Hong Kong: Government opposes joint statement

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government strongly opposes the joint statement by the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US Secretary of State concerning the 2021 Legislative Council General Election held in Hong Kong.

In a statement, the Hong Kong SAR Government said the LegCo election was successfully held after the improvement to the electoral system and it strongly opposes the five countries' attempt to smear the election by making up allegations contrary to facts and without basis.

The improvement to the electoral system has fully implemented the principle of patriots administering Hong Kong, ensuring that the Legislative Councillors are patriotic and act in the interests of the country's development and Hong Kongs long-term prosperity and stability, the statement noted.

On this basis, legislators elected on December 19 come from different backgrounds and across the political spectrum and such diversity showcases the broad representation and political inclusiveness of the improved electoral system.

Such lawmakers have been returned by the Election Committee, functional constituencies and geographical constituencies through direct elections, the statement explained, adding that by balancing the overall interests of Hong Kong, the interests of different sectors and districts, the election ensures balanced participation.

Moreover, healthy competitions among the candidates reflected the fairness and competitiveness of the new electoral system.

The statement also pointed out that with the support of the central government, the safeguards of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the improved electoral system, the citys democratic development will proceed in a lawful and orderly manner in accordance with the Basic Law.

Any external or internal destructive force and political conspiracy trying to interfere with the Hong Kong SAR's democratic development in accordance with the Basic Law will not succeed, it stressed.

The statement emphasised that following the implementation of the National Security Law, chaos came to an end and stability has been restored in Hong Kong.

The law ensures the resolute, full and faithful implementation of the policy of one country, two systems under which the people of Hong Kong administer Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy while the legitimate rights and freedoms enjoyed by them under the Basic Law are well protected.

It added that the National Security Law clearly stipulates that human rights shall be respected and protected in safeguarding national security in the Hong Kong SAR, and the rights and freedoms enjoyed by its residents under the Basic Law and the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights as applied to it shall be protected in accordance with the law.

Such rights and freedoms include those of speech, the press, of publication, of association and assembly as well as procession and demonstration. The four categories of offences endangering national security stipulated in the security law are clearly defined and law-abiding people will not unwittingly violate it.

Any law enforcement actions taken by law enforcement agencies are based on evidence, strictly according to the law, for the acts of the people or entities concerned, and have nothing to do with their political stance, background or occupation, the statement concluded.

This story has been published on: 2021-12-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Western Cape commended for crime fighting efforts

The Police Ministry has commended the zero-tolerance to criminality and illegality adopted by the Western Cape during the festive season.

The ministry said the South African Police Service (SAPS) in the Western Cape had adopted a no-nonsense approach to criminality and illegal activity, as the province welcomed thousands of visitors for the festive season.

In the latest instalment of the Safer Festive Season Inspection Tour hosted in Cape Town on Monday, Police Minister General Bheki Cele and his deputy, Cassel Mathale, alongside National Police Commissioner, General Khehla Sitole and his management team, joined police operations in and around the Mother City.

Ministry spokesperson Lirandzu Themba said the SAPS in the province was bringing police services closer to communities by shifting resources to where they are most needed, as part of its crime combating strategy during the holiday season.

Over and above closely policing identified hot spot areas, the province is embarking on the destruction of illegal liquor, which - according to the latest crime statistics released by the SAPS - is one of the drivers of violent crime such as murder, rape and assault in the province and the country.

As part of the Safer Festive Season Inspection Tour, the Police Minister and the SAPS top brass took part in the flushing down of over 20 000 litres of alcohol that was seized by the SAPS during various Safer Festive season operations that commenced in October 2021.

Cele called on SAPS members not to hesitate to shut down illegally run liquor outlets.

It is not that we are obsessed with alcohol, as many would like to think. We are aware that liquor is a social lubricant. Unfortunately, crime statistics show that it is also a contributor to crime. It is in and around liquor outlets where attacks on women are likely to occur and where people are likely to get into arguments, stab or shoot each other.

The liquor that we are destroying today [has been] seized mainly from illegal traders located in policing precincts that have high cases of assault, rape and murder, and is an indictment on the dire effects of illegal sale of liquor, said Cele.

The Minister commended the Western Cape for improving its crime picture. Although the volumes are still high, the province has recorded a decrease in its murder and contact crime figures.

The combination of resources, energy and human capital between the Western Cape government and the SAPS is starting to bear fruit. I want to strongly urge that this partnership continues and grows in leaps and bounds.

The rearranging of policing resources within the province to where they are most needed, especially moving more officers and vehicles to poorer areas of Cape Town, will certainly send a firm warning shot to criminals that everywhere you go, police wont hesitate to make life extremely difficult for you.

As part of the SAPS strategy to deal decisively with threats associated with the holiday season and beyond, the Police Ministry welcomed the handing over of a mobile police station to the community of Makhaza.

Over and above the mobile station, 50 SAPS personnel have been brought in to work in the policing precinct, alongside 10 more police vehicles to police the township and surrounds. - SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Men urged to be role models in society

KwaZulu-Natal Premier Sihle Zikalala has called on men to be the bedrock of society by supporting the agenda of generation equality, while also supporting women empowerment.

It is our earnest desire that we have men who are hungry for peaceful ways, respectable men who use amicable methods to solve pressing issues that face our families and societies, Zikalala said.

The Premier called on men to fight patriarchy, end gender-based violence (GBV), as well as eliminate child abuse.

Zikalala said the province and the country need men who will be role models to boys, who will grow to respect, embrace and appreciate women and girls for who they are and not for what they can get from them.

The underlying message is that we must work together in ensuring that the relationship between men and women reflects unity, collaboration, partnership and harmony.

He emphasised that men should discuss frankly with each other the challenges they face, explore their fears and anxieties, and pay attention to their dreams and aspirations.

Men need other men and women too to be a shoulder to cry on. They are only human, and also benefit from support and care from others. We need to do away with such myths that men dont cry.' We do not want to create a society of men who feel their voices do not matter, who think no one takes their concerns seriously.

It is very important that men talk about issues that affect their mental, psychological and physical well-being so that they are solved before they worsen. Real men unite to do positive things that build and fortify them.

Importantly, Zikalala said it was never the culture in traditional Zulu society or many African societies to repress women and relegate their role to second-class citizens.

Our history teaches us that women were revered and even worshipped. Before the planting season, our ancestors did rituals to the goddess of fertility and agriculture.

It is really shameful and a disgrace that today, our mothers, sisters and daughters suffer at the hands of men and boys. Something has really gone wrong. This is not a society we can be proud of, he said.

He urged amabutho to be exemplary to young boys by teaching them the true values, characters and responsibilities of being trustworthy men.

Amabutho are a bedrock and strength of the Zulu nation, as the whole nation rely on their defence in times of war. As we confront this devastating war in the form of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF), we rely on amabuthos guidance, war tactics, discipline and determination to win the war against GBVF, Zikalala said.

On Sunday, the Premier joined the community in Mbumbulu, south of Durban, to commemorate International Mens Day under the theme, 'Better Relations Between Men and Women'.

Joined by Social Development MEC, Nonhlanhla Khoza and Member of the Provincial Legislature, Bishop Vusi Dube; traditional leadership and religious leaders, amongst others, the Premier urged men to be the warriors that will be remembered to have restored the humanity and dignity of women.

Please rise and be counted in the fight against this scourge which is a blight on our hard-won freedom and democracy. It is our role as men to improve gender relations and promote gender equality in the workplace, in businesses, government [and] communities, he said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Plan in motion to stabilise PRASA

Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula says the process to address the dire state of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) is firmly on track and significant progress has been made in a number of areas.

It is common cause that we inherited a broken organisation in dire straits. Through the Shareholders Compact we concluded with the Board, we seek to address the challenges with speed, in a systematic and focused manner, the Minister said on Monday.

In a statement, the Minister said when he came into office in 2019, a process to address the state of the entity was set.

The narrative that seeks to create an impression that there is a crisis at PRASA requires that we set the record straight.

The Board of Control we appointed in 2020 is making progress in building the necessary capacity, while providing leadership in enabling PRASA to deliver on its mandate, Mbalula said.

The Minister said he has been briefed on a number of significant decisions the Board has taken, which include the termination of employment of the Group CEO, a matter currently before the courts.

The report of the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) implicates approximately 44 officials in wrong-doing, and the Board is implementing consequences management in this regard.

The Board is equally giving urgent attention to serious allegations made against one of the executives, while tackling, among others, the challenge of ghost workers through an internal campaign, Operation Ziveze, the Minister said.

He said he has comfort that the Board has its eye on the ball and is making headway in addressing chronic challenges that have undermined PRASAs ability to deliver on its mandate in the past.

Operational decisions relating to appointments, suspensions and termination of contracts of employees are matters that fall within the purview of the Board.

The established accountability protocols are fully functional, and I am regularly informed when the Board makes significant decisions that are of a strategic nature or impact on policy implementation, the Minister said.

The Minister has encouraged the Board to take the public into its confidence on the interventions it is making to steady the ship and the decisions it is taking as part of ensuring that the modernisation of passenger rail moves with the necessary speed, led by capable individuals.

Such a step will obviate the need for others to speculate on the state of PRASA and make unfounded statements, the Minister said.

In the new year, the Department of Transport will provide a comprehensive update to the nation on the progress we have made in implementing the PRASA Corporate Plan and the Shareholders Compact.

This update will also include the White Paper on National Rail Policy, which will be tabled before Cabinet in the new year.

Our efforts to turn around PRASA will not take us 30 years, but will deliver tangible results in the coming year. Most of the corridors that were shut down will be back to full operation in the new year, including the central line in Cape Town and the Mabopane line in Tshwane, the Minister said. - SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Government to accept applications for Taxi Relief Fund in 2022

Government will officially launch the application process for operators to access the Taxi Relief Fund next year.

In January 2022, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula will officially launch the application process for operators to access the fund.

At this launch, we will provide details of the application process, which will enable the department, with the support of the NEF, to start accepting applications from individual operators. The application window will remain open until midnight on 28 February 2022. No new applications will be accepted after this date, Mbalula said.

This as government has resolved differences with the taxi industry on the conditions and the manner in which the funds for the Taxi Relief Fund were to be disbursed.

I am pleased that we have since resolved these differences and have partnered with the National Empowerment Fund (NEF) to manage the disbursement of the funds on behalf of the department, the Minister said on Monday.

In July 2020, Parliament allocated the R1.135 billion Taxi Relief Fund as a once-off payment to taxi operators to provide relief for the COVID-19 impact on the sector.

On 2 December, the Minister published Directions on the disbursement of the Taxi Relief Fund in the Government Gazette outlining the qualifying criteria for the fund.

All taxi operators who meet the prescribed conditions are eligible to apply for the fund. This includes minibus-taxis, metered taxis and e-hailing partners, but not the e-hailing companies, the Minister said.

The conditions which taxi operators must comply with in order to access the funds are:

They must be South African or permanent residents;

They must be in possession of a valid operating licence and

They must be registered as a taxpayer with the South African Revenue (SARS).

The application process and the call centre will be driven by a team of young people, recruited from the ranks of unemployed youth and trained by the NEF. This project will provide them with job opportunities and skills to ready them for the job market beyond the project, Mbalula said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: 18 held for speeding in Gauteng

The Gauteng Traffic Polices High-Speed Unit has arrested 18 drivers for allegedly speeding excessively on Gauteng roads.

Excessive speeding is one of the major contributing factors towards fatal crashes. This kind of behaviour will never be tolerated on our roads, Gauteng Traffic Police spokesperson, Sello Maremane, said on Tuesday.

The reckless and negligent drivers were arrested over the weekend during the high-speed operations conducted along Gauteng major routes.

The speedsters were found driving their vehicles at a speed in excess of the prescribed maximum speed limit of 120km per hour on a freeway.

The suspects, aged between 21 and 45, were apprehended on Gauteng Freeways such as the N1 Pretoria to Polokwane, N14 Pretoria to Krugersdorp, N4 Pretoria to Mpumalanga, R21 Pretoria to Boksburg, and M1 between Pretoria and Johannesburg.

Their speed ranged from 160km per hour to over 200 km per hour.

The highest speed recorded was the 26-year-old driver of a Silver BMW, who was caught excessively speeding at 207 km per hour on the N1 freeway in Midrand on 11 December 2021.

The driver could not provide any reason for over speeding nor show any signs of remorse for having endangered the lives of other road users. The driver was detained at Midrand police station.

All the drivers were formally charged with reckless and negligent driving, as well as exceeding the prescribed speed limit of 120km/h on a freeway. The drivers are expected to appear soon in various magistrate courts in Pretoria and Johannesburg, respectively, after they were granted a bail of R1 500 to R5 000, the Gauteng Traffic Police said.

The Gauteng Traffic Police High-Speed Unit will be on high alert this festive season by continuously conducting patrol on Gauteng major routes to ensure that motorists adhere to the general speed limit.

The Gauteng Traffic Police have urged motorists to continue to exercise the necessary caution by adhering to the rules of the road, and driving at the prescribed speed limit in order to save the lives of passengers and other road users.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Special Tribunal dismisses Ndlovus attempts stop SIU proceedings

The Special Tribunal has dismissed with costs an application by businessman Hamilton Ndlovu to have the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) review proceedings against him and his associates stopped in the tribunal.

The proceedings relate to the SIUs application to review and set aside National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts worth R172 million obtained by Ndlovu and eight companies through alleged dubious means.

In August, the SIU and the NHLS were granted an order by the Tribunal to freeze properties and a trust account to the value of R42 million, with a further R60 million of assets also frozen through an order brought by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) earlier this year.

According to the SIU, at least R50 million still remains unaccounted for.

In his application to have the review proceedings halted, Ndlovu told the Tribunal that he could not afford legal counsel because of the two freeze orders against him, rendering him unable to oppose the review proceedings fully.

The Tribunals Judge Lebogang Modiba dismissed this notion.

It is ironic that the applicants may be employing legal fees of applications in the circumstances where they alleged there are no funds or rather limited funds to oppose the review application where far reaching relief is sought against them. They did not take the Special Tribunal into confidence as to how they are financing the stay application and how they intend funding the variation application, Modiba said.

Modiba further reprimanded Ndlovu and his associates for not fully disclosing their financial means.

In the absence of full disclosure I am not satisfied that the applicants have prospects of success in establishing that they will suffer hardships [if] additional money [is not made] available to them, she said.

The Judge said halting the review proceedings against Ndlovu and his associates would not bode well.

In the event that the allegations are established in the review application, it is not in the public interest that they should continue conducting business with the State. Instead, if true, they need to be placed on a list of tender defaulters. Granting the stay in these proceedings will be a great disservice.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-12-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Matric exam scripts recovered after damage to F State marking centre

All the National Senior Certificate scripts that were affected in the storm that damaged a marking centre in Thaba-Nchu in the Free State have now been accounted for.

This comes after devastating storms ripped through parts of the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape in recent weeks.

In a statement on Monday, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) said that a total of 24 519 scripts for Accounting P2 and Business Studies P2 had now been delivered to the Albert Moroka High marking centre for processing.

All Accounting P2, matric scripts had also been accounted for following the storm damage, the department said.

The DBE said the one Business Studies P2 script that had gone missing had now been found, and all scripts for the centre could now be accounted for.

The department extended its gratitude to the hard work of the Education Departments team.

Chief Director for Public Examinations and National Assessments, Dr Rufus Poliah, said had it not been for the sacrifice and quick thinking by the markers and staff, the damage could have been worse.

They worked hard to save the scripts and proceeded to work around the clock to locate the scripts which were initially reported missing in the chaos that happened during the storm, Poliah said.

Poliah commended the manner in which the Free State Education Department had managed the crisis.

The decision to move the marking centre to a new location in Bloemfontein helped to ensure business continuity for the departments marking process.

At the new location, marking is progressing very well, including the capturing of marks. Marking is expected to conclude on 22 December 2021, as planned," the DBE said. SAnews.gov.za

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RTHK: France to implement vaccine pass from January

France will pass a law transforming its health pass needed to exercise some professions and to go to cinemas and bars into a "vaccination" pass in the first half of January, the government said on Tuesday.

"The wave awaiting us will be high," government spokesman Gabriel Attal told journalists, adding that the Omicron variant accounts for 20 percent of new Covid-19 infections in France and is spreading rapidly, particularly in the Paris region.

He added that in the last 24 hours, France had registered around 73,000 new infections.

The main aim of a vaccination pass will be to do away with the option of obtaining a valid certificate by testing negative instead of having the jabs.

However, the government ditched the idea of making the pass mandatory at the workplace, a measure France's labour minister had tested out in recent talks with unions and employers.

"There is no consensus for this measure", Attal said.

A draft law will be discussed by the government in an off-schedule meeting on Monday, and subject to a vote in parliament in the first two weeks of January, Attal said, speeding up an initial government plan to pass the new law by late January.

In contrast to other European governments, Attal on Tuesday ruled out further restrictions, saying that the country had the means to battle the next wave of cases with its vaccination campaign and mass testing and reinforced controls. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2021-12-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: Vaccination a patriotic duty, Biden tells Americans

US President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday the opening of more federal vaccination and testing sites to tackle a surge in Covid-19 cases sparked by the Omicron variant, and said some 500 million at-home rapid tests will be available to Americans for free starting in January.

Biden offered both a warning to the unvaccinated, who he said have "good reason to be concerned," and reassurance that those who are inoculated can gather for the holidays despite the new variant sweeping the country. He said Americans had a patriotic duty to get vaccinated.

"No this is not March of 2020," Biden told reporters at the White House. "Two hundred million people are fully vaccinated, we're prepared, we know more."

Striking a more dire tone about the risks to the one-in-four American adults who are not fully vaccinated, Biden said those who still have not been vaccinated "have a significantly higher risk of ending up in the hospital or even dying."

The measures announced on Tuesday include activating some 1,000 military medical personnel to support hospitals already being overwhelmed by Covid patients in some areas.

Biden's Covid-19 response has been criticised for focusing on vaccines at the detriment of testing and masking, and for underestimating the impact of the politically motivated anti-vaccine movement in the United States.

The new federal measures will not be fully in place ahead of Christmas on Saturday, leaving many Americans scrambling to find available tests ahead of holiday gatherings and travel  and confused about whether it is safe to press ahead with their plans.

The Omicron variant, first detected last month, is causing infections to double in 1.5 to 3 days, according to the World Health Organisation. It is not yet known whether it causes more serious illness than the Delta variant.

Omicron now accounts for 73 percent of all new cases, according to the latest US data, up from less than 1 percent at the beginning of the month. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2021-12-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Vietnam Airlines proposes restoring flights to Europe, Australia from early next year

Vietnam Airlines has proposed resuming regular flights to Europe and Australia from January 1, 2022.













Vietnam Airlines has proposed resuming regular flights to Europe and Australia from January 1, 2022. (Photo: VNA)

The national flag carrier has prepared resources to serve the markets, with the initial weekly frequency of about two flights on each route, according to a representative from Vietnam Airlines.



The restoration would help the corporation bring into full play its aircraft fleet, cut operational costs and consolidate its position, while preventing the risk of domination by international airlines at gateways.



Under a plan mapped out by the Ministry of Transport, regular international flights from/to Vietnam will be resumed in two phases, with air travel with nine foreign destinations to be available again in the first phase and fifteen in the second phase.



Vietnam will restore regular international air routes with Beijing/Guangxi (China), Tokyo (Japan), Seoul (the Republic of Korea), Taipei (Taiwan, China), Bangkok (Thailand), Singapore, Vientiane (Laos), Phnom Penh (Cambodia), and San Francisco/Los Angeles (the US).



During the second phase, flights will be likely to reconnect Vietnam with six more other foreign destinations, including Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Hong Kong (China), Paris (France), Frankfurt (Germany), Sydney (Australia) and Moscow (Russia).



Concerned authorities will evaluate the implementation of the plan before allowing regular international flights to reach the pre-pandemic level.



According to a new guidance issued by the Ministry of Health, fully vaccinated foreign arrivals with negative COVID-19 test results will only need to self-quarantine at home or places of accommodation for three days upon entry into Vietnam by air.



The new regulations will be effective from January 1, 2022, the day Vietnam is set to resume regular international flights on a pilot basis.
Vietnam International Fashion Week 2021 is back

The Aquafina Vietnam International Fashion Week (AVIFW) 2021 will be back in HCM City on December 21-23 after being postponed due to the fourth outbreak of COVID-19.













Famous designer Adrian Anh Tuan will open the AVIFW 2021 with his latest collection called 'Cham' (Touching).  Photo courtesy of the organiser

Le Thi Quynh Trang, president of AVIFW and Council of ASEAN Fashion Designers (CAFD), said at a recent press conference in HCM City: With the theme of 'Shining Life', VAIFW is expected to bring hope and optimism to everyone.



Its time for us to be together to help Vietnams fashion industry, which has been negatively affected by the pandemic, to overcome tough times. I believe Vietnamese fashion will revive strongly, Trang said, adding that the organiser will exempt costs for hosting shows at AVIFW 2021 to all designers.



Designer Adrian Anh Tuan will open the AVIFW 2021 with his latest collection called Cham (Touching) featuring dozens of creations in luxury materials and printed patterns which are especially suited for men.



Tuan is well known for womens ready-to-wear designs with his brand Valenciani. He has presented the latest styles and trends in multiple fashion shows at home and abroad, such as ep Fashion Show, Elle Fashion Show and Vietnam International Fashion Week.



In June 2016, he debuted his collection called The Superstar in California, highlighting the beauty of modern Vietnamese women.



The catwalk performance featured 50 models, including Vietnamese top models Thanh Hang and Le Hang. All proceeds from the event were used for fresh water projects for children living in remote areas in Vietnam.



In 2017, Tuan released "Away We Know -- Things we do for love", a collection of 50 designs to mark his 10 year-career in HCM City. The collection included charming and elegant creations in a 1960s style.



He introduced Fall-Winter 2021 collection, "Hen Ho" (Making a Date), in HCM City in October. It featured 40 ready-to-wear designs for women in Vietnamese and foreign materials.



The AVIFW 2021 will see the participation of other 12 Vietnamese famed designers and brands like Hoang Hai, Ivan Tran, Le Long Dung, and Nguyen Tien Truyen.





Designer Le Long Dung will bring to the event collections of ao dai (Vietnamese traditional dresses) to honour the Vietnamese traditional performing art of cai luong (reformed opera).





Le Thi Quynh Trang, president of the Aquafina Vietnam International Fashion Week and Council of ASEAN Fashion Designers (right), and Vietnamese top fashion model Thanh Hang (centre).  Photo courtesy of the organiser





Top fashion models like Thanh Hang and fashion models from leading fashion and modelling agencies will take part in the catwalk.



The Vietnam International Fashion Week was first held in 2014, and quickly became the leading fashion event in ASEAN. It ranks fourth in Asia after Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai fashion weeks.



The AVIFW 2021 will be held at Capital Studio at 212 Ly Chinh Thang Street in District 3.
Electric vehicles have high development potential in Vietnam amid the growing trend of using green and clean energy, heard an online conference held by Green Innovation and Development Centre (GreenID) and the Giao thong (Transport) newspaper on December 21.

Vinbus electric bus (Photo: VNA)

Participants discussed a wide range of issues related to the future development of electric vehicles in the country, focusing on infrastructure system, encouragement policy, charging centre planning, and experience from countries in the world.

Nguyen Thi Hong Nga, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Giao thong Newspaper said that Vietnams Automobile Industry Development Strategy until 2025 with a vision to 2035 clarified that Vietnam encourages the development of environmentally friendly vehicles that meet requirements in emission standards in line with the roadmap approved by the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, Dr. Nguyen Quoc Khanh, an energy specialist from the GreenID and a member of a research team of a project in forecasting the development of electric vehicles in Vietnam, said that the team has devised three scenarios with three development levels for Vietnam in the field, using Calculator 2050, a tool supporting countries in exploring low-carbon path.

Dao Cong Quyet, a representative from the Vietnam Association of Automobile Manufacturers (VAMA) cited the Vietnam Registers data showing that the number of electric vehicles in Vietnam remains modest at 140 in 2019, 900 in 2020, and additional 600 units as of the first quarter of 2021.

Quyet suggested that Vietnam should issue a roadmap to boost the growth of electric vehicles with specific periods and requirements, along with policies to encourage manufacturers and consumers to switch to the vehicles, paving the way for the expansion of the electric vehicle market.

He also proposed the building of regulations on treatment of waste products related to electric vehicles such as expired batteries, cars and motorbikes.
Vietnam wishes to receive further support from foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the near future, said Vietnamese officials.

VUFO President Nguyen Phuong Nga speaks at the event (Photo: VNA)

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairman of the Committee for NGOs Affairs To Anh Dung and President of the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organisations (VUFO) Nguyen Phuong Nga made the statement during a ceremony held in Hanoi on December 21 in both online and offline formats to honour foreign NGOs contributions this year.

They also committed all possible support for them to work in Vietnam.

At the event, VUFO Vice President and Secretary General and Deputy Chairman of the committee Phan Anh Son presented certificates of merit to 49 NGOs in honour of their outstanding activities this year.

Son lauded foreign NGOs for assisting Vietnam in policy making, finance, pandemic prevention and control with nearly 130 aids worth 10.65 million USD in cash, medical supplies, necessities and training courses.
President Nguyen Xuan Phuc leaves for State visit to Cambodia

President Nguyen Xuan Phuc departed from Hanoi on the morning of December 21 for a State-level visit to Cambodia on December 21 and 22 at the invitation of Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni.













President Nguyen Xuan Phuc leaves Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi on December 21 morning for a State visit to Cambodia (Photo: VNA)

Phucs entourage includes Minister of Public Security General To Lam, Minister of National Defence Gen. Phan Van Giang, Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son, among other officials.



This is the first visit to Cambodia by Phuc as President of Vietnam, making him the first high-ranking Vietnamese leader to officially visit Cambodia during the past two years since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.



The visit aims to implement the 13th National Party Congresss policy for external relations. It takes place in the context that the traditional friendship, solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Cambodia continue to develop robustly, despite many impacts of the epidemic.



The two countries have regularly conducted meetings at both high level and lower levels. Even in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, their leaders continue to maintain online contacts.



The State visit to Cambodia of President Phuc is also one of the first events to start a series of activities to celebrate the Vietnam - Cambodia and Cambodia - Vietnam friendship year and the 55th anniversary of the establishment of the countries diplomatic relations (June 24, 1967 - 2022).



It is also an opportunity for leaders of the two nations to evaluate the results of bilateral cooperation over the past time; exchange and discuss ways for promoting the ties in the future; and talk about regional and international situations of their mutual interests.
Australia and Vietnam set to deepen economic ties

The governments of Australia and Vietnam today publicly released a strategy to unlock significant opportunities for businesses across the two countries.













Australias Ambassador to Vietnam, HE Robyn Mudie and Vice Minister for Planning and Investment, Tran Quoc Phuong present the Australia Vietnam Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy



The Australia Vietnam Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy sets out a road map to increase trade and investment opportunities, forging closer ties between the two countries. The Strategy is unique, the first of its kind for Vietnam and Australia and reflective of both countries mutual interests.



At a meeting in Hanoi with Vice Minister for Planning and Investment, Tran Quoc Phuong Australias Ambassador to Vietnam, HE Robyn Mudie, said, We are proud to have publicly released this strategy in partnership Vietnam. It is the strongest reflection yet of our confidence in our shared economic future. Through this strategy we can recover our economies and prosper together.



Our economies are highly complementary. Australia is a reliable supplier of the services and raw materials that Vietnams exporters require, and our consumers enjoy Vietnams high-quality products in their homes and workplaces. There is enormous potential to take this relationship even further as we emerge from COVID-19.



The Ambassador added, The Strategy will help guide our two countries towards an inclusive and sustainable growth path.



At the meeting, Vice Minister Phuong said the economic potential between Australia and Vietnam is great. This strategy will be central to realising this potential. It demonstrates our commitment to promote economic, trade and investment links across key sectors and will help support the post COVID-19 pandemic economic recovery.



In their forewords to the Strategy, Vietnams Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison endorsed the Strategy as an important step in realising the two countries mutual goal to become top ten trading partners and double two-way investment.



Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, Together, Australia and Vietnam are achieving tremendous things. We share a strong, optimistic and future-focused agenda. This Strategy is a manifest recognition of what is possible when we work together. I am delighted to commend this Strategy to the government, business, investment and innovation communities of Australia and Vietnam, and all who will work together to advance its goals.



Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said, Since the official establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations in 1973, the friendship and cooperative relations between Vietnam and Australia have developed strongly. The Australia-Vietnam Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy shows the ambition and aspirations of our two countries governments and people.



To support Australian and Vietnam businesses, the strategy outlines a series of mutually beneficial, practical initiatives to deepen trade and investment links in key sectors including across agriculture, education, energy, services and the digital economy.



The Strategy also highlights the importance of strengthening the rules-based global trading system as the basis for open international trade and working together to address economic challenges and coercive economic practices.



For more information, and to access the Strategy and Implementation Plan, visit: www.australia-vietnam-eees.gov.au.


News  Headlines

US to donate more COVID-19 vaccines to Vietnam
Xi stresses improving Party regulations to safeguard Party's leadership, governance

Xinhua) 08:11, December 21, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has stressed the important role of the Party's internal regulations in maintaining the centralized and unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee.

The regulations are also vital to the Party's long-term governance and the country's enduring prosperity and stability, said Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, in an instruction to a national meeting on the work of the Party's internal regulations held in Beijing Monday.

Noting the remarkable progress in strengthening Party regulations since the 18th CPC National Congress, Xi stressed further efforts to willingly and firmly implement rule-based governance over the Party and improve intra-Party regulations.

The major roles of intra-Party regulations should be better leveraged to ensure the Party's firm leadership in upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics, he said.

Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, delivers a speech at a national meeting on the work of the Party's internal regulations in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 20, 2021. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the meeting and delivered a speech.

Noting that Xi's instruction has taken into consideration of the Chinese nation's rejuvenation and profound changes happening in the world, Wang said the CPC Central Committee's policies and Xi's instruction must be thoroughly implemented.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Zimbabwe receives latest vaccine donation from China amid 4th wave of COVID-19 pandemic

Xinhua) 08:14, December 21, 2021

A batch of COVID-19 vaccine donated by China arrives at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Dec. 20, 2021. Zimbabwe on Monday received a batch of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine donated by China, which will boost the country's vaccination campaign as it battles the fourth wave of COVID-19 pandemic. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuliang)

HARARE, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe on Monday received a batch of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine donated by China, which will boost the country's vaccination campaign as it battles the fourth wave of COVID-19 pandemic.

The latest donation - on top of other batches of vaccine that China has already donated to Zimbabwe - follows a pledge made by China at the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) to provide another 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa. The sum includes 600 million doses as donation and 400 million doses to be provided through such means as joint production by Chinese companies and relevant African countries.

Speaking shortly after receiving the donation at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare, Zimbabwe's Vice President, who is also the health minister, Constantino Chiwenga, expressed gratitude for the vaccines, saying the donation will help accelerate Zimbabwe's vaccination campaign.

Chiwenga said Zimbabwe and China enjoy excellent relations, as characterized by comprehensive strategic cooperation in many sectors of the economy.

Speaking at the same event, the Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Guo Shaochun, reaffirmed China's commitment to assisting African countries in the fight against the pandemic and addressing vaccine inequality.

"The arrival of this consignment demonstrates that China is turning its commitments into visible and tangible outcomes. China-Africa cooperation will be further increased and benefit wider populations in Africa," Guo said.

China is a major vaccine supplier to Zimbabwe.

As of Dec. 19, slightly over 4 million people out of a population of about 15 million had received at least one vaccine dose, while about 3 million had received both required shots, according to the health ministry's daily update.

Workers unload medical supplies donated by China at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Dec. 20, 2021. Zimbabwe on Monday received a batch of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine donated by China, which will boost the country's vaccination campaign as it battles the fourth wave of COVID-19 pandemic. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuliang)

A batch of COVID-19 vaccine donated by China arrives at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Dec. 20, 2021. Zimbabwe on Monday received a batch of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine donated by China, which will boost the country's vaccination campaign as it battles the fourth wave of COVID-19 pandemic. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuliang)

Constantino Chiwenga (1st L), Zimbabwean Vice President, who is also the health minister, receives medical supplies donated by China at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Dec. 20, 2021. Zimbabwe on Monday received a batch of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine donated by China, which will boost the country's vaccination campaign as it battles the fourth wave of COVID-19 pandemic. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuliang)

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
UK reserves "possibility of taking further action" amid surging Omicron cases: PM

Xinhua) 08:17, December 21, 2021

People walk on Westminster Bridge in the mist in London, Britian, Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

Britain reported 91,743 coronavirus cases in the latest 24-hour period, the second highest recorded daily number.

LONDON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday that the government reserves the "possibility of taking further action" to protect public health because of the spread of the Omicron variant.

The prime minister said he is following the data "hour by hour" and warned the rules could still be tightened in the days to come.

Britain reported 91,743 coronavirus cases in the latest 24-hour period, the second highest recorded daily number ever, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 11,453,121, according to official figures released Monday.

Another 8,044 Omicron cases have been detected in Britain, taking the total Omicron cases in the country to 45,145, the UK health security agency (UKHSA) confirmed.

The country also reported a further 44 coronavirus-related deaths, raising the national death toll to 147,261.

A man receives a vaccine jab at NHS (National Health Service) COVID Vaccine Center at Wembley Stadium in London, Britain, on Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo by Ray Tang/Xinhua)

Meanwhile, ministers have reportedly pushed back against calls from scientific advisers for new measures to tackle the Omicron variant before Christmas.

Around one third of the cabinet are said to be reluctant to support new restrictions in the coming days, with Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak among them, according to The Times.

The British government's advisory scientists have warned extra restrictions are needed "within days" to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by Omicron.

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 50.4 percent have received the booster dose, or the third dose.

People queue for a vaccine jab at a mass vaccination center at Wembley Stadium in London, Britian, Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Iran launches large-scale war game along southern coasts: state TV

Xinhua) 08:20, December 21, 2021

A missile is launched during the fifth day of the six-day naval drill dubbed Velayat 91 from the coastline of the sea of Oman in southern Iran on Jan. 1, 2013. (Xinhua/Irna News Agency/Mohammadreza Alimadadi)

TEHRAN, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) staged a large-scale war game, codenamed "the Great Prophet 17," along the southern coasts of the country on Monday, state TV reported.

The exercise, to be held for five days, involves IRGC units such as the aerospace force and the cyber-electronic division, Abbas Nilforoushan, the IRGC's deputy chief of operations and spokesman for the drill, was quoted by Press TV as saying.

According to the general, a series of military systems and weapons recently delivered to the IRGC will be brought into action during the war game.

"The military exercise is meant to increase the preparedness of the IRGC combat units," Nilforoushan said.

"The military drills carry the message of defending and safeguarding the national security," he added.

Meanwhile, Gholam Ali Rashid, another IRGC senior commander, seriously warned Isreal and the United States about any threats or mischief against nuclear facilities in Iran, after Isreal threatened to launch military attacks on Iran's nuclear program during rounds of nuclear talks.

"If such threats are carried out, Iran's armed forces will immediately and decisively attack all centers, bases, routes, and spaces used for the aggression," Rashid said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
39 wild Asian elephants "dine together" in China's Yunnan

Xinhua) 08:30, December 21, 2021

KUNMING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- A total of 39 wild Asian elephants inhabiting different areas gathered together recently to dine in Jiangcheng Hani and Yi Autonomous County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, according to local authorities on Monday.

Due to the shortage of food sources in the forest during winter, when the corn planted in the villages is gradually harvested, herds of elephants, along with their cubs, have come here for food, said Diao Faxing, an Asian elephant observer.

"They do nothing but eat every day," said Diao.

According to Yang Song, head of the county's wildlife protection station, the 39 elephants belong to two populations. They gathered in batches near Kangping Township and Zhengdong Township, and mainly forage on the farmland during the day, which has caused damage to villagers' agricultural facilities and crops.

"We are trying to lead these mammals back to the mountains by providing them with food," Yang said.

Local authorities have taken measures such as strengthening monitoring and early warning, traffic control and setting up roadblocks to ensure the safety of people and elephants.

Wild Asian elephants, a flagship species in the rainforest, are under A-level state protection in China. Thanks to stronger environmental and wildlife protection efforts, the population in the country has grown to about 300, mostly scattered around Yunnan.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China's top legislature starts standing committee session

Xinhua) 08:32, December 21, 2021

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over the first plenary meeting of the 32nd session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 20, 2021. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, started its 32nd session Monday in Beijing.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, presided over the session's first plenary meeting.

Lawmakers reviewed a draft amendment to the Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments. In its report on the draft, the NPC Constitution and Law Committee suggested the draft be submitted to the fifth session of the 13th NPC after being reviewed at the current session.

The NPC Constitution and Law Committee also submitted to the session a draft anti-organized crime law, a draft wetlands protection law, a draft revision to the Law on Progress of Science and Technology, a draft amendment to the Seed Law, a draft law on the prevention and control of noise pollution, and a draft amendment to the Civil Procedure Law.

Considering the above six drafts are already mature, the NPC Constitution and Law Committee suggested the current session adopt them.

Lawmakers reviewed a draft revision to the Vocational Education Law, a draft amendment to the Trade Union Law, a draft revision to the Company Law, a draft amendment to the Rules of Procedure for the NPC Standing Committee, a draft law on protecting the black soil, a draft revision to the Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women, a draft law on protecting the Yellow River, and a draft revision to the Emergency Response Law.

Lawmakers also deliberated a draft decision of the fifth session of the 13th NPC on the number of deputies to the 14th NPC and their election, two draft methods for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Macao SAR to elect their deputies to the 14th NPC, and a draft revision to the decision on strengthening the oversight over economic work.

The session reviewed a draft decision of the NPC Standing Committee on convening the fifth session of the 13th NPC, several reports and personnel bills.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China, Japan agree to manage maritime differences, safeguard maritime stability

Xinhua) 08:33, December 21, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- China and Japan have agreed to properly manage maritime contradictions and differences, earnestly safeguard maritime security and stability, and make the East China Sea become a sea of peace, cooperation and friendship.

The agreement was reached during the 13th round of high-level consultations on maritime affairs held via video link on Monday.

The two sides held a plenary meeting and three working group meetings on maritime defense, maritime law enforcement and security, and the marine economy.

Both sides agreed to focus on building China-Japan relationship that meets the requirements for the new era, fully implement the important consensus reached by the two countries' leaders and four-point principled consensus.

The two sides reached consensus on conducting cooperation on combating maritime crimes, promoting exchanges between law enforcement officers, and enhancing marine environmental protection.

The Chinese side reiterated its solemn position on the Diaoyu Islands and other issues, and urged the Japanese side to earnestly respect China's territorial sovereignty, maritime rights and interests, and stop taking actions that complicate the situation.

China also expressed dissatisfaction with Japan's negative actions in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, which affected air and maritime security, and made representations on Japan's wrong words and deeds on the Taiwan Strait.

The Chinese side stressed firm opposition to external forces' intervention in the Taiwan Strait and urged the Japanese side to be cautious in words and actions to avoid affecting regional peace and stability.

The two sides agreed in principle to hold the 14th round of high-level consultations on maritime affairs in the first half of next year.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China to legislate to protect fertile black soil in northeast

Xinhua) 08:43, December 21, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- China is deliberating a new law to protect the fertile black soil in its northeastern regions as part of the efforts to ensure the country's food security and protect the ecosystem.

The draft law was submitted for its first reading on Monday at an ongoing session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature.

The black soil, or chernozem soil, found in China's northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning and in some parts of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, produces about one-quarter of the country's total grain output, making it key to China's food supply.

But years of excessive reclamation have eroded its nutrients and the chernozem layer is thinning, which threatens the country's ecological security and sustainable agricultural development.

According to an explanatory document on the draft law, provincial-level legislation has failed to establish an effective protective mechanism and the country is in need of measures designed to specifically protect the black soil.

With 37 provisions, the draft law specifies the responsibilities of the government and "agricultural production operators" to protect the black soil.

Stipulating a surveying and monitoring system for the soil, the draft says that when the State Council conducts its national land survey, a similar survey on the distribution, quantity, quality, and protection of the black soil would meanwhile take place to establish a "black soil archive."

Governments at or above the county level should earmark funds for black soil protection in their budgets and report their work on black soil protection to people's congresses of the corresponding level, says the draft law.

Organizations and individuals who make outstanding contributions to black soil protection would be commended and rewarded.

Lawmakers will deliberate the draft law in group discussions during the session, which will run until Friday.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Chinese vice premier holds video conference with Swiss finance minister

Xinhua) 08:44, December 21, 2021

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, speaks via video link with Swiss Federal Councillor and Finance Minister Ueli Maurer, Dec. 20, 2021. (Xinhua/Ding Lin)

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu He spoke via video link with Swiss Federal Councillor and Finance Minister Ueli Maurer on Monday.

Noting that China-Switzerland relations offer a model of cooperation between countries featuring equality and win-win results, Liu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, expressed the hope that the two sides can create more "firsts" in financial cooperation.

While hailing the openness of China's capital market, Maurer said Switzerland is willing to deepen cooperation in financial and other sectors on the basis of friendship and mutual respect.

The two sides agreed to establish a ministerial-level working group on finance, to strengthen communication and implement work related to cooperation on sustainable finance, connectivity between stock markets, wealth management, and insurance industry supervision.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China condemns Lithuania over remarks on Taiwan

Xinhua) 08:45, December 21, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- If certain people or forces in Lithuania insist on colluding with "Taiwan independence" separatist forces and going further down the dark path, they will eventually end up in the trashcan of history, said a foreign ministry spokesperson Monday.

Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to recent remarks made by a Lithuanian official, who also noted that a senior agriculture official might lead a business delegation to Taiwan next year.

Lithuania openly created the false impression of "one China, one Taiwan" in the world, renounced the political commitment it made in the communique on the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Lithuania, and violated the one-China principle, a basic norm governing international relations and consensus of the international community, Zhao said.

"The move is bound to be disdained and rejected," he added.

"It is right and just that national sovereignty and territorial integrity shall be inviolable," said the spokesperson, adding that Lithuania broke faith and stood on the opposite side of what is right and just.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
China ready to provide humanitarian assistance to Philippines

Xinhua) 08:50, December 21, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government is ready to assist, within its capacity, the Philippine government and people according to their urgent needs, a spokesperson with China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) said Monday.

Noting that the Philippines was hit hard by Typhoon Rai recently, causing heavy casualties and property losses, spokesperson Xu Wei said that China expressed deep condolences to the victims and sincere sympathy to all affected.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Chinese livestreamer fined 1.34 bln yuan for tax evasion

Xinhua) 09:06, December 21, 2021

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The leading livestreamer Huang Wei, better known as Viya, was fined 1.34 billion yuan (about 210 million U.S. dollars) for tax evasion, said China's taxation authority Monday.

Between 2019 and 2020, Huang evaded 643 million yuan in tax by concealing her personal income and falsely declaring the nature of her income while failing to pay 60 million yuan in other taxes, said a statement on the website of the State Taxation Administration.

According to the law, Huang was fined 1.34 billion yuan, including tax payments and overdue fines, the statement said.

If a taxpayer evades taxes, the tax authorities shall recover the tax which the taxpayer fails to pay or underpays and the late payment fee, and impose a fine of not less than 50 percent but not more than five times the amount the taxpayer fails to pay or underpays, according to the law.

Along with the takeoff of the platform economy and livestreaming e-commerce, the tax authorities have strengthened supervision and regulation of the new economy and new forms of business and probed and dealt with many cases on tax evasion.

The tax authorities have offered a self-examination and rectification period for new-business practitioners.

In September, the administration issued a notice specifying that livestreamers who proactively report and promptly correct tax-related problems by the end of 2021 can receive less punishment or be exempted from punishment under the law. Thousands of people have taken the initiative to self-examine and pay back taxes.

The country's support for the new economy and new business forms should not be a talisman for people in this sector to evade tax. Paying taxes under the law is the obligation of every citizen, said Tang Jiqiang, a professor at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.

Online shopping is getting more intelligent as livestreaming e-commerce thrives and reshapes consumer behavior.

Compared with traditional online retailing, livestreaming e-commerce enables sellers to showcase their goods more authentically and thoroughly. Consumers can also enjoy special offers from livestreamers.

Considering China's massive livestreaming market, analysts envision that livestreaming e-commerce will continue to expand its presence in online shopping and involve more sectors and types of goods.

The country's livestreaming e-commerce market is estimated to near 2 trillion yuan in 2021, according to a report from a Ministry of Commerce research institute.

The streamlining sector boasts diversified platforms and different practitioners, bringing more challenges for supervision, said Xu Sheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research. Xu called for better cooperation of various departments to promote the healthy and sustained development of the sector.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Americas giant war machine threatens global security

09:09, December 21, 2021 By Zhong Sheng ( People's Daily

The U.S. Department of Defense recently released its 2021 Global Posture Review (GPR), claiming that the U.S. will enhance military infrastructure in Guam and Australia. The report, which is full of Cold-War mentality, is the embodiment of the countrys age-old hegemonic mindset and the result of its habit of maintaining hegemony with military means.

Over the years, the U.S. has been wantonly flaunting its military power around the world. For the ultimate purpose of maintaining U.S. hegemony, it has frequently imposed military pressure on other countries and even provoked conflicts and wars.

To the U.S., hegemony always goes hand in hand with war. As a matter of fact, from the Westward Movement to the Mexican-American War and then the Spanish-American War, a series of expansions accompanied the U.S. in the early stage of its development.

After the end of World War II, the U.S. became the worlds strongest country in terms of comprehensive national strength and war became an important means for the country to maintain the hegemony.

Its ambition to maintain U.S. hegemony has inflicted one war after another upon foreign countries, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the U.S. Invasion of Panama, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan Civil War and the Syrian Civil War. Even the huge cost of defeat didnt stop the country from waging more wars.

U.S. magazine The National Interest quoted Dakota Wood, senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation, as saying that in every 15 years or so, the U.S. would get involved in a conflict.

From Asia to America, from Europe to Africa, the places where the evil war machine of the U.S. goes are deprived of peace and tranquility.

In order to maintain its hegemony, the U.S. has operated a giant war machine and even established military bases all over the world. Since 1945, the country has built nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries around the world and constantly bolstered its military presence.

The Middle East alone sees more than 70,000 permanently stationed U.S. troops. The U.S. also deploys advanced military equipment in the region, such as aircraft carrier battle groups, stealth fighters and strategic nuclear submarines, trying to maintain strategic deterrence in the region at all times.

Overseas military bases of the U.S. have exacerbated geopolitical tensions and actually made the U.S. and the world less safe, pointed out U.S. writer David Vine in his book Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.

Thirty years has passed since the end of the Cold War, yet U.S. foreign policies still cant shake off the influence of the Cold War mentality and remain highly dependent on military means.

Over the past three decades, the U.S. has always maintained its military deployment around the world and, in pursuit of its own absolute security, undermined the legitimate security interests of other countries.

It has constantly searched for imaginary enemies and exaggerated external threats despite the risk of provoking confrontation between major countries.

Relying on its superior military strength, the U.S. has waged wars directly or fought proxy wars, and interfered in the internal affairs of other countries on various pretexts, frequently causing security crises and humanitarian disasters.

A report released by U.S. antiwar organization Code Pink revealed that during the past two decades, the U.S. and its allies have dropped an average of more than 40 bombs and missiles a day, leading to untold casualties.

The U.S. has reveled in its own power following the Cold War and appeared selfishly fixated on its own politics and interests, said an article published on the website of the Los Angeles Times.

The transformation of the international landscape is at a crossroads. Fostering democratic relations between nations represents the general trend of the times, while building a world that is free from fear and enjoys universal security is a widely shared appeal of the international community.

However, the U.S., going against the prevailing trend of the times, has constantly upgraded its nuclear arsenal, lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, established the Space Force and the Space Command, speeded up weapon tests in outer space, increased military deployment in the Asian-Pacific region, and instigated its allies to join it in imposing military pressure on others.

The U.S. has remained the worlds largest military spender for years, according to a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

In 2020, despite economic crises and fiscal challenges, the military expenditure of the U.S. increased by 4.4 percent over 2019 and accounted for nearly 40 percent of the worlds total military expenditure.

At present, people in all countries across the world long for peace and development more than ever before, and their call for equity and justice and determination in pursuing win-win cooperation are growing stronger.

If the U.S. continues to be obsessed with the power of fist and the law of the jungle, it will only find itself on the wrong side of history and expose to more people around the world its true colors as a hegemonist.

(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)
Guangdong's foreign trade up 17.4 pct in Jan-Nov

Xinhua) 09:13, December 21, 2021

People visit the 130th session of the China Import and Export Fair, or the Canton Fair, in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Oct. 15, 2021. (Xinhua/Deng Hua)

GUANGZHOU, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Foreign trade in south China's Guangdong Province rose 17.4 percent year on year in the first 11 months, according to figures released by the provincial customs authority.

As China's major foreign trade hub, Guangdong's foreign trade volume hit 7.5 trillion yuan (about 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars) during the Jan-Nov period, which has exceeded the scale of 7.1 trillion yuan last year.

Among them, exports grew 17.4 percent to 4.6 trillion yuan, while imports also registered a 17.4-percent year-on-year increase to 2.9 trillion yuan.

From January to November, Guangdong's trade with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) increased by 14.8 percent year on year, while trade with the United States and the European Union grew by 15 percent and 21.4 percent respectively, compared to the same period last year.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Understanding whole-process people's democracy

09:15, December 21, 2021 By Robert Lawrence Kuhn ( People's Daily

China's second centenary goal is to build China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful by the middle of the century. Promoting democracy, as China defines it, is an important part of the plan. Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out that democracy is a common value of humanity and an ideal that has always been cherished by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese people. What is this kind of democracy?

At present, under the leadership of the CPC, China states that it is developing people's democracy throughout the whole process, expanding orderly political participation of the people, strengthening legal protection of human rights, and ensuring that the people enjoy extensive rights and freedoms in accordance with the law.

Whole-process people's democracy is said to enable the role of the people  who, according to CPC theory, are masters of the country  to be better reflected in the country's political and social life. To promote whole-process people's democracy, the CPC adheres to and improves the system of people's congresses. While exercising their rights through certain kinds of elections, the people also participate in extensive consultations in various ways before and during policy decisions on major issues concerning the country's reform, development and stability as well as on issues concerning their own interests. For example, the process of preparing the annual reports on the work of the Chinese government solicits opinions and suggestions from government officials, experts, scholars and people from all walks of life. These documents take months to draft, and many proposed changes are made through deliberation.

The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is playing an increasingly important role in consultative democracy. CPPCC members come from all walks of life with professional knowledge and social influence. Deliberative democracy in China enriches the forms, expands the channels and enhances the connotation of democracy.

Some people in western and other countries have misconceptions about the CPC, partly because China's political system differs from that of countries with multiple parties and regular elections. There are no identical political systems in the world, nor is there a model political system applicable to all countries. In fact, all political systems have trade-offs.

As China's ruling party, the CPC states that it represents the interests of all Chinese people, which it distinguishes from multi-party systems, where political parties represent only a segment of the electorate. That is why the CPC has a higher obligation to improve the living standards of all Chinese people. This involves reform, the rule of law, government transparency, public participation in governance, promoting democracy and freedom, and safeguarding human rights  all of which, the CPC states, it is striving to achieve. The CPC's sense of mission and governance capability can be seen in China's fight against COVID-19 and eradication of absolute poverty. I argue that the common reason why China won these two battles was the leadership and organizational ability of the CPC.

Of course, the CPC doesn't stop there. China has set a broader and longer-term goal of achieving common prosperity. This overarching policy driver is the CPC's firm commitment to the Chinese people. In pursuit of this goal, China will have to continue to adhere to reform and opening-up and constantly improve various institutions. Whole-process people's democracy, fully implemented under the leadership of the CPC, is an essential element in ensuring that development is for the people, by the people, and shared by the people.

(The author is the winner of the China Reform Friendship Medal and president of The Kuhn Foundation)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Huawei releases scenario-based solutions to facilitate digital transformation of industries

09:24, December 21, 2021 By Cao Shulin ( People's Daily

Chinese tech giant Huawei has launched 11 scenario-based solutions for customers from different industries to satisfy their individualized demands for digital transformation, aiming to respond to challenges, take opportunities and create new value in these industries together with its partners.

Customers try Huaweis new smart global operating system HarmonyOS 2 at a Huawei flagship store in Shanghai, June 3, 2021. (Peoples Daily Online/ Wang Gang)

To achieve digital transformation, enterprises need to develop digital platforms as a foundation and focus on business restructuring with the aim of supporting the success of their main business, noted Tao Jingwen, Huaweis Board Member.

Huawei, which has traveled a path of digitalization that started in one specific field and resulted in well-rounded digitalization, hopes to provide customers with high-quality products and services based on its experience and help enterprises in various industries achieve digital transformation and forge global competitiveness, Tao said.

Huaweis business interaction service platform has effectively tackled some bottlenecks that have haunted traditional electric power companies in development.

When customer complaints occurred in the power system, they were traditionally conveyed to personnel responsible for handling complaints through one procedure after another, which caused slow response and could easily lead to further complaints.

As regards overhaul, tasks used to be assigned orally and examination records written down by hand, which made maintenance unknowable and uncontrollable; and when new problems arose, it was hard to fix them in time.

Photo shows Huaweis exhibition booth at the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services. (File photo)

With Huaweis business interaction service platform, State Grid Sichuan Electric Power Company has developed an innovative digital solution under which many prefecture-level smart service centers have been built based on dedicated working groups providing services via digital means.

Thanks to the digital solution, work orders are directly sent to groups in charge and the whole handling process becomes transparent and visible. Besides, a hierarchical management system that connects the headquarters, prefecture-level service centers and digital working groups has taken shape, enabling real-time interactions between personnel at different levels during work.

In recent years, Huangpu district, Shanghai, has incubated an integrated urban management platform that combines data in public security, public governance, public services, economic operation and other aspects of urban governance based on Huaweis smart city solution, City Intelligent Twins. The solution solves the difficulties in fine urban management with digital technologies and provides new wisdom for urban governance.

The City Intelligent Twins, which has been developed based on new-generation cloud computing centers, urban digital platforms and urban operation centers, has also been employed by Zhangjiagang city, east Chinas Jiangsu province, to promote its intelligent upgrading.

In the digital era, human-machine collaboration and intelligence-driven efficiency improvement will become a new development path for cities in the context of digital transformation, according to Yue Kun, a manager at Huawei.

Under the belief that the construction of smart cities should aim for responding to the needs of the people and focus on bringing citizens a sense of gain rather than simply piling up advanced technologies, Huawei has devoted itself to achieving finer urban governance with technologies and continuously improving the happiness of citizens, Yue said.

So far, the City Intelligent Twins has been implemented in over 50 Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Changchun.

Photo shows a mixed reality (MR) telemedicine multi-terminal interaction solution jointly developed by Huawei Cloud and IDEAPOOL, which provides more application scenarios for telemedicine. (File photo)

In the field of transportation, Huawei has released its latest smart airport solution as well as smart air traffic control and comprehensive transportation solutions, continuously helping customers in the industry realize digitalization that brings about more convenient traveling for people and better logistics services for goods.

The company has also rolled out its latest solution to smart car manufacturing to help the manufacturing sector improve efficiency and experience.

Huaweis virtual desktop solution, which can be employed in industrial applications, is flexible, efficient, safe and reliable, said Zhang Liang, general manager of the manufacturing business department under Talkweb Information System Co., Ltd.

The end-to-end solution that involves the ecosystems of both software and hardware can be used in major industrial scenarios and achieve cloud-based collaborative production among multiple business divisions, Zhang added.

We intend to help each customer embrace digitalization in their unique way, said Peng Zhongyang, Huaweis Board Member, adding that in different stages of digital evolution, Huawei will infuse vitality into industries with digital technologies and industry practices, and work with global partners to fully support customers digital transformation.

It was disclosed that the company plans to release more than 300 scenario-based solutions in the next five years.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Hubei Provincial Museum opens new exhibition hall

Xinhua) 13:29, December 21, 2021

Photo taken on Dec. 20, 2021 shows a set of chime bells, the largest ever unearthed in China, which was found in 1978 in the tomb of Marquis Yi, a ruler of the Zeng State during the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC), on display in the new exhibition hall of Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

A visitor appreciates cultural relics in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

A visitor appreciates cultural relics in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

A visitor appreciates cultural relics in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

Visitors appreciate cultural relics in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

Photo taken on Dec. 20, 2021 shows cultural relics on display in the new exhibition hall of Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

A visitor appreciates cultural relics in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

A visitor looks at the Sword of Goujian, which was named after the king of the state of Yue during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

Visitors look at the Sword of Goujian, which was named after the king of the state of Yue during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

A visitor looks at the Sword of Goujian, which was named after the king of the state of Yue during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

Photo taken on Dec. 20, 2021 shows the exterior view of the new exhibition hall of Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

A visitor looks at a cultural relic in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

Visitors look at a set of chime bells, the largest ever unearthed in China, which was found in 1978 in the tomb of Marquis Yi, a ruler of the Zeng State during the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC), in Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Dec. 20, 2021. The Hubei Provincial Museum, located in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, opened a new exhibition hall on Monday, with its most famous exhibits moved to the new location. The museum is one of the best known in China, with more than 240,000 items in the collection and nearly 1,000 top state-level historic and cultural relics, according to the institution. With the new exhibition hall, the area of the Hubei Provincial Museum now totals 113,800 square meters, with around 36,000 square meters of exhibition area. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Washington's fixation on sanctions

Xinhua) 13:36, December 21, 2021

Photo taken on Nov. 23, 2021 shows the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

For years, the United States, relying on its dominant position in the global economic and financial system, has frequently used sanctions to attack other countries in the name of "democracy and human rights," which has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, and also has poisoned global economic security.

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Washington has "become addicted to sanctions" like a 5-year-old child who "is addicted to candy," a U.S. columnist has said.

"If there is one tool policymakers and lawmakers in Washington are almost always predisposed to use, it is the economic stick commonly known as sanctions," said Daniel DePetris in an op-ed published recently by U.S. weekly news magazine Newsweek.

Recently, the United States has imposed new sanctions on individuals and entities from China, Russia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Myanmar, Bangladesh and others for "human rights violations" during the so-called "Summit for Democracy."

For years, the United States, relying on its dominant position in the global economic and financial system, has frequently used sanctions to attack other countries in the name of "democracy and human rights," which has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, and also has poisoned global economic security.

LONG-ARMED JURISDICTION

For a long time, the United States has overused its financial hegemony and technological advantages, and has continued to impose its domestic legislation all over the world under the guise of "human rights" and "national security," by sanctioning countries it regarded as enemies or rivals, and imposing illegal unilateral long-armed jurisdiction on third parties, including its allies.

"Economic statecraft has been a vital component of U.S. diplomacy since the early days of the republic," Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, said in a recent article published in Foreign Affairs magazine.

During the Cold War, the United States issued rules and laws to prevent Soviet allies from accessing vital resources and technologies, Drezner said.

Over the past few years, Washington has taken a new approach to sanctions. It has adopted a series of domestic laws. Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria and more are on the U.S. blacklist.

According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the number of U.S. sanctions has increased tenfold in the past 20 years. U.S. President Barack Obama imposed 2,350 sanctions in his second term, and U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 3,800 sanctions during his presidency. As of Oct. 1, 2021, the department has implemented 9,421 sanctions in force.

A protester breaking into the U.S. Capitol building is captured on a screenshot in a video feed from NBC news seen in Arlington, Virginia, the United States, Jan. 6, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

TRUE DEMOCRACY?

In early December, the so-called "Summit for Democracy" ended with endless doubts from the international community.

The fundamental purpose of democracy is to safeguard the interests of the people. However, the U.S. government, based on the mentality of "follow me or go against me," has made great efforts on the international stage to wantonly disrupt other countries' economies and damage people's livelihoods by means of sanctions and bullying, without considering the interests of other peoples, which has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, and interfered with and disturbed the normal operation of the world economy and global industrial chain.

The U.S. regressive moves are totally different from the true democratic spirit, which makes the so-called "freedom, democracy and human rights" billed by the United States questionable.

Among the nearly 40 million people in Afghanistan, "22.8 million could face acute hunger during winter months, with 8.7 million people at emergency levels," according to the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme.

The Afghan Taliban has repeatedly urged the United States to ease sanctions against Afghanistan and unfreeze Afghan assets, pointing out that the U.S. sanctions have caused serious damage not only to Afghan trade and commerce, but also to humanitarian assistance.

According to statistics, U.S. sanctions have cut Iran's oil exports by more than 80 percent from 2017 to the end of 2020. Not to mention the 60-year economic embargo against Cuba, which has caused direct economic losses of over 100 billion U.S. dollars to Cuba and caused serious harm to the Cuban people. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has increased its sanctions against Iran, Syria and other countries, making their situations even worse.

During the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in September this year, leaders of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and other countries blasted the United States for its hegemonism, neo-colonialism and economic coercion in international relations.

Earlier in June, for the 29th consecutive year, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution, "calling for an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba," which conveyed the voice of the international community against U.S. hegemonism.

People look at a board showing the rates of currencies at a currency exchange center in central Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 1, 2018. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

HEGEMONIC MENTALITY

Although the U.S. sanctions are often under the banner of "democracy and human rights," in essence, such means, like foreign ideological exports and foreign wars, are a tool for Washington to maintain its hegemony and serve the interests of its ruling class.

Foreign Affairs magazine said the United States has become a country "of sanctions," having a tendency for "the use and abuse of economic coercion."

This year alone, the United States has repeatedly wielded the stick of sanctions.

The country has threatened sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine issue, of cutting off Russia's financial lifeline.

On the day the Taliban took over the Afghan capital city of Kabul, the U.S. government quickly froze nearly 9.5 billion dollars in national foreign exchange assets held in the United States by the Afghan central bank.

Washington has also been ruthless in imposing sanctions on its European allies on issues such as the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.

The U.S. approach is the age-old "with us or against us" strategy, and "delivers all the consequences that a hegemon can inflict upon non-compliant states," Chandran Nair, founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, said in a recent op-ed published in the South China Morning Post.

"The truth is that Washington's fixation with sanctions has little to do with their efficacy and everything to do with something else: American decline," said Drezner.

Two decades of war, recession, polarization, and a pandemic have dented U.S. power, Drezner said. "Frustrated U.S. presidents are left with fewer arrows in their quiver, and they are quick to reach for the easy, available tool of sanctions."

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Liang Jun)
Spectacular gathering of birds seen at Baiyangdian Lake in Xiongan New Area

People's Daily Online) 15:49, December 21, 2021

Baiyangdian Lake, the largest freshwater lake in northern China, has seen a spectacular gathering of birds over the winter. Wild birds like coots and mallard ducks were captured on camera playing and foraging in the area recently.

Located in the Xiongan New Area in north China's Hebei Province, Baiyangdian Lake has been undergoing the largest-scale systematic ecological management effort in its history. The function of Baiyangdian as the "kidney of North China" has been restored at an accelerated pace with the improvement of water quality and biodiversity during the past four years.

Baiyangdian Lake is now home to 230 species of wild birds, an increase of 24 species compared with the number before the establishment of the Xiongan New Area.

Wild birds like coots and mallard ducks are captured on camera playing and foraging at Baiyangdian Lake, located in the Xiongan New Area in north China's Hebei Province. (Photo/People's Daily Online)

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has stressed the important role of the Party's internal regulations in maintaining the centralized and unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee.

The regulations are also vital to the Party's long-term governance and the country's enduring prosperity and stability, said Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, in an instruction to a national meeting on the work of the Party's internal regulations held in Beijing Monday.

Noting the remarkable progress in strengthening Party regulations since the 18th CPC National Congress, Xi stressed further efforts to willingly and firmly implement rule-based governance over the Party and improve intra-Party regulations.

The major roles of intra-Party regulations should be better leveraged to ensure the Party's firm leadership in upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics, he said.

Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the meeting and delivered a speech.

Noting that Xi's instruction has taken into consideration of the Chinese nation's rejuvenation and profound changes happening in the world, Wang said the CPC Central Committee's policies and Xi's instruction must be thoroughly implemented. Enditem




Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) Photo: VCG Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) Photo: VCG

In a joint statement released on Monday, foreign ministers of the Five Eyes alliance countries, headed by the US, harshly criticized the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) elections that just took place. They falsely claim that the democratic elements of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's (HKSAR) electoral system have been eroded and they complain loudly about the imprisonment of criminals who had violated the national security law for Hong Kong. These LegCo elections were very smooth but the Five Eyes alliance was quite disappointed. Therefore, it uttered these malicious cliches when Hong Kong is enjoying a happy moment.

The 90 newly elected LegCo members all have passed the qualification reviews which requires candidates to love the country and love Hong Kong. They take serving and better building Hong Kong as their mission. The LegCo will never see the astonishing chaos it had before when some lawmakers, like hooligans, specially acted against the HKSAR government, destroyed Hong Kong's constitutional order and impaired the city's prosperity and stability. During the radical anti-extradition bill protests, they betrayed Hong Kong and became the agents of some foreign countries. But now, all the tools that the Five Eyes alliance used in Hong Kong have been cut off, which is certainly a threat to their shared wishes. For the Five Eyes alliance, the so-called good democracy probably means that their agents in Hong Kong can act unscrupulously and will not face any restrictions, even if they engage in anti-China activities that disrupt order in HKSAR.

Voters line up outside a polling station at Whampoa in Hong Kong to cast their votes for the Legislative Council, the first election since the city implemented the electoral reform that ensures only patriots govern Hong Kong. Photo: Xinhua Voters line up outside a polling station at Whampoa in Hong Kong to cast their votes for the Legislative Council, the first election since the city implemented the electoral reform that ensures only patriots govern Hong Kong. Photo: Xinhua

Seeing that its attempts have failed, the Five Eyes alliance issued a statement to satirize the Hong Kong LegCo elections by saying they are of the "same color." Are they all colorblind? During these elections, many people with different political propositions were nominated, some of whom were successfully elected. The composition of the newly elected members is more representative than the previous generation. In addition to entrepreneurs and professionals, there are also representatives of grass-roots workers. It is appropriate to describe them as colorful elections.

Although the US and the West, represented by the Five Eyes alliance, have gone all out to attack Hong Kong's new electoral system, its citizens still have a high degree of trust and support for it. Within one day, 1.35 million Hong Kong citizens took to the streets to cast a sacred vote. Can't the Five Eyes see all these facts? With 1.35 million votes, the public opinion they represent cannot be failed, let alone be degraded.

The Five Eyes alliance has repeated its cliche by referring to the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The US and the West have always brought up the Sino-British Joint Declaration when interfering in Hong Kong affairs. This is completely untenable in legal terms. In fact, the so-called rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Sino-British agreement are false propositions. This document only made arrangements for the transitional period of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. In other words, after Hong Kong's return, the Sino-British Joint Declaration has become a historical document in the database of China. It does not have any practical significance. But the US and the West still regard it as a legal document to restrict China. How arrogant could they be to have such an illusion?

China's State Council Information Office on Monday issued a white paper entitled "Hong Kong: Democratic Progress Under the Framework of One Country, Two Systems." The white paper presents a comprehensive review of the origins and development of democracy in the HKSAR and points out detailed facts and conclusive evidence that, under British colonial rule, there was no democracy in Hong Kong, and the UK had ulterior motives for its rapid promotion of a "political reform" at the end of its colonial rule. The forces that oppose China and mess up Hong Kong, and the hostile external forces behind them are the chief culprits hindering the development of democracy in the HKSAR. The reason why the democratic development of the HKSAR is so difficult is because the local forces that oppose China and mess up Hong Kong are the saboteurs standing in the foreground, while the external hostile forces are the manipulators behind the scenes.

Under the instigation and leadership of the US, the Five Eyes alliance has become the most anti-China organization in the West. In recent years, as long as unified actions were launched by the Five Eyes alliance, they were always aimed at attacking and smearing China. That tone has never changed. We can make this judgment: In dealing with Hong Kong-related affairs, whatever the Five Eyes alliance opposes is just what is needed for Hong Kong's prosperity; what the Five Eyes supports mostly usually hides its evil intentions of opposing China and messing up Hong Kong. In this sense, the Five Eyes alliance having issued a condemning statement at this moment just shows that Hong Kong has done the right thing.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, November 1, 2021. /Xinhua

The Iranian foreign ministry denied on Monday a claim by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that there were direct talks between the two countries over the past few months, official news agency IRNA reported.

"Since the beginning of the negotiations on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna, Iran has held no direct talks with the United States," said Saeed Khatibzadeh, the ministry's spokesman, in an address to a weekly press conference.

On Friday, Sullivan told reporters in Washington that the United States has "communicated both through the Europeans and directly to Iran."

"Iran has received some messages on the issues of negotiations in written and unwritten forms through EU mediators since the start of the talks in Vienna, to which answers were given on the spot," Khatibzadeh noted.

In May 2018, former U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the Iranian nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and reimposed unilateral sanctions against Tehran in a bid to hammer out a new deal.

Since early April this year, representatives from China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran have held seven rounds of negotiations in the Austrian capital, with the United States involved indirectly, aiming to bring the United States back to the JCPOA and prepare the ground for its full implementation.

The seventh and latest round of the talks started on November 29 and concluded on Friday.

"Today, we have two new agreed-upon texts, which are the results of the intense negotiations over the past few days in the Austrian capital," Khatibzadeh said.

"The new texts have incorporated Iran's views compared to the previous ones. We now have texts according to which we can continue the future talks," he added.

On the U.S. approach to the talks and its intention, the Iranian spokesman said Washington has offered "no tangible proposal or text" to other parties, placing "a big question mark on America's intention."

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency
Photo: CFP

Chinese Foreign Ministry's commissioner officer in Hong Kong, the Chinese embassy in the UK, the liaison office of the central government in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government condemned the smears and irresponsible remarks made by Five Eyes countries, the EU and G7 on Hong Kong's Legislative Council election, urging them to stop any form of interference in Hong Kong affairs, which are China's internal affairs.

China urges these countries to take off their mask of hypocrisy, respect China's sovereignty and unity, and stop any form of interference in Hong Kong affairs, which are China's internal affairs, spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in the UK said in a statement on Monday shortly after the joint statement issued by the foreign minister of the UK along with his counterparts of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US.

The G7 and the EU also voiced "concern" over the outcome of the LegCo election calling it an "erosion of democratic elements."

These comments completely distorted the facts, maliciously smeared the Hong Kong affairs and blatantly interfered in China's internal affairs, on which China expressed the firm opposition and strong condemnation, the spokesperson said in the statement.

The Commissioner's Office of China's Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong also blasted the joint statements.

In a new statement issued by the commissioner's office on Tuesday, the spokesperson called the joint statement by the G7 and EU a "staged political farce" that won't change Hong Kong public's judgment of right and wrong. Their old rhetoric won't nullify the Chinese government's sincerity and achievement in supporting the development of Hong Kong's democracy and their interference won't prevent the progress of Hong Kong in developing high quality democracy based on its own conditions, the spokesperson said.

On late Monday night, the office said in a statement that smears on the Hong Kong LegCo election from outside forces are an insult to themselves. Such wrong acts of questioning the legitimacy of the election results, openly supporting the anti-China rioters and blatantly interfering in China's internal affairs must be corrected.

The UK repeatedly cited the Sino-British Joint Declaration as its argument in commenting on Hong Kong affairs, which is distorting the history and legal fundamental, the office said. Australia, Canada and New Zealand have been openly backing some anti-China rioters who sabotaged Hong Kong's democracy and the rule of law. And rather than reflecting on their own mistakes, they have been continuing going down on this wrong path, which will only lead to "bitter results."

The spokesperson from the commissioner's office also emphasized that the days when foreign forces could use their political agents to interfere in Hong Kong affairs are over.

The liaison office of the central government in Hong Kong also condemned the cliche used by a handful of Western countries to smear Hong Kong affairs, stressing that their practice won't change the general trend. "They are the biggest threat to Hong Kong's development of democracy and the city's prosperity and stability," the spokesperson of the liaison office said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

The HKSAR government also condemned the blatant interference in a statement on Tuesday morning saying that "we strongly oppose to the five countries' attempt to smear against the 2021 LegCo General Election of Hong Kong by making up allegations contrary to facts and without basis. The 2021 LegCo General Election was held successfully after the improvement to the electoral system."

"There's no surprise that those countries reacted in this way, as it's becoming increasingly difficult for their agents to incite trouble in Hong Kong anymore," Lau Siu-kai, Vice President of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

When it's difficult for the US to contain China from the position of strength, it has to play the card of ideology by slandering China's political system, including HKSAR's, Lau said, noting that the Western-style democracy, however, is engulfed in deep dilemma.

Such interference will make more Hong Kong people feel resentful. As the Western-style of democracy loses attraction, it's hard for them to play the Hong Kong card in containing China, Lau said.

Some experts also noted that such apparent "united stance" of criticizing the HKSAR LegCo election only shows those Western countries are losers in wrestling with China by trying to turn the Chinese city into an anti-China bridgehead. And using democracy as a cover is just the final struggle of those countries, experts said.
By Zhang Hong

Russia recently outlined two comprehensive draft agreements on security guarantees to the US and NATO respectively, demanding NATO to prevent from the further eastward expansion, deny NATO membership to Ukraine, and roll back the alliances military deployments in in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Eastern Asia. Moscow hoped to solve all disputes with NATO once and for all through the package solution.

The US and the Soviet Union signed a series of arms control treaties in the later stage of the Cold War to control their behaviors legally, but US pullback from one arms control treaty after another has escalated the arms race in Europe. In the 21st century, NATO continuously accepting new members against its post-Cold War commitment to Russia has also aggravated Moscows dissatisfaction and doubts, eventually leading to the serious tension on their ties.

Since both Russia and the US claimed to be ready for dialogue on the increasingly severe Ukraine issue, what are the chances for them to reach a new arms control treaty?

Even though both parties expressed willingness to ease the tension, the contents in the Moscow-proposed draft decide that they will go through a long and hard process of bargaining and are unlikely to reach a compromise any time soon.

First, its hard to have NATO flatly refuse Ukraine. Although NATO is a US-led bloc, the stances of European members cannot be ignored, and Biden wouldnt dare make concessions on the Ukraine issue as he is trying to mend the US-EU cross-Atlantic alliance. Eastern European countries represented by Poland and Lithuania take support for Ukraine as US commitment of confidence to Europe. Therefore, if Biden agreed to Moscows demand for denying Ukraine the NATO membership, the influence of the US and NATO would be seriously undermined.

Second, its possible to make some arms control arrangements between Russia and NATO. The EU has the motive to reach an arms control treaty for the sake of Europes security. Trump Administrations withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) was not only slammed by Russia, but also by EU members. In 2021, Putin has elaborated on Russias strategic red line and strategic resolve to safeguard core interests to the West on many public occasions, and the country has twice assembled masses of armed forces on the Ukraine border this year, indicating how determined it is to launch strategic counterattacks. It would be much better to replace such sporadic breakout with a legal arrangement on guaranteed security.

Despite the vastly different positions of the various parties, Moscow still took the initiative to break the security deadlock with NATO. Once they sit down at the negotiating table, there is still a chance of reaching a compromise, and the security guarantee agreement, if agreed on, will exert great impacts on the European and global situation.

On the one hand, Russia specifically mentioned the Cuba Missile Crisis during the Cold War in the security agreement, hoping to force NATO to back up by hinting at a possible hot war if the negotiations go south. Given Russias powerful nuclear deterrence, the US-led NATO will not meddle in the Ukraine situation through military means, and the situation in the country will chill if the security guarantee agreement can be concluded.

On the other hand, we must be alert to America further shifting its strategic focus to the Asia Pacific. Since Biden took office, Washington has moved more quickly to retract from non-key areas, not only pulling troops out of Syria and Iraq, but also completely abandoning Afghanistan. It has also deployed most of its aircraft carriers to the Asia Pacific and teamed up with NATOs European members to carry out joint military exercises in the region. Considering the shift of its strategic focus, the US may make some concessions to Moscow.

Proposing the security guarantee agreement is a diplomatic initiative made by Russia, but how it will play out depends partly on the wisdom of the concerned parties and partly on the joint efforts of the international community.

(The author is a research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European & Central Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

Editor's note: This article is originally published on huanqiu.com, 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.
A record 33,442 urban households packed up their belongings and headed to idyllic rural parts last year, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said Thursday. That marks a 55-percent increase compared to 2013 when 21,501 urban households moved to the countryside.

But the number of migrating households that actually moved out to farm or raise livestock for a living rose only two percent from 10,923 to 11,144 over the same period.

Statistics are based on figures compiled from November each year tallying the number of households that are newly registered in rural communities.

These households are classified into two groups -- those who register as farmers and those who start their own businesses or take up an artistic pursuit.

The number of the latter has grown particularly steeply. Last year, 3,569 households moved to Jeju Island, up a whopping 1,649 percent from 204 a year earlier, while relocating to South Jeolla Province surged 267 percent and to North Gyeongsang Province 137 percent.

"It appears that the lower cost of living and better living conditions in rural areas are prompting more and more people to move to the countryside," a ministry official said.

Another factor is the growing number of baby boomers born between 1955 and 1963 who are retiring. Some 58 percent of households who quit the city were over 50.


The United States and four other Western countries expressed "grave concern" Monday about the "erosion of democratic elements" in Hong Kong as pro-Beijing candidates swept to victory in the city's legislative elections after laws were changed to favor China's Communist Party loyalists.

"Actions that undermine Hong Kong's rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy are threatening our shared wish to see Hong Kong succeed," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain said in a statement. The diplomats said that since Britain handed over control of Hong Kong to China in 1997, "Candidates with diverse political views have contested elections in Hong Kong," but that Sunday's elections "reversed this trend."

Pro-Beijing candidates won a landslide victory in the elections, defeating moderates and independents in Hong Kong's first polls since Beijing decreed that only "patriots" loyal to China's ruling Communist Party could run the city.

"These changes eliminated any meaningful political opposition," the Western diplomats said. "Meanwhile, many of the city's opposition politicians -- most notably the majority of the "NSL 47" -- remain in prison pending trial, with others in exile overseas."

The NSL 47 are activists accused of subverting Hong Kong's National Security Law that was enacted by China last year. In addition, they said that nongovernmental organizations, trade unions and human rights organizations "not supportive of the government's agenda have been forced to disband or leave, while media freedoms are being curtailed at pace."

The diplomats urged China "to act in accordance with its international obligations to respect protected rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong."
Korea has become the world's ninth-largest exporter of weapons.

The Korea Research Institute for Defense Technology Planning and Advancement said on Monday the country accounted for 2.7 percent of the world's defense exports from 2016 to 2020 -- double the level from 2011 to 2015.

Korea's weapons exports are expected to continue rising. Seoul signed a contract to export K-9 self-propelled howitzers to Australia earlier this month and is in talks with Egypt to export them.

The largest arms exporter in the world during the same period was the U.S., followed by Russia, France, Germany and China.


Korea's lackluster presidential candidates are slipping in the ratings as the shenanigans of their families cast them in an even dimmer light to many voters.

With around 80 days left before the presidential election, opinion polls vary widely which of the candidates is ahead.

A Real Meter poll from Dec. 12-17 showed main opposition People Power Party presidential candidate Yoon Seok-youl ahead with 44.4 percent while Minjoo Party candidate Lee Jae-myung trails him with 38 percent. That was down 0.8 percentage points for Yoon from last week, but Lee slipped even further with 1.7 percentage points. At the same time, both changes are well within the margin of error of such polls.

But the alternatives do not appeal to voters either, with People Party candidate Ahn Cheol-soo a distant third with 3.9 percent followed by the Justice Party's Sim Sang-jung with 3.2 percent.

Pollsters seem to have lost their footing in the muddle. A poll by the Korea Society Opinion Institute the same week shows Lee ahead with 40.3 percent and Yoon trailing with 37.4 percent. That was also down 0.3 percentage points for Lee from the week before and a substantial 4.6 percentage points for Yoon. Ahn came third with 4.6 percent and Sim fourth with 4.2 percent.

Yoon seems to have been damaged by revelations that his wife, Kim Kun-hui, padded her resume, while Lee's rating fell due to revelations about his son's gambling habit.


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December 21, 2021 Gordon alarmed over cyber-attacks vs critical press Senator Richard J. Gordon has expressed serious concern over the recent cyber-attacks against Philippine news websites news.abs-cbn.com and Rappler.com, two news media organizations critical of the Duterte administration. Gordon, who chairs the Senate Justice and Human Rights, said the cyberattacks against these two news media organization seem to be a deliberate act to deny access to their respective two websites as an infringement of freedom of the press. "What happened to the ABS-CBN News and Rappler websites is absolutely horrendous, given the context of unabated attacks against journalism and journalists in the country," he said. "Ang pambababoy sa dalawang nangungunang napagkakatiwalaang sources ng balita ay panunupil ng karapatan sa kalayaan ng pamamahayag. Dahil ba sila ay naglalabas ng mapait na katotohanan dapat na silang busalan?," he added. Both ABS-CBN News and Rappler were affected by a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, causing the two websites inaccessible for several hours. ABS-CBN News was knocked out for six hours last Dec. 11, while Rappler experienced the same last Dec. 15. DDoS attacks are usually conducted by hackers for a huge sum of money by using infected computers worldwide to flood a particular site with requests, whose sole aim is to overwhelm its servers and render it offline. Gordon pointed out that his official website also fell victim multiple times to DDoS attacks in October and November during the height of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee's investigation on the government's anomalous deals with Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation. "This kind of attack is nothing new against purveyors of truth and those who attack this government's wrongdoings. We strive to continue serving the people in our own ways," he said. "We call on the pertinent government agencies to investigate these coordinated attacks because it happens all too often," he continued. Aside from the attacks on news websites, journalists have been slain for their fearless reportage and advocacies, with 22 newsmen having been killed since the start of the current administration. Gordon also denounced the recent murder of veteran correspondent Jesus "Jess" Malabanan by unidentified motorcycle-bound assassins in Samar. According to CPJ's 2021 Global Impunity Index, the Philippines remains to be the 7th deadliest country in the world for journalists in terms of unsolved killings.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who is on a visit to Beirut, called for the continuation of negotiations between Lebanon and Israel on the demarcation of the maritime border.

Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berry, he indicated that the UN would help make progress towards resolving the border dispute, TASS news agency reported.

We will spare no effort to achieve an early conclusion of the negotiations, as this will allow Lebanon to use its offshore oil and gas reserves for economic development, Guterres said.

The UN Secretary General said that he discussed with Berry the issue of continuing violations of the Lebanese airspace by the Israeli Air Force and the need for strict observance of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which established a ceasefire on the Lebanese-Israeli border in 2006.

We stressed the importance of strengthening cooperation between the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers stationed in the south of the country, he said. In addition, the international community should increase support for the Lebanese armed forces.

Earlier on Monday, Guterres visited the memorial complex in the seaport of Beirut, where he expressed solidarity with the families of those killed in the August 4, 2020 explosion. Lebanon needs a proper investigation into this emergency, he said. My visit is aimed at mobilizing international support for victims of the emergency in the port of Beirut, he said.

In his remarks in the Lebanese capital to journalists, the Secretary-General spoke about his visit to the Harbor, saying it was a very emotional moment. The suffering of the people, first of all, those that perished, their families, the wounded, the dramatic impact in the lives of so many people is something that of course generates very deep solidarity.

On the other hand, he noted that he had been receiving messages from many victims demanding the need for truth to be established, for the need for an independent investigation, that is able to produce that truth.

On August 4, 2020, an explosion occurred in the seaport of the Lebanese capital, the capacity of which was 1,500 tons of TNT. The blast wave destroyed and damaged thousands of houses within the city and beyond, 219 people died, 6.5 thousand were injured, more than 300 thousand citizens were left homeless.

The extent of the devastation has drawn comparisons within Lebanon, to the horrors endured by the residents of Hiroshima in 1945, after one of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War Two, raised the Japanese city to the ground, killing tens of thousands. Locals refer to the infamous day on August 4, 2020, as Beirut-shima.
Qatars sovereign wealth fund has acquired 10 per cent of Rolls-Royces low-carbon nuclear business that has lured 490 million pounds.

The Gulf country in exchange will inject 85 million pounds ($112.12 million) in project, Zawya reports.

This investment is a clear vote of confidence in the UKs global leadership in nuclear innovation, British Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said in a statement.

The new investment comes following an announcement by both partners last month they would team up in a multi-billion pound project to develop and invest in green technology start-ups.
The World Bank has granted Turkey two loans worth $300 million to support the development of renewable energy by tapping heat sources deep underground as part of the Geothermal Development Project, Daily Sabah reports citing the Washington-based financial institution.

The financing, additional of two initial loans worth $250 million, will help finance electricity generation, drilling capacity and steam-field development, as well as geothermal direct-use applications, the bank noted.

The project, in addition, plans to finance a total of over 380 megawatts (MW) of new geothermal capacity, mobilize about $555 million of private capital and contribute to the countrys climate commitments by preventing about 30 million tons of carbon emissions over the lifetime of the geothermal projects.

The loans have been backed by a $39.8 million grant from the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) and a $350,000 grant from the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP).

Turkey in recent years has increased initiatives to transition towards renewal energy generation.
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Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng will hold the ninth high-level strategic dialogue between the foreign ministries of China and the Republic of Korea (ROK) with First Vice Foreign Minister of the ROK Choi Jong Kun in Beijing through video link on December 23. The two sides will have an in-depth exchange of views on foreign policies, international and regional situation and the development of bilateral relations.



CCTV: According to reports, the US Department of State just designated a new Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues. Does China have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: Tibetan affairs are purely Chinas domestic affairs that brook no interference by any foreign force. The US designation of the so-called Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues interferes in Chinas internal affairs. We firmly oppose it and never recognize it. We urge the US to abide by its commitment of recognizing Tibet as part of China and not supporting Tibet independence with concrete actions, and stop using Tibet-related issues to meddle in Chinas domestic affairs. The Chinese side will continue to take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests.

Xinhua News Agency: According to some research, the Roma ethnic minority in Lithuania said they generally suffer from discrimination in life and work. With little interest in their resumes in the labor market, jobs seemed unattainable. What is Chinas comment?

Zhao Lijian: I have seen relevant reports. According to what is revealed, there is grave racial or religious discrimination in Lithuanias job market, which usually leads to systemic poverty facing ethnic minorities. Statistics showed that in Lithuania, the monthly income of the Roma population was less than one quarter of the national average. Up to 75 percent of Roma lived in poverty, which was about 3.5 times as much as the national average. More than two-thirds of Roma people at the age of 15 and above could not afford to replace worn-out clothes and half of the group could not afford to have two pairs of shoes. Poverty due to racial inequality had a direct impact on Roma peoples health, many of whom lived with chronic or long-term illness.

What the ethnic minorities including Roma people have gone through is only the tip of the iceberg of Lithuanias grave humanitarian problems. Serious domestic violence and infringement upon childrens rights can also be found in the country. National corruption remains rampant. The Lithuanian side should earnestly reflect on itself and work on the problems, and take effective measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of ethnic minorities and women and children. It should not bury its head in the sand, which is not what a responsible country would do.





Bloomberg: Nikkei reports that China has invited South Korean President Moon Jae-in to the Winter Games. Does the ministry have a comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: The international community and people from different sectors are all welcome to attend and support the Beijing 2022 in various ways. We are ready to work with all parties to follow the Olympic spirit of together, present a streamlined, safe and splendid Olympic Games to the world, and promote friendship and cooperation between countries.

Shenzhen TV: On December 20, the US Department of State and Department of the Treasury announced that theyve added five Deputy Directors of the Liaison Office of the Central Peoples Government in Hong Kong (LOCPG) to a sanction list pursuant to the Hong Kong Autonomy Act (HKAA). Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: In accordance with its domestic law of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, the US announced sanctions on relevant officials of the resident organ of the Central Peoples Government of the PRC in Hong Kong. This seriously violates international law and basic norms governing international relations and constitutes severe interference in Chinas internal affairs. Thus it is illegal, null and void. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns it.

It needs to be pointed out that earlier in July this year, the US already announced sanctions on seven Chinese officials including the above-mentioned five Deputy Directors of the Liaison Office of the Central Peoples Government in Hong Kong when it issued the so-called Hong Kong Business Advisory. The Chinese side has taken reciprocal countermeasures against relevant personnel in accordance with the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law. Now the US has announced sanctions against these same individuals once again under another pretext, citing the Hong Kong Autonomy Act. That I cannot understand. Such a move is preposterous and despicable.

CRI: According to reports, foreign ministers of the Five Eyes countries, and foreign ministers of the G7 countries and the EU High Representative issued joint statements respectively on the election for the seventh-term Legislative Council (LegCo) of the HKSAR. What is Chinas comment?

Zhao Lijian: China firmly rejects and strongly condemns certain Western countries collusion, irresponsible remarks on the seventh-term LegCo election and democracy and the rule of law in HKSAR, and gross interference in Chinas internal affairs.

Improving Hong Kongs electoral system is a necessary step to ensure the full and faithful implementation of the policy of One Country, Two Systems, the principle of patriots administering Hong Kong, and the development of democracy in Hong Kong on the right track. The seventh-term LegCo election in HKSAR just concluded is a successful practice to implement the new electoral system, and an important leap of a democratic system with Hong Kongs characteristics and compatible with the SARs realities. The election process was fair, just, open, secure and clean, where voters democratic rights were fully respected and protected.

I want to stress that under the British colonial rule, there was no democracy in Hong Kong at all, and residents there never enjoyed real democracy, human rights and freedom. But no democracies expressed concern then. When the forms of democracy are developing with the quality improving in Hong Kong, certain Western countries shamelessly expressed so-called concern about a democratic election in an administrative region of China, and condescendingly launched attacks on and made accusations about Hong Kongs democracy and rule of law. This fully reveals the countrieshypocrisy, as well as their vile scheme to destabilize Hong Kong and contain Chinas development.

Certain Western countries should face up to the fact that it has been 24 years since Hong Kong returned to the motherland. They should abide by international law and basic norms governing international relations, stop all forms of meddling in Hong Kongs affairs and interference in other internal affairs of China. Any attempt to undermine Hong Kongs prosperity and stability is doomed to fail.

CCTV: On December 10, the US Department of State and Department of the Treasury announced sanctions on four Chinese officials citing human rights abuse in Xinjiang pursuant to its domestic law. Does China have any comment on that?

Zhao Lijian: The US imposed illegal sanctions on Chinese officials under the pretext of so-called human rights issue in Xinjiang in accordance with its domestic law. Such action seriously interferes in Chinas internal affairs, seriously violates basic norms governing international relations and seriously undermines China-US relations. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this.

In response to the above-mentioned erroneous practice of the US side, China has decided to take reciprocal countermeasures in accordance with the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law of the Peoples Republic of China. Effective today, China will take countermeasures against Chair Nadine Maenza, Vice Chair Nury Turkel, Commissioner Anurima Bhargava and Commissioner James W. Carr of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). These individuals are prohibited from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao of China. Their assets in China will be frozen, and Chinese citizens and institutions will be prohibited from doing business with them.

It must be pointed out that Xinjiang affairs are purely Chinas internal affairs and the US has no right and is in no position to interfere. The US should lift the so-called sanctions and stop interfering in Xinjiang affairs and Chinas other internal affairs. China will make further response as the situation evolves.

Global Times: According to US media reports, over the past five years, the US military has conducted more than 50,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Due to so-called flawed intelligence, the air wars in the Middle East caused the deaths of thousands of civilians, children included. We noticed that the spokesman for the US Central Command said that even with the best technology in the world, mistakes do happen. He added, the US will try to learn from those mistakes, work diligently to avoid such harm and investigate each credible instance. What is Chinas comment?

Zhao Lijian: The killings of civilians by the US military in overseas wars are abominable crimes. Downplaying the war crimes and shirking the responsibilities further exposes the US hypocrisy in professing democracy and human rights.

Some more shocking numbers to share with you. Over the past two decades, the US military launched over 90,000 airstrikes in other countries, which led to about 48,000 civilian deaths. Up to 1,600 civilians were killed in the most precise air campaign in history in Raqqa, Syria alone. Bullets, explosives and missiles from the US have taken tens of thousands of innocent lives and displaced hundreds of thousands. Behind every number is a precious human life. In the face of all such brutality, the US has not shown remorse, given any apology or held anyone concerned accountable. Instead, it attempts to give it short shrift with such claim as mistakes do happen. Is this how the US defends human rights?

Adhering to the hegemonic mindset, the US has long violated human rights in other countries under the pretext of democracy and human rights. The crimes the US has committed were etched into the historical pillar of shame; they cannot be erased or evaded. Rather than saying to avoid such harm halfheartedly, the US should seriously investigate and hold those concerned to account, stringently punish the perpetrators and connivers, and show repentance and atone for its crimes with real actions.

Prasar Bharati: Yesterday at a symposium on Chinas foreign relations in 2021, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China and India have maintained a dialogue through diplomatic and military channels, and effectively managed and controlled frictions in certain border areas under a shared commitment to improving and developing the bilateral relations. Can you share the latest situation in the India-China border standoff and progress in the dialogue between the two countries on this matter?

Zhao Lijian: I would like to say that the situation at the China-India border is generally stable. China and India have maintained dialogue through diplomatic and military channels to ease the situation along the border.





Hubei Media Group: Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh of Laos in a recent interview rebuked smears targeting the China-Laos Railway, dismissing the allegation that the railway has led Laos into a debt trap as pure slander. He said the railway meets the development needs of the Lao people and will deliver greater benefits to them by giving a strong boost to personnel and trade exchange. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: Just as Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh put it, the China-Laos railway meets the development needs of Laos. Laos is endowed with rich natural resources and has enormous potential for development. The main impediment at the moment is inconvenient transportation with the outside world due to its geographical location as a landlocked country. As a Chinese saying goes, good wine with an enticing aroma may still be known even hidden deep in an alley. The China-Laos Railway aims to reach this deep alley, help Laos realize the strategy of turning itself from a landlocked country into a land-connected one, invigorate its growth, bring it closer to the world, and enable people to not only smell the aroma but also taste the fine wine produced by Laos.

The China-Laos Railway is a flagship project of the two countries mutually-beneficial cooperation and BRI cooperation. For over half a month since it started operation, tangible progress has already been achieved. According to statistics, many Chinese localities including Yunnan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Chongqing, Sichuan and Guangdong have started operating international freight trains on this railway. As of December 15, they have shipped over 100 million RMB worth of goods between the two countries. As of December 20, the Laos section of the railway has served 22,000 passengers. My colleagues in Vientiane told me that many local people would buy tickets to experience the positive changes brought by the railway to their life and work. They are showing their joy and support for the railway with concrete actions. Going forward, the railway will connect more countries both northward and southward. We are convinced that it will play an even bigger catalyst role, produce greater integrated effects, and create more benefits to the people in China, Laos and the wider region.

CNR: Recently, a research report entitled The Worlds Human Rights Dilemma Clouded by US Interference was released by the working group on international human rights and politics of the Human Rights Research Center of Jilin University. The 18,000-word report with substantial facts exposes US brutal interference in others internal affairs and damages to others stability, and reveals the profound disasters in the human rights cause brought by the US hegemony. What is your comment?

Zhao Lijian: The report you mentioned has revealed the essence of the US hegemony. I can share more with you about this. The US interferes in other countries internal affairs mainly through the following four ways.

First, engaging in infiltration and subversion. The US has long leveraged government agencies such as USAID and so-called non-governmental organizations including the NED to foster proxies in countries in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and provide them with financial support and guidance for action. The countries where color revolutions and the Arab Spring took place were thus reduced to guinea pigs of the experiment of US democracy at a huge expense.

Second, fanning turbulence and chaos. The US is apt at employing its hegemony in public opinion to distort facts, fabricate lies and spread disinformation. It portrays itself and its proxies as human rights fighters and labels others with authoritarianism. The US calls violence created by anti-China forces destabilizing Hong Kong a beautiful sight to behold, but does not mince its words in condemning the Capitol riots. Its double standards and political manipulation is laid bare.

Third, willfully imposing economic coercion. Without UN Security Councils authorization, the US willfully slapped unilateral sanctions many times that severely affected national economy and peoples livelihood in countries concerned and undermined the security and stability of global industrial and supply chains, which is textbook economic coercion. After the outbreak of COVID-19, the US took more unilateral coercive measures than before, which caused food and anti-pandemic supplies shortages and impeded humanitarian assistance in the countries sanctioned. Some scholars pointed out that sanctions have become the go-to solution for nearly every foreign policy problem in the US, and that the United States of America has become the United States of Sanctions.

Fourth, waging wars of aggression. The US wantonly conducted military intervention in sovereign states including Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan, and forced through the US democracy that is incompatible with local realities. This has resulted in human tragedies and sufferings. Over the past two decades, US military actions overseas have taken the lives of over 800,000 people.

The iron-clad facts are indisputable. The US has exported chaos and disasters to the world in the name of democracy and human rights, bringing untold sufferings to people in relevant countries. The international community should see the true face of the US, and jointly oppose US interference in others internal affairs and violation of human rights in other countries for its own hegemony.

RTHK: A report on Hong Kong submitted by the US government to Congress underscores concerns about Beijings clear efforts to deprive Hong Kongers of a meaningful voice in the Legislative Council election. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price issued a statement about this. How do you respond to the report? Also, the turnout in the Legislative Council election hit a record low. What is your comment?

Zhao Lijian: I have already expounded on Chinas Central Governments position on the LegCo election both today and yesterday. I would like to add two more points.

First, turnout in an election is never an indicator of the degree of democracy of an electoral system. The criteria to gauge an electoral system is whether or not it can promote meritocracy. For this election in Hong Kong, the most important factor is whether it can implement the principle of patriots administering Hong Kong and whether it can elect capable patriots into the SARs administrative architecture. The election for the seventh-term Legislative Council was held in an open, fair, just and orderly fashion. Altogether 90 members with diverse backgrounds were elected in accordance with law. The composition is well-balanced. This fully demonstrates the new electoral systems feature of broad representation, political inclusiveness, balanced participation and fair competition. It can advance the interests of the whole society and all sectors and social strata. Facts have proven, this is a very successful democratic practice.

Second, if voter turnout could decide whether an election is legitimate and democratic or not, then how can one explain the 23 percent turnout in the New York Citys mayor election and the 32 percent turnout in local elections in France? Are these elections illegitimate? Certain individuals hyped up the turnout issue in Hong Kongs election simply to question the democracy and legitimacy of the new electoral system and to disrupt and undermine Hong Kongs constitutional order. Their ploy of fact distortion is preposterous.

China Daily: Can you share with us some details and major outcomes of the 2021 annual meeting of the Advisory Council of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation?

Zhao Lijian: On December 17, the 2021 annual meeting of the Advisory Council of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was held through video conference. State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi delivered remarks at the opening ceremony and witnessed the release of the Report on the Findings and Recommendations. Convener of the Advisory Council and Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu chaired the meeting.

At the meeting, members had an in-depth exchange of the overall progress of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the work going forward. They shared the view that Chinas confidence and determination to advance Belt and Road cooperation is fully demonstrated in President Xi Jinpings call that the BRI must stay committed to realizing sustainable, livelihood-oriented and high-standard objectives and that it should strive for more cooperation at a higher level, more efficient investment, better quality in supplies and greater resilience in development. This is a guiding principle for high-level Belt and Road cooperation at the next stage.

The Global Development Initiative and the BRI put forward by President Xi are both conducive to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They can complement and reinforce each other to contribute to global common development.

The participants of the meeting believed that the Belt and Road cooperation benefits global connectivity and strengthens international cooperation. The BRI has born much fruit since it was put forward eight years ago. It has promoted global poverty reduction, trade and economic growth and has become an important global public good and a platform for global economic cooperation consisting of guiding principles, cooperation mechanisms and pragmatic programs with even broader prospects. All parties should continue to advance practical cooperation in infrastructure connectivity, health, innovation and green and digital sectors, find more drivers for world economic recovery and inject more impetus into the global fight against the pandemic.

The members also spoke highly of Chinas vaccine cooperation with Belt and Road partners and the launch of the Initiative for Belt and Road Partnership on COVID-19 Vaccines Cooperation with 30 countries. They believe that China has made important contribution to the global fight against COVID-19 with the provision of nearly two billion doses of vaccines to more than 120 countries and international organizations, accounting for nearly one-third of global vaccine usage outside China.

The Paper: US Secretary of State Blinken said in a statement on December 20 that the newly appointed US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Uzra Zeya will promote the human rights of Tibetans and support efforts to preserve their historical, linguistic, cultural and religious heritage. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: I just stated Chinas position on Tibet-related issues.

I want to stress that since the peaceful liberation of Tibet 70 years ago, Tibet has witnessed social harmony, economic prosperity and religious and cultural development. People in Tibet have been leading a happy life. There is no need for certain Americans to worry about them, still less any room for their criticism and lectures. If the US politicians cannot find anything better to do, I would suggest that they show some care for the serious racial discrimination and human rights problems at home. What the US has done to Native Americans constitutes de facto genocide. But when will the US show remorse and take real actions to protect these peoples human rights? Racial minorities in the US long suffer from unfair treatment including racial discrimination and violent crimes. But when will the US politicians truly protect these peoples human rights? The US has the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. But since US politicians are not even able to protect the safety and life of its own people, what right do they have to babble on protecting human rights in Tibet? In place of the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, the best designations the US should make are the Special Investigator for the Genocide of Native Americans, the Special Coordinator for the Human Rights Affairs of US Racial Minorities and the Special Coordinator for Investigations into US Poor Epidemic Response.

Facts have fully proven that the US has no right whatsoever to interfere in other countries internal affairs under the pretext of human rights. It should immediately stop political manipulation, earnestly reflect upon itself, and resolve its own serious racial and human rights problems.

Bloomberg: Lithuania pulled out its remaining four diplomats, one technical embassy employee and their relatives on short notice on December 15 in Beijing, a day after a deadline given by the Chinese foreign ministry demanding the return of the envoys diplomatic ID cards. Lithuanias foreign ministry said this. Does the foreign ministry of China have any comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: With the downgraded relations to the charge daffaires level, China asked Lithuanias diplomatic representation in China to reapply for the identification cards for diplomats. This is a normal procedure of Chinas support for and management of foreign missions in China, which complies with international law and common international practice. It does not affect the normal fulfillment of duties and life of Lithuanian diplomats in China. At the same time, China protects the security and legitimate rights of all diplomatic missions in China and their normal operation, including Lithuanias diplomatic representation, in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Without prior notification to the Chinese side, the Lithuanian side suddenly decided to pull out all its diplomats from China and spread false statements afterwards, thus putting on a self-directed farce. China regrets and firmly opposes this. A stern warning to the Lithuanian side: the attempt to pull tricks, shirk responsibilities, distort facts and even blackmail China politically is completely miscalculated. For Lithuania, the only way out is to earnestly correct mistakes, stop undermining Chinas sovereignty and territorial integrity, and come back to the commitment to the one-China principle, which is the right path to follow.
Monday, December 20, 2021 at 10:45PM

by Claudio Alves

Our voyage around the world through Best International Film Oscar submissions is coming to an end. Tomorrow, the Academy will reveal its shortlist, reducing 92 contenders to just 15. Before that, though, I'd like to shine a light on three fantastic films, regardless of their awards chances. They are a jewel of queer cinema from Austria, a prickly character study from Croatia, and a throwback to the early days of Neorealism courtesy of Malta. At the end of this piece, I shall also reveal what films would make up my ideal Oscar shortlist



GREAT FREEDOM (Austria)

Allied victory did not mean freedom for the gay men imprisoned by the Nazis. Indeed, Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code made many victims until its final deletion in 1994. Hans Hoffmann is one of them, a man who left the concentration camps to be promptly incarcerated in an American-controlled prison, starting a never-ending cycle in which every release is followed by the swift return to a life behind bars. That doesn't mean his pursuit of happiness, freedom, pleasure, and love ever ceases. If there's one thing that defines Franz Rogowski's character is his stubbornness, an unwillingness to give up in the face of oppression.

And yet, neither the actor nor director Sebastian Meise is interested in making Hans a figure of idealized inspiration. Great Freedom is not some ennobling portrait of the homosexual martyr. Instead, it's a collection of moments strewn through time, a collage that paints the striking picture of a man's desire. While it's deliciously horny, it's not a unilaterally carnal picture either, regarding the bonds of homosocial friendship with curiosity, even tenderness. Rogowski has never been better, and he excels at that negotiation between sensuality, vulnerability, tragedy. His shifting body tells a complex story all on its own, but his greatest gift may be the easy chemistry with all costars, especially the formidable Georg Friedrich.

The images Meise comes up with are as brilliant as the actors. A match in the darkness connects out-of-order chronology, a flame of kindness transcending time. A friend offers a hug to help another man cope with grief while guards try to separate them, beating the one cradling his crying comrade. Dates in an open courtyard at night, bodies huddled in the cold and darkness, trying to forge a sense of intimacy in a place where that cannot exist. Sex is a cure for addiction, a love language, and a way to celebrate the self, the velvety shadows in a labyrinth of passion. A-/A

TEREZA37 (Croatia)

A woman slumbers in her bed, alone amid the white sheets. As she turns, we see the shock of red blood covering her underwear. Tereza has suffered a miscarriage, a traumatic event if there ever was one. Yet, observing her as she cleans up the mess, one realizes it's become something of a routine for the woman. At 37, she's had four miscarriages in a Quixotic attempt at motherhood, and she's willing to do anything to carry a pregnancy to term. She feels her life is unfulfilled without a child she can call her own. A happy marriage, beautiful home, strong friendships, and thriving career on stage aren't enough, not for Tereza.

In this desperate state, a doctor's dismissive joke becomes a last ray of hope. If she can't conceive with her husband, why not try other men? Though Tereza's reaction appears nonplussed, the idea plants a seed in her mind. It becomes a mission to seduce as many men as possible, to use them like unwitting sperm donors. As both lead actress and screenwriter, Lana Baric uses the title character's sexual misadventures to paint a complex societal mural, highlighting the limiting gender norms of modern Croatia, the ghost of outdated tradition in contemporary mores. Even women can perpetuate machismo and make femininity into a toxic thing.

Deadpan hilarity reigns supreme along with terminally sunny cinematography, but that doesn't mean horror is out of sight. This is no mere comedy of manners or the zany chronicles of a bored wife's infidelities. When violence hits, it hits hard, resulting in a visceral nightmare of autonomy denied. Director Danilo Servedzija's tonal negotiations are impressive in these harrowing passages, never calling attention to their craft while exploring Baric's ideas through visual idioms. Actress/writer and director prove themselves a formidable duo, bringing Tereza37 to an inconclusive ending whose ambiguity feels honest and character-specific. B+



LUZZU (Malta)

Luzzu is the name of a traditional Maltese fishing boat, usually painted in bright colors with a pair of eyes on its bow. Even though one such vessel dominates the narrative of Alex Camilleri's Luzzu, it's far from the most colorful part of any given frame. Not when the Mediterranean is present, shining with impossible blues through Leo Lefevre's cinematography. The azure wonder establishes a sense of place and the magnetic pull that the sea holds for our protagonist. He's Jesmark, the latest in a long lineage of fishermen. However, he's got responsibilities that pull him from the waves, a baby to care for, and a partner who demands he move on from ancient tradition.

Other films might have fallen into cliched tropes when handling Jesmark's dilemmas, but Luzzu never does. While the narrative's as familiar as the Neorealist style Camilleri favors, there's profound empathy in the telling of this story. As played by non-actor Jesmark Scicluna, the fisherman is someone whose sense of self depends on the sea. The boat is part of who he is, part of a history shared across generations. To give it up hurts. Luzzu might acknowledge that living in today's world makes such choices necessary, that they are the right thing to do for the good of this family. Still, the cineastes make sure to showcase the pain it entails, to honor it.

The conflict between tradition and modernity isn't easy, nor is it clear-cut. It becomes even more multifaceted when staged within a community riddled with economic precarity where the temptation of crime is ever-present. It'd be disrespectful to flatten it into a simple moral binary. On many occasions, neither characters nor viewers can be sure about the right path to follow, which feels honest. Even at the end, when Jesmark's fate seems set in stone, Camilleri maintains a sense of mystery around his seafaring hero. The script may explore the man's complex interiority, but a part of him will always remain unknown, beautifully so. B+

Oscar odds? Tereza37 feels DOA as far as AMPAS is concerned. However, both Great Freedom and Luzzu could make it. The Austrian flick gained many fans in Cannes, and its travail through the festival season only intensified the acclaim. On the other hand, Luzzu got good notices at Sundance and is one of the submissions to have been already released in American theaters. That has to count for something.

Enough about Oscar prognostication. What would happen if I chose the shortlist of 15 films that'd go forward in the race? Having watched half of the submissions, these are my favorite titles in alphabetical order:

Honorable mentions include Argentina's The Intruder, Norway's The Worst Person in the World, and Malta's Luzzu, Greece's Digger, and Brazil's Private Desert. Even though I watched 46 films, there are still many other submissions I'm curious to see. Because I've admired some of the directors' past works, I'm particularly excited for Bolivia's The Great Movement, Chad's Lingui: The Sacred Bonds, and Morocco's Casablanca Beats.

What about you, dear reader? What films would make up your Best International Film shortlist?
Azerbaijan's Economy Minister Mikayil Jabbarov and Japanese ambassador Junichi Wada have discussed prospects of bilateral partnership between the two countries.

At their meeting, the parties stressed the importance of developing Azerbaijani-Japanese trade relations.

Noting that Azerbaijan attaches great importance to the development of ties with Japan, the minister noted that bilateral economic cooperation is expanding.

Jabbarov mentioned that the application of the digital economy and technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, the exchange of experience in digitalization, energy, and other areas are among the priorities of the cooperation.

The parties stated that the projects on the creation of the Azerbaijan Trade House in Tokyo and Japan Premium House in Baku will make a significant contribution to the development of bilateral trade and economic cooperation.

It was noted that the organization of business forums, trade missions, as well as participation in exhibitions, can be favorable mechanisms for establishing direct contacts between business circles and developing cooperation.

In turn, the ambassador shared his views on the events to be held within the "Year of Friendship between Azerbaijan and Japan 2022" and expressed confidence in further strengthening of bilateral relations.

The sides agreed to accelerate the signing of the agreement on attraction and protection of investments between the countries and the new convention on the elimination of double taxation. They also discussed energy, including green energy, and environmental projects and cooperation.

Currently, Azerbaijan and Japan are cooperating in different fields of economy. Japanese companies in Azerbaijan work in the fields of oil and gas as well as agriculture. Last year the trade turnover between the two countries exceeded $200 million and the growth of this sector is forecasted to increase up to four times in the near future. In addition, Japan has invested $7.1 billion in Azerbaijan, during the entire period of cooperation between the two countries.

It should be also noted that 2022 will be the year of friendship between Azerbaijan and Japan.

Additionally, earlier this year, Azerbaijans Energy Ministry and Japans TEPSCO company signed an agreement on the establishment of the green energy zone in the newly-liberated territories. The agreement envisages the effective use of renewable energy potential such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and bioenergy in the liberated territories. It considers the establishment of a green energy zone based on modern energy management approaches in order to realize the energy supply of the region.

The trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $228.1 million in the first 10 months of 2021.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijan's carpet weaving art has been promoted in Tatarstan.

The National Carpet Museum director Shirin Malikova represented the country at the International Symposium "The Art of Weaving in the Turkic World: History and Modernity" held in Kazan.

She informed the symposium conference about the museum's actives. Shirin Malikova also touched upon the restoration of the pileless carpet weaving techniques.

According to their technical aspects, Azerbaijani carpets are classified as flat-woven (pileless) and knotted (pile).

The flat-woven carpets are linked to the earlier period of carpet weaving. There are several kinds of pileless carpets such as Shadda, Verni, Jejim, Zilli, Sumakh, Kilim and Palas.

Shadda is a flat weave carpet, made primarily in Nakhchivan, Agdam, Gubadly, Agjabadi. The artistic composition of shadda made by complicated whipping, as well as its constituents have a complex form.

One of the most widely spread types of the flat-weave carpet is "verni". The key pattern of "verni" is the S-element. Its shape varies, it may resemble both figure 5 and letter S. This element means "dragon" among the nomads and water among the village people. According to ancient beliefs, a dragon featuring carpet would protect the family from foul weather. Agjabadi, Barda, Aghdam, Nakhchivan are the centers of this type of pileless carpets.

Jejims are woven on simple horizontal looms by narrow stripes 3035 cm wide and 1510 cm long. The resulting product is a cloth to be used as a wall carpet, a bedding coverlet, or curtains.

The major jejim production centers are Barda, Nakhchivan, Zangilan, Shusha, Shamakha.

Zilli carpet is characterized by stylized forms of animals and vegetal elements. In terms of their composition and pattern the Azerbaijani zillis are very diverse. They feature images of large elements in the shape of big lozenges, paired horns, and various stylized elements.

The Sumakh carpets have become widely spread and recognized over the last few centuries. Since the 18th century, they have been made in the country's Guba and Gusar regions.

The Sumakh carpets feature the diverse stylized vegetal motifs, various geometrical elements such as large hexahedral, square, rhomboid medallions.

Kilim is the most widespread type of flat-woven carpets. They are made by passing the weft through the warp using the technique of compound interweaving. Kilim is characterized by a slot-like gap (opening) around the geometrical patterns.

The technique of kilim weaving predetermines the pattern shapes in the form of a lozenge, triangle, and trapezium. Images of animals, birds and humans are geometrized in kilims. Kilims of different regions are distinguished by their composition, pattern, and colors. In terms of their technical peculiarities, kilims can be classified into five major groups based on the area of production: Kazakh, Karabakh, Absheron, Shirvan and Tabriz kilims.

Palas is one of the widely spread flat-weave carpets. The palas weaving process consists in passing the weft through the warp by a simple technique.

The weavers decorate the palas by traditional patterns in the form of horizontal stripes commonly used throughout Azerbaijan. As a rule, the palas is not framed by a border.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

International Mugham Center and the Hungarian Cultural Heritage have signed a memorandum on cultural cooperation.

The memorandum will contribute to the expansion of cultural ties between the countries and the promotion of mugham art and Azerbaijani music.

At the signing ceremony, the director of Mugham Center, People's Artist Murad Huseynov informed the meeting participants about the center's activities.

The Mugham Center also touched upon Azerbaijan's musical culture and mugham art.

In his speech, Murad Huseynov noted the state's attention to the country's cultural legacy and the efforts of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva aimed at promoting mugham art worldwide.

He stressed that the International Mugham Center attaches particular importance to international ties.

Director of the Hungarian Cultural Heritage Pal Istvan shared his opinion on cultural partnership between the Mugham Center and Hungarian musical ensembles in the field of promoting ethnic music. He stressed the importance of holding joint exhibitions, research and concert programs within the framework of cooperation.

The sides exchanged views on mutual projects, including festivals in Hungary and Azerbaijan to promote musical traditions of both countries.

The Mugham Center is constantly expanding its activities, holding numerous international projects, concert programs, seminars and conferences aimed at promoting mugham art.

The musical institution is actively expanding international ties with cultural institutions.

The director of the Mugham Center Murad Huseynov has recently met with the head of the Uzbek National Center of Makom Art Saibjan Begmatov to discuss the partnership in various areas.

The sides agreed on a cultural partnership with the Uzbek National Center of Makom.

The heads of cultural institutions discussed promising areas of interaction, including in the promotion of national music, in the mutual study and research of the mugham and the art of makom, known as the Uzbek professional music of oral folk traditions.

An agreement was reached on the exchange of experience between researchers of the two countries.
By Azernews





By Sabina Mammadli

Human Rights Commissioner (Ombudsman) Sabina Aliyeva continued a fact-finding mission in liberated Aghdam region to investigate Armenia-committed destructions of cemeteries during the 30-year occupation, the ombudsman's office has reported.

During the fact-finding visit, the ombudsman monitored the Garaghaji and Uzundara village cemeteries in Aghdam and collected relevant facts of violations. The threat of mines was revealed in cemetries in Aghdam as in other regions.

On December 20, Aliyeva visited Fuzuli and Zangilan regions with the same mission to detect all facts about the Armenian destruction of Azerbaijani cemeteries there.

As mentioned previously, a relevant fact-finding mission report will be compiled on the basis of the outcomes of the on-site investigations and sent to competent regional and international organizations.

During Armenia's three-decade occupation, 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.

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.

Azerbaijan and Armenia resumed the second war after that latter started firing at Azerbaijani civilians and military positions starting September 27, 2020. The war ended on November 10 with the signing of a trilateral ceasefire deal by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders.

The Azerbaijani army declared a victory against the Armenian troops. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it has occupied since the early 1990s.

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.
By Azernews





By Vugar Khalilov

Azerbaijani and Russian experts have discussed the development of bilateral future ties in a wide range of spheres, Trend reported on December 20.

The discussions took place as part of an international roundtable Russia-Azerbaijan in a new system of regional security and economic cooperation. Results of the year and prospects.

The roundtable was organized by the North-South Political Science Center together with the Baku Network analytical center in capital.

The participants exchanged views on Azerbaijani-Russian cooperation in different fields.

The experts also focused on Azerbaijani-Russian initiatives on the international arena, cooperation within the international organizations, as well as Azerbaijans and Russias role in establishing a new regional security system as key partners in the South Caucasus.

Furthermore, Russia's peacekeeping activity in the region, as well as cooperation in industry, the two countries willingness to establish Eurasias new transport map were discussed during the meeting.

The experts highlighted the importance of cooperation in the North-South International Transport Corridor project within the framework of the emerging new regional realities.

The deepening of economic integration, the establishment of cooperative industrial facilities, and foreign tourism were also on the agenda.

Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs, Eurasian integration and relations with compatriots Artem Turov, Azerbaijani Trend News Agency's Editor-in-Chief Emin Aliyev, Deputy Director of the Russian School of Economics, Professor of Azerbaijan State University of Economics Elshad Mammadov, head of the South Caucasus Political Scientists' Club Ilgar Valizade, Head of the Sector of the Center for Post-Soviet Studies of the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations Elena Kuzmina, Doctor of Economics, Professor, Head of the Master's program "Diplomacy" at St. Petersburg State University, member of the Valdai International Discussion Club Stanislav Tkachenko, Director General of CBC TV channel Vugar Khalilov, Researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Karavaev attended the event as experts.
By Azernews





By Sabina Mammadli

The Azerbaijani parliament has approved changes to relevant agreements with Japan and the German Development Bank (KfW), Trend has reported.

At the plenary session held on December 20, parliament debated the bill On approval of changes to the Loan Agreement No. AZB-P4 signed on May 29, 2009, within the project titled 'Water supply and sewerage in small towns' between the Azerbaijani government and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

The project aims to reconstruct water supply and sewerage systems in Gusar, Khachmaz, Khizi, Gobustan and Naftalan.

The bill "On approval of changes to the Financing Agreement for the project 'Establishment of Samur-Yalama National Park' within the Ecoregional Conservation Plan for the South Caucasus between the Azerbaijani Finance Ministry and KfW" was also discussed.

Following the discussions, both documents were put to a vote and adopted.

Currently, Azerbaijan and Japan are cooperating in different fields of economy. Japanese companies in Azerbaijan work in the fields of oil and gas as well as agriculture. It should be also noted that 2022 will be the year of friendship between Azerbaijan and Japan.

The German Development Bank (KfW) has been cooperating with Azerbaijan since 1994. KfW has been implementing various investment projects and consulting services in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijans Finance Ministry and KfW signed grant agreement on the creation of Samur-Yalama Park in 2006. The grant equalled 2.55 million euros in aggregate. Samur-Yalama National Park (SYNP) was established in 2012 within the framework of the "South Caucasus Environmental Program" with financial support from the German Development Bank (KfW) and international consultants.
By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Experts see the South Caucasus region's prosperous future in peace and cooperation among the regional countries, Trend has reported.

They made the remarks at the Baku-based international round table "Russia-Azerbaijan in a new system of regional security and economic cooperation. Results of the year and prospects".

Speaking at the event, the president of Russia's Consulting-Analytics-PR Union of Companies, Ismayil Aghakishiyev, said that along with Azerbaijan and Armenia, every country in the South Caucasus needs peace in the region.

"Dialogue between the peoples of Azerbaijan and Armenia is necessary. Why do Russian peacekeepers [temporarily stationed in some parts of Azerbaijans Karabakh region under a trilateral Azerbaijani-Russian-Armenian ceasefire deal to end the 44-day war in 2020] do so much in this area, but Russian, Azerbaijani and Armenian creative intelligentsia and business are passive? For dialogue between these parties there are already appropriate platforms in Baku, Moscow and Yerevan," Agakishiyev underlined.

He emphasized that conducting an active dialogue is necessary in this format and people who work in this direction should not think about their personal gains from the process.

They should rather think about loyalty to their nation, the expert added.

Without stability in the region, there will be no regional, Eurasian and other projects," Aghakishiyev said.

The unions president stressed the regional nations should treat each other with respect, if they want to be respected by other countries in the world.

"There is no need to exaggerate the role of third countries, everything depends on us. The more active are dialogues between our countries, the sooner these issues will be resolved," he added.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijani International Relations Analysis Center Chairman Farid Shafiyev said that founding out the new spheres of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Russia is crucial.

Addressing the roundtable, Shafiyev highlighted the stabilizing role of the Russian peacekeepers in the region.

He added that as an owner of the Armenian Railways, Russias involvement in the reconstruction of transport corridors in the South Caucasus is noteworthy.

The group on the delimitation and demarcation of borders, in which Russia also takes an active part, creates a positive atmosphere in the settlement of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Shafiyev stressed.

He also highlighted the importance of such discussions and workshops with the participation of experts.

We would like the South Caucasus to be a region of cooperation between Turkey and Russia, rather than a region of rivalry, Shafiyev said.

Azerbaijan and Armenia resumed the second war after the latter started firing at Azerbaijani civilians and military positions starting September 27, 2020. The war ended on November 10 with the signing of a trilateral ceasefire deal by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders.

The ceasefire agreement stipulated the return of Azerbaijan's Armenian-occupied Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions. Before the signing of the deal, the Azerbaijani army had liberated around 300 villages, settlements, city centers, and historic Shusha city. The Azerbaijani army declared a victory against the Armenian troops.

The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw all its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it had occupied since the early 1990s.

About 2,000 Russian peacekeepers have been deployed for five years in Karabakh under the trilateral cease-fire deal signed by Baku, Moscow and Yerevan on 10 November 2020.
By Trend

Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Fatih Donmez arrived in Baku to participate in the first Azerbaijan-Turkey Energy Forum, Trend reports on Dec. 21 referring to the ministers message on Twitter.

The first Azerbaijan-Turkey energy forum will be held in Baku on December 21-22 under the co-chairmanship of Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov and Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Fatih Donmez.

The documents are expected to be signed between Azerbaijan and Turkey at the forum on Dec. 22.

The first Azerbaijan-Turkey Energy Forum was established within the Joint Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkey to ensure more flexible and result-oriented strategic energy cooperation.
Marr Contracting (The Men From Marrs), a world leader in the design and delivery of heavy lift luffing tower cranes and heavy lifting services, has appointed Craig Goltz as the new operations director of its global operations.

Based in Sydney, Australia, Goltzwill assume responsibility for leading Marrs Operations Team including the construction, works and yards, engineering, transport and logistics functions for the business.

Returning to Australia after more than six years working internationally in locations such as the Middle East, UK and North America; he brings almost 40 years experience working on large-scale construction projects across the oil, gas and chemicals, mining and minerals, power, infrastructure and nuclear sectors.

"Goltzs appointment is strategically important for us as we continue to build our business internally in preparation for a strong pipeline of new works coming on board both domestically and internationally," remarked its Managing Director Simon Marr.

"2022 is looking to be one of the strongest years ever for our business and were seeing growth across a diverse range of sectors  particularly power generation, industrial construction (including data centres) and large-scale government-funded infrastructure projects. Craigs global network and extensive experience working on large-scale projects will be key to us delivering on these projects," he added.

With experience spanning the entire spectrum of execution starting from project development through to site preparation, construction, commissioning, start-up and operations, Goltz has gained a reputation in pioneering new standards of project management for large multi-disciplined teams in complex and difficult environments.

"Having worked across a number of remote and culturally diverse locations across the globe, I understand what is required to overcome the logistical and cultural challenges of a project," observed Goltz said.

Highlighting that Marrs own internal culture was a drawcard in joining the team, Goltz said: "Although Marrs forward-thinking approach is entrenched in innovation; theres an old-fashioned honesty, integrity and humility in how they tackle a project which is supported by a team of deeply loyal, dedicated and competent people."
The Diriyah Gate Development Authority (DGDA) has brought together experts from across the globe at an archaeology conference - the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia - to launch its first historical research project on the archaeology of Diriyah and the Nejd, an area located in the centre of the Arabian Peninsula.

As the first gathering of academics to support the research agenda for Diriyahs cultural landscape, the conference kicks off a multi-year research project, which will delve into the ancient history of the site and inform future management. Run by the DGDA, the research will result in a range of publications, both general and academic, a series of site investigations, a public outreach programme and a travelling exhibition.

The Riyadh event, led by DGDAs principal research partner Dr Derek Kennet, an associate professor of archaeology at the UK's Durham University, presented in detail what DGDA has learned about the regions archaeology over the last few years, including what it currently understands and what opportunities there are for further exploration.

Scholars, professionals and government institutions working on the subject area attended the event online and in person. Speakers included leading figures in the field of history and archaeology from Saudi universities and institutions, as well as from global partner organisations.

DGDA Group CEO Jerry Inzerillo said: We are the custodians of a historical area that is fundamentally important to not just the Saudi people, but to the development of the wider region. These research projects serve to highlight that, while uncovering new findings into what sort of society lived here centuries ago.

Each archaeological discovery is another piece of the historical puzzle that we are carefully putting together here in Diriyah. This conference was an opportunity to showcase where we are in this endeavour and has shone light on which areas still need to be explored.

DGDA Chief of Heritage and Culture Adam Wilkinson said: Archaeological research in Saudi Arabia is a rapidly expanding field, and this conference has been an important step in the journey to co-ordinate our efforts discover and learn more about the ancient and more recent history of this fascinating place.

We were delighted to welcome colleagues from academia, from other giga projects and students, all of whom participated in the discussions.

As a part of Vision 2030, Saudis are embarking on a voyage of cultural rediscovery, with national heritage sites now at the forefront of scholars efforts to better understand the Kingdoms history and to celebrate its achievements.

The study and examination of the archaeology of Diriyah and Central Arabia plays a crucial role in helping to achieve this and, as such, is a fitting way to launch DGDAs ambitious research initiative.-TradeArabia News Service
Omans Public Establishment for Industrial Estates  Madayn has signed an agreement with Shandong Shanzuo Holding Group in China to develop and promote strategic cooperation in diverse areas that serve interests of the two sides.



The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed remotely by Hilal bin Hamad Al Hasani, CEO of Madayn, and Lillian Shi, CEO of Shandong Shanzuo Holding Group, and in the presence of Warda Al Shaqsi, Deputy Head of the Sultanate of Omans mission in China.



The MoU focuses on mutual promotion to encourage investments in both countries and establish projects that contribute to achieving economic growth. The MoU also aspires to boost cooperation in import and export activities between Oman and China, provide support in carrying out related commercial businesses, as well as ensure provision of administrative and logistical support for the businesses.



Al Hasani emphasised that this strategic MoU comes along the lines of Madayn 2040 Vision priorities, specifically in pillars related to strengthening Public-Private Partnership, attracting more foreign investments into Oman, and fostering international cooperation.



The MoU aims at strengthening strategic cooperation between Madayn and Shanzuo Group, exchange information, organise visits for investors from both sides, and explore business opportunities in both countries for the investors. Moreover, we will provide the investors with all necessary information and incentives they need to set up projects in Oman and China, Al Hasani pointed out.



Lillian Shi, CEO of Shandong Shanzuo Holding Group Co., said: We are pleased that Madayn and Shanzuo Group have reached to this strategic partnership. As Shandong Shanzuo Holding Group, we strive to be a comprehensive multi-national corporation through delivery of high profile international business services. Besides, we look forward to implement this strategic partnership and promote projects in both Oman and China to facilitate the way to Chinese businesses to set up projects in Oman and vice versa.



As per the agreement, Shanzuo Group shall provide Madayn with free of charge display area in the Demonstration Park for the purposes of advertising and promoting Madayns investments, office space for Madayn in Hanyu Gold Valley, market consultation services for Madayn in China, encouragement of Chinese companies to invest in Oman.



Shanzuo Group will also promote Madayn and its brand to the Chinese companies and market, and recommend expert teams to handle other commercial services that Madayn requires in China.  TradeArabia News Service
It is imperative to create systematic support to advance womens representation and inclusion across automotive operations, opined panellists at a session of the recently concluded Automechanika Dubai.

The session titled An Interview with Women in Automotive, Enabling Women as Industry leaders and Serving Female Consumers discussed various roles of women in the industry, whether through inventions, technical innovations, leadership, courage, or inspiring successes behind the wheel.

The discussion shed light on significant industry concerns and topics, including underrepresentation of women at the executive level, cultural and traditional bias due to underrepresentation, and the importance of mentorship and guidance.

The session also brought forward the need to encourage women early, making the automotive industry appealing to women and the importance of flexibility in working hours.

As an industry pioneer, Bridgestone, a global sustainable mobility, and advanced solutions provider, actively participated in the event to bring forward its milestones, particularly womens roles in the automotive industry.

Berna Aknc, Head of Marketing at Bridgestone Middle East and Africa, was one of the panelists in their Women in Automotive session.

It was also pointed out that the way forward is to increase awareness and develop programmes that provide support to women in childcare, career support, and other opportunities that can facilitate career growth.

Representing the women leaders of Bridgestone, Aknc said: We are proud of how Bridgestone continuously encourages and advances diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. Our company has been proactive in creating a conducive work environment for all individuals who have diverse values and backgrounds, irrespective of their gender. We want our employees to work comfortably and demonstrate their abilities while supporting career growth and development.

It is essential to design and implement programmes that empower our employees, such as career development training, help employees develop networks, and offer career-support training for managers with a special focus on gender diversity awareness. Embracing employee empowerment contributes to the enhancement of work culture and values at our company.-- TradeArabia News Service
Adnoc Distribution, the UAEs largest fuel and convenience retailer, has opened a new service station in Saudi Arabia, featuring its modern fuel and retail convenience offering with an integrated Adnoc Oasis store, car wash and lube change.



During the first half of 2021, Adnoc Distribution received no objection certificates from the Saudi General Authority for Competition (GAC) to acquire 35 stations in Saudi Arabia, deals which were previously announced in December 2020 and February 2021. Adnoc Distribution plans to open more Adnoc service stations in KSA in 2021 in accordance with its smart growth strategy locally and internationally.



The new station is the first in the Kingdom to be fully constructed and operated by Adnoc Distribution, bringing its modern fuel and retail convenience to customers and communities in KSA. The station will offer fuel and non-fuel retail, with car wash and lube change located onsite, as well as the first signature Adnoc Oasis store in KSA, offering a wide selection of products, and a range of fresh food and hot and cold made-to-order beverages.



Engineer Bader Saeed Al Lamki, Chief Executive Officer, Adnoc Distribution said: We reaffirmed out commitment to Saudi Arabia through the intention to expand our presence both through acquisition and organic growth. Having first opened in the Kingdom in 2018, this continued expansion is an integral part of our companys overarching strategic growth plans. We look forward to more openings later this year and into 2022.



Mohammed Ali Zabani, Saudi Arabia Country Manager, Adnoc Distribution, added: We have a strong proposition to bring to the Saudi market and are committed to delivering on our promises to the market and to customers. We are delighted to open our first full Adnoc Service Station experience in the Kingdom, bringing our modern, fresh approach to fuel retail to customers.  TradeArabia News Service
Some 176 units of the worlds largest offshore wind turbine, SG 14-222 DD, will be in operation at Siemens Gamesa and Dominion Energys 2.6-GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind commercial project in the US.

The project, which is scheduled to be completed by 2026, is expected to provide enough clean energy to power up to 660,000 homes at rated wind speed, avoiding more than 5 million tonnes per year of carbon emissions compared to fossil fuel-based power generation.

The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind commercial project will also provide a large springboard towards realising the goal established by the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which requires Virginia to have 100% clean energy by 2045.

This is another milestone agreement for the US as it aims to add 30 GW of renewable energy by 2030, enough to provide clean, renewable energy to approximately 12 million average US homes, or 10% of total US households.

Siemens Gamesa has announced that the next steps are being taken with Dominion Energy subsidiary Dominion Energy Virginia for delivery of the offshore wind turbines and 10-years of service as per an agreement reached between the two parties. The agreement is subject to customary conditions, including required governmental permission.

All items are anticipated to be successfully closed by Q1 2023. Installation of the mammoth project in waters off the coast of the Commonwealth of Virginia is expected to begin in 2024.

This agreement is historic for many reasons, most notably as the next step towards the planned deployment of our flagship SG 14-222 Direct Drive turbine. It also brings our planned offshore wind turbine blade finishing facility in Portsmouth, Virginia, one step closer to reality - the first in the colossal US offshore market. Perhaps more importantly, this marks the point where we prove that as the leaders of the offshore revolution, we begin to write history for a cleaner, greener environment in the US, said Marc Becker, CEO of the Siemens Gamesa Offshore Business Unit.

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy brings decades of experience as the global leader in wind turbine technology to our Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, said Joshua Bennett, Dominion Energy Vice President of offshore wind. Siemens Gamesa is a valued partner on our two-turbine pilot project and will look forward to continued success as we work together to make commercial offshore wind a reality for our Virginia customers.

We are delighted to be partnering Dominion Energy on this milestone development, making a significant addition to Virginias quest for 100% clean energy through our state-of-the-art turbines. With completion of the development set for 2026, Virginia is setting the standard for rapid decarbonisation and energy transition, against which other states will judge their success. Virginia will rightly be able to boast that it has achieved utility-scale energy generation in just a few years, whereas entire countries took decades, said Steve Dayney, Head of Offshore North America at Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy.

The prototype of the SG 14-222 DD offshore wind turbine was installed in November 2021 in Denmark and is currently producing power. The worlds largest installed offshore wind turbine, it has a current pipeline in excess of 12 GW in firm orders, preferred supplier agreements, and preferred bidder statuses. It is built on the solid Siemens Gamesa offshore Direct Drive technology platform, of which over 1,500 units have been installed in all major markets.

The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind commercial project expands on knowledge gained though the existing two-turbine,12-MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project.

The first offshore wind project to be built in US federal waters, it utilises Siemens Gamesas 6 MW SWT-6.0-154 wind turbines with 154-metre rotors. The pilot project has been in operation since October 2020 and is located within a research lease area adjacent to the commercial project site.-- TradeArabia News Service
Airports Council International (ACI) World has announced the appointment of Veronique Demers as its new Vice President of Communications and Marketing.

She joins at a critical point for the airport industry as it looks to forge the path to sustainable recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

Demers has over 15 years of multi-sector experience in corporate communications, public relations, digital marketing and branding. She has held leadership roles in strategic communications and marketing for the hospitality/travel industry including two brands of the Accor hotel group.

While working in the hospitality sector, she was integral in establishing partnerships and building communications and marketing strategies that helped hotel properties reach top status on the global stage. She brings international experience to the position with previous roles in North and South America, Europe and the Middle East, according to a statement from ACI World.

ACI World Director General Luis Felipe de Oliveira said: At a time when the voice of the global airport community needs to be heard, I am confident that Demers will leverage her background to advance ACI Worlds initiatives to support our airport members around the globe. Her experience will help develop relationships and amplify key industry issues at a time when collaborationacross the aviation ecosystem and beyond is more important than ever.

I am thrilled to pursue ACI Worlds mission with the team, said Demers. I intend to support the great work of the organisation by strategically deploying the complete marketing and communications scope for sustainable results, collaborating closely with the diverse stakeholders and expanding engagement. It is a great honour to use the skills I have acquired over my experience to help ACI World support and serve its airport members.

She will begin her role on January 10, 2022 and will be based in Montreal at ACI Worlds office.-TradeArabia News Service
In line with the restoration of Emirates' network and upsurge in travel demand, passengers travelling in premium cabins as well as Skywards members in select membership tiers will have access to more than 120 lounges by February.

The airline, which has resumed operations to over 90 per cent of its pre-pandemic network, currently flies to more than 120 destinations worldwide via its hub in Dubai.

Customers travelling in First Class and Business Class will be able to complement their travel experience with Emirates' premium lounge service at over 20 airports in its network, comprising popular destinations across Europe, Africa, US and Asia.

By late December, the airline's lounges at a host of airports in the UK will have re-opened their doors for customers, including London Heathrow, Birmingham, and Manchester while the lounges in London Gatwick and Glasgow will welcome customers in January 2022.

In Europe, lounges in Germany, namely Munich, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, in addition to lounges in Milan and Rome, have already re-opened, while those in Hamburg and Paris are scheduled to open later this month.

In the US, travellers can access the premium lounge experience at Los Angeles International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport as well as New York JFK, with Emirates' San Francisco lounge to re-start its services in February 2022.

An additional Lounge, to serve passengers travelling through Cairo, has resumed operations earlier, while premium class customers and eligible Skywards members will soon be able to access its lounges in Colombo and Bangkok.

At Terminal 3 at Dubai International airport, premium class customers and eligible Skywards members can enjoy the airline's premium lounge service at five of its dedicated lounges, which are now fully operational.

In Concourse B of Terminal 3, both Emirates' First Class Lounge as well as its Business Class Lounge, have re-opened with full service offerings. Customers flying in Business Class in addition to Skywards Platinum and Gold members can enjoy gourmet dining for up to four hours prior to departure. The new menus also include vegan, vegetarian and healthier options.

First Class and Business Class Lounges in Concourse A have also resumed operations in the East Wing and, in the West Wing, the First Class and Business Class Lounges are set to re-open in the coming weeks. Furthermore, plans are underway to ensure two Lounges in Concourse C are fully operational by early next year.

In addition to Dubai and select airports within its network, First Class and Business Class customers in addition to Skywards Platinum and Gold members can also enjoy access to 96 partner lounges across its network and benefit from their services before flights, with an additional 15 partner lounges to be phased in.

All lounges have resumed operations after stringent health and safety measures have been put in place. Furthermore, airport services teams around the airline's network have worked closely with partner lounge service providers to ensure specific protocols are met to provide services to its premium and frequent flyer customers.

Depending on specific local guidelines in each market, either buffet service or a la carte dining are offered to customers and only contactless menus are available via smartphone. Special seating arrangements have been made to ensure social distancing guidelines are met.

Passengers travelling in First Class and Business Class can also enjoy chauffeur driven service to the airport or on arrival at select locations within its network. Onboard, passengers travelling in premium class can enjoy exclusive services and amenities on its flagship A380 and Boeing 777 aircraft.-TradeArabia News Service
(Photo: Kirsty O'Connor via PA Wire/PA Images)

Getting your Covid booster is essential as Omicron continues to spread through the UK, but is one vaccine better than the other?

The booster vaccines currently offered in the UK are either Pfizer or Moderna, and data so far suggests both booster vaccines offer you a greater level of protection compared to two doses of any vaccine.

However, new research released by Moderna suggests its jab may (slightly) pip Pfizer to the post.

The company said its trial data found a booster dose increases antibody levels 37-fold compared to two original doses of the vaccine. Pfizer/BioNTech previously said its booster dose increased antibody protection 25-fold.

Its worth noting also, that if you receive the Moderna vaccine, youll only receive a half-dose of the original jab. This is because a half-dose is enough to boost the immune system well, according to the Department of Health.

This half dose of Moderna is expected to have a low rate of side effects including myocarditis [rare inflammation of the heart muscle,] it adds.

Despite the positive data, Modernas CEO Stephane Bancel said the increase in Covid-19 cases from the Omicron variant is still concerning to all.

However, these data showing that the currently authorised Moderna Covid-19 booster can boost neutralising antibody levels 37-fold higher than pre-boost levels are reassuring, he said.

To respond to this highly transmissible variant, Moderna will continue to rapidly advance an Omicron-specific booster candidate into clinical testing in case it becomes necessary in the future.

Can you mix vaccines?

Yes, you can  and youre advised to take up whichever vaccine or booster is offered to you.

The Moderna data follows a separate study published in the Lancet medical journal this month, which found no side effects associated with having mix and match vaccines.

The researchers found that participants receiving a first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine generated a robust immune response when immunised nine weeks later with a second dose of Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Novavax or Moderna.

Story continues

Were showing...you dont have to stick rigidly to receiving the same vaccine for a second dose...and that if the programme will be delivered more quickly by using multiple vaccines, then it is okay to do so, Matthew Snape, the Oxford professor behind the trial, told Reuters.

Separate data from the COV Boost study found some people who received mix and match vaccines reported slightly more noticeable side effects, such as fatigue and headaches, but they were mild and didnt last longer than 48 hours.

Do I really need a booster?

Yes, yes you do. Separate research from Imperial College London has found that Omicron largely evades immunity from past coronavirus infection or two vaccine doses  whichever vaccine you had first time around.

Boosters are key to mitigating the impact of the variant, the researchers said, because the risk of reinfection with Omicron is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant

This article originally appeared on HuffPost UK and has been updated.

READ MORE:
BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday stressed attentive, enthusiastic and targeted services for retired cadres, urging those working in the field to strive for remarkable accomplishments in their ordinary positions.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks in an instruction to a national commendation meeting on work related to retired cadres.

Reviewing the CPC's century-long endeavor, Xi praised retired cadres for their important contributions, and expressed the hope that they could contribute their wisdom and strength to the realization of China's second centenary goal and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Xi also urged Party committees and organization departments at all levels to recognize and value those working for retired cadres and complimented their tremendous yet unknown contributions.

Chen Xi, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the CPC Central Committee's Organization Department, spoke at the meeting and stressed the need to make Xi's important discourse a fundamental guiding principle for the work concerning retired cadres.

At the meeting, 100 groups and 300 individuals were cited for their outstanding services to retired cadres.
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
BTO-Tiep tuc chuong trinh ky hop bat thuong lan thu nhat, Quoc hoi XV, chieu nay 6/1, ong chi Duong Van An - Uy vien BCH Trung uong ang, Bi thu Tinh uy, Truong oan ai bieu Quoc hoi tinh chu tri thao luan to tai iem cau tinh Binh Thuan.
About 1.3 million vehicles are expected to travel on tollways on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve, the tollway said. Nearly 1.1 million travelers are expected on Christmas Day and New Years Day. Both are expected to be less than the roughly 1.6 million vehicles that use the tollway on an average day.
And Walgreens has seen an unprecedented increase in demand for rapid, at-home tests and is working with suppliers to make them available through the holidays, said spokeswoman Kris Lathan in a statement. Some Walgreens stores may experience a temporary shortage, she said, and she encouraged consumers to visit the Walgreens website to see updated store inventory. Walgreens is also seeing more demand for on-site COVID-19 tests and is, overall, able to meet that demand, but in some areas people may have to book testing appointments one to two days in advance or drive farther for them, Lathan said.
With this recent spike having such an impact on the industry citywide, we felt it was in everyones best interest to hit pause for a few days and allow our staff time to get tested, spokesperson Hannah Turnbaugh said. Were just going to take things one day at a time right now and do our best to keep everyone healthy.
"I Need to Know," from "You're Gonna Get It" (1978): Petty was initially pegged as a new-wave artist by tastemakers who didn't know what to make of him, and this song embodies the fast, terse, almost slapdash urgency of the form with the guitar interplay of Petty and Mike Campbell.
Two years and a lot of dance classes later, Farley joined Contes then-new company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, in its second season. She danced with Hubbard Street until 1988 when her first child was born. Farleys long list of accomplishments after Hubbard Street includes teaching at Columbia College Chicago and co-directing the 58 Group (with musician Cameron Pfiffner). Having served on review panels and consultancies too numerous to list, Farley participated in Chicago Community Trusts Excellence in Dance Initiative in 2002, which led to the formation of Chicago Dancemakers Forum and See Chicago Dance. She was among the first cohort of Lab Artists for the then-nascent CDF, and stayed.
A: In August 1968, the Yippies arrived in Chicago. They were already known for their stunts of political theater  what they were trying to make were experiences that would attract media attention, creating a platform for some of their other messages. Looking at the options in the 1968 run for president, they thought that perhaps the country would best be served by just going forward and straight-out nominating a pig for president. Which is what they did.
Prosecutors, however, said in court that videos posted online as well as body-worn cameras on some of the officers at the scene showed Elliott among a large group of rioters trying to break through a police line outside the Capitol on the afternoon of Jan. 6.
Even then, the American Civil Liberties Union objected to allowing police wide latitude about whom to stop and pat down. It was clear that a disparate impact in the application of the practice was inevitable, Sheley wrote. The intervening years have shown this to be true. ... There was a systemic policy of stopping a large number of people, which led to targeting (B)lack people, especially youth, by instructing officers to stop the right people at the right place at the right time.
According to police in the statement, fearing for his own safety, and the safety of other occupants inside the home, the officer fired his gun, striking Barnhart around 8:50 p.m. Paramedics who were already at the home rendered aid, but Barnhart was pronounced dead. A gun was recovered from the scene, police said.
China's Ministry of Education, together with eight other relevant authorities, has issued an action plan to address the draining talent pool of students and teachers in county-level regular senior high schools.

By 2025, the gross enrollment ratio for senior secondary education will exceed 92 percent, and the dwindling pool of high-quality prospective students in county high schools will be addressed, according to the ministry.

The action plan urges efforts to build a well-regulated enrollment mechanism with effective oversight. It also prohibits unfair cross-regional talent-poaching activities.

The plan demands further efforts to replenish the teacher workforce, optimize the structure of teachers' allocations, enhance teachers' training and ensure proper treatment for teachers in county high schools. It also bans the irregular talent-poaching of teaching staff from schools in less developed areas to those in more developed ones.
Celebrations to mark Cairo's designation as the "Capital of Culture in the Islamic World" in 2022 will boost cultural tourism in the Egyptian capital, which is known as "the city of a thousand minarets" for its historic mosques and landmarks, an Egyptian official has said.

Osama Talaat, head of Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities' Islamic, Coptic, and Jewish antiquities sector, said Cairo's tourism business is likely to benefit from the celebrations, which are set to begin in mid-February 2022.

Cairo was supposed to hold celebrations as the Islamic world's cultural capital in 2020. However, activities were postponed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Salim AlMalik, director-general of the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO), who spoke at a press conference on December 7.

During the conference, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture announced it will collaborate with ICESCO to host the celebrations, which include more than 50 activities.

Seminars, lectures, conferences, publications, photo galleries and competitions, artistic shows, folklore performances, handicraft exhibitions, and the presentation of a special film about Cairo are among the activities announced at the press conference by Egyptian cultural officials.

"The choice of Cairo as the capital of culture in the Islamic world was made because it is one of the oldest and most ancient Arab capitals, as well as a witness of the depth of history thanks to the tremendous heritage it possesses," Egyptian Minister of Culture Inas Abdel-Dayem said at the press conference.

Cairo's designation "embodies Egypt's international position" and confirms Egypt's cultural and historical standing among the world's states, the official said, adding Cairo's heritage expresses the fundamental characteristics of human civilization in general and ancient Islamic civilization in particular.

The celebrations coincide with the ongoing renovation projects in Historic Cairo, such as those in the areas surrounding Bab Zuweila, Bab al-Nasr, Bab al-Futuh, Al-Hakim Mosque and Al-Rifa'i Mosque, according to Osama Talaat.

Founded in the 10th century during the Fatimid caliphate, Historic Cairo is recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a World Cultural Heritage site, being "one of the world's oldest Islamic cities."

Among the famous landmarks of Historic Cairo are Al-Azhar Mosque, Al-Hussein Mosque, the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, Al-Mu'izz Street, which was named after a Fatimid caliph and contains iconic religious and charitable buildings commissioned by Egypt's rulers and elites back then, and the three remaining gates in the walls of Old Cairo: Bab Zuweila, Bab al-Nasr and Bab al-Futuh.

Tourism in the city is not restricted to Historic Cairo but extends to Greater Cairo that includes the great pyramids of Giza, besides various museums featuring different eras of Egypt's history.
A new exhibition WAVELENGTH: Vi3ionx, gathering over 100 works from 18 global artists, has arrived at the Lizhu Art Space in the Hunan Exhibition Hall for the very first time. Running through April 10, the event also marks the opening of the art space.

WAVELENGTH: Vi3ionx discusses the appeal of contemporary art and fashion in the hearts of the audience. Via creative techniques to express emotions, the artists convey their understanding of the world and their culture.

Attending international artists include Philip Colbert, a leading figure in British neo-pop art; Trevor Andrew, the first street artist to co-sign with GUCCI Andrew; Jon Burgerman, graffiti artist who has had a solo White House show; Daniel Parillo, artist and fashion designer adored by international stars like Lady Gaga and Wiz Khalifa; Buff Monster, an artist working with Disney and Sanrio; Rejane Cantoni, an artist who captivates audiences with his magical lighting effects; Reed Van Brunschot, a popular Dutch artist who uses art to map society and SINBIOX, a Russian artist who blends Chinese culture into cyberpunk. These artists have created their own art spaces for this exhibition, bringing a large number of new works to art lovers in Changsha.

In addition, this exhibition also brings together a large number of outstanding Chinese artists, among them interdisciplinary surrealist artist Chi Lei, Rauschenberg Foundation "recommended" artist Wu Ziyang, experimental trend artist Zeng Chen, realism graffiti artist DAIV, Ouyang Rui, creator of the Loonyface image, trend art organization Loliloli Studio, NYSomeTimes, a student artist at Tsinghua University, Xia Han, an ethical artist of science and technology, Dai Zhankun, director of art spaces, and YIMING, an installation artist of new media.

If you go:

Exhibition period: Dec 18 to April 10

Exhibition time: Tuesday to Sunday 11 am-10 pm (No entry on Mondays, admission closes at 9:30 pm)

Address: Lizhu Art Space, Hunan Povince Exhibition Hall, Changsha
The 2021 International Teen Short Film Festival, organized by the Experimental High School attached to Beijing Normal University and media company Beijing Culture among others, ended with an award ceremony in Beijing on Sunday.

The festival collected short films from middle school students across the world, encouraging them to pay attention to traditional culture, express themselves and communicate with each other through film.

Judges of the festival included Oscar-winning directors Paul Haggis and Kieth Merrill, Chinese directors Tian Zhuangzhuang and Wen Muye and Chinese actress Song Chunli.

After more than half a year of evaluation, 30 films were shortlisted for the international competition unit and 33 for the domestic unit. The films include comedy, fantasy, action and war films.

The best film award was given to Telephone Booth and Come Back to Me, and the best director award was given to Maxim Sharkman Bogdanov from Russia and Zhu Manlin.

Forums about films were also held on Sunday. Scholars and people involved with the film industry discussed themes like the development of young people's film education and the creation of films related to teenagers.
You are here: Business

Foreign trade in south China's Guangdong Province rose 17.4 percent year on year in the first 11 months, according to figures released by the provincial customs authority.



As China's major foreign trade hub, Guangdong's foreign trade volume hit 7.5 trillion yuan (about 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars) during the Jan-Nov period, which has exceeded the scale of 7.1 trillion yuan last year.

Among them, exports grew 17.4 percent to 4.6 trillion yuan, while imports also registered a 17.4-percent year-on-year increase to 2.9 trillion yuan.

From January to November, Guangdong's trade with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) increased by 14.8 percent year on year, while trade with the United States and the European Union grew by 15 percent and 21.4 percent respectively, compared to the same period last year.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) will defer its 2022 annual meeting from January to early summer, it said on Monday.



The meeting, scheduled for Jan. 17-21 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, was postponed due to the "continued uncertainty over the Omicron outbreak."

"Current pandemic conditions make it extremely difficult to deliver a global in-person meeting," the WEF explained in a news release published on its website.

Preparations of the WEF annual meeting have been guided by expert advice and have benefited from the close collaboration of the Swiss government at all levels, the WEF said, adding that the transmissibility of Omicron and its impact on travel and mobility have made deferral necessary.

The health and safety of everyone involved in physical meetings have always been the Forum's priority, it stressed.

"The deferral of the annual meeting will not prevent progress through continued digital convening of leaders from business, government and civil society," said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF.

According to the Forum, participants of the annual meeting will instead join a headline series of "State of the World" sessions bringing together global leaders online to focus on shaping solutions to the world's most pressing challenges.

"Public-private cooperation has moved forward throughout the pandemic and that will continue apace. We look forward to bringing global leaders together in person soon." Schwab added.

Previously, the WEF has cancelled its annual meeting for 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
 Flash

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) staged a large-scale war game, codenamed "the Great Prophet 17," along the southern coasts of the country on Monday, state TV reported.

The exercise, to be held for five days, involves IRGC units such as the aerospace force and the cyber-electronic division, Abbas Nilforoushan, the IRGC's deputy chief of operations and spokesman for the drill, was quoted by Press TV as saying.

According to the general, a series of military systems and weapons recently delivered to the IRGC will be brought into action during the war game.

"The military exercise is meant to increase the preparedness of the IRGC combat units," Nilforoushan said.

"The military drills carry the message of defending and safeguarding the national security," he added.

Meanwhile, Gholam Ali Rashid, another IRGC senior commander, seriously warned Isreal and the United States about any threats or mischief against nuclear facilities in Iran, after Isreal threatened to launch military attacks on Iran's nuclear program during rounds of nuclear talks.

"If such threats are carried out, Iran's armed forces will immediately and decisively attack all centers, bases, routes, and spaces used for the aggression," Rashid said.
 Flash

The embassy of Belarus in London was attacked Sunday evening, and one Belarusian diplomat was diagnosed with a broken nose, a minor concussion and a traumatic tooth fracture, according to the press service of the Foreign Ministry of Belarus.

The attackers tried to escape after the arrival of the police, and some of them were detained. They are presumably part of the group of Belarusian emigrants "Nadzeya" and "Hope", the press service said.

The charge d'affaires of Britain in Minsk has been summoned. The Foreign Ministry of Belarus has filed a protest with the demand to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident.
 Flash

Zimbabwe on Monday received a batch of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine donated by China, which will boost the country's vaccination campaign as it battles the fourth wave of COVID-19 pandemic.

The latest donation - on top of other batches of vaccine that China has already donated to Zimbabwe - follows a pledge made by China at the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) to provide another 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to Africa. The sum includes 600 million doses as donation and 400 million doses to be provided through such means as joint production by Chinese companies and relevant African countries.

Speaking shortly after receiving the donation at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare, Zimbabwe's Vice President, who is also the health minister, Constantino Chiwenga, expressed gratitude for the vaccines, saying the donation will help accelerate Zimbabwe's vaccination campaign.

Chiwenga said Zimbabwe and China enjoy excellent relations, as characterized by comprehensive strategic cooperation in many sectors of the economy.

Speaking at the same event, the Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Guo Shaochun, reaffirmed China's commitment to assisting African countries in the fight against the pandemic and addressing vaccine inequality.

"The arrival of this consignment demonstrates that China is turning its commitments into visible and tangible outcomes. China-Africa cooperation will be further increased and benefit wider populations in Africa," Guo said.

China is a major vaccine supplier to Zimbabwe.

As of Dec. 19, slightly over 4 million people out of a population of about 15 million had received at least one vaccine dose, while about 3 million had received both required shots, according to the health ministry's daily update.
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Laos, a landlocked country surrounded by five neighbors including China and Thailand, used to have only 3.5 km of railway. However, that situation has begun to change on December 3 with the opening of the China-Laos Railway, a 1,035-km line connecting Kunming in Yunnan Province of China with the Lao capital of Vientiane.

On that day, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Lao counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith jointly inaugurated the railway, a landmark project under the Belt and Road Initiative, a blueprint proposed by China in 2013 to mainly boost trade and infrastructure connectivity along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road.

Xi, who is also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, met with Thongloun, General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party Central Committee and President of Laos, via video link.

The two leaders witnessed the opening of the railway, which runs through lush tropical mountains and across the Mekong River, shortening the journey from Kunming to Vientiane to about 10 hours. The line, with a top speed of 200 km per hour, has 50 stations. It is the first overseas railway project that is mainly invested in, constructed and operated by China and networked into China's domestic rail system since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative.

"With the opening of the railway, the high mountains are no longer high and the long journeys are no longer long from Kunming to Vientiane," Xi said at the opening ceremony.

He urged both sides to follow high standards in the maintenance and operation of the railway, saying the regions along the railway must be properly developed to ensure the line can benefit the people of both nations.

"It is a moment to be proud of. More importantly, the opening of the railway is of monumental significance to further the traditional friendship between the two parties, nations, and peoples and to comprehensive strategic cooperation," Thongloun said.

Laos stands ready to conduct even closer high-level exchanges with China, step up strategic communication and maximize the economic benefits from the railway, he said.

Strenuous work

Since the project began in December 2016, over 20,000 construction workers from China and Laos have contributed to the railway's construction.

The Boten-Vientiane section of the railway stretches from the Lao border city of Boten to Vientiane. As it is located on the Lao side of the border, most of the construction workers are Lao, with Chinese technicians providing training and assistance.

One of the Chinese instructors is Chen Jie, a technician from CREGC Architectural and Construction Engineering Co. Ltd., which is headquartered in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Chen works with construction workers on methods for processing steel for railway construction. As they speak different languages, Chen demonstrated the processes many times to ensure the workers had mastered them. For the construction of the Boten-Vientiane Railway, Chen's company dispatched its best technicians to train their Lao counterparts. The company also established a training school that provided over 600 training sessions to help over 2,400 local people master railway building skills.

During construction of the railway, China created 110,000 jobs for Lao workers and purchased over 5.1 billion yuan ($802.7 million) worth of materials and supplies from Laos.

The area along the China-Laos Railway has been called a "geological museum" for its complex geological formations. The complex geological structure underneath the project exposed construction workers to a number of risks, and posed great difficulties for construction work.

For instance, in building the Yuanjiang Grand Bridge, the highest bridge along the railway, engineers had to overcome major technical obstacles. The bridge is located in the section between Yuxi City and Mohan port in Yunnan. The 832.2-meter bridge has four piers, the highest of which is 154 meters, the height of a 54-story building. Even when there is no train passing across the bridge, the bottom of the pier needs to support 150,000 tons of weight. However, engineers found that the underground structures under the pier were unable to bear the weight owing to the large number of fault lines underneath.

Three academicians from the Chinese Academy of Engineering were invited to collaborate with project employees on identifying solutions. A new solution was found that could reduce the weight of the piers by 30 percent while maintaining their weight-bearing capacity.

After the bridge was put into operation, a nearly three-hour drive along mountain roads was reduced to a crossing of slightly over 10 seconds. To achieve that 10-second crossing, Chinese technicians and construction workers worked for more than five years at temperatures as high as 40 degrees Celsius.

The China-Laos Railway has 301 bridges and 167 tunnels, amounting to 712 km and accounting for 76.5 percent of the total length of the railway.

While overcoming technical problems, much attention was given to environmental protection during the railway construction. The railway crosses 20 nature reserves and three national parks. "We have avoided core areas and buffer zones of nature reserves as well as environmentally sensitive areas to reduce the impact on the environment," said Xie Yi, chief engineer of the China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group Co. Ltd.

Regional connectivity

The China-Laos Railway is expected to bring benefits to both countries. The economy of Laos is largely based on agriculture and over 80 percent of its agricultural products are exported to China. However, high transportation costs over the past few years have made its agricultural products less competitive compared with its neighboring countries. The opening of the railway has reduced transportation costs between Vientiane and Kunming by 40 to 50 percent, making Lao products more competitive in the Chinese market.

"The China-Laos Railway has improved the efficiency of resource relocation, so as to galvanize the Lao economy," said Bai Ming, Deputy Director of the Institute of International Market of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

The railway is expected to increase trade flow between China and Laos from 1.2 million tons in 2016 to 3.7 million tons by 2030, including 2 million tons to be shifted from maritime transport to the railway, according to the World Bank. The transit trade through Laos along the railway corridor could reach an estimated 3.9 million tons per year by 2030, which would include a shift of an estimated 1.5 million tons of trade from maritime transport to the railway.

Within China, the China-Laos Railway connects the regions of Kunming, Yuxi, Pu'er and Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan, and the railway is expected to bring prosperity to these border areas, populated by multiple ethnic groups, including Han, Yi, Hani and Dai. Kong Zhijian, deputy head of the Chinese Academy of South and Southeast Asian Studies (Kunming) under the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, said the railway will facilitate economic and cultural exchanges between ethnic groups in the region and inject impetus into the economy on China's southwest border.

"Since the railway will connect with railway networks in countries such as Thailand and Malaysia, Chinese tourists are expected to begin traveling to Laos, Thailand and Malaysia by train. In the meantime, the railway will promote cooperation between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in trade, investment, services and finance, entailing more opportunities for Chinese enterprises," Kong added.

Moreover, the China-Laos Railway, a part of the Pan-Asian Railway Network, will not only benefit the two peoples, but also significantly improve regional connectivity. The Pan-Asian Railway Network, also known as the Kunming-Singapore Railway, is one of the most important Belt and Road transportation development projects.

There are three routes in the railway network, with the central route starting from Kunming, going through Laos and ending in Bangkok; the western route extending through Myanmar and Thailand; and the eastern route crossing Viet Nam, Cambodia and Thailand, before they all connect in Bangkok and extend southward through Malaysia and Singapore.

Bai said with the opening of the China-Laos Railway, Laos will become a key hub in boosting connectivity in Southeast Asia. "The China-Laos Railway will connect with the Malaysia-Singapore Railway Network to the south through the China-Thailand Railway and connect with the China-Europe Freight Train Service to the north, enabling the landlocked country to be better connected."

"It will be of great significance for promoting the construction of the Pan-Asian Railway Network, enhance regional connectivity in Southeast Asia and boost regional economic integration between China and Southeast Asian nations," Bai added.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of China-Laos relations as well as the 30th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue partnership. "The railway will enable China and its neighboring countries to become an even closer community with a shared future for humanity and set an example for building the Belt and Road," said Wang Yiwei, Vice President of the Academy of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era at Renmin University of China.
Ive sat at my fathers deathbed twice, almost three times. The first time was when Dad suffered a major stroke at 66. We werent sure hed survive. He did, but was left paralysed on one side and with his personality very much changed.

A few years later, Dad was hospitalised with severe pneumonia. Medical staff advised Mum to bring the family together, saying Dad wouldnt last the night. He did, and the next morning berated us for discussing plans for his funeral. You wanted me gone! was his accusation. It wasnt much of a defence to explain we were only acting on what wed been told.

And then, last Augustwith Dad now in a nursing homewe were told he would die within a matter of days. Our family gathered at his bedside in Wellington. Mum, my sister from Christchurch, Dads sister from South Australia, my husband and our children. It took almost two weeks for Dad to die. We learnt dying people sometimes rally when loved ones gather. That was comforting to hear.

News that MP David Seymours End of Life Choice Bill had been drawn from the Ballot and will be debated by the New Zealand Parliament sent my thoughts back to Dads death. Seymours Bill is focused on the very real anguish faced by people with terminal illness as they anticipate the prospect of intolerable suffering, and the indignity of the final few days and weeks of their lives.

Every death is different and I can only speak to my own experience. But I would say much of Dads final years were an experience of indignity. Anguish wasnt a stranger either.

Our last couple of days with Dad were hard. His breathing was labouredthe death rattle people speak of his pallor grey, his body worn out. At this point Im not sure how much Dad could hear, but there was still work to do. The work of letting go and saying goodbye.

Difficult

Seymour says should his Bill become law, doctors would need to assist only around 130 people each year to die. But others argue, based on similar legislation in the Netherlands where reported euthanasia cases represent four per cent of Hollands total deaths, its more likely to be closer to 1240.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide became law in the Netherlands in 2002. The number of such deaths there rose 10 per cent last year to 6091, a 317 per cent increase since 2006. From experiences in the Netherlands its clear such deaths are no longer offered only to terminal cases. There were 32 more cases of assisted suicide involving people with dementia in 2016 than the year before, most in their early stages. Sixty other cases involved people with psychiatric problems.

Our family didnt have power over when Dad would draw his final breath. His doctor didnt have us pressuring for a quicker end. And rest home staff provided excellent palliative care.

Dad lingered, but he was still present. And at the end he lingered because those who loved him were with him. I believe this was good for him and I know that, although difficult, it was good for us too.
The global Silicone Release Films Market research report, published by Value Market Research, is designed to offer various market framework such as market size, portion, trends, growth path, value and factors that impact the current market dynamics over the forecast period 2020-2027. Most importantly, this report also provides the latest significant strategies adopted by major players along with their market share.

The research report also covers the comprehensive profiles of the key players in the market and an in-depth view of the competitive landscape worldwide. The major players in the silicone release films market include Mitsubishi Chemical America, Inc., MTI Polyexe Corp., UK Insulations, PPI Adhesive Products, Dow Inc., Mondi Group, Lintec Corporation, Wacker Chemie, Sappi Limited. This section consists of a holistic view of the competitive landscape that includes various strategic developments such as key mergers & acquisitions, future capacities, partnerships, financial overviews, collaborations, new product developments, new product launches, and other developments.

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Market Dynamics

Silicone release film manufacturers are working to reduce the platinum and fossil-free silicone coating used in the production of the films. The platinum-based curing catalyst is commonly used in silicone release films. For preventing the depletion of natural resources, manufacturers are working on developing new technology that uses less platinum than traditional technology. These silicone release films are utilized in adhesive tapes, stickers, and labels, among other things. The factors stated above are pushing the growth of the market. In addition, the majority of the leading silicone release film manufacturers are based in India, which is a significant driver influencing the silicone release film market's expansion. Changing packaging methods in the packaging business and an emphasis on research and development efforts have resulted in breakthroughs in the release properties of silicone release films. Furthermore, the dissolvable silicon release films can be used to transfer release ingredients to silicon paper, which is particularly useful for labels used in medical applications. These dissolvable release films can successfully discharge the releasing materials or substances with minimal wastage and no errors during the transferring operation. The market is expected to rise because of this merit offered by silicone release films. Nevertheless, the equipment cost required to manufacture silicone release films is high, which could be a market restraint for the silicone release films market.

The research report covers Porters Five Forces Model, Market Attractiveness Analysis, and Value Chain analysis. These tools help to get a clear picture of the industrys structure and evaluate the competition attractiveness at a global level. Additionally, these tools also give an inclusive assessment of each segment in the global market of silicone release films. The growth and trends of silicone release films industry provide a holistic approach to this study.

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Market Segmentation

This section of the silicone release films market report provides detailed data on the segments at country and regional level, thereby assisting the strategist in identifying the target demographics for the respective product or services with the upcoming opportunities.

By Coatings

 Single-Side Coating

 Dual-Side Coating

By Thickness

 Up To 20 Microns

 20-30 Microns

 30 To 50 Microns

 Above 50 Microns

By Film Base

 Polyethylene Terephthalate (Pet)

 Low Density Polyethylene (Ldpe)

 High Density Polyethylene (Hdpe)

 Polypropylene (Pp)

By Application

 Adhesive Tapes

 Labels

 Stickers

 Hologram

 Others (Window Films, Etc.)

Regional Analysis

This section covers the regional outlook, which accentuates current and future demand for the Silicone Release Films market across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Further, the report focuses on demand, estimation, and forecast for individual application segments across all the prominent regions.

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The Global Octamethyl Cyclotetrasiloxane Market Report, in its latest update, highlights the significant impacts and the recent strategical changes under the present socio-economic scenario. The Octamethyl Cyclotetrasiloxane industry growth avenues are deeply supported by exhaustive research by the top analysts of the industry. The report starts with the executive summary, followed by a value chain and marketing channels study. The report then estimates the CAGR and market revenue of the global and regional segments.

Base Year: 2020

Estimated Year: 2021

Forecast Till: 2027

The report classifies the market into different segments based on type and product. These segments are studied in detail, incorporating the market estimates and forecasts at regional and country levels. The segment analysis is helpful in understanding the growth areas and potential opportunities of the market.

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DowDuPont

Bluestar

Momentive

WACKER

Dongyue Group

Tangshan Sanyou

Shin Etsu

Hoshine Silicon

Shandong Jinling

Zhongtian Fluorine Silicon

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Octamethyl Cyclotetrasiloxane Market Analysis by Type:

Content 99%

Content 98%

Others

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Silicone Rubber

Silicone

Silicone Oil

Octamethyl Cyclotetrasiloxane Market Analysis by Geography:

North America (USA, Canada, and Mexico)

(USA, Canada, and Mexico) Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Rest of Europe)

(Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Rest of Europe) Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, South-East Asia, Rest of Asia-Pacific)

(China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, South-East Asia, Rest of Asia-Pacific) Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Rest of Latin America)

(Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Rest of Latin America) The Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, South Africa, Rest of the Middle East and Africa)

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Childrenswear brand partners with Centric Software to drive digital brand management and innovation

CAMPBELL, Calif., December 21, 2021  Semir Group has selected Centric Softwares Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution for the third time for its childrenswear brand, MarColor. 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.

Founded in 2015, MarColor is a clothing brand for children aged 0-7. Its vision is to provide joyful, childlike, vibrant and comfortable products and experiences driven by professional color analysis, model optimization and dedicated R&D of patterns and functional fabrics.

With increasing digitalization across the industry and growth constraints posed by Covid-19, MarColor has an imperative need for digital brand management.

We used to waste time on duplicated work due to information gaps in workflows and inconsistent data transmission, recalls Ms. Fan Yuxing, Executive Director of the MarColor PLM project. The lack of digital management on key business nodes also meant that a lot of time had to be invested in manual data analysis.

Having implemented Centric Fashion PLM for both the Balabala childrenswear brand and their Semir apparel brand, Semir Group put their trust in Centric for a third time.

We believe PLM will improve efficiency significantly by tracking and sharing everything online from fabric requirements to product positioning, style design drawings and sample progress, says Ms. Fan.

Tapping the experience of working with multiple Semir Group brands, Centric will address MarColors challenges with improved product management, more precise R&D, standardized data language, optimized process efficiency and improved digital intelligence for informed decision making.

Jack, General Manager of MarColor, concludes that, Even though MarColor is not a big brand, we suffer from inefficiencies without a digital system. Furthermore, as the number of young employees increases, we hope that digitalization can free our teams from duplicate and tedious work to focus on unleashing creativity and developing themselves. Centric PLM will also help attract and retain fresh talent.

We are working together from top to bottom to ensure that we are on the same page and devoted to continuous improvement. With the help of the experienced Centric team, our young MarColor brand will shine even more brilliantly.

We are proud that Semir Group has chosen Centric PLM for a third time, says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. Our experience with MarColors sister brands streamlines the implementation process, and we are looking forward to working with MarColor to achieve their business growth goals.

Learn more about Centric Fashion PLM

Request a Demo

MarColor (www.marcolorkids.com)

Founded in August 2015, MarColor is a childrens clothing brand that targets infants and toddlers aged 0-7. Its vision is to provide children and parents with joyful, childlike, vibrant, and comfortable products and experiences driven by professional color analysis, model optimization, and dedicated research and development of patterns and functional fabrics.

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 and personal care 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.

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
Saudi Arabian officials allowed local quarantine of five days for migrant workers. As a result, lower flight charges and the reduction of 14-day quarantine to five days gave them some relief.  Representational image/DC

HYDERABAD: In the backdrop of snowballing Omicron fears, several Gulf migrants have cut short their vacation and flown back to the Gulf countries to resume their work.

Also, anticipating a possible hike in flight charges and likely restrictions on flight services, several migrants have reached back their homeland while there is also a rush to return to the work stations. This happens both ways.

Gulf migrants belonging to Adilabad, Karimnagar and Nizamabad districts are hurriedly finalising their travel plans for fear of eruption of a third wave courtesy the Omicron spread.

Due to the Covid-19s adverse effect on the aviation sector finances, a few airlines have collected huge fares from those flying out of Gulf countries to India. The migrant workers, mostly belonging to north Telangana state districts, were forced to pay hefty sums for travel.

In addition, quarantine charges too burdened them in the last few months. To reach Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Bahrain, the migrants had to have a 14-day quarantine in Sri Lanka, Maldives or Dubai en route to their destination.

For instance, a migrant worker from India usually pays Rs 90,000 to reach Saudi Arabia. But the midway quarantine rule forced passengers to pay as high as Rs 1.50 lakh.

Reportedly, Saudi Arabian officials allowed local quarantine of five days for migrant workers. As a result, lower flight charges and the reduction of 14-day quarantine to five days gave them some relief. In these circumstances, some migrant workers thought it fit to cut short their tour plans and reach back to the workplaces earlier than what was originally planned.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle from Sharjah, migrant worker Ashok of Jagiryal village in Bheemgal mandal of Nizamabad district said he got RT-PCR tests done thrice  at home, the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) at Hyderabad and at Dubai Airport before he reached the destination.

Travellers must reach the airport at least three hours before their scheduled time of departure, to take the RT-PCR tests. I resumed my work in Sharjah after showing a Covid negative report, he said.

Pendem Srinivas, who runs a travel agency at Morthad in Nizamabad district, said a few migrant workers are showing an interest to reach back to the Gulf countries soon. If a lockdown is imposed in India in the event of a third wave, the migrant workers will be stuck here and lose their employment in the Gulf countries, he pointed out.

If their personal matters like attending marriages, housewarming ceremonies etc., are completed in their native places, the workers are ready to return for work. Only the new visa holders are facing restrictions in the Gulf countries. Else, the civil identity card holders are simply resuming their work a bit early too, he explained.
Kochi: The Prime Minister is the leader of the nation and not of a political party and citizens "need not be ashamed" to carry a vaccination certificate with his photograph and "morale boosting message", the Kerala High Court said on Tuesday and dismissed a plea seeking removal of PM's photo from the COVID-19 immunisation certificates.

"Nobody can say that a Prime Minister is a Congress Prime Minister or a BJP Prime Minister or the Prime Minister of any political party. But once a Prime Minister is elected as per the constitution, he is the Prime Minister of our country and that post should be the pride of every citizen.

".. they can differ on the policies of the government and even the political stand of the Prime Minister. But the citizens need not be ashamed to carry a vaccination certificate with the photograph of the Prime Minister with a morale boosting message, especially in this pandemic situation," the high court said.

It also said that when COVID-19 pandemic can be eliminated only by vaccination, if the PM gave a message with his photograph, in the certificates, that with the help of medicine and strict control, India will defeat the virus, "what is wrong with it?"

The court dismissed the petition with a cost of Rs 1 lakh, saying it was "frivolous", filed with "ulterior motives", "publicity oriented" and the petitioner probably also had a "political agenda".

"According to my opinion, this is a frivolous petition filed with ulterior motives and I have a strong doubt that there is a political agenda also to the petitioner. According to me, this is a publicity oriented litigation. Therefore, this is a fit case that is to be dismissed with a heavy cost.

"A citizen of this country argues before the High Court that carrying the photograph of his Prime Minister in the vaccination certificate with a morale boosting message in a pandemic situation is an intrusion to his privacy. The petitioner says that it is a 'compelled viewing'. As I observed earlier, these are frivolous contentions, which one never expects from a citizen," Justice P V Kunhikrishnan said.

The court directed the petitioner -- Peter Myaliparampil -- to deposit the cost in favour of the Kerala State Legal Services Authority (KeLSA) within six weeks.

The court said in case of failure to deposit the cost within the stipulated period, KeLSA shall recover the amount from his assets by initiating revenue recovery proceedings against him.

It also said that the "petitioner should study the respect to be given to the Prime Minister and others by watching at least the parliamentary proceedings, which are available live on national TV".

The court said that if the petitioner does not want to see his PM or if he was ashamed to see the PM's photo, "he can avert his eyes to the bottom side of the vaccine certificate".

"Therefore, the argument by the petitioner that the photograph of the Prime Minister of India with a morale boosting message to his fellow citizens through the vaccination certificate is a compelled viewing of the photograph of the Prime Minister of India is to be rejected. This is also a frivolous contention raised by the petitioner," the judge said in his 32-page judgement.

The court also said that 'compelled listening or viewing' is only there when the government forces someone to listen or view its messages.

The court also said, "What is wrong with politicians? Since a small percentage of politicians are having a bad history, the entire politicians need not be ignored. They are the builders of our nation with innovative ideas."

While imposing the cost, the judge said he was aware the amount was big as far as a citizen was concerned, but when such frivolous contentions are raised by a petitioner, he should know its effect and "the society also should know that if frivolous petitions are filed, the court will not accept the same".

"Thousands of convicted persons in criminal cases are in jail in our country waiting for hearing of their appeals. Thousands of people are waiting for a result in their matrimonial disputes. Thousands of people are waiting for the result of their property disputes.

"In such a situation, this court has to consider those litigations as early as possible and this court is doing that every day. In such a situation, when frivolous petitions are filed, that should be dismissed with a heavy cost," it said.

"If the petitioner is coordinating this type of campaign, I have nothing to say but to pity him," the judge added.

The petitioner had contended that the certificate was a private space with personal details on record and therefore, it was inappropriate to intrude into the privacy of an individual.

He had contended that adding the Prime Minister's photo to the certificate was an intrusion into an individual's private space.

The petitioner, a senior citizen, had contended in his plea that the Prime Minister's photo on his vaccination certificate was a violation of fundamental rights.
The district administration should immediately take steps to prevent deaths and shift the cows to a shelter for which five acres have been earmarked at Kusulavada in Anandapuram mandal in Vizag district, said founder-president of Visakha Society for the Protection and Care of Animals.  Representational image/DC

Visakhapatnam: Two more cows died at the Gnanananda Ashram in Visakhapatnam due to disease and cold weather. So far, 26 cows including several calves have died, animal activists said.

The district administration should immediately take steps to prevent deaths and shift the cows to a shelter for which five acres have been earmarked at Kusulavada in Anandapuram mandal in Vizag district, said founder-president of Visakha Society for the Protection and Care of Animals.

Talking to Deccan Chronicle on Monday, he said it was cruel to house more than 500 cows at the Gnanananda Ashram which is small and is unable supply fodder to its own cows. The police left 160 cows seized from a container while the Simhachalam Devasthanam dumped another 300 cows, he said.

He said the Andhra Pradesh High Court had issued orders to have shelters for cows in every district in the state and accordingly five acres of land was allotted in Kusalavada in Anandapuram mandal.

If they do not have funds to organise a shelter, the district administration can always entrust the responsibility to a reputed NGO which could be monitored by a committee, Nath said.

He warned that if the administration did not take immediate measures, he would be forced to approach the High Court.

Meanwhile, animal husbandry joint director D. Rama Krishna said in all he identified 319 cows of which 108 are calves sheltered in the ashram. He said he was not aware from where these animals were brought.

He said treatment was being given and the situation was under control.
The authorities ought to have included graduation in any field, instead of confining to only B.A., B.Sc and B.Com, was the aggrieved candidatescontention. The single judge had ordered that the candidates who studied B.Tech along with B.Ed should be eligible.  DC Image

HYDERABAD: Division Bench of the Telangana High Court made it clear that the BE and B.Tech degree candidates with an additional B.Ed degree are eligible for the posts of Trained Graduate Teachers (TGT) and Post Graduate Teachers ( PGT).

The bench headed by Chief Justice Satishchandra Sharma upheld the single judge courts orders to this effect, passed some time ago.

It was in 2019 that Justice Abhinand Kumar Shavili directed the recruitment authority to accept the engineering students for the above posts, while disposing of a challenging the notification issued for filling up the posts of TGT and PGT in Residential Educational Institutions Societies (general recruitment), by

the Telangana Residential Educational Institutions Recruitment Board.

The said notification was issued on June 30, 2018 for recruitment. It stated that only such candidates who have passed B.A., B.Sc., B.Com. are eligible to apply for the post of TGT.

The authorities ought to have included graduation in any field, instead of confining to only B.A., B.Sc and B.Com, was the aggrieved candidatescontention.

The single judge had ordered that the candidates who studied B.Tech along with B.Ed should be eligible. This order was challenged before the division bench through an appeal. However, the HC bench declined to interfere in the single judges order.
According to preliminary probe it is clear that workers BJP-RSS and SDPI were involved in the brutal incidents. (Photo by arrangement)

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The ruling CPM and opposition parties keeping their fingers crossed over the fall out of the twin murders in Alappuzha.

Even though the back to back killing of state leaders of rival organisations have been described as "political murders", what is worrying the government is the possibility of a communal flare up because of such incidents. Unlike the political murders that often take place in Kerala which are mainly due to ideological differences and fight for political space, according to preliminary probe it is clear that workers BJP-RSS and SDPI were involved in the brutal incidents.

BJP state president Mr K Surendran says it is not political murder but ethnic cleansing of Hindus. On the other hand the SDPI has also come out with similar statements that the killing of Shan was part of the conspiracy to silence the Muslim community.

With both BJP-RSS and SDPI leaders making highly provocative speeches, the police say the possibility of targeted retaliatory attacks cannot be ruled out completely.

The ruling CPM on the other hand accused the BJP-RSS and SDPI of creating animosity among the two communities.The CPM state secretariat has demanded an immediate end to the murder politics of the two parties which was destroying the peaceful atmosphere in Kerala.

The CPM appealed to all secular believers on both sides to join hands and guard against the attempts of hardline elements to trigger communal riots.

The CPM leadership alleged that the communal forces were making a conscious effort to destroy the peaceful law and order situation in the state.

KPCC president Mr K Sudhakaran rejected the CPM charge that Congress was speaking the language of BJP. He alleged that Chief Minister Mr Pinarayi Vijayan was obsessed only with the high speed K rail project. The CPM is aligning with the BJP and the SDPI wherever it suited them. As a result, the hardline elements in these organisations have started raising their heads.

Sudhakaran said the LDF government is squarely responsible for the killings in Alappuzha.
Hyderabad: Union home minister Amit Shah will tour Telangana for two days to strengthen the party BJP in the state, and address a public meeting.

This was disclosed by TS BJP president Bandi Sanjay while speaking to media personnel in Delhi on Tuesday after meeting Amit Shah.

Apart from Sanjay, the delegation comprised Union tourism minister G. Kishan Reddy, party MP D. Arvind, MLAs Etala Rajendar and M. Raghunandan Rao, BJP vice-president D.K. Aruna and party leader Vijayashanthi. It met Amit Shah in his chambers in Parliament premises. Union food minister Piyush Goyal was present in the meeting.

After the meeting, Sanjay told the media, "Amit Shah asked us to wage a battle against the TRS government. He wanted party leaders and cadre to reach out to people and expose the false propaganda of the TRS against BJP-led government at the Centre on paddy issue.

Amit Shah assured us that he will tour Telangana for two days soon and address a huge public meeting. He said that he would finalise his tour after the Winter Session of Parliament."

Sanjay stated that the date and venue of Amit Shah's meeting will be declared soon.

Party sources said that Amit Shah offered to tour Telangana days when they requested him to visit the state to strengthen the BJP. Shah assured the team that he would not just stay for an hour or two, but spend two days in Telangana state.

Sources said the BJP team updated Amit Shah on several state issues, especially the paddy procurement row and huge corruption in TRS government.

They complained that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, his family members, ministers and TRS leaders were indulging in corruption and amassing wealth. They alleged huge corruption even in the matter of paddy procurement in collusion with rice millers.Responding to this, Amit Shah reportedly asked the party leaders take the TRS head-on and wage a battle against its misrule, unearth scams in paddy procurement and other issues and demand inquiries.

Shah assured that the party national leadership would support the state unit in its fight. He also asked them to be prepared to face Assembly elections in the state anytime and keep candidates ready for all the 119 Assembly seats.

Shah expressed severe anger at the TRS for holding 'funeral processions' with effigies of BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday after the BJP showed him videos and pictures.

Sanjay said the state government employees were facing severe hardships due to ongoing transfers as per new districts and zones and lakhs of unemployed persons are waiting for job notifications for years. To divert people's attention from these problems, Chandrashekar Rao was enacting a drama voer paddy procurement even after the Centre said that it would procure raw rice from Telangana as usual without any restrictions.
Hyderabad: The battle between the TRS and the BJP over procurement of paddy, reached Delhi on Tuesday, with leaders from both the parties meeting Union food minister Piyush Goyal separately.

The TS government delegation consisting of ministers and TRS MPs had been waiting in Delhi since Saturday to meet Goyal to seek clarity on the status of paddy procurement for the Kharif season.

The BJP delegation from the state reached Delhi on Monday and sought Goyal's appointment to discuss the issue. Goyal met the BJP delegation first at noon, and the TS delegation in the evening.

Goyal met the BJP delegation at Union home minister Amit Shah's chambers in Parliament. Shah was present along with Union tourism minister G. Kishan Reddy, BJP TS president Bandi Sanjay, MP D. Arvind, MLAs Etala Rajendar, and M. Raghunandan Rao, party's national vice-president D.K. Aruna and party leader Vijayashanthi among others.

State BJP leaders briefed Amit Shah and Goyal about the TRS government misleading farmers on paddy procurement and trying to pin the blame on the Centre.

They said TRS elected representatives had held 'funeral processions' with effigies of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi across the state on Monday. The police did not initiate any action against the TRS leaders while they were burning the PM's effigies, the BJP leaders told Amit Shah and Goyal.

BJP sources said Amit Shah and Goyal expressed severe anger at the TRS for holding 'funeral processions' and told the BJP leaders that this should not be tolerated.

Later, TS ministers S. Niranjan Reddy, V. Prashanth Reddy, G. Jagadish Reddy, Errabelli Dayakar Rao and TRS MPs met Goyal at his chambers in Parliament.

Goyal reportedly expressed anger at the TRS leaders for repeatedly coming to Delhi on the paddy issue even after he had stated the Centre's stance on more than one occasion in both Houses of Parliament during the ongoing winter session.

The TS delegation demanded a written assurance from the Centre on enhancing the paddy procurement target for the state for the ongoing Kharif season. The state had met the target of 60 lakh tonnes set by the Centre, and another 60 lakh tonnes was awaiting procurement.

The TS delegation asked Goyal to clarify whether the Centre would enhance the target, and give a written assurance as the state could not trust oral assurances. They asked whether the TS government should continue Kharif procurement or close the purchase centres.

However, Goyal remained non-committal and said he would clarify in two to three days after discussing the issue with the Food Corporation of India.

Speaking to the media later, Niranjan Reddy said the delegation would wait for three more days in Delhi for Goyals response
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The holiday season has come to both Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific in a brutal way as Krampus, the half-goat, half-monster mythical creature from the European folklore, has entered the battlefield, not to steal naughty children, but to hunt down those who are unfortunate enough to face it.

However, its arrival caused a lot of trouble in the aforementioned first-person shooting games as players that are participating in the in-game event are having a rough time defeating it. Because of this, they are looking for solutions on how to kill the monster.

Where to Find the Krampus

In order to defeat the Krampus in both Vanguard and Warzone Pacific, players must find it first. According to Gamepur, the creature from the European folklore will appear in the Vanguard's objective-based modes Control or Domination.

Later in the matches in these said game modes, the announcer will notify them that the monster will appear and target the player, or players, that has a lowest overall score.

READ ALSO: 'CoD Vanguard' The Battle of Midway Guide: How to Clear this Campaign

It will also tell them that they need to perform at a higher rate in order for them to avoid being attacked by the Krampus.

The monster will also appear in Warzone Pacific's classic battle royale and Vanguard Royale game modes.

Once they are in one of those game modes, they will need to go one of the Christmas Fir Trees that are scattered across the map and will be marked with a green tac, indicating where they are in the area.

Once they secured the location, and nabbed the coal from its loot box, they will discover the monster, and hear its footsteps that are inching closer towards them, telling them that it will hunt them down.

Killing the Krampus

Whether they encounter it in Vanguard or Warzone Pacific, the Krampus will have 365 Health, which means players will have a hard time defeating this tanky character that roaming in the wild.

Because of this, they need to pick the weapons that can be used to take the monster down. According to Dexerto, light machine guns such as the DP27, the MG24, the Type 11, and the Bren gun can be the best choice to kill the Krampus.

Once they got the gun that can do the job, according to Charlie Intel, they will need to keep their distance, and fire their weapons at the monster to drain its health. While attacking it, they need to move around in an open space, while staying away from the corners.

As they are firing their light machine guns towards the Krampus, they will also watch its movements, including instances that he is preparing to attack them. Once it attacks, they will take cover behind the trees in the area.

They will continue doing this until they either survive the Krampus' attack, which according to Dot Esports, will last for three minutes long, or kill it completely.

If they did the former, it will disappear eventually in the area, but if they succeeded in doing the latter, they will be rewarded with 2,000 XP, $10,000, and a box full of ammunitions.

READ ALSO: 'CoD Vanguard' Stalingrad Guide: How to Clear the First Half of this Campaign
Senator Chuck Schumer, who has been blocked by Republicans on voting rights legislation, gave the clearest indication yet that he will try to force a fundamental change in Senate rules if necessary to enact federal laws to counteract voting restrictions imposed by Republican-led legislatures across the country.

Schumer, the majority leader of the Senate and a New York Democrat, said in a letter to colleagues that the Senate would take up stalled voting rights legislation as soon as the first week of January and that if Republicans continued to filibuster, the Senate would "consider changes to any rules that prevent us from debating and reaching final conclusion on important legislation," as per the New York Times.

Schumer plans on vote for Build Back Better

However, it is unclear how far Democrats will be willing or able to go to get past the 60-vote threshold for most bills and enact voting rights legislation with a simple majority. While some previously hesitant senators have since approved changes to voting procedures, at least two Democratic senators - West Virginia's Joe Manchin III and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema - have refused.

Concerned about state laws enacted in the aftermath of the 2020 election that appears to make it more difficult for people, especially minorities, to vote, Democrats have tried several times this year to establish federal standards for early and mail-in voting, as well as to limit partisan gerrymandering. However, a Republican roadblock has constantly blocked them.

To this time, Democrats have been silent on the subject. Schumer's new posture, on the other hand, indicates that he is willing to go the next step and launch a rules debate on the Senate floor, despite the fact that he lacks the 50 Democratic votes required to override Republican opposition.

After months of debate with the White House and after the House had passed the measure, Manchin informed Fox News on Sunday that he would not support it. Schumer also stated that the Senate will take up voting rights legislation as early as the first week of the new year. Voting rights legislation has languished in the Senate because it lacks the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster, and Manchin and Sinema are opposed to modifying the Senate rule.

Read Also: Kamala Harris Claims She, Joe Biden Barely Talks About 2024 Election; Vice President Barely Beats "Let's Go, Brandon" in Google Searches

Manchin turns his back on Democrats

"Our job For The People necessitates that we stay at the table to pass the Build Back Better Act," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a message to Democrats on Sunday evening, as per The Independent.

If Manchin has chosen to abandon discussions, White House press secretary Jen Psaki issued a furious 712-word written statement accusing him of making a "sudden and unexplained shift in his views" and called his statements a "breach of his pledges" to Biden and Democratic legislators.

Biden did not react to reporters' shouted questions about Manchin as he returned to the White House from Delaware on Monday. Manchin's Sunday remarks drew further criticism Monday from Democratic colleagues, particularly from leftist senators.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) accused Manchin of "betraying working families across the country" and said his revelation was "an outrageous breach of the president's trust" during a morning television interview, the Washington Post reported. She was alluding to a White House assertion that Manchin had pledged to continue discussions with Biden after presenting a written outline of a package he might support only days before.

Senators will discuss voting rights legislation as early as the first week after they return to Washington in January, according to Schumer's letter. If Republicans continue to obstruct such legislation, Schumer said the chamber will consider changing its rules.

Related Article: Joe Biden Faces Perils Over COVID-19 Cases Rise, Social Spending; President Vows Competence, Order

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The teleconference between US President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin has effectively made the discussions of the Ukraine conflict bilateral. But the European Union has been left out in how the border is a concern of the bloc.

Russian has won through discussion over the White House in forwarding its concerns with its differences with Kiev. The bloc has a stake bypassed by Biden when the EU reached a consensus.

US-Russia bilateral discussions

One expert said that NATO and the EU non-entities in the discussions to decide on a measure to lessen the chance of conflict at the southern border of Russian. Biden and Putin have become the arbiters, reported the Express UK.

Repeated warnings of the danger that Russian troops will spill over the Ukraine border and report that an inevitable assault is coming. The teleconference between Washington and Moscow had not diffused the crisis altogether. The western alliance is emboldening Kiev that is making things worse.

According to Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European P agreed that the west is provoking Russia, and it is not doing any good, cited the Swift Headline.

Professor Sakwa was asked how it could have gotten this bad on the border. The reason is that diplomacy is the cause for such escalation.

He added that Moscow is not happy that its borders have not been secured like Yeltsin, and now the threats of western encroachment have galvanized Putin to move. But the west wants its way, but Russia won't budge.

It's a bad call for NATO or the European Union to support whether political or military to Kiev, which is hostile to the Kremlin. There is a need for a resolution to happen and diffuse tension in the Ukraine conflict.

Read Also: Brussels Plays Best Card Against Putin, Threatens To Shut Down Nord Stream 2 in Event of Ukraine Invasion

Last Friday, several paper proposals suggested keeping the US and Russian assets from violating airspace and territory. He said that NATO is too irresponsible in holding drills close to Russia.

This week, these proposals to the US and allies had parts for a veto of NATO membership against Ukraine, but it was taken out.

European Union has been left out

The professor said that Moscow would decide to launch an attack if there was fighting at that border. He added that it would only happen if Kiev agreed to pre-empt Putin, so actual combat would happen if the west supported Ukraine started the fight.

Professor Sakwa stated that Moscow wanted to be like it during the cold war with secure borders, noted Magmint.

Invasion comes with a price like sanctions from embargoes, no gas that will skyrocket energy prices worldwide. When that happens, the Chinese will not miss a beat, especially to get back at the US and its allies.

Furthermore, he said the west is not thinking that the US-NATO alliance to realize the time bomb it is, not adjusting properly to the challenges of the Kremlin. The west is playing a dangerous game with Russia and even China, hurting them.

Even if the US acts as a big brother to Kiev leader, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky wants quick entry to NATO.

The European Union is out due to the Kremlin moves, and the Ukraine conflict is still tense, with the White House making a two-deal that Brussel is rankling over.

Related Article: EU Got Blindsided by Biden-Putin Negotiations Over Ukraine After Assurances They Would Be in the Loop

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Even if the monthly Child Tax Credits are no longer available, there are still methods for families to get a stimulus payment in some manner. Some states are providing families with a sort of universal basic income (UBI), while others are trying to provide people with a state-wide stimulus check to assist pay expenditures.

Here are five stimulus check programs that can help make ends meet, however they may not apply to everyone. In the absence of a federal stimulus package, several states and localities are delivering their own form of payment to people.

Stimulus checks in 2022

California and Minnesota are just two of several states that provide programs like the Golden State Stimulus II, which provides California citizens with over $568 million in additional assistance to get them through the year.

Over half a million citizens in Maine will receive $285 checks, while qualified Maryland residents will receive anything from $300 to $500. Some governments, such as Florida, are providing profession-related payments, such as $1000 to first responders and Pre-K through 12 teachers.

And it doesn't end there: localities such as Seattle are providing stimulus payments to low-income residents, such as the Seattle Relief Fund, which provides a one-time stimulus check up to $3000. Instead of one-time stimulus checks, several states have gone a step further by providing qualified residents with regularly scheduled universal basic income payments.

Low-income people in Columbia, Chicago, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Santa Ana are receiving UBI payments. For a year, 100 low-income fathers in Columbia will get $500 monthly payments, as per The Sun.

Those earning less than $35,000 in Chicago will receive $500 monthly payments, while those earning less than $15,000 in Los Angeles would receive $1000 monthly payments. The state's financial literacy initiative would provide $350 monthly payments to teens in New Orleans. Newark, New Jersey, is extending its "guaranteed income pilot program," which provides compensation for two years to 400 residents.

Read Also: Some States Will Receive Stimulus Payments After Holidays With Thousands To Get $500; Check if Yours Is Included!

Will Child Tax Credit be extended?

According to CNET, the final advance payment of the US Child Tax Credit for 2021 was released on Friday. The American Rescue Plan, which was enacted in March 2021, doubled the Child Tax Credit amount and established advance monthly payments.

When the House of Representatives confirmed the Build Back Better measure in November, it included an extension of the Child Tax Credit increase and advance payments. However, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin stated on Sunday that he will not support the Build Back Better measure.

Many families are concerned about the future of the Child Tax Credit since his vote is essential for the package to succeed. If you have direct deposit with the IRS, your final Child Tax Credit payment for 2021 should have arrived on Friday. A stimulus check should arrive in the mail by the end of December if everything else fails.

The payment you received in December is the final one you'll get, but additional money should arrive in 2022 when you submit your 2021 taxes. Many people are asking what will happen now that the final advance payment, which went out to more than 36 million households in December, has arrived, and whether Congress will continue the payments.

Congress is currently discussing whether and for how long to prolong the advance Child Tax Credit payments in 2022. The $1.75 trillion Build Back Better proposal, which would prolong the Child Tax Credit increase and advance payments for another year, was enacted by House Democrats on Nov. 19.

HuffPost reported earlier Monday on some of Manchin's private reservations about the credit. Manchin expressed fear to Democratic colleagues in recent months that parents might spend the funds on drugs, according to the news website, which cited people familiar with the senator's remarks.

In a MetroNews interview, Manchin didn't address such issues, although he did say that the program should be better targeted. He suggested that Congress "make sure the money accompanies a child" so that it may be given to someone else to raise the child if the parents are unable to do so.

Related Article: Stimulus Checks Worth $575 Million Coming in January 2022; Who's Eligible for New Payments Next Year?

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According to a Russian official, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday and discussed the situation in the "Asia-Pacific" area.

The Indo-Pacific area is frequently referred to as Asia-Pacific by Russia. The two leaders also addressed the practical issues of executing the agreements reached during Putin's December 6 visit to India.

Modi, Putin talk over the phone

The talks took place two weeks after Putin visited Delhi for the 21st India-Russia annual summit, which saw 28 pacts signed to strengthen bilateral ties. The two leaders discussed problems of international stability and security, especially the situation in the Asia-Pacific area, according to a readout from Moscow. The Indo-Pacific area is frequently referred to as Asia-Pacific by Russia, as per The Week.

The two leaders followed up on some of the problems raised during Putin's recent visit to India, according to a statement from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). India has expressed a desire to strengthen ties with Russia's Far East.

According to the statement, the leaders agreed to keep in frequent contact on all areas of the India-Russia Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership, as well as to continue to work to expand bilateral cooperation and multilateral consultation and coordination.

Putin "warmly praised" Modi for the hospitality shown to the Russian group during their visit to New Delhi on December 6, according to the Russian readout. Modi and Putin exchanged views on "problems of international peace and security, especially the situation in the Asia-Pacific area."

According to a Russian media report published last week, a trilateral meeting of Russia's, India's, and China's top leaders might be held soon. The staging of the RIC (Russia-India-China) meeting was mentioned during a recent video conference between President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, according to Russian news agency TASS, citing a Kremlin official.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told reporters that he was not in a position to comment on the issue when questioned about it.

At the 21st India-Russia summit, the two countries pledged to increase cooperation in combating significant concerns such as terrorism, extremism, and the Afghan crisis. Defense and military, civil nuclear energy, space, transport and connectivity, energy, trade, and health were among the major areas of focus for enhancing collaboration.

At the 21st India-Russia summit, the two countries pledged to further up cooperation in the face of key problems including terrorism, extremism, and the Afghan crisis. Defense and military, civil nuclear energy, space, transportation and connectivity, energy, trade, and health were among the major areas of focus for enhancing collaboration.

Per BBC, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, released proposed security accords that Moscow wants America to sign last week. They would provide a legally enforceable assurance that Nato will cease military operations in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.

According to the recommendations, Nato deployments to nations that joined the alliance after 1997 would be prohibited. Russia is also asking that Nato's expansion into former Soviet territories be halted.

Read Also: Boris Johnson's Leadership in Jeopardy as Lord Frost's Resignation Sparks Fresh Tory Concern Amid UK's COVID-19 Omicron Battle

US warns against travel to Ukraine

Meanwhile, the State Department warned Americans against traveling to Ukraine on Monday, citing "increased risks" from Russia as a result of the latter's military buildup near the country's border. The State Department stated in a new travel recommendation that Americans should be "aware of allegations that Russia is contemplating serious military action against Ukraine" and that security in the nation might deteriorate.

The State Department publishes travel advisories on a regular basis, and one was already in effect for Ukraine due to COVID-19. This was unique because of the direct warning about Russian forces massing at the Ukraine border, which has heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington in recent days.

Russia has reportedly relocated 70,000 troops and is preparing for an invasion early next year, according to US intelligence officials. Moscow rejects any preparations to assault, as it did when it annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, but claims it needs assurances that Ukraine would never join NATO, ABC News reported.

Related Article: Joe Biden-Vladimir Putin Meeting: US Warns Strong Nuclear, Economic Sanctions If Russia Invades Ukraine

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Former United States President Donald Trump clashes with Attorney General Letitia James over investigations into the Republican's businesses where the former is askinag a federal court to halt the probes, citing political bias.

The situation comes amid a sweeping investigation that is looking into the Trump Organization and its assets. It also seeks to enjoin James' involvement in any civil or criminal actions against the former President or his company.

Trump's Lawsuit

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Northern New York on Monday and accuses the attorney general of misconduct. It claims that she has taken advantage of her investigatory powers to target her political adversaries and advance her career.

"Since taking office, she has tirelessly bombarded him, his family, and his business, Trump Organization LLC, with unwarranted subpoenas in a bitter crusade to 'take on' the President," said the suit, CNN reported.

The lawsuit details James' alleged "personal disdain" for Trump and claims she made various statements targeting the Republican businessman in recent years. The list includes the attorney general's support of "die-in" protests against the former president, her boast that her office sued his administration 76 times, and Twitter posts during her 2018 campaign.

The Republican businessman's lawyers wrote in the lawsuit that James' mission was "guided solely" by political animus and her desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen. The documents alleged that the attorney general views Trump as a political opponent.

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The attorney general previously issued a statement where she said that the Trump Organization has repeatedly sought to delay investigations into its business dealing. She added that the former president now has filed the lawsuit as an attempt to attack the probes, the Associated Press reported.

Despite the lawsuit, former President Trump has a tall order to prove that James did, in fact, violate his rights. Legal experts predicted that the attorney general would win the legal battle even if a judge concluded that her comments against Trump were inappropriate.

Legal Battles

The situation is similar to one that Trump has previously faced when he argued that he became the victim of political harassment when he tried to stop a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. The legal battle was over a subpoena for the Republican businessman's tax returns.

Although the investigation was significantly delayed due to Trump's lawsuit and claims, the Supreme Court ultimately rejected the former president's argument in February. The Republican businessman also addressed James directly in a statement on Monday. He called her investigation a "continuation of the political witch hunt that has gone on against me."

James' office assisted with Vance's criminal investigation, which was centered on whether or not Trump fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to trick bank companies into giving him loans. Recently, the probe entered a critical phase as prosecutors questioned one of the Republican businessman's accountants before a grand jury.

By the end of the year, Vance is expected to leave office, but if prosecutors in his office conclude that Trump really did commit a crime, they could choose to indict him. But that decision would most likely be made by Vance's successor, Alvin Bragg, the New York Times reported.

Related Article: Social Security, SNAP Benefits Become Easier To Access With Biden's New Executive Order

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British MP Tobias Ellwood assailed UK inaction for military assistance to Kiev with the chance of a Russian steamroller hitting the Ukrainian border forces. The Tory MP called the decision of Downing Street as a clear sign that the Kremlin can do what it pleases.

NATO is wary of the presence of Russian forces on the border and Moscow's posturing over issues that have caused endless worries for the bloc.

Britain not to send troops to Ukraine

MP Ellwood, who is the head of the House of Commons Defense Committee, posted online the decision of Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who decided to hold back British Troops to support the Ukrainian forces, according to the Express UK.

Wallace spoke to The Spectator and stated that Kiev is not a NATO member and that precludes sending assets to challenge an alleged invasion. Joe Biden gave the same advice that the non-NATO country must fend for itself, even if the Kremlin orders to initiate hostilities.

He made it clear that London would assist in the defense of Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO. Diplomacy is the last method to stop the Russian leader from doing anything untoward.

The British MP stated that if the UK follows the policy of UK inaction, which will be more of an impetus for the Russian head of state to ignore Great Britain. He said we had given the green light to proceed anytime on the Ukraine border on social media.

Read Also: EU Got Blindsided by Biden-Putin Negotiations Over Ukraine After Assurances They Would Be in the Loop

Comment by Defense Secretary about nonintervention followed a prior statement issued with the Oleksii Yuriyovych Reznikov, the Ukrainian defense minister. Both defense officials were worried over the build-up of Russian troops at the southern Russian border.

US spooks have come up with 70,000 Russian troops on the edge of the border. The UK gave its commitment to Kiev that it would stand by the Ukraine people and support them.

Russia's demands

Earlier, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave Vladimir Putin a fair warning not to dare invade the country. During a one-on-one phone call, he said that UK support is steadfast for Ukraine; he did not mince words of harsh response, cited Sky News.

They discussed the border shared with Ukraine that should not be violated, adding that attempts to sow confusion and destabilization there would be an error.

Transcript of the conversation between the heads of state read that Putin insists on a treaty that NATO does not advance eastward to have peace. This is one of the red lines not to cross.

Another demand to diffuse the tension is to lessen the presence of arms in Ukraine, especially close by states to the Russian border. More demand to follow as the Russian leader wants to prevent conflict if it can be done, but provocation the US significantly should be halted.

US President Joe Biden wants Moscow to dial down border responses, but the US is actively undermining de-escalation with provocative acts close to the Russian borders.

British MP Ellwood says the UK inaction is incorrect as there was expressed support for Ukraine against Russian aggression. The US said no military support for a non-NATO member as demanded by Putin.

Related Article: US, Russia Configures Cold War Tension; European Union Locked Out From Preventing Ukraine Conflict

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Pro-Beijing "patriots" won a majority in Hong Kong elections in what critics have described as undemocratic after authorities imprisoned pro-democracy activists and excluded opposition, resulting in a record-low turnout.

The turnout for the recent elections was recorded at 30.2%, which is roughly half of the previous poll in 2016. Pro-democracy activists saw the low turnout to be a rebuke of Beijing's imposition of broad national security law and sweeping electoral changes. Many considered the actions as Beijing's attempts to have Hong Kong under its authoritarian control.

Hong Kong Elections

Pro-Beijing and pro-establishment candidates won nearly all of the available seats, with some cheering at the vote-counting center, chanting "guaranteed win." During a news conference on Monday, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam acknowledged the low turnout but did not provide details on why it resulted in that way.

"But 1.35 million coming out to vote - it cannot be said that it was not an election that did not get a lot of support from citizens," said Lam. Many political analysts said that the historically low turnout was a measure of an election's legitimacy due to the lack of pro-democracy candidates Reuters reported.

The voter turnout is the lowest that has been seen in Hong Kong since the British handed the territory over to China in 1997. Under the laws in the region, the number of directly elected lawmakers has gone down to 20 from 35. This is despite the legislature being expanded from 70 to 90 seats.

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A primarily pro-Beijing committee vetted all candidates before the elections before they could even be nominated. In a statement, Lam said that a high turnout based on "poor politics" would not have been something good to have.

An elected pro-Beijing legislative council candidate, Starry Lee, who is from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong party, said that the 30% turnout was within expectations. He said that the region was trying a new system that aimed to call patriots administrating Hong Kong, Fox News reported.

Results of the Voting

A senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, Tim Summers, said that the winners of the elections, who are nearly all pro-establishment candidates, focused more on livelihood issues and social issues. On Monday, he said that the elected officials are dominating the legislature.

The issues that the officials are focusing on range from housing and poverty to the environment, Summers said. He added that the people of Hong Kong will most likely still see a decent amount of contestation and debate regarding the other livelihood issues that the region is struggling with.

The vice-president of Beijing-based think tank the China Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, Lau Siu-Kai, echoed Summers' sentiments. He added that the new legislature will mainly prioritize "practical matters" such as the city's housing shortage, climbing real-estate prices, and income equality.

"They saw a much greater radicalization of Hong Kong politics over the last five or six years. They wanted to cut that off after the massive social movements, often violent movements of 2019," said Summers, CNBC reported.



Related Article: Leaked Email Shows Fauci, NIH Chief Sabotaged Great Barrington Declaration in Favor of Herd Immunity and Ending Lockdowns

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A jury in charge of the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, began deliberations on Monday and will consider whether or not the suspect was involved in the convicted sexual predator's crimes.

During the case, the suspect refused to testify in her own defense, citing that there was not enough evidence. It was shortly before 5:00 p.m. when the jury received the case after two prosecutors and defense delivered their closing arguments in the trial over a six-hour period.

Ghislaine Maxwell Deliberation

On that day, the jury deliberated for less than an hour and was later allowed to go home after authorities told them to go back on Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. The 59-year-old suspect appeared to be composed throughout the first three weeks of the trial while interacting with her lawyers and family members.

However, Maxwell suddenly turned emotional when Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey rebutted defense arguments and asserted that the British socialite believed her four trial accusers were simply beneath her. Comey said that in the suspect's eyes, they were "trash", as Maxwell could be seen shaking her head slightly, the Associated Press reported.

Prosecutor Alison Moe said that Maxwell and Epstein were a wealthy couple who took advantage of minors by preying on children who came from struggling families. She said that the way the suspects were targeting their victims showed how they were prioritizing vulnerable young girls.

Read Also: Fauci Says Omicron Surge Over the Holidays Possible; New York Mayor Bill de Blasio Rejects Calls for Lockdown

She argued that it was no mere coincidence that Jane, Kate, Annie, and Carolyn, who were victims of the couple, were all from single-mother households. But in Maxwell's defense, her representatives attacked the motivations of the women who testified against the defendant. They argued that their client's association with Epstein was not criminal.

In a statement, attorney Laura Menninger told the jury of the trial that Maxwell was being tried for being close to the deceased financier when he was alive. The defendant also pleaded not guilty to six federal counts, including sex trafficking of minors, enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, and three related counts of conspiracy, CNN reported.

Defense Witness

The only time that Maxwell spoke during her trial was when she stood up after conferring with her lawyer Bobbi Sternheim. The defendant said that there was no need for her to testify because, as she told the judge, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Earlier in the day, Eva Andersson-Dubin, a physician and former model, who is married to Glenn Dubin, a hedge fund billionaire, took the stand as a defense witness. She was the first witness called in the trial who is believed to have occupied the same social strata as Epstein and Maxwell.

However, despite Andersson-Dubin's proximity to the couple, she testified on Friday that her three children used to call Epstein "Uncle F," which was short for "Jeff." The witness's testimony offered a little contribution to the trial, Vanity Fair reported.



Related Article: Donald Trump Could Be Charged With a Crime For Allowing Jan. 6 Capitol Riot To Happen; Rep. Kinzinger Says No One Is Above The Law

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The Democratic party is having growing concerns over its ability to maintain a majority over Republicans as dozens of lawmakers have announced that they would not be seeking reelections in 2022.

The situation is expected to make a harsh environment for Democrats who want to keep their narrow majority in both chambers of Congress. Several members of the House are seeking other offices, such as in the Senate or their own state's governorships.

Losing Majority Power

However, several other lawmakers blame what they call decennial redistricting and an increasingly toxic environment in Congress as the main reasons why Democrats are exiting. Now, Republicans only need to take five seats to win the House majority in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections.

There have so far been 23 House Democrats that expressed their hesitancy of running for reelection, while 13 Republicans did the same. Only six senators across the Capitol have said that they specifically did not want to run for reelection, including Richard Burr, Pat Toomey, Rob Portman, Richard Shelby, Roy Blunt, and Patrick Leahy, The Hill reported.

The lawmakers that are not seeking reelection include Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a leading voice of House Democrats' moderate wing. The official announced her stance on Monday, which marks another major disadvantage for her party.

Read Also: Fauci Says Omicron Surge Over the Holidays Possible; New York Mayor Bill de Blasio Rejects Calls for Lockdown

Murphy is a Democrat from Florida who was able to flip a GOP-held battleground seat in 2016 while also assisting with her party's playbook for its takeover of the house in 2018. She said that she was leaving the Capitol so that she could have more time with her family, citing her two school-aged children.

"It's been a real honor for me to serve in Congress, but it does come at a personal sacrifice. My time away has been hard on my family and my kids and on me," said Murphy during an interview, Politico reported.

Congressional Democrats

Murphy is the 21st Democrat to announce that she will not be seeking reelection in the 2022 midterm elections. Her announcement came a day after Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia dealt a major blow to United States President Biden and Congressional Democrats for her "no" vote on the nearly $2 trillion Build Back Better Act.

The National Republican Congressional Committee responded to Murphy's announcement by arguing that the Democratic party was going to have a nightmare before Christmas between the collapse of the massive social spending plan and the number of Democratic lawmakers not seeking reelections.

While Murphy's district boundaries are bound to change during a once-in-a-decade redistricting process, she said that her chances of winning or losing her seat did not play a factor in her decision to not run for reelection.

In her statement, Murphy highlighted that her journey started as a fleeing citizen from a violent communist regime to being rescued by the U.S. Navy. She later found work in national security at the Pentagon. Now, she serves as the first Vietnamese-American congresswoman, a journey that she said could only ever happen here in America, the land of the free, Fox News reported.



Related Article: Leaked Email Shows Fauci, NIH Chief Sabotaged Great Barrington Declaration in Favor of Herd Immunity and Ending Lockdowns

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Donald Trump shuts down a small group of Republicans that booed him at the "History Tour" in Dallas this past weekend.

A clip from the tour shows Trump and former Fox News Bill O'Reilly talking about the COVID-19 vaccine. O'Reilly tells the crowd that he and Trump have already been vaccinated.

Donald Trump already received his booster shot

The host also asked Trump if he had already received his booster shot, and the ex-POTUS said yes. Immediately after, a small group of people from the left side of the stage booed the ex-president.

After all, several Republicans are still refusing to get vaccinated for a wide array of reasons. Trump is a Republican, but he chose to get vaccinated.

According to reports, Trump also continues to send mixed messages regarding COVID-19.

Donald Trump urges his supporters to get vaccinated

O'Reilly later tweeted a lengthier version of the video wherein Trump warned his supporters about dismissing the vaccines.

"Look, we did something that was historic. We saved tens of millions of lives worldwide. We, together, all of us, not me," Trump said via CNN.

Read Also: Farah Griffin Says Donald Trump Has Total Disregard For Other People's Well Being After Meeting Joe Biden While COVID-19 Positive

Trump went on to say Republicans and Americans as a whole should take credit for the vaccines what they've done is something historic. He added that the United States would've seen more death tolls and hospitalizations if not for the vaccines.

Thousands of people had different reactions to Trump on Twitter, saying that he already got his booster shot.

"Trump is basically the only Trumpist with the [expletive] to say he got vaccinated, he got boosted, and that vaccines are good," on Twitter user said via the Huffington Post.

Another joked that Republicans weren't booing Trump at the "History Tour" in Dallas. Instead, they were saying "boos... ter."

Donald Trump booed in Alabama

This isn't the first time that Trump was booed for encouraging his supporters to get vaccinated.

In August, he attended a rally in Alabama. He said that while he understands that his supporters have the right to make decisions for their bodies, he's still recommending that they get vaccinated.

Weeks later, Trump claimed that he might not opt for a third jab. He said that he's not against booster shots, but he also thinks that it's for him. Trump said that he needs to look into booster shots first before making a decision.

Donald Trump sends mixed messages about COVID-19, vaccines

According to Business Insider, Trump's mixed messages regarding the vaccine have not helped in encouraging more Republicans to get the jab.

For instance, he previously admitted that the vaccines are safe, but he also stressed that Americans shouldn't be required to get them.

In March, Trump encouraged Americans to get inoculated, but this was already after he left the White House. But Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, reportedly got vaccinated in January right before leaving the Oval Office.

Trump didn't also participate in the video that other American politicians released encouraging the public to get the jab. As such, his revelation that he had already received his booster shot might have come as a surprise to his supporters.

Related Article: Donald Trump Accuses Joe Biden of Breaking the Economy, Making It Impossible for Parents To Buy Christmas Gifts at Lower Prices

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Millions of truckers and citizens have signed the petition demanding clemency for a truck driver who was sentenced to 110 years in prison after the 18-wheeler he was driving lost its brakes, causing him to crash and kill four people on a Colorado interstate.

There are now more than 4.4 million signatures on the petition that is calling for Governor Jared Polis to reduce the suspect's sentence. Various social media users have contacted truckers to boycott Colorado in protest of the alleged injustice and mistaken sentencing.

Request for Clemency

The suspect, identified as 26-year-old Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, was a former truck driver who was the driver of the vehicle when it crashed. Authorities held the suspect in Denver on Monday and despite the massive online support that he received, only eight people attended the demonstration.

"Our goal is to bring local and national awareness so that we CAN find someone who will support Rogel in creating change in this sentencing. Let's join together and RISE UP in support for Rogel! Let Governor Polis know the TIME doesn't fit the 'Crime'. If we do not stand up for him, who will?" said protest organizers, Dailymail reported.

A spokesperson for the Change.org website said that the petition has become the fastest-growing one in the whole year. Attorney Bryan Kuhn said that there did not seem to be an intention to injure or kill people in Rogel's case. He argued that the suspect was getting a sentence that could rival a mass murderer.

Read Also: Fauci Says Omicron Surge Over the Holidays Possible; New York Mayor Bill de Blasio Rejects Calls for Lockdown

Earlier this month, authorities convicted the 26-year-old suspect of vehicular homicide and other charges. Rogel testified that, when the incident occurred, he tried to slam on the brakes of the 18-wheeler to prevent the vehicle from crashing on Apr. 25, 2019; but according to him, he failed.

Prosecutors focused on the suspect's decision not to take any runaway truck ramps while the massive vehicle went about 85 miles per hour on Interstate 70 west of Denver. The crash resulted in a chain reaction that wrecked gas tanks that later burst into flames, consuming several vehicles and melting a portion of the highway, Fox News reported.

Horrifying Accident

People immediately criticized the decision of the case to hand out a lengthy sentence to Rogel, including the judge who was preceding his trial. Allegedly, the judge said that if he had the discretion, he would not be given that long of a sentence.

The company that the suspect was driving for identified in local news reports as Castellano 03 Trucking LLC in Houston did not respond to requests for comments regarding the case.

In a statement, a popular website about cars, Jalopnik, said that the sentencing of an employee to a lifetime-and-a-half behind bars due to equipment failure was wrong. A lawyer for the suspect, James Colgan, said that he has been in the system for more than three decades and has never seen anything like what happened to Rogel.

"I think the chances are pretty good that the governor is going to look at that favorably. This is truly, truly, truly something that is out of the ordinary," said Colgan, the New York Times reported.



Related Article: Deliberations Begin For Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell as Suspect Refuses To Testify, Citing 'Unproven' Case

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Illinois just reached another all-time high with its reported active cases of COVID-19.

Over 10,000 new cases were reported in the state in the past seven days, causing more concern for residents and government officials. And in the past day alone, 12,328 new cases were reported, which is the most number in a single day this year.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, the average number of daily COVID cases has increased by 390 percent since Oct. 24.

Illinois and the other states in America are dealing with a surge caused by the newest variant, Omicron.

Omicron is the dominant variant in the United States

According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Omicron has become the most dominant strain in the United States. And in the next three weeks, more active cases will be recorded.

Last week, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director at the Centers for Disease Control, and Dr. Robert Citronberg, the executive medical director for infectious diseases and prevention at Advocate Aurora Health, agreed with Dr. Fauci's predictions.

"Delta is still the predominant strain circulating in our area and throughout the country, though Omicron is really catching up pretty quickly. Just even a couple of weeks ago, we didn't know about any omicron... and is probably the next few weeks, it will become the dominant strain in our country," Citronberg said via NBC 5 Chicago.

Read Also: Illinois COVID-19 Surge Much Worse Than Last Summer; New Active Cases Surpass 20,000

University of Illinois postpones in-person classes

To help prevent the further spread of Omicron in Illinois, two University of Illinois campuses already announced that their spring term would take place remotely. All campuses will also require students to submit a negative COVID-19 test before entering the school.

Even though the remote learning scheme will only take place between one and two weeks on the two campuses, this is the university's way of preventing the spread of Omicron.

According to the Chicago Tribune, in-person classes will begin on Jan. 24, and face masks will be required at all times.

Breakthrough COVID-19 cases could result in super immunity

A new study revealed that people that get sick while double-vaccinated from COVID-19 may get "super immunity."

The study examined the blood of 26 individuals that had the so-called breakthrough COVID-19 infections after receiving double vaccinations.

According to The Independent, it's not uncommon for people who are already double vaccinated to test still positive for COVID-19, but their symptoms are usually less severe.

Researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University found that blood samples of those recovered from mild covid cases have better immune systems to combat the virus.

Fikadu Tafesse, an assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the university, said that vaccines are effective against severe covid cases. And those who are vaccinated and then experience a breakthrough infection could have super-immunity.

Marcel Curlin, an associate professor of medicine at the School of Medicine, said that the new study results show how important getting vaccinated is.

Curlin also said that the study suggests that the long-term outcome will tap off the severity of the worldwide epidemic.

Related Article: Illinois Rep. Jonathan Carroll Admits Legislation He Filed Targeting Unvaccinated Residents Is Divisive, Says He Won't Pursue It Anymore

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North Korea recently announced an extended mourning period to commemorate Kim Jong-un's father's 10th death anniversary, Kim Jong-il.

According to reports, North Koreans have been mourning the death of the former leader for ten days throughout the first nine years since his passing. But this year, the country decided to add another day because it is Jong-il's 10th death anniversary.

North Koreans in mourning

The mourning period, which started on Dec. 17, bans North Koreans from engaging in any form of leisurely activity like shopping or even dining at restaurants.

They cannot also laugh for 11 straight days, and they are not allowed to drink alcohol.

Individuals that will be found guilty of breaking the rules can be arrested. And those that were arrested during the previous years of mourning were reportedly treated like criminals.

Birthday celebrations, funerals banned in North Korea

On Dec. 17, grocery shopping was not allowed either. And whoever was born on the same day as Jong-il's death and those born during the 11-day mourning period cannot celebrate their special day.

If a person dies during the mourning period, surviving relatives are also banned from crying aloud. And the body of the deceased must immediately be laid to rest, according to NDTV.

Read Also: Kim Jong-un Ignores Joe Biden's Offer To Restart Negotiations; Pyongyang Would Rather Talk To Seoul To Promote Peace

A source, whose name was redacted due to safety reasons, said North Korean officials tasked police officers to crack down on those violating the rules.

"It's a month-long special duty for the police. I heard that law enforcement officials cannot sleep at all," the source said via Newsweek.

In Pyongyang, citizens took part in a brief moment of silence and bowed their heads as sirens blared across the city to remember the late leader.

Kim Jong-un, North Korean officials remember Kim Jong-il

Jong-un was also present at the ceremony, and several officials joined him to pay their respects for Jong-il.

Senior North Korean official Chloe Ryong Hae dubbed Jong-il the "parent of our people." The late leader was also praised for building up the potentials for the country's military and economic plights.

Pyongyang resident Won Jong Rim also praised Jong-il for doing everything that he could to give North Koreans the paradise they are living in now, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.

Kim Jong-il died from heart attack

According to reports, Jong-il died in 2011 following a heart attack while traveling by train outside Pyongyang.

However, there are also claims that the North Korean leader died due to exhaustion because of mental and physical overwork.

Three years before his death, Jong-il suffered a stroke. But after he recovered, he never stopped working.

Just days before his death, Jong-un's dad made an on-the-spot inspection of installations in South Hamgyong Province. On Dec. 13, he visited the Pyongyang Capital Guard Unit. And on Dec. 15, he visited the Kwangbok Region Grand Mart.

Prior to his death, Jong-il designated Jong-un to be his successor. At the time, the current leader of North Korea was just 29 years old, and there were fears that he may not be up to the job, according to Brookings.

Related Article: North Korea Slams 'Squid Game,' Says Netflix Drama's Storyline Reflects An 'Unequal Society Where The Strong Exploit The Weak'

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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told the press that the new coronavirus variant called Omicron would not cause lockdowns as before.

The discovery of the Omicron variant has raised the alarm, and the administration is known for implementing lockdowns at the drop of a pin.

Many conservatives worry over another possible lockdown as the DEMS have shutdown states they dominate, causing businesses to fail and more mask and vaccine mandates that are contested.

Biden's speech won't be about lockdown

Psaki has said in a press conference that a forthcoming speech by the president will not include the discussion of lockdowns. People fear the spread of the COVID-19 new strain will be followed despite White House assurances, reported the Epoch Times.

Biden will be warning those who have not been vaccinated against the virus, Psaki stated, adding no announcement of lockdowns to curb the spread of new variants. Several have died from exposure to the virus but not as many as expected.

The World Health Organization remarked that the Omicron is a variant of concern, and it can spread faster. According to officials in South Africa and New York City's chief health commissioner, there are fewer cases than expected.

Compared to the first wild-type SARS-CoV-2 pathogen that infected more in one go, but US officials seem to have overblown it, cited Pix 11. A lockdown is feared from the new coronavirus variant, but there are doubts with President Biden's Press Secretary statement.

Read Also: Coronavirus Facts Not Acceptable If It Fails to Match Anyone's Worldview, Dr. Fauci Says

Sources say that the White House has no validation to declare a lockdown because the Lower House is the only entity to declare a lockdown.

One way for Biden to call for such drastic measures is if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) move to recommend these stay-at-home orders. If that is the case, some municipalities can decide on the CDC recommendation.

The president will declare that the federal government will make more vaccines available and COVID-19 testing all over the country, Psaki said during the press conference.

Last week the White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients remarked the federal government does not want to cause problems by disruptions. Also, Mr. Biden will take about it further, noted the Daily Mail.

Zients stated that the unvaccinated people were in danger of being exposed to sickness and death and that families wouldn't be safe. Lastly, he said that the hospital might not have enough room. Many Biden officials resort to fear tactics that only reinforce some not to get vaccinated.

Various states to enforce own health protocols

Fear of the Omicron is causing businesses, schools, and institutions to consider closing for a while or push coronavirus protocols.

The New Year's Eve party planned by organizers in Los Angeles in the Grand Park says that there will be no live audiences. It will be streamed online like a year ago.

Rhode Island enforced a masking mandate last Monday for spaces indoors with a capacity of 250 or more. These structures would be retail stores and churches include.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says the Omicron has 'overwhelming' cases but is less than the spring 2020 peak.

The new coronavirus variant has cases but not as many as expected. However, Psaki said the president would implement no lockdown and more safety measures instead, but many are unsure.

Related Article: Leaked Email Shows Fauci, NIH Chief Sabotaged Great Barrington Declaration in Favor of Herd Immunity and Ending Lockdowns

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From pigeon people to photos of sneaky people, Google Maps has a lot of unexpected sightings.

In addition to these sightings, a Reddit user just discovered one of the best photobomber so far---which is a B-2 Spirit flying stealth bomber.

Google Maps Stealth Bomber

Despite the fact that the B-2 Spirit can reach speeds of 1,010 kilometers per hour or 628 mph, a photograph of the Bomber was captured on Google Maps as it hurtled over a rural section of Missouri, per Tech Radar.

Reddit user Hippowned discovered the said stealth bomber through Google Maps, which can be accessed through this link.

As of writing, the Reddit post has about 98,000 votes, including 95 percent upvotes. Additionally, it has approximately 3,000 comments.

To give further details on the Google Maps discovery, the image is relatively fuzzy, and there are some red, green and blue details caused by the way satellites take photographs.

Google Maps and its software-based companion Google Earth get its photographs from several places. However, this satellite image was from Maxar Technologies.

Since it is one of the rarest photos captured, several people have given their thoughts and comments about the stealth bomber.

Redditor RandyGareth stated that the stealth bomber is "more like a photo bomber." Meanwhile, another user stated that "no one escapes Google."

Meanwhile, Reddit user JimboLodisc commented that it is one of the eeriest things in the air, which is also practically silent when it circles overhead.

"Plus, I heard there's a rigorous and costly post-flight inspection. Can't remember how much it was but every mile a stealth aircraft fly is $$," JimboLodisc furthered on their comment.

Read Also: Xiaomi 12 Specs, Design Leaked! Triple Rear Camera, Snapdragon 8Gen 1, and MORE

Stealth Bomber

According to How Stuff Works, the B-2 bomber, often known as the stealth bomber, was a huge project.

For background information, the U.S. military needed to replace the outdated B-52 bomber in the 1970s. Apart from the said replacement, they also needed a jet that can transport nuclear weapons around the world in a matter of hours from the United States. Moreover, the U.S. military also wanted it to be almost undetectable to enemy radar.

Concealing a massive plane may be a difficult task, but the Pentagon contractor Northrop Grumman, which obtained the bomber contract, spent billions of dollars and nearly a decade creating the top-secret project.

A result is a breakthrough machine with a 172-foot-wide flying wing that radar scanners mistake for an insect.

Furthermore, a regular plane has two flying wings and three rear stabilizers attached to the tail, but the stealth bomber only has one big wing which has a similarity to what a boomerang looks like.

Northrop Grumman added that it holds the title for the world's longest flying combat mission.

Amusingly, it can fly for 6,000 nautical miles without refueling and 10,000 nautical miles on a single refueling. This only means that it can reach any location on the planet in a few hours.

This stealth bomber also appears in several well-known movies such as "Independence Day," "Armageddon," "Iron Man 2," "Cloverfield," "Airplanes," "Rampage" and, most recently, "Captain Marvel."



Related Article: Google COVID-19 Vaccine Rule: Leaked Memo Warns Termination for Unvaccinated Employees
On December 17, the IRS officially sent out the final advance payment for the Child Tax Credit. Now, lawmakers are locked on a heated debate whether or not to extend the program for January 2022. Fortunately, there are other programs that could credit a few hundred dollars to eligible Americans.

For reference, the Child Tax Credit is a program that allocates a budget of $3,600 per child under six and $3,000 per child ages six to 17. The payments serve as immediate financial relief on the parent's childcare expenses.

Half of the budget was sent out as advanced payments starting this July and ending this December. This program definitely helped millions of eligible families with their expenses, and recipients got used to reliable payments dropping in their accounts every 15th of the month.

But now that the last of the payment is already sent out, a lot are getting worried about what happens next. It is important to keep in mind that the other half of the payment, amounting to $1,800 and $1,500, will still be given in lump sum after families submit their 2021 tax returns.

How to Get $3600 Child Tax Credit for December Baby

Cnet warned that families need to meet the income eligibility requirements to claim the other half of the Child Tax Credit. Changes like an increase in the adjusted gross income can affect the amount receivable from the program. However, the principle could also be applied to household changes.

Any family who will have a baby or who had a baby this December, or will adopt one before the end of the year, will automatically be eligible for the child tax credit. Note that the payment also includes any backpay for July through December, crediting the recipient with the full $3,600 amount. However, to claim the money, they have to complete their 2021 tax returns next year, together with the other eligible recipients.

Read Also: COVID-19 Vaccine vs. Omicron: Spread Rate of Omicron Variant, Vaccine Resistance Revealed in Studies

Fourth Stimulus Check Update: $2000 Online Petition Nearing Completion

Aside from the Child Tax Credit, others might also be interested in a fourth stimulus check payment.

Although anything official has yet to be approved by lawmakers, a lot of Americans are desperately petitioning for the approval of a fourth stimulus check. One notable proposal is the online petition by Stephanie Bonin, which was posted on Change.org.

Bonin emphasized that the "country is still deeply struggling" because of the pandemic. She noted that since the pandemic shows no signs of stopping, Americans need recurring and reliable payments to get by the crisis.

Many supported her sentiment and signed up on her petition. At the time of writing, the online petition has reached 2,986,113 signatures out of its 3 million goal. A lot feel hopeful about its approval. However, lawmakers have yet to acknowledge its existence.

For now, supporters have to wait and see on its development. Perhaps some changes might occur once the petition finally reaches its goal. However, it is hard to determine whether this is enough to convince lawmakers to finally give out the fourth stimulus check.



Related Article: Fourth Stimulus Check: $6300 Stimulus Money for Students, Up to $1400 Plus Up Payment
Over the last few months, the Samsung S22 series has been widely talked about with various rumors and leaks.

In addition to the said leaks, numerous report stated that the Samsung S22 colors are expected to have several options including beige and dark red.

Samsung S22 Colors

GSM Arena reported that the Samsung S22 color variations for all three smartphones have been unveiled ahead of the actual announcement.

In addition to this, well-known tipster @SnoopyTech has shared some of the Samsung S22 color variants that people must look forward to. The said color options available for both Samsung S22 and S22 plus 5G variant is expected to include pink gold, green, black and white. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G will have color options of dark red, black and white.

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

Apart from Snoopy Tech, Galaxy Club also added that the Samsung S22 and S22 plus is set to be available in beige, grey, light blue and rose gold, per Sam Mobile.

Amusingly, the Samsung S22 plus is speculated to have a violet option.

However, it is worth noting that there is a possibility that not all the color variants will be readily accessible for everyone. For instance, the beige, grey, light blue and violet color options may be available in a limited number of markets.

On the other hand, the South Korean company may release other color versions of the Samsung S22 devices. Some Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22 Plus, and Galaxy S22 Ultra color variations may only be available through Samsung's website.

Read Also: Google Maps Accidentally Captures Stealth Bomber in Missouri: It's a 'Photo Bomber'!

Samsung S22: Release Date

For those who are curious to know about the Samsung S22 release date, the arrival of the next-generation Galaxy S smartphones has yet to be announced, although it is expected to be released in January or February 2022, per Tech Advisor.

Furthermore, a year has passed since the Galaxy S21 line-up was introduced, and the Samsung S22 expected release date would be a standard time between updates.

Samsung S22: Specs

With regards to the Samsung S22 specs, the Galaxy S22 Ultra would offer a 6.8-inch LTPO Super AMOLED Infinity-O display with a variable refresh rate of 120Hz, per Indian Express.

The standard model, on the other hand, would equip a 6.1-inch screen.

Depending on the market location, the phones will be powered by Qualcomm's newest flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or AMD's Exynos 2200 gaming chipsets.

With regards to the camera, the rear quad camera arrangement on the Samsung S22 Ultra includes a 108-megapixel primary sensor, 12-megapixel ultra-wide sensor, and two 10-megapixel telephoto lenses, per another GSM Arena report.

Meanwhile, it is expected to have a 40-megapixel punch-hole front camera.

Samsung S22 Accessories

Samsung appears to be going all out this year, especially in terms of casings, per GSM Arena.

The said mobile cases expect to include clear covers, clear standing covers, frame covers, leather covers, protective standing covers, silicone covers (with/without strap), smart clear view covers, smart led view covers, and gel cases will be available for both Galaxy S22 and S22 plus.

Meanwhile, the Samsung S22 Ultra or S22 Note users get to experience practically the whole assortment except for the frame cover variant.

Apart from the numerous phone cases, Box UK unveiled that S-Pen replacements for the largest of the S22 group, and rumors speculate that it will be available in four colors such as green, dark red, white and black--which further confirms the color options rumored about the Samsung device.

Relate Article: Samsung Galaxy S22 Leaks Hint Dark Red Color and More, Up to 512 GB Storage, Price; But There's a Big Problem
Recently, an Elon Musk doppelganger from China surprised the internet community and quickly went viral. After seeing his clone, the Tesla CEO himself couldn't help but be surprised.

In his tweet, Musk said that "maybe I'm partly Chinese."

Elon Musk Tweets: 'Maybe I am Partly Chinese'

While he is the richest man in the world, Musk is known for being active on social media, specifically Twitter.

On his account that has more than 67 million followers, Musk's tweets are mainly composed of several contents such as updates about SpaceX, Tesla, his love for cryptocurrencies, memes and even about himself.

In relation to this, one of his latest tweets stated that "for those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year."

Despite the Tesla CEO's clarification about paying his taxes, it appears that Twitter user @imoriginalankit is more concerned about Musk's clone. To give further details, the said user replied on Musk's tweet of a photo collage showing the SpaceX founder together with his doppelganger.

Surprising the internet, the South-African-born business mogul directly replied to the said photo collage tweet stating that "maybe I'm partly Chinese."

Maybe Im partly Chinese!  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2021

Upon replying to the said photo collage, several people made comments about his statement.

Twitter user @justinsuntron stated that the Chinese Elon Musk could be the entrepreneur mogul's brother. While another Twitter user suggested that the billionaire should have a Chinese name.

Apart from these comments, several Twitter users said that Musk looks Chinese and some mistakenly thought that he is Asian.

Read Also: Samsung S22 Colors Revealed in New S-Pen Leak! Release Date, Specs, Accessories, and MORE

Elon Musk Asian Clones

For background information, a video of a Chinese man, who looks just like Elon, has gone popular on a public Facebook page, as previously reported.

Elon Musk's doppelganger video was initially released on TikTok and since then, it has received a huge amount of attention. As of this writing, the video has received more than 300 comments and almost 2,000 shares on Facebook.

In relation to the suggested Chinese names, several Facebook users had fun with it and said that the Chinese musk should be named "Yi Long Musk," "Yilon Must," and "Elon Ma."

Aside from the Chinese clone, it seems that the Philippines also has its version of the Tesla CEO.

According to Coconuts Manila, early this year, the discovery of a Filipino man who looks like the SpaceX boss stunned some Twitter users.

Bong Villanueva's TikTok video, which shows him wandering in the rows of plants at a Palawan resort and urging his fans to swim with him, was first uploaded by Twitter user @thysz.

The caption on the mentioned Twitter post reads, "Elon Musk enjoys El Nido."

Thyz also wrote a follow-up message thanking the Musk clone for choosing the Philippines.

Villanueva, who had never heard of Tesla head, was also traced down by Coconuts Manila. The 46-year-old cosmetics artist and entrepreneur from Puerto Princesa claimed he was "grateful" to be compared to Musk.

Other Elon Musk Clones

Apart from the Asian versions of Elon Musk, a WWI-era clone also went viral in the past.

According to the New York Post, Musk has debunked several interesting conspiracy theories that claimed his success was due to his ability to time travel.

"Full disclosure, I'm actually a 3000-year-old vampire. It's such a trial assuming all these false identities over the centuries!" the business mogul joked on Twitter.

Another Musk double was also seen on the Reddit site.

"Elon Musk has a lot of money, he even cloned himself to play in the NFL," Redditor TheGreatCanadian13 stated.

Related Article: SpaceX Starlink Satellite Launch: Elon Musk Promises Internet Coverage Even in Navajo Nation!
Shinhan Bank's AI Concierge machine / Courtesy of Shinhan Bank



By Lee Min-hyung



Shinhan Bank will showcase its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered banking machine in Las Vegas early next year, becoming the first Korean commercial bank to showcase its IT hardware at the world's largest electronics fair.



The lender plans to promote its AI Concierge device, which was co-developed with MINDs Lab, a Korean company specializing in artificial intelligence. Shinhan hopes to showcase its state-of-the-art financial technology amid the rise of digital banking here and abroad.



Shinhan is on track to introduce AI software into its services to enable customers to carry out multiple tasks previously done by human beings, such as issuing bank certificates, when visiting the lender's digital desks. The lender also plans to increase the number of what it calls "AI bank clerks" down the road. A total of 200 AI bank clerks will work at its digital desks nationwide by the end of January of next year. The AI bank clerk is equipped with voice and image recognition technologies, according to the lender.



This year will mark the first time that a Korean bank showcases its IT device at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The tech fair is the world's most influential IT show, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. It moved online for this year's event in January, due to the global spread of the coronavirus. But the organizing committee of the fair decided to hold the event offline in 2022 for the first time in two years.



Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung also attended the online event this year. For CES 2020, KB Financial Group Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo and Hana Financial Group Chairman Kim Jung-tai visited the U.S. city to seek tech partnerships with global clients and find new business opportunities in the emerging digital finance sector.



"We are going to keep refining our technological expertise in AI and introducing a wider range of financial services, so customers can carry out financial transactions with more ease at our digital desks," a spokesperson at the lender said.



Cho was also scheduled to visit Las Vegas next year, but cancelled the business trip amid growing fears over the spread of the Omicron variant. Woori Financial Group also planned to send a group of officials to the tech fair, but scrapped that plan as well due to virus fears. KB, Hana and Woori, will also all only attend the online CES next year.



"The boundary between IT and finance has been blurring rapidly since the outbreak of the pandemic, with more people preferring to make online transactions, so it has become a necessity for banks to seek fresh revenue areas in the area of technology, not in the conventional banking sector," a financial industry source said.



CES is considered to be one of the most important events for business leaders to hold face-to-face meetings with new partners, and the chiefs of major financial holding firms also understand the importance of the event, he said.



"But the resurgence of the pandemic has blocked most of them from doing so next year," the source said.




Ai Weiwei's "Life Vest Snake" (2019) on view at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art's exhibition, "Ai Weiwei: Defend the Future" / Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio, Lisson Gallery and neugerriemschneider, Berlin



By Park Han-sol





Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei / Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio

A 22.5-meter-long serpent floats up by the ceiling of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, ready to slither away at the slightest provocation. As viewers travel down the hall, they find it almost impossible to take their eyes off the creature hovering overhead with its peculiar blue and red scales.



Its scales, they soon realize, are made up of 140 life vests, both small and large. But whose, exactly?



When refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom are of Syrian, Afghan or Somali origins, arrive on the Greek Island of Lesbos  one of the busiest crossing points for migration into Europe  the first thing they do is to take off the very jacket that protected their lives while crossing the ocean and throw it into a massive pile.



Ai Weiwei, the Beijing-born artist and activist known for his unapologetically anti-establishment commentary, saw the hundreds of life vests left on the shore as the shed skin of a snake. Since the mid-2010s, he began following such traces left behind by the refugees, many of whose fates are unknown, through thought-provoking installations and documentaries.



In addition to "Life Vest Snake," they include "The Navigation Route of the Sea-Watch 3 Migrant Rescue Vessel, June 2019" recreated with LEGO bricks, as well as a tower of blue-and-white porcelain vases depicting sceneries of destruction, war and migration instead of traditional patterns of peaceful nature.





"Porcelain Pillar with Refugee Motif" (2017) / Korea Times photo by Park Han-sol



This "historical testimony" of unresolved human tragedies and ongoing suffering also reflects the artist's own status as a person drifting from one place to another  Portugal, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, among others  due to being persecuted by the Chinese government.



"If art doesn't change in the face of such a huge spiritual and social crisis for humankind, it's basically like a zombie, and there's no need for it to exist," Ai told the press in a recent email interview to mark the opening of his first exhibition at the Korean national museum, "Ai Weiwei: Defend the Future." The show hosts more than 120 pieces of his sculptural and LEGO installations, photos and documentaries.



Ai's political outspokenness and activism to promote greater freedom of speech in regard to universal human suffering  which earned him the title of China's most "controversial and dangerous" artist  are influenced by his father, Ai Qing, a famed modern poet.



In 1957, the frenzy of the Anti-Rightist Campaign in China, which soon launched a purge of intellectuals, branded the poet a "rightist." His whole family was soon exiled first to Heilongjiang in northeast China, then to Xinjiang. Ai grew up watching his father scrub toilets, while being forbidden to read or write freely.



Although the family was eventually able to return to Beijing at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, his childhood experience forever shaped the subversive nature of his artwork, as well as his openly critical remarks against the Chinese government.



"I think the so-called art scene in China [has been] a defective community since the day it was formed," he said. "Seeking the truth through artistic language and other means is the most important way to protect art, but the Chinese art scene has changed its stance on that in order to survive. There is in fact no future in that."



He highlighted freedom of speech as an "important attribute of life" that must be protected at all costs.



Adhering to his life philosophy, Ai has refused to shy away from documenting the uncomfortable truth of social injustice, as well as the authorities often complicit in human rights violations.



Thus, the sources of inspiration for a wide range of pieces displayed at the exhibition come from both the artist's attempts to question established authority and his inevitably troubled relationship with the Chinese government.





"Study of Perspective, 1995-2011" / Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and neugerriemschneider, Berlin



One series of such works on view is the photography series that launched the artist to global stardom, "Study of Perspective." In the images that mimic classic tourist photos, he extends his left arm to give the middle finger to historically renowned monuments and landmarks, including the fraught Tiananmen Square.



The series recently made headlines, as Hong Kong's M+ Museum, which opened its doors to the public last month as the city's premiere institution dedicated to contemporary visual culture, announced the removal of Ai's images from its website and gallery, citing the National Security Law.



Another notable piece is the bright golden wallpaper that covers the entirety of one gallery space, titled, "The Animal that Looks Like a Llama but is Really an Alpaca." An elaborate pattern is created via a combination of surveillance cameras, handcuffs and birds symbolizing Twitter.





"The Animal that Looks Like a Llama but is Really an Alpaca" (2015) / Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio, Lisson Gallery and neugerriemschneider, Berlin



Although it could be read as a general commentary on the rise of the surveillance state, the work also hints at numerous personal experiences of the artist.



In the aftermath of the catastrophic Sichuan earthquake in 2008 in China, where it was suspected that poorly constructed schools resulted in the deaths of more than 5,000 children, he launched a "Citizen's Investigation" to interview the victim's families and public officials. He also recorded the names and number of dead children on his blog  information that the state refused to provide citing "state secrets" or "a matter of social stability."



When his blog was forcibly shut down, he soon found Twitter to be the platform to host his thoughts. "Twitter is the people's tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources," he said in "Weiwei-isms," a book presenting a selection of his quotes.



But the closure of his blog did not mean the end of governmental repression for him. A year later, when Ai was visiting Chengdu to testify at the trial of the social activist Tan Zuoren, who was involved in researching earthquake fatalities, two police officers appeared at his hotel door at 5 a.m. and subsequently assaulted him. A mirror selfie blown up as large as wallpaper, "Illumination," taken at this very moment, is also displayed at the exhibition.





"Illumination" (2009) / Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio, Lisson Gallery and neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Students at an elementary school in the southwestern city of Gwangju receive coronavirus tests, Tuesday, following infections at the school. Yonhap





By Lee Hyo-jin







The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is likely to replace the Delta variant to become the dominant strain in Korea, health officials said Tuesday.







Health authorities here are on high alert, as the country saw its biggest spike in the number of Omicron cases on Monday, following the identification of the first cases in the country on Dec. 1. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 49 new Omicron infections, pushing up the total caseload to 227.







The KDCA detected cluster infections at a kindergarten in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, and a state-run facility Gwangju. Twenty cases have been detected at the kindergarten and nine at the state-run facility.







The spread of the Omicron variant is roughly three times faster than that of the Delta variant, according to the agency.







It took just 20 days for the Omicron variant to spread among 227 people. In contrast, it took 60 days for the Delta variant to reach the same figure after the first cases were reported on April 22.







In addition, the Omicron variant is causing breakthrough infections in people who received booster shots, raising concerns that three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine may not offer sufficient protection against the new strain.










A major South Korean umbrella labor organization has notified the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Trade Union Confederation that it does not support former South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha's candidacy for the position of ILO chief, sources said Tuesday.







The statement from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which was sent Monday, is expected to deal a blow to Kang's bid to become ILO director-general about three months before the election set for March 25.







The KCTU has claimed Kang is not fit to head the ILO, saying she lacks experience and qualities.







Last week, Kang visited the KCTU headquarters in central Seoul to ask for support for her bid, saying she has the leadership and competency that ILO needs from her experience at the United Nations. The KCTU refused to give its support, claiming a person with experience in the field of labor would be more qualified. (Yonhap)


Then Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha speaks in a meeting with correspondents at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., in this Nov. 10, 2020 photo. Yonhap



By Bahk Eun-ji



One of the nation's two largest umbrella labor unions has voiced its disapproval of a former Korean foreign minister who is running for the top post of the International Labor Organization (ILO).



The stance of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) is expected to sway the prospects of former Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha in the election slated for March 25 of next year.



The KCTU said, Tuesday, it recently sent a letter to Catelene Passchier, the chair of the Workers' Group in the ILO, and Sharan Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), saying it does not support Kang's bid for the ILO director-general post.



It said an ILO chief should guarantee the rights and safety of workers, but Kang does not qualify for the position because she lacks experience in that regard.



"The ILO director-general needs the capability to lead its action in order to realize the universal labor guarantee for all workers, recognition of workplace health and safety as fundamental rights and universal social protection, and a candidate must have wide experience in the world of work and labor relations," the KCTU said in a letter.



The KCTU also mentioned a meeting between Kang and the KCTU President Yang Kyeung-soo, on Dec. 15, where Kang asked for the group's support for her bid.



In the meeting, Yang said the ILO head's role includes setting international labor standards and promoting their implementation, and as such the person needs to be more than a moderator between workers and employers, but a facilitator with a concrete vision and direction.



"In order to set the right direction, the director-general post should be taken by a person who has wide experience in the area and a good understanding of labor relations," Yang told Kang at the time, according to the group.



During the meeting, Kang said her bid is an opportunity for Korea. "I think I have the leadership and capabilities that the ILO needs because I have been working on human rights at the United Nations for a long time," she was quoted as saying by the group.



Kang had worked at international organizations before being named foreign minister in 2017, but does not have any relevant experience in labor-related issues.



The KCTU said apart from Kang's own qualifications, it cannot support her because she was a foreign minister under President Moon Jae-in and the group has been opposing the Moon administration's labor policies.



"As Kang is a candidate supported by the Moon government, rather than an individual's bid, we cannot separate Kang from the Moon administration's labor-related policies," KCTU spokesman Han Sang-jin told The Korea Times.



"We are not giving generous marks to the government's labor policies. Therefore, we gave notice of our position that we could not support her bid," Han said.



It remains to be seen how the KCTU letter will affect the vote for the ILO head. The ILO Workers' Group and the ITUC apparently wield significant influence over the vote.



The election is carried out with 56 votes, including 28 directors from a government group, 14 directors from a workers' group, and 14 directors from an employers' group.



Besides Kang, four other candidates from South Africa, Togo, France and Australia are also in the running for the position.



If Kang is elected, she will become Asia's first female ILO director-general. The government has organized an election support taskforce under the Ministry of Employment and Labor to provide support.




Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC) President Kim Kyung-wook, third from left, poses with Muhammad Rudi, second from left, head of the Batam Indonesia Free Zone Authority, during a signing ceremony between the IIAC and the authority in Batam, Indonesia, Tuesday. Courtesy of Incheon International Airport Corp.



By Kang Seung-woo



The Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC) announced, Tuesday, that it reached a 600 billion won ($503 million) deal to develop and operate an airport in Indonesia, according to the nation's main airport operator.



Under the deal, the IIAC will renovate the existing passenger terminal and build a second terminal at Hang Nadim International Airport on Batam Island and run the airport for 25 years until 2047. It is Korea's first overseas airport development and operation deal, it said. Construction is scheduled to begin in June 2022.



Earlier this year, the IIAC, which formed a consortium with Indonesia's state-run airport operator PT Angkasa Pura 1 (AP1) and local construction firm PT Wijaya Karya Tbk (WIKA), was picked as the final bidder for the project after defeating Zurich Airport of Switzerland, EGIS of France and GMR of India.



The signing ceremony with the Batam Indonesia Free Zone Authority was held on the island, attended by IIAC President Kim Kyung-wook, Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto and other dignitaries.



Batam is the third-most-visited tourist destination in the Southeast Asian country after Bali and Jakarta. In 2019, some 2 million tourists, including 80,000 Koreans, traveled there.



Batam's airport, which has the longest runway in Indonesia, handled 4.54 million passengers and 44,000 tons of cargo in 2019. The IIAC plans to expand the airport to accommodate 25 million passengers by 2040.



According to the IIAC, the consortium is expected to reap 6.4 trillion won during 25 years of operations, with its dividend revenues for the IIAC expected to reach 485.1 billion won.



The project is also expected to pave the way for other relevant local companies to make roads into the Indonesian market.



The IIAC plans to equip the Indonesian airport with its airport common user system (AirCUS), an essential airport operating system used for airline check-in and boarding procedures. In 2011, the IIAC and a Korean small firm jointly developed the system, which has since been used at Incheon International Airport.



The IIAC seeks to help Korean IT companies, duty free shops and travel agencies to do business at the airport, while making efforts to help Korean constructors participate in expanding the terminal and building a second one.



On the back of this project, the IIAC has set its sights on emerging markets such as Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe.



"We plan to expand our overseas business to Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia together through partnerships with Korean companies to contribute to revitalizing the national economy via export of Korea's airport operation platform," the IIAC president said.



The IIAC has signed $227 million worth of deals to operate overseas airports and offer consulting services in 15 countries, it said.






Korea on Tuesday voiced concerns as the operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant filed for approval for its plan to release radioactive water into the sea.







The Seoul government held an emergency vice-ministerial meeting after Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) submitted an application for the planned release to Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA).







"We express serious concerns as Japan is proceeding with its plan to unilaterally release the contaminated water into the sea despite our repeated expression of concerns and persistent calls for the withdrawal of plan," the government said.







The government will convey such a stance to Japan through diplomatic channels, it added.







The government criticized Japan for not providing sufficient explanation over the planned dumping.







"We delivered a letter to Japan yesterday requesting detailed explanations to key questions on the issue," the government said.







Korea's nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, has also sent a letter to Japan's NRA calling for an independent and transparent review, it added.







In April, Japan announced a plan to start discharging the radioactive water into the sea in 2023 in what is expected to be a decadeslong process, as all storage tanks at the Fukushima plant are expected to be full as early as fall of 2022.







Last month, TEPCO said its planned release of radioactive water into the sea would have a very minimal impact on the marine environment and humans.







An estimated 1.25 million tons of such water are in temporary storage at the Fukushima nuclear plant on the east coast of Japan, which was devastated by a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in March 2011. (Yonhap)
















Taiwan said Tuesday it has lodged a protest with South Korea after a conference invitation to one of the island's ministers was rescinded over "cross-Strait issues".





Taiwan's Digital Minister Audrey Tang / Yonhap
A police officer is seen at an office of Seongnam Development Corp. in Gyeonggi Province after Kim Moon-ki, head of the development division of the company, was found dead in the office, Tuesday. Yonhap



An official at a public development company was found dead Tuesday in an apparent suicide amid a probe into a corruption-ridden development project, which political foes allege involves ruling party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung.



Police in Seongnam, south of Seoul, said they discovered the body of Kim Moon-ki, head of the development division at Seongnam Development Corp., in an office of the company in the city at around 8:30 p.m.



Police were searching for Kim after his family reported him missing at 8:13 p.m. Authorities are investigating the exact cause of death.



Kim has been probed over his possible involvement in a massive corruption scandal surrounding a public-private apartment development project in the city. It was launched in 2015 when Lee, presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Party, served as Seongnam mayor.



Kim allegedly played a role in removing from the project contract a clause that would allow the city government to recoup excessive development profits from private investors.



In October, he was questioned as a witness by police and prosecution over whether the deletion was ordered by Yoo Dong-gyu, former acting president of the company. Yoo was arrested and indicted on charges of bribery and breach of trust. Opposition parties claim Yoo was a close aide to the presidential candidate.



Kim's death came after Yoo Han-gi, head of the Pocheon Urban Corp., who was also connected to the scandal, died by suicide on Dec. 10.



Prosecutors had requested an arrest warrant for the former senior manager at Seongnam Development Corp. on charges of receiving bribes from private-sector partners, who took huge profits from the project. (Yonhap)
Shinsegae Casa's store at Shinsegae Department Store in Seoul / Korea Times file



By Kim Jae-heun



Shinsegae Department Store is faced with deciding whether to sell its furniture brand, Shinsegae Casa (formerly known as Casamia) as the business has been racing a number of setbacks.



The company does not own a production facility for the furniture brand, which reduces manufacturing costs, but the subsidiary is failing to create a presence in the market.



However, Shinsegae Casa has appointed Choi Moon-suk as its new CEO, someone who has ample experience in corporate acquisitions, and industry sources believe he will be able to grow the business before selling it at some point in the near future.



Others believe Shinsegae will keep the furniture brand as it will put the retailer in line with No. 2 player Hyundai Livart, as well as Lotte Shopping, which are both waiting for a chance to acquire the country's No. 1 furniture brand, Hanssem. Lotte Group spent 299.5 billion won on Hanssem as a strategic investor when local private equity fund IMM PE acquired the furniture giant in September. It is highly likely that IMM PE will sell off Hanssem to Lotte, when it believes its corporate value has reached the targeted level.



"If Shinsegae Department Store gives up its furniture brand, it will lose competitiveness in the mid- to low-priced furniture market. Shinsegae Casa can be a money-losing business for the retailer now, but it still has the potential for growth," an industry source said.



For Shinsegae, owning a furniture subsidiary is imperative for its department store business. Industry sources say even if Shinsegae Casa's profitability is sluggish at the moment, the retailer needs to foster it over the long term.



As of the third quarter, Shinsegae Casa's cumulative sales reached 158 billion won, up 32.9 percent year-on-year, while its operating losses narrowed by 3 billion won to 4.7 billion won. However, it is looking hard for the furniture brand to achieve a turnaround this year.



Nonetheless, Shinsegae has outperformed Hanssem's 9.4 percent and Hyundai Livart's 0.9 percent sales growth through the first three quarters  one reason why it cannot abandon the money-losing furniture business.



Shinsegae Casa's online shopping mall, "Guud.com," led overall sales, achieving 71 percent growth year-on-year. Shinsegae added lifestyle products to its furniture brand's lineup and its online furniture brand "Onion" saw sales grow 160 percent so far for this year compared to 2020. Its new CEO was behind the results.



The industry sources still believe Choi will seek to sell Shinsegae Casa when it turns a profit. He has already shown his capability in corporate acquisitions by spearheading Shinsegae's purchase of G-Market, an open market operated by Ebay Korea, this year.






Cars are parked at a used car dealership in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, in this July 2015 file photo. Korea Times file



By Baek Byung-yeul



With the prolonged supply of automotive semiconductors, demand is increasing for purchasing used cars or using car sharing platforms instead of buying new ones.



According to the latest automotive industry report, global carmakers are still unable to completely escape the aftermath of car component shortage. As a result, some popular models take more than a year of waiting after customers make their orders.



A dealer for Kia in Seoul said its newly launched EV6 "would probably take around a year for customers to actually receive due to the component shortage."



The used car market here is widely seen as full of scams using invisible transactions, such as not providing full information on vehicles and selling for deceitful prices, but many customers are saying that a paradigm shift is occurring in the market with the development of online trading platforms.



In 2020, the number of used cars newly registered reached about 3.95 million, which was an all-time high. The figure for this year is expected to remain similar to last year's, as 3.28 million used cars were registered as of October.



The industry view is that the country's used car market was worth around 39 trillion won ($32.7 billion) in 2020, and the figure is expected to grow to 50 trillion won by 2025 with an average annual growth rate of 5 percent.



As people are increasingly purchasing used cars, consumers are increasingly calling for allowing domestic automakers to enter the certified used car market. This is because consumers expect domestic car brands could increase transparency in the used car market, which has been deeply distrusted due to existing opaque transactions.



A survey conducted by the Citizens United for Consumer Sovereignty in April, 79.9 percent among 1,000 adults aged between 20 and 60 said the used car market is currently opaque and underdeveloped, so there needs to be improved. Carmakers here are discussing entering the used car market with used car dealers, but no clear conclusion has been reached at the moment.



Industry analysts said the used car market here was buoyed thanks to the advent of online used car trading platforms. They said transactions have become much easier due to those used car platform operators providing easy, transparent payment and refunds for used cars online.



"As non-face-to-face transactions have been preferred since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and demand for quality used cars is increasing, business-to-customer transactions are expected to increase in the future. So, online platforms like K Car, which are taking responsibility for quality, will benefit greatly," said Ahn Joo-won, an analyst at Yuanta Securities Korea.



Meanwhile, market tracker IHS Markit presumed that the reduced car production will recover slowly through 2022 as the semiconductor shortages remain a challenge.



"Overall, while manufacturing operations in most regions are expected to improve, capacity constraints within the semiconductor supply chain remain the single most influential feature of the forecast," said Mark Fulthorpe, executive director of light vehicle production forecasts at IHS Markit. "As the semiconductor tide recedes, will this expose further risks to the auto recovery? Threats elsewhere within the supply chain could become more apparent as chip supplies improve, notably logistics, worker-related issues and key raw materials shortages."


New Selander Bridge in Tanzania / Courtesy of GS E&C



By Baek Byung-yeul



GS E&C, one of Korea's leading builders, is increasing its presence in the global construction market with the successful completion of the New Selander Bridge in Tanzania.



The new bridge is located in Dar es Salaam, a key trading hub connecting the Indian Ocean and Central Africa. The project, ordered by the Tanzanian road authority, is the first bridge construction project GS E&C has undertaken in the East African country. The bridge will open on Dec. 27.



GS said that the bridge was completed on time without any delays in spite of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Gaining the trust of the Tanzanian government.



The project was divided into the construction of a 6.23-kilometer-long road and the bridge itself, which stretches 1.03 kilometers over the Msimbazi delta.



The New Selander Bridge was built to reduce traffic congestion and improve mobility in Dar es Salaam, the largest port city and economic hub of Tanzania, and consists of urban bypass roads and a bridge that connects the Masaki Peninsula and Central Business District, GS said.



The bridge was the largest construction project in Africa to be supported by Korea's Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF). The EDCF provided $107 million in funding aid for the bridge. The construction project also attracted attention as a major project by former Tanzanian President John Pombe Joseph Magufuli.



The EDCF is a Korean government-led fund established in 1987 to support the industrialization and economic growth of developing countries and promote economic exchanges between Korea and developing countries. The fund is operated and managed by the Export-Import Bank of Korea under government consignment.



"The project was EDCF's largest construction project in Africa and Tanzania's presidential pledge project. GS E&C successfully completed this construction project within the fixed contract period, which has increased our reliability," a GS E&C official said. "It will greatly help us have more business opportunities in Africa in the future."


Starry Lee, bottom center, chairwoman for the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, speaks at a press conference with party members in Hong Kong, Dec. 20. AFP-Yonhap



World powers on Monday condemned Hong's Kong tightly vetted legislature vote, saying rules imposed by Beijing that reduced directly elected seats and controlled who could stand had eroded democracy in the Chinese territory.



China has overseen a sweeping crackdown in Hong Kong in response to huge and often violent democracy protests two years ago.



It imposed a national security law in the former British colony that criminalized much dissent and introduced political rules that vet the loyalty of anyone standing for office.



The first public vote under this new order was held on Sunday for the city's legislature, with a historic low turnout recorded and the number of those directly elected slashed from half to 22 percent.



Figures showed just 30 percent of the electorate cast ballots, the lowest rate both of the period since the city's 1997 handover to China and the British colonial era.



Turnout at the last legislature polls in 2016 was 58 percent, while the 2019 district council elections, when pro-democracy figures won a landslide, saw a record 71 percent.



The foreign ministers of the G7 group of most developed nations expressed "grave concern over the erosion of democratic elements" in Hong Kong's electoral system after the poll.



The new vetting process "to severely restrict the choice of candidates on the ballot paper undermined Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy" under the principle of "One Country, Two Systems" agreed for the handover of the territory from the UK to China in 1997.



The foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and U.S. called on China "to restore confidence in Hong Kong's political institutions and end the unwarranted oppression of those who promote democratic values and the defense of rights and freedoms".



The European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement that the poll was "yet another step in the dismantling of the 'One Country Two Systems' principle," and called for a "high degree of autonomy as well as respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, democratic principles and the rule of law" in Hong Kong.





Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks during a press conference at the government headquarters in Hong Kong, Dec. 20. AFP-Yonhap



'Eliminated opposition'



In an earlier statement, Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand had rebuked the new system in even stronger language, saying "these changes eliminated any meaningful political opposition".



"We also remain gravely concerned at the wider chilling effect of the National Security Law and the growing restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, which are being felt across civil society," the five Western allies added.



China called on Hong Kongers to embrace the new rules that they say will restore stability and root out disruptive "anti-China" elements for good.



Hong Kong's chief executive Carrie Lam defended the new system and brushed off the low turnout.



"Hong Kong is now back on the right track," she told reporters.



"We cannot copy and paste the so-called democratic system or rules of the Western countries."



Zhao Lijian, China's foreign ministry spokesman, blamed the low turnout on the pandemic and "anti-China elements bent on destroying Hong Kong and the interference of external forces".



In March, a 1,500-strong committee stacked with Beijing loyalists will pick the city's next leader.



With her public approval ratings at around 36 percent, Lam has declined to say whether she will seek another term.





Election workers empty a ballot box to count votes at a polling station for legislative election for legislative election in Hong Kong, Dec. 19. AP-Yonhap


BUSINESS COORDINATOR Richmond, Virginia The Virginia Economic Development Partnership is seeking a Business Coordinator to provide professional services to the Business Investment team to successfully locate economic development projects in Virginia and expand existing businesses in the Commonwealth. For more than two decades, VEDP has served as Virginias statewide economic development authority. As a quasi-independent state authority governed by a board of directors that spans gubernatorial administrations, VEDP is a nonpartisan organization with stable leadership and nimble, creative, mission-focused operations. VEDP offers a unique opportunity to directly support the economic growth of the Commonwealth in a dynamic, collaborative, high-profile, and fast-paced professional environment. The Business Coordinator will provide administrative support and project assistance to the Business Investment division. The position will support the development and implementation of VEDPs comprehensive lead generation strategy. The successful applicant will support business managers with preparing for lead generation activities, developing target lists, managing Salesforce campaigns, data research and client outreach to set appointments. The position will support the team in developing promotional materials, travel logistics, and expense reports. The Business Coordinator will support the Business Investment team members in preparing for prospect visits and assist with preparing documentation and communications. The position will utilize Salesforce to manage lead generation campaigns, opportunity records, and client contact and follow-up. The successful applicant must have excellent written and verbal communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills. The Business Coordinator must be able to work well under pressure and within tight deadlines, effectively prioritize tasks, work collaboratively to accomplish goals, and make decisions based on logical analysis and sound judgment. Demonstrated proficiency in using multiple software packages required, with MSO in a Windows environment experience preferred. Contact management software experience desirable. The Business Coordinator must have a valid drivers license. An undergraduate degree in business, marketing, communications or related field or equivalent training and experience is preferred. It offers a comprehensive and competitive benefits package and an excellent working environment. Under Executive Directive #18, effective September 1, 2021, all employees must disclose their COVID-19 vaccination status to designated Human Resources personnel. If fully vaccinated, employees are required to submit vaccination documentation to designated Human Resources personnel. Those who are not fully vaccinated or have not disclosed their current vaccination status, must undergo weekly COVID-19 testing. All weekly testing results must be disclosed to designated Human Resources Personnel. All candidates must apply through our website: https://www.vedp.org/about-vedp. Candidates with disabilities are encouraged to apply. Salary minimum: $40,000. Application deadline: January 7, 2022. VEDP is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All applicants are considered for employment without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, veteran status, political affiliation, genetics, or against otherwise qualified individuals with disabilities. It is VEDPs intent that its employment and personnel policies and practices conform to all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations regarding non-discrimination and affirmative action. Applicants requiring more information or requiring assistance may contact VEDP Human Resources at 1-804-545-5634 or vedphr@VEDP.org. TDD 1-800-828-1120.

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Says will never recognise her role

China on Tuesday reacted angrily to the US move to appoint Indian-origin diplomat Uzra Zeya as Americas Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, saying it will never recognise her designation as it amounted to interference in its internal affairs.

While designating Zeya as Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that she has been tasked with promoting substantive dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama or his representatives in support of a negotiated agreement on Tibet.

Responding to questions on Zeyas appointment, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing here that Tibetan affairs are purely Chinas domestic affairs. They brook no foreign interference.

By designating a so-called special coordinator for Tibetan issues the US is interfering in Chinas domestic affairs. China firmly rejects this. We never recognise this designation, he said.

He asked the US to take concrete actions to abide by its commitment of recognising Tibet as part of China and not supporting Tibet independence and stop using Tibetan related issues to interfere in Chinas domestic affairs. China will continue to take all measures to firmly safeguard our sovereignty, security and development interests.

Responding to a follow-up question, he said, I would like to stress that since the peaceful liberation of Tibet 70 years ago Tibet has experienced social harmony, economic prosperity and religious and cultural development.

People there lead a happy life (and) there is no need for certain US individuals to worry and there is no room for their criticism. If the US politicians cant find anything better to do perhaps they should pay some attention to serious racial discrimination and human rights problems at home, he said.

The US should appoint Special Coordinator, not for Tibetan issues but to probe the genocide of American Indians, human rights affairs of the ethnic minorities and the botched COVID-19 response resulting in a heavy death toll, he said.

Zeya, who was once posted in New Delhi during her diplomatic career, had quit the foreign service in 2018 in protest against the policies of then-president Donald Trump.

She is also the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.

As the US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, Zeya will coordinate the US government policies, programmes and projects concerning Tibetan issues, consistent with the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, as amended by the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020.

Specifically, she will promote substantive dialogue, without preconditions, between the Government of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the Dalai Lama, his representatives, or democratically elected Tibetan leaders in support of a negotiated agreement on Tibet, according to the US Department of State.

Beijing views the 86-year-old Dalai Lama as a separatist.

Last month, China while responding to the Dalai Lamas remarks in Tokyo that he has no particular plans to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping but his wish to visit Tibet to meet old friends, another Chinese spokesman Wang Wenbin had said Beijing is open for dialogue with the Tibetan spiritual leader.

The Central Government of Chinas policy on contact and negotiations with the 14th Dalai Lama is consistent and clear, and the door for contact and negotiations remains open, he said.

I want to stress that the contact and negotiations are only about the personal future of the 14th Dalai Lama, not the so-called Tibetan issue, he said.

What the Dalai Lama should do is to truly give up the position of splitting the motherland, stop activities that will separate the country, and win the trust of the Central Government and the Chinese people with concrete actions, Wang said.
State

Legislators come out strongly against AFSPA

Correspondent/DIPR KOHIMA, DEC 20 (NPN) | Publish Date: 12/20/2021 1:27:45 PM IST

The all-party United Democratic Alliance (UDA) government on Monday vehemently opposed the imposition of the draconian lawAFSPA in the state, particularly against the backdrop of the Oting incident where 13 innocent civilians were massacred by the 21 Para special forces on December 4.

Initiating the discussions on AFSPA, during the one-day special session of the 13th Assembly here, deputy chief minister, minister in-charge of home, Y Patton said as per Section 3 of the Act, its provisions came into force in any area where the Act was extended after the area was declared Disturbed by the Central government or governor of that State if, in the opinion of either, the area was in such a disturbed or dangerous condition that use of armed forces in aid of the civil power was necessary.

He mentioned that the Centre had been declaring entire Nagaland as Disturbed Area by issuing notifications every six months and thereby keeping the provisions AFSPA operative in the State for the past many decades. The Centre issued the latest notification on June 30 this year and would be operational till December 29.

He said the provisions of AFSPA, by their nature, scope and intent, gave undue and excessive powers to security forces to take coercive actions like search, seizure, arrest of suspected persons and use of firearms, even to the extent of causing death. And for all the actions that may be taken by the security forces, there was a great deal of immunity provided to them, he added.

Patton claimed that the power and immunity granted to the security forces led to many instances of gross abuse of powers over the years, the most recent being the ghastly firing incident in Oting-Tiru village area.

Informing the members that the Centre consulted the State government before deciding on extending the notification for Disturbed Area every six months, Patton however clarified that the State government had consistently been opposing the notifications on the ground that the overall law and order in Nagaland has been good for many years now, while the situation was much better than many other States in overall crime and other similar indicators.

Further, all Naga political groups were in ceasefire with Government of India for many years now. In addition, the ongoing peace talks were proceeding in the right direction, giving hope for an early solution to the Naga Political Issue. However, Patton said the Centre had always been extending the notification declaring Nagaland as a Disturbed Area based on its own assessment.

The deputy chief minister remarked that the sentiments of the people were strongly against the continuance of AFSPA any more in the State, that it did not deserve to be designated as a Disturbed Area. Hence, he urged every Member of the House to impress upon the Central government to see the situation on ground, listen to the voice of people and withdraw AFSPA from the State.

Participating in the discussion, NPF legislator Dr Chumben Murry alleged that terrible acts of omission and commission had been committed under the Act, causing mistrust, fear and untold miseries on the people. He said it had served to alienate Nagas from rest of the Country, rather than bring them closer.

Even after 60 years of the draconian Act, he regretted that many Indian leaders and Indian Army did not realise or choose to ignore the fact that imposition of AFSPA had resulted in fostering anti-Indian feelings among the people of the State. He remarked that at a time when people were hopeful that solution was around the corner, the gruesome massacre in Oting created confusion in the minds of the people regarding the sincerity of the Centre on the Naga political issue.

Murry pointed out that the bid to hide the crime and misinform members of Parliament by Union home minister Amit Shah by giving a wrong statement further angered the people of Nagaland. It was an unforgiveable crime and would never be forgotten, he said, adding the armys ghastly act would definitely be written in the hall of infamous crimes and grievous violation of human rights. He therefore appealed to the House to adopt a motion to demand withdrawal of AFSPA.

NPF legislator Imkong L Imchen said the genocide on December 4 at Oting village was only one of thousands of similar such genocides committed by Indian security forces in the past 70 years, calling it a well and pre-planned incident. Alleging lapses even on the part of the Mon district administration and police, he demanded that these should be thoroughly probed by a competent authority, other than the Special Investigation Team (SIT), preferably a judicial probe headed by a retired judge of Supreme Court or a high court.

He condemned Shahs statement, terming it misleading and not based on the facts. He appealed to NLA to pass a resolution urging the Central government to repeal AFSPA.

Regarding Naga political issue, Imchen observed that it was almost 25 years since the ceasefire and peace talks began (in 1997) but, regretted that till date there was no sign of any progress despite countless rounds of talks. He insisted that Naga people deserved to know what was happening, adding that absolute secrecy and confidentiality might be good only up to a certain extent.

BJP member and minister Paiwang Konyak lamented that even after attainment of statehood on December 1, 1963, AFSPA continued to be enforced despite resistance by the Nagas and killing of innocent people by forces. He observed that public anger against AFSPA increased after the Oting-Tiru massacre, claiming that there were now demands for justice, repeal of AFSPA and punish those responsible for the tragic killings in Tiru and Mon even at the international level.

He claimed that Nagaland was peaceful except for extortions and illegal taxations here and there, with shops and business establishments opening everywhere. So, now was the appropriate moment to repeal AFSPA and remove the Disturbed Area tag to bring the people of Nagaland and North-eastern States closer to the nation, he emphasised.

Paiwang alleged that around 4:30 pm on December 4, 21 Para Special Force ambushed and killed six civilians and critically injured two others and, after almost five hours at around 9:30 pm, another clash took place after villagers came out looking for the boys who had left the coal mine on a Pickup Bolero for the village. In the second incident, he alleged that seven more civilians were killed after which the army fled towards Assam side.

Accompanied by Nagaland commissioner and director general of police, he said they reached Oting village and held meeting with village council members, pastor and church leaders, GBs, VGs and village elders on December 5 in which the government assured them that justice would be served, for which the SIT was constituted.

He said the State government paid an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh to each of next of the kin of deceased, while the Central government paid Rs 11 lakh each, and Rs 1 lakh each to those seriously injured and Rs 50,000 to those with minor injuries.

Referring to Eastern Nagaland Peoples Organisations demands for withdrawing AFSPA from Nagaland and awarding befitting punishment to those responsible for the tragic incident, Paiwang stressed that equally important was compensating the victims families by providing government jobs as committed by the Union home minister, insisting that it must be done at the earliest.

NPF member Y Vikheho Swu observed that many civil society organisations have lent their support to the campaign for withdrawal of AFSPA. In mainland India too, he claimed that organisations like Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) and Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) have championed the efforts to have the Act repealed.

According to him, the latest killings once again brought the notoriety of AFSPA into limelight and stressed using this opportunity to make a concerted effort to have the Act repealed. He pointed out that AFSPA had no regard for even international laws even though the international community had been trying to get the Indian government repeal it.

Taking part in the discussion, NPF legislator Dr Chotisuh Sazo compared AFSPA to the Rowlatt Act, 1919. He alleged that the Act had become a tool for State abuse, oppression and discrimination. He said the Act promoted a culture of impunity, discarded rule of law and granted a licence to kill.

He cited various incidents of abuse by the security forces over the years. He called for a humanitarian approach, instead of using force through AFSPA, for lasting peace. He suggested chief minister Neiphiu Rio to appeal to all his counterparts in the North-eastern States to come together and urge the Central government to withdraw the Act from the region. He also urged MPs from Nagaland to do same with their counterparts from the region.

Planning & coordination, land revenue and parliamentary affairs minister Neiba Kronu advocated a final solution through trust and understanding, rather than the use of force. He emphasised that the purpose of UDA government should not be defeated and more efforts should be given at the juncture. He said it was the right time to make the Central leaders understand the reality.

Taking part in the discussion, NPF Legislative Party (NPFLP) leader TR Zeliang said no amount of reason could justify the killing of innocent civilians. For a lasting peace in the region, he demanded that AFSPA should be repealed. Stating that justice delayed was justice denied, he called for justice to be delivered on time.

He lamented the absence of a State Human Rights Commission and called for initiation of necessary steps to set up the commission at the earliest.

Higher education and tribal affairs minister Temjen Imna Along said the Oting incident brought back old memories of atrocities on our people through the draconian Act. He said there was no space for such a law in a democratic country like India. He appealed for its withdrawal not only from Nagaland but from the whole North-eastern region.

NPF member Yitachu alleged that the basic fundamental rights, including the right to life, were being denied due to AFSPA. He insisted that the Act had no place in a democratic and civilised country. The special provision for Nagaland enshrined in the Constitution of India became meaningless because of this Act and called for its revocation.

He said the voice of the people was to get the Act withdrawn from Nagaland and an early solution to the Naga political issue. He therefore appealed to the negotiating groups not to isolate each other in the pursuance of settlement of the Naga political issue.

Food & civil supplies, legal metrology and consumer protection and taxes adviser Pukhayi said the law was unjust for the people of Northeast. He cautioned that as long as the Act existed, there was no guarantee that a similar incident would not happen anywhere in Nagaland.

Deliberating on the issue member CL John asserted that the Act had no place in a democratic country like India. He said no progressive country could afford to give step-motherly treatment to its citizens.

He strongly condemned the incident at Oting and appealed to the government to take steps to get the Act withdrawn immediately. Stressing that intelligence failure and mistaken identity should not be an excuse, he asked the Central government to ascertain the facts before making any statement.

In his concluding remark, leader of the House and chief minister Neiphiu Rio thanked all members who participated in the discussion.

He said AFSPA had its origin in the Naga political issue due to the armed insurrection. It was enacted by Parliament in 1958 in order to give Indian security forces certain special powers to deal with Naga armed insurgency and was in force only in the then Naga Hills district of Assam. Later on, it spread to other North-eastern States and at present it was still in force in Nagaland, Assam, Manipur (excluding Imphal municipal area) and Naga-inhabited districts of Arunachal Pradesh  Changlang, Longding and Tirap. It was also in force in some areas of Arunachal Pradesh bordering Assam. Outside the Northeast, it was in force only in Jammu & Kashmir since 1990.

In order to deal with the situation, Rio recalled that the then Assam government had imposed the Assam Maintenance of Public Order Act, 1953 in Naga Hills district and intensified police operations. As the situation became worse, he said the Assam Government started deploying Assam Rifles in the Naga Hills, enacted the Assam Disturbed Areas Act, 1955, arming the State police and Assam Rifles with certain special powers to deal with the insurgency. But as the State police and Assam Rifles could not contain the insurgency, Government of India promulgated the Armed Forces (Assam & Manipur) Special Powers Ordinance in 1958, which was subsequently converted into an Act by Parliament in the same year.

He alleged that there had been many instances of abuse and misuse of the provisions of AFSPA by the security forces while carrying out their operations in Nagaland and other parts of the Northeast, particularly in Manipur and Assam. The latest instance of such abuse being the killing of 14 innocent civilians at Oting and Mon, he added.

As NLA comprised democratically-elected representatives of the people, the chief minister commented that the Assembly was the temple of democracy in the State and the members were duty bound and responsible to reflect the voice of the people and fulfil the aspirations of the masses.

Entire Naga society has been calling for repeal of AFSPA and that voice is at its loudest today. Even as we participate in this discussion, the entire State is eagerly awaiting the result of this special session and contents of the resolutions we will adopt today. This House must reflect the desire of the people, he insisted.

Observing that the desire of the people was to get the undemocratic and draconian law withdrawn, he urged all members to unite and send out a clear and loud message to the world that Nagas did not want to see this Act anymore. Calling for real peace to reach a lasting political solution, he said impediments like AFPSA must be removed so that hurdles in the way for lasting peace were removed.

Removing AFPSA would also contribute towards confidence building, strengthening trust and removing the feeling of alienation from the peoples mind, he added.

Asserting that Nagas had made significant contributions towards nation building and that they were keen to continue giving efforts to strengthen the countrys foundation, especially by the youth, he therefore stressed that it was all the more important to make every effort to regain public confidence and trust and remove the impediments.

He said ex-gratia and employment to the next of kin of deceased had been assured by the Central Government. However, in case the families of the deceased preferred a job in the State government, he said the government was ready to give Grade III and IV posts as per their qualifications. Medical expenditure of all the injured would be borne by the State, he added.

Rio further sought cooperation and support from citizens and CSOs in the governments collective effort to restore normalcy in the interest of all citizens.
Regional

National Health Mission staff call off strike in Mizoram

AIZAWL, DEC 20 (AGENCIES) | Publish Date: 12/20/2021 1:59:59 PM IST

National Health Mission Employees Union of Mizoram (NEUM) on Monday called off their indefinite strike, a day after the state government banned staging of strikes by health employees amid COVID-19 pandemic, reported EastMojo.

The staff of National Health Mission, under the aegis of NEUM, has stayed off work since December 17, demanding regularisation under the state government and a regular pay. They also demanded they should avail of medical reimbursement and travelling allowance for transfer. A statement issued by NEUM said the ongoing indefinite strike has been called off at 7 am on Monday following an assurance from Health Minister Dr. R. Lalthangliana that the government would take measures for regularisation of the NHM staff.

Besides regular pay, medical reimbursement and transfer travelling allowance, the health minister also assured that he would take measures for the welfare of the NHM staff, and to ensure that more and more staff are recruited in the upcoming recruitment under the state health department, it said.

Health Secretary R. Lalramnghaka also assured that he would make efforts to fulfil the demands and aspirations of the NEUM, the statement said.

The union apologised to the general public, especially patients, who faced problems and inconvenience due to the strike. The indefinite strike had affected the healthcare system amid manpower crunch, sources said.

The Mizoram government had on Sunday prohibited strikes by employees under the state health department during the COVID-19 pandemic. The order issued by the health department had said that no employees under the health and family welfare department should organise strikes during the pandemic, as defined in the Mizoram Essential Services Maintenance Act, 1990. The order said that COVID-19 is still prevalent in the state.

In the wake of Omicron variant of COVID-19, there is urgent need to keep a close vigil on the incidence of local and regional spread of the pandemic and any strike, if organised by any section or category of employees under the health department, would adversely affect the healthcare service, the order had said.

The prohibitory order was valid for six months with effect from 7 pm on Sunday.
International

Vladimir Putin blames West for tensions in Europe

Vladimir Putin

MOSCOW, DEC 21 (AGENCIES) | Publish Date: 12/21/2021 1:05:50 PM IST

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday blamed the West for escalating tensions in Europe, saying it had incorrectly assessed the outcome of the Cold War.

Speaking to senior military officials, Putin said Russia would respond adequately to any Western aggression and would develop its army further.

Why did they expand NATO and renounce the missile defence treaties? They are to blame for what is happening now, for the tensions building up in Europe, Putin said.

After what it regarded as its victory in the Cold War, Washingtons judgement has been clouded by euphoria, he said, leading it to poor policy choices. Russia has amassed tens of thousands of troops on the border with Ukraine, demanding that NATO refuse to accept the former Soviet republic as a member and guarantee that no weapons or troops will be deployed there. Putin said he hoped for constructive talks with Washington and Brussels on Russias demands for security guarantees as there were signs the West was ready to work on the issue.

Armed conflicts and bloodshed are absolutely not something we would choose, we do not want such a scenario, Putin said.

He said Russias proposals were no ultimatum, but it had nowhere to retreat over Ukraine.

Speaking at the same meeting, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the United States had deployed some 8,000 troops near Russian borders and, alongside NATO allies, frequently mounted flights by strategic bomber planes close to Russia. Attempts by NATO to get the Ukrainian army involved in the alliances activities present a security threat, Shoigu said.

Earlier on Tuesday, a senior Russian diplomat said contacts had already begun between Moscow and Washington on the issue of security guarantees that Russia is seeking, and there was a possibility that the sides would reach an understanding.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-20 21:31:26|Editor: huaxia

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A man receives a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 7, 2021. Turkey has administered nearly 125 million COVID-19 vaccines to date, and the vaccination rate of people aged 18 and over who have got two doses hit 82.43 percent, announced the Health Ministry on Monday. (Xinhua/Shadati)

ISTANBUL, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Turkey has administered nearly 125 million COVID-19 vaccines to date, and the vaccination rate of people aged 18 and over who have got two doses hit 82.43 percent, announced the Health Ministry on Monday.

Turkey has been observing the positive outcomes of achieving a high vaccination rate among its adult population, Nurettin Yiyit, a member of Turkey's Health Ministry's Scientific Committee and the chief physician at Istanbul's Cam and Sakura city hospital, told Xinhua.

The daily cases decreased below 20,000 after a plateau trend of around 20,000 to 25,000 bands without a notable increase since August, he added.

At the meantime, as the population of children constitutes one-third of Turkey's 83 million citizens, when considering this number, the herd immunity suddenly drops to 60 percent, he also noted.

The physician emphasized that the essential purpose in the struggle against the pandemic would be the urgent vaccination of the unvaccinated adults and those who have not completed their inoculation yet.

"The more we narrow the unvaccinated group, the faster the death figures (fluctuating at around 200 since September) will fall," he added.

On Dec. 11, the first six cases of the Omicron variant were detected in Turkey, forcing health authorities to shorten the period between the second and third doses of vaccine inoculation from six months to three.

"The primary measure against the prevalence of Omicron variant is reinforcing the shield of protection through vaccination," the Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.

The minister also noted that the lack of a sudden increase in the number of daily cases in the country is an "indicator of the success of the vaccination program."

Turkey launched its mass vaccination program against COVID-19 in January with the vaccine developed by China's Sinovac company. It later included vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech in the drive.

Erdem Sari, a Turkish citizen, and his wife were in the line in front of a vaccination room of the Cam and Sakura hospital to have their third Sinovac dose.

"We preferred Sinovac because it is one of the known classical vaccines and it gives more confidence," Sari told Xinhua after getting his vaccine done. Enditem

Nurettin Yiyit, a member of Turkey's Health Ministry's Scientific Committee and the chief physician at Istanbul's Cam and Sakura city hospital, is interviewed in Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 7, 2021. Turkey has administered nearly 125 million COVID-19 vaccines to date, and the vaccination rate of people aged 18 and over who have got two doses hit 82.43 percent, announced the Health Ministry on Monday. (Xinhua/Shadati) TO GO WITH Roundup: Turkey achieves sound gains in COVID-19 vaccination among adults: experts

A sign reading "It is forbidden to enter without a mask" is seen on a door at a hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, on Dec. 7, 2021. Turkey has administered nearly 125 million COVID-19 vaccines to date, and the vaccination rate of people aged 18 and over who have got two doses hit 82.43 percent, announced the Health Ministry on Monday. (Xinhua/Shadati) TO GO WITH Roundup: Turkey achieves sound gains in COVID-19 vaccination among adults: experts
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 02:18:18|Editor: huaxia

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People walk on Westminster Bridge in the mist in London, Britian, Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)

Britain reported 91,743 coronavirus cases in the latest 24-hour period, the second highest recorded daily number.



LONDON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday that the government reserves the "possibility of taking further action" to protect public health because of the spread of the Omicron variant.

The prime minister said he is following the data "hour by hour" and warned the rules could still be tightened in the days to come.

Britain reported 91,743 coronavirus cases in the latest 24-hour period, the second highest recorded daily number ever, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 11,453,121, according to official figures released Monday.

Another 8,044 Omicron cases have been detected in Britain, taking the total Omicron cases in the country to 45,145, the UK health security agency (UKHSA) confirmed.

The country also reported a further 44 coronavirus-related deaths, raising the national death toll to 147,261.

A man receives a vaccine jab at NHS (National Health Service) COVID Vaccine Center at Wembley Stadium in London, Britain, on Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo by Ray Tang/Xinhua)

Meanwhile, ministers have reportedly pushed back against calls from scientific advisers for new measures to tackle the Omicron variant before Christmas.

Around one third of the cabinet are said to be reluctant to support new restrictions in the coming days, with Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak among them, according to The Times.

The British government's advisory scientists have warned extra restrictions are needed "within days" to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by Omicron.

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 50.4 percent have received the booster dose, or the third dose.

People queue for a vaccine jab at a mass vaccination center at Wembley Stadium in London, Britian, Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo by Stephen Chung/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 03:47:23|Editor: huaxia

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Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (R) welcomes German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (C) in Rome, Italy, on Dec. 20, 2021. Italy and Germany are likely to bring their positions closer on how they respectively look at the European Union's fiscal rules, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday after his first meeting with Germany's new chancellor Olaf Scholz. (Str/Xinhua)

ROME, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Italy and Germany are likely to bring their positions closer on how they respectively look at the European Union's (EU) fiscal rules, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday after his first meeting with Germany's new chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The two countries have long held different views on the EU's budget and public debt rules (i.e. on how the EU member states should manage their public spending), with Italy pursuing a more flexible approach and Germany a stricter one.

Yet, in the context of the post-COVID phase -- and of the 750-billion-euro (846 billion U.S. dollars) "Next Generation EU" recovery instrument -- the Italian prime minister said the EU needed to proceed further with its integration process and find an agreement on the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact.

As a review of this pact was launched by the EU in October, Draghi and Scholz "briefly discussed" the changes that might be needed to make it consistent with the bloc's new goals.

"In the post-pandemic phase, all our countries are required to fund unprecedented projects in the fields of digital transition, environmental transition, defense, and also in terms of coordination," Draghi told a joint press conference after their meeting.

"These are massive projects, and it will be necessary to see how these projects can be inserted into the new budget rules," he explained.

"My guess is that an understanding will be found on this ... there will be a narrowing of positions. Perhaps I am being too optimistic, but this is a field easier to tackle than others."

Scholz -- whose country favors a more rigorous fiscal approach along with other northern EU partners -- noted that the current framework of rules already proved flexible but would not reveal whether he would agree to more flexibility.

"The Stability Pact has shown great flexibility in the past and it is plausible that it would prove flexible in the future as well," the German chancellor said.

"Some 750 billion euros have been made available to the whole of Europe, which is unprecedented. Now that we have mobilized a large amount of funds, our ambition now should be to spend that money," Scholz said.

Draghi explained that Italy and Germany were willing to strengthen their cooperation in facing "Europe's big challenges."

"We want to strengthen our cooperation in science, technology and research ... on European projects of common interest, and in sectors crucial to our future, such as hydrogen, microelectronics and electric vehicle batteries," he said.

Draghi said the two governments also wanted to accelerate the ecological transition, stressing that bilateral cooperation among European countries would be crucial considering the "very ambitious goals" the EU has set in this regard.

Draghi said that Italy and Germany agreed on the need for a common defense policy for the EU, which should be complementary and not an alternative to the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) alliance of which both countries are members. Enditem

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (R, Front) welcomes German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (C, Front) in Rome, Italy, on Dec. 20, 2021. Italy and Germany are likely to bring their positions closer on how they respectively look at the European Union's fiscal rules, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday after his first meeting with Germany's new chancellor Olaf Scholz. (Str/Xinhua)

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (R) shakes hands with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a joint press conference in Rome, Italy, on Dec. 20, 2021. Italy and Germany are likely to bring their positions closer on how they respectively look at the European Union's fiscal rules, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday after his first meeting with Germany's new chancellor Olaf Scholz. (Str/Xinhua)

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (R) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attend a joint press conference in Rome, Italy, on Dec. 20, 2021. Italy and Germany are likely to bring their positions closer on how they respectively look at the European Union's fiscal rules, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday after his first meeting with Germany's new chancellor Olaf Scholz. (Str/Xinhua)

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi (L, Front) welcomes German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (R, Front) in Rome, Italy, on Dec. 20, 2021. Italy and Germany are likely to bring their positions closer on how they respectively look at the European Union's fiscal rules, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said on Monday after his first meeting with Germany's new chancellor Olaf Scholz. (Str/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 05:05:22|Editor: huaxia

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A missile is launched during the fifth day of the six-day naval drill dubbed Velayat 91 from the coastline of the sea of Oman in southern Iran on Jan. 1, 2013. (Xinhua/Irna News Agency/Mohammadreza Alimadadi)

TEHRAN, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) staged a large-scale war game, codenamed "the Great Prophet 17," along the southern coasts of the country on Monday, state TV reported.

The exercise, to be held for five days, involves IRGC units such as the aerospace force and the cyber-electronic division, Abbas Nilforoushan, the IRGC's deputy chief of operations and spokesman for the drill, was quoted by Press TV as saying.

According to the general, a series of military systems and weapons recently delivered to the IRGC will be brought into action during the war game.

"The military exercise is meant to increase the preparedness of the IRGC combat units," Nilforoushan said.

"The military drills carry the message of defending and safeguarding the national security," he added.

Meanwhile, Gholam Ali Rashid, another IRGC senior commander, seriously warned Isreal and the United States about any threats or mischief against nuclear facilities in Iran, after Isreal threatened to launch military attacks on Iran's nuclear program during rounds of nuclear talks.

"If such threats are carried out, Iran's armed forces will immediately and decisively attack all centers, bases, routes, and spaces used for the aggression," Rashid said. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 13:15:18|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Nov. 23, 2021 shows the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

For years, the United States, relying on its dominant position in the global economic and financial system, has frequently used sanctions to attack other countries in the name of "democracy and human rights," which has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, and also has poisoned global economic security.

by Xinhua writers Zhang Yisheng, Zhao Zhiqin

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Washington has "become addicted to sanctions" like a 5-year-old child who "is addicted to candy," a U.S. columnist has said.

"If there is one tool policymakers and lawmakers in Washington are almost always predisposed to use, it is the economic stick commonly known as sanctions," said Daniel DePetris in an op-ed published recently by U.S. weekly news magazine Newsweek.

Recently, the United States has imposed new sanctions on individuals and entities from China, Russia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Myanmar, Bangladesh and others for "human rights violations" during the so-called "Summit for Democracy."

For years, the United States, relying on its dominant position in the global economic and financial system, has frequently used sanctions to attack other countries in the name of "democracy and human rights," which has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, and also has poisoned global economic security.

LONG-ARMED JURISDICTION

For a long time, the United States has overused its financial hegemony and technological advantages, and has continued to impose its domestic legislation all over the world under the guise of "human rights" and "national security," by sanctioning countries it regarded as enemies or rivals, and imposing illegal unilateral long-armed jurisdiction on third parties, including its allies.

"Economic statecraft has been a vital component of U.S. diplomacy since the early days of the republic," Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, said in a recent article published in Foreign Affairs magazine.

During the Cold War, the United States issued rules and laws to prevent Soviet allies from accessing vital resources and technologies, Drezner said.

Over the past few years, Washington has taken a new approach to sanctions. It has adopted a series of domestic laws. Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria and more are on the U.S. blacklist.

According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the number of U.S. sanctions has increased tenfold in the past 20 years. U.S. President Barack Obama imposed 2,350 sanctions in his second term, and U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 3,800 sanctions during his presidency. As of Oct. 1, 2021, the department has implemented 9,421 sanctions in force.

A protester breaking into the U.S. Capitol building is captured on a screenshot in a video feed from NBC news seen in Arlington, Virginia, the United States, Jan. 6, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

TRUE DEMOCRACY?

In early December, the so-called "Summit for Democracy" ended with endless doubts from the international community.

The fundamental purpose of democracy is to safeguard the interests of the people. However, the U.S. government, based on the mentality of "follow me or go against me," has made great efforts on the international stage to wantonly disrupt other countries' economies and damage people's livelihoods by means of sanctions and bullying, without considering the interests of other peoples, which has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, and interfered with and disturbed the normal operation of the world economy and global industrial chain.

The U.S. regressive moves are totally different from the true democratic spirit, which makes the so-called "freedom, democracy and human rights" billed by the United States questionable.

Among the nearly 40 million people in Afghanistan, "22.8 million could face acute hunger during winter months, with 8.7 million people at emergency levels," according to the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme.

The Afghan Taliban has repeatedly urged the United States to ease sanctions against Afghanistan and unfreeze Afghan assets, pointing out that the U.S. sanctions have caused serious damage not only to Afghan trade and commerce, but also to humanitarian assistance.

According to statistics, U.S. sanctions have cut Iran's oil exports by more than 80 percent from 2017 to the end of 2020. Not to mention the 60-year economic embargo against Cuba, which has caused direct economic losses of over 100 billion U.S. dollars to Cuba and caused serious harm to the Cuban people. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has increased its sanctions against Iran, Syria and other countries, making their situations even worse.

During the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in September this year, leaders of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and other countries blasted the United States for its hegemonism, neo-colonialism and economic coercion in international relations.

Earlier in June, for the 29th consecutive year, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution, "calling for an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba," which conveyed the voice of the international community against U.S. hegemonism.

People look at a board showing the rates of currencies at a currency exchange center in central Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 1, 2018. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

HEGEMONIC MENTALITY

Although the U.S. sanctions are often under the banner of "democracy and human rights," in essence, such means, like foreign ideological exports and foreign wars, are a tool for Washington to maintain its hegemony and serve the interests of its ruling class.

Foreign Affairs magazine said the United States has become a country "of sanctions," having a tendency for "the use and abuse of economic coercion."

This year alone, the United States has repeatedly wielded the stick of sanctions.

The country has threatened sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine issue, of cutting off Russia's financial lifeline.

On the day the Taliban took over the Afghan capital city of Kabul, the U.S. government quickly froze nearly 9.5 billion dollars in national foreign exchange assets held in the United States by the Afghan central bank.

Washington has also been ruthless in imposing sanctions on its European allies on issues such as the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.

The U.S. approach is the age-old "with us or against us" strategy, and "delivers all the consequences that a hegemon can inflict upon non-compliant states," Chandran Nair, founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, said in a recent op-ed published in the South China Morning Post.

"The truth is that Washington's fixation with sanctions has little to do with their efficacy and everything to do with something else: American decline," said Drezner.

Two decades of war, recession, polarization, and a pandemic have dented U.S. power, Drezner said. "Frustrated U.S. presidents are left with fewer arrows in their quiver, and they are quick to reach for the easy, available tool of sanctions." 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 16:06:43|Editor: huaxia

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Staff members count ballots for the election for the seventh-term Legislative Council (LegCo) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in Hong Kong, south China, Dec. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

Those anti-China Western politicians need to know that they are in no position to tell China which kind of path of democracy Hong Kong should take. Under no circumstances can they bend the iron will of the Chinese people, including Hong Kong residents, to maintain stability and boost development in Hong Kong.

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- History will remember the moment when more than 1.3 million Hong Kong voters went to the polls and elected all 90 members of the Chinese city's new Legislative Council (LegCo) on Monday.

This election signifies that the principle of "patriots governing Hong Kong" is taking hold, and marks a new chapter for democracy's development in this metropolis, as well as a fresh starting point for its pursuit of good governance.

The successful election has smashed all the smears and lies by some foreign forces, and testified that the entire Hong Kong society wants stability and security, and rejects any intervention by anti-China forces that seek to stir chaos in Hong Kong.

Voters wait to cast ballots at a polling station in Wan Chai of Hong Kong, south China, Dec. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaochu)

Prior to the LegCo election, some politicians in the United States and Britain went to great lengths to besmirch Hong Kong's new electoral system, and sought to incite anti-China agitators to disrupt the election, which was a reckless intervention in China's internal affairs.

A handful of foreign media outlets also joined the smearing campaign. In their professedly unbiased reports, they focused on such topics as the turnout rate and representation, and churned out a large number of prejudiced stories.

While concocting and peddling lies about Hong Kong, they turned a blind eye to such burning problems as declining turnout rates, money politics and surging political polarization that are suffocating the political systems back in their own countries.

All roads lead to democracy. One does not have to be a political scientist to understand that the ultimate yardstick of good democracy is whether it can actually ensure the rule by the people, and meet the real needs of the general public.

During this election, candidates and voters cared very much about the welfare of the people and the development of Hong Kong. There is now broad consensus in Hong Kong that development is the golden key to solving all sorts of problems confronting the city.

"I am voting to choose a new bunch of people to make Hong Kong a better place," a resident was quoted by The Associated Press as saying. "I am a patriot, and I just hope for peace and quiet, and to have a good livelihood."

Photo taken on Nov. 24, 2021 shows a view of Hong Kong, south China. (Xinhua/Wang Shen)

This election also marks a key step towards establishing in the city a democratic system that fits Hong Kong's conditions and has its own characteristics, and will stimulate high-quality development of democracy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

Under British colonial rule, there was no democracy in Hong Kong, said a white paper titled "Hong Kong: Democratic Progress Under the Framework of One Country, Two Systems" issued by China's State Council Information Office on Monday.

The white paper presented a comprehensive review of the origin and development of democracy in the HKSAR, and the principles and position of the central government in Beijing.

"The determination, sincerity, and efforts of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government to this end have remained consistent and are obvious to any objective observer," it said.

Citizens wave China's national flag and the flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in Tsim Sha Tsui, south China's Hong Kong, Oct. 1, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Jiayi)

The anti-China forces in the West always try to fake their love for Hong Kong and the people there, claiming from time to time that they stand with them. Yet their ulterior purpose is to play the Hong Kong card to contain China.

However, those anti-China Western politicians need to know that they are in no position to tell China which kind of path of democracy Hong Kong should take. Under no circumstances can they bend the iron will of the Chinese people, including Hong Kong residents, to maintain stability and boost development in Hong Kong.

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. With the implementation of the National Security Law for Hong Kong and the improvement in the city's electoral system, more patriots will be able to serve in the LegCo, and Hong Kong's legal and business environment will thus be better and the society more stable and harmonious. A brighter future for the "Pearl of the Orient" is in the making. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 19:45:01|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows Xiamen International Conference & Exhibition Center, International Conference Center and surrounding buildings in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 8, 2021 shows the city view of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Sept. 29, 2021 shows the city view of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Sept. 29, 2021 shows the city view of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 12, 2021 shows the sculpture of a symbolic "golden key" for the China International Fair for Investment and Trade in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows Xiamen International Conference Center and surrounding buildings in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 12, 2021 shows people enjoying their leisure time on the beach in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Sept. 29, 2021 shows people enjoying their leisure time in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Oct. 5, 2021 shows people enjoying their leisure time in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 12, 2021 shows the city view of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Sept. 29, 2021 shows the city view of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Oct. 6, 2021 shows the view of Gulangyu Island in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 12, 2021 shows the coastal view of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows the view of Xiamen International Conference & Exhibition Center in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 8, 2021 shows the view of a wetland in Jimei District of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)



Aerial photo taken on Dec. 8, 2021 shows the city view of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 8, 2021 shows the view of a park and a wetland in Xiang'an District of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Sept. 29, 2021 shows the city view of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 7, 2021 shows the scenery of Junying Village of Tongan District in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 9, 2021 shows the skyscrapers of the central business district in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)

Aerial photo taken on Dec. 7, 2021 shows the scenery of Baijiaoci Village in Tong'an District of Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The Xiamen SEZ has made important contributions to the country's reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and played a unique role in promoting national reunification. (Xinhua/Jiang Kehong)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 20:55:22|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- China decided to take reciprocal countermeasures and sanction four U.S. individuals in response to the U.S. sanctions against four Chinese officials over issues related to Xinjiang.

The individuals are U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom chair Nadine Maenza, vice-chair Nury Turkel, and commissioners Anurima Bhargava and James Carr.

Henceforth, these four individuals are prohibited from entering China (including the mainland, Hong Kong, and Macao). Also, their properties in China are frozen, and they are banned from doing business with Chinese citizens and institutions, said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.

Zhao noted the United States imposed illegal sanctions against four Chinese officials under the pretext of the so-called human rights issue in Xinjiang according to U.S. domestic laws.

He said the move gravely interfered in China's internal affairs, violated the basic norms of international relations, and damaged China-U.S. ties.

"China expresses firm opposition and strong condemnation," he said, adding that China decided to take reciprocal countermeasures according to the anti-foreign sanctions law in response to this wrong move.

"Xinjiang affairs are purely China's internal affairs, and the United States has no right or qualification to interfere. The United States should revoke the so-called sanctions and stop interfering in issues related to Xinjiang and China's internal affairs," Zhao said.

China will further respond depending on the development of the situation, he added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-22 03:03:14|Editor: huaxia

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu after an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board in Moscow on Dec. 21, 2021. (Kremlin)



"They must understand that we simply have nowhere to retreat," Putin said.



MOSCOW, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that his country will take countermeasures if the West continues its "aggressive" policy, but remains ready for negotiations.

"If our Western colleagues continue their clearly aggressive line, we will take adequate retaliatory military-technical measures to respond firmly to hostile actions," Putin said at an expanded meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board.

"We have every right to do so, to take actions aimed at ensuring the security and sovereignty of Russia," he said, expressing concerns over the deployment of U.S. missile defense systems near Russian borders, including in Romania and Poland.

He warned if the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deploy missiles in Ukraine, they would reach Moscow in only seven to 10 minutes, and in just five minutes if they are hypersonic weapons.

"They must understand that we simply have nowhere to retreat," Putin said.

Russia has recently sent a draft agreement to NATO and a draft treaty to the United States both on security guarantees in Europe for the Western countries to consider.

Putin reiterated that Russia stands against armed conflict and bloodshed and wishes to resolve issues through diplomacy, but there must be clear legal guarantees. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 13:49:11|Editor: huaxia

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TRIPOLI, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Monday said that 466 illegal migrants were rescued off the Libyan coast and returned to Libya in the past week.

"In the period of Dec. 12-18, 466 migrants were rescued/intercepted at sea and returned to Libya," IOM said.

So far in 2021, a total of 31,456 illegal migrants, including women and children, have been rescued, while 509 died and 831 went missing off the Libyan coast on the Central Mediterranean route, according to the organization.

Libya has been suffering insecurity and chaos since the fall of its leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, making the North African country a preferred point of departure for illegal migrants who want to cross the Mediterranean Sea to European shores. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 18:20:51|Editor: huaxia

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WINDHOEK, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Eight Namibians lost their lives to human-wildlife conflict (HWC) in 2021 compared to two cases recorded in 2020 and six in 2019, Minister of Environment, Forestry and Tourism Spokesperson Romeo Muyunda said Tuesday.

Muyunda said four of the fatalities recorded this year were from crocodile attacks while two were trampled by elephants and the other two were attacked by hippos.

"Accordingly, in line with the National Human-Wildlife Conflict Management Policy's self-reliance scheme, the families of the victims were each given 100,000 Namibian dollars as compensation," Muyunda said.

He said the country recorded 12 injuries this year compared to 13 in 2020 and nine in 2019.

According to statistics provided by the ministry, Namibia has paid out close to 6 million Namibian dollars (402,943 U.S. dollars) for loss of livestock, crop damage, injury, and death. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 18:34:40|Editor: huaxia

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Women show handcrafted bags at Tsamaya village in the outskirts of Francistown, Botswana, on Dec. 8, 2021. A group of elderly ladies in Botswana are fashioning and carving their way out of stress and poverty through dancing, singing and knitting beads for bags together. These women are affectionately known as Botswana's "knitting grannies". (Photo by Shingirai Madondo/Xinhua)

FRANCISTOWN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A group of elderly ladies in Botswana are fashioning and carving their way out of stress and poverty through dancing, singing and knitting beads for bags together.

Almost every day, the 13 women, ranging in age from the early 50s to the late 70s, converge at a Pentecostal church, situated at Tsamaya village in the outskirts of Francistown, Botswana's second-largest city, to do the knitting.

These women are affectionately known as Botswana's "knitting grannies".

"I used to survive on odd jobs to have an income. But these odd jobs were not always available," said 79-year-old Lungani Mphinyane, who has been part of the Mukani Muzwithamile Group since its inception in December 2019.

Mukani Muzwithamile (loosely translated to wake up and fend for self to be self-reliant) is a Kalanga language, one of the many dialects spoken in Botswana especially in the northeastern part of the country and is a statement that encourages self-reliance.

Mphinyane said the program has been so helpful to her. Without using much energy, Mphinyane said she is making enough money to fend for herself and her two great-grandchildren whom she lived with.

Besides managing to make an income that ranges between 800 and 1,000 pula (between 68 and 85 U.S. dollars) per month, Mphinyane said she is now living a stress-free life.

In the morning, they dance as they sing traditional music as a way of motivating each other and exercising. After a day of working, they also sing and dance in order to stretch their bodies before going home, Mphinyane told Xinhua.

"A few months after joining this group, I visited a local clinic for my routine high-blood and diabetes checkup. The nurse was so surprised by the stability of the two chronic diseases," said Mphinyane with a wide smile.

Fadzai Themba, 51, has been surviving through processing and selling peanut butter but soon after joining the association of elderly women, her life changed dramatically.

"Handcrafted bags are loved by most ladies, especially young ones. And this means more money into our pockets," said Themba, showing off her purse full of 100 pula notes before breaking into laughter.

Usually, they sell the crafts to individuals in Francistown and surrounding areas. They also advertise their bags on social media, such as Facebook and Whatsapp.

Nanzelela Chaitezvi, a 34-year-old native of the village in which the elderly women are operating, is the brain behind the project. Her intention was to group unemployed young people like her but it was never to be. "Young people are very impatient," said Chaitezvi, adding that the intention is to export the beaded bags to China.

According to Chaitezvi, the Chinese people like handcrafted products. It will make business sense for us to start supplying the Chinese market because China has the largest population across the globe. "More people mean more business opportunities," said Chaitezvi. Enditem



"Knitting granny" Sellinah Dzawanda (R) shows her knitting skills at Tsamaya village in the outskirts of Francistown, Botswana, on Dec. 8, 2021. A group of elderly ladies in Botswana are fashioning and carving their way out of stress and poverty through dancing, singing and knitting beads for bags together. These women are affectionately known as Botswana's "knitting grannies". (Photo by Shingirai Madondo/Xinhua)

"Knitting grannies" Lungani Mphinyane (L, Front) and Sellinah Dzawanda (R, Front) show their knitting skills at Tsamaya village in the outskirts of Francistown, Botswana, on Dec. 8, 2021. A group of elderly ladies in Botswana are fashioning and carving their way out of stress and poverty through dancing, singing and knitting beads for bags together. These women are affectionately known as Botswana's "knitting grannies". (Photo by Shingirai Madondo/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 20:04:03|Editor: huaxia

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ABUJA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria is now experiencing a fourth COVID-19 wave, health authorities in the country have said, attributing it to the rise in Delta and Omicron variants infections.

The most populous African country has recorded a 500 percent increase in infections in the past two weeks, Ifedayo Adetifa, head of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC), said in a statement sent to Xinhua Tuesday.

"The country is now in a fourth COVID-19 wave," Adetifa said, noting as of Sunday, Nigeria had recorded 223,887 cases and 2,985 deaths in the 36 states and the federal capital territory.

Health authorities in the country are intensifying risk communication efforts to remind Nigerians of the risk and the need to take collective responsibility to reduce transmission of the virus, the senior public health official said.

"The response to COVID-19 requires a whole-of-society approach. Therefore, individuals, families, and institutions also need to play their part in protecting each other by ensuring adherence to COVID-19 public health and social measures," he added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 20:06:17|Editor: huaxia

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ACCRA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Ghana placed a travel ban on Israel, Malta, and the Republic of Korea in a bid to prevent a spread of the Omicron variant from those countries, said the foreign ministry late Monday.

In two different releases, the foreign ministry said the bans on the Republic of Korea and Israel were temporary, lasting for 14 days from Dec. 20, while giving no indication of the duration of the ban on Malta.

It added that Ghana did not recognize any vaccine certificate from Malta.

On Dec.10, the West African country adopted tough restrictions by imposing a 3,500 U.S. dollar penalty per passenger on airlines that brought unvaccinated passengers to Ghana. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 09:06:30|Editor: huaxia

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SEOUL, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export logged a double-digit growth in the first 20 days of December thanks to global demand recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, customs office data showed Tuesday.

The outbound shipment amounted to 36.9 billion U.S. dollars in the period from Dec. 1 to Dec. 20, up 20 percent from a year earlier, according to Korea Customs Service.

Semiconductor export jumped 27.5 percent, and shipment for oil products and computer peripherals soared 88.8 percent and 73.9 percent, respectively.

Automotive export shrank 4.1 percent, with shipment for telecommunication devices such as smartphones dropping 12.8 percent.

Export to China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, gained 22.5 percent in the 20-day period, and those to the United States, the European Union (EU) and Vietnam grew in double digits.

Import surged 42.1 percent from a year earlier to 39.6 billion dollars in the first 20 days of December, sending the trade deficit to 2.7 billion dollars. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 10:07:39|Editor: huaxia

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SYDNEY, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Australia's first art library for children will open its doors to creative young readers in Sydney in 2022.

The Children's Art Library will be part of a revitalization project of 344 million Australian dollars (244.6 million U.S. dollar) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The library will have an array of books featuring international and national artists including many works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and writers. There will also be a range of reading items in accessible formats for children with disabilities.

The gallery's head archivist Steven Miller said the library will "provide children with the opportunity to discover and explore the creative world, primarily through the eyes of the artist."

Among those explorations will be collaborative projects where artists will foster children's innate creative talents along with performances, exhibitions and sensory and tactile experiences to fire up young imaginations.

Deputy Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales Maud Page said the library would "offer families with young children a welcoming place designed especially for them."

"In addition to exploring our gallery spaces or exhibitions ... this will be a place where children can, above all, be inspired and look, read, learn, and imagine," Page said.

The Children's Art Library will be among the key features in the "Sydney Modern Project" revitalization program which coincides with the gallery's 150th anniversary. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 11:08:11|Editor: huaxia

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WELLINGTON, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand government on Tuesday urged parents and caregivers to consider protecting their children aged 5 to 11 against COVID-19 with a child version of vaccination to be unveiled in January next year.

COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said that Cabinet has agreed with the advice from the Technical Advisory Group off the back of Medsafe approval to vaccinate children between 5 to 11 years old.

"A key focus of the government is to keep everyone in New Zealand safe from the COVID-19 pandemic," Hipkins said.

According to the Ministry of Health, the children vaccination program will begin from Jan. 17, 2022. There are 476,000 children between ages 5-11 nationwide, who will become eligible to get their first dose from this date, and their second dose at least eight weeks later.

However, the interval can be safely shortened to a minimum of 21 days if needed, the ministry said.

New Zealand government strongly recommends parents have their children vaccinated.

"In the most recent outbreak, 24 percent of cases have been aged 11 or under. The government is strongly encouraging parents to have their children vaccinated against COVID-19, but I want to be clear that this is a choice for parents," Hipkins added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 15:45:23|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Dec. 21, 2021 shows a damaged house, a hideout of a kidnapping gang, in Qasaba locality, Jalalabad city of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Five people were killed after intelligence personnel of Afghanistan's caretaker government busted an armed kidnapping group in Jalalabad city, capital of eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday, the local government confirmed. (Photo by Hamidullah/Xinhua)

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Five people were killed after intelligence personnel of Afghanistan's caretaker government busted an armed kidnapping group in Jalalabad city, capital of eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday, the local government confirmed.

"The Special Forces of General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) launched an operation against a hideout of a kidnapping gang in Qasaba locality, Police District 1 of Jalalabad city Tuesday morning. As a result of the operation, three members of the gang were killed," the government said in a statement.

A kidnapped goldsmith and a GDI personnel were also killed during the firefight and the groups' hideout was destroyed following the raid, the statement said.

Two suspected men were arrested and a handful of weapons and ammunition were seized by the security forces, according to the statement.

The group was involved in several armed kidnapping incidents in Nangarhar, the statement said. Enditem



Photo taken on Dec. 21, 2021 shows a damaged house, a hideout of a kidnapping gang, in Qasaba locality, Jalalabad city of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Five people were killed after intelligence personnel of Afghanistan's caretaker government busted an armed kidnapping group in Jalalabad city, capital of eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday, the local government confirmed. (Photo by Hamidullah/Xinhua)

Photo taken on Dec. 21, 2021 shows a damaged house, a hideout of a kidnapping gang, in Qasaba locality, Jalalabad city of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Five people were killed after intelligence personnel of Afghanistan's caretaker government busted an armed kidnapping group in Jalalabad city, capital of eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday, the local government confirmed. (Photo by Hamidullah/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 18:45:04|Editor: huaxia

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Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen (R) shakes hands with visiting Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Dec. 21, 2021. Cambodia and Vietnam signed seven documents on Tuesday to further boost their bilateral relations and cooperation, a senior Cambodian official said. (Photo by Ly Lay/Xinhua)



PHNOM PENH, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia and Vietnam signed seven documents on Tuesday to further boost their bilateral relations and cooperation, a senior Cambodian official said.

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen and visiting Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc presided over the signing ceremony after their meeting at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh.

The signed documents focused on continued cooperation in security, national defense, justice, border demarcation, economics, trade, education, culture, science and technology between the two ASEAN member states, said Eang Sophalleth, an assistant to the Cambodian prime minister.

Before the signing ceremony, the two leaders held talks, vowing to further promote bilateral cooperation in various fields for mutual benefit, he said.

"The two leaders were satisfied with their bilateral cooperation in economics, trade and investment, and agreed to push for the implementation of the investment protection agreement and the avoidance of double taxation agreement," Sophalleth told reporters.

"They also agreed to further strengthen cooperation in national defense, health, education and justice," he said.

The Vietnamese president arrived in Cambodia on Tuesday for a two-day visit at the invitation of Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni. Enditem

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen (R) meets with visiting Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Dec. 21, 2021. Cambodia and Vietnam signed seven documents on Tuesday to further boost their bilateral relations and cooperation, a senior Cambodian official said. (Photo by Ly Lay/Xinhua)

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen (R, center) and visiting Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (L, center) preside over a signing ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Dec. 21, 2021. Cambodia and Vietnam signed seven documents on Tuesday to further boost their bilateral relations and cooperation, a senior Cambodian official said. (Photo by Ly Lay/Xinhua)

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen (R) and visiting Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc attend a signing ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Dec. 21, 2021. Cambodia and Vietnam signed seven documents on Tuesday to further boost their bilateral relations and cooperation, a senior Cambodian official said. (Photo by Ly Lay/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 23:13:44|Editor: huaxia

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Local residents clear up mud and debris after flood hit in Hulu Langat of Selangor state, Malaysia, Dec. 21, 2021. Another nine people have been reported dead, bringing the total deaths due to severe flooding in Malaysia to 17 as of Tuesday, authorities in Selangor state said. (Photo by Chong Voon Chung/Xinhua)

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Another nine people have been reported dead, bringing the total deaths due to severe flooding in Malaysia to 17 as of Tuesday, authorities in Selangor state said.

Selangor state Chief Minister Amirudin Shari said at a press briefing more bodies have been found as floodwaters start subsiding, adding that the state government has mobilized all necessary resources to aid the victims.

"At this time, our focus is to ensure search and rescue operations are carried out effectively and that they reach all who need it," he said.

The number of displaced persons due to flooding in Malaysia has risen to over 69,400 in seven states plus the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur as of 10:00 p.m. local time Tuesday, according to data from the Malaysian social welfare department.

The worst-hit state is Pahang along the east coast of Peninsula Malaysia, with over 42,000 people being evacuated to flood relief centers, followed by Selangor state with over 23,000 evacuated.

The country's meteorological department has warned of more rain in the Peninsula Malaysia, with rain and storms expected in several states on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob told a meeting with chief ministers this morning that it was found that states such as Terengganu, Kelantan and Pahang had been prepared to face the floods, especially during this time of the year, according to state news agency Bernama.

He said while east coast states have been prepared to face annual floods, the situation in Selangor state is unexpected, and acknowledged that there have been problems with the disaster management response.

"I don't deny (the weakness) and will improve in the future. The responsibility is not that of the federal government alone, but also the state governments and the frontliners in the districts."

"In Selangor, there is a problem. We are transparent about this, and I do not want to cover for anyone," he said. Enditem

A local resident walks on a muddy path after flood hit in Hulu Langat of Selangor state, Malaysia, Dec. 21, 2021. Another nine people have been reported dead, bringing the total deaths due to severe flooding in Malaysia to 17 as of Tuesday, authorities in Selangor state said. (Photo by Chong Voon Chung/Xinhua)

A cat runs on a muddy path after flood hit in Hulu Langat of Selangor state, Malaysia, Dec. 21, 2021. Another nine people have been reported dead, bringing the total deaths due to severe flooding in Malaysia to 17 as of Tuesday, authorities in Selangor state said. (Photo by Chong Voon Chung/Xinhua)

Local residents clear up mud and debris after flood hit in Hulu Langat of Selangor state, Malaysia, Dec. 21, 2021. Another nine people have been reported dead, bringing the total deaths due to severe flooding in Malaysia to 17 as of Tuesday, authorities in Selangor state said. (Photo by Chong Voon Chung/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-22 04:01:25|Editor: huaxia

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KIEV, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Kiev is ready to implement the Minsk agreements designed to end the conflict in Ukraine's eastern region of Donbas, Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

"We even wrote 10 steps on how to get it done very quickly. It is a complex document. It is 10 steps involving the Normandy format and the USA," Zelensky said during a meeting with Ukrainian diplomats in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region.

Kiev has already submitted the 10-step plan on implementing the Minsk agreements to the United States, France, Germany and Russia, Zelensky said.

At the same time, Zelensky expressed his readiness to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin to resolve the conflict in Donbas.

The Minsk agreements, reached in September 2014 and February 2015 respectively, outline the steps needed to end the conflict between government troops and armed groups in Donbas, which has left some 14,000 dead since April 2014.

The documents envisage a ceasefire, a withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the demarcation line, a prisoner exchange and local elections, among other measures. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 10:09:11|Editor: huaxia

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by Xinhua writers Zhang Yisheng, Zhao Zhiqin

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Washington has "become addicted to sanctions" like a 5-year-old child who "is addicted to candy," a U.S. columnist has said.

"If there is one tool policymakers and lawmakers in Washington are almost always predisposed to use, it is the economic stick commonly known as sanctions," said Daniel DePetris in an op-ed published recently by U.S. weekly news magazine Newsweek.

Recently, the United States has imposed new sanctions on individuals and entities from China, Russia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Myanmar, Bangladesh and others for "human rights violations" during the so-called "Summit for Democracy."

For years, the United States, relying on its dominant position in the global economic and financial system, has frequently used sanctions to attack other countries in the name of "democracy and human rights," which has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, and also has poisoned global economic security.

LONG-ARMED JURISDICTION

For a long time, the United States has overused its financial hegemony and technological advantages, and has continued to impose its domestic legislation all over the world under the guise of "human rights" and "national security," by sanctioning countries it regarded as enemies or rivals, and imposing illegal unilateral long-armed jurisdiction on third parties, including its allies.

"Economic statecraft has been a vital component of U.S. diplomacy since the early days of the republic," Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, said in a recent article published in Foreign Affairs magazine.

During the Cold War, the United States issued rules and laws to prevent Soviet allies from accessing vital resources and technologies, Drezner said.

Over the past few years, Washington has taken a new approach to sanctions. It has adopted a series of domestic laws. Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria and more are on the U.S. blacklist.

According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the number of U.S. sanctions has increased tenfold in the past 20 years. U.S. President Barack Obama imposed 2,350 sanctions in his second term, and U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 3,800 sanctions during his presidency. As of Oct. 1, 2021, the department has implemented 9,421 sanctions in force.

TRUE DEMOCRACY?

In early December, the so-called "Summit for Democracy" ended with endless doubts from the international community.

The fundamental purpose of democracy is to safeguard the interests of the people. However, the U.S. government, based on the mentality of "follow me or go against me," has made great efforts on the international stage to wantonly disrupt other countries' economies and damage people's livelihoods by means of sanctions and bullying, without considering the interests of other peoples, which has seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations, and interfered with and disturbed the normal operation of the world economy and global industrial chain.

The U.S. regressive moves are totally different from the true democratic spirit, which makes the so-called "freedom, democracy and human rights" billed by the United States questionable.

Among the nearly 40 million people in Afghanistan, "22.8 million could face acute hunger during winter months, with 8.7 million people at emergency levels," according to the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme.

The Afghan Taliban has repeatedly urged the United States to ease sanctions against Afghanistan and unfreeze Afghan assets, pointing out that the U.S. sanctions have caused serious damage not only to Afghan trade and commerce, but also to humanitarian assistance.

According to statistics, U.S. sanctions have cut Iran's oil exports by more than 80 percent from 2017 to the end of 2020. Not to mention the 60-year economic embargo against Cuba, which has caused direct economic losses of over 100 billion U.S. dollars to Cuba and caused serious harm to the Cuban people. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has increased its sanctions against Iran, Syria and other countries, making their situations even worse.

During the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in September this year, leaders of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and other countries blasted the United States for its hegemonism, neo-colonialism and economic coercion in international relations.

Earlier in June, for the 29th consecutive year, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution, "calling for an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba," which conveyed the voice of the international community against U.S. hegemonism.

HEGEMONIC MENTALITY

Although the U.S. sanctions are often under the banner of "democracy and human rights," in essence, such means, like foreign ideological exports and foreign wars, are a tool for Washington to maintain its hegemony and serve the interests of its ruling class.

Foreign Affairs magazine said the United States has become a country "of sanctions," having a tendency for "the use and abuse of economic coercion."

This year alone, the United States has repeatedly wielded the stick of sanctions.

The country has threatened sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine issue, of cutting off Russia's financial lifeline.

On the day the Taliban took over the Afghan capital city of Kabul, the U.S. government quickly froze nearly 9.5 billion dollars in national foreign exchange assets held in the United States by the Afghan central bank.

Washington has also been ruthless in imposing sanctions on its European allies on issues such as the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.

The U.S. approach is the age-old "with us or against us" strategy, and "delivers all the consequences that a hegemon can inflict upon non-compliant states," Chandran Nair, founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow, said in a recent op-ed published in the South China Morning Post.

"The truth is that Washington's fixation with sanctions has little to do with their efficacy and everything to do with something else: American decline," said Drezner.

Two decades of war, recession, polarization, and a pandemic have dented U.S. power, Drezner said. "Frustrated U.S. presidents are left with fewer arrows in their quiver, and they are quick to reach for the easy, available tool of sanctions." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 15:32:55|Editor: huaxia

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by Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Democrats have encountered a major setback as Democratic Senator Joe Manchin on Sunday dealt a death blow to his party's landmark Build Back Better plan.

After months of negotiations between moderate and progressive Democrats, Manchin publicly stated he would vote "no" on U.S. President Joe Biden's landmark 2-trillion-U.S.-dollar social spending bill.

The moderate Democrat has for months raised concerns about the bill's tax increases and provisions against domestic energy. He also has taken issue with the bill's cost at a time of sky-high national debt.

After months of record low poll numbers for Biden -- on the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, a surging crime wave and COVID-19, the bill was supposed to be a big win for Democrats.

Now, it's unclear what will occur next as opinions are still split over the bill after months of failed talks.

According to a report by NBC News on Monday, when asked whether the bill can be saved, a source familiar with Manchin's thinking said: "It's dead right now. Hypotheticals are possible I guess, but we are far from that when the president and Dem leadership are releasing statements like they did today."

The Party needs every Democratic Senator get on board in the most tightly split Senate in decades, and that could be a tall order, considering that both Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema held out for months before Manchin finally gave the legislation a "no."

Senator Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking GOP lawmaker on the Senate Budget Committee, said the bill was "dead forever."

Republican Senator John Cornyn said it would be tough for Democrats to pass a bill in the lead-up to the midterm elections.

"Every day that goes by makes it harder to pass because their so-called moderates start worrying about the voters in November. So I think this has been a positive development," he said, noting that the bill did not pass before the holiday season.

Meanwhile, some Democrats have expressed determination to pass the social spending bill.

"At the start of these negotiations many months ago, we called for prioritizing doing a few things well for longer, and we believe that adopting such an approach could open a potential path forward for this legislation," Democratic Representative Suzan DelBene said in a statement.

In a letter to lawmakers on Monday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will vote "very early in the new year" on a tweaked bill.

"We are going to vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act, and we will keep voting on it until we get something done," he said.

Some analysts believe new legislation is still possible if it is downsized or broken down to smaller bills.

Christopher Galdieri, an assistant professor at Saint Anselm College, told Xinhua it's "quite possible we get a new bill with a similar price tag that mainly does what Manchin wants it to do, at which point the job Biden and the congressional leadership face will be getting progressives to accept it."

"Democrats likely will downsize the bill or pull out a few key components and enact those provisions...Manchin has shown an openness to a smaller and more targeted bill," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, told Xinhua that one possibility "is to break the bill into smaller bills and vote on them one by one, and see what Manchin and Sinema do on each." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-12-21 19:57:33|Editor: huaxia

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by Xinhua writer Xu Chi

GENEVA, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Academy Award-winning film director and producer Oliver Stone and his son Sean Stone, a filmmaker and political commentator, have denounced America's addiction to endless wars and notorious record of interference in other countries' internal affairs.

"I've talked to a lot of Afghan and Iraq veterans, and there's a tremendous disturbance here going on. The suicide rate is so much higher than ordinary, normal (wars)," Oliver Stone, the three-time Academy Award winner, also a Vietnam War veteran, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

He noted that U.S. veterans returning from the Middle East have expressed strong discontent over their country's obsession with endless wars, adding they "know subconsciously or consciously" that they were fed with lies and were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan for "selfish interests," out of mere political considerations.

The senior director also blasted the United States for recently stoking military tensions with Russia over Ukraine, accusing Washington of violating its promise not to expand eastward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In particular, he lashed out at the U.S. military buildup targeting China, which he observed has accelerated since the U.S. "pivot to Asia" strategy in 2012, and at its arms sales to Taiwan, China.

Oliver Stone is world-renowned for directing movies such as Platoon, Wall Street, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July. He is also an author and historian.

In his latest documentary, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, he delved into the unanswered mysterious behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.

"I'm not sure I'm in charge of this entire government because they're doing things off the shelf ... nobody bucks them (the intelligence agencies and the military), nobody challenges them, nobody," the filmmaker said, quoting Kennedy's words.

In his eyes, the country's economy is heavily reliant on its military-industrial complex, and its politics lies in the hands of intelligence agencies and the military.

This, he said, is due to "the military Keynesian policies coming up right after World War II," which kept U.S. administrations "militarizing the economy, pumping money into weapons" to sustain the economy, he explained.

"America has always prepared for war," he said, adding that the United States avoids war only when "there's more money in preparing for war than going to war."

For his son Sean Stone, the United States has positioned itself in its endless wars on terror as a unipolar superpower. Born in 1984, the younger Stone recalled that he "grew up really at the end of the Cold War."

"It was like my consciousness was basically coming out of the end of the Cold War right into a whole series of wars in the 1990s," he said.

The young filmmaker noted that he believes that in the wake of the Cold War, there is so-called "American supremacy," which has basically prevailed so far. "We could do what we wanted to, and obviously what happened in the wake of 9/11 was, as we know, the war on terror, (an) endless war."

"There were no boundaries: any country could now be targeted as a host of terrorists, and you could have drone strikes, and we just saw this continuous perpetuation," he said.

He mentioned the US involvement in Syria and Afghanistan.

"And of course, what happened? You end up with populations that are being displaced. They go into Europe. It creates more chaos for the economies of the European countries. Then you get more xenophobia, more anti-islamophobia," he said.

"What's happening is exactly what my dad pointed out, when you start to destabilize countries, and you don't allow them to have peace, to have viable working economies for their people, then you know people are displaced, and it creates chaos in the countries that are absorbing them," the young filmmaker added. Enditem
A HARARE man has filed a Constitutional Court (ConCourt) application against President Emmerson Mnangagwas appointment of Patrick Chinamasa as director and chairman of the embattled Air Zimbabwe arguing that it was inconsistent with the Constitution.

Mnangagwa appointed Chinamasa to head the AirZimb board in June 2019.

Mnangagwa is cited as the first respondent while prominent Harare lawyer Edwin Manikai is the second respondent according to papers filed at the ConCourt on December 17.

In the application, Tichaona Mupasiri, indicated in his founding affidavit that no relief was being sought from Manikai as he is cited to assist the court in determining the matter in the interest of justice.

He said at the core of the application was Mnangagwas actions concerning the affairs of SMM Holdings (Private) Limited (SMM), AirZim (Private) Limited and Hwange Colliery Company (HCCL).

This application is concerned about holding public office bearers to account for their conduct and ensuring that the first respondents conduct is subject to public scrutiny and interrogation, he said.

Mnangagwa and Manikai have not yet responded to the application.

In his application, Mupasiri said Mnangagwa appointed Chinamasa to head AirZim, a company whose control and management was divested from its directors and shareholders.

He said the control was vested in an administrator appointed by the Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs minister pursuant to the operation of the Reconstruction of State-Indebted Insolvent Companies Act 2005.

By engaging in a self-help scheme, interposing himself as a shareholder of Air Zimbabwe, the first respondent failed to fulfil his obligations in terms of s90(1) and s90(2)(c) by clothing himself with the right to amend to the Reconstruction Act that specifically vests the control and direction of the company under the administrator, the court papers read.

By knowingly and intentionally appointing Chinamasa to be a chairman of Air Zimbabwe, a juristic entity in its own right, the first respondent had no title to do and usurped the power and authority of shareholders of the company, to the extent that the then Companies Act could operate concurrently with the Reconstruction of State-Indebted Insolvent Companies Act.

By unilaterally and arbitrarily involving himself in the affairs of Air Zimbabwe (under reconstruction), the first respondent knowingly and intentionally offended the fundamental rights and freedoms of shareholders and creditors involved in the affairs of the company by appointing a representative of the company who was not accountable to shareholders but him.

Mupasiri argued that Mnangagwa failed to take cognisance of the fact that the right to appoint directors fell within the scope of the exercise of fundamental rights which was inconsistent with duties imposed on him under the Constitution rendering his conduct unconstitutional and invalid.

By allowing and actively participating in the appointment of Chinamasa whose effect was to create an absurdity of a company having two centres of control, the first respondent acted ultra vires s6 of the Reconstruction of State-Indebted Insolvent Companies Act and in so doing failed to uphold, defend, obey and respect the Constitution

He argued that Mnangagwa had constructive knowledge that in relation to SMM, at the time he assumed the office of President, that shares had already been issued to Nicdale Investment, a purported proxy for the State as contemplated in the Reconstruction Act.

Notwithstanding this knowledge, (he) has failed, refused and neglected to ensure that no agency can exist between an administrator in respect of a reconstructed company as would have been the case prior to the issuance of any shares to the State as prescribed by the Act.

In the premise, the failure to divest the administrator of the control and management of a reconstructed SMM constitutes a material violation of the Reconstruction Act and the Constitution in terms of s90(1) and s90(2)(c) of the Constitution as the role of the administrator in relation to SMM during the first respondents tenure has no legal authority to support it, he said.

This conduct has the effect of undermining the doctrines of separation of powers and equality on which the rule of law as set out in s90(2)(c) is premised. Accordingly, the first respondent failed to fulfil his obligations in terms of s90(1) as well. Newsday
SELF-EXILED former minister Jonathan Moyo has withdrawn an offer to train MDC Alliance polling agents ahead of the elections expected in 2023, claiming the opposition party failed to take a clear position on the proposal.

Moyo said the MDC Alliance failed to make its position clear after an online publication said the offer had divided the opposition party, with some named officials said to have vowed to resist it.

Zanu PF officials ridiculed Moyo.

The former Higher and Tertiary Education minister in September offered to support MDC Alliance polling agents at all polling stations in the Tsholotsho constituency and to train 44 000 polling agents.

When neither the mentioned senior MDC Alliance officials nor the party clarified the situation, on the back of growing messages on various social media platforms that were sharing the article coupled with direct messages that were asking for my position, I wrote to the MDC Alliance secretary-general (Charlton Hwende) on October 11, 2021, withdrawing my offer to train MDC Alliance polling agents in Tsholotsho and to train the partys 44 000 polling agents for the 2023 elections, citing the partys silence, Moyo said in an emailed response.

The MDC Alliance was found wanting in the 2023 elections after failing to field polling agents in several polling stations.

The opposition party rejected the 2018 election results, but admitted that it did not have data from a fifth of the nearly 11 000 polling stations due to lack of polling agents.

My offer was based on having previously trained polling agents in particular, but generally, after having been directly involved in six elections  four of them as a candidate in 2005, 2008, 2013 and 2015  and three of them as Zanu PFs publicity campaign manager in 2000, 2002 and 2013, Moyo added.

I also managed and co-ordinated the publicity campaign of the Yes Vote in the referendum of the 2000 draft constitution. Besides this direct participation in elections, I have run seminars and given numerous lectures and written articles and two books on elections in Zimbabwe.

Hwende said the opposition party was still considering Moyos offer.

We took note of the offer to assist Zimbabweans in defending their vote through training and also offering assistance. I have talked to a number of people who have also offered some form of help and once the modalities are in place, we will reach out to him and other Zimbabweans that have offered assistance, Hwende said in a telephone interview.

Moyo, however, said without trained polling agents, it was difficult to back claims of election rigging.

And sadly, while it is now taken as a given that every election in Zimbabwe since 1980, but particularly since 2000, has been stolen, the fact is that this axiomatic belief is not supported by any empirical evidence because there is none.


ZAPU president Sibangilizwe Nkomo has dismissed the notion that the party had no support and could not win elections as it was stuck in the past and basking in yesteryear glory.

Nkomo, son of the late Vice-President Joshua, who was elected Zapu president recently, made the statements at an event held to celebrate the partys 60th anniversary, recently.

Zapu was launched on December, 17, 1961.

Despite its rich history, Zapu has performed badly in recent elections.

In 2019, the opposition party initiated a renewal and rebranding exercise that sought to retire the old guard to pave way for young blood.

There is no doubt that there is no party with a past as glorious as that of Zapu. We have a rich history and that history is a serious heritage for our people. Some will tell us that we are stuck in the past when we tell the story of Zapu.

It is not that we are stuck, we cannot afford to be, Nkomo said. Nkomo said Zapu would continue celebrating its past without shame.

Had they (Zanu PF) not been jealous, they would not have confiscated our archives. They would not have killed the makers of that history in genocide. They would not be claiming the exploits of our fathers.

They would not be embellishing their own history and they would not use the State media to tell a one-sided story of Zimbabwe.

Government seized properties and records belonging to Zipra, the military wing of Zapu during the liberation struggle, after accusing the opposition party of plotting to unseat it.

Among the seized records and materials are cassettes with original recordings of Zapu war songs.

Nkomo added: Our history has been dwarfing theirs since the day we came back from the war. As a result, we will not keep quiet. Zapu history is our legacy. Zapu history is our heritage.

We will speak about our history because it is a clear template of the values and ideals that we stand for.

After fighting so hard for this country, it is a shame that the country is in this State. Newsday
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Oil ends Monday 3% lower amid omicron-inspired restrictions

By Myra P. Saefong and Mark DeCambre / MarketWatch



SAN FRANCISCO

Petroleumworld 12 20 2021

Crude-oil prices fell sharply on Monday, but ended off of session lows, as the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and the imposition of new mobility restrictions in parts of the world, amplified worries about demand.

Oil prices are getting pummeled again as sentiment turns south and countries ponder deepening restrictions and lockdowns, wrote Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, in a note.

Politics also were playing a part to undercut demand for crude after Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said that he wouldnt lend support to U.S. President Joe Bidens key $2 trillion spending bill.

Manchin told Fox News Sunday that after five-and-half months of talks within his own party, he couldnt vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just cant. Ive tried everything humanly possible. I cant get there.

The news led Goldman Sachs over the weekend to again cut its forecast for U.S. growth, citing lack of traction on Bidens Build Back Better bill.

Meanwhile, a number of countries have imposed new travel restrictions to help limit the spread of the fast-moving, novel omicron variant of coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The Netherlands on Sunday reimposed a lockdown, with all nonessential shops, bars and restaurants closed until mid-January and Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin also announced new restrictions.

None of this bodes well for crude demand in the first quarter of the year. Its just a question of whether OPEC+ will hold out until the January meeting to pull the trigger or pile further pain on the global economy this year, wrote Erlam, referring to the group of energy producers including Russia and members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Against that backdrop, West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery CLG22, -2.25% CL00, -2.25%, the most actively traded U.S. contract, ended the day down $2.11 , or 3%, at $68.61 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after trading as low as $66.12. WTI on Friday put in a 1.1% weekly decline.

February Brent crude BRNG22, +0.69%, the global benchmark, lost $2 , or 2.7%, to settle at $71.52 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, following last weeks 2.2% weekly decline. Mondays settlements were the lowest for the most actively traded WTI and Brent contracts since Dec. 3.



OPEC+s output continues to be below agreed upon targets, according to a report from Reuters. OPEC+ compliance reportedly stood at 117% in November, up from 116% in the month before.

Earlier in December, OPEC+, decided to stick to a previously agreed upon plan of hiking output by 400,000 barrels per day in January, but left options open to make immediate adjustments, as needed, amid the new phase of the pandemic.

Natural-gas futures NGF22, +4.01%, meanwhile, jumped 3.9% to close at $3.834 per million British thermal units. Natural gas soared to a 13-year higher earlier this fall, then retreated, remaining down nearly 16% in the month to date.

The latest forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are now showing the likelihood of below-normal temperatures spreading from the Northwest across the West and upper Midwest over the next two weeks, said Brian Steinkamp, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric, in a note.

This could see some upward pressure on gas prices finally arrive in the form of increased heating demand in whats heretofore been a warmer-than-usual December across most of the U.S., he wrote.

Meanwhile, January gasoline futures RBF22, -0.76% fell 1.5% to close at $2.09 a gallon, while January heating oil HOF22, -1.34% dropped 2.1% to $2.173 a gallon.

______________________________________
Venezuelas Guaido gets boost

in fight over $1 billion gold

Gaby Oraa/Bloomberg



Top court allows Venezuelas Juan Guaido to assert control of $1 billion gold



- Top judges accept U.K. government recognition of Guaido

- Bank of England is storing Venezuelan bullion in its vaults

By Jonathan Browning / Bloomberg News

LONDON

Petroleumworld 12 21 2021



The U.K.s top judges ruled in favor of Venezuelas Juan Guaido, paving the way for the opposition leader to assert control over more than $1 billion of gold stored in the Bank of Englands vaults.

The Supreme Court accepted the U.K.s clear and unequivocal recognition of Guaido as president, in a ruling on Monday. The judges however, said a lower court will still need to consider whether Venezuelan court decisions should also be taken into account in deciding who ultimately controls the gold.

The long-running case has been heard by multiple U.K. courts since Venezuelas central bank sued the BOE for access to the bullion, saying it was urgently needed in a joint effort with the United Nations Development Fund to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile Guaido has seen his support falter as President Nicolas Maduro continues to hold onto power and the ruling party dominates at the regional elections.

Battle for Venezuelan Gold Starts at U.K.s Top Court

The international recognition comes at critical time for Guaido in Venezuela, with allies starting to doubt the ongoing viability of his interim government, said Luis Vicente Leon, head of local pollster Datanalisis.

We have to remember there are only a few concrete things the interim government can control and Venezuelas resources abroad are one of those few things, Leon said.

While the lower court was ordered to consider the impact of Venezuelan rulings, the judges said that if such rulings assumed Guaido was not president then those judicial decisions cannot be recognized or given effect by courts in this jurisdiction because to do so would conflict with the view of the United Kingdom executive.

Sarosh Zaiwalla, a lawyer for the Maduro-led central bank, warned that foreign governments would think twice about storing assets in the U.K. after the ruling.

This decision relied on a 19th-century doctrine and it could have the effect of validating a new approach to regime change, which has potentially serious and adverse ramifications for the U.K. as a safe repository for sovereign assets, Zaiwalla said.

The opposition has said that if it gets control of the bullion, it plans to safeguard the gold for the time being, as part of Guaidos efforts to secure Venezuelas financial assets abroad.

We look forward to the opportunity to demonstrate that the Venezuelan decisions relied upon by the Maduro side deserve no recognition by an English court as they are not the decisions of an independent judiciary respecting the rule of law, said Jane Wessel, a lawyer for Guaidos administration at Arnold & Porter.

 With assistance by Nicolle Yapur
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The Lok Sabha on Tuesday was adjourned for the day amid Opposition's continuous protests over Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni, however, the government was able to introduce the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill 2021 amid din.

This Bill seeks to increase the marriage age of women from 18 to 21 years but later, Minister Irani asked the Chair to refer the bill to Standing Committee.

Soon after the House resumed at 2 p.m., BJP member Rajendra Agrawal who was on the Chair, allowed Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani to move the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill 2021 amid strong protests by the Opposition bench.

Introducing the Bill, Irani said that it was a step towards gender equality and empowerment.

Giving data, she further said that 20 lakh marriages of underage women have been prevented and the voices that emerged make it clear that there should be equality for marriage.

Opposing the government's move to introduce the Bill, the Congress Party floor leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said they continued to demand the removal of MoS Home Ajay Mishra. "We are not against any individual, but we are with the farmers," Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury added.

He also said that the government has brought the Bill without consultation with political parties and with the states. "Why is the government bulldozing the Parliamentary norms and introducing Bills without consultations with the political parties?" he asked. This Bill should be sent to the standing committee for further scrutiny, Chowdhury demanded.

TMC Member Saugata Roy and AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi opposed the Bill. "An 18-year-old can vote and elect a Prime Minister, have sexual relations under POCSO Act but cannot marry. What message are we sending?" Owaisi said.

Indian Union Muslim League Member E.T. Mohammed Basheer said that it was an attack on personal law while the NCP Member Supriya Sule and K. Kanimozhi of the DMK opposed the manner in which the Bill was introduced in the House. Both women MPs from the Opposition bench argued for stakeholder consultations and feedback from civil society.

"The Bill needs to be scrutinized, I condemn the way this Government brings all the Bills," Supriya Sule added.

Responding to them, Irani said, "We are 75 years late in a democracy to give equal rights to enter into matrimony. To say that rural women cannot exercise their right is an insult to them," the Union Minister further added.

Meanwhile, Union Minister for State Arjun Ram Meghwal said that the Bills to amend the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949, the Cost and Works Accountants Act, 1959 and the Company Secretaries Act, 1980, should also be referred to the Standing Committee.
Bosses from the world's two biggest plane makers have called on the US government to delay the rollout of new 5G phone services, BBC reported.

In a letter, top executives at Boeing and Airbus warned that the technology could have "an enormous negative impact on the aviation industry".

Concerns have previously been raised that C-Band spectrum 5G wireless could interfere with aircraft electronics, the report said.

US telecoms giants AT&T and Verizon are due to deploy 5G services on January 5.

"5G interference could adversely affect the ability of aircraft to safely operate," said the bosses of Boeing and Airbus Americas, Dave Calhoun and Jeffrey Knittel, in a joint letter to US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

The letter cited research by trade group Airlines for America which found that if the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) 5G rules had been in effect in 2019, about 345,000 passenger flights and 5,400 cargo flights would have faced delays, diversions or cancellations.

The aviation industry and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have raised concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft equipment like radio altitude meters, the report added.

"Airbus and Boeing have been working with other aviation industry stakeholders in the US to understand potential 5G interference with radio altimeters," Airbus said in a statement.

This month, the FAA issued airworthiness directives warning 5G interference could result in flight diversions, saying it would provide more information before the January 5 rollout date.
The New Zealand government on Tuesday urged parents and caregivers to consider protecting their children aged 5 to 11 against Covid-19 with a suitable jab to be unveiled in January next year.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said that Cabinet has agreed with the advice from the Technical Advisory Group off the back of Medsafe approval to vaccinate children between 5 to 11 years old, reports Xinhua news agency.

"A key focus of the government is to keep everyone in New Zealand safe from the Covid-19 pandemic," Hipkins said.

According to the Ministry of Health, the children vaccination program will begin from January 17, 2022.

There are 476,000 children between the mentioned age group nationwide, who will become eligible to get their first dose from this date, and their second dose at least eight weeks later.

However, the interval can be safely shortened to a minimum of 21 days if needed, the Ministry said.

The New Zealand government strongly recommends parents have their children vaccinated.

"In the most recent outbreak, 24 percent of cases have been aged 11 or under. The government is strongly encouraging parents to have their children vaccinated against Covid-19, but I want to be clear that this is a choice for parents," Hipkins added.
Edison, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/21/2021 -- The Latest research study released by HTF MI "Global Rare Earth Magnets 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 Galaxy Magnetic, Adams Magnetic Products, Daido Electronics, Innuovo Magnetics, Yunsheng Company, AT&M, Magsuper & Earth- Panda etc.



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Browse market information, tables and figures extent in-depth TOC on "Rare Earth Magnets Market by Application (High Efficiency Motors, Electronics, Turbine Generators), by Product Type (, Samarium Cobalt (SmCo)), Business scope, Manufacturing and Outlook  Estimate to 2025".



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At last, all parts of the Global Rare Earth Magnets 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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On the basis of report- titled segments and sub-segment of the market are highlighted below:

Global Rare Earth Magnets Market By Application/End-User (Value and Volume from 2021 to 2026) : High Efficiency Motors, Electronics, Turbine Generators



Market By Type (Value and Volume from 2021 to 2026) : ,Samarium Cobalt (SmCo)



Global Rare Earth Magnets Market by Key Players: Galaxy Magnetic, Adams Magnetic Products, Daido Electronics, Innuovo Magnetics, Yunsheng Company, AT&M, Magsuper & Earth- Panda

Geographically, this report is segmented into some key Regions, with manufacture, depletion, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Rare Earth Magnets 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 Rare Earth Magnets 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.



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Some of the important question for stakeholders and business professional for expanding their position in the Global Rare Earth Magnets 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 Rare Earth Magnets movement showcase by applications, types and regions?

Q 4.What segments grab most noteworthy attention in Rare Earth Magnets Market in 2020 and beyond?

Q 5. Who are the significant players confronting and developing in Rare Earth Magnets Market?



For More Information Read Table of Content @: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/3192182-global-rare-earth-magnets-market-6



Key poles of the TOC:

Chapter 1 Global Rare Earth Magnets Market Business Overview

Chapter 2 Major Breakdown by Type [, Samarium Cobalt (SmCo)]

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.
A new genus and species of dromaeosaurid dinosaur has been discovered by a team of paleontologists from the University of Bath and the University of Portsmouth.

The newly-identified dinosaur species roamed our planet during the Early Cretaceous epoch, between 130 and 125 million years ago.

Named Vectiraptor greeni, the ancient creature measured about 2.5-3 m (8.2-9.8 feet) long.

It was a member of Dromaeosauridae, a very large family of feathered predatory dinosaurs.

Vectiraptor greenis fossilized remains (two associated vertebrae and a partial sacrum) were collected from the Wessex Formation at Compton Bay, Isle of Wight.

During the Early Cretaceous, England supported a highly diverse dinosaur assemblage, said Dr. Nicholas Longrich, a paleontologist in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath, and his colleagues.

Perhaps the most diverse assemblage comes from the Wessex Formation of the Wealden Group, on the Isle of Wight.

While complete remains are rare, the fauna has been sampled and studied for over a century, and includes both fossils and footprints, with around 20 dinosaur species now known. This high diversity is surprising because Europe was isolated from the rest of the world by seas for much of the Cretaceous.

According to the team, Vectiraptor greeni closely resembles Early Cretaceous eudromaeosaurs from North America, suggesting a faunal exchange between Europe and North America.

The diverse Early Cretaceous dinosaur assemblage found in England and Europe resulted from dispersal from North America, Asia, and West Gondwana, likely involving both land bridges and oceanic dispersal, the paleontologists said.

Europe served as a biotic crossroads in the Early Cretaceous, allowing faunal interchange between landmasses.

A paper describing the discovery was published in the journal Cretaceous Research.

_____

Nicholas R. Longrich et al. A new dromaeosaurid dinosaur from the Wessex Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Barremian) of the Isle of Wight, and implications for European palaeobiogeography. Cretaceous Research, published online December 17, 2021; doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2021.105123
Page Content

The Collective Prevention Services (CPS), a department in the Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labour (Ministry VSA), said on Monday that the number of COVID-19 cases are on the rise and therefore calls on members of the community to get vaccinated; for those who already have been vaccinated twice, to get boosted with the booster vaccine.





CPS advises to continue to practice preventive public health measures such as handwashing, wearing your mask in most indoor public places, cough and sneeze etiquette, and social distancing; let fresh air in if you meet indoors; get tested and self-isolate once you test positive. Do not provide opportunities for the further transmission of the virus.





Families and friends meeting up this Christmas weekend should keep gatherings small.





On November 26, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated Omicron a variant of concern.





Everyone ages 18 and older should get a COVID-19 booster shot. Persons who have received their COVID-19 vaccination series (two vaccines, first and second dose), at least three (3) months after completing the aforementioned, should get their booster. The booster vaccine remains the best protection against the new variant and is more effective than two doses alone.





International research data so far suggest an increase in overall reinfection rates of persons who already have had COVID-19, alongside an increase in first infections.





Scientific research has shown that COVID-19 vaccines protect against serious illness and death should you get infected with the disease. Getting vaccinated is a personal choice, however, strongly consider protecting your health, that of your family and members of your community.





The CPS office at the Vineyard Office Complex is open for COVID-19 vaccinations up until Thursday, December 23.





The CPS office at the Vineyard Office Complex will be closed Friday, December 24; Saturday, December 25; and Sunday, December 26. Besides regular office operations, this also includes COVID-19 testing and COVID-19 vaccinations.





Persons who need assistance can call 914 on either one of those days between 8.00 AM and 12.00 PM.





After the holiday period, persons who have flu-like symptoms should get tested.
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Cuban special event

Members of the Radio Club of Sancti Spiritus together with the Radio Club of Trinidad will activate a SOTA (Summits on the Air) signing as T46SB between 0000z, March 8th and 0000z, March 9th, in the La Sabina-Banao Reserve, in the center of the province Sancti Spiritus, forming part of the Mountains of Guamuhaya.

Activity is to commemorate the 99th anniversary of the 1st radio transmission from the Sancti Spiritus Province made from the town of Tuinicu. They are also celebrating International Women's Day.

Operations will be on 80/40/30/20/17/15/12/10/2 meters using CW, SSB and FM.

Operators are Emilio/CO6XE, Manuel/CO6SE and Andy/CL6WYZ.

All QSL submissions will be made digitally. Only QSLs will be sent to those who request it through the application form. The log of the contacts made will be stored and published on the following Web site: https://frcss.cubava.cu/sota/log

OPDX
Finland's radio hams send gift to Icelandic hams The national amateur radio society of Finland, SRAL, has presented Iceland's IRA with an engraved KBX-380 Morse paddle to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the IRA's foundation



A translation of the IRA post reads:



Erik Finskas OH2LAK (TF3EY) brought Jonas Bjarnason TF3JB chair IRA a gift from our sister organisation in Finland SRAL on the occasion of the organisations 75th anniversary. The gift was received in Skeljanes on 16 December.



The gift is engraved KBX-380 Morse paddle made by a well-known Finnish radio amateur, Tapio Hirvioski, OH1KB. The gift was accompanied by a letter from Markka Tuhkanen, OH4UI Secretary General of SRAL with the following text:



Sincere congratulations on the 75th anniversary of Icelandic radio amateurs!



On behalf of all Finnish radio amateurs, we would like to congratulate our dear friends in Iceland.



Icelanders have a special place in Finland's mind and when we meet we immediately find a connection. Courage, independence, and perhaps a little stubbornness, along with a good sense of humor, are qualities that unite us .



As a pandemic now prevents us from celebrating large stages together, we can only hope to meet soon to celebrate together in a larger group.



May Erik Finskas OH2LAK / TF3EY be a good representative of Finnish radio amateurs in Iceland.



We wish all our Icelandic members all the best, a number of connections and good telecommunications conditions.



Jonas thanked Erik for his warm greetings and said that he accepted the gift on behalf of the association with pleasure and thanked the kind heart from our members in Finland to the members of IRA.



Board of IRA



Source IRA https://tinyurl.com/IARU-Iceland
When the time for them to leave my residence, he wants to see my dog, Rexy, his friend from New Delhi. All present at that day were surprised!

by Admiral Ravindra C Wijegunaratne

My mobile telephone rang around noon on 8th December. It was overseas call from Dubai our former Army Commander General Mahesh Senanayake  Sir did you here the news? General . and madam no-more. Helicopter crash !

Mahesh knew my close relationship with General Rawat. We did year-long National Defence College course (NDC) at New Delhi in year 2010, eleven years ago.

I switched on TV and turn to NDTV Channel. They were giving details on this tragic helicopter crash near Ooty, few kilometers away from Indian Defence Services Staff College, (DSSC), Wellington, Nilgiris, Tamilnadu.. Indias first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, PVSM,UYSM, AVSM, YSM, SM, VSM, ADC (senior most serving military officer of India), his wife Mrs Madhulika Rawat and eleven others, most of them were Generals personal staff. All died at crash site, except one, who later succumb to injuries. We had sixty Indian Army brigadiers doing the course with me. I sat next him in auditorium to listen to eminent Indian scholars, retired top military commanders,diplomats and businessmen. Our friendships extended to families also when my family was invited to dinner at his place. Madhurika was a friendly and graceful lady.

Madhulika Raje Singh, descendant of an erstwhile princely family, she was daughter of Kunwar Mrigendra Singh, an Indian National Congress member of local assembly. She has educated in Gwalior and graduated in Psychology at Delhi University. She married Bipin in 1985 and couple had two daughters Kritika and Tarini.

As Chief of Army Staff of India visiting Sri Lanka on 14th May 2018

Before he was appointed as Indias first CDS, he was the Army Chief for three years. In May 2018 he visited Sri Lanka as Indias Chief of Army Staff (COAS) on invitation of our Army Commander ( then) General Mahesh Senanayake. I was the CDS of Sri Lanka then. He has only one request to Mahesh, that to keep his last night of visit free to visit my home.So, as agreed, I hosted him at my official Residence. He and Madhulika were so happy and relaxed. Navy band played beautiful old Hindi songs, practiced earlier under guidance of my wife Yamuna. It was a lovely evening with delicious food, drinks , great company and melodious old Hindi songs.At end General wants thank all the members of the SLN band personally.

Two ladies Madhulika and Yamuna





With my dog Rexy

When the time for them to leave my residence, he wants to see my dog, Rexy, his friend from New Delhi. All present at that day were surprised! He could remember the name of the dog he met eight years back in New Delhi. That was his sharp mind.

Bipin was born on 16th March 1958 in Pauri town of Pauri Garhwal district ( present day Uttarakhand State).His family was serving in the Indian Army for multiple generations. His father, Luxman Sing Rawat, from 11 Gorkha rifles, retired as Deputy Chief of Army Staff of Indian Army in 1988, rose to rank of Lieutenant General. His mother was daughter of Kishan Singh Parmar, ex- Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Uttarakashi.

What he saw, all pomp and pageantry was nothing new to him as his father was the Deputy Chief of the Indian Army. He was the recipient of Sword of Honour from Indian Military Academy (IMA) , Deheradhun. He was a true follower of Chatwode motto - which is written in Golden letters at IMA hall of fame,

The safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, alway and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next. Your own ease, comfort and safety come last , always and every time.

Dear General Sir ! You lived to your promise through out your life. You are a role model for all juniors.

As a result of your visit to Sri Lanka, you arranged Sri Lankan military personnel with their spouses to visit Bodh Gaya every year. You ensured Indian Air Force largest transport aircraft C-17 Globemaster available for this pilgrimage of our men every year. We as Buddhists, we appreciate this gesture with highest respect.

Ironically, the last gift you sent me through Vice Admiral Anil Kumar Chawla, former Flag Officer Command-In -Chief, Southern Naval Command last month was beautiful white marble Buddha statue. Its in our shrine room at a prominence place. When my wife Yamuna and myself see this statue every day, we will remember General Bipin and Madhulika. Om Shanthi !

The funeral

No time to wait. I decided to attend the funeral of my dear friend and his wife. Media indicated that funeral fixed to 11th December at Brar Square crematorium in Delhi Army Cantonment. I booked a ticket on Colombo-New Delhi Srilankan airlines flight on 10th. The Chief of Defence Staff and Army Commander General Shavendra Silva also took the same flight to New Delhi to attend the funeral representing Sri Lanka Government. It was a appreciative gesture by Sri Lankan Military at this hour of grief of India. Our CDS sat next to Indian Defence Minister Hon. Rajinath Singh, during funeral parade.

The mortal remains of General Bipin and Madhulika laid side by side in single Gun Carriage left their official residence at K Kamraj Marg to Brar Square crematorium. 800 personnel from Indian Army, Navy and Air Force took part in parade. With Tri - Forces band taking the lead.

I saw some thing I have never seen in my four years and eight months stay in New Delhi (as Defence Adviser 3 years and 8 months and one year doing NDC). Thousands of people carrying tricolor Indian National Flags and photos of General Bipin and Madhulika following funeral parade amid chants of jab tak suraj chand rehega. Rawat ji ka maam rehega and Indian Army Zindabad and others stand on roadside showered flower petals as convoy passes. General was very popular with General public as tough military leader who protect his country with vision and wisdom.

Two daughters of General Bipin and Madhulika conducted the last rites of their parents. Seventeen Gun Salutes boomed into air befitting to senior most Indian Military officer who died in uniform. Fire in funeral pyre mixed their soul into thick air of New Delhi winter.

Next day morning the ashes of General and wife taken to Haridwar (Haro - God, Dawar - door, Haridwar - door to heaven) and immersed in Great Ganga River by their children.

We salute you General , dear friend of Sri Lanka.

(The writer retired from Sri Lanka Navy, Former Chief of Defence Staff)
The Russian people have long been leaders in great military achievements and scientific innovation; now is the time for Russia to utilize the latest, most advanced military brain-based technology to defuse these dangerous rising tensions.

by Dr. David Leffler

President Vladimir Putin! You are amassing (soon perhaps) up to 175,000 Russian military personnel on Ukraine's border. Are you afraid that Ukraine and Georgia will become NATO members, threatening Russia's sovereignty?

The presence of these Russian troops is triggering a response within the international community that could easily become volatile. Tensions are also simultaneously rising between the US and other countries such as China, North Korea and Iran. These hotspots could quickly escalate into global catastrophe.

The Russian people have long been leaders in great military achievements and scientific innovation; now is the time for Russia to utilize the latest, most advanced military brain-based technology to defuse these dangerous rising tensions. We bring to the attention of your people a field-tested, scientifically-verified means to not only alleviate Russia's fears, and protect Russian soil and its people, but, mostly importantly, to replace the longstanding fear of the entire international community with a peaceful, win-win solution for all humanity.

Russia can not only protect its sovereignty, but also create lasting world peace. What a magnificent and historic achievement, that will distinguish Russia as the great peace-maker, for our generation and many in the future.

How can this be done? By implementing Invincible Defense Technology (IDT) on a global level. And the cost? Highly cost effective. The cost would be less than that of 2-3 modern fighter jets.

What is IDT? IDT involves large groups practicing the non-religious Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the advanced TM techniques that harness group brain power. This is a proven procedure to produce an orderly, coherent field effect radiating orderliness and harmony in the proximity of the group. By elevating collective consciousness and social orderliness, people within the field effect find that they are now able to work together, to find solutions to otherwise insoluble problems such as civil and global conflict, crime, and terrorism. Google an online video, "An Important Message for All Military Leaders" by John Hagelin, a Harvard-trained Ph.D. quantum physicist, it explains in detail how this works.

President Putin! As Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces you have, in fact, already taken the most difficult and expensive step necessary to deploy IDT on a global level. By assembling a large group of military personnel in one place, you have surpassed the minimum number of personnel necessary to create a global super-radiance effect. This effect was documented in a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Offender Rehabilitation when three large groups of IDT experts gathered together.

The study reports the facts: Terrorism-related casualties decreased 72%, international conflict decreased 32%, and overall global violence was reduced. To produce this positive global effect only the square root of 1% of a worlds population was needed to practice the advanced TM program in group twice a day. At the time of this demonstration the largest group was only about 7,000 people, a small number compared to the military personnel you are assembling. Yet, these groups of advanced TM meditators were able to produce profound positive effects on a global scale.

Traditionally the military is the most disciplined and organized aspect of society. President Putin! Imagine how your highly-trained and dedicated group of 175,000 Russian warriors could use their overwhelming orderly brain power to create perpetual peace as a permanently established coherence-creating group. By assembling Russia's large military force, you are perfectly positioned to now gain the strategic IDT advantage, winning you a glorious place in human history as the creator of a peaceful world. Even if President Joe Biden were to decide today to deploy IDT it would be difficult for the US military to quickly gather such a large group in one place.

This brings up an important point regarding my allegiances. I am a patriotic American citizen who served nine years in the US Air Force. In case any readers question my motives in urging Russia and other nations to deploy IDT, be aware that an IDT system cannot be used for nefarious purposes, either against the United States or any other country. IDT can only act for order and harmony. Therefore, I have no qualms about urging any country to deploy IDT and create lasting world peace. Further, any country that deploys IDT on a global scale will benefit ALL countries, including the United States  and Russia.

IDT is currently in various stages of deployment worldwide (see Google search on "New Solution for Latin America: Transforming Lives and Changing Nations" and a short online video "Creating Peace in Ukraine on Vimeo"). However, as of this writing, no national leader has demonstrated the foresight to deploy a large, globally operational IDT group.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Five-Star General and President of the United States said: "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." Let us hope that history will prove him right. Extensive scientific research indicates that deployment of IDT by either a military or civilian group (such as the one being established in Cambodia, Google "Group practice of Transcendental Meditation dramatically reduced violence in Cambodia, new study shows") can create the conditions for all people to enjoy peace.

President Vladimir Putin! You are a powerful leader in the global community! Bring honor to yourself and your nation! Be the first to deploy IDT on a global scale and thereby grant perpetual peace to our troubled planet. A Nobel Peace Prize and the gratitude of all humanity awaits you.

President Vladimir Putin! Act now! History will record you as the worlds greatest leader and a peaceful human civilization is assured for generations to come.

About the Author: Dr. David Leffler has a Ph.D. in Consciousness-Based Military Defense and has served as an Associate of the Proteus Management Group at the Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College. Currently, he serves as the Executive Director at CAMS and lectures (Google also: "New Military Science Is Warmly Received in Moscow") and writes worldwide about IDT. Dr. Leffler's editorial "Creating an Invincible Military" was featured in Fox News.
Gabriel Boric's lack of determination to carry out radical change aimed at improving living conditions will be exposed.

The candidate of Apruebro Dignidad, Gabriel Boric has won the presidential election with 56% of the votes. In absolute terms, this is a record majority, with some 4.6 million votes cast for Boric, putting him almost 1 million votes ahead of the pro-Pinochet candidate, Juan Antonio Kast, who obtained 44%.

After the low turnout in the first round (47%), the Apruebo Dignidad campaign managed to mobilise a significant number of votes in working-class and popular districts, where it obtained a wide advantage, as in Puente Alto (70%) and Maipu (66%), with the turnout rising to 55% nationally in the second round. Compared with wealthy districts, where the vote increased by about 4 points on average, participation increased considerably more in poor urban districts, reaching a 10-point increase. With a correct class instinct, workers and youth mobilized to defeat Kast. In total, there were 1.25 million more votes cast in the second round.

In Antofagasta, in the north of the country, the second round result produced a surprise, with Boric gaining a comfortable 20 point majority. In the north, the populist candidate Parisi had come out on top in the first round, before declaring his support for Kast. But despite this, Boric managed to win a significant part of that vote, recapturing a traditionally left-wing vote in that mining region.

The millennial president

The international press has taken to describing the president-elect as the left-wing millennial who won Chiles elections. At 35 years old, Boric is the youngest president in the history of the country. Some of the press highlighted his social-democratic programme, in contrast to the conservative and reactionary ideas of Kast.

Comparisons with other groupings representative of a new left such as Podemos (Spain) and Syriza (Greece) are already commonplace. Indeed, Aprueblo Dignidad, the governing coalition of the Broad Front with the Communist Party, will have a left-reformist character, in a time of capitalist crisis in which capitalism has no margin for reforms. These are new political groupings that have erupted onto the electoral scene in the wake of the debacle of the traditional parties that governed in previous decades. They summon the hopes of layers of the youth and workers who desire to see profound reforms carried out, but these progressive governments fail to overcome the straightjacket of capitalism in crisis.

In the current context, after two years of pandemic and economic crisis, there is very little room for such a government to deliver significant reforms. Rather, forecasters are predicting an economic slowdown in 2022.

In any case, Boric has not even presented a programme of profound reforms. He talks about fiscal responsibility, and change through slow but firm steps. In his programme, he insists:

Our Government will have as a priority recouping a trajectory of credible fiscal consolidation, with a gradual and sustained reduction of the structural fiscal deficit.

He wants to prove himself to be a good manager of the business interests of the capitalist class and to thus put the bourgeoisie at ease. His message to the capitalists is: the social divide needs to be healed so that the country can grow. The name for this is a programme of class conciliation.

Kasts candidacy managed to draw together the ranks of the most reactionary, hardline right wing, whose interests had been threatened by the popular insurrection dating back to 2019. The death of Pinochet's widow, Lucia Hiriart, just four days before the elections, placed the memory of the Pinochet dictatorship at centre stage of the political landscape. Following the result of the first round, the candidacy of the pro-Pinochet Kast brought back memories of the horrors of the civilian-military dictatorship and the threat posed to the democratic rights of the oppressed, in comparison to which Gabriel Boric's moderate proposals appeared like an epic alternative. As we explained after the first round, it was clear that broad sections of the working class would now instinctively seek to vote together against the possibility of a Kast government that would attack democratic freedoms head on.

This sense of urgency was accentuated on election day on Sunday, when the government was accused of sabotaging public transport in order to frustrate the vote in poor and working-class communities. A transport union leader explained how this infamous maneuver was carried out by the transport companies, giving the drivers the day off so that most of the buses were unable to circulate. This situation provoked initiative and solidarity, with those who had cars ferrying people closer to their polling stations. But for such tricks, the turnout could have perhaps been even greater.

It is significant for what is to come that some among business and among the right wing were willing to use extra-parliamentary methods. We saw this in the way the truck owners leader, Sergio Perez, attacked the rail transport proposal in the Apruebo Dignidad programme. This same reactionary bosses organisation threatened to stop the supply to the country in the midst of the pandemic, as well as pressing for the militarisation of the Wallmapu (Mapuche territory). In the period that is opening, it will be important to remember that only the solidarity and grassroots organisation of the workers can defeat the employers sabotage.

The crystallisation of the Agreement

The slogan of October 2019 was, its not 30 pesos, it's 30 years, signifying a rejection of the parties that governed after the dictatorship, deepening the capitalist economic model of privatisations and leaving human rights violations unpunished. The first president after the end of the dictatorship, Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin, is famous for the phrase justice as far as possible. There was a policy of agreements, of conciliation with the right wing and big business, whose interests were enshrined in the 1980 constitution, after the historic defeat of the Chilean working class in 1973.

During the transition we were sold the idea that the dictatorship had fallen with the plebiscite of the YES and the NO of 1988, simply by the work of a pencil and a paper. The importance of mass mobilisations during the days of national protest was buried. The hundreds of thousands of people who risked their lives fighting against the dictatorial regime, hoping to conquer the joy of a better life were forgotten about. The Christian Democratic president Aylwin, who received the presidential sash from Pinochet, was a key figure in organising the coup in congress during the government of the socialist Allende in the 1970s. At the end of the dictatorship, secret agreements were made with the Concertacion parties (mainly the Socialist and Christian Democratic) to preserve the economic and ideological pillars of the old model and to grant impunity to the armed forces. In this election, the Concertacion was united in its support for Boric.

After 30 years, during the October rebellion in 2019, a new generation that had not experienced the dictatorship embraced the experience of older generations. The idea was to put an end to the policy of justice, as far as possible once and for all, and rather to fight for a life that is truly worth living. Right-wing President Pinera declared war on the poor and the workers, and the angry masses defeated his state of emergency. The general strike put the government on the ropes. But the agreements and impunity returned. The so-called Agreement for peace and the new constitution, in which Boric played a key role, was an agreement amongst the parties of the regime to save the criminal government of Sebastian Pinera. Instead of peace, repressive laws continued and the Wallmapu remained militarised. Pinera is still in power two years after the uprising which sought to remove him. Now Gabriel Boric will have the honour of receiving the presidential sash from his hands.

Boric has proven to be a politician who knows how to stand in the right place at the right time, positioning himself to engage in dialogue to reach agreements and elevate his own political career. At the moment he is the largest shark that has emerged from the splits, alliances and internal disputes of the groups that have gone under the umbrella of the Broad Front. The history books will already record Boric as the prophet who created that Agreement that marked the derailing of the October uprising along bourgeois, institutional lines. The Boric government represents the crystallisation of the parliamentary path of the Agreement, in opposition to the path of the rebellion of the masses. In this sense, Boric's triumph represents the closing, by agreement at the top, of the insurrection of 2019.

The composition of the new parliament does not give the next government the necessary majority to approve its reforms. On the other hand, Apruebo Dignidad now hopes to bring the constitutional process to fruition. Doing so therefore necessarily means continuing to resort to the repudiated agreements policy.

The government will be under a lot of pressure from the streets. In the electoral victory rally, which took the form of a massive celebration, slogans were heard demanding the release of the political prisoners of the 2019 revolt and the end of the private pension system (AFP), to which Boric was forced to give unconvincing answers. He was also hissed and booed when he mentioned his intentions to open a dialogue with the right wing: With Kast we will know how to build bridges so that our compatriots can live better.

In reality, the kinder you are to the right, the more emboldened it will feel to make up lost ground and fight back. The resistance of the right to substantive changes will provoke the reaction of the masses. Inevitably, the government will have to choose whether to repress the mobilisations or rely on them to overcome the resistance of the right. But the masses will push beyond Borics programme of restraint and fiscal responsibility. The Communist Party will also find itself enmeshed in a dilemma as to how to keep one foot in the government, and another in the street.

Comparisons with the Castillo government in Peru are appropriate. Castillos programme in relation to the mining companies was more radical than Borics. Like Boric, Castillo is in the minority in congress. Faced with pressure from the bourgeoisie, the army, bourgeois public opinion and the multinationals, Castillo quickly began to make concessions, abandoning the most advanced points of his programme. Boric is pointing in the same direction.

The underlying social and economic crisis cannot be solved on the basis of reforms within the framework of capitalism. It must be expected that sooner or later there will be important mobilisations over the demands still pending from October 2019. The defeat of Kast increases the confidence of the masses, and what has now been expressed through electoral channels will be expressed in demands on the new government and in mobilisations of the masses when faced with half measures.

The water crisis will continue to worsen. The Wallmapu will continue to be militarised, leading to an increasingly complex conflict where the right has established a bastion. The decriminalisation of abortion will continue to be a demand raised by the feminist and womens movement. We are likely to witness an increase in labour disputes over wages and working conditions.

Gabriel Boric's lack of determination to carry out radical change aimed at improving living conditions will be exposed. For a profound transformation of society we need to put an end to the capitalist system and establish a workers government. We can only rely on the strength of the mobilisations of and the self-organisation of the working class. The key is to build a revolutionary leadership that is up to the tasks that the working class posed in the October insurrection.
Professional services firm KPMG International has announced annual aggregated revenues for KPMG firms globally of $32.13 billion for the fiscal year ending 30 September 2021 (FY21).



Reporting a 10% increase in US dollar revenues from FY20, this follows an extensive period of investment and focus on priority services and solutions addressing the challenges faced by businesses across the globe.



 Strong growth across functions: Advisory growing at 17%, Audit at 4% and Tax & Legal Services at 8%.

 During FY21, the global organization committed to a more than $1.5 billion investment to focus on a multi-year program to accelerate the delivery of its global environmental, societal and governance (ESG) plan and solutions.

 KPMG firms are focused on building an inclusive and diverse culture and have increased female diversity among leadership ranks to 27% of partners and directors.



2021 was a strong year for KPMG. We achieved outstanding growth in a challenging business climate, unveiled KPMG: Our Impact Plan to help drive sustainable change across our organization, and launched a new global ESG plan to support our clients in achieving their goals of addressing the most existential challenges  while making a difference in the world, Bill Thomas, Global Chairman & CEO, KPMG International.



I am thankful to our talented teams who have worked tirelessly, in difficult circumstances, to ensure we met the rapidly evolving needs of our clients. We have focused first and foremost on enhancing quality and building trust. We have also worked with our leading ecosystem of alliances to support business and technology transformation. This years financial success is the result of KPMG firms coming together to chart a new trajectory for the global organization with a commitment to a bold ambition to become the most trusted and trustworthy professional services firm.



Dr Rasheed Al-Qenae, Managing Partner in KPMG in Kuwait Said: KPMG demonstrated great resolve at the face of uncertainty in the business landscape in 2021. We grew across all three functions (Advisory, Audit and Tax & Legal Services), paved the path for the implementation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, driving sustainable change throughout the organization, and supported clients in achieving their goals and tackling existential roadblocks.



Throughout the course of the year, we strived to make a difference in the communities that we operated in and worked closely with our alliances to facilitate the business transformation and technology enablement necessary to sustain business in the disrupted reality.



All of this would not have been possible without the talented teams that put in countless hours to ensure that the demands of clients were being met even during testing times  I cannot thank them enough for that. The future for us as an organization is to become more trustworthy in terms of the services that we offer and with the quality that we have delivered, along with the trust that we have been building upon this year, as we navigate toward a digital-first reality, the outlook is promising, he added.



Audit achieved total revenues of $11.46 billion, while tax and Legal services achieved revenues of $7.02 billion across all KPMG firms globally in FY21.  TradeArabia News Service
Arab Financial Services (AFS), a leading digital payment solutions provider and fintech enabler in Middle East and Africa, has collaborated once again with Bahrains first cloud-based digital, mobile-only bank, ila, powering the newly launched ila Blue and Switch credit cards.

A banking pioneer that embraces cutting-edge technologies, ila Banks keen understanding of its customer needs is complemented by AFSs agility in delivering the solutions of choice that clients and end-users demand.

The new ila Bank credit cards are designed as part of a seamless banking experience that is built around customer needs and sets the stage for end-to-end digital credit card applications.

The ila Banks Blue and Switch credit cards offer a world of exciting and premium benefits to cardholders including offers, cashbacks, lounge access and more.

On the collaboration, CEO Samer Soliman said: "AFS continues to work on innovation-led partnership models to offer distinctive products to its partners. In this effort, we are delighted to have collaborated with ila Bank to launch the ila Blue and Switch credit cards, two of the most rewarding Credit Cards in their own segment that offer a convenient, secure, frictionless payment experience."

Regulated by The Central Bank of Bahrain, and majority-owned by Bank ABC, AFS boasts numerous ground-breaking end-to-end digital payment services and solutions. These span debit, credit, and Islamic card processing, merchant acquiring, fintech, and a suite of state-of-the-art value-added services.

"Our collaboration with ila Bank continues to expand AFSs product footprint and raises the level of digital banking penetration in Bahrain, while further leading the way to a cashless economy," he added.

AFS had partnered with ila Bank since its establishment in Bahrain in 2019, supporting it with payments technology co-innovation. Today, it has successfully rolled out ila Banks ATM enabling, debit card processing and mobile application integration and services.

Adding credit card processing to this list, marks a milestone in the collaboration between the two partners.

As the preferred partner for banks, challenger banks, financial institutions, fintechs, and other payment players who are looking to digitally disrupt the traditional financial services model, AFS is committed to providing leading, technology-driven financial payment solutions to its clients and their end-users, while developing the payment modes of future.

Mohamed Al Maraj, the CEO of ila Bank said: "With the exponential rise in the adoption of digital payments, consumers expect smart, simple and effortless payment experiences in e-commerce. We have witnessed this in the success of our debit card portfolio proven by the significant increase of online transactions."

"This paved the way for us to expand our product suite, encouraging us to introduce our new credit cards, offering a fully digital user experience. We are excited to work with AFS, one of our trusted partners, to build on our efforts to bring innovative market-first products that reflect changing customer needs," he added.

With ila Blue and Switch credit cards we are bringing a seamless product that not only offers exclusive benefits and rewards, but also holds the customers need for financial health and security at the epicenter, added Al Maraj.-TradeArabia News Service
G42 Healthcare, an Abu Dhabi-based leading health tech company, and AstraZeneca, a global, science-led biopharmaceutical firm, will collaborate to further enhance clinical research and diagnostics frameworks in the UAE.

The announcement follows the recent signing of the Declaration of Collaboration between the Department of Health  Abu Dhabi (DoH) and AstraZeneca in October this year to boost innovation in the UAE healthcare sector by addressing the governments strategy to increase patients access to quality healthcare services and treatments locally and beyond.

Both Abdulla Bin Mohamed Al Hamed, Chairman of DoH and Anna Hallberg, Minister for Foreign Trade and Nordic Affairs of Sweden attended the Declaration of Collaboration signing ceremony.

As part of this collaboration, G42 Healthcare, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabis artificial intelligence and cloud computing company G42, and AstraZeneca will work closely together to explore real-world evidence and conduct clinical trials through IROS  the first-of-its-kind Contract Research Organisation (CRO) in the UAE.

Al Hamed said: Our partnership with important companies contribute to strengthen Abu Dhabis position as an incubator for innovation in life sciences and a leading destination for healthcare globally. We are keen to follow the directives of our wise leadership to consolidate fruitful cooperative relations that bring together local institutions with major international companies in the health sector.

All of our efforts come in line with the emirates vision to provide high quality and efficient healthcare services following global scientific foundations and employ the latest innovations and technologies in healthcare. This will further stimulate a knowledge-based economy in the capital and the UAE as a whole and ensure the health and safety of all communities around the world.

Ashish Koshy, CEO of G42 Healthcare, said: We deeply encourage opportunities for collaboration with international organisations to share our knowledge and expertise to drive the growth of the sector in the nation and beyond. We are confident in the incredible potential this partnership holds for the sector and the future of the regions healthcare landscape.

Sameh Elfangary, Country President, GCC and Pakistan at AstraZeneca, said: Innovation in healthcare is a continuous process, and we are constantly pushing the boundaries of science to uncover and deliver life-changing medicines to patients in the UAE and across the region. This collaboration allows us to explore greater possibilities in clinical research and diagnostics which will help us create a more patient-centric healthcare sector in the UAE.

Both organisations will also explore real-world evidence in the field of genomics and comprehensive clinical diagnostic services through Biogenix Labs, a G42 Healthcare company that has been one of the key players in the UAE for Covid-19 testing with the other offering of products and services in the consumer and clinical health spectrum.-- TradeArabia News Service
Fewer enterprises globally now fire employees because of data breaches, said leading cyber security company Kaspersky in a new report.



In the META region this common measure in responding to data breaches actually witnessed an increase when comparing the numbers to 2018 (22%) to the27% in 2021, according to the Kaspersky study titled IT Security Economics 2021: Managing the trend of growing IT complexity.



In 2021 across the META region, though the number slightly increased in the laid off senior IT staff (15% in 2021, compared to 13% in 2018), the figure for senior IT security roles actually decreased (5% in 2021 compared to 15% in 2018) if a data breach occurs.



The split of employees that could lose their job as a result of a cybersecurity breach has also changed. In addition to senior IT and IT security roles, C-level executives are likely to be exposed to dismissals too  3% in 2021 similar to 3% in 2018. The trend is also relevant for non-IT senior staff. As a result, the overall split across IT and non-IT, senior and non-senior roles, became flatter than a few years ago.



The demand for retaining and nurturing expertise is seen, for example, in budget planning: 30% of enterprises report the need to improve the level of specialist security expertise as the top reason to increase their IT security budget. In fact, this is the second most common reason, followed only by increased complexity of IT infrastructure (38%). Furthermore, by investing in internal specialists, employers are interested in retaining their knowledge within the company so that employees could leverage their skills in future.



The transfer to remote work and processes has put increased pressure on the information security sector. With cybersecurity jobs in such high demand and skilled professionals in low supply, companies are realizing the value of senior security executives and the need to plug the talent gap, said Evgeniya Naumova, Executive VP, Corporate Business at Kaspersky.



As digital transformation intensifies, not only does the need for well-trained professionals grow, but the management's awareness of cybersecurity. Incidents cannot be completely ruled out. The highest possible level of cybersecurity depends on an adequate strategy, represented by IT security experts. We therefore very much welcome positive trends regarding the appreciation of specialized staff, said Sebastian Artz, Head of Cyber and Information Security at Bitkome.V., Germanys digital association.



Companies that face the lack of internal expertise can use the following tips to raise the level of their cyber defence:



 Train internal talent. Provide your IT security team with opportunities for additional education, including participation in expert courses or webinars. Specialists will appreciate a company that cares about their professional development and will be able to apply new knowledge to specific organizational processes.

 Encourage employees to share practical experiences and work on varied, non-standard tasks. Cybersecurity workers can also augment their expertise by reaching out to industry leaders that could provide unique knowledge to solve advanced challenges.

 If the lack of resources or expertise has to be solved in the short term, or the existing team is struggling to deal with the increased software security levels and constantly evolving protection technologies, a business can gain help from third-party IT security providers. Managed services from trusted IT security providers combine the most advanced automated tools with professional expert support to ensure timely detection, threat hunting, and remediation.  TradeArabia News Service
Group-IB, one of the global cybersecurity leaders, has uncovered a worldwide scam campaign targeting users in over 90 countries all around the world, including the UAE, Oman, and Qatar.

The fraudsters employ the tried and tested technique with fake surveys and giveaways purporting to be from popular brands to steal users personal and payment data, with the total number of big-name companies impersonated in the scheme exceeding 120.

The new wave of the scam is particularly persistent thanks to an innovation in the scammers toolset  targeted links, which makes investigating and tackling such attacks increasingly challenging.

The potential victim pool of a single scam network is estimated at about 10 million people, while the potential damage totalled about $80 million per month, according to Group-IBs Digital Risk Protection unit.

According to Group-IB DRP analysts, fraud has been spotted in 91 countries, with cybercriminals exploiting at least 121 brands as bait. Based on the country of origin of the brands affected, the scams target regions are: Europe (36.3%), Africa (24.2%), and Asia (23.1%).

In the Middle East alone, cybercriminals exploited 9 brands from Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and the UAE. Globally, cybercriminals mostly try to exploit the brands of leading telecommunications companies, which enjoy special love in this scheme, and make up more than 50% of the total number of brands exploited, followed by ecommerce and retail.

Group-IB analysts have detected at least 60 different scam networks that operate targeted links. On average, each of them contains over 70 domain names. One of the largest networks in terms of traffic attracted contained over 50 domain names. Judging from the number of visitors, scammers potential victim pool on this network alone totals 10 million people.

Group-IB experts estimate the damage at $80 million per month, based on the number of sites detected, their minimum conversion, and an average money loss on a scam website. For each specific website that hosts fraudulent content, Group-IB team was able to analyse where the visitors came from. The main sources of traffic for targeted links operators are India (42.2%), Thailand (7%), and Indonesia (4.4%), among others.

Fraudsters trap their victims by distributing invitations to partake in survey, after which the user would allegedly get a prize. Each such offer contains a link leading to the survey website. For lead generation, the threat actors use all possible legitimate digital marketing means: contextual advertising, advertising on legal and completely rogue sites, SMS, mailouts, and pop-up notifications. To build trust with their victims, scammers register look-alike domain names to the official ones.

Less frequently, they were also seen adding links to the calendar and posts on social networks. After clicking the targeted link, a user gets in the so-called traffic cloaking, which enables cybercriminals to display different content to different users, based on certain user parameters.

But this destination branded survey page takes very long to download. This is because the victims find themselves in a long chain of redirects, during which scammers gather information about their session, including country, time zone, language, IP, browser, and etc.

The content on the final page will be determined based on what was learned about the user and tailored as much as possible to their possible interests. The final scam link is customised to a specific user and can be opened only once. This complicates the detection of such links, which inevitably leads to the scams longer life cycle, and hampers the takedown and investigations.

At the final stage, the user is asked to answer questions to receive a prize from a well-known brand and to fill out a form asking for their personal data, which is allegedly needed to receive the prize. The data required usually includes the full name, email, postal address, phone number, bank card data, including expiration date and CVV.

Fraudsters can use the data stolen to buy goods online, register fake user accounts on any online resources or simply sell the personal information on the dark web. Apart from revealing their data, users are sometimes asked to pay a tax or a test payment to receive the prize.

Just a couple of years ago, online scams were focused on scale: by indiscriminately targeting users, fraudsters tried to ensure that at least someone would take the bite, comments Ashraf Koheil, Director of Business Development, Middle East & Africa at Group-IB. Over time, as scam awareness was growing, fewer and fewer people fell prey to such scheme, which made it much more difficult for cybercriminals to make money. They started to explore new ways that would meet their financial ambitions. This triggered the scamdemic and the diversity of various fraudulent schemes that we observe today. The variety of scams observed globally today in described in detail in our annual Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2021/2022 report Scams and Phishing.-- TradeArabia News Service
Bahrain today (December 21) achieved a major milestone with the launch of its first-ever satellite.

The nanosatellite Light-1, a joint endeavour between Bahrain and the UAE, lifted off at 1.06pm (Bahrain time) from the Nasa Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, the US, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket which launched the SpaceX CRS-24 commercial resupply mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US.

It then successfully reached the International Space Station (ISS). The satellite will be later deployed into orbit from the ISS' Japanese Experiment Module, nicknamed Kibo.

The Light-1's successful arrival at the ISS is the culmination of a trailblazing partnership between the UAE and Bahrain and an achievement of cooperation between the UAE Space Agency, Bahrains National Space Science Agency (NSSA), Khalifa University of Science and Research and New York University Abu Dhabi.

It reflects the depth of bilateral ties between both nations, and the level of strategic partnership in all fields, including space, science and technology.

Named after His Majesty King Hamads book, First Light, the satellite is a major achievement for the kingdom.

His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa sent a cable of congratulations and thanks to Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, National Security Adviser, Commander of the Royal Guard and Secretary-General of the Supreme Defence Council, on the successful launch of the first joint Bahraini-UAE satellite Light-1.

He commended Shaikh Nasser for his great efforts in ensuring the honourable historical scientific achievement for the kingdom, reported Bahrain News Agency.

He stressed that the vital project, in which qualified Bahrainis nationals were involved, will constitute an important breakthrough in strengthening the kingdom's capabilities in the technical, scientific and research fields, and in consolidating its global position and leadership in space science.

In reply, Shaikh Nasser sent a cable of thanks to King Hamad.

Shaikh Nasser stressed that space science and scientific and technical research were able, during the auspicious era of King Hamad, and with the help of qualified and creative Bahrainis, to accomplish the national achievement, the first step for Bahraini youth to move forward in space and creativity.

He also praised Bahrain's comprehensive progress that has demonstrated that all loyal Bahrainis stand united as the nation led by King Hamad moves forward and enlightened by His Majesty's directives.

"Light-1 is a result of collaboration between the UAE Space Agency and Bahrains National Space Science Agency (NSSA), along with Khalifa University and New York University Abu Dhabi," stated NSSA chief executive Dr Mohamed Al Aseeri.

This is a significant step towards establishing Bahrain in the space sector, following its new national strategy for space research, noted Dr Al Aseeri.

The new satellite will bring important scientific and technological contributions, collecting data about thunderstorms previously unavailable in the Middle East, he added.

Light-1 will be subsequently re-launched into orbit around Earth during the first quarter of 2022 in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

It will then start the regions first scientific mission to monitor and study terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) from lightning storms and cumulus clouds. The data will be made available to the global scientific community.

The data will also be used to construct simulations to map the frequency of thunderstorms.

The 3U CubeSat nanosatellite weighs 5.25kg and is approximately 10cm x 10cm x 34.5cm in size. It will be part of the Dragon cargo resupply mission (CRS-24) lifting off from the famous Cape Canaveral space centres Launch Complex 39A. Approximately 75 per cent of it has been built by a nine-person NSSA team.
Gurdaspur, Dec 21 (UNI) The Border Security Force (BSF) on Tuesday gunned down a Pakistani intruder trying to infiltrate the International Border near the Basantar post in Dera Baba Nanak area of Gurdaspur in Punjab.

According to BSF sources, its troopers challenged the intruder when he tried to breach a barbed fence.

Meanwhile, a drone was seen near the Basantar outpost. The BSF and security agencies launched a search in the area to see if the drone dropped any incriminating material or weapons.

On Monday, a Pakistani youth was arrested in Dera Baba Nanak area near the India-Pakistan border in Punjab. The BSF recovered a mobile phone and Pakistani currency from him.

On Sunday night, the BSF spotted and fired five rounds at a Pakistani drone in Gurdaspur area, forcing it to return to Pakistan.

UNI XC DB MR
New Delhi, Dec 20 (UNI) The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Monday hit out at the Centre over The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, and demanded thorough examination of the Bill by a 'select committee'.

The Bill which was introduced in the Lok Sabha by Union Minister for Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju on Monday, was passed by voice vote, amid opposition by several MPs.

"The polit bureau of the CPI(M) strongly condemns the manner in which important changes in the electoral laws, which have far-reaching consequences, has been rushed through the Lok Sabha and passed in a din.


New Delhi, Dec 21 (UNI) Delhi government on Monday sacked three Mohalla Clinic doctors after a report from the central government mentioned that a drug prescribed by the doctors killed three children while 13 others were hospitalised.

"Delhi government has taken strict action on the unfortunate death of three children at Delhi's Kalawati Saran Hospital. The Delhi Government has de-empanelled the services of three doctors and ordered an inquiry into the matter. Apart from this, the Delhi government has also written a letter to the Delhi Medical Council to investigate and report immediately," a statement from the state government said.

"Along with this, the Delhi Government has also constituted an inquiry committee under the leadership of CDMO Dr Geeta. The committee has been directed to submit its report within seven days," it added.

CDMO Dr Geeta will be the chairperson of this committee, while Nodal Officer ACDMO Dr Anjum Bhutia, Indu Sarna (ACDMO), MO CPA Anshul Moudgil have been made members of the committee, the statement said further.

On December 7, Dr Sunil Kumar of the Directorate General Health Services (DGHS), under the Union Health Ministry, asked the Delhi government in a letter to issue notices to stop doctors at these clinics from prescribing the drug dextromethorphan.

His letter was prompted by 16 cases of alleged dextromethorphan poisoning at the Kalawati Saran Hospital of the Centre-run Lady Hardinge Medical College.

Dr Kumar wrote in his letter that doctors at Mohalla Clinics had irrationally prescribed dextromethorphan to these children and that that was the cause of their death.

The DGHS had noted that "the drug is strictly not recommended for paediatric age children, according to the letter.

UNI ASH GK
For information only - not an official document

UNIS/OS/563

21 December 2021

PRESS RELEASE

UNOOSA and United Kingdom sign agreement to map global space-related climate action efforts

VIENNA, 21 December 2021 (United Nations Information Service) - The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the United Kingdom have signed an agreement to address the information gap for space-related climate actions. The scientific community and the United Nations (UN) system have long recognized and utilized space-based technologies, data and applications as essential components in climate change research, monitoring, and policy enactment. However, a comprehensive overview of the broad spectrum of current and planned activities in using space for climate action has been missing.

Through this new partnership, the UN and the United Kingdom strive to address this information gap and build synergies, facilitate coherence, and contribute to avoiding duplication of existing efforts. With a Strategic Mapping Exercise, the core of the mutual work, the two parties are going to review existing activities at the international and regional levels, in the UN system, for non-UN groups, partnerships, organizations and other relevant entities.

As underscored by global leaders at the COP26 in Glasgow, addressing the climate crisis demands a holistic and collaborative approach using resources, tools, and technologies at full speed. The outcome report can help policymakers, international or regional organizations, industry, academia, experts and civil society gain a better understanding of existing technical, policy, and coordination efforts. It can also inform their strategy development or research and bring policy coherence across the multilateral system.

UNOOSA Director Simonetta Di Pippo underscored the importance of this partnership: "We can only advance the use of space for climate action with the wisdom of replicable solutions, working with opportunities and gaps, and with an understanding of the needs of stakeholders and communities. We are thrilled to engage with the UK Government to provide a unique, state-of-the-art overview of where we are, where we need to go, and how we can get there, together."

Dr Paul Bate, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, said: "As we saw at COP26 in Glasgow, satellites are being used every day to measure carbon emissions, track deforestation and improve climate models that inform international action. This new project with UNOOSA will map this existing work and investigate what more can be done to strengthen the space sector's contribution to tackling our planet's biggest global challenge."

* *** *

For more information, please contact:

Martin Stasko

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)

Email: martin.stasko[at]un.org


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Northern Defences  History, Learning and Leisure All in One

The Royal Engineers have returned to Gibraltar and are assisting with the continuing development of the works at the Northern Defences.

This system of tunnels and fortifications was carved into the face of the Rock by their predecessors hundreds of years ago.

As things have slowly come back to normal, I cannot help but feel a great sense of pride welcoming the Royal Engineers to our shores. The teams deployed have focused on clearing up sections at the Northern Defences. This adds huge value and complements the works already being carried out by the Government. Their efforts are invaluable as each member will push to the limits whilst on site, from the more experienced troop leaders, to younger students. The Governments representative driving this project, Mr Carl Viagas, tells me how he is always fascinated by their tenacity, fitness and good humour throughout the exercise, explained the Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia.

This years exercise focused on the northern end of Queens Lines where spoils from the recently cleared Amphitheatre Gallery were removed. The event also included a tour by Carl Viagas of most of the Northern Defences so that those present could better understand and appreciate the complex nature and value of the site.

The Deputy Chief Minister highlighted that it is no longer only visiting Royal Engineer students who have been able to assist and learn about the Defences. The site has also become a beacon for learning about our past. Whereas Government has assisted with tours and dedicated site visits, this year has seen some schools include the Northern Defences as part of their local history curriculum for the first time.

The Deputy Chief Minster stated: As a historian, it is deeply rewarding to lead on a project which not only has tremendous economic potential, but is now yielding such fruits for our younger generations. We have had the College of Further Education who used the Northern Defences for their Travel and Tourism AS level Module as they were unable to travel abroad due to the pandemic. The creativity and initiative shown by the course directors to arrange this in order to meet the demands of the curriculum is truly inspiring and speaks volumes about our educators. I look forward to meeting the group soon when circumstances allow.

Bishop Fitzgerald School also visited the Northern Defences recently to learn and place into context the events surrounding the Great Siege. This would have been virtually impossible on this scale ten years ago without the investment and the work of many years. The policy objective remains to continue this progress in a slow and gradual manner going forward.

A number of leisure activities are now being considered for sections of the site in a way which will blend well with the continuing historical and heritage advances in the area. This will be an added feature that will provide another dimension to such a unique site, explained Project Director Carl Viagas.
The crime that landed Kevin OBrien Allen a spot among the more than 4,100 Louisianans now serving life-without-parole sentences wasnt a bloody one: He sold $20 in marijuana to a childhood friend.

Then he made some bad decisions.

Allen and Justin Shealey were tight growing up in Bossier Parish, he said. But as they hit their 30s, Shealey was working as an informant for a local narcotics task force, and he recorded a pair of $10 pot sales inside a vehicle with Allen.

Agents booked Allen on two counts of marijuana distribution, and prosecutors in District Attorney Schuyler Marvins office made him an offer: a 5-year sentence if he pleaded guilty. Allen, a father of two with a steady job but a handful of drug convictions, balked.

I was being dumb. I wasnt thinking, he said in a recent call from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. I felt like (Shealey) wasnt going to testify on me because he was my best friend. I wasnt thinking he was going to use me up like that.

Shealey helped convince a jury to convict Allen on both counts at a 2014 trial. Twenty-sixth Judicial District Judge Michael Craig sentenced him to two concurrent 10-year prison terms, but it was only a placeholder.

Louisiana law affords prosecutors wide discretion to increase a repeat offenders sentence, up to life, and Marvins office drew on Allens past convictions: possession with intent to distribute marijuana in 2004, marijuana possession in 2007 and 2011, and methamphetamine possession in 2013.

Once invoked by a prosecutor, the habitual-offender law gives little leeway to judges. They can sentence a defendant to less time if they find the minimum is so far out of line that it defies acceptable goals of punishment or serves as nothing more than the purposeful imposition of pain and suffering. But courts have described those scenarios as exceedingly rare.

Allen pleaded that he was an addict who never got treatment. He also turned down a second, 20-year plea offer before the perfunctory habitual-offender hearing.

Calling Allen a classic reason that the multiple offender statute was enacted, Craig handed him a life sentence that an appeals court soon endorsed.

Allen now works in the prison kitchen, making juice for pennies a day, serving a sentence that ends when he dies. Hes among nearly 300 people serving life without parole in Louisiana prisons based on their status as habitual offenders, an analysis of recent state corrections data show. In 40% of those cases, the incarcerated person is locked up for life on a non-violent crime.

All I did was get set up from some drugs, said Allen, now 39. I still feel to this day that Im not supposed to be here.

Corrections data show wide variances in how district attorneys around the state have used the habitual offender law.

Nearly two-thirds of habitual lifers in the state were sentenced in one of four large parishes: Caddo, Orleans, St. Tammany or Jefferson, according to the data. The practice is somewhat less common in East Baton Rouge Parish, the states most populous.

Overall, Louisiana prosecutors have mostly aimed the law at Black defendants, like Allen. Black people make up 31% of Louisianas population, but 66% of its state prisoners; 73% of those serving life sentences; and 83% of those serving life as habitual offenders, corrections and census data show.

There are 20 parishes from which everyone serving life as a habitual offender is Black, including all 26 of the prisoners from East Baton Rouge, according to data provided by the corrections department.

Many other states have three strikes laws that mete out increased punishment on repeat offenders. But Louisiana has long stood out for the terminal life sentences that can result when prosecutors drop the hammer.

Its really easy to get to life when youre multi-billed, said Marcus Kondkar, a Loyola University sociology professor who has analyzed state corrections data and interviewed scores of life prisoners. It is solely at the discretion of the prosecutor.

Kondkar is assisting civil rights prosecutors in the office of Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams. Williams, who ran on a progressive platform, this year succeeded district attorneys who for decades wielded the habitual offender law as a cudgel to motivate stiff plea deals, or to impose longer sentences on those convicted at trial.

Kondkar describes the law as an awesome power in a DAs hands, but one that only a handful of them exploit regularly.

This is a problem with unchecked prosecutorial discretion, rather than crime patterns, he said.

Simple burglary, theft, purse snatching and aggravated flight from an officer are among the common charges that have left repeat offenders serving no-parole life sentences. Scores of other lifers were picked up for the last time on drug offenses.

Behind armed robbery, drug convictions land more Louisianans in prison for life as repeat offenders than any other charge, the data show.

Reforms enacted in 2017 shrank the cleansing period after which prior offenses drop from the repeat-offender calculus, while also excluding life sentences for non-violent crimes. That means some habitual lifers, like Allen, might not have qualified for their sentences if they committed the same offenses today.

Williams isnt the only DA to take a fresh look at some of the harsher applications of the habitual-offender law.

Last week, Caddo Parish District Attorney James Stewart agreed to vacate the habitual life sentence of 88-year-old Clarence Simmons, who was released after 31 years. He lived in a skilled nursing unit at Angola and is confined to a wheelchair. A judge convicted Simmons in a one-day trial in 1991 for illegal possession of a stolen camera and tripod, then handed him a life sentence as a fourth felony offender. His attorneys argued that Simmons trial attorney failed to argue against life.

Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connicks office agreed in February to scrap the life sentence given to Terrance Mosley in 2009. After a jury convicted Mosley of possession with intent to distribute marijuana, Connicks office reached back more than a decade, invoking two prior drug convictions to send Mobley away for life as a three-time felon.

Connicks office didnt concede error but also didnt fight Mosleys petition, so long as he agreed to waive appeals.

A spokesman for Connicks office declined to explain the change of heart, saying only that the office makes such decisions based on the facts, circumstances and legal considerations.

In St. Tammany Parish, District Attorney Warren Montgomery last year agreed to remove the habitual-offender sentence of Thomas Swinner, who received life after walking into a Slidell pawn shop in 1998.

Fast Bucks Buy and Sell, on U.S. 190 in Slidell, was a trap set up by drug agents with the St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs Office. They stocked its shelves with stereo gear, tools and musical instruments while a display case featured bongs and other drug paraphernalia.

Swinner walked inside hoping to unload a pair of Kicker car speakers, he said, and ended up spending the next 21 years locked up. His cousin, James Tyler, was ogling at the display case when an undercover officer chirped up.

He said, Throw me in a quarter bag of weed along with the speakers for $100, Swinner said in a recent interview. After some discussion, Tyler reached into his pocket for a little bitty bag of weed on him that I had no idea he had, Swinner said, before officers arrested both men.

Authorities said Swinner approved the sale and a jury convicted him of distributing marijuana within 1,000 feet of a park  Tammany Trace was across the street. A judge handed him the maximum: 30 years.

Prosecutors under then-DA Walter Reed then tapped Swinners history of burglary convictions to charge him as a repeat offender, and a judge sentenced him to life. (Reed is now at home serving out a four-year federal prison term on corruption charges.)

Im not no angel. Im not saying I was completely innocent. I was by no means guilty of the distribution, said Swinner. I lived in St. Tammany for maybe four months before this happened. I didnt have a traffic ticket in the parish. I dont know why they went after me so hard.

Swinner received help from Innocence Project-New Orleans attorney Meredith Angelson, whom he credits with resurrecting his cause.

Theres no end to it until a guardian angel comes over you, Swinner said. If youre on your own, youre just sitting there until you wither away, until you take your last breath.

Montgomery, the district attorney, pointed to a wide disparity in the sentences handed to Swinner and Tyler, his co-defendant, in explaining why he agreed to dissolve the life sentence. For his part in the pawn-shop sale, Tyler received a 7-month sentence.

It was the contrast between the two sentences for basically the same criminal conduct, and also the severity of his sentence, Montgomery said. I dont condone his past criminal behavior, but I think a life sentence is disproportionate to his criminal actions.

Montgomery, who said he has revisited a handful of older convictions and is reviewing others, said he isnt shy about using the habitual offender statute himself.

Its not principally about punishing someone. Its about principally keeping the community safe, Montgomery said. Some people should be in prison for a very lengthy period of time in order to keep the community safe.

Decisions like those remain rare, however. Allens fate in Bossier Parish is a more common outcome.

I had got in a lot of trouble in Bossier in my past. I wasnt giving the DA no reason to mess with me, Allen said of the drug setup that put him away for life. The jury in his case voted 11-1 to convict, a split verdict that is no longer allowed.

I feel like they need to have a change of heart about what they done to me. A change of heart about sending me to Angola on drug lifeI feel like if the jury would have known I was gonna get a life sentence, they probably wouldnt have found me guilty.

His attorney, Erin Tremain, said Allens life sentence was achieved only through an abuse of the tremendous power and discretion enjoyed by prosecutors in our system.

But an appeals court long ago rejected Allens claim that his life sentence was excessive, while pointing to other arrests that didnt end in convictions.

In one case, Marvins office charged Allen with two counts of solicitation of murder, for allegedly seeking the deaths of Shealey, the informant, and a relative before his trial. Those charges, which Tremain said were based on a letter Allen wrote from jail before his trial, were dropped after he received life.

Allen acknowledges writing a threatening letter about Shealey and his family. He said another suspect in jail took it while he was in court. I was mad for what he did, he said of the informant.

Allens spirits lifted last year, he said, when the Louisiana Supreme Court granted his request for records and opened the door for a renewed challenge.

Tremain argued in a recent filing that Allens public defender failed him unconstitutionally at trial and at his habitual-offender sentencing. Tremain also argued that prosecutors allowed Shealey to testify falsely over what he expected in return for his testimony.

Shealey had told the jury that $100 per bust was his only reward. Weeks after his testimony, the DAs office dropped two pending drug charges against him and reduced a third, records show.

Prosecutors in Marvins office were unmoved, opposing Allens petition in a filing submitted the day before Thanksgiving. They dismissed the allegation that Shealey was rewarded for his testimony against Allen with reduced charges, saying there was absolutely no evidence other than the wild speculation of the defendant to show a connection.

Marvins office did not respond to requests for comment.

On Dec. 9, Craig, the same judge who handed Allen his life sentence, summarily dismissed Allens bid without a hearing.
Fort Polk, LA (71446)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. Morning high of 64F with temps falling to near 45. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear. Low near 30F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS. The official closing ceremony summarizing the results of the UNDP Revive Deep Tech Accelerator program implemented by the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST) took place in Yerevan on December 20. The purpose of the accelerator was to develop the capacity of local and foreign startups and expand their current activities into developing assistive technologies to improve the quality of life of persons with disabilities.

Revive Veteran Support Program is the project of the UNDPs ImpactAim Ventures Accelerator was implemented by the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST). he Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs was the partner of the project.

Eighteen (18) startups from seven countries, including Armenian companies, applied for Revive, with twelve (12) participating in the five-week acceleration program.Through FASTs program, they refined their solutions, got acquainted with the procedure of entering the local and international markets, obtaining the necessary health certificates, and received advice on other areas of business development.

The winners were announced during the closing ceremony and are four (4) companies from Armenia, Iran, and the United States. Armenian AIP Tech startup received a grant of $7,000, the other three - Key2enable, Sheral, and oqni - received a grant of $2,000 each.

RA Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Narek Mkrtchyan, emphasized that the goal of the program is to support all the startups that aim to facilitate and improve the life of persons with disabilities by the means of innovative technologies. "The improvement of the life quality of persons with disabilities, as well as the ensurrance of internal development is one of the priorities of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. In order to achieve this goal, during the recent years we have initiated a number of reforms to develop, implement, strengthen policies and programs which aim to attain availability of assistive technologies and create more accessible conditions for persons with disabilities," the Minister noted.

According to certain estimates, by 2030, that number could reach two billion. "The good news is that technological development allows us to provide assistive technologies to all of those persons with disabilities. And our commitment is to reach out to the technological companies to make sure that this people enjoy dignified life", said UNDP Resident Representative in Armenia.

Natia Natsvlishvili expressed her gratitude to her colleagues and participating startups, hoping it was a solid and rewarding experience for them.

Suzanna Shamakhyan, Vice President for Strategic Programs of the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST), noted that the program was successful due to strong partnerships: "We attach great importance to cooperation with the government and international partners to enable systemic development of science and technology in Armenia. This is the second project we are implementing with UNDP, with the AgriTech Accelerator established at Armenian National Agrarian University already demonstrating its successes".

According to Suzanna Shamakhyan, Armenia being in the crossroads of several markets has a great potential to become an innovation hub not only for local, but also foreign growth-stage startups. It is noteworthy that it was attempted to organize such a soft-landing program for foreign startups. "One of the important components of the program is that local and foreign companies develop solutions to invest in Armenia, develop, and get an opportunity to enter other international markets in the future, including the Eurasian Union countries, European Union, and Middle East," Suzanna Shamakhyan added.

The winning startups presented their technological solutions and the prospects of applying them in Armenia via video during the event.

Revive is a part of a larger UNDP Veterans Support Program under the UNDP Tech2Life Auxiliary Technologies for Self-Sufficiency.

About the winning startups of Revive program

AIP Tech is an Armenian implant startup that uses a 3D printer to produce biodegradable, bioactive adapted implants.

The startup will receive a $ 7,000 grant from Revive to start the patent application process.

oqni is an Armenian startup producing artificial limb prostheses based on artificial intelligence, providing integrated rehabilitation assistance.

The Revive will receive a $ 2,000 grant from the Revive program to provide professional assistance in obtaining the necessary certification.

Sheral is an Iranian company that produces lower limb prostheses using carbon fiber.

The Revive will receive a $ 2,000 grant from the Revive program to provide professional support and certification assistance.

Key2enable is an American startup that offers innovative digital access tools that help with communication, learning, and inclusion.

The Revive startup will receive a $ 2,000 grant for certification to receive professional support for ethical testing of their products.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Muratsan University Hospital has been equipped with the modern medical equipment: mobile X-ray machine, neonatal therapeutic hypothermia and artificial respiratory devices, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), infant radiant warmer, electroencephalography monitoring system.

To enable the high level care and treatment of newborns in the pediatric intensive care unit of the hospital, benefactor Karen Vardanyan donated new 11 Japanese and European modern life-saving medical equipment.

The total budget of the program is 100 million drams.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Armenian broadcaster AMPTV are pleased to announce that the 20th Junior Eurovision Song Contest will be staged in Armenia next year.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Armenian broadcaster AMPTV are pleased to announce that the 20th Junior Eurovision Song Contest will be staged in Armenia next year.

This follows Malenas sensational win in Paris with the whirlwind of a song that is Qami Qami.

It is Armenias second victory in the Contest and 2022 will see the country host Junior Eurovision for the second time after AMPTV staged the competition in Yerevan in 2011 following their triumph the previous year.

Martin Osterdahl, Executive Supervisor of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, said:

'Armenias cool, classy, contemporary winner set a new standard for the competition. Their enthusiasm for the event is unmatched and we are excited that AMPTV want to host the 20th edition of the JESC next year. We look forward to working with them on planning a very special anniversary edition of the show.'

EBU Director General Noel Curran added:

'We were thrilled to see Armenia win their 2nd Junior Eurovision in Paris this weekend and congratulate Malena and AMPTVs hard working delegation on their stunning victory. We welcome the enthusiasm from our Armenian member for hosting the 20th Junior Eurovision Song Contest and are anticipating a great collaboration between the EBU and AMPTV over the coming months.'

Hovhannes Movsisyan, CEO of Armenian Public Television said:

'From the very first day we released Qami Qami we believed in Malenas victory and were looking forward to hosting this major event. Armenians are very excited about our comeback into the Eurovision family, and even more thrilled to host this spectacular event next year. Welcome to Armenia!'

The date and the venue for the 2022 Junior Eurovision Song Contest will be confirmed in the coming months.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian congratulated French President Emmanuel Macron on the occasion of birthday, the Presidential Office reports.

I value your personal contribution to the strengthening of friendly relations and the deepening of mutually beneficial cooperation between Armenia and France.

The centuries-old friendship between the peoples of Armenia and France and the high-level dialogue between our countries have an important potential to further expand the mutual partnership.

I hope with joint efforts we will contribute to the development of the Armenian-French comprehensive agenda and the implementation of new initiatives.

Armenia highly appreciates Frances consistent efforts, as an OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair country, and your personal engagement in particular, aimed at strengthening the lasting peace and stability in the region.

Frances attention to the issues relating to the Armenian prisoners of war, the protection of Artsakhs historical-cultural heritage which came under the Azerbaijani control, as well as providing important assistance to the Artsakh-Armenians deserves special appreciation, the Armenian President said in his congratulatory letter.
YEREVAN, 21 DECEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 21 December, USD exchange rate up by 0.50 drams to 481.11 drams. EUR exchange rate up by 2.35 drams to 543.37 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.04 drams to 6.51 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 3.64 drams to 637.42 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price down by 147.27 drams to 27785.25 drams. Silver price down by 5.05 drams to 344.86 drams. Platinum price down by 124.18 drams to 14323.41 drams.
YEREVAN, 21 DECEMBER, ARMENPRESS. Chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the National Assembly of Armenia Eduard Aghajanyan on December 21 met with Ambassador of People's Republic of China to Armenia Fan Yong, ARMENPRESS was informed from the National Assembly of Armenia.



Eduard Aghajanyan highlighted the contacts of the two parliaments, talked about the realization of potential of bilateral relations and necessity of development of cooperation in a number of fields. According to the Chairman of the Standing Committee, since the establishment of diplomatic relations the ties between Armenia and China have recorded a positive development.

The Ambassador emphasized that it is necessary to further deepen the cooperation and expressed readiness in that issue.



A reference was made to prospects of cooperation in the fields of tourism, infrastructure, education, culture and other fields. The sides expressed readiness of implementing mutually beneficial programmes.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. Asia Times correspondent Kourosh Ziabari recently conducted an exclusive interview with Armenian President Armen Sarkissian in the capital Yerevan.

According to Ziabari, tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been a mainstay of world news. Most journalists who talk to the leaders of the two countries start their conversations by directing vexed questions about why conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave has dragged on for so long and what the future holds for relations between two neighbors whose differences seem unbridgeable.

But Armenia is not all about its skirmishes with Azerbaijan. The first world country to officially adopt Christianity as a state religion in 301 AD, Armenia is the wellspring of an ancient civilization and has fared notably well in cementing its democratic credentials. It scores better than Singapore and Malaysia in the Freedom Houses rating of political rights, and has made tangible strides in combating corruption.

Kourosh Ziabari: If history is indeed on your side, why hasnt the Armenian government been able to draw the support of the international community and the UN Security Council that consider Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory, as reflected in UNSC resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884?

Armen Sarkissian: What is interesting, I think, is that youre not the first person nor the last one who would like to build the international relations on historic justice. But it doesnt work like that in the real world. Am, I right?

Ziabari: Sure!

Sarkissian: I think historic justice is one of the components but the real world is the real world. Indeed, I think if you have the chance of traveling to the territories of Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh, it would be a fantastic trip, because you go through all of the different ages of our history. That area was always inhabited by ethnic Armenians. If you go back, youll find Armenian churches coming from the fourth or fifth century and so on.

I was recently on a state visit to Italy. As part of that visit, I visited the University of Bologna and had a very interesting tour to the library where they presented us some of their old Armenian manuscripts they had. There was a very interesting material which was an old 16th or early 17th-century map depicting Armenian cultural and religious centers.

Those who have founded and made it were in fact based in two places: in Jerusalem and in Constantinople. The map covers current Turkey, it covers current Armenia, it covers partially places in Iran up to Isfahan and other places. But it also covers Nagorno-Karabakh with hundreds of Armenian medieval churches and cultural centers there. So, this is about history.

Secondly, I think, unfortunately the history is pretty simple! That territory was rich of invasions, fights, relations with the Persian Empire, and you can find a lot of culture there, as well. But if you go back around 200 years ago, youll see that territory was taken over by the Russian Empire from the Persian Empire.

And then comrade Stalin, who was the great designer of borders and in reality, a great creator of problems between nations, including between Armenia and Azerbaijan, at that time gave Karabakh and Nakhchivan to Azerbaijan, because Soviets wanted to help create a common border between Azerbaijan and Turkey, and because Turkish leader Ataturk was seen as a great friend of Bolshevik Russia.

This is not about historic justice; this is about a desire for political manipulation and relations. And in more than 70 years of the Soviet rule, people of Nagorno-Karabakh at that time, Artsakh, were never happy living under Azerbaijan for many reasons.

And with the end of the Soviet Empire in 1985, when Gorbachev introduced changes, the emotional Armenian people, especially in Nagorno-Karabakh, believed in what was declared by Gorbachev: freedom of speech, Perestroika, redesigning, and so on, and then a movement started for the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh triggering Soviet Azerbaijans military operations and violence against ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh which turned into a full-fledged war that the Armenian side won. And then for last 26 years, Karabakh and attached territories were under the control of the Republic of Artsakh or Nagorno-Karabakh until the war of 2020.

Now, why the international community didnt do this or didnt do that? Well, the international community was involved; international community has decided that the organization that should be responsible for the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh is the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), not the United Nations, not the European Union.

And that organization has created a specific group, which is the Minsk Group, and the three co-chairs of this group were the United States, France and Russia, representing the interested parties, namely the United States as a superpower of the time, the European Union represented by France, and Russia. And basically, the sides were negotiating a possible solution with all its details.

So, there was an international institution that was in charge and I hope that we will go back to negotiations and we dont have to recreate or create a new format or framework, because it already exits and has a history.

Unfortunately, the second war in 2020 has destroyed the process of negotiations, but I think the best solution that we can get today is to engage the same organization. Now why did we win the first war, but lost the second one?

Lets speak about the first war. Azerbaijan was, at that time, supported by Turkey. But Turkey was different under President Demirel, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller and others. And Armenians, and Karabakh probably were different. To make it simpler, I would say that we were a bit ahead of Azerbaijan; we were ahead of designing construction of army; we were ahead of motivation, war, discipline and science.

There were generals, colonels, captains or soldiers who were serving in the Soviet army and had the experience of the Afghanistan War. So, the experienced soldiers were coming to a voluntary army, the army of Fedayeens or voluntary people creating an army. And we were a bit quicker than Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, during the past 26 years we didnt manage to convert the victory into stable peace.

Why Im saying we couldnt manage? Because its always not one side. At least, there are two or several sides. But because we were victorious, I think we had the upper hand to be more proactive and quickly convert the victory into stable peace. And probably towards the end of 1990s and beginning of 2000s, there was a chance of doing that and I will explain to you why. That was the time that Azerbaijan was trying to build the pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the European markets, to the Mediterranean, to Turkey  Ceyhan.

President Heydar Aliyev was a very pragmatic person. I didnt have that discussion with him but I have met him several times, and his son more later  but I can guess that in his list of priorities, the pipeline was of the higher significance. Without the pipeline, there was no chance that Azerbaijan would ever get back Karabakh, because the pipeline was power, money  money that helped them to rebuild their own army; and then it was also money that helped them to build their public relations and relations with other states including Europe.

For him it was a priority and at that time the Armenian army was the most powerful in the region. And that was the time that probably we should have gone into deep negotiations and sort it out. After that, the history started going 180 degrees in the other direction; Azerbaijan was becoming more powerful and Armenia was basically and gradually sort of falling behind the development.

The Armenian side was still enjoying the victories and believing that the issue was resolved and that the Minsk Group of co-chairs had a final conclusion. But the negotiations were not very successful, the sides were emotional while there were elections here and there, so these negotiations were being shaped in a different form.

Ziabari: I want to make a quick reference to Armenias present challenges with Azerbaijan. There was a massive rally in Yerevan in December last year, the March of Dignity, after the Russian-brokered armistice was signed, and many Armenians, mostly from the opposition party Homeland, were expressing frustration over the terms of the peace deal believing that the government didnt act prudently and acquiesced to a ceasefire that took away from Armenia territories it had controlled for more than a quarter of a century.

Do you believe Armenians are right to be disgruntled? Do you personally find the terms of the peace deal favorable or think the government could have negotiated more persuasively?

Sarkissian: It takes me back to our Constitution. Im the president of the parliamentary Republic and not in the position to comment on what I think about the parliament or the government.

As a president, I have very limited tools which are defined by the constitution. When something comes to my table, I have only two options; either to sign it or send it to the Constitutional Court.

Not every law that is on my table is anti-constitutional, but it can be anti-state, anti-education, anti-culture. The constitution is less effective until we dont change it. And I made it clear that if we go on with the constitutional changes, Im ready to resign.

Secondly, psychologically, for most of Armenians it is difficult to get the concept of parliamentary democracy. Probably its difficult for them to understand why the president cannot sack a minister.

Thirdly, our constitution was written at the time of the third president who was hoping to become the next prime minister. So, there were no checks and balances. If you have a constitution without checks and balances, then you will have very big problems. Any democracy, be that presidential or parliamentary, has to have checks and balances.

And the president doesnt have enough power to stop any law or to balance the government or prime ministers power. And thats not healthy. What Im pushing now is the change of constitution. And it doesnt matter if it changes to presidential one or will change kind of by bringing more checks and some balances, but we need a change.

Now, there is a statement on ceasefire and further steps by leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, but not an official agreement that has gone through the parliament or has come to my table. There was nothing on my table. Yes, the majority of people were unhappy, because a lot of them believed that the country was winning the war, and then one day it appeared that despite the thousands of lives lost, Armenia had also lost territory, cultural heritage and religious heritage.

Whats the solution then? The solution is classic. You dont have to invent solutions in this world. If you are a non-democracy, you just keep going. If you are a democracy, theres only one solution. You appeal to the people; whom do they want to continue running the country? This is exactly what I proposed openly. My proposal was the government to resign. I dont have the power, I couldnt force them, but to ask the government, not the prime minister, to resign and have a professional government, being appointed by the parliament.

Why professional? Because the aim was to go through the elections. Its better to have either a government of national unity, which is much more complex, or a professional one which is not politicized. And, change the constitution.

Ziabari: Moving onto your foreign relations. I understand that Armenia and Turkey have had a long history of hostilities and challenges, and there are deep-seated grievances that might not go away momentarily. But still your country and Turkey were so close to a breakthrough on normalizing ties when the Zurich Protocols were signed in 2009 mediated by the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group.

Yet the deal faced immense criticism in both countries and your predecessor Serzh Sargsyan recalled it from the parliament. Do you foresee any shift in the current antagonistic mood between Yerevan and Ankara? Is there any benefit to establishing official diplomatic relations and diffusing tensions?

Sarkissian: Is there anybody that would say theres no benefit in normalizing relations between two individuals that dont like each other or two families or two nations or two states? Of course, not. But every normalization is at minimum two-way or requires two players. This sort of normalization needs specific ingredients.

But, let me comment on what you said about the Zurich document. I didnt really believe when this document was signed that it is going to be effective. There are several reasons, but Ill give you the simplest one. The simple reason is that there was an attempt to bring together Turkey and Armenia while the Karabakh issue was not resolved. Could anyone prove or explain to me how Turkey could have normalized relations with Armenia when there was this unfinished war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, when Azerbaijan and Turkey were declaring that they are brotherly nations?

Obviously, in that room of peace talks, there were not only Armenia and Turkey; there was a third party that was not taken into account. And I never believed that theres any way that Turkey can normalize relations with Armenia without Azerbaijan agreeing to that. And why should Azerbaijan agree to normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey when the relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan arent normalized?

There is a fourth player and that fourth player is the Armenian nation. Armenian diaspora is a product of what happened in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire: the Armenian Genocide. Any president, cannot go on and negotiate on behalf of these people, on behalf of the grandparents that were killed or survived.

So, before negotiating with Turkey, there should be dialogue between the state of Armenia and its diaspora. And we have to have a common understanding and common policy on what we do, and thats why when former president after that traveled to France or Lebanon, he was received not in a friendly [manner], for the first time, by his fellow Armenians.

This relationship is a much more complex issue. When you are speaking about relations between Armenia and Turkey, I think we dont have a long history of Armenia and Turkey. We have a long history of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Armenians in Turkey. The history of Armenia and Turkey was short, and there was a war between the first Republic of Armenia and Turkey in 1920.

And the second part of relations is from 1991 when the third Armenian Republic was announced. And there are no relations today. Individuals travel; I have traveled to Turkey many times, when I was especially a free person, not in government office. I have visited universities, I have been chairing big conferences, giving lectures at Koc and other universities.

How can we improve relations now? Lets look at the other nations experiences, for example France and England, France and Germany. They were destroying each other for centuries; but then something changed, when after huge disasters and tragedies, everybody understood that theres only one way out from that hatred, and that is tolerance; tolerating other peoples language, faith, culture and religion.

If there were no tolerance in Europe, Europe would have been a messy place now. Theyve put aside all of that and then started tolerating each other, accepting each other, and then having a dialogue and being involved around ideas and principles that they share.

Tolerance means accepting; tolerance means being strong enough to say I am sorry. Saying I am sorry in individual relations or family relations or on the level of states is a sign of strength. If Germany would have not said I am sorry to Jews, do you think there would have been any relations? And the same happened with other nations as well. I was in Jerusalem when the president of Germany made a speech on the Holocaust Day.

And on the war in 2020, as I said, Azerbaijan was ahead, but it had another factor which was the factor of Turkey, and this is the modern Turkey maybe with huge ambitions to return the glory of the Ottoman Empire. But no one wants to analyze, go to the psychology of people. But what we see is that Turkey is active everywhere; Turkey is in Lebanon, effectively a lot now; Turkey is in Syria aggressively; Turkey is in the Mediterranean; Turkey is near Cyprus; Turkey is near Greece; Turkey is in Libya.

Turkey keeps Europe as a hostage by keeping a couple of millions of refugees on the border with the European Union. And the EU is paying billions of euros for these refugees. Turkey is in Libya, which is the gateway from northern African refugees to Europe. Somehow, Turkey now is in a very strong way in Azerbaijan. Europe is getting oil and gas now from the Caspian and Turkey is sitting there.

Ziabari: So?

Sarkissian: So, what about your historic justice?

Ziabari: Thats ambitious to be able to always cling to historic justice!

Armen Sarkissian: The reality is some sort of pure reality; the oil, the gas, logistics, transportation, money and power!

Part 2 of this interview will be published on December 22.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will visit Israel this week for detailed discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Iran's nuclear program, a senior Biden administration official said on Monday, Reuters reported.

December 21, 2021, 10:06 US says it will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapon

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 21, ARTSAKHPRESS: Sullivan, joined by the National Security Council's Middle East director Brett McGurk and other U.S. officials, are expected to arrive in Israel on Tuesday. Sullivan will also meet with Palestinian President Mohammed Abbas in Ramallah on the West Bank to discuss strengthening U.S. relations with the Palestinians, the official said.

But the trip is likely to be dominated by the perceived threat from Iran as negotiators report slow going in talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The Biden administration official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. and Israeli officials will talk about how they see the coming weeks unfolding with Iran.

"We will talk about where we see the state of Iran's nuclear program and some of the timelines," the official said. "It will be a good opportunity to sit down face-to-face and talk about the state of the talks, the timeframe in which we are working and to re-emphasize that we don't have much time."

The United States believes Iran's breakout time to producing enough highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon is now "really short" and alarming, a senior U.S. official said last week. Iran denies trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

The United States and Israel are in total agreement that Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, the Biden administration official said.

Talks between Iran and world powers have been put on pause until next week.

In his talks with the Israelis, Sullivan will reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israels security, the White House said in a statement.

In Ramallah, Sullivan will discuss with Abbas ongoing efforts to strengthen U.S.-Palestinian ties and advance peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike, the statement said.
Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan says that the implementation of the Persian Gulf-Black Sea international transportation corridor project could boost the economic cooperation.

December 21, 2021, 12:22 Launch of Persian Gulf-Black Sea route could boost economic cooperation  Armenian PM

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 21, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: Pashinyan delivered speech at the 11th session of the Armenian-Georgian inter-governmental commission on economic cooperation in Tbilisi, stating in particular: The bilateral cooperation between Armenia and Georgia in the transportation sector is a priority for us. We are cooperating within a number of international transportation organizations, are attaching great importance to the implementation of the Persian Gulf-Black Sea international transportation corridor and other initiatives in the field. I would like to note that the route connecting Persian Gulf with the Black Sea can truly boost the economic cooperation. Moreover, I want to highlight one more important fact that Prime Minister Garibashvili said that we view the relations with Georgia not only in the bilateral, but also within the regional cooperation domain. This is highly important in the context of our relations. Yes, Armenia and Georgia have quite a serious field of cooperation, and we can mutually assist one another.

He said that there are two projects by the Persian Gulf-Black Sea route  automobile route and railway route. For the development of the automobile route, we are implementing the construction of North-South highway which connects the Armenian-Georgian border with the Armenian-Iranian border. For the further effective work of the road we are holding active discussions with our Iranian and Georgian partners, and its very important that we reach a complete mutual understanding here. Moreover, I want to draw your attention to the fact that if we manage to reach an agreement with Azerbaijan over the Armenia-Azerbaijan automobile communication, this project will significantly change, becoming North-South, East-West route, the Armenian PM said. As for the restoration of railway communication, we have already reached a principled agreement with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. The talk is about the restoration of Yerevan-Julfa-Ordubad-Meghri-Horadiz railway, and we hope to end that works within the next 2-3 years. Of course, we need to work so that our agreements are clearly recorded as they are, Nikol Pashinyan said.
In the current year, great work has been done to monitor and preserve the cultural heritage of the occupied territories of Artsakh.

December 21, 2021, 17:01 Great work done to monitor and preserve the cultural heritage of the occupied territories of Artsakh. Minister

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 21, ARTSAKHPRESS: As "Artsakhpress" reports, Lusine Gharakhanyan, Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Artsakh Republic said during todays press conference.

Through various programs implemented in the field of culture, support was provided to art schools of Martuni, Chartar, Askeran, Astkhashen, Martakert to ensure the participation of schoolchildren in the republican competition of folk instruments and folk songs.

We have also organized training courses for art school teachers within the framework of the "Cooperation with Armenia and Foreign Countries" program. We have been able to keep the Shushi State Theater after Mkrtich Khandamiryan, which, although itinerant and unaddressed, continues to fully perform its work. Also, work has been done in the direction of museums.

Considerable work has been done in the framework of non-formal education through youth awareness raising programs, especially in terms of orientation and strengthening of national values, she said.
By Mark Trevelyan

(Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia had no room to retreat in a standoff with the United States over Ukraine and would be forced into a tough response unless the West dropped its "aggressive line".

Putin addressed his remarks to military officials as Russia pressed for an urgent U.S. and NATO reply to proposals it made last week for a binding set of security guarantees from the West.

"What the U.S. is doing in Ukraine is at our doorstep... And they should understand that we have nowhere further to retreat to. Do they think well just watch idly?" Putin said.

"If the aggressive line of our Western colleagues continues, we will take adequate military-technical response measures and react harshly to unfriendly steps."

Putin did not spell out the nature of these measures but his phrasing mirrored that used previously by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who has warned that Russia may redeploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe in response to what it regards as NATO plans to do the same.

Russia rejects Ukrainian and U.S. accusations that it may be preparing an invasion of Ukraine as early as next month by tens of thousands of Russian troops poised within reach of the border.

It says it needs pledges from the West - including a promise not to conduct NATO military activity in Eastern Europe - because its security is threatened by Ukraine's growing ties with the Western alliance and the possibility of NATO missiles being deployed against it on Ukrainian territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said on Friday that he was ready to meet Russia for "direct talks, tete-a-tete, we don't mind in what format". But Moscow has said repeatedly it sees no point in such a meeting without clarity on what the agenda would be.

A Kremlin statement said Putin stressed in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron that reconvening the four-power Normandy group - which brings together the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany - would require concrete steps by Kyiv to implement existing peace agreements. Ukraine says it is Russia and its proxies who are refusing to engage.

Story continues

With Western powers keen to show Russia they are solid in their support of Ukraine and NATO, Germany's new Chancellor Olaf Scholz also spoke by phone with Putin.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday ruled out an in-person meeting between Biden and Putin for now. "I think we have to see if, in the first instance, theres any progress diplomatically," Blinken said in a news briefing when asked if an in-person summit could happen to try to ease the tensions.

U.S. SUPPLIES

Karen Donfried, the U.S. State Department's top diplomat for Europe, said in a briefing with reporters that Washington was prepared to engage with Moscow via three channels - bilaterally, through the NATO-Russia Council that last met in 2019, and at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In the meantime, she said, the United States would continue to send military equipment and supplies to Ukraine in the weeks and months ahead - something that has antagonised Moscow.

"As President (Joe) Biden has told President Putin, should Russia further invade Ukraine, we will provide additional defensive materials to the Ukrainians above and beyond that which we are already in the process of providing," she said.

Washington is considering tough export control measures to disrupt Russia's economy if Putin invades Ukraine, a Biden administration official told Reuters, and the measures would be discussed in a meeting of senior officials on Tuesday.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would seek meaningful discussions with Moscow early next year.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu alleged that more than 120 U.S. private military contractors were active in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian troops have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014, and said they were preparing a "provocation" involving chemical substances.

He offered no evidence in support of the claim, which Pentagon spokesman John Kirby described as "completely false".

Throughout the crisis, Russia has veered between harsh rhetoric, calls for dialogue and dire warnings, with Ryabkov repeatedly comparing the situation to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.

Many of Moscow's demands, including for a block on NATO membership for Ukraine and the withdrawal of U.S. and other allied troops from Eastern Europe, are seen as non-starters by Washington and its partners.

But rejecting them out of hand would risk closing off any space for dialogue and further fuelling the crisis.

(Reporting by Maxim Rodionov, Andrew Osborn, Olzhas Auyezov, Polina Devitt, Natalia Zinets in Kyiv, Daphne Psaledakis, Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Lewis and Idrees Ali in Washington, Sabine Siebold and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly says a rapid COVID-19 test she had taken proved positive, adding she is working in isolation until the result could be confirmed.

Joly, 42, was named foreign minister in October and would be one of the most prominent domestic politicians to come down with the coronavirus, which is spreading rapidly as the Omicron variant picks up speed.

"I have taken a rapid test and tested positive for COVID-19. Following public health guidelines, I am in isolation and will continue my work virtually, as I have been for a number of days, until I get the results of my PCR test," she tweeted on Monday.

Joly did not give further details. Her chief spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday said a spike in Omicron cases was "scary," while a top medical official suggested the healthcare system could soon be swamped.

Earlier in the day, Quebec, Canada's second-most-populous province, ordered bars, gyms and casinos shut on Monday and directed people to work only from home.

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube said the province had a record 4500 new cases of the coronavirus a day and predicted worse was yet to come.

He urged Quebecers to cut down personal contacts with the approach of Christmas and New Year's Day. The new measures were due to take effect at 5pm on Monday.

"The situation is critical. Right now we are waging a war against the virus," Dube told a virtual briefing.

"We will have new projections from our specialists this evening and let's be honest, they probably won't be encouraging," he said.

Dube said most schools would shut down immediately until January 10, while restaurants would open only from 5pm to 10pm and all sporting events would be played without spectators.
With nearly 100 new COVID-19 cases over the weekend, Cayuga County has topped 1,000 cases in a month for the fourth time in the pandemic.

The Cayuga County Health Department reported 97 new cases over the last three days. In December, the county has 1,019 confirmed cases, trailing only December 2020 (2,024), January (2,010) and September (1,079) for the most cases in a month.

The county is in the midst of a five-month COVID wave largely driven by the delta variant. There has yet to be a confirmed case with the omicron variant, but health officials said last week that it is present in neighboring counties and could be here soon if it is not already.

Active cases (392) dipped below 400 for the first time in a week, while hospitalizations of residents in Auburn or Syracuse facilities increased to 19. At this time last year, there were 28 residents who tested positive for COVID-19 and were hospitalized in Auburn. The county's tally at that time did not include residents in Syracuse hospitals.

State gets at-home tests

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Monday that New York will receive 10 million free at-home tests, 5 million of which will arrive before the end of the year. The remaining 5 million will be delivered in January.

The initial 5 million tests will be distributed mostly to local governments and school districts. Schools will receive 2 million at-home tests, which will allow districts to implement "test-to-stay" policies. Test-to-stay ensures that students with a negative COVID test can remain in class.

"We'll be sending a lot of testing kits to schools, and here's why: we are keeping our schools open," Hochul said during a briefing on Monday afternoon.

"Let me repeat that: We are keeping schools open because we're dealing with a very different variant at this time. We believe that it's critically important that our children not end up in that same situation they were for so many months, when they were so displaced from their normal environment, they did not get the quality of education, despite the best efforts of those incredible teachers and parents who struggled every single day alongside their children, just to deal with these circumstances we dealt with last time. We're in a different environment, a different circumstance."

New York City will receive 1.6 million tests and 1 million tests will be given to county emergency managers. The remaining 400,000 tests from the initial shipment will be sent to vaccine sites. Anyone who gets vaccinated at a state-run site can pick up an at-home test.

Kathryn Garcia, director of state operations, urged the federal government to invoke the Defense Production Act to require companies to manufacture more over-the-counter tests.

"This is good progress, but we still need more and we need more partnership from the federal government," Garcia said. "We need them to help make sure there are tests available to anyone who needs it."

In other news:

 The Cayuga County Health Department is holding two vaccination clinics this week  from 4 to 5 p.m. Tuesday and 2 to 3 p.m. Wednesday. Both clinics will be held at the Fingerlakes Mall Event Center.

More information about the clinics, including registration links, can be found at cayugacounty.us/health.

The health department noted in its situational update on Monday that the clinics are open only to Cayuga County residents.

Online producer Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.

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AUBURN  Tapangah Becker tried to address the man about to be sentenced in the overdose death of her father, but could not get the words out. With help from her mother, the message still got delivered.

Michael J. Chapman, 32, of 2539 Sittser Road, Throop, was in front of Judge Mark Fandrich for sentencing in Cayuga County Court Tuesday. Chapman pleaded guilty earlier this year to second-degree manslaughter, a class C felony, for selling heroin laced with fentanyl that resulted in the death of Matthew Becker, 35, in January.

Tapangah, 14, with a piece of paper in her hands, started to read her statement to Chapman, but began crying. Tapangah's mother, Ashley Miles, stepped in to help, reading her daughter's words.

"You took away my dad's ability to take care of me and my family," Miles said on behalf of her daughter. Tapangah wrote that Matthew will never be able to teach her to play the guitar or see her graduate.

She said Chapman knew "what you were doing was wrong," that Matthew trusted Chapman but Chapman "did it anyway."

Five people, including Matthew's parents, Donald and Lisa, were in court with Tapangah and Miles. Fandrich expressed condolences after Miles was finished speaking.

In addition to being sentenced for the manslaughter charge, Chapman was also facing five counts of third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, which are class B felonies, and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, also a class B felony.

Cayuga County Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Brittany Grome Antonacci noted Chapman sold heroin laced with a fentanyl compound to an undercover agent of the New York State Police on different occasions, and when a search warrant was executed at Chapman's home, heroin laced with fentanyl was discovered.

Rome Canzano, Chapman's attorney, said his client expressed regret for his actions.

"It is my sincere hope that this case is not only a lesson to Mr. Chapman, but to the public," Canzano said.

Given an opportunity to speak on his own behalf, Chapman said he was "truly sorry" for what happened to Matthew. Chapman also lamented that his addiction harmed Matthew's family in addition to his own.

"I'm just truly sorry. I feel horrible for you guys," Chapman said.

Before announcing his decision, Leone noted that several letters supporting Chapman had been sent in.

For the manslaughter charge, Chapman was sentenced to three to nine years in prison. For the other six counts, Chapman was sentenced to nine years in prison, followed by two years of post-release supervision. The sentences will run concurrently.

Several people in the courtroom appeared to be there in support of Chapman. As he was about to be led away in hands cuffs, someone got up and said "Mike, we love you. God loves you. It'll be OK." Another person said "I love you" to Chapman as he was going out the door.

After the case ended, Matthew's family spoke about him with smiles, describing him as an extremely positive person. Lisa and Donald said they felt Chapman should have received a longer sentence. Lisa added that she felt her son would have forgiven Chapman and would have encouraged Chapman to be "the best version of himself."

Grome Antonacci said in a press release issued later Tuesday that the case marked the first time in Cayuga County that an admitted drug dealer was criminally convicted for causing an overdose death.

Nearly one year ago, Matthew Beckers life ended abruptly after ingesting heroin laced with fentanyl sold to him by this defendant," Grome Antonacci, said in the release. "An overdose death affects more than just the victim; it affects those left behind and the community as a whole. The family members of Matthew Becker stood strong today and voiced the pain caused by this defendant.

Grome Antonacci said Chapman "was on notice that the drugs he possessed and sold contained both heroin and fentanyl. Despite this knowledge, he did not stop selling that product, which is the epitome of recklessness. Part of our strategy in addressing the opioid epidemic is to target drug dealers who are causing fatal overdoses in our communities and hold them accountable for their actions. I strongly urge friends and family members of opiate overdose victims to reach out to their local legislators and push for legislation that will make it easier to prosecute those who bring these lethal drugs into our communities. I commend the thorough investigation conducted by the Auburn Police Department, as well as the investigation into the narcotic sales by members of the New York State Police. We will continue to work closely with local law enforcement to bring justice in these cases.

Staff writer Kelly Rocheleau can be reached at (315) 282-2243 or kelly.rocheleau@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @KellyRocheleau.

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For Dia Carabajal, endorsing Gov. Kathy Hochul is a "no-brainer."

Carabajal, chairwoman of the Cayuga County Democratic Committee, is among 13 Democratic county leaders who backed Hochul on Tuesday. Hochul, a Democrat, is seeking a full term as governor in 2022.

"The governor really has the finger on the pulse of what it feels like to be up here," Carabajal told The Citizen in an interview. "She supports us. She supports our projects. She's been here. She knows our names. She knows (Cayuga County Legislature Chairwoman Aileen McNabb Coleman). She knows (Auburn Mayor Michael Quill). She knows the people who are here in our county."

As an example, Carabajal recalled Hochul's last visit to Cayuga County in July. The then-lieutenant governor stopped in Auburn for the opening of the Cayuga Culinary Institute on Genesee Street. During her time in the city, Carabajal estimates Hochul met 30 to 40 local officials.

It wasn't the first time that Hochul traveled to Cayuga County. As lieutenant governor, she was a regular visitor to the county. In 2015, her first year as a statewide elected official, she stopped at the Harriet Tubman Home. She has delivered state budget presentations in the city and was here for the opening of the Equal Rights Heritage Center.

Hochul is attempting to lock up the support of Democratic officials across the state. She has two main competitors for the Democratic nomination: New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who challenged Hochul in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in 2018, and U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi. Another Democrat, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, may run for governor.

In addition to Carabajal, the other Democratic chairs who endorsed Hochul on Tuesday include Elizabeth Passer (Oswego County) and Mark Alquist (Wayne County). Most of the Democratic leaders who endorsed Hochul mentioned her upstate ties  she hails from the Buffalo area  and frequent visits to their areas.

Carabajal believes that Hochul is doing "a fantastic job" as governor since taking over in August. She was sworn in as New York's 57th governor after Andrew Cuomo's resignation.

"She's capable, she's competent and she knows who we are," Carabajal said. "She is proving right now that she has what it takes to be governor of New York."

Online producer Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding.

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Toyota Motor Corp maybe splashing out around $35 billion globally on its battery-electric-car push but in Latin America, electric vehicles will only comprise about 5% of the regions total market by 2030, the Japanese automakers president and chief executive officer for Latin America and the Caribbean said.

A lack of government guidelines is part of the reason for the slow EV adoption, Masahiro Inoue said, noting that while he has plans on his desk for 2030, authorities in Brazil, where Toyota sells most of its cars in the region, havent outlined a clear transport decarbonization road map.

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Its important Brazil takes the lead considering its one of the rare countries that has a complete automobile industry, Inoue said in an interview with Bloomberg News. In the southern hemisphere, only Brazil has this situation," he added. Neighboring nations could follow what Brazil decides, whether thats embracing a hybrid, flex-hybrid or a purely electric strategy.

(Also read | EV push by Joe Biden may hit roadblock within even as Canada, Mexico up pressure)

Inoue sees around 6 million cars being sold in Latin America and the Caribbean, excluding Mexico, in 2030, with about half of those going to Brazil. While that represents growth of 40% compared to 2021 levels, just 5% of those cars are expected to be EVs. Around 10% may be plug-in hybrids while almost 40% will be so-called flexible-hybrid cars, or ones that have an electric engine combined with a combustion engine that can run with petrol or petrol blend.

The large chunk of flex-hybrids means Toyota should be able to start local production of some relevant parts, Inoue said. Currently Toyota imports the hybrid part of flex-hybrid cars sold in Brazil from Japan due to lack of scale.

Toyota has sold more than 25,000 flex-hybrids in Latin America to date, with the Corolla Cross sports-utility vehicle proving particularly popular since its March debut, he said. Uptake of that model has led Toyota to add a third shift using another 500 staff at its Sorocaba plant in Brazil.

(Also read | This country to build affordable EVs in a bid to shift towards electric mobility)

Toyota isnt the only automaker with an eye on flex-hybrids in Latin America. Volkswagen AG said in September it plans to launch six similar models in Brazil within five years. Nissan Motor Co. is also working on ethanol-fuel-cell cars in the region.

Akio Toyoda, the Japanese automakers global president, said earlier this month that EVs can be divided into two categories depending on the energy they use: Carbon-reducing vehicles, which dont use clean energy but which result in zero CO2 emissions, and carbon-neutral vehicles, which run on clean energy and achieve zero CO2 emissions.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.
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.

NIOs founder names Mercedes, BMW, Audi as rivals

Founder, chairman, and CEO of NIO, Li Bin, said that Tesla is not a competitor to NIO, nor are XPeng and Li Auto, but such traditional automakers as Mercedes, BMW, or Audi. Li believes that NIO is battling against traditional fossil-oiled vehicles on behalf of new energy vehicles.

ET5; photo credit: NIO

HUAWEI's Intelligent Automotive Solution BU accumulates 300 partners

According to the COO of HUAWEI's Intelligent Automotive Solution Business Unit (BU), Wang Jun, the BU has formed relationships with roughly 300 companies in the past year. Over 70 companies are HUAWEI's iDVP digital platform partners, another 70 are MDC intelligent driving computing platform partners, and the rest 150 are partners to the HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit.

Chinas first port driverless container car criterion issued

Dongfeng Motor, China COSCO Shipping, and China Mobile have co-formulated the Port Driverless Container Vehicle Technical Requirements, the first regulation in the field in China. The criterion was approved by China ITS Industry Alliance, offering a basis for all future conducts in the driverless container car segment in the country.

Desay SVs intelligent driving assistance unit approved by ASPICE CL2

Chinas major automotive supplier, Desay SV, announced that its intelligent driving assistance business unit had passed the ASPICE CL2 evaluation authentication, signifying the company's achievements in the field.

NavInfo secures autonomous driving service, mapping contracts from Volvo Cars

Chinas major navigation player NavInfo announced that the company had signed a service contract with Volvo Cars Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in regards to autonomous driving.

Ningbo Jifeng, Grammer offer NIO ET5 auto parts worth 2,000 yuan per car

Chinese automotive supplier Ningbo Jifeng Auto parts Co., Ltd. (Ningbo Jifeng) and its subsidiary Grammer AG provide the NIO ET5 with 2,000 yuan ($315) per car worth of components, including the headrests for second-row seats, armrests, center console, and electric power air vents, Ningbo Jifeng revealed on Dec. 20 on a communication platform of Shanghai Stock Exchange.

ByteDance leads A round investments of Chinese autonomous driving startup Senior.auto

Chinas autonomous driving startup Senior.auto announced today that it had landed hundreds of million RMB in its Series-A round of financing, led by TikToks parent, ByteDance.

HUAWEIs intelligent automotive solution innovation center starts operation

HUAWEIs intelligent automotive solution innovation center started operation on December 21st, and its intelligent connected vehicle test field will start operation next year, according to the ICT giant.

WeRide invests in GAC's ride-sharing platform Ontime

GAC Group, WeRide and Ontime held a strategic cooperation and investment signing ceremony on December 21st, further cementing the trios future collaboration.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- Chinas major navigation player NavInfo announced that the company had signed a service contract with Volvo Cars Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in regards to autonomous driving.

Photo credit: NavInfo



According to the announcement, NavInfo will perform environment constructions for Volvo Cars autonomous driving function verification platform and provide corresponding autonomous driving data collection, process, and services in the next three years.

The specific trade sum will depend on Volvo Cars sales performance of the corresponding vehicle models in China during the contracted period.

NavInfo believed that the agreement signifies Volvo Cars recognition of its achievements in the autonomous driving, intelligent connected services, and compliance data operation aspects.

Moreover, one of NavInfos subsidiaries, Nav2 (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., also secured a procurement contract with Volvo Cars for Nav2s high-precision mapping services.

According to the company, Nav2 will provide its high-accuracy mapping products to Volvo Cars corresponding vehicles in the coming three years.

Notably, NavInfo has gradually signed several procurement agreements with major automakers across the world, including Volkswagen AG and Daimler. Earlier in November, Volvo Cars have signed a contract to purchase NavInfos V2X (vehicle to everything) related products.

The various orders from the automakers represent NavInfos success towards the new intelligent and autonomous transformations in the auto industry.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- Chinas autonomous driving startup Senior.auto announced today that it had landed hundreds of million RMB in its Series-A round of financing, led by TikToks parent, ByteDance.

Autonomous vehicle fleet; photo credit: Senior.auto



Senior.auto said that the funds would be put towards the companys R&D, daily management, and business expansions.

Established in April 2020, Senior.auto is a young company dedicated to providing autonomous driving solutions and operation services in the pan-ports area. The company has completed its Angel round and Pre-A round of financing in May 2020 and February 2021 successively.

The companys integrated solution consisting of LiDARs, cameras, millimeter-wave radars, and ultrasonic radars guarantee a fully redundant perception, satisfying the diverse demands under port scenarios. Its hierarchical feature fusion network allows 100% recall of obstructions, with 99.7% accuracy. Its self-developed hardware reaches 32fps of computing power, while its innovative cloud-control platform supports real-time simulation and remote monitor/control over hundreds of driverless vehicles.

Driverless operation; photo credit: Senior.auto



In June this year, Senior.auto has successfully inked the first L4 driverless commercialized paid-operation agreement with Daxie Merchants Port in Ningbo. Two months later, in August, the company signed another agreement with Jingtang Port in Tangshan.

According to the CEO of Senior.auto, He Bei, the company expects to secure 3 to 4 more driverless commercial operation deals with domestic ports during the first half of 2022. Storage-to-storage commute and trunkline logistics are two other fields the company plans to branch out to next year.

Moreover, the company is also eyeing the international market, as its partner Wang Chuhao is actively facilitating a deal with the Port of Hamburg, Germany.

Currently, Senior.auto has deployed roughly 40 vehicles for normalized autonomous operations and expects to remove all onboard safety drivers in 2022.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese automotive supplier Ningbo Jifeng Auto parts Co., Ltd. (Ningbo Jifeng) and its subsidiary Grammer AG provide the NIO ET5 with 2,000 yuan ($315) per car worth of components, including the headrests for second-row seats, armrests, center console, and electric power air vents, Ningbo Jifeng revealed on Dec. 20 on a communication platform of Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Photo credit: Ningbo Jifeng



The auto parts supplier said it will continue to strengthen the cooperation with automakers like NIO on new energy vehicle models.

The ET5 was launched last week on the NIO Day 2021 as NIO's fifth production model and second sedan model. At the event, NIO started presale of the ET5 and said the model is expected for delivery in next September.



ET5; photo credit: NIO



With a starting price of 328,000 yuan ($51,460) before government subsidies, and 258,000 yuan ($40,480) with a leased battery, the most basic variant features a CLTC range of 500km on a single charge. The post-subsidy price for the entry-level China-made Model 3 is 255,652 yuan ($40,110).

The ET5 comes with the 3rd-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platform. Inside of the ET5 looks as clean as possible despite the 10.2-inch HDR digital dashboard and the 12.8-inch AMOLED console-mounted display.

Regarding NIO Aquila Super Sensing, the ET5 carries 33 sensors, including one ultralong-range high-resolution LiDAR, seven 8 mega-pixel cameras, five millimeter-wave radars, twelve ultrasonic sensors, one ADMS, two high-precision location units (GPS plus IMU), etc.

As a global automotive supplier, Ningbo Jifeng supplies passenger vehicle clients with such products as headrests, armrests, center console system, interior parts, as well as thermoplastic solutions. Its clients contain FAW Group, SAIC Motor, Dongfeng Motor, Great Wall Motor, Hongqi, BYD, Geely Auto, XPeng, NIO, and Li Auto.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.  Hustler Hollywood will officially open doors for business this Thursday at 2911 S. Bristol Street in Santa Ana, Calif. This location marks store 39 for the nationwide chain founded by Larry Flynt, a leader in the sexual health and wellness arena for more than two decades. In addition, the Santa Ana location marks the retailer's 10th store in the California market.

The company said each Hustler Hollywood boutique is designed to be "intimate, sophisticated and curated with only the finest products on the market." Hustler Hollywood's mission is to encourage the exploration of intimacy and enhancement of relationships and advocate and promote free sexual expression for all.

"Santa Ana is a community that we have looked at for some time with hopes of entering as we have a lot of fans and customers in Orange County," said Philip Del Rio, vice president, retail. "We are looking forward to having another store in Southern California and being a part of the Santa Ana community for years to come."

The store will hold a Grand Opening event on Saturday, January 15, 2022, where attendees will have the opportunity to mingle, shop, enjoy drinks and hors-d'oeuvres, plus have the chance to win prizes throughout the evening. One lucky winner will receive a $750 shopping spree for Hustler Hollywoods Santa Ana location. In addition, the first 50 guests through the door will receive a special gift bag. The event is free and open to the public.

Hustler Hollywood Santa Ana is currently hiring. Those interested can visit the company's career website HUSTLERCareers.
Over the past few months, Newsweek has been following the progress of a petition from citizens asking Congress to continue sending monthly stimulus checks to Americans for the duration of the pandemic. With nearly 3 million signatures, it is one of the best-supported petitions ever run on Change.org.

Sadly, it will result in nearly 3 million separate email messages distributed to each signers senators and House members, who have no way of knowing the messages are part of such a big, national grassroots campaign. Each member of Congress will choose whether or not to act, and some of the 3 million signers who now feel part of something big may not even get a response.

Wouldnt it be great if we could engage with Congress in ways that help us better trust, understand and guide what theyre doing, and that make us feel like our voices really make a difference?

Some advocates participate in online petitions like this and dutifully click to send whatever form message results. Some attend telephone and in-person town hall meetings to support or oppose our leaders  or simply to ask a question. And, of course, we have elections. But these acts of civic engagement often leave us empty, feeling unheard and apathetic or angry. Few of us engage in practices that truly inform legislators and build strong trust and understanding with those they represent. And its not entirely our fault. Were following standard practices for communicating with elected officials, often facilitated by the groups we associate with.

Unfortunately, standard practices have not kept pace with the times.

Congress lacks the capacity to meet the demands of a 21st century constituency and has been slow to embrace new technology and innovation. Grassroots organizers  associations, nonprofits and companies that facilitate the vast majority of advocacy flooding Congress  focus on easy and efficient advocacy strategies, rather than those proven to be more effective for policy outcomes but which are harder to implement. As a result, Americans do not feel heard, and Congress is spending countless hours and millions of dollars on the administrative tasks of responding to form letters instead of the dynamic activities of engaging with the people who sent them.

But there are bright spots that portend a better future. The Congressional Management Foundation recently offered transformative strategies to enhance engagement between decision-makers and the people in a report: The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue. We also identified examples of members of Congress, nonprofit groups, and legislatures trying new approaches, including:

-- A years-long effort by the House Natural Resources Committee to engage stakeholders and the public in an inclusive, transparent, community-led and community-driven process to create the most comprehensive environmental justice bill in congressional history.

-- Members of Congress conducting virtual deliberative town hall meetings, which enable them to dive deeper with their constituents into a single issue than allowed by the typical, free-for-all town halls most legislators host.

-- State legislatures, including Washington and Oregon, providing digital tools to facilitate public comment on bills and committee proceedings.

-- International parliaments, including New Zealand and the U.K., offering multiple venues for public engagement, including submissions to committees, complaints about regulations, messages to members of Parliament and petitions (more formal than the click here versions discussed above).

-- Municipalities, including Paris, establishing permanent and representative citizens councils to advise leaders and help engage other residents in decision-making.

Extensive research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development indicates efforts like these lead to significant benefits to democracy, including: better policy outcomes, greater legitimacy of decisions, increased public trust, a decline in undue influence of money and power, and reduced polarization and disinformation.

Unfortunately, most deliberative opportunities with Congress are one-time experimental efforts. If we want to reap the benefits of true public engagement in national decision-making, it must be methodical, representative, government-facilitated and woven into the DNA of Congress. We need proven methods to be scaled up and to become common practice for senators and representatives.

In the early days of our republic, Congress had such a system that enabled diverse voices to weigh in on policy  the petition process guaranteed by the First Amendment  but that has long since atrophied to the point we no longer remember what it was or how to facilitate it. We need now to rebuild trust through engagement that demonstrates that the People are partners in the democratic process rather than subject to the whims of monied interests, ersatz advocacy and angry mobs. And if our current state of affairs is any indication, we need to do it soon. Many are concerned that our democracy is at stake, possibly facing its worst existential crisis since the Civil War. Its past time to embrace proven methods for engaging the People and enhancing trust in Congress and offer America a 21st century republic that anyone would be proud to participate in.

Kathy Goldschmidt is the director of strategic initiatives at the Congressional Management Foundation and co-author of "The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue."

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PHOENIX  Thousands of Arizona high school students can now get free college tuition thanks to a new statewide scholarship program.

The Arizona Promise Program will provide scholarships for eligible low-income students to fully cover their tuition and fees if they enroll at one of the three state universities  Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University or the University of Arizona.

The goal is to make higher education more accessible for students from low-income families, a necessary step for a strong future economy in the state.

The Arizona Legislature approved the new program earlier this year.

The universities for years have had lots of financial aid, but what weve done here is passed a state law that requires it, said John Arnold, executive director of the Arizona Board of Regents, which is overseeing the scholarship.

So its not a decision, theres not a pool of money, its not first come first served  it is state law that if you do your part, you graduate from high school, you meet the admission requirements for the university, if you are a low-income family, you go without tuition and fees. I think its a really powerful message, Arnold added.

Last year only 28% of Arizona public high school graduates enrolled in a four-year college, and the rate was even lower for low-income students, per an analysis from the Board of Regents.

At the current pace, only about 17% of Arizonas current ninth-graders will have a four-year degree by 2029, much lower than the expected portion of jobs that will require that level of education.

The scholarship will cover all eligible students who enroll at a state university. Students who meet the qualifications will automatically get the funding through their university.

An estimated 3,800 students currently enrolled at the three universities are expected to be eligible for the program and funded this spring, according to data from the Board of Regents.

The total universe of eligible Arizona high school students is not clear, but last year about 12,400 Arizona students who filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid would have financially qualified, according to the board.

Likely even more students are eligible for the promise program but did not fill out the financial aid form in anticipation of applying to college.

State lawmakers funded the program with an initial $7.5 million this year, and the board is pushing for over $30 million next session. But regardless of state allocations, all eligible students will get funding.

Many states and cities already have promise programs in place  locally, for example, Mesa has a free tuition program for Mesa Community College students.

The hope is that this state scholarship will help increase Arizonas relatively low level of college completion and also incentivize high school students to be college-ready and graduate so they can have access to free tuition.

Its messaging down into eighth, ninth, tenth grade to students and their families who are making long-term decisions about their academic career, that even if youre a very low-income person, you can go to college, that avenue is available to you, that our state wants you to go to college, and we want that promise there for you, Arnold said.

Who is eligible for free college?

Students who qualify get a guarantee that their tuition and fees will be covered, according to the board. The scholarship fills any gaps for students in tuition and fees after their Pell Grant and any other aid they may receive.

This is a promise. Its a guarantee, Arnold said. If you meet all of those criteria, you receive the scholarship.

Scholarships are starting this coming spring semester for qualified students who already are enrolled. The board and three universities are working on plans to market it across the state to get more eligible students aware of the program and ready to enroll next fall.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Coconino County is on the verge of possibly huge political changes between redistricting, a looming election and political personalities. Heres a look at the biggest political stores of the year:

Last-minute pardon for Renzi

Former Flagstaff Representative Rick Renzi was pardoned by President Donald Trump on his last day in office in January.

The former Republican congressman represented Arizonas 1st Congressional District from 2003 to 2009. Prosecutors argued Renzi used his position in Congress to enrich himself and help fund his 2002 political campaign by embezzling money from an insurance company and orchestrating a federal land swap. He was convicted in 2013 for corruption, including wire fraud, conspiracy, extortion and lying to insurance regulators.

Renzi maintained his innocence and campaigned heavily for a pardon, alleging that his trial was tainted with concealed evidence and false testimony.

Archuleta moves on

Liz Archuleta stepped down from her position on the Coconino County Board of Supervisors in February to join President Joe Bidens administration.

Archuleta, who was just sworn in to represent District 2 for the seventh time, was the first Latina to serve on the Board and held a number of leadership positions during her 24-year tenure.

Archuleta was named as director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Vazquez steps in

After Archuleta stepped down, Jeronimo Vasquez was appointed to the District 2 position.

The longtime Flagstaff resident previously worked at Killip Elementary School for 14 years. He has longstanding ties to the Sunnyside neighborhood he represents, including being a part of the creation of the Market of Dreams, a co-operative multi-cultural marketplace.

Vasquez, who was unanimously approved by the board, was sworn in on Feb. 12.

Congressional election heats up

Candidates were quick to put their hats in for the 2022 election as state politicians were still squabbling over the one in 2020. Numerous Republicans announced their intention order to run for Congress representing Arizonas First Congressional District (CD1)  currently held by Democrat Rep. Tom OHalleran  including state including Rep. Walt Blackman of Snowflake and Tucson entrepreneur Eli Crane, as well as Williams Mayor John Moore.

But the races could change entirely depending on how the districts are redrawn by Arizonas Independent Redistricting commission. Watkins could also find himself vying for the nomination against Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, who was tied to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol and censured by the U.S. House for posting a violent video on social media.

Tensions on Flagstaff City Council

Between a brick, stewing tensions and a special wastewater meeting  if theres been one constant on the Flagstaff City Council this year, its the ongoing drama between Mayor Paul Deasy and the rest of the council.

Deasys relationship was already strained before he was even sworn in due to what councilmembers described as an overstepping of power by acting without the councils approval. That tension reached a high in February when Deasy accused Flagstaff Shelter Services leaders of facilitating violence against his family and city staff during a public meeting.

The claim appeared to be largely unfounded and Deasy later apologized for the comments, saying they did not befit the honor of his position.

But that wasnt the end of it. Deasy again found himself in hot water in September after calling a special meeting to approve a wastewater expenditure while only giving councilmembers one days notice. Councilmembers questioned whether the expenditure was actually urgent enough to warrant a special meeting, resulting in four opting not to attend. Deasy was there, though, and the meeting was adjourned minutes after it began due to a lack of majority. Deasy then turned to Facebook, insinuating that the absent members didnt prioritize health and safety in a post. Five councilmembers decried Deasy during the following meeting, stopping short of calling for his resignation.

Contenders line up for 2022 mayoral race

The election isnt until next year, but candidates announced this year their intent to run for mayor in 2022.

Both Vice Mayor Becki Daggett and Councilmember Regina Salas both declared they would run shortly after the wastewater/bad-mouthing debacle.

Salas told the Daily Sun she wanted to give voters a choice, while Daggett pointed to a need for the council to work together, instead of fighting. Both touted their years of experience and work in the community.

Redistricting on the verge of reshaping northern Arizona politics

Arizona started the long process of mapping new congressional and legislative districts across the state in 2021.

These new districts will redefine political boundaries for the next decade, including the 2022 election.

Northern Arizona officials expressed concern that the proposed map neutered the northern portion of the state and mute tribal voices at the state Capitol. The draft split communities of interest and left northern Arizona without a competitive district.

The draft districts passed by the commission largely split Coconino County in two, placing most of the county within the Native American-centered District 6, which also includes the city of Flagstaff.

In addition to Flagstaff, the proposed District 6 would include much of northern and eastern Arizona, including the Hualapai Indian Reservation, Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation before swinging to the south to include the Fort Apache Reservation and San Carlos Reservation as well.

But tribal members in the region arent interested in being in a district with Flagstaff out of fear that it would make it more difficult for them to elect a legislator of their choice, according to reporting by Capitol Media Services.

Of the voting age population within the new district, about 7% are Hispanic while about 54% identified as Native American. That is compared to Native Americans making up about 68% of the population in the current majority minority legislative district that was adopted last cycle.

The Independent Redistricting Commission must adopt final maps by Tuesday.

Redistricting could reshape county politics

The state isnt the only one seeing redistricting efforts.

Every 10 years, supervisorial districts must be redrawn so each district is equal in population. The Coconino County Board of Supervisors is responsible for drawing the district, which impacts both the board and the Coconino County Community College Board.

The population of Coconino Country grew significantly in some districts in the years since 2010, while others remained relatively steady. The proposed redistricting scenarios will be presented to the Board of Supervisors in January.

They are expected to adopt the final districts by April 2022.

Bree Burkitt is the Niche Editor for the Arizona Daily Sun. Reach her 928-556-2262 at bburkitt@azdailysun.com.

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On December 25, 1643, Captain William Mynors sailed by an island, which accounts for the name he bestowed upon it: Christmas Island. Many species living on that island share the moniker, so theres the Christmas Island Imperial-Pigeon, the Christmas Island blind snake, the Christmas Island flying fox, the Christmas Island forest skink, and the Christmas Island Hawk-Owl, among others. Perhaps the islands most celebrated species is the Christmas Island red crab, which migrates every year in such large numbers it has achieved worldwide fame.

Seeing the annual migration of the Christmas Island red crabs is so amazing that even Sir David Attenborough considers it one of his most memorable experiences in nature. Each year, millions of large crabs migrate from the forest to breed in and around burrows close to shore. Their journey to the ocean takes at least a week and requires traveling across roads, beaches, streams, and indeed across all types of terrain.

The migration happens after the first rainfall of the wet season, which occurs as early as October and as late as January. The phase of the moon also influences the timing of this event. The crabs spawn before sunrise while the high tide is receding during the last quarter of a waning moon.

The spectacle of red crabs all over the landscape is a tourist attraction, which is problematic for these animals, many of whom are killed by vehicles as they cross bridges and roads. Human activity presents another survival challenge because a lot of crabs dehydrate when they move into areas where the forest has been cleared. (Migrating during the rainy season increases their chances of maintaining the moisture necessary to stay alive.)

Males mate and return without delay to the forest, but females remain in their burrows for approximately two weeks  until the young are ready to head for the sea to continue their development. So many young are eaten by predators in some years that virtually none make it to adulthood. In other years, enough survive for the population to maintain its high levels despite the years when few pull through.

Though Christmas Island red crabs are currently plentiful, their continued existence must not be taken for granted. This species only occurs on Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands, which are Australian territories located southwest of Java in the Indian Ocean. Like many islands, these have high rates of endemism, meaning that species living there are found nowhere else. That makes them vulnerable to population crashes due to natural disasters, human interference, and disease. These crabs eat leaf litter, which is critical for keeping forests healthy and supporting the islands ecosystem.

To understand the intensity of the mass migration of Christmas Island red crabs, consider this tweet from Parks Australia describing the situation this year: With red crab migration in full swing on Christmas Island, the crabs are turning up everywhere ... Our staff have been out managing traffic, raking crabs off the roads and providing updates to the community on road closures.

Karen B. London, Ph.D. is a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist, Certified Professional Dog Trainer, and an author of six books on canine training and behavior, including her most recent, Treat Everyone Like a Dog: How a Dog Trainers World View Can Improve Your Life.

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On Monday, Northern Arizona Healthcare (NAH) gave an update on how COVID-19 has affected its locations. Hospitals across the state have been approaching capacity due to another surge of COVID cases and NAH is no exception.

This is probably the busiest our institutions have been in the entire 12 years Ive worked here or the 20 years that [physician executive for quality and safety John Mougin] has been here, said NAHs chief medical officer, Derek Feuquay. ...[Theres] no relenting.

He said this had been the case on a day-to-day basis since last July and that it was putting quite a strain on staff.

At the time of the update, Flagstaff Medical Center had reported 53 inpatients with COVID, slightly more than 20% of the total inpatients. Feuquay said that percentage had stayed consistent over the last few weeks or months, though both census numbers and COVID patients had been rising.

The percentage of COVID patients was higher at Verde Valley Medical Center (VVMC), one day even approaching 50%. On Dec. 20, the center had 28 COVID patients, nearly 40% of the total.

One of things that has been most affected by capacity, Feuquay said, is emergency room wait times. The high volume of COVID patients, who tend to have a longer than usual recovery time, means that a hospitals beds fill up. People who come into the emergency room with even a minor issue stay there, since theres not enough room to move them elsewhere in the hospital.

The ER normally operates with, lets say, 20 beds. In Cottonwood last week, 10 or more of those beds had inpatients in them that were already admitted, so they have to operate with only 10 beds available, which makes wait times much worse, he said. ...Thats happening across the country, where people come into the emergency room and triage. If its a minor issue, still an issue they need to be seen for, we just cant get them in as quickly as we normally would be able to.

Most patients admitted to the hospital with COVID are unvaccinated. Mougin said unvaccinated individuals were 10 times more likely to get COVID and 20 times more likely to die of the disease, compared to vaccinated people who had received a booster dose.

Vaccines are the number one tool in the toolbox for addressing COVID-19, Mougin said, though other precautions are still necessary. He recommended continuing to wear masks and social distance and avoid gatherings when experiencing even mild symptoms or coming into contact with someone who is ill. Getting a flu vaccine can also help with hospital capacity, and they are safe to receive the same time as a COVID vaccine.

For those planning to travel, the ideal would be to quarantine for three days before traveling as well as getting tested before setting out, he said.

These guidelines should be a priority over the holiday season, Mougin said. Thats what will allow us to enjoy the holidays in health and unload our hospitals somewhat. We all need to work together as a community so we can enjoy a safer holiday.

The meeting also included a short update on NAHs vaccine requirement, which was first announced in September and goes into full effect Dec. 31. The first dose was required by Dec. 5 and NAH employees who did not receive one have been placed on administrative leave.

Chief operating officer Josh Tinkle said NAHs vaccination rate was well over 90% and that less than 2% of staff had either refused to be vaccinated or received an exemption based on either a medical condition or seriously held religious belief.

When we first started, there was 27% of our staff that was vaccine-hesitant, Tinkle said. Were now down to around 2% and as a provider network.were less than half a percent.

He said three out of a total of about 600 providers across NAHs network had received neither a vaccine nor an exemption and were currently on administrative leave. The total among staff was between 60 and 70.

Our belief is were serving the health of our community, Tinkle said as the reasoning behind the mandate. Its important for all of our staff members to slow down the risk of transmission as well as of hospitalization and deaths [and] be good citizens for the community.

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Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
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The Beatrice City Council met to approve a housing improvement grant agreement with Nebraska Department of Economic Development during its Monday meeting.

City Administrator Tobias Tempelmeyer said the $540,000 grant will help improve houses across the community. The agreement is just the first step in what will be a more than two year process.

That kind of next step after you approve this agreement tonight  well start working through the process of contacting those who pre-applied, make sure theyre still interested in the grant, Tempelmeyer said. We have to verify income level. We have to inspect houses and see what would qualify. Theres a limit of $24,999 that can be spent on each household. Some different federal rules kick in at $25,000  All of this has to be completed by May of 2024.

Tempelmeyer said certain improvements will count as eligible expenses under the grant, including furnaces, water heater, electrical and plumbing.

If somebody wants to simply remodel their bathroom to make it look nicer, that will not be an eligible expense, he said. If they need to remodel to make it ADA compliant, then that starts becoming eligible. So those will be the things this committee starts going through, making sure we have applicants who qualify.

Tempelmeyer stressed that homeowners planning to use grant funding should wait until theyre approved before they start making renovations.

To help dispense grant funds, the council passed a resolution that appointed members of a committee set up to manage applications. Final approval will go before the City Council.

In other business:

The City Council also approved an economic development loan totaling $150,000 with Envision Landscapes, LLC.

Following recommendations by the Beatrice Board of Public Works, the council approved an Agreement for Professional Services outlining the scope of services for the Citys MS4 compliance.

The City Council voted to adopt the Public Internet Use Policy.

What the policy basically says is that if youre a public user, logged onto city Wi-Fi  we cant help the contents of the Internet, Tempelmeyer said. ..If you have small children, a child on the Internet, its up to the parents to monitor what the child gets access to.

The council voted to approve an agreement of services between the City and JEO Consulting Group, Inc., to conduct a drainage study of the Beatrice Industrial Park.

This is important, council member Ted Fairbanks said. If you look at the area that Rick and I represent, had we done this east and north of our area, we wouldnt have the problems were having today. And its really hard to fix now.

Tempelemeyer, during his monthly report, brought up last weeks storm and noted the number of city workers involved in helping to get the city back together.

Lastly, I would just like to take a moment to say thank you to all the city staff last week when the storm came through, he said. Everyone stepped up and did a wonderful job. But especially, I want thank the electric department I just want to say thank you to those guys.

The next regular City Council meeting will be Monday, Jan. 3 at 7 p.m. in the BPS Administration Building Board Room. There will be a Work Session on Dec. 27, 2021 at 7 p.m. in the BPS Administration Building Board Room.

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A standard business license in Billings costs $55.

The motivation with the high fees for the recreational marijuana-based business is to recoup the costs the city anticipates spending on processing, inspections and enforcing the new codes that regulate these businesses.

"A lot of that cost is code enforcement," said Andy Zoeller, the city's finance director.

The city estimates that it'll cost $70,970 a year to properly inspect, manage and regulate the recreational marijuana businesses that set up in Billings.

Medical marijuana dispensaries and the non-storefront elements of the recreational marijuana business will be limited to those areas in the city that are zoned industrial and heavy commercial, and sit at least 1,000 feet from neighborhoods, schools, churches, parks, addiction recovery centers and youth centers.

Medical marijuana dispensaries and the non-storefront elements of the recreational marijuana business will be limited to those areas in the city that are zoned industrial and heavy commercial, and sit at least 1,000 feet from neighborhoods, schools, churches, parks, addiction recovery centers and youth centers.

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A cultural leader in Billings for more than five decades, Ian Ray Elliot died in his sleep Saturday night in New Jersey at age 70.

Elliot had spent the last year and half in New Jersey with his partner, Jenny, and the couple was planning to return to Billings in early 2022.

Two long-time friends, Mike and Margo Turley, spent an evening with Elliot in mid-December in Billings and they said he couldnt wait to get back to his hometown. Mike Turley worked with Elliot in the 1980s producing shows for the Rainbow Childrens Theatre group that Elliot had founded, and later presenting concerts and plays.

Ian brought everybody together, it didnt matter their ranking or how much money they had, Mike Turley said. I am very humbled to have worked with him and learned from him and to have appreciated him.
Montana reported its first COVID-19 cases caused by the omicron variant.

Two residents in their 30s who recently traveled to South Africa tested positive for omicron Monday, which was confirmed through genomic sequencing performed at the Montana State Public Health Laboratory and at Montana State University, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Both are experiencing mild symptoms, both are fully vaccinated and are recovering in Gallatin County.

This is not a surprise as nearly every other state has reported omicron cases in recent weeks, DPHHS Director Adam Meier said. We continue to urge all Montanans to use all available tools to stay healthy this winter, including getting your COVID-19 vaccine and booster and taking other measures to prevent the spread of the virus."

Montana is the 46th state to report cases of omicron.

There are four confirmed cases of omicron in North Dakota, according to a press release from the North Dakota Department of Health.
For the second time this year a Yellowstone County District Judge has ordered the Office of the Public Defender to answer allegations it has failed to appoint public defenders to cases in a timely manner.

Judge Donald Harris ordered OPD director Rhonda Lindquist to show cause Monday as to why she should not be held in contempt. In his Nov. 15 order, Harris pointed to 17 cases, saying none received appointed attorneys in the three-day window required by a previous order he issued in September. In two cases highlighted by the judge in November, attorneys had still not been assigned in more than 45 and 85 days.

On Sept. 13, the judge held Lindquist in contempt for dozens of cases that had gone on in some cases for months without the assignment of a public defender. Following that hearing he fined the office $500 per case to be paid to Yellowstone County, since, as the judge put it, it was the countys taxpayers shouldering the burden of a slower justice system due to OPDs shortfalls.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Doling out pardons is a holiday tradition for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who around every Christmas grants them to a handful of ordinary citizens, typically for minor offenses committed years or decades ago.

But one name stands out on his desk: George Floyd.

Abbott has not said whether he will posthumously pardon Floyd this year for a 2004 drug arrest in Houston by a former officer whose police work is no longer trusted by prosecutors. Texas' parole board  stacked with Abbott appointees  unanimously recommended a pardon for Floyd in October.

Since then, the two-term Republican governor, who is up for reelection in 2022, has given no indication of whether he will grant what would be only the second posthumous pardon in Texas history. Floyd, who was Black, spent much of his life in Houston before moving to Minnesota, where his death under the knee of a white police officer last year led to a U.S. reckoning on race and policing.
University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson described the decline in natural population increase as stunning," saying it was the smallest spread of births over deaths in more than 80 years.

Of course most of this is COVID, but not all of it," Johnson said. U.S. natural increase was already at a low ebb prior to COVID with the fertility rate hitting a new record low each year and deaths steadily rising due to the population aging."

Between 2020 and 2021, 33 states saw population increases, primarily through domestic migration, while 17 states and the District of Columbia lost population.

States in the Mountain West saw the biggest year-over-year growth, with Idaho growing by almost 3%, and Utah and Montana each seeing population increases of 1.7%. The District of Columbia lost 2.9% of its population, while New York and Illinois lost 1.6% and 0.9% of their populations, respectively.

While the pandemic gave some the option of working remotely, data released last month by the Census Bureau shows there was no great migration in the U.S. because of it.
A Montana lawyer who federal officials say earned more than $19.62 million from promoting a tax shelter through improper deductions for donating timeshares is liable for $8.46 million in penalties, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Tax Division.

James Tarpey, who formed Project Philanthropy Inc., which operated as Donate for a Cause, promoted a scheme where timeshare owners could donate their unwanted timeshares for large tax deductions, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Tarpey and others conducted appraisals for the timeshares, and in March 2019 a federal court in Montana found those appraisals "lacked sufficient independence" and that the "false appraisals resulted in tax avoidance."

The federal government first filed an action against Tarpey in 2015, and he agreed to an injunction barring him from promoting the timeshare donation scheme in 2016. The court also ruled that Tarpey made false statements that resulted in tax avoidance.
The Fish and Wildlife Commission approved 2022-23 hunting regulations proposals for public comment at its meeting Tuesday, Dec. 14.

The draft proposals are being compiled and will be available online at fwp.mt.gov/regproposals as soon as possible. Public comment on the regulation proposals will be taken through Jan. 14. Comments can be submitted online at fwp.mt.gov/regproposals or by email to fwpwld@mt.gov.

This is a second opportunity for the public to provide input. Earlier this fall in an effort to simplify the regulations, Fish, Wildlife & Parks biologists offered regulation proposals that combine some hunting districts, reduce some license and permit types, and eliminate hunting district portions. FWP staff held informational meetings around the state, and the public was invited to submit comments on those initial proposals. FWP adjusted proposals based on public comment and presented them to the commission. The commission approved the draft regulations for public comment last week.
A former Bismarck firefighter has been sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to receiving hundreds of sexually explicit images of children by electronic means.

Ryan Johnsrud, 42, of Minot, was indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2020 for receiving and distributing some 600 images, court documents show. The distribution charge was later dismissed as part of a plea agreement. U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor during a Monday sentencing hearing also ordered Johnsrud to spend 12 years on supervised release.

Johnsrud allegedly received and distributed the images -- some of minors under the age of 12 and some of which were described as sadistic or masochistic -- between January 2018 and August 2019, according to the indictment. He was hired by the Bismarck Fire Department in February 2011. He resigned in July 2018, citing personal issues, according to a resignation letter obtained through an open records request.

Burleigh County prosecutors in August 2019 charged Johnsrud with a felony for possessing prohibited materials, court documents show. The charge was dismissed in January 2020, a month before the federal indictment.

Reach Travis Svihovec at 701-250-8260 or Travis.Svihovec@bismarcktribune.com

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Gov. Doug Burgum's appointment of Public Service Commissioner Brian Kroshus as the next state tax commissioner means the governor will fill another elected office now set for the ballot next year.

Burgum on Tuesday announced Kroshus will succeed Republican Ryan Rauschenberger, who resigned effective Jan. 3 following an alcohol-related disturbance at a Bismarck hotel on Nov. 15. He was held in jail for detoxification, and was never under arrest.

Burgum cited Kroshus' background with business management and the public and private sectors, as well as his experience and abilities working with the Legislature, tribal nations and consumers.

His past electoral success "also was a consideration," Burgum said.

"Across all of that, Brian rose to the top," the governor said.

New role

Burgum said his office compiled names of 10 candidates "all interested and qualified" for tax commissioner, "took that discussion down, I would say, informally," narrowed down the names to the most qualified and "had more in-depth discussions with them, all the things that you would take into consideration," such as private sector and business management experience.

Burgum said he "gave Brian a call" about the vacancy.

Kroshus, a Republican, said his top priorities will be "treating taxpayers with fairness, transparency and efficiency with excellent customer service."

"We'll continue to work across state government and with our tribal partners and private sector partners to create a stable tax and regulatory environment that will support economic growth and prosperity for all," Kroshus told reporters, appearing with Burgum at a news conference.

He left his role as publisher of The Bismarck Tribune in 2015 to run for state auditor, but he did not receive the Republican nod. Burgum appointed Kroshus to the PSC in 2017 to fill a vacancy, and he was elected in 2018 to finish out the two remaining years in his predecessors term. He was reelected last year for a six-year term.

He chaired the PSC for two years beginning in 2019.

Kroshus will begin as tax commissioner on Jan. 4 and will complete Rauschenbergers term that expires Dec. 31, 2022.

He said he intends to run next year for the job, with a formal announcement to come. His initial goals are education, outreach and tribal engagement.

Burgum said Rauschenberger has "pledged his full commitment to support the transition."

PSC seat

Kroshus' appointment opens up a position on the three-member Public Service Commission. The seat will be on the ballot next year for the four years remaining on the term.

Burgum said his office will work on an appointment to the seat throughout January. He invites interested people to reach out.

Kroshus' portfolio at the PSC includes electric and gas utility regulation, pipeline safety and damage prevention, and weights and measures. He is the lead commissioner handling utility rate cases.

PSC Chair Julie Fedorchak said she and Commissioner Randy Christmann will temporarily split up Kroshus' portfolio and reassign the duties to the future third commissioner.

She said a vacancy is not unprecedented, and the transition's timing works well with the panel's workload clearing at the end of the calendar year.

She expects all the cases Kroshus has heard will have been decided by the time he leaves the board.

The PSC's next meeting is Dec. 29. Fedorchak said she and Christmann are able to proceed as a quorum after Kroshus leaves.

She expects them to conduct at least one meeting as a two-member panel.

The annual salary of the public service commissioners is $115,304. The panel regulates everything from the energy industry to telecommunications to railroads.

Tax Office

The state Tax Office collects more than 90% of general fund revenue. The office has a two-year budget of $64.4 million and is authorized for 118 full-time employees.

The governor said Kroshus will oversee the rollout of $211 million of two-year income tax relief passed by the Legislature last month during its special session.

The tax commissioners annual salary is $121,814. The positions duties also include sitting on the state Board of Equalization and the advisory board for the Legacy Fund, North Dakotas $8.6 billion oil tax savings.

The position has been a springboard to higher office in years past. Former U.S. Sens. Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan and Heidi Heitkamp, all D-N.D., were former tax commissioners.

Rauschenberger was appointed tax commissioner in 2014, and he won election later that year and in 2018.

He has been involved in several alcohol-related incidents during his time in office, including pleading guilty in 2017 to drunken driving. He was taken to detox for his own safety twice in recent months -- after an incident in downtown Bismarck in August in which police say he was passed out behind the wheel of his car, and after the November incident in which an officer found him passed out in a hotel room that wasn't his. He has been open about his efforts to seek recovery.

Rauschenberger declined an interview last month to discuss his plans for his remaining time in office.

Kroshus' appointment is the third time in Burgum's tenure that he has filled a state elected office upon a vacancy. The governor appointed Kroshus to the PSC in 2017, and named Justice Jon Jensen to the Supreme Court later that year.

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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The latest Pew Research Center survey on American religion reflects a familiar trend in recent years: declining levels of Christian affiliation and growing numbers of religiously unaffiliated (the nones). Almost 30% of those surveyed told Pew that they identify with no particular religion, compared to 16% in 2007. Similarly, the Barna Group has estimated that in-person church attendance may be 30% to 50% lower than before the pandemic began. Many question whether American churches will ever get back to pre-pandemic levels. Has COVID-19 accelerated preexisting patterns of Christian decline?

The answer is probably yes, but with a multitude of caveats. Polling on religion is notoriously difficult to interpret. What do people mean when they say they have no religion in particular? (For that matter, what do respondents mean when they say that they are evangelical or Catholic?) Only small numbers of the nones are atheists: The total number of American atheists has remained steady at about 2% to 4% of the population for decades. Slightly larger numbers of the nones identify as agnostics, leaving a strong majority of the nones in the murky religious category of nothing in particular.

Most polls ask no follow-up questions about religious belief or practice, leaving the meaning of such categories as evangelical or nothing in particular entirely up to individual self-identification. Happily, the Pew poll did ask some follow-ups about attendance, prayer habits, and (most subjective of all) the importance of religion in a persons life. These metrics all suggest declining religious observance across the board, too.

Still, there are many reasons to take such statistics with a grain of salt. One reason is pollings dirty little secret: Americas plummeting response rates to polls of all kinds. Polling agencies tell us that they have ways of compensating for abysmally low response rates by weighting the data. (Pews response rate to this latest poll was 29%, but it was 10% in other polls referenced in their report. For most such reports, even from highly creditable sources, it can be difficult to discern how these rates are counted, if you can find the response rates at all.) Such low percentages are deeply problematic; no amount of data weighting can sufficiently address these concerns. Polls are asking questions only of people who respond to pollsters. The distinguished Princeton sociologist and religion scholar Robert Wuthnow wrote an entire book, Inventing American Religion, dedicated to this subject. It cannot be overemphasized: National surveys are no longer a truly representative sample of the American people, especially in the postlandline phone era.

Second, religion is a qualitative category open to individual, and often idiosyncratic, interpretations. Assuming that a person will tell a pollster the truth, there is not much wiggle room for interpreting a question like Did you vote for Joe Biden? A voter either did or did not vote for the president. But a question like What is your religion? can be construed in many different ways. For instance, small but significant numbers of people with no religionsome studies suggest as high as 10% of themactually attend religious services at least monthly. Extrapolated to the entire American population, this would mean that perhaps millions of Americans will tell a pollster they have no religion, while simultaneously knowing the church or other congregation where they regularly go. Are these people spiritual seekers? Are they nondenominational and interpret that as having no religion? Do they attend for the benefit of their children or to accommodate a believing spouse? Are they the type of evangelical who says, I dont have a religion, I have a relationship with Jesus? We just dont know.

Finally, we might take statistics on religious decline with a dose of skepticism because both secular media outlets and Christian research firms such as Barna have a vested interest in promoting the narrative of American religions collapse. Secular journalists and evangelical pastors may not agree on much, but both groups like to amplify the story of the rise of the nones. Secular folks in the media may enjoy reporting on religions downfall, if it means that the world is finally becoming awakened to the folly of faith. But Christian traditionalists have a strange affinity for that narrative, too. It is a story that goes back at least to the Puritans of colonial New England, and in some ways to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Most American Christians are familiar with hearing sermons about how the rising generation is not as godly as their forefathers were. The takeaway from such homilies is that we should pray and work hard to live up to their example. In other words, we should work the program religiously. However true these exhortations may be, they are also rhetorical memes, as we would say on social media.

As for the declines in attendance since COVID started, this is observably true for many, if not the majority, of congregations in America. Again, there is a wide range in practice and reliability of attendance statistics. Much of what we hear on the topic is anecdotal and depends on self-reported estimates by clergy. Still, there was unquestionably a massive attendance drop overall, sometimes backed by threats of legal penalties for noncompliance, during the COVID shutdowns. It would be surprising if that catastrophic plunge did not have a lingering impact, especially since the threats of new variants and regional COVID hotspots are constantly in the news.

In the tech-savvy congregations, there was a relatively seamless transition to online services. One imagines that there will have been a rich get richer effect, where the most well-resourced and thriving churches were best prepared to make adjustments to maintain contact with members and attendees. Many smaller congregations faced the devastation, socially and financially, of not being able to meet at all. Aging, poorer, and rural congregations struggled with setting up an effective online ministry, especially if they did not already have one set up as of the spring of 2020. Yet even for the larger, more established churches, going online may represent a double-edged sword for the return to in-person worship. Robust online worship could give people the impression that doing church online is permissible, normal, and even a devout thing to do.

This online media format may be new, but the trend of electronic church goes back much further, to the days of radio and TV clergy such as the Catholic priest Fulton Sheen, the Baptist minister Charles Fuller, and the Pentecostal preacher Oral Roberts. More recently, even before COVID, many would already listen to their favorite ministers on podcasts or YouTube. For the elderly or infirm, watching church through electronic media may be their only option. But for most Christians, defaulting to doing church from a couch or office chair is an unprecedented practice in the history of Christianity. It is the communion of saints in an extremely impoverished sense.

So yes, we may be seeing something happening in churches that roughly equates to the Great Resignation transpiring in the workplace. Historically high numbers of workers have quit their jobs in 2021. Will similar numbers of people quit their churches? Perhaps. But in both cases, the essential question is quit to do what? Media narratives of the nones almost always assume that leaving church means leaving for good. But most people who leave one church end up in another church sooner or later. Most people quit their jobs for a better or more flexible opportunity; likewise, most devout Americans leave one church only to go to one that (seemingly) offers better preaching, childrens ministries, or other attractions.

The more devout a person is, the more likely that if they leave a church they will soon go to another one. Of course, this is a more complex matter in segments of Christianity that encourage attendance only at the nearest parish and discourage church shopping. But especially among Protestants, there is little evidence, except for a handful of celebrity deconstructionists, that people are turning from devout Christian practice to becoming nonpracticing nones.

Many of the nonpracticing nones likely had once been nonpracticing Christians. For many Catholics, of course, there is a deep familial or ethnic attachment to the Catholic faith, an attachment that often endures even when the Catholic in question almost never goes to mass. But among Protestants, and especially evangelicals, there is generally little ethnic or familial association with ones religion, at least in America. What are we to make, then, of the quarter of self-identified evangelicals who attend church less than a few times a year? Most practicing evangelicals would think those folks are not real evangelicals in any useful sense.

Of all Christian groups in America, wouldnt you think that saying youre an evangelical presumes an active faith? That was true historically, but in todays highly politicized environment, more people apparently see evangelical as a political or cultural term than a specifically religious one. Fewer people see it as oxymoronic to describe themselves as a nonattending evangelical. In their relationship to actual churches, however, the nonattending evangelicals are pretty much like the nearly 50% of mainline Protestants who likewise say they almost never attend church. These are the prime candidates in America for becoming nonpracticing nones. What functional difference will it make for nonattending nominal Christians to become nonattending nones? Probably not much.

The ambiguity of polling often limits what we can say with certainty about these patterns. But overall, COVID appears likely to accelerate the trend of lower overall church adherence in America. The pandemic has habituated some Christiansespecially infrequent attendersinto not attending church at all. For some, COVID also provided a structure of online services that gives them an easy out for not attending in person.

In some ways, however, there is nothing new under the sun in the data on the nones. Mainline Protestant denominations have seen a long-standing, cataclysmic decline in membership since the 1960s. COVID might exacerbate that pattern and also heighten it for those Catholic parishes and evangelical churches in decline. But there is little reason to think that many devout American Christians are suddenly becoming skeptical or blase nonattenders. Were most likely to see an American religious future with even starker cultural differences between practicing American Christians and the nonpracticing nones. The group that is likely the most endangered on the American religious landscape is the nonpracticing Christian.
Today is Bill of Rights Day, a commemoration first established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to cherish the immeasurable privileges which the charter guaranteed and to rededicate its principles and practice.

Here are five facts you should know about the Bill of Rights:

1. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, George Mason of Virginia said that he wished the plan had been prefaced by a Bill of Rights, because it would give great quiet to the people. A motion was made that a committee be established to prepare a Bill of Rights, but the delegates, voting as states, defeated it 10-0. The reason? It was deemed to be unnecessary. (Some were also skeptical about what James Madison called parchment barriers against overbearing majorities.)

2. James Madison initially presented 19 amendments for ratification, but the House only advanced 17 of them. The Senate trimmed it further to 12 before sending them to the states. In the end, numbers three through 12 were approved and collectively became our Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791.

3. The U.S. Bill of Rights was heavily influenced by George Masons Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), the English Bill of Rights (1689), and the Magna Carta (1215).

4. The third amendment (No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.) is the least contested amendment in the Bill of Rights. To date, no significant Supreme Court case hinges on the amendment. One of the most prominent citations, notes Andrew P. Morriss, is in the name of marital privacy as support for constitutional restrictions on state governments abilities to regulate the sale of contraceptives in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965).

5. Three statesConnecticut, Georgia, and Massachusettsdidnt ratify the bill of rights until 1939, the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Constitution.

Toxic Lauren Boebert (QCO) seemed more unhinged than usual as she screamed on stage at the Turning Point USA "AmericaFest" over the weekend.

Shouting in a breathless, near-frenzied rhythm as if she were auditioning for the part of televangelical host, she said, "I'm going to ask you, we have thousands of people in this room  what are you doing with your God-given authority?! What are you doing where He's positioned you? What are you speaking You have the answers inside of you I am tired of having Godless people who hate America run this country!"

"Because I'm tired of having brother-marrying, violence-inciting, Chinese spy simpingterrorist supporting, Israel hating  commies wreck this country!!" she continued, riling up her crowd with the same old gross, dangerous name-calling toward Democrat colleagues (e.g., Ilhan Omar) that she's been spewing ad nauseam since day one.

"You and I are going to take this country back!"
When Trump admitted to Bill O'Reilly on Sunday that he got a booster shot, the Dallas crowd booed. But it was nothing compared to the growling, stuttering reaction he got from Info Wars host Alex Jones.

"Hell, we're fighting Bill Gates and Fauci and Biden and the New World Order and Psaki and  and  and the Davos Group  and now we've got Trump on their team!" he screamed.

It's not the first time Jones has slammed Trump for suggesting it could be a good idea to get vaccinated. In August he called the ex-president a "dumbass" after Trump admitted to a his Alabama rally crowd that he had received the vaccine and that it could be good for them as well.

"But my God," Jones said at the time. "Maybe you're not that bright. Maybe Trump's actually a dumbass."

Alex Jones is flipping out after Trump said he got the booster: "Hell, we're fighting Bill Gates and Fauci and Biden and the New World Order and Psaki and the Davos Group .. and now we've got Trump on their team!" pic.twitter.com/fyEfx1OcFp  Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 21, 2021

Trump gets booed:
James David Russell, 39, was charged last week with first-degree murder and felony cannibalism after a some of a dead man's remains were found in his microwave, reports Eric Grossarth with East Idaho News. The rest of the partially-dismembered body had already been found in a truck, leading to the find indoors.

The following day, investigators served a search warrant at Russell's home. Inside, detectives found tissue consistent with Flaget's missing flesh. Investigators also found blood and tissue in a bowl inside the microwave. Some of the tissue indicated heat had been applied, possibly in the microwave for one to two minutes, according to court documents. Investigators could not locate one of Flaget's testicles, his penis and a portion of the thigh that was removed from his body. Investigators wrote in their probable cause affidavit that they believe Russell ate the missing body parts.

The murder could evidently have been prevented:

Witnesses report that on the day of Flaget's killing, Russell acted agitated and recently had been having mental health issues. Court documents indicated while at a California hospital receiving psychiatric help in May, Russell reportedly told his family he wanted to "cut chunks of his skin off with a knife" to "cure his brain," according to court documents.

Idaho appears to be the only state that explicitly outlaws cannibalism (read the statue here), though many have less specific laws (e.g. desecration) that apply to it. The peculiar outcome of this prohibition is that the law also explicitly legalizes cannibalism under certain circumstances.

Idaho Statutes specify that there is a viable defense for cannibalism: if the action was taken under extreme life-threatening conditions as the only apparent means of survival. "That's your Donner Party defense," Loebs said, where a person could say, "I was trapped out in the woods, and my hunting companion died of natural causes and froze to death and I was gonna die too, so I ate him."

14 years is the maximum penalty under statue, but I couldn't find another prosecution, let alone conviction, to figure out what Russell would likely serve if convicted. His murder charge (and likely defensesa judge already found him unfit for trial) offers clearer outcomes.
Japanese culture is a beautiful, bottomless treasure chest. If you're shopping for quality animation, you're seldom going to be disappointed. Fond of pro wrestling? Japanese pro wresters are so intense that a seven-year-old would sprout a beard after watching one match. The same standard of quality applies to Japanese live-action dramas as well.

In the 80s, Japan became obsessed with the juvenile delinquent trope. Macho characters like Jotaro from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Yusuke from YuYu Hakusho became synonymous with the trope in animation, but juvenile delinquent girls held sway in the world of live-action. Japanese television in the 1980s was replete with an army of rebellious girls that fought crime with odd gimmicks. How odd did the gimmicks get? One of the delinquent girls actually fought crime with a rocket launcher.

In the video linked above, YouTuber Kenny Lauderdale goes into the over-the-top series known as Shoujo Commando Izumi. If you want a taste of truly bizarre television, please give the video a watch.
"It was horrible what was going on at that time," Arcara said before issuing the sentence. Even though the fire didn't do much damage, it had the potential to be destructive, the judge said.

Once in police custody, Renford told police he started the fire, prosecutors have said. Overall, prosecutors had "very substantial" evidence against Renford, Arcara said.

Renford has been incarcerated since his arrest June 1, 2020, which means he has about three and a half years left on his sentence.

Renford originally was charged under a federal law that involves the destruction or attempted destruction of a building involved in interstate commerce. Had he gone to trial and been convicted on that charge, he would have faced a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of up to 20 years.

Renford has felony arson and burglary charges pending in Erie County Court in connection with the events of May 30, 2020.

Samuel P. Davis, Renford's attorney, said while Renford played a role in the events of that evening, others from outside the area came in to provoke disorder.
During the hearing, Terragnoli said, "You have to try the process before you come into court claiming an injury."

The landlords' attorneys, Jeffrey Reina and Paul Cambria, have called the opportunity to challenge hardship claims "illusory," saying landlords who challenge tenants' hardship claims must be able to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the hardship claims are false.

But landlords almost never have access to the information necessary to do so, Cambria said during Tuesday's hearing.

Under the state's current rules, tenants need only file a hardship declaration that says they are unable to pay their rent. Tenants are not required to provide any proof they have lost a job or suffered some other form of financial hardship since the onset of the pandemic.

All tenants have to do is check a box on a form, Cambria said .

"They don't have to prove anything," Cambria said. "They don't have to allege anything. All they have to do is check that box."
The close of business Monday was set as a deadline for the submission, but the deadline was not met, the mayor said.

Thus, he said, the moratorium will affect U.S. Bitcoin's outdoor operations.

Restaino said it will not affect Blockfusion LLC, a company operating a cryptocurrency mining business inside the former Niagara Generation power plant on Frontier Avenue, under the name of North East Data LLC.

U.S. Bitcoin chief operating officer Asher Genoot did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday, nor did his landlord, the owner of the DuPont plant, local businessman Jon Williams.

In a November interview, Williams told The Buffalo News, "I met with the tenant and told the tenant that they need to get into compliance with the city, whatever the ordinances are, and I met with the city and told the mayor that whatever cooperation they need from us as the landlord, we're going to give it to them. If the tenant's not going to comply, the tenant's going to have to deal with the consequences."

Councilman William D. Kennedy II voted against the moratorium, since there are only two active cryptocurrency companies in Niagara Falls. He also said the city has become too dependent on moratoriums and special Council meetings on key issues.

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"We hope that we get to yes on test-to-stay in Erie County," Cornell said.

+2 Hochul pledges support for rural hospitals struggling with Covid "We've come a long way," Hochul said, noting vaccines, booster shots and testing are more available.

Buffalo Superintendent Kriner Cash welcomed Hochul's announcement, but said he has a number of questions: How did the Grand Island pilot go? How could it be scaled up for a district as large as Buffalo? Under Hochul's plan, will students be given antigen tests or PCR tests? How will parents be educated on how to administer the test and understand the results?

"I like the initiative, but the devil's in the details," Cash said.

Cornell appealed to families to be patient while schools worked through the logistics.

Because Hochul plans to have children take the Covid-19 testing kits home to use, schools will have fewer challenges to work through, Cornell said. He acknowledged that sending the kits home with students, though, requires a certain level of trust that families will follow through with administering the tests.

"It seems to me an acknowledgement that the vast majority of people will adhere to the social contract and keep their friends and neighbors safe," he said.
Trump had told the Wall Street Journal in a September interview that he "probably" wouldn't get a booster shot.

"I feel like I'm in good shape from that standpoint," he told the paper. "I'll look at stuff later on. I'm not against it, but it's probably not for me."

The U.S. has been urging all eligible Americans to get booster shots as quickly as possible as the country faces a surge in the new, highly contagious omicron variant. Both Moderna and Pfizer have said that booster shots of their COVID-19 vaccines appear to offer protection against the new strain, which preliminary evidence suggests can better evade vaccines than previous versions.

Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October 2020, weeks before the presidential election, and received experimental monoclonal antibodies treatment. His former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, revealed in a book released this month that Trump was far sicker than the White House disclosed at the time.

Before the booing, Trump on Sunday told the audience that they should "take credit" for the success of the vaccines developed while he was in office.
'Spider-Man' Producer Tried to Stop Tom Holland and Zendaya's Blossoming Romantic Relationship

It Seems Even Superheroes Should Think Twice Before Deciding to Date Coworkers

Workplace relationships are complicated and often messy, even under the best of conditions, but imagine having the whole world know that you and a co-worker are romantically involved. Thats the situation that Spider-Man: No Way Home co-stars Tom Holland and Zendaya find themselves in, and though the world wide web is busy gushing over the happy couple, not everyone is thrilled that the figureheads of a multi-million dollar franchise are in a romantic entanglement that could threaten to blow up in their faces.

RELATED: The Dos and Donts of Starting an Office Romance at Work

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Spider-Man producer Amy Pascal shared that she had attempted to preemptively curtail the on-screen romance. I took Tom and Zendaya aside, separately, when we first cast them and gave them a lecture," she said. "Dont go there  just dont. Try not to.

How far did that advice go? Well, rumors of a romantic connection between the pair of young stars have been swirling since almost the beginning of their professional relationship, fueled by the adorable, supportive messages they would send each other over very public social media posts. Case in point:

But it took some shady photographers capturing the pair kissing in a moment of presumed privacy to confirm the sparks that everyone already thought they saw.

In an interview with GQ, Tom opened up about those photos and the invasion of their privacy in a way that confirmed what everyone already suspected: One of the downsides of our fame is that privacy isnt really in our control anymore, and a moment that you think is between two people that love each other very much is now a moment that is shared with the entire world. In a separate interview, Zendaya echoed Toms sentiment exactly: I think loving someone is a sacred thing and a special thing and something you want to deal with and go through and experience and enjoy amongst the two people that love each other.

If youre a fan of the Spider-Man movies, you may recall that this isnt the first on-screen romance that was translated into real life. In fact, all three major iterations of the smart-talking wall-crawler have been romantically linked to their co-stars: Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, and now Tom Holland and Zendaya.

Tobey and Kirsten managed to keep their tryst secret, even from director Sam Raimi, who only learned after the fact: They apparently began dating each other, I think, in the middle of the first movie, although I didnt know it at the time. They eventually broke up before the second movie.

But for producer Amy Pascal, who also oversaw the Andrew Garfield-Emma Stone movies, this kind of romantic chemistry is nothing new. I gave the same advice [about not dating a co-worker] to Andrew and Emma," she said in the recent interview." It can just complicate things, you know? And they all ignored me.

We definitely know that a professional relationship that becomes a romantic one can be complicated, controversial, and even disruptive to the larger mission of the office, company or film studio, but we also know that people are people, and when we see photos of Tom and Zendaya very obviously in love, we try to remember that some rules are made to be broken.

The proof is in their on-screen chemistry, bringing Spider-Man: No Way Home to the $253 million dollar mark in its opening weekend, making it the most successful movie launched in the last two years. We bet that makes Amy Pascal very happy.

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Latin America experienced a cryptocurrency boom this year, with Brazil leading the pack in terms of digital asset ownership.

Not only is Brazil the richest country in Latin America, but it also ranks as the largest and, in turn, has one of the biggest cryptocurrency markets in the world, trading 100,000 BTC on a daily basis.

Despite the dismissal of Bitcoin from Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro who once declared I dont know what Bitcoin is, the country has gone crypto-mad with both individuals and institutions widely accepting the market trading and impact it could have on the economy.

Demonstrating the approval of cryptocurrencies in the nation, the Central Bank of Brazil (CBC) officially recognised Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as legal monetary assets this year.

To go a step further, a bill to use cryptocurrency as a form of payment for workers in both public and private sectors was put before parliament in November and remains under consideration. If accepted, it would spark a new era for the Brazilian economy.

Bitcoin is undoubtedly the biggest and most popular cryptocurrency in Brazil with 5% of the nation owning the crypto, which is in excess of 10 million people.

A staggering 92% of Brazilian crypto users are male, while regardless of gender, 40% of crypto holders are 20 to 25 years old. The other age groups of 26-30 and 31-40 respectively represent 20%.

The nation also ranks ahead of Colombia (7.7%), Mexico (5.9%), and Argentina (4%) in regards to cryptocurrency-active owners and according to a CoinDesk report quoting Portal Du Bitcoin, Brazilians acquired cryptocurrencies worth $4.27 billion in 2021.

Brazils trust and acceptance of cryptocurrency in 2021 had grown drastically over the last three years with $4.3 billion being invested in the industry from January to August 2021.

That figure is compared to $1.7 billion in the same period in both 2019 and 2020.

The volume invested in 2021 represents 36.8% percent of the total stock already historically allocated by Brazilians in crypto assets, which adds up to $11.7 billion since 2016.

The increasing embrace of crypto had also benefitted the likes of Mercado Bitcoin, one of Brazils largest cryptocurrency exchanges, whose parent company  2TM  raised $50m on top of the $200m already raised this past summer in an aim to further build its operations in Latin America.

Brazil had already planted its roots at the forefront of economic freedom in Latin America and itll be interesting to see where they next look to conquer in 2022.
COVID-19

Crowdsourced Document Tracks Institutions' COVID Strategies for 2022

With the Omicron variant spreading rapidly across the United States, colleges and universities face a familiar dilemma: Will COVID force a pivot to online when classes begin in the new year? A new project kicked off by futurist Bryan Alexander aims to crowdsource the answer to that question in a shared Google spreadsheet.

A number of institutions have already announced plans to start January classes online, including Harvard University, the New School, Stanford University, the University of Denver, the University of Illinois-Chicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Alexander reported in a blog post. "Each has its own timing and other campus restrictions, but all greet the new year with online teaching and learning," he noted. Other universities have publicly stated that they are still considering the online vs. on-campus options.

The Google spreadsheet invites anyone with information and sources to list an institution's name, whether it's on a quarter or semester system, and its COVID strategy, along with associated documentation links. It is meant to serve as a living document, updated in real time as colleges and universities respond to evolving circumstances.

"The more eyes on the problem the better," wrote Alexander. "We can update the Sheet as events transpire and we learning about them, amending previous entries as things change. People can add new categories of information and ways of displaying them as you all have time. Hopefully we can all learn from each other."
West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination 2022 https://career.webindia123.com/career/dates_and_events/entrance/eng/west-bengal-joint-entrance-examination-wbjee.htm Details of West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination 2022 2021-10-26 2022-1-10 https://career.webindia123.com/career/images/exams.png India India West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination 2022 Engineering

West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (WBJEEM 2022) - 23rd April 2022

West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination : WBJEEM 2022 Category : Medical Admissions 2022 Published : On December 20, 2021 By Webindia123 Editor

Important Dates

Start of online form fill-up 24th December 2021 Last date of form fill-up and registration 10th January 2022 Publication of downloadable admit card in www.wbjeeb.nic.in 18th - 23rd April 2022 West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination 23rd April 2022 Publication of results -

West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations for admission to under graduate courses of Engineering, Medical and other allied disciplines in Universities and Colleges of West Bengal.

Applications are invited from Indian Citizens for admission to undergraduate courses in Engineering/ Technology/ Medical/Dental and Pharmacy in Universities/ Colleges in West Bengal and B. Arch Course in Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur and Jadavpur University for the academic session 2022-2024 on the basis of a Joint Entrance Examination, to be conducted by the "West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board".

Examination Centres: To be located in the State of West Bengal and Tripura



Scheme of West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination 2022 (WBJEEM 2022):

Relevant Courses Type of Form Subjects Engineering & Technology / B.Arch. / Dairy Technology / Agricultural Engineering / Pharmacy E Mathematics, Physics & Chemistry. Medical / Dental / Pharmacy

M Biological Sciences, Physics & Chemistry Engineering & Technology / B. Arch. / Dairy Technology / Agricultural Engineering / Pharmacy / Medical / Dental C Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biological Sciences

Schedule of Examination :

Date of Examination Subjects, Marks and Timing 26th May 2022 (Tuesday) Physics and Chemistry (100 marks) 11.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. Mathematics (100 marks)

2.00 p.m. to 4.00 p.m

Eligibility:

The applicant must be a citizen of India and should have passed the H.S.(10+2) or its equivalent examination. The general candidates must have to secure at least 50% marks in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics or Biology taken together (40% for SC/ST candidates) and at least 30% marks in English (for all categories). In addition, candidates must secure at least pass marks in the subjects individually including vernacular (or any other fifth subject) as mentioned below :

B.E/B.Tech./B.Arch : Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, English and vernacular or any other fifth subject.

M.B.B.S/B.D.S : Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English and vernacular or any other fifth subject.

Pharmacy : Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics or Biology, English and vernacular or any other fifth subject.

For MBBS and BDS courses : In addition to the aforesaid eligibility criteria, the general candidates must have to secure at least 50% marks in Physics, Chemistry and Biological Sciences taken together (40% for SC/ST) in the Joint Entrance Examination, W.B.

Age Restriction : Candidates must be 17 (seventeen) years of age or above as on 31.12.2021. There is no upper age limit except for the Marine Engineering course for which the upper age limit is 25 years as on 31.12.2021.

Residential Requirements : Candidates desirous of seeking admission to Government Engineering / Technology Colleges, Govt. Medical and Dental Colleges as well as to Private Medical and Dental Colleges, must have been residing in the State of West Bengal continuously at least for last 10 (ten) years as on 31.12.2021 or their parents must be permanent resident of West Bengal having their permanent home addresses in the State of West Bengal.

Reservation : Reservation for SC/ST/PC candidates are as per State Govt. Rules.

Venue of Examination : To be located in the State of West Bengal and Tripura.

How to Apply : Application has to be made by online mode through the official website.

Application Fee Details:

Irrespective of his/her category and gender, a candidate applying for WBJEEM  2022 has to pay Rs. 500/- (Rupees five hundred) only, as application fee, through ONLINE mode. An extra service charge of Rs. 6/- has to be paid by the candidates.

The candidate, on successfully uploading the PERSONAL DETAILS; will be directed to the webpage containing process of payment of application fee. The candidate has the option to choose any one from the following modes of payment:

(a). Payment through Allahabad Bank e-Challan: The candidate has to select Allahabad Bank e-challan to submit the application fee through bank. As soon as he selects it an e-Challan will be generated containing details of the candidate. The candidate has to take a printout of the same and take it to the nearest Core Banking Service (CBS) facility enabled Branch of the Bank for making payment. After payment, the candidate has to login to the system and upload the details written on the e-Challan by the bank official. When the details are uploaded, the Confirmation Page will be generated.

(b). Payment through EPG: The candidate has to select EPG mode if he/she desires to submit the application fee through one of the Electronic Payment Gateway via Debit Card, Credit Card or Net Banking. As soon as t he transaction is completed that a RECEIPT will be generated containing details of the transaction and the Confirmation Page will be automatically generated.

More details can be available from the institute website.

Contact Details Address : West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board,

AQ 13/1, Sector-V, Salt Lake City, Kolkata - 700091 Phone : +91-33-23671198, 23671199 Fax : +91-33-23671149 Mobile : E-mail : Contact I, Contact II Website : wbjeeb.nic.in

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For Carol Schumacher, the phone calls from relatives this holiday season wont be as joyous as in years past. Many will be processing the toll of COVID-19, which has already claimed 26 of her Navajo kin.

Suffice it to say Christmas isnt really a holiday of cheer or celebration around the reservation right now, because theres just too many, too many people being remembered, she said.

Schumacher, of Sun Prairie, is in her seventh year as a tutor coordinator at Madison West High School. She grew up in Chilchinbeto, in Navajo County, Arizona, which the U.S. Census lists as having a population of 769.

All of the relatives shes lost  aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews  were on her mothers side of the family and lived in or around the Chilchinbeto community. All were blood relatives, except for a nephews wife.

Schumacher, 55, lost two brothers to COVID, one who was 56, and one who was 53.

As COVID-19 began its path through the United States in March 2020, the virus ravaged the Navajo Nation, which early in the pandemic had the highest rate of COVID-19 infections per capita in the United States.

The nation is the largest reservation in the United States and includes parts of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah.

Schumacher, whose Navajo name is Azdzaa Nizhonii, said before COVID was identified on the reservation, it spread during a religious event in Chilchinbeto attended by Native American people from all over the area.

It started from our community, she said. Apparently, the pastor who ran the revival and some of the people, they were coughing, but nobody was aware.

Schumacher describes reservation life as harsh, with large families living together in small spaces. She came from a family of eight and lived with her parents, four brothers and a sister in a three-bedroom home.

Other families on the reservation had 10-12 people in even smaller homes, she said.

Schumacher said once the virus started spreading, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got involved and people who got sick had to distance and quarantine.

And theres no such thing as quarantining in a home of 12 people. So, that was one of things that just caused it to spread so quickly, she said.

A hotel 25 miles away in Kayenta was used to quarantine some of her relatives, which Schumacher said was helpful.

Left at 21

Before COVID, she lost two siblings to alcohol and drugs  a younger brother in 2019, and her sister in 2008. She has an older brother left.

Schumacher left the reservation when she was 21 and in 1989 met her husband when the two worked at a lodge in the Grand Canyon. She was a cashier in the cafeteria; he was a front desk clerk who came through her line sometimes. Now hes an accountant at a law firm in Downtown Madison after a 22-year career at Pepsi.

They moved to Sun Prairie, where he grew up, in 1994, when the oldest of their two daughters was 2 months old.

After her younger sister died of a drug overdose, she took in her sisters four children, and they became an eight-member family. It was a big adjustment for them, but we made it work, she said. In the Navajo culture, family is very important and we are very close-knit.

Schumacher said most of her relatives who have died lived in northeastern Arizona, but an aunt, whom she considered a second mother, died in an assisted-living home in Blanding, Utah. An uncle who died lived on the border of Arizona and Utah in Monument Valley.

Most of her family members who succumbed to COVID-19 in the past 20 months died in hospitals that were six or more hours away from home: in Phoenix, Cottonwood and Flagstaff, Arizona, and in Farmington, Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico, she said.

Schumacher said the distance made it even more costly when it came to funeral expenses. Many died without services, and in some cases, no proper goodbyes, she said.

Carrie Bohman, a social studies teacher at West, helped Schumacher set up a GoFundMe account, which as of Monday has raised $6,385 of its $20,000 goal to help the Chilchinbeto community fund necessities for those affected by the virus.

My community and people are scared, suffering and hurting, Schumacher says on the GoFundMe page.

Best vaccination rates

The Navajo Nation went from having one of the countrys worst early case rates to being credited in September by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States top infectious disease expert, as a model of success.

Last month, the CDC said that Native Americans consistently had the best COVID-19 vaccination rates in the U.S. since the shots became available late last year.

The New York Times reported that tribal leaders pushed hard to vaccinate Native American communities because of the disproportionate toll the virus has taken on their people.

In 2010, the total population of Navajo tribal members was 332,129 with 173,667 living within the boundaries of the reservation and 158,462 outside of the reservation.

Schumacher said those on the Navajo reservation were among the first to get the vaccine late last year, and the majority of her family members got their shots right away.

But some of her elderly relatives, who are more traditional, she said, have refused the vaccine because of experiences from their youth. They distrust the government. So, its just rehashing their past lives, what theyve survived.

She said some of the older family members she has lost had health problems that didnt help their case when they got COVID.

Last December was particularly hard for Schumacher when the aunts and uncles on her mothers side and their children all got COVID-19. The majority survived, but she said many of them are dealing with long-term effects of the virus, including breathing issues, heart problems, anxiety and depression.

Because her relatives live in remote areas, they have little access to health care or counseling, Schumacher said, and they are having trouble processing their grief.

She said she has tried to compartmentalize all the loss, but in June started having physical manifestations of her sadness. Shes diabetic and said her blood sugar started reaching dangerous levels. She was getting headaches and having heart pain, so she went to get help.

At the same time, she said she felt guilty knowing how many of her family members could be helped by therapy, but arent able to get it.

Schumacher said she remains afraid of getting COVID herself, but she works in a corner of the school with a few students in the study hall area. She said she doesnt interact or go near students and when they approach her, she makes sure they are wearing a mask as required. She double-masks.

Now, having to go through this new variant thats coming out, family members are just beside themselves because of this, she said.

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A Madison man has been charged with first-degree reckless homicide after police in September found the decomposed body of his former girlfriend at the Far East Side home where they had lived, then listened to jail calls between him and his current girlfriend as the two settled on a story to tell police, according to a criminal complaint.

Gregg G. Raether, 56, told police he had nothing to do with the death of a 55-year-old woman identified in the complaint only by her initials but by the Dane County Medical Examiners office on Monday as Patricia A. McCollough, of Madison.

The complaint, filed late Friday, says police believe McCollough died on or about July 22. Police went to her home on Sept. 16 after a caller who identified herself as McColloughs daughter asked police to check on her mothers welfare since she had been unable to reach her by phone.

After looking through windows and seeing that the house was in disarray and getting no answer at the door, police entered the home and found McColloughs body in a bedroom, buried under a pile of dresser drawers, shelving, televisions and bedding material.

The 24-page criminal complaint was the first public mention of the homicide case. It indicates that on Dec. 11, police received the results of a Sept. 17 autopsy by the Dane County Medical Examiners Office, which found McCollough is suspected to have been the victim of a homicide and died from mechanical asphyxia, a term sometimes used to indicate strangulation, along with blunt force trauma to her torso.

But in a press release Monday, the Medical Examiners Office did not list the cause of McColloughs death. The office said preliminary autopsy results are pending further study and investigation. Asked by the Wisconsin State Journal Monday night to explain the discrepancy, a staffer in the Medical Examiners Office said to call back Tuesday morning and speak with a supervisor.

Madison police spokeswoman Stephanie Fryer said Monday that there was a delay in publicly disclosing the homicide because the medical findings were not known to police until Dec. 11. The discovery of McColloughs body preceded Fryers work as public information officer, Fryer said, so she does not know why no news release was issued when that happened, although a brief item appeared in Chief Shon Barnes daily blog on Sept. 17.

Raether, who is on state Department of Corrections supervision for prior convictions, was taken into custody late in the afternoon of July 23 on an unrelated matter and remained in jail until Sept. 4.

While he was in custody, the complaint states, he made calls from the jail to Sherri L. Albrecht, 56, of Madison, in which they guardedly talked about what happened to McCollough and what they were going to tell police if they were asked about her.

Raether was jailed again on Sept. 24 when police told the DOC that he was a person of interest in a homicide case, according to DOC spokesperson John Beard, and was held on supervision violations as police continued to investigate McColloughs death.

In addition to reckless homicide, which is charged as a crime of domestic abuse, Raether is charged with possession of a firearm by a felon and three counts of unauthorized use of food stamps. Albrecht is charged with four counts of unauthorized use of food stamps. She is being sought on a warrant.

Raether appeared in court Monday, when Court Commissioner Jason Hanson agreed to set bail at $500,000.

Theres certainly probable cause to believe there was an extraordinarily violent encounter between the defendant and the victim, Hanson said. Theres also reason to believe, at least from the perspective of whats alleged here, that she was essentially left for dead.

Assistant Public Defender Diana Van Rybroek, appearing for Raether, said the criminal complaint is voluminous but fails to support the reckless homicide charge.

Dont say nothing

According to the complaint:

In the July jail calls that police reviewed, Raether complained about how sore his body felt and that she broke my (expletive) thumb, but he told Albrecht, dont say nothing, you know better.

They told each other they loved one another and that things would work out. He told Albrecht he hadnt heard from McCollough, whose name they did not use in the jail calls, and said he had no idea if she was dead. He told Albrecht, who was using McColloughs car, to return the car to McColloughs Deerwood Drive home. Albrecht also said she had McColloughs food stamp card and would use it to buy groceries.

Raether told Albrecht he was with Albrecht the whole time and told her, You know what to say. Youre good.

On Sept. 23, police executed search warrants at Albrechts apartment. A search dog alerted officers to the possible odor of decayed human remains in the apartment and in Albrechts car. Police found a lanyard with McColloughs name on it in one of the bedrooms.

During an interview with police a short time later, Raether asked police whether the interview was about McCollough and told detectives, I didnt murder her.

He said he and Albrecht had gone to McColloughs house with a U-Haul truck after he was released from jail in early September to get his things and didnt see her body or smell anything foul besides rotten food. But he said he now knows her body was there while he was. Everything in the house was smashed, he said.

He said the last time he saw McCollough, she was alive.

Ill take a lie detector test, whatever you want to take, he said. I loved her. I loved that girl.

Home smashed up

Raether at first said he had last seen McCollough on July 21, two days before he was arrested, and ran from the house without shoes on. He said he and Albrecht went back on Friday, July 23, to get his stuff and found the door unlocked with no sign of McCollough.

He said he was sure she was alive on July 21 and July 22 because he called her on July 22 from the motel where he was staying with Albrecht about going to Mount Olympus in Wisconsin Dells. But he also added he last saw her on July 22, when he and Albrecht went to her home but said he only went as far as the front entry.

He said again that he and Albrecht went to McColloughs house on July 23 to pick up his clothes and found everything smashed up, and no sign of McCollough. But he later corrected himself again and said he didnt see the home all smashed up until Sept. 4, after he got out of jail and went to McColloughs house with a U-Haul.

Raether also claimed he felt fine when he went to jail in July, despite what he told Albrecht on the phone. But confronted with his jail call statements about injuries, Raether then said McCollough attacked him and he defended himself. He also said that happened on July 22, when Albrecht was there with him. He said he didnt tell police that earlier because he was protecting (McCollough) because I dont want you guys to have that image that thats what she did, he said. But she was alive. I ran out of the house because she was doing that.

He said McCollough attacked him with a rubber mallet and also used it to smash things in the house.

Interviewed by police, Albrecht admitted using McColloughs food stamps card to buy groceries and denied that Raether went to McColloughs house on July 22. She said she and Raether were together the entire day.

Albrecht said she found out on Sept. 17 that McCollough had died. But asked why the calendar at her home stated found (McCollough) dead on Aug. 20, Albrecht maintained it was the day she learned McCollough was dead, and that she wrote it on the wrong month.

A letter found in Albrechts apartment, which Albrecht said was written so she and Raether could figure out what happened, said Friday morning (July 23) went to (McColloughs) about 3 a.m. Albrecht denied going there herself but later said Raether was there at that time by himself.

Phone records stated Albrecht got a phone call from McColloughs phone on July 22 at 11:22 p.m., but Albrecht said it was only to tell her that Raether was there with McCollough.

A day after the interview, Albrecht called a Madison police detective and said she did not want to be involved in the situation and had been telling police what Raether had told her and was not trying to lie. She said she didnt believe Raether meant to kill McCollough, but that the incident started out as a fight.

Police also searched the home of Albrechts mother in Endeavor. Albrechts mother said Raether had unloaded items from a U-Haul truck into the corner of her garage, including a rifle. Police could smell the odor of decomposition coming from a basket of gloves in the pile and the stock of the rifle.

In a Sept. 29 call from jail, Raether told Albrecht he didnt do anything to McCollough and told her not to talk to the police because they were trying to get her to turn on him.

Because you talking to them would make their case rock solid, Raether said. Tell them I didnt do this and I was with you practically the whole time.

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Nebraska State Patrol has a new face that will be seen helping keep people safe  that of Havik, an 18-month-old Belgian Malinois.

Trooper Levi Cockle, who is based in Columbus and resides in Butler County, received Havik around March of this year. Cockle and Havik became drug certified over the summer and just received their patrol certification a few weeks ago.

He's both patrol and narcotics. It takes a while, especially when they're that young, Cockle said.

As part of his patrol training, Havik can be sent into certain situations that require apprehending someone.

Let's just say they robbed a gas station or something at gunpoint that meets our criteria for a bite so I could send him in  He would go in here and find that person, Cockle said. They are trained to lay down like he is now and bark at him if the individual is a still standing person.

If the individual is moving around, Cockle added, that may constitute Havik being allowed to apprehend the person, though the guidelines for that are strict due to the potential of liability issues.

On the narcotics side, a rewards system is used to train the dogs. During training, the actual drug  such as marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine or cocaine  is sealed in a bag and hidden in a material like a t-shirt or sock. The odors from the drugs permeate the materials fabric and the dog is rewarded for detecting the odor.

The majority of the Nebraska State Patrols K9s are dual purpose dogs, Cockle noted.

For state patrol wise we're always going to have the dual purpose dogs, he said. We do have a single purpose Pointer right now that just does narcotics and he works in Lincoln.

Cockle said there is a sole dual purpose K9 who is certified in bomb detection and patrol, but that may be phased into a single purpose bomb detection; those types of K9s are required to know 16 different types of odors rather than the typical four.

The dogs that are in the bomb detection are a little bit more sharper and intelligent, because they have to remember the 16 odors and differentiate that stuff, Cockle said.

As a K9 handler, Cockle is on call 24/7 but he said that it allows him the flexibility to set his own schedule.

As a state trooper we have jurisdiction over the whole state but usually our road guys are assigned to certain areas. My area's technically Columbus but with having (a K9)  we only have 11 of them in the state so we go all over the state, he said.

Nebraska State Patrol announced in November the addition of five new K9s to its Police Service Dog Unit, one of which is Havik. The other four include a German Shorthaired Pointer based on Omaha, a Belgian Malinois based in Omaha, a German Malinois based on Lexington and a Belgian Malinois based in Lincoln.

Our Police Service Dog Unit does phenomenal work across our entire state, said Captain Jason Scott, Commander of the NSP Special Operations Division, in a provided statement. With so many new faces in the unit, this is a great way to introduce them to the public and to also say thank you to the NSP Foundation for their financial support of our K9 program.

Cockle has been a state trooper for about five years and has previously served the Ogallala area. He applied for this position once it became open.

All of the states K9s are purchased by the Nebraska State Patrol Foundation, which uses funds from the public, according to a NSP press release. More information on the foundation can be found at statepatrol.nebraska.gov/about/nsp-foundation.

These dogs run for anywhere from $9,000 to $13,000. And these all come from donations, actually. So we've been very fortunate, Cockle said.

Hannah Schrodt is the news editor of The Columbus Telegram. Reach her via email at hannah.schrodt@lee.net.

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Those in need of help but unsure of where to go can now take advantage of a new online hub filled with resources.

The Columbus Area United Way and its collaborative Community and Family Partnership, the Nebraska Presbyterian Foundation and First National Bank of Omaha have joined together to announce the How are you, really? mental health awareness campaign.

The ongoing pandemic has shined a stark spotlight on the importance of mental health needs and resources, Columbus Area United Way Executive Director Hope Freshour said. While we know not everyone has mental health concerns, we all have mental health.

"If you are struggling, you are not alone and do not need to suffer in silence. Mental health matters. We are committed to providing the tools and resources individuals and families need to stay mentally well. Its also important to have these tools to approach conversations about mental health effectively and proactively.

The new landing page, columbusunitedway.com/mentalhealth, includes mental health resources in English and Spanish. Community members also can locate resources by calling 2-1-1 and entering their zip code.

We are proud to support this critical work to strengthen awareness of mental health resources in our local community, said Mindy Muhle, LIMHP, LMFT, MedFT, Embark Counseling, Its important for people to know they are not alone. Asking your loved ones, How are you, really? can sometimes help them feel comfortable enough to share more about their state of mental health. If you or a loved one are struggling with mental health, this new online toolkit and 2-1-1 provide two, easy places to turn to for help and guidance.

The website has several videos featuring community members who share mental health stories, such as Platte County Sheriff Ed Wemhoff.

Support for our mental health can take many forms, but the first step is to reach out and ask for help, Wemhoff said. During the trying times of the pandemic, we have seen an increase in mental health struggles, and this is an excellent resource for families to take the first step. We have people who can help.

Area businesses and community organizations are invited to join the effort. Graphics, posters, and information sheets can be accessed and downloaded at columbusunitedway.com/mentalhealth.

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Although there hasnt been much in terms of the white stuff, Columbus residents have something to look forward to when the snow does come around.

The Columbus Parks and Recreation Department will be hosting its first Snow Sculpture Contest. Entries can be submitted starting after the first snow and will continue through the end of March.

Its a competition for the community  families, kids, parents, anyone who is creative  to be able to give others the opportunity to see their creation and the opportunity to win a prize, said Parks and Recreation Coordinator Betsy Eckhardt.

There are two prize categories  biggest sculpture and most creative sculpture. The winners will receive Columbus Bucks. Any kind of snow creation is welcome as long as its appropriate.

Eckhardt said she had talked to other cities park and recreation departments and they have had these type of competitions in their communities, and they were big hits.

It brings the whole community together and people really like it, Eckhardt said.

When submitting an entry  done using the email below  it must include the name of the artist, address, phone number and picture of their creation. If the creation is not easily viewable  such as it being in the backyard  Eckhardt asks that you let her know at this time.

According to the National Weather Weather Service Omaha, there is a volunteer observer in the area and the snowiest month recorded in Columbus was November 1983 at 15 inches. The snowiest month for Columbus is February with a mean of 3.4 inches.

Hopefully we will get enough snow this year that we can get that done, Eckhardt said.

Should the dry weather continue, Eckhardt said they will shoot for next year, but this is an opportunity for the whole community to get involved.

It just gives people the opportunity to get out and enjoy what their neighbors are doing creatively, Eckhardt said. It also keeps people engaged in Columbus. In the winter months, we dont necessarily want to go outside, we dont necessarily want to be in the cold, but this will be a fun way to make it worth it. Get in your car, go drive by, see the cool snow sculptures especially for little kids.

And just being involved in the community, you feel like youre connected to something, and thats definitely something we want to encourage in Columbus. Feeling like youre connected and that we are one unit and were all working together and we can enjoy each other's creativity.

For more information, call 402-562-4234 or email betsy.eckhardt@columbusne.us.

Monica Garcia is the managing editor of The Columbus Telegram. Reach her via email at monica.garcia@lee.net.

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The record-busting $768.2 billion defense authorization bill that cleared Congress last week contains a little sugar for Nebraska, courtesy of the states congressional delegation.

The bill, which passed the Senate 88-11, includes a 2.7% pay increase for military personnel while making landmark changes to the way the military handles sexual assaults, keeping women out of the draft and laying the groundwork for a new war on terror memorial on the National Mall.

The bill passed the House 363-70 in September and is now awaiting President Joe Bidens signature.

Sen. Deb Fischer and Rep. Don Bacon, who serve on the Armed Services Committees in their respective houses, claimed credit for steering some of that money to benefit military personnel and commands in Nebraska.

The (bill) includes critical provisions to support a pay raise for our troops, bolster Nebraska military assets and modernize our nuclear deterrent, Fischer said in a statement. The legislation reflects broad agreement that the country must be prepared to address the many growing national security challenges we face.

At least $150 million is slated for construction at Offutt Air Force Base near Bellevue. Of that, $100 million is for reconstruction of parts of the base damaged in the 2019 flood.

Thats on top of more than $400 million for cleanup and repairs in previous years, and $234 million to replace RC-135 flight simulators destroyed in the flood.

The bill also authorized $50 million for rehabilitation of family housing at Offutt.

You can tell its older, and it needs some investment, Bacon said. The sense was were falling a little bit behind.

The Pentagon began turning over construction, management and maintenance of military housing to private companies in the mid-1990s, and accusations of mismanagement by some companies prompted congressional hearings in 2019 and again in March.

Offutts Rising View housing, owned by Omaha-based Burlington Housing since 2005, drew scrutiny two years ago after some residents complained of poor living conditions and slow repairs. That prompted much closer scrutiny by senior leaders of Offutts 55th Wing.

The bill also authorized $10 million to find a site and build the U.S. Strategic Commands nuclear command, control and communications hub. Its tied to a 2019 initiative to put StratCom in charge of what the Pentagon calls NC3.

Bacon said it is likely to be built on Offutt property but outside the current fence line.

In addition to the funding at Offutt, the bill includes $11 million for barracks construction at the Nebraska National Guards training site near Mead, about 30 miles west of Omaha.

Other notable items:

* Accelerated procurement of mission systems and engines for the 55th Wings new EC-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft, which are based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.

* A provision directing the Air Force to look for ways to increase the operational availability of the 55th Wings Offutt-based RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance jets.

* A provision nudging the Air Force to move forward with replacement of the E-4B Nightwatch aircraft  now more than 45 years old  with a new airframe.

* Encouragement of the Pentagon to expedite plans to build a new laboratory for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. The current lab, which opened in 2013, is in the former Glenn L. Martin Bomber Plant, built in 1941.

* A continuation of full funding of replacements for various parts of the nations nuclear arsenal and a prohibition on reductions in the intercontinental ballistic missile force, currently at 400.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, whose district includes Offutt, supported the bill. He said in a statement that he was glad to see the pay raise for troops and the funding for nuclear command, control and communications.

Nebraska plays a critical role in our national defense, he said. The most important duty of your government is to keep you safe. The yearly National Defense Authorization Act is essential to that goal.

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The swearing-in of Cumberland County officials Monday afternoon marked a major milestone for women in the courthouse, with the countys first female sheriff and its first female-majority judges bench.

Mondays changing of the guard ceremony at the historic courtroom in Carlisle also served as an impromptu send-off for District Attorney Skip Ebert, who recently announced that he would retire at the end of this year, half-way through his current term.

County judges swore in 10 officials on Monday who had won office in the 2021 local elections, most of them incumbents. But two new faces marked a major pivot point in a government structure that has long been male-dominated.

Jody Smith has become the countys first female sheriff as she was sworn in to replace retiring Sheriff Ronny Anderson, who said her experience and close working relationships with law enforcement officers around the state made her the clear choice to take over after his departure.

In 2010, Anderson said, Smith was also the first woman to have ever been named first deputy in the sheriffs office.

Also, Michelle Sibert received her judges robes on Monday, joining the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas to fill the seat vacated by former Judge Thomas Placey.

The addition of Sibert gives the countys highest court a female majority bench, with four of seven common pleas judgeships being held by women.

When I was sworn in 10 years ago, I was the sole woman on a bench of six, but we now outnumber the men, said Judge Christylee Peck, who was sworn in Monday for another 10 years after winning her retention vote.

Sibert said that being a judge was never a specific goal of hers, but a combination of being in the right place at the right time, and possibly some divine providence, put her in a place where it made sense. She has worked for the county district attorneys office since 1999, and starting in 2012 became the head of the victims services division.

I am hopeful that I am made for such a time as this, and I am grateful that you believe in me and trust that I am made for such a time as this, Sibert told the crowd.

Although he was not expected to run again in 2023, Ebert announced that he would retire early, effective at midnight on Dec. 31, 2021. Under a recent change to state law, the remainder of Eberts term will be filled by Chief Deputy District Attorney Sean McCormack.

Ebert, 73, said, its time to give the young people a chance, and said he felt confident that the team hes assembled will be able to operate without him at the helm.

Ebert served as Cumberland County district attorney from 1995 to 2005, when he departed to become a judge. After former county DA David Freed left for a federal position in 2017, Ebert was selected as his replacement, and subsequently won a full four-year term in 2019.

Known as an old-school prosecutor, Ebert pursued the death penalty in a large proportion of cases, despite the states de facto ban on executions, and dramatically increased the use of drug delivery resulting in death charges, a deterrent that has been criticized by reform groups as discouraging the reporting of overdoses.

This criminal justice reform isnt exactly suiting my personality, Ebert said in an interview Monday, and the changing environment partially influenced him to step down.

Its just different times, Ebert said.

In addition to Smith, Sibert, and Peck, former Carlisle police detective Daniel Freedman was sworn in as the new magisterial district judge for the Mount Holly Springs area.

Incumbent row officers sworn in for another term Monday were Controller Alfred Whitcomb, Prothonotary Dale Sabadish, Clerk of Courts Dennis Lebo, Recorder of Deeds Tammy Shearer, Register of Wills Lisa Grayson, and Coroner Charley Hall.

Email Zack at zhoopes@cumberlink.com.

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Shop with a Hero helped more children this year than it ever has in the nine-year history of the event. Fredericktown Walmart was visited by 146 children, each with $100 to shop for items on their Christmas lists.

This year's event was held the morning of Dec. 15 and the children each chose a hero to help them shop. In Fredericktown, the heroes consisted of firefighters, police officers, sheriff deputies, highway patrol troopers, paramedics, city employees, school personnel, county employees and many others who helped make the event possible throughout the year.

Fredericktown Police Chief Eric Hovis said the entire community works together all year to raise the money for these kids. He said anyone who helped make this happen is a hero and was invited to come out, shop, and be involved with the event.

"We are able to do this every year because of the generosity of businesses, groups and individuals throughout the community," Hovis said. "This year, with the tornado and still trying to bounce back from COVID-19 shutdowns, the children of the community needed this more than ever. We helped more children this year than we ever had, and we plan to raise even more money next year to make sure we can continue to help all that need it."

The Fredericktown Fire and Police Community Coalition, the sponsor of the event, indicated the teamwork and everyone working together is the true key to the success of the day.

"The school district helps make sure the kids who need help get it, Walmart is always so helpful and inviting, our school resource officers always do such a great job, and just everyone who comes out to shop, wrap presents or just be a part of the day all really make this possible," Hovis said. "They put so much work into it.

Hovis said everyone has their role and does a great job pulling it all together.

"Things were tough again this year for the community and for our fundraising events, but we pulled it off," Hovis said. "We are so blessed and thankful for those that did step up and give. Even if it was a smaller donation than normal. It doesn't matter if you normally give $100 and you only gave $20 this year. It helped us make this possible for these kids and it is all about those kids."

As the children entered the store, they smiled ear to ear and some even pointed with excitement to the hero they wanted to shop with. Hawk the K-9 was a favorite of the day with his handler Brandon Greene from American Caliber K-9 just there as his partner instead of the other way around. Hawk even helped pick out toys and video games, sniffing them just to be safe.

Popular toys this year were Nerf Guns, Barbies, Pokemon cards and video games. One little girl decided to go straight for a big ticket item, spending most of her money for a new bike.

Several police officers had fun shopping with a few of the teenage shoppers in the makeup isle, obviously out of their comfort zone but still making it a memorable day for all, smelling perfumes and picking out eye lashes.

The entire experience gets you into the Christmas spirit, Hovis said. I look forward to this day all year long. The children light up when they see Santa, and it is fun to see the kids and all the volunteers cut loose and have fun shopping.

Hovis said the experience touches your heart and, yes the kids are getting their presents, but the volunteers walk away with so much more.

You can't help but love every minute of the morning, Hovis said. For that time you are shopping with that child, nothing else matters. Everything is about them and what they want. They do not have to worry about life. They just get to be kids.

At the end of the event, all of the heroes who were able, took a ride out to a bless a deserving family with a $1,000 donation to make their holiday season a little brighter.

This year the Bowman family was chosen to receive the extra blessing. The Bowmans were impacted by the recent tornado with their home and van receiving damage. The group went to the Fredericktown Elementary School to present Missy Bowman with the donation.

"We want to give you guys $1,000 because we get called heroes all the time, but what you are doing, fostering all those kids and the type of mom you are and the family you are, you are a hero," Santa said. "We really do appreciate you. We hope you have a Merry Christmas and we know that you know what Christmas is all about."

Victoria Kemper is a reporter for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at 573-783-3366 or at vkemper@democratnewsonline.com

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Then you listen closely to the lyrics:

I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coats with scarves of red tied round their throats to keep their little heads from fallin in the snow, and I turned round and there you go, and Michael you would fall and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime.

One theory on the Internet is that White Winter Hymnal is about decapitation, with the red scarf a supposed reference to the French Revolution. Michael is being led to the guillotine.

Could that be true? What is the song about anyway?

Pecknold pauses at the question.

Thats another funny aspect of it, he said, is that its kind of vaguely not about anything.

One common theme of songs on Fleet Foxes debut was keeping family and friends together as people grew and changed, and that was in his mind as he wrote. While he concedes that the most literal image may be a boy falling down a hill and dying, Pecknold said the song is definitely NOT about decapitation.
Right at this moment very little. Our goal for omicron should be prevention and not treatment, as today an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The Pfizer pill for COVID-19 that blocks the viral protease (preventing assembly of new infectious virus) is up to 90% effective at preventing COVID-19 severe enough to result in hospitalization. It however will not be immediately available as it is just going into mass production. Merck also has an antiviral pill that inhibits the ability of virus to make copies of its genome, which while less effective in clinical trials than the Pfizer medicine should also be available soon. In the interim the only anti-Spike monoclonal antibody known to work for omicron is sotrovimab which is in short supply (only 55,000 doses for the entire country available this week from the CDC).
A rapidly spreading deadly virus. Record-breaking fires. Acrid smoke from the Pacific to Pendleton. A riot in the capitol.

As 2020 came to a welcome close a year ago, an exhausted Oregon public had hope for the New Year.

The worst of the COVID-19 pandemic seemed over with the arrival of vaccines. The Labor Day fires were gone and the smoke that gave the state the worst air in the world some days was gone. Protestors who fought with police in the Capitol in Salem were gone with the end of the special session.

Soon, 2020 would be in the rear view mirror. An optimistic joke that the worst had passed was that "Hindsight is 2020."

But as 2021 in Oregon winds down, it feels like a sequel of the highly unpopular horror classic, 2020 in Oregon.

Dark humor dominates  the wordplay now is turned into rueful wordplay that 2021 is actually spelled as "2020 Won."

Now the question is if we are going to have a trilogy.

In announcing that a sixth wave in two years of COVID-19 would arrive around Jan. 1, Gov. Kate Brown noted that another year of COVID-19 wasn't on anyone's wish list.

"I know that bracing for a new variant as we head into our second pandemic holiday season is not what we all hoped for," Brown said.

Many of the catastrophes that marked 2020 as no one's favorite year were back in 2021.

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The vaccines set off a mass scramble for appointments, with most people told they might have to wait until mid-summer for inoculation. Then demand fell off a cliff. Bottles of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine with fewer and fewer arms to put them in.

From a high of 50,000 shots in April, demand in Oregon shrank to less than a tenth of that on days in June. Vaccination became another political wedge issue. A riot at the U.S. Capitol showed the fragility of peaceful democracy.

The fires were back  earlier and more remote this year  but burning miles of scars in the land and costing million of dollars to contain. The smoke choked not just Oregon but jetstreams shared it with places as far as Boston. This year added a grim stretch of record-frying heat on June 28. It hit 116 degrees in Portland. Salem was 117. Temperatures more familiar to Death Valley than the Willamette Valley.

As 2022 is about to dawn, there is little swagger that the worst is over. The cornerstone of crisis  the COVID-19 pandemic  began on the last day of 2019 with a trickle of infections in China. It was worldwide  a pandemic  by the end of 2020 with more than 300,000 dead in the United States.

Through 2021, the virus threw off variants, most little more than scientific curiosities. But a few  "variants of concern"  would start a roll call of names taken from the Greek alphabet.

Delta brought contagion to a new level. Omicron capped the year as the biggest and fastest, though hopefully less lethal, of them all.

The cases in one city in one country that could be counted on two hands at the end of 2019 would march into 2022 with a tally of 273 million infections worldwide and 5.4 million deaths  led by over 800,000 in the United States.

In January, some forecasts predicted the virus would be under control by June. It felt that way in July, when Oregon reported 92 deaths  the first monthly total to fall to two digits since June 2020, at the beginning of the crisis. A two-week respite around the Fourth of July gave a glimpse of what could pass for normal life.

Delta quickly crushed the hope. By Labor Day, delta peaked. The spike would bottom out in October. No, Thanksgiving. Christmas. March 2022. The steep line plotted on a graph that took two months to peak became a stretched out slope with bumps back up on the way down.

This time, there would be no hiatus. Delta dropped, then at the beginning of December surged in parts of the nation  driven by crisis fatigue of people who now gathered more often indoors, in larger groups, with varying levels of the official guidelines for masks and social distancing.

Delta took two months to jump from where it was first seen in India to all 36 counties in Oregon. Omicron was reported in southern Africa on Nov. 22 and was officially in Oregon by Dec. 13.

Attempts to calculate when the pandemic was slowing or receding have led to futility.

After 612 people died in December 2020, the tally slowly dropped with the arrival of vaccines late that month. The worst seemed over.

When delta broke the record with more than 900 reported deaths in September, then slid to 640 in October and 249 in November, the path forward looked much brighter.

But the virus is a living, morphing, shape-shifter. What it is today, it isn't tomorrow, much less a month or a year from now.

Today, nearly three out of four people in Oregon are vaccinated  the 12th highest rank among 50 states.

A New York Times survey on Saturday of federal, state and local data showed that since the pandemic began, Oregon has had the third lowest rate of infections and sixth lowest rate of deaths of the 50 states.

But forecasts come with more caveats this December. The omicron variant may be less lethal. May be milder in most cases.

But new information can make current information grow old and out-of-date very quickly.

In June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was fine for people with two vaccine shots to meet in small groups with others whose status was the same.

Delta was tagged as "the pandemic of the unvaccinated"  and was in the most severe cases. The vaccinated made up less than 5% of the hospitalized and about 1% of the dead.

Omicron could be held at bay in the United States by the dominance of the delta variant. Instead, it is pushing it aside.

"Fully vaccinated" meant two shots of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one of Johnson & Johnson. Now a booster of the first pair is the marker for maximum protection, while the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been shelved amid caution over its effectiveness and side effects.

"Exactly one year ago this week, we came together to celebrate the first COVID vaccinations in Oregon," Brown said Friday. "We watched with excitement, and frankly a huge sigh of relief, as health care workers from across our state received their first dose."

One year later, the New Year opens with omicron.

"A gut punch," Dr. Renee Edwards, chief medical officer of the Oregon Health & Science University, said.

On the streets and stores of Oregon, the sign of the pandemic as of late has been, at most, people wearing masks. In some parts of Oregon where going maskless is a sign of skepticism of the science or political belligerence, even that symbol is absent.

But health workers across the state say inside hospitals, exhausted doctors, nurses and other medical and health staff deal with an undulating but never absent stream of sickness and death. Now they must prepare for more.

Cloaked by privacy laws, the state daily issues a ticker of deaths  people reduced to which county they lived in, when they became sick, when and where they died, their gender and age and if they had the catch-all "underlying conditions" that made fatality more likely.

With a few exceptions that attract a public obituary or a level of fame that makes it impossible to conceal their identity, the daily list of names, faces, stories and suffering of the dead remain unknown to all but family and hospital staff who watch as they pass.

Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state's chief epidemiologist gave a mournful soliloquy on Sept. 16 when Oregon passed 3,500 deaths from COVID-19.

Each morning he would look at the internal reports of new deaths coming in from around the state. Some made him cry. Some made him angry. Some made him feel something worse.

"Some mornings I am numb to the pain that the suffering and death that the numbers represent," he said. "A mother, a father, a son or daughter, brother or sister, grandmother or grandfather, a best friend, a neighbor, a beloved go-worker. Every one of them was loved and every one of them leaves behind grieving loved ones."

Sidelinger said he longed for the day the pandemic is over and hoped people would not forget what it had extracted from everyone.

Since he spoke, 2,000-plus more people have died in Oregon.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a top forecaster of the pandemic at the University of Washington, said Friday that the reports will continue past Jan. 1.

It reports that the official worldwide death toll will hit 6.26 million by March 1  though postmortems in months and years ahead will show deaths at double that number.

In the United States, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation expects fatalities to reach 880,000 nationwide by that date. When statistics catch up, historians will likely see that deaths in the United States topped 1 million in mid-February.

The flow of reports to Sidelinger's desk in Oregon each morning won't stop either. IHME puts the likely official count on March 1 passing 6,400 reported deaths. The real number will eventually be closer to 9,100 after the review of fatalities is done after the pandemic ends.

When that will be, is unknown. The forecast stops at March 1. The list of variants ends for now at omicron.

How many more Greek letters tagged to coronavirus variants in 2022 is in a future that won't be known until next year this time.

Whether pandemic will die out  or fires burn, smoke billow, political violence flare  won't be known until this time next year.

The past three years show that predicting the future of this era of trouble is difficult and often foolish.

Check back next December to find out.
Here's a depressing thought. The three people most likely to appear at the top of the November ballot in 2024 are President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

If Biden, who turns 80 next year, declines to run for a second term, the net contest could be 2016 all over again, when many voters had to choose between two unlikable nominees, Trump and Hillary Clinton.

On paper, Harris, 57, looks better than in person. A former district attorney, state attorney general and U.S. senator  Harris' resume would impress even if she wasn't the first woman of color to hold those positions. She won every election in which she ran, until she ran for president in the 2020 election. What plays in Marin County, California, doesn't necessarily win in Iowa.

(Harris became the first Democrat to drop out of the primary when the RealClearPolitics polling average put her in sixth place with 3% support.)

"She's a very weak general election candidate," California Republican strategist Kevin Spillane told me, and she has been very "lucky" in the weak opposition she faced as a candidate in California, where winning the Democratic primary usually means winning the race.

Spillane should know. He worked for Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, who narrowly lost to Harris in the California attorney general race in 2010, when Democrats for all other statewide offices won by double digits.

This season's big year-end political story is about staff turnover and turmoil in Kamalaland. The Washington Post reported on her "dysfunctional" staff. Big guns have resigned.

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Former Harris aide Gil Duran wrote in the San Francisco Examiner that the veep's staff is bailing for the same reason he did after working for Harris for five months in 2013  tantrums, turmoil, poor management and lack of discipline.

"She's not well liked by the majority of people that had to interact with her on the Homeland Security Committee," an unnamed department official told Dan Morain, author of "Kamala's Way: An American Life." The same source said that four Department of Homeland Security officials who were ready to support Biden publicly in 2020 backed off after they found out Harris would be the running mate. "For them," quoth the source, "it seemed like she was always about politics, and not about the mission."

In short, Harris comes across as phony.

Or as Spillane put it, "She doesn't connect with people." And not just because of the phony laugh.

When Harris ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2003, she pledged not to seek the death penalty because of her personal opposition to it. When a gang member shot and killed San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza, Harris announced she would stick to her beliefs and not seek a capital sentence for the killer  before the funeral and without consulting Espinoza's widow.

But then in 2010, when Harris wanted to be attorney general of a state where voters consistently support capital punishment, she promised to enforce the death penalty. So much for those deeply held beliefs.

Biden handed dicey issues including immigration to his second in a way that was supposed to boost her visibility. For me, that move confirmed a suspicion that Biden picked Harris as insurance against impeachment attempts. (There were voices calling for his removal after the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.)

The RealClearPolitics polling average puts Harris underwater by 12 points, with nearly 53% of respondents having an unfavorable view of her. Biden is underwater by 6 points.

When she ran for president in 2020, Harris didn't even poll among the top three in her own state. Californians knew that Harris didn't have what it takes.

No wonder her staffers are bailing from their plum positions.

As Duran wrote during the 2020 primary, "You can't run the country if you can't run the campaign."

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Events

Tuesday

Advent Recital Series, noon, online. First Presbyterian Church in Corvallis will offer the final concert in its annual series. Choral Sounds of Christmas will feature the church's Chancel Choir, directed by Carol Nelson and accompanied by Ella Jones, violin. View at www.1stpres.org or www.facebook.com/1stprescorvallis.

Jan. 1

Guided 2022 First Day Hikes, Jan. 1, several state parks. The normal $5 day-use parking fee will be waived for the day at the 25 parks that normally require a parking permit. Jan. 1 also marks the beginning of the yearlong Oregon State Parks centennial commemoration. A list of guided hikes, including times and meeting locations, is available at https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=things-to-do.events. Visitors should check the calendar in the days leading up to Jan. 1 for additional guided hikes. Some parks not hosting guided hikes may post information that includes recommended hikes and ranger favorites. Parsons added that at this time of year, whales can be seen during winter migration, so bring binoculars to coastal parks to help scan for whale spouts.

Ongoing

Pastega Christmas Display, 5 to 10 p.m. daily through Dec. 31, Benton County Fairgrounds, 110 SW 53rd St., Corvallis; enter off Reservoir Avenue and exit on 53rd. The drive-through event has returned after being canceled last year due to COVID-19. Admission: donation of packaged food items for local food items. Organizers are seeking volunteers to assist with taking down the display after Dec. 31; information is available at https://www.pastegachristmasdisplay.com (click on the "Volunteer" button).

Fourth Annual Ornament Hunt and Sweepstakes, through Jan. 1, non-wilderness trails, Willamette National Forest and Umpqua National Forest. The Willamette Valley Visitors Association is sponsoring the hunt, which encourages locals and travelers to connect with public lands and increase outdoor recreation activities. Two hundred wooden ornaments featuring the Willamette Valley will be hidden along non-wilderness trails not affected by wildfires. Each ornament includes a Willamette Valley leather patch and instructions on how to register to win a prize of an adventure and overnight stay in the Willamette Valley. The visitors association website, https://willamettevalley.org/ornament, will serve as the hub for contest winners to claim their prizes throughout the contest. You can also find trail information and hints throughout December on this page. Once the contest closes, all remaining ornaments will be picked up by U.S. Forest Service professionals. The Willamette National Forest provides recreational opportunities, fishing, hunting, foraging, firewood, minerals, wood products and Christmas trees. Christmas tree permits are available at https://www.recreation.gov/tree-permits.

Albany Visitors Association's 34th Annual Nighttime Magic Holiday Light Contest. Community judging ended Sunday; winners will be announced Tuesday. Pictures of entries will be posted on the AVA Facebook page and addresses will be included for people to drive by, or you can pick up a list of participants at the AVA, 110 Third Ave. SE, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. The addresses will also be posted on the Albany Explorer App. Participants' lights will be on from 5 to 10 p.m. through Jan. 1, or beyond.

Holiday light string collection; drop off lights at the Republic Services office, 1214 SE Montgomery St., Albany. Through Jan. 3.

Giving opportunities

Linn County Animal Rescue is a nonprofit sanctuary that rescues neglected, abandoned and abused horses, and hospice dogs. In existence for 14 years, the agency, based in Waterloo, is 100% volunteer-run and provides Healing Hearts with Horses events for developmentally disabled/handicapped individuals and those with post-traumatic stress disorder. Donations of the following items are needed: gift certificates/cash donations, cleaning supplies, senior horse grain, and small blankets, beds and pee pads for dogs. For more information about ongoing fundraisers (Bottle Drop and Points for Profit) or volunteering at the rescue, call 541-258-3422 or visit www.lcarhorse.org.

Other opportunities

It's the time of year to visit the Siuslaw National Forest or the Willamette National Forest and find the perfect Christmas tree for your home. Christmas tree permits are primarily being sold online at www.recreation.gov and can also be obtained in person from local vendors or via the telephone from a ranger district. Permits allow the holder to cut one tree in designated areas. Each household can purchase up to a maximum of five permits. Permits are $5 each with an additional $2.50 registration fee when purchasing online. Additionally, fourth-graders with Every Kid Outdoors passes are eligible for a free Christmas tree permit through their local national forest; they can apply through Recreation.gov by entering their voucher or pass number when prompted. A $2.50 registration fee will also be applied for this transaction.

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The day after Christmas will mark 25 years since 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her parents' Boulder home, setti
Apple is bringing iPhone 13 production to the vast Indian market, with commercial production planned for early next year.

In fact the technology giant has already started trial production of the iPhone 13 in the Foxconn plant near Chennai on the south-eastern coast of India.

Indias Economic Times says the US company is getting ready to make almost all its top-selling smartphone models in the country. Commercial production of the iPhone 13 in India for both the domestic market and exports will begin by February.

Part of the reason for this activity is apparently that Apple has been able to get hold of semiconductor chips, which have been in short supply globally. This has enabled it to plan the expansion of production into India.

A large proportion  up to 30 percent  of the production of the iPhone 13 in India will go to overseas markets, helping Apple to improve supplies of the model into its global markets.

There had, it seems, been an acute shortage of top-selling iPhones in the Indian market. This has, however, eased as supplies have improved and will no doubt be boosted by the local production of the iPhone 13, the biggest-selling iPhone 13 model in the country, though lower priced models such as the iPhone 11 and 12 may actually have a larger share of the Indian market.

There are apparently no plans to produce the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max in India.
A proposed subsea internet cable that would be designed to connect Chile and Australia came closer this week with the appointment by the Chilean government of a partner in the project.

The Chilean government has selected a Singaporean cable company called H2, chaired by Remi Galasso who is also the chief executive of New Zealand-founded cable company Hawaiki, as its partner for the proposed Humboldt cable.

According to the stuff.co.nz website, Chilean government infrastructure fund Fondo de Infraestructura has said that the 14,810 kilometre cable would run between Valparaiso in Chile and Sydney, where it would connect with other cable systems to Asia.

It would include several branches to allow for the possible connection of other countries and territories, such as Juan Fernandez  also known as Robinson Crusoe Island  and Isla de Pascua (Easter Island), as well as New Zealand.

The cable, estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, could also potentially enable the first ultrafast broadband connection to Antarctica, which currently relies on satellite communications.

Fondo de Infraestructura has also said that Desarrollo Pais, a company majority-owned by the Chilean government, and H2 would jointly promote the Humboldt Cable and make the investment based on market response.

H2 had contracted Hawaiki to finalise the system design, launch the contracting process and contact potential key customers, it said.

Hawaiki is a 15,000 km telecommunication cable connecting 356 million consumers in Australia, New Zealand, American Samoa, Hawaii and continental United States. As well as its work on Humboldt, H2 is planning the first direct subsea cable between Sydney and Hong Kong.
Statement by Ambassador Byrne Nason at the UNSC Briefing on Syria - Humanitarian and Political

Statement

Merci beaucoup Mr. President,

I make this statement today on behalf of the co-penholders of the Syria humanitarian file, Norway and Ireland. I want to say many thanks Martin, for your comprehensive briefing, which has underlined the severity of the humanitarian need and the complex challenge of delivering humanitarian response throughout Syria. Geir, it is good to see you with us today. I will address the political aspects later in my remarks. I want to say thank you to Dr. Ballour for her remarks- your messages to us were very clear.

Ireland and Norway also wish to thank the Secretary General for the two reports furnished to Council Members last week. We welcome in particular the comprehensive report on humanitarian operations in Syria, issued in accordance with Security Council Resolution 2585, which was unanimously adopted by consensus of all Council Members in July of this year. This resolution extended the authorisation to use the border crossing at Bab al-Hawa until 10 July 2022, subject to the issuance of this report.

This report illustrates welcome progress in a number of important areas, including with regard to cross line deliveries. We have seen deliveries take place throughout Syria, in spite of constraints and challenges to access, which vary greatly by region.

The second interagency cross line delivery to the North West, which took place on 9th December marks another significant and positive step. We welcome the commencement last week of the distribution of the much-needed humanitarian aid. We commend the efforts made by the UN and WFP to develop a comprehensive plan for cross line deliveries, and we call on all parties to facilitate their continuation.

Ireland and Norway, as co-penholders on the Syria humanitarian file, have repeatedly emphasised our support for all modalities to provide humanitarian aid to meet the needs of people across Syria.

Our sole objective is ensuring that humanitarian aid reaches all people in need.

As the report makes clear, the cross border humanitarian operation at Bab Al Hawa remains an absolutely critical lifeline. As the Secretary General has told us, this operation is the essential channel for the UN to provide lifesaving assistance at the scale required to support the significant and growing humanitarian needs of 3.4 million people in need in north west Syria.

Ireland and Norway welcome the substantive update on the considerable work taking place to ensure transparency in operations throughout Syria. We commend OCHA for the systems you have put in place to safeguard humanitarian principles and ensure accountability of humanitarian action at all stages. The cross border operation in the North West is one of the most heavily scrutinized and monitored aid operations in the world, ensuring the humanitarian nature of all deliveries. The role of the UN Monitoring Mechanism is critical in this work.

We also note and commend the work of OCHA in delivering early recovery activities and building resilience to prevent a further increase of people in need, as well as reduce immediate and protracted humanitarian needs by strengthening the self-reliance of affected populations, and improving individual and community welfare.

Mr. President,

Our focus of attention must be the worsening hardship facing the men, women and children of Syria. We heard from the Secretary General this month that the combination of ongoing hostilities, economic crisis, water shortages, and COVID-19 have driven humanitarian needs for millions of vulnerable people to some of the highest levels seen since the conflict began. Those needs continue to grow as the people of Syria grapple with another bitter winter, leaving 4.5 million people in need of winterisation support, many without the bare essentials they need to survive.

We in this Council must continue to work together to ensure that these great humanitarian needs are met.

We know that only political progress can bring the conflict, and the long nightmare of the Syrian people, to an end. Ireland and Norway strongly support UN-led efforts to find a sustainable political solution, which is key to transforming the humanitarian situation on the ground. In all of this, we must keep the Syrian people at the heart of our efforts in this Council.

Martin, we continue to fully support you and your team as you work to deliver a lifeline to so many in need.

Mr. President, I would now like to make a statement in my national capacity on political issues.

Thank you again Geir for your briefing earlier. I commend your tireless efforts on the implementation of Resolution 2254, which offers a clear, agreed blueprint for delivering a long-term political solution for the people of Syria. I commend you in particular for your ongoing engagement with the Syrian Womens Advisory Board, and other civil society organisations. This year, the Council has heard directly from Syrian women, including from Rouba Mhaissen during Irelands Presidency. Far too often, these voices are silenced and marginalised by the Syrian authorities.

Ireland once again urges the Syrian authorities to engage meaningfully with the opposition and with civil society members of the Constitutional Committee.

Mr. President,

Sadly, 2021 has marked another year of conflict, chaos and catastrophe for the people of Syria. Ireland calls on all parties to the Syrian conflict, to refrain from violence, to de-escalate tensions and to exercise maximum restraint.

We are deeply concerned at the continued violence in the northwest, particularly the abhorrent and sustained impact on civilians and civilian objects, which this Council must unreservedly condemn. We repeat our calls for a nationwide ceasefire, in line with Resolution 2254.

I want to commend Estonia on last months Arria meeting which highlighted the need for accountability and we heard the powerful testimony from victims. Ireland fully supports the work of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to assist in the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible for the most serious crimes under international law. We also strongly support the work of the Independent international Commission of Inquiry, which has outlined appalling human rights violations including arbitrary detention, disappearances, and sexual and gender based violence.

Ireland calls on the parties to the conflict, especially the Syrian authorities, to release detainees and abductees, and to take meaningful action on missing persons.

Finally, Mr. President,

We listened with interest to the Special Envoys ideas on steps for steps. Ireland is prepared to consider proposals, which would enable the people of Syria to determine their own future. This would require a profound change of approach by the Syrian authorities. Such a change could help realise this Councils vision of the restoration of Syrias sovereignty, unity, independence and prosperity for the benefit of all its people.

Merci beaucoup Mr. President.

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TUSKEGEE, Ala. (AP)  A hearing is set for early next year on a bid by a Confederate heritage group to dismiss a lawsuit over the land where a rebel monument stands in the middle of mostly black Tuskegee, Alabama.

Court records show Macon County Circuit Judge Steven Perryman has scheduled a session for Feb. 3 on the dispute.

The Tuskegee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy is opposing a lawsuit filed earlier this year that could lead to the removal of a Confederate monument that's stood in the heart of Tuskegee for 115 years.

A lawsuit filed by the county and Tuskegee residents argues the county wrongfully gave land to the Confederate group for the statue in 1906. A decision in favor of the county could lead to removal of the monument, which has been the subject of on-and-off opposition for decades.
We just have to wonder what the future holds, Harris said.

Alabamas first case of the omicron variant was identified last week, but Harris said the patient had been showing symptoms since the first of December, a clear indication that the variant has been in the state longer. But Harris said the delta variant still makes up the majority of Alabamas COVID-19 cases.

Saag of UAB said he would not be surprised in the omicron variant is the predominant variant in the state by the first of the year.

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We know its a new variant; we know its at least twice as transmissible as delta, and delta was very transmissible, Saag said. We know that people who get omicron, that it happens fast  the spike of cases is almost like a rocket ship.

Saag said vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna also are not as effective against omicron with a 70% chance of a breakthrough infection in individuals who have had both doses of those vaccines. However, he said a booster shot drops the risk to 30%. Still, those who have had only two shots seem to have more protection against serious illness.
The state has banned schools from requiring COVID-19 vaccines for attendance, and the COVID-19 vaccination rate among eligible children and adults remains at 47% fully vaccinated, ahead of only Wyoming and Idaho nationwide.

Unlike with COVID, the consequences of not being vaccinated against some of these diseases isnt as immediate.

If you take HPV, for example, we vaccinate kids from 11 to 13 because we want to vaccinate them well before theyre ever exposed to the HPV virus, and thats also the age when their immune system has the best response to the vaccine, said Skinner. But we know that the incidence of HPV associated cancers is later in life. And so, if were seeing decreased rates of vaccination now, we may not realize the consequence of that for 20 years.

From 2019-2021, the rate of vaccination against HPV went down by 20%. ADPH has been actively engaged in a billboard campaign since the beginning of this year to promote the HPV vaccine in particular, according to the agency.
President Nguyen Xuan Phuc arrived in Phnom Penh on Tuesday for a two-day official visit to Cambodia at the invitation of King Norodom Sihamoni.

The president's trip marks the first by a Vietnamese head of state to Cambodia since the 13th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in January.

After meeting with King Sihamoni, President Phuc will meet with Cambodian leaders to comprehensively promote cooperation between both countries.

The visit takes place at a time when the relationship between Vietnam and Cambodia continues to develop positively in all fields, despite the impact of Covid-19.

Leaders of Vietnam and Cambodia this year participated in many phone calls, online talks and face-to-face meetings. During those events, they had expressed their determination to cooperate closely and constantly strengthen good neighborliness, traditional friendship, comprehensive and long-term sustainable cooperation.

Cambodian Ambassador to Vietnam Chay Navuth said the visit clearly reflects the close relationship between Cambodia and Vietnam, and at the same time, demonstrates to countries in the region and the world the friendship between the two nations.

This year, Vietnam provided $500,000 in cash, 800 ventilators, two million medical masks, and 300,000 N95 masks worth $10 million to support Cambodia's Covid-19 fight.

In response, Cambodia donated 200,000 doses of China's Sinopharm vaccine to Vietnam, one million medical masks, 100,000 N95 masks, 100 oxygen generators and $350,000 in cash.

The two sides have worked closely in exchanging information and resolving issues arising along the border, enhancing and maintaining joint patrols at sea, and cooperating in the search and repatriation of the remains of Vietnamese soldiers who had lost their lives in January 1979 during the counter-offensive on the southwestern border to free Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge regime.

The trade turnover between Vietnam and Cambodia reached nearly $7.9 billion in the first ten months of this year, up 87.5 percent over the same period last year.

Vietnam currently has 188 valid investment projects in Cambodia with a total registered capital of more than $2.8 billion and stands in the group of five largest foreign investors in Cambodia.

The two countries have also increased support for the Vietnamese community in Cambodia, helping to strengthen their legal status so they could settle down soon, actively contributing to Cambodia's development, and becoming a bridge promoting the relationship between the two countries.

Cambodia in October received the 2022 chairmanship for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from Brunei.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced then the theme of the 2022 ASEAN Chairmanship Year was "ASEAN Acting Together to Respond to Challenges" to work for harmony, peace and prosperity in the region, promoting the building of an equitable community that is strong and inclusive.
Central African Republic, known as CAR, is one of the worlds least developed countries, one of its most fragile, and torn by strife.

A civil war that began in 2004 in opposition to then-President Francois Bozize escalated in 2013 when Bozize was deposed in an overthrow led predominantly by the Seleka armed group. Seleka and its opposition, the Anti-Balaka, entered into a brutal conflict, killing thousands of people and displacing more than half a millioncivilians in a country of less than 5 million.

In 2016, a new President, Faustin-Archange Touadera was elected. In February 2019, the Government of CAR and 14 armed groups signed the Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation, also called the Khartoum Accord.

Nonetheless, violence resumed in the run up to the December 2020 presidential election, as former president Bozize was ruled ineligible to run for office by the countrys top court and President Touadera won re-election. Fighting ensued between rebel groups supporting former President Bozize and those supporting the CAR government.

And as is true in all wars, it is the civilians who suffer. Today, the Central African Republic is in the midst of a humanitarian emergency not seen at this scale since 2015. Wide-spread violence following the latest presidential elections, political instability, the presence of explosive ordnance along key transport routes, flooding, and the COVID-19 pandemic have led to worsening humanitarian needs while hampering delivery of life-saving assistance that has left about 2.6 million people facing acute food insecurity. The number of people in need of humanitarian assistance is expected to rise in to 3.1 million people.

The United States remains the largest donor of humanitarian assistance in CAR.

In late November, USAID Administrator Samantha Power announced an additional tranche of 8.9 million dollars in humanitarian assistance for the people of the Central African Republic. The funds will increase access to food assistance, as well as provide treatment for malnourished children and support for mothers and caregivers. It will help rehabilitate roads to improve humanitarian access, support the displaced, and provide case management and psychosocial support for survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse.

The United States stands in partnership with the Central African people as they navigate interrelated crises and encourages other donors to increase their lifesaving aid.
ELKO  Twenty-one graduates will now Lead the Way, as the first class of the Battle Born Youth ChallenNGe Academy.

Families and friends cheered at the inaugural graduation ceremony Friday night as Class 2021-2 entered the Elko Convention Center Auditorium.

Graduates were dressed in blue caps and gowns and wore masks with Trailblazer, signifying their designation as the first class.

It concludes their journey that began on July 24, said Program Coordinator Lisa Williams. They each brought with them unpacked potential and unspoken dreams, the love of their families and maybe a little bit of healthy fear.

Williams commended the cadets and their families, saying the courage it took each of you to put your trust in us speaks to your grit and your desire for success.

Tonight, we gather to celebrate and support them as they take the next steps on the path of success, Williams said. The journey is truly just beginning.

Cadre Team Leader Jonathan West called the academy a second chance for youths who were struggling with issues before they even got into any real trouble, such as grades and behavior.

This graduation is six months of you have a second chance. Were going to show you what right looks like, and were going to help you along the way for five-and-a-half months, West explained.

BBYCA admissions specialist Vanessa Pichon based out of Clark County presents the program to 16- to 18-year-old high school students seeking school credit recovery.

Graduation night for Pichon meant seeing the results of their six months at the academy for those who live in the Las Vegas area.

Im extremely proud of all the 21 graduates and those from Las Vegas, Pichon said. Im so excited to be here, see how theyve changed, what theyve learned and how theyre going to bring all the successes they received and learned from here back to Clark County.

For the graduating cadets, the 21 weeks included various activities emphasizing life coping and job skills, community service, academic excellence, physical fitness, responsible citizenship and leadership/followership.

Each student also accumulated 40 hours of community service, contributing to projects led by the Bureau of Land Management and the California Trail Interpretative Center.

In February, the National Guard Youth Challenge Program opened the Battle Born Youth ChalleNGe Academy located at the Elko County Readiness Center near Carlin. They soon began accepting applications for the incoming class over the summer.

Williams told the audience that the cadets graduation completed the first third of their overall journey, with more to come. When we leave tonight, the class of 2021 enters the post-residential phase.

Cadets will work closely with a mentor for the next 12 months after returning home, receiving support as they complete their education or enter the workforce.

Two of the 21 graduates recovered enough credits during the past six months to graduate with their class of 2022 in June. Others are on track to graduate with their classes in 2023 and 2024 if they continue to accrue credits each year.

The first stepProgram director Lauren Shulman said the first class of BBYCA students proved to be phenomenal.

This class established a standard of excellence that all future classes will aspire to match, Schulman said. The students all made a remarkable journey from compliance to self-reliance.

Throughout the ceremony, graduates were recognized for their progress in physical fitness and academic credit recovery.

But it was the personal milestones and lessons learned that some students said they would take home with them.

Imani Tyj Akmal of Las Vegas, who attended to recover school credits, thanked the audience for attending the graduation during his class speech and observed that the program breaks old habits and forms a new person.

You go through every emotion while youre here, and its set up like that because they want you to fail, they want you to learn from your mistakes, Akmal said. This Academy is the best place to fail. They give you the tools to understand what you did wrong so you can bounce back in tremendous ways.

Chantal Cruz of Spring Creek spoke after Akmal, thanking all involved with BBYCA and her fellow graduates who finished strong, who made many memories, who had fun while still challenging themselves in school and out of school.

Out of the past six months, Cruz said she would miss the people, the support [and] the freedom of being able to make mistakes. To learn how to make my own decisions, and be wrong, and still get up and keep going.

The Battle Born Youth Academy is entirely voluntary, noted cadet Rolando Mendez-Portillo. I think I speak for the rest of my fellow cadets when I say that coming here was initially a strange and scary thing.

No one forced us to stay, no one forced us to do push-ups, to wake up before the sun came up, or even to run in the cold, Mendez said. But we did, not because we were told to, but because we chose to.

In addition to learning about themselves, West said he believed they saw something even more valuable during their time at BBYCA.

They got to see that some adults do care for them, West said.

BBYCA is accepting applications for next semester to start on Jan. 15. However, according to Cruz, the Class of 2021-2 set a high standard for future classes.

We are the first class and will forever be the first class, she said. We sprinted to the top and made it. Its time to turn the page, to keep living, to keep changing for the better. We are the trailblazers. We led the way and finished strong.

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Many were surprised when James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of Ethan Crumbley, the 15-year-old boy accused of killing four classmates at Oxford High School in Oakland County, Michigan, were charged for their alleged role in the tragedy.

Criminal law, unlike civil law, is less likely to hold defendants liable for the actions of a third party, even if that third party is the defendants child. This is because in criminal law defendants face incarceration and the associated stigma that comes with a conviction.

Both Crumbley parents have pleaded not guilty to four counts each of involuntary manslaughter. If convicted on all counts, they each face a maximum prison sentence of 60 years and maximum fines of $30,000. Unable to make the combined $1 million bond, they appeared before a judge on Dec. 3, 2021, in prison uniforms and chains.

In the rare instances that parents of school shooters are prosecuted, they are normally charged with crimes such as child abuse, child neglect and failure to properly secure a firearm. The charge lodged against the Crumbleys, involuntary manslaughter, also known as gross negligent homicide, is even more uncommon.

But its not without precedent.

A first graders deathIn 2000, Jamelle James, a Michigan resident, pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter for leaving his handgun in a shoebox in his bedroom. At the time, James lived in an apartment prosecutors described as a flophouse that was shared with a number of people, including two young children.

A 6-year-old boy  James nephew  was temporarily living in the apartment and discovered the gun, brought it to school and fatally shot his first grade classmate Kayla Rolland. James spent more than two years in prison before he was released on probation.

Prosecutors claimed that James conduct was grossly negligent and so reckless as to demonstrate a substantial lack of concern for whether an injury resulted. Arguably, leaving an unsecured gun around very young children demonstrated James gross negligence.

The Oxford shootings were the deadliest at a U.S. K-12 campus since 2018 and claimed the lives of Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17. Seven others were injured.

Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald took direct aim at Crumbleys parents. Their behavior, McDonald explained, was egregious.

I want to be really clear that these charges are meant to hold the individuals who contributed to this tragedy accountable and also send a message that gun owners have a responsibility, McDonald said during a news conference. When they fail to uphold that responsibility, there are serious and criminal consequences.

One of the key questions for jurors, assuming no plea deal is reached, is whether the parents knew that a school shooting would occur or had reckless disregard of this fact. To prove the parents gross negligence, the prosecution will most likely rely on a series of alleged facts.

Egregious behaviorAmong the most central facts is that the Crumbleys bought their son the handgun as a Christmas present and later took him to target practice.

Neither parent informed the school that they had bought the gun and that their son had access to it.

After being told that her son was searching for ammo on his phone at school, Jennifer Crumbley told her son via text message not to get caught: LOL Im not mad. You have to learn not to get caught.

Neither of the parents opted to remove their son from school after being told that a teacher found a disturbing drawing of a bloody figure in his desk.

Finally, the gun was unsecured.

Though the prosecutions case appears compelling, the Crumbleys defense team has some very strong counterarguments.

For starters, the weapon was legal to own, and Michigan has no law requiring the gun to be properly stored away from juveniles. As for informing the school about their sons access to weapons, the defense will likely argue that the Crumbleys had no duty to do so, nor were they required to pull their son from school.

Finally, with regards to the text, Jennifer Crumbley will most likely claim that her text about the ammo was sent jokingly and she thought her son planned to shoot at targets, not other children.

Changing the lawsIn the James case, the 6-year-old who shot his classmate was never charged with a crime because most jurisdictions hold that children under the age of 7 are unable to formulate criminal intent.

The same cannot be said for Ethan Crumbley. He has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder, one count of terrorism causing death, seven counts of assault with intent to murder and 12 counts of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Despite the challenges facing the prosecution, many people on both sides of the gun safety debate applaud the efforts of Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald.

This may be attributable to the fact that most school shooters have little difficulty acquiring their weapons. According to a 2019 assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 76% of the guns used in school shootings came from a parent or close relative, and approximately half the weapons were easily accessible.

Prosecuting the Crumbleys may reverse this trend, as may recently proposed state and federal legislation. Two weeks after the Oxford shootings, U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., proposed a new law holding parents or other responsible adults liable for failing to secure their firearms. Michigan, along with a majority of other states, lacks a secure gun storage law, and a new federal law could make up for the absence of legislation at the state level and create penalties for failure to safely store guns.

The tragic events at Oxford High School  and the case against the Crumbleys  may be the catalyst for getting this legislation enacted and making parents criminally responsible for their childrens behavior. This case also may demonstrate that the debate on gun safety has moved from the statehouse to the courthouse.

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Omicron was declared a Variant of Concern by the World Health Organization on 26 November, with the first recorded case of the new coronavirus strain emerging on 1 December in California. Since then, the variant has been spreading at a lightning pace and accounted for 73% of all new reported cases in the US in the week up to 18 December. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that represented a six-fold increase in the percentage share of omicron cases in the country as omicron asserts itself as the dominant strain in the US. In the previous week, ending 11 December, omicron accounted for just over 12.6% with the delta variant making up 87% of all sequenced cases. In the first week of December, omicron accounted for only 1% of cases.

In some areas of the US, omicron accounts for over 90% of all new recorded cases, according to estimates by the CDC, which has also published data compiled from several forecasts, a so-called ensemble forecast, suggesting that the US could face between 620,000 and 1.3 million new cases by Christmas Day.

The CDC has warned that the rapid spread of omicron could lead to steep epidemic trajectories that would require expedient public health action to prevent severe impacts on the health of individuals and the healthcare system.

Omicron reported in 48 US states

As of 20 December, the omicron variant has been found in the vast majority of US states with only Oklahoma and South Dakota yet to report an incidence of the new strain. Health officials in Texas said on Monday the state recorded what ABC News reported is believed to be the first known US death related to Omicron.

The highly contagious variant was first detected last month in southern Africa and Hong Kong, and has raced around the globe and been reported in 89 countries, the World Health Organization said on Saturday.

In New York, Washington and other US cities over the weekend, lines for covid-19 tests wrapped around the block as people clamored to find out if they were infected before celebrating the holidays with family. The Biden administration will open federal covid-19 testing sites in New York City this week and buy 500 million at-home rapid tests that Americans can order online for free starting in January as it tries to tackle the omicron variant sweeping the country.

White House issues warning to unvaccinated Americans

Striking a more dire tone about the risks to the one in four American adults who remain unvaccinated, Biden will lay out the initiatives in a speech on Tuesday warning of the risks from the fast-spreading variant a senior administration official said. The measures include activating some 1,000 military medical personnel to support hospitals that are already being overwhelmed in some areas.

"We will also note that if you are unvaccinated, you are at high risk of getting sick. This variant is highly transmissible and the unvaccinated are eight times more likely to be hospitalized and 14 times more likely to die from covid," the official said.
NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue speaks at the event (Photo: VNA)



At the event, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son reported the outcomes of the 31st Diplomatic Conference and the National Conference on Foreign Affairs 2021 to the NA Chairman.



Participants at the event expressed their impression on the outcomes of Chairman Hues recent visits to the Republic of Korea and India, saying that parliamentary diplomacy is a significant pillar in Vietnams external affairs, making important contributions to the success of the countrys diplomatic sector.



NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue asked ambassadors and heads of overseas representative agencies to closely follow the Party and State leaders guiding viewpoints presented at the National Conference on Foreign Affairs.



The NA and NA Standing Committee will continue giving the top priority to the diplomatic sector when considering and deciding issues within its competence, he said, adding that the NAs external activities will continue to be strengthened in combination with the Party, State and people-to-people diplomacy, contributing to stepping up global integration and improving the NA and countrys position on international arena./.


President Nguyen Xuan Phuc leaves Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi on December 21 morning for a State visit to Cambodia (Photo: VNA)



President Nguyen Xuan Phucs entourage includes Minister of Public Security General To Lam, Minister of National Defence Gen. Phan Van Giang, Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son, among other officials.



This is the first visit to Cambodia by President Nguyen Xuan Phuc as President of Vietnam, making him the first high-ranking Vietnamese leader to officially visit Cambodia during the past two years since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.



The visit aims to implement the 13th National Party Congresss policy for external relations. It takes place in the context that the traditional friendship, solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Cambodia continue to develop robustly, despite many impacts of the epidemic.



The two countries have regularly conducted meetings at both high level and lower levels. Even in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, their leaders continue to maintain online contacts.



The State visit to Cambodia of President Nguyen Xuan Phuc is also one of the first events to start a series of activities to celebrate the Vietnam - Cambodia and Cambodia - Vietnam friendship year and the 55th anniversary of the establishment of the countries diplomatic relations (June 24, 1967 - 2022).



It is also an opportunity for leaders of the two nations to evaluate the results of bilateral cooperation over the past time; exchange and discuss ways for promoting the ties in the future; and talk about regional and international situations of their mutual interests./.
Photo for illustration. (Soure: VOV)

By the end of November, the country exported 245,975 tons of pepper, worth 867.2 million USD. Compared to the same period last year, the volume decreased by 7%, but the value increased by 43.8%. Since March 2021, pepper prices started to recover due to sharp increase in supply. Currently, domestic pepper prices fluctuate around 82,000 VND per kilogram.



In 2021, exports to the American market are forecast to increase by 9.3%, of which the US continues to be the largest importer of Vietnams pepper with 55,602 tons, up 9.6% against the same period.

Export to Europe is expected to rise by 4.9%, with Germany taking the lead with 11,228 tons, up 9.5%; the Netherlands 9,356 tons, up 34%; the UK 5,506 tons, up 9.3%; and France, 5,018 tons, up 30%.

In the coming time, VPA recommends not to expand the new pepper growing area; convert and intercrop with other crops to limit risks when prices are low. It also suggests building sustainable organic pepper growing areas, applying production standards like Global Gap, Viet Gap and IPC Gap. The issue of food hygiene and safety must be further promoted with many solutions.

In addition, it is necessary to diversify high-quality processed pepper products such as pepper essential oil, red pepper, powdered pepper, seasoning products from pepper, and pepper packaged and exported directly to the global retail system. The industry is suggested to continue to expand high-quality pepper consumption markets such as Europe and the US./.
Photo for illustration. (Source: VNA)

According to statistics from the General Department of Vietnam Customs, in the Jan-Nov period, trade turnover between the two countries reached 8.632 billion USD, a year-on-year rise of 84%. Of this, Vietnams commodities exported to Cambodia posted 4.35 billion USD, up 17% and Cambodias goods shipped to Vietnam were valued at 4.282 billion USD, a year-on-year rise of 337%.



In the 11 months, Vietnams trade surplus with Cambodia was 68 million USD. Import and export turnover between the two countries is expected to reach 9.3 billion USD, up about 75% (equivalent to 4 billion USD) against 2020.

During the period, 24 out of Vietnams 29 groups of products achieved positive growth compared to the same period last year. In which, vegetables, tubers and fruits reached USD 17.1 million, up 152%; animal feed and raw materials, USD 137 million, up 22.7%; gasoline, 348 million USD, up 56.8%; and fertilizer, 193 million USD, up 64%.

Regarding Cambodian goods exported to Vietnam, 9 out of 11 groups of goods recorded positive growth. Specifically, vegetables, tubers and fruits reached 39 million USD, up 63%; cashew nuts, 1.866 billion USD, up 588%; rubber, 1.3 billion USD, up 299%; and other goods, 942 million USD, up 246% compared to the same period last year.

According to statistics, in 2020, import and export turnover between Vietnam and Cambodia reached 5.327 billion USD, up 0.84% from the previous year. In which, Vietnams goods exported to Cambodia reached 4.149 billion USD, down 5.3%, while Cambodian products exported to Vietnam were worth 1.178 billion USD, up 30.9%./.




President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his entourage arrive in Phnom Penh on 8:30am on December 21 (local time), beginning his two-day State visit to Cambodia (Photo: VNA)

Upon his arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport, President Phuc was welcomed by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Royal Palace Samdech Chaufea Veang Kong Sam Ol, Senior Minister in Charge of the General Affairs to the Ministry of the Royal Palace Kuy Sophal, and Minister of Tourism Thong Khon, among others, from the Cambodian side. Vietnamese Ambassador to Cambodia Nguyen Huy Tang and embassy staff were also there to greet the president.

During the visit, President Nguyen Xuan Phuc is scheduled to meet King Norodom Sihamoni, Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen and National Assembly leaders of Cambodia. He also plans to witness signing of cooperation agreements between the two countries and attend the inauguration of Cambodia NAs new administrative building, a project funded by Vietnam.

It is Phucs first official visit to Cambodia as the President of Vietnam, which aims to mark the 55th anniversary of the two countries diplomatic relations (June 24, 1967  2022). It is also the first visit of a foreign head of state to Cambodia since the beginning of this year.

The visit is expected to strengthen the political trust between the two nations and deepen their multi-faceted partnership in a more practical and effective manner. Additionally, it demonstrates Vietnams support for major internal and external events hosted by Cambodia in the coming time, notably the NA elections 2023 and Cambodias ASEAN Chairmanship 2022./.
According to the Vietnamese Ambassador, in the past, without the help of the international community, including Cambodia, it would have been very difficult for Vietnam to secure resources for the struggle to liberate the South and reunify the country. Conversely, without the timely and effective help and support of the Vietnamese Army and people, it would have been difficult for the Cambodian people to overthrow the Pol Pot genocidal regime and revive the nation.

Ambassador Nguyen Huy Tang (Photo: baoquocte.vn)

Today, the Vietnam  Cambodia relationship plays an increasingly important and great role in the development and international integration of each country.

To maintain and promote the traditional relationship between the two countries, especially while celebrating the 55th anniversary of the diplomatic relationship (June 24, 1967  June 24, 2022), the ambassador said that the two countries will focus on promoting the good political relations to guide the overall relationship; strengthening good cooperation in the fields of security, defense and foreign affairs; promoting and constantly improving the efficiency of cooperation in the economic field; promoting cooperation in culture, education-training, health and science-technology; and promoting good cooperation and mutual assistance between ministries, branches and localities, especially those sharing borders.

Regarding both countries contributions to ASEAN at a time when the region is trying to recover socio-economically during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ambassador asserted that the two countries can continue to mobilize the international community to support the ASEAN Vaccine Fund to help member countries as well as countries in the region.

Besides, from their experiences, the two countries can share with ASEAN countries and the region their experience in coordinating the pandemic control and prevention, as well as experience in economic connectivity, overcoming the disruption of supply chains, production and consumption.

In addition, the good relations between the two countries will contribute to promoting economic linkages and cooperation among ASEAN member countries, together contributing to ASEAN's common goals, including the implementation of the ASEAN Comprehensive Recovery Framework to restore socio-economic development in the long term, propose extensive strategies and appropriate recovery measures, and bring ASEAN economy and society back to sustainable growth and development./.
In 1963, Egypt became one of the first Arab countries to establish relations with Vietnam. (Photo: VGP)

During the years of revolutionary activities, President Ho Chi Minh visited Egypt three times, laying an important foundation for the good cooperation between the two countries in the future.

Since the establishment of relations, Vietnam and Egypt have maintained the exchange of delegations at all levels on the Party, Government, National Assembly channels, people-to-people exchanges; and closely coordinate at multilateral forums, especially within the framework of the United Nations.

Egypt is the gateway for Vietnamese goods to the African market, with main export items such as seafood, black pepper, coffee, auto parts and accessories. The bilateral trade turnover has been maintained stably at around USD500 million.

Egypt currently has 3 registered investment projects in Vietnam with a total capital of more than USD2 million. Vietnam is willing to support Egypt in accessing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Vietnam can go through Egypt to enter the Middle East and African markets.

The two countries have promoted cultural exchange activities such as "Vietnamese Culture Day in Egypt" and "Vietnam-Egypt Culture Exchange Week." In addition, on the 130th birth anniversary of President Ho Chi Minh Minh, The Egyptian Gazette published on page 6 the solemn article "President Ho Chi Minh and his image in the country of the pyramids".

With the available potential and the continuous efforts of both sides, the multifaceted friendly cooperation between Vietnam and Egypt will be increasingly consolidated and developed, for the mutual benefit of the two peoples, and for peace in the world./.
Vietnamese Ambassador to Japan Vu Hong Nam (R) and Ms. Akie Abe (sitting on a cyclo) at the Vietnam festival in Tokyo 2019 (Photo: Department of International Cooperation)

"We need to be more proactive to promote Vietnamese cultural values and enhance the soft power of Vietnamese diplomacy," said Ambassador Vu Hong Nam at the Cultural Diplomatic Conference held in Hanoi on December 20.

To demonstrate this, Ambassador Nam told the story of convincing Japanese people to try on ao dai (Vietnamese traditional long dress), one of the outstanding traditional cultural features of Vietnam. The Ambassador invited artists from Ho Chi Minh City to provide materials and tailor ao dai for Japanese officials and leaders wives.

He mentioned that Akie Abe, the wife of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in 2019 wore ao dai and sat on a cyclo to take photos while attending the Vietnam festival in Tokyo, an event that attracted about 400,000-500,000 people.

"Images of Japanese female officials and leaders wives wearing Ao Dai are widely spread in the Japanese media, making public opinion in Japan excited," he said.

In addition to ao dai, Ambassador Nam also tries to promote Vietnamese culture in Japan through cuisine. In 2017, when then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe enjoyed noodles in Hoi An on the occasion of his visit to Da Nang to attend APEC and praised this dish, Ambassador Vu Hong Nam saw this as an opportunity to introduce Vietnamese noodles to Japanese people.

"Japanese friends like it very much and they introduce this dish to each other. Many people then called the embassy to ask where to enjoy this dish," he added. "Thanks to things like this, we let you know more about delicious food in Vietnam, in addition to traditional dishes like spring rolls and pho."

Ambassador Vu Hong Nam shared that in 2019, during the festival introducing Vietnamese culture, music and cuisine in Hokkaido, the Vietnamese embassy in Japan prepared about 500 bowls of pho with the expected sale in two days. However, all of these pho sold out in just one morning.

"Pho is famous and when Japanese friends feel good, they continue to recommend it to others," he said. The ambassador added that there are now about 10 Vietnamese restaurants in Hokkaido, after a Japanese couple who traveled to Vietnam opened a Vietnamese restaurant./.
At the event (Photo: baoquocte.vn)

The delegation also had the participation of a representative of the Executive Board of the Khmer  Vietnam Association of Preah Sihanouk province, and Vietnamese veterans in Kep and Kampot.



The activity aims to mark the 32nd anniversary of the All-People National Defense Day (December 22, 1989  December 22, 2021) and 77th anniversary of Vietnam People's Army's Establishment Day (December 22, 1944  December 22, 2021).

In addition, some Vietnamese veterans in Kep and Kampot provinces have participated in international service in Cambodia in the past to liberate Cambodia from the former genocidal regime.

On the occasion, the Consul General graciously visited and presented gifts to show gratitude to Vietnamese veterans. The Consul General sincerely wished the veterans and their families good health and peace, and encouraged them to actively participate in activities of the Khmer-Vietnam Association of the province.

On behalf of Vietnamese veterans living in Kep and Kampot provinces, Mr. Hoang Duc Ha, Chairman of the Khmer-Vietnam Association in Kampot province and a Vietnamese veteran who participated in liberating Kampot in the past, thanked the Party, State and Consulate General of Vietnam for their attention.

He affirmed that the attention has given more motivation to help Vietnamese veterans feel secure, stabilize their lives and make positive contributions to the prosperous development of the Kingdom of Cambodia and the friendly relations between the two countries./.
Delegates at the event (Photo: baotintuc.vn)

Speaking at the event, Mr. Nguyen Nhu Hao, Head of the Community Liaison Committee of the Overseas Vietnam community in Johor, said that over the past time, the pandemic has seriously affected the overseas Vietnameses life and income. Many Vietnamese people have been unemployed or have to leave work without payment in a long time, therefore their lives are very difficult.

The Community Liaison Committee has received timely direction and support from the Vietnamese Embassy, as well as help of Vietnamese businesses in Johor and charity groups.

At the event, Charge d'Affaires of the Vietnamese Embassy in Malaysia Nguyen Hong Son highly appreciated the efforts of the Community Liaison Committee of the Overseas Vietnam Community in Johor, with thousands of Vietnamese workers.

Mr. Son emphasized that the highlight of the Community Liaison Committee was that it not only supports the community with necessities, but it also created jobs for people in difficult circumstances, supported people infected with diseases, meeting with accidents and joined hands with the embassy in charity trips to other localities./.
At the event (Photo: VNA)

Speaking at the event, Honorary Consul of Vietnam Nguyen Van Khanh expressed his emotion at this charity gift-giving event, because he himself is a doctor and daily witnesses the hard work of the health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He also expressed gratitude to the government and the health sector of Odessa for always supporting the Vietnamese community with medical examination and treatment and vaccination, and affirmed that giving charity gifts reflects the spirit of "mutual solidarity and mutual love" of Vietnamese people.

Expressing the affection and good impressions for the country and people of Vietnam, Mayor Trukhanov recalled the 10th Christmas Charity Fair, when the Vietnamese community in Odessa donated 100,000 Grivna (about 3,600 USD) to buy 3 modern health monitors.

On this occasion, the Mayor of Odessa also sent a letter of thanks to the Vietnamese community in Odessa and wished them a peaceful and happy Christmas.

Director of Pediatric Hospital No. 3 in Odessa Elena Archemova expressed deep gratitude for the timely attention and help of the Honorary Consular Office and the Vietnamese community. She said these are very necessary gifts to treat COVID-19 for children.

Pediatric Hospital No. 3 is the leading pediatric clinic in Odessa and has recently opened a new COVID-19 treatment department for severe pediatric patients, with 120 beds./.
-- Electoral Affairs Commission official said election was conducted in an open, fair and honest manner.

-- Newly-elected lawmakers and authorities in Hong Kong have highlighted the significance of the election in getting rid of past political quagmire and fast-tracking solutions to Hong Kong's deep-seated problems.

-- Chief Executive Carrie Lam said she hopes to cooperate with members of the new LegCo to build a better Hong Kong.

-- Beijing's liaison office in the HKSAR called the election a successful practice of democracy with Hong Kong characteristics.

HONG KONG, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Monday unveiled its new lawmaker lineup after successfully holding its first legislative election under an improved electoral system.

Ninety elected lawmakers, standing out from a total of 153 candidates from different backgrounds and across the political spectrum, will sit on the seventh-term Legislative Council (LegCo) of the HKSAR.

About 1.35 million eligible voters cast their ballots at more than 600 polling stations across the SAR on Sunday.

To facilitate participation for registered Hong Kong voters in the Chinese mainland amid COVID-19 concerns, voting stations were also set up at the checkpoints at Heung Yuen Wai, Lo Wu, and Lok Ma Chau Spur Line. The voters briefly crossed into the Hong Kong side to cast their ballots.

"Overall, the polling and counting processes went very smoothly. The election was conducted in an open, fair and honest manner," Chairman of the HKSAR Electoral Affairs Commission Barnabas Fung said after the conclusion of the election.

The election was also characterized by intense competition. For example, five candidates from the education functional constituency had to vie for a single seat.

Voters wait to cast ballots at a polling station in Whampoa, Hong Kong, south China, Dec. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Shen)

A SOUND GOVERNANCE BACK ON TRACK

After a series of improvements made to the electoral system to better implement the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong," the LegCo now has 90 seats, up from 70, with 40 returned by the Election Committee constituency, 30 by functional constituencies, and 20 by geographical constituencies.

Newly-elected lawmakers and authorities in Hong Kong have highlighted the significance of the election in getting rid of past political quagmire and fast-tracking solutions to Hong Kong's deep-seated problems.

Hong Kong has been plagued by entrenched problems ranging from housing shortage to a wide wealth gap, and young people long for more opportunities. Political distractions over the past years have left such issues unsolved for too long, because in the past, elections in Hong Kong often descended into chaos and were used by external anti-China forces to endanger national security and undermine Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

Wong Yuen-shan, elected by the Election Committee constituency, said as seen in the past month or so of campaigning, candidates from different backgrounds competed rationally and pragmatically on their ideas, platforms and abilities, as rational discussions regained footing in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong residents are delighted to find that issues of public concern have been featured on the election platforms of the candidates, ranging from ensuring land and housing supply to developing a new northern metropolis.

Chan Han-pan won a seat through the highly competitive geographical constituency of New Territories South West. He has 16 years of experience as a District Council member and nine years as a LegCo member.

Looking forward, he said he will live up to the expectations of the voters by implementing his political platform and bringing the opinions received during the election period to the legislature to reflect voters' voices.

Chan Han-pan talks with a citizen in Hong Kong, south China, Dec. 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Shen)

Robert Lee, elected by the financial services functional constituency, said he will make a difference in conveying the voices of the industry, increasing employment opportunities, promoting economic development and solving the problems encountered by young people.

Yiu Pak-leung, elected by the tourism functional constituency, said the outlook for Hong Kong is bright given support from the central authorities. He noted the country's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) supports Hong Kong in enhancing its status as an international financial, shipping and trade center, and its effort to develop itself into a center for cultural and art exchanges between China and other countries.

"The new LegCo will put sound governance back on the right track, work for the well-being of the people, and move Hong Kong forward," Yiu said. "In the future, I will work with the tourism industry to solve the difficulties and retain the talents, and work hard for the tourism industry to take off again."

A SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE OF DEMOCRACY

HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Monday that she hopes to cooperate with members of the new LegCo to promote Hong Kong's economic development, its integration into the overall development of the country, and to improve people's livelihood, so as to build a better Hong Kong.

The Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR on Monday hailed the successful election in an online statement released after election results were unveiled.

Calling the election a successful practice of democracy with Hong Kong characteristics, the office said the HKSAR's seventh-term LegCo election has once again demonstrated the strengths and advantages of the improved electoral system and is a further implementation of the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong."

Staff members count ballots for the election for the seventh-term LegCo of the HKSAR in Hong Kong, south China, Dec. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

The Chief Executive in Council, in accordance with the Legislative Council Ordinance, has specified Jan. 1, 2022 as the commencement date of the seventh-term LegCo of the HKSAR.

In addition, under the ordinance, the chief executive of the HKSAR has specified Jan. 12, 2022 as the date on which the 2022 legislative session is to begin, and 11:00 a.m. local time of Jan. 12, 2022 as the time for holding the first meeting of the seventh-term LegCo. The term of office of the LegCo is four years.

Editor: WXY
People line up for nucleic acid test in Songzhuang Township, Tongzhou District of Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 20, 2021. Beijing Municipality reported one new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 case on Sunday, the city's health commission said Monday. (Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Beijing Municipality reported one new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 case on Sunday, the city's health commission said Monday.

The patient, who lives in the dormitory of a painting studio in Songzhuang Township, Tongzhou District, headed to Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, for an examination on Nov. 28, according to the commission.

The case returned to Beijing on Dec. 14 carrying a negative nucleic acid test result and was tested positive on Sunday following a COVID-19 test request.

The latest COVID-19 resurgence in Shaanxi was reported from Dec. 9 and as of Sunday, 53 locally transmitted confirmed cases were reported in the province, mostly in Xi'an, the provincial health commission said.

People go to a nucleic acid testing site in Songzhuang Township, Tongzhou District of Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 20, 2021. Beijing Municipality reported one new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 case on Sunday, the city's health commission said Monday. (Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

A medical worker takes a swab sample from a citizen for nucleic acid test in Songzhuang Township, Tongzhou District of Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 20, 2021. Beijing Municipality reported one new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 case on Sunday, the city's health commission said Monday. (Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

A staff member instructs as people line up for nucleic acid test in Songzhuang Township, Tongzhou District of Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 20, 2021. Beijing Municipality reported one new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 case on Sunday, the city's health commission said Monday. (Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

Editor: WXL
-- Electoral Affairs Commission official said election was conducted in an open, fair and honest manner.

-- Newly-elected lawmakers and authorities in Hong Kong have highlighted the significance of the election in getting rid of past political quagmire and fast-tracking solutions to Hong Kong's deep-seated problems.

-- Chief Executive Carrie Lam said she hopes to cooperate with members of the new LegCo to build a better Hong Kong.

-- Beijing's liaison office in the HKSAR called the election a successful practice of democracy with Hong Kong characteristics.

HONG KONG, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Monday unveiled its new lawmaker lineup after successfully holding its first legislative election under an improved electoral system.

Ninety elected lawmakers, standing out from a total of 153 candidates from different backgrounds and across the political spectrum, will sit on the seventh-term Legislative Council (LegCo) of the HKSAR.

About 1.35 million eligible voters cast their ballots at more than 600 polling stations across the SAR on Sunday.

To facilitate participation for registered Hong Kong voters in the Chinese mainland amid COVID-19 concerns, voting stations were also set up at the checkpoints at Heung Yuen Wai, Lo Wu, and Lok Ma Chau Spur Line. The voters briefly crossed into the Hong Kong side to cast their ballots.

"Overall, the polling and counting processes went very smoothly. The election was conducted in an open, fair and honest manner," Chairman of the HKSAR Electoral Affairs Commission Barnabas Fung said after the conclusion of the election.

The election was also characterized by intense competition. For example, five candidates from the education functional constituency had to vie for a single seat.

Voters wait to cast ballots at a polling station in Whampoa, Hong Kong, south China, Dec. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Shen)

A SOUND GOVERNANCE BACK ON TRACK

After a series of improvements made to the electoral system to better implement the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong," the LegCo now has 90 seats, up from 70, with 40 returned by the Election Committee constituency, 30 by functional constituencies, and 20 by geographical constituencies.

Newly-elected lawmakers and authorities in Hong Kong have highlighted the significance of the election in getting rid of past political quagmire and fast-tracking solutions to Hong Kong's deep-seated problems.

Hong Kong has been plagued by entrenched problems ranging from housing shortage to a wide wealth gap, and young people long for more opportunities. Political distractions over the past years have left such issues unsolved for too long, because in the past, elections in Hong Kong often descended into chaos and were used by external anti-China forces to endanger national security and undermine Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

Wong Yuen-shan, elected by the Election Committee constituency, said as seen in the past month or so of campaigning, candidates from different backgrounds competed rationally and pragmatically on their ideas, platforms and abilities, as rational discussions regained footing in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong residents are delighted to find that issues of public concern have been featured on the election platforms of the candidates, ranging from ensuring land and housing supply to developing a new northern metropolis.

Chan Han-pan won a seat through the highly competitive geographical constituency of New Territories South West. He has 16 years of experience as a District Council member and nine years as a LegCo member.

Looking forward, he said he will live up to the expectations of the voters by implementing his political platform and bringing the opinions received during the election period to the legislature to reflect voters' voices.

Chan Han-pan talks with a citizen in Hong Kong, south China, Dec. 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Shen)

Robert Lee, elected by the financial services functional constituency, said he will make a difference in conveying the voices of the industry, increasing employment opportunities, promoting economic development and solving the problems encountered by young people.

Yiu Pak-leung, elected by the tourism functional constituency, said the outlook for Hong Kong is bright given support from the central authorities. He noted the country's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) supports Hong Kong in enhancing its status as an international financial, shipping and trade center, and its effort to develop itself into a center for cultural and art exchanges between China and other countries.

"The new LegCo will put sound governance back on the right track, work for the well-being of the people, and move Hong Kong forward," Yiu said. "In the future, I will work with the tourism industry to solve the difficulties and retain the talents, and work hard for the tourism industry to take off again."

A SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE OF DEMOCRACY

HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Monday that she hopes to cooperate with members of the new LegCo to promote Hong Kong's economic development, its integration into the overall development of the country, and to improve people's livelihood, so as to build a better Hong Kong.

The Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR on Monday hailed the successful election in an online statement released after election results were unveiled.

Calling the election a successful practice of democracy with Hong Kong characteristics, the office said the HKSAR's seventh-term LegCo election has once again demonstrated the strengths and advantages of the improved electoral system and is a further implementation of the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong."

Staff members count ballots for the election for the seventh-term LegCo of the HKSAR in Hong Kong, south China, Dec. 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

The Chief Executive in Council, in accordance with the Legislative Council Ordinance, has specified Jan. 1, 2022 as the commencement date of the seventh-term LegCo of the HKSAR.

In addition, under the ordinance, the chief executive of the HKSAR has specified Jan. 12, 2022 as the date on which the 2022 legislative session is to begin, and 11:00 a.m. local time of Jan. 12, 2022 as the time for holding the first meeting of the seventh-term LegCo. The term of office of the LegCo is four years.

Editor: WXL
Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over the first plenary meeting of the 32nd session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 20, 2021. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, started its 32nd session Monday in Beijing.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, presided over the session's first plenary meeting.

Lawmakers reviewed a draft amendment to the Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments. In its report on the draft, the NPC Constitution and Law Committee suggested the draft be submitted to the fifth session of the 13th NPC after being reviewed at the current session.

The NPC Constitution and Law Committee also submitted to the session a draft anti-organized crime law, a draft wetlands protection law, a draft revision to the Law on Progress of Science and Technology, a draft amendment to the Seed Law, a draft law on the prevention and control of noise pollution, and a draft amendment to the Civil Procedure Law.

Considering the above six drafts are already mature, the NPC Constitution and Law Committee suggested the current session adopt them.

Lawmakers reviewed a draft revision to the Vocational Education Law, a draft amendment to the Trade Union Law, a draft revision to the Company Law, a draft amendment to the Rules of Procedure for the NPC Standing Committee, a draft law on protecting the black soil, a draft revision to the Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women, a draft law on protecting the Yellow River, and a draft revision to the Emergency Response Law.

Lawmakers also deliberated a draft decision of the fifth session of the 13th NPC on the number of deputies to the 14th NPC and their election, two draft methods for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Macao SAR to elect their deputies to the 14th NPC, and a draft revision to the decision on strengthening the oversight over economic work.

The session reviewed a draft decision of the NPC Standing Committee on convening the fifth session of the 13th NPC, several reports and personnel bills. Enditem

Editor: GSY
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine hopes to sign an agreement on a free trade area (FTA) with Turkey during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Ukraine early 2022.

"It is the economy and the joint economic interest of states that strengthens the political partnership between countries. There should be more Ukrainian products abroad. We must expand free trade agreements with the European Union, Canada, Israel early next year, when Erdogan will visit Ukraine. You also need to move towards liberalizing trade with the United States, Japan and our other trading partners," Zelensky said at the annual conference of ambassadors of Ukraine titled "Diplomacy 30. Strategy of a Strong State."
USA does not change 'level' of threat to Americans in Ukraine, but only add details to description of situation  White House

The U.S. authorities did not change the assessment of the level of threat for Americans wishing to visit Ukraine, but only added new details to the description, about the buildup of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border, White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki has said on Monday.

"The travel advisory for Ukraine remains a 'Level 4: Do not travel' due to COVID-19... The State Department issued a Level 4 travel warning today, saying, 'U.S. citizens should be aware of reports that Russia is planning for significant military action against Ukraine," Psaki said during a press conference at the White House.

The fourth level means that the U.S. authorities advise fellow citizens not to travel to this or that country.
The SBI military counterintelligence service exposed an ex-official of one of the units of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on secret collection of secret military information.

"It has been established that the former soldier secretly collected data of state secrets at the workplace. The attacker illegally copied classified defense information with the help of unlawful interference in the unit's automated information systems," the SBI press service reported.

The received classified materials were stored at the malefactor's place of residence. In the course of investigative and operational actions, the SBI officers seized from the attacker illegally obtained materials on the organization of the control system of the air defense forces of Ukraine.

During searches in his home, law enforcement officers found flash drives with secret military information, as well as computer equipment and communication equipment with evidence of illegal activity.

The issue of informing a man about suspicion under Part 1 of Article 258-3 (participation in a terrorist group or terrorist organization), part 2 of Article 362 (unauthorized actions with information that is processed in electronic computers, automated systems, computer networks or stored on carriers of such information, committed by a person who has the right to access it) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the choice of a preventive measure by the court.

Pretrial investigation continues to establish all the circumstances of the offense.
The state of health of a citizen of Ukraine Ihor Nazarenko, illegally detained by the occupation administration of the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied territory of Donetsk region in the Makiyivka correctional colony No. 32, is critical, Ombudsman of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights Liudmyla Denisova said.

"Ihor has chronic illnesses: before his illegal imprisonment, he suffered a serious lung disease, which requires regular preventive therapy. Staying in the notorious Makiyivka correctional colony No. 32 in the absence of heating and unsanitary conditions can provoke a relapse. According to his family, Ihor has significantly lost weight and is seriously ill, probably on COVID-19. Medical assistance is not provided. Although he, as a doctor, helps his cellmates," Denisova wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

In addition, according to the Ombudsman, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations are not allowed to visit political prisoners.

"I appeal to the leadership of the ICRC in Ukraine to urgently visit Ihor Nazarenko, facilitate his immediate hospitalization and provide qualified medical care. I ask the OSCE coordinator in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group, Charlotte Relander, to personally intervene to provide appropriate assistance," Denisova said.

The Ombudsman recalled that on October 3, 2017, Nazarenko was abducted by the so-called "DPR MGB officers" from his workplace in a hospital in Donetsk, where he worked as a surgeon.

"For several days, his relatives could not establish his whereabouts, until representatives of the Russian occupation administration came home with a search because of his accusations of 'terrorist activities'. He was subjected to physical and psychological torture," she wrote.

On October 4, 2019, Nazarenko was sentenced for alleged "espionage" to eleven years of strict imprisonment.
With the introduction of the Nazovni system, due to which Ukrainian companies will have convenient access to new opportunities in foreign markets, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) will fully digitize the policy of economic diplomacy, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has said.

"We are trying to speak the language of business and offer them convenient formats. With the introduction of the Nazovni system, the MFA will fully digitize the whole policy of economic diplomacy. This will be the first policy to be digitized. It will be very convenient, effective, understandable for business and the state," Kuleba said at the conference of Ukrainian ambassadors at the Syniohora state residence in the Carpathian region on Tuesday.

According to him, in this way the concrete contribution of the embassies and the MFA in general to the promotion of Ukrainian exports and attraction of investments will be seen.

"Nazovni will be a convenient open online platform that will offer consultations for each business and a personal manager, in fact, an embassy employee in the respective country. We will accompany the Ukrainian exporter at every stage: from submitting documents to concluding a contract for the supply of that or other products," the minister said.

Kuleba said that so far there is no such mass phenomenon as a Ukrainian exporter.

"We need to create a Ukrainian exporter class, and the Nazovni system will allow us to do this so that exports become really massive," he said.

Kuleba said the system consists of four steps.

"A business representative goes to one resource, leaves personal information. He has an exporter's office. We evaluate this information, determine the degree of his readiness, help (if he himself does not know where he wants to export) to determine a potential market, where he can have success, and we help him choose the relevant model of work," he said.

Kuleba said that an action plan will then be prepared for each exporter.

According to him, from now on, nazovni.online, the website is the main tool for promoting Ukrainian exports abroad through the Ukrainian embassies.

Kuleba also expressed his conviction that Nazovni would increase exports and return currency to Ukraine.

"In a year we will present you the first results of this system, but now the main thing is that we are reaching a qualitatively new, previously unprecedented level of work with Ukrainian exports," the foreign minister said.
Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olha Stefanishyna said that at the beginning of 2022, a NATO cybersecurity exercise will be held in Kyiv for the first time.

"We expect that an international NATO exercise on cybersecurity will be held in early 2022. They will be held in Ukraine, directly in Kyiv... I am proud that for the first time Ukraine will become a country that will host all the countries of the Alliance, all teams," Stefanishyna said on online briefing titled "EU and NATO Annual Results" on Tuesday.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk has said that Ukraine hopes that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz realizes the full responsibility of Germany for making the Normandy process effective.

"Whether we will be able to resume the Normandy format in the context we wish it to (since this is the only instrument we have at the moment, it needs to be reloaded) will be shown in the near future. We hope that the new chancellor will realize the full responsibility of Germany as a state - a mediator, so that this process still becomes effective, and not just a process for the sake of the process," Melnyk told reporters on the sidelines of a conference of Ukrainian ambassadors at the state residence Synehora in Ivano-Frankivsk region on Tuesday.

He stressed that this is precisely the main challenge for Ukrainian diplomacy.

"In the coming weeks, months, we will be able to understand what will be the role of Germany in this new context and the new leadership of Germany," added Melnyk.

He noted that "there are no dates yet, but there is such an ambition, since it is important to resume communication at the level of leaders."

"We need the Berlin summit of Normandy in order to sit down at the table, so that the Russians come back to the table and understand how we can move on. It is still too early to talk about this," the diplomat said.

Melnyk also noted that he hopes that the German politician will realize the geopolitical implications for the security of Europe, so that Ukraine's membership in NATO will be possible.

"But the chance remains not very high at the moment, and this will be the task of our diplomacy - in the coming weeks to try this threatening situation that exists (it is very threatening for Ukraine, unfortunately), to use it to sensitize the elite, a new traffic light government so that not to pose NATO membership as a provocation against Russia, but a real guarantee that this new war, a new invasion does not occur," the ambassador emphasized.
Ismailiia criminal court sentenced on Wednesday Abdel-Rahman Nazmy  nicknamed Dabour  to death for decapitating his neighbour and attempting to murder two others in October of 2021.
Egypt's parliament approved on Wednesday three laws related to economic activities; namely on regulating and promoting the use of financial technology (FinTech) in non-banking financial activities, allowing the finance ministry to transfer money from private funds and accounts into the state treasury, and setting up a renewable energy development authority.
A Lebanese mountain town home to 70,000 Syrian refugees declared a "fuel emergency" Thursday, warning that soaring heating fuel prices would spell tragedy as winter starts to bite.
Meeza cards will replace the payroll cards of 4.3 million state employees by the end of January, Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait said on Thursday.
Renowned Egyptian composer and singer Ahmed El-Haggar passed away on Tuesday at the age of 65 after reportedly suffering from a heart attack.
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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To celebrate the 46th anniversary of the inauguration of the Luxor Museum on Sunday, a temporary antiquities exhibition will be on display tonight and will last for 12 months.

The exhibition will display a collection of 155 artefacts unearthed by a Spanish archaeological mission at the tomb of an 18th Dynasty vizier, Amenhotep Huwi.

Alaa El-Menshawi, the director of the museum, explains that among the most important artefacts is a limestone stela with a religious scene engraved on it, a lid of a clay vessel that was probably used in the Heb Sed ceremony for King Amenhotep III, a limestone ostracon that was used in hand paintings decorated with a man holding tools of harvest.

A collection of ushabti figurines (small statues), amulets, and scarabs are also on display at the exhibition.

The museum is considered one of the most beautiful regional museums in Egypt. It is located on Luxors west bank, overlooking the magical Nile River.

It was officially inaugurated on 12 December 1975, and the Cachette Hall was added in 1991, which displays what was unearthed in Luxor Temple in 1989, followed by the Glory of Thebes Hall in 2004.

The museum includes a collection of 6,000 artefacts, 3,000 of which are exhibited across its five exhibition halls, documenting the history of Egyptian art since ancient Egyptian times to Islamic times.

Among the most important objects in the museum are a very distinguished statue of king Amenhotep III with the deity Sobek, a quartzite statue of king Amenhotep III standing, a stela of king Kamose, and the mummy of king Ahmose I  who expelled the Hyksos out of the country.











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The World Economic Forum (WEF) said Monday it "will defer its annual meeting in Davos... in the light of continued uncertainty over the Omicron" variant of coronavirus.

The high-powered meeting, which usually draws leading figures from business, politics and diplomacy, will instead be held in "early summer", the organisers said. Last year's edition was cancelled because of the pandemic.

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Weather conditions are expected to improve throughout Egypt on Tuesday after the wave of rain and cold weather that hit the country over the past 24 hours, the Egyptian Meteorological Authority (EMA) said.

Director of the Remote Sensing Center at the EMA Iman Shaker has said in media statements that light rainfall would continue along the northern coast and the northern Nile Delta, while no rain is expected in Cairo, Giza and the rest of Nile Delta.

Shaker added that light rain is also expected on Tuesday in Sinai.

With the winter season officially starting on 21 December, increased rain is expected along the northern coast.

Meanwhile, in a meeting with the cabinet and the governor of Alexandria, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly discussed a study by the University of Alexandria on the increasing danger of rainfall in the governorate.

According to the study, climatic changes, the lack of infrastructure to deal with heavy rainfall and the lack of a strategy to deal with the rain waters in the city have all contribute to the danger posed by heavy rains in Alexandria, the cabinet said in a statement.

PM Madbouly issued a directive to quickly prepare plans to separate the rain drainage and sewage networks, adding that implementation should begin as soon as the rainstorm season in Alexandria is finished.

Earlier on Monday, Alexandria witnessed rain and rare snowfall in some parts as temperatures dropped in the Mediterranean city.

A number of Nile Delta governorates as well as parts of Giza and Cairo saw rainfall and a drop in temperature on Monday.

A young student died in Tanta, Gharbiya governorate after being electrocuted when touching a lamppost while walking during the rain.

North Sinai witnessed moderate rain on Monday, whereas the Sinai mountains, including Mount Catherine, were covered by snow as the temperature reached -2 degrees Celsius.

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Egypts Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ahmed Hafez said on Monday that it was inappropriate to comment on judicial rulings in response to statements made by the US State Departments Spokesman criticizing a verdict handed earlier on the same day to activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah and two others.

On Monday, an Egyptian Emergency Misdemeanour State Security court sentenced Abdel-Fattah in case 1228/2021 to five years in prison and co-defendants Mohamed Ibrahim (aka Mohamed Oxygen) and Lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer to four years on charges of joining a terrorist group and spreading false news inside and outside the country.

The rulings against the three defendants are final and cannot be appealed since they were issued by a state security court, as per Egyptian law.

In November, Egypts Court of Cassation upheld a ruling from case 1781/2019 to place Abdel-Fattah, El-Baqer, and 26 others on the countrys terrorism list for a period of five years.

According to the state-owned news agency MENA, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hafez said that it is inappropriate to comment or refer to rulings issued by the Egyptian judiciary in the implementation of [the countrys] laws on the basis of irrefutable and conclusive evidence within the framework of a fair, impartial, and independent judicial process.

Such judicial matters should not be put in any political frames or be linked to ties between the two countries, Hafez added.

The spokesmans statements came hours after US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said that Washington was disappointed by the verdict, calling on authorities to allow journalists, human rights defenders, and others seeking to peacefully exercise their freedom of expression to do so.

On Saturday, Egypt rejected a statement by the German government on the same case that was released one day ahead of the court session, calling it a blatant and unjustified interference in the countrys internal affairs.

In a statement, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry rebuked the German governments statement saying that it is comprised of unacceptable infractions and represents both a blatant and unjustified interference in the internal affairs of Egypt and infringes upon a judicial path without objective evidence or proof.

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Visitors flocked to Luxors Karnak Temple earlier on Tuesday to witness the annual solar alignment on the main holy shrine of the temple, which marks the beginning of the winter season.

This solar alignment at the Karnak Temple occurs every year on 21 December and marks the start of the winter solstice.

Mostafa El-Sagheer, the director-general of Karnak Antiquities and the Avenue of Sphinxes, explained that this solar alignment reveals the brilliance of the ancient Egyptian civilisation, as they linked astronomy with architecture in a unique structure that remains standing 2,000 years later.

During the event, the sun appears in the middle of the temples eastern gate and then illuminates the sacred parts of the site, including the open courtyard, the hall of columns, and the sanctuary of the god of Amun.

El-Sagheer added that the Governorate of Luxor organised a celebration to mark the event with folkloric performances and a concert.

Last month, Egypt launched Luxor as one of the world's largest open air museums in a massive celebration.

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Egypt has asked the representatives of US multinational automotive giant General Motors (GM) and Al-Mansour Automotive Company to submit a comprehensive study of their plans to manufacture electronic vehicles locally, as they plan to launch electric, eco-friendly vehicles in the country in 2022.

In a meeting in Cairo on Monday, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly met with Al-Mansour Automotive CEO Ankush Arora and GM Egypts Chairman and Managing Director Tarek Atta to discuss manufacturing the vehicles in Egypt under the states plan to implement a green transition, a statement issued by the cabinet on Tuesday said.

Madbouly reiterated the importance attached by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to localise the automobile industry and auto feeding industries.

The state is ready to provide full support to build meaningful partnerships in this field, especially with GM, which is an important partner to Cairo, the premier said.

Following the meeting, Madbouly inspected and was briefed on the specifications of a GM-manufactured electric vehicle model that is due for launch in Egypt in 2022.

The PM expressed the possibility of setting up various initiatives and programmes that can provide incentives and waives to those who purchase these vehicles.

Madbouly was also briefed on more advanced models being manufactured by the company, the statement said.

Al-Mansour Automotive Company was founded in 1975 and became the primary dealer for GM in Egypt at the time. Currently, it is one of the largest GM distributorships in the world, selling over 75,000 vehicles a year.

On 1 December, Al-Mansour Automotive Company and GM Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to study joint manufacturing of electric vehicles in Egypt.

Other efforts to localise the automotive industry

Earlier this month, Madbouly revealed that the government is preparing to launch The Automotive Industry Strategy in Egypt by the end of the current year, noting that the step is meant to consolidate the localisation of the automotive industry and auto feeding industries, with the aim of attracting more investments to the vital sector.

Egypt seeks to localise these environment-friendly cars, reduce dependence on fuels, and keep pace with global progress in the automobile industry.

Last week, Egypts military production minister said the mass production of the Egyptian-Emirati bi-fuel pickup vehicles will begin by the end of the first half of 2022.

In August, Egypt and the UAE signed a cooperation agreement stipulating the establishment of a factory named the Egyptian Emirates Company for the Automotive Industry in Cairo that will manufacture and market several models of pickup trucks that operate on natural gas and gasoline.

In July, Egypt inaugurated the first integrated fuel station in Cairos Abbasiya district which will serve vehicles running on natural gas, gasoline, and electric charging, with plans to set up a network of 3,000 electrical-charging stations in the near future.

Egypt was in talks with Chinas Dongfeng Company to manufacture battery-powered cars. The production lines of the state-owned El-Nasr Automotive Company were due to locally produce the first-ever Egyptian electric vehicles  using Chinese blueprints  by mid-2022. However, talks between the two sides collapsed after an agreement over the price of important components was not reached, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Public Enterprise in November.

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President Vladimir Putin urged France to end "discrimination" against Russian state-funded broadcaster RT, which has been accused by Western countries of distributing disinformation and Kremlin-friendly propaganda.

In a call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron, the Russian leader "expressed hope the Russian channel will be provided the same opportunities to operate without discrimination as French media enjoy in Russia".

Launched in 2005 as "Russia Today", state-funded RT has expanded with broadcasters and websites in languages including English, French, Spanish and Arabic.

In France, RT has long been accused by the authorities and news organisation of being a propaganda wing of the Kremlin. Its reporters complain they have not been granted official accreditation to cover the Elysee.

In the United States it has been required to register as a "foreign agent", while in Britain the authorities have threatened to revoke its broadcasting licence.

Lithuania and Latvia, both former Soviet countries on Russia's border, have banned the channel.

This week, YouTube blocked a new RT channel after removing the network's German channels RT DE and Der Fehlende Part earlier this year.

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President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has reaffirmed Egypt's full support for "everything that could achieve the higher interests of Libya, activate the free will of its people, and preserve the countrys unity and sovereignty."

El-Sisi made his remarks during a meeting with head of Libyas Presidency Council Mohamed Al-Menfi at Cairo's Al- Ittihadiya Palace on Tuesday, three days before date set for the Libyan presidential election, which is uncertain so far.

Al-Menfi expressed his appreciation for Egypt's "vital" role as well as its "tireless and sincere" efforts to help restore security and stability in Libya and unify the countrys state institutions, especially the military institution represented by the Libyan National Army.

The Libyan official also presented a briefing on the internal political situation in Libya, Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady said in a statement following the meeting.

The two sides agreed on intensifying bilateral consultation and coordination to following up on the developments related to the political process and procedures related to managing the transitional period in Libya, Rady added.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and head of Egypt's General Intelligence Service Abbas Kamel, in addition to Libyas permanent representative to the Arab League Abdul Muttalib Idris attended the meeting.

Friday's vote is the culmination of a United Nations-led process agreed upon to end 10 years of turmoil that have wracked Libya following the ouster and killing of president Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

However, it is unclear whether the vote will take place as previously scheduled due to disagreements over the legal basis for the vote given procedural delays. Thus far, the Libyan elections authority has not announced the final list of candidates. The law obliges the authority to publish the list at least two weeks ahead of the vote.

Ahead of the UN-led process, Egypt hosted a host of Libyan dialogue meetings to bridge the gap between various Libyan parties.

On Monday, Egypt launched an electronic link system to regulate Egyptian workers' entry into Libya, which had long been a major destination for Egyptians due to its geographical proximity.

Violence since the uprising in the oil-rich country has scarred businesses and labour, yet efforts to push through with reconstruction continue through the recruitment of workers in neighbouring countries.

Until 2011, three million Egyptian workers had been working in Libya.

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Egypt's health authorities have sent more than 400,000 text messages to a selected target group from the fully vaccinated citizens for appointments to receive booster shots of the coronavirus vaccines, according to Health Ministry Spokesman Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar.

More messages will be sent in the coming days to other people who received the primary shots at least 6 months ago, Abdel-Ghaffar said in televised statements on Tuesday. The country is currently prioritising the optional booster shots for an initial group totaling around 4.1 million.

The group comprises those whose health and work conditions put them at elevated risk of contracting the virus, including patients who suffer from immunodeficiency, patients undergoing immunosuppressive therapy, the elderly, and healthcare workers, the government announced in late November.

The Egyptian health ministry has appropriated the booster types, noting that the additional shot may be different from the two initial doses.

Egypt has administered more than 52 million COVID-19 vaccine doses since the launch of its mass vaccination campaign in January, according to the latest figures released by the ministry.

Egypt, which plans to vaccinate 40 percent of its 102-million population by the end of 2021, has currently 64.5 million vaccine doses available for use.

The country has so far detected 376,233 coronavirus infections, including three recently-detected Omicron variant cases, and 21,410 related deaths.

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UN aid flights into Yemen's rebel-held capital Sanaa have been halted by air strikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition which supports the government, an airport official said on Tuesday.

Due to coalition bombing that targeted the Houthi rebels, "the airport is no longer able to receive aircraft operated by the United Nations or international humanitarian organisations", the official told AFP.

Flights into Sanaa airport have largely ceased because of a Saudi-led blockade since August 2016, but there have been exemptions for aid flights that are a lifeline for the population.

The seven-year conflict has led to what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis. More than 80 percent of the population of around 30 million require aid.

The airport official, who asked not to be identified, said the United Nations should secure a halt to the raids so that the airport could resume operations.

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, called "on all parties to keep the airport open for humanitarian operations" but also, more broadly, "for the airport to be open for regular civilian and commercial flights."

On Monday evening, the coalition said it had carried out "a limited number of precision strikes on legitimate military targets in Sanaa international airport".

"The operation was mounted in response to the threat and use of airport infrastructure to carry out cross-border attacks," it said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Its aircraft hit six targets in the airport, including sites used to "control attacks by drones loaded with explosives" or to "train terrorist elements" for such operations, the statement said.

'Keep airport 'out of crossfire'

The Iran-backed rebels have repeatedly launched missile and drone strikes against neighbouring Saudi Arabia, targeting the kingdom's airports and oil infrastructure.

They have intensified their strikes on the kingdom in recent months.

The coalition has insisted that its strikes were "in accordance with international humanitarian law" and should have no impact on the airport's operational capacity.

Khaled al-Shayef, Sanaa airport's director general, told AFP that the "health quarantine quarters and warehouses to store export and import goods were destroyed".

A metal hangar and cement structures near an air traffic control tower were also reduced to rubble, an AFP correspondent reported.

"A UN team is on the ground at Sanaa airport to verify the extent of any damage," a World Food Programme spokesperson told AFP.

Another aid group, the Norwegian Refugee Council, urged both sides to work with the UN to reopen the airport for humanitarian and commercial flights.

"Aid delivery to the airport is now at a standstill. We urge both the authorities in Sanaa and the Saudi-led coalition to keep Sanaa airport out of the crossfire and to ensure that it can function again for medical and commercial flights," NRC country director Erin Hutchinson said.

On Tuesday the coalition said Saudi airports were prepared to receive Yemen-bound humanitarian flights and to deliver aid through "access points" under UN supervision, according to statement carried by state-owned Al-Ekhbariya television.

It claimed the Huthis had halted UN aid flights into Sanaa airport on December 19.

Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in the Yemeni civil war in 2015, after the rebels seized Sanaa in late 2014.

Tens of thousands of people -- most of them civilians -- have been killed in the war, whose impact has also been felt in Saudi Arabia through rebel strikes.

In August, a drone hit the kingdom's Abha international airport, wounding eight people and damaging a civilian plane.

Two months later, Saudi state media said 10 people were hurt in a drone attack on a civilian airport in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah.

While the UN and Washington are pushing for an end to the war, the Huthis have demanded an the coalition air blockade of Sanaa airport end before any ceasefire or negotiations.

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Sudans Prime Minister Abdallah Hamouk intends to resign in the next few hours, according to two source who spoke to SkyNewsArabia on Tuesday amid a dispute with the military.

The decision comes a month after Hamdouk signed a political deal with the army chief Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan in 21 November.

The deal reinstated Hamdouk as prime minister and released government members and politicians who were arrested in the military coup led by the army chief Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan on 25 October.

Al-Burhan led a military coup that dissolved the government and arrested its members including Hamdouk, dissolved the sovereignty council and froze the constitutional declaration, which was signed in August 2019 and governed the transitional period.

Many factions in the Sudanese political scene refused the politicql deal and took to the streets. Those who oppose the deal say that it gives the army a favourable position in the post-coup situation by keeping Al-Burhan in his place.

A source close to Hamdouk told SkynewsArabia that Hamdouk "intended to resign in two weeks after evaluating the partnership with the military, but the security forces crackdown on protests and the reports of extreme violence and rape against protesters forced him to speed up his resignation.

On Tuesday the UN human rights office called for an independent investigation into allegations of sexual violence including rape and gang rape during mass anti-coup protests in Sudan earlier this week, a spokeswoman said according to AP.

Several media reports said that Hamdouk's deicsion also comes due to lack of consensus between all parties.

Sources told Asharqnews channel that Hamdouk intended to work towards a political consensus in the framework of the political agreement signed in November with the army but he failed to do so with regard to the political powers.

Earlier this month a source close to Hamdouk told Reuters that the prime minister will not stay in office unless there is a consensus between the political powers in the country in the framework of the deal signed with Al-Burhan,

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The Emergency State Security Misdemeanour Court sentenced renowned Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah on Monday in the case 1228/2021 to five years in prison over joining a terrorist group and spreading false news inside and outside the country.

The court also sentenced two co-defendants in the case, activist Mohamed Ibrahim (aka Mohamed Oxygen) and lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer, to four years.

The rulings against the three defendants are final and cannot be appealed since it was issued by a state security court, per Egyptian law.

The three defendants had been held in pretrial detention since September 2019.

In October, the Public Prosecution referred them to the Emergency State Security Misdemeanour Court.

The prosecution had charged them with spreading fake news and statements, misusing social media, and joining an illegal group that seeks to suspend the constitution and laws, and prevent state institutions from carrying out their duties.

In November, Egypts Court of Cassation upheld a ruling to place Abdel-Fattah, El-Baqer, and 26 others on the countrys terrorism list for a five-year period in case 1781/2019.

In a document, the State Security Prosecution said the defendants in the case 1781/2019 are also accused in other cases of various terror-related crimes, including belonging to an outlawed group, inciting violence against the state, calling for the suspension of the constitution, attempting to overthrow the regime, threatening national security, and spreading chaos.

Earlier this month, the German government urged Egypt to ensure a fair trial for the defendants and called for their release, saying the upcoming pronouncement of a judgment on 20 December 2021 in the trial of the lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer will show where the human rights situation in Egypt is heading.

Egypt rebuked the German government on Saturday, calling the statement a blatant and unjustified interference in the internal affairs of Egypt and an infringement upon a judicial path without objective evidence or proof.

In a statement, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry also accused the German government of double standards since it calls on the one hand for the respect of the rule of law while calling on the Egyptian government to intervene and influence the rulings of the countrys independent judiciary.

It is better for the German government to heed its own internal challenges than to impose its guardianship on others, the foreign ministry added.

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Environmental issues and climate change were not at the top of the Egyptian states priorities until a few years ago, when the government initiated a number of measures to protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions.

The government has launched huge projects in conjunction with the increasing global concern about environmental issues and climate change.

Egypt hosted the United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity (COP14), which was held in 2018 in Sharm El-Sheikh, and has been chosen to host the Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP27), scheduled for late 2022.

The Egyptian government has paid attention to climate issues and their impact on the environment not by just signing treaties and hosting environmental conferences, which are of course important, but also by implementing the outcomes of these events and treaties.

The government began to activate its plans to deal with climate change through several national projects and laws, which emerged through the expansion of metro networks, trains and electric cars and the preparation of the necessary infrastructure for this, as well as the establishment of smart and sustainable cities.

Egypt has also offered green bonds worth $750 million for five years at a yield of 5.25 percent, the first offering of government green bonds in the Middle East and North Africa.

Green bonds are special loans to finance projects related to climate change or the environment, as defined by the World Bank.

Egypt is also implementing projects to rationalise water use, line canals, integrate coastal zone management, and a huge project to reclaim 1.5 million feddans in the Western Desert and other governorates, which will have a significant impact in combating climate change and reducing CO2 emissions.

Converting cars to run on natural gas

Perhaps the most prominent measures regarding green transport are cooperation agreements for the manufacturing of electric cars and the completion of their associated infrastructure, as well as the national project to convert, or replace, cars to run on natural gas. This consists of two main projects, the first is replacing worn out and old cars, and the second is converting cars to run on natural gas.

Egypt is replacing cars manufactured over 20 years ago, which tend to produce high carbon emissions that increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The second part of the project involves converting gasoline-powered cars to have them run on natural gas or dual-fuel, given the high environmental and economic cost of gasoline.

This huge project targets various types of cars, including microbuses, taxis and privately owned cars. The government has said the project aims to replace 250,000 old cars with a budget of up to EGP 1.2 billion, with 3 percent interest loans to pay for the new cars in instalments over seven to 10 years.

As for converting cars to run on natural gas, the government is providing specialised centres to conduct this procedure, assuming the car in question is fit for conversion, for EGP 8,000 to EGP 12,000 ($515 to $715), which can be paid in instalments.

In 2017, the Small and Micro Enterprise Development Agency signed a contract with the Natural Gas Car Company worth EGP 7.5 million to finance the conversion project.

In an exclusive interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Ahmed Abdel-Razzaq, who is responsible for the National Program for Car Replacement and Renewal, said that the first phase of the program has registered 36,000 eligible citizens, of whom 9,500 have received the upgraded vehicles.

Abdul-Razzaq says this falls far short of the initial target of replacing 250,000 vehicles in the first three-year phase starting January 2021, at a rate of 80,000 vehicles annually.

The failure to meet this target is due to weak supply chains affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the global shortage in microchips, which are used in electronic circuits found in all modern cars, Abdul-Razzaq said.

Abdul-Razzaq pointed out that the rate of cars delivered as part of the replacement program is expected to increase over the next two years after the electronic chip crisis eases and foreign trade improves.

Abdul-Razzaq also said that despite the huge cost of replacement and conversion, these measures are expected to spare the state budget the cost of subsidising gasoline and petroleum.

The price of a cubic meter of natural gas is EGP 3.5, while the price of a litre of 80, 92 and 95 octane gasoline is EGP 7, 8.25 and 9.25 respectively.

According to Abdel-Razzaq, Egypt was one of the first countries in the region to switch to green transportation, when in 2008 it launched the project to replace its old taxis with the new white taxi that run on natural gas or dual fuel. Egypt replaced 45,000 taxis and won a grant of 2.5 million euros from the World Bank in recognition of its achievements in reducing carbon emissions.

This gigantic national project is in line with the sustainable development goals of the United Nations, Abdel-Razzaq said, adding that the national sustainable development strategy Egypt Vision 2030 aims to achieve sustainable development and tackle environmental challenges, especially climate change.

The fuel conversion project aims to reduce harmful carbon emissions as well as bring about economic benefits by stimulating trade in the automobile sector and the banking sector, which financed the program. The project should also reduce the financial burden on citizens by using a safe, clean and affordable alternative like natural gas.

Abdel-Razzaq says the replacement process began in seven governorates as a first stage, which are the governorates that have the appropriate infrastructure to convert cars. This has involved the participation of many agencies and companies, including the ministries of finance, interior, environment and planning, as well as a number of car manufacturers, importers of natural gas-powered cars, and 31 banks.

Achieving carbon neutrality

Magdi Allam, secretary-general of the Union of Arab Environmental Experts, said in an exclusive interview with Al-Ahram Weekly that carbon emissions from natural gas are much lower than from fossil fuels, while electric cars produce no carbon emissions.

Allam explained that Egypt is also working on manufacturing electric cars at the Nasr Automobile Factory as part of its relentless efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

The environmental expert pointed out that Egypts efforts to support green transport will reduce carbon emissions by 42 percent, which will be a good step towards reaching carbon neutrality.

A report issued by the cabinet of Egypt indicated that the number of cars converted to work with natural gas during the 5 years, which increased by 49.3 percent, to reach 339,000 cars by the end of 2020, and this number is increasing with the activation of the initiative to convert cars to work with natural gas and the stimulus package provided by the government to the citizens in this regard.

The report said that the government launched a mobile phone application called MOP Station, which is used to locate natural gas refuelling stations and the centres for converting vehicles to run on natural gas.

The report emphasised that the use of natural gas as a fuel is very safe, non-toxic, free from lead compounds and sulphur impurities, and is better from an environmental point of view. The US Environmental Protection Agency has announced that reliance on natural gas guarantees 90 to 97 percent lower emissions of carbon monoxide and 25 percent lower carbon dioxide emissions.

The report also cited the UN Economic Commission for Europe as saying that natural gas reduces nitrogen oxide emissions by about 80 percent compared to gasoline and diesel. The International Gas Union has also said that the use of gas contributes to improving air quality compared to gasoline, as it reduces heat emissions by 20 percent.

The report also cited British magazine The Economist praising Egypt's ambitious plan to use natural gas in cars. Bloomberg has also said that the Egyptian project is a serious step to encourage the conversion of up to 1.3 million car owners to use natural gas.

Egypt has one of the oldest experiences in the world in using natural gas, as it was the first in the Arab world to use the fuel in the transportation sector, according to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

Abdel-Razzaq says that Egypts conversion of 45,000 taxis to run on natural gas from 2008 to 2012 won it a special award from the World Bank in recognition of its success in reducing emissions.

The cabinet report says that the project works to reduce the cost of environmental deterioration due to air pollution, which costs EGP 47 billion annually, in addition to reducing between 46 percent to 99 percent of carbon emissions.

The total number of natural gas car refuelling stations nationwide reached 225 by the end of 2020, and there is a plan to double the number of these stations.

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French soldiers have killed one of the suspects in last year's murder of six young French aid workers in Niger, the general staff said on Tuesday.

The Islamic State group had claimed the killings last August of the six aid workers aged between 25 and 31 and their two local guides while they were visiting a nature reserve in the West African country.

The army identified the killed jihadist as Soumana Boura, one of the bosses of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS).

General staff spokesman Colonel Pascal Ianni told AFP that Boura had filmed the execution of the eight victims in August and overseen the publication of the footage.

Boura, who headed a group of dozens of fighters in western Niger, was killed by a French drone strike as he was riding his motorcycle, he said.

A French unit was on its way to secure the area and formally identify him, the army said.

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South Africa's former president Jacob Zuma can appeal a court ruling last week that he should not enjoy medical parole and should return to jail.

High Court Judge Elias Matojane ruled last Wednesday that the September decision to place the 79-year-old on medical parole was "unlawful".

The same judge on Tuesday decided to allow an appeal.

"In my view, this matter merits the Supreme Court of Appeal's attention," he said at the end of a virtual hearing.

He said another court may find that Zuma should be treated with "compassion, empathy and humanity" because of his ill health and advanced age.

The former president was handed a 15-month jail sentence in July for contempt of court after he refused to give testimony to corruption investigators.

His jailing sparked violent protests and looting in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal that spread to South Africa's financial hub Johannesburg in July, claiming more than 350 lives.

It was the deadliest violence in South Africa since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.

The former president was granted medical parole on September 5, but the exact reasons were never revealed. He has since returned to his $17 million estate in rural Nkandla.

While he was in prison, he was taken to hospital for surgery to treat an undisclosed ailment.

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Lebanon's mandatory reserves are down to $12.5 billion, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh said Tuesday, adding that this was only enough to finance subsidies on basic goods for another six months.

"The mandatory reserves are down to 12.5 billion dollars," he told AFP in an interview.

The mandatory reserves stood at $32 billion before the start of the economic crisis in 2019.

Lebanon's official exchange rate pegged at 1,500 pounds to the US dollar is obsolete, Salameh admitted Tuesday.

The lebanese pound is sold for nearly 30,000 pounds to the US dollar on the black market, which made banks use parallel rates as the black market rate is 20 times the official rate.

The fixed rate that guaranteed Lebanese a strong purchasing power for the best part of three decades went into a tailspin when the state defaulted on its debt last year and is "no longer realistic", Salameh said.

Lebanon defaulted on its debt for the first time last year but political leaders have continued to resist key reforms demanded by donors to unlock necessary funds.

Lebanon is grappling with an unprecedented economic crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the planet's worst in modern times.

More than 80 percent of the population lives in poverty and the currency has lost more than 90 percent of its black market value amid political squabbling that has delayed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

Lebanon last year started IMF talks that have relaunched in recent weeks during which Lebanese officials have agreed that financial sector losses amount to around $69 billion.

"Lebanon is still in the stage of crushing numbers," Salameh said. "The Lebanese side hasn't yet presented a plan to the IMF for discussion."

*This story was compiled by Ahram Online

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Thailand, New Zealand and other Asian countries, imposes new restrictions over the concerns of the omicron variant spread

Thailand on Tuesday decided to immediately reimpose a mandatory quarantine for visitors and suspend a "test-and-go'' scheme for fully vaccinated arrivals as concerns grow over the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, the government said.

The decision is a blow to efforts to revive Thailand's battered tourism sector ahead of the peak holiday season.

"Today we no longer accept more applications for travelers. No new applications," Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters. "We have about 200,000 travelers who already registered. No other restrictions apply for these people, but we will have to track them.''

He added that "from now, we are back to the old system of quarantine when entering.''

New Zealand will shorten the gap between second COVID-19 vaccine doses and boosters and push back the phased reopening of its borders in measures announced Tuesday to keep the omicron variant at bay.

The gap between a second vaccine dose and a booster will be shortened from six to four months, meaning 82 percent of vaccinated New Zealanders will be due for a booster by February.

New Zealand's strict border regulations so far have been successful in keeping omicron from spreading in the community. The only cases reported so far have been in travelers who are in managed isolation and quarantine.

"Public health advice suggests that soon every case coming into our border, into our managed isolation facilities, will be the omicron variant,'' COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said. "We already know that booster vaccinations significantly lift an individual's immunity, reducing the spread and the severity of COVID-19.''

Plans to allow travelers from Australia to self-isolate from Jan. 17, rather than go through managed isolation, have been pushed back to the end of February.

Cases of coronavirus have surged in Australia, as government tighten precautions to prevent or curb outbreaks.

Hipkins said with Australia's New South Wales state "now expecting to record 25,000 cases a day by the end of January, opening the border in mid-January as planned simply presents too high a risk at this point.''

India, which also opened to vaccinated tourists in November, has since suspended commercial international flights until Jan. 31 as global alarm over the variant grows. Still, international travel has continued via a number of flights from countries that India had agreements with.

Japan, where the vast majority of the population is vaccinated, now bans entry to most foreign nationals.

Mainland China and Hong Kong have continued to ban tourists from entry. Visitors face tight entry restrictions and mandatory 14- to 21-day quarantines depending on which part of the country they arrive in.

*This story was compiled by Ahram Online.

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The Malaysian military used boats Tuesday to distribute food to desperate people trapped in their homes after massive floods, as the death toll rose to 14 with over 70,000 displaced.

Days of torrential rain triggered some of the worst flooding in years across the country at the weekend, swamping cities and villages and cutting off major roads.

Selangor -- the country's wealthiest and most densely populated state, encircling the capital Kuala Lumpur -- is one of the worst-hit areas.

Some parts of state capital Shah Alam were still under water Tuesday, and military personnel in boats distributed food to people stuck in their homes and government shelters.

Kartik Subramany fled his house as floodwaters rose, and took refuge in a school for 48 hours before being evacuated with his family to a shelter.

"My house is totally damaged, my two cars are wrecked," the 29-year-old told AFP.

"These are the worst floods of my entire life. The federal government has failed the people miserably -- it has failed in its primary function to protect and safeguard lives."

He is among a growing number attacking what they say is a slow and inadequate official response.

Thousands of emergency service and military personnel have been mobilised, but critics say it is not enough and volunteers have stepped in to provide food and boats for the rescue effort.

An AFP journalist in one hard-hit Shah Alam neighbourhood saw people desperate for food snatching items from a devastated supermarket.

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob admitted Tuesday there were "weaknesses" in the response to the disaster and pledged there would be improvements in future.

"The responsibility is not that of the federal government alone, but also the state governments," he added, noting a month's rainfall had come down in a single day in Selangor.

'Hopeless' Official Response

Opposition MP Fuziah Salleh described the official response as "hopeless" and "incompetent".

"No early warning of the torrential rain was given," she told AFP. "It is so sad lives have been lost."

Opposition politicians have accused the government of ignoring their calls to better prepare for the monsoon season, from November to February, particularly by improving drainage in densely populated urban areas.

On Tuesday, the death toll from the floods rose to 14, including eight in Selangor and six in the eastern state of Pahang, official news agency Bernama reported.

But with reports of people still missing, it is expected to increase.

More than 71,000 people have been forced from their homes due to the floods, including 41,000 in Pahang and 27,000 in Selangor, according to official data.

Evacuees are being housed in government relief centres but officials have warned to expect a rise in coronavirus cases linked to the crowded shelters.

The rain has stopped and in many areas floodwaters have receded, leaving residents to count the cost.

"I've been doing business for more than 24 years... this has never happened before," said Mohammad Awal, whose cosmetic shop outside Kuala Lumpur was flooded.

The Southeast Asian nation is hit by floods annually during the monsoon season, but those at the weekend were the worst since 2014 when over 100,000 people were forced from their homes.

Global warming has been linked to worsening floods. Because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, climate change increases the risk and intensity of flooding from extreme rainfall.

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Despite vaccination rates that make other governments envious, Spain is facing the hard truth that, with the new omicron variant running rampant, these winter holidays won't be a time of unrestrained joy.

The country had hoped to rely on the willingness of 80% of its entire population of 47 million (90% of those over age 12) to line up for vaccine shots with little-to-no prodding and the widespread use of face masks to have a Christmas that looked much more like 2019 than like last year.

But the incredibly fast spread of the omicron variant that reached Spain less than a month ago is starting to put pressure on hospitals, even though experts agree that being vaccinated still greatly reduces the risk of falling seriously ill.

Catalonia, home to the northeastern city of Barcelona, is prepared to become the first Spanish region to reinstate serious limitations and put a damper on the holiday cheer. One in four of everyone hospitalized in Spain with COVID-19 is in Catalonia.

``We had all hoped to spend these Christmas holidays with our family and loved ones, but unfortunately we are not in that situation,'' Catalan regional president Pere Aragones said Tuesday. ``You don't have to look at the numbers. All of us know people who have been infected.''

Catalan health authorities have asked the courts to authorize a battery of measures including a new nightly curfew from 1-6 a.m., a limit of 10 people per social gathering, the closure of night clubs, and capping restaurants at 50% of indoor seating and stores, gyms and theaters at 70% capacity. If approved, the rules would take effect on Christmas Eve and last for 15 days, thus also wiping out New Year's parties.

``These steps are absolutely necessary,'' said Catalonia's regional health chief, Josep Argimon. ``Infections have grown 100% over the past week.``

Spain is back in the high-risk zone with over 600 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 days, more than double the accumulated cases seen before last year's winter holidays. The omicron strain has shot up from 5% of new cases in Spain to 47% within one week, according to the health ministry.

The decision by Catalonia comes before Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez meets via video with the heads of Spain's 17 regions on Wednesday to discuss new health measures.

Medical groups and experts are clamoring for more action to be taken.

``The rise in the diagnosis of new cases in health clinics and hospitals ... can in the short- to mid-term lead to a new collapse of the health system,'' Spain's association of lung doctors said last week.

But it seems that most are reluctant to go as far as Catalonia, which has nearly 30% of its intensive care beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.

That has left many families to make some hard decisions and take their health into their own hands.

So many Spaniards are relying on self-screening that there is a shortage of self-administered antigen COVID-19 tests. Some pharmacies are completely out and the lack of supply is pushing prices up.

The Madrid Pharmaceutics Official College told The Associated Press that demand in November had gone up 500% in a month. Shipments were still arriving in pharmacies, although late, and quickly being purchased by customers.

Among those looking for the test kits was Eulalia Rodriguez. Her family was planning to welcome a relative traveling from abroad for Christmas and she was struggling to find the tests after inquiring in four different pharmacies in the Spanish capital.

``It's really disappointing,'' Rodriguez said. ``At least they give you some peace of mind.''

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The United States Monday submitted a new draft resolution to the UN Security Council on facilitating humanitarian aid to Afghanistan while keeping it out of Taliban hands, after abandoning an earlier proposal under pressure from China.

After a first draft was rejected by US rivals China and Russia, but also India, France and Britain, Washington submitted a new version seen by AFP to the 15-member council, which could vote on the resolution soon, according to diplomatic sources.

Veto-wielding Beijing's objections were not immediately clear.

The new draft says "that for a period of one year, humanitarian assistance and other activities that support basic human needs in Afghanistan are not a violation of" the 2015 resolution 2255 that imposed sanctions on Taliban-related entities.

"The processing and payment of funds, other financial assets or economic resources, and the provision of goods and services necessary to ensure the timely delivery of such assistance or to support such activities are permitted," the draft reads.

The international community has struggled over how to avert a humanitarian catastrophe amid economic meltdown in Afghanistan since the Taliban swept back to power in mid-August, prompting the United States to freeze $9.5 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank.

The text "strongly encourages providers" of humanitarian assistance "to minimize the accrual of any benefits" whether directly or indirectly by sanctioned individuals or entities.

Earlier in the day, China, supported by fellow permanent Security Council member Russia, had blocked an initial US plan to authorize case-by-case exemptions to sanctions for humanitarian purposes.

"Humanitarian aid and life-saving assistance must be able to reach the Afghan people without any hindrance," China's UN Ambassador, Zhang Jun, said in a tweet Monday. "Artificially created conditions or restrictions are not acceptable."

The new US draft deletes an entire paragraph relating to a case-by-case exemption mechanism in response to Beijing's criticism.

The decision to limit the scope of the resolution to one year, which was not part of the first draft, aims to satisfy Washington's European allies, who, like India, had criticized the absence of any deadline and called for strict control over the destination of aid ,another added element.

There was no immediate comment from the US mission to the UN.

'We need a lot more'

Such a resolution should allow humanitarian workers who "need to work with and have financial transactions with ministries run by" sanctioned individuals to avoid violations, a diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

After the Taliban takeover, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank also suspended activities in Afghanistan, withholding aid as well as $340 million in new reserves issued by the IMF in August.

On December 10, the World Bank said international donors agreed to release $280 million to UNICEF and the World Food Programme for Afghanistan.

But a UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said much more was needed.

"We need a lot more of the funding that's been frozen at the bank released and we need donors to contribute."

UN undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, emphasized the urgent "need for liquidity and stabilization of the banking system" on Sunday at a ministerial meeting in neighboring Pakistan, "not only to save the lives of the Afghan people but also to enable humanitarian organizations to respond."

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US President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he remains hopeful he can secure Senate passage of a massive social spending bill.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia dealt a potentially fatal blow last weekend to Biden's $1.75 trillion "Build Back Better" plan, saying he could not support it.

But Biden told reporters at the White House he believed the bill, the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, could be resurrected.

"I still think there's a possibility of getting Build Back Better done," Biden said. "Senator Manchin and I are going to get something done."

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged on Monday to bring the bill, which proposes sweeping reforms to health care, immigration, climate and education, to the Senate floor.

"We are going to vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act -- and we will keep voting on it until we get something done," Schumer said.

How Democrats can do so without Manchin's crucial vote in an evenly divided Senate is not clear.

Republican senators who backed the president's infrastructure bill have also made it clear that they will not support Build Back Better.

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Last night, Egypt celebrated renowned director and founder of Egypts first independent theatre troupe, Hassan El-Geretly, at the closing ceremony of the 28th edition of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (CIFET).

El-Warsha Theatre Company is among the first troupes that brought the countrys folk heritage closer to modern audiences.

El-Geretly studied theatre at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom; his passion, however, was French theatre. So, in 1972, he became an assistant director at the Bellac Theatre Festival.

Then, once he returned to Egypt, he became the managing director of Al-Hanager Theatre in Cairo, where he helped redesign the theatre and make it as forward-looking as possible.

He eventually left to focus on setting up his own independent theatre company, El-Warsha, in 1987.

El-Warsha (The Workshop) focuses on presenting folk heritage on the stage of a theatre, reintroducing folk stories, epics, and songs to modern audiences. Unlike many other companies, El-Warshas charm lies in the fact that it is an on-going workshop for talents to flourish and nurture one another, where the younger generations can give their own interpretations of older material.

El-Geretly is a firm believer in Gustav Mahlers quote: Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire, and that is the secret of his success in attracting young artists that interact with traditional arts without compromising their unique styles.

The 28th edition of the CIFET ran between 14 and 19 December.

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The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) has received a collection of 23 artefacts, including large stone reliefs, transported from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir and Saqqara and Ismailia archaeological sites.

The objects include a large limestone relief bearing the different titles of the Old Kingdom King Senefru, a relief depicting the monotheistic King Akhenaten and his wife Queen Nefertiti, three Old Kingdom reliefs from the tomb of Raa-Hotep, and two red granite reliefs bearing the image of King Ramses II in the osirion pose and wearing the red crown, according to Altayeb Abbas, antiquities ministry assistant for archaeological affairs.

All the objects were restored before transportation and were packed using the latest scientific methods, Eissa Zidan, executive director for the restoration and transportation of artefacts.

Among the most notable objects is also a collection of 269 pieces of a limestone wall bearing pyramid text for Queen Ankh Isen Pepi. These pieces will be reassembled to form a huge wall in the GEM's main hall.

A collection of painted false doors, offering tables, and a statue of King Amenemhat I from the Ismailia museum have been also transferred, Zidan added.





















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Former President Donald Trump sued New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday, resorting to a familiar but seldom successful strategy as he seeks to end a yearslong civil investigation into his business practices that he alleges is purely political.

In the lawsuit, filed in federal court two weeks after James requested that Trump sit for a Jan. 7 deposition, Trump contends the probe into matters including his company's valuation of assets has violated his constitutional rights in a "thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates."

U.S. Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Perry, Ga., on Sept. 25, 2021. [File photo: AP Photo/Ben Gray]

The lawsuit describes James, a Democrat, as having personal disdain" for the Republican ex-president and points to her numerous statements she's made about him, including her boast that her office sued his administration 76 times and tweets during her 2018 campaign that she had her eyes on Trump Tower and that Trump was running out of time."

Her mission is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent, the former president's lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, filed on behalf of Trump and his company, the Trump Organization.

In a statement, James said: The Trump Organization has continually sought to delay our investigation into its business dealings and now Donald Trump and his namesake company have filed a lawsuit as an attempted collateral attack on that investigation.

To be clear, neither Mr. Trump nor the Trump Organization get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions. Our investigation will continue undeterred because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump.

Trump responded that his lawsuit is not about delay, this is about our Constitution!

Despite many years of investigation that nobody else could have survived even if they did things just slightly wrong, yours is just a continuation of the political Witch Hunt that has gone on against me by the Radical Left Democrats for years, Trump said in a statement.

James had announced a run for New York governor in late October, but earlier this month, she suspended that campaign and cited ongoing investigations in her decision to instead seek reelection as state attorney general.

News of the lawsuit, filed in upstate New York, was first reported by The New York Times. The case is assigned to Judge Brenda Sannes in Syracuse, who was appointed in 2014 by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, but preliminary proceedings will be handled by a magistrate judge in Albany, which isn't unusual for federal court.

Trump seeks a permanent injunction barring James from investigating him and preventing her from being involved in any civil or criminal investigations against him and his company, such as a parallel criminal probe shes a part of thats being led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Although the civil investigation is separate, James office has been involved in both.

Trump also wants a judge to declare that James violated his free speech and due process rights.

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers said that while its clear James gave Trump ammunition to argue that she has a vendetta against him, the lawsuit remains a longshot for Trump, who has lost multiple lawsuits aimed at foiling investigators, including a multiyear U.S. Supreme Court fight that ended in February with Vance obtaining his tax records.

During her campaign for attorney general, James foolishly stressed her intent to target Trump and his businesses if elected, Gillers said. "Nonetheless, I think a federal court will want stronger proof of James partiality than Trump can muster. Its very hard to get a federal court to stop a state investigation when state courts are available to review any misconduct.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 21, 2021 - 22:14 | Japan, All

Three death-row inmates were hanged Tuesday, the Ministry of Justice said, in Japan's first executions since December 2019 and first under the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The three were identified as Yasutaka Fujishiro, 65, who killed seven of his relatives in Hyogo Prefecture in 2004, and Tomoaki Takanezawa, 54, and Mitsunori Onogawa, 44, convicted of killing two employees at two separate pachinko parlors in Gunma Prefecture in 2003.

Following Tuesday's executions, the number of inmates sitting on death row in Japan stands at 107.

Japan's capital punishment system has drawn international criticism, with critics calling for greater transparency on the timing of executions given that death-row inmates are typically notified just hours before or, at times, not at all.

The Kobe District Court in western Japan sentenced Fujishiro to death in May 2009, and the decision was finalized in June 2015 after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal.

Takanezawa and Onogawa, who also robbed one of their victims and stole money from one of the pachinko parlors, were sentenced to death by the Saitama District Court near Tokyo. The death penalty on Takanezawa was finalized in July 2005 after he withdrew his appeal, while Onogawa's sentence was finalized in June 2009 at the Supreme Court.

After the executions, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara told reporters it is "not appropriate to abolish (the country's death penalty system) considering the current situation in which heinous crimes continue to occur."

"Many Japanese think the death penalty is unavoidable in the case of extremely malicious crimes," Kihara said.

More than two-thirds of countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

The group's death penalty advisor, Chiara Sangiorgio, condemned the latest death penalties, saying the resumption of executions shows the current Japanese government's "lack of respect for the right to life" and "a missed opportunity" for Japan to abolish the practice of capital punishment.

"It is dismaying that Japan bucks this trend by continuing to use this cruel and inhuman punishment," Sangiorgio said in a statement and urged for a moratorium on all executions.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 21, 2021 - 13:57 | All, Japan

Two former bureaucrats from industry ministry were found guilty Tuesday of swindling the state out of some 15.5 million yen ($136,000) in office rental subsidies and other benefits that were meant to help coronavirus pandemic-hit businesses.

Saying they had "betrayed the public's trust," the Tokyo District Court handed down a jail term of 30 months to Makoto Sakurai, 29, while Yutaro Arai, 28, was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for four years.

According to the ruling, the two fraudulently obtained 11.5 million yen in office rental subsidies between December last year and January for two dummy companies that they had established.

They also swindled the ministry out of 4 million yen in benefits between May and June last year. The pair has admitted to the charges.

Presiding Judge Ryuta Asaka rapped the two in handing down the ruling, saying they "deserve strong criticism for dragging down a key policy to support pandemic-hit small businesses."

Prosecutors said Sakurai was the main culprit of the fraud, but his defense lawyers argued that Arai also benefitted and that Sakurai is "being made overtly responsible."

Arai's defense lawyers, however, said he could not refuse Sakurai's instructions and was not actively involved in the crime.

Asaka determined that Sakurai played the leading role and that Arai's criminal responsibility was smaller, saying, "Without Sakurai, Arai would not have gotten involved."

The Small and Medium Enterprise Agency of the ministry was in charge of the subsidy and benefit programs that helped struggling sole proprietors and small businesses, whose sales dropped due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sakurai worked at the ministry's Industrial Finance Division and Arai at its Corporate System Division. They never worked for the agency.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 21, 2021 - 19:12 | World, All, Japan

China tried to force Japan's embassy in Beijing to cancel its cultural exchange event earlier this month after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made remarks on Taiwan, sources close to the matter said Tuesday.

On Dec. 1, Abe, an influential lawmaker who still heads the largest faction within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said at a virtual event that any emergency concerning Taiwan would be an emergency for Japan and for the Japan-U.S. security alliance.

The Sino-Japanese event supposed to be held on Dec. 7 was eventually canceled, the sources said, probably making bilateral relations more fragile although next year marks the 50th anniversary of the normalization of their diplomatic ties.

Since one day after Abe made comments on Taiwan, many Chinese among around 250 invited guests had been put pressure by the authorities not to join the event on the grounds of the risk of infections with the novel coronavirus, the sources said.

Similar events, however, were held at other embassies in Beijing in December, they added.

Noting there was a "special background," a Chinese official suggested a connection between the cancellation of the event and Abe's remarks, which came with Beijing stepping up military intimidation against Taiwan.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since they split in 1949 as the result of a civil war. The Communist-led government has regarded the self-ruled democratic island as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Abe, a conservative politician known for his hawkish views on security, had invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to Japan as a state guest during the latter term of his tenure. He resigned as prime minister in 2020 after nearly eight years in the post.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 21, 2021 - 14:44 | All, World

Japan on Tuesday expressed its grave concern over Hong Kong's recent legislative election that was held despite an international outcry over controversial Beijing-led electoral changes.

Elections must be carried out fairly involving candidates representing "a wide range of political opinions," and Japan will continue to urge China to take concrete steps to address international concerns, Japanese government spokesman Seiji Kihara told a press briefing.

"We express our grave concern again about the fact that the Legislative Council election was held without addressing international concerns," Kihara, a deputy chief Cabinet secretary, said.

"It's important that a free and open system is maintained and Hong Kong can prosper in a democratic and stable manner. This is our consistent stance," Kihara said.

Pro-Beijing members swept the election on Sunday with just one non-establishment candidate winning.

China has been tightening its grip on Hong Kong in the aftermath of the 2019 anti-government protests, with the electoral changes aimed at ensuring only patriots govern the territory.

Following the return of the former British colony to Chinese control in 1997, Beijing guaranteed Hong Kong a "high degree of autonomy" under the principle of "one country, two systems."

The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations issued a statement on Monday, expressing their grave concern over what they see as an erosion of democracy in Hong Kong.

"The Japanese government will carefully follow developments, such as the impact of the election outcome on Japanese companies and the economy," Kihara said.

Related coverage:

G-7 expresses "grave concern" over democracy erosion in Hong Kong

Hong Kong holds 1st legislative election under "patriots-only" system
KYODO NEWS - Dec 21, 2021 - 17:08 | All, Japan

A city assembly in suburban Tokyo rejected Tuesday a proposed ordinance that would have allowed foreign residents to vote in local referendums, amid concern voiced by some conservatives that it could give foreigners a say in national security matters.

When first submitted in November, the proposal divided opinions in the assembly of the Musashino city with a population of nearly 150,000 including some 3,000 foreign residents. It also drew flak online, with critics saying it could be a step toward granting foreigners the right to vote in national elections.

Musashino, which has the popular shopping and residential district of Kichijoji, failed to join two other Japanese cities that have granted voting rights to foreigners living there for three months or longer in referendums without attaching special conditions -- Zushi in Kanagawa Prefecture and Toyonaka in Osaka Prefecture.

Aside from the two cities, about 40 among more than 1,700 municipalities in Japan have allowed foreigners to vote in referendums but with some conditions, such as having permanent residency status.

"There were voices in the city assembly that the proposal has not sufficiently gained the citizens' understanding," said Musashino Mayor Reiko Matsushita, who made the controversial proposal in seeking to create a diverse city.

She suggested she will review her proposal by listening to the opinions of more people.

The voting down of the ordinance at a plenary session of the assembly by 14 to 11 came after its general affairs committee approved the plan last week, with its chair giving it the green light. Three among the six members of the committee voted in favor of the plan, while the other three rejected it.

The proposal was to allow foreigners aged 18 or above to vote in referendums if they have lived in the city for at least three months -- the same conditions applied to Japanese residents. The results of local referendums are not legally binding.

In a session held prior to voting, the assembly remained divided, with some saying it is a proposal that contributes to realizing a diverse city, while others criticized it for causing confusion due to insufficient explanations to citizens.
By Noriyuki Suzuki, KYODO NEWS - Dec 21, 2021 - 23:37 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Japan will extend the current strict border control measures "for the time being" past early January as the nation remains vigilant amid uncertainty over the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.

Even with the number of daily confirmed coronavirus cases staying at low levels and a community spread of Omicron not unfolding, Kishida said Japan needs to strengthen its preparedness by accelerating booster shot rollouts and promoting orally administered COVID-19 drugs.

The government launched the current border control measures in late November for about a month, barring new entries by foreigners from abroad and requiring returning Japanese nationals and foreign residents to quarantine in government-designated facilities. Kishida said recently that the measures would be extended until early January.

As part of ramped-up anti-virus steps, all people found to be infected with COVID-19 will be tested for Omicron in Japan. Those who have had close contact with people infected with the new variant will be asked to stay at designated facilities for two weeks, rather than at home.

"Scientific evaluations have yet to be established regarding how transmissible Omicron is and how serious (the disease caused by it) will get," Kishida told a press conference held after a 16-day extraordinary Diet session ended on the day.

"We have decided to extend the current border control measures for the time being," Kishida said.

Following the lifting of a protracted COVID-19 state of emergency in October, Japan has not seen a surge in coronavirus cases and over 77 percent of the population has been vaccinated twice against the novel coronavirus.

The government is now seeking to accelerate the rollout of third shots of COVID-19 vaccines, with health care workers and senior citizens receiving priority. U.S. vaccine suppliers Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. have said third shots will boost antibodies and offer protection against Omicron. The health minister approved the two companies' vaccines to be used for a booster shot.

In the meantime, the government aims to make U.S. pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co.'s orally administered COVID-19 treatment drug available in Japan before the year-end and its competitor Pfizer's in early 2022.

Kishida, who became prime minister in October, has focused on antivirus measures after his predecessor Yoshihide Suga saw public support dwindle over his government's response to the pandemic.

During the extraordinary Diet session, parliament passed a record 36.0 trillion yen ($316 billion) supplementary budget for fiscal 2021 to support the pandemic-hit economy. The prime minister faced criticism for his flip-flop over a cash handout program as the government decided to allow 100,000 yen to be distributed entirely in cash to child-rearing households, rather than its earlier plan for half of the amount in vouchers.

"I accept various criticisms that our change to the original policy has caused confusion," the premier said.

On wage growth, a requisite for his push for wealth redistribution, Kishida said "all possible tools" should be used to realize pay hikes, adding that he will make sure small and midsize companies can raise wages.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic has made in-person meetings with global leaders difficult, Kishida told the press conference he wants to step up diplomacy next year.

"I'd like to hold talks with U.S. President (Joe) Biden at an early date," he said, adding that arrangements are still being made for him to visit the United States.

"Meeting him in person and sharing views on common challenges and building a personal relationship of trust is extremely important," the premier added.

Asked about the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Kishida said he needs more time to weigh various factors before making a decision based on national interests.

The United States, Japan's closest ally, has already announced plans not to send its officials to the games, followed by nations such as Australia and Britain.

At home, Kishida has faced calls within some conservative lawmakers from his ruling Liberal Democratic Party to join the diplomatic boycott.

China is a major trading partner for Japan but its assertive moves in the East China Sea where the Japanese-controlled, Chinese-claimed Senkaku Islands are located, has raised alarms.

"We need to say what should be said to China based on the universal values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and human rights," Kishida said, adding that no summit talks have been planned with President Xi Jinping.

As a Japanese leader who was elected from Hiroshima, which experienced a U.S. atomic bombing in 1945, Kishida is vocal about the realization of a nuclear-free world.

Japan will do its utmost for the success of a U.N. review conference on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in January, he said, after the previous meeting in 2015 failed to produce a final document due to disagreements.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 21, 2021 - 23:54 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

The Japanese government plans to dispose of unused cloth masks that it has been keeping in storage since an unpopular free distribution program at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday, as keeping them is proving costly.

The washable cloth masks won the name of "Abenomasks" in some quarters in Japan after then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who decided to distribute them last year to cope with tight supplies of disposable ones.

The government procured about 287 million masks to distribute to nursing care facilities and all households across the nation. It had over 81 million undistributed masks as of October and spent about 600 million yen ($5.3 million) to keep unused ones in storage between August last year and March this year.

"I have instructed (officials) to dispose of the government's stock of cloth masks by the end of the current fiscal year (through March) after distributing them to those in need," Kishida told a press conference.

"Worries about mask shortages have been completely eliminated due to a recovery in manufacturing and supply, and the intended purpose (of the cloth masks) has been achieved," the premier said.

Japan has seen the number of newly confirmed coronavirus cases on a downward trend, though uncertainty over the new Omicron variant remains.

The Abe government's well-intended cloth mask distribution apparently backfired due to delivery delays and the discovery of defective ones.

The health ministry has found about 11 million cloth masks, or about 15 percent of those checked, defective, costing around 2.1 billion yen just for the inspections.

During the just-ended extraordinary session through Tuesday, Kishida said the government will consider how to utilize the remaining face masks better.
New Delhi:

The government will launch a nationwide campaign to shun single-use plastic as part of an ongoing clean India mission, which will start from second week of September, sources said on Wednesday. Sharing the details with the Union Cabinet in the council of ministers' meeting, Secretary Drinking Water and Sanitation Parameswaran Iyer informed that the campaign will be held in three phases.

In the first phase, a nationwide awareness campaign will be held across the country, in the second phase various government agencies will collect single-use plastic items, and in the last phase accumulated items will be recycled.

All the ministries have been asked to participate in the campaign, they said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day address, had appealed to the countrymen to shun single-use plastic.

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highlights Indrani Mukerjea is accused in murder case of daughter Sheena Bora.

Indrani had turned approver in the INX Media case recently.

She had told agencies that Chidambaram told her to transfer funds.

New Delhi:

Indrani Mukerjea, the prime accused in the murder case of her daughter Sheena Bora, who had turned approver in the INX Media case recently today said that arrest of former Union Minister P Chidambaram is a good news. It should be noted that Indranis testimony forms the basis of case against Chidambaram. In her statement before probe agencies, the wife of former media mogul Peter Mukerjea had spoken about how Chidambaram told her to transfer funds. She had reportedly told the probe agencies that it was Chidambaram himself, who had personally told her and her husband to help his son Karti in order to get the FIPB clearance.

In her statement, Indrani had said that she and Peter met Chidambaram at his North Block office, where he told about the way to get the funds.According to an NDTV report, Indrani had the agencies that the names of two firms -- 'Chess Management' and 'Advantage Strategic' -- were discussed. These were the firms reportedly used to send the money to Karti Chidambaram. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had submitted to the court Indrani's statement, according to which the two promoters and a senior company executive had approached Chidambaram for foreign direct investment approval after the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) rejected their request for a stake sale to the tune of 26 per cent.

The former finance minister cleared it for a sale of Rs 4.62 crore only. According to Indrani's statement, the request was approved on the condition that Peter help Chidambaram's son Karti in his business and make possible overseas remittances in lieu of the FIPB approval.Quoting the FIR that was filed in 2017, according to a Hindustan Times report, Karti Chidambaram advised INX Media to explain the investment as having been cleared by FIPB and that the excess "foreign inflow was justified as premium received."In her statement, Indrani had also said that she met Karti Chidambaram at a hotel in Delhi hotel and offered $1 million to sort the matter. The two reportedly agreed to settle the amount at Rs 3.5 crore, which was paid to Advantage Strategic, a company Karti owns through a subsidiary.

On May 15, 2017, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had registered an FIR in the case alleging irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance granted to the INX Media for receiving overseas funds to the tune of Rs 305 crore in 2007, during P Chidambaram's tenure as finance minister.Earlier, Indrani had told a special CBI court that she was ready to undergo a lie-detector test in the Sheena Bora murder case.

She had submitted a handwritten application before special judge JC Jagdale, conveying her willingness to undergo a polygraph (commonly known as lie detector) test. In her plea, Mukerjea had claimed, she was emotionally more settled... and it is only right and proper in the name of justice that I undergo the polygraph test. However, the CBI has rejected her plea saying that there are more than 30 witnesses in the case.

In 2015, Indrani had refused to give her consent to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to subject her to a lie-detector test.According to the law, an accused cannot be made to undergo such tests without his or her consent. "In October 2015, I had not given consent...because I was under tremendous pressure not to undergo the test," she said in the application.However, Karti Chidambaram today dismissed the reports of him meeting Indrani and said that he never met her. He added that it was only in jail he met her for the first time.

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Lucknow:

Uttar Pradesh is witnessing a spurt in triple talaq cases, with 216 FIRs filed by Muslim women since the enactment of a law which makes the practice of instant divorce a punishable offence. The maximum number of 26 such cases have been registered in Meerut followed by Saharanpur and Shamli where 17 and 10 FIRs have been lodged respectively, a senior police official told PTI on Tuesday. These three places in western Uttar Pradesh have a sizeable Muslim population.

"In UP, women given triple talaq are coming out in large numbers to register FIRs against their husbands. Within three weeks (till August 21) of implementation of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, as many as 216 FIRs have been filed in the state so far," he said.

In eastern Uttar Pradesh, the highest number of 10 FIRs were registered in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency - Varanasi.

The main causes of triple talaq are dowry, property dispute and domestic violence as per the FIRs lodged.

However, except in two-three cases, no arrest has so far been made in the over 200 cases lodged.

In a bid to ensure effective implementation of the Act, the Uttar Pradesh Police is contemplating to arrest the accused.

"To ensure that the Act is followed in letter and spirit and justice is given to Muslim women, we are examining as to why we should not arrest those involved in giving triple talaq. We will be doing that in some districts," Director General of Police OP Singh told PTI.

He said very soon the police will also be going for "impact analysis" to ensure justice to Muslim women.

"Very soon, we will be calling a few sample cases to assess the impact to ensure justice to the victim women," he said.

Some triple talaqs have been given over phone, through SMS or directly to women.

In a case in Lucknow, a man allegedly gave triple talaq to his wife right inside civil court premises in the presence of her advocate after she refused to accept a chewing gum from him, police said.

30-year-old Simmi of Amrai village was divorced by her husband Syed Rashid where she had gone for the hearing of a case of dowry harassment she had lodged earlier against her in-laws.

The woman was talking to her advocate when her husband offered her a chewing gum which she refused, throwing Rashid into a fit of rage so much so that he divorced his wife, uttering talaq three times then and there itself.

In Banda, a woman was given triple talaq by her husband over phone, while in Barabanki a woman was given triple talaq through SMS.

In another case, a man divorced his wife allegedly to escape from the responsibility of providing treatment to their physically challenged daughter.

In a separate case, a woman alleged that her husband had ended their two-year-old marriage by pronouncing triple talaq over phone as she had a dark complexion.

In yet another case, a man allegedly divorced his wife in full public view in her village market in Unnao district using the outlawed custom and mocking at the new law that declares the oral diktat a penal offence.

The triple talaq law came into effect retrospectively from September 19, 2018, after President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent to the legislation that makes giving instant oral triple talaq or talalq-e-biddat a criminal offence with provisions of jail term up to three years.

The new law makes void and illegal talaq-e-biddat or any other similar form of talaq having the effect of instantaneous and irrevocable divorce pronounced by a Muslim husband.

It also makes it illegal to pronounce talaq three times in spoken, written or through SMS or WhatsApp or any other electronic chat in one sitting.

The law says any Muslim husband who pronounces the illegal form of talaq upon his wife shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, and shall also be liable to fine.

The aggrieved woman is entitled to demand a maintenance from her husband for herself and her dependent children under the Act.

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highlights 50,000 Job Vacancies In Jammu And Kashmir And Ladakh.

The recruitment notification announcement was made by Governor, Satya Pal Malik at the press conference held at Raj Bhavan.

The governor has asked the youth to participate in the job fest with alacrity as this will open new doors of career opportunities for them.

New Delhi:

The Jammu and Kashmir Government has decided to fill a whopping 50,000 vacancies in several government departments in the gap of few months. The recruitment notification announcement was made by Governor, Satya Pal Malik at the press conference held at Raj Bhavan. The governor has asked the youth to participate in the job fest with alacrity as this will open new doors of career opportunities for them.

Other than this, he further said the government is working jointly with central agencies in order to implement a scheme. The scheme aims to provide a base support price for the apple crop in the region. This drive will hugely benefit over 7 lakh apple farmers.

The governor also announced that mobile phone service will open in all the 10 districts of Jammu (Except one). In addition, mobile phone service will be made functional in the revenue district of Kupwara and Handwara Police districts in Kashmir. In the meantime, the government has already made it clear to open the landline connections in the valley.

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New Delhi:

Pakistan has violated 222 times since August 5 when Indian government decided to revoke the special status to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcate the state into two union territories. According to a report in India Today, Pakistan Army has violated ceasefire a total of 1,889 times this year with 222 of these happening since the abrogation of provisions of Article 370. The Indian Army has been giving a strong reply to Pakistan and has hit some critical Pakistan Army installations across the border, the report said.

Pakistan violated ceasefire a total of 271 times in August so far while there were 296 incidents of ceasefire violations in July.

According to intelligence inputs, Pakistan is trying to push in terrorists from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) to carry out attacks on the security forces and disturb peace in an already tense Kashmir valley.

Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday also admitted it has information that Pakistan is trying to infiltrate terrorists into the country to carry out attacks.

MEA spokesman Raveesh Kumar told reporters that Indian security forces were prepared to deal with any eventuality. He was reacting to Indian media reports that cited unidentified Indian intelligence sources as saying Pakistan-trained commandos have entered Indian waters to attack port facilities in western Gujarat state.

He said Pakistan is trying to infiltrate terrorists to create an alarmist situation after New Delhi imposed a lockdown and ended Indian-controlled Kashmir's autonomy early this month.

On Wednesday, Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire by restoring to mortar shelling and firing of small arms along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district, a defence spokesperson said.

The firing from across the border started around 8 am and continued for three-and-a-half hours, he said.

Meanwhile, All ports across Gujarat have been put on high alert after latest intelligence inputs said that some Pakistan-trained commandos may infiltrate the Gulf of Kutch via 'Harami Nala.

News Nation has learnt that the security agencies believe that these commandos are trained for underwater attacks. "All ships need to maintain anti-terror watch," sources said. Coast Guard have also been put on high alert following this intel input.

"All shipping agents are directed to inform their vessels at Kandla outer anchorage, inner anchorage, berths," the intel input said.

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New Delhi:

A Delhi court on Wednesday summoned BJP leader Harish Khurana in a defamation complaint filed by an AAP worker for his tweet in connection with the assault on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on May 4, noting prima facie there are sufficient grounds to proceed against him.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal, however, dismissed the complaint against Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari for his remarks to media in the matter, citing lack of sufficient ground.

The court passed its order on the complaint of Sushil Kumar, an Aam Aadmi Party worker who alleged that Khurana as well as BJP leader Manoj Tiwari had defamed him.

It directed Khurana to appear before it, saying that prima facie there exists sufficient grounds to proceed against Khurana for making defamatory remarks on Twitter.

On Tiwari, the court said: It is clear that Tiwari has not taken the name of the complainant in this video. The only allegation is that when he was saying these words, he showed a photo in his mobile phone, which according to the complainant is his photograph.

I have minutely seen the video of the press conference and it is clear that the photo which he had showed in the press conference is so blurred in the video placed on record that it is not possible to identify the complainant only by seeing the video... therefore there does not exist sufficient grounds to proceed against Tiwari, the court said.

According to the complaint, on May 4, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was holding a road show in south Delhi parliamentary constituency for general elections when he was slapped by a person.

It said that Khurana had tweeted suggesting that Kumar had assaulted Kejriwal.

The complainant alleged that Tiwari had falsely and with an intention to defame him told the media that it was Kumar who had attacked Kejriwal.
highlights Status of notes in circulation was revealed by RBI in its annual report.

It also said that there is decline in number of Rs 2,000 banknotes.

RBIs contingency fund has also plunged after payment to govt.

New Delhi:

Two years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the shock-therapy of demonetisation to push India into a cashless mode, it seems there are more currency notes in circulation since the pre-November 8, 2016 era. The data was revealed by the annual report published by the Reserve Bank of India recently. However, despite pronounced spike in the number of currency notes printed by the official presses, there has been a decline in the cost of printing new notes.

According to the official data, the total supply of banknotes by Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt. Ltd (BRBNMPL) and Security Printing & Minting Corporation of India Ltd (SPMCIL) amounted to 2,919.1 crore pieces in 2018-19. These two companies are responsible for printing banknotes on behalf of the RBI. This was higher than the number of pieces supplied in previous years, including 2016-17, when demonetisation happened.

Following the note ban, old notes were allowed to be deposited in banks, with unusual deposits coming under the Income Tax department's scrutiny. A collateral damage as a result of rise in printing and other cost was dividend RBI paid to the government. The RBI had said its income for 2016-17 decreased by 23.56 per cent while expenditure jumped 107.84 per cent.

Meanwhile, in other related news, the number of Rs 2,000 banknotes have seen a massive drop in the circulation. The number of outstanding notes has shrunk by 7.2 crore to 329 crore in FY19.

It should be noted that the Reserve Bank of India's contingency fund, useful in fighting any exigency, has plunged to Rs 1.96 lakh crore as of June 30, after the Rs 52,000 crore excess payout to the government, says the central bank's annual report for FY19. The RBI board has decided to transfer the excess reserves to government based on the Bimal Jalan committee report on the appropriate economic capital framework.

In the annual report, the central bank makes it clear that as of June 30, 2019 it "stands as a central bank with one of the highest levels of financial resilience globally." After the payout to the government, "the balance in the contingency fund as of June 30, 2019 was Rs 1,96,344 crore compared to Rs 2,32,108 crore as of June 30, 2018," the annual report said.

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Chandigarh:

The Punjab government on Wednesday said Rs 475.56 crore has been set aside for the flood-hit districts of the state, which faced worst floods since 1988. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh ordered the officials concerned to prepare comprehensive rehabilitation plans for the flood-ravaged areas, including the works needed to be carried out post the relief operations, according to an official release.

While Rs 242.33 crore is being used for the immediate infrastructure work/relief operations, another Rs 233.23 crore will be provided in the short and long term, after proper damage assessment and planning, the release said.

Singh, who reviewed the flood situation, asked the chief secretary to ensure prompt execution of post flood infrastructure works to address the damage caused to public installations.

The chief minister has directed all the deputy commissioners to prepare rehabilitation plans and ensure supply of food, drinking water, shelter and medicines to all the affected people.

He also asked the Animal Husbandry department to provide the necessary fodder and medicines for the livestock in the affected areas on priority.

The review meeting was informed that of the total Rs 475.56 crore set aside for the execution of flood relief/infrastructure works, a sum of Rs 68.75 crore would be spent on restoration works in Rupnagar district, Rs 91.38 crore in Moga, Rs 119.85 crore in Jalandhar, Rs 189.62 crore in Kapurthala, Rs 54 lakh in Fazilka and Rs 5.42 crore in Ferozepur.

Singh asked the additional chief secretary (development) to ensure that the agricultural land affected by floods is reclaimed and restored for sowing of the next crop well in advance.

The chief minister was apprised that the flood-hit farmers would be compensated at the rate of Rs 12,000 per acre (the Centre's share is Rs 5,000, and the state government's share is Rs 7,000).

The compensation would also include de-silting of land affected by floods.

Deferring recovery of crop loans of the affected farmers taken from the state cooperative banks, Singh said he would take up the issue with the central government to request for a similar decision by the commercial banks in the state.

The Punjab government has already announced Rs 4 lakh per person to compensate the families of the deceased, besides monetary assistance to compensate the affected families in lieu of loss of their animals at the rate of Rs 30,000 per milch cattle, Rs 25,000 for bullocks and Rs 3,000 for sheep, goat and pig.

Following recent heavy rains and the release of excess water from the Bhakra dam, the Sutlej river and its tributaries had inundated villages in several areas in Punjab, causing extensive damage to crops and homes in low-lying areas.

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New Delhi:

MV Agusta Turismo Veloce 800, the first adventure tourer motorcycle from the MV Agusta brand, has been launched in India. It is to be noted that the motorcycle was launched at the inauguration of Kinetic's latest Motoroyale showroom, which has come up in Maharashtras Navi Mumbai. The motorcycle costs Rs 18.99 lakh (ex-showroom).

On the designing front, MV Agusta Turismo Veloce 800 features a sharp and aggressive design language, with premium fit and finish. The motorcycle gets several signature styling elements from other MV Agusta models, like the front fairing that resembles the F3, and the triple-pipe exhaust and the, inspired by the Brutale 800. The bike also gets LED headlamp, hand guards with built-in indicators and LED taillamp.

MV Agusta Turismo Veloce 800 is powered by a 798 cc, in-line three-cylinder engine that belts out maximum of 110 bhp at 10,150 rpm and develops a peak torque 80 Nm at 7,100 rpm. The engine is mated to a 6-speed gearbox, with a quick shifter as standard.

The newly-launched motorcycle comes in four variants - Turismo Veloce 800, Turismo Veloce 800 Lusso, Turismo Veloce 800 Lusso SCS and Turismo Veloce RC SCS. However, for now, India only gets the XX options.

It gets an extensive electronics package, featuring an MVICS electronic system with a full multi-map ride-by-wire throttle, 8-level traction control, along with a sophisticated EAS 2.0 electronic up and down gearbox and a hydraulically activated slipper clutch.

Suspension duties are performed by Marzocchi fork at the front and a Sachs monoshock at the rear. On the other hand, braking duties are handled by twin 320mm discs with four-pot calipers up front, and a single 220 mm disc brake at the rear. The bike also comes with dual-channel Bosch 9 Plus ABS (anti-lock braking system) with rear-wheel lift-up mitigation. The Turismo Veloce 800 further comes with 17-inch alloy wheels on both ends, wrapped in 120/70-section front and 190/55-section rear tyres.

In the Indian market, MV Agusta Turismo Veloce 800 will compete with the likes of the Triumph Tiger 800 and the Ducati Multistrada 950.
New Delhi:

Army Chief General Bipin Rawat will visit Srinagar on Friday to review the security situation and preparedness of security forces to deal with the situation in Kashmir valley. This will be Rawats first visit after the abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. On the other hand in Kashmir, normal life remained disrupted across the Valley for the 25th consecutive day on Thursday, with markets closed and public transport off the roads. However, some private vehicles could be seen plying in many parts of the city while some roadside vendors also plied their trade, officials said.

The efforts of the state government to open schools up to high school level have not borne fruit as parents continued to keep the children at home due to apprehensions about their safety. Government offices are open but attendance in many offices was thin due to lack of public transport, the officials said, adding the offices at district headquarters registered normal attendance.

While landline telephony services have resumed in many parts of the valley, mobile telephone services and all Internet services continue to remain suspended since 5 August after the Centres move to abrogate Article 370, that provided special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and bifurcate the state into two union territories.

Most of the top level and second rung separatist politicians have been taken into preventive custody while mainstream leaders including three former chief ministersFarooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Muftihave also been either detained or placed under house arrest.

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highlights Pakistan PM Imran Khan said on Monday he will raise the Kashmir issue at every international forum, including at the UN General Assembly.

Chaudhry threatened that Khan is considering a complete closure of airspace to India on Tuesday.

He said the prime minister is contemplating the stoppage of routes to impede Indian trade.

New Delhi:

Pakistan science minister Fawad Chaudhry threatened that Prime Minister Imran Khan is considering a complete closure of airspace to India on Tuesday, a day the US agreed that Kashmir is a bilateral issue after a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra and President Donald Trump. He said the prime minister is contemplating the stoppage of routes to impede Indian trade.

"PM [Imran Khan] is considering a complete closure of air space to India. A complete ban on the use of Pakistan's land routes for Indian trade to Afghanistan was also suggested in a cabinet meeting. The legal formalities for these decisions are under consideration...Modi has started we'll finish!" Fawad Chaudhry tweeted.

PM is considering a complete closure of Air Space to India, a complete ban on use of Pakistan Land routes for Indian trade to Afghanistan was also suggested in cabinet meeting,legal formalities for these decisions are under consideration... #Modi has started we ll finish!  Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) August 27, 2019

With Pakistan failing to get traction for its belligerent stand on Kashmir, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday that he will raise the issue at every international forum, including at the UN General Assembly. Khan's address to the nation came after Modi, during his meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in France on Monday, categorically rejected any scope for third party mediation between India and Pakistan on Kashmir.

Prime Minister Khan assured the people of Pakistan that his government will stand by the Kashmiris till India lifts the restrictions in the Valley.

Outlining his government's future strategy on Kashmir, Khan said: "First, I believe, the entire nation should stand with the Kashmiri nation. I have said this that I will act as Kashmir's ambassador".

"I will tell the world about this, I have shared this with the heads of state that I have been in contact with. I will raise this issue at the UN as well," he said, referring to his scheduled address to the UN General Assembly next month.Khan said he would highlight the Kashmir issue at the UN General assembly.

Chaudhry's statement came amid reports that the Pakistan Army is preparing for a military fight with India. According to media reports, Pakistan is preparing a military response to Indias decision to revoke provisions of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistan Army has been collecting heavy artillery and ammunition along the Line of Control (LoC).

According to ANI, the Pakistan Army has deployed more than 100 Special Services Group (SSG) commandos along the Line of Control. India is closely monitoring the activities of these commandos, who are seen working closely with the Jaish-e-Mohammed and other terrorist groups, Army sources said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is not only preparing India to attack from the outside, but also planning to disturb country's peace from the inside. The latest input from the Intelligence Agencies reveal that Pakistan backed ISI is planning a series of bomb blasts in India.

According to the input, ISI has given stern orders to different terrorist groups and sleeper cells to start terror activites and plan serial blasts in India. The Intelligence agencies have given their inputs to different state police including Delhi.

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New Delhi:

Pakistan has partially shut Karachi's airspace till August 31 as it reportedly plans to carry out a possible missile test firing. Pakistan has closed three aviation routes of Karachi airspace from August 28 till August 31, the country's civil aviation authority said on Wednesday. The shutdown comes after the Pakistan government's announcement that it is mulling a complete ban on the use of the country's airspace by Indian flights.

According to ANI, Pakistan has issued NOTAM (notice to airmen) and Naval warning due to a possible missile test firing from Sonmiani flight test range near Karachi. The ban will affect all international flights using the three routes above Karachi. It further provides pilots with an alternate route to circumnavigate Karachi airspace.

ALSO READ: Pakistan minister threatens closure of airspace to India, says 'Modi has started, we'll finish'

The four-day ban will expire on September 1, the aviation authority said in a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM).

The closure came at the heels of announcement by Minister of Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry who tweeted on Tuesday that Prime Minister Imran Khan is considering a 'complete closure' of airspace with India. Pakistan's Cabinet on Tuesday discussed the idea of disallowing India to use the country's airspace for flight and the land route for trade with Afghanistan.

The final decision will be taken by Prime Minister Khan. Pakistan had fully closed its airspace in February after an Indian Air Force strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror camp in Balakot.

The country opened its airspace for all flights except for New Delhi, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur on March 27. On May 15, Pakistan extended its airspace ban for flights to India till May 30.

It fully opened its airspace for all civilian traffic on July 16. Tensions between India and Pakistan spiked after India abrogated provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution to withdraw Jammu and Kashmir's special status and bifurcated it into two Union Territories.

ALSO READ: Indian Army on alert as Pakistan positions 100 elite commandos along LoC in PoK: Report

Pakistan expelled the Indian High Commissioner after it downgraded the diplomatic ties with India in protest to India's decision to end Jammu and Kashmir's special status. Pakistan also suspended its trade with India and stopped the train and bus services.

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New Delhi:

Pakistan Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed has predicted a full-blown war between the two countries underlining that the war is likely to occur in October or November. The provocative statement comes a few days after Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan also threatened India of a nuclear war saying no country will win if it happens. In an official address to the nation, Khan said both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and if war happens the rest of the world will have to bear consequences.

ALSO READ: India not scared of Pakistan's nuclear threats, says Eastern Army Commander

While addressing a ceremony in his home town Rawalpindi, Rashid affirmed that the time for a final struggle for Kashmir has come and the war with India will be the "last this time".

"Kashmir is on the brink of destruction due to barbarian and fascist Narendra Modi, and Pakistan is the only obstacle in front of him. Why is the rest of the Muslim world silent over the issue?" Rashid asked.

"Jinnah had assessed the anti-Muslim mindset in India long ago. Those who still think about the possibility of dialogue with India are fools," he was quoted as saying by Pakistan Today.

ALSO READ: Why Pakistan PM Imran Khan is under massive pressure on Kashmir

"Imran Khans upcoming speech at the United Nations on Sept 27 holds vital significance. We are lucky to have a friend like China standing with us," he said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has issued NOTAM (notice to airmen) and Naval warning in the view of a possible missile test-firing from Sonmiani flight test range near Karachi.

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New Delhi:

Delhi Cabinet has approved free travel to female passengers in public transport buses effective from 29 October 2019. Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said that a single journey pass will be available with the conductors for this purpose.

Women commuters will be able to get free rides using 'single-journey passes' to be available with the bus conductors. Those not willing to avail free ride may buy tickets," Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said in a press conference.

According to a statement, women employees of the Delhi government, local bodies and undertakings will not be entitled for transport allowance if they opt for free ride in Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and cluster buses.

"The departments, local bodies, autonomous bodies etc will take an undertaking from their women staff to the effect that they are not availing this free travel facility," it said.

The transport department will also write to the Ministry of Finance after implementation of the scheme, to consider issuing necessary instructions in this regard to all ministries, Central government departments and autonomous bodies in Delhi, the statement added.

The Delhi Assembly recently approved a supplementary grant of Rs 140 crore to facilitate free ride for women in buses for the current fiscal. The government will reimburse Rs 10 per single-journey pass, to the DTC and similar payment will be made in case of Cluster buses. Delhi Assembly has also approved a grant of Rs 150 crore for implementation of schemes in Metro trains.

"The Delhi Metro had said that a board meeting will be held on these issues, but has not mentioned when it will be held," Gahlot said when asked about progress in implementing the scheme in Metro trains.

The cabinet has directed the DTC to propose suitable amendments in DTC (Free & Concessional Passes) Regulations, 1985, if any, so that it could be be notified in the official gazette.

Both DTC and DIMTS will strengthen their ticket checking mechanisms prevent "misuse" and "pilferage" of single journey passes.

Earlier, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had announced that rides on DTC and cluster buses will be free for them from October 29 in his Independence Day speech at Chhatrasal Stadium. Kejriwal had announced free rides for women in public transport buses and Delhi Metro in June. There are 5,500 buses, including of 3,800 of the Delhi Transport Corporation and over 1,600 cluster (orange) buses operated by the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System.

"With this move, our sisters will be able to fulfil their dreams because they have to travel long distances for their studies and work," Kejriwal had said.

Speaking about those opposing his government's free ride scheme, the chief minister said, "Their first point was that everything is being made free. I want to say to them that I am not splurging or stealing money."

He added that it is the public's tax money which was earlier stolen and he has saved it to facilitate people. Kejriwal said he was being questioned by many on grounds of gender equality.

Asserting that there is no gender equality in the country, he said, "In Delhi's working population, women account for only 11 per cent while around 90 per cent are men."

"Currently, only 30 per cent of women and 70 per cent of men travel in public transport buses and metro trains. Our free ride scheme will significantly help women realise their dreams," he added.

Kejriwal had also said the scheme will strengthen the economy which is going through a slowdown as women will travel more for shopping.

(With PTI Inputs)
highlights Shivakumar is summoned by ED in a money laundering case.

The case was filed based on a charge sheet filed by IT department.

Shivakumar said he will go to Delhi later this afternoon.

New Delhi:

A day after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) issued a fresh summon to DK Shivakumar, the Congress leader on Friday reiterated that he has done nothing illegal and the BJP members could enjoy harassing and giving him trouble. In what spells trouble for the former Karnataka minister, the law enforcement agency on Thursday asked him to appear before it at 10:30 am today. The development comes hours after the Karnataka High Court dismissed a petition filed by Shivakumar, seeking to quash ED's previous summons, issued in December 2018 in connection with a money laundering case.

"There is no illegal activities that I have done. BJP leaders have said it on record, they are going to harass me. Let them enjoy giving me trouble," Shivakumar was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. The Congress leader, however, has promised to cooperate with the ED, adding that he is busy till this afternoon and will go to Delhi afterwards.

DK Shivakumar, Congress on being summoned by ED: Theres no illegal activities that I've done. BJP leaders have said it on record, they're going to harass me. Let them enjoy giving me trouble. But I'll participate&cooperate. I am busy till this afternoon, then I will go to Delhi. https://t.co/4Ad4atOpzA pic.twitter.com/mi8h2pJTHc  ANI (@ANI) August 30, 2019

READ | In a first, Karnataka to have 3 deputy chief ministers as Yediyurappa allocates portfolios

Elaborating about the case, he was summoned in, he further said, " I have requested the Court that it is a simple Income Tax matter. I have already filed ITR. There is no Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) Act. Last night, they summoned me to come to Delhi. I will respect law".

"From the past two years, entire property of my 84-year-old mother has been attached by various investigation authorities as benami property. Our entire blood has already been sucked," Shivakumar, the water resources minister in the previous Congress-JDS government, went on to claim further.

The ED had in September, 2018 registered a money-laundering case against Shivakumar and few others on the basis of an alleged tax evasion and hawala transactions case.

READ | Deve Gowda targets Siddaramaiah over Collapse of JDS-Congress government in Karnataka

The agency had booked Shivakumar, Haumanthaiah, an employee at Karnataka Bhavan in New Delhi, and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The case has been filed based on a charge sheet (prosecution complaint) filed by the Income Tax Department against him early last year before a special court in Bengaluru on charges of alleged tax evasion and hawala transactions worth crores.

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New Delhi:

The CBI has summoned senior BJP leader Mukul Roy, former Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee, who recently joined the BJP, in connection with the Narada sting case, sources said on Wednesday. The investigating agency has also summoned Trinamool Congress MP Aparupa Poddar, they said. Chatterjee has been asked to appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday and Poddar in the first week of September, the sources in the probe agency said.

In Delhi, the CBI earlier in the day questioned Trinamool Congress' Rajya Sabha MP K D Singh in connection with the case in which some persons resembling party leaders were seen accepting money, officials said.

The agency has also called Mathew Samuels, the editor of Narada news, who had provided the recordings purportedly showing alleged payments received by politicians and senior bureaucrats of West Bengal government.

In the sting operation, which was claimed to have been carried out in 2014, some persons resembling senior TMC leaders are seen accepting money from the representatives of a fictitious company in return for favours.

The CBI had booked 12 top TMC leaders, including MPs and West Bengal ministers, and an IPS officer in connection with the case.

An FIR was lodged for alleged criminal conspiracy under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with bribery and criminal misconduct.

(With PTI inputs)

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highlights Sensex jumped over 200 points, trading higher at 37,274.63.

Nifty reclaimed the 11,000 level at 09:30 hours.

Top gainers in Sensex pack include Tata Steel, ONGC, SBI among others.

Mumbai:

Domestic equity benchmark BSE Sensex jumped over 200 points and the Nifty reclaimed the 11,000 level in early trade on Friday led by gains in financial and energy stocks amid positive global cues.

The 30-share index was trading 205.70 points, or 0.55 per cent, higher at 37,274.63 at 09:30 hours, while the broader Nifty rose 61.35 points, or 0.56 per cent, to 11,009.65. In the previous session, the BSE barometer ended 382.91 points, or 1.02 per cent, lower at 37,068.93, and the Nifty shed 97.80 points, or 0.89 per cent, to finish at 10,948.30.

Top gainers in the Sensex pack in early trade on Friday included Tata Steel, Vedanta, TCS, Yes Bank, ONGC, Tata Motors, HDFC twins, SBI, IndusInd Bank and ICICI Bank, rising up to 3 per cent. On the other hand, TechM, HCL Tech, TCS, Bharti Airtel, Infosys and Asian Paints fell up to 1 per cent. Investor sentiment recovered tracking firm cues from global markets, traders said.

READ | Rupee slips 20 paise to 71.47 against US Dollar in early trade

Bourses in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan were trading on a positive note in their respective late morning sessions. Exchanges on Wall Street too ended in the green on Thursday. Market is also awaiting the government's official estimate of GDP growth for Q1 FY20 to be released later in the day.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday played down deepening slowdown as just "soft patch mutating into a cyclical downswing". In the annual report for FY19, the central bank conceded that diagnosing the exact problems was "difficult", but reiterated that the issues were not structural in nature.

READ | August 31 Deadline: Only 2 DAYS Left To File Income Tax Returns, Here Are Steps To File ITR

Foreign portfolio investors sold shares worth a net of Rs 986.58 crore on Thursday, while domestic institutional investors purchased shares worth Rs 489.23 crore, provisional data showed.

The rupee, meanwhile, appreciated 11 paise against its previous close to trade at 71.68 in early session. Global oil benchmark Brent crude was trading 0.17 per cent higher at 60.59 per barrel.

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highlights Greta was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at 12.

Her climate stir outside Swedish parliament began in 2018.

She was quickly joined by other students around the world.

New York:

Teenage climate campaigner Greta Thunberg said the "war on nature must end" and called on Donald Trump to listen to science after she sailed into New York on a zero-emissions yacht Wednesday. The 16-year-old completed a 15-day journey across the Atlantic shortly after 4:00 pm (2000 GMT), stepping off the boat onto a Manhattan dock to cheering crowds chanting her name. "It is devastating and so horrible. It's hard to imagine. They are a clear sign that we need to stop destroying nature," she told waiting reporters when asked how she felt about raging fires in the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest.

The Swede also rebuked Trump, a notorious climate change skeptic. "My message for him is listen to the science and he obviously doesn't do that," she said, as she brought her environmental message to the United States for the first time.

Thunberg poked fun at the president too by saying she was "pretty sure" windmills don't cause cancer, in reference to a comment Trump made at a Republican fundraising event in April.

The teenager has become a symbol for climate action with her stark warnings of catastrophe if the world does not act now to cut carbon emissions and curb global warming. Thunberg, who was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at the age of 12, began sitting outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018 to get members to act on climate change.

She was quickly joined by other students around the world, as word of her strike spread through the media, and the "Fridays for future" movement was born.

She will attend a summit on zero emissions at the United Nations next month but refused to fly because of the carbon emissions caused by planes.

The Swede was offered a ride on the Malizia II racing yacht skippered by Pierre Casiraghi, the son of Monaco's Princess Caroline, and German round-the-world sailor Boris Herrmann. Thunberg has received criticism and abuse for her uncompromising attitude, however.

Her voyage sparked controversy after a spokesman for co-skipper Herrmann told Berlin newspaper TAZ that several people would fly into New York to help take the yacht back to Europe.

Hermann himself will also return by plane, according to the spokesman.

Malizia's manager insisted, though, that the young activist's journey would be climate neutral, as the flights would "be offset."

A few hundred well-wishers and activists clapped and chanted "Greta, Greta, Greta" as she completed her 3,000-nautical-mile (5,550 kilometers) trip under overcast skies.

She passed the Statue of Liberty and headed up the Hudson River before docking at North Cove Marina near the World Trade Center.

The United Nations sent a flotilla of 17 sailboats, one for each of its sustainable development goals for 2030, to welcome her.

Thunberg endured rough seas and cramped conditions but said she never felt seasick once. She ate freeze-dried food and used a bucket as a toilet.

"It's insane that a 16-year-old has to cross the Atlantic Ocean to make a stand. This, of course, is not something that I want everyone to do," she said, smiling.

Thunberg added that she planned to rest before joining youngsters striking outside the UN on Friday.

The Malizia II yacht left Plymouth in southern England on August 14, and the teenager marked the first anniversary of the start of her school strike on August 20.

The 18-meter yacht features state-of-the-art solar panels on its deck and sides, and two hydro-generators provide the vessel's electricity.

It can travel at speeds of around 35 knots (70 kilometers an hour).

Thunberg has said that she does not yet know how she will return to Europe.

Ahead of the UN summit on September 23, Thunberg will take part in youth demonstrations, before heading to Canada, Mexico and then to Chile for another UN conference in December.

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These days, Jaya Bachchan's mercury has risen when Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was called for questioning by the Enforcement Directorate in a case related to the Panama Papers Leak. has responded to. In fact, he did not say much on questioning Aishwarya, but he definitely said that, 'These people are scared of UP'. In fact, during this time, Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan refused to say anything about the action against her daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. However, when she was told that yesterday Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut had given a statement that Jaya ji is vocal in Parliament, so her children are being harassed.

To this, Jaya Bachchan said, 'There is a saying in English. Who was the first to run away from the faltering boat? This is what is happening to them. I am scared of UP. With this, he further said on the question of raiding Samajwadi Party leaders, 'Elections are coming, so these people are targeting. These people are scared of red hats. Only this red cap will put these people in the dock. With this, he said on the suspension of Rajya Sabha MPs, 'Of these 5 are women, the rest are men. What have these people done that these people have been sitting in the cold for a month. Those who do not have human feelings, they do not have the right to sit in the House.

Let us tell you that on Monday, Aishwarya Rai was called by the Enforcement Directorate for questioning in the case related to the Panama Papers leak. In fact, he is accused of depositing money abroad in violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). He was interrogated for about 5 and a half hours.

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Iran: The Iranian foreign ministry has refuted a claim made by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that the two countries had held direct conversations in recent months. "Iran has held no direct contacts with the US since the commencement of the negotiations in Vienna on the renewal of the 2015 nuclear deal," Saeed Khatibzadeh, the ministry's spokesman, was cited as saying.

The US has "communicated both through the Europeans and directly to Iran," Sullivan told reporters in Washington on Friday. "Since the start of the talks in Vienna, Iran has received certain communications on the issues of negotiations in written and unwritten formats through EU mediators, to which answers have been given on the spot," Khatibzadeh stated.

Former US President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in May 2018, and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran in an attempt to reach a new agreement.

Representatives from China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Iran have held seven rounds of negotiations in the Austrian capital since early April, with the United States indirectly involved, with the goal of bringing the US back to the JCPOA and laying the groundwork for its full implementation.

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ROME: Following his first face-to-face meeting with incoming German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the two countries are likely to align their views on the European Union's (EU) budgetary laws.

According to sources, the two countries have long had opposing viewpoints on the EU's budget and public debt guidelines (i.e., how member states should manage their public spending), with Italy taking a more flexible approach and Germany taking a tougher one.

However, in the post-Covid phase -- particularly in light of the 750 billion euro (USD846 billion) "Next Generation EU" recovery tool -- the Italian Prime Minister stated that the bloc needs to continue its integration process and reach an agreement on the Stability and Growth Pact's criteria.

When the European Union initiated a review of this accord in October, Draghi and Scholz "briefly addressed" the adjustments that would be required to align it with the bloc's new goals. "All of our countries are obliged to fund unprecedented projects in the sectors of digital transformation, environmental transition, defence, and also in terms of cooperation in the post-pandemic phase," Draghi said during a joint press conference after their meeting on Monday. "These are enormous projects," he added, "and it will be vital to evaluate how they can be incorporated within the new budget regulations."

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New Delhi: Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Jaya Bachchan, who has often been embroiled in controversy over her controversial statements, lashed out at the Central government and BJP MPs in the Upper House on Monday (December 20, 2021). The SP MP cursed the government for bad days and said, "You don't let us speak, instead strangle us.''

In fact, the Upper House was discussing the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Bill, 2021 on Monday. Meanwhile, SP MP Jaya Bachchan had a heated exchange with BJP MPs sitting on the Treasury bench. Jaya, regardless of the dignity of Parliament, was furious with BJP MPs and said, "I was personally attacked. Very soon you people are going to have bad days. I curse you that you people will have bad days. Strangle us, you run the House.'' Jaya Bachchan also hit out at the opposition party leaders saying before whom are you surrendering.

Jaya Bachchan further said that what is happening in the House is very sad. If you don't have the slighter respect left for your colleagues, strangle us, you are not allowing us to speak. A member made a personal comment on her, which was further agitated. She appealed to the Chairman that action should be taken against such members who have abused me and my career. How can one make a personal comment about someone? No one has any respect left in their hearts for their colleagues and for the MPs sitting outside. It may be mentioned that on Monday morning itself, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had summoned Jaya Bachchan's daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to appear before it in the Panama Papers leak case, after which ED also questioned Aishwarya. Many are trying to link Jaya Bachchan's anger with Aishwarya's interrogation.

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New Delhi: Vaccine boosters, or additional doses, were considered an important option to prevent omicron, but there are cases in Delhi that have contracted corona infection even after taking the third dose. Yes, omicron infection is also said to have been confirmed in genome sequencing of samples of such patients. The three patients are said to be admitted to Loknayak Hospital these days. This was among the 12 patients found together on Friday last week. The three patients are said to have been diagnosed with omicron infection last week. All of them are currently admitted to the Omicron ward but none of them has symptoms of infection. Giving this information, a senior doctor at the hospital said, "Booster doses have not been approved in the country so far.''

In fact, these people had recently gone on a foreign trip and had taken an additional dose of vaccine there. However, after coming to Delhi, when corona infection was detected at the screening at the airport, they were admitted here. It has not yet been mentioned which vaccine did they take the booster of? Let us also tell you that many countries have approved booster doses after the cases of omicron increased. In countries like Germany, vaccines are now being administered to protect children from infection. Let me tell all of you that the Government of India has also not given the green signal to the booster dose of the vaccine so far.

In fact, in the recent past, NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul had said at a press conference that first of all, it is the priority of the government to vaccinate all the people in India completely. Talking about Delhi, according to Loknayak Hospital here, more than 50 corona infected patients have been admitted so far, out of which a total of 22 people have been found to be infected with omicron. Out of these, 10 patients have been discharged and 12 omicron infected patients are still undergoing treatment.

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New Delhi: The new corona variant Omicron has added to everyone's problems around the world. While Omicron has caused its first death in the US, the variant has claimed 12 lives in the UK so far. Meanwhile, the problems of governments over Christmas and New Year parties are now on the rise. The Netherlands has already imposed a lockdown in its country till January 14. Schools, colleges, museums, pubs, discotheques, and restaurants will remain completely closed here. On the other hand, the US and UK governments may now impose partial lockdowns in view of the rush on Christmas and New Year.

While Britain currently makes it mandatory to show vaccination certificates before going to nightclubs and parties, Israel has banned travel from today by putting 10 countries, including the US, Canada, and Germany, on a no-fly list. The French government has completely banned fireworks on Christmas and New Year so that people do not gather. Ireland has also issued an order to stop entry to pubs and bars in its country after 8 pm.

Omicron is now spreading its legs rapidly in many parts of India. Six new omicron cases have been found in the country on Monday, after which the cases of omicron-infected people have now increased to 171. Above all, omicron cases are now being reported continuously in Delhi, while Delhi has also reported more than 100 corona cases in a day for the first time in six months. The Maharashtra government has issued guidelines to ban Christmas and New Year parties. Experts have been repeatedly warning that the third wave of corona could hit India. First warning IIT Kanpur said that the third wave of corona may occur in January and February.

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Islamabad: Pakistan had convened a meeting of the Islamic Cooperation Organisation (OIC) on Sunday and a total of 57 Muslim leaders were sent to Nyota. But only leaders of 20 countries attended the meeting convened by Pak. In addition, some other countries brought only their ambassadors to the meeting. Pak PM Imran Khan has been engulfed in his own country and his foreign policy is being questioned. In fact, it was only on December 19 that India also convened a meeting of 5 countries on the Afghan crisis. The meeting was attended by foreign ministers from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. All these 5 Islamic countries border Afghanistan and the role of these countries is considered very important to control the situation in this troubled country.

While separate meetings were going on in Islamabad and New Delhi on Sunday, foreign policy experts say India's strategy has dealt a major blow to Pakistan. In fact, Pakistan has been working with Turkey and Malaysia for the past several years to establish the leadership of Islamic countries. But the arrival of only the leaders of 20 countries was nothing short of a shock for him. Not only that, leaders of 5 of those 57 Muslim countries were present at the Delhi meeting. The arrival of leaders of Islamic countries in Delhi inplace of Islamabad raises questions about Pakistan's status in the world.

The OIC meeting has agreed to set up trust funds to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. Not only that, Pakistan PM Imran Khan once again linked the Kashmir issue to Islam and urged the member states to unite. However, there was no statement from any other country on this also. Addressing the meeting, the Pak PM said, "The people of Palestine and Kashmir want a united response from the Islamic world. Imran said the Islamic Cooperation Organisation should unite to inform the world about the teachings of Islam.

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Amritsar: There seems to be an atmosphere of instability in Punjab these days. The question arises as to who is spoiling the atmosphere in Punjab. Is Pakistan plotting behind the sacrilege cases in Punjab? These questions are being raised because two gurudwaras in Punjab reportedly came to light in two gurudwaras one after the other before the Punjab assembly elections, after which Punjab is on high alert. The Centre has also issued an alert to the Punjab government.

The Union Home Ministry has directed to enhance the security of all religious places except all gurudwaras, deras, temples in Punjab. The Home Ministry has said that anti-national elements may try to incite religious sentiments in Punjab. The central government fears that the atmosphere in Punjab could be disturbed using religious places. Cases like sacrilege can disturb the religious harmony of Punjab. The state government has also been put on alert following the central government's input. Instructions have been issued to install CCTV cameras in all religious places, increase lighting and increase the number of security personnel. Punjab's ADGP Law and Order has directed all police commissioners and SSP to tighten security at shrines. It said that in view of the post-atrocities environment, the police chiefs of the districts themselves should monitor the security arrangements.



According to sources, meanwhile, agencies have received inputs that Pakistan may conspire to incite religious sentiments in Punjab before the elections. However, Pakistan's plots in villages bordering Punjab have also been seen last night. A suspected drone was spotted in the Gurdaspur sector near the international border at around 11.30 pm, which was fired at 5 rounds by a BSF patrolling team, after which the suspected drone went back to Pakistan's border. If all these three things are taken care of and coordinated by the cases of atrocities in Punjab, input from agencies, and timing of Pakistani drones, the question automatically arises whether Pakistan is behind the cases of atrocities in Punjab. Does Pakistan want to spoil the atmosphere in Punjab once again before the elections?

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During the two decades of the war on terror, all the wounds Pakistan suffered were self-inflicted, said Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan.

During a ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, the Pakistan PM stated that every nation, including Pakistan, has its highs and lows. "There will be consequences if you abandon your principles and make materialistic decisions." He recalled how the previous administration prioritised money over human life. "We also can't hold anyone else accountable for what they did." Pakistan's Prime Minister assured that the country's problems would be resolved soon. "We simply need to fix the system and institute the rule of law and meritocracy. We must put an end to this elite enslavement." "This, however, will not happen overnight. We need to weigh in on this as a group "The PM emphasised that Pakistan will soon overcome its current account deficit and achieve growth levels last seen in the 1970s, according to the report.

Despite facing severe challenges such as the coronavirus pandemic, Pakistan's international reputation has improved over the years. "We shouldn't think we're out of the woods just yet, but the country's image has definitely improved. This was evident at the OIC conference." The Prime Minister stated that Pakistan's position was not only accepted by the world, but that the country's goals for Afghanistan were adopted by European nations and even the World Health Organization.

"This is something we must comprehend. Whether you agree with the Taliban government or not, you must consider the 40 million people who live in the country. Their lives are on the line." He stated that this is a man-made humanitarian crisis. "We can avoid it by defrosting Afghanistan's assets and increasing liquidity."

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Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is in trouble these days. In fact, she was questioned by the ED in the Panama Papers case last Monday. Meanwhile, the investigating agency recorded Aishwarya Rai's statement in Delhi. She is said to be accused of depositing money abroad in violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). Aishwarya Rai was questioned by the ED for nearly 5-and-a-half hours yesterday during which she was asked several questions.

List of questions asked by Aishwarya -

- AMIC PARTNERS was an incorporated and registered company in the British Virgin Islands in 2005. What is your relationship with this company?

- Do you know the law firm where Mossack Fonseca registered the company?

- The directors of this company include you, your father Kotedadiraman Rai Krishna Rai, your mother Kavita Rai and your brother Aditya Rai. What can you say about this?

- Initial paid-up capital is $50,000. Each share was valued at $1, and each director had 12,500 shares. Why did you become a shareholder from your position as a director?

- Why was your position changed as a shareholder in June 2005?

- Why did the company become inactive in 2008?

- Was permission sought from RBI for financial transactions?

You must be aware that actor Amitabh Bachchan's daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai has been summoned before. In fact, she asked for two more time. The Enforcement Directorate had initiated an inquiry into the allegations of foreign exchange violations in 2017. At that time, a notice was issued to the Bachchan family asking them to explain their foreign remittances from 2004 under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS) of the Reserve Bank of India. The enforcement directorate sources say that an offshore company, Amic Partners, was inducted into the British Virgin Islands in 2004, with Aishwarya Rai as director. Legal firm Mossack Fonseca registered the company with a paid-up capital of $50,000. The actor is said to have quit the company in 2009 and was acquired by Dubai-based BKR Adonis.

What is the Panama Paper leak case?- Yes, in fact, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) released data on April 3, 2016, under the name Panama Papers. The data included the names of politicians, businessmen, celebrities from 200 countries, including India, who were accused of money laundering. The list was listed from 1977 to the end of 2015. The list included the names of 300 Indians. Apart from Aishwarya, Amitabh Bachchan and Ajay Devgn were also included in the list.

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Chandigarh: India has taken a major step in view of the threat of air strikes. In fact, India has deployed its first air defence system in Punjab. Let me tell all of you that the Indian Air Force has deployed the first squadron of the S-400 Air Defence Missile System from Russia in Punjab. In fact, government sources themselves have informed about it. Sources said the decision has been taken in view of the threat of air strikes from both China and Pakistan. Let us also tell all of you that parts of the Russian missile system have started arriving in India earlier this month and the unit will start operating fully in the coming few weeks.

What are the features of S-400- Under the information received, India has purchased 5 squadrons of S-400 Air Defence System from Russia for Rs 35,000 crore. It is said to destroy dangers at 400 kilometres in the air. In fact, the delivery of the first squadron will be completed by the end of this year. According to sources, equipment is being brought to India by air and sea. At the same time, it is said that after the first squadron is deployed, the Air Force will focus on the North Eastern Border and provide training to military personnel across the country. As part of the information received, iaf officers and staff have been trained on the system in Russia.

The air defence system will give India an edge over South Asian countries and will be able to destroy enemy aircraft and cruise missiles at 400 km in the air. The S-400 missile defence system is said to have 4 different missiles, which can destroy enemy ships, ballistic missiles, AWACS ships at a short range of 400 km, 250 km, medium range 120 km and 40 km. Not only that, due to tight erring bargaining, India has been able to reduce the price of S-400 by billion dollars.

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Ramgarh: Police have recovered a truck traveling from Andhra Pradesh to Nepal from a new bend in the Kuju OP area of Ramgarh district. According to reports, the truck was full of ganja. Police have recovered the drug worth about Rs 40 lakh. The police have taken this action after receiving the secret record. SP Prabhat Kumar said a team was formed to nab the smugglers led by Kishore Rajak SDPO Ramgarh. He said that 78 packets of ganja-like substance slipped into the cabin of the truck and recovered it.

SP said, "On thorough interrogation, it was reported that the truck was being loaded from Andhra Pradesh and taken towards Nepal. As a result, police raided and recovered the truck and arrested two persons present in it. Prabhat Kumar said that the name of the kingpin of this gang has also come to the fore. The administration has registered an FIR in the case and arrested 2 persons. Further action is being taken in the case. No documents relating to the registration number of the truck have been received and what has been received is also fake.

It may be recalled that the police are continuously conducting raids against illegal smugglers in the state and are taking strict action against them. The police administration in the district has been conducting a drive for the past several days to crack down on smugglers. Several smugglers have been taken into custody so far.

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New Delhi: Once again a shameful case has come to the fore from Pakistan. This time the extremists have attacked the Narian Pora Hindu temple in Karachi, Pakistan. Where the fundamentalists have vandalized the temple of Maa Durga as well as broke the torso of the statue of Maa Durga. Pakistani reporter Vingas has given this news by tweeting. Vinagas has also told in his tweet that this is the 9th major attack on Hindu temples in the last 22 months.

The same Pakistani reporter Vinagas has said in his tweet that even after the notice issued by the Supreme Court and the government's claim to protect the temples, this is the 9th attack on a Hindu temple in 22 months, nothing has changed. This is when the guilty are allowed to walk free. It should be noted that even before this, radicals have attacked many temples in Pakistan.

Attack on Narian Pora Hindu Temple in Karachi. This is 9th attack on Hindu Temple in 22 months despite Supreme Court notices and government claims that they protect Temple  nothing has changed.

It happens when culprits are allowed to walk free. pic.twitter.com/RevrRED2mr

The same Pakistan Supreme Court has taken a strict stand in the case of attacks on Hindu temples by extremists in Pakistan in the last few years. The Supreme Court had summoned the Chief Secretary and Inspector General of Police of Punjab province in this matter after the attack on the Ganesh temple by the extremists on the Ganesh temple in the Punjab province of Pakistan. At the same time, in this case, PM Imran Khan issued a statement 24 hours after the incident, promising to restore the temple. Imran Khan had tweeted that he strongly condemns the attack on Rahim Yar Khan's Ganesh temple in Bhong, he has asked IG Punjab to ensure the arrest of all the criminals and take action against any negligence of the police.

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In the summer of 2020, then prime minister KP Sharma Oli, with the intention of dissolving the House of Representatives, was on his way to meet President Bidya Devi Bhandari. No one in their right mind had thought that Oli, who was leading the erstwhile Nepal Communist Party that had won a two-thirds majority in the 2017 general elections, would do that; even the constitution had not given him the right to do so. What was strange was Oli did not even discuss the idea of dissolving the house within his council of ministers.

But, just before Oli was on his way, he was stopped by his chief political advisor Bishnu Rimal.

Yet, Oli was adamant that he wanted a change. While politicians from his own party were opposed to the idea and started talking about replacing Oli, he even threatened that he would break the PMs chair in such a manner that no one would be able to sit on it.

Before his decision to dissolve the lower house, he even spoke to his own partys co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal and told him how he ha made everything ready for the dissolution of the house and he only needed the signature of the president. That is exactly what happened on December 20, 2020.

The president signed Olis document and the house of representatives was dissolved. This caused a lot of noise in the country as political analysts started to question the integrity of the position of the president.

Dahal had warned such a thing would happen during a party secretariat meeting a month prior to the dissolution. Oli, knowing that he did not have the support from people within his party, went ahead with his plan.

Oli, aware that he would not meet the constitutional criteria for the dissolution of the House of Representatives, did it anyway. This meant that the country, which had only received some political stability, was on the brink of getting back to where it was again.

In the next year since then, Olis decision not only split the erstwhile NCP but also brought cracks in the CPN-UML camp. The leadership got changed not only in the central government, but most of the provincial governments too, which meant the country took two steps backwards. The dissolution brought instability. It set bad precedence as even a two-third majority government failed, says senior advocate Satish Krishna Kharel. This has boosted the confidence of radical parties while it, in many ways, also made democracy look like a joke.

Preparations for the unconstitutional move

File: Amending the Constitutional Council Act with an ordinance, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had conducted the council meeting with just two other members on Tuesday, December 15, 2020.

The decision to dissolve the house was not made haphazardly. People close to Oli say preparations were underway for a long time. They say even though Oli was the party chairman, he was quite insecure about the future as he did not trust many people. So whenever he felt that his position was weak, he would always suggest dissolving the house.

The first time he felt he needed to dissolve the house was when his party leaders requested him to quit as the party chair. This did not go down well with him. Hence, he met Chief Justice Cholendra Shamsher Rana to bring a new ordinance that would make it easy for Oli to change the clause related to the Constitutional Councils meeting. Post-ordinance, everyone started calling for Olis resignation, but he was adamant.

A little while later, Oli did something that again did not go down well with political parties. The second wave of Covid-19 was at its peak when Oli brought an ordinance related to political parties on April 20, 2020.

Analysts say this move was quite low from Oli who, despite being on top of the political ladder, felt weak and brought an ordinance to prove he was still powerful. He felt his power was weakening when his party members started to question Olis working as a prime minister. Others believe he brought the ordinance because Dahal, who was the NCPs co-chair, was opposed to the Millennium Challenge Compact. Everyone was criticising Oli and his decision, but he was not fazed by any of it. Wanting to show every one of his power, Oli started to take whimsical decisions on issues of national importance.

The origin of political instability

L-R: KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal

Narayan Kaji Shrestha, the spokesperson of erstwhile NCP, says the dissolution of the house will have a long-term impact on Nepali politics.

Oli made three major mistakes. First, he disregarded and disrespected everything the NCP stood for. Second, he attacked a unified party that had just won the elections and disrespected the communist movement. And finally, he mocked our constitution that took years to draft, says Shrestha.

While Shrestha says this, some leaders from the NCP say that had Oli not dissolved the parliament, the other chair, Dahal, would have taken over the NCP. But, how right was it on Olis part to disregard the constitution to save his party? Oli has not answered this questions nor have his close aides.

In fact, the involvement of the judiciary in executive affairs began with Oli when he apparently consulted Chief Justice Cholendra Shamsher Rana on several political issues before dissolving the house.

Current Minister for Urban Development Ram Kumari Jhakri says Olis idea to dissolve the parliament in December 2020 left a bad taste on everyone as it was completely needless.

He did it for his personal gain and that is what was wrong, says Jhakri. We tried so hard to ensure Oli didnt break the system, but we could do nothing and that resulted in our party splitting. But, our efforts are still underway to ensure that people like Oli dont ruin this system.

But, despite such efforts, the move of December 20, 2020, already has had a severe impact on national politics. Multiple parties split. The opposition leader became the prime minister.

More importantly, no one is sure if the country will get political stability in the next few years.
Home  Just In  Redmi Note 10 Pro: Why this new model is likely to rule the mid-range phone market in Nepal

Redmi Note 10 Pro is the latest edition of Xiaomis famous Note series. It is also one of the many Note 10 series smartphones that have been launched this year. Redmis Note series are known for their excellent features for affordable pricing although there was intense competition for smartphones in this particular price range this year.

Regarding the competition in the price range, Samsung was already going head-to-head with Xiaomi in Nepal and India. The rise of Realme was also evident as it came up with smartphones like Realme 8i which got a good response from the market. There are other options like Vivo or Oppo as well.

The Redmi Note series competes with its own Poco and Redmi series as well. This is probably the market segment with the highest numbers of customers in Nepal and is the very reason that companies are launching multiple models in this price category. Accordingly, Redmi Note 10 Pro also has a lot to offer and can be the number one phone in the mid-range category within the next few days.

To know about that, lets get into the details of the phone.

Specifications

Dimension Height: 164mm

Width: 76.5mm

Thickness: 8.1mm

Weight: 193 grams Display 6.67-inch AMOLED, 120HZ, HDR10, 1200 nits (peak) Sim Dual sims Resolution 1,080*2,400 pixels Protection Corning Gorilla Glass 5 OS Android 11, MIUI 12 Chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G (6nm) GPU Adreno 618 Storage 64GB/128GB SD card slot Yes RAM 6GB/8GB Camera Front: 16MP, f/2.5

Rear: 108MP, f/1.9

8MP, f/2.2, 119 (ultrawide)

5MP, f/2.4, (macro) AF

2MP, f/2.4, (depth) Sound Loudspeakers with stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack Battery 5020mAh, Li-Po, non-removable

Fast charging 33W

59% in 30 mins Sensors Side-mounted fingerprint, accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass Colours Onyx grey, glacier blue, gradient bronze Price Rs 29,999 (6/64GB)

Rs 33,999 (6/128GB)

Rs 36,999 (8/128GB)

Design and display

Photo: Mi

Redmi Note 10 Pro is one of the best-looking smartphones in this price range. Talking about the build of the phone, it has a glass front, a glass back and a plastic frame. The front and back of the phone have Gorilla Glass 5 protection. Designwise, it has a punch-hole display on the front. There is a side-mounted fingerprint on the phone which works as a power button as well. The phone is 8.1mm thick and weighs lightly at 193 grams.

There is a 6.67-inch AMOLED display on the phone. The phone has a whopping 120Hz refresh rate and reaches a peak brightness of up to 1200 nits while it has a maximum resolution of 1,080*2,400 pixels. The touch sampling rate of the phone is 240Hz.

Cameras

Photo: Mi

Redmi Note 10 Pro features a massive 108MP quad-camera setup on the back. The main 108MP camera is accompanied by an 8MP ultrawide camera, 5MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor. Along with shooting 4K videos and high-resolution photos, there are plenty of camera features on Redmi Note 10 Pro.

There are features like Pro time-lapse, telemacro time-lapse, dual video, video clones, photo clones, shoot steady and plenty of long exposures for cool photography. Though it does not support 60fps recording in 4K, you can record a 60fps video in 1080p.

At the front, there is a 16MP selfie camera. Along with panorama pictures, it can record videos only up to 1080p in 30fps, which is normal for a smartphone in this price range. It can also capture 720p resolution video in 120fps.

Performance and battery life

Photo: mi

Redmi Note 10 Pro runs on Android 11 with MIUI 12 on top. Powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G (8nm) chipset, its graphics are handled by Adreno 618. This is one of the best processors in this price range.

Photo: Mi

Giving life to the phone is a 5020mAh non-removable Li-Po battery. The phone can be charged at incredible speed with a 33W fast charger. The phone gets up to 59% charge in just 30 minutes. The power is decent and can be good for gaming sessions or surfing the internet. The company claims the battery can last up to two days in normal use.

Storage, connectivity and other features

Photo: Mi

Redmi Note 10 Pro comes in three variants with two storage options. The phone comes with 6GB or 8GB of RAM variants and 64GB or 128GB of internal storage options. There is also a dedicated microSDXC card slot in case the internal storage is not enough.

Redmi Note 10 Pro supports dual 4G sims and also dual-band WI-fi. Further, it supports Bluetooth 5.1, GPS and is NFC enabled. The phone also supports USB Type-C 2.0 and an infrared port. For audio connectivity, the phone has stereo speakers as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The price of Redmi Note 10 Pro is Rs 29,999 for 6/64GB, Rs 33,999 for 6/128GB and Rs 36,999 for the 8/128GB variants.

Verdict

Redmi Note 10 Pro is probably the best smartphone in this price category and there are hardly any smartphones on the market that can compete against it. Xiaomi really has been brilliant in mid-range smartphones. This is the very reason it has been successful to amass a lot of customers over the years and is the number one smartphone company in India and Nepal in terms of sales.

A good display, safety, high-resolution camera, good processor, well-built, good battery backup, good audio: Redmi Note 10 Pro literally has everything you need on a good smartphone. If you want a smartphone under Rs 30,000 this is a no brainer.

Is there any smartphone better than Redmi Note 10 Pro? If there is, let us know.

Also, check the price of MI phones in Nepal.
* Court hands down long jail term to opposition politician

* Finds him guilty of organising mass unrest

* He denies wrongdoing, wife says it's political revenge

* Verdict part of long-running crackdown on opposition (Adds Blinken comment)

By Andrew Osborn and Tom Balmforth

MOSCOW, Dec 14 (Reuters) - A court in Belarus sentenced the opposition leader's husband to 18 years in jail on Tuesday after he was arrested during an attempt to run for president against incumbent Alexander Lukashenko, a verdict his wife called political revenge.

The court found Syarhei Tsikhanouski, a 43-year-old video blogger, guilty of organising mass unrest and of inciting social hatred, and handed him one of the longest jail terms in modern Belarusian history. His supporters said the charges were fabricated and politically motivated.

Syarhei, husband of opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, was arrested at an opposition protest in May 2020 after being barred from taking part in an election later that year which his wife contested instead.

He rose to prominence in Belarus after comparing Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, to a moustachioed cockroach from a childrens fairy tale.

His jailing angered many Belarusians who went on to stage the biggest protests against Lukashenko in post-Soviet history after what they said was a rigged presidential election, something Lukashenko denied.

Tuesday's harsh jail term is part of a pattern that has seen Lukashenko, who is supported by Russia, use the courts and the police to systematically repress his opponents and critics by locking them up for long periods or forcing them abroad. It is one of the starkest examples of his decision to ignore sanctions and Western condemnation in order to continue his crackdown.

"My husband...is sentenced to 18 years in prison," his wife, opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to Lithuania to escape the sweeping post-election crackdown by Lukashenko, said on Twitter.

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"The dictator publicly takes revenge on his strongest opponents. While hiding the political prisoners in closed trials, he hopes to continue repressions in silence. But the whole world watches. We won't stop," she wrote.

There was no immediate comment from Lukashenko, whose crackdown on opponents and role in a standoff over migrants with the European Union have triggered Western sanctions against his country.

FIVE OTHERS JAILED FOR 14-16 YEARS

Five supporters of Tsikhanouski were also tried along with him and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 14 to 16 years on Tuesday. They also denied the charges against them.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the convictions and called for Tsikhanouski's immediate release, as well as the release of hundreds of other political prisoners.

"These sentences are further evidence of the regimes disregard for these international obligations as well as for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Belarusians. The Belarusian people deserve better," Blinken said in a statement.

Tsikhanouski's mother Sofya told U.S. broadcaster RFE/RL she feared she would never see her son again.

"How many? Eighteen years for my son? What for?... God... I'm 71. I won't live that long, I won't see my son."

"Innocent people who want a dignified life for their nation are treated as the most dangerous criminals," Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau tweeted. "There is no way that this shameful sentence will be left without consequences for the authorities in Minsk."

Since fleeing Belarus, Tsikhanouskaya has gained international prominence, meeting an array of Western leaders.

Her husband's trial was closed to the public and lawyers were banned from disclosing details of the case.

In July, a Belarusian court jailed former presidential contender Viktor Babariko for 14 years after convicting him on corruption charges he denied.

In September, Maria Kolesnikova, one of the leaders of mass street protests against Lukashenko last year, was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Anais Marin said more than 35,000 people had been arbitrarily detained over the past year in Belarus and that the fear of repression had caused tens of thousands to seek refuge abroad. (Reporting by Tom Balmforth and Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan, Polina Devitt and Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber in Moscow, Alan Charlish in Warsaw; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
(Adds no immediate comment from Buttigieg, background)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun and Airbus Americas CEO Jeffrey Knittel on Monday urged the Biden administration to delay planned deployment of new 5G wireless services, saying it could harm aviation safety.

The executives in a joint letter seen by Reuters asked U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to support postponing AT&T and Verizon's Jan. 5 deployment of C-Band spectrum 5G wireless.

"5G interference could adversely affect the ability of aircraft to safely operate," the letter said, adding it could have "an enormous negative impact on the aviation industry."

The industry and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have raised concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters.

The FAA this month issued airworthiness directives warning 5G interference could result in flight diversions. The agency plans to provide more information before Jan. 5

The Boeing Airbus letter cited an analysis from trade group Airlines for America (A4A) that if the FAA 5G directive had been in effect in 2019, about 345,000 passenger flights and 5,400 cargo flights would have faced delays, diversions or cancellations.

Buttigieg's office did not immediately comment.

In November, AT&T and Verizon delayed commercial launch of C-band wireless service by a month until Jan. 5 and adopted precautionary measures to limit interference.

Aviation industry groups said that was insufficient. Boeing and Airbus said they made a counterproposal that would limit cellular transmissions around airports and other critical areas.

United Airlines Chief Executive Scott Kirby said last week that FAA's 5G directives would bar the use of radio altimeters at about 40 of the country's biggest airports.

Wireless industry group CTIA said 5G is safe and accused the aviation industry of fearmongering and distorting facts.

The Air Line Pilots Association on Monday said that aviation and communications regulators are at a stalemate. "That's a big problem for passengers, shippers and the American economy," the group said. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Increases engineering and manufacturing capabilities as well as capacity in software development and related hardware to deliver end-to-end enhanced technology solutions

DULUTH, Ga., December 21, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AGCO, Your Agriculture Company, (NYSE:AGCO), a worldwide manufacturer and distributor of agricultural machinery and precision ag technology, announced an agreement to acquire Appareo Systems, LLC ("Appareo"), a leader in software engineering, hardware development and electronic manufacturing. The acquisition is expected to close in January 2022.

Appareo, based in Fargo, North Dakota, specializes in the research, development, design, and manufacture of tangible technology that utilizes A.I., mechatronics, and innovative electronics designed to deliver exceptional customer value. The solutions Appareo has delivered are focused on communication, monitoring, sensing, tracking and controlling devices and systems used in the agricultural and aviation industries as well as other off-road businesses.

"Appareo has developed a world-class organization with exceptional capabilities to solve highly complex customer problems in emerging technology areas," said Eric Hansotia, AGCOs Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "We see Appareo as a great addition to support delivering high quality, smart solutions to our farmers to maximize both their user experience and profitability. The addition of Appareo enhances our portfolio and talent as we execute our strategy to provide advanced technology solutions to farmers around the world."

AGCO intends to retain the Appareo team and maintain its operations in Fargo, North Dakota and Paris, France.

Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Statements which are not historical facts, including expectations regarding the closing of the acquisition and its benefits, are forward-looking and subject to risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those suggested by the statements. These risks include, but are not limited to, the failure to satisfy closing conditions, the possible lack of success in developing the technology, and the lack of customer acceptance of the technology. Undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements, which are current as of the date of this release, and AGCO and Appareo Systems disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law.

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About AGCO:

AGCO (NYSE:AGCO) is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of agricultural machinery and precision ag technology. AGCO delivers customer value through its differentiated brand portfolio including core brands like Challenger, Fendt, GSI, Massey Ferguson and Valtra. Powered by Fuse smart farming solutions, AGCOs full line of equipment and services helps farmers sustainably feed our world. Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, USA, AGCO had net sales of approximately $9.1 billion in 2020. For more information, visit www.AGCOcorp.com. For company news, information and events, please follow us on Twitter: @AGCOCorp. For financial news on Twitter, please follow the hashtag #AGCOIR.

Please visit our website at www.agcocorp.com

About Appareo:

Founded in 2003, Appareo is a premier provider of custom electronics and software design for off-highway and airborne equipment. Appareo works with original equipment manufacturers to deliver the desired technologies affordably and effectively when no off-the-shelf capabilities are available. Additionally, through the Intelligent Ag, Galeo, and Stratus brands, Appareo delivers aftermarket electronic and software solutions for agricultural, aviation, and offroad customers. Appareo is based in Fargo, North Dakota with an additional design office in Paris, France. All products are built and supported in the USA. For more information, visit Appareo.com, and follow us on Twitter: @Appareo_.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005609/en/

Contacts

Greg Peterson

Vice President, Investor Relations

(770) 232-8229

greg.peterson@agcocorp.com
DALLAS, Dec. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Four Corners Aviation of Dallas, Texas, will market the extra-large cabin ACJ TwoTwenty as the first of an all-new business jet to its clientele for the 'Freedom by Four Corners Aviation' product entitled Corporate Jet as a Service (CJaaS).

'Freedom by Four Corners Aviation' as well as the ACJ TwoTwenty are both industry-disruptive products. The concept is creating a new value proposition to the business and private aviation market by providing all the benefits of their own scalable aviation department  with a customized and fully integrated ACJ TwoTwenty financed solution, with crew, operations and supplemental lift, but without the hassles of ownership, such as administration, accounting and cost variabilities. It opens up business aviation to a wider clientele by providing an innovative and packaged solution.

Four Corners Aviation, assisted by Mente Group, its sister company, along with ACJ, will market the extra-large cabin ACJ TwoTwenty to the clientele for the 'Freedom by Four Corners Aviation' product. The ACJ TwoTwenty is the first all new business jet dedicated to the 'Freedom by Four Corners Aviation' program entitled Corporate Jet as a Service (CJaaS).

Well Suited to North American Market

"The ACJ TwoTwenty's superior cabin space and ability to connect London to Los Angeles directly all year long make it an excellent choice for the North American market," said Brian Proctor, chief executive officer of Aquila Aviation Ventures, which holds Four Corners Aviation and Mente Group. "Furthermore, it's a true North American aircraft assembled in Canada, engines in Connecticut and the cabin completion is performed in Indiana."

ACJ President Benoit Defforge said, "The ACJ TwoTwenty is a game changer in the business jet market bringing a new value proposition to the market, as is Four Corners' new offer. The 'Freedom' program simplifies the aviation travel experience for executives and high net worth individuals who care about getting to their destinations in comfort yet offering a pioneering solution to aircraft ownership to access the ACJ TwoTwenty," Defforge added.

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We are very pleased to be able to offer the ACJ TwoTwenty to our clientele," said Cameron Gowans, president, and COO of Four Corners Aviation. The reliability of the Airbus platforms, excellent customer support, a third lower key operating cost drivers and twice better residual value vs. other large business jets, while delivering true intercontinental range, make the ACJ TwoTwenty very attractive to our 'Freedom' customers," he added.

Four Corners Aviation Launched in November



Four Corners Aviation was launched in November. It is an industry disruptive product, branded as 'Freedom by Four Corners Aviation.' The concept enables customers to have all the benefits of their own scalable aviation department  with a customized and fully integrated financed lift solution, including aircraft, crew, operations, and supplemental lift, but without the hassles of ownership such as administration, accounting, and uncertainties.

Freedom by Four Corners Aviation is a revolutionary way for clients to enjoy the multiple benefits of private jet travel, without worrying about ownership, financing, operations, insurance, crew management, maintenance, or any of the additional aggravations associated with private jet travel. This radical and sweeping approach to business jet access protects and preserves shareholder and client capital. For more information on Freedom by Four Corners Aviation go to: Four Corners Aviation.

About Four Corners Aviation

Four Corners Aviation has the most comprehensive suite of solutions in business aviation today. Four Corners offers fresh products and services to support business aviation users such as Corporate Jet as a Service, Aircraft Management and Jet Card Solutions.

Four Corners' assets include an aircraft management and charter company and a fleet of Cessna Citation, Embraer Phenom, Bombardier Challenger, and Gulfstream business jets. The business is an ARGUS Platinum Rated Charter Operator, which supports a diverse fleet based throughout the United States and operating around the world.

About Aquila Aviation Ventures LLC

Aquila Aviation Ventures is an investment company formed to serve unmet industry needs and leverage resources across entities to scale for future growth. The company identifies and invests in high-growth firms within the business aviation sector. The company holds Four Corners Aviation and Mente Group. Aquila recently invested in Mente Group, which has permitted it to recapitalize in order to expand its platform and fund high quality products.

About City+Ventures

City+Ventures is a premier development and investment company focused on building companies and communities. With Omaha roots, but regional and national assets, City+Ventures owns and operates a wide array of businesses, including automotive dealerships; carwashes; a private jet management and charter company; real estate management; and construction-related businesses, in addition to holding a real estate portfolio.

In August 2020, City+Ventures' proven track record of reinvention and financial success earned it the No. 71 spot on the Inc. 5000 Company list. For more information, visit Home - City+Ventures (city-ventures.com).

Media Contact:

Jim Gregory

James Gregory Consultancy LLC

(316)558 8578

FCA Logo (PRNewsfoto/Four Corners Aviation)

Cision

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SOURCE Four Corners Aviation
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 21, 2021 /CNW/ -- Binance, the world's leading blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider, and the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority (DWTCA) have signed a cooperation agreement to help advance Dubai's commitment to establishing a new international Virtual Asset ecosystem that will generate long-term economic growth through digital innovation.

Building off Dubai's reputation as a global technology leader, the recent announcement establishing DWTCA as the comprehensive zone and regulator for virtual assets comes as a much-awaited signal for the global industry. This first-of-its-kind hub for crypto assets and blockchain services, will fuel entrepreneurship, boost market confidence and accelerate investment.

Dubai's Virtual Asset ecosystem aims to create a robust regulatory and legislative framework that will support innovation, ensure safe market adoption, and facilitate global acceptance.

As the leading blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem, Binance's commitment to the landmark agreement demonstrates its confidence in Dubai's future-shaping agenda to tap into a new wave of multi-sectoral growth across the global economy.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Founder and CEO of Binance, said: "I am grateful for the confidence the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority has placed in Binance. Together, we share a vision for helping Dubai embrace the new future economy that includes crypto and blockchain. Today, the adoption of crypto and blockchain technology remains in its infancy, but through our leadership position and expertise, combined with the long-term vision of Dubai, we plan to develop a regulatory framework appropriate to fit the fast-moving and progressive nature of virtual assets."

Binance will also participate in this knowledge-sharing ecosystem with its experience in collaborating with global regulators to aid the development of progressive Virtual Asset regulations. The goal is to help crypto exchanges, or businesses that offer blockchain and DLT services, or a wide range of digital currencies and assets to become licensed in Dubai.

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Dubai World Trade Centre Authority remarked: "The new Virtual Assets Hub in Dubai will connect service providers, technology enablers, and governments to co-create the next generation future economy ecosystem for the Virtual Assets industry. Our pioneering 'test-adapt-scale' model is designed to accelerate secure, equitable and sustainable access to new growth opportunities, aiding Dubai's vision for a fully digital and inclusive global society."

Cision

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SOURCE Binance

Cision

View original content: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2021/21/c5664.html
Internet Provider to Break Ground Next Year on State-of-the-Art Fiber Network

BLACKWELL, Okla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bluepeak, an innovative internet provider, announced today that it has received franchise approval from the City of Blackwell, Oklahoma, and will break ground next year on a high-speed fiber network to meet the growing needs of the community, today and in the future. The approximate $3 million expansion effort will bring Bluepeak service to nearly 3,000 residences and businesses in Blackwell.

"We're thrilled to be partnering with the City of Blackwell to build a next-generation, fiber-to-the-home network," said Rich Fish, CEO of Bluepeak. "Bluepeak is a different kind of provider with faster, more reliable speeds that will better connect homes, businesses and organizations across Blackwell."

With Bluepeak's advanced fiber connection, residential customers can get up to 5 gigabits of symmetrical bandwidth and businesses can get up to 10 gigabits of symmetrical bandwidth. Bluepeak's fiber network will provide faster speeds, better connectivity, and the bandwidth to connect more devices for internet, streaming, gaming and more.

"Providing city residents, businesses and industry with additional telecommunication options is paramount in this age of information. The City looks forward to working with Clarity Telecom, LLC/Bluepeak in the coordination of the installation of fiber on the City's poles and underground fiber in its rights-of-way where no poles are present," said Blackwell City Manager Jerry Wieland.

For more information and to receive the latest updates, visit www.mybluepeak.com .

About Bluepeak

Bluepeak is building a faster, more reliable internet without the things that get in the way of great servicelike red tape, hidden fees, and slow response times. Offering up to 5 gigabits of speed for residential customers and 10 gigabits for businesses, Bluepeak is a whole new ballgame  from internet to TV, to connecting every device in a home, to powering a business, Bluepeak not only provides the best fiber connections in the communities it serves, but also meets the growing needs for how its customers live.

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Bluepeak (Clarity Telecom LLC) is known as Vast Broadband today in South Dakota and portions of western Minnesota until those markets rebrand as Bluepeak in the summer of 2022. Visit www.meetbluepeak.com to learn more.

Media Contact:

Brad Krebs

314-973-8090

bkrebs@wearecsg.com

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bluepeak-to-bring-a-faster-more-reliable-internet-to-blackwell-ok-301449035.html

SOURCE Bluepeak
The United States financial sanctions against countries like Iran create a messy regulatory environment where cryptocurrency startups have to pick their battles carefully. So far, the battles these companies aren't picking are having real effects on users and can sometimes directly contradict the companys alleged decentralization philosophy.

Something will come down on someone. We just dont know where or when these regulations will be tested, said Larry Florio, general counsel at Syndicate, a company focused on enabling decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) for tech-savvy collectives.

For a previous example, the crypto custody startup BitGo was penalized in 2020 by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for failing to implement controls designed to prevent interacting with users from sanctioned jurisdictions. Basically, BitGo is almost like a crypto bank; it helps store clients assets in secure vaults. And the legal penalty came when some of those clients may have received cryptocurrency from individuals in sanctioned jurisdictions. OFAC showed this is not allowed under U.S. sanctions. Along those same lines, the crypto exchange Binance has been known to routinely deactivate accounts owned by Iranians and Cubans.

Thats supposedly why the ConsenSys Academy, one of the industrys leading Ethereum-centric educational organizations, banned roughly 50 Iranian students from its online platform in November 2021, claiming a recent review of our records shows that you indicated that you are located in a country that we are prohibited from providing goods or services to under U.S. law.

This compliance review raises questions since the program was free, with no transactions involved, and Coogan Brennan, head of developer relations at ConsenSys Academy, gave an interview to CoinDesk in February 2021 about these Iranian students and the challenges they faced. Former program participant Salman Sadeghi told TechCrunch that Iranians are treated like second-class citizens in web3.

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They knew that we were from Iran from the very beginning, Sadeghi said. I think sanctions harm innocent people as you see, not the government. Its not fairEthereum mining is still popular in Iran. But its the government, mostly, that mines cryptocurrency.

Yet another thwarted student, who goes by @Alireza__28, said that he had already quit his job in Tehran to study at the academy and that getting kicked out of the program without a completion certificate, after months of participation, ruined his career plans.

It was really humiliating, he said. There are many remote blockchain job opportunities that pay with crypto. It doesn't matter where you are living. Another hope that I had was getting a job offer with a visa sponsorship [to leave Iran]. And the other big hope I had was to make a decentralized app from here, myself.

Its also unclear if the sanctions actually apply to this educational program at all. The educational platform Coursera does allow Iranian students with direct permission from the U.S. government. According to Michael Mosier, the former acting director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Biden administration is trying to thaw relations with Iran. As such, OFAC might have granted ConsenSys permission to serve this population. For an example from a different sanctioned country, last year OFAC approved a humanitarian stablecoin distribution campaign in Venezuela.

The big takeaway from the ConsenSys stuff is that its worth talking to experienced lawyers in the OFAC space, Mosier said. I find it hard to believe that ConsenSys cant do this. Theres a lot of times when people self-select out of something rather than deal with the risk.

On the other hand, Florio countered that it is hard to fault companies taking a conservative approach to such sanctions.

Sometimes even just trying to seek a waiver could raise your profile and attract more regulatory scrutiny, Florio said. A lot of the way that the industry works these days is dont ask, dont tell.

There may still be hope for Iranian Ethereum fans. ConsenSys global PR lead Elo Gimenez told TechCrunch his company is fully dedicated to our mission of building the digital economy of tomorrow, which includes exploring ways that we can lawfully share and educate around the world, including in jurisdictions where international engagement can be challenging.

In the meantime, its still commonplace for Iranians to use centralized NFT platforms and tools provided by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubins portfolio companies like Gitcoin or MetaMask, usually in combination with a VPN service to mask their location. The crowdfunding platform Gitcoin, for example, is a crowdfunding platform that hosted a campaign for Persian-speaking students that was active from March until December 2021.

Gitcoin COO Kyle Weiss told TechCrunch that, as of December 8, 2021, his fundraising platform is now marking this grant as inactive out of an abundance of caution to ensure compliance with U.S. law.

However, Mary Beth Buchanan, president, Americas and chief legal officer at Merkle Science and the former general counsel for the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken who previously worked for the Department of Justice, where she contributed to the Sentencing Guidelines for Business Organizations, told TechCrunch she doesnt agree that companies like Gitcoin and ConsenSys Academy need to automatically ban users from sanctioned countries.

Its quite possible the activity they wanted to engage in might even be exempt from sanctions. It may be that the company didnt ask the right questions, Buchanan said. Lots of activities are completely exempt from the sanctions regime and others can be granted a general license. You can also apply to OFAC on a case-by-case basis to ask if what youre doing is okay. there are phone numbers so that even average people can call OFAC and talk through whether an activity is exempt from sanctions.

In short, crypto companies may be choosing to avoid marginalized communities rather than devising strategic ways to include them. Buchanan said, especially in cases that involve art or education, its far less expensive to be compliant than most business owners might expect. In the meantime, some people from Iran, Cuba and other sanctioned countries feel the crypto industry operates with a de facto caste system. Needing to hide one's identity in order to participate in online communities is not the same thing as the community being borderless or inclusive.

Yes, we can develop our own user interfaces and web3 websites, said Aysha Amin, one of the women involved with the shuttered Gitcoin campaign, describing the esoteric concept that people refer to as web3 or the metaverse when describing Ethereum projects and altcoin competitors like Solana. This kind of isolation does not seem good.

Beyond Gitcoin, Amin said shes currently participating in an Ethereum Foundation-supported educational program, called Secureum, while also working for a Tehran-based tech company. Like many Iranians cited in this piece, she is a MetaMask user who intends to continue working in the space despite discriminatory bans on any specific platform.

We started this [Farsi-language group for blockchain enthusiasts] group after finishing [another] ConsenSys blockchain developer bootcamp, Amin said. As long as I have my own private key, Im not worried. MetaMask saves my info locally.

For a little background, the Iranian group shes a part of includes members that met in Japan at the DevCon Ethereum conference in 2019. Amin joined this subgroup of five Iranian women in 2021. Their U.S.-based partner in the Gitcoin campaign, Thessy Mehrain, described the Gitcoin campaign:

I have worked with Consensys Academy on diversity initiatives. As part of that, I was offered scholarships for minority communities, which I in turn extended to CoinIran, an Amsterdam-based organization that has the goal to educate about web3. I met them [CoinIran bloggers] at the Ethereum conference in Osaka. In 2020, a group of female developers took part in the Solidity bootcamp a Women in Blockchain chapter was formed in Tehran, the same as we have globally in NYC, Boston, Brisbane, Lagos and elsewhere They are run locally, entirely independently to educate about the tech and its opportunities.

All things considered, it appears these initiatives are more focused on education than strictly on financial transactions.

Education helps an individual make informed decisions for themselves and also contribute to the progress of the society and nation, Mehrain said. These women are members of the global society and should be empowered by education to meaningfully contribute.

And it also appears that the recent Gitcoin ban is an outlier among the global initiatives funded by Ethereum co-founders like Vitalik Buterin, founder of the Ethereum Foundation, and Lubin, the leading investor behind ConsenSys. This is partially because, as Florio pointed out, its impossible to discriminate across the entire metaverse.

I dont see sovereign nations giving up their foreign policy arsenal yet it's unenforceable to say that Iranians cant participate in anything without applying some type of firewall to the entire country of Iran. I dont even think the technology exists to do something like that type of internet blockade, Florio said. Imposing sanction laws is going to be difficult and require creative interpretations...I dont know how the enforcement will come there or if theyll take into account there are no known methods of fully complying in this context.

For now, some crypto companies prefer to ban Iranians and other people from sanctioned jurisdictions, rather than seek a compliant legal strategy for including them.

We dont have full access all the time. Its easy to exclude or ban us in web3, Amin said. Here in Iran, people who work with blockchain technology, miners, traders, developers, always worry about their access to web3. And we definitely feel this second class citizens treatment.
Emergency regulations for the equity license fee waiver program were approved today

SACRAMENTO, Calif., December 21, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cannabis entrepreneurs affected by the War on Drugs can have their license or renewal fee waived, following the approval of emergency regulations issued by the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC). These regulations implement Senate Bill (SB) 166, signed into law on September 23, 2021, which outlined broad criteria for the waivers and mandated that DCC have a fee waiver program in place by January 1, 2022.

Read the approved regulations.

DCC will begin processing fee waiver requests on January 1, 2022, and anticipates rolling out additional guidance for licensees and applicants in the coming weeks. $30 million has been set aside to fund these fee waivers.

"Access to capital is the number one challenge for equity operators, and the approval of these regulations puts much-needed financial support into the hands of businesses immediately," said Nicole Elliott, DCC Director. "While this is a critical first step, we recognize that there is more work to be done to refine these rules. That is why DCC will immediately begin engaging directly with equity operators and stakeholders to begin the development of regulations for the permanent rulemaking package."

Heres what equity operators and local equity program leaders had to say about todays approval of state equity fee waiver regulations:

"Equity fee waivers will allow me to create additional business opportunities in my community. High fees are a barrier to equitable participation, and Im excited about the opportunity the state is providing."  Ali Jamalian, Sunset Connect (Equity Business Owner)

"State fee waivers provided by SB 166 to Qualified Equity Applicants and Licensees as well as Locally Verified Equity Applicants and Licensees will provide much needed financial assistance to individuals and communities disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition and its enforcement who are seeking to enter into the legal commercial cannabis industry."  Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation

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"Fee waivers for equity vendors are an important and tangible expression of California's commitment to ensuring that those previously harmed by the war on drugs can participate in the sale of cannabis today. Waiving the collection of fees is an efficient method of providing meaningful assistance to equity applicants while they navigate the expensive process of starting a business. San Francisco waives fees for equity applicants for this purpose, and we are excited by and support the State's intention to do the same."  San Francisco Office of Cannabis

"The City of Oakland's 2017 cannabis equity analysis identified access to capital as a primary barrier to equity applicants entering the regulated marketplace," said Greg Minor, Assistant to the City Administrator in the City of Oakland. "Waiving state licensing fees for equity applicants is a critical step in addressing disparities within the cannabis industry and supporting communities that were disproportionately impacted by cannabis-related arrests and systemic racism."  Oakland Cannabis Office

"The regulations developed by the Department of Cannabis Control to waive state cannabis license fees are greatly anticipated and will have an immediate and profound impact on the ability of cannabis equity businesses in California to get operational and remain operational. This is an important step towards ensuring those most impacted by the War on Drugs will be able to open their businesses and operate in the regulated cannabis marketplace."  Sacramento Office of Cannabis Management

Read more about the equity fee waiver regulations.

The Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) licenses and regulates commercial cannabis activity within California. DCC works closely with all stakeholders, including businesses and local jurisdictions, to create a sustainable legal cannabis industry and a safe and equitable marketplace. DCC develops and implements progressive cannabis policies with robust protections for public health, safety and the environment. DCC was recently formed by merging the three state cannabis programs.

To learn more about the California cannabis market, state licenses or laws, visit www.cannabis.ca.gov.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211220005957/en/

Contacts

Christina Dempsey

press@cannabis.ca.gov
On Monday, the Biden administration finalized new fuel efficiency standards designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions put out by passenger vehicles. By 2026, the Environmental Protection Agency will require that automaker fleets travel an average of about 55 miles per gallon, up from the 37 miles per gallon standard theyre held to as of this year.

The agency estimates the policy will save American drivers between $210 billion and $420 billion through 2050 on fuel costs. Over the life of a model year 2026 vehicle, that will translate to about $1,080 in individual consumer savings after factoring in the higher initial cost of a more efficient vehicle. The EPA estimates the policy will also prevent the release of about 3.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide over the same time frame.

We followed the science, we listened to stakeholders, and we are setting robust and rigorous standards that will aggressively reduce the pollution that is harming people and our planet  and save families money at the same time, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.

The new standards effectively mirror those put forward by the Obama administration in 2012. Had former President Trump not weakened those in 2018, they would have required automakers to make vehicles that could travel about 51 miles per gallon by 2025.

Jeff Alson, a former EPA senior engineer, told The New York Times, the new standards recapture the emissions cuts carved out by the Trump administration. Thats good, but its not going to get us anywhere near the level weve got to get to reduce vehicle emissions enough to protect the planet, he said.

We've reached out to Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota and Stellantis for comment on today's rulemaking.

The new standards mark the most significant climate action taken to date by President Biden. As of 2019, the transportation sector has been the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. However, the announcement comes just one day after Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he would not support the Democratic partys Build Back Better plan. Among other items, the approximately $2 trillion plan includes a proposal for up to $12,500 in individual tax subsidies for Americans who buy an EV as their next car.
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BizVibe has made available 1,000+ company profiles for the joint manufacturers and suppliers category on its B2B platform. Companies listed in this product category are primarily engaged in manufacturing or supplying various types of joints and related products (such as metallic expansion joints, joint sealant, drywall joint tape, etc.).

Snapshot of BizVibe's construction and machinery joints supplier profiles and categories.

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Free Insights Included for all Joint Manufacturer and Supplier Profiles:

List of product and service category offerings and primary operating industries

Risk of doing business score across four different metrics

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Joint Companies on BizVibe

BizVibe's platform contains 30M+ company profiles, spanning across 200+ countries, categorized into 40,000+ products and services. There are 1,000+ company profiles related to joint manufacturers and suppliers on BizVibe, covering 40+ product and service categories. Each company profile contains detailed insights dedicated to helping procurement and sales teams find trusted suppliers and target sales prospects.

Examples of joint manufacturer and supplier company profiles that can be discovered on BizVibe include:

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Contact

BizVibe

Jesse Maida

Email: jesse@bizvibe.com

+1 855-897-5880

Website: https://www.bizvibe.com/

BizVibe (PRNewsfoto/BizVibe)

Cision

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SOURCE BizVibe
- Eve is the urban air mobility business created by Embraer S.A. and established as an independent company in October 2020

- Transaction proceeds will be used to further develop and commercialize Eve's comprehensive urban air mobility solution spanning eVTOL design and production, service and support, fleet operations and urban air traffic management

- Order pipeline of approximately $5.2 billion, comprised of 1,735 vehicle orders, via non-binding letters of intent, from 17 launch customers, including fixed wing and helicopter operators, aircraft lessors and ride sharing platform partners

- Pro forma implied enterprise value of approximately $2.4 billion and pro forma equity value of approximately $2.9 billion

- Transaction includes up to approximately $237 million of cash from Zanite Acquisition Corp. and a $305 million PIPE, anchored by Embraer S.A., Zanite Sponsor LLC, financial investors and a consortium of leading strategic partners- including Azorra Aviation, BAE Systems, Bradesco BBI, Falko Regional Aircraft, Republic Airways, Rolls-Royce and SkyWest, Inc.

MELBOURNE, Fla. and CLEVELAND, Ohio, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- UAM, LLC ("Eve"), a leader in the development of next-generation Urban Air Mobility ("UAM") solutions, has entered into a definitive business combination agreement with Zanite Acquisition Corp. ("Zanite") (Nasdaq: ZNTE, ZNTEU, ZNTEW), a special purpose acquisition company focused on the aviation sector. Upon closing of the transaction, Zanite will change its name to Eve Holding, Inc. ("Eve Holding") and will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") under the new ticker symbol, "EVEX" and "EVEXW." Embraer S.A. ("Embraer"), through its subsidiary Embraer Aircraft Holding, Inc., will remain a majority stockholder with an approximately 82% equity stake in Eve Holding following the closing of the business combination, including its investment in the PIPE.

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Eve's strategic partnership with Embraer is a key competitive advantage. In connection with the transaction, Embraer has contributed its UAM-related assets, employees and IP to Eve. In addition, Embraer has granted Eve a royalty-free license to Embraer's background IP to be used within the UAM market. Eve has access to thousands of skilled Embraer employees on a flexible, first priority basis and use of Embraer's global infrastructure on preferred terms, pursuant to the terms of certain services agreements between Embraer and Eve. The strategic alignment with Embraer provides Eve with significant cost and execution advantages relative to other UAM participants.

"We believe that the urban air mobility market has enormous potential to expand in the coming years based on an efficient, zero-emissions transport proposition, and that with this business combination, Eve is very well positioned to become one of the major players in this segment," said Francisco Gomes Neto, president and CEO of Embraer. "As a global aerospace company, with leadership position in multiple segments, we understand that innovation and technology play a strategic role in driving sustainable growth and redefining the future of aviation."

Eve is the first company to graduate from EmbraerX, the market accelerator created in 2017 by Embraer, a global leader in the aviation industry with a more than 50-year history of aircraft manufacturing and certification expertise. With a singular focus on a potential $760 billion urban air mobility ("UAM") addressable market, Eve has introduced a comprehensive, practical and capital efficient UAM solution spanning electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle ("eVTOL") design and production, service and support, fleet operations and urban air traffic management. By leveraging the ongoing support and resources of Embraer and the anticipated proceeds from the business combination, the parties to the transaction believe that Eve is uniquely positioned to develop, certify and commercialize its UAM solutions on a global scale.

"The Zanite team is extremely proud to partner with Eve and Embraer in this transaction. After an extensive search, we selected Eve because of its simple and certifiable eVTOL design, its capital efficient approach to fleet operations and Embraer's global footprint that we believe will enable Eve to not only reach vehicle type certification, but to scale its manufacturing, support and operations globally," said Kenn Ricci, Co-CEO of Zanite and Principal of Directional Aviation Capital, a member of Zanite's sponsor.

Eve will be led by co-CEOs Jerry DeMuro, who most recently served as CEO of BAE Systems, Inc., and Andre Stein, who has led Eve since its inception and served in leadership roles with Embraer for more than two decades. "Urban air mobility is a transformational opportunity in the aviation sector. I joined Eve because I believe that there is no company better positioned to capitalize on the tremendous potential of this emerging market," said Jerry DeMuro, Co-CEO. Andre Stein, Co-CEO, added, "Eve was founded on a vision to accelerate the UAM ecosystem, make safe and affordable urban air transportation available to all citizens, while reducing global carbon emissions. The transaction announced today with Zanite is a major milestone that will accelerate our strategic plan and support us in realizing our vision."

Eve has formed a powerful network of dozens of highly respected strategic partners spanning the UAM ecosystem, including fleet operators, ride sharing partners, vertiport providers, aircraft lessors, financing partners, renewable energy providers and leaders in the defense and technology sectors. From this partner network, Eve has secured launch orders from 17 customers, via non-binding letters of intent, resulting in a pipeline of 1,735 vehicles valued at approximately $5.2 billion.

Transaction Overview

The business combination values Eve at an implied $2.4 billion enterprise value. Upon closing of the transaction, and assuming no redemptions by Zanite's stockholders, Eve will have approximately $512 million in cash, resulting in a total pro forma equity value of approximately $2.9 billion. Cash proceeds raised in the transaction are expected to be used to fund operations, support growth and for general corporate purposes. The proceeds will be funded through a combination of Zanite's approximately $237 million cash in trust, assuming no redemptions by Zanite's stockholders, and a $305 million PIPE of common stock at $10.00 per share, comprised of commitments of $175 million from Embraer, $25 million from Zanite's sponsor and $105 million from a consortium of leading financial and strategic investors including Azorra Aviation, BAE Systems, Bradesco BBI, Falko Regional Aircraft, Republic Airways, Rolls-Royce and SkyWest, Inc. In connection with such commitments, Embraer has entered into arrangements with certain of such strategic investors to provide them with price protections in the amount of up to their $30 million aggregate commitments in the form of credits for parts and services or cash in exchange for the transfer of shares to Embraer. In addition, Embraer has agreed to a three-year lockup on its rollover shares and Zanite's sponsor has agreed to a three-year lockup on its founder shares.

The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both Embraer and Zanite, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022, subject to regulatory and stockholder approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Additional information about the proposed business combination, including a copy of the business combination agreement and investor presentation, will be provided in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by Zanite with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and available at www.sec.gov.

Advisors

White & Case LLP served as legal advisor to Zanite. Jefferies LLC and BTIG, LLC served as financial advisors and capital markets advisors to Zanite. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Mattos Filho, Veiga Filho, Marrey Jr. e Quiroga Advogados served as legal advisor to Embraer and EAH. Raymond James & Associates, Inc. served as financial advisor and capital markets advisor to Eve and Banco Santander (Brasil) S.A., Banco Bradesco BBI S.A. and Banco Itau International served as financial advisors to Eve.

Webcast and Conference Call Information

Zanite, Embraer and Eve will host a joint investor webcast and conference call to discuss the proposed business combination on Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 8:00 am EST.

To access the call please dial +1 (412) 717-9627 / +1 (844) 204-8942, from the United States, +55 (11) 3181-8565 / +55 (11) 4090-1621, from Brazil, or +44 20 3795 9972, from UK. Participants should dial in 15 minutes before the scheduled time.

The live call and replay will also be available as a webcast, which can be accessed at Zanite's investor site at https://www.zaniteacquisition.com/znte-i/

About Eve

Eve is dedicated to accelerating the UAM ecosystem. Benefitting from a startup mindset, backed by Embraer's more than 50-year history of aerospace expertise, and with a singular focus, Eve is taking a holistic approach to progressing the UAM ecosystem, with an advanced eVTOL project, a comprehensive global services and support network and a unique air traffic management solution. For more information, please visit www.eveairmobility.com.

About Zanite

Zanite is a special purpose acquisition company and was formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses in the Aviation, Aerospace & Defense, Urban Mobility and Emerging Technology industries. Zanite's sponsor is managed by Kenneth C. Ricci, Principal of Directional Aviation Capital, and Steven H. Rosen, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Resilience Capital Partners along with its Board of Directors and Strategic Advisors Mr. Larry Flynn, Dr. Ron Sugar, Mr. Patrick Shanahan and Mr. John Veihmeyer. Zanite began trading on Nasdaq in November 2020 and its common stock, units and warrants trade under the ticker symbols "ZNTE," "ZNTEU" and "ZNTEW," respectively. For more information, please visit www.zaniteacquisition.com.

About Embraer

A global aerospace company headquartered in Brazil, Embraer has businesses in Commercial and Executive aviation, Defense & Security and Agricultural Aviation. The company designs, develops, manufactures and markets aircraft and systems, providing Services & Support to customers after-sales. Since it was founded in 1969, Embraer has delivered more than 8,000 aircraft. On average, about every 10 seconds an aircraft manufactured by Embraer takes off somewhere in the world, transporting over 145 million passengers a year. Embraer is the leading manufacturer of commercial jets up to 150 seats and the main exporter of high value-added goods in Brazil. The company maintains industrial units, offices, service and parts distribution centers, among other activities, across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. For more information, please visit www.embraer.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "estimate," "plan," "project," "forecast," "intend," "will," "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "seek," "target", "may", "intend", "predict", "should", "would", "predict", "potential", "seem", "future", "outlook" or other similar expressions (or negative versions of such words or expressions) that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Zanite's, Eve's, Embraer's and EAH's expectations with respect to future performance and anticipated financial impacts of the proposed business combination, the satisfaction of the closing conditions to the proposed business combination and the PIPE, the level of redemptions by Zanite's public stockholders, the timing of the completion of the proposed business combination and the use of the cash proceeds therefrom, and the ability to successfully develop, certify, manufacture and commercialize Eve's UAM solutions and eVTOL on a global scale. These statements are based on various assumptions, whether or not identified herein, and on the current expectations of Zanite's, Eve's, Embraer's and EAH's management and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to serve as, and must not be relied on by any investor as, a guarantee, an assurance, a prediction or a definitive statement of fact or probability. Actual events and circumstances are difficult or impossible to predict and may differ from assumptions, and such differences may be material. Many actual events and circumstances are beyond the control of Zanite, Eve, Embraer and EAH.

These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including: (i) changes in domestic and foreign business, market, financial, political and legal conditions; (ii) the inability of the parties to successfully or timely consummate the proposed business combination, including the risk that any required regulatory approvals are not obtained, are delayed or are subject to unanticipated conditions that could adversely affect the combined company or the expected benefits of the proposed business combination or that the approval of the stockholders of Zanite or Eve is not obtained and or that the proposed business combination and the private placement of common stock are not able to concurrently close; (iii) failure to realize the anticipated benefits of the proposed business combination; (iv) risks relating to the uncertainty of the projected financial information with respect to Eve; (v) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Zanite, Embraer, EAH and/or Eve following the announcement of the business combination agreement and the transactions contemplated therein; (vi) future global, regional or local economic and market conditions; (vii) the development, effects and enforcement of laws and regulations; (viii) Eve's ability to grow and manage future growth, maintain relationships with customers and suppliers and retain its key employees; (ix) Eve's ability to develop new products and solutions, bring them to market in a timely manner, and make enhancements to its platform; (x) the effects of competition on Eve's future business; (xi) the amount of redemption requests made by Zanite's public stockholders; (xii) the ability of Zanite or the combined company to issue equity or equity-linked securities in connection with the proposed business combination or in the future; (xiii) the outcome of any potential litigation, government and regulatory proceedings, investigations and inquiries; (xiv) the risk that the proposed business combination disrupts current plans and operations as a result of the announcement and consummation, (xv) costs related to the proposed business combination, (xvi) the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and (xvii) those factors discussed in Zanite's Annual Report on Form 10-K/A for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, in each case, under the heading "Risk Factors," and other documents of Zanite filed, or to be filed, with the SEC. If any of these risks materialize or our assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. There may be additional risks that neither Eve nor Zanite presently know or that Eve and Zanite currently believe are immaterial that could also cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect Eve's and Zanite's expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this press release. Eve and Zanite anticipate that subsequent events and developments will cause Eve's and Zanite's assessments to change. However, while Eve and Zanite may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Eve and Zanite specifically disclaim any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Eve's and Zanite's assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon the forward-looking statements.

Important Information and Where to Find it

In connection with the proposed business combination, Zanite intends to file with the SEC a preliminary proxy statement relating to the proposed business combination. Zanite will mail a definitive proxy statement and other relevant documents to its stockholders. This press release 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 proposed business combination. Zanite's stockholders and other interested persons are advised to read, when available, the preliminary proxy statement and the amendments thereto and the definitive proxy statement and documents incorporated by reference therein filed in connection with Zanite's solicitation of proxies for its special meeting of stockholders to be held to approve the proposed business combination and other matters, as these materials will contain important information about Zanite, Eve and the proposed business combination. When available, the definitive proxy statement and other relevant materials for the proposed business combination will be mailed to stockholders of Zanite as of a record date to be established for voting on the proposed business combination. Stockholders of Zanite will also be able to obtain copies of the preliminary proxy statement, the definitive proxy statement and other documents filed with the SEC that will be incorporated by reference therein, without charge, once available, at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov, or by directing a request to Zanite Acquisition Corp. at 25101 Chagrin Boulevard Suite 350, Cleveland, Ohio 44122, Attention: Steven H. Rosen, or by calling (216) 292-0200.

No Offer or Solicitation

This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, or a solicitation of any vote or approval, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act, or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements thereof.

Participants in the Solicitation

Zanite and its directors and executive officers may be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies from Zanite's stockholders 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 Zanite is contained in Zanite's Registration Statement on Form S-1/A and by Zanite's Current Report on Form 8-K filed on September 15, 2021, each of which was filed with the SEC and is available free of charge at the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov, or by directing a request to Zanite Acquisition Corp. at 25101 Chagrin Boulevard Suite 350, Cleveland, Ohio 44122, Attention: Steven H. Rosen, or by calling (216) 292-0200.

Eve, Embraer, EAH and their respective directors and executive officers may also be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the stockholders of Zanite 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 for the proposed business combination when available.

Additional information regarding the persons who may, under SEC rules, be deemed participants in the solicitation of Zanite's stockholders in connection with the proposed business combination, including a description of their direct and indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be set forth in Zanite's proxy statement for the proposed business combination when it is filed with the SEC. Stockholders, potential investors and other interested persons should read the proxy statement carefully when it becomes available before making any voting or investment decisions. When available, these documents can be obtained free of charge from the sources indicated above.

Investor Information

https://www.zaniteacquisition.com/znte-i/

Contacts

investors@eveairmobility.com

media@eveairmobility.com

Cision

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SOURCE Eve
Edmonton, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Further to its news release of December 8, 2021, Green River Gold Corp. (CSE: CCR) (OTC Pink: CCRRF) (the "Company" or "Green River") is pleased to announce the completion of its maiden drilling program at the wholly owned Quesnel Nickel/Cobalt/Talc Project in British Columbia, Canada.

The drill core samples are currently being prepared to be submitted for assay results at ALS Laboratories. Photos of some of the drill core will be available at the Company's website, greenrivergold.com shortly.

Perry Little, Green River Gold's President and CEO stated, "We are very excited to see the early results from this drilling program appear to be very similar to the limited, but impressive, results from the 1980's that inspired the claim owners at the time to proceed to a feasibility study and preliminary mining plan. With increased confidence regarding the presence of talc on the property, we are now shifting our attention to the potential for other minerals, including nickel. The work done in the 1980's had a singular focus on the talc potential and may have overlooked the potential for other metals. We look forward to continued drilling early in 2022."

The area being targeted with the drilling program is host to talc and nickel mineralization (see the Sovereign nickel showing, Minfile 093A 130). The area covered by these mineral rights was subject to an exploration program targeting the potential for a commercial talc deposit during the 1980's. The exploration resulted in the preparation of a preliminary talc mining plan in 1986.[1] To date, only the evaluation of the talc potential has been done. From a thorough review of the records from the 1980's, the potential for other minerals, including nickel, to be present along with the talc was not fully investigated.

The drilling completed on the talc showing in the 1980's consisted of relatively shallow holes. Green River's goal for this preliminary part of the program was to confirm the results of the drilling from the 1980's. One of the first holes that Green River drilled during this program appears to have intersected one of the drill holes from the 1980's. The Company was initially uncertain of the exact coordinates of the 1980's drill program.

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The accidental intersection of one of the original drill holes was an extremely unlikely occurrence, but it has given the Company great confidence that Green River is drilling from the exact location that was drilled in the 1980's. Drill results to this point mirror the reported results from the 1980's drilling. The Company intends to follow up the preliminary results in early 2022 using a larger rig capable of reaching depths of over 100 meters with the twin goals of expanding the area of the known talc occurrence and gaining more knowledge of the potential for nickel and cobalt in the same general area as the talc.

Kyle Townsend, Mine Manager for Green River Gold Corp. says "We would like to thank our exploration team and contractor, Paradigm Drilling, for the successful completion of the maiden drill program at the Quesnel Project. We are eager to share initial results from this highly prospective project. While we patiently await assay results from the accredited lab, management has asked our exploration team to develop a follow up exploration program that would include a second phase of drilling at the Project and a 2022 field program to help understand the true extent of our target."

Tyler Tian, Contract Mining Engineer for Green River Gold, provided this geological summary of the drill core from the maiden drill program:

The host rock is carbonate-bearing serpentinite, and its protolith is the ultramafic rock, peridotite (or pyroxenite, as less olivine). Black colour, coarse-grained with grain size ranges from 2 to 16 mm. As serpentinite is a low-temperature metamorphic rock, the texture shows cataclastic, banded, and foliated. The core bears many large crystals of pyroxene, antigorite, and a white milky colour carbonate breccia veinlet (the carbonate vein reacts with acid and fizzing, mainly calcite, less dolomite). The carbonate, mainly calcite recrystallization, could be noticed on the core through the veinlet. Slightly weathering and oxidation shows near the surface (first 2 to 3 meters). Moderate carbonate alteration throughout the core, mainly gray dolomite. Then weak to moderate, talcose alternation replaces the carbonate in the core, showing green colour and waxy texture. The talc crystals aggregate with carbonates shown on the core with grain size ranging from 1 to 30 mm. Slightly chlorite alteration could be noticed as well. There are no other intrusive body shows on the core. Sulphides (less than 1 %of the core) are weakly disseminated along with the ultramafic rock (with pyroxene), mainly pyrite, from the shallow surface. There is a copper-bronze colour mineral associated with ultramafic rock, it could be nickel minerals, such as pentlandite or nickeline. One mineral that has weak magnetic, which might be pyrrhotite. There are minor quartz veins that intersect the drill core with a thickness of less than 5 cm and without any other sulphides showing up in the quartz vein. The sulphides mineralizations are easy to observe along with the fractures. Some of the fractures, the sulphides could take up to 65% of section area, associated with dark colour ultramafic rock, and foliated. At this stage, it could be assumed the mineralization type is lateritic nickel.

The Quesnel Nickel/Cobalt/Talc Project is adjacent to the Company's Fontaine Gold Project. The two projects border Osisko Development Corp.'s Cariboo Gold Project, which contains 5 million ounces of gold and is expected to go into production late in 2023.

Quesnel Nickel/Cobalt/Talc Project Highlights:

There are 3 BC MINFILE occurrences as follows:

093A 013 - Sovereign Creek - developed prospect containing talc and magnesite, and a co-incident nickel sulfide showing.

093A 130 - Sovereign - showings containing talc and nickel sulfides.

093H 061 - R.T. - showing containing nickel, chromium, and cobalt.

Talc is a soft mineral used in a variety of industries. Talc is used in the production of plastics, ceramics, paint, paper, roofing, rubber, and for other industrial uses. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) indicates that total sales of talc by U.S. Producers in 2020 was about 430,000 tons valued at about US $100 million. The USGS estimates total mine production worldwide in 2020 was 5,800,000 tons with about 220,000 tons produced in Canada. To the best of the Company's knowledge, there are no talc mines in Western Canada.

The recently completed UAV-MAG survey results over the Quesnel Nickel/Cobalt/Talc Project area indicates the presence of highly magnetic rocks co-incident with the interpreted surface exposure and down-dip projection of a favorable ultramafic rock assemblage. This is similar to the aeromagnetic response in the area of nickel-alloy mineralization found throughout the BC Decar District.

Further to its news release of December 8, 2021Regional Exploration Plan:

Additionally, there will be some upcoming exploration plans for the Fontaine Lode Gold Project, which is contiguous to the Quesnel Nickel/Cobalt/Talc Project and also contiguous to Osisko Development Corp.'s Cariboo Gold Project. Green River is also awaiting assay results from the recent grab sampling program completed at the Quesnel Nickel/Cobalt/Talc Project.

Qualified Person:

Stephen P. Kocsis is the qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and he has reviewed and approved the technical information in this news release.

About Green River Gold Corp.

Green River Gold Corp. is a Canadian mineral exploration company focused on its wholly owned, high-grade Fontaine Gold Project, Quesnel Nickel/Cobalt/Talc Project and Kymar Silver Project which are located in renowned mining districts in British Columbia. The properties straddle an 18km length of the Barkerville and Quesnel Terranes and are contiguous to Osisko Development Corp.'s mineral claim group containing a proposed mine location at its Cariboo Gold Project.

The Kymar Silver Project is located in southeast BC, approximately 28 kilometers west of the town of Invermere in the Golden Mining Division. The property is made up of two mineral tenures, totaling 1,440 hectares, along the southeast flank of Mount Catherine.

For more information contact:

Green River Gold Corp.

Mr. Perry Little - President and Chief Executive Officer

perry.little@greenrivergold.ca

780-993-2193

Additional information about Green River Gold Corp. can be found by reviewing its profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Forward-Looking Information: This release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Expressions such as "anticipates", "expects", "believes", "estimates", "could", "intends", "may", "plans", "predicts", "projects", "will", "would" and other similar expressions, or the negative of these terms, are generally indicative of forward-looking information. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. In addition, the forward-looking information contained in this release is based upon what management believes to be reasonable assumption. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information as it is inherently uncertain, and no assurance can be given that the expectations reflected in such information will prove to be correct. The forward-looking information in this release is made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise such information to reflect new events or circumstances.

The securities of the Company have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This release is issued for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of any securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

The Canadian Securities Exchange (operated by CNSX Markets Inc.) has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release.

[1] https://aris.empr.gov.bc.ca/ArisReports/15729B.PDF

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108215
Dialpad provides secure way for homeloanexperts.com.au to connect with customers

SYDNEY, December 21, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dialpad Inc., the industry leader in AI-powered communication and collaboration, today announced leading specialist mortgage broker homeloanexperts.com.au has picked Dialpad as its communication provider of choice. Dialpads technology will play an integral role in helping www.homeloanexperts.com.au provide mortgage broking services to Australian homeowners.

Over the past six months, homeloanexperts.com.au has doubled its workforce and it expects to continue that growth trajectory over the next year. As the company quickly scaled beyond 400 employees, it was clear the organisation needed a secure, enterprise-grade tool that enabled its brokers to work from any device, anywhere in the world.

"We were looking to upgrade our aging on-premises PBX solution and because we work with sensitive customer data, it was critical to ensure the new communications platform we chose had the highest degree of security," said Alan Hemmings CEO, homeloanexperts.com.au "Not only does Dialpad check off all the security, privacy and compliance boxes for us, but the platform was ready to use immediately. The ability to add and subtract seats at the click of a button and unlimited online storage were both huge benefits, as we continuously add brokers and scale the business. We were evaluating another communications provider alongside Dialpad, but it didnt even come close to having the same number and quality of features that Dialpad offers. "

The Dialpad cloud-native communications platform is the one place for a truly unified Communications as a Service (TrueCaaS) experience. With a TrueCaaS solution delivered through a single pane of glass, and customer engagement all on one cohesive platform with AI at its core, Dialpad helps companies simplify business communications and collaboration. Dialpad is a complete, modern communications platform built on a split cloud architecture for unmatched security, reliability, and flexibility. Simple to deploy, available on any device and with baked-in Voice Intelligence (Vi), Dialpad creates a searchable archive of every call, improving communication among employees, customers and business partners working from anywhere.

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"Were looking forward to enabling more Australians to take advantage of homeloanexperts.com.aus services and make homeownership a reality," said Gerard DOnofrio, Australia Country Manager, Dialpad. "homeloanexperts.com.au is just one example of a local company taking advantage of the worlds most advanced business communications platform. Weve seen tremendous adoption across the country and we have a lot of exciting opportunities ahead."

Additional Resources

Social Networks

About Dialpad

Dialpad is the global leader in AI communications for business, transforming how the world works together. Dialpad customers benefit from truly unified business and customer communications, including a cloud business phone system, text and team messaging, video meetings, and the worlds most advanced AI Contact Center  all in one beautiful app. More than 7,000 innovative brands and millions of people use Dialpad to connect their teams from anywhere, including Motorola Solutions, Netflix, T-Mobile, Twitter, Uber and WeWork. Visit www.dialpad.com for more information and to request a demo.

About homeloanexperts.com.au

Formed 15 years ago, homeloanexperts.com.au specialises in first home borrowers, investors, people with complex financial situations and those who do not meet standard lending policies. Our company mission is to help people who are being let down by the Australian banking system. We deal with a wide variety of lenders and know their policies back to front, as well as the hidden catches and potential problems our customers might face. We have an extensive in-house credit assessment process which we complete before applying with any bank or lender. Most of our mortgage brokers have worked in the credit department of a lender approving and declining loan applications, so we can talk their language and build a case to get loans approved.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005721/en/

Contacts

Alexa Becker

alexa.becker@dialpad.com
Carlton McCoy, Jr. is one of those rare people who has taken an industry by storm. Just google his name and youll find a myriad of articles on how he has risen through the ranks to become one of the wine industrys newest heavy hitters. And as the second African American and one of the youngest people to ever earn the Master Sommelier titlethe highest qualification in the wine industry, which only 269 people have earned globallyit seems fitting for McCoy.

Related 31 Wines and Spirits to Get You Through the Holiday Season

Holiday Wine and Spirits List

Though he is now known for his work in the wine industry, McCoy entered the industry through the kitchen. He was raised by his grandmother in Washington, D.C. and says cooking was a significant part of his childhood. Through the Careers Through Culinary Arts Program, which gives underserved teenagers the skills to move into successful culinary careers, McCoy won a cooking competition that earned him a full scholarship to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). This, he says, was a major turning point in his life, as he had not been planning to go to college. And while attending CIA was a big culture shock, McCoy says it was a cool, yet intense, experience.

CIAs like the military. You have to show up every day clean shaven, creased neckerchief, the big toques, sharp knives. If the chef cant slice a sheet of paper with your knife, you have to go home and sharpen your knives, like a very, very intense environment, McCoy says. I found it to be very fun actually. I know its very odd, but I thought it was fun. At just 19, McCoy was a teaching assistant at the Escoffier Room, a CIA student-run French restaurant that became The Bocuse Restaurant in 2012.

After earning his bachelors in hotel restaurant management, McCoy moved to New York, where he moved to the front of house. He found that servers made more money than cooks, so he became a server with the intention that it would be a short-term gig. But he ended up really enjoying getting to connect with people over food and wine.

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I like talking to people about food; I like connecting with people, he says It was something I really missed. When youre cooking lots, its very pleasant, you love cooking. You dont ever get to connect with people. Youre just doing the task. And I really like to bring food to people and tell them about food and interact with them.

So, a manager told him that to progress, hed have to learn more about wine. Its a big part of the business model of restaurants, he says. So, I started studying wine as an economic thing. It was a business thing.

Related The Ethical Cellar: The Joys of Organic, Sustainable, Biodynamic and Natural Wines

This was how he came to learn about the Court of Master Sommeliers. For five years, he rigorously studied wine. And at 28 years old, he became the second-youngest person in the world to pass the Master Sommelier exam. After traveling the globe to learn about wine and the people and companies that produce it, McCoy moved to Aspen, Colo. to work at the five-star hotel The Little Nell, where after two years, he became the wine director. It was here that he met the Lawrence family. We really hit it off and started to have some discussions about investments in the Napa Valley and what that could look like, McCoy recalls.

Together, McCoy and Gaylon Lawrence, Jr. bought Heitz Cellar, a whole host of vineyards and a tasting room. McCoy is now the managing partner of the Lawrence Wine Estates and CEO and president of Heitz Cellar, making McCoy the first Black CEO of a Napa winery.

I think my existing in this space, in a high position, hopefully can lead as an example to show others that its an option for them, he says. They shouldnt be given anything, no one should be given anything, but just psychologically, seeing, hey look, this is something I could do. To me, its very powerful, and its worth it to me to work hard to take my career as far as I can just to show people what theyre capable of.

McCoy also cofounded The Roots Fund in 2020 with Ikimi Dubose to help create a pathway for Black and Indigenous people to engage with and pursue careers in the wine industry. What we wanted to do is to really examine why we felt people of color were not engaged in and working in the wine industry, he says. One was a lack of exposure culturally and socially. So, you were less likely to be in social circles with people who drank wine for a number of reasons.

The Roots Fund offers wine education, mentorship and help pursuing a career in the industry. The great thing about the way Ikimi has structured our organization is theres very low overhead. Almost all the money goes directly into efforts for candidates, McCoy says. So, its been very fulfilling to be a part of the organization thats actually doing something thats going to have an impact, not just be sort of some fluff organization.

Related The Ethical Cellar Goes to Lyon, France

So, what does McCoy want the future of the wine industry to look like? My ultimate goal is to make sure that all barriers are broken down, where candidates who want the opportunity to enter the industry have them.

The post How Napa Executive Carlton McCoy Is Opening the Door for Diversity in the Wine Industry appeared first on Worth.
The Company will produce over 89,000 feet of engineered steel pipe for the first phase of the Texas water infrastructure project for the Alliance Regional Water Authority

VANCOUVER, Wash., Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Northwest Pipe Company (Nasdaq: NWPX), a leading manufacturer of water-related infrastructure and engineered pipeline systems, has been selected by Garney Construction and the Alliance Regional Water Authority to manufacture engineered steel pipe for Phase 1B  Segment A of the Carrizo-Water Supply Project.

Northwest Pipe Company Logo (PRNewsfoto/Northwest Pipe Company)

The project, which will be operational by late 2023, includes new water transmission pipeline, four wells, storage tanks, pump stations, and a treatment facility. Serving the cities of San Marcos, Buda, Kyle, and other utility districts represented by the Canyon Regional Water Authority, the plant will provide 19 million gallons of water per day to these Texas communities.

Northwest Pipe Company is manufacturing over 89,000 feet, or nearly 17 miles, of water transmission pipe that will convey water from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer to a new treatment plant. Over 5,100 tons of steel is being used to manufacture the cement mortar lined and polyurethane coated 48-inch-diameter engineered pipeline.

"The State of Texas continues to see steady growth in population and this new water treatment facility will provide water to over 225,000 residents on a daily basis," states Scott Montross, President and CEO of Northwest Pipe Company. "We are pleased to again team with Garney Construction on this large Texas infrastructure project, which is using steel pipe manufactured at our nearby plant in Saginaw, Texas."

About Northwest Pipe Company  Founded in 1966, Northwest Pipe Company is a leading manufacturer for water-related infrastructure products. In addition to being the largest manufacturer of engineered steel water pipeline systems in North America, the Company manufactures high-quality precast and reinforced concrete products; water, wastewater, and stormwater equipment; steel casing pipe; bar-wrapped concrete cylinder pipe; and one of the largest offerings of pipeline system joints, fittings, and specialized components. Strategically positioned to meet growing water and wastewater infrastructure needs, Northwest Pipe Company provides solution-based products for a wide range of markets under the ParkUSA, Geneva Pipe and Precast, and Permalok lines. The Company's diverse team is committed to quality and innovation while demonstrating the Company's core values of accountability, commitment, and teamwork. The Company is headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, and has 13 manufacturing facilities across North America. Please visit www.nwpipe.com for more information.

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Contact:

Aaron Wilkins

Chief Financial Officer

Northwest Pipe Company

360-397-6294  awilkins@nwpipe.com

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/northwest-pipe-company-to-supply-water-transmission-pipeline-for-phase-1b-of-the-carrizo-water-supply-project-301448616.html

SOURCE Northwest Pipe Company
NEW ORLEANS, LA / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until January 11, 2022 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Novavax, Inc. (NASDAQ:NVAX), if they purchased the Company's securities between March 2, 2021 and October 19, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

What You May Do

If you purchased securities of Novavax and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nasdaqgs-nvax/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by January 11, 2022 .

About the Lawsuit

Novavax and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On August 5, 2021, the Company disclosed another delay in filing the Emergency Use Authorization ("EUA") for its COVID-19 vaccine product candidate, NVX-CoV2373, from the third quarter of 2021 to the fourth quarter of 2021. On this news, Novavax's stock price fell $46.31 per share, or 19.61%, to close at $189.89 per share on August 6, 2021. Then, on October 19, 2021, Politico reported that anonymous sources stated that manufacturing issues could delay regulatory authorizations and approvals for NVX-CoV2373 until the end of 2022.

On this news, Novavax's shares plummeted $23.69 per share, or 14.76%, to close at $136.86 per share on October 20, 2021.

The case is Sinnathurai v. Novavax, et al., 21-cv-02910.

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About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is one of the nation's premier boutique securities litigation law firms. KSF serves a variety of clients - including public institutional investors, hedge funds, money managers and retail investors - in seeking recoveries for investment losses emanating from corporate fraud or malfeasance by publicly traded companies. KSF has offices in New York, California, Louisiana and New Jersey.

To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com.

Contact:

LogoDescription automatically generated

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

Lewis Kahn, Managing Partner

lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com

1-877-515-1850

1100 Poydras St., Suite 3200

New Orleans, LA 70163

SOURCE: Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC





View source version on accesswire.com:

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OnlyFans founder and CEO Tim Stokely is stepping down, Bloomberg reports. His successor is Ami Gan, the company's former head of communications and marketing. This move comes after a tenuous year for OnlyFans, in which the company said it would ban the sex workers that thrive on the platform, a decision that it suspended a week later.

If it seems strange to appoint a spokesperson as CEO of a company, you're not off base. But, per reports, this was Stokely's own decision. Stokely will remain with the company as an advisor.

Weve worked side-by-side sharing our passion about the creator economy, Gan, the new CEO, said. Our priority is to continue being committed to being the safest social media platform in the world.

Gan also said that she will invest in OFTV, the company's safe-for-work streaming app, and will build new tools for creators. While Stokely's own business background is in online pornography, Gan has worked for brands like Red Bull, Quest Nutrition and a cannabis cafe.

TechCrunch asked OnlyFans if this change in leadership will impact sex workers on the platform. OnlyFans declined to comment.

OnlyFans thrives thanks to its NSFW creators, and in August, the company was on track to do $2.5 billion in sales this year, up from $1.2 billion last year (OnlyFans takes 20% of creator earnings). But then the company dropped a bombshell that would jeopardize the livelihoods of the sex workers who made the app a billion-dollar enterprise: OnlyFans was going to ban NSFW content. After swift backlash, OnlyFans suspended this decision, saying that it resolved issues with banking providers.

Still, sex workers remain concerned about being deplatformed -- after all, OnlyFans said it was "suspending" the ban, rather than reversing it.

When platforms like OnlyFans threaten to ban sex workers, it can mean the loss of their livelihood, but it can also push them toward more dangerous, offline working conditions.

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Congress introduced the Safe Sex Workers Study Act in 2019 to examine the affects of legislation like the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which make online sex work more difficult. This study found that community organizations [had] reported increased homelessness of sex workers after losing the economic stability provided by access to online platforms."

The possibility of changes at OnlyFans is also scary for sex workers who know how hard it is to be shuffled from platform to platform. Even Patreon deplatformed sex workers in 2018 -- the company said that it never allowed porn, but for years, these guidelines weren't stringently enforced, so sex workers were able to use the platform to make a living.

Patreon at least provides creators with access to subscribers' emails, so they can still contact their fanbase even without the intermediary of the platform. But OnlyFans is more like Instagram or Twitter -- even if someone follows you, you have no way of communicating with them outside the platform. How could you create a new business on a different platform if you have no way to contact your clients?

OnlyFans hasn't indicated that this change in leadership will jeopardize sex workers -- but this is a massive change to a platform that has already toyed with the trust of its NSFW creators.
NEW ORLEANS, LA / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until January 18, 2022 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Peloton Interactive, Inc. (NASDAQ:PTON), if they purchased the Company's shares between December 9, 2020 and November 4, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

What You May Do

If you purchased shares of Peloton and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nasdaqgs-pton/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by January 18, 2022 .

About the Lawsuit

Peloton and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On November 4, 2021, the Company disclosed a shocking cut to its full-year revenue forecast by up to $1 billion from a prior forecast of $5.4 billion to a range of $4.4 to $4.8 billion due to deteriorating demand for its home fitness equipment as customers were increasingly free to pursue other fitness options outside the home. Further, the Company disclosed that inventory totaled $1.27 billion, a 35% increase over the prior quarter, 91% of which were "finished products" still held by the Company.

On this news, shares of Peloton plummeted $30.42 per share, or over 35%, from a closing price of $86.06 per share on November 4, 2021, to a closing price of $43.68 per share on November 5, 2021.

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The case is City of Hialeah Employees' Retirement System v. Peloton Interactive, Inc., et al., 21-cv-9582.

About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is one of the nation's premier boutique securities litigation law firms. KSF serves a variety of clients - including public institutional investors, hedge funds, money managers and retail investors - in seeking recoveries for investment losses emanating from corporate fraud or malfeasance by publicly traded companies. KSF has offices in New York, California, Louisiana and New Jersey.

To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com.

Contact:

LogoDescription automatically generated

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

Lewis Kahn, Managing Partner

lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com

1-877-515-1850

1100 Poydras St., Suite 3200

New Orleans, LA 70163

SOURCE: Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC





View source version on accesswire.com:

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NEW YORK, December 21, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Academy Securities, a registered broker-dealer, certified Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise (DVBE), and Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), today announced the addition of Randy Lauer as Managing Director, Head of Business Development and Institutional Sales.

Mr. Lauer is both a military veteran, having served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps, and an industry veteran with over 33 years of financial services experience. Most recently, Mr. Lauer was a Managing Director at Citigroup and oversaw all Institutional Markets Sales for the Midwest Region. In this role, Mr. Lauer managed a regional team of sales and trading professionals and was responsible for the distribution of all fixed income, futures, equities, and municipal product in the region. Prior to this role, Mr. Lauer was in New York and oversaw all Securitized Product Sales for North America. Mr. Lauer started his career with Salomon Brothers in New York and held numerous sales leadership positions, all in institutional markets.

"We are thrilled to add another impressive military veteran to the Academy team," stated Academys Chairman and CEO Chance Mims. "Randys sales and leadership expertise will greatly add to the growth trajectory of the Firm."

Mr. Lauer commented on joining Academy: "I am very excited and extremely honored to be joining the Academy Securities Team. Academy is the best-in-class Veteran owned broker dealer and their Cyber Intelligence and ESG teams deliver real cutting-edge value to their clients. What also attracted me to Academy is their commitment to a strong social mission. To me there is no cause more noble then to hire, train, and support those young men and women who have sacrificed and served this great country of ours. I look forward to this next chapter of service with Academy Securities!"

As an officer in the Marine Corps, Mr. Lauer held numerous leadership billets ranging from platoon commander to company commander. He received his bachelors degree from Lake Forest College and his MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

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"Randy has had a remarkable career providing service to some of the top hedge funds, insurance companies, and asset managers in the Country. We are honored to have him on the team and help us grow our Midwest presence," stated Academys President Phil McConkey.

About Academy Securities

Academy Securities is a preeminent disabled veteran owned investment bank with strength in capital markets, public finance, fixed income and equity trading. Leadership and staff have had intensive military training prior to entering and gaining in depth financial services experience in global capital markets. We are mission driven with a high ethical code, a solid sense of accountability and strive for excellence in the pursuit of our clients success. Intellectual assets, strong visionary leaders and a proud team commitment bring out the best in each other for the benefit of our clients. Academy is our nations first and only post-9/11 disabled veteran owned investment bank and is certified as a DVBE, SDVOSB, and MBE. The firm has a strong top and middle tier client base served by a national platform with offices in New York City, Dallas, Chicago, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chapel Hill, Kansas City, Austin, Louisville, and Sacramento. Information about Academy Securities is available at www.academysecurities.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005755/en/

Contacts

Academy Securities

Michael Boyd, 646-736-3995

Chief Compliance Officer

mboyd@academysecurities.com
VERO BEACH, Fla., December 21, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today a group of mobile homeowners filed a federal class-action lawsuit claiming real estate giant Equity LifeStyle Properties (NYSE: ELS) has ignored decades of complaints over failed drainage issues, leaving residents to deal with frequent flooding, mud, injuries, damaged mobile homes and cars, and more, in dereliction of their duties as mobile home park operators and owners.

The suit alleges ELS failed to maintain the Heritage Plantation property since 2003 by ignoring code violations, failing to maintain the parks buildings and common areas, and ignoring a failing stormwater drainage system causing severe flooding during ordinary rainfall.

Heritage Plantation is located in Vero Beach and has over 400 homes across its nearly 70-acre campus.

"It is abundantly clear that ELS has made a deliberate, conscious decision to starve this property of even the most rudimentary maintenance for almost 20 years," said Elizabeth Fegan, founding partner and managing member of FeganScott and lead attorney representing the residents. "It is also clear to me that the intent of this willful neglect is to bolster profits, knowing that typical residents dont have the resources or the ability to organize and fight for their interests."

Fegan noted that cases such as this are specifically why the State of Florida has defined the duties of mobile home park operators and owners, recognizing that mobile homeowners are often at an economic disadvantage in their ability to defend against large, corporate owners, and inability to move their homes if they are dissatisfied with the corporations maintenance and upkeep of the property. Many of the residents in Heritage Park are retirees with low- or fixed-incomes.

"Its unacceptable for retirees to be routinely forced to wade through hip-deep, fetid water to leave their homes, and we intend to use the law to compel ELS to fulfill its obligation to provide residents with a safe living environment," Fegan added.

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ELS owns and operates over 400 communities in 33 states and British Columbia and has been the subject of legal action in several of those communities across California and other states.

The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, notes that ELS has been put on notice of the parks various deficiencies, including citations and fines by Indian River County concerning the failed stormwater system.

"When it rains, our properties almost immediately flood, making it difficult and dangerous to leave our homes. I know seniors who have been cut off from going to doctors appointments or picking up prescriptions," said Michael Noel, resident and homeowner. "Once the water recedes, thats just the beginning of the problem  we are left with slime and mud covering almost everything the water touches."

Residents and homeowners at Heritage Plantation mobile home park have suffered economic damages, according to the suit. At least two homeowners have incurred more than $10,000 in fees replacing their flooring that is persistently damaged by the three-feet high floodwaters that enter the home, only to find that their floor will need to be replaced again after the next bad flood.

"Repairing floors even once is unreasonable and out of financial reach for most residents, who are seniors and on fixed incomes," said resident and homeowner Kathleen Wiksten. "And all the while, homeowners are also seeing their homes resale value diminish."

In addition to the stress of frequent household damages, residents face the physical impact of injuries caused by muddy accumulations. Heritage Plantation is an age-qualified community, meaning its residents are over the age of 55 and face additional risks in the parks slippery and unsafe environment, frequently riddled with sink holes and exposed electrical wiring.

"My mother and I tried to hold ELS accountable years ago to provide a safe and livable environment for all residents. It is now time for ELS to fulfill their legal obligations and provide the most basic services to which all residents are entitled," said resident and homeowner Claire Ladouceur.

The lawsuit seeks to represent all former and current residents who leased a lot in the Heritage Plantation mobile home park.

About FeganScott

FeganScott is a national class action law firm dedicated to helping victims of sexual abuse and sexual harassment. Beth Fegan, the firms founder and managing member, represents the group of survivors suing criminally convicted movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. The firm, championed by acclaimed veteran, class-action attorneys who have successfully recovered $1 billion for victims nationwide. FeganScott is committed to pursuing successful outcomes with integrity and excellence while holding the responsible parties accountable.

Case No. 2:21-cv-14492

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005744/en/

Contacts

Jaime Conlan

feganscottpr@firmani.com

206.466.2707
ROHM Receives 2021 EcoVadis Platinum Award for Sustainability Performance

Only the top 1% of ~80,000 companies across all industries receive this prestigious award.

Only the top 1% of ~80,000 companies across all industries receive this prestigious award.

Santa Clara, CA and Kyoto, Japan, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ROHM Semiconductor today announced they have been awarded the highest rating of "Platinum" for sustainability performance in 2021 by EcoVadis. The Platinum rating is given to the top 1% of about 80,000 companies assessed across all industries.

Based in France, EcoVadis is the world's largest and most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings, founded in 2007 to promote the sustainability of supply chains around the world. About 80,000 companies in 160 countries across 200 industries are assessed in four areas: Environment, Labor and Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Resource Procurement. They are also rated in four levels: Platinum (top 1%), Gold (top 5%), Silver (top 25%), and Bronze (top 50%). As environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are becoming increasingly important, the assessment results of EcoVadis are recognized by many global companies as one of the most important factors in selecting suppliers.

ROHM received the highest performance score level of "Outstanding" in the environmental field for establishing the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 and for their longstanding efforts to promote greening in Japan and overseas. ROHM also received high scores for Labor and Human Rights and Sustainable Resource Procurement fields and overall, putting it in the top 1% of the companies across all industries.

Encouraged by the results of this assessment, ROHM will continue to promote CSR activities and work to solve social issues in order to realize a sustainable society, while aiming to be a company that meets the expectations of its stakeholders.

For more information, please visit www.rohm.com.

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CONTACT: Travis Moench ROHM Semiconductor 858.625.3600 tmoench@rohmsemiconductor.com Heather Savage BWW Communications 720.295.0260 heather.savage@bwwcomms.com




Global Sulfuric Acid Market size is estimated to grow a CAGR above 2.9% over the forecast timeframe and reach a market value of around USD 14,282 million by 2028

LONDON, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sulfuric acid, also known as oil of vitriol or hydrogen sulfate, is a dense, colorless, oily, corrosive liquid that is one of the most important commercially available acids. Sulfuric acid is a highly reactive acid that oxidizes, dehydrates, or sulfonates the majority of organic compounds, frequently resulting in charring. Sulfuric acid is used to make fertilizers, chemicals, dyes, glass, paper, soaps, textiles, fungicides, insecticides, astringents, and emetics. They're also used in mining, wood pulp, metal, and plating, as well as sewage treatment and leather processing. Sulfuric acid is well-known for its wide range of applications. It is an important chemical in the industrial field because it is used to make a variety of products and goods and is found in a variety of manufacturing processes.



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Global Sulfuric Acid Market Dynamics

Sulfuric acid is one of the world's most abundant industrial chemicals. Fertilizer production, particularly phosphate fertilizer production from wet-process phosphoric acid, is the major end-use market for sulfuric acid, accounting for more than 60% of total global consumption in 2020. This share is expected to fall slightly through 2025, owing to the faster growth of metal leaching and steel pickling applications. Furthermore, increased demand for electric vehicles will result in increased use of sulfuric acid in automotive batteries, triggering a new application in the coming years. Moreover, increased adoption of sulfuric acid in the production of nutrient-rich food crop will boost the market. Sustainable demand for sulfuric acid owing to its increased use in wastewater treatment, paper & pulp production, and fertilizers will aid the growth in the market.

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Regional Overview

North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa are the regional classification of the global sulfuric acid market. The global demand for sulfuric acid is expected to rise over the next five years. The Asia Pacific region is the largest market, accounting for more than 35% of total consumption in 2020, followed by North America; while Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East are also significant users. Asia-Pacific is expected to dominate the Sulfuric Acid market, owing to the rising population, food consumption, and expanding fertilizer and manufacturing industries in these regions. Furthermore, Asia-Pacific is home to some of the world's largest manufacturers of sulfuric acid. However, China, the world's fastest-growing economy, has enormous potential for the pharmaceutical industry, which contributes significantly to the region's overall growth of Sulfuric Acid over the forecast period. During the forecast period, fertilizer demand for sulfuric acid is expected to rise steadily, while demand for chemical and industrial applications is expected to rise at a slightly faster rate.

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Market Segmentation

By raw material type, the global sulfuric acid market is classified into elemental sulfur, base metal smelters, pyrite ore, and others. The elemental sulfur holds the largest market share in 2020. Elemental sulfur has been used as a pesticide for thousands of years and has been approved used in hundreds of products in the US since the 1920s. Elemental sulfur can be used as an insecticide, repellent, fertilizer, acaricide, rodenticide, and soil amendment to lower soil pH in agricultural applications. Furthermore, using the elemental sulfer in sulfuric acid production is less polluting than pyrite ore roasting and base metal smelting, where companies/factories must follow strict procedures to treat the emitted SO2 gases before releasing them into the atmosphere.

By purity type, the market is divided into standard and ultra-pure. The ultra-pure sulfuric acid market is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, owing to rising demand from the semiconductor industry and expanding applications in the pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, in the electrical and electronics industries, ultra-pure sulfuric acid is used in varying concentrations during the fabrication of printed circuit boards, as an etching agent for the production of semi-conductors, cleaning agents, and other applications. These factors have increased demand for ultra-pure sulfuric acid over the years.

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By applications, the market is separated by Fertilizers, Chemical manufacturing, Metal Processing, Petroleum Refining, Textile Industry, Automotive, Pulp & Paper, and Others. In 2020, the fertilizers segment will dominate the global sulfuric acid market. Fertilizer production is the most important end-use market for sulfuric acid, accounting for more than 60% of total global consumption. Fertilizers containing three primary nutrients are used by farmers all over the world to improve the quality and yield of fruit and vegetable crops: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Some fertilizers, such as the two-component fertilizers Monoammonium Phosphate (MAP) and Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) provide farmers with an efficient way to deliver nitrogen and phosphorus to soils. Sulfuric acid is used as a key first step in the production of both MAP and DAP before being combined with phosphate rock to produce phosphoric acid. These factors are propelling the global sulfuric acid market forward.

Major Players

Some major players covered in global sulfuric acid markets are BASF SE, Akzonobel N.V., Ineos Enterprises, Limited, The Mosaic Company, Potashcorp, Aurubis, PVS Chemicals, Inc., and Sumitomo Chemical, Chemtrade Refinery, DuPont, Nouryon, OCP Group among others.

In November 2020, DuPont Clean Technologies introduces two new sulfuric acid catalysts: MECS Super GEARTM and MECS XLP-310, which expand on the company's well-established GEAR and XLP catalyst product lines.

In November 2017, BASF introduced the new O4115 Quattro sulfuric acid catalyst in the market. Because of its geometrical shape, a combination of four strands, the new cesium-based catalyst has a 30% greater catalytic surface area than conventional sulfuric acid catalysts.

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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - TransCanna Holdings Inc. (CSE: TCAN) (FSE: TH8) ("the Company") is pleased to announce that it has harvested its first crop management site - a greenhouse in Wesley, California.

TransCanna's wholly-owned subsidiary Lyfted Farms began cultivation on the crop in September, and harvested Friday, December 17th, 2021. The harvest includes six strains and is expected to yield approximately 200 pounds of flower. In addition to providing the genetics, and cultivating and harvesting the crop, Lyfted Farms will also be curing, storing, packaging and distributing it on behalf of the client, Central Valley Farms.

"This first successful third-party crop perfectly showcases our capabilities of truly being a 'one-stop-shop' for the California cannabis industry," said Bob Blink, CEO of TransCanna. "We are truly managing the process from seed to sale."

Additionally, the Company, in partnership with 365 CannaFarms, consulted the client on the construction of the state-of-the-art, computer-controlled greenhouse prior to producing its inaugural crop.

"This first harvest from our true light-deprivation greenhouse has turned out beautifully, and the product quality reflects the tremendous abilities of our greenhouse partners, 365 CannaFarms, who are known throughout the region as one of the best greenhouse growers/operators in California," said Mr. Blink.

The client, Central Valley Growers, is a family-run company with over 25 years of history in traditional agriculture that had sought out Lyfted Farms specifically for its potent, premium genetic strains. The contract began this summer and involved advising on the construction of a 22,000 square foot, fully automated light deprivation glass greenhouse with computer controlled light curtains, cooling, heating and humidity systems.

This year, TransCanna has successfully launched cultivation, third party crop management, cold storage, and processing and distribution services out of its massive new 196,000 square foot Daly Facility in Modesto California. The Company expects to build out these capabilities throughout 2022.

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TransCanna's harvests its first crop management site out of a new state-of-the-art greenhouse in Wesley, California.

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6207/108230_1e71b28be4c4da36_002full.jpg





About TransCanna

TransCanna Holdings Inc. is a California-based, Canadian-listed company building cannabis-focused brands for the California lifestyle, through its wholly-owned California subsidiaries.

TransCanna's wholly owned subsidiary Lyfted Farms is California's authentic cannabis brand whose pioneering spirit has been continuously providing the finest cannabis flower genetics and cultivation methods since 1984. The Lyfted Farms brand of exclusive cannabis flower is sold at premium retailers throughout the state. With its new multipurpose facility in Modesto, California, the company is now poised to become one of the largest and most efficient vertically integrated cannabis companies in the California market. Visit the TransCanna website today at transcanna.com.

For updated information with respect to our company, please see our filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the CSE at www.thecse.com, or visit the Company's website at www.transcanna.com. To contact the Company, please email info@transcanna.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Bob Blink, CEO

Corporate Communications:

info@transcanna.com

604-200-8853

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION:

Certain information in this release may contain forward-looking statements, including information about crop yields and future business opportunities. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning management's guidance on sales and other statements which are not historical facts. When used in this document, the words such as "could", "plan" "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "potential", "should" and similar expressions indicate forward-looking statements.

Although TransCanna believes that its expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties and no assurance can be given that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date that the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are based will occur. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, projections and other events contemplated by the forward-looking statements will not occur. Although TransCanna believes that the expectations represented by such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct as these expectations are inherently subject to business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Some of the risks and other factors which could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to, unexpected increases in operating costs, a continued strain on farmers due to fires, the impact of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, competition from other retailers changes in exchange rate between the Canadian Dollar and other currencies, the impact of global supply chain delays and the retention of key staff.

This cautionary statement expressly qualifies the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. TransCanna undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by law.

NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN

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By Tuvan Gumrukcu and Nevzat Devranoglu

ANKARA (Reuters) - The Turkish currency was highly volatile again on Tuesday as traders digested measures proposed by President Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish central bank to guard local currency savings against precisely such swings.

The lira fell as much as 8.6% intraday on Tuesday and rose as much as 18.5% on its second-largest daily range, behind Monday's record swings. It closed the session up 6% at 12.4 per dollar.

One-month implied volatility on the lira, or expected price swings, jumped to the highest on record, reflecting uncertainty about the scheme.

On Tuesday, the Turkish central bank said it will support the conversion of foreign currency deposit accounts into lira deposit accounts to further encourage reverse dollarization.

"In the event that resident real persons, who already had an FX deposit account ... convert their accounts into Turkish lira time deposit accounts will be eligible to benefit from the incentive," the central bank said.

More than half of locals' savings is in foreign currencies and gold, according to central bank data, due to a loss of confidence in the lira after years of depreciation. At its low, the lira was down some 60% on the year.

Erdogan introduced a series of steps on Monday that would shift the burden of a weakened currency to the Treasury and encourage Turks to hold lira rather than dollars. [nL1N2T616D]

The government's initial support for the currency sent the lira soaring some 25% on Monday, albeit in the lowest volume of trading for any day so far this year.

Analysts and bankers warned that if the lira's rally reverses it could further stoke already high inflation and weigh on the deficit.

"Our back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that any extra 12% lira depreciation over the lira interest rate could increase the budget deficit by around 1% of GDP over a six-month horizon," said JPMorgan analysts in a note.

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Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati said on Tuesday that legal proceedings against speculative market comments made on social media were initiated after the recent currency volatility.

"We will never allow such treason," he said.

A source with knowledge of the matter said the Monday measures were decided after the exchange rate hit "problematic" levels, adding that the government would manage the coming period carefully.

"The dollar and euro had risen up to the point of forming a bubble, really. This needed to be intervened in. This situation was not sustainable," the person said, requesting anonymity.

Turkey's five-year credit default swaps, the cost of insuring against a sovereign default, were at 604 basis points after hitting on Monday 622 bps, the highest since May 2020, according to IHS Markit.

Graphic:Lira volatility hits record hit-https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/gdpzymlxkvw/Pasted%20image%201640076530130.png

WEAKENED BACKDROP

Presidential adviser Cemil Ertem told Reuters the moves had removed the need for individual investors' dollar demand, adding it was "a very important paradigm shift" for Turkey's economy.

While the government called the lira's rebound on Monday a major win on policy, economists have said Erdogan's economic program based on low interest rates is reckless and expect inflation, currently above 21%, to blow through 30% next year.

Turkey's main BIST 100 stock index fell 8% on Tuesday.

Under pressure from Erdogan, the central bank has cut rates by 500 basis points since September. The president has pledged to continue with his low-rates policy.

"The market may be waiting to see how this exchange rate guarantee may play out," said Gary Schlossberg, global strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in San Francisco.

"Some people think it will stabilize the market for a time, but it just seems that the fundamental backdrop is weak and I'm not sure how long that measure by itself can shore up the market."

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Ebru Tuncay in Istanbul, Davide Barbuscia in Dubai, Marc Jones in London and Rodrigo Campos in New York; Editing by Jonathan Spicer, Alistair Bell and Sonya Hepinstall)
NEW YORK, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 41% of the growth will originate from North America for the veterinary software market. The US is a key market for veterinary software in North America. Market growth in this region will be faster than the growth of the market in Europe, MEA, and South America. Increasing pet insurance, high pet ownership, and technological developments in the diagnostics field will facilitate the veterinary software market growth in North America over the forecast period. The veterinary software market is expected to grow by USD 161.37 million at a CAGR of 5.81% from 2021 to 2026, according to the latest research report from Technavio.

Attractive Opportunities in Veterinary Software Market by Deployment and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026

For more insights on the veterinary software market - Request a Free Sample Report !

The veterinary software market covers the following areas:

Veterinary Software Market - Driver

The global pet population is on the rise as more and more households are adopting pets. For instance, roughly two-thirds of American households have at least one pet, most of which are dogs. The need to own a pet in the US stems from the belief that pets positively contribute to human lives. Other nations, such as China, have come a long way in having pets, which was once considered illegal. Brazil and India are also witnessing a significant increase in their pet populations. A study on the psychology of pet owners shows that the majority of pet owners believe that their pets positively impact their physical and mental health, which has resulted in a growing market for pets. The rising adoption of pets has increased the demand for pet care, veterinary services, and veterinary visits.

Veterinary Software Market - Challenges

Countries, especially in APAC, such as India, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, do not have such strict regulations guiding the safety of pets. These countries lack proper vet clinics and pet care services which will hinder the growth of the market during the forecast period. This is due to the lack of organizations and authorities to regulate these issues. The governments in these countries majorly focus on the safety of endangered species. Thus, the lack of properly established animal services in developing countries will hinder the market's growth during the forecast period.

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Veterinary Software Market - Segmentation

The veterinary software market analysis includes deployment (on-premises and cloud-based) and geography (North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA).

The veterinary software market share growth by the on-premises segment will be significant for revenue generation. On-premises deployment veterinary software is considered highly secure as it is managed and maintained by end-users such as hospitals and other related clinics. The end-users have complete control over on-premises solutions because of monitored and restricted access, and it also allows them to customize veterinary software solutions as per requirement. This market segment is dominated by large organizations that are concerned more about functionality than cost. These organizations mainly deal with highly critical data, so they increasingly rely on the on-premises model, as it is more secure due to end-to-end quality control and no third-party interference.

Companies Mentioned

Animal Intelligence Software Inc.

Brittons Wise Computer Inc.

Covetrus Inc.

ezyVet Software and Applications

FirmCloud Corp.

IDEXX Laboratories Inc.

Oehm und Rehbein GmbH

Timeless Veterinary Systems Inc.

Vetter Software Inc.

VIA Information Systems

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Veterinary Software Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 5.81% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 161.37 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 5.13 Regional analysis North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA Performing market contribution North America at 41% Key consumer countries US, Germany, UK, France, and China Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Animal Intelligence Software Inc., Brittons Wise Computer Inc., Covetrus Inc., ezyVet Software and Applications, FirmCloud Corp., IDEXX Laboratories Inc., Oehm und Rehbein GmbH, Timeless Veterinary Systems Inc., Vetter Software Inc., and VIA Information Systems 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 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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Verde Solutions Logo

Verde Solutions Logo

Verde Solutions Logo

CHICAGO, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Verde Solutions, LLC, a full-service renewable energy development firm based in Chicago, is thrilled to announce a partnership with the Village of Minooka, IL, for a solar array at the Minooka Wastewater Treatment Plant. This solar project will reduce the energy expenses for the village while saving more than 20,000 metric tons of carbon emissions over its lifespan.

To finance the system, the Village of Minooka is entering a power purchase agreement (PPA) and will buy power at a discounted rate compared to grid power. Thus, the solar installation will result in instant savings for the village, yet it will make no capital investments into the project.

Verde Solutions brought together the team needed to make this project possible. For example, it secured a third-party investor to monetize the federal tax incentives for the solar system because the village is not eligible for them. Over the lifespan of the project, the town will save an estimated $533,549 over the 20-year agreement, lowering the operating costs of the wastewater treatment plant and saving residents' dollars.

"The municipal team and the Village of Minooka board saw that going solar was a great way to reduce expenses from the wastewater treatment facility," says Christopher Gersch, founder and CEO of Verde Solutions. "The Purchase Power Agreement structure allows communities like Minooka to show their commitment to sustainability and save money from day one of operation. Minooka was one of the first communities to take advantage of this great private-public partnership, but it will not be the last. Solar in Illinois for communities just makes sense."

The Village of Minooka is a southwest suburb of Chicago and has over 11,000 residents. Its wastewater treatment plant is energy-intensive due to the need to move millions of gallons of water before it is safely released into the environment. The treatment plant is also a prime location for a solar system because it has vacant land adjacent to it and is in full sun. Verde Solutions, a community leader in sustainability, designed the solar project with an access path and landscaping buffer consisting of native trees, to blend in with its surroundings.

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"The Village Board, President and staff at Minooka are dedicated to achieving a more energy-efficient footprint for the benefit of our residents and the environment we share," says Barry Thompson, the Village of Minooka's Chairman of Public Works. "We began by replacing incandescent lighting in our buildings and streetlights with modern LED fixtures, reducing energy consumption and generating a substantial cost savings. Looking ahead, adding solar technology will deliver an even more robust, clean-energy footprint, while further reducing costs for village residents."

The Minooka solar project was made possible with collaboration between Verde Solutions, Fresh Coast Solar, BA Solutions , and the Village of Minooka municipal team led by Ryan Anderson. Fresh Coast Solar plans to install the solar array in the summer of 2022.

"The ability to use natural sunlight to save the Village money for the next 25 years is, may I suggest, a no-brainer," says Ric Offerman, Mayor of Minooka. "Don't forget your sunscreen."

About Verde Solutions:

Verde Solutions partners with businesses, municipalities, and educational centers across the country to develop comprehensive efficiency and renewable energy solutions. With more than 1,900 projects in 48 states completed, the turn-key energy consulting firm offers a customized set of solutions for each clients' needs including solar, HVAC, LED lighting, and cogeneration. Verde Solutions' passion for sustainability is shared by many of its Fortune 100 clients. Thus, it is proud to partner with these organizations to achieve significant and lasting improvements in environmental and social outcomes.

Media Contact: Nicole Ciesla, NiKnack Marketing, nicole@niknackmarketing.com

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Wellness Pet Company renaming harmonizes pet nutrition pioneer's mission of bringing nature, innovation, and science to premium pet nutrition with the Company's flagship Wellness brand

TEWKSBURY, Mass., Dec. 21, 2021 /CNW/ -- WellPet, LLC, the largest North America based independent branded premium natural pet food company, backed by Clearlake Capital Group L.P. (together with its affiliates, "Clearlake"), today announced it is changing its name to the Wellness Pet Company ("Wellness Pet," or the "Company"). With 100 years of premium pet food and treats heritage, Wellness Pet will build on its mission of fulfilling a shared life of wellbeing between pets and a new generation of pet parents. This expanded vision for Wellness Pet Company comes at a pivotal time as consumer interest in the premium natural pet food category has been fueled by step-change increase in U.S. pet adoption and pet parents seeking the benefits of premium natural nutrition first-hand.

WellPet renames to Wellness Pet Company

"We felt this was the ideal time to re-introduce Wellness Pet, a company focused squarely on serving the next generation of pet parents at the beginning of their life-long pet parenting journey. Our relationships with pets are about more than just companionship. Pets provide a mutually beneficial emotional connection that makes each of our lives better every day, and proper, science-driven natural nutrition is one of the foundational elements needed to keep them healthy, happy, and well," said Reed Howlett, CEO of Wellness Pet Company. "Pet parents and their pets are at the center of all that we do, and we believe that natural, premium nutrition focused on proven health outcomes is the foundation of creating this mutual wellbeing. We're here to make a difference for even more pets and their families."

The premium natural category is the largest and fastest growing segment in the pet food industry, and Wellness Pet Company believes this is driven primarily by the desires of Millennial and Gen-Z pet parents, who are expected to make up 58% of American pet parents by 20251. This next generation of pet parents looks for credible brands they can trust and has a greater interest in feeding premium treats, toppers, and supplements that make them confident their pets' needs are being met. Wellness Pet will actively pursue its mission to create natural nutrition that provides physical, mental, and emotional benefits that pets can feel, and pet parents can see, like a healthy skin and coat, optimal energy, digestive health, healthy eyes, teeth and gums, and immunity.

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"We see so much potential for Wellness Pet Company as a purpose-driven organization that continues to provide pet parents around the world with the quality products they deserve," said Jose E. Feliciano, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, and Arta Tabaee, Managing Director, of Clearlake. "We look forward to supporting the Company's strategic growth with the help of our Operations, People and Strategy playbook, O.P.S., while supporting initiatives important to pet parents, such as a continued commitment to natural nutrition, a science-driven approach, and sustainability."

Wellness Pet Company carries on the legacy of best-in-class product innovation and outcomes-based nutrition led by its flagship Wellness brand and includes well-known dental treat brand WHIMZEES by Wellness and all-natural dog treat brand Old Mother Hubbard by Wellness, in addition to premium food brands Holistic Select, Sojos, and Eagle Pack, all backed by its world-class operational and manufacturing capabilities rooted in quality and safety.

Wellbeing amongst pets and parents also means wellbeing for their communities and the environment they enjoy together. That's why Wellness Pet Company will remain committed to the global fight against climate change with more recyclable packaging, low-waste eCommerce shipping, and greater attention to manufacturing emissions while continuing to operate with the highest food safety and compliance standards. Equally important will be creating and cultivating diversity, inclusivity, and belonging in the workplace.

The new company name will be effective in early 2022. Wellness Pet Company will continue to be headquartered in Tewksbury, MA. The Company also recently opened a new Boston, MA office, the Consumer Connect Center (C3), a center of excellence that will focus on developing best-in-class nutrition solutions for the next generation of pet parents.

About Wellness Pet Company:

Wellness Pet Company, the largest North America based independent branded premium natural pet food company, is home to pet food and treats brands Wellness, WHIMZEES by Wellness, Old Mother Hubbard by Wellness, Holistic Select, Sojos, and Eagle Pack. Building on a 100-year legacy, Wellness Pet Company has a singular mission of fulfilling a shared life of wellbeing between pets and pet parents with premium natural nutrition that provides proven health benefits that pets feel, and pet parents can see, because when pets are well, pet parents are, too. Wellness Pet produces proprietary and exclusive formulations at its three state-of-the-art facilities in Indiana, Minnesota, and the Netherlands, supported by a supply chain spanning over 1.2 million distribution points across the globe. More information is available at the Company's website.

About Clearlake:

Founded in 2006, Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. is a leading investment firm operating integrated businesses across private equity, credit, and other related strategies. With a sector-focused approach, the firm seeks to partner with experienced management teams by providing patient, long-term capital to dynamic businesses that can benefit from Clearlake's operational improvement approach, O.P.S. The firm's core target sectors are technology, industrials, and consumer. Clearlake currently has over $55 billion assets under management, and its senior investment principals have led or co-led over 300 investments. The firm has offices in Santa Monica and Dallas. More information is available at www.clearlake.com and on Twitter @ClearlakeCap.

1 2019, Packaged Facts Pet Owner Survey

Cision

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SOURCE Wellness Pet Company

Cision

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HONG KONG, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New World Development Company Limited ("New World Development" or "Group") announced today that in 2021 Q4 alone, its mainland China property development flagship New World China Land Limited ("New World China") has successfully secured three important urban renewal projects in the Greater Bay Area. They include the Longgang District urban renewal project in Shenzhen; the Guangqiao Food Factory urban renewal project, also in Shenzhen; and the redevelopment project of the Guangdong No.2 People's Hospital.

(PRNewsfoto/New World Development)

The Group's development strategy of deepening investment in the construction of the Greater Bay Area has been strongly supported by national policies. In a recently issued notice on property development risk, jointly published by The People's Bank of China and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, it is highlighted that well-positioned property companies are encouraged to acquire real estate projects from companies with higher debt, while also urging financial institutions to strengthen financial support for such acquisitions. With its strong financial positions and development background, New World China Land has successfully scooped up three quality projects in the Greater Bay Area in one financial quarter alone, further demonstrating its ability to respond to national policies, seize market opportunities, while confirming its will to actively participate in the upgrade and development of the Greater Bay Area.

Longgang District Project: 650,000SQM Behemoth that Promotes Industry Upgrade in Shenzhen East

Set to become an integrated landmark of low-density residential projects and innovative industries, the urban renewal project in Longgang District's 188 Industrial Zone is co-developed by New World China and Shenzhen Witland Holding Group, with construction expected to commence at as early as the end of 2022. Covering 650,000 sqm in Gross Floor Area on Yuanshan Road of the Longgang District, the project is dubbed the "Shenzhen Urban Renewal Behemoth" and is conveniently linked with the Shenzhen Metro Line 3, providing direct connectivity to the Shenzhen East Railway Station, Futian High Speed Rail Station and Futian Port. The project commands a superior location and is designed to fully meet the traffic demand of Shenzhen and the rest of the Greater Bay Area.

Story continues

With the goal of creating an integrated landmark in Shenzhen East, New World China will introduce to the project New World Group's network and experience in city infrastructure, education, innovative technology, healthcare and wellness, innovative finance, and more. In addition, the project is a response to the development blueprint of the Longgang District, which centres around its high-tech industry and will enrich the district's residential, commercial, offices, education and other areas, creating a high-quality, international community in Shenzhen East, completely upgrading the area.

Guangqiao Food Factory Project: Elite Community for Technology Talent

The Quangqiao Food Factory renewal project is situated in the Guangming Science City area, adjacent to the Shenzhen Xinming Hospital station of Shenzhen Metro Line 6 extension, and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, enjoying superior connectivity. It covers approximately 50,000 square metres in Gross Floor Area. Once completed, the renewal project will add 160,000 square metres of Saleable Floor Area to the Group.

Situated in the core area of the International Science and Technology Innovation Centre of the Greater Bay Area, and as part of the Comprehensive National Science Centre, Guangming Science City is positioned as "World's Top Science City". The area is poised to become one of the world's most influential science, technology and industry development centres, creating an elite community where top technology talent can call home. New World China will inject the Group's expertise in elite education programme to meet the residents' demand for high quality education, create a highly liveable community, and further attract talent to the science city.

Guangdong No.2 People's Hospital Redevelopment Project: Promoting the Healthcare and Wellness Services Industry in the Greater Bay Area

The redevelopment plan of the Guangdong No.2 People's Hospital, located in the Haizhu district of Guangzhou, will be jointly developed by New World China and Talent Holdings. When completed, the project will help solve the decades-old problem of the near-saturation of hospital construction space, while also meeting the future development needs of medical research, medical exchanges and emergency medical care in the province. Moreover, the redevelopment plan may also entail the construction of the Guangdong International Medical Centre and the Healthcare Services Centre, to greatly enhance its capacity for medical research and emergency medical services. Through the transformation of housing and other facilities, the project is also set to improve the living environment of healthcare staff.

The Group has long had an invested interest in the healthcare and wellness industry, and has entered a long-term strategic partnership with the First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, through which a number of collaborations in the fields of clinical medicine, public health and healthcare have been created. In addition, New World's ecosystem also includes a number of healthcare and wellness brands, including the Gleneagles Hospital, health and wellness concept Humansa, among others. The redevelopment project will therefore further enrich New World's ecosystem, and benefit significantly from the Group's experience in health and wellness, and urban renewal. The Group is well positioned to actively promote the development of healthcare and wellness services in the Greater Bay Area.

Deepening Greater Bay Area Footprint  Seizing "14th Five-Year Plan" Opportunities

As one of the earliest Hong Kong developers to expand into mainland China, New World has long been actively participating in the comprehensive development and urban renewal projects in the Greater Bay Area. It currently has a Greater Bay Area landbank of over 3 million square metres and is the area's most active Hong Kong-based developers.

Moving forward, the Group vows to continue to seize growth opportunities of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and support the Hong Kong SAR government in the development of the Northern Metropolis. New World Development will bring about its experience and expertise in city-industry integration and actively participate in city infrastructure of the Greater Bay Area, promoting linkages and development within the area. The Group will also uphold its vision of Creating Shared Value, and continue to connect business success with social progress, creating more value for all stakeholders.

About New World Development Company Limited:

Founded in 1970, New World Development Company Limited ("The Group", Hong Kong stock code: 00017) was publicly listed in Hong Kong in 1972 and is a constituent stock of the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index. A premium brand infused with a unique personality best defined by The Artisanal Movement, New World Group's core business areas include investment in property and property development, and investment in and/or operation of roads, commercial aircraft leasing, construction, insurance, hotels and other strategic businesses. Its Greater China operations, especially in the Greater Bay Area, had a total asset value of approximately HK$627 billion as at 30 June 2021. The Group's two listed companies are NWS Holdings Limited (61%), and New World Department Store China Limited (75%). New World China Land Limited is wholly owned by the Group.

SOURCE New World Development
An involuntary manslaughter charge in Stafford County went away Monday after a judge ruled the evidence was not sufficient to send the case to a grand jury.

Jared C. Carter, 25, of Fayetteville, N.C., had been charged in connection with the July 21 death of 49-year-old Daniel Junco, also of Fayetteville. Junco was killed when he fell from the side of a car that Carter was driving in the parking lot of Lidl at 1175 Warrenton Road in southern Stafford.

According to the evidence presented in Stafford General District Court by prosecutor George Elsasser, Junco and Carter had ridden together to Virginia for work-related reasons. Carter told police that Junco had used heroin, cocaine and steroids on the trip and became especially agitated when Carter told him he wanted to go back home.

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Fentanyl and opiates were in Juncos system when he died, an autopsy revealed.

Carters story to police was that Junco, a larger man, became enraged, got out of the truck and challenged him to a fight. Carter said he locked the passenger door and moved into the drivers seat, where he locked that door as well, but was unable to get the window up before Junco returned to that side of the truck.
A man who took part in killing a Spotsylvania County teenager in 2019 after mistaking him for someone else was ordered Monday to serve more than 67 years in prison.

William Gerard McDowney, 41, of King George County, received the maximum sentence of 67 years and seven months from Judge Ricardo Rigual for his role in the Aug. 12, 2019, slaying of 18-year-old James Wallin.

McDowney had previously pleaded guilty in Spotsylvania Circuit Court to felony murder, conspiracy, concealing evidence and two firearms offenses. He was also convicted Monday of a probation violation.

According to evidence presented in previous hearings, McDowney and codefendant Augustus Rhodes went to Matti Hill Court looking for a man in connection with a drug debt. The home next to Wallins had been raided 12 days earlier and a large amount of marijuana was seized.

McDowney later told police that someone referred to as DB had sent Rhodes to settle the debt. Rhodes has been convicted of murder and other charges. His sentence is pending in Spotsylvania.
Several communities in Stafford County got some good news during the final Board of Supervisors meeting of 2020.

Supervisors last Tuesday unanimously approved a revised VDOT proposal for Leeland Road that brings to a close a summer-long debate between Leeland Station residents and local VDOT officials.

Last February, homeowners in the Leeland Station subdivision started to seek answers about a proposed $2.8 million 10-foot-wide bicycle path that VDOT planned to run through their backyards, taking mature trees and a fence with it.

Gina McVicker, who lives in one of the homes that would have been impacted by the project, said she first heard about the VDOT plans after receiving a letter in mid-February from an eminent domain attorney in Arlington. She checked further and found the plan also called for an 18-inch pipe through her backyard along with the removal of 12 mature trees from her property.

McVicker helped form a community alliance that ultimately changed the projects path.
Virginia is an amazing place to live, work and play, he added. There are investments we must make now, and projects we must begin now if we want to keep that reputation. And our businesses need more skilled and qualified people to hire if they are going to make that happen.

Dalrymple, who lives in Spotsylvania County, is a member of the State Board for Community Colleges. A former member of Germanna Community Colleges board, he has helped create programs in heavy equipment operation, asphalt manufacturing and open-pit mining at Germanna.

Orange County resident Allen Miller managed an asphalt-making plant at Dalrymples Cedar Mountain Stone in Culpeper County. He found work there after becoming the first graduate of the Germanna asphalt academy, and taking part in the GCC apprenticeship program at the Cedar Mountain Stonethe sort of training the new Virginia Infrastructure Academy plans to multiply, manifold. Miller was the first graduate of the VCCS FastForward program, which quickly and affordably prepares students for skills-gap jobs.

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Glenn DuBois, chancellor of Virginias community colleges, said industrys needs as technology advanced has spurred creation of many institutions.
During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence on the differences between the gun and the Taser, including weight, feel, size, color, and that the gun was holstered on Potter's right side and the Taser on her left.

Prosecutor Erin Eldridge said in her closing argument that the jurors would be able to hold both the Taser and the gun to compare them, to get a feel for the two, and to get a sense of all those differences that you heard about in court, and see for yourselves how different they really are.

The jury's question about deliberating, read in court by Chu, said: If the jury cannot reach consensus, what is the guidance around how long and what steps should be taken?

The judge then reread from the jury instructions, telling the jurors to continue to discuss the case with one another and deliberate with a view toward reaching agreement if you can do so without violating your individual judgment.

Potter's attorneys objected to the judge rereading that instruction, arguing that doing so inappropriately emphasized that paragraph over the rest of the instructions. Chu overruled.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Long-serving California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, the first Mexican-American woman elected to Congress, announced Monday she will not seek re-election in her Los Angeles-area district.

The decision by the 80-year-old Democratic congresswoman comes as her district appeared headed for elimination, as part of California's once-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts to account for population shifts. California is losing a congressional seat for the first time because other states are growing faster, dropping to 52 seats from 53 seats, though it will remain the largest House delegation by far.

Shifting district boundary lines appear to have played a role in other House departures. Among them: Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, who was one of former President Donald Trumps most ardent loyalists in Congress, is leaving the House at the end of this year to join Trumps fledgling media company, and Democratic Rep. Alan Lowenthal, who represents a district anchored in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, announced he would retire at the end of his term.
This defendant used his position of trust within the credit union to gain access to large sums of money only to abuse that trust in the name of greed, United States Attorney Chris Kavanaugh of the Western District of Virginia said Monday. Fortunately, the men and women of the Danville Police Department acted swiftly and were able to keep all of the counterfeit bills in this case from making their way into circulation.

He was on the run until March when Durham authorities responded to a shots fired call and found Navarro covered in blood. He said he had been robbed at gunpoint.

After obtaining a search warrant, police found multiple firearms, kilograms of cocaine and marijuana, drug paraphernalia and $74,000 in cash, the news release stated.

Navarro later admitted to investigators he obtained the cash by selling drugs and confirmed his true identity, admitting that he had been using an alias after the incident at the Danville bank.
Sen. Tim Kaine has re-introduced a bill to increase representation of rural, underserved and students of color in medical school. Locally, the Expanding Medical Education Act would help grow health-related programs at Virginia Union University and help the university develop new ones, a spokesperson for the university said.

The bill would also provide funds to establish or expand medical schools in medically underserved areas or at minority-serving institutions.

The Health Resources and Services Administration designates most of Virginias rural counties as medically underserved, including Charles City County, Goochland County and King William County, as well as the city of Petersburg.

Kaine first sponsored the bill in July 2020, but it was not approved by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The 2021 version is cosponsored by Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

A cost has not been determined. The Department of Health and Human Services would determine how many schools receive funding and how much each would receive, a spokesperson for Kaine said.
Military should oust members who refuse vax

Those of us who spent years in the service to our country in the 60s can doubtlessly think of hundreds of things we were ordered to do that we didnt like or with which we disagreed. If any of us had refused an order, we could have expected a court-martial and time in the stockade.

Todays military seems to be afraid or reluctant to enforce articles 9092, disobeying officers and/or failure to obey orders.

Today, those who refuse vaccines may have legitimate religious objections (but never before expressed them over other vaccines the military administers). Alternatively, they may fear the vaccine or be trying to make a political statement.

None of these reasons have a place in the military. Religious objectors should file as conscientious objectors and get out of the service because their unvaccinated presence jeopardizes unit mission readiness and endangers their fellow servicemen and servicewomen. Cowardly fear for their lives because of a vaccine and/or mutinous political statements should be reasons to be discharged from the military.
A 51-year-old Fremont woman was sentenced to 18 months in the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women for possession of a controlled substance Monday.

Jeannie D. McCoy previously pleaded guilty to the charge in the Dodge County District Court and was released from custody to enter treatment, but entered a different facility instead of returning to jail after her discharge.

You were given the opportunity, the privilege of furlough, and theres clearly an abscond, Judge Geoffrey Hall told her. The facts of what happened dont square with what you just told me here today.

On July 10, Fremont Police Department officers responded to a report that McCoy was talking to herself and walking into homes she didnt reside at. The officers returned McCoy to her sisters home, where she had been staying.

The sister told the officers that McCoy had a history of methamphetamine use and gave consent to search the residence. During the search, the officers found several items indicating drug use and a bag containing methamphetamine.

McCoys attorney said his client entered NOVA Treatment Community after being released on furlough, but was discharged due to inappropriate relations, although McCoy claimed it was due to what she was wearing.

After the discharge, McCoys attorney said his client was transported to the Siena/Francis Houses Miracles Recovery Program, where she was accepted and given a bed. He said she also had no transportation for getting back to Fremont.

Ultimately, McCoys attorney asked for a probation term, as he said his client was serious about going through treatment for her drug and mental health issues.

I really want this because I have nothing else in life but to get better, McCoy said.  I feel like this might be the only shot left I have in my life.

However, Hall said McCoy had absconded from her furlough, as on Nov. 16, a bench warrant was made for McCoys arrest, which wasnt made until Dec. 2.

You knew you were supposed to go to jail and you didnt contact anybody here, he said. They could have come and figured out how to get you back to jail, but you went and you absconded.

Additionally, Hall said McCoy had several active warrants out of Oklahoma that she was not aware of and didnt believe she was serious about getting help.

I cant help her, you cant help her, the state cant help her unless she wants help, he told her attorney. And I dont see it.

Hall said he hoped that McCoys prison sentence would be a catalyst to making changes in her life. She was given credit for 106 days previously served.

Hall also sentenced McCoy to 12 months of post-release supervision and ordered her to take part in a substance evaluation, 12-step program and employment enhancement.

In other district court news on Monday:

Christopher J. Mossburg, 47, of Fremont pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual assault of a child. On Aug. 18, FPD received a child abuse/neglect intake from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. The victim disclosed to a school counselor that Mossburg had been sexually assaulting her for several years between the ages of 5 and 13. On Aug. 30, an officer spoke with Mossburg, who admitted to the accused actions. After it was made known that Mossburg had dropped out of school after eighth grade, he was found competent to stand trial. Hall found Mossburg guilty and provided him with a sex offender registration form. He also ordered a PSI and set Mossburgs sentencing for Feb. 11, 2022.

Jason A. Hoey, 44, of Omaha pleaded no contest to possession of a controlled substance. On Sept. 20, the Dodge County Sheriffs Office received a report of a possible impaired driver who drove into a ditch. As the driver, Hoey, exited the vehicle, a small bag of meth fell from his lap. An additional container of meth was also found inside of the car. As part of his plea agreement, Deputy Dodge County Attorney Sara Sopinski said the state would not be opposed to a term of probation if Hoey wished for the sentence. Although Hoeys attorney also requested an own recognizance bond to lower the cost from $10,000 so his client could return to his job, Sopinski opposed the reduction. Hall denied the motion but said he would grant a furlough if Hoey agreed to enter treatment. He found Hoey guilty, ordered a PSI and set his sentencing for Jan. 31, 2022.

Curtis J. Reeves, 40, of Dodge pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver. On June 28, a DCSO deputy located Reeves, who had two active warrants for his arrest. After Reeves was taken into custody, five plastic bags containing 27.23 grams of meth were found on him. During a search of Reeves house, two additional bags containing 5.2 grams of meth were also located, as well as scales and bags. As part of his plea agreement, Sopinski said Reeves would apply for the Dodge County Adult Drug Court. Hall found Reeves guilty, ordered a PSI and set his sentencing for Feb. 7, 2022.

Erich S. Kirchmann, 35, of Fremont appeared on a motion to revoke his probation. On Sept. 13, Kirchmann was sentenced to 18 months of intensive supervised probation for shoplifting, obstructing a peace officer and two counts of operating a vehicle to avoid arrest. A motion to revoke his probation was made after Kirchmann was arrested for possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver on Nov. 27. Hall set Kirchmanns bond at $100,000 and set his next hearing date for Jan. 18, 2022.

Thomas A. Becker, 33, of Fremont had his motion for discovery granted. Becker is facing a possession of a controlled substance charge from Nov. 2. Hall ordered the discovery to be done by Tuesday and set Beckers next hearing date for Jan. 18, 2022.

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Tuesday

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, 136 N. Main St., Fremont.

Letters to the Churches of Revelation, 10 a.m., Lighthouse, 84 W. Sixth St., Fremont.

Supportive Singles, 11:30 a.m., Reinita Restaurant, 414 N. Main St., Fremont. For more information, call 402-660-8474.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Business Improvement District 1 Committee meeting, noon, Nebraska Quilting Company, 330 N. Main St., Fremont. The meeting is open to the public.

Community Free Skates, 1-3 p.m., Sidner Ice Arena, Fremont. The event is open to grades kindergarten through 12th. No pre-registration is required.

Narcotics Anonymous Steps of Freedom meeting, 1 p.m., LifeHouse, 723 N. Broad St., Fremont. The hotline number is 402-459-9511.

Fremont Eagles Club open, 3 p.m. to midnight, 649 N. Main St., Fremont. The club may stay open later or close early depending on business.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Mens and Womens Bible Study, 6 p.m., Lighthouse, 84 W. Sixth St., Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous Freedom Works Group, 7 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont.

Wednesday

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, 136 N. Main St., Fremont.

Mens Bible Study, 1 p.m., Lighthouse, 84 W. Sixth St., Fremont.

Fremont Eagles Club open, 3 p.m. to midnight, 649 N. Main St., Fremont. The club may stay open later or close early depending on business. Aerie and Auxiliary meetings begin at 7 p.m.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Fremont Community Breastfeeding Support Group, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Three Rivers Health Department conference room, 2400 N. Lincoln Ave., Fremont. This support group is for mothers and their babies. Siblings are welcome.

Narcotics Anonymous Library Group, 7 p.m., Keene Memorial Librarys east building, 1030 N. Broad St., Fremont. The hotline number is 402-459-9511.

Alcoholics Anonymous, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Thursday

Mens Bible Study, 8 a.m., Lighthouse, 84 W. Sixth St., Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous big book study, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, 136 N. Main St., Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Community Free Skates, 1-3 p.m., Sidner Ice Arena, Fremont. The event is open to grades kindergarten through 12th. No pre-registration is required.

Fremont Eagles Club open, 3 p.m. to midnight, 649 N. Main St., Fremont. The club may stay open later or close early depending on business. The kitchen will be open from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The menu will include hamburgers and cheeseburgers, tacos and soup. Everyone is welcome.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

The Banquet, 5:30-6:30 p.m., First Lutheran Church, 3200 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Drive-thru meals served. The dinner is free.

Civil Air Patrol, 7 p.m., 1201 W. 23rd St., in yellow hangar at Fremont Airport.

Narcotics Anonymous Freedom Works Group, 7 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 1440 E. Military Ave.

Tally Ho Toastmasters, 7-8 p.m., Midland Universitys Anderson Building, Ninth and Clarkson streets, Fremont. Everyone is welcome to learn skills in communication, self-confidence and leadership. For more information, call 402-936-3479.

Narcotics Anonymous Back to Basics meeting, 7:30 p.m., First Evangelical Lutheran Church, 201 N. Davis St., Oakland.

Alcoholics Anonymous big book study, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

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Officials in then Gov. John Hickenloopers administration helped an influential Colorado Springs nonprofit privately lobby a member of the state mining board to kill plans for a granite quarry, setting up a secret briefing that legal experts described as a potential violation of state law and that proponents of the quarry believe doomed their chances at success.

In the end, the proposed quarry in southwest El Paso County was sidelined, dashing the hopes of those who argued it would deliver the county jobs, decrease construction costs across the West and generate millions of dollars in new revenue to school districts in the state.

State records show that members of the board of the Colorado Springs-based El Pomar Foundation, among the largest nonprofits in the state, relied on relationships with officials in the Hickenlooper administration to privately press their case that a permit for the quarry, at Hitch Rack Ranch south of Colorado Springs, should be denied due to environmental concerns.

After the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board rejected the permit, lawyers for the applicant, Chicago-based Transit Mix Concrete, alleged in a private demand letter threatening a lawsuit that El Pomars backdoor lobbying of the Hickenlooper administration subverted the legal hearing process and exerted undue influence on deliberations. El Pomar ended up paying a confidential $15 million settlement to Transit Mixs parent company after the demand letter was sent to the foundations board, according to six people familiar with the negotiations.

Among the officials in the Hickenlooper administration who listened privately, outside the view of the public, to the concerns of El Pomar, was Colorado Natural Resources Executive Director Bob Randall, a key state official who also was a member of the state board that would decide the fate of the project, records show.

Randall, a member of Hickenloopers Cabinet, also scheduled policy matter discussions on the Hitch Rack quarry with other top Hickenlooper officials, including Hickenloopers Chief of Staff Patrick Meyers, Hickenloopers chief legal counsel, Jacki Cooper Melmed, and Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, state records show.

Randall originally expressed support for the quarry, but reversed his stance when he voted, though he denies his private discussions with an El Pomar official and Hickenlooper administration officials swayed his vote and also contends his discussions were legal. He cast the deciding vote in April 2018 when the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board denied, on a 3-to-2 vote, a permit for the quarry, quashing a Chicago firms hopes of generating hundreds of millions of dollars in quarry revenue over 40 years.

The private discussions on the quarry permit Randall held with El Pomar and officials in the Hickenlooper administration occurred despite a state law barring the state mining board from considering in its deliberations ex parte communications, or communications from one party to the quarry permit application without the other party being present or being notified.

El Pomar Senior Vice President and general counsel Maureen Lawrence said in the statement that the foundations opposition to the quarry stemmed from its commitment to protect, enhance and promote awareness of the beautiful natural assets of the Pikes Peak region along with the fact the foundation had been gifted land adjacent to the Hitch Rack Ranch. She did not respond to specific questions about the communications between El Pomar officials and Hickenlooper administration officials, but in her statement she said that the foundation acted appropriately in all facets of this matter relating to the development of an open quarry on the Hitch Rack Ranch.

There are good reasons why the law bars ex parte communications for state agency boards that must rule on divisive subjects, said Justin Pidot, a professor at the University of Arizona school of law and former deputy solicitor for land resources for the U.S. Department of Interior in the Obama administration.

The core issue is that the parties have a right to understand the material and have a right to cross-examine proponents of information and understand the basis of an agencys decision, said Pidot, who from 2011 to 2019 was a professor at the University of Denvers school of law and also is a former appellate litigator in the U.S. Justice Department on environmental issues.

He added that the state law barring ex parte communications doesnt just ensure fairness during a state boards proceedings. The prohibition also is meant to ensure that theres a record that accurately reflects the agency decision so a court can review it.

If an agency based a decision on something submitted ex parte then a court cant later examine that and test it to determine if what was presented is legally adequate, Pidot said. You want agencies acting in a fashion that is sufficiently transparent so that if a judge later gets involved, the judge can decide what is legal and what is not legal.

Another legal expert on administrative state agencies agreed with Pidots analysis, though he asked to not be identified.

Pidot said Randalls discussion with Kyle Hybl, then El Pomars president and chief operating officer and a vocal opponent, appeared to be a clear violation of the prohibition on ex parte communication, but discussions Randall had with other officials in the governors office about the quarry permit application are murkier. Case law is less settled on whether such discussions with the governors staff would be allowed because the governor has executive authority to allow Cabinet-level discussions with a voting board member, Pidot said.

Randall, in an interview, said he recalled that at the time he took the private briefing on the quarry from Hybl, the permit application had not yet been scheduled for a hearing before the board. The technical team at his agency still was reviewing the merits of the application, giving him the ability to hear an opponents concerns despite the law barring ex parte communications, he said.

Its not a ripe matter for the board at that point, Randall said. As an executive member of the department I would meet with proponents and opponents not infrequently. That is part of the business of state department heads. Thats part of the business to resolve matters.

Records show that Transit Mix had filed its application for a permit in November 2017, nearly three months before Kyle Hybl privately briefed Randall. By February 2018, the issue had become so divisive that the department he heads had received more than 567 comment letters. In April, the departments technical team recommended approval of the quarry permit.

Randall said nobody in the Hickenlooper administration, including the governor, directed his vote against the permit for the quarry.

I based my vote in opposition on the information presented at the hearing, said Randall, who is now a lawyer in private practice.

The Colorado Supreme Court has found violations of the law barring state boards from ex parte communications serious enough to set aside a state boards orders and require a new board hearing.

In 1975, the Colorado Supreme Court set aside the Colorado Unemployment Commissions denial of unemployment benefits for an employee of Anheuser-Busch after finding that a commissioner held a private phone call with the employer on the merits of the case.

In another case, in 1981, involving a gas providers challenge of a ruling from the Colorado Utility Commission, the Colorado Supreme Court issued an opinion stating, we have no doubt that questionable ex parte exchanges between an advocate and an adjudicatory tribunal may not arbitrarily be screened from appellate scrutiny.

Details of Randalls private discussion with Kyle Hybl werent revealed at the time of the hearing and werent discovered and documented by Transit Mix and its lawyers until months after the state boards official vote.

Key players who ruled on the permit said they werent aware of the private briefing at the time. Karin Utterback-Norman, a member of the state mining board who voted in favor of the quarry permit, said in an interview this month that she never knew that Randall had been briefed by the opposition prior to the board hearing and vote.

Although El Pomars opposition was widely known, officials with the foundation did not testify during the hearing, choosing instead to submit written comments against the quarry permit.

The discussion Randall had with Hybl and several other discussions between Randall and other high-ranking officials in the Hickenlooper administration were revealed in a stream of emails lawyers for the quarry applicant, Transit Mix Concrete, obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act request after the denial of the permit.

Six sources have confirmed that the lawyer for Transit Mix used the details contained in the state emails to press El Pomar for a multimillion dollar payment, threatening litigation on behalf of Transit Mix. The firms lawyers alleged the secret meetings and communications by El Pomar with the Hickenlooper administration amounted to undue influence restricting the free flow of commerce.

The lawyers for Transit Mix contended in a private demand, contained in a thumb drive and sent to El Pomar board members, that top officials at the nonprofit foundation should not have asked officials in the Hickenlooper administration to help in the attempt to kill efforts to obtain a permit for the quarry. The demand for a settlement included details about El Pomars lobbying campaign of the Hickenlooper administration as detailed in the emails, according to people familiar with the demand.

One individual familiar with the negotiations said Transit Mixs lawyer, John Cook, sought $40 million from El Pomar to head off litigation over the matter.

Randall, the head of the department of natural resources and a member of the board that denied the permit, was seen in the lobby refreshment area at the Colorado Springs hotel where the hearing on the permit was held, talking with an El Pomar official and a developer moments before the final day of the hearing began, according to notes detailing concerns a Transit Mix lawyer later raised.

The notes, which were reviewed by The Gazette, state that Cook later told Transit Mix officials he had evidence that Randall conversed in the hotel lobby area moments before the final day of the hearing with R. Thayer Tutt Jr., the chief investment officer for El Pomar, and developer Warren Dean, who hired a consultant to fight the quarry who spent more than two decades working for the state mining division. In a split vote, the mining board rejected the permit later that day after meeting twice in executive session for board members to discuss matters outside the view of the public. Those voting against the permit said they were swayed by concerns the quarry would harm groundwater quality in the area.

Randall said he did talk to Tutt and Dean, two avowed opponents of the quarry, on the day of the hearing, but not about the merits of the quarry. He said the discussions were merely small talk, including about mountain biking. He said he received no communication from the governor about the quarry the day of the hearing. Tutt and Dean did not return telephone messages seeking comment.

Five individuals familiar with the matters confirmed that the board of directors of El Pomar eventually approved a confidential $15 million payment in 2019. Transit Mix agreed as part of the settlement to not renew its efforts for a permit for the Hitch Rack Ranch quarry, one person familiar with the negotiations said. The people familiar with the deliberations asked that their names not be revealed due to the sensitivity of the matters involved.

Asked about the payment by The Gazette, El Pomar issued a statement that didnt acknowledge or deny the payment and said it would not comment about any alleged agreement with Transit Mix. Lawrence, the El Pomar general counsel, added these additional comments: The mining permit matter related to the Hitch Rack Ranch was decided over two years ago, after the state of Colorado rejected the permit application for a second time because it failed to protect groundwater quantity and the hydrologic balance in the area. El Pomar Foundation was one of hundreds of individuals and organizations from the community to publicly oppose the development of an open quarry mine on the historic ranch which features abundant wildlife, beautiful pasture land, ponderosa forest and several ponds and creeks.

Hickenlooper, who no longer is governor and is running for the seat held by U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, denied through a campaign spokesman having a role in influencing the board vote.

Gov. Hickenlooper did not weigh in on the decision made by the independent Mined Land Reclamation Board, and that insinuation is another unfounded attack, said Mellissa Miller, the communications director for the Hickenlooper campaign.

The Gazette learned about the private discussions and the El Pomar payment through individuals familiar with the details. The newspaper also obtained 81 pages of the state email communications and calendars and agendas for some of the meetings the Hickenlooper administration held with El Pomar officials by filing its own open records requests with the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and the governors office, though the records obtained were not a comprehensive account.

Additional records, more than 120 pages, released from the governors office to Transit Mix in 2018, were purged in the transition from the Hickenlooper administration to the incoming administration of Gov. Jared Polis, according to an official who worked in both administrations. The records were destroyed in violation of the states records management manual, which requires state agencies to keep for two years documents provided in response to an open records request.

The proposed quarry was one of the most hotly debated issues in El Paso County in recent years. On one side was Transit Mix Concrete, a Chicago firm that had angered Colorado Springs residents who said the company had left unsightly scars in the Pikes Peak foothills at gravel mines it owned.

Supporting Transit Mixs case for a new granite quarry were key Republicans who agreed to lobby on the firms behalf, and also Cindi Allmendinger, a retired school teacher who had agreed to lease her land south of Colorado Springs to Transit Mix for a new granite mining operation.

Transit Mix and Allmendinger pointed out the quarry wouldnt generate just a stream of revenue for them. The quarry also would yield millions of dollars in mineral royalties for public schools and ensure low-cost aggregate and concrete for roads and other construction in Colorado, they said. They hoped to mine the quarry for 40 years, with the quarry generating as much as $750,000 annually in royalty revenue for school districts in the state, according to one state analysis.

Their plans drew the opposition of several environmental groups as well as El Pomar, which had been gifted about 150 acres adjacent to the Hitch Rack Ranch for an eventual nature preserve from property owned by Harold Buck Ingersoll, who died in 2015, and his wife, Barbara. Also opposed were some wealthy homeowners, 13 of whom lived within a mile of the proposed quarry. El Pomars statement noted the gift of the land and said the foundations commitment to protect the environmental integrity of the Ingersoll Ranch and fulfill the donors wishes drove our decision to oppose the quarry mine, which we felt was incompatible with those goals. The statement further added that the foundation remains heartened that there is no mining operation on the site today, and we are not aware of any proposals to do so in the future.

El Pomar is among the largest nonprofit foundations in the state. It was established by Spencer Penrose, who died in 1939 after making a fortune in the mining business and contributing to many Colorado Springs landmarks, including his construction of The Broadmoor hotel. In 2019, El Pomar reported assets in excess of $560 million and reported handing out in 2018 more than $17.2 million in charitable grants and contributions to organizations throughout Colorado.

Members of the El Pomar board are politically active. Bill Hybl, who stepped down as CEO of El Pomar Foundation in February 2019 but remains chairman of the board, contributed $1,050 in 2010 and $1,100 in 2012 to Hickenloopers gubernatorial campaigns, though he has much more often financed the political campaigns of Republican candidates. His son, Kyle Hybl, who replaced his father as CEO of the foundation, was an elected member of the Board of Regents for the University of Colorado system from 2007 through 2018, serving two stints as chairman. That board is responsible for hiring the universitys president, setting tuition rates and approving the systems nearly $5 billion budget.

Allmendinger said she found El Pomars opposition to the quarry cynical, saying that the foundation acted as if its a solid do-gooder in the community while it took a stance that in the end blocked her private property rights.

I feel thats business as usual in Colorado Springs, Allmendinger said. Its not fair. Theres a good old boys club here, and if youre out, theres no business that happens. Its strange that a property owner of just 150 acres was able to block something that was such a benefit to everyone in Colorado Springs and maintain so much control over the process.

She said she believes the private communications El Pomar held with Hickenlooper officials tilted the playing field in El Pomars favor.

Before this I expected the system to play by the rules, said Allmendinger, who said she didnt receive money from the settlement between Transit Mix and El Pomar, but was aware of the negotiations. I expected a fair game. It feels wrong to learn this process might have been tainted by what appears to be backdoor dealings.

James Gidwitz, a Chicago resident and the owner of Transit Mix, declined comment, saying he did not want to revisit what he considered a painful episode that impacted his business.

Transit Mix was owned by Chicago-based Continental Materials, which reported in a government filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the company had reached a settlement agreement in January 2019 to resolve a business dispute. Under the terms of the settlement, Continental Materials was paid $15 million, with no admission of wrongdoing from either party, the filing states.

El Pomar has not yet submitted its IRS form 990 for that particular year.

Continental Materials has since sold Transit Mix to Aggregate Industries-WCR, a Colorado company, and the efforts to seek another permit to mine Hitch Rack Ranch quarry have not been pursued.

Back in 2018, Transit Mixs permit application to mine Hitch Rack Ranch quarry won the support of the staff at the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety in the Department of Natural Resources, which recommended that the state mining board approve the permit. But Randall, the member of that board and the executive director at the Department of Natural Resources, would end up, when the matter came up for a board vote, bucking the recommendation of his staff.

Emails show that months before he voted, Randall agreed to hear from an El Pomar official about El Pomars concerns over the quarry.

Jamie Van Leeuwen, at that time Hickenloopers senior adviser, on Dec. 23, 2017, sent an email to Randall, thanking him for a great conversation yesterday about Hitch Rack Ranch. Van Leeuwen also states in the email, that per our conversation I am looping you in with my two dear friends, identifying both Kyle and Bill Hybl, and copying them on the email.

Any wise advice or consult you could offer would be most appreciated! Van Leeuwens email to Randall reads. I will turn over to you all and lets go take it from there.

After that introduction, Kyle Hybl reached out by email four days later to Randall asking for a call, or, if preferable, an in-person meeting on January 8, 2018. Randall replied back to Kyle Hybl in an email, copied to others, including Bill Hybl, that hopefully we can find a time that works.

On New Years Day, Randall sent an email to Kyle Hybl, setting up a meeting by telephone for later that week, stating that he would ask Ginny Brannon, the Department of Natural Resources director of the Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, to attend. Also copied on that email was Bill Hybl and Van Leeuwen.

In April of that year, Randall cast the deciding vote as a member of the Colorado Mined Land Reclamation Board denying Transit Mixs permit application.

The communications between Hybl and Randall werent the only El Pomar communications tracked in the state emails obtained by The Gazette.

Other email communications provided to The Gazette show that Kyle Hybl also asked Meyers, Hickenloopers chief of staff, and Melmed, Hickenloopers chief legal counsel, to hear his concerns, and that those two Hickenlooper staffers met with Hybl and R. Thayer Tutt Jr. Melmed then relayed Hybls concerns to Randall, alerting him of arguments from an opponent of the quarry without the company seeking the permit having a chance to review or rebut those arguments.

Kyle Hybl, in a series of emails in December 2017 and January 2018 to Meyers and Van Leeuwen, asked them to address a matter of potential interest to the governor, and detailed for them El Pomars objections to the quarry. The emails included a draft video he said had been prepared in opposition to the quarry.

In one email to Hybl in late February, Meyers wrote: Kyle, we never spoke on this. Given that the permit is pending, were pretty limited but happy to talk if youd like. In previous emails sent before that one, Meyers had agreed to review material Hybl had sent by email and also agreed to get back to him.

In a March 2018 email, Meyers agreed to set up a meeting between himself, Tutt, Kyle Hybl and Melmed to discuss the quarry. In a March 9 email, Kyle Hybl thanked Meyers and Melmed for meeting with him and Tutt to go over their concerns. Hybl went on to detail in the email a host of El Pomar concerns about the quarry.

We would respectfully request the governors various agencies make a full and complete examination of the proposed quarry and its impacts, Hybl asked in that email.

A clear and transparent review by the governor and the governors agencies will reveal how disturbing and damaging Transit Mixs application is, he further said in the email.

Melmed on March 18, 2018, forwarded to Randall an email from Kyle Hybl, detailing Hybls concerns, and asked Randall in her own email to review the material and let her know his thoughts. Please keep this email between us for now, but you can discuss the position he takes below with anyone you think is necessary, Melmed wrote to Randall. Im mostly interested in the way he characterizes process here.

Randall replied by email a little over a week later to Melmed, telling her he was a voting member of the board that would decide the quarry permit and telling her that his staff, including five environmental protection specialists, who reviewed the permit, would recommend approval of the permit during the hearing.

I take issue with Mr. Hybls assertion that agencies within DNR have failed to perform a sufficient examination of the proposed quarry, Randall wrote in the email to Melmed.

The governors office, when it responded in 2018 to Transit Mixs open records request, redacted the emails between Melmed and Randall but eventually relented and released those emails after Transit Mix threatened to go to court for their release, records show. Melmed, who declined comment for this article, has continued as chief legal counsel in the Polis administration. Meyers could not be reached for comment.

Theres nothing untoward about her asking me to answer questions shes received, Randall said in an interview. She was just saying, Help me understand this.

On April 12, Randall was scheduled to hold a meeting with top officials in Hickenloopers office, the records show. The agenda for the meeting states those expected to attend the meeting with Randall were Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne; her chief of staff, David Padrino; Hickenloopers chief of staff, Meyers and Hickenloopers deputy chief of staff, Amy Venturi.

The draft agenda for the meeting states the fourth item that will be discussed will be policy matters, regarding Hitch Rack quarry, which was identified as the only policy matter to be discussed.

Randall, in an interview, said he recalled scheduling that meeting as a courtesy to Hickenloopers staff to give them a heads up that the quarry vote was coming up in a couple of weeks. He denied that Hickenlooper officials pressured him during the meeting to vote against the quarry permit.

It was a significant public debate, he recalled. You dont want the governors office blindsided.

Randall said in an interview that his eventual vote against the permit for the quarry was based solely on what was presented during the boards hearing and was not based on what was discussed in the meeting with Lynne and Hickenloopers staff or earlier discussion with El Pomar officials or state officials.

Since the rejection of the quarry permit, the producer price of mined granite, the type of material the quarry would have produced, has increased by more than 10%. Allmendinger and supporters of the permit say that price would be significantly less if the quarry permit had been approved.

The quality of material elsewhere, as I understand it, is not as good a quality as we would have produced, Allmendinger said. And there also is not as much material on the market now as there would have been.

As the price of granite has shot up, El Pomar has approached Allmendinger and asked if she has interest in selling her familys ranch to the foundation. She said that after the mining board rejected the permit, an El Pomar official toured the ranch and offered to have the foundation buy her out for what she considered a low-ball offer. She said that when she has pushed back for a higher price, El Pomar officials and their lawyer have told her that the land isnt very valuable because theyve successfully blocked her efforts to have it mined.

Gazette writer and editor Tom Roeder contributed to this report.
Gov. Jared Polis named Ken Montera on Monday to represent the 5th Congressional District, which includes Colorado Springs, on the University of Colorado Board of Regents.

Montera, a Republican, ran for an at-large seat on the board unsuccessfully in 2018. He will replace Chance Hill, who resigned his seat last month to "pursue new professional opportunities outside the state," the board and president said in a release announcing his departure. Hill was in the middle of a six-year term that would have expired in 2025; Montera will serve until the Nov. 8, 2022 election, and the winner of that race will serve out the remaining two years of the term.

Polis said he received 19 applications for the unpaid post and interviewed seven finalists before selecting Montera, who had been endorsed by the Republican Party's 5th Congressional District assembly. Polis said he was looking for "someone who would cut costs and waste and would work hard to made higher education affordable," adding that Montera's previous campaign for the board would make him "a more effective regent."

Polis said he wanted to make the appointment quickly to give the district a representative as the search begins for CU's new president. He also said he hoped to have Montera in place for Tuesday's Board of Regents meeting.

Polis said he chose Montera for the job, in part, for his "deep ties in the community" and because as the son and grandson of Pueblo steelworkers, he was the first in his family to attend college. Montera received a Presidents Leadership Class scholarship to attend the University of Colorado Boulder and earned a bachelor's degree in marketing from the Leeds School of Business that "set him (Montera) up for a successful career in business," Polis said.

Montera, 64, said he plans to seek election to the seat in November and his most important task as regent will be to help select the system's president. He said he also learned during his previous campaign that the cost of higher education has become too high for many in the state to afford, making attending one of the system's campuses impossible for some Colorado residents.

"Im appreciative for the opportunity to give back to the university that set the course for my life," Montera said during a news conference announcing his appointment. "Now I have the chance to deliver the dream (of a college education) to someone like me."

Montera had a long career in marketing in executive roles with health care giants Johnson & Johnson and Baxter International, as well as consumer brands KFC, PepsiCo, Bath & Body Works and L Brands, which later acquired Bath & Body Works. He has been a self-employed retail and management consultant in Colorado Springs since retiring in 2015 and said he plans to continue serving as vice chair of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic Board of Directors.

The appointment, announced on the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus, and how quickly Polis made the selection won praise from the university's interim president Todd Saliman, Board of Regents Chair John Kroll, Vice Chair Sue Sharkey, retired UCCS Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak and Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers.

Polis on Monday also named Nick Ragain, president of the Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC, to the Colorado Tourism Board. The 11-member panel oversees the Colorado Tourism Office, the primary tourism promotion agency for the state with a $19.3 million annual budget.

Ragain spearheaded plans for the team's 8,000-seat downtown stadium, Weidner Field, which opened in May.
The Denver Police Department is investigating a murder in which the victim was believed to be following his stolen vehicle when he was fatally shot.
A motorcyclist died after crashing into an SUV in Colorado Springs on Sunday afternoon, police said.

Officers responded to the intersection of Powers Boulevard and Hancock Expressway shortly after 3:30 p.m. after a motorcycle and SUV collided, officers said.

The motorcycle heading south on Powers crashed into an SUV's side door as the SUV was headed east on Hancock, police said.

Emergency responders took the motorcyclist to a hospital where the rider died, the agency said.

Speed and impairment were not suspected in the crash, officers said.
One year after the Colorado Supreme Court laid down a new standard for prosecuting felony drunk driving cases and prompted the reversal of dozens of convictions, the justices have now clarified that prosecutors may, in fact, seek to try those defendants again for driving under the influence.

It does not violate the constitutional protection against double jeopardy, the court decided on Monday, for district attorneys to again file felony charges against people whose convictions were downgraded to misdemeanors after the November 2020 decision in Linnebur v. People.

"[W]here a legal error occurs in the trial court, double jeopardy typically does not bar retrial," wrote Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright in the Dec. 20 opinion.

The Colorado Criminal Defense Bar blasted the decision and hinted that it would be worthy of further appeal.

"We are very disappointed that the court did not uphold the very basic and old principle of law that the state should only be able to take one shot at getting a conviction," the legal organization said. "We hope that there is a way that the U.S. Supreme Court might reverse this error."

The Linnebur case clarified the level of proof needed to convict someone of a felony DUI, rather than a misdemeanor. A 2015 change in state law established the more serious offense for someone who had at least three prior DUI or driving while ability impaired convictions. The subsequent practice was to treat the prior offenses as a sentence enhancer, with trial judges effectively transforming a misdemeanor conviction into a felony after establishing the existence of the three prior DUIs.

In Linnebur, a majority of the court jettisoned that method, saying that prosecutors must instead prove the prior offenses to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

"That is not what we meant," said Sen. John Cooke, R-Greeley, following the decision. Cooke was one of the legislative sponsors of the felony DUI law. "The intent was to say if you have three misdemeanor DUIs, then on your fourth one, it's a felony, so it becomes a sentence enhancer."

As a result, the state's second-highest court ordered the reversal of felony DUI convictions to misdemeanors. But the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court were silent about whether the state and U.S. constitutions would allow a prosecutor to charge a defendant again with felony DUI and seek a second trial.

The First Judicial District Attorney's Office, which covers Jefferson and Gilpin counties, charged Kevin Wayne Viburg again for a felony DUI offense from 2016. The Court of Appeals previously reversed Viburg's felony conviction in 2020, but earlier this year a Jefferson County judge ruled that District Attorney Alexis King could proceed with a second trial.

The Supreme Court reviewed the trial court judge's ruling directly. Viburg's lawyer argued that the district attorney should not receive a second chance at presenting evidence to the jury that it did not offer at the first trial, and raised logistical questions about what a second conviction would mean for Viburg's existing misdemeanor.

"Would a second verdict override, or merely supplement, the first conviction? Does the original verdict have any significance at a successive jury trial for the same offense? Which conviction prevails?" Deputy State Public Defender Meredith O'Harris wrote to the court.

The Supreme Court's decision did not resolve those questions. Boatright instead explained that the purpose of the constitutional prohibition against successive prosecutions for the same offense was to avoid putting a defendant through extra expense and anxiety. But he drew a distinction between an acquittal by a jury and someone whose conviction is reversed following an error in the proceedings.

"Here, there was no acquittal. And where the defendant is not acquitted, double jeopardy does not bar retrial," Boatright wrote.

Viburg also pointed out that he still retains his conviction from the criminal conduct at issue, and that the district attorney had the opportunity to prove his prior convictions to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt, but did not. The Supreme Court disagreed with that interpretation, noting the original trial court judge applied the sentence enhancement to Viburg's conviction instead of turning the question of the prior offenses over to the jury.

"Here, the jury didnt acquit Viburg of felony DUI because it never actually considered whether he was guilty of felony DUI," Boatright explained. "As a result, the prosecution never received the opportunity to present the evidence to the jury, which didnt render a verdict on felony DUI at all. Therefore, that misdemeanor DUI is a lesser included offense of felony DUI has no bearing on whether the prosecution may retry Viburg for felony DUI."

The criminal defense bar, in its statement, criticized the decision for allowing the First Judicial District Attorney's Office to "take a second shot at convicting" Viburg.

"It really is fundamentally unfair to let them keep trying until they get it right," the organization said.

The Colorado District Attorneys' Council, which represents the state's elected prosecutors, declined to comment on the case.

When the Supreme Court originally decided Linnebur, the majority of justices had significant concerns about allowing a jury to convict someone of a misdemeanor, with a judge then elevating the conviction to a felony through sentencing. Felony convictions not only carry longer sentences, but also consequences for firearm ownership, voting while incarcerated and working in certain professions.

But the two dissenting members of the court, Justices Monica M. Marquez and Carlos A. Samour Jr., warned about other manifestations of unfairness to defendants that could result from the ruling, even beyond the possibility of a second trial.

"Todays decision strikes me as an example of 'be careful what you wish for,'" Marquez wrote.

M. Colin Bresee, a criminal defense attorney in Denver, agreed with that sentiment.

"The expression 'be careful what you ask for' applies," Bresee said. "The Colorado Supreme Court is not planning on lightening up on DUI laws any time soon. It was folly to think otherwise. Unfortunately, (Viburg) will now likely be a convicted felon."
Rogel Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced Friday in connection with the 2019 deaths of four people when his semitrailer truck crashed into

traffic on Interstate 70 in Lakewood.
The way Thomas T.J. Robertson tells it, the only thing he did inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was pose for a photograph while other supporters of then-President Donald Trump ran amok.

Mr. Robertson, like many other defendants, had no direct bearing on what others in various parts of the crowd ... were doing, his attorney wrote in a motion filed earlier this month that seeks dismissal of a felony charge against him.

Federal prosecutors have cited various comments from the former sergeant with the Rocky Mount Police Department, made before and after the insurrection, that they say show he was an active participant in an effort to obstruct Congress as it met to certify the results of a Nov. 2, 2020, election won by President Joe Biden.

But his words, defense attorney Mark Rollins wrote in the motion filed in Washington D.C.s federal court, should be protected by the First Amendment.

The opinions allegedly expressed by Mr. Robertson were just speech, and no matter how unpopular, they cannot be considered criminal conduct punishable by the government, the motion states.

In response, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi argued that Robertson is being prosecuted not for what he said, but what he did.

That his own statements about his conduct will serve as evidence of his intent to commit this crime does not render the prosecution in violation of the First Amendment, she wrote in court filings.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said in an order filed Friday that he will rule on all pre-trial motions by March 29. An April 4 trial has been scheduled for Robertson and Jacob Fracker, a fellow police officer who accompanied him inside the Capitol while the riots were underway.

Roberson and Fracker, who were off-duty at the time, were fired from their police jobs shortly after the disclosure of a selfie photograph taken of them standing in front of a Revolutionary War heros statue in the buildings Crypt.

They are each charged with obstruction of an official proceeding  a felony  and three misdemeanors: entering a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in such a place, and disorderly conduct in the Capitol.

Robertsons motion to dismiss the felony count contends that it is unconstitutionally vague as applied to his actions. He also argues that the indictment fails to specify what proceeding he is charged with obstructing, and that the Jan. 6 electoral count by Congress is not an official action covered by the law.

Yet there seems to be little vagueness about how Robertson, an Army veteran, felt about the presidential election.

A legitimate republic stands on 4 boxes, he wrote Nov. 7, 2020, on Facebook, prosecutors say. The soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box and then the cartridge box.

We just moved to step 3. Step 4 will not be pretty, the post continued. I cannot speak for others, but being disenfranchised by fraud is my hard line. Ive spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. Im about to become part of one, and a very effective one.

Other online comments suggest that Robertson ardently believed Trumps claim that the election was stolen. There has been no evidence of the widespread voter fraud Trump decried in urging a large crowd to fight like hell shortly before the Capitol was stormed.

More than 700 people, including two others from Western Virginia, have been charged with taking part in the insurrection.

Robertson was allowed to remain free on a personal recognizance bond following his arrest in January. He continued to air heated online rhetoric, writing that we actually attacked the government who is the problem, according to court records.

In July, Robertson was charged with violating the conditions of his bond after a search of his Ferrum home found what prosecutors call an assault-style rifle, a cache of ammunition and a partially assembled pipe bomb. In the months after Jan. 6, Robertson had placed online orders for an arsenal of more than 40 firearms, according to a motion to have his bond revoked.

The 48-year-old had been ordered not to possess or transport any guns as a condition for staying free pending trial. He has been held in the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange since early August.

About 710 people from around the country have been arrested on charges of taking part in the insurrection. Some are charged with forced entry and assaulting police officers. Others are accused of obstructing Congress by their mere presence in the Capitol at such a turbulent time.

As of Dec. 6, 145 defendants have pleaded guilty, according to a summary by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia. Judges have imposed sentences for 45 of them, 19 of which involved incarceration.

The toughest punishment to date was imposed last week, when a rioter was sentenced to more than five years in prison for attacking police officers as they tried to hold back the angry mob.

In his motion to dismiss Robertsons charge, his attorney noted that participants have been convicted for a wide variety of actions under the same law, which he cited as evidence that the felony charge was too vague.

Aloi responded that any inconsistencies are taken into consideration at sentencing.

None of the Capital breach defendants are the same, she wrote.

CEO who threw chair inside Capitol on Jan. 6 gets jail time In another sentencing on Friday, a Montana man who brought his 10-year-old son to Washington for Donald Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally was given 60 days in prison for joining the mob that stormed the Capitol.

N.C. woman convicted in Jan. 6 insurrection brought her child to the Capitol with her, prosecutors allege A Pilot Mountain woman convicted of illegally entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, also brought her 14-year-old child to the riot and took the child into the building, federal prosecutors said in court papers filed Thursday.

Illinois brothers plead guilty to charges in US Capitol attack Two Illinois brothers pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges for their participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
ROCKY MOUNT, N.C.  Authorities have recovered the body of a man who was working at a distribution center in North Carolina for the QVC home-shopping television network when a massive fire erupted, destroying most of the facility, a local official said Sunday.

Edgecombe County Manager Eric Evans said authorities found the man's body Sunday morning at the facility near Rocky Mount.

"Fire had not actually touched that section of the building," where the body was discovered, Evans said. "An autopsy has not been done, but they are assuming it may have been through smoke inhalation."

The Edgecombe County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post that 21-year-old Kevon Ricks has been identified as the worker who died.

QVC confirmed the death in a statement released Sunday night. The company also said it was offering resources to the rest of its Rocky Mount employees, including shutdown pay through December 31 and a hotline for workers to get updates and leave questions.

More than 300 employees were working at the 1.2 million-square-foot facility when the fire broke out early Saturday.

On Saturday, Evans initially said all of the center's employees appeared to be accounted for. Later, however, he said the sheriff's office was looking for a worker who was missing after the fire.

Ricks' relatives told WTVD-TV they hadn't heard from him since the fire. A relative told the TV station they were informed of the body's discovery.

Gov. Roy Cooper tweeted he was "saddened by the loss of life" during the fire.

"I've been in contact with local and state officials about that tragedy and taking steps to help families hurt by the loss of more than 2000 jobs," he posted.

Evans estimates the fire destroyed at least 70% of the facility. He said firefighters were using machines to clear debris in order to extinguish "hot spots" that were still flaring up Sunday.

Crews from nearly 45 fire departments were fighting the blaze more than 12 hours after it began.

The statement from QVC on Sunday said the company was "still working to understand the impact" on customer orders.

"Our Customer Care representatives are prepared to help as this situation continues to evolve. We appreciate our customers' patience and their outpouring of support to our Rocky Mount team," the statement said.

QVC. Inc. is based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Qurate Retail Inc. Evans said QVC is one of Edgecombe County's largest employers.

"It's devastating, but everybody is concerned and everybody is pulling together for these employees and their families," he added.
ALMODOVAR: At that moment, I was sick. I got the virus the first week. Even before the first week. I had just arrived from LA after being at the Oscars at the end of February. Then I felt like I had a flu and stayed at home. Three days later, they called for the quarantine. The days were so long that I tried just to talk and write something about the situation. One day, I was disobedient and went into the street to see Madrid completely deserted. It's a very impressive image that I wanted to have. So I pretended to go buy something just to see, just to see the town.

AP: It must have felt ironic that in the midst of a pandemic you were making a movie where swabs and lab tests, in proving the children's maternity, is central to the plot.

ALMODOVAR: When I was writing the movie a year before, it was like science fiction. But when we made the film, it did feel very familiar.

AP: What initially interested you in making a film that deals with the mass graves from the Spanish Civil War?
Pegram is serving up to 30 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to numerous sexual offenses. He is named as a defendant in another lawsuit involving the Kernersville Family YMCA, where he worked as a counselor.

The sex abuse law had also paved the way for a lawsuit that was filed against the UNC School of the Arts. That lawsuit now has 39 plaintiffs, all former alumni of the high school program, who allege that faculty members sexually abused them and the administration turned a blind eye.

Other parts of the law, like a section making it a crime for people to fail to report child abuse to authorities, werent challenged.

But for many advocates, the statute of limitations change was a hallmark piece of the bill.

As a former child victim advocate and the mother of a detective who investigates crimes against children, this is deeply personal for me, said Gastonia Sen. Kathy Harrington, the Republican Senate majority leader and a lead sponsor of the bill, when she filed it in 2019. Victims and those who work to bring offenders to justice need all the help they can get, and this legislation strengthens our laws to do just that.
We hope and pray that this plague will quickly disappear from the midst of all of us. At the same time, demonization of our people must not take root here or anywhere, so we are speaking out.

We in the Jewish community are resolute in our determination to educate ourselves, our youth and others in our area about the terrible consequences of all types of bias, bigotry, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism.

In the history of the Jewish people, we have seen and experienced the terrible consequences of hate and have learned well the lessons of these horrible occurrences. The main lessons are that hatred must be fought wherever it raises its ugly head and that education against it is of paramount importance.

Indeed, after the deaths of 6 million Jews during World War II, the phrase Never Again became a watchword of sorts for the Jewish people. We believe that Never Again must begin in the classroom and the home.

Cowardly acts such as what occurred Sunday in Greensboro will not succeed in dividing our community.
On the isolation imposed on leader Abdullah Ocalan Sheikho told ANHA:

''Leader Abdulla Ocalan surpassed all national, geographic, religious and gender boundaries via his thoughts and philosophy as well his peoples and project of democratic nation and has bcame an incarnation to free life and democratic transformation as well the relentless struggle and women freedom. Hence, leader APO has become an ideal system for freedom and democracy for all peoples and humanity as he is the sole and able substitute to all impending democracy related solutions in the Middle East and the world and proposed an arrangement as a substitute to the hegemony and exploitation and means of national and Islamic states and dependence . ''

Ahmed Sheikho said all ''practices by the Turkish state since 2011 against leader and banning lawyers and family to meet him and imposing sanctions under fake grounds all discharge into encroachments and rights usurpation amid an international silence that is an accomplice with Turkey in its policies based on annihilation and isolation on leader and the Kurdish rights and democracy in the region. It is revealed that secret agreements between the world hegemony system and Turkey are still active and never changed as some countries changed their views though they were parts to the international plot hatched against the Kurdish people and democracy in the region in the personage of leader Abdullah Ocalan and Kurdistan Workers' Party, as powers that make societal mature proposals as substitutes for hegemony and its national states and its partition of the region.''

Responding to a question on the isolation imposed on leader Sheikho said:

''It is true that fascist Turkey as a means for hegemonies and great powers against leader is indication and same approach by these powers towards the Kurdish people and its struggle and its legal rights and towards democracy in the region as well. Undoubtedly, as isolation continues keeping the most important Kurdish leader in the Kurdish freedom and democracy and community seeking powers in the region . keeping leader 23 years in prison means to annihilate the Kurdish people and non -acceptance of any solutions based on democracy to all national pending issues and impeding any building any real democracies. ''

Sheikh said any real solution should be preceded by lifting isolation imposed on leader and Kurdish people and great powers should relinquish its polices based on slavery and submission and assimilation.

Sheikh said replying to a question on the role played by CPT and other human rights associations:

All these associations are moving under already planned schemes drawn by great powers. All based on policies and not procedural measures that run in the same policy adopted by international system against the Kurdish people and its rights and other pending solution in the region. They do not lift a finger, and if does so it is a very slow process and for ends sought. ''the CPT well knows what happens in Imrali Prison of breaches upon rights, but it is clear that there are factors and some basic factors in the hegemony power that forbids it from carrying out its duties and its role regarding encroachments committed in Turkish Imrali Prison against leader Ocalan and other detainees''.

Sheikh went on to say ''in spite of all encroachments committed by Turkey that commits massacres and annihilations against Kurds and region's peoples we see no real or punitive approaches to the criminal Turkish conduct''. Though European and U.S cover the breaches and offences against leader and isolation imposed and the slow dearth applied by Turkish authorities against the Kurds these same countries are shown astonished from the Turkish barbarity and savagery and release shy statements without any real follow up.

Sheikh noted a new phase would be commenced in case isolation on leader and slow death on Kurds ended by Turkey and its supporters, but up to date Turkey under Erdogan intensifies these policies against Kurds in all parts of Kurdistan. '' peace and security will not be achieved in the region without leader APO. A real democratic solution should be found to the Kurdish Question, and to guarantee their rights in determination and running their regions and wealth''.

L..A

ANHA
The Longest Night Memorial Service for those who have died while experiencing homelessness is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at Anchor Park in Helena.

Helena will join hundreds of cities across the United States in memorializing those lost this year. National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day takes place annually on the longest night of the year, Dec. 21.

These past few years have been steeped in crisis, said YWCA Helenas Executive Director Jenifer Gursky. A pandemic that left agencies and local governments scrambling has highlighted the challenges for those without safe and secure housing. It should break our hearts that some of our neighbors lose their lives in the midst of homelessness.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Montana had an estimated 1,545 people experiencing homelessness on any given day in 2020. And 4,216 public school children were reported to experience homelessness.

I think what we need to remember is that our dental assistant, our server at our favorite restaurant, and families with small children are experiencing homelessness, Gursky said. The pandemic economy is intensifying housing insecurity and an economy that doesnt work for everyone. I want it to be not okay for families, for our neighbors, to be living in cars.

A prayer song led by Mike Jetty will open the service, followed by a reminder to look inward and reflect by the call of the Shofar. The service will include a reading of names, a prayer, and French horn by Erin Vang. The memorial service will end with a candle ceremony and reflection. This years event is hosted by YWCA Helena and United Way of the Lewis & Clark area.

YWCA Helena is a nonprofit organization providing transitional housing and supportive services for unhoused women and their children.

Provided by YWCA Helena.

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U.S. population growth dipped to its lowest rate since the nations founding during the first year of the pandemic as the coronavirus curtailed immigration, delayed pregnancies and killed hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents, according to figures released Tuesday.

The United States grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to the U.S. population from July 2020 to July 2021, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The U.S. has been experiencing slow population growth for years but the pandemic exacerbated that trend. This past year was the first time since 1937 that the nations population grew by less than 1 million people.

I was expecting low growth but nothing this low, said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro. It tells us that this pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all kinds of ways, and now demography.

Montana, however, was tied for second in the country in terms of percent growth, increasing in size by 1.7%. Utah also grew by 1.7%, while Idaho topped the nation at 2.9%.

According to the census, Montana reached 1,104,271 individuals this past July. That increase bumped Montana from 44th largest state to 43rd, prompting it to swap places with Rhode Island.

While 2020 saw deaths outrank births for the first time in Montana, the population still grew by 18,087 people between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021, according to the census, due to migration to the state.

Montana saw 10,502 births during that period, 12,022 deaths and 19,791 people move here in net migration.

Once theres a handle on the pandemic, the U.S. may eventually see a decrease in deaths, but population growth likely wont bounce back to what it has been in years past because of fewer births. That will increase the need for immigration by younger workers whose taxes can support programs such as Social Security, Frey said.

We have an aging population and that means fewer women in child-bearing ages, Frey said. We see younger people putting off having children and theyre going to have fewer children.

The population estimates are derived from calculating the number of births, deaths and migration in the U.S. For the first time, international migration surpassed natural increases that come from births outnumbering deaths. There was a net increase of nearly 245,000 residents from international migration but only about 148,000 from new births outnumbering deaths.

University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson described the decline in natural population increase as stunning," saying it was the smallest spread of births over deaths in more than 80 years.

Of course most of this is COVID, but not all of it," Johnson said. U.S. natural increase was already at a low ebb prior to COVID with the fertility rate hitting a new record low each year and deaths steadily rising due to the population aging."

Between 2020 and 2021, 33 states saw population increases, primarily through domestic migration, while 17 states and the District of Columbia lost population.

States in the Mountain West saw the biggest year-over-year growth, with Idaho growing by almost 3%, and Utah and Montana each seeing population increases of 1.7%. The District of Columbia lost 2.9% of its population, while New York and Illinois lost 1.6% and 0.9% of their populations, respectively.

While the pandemic gave some the option of working remotely, data released last month by the Census Bureau shows there was no great migration in the U.S. because of it.

Some did take advantage of the opportunity, however. Tired of the heat, hurricane threats and traffic in Houston, tech worker Heidi Krueger moved to a small town south of Knoxville, Tennessee, in September. She can see the Great Smoky Mountains from her front porch.

Because I was working from home during the pandemic, it made it feasible to move and still keep my same job, Krueger said. As long as I have internet, I can still connect to our clients.

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Police discovered four adults and three children dead in a home in South Moorhead, Minnesota, home Saturday night.

The relationship between the seven victims was not released, and police are still working to determine the circumstances surrounding the fatalities, the Moorhead Police Department said in a statement to CNN affiliate KVRR.

Family members were conducting a welfare check when they discovered the bodies and called 911, CNN affiliate KARE reported. There were no signs of forced entry or violence at the home, according to KVRR.

All seven victims have been transported to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office, where their causes of death will be determined, police said.

Police say the investigation is ongoing and that victim identifications will be released at a later time.

Moorhead is in Clay County, just across the Red River from Fargo, North Dakota.

***

IN OTHER NEWS TODAY:

CNN's Laura James contributed to this report. The-CNN-Wire  &  2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

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A Montana lawyer who federal officials say earned more than $19.62 million from promoting a tax shelter through improper deductions for donating timeshares is liable for $8.46 million in penalties, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Tax Division.

James Tarpey, who formed Project Philanthropy Inc., which operated as Donate for a Cause, promoted a scheme where timeshare owners could donate their unwanted timeshares for large tax deductions, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Tarpey and others conducted appraisals for the timeshares, and in March 2019 a federal court in Montana found those appraisals "lacked sufficient independence" and that the "false appraisals resulted in tax avoidance."

The federal government first filed an action against Tarpey in 2015, and he agreed to an injunction barring him from promoting the timeshare donation scheme in 2016. The court also ruled that Tarpey made false statements that resulted in tax avoidance.

The March 2019 order did not set Tarpey's penalty. In a final order on Dec. 16, the court ruled he would have to pay $8.46 million, which is the amount the government sought in a counterclaim, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle in 2016 reported that Tarpey's sister, Suzanne Tarpey, was also barred from doing appraisals for the scheme. The Chronicle reported that James Tarpey was then an owner of the Bacchus Pub in Bozeman.

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China has a plan. It wants to be the dominant technology country by 2035. If you look, its clear to see how theyre executing on that plan. Theyre massively investing in hardware and software development to catch up to, and eventually overtake, the United States. If theyre successful, well experience serious ramifications for our economy and national security.

Weve been the world technological leader for so long its understandable that many Americans take it for granted. Whats amazing is it happened without any state-backed central plan  it emerged from the marketplace of ideas and innovation. The technological progress driven bottom-up by American entrepreneurs has resulted in unprecedented prosperity throughout the world.

China has a different vision. The Chinese Communist Party brand of technological innovation is not designed to increase prosperity; its motivated by maximizing state power. Power both over their own people and on the world stage.

Increasingly, Americans are recognizing the threat that China represents. Its time for our policymakers to take notice as well and begin to implement policy that treats this threat with the gravity it deserves.

That starts with not tying our hands behind our back with policy that would make U.S.-based technology companies less competitive and innovative. Consumer protection policy changes should be considered, but proposed legislation that would radically alter established publishing and moderation policy is a glaring example of the wrong direction to take. Privacy and free speech protections for companies to create their desired product should remain. An individuals decision to use that product or not should continue to be the driver of the free market, not the government.

Beyond preventing self-imposed impediments to American tech companies, we also need proactive measures to confront China and hold them accountable. Its well known theyve facilitated cybercrime and stolen intellectual property from American companies. And weve had to go to great lengths to ensure that CCP-backed companies like Huawei and TikTok do not damage our national security.

These defensive tactics are necessary, but we should also be going on the offensive by holistically enhancing the competitiveness of American tech companies.

It matters for Montanas future too as our technology economy has begun to take off. According to the Montana Business Quarterly, Montanas tech sector grew seven times faster than any other sector last year. Another analysis found that the median wage for tech workers in Montana is 65% higher than that of all other occupations. Montana is adding tech jobs faster than most other states, and that trend is expected to accelerate. Tech investment is happening in Montana and it will have positive implications throughout the state. But that can only continue if the United States can maintain its competitive edge and remain the dominant technological force.

And to keep that edge, policymakers must embrace what got us here in the first place. The United States is today the dominant technology country because we, more than anywhere in the world, have championed innovation and entrepreneurship. We must continue to give innovators the space they need without excessive regulation.

The dynamic marketplace of ideas that exists in the United States is our trump card. It can and will beat Chinas central planning approach, but only if we allow it to operate freely.

Kenneth Bogner is a Marine Corps veteran and Republican state senator from Miles City.

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Donnette Beckett "Together Decatur" Columnist and Food/Drink Reporter Together Decatur columnist and food and drink reporter for Lee Enterprises Central Illinois. Follow Donnette Beckett Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

DECATUR  Joyce Perry recently went on a shopping spree for seven of her godchildren.

With so many gifts to find, she needed help. Dove staff member Vicki Veech assisted Perry with her shopping during the Christmas Care and Share toy distribution.

We check them off as they get their toys or their hats and gloves, Veech said.

However, Perry also had herself in mind after perusing the many toys.

Like these Bible songs and stories, she said, holding a DVD. Im going to work with them.

All of the toys the community donated through Toys for Tots events and toy drives have made it to their destination. This is where they land, said Angie Williams, Christmas Care and Share coordinator.

The toy distribution was organized last week for the family shopping event, which was housed at the St. Pauls Lutheran Church in Decatur. Before they could shop, each family registered for a specific time and day.

Williams organized the toy distribution through a partnership with Dove, Northeast Community Fund and Salvation Army. We all worked together since were all doing the same thing, trying to serve families at Christmas with toys and food, she said. We just all decided to work together last year.

The process of shopping with the families is easy, according to Veech. Because its organized so good, she said. Otherwise it might not be as fun.

Northeast Community Fund and Dove have been distributing toys for nearly 50 years, according to Williams. Toys for Tots provides the toys collected from the community during various toy drives.

We all came in like Marines and took charge of getting everybody what they needed, said Melody Scroggins, assistant coordinator for Toys for Tots. Its not the childrens fault that the parents cant provide the toys, but we want the parents to be involved. They know what their kids like.

Scroggins has helped coordinate the local event for 29 years. The Toys for Tots volunteers organize the toys from September through January. Approximately five years ago, Scroggins restructured the event to provide an opportunity for parents to select the toys, instead of simply receiving a bag full of toys designed for a specific age group. This way they are doing something for their children, Scroggins said.

As the years have passed, she has witnessed more families attending the distribution events. Theres a greater need for toys, she said.

Although more families have lined up to receive toys through the years, Scroggins has witnessed the community stepping up as well. Macon County is the most giving county Ive ever been in, she said.

According to Scroggins, the donated money and toys are distributed to local residents. We just stay right here in Macon County, she said.

Families sign up to take part in the Care and Share event through various agencies, including Northeast Community Fund, Salvation Army and Dove as well as Baby Talk, Anna Waters Head Start and Growing Strong.

#TogetherDecatur Do you know a person or of a story that exemplifies the best of Decatur? Contact Donnette Beckett at (217) 421-6983 or dbeckett@herald-review.com.

I think people really like that were all working together, Williams said. Were serving the same people. It just makes sense to all come together to do this event.

Families select appropriate toys ranging in ages and genders. A personal shopper, often a volunteer or staff member from one of the agencies, assists them through the toy selections, as well as the areas devoted to hats and gloves, coats and wrapping paper.

That gives the parents a little more of a chance to get a little more involved, Williams said.

Contact Donnette Beckett at (217) 421-6983. Follow her on Twitter: @donnettebHR

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WARRENSBURG  A Decatur man is accused of driving off with the vehicle a Warrensburg couple had hired him to fix.

William E. Day, 46, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of possession of a stolen vehicle valued at more than $10,000 and is due to appear in Macon County Circuit Court for a pretrial hearing Jan. 25. A judge found probable cause to try him after a preliminary hearing of the evidence Dec. 15.

A sworn affidavit from the Warrensburg Police Department quotes the vehicle owners as describing Day as homeless when they gave him a ride to their house on Dec. 3. The affidavit said they told police they had hired Day to repair their sport utility vehicle and some jet skis.

The complainants advised that sometime after 10 p.m., Day was left unattended outside their residence while he was working on the vehicle, the affidavit said. The complainants advised that they went to bed and when they woke up Saturday morning around 9 a.m., they observed the vehicle to be missing.

The couple said they waited until that evening to give Day time to bring the vehicle back before reporting the incident to police.

Macon County Sheriffs Office deputies found the vehicle the following morning at 12:30 a.m. parked outside an address in Dalton City near Illinois 121. Deputies report arresting Day after they found him walking nearby. He is quoted as denying taking the vehicle or driving it.

When asked how the vehicle would have ended up in the same area he was, Day advised that the vehicle must have just followed him, the affidavit said.

The keys to the sport utility vehicle were never found, police report.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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DECATUR  A Decatur man who is a serial breaker of the registration rules for sex offenders is now back in jail, accused of infringing the rules yet again.

Jessie L. Walker, 61, is pleading not guilty to one charge of breaking sex offender regulations by entering a school campus. He also denies a second charge of being in violation of the regulations by not living at the registered address he had given to Decatur police.

A sworn affidavit signed by Detective Charles Hendricks lists seven convictions for breaking the sex offender registry requirements racked up by Walker since 1999. Hes been sentenced to prison periods ranging from 18 months to five years on each of the violations, with the latest sentence of five years handed down in January 2018. Total prison sentences over the seven convictions adds up to 21 years.

Giving evidence last week in Macon County Circuit Court, Hendricks said Walker was caught this time entering a school to collect a young girl who is a relative and take her home.

A sworn affidavit signed by Hendricks, whose responsibilities include monitoring sex offenders for registration compliance, said teachers were unaware, at first, of Walkers criminal history. The child was allowed to leave with Walker after advising she knew him Hendricks said in the affidavit.

Later, a teacher checked the sex offender registry maintained by the Illinois State Police and discovered that Walker was listed as a sexual predator. He had been convicted in 1994 of aggravated criminal sexual assault involving a victim under the age of 13.

Hendricks said video surveillance provided by the school showed Walker walking on school property among school children on the afternoon of Nov. 18. The subject then escorts a young female away Hendricks added.

Later interviewed by the detective, Walker is quoted as telling him: ... He knows that he cant be on school property and he made a mistake.

Hendricks said when he then checked the Decatur address of a relative that Walker had listed as his home, the relative told him that Walker only spends the night there once in a while.

Judge Forbes ruled there was probable cause to try Walker on the charges and scheduled a pretrial hearing for Jan. 27. A check of Macon County Jail records Sunday showed Walker is still in protective custody after his arrest Nov. 24. Bail is set at $75,000, meaning he would need to post a bond of $7,500 to be released.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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DECATUR  Cindy Ford heard such a clatter outside her Decatur home late Tuesday morning she sprang to the window to see what was the matter.

This, however, was no early visit from St. Nicholas dropping in from the North Pole but a military jet punching it through the sound barrier with a sonic boom that jarred and concerned people throughout Central Illinois.

Oh yeah, it shook the windows, it shook the house, I felt the floor vibrate, said Ford, whose home is located between South Shores and Mount Zion.

I felt it was either a huge accident out front or something had blown up very near my house.

But I think Tuesdays boom was even louder than that, she said.

Emergency phone lines in Decatur lit up with calls from anxious families wondering what the noise was when it hit around 11:28 a.m. Deputy Decatur Fire Chief Dan Kline said the vibration was so prominent he even thought something had dropped onto the roof of Fire Station No. 1.

It was a bang like someone dropped something heavy upstairs, he added.

The actual explanation had arrived by early Tuesday afternoon, however, when officials confirmed it was the sonic boom of an F-15 fighter jet.

The Illinois Emergency Management Agency said in a social media post that the noise had "kicked off an immediate collaboration between federal, state and local officials" to identify the source and impact.

Further review found that the F-15 fighter jet had course-corrected above Central Illinois, creating a sonic boom. When the aircraft broke the sound barrier, the pressure wave created an audible noise and minor shaking in the region, the agency said, adding that no reports of damage were associated with the incident.

But the mystery boom noise had so rattled nerves that some officials were getting personal calls about it.

I live on the west side of town and I got calls from my neighborhood, and our administrative assistant lives on the east side of town and she got calls from her neighborhood, said Kline. So it was heard from east to west.

Springfield police Lt. Jason Brands said officers received numerous reports from residents who heard a loud noise, and that other local communities received the same type of reports from the public.

Other shocked listeners with some military experience said this sonic boom was louder and more resonant than other ones theyd heard before. Ellsworth Dansby, who lives south of Millikin University, said the sound was so intense he thought a train car had derailed near his home and blown up.

I have prior service in the military and was occasionally exposed to that (sonic booms), he said. And that must have been one heck of an F-15 that did that; in fact, if that really was an F-15, Id eat my hat.

Dansby, 70, has some theories it might have been some kind of high velocity spy plane or similar clandestine aircraft. And if it was, they wouldnt say it was a spy plane, he added.

But it was loud.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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A federal grand jury investigation into Loretto Hospitals vaccination program has expanded to include a suburban church connected to the hospitals CEO, where hundreds of congregants were allegedly vaccinated while shots were still scarce.

Federal prosecutors last month subpoenaed the city of Chicago for records related to COVID-19 vaccines administered by the city at or in partnership with Valley Kingdom Ministries International Church in Oak Forest, according to documents obtained by the Tribune in an open records request.

The subpoena asked for information about outreach to the church by city officials as well as any use of church facilities by the city to administer vaccines.

Block Club Chicago has previously reported that the West Side hospital administered vaccines in February to more than 200 members of the church, where Loretto CEO George Miller was a member. At the time, shots were in short supply and were supposed to be given only to people ages 65 and older and front-line essential workers.

The vaccination event also occurred as health and community leaders emphasized a need to distribute vaccines equitably, making sure hard-hit communities on the South and West sides got the shots.

In a written statement Monday, a city spokesman said the Chicago Department of Public Health has worked with hundreds of hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and other vaccine providers over the past year and provided detailed guidance on how that vaccine should be handled and who was eligible for vaccination.

The moment CDPH learned of potential vaccine distribution issues at Loretto Hospital last spring, we immediately suspended the program there, conducted an investigation, and ultimately stepped in to manage the clinic at the hospital in order to ensure Austin residents had priority access to vaccine, the emailed statement read.

Attempts to reach Loretto and the church for comment Monday were not immediately successful.

No criminal charges have been filed as part of the grand jury probe, which dates back to at least May, records show.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney John Lausch, whose office is leading the investigation, declined to comment on Monday.

In March, Lorettos board reprimanded Miller and former hospital Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Dr. Anosh Ahmed after the hospital improperly vaccinated ineligible workers at Trump Tower downtown and Cook County judges.

Block Club Chicago also reported that a luxury watch shop in the Gold Coast, where Ahmed was a frequent customer, improperly received vaccinations.

The hospitals board decided to suspend Miller for two weeks without pay, and Ahmed resigned.

After the allegations came to light, the city of Chicago temporarily withheld first doses of coronavirus vaccines from Loretto while it conducted a review.

In April, Loretto released the results of an internal audit showing that it had provided 15,668 vaccines as of March 15, and 70% of them went to people of color. The audit found that less than 1% of its vaccines were given to ineligible people.

The next month, the federal grand jury subpoenaed the state Department of Public Health for information on dozens of people who were given shots by Loretto in March  the same time frame as the controversial shots given at Trump Tower and elsewhere, according to records released by the state.

The names of those vaccine recipients were blacked out in copies of the subpoenas released to the media due to medical privacy rules.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot have both said previously that the city and state are cooperating with investigators.

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A Belleville school administrator has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct after being accused of mailing underwear and a sex toy to a teacher.

A second misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct was dismissed against Justin Ballou, director of technology for Whiteside School District 115, as part of a plea agreement.

St. Clair County Circuit Court Associate Judge Elaine LeChien sentenced Ballou to one year of probation on Thursday, the day his bench trial was supposed to begin. He's also ordered to pay $514 in fines and court costs.

Ballou couldn't be reached for comment Monday. His Glen Carbon attorney, K.T. Taplin, declined comment.

Nicole Webster, the Whiteside Middle School teacher who complained about Ballou's actions last spring, said Monday she was "disappointed" in the process and outcome of the case.

"I truly believe this is why many, many women do not come forward and report things like this," she said. "(The perpetrators are) not going to get charged with much of anything. Is it even worthwhile?"

Webster is a seventh-grade teacher in special education.

A St. Clair County judge granted her a stalking no-contact order against Ballou in March. That's similar to an order of protection, but it's used in cases involving parties with no domestic relationship.

In Webster's petition for the order, she cited three incidents, including receipt of two packages at her home, one with a fictitious return address that contained Victoria's Secret panties and one with a ball gag; and four chandelier light bulbs placed in her school mailbox.

Webster said she was questioned by a St. Clair County Sheriff's Department detective several times after filing a complaint, but that no one from the St. Clair County state's attorney's office contacted her about the case before or after the plea agreement.

Webster said she called the state's attorney's office on Oct. 14, asking what was happening, and that a representative told her, "There would be several more meetings before anything is finalized."

Two BND calls to the state's attorney's office weren't returned Monday.

"We were told in the beginning that (Ballou's charge) could be a felony," Webster said. "Then it got moved from stalking down to disorderly conduct. It was like, 'Whatever we can do to minimize it.'"

Ballou was charged in April with two counts of disorderly conduct, a Class C misdemeanor, which has a maximum penalty of up to 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine plus court costs.

The Whiteside School Board had placed Ballou on paid administrative leave and then unpaid leave in March. He's still listed as director of technology on the district's website and his personal LinkedIn and Facebook pages.

Superintendent Mark Heuring couldn't be reached for comment Monday. School is out for Christmas break.

Webster said she plans to attend the next school board meeting to see what happens with Ballou's job. The stalking no-contact order, which remains in effect through April 5, 2023, doesn't prohibit him from working for the district, as long as he stays 500 feet from her.

"I will not let him run me out," Webster said. "I've been here 18 years. I just feel that the way it was handled, not by my principal, but by the superintendent, was 'Let's minimize it. Let's not talk about it.'"

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In neighboring Norway, Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol said 86% of those aged over 65 have gotten the booster shot and said the good news means they are well protected should they be infected.

Norway has seen the number of virus cases quadruple in recent days.

LONDON  Britain has announced 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in grants and loans to help the hospitality industry survive the onslaught of the omicron variant, bowing to days of pressure from pubs, restaurants and other businesses that have seen their income plunge following public health warnings.

Businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors in England will be eligible for one-time grants of up to 6,000 pounds ($7,900) each. An additional 100 million pounds ($132 million) will be given to local governments to support businesses in their areas hit by the sudden spike in COVID-19 infections driven by the highly transmissible new variant.

Pubs and restaurants have reported a wave of cancellations during the crucial Christmas season as people shun public events and workers are forced to self-isolate, leaving venues short of staff. Many theaters and museums also have closed their doors.
It also shows us that there are serious quality of life issues for us all to consider as we move forward. Simply put, do we wish to live in a community that smells of garbage and acrid chemicals constantly? While the landfill doesn't pose an immediate health hazard, it does present a long-term harm. I look forward to seeing it fixed and shut down, Weddington wrote.

Issues with pumps and mixing the gradient and leachate water are also considered a likely source for benzene entering the citys wastewater treatment system.

In and around the Bristol landfill, benzene in ambient air apparently comes primarily from a gasoline (or similar fuel) leak somewhere that enters the quarry in groundwater, rather than from the municipal solid waste contents of the landfill, the report said. Data from gradient water (which is primarily groundwater that enters the quarry) at the landfill indicate that this benzene-contaminated plume first entered the quarry about five years ago, and is now also contaminating the leachate.

The new report cites other aspects likely contributing to the odor problem.
He goes into detail about her complex life and love for weekly manicures, colorful jokes, rolling joints and dirty magazines. He jokingly described her as supermom and "perfect PTA lady," then quickly retracts."HA! HA! HA! Just kidding y'all!," he writes.

The goal was to paint an accurate picture of a woman who was not perfect, but lived an authentic life to the fullest, says Corren, who lives in New York City. The obit has been widely shared on social media, and he hopes it teaches the world to celebrate women like his mother.

"Most women like Renay don't get respect. Either they were too fat, too poor or too old. They are made to feel invisible and they are not invisible," Corren told CNN. "My job was easy, I just reported the facts."

He wrote the obit on his mom's final days

Corren wrote the obit at his mom's bedside as she was dying from advanced diabetes and sepsis. He shared some of the lines with her before she died.

"She laughed. As a writer writing for one audience, that was very satisfying," he says. "I didn't believe anyone was going to read it. I genuinely thought it was going to be rejected. I was shocked it even got printed."
WYTHEVILLE, VA. - Police have arrested one suspect in a Saturday morning attempted burglary at Wythe Countys Mark IV Honda dealership.

Christopher A. Thomas, 35, is facing three felonies in the ongoing Virginia State Police investigation.

According to a VSP spokesperson, Thomas was apprehended as officers searched for several individuals accused of trying to break in to the Chapman Road ATV and motorcycle business at 2:20 a.m. on Saturday.

Police said a Wythe County Sheriffs Office deputy encountered the individuals, who fled on foot.

The Sheriffs Office requested Virginia State Police to aid with searching for the suspects, the spokesperson said. During the course of the search, the Sheriffs Office requested VSP to take the lead on the incident.

State police brought in dogs to help with the search, and investigators are seeking information on a 2016 Hyundai sedan possibly involved in the crime. Its license plate number is LSG 0399.
HICKORY  Lenoir-Rhyne University will commemorate the life and memory of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, Jan. 17. LR faculty, staff, students and community members will continue its tradition of honoring King through two events, reflecting on the things that were important to King  diversity and equality for all the citizens of the United States.

This years MLK celebration is a time to reflect on how we can truly transform the lives of our young people to make a greater impact on their communities, said Terry Phillips, director of multicultural affairs.

The events at LR are designed to engage and inspire community and university members and help them envision ways to carry forward Kings work in a manner relevant today.

Sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the university will host The Dream and Work Continues presentation at 10 a.m. in P.E. Auditorium. The in-person event is open to the public and features LR faculty, staff and students, including the A Cappella Choir singing Lift Every Voice and Sing, often referred to as the Black national anthem in the United States. The hymn features lyrics by James Weldon Johnson set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson.
I prefer not being in the films," he said. "Early on, it had to do with me being able to raise the money to get the films made. Then Fences, obviously we had great success onstage, so that translated to film. But I enjoy being a more behind-the-scenes kind of guy.

Aside from his recent collaboration with Coen, whom he calls one of the greatest directors, Washington says he sought insight from some other directors he admires.

I spent a great day with Paul Thomas Anderson a month or so ago, to listen to how he works, he said. And Steve McQueen, Ive been talking with a little bit. Im learning how to do it, so Im interested in learning from the best. So, Ive been talking to the best.

Michael B. Jordan says he, too, is interested in learning from the best  which is why it was so impactful for him to be directed by Washington. The actor gives a charismatic performance as Canedys fiance, 1st Sgt. Charles Monroe King, who was killed in Iraq in 2006 at age 48. (Canedy is portrayed by Chante Adams.)

To be able to work so closely with him was really important, Jordan said in an interview. It was a master class, honestly.
" " This painting by Mikhail Petrovich Klodt titled 'Ivan the Terrible and the Ghosts of His Victims' shows the tsar surrounded by the ghosts of some of the many, many people he had killed. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

History has witnessed incredible atrocities committed by world leaders, like Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed, the Blood Countess. Yet only one of them is known as Terrible  Ivan the Terrible. But what did this medieval Russian icon do to earn his foreboding nickname?

For starters, he bloodied his own subjects in a series of horrifying repressions. He also fought unending wars that cost his nation dearly in life and wealth.

But as it turns out, Ivan didn't begin his reign as a bloodthirsty tyrant.

Ivan Vasilyevich was born in 1530, and when he was just 3 years old, his father, Grand Prince Vasily III of Moscow, died of an infection. Ivan immediately became the grand prince, destined to become the country's ruler once he came of age.

Throughout his childhood he was targeted by power-hungry boyars (elites) hoping to expand their influence and wealth. Meanwhile, the boy himself was essentially neglected, sometimes to the point where he didn't even have enough food to eat.

The boyars were clannish landowners, upper-crust types who wielded control in civil affairs and the military. As they bickered and murderously conspired against each other, the young Ivan grew to dislike them. It was a sign of things to come.

When he turned 16 in 1547, Ivan was handed the reins to the country, given the title of Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia. He was the country's first tsar, a title that lent a divine element to his powers.

In his first years as leader, Ivan was less terrible and more peaceful and progressive. He attempted to reform and modernize Russia. He and his council, the Elected Rada, updated and improved the law code, created the streltsy (standing army), and implemented the practice of self-government in some regions of the country. He even embraced Christian theology and worked to improve justice throughout the nation.

Maybe Ivan was not so terrible, after all?

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Ivan the Awe-Inspiring?

"During his own life he was not referred to as 'Terrible,' says Michael Khodarkovsky, a history professor at Loyola University Chicago, in an email interview. "It is not clear when this sobriquet 'Terrible' appeared, but certainly after Ivan's death."

"'The Terrible' is actually a translation issue," says James Pickett, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, via email. "In Russian 'Groznyi' means something more like 'inspiring awe or fear,' similar to the way the English 'terrible' can be used as in the 'terrible wrath of God,' i.e., inspiring fear. Ivan did some nasty things, to be sure; but then so did 'Greats' like Catherine and Peter, who were every bit as 'terrible' in their own rights."

So maybe Ivan wasn't so bad after all? Well, hold that thought. He was just getting started.

He soon disbanded the Elected Rada and moved toward an autocracy. He split the country in two: the zemschina and the oprichnina. The zemschina was ruled as usual. But the oprichnina was where Ivan became the ultimate tsar of everything, where he could rule by fear, destroy the boyars that he'd come to hate as a child, take their wealth and consolidate his power.

"To achieve his goals, he drowned Russia, or Muscovite Rus as it was then known, in blood," says Khodarkovsky. "He murdered thousands of boyars, Russia's landed aristocracy and high church officials. The lands and property belonging to both were taken into his own treasury. He burned down and killed thousands of civilians in Russian cities that were deemed to be rebellious."

To carry out these deeds, Ivan created the oprichniki, which some historians liken to a type of secret police. They were chosen for their extreme loyalty, dressed in black and rode in black carriages driven by black horses.

This ominous display wasn't just for show  they were given the freedom to purge anyone deemed traitorous however they saw fit. They displayed symbols of a dog's head and a broom, meant to symbolize their willingness to chase and bite their enemies and sweep them away.

You can probably see where this is going.

All sorts of atrocities ensued, ranging from imprisonment to execution and impalement. Even women and children were killed. (Ivan had at least six wives, several of whom were poisoned or sent to monasteries.)

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Ivan the Insane?

Ivan's mental state only exacerbated these appalling acts.

"Ivan IV saw treasonous plots everywhere, and like all dictators past and present, he inevitably crossed the line into the world of paranoia, where one could not tell a reasonable suspicion from a product of his sickened mind," says Khodarkovsky. "Some believed he became mentally ill, and he probably was by modern standards."

" " Another famous painting, 'Ivan the Terrible Killing His Son' by Ilya Repin, depicts an incident where Ivan struck his son in the head with his pointed staff, during an argument. The son was fatally wounded. Wikipedia

Ivan also warred constantly during his reign. His unsuccessful wars with Poland, Lithuania and Sweden took many lives.

But some of his conflicts succeeded in growing Russia into a larger country.

"What I find most fascinating about his legacy in Russia is his state-building," says Pickett. "Before Ivan IV, in the 15th century, Russia was under various degrees of Mongol control (or at least Mongol successor state control, i.e., the Golden Horde), gradually becoming more autonomous."

Pickett adds that a lot of people assume that Russia's centralized fiscal-military state came from the Mongols, i.e., a kind of "Oriental despotism."

"But in fact, the Mongols practiced a kind of consultative rule (not the same as democratic, as is sometimes claimed). So in centralizing rule in Muscovy, Ivan was actually doing something quite novel; Muscovy was far more centralized than either the Kievan Rus (who came from a 'first among equals' Viking tradition of rule), or Poland or Novgorod, and Ivan's rule was critical for building this centralized fiscal-military state."

Still, Ivan's adept political maneuvering was overshadowed by his willingness to remove his opponents by force. The last decade of his reign was characterized by savage brutality. A slight suspicion of disloyalty, a rumor, a wrong word could lead to the suspect's arrest, cruel torture and execution.

"After he died, his body was found to have large amounts of mercury," says Khodarkovsky "There were speculations that he was severely ill and used it as medicine or that he participated in some rituals that involved alchemy or that he was poisoned. As with all dictators who surround themselves with secrecy and suspicion, his end was as predictable as it remains uncertain."

Even now, hundreds of years later, Ivan's legacy has an impact on the country.

Khodarkovsky especially stressed two components of Ivan's reign. One, of course, is that he forcefully moved Russian toward an autocracy, killing even elite members of society who opposed him.

"Two, his image was later used by the Soviet dictator, Stalin, to justify his own bloodbath in the country and claim that Russia needed a strong leader and that sacrifices for the sake of Russia's glory were inevitable," he says. "Just as Russia's current President Vladimir Putin relies on the images of Ivan IV and Stalin to convey the same message and validate his own dictatorial rule."

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING St. Basil's Cathedral is one of Moscow's most famous landmarks, built to commemorate Ivan's defeat of the Kazan Khanate. He was so enthralled with the brilliantly colored structure that  as legend holds  he had the two architects blinded so they couldn't build anything else like it. This is a colorful tale that's often repeated online, but it's not true. There was just one architect  Postnik Yakovlev  and he later designed other structures.
The global milk production forecast calls for minimal growth from New Zealand and the European Union, the worlds top two dairy export markets. The combination of high input costs, lackluster feed quality, and new environmental regulations have diminished milk production capabilities in these major two milk sheds.

In the U.S., milk production also has been hitting a wall as high input prices and poor quality forage in some regions have contributed to slowed milk production. As this situation is unfolding, global demand for dairy products has been strong.

Given these metrics, what might be in store for milk prices in the coming year?

Milk futures moved up sharply during CME trading from November 1 to December 17. Class III futures rose $1.15 to reach a $19.70 average per hundredweight (cwt.) for the bundle of January to November 2022 contracts. Class IV futures climbed even higher, gaining $1.90 per cwt. on those same monthly contracts to reach a $20.60 average.

The All-Milk price was pegged to be $20.75 for the upcoming year. That was up 50 cents per cwt. over the prior months outlook, according to projections by USDA economists in the latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, which was released on Thursday, December 9.

Two foundations for USDAs estimates were an $18.15 Class III and a $19 Class IV. However, markets once again rose higher after the December 9 release of the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates. The Class III CME average climbed 25 cents and the Class IV jumped 50 cents in just six trading days. In all likelihood, USDA will once again raise its All-Milk Price forecast in its January 2022 report.

Dairy markets are teetering at levels not seen since 2014, wrote Rabobank economists in their December 2021 Global Dairy Quarterly Q4 2021 outlook. Milk production in the Big 7 exporting regions is expected to decline by 0.3% versus last years high comparable. This is the first quarterly year-over-year decrease since 2019.

Farmgate milk prices have followed commodity prices higher worldwide, with more potential upside in some regions, the Rabobank team continued. Still rising costs of inputs, lack of labor, unfavorable weather, and questionable feed quality will limit the production response by producers.

There is no improvement in the EU or U.S. milk production yet, and the weather in New Zealand has stayed sub-optimal, wrote Nate Donnay with StoneX. Were in a supply driven market, and there is no sign that supply is getting better . . . yet.

The sharp rise in commodity prices will feed through to the farm gate and push milk prices significantly higher in Q1, continued Donnay in the December 9 Udder Intelligence. The models say milk prices will be strong enough to generate some milk production growth in Q2/Q3, which should put some downward pressure on the market, but that feels a long way out there still.

To comment, email your remarks to intel@hoards.com.

(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2021

December 20, 2021
The federal government has repatriated a senior Microsoft executive to lead its efforts to coalesce Australias artificial intelligence (AI) industry around the newly launched National Artificial Intelligence Centre (NAIC).

Launched as a key deliverable under the governments $124.1m AI Action Plan, the new facility will play a pivotal role in ensuring we can take advantage of AI technologies, Minister for Science and Technology Melissa Price said as the NAIC was launched.

This investment will strengthen Australias ability, lift our global competitiveness through AI, and attract new investment and world-leading specialists, she added, noting that one key goal was to help address barriers preventing small and medium businesses (SMBs) from developing AI and related technologies.

Co-located within CSIROs Data61 data arm  which recently launched its own Data61 Artificial Intelligence Roadmap  the Canberra-based centre will complement four planned AI and Digital Capability Centres in a $53.8m combined investment that will facilitate collaboration between government, industry, and research bodies to create what CSIRO calls an Australian AI and digital ecosystem.

More and more companies around the world are turning their attention to Australia to help design and develop new technologies to implement in their global operations, the organisation notes.

Its establishment  which will be marked with a number of NAIC events in early 2022  will provide a centre of gravity for the governments efforts to attract new investment and world-leading specialists in AI, Price said.

This recruitment effort includes, among other things, $47.3m in AI-related scholarship programs that are expected to attract more than 460 home-grown, job-ready specialists in the technology.

First off the rank will be centre director Stela Solar, an Australian expat who has spent the past decade leading Microsoft efforts in unified communications, partner alliances, Internet of Things sales and, for the past two and a half years, serving as global director of Microsofts AI solution sales and strategy.

Australians are well regarded around the world [and] Australia has deep AI expertise and investments which already contribute to the global AI community, Solar said as her appointment was announced.

Our opportunity with the National AI Centre is to stitch together the fabric of our AI ecosystem and work together to lift our capability to a leadership position. Countries that have a coordinated vision around how AI can best be used are the ones that benefit most from the technology because these become the highways for trusted innovation.

Bootstrapping an industry

AI is one of nine key critical technologies in the national interest that were outlined last month in the Morrison governments Action Plan for Critical Technologies.

Comparable strategies in fields like advanced manufacturing, quantum computing, and clean energy have engendered a similar industry-focused investment approach  echoing the success of the national network of Cyber Security Innovation Nodes that has coalesced Australias cybersecurity industry under the auspices of AustCyber.

The CSIROs Artificial Intelligence Roadmap report predicted the industry would be worth $22.17 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

With leading world economies investing heavily in AI  China and the US have become locked in a race to dominate the exploding sector  industry stimulus has become crucial.

The centres success will be tied to aligning research, investment, and skills development with local and global market opportunities  but identifying those, UNSW laureate fellow and scientific professor of artificial intelligence Toby Walsh said during ASIALs recent Security Exhibition and Conference, remains a key challenge going forward.

We often joke that AI is all the things you cant yet do with a computer, he said, and anything that you can do by computer gets renamed.

It used to be that speech recognition was something that was called AI, and now thats something that works, and many people dont think of it as being part of artificial intelligence anymore.

Calling AlphaGos 2016 defeat of Go champion Lee Sedol a Sputnik moment that convinced governments they had to get truly serious about AI  spurring billions in investments from the likes of China, India, and South Korea  Walsh said Australia risked being quickly outpaced.

China really woke up as it started to invest billions into AI, he said, and has made it very clear that it wants to win this race, both in economic dominance and military dominance  and theyre going about that in short order.

It is somewhat troubling that Australia has invested much less in AI to date, he added.

At the moment the Australian government has only committed [$124m] to AI, he said.

I wish it was in the billions like in many other places.
GUEST INTERVIEW: Impact investment is the art of sustainable investing and achieving positive social and private investment outcomes - a win/win situation proven by investment expert Barry Palte, who says social impact and leading investment returns are not mutually exclusive!

Barry Palte. A global investment expert of over 35 years, with a primary focus on sustainable investing and achieving positive social and private investment outcomes through his private investment platform, Barry is eminently and impressively qualified as a leader in this space, producing results that aren't just good for the investor, but for people and the planet.

His company, EQ Capital Partners invests in four main areas: Food and Agriculture, Social Infrastructure, Healthcare and Biotech, and the Circular Economy.

Barry founded EQ Capital Partners in 1999 after a distinguished corporate and institutional career, which include serving on the executive committee of MLCs Wholesale Funds Management Business, Australias third largest fund manager, serving as the head of Strategy and M&A for the funds management and insurance businesses of Commonwealth Bank (Australias largest bank) in both Australia and Asia and as Global Chairman of the International Association of Investment Bankers  recently renamed Orion International Advisors (a global network of investment banks with member firms in USA, UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Japan, India, Brazil, China and Australia), where he is now Emeritus Chairman.

He also previously served on the Chairmans Council for the Australia China Research Institute which was founded by the ex-Foreign Minister of Australia, while his current roles also include being:

Barry's credentials are clearly impeccable, and he clearly knows the investment and banking industries inside and out, with his global relationships and team providing a powerful platform to generate superb investment returns while managing risk and delivering social outcomes which map explicitly to Sustainable Development Goals.

Barry explains his passion for impact investing is reflected in his focus on investing in, and working with, disruptive technology companies and projects which have a major impact on:

Health of People Health of Planet

He also holds a first class honours business degree from the University of Cape Town, where he was a multiple scholarship holder, and is also a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in London.

So, to discover what impact investing means in practice, what inspired Barry to be interested in impact investing, examples of the concrete results Barry has been able to achieve, and much more, we spoke with Barry in an extended video interview that is embedded directly below, after which is a summary of the topics we spoke about, ending with another video interview Barry conducted with Australian streaming news service, Ticker.

I started by introducing Barry, and welcoming him to the program





We then moved onto the obvious next question - what is impact investing, and where did this trend come from?





We then discussed Barry's principles of investing in disruptive technologies that better the health of people and the health of the planet, and the four areas EQ Capital Partners invests in, as well as some examples of the companies Barry has invested in, in each of these areas.





We then spoke about MustGrow, a Canadian company that has created bio-pesticides and bio-herbicides, the results the company has achieved, and how Barry discovered the opportunity





With MustGrow being a bio-herbicide, and with the family home dealing with a decades-old bamboo infestation, I cheekily asked whether MustGrow might be able to help my mother (and myself!) solve this problem, although bamboo is not one of the areas MustGrow has yet been tested on.





We covered the criteria Barry goes by to choose ethical, impactful and profitable investments, and we discussed some of the social outcomes Barry has achieved through impact investing (article continues below, please read on!)

This was followed up by asking about more examples of investing in disruptive technologies.





I then wanted to know what gave Barry the idea to start investing in this way - what in his past was the catalyst? We learned about Barry being born in Rhodesia, which today is Zimbabwe, and how he lived during a civil war, with both a "white" mother and a "black" mother - and how this helped shape his views on the world we live in.





The next question was one investors would be interested in - how does EQ Capital Partner's investment results compare with that of the industry?





After this, Barry shared his thoughts on blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the current market.





I then asked Barry what else we need to know about impact investing, and where viewers and readers can find more information.





We ended the interview, with Barry sharing memories of his first computer, a bit more detail about his history in the world of finance, how he sees impact investing evolving over the next couple of years, and into the 2030s thereafter, great advice Barry has received in life, and his final message to iTWire and iTWireTV viewers and readers, and to his current and future customers and partners.

So, please watch the fascinating video interview above to learn more, and take a look at the video interview Barry did with Ticker TV below!

Here is Barry's interview with Australian news service Ticker News:

Ticker - Barry Palte from Barry Palte on Vimeo.
Under pressure to reduce violent crime, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot delivered a speech on Monday aimed at reassuring the public that her administration takes the surge in shootings seriously and is working to make the city safer.

But the mayor but fell short of offering any fresh strategies, hitting a series of familiar themes in an address of about 40 minutes delivered at the Garfield Park Gold Dome Fieldhouse.

While saying the city must address root causes of crime, including poverty, Lightfoot called for United States Attorney General Merrick Garland to send additional agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to go after illegal guns and more prosecutors to bring additional criminal cases at the federal level.

She also called on Cook County judges to stop releasing people charged with violent crimes on electronic monitoring, reiterating a frequent complaint raised by City Hall and the Chicago Police Department that the court system is too lenient. Advocates for changes to the criminal justice system dispute that the rise in violent crime is tied to bond reforms and have criticized Lightfoot for finger pointing.

Lightfoot said the city would look to expand the use of license plate readers, which she said was key to solving the murder of University of Chicago graduate Shaoxiong Dennis Zheng.

And the mayor also pledged to continue pushing a controversial ordinance targeting gang members for fines and forfeiture in civil court, which the ACLU and other advocates said could lead to civil rights abuses.

Addressing residents directly, Lightfoot sought to reassure Chicagoans frustrated with crime that she cares.

Keeping you safe is my priority  not one of, but the first and primary priority, Lightfoot said. I wake every morning with this as my first concern and I push myself and all involved to step up and do more and better because we cannot continue to endure the level of violence that we are now experiencing.

The mayor has repeatedly had to confront the issue of rising violent crime throughout the year, acknowledging that residents are scared due to a spike in shootings and carjackings and calling public safety the citys top issue.

But Lightfoot and police superintendent David Brown have struggled to get the situation under control.

Official Chicago police statistics show the number of shooting victims is up year-to-date through Sunday to 4,270, from 3,930 through the same date in 2020. Homicides are up to 783 from 749 last year. The homicide figures do not include killings that occurred in self-defense or in other circumstances not measured in Chicago police statistics.

Expressway shootings have also spiked, to 249 this year from less than 130 in 2020, according to State Police records. And carjackings are up through Sunday, to 1,781 this year from 1,352 in 2020, records show.

Behind the scenes, Lightfoot and Chicago aldermen have repeatedly expressed concerns about high crime, though they have sometimes clashed over how to best address the issue.

In September, downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly and Lightfoot exchanged a series of heated texts about crime after he reportedly sent a tweet calling police Superintendent Brown a moron who wont listen.

Brendan, shameful and unhelpful. How about pickup the phone instead falsely creating the appearance of doing someone at everyone elses expense? Lightfoot texted Reilly in response. Really bush league.

Reilly defended his use of the word, saying hed lost confidence in the superintendent.

Hes a fine cop, but Im looking at ... my crime stats & can honestly say that, in my 26 years living downtown, Ive never seen lawlessness to this degree, Reilly said. Its sickening. So Ill apologize for using the word moron. And I am anything but Bush League. I want you to be successful, Mayor & I support you. But (this) has to change ASAP. We are losing downtown.

Lightfoot said she shares the levels of concern but the 18th police district on the Near North Side has tons of resources so there is no excuse for what is happening.

I will push back and say that it was not that long ago that River North was not a nice safe neighborhood and that is recent enough that I remember it, Lightfoot added. But Brendan, you know there are far more constructive ways to get stuff done. Pandering to the crowd is never the best answer, even when you are frustrated.

The mayor has also faced pressure from high-ranking staff. Susan Lee, a top adviser to Lightfoot and former deputy mayor for public safety, resigned in August while raising concerns about the citys ability to keep moving the ball forward on its violence prevention efforts and Police Department consent decree implementation.

A month after Lee resigned, she cowrote an article with Southwest Side Ald. Matt OShea in which they declared Chicago a city in crisis.

Days later, OShea sent an email to state officials about the dangerous gun violence on the Chicago expressway system and stalled plans to add license plate readers to help catch shooters.

I have made a number of inquiries on the status of this project over the last several weeks. It has come to my attention that IDOT and CDOT are having difficulty settling on an installation plan of providing power to the system, OShea wrote on the email, which included Lightfoot. Now is not the time for bureaucratic finger pointing. This is an urgent matter of public safety that must immediately be resolved.

The mayor wrote in response that In the City of Chicago, when we work with our partners in other governments like the state, we have found that the best way to move things forward is to collaborate and approach these opportunities with good faith.

Sending poison pen missives, especially with an audience, which you seem to favor, is not the best way to move things forward, Lightfoot wrote. Obviously, you have a method and history of dealing and you will carry on as you see fit, but we value our relationships with other governmental actors and nastygrams are not the best strategy. But of course carry on as you like.

In her speech Monday, the mayor praised the police departments homicide clearance rate, which she said is at 48%. She said her administration will try to raise that figure to 60% in 2022 by increasing the resources devoted to homicide investigations, lowering caseloads, and continuing to build community trust, though she did not specify how the department  which has struggled to recruit and retain officers  will achieve the goal.

Lightfoot also called for increased citizen cooperation with police, a long-standing challenge in Chicago where many residents fear retaliation if they work with cops.

No gang member is this city should ever rest easy. People must also stop shielding them. We need to bring them to justice. As Father Mike (Pfleger) has said, our faith must overcome our fears, Lightfoot said. There are people in our city right now who know the identity of shooters who have killed or harmed. I beg you to come forward. We need you to break your silence.

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Just after noon on Sunday, a line began to form outside a mass vaccination booster clinic in Blue Island. Over the past week, the state and Cook County joined forces to set up the south suburban regional clinic and two other sites within the county where people can easily access the COVID-19 vaccine without an appointment.

Nearly 3,000 inoculations were provided during the first mass vaccination events a week ago, as part of an effort officials are making to encourage Illinoisans to get the vaccine as holidays approach and the omicron variant spreads.

Theresa Voyce rushed to get in line while her husband looked for parking. She said they werent initially in a hurry to get the booster vaccine, but after hearing news of how quickly the omicron variant was hitting, they decided to get it sooner rather than later.

The couple also said that getting the booster makes them feel safer to gather with family.

Im not a shot person but then I see how fast the variant is spreading, said Voyce. She learned of the mass vaccine clinics in the news in the morning. I figured we better, and it was convenient to come here.

The site, located at 12757 S. Western Ave., was only a few minutes from Voyces home, she said. We dont mind waiting in line for a few minutes, she added.

Voyce said she and her husband had to travel to the United Center to get their first two doses and that she thought the concept behind the clinics was favorable because people didnt have to travel to the city, search for places that offer the booster and make appointments.

All three sites  in Blue Island, North Riverside and Arlington Heights  offer the boosters for Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. Anyone age 12 and older who needs a first or second dose also can get the vaccine at the clinics with no appointment, no identification or health insurance required.

As of Friday, 16 cases of the omicron variant had been reported in Illinois, and it was likely to spread quickly, the Illinois Department of Public Health said in a statement. Still, the highly contagious delta variant is the most common strain, according to the department.

Its increasingly clear that the booster shot is the best protection against the COVID-19 Omicron variant, and in the truest spirit of the holiday season, getting one is a gift for our families and communities, too, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement.

Aldo Aburruda, 52, hadnt been able to get his booster shot because he hadnt been able to take time off work, he said.

On Sunday he waited in line to get it because he finally had time.

It is very important to me, said Aburruda who plans to attend family gatherings for Christmas. A friend told him about the clinic, which was only three blocks from his home.

The state health department is urging unvaccinated residents to get vaccinated and vaccinated residents to get their boosters. All adults are eligible to receive boosters, and teens ages 16 and 17 are eligible to receive a Pfizer booster.

Unvaccinated residents should not gather indoors with anyone outside their household, the department said. It strongly urged testing two to three days before an indoor gathering, and on the morning of the gathering. Residents should continue to wear masks at indoor gatherings and businesses.
Thomson Federal Prison correctional officers and staff will receive an increase in their locality pay following a recommendation from the President's Pay Agent.

The President's Pay Agent consists of the secretary of labor, the directors of the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management.

The American Federation of Government Employees Local 4070 has been lobbying for the locality pay change for several years as part of a larger effort to address critical staffing shortages at the high-security federal prison that currently houses 987 inmates; 865 at the main prison and 122 at the satellite camp.

"We are beyond pleased that our hard-working employees will be moved into the higher-paying locality," AFGE Local 4070 President John Zumkehr said in a press release. "This change, in addition to the 25% retention pay we already secured, will go a long way toward helping us retain our experienced staff and recruit the additional staff we desperately need."

USP Thomson is located in Carroll County, Ill., which has seen large-enough increases in federal employment during the past year to qualify the prison for moving up in pay locality rank to include six counties surrounding Davenport and Moline.

Following pressure from Illinois Democratic Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Moline, the Federal Office of Personnel and Management approved a 25% retention pay increase in September for all officers and staff at USP Thomson in an effort to keep the prison from losing employees.

The pay increase is the fourth victory in ongoing efforts for the lawmakers and their lobbying efforts. In July, the BOP approved an initial 10% retention pay increase for USP Thomson employees, and in August, the prison was granted authority to hire its own employees, bypassing months of bureaucratic red tape that stalled the hiring process.

AFGE Local 4070 has worked with management to hold job fairs each month this year to boost staffing at the prison, which in turn helped the prison qualify for the higher locality pay.

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DECATUR  Cindy Ford heard such a clatter outside her Decatur home late Tuesday morning she sprang to the window to see what was the matter.

This, however, was no early visit from St. Nicholas dropping in from the North Pole but a military jet punching it through the sound barrier with a sonic boom that jarred and concerned people throughout Central Illinois.

Oh yeah, it shook the windows, it shook the house, I felt the floor vibrate, said Ford, whose home is located between South Shores and Mount Zion.

I felt it was either a huge accident out front or something had blown up very near my house.

But I think Tuesdays boom was even louder than that, she said.

Emergency phone lines in Decatur lit up with calls from anxious families wondering what the noise was when it hit around 11:28 a.m. Deputy Decatur Fire Chief Dan Kline said the vibration was so prominent he even thought something had dropped onto the roof of Fire Station No. 1.

It was a bang like someone dropped something heavy upstairs, he added.

The actual explanation had arrived by early Tuesday afternoon, however, when officials confirmed it was the sonic boom of an F-15 fighter jet.

The Illinois Emergency Management Agency said in a social media post that the noise had "kicked off an immediate collaboration between federal, state and local officials" to identify the source and impact.

Further review found that the F-15 fighter jet had course-corrected above Central Illinois, creating a sonic boom. When the aircraft broke the sound barrier, the pressure wave created an audible noise and minor shaking in the region, the agency said, adding that no reports of damage were associated with the incident.

But the mystery boom noise had so rattled nerves that some officials were getting personal calls about it.

I live on the west side of town and I got calls from my neighborhood, and our administrative assistant lives on the east side of town and she got calls from her neighborhood, said Kline. So it was heard from east to west.

Springfield police Lt. Jason Brands said officers received numerous reports from residents who heard a loud noise, and that other local communities received the same type of reports from the public.

Other shocked listeners with some military experience said this sonic boom was louder and more resonant than other ones theyd heard before. Ellsworth Dansby, who lives south of Millikin University, said the sound was so intense he thought a train car had derailed near his home and blown up.

I have prior service in the military and was occasionally exposed to that (sonic booms), he said. And that must have been one heck of an F-15 that did that; in fact, if that really was an F-15, Id eat my hat.

Dansby, 70, has some theories it might have been some kind of high velocity spy plane or similar clandestine aircraft. And if it was, they wouldnt say it was a spy plane, he added.

But it was loud.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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The JG-TC newsroom is looking for your help to tell the stories of positive things that have happened in the past year.
Christmas trees, Hanukkah candles, New Years countdown clocks  these are some of the ways we mark the holiday season. But Amazon workers have other, more brutal metrics this time of year. The company demands that they pick, stow, pack, ship and deliver at a faster rate and for longer hours.

The holidays, workers in Amazon warehouses tell us, is not a time of cheer, but backbreaking labour and relentless pressure. It can cost them their health and rob them of time with their families. In many ways, the holiday crunch is all that is wrong with the companys labor model, but amplified.

In Bessemer, Alabama, where a union drive was stymied earlier this year, workers have never stopped organizing with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, or RWDSU, despite the companys ongoing campaign to steamroll over their rights. Workers, for example, have stated and the National Labor Relations Board agrees with them  that Amazon meddled in the process by illegally pressuring warehouse staff to vote against joining a union.

What pushed these workers to seek a union was the punishing pace of work they were required to maintain, which was damaging both their physical and mental health.

The stress can be particularly hard on any day, but during the holiday shopping season, it can become unbearable. We know that at least two workers from the Bessemer facility have lost their lives this year: One died on the job; the other was rushed to the hospital after collapsing at work.

And several others have died there since it opened in 2020. Ambulances are sadly a regular occurrence at the Bessemer facility, as they are at many Amazon warehouses.

With its obsession with control, speed and disregard for workers rights, Bezosism is a threat to all workers  not just those who work for Amazon. Without a strong voice on the job, workers will never get a fair chance when facing a corporation that has so much influence over commerce, the future of work and our data.

The first step to overhauling the companys systemic problems is to shift more power to Amazon workers. We know that workers can be agents for change when they join together  as we saw on Black Friday when thousands of Amazon warehouse workers and allies in more than 20 countries across six continents protested and went on strike as part of a global push to Make Amazon Pay.

If Amazon workers want a better deal next holiday season, they need a union. And Amazon should stop standing in their way.

Amazon workers toil in different countries, with different cultures and different labour regulations. But the problems nearly every worker faces are the same: increasing concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a corporation that consistently mistreats and devalues its workforce.

The bottom line is that Amazon takes far too much for itself, while leaving workers and society with too little.

And that is why we are coming together, to push for change, to demand that workers are allowed to create a union without Amazons relentless union-busting and interference. We will reign in the power of Amazon and strengthen labor rights around the world.

Sharon Graham is the general secretary of Unite the Union; Stuart Appelbaum is president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU); and Christy Hoffman is the general secretary of the UNI Global Union.

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Health

editor's pick topical alert top story

Number of COVID-19 hospitalizations drops sharply in Nebraska

After a significant decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the weekend, it seems unlikely Nebraska residents will see any heightened restrictions due to the virus.

The number of people hospitalized for the coronavirus dropped by more than 10%, from 584 on Friday to 523 on Monday morning. That means COVID-19 patients are now occupying a little more than 12% of the state's hospital beds, down from 14.5% a week ago when hospitalizations reached 637, their highest number of the year.

"It's a huge drop," said Dr. Gary Anthone, the state's chief medical officer.

At one point last week, Anthone said officials were discussing requiring hospitals to limit elective surgeries if the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients hit 15% of the state's beds.

Anthone and Gov. Pete Ricketts held a news conference Monday to give an update on the COVID-19 situation and to encourage people to stay safe over the holidays.

Ricketts

Ricketts announced that he is extending some existing directed health measures aimed at helping alleviate staff shortages at hospitals until at least March 31. The extension of the orders also will keep the state's daily coronavirus dashboard live through the end of March.

In addition, Ricketts said he plans to request extra reimbursement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to help the state's long-term care homes deal with staff shortages and rising costs. He said he will request an extra $20 per day per resident for six months starting Jan. 1. The estimated cost is $21.3 million, of which the state would have to cover 10%.

Ricketts and Anthone both encouraged people to get vaccinated if they haven't yet.

"Still, the No. 1 mechanism to fight COVID is to get vaccinated," Anthone said.

Ricketts said the main goal is to keep people out of the hospital, "and getting the vaccine is one of the ways we can do that."

In Lancaster County on Monday, there were 112 COVID-19 patients hospitalized, including 38 non-county residents. The Health Department reported a man who was in his 50s and had been vaccinated had died, raising the total number of county deaths to 345.

Nebraska could see more DHMs as COVID-19 hospitalizations rise COVID-19 patients are occupying nearly 15% of the state's hospital beds, a level that in the past triggered more restrictions.

Ricketts on Monday also encouraged those eligible to get a booster shot to do so, saying he personally has gotten one.

People ages 5 and older are eligible to be vaccinated, and of that group, just more than 64% of Nebraskans are fully vaccinated, while another 6.3% are partially vaccinated.

OFFICE OF GOV. PETE RICKETTS Gary Anthone

Anthone said there still are significant numbers of people coming in to get a first vaccine, although state data show those numbers have declined in the past week.

From Nov. 29-Dec. 10, there were at least 1,500 first-time vaccinations given statewide on every weekday. Last week, however, the number of first-time vaccinations was below 1,500 every weekday except Friday.

Highlighting the risks that unvaccinated people face, Ricketts showed a video of a woman whose husband nearly died from COVID-19 earlier this year.

Natalie Trace said her husband, Joshua, went into the hospital in August and was on a ventilator two different times for a total of about three weeks.

He eventually recovered enough to be released from the hospital in September, but she said he has had long-lasting complications, including memory loss and the loss of motor skills.

"My husband is a totally different person after COVID," Natalie Trace said in the video. "Every day, every single day, is a challenge for him."

Lincoln hospital leaders' plea as patient numbers swell: Get vaccinated The number of COVID patients in local hospitals has reached its highest number this year.

'It's been hard'  Doctors, nurses from Bryan 6N reflect on last year of fighting COVID While the worst of the pandemic may be over, the nurses and doctors of Bryan Health's 6N intensive care unit said the ongoing fight against COVID has pushed the hospital to the brink  and maybe past it.

The couple, who live in Curtis, were not vaccinated.

"Had we known now the severity of what COVID can do, we would have taken better precautions," she said.

While Nebraska ranks near the middle of states in terms of vaccination rate, some areas of rural Nebraska have among the lowest vaccination rates in the country.

In McPherson and Logan counties, for example, fewer than one in five residents eligible for the vaccine has been fully vaccinated.

On Monday, Ricketts said about nine of every 10 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the state are unvaccinated.

In addition to vaccines, Anthone and Ricketts highlighted treatments that also can keep COVID-positive people out of the hospital, including antiviral medicines and monoclonal antibodies.

Anthone said the state has been averaging about 1,400 monoclonal antibody treatments a week, even though its normal allotment is only 800-900 doses per week. He said thanks to the work of two pharmacists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center  Bryan Alexander and Andre Watkins  the state has been able to procure an additional 500-600 doses weekly.

Vaccines and antiviral and monoclonal antibody treatments have been shown to work well against the delta variant of COVID-19, but it's unclear how well they will work against the new omicron variant, which is rapidly spreading in many countries, including the U.S.

Additional omicron variant case reported in Southeast Nebraska Public Health Solutions, which covers Fillmore, Gage, Jefferson, Saline and Thayer counties, said the positive case is not related to the omicron variant cluster detected earlier this month and is likely the result of international travel.

Even though Nebraska was among the first states to see omicron cases, there has been virtually no spread detected here yet.

One case of omicron was confirmed last week in the Public Health Solutions district in Southeast Nebraska. That was the first case since an initial cluster of six cases was found in the same health district in early December.

Anthone said about 15%-20% of all positive COVID-19 tests in Nebraska are being genetically sequenced to look for the variant.

Omicron has been shown to be more transmissible than delta, but some preliminary evidence shows it may cause less severe illness. However, even if it is less severe, experts have said its transmissibility and the reduced effectiveness of vaccines against it could lead to an increase in hospitalizations.

When asked whether he would reinstate some of the directed health measures used late last year and early this year during periods of high COVID-19 hospital rates, Ricketts said it's "very, very unlikely."

For several months, the state had capacity restrictions on indoor gatherings.

"We've got so many more resources this year," he said, including vaccines, booster shots, more testing options and improved treatments.

"That's not the kind of resources we had last year."
That led to criticism both from people who felt there shouldn't be a mask mandate and from supporters of the mandate who didn't feel it was being enforced.

However, Lopez said neither fatigue over wearing masks nor issues with enforcement played into the decision to end the mandate.

Instead, she said the county has made "critical progress" over the past year in battling the virus, helped largely by the vaccine.

"We are currently equipped with more tools and treatment options than before, and we are using them to reduce the spread of the virus and its variants," she said.

Even with a mask mandate and high rates of vaccination, COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations rose throughout the fall in Lancaster County.

After hitting a high of more than 1,200 cases the week ending Dec. 4, the county has seen its case numbers decline slightly the past two weeks, to just more than 1,000 cases a week ago. However, that's still one of the highest weekly totals of 2021.

On a daily basis, the rolling average number of cases declined from a high of 182 on Dec. 5 to 140 on Friday, but that drop may be temporary.
In general, individuals and families with annual incomes between 138% and 150% of the federal poverty line  $17,775 to $19,320 for an individual and $36,570 to $39,750 for a family of four  can get the lowest level of coverage, known as bronze, for no monthly premium in 2022. But they would also pay no premium if they chose a particularly generous plan known as silver-94. The individual version of the plan has a medical deductible of just $75, no deductible for prescription drugs and an $800 annual cap on how much enrollees pay out-of-pocket before 100% of their medical costs are covered. In the bronze plan, by comparison, the medical deductible for an individual is $6,300, with an out-of-pocket spending limit of $8,200 and a separate pharmacy deductible of $500.
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A Lincoln man is in jail after leading police on a chase that began after he allegedly punched and kicked a woman near 10th Street and Park Avenue at about 1:45 a.m. Tuesday, according to Lincoln Police.

By the time officers took 30-year-old Jordan Williams into custody, he was hiding in shrubbery 5 miles away, arrested near 40th Street and Pine Lake Road, Sgt. Chris Vigil said.

A man called police after he said Williams struck the woman in front of him near 10th and Park before threatening the man with a sword-like blade, Vigil said.

By the time police arrived at the scene, Williams and the woman had fled in a Honda Accord, which was spotted shortly afterward driving recklessly near 27th Street and Nebraska 2.

Lincoln Police officers pursued the car, and the Nebraska State Patrol's helicopter assisted.

Williams parked the Honda near Old Dominion Road and Culpepper Court in south Lincoln, where he and the woman fled separately on foot, according to police.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Warning that extremism in the ranks is increasing, Pentagon officials issued detailed new rules Monday prohibiting service members from actively engaging in extremist activities. The new guidelines come nearly a year after some current and former service members participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol, triggering a broad department review.

According to the Pentagon, fewer than 100 military members are known to have been involved in substantiated cases of extremist activity in the past year. But they warn that the number may grow given recent spikes in domestic violent extremism, particularly among veterans.

Officials said the new policy doesn't largely change what is prohibited but is more of an effort to make sure troops are clear on what they can and can't do, while still protecting their First Amendment right to free speech. And for the first time, it is far more specific about social media.
Keep scrolling for links to full versions of these top stories and more.

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Jury at Kim Potter trial in Wright death returns Tuesday

MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  A jury will resume deliberations Tuesday in the trial of a suburban Minneapolis police officer who says she meant to use her Taser instead of her gun when she shot and killed Black motorist Daunte Wright.

The jury met for about a five hours Monday following closing arguments in which prosecutors accused Kim Potter of a blunder of epic proportions in Wright's death in an April 11 traffic stop  but said a mistake was no defense.

Potter's attorneys countered that Wright, who was attempting to get away from officers as they sought to handcuff him for an outstanding warrant on a weapons charge, caused the whole incident.

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MORNING LISTEN

New Release Picks: 'Spider-Man' (spoiler free!), 'Nightmare Alley,' our best of 2021 lists, plus an interview with Tim McGraw and Faith Hill

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Clark also allegedly told detectives that he and Henderson barricaded themselves in their bedroom, where he heard voices coming from a pile of clothes. Clark said he fired a shot into the clothes because he thought the pile had moved.

Clark told detectives that he took the gun into the bathroom because he heard voices coming from under the sink. Henderson left, he said, to check on their 11-year-old son.

Mr. Clark then stated that he thought he heard something as he came out of the bathroom, where he was surprised by an individual that he shot ... in the arm, Sarpy County Judge Tricia Freeman wrote in her notes from a preliminary hearing. Mr. Clark then realized it was Ms. Henderson that he had shot.

Betsworth said an autopsy found that Henderson had been shot in the neck from at least 36 inches away. Freeman said in her decision that Clark may not have intended to shoot Ms. Henderson, but his actions suggest that he was intending to shoot someone.

Freeman rejected the defenses contention that the shooting was accidental, due in part to Henderson having run back into the bedroom from checking on their son.
The car had overturned and was resting on its roof with three men trapped inside. Britton was able to remove two of the men and get them to safety. He then returned to the car to help the third man, who was severely injured and trapped underneath the car.

The situation became even more serious when the car caught fire. A second bystander helped Britton lift the vehicle with their bare hands and turn the vehicle on its side. That allowed Britton to remove the unconscious man through a broken window, just seconds before the car was completely engulfed in flames.

Britton began CPR and attempted to control bleeding caused by multiple injuries.

Britton said his experiences in the Coast Guard played a big role in his response to the crash.

When I saw the accident my only thought was to go do whatever I needed to do to help, Britton said. In the Coast Guard we train to be constantly ready to save lives, and that mindset doesnt change just because we arent in uniform. The Coast Guard is full of people who wouldve acted exactly as I did in that situation.

Britton said his upbringing in Plattsmouth also made a difference that day.
But at the local level, it's a different story.

Last week, members of the New York City Council adopted a commonsense measure to allow residents who are not U.S. citizens to vote for mayor and city council positions. Undocumented immigrants are still barred from voting, and noncitizens still can't vote in state or federal elections.

More than a dozen other cities -- including Chicago, San Francisco, two cities in Vermont, and 11 in Maryland -- currently allow noncitizens to vote in either city council or school board elections. Other cities and towns are mulling over proposals to follow suit.

In fact, the question is not why noncitizens should be allowed to vote in local elections. The better question is why should they not be allowed to vote in local elections.

On what legal, moral or practical grounds should legal, permanent residents be barred from voting for the people who represent them at the municipal level? Honestly, I can't think of any.

First, there is the issue of fairness. Noncitizens pay sales taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes and property taxes. So what we have now is -- what was that phrase, oh yes -- "taxation without representation." Anyone want to throw a tea party?
He allegedly said he did not really need the money, but also that he used it for gas; he added that his car broke down and needed to repair it several times.
The educational journey from kindergarten through high school and beyond paints a picture of your childs future. The path to success can be faith-filled, impactful, safe and stable. Siena Catholic Schools of Racine will not only partner with your family on this journey, but help make it a reality.

We believe that when you give students the right foundation, theyre able to grow beyond measure. So, while our stats do measure up to some of the best in the state and the country, we also value the heights our students reach on a personal, spiritual, and communal level. Because when theyre rooted in faith and tradition, theyre able to grow in mind, body, and faith.

Siena Catholic Schools of Racine unites the areas five Catholic elementary schools (John Paul II Academy, Our Lady of Grace Academy, St. Joseph Catholic School, St. Lucy Catholic School, St. Rita Catholic School) and one high school (St. Catherines), and is guided by a shared mission, shared values and a shared vision.

Our Mission

We ignite a spirit of excellence in faith, knowledge and service, inspiring students to be who God created them to be.

Our Vision

Rooted in Christs teachings, our graduates are prepared to be successful leaders in college, career, community and the Church.

Our Values

Service: We serve Gods children through Catholic education.

Education: We educate the whole child in mind, body and spirit.

Tradition: We honor our Dominican roots through prayer, study, service and community.

Innovation: We develop innovative thinkers and problem solvers.

Collaboration: We work with families, parishes and partners to build and strengthen communities.

Excellence: We strive for excellence in all we do.

If you dont think that you can afford a Catholic education, think again.

Financial aid is available to all Siena families to help offset the cost of tuition and the amount of aid offered is dependent upon the results of the application.

Siena Catholic Schools of Racine partners with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to offer tuition assistance through the Racine Parental Choice Program (RPCP). RPCP covers the cost of tuition at 100% for grades K4-8 and around 75% for grades 9-12.

The Siena Promise Scholarship is also available to students in good standing who have attended a Siena Catholic school or participated in a Siena religious education program for at least three years. This $2,500 scholarship is renewable for all four years of high school, totaling $10,000.

Many other scholarships are also available. The average award is $1,000 with some being as much as $3,000. Several are renewable for up to four years.

Siena Catholic Schools of Racine is committed to providing an exceptional college- and life-preparatory Catholic education to students regardless of a familys circumstances. Lets brighten and pave your childs path to success.

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RACINE  Ive heard a lot from our manufacturers and some from our tech sector ... can we please repeal the personal property tax so we can let our manufacturers thrive more? Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave asked a panel of six state legislators Wednesday.

The personal property tax has been around for more than 170 years. Businesses pay it continuously on things such as furnishings, tools and equipment so long as they are in use.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats are fans of the personal property tax, but they disagree about how to get rid of it. So, despite bipartisan distaste, the personal property tax is remaining indefinitely.

One proposal, then another

Republicans passed an elimination of the tax earlier this year, which Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed.

Evers unveiled his own proposal to get rid of the tax in September. He said his proposal addresses those concerns by repealing the tax on railroad personal property and creating an appropriation to keep the states transportation fund whole; continuing payments for rail terminals to cities; and clarifying language so the repeal has no impact on a claimants eligibility for the manufacturing and agriculture credit.

The goal of eliminating the personal property tax, while also holding local governments unharmed, has been supported by both Democrats and Republicans alike, state Rep. Robyn Vining, D-Wauwatosa, said in support of Evers repeal proposal. The longevity of the personal property tax and constant carveouts have created an administrative burden on small businesses and local governments alike.

Republicans have responded by saying what Democrats have proposed is not a tax cut at all, but merely changes from where the taxes would be collected.

Wittke and Neubauer

Heres how state Rep. Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, responded to Delagraves question, which was asked during a legislative panel hosted Wednesday by Racine Area Manufacturers and Commerce at the DeKoven Center, 600 21st St.

AB 641 is a bill that has been introduced, has the support of many businesses across Wisconsin and groups that have been advocating for the personal property tax repeal for years, Neubauer said. Of the Republican proposal Evers vetoed, she said there were concerns with that bill, chief among them from me (and) from the City of Racine was that there was not backfill for local governments who would be losing resources if we repealed personal property tax as it was proposed earlier this session. What we have now is a clean bill ... It supports local governments to be made whole. It does not have some of the additional problems that were unforeseen in the initial bill. That bill is ready for scheduling right now and if it was passed by the legislature, the governor would sign it.

The bill has not been scheduled for a vote. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who also was on the panel, would be the one who can put the bill on an agenda to be voted on by the Assembly.

Vos did not directly respond to Delagraves question, but state Rep. Bob Wittke, R-Wind Point, did.

Wittke said the original proposal needed to be fixed, and accused Evers and Democrats of playing politics.

What I want people to understand is that this (the Democrats proposal) isnt really a repeal of the personal property tax. All it does is it shifts which hand this money comes out of. So instead of collecting it locally from you, wed have to assume it at the state level, Wittke said. The fact that the governor vetoed it (the Republican-proposed repeal) and now wants to come back with a bill that supposedly fixes everything? I kind of highly doubt the bill is going to get any further than where it is at right now.

After Democrats filed their proposal three months ago, the lead author of the bill Evers vetoed back in July, state Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, accused the Democratic governor of adding poison pill provisions to appease the left and serve as political cover for those not paying attention. Stroebel cited language in the bill pertaining to specific industries such as manufactured homes and outdoor advertisers, as well as a property tax exemption for air carriers. The bill also includes an annual increase in local government aids, Stroebel said. State aid to local governments in Wisconsin has been consistently falling for decades.

Reporting from Mitchell Schmidt of Lee Newspapers is included in this article.

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RACINE  Dr. Jones Elementary Schools closure has been delayed despite the Racine Unified School Districts recommendation to close the school early.

During Mondays School Board meeting, several members of the public spoke in opposition to the schools early demise, including a current student.

I go to Dr. Jones and I have been coming here since 4K. I love my teachers and friends; this is my home. I have gone to Mitchell for summer school and I did not like how other students treated me. I saw how other kids got bullied and how they treated the teachers. I would like for you to keep my school open, the student said.

Dr. Jones serves a large portion of economically disadvantaged students, which make up 86% of the student population, as well as English learners, which make up 36.9%, according to the Department of Public Instruction Data. One of the speakers, a bilingual parent of the student who spoke, pointed to the fact that she was the lone bilingual parent in attendance, a fact she said was due only to the fact she spoke English.

Board member Dulce Cervantes, a bilingual teacher, voiced her concerns about preserving the trust of Spanish-speaking families in the district. Closing Dr. Jones earlier than planned, she said, would likely damage that trust.

I just want to make a comment as a mother and as a Spanish-speaking parent: Its very hard to trust a system thats not built for us, Cervantes said. So, when you see something thats so precious to you being taken away, I can see how that can be bad.

The board ultimately voted 6-2 to keep the school open, for now, which prompted those in attendance to cheer. Janes Elementary School, however, is still to close at the end of the school year with the grounds being sold to the city as a historic site. New boundaries were also adopted to accommodate the closure.

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MOUNT PLEASANT  Racine Nails, located in the Village Center Plaza with Festival Foods and Kohls, is a new family-owned nail salon that opened mid-August.

The salon is owned by Anna and Simon Nguyen, a Vietnamese couple who came to the Racine area from Waukesha, and is managed by Arcelia Zertuche alongside nail technician Zoe Clarke. The Nguyens 18-month-old Andrew may also be seen rolling around the lobby and smiling at customers.

The original opening date for the salon was sometime in the spring, but minor challenges with keeping the building up to codes that were changing pushed the date to August. Its soft opening was held in mid-August.

The salon offers traditional manicure and pedicure services, and some waxing options. However, their pedicure services  which are tucked in the back of the salon, near relaxing waterfalls and in dim lighting with spa music in the background  are one of a kind, said Zertuche.

I dont know of any other nail salons that offer that kind of relaxing, peaceful environment that we do for our pedicures, she said.

As such, the pedicure services are called, Peaceful Escape for a basic pedicure with a hot massage; Chasing Paradise for a pedicure with a sugar scrub and hot massage; or Gates of Heaven with all of the above and hot stones.

The salon employs about 11 technicians with room for more, but Zertuche and Clarke said that they like the spaciousness of the salon.

I often get that (customers) like that were not rushing them out the door, said Clarke, who has been a nail technician since early 2020.

We just want to make sure we give that one-on-one time with the client, Zertuche said.

The pair also acknowledged it can be a bit challenging to attract attention and clients as a new salon, especially when clients often have their go-to.

Theyre like, Im scared to leave this person, Clarke said. And well say, Just try it. Maybe youll like the experience.

Check it out For more information like how to book and what specials are running, visit facebook.com/racinenails. The address is 5630 Washington Avenue, Suite 2B, on the side of the plaza closer to Kohl's and Ulta.

With a family at the helm of the new business, Clarke and Zertuche said that although theyre not related, it definitely feels like working with family. We have a lot of fun, Zertuche said.

We do everything here like family, said Simon Nguyen. We do everything for customers and make sure theyre comfortable.

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RACINE  A warrant has been issued for a woman out on signature bond who failed to appear in Racine County Circuit Court on Monday.

Asumandez Soltero, 41, was arrested March 4, after she allegedly became jealous at a party and began stabbing people.

Soltero was charged with two counts of second-degree recklessly endangering safety and two counts of substantial battery with the intent to commit bodily harm, with all four counts carrying a dangerous weapon and repeat offense enhancements.

She is further charged with four misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct with use of a dangerous weapon and four misdemeanor counts of bail jumping with use of a dangerous weapon.

Tracking defendants with GPS anklets saves taxpayers lots of money, but only if suspects can afford it Having an inmate in jail costs taxpayers $51.46 per inmate, per day, on average. An ankle bracelet is an initial $120 and then $6/day afterwards; that cost is paid by the individual on release, not taxpayers.

On March 5, the day after her arrest, the defendants bail was set $1,000  cash only.

On July 21, the defense requested and was granted a $5,000 signature bond by Judge Wynne Laufenberg on the condition Soltero be placed on house arrest with a GPS ankle monitor, among many other conditions.

Assistant District Attorney Brian Van Schyndel had opposed the signature bond.

The defendant did make all her court appearances between July and December. However, the Racine County Alternative Program had notified the court of violations in a letter dated Dec. 9.

Erin Preston, the defendants attorney, told the court she did not know of any reason for her clients absence Monday.

Case history

The Racine Police Department was dispatched to the 200 block of North Memorial Drive on the report that multiple people had been stabbed and blood was everywhere.

A number of people went to a mans apartment the night of the attack to hang out, drink, play games, and grill, according to the criminal complaint.

During the party, Soltero was told to leave by the man who lived in the apartment after she angrily poured a beer over another mans head.

According to police, Soltero is very easily made jealous or angry.

After she being accused of scratching one man, she allegedly went into the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife and then yelled Im going to kill this (expletive) while swinging the knife.

She then stabbed at least three people, none of whom were the man she was initially mad at, according to the complaint; two of those stabbed ended up needing stitches.

Competency

The defendant was initially found not competent to stand trial on April 7; though, the report issued to the court indicated Soltero would likely regain competency with treatment, which was ordered.

At hearing on July 12, the defendant was determined to be competent again.

However, no jury trial was scheduled as the Racine County District Attorneys Office was negotiating a settlement with the case with the defense.

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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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The first analysis looked at the potential for starting an in-patient treatment facility on the Lincoln Regional Center campus. The facility would be geared toward treating teenagers who now are being sent out of state for care.

Karen Chinn, a consultant who worked on the study, said Nebraska youth are going to other states because private, in-state treatment programs will not take them.

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Such youth are typically teens with aggressive and violent behavior who have experienced trauma and out-of-home placement from an early age. Most have serious mental health and substance-abuse problems. Some have a history of sexual offending. Some have developmental disabilities.

She said Nebraska sent between 39 and 74 such youth to other states every year from 2015 through this year. About two-thirds were on juvenile probation, while the others were in the child welfare system. They were sent as far away as Tennessee and South Carolina and typically spent four to six months in those out-of-state facilities.

Chinn said the state paid $9.1 million for the care of such teens in 2019.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania on Tuesday rebuffed a request for him to sit down for an interview and turn over documents to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, joining other allies of former President Donald Trump in trying to stonewall the committee.

I stand with immense respect for our Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the Americans I represent who know that this entity is illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the US House of Representatives," Perry said in a statement.

In a letter to Perry on Monday night, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said the panel had received evidence from multiple witnesses, including then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, that Perry had an important role in efforts to install Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general.
Goines has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys accuse Ogg of launching the review for political gain.

Abbott has several primary challengers from the far right, and his ongoing silence about a potential pardon for Floyd has raised questions by Mathis and others over whether political calculations are at play. His office has not responded to those charges.

Abbott attended Floyds memorial service last year in Houston, where he met with the family and floated the idea of a George Floyd Act that would take aim at police brutality. But Abbott never publicly supported such a measure months later when lawmakers returned to the Capitol, where Republicans instead made police funding a priority.

State Sen. Royce West, a Democrat who carried the George Floyd Act in the Senate, said he understands the politics if Abbott was waiting until after the GOP primary elections in March. But he said the governor should act on the recommendation.

As hes always said, he is a law and order governor," West said. And this would be following the law."

Find APs full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The Omaha World-Herald guest editorial  University plans are not against America, Dec. 13  was a historical, condescending and obscurantist. To wit: There is a real conflict over first principles and visions raised by UNLs new Journey for Anti-Racism and Racial Equity program. If philosophy is indeed a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language, we should clarify what were squabbling about.

Our Founding Fathers deployed the advantages of an 18th century education well. They were steeped in classical learning, natural law theory, British empiricism and Scottish common-sense philosophy. They adhered to the liberal creed that equal opportunity in a meritocratic society is equity instantiated. Aristotle  The worst form of inequality is to make unequal things equal.  and Seneca  The fairness of a law does not consist in its effect being felt by all alike, but in its having been laid down for all alike.  inspired the Founders to establish a republic of virtue. African-Americans from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr. to the sizable number of African-Americans who voted against reinstituting race based affirmative action in California in 2020, subscribed to our founding principles. Dr. King used the word equality once and freedom 20 times in his I Have a Dream speech.
Shoppers are finding out this week its surprisingly hard to pick up candy canes to adorn trees or stuff into stockings on Christmas Eve. The sweet peppermint classics are the latest seasonal favorite to get hit by the 2021 holiday supply crunch. Thats right: Theres a candy candy shortage.

Money did some digging and found that traditional peppermint candy canes are difficult to buy online right now. Many of the classic candy cane options at online specialty retailers like Candy Warehouse, Just Candy and Spangler Candy are listed as out of stock. The candy cane selections at big-box retailers like Amazon, Target, Walgreens and Walmart are much more limited than usual too.

Its not just regular consumers who are facing availability issues. We only received half of our candy cane order for the holiday season and sold out almost immediately. We currently have zero in stock, Mitchell Cohen, owner of Economy Candy in New York City, recently told the New York Post.

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Why are there so many holiday shortages?

Candy canes are not the only treat that is more difficult to find than usual this holiday season. There have also been inventory issues with turkeys, cranberry sauce, Christmas trees, beer and wine, cream cheese and even Santa himself. (Santa Claus performers are simultaneously in short supply and in extra high demand this year.)

Snags in the global supply chain and severe labor shortages combined with a huge surge in consumer demand  all exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic  have caused disruptions in stocks of holiday favorites at supermarkets and malls across the country. Manufacturers are struggling to produce enough goods to satisfy their customers, and cargo ships are stuck at crowded ports waiting to unload. Once the goods do leave the ships, there often arent enough truck drivers to transport them to warehouses and retail floors.

Of course, not every supply chain disruption should be considered a shortage. Christmas trees  while more expensive this year  were still readily available in many places. Anybody that wants a real tree should be able to get one, the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Associations Cheryl Nicholson told the Wisconsin State Farmer last month. Prices may be higher than some shoppers would like, but that doesnt mean Christmas trees are sold out.

In the case of candy canes, a weak peppermint harvest may be partly to blame for inventory issues leading up to Christmas 2021. U.S. peppermint production was down some 8.6% in 2020, according to data from the Department of Agriculture. Production has declined roughly 25% since 2011.

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Where to buy candy canes before Christmas

If you need to get your hands on a few peppermint candy canes this week, its worth hitting your local drugstore or supermarket to see if there are any left. If youre shopping online, here are some options we found availability (though theres no telling how long theyll be in stock):

On Amazon, a pack of three 12-count boxes of Brachs Red and White Peppermint Candy Canes is selling for $13.49 and will arrive by December 24 with expedited shipping.

At Walmart, a 6-count box of Brachs Giant Peppermint Holiday Candy Canes, is listed for $5 and is eligible for two-day shipping in some areas.

At Target, boxes of peppermint candy canes are tougher to find available for shipping online, though they are in limited stock in some stores.

At many big retailers, boxes of novelty-flavored candy canes (from Oreo to Hot Tamales candy to Starburst to Funfetti) are more readily available.

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Ashleys Hope to Dream program is celebrating its 11th anniversary, and the nonprofit organization made some changes this year leading to new means of fundraising, allowing them to serve more children.

During a year with endless supply chain disruptions, Hope to Dream was successful in donating more than 15,800 beds to children in need.

Founded on the guiding principle that every child deserves a good nights sleep, Hope to Dream became an official 501c3 this year. The organization, which has been solely funded by mattress purchases at over 620 participating Ashley stores, launched a paycheck contribution program to Ashley employees.

Additionally, new partnerships with Salvation Army and Sleep in Heavenly Peace have expanded the reach of Hope to Dreams mission and increased the donation and delivery efforts.

These partnerships allow us to work together as one in helping children across the nation get their own brand-new beds and a restful sleep at night; enriching childrens lives one bed at a time, said Ruthie Bautista, vice president, Hope to Dream.

While individuals and families recover from and combat the financial impacts of pandemic poverty, there simply can be no overestimation of the value a warm, safe bed to sleep in at night, said Commissioner Kenneth G. Hodder, National Commander for The Salvation Army. Ashleys contribution of mattresses and bedding could not have come at a more critical moment of need, and we are grateful for their generosity.

Since its inception in 2010, Hope to Dream has donated over 125,000 beds to underserved children across the U.S. and Canada. Each of the programs recipients is provided with a new Ashley Sleep bed, including: a twin mattress, bed frame, sheets, pillow and comforter.

Recipients are selected by a nomination process as well as working with community resources (ie. school districts, religious organizations, etc.).

Ashley, through their Hope to Dream program, has been the lifesaving line that our organization has needed during this difficult time, stated Luke Mickelson, executive director, Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Their donation of thousands of mattresses has allowed our chapters, nationwide, fulfill our mission to see that no kid sleeps on the floor in our town. Without Ashley, these little humans would have been without.

The growth of the Hope to Dream program these last 11 years has been tremendous, and we are so thrilled to be able to continue bringing underserved children beds of their own, said Ben Thorud, president, Hope to Dream. We are grateful for the kind donations and amazing volunteers that help make these deliveries possible all year long.

Learn more about Hope to Dream at www.ahopetodream.com,

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The omicron variant has overtaken delta as the most dominant strain of the coronavirus nationwide, spiking from comprising just a few percent of cases to 70%.

With infection rates still very high across the state and hospitals overwhelmed by patient loads, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and local hospitals are issuing a call to action for residents: Get vaccinated, get boosted, get tested and mask up.

DHS on Monday shared a public health advisory, stating with omicron present in Wisconsin  29 cases have been sequenced thus far  a rapid increase in disease activity is anticipated in the coming weeks.

There is a serious risk that continued, increased numbers of COVID-19 cases will overwhelm an already strained health care system, leading to dangerous situations where patients experiencing medical emergencies may not be able to receive immediate, adequate, life-saving attention and care due to lack of hospital capacity, the release states.

Gov. Tony Evers stressed the importance of vaccination, including booster doses, calling inoculation a critically important mitigation strategy for halting surges in hospitalizations and deaths.

Please get the vaccine, continue following public health best practices, and do your part to help slow the spread of the omicron variant, Evers implored.

With the holiday season in swing, DHS secretary designee Karen Timberlake also asks individuals to wear face coverings in the presence of non-household members, stay home when feeling ill or a if a close contact of a COVID patient, keep gatherings small and get tested before interacting with others.

Gundersen Health System Tuesday stated the community is facing a dire situation as Gundersen hospitals remain at near or full capacity. On a daily basis, Gundersen sites are caring for 40 to 50 COVID patients, the majority at the La Crosse hospital. Around 80% of those patients are unvaccinated.

Since the start of the pandemic, Gundersen has provided inpatient care for around 2,000 COVID patients, including 1,200 in the past 12 months and 850 since July. The CDC is reporting over 125,000 new infections a day nationwide, and some 1,000 daily deaths. The extremely contagious omicron will only heighten those numbers.

To protect yourself and others against omicron, the best defense is to receive the maximum number of vaccine doses allowable for your age and risk group, Gundersen says.

Mayo Clinic Health System warns COVID-19 continues to be a public health threat, noting that across its regional facilities in recent weeks we have seen increases in the number of COVID-19 patients needing care and that number is expected to remain elevated.

At Mayos Rochester hospital, around 80 to 100 COVID patients are being treated per day, and in southwest Wisconsin locations, including La Crosse, around 18 COVID patients are cared for on a daily basis.

As with other hospitals, ICUs at Mayo Clinic hospitals continue to be full, a Mayo spokesperson told the Tribune. ICU numbers fluctuate from day to day, but there has been an upward trend in the COVID-19 ICU census. Of the patients infected with COVID-19 who have been in the ICU over the past few weeks, the number of unvaccinated patients is five to six times higher than vaccinated patients.

Mayo reiterates that in order to reduce infectious spread, and prevent the virus from mutating into even more dangerous strains of the disease, vaccination, boosters, distancing and hand washing remain crucial.

Emily Pyrek can be reached at emily.pyrek@lee.net.

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An area group of solar energy advocates announced on Tuesday that it is donating new solar oven learning tools to the School District of La Crosse.

Solar on La Crosse Schools (SOLS) said in a media release that its donation comes after a second successful year of fundraising. The group was formed and operates largely to install solar energy at district facilities, but works to increase resources on sustainability in classrooms, too.

The new portable solar ovens will be accompanied by cooking equipment and lesson plans for teachers and staff to use and demonstrate the power of the sun, SOLS said.

Solar ovens will let students see and experience the power of the sun, said Cathy Van Maren, SOLS volunteer, in a statement.

You never know when an idea planted by a hands-on school experiment will grow into a new invention or even a business a few years later, she said.

SOLS said that the ovens will offer hands-on, experiential learning that can spur students imaginations and demonstrate how renewable solar energy can be used.

In addition to the ovens, SOLS said that it has raised $85,000 for solar projects at La Crosse schools since the group began.

The group is currently fundraising for its next solar installation which is anticipated for the building that houses Northside Elementary School and Coulee Montessori Charter School.

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One year ago, Eric Erickson was watching from an upper floor window of Mayo Clinic Health System as state troopers pulled up to the building. The arrival of the vehicles was not extraordinarily exciting, but what was inside their doors had his emotions running high.

The coronavirus pandemic was about 10 months in, and the fall had brought rising case levels, spiking hospitalizations, and devastating deaths. The toll was extreme, but housed in crates on those vehicles were little vials of hope: the Pfizer vaccine.

It was not real ceremonious  a couple of state trooper SUVs and minivans  but we were welling up with tears when they were unloading these crates from the minivan because finally, we had a tool to help us work against the spread of this pandemic, recalls Erickson, hospital administrator at Mayo. I cant imagine where we would be without it.

On Dec. 11, EUA was given for the mRNA Pfizer vaccine, with Moderna approved a week later. After a brief delay in La Crosse Countys receipt of their first batch, the vials, housed in super cold storage, were delivered to hospitals Dec. 21, 2020.

Mayo Clinic Health System administered its first dose that day, to Thomas Jensen, a patient care assistant, and Dr. Elizabeth Cogbill, geriatrician at Gundersen Health System and a nursing home director, received her first shot the next day.

Winona Health administered its first dose Dec. 18, and the hospitals CEO and president Rachelle Schultz recalls the gratitude the staff felt when they received their initial shipment, and Cogbill too remembers how overwhelmingly thankful she was.

I have been reflecting on one year ago, the fall before the vaccine, and how I felt and my team felt and how the community felt. I think there was a lot of powerlessness and maybe some building despair up until the vaccine, and an immense amount of hope we placed on the vaccine, says Cogbill, noting that being among the first to get a dose was a huge honor and a privilege.

At the end of December, area long-term care staff and residents began being inoculated, and on Feb. 2 the La Crosse County Health Department welcomed its first delivery, hosting the areas debut vaccine clinic three days later.

As a director for two area long-term care facilities, and a provider of rounds at several others, Cogbill witnessed the immense impact the vaccine had on those in the late December vaccine tier.

It has had a tremendous impact on the nursing homes and the COVID cases in the community, Cogbill says. We saw the rate of cases drastically reduce in the weeks after vaccinations in the facilities. It felt incredible to practice medicine during such an overwhelming surge, and to witness firsthand the power of an intervention that is a miracle of modern science and see it work the way it was intended to. That felt like the opportunity of a lifetime.

As of last week, Mayo in La Crosse had administered over 66,000 doses, with a single day record of 859 last March. Gundersen has since Dec. 19 given 134,207 doses system wide, including 86,883 at its dedicated La Crosse and Onalaska vaccine clinics. Gundersens daily high was 1,371 doses on Feb. 12. Across Winona County vaccine sites, 75,681 doses were given as of Sunday, with a monthly high of 16,562 in March.

There were a lot of moving parts in the beginning  definitely a lot of meetings to figure out the logistics of things. Now weve streamlined and this has become an everyday thing for us, says Dr. Erin Morcombe of Mayo.

Our employees had to scramble to make sure that we had what we needed to deliver these vaccines  we had to do it in such short timeframes. We didnt have a week to plan.

We were going to do it the second we had those doses available and we had to get nurses to step up and take additional steps, Erickson says of the day the vaccine arrived. We had to take them out of their clinical environments and put them in a new environment where we were administering the vaccines.

Mayo staff employed in non-clinical roles volunteered to help get vaccines deployed as broadly as possible. COVID cases after the vaccines began becoming available to more and more eligibility groups rapidly declined, as did the rate of deaths and hospitalizations.

As the delta variant began circulating, infections have risen, but those who have completed their vaccine series are being infected at much lower rates, with deaths 12 times higher among those unvaccinated or only partially so.

The vaccination has definitely done an impressive job of preventing especially severe COVID infection which can result in death and hospitalizations, Morcombe says. I think we could have been in a lot worse place with hospitalizations and loss of life if we had not had a great vaccine.

Erickson marvels at the streamlined development and rollout of the vaccine, conducted in remarkable time without compromising safety.

Its been incredible that weve had such an effective, safe tools developed so quickly in the world of scientific research. The world of medical research, the world of hospital care and clinical care and vaccine deployment did everything so quickly and really stepped up to this crisis, Erickson says.

Vaccination rates still lower than hoped

Morcombe, Erickson and Cogbill wish area, and overall, vaccination rates were higher. As of Dec. 21, 63.7% of La Crosse County residents were fully vaccinated, and 67.1% had received at least one dose. In Wisconsin, those numbers were 57.8% and 61.5%, respectively. Winonas rates as of Sunday were 59% and 62.3%, respectively.

With any vaccine, we would love to see 100% uptake of those in the community, but thats just not a realistic goal. (The rate we are at) is excellent (but) we hoped that we there would be more than that, Morcombe says.

Erickson expresses sadness that more eligible individuals have not partaken in inoculation.

Its just somewhat heartbreaking to realize that so many people have been hesitant to use it so that they can help keep everybody safe, says Erickson. I can appreciate that there are some people, either through strong convictions or some medical reasons, that they are hesitant to receive the vaccine. But its such a effective and proven tool. It doesnt make people bulletproof, but it really does knock down the spread of this disease, and the data is overwhelming.

Cogbill says she is grateful that La Crosse County has reached the percentage it has, which is higher than in the majority of Wisconsin counties, but hoped more would have gotten their shots as of now.

Many hospitals statewide, including Mayo and Gundersen, are already at or nearing capacity as COVID infections climb dramatically, with, as of last week, around 20% of patients at each facility are being hospitalized for COVID.

(Vaccination) has really been the one thing that has kept us in this county from being completely overwhelmed from a hospital capacity standpoint. Weve been running at 100 percent capacity over the last couple of months, and I know that is for many of the hospitals throughout the state of Wisconsin. But we would have been buried for the last year if it werent for the vaccine, Erickson says.

A year into providing vaccines, and some 21 months into the pandemic, employees are drained and staffing shortages are an issue.

Staff are getting tired, and I think we need to recognize that its wonderful that people are willing to be heroes because you cant be a hero forever. Eventually, you get exhausted, Erickson says. And my fear is that just across the continuum of the state, were starting to see that nurses who have been new to the discipline of nursing are starting to question if they made the right career choice. They can only pick up so many shifts in their family life and home life is suffering. People who have been at this for decades are now saying maybe now is the time to retire. And its unfortunate because right now this is the one time in their careers that we need them more than ever.

Schultz says Winona Health staff as well are incredibly dedicated to caring for this community, and each other, and they are being pushed to their limits by the demands of this pandemic. In a time that requires all hands on deck, I am more grateful than ever for all of my colleagues.

Erickson says he hopes the community recognizes the sacrifices healthcare staff are making, and the pressures they are under. People everywhere are tired of masking, distancing and limiting social gatherings, but we need to do what we can to look out for each other and that includes continuing to take precautions.

Simple things to do, like wearing a mask, doesnt seem to be that big of a sacrifice. When I have to look at the sacrifices our clinical care teams are putting forward every day to care for patients, Erickson says. The most effective tools are masking and getting the vaccine. We need to continue those behaviors, and for those who are vaccinated, if youre eligible to get a booster that also prevents more variants from forming, it prevents greater spread. These are the things we need to do for each other.

Shots crucial with rise of omicron variant, case rates

The rapidly spreading omicron variant has now overtaken delta as the prominent strain in the U.S., and experts stress the need for those eligible to receive their third doses of the vaccine.

Every day were learning more about the interplay of virus, variants, and vaccines  all with a goal to keep people safer while curbing the negative health impacts of getting COVID-19, says Schultz. ...We all hoped that (the vaccines arrival) would be the beginning of the end of the pandemic, but were still fighting it. Its keeping our caregivers safer at a time we need them to be here to care for others. We are far better off for having it than not.

Many are discouraged by the ongoing pandemic, which has ramped up again rather than slowed, but Cogbill notes that while breakthrough infections are occuring, the degree of illness and number of deaths caused by the coronavirus are far lower among the fully vaccinated. Those who do get infected are likely to experience milder cases, and it is the health of those without their shots that causes her worry.

I do not even want to think about where we would be without vaccination, Cogbill says. I dont even want to imagine the depths of despair we would be in as a county, as a region, as a country, as a world. Every single day I am grateful for the vaccine and impact it has had on my patients and myself and this community. The vaccine is truly the most powerful tool we have at our disposal. I really do desire for everyone in this community who is eligible to get the vaccine to please, please get it.

Morcombe emphasizes, You are much better protected if you get that extra dose of the vaccine. I was very excited to get my vaccination and also was very excited to get my booster to help protect me. We want to stay as healthy as possible not only for ourselves and our family but to keep our patients healthy.

With the adult population now several months out from qualifying for vaccination, and youth 5 and older becoming eligible last fall, Cogbill reminds those without their shots the time is now.

It is life changing, it is community changing, it is pandemic changing, Cogbill says. The only way we are going to end the pandemic is together and through vaccination.

Emily Pyrek can be reached at emily.pyrek@lee.net.

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THE BACKGROUND: Melting glaciers, deadly floods in Germany, record high summer temperatures in generally mild Oregon, more urgent pleas for help from Pacific island nations. With growing urgency, the effects of climate change were felt around the world in 2021.

A United Nations climate conference in Glascow, Scotland, in November  called COP26  ended with almost 200 nations agreeing to a compromise aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but which contained a last-minute change that watered down language about phasing out coal.

While many nations complained the deal did not go far or fast enough, they said it was better than nothing and provided incremental progress.

Here, some Associated Press journalists involved in the coverage reflect on the story and their own experiences.

____

SETH BORENSTEIN, science writer, Washington, D.C.:

COP26 leaves us sort of where we were before. There's a little bit more being done to try to control emissions, a lot more pledges to do stuff. But a lot of these pledges are still based very much in the future. These net-zero by 2050, 2060 pledges  these are pledges made by leaders who won't be alive when their pledges become due.

This has also been an interesting year where you had a major climate report in August. But more than anything, it's yet another year where climate change keeps popping up in extreme weather all over the world. But this year, perhaps a little bit more in the Western, richer countries than in the past: in Germany, in Belgium, horrible flooding in Tennessee, places like that. And not to mention the wildfires and 116-degree (47 Celsius) heat in Portland, Oregon. I mean, if you had to choose one weird thing, the Pacific Northwest is known for mildness, but there are records and then there are records, and theirs are so far off the scale that your eyes pop out. And that's what Portland was.

___

Rich countries aren't exempt. But when you're rich, you can flee that more easily. You can weather weather extremes when you're in the global North far better than you can in the South. But then, there come extremes that are so big, that wealth can't help you as much.

___

And so that's one of the issues of adaptation: the rich countries of the world can, and the poor countries can't. And that was one of the major issues we saw in Scotland at the conference. What we saw ... is this sort of combination of hope because nations were saying the right thing and pledging the right thing to do that would help reduce emissions in the future. More so than they've ever done. And yet, the temperatures are still going up, the extremes are still getting worse. So you sort of have this combination of optimism  and there was a lot of optimism there  and also harsh reality smacking each other in the face. And you would ping-pong there from "Oh, this looks promising" to "Oh my God."

___

FRANK JORDANS, correspondent, Berlin:

Thinking about what was special about covering climate this year, it struck me that normally, covering climate change from Germany is a bit like covering a war 100 miles from the front line, right? Because you sort of think all the action is happening somewhere else. And it's certainly true that most of the direst impact is happening in countries in what's known as the global south. Or the far north, because that's heating up much faster than anywhere else.

But this year, we had two events in Germany that were really quite striking. One of them was a Supreme Court decision in April here in Germany. Basically the court ruled that the government hadn't done enough to chart the course that the country needs to set if it wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to meet these Paris goals. And the judges basically said that they were putting too much of the strain on younger generations, pushing too much to beyond 2030. And they said that this was actually a restriction on freedoms of the younger generation. ... The judges in the Supreme Court here actually said that if we don't tackle climate change, then core freedoms are going to be impinged upon. And by saying that, that was a hugely significant moment that could change the trajectory of how future governments see things.

The second one was these floods that Seth mentioned in Germany and Belgium. Certainly, there are occasional floods here, but nothing like what we saw in July. And while some people said, well, we should have seen this coming, really, the general population was not prepared for this. And it really woke people up to see almost 200 people killed in a matter of hours, and entire villages swept away. In a country like Germany, I mean, they can afford to rebuild, but it's still billions (in damages) in one devastating flood.

___

NOAH BERGER, photographer, San Francisco:

I've been a news photographer for 26 years, so I've done a bunch wildfires here and there. But really, 2013's Rim Fire near Yosemite was the first one that got me focused on this as a specialty. I went out there and spent a few days there with a colleague from Getty, we were riding around, and I just loved being out there.

In California, we have press access to emergency zones. .... So, when I started, it was more an issue of how close you could get yourself because I didn't have all the tools that I have now. It was harder to know the right spots to be in, but it was a powerful experience. And after that, I said, this is what I want to do with my summers and falls. And every year since then, I've really ramped up the gear that I use, the knowledge I have, the interactions with firefighters. Whether it's something physical, like a carbon monoxide detector for the car, or fire shelter, or a better understanding of firefighting techniques.

Every year I've increased my fire knowledge. And it's worked out well, because our fires have also ramped up incredibly. Every year since then, with a couple exceptions, you just see new superlatives: more homes, more lives lost, more intensity. Especially since about 2015.

The firefighters are easy to interact with. I'm dressed like a firefighter. I know the lingo. You know, I pull up and they know I'm not a firefighter, but I also blend in. ... I always have a hard time with (civilians). I mean, we go up to somebody, and usually it's somebody who's either fleeing their home as flames bear down, in immediate danger or returning to their leveled home. And it's really hard to go up to people as a human. You know, it's one of the worst days of their lives and you say, "Hey, can I hang out with you?"

___

I think the intensity has been startling for all of us, and how much it's increased. I don't know what percentage you can put on climate change, what percentage on PG&E, what percent on the bark beetle tree mortality, which was part of the drought here, where a lot of trees have are very flammable and combustible. But it's pretty indisputable that the fires have definitely intensified. I think you could look up the exact figure. But, according to CalFire, our state firefighting agency, 15 out of 20 of California's most destructive wildfires have occurred in the last six years. It's a very striking statistic. I've only been doing this for eight years, and I've covered 14 of the 20 most destructive wildfires in California history.

***

For a full overview of the events that shaped 2021, "A Year That Changed Us: 12 Months in 150 Photos," a collection of AP photos and journalists' recollections, is available now: https://www.ap.org/books/a-year-that-changed-us

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Rikki and Josh Gutzdorf knew from prenatal testing that their child would have abnormally shaped bones.

After son Theo was born, other problems emerged: He could barely breathe and had a dangerously high fever. Tests, including a spinal tap, couldnt identify a cause.

Doctors at Childrens Wisconsin hospital near Milwaukee turned to genome sequencing, mapping the protein-making parts of the babys DNA. The analysis showed Theo had Stuve-Wiedemann syndrome, a rare genetic disorder marked by curved leg bones, respiratory distress, poor regulation of body temperature, swallowing problems and, often, death within a year.

The finding helped doctors decide to adjust the boys oxygen level, start him on a medication to lower his temperature and give him a feeding tube. Since the disorder also involves a lack of the reflex to blink, they initiated eye drops. Theo spent his first 100 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, but he hasnt been in the hospital since and turned 3 in September.

It was very much life or death, said Rikki Gutzdorf, of Watertown. We firmly believe that without the genetic testing, we wouldnt have had a diagnosis and known how to treat it, and possibly would not have our son with us today.

Doctors are increasingly sequencing babies genes in addition to newborn screening, especially in critically ill children whose symptoms arent explained by the routine screening a day or two after birth that mostly involves metabolic tests.

Charting the A, C, G and T bases in the DNA molecules of sick infants can yield answers  sometimes in three days or less, according to a California study  that can improve treatment and save lives. The technology, which often involves enzymes made in Madison by the company Illumina, offers the potential to sequence all babies  not just for childhood disorders but, as a Boston study showed, for risk of adult-onset diseases such as some types of cancer.

The prospect of universal newborn sequencing, and looking for adult-onset conditions, raises questions about personal autonomy, according to a federally funded ethics group. In 2018, the group said the evidence does not support genome-wide sequencing of all babies at birth.

Still, at some point, thats going to be a reality, said Dr. Donald Basel, medical director of genetics at Childrens Wisconsin. Were all going to have knowledge of our genomic data.

For now, Basel said, genome sequencing at Childrens Wisconsin is done on about 200 patients a year, primarily children in the neonatal or pediatric intensive care units. The testing leads to a diagnosis about 43% of the time and often leads to better care, he said.

Weve definitely made some significant changes in treatment based on the genomic data weve gotten back, Basel said.

At UW Health, doctors in April started sending blood samples from perplexing NICU patients to Rady Childrens Hospital in San Diego, which leads an effort to do rapid whole genome sequencing on sick infants. In July, UW opened an Undiagnosed Genetic Disease Clinic to identify rare diseases in children and adults, with the somewhat slower sequencing involved taking place on campus.

Each of more than 7,000 known rare genetic diseases affect relatively few people, but collectively the conditions are believed to be present in about 8% of the population, or roughly 450,000 Wisconsin residents, said Dr. Stephen Meyn, director of the UW Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine, which includes the new clinic.

Until recently, it took three to five years to diagnose one of the conditions, and doctors were successful less than 10% of the time, Meyn said. Now, with genome sequencing, the speed is quicker and the success rate is closer to 40%, he said.

We are, as geneticists, thrilled with those numbers, Meyn said. But that means most patients walk out of the clinic without a diagnosis. We have a lot of work to do still.

Rapid sequencing

Dr. Stephen Kingsmore, CEO of the Rady Childrens Institute for Genomic Medicine, led Project Baby Bear, which used rapid whole genome sequencing to analyze the genetic code of 184 infants at five NICUs in California covered by the states Medicaid program.

In one case, a scan showed problems in the brain of an inconsolable 5-week-old boy, whose older sister died at 11 months after seizures. Genome sequencing on the boy, completed in a record 13 hours in October 2020, identified a severe vitamin B disorder called THMD2. Soon the boy was started on a vitamin treatment and recovering from the condition that likely killed his sister, Kingsmore and colleagues reported in June in the New England Journal of Medicine.

This case illustrates the potential for decreased suffering and improved outcomes through the implementation of rapid genome sequencing, they wrote.

The BabySeq Project, at Boston Childrens Hospital, involved sequencing of nearly 1,000 genes on 127 healthy babies and 32 NICU patients. Some 8% of healthy babies and 9.4% overall had mutations for childhood genetic disorders, which were not predicted by clinical or family history, researchers reported in 2019 in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Parents of more than half of the sequenced babies agreed to look for actionable adult-onset conditions. Three babies had such genetic risk factors, two for breast cancer and one for colon and endometrial cancer.

The information gleaned from the sequencing didnt cause undue distress for the parents, including the 15 families whose babies had an unexpected risk gene for childhood disease, according to survey results reported in August in JAMA Pediatrics. Now, BabySeq2 aims to expand the research to more diverse families in Boston, New York City and Birmingham, Alabama.

Wisconsin doctors seek answers

In Michigan, Dr. Caleb Bupp heads up Project Baby Deer  which, like its California precursor, is named after the state animal. Eight hospitals in the state have sent samples from more than 80 children to Rady in San Diego for rapid genome sequencing, with analysis of the first 30 cases showing 40% led to diagnoses and 45% resulted in changes in treatment, said Bupp, chief of medical genetics at Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Childrens Hospital in Grand Rapids.

Michigans Medicaid program in September started covering genome sequencing for children up to a year old. Michigans project also involves private insurers, including the states largest carrier, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, for whom children with unexplained symptoms up to age 18 can be sequenced.

The testing helps parents by providing answers and doctors by providing direction, Bupp said. Its also good for hospitals and payers, because if we know why were treating folks, we give them better care and the cost of that care is lower, he said.

UWs American Family Childrens Hospital is among 10 hospitals in the Sanford Childrens Genomic Medicine Consortium  led by Sanford Health, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota  that are sending samples to Rady for rapid genome sequencing, Meyn said.

Since April, sequencing has been performed on four NICU patients from UW, with three leading to diagnoses within five days, Meyn said. He said the results led to major changes in medical management for all three of the diagnosed patients.

UW doesnt have enough cases to justify running costly sequencing equipment around the clock on site for the rapid results needed to help deteriorating newborns, Meyn said.

With older children or adults who have spent years trying to pinpoint the cause of their conditions, speed is not as vital, he said. Thats why genome sequencing for patients at the new Undiagnosed Genetic Disease Clinic is done at UW-Madisons Biotechnology Center, which can run so-called long-read sequencing that can provide even more answers.

UW plans to study up to 500 patients at the clinic over five years, with the goal of diagnosing rare disorders and discovering new disease genes.

Childrens Wisconsin has been doing genome sequencing on some patients for more than a decade, Basel said. In 2009, the hospital received national attention for reading the genetic script of 4-year-old Nic Volker of Monona to diagnose his rare condition and treat him with a cord blood transplant.

Most sequencing at the hospital yields results in two or three weeks, but the timing can be sped up to about five days for urgent cases, Basel said. In those situations, scientists using the sequencing equipment for research are asked to temporarily give it up.

They basically have to put everything theyre doing on hold so we can run our sample, he said. We flood the plate with just our sample for a quick turnaround.

Adapting to a rare disease

At the Gutzdorfs house in Watertown, Theo climbed a step to arrange pots and pans in his play kitchen on a recent afternoon before scuttling across the floor to pet Phil, the familys Lab mix.

Theo started walking on his own a year ago, a few months after he turned 2. Earlier, he used a walker Josh Gutzdorf fashioned out of PVC pipe. Medical walkers, even pediatric ones, were too big.

Theo is a little person, or dwarf, one aspect of his Stuve-Wiedemann syndrome. With his leg bones not only short but curved, doctors plan to operate on his hip to help him walk better. After surgery, he will need to be in a partial body cast for six weeks. His parents scheduled the procedure for January, when its cold.

Theos body temperature can still be hard to regulate, even with the medication he takes.

Its a lot easier to warm him up than it is to cool him down, Josh said. When its hot, we can only be outside for 15 minutes, maybe, before he starts showing a lot of distress.

Theo is largely nonverbal but recently learned to say a few words, including bye. His parents are trying out communication devices and teaching him some American Sign Language. Signing is a challenge, though, because his condition makes it difficult for him to open his fingers. At rest, his hands form fists.

He goes to speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy. Though he eats mostly by mouth, he still has a feeding tube, used for medication, hydration and, when hes ill, nutrition, Rikki Gutzdorf said. His parents give him eye drops several times a day to prevent scarring of his cornea and hope hell learn to blink when he gets older.

Stuve-Wiedemann is exceedingly rare, especially in the United States, so Theos parents arent sure what to expect for his future. They credit genome sequencing for helping him so far.

Without it, we wouldnt be in the place we are today, Rikki said. I ache for the families that dont have a diagnosis or a (disease) name.

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The UW Board of Regents on Monday increased salary ranges for top leaders between 5% and 32%, a move that will give them more negotiating power amid two high-profile searches for the next University of Wisconsin System president and UW-Madison chancellor.

The unanimously approved plan boosts salary ranges by 6.8% for the System president, 21.7% for the UW-Madison chancellor, 32% for the UW-Milwaukee chancellor, 7.1% for other chancellors, 5.5% for System vice presidents and senior vice presidents, 5% for the UW-Madison provost and 9.6% for the UW-Milwaukee provost.

The pay for at least two leaders, UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone and UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow, now falls below their new salary range, but the proposal passed Monday only increases salary ranges, not current salaries.

The Systems human resources office analyzed pay data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources and found the salary range for the UW-Madison chancellor needed to increase by 22% and for the UW-Milwaukee chancellor by 32% to reach the median for peer schools. System officials earlier this month, however, recommended a 9.5% increase in salary range for the two chancellor positions, citing COVID-19 as the reason for the more conservative adjustment.

But Regents worried that setting a range below what the market analysis found would limit the applicant pool and also conflict with board policy, which calls for market-based salary range adjustments every two years.

Our chancellors and our provosts and others, these senior leaders, really do drive everything we do within the UW System, Regent Scott Beightol said. We need the best and the brightest. We need to attract the very best talent and that means we move with market.

Beightol conceded that the salary range increases were in some cases a big number, but necessary to keep pace with peer schools.

At Michigan State University, for example, the Board of Trustees recently restructured President Samuel Stanleys contract, raising his base pay by 20% to $960,000.

The governing board overseeing the University of Minnesota just last week bumped President Joan Gabels base salary and other supplemental income to more than $1 million next year.

At UW-Madison, the current salary range for chancellor falls between $493,240 and $739,860. UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blanks base salary is $606,154, though she earned less last year because of pandemic-related pay cuts. Increasing the salary range by 22% puts the salary minimum at $600,126 and the maximum at $900,190.

For someone serving as System president, the current range falls between $489,334 and $734,000. Under the new range bumped 6.8%, the minimum will be $522,470 and the maximum $783,706.

Id hate to see us tie our hands for either one of those positions or indeed some of the other ones coming forward from this, said Regent Karen Walsh, who is chairing both the System president and UW-Madison chancellor search committees. I fear its going to affect applications for the Madison chancellorship and we shouldnt be limiting ourselves in that way. Replacing Becky is a tough job and we shouldnt hamstring ourselves before we even start.

Many Big Ten leaders also receive substantial bonuses or deferred compensation packages, an arrangement that rewards longevity by setting aside money that administrators cannot withdraw until an agreed-upon date and if they are still on the job.

The Regents didnt discuss on Monday whether to offer perks that many of UW-Madisons peer schools provide.

The conversation around executive compensation rankled some System employees watching from afar as they finished up their fourth pandemic semester.

Like a hospital being unable to function without medical personnel, a university does not exist without those responsible for teaching and supporting our students, UW-River Falls political science professor Neil Kraus said. This is especially demoralizing for the lowest-paid employees, many of whom are part-time faculty with no job security.

System employees are expected to receive a 2% pay increase next month. The Legislatures Joint Committee on Employee Relations is scheduled to vote on the plan Tuesday.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Wisconsin health officials and Gov. Tony Evers on Monday urged residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and take other precautions, such as wearing masks and keeping holiday gatherings small, as the new omicron variant is expected to create a surge in cases over the coming weeks.

Also Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the mask mandate in place in Dane County. The decision to take the case came just after the county health department announced it would be extended into February.

The court's ruling, which is unlikely before summer, would have implications on any orders other counties or local governments may want to put in place. The court this year struck down Evers' statewide mask mandate.

Evers joined with health officials Monday in urging people to take action in the face of the omicron variant.

I urge every Wisconsinite to take immediate action and get the COVID-19 vaccine and your booster dose if you havent received it already  this is critically important for mitigating surges in hospitalizations and deaths across our state, the Democratic governor said in a statement.

The highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 is expected to cause a rapid increase in disease activity in the coming weeks, the state Department of Health Services said in issuing a public health advisory.

There is a serious risk that continued, increased numbers of COVID-19 cases will overwhelm an already strained health care system, leading to dangerous situations where patients experiencing medical emergencies may not be able to receive immediate, adequate, life-saving attention and care due to lack of hospital capacity, Dr. Ryan Westergaard, a chief medical officer with the state health department, said in a public health advisory.

Westergaard urged everyone who can to get vaccinated, including booster shots for those eligible. COVID-19 vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and death from the delta variant, which still accounts for the vast majority of cases, he said. Fully boosted people are protected against serious illness and hospitalization from omicron, which is starting to circulate more widely.

Masks should be worn indoors when with others outside peoples households, and holiday gatherings should be small, Westergaard said. People with COVID-19 symptoms or exposure should get tested.

COVID-19 activity is critically high in 40 of Wisconsins 72 counties and very high in the rest, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. Statewide, just over 61% of residents have received at least one dose of vaccine and nearly 587% are fully vaccinated. Multiple cases of the omicron variant have been found.

As of Monday, 1,660 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 424 in intensive care, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association

The lawsuit the Supreme Court agreed to hear was brought by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of two Dane County residents. The court in November 2020 refused to hear it before it worked through the circuit courts first. It agreed to take it Monday after a Dane County judge threw the case out and the plaintiffs asked the court to take it without having to go through the appeals court first.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Wisconsin State Journal.
Less than a week after Amanda and Brandon Hoods daughter Claire was born, they got a call from their doctor. Claire, who seemed healthy, had severe combined immunodeficiency disorder, or SCID, sometimes called bubble boy disease.

Amanda Hood, a nurse, was familiar with immune deficiencies but not SCID, which affects about 1 in 45,000 babies. We were very surprised, she said. I thought maybe it was a lab error.

Further tests confirmed SCID, marked by having few or no T cells to fight infections. Without treatment, the condition is usually fatal by age 2.

Doctors at UW Healths American Family Childrens Hospital introduced T cells in Claires body by giving her a stem cell transplant when she was 4 months old, before showing any symptoms. Now 8 and in third grade, she is doing well, playing with her 3-year-old brother on their backyard swing set in West Bend and writing a short story tentatively titled Fire Mountain.

What would have happened if we didnt have newborn screening then? Amanda asked.

Many Americans are familiar with SCID from the 1976 film, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, starring John Travolta, who played a child with the disease based on two real patients.

On Jan. 1, 2008, Wisconsin started a pilot project to test babies for the disorder, using funding from Childrens Wisconsin hospital and the New York-based Jeffrey Modell Foundation, named after a boy who died from a related condition at 15.

New molecular technology presented an opportunity for testing, and stem cell transplants were shown to be beneficial, said Dr. Mei Baker, co-director of newborn screening at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene.

With the ... transplant, its the first disorder where we ever can use the word cure, Baker said.

The state, which has more than 60,000 births a year, has found 19 cases of SCID in babies since 2008.

Claire Hoods transplant helped, but she had to live in isolation until she was nearly 3 because it took a long time for her transplanted T cells to grow. She didnt leave home except for doctor visits, and visitors were limited to her grandparents when they werent sick.

Once she was able to socialize, Claire was shy during play dates because she was not used to interacting, her mother said. But that soon changed.

In 4K, Claire was exposed to chicken pox, for which she has not been vaccinated because the live vaccine can still be dangerous for her. She received preventive antibodies and didnt get sick.

In school today, she wears a face mask to help prevent COVID-19, as do a few classmates even though West Bend schools dont require them. Amanda stopped working as a nurse because she didnt want to bring infections home. Brandon is a sergeant with the Washington County Sheriffs Department.

Other than washing their hands frequently and trying to avoid sick people, the family lives like any other.

Shes like a normal kid, where she gets sick and she gets better, Amanda said.

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Woman, 69, Missing in Long Beach

The California Highway Patrol issued a Silver Alert this morning for a 69-year-old woman last seen in Long Beach. Alva Jackson-Harris was last seen at about 4:40 p.m. Sunday in Long Beach, according to the CHP. The specific location was not included in the Silver Alert.

Jackson-Harris was described as Black, 5 feet, 7 inches tall, 175 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, believed wearing a brown hat, green jacket, blue or black jeans and sandals. Anyone who sees Jackson-Harris was asked to call 911.

A Silver Alert is activated when an elderly, developmentally or cognitively impaired person is missing and determined to be at-risk to provide immediate information to the public and aid in the persons swift recover.

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Across US, Houses of Worship Struggle to Rebuild Attendance

When Westminster United Methodist Church in Houston resumed in-person services late last year, after a seven-month halt due to COVID-19, there were Sundays when only three worshippers showed up, according to the pastor, Meredith Mills.

Since then, attendance has inched back up, but its still only about half the pre-pandemic turnout of 160 or 170, Mills estimates.

Its frustrating, she said. People just seem to want to leave home less these days.

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Some houses of worship are faring better than Mills church, some worse. Polls by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows how dramatically church attendance fell during the worst of the pandemic last year, even as many say they are now returning to regular service attendance.

Among mainline Protestants, just 1% said in a May 2020 poll that they were attending in-person services at least once a week. In the new poll, 14% say theyre doing so now, compared to 16% who say they did in 2019.

Among evangelical Protestants, 37% now say they are attending services in person at least weekly, while 42% said they did that in 2019. In the May 2020 poll, just 11% said they were attending services in person that often.

Among Catholics, 26% attend in person at least weekly now, compared with 30% in 2019. In the 2020 poll, conducted as many bishops temporarily waived the obligation for weekly Mass attendance, just 5% were worshipping in person at least weekly.

At St. Ambrose Catholic Parish in Brunswick, Ohio, the six services each weekend drew a total of about 3,800 worshippers before the pandemic, according to the pastor, Bob Stec. Current weekend attendance is about 2,800, Stec says, with 1,600 or more households joining online worship.

Elsewhere, churches large and small have taken hits in attendance.

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John Elkins, teaching pastor at Sovereign Grace Fellowship in Brazoria, Texas, says 25 to 30 people have attended services recently, down from around 50 before the pandemic.

For some, I was not political enough, he said via email. Some wanted more activities, some just stopped going to church.

Sovereign Grace, a Southern Baptist church, had never offered online worship before the pandemic. When in-person worship was halted for a month in 2020, leaving online worship as the only option, Elkins said he did more crisis counseling for congregation members than ever before.

At the much larger First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio, there was a near-total halt to in-person worship between March 2020 and September of this year. On two Sundays in September 2020, worshippers were invited back to the church to test the feasibility of in-person services.

But it was obvious they were still uncomfortable  they came dressed like they were working at Chernobyl, said the senior pastor, Bishop Timothy Clarke, evoking hazmat suits appropriate for confronting a nuclear disaster.

Pre-pandemic, the predominantly African American church held three services each weekend, including one on Saturday evenings, with average total attendance of 2,500. Now theres a single service on Sunday, and only 500 worshippers  with masks and proof of vaccination  are allowed into a sanctuary that can seat more than 1,500.

The return to in-person worship gives us a sense of connection and community, Clarke said. But you also have safety.

At All Saints Episcopal Church in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, average Sunday attendance dropped from about 140 pre-pandemic to as low as 30 before climbing back, reaching 120 earlier this month. The Rev. Steven Paulikas credits a mandatory mask policy.

Mask wearing puts people at ease about their health and allows them to do what people come to church to do  worship God, he said.

Attendance is down sharply from pre-pandemic levels at St. Barnabas Lutheran Church in Cary, Illinois, which halted in-person, indoor worship for more than six months in 2020. Instead it held drive-in services in the parking lot.

Before the pandemic, about 115 people would attend one of two services offered on Sundays, said the pastor, Sarah Wilson. Now theres one service, and attendance is down by more than half.

Some families are still nervous about being in a room with others, even though most people attending are vaccinated and we require masks, she said. Other people have re-ordered their priorities and worship isnt one of them.

Friendswood United Methodist Church, in the Houston suburbs, has endured not only COVID-19 disruptions but also flooding during a winter storm last February that rendered the sanctuary unusable. It just reopened for services this month, said the pastor, Jim Bass.

Pre-pandemic, Friendswoods Sunday services would draw about 900 worshippers; Bass was pleased that about 650 gathered when the sanctuary reopened for high-energy, music-filled services on Dec. 5.

However, he said average attendance has been only half of that during most of the pandemic, creating a $400,000 shortfall in expected giving.

Like many houses of worship, Friendswood offered online services as an alternative to in-person attendance. He considers them a mixed blessing  a plus for elderly congregation members worried about their health, but a disincentive for others who are increasingly disconnected from the church.

Theyve become spectators, Bass said.

At Temple Beth El in Charlotte, North Carolina, Rabbi Asher Knight was elated that recent Hannukah celebrations drew about 300 people in person. Overall, attendance now is roughly half of pre-pandemic levels, but an improvement over periods earlier this year when only a handful of worshippers appeared.

It was demoralizing and painful to lead worship with virtually no one present, he said. But in October and November, people got the booster and their children got vaccinated and they slowly started coming back.

In September, amid a surge in COVID cases, Temple Judea in Coral Gables, Florida, observed the Jewish High Holy Days with no in-person services. So the sanctuary wouldnt look so empty for online services, Rabbi Judith Siegal and her staff filled it with cardboard cutouts of congregation members, including children and pets.

In-person worship has now resumed, and the range of weekly attendance  75 to 125 people  is close to pre-pandemic levels.

Were still wearing masks, and the seating is still spread out, Siegal said. But our members love it.

Among Christians, the option of worshipping online has been embraced by many evangelical Protestants, according to the AP-NORC poll. About 3 in 10 have livestreamed services at least weekly in recent months, compared with about 1 in 10 Catholics or mainline Protestants.

Three-quarters of evangelical Protestants say they pray privately at least weekly, compared with roughly half of mainline Protestants and Catholics, the poll found.

Roughly a quarter of evangelical Protestants say theyve recently talked by phone or video conference with a religious or spiritual leader at least a few times a month, compared with about 1 in 10 mainline Protestants and Catholics.

Some faith leaders, such as Meredith Mills, see some positives, such as more energy in the church, even with fewer worshippers.

The ones showing up right now are the people who really want to be there, she said. Theres a lot of joy in the room Sunday mornings. Its one of the reasons that, despite everything, I still love my job.

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,083 adults was conducted Oct. 21-25 using a sample designed to be representative of U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Doc on Civil Rights Icon Fannie Lou Hamer to Air in February

A documentary about Mississippi Delta sharecropper and civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer will open the 10th season of the Emmy award-winning PBS series, America ReFramed.

Produced by Hamers great-niece Monica Land and Selena Lauterer, and directed by Joy Davenport, Fannie Lou Hamers America follows Hamers life story and the injustices against Black people she spoke out against. The film will air at 8 p.m. CST on Feb. 22, according to a news release by WORLD Channel.

For 10 years, America ReFramed has shined a spotlight on a transforming America, bringing audiences into communities that are becoming increasingly diverse and introducing them to people whose stories are often overlooked by the mainstream, said Chris Hastings, executive producer/managing editor of WORLD Channel at GBH in Boston.

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Born during the height of the Jim Crow era, Hamer began her activism in the 1950s by attending civil rights conferences. She fought for equal rights for Black citizens and encouraged Black people to register to vote.

After stepping onto the national stage in 1964 at the Democratic National Convention and detailing the injustices and racism she faced on the cotton fields through speeches, Hamer went on to help start the National Womens Political Caucus and was proactive in fighting for justice for Black women as well.

Her humanitarian efforts helped provide housing, educational programs and food for many in the Mississippi Delta.

More than 40 years after Hamer died from breast cancer and other medical complications on March 14,1977, her story is being told through her own words.

In 2005, distant memories of her great aunt Hamer led Land to consider creating a documentary focused on Hamers personal life. She began gathering stories from family with her cousin, Sulla Hamer, about two years later. Land said over 17 years, the team stumbled across newspaper stories she was not previously aware of and overcame many obstacles, including securing funding for the film.

This has been a very long, hard, emotional journey, Land said.

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Unlike other documentaries about her great aunt focused mainly on Fannie Lou Hamers political and humanitarian efforts as told by those who worked with her or distant relatives, Lands vision for the film was to highlight Fannie Lou Hamers personal life.

While the film does showcase Fannie Lou Hamers political pursuits, it incorporates never before seen personal letters from Hamer and interviews with Hamers last living adopted daughter, Jacqueline Hamer Flakes.

The film _ assembled by a team of civil rights scholars, historians and Hamers family members _ uses video footage of Hamers public speeches, personal interviews and songs, according to the website about the film.

Fannie Lou Hamers America is a powerful film, one that illustrates the challenges and sacrifices so many faced in fighting for the right to vote, said Sylvia Bugg, chief programming executive and general manager at PBS.

In addition to the documentary, individuals can learn more about Hamers legacy through the website, https://www.fannielouhamersamerica.com/, which includes a plethora of material on the human rights activist.

WHERE TO WATCH

The film and TV series will be available for streaming on worldchannel.org, WORLD Channels YouTube channel and on all PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS Video app, according to the news release.

The film will premiere on PBS on Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022, from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. CST. It will then air on WORLD Channel on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022, at 7 p.m. CST.
Jury Begins Deliberating Cops Case in Daunte Wright Death

The suburban Minneapolis police officer who says she meant to use her Taser instead of her gun when she shot and killed Black motorist Daunte Wright made a blunder of epic proportions and did not have a license to kill, a prosecutor told jurors on Monday shortly before they began deliberations in her manslaughter trial.

Kim Potters attorney Earl Gray, though, countered during closing arguments that the former Brooklyn Center officer made an honest mistake by pulling her handgun instead of her Taser and that shooting Wright wasnt a crime.

In the walk of life, nobodys perfect. Everybody makes mistakes, Gray said. My gosh, a mistake is not a crime. It just isnt in our freedom-loving country.

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The jury began deliberating the case shortly before 1 p.m.

Prosecutor Erin Eldridge said during her summation that Wrights death was entirely preventable. Totally avoidable.

She drew a deadly weapon, Eldridge said. She aimed it. She pointed it at Daunte Wrights chest, and she fired.

Gray argued that Wright caused the whole incident because he tried to flee from police during a traffic stop.

Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately, he asserted.

Potter mistakenly grabbed her gun instead of her Taser because the traffic stop was chaos, Gray said.

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The jury was set to deliberate once closing arguments concluded.

Potter, 49, told jurors on Friday that she didnt want to hurt anybody, saying during her sometimes tearful testimony that she shouted a warning about using her Taser on Wright after she saw fear in a fellow officers face. She said she was sorry it happened and that she doesnt remember what she said or everything that happened after the shooting, as much of her memory of those moments is missing.

Eldridge said Monday that the case wasnt about whether Potter was sorry.

Of course she feels bad about what she did. . But that has no place in your deliberations, she said.

Playing Potters body camera video frame by frame, Eldridge sought to raise doubts about Potters testimony that she fired after seeing a look of fear on the face of another officer who was leaning into the cars passenger-side door and trying to handcuff Wright. The defense argued that he was at risk of being dragged.

Playing the video not at the right speed where it showed chaos, playing it as slow as possible . thats the rabbit hole of misdirection, Gray said.

As prosecutors have done throughout the three-week trial, Eldridge stressed that Potter, who resigned from the police force two days after the shooting, was a highly trained and highly experienced 26-year veteran and said she acted recklessly when she killed Wright.

She made a series of bad choices that led to her shooting and killing Daunte Wright, Eldridge said. This was no little oopsie. This was not putting the wrong date on a check.  This was a colossal screwup. A blunder of epic proportions.

Although there is a risk every time an officer makes traffic stop, that didnt justify Potter using her gun on Wright after he pulled away from her and other officers during an April 11 traffic stop as they were trying to arrest him on an outstanding weapons possession warrant, Eldridge said.

Carrying a badge and a gun is not a license to kill, she said.

Potter is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in the April 11 killing of Wright, who was pulled over for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.

Potter, who was training another officer at the time, said she probably wouldnt have pulled over the 20-year-old Wrights car if she had been on her own that day.

Potters attorneys argued that she made a mistake but also would have been justified in using deadly force if she had meant to because of the potential harm to the other officer, then-Sgt. Mychal Johnson, if he had been dragged by Wrights car.

While playing Potters body camera video frame by frame, Eldridge raised doubt about Potters assertion that she saw fear in Johnsons face. She pointed out that Potter was behind Luckey for much of the interaction and that Johnson didnt come into view of her body camera until after she opened fire.

Wrights death set off angry demonstrations for several days in Brooklyn Center. It happened as another white officer, Derek Chauvin, was standing trial in nearby Minneapolis for the killing of George Floyd.

Eldridge went into detail on the elements to prove first-degree manslaughter, including the requirement that a slaying be a voluntary act. She said various actions taken by Potter _ unsnapping her holster, shifting a piece of paper from her right hand to her left, putting her hand on her gun as she approached Wrights car _ were all voluntary acts and not reflexive.

Chu told jurors that intent is not part of the charges against Potter and that the state doesnt have to prove she tried to kill Wright.

The judge said to prove first-degree manslaughter, prosecutors have to prove that Potter caused Wrights death while committing the crime of reckless handling of a firearm. This means they must prove that she committed a conscious or intentional act while handling or using a firearm that creates a substantial or unjustifiable risk that she was aware of and disregarded, and that she endangered safety.

For second-degree manslaughter, the state must prove that she acted with culpable negligence, meaning she consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm.

Gray said jurors have a constitutional duty to presume Potter is innocent. He also reminded jurors that they need to find that prosecutors proved every element of the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

The case was heard by a mostly white jury. State sentencing guidelines call for just over seven years in prison upon conviction of first-degree manslaughter and four years for second-degree, though prosecutors have said they plan to push for longer sentences.

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Associated Press writer Michael Tarm in Chicago contributed to this story. Bauer reported from Madison, Wiscoonsin.

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Find the APs full coverage of the Daunte Wright case: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-daunte-wright
LA County Sees Another Spike in New COVID Cases, With 3,512 Reported

Los Angeles County reported 3,512 new cases of COVID-19 and nine additional deaths associated with the virus  the third consecutive day with more than 3,000 new cases after months of lower totals  in its latest data.

Despite the high number of cases, officials said Sundays number of cases and deaths likely reflect reporting delays over the weekend. The number of Los Angeles County residents hospitalized with COVID-19 increased by just one to 743 Sunday, with 180 of those patients in intensive care, the same as Saturdays total. The county had 772 COVID patients on Thursday.

Sundays numbers brought the countys cumulative totals to 1,563,879 cases and 27,441 fatalities since the pandemic began, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The daily test positivity rate was 1.9% as of Sunday, up from 1.3% six days earlier.

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With the new Omicron variant expected to fuel a spike in cases and hospitalizations in the coming weeks, health officials are stepping up their efforts to combat the pandemic, including new rules for attending large events.

As of Friday, anyone attending indoor or outdoor mega-events in the county who cannot provide proof of full vaccination was required to provide proof of a negative COVID test within one day (if antigen test) or two days (if PCR test) of the event.

Children under age 2 are exempt from the rule for indoor events, and children under 5 are exempt for outdoor events. This is a change from the previous health order, which required proof of a negative test within 72 hours.

The county defines mega-events as indoor gatherings of more than 1,000 people or outdoor events of more than 10,000 people. Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday there is no evidence to suggest the new variant causes more severe symptoms than previous versions, but it is more transmissible than other variants.

Based on the data collected to date, we anticipate that Omicron will circulate more widely in L.A. County in the very near future, leading to many more cases over a short period of time, particularly given increased gatherings with travel over the winter holiday, Ferrer said. Unvaccinated individuals appear to remain at the highest risk, but all the evidence to date indicates that those fully vaccinated are also at increased risk, particularly for getting infected and infecting others.

Officials noted Thursdays action by an advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which unanimously voted to give a preferential recommendation to mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna over the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to rare but serious blood clots associated with the latter.

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Dr. Isaac See of the CDC said health officials have confirmed 54 cases of the blood clots  nine of which have been fatal  and two additional deaths suspected to be related to the blood clotting issue. L.A. County officials say that as of Dec. 12, over 530,000 residents have received a dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

We remind residents that L.A. Countys supply of mRNA vaccines is abundant and that when it is time to get a booster dose, individuals previously vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should consider boosters with Pfizer or Moderna, the health department said Friday.

We appreciate the CDCs guidance on vaccine choice, Ferrer said, While any vaccine is better than no vaccine, we urge those who have received Johnson & Johnson vaccines to obtain booster doses of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to ensure they are well protected from both suffering severe COVID outcomes.

The countys health department also said Friday that compliance with mask-wearing mandates in the public and business sector was high, and credited the practice with keeping transmission low in public schools. With more than 1.55 million students across 3,000 L.A. County schools, officials said they are routinely seeing fewer than a dozen outbreaks each week. And out of more than 1,500 site visits conducted from Dec. 4-10, the vast majority of businesses and industries, including restaurants, bars, food markets and hair salons, had masking compliance rates above 95%.
Pharrell to college grads: We are the emerging majority

Grammy-winning musician Pharrell Williams on Saturday told the newest graduates of a historically Black university in Virginia to act like the emerging majority and help develop the areas businesses and culture.

Williams gave the fall commencement speech at Norfolk State University, not far from where the producer and rapper grew up in adjoining Virginia Beach.

I didnt attend Norfolk State, but I was always present, Williams said. I am honored to have made this part of my work, my story and still today, I cant wait to see how far you amazing, impressive graduates of Norfolk State  how far youll go.

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Williams received an honorary doctorate from the school and was also named an honorary member of Norfolk States marching band _ which brought him to tears, The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk reported.

Before the presentation, Willams said he remembered the band as a child and wondered why the band at his Virginia Beach high school lacked the same cadence as Norfolk State.

I wanted to be able to make people feel the way Norfolk States band made me feel, he said.

Williams said the city of Norfolk will thrive because it recognizes how important it is to acknowledge past and local heroes: Norfolk will not be the city that limits its peoples own potential, but instead, it will feed it.

He told listeners to do their part by spending money at local businesses that care, and by changing outdated language, like the word minorities.

We are the emerging majority, he said. Dont wait until Election Day. Vote with your wallets today, tomorrow and the next day.

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Williams has had a fraught relationship with the city of Virginia Beach recently. He criticized the city months ago for its response to the death of his cousin, who was shot by a police officer in March at the citys oceanfront. Two weeks ago, it was announced that a grand jury determined the officer was justified in the fatal shooting.

Williams wrote city officials last month saying he wont bring his Something in the Water music festival back to the citys oceanfront, partly because of how the city handled the investigation.
President of USC Medical Group Jehni Robinson Strives for Excellence

Honoring Women of Color in Medicine, leading the call for Equitable Healthcare

Keck Medicine of USC tapped Jehni Robinson, MD, to become president of USC Medical Group (USC care). The Los Angeles Sentinel had an exclusive interview with the newly appointed president to discuss her role and responsibilities. As an empowered Black woman, Robinson provided words of wisdom for the next generation to adhere to.

On July 22, Keck Medicine of USC released an announcement, depicting their newly appointed president. Robinson, who was the chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, is now serving a two-year term.

Robinson is the bridge between leaders in the healthcare system and innovative strategies that promote equity and deeper care for diverse populations.

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The press release spoke highly of Robinson, by stating, Robinson is a well-established and respected primary care physician with a combination of practical administrative skills from leading a large, multiservice community clinic and considerable experience in teaching and developing curriculum. She is passionate about medical care for underserved communities, developing teams, and creating efficient patient-centered models of care.

The growth in Robinsons responsibilities came from merited experience. In the press release, Robinson stated, I look forward to working closely with our leaders to help advance our medical group by supporting its continued growth and development while improving communication, efficiency, and reliability of our processes. We must also improve diversity and inclusion within health care as technology and policy create a rapidly shifting industry landscape.

Executive leadership emphasized the medical centers good judgment in Robinsons placement. Smitha Ravipudi, MPH, chief executive officer of USC Care and Ambulatory Care Services for Keck Medicine stated, Maintaining a high-caliber physician group requires experience, thoughtful and strategic leadership from someone with a clear vision and keen ability to listen to others,

Ravipudi continued, Jehni Robinson is a dedicated physician and leader within her department. She enters this new role with enthusiasm and a wealth of knowledge that will make her an exceptional president of USC Care.

Robinson worked diligently in school, earning her undergraduate degree from Stanford University. She followed her passion for medicine and completed her program at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.

Robinson found herself moving to Los Angeles to complete her internship and residency in family medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical center, accomplishing her term of residency and faculty development fellowship.

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Robinson shared her passion for health and the medical profession started in middle school. My middle School newspaper is where I was interviewed, and I said that I wanted to be a doctor. I always had some interest in it, but it wasnt until I got to college and was thinking about how both of my parents used their careers to help others I began to think of medicine as a means to an endin the sense that I felt like it was important to use your career to improve the lives of others.

The president of USC Medical Group shared that her work fulfills an aspect in her life that is a part of a greater cause, she described being involved in healthcare felt like a tangible outlet in building the collective community.

Robinson explained her academic journey, which included 11 years of training, she shared her courses of hardship. Robinson also provided the words of her father that kept her balanced. Robinson admitted that chemistry was her Achilles heel in her program. As my dad would say, you just keep on keeping on. You just try to put one foot in front of the other, show up, and do your bestand then you learn along that journey.

Looking at healthcare in the current status of emergency, Robinson shared her appreciation and pride in the growth in Medicine at USC. Building on the Journey, medicine has been a rapidly growing health system that has been developing and has continued to develop as part of the University of Southern California. And I think were incredibly proud within Medicineof the growth and the accomplishments both in the number of patients and communities that we serve as well.

Robinson continued, I have had an opportunity as a chair of the Department of Family Medicine to watch over the last four years of continuing to grow and develop.

The newly appointed president expressed how the values found in the healthcare at USC continue to move in the right direction. I been impressed with the values of the other leaders within our system about being there for our community and about serving patients, and their families.

Robinson said.

Considering her two-year term, Robinson began to express the unique opportunity for growth she has found in this role. Robinson said, I felt like it was an excellent opportunity to bring what we have in Family Medicine, which is a holistic perspective in terms of longitudinal care for patients. Its on communities to bring that into a leadership role at an organization that I felt would be welcoming of that.

Robinson has been selected to head a crucial part of the USC healthcare system, she expanded on her main plan while she holds this seat is the continual growth and development of more equitable healthcare opportunities for all patients.

I think having access to excellent care across a wide variety of areas is something that weve been growing, and I want to continue to advocate for that growth and development. Also always having an eye on excellence and when we think about what is excellent to methat means not only outstanding care for our patients and families but also thinking about how we create systems of care that are efficient, high-quality for the people who are involved in providing that care.

Robinson continued, From the people who might encounter you firstwhen you call in for an appointment, to the care provided by our nursing teams, to our world-class physicians who are providing outstanding services. If we can shoot for excellent Synergy, good communication, and connection across those different parts of the care team, then I think we can meet our continued goal which is to provide excellent service.
Mas

 Copyright 2017 Grupo Editorial La Verdad.

Todos los derechos reservados.
The proprietor of Hideaway Distillery in Lebanon is on the right side of the law  unlike a few of his family members during the Prohibition era. Here's how to find it.
We will have to reserve the possibility of taking further action to protect the public, Johnson said. The arguments either way are very, very finely balanced.

The conservative government re-imposed face masks in shops and ordered people to show proof of vaccination at nightclubs and other crowded venues earlier this month. It is also weighing curfews and stricter social distancing requirements.

Johnsons warning threw into stark relief the unpalatable choice government leaders face: wreck holiday plans for millions for a second consecutive year, or face a potential tidal wave of cases and disruption.

In the U.S., President Joe Biden is set to address the nation on the latest variant on Tuesday, less than a year after he suggested that the country would essentially be back to normal by Christmas.

His top medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, made the rounds on television over the weekend, promising that the Democrat will issue a stark warning of what the winter will look like for unvaccinated Americans.

Cases are surging in parts of the U.S., particularly the Northeast and Midwest, though its not always clear which variant is driving the upswing.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it has started distributing free COVID-19 home test kits to international travelers arriving at airports in America.

According to Reuters.com, CDC officials said they began handing out the coronavirus tests last week (on Dec. 15) at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, Miami International Airport and Chicago O'Hare International Airport.

The government agency said it plans to add the free tests to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and four additional unidentified international airports in the coming weeks.

While the CDC does not require international travelers arriving in the U.S. to get a new COVID-19 test upon arrival, the agency strongly recommends it. Current federal law says that passengers arriving in American must show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within one day of travel.

U.S. President Joe Biden and White House officials said the tighter testing timeline provides an added degree of public health protection as scientists continue to assess the omicron variant.
And now Jen Barney, owner of the Meringue Bakery & Cafe in downtown La Crosse, is a three-time Food Network champion.

Barney was one of three members of Team Dough Angels, which finished first in the third season of Food Networks Holiday Wars holiday cakes competition. That team topped Team Bakers in Toyland, in the two-team finale episode, which aired Sunday night and involved creating a new Santas sleigh.

The competition began with nine teams, and the eight episodes aired on Sunday nights in November and December. All eight were filmed in June in Park City, Utah.

At the end of Sunday nights finale, the Team Dough Angels members were congratulated, then were told that they would be competing in a Champion Cake Off episode against the champions of Halloween Wars, which will air at 8 p.m. next Sunday.

The Champion Cake Off episode was filmed the next day in Park City, Barney told the Tribune in an interview Monday. In that contest, teams were vying for a choice of $5,000 per team member or a trip to what Food Network is billing as the biggest New Years party in the world in New York City.
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He said he was sure she was alive on July 21 and July 22 because he called her on July 22 from the motel where he was staying with Albrecht about going to Mount Olympus in Wisconsin Dells. But he also added he last saw her on July 22, when he and Albrecht went to her home but said he only went as far as the front entry.

He said again that he and Albrecht went to McColloughs house on July 23 to pick up his clothes and found everything smashed up, and no sign of McCollough. But he later corrected himself again and said he didnt see the home all smashed up until Sept. 4, after he got out of jail and went to McColloughs house with a U-Haul.

Raether also claimed he felt fine when he went to jail in July, despite what he told Albrecht on the phone. But confronted with his jail call statements about injuries, Raether then said McCollough attacked him and he defended himself. He also said that happened on July 22, when Albrecht was there with him. He said he didnt tell police that earlier because he was protecting (McCollough) because I dont want you guys to have that image that thats what she did, he said. But she was alive. I ran out of the house because she was doing that.
Theo started walking on his own a year ago, a few months after he turned 2. Earlier, he used a walker Josh Gutzdorf fashioned out of PVC pipe. Medical walkers, even pediatric ones, were too big.

Theo is a little person, or dwarf, one aspect of his Stuve-Wiedemann syndrome. With his leg bones not only short but curved, doctors plan to operate on his hip to help him walk better. After surgery, he will need to be in a partial body cast for six weeks. His parents scheduled the procedure for January, when its cold.

Theos body temperature can still be hard to regulate, even with the medication he takes.

Its a lot easier to warm him up than it is to cool him down, Josh said. When its hot, we can only be outside for 15 minutes, maybe, before he starts showing a lot of distress.

Theo is largely nonverbal but recently learned to say a few words, including bye. His parents are trying out communication devices and teaching him some American Sign Language. Signing is a challenge, though, because his condition makes it difficult for him to open his fingers. At rest, his hands form fists.
Schumacher left the reservation when she was 21 and in 1989 met her husband when the two worked at a lodge in the Grand Canyon. She was a cashier in the cafeteria; he was a front desk clerk who came through her line sometimes. Now hes an accountant at a law firm in Downtown Madison after a 22-year career at Pepsi.

They moved to Sun Prairie, where he grew up, in 1994, when the oldest of their two daughters was 2 months old.

After her younger sister died of a drug overdose, she took in her sisters four children, and they became an eight-member family. It was a big adjustment for them, but we made it work, she said. In the Navajo culture, family is very important and we are very close-knit.

Schumacher said most of her relatives who have died lived in northeastern Arizona, but an aunt, whom she considered a second mother, died in an assisted-living home in Blanding, Utah. An uncle who died lived on the border of Arizona and Utah in Monument Valley.

Most of her family members who succumbed to COVID-19 in the past 20 months died in hospitals that were six or more hours away from home: in Phoenix, Cottonwood and Flagstaff, Arizona, and in Farmington, Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico, she said.
BOISE  Residents of Boises North End neighborhood woke up Sunday morning to antisemitic messages on doorsteps, fences and sidewalks.

Never thought Id see the day when my neighborhood would be peppered with anti-Semitic litter, along with a flyer proclaiming Santas elves are Satanic, all packaged in a bag full of pellet gun ammo, one resident tweeted.

Plastic bags were filled with paper flyers that included messages saying the Covid agenda is Jewish and claiming people who were in favor of government restrictions related to the pandemic were carrying out the will of the Jews. The flyers also included a list of health care leaders who the distributor believes are Jewish. The bags contained pellet gun ammunition and a second piece of paper with a message misquoting a Bible verse by replacing Jewish-related words with Santa-related words.

Targeting our Jewish neighbors with such words and symbols should alarm us all, Dan Prinzing, the executive director of the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, told the Idaho Statesman in an email. In this moment the community must decide, do we accept these acts and become complicit in the hate  or do we stand together and condemn, denounce and prosecute the perpetrators? When such acts target one among us, they target all of us. It is time for state leaders to stand up, speak out and set a course for Idaho that does not coddle extremism, feed conspiracy theories, nor encourage a national perception that Idaho is a haven for hate.

The Boise Police Department says just before midnight on Saturday officers responded to a report of anti-Jewish literature distributed around property in the North End. Officers say they collected as much of the material as they could find in the dark and began an investigation. Police say they believe no one was a target and the papers were distributed randomly.

The flyers contained advertising related to the Goyim Defense League. The Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that combats antisemitism and hate groups, describes the Goyim Defense League as a loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism that includes five or six primary organizers/public figures, dozens of supporters and thousands of online followers. The group espouses antisemitic and white supremacist themes via the internet, through propaganda distributions and in street actions, according to the ADL website.

The flyer distribution follows other recent acts of antisemitism in Boise. Within the last month, residents have found swastikas and other antisemitic messages spray-painted on a downtown building and in tunnels along the Boise Greenbelt near the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial. In September, a sign in front of St. Lukes McCall Medical Center was defaced with a spray-painted swastika, and the Idaho Anne Frank Memorial was vandalized with Nazi stickers last December.

The frequency and repetition of this filth has become both calculated and deliberate  and requires that the citizenry also become deliberate in response, Prinzing said.

He asked city and faith leaders, civic and community organizers, and law enforcement to come together in a unified message against such acts.

According to news reports, similar flyers were distributed in North Carolina and California over the last month.

Police are asking anyone with information or video footage from the area to contact them through one of several options. People can call dispatch at 208-377-6790, call Crime Stoppers at 208-343-COPS (2677), reach out through 343cops.com or leave a tip using the P3 Tips app from a mobile device.

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Q: There are graves at China Creek Butte on the Toana Road. What do you know about them?

A: The readers question relates to a project the Twin Falls County Historic Preservation Commission and Frontier Historical Consultants, in Bruneau, completed in 2003-04 on the Toano Road, a 19th century freight road in the western portion of Twin Falls County, said Shauna Robinson, who serves on the Twin Falls County Historic Preservation Commission and is a board member of Preservation Idaho. In answering the question, I will provide some background on the historic road for context.

About 40 miles east of Wells, Nevada, the town of Toano was founded by the Central Pacific Railroad in 1868 as a railhead for eastern Nevada, identified by a unique name with six different spellings and with about as many meanings. Perhaps the explanation presented in Nevada Place Names would be most accepted, that Toano is a Gosiute word meaning pipe-camping place. Initially, Toano gained importance as Leland Stanfords staging center for the golden spike ceremony in Promontory Point, Utah, 166 miles to the northeast, that celebrated the completion of the transcontinental railroad.

Toano gained further importance thereafter as a supply center for the mines to the south near Pioche, Nevada, and to the north in Idaho Territory. To enable the transport of goods by freight wagon to Boise, an established road with rest stations was needed. This prompted businessman and promoter John Moffit (also spelled Maffit) in 1870 to hire workers to survey and construct a freight road from Toano to Boise. Included in the road crews were Chinese laborers who needed employment as they made their way north to Idahos mining camps.

When finished in 1871, the road angled northwest across Thousand Springs Valley, turned north, and made its way to the Oregon Trail near Hagerman. Along the way, the road passed through areas familiar to many today, including Contact, Nevada, the west side of Salmon Falls Reservoir, Roseworth, and Balanced Rock.

So just how does China Creek Butte tie into this? China Creek was the site of a construction camp used by some of the Chinese laborers that stands out in local lore. Located less than 3 miles north of the Nevada border, the three Chinese workers who camped along the creek were supposedly murdered by other work crews. Why? One account claims the Chinese were killed, rather than being paid for the work they had completed. Subsequently, they were then buried in a large grave not far from the creek. This story may just be folklore, a 19th century urban legend of sorts, as it was not uncommon in camps and work sites that had Chinese residents to hear such tales. The murders at China Creek have not been substantiated through any research or documentation.

In 1871, the route was completed, allowing wagons carrying thousands of pounds of needed freight to bump along this dusty track en route to Boise City. Helping the cause in 1874, was when promoters John Moffit and F.F. Marx billed the Toano Road as a fast freight line that could deliver goods to Boise in eight to 10 days as noted in the ad appearing in the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, March 10, 1874.

Use of the Toano Fast Freight Road as well as the Kelton Road continued until 1883, when the completion of the Oregon Short Line Railroad made overland freighting unnecessary. Nonetheless, locals continued using the well-worn ruts for their own transportation needs across the high desert, and the visible remnants of the road today signal the important role freighters played in Idahos development. Place names in southwest Twin Falls County such as China Creek Butte and China Mountain also serve as reminders of those who helped shape the countys historic record.

In 2006, the Toana Historic Freight Road was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its contributions to Idahos early transportation and settlement. Twin Falls County is fortunate to have such a worthy historic property as a part of our heritage.

Have a question? Just ask and well find an answer for you. Email your question to Kimberly Williams Brackett at timesnewscuriousmind@gmail.com with Curious Mind in the subject line.

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BOISE  Idaho and 26 other states filed an emergency motion to reinstate the stay in the U.S. Supreme Court on President Joe Bidens COVID-19 vaccine mandate for large private businesses.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little has opposed Bidens vaccine mandates. In November, Little joined lawsuits to try to stop the private employer mandate, as well as vaccine mandates for federal contractors. On Friday, a three-judge panel in the Sixth Circuit allowed the vaccine mandate for larger private employers to move ahead by a 2-1 decision.

We are doing all we can to put a stop to Bidens unprecedented government overreach into the private sector, Little said in a news release. The majority of the nations governors oppose Bidens damaging and ineffective vaccine mandate policies, but he continues to push them on citizens, businesses, and the states.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirement would apply to companies with 100 or more employees. That would cover about 84 million workers nationally, the White House said. Employees who arent fully vaccinated would have to take weekly COVID-19 tests and wear face masks at work.

The Supreme Court is likely to rule on the states motion in January, according to the news release from Littles office.

Vaccine rules for federal government contractors and workers in health care facilities that receive Medicaid or Medicare funding are still on hold.

Thankfully, two other vaccine mandates remain stayed, and collectively the states will give a voice to the millions of Americans being coerced and cornered by the President, Little said.

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TWIN FALLS  Inside of a hoop house, tiny sagebrush plants sit inside of black plastic cones.

Lisa Wheeler calls them her babies. Every day during the fall, she spent time meticulously caring for each plant, making sure all 18,000 seedlings had the best chance of survival.

Documenting, watering, thinning, fertilizing, and watching for disease became her routine.

To be in a very quiet setting, its almost like a meditation, Wheeler said. To be in a serene place, it brought calmness to me and peace to my soul and heart.

Peace is something that can be hard to find inside of a prison.

Wheeler is serving time at the South Boise Womens Correctional Center near Kuna for possession of a controlled substance.

It was there she was introduced to the Sagebrush in Prisons Project started by the Institute for Applied Ecology.

It really is a win-win-win program, said Stacy Moore, ecological education program coordinator with the Institute for Applied Ecology. It provides skills for the inmates, its a really nice contact with the community and its helping to restore our native habitats.

Mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, pronghorn antelope and more than 100 bird species depend on sagebrush for food and habitat.

The Idaho State Correctional Center, about a mile from the womens prison, has participated in the program since 2015. This year, they grew a record 57,600 sagebrush seedlings. Crew sizes range from two to 20 people, depending on the prison and stage of plant growth.

Oregon, Wyoming, California and Nevada also participate in the program.

Before COVID-19, the program offered monthly lectures on the environment and agriculture-related topics. Classes covered everything from solar power and beekeeping to birds of prey and desert plants.

This is an opportunity, at least for me, to reach a segment of the population that usually isnt reached with environmental education, said Holly Hovis, Institute for Applied Ecology program coordinator.

Hovis works directly with the two crews in Idaho and has seen the demand for high-quality programming inside of prisons.

Everybody is so eager for something productive to do and some education, she said.

Wheeler owns her own landscaping business that she plans to start up once she is released. This program has provided her with skills that she can use in her business.

The hardest part of the process was watching her seedlings be boxed up and given to the Bureau of Land Management for planting.

To see them gone, I thought, What am I going to do now? she said.

The seedlings from the South Boise Womens Correctional Center were planted in southwest Idaho to help the landscape recover from the Cat and Soda fires. The seedlings from Idaho State Correctional Center were planted near Shoshone.

Its a huge benefit for the folks in the prison system and it benefits us, said Tony Erickson, supervisory fire management specialist with the BLMs Twin Falls District. It helps us get our lands restored quickly.

Using seedlings can be more effective than planting seeds on smaller restoration projects, Erickson said.

The seedlings that (the prisons) provide are some of the best that we usually see from all of our other providers, he said.

For Wheeler, she is proud of what they have accomplished.

I recommend anybody to have this experience, especially if you get in trouble and find yourself in a place like this, she said. Its a fresh new perspective on the value of life.

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Its high time to give former President Trump the credit he deserves  for something other than inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

While other politicians groan about the high cost of insulin, and do nothing about it, Trump changed the course with a stroke of the pen. He issued an executive order last year that would cap insulin costs at $35 a month for about a third of Medicare recipients  giving a hopeful prospect for millions of Americans with diabetes. Folks who were in line for the benefit would no longer have to choose between paying for the lifesaving drug and buying groceries.

The executive order didnt stand for long. President Biden, upon taking office, rescinded or delayed a multitude of Trumps executive orders  including the one pertaining to insulin. There were a variety of reasons (or excuses) for putting the order on hold, including bureaucrats complaining about the added paperwork that would go with the change. But apparently, the bean counters were OK with enabling drug companies to rake in big profits on the backs of people with diabetes. Insulin hasnt changed radically in the last decade, yet the cost to consumers keep rising to the tune of 10 to 15 percent a year. Its legal extortion at its worst.

But none of this came into play when Biden delayed the executive order. The bottom line was that if it came from Trump, then it must have been a bad idea.

Since then, the Dems have been scrambling like Keystone Cops to put their own stamp on insulin prices. The $35 cap, which significantly expands on Trumps executive order, is part of the Democrats zillion-dollar baby with a feel-good name, the Build Back Better Act. It would bring more Medicare plans into the fold, which is a good thing.

On the downside, it adds more spending when the national debt is approaching $30 trillion. But whos counting?

Not surprisingly, the Democrat-controlled House passed BBB on a party-line vote, but its not a slam dunk in the Senate where at least one Democrat  Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia  is holding out. The president and Democrats have given up hope for passing BBB by the end of the year, which takes us into the mid-term election campaign.

Theres no mystery on the Republican side. Idaho Reps. Mike Simpson and Russ Fulcher voted against it in the House; Sen. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch are firm with their opposition in the Senate. The Dems say that the nearly $2 trillion spending plan would be paid by big corporations and people making more than $400,000 a year. Crapo, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, isnt buying it.

This human infrastructure bill is a filibuster-proof budget proposal that will do long-term damage to our economy, he says. It is a blueprint to recklessly tax and spend our country into fiscal ruin. The measure increases taxes on businesses small and large; on farmers and ranchers; on retirees; and certainly on those making less than $400,000 a year.

Fulcher expressed similar strong objections with his no vote in the House. The size and scope of this (more than) 2,460-page bill would be the largest expansion of government in our nations history. This legislation reflects the most extreme priorities of the House Democratic caucus and would put our country one step closer to socialism.

Of course, what Republicans think about the bill  and the presidents social agenda in general  is irrelevant. If Democrats want Build Back America, with all the socialistic trappings, they can have it. Its kind of like the Idaho Legislature where Republicans can get what they want, and it doesnt matter what Democrats say or think.

The consolation, if BBB passes without a lot of tinkering, there would be at least one positive aspect to the act. It would finally make headway on the cost of insulin for the millions of Americans who are battling with diabetes.

Naturally, Democrats will be the first in line to take credit for putting a check on big Pharma and rescuing insulin-dependent diabetics. But lets not forget that it was this Scrooge from the Christmas past, Donald J. Trump, who put the foundation in place.

Chuck Malloy is a longtime Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com.

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If you know someone is a Republican or Democrat, then you might assume you know exactly where they stand on whether local jails need to be expanded.

But if recent experience in the rural, southwest Oregon county where I live is any guide, its not that simple.

The economy in Jackson County is dominated by mostly low-wage jobs in tourism, health care, agriculture and forestry, yielding a median income 24 percent lower than the national average. Yet the median home price is 9 percent higher than the national average, and one out of three households pays more than half of what they earn just for housing.

Republicans win every county commissioner election, and last year, those commissioners asked voters to authorize a new jail with three times the capacity of the old one. The local newspaper came out in favor, publishing a three-part series and a positive editorial as well.

But voters in this red county said no by nearly 3 to 1. How did this happen?

It happened because a broad-based community group of volunteers convinced voters that lockups werent the only answer. The group did intensive public outreach, pointing out that a large percentage of what was considered local crime involved mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and poverty  all underlying issues that a larger jail couldnt help.

A study they cited by the independent Vera Institute of Justice examined the experience of 77 counties and found that larger jails often become overcrowded again because expansion fails to address the root causes of an increased (jail) population.

The coalition even brought in police to make their case. They hosted forums, inviting law enforcement leaders from other counties to talk about how they reduced jail bookings instead of expanding jails. In many cases, they said, mental health professionals or social service workers were more effective and less costly than sending in police.

Tad Larson, the jail commander from Marion County, Oregon, said his county operates mobile crisis intervention teams that connect individuals with counseling services, alcohol and drug treatment, and peer mentor support.

Less than 3% of calls the crisis teams respond to result in arrests, Larson said, and the county has reduced annual jail bookings by 20 to 25 percent.

A similar program in Lane County, Oregon responds to 24,000 calls per year involving dispute resolution, medical crises, mental illness, substance abuse, or homelessness. The program saves $15.5 million a year by handling calls that would otherwise go to the police. This reduces arrests and diverts patients from emergency rooms, according to program coordinator Tim Black.

The Real Solutions coalition also pointed out that crisis intervention alternatives are supported by a national group called Right on Crime, which was founded by well-known conservatives such as Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and Mike Huckabee.

Research shows that, especially in regards to low-risk defendants, even brief jail stays can increase the chance of committing another crime in the future, Right on Crime reports.

When someone who has mental health issues is locked up pretrial it can compound their situation, Right on Crime adds. The same can be said for people who display signs of substance abuse.

While crisis response programs save money once operating, many communities need seed money and technical assistance to get started. Federal grants totaling $15 million have been awarded to 20 states, including California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah, to help local jurisdictions to plan such programs.

Meanwhile, the Oregon legislature this year set an example by appropriating $10 million to expand local mobile-crisis programs throughout the state.

In the county where I live, the county commissioners have been silent on this subject since their proposal was soundly defeated. But the voters decision has prompted discussions among public agencies, nonprofits, and community advocates about establishing a crisis intervention system.

With continued population growth and with new fiscal challenges as a result of COVID-19, it will be particularly important to find cost-effective alternatives to continually building bigger jails, wrote four city councilors from local communities in Jackson County after voters turned down jail expansion. We hope Jackson County officials have learned those lessons too, and we look forward to working with them on constructive and practical alternatives.

That would be an example, increasingly rare these days, of a community finding a solution that everyone  no matter their political leanings  can support.

Matt Witt is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation in the West. He is a writer and photographer in Talent, Oregon.

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If reversion is such a good thing for the people of Martinsville and Henry County, then who comes out ahead?

Thats the question that doesnt have a quick answer.

Reversion seemed to be on the fast track until the county Board of Supervisors failed to approve an agreement with City Council in November and then outright rejected it last week. Now the Martinsville mayor is threatening legal action and the whole matter, once thought to have been settled, is in flux.

Certainly Henry County claims it will not be the better because of reversion; their best guess is that it will cost Henry County taxpayers $5 million more in the first year  and thats not including moving expenses.

This is an  undeniably  a negative financial event for the county, said Henry County Attorney George Lyle back in May to Virginia Business, an independent monthly magazine covering economic news in the state. We think the annual expense will start off at $5 million a year.

Martinsville taxpayers appear to come out even, but not ahead. Outside counsel on reversion for the city proposes a reduction in city taxes only enough to keep overall taxes level after the county begins taxing the new town residents.

So where does the $5 million go?

There is nothing to indicate it costs more to operate government services and schools in Henry County than it does in the city, so if the number is accurate then it could be said $5 million is the extra amount or the difference that reversion creates for Martinsville.

But the residents and the businesses in the new town will not realize any of that reduction in their tax bills.

With an aging infrastructure the city administration and council members have all conceded the future of Martinsville will continue to be more expensive and if a means to create some additional cash doesnt occur, then its taxpayers eventually will see either a hike in their tax bills or noticeable reductions in services.

Henry County takes the position that its unfair to be forced to pay that portion of expenses that Martinsville can legally shed merely by changing its status.

The more Ive thought about reversion, the one thing that educators dont like is a bully, said Iriswood District Supervisor Dr. David Martin at the Dec. 7 regular meeting of the Henry County Board of Supervisors. The state is bullying us.

Martin is also a former superintendent of Henry County and Patrick County public schools.

Its disheartening to me to think you could put the two largest employers together this quickly. Even though I believe there is a benefit, weve not had an opportunity to sit down with the school boards, said Martin.

Henry County and Martinsville public schools combined employ between 2,000 and 2,500 people, according to the Martinsville and Henry County Economic Development Corporation, and reversion, as it is proposed, would consolidate the two systems.

City vs. town

There are 38 independent cities in the United States; all of them are in Virginia, the only state in the country to permit independent cities, and Martinsville is one of them.

By comparison, there are 190 towns in the state.

For over 30 years independent cities in Virginia have been permitted to revert to towns, a process that results in the city shedding itself of significant expense at the cost of the surrounding county.

Although other cities have considered it, only three have actually reverted from a city to a town: South Boston in 1995; Clifton Forge in 2001; and Bedford in 2013.

Outside counsel for both Henry County and Martinsville have said the reversion of Martinsville is by far the most complicated reversion in the history of Virginia, primarily due to the number of people involved.

The population of Clifton Forge is 3,581; that of Bedford is 6,562; and South Bostons is 7,762 people. Martinsville had a population of 12,852 as of 2019.

Schools were left out

Martinsville City Council, at a suggestion by Mayor Kathy Lawson, decided to schedule monthly meetings to answer questions about reversion from the public.

The rules limited the number of speakers to a dozen, and they were required to register prior to attending.

Only one person registered for the first meeting in November, Martinsville Commissioner of Revenue Ruth Easley, and the meeting that had been set for December was canceled due to low response regarding interest in attending, an announcement from Executive Assistant to the City Manager and Clerk of City Council Karen Roberts stated.

But last week two residents of Henry County registered to speak before the Henry County Board of Supervisors on the matter.

The two school systems were left out, said former Henry County School Board member Mary Martin. Vote to shut down this voluntary settlement agreement. The citizens didnt volunteer.

Between a memorandum of understanding and the agreement, the process requires both City Council and the Board of Supervisors to approve reversion by public vote three times.

Martinsville did so, but Henry County balked on the third occasion, striking the agreement down by a 4-2 vote.

What is the boards overall plan for dealing with reversion? Rev. Tyler Millner of the Iriswood District asked. What do you hope for the outcome to be when this is all over? How do you see the citizen being part of the process going forward?

Millner prefaced his questions by encouraging the board members to be more statesman-like, bring divisions together and turn down the rhetoric and meet minds.

Well have better government and community if more citizens were engaged, said Millner.

Avoiding court

Lyle reminded the county board before they voted that the agreement avoided the process playing out in court, a road that would present greater risks.

I know the sentiment in the county is they dont like it, Lyle said. The Commission on Local Government made it clear that reversion is in the best interest of this community and the state, and I dont think their opinion would change at all if fully litigated.

Lawson also said as much in a letter on Dec. 15 to Henry County Board Chairman Jim Adams and delivered to by Martinsville police to Henry County Administrator Tim Hall.

We anticipate that such a contested reversion, although painful for the parties, ultimately will result in an outcome more favorable to the city and less favorable to the county than the results already obtained in the voluntary settlement agreement, Lawson wrote. Such an outcome is particularly likely, given that the Commission on Local Government and any panel appointed to review its recommendation will not take a favorable view of the actions by the county in abandoning a settlement agreement at the eleventh hourdespite having voted not once, but twice in favor of that agreement, and despite having represented to the Commission repeatedly that the agreement was in the interests of both parties and the Commonwealth.

The plan

Henry County has a two-pronged attack to thwart City Councils push to reversion.

The first is to petition the General Assembly to intervene on behalf of the county when the session begins on Jan. 12, and the second is to stretch and stall Martinsvilles pursuit of reversion until the next election cycle on city council that occurs in November 2022.

Collinsville District Supervisor Joe Bryant explained during his campaign for re-election earlier this year how the strategy would work.

With or without an agreement, an approval to revert from a city to a town comes with a requirement that the city accept the offer in 21 days.

Of the five current city council members, four have supported reversion and one has not.

The seats for two of the supporters for reversion, Vice-Mayor Jennifer Bowles and Council Member Danny Turner, are up for election in November 2022.

If opposition were strong enough within the city to elect two new council members opposed to reversion, the city council would have a majority against reversion.

Bryant explained this possibility as one of the reasons the current city council and administration are anxious to push reversion through while they still maintain a fragile majority.

Martinsvilles plan, as explained by Lawson in her letter to Adams, is to have its legal team take steps to immediately enforce the agreement between the city and the county, and failing that, proceed with litigation to revert from a city to a town without an agreement.

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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Donald W. Lemons will step down as chief justice of the Virginia Supreme Court effective Dec. 31, and his colleagues have elected Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn to succeed him on Jan. 1, the court announced Monday.

Lemons, 72, a former Richmond lawyer and judge, has served as chief justice for six years. He was first elected to the position by his fellow justices on Aug. 18, 2014, to a four-year term that began Jan. 1, 2015.

Lemons was elected to the state Supreme Court in 2000 for a 12-year term. His current term expires on March 15, 2024. The court's announcement did not say why Lemons was stepping down as its 26th chief justice.

He has served at every level of the court system in Virginia.

From 1971 to 1973  after college and before law school  he was a probation officer for the Fairfax County Juvenile & Domestic Relations District Court. From 1976 to 1978, he was an assistant dean and assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Law from which he had just graduated.

Lemons was in private practice in Richmond from 1978 to 1995; a circuit court judge in Richmond, from 1995 to 1998; and a judge on the Virginia Court of Appeals, from 1998 to 2000.

As a Richmond Circuit Court judge, Lemons helped pioneer drug courts in Virginia. In 2013, at a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of Richmonds drug court, he brought home the point that drug addiction can strike anywhere by revealing he had a cousin who had died from a heroin overdose not long before, according to news accounts at the time.

At Lemons' investiture ceremony in January 2015, he was lauded by more than one speaker for his civility and integrity.

Then Gov. Terry McAuliffe, in remarks at Lemons' 2015 investiture as chief judge, thanked Lemons for his groundbreaking work on drug courts and said Lemons faced a great deal of resistance, to the point he was warned that becoming Richmonds drug court judge could be a career-ending move.

There are now more than 50 drugs courts in the state.

Lemons also served as the former president of the American Inns of Court from 2010-2014, and as an honorary Bencher of Middle Temple in London. In 2019, he was awarded the American Inns of Court Lewis F. Powell Jr. Award for Professionalism and Ethics.

Goodwyn, 60, will assume the office of chief justice at the beginning of the new year. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Timothy Kaine in 2007 and was unanimously elected by the General Assembly to the court in 2008 and re-elected in 2020.

Goodwyn previously served as a circuit court judge in Chesapeake for 10 years, and as a general district court judge for two years.
A public hearing was held in April by the McDowell County Board of Commissioners, and the board approved the transfer of an approximate four-acre site for the company location.

During that April hearing, Chuck Abernathy, director of the McDowell Economic Development Association, said this company would construct a new building on the site and move its operations to McDowell. He placed a conservative value of $3 million on the building and the vehicles. Water and sewer will have to be extended there as well. At the time, he added this telecommunications company would do much of its operations outside the building.

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The work takes place outside of the building so it is like a service they provide, he said during the hearing. You would have the company here and the odds are the employees would live here.

County Commission Chairman Tony Brown said the board appreciates the company locating in the McDowell industrial park and the high quality and diverse jobs that will be created.

These are the type of jobs and this is the type of company that we want to focus on, Brown said.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which presented its progress report to the Burundian parliament in congress on Monday, December 20, described one of the worst episodes of inter-ethnic massacres in the country, which began at the end of April 1972, as the genocide against the Hutus of 1972 and 1973. The Hutus are now in power. A qualification that was endorsed, by acclamation, by both houses of the Burundian parliament.

Established in 2014, Burundis highly contested TRC had the daunting task of investigating crimes committed in that country from the Berlin Conference of 1885 to the end of the civil war in 2008. But the TRC focused its investigation on this dark period.

The report presented to the parliament in congress is rather voluminous. More than 5,000 pages that summarize years of investigation focused exclusively on what Burundians used to call the events of 72. This date corresponds to one of the worst episodes of inter-ethnic massacres in the country.
In Lubumbashi, the public prosecutors office requested twenty years in prison and a fine of 800,000 Congolese francs ($ 400) for ten prisoners accused of gang-raping female inmates at Kasapa prison. This demand was made during the hearing on Monday, December 20.

The hearing was again held in the courtyard of Kasapa prison. Sixteen complainants are present, all veiled. They are impatient to know the outcome of this case. The gang rapes of female prisoners in Kasapa prison took place in September 2020 during an uprising of the prisoners and their attempted escape.

For about five hours, the lawyers for the plaintiffs and the defendants, as well as the public prosecutors office, appeared before the court. Our clients were subjected to rape with violence and threats, said Alain Sumbwa, one of the plaintiffs lawyers. It is an organized crime and the damage caused is enormous. Forced pregnancies, infections such as HIV-AIDS, injuries, other women risk losing their marriage. The lawyers are asking for one million dollars in damages for their clients.

Among the defendants, one name comes up often, that of the defendant nicknamed the death judge. The prosecution presents him as the leader of the prisoners who perpetrated the rapes. The prosecution requested twenty years in prison and a fine of 800,000 Congolese francs for each defendant.

As for the defendants, they rejected the charges against them outright. They pleaded not guilty and asked for their acquittal. And their lawyers argue that there is an absence of evidence. The judgment is expected in ten days.
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Children and adolescents who show persistent high levels of anxiety are more likely to become psychotic in their early 20s, according to a new study.

But treating early anxiety by targeting stress hormones and non-resolving inflammation during childhood and teenage years could help to reduce the risk of young adults going on to develop psychosis.

Experts at the University of Birmingham examined the link between persistent anxiety in childhood and adolescence with individuals with psychotic experiences (PE) or psychotic disorder (PD) at the age of 24.

They analyzed data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to create a picture of 3,889 children's mental health at eight, 10, 13 and 24 years-of-age.

Publishing their findings in Biological Psychiatry, the researchers reveal that individuals with persistent high levels of anxiety were more likely to develop PEs and PD at the age of 24 years.

Leading author Isabel Morales-Munoz, from the University's Institute for Mental Health commented that "persistent high levels of anxiety in childhood and adolescence are linked to subsequent psychosis, but we may be able to prevent psychosis by targeting and treating early anxiety."

"Early diagnosis and management of adolescent anxiety and possibly novel treatments targeted at inflammation could be key actions to unlock treatment strategies that reduce the risk of children and adolescents going on to develop psychosis."

Psychotic disorders are among the leading causes of disability and affect 31% of people in England. Evidence suggests both genetic and environmental risk factors, including deprivation, childhood trauma and minority status, contribute to their development.

Individuals who develop psychosis are more likely to show socio-emotional and behavioral problems in childhood, but whether childhood anxiety is associated with subsequent psychosis is still under-investigated.

The senior author of the study, Rachel Upthegrove commented that "childhood and adolescence is the core risk phase for developing anxiety disorders which become risk factors for general mental disorders in adulthood."

"We identified a group of children and adolescents who experience persistent and high anxiety levels, and these could be the individuals at higher risk for later mental disorders, including psychosis."

Researchers found more robust associations of persistent high levels of anxiety with PD than with PEs.

This suggests that persistent childhood and adolescent anxiety may form a better indicator of the development of future formal psychotic disorder, while PEs, which are far more common in the population than PDs, constitute a more diverse group.

The experts believe that PEs may associate with a wider range of potential risk factors in young adulthood, such as sex and cannabis use.

Their findings indicate that associations of persistent high levels of anxiety with psychosis at 24 years could be specific to this mental disorder, as no associations with other relevant disorders, such as hypomania, phobias or substance abuse were found.

More information: Isabel Morales-Munoz et al, Persistent childhood and adolescence anxiety and risk for psychosis: a longitudinal birth cohort study, Biological Psychiatry (2021). Journal information: Biological Psychiatry Isabel Morales-Munoz et al, Persistent childhood and adolescence anxiety and risk for psychosis: a longitudinal birth cohort study,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.12.003
A man has a swab taken at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. New South Wales state reported a record new coronavirus cases and two deaths over the past 24 hours. Credit: AP Photo/Rick Rycroft

New COVID-19 cases in Australia's most populous state surged past 3,000 on Tuesday for the first time, adding pressure on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to speed the rollout of booster shots.

New South Wales state reported a record 3,057 new coronavirus cases and two deaths over the past 24 hours. There were 284 people in hospitals, up from 261 a day earlier, and 39 in intensive care units, up from 33.

Morrison has called an "informal" meeting on Wednesday of the national cabinet, a forum of state premiers and territory chief ministers, as new infections rise in New South Wales and Victoria states.

The premiers of those states are likely to press Morrison to cut the interval between a second vaccine dose and a booster shot from six months to four months.

Victoria reported 1,245 new COVID-19 cases and six deaths on Tuesday.

Health ministers in New South Wales and Victoria have called on the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation to make "specific determinations" for accelerated booster programs in both states in part to stay ahead of the new omicron strain of the virus.

The advisory group is also reportedly considering changing the definition of "fully vaccinated" to mean those who have had a booster shot in addition to two vaccine doses.

A woman has a swab taken at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. New South Wales state reported a record new coronavirus cases and two deaths over the past 24 hours. Credit: AP Photo/Rick Rycroft

A dog keeps an eye on the presses as a woman has a swab taken at a drive-through COVID-19 testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. New South Wales state reported a record new coronavirus cases and two deaths over the past 24 hours. Credit: AP Photo/Rick Rycroft

While some states in Australia require masks in bars, restaurants and other indoor public settings, New South Wales has resisted a return to mask mandates.

Morrison has also said he does not favor mandates, even in the face of the omicron variant. He said Australia would have to "continue to calibrate" how it lives with the virus.

"The time for that heavy hand is behind us," Morrison said. It is "the time for knowing and trusting Australians who have proven themselves with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world."

"We have to move from a culture of mandates to a culture of responsibility. That's how we live with this virus into the future," he said.

Explore further Australia sticks with easing plans as virus cases jump

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 response and vaccinations, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Fighting the omicron variant surging through the country, President Joe Biden announced the government will provide 500 million free rapid home-testing kits, increase support for hospitals under strain and redouble vaccination and boosting efforts.

At the White House on Tuesday, Biden detailed major changes to his COVID-19 winter plan, his hand forced by the fast-spreading variant, whose properties are not yet fully understood by scientists. Yet his message was clear that the winter holidays could be close to normal for the vaccinated while potentially dangerous for the unvaccinated.

His pleas are not political, he emphasized. He noted that former President Donald Trump has gotten his booster shot, and he said it's Americans' "patriotic duty" to get vaccinated.

"It's the only responsible thing to do," the president said. "Omicron is serious and potentially deadly business for unvaccinated people."

Biden chastised social media and people on cable TV who have made misleading statements to discourage people from getting vaccinated.

The outbreak from this latest strain of the coronavirus has required the federal government to get more aggressive in addressing the wave of infections, but Biden promised a weary nation that there would not be a mass lockdown of schools or businesses.

President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 response and vaccinations, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

"I know you're tired, and I know you're frustrated. We all want this to be over. But we're still in it," Biden said. "We also have more tools than we had before. We're ready, we'll get through this."

Scientists don't know everything about omicron yet, but they do know that vaccination should offer strong protection against severe illness and death. The variant has spread at such an alarming rate since it was identified in South Africa about a month ago that the Biden administration snapped into action to offer new tests and additional aid. Still more is needed, some medical experts said.

A cornerstone of the plan is for the government to purchase 500 million coronavirus rapid tests for free shipment to Americans starting in January. People will use a new website to order their tests, which will then be sent by U.S. mail at no charge. The 500 million could be increased, depending on developments.

It marks a major shift for Biden, who earlier had called for many Americans to purchase the hard-to-find tests on their own and then seek reimbursement from health insurance. For the first time, the U.S. government will send free COVID-19 tests directly to Americans, after more than a year of urging by public health experts.

Dr. Sydney Sewall fills a syringe with the COVID-19 vaccine at the Augusta Armory, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, in Augusta, Maine. Gov. Mills' administration opened the vaccination clinic earlier this month. Credit: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

Experts had criticized Biden's initial buy-first, get-paid-later approach as unwieldy and warned that the U.S. would face another round of testing problems at a critical time. Testing advocates point to nations including the U.K. and Germany, which have distributed billions of tests to the public and recommend people test themselves twice a week.

The federal government will also establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. The first new federally supported testing site will open in New York this week. The new sites will add to 20,000 already available. White House officials said they're working with Google so that people will be able to find them by searching "free COVID test near me."

Still, Biden's testing surge would need to be supported by a further jump in production for all Americans to test at the recommended rate of twice weekly. The U.S. would need 2.3 billion tests per month for everyone 12 and older to do that, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. That's nearly five times the half-billion tests Biden will deploy.

Currently, the U.S. can conduct about 600 million tests per month, with home tests accounting for about half, according to researchers from Arizona State University.

People stand in a line spanning several blocks for COVID-19 testing, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, at a Curative testing kiosk outside an elementary school in northwest Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

In another prong to Biden's amped-up plan, he is prepared to deploy an additional 1,000 troops with medical skills to assist hospitals buckling under the virus surge. Also, he is immediately sending federal medical personnel to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont. And there are plans to ready additional ventilators and protective equipment from the national stockpile, expanding hospital resources.

As a backstop, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will deploy hundreds of ambulances and paramedic teams so that if one hospital fills up, it can transport patients to open beds in another. Ambulances are already headed to New York and Maine, and paramedic teams are going to New Hampshire, Vermont and Arizona.

But vaccination remains the main defense, since it can head off disease in the first place. The government will support multiple vaccination sites and provide hundreds of personnel to administer shots. New rules will make it easier for pharmacists to work across state lines to administer a broader range of shots.

Biden said in response to a question that he may lift the Southern Africa travel ban that was imposed to delay omicron from reaching the U.S.

Jose Ivanildo, who lost the use of his legs due to infantile paralysis, uses a skate board as he begs for money at a traffic light dressed as Santa Claus in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. The 48-year-old, known as "Ivanildo do Skate," said that the COVID-19 pandemic has made people scared to open their windows. Credit: AP Photo/Eraldo Peres

Some prominent experts said that Biden's new actions are a step in the right direction but he hasn't gone far enough, given the risks of infections and hospitals being overwhelmed.

"I don't know that the measures being proposed are going to be adequate," said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Hotez said the government may need to authorize a second booster shot for health care workers to prevent infections that would sideline clinicians when all hands are needed.

Dr. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, said the administration "finally sees the light" with Biden's plan to ship 500 million tests, but "we need to pull out all the stops, and we're not doing that still."

"We don't have control of this pandemic here," said Topol.

President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 response and vaccinations, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

He said the government could redefine "fully vaccinated" as three shots instead of two of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Biden could order a ban on air travel by people who are not fully vaccinated, and the government could use its authority to ramp up production of high quality masks for free distribution.

"There's a lack of boldness," Topol said. "I am disappointed."

Scientists say omicron spreads even more easily than other coronavirus strains, including delta. It accounted for nearly three-quarters of new U.S. infections last week.

Underscoring the reach of the virus, the White House said late Monday that Biden had been in close contact with a staff member who later tested positive for COVID-19. The staffer spent about 30 minutes around the president on Air Force One on Friday. The staffer, who was fully vaccinated and boosted, tested positive Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 response and vaccinations, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Psaki said Biden has tested negative twice since Sunday and will test again on Wednesday. He cleared his throat several times at Tuesday's event but spoke firmly and appeared fine.

In New York City, nearly 42,600 people citywide tested positive from Wednesday through Saturdaycompared with fewer than 35,800 in the entire month of November. The city has never had so many people test positive in such a short period of time since testing became widely available.

Explore further Biden to pledge 500M free COVID-19 tests to counter omicron

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Early in the pandemic, when children were thought to be at little risk from COVID-19, Lawrence C. Kleinman helped set the record straightdocumenting some of the first cases of a severe complication called multisystem inflammatory syndrome.

In 2021, the Rutgers University pediatrician is trying to set the record straight again, studying how children, like adults, can experience "brain fog," fatigue, and other lingering symptoms known as long COVID.

It's not that long COVID is unknown in children, but Kleinmana professor at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and at the university's school of public healthsuspects it is underrecognized. What's more, he says these chronic symptoms present unique challenges for children, potentially interfering with development in ways that are not fully understood.

He is helping to run a new study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, to track the physical and mental health of several thousand children and young adults who have tested positive for COVID. The group includes both those with long COVID as well as those who've had the inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), which typically emerges several weeks after the initial infection. Together, the two overlapping categories are collectively known as PASC: post-acute sequelae of COVID.

We spoke to Kleinman about the latest findings on these patients with long-term symptoms, and what more he and collaborators hope to learn from the approximately $30 million study. He also is conducting a separate study of how to predict which children are at risk of severe and long-term complications.

How often do children develop long-term symptoms?

For PASC overall, the estimates really vary. There was a study in Italy early on that suggested it was north of 40% in kids (who had been infected). There were others that suggested it was more around 5 to 10%. If we think about children on a developing trajectory, they're growing, they're developing new skill sets. We have to think about the symptoms that exist when you're sitting there looking at the child, and what is the impact on the child's life trajectory that might be changingif they will learn differently, if there are disruptions that are not yet evident, or if there may be things that are present but not evident at rest.

In other words, there are clinical things that may be immediately observable. There may biochemical or molecular markers that may be immediately available. And there may be things that emerge in response to some sort of stress. There may be things that are developmental that become apparent over time. There's a wide range, and that makes it very hard to have the exact answer.

What about the subset of kids with the inflammatory syndrome?

For each million identified COVID infections in children, a recent study identified 316 such cases, yet the rate was much higher in Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.

And keep in mind the CDC's definition of MIS-C at this point requires hospitalization. Milder inflammatory syndromes may well exist at higher numbers that don't cross that threshold, or don't get identified, or don't get associated with COVID at all.

The syndrome is characterized by fever, and the involvement of at least two organ systems. The gastrointestinal system is very commonly involved. And conditions like myocarditis and heart failure and other cardiac manifestations. There's typically a lag time of about a month from when the child first had the COVID. They may or may not even know they had the COVID. A lot of the kids end up in the ICU. Thankfully, most recover. A few die, and some have lingering symptoms.

In young adults, it's not so much different. It's a similar pathway. The same thing is happening in the body. It's just at a different age.

What do you hope to learn about kids with long covid?

We want to understand the development trajectory in these children. If in fact that's altered, that would be unique in kids. What we see often is the child does not have a clear head. Brain fog is a term that people have been using. Another aspect is this lack of stamina or reduced exercise capacity, or inability to even take on normal aspects of daily living. I think those symptoms are similar in adults. But we don't really know in the very young children. If they are acting a little differently, is that long COVID, or is it changes associated with normal childhood development?

And I think there's a second type of long COVID.

When someone in the child's life orbit has gotten COVID, there can be stress, economic deprivation, loss, grief, survivor guiltall these kinds of things may happen. I think the whole pandemic has been traumatic to many.

If some of these long-term symptoms are due to inflammation, would anti-inflammatory medicines be helpful?

I think we know that the MIS-C piece has a lot of inflammatory components. But the long COVID, I don't think we know. There's a tremendous amount of uncertainty. It wouldn't surprise me if some of it was inflammatory.

At the moment, a lot of the focus has been looking at rheumatological drugs and immune modulators rather than general anti-inflammatories, although steroids have played a role (in treating hospitalized patients). Part of what this study may do is identify patterns of symptoms that then are sufficiently homogeneous that patients can becomeshould they volunteer and be willingparticipants in research studies to understand treatment.

You're looking to identify distinct phenotypes: distinct groups of symptoms that seem to hang together, so that we can say 'Ah, this is a group for whom we can study both the mechanisms of the illness, and therefore how we might disrupt those mechanisms with therapeutics.' It's like the step before doing a trial. But there's no question that identifying who to treat, and various treatments and how effective they are, is the ultimate goal of this.

Tell us about your other study to predict which children are most at risk

It's ongoing. We're actually looking at a bunch of things. We're looking at what's going on in the community. We're looking at social determinants of health, various stressors that might impact the body. And we're looking at the genetics and genomics of those factors, and we're looking at the immune function. That's the focus we have, bringing that together with clinical data, what comorbidities or other illnesses they have, then also the community factors. We want to bring all of those together to try to help predict who is at greatest risk.

Are there ways to prevent long covid?

The best way to prevent long COVID is to avoid being infected with COVID.

Vaccination, among those who are eligible, is essential to the population and public health response to this. Vaccination is the first and foremost. Also masking and social distancing.

How might the omicron variant change the equation?

Each of these new variants poses a risk. As variant gives way to more variants, does that change the prevalence of long COVID? Does a less severe infection mean you're more likely to get long COVID? Less likely to get long COVID? We don't know these things. Some of them we'll never know. We'll at least be able to study them on average.

2021 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A physician removes a bag of donated COVID-19 convalescent plasma after thawing. A study led by Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows convalescent plasma can be an early treatment for COVID-19, reducing the need for hospitalization. Credit: Will Kirk, Johns Hopkins University

The results of a nationwide, multicenter clinical trial led by Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health provides solid evidence for the use of plasma from convalescent patientsthose who have recovered from the disease and whose blood contains antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19as an early treatment. The researchers showed that convalescent plasma reduced the need for hospitalization by half for outpatients with COVID-19 who participated in the study.

The findings are posted today on the preprint website MedRxiv, in which scientists and clinicians have been sharing urgent research related to COVID-19 prior to peer-reviewed journal publication.

"As the changing, often unpredictable landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic demands multiple treatment optionsespecially in low- and middle-income nations where frontline therapies, such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, may not be readily availableour study provides solid evidence that antibody-rich convalescent plasma should be part of the outpatient arsenal," says study co-lead author David Sullivan, M.D., professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a joint appointment in infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

In the outpatient early treatment study conducted between June 2020 and October 2021, the researchers provided 1,181 randomized patients with one dose each of either polyclonal high-titer convalescent plasma (containing a concentrated mixture of antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2) or placebo control plasma (with no SARS-CoV-2 antibodies). The patients were 18 and older, and had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 within eight days prior to transfusion. A successful therapy was defined as a patient not requiring hospitalization within 28 days after plasma transfusion.

The study found that 17 patients out of 592 (2.9%) who received the convalescent plasma required hospitalization within 28 days of their transfusion, while 37 out of 589 (6.3%) who received placebo control plasma did. This translated to a relative risk reduction for hospitalization of 54%.

"With early administration of high-titer SARS-CoV-2 convalescent plasma reducing outpatient hospitalizations by more than 50%, our findings suggest that this is another effective treatment for COVID-19 with the advantages being low cost, wide availability and rapid resilience to the evolving SARS-CoV-2," says study co-lead author Kelly Gebo, M.D., M.P.H., professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"Therefore, we believe that the best role for COVID-19 high-titer convalescent plasma is extending its use to early outpatient treatment when other therapies, such as monoclonal antibodies or drugs, are either not readily availableas in low- and middle-income countriesor ineffectiveas with SARS-CoV-2 variants that are resistant to certain monoclonal antibodies," she says.

Sullivan adds that convalescent plasma is the only antibody therapy that "keeps up with SARS-CoV-2 variants," including the delta and omicron strains currently spreading around the world, because each patient that recovers from variant COVID-19 produces antibodies that neutralize that specific virus.

Convalescent plasma therapy is currently available in the United States under Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization. Before it can be considered as an early COVID-19 treatment option for outpatients, the FDA must extend the current authorization to include its use in that role.

"We have shared our findings with the FDA, as well as with the World Health Organization," says Sullivan. "We hope that both organizations will see the value of convalescent plasma for outpatients based on the strength of our study, the largest randomized clinical trial of its kind to date."

"Eventually, we hope that our data will guide clinicians in how to effectively use high-titer convalescent plasma as an early outpatient treatment, especially regarding timing and dosage," says Gebo.

Along with Sullivan and Gebo, the members of the study team from Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health were study senior author Daniel Hanley, Lawrence Appel, Sheriza Baksh, Evan Bloch, Arturo Casadevall, Stephan Ehrhardt, Amy Gawad, Laura Hammitt, Douglas Jabs, Nicki Karlen, Sabra Klein, Karen Lane, Bryan Lau, Christi Marshall, Nichol McBee, Andrew Pekosz, David Shade, Shmuel Shoham, Catherine Sutcliffe, Aaron Tobian and Anusha Yarava.

Explore further WHO advises against blood plasma treatment for COVID-19

More information: David J Sullivan et al, Randomized Controlled Trial of Early Outpatient COVID-19 Treatment with High-Titer Convalescent Plasma, (2021). David J Sullivan et al, Randomized Controlled Trial of Early Outpatient COVID-19 Treatment with High-Titer Convalescent Plasma,(2021). DOI: 10.1101/2021.12.10.21267485
Scott Hollister and his team developed a 3D-printed airway support device to save the life of Ramiah Martin. Credit: Georgia Tech

Ramiah Martin isn't like other little girls, and that's perfectly fine with her mother.

"She is nothing short of a miracle," Leanne Martin said of her daughter, who was facing long odds before her birth in December 2017, after being diagnosed with heart problems during a prenatal ultrasound. And the odds only got worse when Ramiah was born with an extremely rare developmental abnormality called tracheal agenesisshe didn't have a trachea, or windpipe. About one in 50,000 babies worldwide are born with the condition, which is almost always fatal.

But this month Ramiah and her family celebrated her 4th birthday thanks to the work of her physicians at Penn State Health Children's Hospital and a 3D-printed tracheal replacement splint developed by researchers in the lab of Scott Hollister at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"We know that children with this condition have not survived past the age of eight or 10," said Hollister, professor and the Patsy and Alan Dorris Chair in Pediatric Technology in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "Our fingers are crossed that this case will be different."

This case is indeed different. It is the first time such a device has been used to treat tracheal agenesis, and Hollister is part of the team of researchers who recently authored a clinical case study published in the journal JTCVS Techniques.

The splint, known as the Airway Support Device, already had a strong track record, having been used in the successful treatment of other pediatric patients with a condition called tracheabronchomalaciacollapse of the windpipe, which causes severe, life-threatening airway obstruction.

While a professor at the University of Michigan, Hollister collaborated with colleague Glenn Green to develop the first version of a 3D-printed, patient-specific airway splint that is bioresorbableit is biodegradable and can be naturally and safely absorbed by the body. The small device is a lifesaving scaffold that opens a child's windpipe, allowing them to breathe.

Ramiah Martin gets around on her walker and hasn't slowed down. Credit: Leanne Martin

But Ramiah's case presented a new, daunting challenge. She didn't really have a windpipe to work with. Her esophagus was her windpipe.

"Tracheal agenesis is a very unusual clinical case with few positive solutions," said the study's lead author, Anthony Tsai, Ramiah's surgeon and co-director of the Surgical Innovation Group at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. "I knew about the work Scott and Glenn had been doing, and I'd seen their success in using the device for airway issues that are not as dire. But similar principles are in play, and that's what we needed."

They needed the support of a splint to keep her airway open, but this time with an added wrinkleRamiah's surgical team needed a splint that would help her esophagus do the work of an airway.

A Lifesaving Procedure

Ramiah, whose family lives in Pennsylvania, needed lifesaving surgery almost immediately after being born. Essentially, the surgical team disconnected her lower esophagus, which feeds the stomach, from her upper esophageal airwayshe could take nutrition directly into her stomach through a G-tube. And then they had to turn the upper portion of her esophagus into a trachea, actually creating a pseudo-tracheostomya surgical opening in the neck, providing a direct route for air to reach the lungs.

"But that isn't a long-term solution," Tsai said. "We prevented air from getting into the stomach and created a pathway to push it into the lungs. But it isn't sustainable. When you take a deep breath, the esophagus collapses, so then you can't get enough air into the lungs."

With Ramiah sedated, ventilated, momentarily stabilized, and just a few days old, Tsai and his colleagues discussed more permanent options for her airway reconstruction. That led them to Hollister and his 3D-printed splint composed of polycaprolactone, a biodegradable polyester.

Scott Hollister and his team developed a lifesaving 3D-printed airway support device. Credit: Allison Carter

Because of its previous success and because there were no other options, Tsai and his team got permission to use the device from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under the "expanded access" rulesometimes called "compassionate use"which allows fast access to medical devices for life-threatening cases like Ramiah's.

Hollister's team re-engineered the Airway Support Device, adding some curvature to accommodate the stoma in Ramiah's neck. The device was ready and installed during airway reconstruction surgery when Ramiah was 20 weeks old.

She gradually progressed and went home when she was a year old, still needing mechanical ventilation. Further tests and imaging showed that her airway was improving and when Ramiah was two years old, she started breathing on her own in the daytime, resting easily at night on a ventilator for safety.

Gastrointestinal reconstructive surgery was later performedtissue from the colon was used to rebuild Ramiah's lower esophagus, which should eventually allow her to take in food through her mouth. Though she is developmentally delayed, Ramiah is crawling and pushing a walker around, learning to communicate through sign language, going to preschool, and playing with her sisters as another holiday approaches.

"We're very low key about celebrating holidays," said Leanne Martin, who recently gave birth to her son. "But we recognize the gift of each year, and we always thank God for that. We knew that Ramiah was leading us into uncharted territory."

Ramiah may need another 3D device as she gets older to stabilize her reconstructed airway, Leanne said. But right now, her next goal is to see Ramiah walk independently; Leanne has no doubt that her little girl will eventually be navigating the busy household on her own two feet.

"That is the kind of outcome we all hope for," said Hollister, whose Georgia Tech collaborators Sarah Jo Crotts and Harsha Ramaraju were major contributors to the work. "We're excited, because we think this is the beginning of a new paradigm for children with this rare condition."

Explore further 3-D-printed tracheal splints used in groundbreaking pediatric surgery

More information: Anthony Y. Tsai et al, Tracheal agenesis: Esophageal airway support with a 3-dimensionalprinted bioresorbable splint, JTCVS Techniques (2021). Anthony Y. Tsai et al, Tracheal agenesis: Esophageal airway support with a 3-dimensionalprinted bioresorbable splint,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.xjtc.2021.08.037
Side of mouth: Early signs of chalky teeth include creamy-brown patches (pictured) or extra-white spots on the teeth. Credit: The D3 Group

One in five children have chalky tooth enamelvisible as discolored enamel spotswhich often causes severe toothache and decay, and sometimes leads to abscesses, extractions and orthodontic problems.

Now, researchers from The D3 Group (based at The University of Melbourne, Australia) and the University of Talca in Chile, have discovered the mechanism causing molar hypomineralisation, the commonest type of chalky teeth.

They report today in Frontiers of Physiology that chalky molars arise when developing enamel is contaminated by albumina protein found both in blood and in the tissue fluid surrounding developing teeth. The trigger appears to be childhood illnesses.

"The result is a sort of 'mineralisation blockage,' which is highly localized to the areas on individual teeth that become chalky enamel spots," says Mike Hubbard, a University of Melbourne research professor and lead author on the report.

"This discovery allows us to correct 40 years of medico-dental dogma which blamed defective enamel-forming cells. What this dogma couldn't explain is why chalkiness affects only one or a few teeth in a child's mouth."

"We've shown instead that albumin leaks in occasionally at weak spots, binding to enamel-mineral crystals and blocking their growth. It's not a system-wide problem, but a very localized one."

The researchers suspect that the albumin leakage is triggered by routine baby illnesses such as a fever. Now they plan to:

Determine the specific underlying causes, such as environmental factors or pathogens Promote their findings to dentists, other child health professionals and parents, so they can all be on the lookout for chalky teeth.

Credit: The D3 Group

"We can't yet prevent chalky teeth from developing in the first place, but if health professionals catch them earlywhen they first enter the mouththen we dentists can usually save them," says Vidal Perez, a pediatric dentist and researcher at the University of Talca.

There are several types of chalky teeth reflecting different causes such as genetic anomalies and problems with nutrition.

The team is particularly concerned about molar hypomineralisation as it carries the most social and economic impact. "Molars are particularly prone to damage," says Vidal. "They are hidden away at the back of our mouths, with grooves that catch food, and they're harder to clean."

A tooth with severe hypomineralisation is 10 times more likely to decay than one without. It is very much a silent epidemic, causing lots of suffering.

The scale of the problem became apparent to Mike when he noted fluoridation of community water supplies led to a big but incomplete reduction of tooth decay in children. A substantial proportion of children with unexplained decay remained. So, he founded a research and education network, The D3 Group for developmental dental defects, to understand what was happening.

Fluoride, which protects against tooth decay in normal enamel, has little if any effect on chalky molars, which are as prevalent in developed countries as in developing ones.

Chalky tooth enamel was first studied by Austrian (and later, American) medical researcher Bernhard Gottlieb, who reported in 1920 the mystery that only some parts of some teeth are affected.

"Building on this research breakthrough, and with appropriate resourcing, The D3 Group can now look towards a medical strategy for preventing this worldwide problem," said Mike.

"This new avenue of research could one day eliminate about half of childhood tooth decay, along with its disturbing costs to affected individuals and society," he says.

Explore further Why some kids are more prone to dental decay

More information: Michael J. Hubbard et al, A Breakthrough in Understanding the Pathogenesis of Molar Hypomineralisation: The Mineralisation-Poisoning Model, Frontiers in Physiology (2021). Journal information: Frontiers in Physiology Michael J. Hubbard et al, A Breakthrough in Understanding the Pathogenesis of Molar Hypomineralisation: The Mineralisation-Poisoning Model,(2021). DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2021.802833
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The protection offered by the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine declines after three months of receiving two doses, a study says.

The findingsdrawn from datasets in two countriessuggest that booster programs are needed to help maintain protection from severe disease in those vaccinated with Oxford-Astra Zeneca, experts say.

Researchers from Scotland and Brazil analyzed data for two million people in Scotland and 42 million people in Brazil who had been vaccinated with the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine.

In Scotland, when compared with two weeks after receiving a second dose, there was approximately a fivefold increase in the chance of being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19 nearly five months after being double vaccinated.

The decline in effectiveness begins to first appear at around three months, when the risk of hospitalization and death is double that of two weeks after the second dose, experts say.

The risk increases threefold just short of four months after the second vaccine dose. Similar numbers were seen for Brazil.

Researchers were able to compare data between Scotland and Brazil as they had a similar interval between doses12 weeksand initial prioritization of who was vaccinatedpeople at highest risk of severe disease and healthcare workers.

The dominant variant was different in each country during the study periodDelta in Scotland and Gamma in Brazilmeaning the decline in effectiveness is likely because of vaccine waning and the impact of variants.

The study also estimated vaccine effectiveness at similar fortnightly intervals by comparing outcomes of people who have been jabbed with those who are unvaccinated.

But experts warned these figures should be treated with caution because it is becoming harder to compare unvaccinated people to vaccinated people with similar characteristics, particularly among older age groups where so many people are now vaccinated..

The study is part of the EAVE II project, which uses anonymised linked patient data in Scotland to track the pandemic and the vaccine roll out in real time.

The research team included scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Strathclyde, and St Andrew's; Public Health Scotland; Victoria University of Wellington; Fiocruz; Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and Universidade Federal de Bahia.

These findings have been published in The Lancet.

Professor Aziz Sheikh, Director of the University of Edinburgh's Usher Institute and EAVE II study lead, said: "Vaccines have been a key tool in fighting the pandemic, but waning in their effectiveness has been a concern for a while. By identifying when waning first starts to occur in the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine, it should be possible for governments to design booster programs that can ensure maximum protection is maintained.

"If eligible for a booster and you have not had yet had one, I would highly recommend that you book one soon."

Professor Vittal Katikireddi at the University of Glasgow said: "Our analyses of national datasets from both Scotland and Brazil suggest that there is considerable waning of effectiveness for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, with protection against severe COVID-19 falling over time.

"We studied two million people in Scotland and over 42 million people in Brazil who had received two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. More than four months after receiving a second dose, the risk of experiencing either a COVID-19 hospitalization or death was approximately five times greater than the period of maximum vaccine protection after accounting for changes in infection rates and a range of other factors.

"Our work highlights the importance of getting boosters, even if you've had two doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, as soon as you are able to."

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council, UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, the National Institute for Health Research and Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), and was supported by the Scottish Government.

Additional support was provided through the Scottish Government Director-General Health and Social Care, and the UKRI COVID-19 National Core Studies Data and Connectivity program led by HDR UK.

Professor Andrew Morris, Director of Health Data Research UK said, "This research is a great example of what can be achieved through global collaboration when it comes to the use of data for health research. By drawing on findings from data sets in two countries with differing dominant COVID-19 variants, the researchers have been able to disentangle vaccine waning from the effects of changes in variantsstrengthening the evidence for the ongoing booster program.

"Health Data Research UK is pleased to have been able to support both the development of these data sets, and their harmonized analysis, as part of our mission to enable global and trustworthy sharing of data to allow major COVID-19 research questions to be addressed at pace."

Explore further Age and health factors in COVID breakthrough deaths
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A 90 percent decrease in the number of NHS psychiatric beds is linked to a tripling of the total prison population, new research has revealed.

Scientists at Newcastle University found that between 1960 and 2019 the number of psychiatric beds reduced by 93 percent. And over time, the prison population increased by 208 percent, and the number of female prisoners more than quadrupled.

The research, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, is the first to analyze almost 60 years of annual data on NHS bed numbers and the prison population in England using time lag analysis.

Integrated services

Experts say the NHS needs to better integrate health services, social care, housing and employment support to break the link between community care and rising rates of imprisonment.

Dr. Patrick Keown, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, said: "Our study shows that as the number of psychiatric NHS beds available was reduced, then in subsequent years we saw a growth in the size of the prison population.

"We show that cuts in the number of psychiatric beds is associated with more prisoners 10 years later, and this was true for the whole period of 1960 to 2019. For every 100 psychiatric beds that were closed, there were 36 more prisoners 10 years laterthree more female prisoners and 33 more male prisoners.

"These findings show that reductions in psychiatric beds may lead to more people being imprisoned. And this is particularly striking for the female prison population."

The relationship between NHS psychiatric beds and prison numbers, known as the "Penrose hypothesis," was first proposed in 1939 and subsequently reported in several countries.

This research found the hypothesis held true for the whole period available to study as the number of psychiatric beds fell from 201,275 to 19,389 between 1960 and 2019. Learning disability beds had the largest proportion (98 percent) of bed closures with a reduction of 56,181. Mental illness beds reduced by 125,706 (87 percent).

At the same time, the prison population more than tripled from 26,048 to 80,203 (208 percent). The male prison population increased 204 percent from 25,182 to 76,495; the female prison population increased 328 percent from 866 to 3,708.

Complex reasons

The research by scientists at Newcastle and Sheffield universities shows that the reasons behind the increase in prison numbers are complex and multi-factorial.

Dr. Keown added: "It's possible that people who would previously have been in hospital are coming into contact with the police and the criminal justice system more frequently when in the community."

The researchers found that it was also notable that there was a very strong association between reductions in beds for people with intellectual disability and the increase in the prison population.

Dr. Iain McKinnon, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, said: "We believe that further bed closures, especially secure beds for offenders including those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and the proposed changes to mental health legislation should be very carefully considered. This is particularly in the light of the potential criminalisation of those with mental health disorders, including mild learning disability or borderline intellectual functioning."

"The Penrose hypothesis in the second half of the twentieth century: an investigation into the relationship between psychiatric bed numbers and the prison population in England between 1960 and 2018/19" is published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Explore further Study marks increase of people with mental health and substance use disorders in British Columbia prisons

More information: Georgina Wild et al, The Penrose hypothesis in the second half of the 20th century: investigating the relationship between psychiatric bed numbers and the prison population in England between 1960 and 20182019, The British Journal of Psychiatry (2021). Journal information: British Journal of Psychiatry Georgina Wild et al, The Penrose hypothesis in the second half of the 20th century: investigating the relationship between psychiatric bed numbers and the prison population in England between 1960 and 20182019,(2021). DOI: 10.1192/bjp.2021.138
Participant in Milgrams obedience to authority experiments. Credit: Yale University Library

Would you electrocute an innocent stranger if you were told to do so by someone in a position of authority? This is the dilemma hundreds of US adults were presented with in Stanley Milgram's famous and controversial "obedience to authority" experiments that ran from 1961 to 1962.

As with many social psychologists of his age, Milgram's formative experience was the Nazi genocide of European Jews during the Second World War. Wishing to understand what had made one of the greatest crimes in human history possible, he devised a series of experiments to find out more about humans' compliance in the face of authority.

Arriving at Milgram's lab, a naive participant met another apparent volunteer as well as a lab-coated "experimenter." The experimenter explained that they were about to participate in an experiment on "memory and learning" and then asked the pair to draw lots to assign one the role of "learner" and the other that of "teacher." The learner was then escorted into an adjacent room to have electrodes attached to his arms. While the participant, now officially the "teacher," and the experimenter returned to the room in front of an electric shock generator and a row of switchesranging from 15 volts ("slight shock") to 375 volts ("danger: severe shock") to 450 volts ("XXX").

A series of word pairs were then read to the learner, whose task was to remember these pairs correctly. The teacher's job was to "teach" by administering progressively stronger electric shocks whenever the learner did not remember the correct pair.

The shocks were not real: the learner was part of the experiment team and the draw was rigged. Yet, Milgram argued, the vast majority of participants did not show any sign of realizing that the real objective of the experiment was not how the "learner" learns, but what happens when the "learner" grunts, then protests loudly and screams in pain, or when he suddenly falls into a deadly silence. Would the teacher continue on the mere say-so of the experimenter? Milgram's astonishing finding was that over half of them did: "electrocuting" an innocent stranger with increasing severity up to the end of the scale.

Explaining what happened

Milgram was famously never able to match the horror in his lab with an adequate theory to explain it. Up until his death in 1984, he remained preoccupied with the disturbing specter of his participants' administering electric shocks while being clearly tormented.

But despite the lack of concrete explanation, as well as outstanding questions regarding Milgram's method, the experiments continued to be seen as having revealed the truth about humanity and have been used to explain atrocities from the Holocaust to the extreme abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison by US soldiers. Continued, that is, until around a decade ago when academics began to interrogate the immense amount of data around the experiments, at a dedicated archive at Yale University.

One popular current explanation suggests that participants stayed in the experiment not because they were simply following orders, but because they enthusiastically identified with the experimenter. Participants, then, were not passive "cogs in the machine," but motivated pursuers of "evil," in the supposedly virtuous name of science.

Another popular account focuses on arguments between the experimenter and the participants, suggesting that whether or not the teacher electrocuted the learner depended on the outcome of a debate they had with the "witty" experimenter. It has also been claimed that perhaps participants' seeming obedience came from the fact they saw through the experimental deception. Or another theory goes that in what amounted to a traumatic situation, participants were effectively coerced by the experimenter into electrocuting the learner.

Setup of the most famous conditions in Milgrams obedience to authority experimental series. Credit: Fred the Oyster, Wikimedia, CC BY

The tapes

Given the number of current theories, I wanted to find out more about the man who sat in the room with the participants. What was he like? And how did his behavior influence people's behavior? Instead of relying on accounts after the event, I used the audiotapes of 140 of Milgram's experiment sessions and tried to account for everything the experimenter did.

My starting point was what we have always knownwhen participants resisted, Milgram's experimenter responded with a succession of four "prods":

Prod 1: Please continue.

Prod 2: The experiment requires that you continue.

Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.

Prod 4: You have no other choice, you must go on.

Indeed, the experimenter regularly used these phrases to "prod" participants to continue. But the frequency with which "Please continue" was used was nearly as much as all the other prods three times put togetherand it almost always led to participants continuing the electrocution.

In contrast, throughout the 140 sessions, there is next to no attempt from the experimenter either to become a motivating leader or to aggressively coerce participants. And while there are sometimes arguments advanced by the experimenter, they are spectacularly unsuccessful. They tend to lead to participants' immediate departure from the experiment.

'Please continue'

But why was a polite little phrase at the very center of the most infamous experiments in the history of psychology? It's not easy to answer this question, but let us join "Participant 2010" just as she shocks the learner with 405 volts. After earlier bouts of violent screams, she suddenly encounters an eerie silence:

Milgram's obedience experimental sessions.

Teacher: "405 volts"

[BUZZ]

[silencethe learner does not scream anymore]

Teacher: "Gold moon."

[silencethe learner does not protest anymore]

Teacher: "Hardstone, head, bread, work."

[long silencethe learner does not provide an answer]

Teacher: "Think he's alright?"

Experimenter: "Please continue"

[silence]

Teacher: "420 volts"

[BUZZ]

To me, what this shows is that "Please continue" was anything but a polite phrase in these experiments. Not only did it ignore the participant's worries, it also sought to eradicate any questions or concerns. And I believe that, subtly but relentlessly, the continuous use of "Please continue" worked towards destroying any vestige of humanity from Milgram's participants.

Milgram's experimenter was clearly not a bully who beat people into submission. Indeed, the participants inevitably quit the experiment the moment they perceived him to be rude. What participants were astonishingly vulnerable to, however, was the violence hiding in the smallest of his utterances.

Did ordinary US citizens become "torturers" because of an invisible yet relentless assault on them? Maybe they could not stop doing evil, because they did not recognize that evil was being done to them. And this may also be the lesson we can finally draw from the experiments that have haunted psychology for six decades. It is not enough to mean well. The origins of human violence to others may be found in acts that seem barely noticeable.

Explore further Conducting the milgram experiment in Poland, psychologists show people still obey

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Christmas shoppers make their way along the High Street in Winchester, England, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that his government reserves the "possibility of taking further action" to protect public health as Omicron spreads across the country. Credit: Andrew Matthews/PA via AP

The World Health Organization's top official in Europe urged governments on Tuesday to prepare for a "significant surge" in coronavirus cases across the continent due to the omicron variant, which is already dominant in several countries.

"We can see another storm coming," WHO Europe regional director Dr. Hans Kluge said at a press conference in Vienna. "Within weeks, omicron will dominate in more countries of the region, pushing already stretched health systems further to the brink."

Omicron has been detected in at least 38 of the WHO European region's 53 members, Kluge added, noting that it is already the dominant variant in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Portugal.

Last week, 27,000 people died from coronavirus in the region and an additional 2.6 million cases were reported, Kluge said. Although these cases include all variants, not just omicron, he noted this figure is 40% higher than during the same period last year.

"The sheer volume of new COVID-19 infections could lead to more hospitalizations and widespread disruption to health systems and other critical services," he said.

Thus far, Kluge said 89% of those with confirmed omicron infections in Europe reported symptoms common with other coronavirus variants, including cough, sore throat, fever. The variant has mostly been spread by young people in their 20s and 30s in the region, he added.

Children wait with their father as they wait in a line spanning several blocks in order to be tested for COVID-19, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, at a Curative testing kiosk outside an elementary school in northwest Washington. The Washington family said they were testing the children as a precaution due to cold symptoms. Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

People wait in a line spanning several blocks for COVID-19 testing, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, at a Curative testing kiosk outside an elementary school in northwest Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

People wearing face masks to protect against COVID-19 walk past the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. Nations across Europe have moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant. Credit: AP Photo/Michel Euler

Medical workers treat a patient with COVID-19 in the intensive care unit (ICU) at the hospital "Reseau hospitalier neuchatelois (RHNe)" Pourtales site during the fifth wave of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Neuchatel, Switzerland, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. Credit: Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP

People walk on a shopping road in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. Germany's leaders are set to decide on new restrictions, likely to come in after Christmas, aimed at slowing the spread of the new omicron variant of COVID-19. Credit: AP Photo/Michael Sohn

Although much remains unknown about omicron, Kluge said it appears to be more infectious than previous variants, leading to "previously unseen transmission rates" in countries with a significant number of omicron cases. In those countries, cases of the variant are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days.

European governments should keep ramping up their vaccination campaigns, introduce additional measures to slow the spread of the variant, and prepare critical infrastructure like health care systems for the coming surge, Kluge said.

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

As concern swells over the highly transmissible coronavirus variant Omicron, Swiss authorities said Tuesday they were shortening the time people vaccinated against COVID need to wait before getting an additional dose.

The Federal Office of Public Health said early data on the new and heavily mutated Omicron variant indicated that it was better than previous coronavirus strains at dodging vaccine protections, but that a booster shot could "greatly improve protection".

As a result, it said, "a booster vaccination with an mRNA vaccine is now recommended for everyone aged 16 years and older as early as four months ... after initial immunisation, especially for older people."

Until now, the country's health authorities had recommended boosters six months after people vaccinated with either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, which use mRNA technology, received their second shot.

And "given expectations that the Omicron variant will spread rapidly, a booster vaccination is also recommended for seriously immune deficient people after three doses of mRNA vaccine for initial immunisation," it said.

Swiss health authorities also recommended that people who had received the one-dose Johnson&Johnson vaccine receive a booster dose of a mRNA jab after four months.

They said that even after shortening the interval before administering boosters, Switzerland had enough vaccine doses to provide jabs for everyone who wants them.

Switzerland introduced a string of new restrictions this week in the face of surging infection numbers, including requiring people to work from home and barring the unvaccinated from restaurants, museums and other venues.

The wealthy, Alpine nation of around 8.6 million people has to date registered more than 11,600 COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Nearly 67 percent of the population is fully vaccinateda relatively low number compared to other countries in western Europe.

Explore further Moderna: Initial booster data shows good results on omicron

 2021 AFP
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

An international team of scientists has created a plan for an accelerated pipeline for developing drug cocktails to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. The pipeline could speed new and better treatments that the newly diagnosed and recently exposed could take at home to prevent serious illness.

The "proactive drug development strategy" could also offer a first line of defense against future pandemics, the researchers say. The approach would allow scientists to be ready with an arsenal of drugs that could be quickly moved into clinical trials when a dangerous new infection appears, whether a coronavirus or another pathogen. The goal: Make effective treatments available in weeks, not months or years.

"We need to proactively develop drug cocktails against virus families as a wholefor example, all coronavirusesto be ready on day one if a new virus or variant emerges. The cocktail should be low cost, easy to transport and distribute, and easy to self-administertherefore available to people across the globe," said researcher Judith M. White, Ph.D., a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. "We hope that this concept of 'smart drug cocktails'smart because of the choice of drugs for testing and computer modeling of their effectiveness in humanswill be the basis for a robust, coordinated effort against coronaviruses and other pathogenic viruses, such as Zika and Lassa fever viruses, just to name a few."

Fast, Safe, Effective Pandemic Response

The new strategy comes from White, of UVA's Departments of Cell Biology and Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology; and colleagues in Seattle, at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; the University of Maryland; and MRI Global, as well as collaborators in Estonia, Finland and Norway. The scientists believe that prioritizing the development of drug cocktailstreatments that combine two or more medicineswould reduce the burden on healthcare systems and help prevent disease spread by limiting a virus' ability to adapt to its hosts. This type of combination approach is already the norm for treating viruses such as HIV.

The researchers outline a five-point plan to accelerate the identification and administration of effective drug cocktails:

Prioritize drugs that people could take at home, either by mouth or inhalation, after exposure or when symptoms first appear.

Focus on drug combinations, rather than individual drugs, to reduce the chance viruses will become drug resistant.

Prioritize drugs that are already approved or in advanced clinical trials, to accelerate how quickly their safety and effectiveness can be assured.

Focus on drugs that can be given to people at doses that will yield anti-viral effects without toxic side effects.

Use advanced computer models to identify useful drug combinations and speed development.

To demonstrate the potential of computer modeling for this purpose, Joshua T. Schiffer, MD, of Fred Hutch, developed a model to assess the potential clinical effectiveness of drug pairs for treating COVID-19. Pairing drugs, the researchers say, could make for treatments that are more effective than individual drugs alone. Identifying drugs with this type of "synergy," they say, could potentially turn two medicines of only modest benefit into a potent treatment.

"Models that incorporate both the properties of the drugs and the biology of the virus spreading against an immune response can be used to identify the best way to dose promising treatments," Schiffer said. "These models suggest strategically combining drugs may add substantial benefit."

The scientists emphasize that better treatments for COVID-19 will not supplant the need for vaccination and are a complement to existing strategies. But they say their strategy could lead to better outcomes for patients who contract COVID-19or the next dangerous virus waiting in the wings.

"Having easily deployable, easily administered, inexpensive drug cocktails on the shelf when a new virus outbreak occurs would buy time from virus discovery to development and roll out of sequence-dependent countermeasures like vaccines and designer drugs, and could therefore blunt the initial stages of an epidemic," White said.

Explore further Potential new treatment for COVID-19 identified

More information: Judith M. White et al, Drug Combinations as a First Line of Defense against Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Viruses, mBio (2021). Journal information: mBio Judith M. White et al, Drug Combinations as a First Line of Defense against Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Viruses,(2021). DOI: 10.1128/mbio.03347-21
People wait in a long line to get tested for COVID-19 in Times Square, New York, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Just a couple of weeks ago, New York City seemed like a relative bright spot in the U.S. coronavirus struggle. Now it's a hot spot, confronting a dizzying spike in cases, a scramble for testing, a quandary over a major event and an exhausting sense of deja vu. Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

The nation's second-largest city called off its New Year's Eve celebration Monday, and its smallest state re-imposed an indoor mask mandate as the omicron variant leaped ahead of other variants to become the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S.

The moves in Los Angeles and Rhode Island reflected widening fears of a potentially devastating winter COVID-19 surge. Much of the concern is being driven by omicron, which federal health officials announced accounted for 73% of new infections last week, a nearly sixfold increase in only seven days.

Omicron's prevalence is even higher in some parts of the U.S. It's responsible for an estimated 90% of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, federal officials said.

The announcement underscored the variant's remarkable ability to race across oceans and continents. It was first reported in southern Africa less than a month ago.

Scientists say omicron spreads more easily than other coronavirus strains, including delta, though many details about it remain unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness. But even if it is milder, the new variant could still overwhelm health systems because of the sheer number of infections.

Organizers of the New Year's Eve party planned for Grand Park in downtown LA nixed plans for an in-person audience, saying the event will be livestreamed instead, as it was last year. In Rhode Island, which has the most new cases per capita over the last two weeks, masks or proof of vaccination will be required in most indoor establishments for at least the next 30 days.

People wait in a long line to get tested for COVID-19 in Times Square, New York, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Just a couple of weeks ago, New York City seemed like a relative bright spot in the U.S. coronavirus struggle. Now it's a hot spot, confronting a dizzying spike in cases, a scramble for testing, a quandary over a major event and an exhausting sense of deja vu. Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

And in Boston, the city's new Democratic mayor announced to howls of protests that anyone entering a restaurant, bar or other indoor business will need to show proof of vaccination, starting next month. City employees will also be required to get vaccinated.

"There is nothing more American than coming together to ensure that we're taking care of each other," Mayor Michelle Wu said at City Hall as protesters loudly blew whistles and shouted "Shame on Wu."

Erika Rusley, a 44-year-old Providence, Rhode Island, resident, says recent events prompted her family to pump the brakes on everyday activities.

The elementary school teacher and her physician husband pulled their two young daughters from swim lessons this week, limited their play dates and canceled medical appointments, even though the whole family is fully vaccinated.

People wait in a long line to get tested for COVID-19 in Times Square, New York, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Just a couple of weeks ago, New York City seemed like a relative bright spot in the U.S. coronavirus struggle. Now it's a hot spot, confronting a dizzying spike in cases, a scramble for testing, a quandary over a major event and an exhausting sense of deja vu. Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

"The past week or so we've really just shut things down. It's just not worth it," Rusley said. "We're back to where we were pre-summer, pre-vaccine. It's square one, almost."

In New York City, where a spike in infections is already scuttling Broadway shows and causing long lines at testing centers, Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to decide this week whether the city's famous New Year's Eve bash in Times Square will come back "full strength" as he promised in November.

North of the border, the Canadian province of Quebec imposed a 10 p.m. closing time for restaurants, banned spectators from sporting events and shuttered gyms and schools and mandated remote work.

Across the Atlantic, the World Economic Forum announced Monday that it would again delay its annual meeting of world leaders, business executives and other elites in Davos, Switzerland.

People wait in a long line to get tested for COVID-19 in Times Square, New York, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

But in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday that officials decided against imposing further restrictions, at least for now.

The conservative government re-imposed face masks in shops and ordered people to show proof of vaccination at nightclubs and other crowded venues earlier this month. It is weighing curfews and stricter social distancing requirements.

"We will have to reserve the possibility of taking further action to protect the public," he said. "The arguments either way are very, very finely balanced."

Johnson's warning throws into stark relief the unpalatable choice government leaders face: wreck holiday plans for millions for a second consecutive year, or face a potential tidal wave of cases and disruption.

In the U.S., President Joe Biden planned to address the nation on the latest variant on Tuesday, less than a year after he suggested that the country would essentially be back to normal by Christmas.

People walk past a billboard inviting citizens to wear face masks to curb the spread of COVID-19, in Nottingham, England, Monday Dec. 20, 2021. Britain's health secretary has refused to rule out imposing tougher COVID-19 restrictions before Christmas amid the rapid rise of infections and continuing uncertainty about the omicron variant. Credit: Mike Egerton/PA via AP

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president would issue a "stark warning" and make clear that unvaccinated individuals "will continue to drive hospitalizations and deaths," she said.

U.S. vaccine maker Moderna announced Monday that lab tests suggested that a booster dose of its vaccine should offer protection against omicron. Similar testing by Pfizer on its vaccine also found that a booster triggered a big jump in omicron-fighting antibodies.

The country is averaging nearly 130,500 new COVID-19 cases a day, up from about 122,000 a day two weeks ago, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

In Texas, a hospital system in Houston reports that omicron already accounts for 82% of new symptomatic COVID-19 cases it is treating, a dramatic increase from Friday, when testing showed it was responsible for just 45% of the system's cases.

A couple wears face masks to curb the spread of COVID-19 as they walk through a Christmas market, in Nottingham, England, Monday Dec. 20, 2021. Britain's health secretary has refused to rule out imposing tougher COVID-19 restrictions before Christmas amid the rapid rise of infections and continuing uncertainty about the omicron variant. Credit: Mike Egerton/PA via AP

But in Missouri, an early epicenter of the delta surge, the variant still accounts for 98% to 99% of COVID-19 samples, according to the state's Department of Health and Senior Services.

Meanwhile, hospitals in Ohio have postponed elective surgeries, while governors in Maine and New Hampshire have sent in National Guard reinforcements to help beleaguered hospital staff in recent days.

In Kansas, rural hospitals are struggling to transfer patients, with some left stranded in emergency rooms for a week while they wait for a bed. Overwhelmed hospitals as far away as Minnesota and Michigan have been calling looking for beds in larger Kansas hospitals. Often there simply isn't room.

"It's already as crazy as it can be when you are talking about moving people from Minnesota to Kansas City for treatment," Dr. Richard Watson, founder of Motient, a company contracting with Kansas to help manage transfers, said Friday.

Commuters, some wearing face masks to curb the spread of COVID-19, walk at Westminster underground station in central London, Monday Dec. 20, 2021. Britain's health secretary has refused to rule out imposing tougher COVID-19 restrictions before Christmas amid the rapid rise of infections and continuing uncertainty about the omicron variant. Credit: Victoria Jones/PA via AP

People walk down a normally bustling shopping street in the center of Amsterdam, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Nations across Europe have moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing a nationwide lockdown. All non-essential stores, bars and restaurants in the Netherlands will be closed until Jan. 14. Credit: AP Photo/Peter Dejong

A view of the exterior of Wembley Stadium in London, which is being used as a vaccination centre, as the coronavirus booster vaccination program is ramped up Sunday Dec. 19, 2021. Credit: Kirsty O'Connor/PA via AP

People line up outside a vaccination centre at the NHS Scotland Leith Community Treatment Centre, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Britain's health secretary has refused to rule out imposing tougher COVID-19 restrictions before Christmas amid the rapid rise of infections and continuing uncertainty about the omicron variant. Credit: Jane Barlow/PA Wire(/PA via AP

People line up outside a vaccination centre at the NHS Scotland Leith Community Treatment Centre, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Britain's health secretary has refused to rule out imposing tougher COVID-19 restrictions before Christmas amid the rapid rise of infections and continuing uncertainty about the omicron variant. Credit: Jane Barlow/PA Wire(/PA via AP

Police drive their patrol car down a normally bustling shopping street in the center of Amsterdam, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Nations across Europe have moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing a nationwide lockdown. All non-essential stores, bars and restaurants in the Netherlands will be closed until Jan. 14. Credit: AP Photo/Peter Dejong

Tables are tipped and chairs sit empty at a closed cafe in the center of Amsterdam, Monday Dec. 20, 2021. Nations across Europe have moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing a nationwide lockdown. All non-essential stores, bars and restaurants in the Netherlands will be closed until Jan. 14. Credit: AP Photo/Peter Dejong

People wait for a tram on an almost empty shopping street in the center of Amsterdam, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Nations across Europe have moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing a nationwide lockdown. All non-essential stores, bars and restaurants in the Netherlands will be closed until Jan. 14. Credit: AP Photo/Peter Dejong

A man stands in a doorway near a closed luxury goods store in the center of Amsterdam, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. Nations across Europe have moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of COVID-19 infections spurred by the highly transmissible omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing a nationwide lockdown. All non-essential stores, bars and restaurants in the Netherlands will be closed until Jan. 14. Credit: AP Photo/Peter Dejong

Still, many political leaders are reluctant to impose the stiff measures they resorted to earlier in the pandemic.

France is desperately trying to avoid a new lockdown that would hurt the economy and cloud President Emmanuel Macron's expected re-election campaign. The government in Paris, however, has banned public concerts and fireworks displays at New Year's celebrations.

Ireland has imposed an 8 p.m. curfew on pubs and bars and limited attendance at indoor and outdoor events, while Greece will have 10,000 police officers on duty over the holidays to carry out COVID-19 pass checks.

For Rusley's family in Rhode Island, the news is worrying, but not enough to deter them from a trip to Denver to visit her husband's family.

They fly out after Christmas, but have decided they will spend extended time indoors only with vaccinated people this holiday season, something they would not have considered just a few months ago.

"We've been here before, and we know how to do this," Rusley said. "We're not going to be hiding in our house, but at the same time, we're not going to be taking unnecessary risks."

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus V.Makei meets the Apostolic Nuncio and Metropolitan of the Minsk-Mogilev Archdiocese

On December 21, 2021, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus Vladimir Makei met with Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Ante Jozic and Metropolitan of the Minsk-Mogilev Archdiocese, Archbishop Joseph Stanevsky.

The main topics of the conversation were the current position of the Roman Catholic Church in the Republic of Belarus, the interaction of the Holy See and official Minsk, as well as some other issues of the bilateral and multilateral agenda. Following the discussion, the parties confirmed their desire to strengthen interfaith dialogue, intensify cooperation in various fields to achieve further positive dynamics of interaction.

V.Makei wished I.Stanevsky long and fruitful work at the new post.

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WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden appeared determined Tuesday to return to the negotiating table with Sen. Joe Manchin, the holdout Democrat who effectively tanked the party's signature $2 trillion domestic policy initiative with his own jarring year-end announcement.

Biden, responding to reporters' questions at the White House, joked that he holds no grudges against the conservative West Virginia senator whose rejection of the social services and climate change bill stunned Washington just days ago.

Instead, the president spoke passionately about the families that would benefit from the Democrats' ambitious, if now highly uncertain, plan to pour billions of dollars into child care, health care and other services.

Sen. Manchin and I are going to get something done, Biden said.

The president's off-the-cuff remarks constitute his first public statement as Democrats struggle to pick up the pieces from Manchin's announcement over the weekend that he would not support the bill, as is. Manchin essentially crushed Biden's sweeping policy measure in the 50-50 Senate, siding with all Republicans who oppose the bill.

Biden spoke forcefully of the economic pressures that strip away the dignity of a parent trying to pay the bills, and the assistance millions could receive from the federal government with the legislation. He also said his package would help ease inflationary pressures and pointed to analyses suggesting it would boost the economy.

I want to get things done, Biden said. I still think theres a possibility of getting Build Back Better done.

But the Democrats face serious questions over whether the $2 trillion initiative can be refashioned to win his crucial vote or the party will be saddled with a devastating defeat.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was set to assemble Senate Democrats later Tuesday for a private virtual caucus meeting to discuss next steps.

Schumer vowed Monday that the chamber would vote early in the new year on Bidens Build Back Better Act as it now stands so every senator has the opportunity to make their position known on the Senate floor, not just on television." That was a biting reference to Manchin's sudden TV announcement against the bill on Sunday.

But Manchin and his party are so far apart, his relationships so bruised after months of failed talks, its unclear how they even get back to the negotiating table, let alone revive the sprawling more than 2,100-page social services and climate change bill.

Biden and Manchin spoke later Sunday, according to a person familiar with the call, first reported by Politico. It was cordial and respectful, said the person who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

The setback has thrown Bidens signature legislative effort into deep doubt at a critical time, closing out the end of the presidents first year and ahead of congressional midterm elections when the Democrats slim hold on Congress is at risk.

Coupled with solid Republican opposition, Manchin's vote is vital on this and other initiatives, including the Democrats' priority voting rights legislation that Schumer also promised would come to an early vote.

Steeped in the politics of a state that Biden lost decisively to Donald Trump, Manchin has little to gain from aligning too closely with fellow Democrats, raising fresh questions over whether he still has a place in the party.

In a radio interview Monday, he reiterated his position that the social and environment bill has far too much government spending  on child care, health care and other programs  without enough restrictions on incomes or work requirements.

But the lifelong Democrat was less clear when asked if the party still has room for him  describing himself as "fiscally responsible and socially compassionate.

Manchin said: Now, if theres no Democrats like that then they have to push me wherever they want.

After months of talks with the White House and fellow Democrats, he lashed out at hard-line tactics against him by those he said just beat the living crap out of people and think theyll be submissive.

While Manchin has said he cannot explain the bill to constituents in West Virginia, a union representing coal miners, including some of the nearly 12,000 from his home state, put out a statement urging the lawmaker to revisit his opposition to the package

Cecil Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers of America, outlined the ways the package would benefit union members, including those in West Virginia, which is the most coal-dependent state in the country.

Some of those provisions include language that would extend the current fee paid by coal companies to fund benefits received by victims of coal workers pneumoconiosis, or black lung. The bill would also provide tax incentives to encourage manufacturers to build facilities in the coalfields, potentially employing miners who have lost their jobs, according to the union.

The next steps remain highly uncertain for the president and his party, with Congress on recess for the holiday break.

The White House appeared to take interest in Manchin's preference for a reimagined bill that would tackle a few top priorities, for longer duration, rather than the multifaceted and far-reaching House-passed version.

But it will be extraordinarily difficult for progressive and centrist Democrats to rebuild trust to launch a fresh round of negotiations having devoted much of Biden's first year in office to what is now essentially a collapsed effort.

The sweeping package is among the biggest of its kind ever considered in Congress, unleashing billions of dollars to help American families nationwide  nearly all paid for with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

For families with children, it would provide free pre-school and child care aid. There are subsidies for health insurance premiums, lower prescription drug costs and expanded Medicaid access in states that do not yet provide it. The bill would start a new hearing aid program for seniors. And it includes more than $500 billion to curb carbon emissions, a figure considered the largest federal expenditure ever to combat climate change.

A potential new deadline for Biden and his party comes with the expiration of an expanded child tax credit that has been sending up to $300 monthly directly to millions of families bank accounts. If Congress fails to act, the money won't arrive in January.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck an optimistic chord at an event Monday in her San Francisco district. This will happen, she said. Im not deterred at all.

Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Colleen Long 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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TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Far from terrorizing people as they did in "Jaws," sharks may offer humanity hope in fending off future coronavirus outbreaks, new research suggests.

That's because their immune systems have unique antibody-like proteins called VNARs that can prevent the SARS-COV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 and its variants from infecting human cells, the researchers said. The findings have so far only been seen in the lab and VNAR treatments have not yet been tested in humans, the investigators stressed.

Shark VNARs are one-tenth the size of human antibodies and can bind to infectious proteins in unique ways that enhance their ability to combat infection, the authors said.

These small antibody-like proteins can get into nooks and crannies that human antibodies cannot access, said study co-leader Aaron LeBeau, a professor of pathology at the University of WisconsinMadison.

They can form these very unique geometries," he explained in a university news release. "This allows them to recognize structures in proteins that our human antibodies cannot.

The researchers tested shark VNARs against both infectious SARS-CoV-2 and a version of the virus that cant replicate in cells. From a pool of billions, the investigators identified three candidate VNARs that stopped the virus from infecting human cells.

Those three shark VNARs were also effective against SARS-CoV-1, which caused the first SARS outbreak in 2003, according to the study published Dec. 16 in the journal Nature Communications.

The big issue is there are a number of coronaviruses that are poised for emergence in humans, LeBeau said. What were doing is preparing an arsenal of shark VNAR therapeutics that could be used down the road for future SARS outbreaks. Its a kind of insurance against the future.

LeBeau and his lab in the School of Medicine and Public Health collaborated with researchers at the University of Minnesota and Elasmogen, a biomedical company in Scotland that is developing therapeutic VNARs.

What is exciting is that these new potential drug molecules against SARS-CoV-2 differ in their mechanism of action compared to other biologics and antibodies targeting this virus, said co-author Caroline Barelle, CEO of Elasmogen.

Potential future treatments would likely include a cocktail of multiple shark VNARs to maximize their effectiveness against a range of different and mutating viruses, according to the researchers. However, it's noted that research in animals do not always produce the same results in humans.

LeBeau is also trying to determine whether shark VNARs can help diagnosis and treat cancer.

More information

For more on coronaviruses, see the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

SOURCE: University of WisconsinMadison, news release, Dec. 16, 2021

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LONDON  Scotland is effectively barring spectators from professional soccer matches and canceling Edinburghs big New Years bash as part of tighter restrictions to slow the spread of the omicron variant.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says that for three weeks starting Dec. 26, public events will be limited to 200 people indoors and 500 outdoors. She said that means pro sports will be effectively spectator-free.

It also means the cancellation for a second year of Hogmanay, Edinburghs New Years Eve street party.

Sturgeon says social distancing and table service-only rules will return to bars and alcohol-serving restaurants Dec. 27.

The rapid spread of omicron means Britain is spending its second Christmas under restrictions. Sturgeon told Scottish lawmakers that although it might not feel like it, we are in a much stronger position than last year.

The four parts of the U.K.  England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  set their own health policies and have slightly different restrictions in place.

HERES WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC:

 Biden to urge Americans to get vaccinated as Christmas nears

 Explainer: Boosters key to fight omicron, lot still to learn

 Feeling powerless, families bring elderly home in pandemic

 Britain to give financial support to businesses hurt by the omicron surge

 German military gives hospital an edge in treating COVID-19 patients

Go to https://APNews.com/coronavirus-pandemic for updates throughout the day.

HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING TODAY:

NEW YORK  The omicron variant is creating havoc on Broadway, with more shows temporarily shutting their doors during the busy Christmas week and one giving up for good.

Jagged Little Pill, a musical built on Alanis Morissettes landmark rock album, will not reopen after it suspended performances when COVID-19 cases were recently detected within the company.

Producers cited the virus in part for the decision to permanently shut down the show, noting extreme uncertainty ahead of us this winter. Since individual musical and plays do not currently reveal box office data, it is hard to tell how much the virus is to blame or a dip in interest.

Aladdin, Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Aint Too Proud, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and MJ The Musical have all announced multi-day cancellations due to the virus. Previews of Skeleton Crew, a play by Dominique Morisseau, have been pushed back into next week and the off-Broadway musical Trevor canceled its last two weeks of performances.

BOSTON  Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced Tuesday he will activate up to 500 members of the National Guard to support understaffed hospitals across the state facing a surge of COVID-19 patients and to bolster non-emergency medical transportation needs.

Up to 300 Guard members will begin training this week to provide nonclinical support at 55 acute care hospitals and 12 ambulance service providers, the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services said. They will be deployed Dec. 27.

The goal is to ensure that hospitals have sufficient capacity to care for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients.

The Guard members will provide support in five critical areas identified by hospitals and ambulance services: non-emergency transportion between health care facilities; observing patients at risk for harming themselves; security and helping to maintain a safe workplace; moving patients within hospitals, such as bringing them from their rooms to tests; and delivering meals to patients in their rooms.

In addition, the state Department of Public Health on Tuesday directed all hospitals effective Dec. 27 to postpone or cancel all nonessential elective procedures.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands  The director of the European Unions drug regulator says that the COVID-19 situation remains extremely worrying across Europe with high levels of transmission of the delta variant and the swift spread of the omicron mutation and it remains to be seen if vaccines will have to be tweaked to deal with omicron.

European Medicines Agency director Emer Cooke said Tuesday that theres no answer yet on whether we will need an adapted vaccine with a different composition to tackle this or any other emerging variants.

Over the past year, the Amsterdam-based agency has given the green light to five vaccines for use in the 27-nation bloc.

Cooke says the agency issued guidance in February to drug makers in case they need to alter vaccines and has changed legislation to speed up evaluation of any newly tweaked vaccines, should they become necessary to tackle the pandemic.

She says, we as regulators were well aware that viruses mutate and this is a situation that we are prepared for from a regulatory perspective.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark  Sweden on Tuesday said patrons must be seated in bars and restaurants and tables must be separated by one meter (over 3 feet).

This means that there will be no nightclub partying on Christmas Day or New Years Eve, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told a press conference as she announced 10 new restrictions that begin Thursday.

She added that they also will be rules to prevent congestion in shops, a maximum of 50 people at private gatherings and urged people to work from home when possible. The government also said participation in sports tournaments and camps is not recommended until Jan. 16.

Sweden has previously stood out among European nations for its comparatively hands-off response to the pandemic.

In neighboring Norway, Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol said 86% of those aged over 65 have gotten the booster shot and said the good news means they are well protected should they be infected.

Norway has seen the number of virus cases quadruple in recent days.

LONDON  Britain has announced 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in grants and loans to help the hospitality industry survive the onslaught of the omicron variant, bowing to days of pressure from pubs, restaurants and other businesses that have seen their income plunge following public health warnings.

Businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors in England will be eligible for one-time grants of up to 6,000 pounds ($7,900) each. An additional 100 million pounds ($132 million) will be given to local governments to support businesses in their areas hit by the sudden spike in COVID-19 infections driven by the highly transmissible new variant.

Pubs and restaurants have reported a wave of cancellations during the crucial Christmas season as people shun public events and workers are forced to self-isolate, leaving venues short of staff. Many theaters and museums also have closed their doors.

With the surge in omicron cases, people are rightly exercising more caution as they go about their lives, which is impacting our hospitality, leisure and cultural sectors at what is typically the busiest time of the year, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. Thats why were taking immediate action.

MIAMI  Omicron has overtaken the delta variant in Miami-Dade County as the dominant strain of the coronavirus in a matter of weeks, according to genomic surveillance data.

Genetic sequencing of the virus showed omicron grew from a tiny fraction of hundreds of samples taken the first week of December to nearly three of every four samples taken last week.

It is absolutely astonishing how contagious this variant has proven to be, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told the Miami Herald.

The county contracts with NOMI Health to conduct testing, vaccination and sequencing. The company found that 76% of 504 COVID-19 samples taken Dec. 14-15 were the omicron variant. That compared to 64% of 378 samples collected Dec. 10-13, and 1.3% of the 373 samples collected Dec. 1-5, county records showed.

The variant is also sweeping the nation, accounting for 73% of new infections last week, federal health officials said.

The county is also seeing a spike in positive COVID-19 cases, which stand at 10% after dropping to about 1% a month ago, according to data.

Its on us to protect ourselves and still the most important thing we can do is vaccinate, the mayor said.

WASHINGTON  The White House says President Joe Biden had close contact with a staff member who later tested positive for the coronavirus and is experiencing symptoms of COVID-19.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Monday night that the staff member tested positive earlier in the day. Psaki says the staff member spent about 30 minutes around the president on Air Force One on Friday during a trip from Orange, South Carolina, to Philadelphia.

Psaki says the staff member is fully vaccinated and boosted and tested negative before boarding Air Force One. She says the staffer began experiencing symptoms Sunday night.

Psaki says the 79-year-old Biden is tested regularly for the virus and has had two negative tests since Sunday. She says he will be tested again Wednesday.

The NFLs decision to reduce COVID-19 testing for asymptomatic, vaccinated players could signal a trend for pro sports leagues and provide an example for society to follow heading into 2022.

Despite a rising number of positive cases that forced three games to be rescheduled over the weekend, the NFL, in cooperation with the players union, agreed on Saturday to scale back testing for vaccinated players. The move aligns with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC recommends diagnostic testing only for symptomatic or close-contact vaccinated people, and screening tests only for unvaccinated people.

The NFL previously required vaccinated players to get tested weekly before amending the protocols. The NFLPA had advocated for daily testing for vaccinated players but eventually agreed to target testing.

The NBA didnt require vaccinated players to get tested during the season but revised its policy to increase testing for a two-week period starting Dec. 26.

The NHL tested players every third day but returned to daily testing through at least Jan. 7.

BRUSSELS  The European Unions executive announced Tuesday that its COVID-19 passport must remain valid for intra-EU travel for nine months after full vaccination. The rule takes effect on Feb. 1.

The announcement came only days after last weeks E summit stressed the importance of coordinated action to avoid a confusing cacophony of rules in the bloc's 27 member states, and ensure that COVID-19 certificates continue to guarantee unrestricted travel.

A harmonized validity period for EU Digital COVID certificate is a necessity for safe free movement and EU level coordination, said EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides.

If member states could all impose their own deadlines, it would sharply hamper travel within the bloc.

The nine-month target had already garnered wide backing at a recent summit but still needed to be legally backed by the EU Commission.

BERLIN  Germanys independent vaccine advisory panel is recommending boosters starting from three months after people are fully vaccinated.

Tuesdays recommendation is effective immediately and is a change from the previous call for booster shots after a minimum six months.

Some German regions and facilities already had declared people eligible for boosters after five or even four months.

The recommendation comes as Germany anticipates a steep rise in infections as a result of the new highly contagious omicron variant.

Also on Tuesday, regulators in neighboring Switzerland recommended boosters after four rather than six months.

MILAN  Police in Sicily have arrested three people for allegedly helping fake vaccinations for around 400 euros ($450) a piece, allowing people opposed to getting inoculated to obtain a health pass.

The suspects include a nurse who pretended to administer the vaccines and the leader of an anti-vaccination movement in Palermo. Video supplied by authorities showed the nurse emptying the syringe into gauze before injecting the needle into people paying for the fake certificate.

Authorities have confirmed about a dozen faked vaccinations, but suspect that many more are circulating. Confirmation of a vaccination allows people to obtain a health pass to access places of employment, as well as indoor dining, theaters, museums and other leisure activities.

Sicily has the highest percentage of unvaccinated people of any Italian region, at nearly 23%. Nationwide, just under 17% of Italy's population is not vaccinated.

BARCELONA, Spain  Catalonia is preparing to become the first Spanish region to reinstate serious limitations given the latest spike in infections in a country that is among the world leaders in vaccination.

Health authorities have asked the courts to authorize a battery of measures including a new nightly curfew from 1-6 a.m., a limit of 10 people per social gathering, the closure of night clubs, and capping restaurants at 50% of seating indoors and stores, gyms and theaters to 70% capacity.

If approved by the courts, they would take effect on Friday and last for 15 days in the northeast region surrounding Barcelona.

Regional health chief Josep Argimon said that the measures are needed because of the arrival of the more contagious omicron variant. Infections have grown 100% over the past week, he said.

Spains prime minister is meeting via video with the heads of Spains regions on Wednesday to discuss new measures for the country that has seen cases rapidly increasing despite having given two doses of vaccines to over 80% of its population of 47 million.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Moms who had COVID-19 in pregnancy can breathe easier thanks to a small, new study that found no growth or development problems in 6-month-old babies whose mothers had the virus while expecting.

Our results should be reassuring to pregnant women with COVID-19 who are worried about how the virus might affect the baby, said study co-author Dr. Malika Shah, a neonatologist at the Childrens Hospital of Chicago.

At 6-month follow-up, we observed normal growth patterns and developmental milestones, with the rate of developmental referrals not higher than what we normally see," Shah said in a hospital news release.

"This is very good news during the pandemic," added Shah, an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The study included 33 publicly insured Hispanic women and their infants, who were born from April to July 2020, before COVID-19 vaccines were available and before concerning variants of the virus started to appear.

All had COVID-19 during pregnancy, and 55% tested positive within 10 days of delivery.

None of the infants tested positive for COVID-19. Three (10%) were born premature and five (15%) required neonatal intensive care for conditions unrelated to COVID-19.

According to the researchers, the study is the longest follow-up to date of infants whose mothers had COVID-19 during pregnancy.

As the pandemic persists and variants emerge, looking at longer-term outcomes is critical," Shah said.

The results appear in the Journal of Perinatal Medicine.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19 and pregnancy.

SOURCE: Ann and Robert H. Lurie Childrens Hospital of Chicago, news release, Dec. 16, 2021

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TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- In record time, the Omicron variant has become the dominant variant in the United States, accounting for 73% of new infections last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

That rate suggests that there were more than 650,000 Omicron infections in the United States last week, the Associated Press reported.

CDC data show nearly a six-fold rise in Omicron's share of infections in just one week, and it's even higher in many parts of the country. Omicron accounts for an estimated 90% or more of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest.

Delta became the dominant variant at the end of June, and it caused more than 99.5% of coronavirus cases as recently as the end of November, CDC figures show.

The new data reflect the kind of growth in Omicron seen in other countries, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday.

These numbers are stark, but theyre not surprising, she noted.

Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency room doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said the timing of Omicron's surge is particularly troubling.

"The rapid and exponential spread of Omicron is concerning, especially five days before Christmas, as travel by road and air eclipses even pre-pandemic levels seen in 2019," Glatter said. "Omicron is much more transmissible than Delta, with cases doubling every 2-3 days... Meanwhile, the Delta variant, which had been the dominant strain of the virus in the U.S. [before] last week, has now dropped back to about 27% of cases sequenced."

"With a lack of rapid tests available in pharmacies, and long lines in major U.S. cities, the upcoming holidays represent a potential cauldron of viral spread with the U.S., as hospitals in the Northeast and Midwest struggle with reduced hospital bed capacity from the ongoing Delta surge," Glatter added. "The National Guard has already been dispatched to at least six states, with many more expected in the coming weeks."

The alarm about Omicron was first sounded less than a month ago by South Africa and it was designated a "variant of concern" by the World Health Organization on Nov. 26. So far, it's been detected in about 90 countries, the AP reported.

Early studies suggest the fully vaccinated will need a booster shot for the best chance at preventing Omicron infection, but even without the extra dose vaccination still should offer strong protection against severe illness and death.

All of us have a date with Omicron, Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, told the AP. If youre going to interact with society, if youre going to have any type of life, Omicron will be something you encounter, and the best way you can encounter this is to be fully vaccinated.

Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told the AP that other countries had seen Omicrons fast growth, but the U.S. data showed a remarkable jump in such a short time.

Topol also said its unclear how much milder Omicron really is compared with other variants.

Thats the big uncertainty now, Topol said. We have to count on it being a lot of hospitalizations and a lot [of] severe disease from Omicron.

More information

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on the Omicron variant.

SOURCE: Robert Glatter, MD, emergency room physician, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City; Associated Press

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TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers who say they have discovered what causes kids to have "chalky teeth" predict it could lead to new ways to fight it and cut cavities by half.

One in five children have chalky teeth -- visible as discolored enamel spots -- which can cause severe toothache and decay, sometimes resulting in abscesses, extractions and other problems.

"We cant yet prevent chalky teeth from developing in the first place, but if health professionals catch them early -- when they first enter the mouth -- then we dentists can usually save them," said study co-author Dr. Vidal Perez, a pediatric dentist and researcher at the University of Talca in Chile.

Perez and other researchers now say they have identified the mechanism behind the most common type of chalky teeth -- molar hypomineralization.

It occurs when developing enamel is contaminated by a protein found both in blood and in the tissue fluid surrounding developing teeth. Routine childhood illnesses such as fever appear to be the trigger, according to findings published Dec. 21 in the journal Frontiers of Physiology.

"The result is a sort of 'mineralization blockage,' which is highly localized to the areas on individual teeth that become chalky enamel spots," said study leader Mike Hubbard, a research professor in oral and facial sciences at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Unfortunately, fluoride, which protects against tooth decay in normal enamel, has little effect in preventing chalky molars. The researchers said the condition is as prevalent in developed countries as in developing ones.

Hubbard said the discovery upends 40 years of blaming defective enamel-forming cells. But that theory didn't explain why chalkiness affects only one or a few teeth in a child's mouth, he added.

Weve shown instead that albumin leaks in occasionally at weak spots, binding to enamel-mineral crystals and blocking their growth," Hubbard said in a University of Melbourne news release. "Its not a system-wide problem, but a very localized one.

The next steps involve pinpointing the underlying causes and getting the word out to dentists, health care providers and parents, so they can monitor kids for chalky teeth.

This new avenue of research could one day eliminate about half of childhood tooth decay, along with its disturbing costs to affected individuals and society, Hubbard said.

More information

There's more on chalky teeth at The Chalky Teeth Campaign.

SOURCE: University of Melbourne, news release, Dec. 21, 2021

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The first omicron variant COVID case has been detected in Missoula County, the health department announced Tuesday.

The county added 13 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday. The first omicron variant case in Montana was detected Monday in Gallatin County.

"The individual infected with the variant was tested at (the Missoula City-County Health Department)," a news release said. "Case investigation is pending, and it is unknown at this time if the individual contracted the variant through travel or community spread.

"Due to the highly contagious nature of this variant, the health department encourages citizens to take precautions and assume the variant is circulating in the community," it added.

The Associated Press reported Monday that 73% of all new United States COVID cases are of the omicron variant. In the same report, it was noted that much remains unknown about omicron, though it is thought to spread more easily than delta and other variants as well as the original strain.

What is not known is if the new variant is more deadly, though early research has suggested it may cause a milder form of the disease, the report added.

Thankfully, we know what actions can limit the spread of this variant. Its just a matter of members of our community practicing these commonsense mitigation measures to protect one another, Health Officer DShane Barnett said in Tuesday's release.

The number of active COVID cases is 169, a jump from 114 active cases from late last week. However, active case counts remain at their lowest numbers since this summer.

The death toll in Missoula County from the pandemic stands at 189. There have been 17,749 total COVID cases in the county since March 2020.

The 20 to 29 age range continues to be the demographic with the most cases, with 31 active. With the University of Montana now out of session, there was not an update on cases connected to the school.

Missoula's seven-day positivity rate is just 4.76%, which means community spread has slowed down. The county is averaging 11 new cases per 100,000 people, which is also smaller than it was even last week.

Of those eligible for the vaccine in the county, 70.59% have received at least one dose. Overall, 61.8% of Missoula County's total population is considered fully vaccinated.

"So far, data show the vaccines still provide good protection against severe illness due to omicron," COVID-19 Incident Commander Cindy Farr said in a statement. "We highly encourage everyone to get their boosters or start their vaccine series if they have not done so already.

Jordan Hansen covers news and local government for the Missoulian. Shout at him on Twitter @jordyhansen or send him an email at Jordan.Hansen@Missoulian.com

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The University of Montana has hired Pardis Mahdavi to serve as its next provost and executive vice president, the universitys No. 2 administrator and chief academic officer.

Mahdavi was chosen after a nationwide search, and she will begin the job in early summer 2022.

The University of Montana is incredibly well-positioned for impact, Mahdavi said. I am excited about UMs impressive strengths across disciplines  in both research and teaching  the institutions demonstrated commitment to students and the campuss deep connection to place in western Montana.

"And I am particularly motivated to partner with President Seth Bodnar, a leader whose vision and ability inspire my confidence in UMs future," she added. "My family and I are eager to connect with and become part of the outstanding Missoula community.

Bodnar celebrated Mahdavis selection in an open letter to campus Tuesday.

Dr. Mahdavis record of tireless support for inclusive student success and her leadership record will serve UM and Montana well, Bodnar said. Dr. Mahdavis decision to join the UM team gives all of us reason to be optimistic as we seek to maintain our positive momentum. Our executive leadership team is developing a transition plan that ensures she is welcome, supported and empowered.

Mahdavi joins UM from Arizona State University, where she now serves as dean of social sciences. In that role she oversees 11 schools and 25 centers with 800 faculty members and 30,000 students. Prior to her leadership post at ASU, she served as acting dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, dean of women at Pomona College and president and director of the Pacific Basin Institute.

Reed Humphrey, UMs acting provost, will return to his role as the dean of the College of Health upon Mahdavis arrival in Missoula. Under Humphreys leadership, more than 5,000 UM students received their diplomas amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic.

As provost, Mahdavi will oversee UMs academic colleges, the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, the Registrars Office, the Global Engagement Office, the Franke Global Leadership Initiative, the Student Success Center and the Central and Southwest Asian Studies Center.

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Nearly 1,000 students graduated from the University of Montana last Saturday in the first in-person fall commencement ceremony at the Adams Center in two years due to the COVID pandemic.

About 250 of the degree candidates attended the event and walked across the stage to receive their diplomas, while a majority of graduates opted for virtual participation.

To our graduates, congratulations. Today, we come together to celebrate each of you and your incredible accomplishments at the University of Montana, said UM President Seth Bodnar. Im so proud of you and so excited to see the impact you will have on our state, our country and our world.

The graduation ceremony was also the first in over 25 years that the late Blackfeet Chief Earl Old Person was not in attendance to celebrate the graduates with a traditional honor song. Old Person died in October at the age of 92.

In addition to being the longest-serving elected tribal leader in the country, Chief Old Person was also a dedicated and beloved member of the UM family, Bodnar said. He was a friend to me and to so many others here at the University of Montana.

Bodnar called for a moment of silence to commemorate Old Persons legacy and impact on the university before the Rawhide Orchestra took the stage and performed an honor song. The members of the group said they usually perform the flag song at commencement ceremonies, but this year they chose their warrior society song to honor Old Person.

Associated Students of UM President Noah Durnell shared an excerpt from Carl Sagans book Pale Blue Dot during his speech, which highlighted human responsibility to care for each other and the planet.

In a lot of respects, the University of Montana is our Pale Blue Dot, Durnell said. The University of Montana is a hub that fosters so many different people interacting in this system to help us grow, help us create meaning, help us invest in ourselves and it's a risky investment.

It was oftentimes a stressful and scary one, but ultimately it was a worthy investment and I look across this room as absolute proof of that, he continued.

Following Durnell's speech, Bodnar presented Colleen McGuire with an honorary doctorate of humane letters. A UM graduate, McGuire served a historic 32-year military career as the first woman from Montana to rise to the rank of brigadier general, as well as the first-ever woman to serve as provost marshal general of the U.S. Army, among other accolades.

McGuire graduated with a bachelors degree in radio and broadcast journalism in a fall commencement ceremony 42 years ago. She did not attend her ceremony in person and joked that she was grateful for the do-over so that her family would finally be able to get a photo of her in graduation regalia.

McGuire spoke about how some disappointing assignments throughout her military career informed her leadership.

Now if you can find that sweet spot in your chosen profession, where you enjoy those with whom you work, you operate in or contribute to an environment that strives to be fair and consistent, if you can serve with a greater purpose while doing something you love, then youve found success in your career and your life, McGuire said.

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NEW YORK (AP)  With a touch of Barbara Stanwyck, a sumptuous Art Deco office and a deadly shade of crimson lipstick, Cate Blanchett plays a femme fatale in Guillermo del Toros Nightmare Alley with cunning embrace and subversion of the film noir archetype.

If Nightmare Alley is del Toros lushly composed love letter to noir, the movies pulpy heart is in Blanchetts conniving psychiatrist Lilith Ritter. She doesnt enter the film until halfway through, when Bradley Coopers carnival huckster, Stan, catches her eye in his nightclub mind-reading act, and the two begin scheming together. But when she does turn up, Blanchett shifts the film's fable-like frequency, conjuring deeper shades of mystery from the movies rich tapestry of shadow and fate.

We tailored the part for her, but she fit in those clothes on the first try, says del Toro.

In period films like Carol, The Good German and The Aviator, Blanchett has often evoked a classical kind of mid-century movie stardom. But in Nightmare Alley, an adaptation of the 40s novel first made into Edmund Golding's well-regarded 1947 film (currently streaming on the Criterion Channel), Blanchett slides into one of the movies most iconic types by trading less on her characters seductiveness than on her razor-sharp intellect.

What I thought was timely and dangerous about this story was its an exploration of the truth, Blanchett said in an interview from Brighton, England. Playing such a deliberately mysterious and ambiguous character I found really challenging because you have to know theres a lot going on, but youre never invited into exactly what shes thinking.

Its one of two roles this December for Blanchett that revolve centrally around American deception and disinformation. There's Nightmare Alley, currently in theaters, and Adam McKays Dont Look Up, which arrives Friday on Netflix. In the latter, she plays a TV morning news anchor who cheerfully steers the news away from an impending asteroid doomsday and toward lighter subjects  like the sex appeal of Leonardo DiCaprios scientist.

There may be something timeless about Blanchett in Nightmare Alley, but to her, both films are characterized by their timeliness.

It was such a privilege to be on a film set in this particular point in human history," Blanchett says. One should always be alive to the time in which what youre making is going to be viewed. I never felt that more profoundly than making these two films.

Blanchett and del Toro had discussed various projects for years but came together for the first time on Nightmare Alley. (She also voices a role in the directors upcoming stop-motion animated Pinocchio  another film about truth telling.)

Del Toro, who calls his kinship with author James M. Cain profound, had long pined to pay tribute to noir. His affection for the genre runs deep. In his previous film, the best-picture Oscar-winner The Shape of Water, del Toro explicitly referenced Otto Premingers Fallen Angel. An avid collector, del Toro calls the portrait that hangs in Premingers Laura the one prop I would kill to own.

I read all of (Raymond) Chandler right before I married, says del Toro. Im not sure why.

Del Toro scripted Nightmare Alley with film critic Kim Morgan, whom he wed earlier this year. His taste in noir leans toward seedy, rather than the more elegant varieties, and films that inhabit an audacious psychology.

I like these characters, like Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest, who are too smart for their environment, he says. I root for them not because I think they do things that are good but because I agree that they are left without recourse in what seems like a rigged game. Thats the noir that I find interesting.

One touchstone for Nightmare Alley was 1949s Too Late for Tears, a nasty noir starring Lizabeth Scott as a housewife who finds a bag full of cash. (Del Toro and Morgan screened it recently on TCM.) Tasting a chance for freedom from her husband and more, Scotts character clings to the money. Del Toro and Morgan envisioned Lilith similarly as operating within a male-controlled society.

Frankly, its the character I was completely passionate about creating with Cate, he says. Shes almost like an avenger. We said: Whatever happened to her in the past, shes sort of righting the wrongs.

To Blanchett, the term femme fatale suggests a diabolical woman  like a siren seeking to draw the male character onto the rocks to destroy them for no reason apart from they have diabolical urges.

Blanchett and del Toro instead played with subtle gradations in Liliths motives. Blanchett thought one line of dialogue was too straightforward, and del Toro agreed in cutting it. But he still quotes the speech a little ruefully: Do you know what it is for a woman like me to grow up in a town where the smartest man is just a stupid beast?

Even though theres nothing explicit that Lilith says about her background, theres a sense that shes damaged goods from the system, that she wants to burn down and shes going to use Stan to do it, says Blanchett. Her faith in him and the men who run the system is nonexistent.

Del Toro shot Blanchetts scenes with Cooper, he says, like three 5-10-minute miniature plays. Inside Lilith's ornate, wood-paneled office, the two con artists dance  a shifting drama told through blocking and camera movement. It's a chess game that Lilith, inevitably, will win.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  A look at jurors in the manslaughter trial of former suburban Minneapolis police officer Kim Potter, who is charged in the April shooting death of 20-year-old Black motorist Daunte Wright. Potter says she meant to use her Taser and drew her gun by mistake.

The jurors are anonymous by order of the court. The 12 who remained after two alternates were dismissed after closing arguments Monday include nine who identify as white, two who are Asian and one who is Black. The panel is evenly divided on gender.

JUROR NO. 2

A white man in his 50s who works as a medical editor.

He said he has a very unfavorable view of the pro-police blue lives matter slogan, saying he believes its more of a counter against the Black Lives Matter movement rather than real support for police. But he also said he opposes cutting funding for police.

I absolutely believe theres a need for change, he said. But I think defund the police sends a message, a negative message."

JUROR NO. 6

A white woman in her 60s. She's a retired special education teacher who also taught English to immigrants and loves true crime shows.

She said she doesnt understand how something like Wrights death could happen, but also said: I really feel for any law enforcement because things can happen just so, so quickly."

JUROR NO. 7

A white man in his 20 who works as an operations manager at a large retailer. He is also a bassist in an alternative rock band.

He wrote on a jury questionnaire that he is slightly distrustful of police. He said he believes they have a hard job, but also should be held to the highest level of scrutiny.

JUROR NO. 11

An Asian woman in her 40s who described herself as a rule follower." She said police officers should be respected, and on a questionnaire she somewhat agreed that police officers should not be second-guessed.

I think sometimes you just react, and sometimes it might be a wrong reaction, but, you know, mistakes happen, she said.

JUROR NO. 17

A white woman in her 20s who recently graduated and is working full-time.

She said policing protests in the Minneapolis area have had a negative impact on the community because of property damage.

She said she somewhat disagreed with defunding the police: Youre always going to need police officers.

JUROR NO. 19

A Black woman in her 30s, a teacher and mother of two who said she carries a stun gun in her purse. She's also is a gun owner with a permit to carry.

I remember panic in the video, she said.

She had a somewhat negative impression of both Wright and Potter, saying of Potter: Having this much experience, you know, in that moment, where did your lapse in judgment come from?

She strongly disagreed that police officers should not be second-guessed for their decisions.

This is a servitude job, and when you get into this position, you need to understand that its a tough job and so you have to maintain that level of professionalism when you get into that position.

JUROR NO. 21

A white man in his 40s. He said on his questionnaire that he had somewhat negative impressions of both Potter and Wright.

I dont condone fleeing from a police officer," he said of Wright. Of Potter, he said, When training fellow officers, your actions should be more thought out.

He said demonstrations about policing have had both positive and negative effects  positive because they started eye-opening conversations but negative because of the looting.

JUROR NO. 22

A white man in his 60s who is a registered nurse, studying to become a nurse practitioner.

He said he strongly agrees that police make him feel safe and somewhat agrees that their actions shouldnt be second-guessed.

You know, theyve got a difficult job. And maybe its just me but I, I dont know that I necessarily raise them up to a higher standard, but I certainly expect them to be law abiding."

He said he believed Potter when she said she didnt mean to shoot Wright.

JUROR NO. 26

An Asian woman in her 20s who was reluctant to be on the panel, saying she has a lot of friends and family who are very opinionated in the matter.

She said her workplace was damaged in a demonstration over policing, and that it made her angry and upset because she thought those who did the damage were just taking advantage of the protests.

JUROR NO. 40

A white man in his 40s who said he once wanted to become a police officer but changed his mind because he was afraid that I would end up having to use my gun. He has worked in IT security for the last 20 years.

He had a somewhat negative impression of both Potter and Wright, saying Potter should have had enough muscle memory to know which side of her body her Taser was on.

He strongly agreed that police in his community make him feel safe. But he said he strongly disagrees that police should not be second-guessed for their decisions.

JUROR NO. 48

A white woman in her 40s and a mother of two who used to work as an IT project manager. She has also worked as an elections judge.

She said Wright should not have died for something like expired tags  a reason given by officers for pulling him over.

JUROR NO. 55

A white man in his 50s, a Navy veteran and former Boy Scout leader who said he competes in medieval steel combat in his spare time. He works as a field systems engineer for a cybersecurity company.

He said he saw a video clip of the shooting and thought the situation was stressful because it looked like a lot of things were happening at once.

He said he has a somewhat unfavorable impression of blue lives matter, saying You can choose your vocation, but you cant chose your skin color.

He said protests in the Minneapolis area over the last two years have been positive overall because regularly examining what leaders and law enforcers are doing is good for society.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  The outgoing mayor of Columbia, South Carolina has been awarded a Harvard fellowship to mentor and teach students.

Steve Benjamins office announced Monday he will teach a course in health policy and leadership at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health during the spring 2022 term.

The class will study approaches to issues including the COVID-19 pandemic, gun violence, climate resilience, and racial justice.

Benjamin, one of the states highest-profile Democrats, has served as the first Black mayor of South Carolinas capital city since 2010.

He said earlier this year that he wasnt seeking a fourth term in office.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The state health department on Monday confirmed the omicron variant has been detected in Montana.

The sample that was confirmed through testing at the Montana State Public Health Laboratory and at Montana State University came from two state residents in their 30s who have travel history to South Africa. Omicron was first detected in South Africa and spread rapidly there, though that does not mean the variant developed there.

The Gallatin County residents were fully vaccinated and have had mild symptoms. One of the people had received a booster shot and the other had not yet. The individuals have been self-isolating since returning to Montana.

The Associated Press reported Monday that omicron is the dominant variant in the U.S., overtaking delta and making up 73% of new infections reported in the last week. That's up from about 13% of new infections reported the week of Dec. 11, the AP said.

In Montana, the delta variant had accounted for nearly all cases in the state since July, when it triggered a major surge that had recently slowed.

This is not a surprise as nearly every other state has reported Omicron cases in recent weeks, Department of Public Health and Human Services Director Adam Meier said in a press release. We continue to urge all Montanans to use all available tools to stay healthy this winter, including getting your COVID-19 vaccine and booster and taking other measures to prevent the spread of the virus."

Montana is one of the last states to report detecting omicron.

While the state health department and Gov. Greg Gianforte's administration have encouraged people to get vaccinated through public statements and public service announcements, the state Legislature passed a bill Gianforte signed earlier this year banning employers including hospitals from requiring vaccines. Lawmakers also enacted laws that limit the ability of public health officials to institute public health measures like mask mandates.

Montana's vaccination rate has remained at about 52% of the eligible population, lagging the national rate. While data is still preliminary and will evolve as more is learned about omicron, early information shows getting a booster shot offers the best protection. The AP reported that even without boosters, those who are fully vaccinated have better protection against the worst outcomes from COVID-19.

Data from the state health department shows demand for boosters or third doses have made up the majority of shots administered in Montana since early October.

Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show how rapidly omicron took over in the rest of the country. In November, delta made up 99.5% of all cases nationwide, but omicron's numbers marked a six-fold increase, the AP reported.

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BREMERTON, Wash.  A dome-less USS Connecticut sailed into its homeport Tuesday, the end of a 7,000-mile journey following a harrowing collision with an underwater mountain.

The elite sub, one in a three-boat class that's the most advanced the U.S. Navy has ever built, pulled into Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton for what's expected to be a lengthy period of repairs at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

The Connecticut struck an uncharted seamount in the disputed waters of the South China Sea on Oct. 2. Eleven sailors were hurt in the crash, and two sustained what the Navy described as "moderate" injuries beyond cuts and scrapes. Both crew members were treated and didn't require hospitalization.

The Navy, with the help of personnel from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, made repairs in Guam prior to the boat's arduous crossing on the surface of the Pacific Ocean to Bremerton. The Navy confirmed the boat's nuclear reactor and propulsion plant were not damaged in the collision.

The USS Connecticut passes the Washington State Ferry Chimacum as the sub heads for Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021.

By the time Connecticut arrived in San Diego, public cameras captured the results of the crash: A boat that appeared to be missing its sonar dome on its hull. As it arrived in Bremerton, the void appeared.

It will likely be a long time, a period of years, before the Connecticut is ready to deploy again. In 2005, the USS San Francisco, a Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine, also struck an underwater mountain, a crash that killed a sailor and injured 97 others. It took 3 1/2 years in Puget Sound to install a sonar dome from the decommissioned USS Honolulu, in maintenance that in total cost $134 million.

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There is $50 million in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act for the repairs, Forbes reported Tuesday.

The crash led Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet, to relieve Cmdr. Cameron Aljilani as commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Cashin as executive officer, and Master Chief Sonar Technician Cory Rodgers as chief of the boat, due to a loss of confidence in their command.

Story continues

The USS Connecticut pulls into Naval Base Kitsap on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021.

The South China Sea, where China has been developing military bases on artificial reefs in disputed waters, is largely unmapped outside of satellite imagery. Deborah Kelly, an oceanography professor at the University of Washington, told the Kitsap Sun of the USA TODAY Network that her review of the sea shows that it is shallow, has "lots of little pinnacles on the seafloor," and is subject to the noise of shipping vessels that "might make it harder to image things" with sonar.

The Connecticut is one of three of the Seawolf-class, built in the era of the Cold War for $3 billion apiece. Armed with about 50 torpedoes fired from eight different tubes, the subs are also stealthily quiet and the fastest ever built, ideal for covert missions. The Connecticut and sister ship USS Seawolf are homeported in Bremerton until the Navy completes a $90 million pier at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor; then, after repairs, the two subs will be able to join the USS Jimmy Carter, the third Seawolf, there.

Josh Farley is a reporter covering the military and Bremerton for the Kitsap Sun. He can be reached at 360-792-9227, josh.farley@kitsapsun.com or on Twitter at @joshfarley.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: USS Connecticut returns home after October crash in South China Sea
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in omicrons share of infections in only one week, the Associated Press reported.

In much of the country, its even higher. Omicron is responsible for an estimated 90% or more of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest. The national rate suggests that more than 650,000 omicron infections occurred in the U.S. last week.

On Tuesday, the president of the American Medical Association Dr. Gerald E. Harmon issued a statement as the omicron variant continues to spread.

As cases of COVID-19 sharply increase due to the Omicron variant, the nations health care system and capacity to deliver care is once again being put under stress. The Biden Administrations announcement (Tuesday) to deploy additional medical personnel to COVID-burdened hospitals and stand-up new mass vaccination sites across the country will help alleviate some of the burden on the nations already overwhelmed health care workforce, Harmon said in the statement.
At Christmastime, we are normally used to seeing a large, jolly man in a red suit. Students at Patton High School have been suiting up in bright green suits, not for holiday activities, but for safety in a brand new class offered to firefighting students.

That suit is what we call a Level A suit, Mike Long, a career and technical education teacher, said. It is a totally encapsulated suit that a hazmat (hazardous materials) operations person would wear into a hazmat call with an unknown substance. We learn the regulations, standards and laws when dealing with hazardous materials and then we even get into learning how to control a spill and keeping them out of waterways and storm drains.

The students also get to learn about how hazmat teams would handle encountering an unknown substance, identifying it and containing or eliminating it. They also set up mock decontamination stations to clean the suits. The bright green color of the suits is to make sure the hazmat team is visible in many different situations.
Nikola also went public through something called a special purpose acquisitions company, or SPAC, a vehicle that is getting increased scrutiny from the SEC and other regulators. The SEC issued new accounting guidance for SPACs this year after a flurry of them hit the market.

SPACs, essentially a blank-check company, are used as a shortcut to go public, bypassing the lengthy and costly process of a traditional initial public offering.

SPACs exploded in popularity last year, reaching a fever pitch early in 2021 when they were raising an average of $6 billion every week. They offer investors a way to get into those exciting, potentially high-growth companies or companies or industries, and few sectors are as hot lately as electric vehicle makers.

Companies going the SPAC route often feel more license to highlight projections for big growth theyre expecting in the future, for example. In a traditional IPO, the company is limited to highlighting its past performance, not necessarily the greatest selling point for young startups that have little to show for in sales or profits.
This summer, the Defense Logistics Agency began reporting to the Pentagon losses and thefts of firearms that the military loaned to civilian agencies under the Law Enforcement Support Office program. In its data release to AP, the Pentagon reported that 461 of these firearms had vanished, with 109 later recovered. APs reporting did not include LESO weapons.

After the APs initial report published in June, Gen. Milley tasked the service branches with scrubbing their data on firearms losses since 2010 -- the time period AP studied.

The Pentagon reluctantly shared the statistics it collected, which Milleys office has provided to Capitol Hill. The official numbers are lower than what AP reported -- but also incomplete, because some services failed to include stolen weapons as documented by the militarys own criminal investigators.

The number of missing, lost or stolen firearms was approximately 1,540 from 2010 through this summer, according to LTC Uriah Orland, a spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The majority have been recovered, he said. That total compares to the at least 2,000 firearms that AP had reported for 2010 through 2020, a tally was based on the militarys own data, internal memoranda, criminal investigation case files and other sources.
Cases are surging in parts of the U.S., particularly the Northeast and Midwest, though its not always clear which variant is driving the upswing.

In New York City, where the mayor has said the new variant is already in full force, a spike is scuttling Broadway shows and spurring long lines at testing centers, but so far new hospitalizations and deaths are averaging well below their spring 2020 peak.

After reprieve, NYC is rattled by a stunning virus spike NEW YORK (AP)  Just a couple of weeks ago, New York City seemed like a relative bright spot in the U.S. coronavirus struggle. Now it's a hot spot, confronting a dizzying spike in cases, scramble for testing, quandary over a major event and exhausting sense of deja vu.

The city is also weighing what to do with its famous New Year's Eve bash in Times Square. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said a decision will be made this week about whether the event will come back full strength  with attendees providing proof of vaccination  as he promised in November. Last years bash was limited to small groups of essential workers.

Much about the omicron coronavirus variant remains unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness. Early studies suggest the vaccinated will need a booster shot for the best chance at preventing an omicron infection but even without the extra dose, vaccination still should offer strong protection against severe illness and death.
Webb released a portion of the report, including its major conclusions, in 2020. The full report released Monday documents interviews with Foxx, dozens of employees in her office, Chicago police officers and friends and family members of Smollett.

Foxx had recused herself from the Smollett case before it was dropped. She told Webb's team that she was surprised when all 16 counts against Smollett were dropped, and that she believed he should have been required to admit some wrongdoing.

Foxx also said she believed prosecutors in her office wanted to get this guy out of town because of the media attention that accompanied the case.

Foxx later said in a media statement that the case was dropped just like thousands of other similar cases, which Webb concluded was not true.

The fact that such a significant mischaracterization could be asserted without sufficient vetting ... is unacceptable for an office that must be transparent and maintain public confidence, Webb's report states.
Brad Belke pondered the question.

He replied, I dont even know where to start.

The question: What are some of the funding needs for 15-90 Search and Rescue, the regional volunteer organization that responds to emergencies when most people would rather stay home.

Our emergency equipment vehicle is over 30 years old and was received as a donation from a local gold mine after it was retired, Belke said. Our SnoCat is over 50 years old and was a donation from the power company when they retired it. None of our snowmobiles is less than 10 years old.

Theres more.

We trained with the American Academy of Surgeons to respond to an active shooter situation, but we have never been able to afford the training materials for refreshers or the medical supplies to facilitate a response, he said. One bandage is approximately $55 and a tourniquet is $25.

Belke has served as commander of 15-90 Search and Rescue for 25 years. The non-profit was organized in 1963 and is run solely by volunteers. It has received some money from Butte-Silver Bow Countys sheriffs office and has relied on fund raising.

But Belke said its time to seek support from taxpayers and local government by asking for a one mill levy to fund the organization.

We followed up and determined that all the search and rescues we could get in contact with from communities our size or larger had already gone to the mill levy, Belke said.

Thats true of search and rescue organizations in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, Beaverhead County and Gallatin County, among others.

J.P. Gallagher, chief executive for Butte-Silver Bow, said he supports the quest by 15-90 Search and Rescue to secure one mill in funding.

This one mill is needed to make sure that this essential emergency service is available for our county, Gallagher said. In speaking with the sheriff about supporting this one mill, he stated that his department does not have the ability to do what our local 15-90 Search and Rescue does.

We live in an area that promotes outdoor recreation and continues to be more and more popular, Gallagher added. This in itself leads to accidents, lost hikers, hunters, campers, snowmobilers and ATV riders.

15-90 Search and Rescue will need to present its case to the Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners to get the one mill levy before the voters.

Belke is on the council agenda for Dec. 29 to make a presentation. This will be the first step in a resolution process that could put the mill levy on the June ballot.

Chris Boyer is executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, based in Virginia. He said most search and rescue organizations nationwide depend on fund raising for support. He said Maine has a fee on snowmobiling to support search and rescue teams and other states add a similar fee to hunting and fishing licenses.

But he said liability concerns and the need to keep training current are two key drivers for seeking taxpayer support. He said FEMA has pushed for a standardization of training.

Boyer added that turnover can bedevil search and rescue organizations that get volunteers trained and then lose them.

Training is critical, Belke said. In the 1980s, when there was Disaster and Emergency Services money available for first aid training, approximately 70% of the group had advanced certification, such as first responder or EMT. In 2021, that number is closer to 20%.

The decline is tied also to the cost of insurance for an EMT, which has skyrocketed over the last 20 years, he said.

Today, 15-90 Search and Rescue needs to train for and be prepared to respond to a host of events to assist primary responders, Belke said. Those events can include: mass casualty events, chemical spills, avalanches, wildland fires, active shooters and more.

In years past, 15-90 Search and Rescue has responded to lost hunters, lost skiers, downed aircraft, avalanche victims, drowning victims, lost children and nursing home walkaways.

Gallagher said the regional search and rescue organization makes it safer to do what many Montanans value so highly  get outdoors.

Without this critical, trained group of people our local outdoor recreational areas would be much more dangerous to venture out into, he said. Our local volunteer group deserves the support of the taxpayers.

Gallagher said the many lives saved through the years by 15-90 Search and Rescue is justification enough for him to support the one mill in funding.

The current value of one mill for the city-county certification is $72,995. An increase of one mill would add about $1.35 to the annual tax on a home valued at $100,000 and about $2.70 for a home valued at $200,000.

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Lacey Starcevich works in a job in Butte that she feels has a purpose. She volunteers with Narcotics Anonymous, she is a homeowner, she has a healthy, happy two-year-old boy, and is expecting a second. When you ask her about any of these things, she beams with pride. Not only because each one is something to be proud of for anyone, but because three years ago, she saw her future as something much bleaker.

Three years ago, if you wouldve asked me, I wouldve still thought Id be on the street and using, she said, Im humble about it because not a lot of people get to make it out of that life  either you keep using, you die, or you end up in jail.

When Starcevich found out she was pregnant with Raiden, she was scared and sad and actively using drugs.

I didnt know how I was going to provide a life for my baby or if I was going to keep my baby and I was sad because I wasnt in a position to even provide the life that I knew a child deserved.

She sought obstetrics care at St. James Healthcare. Thats where social care manager Joslin Hubbard met her through a program she helped spearhead  the Meadowlark Initiative.

From the moment I met Lacey, I knew she was special, said Hubbard. She had a goal in mind, she knew what she wanted to do, she just really put the work in and she found it inside herself to you know, reach out, to find services to continue with them.

The Meadowlark Initiative is a program that was launched with money from the Montana Healthcare Foundation just over three years ago. Along with 10 other hospitals and health centers around the state, St. James is a participant in the program. It's a re-branding of the Perinatal Behavioral Health Initiative started in 2018 by the Montana Healthcare Foundation in partnership with the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.

The programs goal is to screen all pregnant women who come to St. James for substance use, mental health, food insecurities, domestic violence, and other social determinants of health. Then once Hubbard identifies where the needs are, she points them to appropriate services in the community and also continues to provide them support from the clinic and the hospital.

I think its so important because so many of these women and families dont know where to go, who to call or what agency can provide whatever resource they might need, said Hubbard.

Starcevich said she wouldnt be where she is today without the Meadowlark Initiative.

It made things a little easier in the beginning because I knew there was help out there. I knew that if I was to keep Raiden, they were going to provide me with resources to be able to achieve that goal. They provided me with my first look into treatment.

Her son, Raiden, is now two-years-old and full of energy. He loves to jam out with his mom and dad using a plastic drum set, a xylophone, and a tambourine. He zips around his room from toy to toy, pausing to get his nose lovingly wiped by his mom then hes off to dance with Mickey Mouse.

In the past three years, Starcevich got married, became a homeowner, a successful employee, and helps others who are in a similar situation she once found herself in.

She works in patient access at St. James and now sees Hubbard at work. Starcevich says that her story came full circle because it was in that emergency room where she found out she was pregnant with Raiden.

She likes her job and feels that by doing it, shes making a difference in her community.

About a year ago, she was H&I trained, which stands for hospitals and institutions. Starcevich is certified to go inside hospitals and jails to lead meetings for Narcotics Anonymous. She says they are the ones who might be taking their very first steps toward recovery.

I remember feeling the way that they are feeling and its always what I wanted to do was to give back.

For everything Ive done wrong in my past, Im trying to make amends by helping the addict who still suffers, said Starcevich.

Starcevich is pregnant with a second son and this time around, instead of sadness and fear, she is experiencing excitement and pride.

The experience is different because this time. Im prepared. Im in a position to be welcoming a baby into my life. But everything that Ive been through has set me up for the success that Im experiencing today to be able to welcome this baby into the world, she said.

Its been such an honor and its amazing to witness these women and the journeys they go on,'' Hubbard said. "Lacey is a tremendous success story and shes just one of the women that this initiative has helped.

Hubbard estimates that she met with 250 women every year for the past three years. The level of assistance can vary. Sometimes its one conversation about postpartum depression leading a mother to enjoy those early months a little more, knowing that its normal. Sometimes is helping someone get connected to WIC so she can spend more time with her baby instead of working an extra shift to be able to afford formula.

We talk about really changing things in our community  it starts with one baby at a time and, I think, here at St. James, weve really figured that out and we recognize the importance of that and its really incredible, said Hubbard. Its not just St. James that does this, its a community and the partners we work with and without having good relationships with all these amazing resources in our community, we couldnt do these things.

Tanner Gooch is communications manager for St. James Healthcare in Butte.

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I am rounding out my first term in the Montana Legislature and have spent the past year thinking about hope: where we find hope, how we create it, what is both feeding and eroding it, and the future of hope within our democratic institutions. I am writing to share one of the conversations on hope Ive been having with myself.

I recently returned from a legislative leadership academy with a bipartisan group of state lawmakers from across the West. We gathered to learn about the history of state Legislatures, how to negotiate and build consensus, communicate effectively, and find common ground.

We also spent time together studying the history of democracies  the Athenian democracies and Greek republics  all of which came to an end after several centuries, driven, in part, by disregard for political norms and violent rhetoric. These history lessons made me think about Montanas 2021 legislative session.

As a Democrat in the deep minority, I watched how our caucus was marginalized and sidelined without adherence to process. Over the course of the session, I imagined that if Democrats were in the majority, we would treat the minority party with the graciousness and integrity we did not receive. But in conversations with my colleagues from the legislative academy, Republicans in the minorities in Oregon, Washington, and Colorado, they told me their Democratic colleagues treated them just as we were treated.

These stories make me feel disheartened. We are working within a system that dehumanizes people and belittles efforts toward kindness and recognition of our humanness. I am disappointed in our bipartisan behavior towards the other that seems to come as a reflex of unexamined power. I also recognize thoughtfulness around power opens up space to include everyone in the work of building an ethic of love in politics. This work takes discipline and a caring for each other and the integrity of our democracy.

It is challenging to run a campaign on a platform of curiosity, generosity, middle-ground, and thoughtfulness. The messaging doesnt come easy. This kind of campaigning demands more time, attentiveness, listening, asking the questions, and a rejection of the reductive soundbites and slogans we are accustomed to in politics. But campaigns built on disparaging or distancing ourselves from each other make it hard to serve with a spirit of partnership and decency.

Despite all of that, a beautiful thing about politics is that the closer we get to the people, moving from national to state to local public service, the more our partisan divides diminish and the easier it is to find common ground, shared values, and consensus. I find hope in We, the people. I find hope in public servants who are meeting people where they are and doing the work that directly improves the lives of those in their communities. I will continue to search for hope in democracy by showing up with love, integrity, and humanness.

Alice Buckley represents House District 63.

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ARCHIVED - Spain warns UK against unlawful construction on Gibraltar



Gibraltar has been creating landfills to reclaim additional territory from the sea

The government of Spain has once again voiced its objection to the UK to any construction work in Gibraltar on spaces not specified by the 1715 Treaty of Utrecht and has claimed that the communitys expansion over Spanish waters is contrary to International Law and has a negative environmental impact in areas of special sensitivity.

Under the Treaty, which was signed over 300 years ago, Spain ceded the Rock to the United Kingdom but the territory was limited to the city and castle of Gibraltar, together with its port, defences and fortresses. It did not include the waters surrounding the British colony. Despite this, regional officials have been reclaiming land from the sea for years for various urban projects, including the ambitious Cape Vantage endeavour, a considerable expansion of the Gibraltar territory for sporting and leisure activities.

The government in Spain has been opposing Cape Vantage since 2012 and has called on the UK to provide an environmental impact report as soon as possible.

Gibraltar has been expanding by creating landfills  large tongues of land reclaimed from the sea by filling the area with rubble and debris. At present, another megaproject is in the process of being built: Las Terrazas del Centenario de Hassan, six huge towers containing 665 homes, a promenade, through road, car park and shopping areas.

Image: Archive
Now you go in for the kill shot, the kill shot with an ambush, deadly, because he doesn't see it coming, Watters said.

He suggested an interviewer say, you know why people don't trust you, don't you?' Oh, he is dead. He's dead. He's done."

The interviewer should make sure the encounter is filmed and the footage given to conservative media, Watters said. It's a confrontation technique that has been used elsewhere in conservative politics by the group Project Veritas.

Just make sure it's legal, Watters said.

A partial clip of Watters' speech, beginning with the kill shot quote, spread around the internet, with some commentators suggesting that he had advocated assassinating Fauci.

During an interview with Fauci on Tuesday, CNN's John Berman referred to Watters as a Fox News entertainer, and asked about the comments without playing the clip, saying it was dangerous. Berman referred to a rhetorical kill shot, and asked Fauci how much that language concerned him.

Fauci noted that for two years, he's been encouraging people to protect themselves against COVID-19 by practicing good public health practices and get vaccinated.
BERLIN (AP)  Germany announced new restrictions Tuesday that will begin after Christmas to slow the spread of the new omicron variant, rules that will fall short of a full lockdown but will include contact restrictions even for vaccinated people.

I can understand anyone who doesnt want to hear about the coronavirus, mutations and new virus variants, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a press conference Tuesday evening. But we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to this next wave.

Among the new rules are limiting private gatherings to 10 people, closing nightclubs nationwide and having large events like soccer matches held without an in-person audience. The restrictions will go into effect nationwide on Dec. 28, although states can implement the measures sooner.

Scholz said the government decided to wait until after Christmas to implement new national restrictions because family-focused holidays such as Christmas and Easter have not proven to be major drivers of the pandemic." But he said restrictions on New Year's celebrations are necessary to keep Germany's health system from being overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases.

This is no longer the time for parties and social evenings in big groups, Scholz said.
MUSCATINE  Dr. Zachary Rasmussen was not among the people from several area health departments who issued a plea to the public to take their health seriously this holiday season, but like them, he is very worried about what he has seen in the last few weeks.

Rasmussen, a frontline caregiver who works in the emergency room at UnityPoint Health-Trinity Muscatine, said COVID-19 cases are at the highest they have been since the surge in November 2020. He also said the beds in the Trinity hospitals are full, with many occupied by someone with a severe case of COVID-19.

Unfortunately we are not where we hoped we would be a year after the vaccinations started coming out, he said. During the holidays people are expected to interact with more people than other times of the year. We are starting to reach a point at the hospital where we are starting to have full beds and a significant number of those are from COVID.

A slight surge was reported in August, but the latest surge seemed to begin shortly after Thanksgiving.
According to that language, the compensation board shall set the sheriffs salary so that it is comparable to salaries paid to professional law enforcement administrators and command officers of the state patrol, the division of criminal investigation of the (Iowa) department of public safety and city police chiefs employed by cities of similar population to the population of the county.

Hammer presented a table that listed those salaries and at the end of the table pointed out that based on the median salary from those sources, the compensation boards recommendation for Turners salary should be $108,458.

Former Louisa County Supervisor Dave Wilson, who represents the board of supervisors on the compensation board, said that was a non-starter for him. Wilson said he had consulted with an attorney who had disagreed the new law required the compensation board to adopt a median salary.

The other members of the compensation indicated they agreed that large of an increase for Turner was unlikely and opted instead for a compromise suggested by board chair Jay Schweitzer, representative for Sturgell.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  Grassy yards would be banned at all new housing and commercial developments in the Las Vegas metro area as officials try to expand water use limitations and the region prepares for a hotter and drier future.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority passed resolutions on Monday to prohibit the yards and the use of evaporative cooling machines, also known as swamp coolers, at the new developments. Swamp coolers are used by many people instead of traditional air conditioners, but use more water.

The moves build on current limitations for water use in the Las Vegas region, which is undergoing strong growth. They must be approved by local governments to go into effect.

Were taking some steps that Im unaware of having any precedent, Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsminger told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  New Mexico's Democratic governor on Monday renewed her call for state legislators in the major oil producing state to approve requirements for fuel producers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement that New Mexico must pass a clean fuel standard in the upcoming legislative session.

The governor has discretion over which nonbudgetary initiatives are heard during the 30-day legislative session that starts Jan. 18.

Earlier this year, a Democrat-sponsored bill to impose low-carbon fuel standards stalled in the state House of Representatives after winning Senate's endorsement on a party-line vote with Republicans in opposition. The proposal would not have applied to retailers, including gas stations.

Similar programs have been implemented in California and Oregon. Low-carbon fuel standards are aimed at reducing greenhouse emission in the transportation sector by going beyond vehicle fuel efficiency requirements and setting benchmarks for fuel producers or importers or both.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  The trial for a truck driver charged with causing the deaths of seven motorcyclists in northern New Hampshire in 2019 is now expected to start in July  more than three years after the crash  to give the defense more time to find and work with a crash reconstruction expert.

Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 25, of West Springfield, Massachusetts, was days away from jury selection in November when his lawyers filed a motion saying they could no longer present their accident reconstruction expert at trial.

Their decision was based on information prosecutors provided to them about the expert's prior employment with the Massachusetts State Police that referenced disciplinary actions. The expert had been working with the defense since August 2019.

We've experienced significant difficulty in identifying an expert that's qualified, has appropriate resources and is willing to accept the case," defense lawyer Jay Duguay told Coos County Superior Court Judge Peter Bornstein during a status conference on the case Tuesday.
Accessories claimed to protect people from the dangers of 5G networks have been found to be radioactive.

The Dutch authority for nuclear safety and radiation protection (ANVS) is discouraging people from using the products as they could cause harm with long-term use.

Products found to be emitting radiation include a childrens bracelet, branded as Magnetix Wellness, and an Energy Armor sleeping mask.

The consumer products tested contain radioactive materials and therefore continuously emit ionizing radiation, thereby exposing the wearer, the agency stated.

The ANVS warned that any Quantum Pendant and negative ion jewellery items be stored away safely and that owners should wait for instructions on how to return them.

Dont wear it anymore, put it away safely and wait for the return instructions, the ANVS said.

The ANVS further explained that prolonged exposure to ionizing radiation could cause harmful health effects.

Conspiracy theories have created a demand for anti-5G devices and there is no evidence to support the efficacy of these products.

These products are elaborate theatrics and completely ineffective, Dublin City University assistant professor of biomedical physics David Grimes told Digital Trends.

The ANVS has informed all known vendors of these products in the Netherlands that their sale is prohibited and that they must stop trading in these products immediately, the Dutch regulator said.

There is no evidence behind claims that radio signals from 5G networks are harmful, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) stating that the technology does not pose a threat to human health.

The way radiofrequency energy affects the human body is by heating our tissue.

However, the WHO also confirmed that radiofrequency exposure levels from current technologies result in negligible temperature rise in the human body.

Despite this, there have still been attacks on 5G transmitters.

Some conspiracy theories even claim the reason the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus started in China was that the country launched widespread 5G services, while others have argued that Covid-19 symptoms are not caused by the virus but instead by exposure to 5G frequencies.

These claims have been shown to be fallacious.

Now read: Fourth wave in Gauteng may have peaked
Julie Savoia, principal designer/owner at Shawback Design in Napa, didnt originally plan to work in the design industry.

She graduated from San Francisco State University with a journalism degree, but then pivoted into clothing design, started a makers market and shortly after having her first child she moved into interiors.

I do feel like interior design is another form of storytelling, Savoia said. And with her job, I get to tell the story of peoples lives.

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1. What was your first job?

Bagged groceries at the local market. I was 15 years old living in a small rural Idaho town.

2. What job would you like to try/not try?

Try: Screenwriter.

Not try: App developer.

3. Whats the worst job you ever had?

A non-profit focused on protecting the environment  door to door trying to convince people to care, it was disheartening  I lasted one day.

4. What is the biggest challenge your business has faced?

Currently, it is the supply and demand issues, along with the challenges of the shipping industry that is adding a lot of extra challenges for us. Furniture and material prices are going up, deliveries are delayed  which means our project timelines are moving targets.

5. Who do you most admire in the business world?

I hang on to every piece of advice from Sara Blakely (founder of Spanx).

6. If you could change one thing about the design industry, what would it be?

The waste produced by construction and design  this industry needs to clean up its act. We need more sustainable design and building materials. As an interior design business, we have been more focused on sustainable sourcing.

7. Whats on your to-do list?

Travel to Portugal to explore their design communities.

8. What is one thing you hope to accomplish in your lifetime that you havent yet?

Id like to write a memoir about my family history.

9. Whats something people might be surprised to know about you?

I used to be a raver in the 90s  and I still love EDM.

10. If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?

Sitting beside a wild river in Idaho.

Shawback Design is located at 1215 West St. in Napa, 707-226-2776, shawbackdesign.com

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Writing is the most obvious part of my job, but I spend even more time listening.

I play back interviews Ive recorded, kicking myself for asking dumb questions or not asking obvious ones. I rewatch City Council meetings, zeroing in on the perfect quote.

Ive been listening to the voices of St. Helena for 16 years, and Ive developed some favorites  voices I never get tired of, even if the context is as dry as a design review hearing. These are voices I could listen to for an entire audiobook.

The St. Helena Chamber of Commerce handed out their annual awards last week, but why should they have all the fun? Here are my awards for the top 10 St. Helena voices, each paired with a potential audiobook that matches the speakers voice and personality.

10. Eric Sklar, businessman and former city councilmember

Eric is the reason I discovered the speed control setting on my voice recorder. Hes easily St. Helenas fastest talker, but also one of its most articulate. Best paired with nonfiction about business-savvy guys making a killing off complicated financial transactions.

Eric, Im assigning you The Big Short by Michael Lewis (and I'm setting my audiobook player on 0.8x speed).

9. Marielle Coeytaux-Britton, choir leader/pilot/anti-bullying consultant

Youve probably heard Marielles marvelous singing voice, but her conversational voice is just as musical. That hint of a French accent lends it a cosmopolitan elan.

Vladimir Nabokovs literary funhouse Pale Fire isnt an easy fit for the audiobook format, but Marielle should give it a try.

8. Scott Snowden, mediator and retired judge

Scotts voice is inseparable from his personality: Witty, exuberant, whip-smart, by turns legal scholar and class clown. Is it possible for a voice to have a twinkle in its eye? Because Scotts does.

Cowboy hat? Keen sense of justice? Scott was born to narrate Charles Portis True Grit.

7. Kay Philippakis, land use attorney and former planning commissioner

One of the two voices that inspired this column (Im saving the other one for the end). Smooth, melodious, with impeccable diction and expressiveness, Kays voice is best paired with something engaging but intellectually hefty.

Kay would be perfect for one of my favorite novels, The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard.

6. Cary Shott, former planning commissioner and Star reporter

Between Kay and Cary, late-00s Planning Commission meetings were a pleasure to hear. Carys voice has a touch of her native Appalachia, and its expressiveness and warmth would be a good fit for sharply drawn, larger-than-life characters.

Im giving Cary my doorstop-sized The Complete Stories of Flannery OConnor.

5. Shannon Kuleto, Star editorial board

One of the perks of being Shannons friend is that I get to hear her talk a lot. Her voice is lively, expressive and chameleonic  she likes to imitate other peoples accents and speech patterns, and her impressions are always spot-on. Shes also smart as heck.

These arent easy assignments, but Im confident Shannon could capture the vibrant personalities, witty dialogue and intricate plot of Hilary Mantels Wolf Hall trilogy, or the epic sweep of Robert A. Caros The Years of Lyndon Johnson.

4. Marcus Robbins, jeweler

Marcus voice is comparable to Kay Philippakis  flawless enunciation, carefully modulated tone, and as silky as one of his trademark ties. It's the kind of voice you hear on NPR. Its also emotionally expressive and sincere; when he asks how youre doing, you sense that he genuinely cares.

Id love to hear Marcus narrate the funny, humane and deeply sad stories of George Saunders Tenth of December.

3. Chris Hartley, police chief and Marine Corps veteran

Theres a concept in the military called command voice, and instead of defining it I simply advise you to listen to Chief Hartley. So confident and authoritative that you have to resist the urge to salute when he greets you. He used to scare me to death until I got to know what a decent guy he is.

Far be it from me to give the chief any orders, but I cant think of a better narrator for Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden.

2. Mary Allen, school administrator

This isnt an obvious choice, but listen to her and youll see what I mean. Some voices are so frenzied that your pulse ticks up a notch just listening to them. And then there are voices like Marys. Deep, soothing, cool, cerebral but empathetic, oozing competence and refinement, Marys voice is the aural equivalent of a luxury car.

Mary talks the way cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson writes  precisely, elegantly, with a wonderful sense of texture  so Im pairing her with his stylish novel Pattern Recognition.

1. Carl Doumani, vintner

This is the crown jewel of St. Helena voices. You might remember Carls quixotic (ha ha, get it?) attempts to develop his Mills Lane property despite obstacles involving drainage, access, etc. During months of fruitless and otherwise tedious Planning Commission hearings, I was continually enthralled by Carls rich, rumbling basso profundo. You know how Tolkien gushed about the beauty of the phrase cellar door? Carl used to make bioswale sound just as mellifluous.

Carls voice could handle just about anything: Dickens, Garcia Marquez, Harry Potter. Im nominating him for the granddaddy of all audiobook assignments, the highest honor I can bestow on a St. Helena voice: Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings.

You can reach Jesse Duarte at 967-6803 or jduarte@sthelenastar.com.

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Fair Housing Napa Valley staffers have had their hands full during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Along with other nonprofits On the Move, UpValley Family Centers and Bay Area Legal Aid, FHNV has been helping Napas landlords and tenants fill out lengthy state rental relief applications to reimburse back rent that went unpaid earlier in the pandemic.

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Thats because the state enacted a moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent so people wouldnt lose their homes  and potentially amplify the pandemic  after they lost jobs and income.

Under the moratorium, however, back rent still accrued. So, to prevent a wave of evictions once the moratorium expired on Oct. 1, the state aimed to pay off 100% of back rent for tenants who make below 80% of the area median income.

But since the state reimbursement program had a low application and payout rate months after it was established, FHNV and the other organizations have been helping Napas landlords and tenants apply for that aid through a program that started up in July. The application rate for the state program has since picked up considerably in Napa and throughout the state, though the payout rate is still lagging.

Many of the applicants most in need of financial assistance face language and technology barriers that make it more difficult for them to complete the necessary forms or to learn about the relief program in the first place, said Pablo Zatarain, executive director of FHNV.

In that sense, typical work the organization has continued to carry out falls directly in line with the tasks theyve taken on during the pandemic. FHNV largely focuses on Fair Housing work  which essentially means investigating discrimination in housing  and landlord/tenant disputes, Zatarain said.

In housing, you have fair housing: dealing with discrimination, segregation, equality, civil rights, Zatarain said. And you have landlord-tenant issues, which is dealing with the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords alike and ensuring compliance. They can often overlap.

The organization also helps with mobile home-related disputes, and disaster relief and support as well, said Pattie James, program manager for FHNV.

Were trying to level the playing field any way that we can, Zatarain said.

Many housing issues can easily be considered fair housing issues if they connect to civil rights in some way, Zatarain said. He said a simple example is a landlord evicting a tenant on the basis of their race.

Another example would be a landlord attempting to restrict pit bulls from their property when one of their tenants has a pit bull thats an emotional support animal, according to James.

Theyd pay a lot of money to get legal advice if theyd hired a lawyer, James said. Whereas I can just quote them part of the Fair Housing Act and explain that it would be disability discrimination, you cant restrict a breed.

Fair housing also extends into broader contexts, such as discriminatory lending practices, according to Zatarain. That includes looking into events like Hurricane Katrina, which highlighted housing inequality in New Orleans because the areas that were hit the hardest were predominately the segregated Black communities, he said.

This agency and a lot of fair housing agencies have adapted over time to not only continue to address ongoing issues with housing discrimination  which has unfortunately continued  but really the context in which theyre occurring, Zatarain said.

Zatarain said that, before joining FHNV in 2013, he worked for the National Fair Housing Alliance. He traveled around the country and, with the help of local fair housing groups, investigated real estate-owned properties  properties banks had foreclosed on and now owned  and how they were being maintained depending on what neighborhood they were in.

We found a huge pattern of discriminatory banking, if you can call it that, based on the way that a number of very big lenders were maintaining their portfolios, Zatarain said.

Fair Housing Napa Valley is somewhat unique among fair housing agencies in that it also works to resolve general landlord-tenant conflicts. Thats a big deal, James said, because about 75% of cases the organization takes on end up being landlord-tenant issues.

That could include habitability issues with an apartment, a tenant not being able to pay rent or needing rental relief, or landlords and tenants wanting to know responsibilities and rights with pandemic-era protections, among much else, she said.

Staffers at FHNV help people understand relevant housing laws and bring them to other agencies  like Bay Area Legal Aid  if tenants or landlords need specific legal or financial assistance, James said.

Theres a huge number of landlord-tenant issues, James said. When COVID hit, I think every renter in Napa called us. You can read what these protections do or what theyre supposed to protect but understanding them and applying them to your situation is a whole different story.

Napas housing issues have much crossover with the Bay Areas housing crisis at large, Zatarain said. Rental prices are high, the supply of housing is low and demand continues to rise. Everything that happens related to housing in Napa, he said, needs to be considered with the context of low housing stock.

Julia DeNatale, the Napa Valley Community Foundations vice president of community impact, said the foundation sees housing as the primary driver of poverty in Napa County.

What I would say impacts Napa the most is, because its isolated geographically, you really feel the shortage of housing stock, Zatarain said. And so everything that occurs with that as an underlying factor, knowing that this isnt a larger city where you can say: Im sorry you had to vacate but theres another property available for you. Thats just not the case here.

FHNV currently employees seven full-time staffers, Zatarain added. Most of the employees act primarily as case managers, handling issues that come forward day-to-day, providing support when clients call.

Access is as much a part of our jobs as knowing legal rights and knowing what the protections are, Zatarain said. If were doing something to promote access then we are supporting a vulnerable community in a more specific way than just education. Not that education isnt valuable, you need education, but sometimes you also need that advocacy to get you over the hump of where youre trying to go and were very grateful to be a part of that.

Fair Housing Napa Valley To donate to Fair Housing Napa Valley, visit: https://www.candogiveguide.org/campaigns/fair-housing-napa-valley-fhnv/ To learn more about FHNV, visit: https://napafairhousing.org/

You can reach Edward Booth at (707) 256-2213.

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A tuneful holiday tradition extending back nearly a half-century again serenaded Napa shoppers on Sunday, after a one-year interruption caused by the pandemic.

More than a dozen trumpet, trombone, French horn and tuba players from the North Bay gathered for the 48th annual Sounds of Christmas Brass, a 2 -hour collection of holiday carols and melodies performed at the South Napa Marketplace. Conducted by the events organizer Peter Altamura, the impromptu band treated late-season Christmas shoppers with a variety of standards including It Came Upon a Midnight Clear and Silent Night, as well as older pieces like The Marie-Golde by the late 16th-century English composer Anthony Holborne, the Napa concerts traditional opening number.

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Originally staged in 1974 at Dwight Murray Plaza and later held in other locations, Sounds of Christmas Brass was moved to the Soscol Avenue shopping center in 2019. The concerts December 2020 edition was canceled during a surge in COVID-19 cases that led California and Napa County to tighten restrictions on crowd sizes.

It hurt not to be able to do it last year; it was a hard decision for me not to go, said Kim Rodriguez of Fairfield, a hornist and member of the Solano Winds who opted out of the 2020 event before its cancellation. This is a delight  its great to be here again and see everybody.

Napa Christmas brass concert canceled for first time in 47-year history after COVID-19 restrictions tightened New restrictions after a surge in coronavirus cases have forced organizers to call off Napa's Sounds of Christmas Brass for the first time since its 1974 inception.

Rodriguez, who has performed at Sounds of Christmas Brass since 2013, was grateful to have the chance to play for in-person audiences ahead of another potential surge in COVID-19 cases, and her uncertainty about group gatherings in the near future. Im feeling like this is the thing Im going to be leaning on, she said during an intermission at the Napa concert.

Originally created to raise money for Napa High School band members, the brass concert has served since 1976 as a benefit for the Napa Salvation Army, with a red collection kettle set up next to musicians.

You can reach Howard Yune at 530-763-2266 or hyune@napanews.com

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For its second time in a row, the Napa County Farm Bureau has been named County of the Year by the California Farm Bureau, celebrating the organizations growth and impact on ag policy during 2021. The group also won awards for policy implementation, leadership, ag education, membership, and public relations, and was highlighted for increasing its reach in Napa County and beyond.

Since joining the Farm Bureau in 2017, now-CEO Ryan Klobas has upended the groups mission and dived deeper into the political realm, and these resulting changes are ultimately part of the reason why the CFB decided to award the bureau again.

Ryan and his team were key in drafting Senate Bill 11, providing wildfire insurance coverage for ag throughout Napa Valley and California, said Jamie Johansson, president of the CFB. The Farm Bureaus membership in Napa County has more than doubled, the program of community work has dramatically expanded, and their professional political operation representing Napa Valley ag is second to none.

Having won state County of the Year for two consecutive years in a row is a testament to the significant work the Napa County Farm Bureau has undertaken and the immense successes it has achieved.

Klobas and the rest of the organization were thrilled for this recognition and were able to celebrate the win again at their annual holiday reception on Dec. 17. However, their sights are already set on summer 2022 and the loads of work ahead of them.

While the passage of SB11 was a huge success for the bureau, and California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has ordered the first increase in coverage limits in fire-prone rural areas in 25 years, the organization wont be slowing down.

In 2022, I think we have to talk about drought and climate change, and honestly we have to talk about a lot of political decisions that need to be made, said Klobas. This is a special election having two supervisors retiring, and depending on who goes on the board, that could change the composition of the Board of Supes.

Since the Napa County Board of Supervisors makes decisions regarding land use and the general makeup of the valley, this June 7 primary is particularly important for local farmers.

Part of agricultures education of the community is telling our story and getting it out there, said Klobas. Every county in California is very different, they have their thing, and Napa Countys thing is agriculture  That's who we are, so the more we keep telling that story, the better.

And one of the ways we can do that is through The Register.

For the week of Dec. 19 through 26, the Farm Bureau has partnered to provide free unlimited access to the Napa Valley Register website, noting the importance of education and community information sharing.

One of the things we focus on is sustainable agriculture, so how we ensure this for generations to come, and when you live in Napa County, I think you have some responsibility to agriculture, so I think the more people understand that, the better, said Klobas. That is giving back to the community  Educating the community.

You can reach Sam Jones at 707-256-2221 and sjones@napanews.com.

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A California mentoring program for potential future judges includes a Napa County judge as one of its leaders in the North Bay region.

Judge Monique Langhorne of the Napa County Superior Court is a North Bay workgroup member for the states Judicial Mentoring Program, jointly created by the court systems of Napa, Solano, Sonoma, and Marin counties. The other regional leaders include Solano County Judge Christine Carringer, Sonoma County Judge Chris Honigsberg, and Marin County Judge Andrew Sweet, according to a news release the program published Thursday.

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The North Bay project is a partnership with the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in July launched the court mentoring program  which sections for appeals and trial courts  with the goal of helping create a more inclusive judiciary.

Our states remarkable diversity is a point of pride and strength that I am committed to advancing at every level of state government, Newsom said in the statement. This mentor program supports our efforts to identify the best and brightest judicial candidates from throughout the state, contributing to a stronger, more inclusive bench to better serve all Californians.

Judges serving in the North Bays regional collaboration will communicate across sectors of the legal communityincluding bar associations, nonprofit legal organizations, local firms, and sole practitionersto support lawyers who are considering service on local trial courts. The program will work to identify and provide judicial mentors for those lawyers, and provide information about the judicial appointment process, answer questions about application and vetting, and make recommendations to improve suitability for appointment.

The process of applying, being vetted for, and ultimately selected for a judgeship can be cumbersome and daunting, Langhorne said in the release. Our goal is to help qualified individuals interested in serving as a bench officer, both as a supportive resource and mentor, as they navigate through the judicial application process. In doing so, well be working collaboratively to encourage a diverse group of candidates to pursue public service as part of the state judiciary.

A Vallejo native, Langhorne served Napa County in Child Support Services and the District Attorneys Office before becoming a county court commissioner in 2006, overseeing cases including restraining orders, child custody, misdemeanor arraignments, drug court, and traffic violations. She was appointed to the Napa County bench in 2018 by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and was elected to a full four-year term as judge in March 2020.
EU takes note of Kazakhstan's appeal for help to CSTO

Shooting in Kazakhstan's Alma-Ata

CSTO Secretary General discuss Kazakhstan situation with Armenian PM

Yerevan-Aktau flight scheduled for today is canceled

Kazakhstan suspended entry of foreign nationals into the country

Lavrov supports efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia

President of Artsakh attends Christmas Holy Liturgy

Yerevan-Aktau flight scheduled for today is canceled

Saakashvili welcomed protests in Kazakhstan

Gibka-S missile systems to be delivered to Russian forces in 2022

Lavrov and Cavusoglu discuss the situation in the Caucasus

First plane with Russian CSTO contingent arrives in Almaty

Georgia PM: I congratulate our Armenian compatriots, brotherly Armenian people on Christmas

Russian peacekeepers secure entry to Karabakh for 5,000 vehicles carrying pilgrims

Armenia sends about 70 servicemen to Kazakhstan

Politico: US Senate unlikely to approve sanctions against Nord Stream 2

1 more person dies of coronavirus in Artsakh

134 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

12 law enforcement officers killed in Almaty

Razm.info: At least 78 casualties in Azerbaijan armed forces become known in 2021

Armenia MFA on Kazakhstan events: We are convinced it is not way for solving political issues

CSTO sends peacekeepers to Kazakhstan

Armenia President: May your hearts and homes be filled with peace, goodness

More than 1,000 people injured in Kazakhstan unrest

Catholicos of All Armenians serving Christmas Divine Liturgy

MFA: No Armenia citizens at the moment among those affected by Kazakhstan events

Blinken, Israel FM discuss Russia, Ukraine, Iran

Christmas and Revelation: Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates Nativity and Baptism of Christ

Dozens neutralized during attempts to attack administrative buildings of Kazakhstans Almaty

Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan leaders discuss situation in Kazakhstan

Kremlin website posts Armenia PM statement on CSTO decision to send peacekeepers to Kazakhstan

Armenia PM: CSTO will send peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan

Airport of Kazakhstans Almaty freed during special operations

8 police and military killed in Kazakhstan: 317 more wounded

Protesters in Kazakhstan tear down Nazarbayev's monument

Special representatives of Armenia and Turkey meeting to take place on January 14 in Moscow

Azerbaijani defense ministry denies news of servicemen deaths

State of emergency introduced throughout Kazakhstan

EU calls on all sides in Kazakhstan to avoid escalation and violence

Azerbaijan starts receiving Turkmen gas through Iran

Prime Minister Pashinyan congratulates Armenians on Christmas

Protesters seize Almaty airport in Kazakhstan

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
MOSCOW.  The servicemen of the Russian peacekeeping contingent are monitoring the implementation of the agreements reached on the ceasefire and hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), reported the press service of the Russian defense ministry.

No violations have been reported in the past month, and individual incidents have been resolved on the spot through joint trilateral efforts.

Also, the Russian peacekeepers have accompanied more than 400 pilgrims to the Armenian monasteries of Amaras and Gandzasar.

The safe passage of 73 Azerbaijani convoys through the Lachin corridor was ensured, too.

The military doctors of the peacekeeping contingent have provided quality medical assistance to more than 1,000 local residents.

The servicemen of the Russian center for humanitarian response have carried out 11 humanitarian actions, with the participation of charitable organizations, to help the internally displaced persons and disadvantaged families. About three tons of humanitarian aid has been provided to them.

The Russian peacekeeping contingent in Artsakh continues to carry out peacekeeping tasks in the regionand in accordance with the agreements reached earlier.
During the Astana talks, special envoy of the President of the Russian Federation for the Syrian settlement Alexander Lavrentiev told the Turkish side about the need to solve the issue of Syrias territorial integrity, RIA Novosti reports.

According to him, all the parties are interested in the stabilization of the situation in Syria, for which reason the guarantor countries (Iran, Russia, Turkey) are talking about their commitment to Syrias sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Russian delegation led by Lavrentiev has already held bilateral talks with the delegations of the Syrian and Iranian governments.

After talks with Lavrentiev, the head of the Iranian delegation told reporters that the stances of Moscow and Tehran on the developments of events in Syria are close.
The Investigative Committee of Armenia has taken actions to find out a number of circumstances within the framework of the investigation of the criminal case against chairman Garnik Isagulyan of the opposition National Security party, the Committee informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Accordingly, evidence has been obtained that during a press conference on September 20, Isagulyan, knowing that the information he was providing was false, reported a crime that had not been committed.

In particular, during the interview, Isagulyan said that the Armenian ambassador to Ukraine was allegedly studied and recruited by the Turkish and Azerbaijani special services, and that this diplomat is collaborating with the aforementioned services and the representatives of those nations since 2008, about which Isagulyan himself has no doubts.

According to his statement, the Armenian ambassador to Ukraine held talks with the Azerbaijani ambassador to Ukraine, and as a result, it was decided that the Armenian prime minister shall meetin Batumi, Georgiawith the representatives of the Turkish president to ask for money from the latter, as the money in the state budget of Armenia has run out and they cannot pay pensions; thus, unjustly accusing the Armenian diplomat of committing a serious crime

Isagulyan has been included as a defendant in the abovementioned crime.

The same day a decision was made to detain him.

Garnik Isagulyan is already accusedin the criminal case under consideration by the Yerevan courtof making false statements about the prime minister of Armenia, a number of former and current officials and public figures, the current chairman of the Investigative Committee, the former secretary of the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Security Council, as well as of making public calls for using violence against the Prime Minister of Armenia.
The further development and deepening of relations with Georgia is among the important priorities of our country's foreign policy. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this in his speech at the Tbilisi session of the Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation between Armenia and Georgiaand reflecting on the cooperation between the two countries, as well as regional processes.

I am more than convinced that there are all the prerequisites for that.

There is no doubt that the friendship coming from the depths of the centuries, which is anchored on common values and historical heritage, creates a solid foundation and fertile ground for our further cooperation.

However, I have to state that in the recent years the pandemic has created the most difficult challenges for the whole world, and the Armenian-Georgian trade and economic relations are no exception. In addition to the pandemic, additional complications have been created for the Armenian economy - the latest developments in our region, the war. However, our cooperation has not stopped, we have continued to work towards the implementation of the agreements enshrined in the minutes of the 10th sitting of the Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation between the Republic of Armenia and Georgia.

The current level of Armenian-Georgian trade and economic relations does not reflect the potential of the two countries. It is obvious that in this respect the bilateral cooperation has not yet reached the desired level, there is a need to expand it. There are opportunities to expand cooperation in industry, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, information technologies and communications, transport, energy, tourism and other areas. In this regard, this session of the Intergovernmental Commission should become a platform for discussing opportunities to further expand bilateral cooperation in various directions of economic relations. Within the framework of the session, I hope we will also outline concrete steps to achieve our goals.

Transport infrastructure and logistics are of key importance for the development of trade and economic relations.

Bilateral cooperation between Armenia and Georgia in the transport sphere is a priority for us. We cooperate within the framework of a number of international transport structures, attaching great importance to the implementation of the Persian Gulf-Black Sea international transport route and other initiatives in the field of transport. It is worth mentioning that the route connecting the Persian Gulf to the Black Sea can really boost regional cooperation. By the way, I would like to mention an important circumstance that Prime Minister Garibashvili stressed that we consider the relations with Georgia not only in the bilateral dimension, but also in the context of regional cooperation. This is very important in the context of our relations. Yes, Armenia and Georgia have a serious field of cooperation, and we can provide mutual assistance to each other.

By the way, talking about the Persian Gulf- Black Sea route, I want to emphasize that there are two projects here: road and rail routes. For the development of the road route, we are implementing the construction of the North-South road, which connects the Armenian-Georgian border with the Armenian-Iranian border. We are in active discussions with our Iranian and Georgian partners for the most effective operation of the road, and it is very important that we reach a full understanding here. By the way, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that if we manage to reach an agreement with Azerbaijan on Armenia-Azerbaijan road communication, this project will significantly transform, becoming the North-South, East-West route, the Armenian premier added.
It is the duty of the state to ensure Armen Gevorgyan's participation in the work of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). This was announced by the second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, during the considerationat court session on the criminal case against Kocharyan and former deputy prime minister Gevorgyan who is now an MP of the opposition Armenia Faction in the National Assembly of Armeniaof the motion for allowing Gevorgyan to head for Strasbourg, France, to attend the PACE Winter Session.

The former president recalled that the court had previously disallowed such a motion, but at that time the situation was different, as Gevorgyan's parliamentary mandate had not been approved by the PACE yet.

"Now the situation is different," Kocharyan added.

Speaking about the prosecutions interpretations of the Constitutional Court decision related to the parliamentary immunity and criminal prosecution of MPs, Kocharyan said: "I am surprised by the absurd interpretations on the decision of the Constitutional Court."

Here the prosecution objected, and the court sustained the objection.

"When they compare the participation in the PACE with the work sitting in the cabinet, I cannot interpret otherwise. Is 'absurd' also a bad expression? But that word is exactly how I can describe such a situation. It is the duty of this country to ensure Gevorgyan's participation [in the PACE work]," Robert Kocharyan added.
The capture of the Azerbaijani servicemen by the Armenian military on December 18 is a deterrent for the Azerbaijani side. Andranik Kocharyan, Chair of the Standing Committee on Defense and Security of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia and an MP of the ruling majority "Civil Contract" Faction in the NA, said this Tuesday to reporters.

However, the MP preferred not to answer the question about their immediate return.

At the same time, he suggested to the reporters to pay attention to the fact that it is for the first time in the post-war period that the Armenian side had captured Azerbaijani soldiers who had crossed the border.

Kocharyan is convinced that this move will be a deterrent for Baku if the Azerbaijanis decide to repeat such attempts in the future.

To the question why the captured Azerbaijani military were returned so quickly and whether the Armenian side received anything in return, the ruling force MP responded: No comment.

Kocharyan answered as follows the further attempts by the media to ask questions on this topic: "I answer only the questions that I consider necessary to answer. You forget that issues related to the country's security may be followed by other issues, too. You have to be ready for that."

And when asked why the captured Azerbaijani soldiers were not exchange with the Armenian captives still held by Azerbaijan, the Armenian MP responded: "How do you know what will follow it? These issues are not subject to discussion."

Andranik Kocharyan added that he did not know the details.
Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan today received the delegation led by President of the Regional Council of Ile-de-France, French presidential candidate Valerie Pecresse, as reported the Department of Public Relations and Communication of the National Assembly of Armenia.

Greeting the guests, the parliamentary speaker stated that France is the absolute leader in terms of the number of visits to Armenia and that this is based on the centuries-old relations between the two peoples and the close political cooperation.

Simonyan expressed gratitude to Valerie Pecresse for the resolution on recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh that the Regional Council of Ile-de-France adopted, as well as for allocating EUR 75,000 in assistance to take care of the needs of persons displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Expressing gratitude for the reception, the French presidential candidate attached importance to the multipolar cooperation with Armenia and mentioned that this is the reason why her visit to Armenia is her first visit as a presidential candidate. According to her, the two countries are bearers of the same universal values and that France cant stay indifferent towards the issues concerning Armenia.

During the conversation, the parties touched upon the current situation in post-war Artsakh, the unresolved humanitarian issues and the protection of cultural heritage. In this context, they discussed the priorities for the repatriation of Armenians being held in Azerbaijan, and Pecresse attached importance to the role of the international community in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

At the end of the meeting, Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan assured that the dynamic development of the relations with France will be ongoing, regardless of the results of the French presidential elections.
Armenias Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan today received the delegation led by President of the Regional Council of Ile-de-France Valerie Pecresse, as reported the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

With satisfaction, the parties highlighted the high level of the special relations between Armenia and France that are hinged on mutual trust, respect and understanding of the two countries and peoples. They attached importance to the ongoing intensification of interactions between Armenia and France and underscored the role of decentralized cooperation, including the cooperation between Yerevan and Ile-de-France.

The Armenian foreign minister also stated that one of the priorities for the development of relations is further expansion of the cooperation in trade and economy, adding that a major step towards this was the signing of a roadmap for economic cooperation during his recent visit to France.

During the meeting, the parties touched upon regional security and stability issues. Mirzoyan expressed gratitude for the resolution on recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh that the Regional Council of Ile-de-France adopted in November 2020, as well as the financial aid for taking care of the needs of those who were displaced after the war.

Mirzoyan and Pecresse also discussed humanitarian issues that require urgent solutions, particularly the speedy repatriation of Armenian prisoners of war and other persons being held, as well as protection of the cultural and religious heritage of Artsakh in the territories that are currently under the control of Azerbaijan.
Five servicemen of the Southern Military Okrug of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are stuck under an avalanche in the southern wing of the portal of the Transcaucasian Highway in South Ossetia, assistance has been provided to three of them, and the search for the other two continues, TASS reports, citing the press service of the Southern Military Okrug.

The servicemen were overseeing the tunnel, and the avalanche covered their kiosk in snow, Deputy Minister of Emergency Situations of the Republic of South Ossetia Atsamaz Bestauti told TASS. Two servicemen have been brought out of the avalanche, they are alive and have been sent to the republican hospital in Tskhinvali. Another one has been found, and the search for the other two continues, he added.

Rescuers are working on the spot.
Twenty-six Italian deputies have issued a joint statement expressing their satisfaction with the release of 10 Armenian prisoners of war by Azerbaijan on Dec. 19, Armenpress reports, citing Nova agency.

Based on the press release of Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Vahan Hunanyan, Azerbaijan returned ten prisoners of war to Armenia. We are glad that significant signs of improvement have been recorded through the mediation of Europe. We hope this is just the beginning for the release of all illegally detained, and the peaceful negotiations to find a final resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will continue, the statement reads.

On Dec. 10, the Italian MPs addressed Prime Minister Mario Draghi with the request to make the release of soldiers and peaceful civilians captured during the Nagorno-Karabakh war a precondition for development of relations between the European Union and Azerbaijan within the scope of the Eastern Partnership.
A group of judges of the Yerevan court of general jurisdiction and the Criminal Court of Appeal have addressed Minister of Justice of Armenia Karen Andreasyan with regard to the drafts of the constitutional laws on making amendments to the Constitutional Law Judicial Code of the Republic of Armenia and on making amendments to the Constitutional Law on the Constitutional Court, along with their comments and suggestions.

The judges expressed certainty that the amendments proposed under the drafts are inadmissible and directly oppose the principle of legal certainty and the inadmissibility of the use of regressive force of a law, and adoption of the drafts will put the independence of judges and the judiciary at risk.

Judges Davit Harutyunyan, Zaruhi Nakhshkaryan, Artur Stepanyan, Arman Hovhannisyan and Davit Balayan of the Yerevan court of general jurisdiction, as well as Judges Alexander Azaryan, Vazgen Rshtuni, Arshak Vardanyan and Mkhitar Papoyan of the Criminal Court of Appeal of Armenia signed under the comments and suggestions.
Not long after Brian Galea adopted a 1-year-old border collie from a foster home in Cleveland, he threw himself into learning everything he could about training dogs. He had no choice because, as the University of Miami double alumnus recalled, Dash was an absolute wreck.

He had every fear in the book. He literally could not walk over a manhole cover. He hated skateboards, loud cars, weights dropping on the gym floor, said Galea, an adjunct lecturer in human anatomy who earned his MBA in May after realizing he had been chasing the wrong career. If I took him to a store and the P.A. system came on, he would freak out.

Six years later, Dash has traded his fears for a crowd-pleasing skill set. Hes a certified therapy dog who hugs strangersand can fetch and deliver a soda from the fridgeon cue. And Galea is at peace with his decision to cast aside his dream of becoming a physician and concentrate on turning Snoot, the dog-training app he founded while at the Miami Herbert Business School, into a national platform that unifies all aspects of dog training and ownership.

I had the idea before I started, but it evolved radically and became more directed as I talked to more professors over the course of my MBA, said Galea, who helped launch the Cane Angel Network, which connects University-affiliated startups with early-stage investors. I jokingly say that I absolutely got my moneys worth from my tuition by getting all this free consulting.

Now available for free at the app store, Snoot is ready to provide new dog owners who adopted their pets from animal shelters or other rescue organizations with curated, research-based information designed to help them raise happy, healthy, and well-adjusted companions. Organized under such topics as food and health, socialization and manners, barking and chewing, and the ever-important potty training, the apps self-paced, positive-reinforcement lessons include step-by-step videos and corresponding product recommendations that, Galea said, enables Snoot to offer its information at no cost.

So far, a handful of canine rescue operations have agreed to encourage people who adopt one of their dogs to use the app. Miami-Dade County Animal Services, which facilitates more than 1,000 dog adoptions every month, is among them and Galea expects many more to follow. Last week, he introduced Snoot to 8,500 rescue operations across the nation.

And soon, new dog owners will be able to find and book a dog trainer through Snoot, a service which the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers (CCPDT) has agreed to share with the nearly 5,000 dog trainers and behavior consultants the organization has tested and certified since its 2001 inception.

First, we want to get to people when they need Snoot the mostin the vulnerable days and weeks after theyve rescued a dog, Galea said, explaining Snoots market strategy. We want them to have high-quality information that is supported by the most reputable organizations in the dog industryby the CCPDT, by the American Kennel Club, by the American Veterinary Medical Association. And, of course, the shelters they got their dog from. Then well get the trainersbecause Snoot will have value and theyll want to be part of it.

But his vision doesnt stop there. Noting that anyone can hold themselves out to be a dog trainer, Galea sees the day when Snoot will become a motivating force in creating standards and licensing requirements for dog trainers. Right now, dog training is a very weird, wild west sort of industry, he said. Anybody can get into it. Anybody can advertise. There is no way to know what youre getting, and usually dog owners dont even know to ask about credentials or methodswhich is something that I really want to fix.

It would, though, take years for Galea to recognize the value of his idea, and the potential for expanding it into what he calls the ultimate dog-owners guide to everything. After earning his B.S. in biology from the U in 2012 and working as a research assistant for two years at the Miller School of Medicine, he headed to Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, where he earned his masters degree in human anatomy with the goal of going to medical school. But when his previous dog died, he set out to adopt a border collie and, when he found Dash, he unknowingly found his calling.

His name was Rupert, and he was living on a farm in the boonies. And when he saw me, he wiggled over, dropped at my feet, and rolled over for me to pet him. I almost cried because it was only a month after my previous dog died and I just needed a friend, Galea recalled. His foster mom asked, Do you want to see the others? and I said No, this is my dog. But it was soon very clear he had all these issues. He was afraid of every noise on campus.

After returning to Miami, Galea began teaching human anatomy at the School of Nursing and Health Studies, applying to medical schools, and taking Dash to all the dog-training classes he could. They were such a good team that Dash soon became a certified therapy dog, and Galea a certified therapy dog tester through the Alliance of Therapy Dogs.

Before long, he co-founded Heel 2 Heal Therapy Dogs, a nonprofit that sends volunteer therapy dog teams to medical and other venues across South Floridaincluding the Universitys Richter Library, where stressed students facing final exams were delighted to see Dash last week. Galea also gained his certifications as a professional dog trainer and canine behavior consultant and established his own personal dog-training business. Then, slowly but surely, he began doubting his plan to pursue a career in medicine.

Graduate student Rebecca Vargas has a stress-relieving visit with Dash during finals week.

It took me a long time because I had invested so much in it and it felt like quitting, Galea said. But I couldnt stop doing the training because its teaching. And I love teaching. And dogs are super fun, and I love the psychology and science behind training them. But there wasnt a lot of money in it, and it wasnt prestigious.

Eventually, those excuses made Galea realize he had been pursuing medicine for the wrong reasons andintrigued by Miamis burgeoning startup ecosystemhe decided to earn his MBA and become an expert in venture capital (VC). But, as he helped develop the initial screening processes for early-stage startups in the inaugural Cane Angel Network class, he kept his idea for Snoot in his back pocket and kept refining it as he talked to more and more professors.

Then, as an active member of the Graduate Student Association (GSA) and the graduate student representative on the Board of Trustees, Galea began organizing and moderating a networking series between alumni panelists and GSA members. Thats how he met fellow double alumnus David Mullings, the founder of Blue Mahoe Capital, an investment firm primarily focused on the Caribbean, who was happy to share his experiences with the GSAand eventually help realign Galeas priorities.

After graduating with his MBA, Galea reached out to Mullings, thinking hed be a good contact for VC jobs. But when Galea mentioned this little side thing he was working on, Mullings encouraged him to forget about VC and follow his heart. It was clear he had a solution to a problem that will make peoples lives better, but more importantly, he was passionate about it, Mullings said. And thats why his business model has the potential for successbecause its scalable and he has the passion to push through the dips and potholes hell face.

He also has Dash, who taught him other priceless lessons. He gave me so much more than what I was looking for, Galea said. He taught me the joy of playing with dogs and making a living doing it.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that her government resolving the maritime border issue between India and Myanmar was a diplomatic success towards maintaining friendly ties with the two neighbouring nations. She made the remarks while virtually distributing the first-ever "Bangabandhu Medal for Diplomatic Excellence-2020" during an event held on Monday in Foreign Service Academy here. Hasina further said that her government had taken initiatives to resolve the long-pending issue first after assuming office in 1996 and eventually resolved it when it was again elected to power in 2009. The Prime Minister said that her government had also resolved the land boundary problem with India by implementing Mujib-Indira Agreement. "We want to keep intact friendly relations with all countries and march the country forward through socio-economic advancement," she mentioned. Regarding the "Bangabandhu Medal for Diplomatic Excellence-2020", she hoped the award would encourage Bangladeshi diplomats to be the best performers discharging their duties with utmost professionalism from the places of their current assignment. "Diplomats of our friendly countries will be inspired to take relationship between their respective countries and Bangladesh to a new heights." In another program on Tuesday, Hasina expressed her optimism that the initiatives of today's youth would turn Bangladesh into a developed and prosperous country. "One thing we should bear in mind that strength, initiative and indomitable spirit of youths worked behind attaining our independence," she mentioned. A recorded speech of the Prime Minister's ICT Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy was played during the event. Radwan Mujib Siddiq, grandson of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibor Rahman handed over the Joy Bangla Youth Awards to 15 youth organisations on Tuesday. "Our younger generation is our key driving force. Today's youths will prepare themselves for the days to come as they can take ahead the country. And this trend will continue generation after generation," she said in a virtual address. "We want to build Bangladesh for the coming days by utilising the merits and knowledge of youths." Appreciating the initiatives of the youths, the Prime Minister also hoped these initiatives would play a vital role in bringing positive changes in society and turning Bangladesh into a developed and prosperous nation by 2041. She urged the youth to prepare themselves to keep pace with the advanced technology to cope with the ever-changing world. --IANS sumi/ksk/ ( 400 Words) 2021-12-21-10:12:02 (IANS)
As the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan continues to worsen in Afghanistan with freezing temperatures adding to the sufferings of the locals, hundreds of Afghans are flooding the passport office in Kabul in a bid to leave the country at the earliest. A large number of people was seen standing outside the passport office in Kabul, a day after the Taliban led government announced resumption of issuance of travel documents. Despite sub-zero temperatures, many people reached and waited throughout the night till the next morning patiently waiting in a single line. The people, who rushed to the passport office, included many who were desperate to leave the country for medical treatment, while many others wanted to flee the country to safety, away from the renewed Islamist rule of the Taliban. The crowd was manhandled and charged by the Taliban repeatedly, who said that they did not want any terror attack or a suicide explosion to happen in the crowd. "Our responsibility here is to protect people. But the people are not cooperating," said Ajmal Toofan, a Taliban security personal on duty at the passport office. It is pertinent to mention that Taliban's principal enemy, the Islamic State (IS), has targeted such crowded gatherings and has claimed hundreds of innocent lives. The biggest attack was outside the Kabul airport in August, when locals gathered in large number in a bid to leave the country with the foreign forces during their evacuation process. Osman Akbari, a 60-year-old man was among the people desperately trying to reach Pakistan on medical grounds. Akbari said that wrecked hospitals in Afghanistan were not equipped enough to complete his heart surgery. "Medica put stent in my heart. They need to be removed and its not possible here", he said. A number of ambulances were also present outside the passport office, carrying people who were too sick to queue with the others. "The patient has a heart problem," said the driver of the ambulance, adding that because the applicant has to appear in person to ensure passport is issued, the patient has been brought here. Afghanistan is fast sinking deeper into financial, economical and humanitarian crises. The worsening situation in the country, triggered through a complete blockage of foreign aid following the Taliban takeover which constituted at least 80 per cent of the country's economy, locals are not only fearing the rigid Islamic rule of law of the Taliban regime, they are also fearful of the well being and upbringing of their families, who are now suffering to freezing sub-zero temperatures, lack of food, water and shelter; lack of medical facilitations at the hospitals is also forcing locals to leave the country on immediate basis. --IANS ksk/ ( 465 Words) 2021-12-21-13:44:02 (IANS)
Amid the collapse of Afghanistan's banking sector, coupled with Taliban-imposed restrictions on money exchange systems, local traders are now opting to use of Pakistani rupee as mode of financial transactions for payment in many provinces of the country. "Due to fluctuations in the US dollar and Afghan currency rates, everyone here is using the Pakistani rupee," said a local trader. The circulation of Pakistani rupee among Afghan traders is being witnessed for the past one month. However, the Pakistani rupee is not being openly accepted for doing trade amid fears of restrictions imposed by the Taliban regime, who have allowed use of Afghani currency for all operations in the country. "Small traders and locals in Afghanistan are using Pakistani rupees for daily transactions and purchases of food items. Provinces adjacent to Pakistan prefer the rupee instead of Afghani because they will face a 10 per cent loss in converting the rupee to Afghan currency," said another trader. The use of Pakistani rupee saw a major decline as the past governments in Afghanistan opposed to its use. However, under the Taliban rule and the deteriorating Afghan currency value, the Pakistani rupee is fast becoming the prime currency for trade, especially by traders who do business along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. "We also need Pakistani rupees to import goods from Pakistan as both Pakistani and Afghani traders prefer to use the Pakistani currency for trade due to the uncertain situation in Afghanistan," said Hameed Khan, a trader. The Taliban government has been working hard to reactivate its banking system, calling on the US to unfreeze the country's central assets worth $9 billion, placed in the US. The Taliban regime has also been calling on the global community to help the country stand back on its feet through economic bailout, humanitarian aids and facilitations. "A joint commission was set up by various civilian and military agencies to monitor shopkeepers and the general public who were carrying out transactions in Pakistani currency," said Hameed khan. "If the Afghan government fails to reactivate the banking system for traders and the general public, it will not only increase the use of rupee but also affect trader's ability to import goods." --IANS hamza/ksk/ ( 379 Words) 2021-12-21-14:42:02 (IANS)
Police in Karachi have arrested a man for allegedly damaging statues at a Hindu temple in the old city area of Narainpura, The Express Tribune reported. The FIR said the man identified as Waleed Muhammad Shabeer attacked the statues. The complainant, Mukesh Kumar, a resident of the area, said that his wife saw the suspect attacking the idols with a hammer. The area residents present around the temple caught the miscreant and handed him over to the police, the report said. The Hindu residents staged a protest in the area and outside the police station, demanding the government to provide security. They also chanted slogans against the attackers, saying they were not feeling secure in the area after the incident, the report said. "Everyone is under trauma after the incident," said a resident. "We are labourers and very poor people. We do not harm anyone and always pray people will respect our worship places too," he added. Police and Rangers reached the spot immediately and cordoned off the area. Instructing the South district's police, Sindh Minister for Minority Affairs Gyanchand Israni said that FIR should be registered and the culprits should be arrested. He said that such incidents create unrest in the society. "We condemn such attacks," he said. Narainpur is one of the localities of the old town which is known for teeming Hindu population. "Some of our Muslim friends living in the area have also condemned this attack," another resident told The Express Tribune. He also informed that he has not seen such kind of attack before. It was not clear the motive behind the attack. Police have started probing the incident and assured the Hindu residents of the area that complete security will be provided to them, the report said. Videos of the broken statues were being circulating on the social media. Several activists and the politicians also condemned the attack and demanded the government to arrest all the persons involved in the temple attack. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's MNA Kheeal Das Kohistani csaid that one out of two attackers were held by the police. --IANS san/ksk/ ( 362 Words) 2021-12-21-15:28:02 (IANS)
"I nearly lost my life fighting against the Taliban's ban on girls' education. Thousands of Pashtun activists and notables lost their lives when they raised their voices against Taliban's horrors, while millions became refugees. We represent Pashtuns not the Taliban," she wrote on Twitter.

On Sunday, Imran Khan had addressed the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) where his remarks about ban on girls' education and Taliban generated a controversy.

The Prime Minister had suggested that the issue of restrictions on girls' education is linked to the Pashtun culture and that the Taliban had been making efforts to work towards ensuring that girls go to school.

Further, he said that the Taliban was a predominantly Pashtun movement, reiterating his earlier statement wherein he had termed Pashtuns as Taliban sympathisers.

Imran Khan's remarks sparked an outrage on Twitter with Afghan activists and journalists sharing how Taliban's position against girls' education is not endorsed by ordinary Afghan citizens.

--IANS san/arm

( 199 Words)

2021-12-21-19:20:03 (IANS)
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Tuesday urged External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to intervene for the immediate release of Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu in Sri Lankan captivity. With the arrest of another 13 fishermen from Tamil Nadu on Tuesday, the total number of Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan custody has risen to 68. Stalin had already written a letter to the External Affairs minister to take up with the Sri Lankan government, through diplomatic channels, the arrest and judicial remand of 55 Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy for purportedly transgressing into the island nation's territorial waters. In his latest letter to the Minister, a copy of which was handed personally to the minister by the DMK's parliamentary party leader, T.R. Baalu, Stalin said: "The alarming frequency at which these incidents of detention and attacks are happening needs urgent attention. The lives and livelihoods of our fishermen must be protected while they are fishing in the traditional waters of Palk Bay." As many as 19 incidents of Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu being arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy and Coast Gguard have taken place in a year's time. Two incidents of attack on Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu by the Sri Lankan Navy has taken place in 2021 and five fishermen had lost their lives. A total of 43 fishermen from Rameswaram were arrested on Saturday while 12 fishermen from Mandapam were arrested on Sunday. --IANS aal/vd ( 256 Words) 2021-12-21-20:56:04 (IANS)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday interacted with chief executives of companies from various sectors of industry at his official residence. This was the second such interaction between the Prime Minister and industry representatives in the run-up to the next Union Budget. "The Prime Minister talked about the inherent strength of the country, displayed during the battle against Covid. He thanked the industry leaders for their inputs and suggestions, and exhorted them to make full use of policies like PLI incentive," said the Prime Minister's Office in a statement. "He said that just like the country aspires for a podium finish at the Olympics, the country also wants to see our industries among the top five of the world in every sector, and this is something for which we should collectively work towards." Besides, the Prime Minister said that the corporate sector should invest more in areas like agriculture and food processing, and talked about the shifting focus on natural farming. "He underlined the policy consistency of the government, and said that the government is firmly committed to take initiatives which will give impetus to economic progress of the country. "He also spoke about the focus of the government towards reducing compliance burden, and sought suggestions on areas where undue compliances need to be removed," the statement said. On their part, the industry representatives gave feedback to the Prime Minister, it added. "They spoke about steps that can be taken to further boost 'Ease of Doing Business' in the country. They also talked about India's commitments at 'COP26' and how industry could contribute towards achieving the goals outlined." --IANS rv/vd ( 283 Words) 2021-12-20-22:54:03 (IANS)
New Delhi [India], December 21 (ANI/GIPR): Surya Sarees, a complete ethnic fashion house based in Delhi, is celebrating World Saree Day 2021with a bang. Saree, one of the most beautiful, elegant and graceful compliment Indian weaver and craftsmanship legacy of centuries, has been bestowed upon the woman of yesteryears, today and definitely the women of tomorrow. Surya Sarees, known and acknowledged to be humble custodians of the immortal skill and magic of countless generations of craftsmen all over the country, is celebrating and marking World Saree Day in its own trademark style, flair and elan. In today's time when westernization has more than completely taken over Indian styling, the value and the significance of the heritage of saree and its creators is slowly fading away in oblivion. Surya Sarees as the name suggests too, are constantly striving to keep the flame and the hopes of the creators and saree lovers shining bright and flying high. "It is our responsibility and the honour to continue to showcase the world of sarees to the younger generations and inspire them to don these handcrafted masterpieces in their own singular and unique ways, "said Mr. Raghav Mittal, COO Surya Sarees. These words of Mr. Mittal echo the Surya commitment loud and clear. December 21st is indeed a Red Letter Day for Surya Sarees. On the grand occasion, a special event is being hosted to showcase specially designed Surya brand sarees, the real treasure trove of traditions, handcrafted classics and contemporary pieces of sheer art. Invitations have been sent to handful of discerning Surya customers and lovers of the draped wonder to showcase one of the most enigmatic and charismatic dressage compliments. This unique event will have saree styling sessions by the company's specialists and saree draping session by saree drapist Chennai by Jesi. These sessions will be used to unravel the real beauty of handloom and handcrafted (embroidered) sarees. Each creation is a world in itself. Each segment has its own history etched in pure gold. The Surya Sarees legacy is studded with 7 to 8 core varieties in the exquisite categories of Handloom and embroidery sarees. From the eponymous Banarasis, Kanjeevarams and Patan Patolas, the handloom universe is shining with Bandhejs, Bhagalpur Tussars. The embroidery galaxy of sarees is shimmering with the flawless radiance of Kashmiri Sarees, Lucknowi Chikan, Dabka Zardozi and Parsi Ghara. Each and every creation listed above is loaded and embedded with ageless and timeless craftsmanship. The vivid variety, the contrast styling of every draped signature is simply an experience beyond words and any mortal explanation. On one hand Banarasi Saree's origin goes to Varanasi city. Every banarasi saree is a rare specimen immortalized in gold and silver brocade. On the other Kanjeevaram comes for a quaint town of South India, Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu. A pure Kanjeevaram comes alive with the magic of gold thread weaved intricately in breathtaking designs. Bandhani or Bandhej saree hails from Gujarat and it is regarded an auspicious creation. It represents the world famous tie and dye technique. Patan Patola is the royal cousin of Bandhej. Rooted in Gujarat again, Patan Patolas are double ikat woven creations for the town of Patan. Every Patola is all about aristocracy and royalty. Made from Bhagalpul silk, a Bhagalpur saree is a classic blend of tradition and ever evolving modern trends. Moving to embroidered wonders further fills our hearts with pride and respect to the craftsmen community. Kashmiri embroidery and specially tila work on sarees is the most sought after all over the world. Kashmiri craftsmen are as beautiful and endearing as the land. From the drapes of Lucknowi silk to dabka zardozi, each creation is majestic tribute to the art form of saree. Surya Sarees and its bevy of craftsmen are committed and dedicated to ensure that saree traditions and statements adorn the phenomena called woman in infinite ways so the world keeps always smiling beautifully. This story is provided by GIPR. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/GIPR)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], December 21 (ANI/PRNewswire): UnlistedKart has emerged as a frontrunner in the unlisted stocks space by playing an active role of helping stock investors bag lucrative returns. By bringing the power and exposure of private equity giants or venture capitalists to the common investors, UnlistedKart is transforming investor portfolios to the scale 100+ crores (FY21). They are doing this with multiple value-creating deliverables such as personalized investment consulting, deal facilitation & completion, growing valuations reports, featured shares, and access to secondary funds. One of the major issues that has plagued the unlisted space is the presence of certain risk factors that are typically absent from the listed stock market. UnlistedKart has handled such risks related to credit, market, liquidity, and valuation with care. For example, their wealth consultants come with years of niche experience and the practical know-how of how to take on credit risk. With hands-on knowledge about contract notes, deal turns, etc., investors can actively avoid numerous risks that can otherwise degrade their portfolios. Unlisted stocks have been one of the major growth winners even before the pandemic hit, with many of them doubling investors' money in 2019, as reported by Economic Times. And fueled by the pandemic-induced IPO frenzy in 2020 and 2021, the trend only mustered further momentum. A shred of the newfound enthusiasm among investors for unlisted stocks is evident in the fact that NSE unlisted stocks increased by 80% in 6 months. Unlisted stocks are not listed on any major stock exchanges such as BSE and NSE. Often, these companies are startups with very high growth potential due to initial capital raised from friends and family, angel investors, venture capitalists or even crowdfunding sites. Investors in this space weigh high risk but have also been known to enjoy high returns on their investments. Although the unlisted space is perfect for investors who have a long-term horizon for investment, it also comes with certain risks and the associated rewards if you can navigate through the risks smartly. Tanmay Vishwanath - Head Product development, Unlistedkart, shares a few risks below. 1. Credit Risk Contrary to the stock market, any transaction in the unlisted space begins with an upfront transfer of funds. This is in accordance with the existing regulation. The transfer of shares then ensues and usually takes24 to 72 hours. Hence, this gives rise to systemic credit risk for investors, especially when considering that multiple intermediaries exist in the market. An investor in the unlisted space is always at risk of losing capital and the time value of money. An order may not execute timely due to various reasons such as price manipulation, information asymmetry, etc. Solution: It is always essential to deal with a trusted company or a wealth advisor who knows how to take on credit risk. Investors must have all related documents, such as contract notes/deal terms, prepared before agreeing to this transaction to avoid any hassle. UnlistedKart actively takes on this role so that their customers are always free of this concern. They ensure that their customer's interests are always protected, and that they receive their paid-for shares on time. 2. Market Risk There is always a chance that the price of the unlisted shares changes before the shares change hands. For instance, today's commitment between a seller and buyer might not be honored tomorrow if the share price increases or decreases overnight. This can result in severe opportunity costs for the investor. Solution: Carrying out periodic price mentions to stay well-versed with the market dynamics is always a good idea, especially when investors are in it for the long term. This helps them to be well prepared. Price discovery should always be a continuous process. Naturally, this calls for a trusted and experienced partner who can do the necessary footwork for you while also preparing vital bidding documents such as purchase agreements, contracts notes, etc. UnlistedKart ticks all the boxes here by not depending on the seller to execute their transactions. Instead, they have contract notes/SPA that binds both parties regardless of the volatility in price and can be executed at any time, even after delivery has been completed! This eliminates the market risk and gives investors a sense of assurance. 3. Liquidity Risk Liquidity was severely constrained in the traditional unlisted space due to underlying assets' illiquidity. This was because investors were often unable to find a counterparty to trade with easily and quickly, unlike in the listed space. Hence, a decade back, investors in the space faced critical dilemmas regarding the liquidation of their holdings. But things have changed today, and this risk is no longer viable. With over 25 brokers in the country and retail investors now aware of the opportunities to invest in the unlisted space, there is no longer a shortage of demand or liquidity constraints. Solution: To further combat liquidity issues, it is always advised that investors do their due diligence before investing in unlisted stocks. They must check the company's track record, assess their business model, and weigh them against appropriate benchmarks. If this assessment goes well, they should be able to profitably dispose of their position without any liquidity risk. With a transparent and efficient platform that allows investors to trade their shares with a hassle-free approach, this is exactly what UnlistedKart offers. 4. Valuation Risk It Is essential to understand the correct valuation of a company before investing. However, in the unlisted space, this is often difficult to do as there is a lack of transparency and information asymmetry. This can often lead to investors overpaying or underpaying for a company's stock without completely understanding the associated risks. Solution: One way to mitigate this problem is to conduct a detailed analysis of the company before investing. This should include understanding the business model and making a list of comparable companies for reference. UnlistedKart provides research reports to all their clients, helping them make the most informed decisions before investing. What makes their reports stand out is that they are always neutral in nature and written with care so as not to distort or influence the investors' views about a company's prospects for success. Looking forward The unlisted stocks space is not for the faint of heart. It can be risky to invest in companies that are still private and have no public market data available. Still, it also has a very high reward potential. If you're looking to diversify your portfolio or want more control over what types of investments you make, consider investing in unlisted stocks as part of your investment strategy with UnlistedKart. Key Takeaways: Unlisted companies are startups with very high growth potential. It is perfect for investors who have a long-term horizon for investment. Credit risk can be eliminated by working with a trusted company such as Unlistedkart. Market risk can be eliminated through bidding documents such as purchase agreements, contracts notes, etc. Liquidity risk is very low today due to higher demand for unlisted stocks and 25+ brokers. It can be eliminated entirely with better due diligence. Valuation risk can be eliminated by better understanding the business model and actionable research reports (such as the ones provided by Unlistedkart). This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)
Kochi (Kerala) [India], December 21 (ANI/ATK): One of the leading flour mills based out of Kottayam in Kerala, South India, Diamond Roller Flour Mills Pvt Ltd (DRFM), has been awarded the prestigious European Society for Quality Research (ESQR) award at a ceremony held in Dubai, endorsing the company's focus on quality across its food products and processes. Speaking on this occasion, the DRFM officials said the ESQR award is another feather on the company's cap, adding to the long list of awards and certifications it has received since it began its operations in 1989. "We are pleased to be receiving this award and we consider this as a milestone achievement for us. Being in the food processing industry, we have been relentless in our pursuit of quality and safety, with utmost commitment to our customers and the community at large. The ESQR award is a recognition and a testimony to our commitment in this regard," said T. K Ameer Aly, Managing Director, DRFM. The award was conferred on the company at the ESQR convention held in Dubai on December 11, 2021. Along with Aly, the award was jointly received by A. MuthuBeevy, Director, DRFM. The ESQR, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, promotes quality awareness globally and recognises good business practices, apart from technological innovation. T.K Ameer Aly said "DRFM weekly exports about 10 containers of products including Atta, Maida and Sooji to UAE through Falcon Global and Jaleel Trading. Also, about Five containers in a week to Qatar through Fineway and Heritage. The products are largely catered to star hotels, restaurants and bakeries across the Middle East. Diamond Roller Flour Mills is planning to set up their manufacturing unit in the UAE in the near future". They are planning to build on its strength and will soon be adding one more wheat milling line at its plant equipped with the latest European roller mill to enhance the production capacity of premium wheat products. The company is also looking at foraying into ready-to-eat products. "The award further encourages us to reinforce our dedication to ensure that our products are of high quality, hygienic and healthy. As a consumer and community-focused entity, DRFM has strictly followed food safety norms as mandated by the Government of India, as well as by global quality regulators. Our success in both the domestic and export markets have been a direct result of this commitment," said A. Muthu Beevy. "We always make sure that our products reach our customers fresh. Apart from Kerala, we also supply to the border districts of Tamil Nadu, while our Diamonds brand wheat flour products are highly accepted in the Middle East markets," said EK Shajahan, General Manager, DRFM. DRFM is one of the leading wheat processing units in India producing premium quality wheat products, Maida, Sooji, R-Atta, Chakki Atta and fine bran at its state-of-the-art processing plant. The company's plant is the only one in India that has installed the entire equipment imported from world-renowned milling machinery manufacturer, Buhler AG, Switzerland. At DRFM, end-to-end hygiene is ensured from handling raw materials, processing, storage to packing and delivery. One of the unique features of DRFM isits steel grain storage silos, which is rare among Indian mills. To ensure quality of wheat, DRFM has installed a Sortex system in the milling line, while an in-house lab, overseen by experts and equipped with modern instruments and technology, monitor quality regularly. Alyis into this foodstuff business for nearly 50 years and he has been operating Diamond Roller Flour Mills for the past 32 years. The mill's new high-tech machinery from Switzerland is mobile enabled making it operational even by remote access. Diamond Roller Flour Mills continuously improve food safety requirements through the FSS certification 22000 (ISO 22000 and ISO 22002) by DNV Business Assurance, Netherlands, a rare achievement among roller flour mills in India. DRFM is Star Export House recognised by the Government of India and has bagged many national awards, including National Productivity Council of India Productivity Award (Food Processing Industries for 2004-2005 & 2005-2006) and Best Productivity performance in India- Cereal (Flour Milling- Processing Industries) Other awards include Government of Kerala's, Department of Factories and Boilers Safety Award 2010, KSIDC Outstanding Entrepreneurship Award 2011and Excellence Award 2014 & 2015. DRFM also received the International Arch of Europe Quality Excellence Award in 2015 and World Quality Commitment International Award in 2019. This story is provided by ATK. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/ATK)
New Delhi [India], December 21 (ANI/NewsVoir): Chicco, a premium brand in the baby care industry launches its e-commerce website www.chicco.in with the intent to make Chicco products available to every customer anywhere, anytime in India. The brand's ideology stands on developing products after understanding the needs of parents and parents-to-be that the brand has been doing in more than 120 countries for over 60 years. The new-age parents want the best for their newborn but they don't want to step out with their baby in this situation, the Chicco's new storefront has been specifically designed to help parents easily find the products for all their needs. The new Chicco website offers a wider range of exclusive products from their different categories i.e. fashion, travel (strollers, high chairs, car seats), toys, cosmetics, and nursing in one place. Not just the exclusive products, consumers will also be able to get exclusive offers here. That's not all, first few customers who buy from the Chicco website will get a free welcome kit. Rajesh Vohra, CEO, Artsana India (Chicco) said, "With the same passion as ever, we are proud to continue designing innovative offerings in order to become a partner to every parent in their fantastic journey of parenting. The launch of the new website will be an amazing experience for every Chicco lover as they will now be able to shop all Chicco products in one place from the comfort of their home." In order to meet the highest standard of online shopping, smooth delivery, and safety, Chicco has associated with experts like SalesForce, the world's leading platform for seamless e-commerce experience; Increff, a well-known inventory optimization solution and Shiprocket, the top logistics software for hustle free transmission of products. With these partners on board, the brand aims to create an effortless digital experience for its valued customers. Arun Kumar Parameswaram, SVP and MD - Sales & Distribution, Salesforce India, said, "We are delighted that Chicco has chosen Salesforce on its journey to effortlessly deliver a connected and digital customer journey. Leveraging our Commerce Cloud Platform Chicco can unify data, across channels with automation, AI, and impact customer experience with a single source of truth." Saahil Goel, Co-founder & CEO, Shiprocket, said, "We are happy to work with a high-quality brand such as Chicco in the next stage of their journey of D2C selling. Chicco's products are very well known in the market for their superior design and quality. Since Shiprocket's inception, we are committed to delivering the best customer experience and are sure that we will provide the same for Chicco's customer base as well." Rajul Jain, Co-founder & CEO, Increff, said, "It feels great to be associated with one of the leading international brands. We look forward to creating a smooth warehousing experience for seamless inventory management and faster order fulfilment. Automating warehousing processes will enable Chicco to achieve incredible efficiency in supply chain operations and scalability from its e-commerce platform." Chicco is a brand of global multinational company, Artsana Group. The brand takes care of multiple needs of babies through its innovative products in nursing, baby toiletries, toys, travel (Strollers, highchairs, and car safety seats), and fashion categories. Chicco's vast experience of over 60 years in the infant world is consolidated in 'Chicco Research Centre' that collaborates with doctors, midwives, paediatricians, and parents to understand a baby's psycho-physical, emotional and social needs to create the most efficient products and solutions. Salesforce is the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bringing companies closer to their customers in the digital age. Founded in 1999, Salesforce enables companies of every size and industry to take advantage of powerful technologies-cloud, mobile, social, internet of things, artificial intelligence, voice and blockchain-to create a 360-degree view of their customers. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), please visit: www.salesforce.com. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
Sonipat (Haryana) [India], December 21 (ANI/OP Jindal University): O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) has won the "Digital Innovation of the Year" award at the distinguished Times Higher Education (THE) Asia Awards 2021. JGU was the Only Indian University to be Shortlisted for the "Digital Innovation of the Year" JGU's win at the THE Awards is a recognition of JGU's successful digital transformation and impact over the last two years. This award is also a reflection of JGU's commitment to ensure continued education for its students during the ongoing pandemic. In March 2020 we were faced with one of the most unprecedented crises of our time. However, with the collective effort put in by the faculty, students and staff and the digital governance led by our IT team, by December 2020, 24,000+ online classes were completed, 1250+ unique online examinations were conducted and 69,000+ assessments were submitted. The Founding Vice Chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University, Prof. (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar lauded the recognition and said, "It is a proud moment for JGU to be featured in the prestigious Times Higher Education (THE) Asia Awards 2021. We are the only Indian university to be awarded in the category for Digital Innovation. The Covid-19 Pandemic created an unprecedented crisis and JGU created innovative technological solutions for continued learning for the benefit of our students and ease of teaching for our faculty. Despite several lockdowns and suspension of face-to-face teaching, we ensured that our students could continue their education in a seamless manner. This involved smart technological solutions and quick implementation of online platforms which could be easily accessible. This recognition for JGU has come when we have just stepped into the second decade of our journey. Winning this award at the competitive THE Asia Awards 2021 is indeed a moment of great pride. Therefore, I feel humbled that our effort to create an impact for our students, and our nation, and driving initiatives to make education more accessible particularly during unfortunate times of this pandemic have been recognized globally." Times Higher Education outlined in its introduction that Universities are extraordinary institutions that transform the lives of their students, produce research that changes the world, and deliver untold benefits to society and economies. "At THE, we want to recognise, support and incentivise this excellence. By recognising outstanding leadership and institutional performance across a range of categories, we hope to celebrate excellence in Asian higher education in all its diversity. The winner in the Technological or Digital Innovation of the Year category, India's O.P. Jindal Global University, created a free, cloud-based application to help schools and universities manage data - especially useful given India's digital divide." Further, to broaden the impact of JGU's internal digital innovations to other institutions, the university also translated (e)learnings into a detailed "Covid-19 Response-Toolkit for Indian Higher Education Institutions: Institutional Resilience for Academic Planning & Continuity". This toolkit was made possible by the efforts of academic and research teams at the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and the International Institute of Higher Education Research & Capacity Building (IIHEd) at JGU. Being released by Dr Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, Hon'ble Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), President of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) and also the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development enabled us to broaden the outreach and impact of the toolkit. Having transformed the education experience at JGU with technology, JGU has decided to extend our technology capability and innovation to make a broader social impact. The institution has realized that when it comes to technology, ours - Schools' and the University's, needs are very similar. This is when JGU innovated the application 'Tou, which is an amalgamated version of the internal software tools that JGU uses to operate the University online. Tou was born with a vision to create social impact: A school of 2000 students would have to pay more than INR 15 lakhs per annum to get a similar solution from the market, which JGU is providing at zero cost to the schools. Tou has enabled digital transformation of educational institutions across 12 states of India: by enabling over 20,000 Assignments with nearly 3 Lakh Submission, INR 4 Cr Fee Payments, and 30,000 Results Automations. This story is provided by OP Jindal University. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/OP Jindal University)
New Delhi [India], December 21 (ANI/SRV): A Global Career Servicess is a leading admission consulting firm expertizing in academic consulting, direct admissions through management quota and career guidance. Their motto, to ensure a free admission process for graduates and postgrads to universities and business schools in India and abroad, has led them to create a new admission platform. Their approach focuses on providing a comprehensive solution to every student's admission and educational needs and queries including admission consultation and career guidance services. GCSONLINE is a leading agency dealing with admission services in top institution in Bengaluru and India. Founded in 2009, the company aims to ensure easy access to top institutions admission process in India and to facilitate direct admissions to MBA/PGDM, Medical, Engineering, Design Architecture, Law, Nursing, Pharmacy, Arts & Humanities, and Paramedical domains. Apart from this they also help and support Parents with hassle-free admission process in schools as well. The company has been instrumental in providing one spot admission guidance and support. They assist students to understand their career goals and choose courses wisely. GCS Online makes certain that applications are completed correctly to lead to higher acceptance opportunities. GCSONLINE aims to provide direct admissions through management quota and bring all college admission options under one roof to help students get accepted to the best colleges which suits both one's educational background and matches their preference, without doing research for months. They also have a team of research experts to survey students and faculties to understand the uniqueness and specialties of each college or university and their approach to education. In this way, GCS ensures that students do not face any inconvenience while choosing the best options from the countless courses and colleges available to them. Their processes are very transparent with no hidden information or costs. The vast availability of higher education options in our country, makes it arduous for students and parents to select the right option. Considering aspects like field of education, kind of courses, multiple college options, entrance tests, academic excellence, innovation & research opportunities, financial budgets, placements track, etc. is a challenging task that can leave many adrift. This inability to not pick the right option leads to high attrition rate and unemployability. GCS understands the confusion and pressure students and parents face during college admission. They are experienced and trained in providing guidance and assistance throughout the admission process and help their clients get admission to the colleges and courses they seek. GCS online guides students in choosing the right courses to achieve their personal and professional goals, without compromising. By offering consultation and accreditation in a variety of disciplines including undergraduates, graduate courses and Entrance test guidance for JEE, NEET, CLAT, NATA, CAT, XAT, SNAP, MAT, SAT, GMAT, and GRE; GCS aims to provide a tailored solution for all higher education needs. The Director/CEO Rajneish Kumar Singh who is also the founder of 'A Global Career Services (GCS Online)' said "We are looking forward to transforming the admission process cycle to the next generation. With more than a decade of expertise in admission guidance and the trust we have gained as a brand in admission consulting, we try to make it simple and easy for our students to get accepted into institutions. Research and innovation are an integral part of our life which is applicable in most aspects. We decided to apply it to admissions as well for superior outcomes that helps students in the long run." With the history, present and future plans that GCS Online has planned for themselves, they have been able to transform into an online brand and a career guidance service one can trust. With Head office in Bengaluru and Branch offices in Patna, Ranchi, and Ramgarh, GCS Online hopes to reach out to more students and help make their lives a little bit easier by easing the admission worries. They consider the interests of students and their parents to be of paramount importance. They have excellent experience working with students from various community organizations, and aim to help the students manage this hectic admission procedure effortlessly. For more information check out their website www.gcsonline.co.in This story is provided by SRV. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/SRV)
New Delhi [India], December 21 (ANI/GIPR): Ashok Chaudhary who plays the role of RAW agent Stalin in 'Code Name Abdul' hit theatres recently. This Film and Television Institute of India graduate who has featured in popular Indian soaps, 'Kasautii Zindagii Kay' and 'Kkavyanjali' discusses how he landed the role in the film. In an industry that'd riddled with allegations of nepotism, Chaudhry says he got it fair and square. "Multiple auditions later, I got the part," he tells us. Admitting that it was a tough one, he calls this serendipity. "I had auditioned for a small part but the director called me after a week and asked me to tape a scene from, 'The Prisoners.' I locked myself in the basement of my house and taped it. Once I sent it, the director asked me to tape the scenes for the roles of two different RAW agents in the film. I was told that I was in, but the role that I would be playing wasn't revealed to me. When I met the director at his home he asked me which role I liked the best and I said that I was keen of playing the role of RAW agent Stalin for which I had not auditioned. The director immediately offered the role to me. It is not fair to say that merit has no place. But as a young actor aiming for big stuff here, I know I have to be relentless and persistent to land parts. This is just the beginning." The film stars Tanishaa Mukerji in the lead and talking about his experience of working with the actress, Ashok says, "Initially I was nervous about sharing screen space with Tanishaa because she is from an illustrious family. Working with her was fascinating because she has mastered her craft. She would do the same scene ten times and give ten different variations. And she knew which version was working. I haven't developed that skill as yet. She is a wonderful collaborator on set." Other projects in this method actor's kitty include Payal Kapadia's untitled film, in which he essays the role of a weather forecaster from the 1970s, British film 'Ascendancy' and Hindi film 'Rom Kom' in which he will be essaying the role of an actor. This story is provided by GIPR. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/GIPR)
New Delhi [India], December 21 (ANI/PNN): When it comes to finding the best schools for their children, parents face an uphill battle. Skoodos, a mobile app, makes it simple for parents and students to locate the best schools in their cities and towns. Skoodos.com is a leading online search aggregator functioning from April 2021, has launched a unique Christmas campaign, '#MeraAsliSanta'. Announcing the launch, Shruti Verma, Skoodos co-founder, said, "We are launching an engaging and unique Social Media Campaign "#MeraAsliSanta' this Christmas." This one-of-a-kind campaign will make parents and children find Santa in their homes and celebrate Christmas with the #AsliSanta. The campaign provides a broader perspective on the relationship and meets the target audience of Skoodos uniquely.`` #MeraAsliSanta Campaign is flooded with entries by photos and videos of people expressing love and gratitude for their parents, teachers and guardians, where they are referred to as their real Santas #MeraAsliSanta. Skoodos, as a platform, allows parents and students to simplify the process of selecting the best schools. The schools have been verified by a team of experts who evaluate the schools based on a gamut of factors and features to ensure that the parents and students are given the options of the best of the best schools. Dr Siya Seth, Founder and CEO of Skoodos, stated, "Our goal with Skoodos is to bridge the gap between schools and students by ensuring that the best educational institutions reach deserving students and vice versa." We have offices in Gurugram and Pune, and our app provides a user-friendly platform for parents and students by providing schools that have been verified by our expert team with all relevant information. The search is made more accessible by categorical searching." The mobile app includes a slew of features, such as school comparisons to help parents make an informed decision. Skoodos, on the other hand, will become a digital partner for schools, assisting them in developing a robust online presence through 360-degree marketing support, according to Dr Seth. This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)
With 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' netting more money ($260 million) than what was previously estimated, it has officially landed the second-biggest debut weekend in Hollywood history, behind only 'Avengers: Endgame' ($357 million), reports 'Variety'. Sony's epic finale in the Tom Holland-led comic book trilogy collected $260 million in theatres across North America on its debut weekend, above Sunday's estimates of $253 million. It means 'No Way Home' has surpassed 'Avengers: Infinity War' ($257 million), which was at No. 2. The Marvel adventure, writes 'Variety', has obliterated all Covid-era box-office benchmarks. Prior to this weekend, no movie, including the much-anticipated 'No Time to Die', Daniel Craig's final outing as James Bond, had been able to cross even the $100-million mark in a single weekend. The best attempt had been another of Sony's comic book sequels, 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage', which generated $90 million to start. "Given those constraints and the pandemic-related headwinds still facing the box-office," reports 'Variety', "industry watchers struggled to ballpark opening weekend figures for 'Spider-Man: No Way Home'." --IANS srb/ ( 189 Words) 2021-12-20-23:30:06 (IANS)
'Sex and the City' actors, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis, have broken their silence about the sexual assault allegations against their co-star Chris Noth. On Tuesday, Parker, Nixon and Davis shared matching statements on their Instagram Stories addressing the allegations against Noth. Parker wrote, "We are deeply saddened to hear the allegations against Chris Noth. We support the women who have come forward and shared their painful experiences. We know it must be a very difficult thing to do and we commend them for it." Nixon and Davis also shared the same statement on their IG Stories. Parker, Nixon and Davis are the first stars of 'Sex and the City' spinoff 'And Just Like That' to address the allegations, aside from Noth, who has denied the claims. The stars spoke out four days after The Hollywood Reporter published the accounts of two women, who used pseudonyms while opening up about the alleged sexual assaults they say took place in 2004 and 2015, respectively. According to the outlet, the two women separately reached out to them and do not know each other. Actor Zoe Lister-Jones also accused Noth of being "consistently sexually inappropriate with a fellow female promoter" and alleged he was "drunk on set" when they guest-starred on 'Law & Order'. The actor shared her statement on her Instagram account a few days back. Noth has denied all the allegations levelled against him. He said in a statement, "The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false. These stories could've been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago--no always means no--that is a line I did not cross. The encounters were consensual. It's difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out." "I don't know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women," he added. Last Friday, a third woman came forward with sexual assault allegations against Noth. In a Daily Beast report, a woman who wished to remain anonymous but used the pseudonym, Ava, told the outlet that when she was 18, Noth had sexually assaulted her while she was working at a New York City restaurant in 2010. Noth also denied the third woman's account in a statement. "The story is a complete fabrication, and the alleged accounts detailed throughout read like a piece of bad fiction," a rep for Noth said. "As Chris stated yesterday, he has and would never cross that line," the rep added. As per People magazine, Noth has since been dropped from the A3 Artists Agency. He has also been dropped from the CBS drama 'The Equalizer'. Noth will no longer be filming episodes of 'The Equalizer', however, he will be seen in one upcoming episode that has already been filmed, as well as future repeats of episodes that have already aired. (ANI)
After several women came forward with sexual assault allegations against Chris Noth, his former 'Sex and the City' co-star Bridget Moynahan responded to the claims, saying she doesn't "know anything about" the misconduct allegations. As per Fox News, the actor told Elle magazine that she doesn't know anything about the allegations made against Noth by multiple women. "It would be inappropriate for me to comment on things I don't have any knowledge of," she said. Nearly four days earlier The Hollywood Reporter published the accounts of two women, who used pseudonyms while opening up about the alleged sexual assaults they say took place in 2004 and 2015, respectively. According to the outlet, the two women separately reached out to them and do not know each other. Actor Zoe Lister-Jones also accused Noth of being "consistently sexually inappropriate with a fellow female promoter" and alleged he was "drunk on set" when they guest-starred on 'Law & Order'. The actor shared her statement on her Instagram account a few days back. Noth has denied all the allegations levelled against him. He said in a statement, "The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false. These stories could've been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago--no always means no--that is a line I did not cross. The encounters were consensual. It's difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out." "I don't know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women," he added. Last Friday, a third woman came forward with sexual assault allegations against Noth. In a Daily Beast report, a woman who wished to remain anonymous but used the pseudonym, Ava, told the outlet that when she was 18, Noth had sexually assaulted her while she was working at a New York City restaurant in 2010. Noth also denied the third woman's account in a statement. "The story is a complete fabrication, and the alleged accounts detailed throughout read like a piece of bad fiction," a rep for Noth said. "As Chris stated yesterday, he has and would never cross that line," the rep added. As per People magazine, Noth has since been dropped from the A3 Artists Agency. He has also been dropped from the CBS drama 'The Equalizer'. (ANI)
As 'Ek Mahanayak Dr B.R. Ambedkar' completed two years recently, the lead actors talk about their journey on the show so far. It is based on the life of the architect of the Indian Constitution - Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. Atharva Karve, essaying young Bhimrao's character, said: "Although the show completed its two years, for me, it seems like the journey has just started. Since the beginning, I have admired this show, and it has been one of my favourite shows. I had never imagined that one day, I would be a part of it and essay the lead character of the young Bhimrao. Essaying a personality of this stature is not easy and a big responsibility." On the other hand, Jagannath Nivangune, who is seen as Ramji Sakpal, Bhimrao's father, shared: "It is undoubtedly a very proud moment for all of us. I am thankful to my director Imtiaz Punjabi who has taken my acting craft a notch higher with his direction. His father imbibed Bhimrao's eagerness to learn and his values. Although Ramji was a strict disciplinarian, he always worked towards the welfare of his children and wife. The show has given all of us immense love and recognition." Narayani Mahesh Varne, who plays the role of Bhimrao's wife, Ramabai, expressed her excitement at being part of the show. "I am on cloud nine today as our show completes two years. It has been a great journey for me, professionally and personally. Portraying Ramabai's character has been an enriching experience, and I had never imagined that I would be playing a significant role in the show one day." 'Ek Mahanayak Dr B.R. Ambedkar' airs on &TV. --IANS ila/kr ( 294 Words) 2021-12-21-14:40:06 (IANS)
Spanish actor Javier Bardem has doubled down on his support for Woody Allen, arguing that the sexual abuse allegations made against the filmmaker are "gossip" and that people are innocent until proven guilty. According to Page Six, talking about his stance on Allen, Bardem said, "Pointing fingers at someone is very dangerous if it hasn't been legally proven. Beyond that, it's just gossip." He continued, "I try to go where logic dictates, which is: Let's follow the rules that exist to establish whether someone is guilty or innocent. If the case re-opens and he is proven to be guilty, I will be the first to say, 'What a horrible thing.' But so far, I haven't seen that." Bardem, who starred in Allen's 2008 film 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona', was dragged in 2018 when he said he would work with Allen again after the director's estranged daughter, Dylan Farrow, accused him of sexual abuse. Allen has vehemently denied Farrow's claims. "He's a genius," Bardem said during the 2018 Lumiere Film Festival in France, adding that despite being in the #MeToo era, "I would work with him tomorrow." He reiterated at the time that Allen had not been found guilty of any crime. "Public accusations are very dangerous. If some day there is a trial and it's proven to be true, I would change my opinion, but at this moment, nothing has changed," he continued. Bardem's 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' co-star Scarlett Johansson had also defended Allen, saying in 2019, "I love Woody. I believe him, and I would work with him anytime." Meanwhile, Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Hall, who both starred in Allen's 'A Rainy Day In New York', have denounced the director, as per Page Six. (ANI)
'Uncharted' starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg will be arriving in theatres on February 18 in India. The film, directed by Ruben Fleischer with screenplay by Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, with a story by Judkins, will be released in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu across India. Sony Pictures India recently made an announcement with regards to the film's release on their social media as they shared the film's poster and wrote, "The race for the greatest treasure never found begins in #UnchartedMovie, starring @TomHolland2013 and @MarkWahlberg, exclusively in movie theaters February 18. Releasing in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu." The film serves as an origin story and prequel to the video games of the same name and follows the journey of Nathan Drake played by Tom Holland on his first treasure hunting adventure with his partner Victor Sullivan played by Mark Wahlberg as they set out on the hot pursuit of "the greatest treasure never found." The film that went into development as early as 2008, has faced numerous roadblocks to its release. Finally, it will see the light of day first with UK release on February 11 followed by its worldwide release on February 18. --IANS aa/kr ( 214 Words) 2021-12-21-16:38:05 (IANS)
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said that Cabinet has agreed with the advice from the Technical Advisory Group off the back of Medsafe approval to vaccinate children between 5 to 11 years old, reports Xinhua news agency.

"A key focus of the government is to keep everyone in New Zealand safe from the Covid-19 pandemic," Hipkins said.

According to the Ministry of Health, the children vaccination program will begin from January 17, 2022.

There are 476,000 children between the mentioned age group nationwide, who will become eligible to get their first dose from this date, and their second dose at least eight weeks later.

However, the interval can be safely shortened to a minimum of 21 days if needed, the Ministry said.

The New Zealand government strongly recommends parents have their children vaccinated.

"In the most recent outbreak, 24 percent of cases have been aged 11 or under. The government is strongly encouraging parents to have their children vaccinated against Covid-19, but I want to be clear that this is a choice for parents," Hipkins added.

--IANS ksk/

( 221 Words)

2021-12-21-14:02:04 (IANS)
A research has found that skin infections are likely to be a significant cause of rheumatic fever. The study has been published in the 'BMJ Global Health Journal'. Acute rheumatic fever is an important cause of serious heart disease, particularly for Maori and Pacific children and young people in Aotearoa, New Zealand and for many children and young people in low and middle-income countries. Professor Michael Baker from the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago, Wellington, explained that it has long been recognized that rheumatic fever is a complication of group A streptococcus (GAS) pharyngitis, commonly known as "strep throat". However, new research indicated that streptococcus skin infections can also trigger the disease. "This study is a major breakthrough in understanding the causes of acute rheumatic fever," Professor Baker said. "It is the world's first study to confirm that the risk of rheumatic fever rises after a GAS skin infection in a similar way to how it does after a GAS sore throat. Because acute rheumatic fever is an uncommon disease and few countries have comprehensive linked health data, no previous study has been able to quantify the rheumatic fever risk following a laboratory-confirmed infection," he added. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of rheumatic fever seen in a high-income country, with more than half of all rheumatic fever cases in the Auckland region. This study used data on almost 1.9 million (1,866,981) throat and skin swabs processed in the Auckland region over an eight-year period, which was linked to hospitalization data to identify rheumatic fever cases, as well as prescribing data to identify if cases were dispensed antibiotics. The risk of rheumatic fever increased five-fold in the eight to 90 day period following collection of both a GAS positive strep throat swab and a GAS positive skin swab (compared with negative swabs). Maori and Pacific children had the highest risk of developing rheumatic fever following the collection of a GAS positive swab. The focus of rheumatic fever prevention in New Zealand has been largely on diagnosing and treating GAS throat infections. This established thinking is behind the school-based sore throat management programme that has operated in several North Island DHBs for more than a decade. Professor Baker said that the study's findings have huge implications for the prevention of acute rheumatic fever. "While treating GAS sore throats should remain a key strategy in the prevention of rheumatic fever, a new focus should also be placed on addressing GAS skin infections to help reduce the risk of rheumatic fever in New Zealand and internationally," he said. New Zealand has a high and increasing incidence of skin infections, with markedly higher rates in Maori and Pacific children compared with children of European and other ethnicities. "Health professionals caring for children at risk of rheumatic fever need to treat skin infections with the same level of intensity as throat infections. While a key message for the public is that skin infections matter and need to be treated promptly," he said. The study team is now planning research to build on these findings, said Dr Julie Bennett, who also worked on the research. "We are planning a trial of more intensive skin infection treatment to see if this can reduce the risk of developing rheumatic fever," she said. The study also revealed that dispensing a course of oral antibiotics, which is the routine treatment for children following a strep throat diagnosis, was not associated with a reduced risk of developing rheumatic fever. "This is a worrying finding. It suggests that we need to find more effective ways of treating these infections than the course of oral antibiotics that is currently prescribed," Dr Bennett said. (ANI)
Karnataka government on Tuesday announced restrictions on new year celebrations in the wake of prevailing Covid situation in the state. At Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that the decision has been taken at a high-level meeting with authorities and Covid expert committee members who attended the meeting through video conferencing. "The usual large gatherings at M.G.Road, Brigade Road and surrounding areas in Bengaluru has been banned this time. Large gatherings are also banned at any place across the state for new year celebrations," he stated. As for as clubs, pubs are concerned, DJ music, special events are not allowed. The entry has been restricted to 50 per cent capacity. Large scale parties are also not allowed anywhere in the state, he maintained. Bommai further said that this applies to the apartment premises also. The resident welfare association's must see to it that there are no large gatherings and parties on their premises. The entry is allowed only for those who have been administered with two doses of Covid vaccination. The rules will be applied from December 30 to January 2. During the Christmas celebrations, mass gatherings are not allowed outside the premises and the prayers inside the church are allowed and church authorities should ensure social distancing, Bommai explained. The state health department is worried over detection of 19 cases of Omicron variant in the state. The cases are reported in districts other than Bengaluru and health machinery is on firefighting mode. Fortunately, all Omicron patients are asymptomatic and recovering well. --IANS mka/shb/ ( 272 Words) 2021-12-21-17:14:03 (IANS)
Amid mounting cases of the fast-spreading Omicron variant of Covid-19, scientists in the UK have called for urgent rules, warning that waiting till New Year to enforce the measures may be "too late". The UK has so far recorded over 37,000 confirmed cases of Omicron, with a majority of cases detected in the last two days, and 12 deaths. PM Boris Johnson has ruled out introducing immediate new Covid restrictions in England. The current restrictions in England don't include limits on socialising. Scientists have reacted with dismay, emphasising that waiting until the new year would "almost certainly be too late to have a material impact on the epidemic", The Guardian reported. Because the rate of growth in infection rates may already have plateaued or fallen by then, it may also be too late to know what impact those restrictions would have had if they had been introduced earlier, they said. "We are damned if we do and damned if we don't," Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia was quoted as saying. After a cabinet meeting, the PM announced that he would not be introducing any further Covid restrictions for now, adding: "The situation is extremely difficult and the arguments either way are very, very finely balanced." Data on the hospitalisation rate for those infected with the Omicron variant would be kept under "constant review", he said, with government sources hinting that further restrictions were likely after Christmas. Yet, with Omicron infections currently doubling within 48 hours in most regions of the UK, the country may already have reached a ceiling where the rate of growth begins to fall and case numbers plateau, the report said. Hunter believes that point could come within days, with or without interventions. "If we implement control measures now, they are unlikely to be sufficient to reverse the growth, only slow it," he said. "But there may still be benefits in slowing the peak, in terms of flattening the curve." Prof Christina Pagel, the director of University College London's clinical operational research unit, said: "Waiting for definitive evidence that it could cause the NHS to be overwhelmed will be too late to avert the crisis." Pagel suggested that instead, the government should follow the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advice and "return to step 2 of the roadmap immediately" to prevent soaring infections and "then monitor the situation hour by hour so that measures can be lifted as quickly as possible, hopefully even in time to enable limited household mixing over Christmas weekend". The step 2 measures includes, people only being allowed to socialise indoors with members of their household or a support bubble, and outdoor socialising being limited to groups of six people or two households, including at pubs and restaurants, the report said. --IANS rvt/vd ( 479 Words) 2021-12-21-19:10:04 (IANS)
Intensifying their ongoing protest over the delay in NEET-PG 2021 counselling, the resident doctors of Delhi's hospitals on Tuesday held a 'Tali, Thali and Phool Wapsi' protest outside the Health Ministry in Nirman Bhawan. In a symbolic representation, the agitating doctors returned the flowers showered on them for being at the forefront in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic during its peak to the ministry. Resident doctors' associations (RDAs) across the nation are protesting since November 27 against the multiple postponement of NEET-PG counselling for 2021 and the subsequent admission of the fresh batch of resident doctors in the medical colleges. The RDAs withdrew all services, including routine and emergency services, from December 17 over their demand of urgent hearing of NEET-PG counselling, which is pending before the apex court. Earlier, the Federation of Resident Doctors' Association (FORDA) had requested the presidents of all the political parties via a letter to highlight their issues in the Parliament, including the necessity of expediting NEET-PG counselling. "Around 45,000 qualified doctors who have cleared NEET-PG 2021 are eagerly waiting to join the workforce. The current batch of resident doctors are already overworked and exhausted after dealing with the previous waves of the pandemic. With the threat of a possible third wave looming large, the situation will be distarous for the healthcare sector with bearing on the nation's population," FORDA had said in its letter to the political parties. Patient care has largely been affected in the city's hospitals, as the doctors' protest entered the fifth day on Tuesday. Earlier, the RDAs had boycotted emergency and routine services in hospitals from December 6. The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Postgraduate) for 2021 was delayed twice, first from January to April, and then to September. Now the admission process has been delayed due to a dispute over the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) quota. --IANS avr/arm ( 323 Words) 2021-12-21-19:16:03 (IANS)
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has slammed Jitan Ram Manjhi, leader of the Hindustani Awam Morcha for his remarks against the liquor ban in the state. Manjhi had openly advocated that poor people should consume liquor after 10 p.m. and stay at home like IAS-IPS officers, doctors, engineers and other such people. On Monday after the Janata Darbar, when asked by media persons to clear his stand on Jitan Ram Manjhi, Nitish Kumar said: "Those who are making statements against the liquor ban should know that they gained public support because of this. We had imposed a liquor ban following public opinion. Hence, he should avoid giving statements that promote liquor consumption in Bihar." Nitish Kumar did not say what action he is going to take against Jitan Ram Manjhi. Manjhi had also demanded that the Nitish Kumar government adopt the Gujarat model of liquor ban in Bihar. The Gujarat model of liquor ban was first put in perspective by the president of the Bihar Chambers of Commerce and Industry P.K. Agrawal during a traders meeting a month ago. Agrawal pointed out that due to the liquor ban in Bihar, national or international seminars or events related to trade and business cannot be organised. It is affecting the business here. He had also advocated the implementation of the Gujarat model of liquor ban where the state government gives permission for liquor for guests coming for such events. Nitish Kumar, on liquor prohibition day about a month ago, had said that those who give statements against the liquor ban or promote consumption of liquor would be liable to face legal action. The Bihar government had also organised an event on that day where every government official and legislator were asked to take oath that they will not consume liquor. Kumar had also directed the authorities to take action against Agrawal. --IANS ajk/skp/bg ( 323 Words) 2021-12-20-19:58:01 (IANS)
Amid uproar by the opposition, Lok Sabha passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill which contains the provision of linking Aadhaar to an electoral roll to churn out fake voters, said Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, adding that linking Aadhar is optional, not mandatory. Speaking to ANI here in New Delhi, Kiren Rijiju said the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill would allow the electoral roll to be linked with Aadhar cards. It will be optional, not mandatory but it will help us to sieve out fake voters. Rijiju said that there should be a proper discussion on election reforms. The Opposition was asked to participate and voice their opinions in the discussion, but they created chaos. Rijiju said, "The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill proposes to replace the word 'wife' with 'spouse' to make the act (Representation of the People Act of 1951) gender-neutral. It will also expand the limits of the election premises acquisition." "Even after 18 years, the system said that one has to wait a whole year to exercise their voting rights if they could not register on January 1 (of the year of revision of electoral roll). This bill will allow 4 qualifying dates a year to register as voters," Rijiju said. Amid uproar by the opposition, Lok Sabha passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill on Monday.The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek the Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters "for the purpose of establishing identity." The Bill also seeks to allow the electoral registration officers to get Aadhaar numbers from "persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in the electoral roll, and to identify registration of the name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency." Reacting to the introduction of the bill, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday said that the Centre is curtailing the independence of the Election Commission by bringing the legislation. (ANI)
Gandhinagar Police on Monday detained about seventy Aam Admi Party (AAP) leaders and workers for creating a ruckus at the BJP state headquarters and physically assaulting some women. The police action came after two BJP female workers lodged a complaint in which they said that some AAP leaders were even drunk. "We have detained around seventy AAP leaders and workers including Isudan Gadhvi, Gopal Italia, Nikhil Savani, Pravin Ram and others based on an FIR lodged against a mob of around four hundred people. The police will produce all of them in the court on Tuesday," Mayur Chavda, the Gandhinagar SP told reporters. According to the complaint, AAP leaders and cadres on Monday entered into the state BJP headquarters in Gandhinagar 'Shri Kamalam' in the afternoon and staged protest over the leak of question papers of head clerk exams. Two women members of the BJP -- Shraddha Jha and Shraddha Rajput in their complaint alleged that they were physically assaulted by AAP leaders. They showed nail injury marks over their bodies to the media. Rajput alleged that AAP leaders caused injuries to BJP women workers and also that the AAP male cadres used abusive language in presence of women. Rajput in her complaint said that she identified Gopal Italia, Isudan Gadhvi and Pravin Ram of the AAP. Rajput has alleged that AAP leader Isudan Gadhvi was drunk. He should be taken to a government hospital to check whether he was drunk or not. Another female BJP member, Shraddha Jha said, "AAP leaders initially were shouting slogans, but then they started using abusive language. They were apparently here to create ruckus. I along with Shraddha Rajput asked AAP women to leave the place after token protest but we were attacked. They had come here with the intention to create ruckus. AAP male members were beating up BJP's two women cadres with sticks." Jha said, "Many of the protesters smelt of liquor consumption and they were definitely drunk." The police flushed out AAP leaders by using force and removed them from Kamalam. The AAP has meanwhile alleged that Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) Gujarat chief was roaming with stick in his hand. Meanwhile, the Gujarat Police on Monday arrested a key person who leaked the Gujarat Subordinate Service Selection Board (GSSSB) (Gaun Seva Pasandagi Mandal) exam paper for recruitment of head clerks. Meanwhile, the primary report of the breath analysis of AAP leader Isudan Gadhvi for liquor has been reported to be negative. --IANS amc/skp/ ( 426 Words) 2021-12-20-20:42:02 (IANS)
When most parties of the northeast, including BJP's allies, are strongly demanding the Armed Forces (Special Power) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) be repealed from the entire region, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said the law would continue to be enforced in his state. A decision on withdrawing the AFSPA would be taken only if the present peace prevails for a longer term, he said, expressing doubts whether militant outfits would reciprocate the same manner if the AFSPA is lifted from Assam. "No state government wants to continue with AFSPA if the law and order situation is peaceful and favourable. AFSPA withdrawal is linked with the peace and stability of the state. Recently the Arunachal Pradesh government in consultation with the Centre has withdrawn the AFSPA from certain parts of the state," Sarma told the media. The AFSPA, which allows the Army and Central paramilitary forces to conduct raids, operations, arrest anyone anywhere without prior notice or arrest warrant, is in force in Nagaland, Assam, Manipur barring the Imphal municipal council area, and certain districts of Arunachal Pradesh. All major political parties including the Congress, the CPI-M, the CPI, the Trinamool Congress, the Naga People's Front (NPF), the National People's Party (NPP), the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) and almost all other local and regional parties have been demanding the repeal of the AFSPA. The NPP, the NPF, the IPFT, and the NDPP are the allies of the BJP in the Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura and Manipur goverments, respectively. Though the BJP leaders in Nagaland are strongly demanding lifting of the AFSPA from the region, the Central leaders of the party have yet to disclose their stand. --IANS sc/vd ( 300 Words) 2021-12-20-22:52:01 (IANS)
"State Home Secretary and Director General of Police have taken up the issue with their Maharashtra counterparts to protect the life and property of Kannadigas in Maharashtra," said Bommai on Monday.

"We have taken up the issue to provide security for Karnataka government vehicles," he added.

Referring to the incident of vandalism of statues of Chhatrapati Shivaji and freedom fighter Sangolli Rayanna, CM said, "The State government will take decisive steps to stop vandalism. Stringent action would be initiated against those who take the law into their hands."

"The main perpetrators of the recent vandalism in Karnataka have already been arrested. We will not allow any hooliganism to continue," he added.

Tension erupted in Belagavi after a purported video that showed some people pouring black ink on the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj at Sankey Tank Road in Bengaluru went viral.

Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) followers gathered in Belagavi and protested against the Karnataka government at Dharmaveer Sambhaji Maharaj Chowk.

The miscreants smashed around 26 vehicles of the Karnataka government and police at Belagavi.

The protestors alleged that Kannada goons have defaced a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Bangalore.

Meanwhile, as per Belagavi commissioner of police K Tyagarajan, 27 people have been arrested in three police station limits in Belagavi for attacking the Sangolli Rayanna statue. (ANI)
HAM leader and Bihar's former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi's "abusive remarks" on the Brahmin community have led to a row and now after the FIRs against him, the Pandas (priests) of his home district Gaya announced they will not perform rituals and "Pind-Daan" (offering to ancestors) after his death. "Jitan Ram Manji is a native of Gaya district and the entire Brahmin community has given good support to him. Still, he has not only abused the Brahmin community but also the entire Sanatan Dharma. Hence, when he would die, Pandas would not go to his house for his shradh or Pind-Daan," said Prem Nath Teyya, the leader of the Panda community of Gaya. A large number of Pandas assembled at the city's Vishnupad temple on Monday to participated in a protest march. They have also burnt him in effigy. "Jitan Ram Manjhi has given disgraceful statements against the Brahmin community to do cheap politics. He has deeply hurt the sentiments of Brahmins. It cannot be tolerated," Teyya said. Gaya is famous for Pind-Daan and people from across the country come here to perform the ritual after their family members die. It is the only place where Pind-Daan takes place in the country and hence this place has great importance under Hindu tradition and culture. As per Ramayana, Lord Rama along with Sita and younger brother Laxmana went to the bank of Falgu river to offer Pind-Daan to his father Dashrath. Since then the tradition has continued, as per the claims of the Pandas of Gaya. Manjhi, while addressing the people of Mushar community during an event in Patna on December 19, said that when he was young, the prevalence of Satyanaraya Puja (Worshiping Lord Vishnu) was not much in their community. "These days, the prevalence of Satyanarayan Puja is taking place in almost every house in our community. More alarmingly, the Brahmins come to our house, conduct Puja but they do not eat food in our houses. They shamelessly demand money (Dakshina) instead of eating food in our houses," he said. Mushars come under the Maha Dalit community in Bihar. --IANS ajk/vd ( 367 Words) 2021-12-20-23:02:04 (IANS)
The curfew timing will be 1 am to 5 am, reads the official order.

The eight cities which continue to witness night curfew are Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat, Rajkot, Vadodara, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar and Junagarh.

Meanwhile, Business can continue their operations till 12 at night.

As per the order, Restaurants can only fill 75 per cent of their sitting capacity in order to maintain social distancing.

The limit of 400 people for a wedding has not been changed in the order.

Rajkot district of Gujarat reported the first case of Omicron variant of COVID-19, said the district collector Arun Mahesh Babu on Sunday.

Whereas, other districts of the state have also reported cases of Omicron.

Meanwhile, India has reported 161 cases of new coronavirus variant Omicron, said Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Monday.

"As of now, India has 161 Omicron cases...We are monitoring the situation daily with experts," the minister told Rajya Sabha while replying to a debate on the COVID-19 situation. (ANI)
In its notice, the BJP Parliamentary Party has requested the attendance of all BJP members of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

"A meeting of BJP Parliamentary Party will be held at 9.15 am on Tuesday, the 21st December 2021 in the Dr Ambedkar International Centre, 15 Janpath (Near Hotel Le Meridian), New Delhi," its notice read.

The winter session of Parliament is scheduled to culminate on December 23. (ANI)
Congress Lok Sabha MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury while demanding that Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to link Aadhaar with the electoral roll, should be sent to the standing committee, alleging that the passage of the bill in Lok Sabha is related to the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. "It has been passed keeping in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in mind... I think the bill was brought in to keep many people away from exercising their electoral voting right," said Chowdhury. "I don't know why the government was in hurry to pass Election Laws (Amendment) Bill. It should have been sent to a standing committee. We still don't have a data protection law. This may impact people's voting rights," he added. Amid uproar by the opposition, Lok Sabha passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill on Monday. Speaking to ANI, Kiren Rijiju said the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill would allow the electoral roll to be linked with Aadhar cards. It will be optional, not mandatory but it will help us to sieve out fake voters. Rijiju said that there should be a proper discussion on election reforms. The Opposition was asked to participate and voice their opinions in the discussion, but they created chaos. Rijiju said, "The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill proposes to replace the word 'wife' with 'spouse' to make the act (Representation of the People Act of 1951) gender-neutral. It will also expand the limits of the election premises acquisition." "Even after 18 years, the system said that one has to wait a whole year to exercise their voting rights if they could not register on January 1 (of the year of revision of electoral roll). This bill will allow 4 qualifying dates a year to register as voters," Rijiju said. The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek the Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters "for the purpose of establishing identity." The Bill also seeks to allow the electoral registration officers to get Aadhaar numbers from "persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in the electoral roll, and to identify registration of the name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency." (ANI)
Two days before the meeting, Sajad Lone led the Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference (JKPC) pulled out of the People's Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) on Sunday.

PAGD's last meeting took place in August last when the leaders adopted a resolution to restore the constitutional position of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh under Articles 370 and 35A.

The constituents of the PAGD as well as their party leaders had met at Jammu and Kashmir National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah's residence in Srinagar on August 24.

Notably, leaders from constituent parties had for the first time attended the meeting of PAGD since its formation two years back. (ANI)
The Enforcement Directorate on Monday questioned Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for nearly 5 hours in the Panama Papers leak case.

She deposed before the investigators following the summons issued by the federal agency against her to join the probe.

The ED recorded the statement of the 48-year-old actor in the case over allegations of stashing wealth abroad under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. She had earlier submitted records on the foreign payments under investigation.

The ED had issued notices to the Bachchan family asking them to explain their foreign remittances since 2004 under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) of the Reserve Bank of India.

Sources in the agency informed that Aishwarya was summoned earlier too but she could not appear and sought next dates at least two times. (ANI)
Netaji Indoor Stadium has been made the counting centre where the exercise is being carried out amid tight security.

Elections for all 144 wards of KMC took place at 4,959 polling booths on Sunday.

Both the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and its biggest opponent BJP fielded their candidates in all 144 seats. When BJP this time mainly focussed on youth candidates, lawyers and professors, TMC picked up relatives of ministers.

All the attention this time has been drawn by TMC candidate from ward number 73, Bhowanipore Kajari Banerjee, the sister-in-law of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Left and Congress who had fought the Assembly polls jointly decided to contest the KMC polls independently.

Importantly none of the parties be it TMC, BJP or Congress, has announced the face for the post of Mayor.

Meanwhile, terming the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) polls a 'farce', West Bengal BJP on Sunday wrote to State Election Commission and alleged that the police in the city were not capable to conduct 'peaceful' elections.

The BJP also said that Meena Devi Purohit who is a 5-term counsellor, contesting for her sixth term, was physically attacked.

In the 2015 KMC polls, TMC won 114 wards while the Left bagged 15. BJP managed to win six wards, Congress five and others got three. However, many opposition councilors joined the ruling camp later. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not attending the meeting.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman; Ports, Shipping and Waterways Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Minister of State (MoS) for Food Processing Industries Prahlad Singh Patel; Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Bhupender Yadav, MoS Ministry of External Affairs V Muraleedharan and other union ministers are present at the meeting.

BJP chief JP Nadda and other party MPs are also present at the meeting.

In its notice, the BJP Parliamentary Party has requested the attendance of all BJP members of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

"A meeting of BJP Parliamentary Party will be held at 9.15 am on Tuesday, the 21st December 2021 in the Dr Ambedkar International Centre, 15 Janpath (Near Hotel Le Meridian), New Delhi," its notice read.

The winter session of Parliament is scheduled to culminate on 23 December. (ANI)
Rajya Sabha has been adjourned till 2 pm on Tuesday following the ruckus created by the Opposition parties. Soon after starting the business on Tuesday, Opposition members raised their issue of boycotting the Business Advisory Committee meeting of the Upper House held yesterday. Opposition parties had boycotted the meeting on Monday alleging that they were not informed timely for the meet. On Monday, Rajya Sabha was adjourned multiple times due to the Opposition's ruckus. Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu had expressed disappointment over the lack of progress in resolving the stalemate on the issue of suspension of 12 members of the House that was effected on the first day of the ongoing Winter Session. Since the beginning of the Winter Session on November 29, Rajya Sabha has been facing a ruckus over the revocation of the suspension of 12 MPs from the House. In a move that angered the Opposition and set the stage for acrimonious exchanges, a dozen members of Opposition parties in Rajya Sabha were suspended from the winter session on the very first day on Monday following a motion brought in by the government. The members were suspended for alleged unruly conduct towards the end of the monsoon session in August when marshals were called after Opposition members stormed the Well of the House during the passage of the General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Bill, 2021. The suspended members comprise six from the Congress, two each from Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena, and one each from CPI and CPM: Phulo Devi Netam, Chhaya Verma, Ripun Bora, Rajamani Patel, Syed Nasir Hussain and Akhilesh Prasad Singh of Congress; Dola Sen, Shanta Chhetri of Trinamool Congress; Priyanka Chaturvedi, Anil Desai of Shiv Sena; Elamaram Kareem of CPM; and, Binoy Viswam of CPI. All the suspended 12 MPs have been sitting near Mahatma Gandhi statue inside the Parliament premises since they were suspended from the House, and the Opposition parties have been relentlessly disrupting House proceedings every day over the issue barring a few occasions. (ANI)
Notably, yesterday, the Opposition parties, during their meeting, had decided not to attend the meeting called by the government to end the deadlock in Rajya Sabha in the ongoing winter session of Parliament.

Yesterday's meeting of floor leaders of both Houses of Parliament was convened to chalk out the further strategy on revoking suspension of 12 Opposition MPs and demand for resignation of Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni over the Lakhimpur Kheri issue. (ANI)
The Bill is likely to be tabled today or tomorrow during the winter session of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly that commenced today.

"The Bill that seeks to recover from protestors and rioters the damages caused to public properties during violent protests, strikes and communal riots, would be introduced in the Assembly either on December 21 or December 22," Mishra told ANI.

The Bill was approved by the Madhya Pradesh Cabinet last week in a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan where it gave its nod to the proposed draft of Madhya Pradesh Lok Evam Niji Sampati Ka Nuksan Nivaran Evam Nusksani Ki Vasuli (Redressal and Recovery of Damages to Public and Private Properties) Bill 2021.

Thie Bill is likely to be on the same lines as 'Uttar Pradesh Recovery of Damages to Public and Private Property Ordinance, 2020'. (ANI)
There have been some news items published stating that December data for the first 17 days is the lowest ever in terms of employment generated under Mahatma Gandhi NREGS. It needs to be clarified that Mahatma Gandhi NREGS is a demand-driven scheme and such comparison is not as per the spirit of the act, said the Ministry of Rural Development. It needs to be mentioned that during the current financial year, so far, more than 261 crore person-days has been generated as per the demand by the beneficiaries, said the ministry, adding that during the financial year (FY) 2019-20, for the period April to November, a total of more than 175 crore person-days got generated, in the same period of the previous year more than 276 crore person-days got generated, and in the current FY during the same period, more than 255 crore person-days got generated. As per the ministry, the work done in a particular month is counted against the MR filled up during the month. The Scheme allows 7 days window for the entry of the data. Thus, full data of December is usually available about 10 days into the next month. Thus, a comparison based on the data for the first 17 days takes into account the person-days that have been generated during a minor fraction of the month of December. As per the provision of the Act, the data entry for the works which would get completed in the last week of the month of December 2021, will be reflected in the 2nd week of January 2022, stated the ministry. It may also be mentioned that during November 2019 a total of 16.92 crore person-days were generated, in the same month of last year over 23 crore person-days got generated and in the month of November, 2021 more than 22 crore person-days got generated. Fund release towards wage and material is a continuous process. There has been an increase of more than 18 per cent of funds allocated for the current financial year in comparison to the previous financial year as a budget estimate. During the current FY, so far, more than Rs 74,388 crore funds have been released for the implementation of the scheme in the States/UTs. Whenever an additional fund is required, the Ministry of Finance is requested to provide the funds. Recently, the Ministry of Finance allocated additional funds of Rs 10,000 crore for Mahatma Gandhi NREGA as an interim measure. Further, allocation may be made upon assessment of demand during the RE stage. The Government of India is committed to releasing funds for wage and material payments for proper implementation of the scheme, as per the provisions of the act and guidelines applicable for Central Government as well as State Governments, added the ministry. (ANI)
The clerics of Darul-Uloom Deoband, a renowned Islamic seminary, have voiced their opposition to the Centre's decision to raise the marriage age of girls from 18 to 21 years. This comes after the Khaps of western Uttar Pradesh declined to accept the decision and announced that they would convene a Maha Panchayat to discuss the issue. Deoband clerics have said that the decision seems to have been taken 'in haste and must be reconsidered'. Jamiat Dawat Ul Muslimeen's patron Ishaq Gora said that if the Union government wants to make it a law, "then they should have consulted the religious heads of all faiths". The cleric further said that "India is a country where people follow and obey religious heads more than the government." He stated, "Our government has the right to make any law. But after raising the age of marriage for girls, the government should not be in a hurry to implement it." Another Deoband cleric, Mufti Asad Qasmi, said, "They (government) do not listen to anyone. If they want to make it a law, they will do so. But I would like to point out that if a boy and a girl are not married at the right time, then there is a risk that they may commit sin. So, they should be married at a younger age." Several Khaps have also opposed the Centre's decision saying that it will lead to an increase in crime against women. The Khaps said that the decision amounts to interference in the personal lives of people. "Parents should have the sole right to decide when to marry off their daughters," said Naresh Tikait, BKU leader and head of Baliyan khap (having over one lakh followers in 78 villages of west UP). Thamba Khap leader Chaudhary Brijpal said, "The move will increase crime in society. Girls should be married off at the age of 16." The Union cabinet recently took the decision to raise the legal age of marriage for girls from 18 to 21 years. The legal age of marriage for men is 21 years. The government, with this decision, will be bringing the age of marriage for both at par. --IANS amita/dpb ( 375 Words) 2021-12-21-08:50:02 (IANS)
Kerala High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition challenging the photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi affixed on the COVID-19 vaccination certificates. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1 Lakh on the petitioner which is to be paid to the Kerala Legal Services Authority within six weeks. "The petition seems to be filed with political motives and a publicity motivated petition. Therefore, it deserves to be dismissed with a heavy cost," the High Court observed while dismissing the petition. The court further observed that while thousands of convicted persons are in Indian jails for criminal cases and are waiting for their appeal hearings, thousands for matrimonial disputes...so this court must consider this petition quickly. "In such a situation, such frivolous petitions must be dismissed with a heavy cost," the court said. The court criticised the petitioner for wasting judicial time, and asked: "Why are you ashamed of our Prime Minister?" Single Bench of Justice PV Kunhikrishnan further remarked: "There is a general trend to a section of the citizens of our country that the political leaders are all corrupt people and they cannot be believed. I think, from this concept, these types of arguments are coming into the mind of the petitioner. But can anyone generalise like that? What is wrong with politicians? Since there is a small percentage of politicians are having a bad history, the entire politicians need not be ignored." There are excellent political leaders who have made great initiatives for the welfare of the country, calling them builders of our nation with innovative ideas, he added. Further, in his remarks, the Judge said, "The people elect the eligible persons among them and send them to the Parliament and the majority party will select their leader and he will be our Prime Minister for five years. Till the next general election, he will be the Prime Minister of India. Therefore, according to me, it is the duty of the citizens to respect the Prime Minister of India, and of course, they can differ on the policies of the Government and even the political stand of the Prime Minister." "The Prime Minister of India is not a person who entered the parliament house by breaking the roof of the parliament building. He came to power because of the mandate of the people. The Indian democracy is being praised by the world. The Prime Minister is elected because he has got people's mandate," he added. "Once the election is over and the majority of people gave a mandate to a political party which leads to the election of Prime Minister, he is not the leader of that political party but a leader of the country. In the next general election, they can make use of it and remove him with people's mandate. But once a Prime Minister is elected as per the constitution, he is the Hon'ble Prime Minister of our country and that post should be the pride of every citizen, whether the Prime Minister is X or Y," he further added. The plea was submitted by an RTI activist Peter Myaliparampil. (ANI)
Slamming the Delhi government over the death of three children due to the alleged administration of wrong medicines by a mohalla clinic, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Gautam Gambhir said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should take responsibility for the incident while demanding his apology. Speaking to ANI, Gambhir said, " The Delhi chief minister should take responsibility for the incident. More than the chief minister, he seems to be the advertisement minister. He has the habit to put blame on either the central government or the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. He calls himself the son of Delhi but is not taking responsibility for the loss of lives of three children." "The Delhi government and the Delhi Drug control board are responsible for the incident. They should be aware of the fact that what kind of doctors they have appointed. Instead of taking responsibility, the chief minister might be on a visit to Punjab," added the BJP MP. Meanwhile, the Delhi government sacked three doctors in connection with the incident. Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said Delhi Medical Council will conduct a thorough investigation over the matter. Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said that three doctors have been terminated in this case and DMC will investigate the matter. According to a report by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 16 cases of dextromethorphan poisoning were reported at Kalawati Saran hospital, of which three children died at the hospital. The report mentioned that these children were prescribed the Dextromethorphan drug by the Delhi government-run Mohalla Clinics and the drug is strictly not recommended for paediatric age children. (ANI)
The meeting was chaired by Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra and other members of the commission were present. The meeting was held at Hotel DoubleTree by Hilton.

Representatives of BJP, Congress, TMC, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Goa Forward Party (GFP) met the CEC.

After the meeting, representatives of parties said that they have given some suggestions to the Commission.

BJP Goa unit president Sadanand Tanavade and Senior Congress leader Altin Gomes appreciated the online registration system of the SUVIDHA App by the Election Commission.

The GFP and BJP requested the Commission to delay the implementation of model code of conduct in the State. (ANI)
With early trends showing Trinamool Congress (TMC) emerging as the leading party in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) polls, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said that people have accepted the party's work and termed it as a landmark victory. As per the official trends, out of the 144 seats, TMC has won 54 and is leading on 78. Briefing media persons, the chief minister said, "It is a landmark victory. It has sent a clear message that people have accepted our work. BJP, Left and Congress are nowhere." Meanwhile, BJP candidate Meena Devi Purohit won from KMC ward 22. "I am happy to be elected as a sixth-time councillor. This is a win for the public and BJP workers. The people who work for the public will eventually win. The voting process was not neutral. Had it been neutral, BJP would have got more seats," Purohit told ANI. In KMC ward 23, BJP candidate Vijay Ojha registered a victory. "This is a victory for the people of ward no 23. There is nothing to say about the neutrality of elections, everyone is aware of the incidents that took place in various wards during the election. BJP would have got more seats if the election was conducted fairly," Ojha told ANI. The counting of votes for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) elections is underway as the results are to be declared on today. Netaji Indoor Stadium has been made the counting centre where the exercise is being carried out amid tight security. Elections for all 144 wards of KMC took place at 4,959 polling booths on Sunday. Both the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and its biggest opponent BJP fielded their candidates in all 144 seats. While BJP this time mainly focussed on youth candidates, lawyers and professors, TMC picked up relatives of ministers. All the attention this time has been drawn by TMC candidate from ward number 73, Bhowanipore Kajari Banerjee, the sister-in-law of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The Left and the Congress which had fought the Assembly polls jointly decided to contest the KMC polls independently. Importantly, none of the parties be it TMC, BJP or Congress, has announced the face for the post of Mayor. Meanwhile, terming the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) polls a 'farce', West Bengal BJP on Sunday wrote to State Election Commission and alleged that the police in the city were not capable of conducting 'peaceful' elections. The BJP also said that Meena Devi Purohit who is a 5-term counsellor, contesting for her sixth term, was physically attacked. In the 2015 KMC polls, TMC won 114 wards while the Left bagged 15. BJP managed to win six wards, Congress five and others got three. However, many opposition councillors joined the ruling camp later. (ANI)
Stating that the entire country is a witness to the development that has taken place in Uttar Pradesh under the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that daughters of Uttar Pradesh have decided that they will not let the previous governments come back to power. Addressing the people at the launch of 'Kanya Sumangala Yojana' in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj, the Prime Minister said, "Right now I got the privilege of transferring crores of rupees to the accounts of more than 1 lakh beneficiary daughters of Mukhyamantri Kanya Sumangala Yojana. This scheme will benefit the daughters of the state. Most of the beneficiaries are those girls who did not even have accounts until some time ago. But today they have the power of digital banking. Now daughters of Uttar Pradesh have decided that they will not let the previous governments come back to power." Attacking the Opposition over the issue of woman empowerment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Union Cabinet has taken a decision to increase the marriageable age of women from 18 years to 21 years but some people are troubled with the decision. "The double engine government is working relentlessly to empower the future of daughters without any discrimination and favouritism. The central government has taken a decision. Earlier the age of marriage for sons was 21 years, but for daughters, it was only 18 years." "Daughters wanted that they should get time for pursuing studies, to progress and get equal opportunities. Efforts are being made to raise the age of marriage to 21 years for daughters. The country is taking this decision for the daughters, but people can see some are troubled by this decision," he stated. Referring to the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' campaign, Prime Minister said the Centre has tried to awaken the consciousness of the society through the campaign to prevent female foeticide. "Over 30 lakh houses in Uttar Pradesh have been built under PM Awas Yojana and about 25 lakh houses are registered in women's name. For generations, women did not have any property here but today they own the entire house. This is what true women empowerment is," he added. Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj on Tuesday. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath received the Prime Minister at the historical city. Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh are slated for early next year. (ANI)
Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai on Tuesday informed the Lok Sabha that Delhi Police acted swiftly in an impartial and fair manner during the violence in the North-east part of Delhi in February 2020. Rai in a written reply to Lok Sabha MP Thomas Chazhikadan said, "Delhi Police makes sustained efforts to obviate the occurrence of any untoward incident in the NCT of Delhi. During the violence in the North-East part of Delhi, Delhi Police acted swiftly in an impartial and fair manner." MoS Home further inform Lower House that proportionate and appropriate actions were taken by Delhi Police to control the situation. "Sincere, dedicated and incessant efforts made by Delhi Police brought the riotous situation to normalcy within a short span of time and also prevented the riots from spreading across to other areas of Delhi/NCR" he added. Nityanand Rai further said that Preventive action was taken by Delhi Police against mischief mongers, persons spreading rumours and other anti-social elements by arresting or detaining them under various preventive sections of law. Round the clock deployment of forces was ensured in all the vulnerable areas to maintain peace and law and order, he added. At least 53 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured in the violence that took place in northeast Delhi between February 24 and 26 in 2020 sparked by clashes between groups supporting and opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act. (ANI)
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday witnessed a Multi-Agency Exercise (MAE) and inaugurated an equipment display on the second day of PANEX-21, a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Exercise for BIMSTEC member nations, organised at College of Military Engineering in Pune, Maharashtra. As per an official release by the Ministry of Defence, Rajnath Singh witnessed a demonstration of the capabilities of the Indian Armed Forces to launch swift, coordinated and incremental relief efforts in case of occurrence of any natural calamity in a particular region. The exercise saw a coordinated display of rescue and relief efforts by the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force. In simulated disaster conditions, the synergised application of resources of the Armed Forces and other premiere disaster relief agencies of the country resulted in the rescue of the stranded people as well as early restoration of essential services and opening of all lines of communications. The equipment display, organised in association with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), is aimed to showcase the niche industrial capabilities and capacities of the Indian industry on disaster relief operations. Many innovative solutions, capabilities and a range of products to assist government agencies in planning, preparation and conduct of HADR operations were demonstrated to the delegates of member nations of BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation). A compendium of the products was also released by Rajnath Singh on the occasion. In his address, Rajnath Singh termed BIMSTEC as one of the most important and closely-knit groups of countries that have the potential to build a symbiotic partnership amongst like-minded nations by strengthening existing civilisational bonds. Lauding the member nations for standing by each other during natural calamities, he said, the PANEX-21 provides a fresh impetus for creating a more cohesive mechanism to respond to the HADR challenges in the region. Singh exuded confidence that the exercise will facilitate improved coordination for meeting future challenges related to cyclones and earthquakes and threats like COVID-19."Efforts by a nation directly affected by a natural disaster may quite understandably fall short due to the huge magnitude of such disasters. Thus, a multilateral effort, involving partners in the Bay of Bengal region, will act as a force multiplier in pooling-in resources and orchestrating relief measures. It will accelerate the process of providing relief to people who are already distressed due to the natural disaster," he said. Rajnath Singh reiterated India's vision for the Indian Ocean region (IOR), which is based on the concept of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), articulated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He called for deepening economic and security cooperation in the littorals; enhancing capacities to safeguard land and maritime territories; working towards sustainable regional development; blue economy and promoting collective action to deal with non-traditional threats like natural disasters, piracy and terrorism. He said, "Each of these elements requires equal attention, developing an effective response mechanism to address the humanitarian crisis and natural disasters is one of the most important pillars of SAGAR." The Defence Minister praised the Indian Armed Forces and Indian Coast Guard (ICG) for incorporating HADR operations as one of the foremost elements in their vision and for being the first responder in IOR. He made special mention of the pivotal role played by the defence forces and ICGin the fight against COVID-19. This commitment is reflected equally in the performance of the Armed Forces of each of the partner countries in the Bay of Bengal region, he added. On the COVID-19 pandemic front, Rajnath Singh stated that such calamities demand very specific resources which need to be moved to areas facing an emergency in a short span of time. He emphasised the need for a seamless information sharing mechanism at the regional level, the establishment of protocols for moving responders and material and creating requisite capacities on the basis of country-specific needs. Singh mentioned some notable HADR missions in IOR undertaken by India, including Operation Rahat in Yemen in 2015 - when India evacuated over 6,700 people; cyclone in Sri Lanka in 2016; the earthquake in Indonesia in 2019; Cyclone Idai in Mozambique; and flooding and landslides in Madagascar in January 2020; Oilspill in Mauritius in August 2020 and Oil tanker fire in Sri Lanka in September 2020 during the pandemic. Rajnath Singh also lauded National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Forces and other agencies at Central, State and district levels for working bravely and tirelessly to provide relief to the people during disasters. He stressed that not only government agencies, but the participation of the private sector, local population and NGOs is critical for ensuring the success of HADR initiatives. Singh hoped that the PANEX-21 will create the necessary groundwork for BIMSTEC nations to strengthen protocols, involving all stakeholders, to respond to future disasters. He called for consolidating and publishing a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to aid member states, expedite the conduct of disaster relief operations and save precious lives. "Each one of you, participating in this joint endeavour, brings a degree of expertise to the table. You also come with your own unique experiences. There is a need to synthesise these into a document that can be shared, circulated and be built upon for the benefit of member countries and subsequent endeavours of this kind," he said. Chief of the Army Staff General Manoj Mukund Naravane, General Officer-Commanding-in-Chief, Southern Command Lieutenant General JS Nain and senior civil and military officials of the Ministry of Defence were present on the occasion. (ANI)
Rai in a written reply to a question of Congress MP Manickam Tagore informed the Lower House that the government has entrusted two cases registered under 66F of the Information Technology Act, 2000 to the NIA for investigation.

The minister further said that NIA has been constituted under NIA Act, 2008 to investigate the cases involving offences specified in the schedule to the Act.

He said that the mandate of the NIA has been expanded by the inclusion of more offences including Section 66F of Chapter XI of the Information Technology Act, 2000 to its Schedule through National Investigation Agency (Amendment) Act, 2019.

"The Government of India has consistently taken steps to enhance the capacity of the NIA, including manpower and infrastructure, to ensure that it is able to carry out its mandate effectively," he added. (ANI)
Union Cabinet Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani on Tuesday introduced The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in Lok Sabha. The Bill seeks to increase the age of marriage of women from 18 years to 21 years. While introducing the marriage bill, the Union Minister in her remarks said, "We are, in a democracy, 75 years late in providing equal rights to men and women to enter into matrimony. Through this amendment, for the first time men and women will be able to make a decision on marriage at the age of 21, keeping in mind the right to equality." Meanwhile, Opposition leaders launched slammed the Centre for introducing the bill without discussions. Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury demanded that the Bill should be referred to Standing Committee. "We would like to advise the Government that mistakes happen when work is done in haste. A lot of discussions is being done in India over this matter. The government has neither spoken to any stakeholder nor consulted any state. We demand that the Bill be referred to Standing Committee," said Chowdhury. Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Saugata Roy opposed the way in which the Government has brought the Bill in a hurry. "I oppose the way in which the Government has brought the Bill in a hurry. This Bill needs total discussion among all stakeholders. The minority people are totally opposed to this Bill," said Roy. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Kanimozhi said, "Except for Women's Reservation Bill, Government does not believe in consulting anybody. It is very important that such an important Bill has to be sent to Standing Committee or Select Committee and they have to review it and ask for opinions in civil society and then bring the Bill." (ANI)
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday again lashed out at the media when asked about his latest tweet on lynching and told the journalist to stop working as a government agent. When questioned, the Congress MP, who was addressing the media at Vijay Chowk in Delhi, lost his cool and said, "Sarkar ki dalali mat kijiye (Don't be an agent of the government)." Rahul Gandhi in his tweet wrote: "Before 2014, the word 'lynching' was practically unheard of. #ThankYouModiJi." This is not the first time that Rahul got irked at media and targeted them alleging that they work in favour of the government. Of late, in the past week, the Congress MP has targeted the media at least thrice. On Monday, when a journalist questioned him about the government's statement blaming the Opposition for not letting the proceedings of the Houses run smoothly, Rahul Gandhi got seemingly irked at the question and asked, "Aap sarkar ke liye kaam karte hain? (Do you work for the government?)" Rahul on Sunday accused the media of suppressing the voice of the Opposition. "Sad! Many media companions only show the face of one person, suppress the voice of the opposition - do not allow it to reach the public. Did that person ever raise a voice for you?" said the Congress leader in a tweet in Hindi. "Do whatever you feel is right, but if there will be injustice-violence against you, then I was with you in the past, I will remain with you in the future," he added. (ANI)
Delhi Police has arrested a man accused of murdering a retired Indian Air Force officer in the national capital, an official said here on Tuesday. According to the official, the accused identified as Bhullu Singh, a resident of Bihar, was nabbed from Cyberabad, Hyderabad, Telangana on December 15. Furnishing details about the case, DCP (Southwest) Gaurav Sharma said a cold blooded murder of Krishan Pal Sehrawat, an Indian Air Force veteran, who was owner of a hotel in the Mahipalpur was reported at Vasant Kunj North police station on October 30. "The incident caused deep sensation among the residents as the deceased was shot dead amid a densely populated area of Mahipalpur in front of his hotel and residence of his brother," the DCP said. Subsequently, a police team was constituted to nab the accused and till November 10, six suspects were apprehended for questioning. During investigation it was revealed that a man named Roshan Lal was operating the hotel owned by Kishan Pal Sehrawat, on lease basis. A dispute cropped up between them and Roshan Lal was ousted by Senrawat. In a bid to take revenge, Roshan Lal hired his henchman Bhullu, a dreaded criminal of Siwan, Bihar who murdered the retired IAF officer. It was found that the accused was not using his mobile phone sim as usual but used to contact his associates with the help of available social media platforms such as Instagram, messenger and WhatsApp available at the time of call and used video calls on these apps. After the murder, he was tracked to Ranikheda Delhi, then Faridabad Haryana, Siwan Bihar, Sitapur UP, but he was continuously shifting his position from one place to another to evade arrest. "Finally, he was traced and cornered in Cyberabad, Hyderabad, Telangana," the official said.The police informed that the accused has previous involvement in six cases of murder, attempt to murder, arms act and extortion cases. --IANS uj/shb/ ( 334 Words) 2021-12-21-11:48:06 (IANS)
The Karnataka Assembly Speaker announced that he has allowed the government to introduce the anti-conversion bill as per the procedure, and it will be taken up for discussion on December 22.

Congress is opposing the bill tabled by the Karnataka Government and staged a walkout from the assembly. Karnataka Congress President DK Shivakumar tore the copy of the Bill inside the House.

However, Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS) HD Kumaraswamy earlier said that his party won't support the anti-conversion Bill in the Karnataka Assembly.

Belagavi Bishop Derek Fernandes has also slammed the Karnataka's government's proposed anti-conversion bill, terming it a hate campaign against Christians.

Earlier on December 14, Leader of Opposition in Karnataka assembly and Congress leader Siddaramaiah said that the anti-conversion law is being brought to target a particular religion.

"There is already a law to stop forceful conversion. Let the government take action in case of any forceful conversion. This law (proposed anti-conversion bill) is being brought to target a particular religion. Congress will oppose it tooth and nail," Siddaramaiah told media.

Meanwhile, the State Home Minister said that there is no need for anybody to live in fear due to this bill.

The Bill will provide for the protection of the right to freedom of religion and prohibition of unlawful conversion from one religion to another by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means. It proposes imprisonment up to 10 years for forced religious conversion. (ANI)
Several Opposition MPs of both the Houses on Tuesday marched from the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Parliament to Vijay Chowk, demanding suspension of Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni over Lakhimpur Kheri incident. Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut, Trinamool Congress MP Dola Sen among others participated in the march. At least 17 political parties joined the protest march including Shiv Sena, TMC, NCP, Congress, DMK and others. Earlier today, the Opposition leaders held a meeting in the Parliament on Tuesday to chalk out the floor strategy for the day. Some of them were seen carrying placards that read "Sack MoS Home". Teni's son Ashish is accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri case and is presently in jail. Rahul Gandhi while addressing the media at Vijay Chowk accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of inaction over the Opposition's demand for Teni's dismissal. "Once again Opposition is raising the Lakhimpur incident. A minister's son killed farmers and report has called it a conspiracy, not an isolated incident. PM doesn't do anything about it. You (PM) apologize (to farmers), but not remove the minister (MoS Home)," Rahul said. Standing firm on the demand to remove MoS Teni, Rahul said, "We will not spare him. Today or tomorrow, he will be sent to jail." Notably, the Opposition's demand for the removal of MoS Home intensified after the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case termed the Lakhimpur violence as "a pre-planned conspiracy". Local farmers had blamed Ajay Kumar Mishra 'Teni' and his son Ashish for the violence that claimed the lives of four farmers and a local journalist among others during a farmers' protest. Allegedly, they were mowed down by a vehicle that was part of the convoy of the minister in Lakhimpur Kheri. Videos were being circulated on social media, where a Mahindra Thar was seen knocking down protesters from behind. The minister and his son have denied the charges. Ashish Mishra and several others have been booked for murder. (ANI)
In a major setback to Punjab Congress ahead of state Assembly polls, its senior leader Rana Gurmeet Singh Sodhi, who is known to be close to former State Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, on Tuesday quit the party and joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Sodhi, who represents Guru Har Sahai constituency in Punjab Assembly, joined the BJP in the presence of party's Punjab in-charge Gajendra Singh Shekhawat at BJP headquarters in the national capital today. Union Minister Bhupendra Singh Yadav, Union Minister Som Prakash, BJP General Secretary Dushyant Gautam were also present on the occasion. Shekhawat welcomed Sodhi to the party and hoped that his joining will strengthen the party. "Gurmeet always think for the development of India and Punjab politics and the social life here has always been a place for him," said Yadav while welcoming him to the party. After joining BJP, Gurmeet Sodhi said, "Punjab is a border state and the way communal harmony peace is being created here, the ruling government here will not be to handle it because their internal disputes are not coming to an end. I think only Narendra Modi's government will save Punjab." Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sodhi further said, "I worked with Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi. Congress has demolished secularism in the country. A personality like PM Modi can only save Punjab." He further slammed the ruling party of Punjab and said that it is trying to divide the state on the basis of caste. Speaking about his relationship with Captain Amarinder Singh, Sodhi said, "Today also, I have a lot of respect for Captain Amarinder Singh. He is like my elder brother. I have a good relationship with him." After Amarinder Singh resigned from his post of Punjab Chief Minister, Sodhi was removed from his ministerial post. The political scenario changed in Punjab after former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh left Congress after months of infighting with state party chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and formed a new party 'Punjab Lok Congress'. Amarinder's party and BJP have also announced an alliance for the upcoming polls scheduled to be held early next year. Punjab assembly polls are scheduled to be held in 2022. In the 2017 Punjab Assembly polls, Congress won an absolute majority in the state by winning 77 seats and ousted the SAD-BJP government after 10 years. Aam Aadmi Party emerged as the second-largest party winning 20 seats in 117-member Punjab Legislative Assembly. The SAD could only manage to win 15 seats while the BJP secured 3 seats. (ANI)
"The words used against Brahmins could be a slip of tongue and I want to publicly apologise for it. I am not against Brahmins but I have objection to Brahmanism," Manjhi tweeted on Tuesday.

"The practice of Brahminism always hated Dalits, declared them untouchables. They forced us to wear clay pots in the neck, brooms on the hip and anklets. I am against these derogatory practices created by Brahminism," Manjhi said.

Manjhi's explanation comes a day after executive member of BJP's Bihar unit Gajendra Jha said: "Whosoever son of a Brahmin would chop off Manjhi's tongue for making derogatory remarks against the community, I will present him a cash reward of Rs 11 lakh and will bear the bills for his entire life.

"We initially believed that Jitan Ram Manjhi is a mentally ill person. He has lost consciousness. But he is repeatedly making derogatory and abusive statements against Brahmins, which cannot be tolerated," Jha mentioned.

"Manjhi neither has the dignity, nor does he believe in Hinduism. In a bid to save the Hindu religion, I am ready to die," Jha mentioned.

Meanwhile, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Thakur said that he (Manjhi) should be taught a course on Indian traditions and Hindu faith.

--IANS ajk/svn

( 243 Words)

2021-12-21-12:18:03 (IANS)
Members of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) Screening Committee for Punjab on Tuesday held a meeting with party leader Rahul Gandhi at his residence in the national capital. Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal and AICC in-Incharge of Punjab, Harish Choudhary, were present at the meeting. Punjab assembly polls are scheduled to be held in 2022. In the 2017 Punjab Assembly polls, Congress won an absolute majority in the state by winning 77 seats and ousted the SAD-BJP government after 10 years. Aam Aadmi Party emerged as the second-largest party winning 20 seats in 117-member Punjab Legislative Assembly. The SAD could manage to win only 15 seats while the BJP secured 3 seats. (ANI)
As per an official release, the IT department conducted the search operation on December 16.

The group also runs educational institutions through its trusts. The search action covered around 30 premises located at various places like Neyveli, Chennai, Coimbatore, Nilgiris, etc.

The search action has led to the seizure of unaccounted cash of more than Rs 12 crore.

During the course of the search operations, a remotely located cloud server containing a parallel set of books of account secretly maintained by key persons of the group has been unearthed. Various documentary and digital evidence have also been seized.

The preliminary analysis of this digital evidence and other related evidence clearly reveals the details of unaccounted money generated through under-reporting of income from chit fund business and deposits received in cash from various parties.

The seized evidences also indicate that the unaccounted money, so generated, has been utilised to make 'on-money' payments for investments in the real estate business. Prima facie analysis indicates the quantum of unaccounted cash transactions in immovable properties to be to the tune of Rs 250 crore, read the release.

Further investigations are in progress. (ANI)
In a veiled attack at Samajwadi Party (SP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that the Union Cabinet has taken this decision to increase the marriage age of women from 18 to 21 years in the interest of women but it has caused pain to some people. Addressing people at the launch of 'Kanya Sumangala Yojana' in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj, the Prime Minister said, "Union Cabinet has taken a decision to increase the age of marriage of women from 18 years to 21 years. We are making efforts to make this happen as the women want that they should get time to pursue their studies, to get equal opportunities." "The country is taking this decision for the sake of daughters. But everyone is seeing who is having problems with this it has caused pain to some." Meanwhile, Union Cabinet Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani on Tuesday introduced The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in Lok Sabha. The Bill seeks to raise the age of marriage of women from 18 years to 21 years. Earlier, two Samajwadi Party MPs ST Hasan and Shafiqur Rahman Barq slammed the government for bringing the bill to increase the marriage age for women. Hasan had said that girls should be married when they attain the age of fertility. He said, "If a girl is mature at 16, she can get married at 16. If she can vote at 18, why can't she get married?" Expressing a similar view on this issue, Shafiqur Rahman Barq said that India a poor country and everybody wants to marry off their daughter at an early age. However, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav distanced himself from his party MPs' statements and said SP is a progressive party and has nothing to do with these remarks. Earlier on Friday, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) President and Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi slammed the Central government for their decision to raise the minimum age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 and termed it "ridiculous". Taking to Twitter, Owaisi had said that both men and women should be allowed to legally marry at 18 as they're treated as adults by the law for all other purposes. Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh are slated for early next year. (ANI)
The Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar (GBPUA&T) has signed an MoU with an agro-chemical firm to jointly conduct research in crop protection chemicals and promote use of drones in agriculture. "A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Director of Experiment Station Dr Ajeet Singh Nain on behalf of the University, while Dr Ajeet Singh Tomar, vice president (R&D) signed on behalf of Dhanuka Agritech Ltd.," Dhanuka Agritech announced on Tuesday. Through this partnership, Dhanuka Agritech and the University aim to boost farmers' income by enhancing crop productivity and production. The objective of the MoU includes organising an awareness programme for carrying out agricultural extension services and also for jointly conducting research activities in the field of crop protection chemicals. "Farmers will be encouraged to use modern agriculture technologies such as drone usage, artificial intelligence (AI), and precision agriculture," it said. The Centre has recently released the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the use of drone applications to spray agrochemicals. The University will conduct demonstration/adaptive trials of new molecules/products of Dhanuka at its farms as well as farmers field and will consider the inclusion of the findings (active ingredient only) into the package of practises. "The tie-up with G B Pant University will help us promote research activities in the agriculture and allied activities," Group Chairman, Dhanuka Agritech Ltd., R G Agarwal said. "Dhanuka will sponsor bio-efficacy and phyto-toxicity projects to the university for managing insects and pests through drone application. Dhanuka's R&D Division has world-class NABL accredited laboratories," it said in a release. Dhanuka will also provide scholarships to PG Students who are involved in the research work. The GB Pant University of Agriculture & Technology had recently signed another MoU with an agriculture science company for that company would award four scholarships annually to students pursuing doctorates and master's degrees in agricultural sciences at GB Pant University. --IANS niv/shb/ ( 333 Words) 2021-12-21-13:58:04 (IANS)
The Bar Council of India (BCI) in its meeting held here has decided to write to Home Ministry for a probe by a central agency like NIA or CBI into the killing of advocate Ranjith Sreenivasan in Kerala on Sunday. Only a central agency can find out the truth and the guilty could be punished, BCI said in a release.It said that Sreenivasan was a young leader of the Bar and has been brutally murdered by criminals. "The murder of Advocate Ranjith Sreenivasan as per the newspaper report is a political murder. Being representative body of advocates, BCI is not supposed to sit tight over such brutal murders of advocates. Such incidents of killings of the advocates are increasing day by day. The Council has been demanding a proper law to protect the advocates and their families," the release said. The Council strongly condemned the brutal murder. It also demanded that the killing of KS Shan of SDPI may also be investigated by the same central agency.The Council will write a letter to the Home Minister and the Union Minister for Law and Justice in this regard. A BCI member Manoj Kumar N, who represents Kerala and is Solicitor for the state, expressed strong dissent to the resolution of the Council. Another member YR Sadasiva Reddy, who represents Karnataka, said that the probe may be carried by a CBI or by the local police. (ANI)
Union Minister V Muraleedharan informed that the Ministry of Women and Child Development has been asked to hold a 'Healthy girl child competition' to mark the day.

"Presently, 7 crore girls are associated with anganwadi. There are about 13 crore girls across the country. Special efforts need to be made to connect the remaining 6 crore," the minster said when asked about the decisions taken in the meeting.

The parliamentary party meeting was chaired by BJP national president JP Nadda. Union Home Minister Amit Shah and other ministers of the BJP-led government and other MPs participated.

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju apprised the Parliamentary Party on what is the reason for the Electoral Laws Amendment Bill and what is its need.

BJP sources told ANI that in today's parliamentary party meeting, special emphasis was laid on the participation of all BJP workers across the country in "Sashakt mandal-sakriya booths," so that the problems of maximum number of people can be resolved at ground level.

The party sources informed that BJP workers have been asked to develop rural areas and help women in empowering them.

Apart from this, Nadda asked everyone to read 'Kamal Sandesh', BJP's national magazine. (ANI)
Shiromani Akali Dal patron Parkash Singh Badal condemned the Punjab government for booking former Punjab minister and SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia in a drug case. Addressing reporters over the matter, PS Badal said, "Congress government has changed three Director Generals of Police (DGPs) recently, exposing its political vendetta to frame senior Akali leaders in false cases." "The Government's duty is to serve people, but this government is busy with political revenge. We will keep raising our voices against injustice," party patron Badal said. Right after Shiromani Akali Dal leader and former minister Bikram Singh Majithia was on Monday booked in a drugs case, State Congress Chief Navjot Singh Sidhu welcomed this move. Sidhu said in a tweet today, "After 5.5 years of fight against a corrupt system run by Badal family and Captain and delay of 4 years without action taken on ED and STF Report against Majithia. Finally now, after pushing for credible officers in positions of power and influence first step has been taken!" "An FIR has been registered in Punjab Police Crime Branch against the main culprits of Drug Trade on basis of February 2018 STF report, wherein I demanded this 4 years ago - It is a slap on the face of all those powerful who slept for years on issues at the heart of Punjab's soul," tweeted Sidhu. The Congress leader further lashed out and said, "Justice will not be served until main culprits behind Drug Mafia are given exemplary punishment. This is merely a first step. Will fight till punishment is given which acts as deterrent for generations. We must choose honest and righteous and shun drug traffickers and their protectors." Punjab Police has filed a case against the brother-in-law of SAD president Sukhbir Badal, Bikram Singh Majithia for being allegedly involved in a drugs case. As per the Punjab police officials, an FIR was registered today against SAD MLA Bikram Majithia at Punjab SAS Nagar Police Station in a drugs case. "He has been booked under Section 25/27A/29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) Act on the basis of a report submitted by the Special Task Force," Punjab Police said. Further probe in the matter is underway. (ANI)
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said on Tuesday that the government accepted the demand for sending a bill that proposes to increase the age of marriage of women from 18 to 21 years to the standing committee. Chowdhury was among members who demanded that the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which was introduced by Union Cabinet Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani in Lok Sabha, be sent to standing committee. In her remarks while introducing the bill, the minister said that the bill may be be sent to the standing committee. "On behalf of the Government, I would request that this Bill be sent to the standing committee," she said. Chowdhury told ANI that the government did not consult any of the stakeholders before introducing the bill."A lot of discussion is taking place over this matter. I suggested the Centre send this bill to the standing committee and it has accepted my suggestion," he said. Introducing the bill, Smriti Irani said it seeks to increase the age of marriage of women from 18 years to 21 years. "We are in a democracy, 75 years late in providing equal rights to men and women to enter into matrimony. Through this amendment, for the first time, men and women will be able to make a decision on marriage at the age of 21, keeping in mind the right to equality," she said. Other opposition leaders also slammed the Centre for introducing the bill without discussions.AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi called the bill a "retrogressive amendment" and said that it is against the right to freedom under Article 19. "It is retrogressive amendment. It is against the right to freedom under Article 19. An 18-year-old can choose the Prime Minister, can have a live-in relationship but you are denying the right to marriage. What have you done for an 18-year-old? Women labour force participation in India is lower than in Somalia," Owaisi said. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) member Kanimozhi alleged that the central government doesn't believe in consulting anybody while introducing a bill in the House. "Except for Women's Reservation Bill, the government doesn't believe in consulting anybody. Such an important bill has to be sent to standing committee or select committee and they have to review it and ask for opinions in civil society," she said. Trinamool Congress member Saugata Roy said the government has brought the bill in a hurry."I oppose the way in which the government has brought the bill in a hurry. This bill needs total discussion among all stakeholders. The minority people are totally opposed to this bill," Roy said. Nationalist Congress Party of India (NCP)'s Supriya Sule accused the government of briging the bill without consulting any party. "It's the second and third time consecutively. They are aggressively bringing Bills and nobody from opposition is consulted. Whatever is discussed in Business Advisory Committee is never implemented on the floor of the House. I want to condemn this new practice which this government is doing," Sule said. Chairperson of the National Commission for Women Rekha Sharma supported the bill and said that it will empower young women. "I welcome the introduction of 'The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill' In Lok Sabha. It will go a long way to empower young women," she said in a tweet."By delaying the marriage age, women can now explore what they want, what their dreams and aspirations are, and what goals they want to achieve," she added. (ANI)
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal on Tuesday visited the Golden Temple and condemned the alleged sacrilege attempt here calling it a "traumatic incident". Addressing a press conference here, Badal said, "One sinful man tried to insult Sikhism's holy book, Guru Granth Sahib. However, he was caught and got punished for the sinful act." Citing an example of another similar incident, he said, "A few days ago, another holy book Gutka Sahib was also torn by someone. We handed over the culprit to the police, but the Punjab police have not taken any action on it." He further said, "Some people try to play politics on Sikhism. Other parties should not play politics on such incidents otherwise God will not spare them." "We will ask the state government to take action and resolve this issue as soon as possible," Badal added. Requesting Punjab Police and Delhi government to help in resolving the issue, he said, "You have so many investigation agencies. I request you to sort out this traumatic incident as soon as possible. If the culprit is not caught, these incidents will happen again and again." "Punjab is a peaceful city. Resolve this issue. the Golden temple is a holy place. If someone tries to play politics over Sikhism, it will not be tolerated," the SAD chief added. A man was beaten to death in an altercation by angry devotees after he allegedly attempted to commit sacrilege at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, earlier on December 18. The incident took place during evening prayers when the man jumped over the metal railing around the Guru Granth Sahib and allegedly attempted to desecrate the Holy Book of the Sikhs with a sword. Reacting to the incident, Badal in Punjab's Fazilka said, "We do not want to do politics. We want culprits to be caught. Since no culprit was caught in the last 5 years, they were emboldened. It's sad they have formed an inquiry committee of the Deputy Chief Minister. A judge should have been on the committee. This shows that they do not want to catch culprits." Badal further slammed the Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and said, "I would like to tell Punjab Chief Minister and Dy CMs to remember the sacrilege incident in our government's rule. You had said that CM should be jailed, that CM-Dy CM had allowed it. You did politics and didn't catch the guilty and deliberately spent 5 yrs in defaming Badal family and SAD." Meanwhile, an unidentified man was allegedly beaten to death by locals at Nizampur in Punjab's Kapurthala district on Sunday for allegedly disrespecting the 'Nishan Sahib' at the village Gurudwara. A video of people beating up the man who allegedly attempted sacrilege with the Nishan Sahib has gone viral on the Internet. He was later handed over to the police but some people reportedly insisted that the man be questioned in front of them and the man was allegedly beaten to death in an ensuing scuffle. (ANI)
This is designed to assess Covid preparedness in view of an increasing number of Omicron cases in the country and will include availability of beds, equipment, oxygen, ventilators in the state.

"All district magistrates must personally inspect hospitals and take measures accordingly," the chief secretary said.

He said the public address systems and integrated control rooms should also be activated without any delay.

The chief secretary also asked the officials to enforce the fixed protocol for international flights and ensure compliance of masking and social distancing norms. He told them to see to it that people who had not taken any vaccine shots, got one at the earliest.

The chief secretary also reviewed arrangements in the cow protection centres and night shelters. Tiwari asked district magistrates to ensure weekly physical inspection of these places. No human beings and cattle should die due to the cold wave, he warned.

Meanwhile, the chief secretary said that the government had decided to observe 'good governance week' from December 20 to 25 with a view to improving public service delivery.

Commissioners and district magistrates have been asked to ensure that public complaints were disposed of quickly and to the satisfaction of the complainants. He asked the officials to send a report on works that would be done during the good governance week to the department of general administration.

--IANS amita/dpb

( 265 Words)

2021-12-21-15:16:03 (IANS)
In view of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday said that the new year celebrations at public places will take place in a restricted manner, with celebrations allowed in restaurants and clubs with 50 per cent seating capacity and mandatory full vaccination. No special events, Disk Jockeys (DJ) will be allowed in the celebrations. The restrictions will be in effect from December 30 till January 2. "We have restricted public celebration of the new year, however, celebrations are permitted in clubs and restaurants with 50 per cent seating capacity and without any special event like DJ. Full vaccination is mandatory. These restrictions will be in effect from December 30 till January 1," Bommai told ANI. The new variant of COVID-19 was first reported to the World Health Organisation (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)
A plea has been moved in Delhi High Court that challenges the revised evaluation scheme of the Entrance Test in Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), which are two leading film schools of India. According to the petition, in the new revised scheme of evaluation, whereas there is one written examination (which includes objective and Subjective type Questions), the valuation will be conducted in two parts, wherein a minimum of 85 per cent of students will be removed from the consideration for the selection after evaluation of only Objective Type Questions for the evaluation of courses of peculiar nature in the cinematic realm, which is inherently based on the creative skills and perceptive abilities, unique to every student. Further, as per the petition, there is no disclosure of any merit list after this shortlisting and the merit list will only be disclosed once students are selected from the remaining 15 per cent. According to the petition the two institutes are established, funded, and substantially managed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The petition states that the said revised scheme of evaluation is challenged for being arbitrary, incompetent, unreliable, unjust, irrational, discriminatory, extremely whimsical, non-transparent actions of the responsible authorities at the respondent offices. According to the petitioner Naresh Sharma, FTII alumnus, the current method deviates from the past and violates the fundamental rights of thousands of students pursuing careers in relevant fields. If the examination is evaluated with the impugned Scheme of Evaluation, it is not only detrimental to the current and future candidates willing to pursue the peculiar courses of creative Arts but also leaves the future opportunities of the community of budding artists at the whims and fancies of a few people in the administration, the plea stated. It stated that the Joint Entrance Test is the first stage of the admission process to a variety of courses of creative nature and artistic skills, including Cinematography, Film Direction, Editing, Sound Recording and Audio Engineering, Art Direction, Screen Acting, Electronic Cinematography and Video Editing, at the aforementioned institutes. Petitioner through Advocates Saju Jakob and Nancy Shah stated that on the one hand, the revised scheme of evaluation has no rational tie to the objectives, and on the other hand, the revised scheme of evaluation will lead to clear discrimination, arbitrariness, favouritism, and lack of transparency, thus hampering the equal protection of opportunities as outlined in article 14 of the Indian constitution. It is also stated that an artificial screening method has been introduced in the Evaluation by introducing an OMR/Computer-based evaluation system, which is quite unusual for the selection of qualified candidates for the creative skills/cinematic and artistic field. The petitioner is filing the present petition on behalf of the wider student community in the field of creative arts as all of them being potential candidates are prevented from filing the present petition as they are in the preparation stage of their examination which is going to be held on December 18-19, 2021. Therefore, the impugned provision in the Information Bulletin of JET 2021 is violative of Articles 14,19 and 21 of the Indian Constitution and thus needs to be quashed, plea read. (ANI)
Opposing the Elections Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi on Tuesday said that linking Aadhar data with Voter ID goes against citizen's right of privacy enshrined in the constitution as well as undermines democracy. In a letter to Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, the Shiv Sena MP said that the Bill is a violation of the Aadhaar judgment. "This bill violates the Supreme Court judgment in Justice KS Puttaswamy (retd.) and Anr. vs. Union of India and Ors. In the judgment, the Court restricted the scope to a limited number of purposes and that the purpose to link (in Section 57) has to be 'backed by law'. The Court permitted the use of Aadhaar authentication solely to welfare programmes. The government's decision to link the Voter Id and Aadhaar clearly violates the judgment," Chaturvedi said in her letter. She further alleged that the government is using Aadhaar as a mass surveillance machine, even allowing private parties access to it. "Aadhaar was introduced as an aid for welfare delivery of the various schemes of the government. However, the government has been overreaching the mandate by using Aadhaar as a mass surveillance machine, even allowing private parties access to it (which the Supreme Court rightfully struck down)," the letter reads. Chaturvedi said that the Bill raises concerns about the violation of the constitutional and fundamental Right to Privacy and the absence of data protection law in the country renders the data of the citizens vulnerable and enables misuse of critical and personal information. "It also violates electoral secrecy. Linking two data sets, Aadhaar and Voter Identity is an unconstitutional and unnecessary move to undermine our electoral democracy. This Bill is highly questionable and will impact voters' trust in the electoral process and system." The Shiv Sena MP alleged that despite the Supreme Court's order, Aadhaar data was misused for political purposes. "In 2015, the government introduced the National Election Roll Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP). The Supreme Court passed an interim order in the same year, asking the ECI to suspend Aadhaar voter linkage. Despite this, Aadhaar data was misused for political purposes. In 2018, the chief electoral officer of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh linked Aadhaar data with voter identity cards which led to arbitrarily disenfranchisement of at least 55 lakh voters during the Telangana Assembly Election," she said while adding that this whole fiasco is a clear picture of the terrible consequences of linking Aadhaar with voter identity cards. "Such these deletions are often systematic bids to deprive specific groups of their voting rights for the benefit of others," she added. The Shiv Sena MP said that the Bill raises concerns about violating citizens' right to privacy by enabling voter profiling through the linkage of datasets. "Linkage of Voter Identity with the Aadhaar ecosystem will lead to voter micro-targeting, especially during election campaigning. The Bill raises concerns about violating citizens' right to privacy by enabling voter-profiling through the linkage of datasets," she said. Recently, the Madras High Court had asked the Election Commission to look into allegations against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that it was illegally using the Aadhaar data of voters in Puducherry for making political gains in the Assembly elections. "There exist widespread data quality issues in the Aadhaar database (self-reported errors in Aadhaar data are 1.5 times higher than those in the electoral data records) and with the linking of the two data sets, the quality of the voter identity database would be undermined and lead to voter frauds," she added. She further said that the issues like biometric failures, the absence of adequate infrastructure will again affect the electoral data records, leaving them without any technocratic accountability. "The problems faced by people, especially the most vulnerable while accessing Aadhaar and Aadhaar related 'benefits' are widely known. Issues such as biometric failures, the absence of adequate infrastructure, and the lack of adequate grievance redressal mechanisms plague the Aadhaar ecosystem. Cases of fingerprints and facial authentication failure are widespread which leave people in a lurch depriving and excluding them of their legal entitlements and rights. Vulnerable sections of society are usually the worst hit by such exclusion. The same issues will affect the electoral data records, leaving them without any technocratic accountability," the letter further reads. The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 that aims to give effect to the long-pending electoral reforms including linking Aadhaar with the voter ID card was passed in the Rajya Sabha amid din on Tuesday. Earlier on Monday, the Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha. According to the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill, it provides for amendment of section 23 of the RP Act, 1950, enabling for the linking of electoral roll data with the Aadhaar ecosystem to curb the menace of multiple enrolments of the same person in different places. It also seeks to amend clause (b) of section 14 of the RP Act, 1950 specifying the 1st day of January, 1st day of April, 1st day of July and 1st day of October in a calendar year as qualifying dates in relation to the preparation or revision of electoral rolls. (ANI)
Indian Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Tuesday inducted the first set of indigenously developed next-generation Armoured Engineer Reconnaissance Vehicle (AERV) and other equipment into the Corps of Engineers, at Bombay Engineering Group (BEG). Speaking exclusively to ANI, the Army Chief General said, "The requirement of AERV was long felt especially for our armoured formations, strike cores, who are mainly operating on the Western border...This platform will speed up the process of reconnaissance which used to be done manually." "This development has been in partnership with DRDO and our engineers. This is a very good example of cooperation between the user and the industry. This is an ideal example of how we can go in for 'Make in India' solutions," he added. According to the Army Chief General, the AERVs will give a boost to operations especially on the western front. The AERV system has been designed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and manufactured by Ordnance Factory Medak and Bharat Electronics Limited, Pune. As per an official statement from the Ministry of Defence, despite the various restrictions imposed by the COVID pandemic since the last one year, the supply of the vehicle to the Army has been on schedule. "The vehicle is capable of carrying out reconnaissance of water obstacles and boggy patches for execution of engineer tasks with capabilities to carry out reconnaissance and provide real-time update to force commanders," the ministry said. "The system will enhance existing engineer reconnaissance capabilities of Indian Army and would be a major game-changer in support of mechanised operations in future conflicts," the ministry added. (ANI)
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi Cabinet has approved a proposal to establish the 'Delhi Teachers University'. After the cabinet meeting, Kejriwal said in a press conference, ''This University will prepare highly qualified and well-trained teachers in Delhi itself. As per the commitment of the Delhi Government, 'Delhi Teachers University' Bill 2021 will be placed before the Delhi Vidhan Sabha in the coming session.'' "Delhi Teachers University' will be a public university dedicated to preparing excellent quality Teachers for the city across different school stages. This University will offer among others, 4-year Integrated Teacher Education Programmes like BA-BEd, BSc-Bed, to help develop a new generation of teachers," he said. Kejriwal added that the students of this University will be attached with Delhi Government schools for the entire duration of their course to get hands-on experience with a strong emphasis on action research. "This will help students gain excellent practical knowledge in addition to theoretical knowledge. Admission to the new University will start for the academic session 2022-23.'' ''Delhi Teachers University' will be a centre for excellence in teacher preparation at both pre-service and in-service in the areas of education studies, leadership and policy. It will engage in world-class teaching and research in emerging areas of teacher education to achieve excellence in school education through national and international collaborations. It will work towards bridging the gap between practice, research and policy in teacher preparation while constantly engaging with the dynamic concept and realities of quality education in the city of Delhi, added the Chief Minister. The Delhi government is preparing to appoint globally reputed scholars as Vice-Chancellor and Professors of this university. The University will be set up at Bakkarwala. It will operate as a multidisciplinary academic centre that brings together various stakeholders as practising and aspiring teachers, teacher educators, parents, administrators, policy planners, and content developers, in a dialogue through a range of programmes and activities. (ANI)
"Rana Gurmeet Sodhi has left Congress party as the party was not able to give him ticket from where he wanted to contest," said Chaudhary while talking to media.

In a major setback to Punjab Congress ahead of state Assembly polls, its senior leader Rana Gurmeet Singh Sodhi, who is known to be close to former State Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, on Tuesday quit the party and joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Sodhi, who represents Guru Har Sahai constituency in Punjab Assembly, joined the BJP in the presence of party's Punjab in-charge Gajendra Singh Shekhawat at BJP headquarters in the national capital today.

Union Minister Bhupendra Singh Yadav, Union Minister Som Prakash, BJP General Secretary Dushyant Gautam were also present on the occasion. (ANI)
Observing the non-availability of requisite and enabling infrastructure for persons with disability is glaring and apparent throughout the city, the Delhi High Court has directed the Delhi government to carry out a Social Disability Audit within six weeks. Justice Nazmi Waziri said, "The non-availability of requisite and enabling infrastructure for persons with disability is glaring and apparent throughout the city. " Remarked it as a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution of India, the Court opined that "Freedom of movement has to be honoured and assured in every way possible, it cannot be restrained by lack of civic amenities." A part of the compensation provided to the petitioner under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, would be meaningless, if the public infrastructure in the city limit her movement, said the Court. The Court was hearing a plea filed by a disabled woman who cannot use the wheelchair optimally as she is unable to access public transportation or wheel herself out of her residence on to a footpath. She has also submitted photographs before the Court to prove her claims. The petitioner, who as a young school girl has been permanently debilitated below the waist and is now wheelchair-bound, is inconvenienced or unable to use footpaths, narrow streets, and transportation facilities be it through bus or metro, and other forms of public transport. Henceforth, the Court had directed the Department of Social Welfare of Delhi Govt to appoint a Nodal Officer, which shall ensure that a Social Disability Audit is carried out, preferably within six weeks. The Court said that it will be open for the Delhi Government to take the assistance of the School of Planning and Architecture. However, it directed all agencies in Delhi, who provide facilities to the public, including road maintaining authorities, DTC, DMRC, Railways, airports authority, etc., shall assist and coordinate with the said designated officer so that the objectives of the said statute are met at the earliest possible. All agencies shall endeavour to respect the dignity and individual autonomy of persons with disabilities suggested the Court and said, "It needs to be borne in mind that this exercise is necessary and needs to be carried out in terms of objectives and context of the enactment of the Rights of Persons with Disability Act, 2016." "Each agency including North Delhi Municipal Corporation, Public Works Department, DISCOM, Delhi Police, Delhi Traffic Police, Delhi Transport Corporation, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, New Delhi Municipal Council as well as such other agencies, shall appoint a senior officer not below the rank of the Executive Engineer to assist and coordinate with the Nodal officer appointed by the GNCTD, for provision of due facilities to persons with disabilities, " the Court said. The Court also clarified that this exercise shall be completed within six weeks and said that it is hoped that in three months streets not less than two kilometres each in the South, East, North, West and Central regions will be identified, and made ready, in terms of the social disability audit, and as may be advised by the SPA. "While, DMRC did assist robustly in an earlier exercise to facilitate the travel of the appellant from her residence to Connaught Place and back, the Court is informed that ordinarily women personnel from the DMRC are not available for assistance to persons like the appellant. It is hoped that the DMRC will ensure due assistance through lady members at the metro station," the Court noted in its order. The Standing Counsel for DMRC said that this order shall be promptly attended to. Thereafter the Court listed the appeal for hearing on February 2 2022. (ANI)
A Delhi Court on Tuesday formally framed charges against the truck driver and three others in the Unnao rape survivor's accident case. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Ravindra Kumar Pandey formally framed charges against driver Ashish Kumar Pal for offences under section 279 (rash driving)/338 (causing grievous hurt) and 304 A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The Court also formally framed charges against accused Vinod Mishra, accused Haripal Singh and accused Naveen Singh. The accident had taken place in 2019 when the Unnao rape victim was on her way to Rae Bareli. A truck rammed into the vehicle in which the girl was travelling with her two aunts and lawyer. While her aunts succumbed to their injuries, she and her lawyer were grievously injured. As four of them pleaded not guilty and claimed for trial, the Court marked the matter before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Rouse Avenue Court with a request to mark the same for further trial to the regular Court of competent jurisdiction. The Court directed the accused persons to appear before CMM Rouse Avenue Court on December 22. ACMM Ravindra Kumar Pandey is designated Court to deal with matters against MP/MLA. As one of the accused Kuldeep Singh Sengar was a former MLA, was discharged from the case and the rest other four accused were not sitting or former MP/MLA. Delhi's Rouse Avenue court on Monday discharged Kuldeep Singh Senger in the 2019 accident case of Unnao rape survivor saying that no charges are made out against Senger in the present case. The Court discharged Kuldeep Singh Senger and five other accused observing that prima facie there is no evidence against these accused persons -- Senger, Komal Singh, Arun Singh, Gyanendra Singh, Rinku Singh and, Awdesh Singh. However, the court orders to frame charges against four accused Ashish Kumar Pal, Vinod Mishra, Haripal Singh and Naveen Singh. The court said that is prima facie sufficient evidence against these accused persons. As per the charge sheet, on July 28, 2019, between 12.45 pm to 12.50 pm, accused Ashish Kumar Pal was driving the truck on the wrong side of the road coming from Rai Bareilly side towards Lalganj side in a rash and negligent manner and due to which, the car being driven by Mahender Singh Advocate collided with the rear portion of the truck resulting into the death of two lady passengers besides grievously injuring the driver Mahender Singh Advocate who later on succumbed to the injuries as also a victim. The court noted that the charge sheet did not mention any record or evidence regarding the criminal conspiracy between the accused persons with the accused Kuldeep Singh Sengar. On August 1, 2019, the Supreme Court transferred the case to Delhi from a trial court in Uttar Pradesh. In December 2019, Senger was convicted and jailed for life in a separate case for raping the woman in Unnao in 2017 when she was a minor. (ANI)
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday said that there is full opportunity for debate in the state legislative assembly when the anti-conversion bill will be taken up for discussion on December 22. Speaking to media persons, Bommai said, "There is full opportunity for debate in the Assembly when it will be taken up for discussion. They (Opposition) were not present in the House when the Bill was presented in the House. This is not the government's fault." Earlier today, Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra tabled the anti-conversion bill in the state Legislative Assembly. The Karnataka Assembly Speaker announced that he has allowed the government to introduce the anti-conversion bill as per the procedure, and it will be taken up for discussion on December 22. Congress opposed the bill tabled by the Karnataka Government and staged a walkout from the assembly. Karnataka Congress President DK Shivakumar tore the copy of the Bill inside the House. The Bill will provide for the protection of the right to freedom of religion and prohibition of unlawful conversion from one religion to another by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means. It proposes imprisonment up to 10 years for forced religious conversion. (ANI)
Union Minister of Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju on Tuesday expressed shock over the killing of advocate Ranjith Sreenivasan in Kerala and urge the state government to take strong action in the matter. Taking to Twitter, Rijiju said, "I am deeply saddened that the political violence in Kerala has once again cost a young life. The killing of Advocate Ranjith Srinivas is shocking. I urge the Kerala government and local police to take strong action in the matter." The Bar Council of India (BCI) also in its meeting has decided to write to Home Ministry demanding that the killing of advocate Ranjith Sreenivasan in Kerala be investigated by a central agency like the National Investigation Agency (NIA) or Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Only a central agency can find out the truth and the guilty could be punished, BCI said in a release. It said that Sreenivasan was a young leader of the Bar and has been brutally murdered by criminals. "The murder of Advocate Ranjith Sreenivasan as per the newspaper report is a political murder. Being the representative body of advocates, BCI is not supposed to sit tight over such brutal murders of advocates. Such incidents of killings of the advocates are increasing day by day. The Council has been demanding a proper law to protect the advocates and their families," the release said. The Council strongly condemned the brutal murder. Ranjith Srinivas was hacked to death inside his house in front of his mother, wife and daughter two days back. He was the OBC Morcha Kerala state secretary and a member of the BJP state committee. (ANI)
Ajay Kapoor has been appointed as the General Secretary of the party and Rajwant Kaur as the Working President of the Women's Wing of the party.

Rajeev Duggal has been appointed Vice President and office incharge of Amritsar Urban.

Rajiv Bhagat and Harmesh Kumar Goyal have been appointed as the district presidents for Amritsar (Urban) and Patiala (Rural) respectively.

In November, Former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh resigned from the Congress party and announced a new party 'Punjab Lok Congress' ahead of Punjab Assembly elections.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is all set to contest Punjab Assembly elections in alliance with former Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh's party Punjab Lok Congress.

Elections to 117-member Punjab Legislative Assembly are scheduled to be held next year. (ANI)
Criticising Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's 'Hindutvavadi' remark, eminent Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh leader Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi on Tuesday said that if he is a Hindu, then Hindutva indicates his character. Speaking to ANI, Joshi said, "If I am a Hindu, then Hindutva indicates my character. Therefore Hindu and Hindutva are not different things." Regarding Rahul Gandhi's statement on Hindutva and Hindutva, Bhaiyaji Joshi said, "Those who think this statement is right can find no reason to reject it. He (Gandhi) said that these two things are not different. If I am a Hindu, then Hindutva indicates my character. So Hindu and Hindutva are not different things. They are one and the same thing." "Some people are busy spreading rumours about the matter. Those who are busy raking controversies are laying the foundation stone based on rumours," Joshi said. Joshi was attending a cultural programme in Delhi where Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh was also present. On December 18, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi spoke about the difference between Hindu and Hindutvavadi. He said while a Hindutvavadi could be described as someone bathing alone in the Ganges, a Hindu is one who takes crores along. Addressing a rally in Jagdishpur in his former Lok Sabha constituency of Amethi, the Congress MP said that the true meaning of a Hindu is someone who only follows the path of truth and never converts his fear into violence, hate and anger. "A 'Hindutvavadi' bathes alone in Ganga, while a Hindu bathes with crores of people... Narendra Modi says he is a Hindu, but when did he protect the truth? He said he would give two crore youth jobs, where did he do so? He asked people to bang thalis to get rid of Covid... Hindu or Hindutvadi?" the former Congress president asked. PM Modi ahead of inaugurating the first phase of the Kashi-Vishwanath corridor in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi had been seen taking a dip in the Ganga. Moreover, on December 12, Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the BJP-led Central government and said that 'Hindutvavadis' only want power and they are in power since 2014 and urged people to throw Hindutvavadis out of power and bring back Hindus who follow the path of truth. Speaking at the Mehangai Hatao Rally then, the Wayanad MP said, "Hindutvavadis spend their entire life in search of power. They want nothing but power and can do anything for it. They follow the path of 'Sattagrah' (search of power), not 'Satyagrah' (search of truth). This country is of Hindus, not of Hindutvavadis." (ANI)
Days after sacrilege incidents in Punjab, former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday said that there is "no justification for mob lynching" and it is "condemnable". To a question on lynchings in Amritsar and Kapurthala, Captain Amarinder said that the accused should have been handed over to the police. "No civilised society can and should approve of such killings." On the issue of people getting angry for denial of justice over Behbal Kalan sacrilege, thus resorting to such killings, the former Chief Minister said, his government had pursued investigations into the matter from day one. He said, first the state had to fight a long legal battle to get the inquiry back from the Central Bureau of Investigation and then the investigation was started and 22 people including police officials and civilians were arrested who are on bail now. "There is no justification for mob lynching, whatsoever and it is condemnable," Singh said. This came as a man was beaten to death in an altercation by angry devotees after he allegedly attempted to commit sacrilege at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, earlier on December 18. Later on December 19, an unidentified man was allegedly beaten to death by locals at Nizampur in Punjab's Kapurthala district on Sunday for allegedly disrespecting the 'Nishan Sahib' at the village Gurudwara. The Chief Minister also said that national security and the welfare of Punjab was on top of his agenda and hoped that the next Punjab Lok Congress-BJP government will successfully work on that. He said that the case registered against Akali leader Bikram Singh Majithia will not stand legal scrutiny as the government had not followed due process of law. He also condemned the killing of the sacrilege accused in Durbar Sahib and Kapurthala, saying the accused should have been handed over to the police. Responding to a question on the registration of an FIR against Majithia, he asked on what basis the government had registered the case against him since the report on drug trafficking was still lying with Punjab and Haryana High Court in a sealed cover. "After all, there is a law in the country and I am sure it will not stand the legal scrutiny in the court of law", he said, while adding, "just because you don't like someone, you can't put him behind bars". Captain Amarinder thanked the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah in particular, for their whole-heartly support for Punjab. He said, that his top-most priority was national security and good governance in Punjab. He warned those who were continuously sending in weapons in the state for creating trouble here. He emphasised the need for close coordination between the Punjab Police and various central security agencies. On the issue of ticket distribution, Captain Amarinder Singh said that his party and the Bharatiya Janata Party will work together to finalise the candidates. He also thanked the BJP leaders and workers who attended the meeting. (ANI)
"India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage has crossed 138.89 crore (138,89,29,333) today. More than 51 lakh (51,30,949) vaccine doses have been administered till 7 pm today," it said.

The ministry further said that the daily vaccination tally is expected to increase with the compilation of the final reports for the day by late tonight.

Of the 51,30,949 doses administered today, 11,30,621 people were administered their first dose while 40,00,328 people received their second dose.

According to the ministry, 82,97,50,222 people have been administered the first dose of the vaccine so far while the number of second doses administered in the country stands at 55,91,79,111. (ANI)
Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri expressed grief over the fire at the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) refinery at Haldia in West Bengal which left three people dead and 44 people injured. "Unfortunate accident causing flash fire at Haldia Refinery today has led to loss of three precious lives & burn injuries to 44 people. Some of the injured have been shifted to Haldia Refinery Hospital. @PIB_India," said Puri in his tweet. Puri said that a green corridor was operationalised to shift the critically injured to hospitals. He added that compensation, best medical care will be provided to the affected and a detailed investigation has been ordered to ascertain the cause of accident. "A green corridor was operationalised for shifting the critical cases to institutes of higher medical management. Compensation & best medical care will be provided to all those who have been affected. Detailed investigation has been ordered to ascertain the cause of the accident," said another tweet from Puri. Speaking to ANI, SK Ajgar Ali, Chairman-In-Council, Haldia Municipality said, "Three people died and over 30 persons were injured in a fire incident at IOCL refinery in Haldia today. The injured have been shifted to Kolkata." West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed anguish over the fire incident. "Deeply anguished by the fire in IOC, Haldia. Three precious lives were lost and my thoughts are with the bereaved families in this hour of grief. Those injured are being brought to Kolkata through a green corridor. GoWB will extend all assistance to ensure their speedy recovery," the Chief Minister tweeted. (ANI)
Panchayat elections in Madhya Pradesh will have mandatory reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC), said Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday. Chouhan's statement came while replying to an adjournment notice by Leader of the Opposition in Madhya Pradesh Assembly Kamal Nath on the second day of the winter session on Tuesday. "Panchayat elections will be held following the reservation policy for OBC community in Madhya Pradesh. The state government will go to the court to oppose the Supreme Court's judgement to stay OBC quota for Panchayat polls in Madhya Pradesh," Chouhan said, adding that he has spoken to the Centre to seek its support on the issue. On Tuesday, soon after the second day of the winter session began, Kamal Nath moved an adjournment notice to Speaker Girish Gautam for seeking discussion on OBC reservation issue in the state. During the discussion, both BJP and the opposition Congress accused each other of being anti-OBC. The BJP held the Congress responsible for cancellation of OBC qota in Panchayat elections. "The Supreme Court's judgment on this matter came on your (Congress) petition and hence you should be held responsible for it," said Medical Education Minister Viswash Sarang. The BJP alleged that senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP for Congress, Vivek Tankha had opposed OBC reservation in the court. In reply to that, Kamal Nath said that the Congress had approached the Supreme Court only for two reasons -- rotation and reservation in Panchayat elections. Nath alleged that the ruling BJP issued an ordinance to conduct three-tire panchayat elections on the basis of rotation policy of 2014, which was totally against the Constitutional rules. "Congress never opposed reservation for OBCs. We went to the court only because what you were doing was wrong. Did you speak to leader of opposition before issuing ordinance? Now, the Court gave its judgement clubbing it with the issue of OBC reservation in Maharashtra, why didn't you oppose it?" Nath added. Nath further said, "It would be better if both- ruling and the opposition unanimously decide to challenge SC's decision. The Congress is ready to extend its support to the government. But, will the state government do it?" Nath asked. Replying to that, the chief minister said, "MP Government will challenge SC's decision on OBC reservation issue and assured that panchayat elections will be held with OBC reservation." --IANS pd/svn/skp/ ( 405 Words) 2021-12-21-17:38:04 (IANS)
Tripura Council of Ministers on Tuesday gave its approval to engage retired civil servants and judicial officers to expedite the process of departmental proceedings piled up for many years. "The decision has been taken to decrease pendency of cases," Tripura cabinet spokesperson and information and cultural affairs minister Sushanta Chowdhury said. Briefing the media after the state cabinet meeting at the secretariat, Chowdhury said, "The state cabinet has given its approval to appoint retired IAS, Tripura Civil Service and Tripura Judicial Service officers for timely completion of departmental inquiries pending for several years. The retired officers will be entitled to a one time honorarium of Rs 15,000 for IAS officers and Rs 10,000 for state officers if they submit the report within the span of three months." "The financial benefits would be awarded case wise," he further clarified. According to the Minister, the department of administrative reforms has taken the decision and the appointments of retired officers shall be made in accordance with the recommendations made by a committee chaired by the Law Secretary. "Principal Secretary Administrative Reforms and Additional Secretary of the department shall also be the part of the committee", the minister added. To a question regarding the number of cases, he said, "The total number of pending departmental proceedings would be a few hundreds." Apart from that, the Minister has spoken about the state government's preparedness about the Omicron, Chowdhury said. Principal Secretary Tripura Health and Family welfare department had informed the state cabinet that the COVID-19 graph had been declining and there were no cases of Omicron detected in the state so far. "We are still safe and there is not a single case of Omicron reported in the state," said Chowdhury. Meanwhile, the Tripura cabinet has also approved the proposals of allotting two land plots with areas of 25 acres and 49.21 acres to Tripura Medical College and Ministry of Home Affairs for expansion of hospital and commencement of construction for Forensic University Campus respectively. (ANI)
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday asked Telangana's BJP leaders to be ready for the state Assembly elections whenever they are held, and work hard to bring the party to power. The state BJP leaders led by Union Minister for Tourism and Culture G. Kishan Reddy called on Amit Shah in Delhi. Shah has directed the BJP leadership to educate people about the corruption indulged in the by Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government. The senior BJP leader reviewed the political situation in the state and gave directions to the state leadership to achieve the goal of bringing the BJP to power. State BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, BJP national vice president D.K. Aruna, former minister Eatala Rajender, MP D. Aravind, former MPs Vijay Shanti, G. Mohan Rao, Jitender Reddy and others attended the meeting with Shah. The meeting is likely to give a boost to BJP's efforts to focus on Telangana ahead of Assembly elections in 2023. Shah, however, asked the BJP leaders to be prepared even if the TRS goes for early polls. The Union Minister asked the state BJP leadership to expose the rice scam and other corruption by the TRS government and suggested that they demand a probe into the same. Shah also wanted the BJP leaders to effectively counter the allegations being made by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao against the BJP. The Central minister wanted the BJP leaders to prepare an action plan to expose the TRS over the issue of paddy procurement. The meeting was held a day after the TRS organised state-wide protests against the Centre over 'anti-farmer' policies. The protesters set afire the effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Union ministers. The meeting also discussed the strategy to counter the allegations by TRS against the Central government over the procurement of paddy. Stating that the government and party are different, Shah said the party should carry on its activities irrespective of the relations between the state and the Central governments. The Union Minister also suggested to the party leaders to chalk out programmes to remain in the midst of the people. Referring to the first phase of Bandi Sanjay's 'praja sangrama yatra', he advised him to work out plans to launch the second phase. After the meeting, Sanjay said they briefed Shah on bad governance, family rule and the attempts by the TRS government to crush dissent by foisting cases against BJP leaders. Amit Shah also congratulated Eatala Rajender over his victory in the recent by-election to Huzurabad Assembly seat. Rajender had quit TRS and joined BJP after KCR dropped him from the state Cabinet following the allegations of land encroachment. Shah told BJP leaders that he will visit Telangana for two days after the current Parliament session and will address a few public meetings. State BJP leaders claim that following its victories in the by-election to Dubbak Assembly seat last year and the recent win in Huzurabad, BJP has emerged as the only viable alternative to TRS. --IANS ms/pgh ( 515 Words) 2021-12-21-19:46:02 (IANS)
President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday said the task of the government while promoting education is to help create the right environment in which the "young minds will be fired with creativity". "The National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 is a well-planned roadmap to develop an eco-system that will nurture the talent of our young generation. The NEP aims to prepare them for the world of tomorrow, while also equipping them with the best of our own traditions," said Kovind. The President said this while speaking at the 5th convocation of the Central University of Kerala at Kasargode, located about 500 km from the state capital. He went on to add that he has had the occasion to discuss the implementation of the NEP with vice-chancellors of central universities and directors of other educational institutions. "The consensus is that this reorientation of our educational policy was long needed, and that it has the potential to turn India into a hub of knowledge. I believe that the most outstanding feature of the NEP is that it aims to promote both inclusion and excellence. Through its varied curricula, NEP promotes liberal as well as professional education, because each stream of knowledge has a role to play in society and in nation-building," said the President. He further added the NEP can become instrumental for India to harness and reap the demographic dividend. "When the younger generation is provided with skills and knowledge required for success in the world of the 21st century, they can do miracles. The 21st century is described as knowledge century. Knowledge power will determine the place of a nation in the global community," added Kovind. Shifting to Kerala, he said the state being a leading one in the area of learning and education, the Central government has recommended names of three cities from the entire country for being listed in Unesco's Global Network of Learning. "Out of them two cities are from Kerala. These two cities are Thrissur and Nilambur. Being part of this Global Network supports the achievement of the sustainable development goals, especially the goal of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting life-long learning opportunities for all," said Kovind. Earlier on Tuesday, the President arrived at the Kannur airport for a three-day trip to Kerala. He was received by Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan among others. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was absent as he is presently undergoing his routine medical check up at a leading hospital at Chennai. Kovind is expected to attend a function at the Kochi Naval base on Wednesday, and after that he will reach the state capital. On Thursday, he is scheduled to take part at a programme in the state capital and will return to Delhi on Thursday. --IANS sg/pgh ( 471 Words) 2021-12-21-20:00:03 (IANS)
Waikar is a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly representing the Jogeshwari East Assembly Constituency.

Waikar is a close aide of Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray.

Earlier, former Maharashtra Home Minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Leader Anil Deshmukh was summoned by the ED in an extortion case.

Earlier on December 14, a suspended cop of Mumbai Police, Sachin Waze, cleared Deshmukh's name in the extortion case and said that no money was demanded by him or his staff during his tenure at the office.

Notably, Waze was arrested in the Antilia case.

Both Deshmukh and Waze are in judicial custody in separate cases of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), respectively.

The Commission is probing the allegations of corruption levelled by former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh.

Singh had accused Anil Deshmukh of asking dismissed assistant inspector Sachin Waze to collect Rs 100 crore from hotels and bars in Mumbai every month. (ANI)
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) once again raised the agenda of renaming Hyderabad as Bhagyanagar by calling a three-day Samanwaya Baithak (coordination meeting) in the first week of January 2022 to review the working of affiliated organizations and preparations for upcoming assembly elections scheduled to take place in five states next year. Taking to Twitter, RSS said, "The Samanvay Baithak (coordination meeting) of the chief functionaries of various organizations inspired by the RSS working in different areas of social life will be held from 5th to 7th Jan. 2022 at Bhagyanagar, Telangana: Sunil Ambekar." Notably, RSS has not clearly demanded to change the name of the city but has used 'Bhagyanagar' instead of Hyderabad. It is worth mentioning that both RSS and Bharatiya Janata Party have been raising the demand to rename Hyderabad to Bhagyanagar. During the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation election, 2020, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had said that if Faizabad can be renamed Ayodhya and Allahabad as Prayagraj, then Hyderabad too can be renamed as Bhagyanagar. "Some people were asking me if Hyderabad can be renamed as Bhagyanagar. I said why not. I told them that we renamed Faizabad as Ayodhya and Allahabad as Prayagraj after BJP came into power in UP. Then why Hyderabad can't be renamed as Bhagyanagar?" Yogi had said. "RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, BJP National President JP Nadda, Party National General Secretary BL Santosh and Joint General Secretary Shiv Prakash and other top office bearers of affiliated organizations will participate in this annual meeting," sources said. Further, sources said that the BJP representatives will give details of their vision and programmes for the coming year. In the meeting, there will be extensive discussions on the upcoming assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Goa, and any assistance required from the affiliates in the polls. Such meetings are held every year between BJP and RSS. In June this year, a coordination meeting was held in Uttar Pradesh which was attended by BJP General Secretary BL Santhosh. (ANI)
The term "anti-national' was not defined in the statutes or the Constitution but it was inserted in the latter during the Emergency by the then Congress regime in 1976 through a Constitutional amendment, but was omitted next year, the Parliament was told on Tuesday. The word "anti-national" was not mentioned in statutes, however, there are criminal legislations and various judicial pronouncements to sternly deal with unlawful and subversive activities which are detrimental to the unity and integrity of the country," Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai told the Lok Sabha in a written reply to the question by AIMIM member Asaduddin Owaisi. The word "anti-national was inserted in the Constitution through the Forty-Second Amendment, 1976 as Article 31D to define "anti-national activity". Owaisi had asked whether the government has defined the meaning of "anti-national" under any legislation or rules or any other legal enactment that is enforced in the country and whether the Supreme Court has prescribed any guidelines to deal with crimes relating to "anti-national" activity. Rai also said that Article 31D was removed from the Constitution by the Forty-Third Amendment in 1977. --IANS ams/vd ( 200 Words) 2021-12-21-21:02:03 (IANS)
Washington [US], December 21 (ANI/Sputnik): The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put eight more countries on its list of states that Americans should avoid due to the high risk of being infected with the novel coronavirus, including Spain and Finland. "Avoid travel to Spain," the CDC said in one of the identically-worded travel alerts for the eight countries that include Chad, Lebanon, Bonaire, Gibraltar, Monaco and San Marino. "If you must travel to Spain, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel. Because of the current situation in Spain, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants." The CDC also urged travelers to follow recommendations or requirements in the eight countries, including wearing a face mask and staying six feet apart from other individuals. The CDC's ravel alerts are usually for countries regarded to be on Level 4 for coronavirus infections, signifying "very high" risk. Monday's alerts came after the Netherlands went into a lockdown at the weekend and more European governments contemplated implementing additional COVID-19-related restrictions ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays. (ANI/Sputnik)
During a press briefing, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said: "We are working with various UN bodies, including the UNDP to find creative ways that we can infuse not only humanitarian aid but also liquidity into the Afghan economy. "

The United States believes that Afghanistan is experiencing an acute humanitarian crisis that was preexisting before the US withdrawal in August and has become worse since then, Sputnik reported citing Price.

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, on Monday said that Afghanistan's economy is in "free fall".

He was addressing the 17th Extraordinary Session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers in Islamabad.

Since the takeover in mid-August by the Taliban (under UN sanctions over terrorist activities), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have suspended financial aid which previously accounted for nearly 75% of Afghanistan's public expenditure, while the United States froze billions of dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan Central Bank.

Addressing the OIC briefing, Afghanistan's acting foreign minister Amir Khan Motaqi urged the United States must unfreeze billions of dollars of Afghanistan as the country desperately needs cash. (ANI)
Ottawa [Canada], December 21 (ANI/Xinhua): Canada's COVID-19 cases continued to surge on Monday as the Omicron variant rapidly took hold in the country. Canada reported 9,294 new COVID-19 cases as of Monday afternoon, raising the cumulative total to 1,892,511 cases including 30,054 deaths, according to CTV. Quebec, a populous province of Canada, reported 4,571 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, most cases of COVID-19 in a single day, as new measures aimed to limit the spread of the Omicron variant come into effect. Of the 4,571 cases, 1,258 were from unvaccinated people, 220 were from people with one dose, and 3,093 cases were from people who got their second dose of the vaccine more than seven days ago. The Quebec government is shutting down several public settings Monday evening, including bars, taverns, casinos, theatres, gyms and even schools as cases of COVID-19 are soaring. Those establishments will be closed as of 5 p.m. Monday. Quebec Premier Francois Legault announced the new restrictions last week amid a surge in cases and modeling predictions that showed an already fragile health system could be overwhelmed in a matter of weeks. In addition to the measures aimed at reducing contacts, Quebec is accelerating its rollout of booster shots. As of Monday, Quebecers aged 65 and over can book an appointment for a third dose. Since the start of the COVID-19 health crisis, the province has recorded 490,294 infections, 452,509 recoveries and 11,642 deaths. Quebec also set a record for the positivity rate for new cases. It's now at 10.1 percent. Meanwhile, Ontario, the most populous province of Canada, reported 3,783 new COVID-19 cases on Monday as the positivity rate rose to a level unseen since early May. Of the 3,783 new infections reported on Monday, 471 cases were identified in children under the age of 12. The province also recorded 381 cases in youth between the ages of 12 and 19 and another 1,633 cases in people between the ages of 20 and 39. Today's case count comes just a day after the province confirmed the highest daily count since late April with 4,177 new cases. Before that, officials confirmed 3,301 new cases on Saturday, 3,124 on Friday and 2.421 on Thursday. Today's report brings the total number of lab-confirmed cases in Ontario to 653,727, including deaths and recoveries. Manitoba province confirmed 809 new COVID-19 cases on Monday. (ANI/Xinhua)
The OIC's new envoy is assigned to follow up on the implementation of the resolution of the Council of Foreign Ministers, particularly as regards coordinating efforts for the supply of humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, Khamma Press reported.

The special representative will not only be coordinating humanitarian assistance and support to Afghanistan but will also pursue economic and political engagement.

The OIC has vowed to set up a humanitarian trust fund for Afghanistan as the country is witnessing a major crisis with millions facing poverty and hunger.

Pakistan organized a summit of foreign ministers from the OIC. An OIC resolution released after the meeting said the Islamic Development Bank would lead the effort to free up assistance by the first quarter of 2022, Al Jazeera reported.

It also urged Afghanistan's rulers to abide by "obligations under international human rights covenants, especially with regards to the rights of women, children, youth, elderly and people with special needs".

The OIC meeting did not give the new Taliban government any formal international recognition and Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi was excluded from the official photograph taken during the event. (ANI)
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States is cooperating with the United Nations to find ways to deliver aid in Afghanistan and ensure liquidity in the country's economy.

"We welcome the willingness of the US to find ways to ensure liquidity in Afghanistan's economy," UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told Sputnik on Monday.

The United States believes that Afghanistan is experiencing an acute humanitarian crisis that was preexisting before the US withdrawal in August and has become worse since then, Price said.

During a press briefing, Price said: "We are working with various UN bodies, including the UNDP to find creative ways that we can infuse not only humanitarian aid but also liquidity into the Afghan economy. "

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, on Monday said that Afghanistan's economy is in "free fall".

He was addressing the 17th Extraordinary Session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers in Islamabad.

\Since the takeover in mid-August by the Taliban (under UN sanctions over terrorist activities), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have suspended financial aid which previously accounted for nearly 75% of Afghanistan's public expenditure, while the United States froze billions of dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan Central Bank.

Addressing the OIC briefing, Afghanistan's acting foreign minister Amir Khan Motaqi urged the United States must unfreeze billions of dollars of Afghanistan as the country desperately needs cash. (ANI)
Eight people have been reported dead due to severe flooding in Malaysia as of Monday, authorities in Selangor state have said. Selangor police chief Arjunaidi Mohamed said floods hit various districts in Selangor and claimed eight lives so far, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the state news agency Bernama. The number of displaced persons due to flooding in Malaysia has risen to over 64,000 in seven states plus the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur as of 10:00 p.m. local time Monday, according to data from the Malaysian social welfare department. The worst-hit state is Pahang along the east coast of Peninsula Malaysia, with over 34,000 people being evacuated to flood relief centers, followed by Selangor state with over 24,000 evacuated. The flood situation in the capital of Kuala Lumpur has eased in part due to its flood mitigation facility, known as the SMART Tunnel, the company managing the tunnel said in a statement. The tunnel, which is designed to capture floodwater before pumping it out via a drainage network, had been activated at around 8:00 p.m. Sunday, with some 4.9 million square meters of floodwater being diverted from the capital, it said. The country's meteorological department has warned of more rain in the Peninsula Malaysia, with rain and storms expected in several states on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said in a statement that more resources including personnel and equipment are being deployed to aid with evacuation and flood relief. He also sought to calm the public, with many still being trapped in areas that are still flooded in parts of the country. "I completely understand the public's concern about the safety of those stranded by floods and as I have stressed before, rescue efforts are being intensified and rescue operations are being carried out nonstop," he said. --IANS int/shs ( 315 Words) 2021-12-21-01:38:03 (IANS)
"On Monday morning, a mid-level staff member, who does not regularly have contact with the President (Joe Biden), received a positive result for a COVID-19 test. Three days earlier, on Friday, that staff member had spent approximately 30 minutes in proximity to the President on Air Force One, on the way from Orange, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania," White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said in a statement.

"The President received an antigen test Sunday, and tested negative. This morning, after being notified of the staffer's positive test, the President received a PCR test and tested negative. He will be tested again on Wednesday," she said.

The White House spokesperson said the staff member is fully vaccinated and boosted, and tested negative prior to boarding Air Force One, as required for everyone traveling with the US president.

"As CDC guidance does not require fully vaccinated people to quarantine after an exposure, the President will continue with his daily schedule," she said. (ANI)
The arrest was made on Sunday in the Taxila city of Punjab province, Dawn newspaper reported.

The man was arrested after a group of local religious leaders informed the police. They said that the suspect had allegedly used derogatory language against one of the Prophet's companions publicly in a hotel.

The religious leaders were led by Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan's area president who reportedly informed the police.

The group presented video footage against the suspect. Soon after the incident was reported, police registered a case against the suspect and launched a hunt to arrest him.

Later, police took him into custody during a raid on his house and sent him behind bars.

Pakistan continues to be a cause of concern for rights activists in the country.

Pakistan has registered thousands of blasphemy cases, which are mostly against religious minorities like Hindus, Christians, Shia and Ahmadiya Muslims from 1987 till today, according to several reports by rights groups.

A large number of these blasphemy cases in Pakistan are still awaiting justice. (ANI)
The man entered a Hindu temple in Ranchore Line area of Karachi in the evening and damaged the statue of Hindu deity Jog Maya using a hammer, Pakistani Urdu language news television network Samaa TV reported.

The accused was later apprehended by the public and handed over to local police. According to media reports, the accused has been booked under sections that deal with blasphemy.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa condemned the incident, calling it a "state-backed terror against minorities."

"Another Hindu temple desecrated in Ranchore line, Karachi Pakistan Attackers justified vandalism saying 'Temple is unworthy of being a place of worship'. This is state backed terror against minorities of Pakistan," Sirsa tweeted.

Earlier in October, unidentified thieves had desecrated Hanuman Devi Mata Mandir in Sindh province. They took away jewellery and cash worth thousands of rupees.

In recent years, there has been a surge in attacks on places of worship of religious minorities in Pakistan. The country has been repeatedly slammed by the international community for not safeguarding the interest of its minorities. (ANI)
The three were identified as Yasutaka Fujishiro, 65, who killed seven of his relatives in Hyogo Prefecture in 2004, and Tomoaki Takanezawa, 54, and Mitsunori Onogawa, 44, who were convicted of killing two pachinko parlour employees in Gunma Prefecture in 2003, as per the media outlet.

The last execution in Japan was on December 26, 2019, Kyodo reported. (ANI)
The anti-corruption office of Manila-based multilateral funding agency punished three state-backed companies for violating integrity rules, The Kathmandu Post reported.

The list of the banned companies includes CMC engineering Company, Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group and China Harbour Engineering Company.

Around 24 companies had purchased bid documents for Tribhuvan International Airport ultimate development project in Kathmandu worth 10 billion Nepali Rupees. However, only four Chinese companies submitted them, the report said.

Among the four hopefuls are two of the firms blacklisted by the ADB, the Post reported citing a top official at the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

"These companies are blacklisted under the ADB's integrity guideline, and have been put on the sanctions list for ADB-funded projects," said the official of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

According to the officials, the punitive actions will not be applied to ongoing projects the companies are currently undertaking.

Notably, the companies have been blacklisted only for ADB-funded projects, a Nepali government procurement expert told the Kathmandu Post.

"But if the ADB informs Nepal's public procurement monitoring office about their misconduct and the manner in which they were put on the sanctions list, it will be easy for Nepal to blacklist them too. The integrity rules in the project are universal rules."

This development comes as Nepal is planning to upgrade Kathmandu's airport which is currently functioning as the sole international airport. According to Post, heavy congestion and lower quality of services are observed during peak hours. (ANI)
This comes a day after opposition parties in Pakistan are celebrating their victory after leaving the ruling Imran Khan's party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf behind, Geo TV reported.

"PTI made mistakes in 1st phase of KP LG elections & paid the price. Wrong candidate selection was a major cause. From now on I will personally be overseeing PTI's LG election strategy in 2nd phase of KP LG elections & LG elections across Pak. InshaAllah PTI will come out stronger," the Prime Minister tweeted.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) has won elections in 10 tehsil councils, PTI in 9, ANP in 5, PML-N and Jamaat-e-Islami have bagged one seat each, The News International reported citing the unofficial and unconfirmed results of 31 out of 64 tehsil councils in 17 districts.

So far five tehsil councils have been won by independent candidates.

The PTI seems to be heading towards another upset defeat in Nowshera as per the unofficial results the ANP's candidate Ghayyur Ali Khan seems to have won the election.

While PTI has managed to gain four out of six tehsils of Buner district.

Meanwhile, a Village Council candidate has accidentally killed himself when he resorted to firing in jubilation of his victory in the elections in Peshawar.

While ecstatic at news of his triumph on a General Councillor seat Zakariya Khan killed himself when he resorted to making celebratory gunfire. Officials have said Zakariya's death would be investigated thoroughly, reported The News International. (ANI)
China is establishing a vast network of boarding schools in Tibet where Tibetan young children are being kept away from their parents and community to turn them into 'patriotic' citizens of future China, a media report said. The information was released in the report, titled "Separated From Their Families, Hidden From the World: China's Vast system of Colonial Boarding Schools Inside Tibet". It was released by Tibet Action Institute, a Dharamshala based intelligence center. The report said that the new policy of Chinese administration in Tibet aims at "forcing three out of every four Tibetan students into a vast network of colonial boarding schools." According to the Tibet Press, these schools are focused on separating children from their families and the social environment from the earliest possible age. About 8-9 lakh Tibetan students, aged between six and 18 are already admitted to these special schools, the report added. In several cases, the families have been coerced to part with their four-year-old children on the promises of 'good education'. Earlier in October, Tibet-focused media group Phayul had reported that children between 8 and 16 years of age are sent to new military education camps set up this year in the autonomous region's Nyingtri city. These military-style camps are situated in an already sensitive militarised region. The centres are established to foster affection towards the communist regime in China. The communist regime states that the aim of such camps is aimed at increasing "the spirit of patriotism and increase the spirit of patriotism and defending the nation, increase physical strength, inculcate mental strength and stamina, and also to increase the spirit of unity among the children," the media outlet said quoting Chinese state media. Children during their summer vacation are taught discipline through military drills and physical activities at military summer camp and training centre on the banks of Lake Draksum Tso, according to Phayul. These camps are similar to vocational skills training institutes and enterprises in Nyingtri focused on Tibetan farmers, nomads and former political prisoners. The Phayul article cited a Free Tibet report that argues that since the 2008 Tibetan Uprising, China's CCP has been heavily invested in using "artificial intelligence technology to boost surveillance and revamped its assimilatory ethnic policies to break connections, lineages, lifestyle and loyalties." China has been exercising such practices for a long time to shape the thoughts of people in a way the regime wants. In Xinjiang, the regime has been running multiple camps to shape the citizens in a pro-Beijing way. However, multiple media reports have claimed that Xinjiang camps are internment camps, not education centres as China claims. Reports have also alleged that there are extensive human rights violations, including rape, torture and sexual abuse at the so-called re-education camps in Xinjiang. (ANI)
India and France held Foreign Office Consultations (FOC) on Tuesday where the two sides took stock of the wide-ranging India-France strategic partnership. The Foreign Office Consultations come close on the heels of a "fruitful visit" by Florence Parly, Minister for Armed Forces of France on December 17 to hold the third Annual Defence Dialogue with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. "Before this, we had held consultations in Paris on 30 October 2020 where we had exchanged perspectives on the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical changes at a global and regional level. We had also discussed in detail various facets of bilateral cooperation including in the areas of space and energy and reviewed the progress made in other dialogue mechanisms between the two sides," said Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla at the FOC with Francois Delattre, Secretary-General, Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France. "We had also exchanged notes on our close cooperation in multilateral and plurilateral fora, be it the UNSC or trilateral cooperation. This helped us prepare for India's term as a non-permanent member of the UNSC where India and France have worked in very close coordination," he added. Shringla noted that several high-level interactions took place in 2021 that included three ministerial visits from France to India, including those of Barbara Pompili, Minister for Ecological Transition in January, Jean-Yves Le Drian, Foreign Minister in April and most recently the Defence Minister. "Besides these, several dialogues at the working level have also been held over the year, including the 34th and 35th editions of the Strategic Dialogue in January in New Delhi and in November in Paris, respectively, Joint Working Group on Environment in January, among others," he added. (ANI)
The number of job vacancies in Canada reached has hit a record of 912,600 in the third quarter of 2021, according to official data. The record-high job vacancies coincided with growth in overall employment and falling unemployment due to the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, Xinhua news agency quoted Statistics Canada as saying on Monday. Statistics Canada's data shed light on some of the factors behind the monthly job vacancy data released previously, including sectoral and regional differences in unmet labour demand, changes in the occupation and skills profile of vacancies, and recent trends in the wages offered by employers. Across all sectors, the total number of job vacancies was 349,700 more than that in the corresponding period of 2019. Compared with the same period two years earlier, job vacancies were up in all provinces of Canada in the third quarter of 2021. Job vacancies increased between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021 in 18 of the 20 major industrial sectors. Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and real estate and rental and leasing were the only sectors where vacancies were not up in the third quarter of 2021 compared with the same period two years earlier. Five sectors - health care, construction, accommodation and food, retail trade and manufacturing - were driving the growth in job vacancies. Increases in job vacancies can signal a number of changes in labour market conditions existing in different sectors and regions. Vacancies increased more in low-wage occupations than in high-wage occupations between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021. In the third quarter of 2019, 20 per cent of occupations with the lowest average wages accounted for 35 per cent of employees and 48.9 per cent of job vacancies. In the third quarter of 2021, these same occupations represented 32.3 per cent of employees and 50.9 per cent of vacancies. In contrast, the 20 per cent of occupations with the highest average wages represented 9.4 per cent of vacancies in the third quarter of 2021, down 1.1 percentage points from the same period two years earlier. --IANS ksk/ ( 360 Words) 2021-12-21-09:08:01 (IANS)
China on Tuesday opposed the establishment of the US special coordinator for Tibetan issues and refused to accept the new appointment made by the US government. "Xizang-related affairs (Tibet) are purely China's internal affairs and China will never allow any external forces to interfere. The Chinese government consistently opposes the establishment of the so-called special coordinator for Tibetan issues and will never accept it," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Monday said that Uzra Zeya, the US undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, will serve as the special coordinator for Tibetan issues, effective immediately. Zeya, who has decades of high-level experience in US foreign policy--including on the issue of Tibet--will now serve as the Biden administration's point person on efforts to help resolve the Tibetan issue, promote Tibetan identity, protect Tibetan culture and heritage. She will also support the human rights of the Tibetan people, who have lived under China's oppressive rule for more than six decades. Zeya will be the first Indian American to serve in the role. India is home to the world's largest population of Tibetan exiles. "The International Campaign for Tibet welcomes Uzra Zeya's appointment as the new US special coordinator for Tibetan issues," International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Interim President Bhuchung Tsering said. "We anticipate that as someone familiar with the Tibetan issue, Zeya will work proactively at promoting dialogue between the Dalai Lama's envoys and the Chinese leadership, as well as at advocating for US interests in Tibet, and advancing the cause of Tibetan Americans and Tibetans around the globe." Zeya's appointment follows bipartisan letters from Congress sent to Zeya on December 14 under the assumption that she would become the next special coordinator. The letters lay out several areas where Congress and the administration can work together to advance US policy on Tibet. (ANI)
Leaders of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) have warned the Imran Khan government against further increase in electricity tariff. TLP leaders said that the fresh proposed hike will incur a huge burden on the poor. TLP leaders on Monday said the poor masses were already suffering shock from the huge bills of power and gas, but the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government badly failed in reversing its cruel decisions and has deprived them of two meals in a day, The News International reported. They said the government is pushing Pakistan towards an economic swamp under IMF dictations. "The country is suffering from economic misery, but the rulers are busy obeying harsh policies of IMF," they said, adding that rulers have closed their eyes and ears about the plight of people. Pakistan's attempts to negotiate with extremist groups will have serious security repercussions as such actions tend to be viewed as a sign of weakness, according to a think tank. This comes as Imran Khan government has recently TLP from the list of organisations linked to terrorism after signing a deal with the outfit that resulted in outrage from the opposition parties. The government also declared a complete ceasefire with another banned group, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). However, last week, the TTP announced it would not extend the month-long ceasefire. It also accused Islamabad of failing to fulfil its obligations under the agreement. "Firstly, the removal of the name of the TLP... as a proscribed organisation has set a dangerous precedent in the country, as it came days after its violent protest march to Islamabad. This bizarre move will only strengthen extremists and anti-state elements in the country," Sehar Kamran, head of the Centre for Pakistan and Gulf Studies think tank, told Sputnik. Kamran argued that the decision has far-reaching repercussions, as thousands of TLP members have been subsequently removed from the terrorist list. Another 2,100 have been released from police custody. The Imran Khan government's move showed that any group can achieve its political gains under the guise of religion by holding the state hostage and forcing it to surrender to demands by launching violent protests and choking major highways, the expert noted. (ANI)
Months of long sit-ins and the protests in Balochistan have rattled the Imran Khan-led Pakistan government and forced the authorities to deploy thousands of additional police in the region, a news article in Policy Research Group read. Gwadar has been pitched as a key node of the Belt and Road-linked China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The residents of the port city in Balochistan province on December 16 called off their sit-in after negotiations with the government. For the past several weeks, thousands of people were protesting demanding basic rights in support of the "Gwadar ko haq do" movement in the port city. Pakistani officials had claimed that Gwadar and CPEC will transform the region's economic geography by providing China's landlocked Xinjiang region. Among other things, thousands of residents were demanding access to clean drinking water and an end to the "trawler mafia". The demands also included the removal of additional check-posts at Pushkan, Sarbandan and Gwadar City, and the opening of the Pakistan-Iran border. Pakistan's Opposition Leader in National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif had described the protests in the port city of Gwadar as a "watershed event" in the struggle for basic rights in the country. After nearly a month-long protests in the port city of Gwadar, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has finally taken notice of ongoing demonstrations by the people in the southwestern province over a slew of issues. "I have taken notice of the very legitimate demands of the hardworking fishermen of Gwadar. Will be taking strong action against illegal fishing by trawlers and will also speak to CM Balochistan," Imran Khan tweeted on Sunday. The people of Gwadar had rejected plans and made it clear that the main objective of these (CPEC) projects is to gradually evict the locals and settle the Punjabis and Chinese on a large scale. The Give Rights to Gwadar Movement had turned aggressive as the organizers have decided to block ExpressWay and all entry points on Coastal Highway to continue their protests. China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been marred with controversy since the announcement of the USD 46 billion projects in 2015. The CPEC project would link Pakistan's southern Gwadar port in Balochistan on the Arabian Sea to China's western Xinjiang region. It also includes plans to create road, rail and oil pipeline links to improve connectivity between China and the Middle East. Since the start of CPEC, it has prompted demonstrations, claiming that projects will not benefit the people of Balochistan while people of other provinces are enjoying the fruits of the mega project. (ANI)
According to a decision made by the Kuwaiti government on Monday, incoming passengers will be required to conduct a PCR test within 48 hours before arrival and take home quarantine for 10 days, while the decision is effective as of December 26, reports Xinhua news agency.

In order to end the quarantine, they must conduct a PCR test after 72 hours of quarantine, the centre said on Twitter.

Starting from January 2, 2022, if nine months have passed since the second dose of vaccination, the person is considered not fully immunised and cannot travel unless he or she takes a booster dose of approved vaccines, it said.

On November 27, Kuwait decided to suspend direct flights with nine African countries over the new Omicron variant.

--IANS ksk/

( 156 Words)

2021-12-21-10:32:03 (IANS)
"We believe that wintertime drills by North Korea's military are under way," Yonhap News Agency quoted Col. Kim Jun-rak, the spokesperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), as saying to the media.

"(We) are keeping a close watch on related activities while maintaining close cooperation between the intelligence authorities of South Korea and the US," he added.

The North usually kicks off a regular military training in December, which continues through early spring often involving artillery firing drills.

--IANS ksk/

( 115 Words)

2021-12-21-10:48:08 (IANS)
There are over two million of newly designed 5-new-shekel coins that will be available in the markets starting from Tuesday, Xinhua news agency quoted a statement issued by the Bank of Israel as saying.

The special coin was launched at a ceremony held at the bank's headquarters here on Monday, in the presence of President Isaac Herzog, Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz.

The design of the coin was chosen in a competition, featuring a doctor examining a patient.

During the ceremony, Herzog said that "the last two years have proven what an excellent public health system we have, with exceptional dedication and commitment in an uncompromising struggle for every patient, under complex conditions and uncertainty".

"Considering the depth of the crisis and its enormous economic consequences, the efforts by workers of the medical and health systems also contributes greatly to the resilience and survival of the Israeli economy," Yaron added.

Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, Israel has reported a total of 1,356,579 confirmed Covid cases and 8,232 deaths.

--IANS ksk/

( 216 Words)

2021-12-21-11:18:04 (IANS)
The relatives of the deceased persons clashed with police on VIP Road in the Larkana city and the Akil police tried to persuade them to disperse peacefully but in vain. In order to clear the road, the police baton-charged them causing chaos and a clash, according to Dawn.

Meanwhile, the protesters converged on the Larkana's Sukarno Memorial Tower and blocked roads with tractor-driven trolleys.

Also, the deceased suspect's heirs claimed that the Akil police killed Raju Mahar and then ASI Khoso and constable Jatoi termed it as encounter.

"We were holding our protest peacefully but police unnecessarily used force against us," they said.

Further, Station House Officers (SHO) of six police stations, along with a strong contingent, used force to disperse them. The tractors, trolleys and a number of motorcycles of the protesters were impounded and taken to various police stations, according to Dawn.

Earlier, a statement issued from the Superintendent of police office hours after the "encounter" had claimed that the killed suspect [Raju Mahar] was wanted by police in 12 cases of heinous nature.

Meanwhile, Larkana DIG Mazhar Nawaz Shaikh had, on December 14, suspended three SHOs and ordered an inquiry into the "encounter". (ANI)
During the visit, Shringla will hold discussions with the State Administration Council, political parties and members of civil society, said Ministry of External Affairs release.

Issues relating to humanitarian support to Myanmar, security and India-Myanmar border concerns, and the political situation in Myanmar will be discussed, added the release.

Meanwhile, Myanmar is in turmoil as on February 1, the Myanmar junta or Myanmar's military has toppled the democratically elected government in a coup d'etat led by Senior General Ming Aung Hlaing and declared a year-long state of emergency.

Myanmar is geopolitically significant to India as it stands at the centre of the India-Southeast Asia geography.

Myanmar is the only country that sits at the intersection of India's "Neighborhood First" policy and its "Act East" policy. (ANI)
The Japanese government will be forced to issue new bonds worth 22.1 trillion yen to finance the majority of the supplementary budget, reports Xinhua news agency.

As a result, the outstanding balance of government bonds, which need to be cleared by tax revenue, is expected to surpass 1,000 trillion yen by March.

The draft of the extra budget was approved by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's Cabinet late last month and passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

In the budget, fiscal spending totalled a record 55.7 trillion yen, with 31.6 trillion yen for the government's new stimulus plan revealed in November.

As a precautionary measure for another possible wave of the pandemic this winter, Kishida's policy package largely leaned towards curbing Covid-19 amid fears over the spread of the Omicron variant.

Of the total extra budget, 18.6 trillion yen was earmarked for measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 and support medical institutions.

In particular, 2.0 trillion yen was set aside as subsidies to help medical institutions secure more beds for Covid-19 patients.

To support promotion of the government's Covid vaccination program and procurement of treatment drugs, 1.3 trillion yen and 601.9 billion yen were allocated, respectively.

As a key policy measure in the stimulus package, 1.2 trillion yen will be used for the government's handout program of cash and vouchers for children aged 18 or younger in households where the primary earner's annual income is below 9.6 million yen.

--IANS ksk/

( 277 Words)

2021-12-21-11:50:07 (IANS)
"Lebanon is today at the centre of all our strategies and efforts, both at the level of the Secretariat and at the level of the different agencies that are cooperating with the Lebanese authorities," Guterres said during a meeting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the Lebanese cabinet at the Grand Serail on Monday.

The Secretary-General emphasized the importance of adopting unified strategies among the UN and Lebanese leaders that are aligned in pursuit of a stable peaceful Lebanon to offer hope and opportunity to all its people.

Guterres noted that the UN stands ready to support Lebanon in its negotiations with international financial institutions to encourage them to provide the maximum possible support for the country.

For his part, Mikati said that Lebanon urgently needs more aid, especially for a cash assistance program for hundreds of thousands of families.

He asked for the help of the international community to facilitate the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland.

Earlier on Monday, Guterres met House Speaker Nabih Berri, vowing to facilitate negotiations for maritime border demarcation allowing Lebanon to take full profit of the natural resources.

The UN Secretary-General laid a wreath earlier in the day at a memorial for the August 2020 Beirut port blast.

Guterres arrived on Sunday in Lebanon to express solidarity with the people of Lebanon amid the country's multiple crises.

--IANS ksk/

( 266 Words)

2021-12-21-12:06:05 (IANS)
After his first in-person meeting with new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the two nations are likely to bring their positions closer on how they respectively look at the European Union's (EU) fiscal rules. The two countries have long held different views on the EU's budget and public debt rules (i.e. on how the bloc's member states should manage their public spending), with Italy pursuing a more flexible approach and Germany a stricter one, reports Xinhua news agency. Yet, in the context of the post-Covid phase -- and of the 750-billion euro ($846 billion) "Next Generation EU" recovery instrument -- the Italian Prime Minister said the bloc needed to proceed further with its integration process and find an agreement on the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact. As a review of this pact was launched by the EU in October, Draghi and Scholz "briefly discussed" the changes that might be needed to make it consistent with the bloc's new goals. "In the post-pandemic phase, all our countries are required to fund unprecedented projects in the fields of digital transition, environmental transition, defence, and also in terms of coordination," Draghi told a joint press conference after their meeting on Monday. "These are massive projects, and it will be necessary to see how these projects can be inserted into the new budget rules," he explained. "My guess is that an understanding will be found on this ... there will be a narrowing of positions. Perhaps I am being too optimistic, but this is a field easier to tackle than others." The visiting Chancellor, whose country favours a more rigorous fiscal approach along with other northern EU partners, noted that the current framework of rules already proved flexible but would not reveal whether he would agree to more flexibility. "The Stability Pact has shown great flexibility in the past and it is plausible that it would prove flexible in the future as well. "Some 750 billion euros have been made available to the whole of Europe, which is unprecedented. Now that we have mobilised a large amount of funds, our ambition now should be to spend that money," Scholz added. Draghi explained that Italy and Germany were willing to strengthen their cooperation in facing "Europe's big challenges". "We want to strengthen our cooperation in science, technology and research on European projects of common interest, and in sectors crucial to our future, such as hydrogen, microelectronics and electric vehicle batteries," he said. Draghi said the two governments also wanted to accelerate the ecological transition, stressing that bilateral cooperation among European countries would be crucial considering the "very ambitious goals" the EU has set in this regard. The Prime Minister added that Italy and Germany agreed on the need for a common defence policy for the EU, which should be complementary and not an alternative to the NATO of which both countries are members. --IANS ksk/ ( 498 Words) 2021-12-21-12:16:20 (IANS)
Nepali communist leaders are under China's pressure to create trouble over ratification of a million dollars worth grant assistance by US foreign aid agency. Nepal government is in favour of ratifying of grant Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)-Nepal Compact despite being aware of the fact that communist parties in the ruling coalition would stand against it, khabarhub reported. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an innovative and independent US foreign assistance agency that helps in curbing global poverty. The report said this stand was evident when the leaders of the ruling coalition at the all-party meeting last week opposed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's idea of moving it forward in the Parliament. The communist party leaders, who have been shouldering PM Deuba to lead the government, reiterated their regular stances saying some clauses of the MCC agreement will undermine Nepal's sovereignty and that it cannot be endorsed in its current status. It should be recalled that a meeting of the MCC Board of Directors held recently in Washington said, "The Board of Directors made note of the commitment by the government of Nepal to seek to ratify the compact in the near term," reported khabarhub. Now, PM Deuba is in a dilemma. If his government tabled the MCC in the parliament for ratification, there are chances that the coalition could break since Chitra Bahadur KC, Chairman of the Rastriya Janamorcha, has reiterated that his party will pull out of the coalition if the government moved the MCC forward. Meanwhile, sources claim that Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal "Prachanda" has asked PM Deuba not to take a decision on the issue before December 28 - the date when the Maoist Centre's national conference will conclude. They also claimed that the communist parties are under pressure from China to not endorse the MCC at any cost, khabarhub reported. On December 13, a Chinese official, Chen Chao, who is also the Deputy Minister of International Affairs under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in a video conversation with UML leader Shankar Pokhrel, had urged the latter to "reconsider" the party's position on MCC before endorsing it. Meanwhile, Khabarhub recently published a story on the basis of a highly confidential document prepared by Nepal's security authorities stating that China is "playing a role" in souring Nepal's relations with third countries, particularly with the United States, and is currently actively propagating, lobbying and spending against the MCC. A Nepali political leader, who preferred to remain anonymous, said, "China does not want MCC to be endorsed at any cost. Therefore, it is piling pressure on Nepal's left parties to stand against MCC." Analyst Saroj Mishra meanwhile is of the view that a handful of Nepalis consider themselves "more Chinese than the Chinese themselves" when it comes to ratifying MCC, reported khabarhub. According to him, some Nepali leaders, mainly the communists, are acting like Nepal is China's protectorate, and are worried that Nepal would go out of China's grip. During Sunday's all-party meeting, all political parties, except for the NC, were unanimous to "suggest" PM Deuba not to take MCC forward without a greater consensus. (ANI)
"Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla met Francois Delattre, Secretary-General of France for Foreign Office Consultations," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a tweet on Tuesday.

"Took stock of bilateral relations and agreed to closely work together in areas of regional, multilateral and global interest including UNSC, Afghanistan among others," Bagchi added.

Shringla is scheduled to pay a two-day working visit to Myanmar on December 22-23.

During the visit, Foreign Secretary will hold discussions with the State Administration Council, political parties and members of civil society, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a press release on Tuesday.

"Issues relating to humanitarian support to Myanmar, security and India-Myanmar border concerns, and the political situation in Myanmar will be discussed," the release added. (ANI)
They held a protest rally against the increase in the fuel price adjustment (FPA) amount in electricity bills, and unscheduled power and gas outages in the Timergara city, reported Dawn.

The protesters blocked the road at the Gorgorai Chowk for some time and chanted slogans against the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) authorities.

The local traders also participated in the protest. The protesters burnt their electricity and gas bills and warned to besiege the PESCO and SNGPL offices if power and gas outages were not stopped, reported Dawn.

The power and gas outages had also affected functioning of hospitals, offices and clinical laboratories.

As per the protestors, the consumers were being robbed in the name of FPA in electricity bills and they demanded an end to it. (ANI)
Delegation of the Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI) called on Punjab Chief Secretary Kamran Ali Afzal at the Civil Secretariat in Lahore and later announced postponing its protest here on Monday, according to Dawn.

Talking to the delegation, the chief secretary said the doors of his office were open for everyone and there was no justification to come on the streets."

"The government was taking steps to resolve the problems of the farmers and the provincial administration was already in contact with the federal government on the issue of wheat support price and overbilling in electricity bills," he said.

"The administration was working hard for the availability of urea at a fixed price for the wheat crop and no one would be allowed to exploit the growers through profiteering," he added.

On the other hand, the government blocked farmers' processions coming to Lahore and arrested scores of participants

Further, PKI's Khalid Hussain Butt apprised the chief secretary about the problems of farmers.

Earlier, the delegation included President Umair Masood, Iftikhar Ahmed, Mehr Akmal and Muhammad Hussain while the additional chief secretary, agriculture secretary, Lahore division commissioner and deputy commissioners of Okara and Kasur were also present.

The district administrations of Okara and Kasur stopped more than 2,000 farmers at different intersections of Lahore-Multan road late on Sunday, according to sources. (ANI)
Moon made the remarks at a Cabinet meeting held after the country reported 49 new omicron cases, bringing the accumulated total to 227, reports Yonhap News Agency.

South Korea's daily Covid-19 cases have recently hovered in the 7,000's, marked by alarming growth in the number of critically ill patients and deaths.

"We must prepare, bearing in mind that the omicron variant may soon become the general trend," Moon said. "Covid-19 can spread at any time if we allow even the slightest crack."

Moon repeated his calls for reinforcing the medical response system, saying the current period of strict social distancing rules must be used to quickly bring the virus situation under control and reduce the number of critically ill Covid-19 patients.

The President was referring to the government's decision last week to halt its program for a phased return to normal and restore curfews on business hours while reducing the maximum private gathering size to four.

"We must check the areas where we fell short, learn the lessons and realign our line of battle," he said.

Moon's message came a day after he instructed national university hospitals to focus their resources on treating critically ill Covid-19 patients as many of them have experienced a shortage of beds.

Moon said he is encouraged by the increased vaccination rate, especially in the administration of booster shots and inoculation of children.

--IANS ksk/

( 273 Words)

2021-12-21-12:46:05 (IANS)
The Tokyo District Court, saying that they had "betrayed the public's trust," handed down a jail term of 30 months to Makoto Sakurai, 29, while Yutaro Arai, 28, was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for four years, reports Xinhua news agency.

Presiding Judge Ryuta Asaka rapped the two in handing down the ruling, saying they "deserve strong criticism for dragging down a key policy to support pandemic-hit small businesses".

According to the ruling, the two cheated 11.5 million yen in office rent subsidies for the two dummy firms they had established.

They also defrauded the ministry of 4 million yen in benefits.

The pair has admitted to the charges.

Prosecutors said Sakurai was the main culprit of the fraud, but his defense lawyers argued that Arai also benefitted from it and that Sakurai is "being made overtly responsible".

However, Arai's defense lawyers said he could not refuse Sakurai's instructions and did not actively participate in the crime.

Asaka determined that Sakurai was the protagonist and that Arai's criminal responsibility was smaller, saying, "without Sakurai, Arai would not have gotten involved".

The Ministry's Small and Medium Enterprise Agency is responsible for subsidy and benefit programs to help struggling sole proprietors and small businesses whose sales have fallen due to the pandemic.

Sakurai worked at the Ministry's Industrial Finance Division and Arai at its Corporate System Division.

They never worked for the agency.

--IANS ksk/

( 287 Words)

2021-12-21-13:50:03 (IANS)
India has taken up the issue of early release of Indian fishermen and boats with the Sri Lankan government, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) informed on Tuesday. Responding to media queries regarding the detention of Indian fishermen, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Arindam Bagchi said that India is concerned about the detention of Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu by Sri Lankan authorities between December 18-20. As per the information, 68 fishermen and 10 boats have been taken into custody. "Officials from the Consulate General of India, Jaffna, have met the detained fishermen and are providing all necessary support. This includes clothes, toiletries, snacks, dry essentials and masks, besides facilitating phone calls to relatives. They are also arranging legal representation." "Our High Commission in Colombo has taken up the issue of early release of the Indian fishermen and boats with the Government of Sri Lanka," he added. Bagchi also informed about one fisherman who was unwell. "The Indian Consular Officer has visited him in hospital to check on his welfare," he said. External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar has received representations on this issue from various political parties. He was also called on the matter by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin. Stalin on Sunday wrote to Jaishankar requesting his intervention to secure the immediate release of 55 fishermen and 73 fishing boats apprehended by the Sri Lankan navy. The chief minister detailed "two incidents of apprehension of Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy that took place in the last 24 hours." The 43 fishermen from Rameswaram, Ramanathapuram District, were fishing in the traditional waters of Palk Bay, in six mechanized fishing boats and were arrested on December 18 and taken to Mylatti, Naval base in Sri Lanka, the Tamil Nadu CM said in his letter. In another incident on December 19, 12 fishermen in two mechanized fishing boats from Mandapam, Ramanathapuram district were arrested and taken to Kalpatti, Naval base in Sri Lanka, Stalin wrote. "He has apprised them all of the current situation and underlined Government of India's efforts to secure early release," said Bagchi. (ANI)
"Hassan Irloo contracted the coronavirus at his place of mission" in Sanaa, Xinhua news agency quoted Khatibzadeh as saying in an official statement.

"Unfortunately, he returned to the country in an unfavorable condition, and despite using all the treatment steps to improve his condition, he was martyred this morning," he added.

Irloo was brought to Tehran, after Baghdad mediated between Iran and Saudi Arabia, by an Iraqi plane on Sunday.

--IANS ksk/

( 112 Words)

2021-12-21-14:48:03 (IANS)
Several families who are struggling to survive in the capital city of Kabul said that aid agencies must transparently distribute assistance to the vulnerable people in Kabul, reported Tolo News.

"In the last three nights I bought two loaves of bread, my children ate them with boiled water. We have not seen aid and caring," said Farida, a displaced woman living in Kabul.

"We live in the Dehmazang area, third police district of Kabul, we are more deserving than others, we have not received aid yet," said Habibullah, a resident, reported Tolo News.

After the fall of the former government in mid-August, Afghanistan's economy has been pushed close to collapse after the Taliban took control of the country.

Afghan families have lost their sources of income and poverty is on the rise. (ANI)
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday declared that the country will not return to lockdowns despite record Covid-19 infections. Morrison said the time for "heavy-handed" government intervention to keep case numbers down was over, reports Xinhua news agency. "We're not going back to lockdowns," he said. "We're not going back to shutting down peoples' lives." "There will be other variants beyond Omicron, and we have to ensure, as a country, and as leaders around the country, we have put in place measures that Australians can live with," he said. His remarks came ahead of an emergency meeting with state and territory leaders on Wednesday to discuss the surge in cases across Australia. Morrison said the meeting would focus on how Australians can continue to live with the virus "with common sense and responsibility" but that he would present "strong recommendations" for indoor mask use to continue. Australia on Tuesday reported more than 4,500 new locally-acquired coronavirus infections -- the most since the start of the pandemic. New South Wales alone reported 3,057 cases, the highest daily infection number among all states during the pandemic, while Victoria recorded 1,245. South Australia, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory and Tasmania reported 154, 86, 16, 14 and four new cases. Leaders will also on Wednesday discuss whether Australians will require a third booster shot to be considered fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The leaders of Australia's two biggest states -- Victoria and New South Wales -- on Tuesday confirmed they would push for shortening the interval between second and third vaccine doses to combat the spread of the Omicron variant. --IANS ksk/ ( 276 Words) 2021-12-21-15:32:01 (IANS)
Delivering an address at the Good Governance Week, Shringla said: "Ministry of External Affairs delivers World Wide Public service delivery system and efforts is involved in delivering passports, visas, and variety of other public service systems. "

He also pointed out the efforts in institutionalizing COVID cell within the Ministry and also referred 'Vande Bharat Mission' which repatriates Indians stranded abroad due to COVID-19 as a part of his address eighth edition of the Good Governance Day celebrations.

The Foreign Secretary mentioned that an enormous effort has gone into implementing a Passport Seva Project (PSP) to improve service delivery and the applicant experience. The Ministry has succeeded in making the process of obtaining a passport simpler and faster, he added.

Shringla said that an international and countrywide networked environment has been created that links concerned agencies which include various units of the Ministry, State Police Departments that conduct physical verification of the applicant's credentials, and India Post for effective delivery of passports.

Earlier, during a keynote address at the Good Governance Week, Jaishankar said: "In these seven years, with the spirit of 'seva', the government has worked towards transformative economic growth, ease of living and building an Atmanirbhar Bharat. All of this has direct relevance to good governance."

Hailing Vande Bharat Mission and Operation Devi Shakti, the Foreign Minister said that these are excellent examples of a "whole-of-government approach".

"The Vande Bharat Mission and Operation Devi Shakti are excellent examples of a 'whole-of-government approach'. The use of post offices to receive passport applications illustrates 'minimum Government, maximum Governance," he said.

Further, Good Governance week symbolise the strides made by India in promoting citizen-centric governance and improving service delivery in consonance with Azadi ka Amrut Mahotsav celebrations to commemorate 75 years of progressive India. (ANI)
The US is rolling out new measures to fight COVID-19 variant Omicron by providing an additional USD 580 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to support seven partners who are working tirelessly in the global fight against coronavirus. This additional USD 580 million is a significant contribution to turn vaccines into vaccinations; strengthen public health capacity; support communities in need, and provide urgent, life-saving relief, read a statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Multilateral organizations are playing an indispensable role in these efforts, and with this additional USD 580 million, the US is supporting seven such partners to continue and accelerate the critical work they are doing to help end the pandemic, strengthen public health capacity, and provide urgent relief. With the emergence of the Omicron variant and continued challenges like equitable access to life-saving care and vaccines, the world is at a critical point in the global response to this virus. The US funding includes USD 280 million for the World Health Organization (WHO), including USD 50 million for the Contingency Fund for Emergencies; USD 170 million to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); USD 75 million to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO); USD 20 million to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP); USD 20 million for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); USD 10 million to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); and USD 5 million to UN Women to assist their efforts to support women and girls. These resources reflect the deep commitment of the United States and the American people to a healthier, more secure world, in keeping with President Biden's commitment to elevate our global ambition to end the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, added US Secretary of State's statement. Blinken further said, "Later today I will host a meeting with foreign ministers to discuss and coordinate how we are addressing the Omicron variant. COVID-19 is not only a health crisis, but a security, economic, humanitarian and development crisis. I call on my counterparts to fulfill and bolster their commitments in fighting the pandemic. We must work together, and we must act quickly, to end this pandemic." To date, the US has shared over 330 million safe and effective vaccine doses to more than 110 countries and economies worldwide. The United States Government is providing more than USD 19.6 billion for life-saving health, economic, and humanitarian COVID-19 assistance to our partners to fight this virus and its impacts. These funds are delivering shots in arms, lifesaving supplies to hospitals, and support that reaches most vulnerable communities, read the statement. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden accelerated efforts to fight this pandemic, promising to deliver 200 million vaccine doses in the next 100 days. "Since his announcement, we have shared more than 50 million doses. While we know vaccines are a critical aspect to help end this pandemic, we also need to work with our partners to increase testing and surveillance, get life-saving equipment and resources to those most in need, and ensure that the most vulnerable have access to vaccination sites," said Blinken. "The rapid spread of the Omicron variant reinforces that we must all continue to accelerate our efforts to end this pandemic and that none of us are safe until all of us are safe. This is a global pandemic that requires global solutions," added Blinken. (ANI)
China is relying on its links with scores of US universities to collect sensitive information that helps the nuclear and cyber-espionage programs of its military-industrial complex, according to reports. The startling revelation was made in December by an American think tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) that the information so gleaned is being used to upgrade China's military modernization and achieve "Chinese military dominance", according to International Forum for Rights and Security. Further, the report, titled 'The Middle Kingdom Meets Higher Education: How US Universities Support China's Military-Industrial Complex', "identifies 28 American universities and schools in 19 states that maintain academic and research partnerships with Chinese institutions that power Beijing's defense establishment." Meanwhile, Adjunct Fellow at FDD who authored the report, Craig Singleton, said: "The Chinese government managed to build an intricate web of academic and research partnerships between America's top universities and Chinese schools that directly enable China's military-industrial complex." Earlier, the Chinese institutes that enter into agreements with American universities were called Confucius Institutes (Cis). They are Chinese government-sponsored organizations offering Chinese-language, cultural, and historical programming at the primary, secondary, and university levels worldwide. Also, the FDD report said: "CIs are also a key element in China's 'united front', a network of groups and key individuals that seek to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)." According to the report's author, "CIs further serve as platforms that advance facets of China's military-civil fusion (MCF), a national strategy aimed at acquiring the world's cutting-edge technologies -- including through theft -- to achieve Chinese military dominance". China's CI-enabled initiatives include the "establishment of academic and research partnerships between top-tier American institutions and Chinese universities supporting Beijing's military-industrial complex". The report said that CI closures began in "earnest only after Congress passed legislation that bars universities hosting CIs from receiving certain types of funding from the US Department of Defense". The universities that have resisted shuttering their CIs are ones that do not receive federal funding jeopardized by this new legislation. The American universities with agreements with the CIs include top research universities of the US including Stanford, Tufts, and Texas A&M, include the University of Washington, Arizona State University, the University of Utah, Rutgers University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the College of William and Mary, and Emory University. (ANI)
Discontentment is growing against Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects with Beijing facing a "BRI backlash" in a number of countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe. The BRI is facing a wide range of impediments in implementation, including strikes, riots, public protests, corruption scandals, natural disasters, public health restrictions, political transitions, bankruptcies, loan defaults, contractual disputes, lawsuits, and ruptures in diplomatic relations, reported Canada-based think tank, International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS). A Chinese project in Europe particularly in Serbia (Copper mining) is facing flak from environmentalists as it would pollute land and water. Similarly in Georgia, local workers are complaining about low pay and dangerous working conditions in the Tiblisi-Batumi railway project. In Greece also public protests were witnessed due to privatization of the ports and long working hour concerns. In the case of the Belgrade metro system, transparency issues remain because there was no public tender placed. Apart from it, the Belgrade-Budapest railway line poses an environmental risk, as it passes through the natural conservation area, which would ultimately affect wetlands and swamps and Danube river water, reported IFFRAS. Some low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) policymakers have cancelled or renegotiated four high-profile BRI projects because major changes in public sentiment have made it difficult to maintain close relations with China. In the African continent, China is developing a USD 55 million industrial fishing harbour in Sierra Leone that is being criticised as a catastrophic human and ecological disaster by conservationists, landowners and rights groups. In Ghana, the Atewa bauxite mines are located in key biodiversity areas and the project could jeopardise the source of clean drinking water for more than 5 million Ghanaians. The project has been opposed by major manufacturing companies (BMW group, Tetra pak and Schuco International) who could have been major customers. In Kenya's Lamu port, civil society organisations and industry along with logistics experts also warned that the facility would become a "white elephant" due to uncertainties around its core use and it could lead to a decline in revenues for Mombasa port. A flagship BRI project, the Tehran-Mashhad High-Speed Railway Electrification Upgrading Project, which was expected to be completed within 48 months from the date of commencement(February 6, 2016) achieved only a 3 per cent completion rate as of June 2019, reported IFFRAS. Several countries, such as Cuba and Sudan, have encountered similar obstacles to BRI project implementation. In Papua New Guinea (PNG) a project involving the laying of 5,600 km of submarine fibre optic cable to connect coastal and maritime provincial centres across the country was overpriced by 30-50 per cent and local controversies emerged. In a similar fashion, the Bishkek thermal power plant (Kyrgyz Republic) that was developed by China, failed and local residents were left with no heating with evidence of embezzlement as well. In Cambodia, villagers protested against Lower Sesan two hydropower dams due to apprehension regarding flood in large areas upstream of the confluence of the Sesan and Srepok rivers and displacement of nearly 5000 indigenous and ethnic people, reported IFFRAS. The list of Chinese projects facing protests in LMICs is very long. In October 2020 Pakistani fishermen in Sindh and Balochistan protested against the arrival of Chinese trawlers that fished in the exclusive economic zone of Sindh and Punjab. The Diamer Basha dam (GB) construction work was indefinitely suspended in February 2021 due to a violent clash between Pakistan Security forces and the protestors. In Bangladesh, due to concerns of biodiversity a USD 14 billion Sonadia Deep Seaport project was cancelled. Workers also protested (April 2021) against the delay in wages and lack of labour rights in the Chattogram coal project. In Myanmar too the ethnic Burman majority is opposing the construction of Myitsone Dam project. In Nepal also a demonstration was organised (September 2021) by the Humla district residents for illegal occupation of Nepalese land by China, reported IFFRAS. In Kyrgyzstan clashes between Chinese workers and the local population emerged (August 2021) in Naryn district injuring about 20 Chinese workers. In Kazakhstan's south-western town of Zhanaozen anti-Chinese protesters (September 2019) raised banners and slogans like "End Chinese expansion" and "No to Chinese factories". The resentment caused by BRI projects seem to have damaged China's image with respect to corporate ethics as well as its hegemonic motives and intent, said IFFRAS. The COVID-19 pandemic has also put Beijing on its back foot, as many BRI projects have encountered implementation challenges and a growing number of borrowers have struggled to repay their Chinese debts. (ANI)
Following the defeat of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's local body polls, the senior leaders of his party have demanded proposed a fact-finding inquiry to ascertain the causes behind the party's dismal performance, reported local media. Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leaders put forward a proposal to hold a fact-finding probe to bring to light the reasons that led to the party's defeat in Sunday's first phase of local government polls and take action against those responsible for it, reported ARY News citing sources on Tuesday. But the final decision about the inquiry will be made by Prime Minister Imran Khan, the publication added. The findings of the inquiry will be key to making decisions for the second phase of local bodies elections in the province. It comes after Imran Khan said that PTI paid the price for mistakes it made in the first phase of local government elections. He also said that selection of the wrong candidates was a major cause of the party's defeat in the election. Taking to Twitter, Khan said on Tuesday: "PTI made mistakes in 1st phase of KP LG elections and paid the price. Wrong candidate selection was a major cause. From now on I will personally be overseeing PTI's LG election strategy in 2nd phase of KP LG elections and LG elections across Pak. InshaAllah PTI will come out stronger." (ANI)
Moscow [Russia], December 21 (ANI/Sputnik): Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, noted that Kiev was still stubbornly evading the fulfillment of its obligations under the Minsk agreements, which hindered the holding of the Normandy format summit, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. Putin had a phone conversation with Scholz on Tuesday. It noted that at the request of the chancellor, the problems of resolving the internal Ukrainian conflict had been thoroughly considered. "Vladimir Putin informed in detail about the state of affairs in this area, noting, in particular, that Kiev continues to stubbornly evade fulfilling its obligations under the 2015 Minsk agreements, which, in fact, hinders the possible holding of a new summit in the Normandy format," the statement says. (ANI/Sputnik)
This is one of the UK's largest-ever divorce settlements, reported CNN.

The figure will be used to cover Princess Haya's security costs for the rest of her life, as well as ongoing costs for the couple's two children, Al Jalila Bint Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Sheikh Zayed Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, with an upfront payment of USD 333 (Pound 251.5m) due in the next three months.

In his written judgement, Justice Moor found that the biggest threat facing Princess Haya and her children Jalila and Zayed, is from "[Sheikh Mohammed] himself, not from outside sources," reported CNN.

The determination was made in reference to the Sheikh's "campaign" of intimidation inflicted on Princess Haya, including "his ability to make use of the Pegasus software, which is only available to governments," to spy on the Princess and her staff, a revelation which surfaced in court documents in October.

Following the ruling, a spokesperson for Sheikh Mohammed said he has always made sure his children are provided for.

"The court has now made its ruling on finances and he does not intend to comment further," said the spokesperson in a statement.

The divorce settlement marks the final stage in a years-long battle between the estranged couple. (ANI)
Ngoc Thanh and Pham Chieu, writing in VNExpress said that local data shows 4,550 trucks were queuing.

The delay in clearance is due to Chinese authorities having tightened COVID-19 safety measures. They also reported technical difficulties in their network system, said Hoang Khanh Duy, deputy head of Dong Dang Economic Zone in Lang Son.

Delays in clearance in other localities, including Quang Ninh and Cao Bang, and stoppage in Lao Cai, force most trucks to pour into Lang Son, he said.

"We are trying our best to negotiate with Chinese authorities to increase clearance speed," added Hoang.

As per Ngoc and Pham, many trucks have been stuck for ten days and drivers are unable to leave the area.

Driver Nguyen Van Toi, with ten years of experience driving long distance, said the clearance delay happens every year but that this year it is especially long.

Many stranded drivers have been forced to cook their own meals on the spot.

Taking advantage of the situation, the local food vendors have increased the price, some drivers had to order food from locals priced at VND 50,000 (USD 2.18) a portion, reported VNExpress.

Moreover, the drivers have to go through many difficulties. Some of them had to rests on a hammock.

Lang Son authorities on December 14 had a phone discussion with Chinese authorities to propose solutions to clear the goods, especially for agriculture produce.

Meanwhile, the Chinese customs authorities earlier told officials of Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development that COVID-19 checks on goods are necessary procedures. (ANI)
This has raised the total Omicron cases in Israel to 341 since the ministry started to add Omicron cases to its report on Sunday.

The ministry also said 234 of all the infected are returning passengers from South Africa, Britain, France, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary, Italy, Namibia, Tanzania, Germany, Morocco, Spain, Serbia, Belgium, Cyprus and Turkey.

Meanwhile, 29 others were infected in Israel through close contact with travellers returning from South Africa, the United States, France and Britain, while 66 people were infected in Israel without being abroad nor in close contact with returning passengers, it added.

The remaining 12 cases are still being examined, according to the ministry.In addition, 95 of the 341 infected are unvaccinated or recovered more than half a year ago.

The ministry also reported another 807 cases with high suspicion of infection with Omicron, but the results of their genomic sequencing tests have yet to be received. (ANI/Xinhua)
As the economic situation in Afghanistan deteriorates, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday (local time) said that Washington is looking intensely at ways to put more liquidity into the Afghan economy so as to provide money to the people of the cash-strapped nation. "We are looking intensely at ways to put more liquidity into the Afghan economy to get more money into people's pockets. And doing that, with international institutions, with other countries and partners, trying to put in place the right mechanisms to do that in a way that doesn't directly benefit the Taliban but does go directly to the people," Blinken said during a press briefing. He further stated that Afghanistan is facing a difficult humanitarian situation. "We're very conscious of the fact that there is an incredibly difficult humanitarian situation right now, all it could get worse as winter sets in, and so that's an area of intense focus for us, working closely with allies and partners," Blinken said. US Secretary of State said, "I am focused right now on the situation in Afghanistan, including the humanitarian situation, we continue to be the largest single providing humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan." Blinken said that the US has issued multiple general licenses to make sure that other countries' institutions can feel free to move forward with their assistance to Afghanistan. "We've issued multiple general licenses to make sure that other countries' institutions can feel free to move forward with their assistance and not be concerned about the application implementation of sanctions against them. We've participated in the release of about $280 million recently in the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund," he said. "We're also focused on ensuring that the Taliban make good on the expectations of the international community when it comes to continuing to allow people who wish to leave Afghanistan to do so when it comes to upholding the rights of all Afghan citizens but notable women and girls and minorities, when it comes to not engaging in reprisals when it comes to making good on their commitments to counterterrorism coming from Afghanistan, so all of those things, are front and centre on our agenda. We are working with them virtually every day and with international partners around the world," he added. The Taliban took over control of Kabul on August 15 and following this the country has been battered by deepening economic, humanitarian and security crises. A combination of a suspension of foreign aid, the freezing of Afghan government assets, and international sanctions on the Taliban, have plunged a country, already suffering from high poverty levels, into a full-blown economic crisis. The international community, from governments to non-governmental organizations, has been providing various assistance to the Afghan people. (ANI)
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday (local time) said that people who are "not fully vaccinated" have "good reason to be concerned" about the spread of the Omicron variant. "If you're unvaccinated, you're at a high risk of getting sick. And if you get sick you're likely to spread it to others, including friends and family. We should all be concerned about Omicron, but not panicked," Biden said in White House remarks. Biden said that unvaccinated people have a "significantly higher risk" of ending up in the hospital or dying from COVID-19. "If you're among the majority of Americans who are fully vaccinated and especially if you got the booster shot, the third shot... you have much, much less reason to worry. You have a high degree of protection against severe illness," Biden said. He further said that because the Omicron variant "spreads so easily" that even fully vaccinated individuals will get COVID-19. He added that they have seen breakthrough cases at the White House but these cases among the vaccinated "are highly unlikely to lead to serious illness." "Vaccinated people who get Covid may get ill. But they're protected from severe illness and death. That's why you should still remain vigilant," he said. Biden further stated that because the Omicron variant "spreads so easily" fully vaccinated individuals will get COVID-19. He said that they have seen breakthrough cases at the White House but these cases among the vaccinated "are highly unlikely to lead to serious illness." "Vaccinated people who get Covid may get ill. But they're protected from severe illness and death. That's why you should still remain vigilant," he added. He also urged the Americans to get their booster shots amid a surge in coronavirus cases. "Folks, the booster shots are free and widely available," he said. "I got my booster shot as soon as they were available. And just the other day, former President Trump announced he got his booster shot. Maybe one of the few things he and I agree on. People with booster shots are highly protected. Join them. Join us," Biden stated. A new variant of COVID-19 was first reported to the World Health Organisation (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)
A view of Main Street, USA, and Cinderella Castle at Disney World in August 2020. Charles Sykes/AP

Wild things have happened at Disney destinations around the world throughout 2021.

TikTokers wreaked havoc at the theme parks by going against rules and breaking the dress code.

Disney ride vehicles also experienced technical difficulties on numerous occasions during the year.

Fans asked Disney World to hide Donald Trump's animatronic inside the Hall of Presidents attraction after Joe Biden's inauguration.

The Donald Trump animatronic in Disney World's Hall of Presidents. Disney Parks

Almost immediately after Joe Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, Disney World closed its Hall of Presidents attraction at Magic Kingdom to make room for a new animatronic of the 46th President.

The maintenance led some Disney fans to share their opinions on the attraction and its controversial Donald Trump animatronic. Some argued the theme park should "hide" Trump behind previous presidents, while others asked Disney to remove him entirely now that he's no longer in office.

A woman became a "theme-park nanny" after videos of her babysitting at Disney World went viral.

Cyan Nardiello and a child she sometimes babysits at Disney World. Courtesy of Cyan Nardiello

Cyan Nardiello is a college student based in Florida. In a February 2021 interview with Insider, she said she had been bringing her babysitting clients to Disney World for a few years, but that she didn't think to create Once Upon a Nanny until videos of their adventures started getting millions of views on TikTok.

"I decided to make a business out of it before someone stole my idea," she told Insider. "I wasn't really planning on making Once Upon a Nanny what it is, but I realized that there's a demand for it."

Now, she works with both local families and those on vacation to help care for their children at theme parks like Disney World.

Some Disney World employees were harassed by parkgoers over COVID-19 safety measures.

A Disney employee sells balloons at Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Charles Sykes/AP

According to a March 2021 report from the Orlando Sentinel, Disney World employees recalled being spit on and yelled at while trying to enforce the theme park's COVID-19 safety guidelines, like mask-wearing and social distancing.

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One anonymous worker told the publication that there's "never a day" when they don't have a bad story about interacting with angry parkgoers, and another said they "would have already quit" if not for having good colleagues.

Disney World has since removed most social-distancing measures in its parks, removed some mask mandates, stopped temperature checks, and more.

A man said he was fired by Disney World after posting controversial TikTok videos about the theme park.

TikToker Jason Jeter scoops water out of a decorative Disney fountain to drink it. ShowMeLoveJete/TikTok

Jason Jeter, who is best known online as Jete and @showmelovejete, has more than one million TikTok followers at the time of writing. His large following is largely the result of two Disney-related videos he posted in early 2021.

In one clip, he's seen entering Disney's wedding pavilion, located at the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, without any employee assistance. In the other, he filmed himself drinking water from decorative fountains throughout Disney World and saying they tasted bad.

In March 2021, Jeter said in a TikTok video that he was fired by Disney World as a result of his videos.

Jeter also said on social media that he was a member of the Disney College Program before the pandemic hit, and later worked in Epcot. Insider has been unable to confirm Jeter's employment at the park.

A man who said he spent $15,000 on a Disney vacation was arrested for refusing a temperature check in April 2021.

A view of the Disney World entrance sign in Orlando, Florida. John Raoux/AP

Kelly Sills from Louisiana was reportedly arrested and charged with trespassing after refusing to have his temperature taken  one of Disney World's previous COVID-19 safety precautions  at the Disney Springs shopping center.

"I paid $15,000. You can't trespass me for paying $15,000," Sills reportedly said in a video seen by the Tampa Bay Times.

The publication also reported that Sills changed his mind after being handcuffed, and said: "Will you take my temperature before you kick me out, please?"

"They'll do that in jail, sir," a deputy reportedly replied.

Later that month, a Disneyland Paris hotel was turned into a vaccine site.

People register for COVID-19 vaccines at Disneyland Paris on April 24, 2021. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

As Insider's Joey Hadden previously reported, Disney's Newport Bay Club resort in Chessy, France, began distributing vaccines on April 24, 2021. The mass vaccination site was open on weekends, and visitors could catch a glimpse of the destination's nautical-themed hotel while there.

Disneyland Paris closed in October 2020 as a COVID-19 precaution but reopened to the public on June 17, 2021.

Gondolas on Disney World's Skyliner then crashed into each other.

A view of Disney World's Skyliner transportation system. Orlando Sentinel/Getty Images

The two Skyliner gondolas crashed at Hollywood Studios on April 22, 2021, shattering glass in the process. Alyssa of the Disney-themed blog Next Stop Main Street was there for the collision and shared a video of the two vehicles sitting side-by-side.

In an email sent to Insider at the time, Alyssa said she took the video at 6:15 p.m., and that the Skyliner was already stopped when she got in line. She also noted that no one seemed to be injured.

"After a few minutes, it started moving, then stopped again," she previously told Insider. "When it started going a second time, something got stuck and you can see that in the video. I think they were adding a car to the line  it was almost like two cars ran into each other."

The incident marked the second Skyliner crash since the attraction opened in 2019.

TikToker Jason Jeter was eventually barred from Disney World properties for trespassing.

TikToker Jason Jeter speaks about being banned from Disney World in a video. Jason Jeter/TikTok

Jeter said in a TikTok video on May 3, 2021, that Disney security circled his car while he was parked outside the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, where he said he was visiting to get food.

"The worst happened," Jeter said in his video. "As soon as I get out of the car, Orange County Police Department pulls up. 'Hi, Jason Jeter, we have a trespass warning for you from Disney. You're no longer allowed on the property.'"

Insider reviewed the warning at the time. It said Jeter has been barred from all Disney World property, including water parks and the Disney Springs shopping center.

Though Jeter didn't say in his video what area of Disney he'd apparently trespassed in, he could be seen entering Disney World's wedding pavilion without employee assistance in a TikTok video from March 13 of that year.

A different TikTok star said she got a free shirt at Magic Kingdom by breaking the theme park's dress code.

Amanda DiMeo shows a pink jersey she says she got for free at Disney World. Amanda DiMeo/TikTok

Amanda DiMeo, a TikTok star with more than one million followers, posted a video on May 19, 2021, in which she said she got a $75 Disney World shirt for free after wearing a crop top that showed her underboob.

In an email previously sent to Insider, DiMeo said she didn't know her shirt went against Disney World's dress code, as she'd worn it to the park once before, in January 2021. She also said that the free-shirt voucher had a $50 limit but that she asked to get the $75 jersey and "the manager approved it for the cashier."

Some people have applauded her actions and said they want to try her "free-shirt hack," while Disney employees have said doing so will cause problems for those who work at the theme parks.

An original Disneyland mosaic sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars in May 2021.

The mosaic was originally featured at Sleeping Beauty Castle Disneyland. Jay L. Clendenin/Getty Images and Van Eaton Galleries

More than 1,200 pieces of Disney park memorabilia were sold as part of the Rediscovering Disneyland auction held by Van Eaton Galleries on May 22 and 23, 2021. One such item was a "Sleeping Beauty"-themed mosaic, which sold for $363,000.

Though the artwork was only estimated to sell for a price between $30,000 and $50,000, its historic ties to the Anaheim, California, theme park likely increased its value.

According to the gallery's auction catalog, the mosaic was handcrafted for the Sleeping Beauty Castle courtyard in Disneyland, though it moved around Fantasyland until the section was renovated in 1983. It's made from tiles, which are infused into a "mesh wire backing" that previously served as "an original section" of the castle's walls, according to the gallery.

The Disney World Skyliner experienced another crash in June 2021.

The Disney Skyliner transports visitors between different parks and resorts. Charles Sykes/AP

A Disney fan who goes by @camerondudeck first shared photos of the incident via Twitter on June 8, 2021, around 7 p.m. The images showed yellow gondolas sitting against each other after crashing, and Disney employees surveying the scene.

WDW News Today later reported that the gondolas collided at the EPCOT Station, where parkgoers can board to travel to three Disney World resorts and the Hollywood Studios theme park. It's unclear if anyone was inside the vehicles at the time of the crash.

Around that time, hundreds of Americans said they were more worried about Disney's sky-high prices than catching COVID-19 at the company's theme parks.

Disney theme parks are a notoriously expensive vacation option. John Raoux/AP

Many said in an Insider poll at the time that they felt Disney vacations were too expensive and simply couldn't afford a trip.

Insider's survey was done through SurveyMonkey among 1,086 respondents, with a 3% margin of error. It ran on May 13, 2021.

Mickey Mouse then went scuba diving at Epcot's The Seas with Nemo & Friends Pavilion.

Mickey Mouse swims with other scuba divers at Disney World. Disney Parks/YouTube

As reported by WDW News Today, Mickey Mouse took the dive in celebration of World Oceans Day. He wore diving equipment and a black-and-yellow swimsuit, and swam through an aquarium tank to interact with fans.

The distanced meet-and-greet was the closest Disney fans have been able to get to Mickey Mouse since the theme park implemented COVID-19 safety protocols last year. The theme park's standard character interactions, which include everything from photo opportunities to hugs, have been halted since early 2020.

Days later, a woman jumped off a moving boat in Epcot's Living with the Land attraction and stole a cucumber.

Living with the Land is a greenhouse ride located within Disney World's Epcot park. Orlando Sentinel/Getty Images

The TikTok video, which had been reposted by Instagram user @alex64gaming, shows a woman jumping off a moving boat within the Disney World ride around 8:30 p.m in late June. She's then seen grabbing a cucumber off of a vine before stumbling and failing to get back on the boat.

People are heard saying "Martha!" in the background, and another parkgoer is seen attempting to help her in the video.

Another Disney fan who said they were on the same boat said they didn't see Disney security get involved during or after the incident.

Disneyland increased its capacity in June 2021, leading to large, maskless crowds forming outside the theme park.

People without face masks wait to enter Disneyland in June 2021. Christy Foster

The capacity expansion also allowed out-of-state travelers to visit for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020.

Some who visited Disneyland that day told Insider at the time that they felt safe and confident in Disney.

In Disney World, gorillas were caught playing with a snake that slithered through their enclosure.

Video shows gorillas at Disney World's Animal Kingdom playing with a snake. @silkystrokesurvivor/TikTok

In June 2021, TikTok user @silkystrokesurvivor shared a clip of a gorilla at Animal Kingdom looking to its side before standing up to inspect a patch of grass. Another gorilla soon follows the first one and swats its hand at the ground. Someone behind the camera is then heard saying, "Oh, there's a snake!"

You can then see the gorilla swatting at the reptile again before it slithers under the grass. Eventually, five gorillas, including the group's silverback, surround the area to keep watch and try to find the snake.

In the background of the video, a Disney World employee can be heard saying that the elder gorilla had joined the commotion to see "what's going on" and ensure that his family "is not in any danger." The employee also added that "like humans," gorillas are "very curious" about what occurs in their habitats.

The following month, Gaston from "Beauty and the Beast" was filmed rejecting a Magic Kingdom parkgoer who asked him on a date

Grace Foltz interacts with Gaston at Disney World in 2021. nots0swift/TikTok

Grace Foltz and her friend Steph had been visiting Magic Kingdom that month when they noticed Gaston from "Beauty and the Beast" walking by, as Foltz told Insider at the time. Foltz made a "spontaneous" and "split-second" decision, and shouted out, "Gaston! My boyfriend just broke up with me. Will you go out with me?"

The character, who is known for his arrogance, responded by saying: "Sorry, I'm looking for the most beautiful woman in town."

While Foltz said she was "stunned" by his response, she also "thought it was so funny."

In August 2021, a small dog was reportedly rescued from a hot car parked at Disney World while its owners visited the theme park.

A small dog was reportedly rescued from a hot car outside the parks. Amanda Krause/Insider

Journalist Parker Branton wrote on Twitter at the time that Disney parkgoer Jerry Dana French was in a Hollywood Studios parking lot around 5 p.m. on a Monday when she heard a dog barking. In a Facebook post that's not publicly available to view, French wrote that the white Maltese looked like it needed help, according to Branton.

French then called for help, the journalist wrote, and waited to make sure the dog was OK.

"Orange County Sheriffs Office later arrived and the dog was eventually pulled from the car and immediately given water," Branton wrote, adding that an officer from the Orange County Sheriff's Department estimated that the dog only had an hour to live at the time of rescue.

A man and child reportedly stepped out of a Splash Mountain boat mid-ride days later.

Guests sit rows apart on Splash Mountain. Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Inside the Magic reported that the two parkgoers exited the ride vehicle while it was moving just before the ride's big drop. The ride was then quickly stopped by employees, according to the publication.

It's unclear at the time of writing what happened afterward, and if the parkgoers faced any consequences.

In September 2021, a mother who visited Disney World with her disabled son said a rude note was left on her car.

Tricia Proefrock and her son at Disney World in 2021. Courtesy of Tricia Proefrock

Tricia Proefrock had been at Magic Kingdom with her 13-year-old son who has Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a type of epilepsy that can affect a person's ability to walk, talk, and see, as she told Fox 35 at the time.

The family usually parks in Disney's disability lots to easily access Mason's wheelchair, but because they were full at the time of their visit, Proefrock parked in two spaces in the general lot.

She added that though she had been previously instructed to do so by employees, Proefrock later found a "parking violation" on her windshield that appeared to have been left by a disgruntled park guest.

Proefrock told Insider's Lauren Edmonds that she initially felt "humiliation" and "shame" over the note.

Not long after that, a man was caught using a stolen iPad meant for employees to skip ride lines in Hollywood Studios.

The man used the device to skip lines at one of Disney World's most popular parks. Orlando Sentinel/Getty Images

An Orange County Sheriff's Office report that was viewed by Insider revealed that an officer had visited Disney's Hollywood Studios on June 4, 2021, to investigate "an incident of a trespasser and unauthorized use of a Disney device."

While there, the officer learned that a Disney investigator had noticed "unauthorized overrides on reservations in the Walt Disney World application for employees' use only" over the course of a few days, the report says.

The man was later caught, according to the report, and handed over the iPad when asked. He also told law enforcement that he was given the technology by the owner of the company he said he works for, A Class, but wasn't aware that it was stolen, the report says.

Disney World has since issued a trespass warning to the man, the report says, though he has not been charged with any crime at the time of writing.

At the end of September 2021, a man was filmed walking to the top of Cinderella Castle where parkgoers aren't allowed.

Nico Vacca is seen standing at the top of Cinderella Castle in Disney World. Shannon/TikTok

The 23-year-old TikToker @pincessshannon was at the park when it happened, and filmed the incident.

According to Shannon, a Disney employee standing nearby noticed the man around the same time she did and began to call for security. Around that same time, the man began to descend the castle steps to head back into the theme park.

Speaking with Insider via Instagram, 25-year-old Nico Vacca from Argentina confirmed that he's the man seen in Shannon's TikTok.

He said he noticed an open castle staircase and decided to climb to the balcony to take photos from the higher vantage point, but realized he was doing something wrong once he noticed an employee watching him.

He was then given a trespass warning, though he was unsure at the time how long it will last for.

On Halloween, more than 30,000 people were required to stay inside Shanghai Disneyland after one person tested positive for COVID-19.

A staff member dressed as LinaBell waves to visitors at Shanghai Disney Resort. Xinhua/Getty Images

CNN reported at the time that the park shut down after the case was found and that visitors and staff had to be tested for the virus before they were allowed to leave.

Police enforced the latter rule by blocking exits, according to the publication.

And ahead of Christmas 2021, a small fire broke out near Cinderella Castle, leading fire trucks to drive through Magic Kingdom.

Main Street USA at Magic Kingdom is typically filled with guests ready to watch firework shows at night. Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

Theme-park websites like the Disney Food Blog shared videos of multiple fire trucks driving down Main Street USA when the fire initially started. Other clips showed people being evacuated from Cinderella Castle, leading some to believe the fire was happening inside the Disney World landmark.

An unnamed Disney spokesperson, however, said the small fire happened near the castle  not in it  and was extinguished quickly, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

The Disney spokesperson also said that an employee was transported from the park to receive "non-emergency treatment," and Jon Shirey, the president of the Reedy Creek Firefighters Association, told the Orlando Sentinel that the incident was seemingly caused by a tree catching fire.

Read the original article on Insider
McDonald's Drive Thru service could soon become much more automated. AP Photo/Seth Perlman

A teen McDonald's drive-thru worker saved a woman from choking.

The 15-year-old reportedly helped to dislodge a chicken nugget caught in a customer's throat.

The teen was described as a hero by local police.

A McDonald's worker was hailed a hero by police after she dived through a drive-thru window to rescue a customer who was choking on a chicken nugget, according to a CNN report.

15-year-old Sydney Raley was working the Saturday shift at a McDonald's restaurant in Eden Prairie, Minnesota when the incident occurred.

"The day had been mostly normal  making coffee, making drinks. Going into the lunch rush, it was all normal," she told CNN.

But after handing the customer her order, Raley noticed that the woman was coughing and gagging.

"Her daughter was in the passenger seat and she looked so freaked out. I immediately knew, 'Oh, no, she's choking,'" she said. Raley told her manager to call 911 and then jumped through the window to help the woman dislodge the nugget from her throat.

Two local police officers, who came to the scene after, described Raley as a hero and rewarded her with $100, she said. The owner of the McDonald's restaurant told CNN that he was "incredibly lucky to have her as a highly-valued crew member."

A spokesperson for McDonald's did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

McDonald's is among the major fast-food chains that have become more reliant on teen workers to fill vacancies in the labor crunch. According to CNN, Raley has worked at this restaurant for seven months.

While younger workers are entitled to be paid the same minimum wage as others, they can be paid as little as $4.25 an hour for up to 90 days of training, Insider's Mary Meisenzahl recently reported.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A judge has sentenced a 27-year-old Texas man to a 25-year prison term after a jury found him guilty of hitting and shooting his wife during an argument on a Marion County road two years ago.

Circuit Judge Lisa Herndon sentenced Christian Joel Villalba-Santos to the minimum mandatory required sentence under state guidelines. He could have been sentenced to life in prison.

The U.S. Army veteran has 794 days of credit for time already served at the Marion County Jail while awaiting resolution of the case.

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Along with fines and court costs, Villalba-Santos also must submit a DNA sample to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and pay restitution of $6,487.65 to Ocala Health LLC.

Assistant State Attorney Marisa Meyer asked the court to impose a no contact order on the convicted felon so he cannot speak with the victim.

Villalba-Santos was found guilty at trial in November

Last month, jurors deliberated for 18 minutes and returned a guilty verdict against Villalba-Santos, who was charged with aggravated battery with a firearm and battery/domestic violence.

During the two-day trial, the jury, made up four women and two men, heard testimony that Villalba-Santos and his wife were in a vehicle traveling on Interstate 75 when the two argued about him cheating on her in October 2019.

Villalba-Santos got upset and hit his wife in the face three times, prosecutors said. One of the blows broke the woman's nose, according to testimony. He then got a gun that was in the vehicle and shot his wife in the stomach.

After the shooting, Villalba-Santos called his mother, his mother-in-law, and then 911. Authorities said Villalba-Santos told them he searched for a hospital while driving along I-75.

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He was eventually stopped by Sumter County Sheriff's Office deputies and arrested. His wife was transported to a hospital for treatment.

The sentencing hearing was held Monday

At the sentencing hearing on Monday, Assistant Public Defender Sean K. Gravel told the judge that his client has no criminal history, is a military veteran, and although jurors rejected their defense, Villalba-Santos showed remorse.

He added that if Villalba-Santos' wife had not gotten medical attention, she would have died.

Gravel said if not for the minimum mandatory sentence, Villalba-Santos would have qualified for a downward departure and reduced sentence. The lawyer said Villalba-Santos' wife doesn't want her husband to spend a lengthy time in prison.

Through a Spanish interpreter, the judge asked Villalba-Santos, who appeared via Zoom from the Marion County Jail, if he wanted to say anything.

Villalba-Santos had a prepared statement, but told the judge he wanted to speak from the heart. He said he's not a bad person, never had any problems in his life, and he loves his wife and family.

He said he cannot change what happened and knows he has to face the consequences.

At times wiping away tears, Villalba-Santos said it's difficult to hear his daughter asking him why he's not at home. He said she tells him to tell the police that he's behaving himself and to release him.

He told the judge that he appreciates her job and the work of the lawyers. He ended with asking the judge to please have mercy on him and "God bless you."

Meyer said the state would not object to the 25-year sentence.

Neither the victim nor any of Villalba-Santos' family or friends were present in court.

Contact Austin L. Miller at 867-4118, austin.miller@starbanner.com or @almillerosb

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: Man will serve 25-year prison term for shooting his wife
After 2020 and 2021, we want health, wealth and heaping gobs of good luck all year long. But are we being overly superstitious by thinking there are actually some foods that are more auspicious than others?

Superstition or not, why hedge our bets? These food-based rituals are not only fun, they're absolutely delicious.

1. Pork

4-Ingredient Slow-Cooker Kalua Pulled Pork by Dani Spies

The expression "high on the hog" refers to the choice cuts of pork, those from the loin, shoulder and upper leg, long reserved for the elite. The "low on the hog" cuts like belly, trotters and offal were left for poor folk. Not so today  it's all good for all folks! So, naturally, pork, with its rich, delicious fattiness has come to symbolize wealth and prosperity. With so many options like sausage, ribs, bacon, ham, suckling pig, etc., there's no reason not to be in "hog heaven" for at least one day.

2. Lentils

Vegan Lentil Chili by Chloe Coscarelli

Italians eat lentils on New Year's Eve for wealth and prosperity because the flat legumes were once believed to resemble Roman coins. They're traditionally served with  you guessed it: pork  this time in the form of a huge sausage called cotechino that simmers with the lentils.

3. Soba Noodles

Turkey Soba Noodle Salad by Dzung Lewis

In Japan, they signify long life, but only if you eat them without breaking or chewing them. Slurp these long noodles in one piece for a good long life or, at the very least, a very tasty meal.

4. Black-Eyed Peas

Black-Eyed Pea Stew with Sausage by Food & Wine

There are several different thoughts on why black-eyed peas have come to symbolize good luck. In America, the prevailing folklore dates back to the Civil War era, when black-eyed peas, also known as field peas, were used to feed grazing cattle. During the Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in late spring of 1863, the town was cut off from all food supplies for nearly two months. People were close to starvation and resorted to eating the crops previously reserved for feeding their livestock. If it weren't for the lowly "cowpeas" (as they're also known), many people wouldn't have survived. Lucky or resourceful, those folks created one tasty tradition out of a versatile legume.

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5. Greens

Collard Greens with Smoked Turkey and Potlikker by Kevin Sbraga

Greens ... greenbacks ... moola? Makes sense. Leafy greens resemble folded paper money symbolizing wealth and prosperity. Pair them with blackeyed peas and ham for a truly Southern-style New Year's Ever tradition and triple your luck for 2021.

Related:

Grace Parisi is a New York City-based food writer, cookbook author and food stylist. Her book, "Get Saucy," was nominated for a James Beard award. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
President Biden speaks about the COVID-19 response and vaccinations Tuesday at the White House in Washington. (Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)

Warning in a speech from the White House that the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus "is serious and potentially deadly business for unvaccinated people," President Biden announced a winter strategy that he hopes will mitigate risks from the new wave of infections.

The speech followed federal officials' confirmation Monday that Omicron had quickly become the United States' dominant variant, accounting for 73% of new cases, according to federal health officials.

Here's what you need to know about this upcoming surge and the Biden administration's response to it:

1. Biden is expanding the nation's testing capacity but not by much, experts say

At-home rapid coronavirus tests are becoming increasingly hard to find as many people flock to the stores to get tested ahead of the holidays. The White House said the federal government would purchase 500 million at-home test kits and mail them to Americans who want them, starting next month.

The move is designed to make it easier for people to skip long lines to get tested. But it ultimately may not be enough, said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University.

If just half of all Americans requested just three test kits, this new stockpile would be depleted, Wen noted.

Five hundred million tests sounds like a lot, but its a drop in the bucket, Wen said. We should be getting to the point of having at least twice-a-week testing for every American family."

2. Get vaccinated and get boosted, if you can

The science doesn't lie  vaccines work. Biden urged unvaccinated Americans to get the shots and for others to get boosters if they are eligible for the extra dose.

If youre not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned, Biden said. You have a high risk of getting sick, and if you get sick, youre likely to spread it to others  including friends and family. And the unvaccinated have a significantly higher risk of ending up in the hospital or even dying.

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Experts say getting vaccinated reduces the chance for infection and helps mitigate many of the harsher symptoms of COVID-19. To protect against this new variant, public health officials urge people to get booster shots after six months to increase antibodies and help fight against the Omicron variant.

Currently, nearly 73% of all Americans have received at least one shot, while nearly 62% are fully vaccinated, according to federal statistics. Nearly 30% of fully vaccinated Americans have received booster shots.

3. Wear a mask and think about getting a better one

The spread of the airborne coronavirus can be curbed by wearing a mask, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "According to our doctors, if you are fully vaccinated, you should wear a mask indoors and in public settings," Biden said.

Wen said the Biden administration should highlight the quality of masks to the public and require people to wear a medical-grade surgical mask, at minimum, when mandates are in play. Essentially, any mask is better than no mask. But surgical masks are much better than cloth masks.

The Biden administration has pre-positioned N95 masks and other medical supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile to get to healthcare providers if Omicron overwhelms hospitals and care facilities. The stockpile has hundreds of millions of such N95 masks, the White House said. N95 masks, which can filter out 95% of particles, are considered the most protective kind of face covering.

4. Holiday party? Keep it small, and invite only vaccinated people

As Christmas approaches, public health experts have said it's OK for vaccinated people to gather in small numbers but noted it is still somewhat risky.

Vaccinated people who are unknowingly symptomatic can still spread the virus, so experts urge people to limit eating and drinking indoors and wear a mask when in intimate settings. Biden said that vaccinated people should not change their holiday plans.

"Some Americans are wondering if you can safely celebrate the holidays with family and friends," Biden said. "The answer is, yes, you can, if you and those you are celebrating with are vaccinated."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.




CBS and Universal Television announced that actor Chris Noth will no longer be part of "The Equalizer" amid sexual assault allegations against him, The Associated Press reported.

In a joint statement on Monday, both companies said Noth will no longer be part of the show's filming "effective immediately."

Noth played a former CIA director on the show, which stars Queen Latifah. His character will appear in one upcoming episode, the AP noted.

Two women have accused Noth of sexual assault dating back to 2004 and 2015, respectively. The women recounted their experiences in an article with The Hollywood Reporter published last week.

One of the women said his reprisal of his Mr. Big character on the recently-debuted "Sex and the City" miniseries "And Just Like That" prompted her to speak out.

In a statement to The Hill, Noth denied the allegations made against him.

"These stories could've been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago - no always means no - that is a line I did not cross," he said, adding that the encounters were "consensual."

Exercise equipment and media company Peleton also pulled a viral of Noth promoting one of its exercise machines, telling CNBC last week that "Every single sexual assault accusation must be taken seriously."

"We were unaware of these allegations when we featured Chris Noth in our response to HBO's reboot," A Peleton spokesperson said. "As we seek to learn more, we have stopped promoting this video and archived related social posts."

Updated 11:00 p.m.
Refugees from Afghanistan are slowly adjusting to their new lives in Tallahassee after an unprecedented number of arrivals in a short time.

As of Dec. 17, some 115 refugees from the war-torn nation made their way to the capital, according to officials with the International Rescue Committee, one of nine resettlement agencies.

They started arriving in early October, about a month after the United States pulled its troops out of the country and ended its longest war.

Previous coverage: A dozen Afghan refugees have arrived in Tallahassee, in need of housing and other help

More: 100-plus Afghan refugees expected to resettle in Tallahassee over the next year

The resettlement agencies across the country, including our office in Tallahassee, have never received this number of clients ... in such a short period of time, said David Oliver, deputy director of the IRC in Florida. So it really is an all-hands-on-deck situation to support these individuals and families.

During a recent meeting of the Refugee Services Task Force in Tallahassee, IRC officials said the agency staffed up quickly, bringing on additional case workers and aides to help the new arrivals assimilate into American life. The number of housing vendors serving them expanded from three to 10.

But IRC officials indicated that the agency can process only so many refugees within a given year. The IRC in Florida asked to cap the number of refugees coming to Tallahassee at 150 for the duration of the fiscal year, with the remainder expected to arrive by summer.

We have demonstrated that we are able to respond  and its very much like an emergency response situation. Oliver said. However ... it is a really big strain on our staff and our overall capacity, and I know its a strain on a lot of our partners.

The IRC, working social service agencies, churches, employers and the school district, helps the refugees find permanent housing and jobs, enroll in school, learn English and obtain benefits. Leann Halsey, IRC Tallahassee site manager, said that the refugees typically get permanent housing within a week or two.

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Thats been a huge success, she said. We do face some barriers at times, in particular with large families ... who might require an affordable four-bedroom house.

December 10, 2021: An Afghan hawker selling balloons walks along a path in a ground in Chaman-e-Hozori area in Kabul.

Karissa Hammett, IRC employment specialist, said she was hopeful that refugees who need jobs will find them within six months so that they can start ... making money and supporting their family. She noted that transportation and limited bus routes and hours remain barriers to employment.

Related coverage from 2019: America 101: How an influx of African refugees is challenging local schools

IRC officials described an outpouring of community support, from financial contributions of more than $35,000 to donations of household items and even cars and trucks. More than a dozen churches and civic organizations have reached out to help, and more than 100 potential volunteers have been lined up.

These are all really positive indicators that the Tallahassee community is really behind welcoming these refugees, J.C. Torres, development manager for the IRC in Florida, told the task force.

Althoria Pickett, Leon County Schools curriculum services coordinator, said refugee children are enrolling at Sealey, Riley and Rudiger elementary, Raa and Griffin middle and Godby and Leon high schools.

Thats exciting because some of those schools have not had has many of the IRC families as before, she said.

Torres, in an interview, said the refugees are a diverse group of people who speak different languages and come from different walks of life. Some worked for the embassy or the Afghan government. Others are completely illiterate and in need of adult education.

Generally speaking, he said, most of the Afghan refugees that have arrived are finding their own footing.

How to help

The IRC is seeking donations of furniture, bedding, cookware and other items. The items are included on an Amazon wish list located at www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2H4YP0WYFEBMZ?ref_=wl_share, though they also can be purchased locally or elsewhere.

For more information, visit www.rescue.org/united-states/tallahassee-fl.

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew 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: Tallahassee's Afghan refugees adjusting into new lives
An Emirates Airbus A380. kamilpetran/Shutterstock.com

Airbus has delivered the last A380 it will ever build to Emirates Airlines.

The 251st A380 to be delivered to an airline and the 123rd A380 delivered to Emirates marks the end of the superjumbo-building era at Airbus.

Airlines are just beginning to bring their A380s back into flying service after grounding them for most of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Airbus has delivered its 251st and final A380 to a customer after 14 years of airline deliveries.

The final Airbus A380 ever to be built, bound for Emirates. Airbus - Bockfilm / Michael Lindner

Emirates was the final recipient and brought its 123rd A380 home from Airbus for the final time on December 16. The delivery flight from Hamburg, Germany to Dubai marked the end a 13-year period of deliveries that started in November 2008.

The final Airbus A380 ever to be built, bound for Emirates. Airbus-Lutz Borck

"It defined us, in many respects," Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, told Insider in July 2020. "We've spent an inordinate amount on product, both in flight and on the ground, and that's really paid off."

An Emirates Airbus A380. Soos Jozsef/Shutterstock.com

The president of Emirates says passengers will never again be as comfortable as they have been aboard the enormous discontinued Airbus A380

As the largest airline to fly the A380, the Middle Eastern mega carrier is responsible for keeping the A380 program alive through 2021, stemming from an order for the then-unnamed A3XX at the Farnborough Air Show in 2000

The final Airbus A380 ever to be built, bound for Emirates. Airbus

Only 16 years have passed since the first A380 took flight in 2005 until the time of its final delivery. Airbus was not able to turn the A380 into a multi-generational aircraft in the same way Boeing was able to with the rival 747.

The final Airbus A380 bound for Emirates. Airbus

Double-decker planes are going extinct as Airbus and Boeing discontinue their largest models. Here's why airlines are abandoning 4-engine jets.

But the A380's success can better be measured in impact more so than in number of orders. The world's largest passenger jet overtook Boeing's 747 as the leading status symbol for airlines that travelers clamored to fly on.

An Airbus A380. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

Singapore Airlines was the first airline to take home the A380 and helped raise the bar for luxury on the immensely spacious aircraft that could seat more than 500 passengers if airlines wanted.

Story continues

A Singapore Airlines Airbus A380. REUTERS/Tim Chong

It was the start of the superjumbo era and the first time passengers could fly on a plane with two full levels. Airlines could even pack the A380 with luxurious extras and still have more than enough room to house four cabin classes.

An Airbus A380 in production. Reuters/Jean Philippe Arles

Singapore Airlines packed the plane with 12 first class suites, 60 business class suites, and 399 economy class seats.

A Singapore Airlines first class suite on the Airbus A380. Pascal Parrot/Getty Images

Emirates and Qatar Airways used the space to offer in-flight bars and decadent first class products while the former took it one step further to include "shower spas" in which first class passengers could enjoy a hot shower mid-flight.

An Emirates Airbus A380. Leonard Zhukovsky/Shutterstock.com

I went inside an exclusive first class spa onboard an Emirates Airbus A380 and saw why wealthy travelers pay a small fortune to live well at 35,000 feet

Etihad Airways created apartments in the sky with its three-room "The Residence" product that came with a living room, bedroom, shower, and private butler.

Etihad's "The Residences" on the Airbus A380. Etihad

Etihad Airways says the end is near for its A380s and their high-flying apartments featuring butlers, chefs, and private showers that often cost $20,000 a trip

Airlines were going strong with the A380 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, even if it was just a status symbol for many. A lack of new orders to keep the program going, however, meant that the A380's days were always numbered.

A Qantas Airbus A380. AP Photo/Rob Griffith

Boeing had experienced the same with its 747-8i aircraft of which even fewer were sold than the A380. Twin-engine aircraft were quickly replacing four-engine behemoths, and the pandemic hastened the demise of the A380 at many airlines including Air France and Lufthansa.

A Boeing 747-8i aircraft. Boeing

Source: Boeing

Helping Boeing along, at least, was a demand for the aircraft in the cargo realm. Cargo giants including UPS Airlines and Atlas Air are some of the final customers for the aircraft.

A UPS Airlines Boeing 747-8F aircraft. Thiago B Trevisan / Shutterstock.com

Boeing just announced the definitive end of the legendary 747 as cargo giant Atlas Air places an order for the final 4 planes

Airbus had not developed a freighter variant of the A380; though, airlines like Emirates and Hi Fly did use their A380 passenger cabins to transport boxes.

A HiFly Airbus A380 cargo conversion. HiFly

Another airline is retiring the world's largest passenger plane after just under 3 years of service as the pandemic keeps long-haul flyers grounded. See inside Hi Fly's Airbus A380.

The Airbus A380 may never return to its pre-pandemic glory, as indicated by the number of flights airlines have planned for aircraft in combined with pandemic-era retirements.

A British Airways Airbus A380. Thomas Pallini/Insider

On the day of the final A380's delivery to Emirates, airlines around the world flew a total of 99 flights with the aircraft. The same day in 2020 saw only 25 flights, while the same day in 2019 saw 341 flights.

A Qatar Airways Airbus A380. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol

Source: Cirium

The most A380 flights in a given day in 2021 will only be 107, based on airlines' current schedule according to Cirium data, with December 17 and December 31 currently tied to achieve that number. In 2022, August will see as many as 183 daily departures with the A380, just more than half of the A380's busiest day in 2019.

Flying on an Emirates A380 from New York to Dubai. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Source: Cirium

But there is hope as fans of the A380 will still have decades to fly on the world's largest passenger jet. Some of the airlines that have committed to the A380 during the pandemic have no plans to retire it anytime soon and are even making investments to improve the onboard experience.

An Emirates Airbus A380. phichak/Shutterstock.com

Emirates unveiled a brand-new interior design for its Airbus A380s that sees enhancements in each cabin, as well as the addition of a premium economy class cabin.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Emirates just unveiled the swanky high-end design for its new Airbus A380 as most airlines say goodbye to the enormous plane  see inside

In first class, the 14 exclusive suites will feature taller doors for even more privacy and new motifs and colors will be found throughout the cabin.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

The famed shower spas will also remain with a refreshed look and feel.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

In business class, the 76 seats will be reupholstered and redesigned with a new champagne-color leather and wood finishing.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

The new premium economy class will feature 56 seats in a 2-4-2 configuration with 19.5-inch-wide seats offering up to 40 inches of legroom.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Economy class and its 388 seats will receive new "ergonomically designed" seats that feature tray tables with wood finishes.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Even the in-flight bar has been enhanced with new seating options and the same color palette found in business class.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Singapore Airlines in 2017 unveiled new business class seats and first class suites that are unique to the A380 and will soon fly to more destinations around the world.

An Airbus A380 of Singapore Airlines approaches the airport in Frankfurt, Germany. Reuters

The first class suites feature their own swivel chair, bed, and 32-inch television, making the enclosed space resemble a luxury office suite more so than an airplane compartment.

A first class suite onboard a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380. Singapore Airlines

Some suites can also be combined to offer a double bed that's ideal when traveling with a companion.

A first class suite onboard a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380. Singapore Airlines

And in business class, center-aisle seats can also act as a double bed when fully flat.

The business class cabin onboard a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380. Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines will bring its A380s to New York on March 27 to fly the recently resumed Singapore-New York via Frankfurt, Germany route as more airlines build back the A380's US presence.

A first class suite onboard a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380. Singapore Airlines

But Singapore Airlines is another example of replacing the A380 with smaller and more efficient aircraft. The airline uses Airbus A350-900ULR, or ultra-long-range, aircraft to offer non-stop flights between the US and Singapore.

Santi Rodriguez / Shutterstock

Inside the new world's longest flight: What it's like to fly on Singapore Airlines' new route between Singapore and New York

There are no first class suites on the smaller aircraft, or any first class seats at all. But travelers can save around four hours by taking the non-stop option in either premium economy class or business class.

Onboard a Singapore Airlines Airbus A350-900ULR. Thomas Pallini/Insider

For ultra-premium flyers, the choice comes down to getting to the destination sooner or enjoying a luxury suite.

Onboard a Singapore Airlines Airbus A350-900ULR. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Singapore Airlines is partnering with the ultra-exclusive Golden Door spa to redefine luxury on the world's longest commercial flights

At the Dubai Airshow in November, Emirates brought one of its newly-refurbished A380s that proved to be a star of the show.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

A steady stream of airshow visitors filed through the aircraft, taking selfies in the business class seats and first class suites while marveling at the bar and showers.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

But also on display at the airshow were the A380's replacements, the Boeing 777X and Airbus A350 XWB.

An Etihad Airways Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner nicknamed the "Greenliner" at the Dubai Airshow 2021 Thomas Pallini/Insider

Emirates, like many global airlines, has plans to incorporate both aircraft into its fleet and both may be flying for the airline long after the A380s have been retired.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Clark, however, said that "nothing is going to be as good" as the A380, not even the soon-to-be largest twin-engine passenger plane in the world.

An Emirates Airbua A380 display at the Dubai Airshow. Thomas Pallini/Insider

"How could it be as good as the A380 on the upper deck, or as good as it is in economy with 10-abreast seating on the main deck," Clark said of the Boeing 777X.

The Boeing 777X at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Clark is referring to the fact that the A380's size is so great that flyers still had extra room in which to stretch out even with 10 economy seats filling a single row.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

"It's palatial," Clark said of the A380. "And people absolutely love it. They still go out of their way to get on the 380."

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

Airbus had even created a website to help travelers find routings on the A380 as the aircraft so popular with frequent flyers.

Emirates' refurbished Airbus A380 at Dubai Airshow 2021. Thomas Pallini/Insider

The US will see more airlines redeploy the A380; though, not all will be as glamorous as those in service with Emirates and Singapore Airlines.

Flying on an Emirates A380 from New York to Dubai. Thomas Pallini/Insider

British Airways has plans to return its A380s to the US, serving destinations like Boston, Miami, Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, DC.

A British Airways Airbus A380. Philip Pilosian / Shutterstock.com

Source: Cirium

All Nippon Airways is scheduled to resume A380 flights to Hawaii on March 27; though, continuing travel restrictions impacting Japan may see that date pushed back.

An All Nippon Airways Airbus A380. viper-zero / Shutterstock.com

Source: Cirium

Qantas has put its A380s on the schedule to fly between Sydney and Los Angeles beginning March 27.

A Qantas Airbus A380. Ryan Fletcher/Shutterstock.com

Source: Cirium

And China Southern Airlines plans to continue flying the A380 between Guangzhou, China, and Los Angeles, as it has been doing throughout the pandemic.

A China Southern Airlines Airbus A380. StudioPortoSabbia / Shutterstock.com

Source: Cirium

Airbus will also help keep the A380 flying and powering the future of flight. MSN1, the first-ever A380 built by Airbus, will be used for flight testing and expanding the capabilities of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF.

The final Airbus A380 ever to be built, bound for Emirates. Airbus

Source: Airbus

Boeing is similarly nearing the end with the American counterpart to the A380, the 747. Atlas Air will take delivery of the last-ever 747 in 2022, marking the end of an aircraft program that spanned more than half a century.

An Atlas Air Boeing 747-8i. Arjan Veltman / Shutterstock.com

The end of Airbus A380 deliveries does not mark the end of the A380  far from it.

The final Airbus A380 ever to be built, bound for Emirates. Airbus

"We'll keep it going as long as we can," Clark said.

The final Airbus A380 ever to be built, bound for Emirates. Airbus

Read the original article on Business Insider
Late into a brisk Tuesday morning on Monument Circle, the bells of Christ Church Cathedral marked a particularly dire year for Indianapolis' homeless community.

It took about three minutes to ring for each known person in Marion County who died in 2021 while experiencing homeless  166 in all, plus a 167th toll for those known only to God who also passed away. The figure represents nearly double the amount of people memorialized in 2020, 87, which was itself at least a five-year high.

Nearly 200 people gathered for the 25th annual Homeless Persons Memorial Service, including Mayor Joe Hogsett, advocacy and faith leaders and 166 volunteers, social workers and friends and family of the deceased who each held candles along the northern steps of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument.

More: Report recommends more low-barrier shelter beds for homeless Indianapolis residents

"Every individual whose name is read today is someone who was loved and someone's person," said Chelsea Haring-Cozzi, executive director of the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention & Prevention, which hosts the memorial.

"Someone's son, daughter, friend, mother, father, brother or sister, partner, peer. They were someone's whole world, or someone trying to get their world back," Haring-Cozzi continued.

The gathering, hosted remotely last year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, always falls on the winter solstice  the longest night of the year  as a reminder that some of Indianapolis' inhabitants must endure the evening chill without safe shelter.

Large increase over 2020

After the memorial, Haring-Cozzi told IndyStar the sharp increase in known homeless deaths during the past year is due to a variety of factors.

In total, 87 people were memorialized in 2020, 58 in 2019, 70 in 2018, 59 in 2017 and 45 in 2016.

An increase in violence within city limits and the ongoing pandemic  both of which disproportionately affect the unhoused  as well as related health care uncertainty for those suffering from chronic illnesses, mental health issues and increased isolation played a part.

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More: Indianapolis breaks homicide record as man found fatally shot on city's south side

But some of the increase is also likely due to improved reporting within the community, Haring-Cozzi noted. Families have recently begun reporting deaths to CHIP, which typically gathers the annual number from health care, law enforcement and service providers.

"For far too many, the lack of safe, adequate housing and quality care can be a matter of life or death," Haring-Cozzi said.

The number of those experiencing homelessness has also likely increased overall in the past year. A January 2021 single-night count identified 1,928 homeless people, up from 1,588 in the 2020 count.

In all, CHIP reported more than 1,114 known homeless people have died in Marion County since 1996.

Haring-Cozzi said she hopes the memorial encourages Indy residents to "look beyond someone's housing situation and to really try to see the person, the story, the journey."

She encouraged the community to show kindness  smile, say hello, make eye contact  when encountering someone experiencing homeless to emphasize "our shared humanity."

Reverence for the lost

Fletcher Elliot give a responsive reading the Annual Homeless PersonsO Memorial Service hosted by The Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (CHIP) on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021 on Monument Circle across from the Christ Church Cathedral. The service was in remembrance of the 167 known homeless individuals who passed away in 2021 in Marion County.

At the memorial, the Rev. Gray Lesesne of Christ Church Cathedral led an opening prayer for those lost.

"Make us today more deeply aware of the shortness and uncertainty of human life," Lesesne asked of God. "Strengthen our collective resolve to work for justice and to challenge our systems so that none of your children will be homeless."

Hogsett offered his thanks to CHIP and the other groups working within the city to address the needs of the homeless community.

"As the city continues to grapple with the challenges presented by this extraordinarily difficult era in which we find ourselves, we must remember that for people living unhoused, those obstacles far too often prove insurmountable," Hogsett said.

Hogsett noted those experiencing homelessness are more susceptible to viruses and disease, as well as the continued socioeconomic difficulties of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic  isolation, educational instability, volatile job markets.

The mayor also pledged "to continue working until homelessness in Indianapolis is rare and is survivable."

How you can help

CHIP encourages those interested in making a donation  financially or in-kind  to reach out to their shelter or housing provider of choice.

Donations can also be made to Street Reach Indy, which provides direct aid to those experiencing homelessness. To learn more about Street Reach, visit chipindy.org/street-reach-indy.html.

digital_memorial_service_program_2021.pdf

Rory Appleton is the pop culture reporter at IndyStar. Contact him at 317-552-9044 and rappleton@indystar.com, or follow him on Twitter at @RoryDoesPhonics.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Homeless in Indianapolis: Memorial honors 166 people who died in 2021
The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing.

WORCESTER  The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts has received an anonymous "transformational gift" of $1 million to support scholarships for students from Worcester County.

The gift was made by a married couple who requested anonymity. It is "the largest single contribution that the organization has received from an individual donor in its history," The Hanover Theatre said in an announcement. The donation "will significantly increase access to arts education, training, and performance opportunities for young people," the announcement said.

A gift of this magnitude is truly game changing for our organization and, more importantly, life changing for the thousands of students who will benefit over the years, said Meghan Montaner, president of The Hanover Theatres Conservatory and Education Division.

I feel incredibly blessed to be able to do this work and to have it recognized in this way is humbling. I am certain that this generous gift will be the reason for so many young people to find their passion and their place in the world through the arts," Montaner said.

The Hanover Theatre Conservatory provides performance opportunities, classes and individual instruction to more than 500 young people and adults from across Central Massachusetts each year. The Conservatorys engagement initiatives reach 16,000 students in the community each year through student matinees and school-based programming.

The gift will be directed to a newly established endowment at the Greater Worcester Community Foundation supporting scholarships for young people studying theater, dance, music and technical theater at the Conservatory. The donors have a strong belief in the transformative power of the performing arts and wanted their gift to allow "more families in the area to take advantage of the conservatorys high-quality classes, programs and performances," the announcement said.

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The Hanover Theatre Conservatory is a dynamic, creative jewel that offers performing opportunities to youth and adults in Central Massachusetts, the donors said. Because we admire the energy and leadership that Meghan Montaner has brought to this organization, we hope our gift will raise awareness of the availability of the Conservatory's broad learning opportunities and performance events available to the Greater Worcester community.

Scholarships will be made available on a rolling basis through an online application process on the conservatorys website. A new semester of performing arts classes for youth and adults will start Jan. 17. Those seeking financial assistance for the coming semester should submit an application no later than Wednesday, Jan. 5. The online scholarship application can be found at TheHanoverTheatre.org/conservatory/tuition-payments/.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for Performing Arts receives $1M gift
The mask requirement for Knox County Schools students, staff and visitors will continue for now, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit decided Monday.

Circuit Judges Eugene E. Siler Jr., Eric L. Clay and David W. McKeague denied the school board's request for the court to pause the mask requirement as the appeals process plays out.

U.S. District Judge J. Ronnie Greer ruled in September the school system must require masks to protect students.

Knox County Schools argues its virtual schools are a reasonable accommodation for students who are at higher risk of getting severely sick from COVID-19, but judges have disagreed. Students take virtual classes from home and must be supervised there, creating a burden on families.

The decisions are part of a larger lawsuit in which families of students with disabilities assert the governor and Knox County Board of Education are failing to make "reasonable accommodations" for their children, who are at higher risk of getting severely sick from COVID-19. They argue their children cannot safely learn in person without a mask requirement this school year.

"Like the district court, we are not persuaded that virtual schooling is a reasonable alternative to universal masking," the appeals court wrote.

This is not the first time the school system has tried to get the mask requirement removed.

So far, the vast majority of students, staff and visitors are required to wear masks. There are about 370 people who have qualified for mask exemptions across the district, according to a court document filed at the end of November.

This decision is not the end of the school mask debate. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Nashville temporarily temporarily blocked Tennessee from preventing schools from issuing mask mandates and from stripping local health and school officials of their ability to set COVID-19 quarantine policies.

The full appeal of the Knox County case will be heard at a later date.

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"This decision is not unexpected. But our opponent is a virus  not each other. Inconveniences of masking and social distancing in confined spaces  like crowded schools with poor ventilation  are really a small sacrifice for health of children," said Justin Gilbert, one of the lawyers for the Knoxville families in the lawsuit.

Students are on winter break and will return to the classroom Jan. 4.

Isabel Lohman reports on children's education, health, welfare and opportunities in East Tennessee

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Live each day with the knowledge you need for you, your family and your community by subscribing to Knox News.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knox County Schools mask requirement: Appeals judges refuse to pause
The Daily Beast

Google MapsWhen police arrested Gioacchino Gamminoone of Italys most wanted mafia fugitivesin a Madrid suburb last week, he asked how on earth they found him. Did someone rat him out or did he accidentally leave a clue?Gammino insisted he had not called his family for more than a decade and had been living under a false name. We saw you on Google Maps, the police told him, showing him a fuzzy photo of himself standing outside a greengrocer store in 2018.Gammino, 61, had escaped from Romes
Chef William Dissen plates a meal for dinner guests in Doha, Qatar. Dissen hosted several food workshops and demonstrations during the culinary diplomacy trip, Nov. 24-29, 2021.

William Dissen, chef and owner of The Market Place in downtown Asheville, took a trip to the Middle East and returned with an understanding of how a shared meal can help bridge divides.

During the Thanksgiving weekend, Dissen introduced Southern cuisine and U.S. customs to the people of Doha, the capital of Qatar. In turn, Dissen and long-time friend, chef Saif Rahman, who was also invited to assist, gained knowledge and experiences that are influencing how and what they cook in their restaurants.

Travel is one of the most important things that Ive humbly had the opportunity to do in my life, Dissen said. "Whenever you go outside of your boundaries it breaks down barriers and stereotypes. When you go places where people dont look or sound like you or eat the same food that you eat it opens your eyes to realize were all global citizens. Were all human beings on this earth trying to live a great life and keep moving forward in a positive way.

Chef William Dissen prepared grits, fried chicken and other Southern dishes for guests in Doha, Qatar during a culinary diplomacy trip, Nov. 23-29, 2021.

From Nov. 24-29, Dissen participated in the Arts Envoy Program, cultural diplomacy program, to showcase the foods of the Appalachian and Thanksgiving traditions.

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The Arts Envoy Program is a public-private initiative of the U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, in partnership with American Voices. The program appoints artistic professionals to share their talents, skills and knowledge of the American culture with community members in other countries.

The diplomats fields vary from performing and visual artists to poets and playwrights to theatrical directors and filmmakers. Each outreach effort is curated and may include workshops, performances and mentoring to foster cross-cultural understanding and collaboration and to demonstrate shared values and aspirations.

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Preparing American and Appalachian food was just the beginning for Dissen. He delved further to explore social and cultural identity through food that would bring people together.

Chef William Dissen prepares chicken for guests in Doha, Qatar.

Its a wonderful way to learn the identity of a place, Dissen said. Its a way that you can also storytell and talk about a sense of place through the food you eat because everybody has connections and stories to tell through that through family and friends.

The experience was powerful as it inspired conversations about culture and the background of the people, Dissen said.

Breaking bread

Dissen has been on a few diplomacy excursions in different countries over the years, including New Zealand, Copenhagen, Denmark, and hosted virtual events for viewers in Israel, he said. His first invitation from the U.S. State Department was in 2015, he said.

The idea was to do both domestic and foreign culinary diplomacy and to send us around to bring people together across the table to break bread, Dissen said. What better way to have cross-cultural affairs than by sharing a meal?

Asheville chef William Dissen discusses Thanksgiving food traditions in Doha, Qatar.

Dissen and Rahman, executive chef of Vidrio restaurant in Raleigh, were the special guest chefs invited to host the holiday week of culinary arts, which was a part of the Qatar-USA Festival within the Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture.

There were many discussions as to how the countries customs are different, as well as cultural overlaps, Dissen said.

It shed any stereotypes I may have had as a preconceived notion, Dissen said. The people were some of the kindest, most giving people Ive met in my life. I cant wait to go back.

Dissen produced three live demonstration workshops with assistance from Rahman: Al Messila Cook-Off and Masterclass, Qatar National Library's Sweet Fusion Masterclass and Thanksgiving Discussion & Tasting.

On Thanksgiving Day, the chefs prepared a traditional dinner for about 40 guests that included residents, students and others invited by the event sponsors, the U.S. Embassy of Doha.

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Over the course of the weekend, the chefs served and demonstrated how to cook dishes, such as Carolina Gold rice, grits, collard greens, pumpkin pie, stewed green beans and Dissens original recipe for hot and crispy fried chicken using poultry from Joyce Farms.

Dissen used the platform to discuss topics, such as sustainability, reducing food wastage and the benefits of locally-sourcing ingredients.

The opportunity to learn and grow went both ways.

Qatari hospitality

Chef William Dissen discusses Southern and Appalachian cuisine with residents in Doha, Qatar.

The kindness and hospitality of the Qatari community is something that wont soon be forgotten, according to Rahman, who described the diplomacy trip as an experience of a lifetime.

We got to experience Qatari culture. That was the most amazing, epic moment of our lives, Rahman said. The Qatari hospitality and Qatari people  its like an open heart.  Words cannot explain the moments, you have to experience it.

Dissen and Rahman spent time with Qatari residents and in Dohas communities and restaurants experiencing the local cuisine. They learned firsthand about the countrys rich culture and explored the city and desert landscapes. They visited Katara Cultural Village and Souq Waqif marketplaces food outlets. They engaged in activities such as dune bashing and camel riding and hung out with a falcon, Rahman said.

The chefs said they made lasting and impactful relationships.

We built the bond. The impression they left on us and the impression we left on them is going to be permanent. It will be a story to tell for the future, Rahman said.

Asheville chef William Dissen addresses dinner guests at the Thanksgiving Discussion and Tasting event in Doha, Qatar.

The chefs are considering ways to incorporate the recipes and flavors they learned abroad into the food they serve daily to diners at their U.S. restaurants.

Its changed and evolved me as a person and also as a chef to eat foods and try flavors that are not in my normal repertoire or day-to-day eating, Dissen said. It was a humbling experience to be a representative from the United States and take our culture on the global scene to showcase our cuisine of America through my eyes and culture as a chef in the Appalachian American South.

Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at tkennell@citizentimes.com or follow her on Twitter/Instagram @PrincessOfPage.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville chef selected as U.S. culinary diplomat, travels to Qatar
MarketWatch

Is there a job that comes with the prospect of a six-figure income, high job satisfaction and has enough job openings to make it a real possibility? Companies are always keen to use intel to improve efficiency and learn more about their customers and, so, computer scientists are in high demand. Java developers are No. 1 on Glassdoors 50 Best Jobs in America for 2021.
BEDFORD  The Bedford Police Department was approved to purchase new body cameras for its 33 officers to replace an outdated system the department has been using for the past 10 years.

BPD Chief Terry Moore said Coban Technologies submitted a bid of $68,310. Other bids were for $216,105 and $138,600.

Moore said the Seymour Police Department uses the same system and he spoke to the Seymour chief and they are pleased with Coban.

"I believe this is the right product for our department," he said.

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The current camera system's technology is outdated and hasn't had a software update in quite some time. He said the vendor is no longer in business, and when BPD needs replacement cameras, it purchases them on eBay.

Moore also received permission to participate in a county-wide task force to get impaired drivers off the roads. Moore said the Lawrence County Sheriff's Department received a grant from the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute for Operation Pullover. For the past three years, the two departments have split the grant, which pays for officers to work additional hours. The grant is for $25,850.

Bedford Mayor Sam Craig performs a swearing-in ceremony for new Bedford firefighter Tristen M. Sites Monday during a meeting of the Bedford Board of Works & Safety.

Items that were budgeted in 2021 but those invoices for payment will be carried over in 2022 were approved by BOW members Mayor Sam Craig, Charlene Hall and Judy Carlisle. Clerk-treasurer Marsha Pfeiffer detailed a lengthy list of encumbrances. Items include replacement of old fire hydrants ($114,874), paving road in Otis Park ($40,000), in-car computers for BPD ($21,415), three separate road expenditures for which the city received Community Crossings grants ($390,000), repairs to Wilson Park shelter house ($28,481), repairs to city hall ($113,314) and renovation of Red Brick at Otis Park, using the insurance coverage ($118,114).

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Misty Adams, director of Bedford Utilities, received permission to assist Smokin' Jim's BBQ on Bundy Line establish a sewer line connection. She explained the restaurant has a failing septic system but, by law, private individuals cannot obtain the necessary boring permit. Bedford Utilities agreed to seek the permit to allow the boring work.

The board also approved Bedford Utilities to work with CJ Underground, a boring company, to improve water pressure from a city water line on South I Street that will be extended to serve three new homes that will be built. Adams explained the current line has insufficient water pressure to meet the new demand.

In other business

 Street Commissioner Dave Flinn received the OK to take bids for a new grapple truck. The department has one grapple truck and Flinn said a second truck would improve efficiency. A grapple truck is used to pick up large items such as mattresses and large pieces of furniture.

 Approved a bid of $4,520 from B-Tech for a smoke detector system in the Red Brick.

 Approved minor subdivision requests from Gene Riley in Broadview Section 5 and Robert L. and Malissa Ikerd in Broadview North. Plan Director Brandon Woodward said the requests were previously approved by the Bedford Plan Commission.

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 Approved Flinn taking sealed bids to sell old street department vehicles, one is a 2003 Ford Sportrax and the other is a 2001 Ford F17.

 Approved agreement with McIntyre Bros to conduct inspections of the city's 10 emergency sirens at a cost of $3,100.

 Accepted an easement request from the Indiana Department of Transportation for 16 feet of land at the corner of 16th and K, near Bedford City Hall. Craig said the easement is in preparation for INDOT to mill and resurface 16th Street from State Road 37 to Tunnelton Road.

 Approved the city's annual agreement with White River Humane Society to house strays for $34,000.

 Craig officiated at the swearing in of new Bedford firefighter Tristen M. Sites.

 Accepted the resignation of BPD officer Peyton Felix.

 Approved the recommendation of Chief Moore to hire officer candidate Tyler McGlocklin.

 Approved standard operating procedures for BPD and Bedford Fire Department regarding overtime.

Contact Times-Mail Staff Writer Carol Johnson at cjohnson@tmnews.com or 812-277-7252.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Mail: Bedford police gets OK to buy new body cameras for officers
For Roger Weyersberg, 70, of Owosso, being a Santa this year has been a bit harder than it was before the pandemic.

Roger Weyersberg, 70, is a local Santa who books events at places like the Williamston United Methodist Church.

Weyersberg is a former band teacher for the Ovid-Elsie School District who attended the Charles W. Howard Santa School in Midland from 2004 to 2014. Since then, he has been Santa at a variety of places including at the Williamston United Methodist Church's sensory Santa event and, most recently, on the North Pole Express  a four-and-a-half hour train ride from Owosso to Ashley.

This year, he was also Santa virtually.

When Santa takes to the internet

Last year, Weyersberg joined Chit Chat with Santa, a company that organizes video calls to Santa. He likes it because he doesn't have to worry about any of the technical stuff, his only responsibility is to be Santa for the kids.

The company provides a blue screen for him to sit in front of, as well as a camera and all of the software he needs to make the calls. During these calls, Weyersberg gets a list with names and ages of kids, as well as whether they have an elf on the shelf.

The past two Christmases, Weyersberg has also learned to spread Christmas joy virtually though he prefers to be in person.

Having to be Santa online was not the biggest challenge of the year, though, he said.

Some of Weyersberg's peers, who are also Santas, have died from COVID-19. This, he said, is a common story and might be one of the main causes of concern for Santas this year.

Santa in the time of COVID

In a recent USA Today article, HireSanta.com Founder Mitch Allen said more than 700 Santas have died this year  300 to 500 from COVID-19. Because of this, the demand for Santas is up 120% from pre-pandemic, he said.

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Santas tend to be a bit older (obviously), and can often have underlying health conditions, thus putting them at a higher probability of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19, Weyersberg said.

"Any Santa that looks like me probably has underlying [medical conditions]," he said.

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Even with the difficulty that's come with being a Santa this year, Weyersberg is still thankful to be spreading Christmas cheer.

"It's been so wonderful to see so many people just enjoy the moment," he said.

Sophia Lada is a news assistant at the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at slada@lsj.com or 517.377.1065. Follow her on Twitter @sophia_lada.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Owosso resident shares how being a Santa has changed during pandemic
Dec. 21BERLIN  Berlin leaders are hoping the state's gas tax-funded paving program will be the ticket to beefing up road infrastructure around the town's municipal property.

At its regular meeting Monday, the Berlin Town Council signed off on making the intersection of Mt. Carmel Drive and County Road 1614 the focus of its application next year for a share of the state's annual allotment of Rebuild Alabama road funds. The project would benefit from an infusion of up to $250,000 in state-allotted road money from the Rebuild Alabama program  if, that is, the state selects Berlin's proposal as a funding recipient for 2022.

In addition to paving both roads, Berlin's proposal calls for reconfiguring the intersection where Mt. Carmel Drive and County Road 1614 meet, an angular turn-off that also accommodates traffic along County Road 1615, which currently serves as the access road to the Berlin Town Hall.

The project would afford easier access to both the town hall and the Berlin Farmers Market on Mt. Carmel Drive, while also laying the groundwork for the town to install a second point of access on the north side of the town hall property in the more distant future.

Berlin mayor Patrick Bates told the council that preliminary research suggests the town would not have to pay significant additional costs to move the work along, should ALDOT accept the town's proposal. "The only out of pocket [costs] would be for engineering," he told the council, adding that the town would also have to facilitate any related right-of-way acquisitions.

The council also signed off on a resolution signaling the town's support for a long-range ALDOT plan to widen U.S. Highway 278 from 4th Avenue in Cullman to East Point. The project is listed among the state highway department's schedule of long-term improvements for state-maintained roads in Cullman County, but ALDOT currently has not published a timeline for when the work might begin.




National security adviser Jake Sullivan will travel to Israel and the West Bank this week, the White House announced on Monday, part of efforts by the U.S. to consult closely with Israel about nuclear talks with Iran while strengthening relations with the Palestinian Authority.

A senior administration official said Monday night that the visit to Israel was "long" planned and meant to cap off the Biden administration's first year in office and engagement with the Middle East.

The trip is also an opportunity for Biden's top national security official to hold face-to-face discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his national security counterpart amid efforts by the U.S. to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the nuclear deal with Iran.

Israel is opposed to the revival of the JCPOA and has lobbied for U.S. officials to abandon the talks.

"Iran will be very high on the agenda for Jake's visit to Israel this week," the senior official said in a briefing with reporters, saying the discussions "will be a continuation of our ongoing consultations on the threat posed by Iran, particularly its nuclear program but also its destabilizing activities in the region."

The Biden administration is engaged in indirect talks with Iranian officials in Vienna over a pathway for both sides to return to the JCPOA, with Tehran calling on Washington to lift sanctions imposed by the former Trump administration when it exited the deal in 2018 and the U.S. calling on Iran to roll back its nuclear provocations such as enriching uranium.

A senior State Department official on Friday described as "modest" the progress made for the U.S. and Iran to rejoin the JCPOA.

The Biden administration maintains that they believe rejoining the JCPOA is the best way to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions and that the U.S. and Israel are "totally aligned in our determination to ensure Iran could never acquire nuclear weapons," the senior administration official said.

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As part of Sullivan's visit to Israel, he will chair a fourth meeting of the Strategic Consultative Group, which brings representatives from various agencies - the defense, diplomatic and intelligence sectors and national security council - into one meeting.

Sullivan will also meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, with the senior administration official saying it is part of efforts to rebuild ties with the Palestinians that the official said were severed during the Trump administration.

"I think Jake will make clear that it's the aim and the policy of the Biden administration to strengthen ties with the Palestinians and ensure the strength and stability of the Palestinian Authority," the senior official said.

The official would not address whether plans to reopen the U.S. Consulate to the Palestinians in Jerusalem have been permanently shelved, as reported by The Times of Israel, in the face of opposition from Israel.

Biden has vowed to reopen the consulate that was shut by former President Trump in 2019. A U.S. Consulate to the Palestinians in Jerusalem is viewed as a symbol of American support for Palestinian aspirations to establish a capital of a future Palestinian state in the holy city, which Israel opposes.
Environmental advocates were bitterly disappointed on Sunday, when Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced that he wouldnt provide his crucial vote for Build Back Better, President Bidens omnibus spending bill that contains $555 billion for fighting climate change. But they were greeted the very next day with welcome news: The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule that will require manufacturers of cars and light trucks to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the new rule, auto manufacturers must cut vehicle emissions between 5 percent and 10 percent from 2023 to 2026. In 2026, cars will be required to get 40 miles per gallon.

These twin developments foreshadow what may be the future of climate change action for the duration of Bidens time in office: using the power of the executive branch to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The heavily traveled I-5 freeway north of Los Angeles. (Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)

But as former President Barack Obamas efforts to use regulations to combat climate change showed, such efforts are subject to the whims of federal judges and can easily be undone by the next president.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki alluded to this approach in a Monday press conference in response to a question about whether Biden can achieve his climate change goals without congressional legislation.

There are multiple paths to achieving President Bidens climate goals, Psaki said. We have every intention of passing Build Back Better, which includes enormous climate provisions. I would note that there are a number of steps we have taken without legislation, and certainly, well continue to build on that.

The federal bureaucracy has vast powers under existing laws, including restricting the production of pollutants, using federal government land and waters to produce fossil fuels, or green energy, and approving everything from pipelines to power lines.

On Monday, Psaki mentioned new rule-making processes that have been recently initiated by the EPA for phasing down hydrofluorocarbons, powerful greenhouse gases used in products such as refrigerators and air conditioners, and a rule in the works to limit the leakage of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, in oil and gas drilling operations.

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White House press secretary Jen Psaki at a press briefing on Tuesday. (Patrick SemanskyAP)

While some environmental activist groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council are still hoping that Manchin will vote for some version of Bidens climate change agenda, others have pivoted to calling for the administration to move on to using every other tool at its disposal.

President Biden now has a mandate to pull out all the stops to confront a rogue fossil fuel industry in 2022, said Janet Redman, climate campaign director at Greenpeace USA in a statement released late Monday afternoon. We expect a full-court press of executive actions to end fossil fuel expansion. ... Biden must go all-in with executive authority to address the climate emergency and do what he promised.

Its an approach that has been tried before, during the last six years of President Barack Obamas term, with limited success. After legislation to reduce carbon emissions through capping them and allowing companies to trade emissions credits failed to pass the Senate in 2010, Republicans took control of Congress, ending any prospects of congressional climate action.

Obama then gradually began to ramp up executive action to limit climate change. The EPA promulgated higher requirements for average fuel efficiency in passenger vehicles, the first-ever restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and new standards for other pollutants produced by fossil fuels, such as coal ash. (While not directly climate-related, any rule that makes it harder or more expensive to burn fossil fuels incentivizes electric utilities to switch from them to cleaner energy sources.) In Obamas last two years in office, the Department of Interior (DOI) began to reform its programs for leasing fossil fuel extraction on federal land, including closing a loophole that allowed coal companies to underpay royalties.

I think back to after cap-and-trade went down in 2010, and President Obama was facing some of these same questions about how to go forward, and he said, Theres more than one way to skin a cat, Pete Ogden, vice president for energy, climate and the environment at the U.N. Foundation, told Yahoo News. I think you saw over the subsequent years, the building up of an alternative to that cap-and-trade system, another kind of vision for how climate action could be carried forward in the United States.

President Barack Obama at a conference on the evironment in 2016. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

But the federal rule-making process is slow, requiring lengthy periods for public comment and review before being finalized and often leaving years to take effect so that industry has time to adjust. In the interim, corporations and sympathetic states almost invariably sue, requesting a stay of implementation until the rule has been adjudicated in federal court. Obamas signature climate initiative, the Clean Power rule that would limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, was tied up in court when Trump took office more than a year after the regulation was published in the Federal Register.

Trump then proceeded to unwind every limitation on fossil fuels that he could. In the case of the Clean Power rule, Trumps EPA argued that the Obama administration had overstepped its legal authority under the Clean Air Act in the way that it wrote the rule, and so it swiftly replaced the regulation with a much-weaker substitute.

That, in turn, triggered its own slew of lawsuits, several of which have been combined into West Virginia v. EPA, a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next Feb. 28. Everyone expects the Biden administration to write a more ambitious Clean Power rule, but how much more ambitious it can be will be determined by the outcome of that case.

The legal review is going to be key: What the courts will allow, Holly Doremus, professor of environmental regulation at the University of California law school at Berkeley, told Yahoo News. The current Supreme Court is not especially restrained. The current majority on the Supreme Court seems quite skeptical of strong administrative actions, particularly if the law is vague or unclear.

Then-President Donald Trump announcing his decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, June 1, 2017. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

When it comes to how the EPA should regulate climate pollution, the law is indeed somewhat unclear. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate pollutants harmful to human health, and during former President George W. Bushs tenure, the Supreme Court ruled that the agency could no longer duck its obligation to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. But some have argued that the flexible approach to reducing emissions that the Obama-era EPA offered, in which utilities could reduce pollution by various means, including helping homeowners improve energy efficiency, went beyond the laws boundaries.

Now, with a more conservative court, there is the possibility that it could overturn the EPAs authority to regulate carbon dioxide entirely, and the more likely possibility that it sharply constrains the ways in which the agency can regulate carbon emissions.

I think its really dicey, Doremus said. Before Trump got his appointments to the Supreme Court, I would have said the Clean Power Plan would withstand review, but now I kind of doubt it.

Nonetheless, Doremus noted that there are multiple regulatory avenues for Biden to pursue on climate change. One hotly contested area is federal land and ocean management. The Trump administration went full throttle in leasing oil and gas drilling, which Biden promised on the campaign trail to end. Currently, all federal fossil fuel leasing is on pause, pending the outcome of DOI reviews and proposed reforms to the program. Conversely, the Biden administration is already attempting to ramp up solar and wind energy production offshore and on federal land. Other scenarios include tighter regulation of coal waste under the Clean Water Act and using the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to block the construction of new oil and gas pipelines.

President Biden addresses a press conference at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 2, 2021. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

But as Trump already demonstrated, any climate change regulation written under Biden could face revision under his successor. In fact, the new clean car rules are actually a reversal of a reversal: Last year, the Trump administration had revoked Obamas fuel efficiency standards. Given how long it takes federal rules to be implemented, that threat to Bidens environmental legacy will be especially acute if he only serves for one term.

As long as theres not legislation, the next administration can reconsider rules, Doremus said. If you have a two-term presidency, eight years can be long enough to get some things entrenched. And eight years can change markets. With four years its more difficult. If Biden doesnt win reelection or isnt succeeded by a Democrat, its going to be problematic.

Cover photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP, Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images.

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Global temperatures are on the rise and have been for decades, step inside the data and see the magnitude of climate change.
CHICAGO  Administrators at private universities in the Chicago area announced that COVID-19 vaccine booster shots will be required for students, faculty and staff next month.

Loyola University of Chicago was the first local school to make boosters mandatory. President Jo Ann Rooney and Provost Margaret Faut Callahan said Wednesday in a message to employees and students that everyone is required to get a booster shot as soon as they are eligible.

People who have been already granted religious or medical exemptions are not required to provide proof of a booster shot, but they must continue to take part in regular surveillance testing.

On Monday, with new COVID-19 infections surging and a majority of new cases now comprised of the antibody-evading omicron variant, administrators at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago announced their own booster requirements.

All three universities made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for people to work or study on campus earlier this year.

Northwestern students and staff have until Jan. 30 to get a booster  or 30 days after they become eligible. The deadline at the University of Chicago is Jan. 31.

Northwestern will also shift to fully remote learning through Jan. 18, administrators said. Students who intend to be on campus during that period are required to take two tests and submit the results.



"The fast spread of the omicron variant and guidance from our medical experts have caused us to reconsider the plans we shared with you earlier this month," Vice President Luke Figora, Provost Kathleen Hagerty and Interim Vice President Priya Harjani said in a joint statement.



There were 476 new COVID-19 cases detected during the week ending Sunday, according to the university's online dashboard. The positivity rate was nearly 13 percent.



"Northwesterns COVID-19 booster requirement does not apply to people who have previously received a non-temporary exception to Northwesterns COVID-19 vaccination requirement, including those who have personal medical conditions or sincerely held religious beliefs that prevent them from being vaccinated," the administrators said. "As appropriate, Northwestern will engage with union representatives to discuss applications of this requirement to union-represented employees."



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More than 98 percent of Northwestern's faculty and staff have provided proof of vaccination, with less than 2 percent requesting an exception, according to a message from Hagerty in September.

At the University of Chicago, 97 percent of students and 98 percent of employees are compliant with vaccination requirements, Provost Ka Yee Lee and Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright said Monday in a joint message.

University officials said their goal was to return to fully in-person research and classes starting Jan. 3. They also urged students to get a COVID-19 test within 72 hours prior to returning to its Hyde Park campus and after attending a large gathering.



"While there are some who are feeling COVID-19 fatigue and may be tempted to eschew public health precautions, please remember that the health of our entire community depends on the actions of all of us," the administrators said. "With the Omicron and Delta variants circulating in the United States, and the fluid and fast changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, we urge you to remain as vigilant as ever to protect yourselves and others and watch for updates from the University."



The new vaccine booster mandate does not apply to employees of the University of Chicago Medical Center or clinically active faculty and staff at the Biological Sciences Division, Lee and Callow-Wright said.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 infections has reached its highest point of 2021  surpassing the peak number of hospitalizations recorded in January, prior to the wide availability of vaccines.



More than 80 percent of the Illinois population aged 12 and over has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. And nearly three out of four adults are fully vaccinated. About 2.75 million Illinoisans  nearly 22 percent of the population  have received booster shots, according to IDPH vaccination data.

This article originally appeared on the Evanston Patch
BROCKTON  Brockton health care worker Wanda Zayas has helped hundreds of people by fostering children and donating $50,000 to several charities over 40 years  and she's not stopping there.

"It's truly amazing to see her help the community and reaching the upcoming generation. Wanda is truly a gift, and we're blessed to have her," said John Messia, the city's director of constituent services and community outreach, while recently presenting Zayas with an award. "The city of Brockton is truly the City of Champions and she is guiding us to success and giving people the help and assistant they need."

On Dec. 16, Sullivan's office presented an official mayoral citation to Zayas for the work she is doing in the community.

Wanda Zayas, recognized for her years of service at St. Joseph Manor Health Care in Brockton, stands with family, colleagues and close friends after receiving a certificate from the facility on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021. Back row: Anabel Rivera, Maria Rivera, Maria Delatorre, Robert Otto, Richard Coe, and Jim Keene. Front row: Nurse Ann Crockett, Ilda Goncalves with son Adriel (19 months), Wanda Zayas and husband Carlos Andrade. All are from Brockton, except for nurse Crockett, who is from Rockland, and Keene, who is from Easton.

Zayas said she came to the United States four decades ago from Coamo, Puerto Rico, for a better life and has been helping people ever since.

One of the promises she made while migrating to America was to help women escape domestic violence  as she has done.

"I'm teaching younger girls to be independent, work hard and I encourage them to rely on themselves," Zayas said.

Zayas has also helped better the lives of five struggling women who didn't have jobs. She helped them enroll in CNA class and referred them to work at St. Joseph Manor Health Care, a nursing home in Brockton where she works.

"The nursing industry is struggling with a labor shortage. Thank God I have Wanda as the community liaison," said Jim Keane, director of the Brockton nursing home. "She brought five women on that have been wonderful."

Wanda Zayas, of Brockton, gets a warm hug from her husband, Carlos Andrade, after getting recognition from the city for her service and selfless efforts in charity on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021.

The journey of Zayas becoming a CNA started after leaving Market Basket and taking a free CNA class from the Red Cross. She said she fell in love with caregiving from the first day.

"My first job in America was a clothing store, then I worked as a cleaning lady for Shaw's, and then, after that, I was a manager at Market Basket for 15 years," Zayas said. "Then, in 2000, I became a CNA to help the elderly because I would be old one day, and I would want someone to care for me. I love what I do."

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Zayas works closely with elderly patients at St. Joseph Manor Health Care and has taken in foster kids for the last decade, she said. Her youngest foster child is 19 months old.

Wanda Zayas, of Brockton, holds her grandson, Adriel, after getting awards of recognition for her years of service in health care at St. Joseph Manor Health Care in Brockton on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021.

"I've used over $50,000 of my money between housing children, donating money to charities and giving back to the community over the last 40 years," Zayas said.

Going above and beyond is something Zayas often does when caring for people. She learned five languages  Portuguese, Cape Verdean Creole, Haitian Creole, Spanish and Brazilian  to better understand her patients because she knows having a language barrier is difficult.

"I want to keep helping people until I die," Zayas said.

Wanda Zayas, a certified nursing assistant at St. Joseph Manor Health Care in Brockton, is pictured outside the nursing home on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, the day she received a mayoral citation for her work fostering children and the donations she's made to help hundreds of people.

One person Zayas helped who left a forever mark is Mitzy Coreano, who spent many years in and out of the hospital because of several health issues. One is being highly allergic to most foods and chemicals. Some of the 67 known allergens include bleach, polyester, gluten, food dyes and cat fur.

Coreano's allergies are so severe they causes asphyxiation, which leads her to passi out and requires immediate hospitalization.

"I've been intubated 19 times in my life and spent several years in a hospital bed. I caught COVID twice, and the second time all my hair fell out. I've had three strokes and two heart attacks," Coreano said.

"I lost my memory and had to learn how to speak all over again. The only person who was there for me was Wanda. She never left my side. She visited me every day in the hospital," Coreano said.

Wanda Zayas, of Brockton, right, 40 years and running, receives a recognition award for her years of service in health care and humanitarian efforts from John Messia, second from left, and Jensen Denoyes, second from right, both of whom work in the office of Brockton Mayor Robert Sullivan. At left is Mitzy Coreano who helped to arrange the Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, ceremony, who is also an ambassador for a self help foundation, and a pre-med student.

Zayas brought coffee to Coreano every morning and kept her busy with warm conversations daily. Coreano gives credit to Zayas as a pillar in her life who kept her grounded emotionally by motivating her to keep going and reach for the stars.

"Wanda became a mother figure to me during all this. She motivated me to get my master's (degree) while being in the hospital," Coreano said. "I finished my bachelor's and two masters from a hospital bed. I admire her work ethic and drive because of her encouragement. I'm so far in life now."

Enterprise staff reporter Alisha Saint-Ciel can be reached by email at stciela@gannett.com You can follow her on Twitter at @alishaspeakss. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Enterprise today

This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Brockton CNA Wanda Zayas recognized for fostering, donations
A new programme by UNDP, in partnership with iNNPulsa Colombia MiLAB, is seeking applications by businesses with telehealth solutions for maternal, natal and pre-natal care in Colombia.

ISTANBUL --News Direct-- Business Call to Action (BCtA)

The Inclusive Innovation Journey is seeking companies with telehealth solutions in Colombia

ISTANBUL, December 21, 2021 /3BL Media/ - Business Call to action alongside UNDP Colombia, UNDP Accelerator Labs and MiLAB, the govtech laboratory operated by iNNpulsa Colombia, have opened a call for applications for businesses that have devised telehealth solutions around natal, prenatal and post-natal care.

This programme is part of BCtAs Inclusive Innovation Journey, a project that seeks to advance government-centred innovation by replicating proven business solutions for local development challenges. The programme supports impact-driven businesses, or those who wish to have an impact, by connecting them to local government bodies that are seeking innovative, tech-driven solutions to reaching populations at the last mile.

In the case of Colombia, the telehealth sector was recognized as an area of focus due to the increased demand of telehealth services caused by COVID-19 and the need to improve the quality and coverage of such services across the country. This was determined through a field study by the firm Haptica alongside the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, which oversees Colombias National Telehealth Plan.

As per the study, 90% of Colombian households were classified as Base of the Pyramid and many had trouble accessing healthcare, particularly specialized care, due to lack of financial resources.

The study noted that telemedicine had significant benefits in access to healthcare for vulnerable populations through reduced costs and consultation times, increase in productivity of health specialists and led to wider adoption of preventative healthcare practices. However, despite seeing an increase in telehealth services, it was observed that a significant gap remained in the reach of telehealth services in rural and remote areas  which is where the Inclusive Innovation Journey seeks to find a solution.

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As part of the programme, businesses that have been operational for more than two years with a working telehealth solution that is already serving clients and that has the potential for social and economic impact on low-income communities are eligible to apply. The deadline for applications is January 21, 2022.

Once selected, companies will begin their Inclusive Innovation Journey and benefit from a training programme, mentorship and networking opportunities with public entities and companies in the health sector, meet with potential stakeholders and have the option to connect with local public entities to scale their business model.

We are excited to launch the Inclusive Innovation Journey in Colombia with our partners to support sustainable, effective and inclusive collaboration with the private and public sector. We hope companies bring forward tech-based solutions that can ensure affordable and equitable access to much-needed healthcare services for women in low-income communities, said Luciana Aguiar, Programme Manager at UNDP Business Call to Action.

We are confident of the development that entrepreneurs in the country's health sector have had in recent years and we saw their work highlighted during the pandemic. For this reason, and in order to improve access to health services for Colombians in rural areas, we invite them to participate and join us in contributing to this solution, said Francisco Noguera, President of iNNpulsa Colombia.

To apply for the Colombia challenge, click here

For more information please contact: bcta@undp.org and info@innpulsacolombia.com

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Business Call to Action (BCtA) on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/call-for-applications-on-telehealth-solutions-by-businesses-for-low-income-populations-in-colombia-100370823
Rich Miller

Matt Chapman, a self-described data nerd who runs a not-for-profit group called Free Our Data, recently filed Freedom of Information Act requests with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoots office. He wanted everything received by the Chicago Tribune this year via their FOIA requests.

Chapmans trove included text messages sent back and forth between Lightfoot and state leaders, including Gov. JB Pritzker.

Most of the conversations were innocuous or polite. The governor thanked the mayor for sending him a bottle of tequila, for example.

But some of the conversations are revealing. On July 14 of last year, Lightfoot informed the governor that the city was toying with a mandatory mask order for Chicago.

The governor responded: Just want you to know we already have a statewide mandatory mask order. It is the law right now during the emergency.

Pritzker had, indeed, issued a mask order more than two months before Lightfoot was kicking the idea around.

I thought that was weird, but then last week Lightfoot introduced a city ordinance that was basically a copy and paste of a bill Pritzker had recently signed into law. Oops.

In August of 2020, during violence and looting, Pritzker sent Lightfoot a text message saying the two should talk about the situation. An hour later, Pritzker sent her another text saying, Im hearing reports of activity downtown and want to reiterate my offer of assistance of state police tonight.

There was no reply. Billionaire Ken Griffin has heaped scorn on Pritzker for not intervening in the citys violence, but that message shows he was at least trying to convince the mayor to accept state help on one occasion.

In late September, Pritzker told Lightfoot that the state police and the National Guard were coordinating closely with the Chicago Police Department through the weekend. Hopefully we are all over prepared, he wrote. Thanks so much for your leadership, she told the governor. I hear from lots of folks that they like to see us working together. Gives them confidence.

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Agree and also I like working on the same page with you. So theres that. Pritzker wrote.

In January of this year, before vaccinations became widespread, Chicago resident Pritzker sent the mayor a Block Club Chicago story about a massive indoor party in the Old Town neighborhood. How brazen? he wrote. This looks ripe for a visit by CPD. !!!

On it, Lightfoot replied.

But there were clearly moments of tension. Just hearing from one of my city council chairmen that your team is trying to move something on [the sale of the] Thompson Center without presenting a plan to me and my team, Lightfoot told Pritzker. We should discuss because that will not happen.

Instead of replying to Lightfoots text, Pritzker sent a link to an online opinion piece written by a political enemy that trashed both him and Illinois Department of Public Health Director Ngozi Ezike. The piece was believed at the time to have been generated by Lightfoot or her allies because it also heaped praise on Lightfoots public health director.

Thank you was all Pritzker wrote. There was no reply.

Organized labor worked last spring to kill a proposal by Pritzker and the Illinois Retail Merchants Association for a statewide mandated paid sick leave law. Lightfoot was also opposed, and she made that known in a text to the governor in late May. I would like to talk about the paid sick leave bill. We strongly oppose. Let me know when you can talk. There was no recorded reply.

Senate President Don Harmon often didnt reply to the mayors texts, although that doesnt mean he didnt pick up the phone or talk to others.

Lightfoot sent several terse but one-way text messages to Harmon this year, including these in January of 2021: Don, my folks are bringing me comments that are concerning. If there is no personal issue, you want to address, then lets have the discussion.  Correction: if there is a personal issue that is of concern, lets put it on the table.

A few days later: A courtesy call regarding the fire pension bill would have been helpful, particularly since there is no funding for it. When that pension fund collapses, I will be talking a lot about this vote.

And then in May: It is important that we talk early. The direction things are going is totally inconsistent with what you committed to.

All of Lightfoots texts with House Speaker Chris Welch were cordial. Former House Speaker Michael Madigan didnt do texts.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.

This article originally appeared on Pontiac Daily Leader: Conversations between Lightfoot, Pritzker are rather revealing
Several Iowans arrested in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol are facing new charges this month, including one who was arraigned Tuesday on five additional charges.

In an interview the evening of the riot with LifeSiteNews.com, a media outlet devoted to anti-abortion, faith and morality-focused coverage, Leo Kelly, 36, of Cedar Rapids said he'd been in the Capitol for 30 to 60 minutes and prayed on the Senate floor. The video interview included footage Kelly shot from inside the Senate chamber.

He was arrested Jan. 18 and charged with two offenses: entering a restricted building, and violent entry to disrupt the orderly conduct of business.

More: What we know about Leo Kelly, the Iowa man who said he prayed on the Senate floor during the US Capitol riot

Court records show little action in Kelly's case until Dec. 3, when he was formally indicted. He now faces seven charges: obstructing an official proceeding, entering a restricted building, parading or demonstrating in a Capitol building, two disorderly conduct charges and two charges for entering certain parts of the Capitol. He was arraigned on the new charges Tuesday.

Kelly's attorney, Kira West, declined to comment after the hearing.

At least one of the new charges, obstructing an official proceeding, is a felony with a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, although sentencing guidelines will likely recommend a far shorter amount of time. A number of Jan. 6 defendants, including fellow Iowan Doug Jensen, facing the same accusation have asked courts to dismiss the charge, claiming the statute is overbroad and vague.

In his LifeSiteNews interview, which is no longer available online, Kelly said he was not armed or violent during the riot, but felt the participants had no other choice because "no one will even listen to us."

More this month: In new bid to leave jail, Capitol riot defendant Doug Jensen apologizes while arguing against broken rules

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Weve been betrayed by Congress," he said. "Weve been betrayed by the judicial branch. Weve been betrayed by our local governments, our mayors.

Kelly, an executive at a Cedar Rapids tech company who was released on his own recognizance after his arrest, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette after the riot that he's a politically active independent. He said he attended the rally in D.C. that morphed into the riot out of frustration with "crimes against the Constitution" he believed were not being addressed, but said he accepts the importance of rule of law.

"If the FBI or whoever calls me  I mean, they know where to find me, I'm sure  I'll talk to them," Kelly said. "I understand there could be consequences for what happened and I will accept those and deal with them."

Court records show Kelly has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is due back in court for a status conference in February. No trial date has been set.

Charges updated in other Jan. 6 cases

Also Tuesday, prosecutors filed new trial information against Daryl Johnson of St. Ansgar, who was arrested in June along with his son, Daniel Johnson of Austin, Minnesota. The FBI said the younger Johnson had posted on social media that "Dad and I were one of the first ones inside."

Both men were initially charged with four offenses: entering a restricted building, parading or demonstrating in a Capitol building and two disorderly conduct charges. Tuesday's charging document adds to both men a charge of civil disorder, a felony with a maximum sentence of five years.

In a third Iowa case, prosecutors recently filed a new indictment against Polk County mother-son duo Deborah and Salvador Sandoval. The new 12-count indictment, filed Dec. 17, drops one count of civil disorder and changes another to assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer.

Both Sandovals had been charged by previous indictment with obstructing an official proceeding, but in the new indictment, only Salvador Sandoval faces that charge.

The two are scheduled to be arraigned on the revised charges on Jan. 10.

William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Capitol riot suspect Leo Kelly of Iowa indicted on five more charges
By Rinat Harash

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Crusader-era bells and organ pipes from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem are inspiring researchers' efforts to re-create music as it may have sounded in the birthplace of Jesus during almost 800 years ago.

Worried they might otherwise be destroyed, mid-13th century Crusaders buried the 13 bronze bells near the church on the eve of a Muslim offensive, slathering them in animal fat to protect them from rust, said David Catalunya, who is leading a project to build facsimiles of them.

"It's a very long process, not only in terms of constructing the materiality of the instruments but also its cultural context and its intellectual context," said Catalunya, a researcher from the universities of Oxford and Wuerzburg, Germany.

With the exploratory research phase complete, he estimates it will take about five years to cast fully functioning copies.

Meanwhile, a knock of the knuckles is enough to bring a clear, high-pitched chime from the originals, whose clappers have long since rotted away - as demonstrated to Reuters at the Custody of the Holy Land for the Roman Catholic church, which holds the unique collection.

"It's half of the original sound, (which) was much richer and louder and a little bit lower," Catalunya said.

The bells were part of a carillon that accompanied chants inside the church, said Franciscan friar Father Stephane, the Custody's liturgist.

They were discovered in the early 20th century, along with 222 Mediaeval copper pipes from the Church of the Nativity's organ, during construction at the church's Franciscan compound, Father Stephane said.

The collection also includes the sceptre of the Bishop of Bethlehem and candlesticks from the 12th century which, according to Catalunya, were made in France, suggesting a shared provenance with the bells and organ pipes, which Father Stephane says are the oldest in Christendom.

Father Stephane said he hoped the collection would be displayed, and played, at a Jerusalem museum the Custody plans to open by 2024.

"These bells are very significant for us because they are the bells of Bethlehem (and a) symbol of Nativity in the Christian world," he said.

(Writing by Rinat Harash; Editing by Dan Williams and John Stonestreet)
BEIJING (AP)  China announced sanctions on Tuesday on four members of the U.S. government's Commission on International Religious Freedom in retaliation for penalties imposed on Chinese officials over complaints of abuses in the countrys northwestern Xinjiang region.

The tit-for-tat sanctions add to spiraling tension over Xinjiang. Washington has banned imports from the region that might be made with forced labor, while activists are calling for a boycott of Februarys Winter Olympics in Beijing. China has denied accusations of abuses and earlier retaliated by publicizing calls for boycotts of foreign shoe and clothing brands.

The chairwoman and three members of the U.S. panel are barred from visiting mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, and any assets they have in the country will be frozen, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.

Zhao identified those targeted as chairwoman Nadine Maenza, deputy chairman Nury Turkel and members Anurima Bhargava and James Carr. Zhao gave no indication whether they have assets in China.

China threatened to retaliate after the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions Dec. 10 on two officials accused of involvement in repression of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Beijing is accused of mass detentions, forced abortions and other abuses.

Treasury targeted Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the regions government from 2018 until early this year, and Erken Tuniyaz, who holds the position now and previously was deputy chairman.

The United States should withdraw the so-called sanctions and stop interfering in Xinjiangs affairs and Chinas internal affairs, Zhao said. China will make further responses in accordance with the development of the situation.
Civil rights organizations, county residents and a state senator have filed a lawsuit challenging a redistricting map they say violates federal law just hours after the map was adopted by the Baltimore County Council Monday night.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, names all seven council members and will be served to county attorney James Benjamin. Plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to block the map  approved unanimously by County Council  from taking effect and force the county to adopt a new one that complies with the federal voting rights laws.

Complainants allege the plan violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in voting on the basis of race.

The adopted map will impermissibly dilute the Black vote in Baltimore County, allowing the white majoritys bloc voting to defeat candidates preferred by Black voters and depriving Black voters of an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice, the lawsuit alleges.

Plaintiffs include the Baltimore County NAACP branch and its president, Danita Tolson; the League of Women Voters of Baltimore County; Common Cause Maryland; state Sen. Charles Sydnor III; former county NAACP president Anthony Fugett; and Dana Vickers Shelley, executive director of the ACLU of Maryland and a Pikesville resident.

Council chair Julian Jones, the councils only Black member and who has opposed creating a second majority-Black district, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

In a statement, Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. said that he shares the concerns of community members regarding the map approved by the County Council.

Opportunities for greater minority representation across all districts is vital, the Dundalk Democrat said.

Civil rights groups for months have threatened to sue the county should it adopt a redistricting map that does not create at least one additional majority-Black district. Map opponents have maintained that since the county has a 30% Black population, and since almost half the population is nonwhite, its unacceptable for the jurisdiction to have just one majority-Black district when its mathematically feasible to create more.

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The council has said that a second majority-Black district can be achieved only by splitting communities, which they were unwilling to do. Before the map passed Monday night, Democratic councilman Tom Quirk said he was confident it could stand up in court.

Map opponents had offered numerous alternative maps showing the ways in which at least one additional Black district could be drawn. Much of the countys Black population is concentrated to the west in the 1st, 2nd and 4th districts, where the Black population in Baltimore County is sufficiently numerous and geographically compact such that two properly apportioned electoral districts can be drawn in which Blacks would constitute a majority of the voting-age population, according to the lawsuit.

These elected officials remain determined to protect their own self interest, Shelley said during a virtual news conference Tuesday, above the rights of thousands of Black voters in the county, like me, who deserve fair representation.

The countys lone majority-Black 4th District is 73% Black. After it was formed in 2001, the district elected the countys first Black council member.

Meanwhile, no Black candidate, nor any non-white candidate, has been elected to the Council from any of the remaining six districts over the past two decades or at any time in history, according to the lawsuit. Each of these districts has always had a majority of white voters and has always voted for white County Council candidates.

The Randallstown NAACP is also seeking to sue over the countys map; the chapter has requested the permission of the flagship NAACP organization to do so.

The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU of Maryland, Baltimore-based law firm Brown, Goldstein & Levy and Washington-based firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer.

This story may be updated.
2021 has been one major news development after another, dominating feeds and giving us yet another scenario to process. As the year winds down and the daily pace slows a bit, the downtime provides an opportunity for some reading and viewing time.

The USA Today Network's Atlantic Region How We Live team has put together a selection of books, broadcast programming and articles that inform your social consciousness  releases that may have gotten overlooked in your shuffle. So kick back, whether you're chilling on a plane between destinations, bored at the in-laws or simply staying up late because you're off for the next few days.

Books

The Kaepernick Effect

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during a preseason game in 2016 to protest racial inequality and police brutality  a move that would negatively impact his career and be used as a political lightning rod by former President Donald Trump.

"The Kaepernick Effect" (September 2021; The New Press) by Dave Zirin looks at how Kaepernick's action inspired high school, college and professional athletes and coaches from across the country to take a knee. Readers will learn about both the support and vitriol they received for their decision, like that of Ohio high school student Rodney Axton, the first athlete to take a knee during a sporting event after Kaepernick.

San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid (35) and quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneel during the national anthem before a game in September 2016 against the Los Angeles Rams in Santa Clara, Calif.

Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual

Luvvie Ajayi Jones aimed to normalize fear in her book Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual (Penguin Life; March 2021). Page by page, she grants people permission to fight their fear, speak the truth, live audaciously, and take up space  like her Nigerian grandmother did.

She offers an opportunity for people to affirm their lives, dreams and fierceness with advice, suggestions and examples of her own failures and successes. During a period that conceived the "Great Resignation, Luvvies book serves as a guide for those who want to take ownership of their careers, financial potential, and impact.

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Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue

Barbecue is one of the most quintessentially American foods  a mix of Indigenous cooking traditions, European meats and especially the artistry of African American chefs who developed the tradition over centuries. Decades before civil rights, barbecue was one of the few domains in which Black chefs were accorded both fame and acclaim.

But after noticing that Black chefs had been left out of the past few decades of barbecue shows and competition circuits, food historian Adrian Miller issued a corrective of sorts: a conversational and voluminously researched tome (University of North Carolina Press; April 2021) spiked with recipes and profiles of Black chefs that clearly lays out the African American roots of the cuisine.

Civil rights: Americans stood up to racism in 1961 and changed history. This is their fight, in their words.

Related: Luvvie Ajayi Jones wants to 'loan courage' in fear-fighter manual 'Professional Troublemaker'

Articles

Jimmie Lee Jackson

The late U.S. Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis once cited the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson in February 1965 as the impetus for the Selma to Montgomery March and the signing of the Voting Rights Act that same year. But who was Jimmie Lee Jackson?

This well-researched article published in May as part of USA Today's Never Been Told series sheds light on this forgotten figure in the civil rights movement. It explores who Jackson was and the circumstances around his death, eight days after he was beaten by Alabama state troopers and fatally shot by one of them following a voting rights march in his hometown of Marion, Alabama.

Jimmie Lee Jackson and pages from The Montgomery Advertiser about Bloody Sunday.

Seven Days of 1961 series

You may have missed this series, launched in late September with a run through December 2021, or perhaps you only had time for a piece of it.

This team of USA TODAY Network reporters, led by Deborah Barfield Berry and Cristina Silva, spoke to freedom fighters about their work 60 years ago  tracing crucial moments that "set in motion a new era of civil rights that continues to inform social justice movements today." Their multimedia project included a podcast series, graphic novels, feature stories, videos and other content covering seven pivotal days of protest in 1961.

Snapshots from an evictions crisis

The eviction crisis in the United States has not subsided as millions face eviction by year's end. A joint effort in September by the USA Today Network How We Live team and NorthJersey.com takes an expansive look at tenants and landlords in several Mid-Atlantic states impacted by this dire situation.

The piece covers everything from a Rochester tenant who has to choose between eviction or living in a substandard apartment to a New Jersey landlord dependent on rental income for his own subsistence.

Films/TV

Summer of Soul

Summer 1969 included the legendary Woodstock music festival, held in upstate New York. During the same time, the Harlem Cultural Festival took place in New York City, which would be known as the "Black Woodstock." However, it did not receive the attention given the former event.

That is until now with "Summer of Soul," the debut documentary of Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, the drummer and founding member of The Roots, which you can check out on Hulu. The new feature, made up of previously shot footage not seen in over 50 years, showcases the artists who performed during the six-week festival including Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone.

Minari

You should consider jumping on Hulu (or texting that friend with a premium subscription) soon if you haven't seen it. Lee Isaac Chungs semi-autobiographical project challenges any antiquated definition of "The American Dream."

The film explores a Korean American family's search for a new life and a new home  in 1980s rural Arkansas. The touching, award-winning movie set in the rugged Ozarks seemed to check even some of Hollywood's understanding of an American story, as the Golden Globes judged it among "foreign language" films, thus not in contention for the program's best-picture awards. In the American writer/director's film, the characters mostly speak Korean in their dialogue. As Chung told USA TODAY in February, the beauty of the story is in its relatability for all audiences, regardless of cultural identity.

Related: Here's why 'Minari' is truly an American story, even if the Golden Globes disagree

"Minari" star Yuh-jung Youn won best supporting actress at the Oscars.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was a famous network of secret routes and used by African Americans in the 1800s to escape from enslavement. It is also the epic miniseries of the same name by filmmaker Barry Jenkins of "Moonlight" fame, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead. Now showing on Amazon.

The 10-part series follows slaves Cora and Caesar fleeing from a Georgia planation via the railroad, which is reimagined as an actual physical railway complete with a conductor, while a white slave catcher is in dogged pursuit. USA Today gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars in a review in May, calling the series a "dark, gorgeous, slightly flawed but ultimately spectacular adaptation."

My Name is Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray checked many boxes in her lifetime: lawyer, activist, poet, priest and non-binary. All those facets are examined in the acclaimed documentary, "My Name Is Pauli Murray," by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who also made the 2018 Ruth Bader Ginsburg doc "RBG." Now showing on Amazon.

In a tight 93 minutes, the viewer gets to see Murray's life unfold: a young girl from North Carolina struggling with her sexuality, being the only woman in her law school who would go on to influence Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, cofounding the National Organization for Women, and becoming the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest.

High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

When food writer Jessica B. Harris ate her way around West Africa in the 1970s, she found something she didnt expect: It tastes like grandmas. And so the Netflix show inspired by her book High on the Hog feels less like a food history than a culinary family reunion  a testament to African food traditions that remain very much alive in America, preserved and transformed by descendants of those who had their roots forcibly ripped away.

In beautifully shot travelogues, host Stephen Satterfield wanders from the fiery hot sauce and yams of West Africa to the pepper pots of Philadelphia and the rice and Gullah cooking of South Carolina. The show tracks not just Africas influence on American dinner plates, but the affinities that still run deep.

Being Different in the Delta

Juke joints. Jim Crow. Civil rights era injustices. The planet of the Deep South often is told in limited spheres  from those who are Black or those who are white. Yet, Chinese Americans are deeply rooted in the historically tumultuous and culturally complex Mississippi Delta, dating to the 1800s. And they are now speaking out. Their pain, their challenges, their triumphs in that region  and what theyve taken from their history there to survive in a freshly divided America in which theyve become open targets anew  is explored in the documentary "Being Different in the Delta." Be prepared for frank discussion on how to confront rising anti-Asian sentiment, discussion that lays bare generational divides.

Being Different in the Delta runs 27 minutes, less time than it takes to go to the store and back, but unpacks a lot. It debuted in mid-November as a CBS Original on the CBS News free streaming platform and on YouTube.

A screenshot from the CBS Originals documentary "Being Different in the Delta"

Passing

"Passing" feels as though the film premiered in 1921 rather than 2021 with its black-and-white hues, as well as the tension between its Black and white-passing characters. The film's grayness blurs color distinctions like the main characters living in the Jim Crow era. Now showing on Netfilx.

The story, based on Nella Larsen's 1929 novel, starts with a reunion between two childhood friends in an upscale New York City hotel. Irene and Clare, both light-skinned Black women, grew up together but lead drastically different adult lives. Clare (played by Ruth Negga) passes as white, enough so she's married to a white man who openly despises Black people. Irene (played by Tessa Thompson), on the other hand, lives in a Harlem townhouse with her Black husband and sons.

As Irene and Clare rekindle their friendship, each woman struggles with her identity. They question what's safer as well as pleasurable: hiding in plain sight in the lion's den, or wearing one's Blackness freely, both in a world where their skin color could be their demise.

Ricardo Kaulessar, Matthew Korfhage, Jasmine Vaughn-Hall, Kelly Powers, Sammy Gibbons and Jamesetta M. Walker are assigned to USA TODAY Network's Atlantic Region How We Live team. For unlimited access to the most important news, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kaulessar@northjersey.com

Twitter: @ricardokaul

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: What to read over holidays: Colin Kaepernick, African American cuisine
MOORESTOWN, NJ  Booster shots, available at pharmacies and clinics in Moorestown, are the best defense against COVID-19 illnesses as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country, according to health officials.

Breakthrough COVID-19 cases from the omicron variant  infections among the vaccinated  are less common among people who have received their third vaccination shots, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The omicron variant, first reported in South Africa on Nov. 24, has been detected in all but a handful of states, including New Jersey.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading infectious disease expert, said Friday the Pfizer and Moderna booster shots work well against the omicron variant and that theres no need for a specific vaccine to fight it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the omicron variant is likely to become the dominant coronavirus strain in the coming weeks. It currently represents 3 percent of new infections.

Public health officials are concerned that vaccination rates  currently 61 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, and only 28 percent have gotten booster shots  are insufficient to fend off a fifth wave of the coronavirus. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing, with about 120,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths reported each day, mainly from the delta variant.

Boosters are available at New Jersey's COVID-19 vaccination megasite at t the former AC Moore, 1190 Nixon Drive in Mount Laurel.

Boosters are also available in the Moorestown area at the following sites:

ShopRite Pharmacy: 892 Union Mill Rd, Mount Laurel, NJ 08054

Chop Care Network Mt Laurel: 3201 Marne Hwy, Mt Laurel Township, Nj 08054

Rowan Family Medicine: 100 Century Pkwy #140, Mt Laurel Township, NJ 08054

Walmart Pharmacy: 934 Nj-73, Mt Laurel Township, Nj 08054

Wegmans Pharmacy: 2 Centerton Rd, Mount Laurel, Nj, 08054

Mount Laurel Supercenter: 934 Route 73, Mount Laurel, NJ 08054

Costco Wholesale Corporation: 43 Centerton Road, Mt. Laurel, NJ 08054

CVS: 4 Centerton Rd, Mount Laurel, NJ 08054

CVS: 219 West Main Street, Moorestown, NJ 08057

Riverside Medical Group Moorestown: 740 Marne Hwy, Ste 206, Moorestown, NJ 08057

Walgreens: 3046 Route 38, Mount Laurel, NJ, 08054

Cooper Family Medicine Moorestown: 110 Marter Ave, Moorestown, Nj, 08057

Omnicare Of S New Jersey: 40 Twosome Drive Unit #1, Moorestown, Nj, 08057

CVS: 3110 Route 38, Mount Laurel, NJ 08054

The CDC says Pfizer and Moderna booster shots both provide increased protection against COVID-19 and helped prevent severe symptoms in breakthrough cases.

This article originally appeared on the Moorestown Patch
SOUTHINGTON, CT  Health officials are promoting booster shots, available at pharmacies and clinics in Southington, as "the best defense" against COVID-19 illnesses as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country.

Breakthrough COVID-19 cases from the omicron variant  infections among the vaccinated  are less common among people who have received their third vaccination shots, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The omicron variant, first reported in South Africa on Nov. 24, has been detected in all but a handful of states, including Connecticut.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading infectious disease expert, said Friday the Pfizer and Moderna booster shots work well against the omicron variant and that theres no need for a specific vaccine to fight it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the omicron variant is likely to become the dominant coronavirus strain in the coming weeks. It currently represents 3 percent of new infections.

Public health officials are concerned that vaccination rates  currently 61 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, and only 28 percent have gotten booster shots  are insufficient to fend off a fifth wave of the coronavirus. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing, with about 120,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths reported each day, mainly from the delta variant.

Southington residents can get a booster shot at:

Walgrens

Walmart

CVS

The CDC says Pfizer and Moderna booster shots both provide increased protection against COVID-19 and helped prevent severe symptoms in breakthrough cases.



This article originally appeared on the Southington Patch
WEST HARTFORD, CT  Health officials are promoting booster shots, available at pharmacies and clinics in and near West Hartford as "the best defense" against COVID-19 illnesses as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country.

Breakthrough COVID-19 cases from the omicron variant  infections among the vaccinated  are less common among people who have received their third vaccination shots, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The omicron variant, first reported in South Africa on Nov. 24, has been detected in all but a handful of states, including Connecticut.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading infectious disease expert, said Friday the Pfizer and Moderna booster shots work well against the omicron variant and that theres no need for a specific vaccine to fight it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the omicron variant is likely to become the dominant coronavirus strain in the coming weeks. It currently represents 3 percent of new infections.

Public health officials are concerned that vaccination rates  currently 61 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, and only 28 percent have gotten booster shots  are insufficient to fend off a fifth wave of the coronavirus. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing, with about 120,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths reported each day, mainly from the delta variant.

West Hartford residents can get a booster shot at:

CVS

Walgreens

Stop & Shop

UConn Health

The CDC says Pfizer and Moderna booster shots both provide increased protection against COVID-19 and helped prevent severe symptoms in breakthrough cases.



This article originally appeared on the West Hartford Patch
HOMER GLEN-LOCKPORT, IL  Booster shots, available at pharmacies/clinics in Homer Glen and Lockport, are the best defense against COVID-19 illnesses as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country, according to health officials.



Breakthrough COVID-19 cases from the omicron variant  infections among the vaccinated  are less common among people who have received their third vaccination shots, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The omicron variant, first reported in South Africa on Nov. 24, has been detected in all but a handful of states, including Illinois.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading infectious disease expert, said Friday the Pfizer and Moderna booster shots work well against the omicron variant and that theres no need for a specific vaccine to fight it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the omicron variant is likely to become the dominant coronavirus strain in the coming weeks. It currently represents 73 percent of new infections.

Public health officials are concerned that vaccination rates  currently 61 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, and only 28 percent have gotten booster shots  are insufficient to fend off a fifth wave of the coronavirus. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing, with about 120,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths reported each day, mainly from the delta variant.

To get a booster shot in Homer Glen or Lockport, check out:

Homer Glen and Lockport locations offer the booster shots, but if appointments are unavailable, there are many nearby pharmacies which also offer the vaccine.

The CDC says Pfizer and Moderna booster shots both provide increased protection against COVID-19 and helped prevent severe symptoms in breakthrough cases.

This article originally appeared on the Homer Glen-Lockport Patch
GILROY, CA  Booster shots, available at pharmacies/clinics in Gilroy, are the best defense against COVID-19 illnesses as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country, according to health officials.

Breakthrough COVID-19 cases from the omicron variant  infections among the vaccinated  are less common among people who have received their third vaccination shots, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The omicron variant, first reported in South Africa on Nov. 24, has been detected in all but a handful of states, including California.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading infectious disease expert, said Friday the Pfizer and Moderna booster shots work well against the omicron variant and that theres no need for a specific vaccine to fight it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the omicron variant is likely to become the dominant coronavirus strain in the coming weeks. It currently represents 3 percent of new infections.

Public health officials are concerned that vaccination rates  currently 61 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, and only 28 percent have gotten booster shots  are insufficient to fend off a fifth wave of the coronavirus. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing, with about 120,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths reported each day, mainly from the delta variant.

To get a booster shot in Gilroy, go to:

Costco  7251 Camino Arroyo, Gilroy, CA 95020

Walmart  7150 Camino Arroyo, Gilroy, CA 95020

CVS  6705 Camino Arroyo, Gilroy, CA 95020

CVS  800 1st St, Gilroy, CA 95020

Walgreens  770 1st St, Gilroy, CA 95020

The following walk-in locations are open on Wednesday. No appointment is required:

Gilroy Senior Center

7371 Hanna St, Gilroy, CA 95020

12:00pm-7:00pm

*Drop-in-only clinic, subject to capacity

Bay Area Community Health (South)

9460 No Name Uno, Gilroy, CA 95020

12:00pm-4:00pm

Click here for additional vaccine locations and resources in Santa Clara County.

The CDC says Pfizer and Moderna booster shots both provide increased protection against COVID-19 and helped prevent severe symptoms in breakthrough cases.

This article originally appeared on the Gilroy Patch
SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ  Booster shots, available at pharmacies/clinics in Sussex County, are the best defense against COVID-19 illnesses as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country, according to health officials.

Breakthrough COVID-19 cases from the omicron variant  infections among the vaccinated  are less common among people who have received their third vaccination shots, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The omicron variant, first reported in South Africa on Nov. 24, has been detected in all but a handful of states, including New Jersey.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said Friday the Pfizer and Moderna booster shots work well against the omicron variant and that there's no need for a specific vaccine to fight it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the omicron variant is likely to become the dominant coronavirus strain in the coming weeks. It currently represents 3 percent of new infections.

Public health officials are concerned that vaccination rates  currently 61 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, and only 28 percent have gotten booster shots  are insufficient to fend off a fifth wave of the coronavirus. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing, with about 120,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths reported each day, mainly from the delta variant.



To get a booster shot within Sussex County, go to:

Sussex County's Vaccination Site List, which includes information about upcoming county-run pop-up clinics, plus others through Atlantic Health, local retailers and other locations: https://www.sussex.nj.us/cn/webpage.cfm?tpid=17480

Some vaccination sites within and near Hopatcong and Sparta are at:

CVS Pharmacy in Sparta (Limited appointments available, click here for more information)

Stop and Shop in Sparta (Limited appointments, click here for more information)

Sparta Pharmacy (make an appointment here)

Walgreens, Hopatcong (walk-ins or make an appointment here)



The CDC says Pfizer and Moderna booster shots both provide increased protection against COVID-19 and helped prevent severe symptoms in breakthrough cases.

This article originally appeared on the Hopatcong-Sparta Patch
Stanislaus Countys unemployment rate dropped in November, continuing a slow trend of economic recovery during the winter months.

The countys jobless rate was 6.2% in November, down from 6.9% in October, according to data from the states Employment Development Department. Local data is not seasonally adjusted. Statewide, unemployment dropped to 6.9%, down from 7.3% in October. The national joblessness rate in November was 4.2%, down from 4.6% in October, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In November 2020, Stanislaus reported 8.1% unemployment, compared with 8.7% in California and 6.7% nationally.

Jeff Michael, the director of public policy programs at Pacific McGeorge School of Law, said the biggest change he noticed in November was local growth in industries like professional and business services. Much of the pandemic recovery has been concentrated to the industries that were hardest hit initially, like leisure and hospitality, and tourism, he said. Now, Michael said, economists are observing growth in other industries as the economy further recovers.

Its not just hospitality recovery anymore. Weve seen some of these other areas grow faster, so that shows these traditional growth drivers are back in gear, he said. Those growth drivers arent as significant in Modesto as they are in other areas. Thats one reason why the pace of recovery in Modesto is not quite as rapid as weve seen in other areas.

Heading into the holidays, Michael said the local economy can expect to get a seasonal boost from shopping. But unlike in prepandemic years, that job growth isnt focused as much on retail positions as it is e-commerce.

With online shopping booming during the pandemic, companies have been hiring more warehouse workers than store associates this season.

I dont think its that people are spending less, theyre just shifting to e-commerce, Michael said.

Economists have been predicting a more permanent economic recovery in 2022, and Michael still sees this as feasible, but expects there to be a lull in the first few months of the year as COVID-19s Omicron variant spreads across the country.

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As 2022 rolls around, Michael said a lot of industries still are figuring out what the permanent effects of the pandemic will be, whether economically or in the ways theyve had to adapt their operations. Employers are deciding whether to implement hybrid work models, retailers are adapting to new consumer trends.

Across the board, he said, the full effects of the pandemic wont be felt for months, if not years.

Still, Michael said theres ground for optimism.

Weve come a long way, he said, but were not all the way back yet.

This story was produced with financial support from the Stanislaus Community Foundation, along with the GroundTruth Projects Report for America initiative. The Modesto Bee maintains full editorial control of this work.

To help fund The Bees economic development reporter with Report for America, go to https://bit.ly/ModestoBeeRFA

Help us cover your community through The Modesto Bee's partnership with Report For America, with financial support from the Stanislaus Community Foundation.



Your contribution helps to fund Kristina Karisch's coverage of economic development and recovery in Stanislaus County, as well as future RFA journalists in our newsroom.

Donate to Report for America
More than 60% of fully vaccinated Oklahomans who are currently eligible for a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine have yet to receive one, according to the state Health Department.

Anyone 16 and older who got their second dose of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine at least six months ago or a Johnson & Johnson shot at least two months ago is eligible and recommended to get a booster dose.

Vaccinations and booster doses are critical, especially in light of the new, fast-spreading omicron variant, health officials have said. The variant hasnt been detected through sequencing in Oklahoma yet, but experts say its almost certainly already in the state.

More: Why has Oklahoma ranked last in COVID-19 sequencing for months? Totals mask some recent progress

Nearly 836,000 Oklahomans are eligible for a booster dose but havent received one, according to data from the state Health Department. Another nearly 332,000 are not yet eligible as of this month, based on when they became fully vaccinated from any of the three available vaccines.

Those figures dont include vaccine doses administered through federal sources, including the Bureau of Prisons, Indian Health Service and others.

By the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Count, which includes state and federal sources, about 567,000 Oklahomans have received a booster dose, which is about 27% of all fully vaccinated people in the state. Data on booster doses also includes people who received an additional dose because they are immunocompromised.

Thirty-five percent of the states population hasnt had a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

More: A year since Oklahoma's first COVID vaccine was given, health chief reflects on saved lives

Booster doses offer significant added protection against the omicron variant, said Dr. Dale Bratzler, the chief COVID officer at the University of Oklahoma. He pointed to new data from Moderna that shows a booster dose is effective against the omicron variant, and the data is similar for Pfizer, he said.

Story continues

It's not perfect, he said. But boosting gives you about 25 times more protection against omicron than if you did not get the booster dose.

Bratzler said hes worried about what may be to come after Christmas and New Years gatherings, given how COVID-19 cases rose significantly after Thanksgiving. Some early reports suggested the omicron variant may cause less severe illness than delta, but a new study from England showed that may not be the case, he said.

Even if the variant does turn out to be less severe, its much more transmissible than the delta variant and could quickly overwhelm an already depleted health care system, Bratzler said.

What's worrisome, and what we're seeing around the country, is the spread of the virus is so rapid, so many people are getting infected, that we can still overwhelm hospitals quite quickly even if it doesn't cause as much severe illness, Bratzler said. Just the sheer number of cases could overwhelm us.

More: Experts urge Oklahomans to get booster shots as COVID-19 cases rise

When omicron arrives in Oklahoma, itll likely quickly overtake the delta variant, which so far has been the predominant variant spreading in the state since this summer, said Dr. David Chansolme, medical director of infection prevention at Integris Health.

(Omicrons) doubling time is so much more brisk, he said. Whereas delta doubled its numbers about every two weeks, omicron seems to do that about every three days.

Chansolme stressed that vaccinations and other precautions, including masking, social distancing and hand-washing, are crucial for a safe holiday season.

Please, please, please: if you haven't been vaccinated, go get vaccinated, he said. If you have been vaccinated and you're eligible for a booster, go get your booster.

Everyone aged 5 and older is eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine, and they can be found in a number of locations including health departments, pharmacies and grocery stores. To search for vaccination sites near you, go to vaccines.gov.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Nearly 836,000 Oklahomans due for COVID booster haven't gotten one
Happy Tuesday, Sarasota! Here's everything you need to know going on in town today.

First, today's weather:

Windy with heavy t-storms. High: 75 Low: 59.

Here are the top stories in Sarasota today:

Florida Studio Theatre received a year-end gift of $200,000 from Jack and Priscilla Schlegels fund at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. (Sarasota) Here's where you can find a COVID-19 booster shot in the Sarasota area. (Sarasota Patch) With COVID-19 cases more than doubling in Florida over a week, Sarasota and Manatee counties saw only a slight increase. (Sarasota Herald-Tribune) Two right whales catalogued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission have given birth in Southwest Florida. (WWSB) Sarasota County was given a loan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for upgrades to the Bee Ridge Water Reclamation Facility. (WFLA)

Today's Sarasota Daily is brought to you in part by our friends at Ring, the home security company. Ring does a lot more than doorbells: check out their full suite of smart home products at Ring.com. And thank you Ring for helping to make local news happen in Sarasota!

Today in Sarasota:

Hooping for Preschoolers - Gulf Gate Public Library (10:15 AM)

Winter Tales with Nan Colton - Gulf Gate Public Library (2:00 PM)

Gulf Gate Library Teen Advisory Board (5:00 PM)

Holiday Sip & Shop (5:00 PM)

From my notebook:

Sarasota County (FL) Sheriff's Office: "Today we share devastating and unexpected news. Earlier this morning as members of our Mounted Patrol Unit were gearing up to begin their shift, Mounted Patrol horse Navigator passed away. There were four deputies with him when it occurr..." (Facebook)

Humane Society of Sarasota County: "Meet Cheetos, one of the lesser known reindeers in Santas bunch. This 5 year old festive boy is sweet and dashing. We would love to see him find a home for the holidays #adopt #happyholidays #beyondshelter #hssc #homefortheholidays" (Facebook)

New College of Florida: "Whether you need a last minute gift idea or are adding to your own To Read list, Sarasota Herald-Tribune invited NCF faculty, administrators and staff to recommend books they thought had a particular impact during the year    https..." (Facebook)

The Women's Resource Center: "It all began last year, when the Office Manager at Fyzical Health discovered the Women's Resource Center and called to see if they could help one of our families with Christmas. This year, the team at Fyzical Health has sponsored two of ..." (Facebook)

Sarasota Police Department: "BEGINNING WEDNESDAY NIGHTRegistration is still open for an after-hours youth activity program in the @cityofsarasota at the Robert L. Taylor Community Complex (RLTCC)! KOPS - Kids & Officers Promoting Solidarity - is for ages 12-..." (Instagram)

Library Foundation for Sarasota County: "    ,         .     ..." (Facebook)

Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee: "The Commercial Real Estate Alliance (CREA) announced Joe C. Hembree as 2021 Commercial REALTOR of the Year and installed the 2022 Officers at their Installation Breakfast on Friday, December 17! Congratulations to: President Ben Bakker,..." (Facebook)

Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County: "50 years is a milestone by any measure, which is why we applaud the Sarasota  Manatee Area Manufacturers Association (SAMA). We had the privilege of participating in their celebration, which included a holiday gathering and toy drive." (Facebook)

Story continues

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This article originally appeared on the Sarasota Patch
FAIRFAX CITY, VA  As COVID-19 cases increase and families prepare for gatherings, testing demand has increased in Fairfax.

Fairfax County recorded its highest daily testing number on Wednesday, Dec. 15  5,252 PCR tests. The next highest testing numbers were on surrounding days, according to Virginia Department of Health data.

As for COVID-19 numbers, Fairfax County currently has high transmission along with most areas of Virginia. Tuesday's new cases in Fairfax County totaled 719, which was the most new cases reported in a single day since Jan. 17. There is a seven-day average of 467 daily cases, and the seven-day positive average of PCR tests is 7.5 percent. However, the seven-day average of daily new hospitalizations is three, and the average of daily deaths is 1.

Testing is available at locations around the Fairfax City area. Public health officials recommend COVID-19 testing if you have symptoms or exposure to someone with suspected or confirmed COVID-19, regardless of vaccination status. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people who were positive for COVID-19 in the last three months and recovered do not have to be tested, unless they develop new symptoms.

Related: COVID-19 Booster Shots: Where To Find Them In Fairfax City

The CDC also recently recommended self tests for those gathering with other households, especially unvaccinated children, older adults, immunocompromised people, or individuals at risk of severe disease. Antigen tests may be conducted at home with results in about 15 minutes and a virtual component so test results can be provided to VDH.

A positive self-test means an individual should stay home or isolate for 10 days, wear a mask, contact a healthcare provider, and contact close contacts who may have been exposed. A negative result may mean there may not be an infection, but repeating the test with at least 24 hours in between will increase the likelihood the individual isn't infected.

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Fairfax County Public Libraries are also offering free BinaxNOW COVID-19 rapid antigen at-home test kits while supplies last. More guidance on antigen tests is provided from VDH.

Below are some testing options around the Fairfax City area. Residents should check for closings on the upcoming Christmas and New Year's holidays. More options are provided by the Fairfax County Health Department and the VDH searchable map.

This article originally appeared on the Fairfax City Patch
Alicia D'Amico knew something wasn't right. D'Amico, who has lupus, was sailing on Royal Caribbean International's Symphony of the Seas, the ship on which 48 people tested positive for COVID-19 before disembarking in Miami on Saturday.

It was Thursday, and she hadn't been feeling well all day. Initially, she chalked it up to a lupus flare-up and exhaustion after an asthma attack earlier in the day. But things got worse.

"As the night progressed, so did my body fatigue, coughing and wheezing," the 40-year-old Tampa, Florida, resident told USA TODAY.

D'Amico started calling the medical center. No nurse answered.

Eventually, exhausted, she decided to try again in the morning.

"I wound up in bed almost 15 hours and was not OK at all," D'Amico said, listing symptoms: "Deep dry hacking cough. Sore throat. All over body pains. Felt super feverish. Lungs hurting a little."

Alicia D'Amico and her daughter were on Symphony of the Seas. D'Amico tested positive for COVID-19 after the sailing.

While on Symphony of the Seas, people tested positive for COVID-19, according to the cruise line. Passengers told USA TODAY that the ship's crew and medical staff seemed "overwhelmed," an assertion Royal Caribbean denies.

D'Amico started calling again in the morning. After an hour of redialing, success. A nurse picked up.

She explained to the nurse that she knew what was happening to her was more than a lupus flare-up and asked about an appointment with the ship's doctor. She was told an appointment would not be available until Friday night and would come with a $160 charge and not include a coronavirus test.

Upon learning that a test wouldn't be included in the appointment, D'Amico told the nurse she expected testing to be free  especially since she was reporting COVID-19 symptoms per Royal Caribbean's guidance.

"She was silent," D'Amico said.

"They never mentioned a test," she continued. Never recommended a test. Nothing."

'Everything was so confusing': 48 people test positive for COVID on Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas ship

Story continues

Royal Caribbean's newest ship: Odyssey of the Seas, makes brief return to port due to COVID

The nurse agreed to "at least" take D'Amico's temperature, at her request. D'Amico's daughter took her to the infirmary in a wheelchair, and the nurse took her temperature. She told D'Amico she didn't have a fever.

"I was burning up," D'Amico said. "Then (the nurse) said 'just keep wearing your mask and enjoy your cruise.'"

D'Amico was shocked.

"My test should have been mandatory," D'Amico said. "I was extremely symptomatic, and I was not only not being tested but being told that I could just wander around the ship putting other people at risk of exposure to my germs."

Too exhausted to push for more, nervous about being ill at sea without a full evaluation and unsure of what to do, D'Amico gave up, retreating with the knowledge she could take a test on dry land in less than 24 hours when the ship disembarked in Miami.

Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas Cruise ship which is the world's largest passenger liner is seen docked at PortMiami after returning to port from an Eastern Caribbean cruise as the world deals with the coronavirus outbreak on March 14, 2020, in Miami.

D'Amico "mostly self-quarantined" for the remainder of the trip and when she went out, she said, she informed the crew she was sick and double-masked, hand-washed and sanitized surfaces she touched.

Later Friday evening, the captain made an announcement that a few passengers had tested positive and were asymptomatic, she said.

"I about lost my mind," D'Amico said.

"Here I was filled with symptoms and not even being tested," she continued

On Sunday, at 2:30 p.m. after leaving the ship, D'Amico took a PCR test.

On Monday evening, her answer finally came.

D'Amico was positive for COVID-19, she said, sharing a screenshot result from CVS with USA TODAY. She called the situation "infuriating."

Her daughter, identified as Rowena DAmico Scott, 25, also tested positive after the cruise.

"They didnt take me seriously and put others at risk," D'Amico said.

Lyan Sierra-Caro, spokesperson for Royal Caribbean, told USA TODAY early Tuesday that the cruise line is unable to comment on a passenger's specific medical history.

Sierra-Caro continued that "if a guest is feeling symptoms we ask them to contact the medical center and we follow the protocols."

Once passengers are off the ship, Royal Caribbean doesn't track if they test positive for COVID. "If guests test once they return home we do not have a way of monitoring that," Sierra-Caro said Sunday.

Royal Caribbean reported 48 cases of COVID-19 from cruise

The 48 cases on the recently disembarked cruise "were found as a result of immediately identifying close contacts after a guest tested positive," Royal Caribbean's Sierra-Caro said, noting each person was quarantined quickly.

Initially, Royal Caribbean said that everyone who tested positive was asymptomatic. In the statement Monday morning, it said that "everyone who tested positive were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, and we continuously monitored their health."

Six passengers disembarked earlier in the cruise and were transported home. The rest of the passengers were assisted Saturday at disembarkation in Miami, Sierra-Caro said.

Passengers say Royal Caribbean was overwhelmed

Connor O'Dell, 29, from Orlando, Florida, was traveling with a party of 12 on the Symphony of the Seas sailing that wrapped up Saturday. Six of his traveling companions tested positive for COVID-19. Everyone in their group was fully vaccinated and most had had a booster shot, O'Dell said.

O'Dell and his fiance, James Johnson, 36, tested negative, he said.

The first person who tested positive in their group was Johnson's aunt, who is 66 and at high risk for COVID-19, O'Dell said. She was symptomatic and reported her symptoms to Royal Caribbean on Thursday during the cruise.

"She was very symptomatic," O'Dell said, noting she had a bad cough and sore throat, and that neither a doctor nor nurse gave her an in-depth physical exam or asked her about preexisting conditions. "We all knew the risks of going on the ship  the problem is that we were promised a set of protocols (or) adequate medical staffing, and they were never adhered to."

It took around four hours for a nurse to come to administer a coronavirus test and get a result. Johnson's aunt was then quarantined for the rest of the trip.

Johnson said he attempted to contact medical staff and, after several tries, reached a nurse who told him that they were understaffed. He asked if the ship's medical team could check on his aunt. His aunt received a call the next day.

Out of their party, she was the only one who was checked on by the cruise line at all, even after five others tested positive, Johnson said.

Johnson and O'Dell self-quarantined but later were told that they could leave their stateroom after the positive test came back on Johnson's aunt, even though they had been spending time together as a group.

"We kept asking 'are you sure we can leave?'" Johnson said. After half an hour, O'Dell said that they were asked by crew members to isolate again.

Johnson said that they received conflicting results, with his cousin being told she tested positive, then later that it was actually her boyfriend who was positive.

"They were so overwhelmed," Johnson said. "They just kept saying something (and then) changing what they were saying. Everything was so confusing," he said.

When asked to comment on whether staff was overwhelmed and if the protocol wasn't followed properly, Sierra-Caro said that wasn't the case.

"Our staff was able to handle all the cases on board and we followed all of our protocols for testing and quarantine," Sierra-Caro said Sunday.

Will passengers cruise again after the experience?

O'Dell won't be sailing with Royal Caribbean again after this last trip on Symphony of the Seas.

"I detest cruises but its the only vacation I can get my dad to go on. If we do another one in the future, will definitely be seeking another cruise operator given theres plenty of them," he told USA TODAY Tuesday.

D'Amico said she didn't think she would be hesitant to sail with the line again.

"I believe a specific set of employees that ran our ship made poor decisions that did not follow protocol," she said. "I would most likely sail with (Royal Caribbean) again."

As omicron spreads: Norwegian Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International update onboard mask requirement

COVID on a cruise: How a breakthrough case sent one couple from an ocean view balcony to the 'dungeon'

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cruise line didn't provide COVID test after passenger reported symptoms
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Former immigration minister Inger Stojberg, a main architect behind some of Denmark's tough immigration policies, was voted out of parliament on Tuesday by her fellow lawmakers following her conviction in a rare impeachment case earlier this month.

Stojberg was handed a 60-day prison sentence last week by an almost unanimous impeachment court for intentionally ordering the separation of under-age couples seeking asylum during her tenure as immigration minister in 2016.

"The conclusion in the case must be, that Mrs Inger Stojberg's conviction at the impeachment court is incompatible with being a member of parliament," Jeppe Bruus, a spokesman for the ruling Social Democratic party, told parliament.

Under Danish and human rights law, each refugee couple, either married or in a relationship, must be assessed on its own merits, implying that the minister's order to separate all under-age couples was illegal. A total of 23 couples were separated.

The rules were changed to comply with law in the same year.

Ninety-eight lawmakers, including from the Liberal Party, her former party, on Tuesday voted in favour of ousting Stojberg from parliament, with 18 from immigration hard-liner Danish People's Party and New Right voting against the motion.

Twentyfive out of 26 judges agreed to convict Stojberg in the impeachment court, only the sixth of its kind in the Nordic country in more than 170 years and the first since 1995.

After the vote, Stojberg told reporters: "I would rather be voted out by my colleagues here in parliament because I have tried to protect some girls than getting voted out by the Danish people because I have turned a blind eye."

After her incarceration, she is free to run in the next general election.

"Do not expect this to be the last your hear from me," she said.

(Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Editor's note: this story has been updated to correct an error in the total votes cast in two meetings.

At least one Central Bucks School District teacher will be enrolled in a transgender education program for faculty after a three-hour long, at times, emotional board meeting Tuesday night.

The district Board of Directors voted 7-2 for the $1,000 conference and workshop request that had been among two line items removed from a previous agenda on May 11. The removal sparked controversy and calls for approval.

Board Director President Dana Hunter and board member Sharon Collopy voted against.

A pride caravan, organized by the Rainbow Room, makes its way through Doylestown Borough, celebrating and supporting LGBTQ+ youth in October. On Tuesday, Central Bucks School District's Board of Directors approved enrolling at least one teacher for a transgender faculty training program developed by Widener University.

Tuesdays vote will enroll district teacher Stephanie Graziosi-Hibbs in Widener Universitys Affirming Schools for Transgender Students Program.

The program consists of five half-day classes across the summer, and Hibbs said Tuesday the program also provides a consultant to be available for one-on-one discussions through November.

Hibbs added the program focuses on giving staff the necessary skills to address concerns of transgender students individually, but also guides districts on how they can be more inclusive overall.

While I certainly hope the board votes to approve the conference tonight, I also hope that the value of this program merits the consideration of sending a team of educators, including administrators who are tasked with making critical decisions on behalf of all of our students, Hibbs said.

More on the May 11 vote: Central Bucks community raises funds for teacher conference on transgender education after BOE denies request

Bucks schools push for more funding: Bucks County school leaders join Pennsylvania push for more state education funding

Diversity in CBSD: Central Bucks students: Diwali debate underscores lack of diversity in schools

Tuesdays vote didnt go beyond the single-teacher enrollment, but there is a more than $5,000 pool from a crowdfunding effort the district could use to sign up more teachers.

The May 11 decision brought public backlash on social media, where community members called the vote removing the conference a thinly-veiled act of transphobia. At that meeting the conference and another were removed since they were not happening in the month of May. Boards routinely approve conference and other activities months in advance.

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That meeting included a 5-4 vote that gave a blanket denial for several requests totaling nearly $2,000. The board then voted 7-2 approving only several conferences held in May.

A GoFundMe page raised over $4,000 within four days of that meeting, with organizers saying the funds would be used for Hibbs and other teachers to take the course.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the page had raised $5,324 for the program.

While there was no discussion during the May 11 meeting on specifically why five of the nine board members wanted to amend the conference request, some did address the issue publicly online.

Director Lorraine Sciuto-Ballasy on Tuesday reiterated comments she made at a recent finance committee meeting that her opposition was largely due to a lack of information.

Ballasy described the conference as appearing only with a single line on a spreadsheet, and that she had met with Hibbs since then and now wanted to approve the expense.

Other board members made similar comments throughout Tuesdays meeting, citing a need to change how conferences are presented to the board.

For transgender students like CB West sophomore Daniel Mautz, the rationale of the May 11 vote doesnt matter as much as the message it sent to students like him.

I am in fear of coming home from this meeting because of the people in this room. I am in fear because I know there are multiple people sitting in this room who would vote against my existence in this school district, said Mautz, who also attends the Middle Bucks Institute of Technology.

Mautz, a Yale-hopeful with a 4.125 GPA, has been taking testosterone for about a year-and-half now, and faces harassment and bullying both inside and out of school.

In 2018, when he was 13, Mautz told the board his journey and treatment by others has impacted his mental and emotional health.

This is not even the beginning of my story, and this isnt even the beginning of transgender stories, Mautz added.

As educators like Hibbs and other members of the community told board members Tuesday, programs like the one approved this week arent just about inclusivity; they can save lives.

The national suicide prevention hotline is available 24 hours a day at 1-800-273-8255.

The audio for Tuesdays three-hour board meeting can be found on the school board section at www.cbsd.org.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Central Bucks school board OKs faculty transgender education conference
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to take on communist China, saying the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not something that his state wants to be involved with.

The Sunshine State Republican issued a press release on Monday regarding the meeting he held with the Florida State Board of Administration (SBA) members putting "woke corporations" and state investments in Chinese companies under the microscope.

"If you look at how these major companies behave when faced with Chinese disapproval, they censor what the CCP tells them to censor, and we see groveling apologies," DeSantis said in the release.

TOM COTTON URGES THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TO REDUCE RELIANCE ON THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

"Go back a generation, and the idea of the American elites was, If we allow China into the WTO and give them most favored nation status, that will make China more like us," the governor continued . "This experiment has failed, and it has endangered our nations national and economic security."

DeSantis also said he wanted the SBA to "survey the investments that are currently being done" and that when the state legislature returns, "they can make statutory changes to say that the Communist Party of China is not a vehicle that we want to be entangled with."

"I think that that would be something that would be very, very prudent," the governor said. "I also think that our country as a whole, but certainly Florida would like to see more production and manufacturing re-shored, and we would be a great place to do that."

"By retaking control of the state pension funds proxy voting from outside fund managers who may pursue social ideologies inconsistent with the states values or the financial interests of the states investments, and by determining the states exposure to Chinese investments, the actions taken today will further strengthen Floridas fiscal footing and signal to those in corporate America who prop up a genocidal, authoritarian, imperialist regime that they will not do so with Floridians money," the release continues.

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China has become the global elephant in the room as they host the 2022 Winter Olympics amid human rights abuses and the CCPs genocide of Uyghur Muslims. While the Biden administration called for a "diplomatic boycott" of the Olympics, many Republican lawmakers and potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates said the Biden administration didn't go far enough and that the Olympics should be boycotted "completely."

"President Biden had the chance to actually stand up to Beijings genocide and human rights abuses, but again, he has chosen appeasement and weakness over strength and resolve," Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said in a statement earlier this month. "Time and time again, Biden does the bare minimum when it comes to dealing with China, and its absolutely unacceptable."

Sen. Rick Scott speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill on May 26, 2021. Drew Angerer

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., recently called on the Biden administration to scale back the countrys economic reliance on China.

"Remember, China is a communist country, and they always put the party above the government and certainly ahead of the public interest," Cotton told "Fox News Primetime" on Monday. "We should do everything we can to take advantage of these trends by reducing our reliance on China for things like advanced technology, but also life-sustaining drugs, or life-sustaining medical devices or medical equipment."
WASHINGTON  Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the Bureau of Prisons on Tuesday to allow federal inmates released because of the Covid pandemic to remain at home.

Garland's directive reverses a Trump administration decision that would have required many of those who were released to return to their prison cells.

"Thousands of people on home confinement have reconnected with their families, have found gainful employment, and have followed the rules," Garland said in a statement.

"We will exercise our authority so that those who have made rehabilitative progress and complied with the conditions of home confinement, and who in the interests of justice should be given an opportunity to continue transitioning back to society, are not unnecessarily returned to prison," he said.

In passing the CARES Act, the federal government's response to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Congress allowed the release last year of some prisoners based on their age, health and length of remaining sentence. William Barr, who was then the attorney general, acted to allow the release after five inmates died of Covid-related illnesses in Louisiana and Ohio.

Related video: Federal home confinement inmates were faced with having to return

The department's Office of Legal Counsel said in January that federal law required many of those inmates to return. But a memorandum issued Tuesday said a better reading of the law is that it "does not require that prisoners in extended home confinement be returned en masse to correctional facilities when the emergency period ends."

The Bureau of Prisons "has discretion to permit prisoners in extended home confinement to remain there," it concluded.

Justice Department figures show that more than 35,000 inmates were released to home confinement. The nearly 3,000 of those with longer sentences remaining would have had to return to prison under the previous policy, which declared that home detention was meant to be temporary.

The best-known federal inmate to benefit from the home confinement policy was Michael Cohen, the ex-lawyer to former President Donald Trump. He was released in May 2020, about 18 months before he was originally scheduled to be let out.

Five days before the end of the Trump administration, the Office of Legal Counsel said the release authority would expire 30 days after the president declared an end to the national pandemic emergency. After that, the memo said, those who were released would have to return to prison. Tuesday's memo reached the opposite conclusion.
Trump complained about Melania getting flak for her Christmas decor in a speech this weekend.

The former first lady was mocked in 2018 for installing red Christmas trees.

And in 2017, the Trump White House's white branches also drew criticism on social media.

Former President Donald Trump is still not over his wife Melania's Christmas decorations being panned.

In a speech at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, the former president criticized the media for going after his wife's White House Christmas displays.

"I have to just start by wishing everybody a very, very merry Christmas," Trump said during his speech. He went on to talk about how Melania was a former first lady "loved by everybody" but lamented that she "didn't get exactly a fair shake."

Video: White House renovations through the years

"She would make the most beautiful Christmas decorations," Trump said. "And I remember she made these magnificent red trees, and the media said, 'Oh, that's terrible.' I said, 'Honey, next time, try white.'

"She made magnificent  remember, the most beautiful you've ever seen  white trees. And they said, 'Oh, that's terrible.' I said, the next time, 'Let's do it more traditional. Let's go with green,'" Trump said.

"We went with beautiful green trees, and they said: 'Why wouldn't you make them white like they used to be?' But I'll tell you what, she's loved all over, and she's got a tremendous heart, and she says hello," Trump added.

In 2017, Melania Trump replaced traditional fir trees with white branches.

The next year she installed red, cranberry-covered trees at the White House that were mocked for appearing to be covered in blood.

In 2020, Melania's enthusiasm for Christmas was questioned when an audio recording of her complaining about decorating the White House for the holidays surfaced. The 2018 conversation was recorded and leaked by the first lady's friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff.

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"I'm working my ass off at Christmas stuff that you know, who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration?" she is heard saying on the leaked tapes. "But I need to do it, right? Correct?"

"OK, and then I do it, and I say that I'm working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas, and they said, 'Oh, what about the children that, they were separated?' Give me a fucking break," she said, referring to a controversial visit she made to the border to visit children who were separated from their parents. During the visit, she wore a jacket that said "I don't really care. Do u?"

Separately, the former president claimed last week that Americans can wish one another "merry Christmas" only because he fought the "woke" and "crazy people" who wanted to cancel the greeting.

Read the original article on Business Insider
GREENLAND  Town police believe a slip of the foot caused a car to crash into a massage business storefront Saturday.

Ka lani Massage Specialists received an unexpected visitor on Saturday when a car plowed into the business, going so far as to crack the interior wall to one of its five treatment rooms.

Brian Lavallee, who operates the company with his wife and business owner Kelly Lavallee, said that around 4:30 p.m. Saturday a car almost came to a full stop in front of the business.

Instead, the car drove up over the curb and the sidewalk then into the 13 March Farm Way building. Though the vehicle never ended up inside the Kai lani space itself, the blow pushed the portion of the building in by about three feet and broke through the interior wall. Nobody was injured in the incident, which Lavallee said caused substantial damage to the business.

Police: Vehicle transporting Gov. Sununu involved in crash

A vehicle accidentally crashed into Kai lani Massage Specialists in Greenland on Saturday afternoon. Police say the vehicle's operator likely accidentally hit the car's accelerator instead of the brake and drove through the building.

The Lavallees were at home when they received word from one of their employees about the incident. At the time of the accident, there were 11 employees and clients inside Kai lani.

What was good was the room that she (the driver) crashed into, we werent using that evening, Lavallee said of the crash. It was very fortunate that that room wasnt being used.

After initially telling Greenland police that she may have skidded on a patch of black ice, an investigating officer determined the driver of the vehicle likely accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake as she approached the building, according to Lt. David Kurkul. There were no arrests made.

Lavallee said that the incident was a mistake and that they will not be pursuing charges, though hes unsure of a timeline or costs to correct the damage.

Why he likes small towns: Greenland sergeant named Newfields police chief

A vehicle accidentally crashed into Kai lani Massage Specialists in Greenland on Saturday afternoon. Police say the vehicle's operator likely accidentally hit the car's accelerator instead of the brake and drove through the building.

Thats the thing, we dont know anything yet, he said. Were waiting to hear back from contractors to try to find out how long this will take.

In the meantime, Kai lani will remain open for clients, though some appointments may be booked at the business location on Greenleaf Woods Drive in Portsmouth.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Greenland, NH driver crashes into massage storefront, no charges filed
An image of a family moving into a home.

Getty Images.

Moving your family from a single-family house (SFH) to a multifamily home (MFH) will constantly remind you just how profitable property appreciation and rental revenue can be.

A multifamily house is classified as such because it more than one living space under the same roof or on the same land. Traditionally, these homes were designed for different generations of the same family to live together on the same property, but to have designated private living spaces for each household. Today, few families still choose to live this way, so that leaves a lot of properties open for rental opportunities.

These properties are so highly sought after because they have ample space for an owner to provide a high standard of living for their own family, while also generating income by providing the same to others.

It is important to know what to look for in buying a multifamily home, because there are major differences across the purchase types and terms. In the United States, a residential MFH is between two and four units, and a bank will provide a conventional loan to fund it. Anything over five units will require a commercial loan, which requires a different qualification process.

Here are the four most important things to keep in mind in order to purchase the right multifamily house for your family and financial goals.

Shop around for different types of MFHs.

Real estate spans a few different categories: residential, commercial, and industrial. Although an MFH is considered residential if it is under four units, anything over five is considered commercial. That said, a two- to four-unit home doesn't have to fit the mold of a traditional house with separate apartments. There are some that are attached, like a three or four-family home; others may look like an apartment over the garage or a rented pool house.

There are also mixed-use properties, which may have a storefront on the ground level and an apartment or two on top or in back. MFHs are quite diverse, but often, each style of MFH is located in a different zoning areasome are more suburban, others more urban.

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To make matters more complicated, it's also important to be sure that rentals are well-located near commercial real estatesupermarkets, jobs, nightlife, as well as schools and other conveniences. Of course, finding a home in good condition and in a great location can take time.

Not only should you set all your search engines to "multifamily," but you should also reach out to an agent. An agent will go the extra mile to look for SFHs that have the potential to be converted into a multi. They'll consider homes for sale that have lots of acreage, an in-law suite, an annex or pool house, or a finished basement. In many towns, these places can become an MFH, even if they're not one today.

Visit properties in person.

If you find a home online or just passing by, you'll want to check for open houses to visit. Otherwise, contact a real estate agentyour own or the listing agentto schedule time to walk through the home. Although it is unconventional for an SFH seller to be on hand for this, MFH sellers may be on site, and that may be useful.

Sure, the previous owner was a resident, but you should think of them as the previous owner of the business you hope to buy. Many MFH sellers are open to a conversation with potential buyers about rental vacancy, trusted contractors, and the lifespan of some of the major systemsfrom roofing to HVAC to plumbing.

In today's era of virtual stagingin which photos are made to look like the home has furniture and features that are not actually in the spaceaspiring MFH buyers must set eyes on the property they want to buy. This means not assuming that every unit looks exactly the same or has the same finishes.

A visit will help you and your family understand some major elements of the home that will affect the rentroom size, condition of appliances, storage/parking spaces, access to separate entrances, and noise levels from the outside or the other units. These are details that are best answered by an in-person visit. Armed with this information, you can think critically about how much you can charge for rent and the real costs of overhead.

Analyze cash flow.

First-time MFH buyers may find themselves slowly turning into accountants. Doing quick math in your head or with a calculator app will help discerning buyers check potential returns on investments, assets, and cash flow, rather than just looking at materials for countertops and floors.

The fact is, cash flow is very important for every real estate investor and MFH owner. Cash flow is all about how much money your family will take home after all the expenses for the home purchase and rental are covered. This includes the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities, and repairs.

Estimating the total rent is relatively easy; do it by using Zillow and Apartments.com to look at comparable rental properties in your neighborhoodand also at how long properties have been listed on the market. Assuming that it takes about one month to find a renter, you can roughly estimate how much rental income you'd make a year.

Calculating estimated expenses, on the other hand, can be more difficult. Subtract from that total the cost of the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities, and repairs. Plan for other expenses, too: landscaping, property management (if you have it), business expenses such as tax preparation and bookkeeping. Whatever is left over would be your cash flow.

Sometimes cash flow is negative because the required expenses surpass the rental income. In those cases, think realistically about how long it will take to become cash-flow-positiveor at least to break even. This may mean increasing the rent, using lower-cost service providers, or finding other ways to supplement with paid parking, paid storage, or DIY upgrades.

There are lots of real estate rules of thumb to consider, but only you know your financial goals. Search for properties that reach targeted results and exclude those that might be nice to live in but produce no cash flow.

Finance the purchase.

Before making an offer, you'll need to make sure you can afford the house; this is why cash flow is so important. In the United States, buying an investment property typically requires a 20-25% down payment on a bank loan if you're buying a MFH that you and/or your family do not plan to live in. If you do plan to live in the home, however, you may be able to put down as little as 5% with some lenders, based on credit worthiness.

Talk with a conventional lender about your options for an investor vs. FHA loan, based on your finances and goals. If you have your eye set on a property that has over five units, then you'll need to find a bank that offers commercial loans. Ask what those terms include. To qualify for these loans, the lender is less focused on your own salaried income, and more concerned about how much income this property can generate.

Last, MFHs are ripe for creative or non-conforming financing. This could come in a variety of forms. A buyer might pool money from friends, family, and investors to purchase a property in cash. Rather than having a loan with the bank, the buyer would have personal loans or investment terms with each funder.

Also, the seller may be willing to help finance the purchase. All of these arrangements are built on relationshipsand trust between parties could make these kinds of payment plans lucrative for a variety of individuals, instead of a big bank.

The bottom line of buying a MFH:

Finding the perfect multifamily home takes time and effort. There's a significant amount of research needed about the home, the neighborhood, renter quality, and finances. MFH seekers should start well in advance and be patient along the way. This market is much more competitive than the SFH market, and a lot more things can go wrong in the buying process.

To best protect yourself and your family, work closely with real estate agents and professionals who know the pitfallsand don't be afraid to build a relationship with the seller. After all, they have had good memories in this home and may still be personally invested in making it a successful rental business for generations to come.
EVANSTON, Ill. (AP)  Peter Nance scored 15 points and Northwestern cruised past Division II Illinois-Springfield 90-50 on Monday night.

Boo Buie and Ty Berry added 11 points each for the Wildcats (8-2), who won their sixth straight at home.

Northwestern was sharp from the start, scoring the first eight points and building a 20-5 lead before UIS found any offensive consistency. The Wildcats led 47-29 at halftime after making 11 of 15 2-point attempts and shooting 57% overall with 15 assists on 17 made baskets.

Northwestern scored the first 17 points of the second half. James Kelley finally got UIS on the board when he hit a 3-pointer with 13:32 remaining.

Kelley led the Prairie Stars with 14 points and Chris Hamil scored 13.

Northwestern finished at 55% from the field with 24 assists on 32 made baskets. The Wildcats average just 8.8 turnovers per game and had eight in this one. They are third in the nation, committing turnovers on only 12.6% of their possessions.

Northwestern had not played since Dec. 12 against NJIT, a 70-52 victory for the Wildcats. Northwestern's scheduled game on Dec. 18 against DePaul was cancelled due to positive COVID results within the DePaul program.

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More AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
Placeholder for 911 call introduction to Wires and Fires

This story was republished on Jan. 5, 2022 to make it free for all readers

Behind the walls of most every home, a powerful energy force snakes through ceilings and down floorboards, traveling close to the speed of light.

It zips through wires to outlets and into cords that power cellphones and televisions, air conditioners and furnaces.

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Out of sight, electricity is hardly noticed  unless it jumps off course, escaping through a frayed wire, loose connection or overheated outlet. When that happens, it can spit sparks and heat to temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, vaporizing most anything in its path.

In theory, its destruction does not discriminate.

In Milwaukee, it does.

Patricia Colston didnt have much choice of neighborhoods in Milwaukee. Blind in one eye with severe arthritis making it difficult to work, the 53-year-old had trouble paying rent in the past. With multiple evictions on her record, relatives said, she was desperate.

She rented the upper floor of a 1920s bungalow on the citys north side in October 2019. Records show the property on North 14th Street had a history of electrical code violations.

Patricia Colston, a mother and grandmother, died in a suspected electrical fire in 2019 near North 14th Street and West Capitol Drive.

A couple of days after she moved, Colstons friend, 60-year-old Clarence Murrell, was helping her settle in. The pair were likely sleeping as calamity unfolded behind the walls. It was before dawn on a cold Saturday.

By the time the downstairs neighbor smelled it and called 911, it was too late. Thick, sooty smoke had filled the apartment. Firefighters found Colston and Murrell unconscious and were unable to resuscitate them.

Police and fire reports were clear: Fire was smoldering among the electrical wires in the space behind the walls. They suspected thats where it started. Electrical testing was needed to confirm, they wrote.

But that didnt happen. Instead, the fire was treated as a tragic accident.

Six blocks away, in the previous year, investigators found that faulty wires ignited a fire that ripped through another rental unit. The tenants had repeatedly complained to the landlord about sparking outlets, according to police reports.

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And just this past April, fire devoured the top floor of another nearby duplex with a litany of unfixed electrical violations  so many that the city had issued a warrant for the landlords arrest.

Those fires, too, were considered mere accidents, despite the complaints, violations and what electricians say: Most electrical fires are predictable and preventable.

These cases are not anomalies. They represent a little-known and life-threatening disparity in Milwaukee, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has found.

Fires suspected to be started by faulty electrical wiring scorch homes in Milwaukees poorest ZIP code at five times the rate of the rest of the city.

The already distressed 53206 ZIP code  and areas surrounding it  are the epicenter for electrical fire danger in the city.

Police and fire investigators, as well as federal, state and local officials, do little to stop it, the Journal Sentinel found.

The people affected the most: low-income Black renters.

Authorities, by their own admission, routinely do not thoroughly investigate electrical fires, marking their causes as undetermined and, in the process, denying families closure and legal recourse and leaving policymakers in the dark about the problem and how to address it.

Will Sherard, the owner of the house where Colston and Murrell were killed, denied any knowledge of what caused the fire.

There was no electrical fire over there, Sherard told a Journal Sentinel reporter. I do not know what happened over there.

Sherard said he had never seen the police or fire reports that both stated faulty electrical wiring likely started the fire. The Journal Sentinel left a copy of the reports for him at his office. He has declined to answer additional questions.

The Journal Sentinel's findings expose another systemic assault on the already beleaguered 53206 neighborhood, which has long suffered from neglect and discrimination by governments and corporations. The home where Colston and Murrell perished sits in the heart of a community that, aside from small pockets of stability, faces the city's most severe poverty, crime, unemployment and evictions rates  essentially trapping many families in substandard housing.

Nearly 95% of the population in 53206 is Black, and more than half are renters. Electrical fires disproportionately ravage rental properties: A Journal Sentinel analysis of fires from 2009-19 showed that while an average of 30% of the citys homes were renter-occupied, 62% of suspected electrical fires occurred in rental units. And nearly two-thirds of the fires took place in ZIP codes that are predominantly Black.

Electrical fires often start in concealed spaces, making them stealthy and more deadly than other kinds, such as cooking fires.

While electrical fires account for an estimated 10% of all residential fires, they cause 18% of the fatalities, according to the National Fire Protection Association, an international nonprofit organization that conducts research on fires.

The association estimates that every year 300 to 500 people nationwide die, and more than 1,200 are injured in residential electrical fires.

But the associations figures are significantly undercounted because they are dependent upon shoddy data and incomplete reporting from government entities, cloaking the full scope of the problem, the Journal Sentinels investigation found.

In fact, the fire that killed Colston and Murrell wasnt included in government data used to calculate the association's figures.

Placeholder image for 53206 Wires and Fires interactive map.

Milwaukee once had several safeguards in place that helped detect dangerous wiring and other problems. But starting in 2011, a group of state lawmakers, some moonlighting as landlords, dismantled the safeguards in a series of sweeping laws promoting the interests of landlords.

Milwaukees Department of Neighborhood Services, whose mission includes protecting renters safety, has failed to hold unscrupulous landlords accountable as violations mount, allowing them to continue renting unsafe units.

Mayor Tom Barrett declined interview requests, referring questions to Erica Roberts, the city's commissioner of building inspections.

When told of the Journal Sentinel's findings, Roberts said: This is interesting data, and its sad data.

Roberts said the city does what it can to protect renters. We do everything in our power within the ordinances, she said. Were certainly open to suggestions.

Milwaukee police and fire departments dont have electrical engineers on staff. If they dont suspect arson or homicide, they dont typically investigate electrical fires, they said. The same is true of the state fire marshal.

Heiner Giese, an attorney for the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin, a landlord trade group that lobbied in favor of the landlord-friendly laws passed by state lawmakers, said he wasnt aware that Black renters in Milwaukee were being disproportionately affected by suspected electrical fires and that little was being done to prevent the problem.

No landlord wants to wake up and see on the news theyve had a fire and one of their tenants has died, Giese said. Do we need more inspections and new laws that require better electricity in older buildings? That depends on how many people are killed or injured in a year for whom such inspections would help.

Colstons nephew, 29-year-old Earl McDougle of Milwaukee, said he is shocked by how little anyone has cared about the deaths of his aunt and her friend.

I still feel rage, he said, and feel like she still aint got justice.

Warrant doesnt stop landlord from renting

Ricky Carter frequently had seen lights flicker in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend near North 15th Street and West North Avenue. But on the night of April 26, something was different.

Carter was getting ready for bed. His girlfriend, Leilani Zollicoffer, was asleep; so were her daughters, ages 5 and 2. The lights in the living room and kitchen flickered, rapidly. Carter said he smelled burning and heard a faint beeping from the smoke detector.

When he looked to find the source, he saw an odd sight: smoke coming up from the living room floor. He shook his girlfriend awake, and the couple rushed in to get the girls, whose bedroom was filled with smoke.

The family hustled out and called 911. They watched as firefighters hosed down the house. Their belongings were destroyed.

Ricky Carter reviews police records on a fire that occurred in a unit he shared with his girlfriend, Leilani Zollicoffer, and her two young daughters.

That fire could have started in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep. Then what? Zollicoffer, 24, said.

Carter, 30, said he had been worried about the electrical system. I thought something was going to happen, he said. I just didnt expect it to happen that soon.

In their report, firefighters wrote, This fire appears to have been caused by an electrical issue. But as with the deadly fire that claimed the lives of Colston and Murrell, the reports reveal that little investigation was done into the specific cause of the blaze. Officials labeled it undetermined.

Records show the duplex on North 15th Street had a documented history of electrical violations dating to at least 2012, revealing failures by city regulators, courts and others to hold unresponsive landlords accountable.

The property changed hands several times over the last decade, with a man named Tommy Cole purchasing it in 2016. Cole failed to fix electrical problems or pay fines associated with the violations, resulting in a warrant for his arrest, records show. The warrant against Cole remains active, according to records.

Cole and his attorney did not return calls and emails from the Journal Sentinel. Cole, who served time in federal prison on a 2006 drug conviction, pleaded guilty to new federal drug charges in 2019. He is awaiting sentencing, records show.

He sold the duplex to Dominique McKinney and Jerome Ward in April 2019. That same month the city again issued electrical violations on the North 15th Street property.

The city immediately began warning McKinney to fix the faulty electrical system, which, reports show, appeared to be the work of a handyman, not a licensed electrician. There were double-tapped breakers in the service box  which can overload the system and cause sparks  and other serious safety violations, according to the report.

Shortly after inspection reports were sent to McKinney, city inspector Matthew Jenrich personally delivered the order to fix the violations to her on May 9, 2019. I also told her that as long as they are working on correcting the violations, we can work with them, he wrote in a report.

A suspected electrical fire in April destroyed belongings of renter Leilani Zollicoffer, who lived with her boyfriend, Ricky Carter, and her two daughters.

A month later, Jenrich spoke to a renter living in the duplex and was told nothing had been done by McKinney about the electrical violations, according to city records.

The following month, in July 2019, the case and a $980 fine were referred to municipal court. McKinney failed to pay the fine, and, as with the previous owner, a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Yet the municipal courts own practice undercuts its effectiveness when it comes to such warrants. The court generally allows for people with municipal warrants to have at least four contacts with police, for things like speeding, before police carry out the arrest order.

The approach was adopted in an effort to stop the practice of jailing low-income people who might not be able to pay fines and traffic tickets. Landlords and others who can pay fines benefit.

Records show the city continued to warn McKinney to fix the electrical problems, notifying her by letter or in person at least seven more times after the warrant was issued. Records do not show that McKinney fixed the problems.

The city has the power to declare, on an emergency basis, a house to be unfit to inhabit when the home constitutes a substantial threat to the health or safety of tenants. The city can placard the property, which means posting signs barring people from living there. In this case, the city declined to do so.

At no time in our involvement with this property  did we believe that the observed electrical violations constituted a placard, Steph OConnor, a city spokeswoman, wrote in an email. We do not take the placarding of a property lightly and we are constantly weighing the risks of violations against the risk of displacement and potential homelessness when placarding occupied properties.

Roberts, the citys building inspection commissioner, said she reviewed the case carefully and, despite the eventual fire, believes the city handled it properly.

I felt comfortable that we did the best we could, she said.

The warrant for McKinney was issued in 2020 and was active at the time Zollicoffer rented the upper flat from her in November.

Zollicoffer said she was concerned about the electrical system in the house soon after she moved in: Some outlets didnt work. An overhead light was inoperable. When they plugged a lamp into one outlet, the lightbulb popped and then stopped working, she said.

Zollicoffer complained to McKinney about the electrical problems as well as the heat not working. She said she called McKinney repeatedly and sent several text messages, which she provided to the Journal Sentinel. Nothing was fixed, Zollicoffer said.

McKinney did not respond to messages left at her home by a Journal Sentinel reporter. Reached by phone later, McKinney was asked about the electrical violations at the rental unit and the fire. McKinney said she couldnt talk but would be available to comment later. She has since failed to return repeated phone messages.

The other owner, Ward, is facing drug charges in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties. He and his attorney did not return repeated phone calls from the Journal Sentinel.

Zollicoffer said she couldnt believe that McKinney was allowed to rent out the unit given her flouting of the citys authority, to the point that a warrant was issued for her arrest.

I feel like she should be in jail, Zollicoffer said. We were homeless and house-hopping, and now we are back to square one.

The day after the April blaze, Zollicoffer recalled she was texting with McKinney about the fire and the many problems with the rental unit that were not fixed, including the lack of heat.

McKinneys response: You warm?

'It's beyond our scope'

When fire investigators dont believe a fire was started intentionally or a crime was involved, they often dont dig deeper.

That isnt really what we do, said Andrew Timm, assistant chief with the Milwaukee Fire Department. Its beyond our scope.

In fact, fire investigators with the state Department of Justice and the Milwaukee police and fire departments acknowledge that unless a crime is likely involved, they do not investigate most suspected electrical fires, labeling them accidents and listing their causes as undetermined.

More than 75% of suspected electrical fires in Milwaukees single- and two-family homes had the cause listed as undetermined or accidental, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of fires from 2014-19.

If we find an electrical issue  if its degraded wiring or loose connections or conductors  we may stop short, said Brian Liethen, a special agent with the state Arson Bureau. Because if its not a crime, we can allow others to come up with the exact cause.

Nationwide, regulators have long known that failure to nail down the precise cause of a fire allows those responsible to escape accountability and perpetuates the problem. A 2014 report by the National Association of State Fire Marshals found that the lack of thorough investigations and determination of the causes of fires were nationwide concerns. The report noted: What gets measured, gets fixed.

Electrical fires usually start in a handful of ways. Damaged wiring insulation, resulting in exposed and touching wires, can cause electricity to jump or arc, generating heat or sparks. Broken light switches, loose outlets and service panels installed by unqualified contractors are also common causes of electrical fires.

Placeholder for Wires and Fires interactive electrical explainer.

Landlords often blame tenants for dangerous extension cord use, but city regulators say the responsibility falls on landlords to make sure there are enough outlets and that they are working, reducing the need for extension cords.

While police and fire officials dont usually drill down into the causes of electrical fires, insurance companies, which have a vested interest, often do.

But when landlords pay cash for buildings rather than take out loans  as is common in distressed areas of Milwaukee  theyre not required to have insurance.

Insurance companies are not subject to public open records laws, and so its difficult to know how many rental properties are not insured.

In a random sample of 25 rental properties in the 53206 ZIP code, however, the Journal Sentinel found 75% had no mortgage loans on file with the Milwaukee County Register of Deeds  meaning they likely didnt have a mortgage and thus were not required to have insurance.

In the case where Colston and Murrell died, landlord Sherard told police he had no insurance, according to the police report.

No insurance, no further investigation. And no accountability.

Wow, said city Ald. Khalif Rainey, whose district includes a portion of 53206 and surrounding ZIP codes, when the Journal Sentinel told him the findings of its investigation. You mean to tell me theyre renting uninsured homes to renters?

Rainey said he wasnt aware electrical fires were such a problem. Thats not surprising considering data collection about electrical fires at the local, regional and national level is scant and based on voluntary participation. The U.S. Fire Administration does not require the nations 30,000 fire departments to report fires, even when they result in death.

Resource: Tips for renters to avoid electrical problem

And often when the fires are reported  about three-quarters of the fire departments do submit at least partial data  key details are frequently missing, including information about the cause and whether there were any fatalities.

Of the Wisconsin residential structure fires reported into the National Fire Incident Reporting System from 2014-19, 60% listed nothing in the box for factors contributing to ignition, the Journal Sentinel analysis showed.

Based on the limited entries that did include factors that started the fires, the national database indicates there are an average of 30 suspected electrical fires across the city of Milwaukee every year, five of which occur in the 53206 ZIP code.

The database also showed that between 2009 and 2019 there were at least 3,077 suspected electrical fires in Wisconsin homes  an average of about 280 every year and a 40% increase during the 11-year period.

To find what government data failed to record, the Journal Sentinel pieced together information on residential electrical fires in Wisconsin through open records requests with local fire departments, medical examiners offices, city departments of neighborhood services and state fire marshals as well as the national database maintained by the U.S. Fire Administration.

The national database lists 229 fire-related deaths statewide from 2009-19, with eight deaths in Milwaukee.

In reality, Milwaukee had at least 68 fire-related deaths, the Journal Sentinel found.

Safeguards stripped away

As other cities and states enact protections for tenants, Milwaukee and Wisconsin are headed in the other direction. What few safeguards the city and state did have were rolled back in a series of landlord-friendly bills passed by the state Legislature and Milwaukee Common Council in the past decade.

The front line in protection for renters is the Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services. Yet the department doesnt routinely inspect single- and two-family rental units, leaving tenants on their own to determine if they are safe.

The city also softened its permitting requirements for some electrical work, such as replacing outlets and switches. In a council meeting in 2013, Tom Mishefske, operations director for the neighborhood services department, said some electrical work didnt need the citys oversight and that the change was a minor lightening of the requirements. He equated changing an electrical switch or outlet to replacing a faucet on a kitchen sink.

Tips: Know of something that needs to be investigated? We want to hear from you.

In a recent interview with the Journal Sentinel, Mishefske said the change in the permitting requirement was the result of pressure from some members of the Common Council and property owners.

We got a lot of heat from rehabbers and others, including aldermen, he said.

Pulling a permit triggers an inspection by the citys electrical experts who can verify whether the work was done properly.

In the house where Colston and Murrell died, inspectors ordered a permit be pulled for electrical repairs in 2017, two years before the fire. The Journal Sentinel could find no permit on file.

Danell Cross, a longtime resident of neighborhoods next to the 53206 ZIP code who herself escaped a blaze in a unit she was renting, said the problem begins with a lack of accountability.

'People are dying, and they are not telling us who is responsible for that loss of life,' says Danell Cross, Metcalfe Park Community Bridges director, shown at a community event in 2014.

People are dying, and they are not telling us who is responsible for that loss of life, said Cross, now director of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, a nonprofit neighborhood improvement group. And that is something that needs to change.

Regarding the duplex where Carter, Zollicoffer and her two young daughters narrowly escaped, Cross said: "If this was a young white family in a white neighborhood, they would not have even been allowed in that house with those code violations."

State lawmakers outlawed the city's residential rental inspection program five years ago at the prompting of the Wisconsin Realtors Association and the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin. Both groups had lobbied the Legislature to pass a law banning such programs.

The inspection program required rental units in certain neighborhoods with many negligent landlords to be certified by building inspectors.

The Realtors and apartment associations argued such programs were costly and unfair.

Representatives of at least two neighborhood associations wrote to city and state officials expressing support for Milwaukees program and their concern that lawmakers sponsoring the changes had conflicts of interest, emails obtained by the Journal Sentinel show.

Inexplicably, this bill will reward the bad apples, wrote Bill Werner, president of the Mariners Neighborhood Association, in a 2015 email to city and state lawmakers. It is troubling that of the five sponsors/co-sponsor of the bill, three are listed in the Blue Book as realtors and one is a former broker.

At least one study showed Milwaukees residential rental inspection program worked.

A 2014 analysis by the citys Department of Neighborhood Services found the number of violations spiked in the previous five years and then declined over time, indicating problems were being addressed, according to the authors. And, the analysis found, complaints from renters to city aldermen about the condition of their apartments and the responsiveness of landlords dropped substantially.

The program allowed inspectors access to properties in vulnerable areas and routinely exposed violations for such things as defective electrical switches, improper wiring and missing fire safety alarms, the authors wrote. They also said the program encouraged landlords to take a more proactive approach to maintenance.

The program was so successful they recommended expanding it into other neighborhoods.

Since the routine inspections ended, the number of properties being cited for violations in the neighborhoods that the program targeted has dropped nearly 80%, a Journal Sentinel analysis showed. City officials say that's most likely because tenants are afraid to call and complain and, as a result, inspectors aren't getting to the properties.

In another change in 2016, then-Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a provision that said properties did not need to be inspected and brought up to code at the time of sale. In Milwaukee, that nixed an exterior inspection of all properties changing hands.

Wisconsin law changed again in 2018 and now allows rental inspection programs but caps the fees that cities can charge landlords to do inspections. City officials say the change makes it cost-prohibitive and therefore they are not doing them.

It is the responsibility of the landlord to maintain their property and provide a safe unit for the tenant, said Mishefske, the neighborhood services official. If we get a complaint, well investigate.

That kind of complaint-based system is deeply flawed, according to tenant advocacy groups.

Tenants often dont have the expertise, and they worry they may be evicted for complaining, said Gregory Miao, an attorney with ChangeLab Solutions, a national health equity and housing improvement group based in Oakland, California. He said at least 15 of the nations largest cities, including Baltimore, Minneapolis and Boston, have various types of residential rental inspection programs.

It saves lives, Miao said.

Violations preceded fatal fire

In October 2019, Patricia Colston was already renting from Will Sherard  known in Milwaukee for his poor upkeep of dozens of properties  before she moved to the North 14th Street duplex where she died.

Sherard, who was jailed for several days in 2011 by a federal judge for failing to follow court orders and clean up lead paint in his units, was also threatened with jail in 2018 for failing to pay more than $60,000 in fines from code violations. Faced with being locked up again, Sherard paid a portion of the fines and set up a monthly payment schedule.

Landlord Will Sherard attends a sheriff's sale of foreclosed properties in 2016.

Sherard had sold the place where Colston had been living. He offered her the option to move to another of his rentals on North 14th Street, just off West Capitol Drive. Family members told the Journal Sentinel Sherard didnt mention any problems with the electricity in the house. But records show the property had been repeatedly cited for potentially hazardous electrical wiring that was improperly installed or defective.

The place was also a mess, the family members said; somebody elses belongings were still scattered throughout when Colston moved in.

Her friend, Clarence Murrell, offered to help her clean on the evening of Oct. 11.

Before sunrise, a downstairs neighbor smelled smoke and called 911.

It smells like its burning, the woman told the dispatcher. It smells like something electrical is set on fire and its burning.

Firefighters arrived at 6:17 a.m. They saw no smoke outside, the reports say. They inspected the basement and entire first floor with a thermal imaging camera. When they moved up to the second floor they still found no heat.

But when they opened the door to Colstons apartment, heavy smoke poured out. They could see fire burning in a living room wall. It took them less than 25 seconds to put it out.

Clarence Murrell and his daughter, Angel Sodamade.

When firefighters moved to the back of the house, they found Colston and Murrell on the kitchen floor, 10 feet apart near the back door. They were covered in soot and unresponsive and were pronounced dead soon after.

The autopsies list their cause of death as smoke and soot inhalation.

Murrells family last year filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Sherard and his company, Morocco Investments, alleging the landlord failed to maintain the electrical system in the duplex where Murrell and Colston died. The family's attorney, Justin Padway, said he is taking depositions and that no trial date has been set.

Angel Sodamade, Murrells daughter and a plaintiff in the case, said her father deserved to be safe.

"I lost a father, and my son lost his grandfather, she said. We want justice and to ensure that no other family is harmed at the hands of Sherard and other reckless landlords."

Sherard's attorney in the case, Robert Meyeroff, declined to be interviewed.

Sherard bought the house where Colston and Murrell died from a sheriffs sale for $12,100 in 2014, records show. Following complaints three years later, the city cited the property for 28 code violations, including several pertaining to electrical problems. Its unclear whether the electrical problems were properly fixed as the Journal Sentinel could find no permit on file  despite the citys orders that a permit be pulled.

You dont just buy some property and slap some paint on the wall and throw somebody in it, said Tiffany McCarver, Colstons daughter. (Sherard) should have had it up to date, and it should have been checked out.  When you pay rent somewhere, you pay to feel safe, not to worry about if your house is going to catch on fire.

Tiffany McCarver outside the home on North 14th Street where her mother, Patricia Colston, died in a fire.

Sherard sold the house several weeks after the fire for $20,000. The new owner took out a permit in March to upgrade the electrical service to the building, according to city records.

McCarver, a 35-year-old from Milwaukee, said she could not salvage any of her mothers belongings after the fire because they were all destroyed, covered in black soot.

And, she said, the landlord refused to return the rent or her mothers security deposit.

He said he wouldnt because her stuff was still in the house, McCarver said.

Contact Raquel Rutledge at (414) 224-2778 or raquel.rutledge@jrn.com; John Diedrich at (414) 224-2408 or jdiedrich@gannett.com; and Daphne Chen at (414) 224-2064 or dchen@gannett.com.

How we did it

To examine which communities are most vulnerable to deadly electrical fires, the Journal Sentinel pieced together data from a number of government databases, including city property records, building violations data and national fire incident data.

First, reporters used the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), a database of fire department responses maintained by the U.S. Fire Administration since 1976, to isolate the 8,000-plus residential structure fires reported in the city of Milwaukee from 2009 to 2019. To determine whether a fire had suspected electrical origins, the Journal Sentinel looked for electrical-related codes in two categories  factors contributing to ignition and equipment involved in ignition  the same methodology used by the National Fire Protection Administration. The Journal Sentinel used any additional details available within the database and from the Milwaukee fire and police departments and the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office to weed out fires that may have been electrical in nature but likely caused by tenant error such as placing a towel over a space heater or lint buildup in a clothes dryer.

Reporters then merged the fire data with the City of Milwaukees master property file to determine which neighborhoods had higher rates of electrical fires. To examine if electrical fires affected renters more frequently than owners, reporters used the same database to identify whether the parcel was owner-occupied at the time of the fire.

The NFIRS database has several limitations noted in the story, notably that reporting is voluntary. Despite reporting improvements over the past 10 years and the Milwaukee Fire Departments reassurance that the department attempts to report all incidents to the database, the Journal Sentinel found that many fires still go unreported. In addition, reporters found that officials fail to deeply investigate the cause of many fires and simply classify them as "undetermined," further undercounting the true incidence of electrical fires.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: c
NEW ORLEANS --News Direct-- Entergy Corporation

Partnering food pantries and nonprofits provide relief following Hurricane Ida and during the holidays

NEW ORLEANS, December 21, 2021 /3BL Media/ - Entergy stepped beyond the power grid again this year to support its communities in Louisiana by partnering with food pantries and nonprofits to fight community hunger. Throughout the year, including the holiday season, the company provided more than $300,000 to make sure thousands of families had access to nutritious food and other necessities.

Families will receive meals through the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank and The Salvation Armys Holiday Food Box program. In Orleans Parish, Giving Hope NOLA, Heroes of New Orleans and Second Harvest Food Bank will provide food for families. In northeast Louisiana, low-income elderly residents will receive food from the Food Bank of Northeast Louisiana. In southwest Louisiana, residents in need will receive a hot meal through Abrahams Tent Association. In addition, families affected by Hurricane Ida received food through Terrebonne Churches United Food Bank; a grant from Entergy helped the organization purchase a new walk-in freezer earlier this year.

These are just a few examples of how Entergy is helping fight hunger, a real threat to one-in-five Louisianans, according to Feeding Louisiana. The organization says 750,000 Louisianans qualified as food insecure prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and the number increased to 930,000 at the height of the pandemic.

We know the pandemic and historic hurricane seasons have only increased economic hardships for people in our communities and thats why supporting local food pantries and nonprofits providing disaster relief is so important to us, said Phillip May, Entergy Louisiana president and CEO. Please join us in supporting these community service organizations that are working incredibly hard to make sure our neighbors are healthy and safe, not only during the holiday season but all year long.

While we work with our community partners to help bring New Orleanians a sense of normalcy, we recognize that many of our neighbors are still in need of a helping hand, said Deanna Rodriguez, Entergy New Orleans president and CEO. No family should ever have to go hungry. Thats why we not only contribute funding to support critical community services, but we also volunteer to prepare and deliver meals for families in need.

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Learn more about Louisiana food pantries by visiting https://www.foodpantries.org/st/louisiana or https://www.feedinglouisiana.org/get-help.

Entergy New Orleans, LLC is an electric and gas utility that serves Louisianas Orleans Parish. The company provides electricity to more than 205,000 customers and natural gas to more than 108,000 customers.

Entergy Louisiana, LLC provides electric service to approximately 1.1 million customers and natural gas service to more than 93,000 customers in the greater Baton Rouge area. It has operations in southern, central and northern Louisiana.

Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) is an integrated energy company engaged in electric power production, transmission and retail distribution operations. Entergy delivers electricity to 3 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy owns and operates one of the cleanest large-scale U.S. power generating fleets with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including 7,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, Entergy has annual revenues of $10 billion and approximately 12,500 employees. Learn more at entergy.com and follow @Entergy on social media.

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Entergy Corporation on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/entergy-grants-provide-meals-to-those-in-need-across-louisiana-858985765
JOHANNESBURG (AP)  Former South African President Jacob Zuma will be allowed to appeal a court ruling that ordered him back to jail to serve the remainder of his sentence, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Zuma, 80, had been released on medical parole earlier this year, but the Gauteng High Court in the capital, Pretoria, ruled last week that his parole had been illegal. On Tuesday, Judge Elias Matojane said the ex-president can now appeal that finding.

Because of his illness and advanced age, he needs compassion, empathy and humanness," Matojane said of Zuma in delivering the judgment.

Zuma was convicted and sentenced for defying a court order ordering that he appear before a government-backed commission probing allegations of corruption during his tenure as president from 2009 to 2018.

Zumas release on medical parole had been granted by former correctional services commissioner Arthur Fraser against the recommendation of the parole board.

He served nearly two months of his 15-month sentence, but this was mainly in the hospital wing of the Estcourt Correctional Center and a hospital in Pretoria, where he underwent surgery in August this year.

Zumas lawyer, Dali Mpofu, had argued that returning him to jail is equivalent to a death sentence.

You are saying he must return to that place where the medical doctors and prison authorities say they cannot cater for him, Mpofu said. Then what else is going to happen except that he must die there."

Zumas imprisonment in July sparked protests by supporters who demanded his immediate pardon and release from jail.

The protests quickly descended into chaotic violence in which trucks were burned, shops and warehouses looted and burned. More than 300 people died in the countrys worst violence since the end of apartheid in 1994.
By Deena Beasley

(Reuters) -Pardes Biosciences on Tuesday said early human testing of its experimental COVID-19 antiviral pill supports its potential as a standalone treatment and announced plans to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company.

If the drug, PBI-0451, proves effective in later-stage testing, it could have an advantage over similar medicines that need to be taken with a second, booster medication, such as Pfizer Inc's two-drug antiviral regimen, Paxlovid, now under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Pardes said it expects to complete its current Phase I study in healthy volunteers early next year. It aims to begin by mid-year a larger trial that could be used to seek regulatory approval for the COVID-19 antiviral pill.

"We're hoping to be able to move as quickly as possible and generate significant data in 2022," said Chief Development Officer Brian Kearney.

There are currently no authorized oral COVID-19 treatments. But they are expected to become important tools against the illness because they can be taken at home early after symptoms appear to keep people out of the hospital.

The Pardes drug is a protease inhibitor, designed to prevent the coronavirus from replicating in human cells. That is the same class of medicine as Pfizer's nirmatrelvir, which in combination with the older antiviral ritonavir was shown to cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% for COVID-19 patients at high risk of severe illness.

Ritonavir is used to extend the action of the Pfizer pill, but can also interfere with some other medicines a patient may be taking, raising the risk of complications.

"We believe the ability to have an unboosted regimen will be important," Pardes Chief Executive Uri Lopatin told Reuters. He said that in the United States, one in five adults are on at least one prescription medication.

Pfizer, which says the issue of drug-drug interactions is manageable, is awaiting emergency authorization from the FDA for Paxlovid.

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"If you look at hepatitis C and HIV as proxies for COVID, you'll see first generation compounds come out and then over time you'll see better and better options," said Jim Tananbaum, founder and CEO of healthcare investment firm Foresite Capital.

Some newer hepatitis C drugs were considered to be advances in part because they were highly effective without the need for ritonavir.

Foresite is the sponsor of FS Development Corp II, a so-called blank check company set up to raise cash for acquisitions as an alternative to a traditional initial public offering. A shareholder vote on the merger of Pardes and FS II is scheduled for Thursday.

Company officials said Pardes plans to talk with regulators about the design of a larger, global trial of PBI-0451, including the number of participants and geographic locations.

(Reporting By Deena BeasleyEditing by Bill Berkrot)
By Jonathan Saul, Marwa Rashad and Davide Barbuscia

LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar plans to invest at least $10 billion in U.S. ports and has approached international banks for financing help, three finance sources say, in an infrastructure spree that reflects the Gulf country's deepening ties with Washington.

The Middle East and Western sources familiar with the matter said Doha was targeting investments in ports around the U.S. East Coast which were expected to be developed in phases, adding that the plan was at a preliminary stage.

The country's sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority and the Qatar Government Communication Office both declined to comment.

"The Qataris have been preparing for almost a year to test the waters with U.S. port investments," said Michael Frodl, a U.S.-based adviser on projects including maritime security, commerce and infrastructure, who is familiar with Qatar's strategy.

"We think that a shrewd investor with the $10 billion the Qataris desire to put into American port infrastructure would likely look at the underserved East Coast first and foremost. The West Coast is getting all the U.S. government and private investment attention, while the East Coast is long overdue for improvements."

Frodl said ports with easy access to highways and rail lines would be a priority.

"We'd be looking at aging medium-sized ports south of Boston and north of Jacksonville," he added.

A Middle East-based source said the investments would be backed by debt, which would be linked to the port assets, adding that Qatar was in early discussions with banks to look for a structuring adviser.

The banks being approached included Morgan Stanley, HSBC and Credit Suisse, two of the sources said.

Morgan Stanley, HSBC and Credit Suisse declined to comment.

In November Congress approved U.S. President Joe Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, which port and industry sources say includes $5.22 billion of federal funding for port specific programmes, falling short of the tens of billions of dollars estimated to be needed for investment in creaking infrastructure.

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U.S. transport secretary Pete Buttigieg told an online news briefing with the Port of Los Angeles on Nov. 16 that while Washington was delivering a "historic level of funding" to improve ports, "it can't all be from federal grants".

"We're going to have to keep working with local, state and private partners in order to make sure that we have the kinds of resources that are needed," Buttigieg said.

There are around 360 ports in the United States, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Middle East-based source said Qatar could look to target three port projects.

A fourth finance source separately confirmed Qatar's investment plans in the United States.

Qatar currently has minimal holdings in overseas ports. However, last year the states commercial ports operator, QTerminals, purchased the Turkish port of Akdeniz and entered into an agreement to develop the Black Sea port of Olvia in Ukraine.

STRONGER TIES

Relations between the United States and Qatar have deepened after the small, wealthy Gulf monarchy forged close ties with the Taliban, playing a key role in the talks that led to the 2020 deal for the U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan this year.

Washington and Doha signed an accord in November for Qatar to represent U.S. diplomatic interests in Afghanistan.

"Qatari interest in investing in U.S. infrastructure dates back to at least 2016," Frodl said.

"Things would have been more advanced if it was not for the previous Trump administration, which was closely aligned with the Saudis."

(Reporting by Jonathan Saul and Marwa Rashad in London, Davide Barbuscia, Yousef Saba and Saeed Azhar in Dubai and Andrew Mills in Doha, editing by Rachel Armstrong and Susan Fenton)
(Reuters) - Several countries reimposed social distancing measures, while surging COVID-19 cases in New York City and across the United States over the weekend dashed hopes for a more normal holiday season.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

AMERICAS

* The Omicron variant accounts for 73% of U.S. infections based on sequencing data for the week ended Dec. 18, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

* The CDC and the State Department advised Americans against travel to eight destinations including Spain and Finland, but top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said the Biden administration is considering easing travel restrictions to Southern African countries.

* U.S. President Joe Biden tested negative after he was notified that a mid-level White House staff member who spent about 30 minutes near him on Air Force One on Friday tested positive.

* Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said a rapid COVID-19 test that she had taken proved to be positive.

* Panama has detected its first Omicron case, while neighbouring Costa Rica detected three more confirmed cases.

* Colombia has also identified three cases of the Omicron variant in the country.

EUROPE

* British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would tighten coronavirus curbs to slow the spread of the Omicron variant if needed.

* The European Union approved the use of Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine in people 18 years and older, paving the way for a fifth shot in the EU.

* The Russian maker of the Sputnik V vaccine is due to submit its latest clinical data by the end of December, with manufacturing site inspections expected to follow in February, a World Health Organization official said.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* New Zealand postponed its phased border re-opening plans until the end of February.

* Australia must move past "the heavy hand of government" and authorities must stop shutting down people's lives with lockdowns, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

* Singapore said preliminary tests had detected two suspected Omicron cases linked to a gym, with results for a third case related to the gym pending.

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MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Kuwait will require anyone who has been fully vaccinated for nine months to get a booster shot.

* South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has returned to work after finishing a week of self-isolation due to testing positive for COVID-19.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* The Omicron variant is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in the vaccinated or who have recovered from COVID-19, the head of the World Health Organization said. [L1N2T51H0]

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Asian stocks rose on Tuesday, shrugging off a bruising Wall Street session, as Chinese markets cheered Beijing's push to help troubled property firms, although surging cases of the Omicron variant persist as a worry for investors. [MKTS/GLOB]

* British business confidence began to feel the impact of the Omicron variant this month, alongside further upward pressure on prices and staffing costs, a survey showed.

(Compiled by Devika Syamnath and Aditya Soni; Edited by Maju Samuel and Shounak Dasgupta)
A red ribbon is displayed on the North Portico of the White House to recognize World AIDS Day on 1 December, 2021 in Washington. (Getty Images)

The US has approved a long-acting pre-exposure prevention treatment (PrEP), named Apretude, to help people avoid HIV infection.

The FDA announced on Monday that Apretude (cabotegravir extended-release injectable suspension) will be available to at-risk individuals who weigh at least 5.5 stone (more than 77 pounds).

There are currently daily HIV prevention oral medications like Truvada available, but Apretude is a bi-monthly treatment with two initial shots at the beginning of a course (one month apart), and can be given as few as six times per year. Recipients have to test negative for HIV before the drug is administered.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) the owners of ViiV Healthcare, which produces the drug, explained that Apretude demonstrated superior efficacy to a daily oral PrEP option.

The injectable treatment was given to 7,700 participants across 13 countries. Cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men were 69 per cent less at risk of getting infected with HIV over taking an oral drug, while cisgender women were 90 per cent less at risk of getting HIV using the injectable drug over an oral drug.

Taking a daily pill to prevent HIV can be a huge burden explained Gabriel Maldonado, from public policy group TruEvolution, people can experience stigma, fears about accidental disclosure of their medicine, as well as general complications from daily living, he explained. Together, these issues may contribute to low rates of PrEP usage and the expansion of the HIV epidemic.

Its thought the drug will make a huge difference to those disproportionately affected by HIV, including those in Black/African American and Latinx communities who have sex with men, plus those who are dealing with substance use disorders, depression and poverty.

Women from sub-Saharan Africa are twice as likely to contract HIV as their male counterparts, according to GSK, but so far the US is the only country to approve the use of Apretude.

We have the tools to end the HIV epidemic through the implementation of effective antiretroviral treatment and HIV prevention, said Richard Elion, Director of Research at Washington Health Institute. PrEP has played a vital role in protecting people from acquiring HIV. With the availability of cabotegravir long-acting for PrEP as an injection every two months to prevent HIV, people now have an important new option besides daily medication. This long-acting medication offers more options for prevention, and now providers and patients will be empowered by choices and the ability to choose the approach that is optimal for each individual.

Around 38 million people worldwide are living with HIV, some 1.7 million people contract HIV each year. GSK estimates that fewer than 25 per cent of people who are at risk in the US are taking a preventative drug. Apretude will be available from early 2022.
Flagler Health+ bought 70 acres of land west of the Palm Coast Parkway and U.S. 1 intersection to build a new hospital.

Flagler Health+ purchased 70 acres of property in Palm Coast with plans to build a comprehensive health complex, including a hospital, on the west side of the U.S. 1 and Palm Coast Parkway intersection, officials announced.

"The scope and timing of the hospital campus project is still in development," said hospital spokeswoman Gina Mangus in an emailed statement. "We are excited to bring locally based hospital care and more services to the region that truly serve the unique needs of this very special community."

The hospital system paid more than $2.2 million for the property, according to Flagler County Chairman Joe Mullins.

This is the second new hospital announced in Flagler County this year. In January, AdventHealth, which operates the only operational hospital in the county, announced plans to construct a $145-million, 100-bed hospital off Palm Coast Parkway near Bridgehaven Drive. The hospital system broke ground in September and the facility is expected to open in the spring of 2023.

More new hospitals: AdventHealth breaks ground on new Palm Coast facility, 2nd hospital in Flagler

Health news: AdventHealth to construct $100M hospital in Flagler County

Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin said the city needs more health-care services.

"This will be another defining moment in the history of the City of Palm Coast as we welcome a second health-care service provider network into the city," Alfin said Monday. "The demographic obviously supports health care and we look forward to the new arrival to broaden the variety of services and increase the service level of care to residents."

Flagler Health+, which also operates Flagler Hospital in St. Johns County, did not provide details regarding cost, timeframe or a name for the new hospital.

"To ensure the communitys needs are being met, our strategy team conducted a market study which demonstrates that there is a need for additional outpatient care, acute care services and inpatient beds," Mangus said in her statement. "With that, we are currently in discussions with UF Health regarding a collaborative approach to best achieve this."

Story continues

Mullins hopes the hospital will be up and running within the next year.

"They still need to go through planning and zoning," he said.

But according to Mullins, Flagler Health+ will start collaborating with the county as early as next month with the addition of behavioral health services.

Flagler County's medical needs

The county has been in talks with Flagler Health+ for the past two years, according to Mullins.

"We sat down with them a few years ago and have been working with them the last two years looking at locations," Mullins said. "We're very excited. They are committed to being a very strong community partner and have started working with us on mental health needs."

The county, along with the cities of Palm Coast and Bunnell, have been working together to try and address the community's medical needs, according to Mullins. Their hope is to turn Flagler County into a medical hub.

"This will bring high-paying jobs and services that the whole region can use, not just our county," Mullins said. "They are recession-proof jobs. You just see an industry that is needed all the time."

But for the moment, the most urgent needs are mental health services, labor and delivery, and other trauma-related services, according to Mullins.

"We need these services," he said. "We have one of the top suicide rates in the state of Florida, no mental health services, zero labor and delivery and we've seen so many people come into the area that need them."

Right now, AdventHealth Palm Coast is the only hospital in the county, and while it has stepped up to help care for the elderly in Flagler County, it has not been able to meet the additional needs for the younger population, according to Mullins.

Anyone needing labor and delivery or trauma services must travel to Volusia County to either Halifax Health or AdventHealth Daytona Beach or to Flagler Hospital in St. Johns County.

"As we step up as a community, these services are needed," he said. "Flagler County is not gonna sit back and wait any longer for these things to happen. We're going to get ahead of it."

Adding another hospital will expand care options for residents across not just Palm Coast but the county as well.

"I think the market supports the competing health-care networks to the benefit of our residents," Alfin said. "I believe there are enough patients and people who will use the hospital here to support what will now be three campuses. All of our residents in the City of Palm Coast will be in close proximity to all of the health-care services that they demand."

More: UNF MedNexus connects Flagler County students with nursing, health-care opportunities

Other expansions by Flagler Health+

Flagler Health+ recently reached a clinical agreement with UF Health that includes expanding graduate medical education programs and an array of clinical services across Northeast Florida.

This will include new primary care sites in St. Johns and Flagler counties. Details have not yet been released as they are still under discussion, according to a hospital system press release.

Civil engineering work is currently underway on 7 acres that Flagler Health+ owns at the southwest corner of Matanzas Woods Parkway and Belle Terre Parkway where the it will build a signature health village, according to the release. The Palm Coast health village will incorporate family practice, behavioral health services, orthopedics, specialty care, imaging and laboratory services.

Flagler Health+ has already expanded its footprint in Flagler County with the addition of an orthopedics practice in the Palm Coast Town Center, a primary care office on Old Kings Road, and a virtual walk-in clinic located inside Publix.

In February, Care Connect+ also opened an office inside Flagler Health+ Specialty Care at 50 Cypress Point Parkway to better serve and coordinate care.

Care Connect+ awarded four Innovators Micro Grants to Flagler County nonprofit organizations to support programs for people experiencing homelessness, hunger, behavioral health issues, financial instability, or lack of access to transportation, medication or health care in Flagler County, according to the release.

Nikki Ross covers K-12 education, health and COVID-19 for the Daytona Beach News-Journal. She can be reached at nikki.ross@news-jrnl.com or follow her on Twitter @nikkiinreallife.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Flagler Health+ buys property for new hospital in Palm Coast
Happy Tuesday, Sugar Land! Here's everything you need to know going on today.

First, today's weather:

Plenty of sunshine. High: 63. Low: 43.

Here are the top stories today in Sugar Land:

Four teens are accused of robbing Cafe L'amour customers before leading police on a chase in southwest Houston. (KTRK-TV) With COVID-19 cases rapidly rising as the omicron variant takes hold in Texas, officials are urging residents to receive booster shots if they haven't already. Here is where to find them in Sugar Land. (Sugar Land Patch) Fort Bend County Libraries are scheduled to resume services in January. (Community Impact Newspaper) Shoe Carnival has partnered with DoorDash to offer same-day delivery, including for a Houston store near Sugar Land. It's a cheap and fast shipping option for a last-minute Christmas gift. (Sugar Land Patch) The Houston Humane Society is giving away free pet food and toys at Texas Four Corners as part of a partnership with Fort Bend County Judge KP George. (KTRK-TV)

Today's Sugar Land Daily is brought to you in part by our friends at Ring, the home security company. Ring does a lot more than doorbells: check out their full suite of smart home products at Ring.com. And thank you Ring for helping to make local news happen in Sugar Land!

Today in Sugar Land:

City Council Meeting  City of Sugar Land. (5:30 p.m.)

From my notebook:

Nextdoor Neighbor, Commonwealth: "Best Jalebi in town? For the folks that like Indian sweets, here is a question? Which place in Houston area makes the best Jalebi?" (Nextdoor)

More from our sponsors  thanks for supporting local news!

Events:

Brighten The First Day Of Winter With 15 Percent Off FTDs Sunniest Blooms (December 21)

Add your event

Loving the Sugar Land 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 jeffrey.perkins@patch.com

Story continues

Now you're in the loop and ready to start this Tuesday off right. I'll see you soon!

 Jeffrey Perkins

About me: Born in San Antonio, I was raised in Arkansas but got back to Texas as soon as I could to attend Texas A&M University, where I earned a bachelor's degree in Telecommunication Media Studies. I started my journalism career as a copy editor at The Eagle in Bryan, Texas, in 2014 and later became the high school sports beat writer for the paper.My seven years at The Eagle strengthened my passion for journalism, and I love getting to know people and telling their stories, both on the field and off. I've seen firsthand the importance of hyper-local journalism in a community, especially in an eventful 2020, when I helped with news coverage and design in addition to my high school athletics beat responsibilities.I joined Patch in 2021 as Texas Field Editor for the Conroe-Montgomery County area.I welcome your questions, comments and story ideas! Please contact me at jeffrey.perkins@patch.com or (479) 264-5801.

This article originally appeared on the Sugar Land Patch
Employees in Fox Newss New York office will now have to show proof of vaccine, the Fox Corporation told staff on Friday.

The company is removing the choice for employees to opt for a test instead of a shot, and will require them to have their first dose by 27 December, the New York Times reported.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has issued a mandate that requires businesses to enforce vaccinations among their staff or face fines. The mayor called it a pre-emptive strike to curb the winter spread of Covid, and the highly contagious Omicron variant.

This is the biggest crisis not only of our time, but in the history of New York City, Mr Blasio said in a statement to press. We cannot let Covid back in the door again.

The Fox Corporation has said that it is following the mandate in New York. A memo sent by the head of Human Resources Kevin Lord in September confirmed that 90 per cent of employees at Fox Corporation had been vaccinated, despite many of Fox Newss anchors undermining vaccine messaging.

Fox host Tucker Carlson, for example, who gets an average of three to four million viewers for his show, told his audience to ignore "medical advice on television," after his fellow presenters promoted Covid shots. Hosts Steve Doocey, John Roberts and Sean Hannity have all advised their viewers to get the Covid vaccine.

"You shouldn't comply mindlessly. You're an American adult. You're allowed to ask simple questions and then demand clear answers," said Mr Carlson.

New York recorded 122,000 new coronavirus cases in the past week, according to John's Hopkins University, with officials reporting 21,027 cases of the virus on Friday  the most cases any US state has seen in a single day, since the start of the pandemic.

Those in the private sector could face $1,000 per violation of staff not vaccinated  the rules will apply to around 184,000 businesses.

New York City will not give a single inch in the fight against Covid-19. Vaccination is the way out of this pandemic, and these are bold, first-in-the-nation measures to encourage New Yorkers to keep themselves and their communities safe, said Mayor de Blasio.

From workplace mandates, to $100 incentives, to mobile and at-home vaccination offerings, no place in the nation has done more to end the Covid era. And if you have not taken this step yet: theres no better day than today to stand up for your city.

The Independent has contacted Fox News for further comment.
The jury Ghislaine Maxwells sex trafficking trial began its first full day of deliberations on Tuesday morning after a day of closing arguments which painted opposing portraits of the British socialite as Jeffrey Epsteins partner-in-crime and his scapegoat.

In a powerful closing for the prosecution on Monday, Assistant US Attorney Alison Moe described Ms Maxwell as a sophisticated and dangerous predator who targeted vulnerable young girls for Epsteins benefit.

Maxwell ran the same playbook again and again. She groomed them. She caused deep and lasting harm to young girls. It is time to hold her accountable, Ms Moe said.

In closing for the defence, Ms Maxwells attorney Laura Menninger sought to distance her from Epstein, saying: The US presented evidence like a sensational tabloid. These were things that Epstein did, perhaps, his crimes. But Ghislaine Maxwell is not Epstein.

Ms Maxwell, who has pleaded not guilty to six charges, refused to take the stand in her own defence last week, telling US District Judge Alison Nathan: Your honour, the government has not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and so theres no reason for me to testify.

Key Points

Prosecutions closing argument: Ghislaine Maxwell was dangerous

Defence closing argument: Not here to defend Epstein'

What four accusers said on the stand

When will we get a verdict?

Planes, pools and palatial properties: Twelve striking images from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial

Jury begins first full day of deliberations

14:21 , Megan Sheets

Jurors were set to begin their first full day of deliberations on Tuesday morning.

The jury was out for less than 45 minutes on Monday after launching deliberations at about 5pm.

The scene outside the lower Manhattan courthouse appeared quiet early Tuesday as it remains unclear when the jury could return with a verdict.

Ghislaine Maxwell trial: Who is judge Alison Nathan?

13:45 , Eleanor Sly

Towards the end of a marathon cross-examination of pilot David Rodgers on day eight of the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking trial, defence Christian Everdell paused to check the time.

Story continues

I thought it was later than it already was, said Mr Everdell.

It just feels like it, Judge Alison Nathan shot back.

Bevan Hurley reports:

Who is Alison Nathan, the judge in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial?

How Ghislaine Maxwell met Jeffrey Epstein

13:00 , Eleanor Sly

She spent decades rubbing shoulders with British royals and US presidents.

Now British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is on trial in a New York courtroom on sex trafficking charges, and faces decades behind bars if convicted. The trial began on Monday, 29 November.

Ms Maxwell, the daughter of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, told a 2016 deposition that she met Jeffrey Epstein, then a wealthy financier, in 1991 through a mutual friend.

Graeme Massie reports:

How Ghislaine Maxwell met Jeffrey Epstein

Ghislaine Maxwell: What the four accusers said at her sex-trafficking trial

11:56 , Eleanor Sly

lmost 30 years after some of the alleged abuse took place, accusers of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell have finally had their day in court.

Four women  three of them testifying under pseudonyms  took the stand during Ms Maxwells sex-trafficking trial to testify that Epsteins former girlfriend preyed on vulnerable underage girls and groomed them for abuse by the late financier.

The women testified that Ms Maxwell, 59, both enabled Epstein in his abuse and took part in some of the abuse herself.

Rachel Sharp has more:

The case against Ghislaine Maxwell

Maxwell trial: Flight logs show Trump flew on Lolita Express with Eric, Tiffany and Clinton adviser

11:01 , Eleanor Sly

Flight logs released by prosecutors in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial show Donald Trump flew onboard Jeffrey Epsteins private jet with his former wife Marla Maples and his children Eric and Tiffany, as well as a beauty queen, and a senior aide to Bill Clinton,

Logs from Epstein pilot David Rodgers were entered into evidence by the US District Attorneys Office as part of their case that alleges Ms Maxwell helped to groom and traffic young girls for abuse.

Ms Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to six charges she recruited and groomed young girls for Epstein to abuse during sexualised massages between 1994 and 2004.

Bevan Hurley reports:

Trump flew on Lolita Express with Eric, Tiffany and Clinton adviser

Planes, pools and palatial properties: Twelve striking images from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial

09:45 , Eleanor Sly

Prosecutors in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial released more than 150 exhibits as part of its case, including many never-before-seen images of the socialites jet-setting lifestyle with Jeffrey Epstein.

They show the pair on private jets, his mansions, and kissing and embracing in exotic locations around the world.

Ms Maxwell faces six charges; one each of enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking of a minor, and three counts of conspiracy related to the other counts. She has denied all the charges.

Bevan Hurley reports:

Twelve of the most striking images from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial

Ghislaine Maxwell: A sophisticated predator or Epstein scapegoat? Case closes with rival portraits of socialite

08:43 , Eleanor Sly

In closing arguments of the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, the prosecution told the court that Ms Maxwell was a dangerous ... grown woman who preyed on vulnerable kids as the defence team argued that she was being blamed for Jeffrey Epsteins crimes.

She targeted a girl whose father had just died. She targeted a girl whose mother was an alcoholic, Assistant US Attorney Alison Moe said.

Ms Moe said Ms Maxwell was a sophisticated predator who caused deep and lasting harm to young girls. It is time to hold her accountable.

Gustaf Kilander reports:

Ghislaine Maxwell: A sophisticated predator or Epstein scapegoat?

Video released of Epstein mansion raid as closing arguments made in Maxwell trial

07:56 , Eleanor Sly

Prosecutors have made their closing arguments in the case against Jeffrey Epsteins so called partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, with footage of an FBI raid on his Florida mansion.

The hour-long video, released as part of the FBIs investigation into the late financier in 2019, shows Palm Beach police entering Epsteins home armed with pistols.

It was used again during the prosecutions case against Ms Maxwell, in addition to a number of nude photos of young women, including that of Annie Farmer on Monday, the New York Post reported.

Gino Spocchia has more:

Video released of Epstein mansion raid

What to expect on Tuesday?

07:00 , Stuti Mishra

The jury will continue deliberating on the sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, after about six hours of closing arguments concluded yesterday.

The closing arguments gave both the prosecution and the defence their final chance to be heard in court, and to conclude their narrative on the charges being faced by the British socialite.

The prosecution arguments were focused on Ms Maxwells relationship with Epstein and her alleged role in his abusive behaviour, while the defence tried to distance her from the crimes of the late financier.

The case was transferred for deliberations at 5pm and the jurors only got one hour for deliberations yesterday. Experts say the jury could return a verdict by the end of this week.

Ms Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to six federal counts, including sex trafficking of minors, enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and three related counts of conspiracy.

If convicted, she could face up to 70 years in prison.

Possible sentences for each charge

06:00 , Stuti Mishra

Below is a breakdown of the charges Ms Maxwell faces and their corresponding sentencing guidelines:

Count 1: Conspiracy to entice a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts - maximum sentence of five years

Count 2: Enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts - maximum sentence of five years

Count 3: Conspiracy to transport a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity - maximum sentence of five years

Count 4: Transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity - maximum sentence of 10 years

Count 5: Conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors - maximum sentence of five years

Count 6: Sex trafficking of minors - maximum sentence of 40 years

Ghislaine Maxwell a dangerous predator

04:57 , Stuti Mishra

Ghislaine Maxwell is a dangerous predator who was the key to Jeffrey Epsteins empire of abuse, prosecutors in her child sex trafficking trial said in closing arguments.

She was a grown woman who preyed on vulnerable kids, prosecutor Alison Moe said on Monday in a fiery address to the jury on day 13 of the socialites trial.

She was a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing.

Ms Moe said the defendant had ran the same playbook again, and again, and again as she threaded together patterns of behaviour from each of the four accusers who testified they were abused by Ms Maxwell and Epstein after being isolated at his palatial properties.

Bevan Hurley has more:

Prosecutors say Ghislaine Maxwell a dangerous predator who had playbook of abuse

ICYMI: Defence thrown into disarray as it struggles to find witness

03:56 , Io Dodds

One of the stranger moments of this trial came three days ago when one of Ghislaine Maxwells lawyers begged the judge for more time to locate a missing witness.

Defence attorney Laura Menninger told Judge Alison Nathan on day 12 of the socialites sex trafficking trial that they were struggling to find a witness named Kelly whom they had issued a subpoena to testify.

Our clients life is on the line, Ms Menninger told the judge.

Read the full story here.

What did each accuser say about Ghislaine Maxwell?

02:59 , Io Dodds

At the centre of this trial were four women who said that Ghislaine Maxwell had played a role in, and sometimes participated in, their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein.

Who were they, and what did they say? In her feature today, Rachel Sharp explores their stories and what role they played in the trial.

Three of the women testified under pseudonyms, while one, Annie Farmer, said under her own name that Ms Maxwell had given her a nude massage and groped her breasts at Epsteins ranch in New Mexico when she was just 16.

Read the full story here.

The strange life of Robert Maxwells youngest daughter

01:58 , Io Dodds

As we wait for the jury to deliver their verdict, its worth looking back on Ghislain Maxwells colourful and eventful life before meeting Epstein.

Born in 1961 in Paris to the British newspaper baron Robert Maxwell and his French wife Elisbeth, she learned to program computers at her fathers publishing outfit and attended Oxford University, where she friends with actor Hugh Grant.

Yet everything changed for her family in 1991, when Maxwells body was found dead after falling off his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, and investigations exposed that he had fraudulently appropriated over 440m from his newspaper companys pensions.

Read her full story, courtesy of my colleague Joe Sommerlad, here.

What are the charges against Ghislaine Maxwell?

01:01 , Io Dodds

The jury has to consider six separate charges against Ms Maxwell, my colleague Luc Cohen explains.

The first four charges are violations or attempted violations of the Mann Act, a US law that bars transporting people across state lines for illegal sexual activity.

Prosecutors say that between 1994 and 1997 Ms Maxwell persuaded an under-age girl to travel from Florida to New York for sex with Epstein, and that in 1996 she induced another girl to fly to Epsteins New Mexico ranch.

The other two charges are one count of sex trafficking of a minor and one count of sex trafficking conspiracy, relating to Ms Maxwells alleged recruitment of a third victim starting in 2001.

Read the full analysis, including Ms Maxwells defence, here.

All the famous names embroiled in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial

00:07 , Io Dodds

A key part of this trial has been the relationships that Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein maintained with presidents, movie stars and royalty.

Ms Maxwells accusers testified that would frequently boast of her close friendships with Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Donald Trump. Prosecutors alleged that these flashy connections served to entice and intimidate victims.

When the FBI raided Epsteins Manhattan townhouse in 2019, they found a trove of photos of Ms Maxwell and Epstein on private jets and in exotic locations across the world. One image showed them in front of a log cabin at Balmoral, the Queens Scottish estate.

Read all about Ghislaine Maxwells connections with the rich and powerful here.

ICYMI: When will there be a verdict?

Monday 20 December 2021 23:20 , Megan Sheets

The jury in Ms Maxwells trial began deliberations on Monday evening after both sides presented their closing arguments.

The socialite and alleged madam for Jeffrey Epstein has pleaded not guilty to six federal charges, including one for sex trafficking of a minor and one for sex trafficking conspiracy.

The four other charges related to the Mann Act, which bars transporting individuals across state lines for illegal sexual activity.

Its impossible to say how long the jury will take to come to a verdict on each of the six charges.

However, experts have speculated that jurors will aim to have the trial wrapped up by the end of the week before Christmas arrives.

The Independents Megan Sheets reports:

Ghislaine Maxwell trial: When will we have a verdict?

New video shows raid at Epstein mansion

Monday 20 December 2021 22:50 , Megan Sheets

As part of its closing argument on Monday, the prosecution showed footage of an FBI raid on Epsteins Florida mansion.

The hour-long video, released as part of the FBIs investigation into the late financier in 2019, shows Palm Beach police entering Epsteins home armed with pistols.

The Independents Gino Spoccia reports:

Video released of Epstein mansion raid

Inside Epstein flight logs

Monday 20 December 2021 22:20 , Megan Sheets

Flight logs released by prosecutors in the Maxwell trial show Donald Trump flew onboard Jeffrey Epsteins private jet with a beauty queen, a senior aide to Bill Clinton, his former wife Marla Maples and his children Eric and Tiffany.

The logs from Epstein pilot David Rodgers were entered into evidence on Monday by the US District Attorneys Office as part of their case that alleges Ms Maxwell helped to groom and traffic young girls for abuse.

The Independents Bevan Hurley reports:

Trump flew on Lolita Express with Eric, Tiffany and Clinton adviser

Jury begins deliberations

Monday 20 December 2021 21:51 , Megan Sheets

Ms Maxwells case is now in the hands of the jury.

Judge Alison Nathan gave a panel of 12 the green light to begin deliberations just before 5pm on Monday after a long day of closing arguments.

Possible sentences for each charge

Monday 20 December 2021 21:20 , Megan Sheets

Below is a breakdown of the charges Ms Maxwell faces and their corresponding sentencing guidelines:

Count 1: Conspiracy to entice a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts - maximum sentence of five years

Count 2: Enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts - maximum sentence of five years

Count 3: Conspiracy to transport a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity - maximum sentence of five years

Count 4: Transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity - maximum sentence of 10 years

Count 5: Conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors - maximum sentence of five years

Count 6: Sex trafficking of minors - maximum sentence of 40 years

Maxwell seen in new court sketch

Monday 20 December 2021 21:10 , Megan Sheets

A new court sketch shows Ms Maxwell listening to closing arguments at her trial on Monday.

According to investigative journalist Leah McGrath Goodman, Ms Maxwell appeared subdued, undisturbed and even bored by the prosecutions closing.

A court sketch shows Ghislaine Maxwell listening to closing arguments on 20 December (REUTERS)

Judge reads out charges against Maxwell

Monday 20 December 2021 20:42 , Megan Sheets

After the prosecution concluded its rebuttal, Judge Alison Nathan read out the charges against Ms Maxwell.

The judge will instruct jurors on how to deliberate on each charge before they are sent out for deliberation.

A full copy of the jury charge is available here via Inner City Press.

Prosecution delivers rebuttal

Monday 20 December 2021 20:40 , Megan Sheets

Assistant US Attorney Maurene Comey delivered the prosecutions rebuttal as the case draws closer to conclusion.

Ms Comey refuted the suggestion that the states witnesses are lying or misremembering details, saying: Some things you never forget because theyre seared into your brain forever.

As for the defence contention that the accusers are after money, Ms Comey asked: Did that look fun? Why would they put themselves through that, when theyve already gotten millions of dollars [from an Epstein settlement].

They did it for justice, for the hope that the defendant would be held accountable for her role in shattering their lives, the prosecutor said.

What charges is Maxwell facing?

Monday 20 December 2021 20:15 , Megan Sheets

Ms Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to six federal charges, including one for sex trafficking of a minor and one for sex trafficking conspiracy.

The four other charges related to the Mann Act, which bars transporting individuals across state lines for illegal sexual activity.

The Independents Luc Cohen explains the charges:

What are the charges in the Ghislaine Maxwell sex abuse trial?

Two portraits of Maxwell

Monday 20 December 2021 19:45 , Megan Sheets

In their closing arguments, both sides painted diametrically-opposed portraits of Ms Maxwell and her relationship with Epstein.

The prosecution described her as a sophisticated predator and said she and Epstein were partners in crime who exploited young girls together.

The defence sought to distance Ms Maxwell from Epstein, saying: These were things that Epstein did ... but Ghislaine Maxwell is not Epstein.

The Independents Gustaf Kilander reports:

Ghislaine Maxwell: A sophisticated predator or Epstein scapegoat

Defence concludes closing argument: Acquit her'

Monday 20 December 2021 19:18 , Megan Sheets

Defence attorney Laura Menninger concluded her roughly 75-minute closing argument by telling the jury: Ghislaine is being tried here for being with Jeffrey Epstein.

Maybe it was the biggest mistake of her life. But it is not a crime.

Acquit her.

The court is now on a brief break before the prosecution presents its rebuttal.

Defence attempts to undercut each witness one-by-one

Monday 20 December 2021 18:54 , Megan Sheets

Ms Maxwells attorney is about an hour into her closing as she continues attempts to undercut state witness testimony.

She is going through each witnesss account on the stand, pointing out areas of weakness and adding details that could impeach their credibility.

The Inner City Press has a thorough thread of the closing statement below:

Menninger: There is no mention of Ghislaine Maxwell in Annie's diaries. Epstein was not in the room when she got the massage. She told the compensation fund that her breasts were gropes. She got $1.5 million. What is the evidence of what Ghislaine Maxwell knew?  Inner City Press (@innercitypress) December 20, 2021

Defence pokes holes in witness testimony

Monday 20 December 2021 18:02 , Megan Sheets

Ms Maxwells attorney Laura Menniger sought to convince jurors that testimony from the states witnesses was riddled with inconsistencies in her closing on Monday.

She pointed out that several witnesses seemed unclear about specific dates or interactions, telling the jury: You have a right to evidence.

With the four accusers, Ms Menninger drove home the point: None of these women called the police.

Defence says Maxwell has no motive'

Monday 20 December 2021 17:40 , Megan Sheets

In closing for the defence, attorney Laura Menninger argued that Ms Maxwell had no motive for the crimes shes accused of.

They [the state] say a happy, educated woman in her 30s would end her career as a facilitator of sexual abuse - but wheres the evidence? Ms Menniger asked.

Branding Epstein as a manipulator, the attorney added: Do you know Ghislaines lifestyle before Epstein, and after? Maybe it was Jeffrey who needed Ghislaine and her connection, and not the other way around.

Defence begins closing argument: Not here to defend Epstein

Monday 20 December 2021 17:24 , Megan Sheets

Ms Maxwells attorney Laura Menninger began her closing for the defence by telling the jury: I am not here to defend Jeffrey Epstein. He is not my client.

The US presented evidence like a sensational tabloid. These were things that Epstein did, perhaps, his crimes. But Ghislaine Maxwell is not Epstein.

Ms Menninger highlighted the 37,000 photos not presented by the prosecution as she argued that the evidence had been tailored to paint Ms Maxwell in the worst possible light.

She also argued that witnesses called by the state had been manipulated into fitting a broader narrative.

RECAP: Prosecutions closing statement

Monday 20 December 2021 17:15 , Megan Sheets

In closing arguments at Ms Maxwells trial, the prosecution told the court that she was a dangerous ... grown woman who preyed on vulnerable kids.

She targeted a girl whose father had just died. She targeted a girl whose mother was an alcoholic, Assistant US Attorney Alison Moe said.

Ms Moe said Ms Maxwell was a sophisticated predator who caused deep and lasting harm to young girls. It is time to hold her accountable.

The proof is in. Its clear. Its consistent and it points to only one conclusion: Maxwell is guilty, she added.

The Independents Gustaf Kilander recaps the entire closing from the state:

Ghislaine Maxwell a sophisticated predator who exploited young girls, court hears

What Maxwells four accusers said at trial

Monday 20 December 2021 16:50 , Megan Sheets

Almost 30 years after some of the alleged abuse took place, accusers of convicted paedophile Epstein and his alleged madam Ms Maxwell have finally had their day in court.

Four women  three of them testifying under pseudonyms  took the stand during Ms Maxwells sex-trafficking trial to testify that Epsteins former girlfriend preyed on vulnerable underage girls and groomed them for abuse by the late financier.

The women testified that Ms Maxwell, 59, both enabled Epstein in his abuse and took part in some of the abuse herself.

The Independents Rachel Sharp recaps what each accuser said:

What the four accusers said at Ghislaine Maxwells sex-trafficking trial

Court on lunch break

Monday 20 December 2021 16:24 , Megan Sheets

The court broke for lunch after the prosecution concluded its closing statement, which took about two hours.

The defence has indicated its closing will take around two hours as well, followed by a 45-minute rebuttal from the state.

Judge Alison Nathan will then present jury instructions before deliberations begin.

Prosecution concludes closing argument

Monday 20 December 2021 16:03 , Megan Sheets

AUSA Moe concluded her closing argument for the prosecution by summarising each of the six counts facing Ms Maxwell, and which victim corresponds to each.

Referencing the defences contention that Ms Maxwell is being blamed for crimes committed by Epstein, Ms Moe said: Let me be very clear: The evidence at this trial showed that Ghislaine Maxwell made her own choices.

Shes a grown woman who knew exactly what she was doing.

She urged jurors: Ladies and gentlemen, look at the big picture and use your common sense.

Common sense, she said, shows jurors that the witnesses are not lying and Ms Maxwell is guilty.

Prosecution says Epstein paid Maxwell $30m for terrible crimes'

Monday 20 December 2021 15:50 , Megan Sheets

AUSA Moe noted that Epstein gave Ms Maxwell more than $30m over the years, and alleged the sums were payment for terrible crimes.

The prosecutor described the couples alleged sex trafficking ring as a pyramid scheme: One girl would bring another who would bring another.

She said the scheme was laid bare in Epsteins little black book, which made Ms Maxwells involvement crystal clear.

Maxwell and Epstein made sexually abusive environment feel normal and casual'

Monday 20 December 2021 15:38 , Megan Sheets

The prosecution showed the jury numerous intimate photos of Ms Maxwell and Epstein to paint a portrait of their incredibly close relationship.

Among the images, which were not shown to the public gallery, were snaps of the couple naked in a pool and of Ms Maxwell massaging Epsteins foot with her breasts.

What you are looking at in these photos are two people in a sexual relationship, Ms Moe, the AUSA, said.

She said the couple made the environment feel normal and casual to young girls.

None of this was normal, she added.
Ghislaine Maxwell will spend Christmas Day -- her 60th birthday -- behind bars, after the jury in her sex crimes trial suspended deliberations Wednesday without reaching a verdict.

The 12-person jury began considering Maxwell's fate on Monday after a three-week trial and has since met for two full days to weigh the charges against her.

Judge Alison Nathan granted a request from the jurors that they take Thursday off and told them to return on Monday, after the Christmas holiday.

Maxwell, the daughter of former British newspaper baron Robert Maxwell, is accused of recruiting and grooming young girls to be sexually abused by the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein.

She faces an effective life sentence if convicted of the charges, one of which is conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of a minor that carries a maximum 40-year prison sentence.

At one point Wednesday, the jury asked the judge for the transcript of the testimony of the former manager of Epstein's property in Palm Beach, Florida.

The jury has also asked the judge for transcripts of the testimony of the four women who testified against Maxwell during her high-profile trial.

The jury must reach a unanimous decision on each of the six counts facing Maxwell. If they cannot agree, then the judge could declare a mistrial.

The charges against Maxwell stem from 1994 to 2004. Two of Epstein's alleged victims said they were as young as 14 when Maxwell allegedly began grooming them and arranging for them to give massages to Epstein that ended in sexual activity.

One, identified only as "Jane," detailed how Maxwell recruited her at summer camp and made her feel "special."

She said sexual encounters with Epstein became routine, with Maxwell sometimes present.

Another, going by "Carolyn," said she was usually paid $300 after sexual encounters with Epstein, often by Maxwell herself.

A third alleged victim was Annie Farmer, now 42, who said Maxwell fondled her breasts when she was a teenager at the New Mexico ranch owned by Epstein.

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Epstein, 66, killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting his own sex crimes trial. Maxwell was arrested the following year and has been held in prison after prosecutors deemed her to be a flight risk.

- 'Sophisticated predator' -

During the trial, the prosecution portrayed Maxwell as a "sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing."

Prosecutor Alison Moe said she was "the key" to Epstein's scheme of enticing young girls to give him massages, during which he would sexually abuse them.

"Epstein liked underaged girls, he liked to touch underaged girls. Maxwell knew that," Moe charged, recalling that three of the four victims testified that Maxwell had participated in the sexual acts, touching their breasts.

Moe also said that Maxwell had been the "lady of the house" at Epstein's properties, handling every detail, including picking the lotions and oils for the massages, which always ended in sexual acts.

Maxwell "was Epstein's partner in crime," said Moe. "It is time to hold her accountable."

Maxwell's defense team countered that there was a lack of evidence to convict and questioned the accusers' ability to recollect quarter-century-old events.

The team also argued that Maxwell was being used as a "scapegoat" for Epstein's crimes after he evaded justice.

Maxwell declined to take the stand but made a brief statement to the judge on Friday.

"Your honor, the government has not proven its case beyond reasonable doubt so there is no need for me to testify," she said.

arb/cl/des/mlm
Southwest Florida's only children's hospital has launched a neurosurgery program for patients with complex pediatric brain and neurological conditions that, ideally, will reduce the need to transfer scores of fragile newborns and children to larger health centers in Tampa and Miami.

The new program at The Golisano Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida in south Fort Myers will be in partnership with St. Petersburg-based Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, which will provide outpatient care for these patients at its satellite facility in Fort Myers.

Administrators of both health care organizations announced the program during a news conference Tuesday at Golisano.

"We were transferring over 100 children a year out of the area for pediatric neurological services," said Alyssa Bostwick, chief nursing and operations executive at Golisano. "That meant a child on a helicopter and two parents in a vehicle over two hours away to get care."

In case you missed it: Safety group cites Lehigh Regional Medical Center as one of Florida's 'top hospitals'

Other news: Jobless rates fell across Southwest Florida in November

The Golisano Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida

All Children's pediatric neurosurgeon and former Tampa-area private-practice surgeon Theodore Spinks, a graduate of Columbia University with 15 years of neurosurgery experience, is leading the program at Golisano.

Spinks' team will focus on the treatment of brain and spine tumors, spina bifida (a congenital condition in which the spine and spinal cord don't form properly), Chiari malformations (a condition in which brain tissue extends into the spinal canal), a spinal cord disorder known as tethered-cord syndrome, and other spine and brain surgeries, according to Lee Heath, which operates Golisano.

Lee Health and All Children's entered into a treatment partnership in 2019 to help enhance care through pediatric research studies, telehealth consultations, training conferences and, ultimately with Spinks, in hiring a pediatric surgeon now based out of Golisano.

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"Now, all these kids can get their care here and maintain the same level of (medical treatment) quality they would have had if they went somewhere else," Spinks said.

Frank Gluck is a watchdog reporter with The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Connect with him at fgluck@news-press.com or on Twitter: @FrankGluck.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Golisano Children's Hospital in south Fort Myers launches neurosurgery program
A man entered a Kroger supermarket in Georgia after hours, robbed employees and forced one of them to drive him to another city, police told WSB TV.

The suspect remains at large, and police are offering a $10,000 reward for those who can aid in finding him.

According to a Facebook post from the Douglasville Police Department, the incident occurred around 2 a.m. on Dec. 10 when an armed man entered a Kroger and robbed employees inside at gunpoint.

The suspect assaulted several employees, then forced one of them to drive him to the east side of Atlanta where he fled the employees vehicle on foot, police officials said.

In photos posted by the police department, the suspect can be seen holding a weapon and guiding a citizen from behind, the gun pointed at their back.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that police did not disclose how much money was stolen from the Kroger.

Its not the first incident the suspect has been linked to, police told WSB. They believe the same suspect robbed a Papa Johns Pizza  which sits only 600 feet from Kroger  in November.

Kroger representatives provided a statement to WSB encouraging citizens to come forward with information.

The safety and security of our associates are our number one priority. We are working in full cooperation with law enforcement and encouraging the public to come forward if they can help identify the suspect, Kroger said.

According to police, the suspect is between 5-foot-7 and 5-10 and was armed with a black semi-auto handgun.

In the security footage, the suspect is seen wearing a gray hoodie concealing his face, gray sweatpants and white sneakers. It appears that he is wearing a white glove on his left hand.

McClatchy News reached out to the Douglasville Police Department for more information on Dec. 21 and did not receive an immediate response.

Anyone with information about the incident is encouraged to call Detective Michael Jetmore at 678-293-1725, email jetmorem@douglasvillega.gov or call 770-920-3010.

Story continues

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New homeowner Rashawn Brooks wipes away tears as she stands next to her son, Alton Brooks, during the Habitat for Humanity Dedication Ceremony at the house they built in Vermont Village on Gidney Street in Shelby Thursday afternoon, Dec. 16, 2021.

The wait is over for Rayshawn Brooks and her family as she finally moved into her new home through Habitat for Humanity more than a year after she was selected by the organization.

Plans to complete the home were pushed back due to COVID-19, but she was all smiles Thursday evening when she was handed the keys.

Today is the day, Brooks said. Weve been moving all day. All day my kids have been telling me to calm down. I told them, You all dont know how long I have not been sleeping. The anticipation has been building up. Today, this is really happening.

New homeowner Rashawn Brooks gets the keys to her new home from Bill Meyers during the Habitat for Humanity Dedication Ceremony at the house they built in Vermont Village on Gidney Street in Shelby Thursday afternoon, Dec. 16, 2021.

A native of Charlotte, Brooks is a cosmetologist who moved to Cleveland County when she was 13. She has felt a connection to the home from the moment the foundation was laid. Family names and scriptures are etched on wood within the home, making it that much more real that it would be hers one day.

For me to be a homeowner means Im leaving a legacy for my children, Brooks said. Weve moved around a lot, so this is a forever home for us.

New homeowner Rashawn Brooks is shown her new quilt from the Quilters Guild during the Habitat for Humanity Dedication Ceremony at the house they built in Vermont Village on Gidney Street in Shelby Thursday afternoon, Dec. 16, 2021.

The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home on Gidney Street filled the last bit of land left. Now five houses have covered what used to be a large empty lot. The home completes the last one in the Vermont Village subdivision.

More news: Community support leads to reopening of Sugarmans in Grover

Burney Drake, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Cleveland County, has spent 15 years helping prospective individuals prepare for all the responsibilities that come with homeownership. More importantly, he said it creates generational wealth. Having spent 25 years in the Cleveland County School System, he witnessed just how cruel poverty can be and the impact it has on children.

HFHCC Executive Director Burney Drake, left, says a few words during the Habitat for Humanity Dedication Ceremony at the house they built in Vermont Village on Gidney Street in Shelby Thursday afternoon, Dec. 16, 2021.

I just love the ministry, Drake said. I love the homebuilding ministry. I had good mentors in my church that were involved, and they were the type of people I wanted to be like. I fell in love with the people  to serve families and provide permanent affordable housing. You can make a difference because poverty and the lack of permanent housing affects every aspect of a childs life and the family. This is generational. They learn not to be a renter and learn not to be dependent. They grow up and have more confidence.

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New homeowner Rashawn Brooks gets a Bible from Cara Elmore with Family Services during the Habitat for Humanity Dedication Ceremony at the house they built in Vermont Village on Gidney Street in Shelby Thursday afternoon, Dec. 16, 2021.

The latest build is the 29th since 2000. Drake praised Brooks for her work-ethic, and the home was blessed with prayers throughout the ceremony.

She put in 200 hours of sweat equity or plus into her house, Drake said. She helped build a house alongside our volunteers. Eighty-eight people have worked on the house. She is a hardworking woman.

Latrice Williams can be reached at 704-669-3339 and lwilliams6@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Shelby Star: Habitat for Humanity completes home in Shelby's Vermont VIllage
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A weekend stunt by nine individuals who hung banners with racist messages from a highway overpass in Brevard County appears to have been the work of a loose-knit national antisemitic organization called the Goyim Defense League, according to hate group monitors.

The Space Coast event, which led to cries of outrage from residents and local politicians on both sides of the political divide, was the latest display of antisemitism in Brevard County. It also took place under the eyes of law enforcement officers who made no arrests but encouraged the group to take their signs down and go home after several hours on the overpass near Port St. John on I-95.

Total reported antisemitic incidents on Space Coast between 2016 and 2021 amounted to 73, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

While no group took responsibility for the act, the Anti-Defamation League, which keeps tabs on anti-Jewish extremists, said the GDL was behind the banner incident. The ADL is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to fight antisemitism and other forms of hate and racism online and off.

Goyim is the Hebrew and Yiddish word used for gentiles, and according to the ADL, the Goyim Defense League is a loose network of people "connected by their virulent antisemitism" and white supremacist views.

While originally comprised of just two people, the group has managed to use its online video platform  called GoyimTV  to attract followers across the country to their cause.

According to the ADL, the banner display last weekend was part of a December 18 challenge issued by GDL leader Jon Minadeo to followers to participate in racist actions over the weekend. In a video calling for racists displays, Minadeo promised whomever made the news would get "100 bucks in the GoyimTV shop." In his video, Minadeo told his followers that participation in these events was "going to feel good."

More: Hateful ideology on the rise in Brevard County as racist leaflets spread the word

Story continues

More: Amid rising anti-Semitism, a chance for learning in Brevard County, rabbi says

According to the ADL, Florida is among the most active states for the GDL along with California, Colorado and New York. Minadeo, a Californian, founded the group and was able to jumpstart the video platform with help from Dominic Di Giorgio of Port St. Lucie, only a short drive from the Space Coast.

ADL monitors say the group was also responsible for some of the antisemitic leaflets left last year around the county, which saw a worrying increase in anti-Jewish acts over the last several years. Between 2016 and 2021, the Anti-Defamation League's records show 73 antisemitic incidents in Brevard, including flyers, graffiti, banners and other attempts to harass the local Jewish community.

The ADL traced some of those acts to the Goyim Defense League.

Also active on the Space Coast has been the New Jersey European Heritage Association, an alt-right group, which was reported passing out similar flyers claiming that "Antifa is a Jewish Militia" in multiple Brevard County cities, including Cocoa Beach, Port Canaveral, Melbourne and Palm Bay. Many of the flyers made detestable claims about the coronavirus, the media and gender and sexuality issues being a part of a Jewish conspiracy.

The group of nine people on Sunday gathered on the Ranch Road overpass to hang their homemade banners spouting racist racists rants, including calling for the expulsion of Jewish people in 2022 and using the N-word.

Residents who monitored the action, said the group was on the overpass for several hours being monitored by law enforcement before Florida Highway Patrol troopers eventually told them that affixing banners to the overpass was against the law.

The group then took down the banners and left the area. Neither FHP troopers nor Brevard County Sheriff's Office deputies cited the group or took their IDs.

We strongly condemn this display of antisemitism and bigotry, an appalling and outright act of hate. In 2020, hate crimes rose to the highest level in twelve years  as the forces of hate and extremism rise, we must stand together in denouncing acts meant to inflict fear and intimidate communities, and be united in taking on bias and bigotry in all forms," said ADL Florida Regional Director Sarah Emmons.

State Rep. Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay) has demanded answers from law enforcement officials about the timeline of events and why nobody was arrested for breaking the law about hanging signs off overpasses.

Tyler Vazquez is the North Brevard Watchdog Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Vazquez at 321-917-7491 or tvazquez@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @tyler_vazquez

Support local journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Hate group activity on Space Coast being monitored by ADL
Sub-zero freeze poses health risk on the Prairies, record in jeopardy

An extremely cold and potentially dangerous air mass from Siberia will descend on Western Canada this week, including the Prairies. Many locales will see daytime highs reaching the upper minus 20s, potentially hitting the -30s in a few spots. With the wind chill, it will feel like -30 or -40 on the weekend. Christmas Day has the potential to be record-breaking for Edmonton, Alta., which may feature the coldest air on Dec. 25 in 50 years. Overnight lows will be even colder, reaching or surpassing -30C. Meanwhile, the region will see quick bursts of snow this week, with some locales potentially seeing 5-10+ cm through Thursday. More on the timing, below.

Visit our Complete Guide to Winter 2022 for an in-depth look at the Winter Forecast, tips to plan for it, and much more!

WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY: SHOTS OF SNOW, TEMPERATURES REMAIN FRIGID

A couple of systems will parade through the Prairies this week, coating the region with dustings of snowfall. A warm front will continue to track eastward across the Prairies Wednesday.

Snow will stretch from Hinton to Edmonton, stretching along the northern foothills, as well. There is 10-15 cm of snow forecast for the aforementioned regions through Thursday and higher totals are possible in Jasper and the Rocky Mountains. Calgary will also see some snow, with 5-10 cm possible.

prsnow

Snowfall from the front will then push into southern Saskatchewan in the afternoon Wednesday, with heavier amounts for Saskatoon and Regina in the evening, roughly 5-10 cm. This swath will then push into Brandon and Winnipeg, bringing in accumulations of 5-10 cm.

DON'T MISS: Five terrible things extreme cold does to the human body

Meanwhile, Alberta and Saskatchewan will see a second round of light snow on the backside of the low on Thursday afternoon. It will bring a coating of ~10 cm, primarily north of the Yellowhead Highway.

pr3

Temperature-wise, severe cold will dominate the Prairies for the rest of December, especially around and during Christmas.

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LOOK AHEAD: POTENTIAL FOR RECORD-BREAKING CHRISTMAS COLD

Hazardous cold with a dangerous wind chill will plunge south and east across the Prairies behind the system. The air mass could potentially bring the coldest Dec. 25 on record for a few places including Edmonton as cross-polar flow delivers dangerous cold weather directly from Siberia.

prtemps

Many regions will have temperatures into the mid- and upper -20s, and wind chills of -30 or -40 on the weekend. Overnight lows will be even chillier, potentially reaching or exceeding the -30s.

In fact, there is the potential for a record-breaking Christmas Day chill for parts of the Prairies, possibly featuring the coldest air on Dec. 25 in 50 years. The City of Edmonton's current forecast is for -27C, close to the current record of -28.9C in 1917.

image (2)

Edmonton airport, also with a forecast daytime high of -27C, may top its previous record, as well, which dipped down to -27.8 in 1971.

It's important to be mindful of signs of frostbite and limit time spent outdoors during this time. Extreme cold puts everyone at risk, so be sure to take the plummeting temperatures seriously.

Check back as we continue to monitor this frigid Prairie forecast.
Walmart said it will temporarily close its store in Heath, Ohio, so the store can be cleaned for COVID.

Walmart said it would temporarily close its store in Heath, Ohio, starting Tuesday to sanitize the store following a COVID outbreak.

The retailer announced that the store would close at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 21, and reopen at 6 a.m. Thursday, in the midst of the year's busiest shopping season.

"As you know, several areas across the country have begun seeing a renewed increase in positive COVID-19 cases, and we want to assist health officials working against the pandemic," Walmart said in a news release.

"In support of this effort, we have chosen to temporarily close our Heath store location at 911 Hebron Road beginning at 2 p.m. as part of an ongoing company-initiated program. This will allow extra time for a third-party specialist to further sanitize the store and will also give our associates additional time to restock shelves and prepare the store to once again serve the community. We plan to reopen the store to customers at 6 a.m. on Thursday, December 23."

Walmart said that when the store reopens, unvaccinated employees must continue to wear masks.

Walmart's announcement comes as COVID rates and hospitalizations soar from the highly infectious omicron variant.

jweiker@dispatch.com

@JimWeiker

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Walmart closes its Heath store for a day and a half because of COVID
CLEVELAND  Northeast Ohio hospitals need your help.

That was the message from the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals on Tuesday. A group of doctors from both hospital systems urged Ohioans to get vaccinated, get booster shots, to abstain from large social gatherings, to wear masks in public and to wash their hands frequently.

The doctors' plea comes amid an unprecedented COVID-19 surge. The delta variant was surging in the region, driving unprecedented levels of hospitalizations and then omicron arrived, pushing the spike even higher. Positivity rates are the highest they've ever been in the region, according to Dr. Daniel Simon, chief scientific officer, University Hospitals. More COVID-19 patients are now being treated in University Hospitals than at any previous time.

He blamed Ohio's lagging COVID-19 vaccination and booster rates for contributing to Cuyahoga County's explosive growth in case numbers. The county has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 spread in the nation, with 199 cases per 100,000 residents, the New York Times reported this week.

The rate of positive tests, of people with symptoms, two weeks ago was 25 percent. It is now 50 percent. The vast majority of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units are unvaccinated  approximately 90 percent  said Dr. Raed Dweik, chairman of Cleveland Clinics Respiratory Institute. The 10 percent of vaccinated patients in the ICU wards are mostly immunocompromised or battling another serious health condition, he added.

"These are alarming numbers and it's no wonder our hospitals are filling up with COVID-19 patients," Dweik said. He said masking has slipped considerably in Greater Cleveland and he asked Ohioans to wear masks during family gatherings and in public.

Omicron In Ohio

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week that omicron is now the dominant strand of COVID-19 in the U.S. and in the Midwest. Dweik thinks the variant is now also the dominant strand of the virus in Northeast Ohio.

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The timing of omicron's arrival in Ohio could not be worse, said Dr. Claudia Hoyen, pediatric infection control, UH Rainbow Babies and Childrens Hospital. The holidays are here and family gatherings will abound. Meanwhile, hospitals are struggling to deal with the effects of the delta variant surge and omicron is already pushing COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations to unseen levels, she said.

She warned that hospital staff are exhausted. Doctors and nurses and other medical specialists have been grappling with COVID-19 for 22 months, she said, and they face another, even worse surge.

"We are in a much different position than we were even two weeks ago. We all need to be on guard because with the potential number of people becoming infected  even if the cases are less severe and we don't know if they will be yet  we are going to be overrun," Hoyen warned.

This article originally appeared on the Cleveland Patch
Connecticut rolled out digital COVID-19 vaccination cards this month, as optional alternatives to paper cards.

"If you dont want to carry your paper card around with you in your pocket, or if you lost your card, then you can digitally load it onto your smartphone," Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont is quoted saying in a press release from the state. "If you dont have a smartphone or dont want to digitize your paper card, then you dont have to, and you can keep using the paper card you were given when you were vaccinated."

Pitched as a convenience, the new digital option, called a SMART Health Card, can be stored and shown on a smartphone, though it is not a phone app. Connecticut residents can now download their vaccination statuses from healthcare providers' digital databases - such as a MyChart account - or the state's immunization website CT WiZ.

Susan Dubb, RN, BS, prepares a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine shot Monday at a drive-up Uncas Health District Mobile Vaccination Team Monday near the food distribution off Route 2 in Norwich. [John Shishmanian/ NorwichBulletin.com]

The downloaded status saves as a QR code that can be scanned by a business or agency that requires vaccination.

A year ago: A year after CT gave out its first COVID-19 vaccine, where do medical professionals stand?

How do I download my SMART Health Card?

Use your phone to go to the state's immunization registry at ct.gov/getmyvaccinerecord, tap "Go to CT WiZ public portal," and follow the directions. You can also ask your healthcare provider.

Once you have the QR code that proves your vaccination status, you can print it or store it on your phone. Detailed directions for storing it on your phone can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions section of ct.gov/getmyvaccinerecord.

COVID vaccines: The new year brings new COVID-19 mandates for Norwich city employees. Here's what we know.

The state website recommends saving the code as a PDF in your phone's documents, or taking a screenshot to save as a photo, marking the photo as a favorite to find more easily.

Both iPhones and Androids also have apps where you can store your SMART Health Card, making it accessible through an icon on your home screen, for example. The state website suggests using Apple Wallet and Health or CommonPass for iPhones and CommonHealth for Androids.

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By the numbers: Connecticut COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker

What about booster shots?

To update your digital vaccination to show booster shots, delete any card downloaded prior to receiving the booster and download your updated record, checking that the new record shows your booster.

COVID vaccines: Where can you find a COVID-19 booster shot in and around Norwich?

If it does not, check with your healthcare provider, who may not have updated your record yet.

The associated app for Android phones does not show booster shots, according to the state website, but that doesn't affect the data stored in the QR code.

COVID-19 Hospital Capacity: New London County and Surrounding Area

Where can I use my SMART Health Card?

SMART Health Cards are currently used in a handful of countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan, according to parent organization VCI. The Connecticut press release said New York and California currently use them, and that Massachusetts and Rhode Island are expected to launch programs using the standard soon.

This article originally appeared on The Bulletin: CT SMART Health Card: COVID app proves you have a COVID vaccine
WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden delivered a speech on Tuesday afternoon that announced specific support he has deployed to Vermont, New Hampshire and several other states outside New England that are fighting a surge in COVID-19 cases due to the omicron variant.

Biden announced he is immediately sending federal medical personnel to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont. There are also plans to ready additional ventilators and protective equipment from the national stockpile, expanding hospital resources.

As a backstop, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will deploy hundreds of ambulances and paramedic teams so that if one hospital fills up, they can transport patients to open beds in other facilities. Ambulances are already headed to New York and Maine, and paramedic teams are going to New Hampshire, Vermont and Arizona.

Vermont COVID hospitalizations: Another record high: How are state leaders responding?

New Hampshire COVID hospitalizations: The picture is getting pretty dark: NH hospitals buckle under weight of COVID surge

President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 variant named omicron, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Monday, Nov. 29, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Ramped-up rapid testing: Another prong of Biden's plan to fight COVID-19

With the omicron variant on the march, President Joe Biden plans to announce 500 million free rapid tests for Americans, increased support for hospitals under strain and a redoubling of vaccination and boosting efforts.

A cornerstone of the plan is Biden's decision for the government to purchase 500 million coronavirus rapid tests and ship them free to Americans starting in January. People will use a new website to order their tests, which will then be sent to them by U.S. mail at no charge, the White House said.

Comparing the Curve: New Hampshire's COVID cases

Comparing the Curve: Vermont's COVID cases

It marks a major shift for Biden, who earlier had called for many Americans to purchase the hard-to-find tests on their own and then seek reimbursement from their health insurance. For the first time, the U.S. government will send free COVID-19 tests directly to Americans, after more than a year of urging by public health experts.

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Experts had criticized Biden's initial buy-first, get-paid-later approach as unwieldy and warned that the U.S. would face another round of problems with testing at a critical time. Testing advocates point to countries like the U.K. and Germany, which have distributed billions of tests to the public and recommend people test themselves twice a week.

Is this surge different than last year: Yes, omicron has overtaken delta. No, it's not March 2020.

The federal government will also establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. The first new federally supported testing site will open in New York this week. The new testing sites will add to 20,000 already available. White House officials said they're working with Google so that people will be able to find them by searching "free COVID test near me."

'It's getting worse': Exeter reinstates mask mandate as COVID cases surge

Still, Biden's testing surge would fall far short of the levels needed for all Americans to test at the recommended rate of twice weekly. The U.S. would need 2.3 billion tests per month for everyone 12 and older to do that, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. That's nearly five times more than the half-billion tests Biden will deploy. Currently, the U.S. can conduct about 600 million tests per month, with home tests accounting for about half, according to researchers from Arizona State University.

COVID in Vermont: What can Vermont businesses do to slow the spread of COVID-19? Here are some ideas.

At-home COVID tests: Are tests covered by insurance under Vermont's new rule? Here's what we know

COVID vaccines and boosters remain Biden's priority

Vaccination remains the main defense, since it can head off disease in the first place. The government will stand up multiple vaccination sites and provide hundreds of personnel to administer shots. New rules will make it easier for pharmacists to work across state lines to administer a broader range of shots.

For those who are already fully vaccinated, a booster shot has been shown in lab tests to provide strong protection against omicron. Although reports of breakthrough cases abound, data show that vaccinated people who become infected are much less likely to suffer serious disease leading to hospitalization or death.

'Best thing you can do': Gov. Sununu rolls up sleeve for COVID booster shot at Booster Blitz in Stratham

Biden has found himself in the delicate position of both alerting the country to the dangers posed by omicron and reassuring Americans that the vaccines will protect them. White House officials are looking to ease the nation back toward accepting the reality of an endemic virus with far lower stakes for the vaccinated. This has meant setting a difficult balance as cases rise and as deaths and serious illness among the unvaccinated dominate headlines.

There are 40 million eligible but unvaccinated American adults. Efforts to increase vaccination rates have struggled to overcome a series of political, social and cultural divides.

The national, global impact of the omicron variant

Scientists say omicron spreads even easier than other coronavirus strains, including delta. It accounted for nearly three-quarters of new U.S. infections last week.

In New York City, nearly 42,600 people citywide tested positive from Wednesday through Saturday  compared with fewer than 35,800 in the entire month of November. The city has never had so many people test positive in such a short period of time since testing became widely available.

Across North America: Rising COVID case counts leads Quebec to close bars, gyms and cinemas

The latest outbreak reflects the global challenges of stopping the coronavirus pandemic.

The Dutch government began a tough nationwide lockdown on Sunday to rein in sharply rising infections, but many European leaders have opted for something less. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said officials have decided against imposing further restrictions, at least for now.

France and Germany have barred most British travelers from entering, and the government in Paris has banned public concerts and fireworks displays at New Year's celebrations.

Stock markets in Asia, Europe and the U.S. fell on Monday with the expectation that the infections could weigh on global economic growth and worsen global supply chain challenges.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Perrone, Darlene Superville and Zeke Miller contributed to this report

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: COVID cases: Biden outlines assistance for New England to fight omicron
Young Ojibwa men in a photo studio in 1885, wearing feather headdresses, buckskin leggings, moccasins, sashes, and dance bells.

Two women with the Prairie Potawatomie in Kansas, in 1880s. Some Potawatomie in Kansas may have come from Michigan.

Here is a quiz question about Monroe history. Who arrived in Monroe County first? Someone from A) New York, B) France or C) Alaska? The answer is C, Alaska.

The Alaskans crossed over to North America from Asia at least 25,000 years ago on a land bridge, which has since disappeared.

The Alaskansalso known as Native Americansarrived in the Great Lakes basin at least 10,000 years ago, according to researchers from Michigan State University. They say Native Americans were using copper on the southern shore of Lake Superior 6,000 years ago.

Wooly Mammoth

Not to be outdone, experts from the University of Michigan have documented an ancient Native American campsite on James Bristles soybean farm in Chelsea. Bristle was installing a drainage system in 2015 when he discovered the bones of a wooly mammoth. Radiocarbon tests showed the bones were more than 15,000 years old

It turns out the mammoth was being barbequed by Native Americans for dinner.

The barbeque in Chelsea is tied to Monroe, because the Native Americans created paths all over the state. They needed paths to visit sugar maples in season for maple syrup, to find the best fishing spots, and harvest wild rice at the right time.

Paths also led to oak openings, meeting places, as well as copper sources and many other destinations.

Native Americans have been living in Michigan, and developing trails and roads throughout North America, for thousands of years before Christopher Columbus was a sparkle in his mothers eye.

By the time explorers arrived in Monroe County from Europe, roads and pathways were laid throughout the state by the Native Americans. Paths connected Monroe to Chelsea to Lake Superior to Lake Michigan.

Later many of those paths were paved and given names like Plank Road, Dixie Highway, and Michigan Avenue.

Macon Reservation

In writing about local history, its easy for historians to forget the Macon Reservation established by Michigan Governor Hull in 1807. Located in Dundee on the north side of the River Raisin, it is listed in the history books as an agreement between Hull and the Potawatomy and other Native American tribes.

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Basically, the Natives were forced to live on the reservation so that European farmers could settle elsewhere in the area unimpeded.

Some Native Americans managed to avoid the reservations by escaping to Canada, according to Jami A. Keegan, Chief of Interpretation and Education at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park in Monroe.

Keegan says some Native Americans went into hiding near Lake Michigan or Lake Huron, or in the Upper Peninsula. Keegan stays in touch with Native Americans today and finds out about their histories, and she also searches other historical records for this information.

A steady stream of white European families arrived in the Dundee area and settled near the reservation after it was established. In 1825, the Erie Canal opened. More families were coming to Michigan from New York and other eastern states, buying farmland and building homes.

The Macon Reservation was soon surrounded by white settlers growing corn and wheat. The reservation was closed sometime before 1827, when the land in the reservation was sold off, making more land available to settlers arriving from New York.

The Macon Reservation closed when the land became available for sale to Europeans. In 1839. Nathaniel Graves, a white European, built the first farm house on the former Macon Reservation. That house still stands, at 414 Main St., with a historical marker in front of it.

Trail of Tears

Dorothy R. Heinlen, Dundee Historian, lived for many years in the Graves farmhouse at 414 Main St.

She has extensively studied the Native Americans of the Macon Reservation in Dundee. She believes some may have moved to a reservation near Athens, Michigan, the Nottawaseppi, around 1824. She says many eventually ended up in the Trail of Tears walking west to Oklahoma.

The Trail of Tears was the work of US President Andrew Jackson, who signed a law on May 28, 1830 to open up Native American land for white settlement.

Jacksons law forced Native Americans to leave their homelands and walk to Oklahoma. This law affected Natives in many states, including Michigan, as they had to leave their homes and walk westward.

This law is referred to as the Trail of Tears because it is estimated more than 4,000 Native Americans died along the way, and were buried in unmarked graves.

Boarding Schools

Native Americans usually lost their language and traditions when they were sent to boarding schools, such as the one in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Native children in these schools were not allowed to speak their tribal language, practice their religion, or sing traditional music. They were expected to forget their original religion and heritage; they were required to blend into white European society.

Many Native children from Michigan were also sent to another boarding school, the Carlisle Boarding School in Carlisle, PA.

Richard Henry Pratt established the Carlisle school in 1879, with this ominous moto: Kill the Indian and save the man. Basically, the Carlisle school was devoted to ethnic cleansing.

The National Battlefield Park has just discovered new information about an early boarding school for Native children in Michigan, much earlier than the Caarlisle school. According to Keegan, one of her researchers has just discovered a boarding school in the Detroit area, at Springwells, going back to 1812.

Keegan says it was run by Father Richard, but she doesnt know any more about him.

War of 1812

A few years ago, I saw a gruesome movie at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park, depicting Indians who massacred American soldiers during the War of 1812. The issue came up in January 1813 with the British fighting the Americans at the end of the American War for Independence.

More recently, however, I visited the museum again and the story I heard has changed. Now the museum is focused on the issues between the British and the American colonists in 1812 and 1813, plus the issue of American land expansion versus the Native Americans as another big factor of the war.

Keegan says the Native people were fighting the Americans to protect their land from new settlers, with the British supporting the Natives.

According to Keegan, 17 different Native American nations worked together and fought the Americans in the River Raisin battle.

Now a visitor to the Battlefield Park can see the history from different sides without the anti-Native American propaganda, Keegan comments.

Birch-bark shelter

At the same time, visitors can see a real birch-bark shelter in the museum, and handle reproductions of wampum peace contracts in Native American languages.

No more bashing Native Americans.

The River Raisin National Battlefield Park can educate people in Monroe giving fair credit to Native Americans in our local history.

Lets acknowledge the Native Americans as part of our local history in Monroe County.

White European settlers are local history. Native Americans are also local history.

Martha A. Churchill is a local historian and the co-author of the book Dundee, Images of America with Dorothy R. Heinlen.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Historian: Native Americans must be included in local history
FRANKLIN, WI  If you're traveling to and from Franklin for Christmas and the holidays, or have relatives visiting, you may be looking for a site to get tested for COVID-19 to stay safe over the weekend.

In its holiday guidance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said those joining gatherings with multiple households should take additional measures like getting tested and avoiding crowded indoor places before traveling.

The CDC also cautions anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 should not travel until they end isolation. More advice from the CDC on traveling can be found on the agency's website.



For anyone who may be sick or has symptoms, the message is to stay home and away from others. They should also get tested for the virus as should anyone who may have been in close contact with a person who has COVID-19, the agency says.



The number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Wisconsin sharply increased in early December, and the Department of Health Services urged people to get vaccinated as omicron variant cases and Christmas family gatherings both draw closer.

The omicron variant, a recently discovered coronavirus mutation with the potential to be highly transmissible, was discovered in Wisconsin on Dec. 4. Health experts say they're waiting to see how transmissible the new variant is, the severity of its illness and how effective vaccines will hold against it.



Wisconsin hospitals are experiencing an overflow of COVID-19 patients, and Wisconsin Hospital Association data showed that over 1,600 Wisconsinites are in a hospital bed due to the virus. There are a total of 44 ICU beds left in the state as of Friday.

SSM Health Monroe Hospital has about 50 percent more patients than what the staff is meant to manage, hospital president Jane Curran-Meuli told WISC-TV. "Our ICU is 2-3 times higher to what we're staffed to, and there's no more staff," she said.

Health officials said most of the virus patients entering hospital and ICU beds in Wisconsin aren't fully vaccinated and urge people to get the shot before traveling.

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Where To Find COVID-19 Testing Near Franklin

South Shore COVID-19 Testing Clinic

The South Shore COVID-19 testing clinic is open at 6077 S. Packard Avenue in Cudahy. The site is operated by multiple local health departments.

Meijer's Pharmacy

171 W Town Square Way, Oak Creek

To make an appointment call (414) 501-1710

Walgreen's Pharmacies

9909 West Loomis Road, 7130 South 76th Street,

Appointments required for testing. More information is available online.

City of Milwaukee Testing Free Sites

The City of Milwaukee has several free drive-thru and walk-up community COVID-19 testing sites for anyone 12-months or older, regardless of symptoms. The sites will be closed Dec. 24-26 and Dec. 31-Jan. 2.

Northwest Health Center

7630 West Mill Road

Drive-thru garage with entry at the Mill Road Library, 6431 North 76th Street

Monday and Friday: 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

Tuesday and Thursday: 12-6 p.m.

Saturday: 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Southside Health Center

1639 South 23rd Street

Drive-thru heated tent, entry on 24th Street

Monday and Friday: 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

Tuesday and Thursday: 12-6 p.m.

Saturday: 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Menomonee Valley Site

2401 West St. Paul Avenue

Drive-thru garage

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: 12-6 p.m.

Tuesday and Thursday: 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

More information about City of Milwaukee testing sites is available online.

Summit Clinical Laboratories



Summit Clinical Laboratories hosts COVID-19 testing clinics at locations across the Milwaukee area. Many locations may be closed on certain days during the holiday season.

There is a location at 7352 West Rawson Avenue in Franklin.

Walk-In Hours

Monday through Friday: 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Saturday: 9 a.m.12 p.m.

Holiday Hours

Closed on Dec. 25 and 26.

Dec. 24: 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

More information is available on Summit's website.





This article originally appeared on the Franklin Patch
Original Cottages brands have chosen to partner with charities who contribute to the local area  with donations made to 29 different organisations across 2021

Throughout 2021, Original Cottages and guests visiting their properties in England and Wales, have been donating to raise charitable funds to support local wildlife, build beach board walks, help fight food poverty and support community arts projects.

As a national family brand run by locals, who truly understand their communities, Original Cottages brands have chosen to partner with charities who contribute to the local area  with donations made to 29 different organisations across 2021.

Throughout the year, guests made voluntary donations to charity partners when booking their stays, with 100% of donations going directly to the charities. This was coupled with direct donations from Original Cottages, as well as match funding and individual employees raising funds.

Original Cottages most sizeable single donation has been its 20,000 contribution to UK Community Foundations (UKCF), a charity that leads a movement of community foundation committed to positive social change in the UK. Original Cottages donated 1 for every booking made over a six-week period this year, to assist in reaching the final amount of 20,000.

Rosemary Macdonald, CEO at UK Community Foundations, said: We were so delighted that the Original Cottages family chose to team up with UKCF to give vital support to the communities where they operate. The community foundations are using these funds to strengthen local efforts to tackle the big challenges in their area, including food poverty, mental health, and loneliness.

Original Cottages most sizeable single donation has been its 20,000 contribution to UK Community Foundations (UKCF), a charity that leads a movement of community foundation committed to positive social change in the UK

Original Cottages family brands have also recognised the increased urgency to support local communities in 2021, with donations including:

To replace the physical Christmas cards Original Cottages would usually send to its family of homeowners they have donated the 2,000 usually spent to Ecologi, a charity working to plant trees across the globe and reduce the worlds CO2 emissions, this year. The donation will allow Ecologi to plant nearly 16,000 trees  which is approximately 3 trees per homeowner.

Original Cottages brands in Norfolk and Sussex have helped vulnerable wildlife to thrive in the local area with donations to the Norfolk and Sussex Wildlife Trusts, in addition to sponsoring the Trusts Cley Calling event, which offers an array of activities celebrating wildlife and landscapes across the county.

Suffolk Secrets donated 9,300 to the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, sponsoring a new beach board walk, benefitting both residents and holidaymakers to Suffolk. The brand also supported community arts projects by donating to Theatre on the Coast in Suffolk during summer, the musical brought a taste of the West End and Broadway to the area during the school holidays.

In Wales, over 3,500 will be donated to Mind Pembrokeshire, Abersoch RNLI and Wales Air Ambulance to support the vital work the charities do in the local community caring for residents health, wellbeing and safety.

While guests of Cornish Horizons, part of the Original Cottages family have helped raise 11,390 for the Cornwall Air Ambulance service since the end of 2019.

Guests visiting Original Cottages properties in Yorkshire in 2020, helped support local wildlife with a 1,234 donation provided to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust at the start of the year. In addition, the Original Cottages team in Northumberland supported local communities by participating in a local beach clean, as part of the Marine Conversation Societys Great British Beach Clean, collecting over 12kg of rubbish.

Sonia Holman, Marketing Director at Original Cottages, said: Were proud to have supported over 29 charitable causes across the business this year, and are very grateful to our guests for their generous donations when booking with us. We hope that our donations will ensure that each charity is able to carry out its cherished work in the community. Original Cottages is committed to contributing to the local areas we operate in by fundraising for charitable causes and we look forward to continuing our work in 2022.

For more information about Original Cottages visit, www.OriginalCottages.co.uk, and if you are interested in staying in a property with Original Cottages, please visit the website or call 03332 020 899.
CRANFORD, NJ  As COVID-19 cases surge across the northeast, New Jersey cases have more than doubled in a week. The state is trying to get in front of infections by offering at-home tests.

Videos and photos of urgent-care locations packed in New York City and testing lines circling blocks of Manhattan have gone viral on social media. To keep residents safe and avoid a similar circumstance, the NJ Department of Health and Vault Medical Services have partnered to offer a free, at home COVID-19 saliva test kit to NJ residents.

The kit is available to all New Jersey residents, regardless of whether you have symptoms.

According to the website, here's how the test works:

"Order your test from Vault. The test kit will arrive at your home via expedited shipping.



Log on to your patient flow for next steps. Zoom supervision is required, you will be prompted to log into Vaults virtual waiting room. Wait times for a clinician are generally 15 minutes or less. Wait times are longest over the noon hour. You must not eat, drink, smoke, or chew anything for 30 minutes before your testing session.



Ship your sample to the lab using a prepaid UPS package.



Get your result 24 to 48 hours after your sample arrives at the lab."

The tests are free and can be ordered online.

State officials urged the public to use caution with Christmas and New Year's approaching. "Please this week before the holiday, stay home if you are sick and get tested before any holiday gatherings, especially if you have any potential exposure," New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said during Monday's state coronavirus briefing.



The state health department has reported at least 6,000 new cases per day since Thursday, peaking at 6,533 for Sunday. It wasn't long ago when New Jersey's case totals were less than half that amount, reaching only 2,968 on Dec. 13.



In Union County, 69 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

The Westfield Regional Health Department held a booster vaccine clinic in Fanwood on Wednesday with over 200 participants.

This article originally appeared on the Cranford Patch
Dec. 20BELFAST, Maine  A low-income housing development in Belfast  which some neighbors opposed when they first learned about it last year  has just been given the green light by the state of Maine to start construction. Ground is expected to be broken this coming spring.

The 36 affordable housing units in the project, located on the site of the city's former public works garage at 115 Congress Street, will be open to anyone, regardless of their age. The city has been working with Portland-based Developers Collaborative to redevelop the 3.5 acre lot.

Laura Reading, the director of affordable housing at the Portland company, learned last week that the development was one of just seven in the state to be allocated low-income housing tax credits through the Maine State Housing Authority.

Tax credits generate equity from private investors so that the developments can be built, meaning that the $720,000 in tax credits allocated to the Belfast project will help fund it.

"It's incredibly exciting," Reading said Monday. "This is the second time we had applied for financing, and it's great to see it come through this time. The city really worked with us over the last year to improve the competitiveness of our application."

The midcoast region is in a long-running housing crunch, with high rents and low availability combining to put stress on those seeking a place to live. For more than a decade, Belfast officials have made affordable housing a top priority, lauding the recent development of two senior housing projects on Wight Street, just around the corner from the Congress Street site. The Wight Street projects will add a total of 50 apartments to the city's housing stock.

"It's still a drop in the bucket, but enough drops, and the bucket gets filled up," said City Councilor Neal Harkness.

Still, the Congress Street project  which will feature 12 market rate apartments in addition to the 36 affordable ones  was at least initially a tough sell to some residents of the neighborhood where it will be built. About 80 people came to a listening session held at the site in August 2020, and some of them were worried that the subsized housing development would erode the charm of their community or worse.

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"I have grave concerns," Sonja Salvatore, who lived next to the site, said. "I'm also going to go out on a limb and say low-income housing brings a lot of things, like drugs and domestic violence."

But Raymelle Moody, a longtime city resident and small-business owner who was recently priced out of downtown Belfast, told the meeting attendees that she was the kind of person who would be helped by subsidized housing.

"I implore you to put down your ideas that this will cause your property values to go down, that the folks who live here will somehow bring down your neighborhood," Moody said then.

Tenants at the Congress Street property would need to pass credit and criminal background checks, and a property manager would spend two or three days a week there.

For many, having subsidized housing is the only way they can afford to live in Belfast. The units in the new Congress Street development will be available to people who make 60 percent of adjusted median income levels for the area. For a two-person family, that is $31,680, and for a four-person family, that is $39,600.

According to the Maine State Housing Authority, people making this much should not pay more than $742 for a one-bedroom apartment in Waldo County, $891 for a two-bedroom apartment or $1,029 for a three-bedroom apartment.

But rents like that are very hard to come by in a community with limited housing available. A recent scan of Craigslist showed only two apartments for rent in Belfast, and although one was $750 for a two-bedroom, the other was $1,000 for a one-bedroom.

Zafra Whitcomb, a Congress Street resident who lives across from the development site, is in favor of the housing project.

"I sit out in front of my door and watch the sunset every day," he said at the 2020 listening session. "It will be a real pleasant chance to have it set over houses."
Melanie Thankappan headed to the Pratt Library in Federal Hill for the branchs 10 a.m. opening, hoping to score a box of COVID-19 rapid tests.

A lot of people were there, and the boxes of test kits already were distributed. She and some other hopefuls waited a few minutes to make sure there werent more inside.

I feel like if I walk away, then they will come out with more boxes, said Thankappan, a second grade teacher in Baltimore, who is tested regularly at school but wanted more certainty and timeliness in results for gatherings. I dont want to hoard tests, but I want to have enough so that I make sure Im safe and everyone around me is safe.

With Christmas and New Years coming soon, and the highly transmissible coronavirus variant omicron now the dominant strain circulating, it seems everyone is eager to stick a swab up their nose.

After weeks of steady crowds, long lines have formed around testing sites in Maryland. Some people report being unable to buy rapid tests or being turned away at testing sites, even with appointments.

Help may be on the way, with more access planned at state testing facilities and more free rapid test kits for distribution, courtesy of state and federal governments. Both Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and President Joe Biden announced emergency measures Tuesday to increase staffing and hours at testing sites and the availability of at-home tests.

For now, people are waiting.

The Pratt libraries had around 4,800 tests, and almost all were handed out within the first 30 minutes, said Meghan McCorkell, a library system spokeswoman. The system later tweeted that people began lining up outside several hours before opening and some locations handed out tests early to get people out of the bitter cold.

The Health Department gave us the tests, and we hope to give away more as they become available, she said in an email.

Some people in line said they already had been to other library branches, drugstores and other sites without luck finding the test kits that have been in low supply throughout the pandemic.

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At the Baltimore City Health Departments only COVID-19 testing site operating Tuesday, across the street from the Village Baptist Church in West Baltimore, a line wrapped around the block.

Jacqui Olson, 28, of Highlandtown, was near the front of the line late Tuesday morning, after having waited over an hour. By then, the site was only offering PCR tests, rather than rapid tests.

She was seeking a test before seeing family in Florida for the holidays. It was her third time getting tested in the city during the pandemic, and the longest shed ever had to wait, she said. Her efforts to save time by taking a rapid test were unsuccessful.

We went to three or four different pharmacies, and they were all sold out, Olson said. So, that wasnt really an option, unfortunately.

For Antoine McKinney, 44, of Canton, it was his second day trying to get a COVID-19 test. Monday, he stopped by the testing site at State Center, which recently moved from the Baltimore Convention Center, but the line was so long  wrapped clear around the block  that he left and came back later. Then officials said they couldnt do any more testing for the day, he said.

McKinney hopes to get results back in time for a holiday trip home to St. Louis, even though hes been vaccinated and boosted.

My grandparents remain one of the main reasons for going home. And they have vaccinations, but they dont have boosters, he said. I dont want to go home and make everybody sick.

By Tuesday afternoon, the wait at the COVID-19 testing site at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia was impossible, said Connor Ferguson, general manager of FirstCall Urgent Care and Centennial Medical Group, which run the site.

The longest Ive heard is four hours, Ferguson said. Last year, there were waits as long as six or seven hours, so weve actually improved.

The Howard County executives office and local law enforcement have been helping to manage the queues of cars forming outside the site, sometimes as early as 4:30 a.m., Ferguson said.

I quite honestly never thought wed ever see volumes like we saw in December of 2020 ever again and were about 50% higher than that, Ferguson said of the companys 10 sites, from the Howard County Fairgrounds and BWI Marshall Airport to FedEx Field.

The demand is so high that the companys website crashes often, he said.

The company offers both rapid and PCR tests at its locations, Ferguson said. Take-home tests are not being provided.

Drive-thru sites, which offer patients the opportunity to be tested from their cars, without needing to stand among infected individuals in lines or packed waiting rooms, are so more difficult to staff, especially given weather and traffic conditions, he said.

Federal officials said the squeeze should ease soon. Biden announced Tuesday that the government would make half a billion at-home rapid tests available to be shipped to consumers who sign up through a website beginning in January. The pandemic plan also includes more testing sites, in addition to 20,000 free testing sites across the country, with the first opening in New York City before Christmas.

Biden already had called on private insurers to reimburse consumers for rapid tests they buy starting next year, in addition to covering the PCR tests done in a lab.

Maryland has joined much of the country in seeing a surge in cases, increasingly tied to the more contagious omicron variant that the CDC said Monday is now the dominant strain in the U.S. State health officials said Tuesday that the variant is now 40% of the specimens taken from infected residents for testing.

Maryland reported a record 6,218 new cases Tuesday. The positivity rate from testing rose above 11.6%, more than twice the international threshold of 5% showing adequate levels of testing.

Hogan, in a virtual address because he is isolating with COVID-19, announced Tuesday that the state would expand hours and days of operations at some state-run testing sites in part by mobilizing the Maryland National Guard to assist.

They include operations in Annapolis and Prince Georges County, as well as at State Center in Baltimore. The Vaccine Equity Task Force plans to step up testing and vaccinations in vulnerable communities.

Hogan also said hed put $50 million of new COVID-19 preparedness spending toward testing, treatments and vaccinations at hospitals and nursing homes, with millions more primarily going increase staffing at hospitals coping with rising numbers of largely unvaccinated coronavirus patients.

The state already pledged a half-million rapid tests to local health departments and to BWI for distribution. Hogan said the state is working to increase those weekly shipments. The state will give $30 million to schools to buy more tests and supplies.

Hogan urged people to get vaccinated and boosted. He said about 91% of adults in the state had gotten at least one dose of vaccine. Marylanders should also use caution and common sense, he said.

If you travel get a test, he said. If you are feeling sick, stay home and get tested.

Tests will continue to be an integral part of a layered approach to protecting the community from COVID-19, said Matthew Frieman, a coronavirus expert and professor in the University of Maryland School of Medicines department of microbiology and immunology.

With the holidays coming, he plans to test himself ahead of visiting family for Christmas.

The family will use rapid tests Wednesday ahead of traveling Thursday. If anyone is positive, they all will go for more sensitive PCR tests at a lab and hope results come back in time.

Like other experts, he said the best way to use rapid tests was to test everyone once ahead of a gathering and twice over several days for those exposed or with symptoms.

Probably no one has enough tests to do it that way for every gathering, though, he said. If you have them, they are good to give you a sense of security that you are not infected at that moment.

Those who cant access a test before the holidays still can consider going to gatherings, Frieman said, but he suggested extra precautions, including vaccinations, boosters, extra hand washes, masks and well-ventilated rooms.

It is important to be together for our emotional well being, and people in public health recognize that, he said. Christmas is a time when people want to be together, especially two years into the pandemic.

Baltimore Sun reporters reporters Emily Opilo and Christine Condon contributed to this article.
Flying was a totally new experience for me, but I enjoyed most of it. Amanda Krause/Insider

I'm 25 years old and just took my first plane ride in December 2021.

I was surprised by numerous things, including the boarding process and how quick security can be.

I was also amused by Kylie Cosmetics vending machines in airports, and how small plane windows are.

I'm 25 years old and have always traveled by car, train, and bus  but never by plane.

I posed for this selfie on my first plane ride, which I took from New Jersey to Florida. Amanda Krause/Insider

Even when my family took Disney World vacations throughout my childhood, we opted to drive from New Jersey to Florida rather than flying our family of four down the East Coast.

So this year, when I decided to spend a weekend at Disney Springs in Orlando, Florida, I figured it was time to take my first flight.

Of course, I knew flying would be a bit different both on the plane and at the airport as a result of the pandemic, but there were still a few standard things that surprised me throughout my journey.

The first thing that surprised me was how fast I got through security despite long lines.

I took this photo from my spot in line while waiting to go through security. Amanda Krause/Insider

My flight was set to depart Newark airport at 5:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning. I assumed the airport wouldn't be too busy when I arrived around 3:30 a.m., but I still found long lines waiting to check bags and go through security.

But to my surprise, it only took approximately one hour for me to do both.

Once at my gate, I laughed upon seeing a Kylie Cosmetics vending machine.

A Kylie Cosmetics vending machine at Newark airport. Amanda Krause/Insider

When not reporting on theme parks like Disney World, I often cover beauty news and products. So it caught me off guard to see the signature pink packaging of Kylie Jenner's beauty brand in a vending machine as I prepared to board my first flight.

But as I came to learn later, these machines are actually a staple at numerous airports across the US.

I also quickly learned that boarding can be a very different process depending on the airline you're flying with.

I took this photo from my seat after boarding my first flight. Amanda Krause/Insider

The first airline I flew with was Frontier, and the second was Southwest. While I enjoyed flights with both, their two boarding processes were completely different from one other.

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Frontier worked on a first-come-first-serve basis and opened boarding to all passengers at once. Southwest, on the other hand, took a more organized approach and called each group individually.

That being said, I had an assigned seat on my Frontier flight, but had to search for one on my Southwest flights. The latter airline has an open boarding policy, and allows passengers to choose their seats once their boarding group is called.

Once I sat down, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, even on an inexpensive airline, the seats were comfortable and I had plenty of legroom.

The seats on my Frontier flight were cushioned, and I had decent legroom. Amanda Krause/Insider

Of course, I'm sure the seats pale in comparison to those on luxury planes, and I am on the shorter side at 5 feet 2 inches.

But because I've always heard people complain about airplane seats  especially those on budget airlines  I was expecting much worse.

The windows also threw me for a loop  they were smaller than I imagined.

I now know that I prefer the window seat. Amanda Krause/Insider

Logically, I know that airplane windows can't be huge. But when looking at planes from a distance, they seem bigger than they actually are when seated next to them.

I found myself craning my neck to see from the aisle seat, and couldn't always appreciate the view below us.

Next time I fly, I'll definitely be getting a window seat.

Takeoff took a lot longer than I expected, and motion sickness set in almost immediately.

Reading books and brochures got me through my first flight. Amanda Krause/Insider

I assumed that the plane would begin ascending shortly after the flight attendants gave their safety demonstrations, but instead, we stayed on the ground. Considering how anxious I was at the moment, those few minutes felt like an eternity.

Unfortunately, things didn't get much better when flying. I always thought I'd be OK in the air so long as there's no turbulence, but I felt dizzy and nauseous for most of the smooth flight.

At first, I thought it was the result of nerves, but even on the way home when I was much calmer, I experienced the same symptoms. Luckily, I found that concentrating on a book or even the plane brochures helped  the complete opposite of what I experience when I have motion sickness in the car.

The biggest shock was how exhausted I felt after only a few days of travel.

I tiredly waited for my flight home, and counted the minutes until boarding. Amanda Krause/Insider

In the past, I've taken week-long vacations where I trekked hours through theme parks in extreme heat. But somehow, three flights and two days in Florida left me feeling more exhausted than ever before.

Maybe it was the speed of my trip, or maybe it was the nerves from my first flight. According to Cleveland Clinic, you can also become tired on flights as a result of low humidity leaving you dehydrated, and lower air pressure providing your body less oxygen.

But whatever the reason, I felt like I needed another vacation as soon as my third and final plane landed.

Read the original article on Insider
The Michigan Attorney General's office contacted the Michigan State Police earlier this month, requesting law enforcement investigate the clergyman.

INDIAN RIVER  The Michigan Attorney General's office and Michigan State Police are currently investigating a clergyman who is serving as pastor of the Cross in the Woods National Shrine in Indian River.

"At this time, we are only confirming our investigation involving Fr. (Bryan) Medlin," said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's Press Secretary Lynsey Mukomel in an email. "I have nothing more to add given it's an active investigation."

The Michigan Attorney General's office contacted the Michigan State Police earlier this month, requesting law enforcement investigate the clergyman.

"We are investigating a clergy member that falls under the Diocese of Gaylord," said Michigan State Police Seventh District Public Information Officer Spl. Lt. Derrick Carroll in an email.

Carroll said the Diocese of Gaylord had contacted the Michigan Attorney General, and then the Michigan State Police were requested to investigate the incident on Dec. 10.

"The investigation continues and there is no further information available," he said.

According to an announcement made on the Diocese of Gaylord's website on July 4 of this year, Medlin had been appointed as the pastor of Cross in the Woods beginning Sept. 17, 2021. Prior to his position in Indian River, Medlin had been serving as pastor of St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Lake Leelanau.

Medlin had also been appointed as the assistant director of vocations for the Diocese of Gaylord in early August.

The Diocese of Gaylord released an official statement on Wednesday regarding the investigation into the clergyman.

The statement reads: "The Diocese of Gaylord became aware some days ago of an apparent violation of diocesan Protocols for Ministry to Minors involving electronic messages sent to a small number of students. The diocese immediately referred the concerns to the Michigan Department of Attorney General and Michigan State Police, who are investigating the matter. Any investigation of the matter by church authorities will be undertaken after the civil investigation concludes.

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"This investigation involves Rev. Bryan Medlin, pastor of the National Shrine of the Cross in the Woods in Indian River, Michigan. Fr. Medlin has stepped aside from all parish and diocesan responsibilities (i.e., pastor of Cross in the Woods Parish and assistant director of vocations of the Diocese of Gaylord) while this civil investigation is underway. He is not engaging in any ministerial activities at this time, and parish responsibilities are being overseen by Rev. James Gardiner.

"Mackenzie Ritchie, director of communications for the Diocese of Gaylord, said, 'The safety and security of our students  and all those within our schools and parishes  could not be more important, and we are thankful for the continued work of civil authorities in safeguarding our young people. The diocese continues to fully cooperate with law enforcement and civil authorities and follow their direction. In order to maintain the integrity of the civil investigation that is underway, the diocese will not make any further comments at this time but continues to direct any questions to Michigan State Police or the Michigan Department of Attorney General.'

"The Diocese of Gaylord encourages that any allegation of abuse, harassment, or inappropriate conduct by someone in the church be reported to the Michigan Department of Attorney General at (844) 324- 3374 or to local law enforcement. Reports are also encouraged to be made to church authorities by contacting the diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinator Larry LaCross at (989) 705-9010."

Contact Features Writer Kortny Hahn at khahn1@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @khahnCDT.

This article originally appeared on Cheboygan Daily Tribune: Indian River clergyman being investigated by attorney general, state police
An Indiana woman has agreed to plead guilty to murder for a fatal stabbing that happened in Georgetown in 2019, according to court records.

Cassandra Carson, 38, will enter a guilty plea in January, according to court records. Shes set to be sentenced to 25 years in prison, according to prosecutors. Carson was arrested and charged in the death of 36-year-old Georgetown resident Matthew A. Turner. Turner was found dead July 30, 2019, on the sidewalk in his front yard, according to Scott County Coroner John Goble.

Turner was an employee for the Toyota plant in Georgetown and is a native of Indiana, Goble said.

Investigators determined that Carson stabbed Turner, according to court records. Turner had an emergency protective order filed against Carson in Indiana, according to court records.

Carson was initially charged with manslaughter, according to court records. But she was later indicted on a murder charge. She was also charged with violating an emergency protective order and unlawful imprisonment.

Carson is scheduled to enter a guilty plea on Jan. 3, according to court records, after her attorney filed a motion last week to change their plea. She was scheduled to go to trial in February.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Irans paramilitary Revolutionary Guard on Tuesday fired cruise missiles during a major military exercise across the countrys south, media reported.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the Guard, did not specify the type and range of the missiles. But it said five cruise missiles and an unspecified number of attack drones successfully hit their targets.

Later, state TV showed the launch of the missiles, flight of drones and a ship that was exploded after frogmen planted mines on it.

The Guards navy chief. Gen. Ali Reza Tangsiri told state TV that his forces managed a coordinated war game across the coasts of Iran, from near the borders of Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow gateway for 20% of the worlds traded oil.

He said the drill has a message of security, peace and friendship to the regional nations.

The Guard in the past has said it has cruise missiles with ranges of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles). It also has missiles that range up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), more than enough to reach archenemy Israel and U.S. military bases in the region.

The five-day annual exercise that began on Monday came days after the breakup of talks to revive Tehrans nuclear deal with world powers. Iran has accelerated its nuclear advances as negotiations to return to the accord struggle to make headway.

From time to time, Iran holds military exercises, saying they are aimed at improving the readiness of its forces and testing new weapons.

Last month, Irans military began its annual war games in a coastal area of the Gulf of Oman.

In 2018, former President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the nuclear deal and re-imposed crushing sanctions on Iran. Tehran has since started enriching uranium up to 60% purity - a short technical step from the 90% needed to make an atomic bomb.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is peaceful. But the country's steps away from its obligations under the 2015 accord have alarmed Israel and other world powers. Israel has repeatedly threatened unilateral action against Irans nuclear program.
The long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope is set to launch this week on a journey to reconstruct the history of the universe.

Why it matters: The telescope, billed as the Hubble Space Telescope's successor, is designed to peer into the atmospheres of distant alien planets and see some of the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang.

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Driving the news: The JWST is expected to launch on Christmas Eve at 7:20am ET from Kourou, French Guiana.

You can watch the launch live via NASA TV starting at 6am ET here.

The big questions: For decades, scientists have tried to piece together the early history of the universe, and the JWST is the first observatory that may give them a real shot at answering long-standing questions. They include:

How do stars evolve within massive clouds of dust?

What are the atmospheres of distant planets made of  and how different are they from Earth?

How did the first galaxies assemble after the Big Bang?

"This telescope will not just rewrite our history of the early universe, but write it," Caitlin Casey, a University of Texas at Austin scientist who plans to use the JWST for her research, told Axios. "There are so many unknowns and blanks that we haven't yet filled in."

For the project Casey is leading, the JWST will stare deeply at a patch of sky about three times the size of the Moon in our night sky, hopefully capturing a view of some of the universe's earliest galaxies.

Casey and her colleagues will use that data to try to piece together a cohesive picture of what the universe looked like not long after it formed.

The JWST will peer out into the universe primarily in infrared light making it more able to cut through dust and capture the faint light emitted by distant, early galaxies more efficiently than the Hubble.

The backstory: The $10 billion JWST has faced a number of technical setbacks, delays and a ballooning budget during its decades-long development.

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The telescope was recommended by a committee in 1996.

Construction began in 2004, but the project quickly ballooned, at one point being called the "telescope that ate astronomy."

Getting this telescope to space will allow other big projects in line behind it  like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope  to eventually launch.

Between the lines: The JWST delays, however, have allowed scientists and engineers to include science goals that weren't possible when the telescope began development.

When the observatory's development began, scientists hadn't yet found many planets around stars other than the Sun. Today, they know there are thousands of them.

"It's fully possible that we might be able to find bio-signatures of life in the atmospheres of other planets," Steven Finkelstein, a scientist using the JWST to learn more about galaxies, told Axios.

Yes, but: All of this science hinges on the telescope actually working the way it's meant to, and a safe launch is only the beginning.

Once the JWST gets to space, it will spend about a month in transit to a point about 1 million miles from Earth. (Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, this observatory won't be close enough to our planet for an astronaut servicing mission if something were to go wrong.)

During that transit, the telescope's large sunshield, its instruments and mirrors will all deploy over the course of weeks.

NASA calls it "the most complex sequence of deployments ever attempted in a single space mission," noting there are more than 300 single points of failure items that could go wrong.

The bottom line: "No one has ever before unfolded a telescope in space," JWST scientist Jane Rigby told Axios. "What we're doing is necessary  astronomy simply cannot advance in some key areas until we build bigger telescopes, and that means telescopes that have to unfold."

"I'm confident because we have the best engineering team in the world, we've practiced this on the ground over and over, we've tested all the hardware, and now it's time."

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The House Jan. 6 select committee on Monday sent a letter to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) requesting information on his communications with the Trump administration in the run-up to the Capitol riot.

Driving the news: In a statement to Axios that mirrored tweets from Perry, the lawmaker said he declined the panel's request, calling the select committee "illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the US House of Representatives."

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Perrys refusal to provide information forces the nine House members that comprise the panel to decide whether to subpoena one of their colleagues for the first time.

Background: The letter marked the first known time the select committee has requested information directly from a sitting member of Congress.

Perry, the incoming chair of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, filed the objection to Pennsylvania's electoral college votes on Jan. 6 along with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

What they're saying: "We have received evidence from multiple witnesses that you had an important role in the efforts to install [Jeffrey Clark] as acting Attorney General," Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote to Perry.

Thompson also cited "multiple text and other communications with President Trumps former Chief of Staff regarding Mr. Clark," including messages on the encrypted communications app Signal.

Clark, a former top official at the Department of Justice, was a key player in a Senate report about former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Between the lines: The request stopped short of a subpoena, the method the panel has used to extract testimony and documents from former Trump administration officials, Jan. 6 rally organizers and others.

"The Select Committee has tremendous respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its Members," Thompson wrote, stressing that they are seeking "voluntary cooperation" from Perry.

Clark was subpoenaed by the committee for information on his alleged role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election but pled the Fifth Amendment in a deposition earlier this month after nearly being referred for contempt of Congress.

"When Mr. Clark decided to invoke his 5th Amendment rights, he understood that we planned to pose questions addressing his interactions with you, among a host of other topics," Thompson wrote in his letter.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of the panels two Republican members, said Sunday the committee hasnt ruled out subpoenas for members of Congress.

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What's next: The panel may opt to subpoena Perry, which will could lead to a protracted legal battle.

In addition to turning over documents, Thompson asked Perry to participate in an interview in late December or early January, even offering to meet with him in his district.

Editor's note: This post has been updated to include news that Perry declined the Jan. 6 select committee's request.

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Three of the women of "Sex and the City" have spoken, and they are showing their support for the women who have accused co-star Chris Noth of sexual assault.

"We are deeply saddened to hear the allegations against Chris Noth," And Just Like That ... stars Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis said in a joint statement posted to each of their Instagram Stories on Monday night.

"We support the women who have come forward and shared their painful experiences. We know it must be a very difficult thing to do and we commend them for it," they said.

Noth played Mr. Big  Carrie Bradshaw's longtime love interest and husband  in the HBO comedy, its film sequels and the current HBO Max revival "And Just Like That ... . He made a brief but shocking appearance in the premiere episode of "And Just Like That ..." and has not returned.

Representatives for HBO did not comment Tuesday when reached by The Times.

The stars of the "Sex and the City" revival had been silent since last Thursday's report in the Hollywood Reporter that detailed the accounts of two women, one who accused Noth of sexual assault in 2004 and the other who alleged Noth sexually assaulted her in 2015. The two women said they were triggered by his return to the HBO Max series and all the fanfare that came along with it.

The next day, actress and director Zoe Lister-Jones accused Noth of misconduct on the Law & Order set and said that he "capitalized on the fantasy that women believed Mr. Big represented." By Friday night, the Daily Beast published allegations made by a 30-year-old tech executive who alleged that Noth forced himself on her in 2010 when she was 18.

Noth and his spokesperson denied the allegations in two separate statements, describing them as "categorically false" and "a complete fabrication."

"[N]o always means no  that is a line I did not cross, Noth said Thursday. The encounters were consensual. Its difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I dont know for certain why they are surfacing now but I do know this: I did not assault these women.

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But the professional fallout has been swift for the actor.

Noth was promptly dropped from a viral Peloton ad poking fun at Mr. Big's fate in the premiere episode of "And Just Like That ... ." Then he was dropped by his talent agency and from additional episodes of the CBS series "The Equalizer."

Additionally, an old National Enquirer story about an ex-girlfriend, former supermodel Beverly Johnson, resurfaced on social media, dusting off 1995 court documents in which Johnson alleged that Noth beat her and made physical abuse and death threats after they dated.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
The Daily Beast

ABDUAZIZ MADYAROVMOSCOWThe unprecedented protests sweeping Russias neighboring country of Kazakhstan entered their fourth day on Wednesday with a declaration of a nationwide state of emergency, the resignation of the government, and an announcement that a Moscow-led alliance of six former Soviet countries will be sending in peacekeeping troops to take control of the situation. As the countrys rich elite took off in their private jets, the revolutionsparked in part by hiked up fuel prices
Kansas and federal data shows COVID-19 spread remains high in Kansas as the Christmas holiday approaches and families prepare to spend time together.

Hospitals are again filling up across the state and officials are bracing for the effects of the omicron variant, which was found in Kansas last week. Additional omicron cases have been uncovered in Douglas, Sedgwick and Wyandotte counties, bringing the state to nine overall.

Meanwhile, all counties in Kansas have "high" or "substantial" levels of community spread, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Kansas Department of Heath and Environment reported 2,659 new cases between Friday and Monday, though the number of new cases reported per day is down from its peak in late November.

More: Vaccinated and test positive? What to know about omicron, COVID for this holiday season.

Meanwhile, the state's vaccination rate has remained relatively steady. A little over 68% of all Kansans have gotten at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But when considering the number of Kansans who have gotten their booster doses, the number drops by over half. Only 30.5% of the state's residents have been boosted, a step health officials say is needed to protect against new variants.

For the state's youngest residents, about 48,000 Kansans between the ages of 5 and 11 have gotten the vaccine, the lowest rate of any age bracket in the state. A little over 120,000 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 have gotten the shots.

Before you head off to your holiday gathering, health officials encourage residents to get tested. You can find a testing provider on the KDHE website.

County COVID-19 rankings

KDHE issues rankings of all 105 counties in Kansas based on COVID-19 vaccination rates, case rates and testing rates. Below is a searchable database of the rankings with data as of Nov. 19. The higher the ranking, the greater the public health risk in the community.

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County cases, test positivity, vaccination rates

Federal public health officials issue various COVID-19 data. Below is a searchable database of COVID-19 case rates, positivity rates and vaccination rates for Kansas counties with data as of Dec. 21.

KDHE school district rates

The KDHE reports presumed student case and vaccination rates by public school district boundaries. Below is a searchable database of Kansas schools with data for the period ending Dec. 15.

Andrew Bahl is a senior statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at abahl@gannett.com or by phone at 443-979-6100.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas COVID numbers up before Christmas; no progress on vaccines
Memphis Kellogg's employee Marvin Rush strikes outside the Airways Boulevard plant Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021.

The strike at the Kellogg's plant in Memphis and three other cities across the country is coming to an end, both the company and the labor union involved confirmed Tuesday.

The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union announced Tuesday morning that workers had ratified a new agreement with the company.

"Our striking members at Kelloggs ready-to-eat cereal production facilities courageously stood their ground and sacrificed so much in order to achieve a fair contract. This agreement makes gains and does not include any concessions, the union's International President Anthony Shelton said in a statement.

Workers had been on strike since October 5. Earlier this month, a national bargaining team had reached a deal with the company but workers rejected it.

The union's national bargaining team negotiated with the company again, reached another deal with the company, and this time employees approved it.

We are pleased that we have reached an agreement that brings our cereal employees back to work, Steve Cahillane, chairman and CEO of the cereal company said in a statement. We look forward to their return and continuing to produce our beloved cereal brands for our customers and consumers.

The plant in Memphis produces popular cereal brands including Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes and Rice Krispies.

The strikes had played out simultaneously in Memphis and at cereal plants in three other cities: Battle Creek, Michigan, Omaha, Nebraska, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It involved about 1,400 workers.

Strikes have been rare in recent years, especially in the South, and the Kellogg's strike was one of the most significant labor disputes in Tennessee in recent decades.

Tennessee AFL-CIO President Billy Dycus issued a statement calling the strike "a true inspiration to workers everywhere" and praised the local union in Memphis as "a shining example of worker power to Tennessees labor movement."

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"As we saw firsthand in the earliest days of the strike, the energy and solidarity that radiated from the picket line captured the attention of community leaders, elected officials, and countless union members who stopped by to show their support for these workers," Dycus said in the statement. "With a new year on the horizon, we are more energized than ever before and are prepared to carry the fight for Tennessees working families into 2022."

New agreement brings wage increases, addresses two-tiered system

A major sticking point in negotiations to date had been the company's two-tiered labor system, in use since 2015. Under that system, newer employees called "transitionals" receive lower pay and less generous benefits than the longer-serving "legacy" employees.

Kellogg's said the newly ratified deal improves wages and benefits for all workers  both transitional and legacy employees  and also speeds up the pathway for transitional workers to earn legacy status and its higher pay and benefits.

According to a summary of the agreement posted by the company, all transitional employees with four years or more of service will immediately graduate to legacy status. After that, transitional workers will graduate to legacy status each year at 3% of the plant's head count.

The new contract also increases the base rate for transitional employees to $24.11 per hour, and says they will receive cost-of-living increases for subsequent years of the contract.

The company summary didn't list wage rates for the higher-paid legacy employees.

However, in a separate post, the company said the base pay for the most senior legacy employees was nearly $36 per hour in 2020, not counting overtime  the new contract will add a $1.10 pay increase for these legacy workers immediately and add cost of living adjustments in subsequent years of the five-year contract.

Investigative reporter Daniel Connolly welcomes tips and comments from the public. Reach him at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis Kellogg's strike ends as workers ratify new deal with company
A Bowling Green man has been indicted on multiple terrorism-related charges for allegedly working with ISIS, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Kentucky announced Monday.

Mirsad Hariz Adem Ramic, a 31-year-old "dual U.S.-Bosnian citizen," has been charged with "providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)," "conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and receiving military type training from ISIS," according to a statement.

Ramic and two other people flew to Turkey in 2014 and then traveled into Syria to join ISIS, the statement and court documents allege. He then, an FBI investigation found, "attended an ISIS training camp where he received weapons and physical training and fired an AK-47," according to the statement.

Read more: Feds rebut claim that prosecuting man pardoned by Gov. Matt Bevin is vindictive

"After joining ISIS, Ramic and his co-conspirators remained in contact with each other and discussed, among other things, Ramics presence in Raqqa, Syria, and his use of an anti-aircraft weapon to shoot at planes. Ramic and his co-conspirators also discussed jihad, martyrdom and fighting for ISIS," the statement said.

The statement also alleges "one of Ramics co-conspirators," who is not named, "sent two e-mails to Western Kentucky University, stating that he had traveled to Syria to join ISIS and expressing his desire that ISIS conquer the United States."

Ramic was arrested in Turkey and "deported to the United States," according to a Justice Department statement. He "arrived in the United States Thursday evening and made his initial appearance in court (Monday) afternoon."

"If convicted of the charged offenses, Ramic faces a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison, a fine of $750,000 and term of supervised release up to life," the statement said.

Mary Ramsey is a breaking news reporter for The Courier Journal. Reach her at mramsey@gannett.com, and follow her on Twitter @mcolleen1996. Support strong local journalism in our community by subscribing to The Courier Journal today.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Justice Department: Bowling Green man facing terrorism-related charges




Former New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof announced on Monday that he filed paperwork to run for governor of Oregon, making his bid for chief of the Beaver State official.

Kristof revealed in a tweet that he filed paperwork to run in Oregon's gubernatorial race as a Democrat earlier that day. The former columnist launched his campaign for the position in October, nearly two weeks after announcing his departure from the Times, but Monday's filing makes the bid official.

"I've just officially filed as a Democratic candidate for governor for 2022 because I've spent a lifetime standing up for people whom governments have left behind, giving a voice to those whom the political class ignores, and shining a light on the toughest problems we face, no matter the odds, no matter who stands in the way," Krisof said in a video posted to Twitter.

In a message accompanying the video, Kristof said his campaign "can build an Oregon that leaves no one behind, tackles the climate crisis that impacts our state every day, and creates a fairer economy that works for everyone."

In a separate tweet on Monday, Kristof solicited donations from his followers, writing "I'm new to running for office, so I can't build a campaign without grassroots support."

But in order to do that, I need your support. I'm new to running for office, so I can't build a campaign without grassroots support. I'll greatly appreciate if you support our campaign here:https://t.co/hJxVpmamd5 - Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) December 20, 2021

Kristof, a native Oregonian who relocated to his family's farm in Yamhill, southeast of Portland, a few years ago, will face off against a number of Democratic contenders in the primary. Whoever wins the general election will succeed Gov. Kate Brown (D), who is barred from running again because of term limits.

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House Speaker Tina Kotek (D), state Treasurer Tobian Read (D) and former state Sen. Betsy Johnson (D), who resigned from her seat this month to focus on the gubernatorial bid, are also running for the party's nomination.

In his October campaign announcement, Kristof suggested that he was running to address problems Oregonians face that previous leaders have failed to tackle.

"I have never run for political office in my life, but I have spent a lifetime shining a light in the darkest corners of the globe," Kristof said in a video announcing his campaign.

"Nothing will change until we stop moving politicians up the career ladder year after year, even though they refuse to step up to the problems Oregon faces," he added.
A Kentucky man convicted of committing devastating fraud has been arrested again after he failed to report to prison to begin a 10-year sentence last week.

William S. Evans III was ordered to self-report to the federal prison in Ashland on Dec. 15 but never showed up, according to federal court records. An arrest warrant was issued and Evans was arrested in Florida on Monday.

A federal judge in Orlando ordered Evans to be transported to Kentucky for additional court proceedings.

Evans admitted earlier this year to committing commodities fraud. He purported to be a professional investor doing business for Turning Point Investments, a company which wasnt licensed to operate in Kentucky, according to federal court records. He was ordered to pay $16.9 million in restitution, according to court records.

Evans had been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Lexington, but was permitted to self-report to prison a few months after his sentencing hearing. Prosecutors filed a motion for Evans arrest the day after he failed to report to prison.

It can be a separate crime to avoid custody or confinement after conviction, prosecutors wrote in the motion to have Evans arrested.

No new charges had been placed against Evans as of Tuesday morning, according to court records.

Evans pooled money from more than 20 investors, according to court records. He encouraged them to put in money, even if it came from individual retirement accounts or other accounts which get penalized for withdrawing money early.

Evans put money from investors into his own bank accounts or into trading accounts in his name or the name of his wife, used money from some clients to pay off debts to other clients and spent some on personal expenses, including improvements to his house and payments on a boat, according to a sentencing memorandum.

Evans ultimately lost huge sums of investor money, according to court records. He also lied to clients and told them they were making large returns on their investments, or would soon be making back a lot of money.

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Evans attorney wrote in court records that Evans was previously very successful in the finance industry. He acknowledged that Evans eventual failures caused his clients to lose millions of dollars and said that Evans deeply regrets the harm he has caused.

Evans attorney asked for leniency in Evans sentencing, in part due to Evans suffering from clinical dementia syndrome. Evans would likely need increasing support for his medical issues, his attorney wrote in court records.

Federal authorities froze more than $10 million Evans and his wife had in various accounts in May 2020, and they sold their house and boat to pay toward restitution, according to court records.

Devastating fraud. Kentucky trader gets prison term, order to repay $16.9 million
Bo and Mindy Ellis needed to act to keep their house from sliding into Lake Michigan.

With their home 8 feet above the waves and 20 feet from the shore of Whitefish Bay in Door County, Wisconsin, the couple watched last year as the lakes waters rose, whittling away the shoreline.

Crashing waves undermined a protective stone revetment. A creek cutting across their property compounded the erosion. The beach used to gradually incline into the water. Now it sharply drops.

The high water was present for such a long time that I realized I needed to do something, Bo Ellis said.

But as other northeast Wisconsinites watched their beachfronts shrink in 2020, they overwhelmed contractors with bookings, requiring the Ellises to wait seven months for a professional to fortify their barrier. The cost: more than $37,000. The waters have since eased, but the Ellises know they will rise again.

High waters have sped erosion along Lake Michigans shoreline, swallowing beaches, damaging public lands and draining homeowners savings. Cities from Milwaukee to Green Bay and small communities in Door County must confront erosion  a key portion of climate impacts that Wisconsins shoreline communities expect to cost at least $245 million over the next five years.

More: A changing climate could cost Great Lakes communities billions. Heres what's being done about it.

Scientists expect erosion to worsen as climate change brings more volatility to Great Lakes levels. While that may yield extremely low waters in some years, experts also expect dramatic shifts to high waters  adding power to waves that punish shorelines. Between record-low waters in January 2013 and a record-high in July 2020, Lakes Michigan and Huron collectively swung more than 6 feet.

Lakefront homeowners are scrambling to add seawalls or riprap, slopes of rock or concrete that block waves. But artificial barriers can accelerate erosion downstream, blocking sand from naturally replenishing beaches  sometimes sparking conflict.

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Eyeing such consequences, experts are calling on communities to find new ways to protect shorelines.

Fight against nature

Lake Michigans levels have fluctuated in cycles throughout its recorded history, swinging up or down roughly every three to 10 years. Shoreline residents are now living through the most dramatic swing in their lifetimes.

Unlike oceans, which are steadily rising with global temperatures, water levels on the Great Lakes largely depend on the weather  rising with deposits from rain and snow, waning as water evaporates.

But experts said new climate trends are altering Great Lakes cycles.

More intense storms are adding water to the Great Lakes. But the regions average temperatures are also rising  accelerating evaporation. These opposing forces are creating a tug of war effect, scientists say, causing more dramatic fluctuations of lake levels and accelerating erosion, particularly during high-water years.

Relatively speaking, the Great Lakes are new features, carved by the last glacial retreat a few thousand years ago  an instant in geological time, said Guy Meadows, director of Michigan Technological Universitys Marine Engineering Laboratory.

Absent human intervention and new climate trends, Lake Michigans shoreline has traditionally eroded by an average of about a foot annually, Meadows said. But increasingly frequent storms are energizing waves that pummel shorelines. In 2020, waves carried up to 25% more energy compared to the low-water year of 2013.

The natural process is for people to try to fight against nature, by building barriers, Meadows said. When we go through episodes of extremely high water levels, like we just went through in 2020 for Lake Michigan, that erosion rate goes up catastrophically, from one foot per year to 10, 20 or 30 feet per year, depending on where you are on the shoreline.

Reflecting Lake Michigans volatility: The deluge of DNR permit applications from property owners installing shoreline protection.

As Lake Michigans waters climbed between 2018 and 2020, those applications jumped from 61 annually to 149  a 144% increase.

Requests for emergency self-certifications  a temporary DNR permit to protect homes or other structures facing imminent danger from accelerating erosion  soared more than 830%, from fewer than 30 applications in 2018 to 280 in 2020.

Those figures offer only a partial glimpse of Lake Michigan shoreline. The DNR issued most permits in Door County, which it considers an area of special natural resources interest  a sensitive habitat where permits are required.

Property owners to the south are not required to seek permits for new barriers, so long as they meet DNR's standards.

As a result, the DNR does not track structures built along most of Wisconsins Lake Michigan shoreline. That lack of data makes it tougher to monitor the downstream impacts from such structures, the agency acknowledges.

Coastal domino effect

A dispute that played out at Concordia University Wisconsin, a private college just north of Milwaukee, illustrates how armoring a shoreline can set off a domino effect.

In 2007, the university finished fortifying a 130-foot bluff and building a 2,700-foot-long rock wall to buffer waves. The $12 million project was among the largest built along Lake Michigan in Wisconsin.

Concordia University, a private Lutheran college in Mequon, spent $12 million on a massive bluff protection project, seen in 2021.

Neighboring landowners soon noticed changes to their property.

While barriers like seawalls can protect the property immediately behind them, they can cut off downstream beaches from replenishing sands, accelerating erosion, Meadows said.

In 2011, two couples sued Concordia, claiming that the massive seawall worsened erosion on their properties. Owners of at least 13 neighboring properties built or reconstructed barriers in the years following Concordias construction, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2015, costing neighbors more than $1 million.

Chin Wu, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, authored a 2014 Journal of Great Lakes Research article finding that the Concordia project may have worsened bluff erosion south of the project.

A jury agreed in 2014 that Concordias seawall caused significant harm to neighbors. But the jury found that Concordia was not negligent in its construction, and it awarded no damages. Still, the university said it paid for at least five repair or reconstruction projects downstream.

Concordia did not offer comment for this story. In court, it did not deny that its wall affected neighbors, according to media coverage of the lawsuit. The university successfully argued that it had the right to project its land  like any property owner.

We were experiencing significant erosion of our shoreline  one that was causing us to see acres upon acres of our property falling into the lake, Rev. Patrick Ferry, the universitys president at the time, said in a video touting the project.

The Concordia project has accelerated erosion on downstream properties from around 9 inches to more than 7 feet per year, Meadows said.

When waves hit seawalls, water reflects back toward the lake, pulling sand farther from the shoreline. The force gradually pulls the sand deeper into the lake until it can no longer replenish the beach.

The walls dont last forever.

When enough sand in front of a seawall washes away, the wall will fall forward or otherwise fail, Meadows added. Aerial maps of Lake Michigan show bands of sunken structures once built to protect the shoreline. Now beneath the water, they lurk as hazards to people and wildlife.

Richard Norton has noticed that shoreline residents get stuck on one concept as he urges them to consider lake levels in their planning: The lakefront properties they own today will look much different in 30 years.

In order for the beach to stay the same, it has to be able to change. It has to be able to move and shift and grow and decrease over time as lake levels go up and down as conditions change, said Norton, a professor at the University of Michigans Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Thats the paradox of beach dynamics.

Armoring the shoreline attempts to pin to a precise location, disrupting sands natural movement and possibly losing beach, he said.

You can save the beach or you can save the beachhouse. You can't save both, Norton said. Part of the message that I give to local officials is you have more authority to act through your zoning than what you may think you do, Norton said.

For cities and townships, that could mean adopting and enforcing setbacks  or revisiting plans every five to 20 years as shorelines move over time. For homeowners, this could require physically moving houses farther from the shoreline  an expensive process, Norton acknowledged, but often no more costly than building and repairing large seawalls. Some landowners have moved their homes multiple times, he said.

Norton is sympathetic to people who invested time and money into their shorelines only to see homes edging closer to a bluff or toppling into the lake. But he said the problem extends far beyond their property lines.

Building resiliency

Experts told Wisconsin Watch that Lake Michigans shoreline needs managing, but the specifics depend on location.

Large stretches of shoreline, particularly around urban centers, keep cities from flooding and protect highways, boardwalks, commercial centers and more, said Drew Gronewold, a University of Michigan professor of ecosystem science and management. Less-developed communities should adopt setbacks while preserving public park land, he said.

Wu endorses nature-based coastal solutions  harnessing resources like sand, vegetation or coral reefs to create natural barriers that also benefit wildlife while allowing for some shoreline movement. While natural barriers may not offer the same protection as steel or concrete barriers, theyre often cheaper. And they help shorelines rejuvenate faster after stress from storms or high water, Wu said.

The Dutch took a similar approach when it formed the Zandmotor  or Sand Motor in English  the worlds largest experiment in coastal storm and flood defense.

As climate change and rising seas threatened the Netherlands coastline, the Dutch dumped onto the beach about 28 million cubic yards of sand.

Over time, wind spread the sand, adding about 3,500 acres of new beach to protect The Hague and a wider inland area. New sand and dunes coated roughly 5 miles of coastline after nearly a decade, and wildlife thrived, the Times-Picayune and Advocate newspapers reported.

Wu hopes more Lake Michigan communities adopt such approaches.

Otherwise well keep going farther and farther downstream until we see all our shoreline hardened and lose our beaches, he said. I dont think thats what any of us want.

Jack Kelly contributed reporting. This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab and in partnership with the Door County Pulse. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin shoreline residents fight Lake Michigan erosion with walls
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy (left) and founder Jeff Bezos. Mike Blake/Reuters; Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

23 US lawmakers sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and chair Jeff Bezos Monday.

The letter addressed the collapse of an Amazon warehouse after it was hit by a tornado last week, killing six workers.

The lawmakers posed 26 questions about the warehouse's safety protocols and policies.

A group of 23 US lawmakers sent a scorching letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Founder Jeff Bezos on Monday demanding answers about the collapse of an Amazon warehouse after it was hit by a tornado last week, killing six workers.

Signatories on the letter included Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

"We are writing to express our grave concern regarding Amazon's anti-worker policies that prioritize profits over worker safety, and appear to have contributed to the tragic deaths of six workers at your Edwardsville, Illinois, warehouse on December 10, 2021," the lawmakers wrote.

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration opened an investigation into the collapse of the facility's roof on December 13.

In their letter, the Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns over various news reports linked to the Edwardsville warehouse, including one report that a driver was instructed to keep driving through the high winds or else face termination. Amazon had said in reponse to the report that the dispatcher  the third-party company through which it contracted the driver  should not have instructed her to keep driving.

The lawmakers did not accept this as an excuse. "This incident calls into question Amazon's reliance on contractors and its formal and informal policies that pressure continuous work, no matter the cost," they wrote.

The letter also said the building's collapse raises questions about whether it was built to code, and cited reports from Amazon workers across the US expressing worries about a lack of safety drills.

As well as focusing on the collapse at Edwardsville, the lawmakers said Amazon's overarching working conditions were cause for concern.

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"These reports of Amazon's workplace safety failures at the Edwardsville facility are disturbing when considered alone," the lawmakers wrote. "But they fit all too well with an ongoing, company-wide pattern of worker mistreatment, including neglecting worker safety, shortchanging workers on proper pay and benefits, and employing union-busting tactics towards workers when they have tried to organize for better working conditions."

The letter concludes with a list of 26 questions specifically about the Edwardsville warehouse, including what internal communication took place ahead of and during the storm, what the warehouse's safety policies are, and whether workers are allowed to have their phones on them.

The lawmakers asked Amazon to provide answers by January 3.

An Amazon spokesperson told Insider: "We're reviewing the letter and will respond directly, but right now our focus remains on taking care of our employees and partners, the family members of those killed by the tornado, and the communities affected by this tragedy."

In a statement last week, Amazon described the collapse as "a devastating tragedy for our Amazon family."

Read the original article on Business Insider
CHICAGO  Diners looking to enjoy their favorite Chicago restaurants will likely have to provide proof of vaccination at local eateries and other city businesses as new confirmed cases of COVID-19 continue to surge.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced new COVID-19 requirements for indoor businesses on Tuesday after cases of the coronavirus have pushed to nearly 1,800 new confirmed cases per day lately. The daily caseload was around 300 only a few weeks ago, and the increase has prompted Lightfoot and local health officials to consider new requirements in response to the surge.

The new requirements will go into effect Jan. 3, Lightfoot said, and the order will remain in place until the city deems that the current surge is over. Lightfoot said Tuesday that churches and schools are exempt, along with grocery stores with dining areas and other businesses where patrons stay for less than 10 minutes. Visiting athletes from professional sports franchises who come to in Chicago are also not required to show proof of vaccination, while residents are required to do so at venues such as the United Center and Soldier Field.

Starting January 3rd, the City of Chicago will require patrons of certain indoor spaces to be vaccinated against COVID-19.This decision is driven in part by the Omicron variant and is in line with requirements already in place in other big cities including NYC and LA. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/GA64RpJki9

 Chicago Department of Public Health - CDPH (@ChiPublicHealth) December 21, 2021





"For the vaccinated, you are free to go your business," Lightfoot said at a news conference. "But you need to have proof."

Lightfoot said that patrons will not have the option of showing proof of a negative test and that the biggest risk facing the city is those who choose not to be vaccinated. She urged vaccinated residents to implore their unvaccinated friends and relatives to get the COVID-19 vaccines, which the mayor said would go a long way in preventing further measures.

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The mayor said she has not been this concerned about the surge of new COVID-19 cases since the early days of the pandemic. But she said her biggest concern is with city residents who choose to not get vaccinated despite the onset of the omicron variant, which local health officials consider to be more dangerous than previous forms of the virus.

The last thing in the world that I want to do is stand before you at a podium like this and announce that were shutting our city back down," Lightfoot said on Tuesday. "That would be devastating. I dont want to have to take that step. But again, it really depends on the unvaccinated.

"The unvaccinated are affecting the health and well-being and livelihoods of all of us.



MORE ON PATCH: Things You Need To Know About Chicago's Proof Of Vaccine Mandate

Chicago's health director, Dr. Allison Arwady, said Tuesday that the city's positivity rate is at 7.3 percent, which is the highest the city has seen in more than a year. Cases have risen by 80 percent in the past week, and officials expect to see a post-Christmas surge after daily rates rose to as high as 2,800 new cases.

Lightfoot said at a news conference said that the city is in the fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and that the city is now averaging 1,700 new confirmed cases per day. Hospitalizations and deaths are at levels that officials have not seen for several months, which makes the new requirements necessary.

We will leave no options off the table when it comes to protecting the safety of our residents, Lightfoot said. We didnt want to get to this point, but we simply have no choice. ... This is what we have to do to keep our health system from being overwhelmed by this new wave.

Lightfoot said in an appearance on MSNBC on Monday night that the time is now to act, and we will," according to the Chicago Tribune.



Other cities, including New York City, have required patrons to provide proof of vaccination at local restaurants, sporting events and Broadway shows. However, Chicago has not yet required such proof while new cases of COVID-19, including those associated with the omicron variant, have steadily increased new cases.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Tuesday that the new policy would apply to restaurants, gyms and other businesses where patrons spend more than 10 minutes unmasked. Rob Karr, the president of the Illinois Retail Association, said patrons stopping into a business to pick up food or coffee or other items would not have to provide proof of vaccination but, in other instances, patrons would need to show proof of vaccination and a valid drivers license.

Its a pretty measured approach considering (the surge in cases), Karr said, according to the Sun-Times.

Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia told the newspaper that he is urging Lightfoot to wait until Jan. 3 and to make restaurant employees exempt from the vaccination requirement to avoid making staff shortages at local restaurants worse than they have been during the pandemic.

The proof of vaccination for diners is a better option, Toia said, than limiting capacity, as was the case earlier in the pandemic when many restaurants were forced to close because of the loss in business associated with COVID-19 requirements.

This article originally appeared on the Chicago Patch
A "Vote Here" sign appears at one of Augusta's numerous polling places. In rural Lincoln County, officials are trying to close all voting precincts except for one.

Lincoln County is trying to close all but one polling place for next years elections, a move opposed by voting and civil rights groups.

Relocating voters from the countys seven precincts to a single location will make voting easier and more accessible and eliminate the need to transport voting equipment and staff the remaining sites, according to a news release. Community members disagreed.

Lincoln County is a very rural county. Some people live as far as 23 miles from the city of Lincolnton, said Denise Freeman, an activist and former Lincoln County school board member. This is not about convenience for the citizens. This is about control. This is about the good old boys wanting to do what theyve always done, which is power and control.

The move was made possible after the Georgia General Assembly passed legislation earlier this year disbanding the Lincoln County Board of Elections. The chief sponsor of Senate bills 282 and 283 was Sen. Lee Anderson, R-Grovetown, whose district includes Lincoln County. The newly-appointed board agreed to move forward with the consolidation plan and was expected to vote on it last week, but appeared to lack a quorum, several said.

Multiple public interest groups including the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda, Common Cause Georgia, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Augustas Interfaith Coalition are taking a stand against the effort.

Aunna Dennis, executive director for Common Cause Georgia, said the move is an extension of Senate Bill 202, which tightened restrictions on voting and gave the state the authority to take over elections boards.

Theyre trying to do this undercover precinct consolidation, so were going to go ahead with the canvassing drive, Dennis said. Obtaining signatures from roughly 20% of the population of a single precinct would appear to have the effect of blocking the move, at least temporarily.

Dennis attributed the Lincoln County effort to a larger push across rural Georgia.

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I think there are bad actors who are wanting to pilot precinct consolidations and takeovers of elections boards in smaller counties, she said.

With multiple voting changes from Senate Bill 202 already underway, adding the precinct closures in a county that lacks a public transportation budget  and attempting to pass them over the holiday season  is too much, Dennis said.

Theres no real justification for something this drastic, she said. This is something that is trying to be steamrolled outside the public eye.

The Rev. Chris Johnson, head of the Interfaith Coalition, said the group tried to get the elections board to wait a month before voting. While a member said last weeks meeting would be postponed a week, others are saying the board wont meet again until next month. There are no notices posted about a rescheduled meeting this week.

The citizens are looking at the disenfranchisement of the body of the people that now have to go to a place outside of their area to vote, Johnson said.

The effort is reminiscent of the 2019 push in Randolph County to close all but two polling places in the majority-Black county. The elections board later voted to close three rural white precincts instead, leaving six open.

Lincoln County did not grow in the 2020 Census, losing about 300 people for a current population of 7,690. Unlike Randolph, the county is majority white, with Black residents comprising about 28% of the population.

Lincoln Elections Director Lilvender Bolton, whose position survived the dismantling of the elections board, did not return messages seeking comment. Calls to the office were answered by a request for an access code.

In a statement, Poy Winichakul, staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the poll closures amount to a diminution of voting strength, particularly among minority voters and applauded the efforts of local activists.

By eliminating six of the seven Lincoln County polling places, the Lincoln County Board of elections is diminishing the voices of their voters, especially Black voters. Even worse, they have tried to deny Lincoln County residents opportunity for input by attempting to rush a vote while failing to give adequate public notice, and they still have not provided clear communication on when they will vote to close Lincoln County polling places," Winichakul said.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Lincoln County attempts to eliminate six of seven polling places
Dec. 20SOUTHERN INDIANA  As the Omicron variant arrives in Indiana, health officials in Clark and Floyd counties are concerned about the potential effects of the variant in the community as hospitals are already facing strain from increased COVID-19 cases.

The Indiana Department of Health reported Sunday that the first case of Omicron was detected in the state from a specimen of an unvaccinated patient collected Dec. 9. The location of the patient was not disclosed.

Clark County Health Officer Dr. Eric Yazel said in regard to the Omicron variant, it is best to "operate under the assumption that it's already here" in Southern Indiana, and he urges community members to take precautions during the holidays.

In a Monday news release, Floyd County Health Officer Dr. Tom Harris urged all eligible residents ages 5 and older to get their COVID-19 vaccinations, including booster shots.

"Booster dosing appears to be very helpful in protecting against the new strain," the news release states. "Becoming fully vaccinated is critically important for the medically vulnerable and their caretakers. The 20 to 40 year old age group may be especially vulnerable to the Omicron variant due to their low vaccination rate."

Harris also recommends the usual COVID-19 mitigation measures for the Omicron variant, including wearing well-fitted masks indoors, testing when symptomatic or after exposure to a close contact, staying home when sick, washing hands and avoiding crowded indoor spaces.

Yazel also works in the emergency department of Clark Memorial Health and one of his biggest concerns with the Omicron variant is the potential effects on the hospital, especially as the holidays approach.

The hospital is at full capacity in terms of intensive care unit beds, causing some patients to be held in the emergency room before they are admitted to the ICU. Clark Memorial Health will likely be tight on resources and hospital beds over the next few weeks, Yazel said.

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An increase in hospitalizations and the extended duration of ICU stays tend to back up the system, he said.

On Sunday, there were 34 COVID-19 patients hospitalized at Clark Memorial Health, which was the highest number the hospital has seen in "quite some time," according to Yazel. Many of those were ICU patients, he said.

About six to eight weeks ago, COVID-19 hospitalizations were in the single digits, but there has been a steady increase that started before Thanksgiving, Yazel said.

"We still have Delta flexing its muscles, and as the weather gets colder, there are more indoor events, which are more efficient spreaders," he said. "Most recently there's the new variant, and we're probably seeing some effects of it as well."

At Baptist Health Floyd, there was a decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations about seven weeks ago, but in recent weeks, the numbers have continued to climb. The number of COVID-19 patients is typically in the low to high 50s per day, according to Brian Cox, director of hospital operations and emergency preparedness.

As of Monday, there were 50 COVID-19 patients at Baptist Health Floyd, including eight in the ICU, he said. The hospital has a total of 32 ICU beds, and recently there usually has been a bed or two available at any given time, Cox said.

"It's not just COVID  other illnesses are pushing our capacity daily," Cox said. "We monitor it every day and meet every day to discuss options to make sure we find capacity as needed. We do what we can. In some cases, that is is keeping patients a little longer in the emergency department, which we don't like to do."

At Baptist Health Floyd, about 80% to 85% of its COVID-19 patients have not received any COVID-19 vaccines, he said.

Cox said the hospital is prepared to accommodate a spike in COVID-19 cases, and he encourages people to "do their part in keeping it from spreading." If there is a significant spike at the hospital and issues with capacity, Baptist Health Floyd could possibly make the decision to pause elective surgeries, but it has not reached that point.

Yazel said one of the most important things to remember this holiday season is to stay away from others if you are feeling sick.

"Realize that if your unvaccinated or high-risk family members show up when you're not feeling well, devastating things can happen," he said.

He also continues to urge people to get vaccinated but notes that many who have not yet received their COVID-19 vaccines at this point are probably "pretty resistant" to getting their shot. Yazel recommends masking up when around people who are at high risk of COVID-19 and/or unvaccinated, as well as limiting length of exposure.

Yazel notes that the COVID-19 vaccines appear to prevent severe illness from the Omicron variant, but the community will likely see an increase in breakthrough cases.

"If you are going down to the mall and bumping elbows with a crowd in a store, even if you're vaccinated you might want to mask up, even if you haven't before," Yazel said. "I think it makes sense to think about what you are doing, plan ahead and limit exposure to big crowds as you can. It's something to keep in the back of your mind again."

Yazel said there has "not been a huge uptake" in booster shots in Clark County, but "it's getting there." A number of people are being motivated to get their boosters due to the Omicron strain.

The uptake among the 5- to 11-year-old age group has been better than expected, and some are coming in for their COVID-19 shots based on employer mandates, he said.

Yazel wants people to enjoy the holidays but also remain aware of the COVID-19 situation.

"I think we all need to enjoy some time with family and friends and to decompress a little bit, but we also want to make sure we're making good decisions when doing that," he said. "I think we're probably looking at four to six weeks of rough numbers in the area, and we need to be prepared for that."

"Be patient with those around you, look out for the vulnerable folks in the community, and let's do everything we can to weather things together," he said.

More Information

In Indiana, 2,544 new COVID-19 cases were reported across the state as of Monday, according to the Indiana Department of Health.

In Clark County, 38 new COVID-19 cases were reported. The county's 7-day positivity rate is 11.9% for all tests and 20.4% for unique individuals.

In Floyd County, 14 new cases were reported. The county's 7-day positivity rate is 13% for all tests and 21.2% for unique individuals.
A 32-year-old man has been arrested in connection with a shooting that killed one man and injured two people at an after party at an auto repair shop in central Lubbock.

Thomas Jeremy Martinez was arrested Friday at a residence in the 6200 block of 62nd Street, according to jail records.

Martinez is accused in the Dec. 12 fatal shooting of 21-year-old Alijah Viramontes at an auto repair shop being used as an after party venue, according to court documents.

Lubbock police responded to a 4:22 a.m. shots fired call at the West Texas Auto and Dent Repair in the 4800 block of Avenue Q, according to a police news release.

Responding officers found Viramontes, 28-year-old Sergio Valdez and 32-year-old Meagan Pena suffering gunshot wounds. Viramontes had serious injuries and Valdez and Pena's injuries were described as minor. All three were taken to a local hospital for treatment, the release states. Viramontes died about eight hours later, according to an arrest warrant.

Investigators learned that the shooting stemmed from a fight inside the property and identified four brothers, including Martinez, as possible suspects. However, two of Martinez's brothers identified him as the shooter, the warrant states.

It was unclear in the warrant if Viramontes was involved in the fight.

More: 4-year-old killed in apparent drive-by shooting in east Lubbock

A man who worked as a bouncer at the after party said a fight broke out when two or three people entered the property through the garage door. The bouncer said he was getting help to deal with the fight when shots rang out. He didn't see the shooting but said he saw someone standing by the garage door putting a gun in his pants pocket. He said he didn't know the man, but had seen him earlier at two nearby bars.

A woman who was with Martinez told investigators she and Martinez went to two nearby bars before going to the auto repair shop for an after party. She said she called one of Martinez's brothers because someone was talking about her brothers. However, she said she didn't see Martinez carrying a gun or firing one, saying she blacked out from intoxication, the warrant states.

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One of Martinez's brothers told investigators he and another brother went to the auto repair shop after getting a phone call for help. When they arrived, he said the brother who accompanied him got into a fight before gunshots rang out. He said he didn't know who fired the shots but said Martinez admitted to the shooting as they were leaving in a vehicle, the warrant states.

More: Teen arrested in Lubbock South Plains Mall shooting

He said he was upset with Martinez and the two fought when they were at his mother's home. He said during the fight, Martinez threatened him with the gun and fired it, the warrant states. Another witnesses gave investigators a statement that corroborated Martinez's brother's account.

The second brother told police he saw Martinez shoot a gun inside the auto repair shop and in the parking lot.

Security camera videos in the auto shop caught Martinez carrying a handgun and firing it in the parking lot. Investigators found spent shell casings of the same caliber inside the auto repair shop and in the parking lot.

Martinez remains held at the jail. His bond on the murder charge is set at $500,000. He also faces two felony theft charges.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Suspect arrested in fatal shooting at Lubbock auto repair shop
Dec. 21Jamie Landis had one thing in mind for Madison High School throwers Becca Martin and Madelyn Moretti two weeks after Martin completed her trip to the Division I state finals in the discus  reach 40 feet in the shot put and 140 in the discus before the end of the 2022 season.

The two throwers recently signed at Duquesne University (Moretti) and Slippery Rock University (Martin), but the training toward more immediate goals is in focus.

The pair of throwers have been training twice a week in Landis' garage during the summer.

Mike Martin is the Madison throws coach, but said Landis, a volunteer mentor, is responsible for the girls' surge. Landis' son, Nolan, who competes at Indiana University, won the 2019 Division I state championships in the shot put and discus.

"He really is responsible for the effort and these kids' training," said Mike Martin, Becca's father.

Moretti has thrown 38-51/2 in the shot put and 117-6 in the discus, while Becca Martin has distances of 37-73/4 and 117-11.

Colleges noticed their progress as Moretti sought to find a top-notch nursing program, which she did in Duquesne.

"I wanted to find colleges that would support us athletically and academically," she said. "It was never about chasing a name-brand school or anything like that. It was about finding somewhere we would be supported as students and as athletes."

Becca Martin wanted to be on an occupational therapy track. Slippery Rock provides her a way to get her doctorate in six to seven years.

"From the moment I stepped on campus and met the coaches, staff and team there, it was a very welcoming facility. It's like a big family over there," Becca Martin said.

Signing at their colleges aren't the end goal for these Madison throwers this year as they keep pushing to improve.

They've been squatting around 500 pounds each, working since Becca Martin went to the Division I state meet last spring.

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"Since then, 40-140 has been in our brains," Becca Martin said. "It's there mentally. We're getting there physically. We're making extreme gains in the weight room, both me and Maddie. It's been quite insane.

"We always joke because our legs have got so much more muscular that we always grow out of all of our shorts. We've been putting on a lot more muscle. At this point, it's about getting the technique right, getting a rhythm and getting all the pieces in place for us and hitting that mark. I think it's feasible for us for sure."

Moretti said making those marks are vital to their respective seasons.

"We've hit it numerous times," she said. "At any given day and any meet, it can happen. We've worked so hard in the weight room.

"We've been students of the sport and we hope it's going to show this season."

This past year, the two athletes honed their skills on track and field.

"They're putting all their focus and attention into it," Mike Martin said. "We're never too crazy about specialization of sports, but at this time when you look at it you never argue with specialization when kids are striving at those things and putting in a 365-day-a-year effort into that sport.

"Both of them being rotational throwers, that balance footwork and athleticism is absolutely requisite of that discipline of those throws is something both of those kids absolutely have."

Moretti made the girls state wrestling tournament last winter. She said her footwork there has translated into the throwing circle.

"It kept me lighter on my feet. In wrestling, you can't do anything flat footed or the opponent will take you out," Moretti said. "I learned that the hard way.

"It was more what wrestling could do for me in the throwing circle. It definitely helped with conditioning and I had that mindset that I was capable of doing anything. I set my heart and mind to it because wrestling isn't easy."

Getting to state track and field is the goal for both. Moretti barely missed going to regionals last year in both the shot and discus.

She saw Becca Martin compete at regionals and state last season.

"It was a big motivational thing, seeing her," Moretti said. "I always get really nervous before I throw. It was really nice to watch her not being able to worry about anything that's happening around her.

"That's what I wanted to translate this year, having her mindset and no matter what's going on around you."

Becca Martin is excited about the upcoming season with a state appearance in mind.

"It was a really surreal experience and we can't wait to be back this year," she said.
James Houser

Madison Township is hoping to get $55,000 from a state brownfield grant that the Richland County Land Bank is in the process of applying for in order to deal with a number of problem properties in the county.

Trustee Chairman Jim Houser reported at the boards regular meeting Monday that the money would be used for a total cleanup of a site next to the main township fire department building on Expressview Drive, where a township owned former business building was demolished.

Trustees learned in January that sand underneath the concrete pad of the former business building contained several chemicals that are considered contaminants but not at levels they would be determined to be hazardous waste.

Trustees worked with the Land Bank and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to deal with the problem and came up with two options  remove and properly dispose of the 5,200 square feet of impacted material or encapsulate the area from the top with at least two feet of dirt, grading and seeding.

At that time, the cost to remove the sand and dirt underneath was $49,000 while encapsulating carried a $6,000 price tag for covering the site with dirt. The cost for encapsulating would be more if the township decides to use the site for a new main fire station because the dirt would have to be covered with a layer of asphalt or concrete.

The Land Bank is applying for a share of $360 million allocated for competitive grants in the new state budget to clean up brownfield sites and tear down old industrial and commercial buildings, along with residential structures. The agency is looking to demolish the former Westinghouse A building and the Ocie Hill Center building in Mansfield and a number of other structures in the county.

Spending cuts, ARPA funds: Madison Trustees discuss spending cuts and ARPA funds at special meeting

Money would be used to pay for removing, replacing dirt

Houser said the application the Land Bank will turn in for the township will be for $55,000 to take out and replace 484 tons of dirt.

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Theyre estimating that $13,000 will be our part to pay to get the grant, but theres another grant they want to tap into that may bring our cost to around $8,000 or $9,000, he said. Thats a lot more than we were going to spend just to encapsulate it (with dirt) and it will completely take care of the problem.

Later in the meeting, trustees approved a resolution authorizing Trustee Cathy Swank to sign the grant application documents instead of Houser as chairman. Houser explained the Land Banks legal counsel advised he could not sign the document as a trustee because it would be a conflict of interest because he also is a Land Bank member.

Tom Craft, who was elected in November and will start his term in January, questioned whether Houser could sign the resolution to make the change. The issue was raised because Trustee Dan Fletcher did not attend the meeting.

After a brief discussion, Houser said he will get a legal opinion and indicated the issue could be brought up again at a special meeting that is expected to be held next week.

Fiscal watch: Madison Township faces fiscal watch designation

Swearing-in ceremony held for trustees

A swearing in ceremony was held during the meeting for Craft and Houser, who were re-elected in November. Fiscal Officer Leanna Rhodes, who also was re-elected, will take the oath of office at the first trustee meeting in January because family members were not able to attend Monday.

During the public comment period at the end of the meeting, resident Tom Brandt thanked Fletcher for his years of service to Madison Township as a trustee and the work he has done behind the scenes on behalf of the township. Swank also said she appreciated the work Fletcher has done, pointing out the landscaping around the township building and the grants he secured for various projects, while Rhodes said Fletcher helped tremendously behind the scenes with finance issues.

Ive had the opportunity to work with Dan for the last four years and we had our good days and we had our bad days and those are behind us now, Houser said. I appreciate what he has done in the past and he has gotten us a lot of grants and he knew the ins and the outs. Its just unfortunate that were losing him.

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Madison Township seeking $55,000 brownfield grant
Mona Charen

In September, an Arizona student who tested positive for COVID-19 was ordered to quarantine for several days. Seems normal, no? No. The boy's father barged into principal Diane Vargo's office and demanded the kid be allowed back into school immediately. Vargo was alarmed when the intruder told her that others were on their way, warning, "If you keep doing this, we're going to have a big problem." Two other men did arrive, one carrying military-style zip-ties. They told Vargo that they were going to make a "citizen's arrest."

As it happens, the intruders were the ones arrested  by the police.

The same month, in Michigan, a meeting of the Barry-Eaton District Board of Health was disrupted when a man threatened to make a citizen's arrest of a county health official after a school mask mandate was announced. That was mild compared with the death threats Genesee County officials have received over masks. And that, in turn, was less serious than what happened in Kent County, where someone tried to run a health official off the road.

Stories of threats and violence aimed at ordinary Americans who are simply serving on school boards, supervising elections or holding public office are not new. It's a mashup of pandemic-induced mania, social media misinformation, Trump-incited disinhibition and something in the water.

The citizen's arrest has become a theme running through some of the most sinister of the recent plots. It has a long pedigree, originating in English common law. In the U.S., it has been codified in a number of ways by states. But the invocation of the citizen's arrest as an excuse for political violence is new. Former President Donald Trump set this table with his "lock her up" chants and accusations of treason against anyone who damaged his fragile psyche. His 2019 Twitter tantrum at Rep. Adam Schiff was the gold standard: "I want Schiff questioned at the highest level ... Arrest for Treason?"

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Back in 2020, when a gang of 14 right-wing nuts plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, they claimed they were effecting a "citizen's arrest." In a normal world, such a claim would be instantly dismissed as risible. But we're not in that world. We're in the world where the sheriff of Barry County, Dar Leaf, seemed to think it had merit. "It's just a charge, and they say a 'plot to kidnap' and you got to remember that," Leaf told a local Fox affiliate. "Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt?"

"A lot of people are angry with the governor," he said. And then, as if the next words flowed logically, he added, "and they want her arrested." Right, because when we dislike the policies of duly elected officials, we arrest them?

The threats are proliferating. The Washington Post reported that lawmakers were subjected to 3,900 threats in 2017. By 2020, that had more than doubled to 8,600, and in 2021, the rate rose even faster. As Tim Alberta noted in his Atlantic profile of Rep. Peter Meijer, the fear factor in Republican politics has changed. Republicans displayed a total lack of political courage in dealing with Trump from 2015 to the present. But because they didn't stand up to him when the consequences would have been merely political, they/we now face a very different climate: fearing for their safety and that of their families. Describing a colleague who said he couldn't vote to certify the 2020 election, Meijer said: "Remember, this wasn't a hypothetical. You were casting that vote after seeing with your own two eyes what some of these people are capable of. If they're willing to come after you inside the U.S. Capitol, what will they do when you're at home with your kids?"

Many members of the Jan. 6 mob didn't conceive of themselves as coup plotters (in contrast to those in the Oval Office). They thought they were vindicating democracy, not destroying it. As they were storming the Capitol, they were exchanging messages that reflected the treason talk Trump had normalized. "You are executing a citizen's arrest. We have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud."

There is a substrate of perverted patriotism here. The invocation of the citizen's arrest signifies a wish for legitimacy. They yearn to be responsible citizens, upholding the law and the duties of the individual. They have been corrupted  all the more reason for the rest of Americans to assert their uncorrupted patriotism. They must defend the election workers, health care workers, school board members, journalists, politicians and anyone else who is being abused by the mob. If patriotism animates only the worst among us, we are lost.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her most recent book is "Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense." To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: The MAGA Perversion of Patriotism
J.B. Hunt executives hand out high-fives to employees at an event at the company's headquarters in 2019. Business Wire/AP

Trucking firm J.B. Hunt is handing out nearly $10 million in holiday bonuses to employees.

Workers have "gone the extra mile" to meet the needs of customers this year, CEO John Roberts said.

The trucking industry has been hit hard during pandemic-induced logistics snafus in the US.

Employees at trucking firm J.B. Hunt will receive nearly $10 million in bonuses this holiday, the firm announced Friday.

The 60-year-old transportation company said the bonuses will be handed out to drivers, maintenance technicians, and other full-time hourly employees who were hired before October 1 and are still employed with the company. As of December 2020, the company had roughly 30,300 employees.

"This year, our drivers and frontline employees have gone the extra mile to honor our commitments and meet the needs of customers," John Roberts, president and CEO of J.B. Hunt, said in a statement. "We wanted to express our gratitude for their dedication to making J.B. Hunt the industry leader it is today."

The trucking industry has been hit hard by the logistics snafus of 2020 and 2021. In April 2020, as the economy came to a standstill, nearly 90,000 truckers lost their jobs in one of the largest single-month losses of trucking jobs on record. Over a year later, the industry is still short tens of thousands of jobs  American Trucking Associations CEO Chris Spear recently told CNN there's a shortage of 80,000 truckers, 30% more than before the pandemic.

As a result, trucking firms have started offering incentives like $15,000 signing bonuses and luxury truck stops with on-site massages to attract new talent.

Experts told Insider's Grace Kay this month that it's not so much a shortage as a natural pattern in the market  when demand soars, as it has during the pandemic, it takes some industries time to catch up. Plus, the trucking industry has a notoriously high turnover rate, the experts said.

"I think if consumers really understood what it was like for the truck drivers who deliver all their goods, they might be a little embarrassed or ashamed," David Correll, a research scientist at MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics, told Insider. "There's no way to over-emphasize how difficult their job is, but now that we have this spotlight on the industry, maybe people can try to make it better."

Read the original article on Business Insider
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia on Tuesday warned of more storms and heavy rainfall in the coming days as Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob admitted to weaknesses in the government's response to flooding that has led to more than a dozen deaths and the displacement of over 60,000 people.

The country mobilised its army and other security agencies after torrential rain that began last Friday, which caused floods in eight states.

Authorities have been criticised by the public and lawmakers for their slow response, with some people trapped by floodwaters for more than two days before being rescued, particularly in Selangor, the country's wealthiest and most populous region.

The prime minister on Tuesday acknowledged weaknesses in coordinating the response by federal security agencies, according to a broadcast on state-run news channel Bernama TV.

"I don't deny (the weaknesses) and will improve in the future," Ismail Sabri said.

"The responsibility is not that of the federal government alone, but also the state governments, and the frontliners are the districts."

The Meteorological Department said Malaysia could see more floods in the coming days, as a tropical depression moved towards four states in Malaysia's north.

"This situation can cause continuous rainfall and strong winds in the northern states.... that could lead to flooding in low-level areas," the department said in a statement.

The death toll from the floods in Selangor climbed to 17 on Tuesday, while more than 30,000 people have been moved into temporary shelters, the state's Chief Minister Amirudin Shari said in a statement.

The national disaster management agency said nearly 63,000 people were displaced across the country as of Tuesday.

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by John Geddie and Bernadette Baum)
A Phoenix police vehicle on Dec. 7, 2021.

Phoenix police arrested a man Sunday morning after officials say he admitted to fatally shooting his girlfriend and cutting her young son with a knife.

Officers responded to a welfare check involving an injured child near 35th Avenue and Roeser Road where they found a 20-year-old William Calvin with a 6-year-old boy.

When police asked where the child's mother was, Calvin said she was at her home nearby. Officers later found the woman, 27-year-old Delores Smith, dead inside her home with gunshot wounds. Calvin told officers he shot Smith during a fight and cut the boy with a knife.

Court documents say Calvin also sexually assaulted the boy, which he later admitted to police.

Calvin was arrested and booked into jail on one count of first-degree murder, two counts of sexual conduct involving a minor, one count of child abuse, one count of kidnapping and one count of having a weapon as a prohibited possessor.

Calvin is being held on a $2.5 million bond. His next scheduled hearing is on Dec. 27 in Maricopa County Superior Court.

The boy was taken to a hospital and treated for injuries that were not considered life-threatening.

Reach the reporter Perry Vandell at 602-444-2474 or perry.vandell@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @PerryVandell.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: William Calvin suspected of fatally shooting girlfriend in Phoenix
The United States Marshals Service made an arrest in DeKalb County Monday related the September fatal shooting of a Columbus man, according to a news release Tuesday from the Columbus Police Department.

Rueben Hensley, 30, was arrested on an outstanding CPD warrant. The departments homicide division issued the warrant for the murder of Marjester Thornton, 37, on Sept. 25.

Columbus police were called to a house in the 3200 block of Urban Drive that day, and found Thornton wounded, according to a news release. He was pronounced dead around 10 p.m. by Muscogee County Coroner Buddy Bryan.

The Special Operations Unit responded to DeKalb County and transported Hensley to face charges in Columbus.

Hensley is scheduled for a Recorders Court hearing at 9 a.m. Thursday.

The police department is asking that anyone with information about the case contact Corporal Z. Cole at zcole@columbusga.org or 706-225-4295. Those who would like to remain anonymous may call 706-653-3188.
MOUNT HOLLY - A Maple Shade man has received a 13-year prison term for robbing a veterinary office and a supermarket.

Craig Greene, 49, must serve more than 11 years before parole eligibility, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office.

Greene was accused of wielding a butcher's knife during an afternoon holdup at the VCA Maple Shade Animal Hospital on East Main Street in June 2019.

The robber took $162 from a payment drawer and fled into a residential neighborhood, causing a nearby school and a child care facility to shelter in place during a police search of the area.

A Maple Shade man on Friday received a 13-year prison term for robbing two businesses in June 2019.

About four hours later, the robber took $471 from a cash register at the Acme supermarket on West Main Street. The suspect did not show a weapon during the second holdup, the statement said.

Surveillance videos led police to identify Greene as a suspect, leading to an arrest as he approached his home on the first block of South Boulevard Avenue.

This was a very frightening encounter for those who were confronted by this defendant, Prosecutor Scott Coffina said in announcing Greene's sentence on Friday.

Fortunately, nobody was harmed, and very solid police work led to a quick apprehension," Coffina said.

A Superior Court jury in September found Greene guilty of robbery, theft by unlawful taking and weapons offenses.

He must serve more than 11 years of his term before parole eligibility.

Jim Walsh covers public safety, economic development and other beats for the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal.

Support local journalism with a subscription.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Maple Shade NJ man gets prison term for 2019 business robberies
The spill sparked an ecological emergency in the area

The captain and first officer of a ship that ran aground on coral reef in Mauritius have been found guilty of endangering safe navigation.

The captain, Sunil Kumar Nandeshwar, admitted to drinking moderately during a birthday party onboard before the MV Wakashio ran aground on 25 July 2020.

About 1,000 tonnes of fuel oil leaked into the water, sparking an ecological emergency.

Mauritius is home to world-renowned coral reefs, and popular with tourists.

Sunil Kumar Nandeshwar and his first officer, Hitihanillage Subhoda Janendra Tilakaratna were found guilty under the 2007 Merchant shipping act by a court in the capital, Port Louis.

Nandeshwar said he had given orders to approach Mauritian waters so that the crew could get phone reception to make calls to their families.

"The sea was bad but the visibility was clear and it was safe to navigate," Nandeshwar said. "At one point, the ship could not move and had touched the sea floor.

"Since I had a few drinks, it did not seem worthwhile to intervene and it did not occur to me that we were sailing that close."

The ship ran aground at Pointe d'Esny, a known sanctuary for rare wildlife. The area also contains wetlands designated as a site of international importance by the Ramsar convention on wetlands.

The investigation found that the lookout officer had been allowed to stay at the birthday party which meant that he could not ensure the safe navigation of the ship.

Nandeshwar apologised to Mauritians for the damage caused. Tilakaratna appealed to the court for leniency and said he had not been able to see his family since his arrest.

The pair are due to be sentenced on 27 December.

At the time of the incident, Greenpeace Africa warned that "thousands" of animal species were "at risk of drowning in a sea of pollution" with dire consequences for the economy, food security and health in Mauritius.
CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP)  Kameron McGusty knocked down six of eight from behind the 3-point arc and finished with 27 points as Miami beat Stetson, 82-72 in a Hall of Fame Invitational campus game on Monday night.

A sixth-year redshirt senior, McGusty shot 9 of 12 from the field and Isaiah Wong hit three 3-pointers and added 16 points, grabbed six rebounds and had four assists for the Hurricanes (9-5), who won their fifth straight game. Sam Waardenburg added 12 points and four assists and Jordan Miller pulled down 11 rebounds.

Aside from McGusty's hot shooting from the field, the rest of the Miami offense shot just 38 percent. Overall the team was 28 of 62 (45.2%).

McGusty hit two 3-pointers in the final two minutes of the first half to help stake Miami to a 39-26 advantage at the break and hit back-to-back 3s to push the lead to 50-32 with 15:46 left.

Chase Johnston took all 11 of his shots from behind the 3-point arc and knocked down six to lead Stetson (4-7) with 18 points. Rob Perry added 16 points, grabbed six rebounds and added three assists and Christiaan Jones added 12 points and seven assists.

The Hatters shot 27 of 55 from the floor (49.1%) and hit half of their 26 shots from beyond the arc.

___

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/boxscore/_/gameId/401371139 AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
Ray Noecker stayed behind to work on a sermon while his wife and five of his children went to an orphanage in Haiti as part of their mission trip. His family was kidnapped on Oct. 16, two of them were released Dec. 5, and four remaining in captivity escaped last week.

Now, he's spoken out for the first time.

In a statement given to longtime family friend Carleton Horst and shared at a news conference, Noecker wrote that God has answered his prayers and his family has been united just in time to celebrate Christmas.

A close family friend of Ray Noecker, Carleton Horst sits with Pastor Ronald Marks during Hart Dunkard Brethren Church's press conference to discuss the returned kidnapping victims from Haiti on Tuesday, December 21, 2021.

"My family is all together and in good health," he wrote "We are rejoicing together over the many ways that God answered the prayers of these people from all around the world. ... Please continue to pray for those in Haiti and around the world who are still being held against their will."

Noecker, 49, said they plan to return to their home in west Michigan before year-end.

The Noeckers are from the Hart area of Oceana County and were part of a group of 17 missionaries who were kidnapped on their way to an orphanage in Port-au-Prince by the 400 Mawozo gang. Kidnappers demanded $17 million for the hostages release  $1 million per person.

Horst said he was going about his day when Ray texted to say his family was finally free.

"I was very elated, it was just a very great, great joy, that they were finally free, that this had come to an end, or at least this portion of things had come to an end," Horst said, "I'm sure that for the family, there's gonna be some time of healing and recovering from what they had gone through, but the fact that they were no longer being held hostage, I was just praising the Lord for what God had done."

The family lives in Oceana County and attends the Hart Dunkard Brethren Church in the nearby small town of Hart. Six members of the 11-person family were kidnapped  the mother and five children.

Ray Noecker's wife, Cheryl Noecker, 48, and their youngest son kidnapped, Shelden Noecker, 6, were released earlier this month. The other hostages in the family were Brandyn, 15, Kasondra, 14, Courtney, 18, and Cherilyn Noecker, 27.

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This photo provided by Christian Aid Ministries shows the freed hostages taken in Florida. Captive missionaries in Haiti found freedom the week before by making a daring overnight escape, eluding their kidnappers and walking for miles over difficult, moonlit terrain with an infant and other children in tow, according to the agency they work for, officials said on Dec. 20, 2021.

The 12 missionaries still in captivity last week, including four of the Noecker family, made a daring overnight escape, said Christian Aid Ministries officials, the Ohio-based group that organized the mission trip, on Monday. They eluded their kidnappers and traveled by foot for miles in the dead of night, according to the Associated Press.

After a number of hours of walking, day began to dawn and they eventually found someone who helped to make a phone call for help, said CAM General Director David Troyer at a news conference. They were finally free.

They eventually reached safety and were flown to Florida on a U.S. Coast Guard Flight and reunited with the five hostages already released, AP reported.

Troyer said they raised funds to pay the ransom, but he declined to say whether they ever paid one.

CAM said that the captives were moved around several times, but were not physically harmed. Some developed sores from bathing in contaminated water, though, and faced challenges from high temperatures and lots of mosquitos.

Ron Marks, minister at Hart Dunkard Brethren Church, said that all the sores have healed and there are no remaining physical health issues among the Noeckers.

Both Marks and Horst said that, despite the ordeal of over two months, they believe the Noeckers would continue to do missionary work in the future.

As a self-proclaimed believer, Horst said he has compassion and concern for the kidnappers, and said he hopes they can find God.

More: As omicron spreads quickly, Beaumont doctor says to consider most vulnerable over holidays

More: No white Christmas in metro Detroit, but expect a wet Christmas Eve, forecasters say

Horst said one of the things that most inspired him was that the hostages were able to be together and sing together, which helped keep their spirits up.

Just as the small Hart community came together to support the Noeckers' congregation, the hostages were able to support each other.

Members of Hart Dunkard Brethren Church who were kidnapped while on a mission trip in Haiti. (Left to Right), Monte Wadel, Veronica Wadel, Kimberly Noecker, Juanitta Noecker, Brandyn Noecker (HOSTAGE), Kasondra Noecker (HOSTAGE), Courtney Noecker (HOSTAGE), Shelden Noecker (HOSTAGE), Cheryl Noecker (HOSTAGE), Ray Noecker, Cherilyn Noecker (HOSTAGE) and Michelle Noecker.

"They were all able to spend time together as, as a group, they were not kept in separate areas, so that was a blessing as well, they were able to encourage one another," Horst said. "It's always good to have support of family, of friends, of churches, of community. You pull an ember from a fire, and you send it off by itself, it will soon die out. But yet, when that ember is with the remaining coals, it will continue to burn for a long time and continue to put out heat. And so community, whether that community is part of family, whether it's part of church, it's always very important."

Contact Emma Stein: estein@freepress.com and follow her on Twitter @_emmastein.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan family releases statement after escaping kidnappers in Haiti




A Michigan middle school teacher was charged Monday for allegedly making a false report or threat of terrorism, just days after she was arrested for distributing notes that alluded to a school shooting.

Johnna Rhone, 59, was arrested on Dec. 18 for allegedly placing at least three threatening, handwritten notes that morning around Jefferson Middle School in St. Clair Shores, a school about 20 miles outside of Detroit.

Surveillance footage caught Rhone placing the notes at teacher stations around the school, prosecutors told the Detroit Free Press.

Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido told the Detroit News at least one note contained a threat of a school shooting. The note read: "Start break early. He's gonna do it. Just don't be in the hall after lunch. Boom! Get it?"

Rhone, who has worked in the district for 21 years, will fight the charges, an attorney told The Detroit News. She was arraigned on Monday and pleaded not guilty. Her bond was set at $75,000.

The Macomb Daily reported she was placed on house arrest while she awaits a Feb. 1, 2022, probable cause hearing. Rhone faces up to 20 years in prison and a $20,000 maximum fine if convicted of the threat of terrorism charge, which is a felony.

Michigan has been on edge since the Nov. 30 shooting at Oxford High School, which left four dead and seven injured. Despite the tragedy, some students have made threats against schools, including eight Detroit-area students recently arrested and charged with intentional threat to commit an act of violence.

Lucido, the prosecutor overseeing the case against Rhone, said of the teacher's behavior that he could "expect something like this from a child, not an adult."

"I can expect something like this as it relates to a cry for help or somebody who is maybe desperate or someone who wants to have a day off," he told the Macomb Daily.

"But I do not have a crystal ball to give you an exact answer as to why an adult who is in supervision and control of our children in a classroom would even think about doing something like this."
Texas police are searching for a missing three-year-old girl, Lina Sadar Khil, who they believe may be in grave, immediate danger.

ABC News reports that the girl was last seen Monday between 4pm and 5pm near the 9400 block of Fredericksburg Road in San Antonio. Her family reported her missing, and a family member told the outlet there was no indication she was with another member of the family.

During a press conference, SAPD Chief William McManus told reporters that Lina was playing at a playground with her mother at their apartment building just before she disappeared. Lina's mother left the playground for a short time and returned to find her daughter had vanished.

According to the mother, there were other children and their parents present during the time that she was not present at the playground.

Mr McManus said both parents were cooperating with the investigation and that officers were going door to door in the neighborhood to inquire about the girl. The SAPD has also asked for the FBI's assistance in locating the girl.

An Amber Alert was issued shortly after she was reported missing.

Lina is 4ft tall and weighs approximately 55 pounds. She is white, has straight, shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes. Police said she was last seen wearing a black jacket, a red dress, and black shoes.

Police said the case is still active and ongoing. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the SAPD Missing Person Unit at 210-207-7660.
Dec. 20Music filled The Alley in downtown Aiken on Sunday afternoon during an event to raise money for the American Red Cross for disaster relief in Western Kentucky.

Teri Davis, who used to live in that part of the Bluegrass State, was the organizer of Jammin' the Alley.

Earlier this month, during a tornado outbreak, Western Kentucky suffered heavy damage and many people died.

"I have a lot of friends that lost homes," said Davis, who works at the Savannah River Site. "My niece is in the National Guard, and she was there at the candle factory (in Mayfield). She said it was horrific. She had to help dig out people who were in the candle factory."

Davis, who felt compelled to do something to help, got on the phone.

"I called Katy Lipscomb because she's really into the music scene," said Davis, who moved to Aiken with her daughter in 2009.

Assisted by Lipscomb, Davis got in touch with potential performers, and they were enthusiastic.

Even though Sunday's weather was gloomy and damp, the show went on as planned.

In the lineup were Lost Dog, Mike Smith, Chip Herring, Bruce Milheim, Gabriel Flores, Justin Hadden and Jason Hadden of RedFoxWood and Ravenswood.

"It was a good way of at least bringing awareness to the plight of those poor people (in Western Kentucky)," Smith said. "We got some donations, and I think that was important. If everybody did something like this, it would really go a long way toward helping."

Davis reported that several hundred dollars in cash was raised.

During Jammin' the Alley, there also was information available about how to give money online at teamwkyrelieffund.ky.gov.
Metro Nashville Police cars line the side of Lower Broadway as officers respond to a call on Thursday, June 10, 2021 in Nashville, Tenn.

A majority of Nashville's community police oversight board is against the use of automatic license plate readers.

The board approved a resolution Monday urging Metro Council members to vote against both proposed license plate reader bills under discussion.

Automatic license plate readers are a controversial tool used by various police departments around the United States. They capture images of every license plate and car that passes by them.

The devices allow law enforcement to compare the plate numbers against those of stolen vehicles or cars driven by people wanted by police.

Several oversight board members expressed concerns over how the police department would use the cameras and whether there would be enough oversight to prevent abuses of the technology.

Board member Phyllis Hildreth said she was against the readers because of concerns on how they could be used to target Nashville's Black community.

Board member and former Judge Joe Brown voted against the board's resolution, citing concerns with the board's neutrality and ability to provide oversight if a license plate reader bill passes the council.

'Nashville messed up again': Woman mistakenly stopped, cuffed shows limits of license plate readers

Community Oversight Board's statement on Automatic License Plate Readers by USA TODAY Network on Scribd

The two bills under discussion

In November, the Metro Council delayed voting on two different license plate reader bills.

The first, proposed by Council member Courtney Johnston, provides the police with the ability to use the cameras for a number of purposes.

Under the bill, the department could use the readers to detect traffic and parking offenses, assist in missing person alerts and investigate felonies. Data collected from the readers can't be held for more than 10 days unless it is part of an ongoing investigation.

The second, proposed by Council member Dave Rosenberg, allows police to use the readers for a limited amount of situations.

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Under the bill, the department could use the readers only to find a car associated with a missing person alert, a vehicle registered to someone with an outstanding felony warrant and a car the department has received a warrant to search. The data collected can only be kept for 24 hours unless there is a match.

The vice mayor created a committee with Johnston and Rosenberg as co-chairs to discuss both bills. The committee is scheduled to meet on Jan. 5.

Adam Friedman is The Tennesseans evening reporter covering breaking news, crime, cops and a little bit of everything else. If you have a news tip, he wants it. Email him at afriedman@tennessean.com or call him at 731-431-8517.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville police oversight board urges to ditch license plate reader
SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria does not see a need for deployment of NATO troops on its territory as a response to Russia's troop build-up near the border with Ukraine, its defence minister said on Tuesday.

Stefan Yanev confirmed reports that within NATO different response options, including establishing a military alliance presence in Black Sea NATO members Bulgaria and Romania under its "Enhanced Forward Presence" mission are being discussed.

NATO has used that mission to deploy military forces to the Baltic states and eastern Poland.

"My position is that such a debate, respectively an approach, has the potential to lead to an undesirable increase of tensions in the region," Yanev said a Facebook posting.

Yanev said that for the for the time being there was no reason to consider Russia's troop build-up as a direct threat to the Alliance and the relevant security zone.

"In this sense, I do not believe that there are the necessary circumstances that can justify a decision related to the deployment of additional troops on our territory," he wrote.

He said that Bulgaria, which joined NATO in 2004, will be following the situation closely and was standing ready to increase the capacity of its own national forces "in the context of the allied capabilities to deter and defend" if needed.

(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by David Gregorio)
A Black San Francisco UPS delivery driver claims she was subjected to racial profiling after being given a citation that she says was for double-parking her service truck earlier this month in a confrontation that was caught on her cellphone and has since gone viral.

The incident took place on Tuesday, Dec. 7, around 11:30 a.m. on Haight Street near Masonic, when Nakisha Ferguson doubled-parked her delivery truck to drop off several packages, KRON reported.

Black UPS driver claims racial profiling after she says she got a traffic citation for double-parking her delivery truck. (Photo: TikTok screenshot)

In the 3-minute clip, that has racked over 2 million views on TikTok, Ferguson is approached by a police officer, during which she explains to the camera that shes being pulled over by SFPD while I deliver my packages. I am a delivery driver in full brown delivering packages, and I get pulled over for double parking for 2 seconds while I deliver my f-cking packages.

Ferguson said she was being pulled over everywhere on this street because there is nowhere for me to park. I go up and down the Haight. According to the station, parking is extremely difficult in that particular part of town.

Ferguson was even shocked to have gotten a citation, thinking double-parking was normal behavior. I never knew that they pulled over people. I see UPS drivers, FedEx drivers, Amazon drivers, everybody double parking to deliver, Ferguson added.

The woman was then approached by two more officers, whom she refused to speak to. She was then told to not admit guilt but sign a citation. Im not signing nothing, she said. I am at work delivering my packages.

I wanna see you pull over somebody else, another driver, she said to the officers. Since its a black girl, I get a ticket. The confrontation appeared to draw attention from local bystanders.

The woman told reporters she believed she was stopped because she was Black. I feel like if I wasnt this young black girl, I wouldnt have got a ticket. I probably would have got a warning. A siren to move your vehicle, she explained.

Story continues

Haight District San Francisco Supervisor Dean Prestons office told the station that they were extremely concerned about the incident in which SFPD ticketed a Black ups driver in the Haight for double parking while making a delivery. We have reached out to SFPD and are eager to get to the bottom of this.



Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Department released a statement to the outlet revealing that This incident is now under investigation by the SF Department of Public Accountability. Because this is an open investigation, we cannot comment further.

A new city ordinance protecting delivery drivers from being cited while double-parked in the city reportedly may be in order soon.

More news from our partners:

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MINNESOTA  The omicron variant has overtaken the delta coronavirus variant, including in Minnesota, and is now dominant in the United States, accounting for 73 percent of new cases, federal health officials estimate.

The omicron spike comes three weeks after the variant was detected half a world away and days before Americans gather for the holidays, sparking fears among health officials that COVID-19 cases could return to early pandemic levels.

In Minnesota, omicron variant cases outpace the delta variant, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Between Dec. 12 and Dec. 18, omicron made up 92.3 percent of all new cases in region five, which includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Delta made up just 7.7 new cases in that same time period.

The CDC numbers reported Monday show how quickly omicron is spreading. Nationwide, omicron variant cases increased six-fold in only a week.

In some regions of the country, the spike is higher than 73 percent. The variant accounts for at least 90 percent of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the Midwest and Pacific.

The delta variant had been dominant since June, and as recently as the end of November represented 99.5 percent of new cases.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters Monday that omicrons rapid spread matches what other countries have seen.

These new numbers are stark, but they are not surprising, Walensky said.

Only about 28 percent of Americans have gotten their COVID-19 booster shots, which health officials say is the best defense against the omicron variant. Only about 61 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated but arent boosted, and health officials are worried about the nations ability to withstand a fifth wave of COVID-19.

For more information, go to the CDC data tracker.

This article originally appeared on the Southwest Minneapolis Patch
President Joe Biden is winding down his first year in office having already made significant headway on one of his most lasting legacies: judicial confirmations.

Biden has put more people into lifetime federal judgeships than decades of past presidents by this point in their terms. His court picks are also, easily, the most diverse mix of people put onto the federal bench by any U.S. president.

The question that hangs over all of it, though, is how long Biden can keep this up and whether hes willing to play hardball with Republicans to do it.

Thanks in part to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) making judicial confirmations a top priority, Biden has confirmed 40 lifetime federal judges this year. That breaks down to 11 appeals court judges and 29 district court judges.

For some context, Donald Trump had confirmed a total of 18 appeals and district court judges in his first year in office. Barack Obama had confirmed 12. George W. Bush had confirmed 28, and Bill Clinton had confirmed 27. George H.W. Bush had confirmed 15. Reagan tied with Biden, at 40.

Heres a snapshot of how Bidens record of judicial confirmations stacks up compared to past presidents, provided by Schumers office.

More than sheer numbers, though, the diversity of Bidens nominees is a huge departure from the prototypical white, male corporate lawyers almost always tapped for lifetime federal judgeships.

This presidents court picks have included public defenders, voting rights lawyers and union organizers, in addition to historic firsts with Native Americans, Black women, LGBTQ nominees and Muslim Americans. Of his 40 judges confirmed, 32 are women, 27 are people of color, 21 are women of color and 27 have professionally diverse backgrounds. Fifteen are former public defenders.

Biden and Schumer have led a revolution in the way Democrats think about who should serve as judges by selecting lawyers who have represented everyday people as public defenders, civil rights lawyers and union-side labor lawyers, said Chris Kang of Demand Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group. This historic approach should give confidence to judges who are eligible to retire that their vacancies will be quickly filled in the new year with judges who will bring balance to our federal courts.

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The White House and Schumer have been flying through judicial confirmations for a couple of reasons. They want to offset the massive number of conservative and ideological judges that Trump confirmed. They also know they may not be able to do this for long.

Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the Senate, and they could lose it in November 2022. Republicans arent likely to confirm many of Bidens preferred court picks, and given their record of obstructing Obamas nominees when they controlled the Senate, theres no reason to believe the GOP would help Biden confirm many judicial nominees at all.

Its not a coincidence that all of Bidens confirmed judges so far are from states led by two Democratic senators. Typically, the judicial nomination process begins with a states two senators recommending nominees to the White House for vacancies in their home states. From there, the White House and those senators traditionally work together to usher their nominees through the Senate confirmation process.

But that process has fallen apart in recent years. Republican senators prevented Obama from filling lots of court vacancies, in part by not recommending nominees at all. Obamas White House waited and waited for judicial recommendations that never came, and some of those court seats stayed empty for more than six years. Eventually, when Trump came into office, those same Republican senators promptly recommended nominees to him who were much more conservative than those Obama would have chosen.

President Joe Biden has made judicial confirmations a top priority in his first year in office, having broken records with the pace of his nominations and the diversity of his nominees. (Photo: SAUL LOEB via Getty Images)

The looming questions for Biden are how much is his White House willing to work with Republican senators on picking judicial nominees, and how aggressive is Biden prepared to be in the event that they wont work with him.

John Collins Jr., a law professor at George Washington University, said hell be watching one nominee in particular as an interesting test case for Senate Democrats strategy for advancing red-state nominees.

Biden recently nominated Andre Mathis to a Tennessee-based seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Mathis is the first and only judicial nominee so far from a state led by Republican senators, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty. Both senators have criticized Mathis nomination and said they werent meaningfully consulted.

If [Democrats] move quickly in the new year to confirm him, that would seem like a positive sign that we could see movement on some of the other red-state seats, too, Collins said.

Biden wouldnt be breaking with Senate norms if he plowed ahead with Mathis nomination without Blackburns and Hagertys consent, either, Collins added, since Republicans already did away with that tradition. Trump nominated several people to appeals court seats over the objections of Democratic senators from those nominees states, and Republicans went ahead and confirmed them.

Acting as though there needs to be (or will ever be) agreement between the White House and [Republican] senators like Roger Marshall or John Kennedy on judicial nominees is a waste of everyones time, said the law professor, and the White House should just start moving forward.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has helped President Biden usher through a higher number of judicial confirmations than decades of past presidents. (Photo: Tom Williams via Getty Images)

Biden still has plenty of court seats to fill in states with two Democratic senators, and he could easily focus on those seats for a while, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor and expert on judicial nominations.

This is especially true of vacancies on appeals courts, Tobias said, which are critical.

Trump made appeals court confirmations a priority, and Biden already appears to be doing the same. Appeals courts are more powerful than district courts, and are just one step below the U.S. Supreme Court. They are often the last resort for 99% of cases in their regions of the country on issues like abortion rights, same-sex marriage and immigration.

Put another way, federal appeals courts resolve roughly 50,000 cases per year while the Supreme Court resolves about 100.

Most of the vacancies currently on U.S. appeals courts are not in states represented by Republican senators, meaning they would be easier for Biden to fill. As of Monday, there are three vacancies on appeals courts based in states with two Republican senators, versus seven vacancies on appeals courts based in states with either two Democratic senators or that dont stem from a senators recommendation.

There may be enough of [these appeals court vacancies] to keep Biden busy through November 2022, speculated Tobias. If Democrats hold the Senate after that, they can regroup and have a strategy to address red-state vacancies.

Acting as though there needs to be (or will ever be) agreement between the White House and [Republican] senators like Roger Marshall or John Kennedy on judicial nominees is a waste of everyones time.George Washington University law professor John Collins Jr.

Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow in the Brookings Institutions Governance Studies Program and president of the nonpartisan think tank The Governance Institute, tends to agree.

I suspect ... that the administration might be more inclined to not worry much about district vacancies in states with Republican senators but pay more attention to courts of appeals, in the interest of protecting or enhancing the proportion of Democratic appointees on certain courts, he said.

Its possible that Biden may have a Supreme Court seat to fill next year, too.

Progressive organizations and Democrats in Congress have been urging Justice Stephen Breyer to retire so Biden can replace him with a Democrat-backed judge while Democrats still control the Senate. Breyer, 83, was appointed to the court in 1994 by Bill Clinton. Hes been mum on his retirement plans.

Collins, for one, said Democrats would be smart to act with urgency on judicial confirmations in the event that Breyer makes a surprise announcement.

No one knows what Justice Breyer is going to do, he said, but in terms of timing, the White House and Senate should operate as though theyre going to have a confirmation battle over the summer and fill as many seats ahead of time as possible.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Related...
President Biden





Welcome to Monday's Overnight Health Care, where we're following the latest moves on policy and news affecting your health. Subscribe here: thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

The White House family is growing after the Bidens adopted a new puppy named Commander.

President Biden's speech scheduled for Tuesday will center on improving access to COVID-19 vaccines and tests, rather than "lockdowns."

For The Hill, we're Peter Sullivan (psullivan@thehill.com), Nathaniel Weixel (nweixel@thehill.com) and Justine Coleman (jcoleman@thehill.com). Write to us with tips and feedback, and follow us on Twitter: @PeterSullivan4, @NateWeixel and @JustineColeman8.

Let's get started.

White House: Speech to avoid 'lockdowns'

President Biden is set to make a speech on Tuesday to address rising COVID-19 infections across the country. But according to the White House, he will not endorse any new virus restrictions. Instead, he will announce new steps to increase access to coronavirus vaccines and tests.

"This is not a speech about locking the country down," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a briefing Monday. "This is a speech outlining and being direct and clear with the American people about the benefit of being vaccinated, the steps we're going to take to increase access and to increase testing and the risks posed to unvaccinated individuals."

Biden administration officials have urged Americans to get vaccinated and for those who are eligible to get booster doses to protect themselves from severe illness, especially as new variants have emerged.

Biden, who met privately with his coronavirus advisers Monday afternoon, is slated to deliver a speech Tuesday amid an uptick in cases due to the more transmissible delta and omicron variants.

The president will say that "while vaccinated individuals get COVID due to the highly transmissibility nature of omicron, their cases will likely be mild or asymptomatic," Psaki said.

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"He'll restate that we're prepared and that fully vaccinated individuals have the tools to protect themselves with a booster shot and masking where CDC recommends," she continued. "For those who remain unvaccinated, he'll issue a stark warning and make clear unvaccinated individuals will continue to drive hospitalizations and deaths."

Read more here.

Moderna: Booster increases antibody levels

coronavirus COVID-19 community spread moderna vaccine stephane bancel world health organization WHO deal governments distribution 2021 first quarter warp speed funding middle east north america

Moderna announced on Monday that a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine significantly increases antibody levels against omicron.

The company said in a statement that preliminary data from a study showed that an authorized booster shot of 50 micrograms - which is half the amount used in the initial two Moderna doses - increases antibody levels against omicron 37-fold compared to pre-booster levels. However, when the initial dosage amount of 100 micrograms is used as a booster, neutralizing antibodies levels go up 83-fold, it added.

"The dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases from the Omicron variant is concerning to all. However, these data showing that the currently authorized Moderna COVID-19 booster can boost neutralizing antibody levels 37-fold higher than pre-boost levels are reassuring," said Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel on Monday.

Moderna also said that it is working to create an omicron-specific vaccine, with clinical trials continuing into early 2022.

Pfizer too: Pfizer announced earlier this month that a booster dose of its vaccine was also successful at significantly increasing neutralizing antibody levels against the omicron variant.

Read more here.

A MESSAGE FROM ASTRAZENECA AND FRIENDS OF CANCER RESEARCH

The Battle Against Cancer: Setting the Next Agenda

To mark 50 years since the passage of the National Cancer Act of 1971, a select group of thought leaders working at the intersection of public health and oncology participated in a roundtable discussion, hosted by The Hill in partnership with Friends of Cancer Research and AstraZeneca's Y OUR Cancer Program, on expanding access to oncology precision medicine. Learn more.

Biogen halves price of Alzheimer's drug

Biogen

Biogen on Monday cut in half the price of its Alzheimer's drug Aduhlem in an effort to boost lackluster sales that stemmed in part from controversy over its price.

The company said Aduhelm will cost $28,200 per year for an average-weight patient, down from the $56,000 a year when the drug first launched last summer.

Sales of the drug yielded only $300,000 for Biogen between July and September after forecasts had predicted revenue to reach $12 million.

Biogen said the price cut is aimed at lowering out-of-pocket expenses for patients as well as "reducing the potential financial implications for the U.S. healthcare system."

"Too many patients are not being offered the choice of Aduhelm due to financial considerations and are thus progressing beyond the point of benefiting from the first treatment to address an underlying pathology of Alzheimer's disease," Biogen Chief Executive Michel Vounatsos said in a statement. "We recognize that this challenge must be addressed in a way that is perceived to be sustainable for the U.S. healthcare system."

Seniors are facing a looming spike in Medicare premiums in part to ensure the program has enough money set aside in case it has to cover Aduhelm. Monthly premiums are set to rise by $21.60, the largest increase in recent years.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is expected to issue a draft national coverage decision on reimbursing the class of therapies that includes Aduhelm in January. A final decision is expected in April.

CMS doesn't take the price into account when setting coverage, but analysts at Raymond Jamesc suggested in a note that Aduhelm's decision could be seen as a way to pressure CMS into giving broad coverage of the drug. Peter Bach, a prominent cancer researcher put it this way:

I feel the need to point out that halving the price of a drug with serious toxicities and no evidence of benefit does not make the drug any better value. #aduhelm - Peter B. Bach, MD (@peterbachmd) December 20, 2021

The drug has drawn controversy both for its price, and because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it despite doubts from experts about its effectiveness. FDA used an accelerated approval pathway, without clear evidence that the drug even works, over the objections of its outside advisory panel.

Read more here.

HHS TO DEDICATE $280 TO NEW SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINE

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will dedicate $280 million to transition the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to the three-digit phone number 988 in July 2022, officials announced on Monday.

The funding from the Biden administration's fiscal 2022 budget and the American Rescue Plan will go toward the "critical priority" of making the suicide prevention hotline more accessible across the country, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters on a call.

Approximately $177 million will be allocated to improve and expand lifeline network operations and telephone infrastructure. Another $105 million is meant to increase staffing at state and local crisis call centers.

"This is the beginning of a major effort undertaken by the administration to really put resources behind this effort to try to improve that infrastructure we have for mental health and crisis care services," Becerra said.

Flashback: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unanimously approved 988 as the new national suicide prevention hotline last year, giving phone service providers until July 16, 2022, to make the switch. Last month, the FCC also voted to allow people to text 988 for assistance.

Before July, Americans needing help should call the current National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.

Read more here.

DC TO REIMPOSE INDOOR MASK MANDATE

Washington, D.C., will reimpose an indoor mask mandate and expand a vaccine mandate for city employees, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) announced Monday.

The mask requirement for indoor public spaces will take effect on Tuesday and remain in place through January 31 as a way to try to blunt a feared surge on COVID-19 infections that could overwhelm the city's health systems.

It comes a little over a month after Bowser lifted the city's mask requirement, citing increasing vaccination rates, relatively low hospitalizations and a desire to move toward individual risk management.

But then the omicron variant began spreading rapidly across the country, and about two weeks later Bowser issued a mask "advisory" for indoor spaces. The advisory was not legally binding, but was meant to reflect the growing unease about the virus.

Coronavirus cases have been surging to record highs in recent days, and Bowser last week said reimposing the mandate was being considered. When asked on Monday, Bowser did not point to any specific metrics that would result in the mandate being extended past Jan. 31, or what would cause it to be reimposed after it gets lifted again.

Also: All D.C. government employees and contractors will now be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19, with a booster shot, and will no longer have the option to test out of the mandate.

Read more here.

A MESSAGE FROM ASTRAZENECA AND FRIENDS OF CANCER RESEARCH

The Battle Against Cancer: Setting the Next Agenda

To mark 50 years since the passage of the National Cancer Act of 1971, a select group of thought leaders working at the intersection of public health and oncology participated in a roundtable discussion, hosted by The Hill in partnership with Friends of Cancer Research and AstraZeneca's Y OUR Cancer Program, on expanding access to oncology precision medicine. Learn more.

WHAT WE'RE READING

'It is embarrassing': CDC struggles to track Covid cases as Omicron looms (Politico)

Public health emergency end could cause millions to lose Medicaid coverage (NBC News)

Local pharmacists fill Rx void as big brands pull out of rural areas (Kaiser Health News)

How long does omicron take to make you sick? (The Atlantic)

STATE BY STATE

Rise of Omicron dashes New York's Christmas cheer as COVID surges (Reuters)

As COVID misinformation spreads in Louisiana, officials fear it could hurt other kid vaccines (WWNO)

Idaho health officials lift crisis standards of care statewide (Boise State Public Radio News)

That's it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill's health care page for the latest news and coverage. See you tomorrow.
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.
Kenya-born Kingori is also one of the youngest women to receive a full Oxford University professorship in its 925-year history.

Kenya native Patricia Kingori has made history as the youngest Black woman to receive tenure at Oxford University.

Kingori, a sociologist who has been with the prestigious British university for eight years, was appointed at the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at Oxford in recognition of the quality and global impact of her research on academia and beyond, the university stated, as reported by Quartz Africa.

She is reportedly the youngest Black professor at the institution and one of the youngest women to ever receive a full Oxford University professorship in its 925-year history. There are conflicting reports about her age; one outlet claims shes 28 years old and another says shes in her early 40s.

Kenyan-born Patricia Kingori has made history as the first Black woman to receive tenure at Oxford University. (Photo: Screenshot/YouTube.com)

Patricia has moved many mountains and shattered countless glass ceilings to secure this historic achievement, said Jan Royall, the principal baroness at Oxfords Somerville College. In the truest tradition of Somerville, she is a woman of firsts, a trailblazer. And yet, I have no doubt that where Patricia leads with such determination, implacable good humor and brilliance, others will follow.

The university said in a statement: Patricia is currently the recipient of a highly prestigious Wellcome Senior Investigator award and leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers exploring global concerns around Fakes, Fabrications and Falsehoods in the 21st Century. She has consistently obtained large and competitive funding grants, written frequently cited and impactful publications, supervised numerous DPhil students and taught hundreds of students during her time at Oxford.

As African intellectuals break new scholarship ground overseas, Kenyan-born academic Patricia Kingori has become the youngest black professor at the United Kingdom's prestigious Oxford University, the youngest women to ever be awarded a full professorship in its 925-year history. pic.twitter.com/WAsBrEvWOF  TheNewsHawks (@NewsHawksLive) December 15, 2021

Speaking of her promotion, Kingori said, To have my body of work recognized in this way is a great honor, and I am deeply grateful to the many people who have inspired and supported me so far.

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The acclaimed academic gave birth to her first child when she received a studentship to fund her Ph.D. with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, per the report. Kingori was pregnant with her second child when she fled civil unrest in her home country and returned to the U.K., where she spent her teen years.

I left friends and colleagues behind, not sure whether they were going to be OK. I didnt want to leave, I didnt believe what I was seeing, she said in an interview on Wellcomes website. I didnt ever think that I would see dead people in the streets, or face threats of physical violence. It was a very, very dark time.

After completing her Ph.D., Kingori served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxfords Ethox Centre. Within five years, she evolved from a research lecturer to an associate professor.

Prof Kingori is also a fantastically enabling colleague, and a gifted & visionary shaper of research agendas, one Twitter user said in response to the announcement of Kingoris history-making job change. Working with her on the SI on Fakery in Africa was a career highlight and one of the most meaningful collaborations ever.

Another proud user commented: Kenyans are pushing boundaries and breaking bounds.

Zimbabwes News Hawk noted, As of January of 2021, only 155 out of more than 23,000 university professors in the UK were black, according to official figures.

Professor Kingoris bio says that her work has focused on the views, values and experiences of fieldworkers and other frontline research staff.

It sounds all really easy, but actually I didnt have a plan for any of this. I dont have academics in my family, so I had no example of how this is supposed to work, Kingori told Wellcome. Its very difficult for me, but Ive been really fortunate to do something I genuinely like. I can put in the extra hours, and I dont mind doing lots of reading or teaching because I genuinely like it.

Shes been published in numerous medical journals such as Social Science & Medicine, and she hosts the podcast, Exploring the Genuine Fake, on which she examines fakes, fabrications and falsehoods in health and medicine.

I think academia is just still very conservative in the way that people are hired and promoted, said Kingori.

As a black woman from a single-parent, working-class background Im very conscious that diversity is sometimes skewed to a very narrow interpretation  its generally gender diversity, so racial, social class and other forms of diversity get put on the back foot, she noted. That is changing, but its changing very slowly.

Have you subscribed to theGrio podcasts Dear Culture or Acting Up? Download our newest episodes now!

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The post Patricia Kingori becomes youngest Black woman with tenure at Oxford appeared first on TheGrio.




Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is facing pushback from some members of her own party for defending the practice of members of Congress trading stocks while in office.

When asked about a Business Insider report finding that dozens of lawmakers and staff had violated a law to prevent insider trading, Pelosi last week said that they should all abide by disclosure laws but maintained: "We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that."

In response, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) tweeted: "No. It cannot be a perk of the job for Members to trade on access to information."

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) - one of the wealthiest members of Congress thanks to his business career that included leading his family's distillery as well as the gelato brand Talenti - echoed: "I disagree with the Speaker."

And Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who represents one of the most competitive districts in the nation, wrote that "I disagree strongly" with Pelosi's stance. "Americans are losing trust in government and we need to show we serve the people, not our personal/political self-interest."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has said that she doesn't hold individual stocks or digital assets, reiterated late Friday that she thinks letting members of Congress trade individual stocks is a bad look.

"There is no reason members of Congress should hold and trade individual stock when we write major policy and have access to sensitive information," Ocasio-Cortez said. "There are many ways members can invest w/o creating actual or appeared conflict of interest, like thrift savings plans or index funds."

Spanberger introduced a bill earlier this year that would require lawmakers, as well as their spouses and dependent children, to place assets in a blind trust while they're in office. But lawmakers would still be allowed to own and trade common investments like mutual funds.

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"I've done it, and believe we all should," Phillips, a co-sponsor of the bill, said of putting investments into a blind trust.

Pelosi herself also ranks as one of the wealthiest members of Congress, largely because of the real estate and venture capital fortune amassed by her husband, Paul. And while financial disclosures show that her husband engages in stock trades, the Speaker does not own any stocks and her office has stressed that she does not have any involvement.

Spanberger's legislation has drawn support from colleagues across the spectrum who usually don't agree on much of anything. But from the far left to the far right, lawmakers of a variety of stripes are behind the idea that members of Congress shouldn't get to trade stocks when their positions inherently can give them access to market information unavailable to most people.

The 15 co-sponsors of Spanberger's bill include fellow moderate Democrats, progressives, and even the incoming chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.).

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), an original co-sponsor of the measure, reiterated his support for the measure in response to Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama and Trump administrations, saying that Pelosi's stance was "ridiculous."

"Actually, Members of Congress SHOULD NOT be trading stocks themselves while in office," Roy, one of the most conservative members of the House GOP conference, tweeted.

And earlier this month, Ocasio-Cortez clarified that she does not hold individual stocks or digital assets in response to a question on Instagram, citing her seat on the House Financial Services Committee.

"It is absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office," Ocasio-Cortez later tweeted. "The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn't be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have."

Lawmakers have been subject to stricter disclosure rules in recent years under a 2012 law, known as the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, that explicitly prohibits them from using non-public information gained from their official duties for profit. It further requires them to report stock transactions within 30 days after they become aware of a reportable stock transaction and no later than 45 days after the transaction.

But numerous members of Congress have been accused of running afoul of the law, either from alleged insider trading or failing to timely report stock transactions.

Last year, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) stepped down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after he was accused of engaging in insider trading in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Justice Department ultimately decided earlier this year not to pursue charges against him.

Three other senators at the time had also sold substantial amounts of stock in late January and early February 2020 as members of Congress were receiving private briefings on the virus: Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.). The Justice Department similarly opted not to pursue charges against them either, but the accusations nevertheless became an issue in Loeffler's Senate runoff campaign, which she ultimately lost.

And this year, two House members have been the subject of ethics investigations.

Following a Business Insider report in March, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) acknowledged that he had failed to file regular reports on stock transactions worth at least $671,000. He has since placed his assets into a blind trust and signed on as a co-sponsor of Spanberger's bill in June, five months after it was introduced.

The House Ethics Committee is also reviewing allegations that Rep. Mike Kelly's (R-Pa.) wife purchased stock - worth between $15,000 to $50,000 - in an iron ore mining company last year based on information the lawmaker would have learned from his official duties.

At the time, Kelly had called on the Trump administration to investigate foreign steel imports that threatened the company, which is located in his district. The Office of Congressional Ethics, which investigates allegations of lawmaker wrongdoing and makes referrals to the House Ethics Committee, found that Kelly's wife purchased the stock a day after her husband was told that the Commerce Department would begin an investigation.

Kelly has maintained that his wife "made a small investment to show her support for the workers and management of this 100-year bedrock of their hometown." The case remains under review by the Ethics Committee.

While Pelosi defended the practice of lawmakers and their spouses engaging in stock trades, she stressed that they should abide by transparency laws.

"We have a responsibility to report on the stock," Pelosi said, "If the people aren't reporting, they should be."
Third from the right, Canitra Thompson poses for a photo with her seven children at Tri-Cities Habitat for Humanity in Petersburg on Dec. 20, 2021.

PETERSBURG - A family of eight can't wait to move into a Tri-Cities Habitat for Humanity home. The property owned by the late James Broughton was generously donated by his family.

"I feel so happy, so grateful, so thankful. I can't stop smiling," Canitra Thompson said. "I'm just so excited!"

The single mom's seven children George Lee [14], twins Kimari and Ky'yon Thompson [13], Lamont Harper [10], twins Lamoni and Lamari Harper [9], and Lamon Harper [6] are also filled with joy.

Nine-year-old Lamari Harper shared her thoughts about moving into a new home, "It makes me feel excited and happy."

The Broughton home at 310 Summit Street in Petersburg donated to Tri-Cities Habitat for Humanity by family members of the late James Broughton.

Sharing her twin sister's sentiment, Lamoni Harper stated, "I can't wait to move in." She recalled how living in Pecan Acres scared her.

"Our apartment was wrongly targeted on October 8. It was shot up, and we were all there," Canitra Thompson said. "So...we've been terrified to even stay there. It was tough."

Canitra Thompson and her children pose for a photo at the press conference in Petersburg. Adults from left to right in front row, Tri-Cities Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Kelli Parker, Delegate-Elect Kim Taylor, Dominion Energy Community Affairs and Engagement Representative Brittani Edwards, Senator Joe Morrissey, and Dominion Energy External Affairs Manager Anita Powell. Adults from right to left in back row, Petersburg Mayor Samuel Parham and Canitra Thompson.

What are you grateful for?: Locals thankful for God, family, friends, good health, food, and Animal Crossings

Did you know this hidden gem existed?: Spring Run Vineyards hosts first-ever Sip and Shop Craft Fair

Your support helps keep the lights on at The Progress-Index! We are passionate about telling Petersburg's stories. Stay connected with our articles, enterprise reporting and more by clicking "Subscribe" at the top of the page.

When I asked the children if they knew who was going to get which room, they simultaneously shouted out the following responses: "I get my own, I get the top, No...oldest gets the top, I don't like sleeping next to the door...it scares me."

"I don't even know how many rooms and whatnot," Canitra Thompson said. "It's just been like...'I want my own room.' I guess we'll figure it out once we know."

One of her sons jumped in on the conversation and said, "I think the home will have six rooms most likely because that is what we're going to need."

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"See...they got their own plans," Canitra Thompson commented while laughing.

Sweat equity

Habitat for Humanity family partners are required to invest 300 hours of sweat equity to help build their homes as well as donate 100 hours towards another home for a different family. Recipients learn useful skills, build relationships, engage with the community, and play an active role in making homeownership a reality.

Canitra Thompson, who doesn't know the first thing about building a home, is excited and ready to help.

Kudos to Dominion Energy

Yesterday, a press conference was held at Tri-Cities Habitat for Humanity [TCH] on Commerce Street. Dominion Energy Vice President of Public Policy and State Affairs Katherine Bond presented a $30,000 check for the "Broughton House" project at 310 Summit Street.

Senator Joe Morrissey thanked Dominion Energy for being a great corporate citizen, and he provided them kudos for once again standing up to plate.

"I talked regularly with the Mayor about organizations that were most deserving and Habitat for Humanity kept coming to the top of the list," Morrissey said.

The present home will be torn down and a new one will be raised with the help of TCH who serves Petersburg, Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Prince George, and Dinwiddie.

TCH's mission to build and rehab homes is supported by many volunteers as well as community partners who reduce professional labor and material costs.

Tri-Cities Habitat for Humanity [TCH] Executive Director Kelli Parker recognizes dedicated volunteers during a press conference held in Petersburg on Dec. 21, 2021. From left to right, Parker, Senator Joe Morrissey, TCH President David Roane, TCH former President /Vice President Bob Hodge, and Mayor Samuel Parham.

Unsung heroes

Two volunteers were recognized for their years of service. TCH President David Roane who has devoted 25 years and former TCH President and Vice President Bob Hodge who has dedicated 28 years.

"We do it for the fun of it," Roane said.

According to Hodge, more than likely, it will take a year before Canitra Thompson and her children will be able to move in.

"It depends on the weather and volunteers," Hodge said. "We're blessed with Fort Lee. Sometimes, we have 40 or more soldiers volunteer on a weekend."

During the press conference, Mayor Samuel Parham described TCH as the hub of transformation of building new homes.

"They spark the development in the City of Petersburg that is so desperately needed right now," Parham said. "We are transforming as a city. Petersburg is on a rise."

Former TCH board member Delegate-Elect Kim Taylor who was present commented, "I love what Habitat does. I'm so excited to be here today and really appreciate Dominion for their generosity."

New neighbors

"It will be a beautiful thing to watch the home turn into someone's treasure," Rhonda Nicholas said.

"It will be a nice addition to the neighborhood to see kids running around," Keith Nicholas added.

Blessed twice

Tri-Cities Habitat for Humanity offered Canitra Thompson a job.

"It's like a 'two for one,'" Canitra Thompson exclaimed. "I'm not sure what I'll be doing, but I've been told a job is waiting for me."

"This is Christmas for us," Canitra Thompson said, grinning from ear to ear.

- Kristi K. Higgins aka The Social Butterfly columnist is the trending topics and food Q&A reporter at The Progress-Index. Have a news tip on local trends or businesses? Contact Kristi (she, her) at khiggins@progress-index.com, follow @KHiggins_PI on Twitter, and subscribe to us at progress-index.com.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Tri-Cities Habitat for Humanity receives $30K from Dominion Energy
MANILA (Reuters) -The Philippines has halved to three months the waiting time for a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine in its battle to rein in the more infectious Omicron variant of coronavirus, which has forced a global tightening of curbs.

The Southeast Asian nation joins Britain, Germany, South Korea and Thailand among a growing list of countries cutting the interval for boosters as they try to stave off a new surge in infections.

From Wednesday, adults can receive a booster dose at least three months after taking the second complement of a two-dose vaccine, versus six months earlier, acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles said.

Single-dose vaccine recipients are eligible for a booster after two months, he told a regular news conference.

The Philippines has found just three imported cases of Omicron, allowing it maintain looser curbs, as average daily infections have dropped sharply from a September peak of more than 18,500.

Everyone in the Philippines should get vaccinated, wear masks and maintain physical distancing, Nograles said, as these measures had helped limit infections.

The Philippines has fully vaccinated more than 45 million, or 41% of its population, with more than 1 million taking booster doses, Nograles added.

Its vaccination programme received additional World Bank funding, with a new loan of $300 million, to buy 27 million doses of vaccine.

The loan is key to re-open the economy safely and will help fight emerging variants such as Omicron, Ndiame Diop, the bank's country director for Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome MoralesEditing by Mark Potter and Clarence Fernandez)
Piers Morgan hit out at John Cleese on Twitter. (Getty Images)

Piers Morgan has branded John Cleese a "bitter sad old bore" after the comedian questioned his talent.

The Monty Python dished out his comments as he reacted to media mogul Rupert Murdoch recruiting the former Good Morning Britain presenter to host a show on his new television station talkTV.

Sharing his opinion to Twitter, Cleese wrote: "I see Murdoch is hiring Piers Morgan as a front man. He'll probably get about 20 million, and everyone will gasp !

Read more: Piers Morgan says new meds are finally 'cracking' his long COVID

"But think how much more he would be getting if he had any discernible talent."

Awwww, Merry Christmas to you too, Cleesey!

I love how much this has annoyed you... you bitter sad old bore.  https://t.co/cydzj9hVNn  Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) December 20, 2021

Morgan reacted by re-sharing Cleese's message alongside a dig of his own.

"Awwww, Merry Christmas to you too, Cleesey! I love how much this has annoyed you... you bitter sad old bore," he shared.

Its not the pairs first internet spat as they previously argued online when Morgan wrote in a newspaper that he and Cleese has seen each other in a New York restaurant but ignored each other.

Watch: Sharon Osbourne takes a lovely time out with dear friend Piers Morgan

On Twitter, Cleese said he had recognised Morgan but didnt want to speak to someone I truly detest.

Morgan then retaliated by suggesting Cleese hadnt been funny for a few decades.

News of Morgans new role on Murdochs News Corp channel was made public in September.

Its set to launch in 2022 and will mark the journalists return to TV news since he quit GMB after refusing to apologise for comments he made about the Duchess of Sussexs mental health.

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John Cleese had something to say about Piers Morgan's move to Rupert Murdoch's new channel. (Photo by Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)

He said of his new position: Im thrilled to be returning to News Corp which is where I began my media career more than 30 years ago. Rupert Murdoch has been a constant and fearless champion of free speech and we are going to be building something new and very exciting together.

Read more: Piers Morgan 'flattered' to be Yahoo's most searched for celebrity of 2021

I want my global show to be a fearless forum for lively debate and agenda-setting interviews, and a place that celebrates the right of everyone to have an opinion, and for those opinions to be vigorously examined and challenged.

Alongside his TV appointment, Morgan has also been given two weekly online columns for News Corp titles The Sun and the New York Post, and a deal with HarperCollins for the follow-up to his book Wake Up.

Watch: John Cleese reveals why he would have to re-write Fawlty Towers in 2020
Opponents of a proposed rendering plant in Gadsden braved the cold and wind on Tuesday outside City Hall, as the Gadsden City Council discussed the issue inside.

For the second time, an attempt to transfer a suit challenging a proposal by Pilgrims Pride to build a rendering plant on Gadsden Airport Authority property to federal court has failed.

U.S. District Judge Corey Maze on Monday directed that the lawsuit filed by Dynamic Collision, a business adjoining the proposed location, and later joined by more than 20 owners of property near the site against Pilgrims Pride, the City of Gadsden and the Gadsden Airport Authority, challenging the proposal on zoning grounds, be remanded to Etowah County Circuit Court.

Recently: Gadsden Airport Authority commended for vote against Pilgrim's Pride rendering plant proposal

Pilgrims Pride had sought the move to federal court, contending that there was federal jurisdiction over at least one of Dynamic Collisions claims.

The City of Gadsden earlier this year tried a similar move, contending that one of Dynamic Collisions claims  that the proposed plant violated existing zoning ordinances, which denied Dynamics procedural due process rights  was being brought under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Maze quashed that request as well, ruling that Dynamic Collision had brought its due process claim under state law.

The federal court quickly recognized this is a local matter that needs to be resolved in Etowah County and sent the case back to where it belongs, said Christie Knowles, attorney for the plaintiffs. We are reviewing options on how to move this matter toward finalization now that we have the case back in Etowah County."

Opposition: Etowah County, Rainbow City and Southside will seek injunction to block rendering plant

A Pilgrim's Pride spokesman contacted by email said the company had no comment on the ruling.

The move by Pilgrims Pride followed the issuance of a temporary restraining order by Circuit Judge George Day on Nov. 17, barring the GAA from signing agreements or taking any action to allow the use of the property at the Northeast Alabama Regional Airport on Steele Station Road for the construction or operation of a rendering plant, or to sell, deed or lease it for that purpose.

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Day in his ruling cited a restrictive covenant in the 1947 deed that conveyed the airport property from the federal government to Gadsden, nothing that it shall be used for public airport purposes, and only for such purposes, and specifically bars its use for manufacturing or industrial purposes.

Votes: The Gadsden Airport Authority votes to reject Pilgrim's Pride, Etowah Community proposals

Dynamic Collision then amended its complaint to seek declaratory and injunctive relief based on the 1947 deeds requirement for the propertys use and a provision in a 2004 deed from Gadsden to the GAA conveying the property subject to all easements, conditions, and restrictions of record  in deeds from the United States of America to the City of Gadsden.

The plaintiffs also now contend that the GAA cant sell or lease property to Pilgrims under Alabama Code 4-3-49, which is what they say gave the city the right to convey the airport property to the GAA.

A hearing on a preliminary injunction was scheduled for Dec. 1, but that was postponed after Pilgrims Pride filed its motion to shift the case to federal court.

The company acknowledged that Dynamic Collision hadnt asserted a federal cause of action, according to Mazes ruling, but said the case raised two issues it contends fall under federal jurisdiction: whether subsequent amendments to the Surplus Property Act of 1944 (that removed the ban on using such property for industrial purposes) nullify the 1947 deed restrictions, and whether the Federal Aviation Administration will close the airport or revoke grants if the GAA sells the property for a rendering plant.

Pilgrims Pride cited Grable & Sons Metal Products, Inc. v. Darue Engineering & Mfg., a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court decision which established that a state case could be moved to federal court when theres a substantial and disputed federal question, and the balance between the federal and state judiciaries wouldnt be threatened.

Maze rejected those assertions, stating that they basically were irrelevant to Dynamic Collisions claims and didnt meet the criteria for the court to exercise federal question jurisdiction over state law claims: that they must (1) necessarily raise a stated federal issue, (2) that is actually disputed and (3) substantial, which (4) a federal forum may entertain without disturbing any congressionally approved balance of federal and state judicial responsibilities.

Frustration mounts: Cynthia Toles lashes out at rendering plant opponents: 'Stay out of Gadsden's business'

At its core, this case turns on whether the Airport Authoritys property is an appropriate location for a chicken rendering plant, Maze wrote. The answer to that question depends on interpreting Gadsden zoning ordinances and the restrictive covenants in the Airport Authoritys deed. How to best allocate the use of land within its municipalities is of special concern to the State of Alabama. It is of little interest to this federal court, which must almost always defer to the zoning decisions of state and municipal officers.

The GAA on Friday voted not to sell property to either Pilgrims Pride for a rendering plant or to Etowah Community, a local group that offered a competing plan to develop an industrial park at the airport site.

Dynamic Collisions suit remains scheduled to go to trial the week of Jan. 3 in Days court.

Remand by USA TODAY Network on Scribd

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Rendering plant case sent back to Etowah Circuit Court
Cincinnati police have arrested a man following a double shooting that killed a woman and left a man hospitalized Sunday afternoon.

Jwan McCloud, 20, of East Price Hill, was charged on Monday in connection with the murder of 28-year-old Lacey Florence, police said in a press release.

Cincinnati officers were called the 3700 block of Glenway Avenue just after 2:30 p.m.

Investigators said Florence was taken to an area hospital in a private vehicle and died later Sunday. The male victim is expected to survive, according to police.

McCloud allegedly shot Florence during an argument, police said in an affidavit filed in Hamilton County Municipal Court.

Court records do not indicate when McCloud is expected to appear in court. He's currently being held at the Hamilton County Justice Center.

Anyone with information regarding the shooting is urged to call the Cincinnati Police Department's homicide unit at 513-352-3542.

The Enquirer will update this story as more information becomes available.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: East Price Hill man arrested in double shooting on Glenway Avenue
Harvey Parker, 20, has been missing since last Friday. (Metropolitan Police)

The police and family of a 20-year-old student who has gone missing following a night out in London say they are extremely worried.

Harvey Parker was last seen at about 2.15am on Friday after leaving Heaven nightclub near Charing Cross rail station in Westminster alone.

Harvey was later seen on CCTV entering Craven Street and walking south towards the Embankment. Harvey's phone has remained unanswered and the Metropolitan Police say there is nothing to indicate any reason for him to go missing.

Music student Harvey Parker went missing after attending Heaven nightclub in London. (Metropolitan Police)

Amanda Parker, Harvey's mother, told the Metro the talented musician has autism and didnt turn up for work at the Theatre Royal Stratford East on Friday. She said Harvey can misread social situations and could be particularly vulnerable. She described Harvey as a "phenomenal" musician.

Friends said the University of York music student had been to a Lil Simz concert in Brixton, south London, before going to Heaven Nightclub.

Read more: Former police firearms officer killed daughter's partner with shotgun

Police described Harvey, of Lambeth, south London, as 5ft 8ins tall, of mixed race, with a slight build and short black hair.

Detective Sergeant Dick Nation, of the Area South safeguarding unit, said: We have not been able to speak to Harvey on his phone and we are not aware of any reason why he should not be in contact with his family.

Both his family and police are extremely worried by his disappearance and we are asking for anyone who may have seen Harvey after he left the club, or has any other information, to call police immediately.

Harvey Parker was seen leaving Heaven nightclub in central London on Friday morning. (PA)

Police say they are 'extremely worried' about Harvey Parker, who went missing last week. (Metropolitan Police)

A message on Twitter from the University of York said people are very concerned about our missing student Harvey Parker.

A notice posted on the London LGBT+ Forums Network said my friend is missing and urged people to get in contact.

Anyone with information is asked to call 101 or tweet @MetCC, quoting reference CAD 3134/18DEC21.
Three police departments responded to Norwood after a robbery suspect allegedly killed himself.

A man suspected of robbing a bank in Hyde Park shot himself as police approached him in Norwood on Tuesday, officials said.

Brennan Ball, 37, was rushed to University of Cincinnati Medical Center where he later died from his injuries, police say.

Cincinnati police Executive Assistant Chief Teresa Theetge said the Eagle Savings Bank was robbed around 10:30 a.m. by an armed suspect. No one was injured during the robbery.

Police located Ball on Wasson Way within an hour, she said.

Theetge said as officers approached Ball, he pulled out a firearm. The officers told Ball to drop the weapon and he shot himself, firing once and striking himself in the head, she said.

No shots were fired at officers during the incident.

The Citizen's Complaint Authority was on the scene of the incident.

Dana Avenue was closed in the area of Montgomery Road during the investigation.

It is unknown how much money was taken from the bank.

If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or contact the lifeline online.

Crisis Text Line also provides free, 24/7, confidential support via text message to people in crisis when they dial 741741.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Police ID man suspected in robbery who fatally shot himself
TUSCALOOSA, AL  A Tuscaloosa businessman, political newcomer and Republican candidate for the Alabama Senate Tripp Powell has received a key endorsement in his bid for the statehouse.

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This week, the Petroleum & Convenience Marketers of Alabama endorsed the 41-year-old former owner of Powell Petroleum and Buddy's Food Mart, who is looking to unseat Republican incumbent Sen. Gerald Allen for Senate District 21.

As a political outsider, gaining the confidence and trust of an association like P&CMA means the world to me," Powell told Patch. I know intimately how important demonstrating leadership is to that group, and Im looking forward to that opportunity.



An endorsement from the statewide trade association brings the backing of more than 225 businesses who "own, operate and/or supply more than 3,000 retail locations across."

It's important to note that Powell served on the board of the organization for five years and as chairman in 2020.

Our members know Tripp Powell very well and believe strongly in his ability to provide the kind of leadership and vision we need to keep fueling Alabamas economic engine, said Bart Fletcher, the groups president in an official statement of endorsement. Tripp has been a lifelong champion of small businesses and knows what it takes to get things done in Montgomery.

Fletcher praised Powell for being a "driving force in keeping Alabamas small businesses open" during the economic uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically citing his work on the Alabama Small Business Commission were vital to businesses remaining open and helping Alabamians keep working for their families.

The endorsement is a big one for Powell, who is running for office for the first time against a longtime incumbent in the GOP primary. The winner of the Republican ticket will then face at least one Democratic challenger in the General Election, with Lake View resident Lisa Ward qualifying to appear on the ticket.

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To date, Allen  who recently received a high-coveted endorsement from ALFA  has a far and away lead in fundraising, trailed by Powell and then Ward, with a cumulative total of $148,200 raised for the race since qualifying opened.

The qualifying deadline is set for Jan. 28, 2022.

Have a news tip or suggestion on how I can improve Tuscaloosa Patch? Maybe you're interested in having your business become one of the latest sponsors for Tuscaloosa Patch? Email all inquiries to me at ryan.phillips@patch.com



This article originally appeared on the Tuscaloosa Patch
The Guardian

The big, beautiful wall has kept US citizens away from the no mans land it created  and in effect ceded territory to Mexico The border wall in La Joya, Texas: What I didnt realize was how quickly the negative effects of this isolated land would be felt. Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images Several miles south of the small town of San Juan, Texas, beyond acres of onion fields, orange groves and other cash crops sits a historic cemetery and the site of the beginning of a slow decay of Amer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  Hundreds of protesters marched through the streets of Kabul toward the shuttered U.S. Embassy on Tuesday, urging the release of Afghanistans frozen assets.

Holding banners reading, Let us eat and Give us our frozen money, the protesters chanted slogans and marched down a central avenue, with the ruling Taliban providing security.

International funding to Afghanistan has been suspended and billions of dollars of the countrys assets abroad, mostly in the United States, were frozen after the Taliban took control of the country in mid-August.

The lack of funding has battered Afghanistans already troubled economy, leading to increasing poverty while aid groups warn of a looming humanitarian catastrophe. State employees, from doctors to teachers and administrative civil servants, havent been paid in months. Banks, meanwhile, have restricted how much money account holders can withdraw.

No country has yet officially recognized the countrys new Taliban rulers due to the armed groups previous track record. The Talibans previous regime 20 years ago banned women and girls from education and public life, mandated beards for men and attendance at prayers, banned sports and entertainment and carried out public executions.

But current Taliban government officials say their rule will be different, including eventually allowing education for all girls, and have called on the international community to release funds and help stave off a humanitarian disaster.
The Providence police searched the area around Kennedy Plaza Monday afternoon in an attempt to catch a man who robbed the Citizens Bank.

The police couldn't find the suspect and are still investigating, according to Providence Police Cmdr. Thomas Verdi.

At about 3:30 p.m. Monday, the police were called to the bank at 30 Kennedy Plaza for a robbery, according to a police report.

A teller told the police that a masked man walked into the branch and handed him a note demanding "hundreds," according to the report.

More: He served 13 years for an armed robbery he didn't commit. Now RI may give him $500K

Before the teller could finish reading the note, he looked up and noticed the robber's left hand was "inside his jacket, which appeared to pointing something at him," the report said.

"Victim then stated he immediately gave the male subject several hundred-dollar bills," the report said.

Courts and crime: Stolen beer truck leads slow police chase; driver's bond in fraud case quickly revoked

The suspect retrieved the note, grabbed a black bag he had placed on the floor and fled into Kennedy Plaza, according to the report.

jperry@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7614

On Twitter: @jgregoryperry

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This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Bank robber demands 'hundreds,' flees into Providence's Kennedy Plaza
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during the plenary session of the 30th Congress of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs at the State Kremlin Palace on December 17, 2021 in Moscow, Russia. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Putin is looking for an excuse to invade Ukraine and blame the West, experts say.

The Russian president is ratcheting up warnings of a military response to alleged NATO aggression.

In reality, Putin created the tensions of Ukraine by annexing Crimea and supporting rebels in the Donbass region.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is seemingly searching for a pretext to invade Ukraine as he continues to blame tensions on NATO and the US while ratcheting up talk of a military response.

"What the US is doing in Ukraine is at our doorstep ... And they should understand that we have nowhere further to retreat to. Do they think we'll just watch idly?" Putin said during a speech to Russian military leaders on Tuesday, per Reuters. "If the aggressive line of our Western colleagues continues, we will take adequate military-technical response measures and react harshly to unfriendly steps."

Russia's defense secretary also claimed without evidence that over 100 US mercenaries were on the ground in eastern Ukraine and threatening Russia with chemical weapons, an accusation that experts dismissed as groundless and bordering on fantasy; the Pentagon called it "completely false."

Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia under the Obama administration, in a tweet said that Putin "just declared war on Ukraine (pretending it's war against the US and its allies, provoked by us)."

Echoing these sentiments, Alina Polyakova, the president of the Center for European Policy Analysis, said that Putin's "framing of Russia as a victim is disinformation."

"Ukraine didn't invade Russia," Polyakova added. "Russia has been the aggressor in every recent conflict  but it serves a purpose: justifying military aggression to the Russian people."

Putin's comments came as Russia has amassed tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine's borders, prompting fears of an invasion for the second time this year.

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The Russian leader, who invaded and unilaterally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, has repeatedly accused the West of not respecting the Kremlin's "red lines" in the region. Since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin has backed separatists in a war against Ukrainian troops in the eastern Donbass region that's claimed over 13,000 lives. Russia, for its part, claims to have no involvement in the Donbass conflict despite evidence to the contrary.

The Russian government in recent days has made demands that NATO and the US would be unlikely to agree to in any context  including a firm commitment that the alliance will never accept Ukraine and Georgia as members.

Ukraine has sought to join NATO for years, and maintains a robust partnership with the alliance that's coincided with members offering security assistance. In addition to training Ukrainian special forces, the US has provided Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles, armored Humvees, radios, and unarmed drones.

'Completely nuts'

Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday baselessly claimed that US mercenaries were in eastern Ukraine and preparing a "provocation using unknown chemical components."

"We have identified the presence of over 120 members of U.S. mercenary groups in the cities of Avdiivka and Krasny Liman to commit provocations  Tanks filled with unidentified chemical components were delivered to the cities of Avdeevka and Krasny Liman to commit provocations," Shoigu said, the Moscow Times reported, citing a state-run news agency.

The Russian defense minister was essentially alleging that the West was poised to commit war crimes against it, as international law prohibits the use of chemical weapons.

Russian landing ships and military vehicles during an exercise at the Opuk training ground in Crimea, April 22, 2021. Sergei Malgavko\TASS via Getty Images

Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, in a tweet responding to Shoigu's groundless assertions said, "These are not the words a rational actor seeking to discuss 'legitimate' concerns about European security. These are the false words of someone looking for an excuse for war. Hoping it's all still bluff; fearing it's not."

McFaul dismissed Shoigu's claims as "completely nuts."

Similarly, Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer said that "Putin faking some serious anger" at the West for "forcing Russia's hand" when it comes to Ukraine. "If you only watch Russian state media, you'd think war is inevitable and NATO's fault," Bremmer said.

To his point, a recent poll found that half of the Russian public blames the US and NATO for the tensions over Ukraine, while just 4% blamed the Russian government.

In reality, Putin has manufactured the recent crisis. His actions in Crimea in 2014 and support for rebels in the Donbass pushed Ukraine closer to the West, increasing the tensions with NATO and the US that he's now banging the war drum over. But he continues to portray Russia as the victim, characterizing NATO's growing influence in Ukraine as an existential threat to his country.

Experts say that Putin views Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, as unfinished business. The Russian president has referred to Russians and Ukrainians as "one people." Steven Pifer, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, in a recent op-ed said such rhetoric from Putin is "utterly tone-deaf," adding that "millions of ethnic Ukrainians heard it as a denial of their culture, history and language."

The US has warned of severe economic consequences if Russia invades Ukraine, but President Joe Biden recently said the US would not be obligated to send in troops in the event of a Russian incursion.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Karen Donfried, the top US diplomat for Europe, in a call with reporters on Tuesday warned "we are poised to move in a dramatic way if Russia does undertake further military aggression against Ukraine."

Donfried said the US would be prepared to provide military equipment "above and beyond" what's already been sent.

Read the original article on Business Insider
President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday that Russia was prepared to take military steps in response to "unfriendly" Western actions over the Ukraine conflict, in a sharp escalation of rhetoric.

He also called for "serious negotiations" on Russian security demands put to the United States and NATO during his first call with new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who in turn called for "de-escalation".

The Russian president has for weeks accused the United States and the Washington-led NATO military alliance of stoking tensions near Moscow's borders, but these were his first comments hinting at potential conflict.

Putin told defence ministry officials that if the West continued its "obviously aggressive stance" Russia would take "appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures".

Russia "will react toughly to unfriendly steps", he said, adding that he wanted to underscore that "we have every right to do so".

The United States has been sounding the alarm since mid-November that Moscow could be planning a large-scale attack on its ex-Soviet neighbour Ukraine and has warned Putin of unprecedented sanctions.

Western governments have accused Moscow of amassing some 100,000 troops near its border with eastern Ukraine, where Kiev has been fighting pro-Russia separatists since 2014.

- 'Doorstep of our house' -

Russia denies plotting an invasion and has demanded legal guarantees over its security from the United States and NATO, demanding the alliance stop an eastward expansion.

Last week Moscow presented its demands to the United States and NATO, saying the alliance must not admit new members or establish military bases in ex-Soviet countries.

In his first call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin on Tuesday said he wanted "serious negotiations" on the demands, accusing Ukraine of having violated the 2015 ceasefire agreements.

"The chancellor expressed his concern about the situation and spoke of the urgent need for de-escalation," said a statement released by Scholz's office.

Story continues

At the meeting with defence officials earlier, Putin voiced concern in particular over what he said was US missile deployments in Poland and Romania, countries he said would soon be capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles.

"If this infrastructure moves further -- if US and NATO missile systems appear in Ukraine -- then their approach time to Moscow will be reduced to seven or 10 minutes," he said. That the time would be cut even shorter with hypersonic weapons, he added.

Despite hinting at conflict, Putin insisted Russia wanted to avoid "bloodshed".

"We want to resolve issues by political and diplomatic means," he said.

But the Russian leader repeated grievances over Washington's support for Ukraine, which includes training Kiev's forces and committing more than $2.5 billion in funds to them.

Those actions are taking place "at the doorstep of our house", said Putin.

- Zelensky seeks 'clear timeline' -

Even if Moscow receives US security guarantees, Putin said he would be wary of them because "the United States easily withdraws from all international treaties that for one reason or another become uninteresting to them".

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile voiced frustration over NATO's reluctance to speed up Kiev's membership in the alliance.

"We cannot accept the theory that is now very popular about (Ukraine joining) the EU in 30 years and NATO sometime in about 50 years," Zelensky said Tuesday.

Ukraine wanted to get a "very clear timeline" from NATO on the prospect of membership in 2022, he added.

Although Kiev has for years been seeking to join the US-led alliance, Western officials have on numerous occasions said this is not on the cards any time soon.

Ukraine and its Western allies say Moscow has long been involved in the Ukraine conflict, sending troops and weapons to support the separatists in fighting that has claimed over 13,000 lives.

Russia denies the claims and says Kiev has mobilised half its forces to the eastern conflict zone.

Kiev's forces have modernised and acquired attack drones from NATO member Turkey, which drew an angry response from Putin when Ukraine deployed them in October.

bur-jbr/jj
NEW YORK (AP)  Pedro Almodovar has a theory that his films with male protagonists, like his autobiographical 2019 film Pain and Glory, are darker and more somber.

I look inside myself when I talk about male characters, says Almodovar.

Parallel Mothers, which Sony Pictures Classics begins releasing in theaters Friday, returns Almodovar to more melodramatic territory. Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit play young mothers who meet at the hospital where their newborns are accidentally switched at birth. This secret plays out in unpredictable ways while the film also investigates another hidden past: Spain's mass graves from the Spanish Civil War.

In recent years, a national dialogue in Spain has brought renewed interest and political discord over exhuming the graves from Francisco Franco's regime, which began with the 1930s civil war and ended with his death, in 1975. Some 19,000 of an estimated 114,000 victims have been recovered in the last four decades.

Parallel Mothers may not be as self-reflective as Almodovar's last film, but it's the 72-year-old director's most politically introspective movie and his first to grapple with the legacy of Franco's reign. Almodovar emerged as a filmmaker in Spain's liberated post-Franco years.

When Parallel Mothers was screening this fall at the New York Film Festival, Almodovar met a reporter at a midtown hotel where he spoke sometimes in English, sometimes through an interpreter, about a film that, like his 1999 masterpiece All About My Mother, is centrally concerned with motherhood.

Ill continue to be interested in mothers, he said. "You can have a thousand different mothers, and they can birth a thousand different genres."

___

AP: You've made an acclaimed short film, The Human Voice, with Tilda Swinton, and now Parallel Mothers during the pandemic. Have the last two years reframed anything for you about filmmaking?

ALMODOVAR: It made me aware of the solitude in which I was living. Because loneliness, despite the fact that I was condemned to confinement, was something that I already experienced in recent times while writing. I think that now I am overcoming loneliness by going out a little more, going to eat with friends, and precisely because it seemed very sad to me that when I was condemned to confinement, I discovered that I was already used to being confined.

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AP: You began the pandemic writing wonderful diaries about your movie watching.

ALMODOVAR: At that moment, I was sick. I got the virus the first week. Even before the first week. I had just arrived from LA after being at the Oscars at the end of February. Then I felt like I had a flu and stayed at home. Three days later, they called for the quarantine. The days were so long that I tried just to talk and write something about the situation. One day, I was disobedient and went into the street to see Madrid completely deserted. It's a very impressive image that I wanted to have. So I pretended to go buy something just to see, just to see the town.

AP: It must have felt ironic that in the midst of a pandemic you were making a movie where swabs and lab tests, in proving the children's maternity, is central to the plot.

ALMODOVAR: When I was writing the movie a year before, it was like science fiction. But when we made the film, it did feel very familiar.

AP: What initially interested you in making a film that deals with the mass graves from the Spanish Civil War?

ALMODOVAR: This has come to me with maturity, in cinematographic terms and also in personal terms. Its been some time since Ive been wanting to make a movie about the mass graves, which Spanish cinema has not really touched on. One of the things that really struck me was when in about 2013, 2014 some UN rapporteurs came to take a look on the ground at what was happening in Spain. They were very struck by the fact that it was the great-grandchildren who were the ones demanding that we look at this problem of the past. Spain has a very bad relationship with the past. For the 40 years after the war, there was this almost pathological fear to speak of the war. There was this silence that enshrouded Spain. Its a generation born during democracy that are asking for the graves to be exhumed.

AP: Your entry point to that history, though, comes through a melodrama that cloaks the film's more political intentions.

ALMODOVAR: I didnt want to only make a movie only about the mass graves. I did it through a character that has a legacy from her mother, who saved her and raised her because she was an orphan. To open the mass grave is to demonstrate that they existed. What Franco did to them was to take all humanity away, to condemn them to non-existence. I was attracted to telling the story through this mother because shes committed to unearthing historical truth at the same time that she, in her personal life, is hiding that truth.

AP: Your early films in the 1980s followed years of censorship in Spain and contributed significantly to a new post-Franco period in the arts. Youve said before that Franco had to die for you to live. Was Parallel Mother motivated by a new surge in fascism?

ALMODOVAR: When I started making movies, he had just died. I would have never been able to make movies if he was still alive. In Spain, because we had that awful experience of civil war, it was as if we were inoculated against it. Even though I could see the far right growing in France  of course Trump happened here, Bolsonaro happened in Brazil  there was a part of me that thought that the far right wouldn't actually arrive in Spain because of that traumatic experience.

But sometimes I think this is the Trump effect. The fact that he was able to give voice to his far-right leanings emboldened others around the world. They lost their fear. It all boiled up, including in Spain. Now there are things happening that were impossible in the 90s and the 80s. There are more homophobic attacks, more xenophobia. Its a very negative feeling to see that all the values we fought for, we yet again have to rise up and fight for.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
Mail carriers load trucks for deliveries at a U.S. Postal Service facility.

Postal praise

This time of year is especially an important one when many of us rely on the great and consistent services of our U.S. Postal Service. This government creation has been consistently undermined by congresses of both parties and weakened especially by Republican administrations.

My wife and I are, like many Americans, so very lucky we have the men and women of the post office to rely upon to help deliver our mail of various types. Sure, there is FedEx, UPS and Amazon for deliveries, and many of these folks also do an excellent job. The staff of the USPS gets the job done no matter what our current postmaster general does to help weaken their government resources!

To show our appreciation of the post office folks who tend to be by far the most common mail carriers to come to our mailbox, we have the following laminated sign on the back of our box pull down flap that hopefully is read at least once by every person delivering mail. The sign indicates: "The Coron family and tens of millions of others GREATLY appreciate our USPS personnel. Thank you and also other staff for all you do."

As a nation we must fully support our USPS mail service before there is yet another attempt to try to privatize it by our national legislators.

Jonathan Coron, Gainesville

More letters:

Readers comment on the desire for control, the events of Jan. 6 and more

Readers comment on affordable housing, preventing traffic deaths and more

Readers comment on the omicron variant, a dismissed fine and more

Christmas tip

It is always a pleasure to observe the generous spirit of the holiday season and the many good deeds that occur. This year, think of the hard-working folks who pick up our garbage every week. Giving them a holiday tip would bring a lot of unexpected happiness to them and their families.

When you are thinking of the size of the tip, ask yourself if you have ever overflowed the blue bin that holds plastic and metal cans and containers. Did you flatten your cardboard boxes for the orange bin?

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If you cant tip directly, for information on reaching the crews that pick up your garbage, call GFL Environmental at 352-377-0800.

John Corr, Gainesville

Praise for DeSantis

I just read the column DeSantis order could trigger constitutional crisis and thought it was great. I am glad that Ron DeSantis is our governor and my family supports him 100%. I feel that he is managing this state with its legal citizens' interests fully in mind.

His handling of the COVID-19 situation has us on the positive side of the virus. He allows the people to make their own decisions, which is the way it should be. We do not live in a socialist/communist state where we must follow what directions the government gives or suffer consequences.

Florida has recovered well from the COVID situation under his governance as have several other Republican-governed states.

I feel once again with his immigration executive order Gov. DeSantis is protecting the legal citizens of this state. The funds of this state should be used for and by the citizens of this state.

Illegal entrants should never have been allowed to enter this country, let alone be dispersed throughout it. The Biden administration has taken it upon itself to disperse them without requiring COVID testing or notice to the states that they were being sent there. The vetting process has not been used as it was intended.

Margaret S. Robinson, Trenton

Join the conversation

Send a letter to the editor (up to 200 words) to letters@gainesville.com. Letters must include the writer's full name and city of residence. Additional guidelines for submitting letters and longer guest columns can be found at bit.ly/sunopinionguidelines.



Journalism matters. Your support matters.

Get a digital subscription to the Gainesville Sun. Includes must-see content on Gainesville.com and Gatorsports.com, breaking news and updates on all your devices, and access to the Gainesville.com ePaper. Visit www.gainesville.com/subscribenow to sign up.

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Letters to the editor for Dec. 21, 2021
The American Red Cross, which provides 40% of the countrys blood supply, is facing historically low blood levels.

Busy holiday schedules, breaks from school and winter weather all contribute to a drop in blood donations this time of year. Those factors combine with the ongoing challenges of COVID-19. Unless more donors come forward to give blood, some patients requiring a transfusion might face delays in care.

Donors are urged to schedule an appointment by using the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visiting RedCrossBlood.org or calling 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767). There is no blood donation waiting period for those who have received a flu shot or a Moderna, Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine or booster, so long as they are symptom-free.

More: Washington County COVID-19 statistics hard to come by weeks after cyberattack

More: Waynesboro to stop first due fire service to Washington Township by the end of the year

More: Berlin man who saved drowning toddler in Assawoman Bay receives Carnegie heroism medal

More: Only a handful of local restaurants will be open Christmas Day, but there are options

All who come to give from Friday, Dec. 17, through Sunday, Jan. 2, will receive a Red Cross long-sleeved T-shirt, while supplies last.

Each Red Cross blood drive and donation center follows safety and infection control, and additional precautions  including face masks for donors and staff, regardless of vaccination status. Donors are asked to schedule an appointment prior to arriving at the drive.

Upcoming blood donation opportunities:

Wednesday, Dec. 22, 12:30 to 6 p.m., Fort Ritchie Community Center, 14421 Lake Royer Drive, Cascade

Wednesday, Dec. 22, noon to 6 p.m., American Red Cross Hagerstown, 1131 Conrad Court, Hagerstown

Wednesday, Dec. 29, noon to 6 p.m., American Red Cross Hagerstown, 1131 Conrad Court, Hagerstown

Monday, Dec. 20, 1:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., Fire Hall, North Main Street, Smithsburg

Monday, Dec. 27, 1:30 to 7 p.m., Shepherdstown Fire Hall, 8052 Martinsburg Pike, Shepherdstown, W.Va.

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Donors can also save up to 15 minutes at the blood drive by completing a RapidPass. With RapidPass, donors complete the pre-donation reading and health history questionnaire online, on the day of donation, from a mobile device or computer. To complete a RapidPass, follow the instructions at RedCrossBlood.org/RapidPass or use the Red Cross Blood Donor App.

To donate blood, individuals need to bring a blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification that are required at check-in. Individuals who are 17 years of age in most states (16 with parental consent where allowed by state law), weigh at least 110 pounds and are in generally good health may be eligible to donate blood. High school students and other donors 18 years of age and younger also must meet certain height and weight requirements.

The Red Cross is screening all blood, platelet and plasma donations from self-identified African American donors for the sickle cell trait. This additional screening will provide Black donors with an additional health insight and help the Red Cross identify compatible blood types more quickly to help patients with sickle cell disease who require trait-negative blood.

Donors can expect to receive sickle cell trait screening results, if applicable, within one to two weeks through the Red Cross Blood Donor App and the online donor portal at RedCrossBlood.org.

For information, go to redcross.org or cruzrojaamericana.org, or on Twitter at @RedCross.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Red Cross seeks blood donors amid historically low supply
Vancouver, British Columbia --News Direct-- Renforth Resources Inc.

Renforth Resources Inc.

December 21, 2021 - TheNewswire - Renforth Resources Inc. (CSE:RFR) (CNSX:RFR.CN) (OTC:RFHRF) (FSE-9RR) (Renforth or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has completed a private placement financing (the Offering) raising $1,376,260 through the issuance of 13,750,0000 of flow-through common units (Flow-Through Units), and 14,000 common units ("Units).

Renforth is also pleased to inform shareholders that the final 2021 drilling at Victoria West, within the Surimeau District Property, has been successfully completed with a total of 7 holes drilled in 1203m within the stripped area. Each hole encountered visible sulphides, samples have been sent for assay, results will be released once received.

Renforth has now drilled 5,626m into Victoria West, this combined with Renforths surface work and historical data demonstrates that Victoria West is a polymetallic occurrence currently striking over 5km within a 20km geophysical feature, with mineralization consisting of nickel, cobalt, copper, zinc, platinum and palladium starting on surface and continuing to a vertical depth of at least 150m.

We are happy to have raised a judicious amount of money pursuant to requests from shareholders which we will immediately deploy in continuing our, to date, successful exploration on both our wholly owned gold deposit contiguous to Canadian Malartic, Parbec, which has a structural setting and lithological similarity to our neighbour, and on our Surimeau District Property. At Surimeau we will work to extend and deepen the polymetallic future facing minerals in the Victoria West area of our vast, >260 km2, wholly owned and road accessible battery metals property, also contiguous to Canadian Malartic. We look forward to a New Year filled with new results and exciting field activities on our properties and, with some success, continued asset growth states Nicole Brewster, President and CEO of Renforth.

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The proceeds of this offering will be used to fund 2022 exploration on the Companys wholly owned properties as follows;

Surimeau

Renforth has retained Joel Dube ing., P.Eng of Dynamic Discovery Geoscience, to carry out a Prospectair MAG-TDEM (helicopter borne electromagnetic geophysical survey) on the Surimeau District Property which will result in consistent detailed geophysical information for Victoria West, Colonie and LaLonde.

Interpretation of the geophysical survey, combined with results from Renforths recently completed comprehensive channeling of the stripped area at Victoria West and the assay results from the just completed drill program.

Parbec

Renforth has retained Stefan Kruse Ph.D., P.Geo, Senior Structural Geologist of Terrane Geoscience to deliver a structural site characterization of Parbec. The first phase of this will occur in January 2022 and consist of a compilation and integration of all relevant data and a gap analysis. This process will dictate, through the gap analysis, the next steps Renforth will take in working to identify the structural controls to the relatively high grade magnetic diorite intersected in numerous drill holes.

Results from the recently completed 15,000m of drilling at Parbec have highlighted areas which require additional assay work, both in the recently completed holes and in prior adjacent drillholes. Renforth is compiling this assay list and will be submitting pulps for assay or cutting new samples in core as appropriate.

Each Flow-Through Unit was priced at $0.10 and consists of one common share in the capital of the Company issued on a flow-through basis, and one-half of one common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant issued with the Flow Through Unit, entitles the holder to purchase one common share in the capital of the Company at a price of $0.13 for a period of 12 months following closing. Each Unit was priced at $0.09 consists of one common share in the capital of the Company, and one common share purchase warrant. Each warrant issued with a Unit, entitles the holder to purchase one common share in the capital of the Company at a price of $0.13 for a period of 12 months following closing.

In connection with the Offering, the Company paid $66,000 and issued 660,000 compensation warrants in respect of the Offering. Each compensation warrant is exercisable, for 12 months, for one common share of Renforth at $0.13 per share. All securities issued under the Offering are subject to a four-month statutory hold period in Canada.

Technical disclosure in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Francis R. Newton P.Geo (OGQ#2129), a qualified person pursuant to NI 43-101.

For further information please contact:

Renforth Resources Inc.

Nicole Brewster

President and Chief Executive Officer

C:416-818-1393

E: nicole@renforthresources.com

#Unit 1B  955 Brock Road, Pickering ON L1W 2X9

Follow Renforth on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram!

About Renforth

Renforth wholly owns the ~260 km2 Surimeau District Property, which hosts numerous areas of polymetallic and gold mineralization, each with various levels of exploration, as well as a significant amount of unexplored ground. Victoria West has been drilled over a strike length of 2.2km, within a 5km long mineralized structure, proving nickel, copper, zinc and cobalt mineralization, in the western end of a 20km magnetic anomaly. The Huston target, during initial reconnaissance, resulted in a grab sample grading 1.9% Ni, 1.38% Cu, 1170 ppm Co and 4 g/t Ag. In addition to this the Lalonde, Surimau and Colonie Targets are all polymetallic mineralized occurrences which, along with various gold showings, comprise the areas of potential of this NSR free property.

In addition to the Surimeau District battery metals property Renforth wholly owns the Parbec Gold deposit, a surface gold deposit contiguous to the Canadian Malartic Mine property in Malartic, Quebec. In 2020/21 Renforth completed 15,569m of drilling which successfully twinned certain historic holes, filled in gaps in the resource model with newly discovered gold mineralization and extended mineralization deeper. Based upon the success of this significant drill program the Company considers the spring 2020 MRE, with a resource estimate of 104,000 indicated ounces of gold at a grade of 1.78 g/t Au and 177,000 inferred ounces of gold at a grade of 1.78 g/t Au to be out of date. With the new data gained Renforth will undertake to complete the first ever structural study of the mineralization at Parbec, as well as additional total metallic assay work in order to better contextualize the nugget effect on the gold mineralization.

Renforth also holds the Malartic West property, the site of a copper/silver discovery, and Nixon-Bartleman, west of Timmins Ontario, with gold present on surface over a strike length of ~500m.

No securities regulatory authority has approved or disapproved of the contents of this news release.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements and information under applicable securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward looking. Forward-looking statements are frequently identified by such words as may, will, plan, expect, believe, anticipate, estimate, intend and similar words referring to future events and results. Such statements and information are based on the current opinions and expectations of management. All forward-looking information is inherently uncertain and subject to a variety of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, fluctuating commodity prices, the risks of obtaining necessary approvals, licenses and permits and the availability of financing, as described in more detail in the Companys securities filings available at www.sedar.com. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements and the reader is cautioned against placing undue reliance thereon. Forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is provided and the Company assumes no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements except as required by applicable law.

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/renforth-raises-1-376-260-to-fund-continued-2022-exploration-of-battery-metals-at-victoria-west-within-the-surimeau-district-property-and-on-the-parbec-gold-deposit-608786802
Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania outside the Capitol on December 3, 2020. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

Republican Rep. Scott Perry said on Tuesday that he will not cooperate with the January 6 committee.

Perry, the incoming head of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, called the committee "illegitimate."

The committee wants to know more about his efforts to install Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general.

Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania said on Tuesday that he will not comply with a request for information from the House Select Committee that's investigating the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

"I stand with immense respect for our Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the Americans I represent who know that this entity is illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the US House of Representatives," Perry wrote on Twitter. "I decline this entity's request and will continue to fight the failures of the radical Left."

In response, a committee spokesperson pushed back on Perry's claims while signaling that he could face a subpoena.

"While [Perry] says that he respects the Constitution and Rule of Law, he fails to note that multiple federal courts, acting pursuant to Article 3 of our Constitution, have already rejected the former President's claims that the committee lacks an appropriate legislative purpose," said the committee. "The Select Committee prefers to gather relevant evidence from members cooperatively, but if members with directly relevant information decline to cooperate and instead endeavor to cover up, the Select Committee will consider seeking such information using other tools."

Perry, an ally of former President Donald Trump, was recently elected chairman of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and will assume that role next year.

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The House committee announced on Monday that it is seeking information from Perry over his efforts in 2020 to install former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general.

"We have received evidence from multiple witnesses that you had an important role in the efforts to install Mr. Clark as acting Attorney General," committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson wrote in a statement. "Acting Attorney General Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue have provided evidence regarding these issues, and we have received evidence that others who worked with Mr. Clark were aware of these plans."

The committee requested Perry's "voluntary cooperation," asking him to turn over all relevant communications related to January 6, including any communications with Trump's legal team, the former president himself, and others who might've been involved in planning events on that day.

Lawmakers had also proposed four dates between December 28 and January 4 to meet Perry.

January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) December 20, 2021

The committee has also subpoenaed Clark for information related to the January 6 riot, but he pleaded the Fifth to avoid testifying. Clark also elevated baseless claims about 2020 election fraud.

Other Trump figures that have refused to cooperate with the committee include Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative, and John Eastman, the legal scholar who wrote a memo arguing that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to overturn the election results.

The Democratic-led House last week voted to hold Trump's former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with a subpoena. Only two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who both serve on the committee, supported the measure.

Meadows was the second person to be held in contempt of Congress related to the January 6 investigation. In October, nine Republicans broke ranks and voted to hold Steve Bannon, Trump's one-time White House strategist, in contempt for defying a subpoena. Bannon ultimately surrendered to the FBI on November 15 before pleading not guilty two days later.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Rhode Islanders can now use an app to display their COVID-19 vaccination status via cellphones, tablets and other devices.

Governor Dan McKee and the Rhode Island Department of Health on Monday announced that the Crush COVID RI mobile application had been updated so vaccinated Rhode Islanders can "access their verified record with the touch of a button."

The update to the application, 401Health, is available through the Apple App store and on the Google Play store in English and Spanish depending on smartphone settings, the state says.

'Painfully reminds us of each tombstone': RI nears grim milestone of 3,000 COVID deaths

The RI Crush COVID app has been updated so it can display vaccine status.

Rhode Island has administered close to 2 million doses of COVID vaccine and almost 300,000 booster doses, and our neighbors deserve a convenient, safe, and efficient way to access and store their vaccination record, McKee said in the press release. I have downloaded my vaccination card to my phone and it was very simple. If you havent gotten vaccinated yet, its not too late. If you havent yet, get boosted.

Rhode Island Health Department Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said, We want to make it as easy and convenient as possible for you to securely access your vaccination information. This new app is a great way to verify for others that you have received the critical protection that comes with a COVID-19 vaccine primary series and booster dose.

'Now is the time to act': 'Now is the time to act': Monday was opening day for Rhode Island's latest masking mandate

On Monday, a renewed mask mandate went into effect in Rhode Island. The new regulation requires people to wear masks at indoor facilities such as stores, restaurants and churches that hold 250 or more people.

Smaller establishments can allow mask-free customers inside if they can prove they are fully vaccinated.

Discussing the app's development last week, Dr. Tom McCarthy, executive director of the state Health Departments COVID Response Unit, said the CDC-issued paper records of vaccination are inconvenient.

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"We have been working for quite some time for the right national standard that will allow Rhode Islanders to travel nationally, internationally, and be recognized as a group for their vaccination status," McCarthy said.

In offering the application, Rhode Island is joining states like California, Colorado and New Jersey. Connecticut and Massachusetts are also developing apps.

Some 98% of Rhode Islanders 18 or older have at least one shot and 77% of all Rhode Islanders are fully vaccinated, according to the Health Department. Everyone 5 or older is eligible to be vaccinated now. People can sign up for vaccination or booster shots for free at vaccinateri.org.

jperry@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7614

On Twitter: @jgregoryperry

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This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: 401 Health App: RI residents can use app to show COVID vaccine status
With more than 109 million people expected to travel for the holiday season after Thanksgiving gathering numbers reached a pandemic high, the new omicron variant spreading across the United States, and a virus surge in the middle of flu season, demand for COVID tests has only been going up.

According to the CDC, more than 61.4% of the U.S. population is vaccinated, but rising concerns over the new variant has pushed Pennsylvania leaders to urge residents to stay home for the holidays.

After a difficult year like this one, I know that we all want to take comfort in our family and religious traditions during the holidays, Gov. Tom Wolf said in recent a news release. But the truth is that COVID-19 is still as dangerous as ever right now, and the best thing we can do to protect our loved ones is to worship and celebrate at home this year.

According to the state Department of Health, the highest spike in the number of cases in the state came on Dec. 9, with 11,541.

Pennsylvania COVID-19 Numbers

The CDC guidelines stipulate non-vaccinated individuals should get tested one to three days before they travel and test again three to five days after their return. Those who got the jab should get tested if they exhibit any COVID symptoms or have been exposed to an individual with the virus but are not required to test before basic travel.

More: York County Walmart temporarily closing to 'further sanitize store' and will require masks

More: Man whose wife won a court battle to treat his COVID-19 with ivermectin has died

Currently, two tests are available: molecular, also known as a polymerase chain reaction or PCR, and antigen, also known as rapid tests. PCR tests usually take around two to five days to process and deliver a result, while rapid tests can be determined in up to 30 minutes.

The PCR is the more accurate test and the rapid tests only indicate a probable result, according to Maggi Barton, deputy press secretary of the state Department of Health.

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If the test taker does not have any symptoms and believes they have a false positive, the CDC recommends confirmatory lab-based testing no longer than 48 hours after an initial positive from a rapid test.

Barton said that the state is expecting a surge in demand for COVID tests but is not expecting any shortages. Wolf recently asked the federal government to make 1 million at-home rapid tests available, particularly for residents in rural parts of the state.

The Biden administration began preparing for the winter season in October, investing another $1 billion in at-home coronavirus tests, quadrupling the nations supply since then. Biden also has cracked down on travel, pushed for Americans to get booster shots and is requiring private health insurance companies to cover the costs of tests.

According to Barton, while the at-home tests could help relieve some of the crowds at testing centers, there are many variables that could be an issue.

There is the potential that at home tests could be conducted inaccurately and compromise the test result, Barton wrote in an email. However, if a person is symptomatic and they have a positive at-home COVID-19 test result, they should isolate and their close contact should quarantine without the need for a confirmatory provider-based test.

At-home COVID tests are available for purchase at most major retailers, such as CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Target, Rite Aid, Sams Club and Amazon.

More: COVID-19 deaths: York County passes a grim milestone since the start of the pandemic

More: WellSpan delays non-urgent care as COVID spike slams Pennsylvania over holiday weekend

Barton also advised those who plan to get tested to think ahead, booking an appointment in advance or making sure to have an at-home test on hand.

Many sites provide walk-in testing that doesnt require an appointment, Barton said. However, increased demand for testing over the holidays may make waiting times longer and decrease the availability of appointments.

Currently, the state Department of Health is offering free testing in Berks, Blair, Centre, Clinton, Jefferson, Luzerne and McKean counties in a partnership with AMI Expeditionary Healthcare.

We encourage anyone who feels they need or want a test, especially if they think they have been exposed to COVID-19 or are experiencing symptoms, to take advantage of the free COVID-19 testing closest to them, Acting Secretary of Health Keara Klinepeter said in a news release. This includes fully vaccinated individuals who are experiencing symptoms.

Testing is running through the Christmas holiday, where the clinics will be performing PCR tests. No appointment is needed. You can find your testing site here.

Where to get tested in York County

According to the state Department of Health, the clinics below are available for general public testing. Call ahead to ensure availability.

CVS: 560 Old York Road, New Cumberland

Rite Aid: 65 Newberry Parkway, Etters

Rite Aid: 818 N. US Route 15, Dillsburg

Rite Aid: 4135 N. George St. Ext., Manchester

Topco: 1800 Roosevelt Avenue, York

UPMC Pinnacle Memorial: 1701 Innovation Drive, York

Walgreens: 3180 Carlisle Road, Dover

York MedExpress Urgent Care: 400 Loucks Road, York

Rite Aid: 3300 E. Market St., York

UPMC Pinnacle York: 325 S. Belmont St., York

CVS: 820 Edgewood Road, York

Walgreens: 2101 S. Queen St., York

Rite Aid: 115 Leader Heights Road, York

Rite Aid: 3205 Cape Horn Road, Red Lion

Rite Aid: 910 W. Broadway, Red Lion

Topco: 440 N. Main St., Spring Grove

Rite Aid: 301 Eisenhower Drive, Hanover

UPMC Pinnacle Hanover: 300 Highland Avenue, Hanover

CVS: 606 S. Main St., Shrewsbury

Clinics below are listed by the state Department of Health as taking only specific patients. Call ahead if you are a member or client of any of these facilities.

Family First Health Lewisberry: 308 Market St., Lewisberry

Family First Health York: 116 S. George St., York

York VA Community Clinic: 2551 Eastern Boulevard, York

WellSpan Health: 1001 S. George St., York

WellSpan Lab Services  Apple Hill: 45 Monument Road, Suite 198, York

Windsor Health Clinic: 3065 Windsor Road, Red Lion

Family First Health Hanover: 1230 High St., Hanover

WellSpan Surgery Center: 1227 Baltimore St., Suite 2012, Hanover

Where to get tested in Adams County

General public testing is available at the following locations:

WellSpan Health: 147 Gettys St., Gettysburg

WellSpan Digestive Health: 37 N. 5th St., Gettysburg

Rite Aid: 231 West St., Gettysburg

Rite Aid: 5675 York Road, New Oxford

WellSpan Health: 2900 Carlisle Pike, New Oxford

Topco: 520 W. King St., Littlestown

Specific patients:

Family First Health Gettysburg: 1275 York Road, Suite 17, Gettysburg

Where to get tested in Franklin County

General public testing is available at the following locations:

Keystone Health: 830 Fifth Ave., Chambersburg

Keystone Rural Health Center: 111 Chambers Hill Drive, Suite 102, Chambersburg

WellSpan Health: 1000 Norland Ave., Chambersburg

Keystone Health: 51 S. Main St., Chambersburg

Rite Aid: 415 E. Queen St., Chambersburg

WellSpan Health: 112 N. 7th St., Chambersburg

Walgreens: 949 Lincoln Way East, Chambersburg

Chamberburg MedExpress: 1048 Lincoln Way East, Chambersburg

WellSpan Weight Management: 1624 Orchard Drive, Chambersburg

Rite Aid: 5035 Lincoln Way East, Fayetteville

CVS: 406 E. Main St., Waynesboro

WellSpan Health: 12525 North Welty Road, Waynesboro

Specific patients:

Chambersburg Community Assessment Site: 12 St. Paul Drive, Chambersburg

WellSpan Lab Services: 50 Eastern Avenue, Greencastle

Where to get tested in Lebanon County

General public testing is available at the following locations:

CVS: 717 E. Main St., Palmyra

Rite Aid: 980 E. Main St., Palmyra.

CVS: 2200 W. Cumberland St., Lebanon

Rite Aid: 415 S. 9th St., Lebanon

Family First Health Lebanon: 300 Willow Street, Entrance B, Lebanon

Rite Aid: 2 Cumberland St., Lebanon

Lebanon MedExpress: 1010 W. Crestview Drive, Lebanon

WellSpan Pediatrics (Treating Adults & Peds): 850 Tucks St., Lebanon

WellSpan Health: 775 Norman Drive, Lebanon

Lebanon VA Medical Center: 1700 S. Lincoln Ave., Lebanon

WellSpan Imaging  Myerstown: 237 W. Lincoln Ave., Myerstown

Specific patients:

WellSpan Lab Services: 1400 South Forge Road, Palmyra

Good Samaritan Hospital: 252 S. 4th St., Lebanon

WellSpan Lab Services: 805 Helen Drive, Lebanon

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Where to get tested for COVID in Central Pa. with at home PCR and rapid
Kate Middleton and Princess Madeleine of Sweden

Karwai Tang/WireImage; IBL/Shutterstock Kate Middleton; Princess Madeleine of Sweden

There's a reason Princess Madeleine of Sweden's Christmas ensemble looked so familiar.

The youngest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia stepped out on Monday with her husband and three children to take part in a royal tradition: receiving the Royal Palace in Stockholm's official Christmas trees!

While Princess Leonor and Princess Adrienne looked adorable in matching green dresses, Princess Madeleine looked extra festive in a red tartan mini skirt with a bow tied around her waist.

The holiday look quickly drew comparisons to an ensemble worn by Kate Middleton three years ago. Joining Prince William at a Christmas party celebrating military families whose loved ones were away for the holiday, Kate sported a red and green tartan skirt by Emilia Wickstead.

The two royal women even styled the pieces similarly  both wore heeled black boots and black sweaters (Kate's was a button-down cardigan while Madeleine opted for a chic turtleneck) to complete their looks.

RELATED: Queen of Christmas! See All of Kate Middleton's Impeccable Holiday Looks Through the Years

The Duke and Duchess Of Cambridge

Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images Prince William and Kate Middleton

This isn't the first time two royal women have sported similar looks. In fact, Queen Letizia of Spain recently wore a dark blue ruffled tulle dress, part of H&M's environmentally friendly Conscious Collection, at a state dinner with the Swedish royals.

Believe it or not, Princess Victoria of Sweden picked the exact same dress for a portrait released to celebrate her 10-year wedding anniversary in 2020 (although she appeared to modify the piece to add sleeves).

Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more!

Although Princess Madeleine and her family moved to the United States, they come to Sweden whenever possible.

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The family last visited Sweden this summer, when they celebrated the christening of Prince Carl Philip and Princess Sofia's youngest son, Prince Julian  and gathered for a huge family photo spanning three generations!

Meanwhile, it's unclear how Kate and Prince William will mark the holiday with their children after Queen Elizabeth announced on Monday that she would not travel to Sandringham for Christmas with the royal family per tradition due to the rising number of COVID cases in the U.K.

Last year when the annual royal gathering was canceled, Kate and Prince William celebrated Christmas quietly at their country home of Anmer Hall in Norfolk.

The couple said in a statement at the time: "This Christmas our thoughts are with those of you who are spending today alone, those of you who are mourning the loss of a loved one, and those of you on the frontline who are still mustering the energy to put your own lives on hold to look after the rest of us."
Photo credit: Guy Levy - BBC

RuPaul's Drag Race International All Stars has been heavily rumoured for ages, with fans noticing that Queens from the UK, US, Canada, Holland and Thailand seasons had all mysteriously vanished from social media between the same dates earlier this year.

Now the series has been confirmed under its official title: RuPaul's Drag Race: UK Versus the World.

Filmed in the UK, the series will see nine queens battle it out to be crowned the first Global Drag Race Superstar. Graham Norton and Alan Carr will be returning to aid Ru and Michelle Visage as judges, while famous guest judges have yet to be announced (pray for Judi Dench, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, Rylan, Alison Hammond and/or Rachel from X Factor).

Photo credit: Guy Levy - BBC

Related: The Boulet Brothers' Dragula star HoSo Terra Toma responds to unprofessional backstage claims

The Queens competing have yet to be officially announced, but let's just say that if you know, you know...

The series will be premiering in early 2022, on the day that BBC Three relaunches as a proper channel.

Although ITV2 will be airing Family Guy, you can enjoy reruns of Drag Race UK in-between classic episodes of Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and Snog Marry Avoid.

Photo credit: BBC

Related: Drag Race UK's Tayce responds to Drag Race fatigue criticism



The BBC have also announced six-part series Santa Claus the Serial Killer, following documentary maker Mobeen Azhar as he investigates a serial killer in Toronto, Canada, targeting the local gay community and the role of authorities in eventually bringing him to justice.

Meanwhile, Flight Club (which is a working title) has also been announced and will follow the lives of people working for an airline in Scotland.

RuPaul's Drag Race UK streams on BBC Three (via iPlayer) in the UK and on WOW Presents Plus in the US.



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The drill also involved covert movement and support from military ships, aircraft and drones, the ministry said in a statement.

Japan lays claim to the Russian-held southern Kuril islands in the nearby Sea of Okhotsk, which Tokyo refers to as the Northern Territories in a territorial row dating from the end of World War Two, when Soviet troops seized them from Japan.

The dispute has prevented the two countries from signing a formal peace treaty.
Rodney Milliken never saw himself playing Santa Claus and definitely never thought that he would see over 5,000 kids in one season. Now known as the Santa of Shreveport, Milliken starts getting calls in July for jobs and is fully booked by October.

It began in 2008 when someone from the Shreveport Club called him saying someone told them he owned a Santa suit. He had purchased a cheap one from Walmart and was on standby in case the Shreveport Club couldn't get their guy. While Milliken wasn't needed that particular year, he took over the reins in 2009, and has been Santa ever since.

Shreveport Santa, Rodney Miliken, photographed on December 14, 2021.

Milliken bought a nicer Santa suit with the money he made from that gig and he continued to get more jobs from word of mouth. Now he does over 100 events a year, including everything from store sittings to house visits and even gender reveals to wedding receptions. He began keeping a clicker to count how many kids he saw each year and in 2019 he saw 5,100 kids alone. He saw a dip in the number of kids he saw in 2020 due to the pandemic, but still booked 94 events that were mainly home visits.

Being Santa is a difficult gig and not everyone is cut out for it, but Milliken feels he keeps booking jobs due to his willingness to go above and beyond for the kids. Fielding questions left and right and doing all he can to convince kids he's the real Santa, just to keep the magic alive just a little while longer makes it all worth it to him.

"My goal is to spread the joy and just let the kids enjoy this time - however many years it ends up being - and enjoy that piece of it. The character's not real, but the emphasis is."

Milliken is willing to travel all over Northwest Louisiana including Shadow, Stonewall, Keithville, Blanchard, Benton, Spring Hill and Minden.

Shreveport Santa, Rodney Miliken, photographed on December 14, 2021.

While he might not always be able to accept every job, he does his best to squeeze in as many as he can. Still working for a natural gas company full-time, he saves his PTO all year long just to dedicate as much time off as possible to play Santa all over Shreveport.

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Milliken is not sure how much longer he will be able to play Santa. As he's gotten older, he's finding it more difficult to withstand the long hours and the physical aspect, such as kneeling down to kids' levels and picking them up to sit in his lap.

"I don't know how long, but I'm going to do it as long as I can. I may not be able to do as much as I have been doing, but I'm gonna do stuff for the kids."

You can check out the Santa of Shreveport Facebook page to see photos, more information and updates to Santa's event schedule during the holidays.

Meredith G. White is the arts and culture reporter for the Shreveport Times. You can find her on Facebook as Meredith G. White, on Instagram and Twitter as @meredithgwhite, and email her at mgwhite@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: Who is the Santa of Shreveport? Find out here.
Students participate through the Science on Wheels program which helps underserved communities.

Every year more than 750,000 people of all ages visit the Arizona Science Center. The doors first opened to the public in 1984 and has been serving the community through science and education ever since.

With exhibitions and community outreach programs the center has been able to provide a space where student, parents, teachers and the entire community can learn and experiment with science.

A dedicated Learning Team provides Arizona STEM, science technology engineering and math, educators with the professional development they need to bring engaging, hands-on curricula and lessons to the classroom.

Through the program, STEM is offered to every county and tribal nation in the state of Arizona through a variety of initiatives.

Their mission is to reach across all ages and create opportunities for lifelong learning through science. Programs are specialized, developed and events are created to connect with various age groups.

The groups vision for science learning is that every single child in Arizona can enter hands-on learning spaces where they can put the concepts, they learned in class to the test and possibly create the next great innovation.

Season for Sharing support provides critical funding to allow us to provide essential STEM education programming while so many schools were unable to have in-person programs during instruction interruptions during COVID, said Kristina Celik, senior vice president of marketing.

Weve been able to serve more than 28,000 students, teachers and families with CONNECT programming to help strengthen their STEM learning and teaching.

Arizona Science Center offers professional development classes for science educators.

Last year, the group received a $15,000 grant from the Arizona Republic-sponsored Season for Sharing. In total, $2.1 million went to 176 organizations that help children and families, teachers and students and older Arizonans. This year's fundraising campaign continues through Jan. 31.

What services does your organization providing? We support our teachers to be able to showcase and teach the concepts and opportunities within STEM. We partner with schools, businesses, non-profit, government and community-based organizations across the state to develop high-quality, hands-on, engaging learning experiences. Our hope is that all young people, especially in rural and underserved communities can develop the necessary skills needed to succeed in post-secondary careers and within the workforce.

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How was the Season for Sharing Grant spent? On the Arizona Science Centers CONNECT program for students and teachers. It is a virtual STEM education program for schools and families. CONNECT provides grade-aligned lesson plans, coaching, interactive webinars, hands-on activities and STEM clubs for students in grades K-8.

Content is strategically aligned to Arizonas STEM subjects of study each month throughout the year to help students stay on track. CONNECT provides thought-provoking science projects, lessons, and demonstrations created to inspire curious future scientists and outlines a path forward within science benefiting students, teachers and families.

In addition to CONNECT, Arizona Science Center delivered STEM education programming and professional development, both in-person and virtually, over the past year. More than 31,000 Pre-K-8 students participated in our core STEM education programs including Science on Wheels, field trips, STEM Clubs, Camp Innovation, and Girls in STEM.

The Center provided more than 7,000 hours of new STEM learning at home videos, engaging more than 233,000 viewers. Arizona Science Center also hosted live STEM demonstrations almost daily via Facebook Live, drawing an average of 500 viewers each time, along with a weekly online series, Parent Resource Live, to help parents nurture their childrens learning, drawing an average of 900 viewers each week.

How do you gauge success?

In addition to tracking the number of students and teachers participating in our programs, the center has defined metrics of success using surveys to measure levels of teacher's confidence and competence, student interest levels, program effectiveness and impact. Surveys are reviewed regularly for mid-course adjustments, and all responses are assessed at the end of each year to inform useful modifications.

What is the future vision for your organization?

We want children of all backgrounds to have the opportunity to explore and make sense of their surroundings through scientific advancements. We want to ensure every child in Arizona has a science educator that has the tools and confidence to showcase the advances of STEM. The center is driven to help bridge educational and socio-economic gaps and mitigate learning barriers by providing high-quality, comprehensive STEM education programming for students, both inside and outside the classroom, along with professional development training and support for teachers.

Our ultimate goal is to improve educational outcomes for children, helping them to tap into their full potential, and to increase the number of teachers well-prepared to teach STEM effectively for their students success.

Scan the QR code with your smartphone camera and click on the link to donate to Season for Sharing.

Ways to give to Season for Sharing

Fill out the secure, online form at sharing.azcentral.com.

Text SHARING to 91-999 and click on the link in the text message.

Go online at facebook.com/seasonforsharing and look for the DONATE HERE post.

Clip the coupon on Page 4A of The Arizona Republic, fill it out and mail it to P.O. Box 29250, Phoenix AZ 85038-9250.

Scan the QR code with your smartphone.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The Arizona Science Center works with STEM educators within the community.
A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit against two Davidson County sheriffs deputies fatal shooting following a multi-county car chase in March of 2020.

John Mark Hendrick, Jr., 32, of Tobaccoville, was shot and killed by two Davidson County Deputies, later identified as Barry Lee Bartrug III and Matthew Jacob Shelton, following a lengthy car chase in which he was a passenger in a stolen car.

Want to know what is happening in Davidson County? Support local journalism, subscribe to The Dispatch.

On Aug. 27, 2020 Donna Faye Kiger, Hendrick's mother and the administrator of Hendrick's estate, filed a wrongful death lawsuit on his behalf in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. The lawsuit also stated officers violated state law and deprived Hendrick of his civil rights.

Details of the settlement agreement have not been disclosed.

According to the press release from the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, at approximately 2:30 a.m. on March 26, 2020 Charles Justin Boothe, 31, of Winston-Salem, was driving a stolen Silver Mercedes SUV with Hedrick in the passenger seat and Deven McKay Mathis riding in the back seat.

Related article: One dead in officer involved shooting after chase

While Boothe was driving on Lewisville-Clemmons Road, he ended up running a red light and when Forsyth County deputies attempted to pull over the vehicle, Boothe began to drive away, according to court documents.

Information in the lawsuit said both Hendrick and Mathis "begged Boothe to stop and let them out, but he said he didn't want to risk going back to prison.

He continued driving traveling east through Guilford and Davidson counties for several hours at "moderate speeds," court documents say, alleging that Boothe stayed at or slightly over the speed limit.

Documents claim both Hendrick and Mathis called 911 while in the car, asking for the deputies to stay back and let them out of the car.

Boothe reportedly told the operator he would let the passengers out if the deputies stayed back to let them out of the vehicle without him being stopped, but was not granted, the lawsuit says.

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Davidson County deputies took the lead in the chase while Boothe drove from Thomasville to Lexington. Near Old Linwood Road and N.C. Highway 150, Davidson County deputies performed a "'pit' maneuver, crashing into the vehicle and immobilizing it in the roadway," according to court documents.

The passenger of a multi-county car chase died in an officer-involved shooting in March 2020. A settlement agreement was reached last week in a wrongful-death lawsuit against the two Davidson County Sheriff's deputies involved.

The lawsuit says the vehicle was blocked in by Davidson County deputies and their vehicles. Bartrug and Shelton got out of their vehicles and fired at least three to six shots at the passenger side of the car, court documents say.

One of the bullets hit Hendrick in the forehead, and he died at the scene.

Boothe suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to the hospital after the shooting. He was charged with felony flee to elude and felony assault with a deadly weapon on a law enforcement officer by the Forsyth County Sheriffs Office.

Mathis was not injured and was not charged.

The lawsuit claimed that no warning was given before shooting and that no attempt was made to avoid hitting the passengers. It also alleges that Hendrick had his hands up when he was shot.

The lawsuit stated that shooting Hendrick "served no legitimate law enforcement objective but constituted excessive force."

Both deputies were placed on administrative leave following the incident, which is standard procedure during officer-involved shooting investigations.

The State Bureau of Investigation and Davidson County District Attorney conducted an investigation into the incident and cleared the officers of any felony charges connected to the officer-involved shooting.

More: Driver of car in officer-involved shooting charged with murder

Hendrick's estate was asking for compensatory and punitive damages. The amount of the settlement has not been disclosed.

In September, Boothe was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting incident.

Davidson County District Attorney Garry Frank said these charges were brought under the theory of felony murder. The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine that makes the person responsible when a death occurs, regardless of intent or physical action, during the commission of a felony crime.

General news reporter Sharon Myers can be reached at sharon.myers@the-dispatch.com. Follow her on Twitter @LexDispatchSM.

This article originally appeared on The Dispatch: Wrongful death lawsuit against Davidson County Sheriffs ends in settlement
Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner announces his bid for reelection during a press conference inside Clark Tower on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021.

Shelby County's next sheriff and mayor will each make 21% more than the current salaries for those roles.

And, the next group of Shelby County Commissioners will see an increase to their salaries as well, going from $29,100 for commissioners and $31,700 for the chairman to $34,900.

The new salaries take effect Sept. 1, 2022, when new officials start their terms.

Commissioners Monday, especially those leaving due to term limits, stressed just how much time they spend at the job, pointing out that the board hasn't received a raise in years, and even received a pay cut in 2007.

Times have been tough, but as a result of us working hard along with other legislators, weve eased the burden on the community  so I think we work hard in order to meet the needs of this community and thats taking time away from us providing time for our families," said Commissioner Van Turner, who had proposed that the commissioners' salary be increased to $40,000. On Monday, he reduced that amount to the $34,900 that was eventually approved.

Turner will no longer be on the commission due to term limits when the raises take effect.

Raises will trigger a provision in the Memphis City Charter that reads, The salary of the City Council shall be equal to the salary and expenses as set for the Shelby County Commission.

Commissioners talk Monday, Nov. 4, 2019, during a Shelby County Commission meeting at the Vasco A. Smith, Jr. County Administration Building in downtown Memphis.

Some noted the tension of raising what could become their own salary, if reelected.

Commissioner Mick Wright motioned to move the commissioners' salary to $31,700, an amount that only four commissioners (Wright, Amber Mills, David Bradford and Michael Whaley) voted to support.

It makes me feel very uneasy with even the hint that Im setting my own salary," Wright said. "And I know thats not true, were setting the salary for the next people who are on it, but I cant ignore that Im seeking that office.

Others said it simply wasn't the right time to raise salaries.

Whaley agreed that commissioners put in a significant amount of time in their roles, but said many of their constituents are still struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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"My concern is it just seems its not the right time to be raising, considering raising elected officials salaries some 20-40% when I know many of the people I represent have not seen that type of increase in their own jobs keeping pace with increased costs in many ways," Whaley said. "We ought to be thinking more about that.

The final ordinance to increase commissioners' salaries received 10 aye votes, with Wright and Commissioner Brandon Morrison abstaining.

On the sheriff's and mayor's increases, commissioners stressed that the sheriff is currently paid less than other sheriffs across the state. The new raise will make the sheriff the highest-paid sheriff in Tennessee, although the sheriff will still make less than the Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis (who makes $234,638.30).

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, center, takes part in World Relief welcoming Afghan refugees to Memphis on Friday, Oct. 22, 2021.

Commission Chairman Willie Brooks Jr. attempted to delay the vote on the mayor's and sheriff's raises for another two weeks in order to hear back from human relations, but other commissioners said the six weeks of review that had already taken place was long enough.

We are losing the battle to crime in this city.  between the Shelby County line and my home, my life is at risk every time I drive through Shelby County because we have people driving over 100 miles an hour, zigzagging in and out of traffic," said Commissioner Mark Billingsley. "In a county thats now ranked number one in crime, I want the very best CEO in the Sheriffs Department.

Those raises were approved with 11 yes votes and one no vote, coming from Whaley. Commissioner Tami Sawyer, who has publicly opposed the raise for the sheriff, was not present.

The mayor's current salary is $173,003, while the sheriff's current salary is $164,765.

Under the proposal, the Shelby County Sheriffs salary will increase by $34,735, rising to $199,500.

And, the mayors salary will increase by $36,997, rising to $210,000 annually.

The mayors and sheriffs salaries are linked based on the Shelby County Charter, with the requirement that the sheriffs pay be equal to at least 80% but no more than 95% of the county mayors compensation, a requirement established in 1986 when the charter was written.

Both positions are up for election in 2022. Both current Sheriff Floyd Bonner and current Mayor Lee Harris are running for reelection.

Katherine Burgess covers county government and religion. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com, 901-529-2799 or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Next Shelby County sheriff, mayor, commissioners to get pay raise
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian healthcare startup Alice has raised $127 million in its series C funding round led by Softbank Latin America Fund, the company said on Tuesday.

Other investors include shareholders Kaszek Ventures and ThornTree Capital Partners and new investors such as Allen & Company LLC, G Squared, Globo Ventures and StepStone.

Other shareholders in Alice include Canary, Endeavor Catalyst e Maya Capital.

Alice did not disclose its valuation in the round. CEO and co-founder Andre Florence said the funds will be used to invest in technology and services to companies interested in providing healthcare to employees.

Paolo Passoni, director at Softbank Latin America Fund, said less than 25% of Brazilians have access to private healthcare and Alice is one of the companies trying to tackle the healthcare problems.

The startup, focused in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area, provides healthcare to around 6,000 people and has 10 hospitals and 200 medical labs as partners. Alice recently acquired startup Cuidas, focused in providing healthcare products to companies.

(Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Mark Potter)
Soldiers will drive the Armys Robotic Combat Vehicle through major testing in 2022.

In 2021, the Army received both the light and medium variants of the RCV and started work in small teams before a planned company-level evaluation this coming year.

Army Times reported in mid-2021 that soldiers with 3rd Infantry Division ran the RCV through two weeks of live-fire testing for the robot battle buddy expected to fight parallel with the Next Generation Combat Vehicle.

Tethered drones, robot vehicles aid soldiers during two-week live fire

The Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment soldiers out of Fort Benning, Georgia, did platoon-level live fires with the RCVs at Camp Grayling, Michigan, in late April 2021.

Those tests were done on a prototype platform before RCV industry developers delivered the actual prototypes, though.

Soldiers used a remote control from behind a berm and tethered drone video feeds to locate targets. They then struck enemy vehicles with two or fewer corrections using M249 Squad Automatic Weapons, M2 .50 caliber machine guns and Mk19 grenade launchers mounted on the RCV stand-in.

The RCV Light is a diesel-electric hybrid with a gross vehicle weight of no more than 8,500 pounds and a maximum payload of no more than 7,000 pounds.

It boasts a top speed of about 40 miles per hour, Army Times sister publication Defense News previously reported.

Defense News also reported that the RCV-M is a diesel-electric hybrid with a gross vehicle weight of 25,000 pounds.

It is equipped with a remotely operated 30 mm cannon and has a top speed of over 25 miles per hour.
Upper Southampton police are investigating potential leads in the fatal shooting of a house cat earlier this month, the second such incident in Bucks County this year.

Police opened a criminal investigation after a 2-year-old domestic shorthair tabby named Bambean was fatally wounded around 2 p.m. on Dec. 8 in the area of the first block of Dogwood Drive.

Bambean was an indoor cat, but his owner would allow him outside with her when she was doing yard work, according to police.

The Bucks County SPCA is offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for killing this two-year-old Tabby cat named Bambean.

Bambean is the second pet cat to die this year in Bucks County after being shot and fatally wounded by a projectile.

Shortly after the pair went outside, the owner heard a single gunshot. Police believe the cat had wandered off his owners property when he was shot.

Bambean ran home where he died, Upper Southampton Detective James Schirmer said. The wound appears to have been caused by a low-caliber firearm, Schirmer said. No projectile has been recovered.

Schirmer said that police had no recent record of residents complaining about cats trespassing on property and Bambean, who was wearing a bright blue collar, clearly appeared to be someones pet, Schirmer added.

The Bucks County SPCA chapter is offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible.

The agency investigates about two cases a year involving cats that are injured or killed after being shot with firearms or weapons that shoot plastic projectiles, Chief Humane Officer Nikki Thompson said. Most cases go unsolved, she added.

In February, a Bristol Township resident reported a pet cat returned home with an injury that a vet later determined was caused by an Airsoft rifle pellet, Thompson said. The cat later succumbed to the wound.

Last year, a Bristol Township man was arrested and charged with aggravated animal cruelty after he shot a neighbors cat three times with an Airsoft rifle after it walked on his property. The cat died. The man recently pleaded guilty, Thompson said.

I dont know why they think its okay to do this. But you cant do this, Thompson said. These have been somebodys pet. This has been a member of someones family.

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Can you help police?

Upper Southampton police are asking anyone with information about the fatal shooting of a cat in the first block of Dogwood Drive on Dec. 8 to contact Detective James Schirmer at 215-364-5000 or jschiermer@ustwp.org The Bucks County SPCA is offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect in the case.

More exclusive content: Pa. sees dramatic jump in animal cruelty charges since 2017 Libre's Law, but convictions are difficult

Pandemic pets: Local shelters not seeing surrender uptick, but say now is the time to prep pets for post-pandemic life

More animal cruelty cases: Police: Northampton man fatally shot dog

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County animal welfare agency offering reward in cat shooting in Upper Southampton
By Emma Rumney

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African court on Tuesday granted former president Jacob Zuma leave to appeal a ruling that he return to prison after being released in September on medical parole, meaning he will be able to spend Christmas at home.

Zuma, 79, was sentenced in June to 15 months in prison for contempt of court after ignoring instructions to participate in a corruption inquiry.

He handed himself in to begin his sentence on July 7, triggering some of the worst violence South Africa had seen in years. Anger from supporters snowballed into broader outrage over hardship and inequalities that persist 27 years after the end of apartheid.

Zuma began medical parole in September, but earlier this month South Africa's high court ordered that decision void and that he should return to jail - raising concerns about further violence.

That same court ruled on Tuesday his legal team should be able to appeal against the judgment at a higher court.

"In my view, this matter merits the Supreme Court of Appeal's attention," Judge Elias Matojane said.

He added there was a reasonable possibility another court may rule differently on the issue of whether Zuma's time on medical parole should count towards his sentence. Matojane previously ruled it should not.

"It means the court order cannot be enforced until the superior court hears the matter and makes a judgment," Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo told Reuters in a Whatsapp message.

The legal processes against Zuma for alleged corruption during his nine-year reign are widely viewed as a test of post-apartheid South Africa's ability to enforce the rule of law against powerful individuals.

Zuma's 2009-2018 presidency was marred by allegations of graft and wrongdoing, and he faces a separate corruption trial linked to his sacking as deputy president in 2005 when he was implicated in a $2 billion allegedly corrupt arms deal.

He denies wrongdoing in all cases and says he is the victim of a political witchhunt.

(Additional reporting by Olivia Kumwenda in Johannesburg; Editing by Tim Cocks and Nick Macfie)
South Dakota center Tasos Kamateros was dominating, so when the ball swung toward him at the top of the key, he rose up immediately.

His 3-pointer could have taken a lead USD cut to four down to one point, but it fell short of the rim. Oral Roberts guard Max Abmas tracked it off the rim. Now, it was his turn.

He stepped over the half-court line, rose over Coyotes guard Kruz Perrott-Hunt and hit the 3-pointer, plus the foul.

South Dakota (7-5, 0-1 Summit), for much of the game, played some of its best offense all year. With the exception of a scoreless outing from leading-scorer Mason Archambault and 22.2% shooting from 3-point range, the Coyotes 21 points from Kruz Perrott-Hunt, 20 from Tasos Kamateros and 19 from Xavier Fuller was some of the most evenly-allocated and explosive offense the team-driven USD offensive attack has produced.

Yet, in a 82-73 loss to Oral Roberts (7-5, 1-0 Summit) in the Summit League opener for both teams, South Dakota couldnt overcome hot shooting from the Golden Eagles, who shot 53.4% from the field and 42.3% from 3 (11 3-pointers). Abmas torched the Coyotes for 32 points, 22 of which he scored in the first half.

More: No new No. 1's in South Dakota Prep Media Basketball Poll week 2

USD center Tasos Kamateros takes a hook shot against Oral Roberts on Dec. 20, 2021.

South Dakota went basket-for-basket with Oral Roberts early in the game, but Abmas was picking up most of the Golden Eagles points nonetheless. ORU's top-scorer was, of course, already a big part of USD's defensive game planning, but early in the game, he was worthy of drawing even more attention.

He had 13 points in just the first 10 minutes of the game, sparking a few possessions of separation between ORU and USD even as Perrott-Hunt had 12 of his own to nearly match him.

South Dakota started substituting to control the matchup better, inserting a taller guard in Boogie Ellis to defend Abmas. Yet as Abmas drew more attention, Oral Roberts supporting players got several open looks to fall.

ORU shot 63% in the first half, and Abmas didnt slow down. Tasos Kamateros, who exited with two fouls early in the game, re-entered and exploded for eight points in just around a minute to get USD back to within five. Though after he exited, ORU and Abmas took over again.

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More: South Dakota football's 2022 Signing Day class features 17 players, 5 from South Dakota

USD guard Mason Archambault takes a pull-up jumper against Oral Roberts on Dec. 20, 2021.

On the last play of the first half, Kruz Perrott-Hunt was face-guarding Abmas on the perimeter, but the star of the Golden Eagles Sweet 16 run cut backdoor, received a pass and layed in a basket. Perrott-Hunt, seemingly in frustration, tapped the ball out of the rim after it was already through the hoop, picking up a goaltend.

In the early part of the second half, it looked like USD had flipped the percentages around. South Dakota went on a 9-0 run to cut Oral Roberts lead to two points, shooting 70% to the Golden Eagles 30% to start the quarter. Kamateros was unguardable down low, ORU fouled the Coyotes relentlessly and Abmas slowed his pace a little (just 10 points in the second half).

But Oral Roberts eventually rose its percentage to a respectable 45.2% (the exact percentage as the Coyotes in the second frame), and after a couple series of empty possessions as USD looked for ways to cut into leads, Abmas hit a 3-pointer with under a minute to play, putting the game away for good.

Follow Sioux Falls Argus Leader reporter Michael McCleary on Twitter @mikejmccleary.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Oral Roberts tops South Dakota basketball to open Summit League play
SpaceX capped its busiest year ever early on Tuesday, launching its 31st and final Falcon 9 rocket of 2021. This one boosted a Dragon cargo ship into orbit loaded with supplies, equipment and Christmas presents for the International Space Station crew.

It was only the second all-new Falcon 9 to fly in 2021 as SpaceX capitalizes on its reusable rocket technology, which company officials say is crucial for lowering launch costs and increasing schedule flexibility.

"It's been a record-breaking year for SpaceX," said Sarah Walker, the company's director of mission management. "Reusability is key to lowering the cost of spaceflight, which enables more investments in critical scientific research."

Tuesday's launch was the company's 24th space station resupply mission overall, the third this year and the sixth flight of a Dragon capsule in 2021, including three crewed missions, two to the space station and one fully commercial flight to orbit.

An all-new Falcon 9 rocket fires up its nine first stage engines and climbs away from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center early Tuesday, kicking off a supply run to the International Space Station. / Credit: SpaceX

"Looking ahead to the next year, we have several more missions to the space station with crew and cargo, including the first fully commercial human spaceflight mission to ISS," Walker said, referring to a February flight sponsored by Houston-based Axiom. "So a really exciting year in 2022 as well."

Just three days after launching two Falcon 9s on Saturday, one from California and the other from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the final flight of the year got under way at 5:07 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday when the rocket's engines ignited for the first time atop historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

The slender rocket put on a very brief pre-dawn show, disappearing into low clouds seconds after liftoff.

After propelling the vehicle out of the thick lower atmosphere, the first stage fell away and flew itself to a pinpoint landing on an offshore droneship, chalking up SpaceX's 100th booster recovery, and its 77th at sea.

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A few seconds earlier, the second stage reached orbit and the cargo Dragon was released to fly on its own. If all goes well, the spacecraft will catch up with the space station early Wednesday, moving in for docking at the space-facing port of the forward Harmony module at 4:30 a.m.

The end-of-year launch surge comes amid an apparent outbreak of coronavirus at SpaceX's Hawthorne, California, headquarters.

The Falcon 9's first stage completed its maiden flight with an on-target landing on an off-shore droneship. It was SpaceX's 100th successful booster recovery, its 77th at sea. / Credit: SpaceX

The New York Times, following up on data posted by Los Angeles County and first reported by the Los Angeles Times, said at least 132 of roughly 6,000 employees had tested positive, the most reported at any private company in the United States.

The company did not respond to a request for comment and it wasn't clear on Tuesday morning what impact, if any, the reported outbreak might have. But Tuesday's launch, like the 30 before it this year, went off without a hitch.

Loaded with 6,590 pounds of equipment and supplies, the cargo Dragon is also carrying Christmas presents and fresh food for the station's seven-member crew.

"Every year, we do our best to send up some some presents to the crew," said Joel Montalbano, manager of the space station program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "I won't get in front of Santa Claus and tell you what's (on board), but we are going to have some gifts for the crew.

"We're also going to find some special food for for Christmas dinner. So you can imagine turkey, green beans, we have some some some fish and some some seafood that's smoked. We also have everybody's favorite, fruitcake... for the crew."

Also on board: 850 pounds of crew supplies, 2,468 pounds of science equipment, 724 pounds of hardware, 400 pounds of spacewalk equipment and 72 pounds of computer gear.

Sneak peek: Natalie Wood: Death in Dark Water

SpaceX rocket brings Christmas gifts to astronauts at space station

Biden extends pause on student loan repayments until May 2022
Tom Holland in "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Matt Kennedy/Sony Pictures/Marvel

Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for "Spider-Man: No Way Home," now in theaters.

The movie features familiar faces from Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's "Spider-Man" films.

Fans are praising one returning actor's standout, heartfelt performance.

"Spider-Man: No Way Home" features the returns of plenty of familiar faces from past "Spider-Man" franchises, and one particular actor's heartfelt performance is being praised by fans.

"No Way Home," which marks Tom Holland's sixth appearance as the Marvel web-slinger, is a celebration of three generations of "Spider-Man" films.

After a spell cast by Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) goes wrong, visitors from the multiverse arrive in Holland's universe.

This includes the return of villains Norman Osborn/Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Dr. Otto Octavius/Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), and Flint Marko/Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) from Sam Raimi's trilogy and Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard (Rhys Ifans) and Max Dillon/Electro (Jamie Foxx) from Marc Webb's "The Amazing Spider-Man" films.

And after over a year of rampant rumors and speculation (and denials from the stars) "No Way Home" does in fact feature the returns of both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man.

From left: Tobey Maguire in "Spider-Man 2," Andrew Garfield in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," and Tom Holland in "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Columbia Pictures; Columbia Pictures; Sony Pi

First, they come face-to-face with Ned (Jacob Batalon) and MJ (Zendaya) after Ned opens portals using Doctor Strange's sling ring. Then, they meet Holland's version of the web-slinger as he grieves over the untimely death of Aunt May.

Aside from fans praising Dafoe's menacing return as Green Goblin, people have also applauded Garfield's performance.

Garfield's past two Spidey films weren't well-received, leading to sequel plans being scrapped. The actor himself has spoken candidly about feeling "heartbroken" by the direction his franchise went in, telling Amy Adams: "Story and character were actually not top of the priority list, ultimately, and I found that really, really tricky."

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More recently, he told The Guardian that money felt like the driving force behind his reboot.

Garfield's experience with "TASM" makes his standout performance in "NWH" that much more impactful. It also offers redemption and closure.

Fans who have seen "NWH" so far have voiced praise for Garfield on Twitter, saying that this movie shows that he was always a great Spider-Man.

People also said that they could tell how much the actor cares about his role, and the character, based on his performance in "NWH."

"Andrew's entrance was so amazing and well fitted! I truly miss watching him take the big screen as the web slinger!" @ThatMcuFan wrote.

"seeing andrew play peter/spiderman again was beyond unreal to me. like he just?? he has always embodied the character so well from both comic knowledge, character appreciation, and bringing in aspects of his own personality and he just BELONGS!! to that role," fan @anakinsmetalarm said.

"he literally owned the movie," another who goes by @milfadyen on Twitter wrote.

izzy SAW NWH (@averyjamesvns) December 18, 2021

mary jane watson love bot (@MARYJANESPETER) December 17, 2021

riv SAW NWH (@nblmparker) December 18, 2021

hi hi || nwh spoilers yass (@canaryfilmss) December 18, 2021

Fans also specifically highlighted Garfield's scene near the end of the film, in which he sprang into action to save MJ when Holland's web-slinger got knocked out of the way by Green Goblin.

After landing safely to the ground with MJ, Garfield looked as if he himself was on the verge of tears because he was able to save her after failing to do so with Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy in "TASM 2."

"its the way everyone knew andrew's peter saving mj was going to happen but none of us prepared for what his reaction would be when he actually saved her," Twitter user @sunsetspletzer wrote.

Given the positive reaction to Garfield's reprisal, fans are rallying for the actor to get another shot at playing Spider-Man in a standalone movie.

"the way andrew garfield an absolute blast in no way home and you could totally tell. he loves being spider man and he deserves a third movie rn," @TASMFELICIA said.

"My theater erupted when Andrew came thru the portal this was really a surreal moment Andrew was so good in this movie we all felt for him tasm 3 needs to happen," @KageDixr wrote.

"Spider-Man: No Way Home" is now in theaters. You can read our review here and follow along with our coverage here.

Read the original article on Insider
The U.S. military and coalition aircraft dropped 153 munitions in Afghanistan in August, the most since October 2020, as the U.S. and the now-defunct Islamic Republic of Afghanistan desperately tried to beat back the advance of the Taliban across the country ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. troops. That offensive eventually overwhelmed Kabul, the capital, Aug. 15.

On Friday, Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters the information on air strikes and sorties in Central Command, withheld from the public since the U.S. and the Taliban signed the Doha Agreement to end the war in March 2020, was being released at the direction of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

It is important to remember that during this time, DoD continued to  collect and analyze the data and provided it to inspectors general for inclusion in their regular reports to Congress, Kirby said.

The data shows a stark reduction in the use of U.S. and coalition airpower in Afghanistan immediately following the implementation of the peace agreement. It then picked back up in the late summer and fall as the Taliban waged a bloody campaign against Afghan army and police forces, reaching a high of 246 munitions expended in October 2020.

In February 2020, manned and unmanned U.S. military and coalition aircraft released 360 munitions in Afghanistan. This number fell to 116 in March, 27 in April and only 15 in May as a U.S. and Taliban cease-fire, part of the U.S. withdrawal conditions, went into full effect. After air strikes spiked in October, the number of weapons released each month remained above 100 through April, then fell steadily back down to 18 by July 2021 before spiking again during the Talibans final push to Kabul.

No air strikes have been launched against targets in Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal.

During an Aug. 31 address to the nation as U.S. involvement in Afghanistan ended, President Biden issued a warning to ISIS-K, which was purported to have been behind the attack that took the lives of 13 U.S. troops guarding Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

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The president alluded to over-the-horizon capabilities that enable the U.S. military to strike targets without American boots on the ground.

And to ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet, Biden said during his speech.

However, despite congressional testimony from defense officials in October warning that ISIS-K intends to strike international targets and could have the capability to do so in as little as six months, the group has not been targeted since U.S. troops left.

As expected, the use of airpower is down across the CENTCOM area of operations. With U.S. plans to end its combat role in Iraq by Dec. 31, strikes in support of Operation Inherent Resolve have declined dramatically. Through November of this year, manned and unmanned aircraft have released a total of 554 munitions in Iraq and Syria combined, down from 1,188 the year before.

During the height of the air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria , U.S. and coalition aircraft released 39,577 munitions. In June 2017, aircraft under the control of Combined Forces Air Component Commander released a record 4,848 munitions, only to set a new record in August 2017 when AFCENT reported releasing 5,075 munitions against targets.

After the coalition eradicated ISIS so-called caliphate across Iraq and Syria, the number of munitions released waned considerably. In 2018, roughly 8,700 munitions were released in support of Operation Inherent Resolve. That fell to a little over 4,700 in 2019, and 1,188 in 2020.

From August through November of 2021, U.S. and coalition aircraft dropped a total of just 17 munitions across the entire OIR area of responsibility. Currently, the U.S. has roughly 2,500 troops in Iraq dedicated to assisting Iraqi Security Forces in eliminating what remains of ISIS in that country.

While it is unclear how many U.S. troops will remain in Iraq in 2022, those there will be in an advise and assist role rather than participating in combat missions on behalf of their Iraqi hosts. According to the Associated Press, U.S. and coalition ground troops have not led combat missions there since early 2020.
Around 200 Afghans marched in Kabul Tuesday to demand the release of billions of dollars of assets frozen by the international community -- a rare protest allowed by the Taliban as the country battles a major economic crisis.

There were no women in Tuesday's march, organised by a little-known group called the Afghan People's Movement which in the past has held peace rallies in the capital.

The Taliban have outlawed protests unless approved, cracking down hard on several demonstrations held by women clamouring for the right to jobs and education.

Tuesday's march clearly had the blessing of Afghanistan's new rulers, with Taliban social media accounts featuring multiple images and video clips saying participants spoke for ordinary citizens.

"Let us eat" read one banner carried by a marcher near a square in central Kabul.

"Our main demand is that the United States should release our assets as soon as possible," organiser Shafiq Ahmad Rahimi told AFP.

"This is the wealth of the nation, not of any single person, group or government," he said.

Since the Taliban's August 15 return to power, nearly $10 billion of assets have been frozen by an international community loathe to give access to the funds directly to the hardline Islamists.

But the country is in the grip of a major humanitarian crisis and the United Nations says more than half of Afghanistan's 38 million people face hunger this winter.

Western countries have tied the unfreezing of assets to the Taliban respecting human rights -- especially with regard to women being allowed to work and girls to attend school.

Tuesday's march comes two days after the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) met in Pakistan and agreed to establish new ways of getting aid to Afghanistan.

The country's economy, already battered by decades of war, went into freefall after the Taliban's return.

Banks have also placed severe restrictions on withdrawals by private customers, and many in the capital have resorted to selling household possessions to buy food for their families.

bur-tbm-jd/fox/jfx
UPDATE: Wednesday's Planning Board meeting has been canceled.

EAST BRUNSWICK  A Hindu temple on Ryders Lane and Perry Road has submitted revised plans for a new place of worship and a nursery school.

Sadhu Vaswani Center proposes to demolish its existing facility and three residential structures located at 4-8 Perry Road and replace them with a two-story, 16,133-square-foot place of worship and a two-story, 7,031-square-foot nursery school.

The original plan, which local residents voiced concerns over at earlier planning board hearings, called for demolition of three structures  its existing facility and two homes  and the construction of a three-story facility and nursery school, which wouldve been in the same building.

The 2.46-acre property is located in a residential zone where the proposed uses are permitted. The site is on the east side of Ryders Lane, north of Washington Avenue and Tices Lane, and south of Corona Road, near the Milltown border.

The revised plan includes a stormwater management collection and storage system, new driveway and parking lot configuration, a parking lot with 75 parking spaces and a landscape and lighting plan.

EARLIER: Here's what we know about the temple in East Brunswick looking to expand

Sadhu Vaswani Center is seeking preliminary and final site plan approval, as well as bulk variance relief for maximum lot coverage of 46.7%, where 30% is permitted.

A public hearing is scheduled for the planning board meeting at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Nearby residents Glenn and Debbie Sandberg have voiced opposition to the proposed project, citing concerns over traffic and the size of the new buildings.

"You can fit almost four of our homes in the preschool alone, and the other proposed building is even bigger," Debbie Sandberg said. "It's going to impact the character of the neighborhood."

Email: sloyer@gannettnj.com

Susan Loyer covers Middlesex County and more for MyCentralJersey.com. To get unlimited access to her work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: East Brunswick NJ: Sadhu Vaswani Center submits revised expansion plan
A Texas man has been indicted after he was accused of strangling his girlfriend while aboard a Carnival cruise ship, prosecutors said in a Dec. 20 news release.

Geronimo Flores, 29, was charged with domestic violence and interstate domestic violence that occurred on a cruise that departed and returned to the Port of New Orleans, the release said.

Flores lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.

According to the indictment, on Dec. 2, 2021, Flores and his girlfriend were aboard the Carnival Glory cruise ship when he intentionally suffocated and strangled her.

He is also accused of hitting the woman he was dating in the head with his hand, the release said.

If convicted, Flores faces up to 10 years in prison.

He is scheduled to be arraigned on Jan. 3, 2022.

If you are experiencing domestic violence and need someone to talk to, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline for support at 1-800-799-7233 or or text START to 88788.

Overboard cruise passenger still missing after hours-long search, rescuers say

Cruise ship with 10 positive COVID cases heads for New Orleans, health officials say
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP)  Thailand on Tuesday decided to immediately reimpose a mandatory quarantine for visitors and suspend a test-and-go scheme for fully vaccinated arrivals as concerns grow over the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, the government said.

The decision is a blow to efforts to revive Thailands battered tourism sector ahead of the peak holiday season.

Government spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana also announced the suspension of sandbox programs that allow visitors to remain and move around specific locations, except for the resort island of Phuket, where he said it will stay in effect.

This is not to shut off tourists but to temporarily suspend arrivals, he said. He added that the decision would be reviewed on Jan. 4.

He said about 200,000 people who have registered for the test-and-go scheme, known as Thailand Pass, but have not yet entered Thailand will be allowed to come. They will be subject to a coronavirus test on arrival and a second test seven days later at the expense of the government. He did not provide further details.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Thailand will not accept any new applications for the test-and-go program.

Today we no longer accept more applications for travelers. No new applications," he told reporters. We have about 200,000 travelers who already registered. No other restrictions apply for these people, but we will have to track them.

He added that "from now, we are back to the old system of quarantine when entering.

The decision came after Thailand recorded its first case of domestic transmission of the omicron variant last week, when a returning resident tested negative on arrival but later tested positive and infected members of his family. The few other positive cases were all caught after testing on arrival and quarantined.

Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia eased entry restrictions for fully vaccinated travelers in November in an effort to kickstart tourism, a major revenue earner that collapsed with the start of the pandemic. But with the exception of Thailand, few have attracted the return of many foreign visitors due to complex entry requirements.

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Bali, a prime tourism destination, has had only a few dozen foreign tourists since it reopened, and Cambodia and Vietnam have also struggled.

Starting in November, Thailand began reopening to fully vaccinated visitors without quarantine, easing a lockdown that caused massive job losses and hardship. Tourism accounted for some 20% of the economy before the pandemic.

With the onset of omicron, Thailand and other countries in Asia moved swiftly to block entry from an initial group of African nations. But Thailand kept its test-and-go program active for fully vaccinated travelers from more than 60 countries.

Under the scheme, fully vaccinated visitors had to show negative results from RT-PCR tests before flying and upon their arrival had a second PCR test. They had to spend their first night in a government-approved hotel awaiting their test results. If the results were negative, they could travel anywhere in Thailand.

Thailand had by far the most ambitious program in the region to allow travelers to enter and move around the country. It eased restrictions after a successful vaccination program that has seen 100 million doses administered to its population of about 60 million people. Booster programs are already underway around the country.

COVID-19 cases have steadily been dropping, with 2,476 new cases and 32 deaths reported Tuesday. Thailand has recorded 2,196,529 cases and 21,346 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Thailand tested the waters with a sandbox program under which it reopened Phuket in July to fully vaccinated visitors without quarantine, allowing them free movement on the island for 14 days and then onward travel throughout the country. It then cut the requirement to seven days, but actively tracked visitors and required them to undergo RT-PCR tests on day one and seven.

Since Thailand reopened to tourists on Nov. 1 with test-and-go, it has received 290,000 visitors, 130,000 of them in November. Last week, Phuket even had fully booked resorts.

Thailand shut its borders to most foreign visitors in April last year after local transmission of the coronavirus started to climb. Foreign tourist arrivals in 2019 were almost 40 million but plunged to 6.7 million in 2020, with most of those visitors coming in the first quarter.

The government had targeted 1.5 trillion baht ($44.6 billion) in revenue from tourism in 2021. Thailand recorded 3.4 trillion baht ($101 billion) in income from the tourism sector in 2019.

Most countries in Asia have reported only a handful of omicron cases so far, or in the case of India, about 200.

India, which also opened to vaccinated tourists in November, has since suspended commercial international flights until Jan. 31 as global alarm over the variant grows. Still, international travel has continued via a number of flights from countries that India had agreements with.

Japan, where the vast majority of the population is vaccinated, now bans entry to most foreign nationals.

Mainland China and Hong Kong have continued to ban tourists from entry. Visitors face tight entry restrictions and mandatory 14- to 21-day quarantines depending on which part of the country they arrive in.
Indiana is down to two games before the new year and the earnest return of the Big Ten season. Wins in both won't do much to help the Hoosiers' NCAA Tournament hopes, but a loss in either would be devastating.

The 9-2 Hoosiers still have a few things they could afford to improve before they get back to league games. Here are three things I'll be watching Wednesday night when Indiana faces Northern Kentucky (4-6) at 7 p.m. at Assembly Hall.

1. Can Indiana take care of the ball against Northern Kentucky's traps?

Northern Kentucky coach Darrin Horn played at Western Kentucky when Tom Crean was an assistant there under Ralph Willard and was part of Crean's staff at Marquette. He's a believer in causing havoc on defense with full-court trapping and in his 12 seasons as a head coach at Western Kentucky, South Carolina and now Northern Kentucky, all but one of his teams have caused turnovers on at least 20% of their opponents possessions according to kenpom.com. Nine of them have finished in the top 100 nationally in turnover rate and four finished in the top 50.

This year's group is generally on par with that, ranking 81st, causing a turnover rate of 21.2%. Northern Kentucky's opponents are giving it away an average of 16 times per game (160 in 10 games), and the Norse are averaging 10.6 steals per game. For the Horizon League, they have length all over the floor, and guards Marques Warrick, Trevon Faulkner and Sam Vinson are all averaging better than one steal per game with Vinson leading the team with 2.6.

Northern Kentucky's greatest strength matches up with Indiana's greatest weakness. The Hoosiers rank 289th nationally in turnover percentage, giving the ball away on 21.6% of their possessions. Their 15.7 turnovers per game is the highest figure in the Big Ten. It's the biggest drag on Indiana's offensive efficiency, as the Hoosiers rank 35th in effective field goal percentage and 69th in adjusted offensive efficiency. They have faced a full-court trapping opponent in St. John's earlier this season and turned the ball over 16 times, not terrible considering the level of pressure but still not a good figure. Northern Kentucky will test their ball security again and they could use a better performance in that regard.

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More: IU Insider Q&A: Crossroads Classic dies, Khristian Lander still sits and what's next

More: No. 7 IU women dominate on glass, overcome 'sluggish' 35 minutes to beat Western Michigan

2. Will Northern Kentucky even try taking the ball to the rim?

The Norse have three players on the roster taller than 6-foot-9, but they don't play any of them real minutes. Their roster is very guard-oriented and it ranks 79th nationally in the percentage of its field goal attempts that are from 3-point range according to kenpom.com.

According to hoop-math.com, Northern Kentucky takes just 28.9% of its shots at the rim, which is the 19th smallest figure in the nation. When the Norse get clean looks close to the rim they're good there, making 58.7% of their shots. But they don't get many there and generally struggle when they take shots inside the arc. Against Division I competition, they have made just 42.1% of their shots from 2-point range, which puts them 334th nationally among the 358 teams in Division I. They aren't great from 3-point range, hitting 33.5% of their shots there, but the gap between percentages there makes it worth it for NKU to take as many 3s as they can.

And on the flipside, Indiana is one of the best teams in the nation at defending 2-point shots, ranking second in 2-point field goal percentage at .392. The Hoosiers are blocking 15.5% of opponent's shots, which ranks 21st nationally, thanks in large part to Big Ten-leader Trayce Jackson-Davis. Expect to see Northern Kentucky take 3s at about the same rate that Merrimack did, with 29 3-point attempts against 25 2s.

3. Will Race Thompson miss?

Indiana fifth-year senior forward Race Thompson was perfect from the field last week, going 6 of 6 from the field for 14 points against Merrimack and 4 of 4 for 11 points against Notre Dame on Saturday at the Crossroads Classic. If he makes his first four shots against Northern Kentucky, he'll match Juwan Morgan's record of 14 consecutive shots made in a three-game stretch, set in the 2016-17 season.

If he gets the record it would be a nice footnote to his season, but it also speaks to the role he has carved out this year. Coach Mike Woodson gave him leeway early to take 3s to see if he could become the stretch four that makes four-out, one-in, wide-open offenses as effective as they are at both the college and professional level. Thompson is 2 of 14 on the year from beyond the arc and just 0 of 3 since the last 3 he made against Marshall on Nov. 27. But he's found away to get shots without taking 3s and without sitting in the post. He's making mid-range shots, especially floaters from the high- to mid-post, getting buckets on post-ups and out of movement, taking advantage of the constant double-teams going on Trayce Jackson-Davis. Since Nov. 30, he's made 29 of his 44 field-goal attempts (65.9%) and is averaging 13.0 points per game while also averaging 8.4 rebounds.

Insider Dustin Dopirak on Twitter at @DustinDopirak or email him at DDopirak@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball vs. NKU: What to watch for during the game
Troops raced Tuesday to deliver food and water to typhoon-ravaged islands of the Philippines as charities appealed for aid to help hundreds of thousands left homeless by the deadly storm.

At least 375 people were killed and hundreds injured when Typhoon Rai pummelled the southern and central regions of the archipelago on Thursday, wiping out wooden houses, uprooting trees and knocking out power across entire islands.

"Our food is about to run out, probably in a few days or tomorrow," Simplicia Pedrablanca, a town mayor in the Dinagat Islands, told local radio station DZBB.

More than 400,000 people were sheltering in evacuation centres or with relatives, the national disaster agency said, after their homes were damaged or destroyed by the strongest typhoon to hit the country this year.

One of the hardest-hit islands was Bohol -- known for its beaches and dive spots -- where at least 96 people have died, provincial Governor Arthur Yap said on Facebook.

A state of calamity has been declared on the island where people sat under umbrellas next to their empty water drums.

Yap said the province had run out of money and pleaded for President Rodrigo Duterte's government to send funds to buy food and drinking water for desperate families.

"If you won't send money to buy food, send soldiers and police because there will be looting here," Yap warned during an interview with DZBB.

While other parts of the Philippines celebrated Christmas, Bohol was "undergoing a Yolanda-like situation", he added, using the local name for Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

On nearby Negros island, Carl Arapoc, 23, told AFP there was no electricity in his city and his family was using "driftwood" to cook.

There has also been widespread destruction on Siargao, Dinagat and Mindanao islands, which bore the brunt of the storm, packing winds of 195 kilometres (120 miles) per hour.

"It was really, really bad, the strongest storm I ever witnessed in my life," said Tal Oran, an Israeli living in the Siargao tourist town General Luna.

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- 'All available assets' -

Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has ordered the military to deploy ships, boats, aircraft and trucks to deliver food, drinking water and medical supplies to survivors, who have been struggling for basic necessities.

The Red Cross is also flying relief to popular holiday destinations Siargao and Bohol islands.

"The emergency appeal by IFRC helps us to act swiftly and do all we can to help people and families get back on their feet," said Alberto Bocanegra, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Philippines.

The organisation has appealed for $22 million to fund urgent relief and recovery efforts.

The UK has pledged around $1 million to the IFRC effort, while Canada promised about $2.3 million in assistance and the European Union nearly $2 million.

Hundreds of residents in Surigao City, on the northern tip of Mindanao, packed out an undercover basketball court on Monday to receive food handouts.

"Never in my entire life have I encountered such a typhoon," said Catholic Bishop Antonieto Cabajog in Surigao.

"To say 'super' is an understatement," he told a Catholic church-run news agency.

Rai hit the Philippines late in the typhoon season: most cyclones develop between July and October.

Another storm could be on the way.

The state weather agency warned a low pressure area was moving towards Mindanao and had a "30-40% chance to develop into a tropical depression".

Scientists have long warned that typhoons are strengthening more rapidly as the world becomes warmer because of human-driven climate change.

The Philippines -- ranked among the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change -- is hit by an average of 20 storms every year.

Typhoon Haiyan was the strongest storm ever to have made landfall, leaving more than 7,300 people dead or missing.

The death toll from Rai is not expected to get close to that number.

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U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan received former President Donald Trump's endorsement Monday. (file photo THOMAS BENDER/ HERALD TRIBUNE)

Former President Donald Trump gave U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan a big boost Monday in his primary against Sarasota Republican Martin Hyde, who had been picking up momentum with support from prominent members of Trump's circle.

Trump endorsed Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, blunting Hyde's efforts to try to challenge the eight-term congressman from the right.

"Congressman Vern Buchanan is a terrific representative of the people of Florida," Trump said in the endorsement. "He is working hard to lower our Taxes, grow our Economy, support our Military and Vets, protect our Seniors, and defend our Second Amendment. Vern has my Complete and Total Endorsement!"

Former President Donald Trump with U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, right, during a bill signing ceremony. Trump endorsed Buchanan's reelection effort Monday.

Previously: Vern Buchanan raises $221,163 in 3Q while challenger Martin Hyde collects $43,167

By the way: Vern Buchanan may have better shot at chairing powerful House committee with Devin Nunes retiring

In case you missed it: Roger Stone and Michael Flynn backing Sarasota Republican's effort to unseat Vern Buchanan

Hyde has questioned Buchanan's conservative credentials. An endorsement from Trump will help Buchanan counter those criticisms, making Hyde's path more difficult.

Buchanan has supported Trump, but is not known as a MAGA stalwart.

The congressman has pitched himself in the past as an independent-minded elected official willing to work across the aisle. He opposed Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord and voted to certify the Electoral College results showing Joe Biden defeated Trump.

Hyde also has emphasized Buchanan's willingness to support modest gun control measures.

I am honored to have the endorsement of President Trump," Buchanan said in a statement. "I look forward to working with him to take back the House so we can put our economy back on track, get people back to work, and restore Americas greatness.

More coverage: Vern Buchanan has easily defeated well-financed Democrats. Will another step forward?

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NEW!



President Donald J. Trump announces his endorsement of Congressman Vern Buchanan pic.twitter.com/jcASsQaY5E  Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) December 20, 2021

Hyde recently hired Trump adviser Roger Stone as a campaign consultant and received the endorsement of Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser and a well-regarded figure among MAGA devotees.

Those moves created the impression that Hyde's campaign was gaining ground among the Trump base. Trump's endorsement of Buchanan is a huge setback for Hyde's campaign in District 16, which covers Manatee County and portions of Sarasota and Hillsborough counties..

Hyde reacted to the endorsement by saying he supports Trump but "now and then we all make poor choices."

"Advocating for Covid booster shots is a poor choice and so is supporting Vern Buchanan," Hyde said in a text message. Trump told a Dallas crowd Sunday that he received his booster shot.

"For now I'll keep at winning the endorsement of the voters of our district," Hyde continued.

Follow Herald-Tribune Political Editor Zac Anderson on Twitter at @zacjanderson. He can be reached at zac.anderson@heraldtribune.com

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: US Rep. Vern Buchanan endorsed by Donald Trump in Florida congressional race
Washington  Former President Donald Trump received his COVID-19 booster shot, he told supporters during an event in Dallas on Sunday. Hearing some boos in the audience, the ex-president dismissed them, according to video posted to social media.

Trump revealed his booster status during a conversation with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, telling the host "yes" when asked if he received the booster shot. O'Reilly continued the conversation, but Trump interjected when he heard some in the crowd booing his answer.

"Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, no, no. That's  there's a very tiny group over there," the former president said in response to an apparent smattering of boos, according to video posted by O'Reilly's show "No Spin News."

Prior to the question about the booster, Mr. Trump lauded his administration's efforts to develop the three COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the U.S., saying "we did something historic" and urging supporters to "take credit  we saved tens of millions of lives."

The former president was criticized for not disclosing his vaccination status while in office, in contrast to former Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials. Pence and others received the vaccine on camera, something Trump declined to do. Only in March did news outlets learn Trump was vaccinated at the White House in January, and many in his own party wanted him to be more consistently vocal in support of the vaccine.

Polling analysis: Can vaccine hesitancy be reduced by a president's encouragement?

The vaccine was developed while Trump was in office, and its production supported by Operation Warp Speed. But Republicans have been more hesitant to get vaccinated, according to CBS News and other polling.

Of American adults who are fully vaccinated, only roughly 30% have received a booster shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

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Sneak peek: Natalie Wood: Death in Dark Water

Biden unveils strategy to combat Omicron variant

President Biden unveils Omicron plan as variant surges across U.S.
In this Feb. 28, 2021, photo, former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Fla. Trump called on his supporters to send their contributions directly to his own committees in his first speech since leaving office. That call puts Trump at odds with the Republican Party's existing political organizations, including the Republican National Committee and the partyas congressional campaign arms (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor, and Donald Trump is a traitor. On Jan. 6, with much planning, Trump and his cronies unleashed a mob on Congress killing and injuring Capital Police and, as we are finding out, he actually was cheering for the mob. Trump sent the mob to overthrow the government at a time when the processes of certifying a legal election was taking place. With what has been uncovered in the last week, it is time for the Jan. 6 Committee to subpoena Trump to answer what we already know. This country needs to go through this prosecution to re-program all his followers who have been overtaken by a grifter who is out to destroy democracy as we know it. If not stopped through a complete transparent truth of what happened and putting Trump and all his disciples/criminals in jail, we can forget our childrens future in a free democratic society.

John Adler, Royal Palm Beach

Two-state solution no solution

Many in the past and some today feel the best answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the two-state solution. With this peace plan, Israel would cede much of the disputed territory to a Palestinian government, and the two nations would live in peace side by side. Under current conditions, however, I feel the two-state solution is wrong.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, recently initiated large scale rocket attacks on Israeli cities. It is supported by Iran and plays a key role in Irans plan to destroy Israel. Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority and controls much of the West Bank, is corrupt and seeks to weaken and then destroy Israel as a Jewish state. Its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, supports and encourages BDS, the Boycott, Divest and Sanction effort, to destabilize and damage the Israeli economy. Both Hamas and Fatah run schools teaching hatred of Jews and anti-semitic violence. Until they become good, peace-loving and democratic, the two-state solution should be put on hold.

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Charles Winfield, Boca Raton

Military directives don't apply with COVID

I just finished the article 12-15 -2021: Air Force discharges 27 for vaccine refusal. The height of hypocrisy was reading 4,700 are seeking religious exceptions from the vaccine. Really, these religious hypocrites are willing to join an organization prepared to kill another of Gods children, based on what the government directs them to do. However, theyre not willing to follow a government directive to protect the Americans they take an oath to protect.

Anthony Frigo, Jensen Beach

Natural immunity not GOP concept

Your headline, Republicans embrace natural immunity, is laughable. Are you suggesting Democrats, Independents and persons of every other imaginable political stripe disagree with the concept? I guess we have to assume that Dr. Martin Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is a Republican. A frequent commentator on medical topics on television, he praises the benefits of natural immunity. He constantly cites the robustness of its protection reported in numerous medical studies, particularly mentioning the experience found in Israel, where natural immunity is 27 times more effective than vaccines. I still dont know for sure Dr. Makary is a Republican. His reports are blessedly apolitical.

Laura Henning, Palm Beach Gardens

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Former President Donald Trump should be subpoenaed by the Congress
LOS ANGELES, CA  The emergence of the omicron coronavirus variant, coupled with an anticipated winter surge of COVID-19, prompted the University of California system Tuesday announce a temporarily return to online classes at the beginning of January.

Also, the university system will mandate booster shots for students returning to its 10 campuses in the spring, according to an email sent to chancellors systemwide by UC President Michael V. Drake.

"The emergence of this new and fast-moving variant, coupled with student travel to and from campus and the prevalence of gatherings over the holidays, will present our campuses with a unique set of public health challenges as we begin the New Year," Drake wrote. "I am asking each of you to design and implement a plan for a January return to campus ...."

Each campus will be required to incorporate a test, sequester and retest model for returning students, which will likely require most campuses to begin the spring term using remote instruction "to allow students to complete an appropriate testing protocol as they return to campus," according to Drake.



Campuses will urge students to adhere to preventive COVID-19 measures especially during the first few weeks of the term, while students are still completing the testing requirement.

Campus policy asks all residential students returning to campus to undergo "arrival testing" for all students. Students must then be retested between five to seven days after a first test. Those who are not fully vaccinated are required to minimize in-person interactions with other campus members during the testing period.

Campus members will also be urged to avoid large gatherings, particularly indoors at the start of January.

"Eligible students who are returning home should be encouraged to get boosted before coming back to campus," Drake said.



Under the existing UC policy, all campus members are required to be fully vaccinated, and the school system recently added booster shots to the definition of "fully vaccinated."

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"The policy mandates COVID-19 boosters for those who are eligible," Drake said Tuesday.



The University of San Diego announced Tuesday it would move instruction to remote only from Jan. 3 to 17, the San Diego Union Tribune reported.

"During this time we will incrementally populate the campus (with students, faculty) using a more comprehensive testing regimen," Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said a statement Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, California had a testing positivity rate of 2.8 percent, according to the state, elevated from 2.2 percent exactly one month ago.



READ MORE: Vaccinated CA Employees Face New Workplace Pandemic Restrictions

This article originally appeared on the Los Angeles Patch
UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir makes no bones about working hard to put the Knights in a position for success.

So, when the possibility of a bowl matchup featuring UCF (8-4) and either Florida or Florida State arose, Mohajir began working the phones to make something happen.

We started lobbying pretty heavily with folks about the winner of the Florida-Florida State game, Mohajir told The Orlando Sentinel. We knew that the ACC and the SEC were possibly going to go long and have more bowl-eligible teams than what they had bowl contracts.

Floridas 24-21 win over FSU in the Swamp on Nov. 27 cleared a path for the Gators (6-6) to be bowl eligible and opened the door to a possible meeting with UCF, a first since 2006. The in-state programs agreed to a 2-for-1 series earlier this year with the first matchup set for 2024.

Mohajirs predecessor, Danny White, was an outspoken critic of 2-for-1 scheduling deals and it was that stance that led to an inability to schedule a series with Florida and Gators AD Scott Stricklin in 2019.

After sharing his idea with school president Alexander Cartwright and coach Gus Malzahn, Mohajir reached out to the American Athletic Conference and ESPN to persuade them to make a matchup would be beneficial to everyone involved. He also wanted to ensure everyone was in the loop and going through the proper channels.

There were some other talks about finding other SEC or ACC teams, so I just called as many people as possible that would listen, said Mohajir. ESPN saw it as an opportunity as did the SEC and some others, so everything just happened to align this year and they were able to make it happen.

When the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl announced it would host UCF and Florida, all the hard work paid off as the game sold out a week later, with 65,000 fans expected for Thursdays showdown at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.

Whether we played them in the regular season or not, being able to have some relevance in a postseason game [mattered], Mohajir said. It was in a regional matchup where a bunch of people is excited to watch the game. Thats exciting for everybody.

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It also rewards a UCF team coming off one of the more challenging seasons in recent memory with a coaching change in February, numerous injuries and the tragic death of one of the programs former players in Otis Anderson Jr.

Ive seen teams like this, where youve had a bunch of injuries at key positions and its gone the opposite way but it never did, Mohajir said. We found a way to win and thats a great tribute to these guys on this team  theyre winners and so are these coaches.

I couldnt have been more proud.

This seasons highlight came in September when UCF accepted an invitation to join the Big 12.

While the Knights would prefer a move by 2023, the AACs bylaws require departing schools to give 27 months notice or pay a hefty exit fee. Mohajir said the school has been working with the conference to negotiate an amicable exit.

Were still talking with [AAC commissioner] Mike Aresco and the conference office about that, said Mohajir. Were working through it and hopefully, we can get this thing figured out and no later than 2024. Hopefully, the conference office will work [with us]. After all, they need to know because they have a lot of plans.

With the departures of UCF, Cincinnati and Houston, the AAC is adding UAB, FAU, Charlotte, North Texas, Rice and UTSA.

Mohajir said uncertainty surrounding when UCF enters the Big 12 has slowed down efforts to schedule future football opponents.

We still have some holes and its just a real challenge, he said.

The Big 12 currently plays a nine-game conference schedule, but that could always change which would mean either adding or, even in some cases, subtracting nonconference matchups.

Thats the big challenge right now for all the conferences that are having to deal with conference realignment is the football schedule, said Mohajir.

This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Matt Murschel at mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com or follow him on Twitter at @osmattmurschel.
Britain on Tuesday launched a 1.0 billion support package for Covid-hit businesses, as staff absences from rising cases began to bite in the run-up to Christmas.

Finance minister Rishi Sunak said some 200,000 firms would be eligible for one-off grants to offset losses from what is normally the busiest time of year.

Pubs and restaurants have seen Christmas parties and bookings cancelled because of the spread of the Omicron variant of the virus, hitting December trade by as much as 60 percent.

Sunak said the government recognised that businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors were facing "huge uncertainty at a crucial time".

The government is banking on an ambitious campaign to get all adults in England to have a booster jab of a Covid vaccine by the end of December to try to stop the spread of the mutation.

The director of the Wellcome charitable foundation, Jeremy Farrar, told BBC radio transmission was "eye-wateringly high", as daily infection rates nudged towards 100,000.

But unlike governments in some of Britain's nearest neighbours on the European mainland, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ruled out immediate curbs in the run-up to Christmas.

Tighter public health measures could yet be introduced after this weekend, according to media reports.

- Staff absences -

Across the country, all sectors of British industry have been hit as staff contract the virus and are forced to self-isolate at home.

As the Christmas getaway begins, train companies apologised for employee absences and warned they could affect scheduled services and even lead to cancellations.

Edinburgh Castle and the National History Museum in London -- two of the country's most visited attractions -- were forced to close their doors because of staff illnesses.

That came after several theatres in London's West End entertainment district cancelled performances to protect performers and the public.

Meanwhile, the hotel and restaurant industry has seen closures because of a lack of staff.

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And in the public sector, the government has called for retired teachers to help out, as the virus forces staff out of the classroom.

In London, unions have warned that firefighters face "unprecedented" manpower shortages, although its response to emergencies has not yet been affected.

Johnson has come under pressure from business owners and industry bodies to reintroduce support packages for Covid-hit sectors, who were already struggling after curbs in the last year.

He is, however, facing intense pressure from within his own ruling Conservative party not to bring in tougher restrictions on public freedoms.

Last week, nearly 100 of his own MPs voted against the roll-out of vaccine passports to allow access to some venues, including sports grounds.

Twelve months ago, Johnson was forced to impose restrictions on indoor mixing and social distancing as the Alpha variant of the virus spread rapidly, putting hospitals under pressure.

But it has since been claimed that he and his own staff broke the rules by holding parties at Downing Street and across government departments.

- Disruption -

Retailers have felt the chill from Omicron in December, as shoppers stayed at home to prevent catching the virus before Christmas, employers' association the CBI said.

The Confederation of British Industry's lead economist Ben Jones said retail sales had slowed and expectations for January had been downgraded.

"The concern now is the potential for rapidly rising sickness and staff absences to cause renewed disruption to supply chains in the New Year," he added.

The hospitality and retail sectors were already feeling the pinch of staff shortages, as foreign staff left due to the pandemic and new post-Brexit immigration rules.

Last year, the government offered sales tax holidays and cuts, plus emergency loans to keep businesses afloat as trade plummeted due to stay-at-home restrictions.

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Nicolas Maduro's government wants access to the Venezuelan gold stored at the Bank of England

The UK Supreme Court has prevented Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from accessing $1.95bn (1.4bn) of gold stored in the Bank of England (BoE).

Mr Maduro says the cash will be used to fight Covid-19 in the country.

The Supreme Court overturned a prior Court of Appeal ruling, meaning only opposition leader Juan Guaido, who the UK considers as the legitimate leader, can decide what happens to the gold.

Despite this, in practice the UK deals with the Maduro administration.

Mr Guaido and Mr Maduro have separately appointed two different sets of governors to Venezuela's central bank.

Mr Guaido, who is recognised by more than 50 countries as the legitimate president, wants the gold to stay in the BoE's vaults.

But Mr Maduro, who remains in the presidential palace and in control of the government, military and police, has sued BoE to have the funds released.

Mr Maduro was re-elected to a second six-year term in May 2018 in highly controversial polls, which most opposition parties boycotted.

He claims the money will be transferred to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to buy medical supplies to fight the pandemic.

His critics have blamed him for mismanaging Venezuela's economy, causing a severe crisis where millions of people need aid due to collapsing public services, soaring unemployment and a devalued local currency.

They claim Mr Maduro will use the funds to pay off foreign allies that support his regime.

Venezuela has been sanctioned by a group of nations including the US, UK, European Union, Canada, Switzerland, Panama and Mexico since 2014 over corruption, human rights violations and the suppression of democracy.

Further consideration needed

The Court of Appeal ruling had overturned an earlier UK High Court judgement in July 2020, which ruled that the UK government's recognition of Mr Guaido as Venezuela's acting president was "clear and unequivocal".

On Monday, the Supreme Court said that the Court of Appeal ruling was "misplaced", because all British courts needed to accept that Mr Maduro was not recognised as president "for any purpose".

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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido says the Transition Statute enables him to appoint central bank officials

However, it has now asked the Commercial Court to consider another issue - whether Mr Guaido has been recognised by the UK government as merely being Venezuela's head of state, or if he has been recognised as its head of government as well.

Citing the Transition Statute - articles in the constitution which in such cases call for the leader of the National Assembly to step in - Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in January 2019.

He has since used these laws to appoint central bank officials, which Mr Maduro continues to contend is not permitted under Venezuelan law.

Mr Guaido welcomed the ruling on Monday, saying he and his appointees would "continue to be dedicated to the constitutional duty to protect the assets of the Republic for future generations".

Sarosh Zaiwalla, a London-based lawyer representing Venezuela's central bank, said: "Our client looks forward to continuing this case, with a view to showing that the Board of the El Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) in Caracas is the only validly appointed authority to deal with Venezuela's foreign assets in the interests of the Venezuelan population."
Steve Chapman

You know the country is in trouble when the voice of reason is Donald Trump Jr. The former president's noxious eldest son has an affinity for white supremacists, but when the Capitol riot erupted, he texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging action by the president. "He's got to condemn this s- ASAP."

The communications disclosed Monday by the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 make several things clear. The first is that even diehard Trumpers close to the president were shocked by the attack. The second is that they knew their efforts to blame it on leftist "antifa" radicals were fraudulent.

The last, and most important, is that President Donald Trump was not appalled by the violence. For him, it was a dream come true.

Meadows himself, the second-highest ranking official in the White House and normally an obedient enabler of Trump, was among those who wanted the president to call on the mob to disperse. "I'm pushing it hard," he replied to Trump Jr. "I agree."

One Fox News personality after another expected Meadows to do the right thing. Sean Hannity urged him to get Trump to "make a statement" and "ask people to leave the Capitol." Laura Ingraham told him that Trump "needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy."

Hannity and Ingraham promoted the absurd claim that the riot was the work of antifa militants. But their text messages confirm that they knew better. If leftists were behind the attack on the Capitol, there would have been no point in getting Trump to intervene.

Just the opposite: A White House plea for peace would have confirmed that their "false flag" event was damaging his cause, as they intended. Trump's allies thought only Trump could stop the attack because they knew the attackers were loyal to him.

People arrested for their role in the insurrection, by the way, have left no doubt of their allegiance. "It was not Antifa at the Capitol. It was freedom loving Patriots who were DESPERATE to fight for the final hope of our Republic," tweeted one. "Don't you dare try to tell me that people are blaming this on antifa and BLM," another posted. "We proudly take responsibility for storming the Castle."

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The texts should put to rest any fantasy that Fox News is a legitimate news organization  a right-leaning counterpart of CNN. Hannity, Ingraham and others at Fox spread the lie, which they knew was a lie, that antifa was to blame. In their reports Monday on the House investigation, Hannity and Ingraham also withheld the newsworthy fact of their communications with Meadows on Jan. 6.

But the person most incriminated by these revelations is Trump himself. There can be no doubt that he knew what his violent followers were trying to achieve by rampaging through the halls of Congress, beating Capitol police officers and hunting for Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi  and that he approved of their tactics.

For hours he declined to speak forcefully to restore order. The violence began at 12:53 p.m., and by 2:11, the mob was in the building. At 2:30, fearful senators began evacuating their chamber, followed shortly by House members.

But Trump never even ordered the National Guard into action. It was Pence, from his hiding place, who called to make that request of the acting Defense secretary  and the troops didn't move until 5:02.

Not until 4:17 did the president put out a video asking the rioters to "go home"  while assuring them: "We love you. You are very special." At 6:01, he tweeted: "Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!" Trump felt no shame or regret.

The new evidence fits perfectly with the account by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl in his book "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show." He reports that Trump watched the melee on TV and rebuffed pleas from House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and others. Trump "didn't want to hear any of it," writes Karl, based on interviews with numerous senior officials and Trump confidants. "He saw the day as a triumph."

Had the insurrectionists succeeded in overturning the election, they would have dealt a severe and possibly fatal blow to American democracy. But for Trump, that would have been the ultimate triumph.

Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Uncovering the Truth About the Attack on the Capitol
The University of Utah has said an investigation into KKK members recruiting on its campus is ongoing amid allegations that it inadequately responded to prior incidents.

Utah authorities told the Salt Lake Tribune on Monday that it had reopened an investigation into two apparently related incidents, and that an update was due later this week.

There was recruitment by so-called KKK members in student residences in October, and a defacement of a Black students dorm room in September, students reported. A worker, meanwhile, has said racial slurs were uttered at them in recent months.

The review into the two incidents, as the Tribune reported, came after a University of Utah student accused the institution of inadequately responding to both incidents on its Salt Lake City campus in an Instagram post at the weekend.

It was, however, unclear if the reopened investigation was a response to the students allegations, with the universitys Racist and Bias Incident Response Team initially saying that was the reason.

The university, according to theTribune, said later on Monday that it was not known if the team conducting the review of the two so-called KKK incidents were aware of the post on Instagram.

The Independent has approached the University of Utah for comment.

The Racist and Bias Incident Response Team is composed of representatives from bodies including the University of Utahs police, its equal opportunity office, a student wellness centre, and housing.

Initial investigations were believed to have been carried out by on campus police, and there were reports of no further action taken  despite feces allegedly being wiped on a students door, and people dressed in KKK-style white gowns.

University of Utah president Taylor Randall said in recent months that Racist and hateful behaviour on our campus is an offense to our entire community, particularly our communities of colour, in remarks condemning the incidents.

More than 37,000 students are enrolled at the university.
DIGHTON  Birders flocked to Shaw's Boat Yard Monday hoping to glimpse the Steller's Sea Eagle rumored to be visiting the Taunton River.

Dee McKee, who works at the marina, said more than a hundred photographers and birders had turned up. She's used to seeing nesting pairs of Bald Eagles, but the buzz over this bird was something else. An obliging birder let her hold her cellphone up to a scope to snap photos of the celebrity predator.

Jonathan Goff, 24, drove from Millville when he heard of the sighting on social media.

"It's one of the largest eagles in the world and I would love to see it," said Goff. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They're usually found in the Arctic, but since it's here, that's why I drove the 45 minutes."

Bird watchers Nate Levy of Plymouth, Tonya Tromblee of Salem NH., and Jane Williamson of Wayland look for the rare Steller's Sea Eagle at Mallard Point in Somerset Monday.

The eagle is likely the same one that's sent birding hearts aflutter in Alaska and Canada, the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife said in a Facebook post.

Birds sometimes lose their way and wind up far from their species' usual range. It's a phenomenon called "vagrancy."

Where have the wild birds gone?: 3 billion fewer than 1970

And this Steller's Sea Eagle is one flagrant vagrant. It's native to Asia and Eastern Russia, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Every winter, hundreds of Steller's sea eagles migrate from Russia, to the relatively ice-free northeastern coast of Hokkaido, Japan. They hunt for fish among the ices floes and also scavenge, following the fishing boats to feed on any discards. Konstantin Shatenev took his image from a boat as the eagles retrieved a dead fish thrown onto the ice.

Birders gathered in Dighton Rock State Park, which is across the Taunton from the boat yard. Others staked out the bridge separating Berkley and Dighton.

Send your news tips to reporter Chris Helms by email at CHelms@tauntongazette.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Taunton Daily Gazette.

This article originally appeared on The Taunton Daily Gazette: Steller sea eagle in Massachusetts from Russia and Asia wows birders
Melania Trump-NFT (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Last week, multiple outlets reported that former American First Lady Melania Trump would be returning to public life for the first time since her husbands ill-fated exit last January. Despite her many fumbled attempts to banish bullying from American discourse during her husbands one-term presidency, Melania Trump will not be making her famously ineffectual campaign for kindness the target of her post-White House life. Instead, she will launch an NFT platform, cashing in, as it were, on the crypto craze in an attempt to make money off something that doesnt actually exist.

If the former First Ladys post-political endeavor seems surprising, it shouldnt. She married into a family, after all, that has carried on a long legacy of the Imperial clothing. They promise us robes spun from gold and deliver us nothing at all. Why wouldnt Melania buy into a business of delivering to the public a host of objects  non-fungible tokens delivered under the monetized title Melanias Vision  that arent strictly real?

In some ways, Melania was the most honest Trump around. When she wore the jacket that made her, er, famous  the one that declared, I Really Dont Care Do U?  she was telling us the truth. That was exactly who she was. Unlike the grimier, slimier, Twitter-grubbier Donald, who tried to back out of every racist thing he ever tweeted, Melania said her piece and let us live with it. Nah, she didnt care, and she didnt care if we cared that she didnt care. Get it? If theres a more fitting second act for a vapid, pretend ally of the bullied and the kicked-around than a business that sells actual nothing, I certainly dont know what it is.

Of course, part of the American entrepreneurial spirit lies in the tender, hard-fought ability to cash in by doing any old exploitative thing. There will be plenty of people out there patting Melania on the back for this silly, performative business. Good for you, Mel. Youll get rich(er) by selling nothing. Youll try to convince yourself that art is anything we believe art to be, anything were willing to pay for.

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It should be known that Melania says she is using her initiative for good. She is tying her NFT business to her anti-bullying platform (its called Be Best, a grammatical tic that this writer still cannot get her brain around). But that platform is also powered by Parler, a right-wing social media site that helped to fuel the January 6 insurrection, and that many including me  would argue is hardly an exemplar for anti-bullying. Actually, Parler is basically a room full of bullies, getting their rocks off by punching down at the weaker, the small, the different. How does the statuesque, white, cishet, wealthy, Melania Trump protect the bullied by siding with the aggressor, I wonder?

She doesnt really care  and she doesnt really care if you know it. But she does want you to buy her digital art, attached to a recording of her voice, for the tidy sum of $150.

Should Melania Trump get a second act? The public, I suppose, will get to make that decision for themselves. Whether or not there is space for the wife of an aggressor who set the world on fire in the wake of a democratic loss is up to everyone, and not just one person. It is worth considering, though, the constitutional makeup of a woman who, though notoriously private, will happily cash in on the crypto craze in the interest of a cheap buck, no matter the cost. Is $150 too much to pay a traitor to democracy? Does she really care? Do you?
Somerset County District Attorney Jeff Thomas is facing another preliminary hearing, only this time as a victim and not as a defendant.

His wife, Amy Thomas, is accused of physically assaulting him during a domestic dispute Sept. 12 at their home. Windber police charged her the following day with simple assault, a second-degree misdemeanor, and harassment, a summary offense.

A look at the Somerset County Courthouse.

Her preliminary hearing is scheduled at 1 p.m. Dec. 22 before District Judge Mark J. Bilik of Westmoreland County. This is the fourth time this preliminary hearing has been rescheduled since she was arraigned on the charges Sept. 13.

Why: Judge agrees to transfer case against Somerset DA's wife to the attorney general's office

Unfolding: Because of a new law, Somerset County DA Jeff Thomas is no longer receiving a paycheck

More: Follow Up: Why a woman withdrew her protection petition against Somerset County DA

Jeff Thomas attempted to intervene in his wife's case when it was initially scheduled to go before District Judge Bill Seger of Windber.

Using the official letterhead of his office, Jeff Thomas wrote a memo to Seger dated Sept. 13 informing him that the district attorney's office was dropping the charges against his wife. According to the criminal complaint, Amy Thomas left scratches on her husband's arm that he showed to police when they responded to a 911 call hang-up.

"Please accept this correspondence as the Somerset County District Attorney's Office request to withdraw the pending criminal charges in the above-captioned matter," Jeff Thomas had written.

Though the letter was initially written to Seger, the Windber judge's name is manually scratched out and replaced with a handwritten "Mankamyer," which appears to refer to Judge Susan Mankamyer of Boswell. Mankamyer was the on-call district judge in Somerset County on Sept. 13.

The judges have not spoken publicly about the matter.

Five days after the alleged altercation with his wife, Jeff Thomas was charged by state police in a separate case with sexual assault of another woman. His law license was subsequently suspended by the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. The board does not indicate the reason for suspensions.

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Jeff Thomas was also suspended from his district attorney position Nov. 26 based on a new state law that amended the state's county codes concerning qualifications for district attorneys. The act requires district attorneys to hold an active law license while in office. Since then the Somerset County Commissioners acknowledged the suspension, which means his pay is also being withheld.

Both Amy and Jeff Thomas will be prosecuted in their separate cases by prosecutors with the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General.

This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Whats next on the assault case against Somerset County DA's wife
A Dallas-based activist has filed a new complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a Rapides Parish School District employee.

Like others recently filed by Norris Guillot Jr., this one claims discrimination based on race.

Rapides Parish Schools Superintendent Jeff Powell (center) received a new contract during the regular School Board meeting on Tuesday. Norris Guillot Jr. (left), a community and civil rights activist and equal employment opportunity advocate, asked board members not to offer the contract until action is taken on complaints he filed Monday with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of some district employees.

But, unlike the others, this complainant is white. The allegation is that the employee's boss, who is Black, has degraded or belittled whites on numerous occasions in front of staff and students.

In a Monday email to Naomi Jones-Belvin, the district's human resources director, Guillot wrote that no one should be mistreated in the workplace. He said, while the aim of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to help people of color, it applies to all.

More: Rapides School Board approves new contract for Superintendent Jeff Powell

More: Activist calls for resignations of Rapides Schools Superintendent Powell, 2 others

"White employees are just as equally protected by these same laws as Black employees," he wrote. "Therefore, such degrading attacks against white employees will not be tolerated even by African American/Black employees."

He demanded the employee who made the most recent complaint be placed on paid administrative leave. He also included the same demand for another employee whose complaint was filed earlier this month.

Superintendent Jeff Powell released a statement Monday afternoon when asked for comment about the complaint, saying the district was aware of it.

"Unfortunately, because this is rooted in a personnel issue and may give cause for investigation, we are not able to comment publicly on this situation," it reads.

"However, we do want the RPSB community to always have faith that when an employee grievance is filed or any other complaint or concern is reported, our intent is to always follow RPSB policy as well as state and federal laws. This potential case will be no exception. Lets continue to show the world that Rapides Parish is truly #bettertogether."

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Guillot is an Alexandria native who now works as a community and civil rights activist and equal employment opportunity advocate. He attended the Dec. 7 Rapides Parish School Board meeting, telling members he had filed complaints on behalf of seven employees with the EEOC office in New Orleans.

He also said he had been contacted by other employees who heard of the initial complaints and expected more to be filed.

"The reason I am here tonight is because these charges are connected (to) the superintendent. Some of them are indirect, and some of them are direct," he said.

But board members voted 5-4 to offer Powell a new contract that takes effect on June 30 and ends on Dec. 31, 2024.

The bulk of the previous complaints allege racial discrimination and retaliation on behalf of Black employees working two jobs yet only being paid for one. Another complaint alleges discrimination against an employee who is visually impaired.

Days after Guillot spoke to the board, he issued a call for the resignations of Jones-Belvin, Powell and Finance Director Liz Domite.

This article originally appeared on Alexandria Town Talk: White Rapides School Board employee claims discrimination by Black boss
By Loren Elliott

BROKEN HILL, Australia (Reuters) - During the Australian outback summer, Christmas spirit does not travel by sleigh. It wings in on a single-engine Cessna 182.

At least, that is how David Shrimpton, a pastor with a pilot's licence, delivers holiday cheer to a congregation of a couple of thousand spread over livestock and farm land nearly three times the size of Ireland. Since 2003 the Uniting Church pastor has been flying to some of Australia's most isolated communities to talk and listen to a scattered flock.

(Open https://reut.rs/32elm71 to see a photo essay on David Shrimpton's airborne ministry)

That largely stopped last year when Australia introduced some of the world's strictest COVID-19 restrictions. "Padre Dave" could have claimed essential worker status and kept his schedule of four visits a year throughout this 225,000 sq km (87,000 sq mile) region, but he opted for phone catch-ups to minimise the risk of spreading the coronavirus.

Now, with restrictions easing, Shrimpton is taking to the skies again with hopes of sharing the closest thing to a normal Christmas season this vast tract of western New South Wales state has seen in years. Graziers, farmers, school children, churchgoers, non-believers, all are on Shrimpton's agenda.

"It will be great to go out again and reconnect with these folk, reconnect with the kids and be part of their school life once again, reconnect with the adults who are living remotely and, let them know that they're not forgotten," Shrimpton, 57, told Reuters at a small airport near his home in Broken Hill.

"Some had thought that I'd retired and moved on, but no, I'm still here and still willing to go out and catch up."

The pandemic was just the latest in a string of setbacks - after nearly a half decade of drought - for this loose network of one-pub towns, sheep and cattle stations, Indigenous communities and schools with a handful of children.

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"A lot of these blokes out here are big and tough, but they have a soft side and the drought buckled a few," said Josh Sheard, a former pub owner who has put up Shrimpton for years in Pooncarie, where a sign outside the town says, "Population 84".

Locals will tell you it's far fewer now.

"To be able to talk to Dave was really good for them. They only like telling each other what they're doing when they're making money," said Sheard, swatting away flies over a table of beers in rubber coolers.

Sara Carey, who looks after a merino sheep operation called Netley Station with her partner Tony, has had visits from Shrimpton for six years. Shrimpton, she said, has a knack for getting men to "have a cup of tea and ... answer questions they don't even realise they're answering."

Pooncarie's five public school students - who don't have internet connections good enough for home learning or socialising during lockdowns - were excited about their year-end awards day mostly because of who would be attending.

"Even though they knew they were going to get a disco, they knew they were going to get awards, they were putting on a play, all they talked about the last few days was 'when's Padre Dave coming?'" said Alison King, the school's teaching principal.

"It's about having someone to just spend time with, and if they've got any concerns they can talk to him, even if it's just to talk, having someone just to listen. He comes and listens."

Shrimpton's unusual occupation is the result of two callings. He was interested in flying as a child, he said, but worked in real estate and childcare and drove taxis before studying, at his wife's urging, to become a minister.

While appointed to a church near an airport, he happened to see an advertisement for flying lessons and signed up on a whim. Next thing, he was moved to Darwin, another remote location in northern Australia, to begin what has become nearly 20 years as a flying pastor. He moved to Broken Hill in 2014.

Shrimpton said that like his congregation, he also has been impacted by the restrictions imposed on social interaction over the past two years. This visit would mark the beginning of "better times and a brighter future", he said.

"It's time to celebrate ... enjoying one another's company and hearing from folk in the bush that they are looking forward to connection with family that wasn't there last Christmas."

(Reporting by Loren Elliott; Writing by Byron Kaye; Editing by Tom Hogue)
People gather at Stonehenge in Wiltshire to mark the winter solstice (Ben Birchall/PA Wire)

As the southern hemisphere celebrates the start of summer, those north of the equator will experience the shortest day of the year, known as the winter solstice. This year, it falls on 21 December.

The word solstice derives from sol, the Latin word for sun, and sistere, which means to come to a stop or make stand.

Arriving on the same day across the globe, a solstice occurs when the sun reaches its lowest or highest point in the sky during the year as a result of the Earths axis tilting to or away from the sun.

Historically, the winter solstice has been of great importance to many cultures, such as Ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome, often as a marker for the passing seasons, and a possible time of rebirth.

In northern Europe, from the Faroe Islands to Estonia, Germanic peoples have long celebrated the event, which became known as Yule.

While Yule dates back to the Norse people, who celebrated the suns rebirth for 12 days, it was also celebrated by Anglo-Saxon pagans.

According to Pliny the Elder, in Britain, druid priests would mark the important date by gathering mistletoe and sacrificing bulls  which was also likely a practical measure to limit the number of mouths to feed during months of famine.

In addition to mistletoe and 12 days of festivities, several Christmas traditions, such as Yule logs and decorating trees, date back to Yule, which were later adopted and adapted by Christians.

But the winter solstice is still celebrated in parts of the UK and US. The most popular annual tradition sees druids, pagans and enthusiasts gather at Stonehenge to watch the sun rise.
ALFRED, Maine  One in five people currently detained at the York County Jail have tested positive recently for COVID-19, as the facility deals with its second major outbreak since the pandemic began.

Jail Administrator Maj. Nathan C. Thayer said Tuesday, Dec. 21, the virus has been detected in a total of 30 residents and seven staff members as the facility has conducted universal testing of residents and staff.

Sheriff Bill King said there were 149 detainees housed at the jail on Tuesday. The jail is continuing to book newly arrested people under existing intake modification guidelines, King said.

A total of 30 detainees and seven staff members at York County Jail in Alfred, Maine, have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks, Jail Administrator Maj. Nathan C. Thayer said Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021.

Thayer had first announced in an internal memo Dec. 10 that one staffer and five detainees housed in that staffer's unit had tested positive for the virus. The residents were moved to the jail's medical wing alongside an additional detainee who had tested positive during intake, he wrote.

Targeted testing revealed additional cases, so the jail has since completed two rounds of universal testing, Thayer said Tuesday, in written answers provided by King.

Some have experienced mild cold-like symptoms, but "a large number" of the cases have involved no symptoms whatsoever, Thayer said. Although the medical staff has been keeping an eye on COVID-positive residents and checking their temperatures daily, no one has required medical intervention, he said.

Not all bad news: Yes, omicron has overtaken delta. No, it's not March 2020.

Thayer said the jail is continuing to follow strict COVID safety protocols and coordinate with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maine Department of Corrections.

"We have been fortunate at the jail because the county is conducting our own PCR testing and we are receiving results that day," he said. "Many of the counties are not receiving their results for five to six days, which becomes nearly impossible to get ahead of the spreading virus. We have had a quick response and I feel that we have it contained, but time will tell."

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The outbreak comes as the nation braces for the impacts of the omicron variant, which has been detected in 89 countries and 43 U.S. states, including Maine.

York County Jail staff were already required to wear masks, but when a staff member tested positive, the jail required all staff to wear an N95 or Envo mask, Thayer said last week. Prior to their shift, every staff member must complete a COVID-19 self certification health screening in the lobby, a process that includes mandatory temperature checks, he said.

Broader community: York Hospital caring for 10 people with COVID as Maine braces for omicron variant

Detainees are required to wear cloth masks, but compliance with this requirement "has been a challenge at times," since jail residents do not always wish to follow rules, Thayer said.

Thayer, who said last week he believes his team has been proactive and caught this outbreak as quickly as possible, was hired as the permanent York County Jail administrator about three months ago. He had stepped in as acting administrator over the summer in light of Capt. Dan Bean's resignation.

Lawsuit filed: Fired jailkeeper Michael Vitiello sues York County to get his job back

Bean, who has been credited with steering the jail through a major COVID-19 outbreak last year, served as acting administrator while long-time administrator Lt. Col. Michael Vitiello was on paid administrative leave. Vitiello was ultimately fired in July over his handling of the 2020 outbreak, though he has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit to challenge the decision.

Cellblock COVID: Inmate's view of York County Jail outbreak

The jail's first outbreak  which was linked to 48 cases of the virus among detainees, 18 among staff and 16 among household contacts of staff  is believed to have stemmed from a corrections officer being allowed to work five full shifts while symptomatic after attending an August 2020 wedding in Millinocket that has since been identified as a so-called "super-spreader" event.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Maine jail COVID outbreak spreads to 1 in 5 detainees, plus 7 staffers
Because this section is free of charge, community events are subject to run based on available space. Email events to calendar@newsadvance.com.

Through December

Celebration of Lights, 5 p.m.  9 p.m. Free and open to the public. Lynchburg Parks & Recreations drive-thru light display at Riverside Park returns each night in December. For more information, go online to: https://www.lynchburgparksandrec.com/programs-and-activities/celebration-of-lights/.

Dec. 21

Lynchburg Tacky Lights Tour, 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., Miller Center, 301 Grove St. Board the Parks and Recreation tacky lights tour bus and enjoy festive holiday music while viewing Lynchburgs finest lit houses! The event offers seven nights of tours with two tours per evening. Each tour will include a 45-minute circuit starting and ending at Miller Center. Smores and hot cocoa can be enjoyed before or after the tour at Miller Center. All youth must be accompanied by an adult. Contact Parks and Rec to feature your neighborhood or home in the tour. All tours are sold in family pods for public health safety. Ages 4+. Register three days in advance. $100 per group of 8. More info and to register: www.lynchburgparksandrec.com.

Dec. 20-23

Christmas Art Camp, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., by Imagination Station Studio, 14805 Forest Road #225, Forest. Children will get to paint canvases, ceramics, wood, shutters and more, using different mediums to create their own masterpieces. All supplies are included. Only 20 spots are open. Tickets are only $90 for four days or $25 per day. For more information, email imaginationstation17@gmail.com.

Dec. 22

Christmas Candlelight Service, 7 p.m. at the Lynchburg First Church of the Nazarene at 1737 Wards Ferry Road, Lynchburg.

Dec. 23

Christmas Fun Night, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Bedford Moose Lodge #1897, 2986 West Lynchburg-Salem Turnpike in Bedford. Tacky Christmas attire contest and a dirty Santa gift game. Bring a wrapped present in the $10 to $20 range for the dirty Santa. Prizes will be awarded to the worst dressed.

Dec. 26  Jan. 1

Virtual Kwanzaa Celebration. Celebrate and learn the African tradition and values of Kwanzaa with the Legacy Museum! Kwanzaa is a week-long celebration from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1. This year the program will be featured virtually on LTV Channel 15 and the Lynchburg Parks & Recreation YouTube channel. Tune in virtually throughout the week of Kwanzaa for a daily tribute featuring each of the seven principals led by local community members. The program will include candle lighting, musical performances, dancing, and drumming presented by the Kuumba Dance Ensemble. More info: www.lynchburgparksandrec.com/programs-and-activities/kwanzaa-holiday-celebration/.

Jan. 2

After New Years Day Bull Buckin, 1 p.m., Event by True Grit Rodeo, 3651 Grit Rd, Hurt. Put on your cowboy hats, Carharts and boots to watch bull bucking. Bring a lawn chair or blanket or sit on the bleachers. Pack a lunch. Admission is $10 cash at the gate; children 6 and under are free. There is a $5 cooler fee.

Feb. 12

Love and the LSO, 6 p.m. at the Virginian Hotel. The Lynchburg Symphony Orchestra will perform in the ballroom of the ballroom of Downtown Lynchburgs historic Virginian Hotel. Enjoy a special 3-course dinner, music and dancing. Renee Ruth will be the special quest vocalist. Tickets are $125 per person, and only 150 tickets will be sold. Call (434) 845-6604 or email tickets@lynchburgsymphony.org to reserve tickets.

April 23

Bedford Cares Spring Craft Fair, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 201 Sweeney Circle, Forest. Bedford Cares, a non-profit that supports the humane control of feral car populations and conducts a Trap Neuter and Return program for feral cat colonies, will hold a vendor and craft fair. The event will also include a 50/50 raffle, as well as the sale of breakfast sandwiches, coffee, pizza, nachos, baked goods, and assorted beverages.
Each year, the YWCA invites Santa and company to come to its shelter for children who are escaping violence with their mothers each year.

This year, Santa visited last week and Lauren Alexander, associate director of communications for the nonprofit, said its very important for the children because theyve often left everything behind from their homes.

We also sometimes have kids from previous years who have passed through our programs, she said of the children the YWCA provides gifts for. But we also have an incredible amount of support during Christmas from people and businesses with enormously generous hearts that give to those in crisis, and its amazing.

Alexander said the nonprofit is blessed by so many people who want to make sure Christmas happens at the shelter for displaced families due to violence.

We are truly blessed at Christmas. We get so excited around here, she said.

Linda Ellis-Williams, senior director of victim services, said the staff at the YWCA is so grateful to businesses such as Target, Central Virginia Orthopedics and BWX Technologies along with various individuals who get involved and donate money and gifts to make sure the victims at the shelter have a better and brighter Christmas.

Its the true meaning of Christmas, she said.

Santa and Mrs. Claus visited the shelter earlier this month and asked children what they wanted for Christmas.

And when they walked in the room, the childrens eyes lit up, Ellis-Williams said. If you can imagine a shelter, its kind of [a] sterile environment and the children just kind of down.

But when Mr. and Mrs. Claus appeared, she said they felt like Christmas was actually going to happen this year.

Santa and Mrs. Claus read Christmas stories and talked to them about life at the North Pole with the reindeer, Ellis-Williams said, and each child had the opportunity to sit on Santas lap and take pictures with him.

I think that just really brightened our childrens day and kind of made them able to forget the crisis that theyre in the midst of, she said. Theyre homeless and unable to spend Christmas in their home and in their own environment.

She said there are so many people in the community who dont know the victims or the children or their stories but they care enough to want to help make their Christmases better.

BWXT adopts the shelter each year and makes sure everyone in the shelter got someone on their Christmas wish list, a donor fixed large stockings for each child and Santa was able to pass those out, and Target adopted a few larger families to give them the gifts they wanted this year.

So weve just had a wonderful pouring out of love, she said. Our staff is so joyously overwhelmed.

Currently, the shelter has six families and 15 children but the YWCA also provides Christmases for the families who have moved out of the shelter and are in their first year of independency.

The first year of standing on the own feet is the hardest because theyre struggling financially and unable to do Christmas for their children, she said.

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Japan hanged three death-row inmates on Tuesday, its first executions in two years, amid growing criticism by human rights groups of the countrys use of the death penalty.

One of the three, Yasutaka Fujishiro, was convicted of killing seven people and setting fire to their house in 2004, while the other two, Tomoaki Takanezawa and Mitsunori Onogawa, were convicted in the 2003 killings of two pinball parlor employees.

Executions are carried out in high secrecy in Japan, where prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. Since 2007, Japan has begun disclosing the names of those executed and some details of their crimes, but information is still limited.

Justice Minister Yoshihisa Furukawa said at a news conference that the three had committed extremely ghastly crimes and the punishment was appropriate.

Furukawa declined to comment on the timing of the executions, often carried out during the year-end holiday season when parliament is in recess, which opponents say is an attempt by the government to reduce criticism. Japans parliament had its final session of the year on Tuesday.

The executions were the first since Dec. 26, 2019, when a Chinese citizen convicted in the 2003 killing of a family of four in Fukuoka was put to death. He was one of three hanged that year. In 2018, Japan executed 15, including 13 Aum Shinrikyo cult members convicted in a deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyos subways.
Daihatsu Motor Co. said Monday that all of its new models for the domestic market will be electric vehicles (EV) or hybrids by 2030.

The company also said it plans to launch an electric mini-vehicle by 2025. Utilizing subsidies from central and local governments, Daihatsu aims to offer the vehicle at about 1 million in real terms. The plan suggests that moves to electrify mini-vehicles, which account for about 40% of Japans new car market, are also accelerating

As carbon neutrality is being actively discussed, we will increase our EVs as much as possible, Daihatsu President Soichiro Okudaira said Monday at a press conference in Tokyo.

Toyota Motor Corp., Daihatsus parent company, has announced its goal of achieving global sales of 3.5 million EVs in 2030. Daihatsus electric mini-vehicles are included in the 3.5 million, but Okudaira did not mention how many of them will be Daihatsu vehicles.
Japan's Prime Minister Kishida Fumio addressed the nation after the Diet wrapped up its latest session on Tuesday. Kishida said the government will continue its tougher border restrictions in response to the coronavirus Omicron variant.

He said, "The government will take pre-emptive measures to contain the Omicron variant. People who have been in close contact with an infected person will be asked to stay at designated facilities for 14 days, instead of quarantining at home."

The government has so far not allowed the entry of foreign nationals who are not residents in principle.

The measure was originally planned to last until the end of December, but Kishida now says it will be continued although he did not mention an exact date.

The government will decide on this after analyzing the situation.

The prime minister said the government is ramping up a rollout of booster shots and is preparing to distribute oral COVID-19 drugs.
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant intends to build an underwater tunnel to release water from the plant into the sea, it said on Tuesday, as part of a project to treat and dispose of contaminated water.

A decade after a massive earthquake and tsunami ravaged the northeastern coast, disabling the plant and causing the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, nearly 1.3 million tonnes of contaminated water has accumulated at the site.

The water, enough to fill about 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools, is stored in huge tanks at an annual cost of about 100 billion yen ($880 million), and space is running out.

This year, Tokyo Electric Power (9501.T) (Tepco) outlined plans to discharge more than 1 million tonnes of the water, after treatment and dilution, from a point about 1 km (0.6 miles) offshore from the power station.

Tepco submitted detailed plans on Tuesday to the nuclear regulation authority for approval, Junichi Matsumoto, a company official, told reporters.

Pumps would move the treated water from the tanks to the seashore and through a seabed tunnel to release it at a depth of 12 metres (40 ft), and about 1 km out at sea, the firm said.
Tokyo's Musashino City Assembly has voted down a draft ordinance that would have effectively allowed the city's foreign residents to vote in referendums under the same conditions as their Japanese neighbors.

Mayor Matsushita Reiko presented the proposal to the municipal assembly with the aim of bringing into the city's policy the opinions of residents with diversified origins.

The proposal was to grant votes in referendums to anyone aged 18 or older who has been registered as a resident for at least three months.

This would effectively enable foreign nationals to vote under the same conditions as Japanese.

The results of the referendums are not legally binding, but the draft ordinance attracted much attention from outside the city as well as within it, including that of lawmakers.

An assembly committee approved the draft last week. But it was voted down 14 to 11 in a plenary session on Tuesday.

Members of factions led by the Constitutional Democratic Party and the Japanese Communist Party voted in favor, while members of factions led by the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito voted against.

Speaking in favor of the plan, one assembly member said the proposed ordinance would greatly help advance citizen autonomy.

But another argued that certain conditions must be set before foreign residents are allowed to cast ballots.

Mayor Matsushita told reporters after the vote that she is taking the assembly's rejection seriously.

She said she will listen to the assembly's opinion that more information should be provided before enacting the ordinance.

Matsushita added that she will review the proposal and continue to seek ways to create a society in which people respect diversity and support each other.
DES MOINES (AP)  After experiencing a spike in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths after the Thanksgiving holiday, Iowa goes into Christmas week with continued high widespread virus activity and no significant gains in vaccination.

The Iowa Department of Public Health said 788 people were hospitalized on Monday, a slight decline from Fridays 810. The agency said 171 people remained in intensive care, one person less than on Friday.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows more than 10,700 cases and 112 additional deaths have been reported in the past seven days in Iowa, where 7,680 people have died.

The CDC says 64.1% of Iowans have received at least one dose of vaccine, leaving more than 35% of the population still unvaccinated. Public health data showed Pottawattamie County was at 53.2%. The rate is 62.2% among residents 12 or older.

Pottawattamie County hosts weekly vaccine clinics from 4 to 6 p.m. Wednesday and Friday and 8 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Veterans Affairs building, 636 Sixth Ave.
Multiple tornadoes and thunderstorms that struck the Great Plains and upper Midwest on Dec. 15 were the result of a rare event called a derecho, according to the National Weather Services Storm Prediction Center. It was the first on record in December in the United States.

What is a derecho?A derecho is often described as an inland hurricane.

According to the National Weather Service, the term comes from the Spanish word derechos to mean direct or straight ahead and was first used in 1888 by a chemist and professor of physical sciences.

The storm has no eye and its powerful winds come across in a line. That can cause widespread overall damage and smaller pockets of severe damage.

Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist in the Atlanta area and a former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said a derecho can develop from a series of separate storms, usually carrying hail and strong winds, that combine and build into a larger bowing complex.

The term bow describes how it appears on radar.

When that happens, the system can subsist on its own, it will continually fuel itself, Maue said. It can cause tremendous damage with straight-line winds.

How often do

they occur?Derechos are relatively rare events, and in the U.S. are more likely to occur in the Corn Belt, an area that ranges from Minnesota and Iowa south and eastward toward the Ohio Valley, according to the National Weather Service.

Theyre more likely to occur from May through August, particularly during periods of high heat  making the December derecho so uncommon.

The climatology of derechoes depends on the location and season, but if you consider the entire US (east of the Rockies), then youll usually see one or two, possible more per year depending upon the weather patterns, Maue said.

What damage

can it cause?A 2020 derecho that traveled from eastern Nebraska across Iowa, including the Council Bluffs area, and parts of Wisconsin and Illinois reached wind speed of a major hurricane. The National Weather Services Storm Prediction Center reported winds approaching 100 miles per hour (161 kilometers per hour) in multiple places. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, residents emerged from their homes to find an estimated 100,000 trees had been snapped or torn out of the ground.

A 2009 storm dubbed a Super Derecho by the National Weather Service traveled from western Kansas to eastern Kentucky. It caused several deaths and injuries and more than $500 million in damages by the time it had traveled more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers).

A 2003 derecho traveled from Arkansas through several southern states including Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. Two people died and 11 were hurt.

Last weeks storm system spawned at least 45 tornadoes and caused widespread damage. Five deaths have been blamed on the storms.

Are there different types of derechoes?

Yes. The August 2020 storm system was the result of what is known as a progressive derecho. The Dec. 15 event was a serial derecho.

The weather service said a progressive derecho is fueled by a hot and moist environment with relatively strong winds aloft. Serial derechos are produced by storms with strong winds that bow outward, the service said. They sweep across an area both long and wide, driven by the presence of very strong winds in the atmosphere.

The unprecedented December warm spell included temperatures that rose to 70 degrees as far north as Wisconsin, creating evening temperatures that weather historian Chris Burt compared to that of a warm July evening.
On Thursday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds issued a disaster proclamation in response to severe storms on Dec. 15. The governors proclamation activated the Iowa Individual Assistance Grant Program (IIAGP) and the Iowa Disaster Case Management program.

West Central Community Action had seven counties declared a disaster area: Cass, Harrison, Mills, Montgomery, Page, Pottawattamie and Shelby Counties.

The Iowa Individual Assistance Grant Program (IIAGP) may provide up to $5,000 of assistance, reimbursement and/or vendor voucher, for covered items to households at or below 200% of the federal poverty level or a maximum annual income of $43,920 for a family of three. Applications must be made through your local community action office.

West Central Community Action is located at the Omni Centre Business Park, 300 W. Broadway, Suite 35 in Council Bluffs. The office can be reached at 712-322-2621.

Area residents may be eligible for repair or replacement of items damaged by storms/flooding. Potential applicants have 45 days from the date of proclamation to submit a claim. Claims are due by Jan. 31, 2022.

The Iowa Disaster Case Management (IDCM) program is to address serious needs to overcome disaster-related hardship, injury or adverse conditions. Disaster case managers work with clients to create a disaster recovery plan and provide guidance and referrals. There are no income eligibility requirement for Disaster Case Management and there is no direct financial assistance provide by Disaster Case Management. Disaster Case Management closes 180 days from the disaster proclamation, on April 15, 2022.

Additionally, individuals affected by the storms/flooding are encouraged to report their damage/losses to their county emergency management office.
DES MOINES  Some Democratic state lawmakers for years have proposed legalizing marijuana in Iowa, just as 19 other states have already done.

They have been stopped in those efforts by the Republican majorities who set the states legislative agenda and a Republican governor who has said she does not support legalizing marijuana.

So statehouse Democrats, with public opinion on their side, went back to the drawing board and have devised a new proposal: let Iowans decide.

Roughly a handful of Senate Democrats on Tuesday held a news conference to announce they will introduce legislation that would propose an amendment to the Iowa Constitution that would make marijuana legal for recreational use and regulated like alcohol.

Amendments to the Iowa Constitution must be passed in two legislative sessions separated by an election, and then must be approved by a public vote.

More than half of Iowans, 54%, support legalizing marijuana for recreational use, according to a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll from March.

Its time to give Iowans the freedom to vote on something the majority of them support, instead of letting a handful of politicians hold Iowans back, said Sen. Janet Petersen, a Democrat from Des Moines.

Public support in Iowa for legal marijuana has climbed exponentially in recent years: it was at just 29% in a 2013 Iowa Poll.

This has become a mainstream issue. The majority of Iowans support this, said Sen. Joe Bolkcom, a Democrat from Iowa City. The Republicans are in the minority on this. That said, we need their help to move this constitutional amendment to voters so they can have their voices heard.

That does not sound likely. Such a proposal likely would move through the judiciary committee, and the man who chairs that committee in the Senate, Sen. Brad Zaun, a Republican from Urbandale, said that will not happen.

Gimmicks like a constitutional amendment on recreational marijuana do a better job of illustrating the lack of ideas Senate Democrats have to solve the problems of Iowans than any response I have, Zaun said in an emailed statement. I have no intentions of advancing this bill out of the judiciary committee.

Statehouse Republicans have in recent years approved two proposed amendments to the state constitution advancing conservative causes. One, which would add to the Iowa Constitution gun rights language that is stronger even than the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, will go before Iowa voters in the November 2022 general election.

The other proposed constitutional amendment recently approved by statehouse Republicans would declare the Iowa Constitution does not guarantee a right to an abortion. The earliest it could appear on Iowans ballots would be 2024.

The 2022 session of the Iowa Legislature begins January 10.

Iowa has a medical marijuana program, although advocates contend it is too weak and does not allow patients to access cannabis-based medication that is strong enough to help address some more serious illnesses.
I had a front row seat to something stunning on Nov. 30 and I have yet to grasp the full meaning of what our community did.

At SHARE Omaha, we organize local nonprofit efforts to raise support for Giving Tuesday, known as #GivingTuesday712 in southwest Iowa. Giving Tuesday is a global day of giving following Thanksgiving, and for the third year we prepared for months in advance with our partners at the Pottawattamie County Community Foundation and sponsor TS Bank. All this work was in hopes that Council Bluffs metro individuals, families and businesses would hear our collective urging to support the causes you care about with time, dollars and needed items leading into 2022.

To say the generous souls of our region responded is an understatement. Pottawattamie County Community Foundation raised $2.26 million dollars, comprised of public gifts and sustaining nonprofit endowment contributions as well as a 20% match from the foundation. We hoped for a 40% growth in giving metro-wide over Giving Tuesday 2020. Instead, PCCF achieved a 1,267% growth.

You did this, with gifts of $10, $25 and $50, each meaningful to you and the organizations you choose to receive your gifts of love. Every dollar of the $5.49 million raised across the Council Bluffs-Omaha metro is the beginning of a story. Giving at this monumental level will improve lives. I know Ill hear tales of the good things these dollars are doing far beyond the campaign.

Donna Dostal, president and CEO of PCCF shared with me, We are excited by the outpouring of support and true philanthropy to our nonprofit partners and southwest Iowa community. We applaud our southwest Iowa community for coming out in force to make true, durable impact a reality for generations to come.

So many givers in Council Bluffs put our city motto into action, proving that we are unlike anywhere else. The surge in local giving even caught the attention of the global Giving Tuesday organizers. Celeste Flores, United States communities director for Giving Tuesday, kept saying phenomenal as she watched the outpouring of selflessness happening in our region.

Im energized by the example set by southwest Iowa this year! You all come together, giving what you could to move mountains for the special nonprofits in the Council Bluffs metro that Ive heard so much about. Ill be sharing your generosity as an example of whats possible when I talk to other cities preparing for Giving Tuesday 2022, Flores said.

Heather Beekhuizen, community liaison at New Visions Homeless Services, was not sure prior to Giving Tuesday if they would be able to provide diapers for families attending their holiday event. TS Bank employees and customers came together to collect diapers and fill their need.

TS Bank employee Jacque Jerkovich was inspired to do more. Many years, Jacque organizes her network to join her in giving back to a cause. This year, she called on friends to help assemble Advent calendar boxes to be delivered to Care & Share House on Dec. 22. Each day of December, Jacque and 30 friends are adding a food item to their boxes, slowly building a nourishing bounty for local families. When I asked her why she was motived to do this she replied, Im not rich, but I can still give.

Staff at Express Employment Professionals of Council Bluffs realized that Promise 4 Paws and New Visions needed new and used blankets, towels and sheets. They organized a drive and invited others to join in their collection. The kindergarten classrooms of teachers Rebecca Liston, Jennifer Pearce and Kevin Maxcy of College View Elementary School donated blankets for the drive as a part of a class project.

Liston shared, Through our Unit of Inquiry, we studied and learned what living things need to survive. One of them is warmth and shelter, as you know! We thought this was a perfect opportunity to help people and animals. At College View we encourage kids to take action and this was a way they could take action and help.

Pam Myers, owner of Express Employment, was astonished by the number of blankets the children had collected to donate, filling two entire cars. She put out the call to give, and like us, was stunned by the response.

Volunteers helped Golden Hills Resource Conservation and Development process seeds on Giving Tuesday at Iowa Western Community Colleges Dodge Hall greenhouse. They gave their time and experienced the work of Golden Hills firsthand as they learned the uses for different native plants.

At the end of the day on Tuesday, Nov. 30 I saw the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge turn its lights to purple and red, symbolizing the Iowa and Nebraska Giving Tuesday campaigns coming together to meet in the middle of the river, celebrating our communitys cross-river effort to fill nonprofit needs going into the new year.

Thank you, each of you, who gave for Giving Tuesday and are still giving end of year donations. You are needed, appreciated and a true example of what it means to share.

Fourney is the marketing and communications manager for SHARE Omaha.
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
I recently subscribed to a new internet service, which meant a technician had to come to the house to install equipment. He got a kick out of the wall-mounted phone in my basement. Not only is it wall-mounted, it also has a rotary dial. Yes, its old. I suspect it would make a good museum ar
The Moroccan government announced, on Monday, a ban on New Years Eve celebrations, as part of a set of measures to curb the spread of the COVID-19.

Besides banning all New Years Eve celebrations, the measures also include banning the organization of parties and special events in hotels, restaurants, and tourist establishments.

Restaurants and cafes will be required to close at 11:30 p.m., while authorities will apply a night curfew on New Years Eve from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.

These decisions were taken on the basis of legal provisions relating to the management of the state of health emergency, and as part of strengthening the preventive measures necessary to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

They also aim to preserve the health of citizens and consolidate the important positive results achieved by the Kingdom in its fight against the pandemic.

The government underlines that the danger of the pandemic persists, stressing that the current situation requires strict respect by all citizens of public authorities instructions, in addition to the precautionary measures issued by health authorities.
The Royal Armed Forces (FAR) have received the first batch of the Chinese long-range anti-aircraft defense system with a Chinese FD-2000B battery, ordered in 2017, according to the Spanish website Defensa.com.

The first battery for the FD-2000B system was received in the middle of this year, and was activated a few weeks ago in Moroccos first military base dedicated to long-range air defense.

The military based, inaugurated recently, is located at about 50 kilometers north of Rabat in Sidi Yahia el-Gharb. The base, extending over an area of 42,000 m2, has a fixed circular starting point with a diameter of 170 square meters, equipment repair hangars, administrative headquarters, and barracks, according to the Spanish website.

The base houses another Sky Dragon 50 medium-range anti-aircraft defense system, also acquired from China in 2017, Defensa said.

The battery of the FD-2000B long-range air defense system received is one of four batteries that Morocco ordered in 2017 from the Asian country. It is an export version of the HQ-9B, which has a range of 250 km.

Defensa noted that the installation is considered a major breakthrough, as Morocco has relied for many years solely on its air force fighters to perform air defense tasks, due to the absence of a ballistic missile threat.

Morocco has previously expressed interest in acquiring US Patriot missiles and in January this year, the US International Trade Administration confirmed the sale of PATRIOT Air Defense systems and G550 reconnaissance aircraft to the Kingdom. Pending the reception of the PATRIOT, Morocco could resort to Israeli Barak-8 missiles.

Also, Morocco had previously requested a medium-range air defense system from China, and it is related to the FD-2000 (HQ-9) SAM missile defense system. This system consists of trucks equipped with four missiles each as well as with radars and spotters.

These acquisitionsshow that the Royal Armed Forces remain consistent in their efforts to modernize weaponry.

The Finance Bill of 2022 confirmed Moroccos continuation of this approach, by allocating a huge financial budget to the Royal Armed Forces.

Under the Bill, $12.8 billion will be allocated to purchasing and repairing equipment of the Royal Armed Forces, and it is related to the acquisition of new weapons, which means signing new arms deals, in addition to maintaining the military arsenal currently owned by Moroccan army.
A year after the signing of the Morocco-US-Israel deal, Rabat has already started to reap diplomatic and economic benefits, bolstering its clout in the region in favor of peace and stability.

The deal to resume ties between Rabat and Tel Aviv was brokered by the Trump administration which recognized Moroccos sovereignty over the Sahara region and supported the autonomy plan.

The US support for Moroccos territorial integrity bolstered Rabats position on the artificial conflict in a context where an increasing number of states have already opened consulates in the Sahara territory bringing tangible support for Morocco.

The deal ended decades of ambiguity and came as a culmination of a series of Moroccos diplomatic inroads on the conflict, which is viewed by the international community more as a relic of the Cold war and as a proxy war perpetuated by Algeria to serve its hegemonic agenda.

The US recognition of the Moroccan claim to its Sahara and its support for the autonomy plan is a victory for Morocco as it seeks a political solution to the conflict based on a mutually acceptable solution in line with UN Security Council resolutions which describe the autonomy initiative as serious and credible.

Morocco has also maintained ties with Israel prior to the normalization deal. Nearly 1 million Israelis are of Moroccan Jewish descent and Morocco is home to the largest number of Jewish saints and mausoleums in the region, making it a key pilgrimage site.

Morocco has also distinguished itself in the Arab region  since the era of Hassan II- as a credible mediator between Palestinians and Israelis.

Moroccos quest for peace and its advocacy of the two-state solution with Jerusalem as a capital of a viable Palestinian state as well as its renewed ties with Israel further bolster the Kingdoms position to play the role of a mediator between Israelis and Palestinians.

The deal with Israel is also beneficial for the Moroccan economy and its impact has started to be felt on the tourism sector in particular with the launch of direct flights between the two countries.

Tourism authorities in the country have started teaching Hebrew to tourist guides in preparation for an important inflow of tourists from Israel.

The Moroccan-Israeli cooperation covers an array of realms including agriculture, high-tech cooperation and trade. Several agreements were signed to that end between Moroccan and Israeli officials.

A milestone was made between the two countries with the visit last month of Israeli defense minister to Morocco where he signed a deal with Moroccan defense administration for cooperation covering procurement and the military industry.

Morocco stands to win more diplomatic support by its new alliance with the US and Israel and sends a strong message to the EU to leave its ambiguity in favor of a clear-cut recognition of Moroccos historic rights in its Sahara.

Morocco is a centuries-old nation that was partitioned by European colonial powers and retrieving the Sahara is part of a process of its territorial integrity which the US supports.
Russias Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare has barred all imports of various types of vegetables and fruits from producers of several countries including Egypt over fear of contaminations, Arab Finance reports.

The move, according to the federal service, is meant to prevent large-scale infectious diseases among the population.

The ban targets a number of producers of oranges, tangerines, grapes, peppers, lemons, and pomegranates in Turkey, the Egyptian media notes.

Producers from China and Iran have been also placed on the blacklist.
Egypt is negotiating with five international financial institutions funding for planned Aswan-Toshka railway project linking the Arab republic to neighboring Sudan, reports say.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, World Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and Islamic Development Bank, Arab Finance reports citing Al Mal.

The media did not disclose the size of the funds being negotiated for the 280-kilo meter line expected to be completed between 24 and 36 months.

The project is the first phase in a larger project that will establish a rail link between Egypt and Sudan, with a second phase planned to connect Toshka to the Sudanese border town of Wadi Halfa, reports say.

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.
Coast guard units of the Royal Navy, patrolling in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, have rescued, from Dec.18 to 21, a total of 352 illegal migrants, mostly from Sub-Sahara, including women and children.

According to Moroccan military source, these migrants were in distress in high sea aboard makeshift boats. After rescuing them, the Royal Navy provided them necessary medical assistance before taking them to the nearest port of the Kingdom.

Morocco has regularized the situation of over 50,000 migrants, in two campaigns, providing them protection and assistance as well as access to health care and education services, including professional and vocational training.

The North African Kingdom is a destination for sub-Saharan African migrants, who either remain in the country or use it as a gateway to Europe.
A 30-year-old North Platte man was sentenced Monday to three to five years in state prison for attempting to distribute methamphetamine in January.

Michael J. Guerra received the sentence during a hearing in Lincoln County District Court. Guerra, who appeared by video from the detention center, was credited with 119 days served.

Judge Michael Piccolo pointed to Guerras criminal history and also his failure to meet terms while on probation on three prior occasions.

According to court records, Guerra also walked away from treatment Nov. 12 and did not report back to the detention center.

Guerra pleaded guilty Sept. 27 of possession of a hazardous drug with intent to distribute.

Also Monday, Eugene I. Richter, 47, had a felony charge of making a terroristic threat on May 5, 2020, dismissed as he has been in jail for 460 days  longer than the sentence for the charge would have been.

The initial plan was to get Richter a bed at a regional mental health center, but he remains 10th on a waiting list for an opening. The time frame for him to move to the top of the list is unknown.
The Lincoln County commissioners on Monday approved a request for CARES Act funds for the West Central District Health Department.

The WCDHD request was for $349,224.77. The board approved less than that because there is approximately $291,000 remaining in the CARES account.

Commissioner Chris Bruns motion was for the remaining funds in the CARES account.

Deputy County Attorney Tyler Volkmer said all of the expenses listed on the request qualified for the funding. The commissioners gave WCDHD Executive Director Shannon Vanderheiden discretion to prioritize the list for the most efficient use of the funds.

All but two of the expenses were reimbursements to WCDHD for items already paid for including an ultra-cold vaccine travel freezer, air-cooled standby generator and payroll expenses.

The other items not yet expended for are the staff retention strategy and two 2021 Ford vehicles for use by the health department.

The commissioners approved a resolution concerning the redistricting map that evened out the five county districts according to the 2020 Census numbers.
He was just 17 that day, sometime near the wars end in summer 1945, heading east on leave to his family in Pierce, Nebraska, after completing Navy training in California.

What he said to me was (that) when he came in, he saw the piano and was more interested in playing it than eating, Griffin said.

Synovec, whose funeral was Saturday at the Episcopal Church of Our Savior, joined former Canteen platform girl Dorothy (Loncar) VanBuskirk and 1944 popcorn bride Ethel (Winters) Butolph in passing away in the Canteens 80th anniversary year.

Like fellow Navy veteran Milo Shavlik, who will turn 96 on Dec. 30, Synovec was one of the Canteens 6 million service customers who eventually moved to North Platte during the postwar years.

Born in Pierce on April 24, 1928, Synovec graduated early from high school at the start of 1945 so he could go to Navy boot camp in San Diego.

After finishing that and electronics school farther north in Del Monte, California, he was assigned to report to a Navy destroyer after his leave that took him through the Canteen.
At the star-crossed 2020 Iowa caucuses. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

On February 4, 2020, the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses suffered a meltdown when results could not be tabulated and reported on Caucus Night. This perfect storm of dysfunction fed a lot of preexisting discontent about the privileged position of the not-terribly-diverse states of Iowa and New Hampshire in the Democratic presidential-nominating process. It looked like a change in the process, or at least a toppling of Iowa, was inevitable.

As late as this past autumn, that was still the prevailing mood in the Democratic Party, as the Washington Post reported:

President Biden is not a big fan. Former Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez is openly opposed. And elsewhere in the Democratic inner sanctum, disdain for Iowas first-in-the-nation presidential caucus has been rising for years.

Now the day of reckoning for Iowa Democrats is fast approaching, as the national party starts to create a new calendar for the 2024 presidential nomination that could remove Iowa from its privileged position for the first time since 1972, when candidates started flocking to the state for an early jump on the race to the White House.

But now, as a disappointing year for Democrats comes to an end, Politico explains that the impetus for changing the nominating process has ground to a near halt:

Democrats, including in the White House, suddenly have more pressing problems. And as party leaders gathered in recent days for year-end meetings here, interest in what was once a red-hot effort to overhaul the order of the early nominating states had all but vanished.

Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic National Committee members, state party chairs and strategists laid bare widespread desire to avoid a divisive, intraparty dispute in 2022  and skepticism that any change enacted after the midterm elections could be done in time for the next presidential campaign.

Even if DNC members were strongly in favor of changing the nominating process, there are a lot of obstacles to wholesale reforms. For one thing, the national parties do not control what individual states decide to do; there isnt a system in place but rather an interlocking set of decisions by state parties and legislatures. The most common form of nominating contest is a state-funded primary, which typically requires bipartisan cooperation in state legislatures and usually involves a common date for both parties (anything else would be deemed an inefficient waste of tax dollars).

If Democratic Iowa critics had their way, the state would replace the caucuses with a primary that would be held later in the year. But the Republican-controlled Iowa legislature is perfectly happy with the status quo, and, in fact, there is no evident interest among Republicans anywhere (including the partys 2024 front-runner, Donald Trump) in a reformed nominating process. This is evidenced by the fact that Iowas GOP chair has been designated to lead the national-party committee that sets the calendar. And if Iowa did try to stay first but shift to a primary, New Hampshire has a state law that empowers and requires the secretary of state to move the Granite States election date back perpetually to head off any rivals for the first primary. Nevada has already bid for first place (it is currently third) in the process by junking its caucuses for a primary and scheduling it ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire. But New Hampshire will fight for its primacy, and its unclear if the national party really wants to adjudicate fights between the states.

It remains possible that residual anger at Iowa among Democrats over its non-diversity or its 2020 meltdown could lead to a simple national-party veto on Iowa going first. Short of creating a state-funded primary, Iowa Republican legislators would have no leverage over that sort of decision. The national party could also try to force Iowa Democrats to abandon caucuses, though in the absence of legislative action, the only option would be a party-funded so-called firehouse primary, so named because financial considerations usually mean that polling places would be limited to inexpensive public facilities like firehouses.

Iowa Democrats could also take some of the heat off themselves by simplifying the caucus process to make a recurrence of the 2020 fiasco far less likely. Iowa Republicans, after all, just show up, hear a few announcements, eat some cookies, and vote for their favorite presidential candidate before going home. Moving to that sort of process instead of the complex system of candidate thresholds and affinity groups and votes measured in multiple ways might boost participation while making the results much easier to tabulate and report.

In the end, the decision to stand pat or try to change the system may come down to how interested Joe Biden is in changing the calendar or the procedures by which particular states elect national-convention delegates. Biden is famously not invested in the IowaNew Hampshire duopoly; he finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire in 2020 and then began his comeback with second place in Nevada and a big landslide win in South Carolina. Some of his closest party allies are those who think more diverse states should weigh in first.

But Biden obviously has other fish to fry and doesnt need any additional intraparty drama at present. If he runs again in 2024, he will almost certainly win the nomination no matter which state goes first, second, third, or 35th.
This winter, deer hunters can help fight hunger by donating venison to Hunters Helping the Hungry, which will give to food banks across the state of Alabama.

This program, coordinated by the Alabama Conservation and Natural Resources Foundation since 1999, helps provide food for those in need while helping hunters manage the deer population.

Since this program began, Hunters Helping the Hungry has donated about half a million pounds of venison to Alabama food banks, according to a release from the Alabama Black Belt Adventures Association.

We want to encourage sportsmen and women to utilize this free program to support the areas in which they go afield, said Pam Swanner, director of the association.

Providing healthy, organic and ground venison to families in need in Alabama, and especially in the Black Belt, is a powerful way to give back to our communities, she said.

The 23 counties within the Black Belt include: Barbour, Bullock, Butler, Choctaw, Clarke, Conecuh, Crenshaw, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Lee, Lowndes, Macon, Marengo, Monroe, Montgomery, Perry, Pickens, Pike, Russell, Sumter, Tuscaloosa and Wilcox.
Can you add another cut or have it start behind the tweet, please thank you.

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Dankie baie

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The only thing that makes sense is Jung Hae Ina character is actually a undercover South Korean spy pretending to be North Korean.



Joseon Exorcist got cancelled for a lot less.

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I dont understand how Joseon Exorcist got canceled so quick. Unless it was the fact that it dropped right on the heels of China taking korean things and saying it was theirs and every sponsor pulled out? Idk. I saw one episode and it wasnt my kind of drama.



But honestly, if they have issue with Snowdrop, they shouldnt watch it - speak with their views. The lower it goes, the more chance it actually could get pulled. If theyre watching, it makes ten ratings go up. But I dont think Ill be tuning in. Bad and Crazy is enough to entertain me for now.

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Knets expose international Jisoo fandom for signing a blue house petition to keep broadcasting Snowdrophttps://t.co/fP8aJ8tyve pic.twitter.com/OkjoArdfRp  pannchoa (@pannchoa) December 20, 2021



So international Blinks, a majority of them non-Koreans, created a counter-petition asking for "Snowdrop" to not be cancelled. I repeat: they used a website that serves the purpose to allow Korean citizens to write petitions to their own President for matters regarding their country.



A majority of the signatures are very clearly from non-Korean citizens, as you can see a lot of English, Indonesian and Spanish.



Korean netizens are livid, of course. And a lot of i-Blinks are CONVINCED that the 300k signatures the cancellation petition gathered are all from international BTS stans. Everything is a fan war!



This was me when I saw how many of the signatures of the counter-petition were in Spanish:



I forgot to include one of the most BATSHIT bits of this all:So international Blinks, a majority of them non-Koreans, created a counter-petition asking for "Snowdrop" to not be cancelled. I repeat: they used a website that serves the purpose to allowto write petitions to their own President for matters regarding their country.A majority of the signatures are very clearly from non-Korean citizens, as you can see a lot of English, Indonesian and Spanish.Korean netizens are livid, of course.This was me when I saw how many of the signatures of the counter-petition were in Spanish: via GIPHY



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I saw this yesterday. Blinks are batshit. Also why are these people incapable of seeing beyond fandom???

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Indonesian K-pop fans... of course. Disappointed but not surprised, etc. I guess Soeharto's reign really has become a distant memory to us now.



Edited at 2021-12-22 01:39 am (UTC)

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I saw Brazilian blinks defending it and was baffled. Our dictatorship is still very much discussed and talked about today. These children are so ignorant and because of the internet they think they have power.

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Oops, I didn't know non-Koreans weren't supposed to sign blue house petitions . Makes sense but they make it so easy to do so. Just need a social media account and that's it. This whole thing is crazy.

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Lo peor

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this is so insane

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the oppressed ashould know better, as a latina, this ish is embarrassing as heck



people losing their morals over a kpop girl is insane to me

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This is terrible. :(



What are these "Blink" people?

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Korean fandoms typically go by their fanclub names to refer to themselves and their fellow fans. So, for example: Blinks are Black Pink fans and BTS fans are Army.



Obviously, not all Blinks are bananas but a great number of them have been acting horribly, so I can't be bothered to make any disclaimers.

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when will stans learn that you don't have to blindly defend/get behind everything their fave does

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Stans love totalitarianism and torture!!

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luckily none of the blackpink fans i follow on twitter have defended this project but one of the topic tweets twitter recommended to me blatantly defended this so.. thanks for nothing twitter

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if your chief allies are people who think your fave's acting sucks, maybe rethink what you're defending?

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Overall Jisoo will be fine because she has all these idiots to fall back on, but I wonder if this whole situation will tank her reputation in SK and affect potential future roles.

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A lot of the anger intially was pointed toward the drama's writer and director, with some eye rolling pointed as Jung Hae-in for his dumb comment about being unaware of the historical distortion comments because it takes place in 1987 and he was born in 1988 (+ he had some other attitude scandals).



Jisoo was gonna get off relatively scot-free - she made a comment about being a history lover but I'm sure would put her down as being ignorant rather than right-wing adjacent.



But her stans refused to stay on their lane and literally went on their way to interfere, in their own clumsy way, in another's country "democratic" process. It seems pointless worrying about her future when regular Korean citizens and survivors are desperate to stop historically distorted media from being shown international, considering the far reach Korean media has these days, but but I wonder if she'll gonna stay shelved for a while.

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she'll be fine but this was a really dumb choice for a debut lead role. she's not like lisa, jennie and rose where she can fall on international fans bc she's a) the least popular member internationally and b) doesn't speak english. she needs korea more than the other three (lisa flopped in korea but ultimately had the most successful solo bc of money going viral and she sold more cds than blackpink)

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In fairness, one of the best received shows had a North Korean soldier as the lead romantic hero. They may have all thought it wouldn't be a big deal. They were wrong.

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Oh lord, I hope you did not just summon all the Jisoo fans to you by saying she is least popular. Make a shield!

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Did Lisa flop in Korea? Shit I didnt know that, how much is that going to be down to the fact that shes Thai and how much because of the fact that Lalisa/Money were shitty teddy tracks

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she sold more cds than blackpink



with *those* songs? good lord.

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(i know, i know, god, international kpop stans are a disease(i know, i know, #notallkpopfans , i have irl friends who are into kpop and they're fine.)

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This bizarre obsession and fetishization of Korean culture because of their fave combined with a intense hatred of actual Koreans and Korean culture, especially when it affects their faves standing in their country, needs to be studied. It's honestly so bizarre yet prevalent.



Even some of the more "enlightened" k-pop stans are guilty of this, as you can see here sometimes when their fave idol flops ("Why does Korea have such bad taste?! I don't understand why they always like ballads and folk song?!) and generally complaints about when whatever happens to be popular doesn't match their own taste ("Why is Yoona so popular and not my bias?! What's wrong with Korea?! - I randomly said Yoona because I'm used to seeing so many comment of people outright upset that a lot of Korean think Yoona is pretty?).



I want to say because of this idea of Western superiority but it's not just Western stans doing this. I'm not saying this to shield Western stans at all but rather to say that other stans are just as weird about their Korean obsession...

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The complaints about ballads, trot, folk rock, and other genres popular with the Korean public doing well on the charts annoys me to no end. It's perfectly fine to enjoy music without understanding the lyrics, but the appreciation of poetry and word choices, contextual significance of the music styles that often evoke nostalgia, and conveyed emotions that hit you through auditory comprehension (not just from reading the translated lyrics) is just lost on so many ifans who only demand bops. And it sucks that so many ifans think "well, they're getting my money so I should have a say", and often it does work because these are companies that would love to have the influx of foreign money so producers churn out a certain type of sound and big networks showcase the same type of performers that meet this global demand. And the attention is viewed as prestige so acts that do well internationally are fed back to the Korean public as ones to aspire to through favorable coverage, and the national music landscape eventually changes driven by external consumers. Having non-pop and legacy acts do well on the charts organically against mass streaming forces is such an achievement and testament to enduring local tastes. When I lived in S.K., 90% of songs sung at the noraebang with colleagues were ballads and trot and 10% were the most popular of older kpop.



Edited at 2021-12-22 04:25 am (UTC)

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Great write up OP!



I mean, siding with dictatorships and the murder of citizens by their own government for trying to democratize, couldnt be me.



This esp disappointing given the history of dictatorships in Latin America and the hundreds of thousands of activists that were murdered by their own governments for protesting.



The same goes for the Filipino Blinks too, like, yall not paying attention to all the people murdered in Dutertes drug war?



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This is absolutely so deranged.



I wonder if they realize how badly this will reflect upon jisoo.

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this blink shit (and other toxic fandoms) is like some crazy ass qanon shit. i'm being totally serious and wish I wasn't.





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International kpop fans in general are mess and so fucking deranged.

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"It's the type of stuff I would expect incels to send female gamers not some teenage girls stanning a girl group"



tbh I'm not entirely convinced all the people harassing that user are teenage girls. when I was scrolling through the thread last night I noticed they were dealing with someone whose username is "c*ntyblink" which...not that I don't think a teen girl growing up on Twitter wouldn't be inclined to go by some edgy ~reclaimed female slur (considering the proliferation of disrespectful @s in international K-pop fandom spaces these days) but I typically associate stan Twitter usernames like that with gay male fans of girl groups 



maybe I'm naive but I feel like fandoms have gotten really out of hand in a general sense and congregating on Twitter didn't help a single thing. but I am glad that the SK people are calling this drama out and trying to do something about it, at the very least it'd be good if it doesn't get internationally broadcast.

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I never assume that kpop stans are young women, tbh. A lot of these people are adults that definitely should know better. Fandom Twitter isnt any more extreme than what youd see on Tumblr in its prime its just more public now, and theyre really good at controlling the airwaves, so to speak.



Teens should know better, too, but they grew up in a world with social media and online fandoms so they get a bit more of a pass from me but not too much. Im sure that some of the teenage fans are being encouraged by their parents, since older millennials like me have kids in their teens and early 20s.

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Millennial Grandparents possibly existing just exploded my brain.

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This reminds me of this thing I'll run across with kpop every once and a while that'll say "so in so is serving c*nt" and I'm just like huh? I guess it's supposed to be about being a bad bitch but I've seen it tagged to guy artists more than ladies so...I dunno. I just shake my head & move on; maybe I'm too old for it or something idk.

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A recent opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal claimed that Bidens special climate envoy John Kerry has been pressuring banks to do less business with the oil industry

In reality, it seems the Biden administration is doing its best to hinder funding for the industry in an effort to accelerate the energy transition

Earlier this month, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told the U.S. oil industry that she wanted to work together on "future-facing solutions" and asked oil companies to "take advantage of the leases that you have, hire workers, get your rig count up."

It was a heartfelt message seeking collaboration between the federal government and the oil industry, an industry that the government has signaled it will definitely not work with but rather work against. And, indeed, it has.

The moratorium on new federal land leases was the start. The moratorium was challenged in court and eventually lifted, but it wasn't the only move of the administration against oil and gas. Keystone XL was killed after President Biden came into office, and although there are differences of opinion as to how necessary the pipeline was, the fact that the administration did not have the industry's best interests at heart was obvious enough.

It is perfectly understandable, really. President Biden came into office with an energy transition agenda. He campaigned for a shift to lower-carbon energy systems, which necessitates less oil and gas drilling. Only since Biden came into office has it become painfully clear the shift will not happen overnight, and we will continue to need fossil fuels for quite a while yet. But members of the administration are working to speed this process up.

In an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal this month, investor and Heritage Foundation fellow Andy Puzder struck at President Biden's special climate envoy John Kerry for waging a crusade against the oil and gas industry. According to the article, Kerry had on the quiet pressured banks into shrinking their business with oil and gas, which had raised concern in some government circles.

For instance, in May this year, a group of 15 state treasurersnot all from oil states, eitherwrote to Kerry expressing their concern with his pressure campaign against oil and gas. According to the letter, the pressure campaign was private, and it involved other members of the Biden Administration, too.

"As members of the Senate Banking Committee have noted," the letter said, "these efforts to secure extralegal commitments from financial institutions will discriminate against law-abiding U.S. energy companies and their employees, impede economic growth, and drive up consumer costs."

That wasn't the first letter on this topic, either. A month earlier, a group of Republican Senators led by Louisiana's John Kennedy, who is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, wrote to Kerry expressing the same sentiment as the state treasurers a month later.

"As marginal funding costs rise, energy companies will have two choices: raise the cost of their products or cut expenses, including by laying off employees," the legislators wrote. "Eventually, they may be forced to do both. Unsurprisingly, these effects are likely to be borne by working class Americans. . . . Perhaps most disconcertingly, this self-harm will diminish America's strategic advantage in fossil energy over adversaries but not meaningfully reduce global carbon emissions given that 90 percent of total emissions come from outside of U.S. borders, as you have recognized yourself."

They also referred to a scandal from the Obama era, likening Kerry's "crusade", as Puzder put it, to that scandal: "Beyond the poor track record associated with central economic planning, this apparent attempt to prevent energy companies from obtaining capital disturbingly resembles the Obama administration's notorious 'Operation Choke Point' scandal, in which financial regulators attempted to coerce banks into denying services to legal yet politically-disfavored businesses."

Now, the oil industry is already subject to growing pressure from investor groups that are specifically targeting banks in a bid to do what Kerry is doinglimiting the industry's access to funding. Just last week, Reuters reported that an investor group was calling on banks to scale back their financing of new oil and gas projects and making accusations that their emission commitments are not good enough.

There's regulatory pressure, too. Earlier this month, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed new guidance that would force banks to add climate risk assessment to all of their operations. This is the sort of indirect pressure that would also see less financing available for oil and gas companies.

Banks are yielding, too. It is difficult not to yield when you are being pressured from all sides, especially in the reputation department, which seems to have become about as important as bottom lines in the era of social networks. Citi recently said it would begin screening clients for climate commitments, and it may have to drop some. Others, such as Britain's NatWest, are already dropping "dirty" clients.

Of course, there will continue to be alternative sources of funding, although perhaps they won't be able to fully replace legacy banks if it ever comes to that. But over the long term, it looks less like a crusade and more like a war between reputation and bottom lines. Normally, the latter would win. In this day and age, it's hard to say.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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While climbing Omicron cases have sparked fear of demand destruction, supply issues in Libya and falling U.S. oil inventories pushed prices higher.

Chart of the Week



- India needs to add 40 GW per year of renewable capacity to reach the 2030 objective it agreed to at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, but the country seems increasingly unlikelyto do so.

- Renewables currently account for only 11% of Indias aggregate generation capacity, with coal - the countrys main source of energy - still having ample spare capacity.

- With thermal coal prices sliding down below the $100/mt threshold recently and coal plants still using only 55% of their nameplate capacity, the widely anticipated GDP surge over 2022-2023 will trigger further increases in coal utilization.

- With feedstock prices for both wind turbines and solar panels increasing over 2021, it is unlikely that India will be able to add more than its usual 10GW per year in the upcoming years.

Market Movers

- UK-based oil major BP (NYSE:BP) will buy out the remaining stake in its US pipeline venture BP Midstream Partners (NYSE:BPMP) for a total price of $723 million, a structure simplification triggered by authorities no longer providing income tax allowances to master limited partnerships.

- Energy firm Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) signed up to develop Omans onshore Block 10 with an operators stake of 53%, aiming to produce 500 MCf per day of gas from the Saih Rawl field by 2023.

- Privately owned Presidio Petroleum is reportedly in advanced talks to buy some 5,000 shale gas wells from US oil major ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) in the Fayetteville Shale patch in Arkansas, initially assessed around $500 million.

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

The rapidly multiplying count of Omicron cases around the world has sparked fears in the oil market of another period of weak demand, with the new strain already becoming the dominant COVID variant in the United States. Despite early indications of Omicron being less lethal, the market will still have to wait out this period of bearish news before it can regain its bullish sentiment. Acting as temporary support for oil prices, skirmishes in Libya that led to a force majeure on oil exports have provided some upward pressure on prices, as did news of US crude oil inventories apparently falling for the fourth week in a row. These bullish factors helped push oil prices higher on Tuesday morning.

OPEC+ Underproduces Output Target in November. OPEC+ compliance with oil production cuts moved a bit higher month-on-month in November to 117%, primarily triggered by Angola and Nigeria struggling to bounce back from declining production rates and never-ending maintenance issues.

Manchin Veto Blocks Biden $1.7 Billion Package. The Biden administration will be forced to revamp its $1.75 trillion Build Back Better infrastructure bill following Senator Joe Manchins veto, making it increasingly likely that some bits such as methane fees will be left out of the final bill.

Related: Cities Around The World Are Trying To Cut Out Natural Gas

Libya Declares Force Majeure on Several Export Terminals. Libyas NOC declared force majeure on crude exports from the countrys western ports of Zawia and Mellitah after the Petroleum Facilities Guard took over and shut down production at most of the African countrys fields in the west.

Aker BP-Lundin Megadeal Creates NCS Giant. Norway-focused producer Aker BP will buy North Sea peer firm Lundin Energy (STO:LUNE) in a $14 billion deal, joining forces to become the second-largest firm in Norways Continental Shelf.

European Gas Prices Spike Further. With Russian pipeline gas deliveries to Germany remaining at relatively low levels and the odds of seeing Nord Stream 2 launched this year fading away, the day-ahead European TTF benchmark rose to 149 per MWh this week (equivalent to $52 per mmBtu).

An Investor's Guide To Private Placements. While nearly every retail investor has at least a basic understanding of stock markets, the private market is largely misunderstood. Luckily, Oilprice readers can now get a FREE report on Private Placements and access to deals that have traditionally been reserved for insiders.

EPA Toughens US Vehicle Emission Requirements. Reversing the Trump-era rollback of car pollution cuts, the US Environmental Protection Agency toughened new vehicle emissions requirements through 2026, expecting a real-world average consumption of 40 miles per gallon by that point (up 8mpg compared to previous rules).

UK Government Wants to Assess New Projects Climate Policy Alignment. Only weeks after the future of Cambo was jeopardized, the UK government launched a national consultation on the future design of its oil & gas licensing, seeking to ensure that any new licenses will be fully aligned with UK climate change commitments.

Chevron Farms Out Suriname Stake to Shell. US oil major Chevron (NYSE:CVX) sold one-third of its 60% equity interest in the Block 5 offshore license in Suriname, just two months after it landed the 30-year production sharing contract at the countrys most recent shallow offshore bid round.

Chile Miners Brace for Leftist President. Chile-focused stocks such as Albemarle (NYSE:ALB) or SQM (NYSE:SQM) took a beating early this week as Chiles president-elect Gabriel Boric promised to create a state lithium firm and to stop the $2.5 billion Dominga iron-copper mine on environmental grounds.

Toyota Plans Hindered by Supply Chain Disruptions. Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor Corp (TYO:7203) stated it would suspend production at five of its factories in January 2022 due to chip shortages and other supply chain disruptions, having already slowed down US output.

Qatar Sponsors UK Small Nuclear Plant Drive. The Qatar Investment Authority invested $110 million into Rolls Royces project to develop small nuclear power plants that could be operating by the early 2030s, allowing the nascent business unit to raise the required capital.

US Fishing Industry Teams Up with Big Oil. United in their drive against offshore wind installations, the US fishing and oil industries have teamed up to derail the 800MW Vineyard Wind power plant in offshore Massachusetts, the first large-scale plant in the Americas, arguing the wind farm would interfere with vessel navigation and hurt fishing stocks.

Rosneft Vows to Go Net-Zero by 2050. Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft (MCX:ROSN) approved a new 2030 strategy that sets a net-zero target by 2050 (Scope 1 and 2 emissions), the first time a Russian major has given itself a stringent carbon-cutting deadline.

By Tom Kool for Oilprice.com

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Its developers describe it as a technique that is complementary to fracking, at a fraction of the cost.

The fracking industry has often been criticized for its tremendous water usage.

In the previous article, I discussed some of the issues involving water and hydraulic fracturing (fracking). In a nutshell, although fracking has proven to be a highly effective means of boosting oil and natural gas production, the process requires millions of gallons of water. Further, there is the potential to contaminate water supplies. Although fracking isnt going away anytime soon, it would be beneficial if there were some complementary tools for drillers in the event that conventional fracking could prove to be problematic. For example, an extremely arid area with certain types of hydrocarbon resources could be ripe for such a technique.

Several years ago, I first heard about Plasma Pulse Technology. As with many new technologies, I approached it with a healthy degree of skepticism. I like to see data, and at that time there wasnt a lot of data yet available on the technique.

Plasma Pulse Technology was invented at St. Petersburg State Mining University in Russia. Conventional fracking uses water at high pressure to break open channels that then enable the flow of oil or natural gas into the well. In contrast, Plasma Pulse Technology through a powerful electrical discharge produces a high-pressure plasma pulse (5,000 psi), and the subsequent compression shock wave propagates along the path of least resistance (i.e., in the perforations). These compression shock waves propagate over long distances.

The first two or three pulses clean the perforation. Subsequent pulses penetrate into the reservoir, clean the existing channels, and create a network of micro-cracks. This enables oil to more easily flow into the well. Following the application of the technique, oil production can be boosted for several years.

To be clear, this isnt voodoo. The technique is described in some detail in multiple technical reports and research papers. For example, in Petroleum Research Karan Patal et al. report on the technical details of how the technology works and specific case studies in Plasma Pulse Technology: An uprising EOR technique.

Its developers describe it as a technique that is complementary to fracking, at a fraction of the cost. It doesnt always work in the same niche as fracking, but it has been shown to boost production in previously fracked wells.

Related: Gas Markets Could See Sudden Bout Of Volatility

Novas Energy rolled out Plasma Pulse Technology in China, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the Middle East a decade ago, and in 2014 it was introduced to North America. Novas Energy North America President and CEO Ken Stankievech described the advantages of the technology to me in a recent phone call:

The cost differential between Plasma Pulse Technology and hydraulic fracking jobs is substantial. On a vertical well, Plasma Pulse Technology is 75% cheaper than an equivalent hydraulic fracturing job. On a horizontal well, depending on the lateral leg length of the project, it can be 90% cheaper than a traditional job, while operating without the extreme consumption of water and caustic chemicals.

He added that they have performed the technique on wells as deep as 13,000 feet, but says the original tools have now been modified for extreme depths of 30,000 feet.

So far Plasma Pulse Technology has been used primarily on small wells, but the results have been promising. Novas Energy provided several case studies, some of which are available in the published literature.

Here are some of the cases in which the technique has been used:

The Kuwait Oil Company well RA-000A was producing oil of about 196 barrels of oil per day (bopd) before the plasma stimulation and after the job the well is producing a stable rate of about 363 bopd. Plasma pulse produced an incremental oil gain of 167 bopd  an increase of 85% from the initial oil production rate. ( Source : Chellappan, Suresh Kumar, et al. First application of plasma technology in KOC to improve wells productivity. SPE Kuwait Oil and Gas Show and Conference . OnePetro, 2015.)

Alberta Case Study 1  Vertical well Lower Mannville, Retlaw Alberta. Pretreatment oil production of 12.6 barrels of oil equivalent per day (Boe/d) increased after treatment to 26.5 Boe/d  a 109% increase. The average 24- month increase is 73%.

Alberta Case Study 2  Vertical well Lower Mannville, Alderson Alberta. Pretreatment oil production of 27.8 Boe/d increased after treatment to 48 Boe/d  a 73% increase. The average increase was 44% over a 40-month period.

Russia Case Study 3  Vertical well in the Taylakovskoe oil field, a tight sandstone deposit. Pretreatment oil production of 40 Boe/d increased after treatment to 145 Boe/d  a 275% increase. The average increase was 80% over a 48-month period.

Case Study 1 and 2 are available from the public data fields GeoScout provided directly from the client to GeoScout, a third-party data management company authorized by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). The Russian study was done by Slvneft-Megionneftegas.

Early results are promising, but oil and gas companies are notoriously conservative when it comes to embracing new technology. But Novas Energy believes 2022 is going to be a breakout year for them, as they have a committed book of business of more than 100 oil and gas wells for plasma treatment.

According to Stankievech More and more of our clients are realizing that Plasma Pulse is an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective technology that can boost hydrocarbon productivity without breaking the bank.

By Robert Rapier

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We think the US Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, is considering one of the most sweeping changes to federal regulatory policy that we can imagine. The court is hearing a case in which it could vote to overturn the so-called Chevron deference. Simply stated, the Chevron deference, resulting from a 1984 court case involving Chevron and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), states that in matters of complex federal regulatory and administrative procedure, the courts should defer to the respective federal agencies involved. This court deference has been broadly applied to all U.S. federal administrative agencies (FDA, SEC, FERC, and EPA, among others) many of which had their origins during President Roosevelts New Deal in the 1930s.

What would overturning the Chevron deference mean? The deference says that the U.S. Supreme Court defers to Congress in delegating broad powers to administrative agencies and agrees not to accept challenges to those broad grants of authority. Four of the sitting justices on the court (Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Alito) have publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the Chevron deference and they have accepted a case for review, American Hospital Association v Becerra, which affords them an opportunity to dramatically revise it (The case involves the FDA and the appropriate application of variations on a hospital reimbursement formula). But most importantly, we believe the courts broader goal here (of which it has made no secret) is to challenge the ability of Congress to make broad delegations of administrative authority to federal agencies. We dont mean to shout but this is HUGE! The court may tell Congress that, instead of broad delegations of authority to administrative agencieswhich has been permissible since 1984it must be specific in writing laws. What this may mean in practice is that the high court swats down what it views as unduly broad environmental and other regulations while a divided Congress fails to rewrite new, more specific legislation.

Related: Tight U.S. Oil Inventories Prop Up Oil Prices

What might this mean for us in the energy industry? EPAs authority to regulate derives from numerous Congressional laws like the Clean Air Act and the Safe Water Drinking Act. But evolving regulations pertaining to newer concerns like CO2 or methaneissues not specifically written into the statutes authorizing the agency back in 1970 and subsequently would be subject to court review and challenge. What we may be witnessing is a wholesale rollback of federal authority over broad segments of the economy. More specifically this seems like a huge win for natural gas and perhaps coal producers if environmental regulations are subject to increasing challenge (As an aside, Justice Gorsuchs mother, who headed the EPA under President Reagan, was accused of trying to dismantle EPA regulation).

Historically, legislatures attempted to regulate economic activity by passing specific laws, so much for a loaf of bread or a ferry ride. In the early 1800s, when the British developed the concept of the public utility, Parliament set prices, competitive conditions and dividends for each public utility. When conditions changed, somebody always ended up a loser, whether customers or the utility, but usually the customers because the utility found a way to wiggle around the old restrictions. Conditions change faster than laws. We tried that method here and gave up due to its impracticality. For a while the courts took charge, setting regulatory rules that defied all logic. Finally, legislatures set up expert regulatory bodies, and that system worked well for over one hundred years. It can continue on the state level, but we have to wonder what will happen to federal regulation if the Supreme Court strikes down the Chevron deference.

The court has recently generated considerable outrage over its efforts to overturn legal abortion. But in our view, restricting federal, bureaucratic oversight of business in the US via review of the Chevron deference is high on this courts agenda. This is our big business surprise for 2022. Maybe great news for gas drillers and coal miners, but potentially great confusion as states try to regulate locally what the federal government can no longer regulate nationally. Watch for the decision, unheralded on cable news, but with really big potential.

By Leonard Hyman and William Tilles for Oilprice.com

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European gas prices jumped to an all-time high on Tuesday after natural gas on a key pipeline from Russia to Germany reversed flow eastward and freezing temperatures took hold in many parts of Europe.

The benchmark price for Europe at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) surged by 11 percent early on Tuesday to a record 162.78 euros per megawatt-hour.

According to data from German operator Gascade, cited by Reuters, flows of natural gas from Russia on the Yamal-Europe pipeline via Belarus to Poland and Germany have been falling since the start of the weekend, stopped completely on Tuesday, and then reversed direction from Germany east to Poland.

Gas prices in the UK also surged to a new all-time high after hitting the previous record just a few days ago last week. UK gas prices soared to an all-time high of 350 pence per therm last Thursday, which was a massive 520 percent jump year to date. Today, the UK benchmark price hit 400p per therma new record.

Freezing temperatures across Europe, low Russian gas supply, and low wind power generation in Germany have all combined to send European and UK gas prices to new records today. Related: Oil Prices Crash On Renewed Omicron Panic

EU gas and power open higher again today with gas flows from Russia on the Yamal-Europe pipeline dropping to near zero. Just as German wind output falls to a five-week low and freezing temperatures spread across Europe, Ole Hansen, Head of Commodity Strategy at Saxo Bank, noted.

At the start of this week, natural gas exports from Russia via the Yamal-Europe pipeline remain limited as true winter begins, Russia keeps more gas for domestic consumption, and Gazprom has not booked too much additional day-ahead capacity at auctions.

Traders are watching closely every tender in which Gazprom is set to book pipeline capacity via the main pipeline routes to Germany and Poland. Every time Russia doesnt book too much additional capacity, Europes benchmark gas prices jump.

Some analysts and EU officials have said that Russia is deliberately keeping extra gas supply  the one on top of its contractual obligations  low amid the row over Ukraine and the delays in the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

Russia denies there is a connection between its limited extra gas supply to Europe and the current events with Ukraine and Nord Stream 2.

This is a purely commercial situation. You have to ask Gazprom about the details, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, commenting on the halted gas flows to Germany via the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the largest Chinese importer of liquefied natural gas, has signed a deal with U.S. firm Venture Global LNG to buy LNG from a new export facility in Louisiana.

Under the deal announced on Monday, CNOOC Gas & Power Group Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC, will buy 2 million tons per annum (MTPA) of LNG on a free on board (FOB) basis for 20 years from Venture Globals Plaquemines LNG export facility in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

The agreement is the first in which CNOOC, Chinas largest importer of LNG, has agreed to buy the super-chilled fuel from a U.S. exporter, Venture Global LNG said.

The deal underscores Chinese importers increased interest in American LNG and is the latest such deal companies from the two countries have announced in recent weeks.

Last month, Venture Global LNG signed an agreement with China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), which, the U.S. firm says, will be the largest single LNG supply deal ever signed by a US company and will double imports of US LNG to China. Sinopec will buy 4 million MTPA of LNG from Plaquemines LNG, and UNIPEC, a Sinopec subsidiary, has agreed to purchase 3.5 million tons of LNG from Venture Globals Calcasieu Pass LNG facility.

Cheniere Energy also announced in November a binding long-term LNG sale and purchase agreement with Sinochem Group of China.

American exports to China started rising toward the end of last year to reach a record high in August 2021, the latest available EIA data shows.

In October 2021, China was the top destination of U.S. LNG exports, the U.S. Department of Energys LNG Monthly for December 2021 showed.

The United States will have the worlds largest LNG export capacity next year, exceeding the capacity of the top LNG exporters, Australia and Qatar, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said earlier this month.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Feeling the holiday spirit? Consider donating to charity, and youll end up giving the best kind of present  one that benefits you, too.

The IRS has a special tax rule right now that allows Americans to deduct certain charitable donations on their 2021 taxes, lowering their tax liability and translating into savings. Single filers can deduct up to $300; married couples that file jointly can deduct up to $600. Crucially, you dont even have to itemize your taxes to claim it.

However, you do have to move fast. The deadline for making an eligible donation is Dec. 31.

The right Tax Relief firm makes all the difference, especially if you owe over $10k in taxes. Get tailored experience that you expect from your tax litigation and tax preparation professionals in your area. Click on your state to get started!
Still, Biden's testing surge would need to be supported by a further jump in production for all Americans to test at the recommended rate of twice weekly. The U.S. would need 2.3 billion tests per month for everyone 12 and older to do that, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Thats nearly five times the half-billion tests Biden will deploy.

Currently, the U.S. can conduct about 600 million tests per month, with home tests accounting for about half, according to researchers from Arizona State University.

In another prong to Biden's amped-up plan, he is prepared to deploy an additional 1,000 troops with medical skills to assist hospitals buckling under the virus surge. Also, he is immediately sending federal medical personnel to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont. And there are plans to ready additional ventilators and protective equipment from the national stockpile, expanding hospital resources.

As a backstop, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will deploy hundreds of ambulances and paramedic teams so that if one hospital fills up, it can transport patients to open beds in another. Ambulances are already headed to New York and Maine, and paramedic teams are going to New Hampshire, Vermont and Arizona.
CHICAGO (AP)  Chicago will require proof of coronavirus vaccination at restaurants, bars, gyms and other indoor venues, as the rapidly spreading omicron variant drives a spike in COVID-19 infections, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday.

Lightfoot said the requirement will take effect Jan. 3, and will apply to places in the nation's third-largest city where food and beverages are served  including sport and entertainment venues  and fitness centers. It doesn't apply to people getting takeout, who stay in a businesses for less than 10 minutes.

Lightfoot said the measure is necessary because of a surge in cases and hospitalizations, with Chicago seeing numbers at levels similar to before vaccines were available. Chicago is reporting an average of more than 1,700 new COVID cases per day, up from about 300 per day just weeks ago, she said.

To be clear, I have not been this concerned about COVID-19 since the early days of the pandemic in 2020, Lightfoot said. She also urged people to get vaccinated, saying it's the only way for life to return to some kind of normalcy and the best way to save lives.
MOORHEAD, Minn. (AP)  Wreaths for each of the seven people whose bodies were discovered inside a Minnesota home over the weekend were left outside the residence Monday, where friends and relatives wept in below-freezing weather and wondered what happened to their loved ones.

Preliminary autopsy results showed the victims who lived together in Moorhead did not die from any obvious trauma, but a cause of death has not been determined, police said. Relatives said they have more questions than answers.

Moorhead police identified the victims as 37-year-old Belin Hernandez, 34-year-old Marleny Pinto, 32-year-old Eldor Hernandez Castillo, 19-year-old Mariela Guzman Pinto, 16-year-old Breylin Hernandez, 7-year-old Mike Hernandez and 5-year-old Marbely Hernandez.

Alan Pinto, 14, a cousin who on Monday served as translator for his Spanish-speaking relatives, most of whom immigrated from Honduras, said the family was happy to be in America and to escape the turmoil of their home country. But they said their lives will never be the same after such a tragic loss.

I'm trying, Pinto said, when asked how he was holding up. It's hard.
Nervous about what was to happen and watching the man approach his vehicle, Johnson put the car in drive. As the man asked Nelson and Johnson if they were from the area, Johnson saw that the man was holding a gun in his pants pocket.

Believing that he was about to be shot or robbed, Johnson put his foot on the accelerator, drove over the curb and into the park.

The man shot at the car, striking Johnson and causing him to crash the Honda into a tree. Johnson suffered a bullet wound in his upper back and a non-penetrating bullet wound in the back of his head. Nelson was bruised by the crash and had a long cut on her leg.

Johnson and Nelson then fled their car and ran to neighboring houses seeking help. While they went to multiple homes, they could hear the mans loud car circling the neighborhood. Finally, they reached a home where someone agreed to call 911.
Nebraska Humane Society workers have taken nearly 500 animals from a Papillion home where living conditions were described as squalid.

Officers served a search warrant at the home southeast of Papillion-La Vista High School on Monday after receiving an anonymous tip, said Steve Glandt, vice president of field operations for the Nebraska Humane Society. Officers removed about 250 exotic birds, rabbits, ferrets, chinchillas, guinea pigs, snakes and lizards. Another nearly 250 were removed Tuesday.

When we got in the house, we realized that it was unlivable and that we had a very significant number of animals to be rescued, Glandt said. The animals will be taken to the Humane Society to be evaluated, and thats going to take several days.

Animal remains also were found in the home, Glandt said. A man lives in the house, he said.

We will refer (the case) to the county attorney and city prosecutor, Glandt said. Well also have to determine if the animals can be housed at the Nebraska Humane Society or elsewhere.
At a news conference Tuesday, state officials said they have no indication of who might be responsible for the egregious killings.

Make no mistake folks, these intentional killings are evil, despicable acts perpetrated against an endangered animal in its own natural habitat, said Hawaiis Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement Chief Jason Redulla. Those responsible must be held accountable.

The killings are felonies that carry a penalty of up to five years in prison, Redulla said.

Suzanne Case, the chair of Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources, noted local outrage at visitors who harassed monk seals earlier this year and called for a similar response to the killing of the seal that was shot in the head.

It is past time for anyone who has information on the killing of this seal and the others to step forward, Case said. Earlier this year many people were outraged when a visitor slapped a seal on the back, and we trust the level of indignation we saw associated with that incident will be exceeded by the despicable shooting of (this seal) and the others taken by human hands.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
HART, Mich. (AP)  The father of four Christian missionaries from Michigan who were among 12 who escaped from kidnappers in Haiti expressed gratitude Tuesday and said they're in good shape.

Two more family members were also kidnapped but were released a few weeks ago. They're associated with Hart Dunkard Brethren Church in Hart, about 190 miles (306 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.

A church elder, Ron Marks, read a statement from Ray Noecker, whose wife, Cheryl, and five of their children were kidnapped in October.

My family is all together and in good health. We are rejoicing together over the many ways that God answered the prayers of his people from all around the world, said Ray, who added that the family plans to return to Michigan soon.

Church member Carleton Horst identified the six hostages from Michigan as Cheryl Noecker, 48, Brandyn Noecker, 15, Kasondra Noecker, 14, Courtney Noecker, 18, Shelden Noecker, 6, and Cherilyn Noecker, 27.

Cheryl and Shelden were released a few weeks ago, Horst said.
Sheikh Mohammed denied knowledge of the hacking.

McFarlane earlier ruled that Sheikh Mohammed had conducted a campaign of fear and intimidation against his estranged wife and ordered and orchestrated the abduction and forced return to Dubai of two of his adult daughters: Sheikha Shamsa in August 2000 and her sister Sheikha Latifa, in 2002 and again in 2018.

The divorce bill eclipses the 450 million pound settlement awarded Tatiana Akhmedova in her 2016 split from Russian billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov, at the time cited as Britain's most expensive divorce.

The settlement includes a holiday budget of 5.1 million pounds, an annual sum of just over 450,000 pounds for the childrens staff and around 275,000 pounds for their animals, including two ponies and a horse. Haya was awarded millions to compensate for property lost when she left Dubai, including 13.5 million pounds for jewelry and what the judge called the relatively modest sum of 1 million pounds for clothes.

It is possible, but rare, for financial divorce settlements to be appealed in England.

A spokesman for Sheikh Mohammed said in a statement that the ruler has always ensured that his children are provided for. The court has now made its ruling on finances and he does not intend to comment further.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  Congregations affiliated with the United Methodist Church have agreed to contribute $30 million to a fund for victims who say they were molested as youngsters in the Boy Scouts of America, an attorney said Tuesday.

A committee representing United Methodist churches that sponsored Scouting activities also agreed to help raise an additional $100 million for the fund.

Jessica Lauria, an attorney for the BSA, told Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein about the planned agreement during an online hearing Tuesday in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. Lauria said the United Methodist-affiliated churches would receive protected party status, which means they would be released from further liability for abuse claims.

The proposed trust is expected to grow to more than $2.6 billion and would be the largest sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history.

More than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case. Victims who say they were abused must vote by Dec. 28 on a Boy Scouts reorganization plan.
BLOOMINGTON  When Santa flies his sleigh to the Miller home on Christmas, he sure wont miss the festive flare illuminating from 11 Jodi Lane in Bloomington.

There are 10,000 LED bulbs lighting his way to the house, thanks to the hard work of 15-year-old Max Miller, with help from his father Ben Miller.

Together, they produce what they call Not Your Normal Christmas Light Show. Their dedication to hardwiring programmable holiday lights shines down the block in a blending of red, green and blue rays in varying intensities.

The lights are dimmed to 20% of their power, out of respect for their neighbors. Still, the beams are so bright, Ben said, they said they needed to buy blackout curtains for their bedroom windows. Other panes are planked off by cardboard.

Max said his ceiling lights up every few seconds after he goes to bed.

Ben said they started building the display in October, but added they moved from Basswood Lane in Normal to their current house in May. The new property gave them a lot more space to work with, but they had to draft a new design around two trees. Ben laments how they block the view.

Weve put on four shows in 26 months, said Ben, which includes each Christmas since 2019 and a special "Quarantunes" display during the spring 2020 lockdown. The current rendition features 30 to 45 minutes of songs synchronized to the lights. Some visitors stay for them all.

Lots of trips to the store

Pre-programmed tunes range from $25 to $80, or the Millers said they can make one themselves in 40 to 100 hours.

We cant make the song until everythings in the yard, Ben said. Last year, they sequenced a tune to "O Come All Ye Faithful."

Meanwhile, at 2815 Scarborough St. in Bloomington, Scott McCoy has also programmed an elaborate display at his home. He said he does all of his own sequences, and tries to keep it traditional.

Programming time, he said, depends on the song, how complex it is and the size of the display.

If you have singing light bulbs and singing Christmas tree props, which have a mouth that opens, you could put 10 hours in just to get those bulbs to sync, McCoy said.

He said he doesnt have those kinds of props, and hes able to synchronize tunes between three and 10 hours each.

McCoy described himself as a "design guy," who enjoys planning out schematics and showing the brains of his operation to curious visitors who return in the daytime.

Without big props, he said, his yard still looks nice when the sun's out.

Max Miller said two years ago, their show was a fifth of the size it is now.

Our mega-tree was just 5 feet tall, he said.

Max said some of the larger tree designs (but smaller than the 20-foot tree) can take three or four hours alone.

Getting it all together took a lot of trips to Menards. But not all their supplies come from a store.

The University High School student said hes designed parts  like the base of light arches  in computer-assisted design software called Onshape. Hes 3D-printed thousands of pieces that connect the lights to the gutters, siding and window frames.

Our 3D printer has been running nonstop for three months, Ben said.

'It's do or die'

Ben said the project taught his son a lot about problem-solving, coding, electrical work and more. Rigging lights to the window frames took 50 hours of prototyping connectors through trial and error.

The dad added that before everything lights up, cables are managed and painted.

Once the ladder comes out, its do or die, he said.

Like other decorators, they work many hours just see other people enjoy their show. Ben said they try to make cookies when they know people will visit.

This has been a wonderful thing for him and I to do together, said the father with his son.

Theyve also learned the value of giving back: The shows website encourages donations to charity. Ben said this year they partnered with Compass Closet, a nonprofit at Compass Church that provides clothes to foster children. The light show referred online visitors to the Forgotten Initiative last year.

Hanging up thousands of LED bulbs does come with its challenges. Ben said theyve quickly learned how many things are wired to one GFCI outlet.

Theyre also thankful for help available from social media networks.

Were in a community of tens of thousands of people across the world that use the same software, Ben said.

McCoy said owning a business in software development, he has experience troubleshooting. He considers himself a helper in the xLights community.

He mentioned theres also an xLights Zoom room.

Im a regular in there, he said.

Part of the learning experience for his teen, Ben said, is learning how to troubleshoot when things go wrong. Like when the lights unexpectedly strobe.

Somebody turned on the dryer, exclaimed Max.

An earlier online version of this story listed an incorrect address for Max and Ben Millers previous display. This version has been corrected.

Contact Brendan Denison at (309) 820-3238. Follow Brendan Denison on Twitter: @BrendanDenison

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NORMAL  An investigation into Rivian Automotive revealed a group of employees were not paid overtime for their work constructing the production line in Normal, authorities announced Tuesday.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced settlements following an investigation by his office and the Illinois Department of Labor into the electric vehicle company and three of its subcontractors.

The investigation found the subcontractors who were hired to construct the production line failed to pay overtime wages to their Mexican workers at the site, Raoul said.

The settlements require China-based Guangzhou Mino Equipment Co.; Spain-based IT8 Software Engineering, S.L.; Mexico-based LAM Automation to pay owed overtime wages and civil penalties, totaling $390,000, to 54 workers who were denied overtime wages they earned.

Any company doing business in our state must follow laws that require workers to be fairly compensated for the hours they work, Raoul said. This settlement should send a message that employers cannot hide behind subcontractors to avoid responsibility for stolen wages. I am committed to holding businesses  large and small  accountable for violating laws that safeguard workers and support law-abiding businesses in Illinois, and I appreciate the Illinois Department of Labors collaboration.

According to the Attorney Generals office, Rivian hired Mino to help build assembly lines at the Normal facility, and Mino subcontracted work to IT8. IT8 then subcontracted LAM to obtain part of the workforce Mino used to complete its work for Rivian.

IT8 and LAM helped laborers in Mexico obtain visas to work for IT8 and Mino at electric vehicle plants in the U.S., including Rivian. LAM was responsible for issuing payments to the workers, but Mino and IT8 shared significant control over their work and their conditions of employment and Mino used these workers for its own labor force.

The Department of Labor and Attorney Generals Office found employees at the Rivian plant typically worked between 60 and 80 hours per week, seven days a week. Illinois law requires an overtime premium of 150% of regular hourly wages for each hour worked over 40 in a week.

LAMs employees did not receive the full overtime wages required by law, Raoul said.

Mino and IT8 both agreed to pay $145,000 in overtime wages and penalties to the 54 employees. LAM will pay an additional $100,000, according to a statement from Raouls office.

Through the settlements, Raouls office is recovering nearly 270% of the overtime wages that employees should have received if they had been paid the required overtime premium rate, the attorney general said.

Michael Kleinik, director of the labor department, said this investigation and its resolution was done to try and prevent this from happening to workers in the future.

Local labor leaders said they appreciate the Workers Protection Unit of the Attorney Generals Office efforts to expose the exploitation of workers.

It is a bittersweet day that the Workers Protection Unit was able to bring the investigation to a close and find fraud, manipulation, and the cheating of wages for vulnerable workers, said Mike Raikes, business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 197 based in Bloomington. It is sad that in the year 2021 we have contractors going to extreme lengths to intentionally break the law. These contractors knew they were illegally bringing in foreign workers, paying less than area standards and benefits, no overtime pay, and hurting our local workers, contractors, and economy by doing so.

Raoul encourages workers who have concerns about wage and hour violations or potentially unsafe working conditions to call his Workplace Rights Hotline at 1-844-740-5076 or to file a complaint online.

Contact Kelsey Watznauer at (309) 820-3254. Follow her on Twitter: @kwatznauer.

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With five days to go before Christmas, Cristian Ruiz rushed out with her three children Monday morning to get them all tested for COVID-19 due to a school exposure, joining the masses of other Chicagoans seeking out tests as the virus surges across the city.

For Ruiz and her children, 8 months, 10 and 12, the hunt for an on-site test was relatively simple, but they couldnt get a test with a fast result. So the family is quarantining, expecting to wait about five days for their results.

Our picture with Santa, we never got to have that, Ruiz said ruefully, planning to settle in at home with her family for a few days.

With Christmas looming and COVID-19 surging in Illinois, health care providers are reporting high demand for COVID-19 tests, while many people are also having a tough time finding rapid, at-home tests. On Monday, Illinois health officials reported the most single-day cases of COVID-19 since Dec. 1, 2020.

State health officials reported 12,328 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19, though that days total may have been inflated by delays in test results being reported over Thanksgiving weekend.

Shelves of rapid, at-home tests appeared picked over at many Chicagoland Walgreens and CVS stores. The BinaxNOW tests, a popular at-home test option, was out of stock for shipping at Walgreens and Walmart, though some stores appeared to have inventory for pickup. In social media groups dedicated to COVID-19 issues, people swapped intel on where they were able to find at-home tests for purchase.

A search of city ZIP codes for upcoming on-site test appointments at CVS and Walgreens on Monday afternoon also turned up few options.

CVS Health is seeing more patients seeking on-site testing, CVS said in a statement. Results for PCR tests are usually available within one to two days, but may take longer due to local surges in COVID-19 cases.

When a CVS store is short on rapid, at-home tests our teams have a process in place to replenish supply, CVS said in the statement.

And Walgreens has seen an unprecedented increase in demand for rapid, at-home tests and is working with suppliers to make them available through the holidays, said spokeswoman Kris Lathan in a statement. Some Walgreens stores may experience a temporary shortage, she said, and she encouraged consumers to visit the Walgreens website to see updated store inventory. Walgreens is also seeing more demand for on-site COVID-19 tests and is, overall, able to meet that demand, but in some areas people may have to book testing appointments one to two days in advance or drive farther for them, Lathan said.

Area hospitals and clinics are also reporting testing increases.

At Esperanza Health Centers in Chicago, where Ruiz and her children were tested, a spokeswoman said demand for tests there has been spiking since Thanksgiving, and their testing site is booked solid for the next three days.

At Amita Health, which has 19 hospitals in Illinois, demand for testing has doubled since the summer.

The system administered more than 3,000 COVID-19 tests in the past week, said Dr. Dana Vais, system medical director for infectious disease services. Because of that increased demand, its now taking about 22 to 27 hours to get PCR test results back, which is longer than before the last couple of weeks, she said.

PCR tests are molecular tests that find genetic material from the virus, and they are generally more sensitive than rapid, at-home antigen tests, but they can take longer to return results.

Demand always rises for testing when COVID-19 surges, and this latest surge has been no different, Vais said.

The upcoming Christmas holiday may be adding to that demand, though Vais suspects that many of the people who want to get tested ahead of gatherings are seeking rapid, at-home tests rather than PCR ones.

I would not recommend any holiday gathering without the people there having at least an antigen test, Vais said. Rapid, at-home tests are antigen tests.

If we want to get through this, we really have to make testing as easy as possible, widely available, she said.

If a person is having even mild symptoms and tests positive at home with a rapid test, the person does not need to confirm the result with a PCR test, she said. An asymptomatic person who tests negative at home also does not need to confirm that result. But a person with symptoms who tests negative at home should seek out a PCR test as well, she said.

Northwestern Medicine has seen a 23% increase in COVID-19 testing over the last week at its immediate care sites, compared with the previous 90 days, said Heather Keirnan, vice president of operations for Northwesterns immediate care services.

At Northwestern, people can get tests with a physicians order, which can be obtained for some patients through Northwesterns MyChart system or a telehealth visit, among other ways. Northwestern is now working to boost its number of virtual appointments, she said.

With this increased demand and the holiday looming, we are recruiting more of our providers to be able to open up more slots for people to make it easier, Keirnan said.

Many people are seeking PCR tests now because theyre getting ready to travel to areas that require negative tests, she said. Others are symptomatic, have been exposed to COVID-19 or simply want to make sure theyre illness free before celebrating Christmas with relatives.

Over the past week, the state has averaged 10,179 new cases per day, the most since the week ending Nov. 26, 2020, when last falls massive case surge was just beginning to subside.

Cases have more than doubled in the past month, up from an average of 4,229 per day during the week ending Nov. 20. Just since last week, the average is up 42%, from 7,153 daily cases.

While some cases are breakthrough infections, the vast majority continue to be among those who are not fully vaccinated. Health officials across the country are urging everyone who is eligible to receive a booster to get a third shot as concerns grow about the omicron variant, which appears to render the two-dose regimen of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines less effective.

This years pre-Christmas surge comes as hospitals resources are being stretched by a flood of patients with COVID-19 as well as other ailments.

With more people planning to gather with friends and family for the holidays this year, the surge in cases has driven the demand for testing to its highest level of the pandemic.

Over the past week, the state has averaged 186,079 test results reported per day. Thats nearly double the number during the same week last year, when testing was in more limited supply and the state averaged 93,956 results reported per day.

During the week ending Nov. 20 (five days before Thanksgiving), the state was averaging 127,225 test results per day.

A rise in the case positivity rate  the percentage of new cases as a share of total tests  suggests the recent increase in cases is a sign of more transmission of the coronavirus in the community rather than merely a function of more testing. The statewide case positivity rate was 5.5% for the week ending Sunday, up from 4% a week earlier.

The last time the number of new cases was this high, in late November 2020, the statewide case positivity rate was averaging above 10%.

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100 years ago

Dec. 21, 1921: Atlantas mayoral vacancy has gone to the Illinois Supreme Court. Mayor Sam Iddings was ousted by the city council. They put in their own man but the circuit court threw him out. The Supreme Court will decide if the council was within its rights to get rid of Iddings.

75 years ago

Dec. 21, 1946: West side residents hope Bloomington-Normal City Lines, the bus company, will add a route to serve neighborhoods west of White Oak Road. Theres a petition to that effect before the Illinois Commerce Commission, Alderman Henry Hawbecker reported.

50 years ago

Dec. 21, 1971: The old GM&O depot at Shirley is being moved to Funks Grove. Robert Rehtmeyer bought it for $100. He says his daughter plans to refurbish it and open a boutique. (Coincidentally, the previous Shirley station was also moved to Funks Grove in 1900.)

25 years ago

Dec. 21, 1996: Officer Kenneth Vanterpool of Eureka PD was acquitted of conspiracy and obstruction charges. His case was tied to that of Officer Greg Zook, who pled guilty earlier. Vanterpool maintained he, Zook and Wayne Lenover were all innocent.

Compiled by Jack Keefe; jkeefe@coldwellhomes.com.
Mobile Network Operators in Ghana have agreed to a 25% cut in mobile money transaction charges to accommodate the controversial E-Levy proposed by the government in the 2022 budget.



We have had extensive deliberation with the government on the need to lessen the impact on our consumers. We acknowledge the need to expand the tax base. However, to reduce the overall impact of the new levy on consumers, MTN and AirtelTigo have agreed to a downward revision of their P2P (person to person transfer) fees by up to 25% depending on the respective operator. Vodafone currently has no charges, the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications (GTC) said in a statement on Friday, 17 December 2021.



Each operator would notify their customers of the applicable revised rate when the e-levy bill is passed into law, the statement noted.



The 1.75 per cent e-levy takes effect from 1 February 2022.



It covers mobile money payments, bank transfers, merchant payments, and inward remittances.



The originator of the transactions will bear the charge except for inward remittances, which will be borne by the recipient.



There is an exemption for transactions up to GH100 ($16) per day.

Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Managing Director of Absa Bank Ghana, Mrs. Abena Osei-Poku has dispelled the myth that the transition to digital technology is leading to perpetual job losses. She said whilst the tectonic shift to global digitalisation is affecting jobs, it is also creating new streams of employment for the benefit of the working population.



Speaking at the 21st Graduation ceremony of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Abena Osei-Poku charged the graduating students to make value-addition a non-negotiable aspect of their career lives. She said the transformative power of digitalisation is eroding labour intensive and repetitive jobs; however, new areas of responsibility and new industries are being discovered for cognitive non-routine tasks and creating several thousands of new and exciting opportunities.



"Digital technologies have introduced opportunities in Digital marketing, robotics, Mobile App development, Customer Experience, and the like. The model employee of the future is the one who gets out of their comfort zone, seizes the opportunity, and delivers value to their organisation. You may make mistakes but that is a part of it. Remember, however, to learn from them quickly, grow, remain relevant and add value wherever you find yourself," she said.



The graduation ceremony, which was on the theme, "Digitalisation and Employment in a changing world," was held at the forecourt of GIMPA's Greenhill campus. Using concrete examples and profound anecdotes, Abena Osei-Poku inspired and admonished the students to look beyond their degrees and pick up new skills, upgrade old ones and become lifelong learners if they want to thrive as employees or entrepreneurs.



"In the skills revolution, the ability to constantly evolve one's skillset will bring opportunities. Today, the average life span of a young graduate in most companies is less than 10 years. With the Hybrid working model made possible by technology, the blurring of locations opens opportunities to work from anywhere and for entrepreneurial activity. You only now require a handset and an Instagram account to be the model entrepreneur. So whilst I encourage you to look for jobs, explore the opportunity to innovate, create and start your own businesses and take advantage of the ability to scale quickly with technology," Abena Osei-Poku added.





The graduation ceremony was chaired by the Chairman of the GIMPA Council, Mr. Kofi Darko Asante and host of attendees including, Vice-Chancellor, Professor Kwaku Bonsu, Council Member, Professor Stanley Coffie and GIMPA Secretary, Mr. Julius Atikpui.







Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The former Mayor of Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Nat Nunoo-Amarteifio has died, close family sources have confirmed.



The cause of death was, however, not immediately disclosed by the family sources. Nunoo-Amarteifio was Mayor of Accra between 1994 and 1998 in the JJ Rawlings administration.



Nunoo-Amarteifio went into lecturing on urban management and contemporary Ghanaian art and culture when he left office.



He was an architectural historian and a writer. He used to work in the US, Canada before returning to Ghana as an architect and consultant.



He was an occasional guest critic for the Ghanaian Times and Sunday Mirror in Accra. He has written a book on the history of architecture in Accra.



In June 2009, the former mayor undertook a photographic exhibition with Kofi Setordji, a Ghanaian sculptor and painter, under the title Architectural history of Accra showcasing in black and white photographs some buildings that were put up between 1920 and 1930

Source: Classfmonline.com













Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Chief Scribe of the ruling New Patriotic Party(NPP), John Boadu, has debunked claims that his party planned a hero welcome for Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia in Kumasi during their annual national delegates conference over the weekend.



The popularity and charisma of Bawumia within the NPP came to the fore when his presence was announced during the conference.



Some political pundits said that is a strong signal about his popularity ahead of their upcoming NPP flagbearership contest.



Others claimed the party deliberated planned the gargantuan cheers for him as their "preferred" candidate to take over from President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.



But John Boadu in an interview with NEAT FMs morning show said the claims are untrue.



According to him, nothing was orchestrated during the conference to favour Dr Bawumia.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Electoral Commission (EC) has clarified that its Chairperson, Mrs Jean Mensa, did not attend the recently held National Delegates Conference of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) held in Kumasi.



The clarification comes after a picture of a woman in a facemask wearing NPP colours at the Conference went viral on social media with people tagging her as the EC Chairperson.



The EC said the person in the photograph is not Mrs Mensa.



The election management body called on the public to be mindful of schemes of such nature with the sole mission of tarnishing the image and reputation of the Chairperson of the Commission.



The NPPs Conference, which was, among other things, meant to take stock of the activities of the party in the year under review, particularly its performance in the 2020 general elections and plan for the coming years, was held at the weekend.



It was on the theme: NPP, Our Resolve, Our Determination and Commitment to Ghanas Development.

Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has dismissed assertions suggesting that there is a general acceptance of the Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia as the next flagbearer of the party.



The NPP is yet to open nominations for the position, however, the vice-presidents name and a few others such as the former Energy Minister Boakye Kyeremateng Agyarko, Trade and Industry Minister Alan Kyerematen, former Railways Minister Joe Ghartey, and the Agric Minister Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto are already making rounds as contenders.



Speaking with Kwaku Nhyira-Addo on The Asaase Breakfast Show after the just ended NPP delegates conference in Kumasi, the communications director of NPP, Yaw Buaben Asamoa, said all flagbearer hopefuls will be given a level playing ground to compete.



This is not the first time a vice-president is contesting for the leadership of our party. I do recall the late Alhaji Aliu Mahama contested in the 2007 primaries of the NPP, though he didnt win, he came third.



And so as a sitting Vice-President he was enabled by our rules, which allow anybody and everybody to also contest. As sitting Vice-President, he didnt have to resign or anything of that sort, so our rules are resilient enough to take care of all the contestants who want to, Asamoa said.



He added: We are not going to restrict anybody from being elected through the electoral college, which is the constitutional amendment from our experience when 17 people ran for the presidency of the party.



We have to break the eight

Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called on members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to remain united as the party works to break the eight-year power cycle.



He said internal competition should not divide the party, but rather strengthen and unite it in the lead-up to the election of a flagbearer for the 2024 presidential election.



We cannot avoid competition. Competition there will be but let that competition help the party and not hinder the party so that we can break the eight in 2024, Akufo-Addo said at the annual national delegates conference of the NPP in Kumasi on Sunday (19 December).



He said breaking the eight-year power cycle will benefit Ghanaians because it will help to sustain the economic growth seen under his government.



We want to break the eight not just for ourselves, but for Ghana because we know the zigzag: NPP comes to clean for them to be polluted. This is not the way progress will be brought to our country.



We need a secure period in office to make that irreversible change in the fortunes of our nation and we are capable of doing it. We will get a candidate that will unify our party and all of us will campaign to make that candidate the next president of the republic, Akufo-Addo said.



Daring Mahama

He added: We have spent more money in improving the circumstances of our people than any government in the Fourth Republic.



So when you leave here, be proud that you have produced a government that has been more diligent in improving the lives of the people than any other government in the history of this country.



All the things that we have done in government are things we thought about while in opposition. What is the one policy that the NDC and their leader John Mahama have thought about in five years that they have been in opposition? There is not one policy! The answer is zero.

Source: asaaseradio.com









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The new 3D printing technology can be used to produce a wide variety of extremely small metal objects. Credit: Julian Hengsteler, ETH Zurich

In recent years 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has established itself as a promising new manufacturing process for a wide variety of components. Dr. Dmitry Momotenko, a chemist at the University of Oldenburg, has now succeeded in fabricating ultrasmall metal objects using a new 3D printing technique. In a paper published together with a team of researchers from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) in the scientific journal Nano Letters, he reports that the technique has potential applications in microelectronics, sensor technology and battery technology. The team has developed an electrochemical technique that can be used to make objects out of copper just 25 billionths of a meter (equivalent to 25 nanometres) in diameter. For comparison, a human hair is about 3000 times thicker than the filigree nanostructures.

The new printing technique is based on the comparatively simple and well-known process of electroplating. In electroplating, positively charged metal ions are suspended in a solution. When the liquid comes into contact with a negatively charged electrode, the metal ions combine with the electrons in the electrode to form neutral metal atoms which are then deposited on the electrode and gradually form a solid metal layer. "In this process, a solid metal is fabricated from a liquid salt solutiona process that we electrochemists can control very effectively," says Momotenko. For his nanoprinting technique he uses a solution of positively charged copper ions in a tiny pipette. The liquid emerges from the tip of the pipette through a print nozzle. In the team's experiments the nozzle opening had a diameter of between 253 and 1.6 nanometres. Only two copper ions can pass through such a tiny opening simultaneously.

Monitoring the progress of the printing process

The biggest challenge for the scientists was that as the metal layer grows, the opening of the print nozzle tends to get clogged. To prevent this the team developed a technique for monitoring the progress of the printing process. They recorded the electrical current between the negatively charged substrate electrode and a positive electrode inside the pipette and then the movement of the nozzle was adjusted accordingly in a fully automated process: the nozzle approached the negative electrode for a very short time and then retracted as soon as the metal layer had exceeded a certain thickness. Using this technique, the researchers gradually applied one copper layer after another to the electrode's surface. Thanks to the extremely precise positioning of the nozzle they were able to print both vertical columns and inclined or spiral nanostructures, and even managed to produce horizontal structures by simply changing the printing direction.

They were also able to control the diameter of the structures very preciselyfirstly through the choice of print nozzle size and secondly during the actual printing process on the basis of electrochemical parameters. According to the team, the smallest possible objects that can be printed using this method have a diameter of about 25 nanometres, which is equivalent to 195 copper atoms in a row.

Combining metal printing and nanoscale precision

That means that with the new electrochemical technique it is possible to print far smaller metal objects than have ever been printed before. 3D printing using metal powders, for examplea typical method for 3D printing of metalscan currently achieve a resolution of about 100 micrometers. The smallest objects that can be produced using this method are therefore 4,000 times larger than those in the current study. Although even smaller structures can be produced using other techniques, the choice of potential materials is limited. "The technology we are working on combines both worldsmetal printing and nanoscale precision," says Momotenko. Just as 3D printing has sparked a revolution in the production of complex larger components, additive manufacturing at the micro- and nanoscales could make it possible to fabricate functional structures and even devices with ultrasmall dimensions, he explains.

"3D-printed catalysts with high surface area and special geometry to allow particular reactivity could be prepared for the production of complex chemicals," says Momotenko. Three-dimensional electrodes could make electrical energy storage more efficient, he adds. The chemist and his team are currently working towards this very goal: in their NANO-3D-LION project they aim to drastically increase the surface area of electrodes and reduce distances between the cathode and the anode in lithium-ion batteries through 3D printing, in order to speed up the charging process.

More information: Julian Hengsteler et al, Bringing Electrochemical Three-Dimensional Printing to the Nanoscale, Nano Letters (2021). Journal information: Nano Letters Julian Hengsteler et al, Bringing Electrochemical Three-Dimensional Printing to the Nanoscale,(2021). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c02847

Provided by Carl von Ossietzky Universitat Oldenburg
The spacecraft would circumnavigate Venus every four to six days, with solar panels charging every two to three days on the side of the planet illuminated by the sun. Credit: CRASH Lab, University at Buffalo

According to multiple lines of evidence, Venus was once a much different planet than it is today. But roughly 500 million years ago, a massive resurfacing event triggered a runaway greenhouse effect that led to the poisonous and hellish environment we see there today. Therefore, the study of Venus presents an opportunity to model the evolution of planetary environments, which can serve as a reference for what could happen to other planets in the future.

In the coming years, NASA plans to send lighter-than-air missions to Venus to explore the atmosphere above the cloud tops, where temperatures are stable and atmospheric pressure is comparable to that of Earth. With support from NASA, engineers at West Virginia University (WVU) are developing software that will enable balloon-based aerial robots (aerobots) to survey Venus' atmosphere in small fleets.

The research is led by Guilherme Pereira and Yu Gu, two associate professors with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at WVU. They were joined by Bernardo Martinez Rocamora Jr., Chizhao Yang, and Anna Puigvert i Juan, two doctoral students in aerospace and mechanical engineering and a master's student in mechanical engineering (respectively). Their research is supported by a $100,000 grant from NASA's Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

Exploring the cloud tops

Part of what makes Venus fascinating to scientists is its similarities with Earth. In fact, Venus is colloquially known as Earth's "sister planet" because it is also a terrestrial body composed primarily of silicate minerals and metals differentiated into a metallic core and a silicate mantle and crust. Venus' atmosphere, however, is a much different story. In addition to being hot enough to melt leadwith an average temperature of 464 degrees Celsius (867 degrees Fahrenheit)it has an atmosphere that's over 90 times as dense as Earth's.

But at an altitude of 50 to 70 km (30 to 45 miles) above the surface, the temperature and pressure of Venus' atmosphere are similar to that of Earth. This presents opportunities for atmospheric research using lighter-than-air vehicles. Proposals include NASA's High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), a series of concepts for a 30-day crewed mission that would explore Venus's upper atmosphere using large lighter-than-air craft.

While this project is no longer active, it inspired subsequent proposals, like the Venus Atmosphere Maneuverable Platform (VAMP), a hybrid airship under development by NASA and its commercial partner, Northrop Grumman. These concepts rely on buoyancy and aerodynamic life to control their altitude, allowing them to fly like a plane during the daytime (using solar energy to power their batteries) and float at night to save energy.

Until now, though, no efforts have been mounted to create software that would allow these craft to act autonomously. As Prof. Pereira explained in a recent WVU Today press release:

"The main goal of the project is to propose a software solution that will allow hybrid aerobots to explore the atmosphere of Venus. Although hybrid vehicles were proposed before this project, we are not aware if any software has been created. One of the ideas of our project is to extend the battery life of the vehicle by planning energy-efficient paths, thus allowing it to fly during the night as well."

Navigating Venus' atmosphere

The software suite Pereira and Gu are currently working on will have three main goals: Optimize travel routes, localize the aerobots in Venus' atmosphere, and coordinate fleets of aerobots to work together. The first goal involves the creation of a "motion planer" that will run on the aerobot's computers and allow for optimized travel. As the NASA science team commands the aerobots to travel from one position to another, the software will select routes that minimize the amount of energy used and take advantage of the local winds.

"The motion planner will be created by understanding the dynamics of the aerobot, the properties of its solar panels and batteries and the properties of Venus atmosphere," said Pereira. With the dynamics of the vehicle, the planner will only consider movements that are feasible given certain inputs to the aircraft, such as thrust coming from the propellers or deflections of the control surfaces."

To this end, the software must account for the interoperability of the craft's solar panels, batteries, and solar intensity. This will allow it to determine how much charge the vehicle needs to power its systems and what the recharging rate will be like. With these models, Pereira explained, the motion planner will calculate the most energy-efficient routes for the aerobot to take:

"The understanding of the atmosphere provides the robots quantities like wind direction and magnitude, pressure, temperature and solar intensity. We are trying to come up with an optimal energy strategy. This is important since the vehicle will be orbiting the atmosphere of Venus in around four days. It will be exposed to long periods without light on the dark side of the planet and it needs to have enough energy to survive these periods."

The motion planner will also compare information on the position of the aerobot, its desired goal location, and information about the atmospheric conditions between these two positions. If, for example, the wind is blowing in the same direction as the aerobot's path to its destination, it will select this route over another that would present wind resistance.

"Starting from the initial position, the planner will simulate different movements the aerobot could make and associate costs for each of them depending on the quantities mentioned before," Pereira added. "After that, the motion planner will keep propagating the movements of the aerobot with smaller cost, creating a tree of possibilities until we reach our destination."

The second goal, localizing the aerobots in Venus' atmosphere, is more complicated. Currently, there are no GPS satellites in orbit around Venus, making localization difficult. As such, Pereira and Gu are designing their software suite to be able to use information from other vehicles and maps of the planet. This will allow several aerobots to keep track of their positions as they navigate the cloud tops of Venus.

The third goal is to coordinate the vehicles to provide improved localization so they can better estimate Venus's atmospheric conditions. To this end, Pereira and Gu relied on wind models of Venus' atmosphere created by NASA from data obtained by missions like the Pioneer Venus missions, CassiniHuygens, MESSENGER, and the ESA's Venus Express. They also plan to equip each aerobot with wind sensors to estimate local wind speed and direction.

By sharing data from multiple locations, said Pereira, a fleet of aerobots will have a better idea of the overall wind patterns and their spatial distribution in the atmosphere:

"The importance of the wind flow is related to the fact that it can be exploited to take the aerobot to desired locations. Just as with sprinters in the Olympics when they get better marks if they are experiencing tail-wind. If the wind is directed towards the goal of the aircraft, the aerobot movement will be aided by the wind and, by consequence, the path will be more energetically efficient."

Looking ahead, Pereira and Gu plan to develop a Venus atmosphere simulator to evaluate their software and the aerobots' functionality. "Several exploratory missions to Venus collected data of wind, temperature, pressure, and air density," Pereira said. "This information was then used to create a simulator where, given the latitude, longitude, and altitude of the vehicle, we compute all the forces acting on the vehicle."

Pereira and Gu estimate that the vehicle's buoyancy will prevent it from descending below an altitude of 50 km (31 mi) and will have a lifespan (at cruise altitude) of several months to a year. The data obtained by this and other missions to Venus are expected to shed light on the evolution of the planet's atmosphere, the possibility that Venus is still volcanically active, and provide clues for dealing with the greenhouse effect here on Earth.

Explore further Venus will soon appear to sink and disappear right before our eyes
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new report has highlighted how beavers are heading further north and are having a significant impact on the landscape of northern Canada and Alaska.

The Arctic Report Card 2021 report, published this month by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), describes how the North American beaver (Castor canadensis) has expanded its range in recent years and is now colonizing Arctic territory.

Authored by members of the Arctic Beaver Observation Network (A-BON), including Dr. Helen Wheeler of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), the report details how scientists are using satellite imagery to plot the beavers' march into the Arctic tundra.

Over 12,000 beaver ponds have so far been mapped in western Alaska, with most areas seeing a doubling in the last 20 years. In comparison, analysis of aerial photography of coastal areas of western Alaska from between 1949-55 found no beaver ponds.

Beavers are a keystone species, capable of changing landscapes by creating new ponds and diverting the flow of rivers. Ponds created by beaver dams increase surface water, which in the Arctic is causing permafrost to melt, in turn releasing the greenhouse gasses methane and carbon dioxide.

North American beaver (Castor canadensis) Credit: Dr Helen Wheeler, Anglia Ruskin University

In western Alaska, research has shown that beavers are the dominant factor in almost two thirds (66%) of cases where surface water has increased. These new ponds can also lead to the introduction of other new species, including fish and invertebrates.

Pond mapping in Canada is now underway and Dr. Wheeler is leading the Wildlife Change in the Arctic project in the Mackenzie Delta in Canada's Northwest Territories to investigate the beavers' impact on the local environment as well as the Indigenous people who live there.

Dr. Wheeler, Senior Lecturer in Zoology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), said: "The true impact of the spread of beavers into the Arctic on the environment and the Indigenous communities who live there, is not yet fully known. However, we do know that that people are concerned about the impact beaver dams are having on water quality, the numbers of fish downstream of the dams, and access for their boats.

An aerial image of a beaver lodge inside the Arctic Circle, in the Mackenzie Delta region of Canada's Northwest Territories. Credit: Dr Helen Wheeler, Anglia Ruskin University

"The abundance of vegetation, particularly trees and woody shrubs, appears to help beavers to thrive in previously inhospitable terrain, and we are also finding beaver lodges at ever higher elevations, including above the treeline.

"Whether their expansion northwards is entirely due to climate change or increased populations following historical reductions in the trapping of beavers for fur and food, or a combination of the two, is not entirely clear, but we do know that beavers are having a significant impact on the ecosystems they are colonizing."

Explore further Beavers have an impact on the climate

More information: K.D. Tape et al, Beaver Engineering: Tracking a New Disturbance in the Arctic, NOAA (2021). K.D. Tape et al, Beaver Engineering: Tracking a New Disturbance in the Arctic,(2021). DOI: 10.25923/0jtd-vv85
A study conducted by researchers at the University of Sao Paulo estimated the likelihood of politicians' future conviction for corruption and other financial crimes by analyzing networks pointing to similarity of voting histories. Credit: Laycer Tomaz/Camara dos Deputados

Birds of a feather flock together. The popular saying applies to politics and to the computational analysis of complex networks in research on corruption, judging from a study by scientists at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

According to the authors, it is possible to predict whether deputies (members of Camara dos Deputados, the lower house of Congress in Brazil) will be convicted of corruption or white-collar crime in future by analyzing the similarity between their voting records and those of already convicted lawmakers.

The study is published as a chapter of the book Corruption Networks. The researchers analyzed the voting history and consonance of 2,455 politicians elected to the lower house between 1991 and 2019, in a total of 3,407 sessions involving votes on bills covering a wide array of subjects.

"The surprising aspect of the study is that we didn't need to use data from cases tried by the law courts to find this correlation between voting history and corruption. We used only house voting records to create networks showing what we call 'voting vicinity' in terms of how and with whom deputies voted. On this basis, our model can predict whether a deputy is corrupt with 90% accuracy," said Tiago Colliri, a co-author of the study.

The analysis was conducted during Colliri's Ph.D. research at USP's Sao Carlos Department of Computer Science, with a scholarship from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). FAPESP provided support via a Thematic Project and the Center for Artificial Intelligence (C4AI), a partnership between FAPESP and IBM.

The analysis of complex networks has been applied very widely, including such fields as biological neural networks and food chains, for example. In crime-related studies, the aims have ranged from finding a correlation between social capital and the risk of corruption in local government contracts to identifying hidden links among the members of an Italian mafia group.

To understand the approach, it is necessary to bear in mind that complex networks refer to large-scale graphs with non-trivial connection patterns. "One of the main features of any complex network is the modeling of various types of relationship between nodesor deputies, in the case of our study. These may be local, intermediate or global relationships. Here we set out to identify the relationship between deputies and how they voted in Congress, and our method was highly accurate for the purpose of prediction," said Zhao Liang, a professor in the Department of Computing and Mathematics at USP's Ribeirao Preto School of Philosophy, Science and Letters (FFCLRP) and the other co-author of the study.

Similarity

After creating a network based on the voting histories of almost 2,500 deputies, the researchers noted that some deputies who had been notoriously convicted of corruption had similar voting histories to those of other deputies. "In this kind of network analysis, each node represents a deputy and each edge stands for the similarity of votes between a pair of deputies," Colliri explained.

The researchers detected a pattern in the network. "The pattern showed voting vicinity or similarity among deputies whose convictions had been reported in the media. There was consonance in their voting histories," he said.

To validate the finding, they assembled a separate database with data on deputies convicted for corruption taken from sources such as Brazil's Supreme Court (STF). "With this secondary database, we verified 33 individuals who had been convicted, and they were not scattered but clustered in the network," Colliri said. "They formed a pattern of what we call 'corruption neighbors'. We then tested this map using a number of link prediction algorithms based on common neighbors. The algorithms proved capable of predicting whether a deputy is corrupt with 90% accuracy."

One of the conclusions to be drawn from the study is that corruption in Congress can be monitored in a simpler manner. "We discovered that corrupt deputies vote similarly in our Congress, so that a predictive model can be obtained more simply and monitoring can be much easier to do. It's far more straightforward to analyze this data than search among lawsuits, criminal trials, media reports, and even family trees," Zhao said.

Explore further Political corruption scandals may be predicted by network science

More information: Tiago Colliri et al, Predicting Corruption Convictions Among Brazilian Representatives Through a Voting-History Based Network, Corruption Networks (2021). Tiago Colliri et al, Predicting Corruption Convictions Among Brazilian Representatives Through a Voting-History Based Network,(2021). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-81484-7_4
Credit: Apirak Wongpunsing

Were it not for Baron Justus von Liebig, Christmas might look and taste quite different. Yet despite his contribution to everything from the stock cubes used in your gravy to the mirrors in your home, it is unlikely you have heard of him.

For much of the 19th century, Liebig was a giant of the scientific establishment, with fingers in many pies. He worked out the core nutritional needs of plants and then went on to develop the first fertilizerfor which he is known in scientific circles as the "father of fertilization." This work removed the dependency on animal dung to feed crops and paved the way for industrial agricultureincluding piles of Brussels sprouts.

The German chemist's interests also stretched to human nutrition. He became convinced the juices that flowed out of cooked meat contained valuable nutritional compounds and encouraged cooks to sear the meat to seal in the juices. This turned out to be complete bunkum, but 150 years later his advice is still followed by Christmas dinner chefs across the land.

The obsession with meat juices also led him to create beef extracts in an attempt to provide a nutritious meat substitute. The extract turned out to be a rather poor, and not particularly nutritious, alternative to meatbut the Liebig Extract of Meat Company did morph into Oxo, whose stock cubes find their way into so many Christmas gravies.

Mirrors and baubles

Yet Leibig's most visible contribution to Christmas may well be hanging on your Christmas tree. Christmas trees have their roots as far back as the Roman saturnalian celebration of the winter solsticesa religious festival involving drinking, singing and exchange of gifts, dedicated to the Roman god Saturn. Later, probably sometime in the 16th century, decorated trees were brought into homes and this German idea was then popularized by Queen Victoria in the mid 19th century.

Some of the first reported glass decorations for trees, dating back to the 16th century, were garlands of beads produced by the Greiner family in Lauscha, Germany. Some 250 years later, the family were still making ornaments, and Hans Greiner became famous for his ornate glass nuts and fruits, decorated with mirrored internal surfaces.

At the time, mirrors were prohibitively expensive for most and were made by adhering a thin tin film to glass using mercury. The process was extremely hazardous as it generated highly toxic mercury vapor, which could also leach off the mirror for decades to come. In fact, antique mercury mirrors may be identified by droplets of mercury pooling at their base.

At more or less the same time as Hans Greiner was creating his baubles, Liebig was developing much safer ways to silver glassware for use in his laboratories. His method utilized silver nitrate, ammonia and simple sugars. And it resulted in a fabulously uniform, crystal-clear film of silver metal deposited on the glass. This was soon adapted for use in other areas of science, including telescope mirrors, and soon Greiner caught wind of the development and incorporated it into his ornaments. Eventually the process also led to mass-produced mirrors which were cheap enough to make them commonplace.

Shortly after Liebig developed his silvering method the process was tweaked by another German chemist, Bernhard Tollen, who turned the process into an analytical technique for identifying particular chemical groups called aldehydes. Tollen's technique has the rather beautiful side effect of quickly silvering the vessel it is carried in. Seeing a mirrored surface form in your hands is a real delight, making it a favorite of chemistry lessons the world over.

Explore further Discovering sources of Roman silver coinage from the Iberian Peninsula

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Front page coverage of COP26 around the world at various points of the two-week negotiations. Credit: Media and Climate Change Observatory

United States news coverage of climate change reached an all-time high in October and November, according to recent data from the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO), an international, multi-university collaboration based at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Monitoring stories around the globe from 127 newspapers, radio and television stations in 59 countries and 13 languages, MeCCO found that during these two monthswhich coincided with the 2021 United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow, ScotlandU.S. media coverage was the highest it's been since November and December 2009, when the same annual conference took place in Copenhagen, Denmark.

"Climate change is no longer just a science story. It's now a political, economic, societal and cultural story," said Max Boykoff, MeCCO lead project investigator and chair of the Department of Environmental Studies.

Both October and November showed significant increases in global climate change coverage from the previous year, with newspaper coverage in October 2021 more than doubling (a 114% increase) from October 2020. This coverage in October 2021 jumped up quickly from the previous month, with newspaper coverage increasing 22% and radio up 29% from September. While newspaper coverage then plateaued in November 2021, it had increased 81% from a year prior, and global radio coverage of climate change increased a whopping 45% from October to November 2021.

In addition to the U.N. conference, emerging stories on social movements played a role in increased coverage, as well as new scientific reports published in October 2021: the annual The Lancet Countdown report about climate change impacts on human health (to which MeCCO team members Olivia Pearman and Lucy McAllister contributed); and a paper in Science which documented how land dispossession from native peoples in the U.S. has increased their vulnerability to climate change.

Changing language for a changing climate

The language of climate change is also changing, with more intense words and phrases being used in the news to describe the phenomenon, such as "climate catastrophe" and "climate emergency," according to data collected by MeCCO and language learning platform Babbel from 2006 to 2021.

MeCCO's work depends on identifying new terms being used in the news and then incorporating them into their tracking algorithms. In their work with Babbel, they chose eight search terms to track where and when they have emerged in recent years.

Between 2020 and 2021 alone, the use of "climate catastrophe" in U.S. news outlets increased by half; in the UK, use of the term tripled.

"Our language helps describe the realities of our world," said Boykoff, who is also a Fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Meanwhile, the terms "global warming" and "greenhouse effect" have been invoked less frequently. At least one outlet, The Guardian, even changed its official style guide in 2019, preferring the terms "global heating" and "climate emergency, crisis or breakdown" over "global warming" and "climate change," respectively.

The term "climate change" however, is not disappearingit's just that other terms are increasing, said Boykoff.

He notes that it's difficult to draw a straight line between more media coverage and increased action on climate change. Yet the news is a major way we understand the world going on around us, and political actors also use media attention to gauge public pressures and interests, he said.

"Increased media attention is part of a story of increased engagement and action," said Boykoff.

MeCCO will release a year-long look at climate change in the news in 2021 in January 2022, its fifth annual summary/explainer of this type. The data MeCCO uses to compile their reports are set up as open-source databases through CU Boulder Libraries, which are available to anyone free of charge: academics, journalists and the public alike.

MeCCO members also authored a paper in The Lancet in January of 2021, "COVID-19 media coverage decreasing despite deepening crisis," which uses the same methods to analyze media coverage of COVID-19. With more resources and funding, MeCCO could use their existing network to glean valuable insights on media coverage of the pandemic like they have been tracking and analyzing climate change news.

Explore further Majority of climate change news coverage now accurate: study
Days of torrential rain triggered some of the worst flooding in years across the country at the weekend.

The Malaysian military used boats Tuesday to distribute food to desperate people trapped in their homes after massive floods, as the death toll rose to 14 with over 70,000 displaced.

Days of torrential rain triggered some of the worst flooding in years across the country at the weekend, swamping cities and villages and cutting off major roads.

Selangorthe country's wealthiest and most densely populated state, encircling the capital Kuala Lumpuris one of the worst-hit areas.

Some parts of state capital Shah Alam were still under water Tuesday, and military personnel in boats distributed food to people stuck in their homes and government shelters.

Kartik Subramany fled his house as floodwaters rose, and took refuge in a school for 48 hours before being evacuated with his family to a shelter.

"My house is totally damaged, my two cars are wrecked," the 29-year-old told AFP.

"These are the worst floods of my entire life. The federal government has failed the people miserablyit has failed in its primary function to protect and safeguard lives."

He is among a growing number attacking what they say is a slow and inadequate official response.

Thousands of emergency service and military personnel have been mobilised, but critics say it is not enough and volunteers have stepped in to provide food and boats for the rescue effort.

An AFP journalist in one hard-hit Shah Alam neighbourhood saw people desperate for food snatching items from a devastated supermarket.

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob admitted Tuesday there were "weaknesses" in the response to the disaster and pledged there would be improvements in future.

"The responsibility is not that of the federal government alone, but also the state governments," he added, noting a month's rainfall had come down in a single day in Selangor.

The death toll from the floods rose to 14, including eight in Selangor and six in the eastern state of Pahang.

'Hopeless' official response

Opposition MP Fuziah Salleh described the official response as "hopeless" and "incompetent".

"No early warning of the torrential rain was given," she told AFP. "It is so sad lives have been lost."

Opposition politicians have accused the government of ignoring their calls to better prepare for the monsoon season, from November to February, particularly by improving drainage in densely populated urban areas.

On Tuesday, the death toll from the floods rose to 14, including eight in Selangor and six in the eastern state of Pahang, official news agency Bernama reported.

But with reports of people still missing, it is expected to increase.

More than 71,000 people have been forced from their homes due to the floods, including 41,000 in Pahang and 27,000 in Selangor, according to official data.

Evacuees are being housed in government relief centres but officials have warned to expect a rise in coronavirus cases linked to the crowded shelters.

The rain has stopped and in many areas floodwaters have receded, leaving residents to count the cost.

"I've been doing business for more than 24 years... this has never happened before," said Mohammad Awal, whose cosmetic shop outside Kuala Lumpur was flooded.

The Southeast Asian nation is hit by floods annually during the monsoon season, but those at the weekend were the worst since 2014 when over 100,000 people were forced from their homes.

Global warming has been linked to worsening floods. Because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, climate change increases the risk and intensity of flooding from extreme rainfall.

Explore further 9 dead after floods in Sri Lanka, southern India

 2021 AFP
Artist representation of the JWST. Credit: European Space Agency

The James Webb Space Telescope has been almost 30 years in the making, a collaborative endeavor between ESA, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency to shed light on our cosmic origins.

Webb is due to launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, at the earliest on 24 December. It will journey on a direct escape trajectory towards its target orbit more than 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Part of ESA's Estrack cooperative network, the 10-meter antenna in Malindi, Kenya, will make first contact from the ground with the fledgling mission, with the all-important 'first acquisition of signal.'

A signal says a thousand words

Webb's first 'message' home will appear as a peak in radio waves on a monitor at the Malindi Ground StationWebb's first 'words.' Such signals are our only means of sending commands and bringing data home.

After this initial signal, a flood of information becomes available, informing operators of the spacecraft's health after the rigors of launch and opening a gateway for ESA's team at the Agency's Operation's Centre in Germany and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) team at Malindi to relay commands and vital mission information to NASA's Webb Mission Control.

ESAs ultra-precise deep-space navigation technique  Delta-DOR  tells us where spacecraft are, accurate to within a few hundred metres, even at a distance of 100 000 000 km. Credit: European Space Agency

ESA's global network of 'eyes on the sky' ground stations, known as Estrack, is in prime position to secure this vital connection. At 10 meters across and relatively nimble in its pointing, the Malindi station is used by ESA in collaboration with ASI for the launch and early operations phases of a mission's life, when a rocket or satellite moves quite quickly overhead, still close to Earth.

The station's position at the equator is in line with Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Launching from this location provides rockets with an extra boost from the speed of Earth's rotation.

While NASA's own system of orbiting data relay satellitesthe Tracking and Data Relay Satellite Systemcan check on newly launched missions, only stations on the ground like those in ESA's Estrack and NASA's Deep Space Network can provide the vital information to Webb's navigation engineers that will be needed on launch day, namely 'tracking data' such as angular, range and velocity measurements.

From launch to L2

About 23 minutes after lift-off, Malindi will locate the Ariane 5 launch vehicle in flight, rising above the Western horizon, still housing its precious cargo. Only five minutes later, Webb will separate from the rocket and begin its solo life in space.

Webb is due to launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, at the earliest on 24 December. It will journey on a direct escape trajectory towards its target orbit more than 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Part of ESA's Estrack cooperative network, the 10-metre antenna in Malindi, Kenya, will make first contact from the ground with the fledgling mission, with the all-important "first acquisition of signal." Credit: European Space Agency

Unlike most missions, Webb will begin emitting its signal as the rocket fairing is jettisoned, just before spacecraft separation. This means ESA's Estrack team can expect to receive signals from Webb just before it gains independence.

"We may lose signal momentarily some minutes after Webb separates from Ariane 5, and at that time we will switch from launch vehicle tracking to spacecraft tracking," explains Daniel Firre, ESA's Ground Operations Manager.

"The Malindi dish has two heads, or 'brains,' and at any point, one or the other is controlling the antenna while receiving orders from either the launch operator, Arianespace, or Webb tracking computers. To switch over, we would stop the antenna for a few seconds and literally switch the cable from one tracking system to the other, interrupting its movement for about 20 seconds."

From the moment of separation, Malindi will have three phases of visibility with the mission; at first, the ESA station will be in a 'private call' with Webb for the first hour after separation, after which point NASA's Deep Space Antenna in Canberra will join the call and Malindi will switch to backup. When the spacecraft is no longer visible from Canberra, Malindi will again take over the reins one more time before NASA's Madrid station joins the call.

Webb launch timeline at Europes Spaceport. Credit: European Space Agency

Keeping an eye on Ariane

Even after Webb has gone off on its own, the Malindi station will track the Ariane rocket upper stage during its 'liberation maneuver,' about an hour after lift-off. The antenna will not be actively tracking the rocketas it will be fully tracking Webbbut the two objects will remain relatively close in the sky.

With Webb behind the upper stage, the Ariane will remain well within Malindi's 'beamwidth' until the end of its mission, culminating with the 'upper stage tank complete passivation'in line with global debris mitigation guidelines.

From launch to separation, acquisition of signal to the first science data streaming into this incredibly exciting mission, ESA will be on hand to support and help uncover the mysterious origins of the cosmos.

Explore further Webb Telescope placed on top of Ariane 5 rocket
The Magis latter two gifts to Jesus were natural resins that are becoming increasingly rare. Credit: David Jackmanson/Flickr, CC BY-SA 4.0

Right now, Christmas nativity scenes across the world feature three kingsalso known as the "wise men" or Magibringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the newborn baby Jesus in Bethlehem. In the Bible, Matthew's gospel tells us that the wise men "saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh."

As a child, I remember thinking how gold seemed like an obvious choice, but that the other two gifts seemed a bit like last-minute purchasesthe biblical equivalent of getting socks for Christmas. The mention of "treasures" in Matthew's gospel is so important, however, because it gives us an indication of how all three of these items were viewed at the time.

Frankincense and myrrh had been in use for thousands of years before they turned up in Bethlehem. Frankincense has long been mixed with various spices to form incense, and myrrh was used by the ancient Egyptians as an embalming agent. Both have been promoted as cures for a variety of ailments, from digestive trouble to pain relief. At the time of Jesus, these gifts were worth the same as, if not more than, gold.

Both substances are produced from the resin of trees in the Burseraceae, or "incense," family. A small incision is made in the trunk of the tree and the resin is slowly drained and allowed to dry. This resin is how the tree tries to seal up its open wound. Frankincense comes from Boswellia trees, while myrrh comes from Commiphora trees.

Although these products are most famously associated with western Asia, the Burseraceae family has relatives all over the worldfrom South America to Africa and Australasia. Native to desert regions, these trees are often of crucial economic importance to communities who can harvest resins during the dry season when other sources of income are scarce.

The Adoration of the Magi by Gerard David, showing the wise men gifting Jesus with gold, frankincense and myrrh. Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikimedia

An imminent threat

The frankincense-producing tree Boswellia sacra is native to Oman, Yemen and Somalia, where it is listed as "near threatened" on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) red list. As the source of high-quality frankincense, it has been widely over-harvested, leading to greatly reduced population sizes.

A 2011 study of a closely related tree (and now the main commercial source of frankincense), Boswellia papyrifera in northern Ethiopia, suggested that fire and over-grazing were preventing saplings reaching maturity.

What's more, adult mortality was also high due to damage from fire and pests. The study predicted a 90% decline in population size within 50 years if nothing was done. Another study has projected a 71% population decline within 25 years.

Intensive ecosystem management and sapling protection was recommended to prevent disaster. A number of these practices have been trialed, including reducing resin extraction from trees and protecting them from grazing animals, but haven't yet been widely adopted.

Frankincense trees are listed as near threatened, making their future uncertain. Credit: Rod Waddington/Flickr, CC BY-ND 4.0

Myrrh is collected in a similar way from a number of Commiphora tree species. Comiphora wightii, native to parts of Pakistan and India, is critically endangered due to over-harvesting of its resin for use in traditional medicine.

Commiphora myrrha, as the name suggests, is one of the species most associated with the production of myrrh. Although it hasn't been assessed for its conservation status, it's likely to face similar challenges to its distant relatives that give us frankincense.

Unfortunately, the story of the exploitation of frankincense and myrrh is a familiar one. Many wild populations of plants are in jeopardy, contributing to ongoing global biodiversity collapse.

A report on the state of the world's plants and fungi, which I co-authored in 2020, found that two in five plants are now threatened with extinction. Apart from the intrinsic loss of value that this represents, these species' disappearance would also mean a potentially enormous loss of plant-based food and medicine for humans.

Faith in the future

At least one writer has noted that, given their sacred significance, the continued unsustainable harvesting of these products poses a dilemma for many Christian churches. As consumers of the resins, they have a responsibility to promote sustainable practices in the resin industry.

Indeed, faith groups in general are importantand often overlookedallies in protecting biodiversity. As Pope Francis wrote in 2015: "Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost for ever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right."

There are a number of examples, from Ethiopia to Japan, of faith groups working to protect biodiversity and restore nature by reforesting logged land and practicing ethical farming.

Thanks to their social and spiritual importance, raising awareness about plants such as those that give us frankincense and myrrh can help engage people of many different faiths in the vital work of protecting the natural world.

Explore further Change of direction in immune defense: Frankincense reprograms inflammatory enzyme

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Scheme of automated platform to engineer arbitrary qudit states in the orbital angular momentum of photons. The experimental parameters are adaptively optimized for generation of target states. Credit: Alessia Suprano, Danilo Zia, and Nicolo Spagnolo.

The adoption of high-dimensional quantum states in quantum information protocols enables better performances in applications ranging from secure quantum communications to fault-tolerant quantum computation. Development of universal protocols able to engineer arbitrary high-dimensional quantum states would be a significant achievement. Several strategies and platforms have been proposed and developed to this end. Quantum-walk (QW) dynamics have been shown to allow development of universal, platform-independent state engineering protocols. However, the unavoidable presence of noise, and imperfections in the characterization of experimental apparatuses, diminish the overall quality of the state generation.

To overcome these limitations, a team of researchers from Sapienza Universita di Roma, Queen's University of Belfast, and Universita degli Studi di Palermo, demonstrate the use of an adaptive optimization protocol that can engineer arbitrary high-dimensional states, as reported in Advanced Photonics. Within a fully black-box scenario, the protocol tunes the relevant experimental parameters relying only on the measured agreement between produced and target state, without needing a description of the generation setup.

The authors present an experimental verification of the proposed protocol using the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of classical light and single photons. OAM is a degree of freedom of the electromagnetic field related to its spatial and phase profile. Since the OAM is an infinite-dimensional degree of freedom, it is suitable for encoding arbitrary high-dimensional quantum states. The authors experimentally implement the protocol using a state-generation platform based on quantum-walk dynamics in the OAM and polarization degrees of freedom. By tuning the parameters of the operators acting on the polarization state, an arbitrary walker state encoded in the OAM space can be engineered. The proposed optimization algorithm then performs an online tuning of the experimental parameters driving the dynamics to obtain the desired outcome.

Conceptual scheme of the engineering protocol. a) The optimization algorithm tunes the parameters to optimize the engineering performance of an arbitrary target walker state. b) OAM mode modification during the iterations of the algorithm. In the first iteration, the beam shape is completely random, during the evolution it improves until it almost completely coincides with the target state. Credit: Suprano et al., doi 10.1117/1.AP.3.6.066002.

The optimization protocol is shown to perform well when subject to experimental noisy conditions, for several four-dimensional target OAM states. Finally, the team investigated the adaptability of the protocol by introducing time-varying noise as external perturbation on the values of the parameters. The protocol found the new optimal solution after the introduction of these external perturbations. The proposed protocol is applicable in a wide variety of circumstances, even in presence of disturbance, without needing significant fine-tuning.

According to senior author Fabio Sciarrino, head of the Quantum Information Lab in the Department of Physics of Sapienza Universita di Roma, "The proposed dynamical learning protocol will be beneficial for several quantum information tasks that require finding optimal values of experimental parameters under noisy conditions."

Explore further Optimized method to detect high-dimensional entanglement

More information: Alessia Suprano et al, Dynamical learning of a photonics quantum-state engineering process, Advanced Photonics (2021). Alessia Suprano et al, Dynamical learning of a photonics quantum-state engineering process,(2021). DOI: 10.1117/1.AP.3.6.066002
H z component diagram when the point source is placed at r = R1 (a) in vacuum and (b) -MoO 3 invisibility concentrator and r = R2 in (c) vacuum and (d) -MoO 3 invisibility concentrator, respectively. Credit: Nanophotonics, De Gruyter

Invisibility devices may soon no longer be the stuff of science fiction. A new study published in the De Gruyter journal Nanophotonics by lead authors Huanyang Chen at Xiamen University, China, and Qiaoliang Bao, suggests the use of the material Molybdenum Trioxide (-MoO 3 ) to replace expensive and difficult to produce metamaterials in the emerging technology of novel optical devices.

The idea of an invisibility cloak may sound more like magic than science, but researchers are currently hard at work producing devices that can scatter and bend light in such a way that it creates the effect of invisibility.

Thus far these devices have relied on metamaterialsa material that has been specially engineered to possess novel properties not found in naturally occurring substances or in the individual particles of that materialbut the study by Chen and co-authors suggests the use of -MoO 3 to create these invisibility devices.

Possessing some unique properties, this material can provide an excellent platform for controlling energy flow. The team's simulation results showed that when cylindrical or rolled up -MoO 3 materials replace metamaterials, the simplified invisibility concentrator can gain the effects of electromagnetic invisibility and energy concentration that would be demonstrated by a near perfect-invisibility device.

As a result, the study shows that hyperbolic materials such as -MoO 3 and Vanadium pentoxide (V 2 O 5 ) could serve as a new basis for transformation optics, opening the possibility of photonic devices beyond invisibility concentrators, including improved infrared imaging and detection systems.

Transformation optics has been a hot topic in physics over recent decades thanks to the discovery that the path light takes through a continuous medium can be the same as its propagation through a curved space that has undergone a coordinate transformation.

The consequence of this is that the behavior of light can be manipulated as it passes through a material, something that has led to the creation of a multitude of novel optical devices, such as invisibility cloaksa camouflage material that could cover an object and bend light around it making it almost disappearand other optical illusion devices.

"It is the first time that 2D materials have been used for transformation optical devices. Usually, we need metamaterials but this is much simpler," says Chen. The researcher continued by explaining that the first application for the results of this study might be a large size energy concentrator capable of improving such devices. "We are now performing experiments by rolling up the -MoO 3 , the results of which we hope will appear very soon."

More information: Tao Hou et al, Invisibility concentrator based on van der Waals semiconductor -MoO3, Nanophotonics (2021). Tao Hou et al, Invisibility concentrator based on van der Waals semiconductor -MoO3,(2021). DOI: 10.1515/nanoph-2021-0557

Provided by De Gruyter
Normally, ion spins that start out pointing in opposite directions will interact and reach an equilibrium, with no trace of where they started. But when the tilt in their container is large enough, they keep pointing in their original direction, creating a many-body localized state that remembers its initial configuration. Credit: JQI

A Persian adage, notably wielded by Abe Lincoln and the band OK Go, expresses the ephemeral nature of the world: "This, too, shall pass."

Physicists have their own version of this rule. It says that wiggles and wrinklesreally any small disturbancestend to get ironed out over time. For instance, a couple drops of blue food coloring mixed into some cake batter will impart a blue tint to the whole batch; fresh water from a river funneled into the salty ocean will spread out and make a slightly less salty ocean; and a gush of cold wind entering your room will mingle with the air inside and reach a single, cooler temperature. The basic idea is that, given enough time, everything will reach equilibrium, regardless of where it started.

There are a few notable exceptions to this equanimous rule. In the quantum world of atoms and electrons, particles confined in a container made of electric and magnetic fieldsakin to a bowl confining cake battercan get stuck in place if the container isn't smooth. When this "bowl" is rough, disorderly, and random, the particles can't make up their minds about which way to go and instead stay put. Oddly, even when a bunch of these localized particles are allowed to influence each other, they can manage to stay localized, not exchanging energy and avoiding equilibrium. This effect, known as many-body localization (MBL), imparts particles with a kind of memory of where they started.

Now, scientists have found a new way to create disturbances that do not fade away. Instead of relying on disorder to freeze things in place, they tipped the quantum particles' container to one sidea trick that is easier to conjure in the lab. A collaboration between the experimental group of College Park Professor Christopher Monroe and the theoretical group of JQI Fellow Alexey Gorshkov, who is also a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has used trapped ions to implement this new technique, confirming that it prevents their quantum particles from reaching equilibrium. The team also measured the slowed spread of information with the new tipping technique for the first time. They published their results recently in the journal Nature.

"One advantage of this method of many-body localization is that we don't need that disorder," says Fangli Liu, former graduate student in physics at the University of Maryland (now a research scientist at QuEra Computing) and lead theorist on the work. "In the original system the disorder is realized in a random form. But with this method, each time you do a measurement you will have exactly the same result. It gives us the possibility to more efficiently use this many-body localization to do something interesting."

Instead of color (as in the dough example) or temperature (in the case of air in your room), the disturbance in the JQI experiment was in the ions' spinstheir little internal magnets that can point up or down (or a bit of both at the same time, as in a quantum superposition). These ion spins sit in a container shaped not like a bowl but instead like a single row of an egg carton, with each ion residing in a different dimple of the container. Normally, after some time all spins would point in the same direction uniformly, with no memory of whether each spin pointed up or down to begin with.

By controlling the ions individually, the scientists can prepare one spin that points up while the rest point down. With an egg carton container that's flat (like it's sitting on a table), the single spin disturbance can hop between ions, chatting with neighbors and ultimately causing all the ions to agree on a uniform configuration. In traditional many-body localization, where randomness and disorder rule the day, the egg-carton dimples become offset up or down from each other in a random way, paralyzing each spin in its spot.

Instead of adding disorder, the team tilted the egg carton, offsetting each dimple a little higher than its neighbor to the left in a smooth, consistent way. This caused the spins to get localized as well, but for a very different reason. Quantum particles have wave-like properties, and once they start rolling down in the direction of a tilt, they can get reflected by the edges of the egg carton dimples. So instead of rolling downhill forever, they roll down and bounce back up over and over again, which confines them to their small region of the container.

For a single particle, this pinning mechanism has been known since the 1930s. But whether it would persist in the face of interactions between many particles and halt equilibration has only recently been explored. Indeed, the idea that tilting the egg carton would result in a breakdown of equilibration was only proposed in 2019.

The JQI team confirmed this in their experiment. Using tightly focused lasers, they adjusted each ion individually and prepared them in a highly disturbed state, with spins pointing in alternating directions. At the same time, they had extra lasers shining on all the ions together, allowing them to talk to each other even while far apart. If the tilt was high enough, the team found, the ions' spins remained in their original configuration for an extended period, refusing to succumb to equilibrium.

In addition to a conceptual leap, creating MBL without disorder may come with certain practical advantages. First, it is experimentally easier to implement a smooth tilt (in fact, a small tilt was present in the JQI experiment whether they wanted it or not). Second, it makes measurements much more straightforward. And third, this method is immune to an accidental break down of MBL. In regular disorder-based MBL, the random offsets of the dimples need to be large. If they aren't, localization can break down in some spots and infect the whole batch. With a smooth tilt, there's no such risk.

This opens the possibility of using many-body localization to create a robust memory. MBL might help maintain quantum information in future quantum computers or help preserve curiosities like time crystals or topological phases.

In the past year, two other experiments realizing this method were reported. The team of H. Wang in Hangzhou, China set it up using superconducting qubits, and Monika Aidelburger's team in Munich, Germany made it happen with ultracold atoms.

"There's a lot of shared themes between our three papers," says William Morong, a postdoctoral researcher at JQI and lead author on the work, "and I would say all of them together give a more complete picture of the phenomenon then each individually."

The JQI group was the only one, however, to demonstrate another key property of many-body localization: the slow spread of entanglement between their ions. The team used a technique adapted from nuclear magnetic resonance imaging to measure the crawling pace with which entanglement spread across their atoms, a hallmark of MBL.

"I think that our work shows the exciting progress that has been made in modern quantum simulation platforms," Morong says, "We are reaching the point where we have enough control over collections of quantum particles in these platforms that we can read a theoretical paper describing some interesting effect that emerges in a specific system, program in the forces that we need to create this effect for ourselves, and measure subtle signatures in the quantum entanglement between the particles that are only revealed when you can observe each particle individually. "

Explore further A new method to measure quantum entanglement in a nuclear spin ensemble

More information: W. Morong et al, Observation of Stark many-body localization without disorder, Nature (2021). Journal information: Nature W. Morong et al, Observation of Stark many-body localization without disorder,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03988-0
LaserSETI Installation at Haleakala. The instruments here look at the same point as the ones at Ferguson (RFO) in Sonoma, CA. Image Credit: Eliot Gillum.

Last summer the SETI Institute began installing a second LaserSETI Observatory, this time 10,000 feet above sea level at Haleakala Observatory, thanks to the University of Hawai'i's Institute of Astronomy (IfA). As a result of challenges involving equipment damaged during shipping, supply chain delays for replacement parts, equipment malfunctions and even a blizzard in Hawai'i, the installation was delayed but is now complete. While two of the four cameras are not fully functional and will be replaced, observations are now possible and data collection is underway. The staff at the IfA has provided invaluable assistance throughout the setup process especially during times when it was not possible for LaserSETI staff to be onsite due to COVID restrictions and other logistical challenges.

LaserSETI is a unique astronomy program designed to detect potential laser pulses originating from outside the solar system. It is building a global network of instruments to monitor the entire night sky. Each LaserSETI device consists of two identical cameras rotated 90 degrees to one another along the viewing axis. They work by using a transmission grating to split light sources up into spectra, then read the camera out more than a thousand times per second. The first LaserSETI observatory is at the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sonoma, CA. Cameras at the new site in Hawai'i will be aimed east, and the California devices are be aimed west. The two observatories will provide redundant coverage of the sky over the Pacific because, as Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

"LaserSETI is attempting a big step forward in SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It's the first project in either optical or radio astronomy designed to cover the entire sky. When you don't know where to look, an instrument with an enormous field-of-view and time range allows us to cover a lot more ground than ever before." said Eliot Gillum, principal investigator for LaserSETI. "There are so many people who've helped make LaserSETI possible that I'd like to thank. From the project team to other scientists at the SETI Institute, to our Indiegogo backers and private donors, to our outstanding observatory partners at Institute for Astronomy and Ferguson Observatory, it takes a village to tackle a project this audacious."

"The possibility that life exists elsewhere is exciting for the public, especially with the reports of biologically interesting molecules in the atmosphere of Venus, the selection of two Venus missions by NASA, the Mars Perseverance rover mission, and the upcoming Europa Clipper mission to explore Jupiter's moon," said Karen Meech, IfA interim director. "UH has had a long involvement in Astrobiology to explore the possibility of life elsewhereboth through research related to formation of habitable worlds, discovery of exoplanets, and the development of new innovative mirror and telescope technology to detect planets. It is exciting to add a new direction to this investigation by searching for technological signatures."

360 view of the intallation (without its cover) at Haleakala. Credit: Eliot Gillum.

Traditionally optical SETI projects have relied on photomultiplier tubes to detect laser flashes, essentially making them one-pixel cameral and enabling only a small part of the sky to be observed. LaserSETI uses two cameras with a commercial lenses that images approximately 75 degrees of the sky onto off-the-shelf solid-state detectors. In front of the lens is a grating that transforms any light source in the camera's field-of-view into a double rainbow-like spectrum. While stars will produce a complete spectrum from blue to red, a laser will only show up at its characteristic wavelength (think of your red laser pointer). Able to distinguish different colors of light, LaserSETI instrumentation is not limited to extremely short flashes as conventional SETI searches have been. And because the devices are wide-angle, it's possible to cover the entire night sky with a relatively small number of them, thereby keeping costs down.

Initial funding for LaserSETI was raised through a crowdfunding campaign in 2017, with additional financing provided through private donations. The plan calls for ten more instruments deployed in Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands, and Chile. When this phase is complete, the system will be able to monitor the nighttime sky in roughly half of the western hemisphere.

Next steps for LaserSETI at Haleakala will include replacing two of the cameras to bring the system to full functionality. This is expected to take place by January of 2022.

Explore further Prototype SETI hardware gets first data from VLA
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

According to the new Finnish report, arts professionals aim their arts education mostly to talented people and provide their arts services to those who actively seek them.

"In the arts, the ideal of normalcy pertains to a person who has fine-tuned senses, a body type that is perfectly suited to the artistic activity, and fine motor skills that are extremely precise. People who do not meet this ideal are regarded as incompetent or unable, and thus less worthy of participating in the arts or arts education," researchers write.

Consequently, various population groups, such as disabled people, older people, people with special educational needs, and people whose bodies or senses do not reach the ableist ideal, are often excluded from the arts and arts education services.

Current funding decisions emphasize the novelty value and benefits of the arts

Finland is a Nordic welfare state which provides generous public funding to arts and arts education, among other things. However, the current funding system is also one of the mechanisms that generate inequality.

"Our funding system emphasizes the uniqueness and novelty value of the arts and the way the field passes on the artistic tradition. The system's current structure does not give sufficient attention to accessibility and democracy," the report states.

Outside of the world of arts, it is increasingly more common to respect the arts on the basis of the immediate financial or social benefits that the field brings, and these benefits are often used as the basis for funding allocation. Researchers are worried that if the link to economy or other benefits to society is not clear, the arts run the risk of failing to secure new funding.

No need for sectoral boundaries

To tackle the problems and to improve the arts and arts education services that are funded by the government, the report describes numerous solutions that have been developed over the course of the ArtsEqual research project.

According to the report, groups that are currently excluded from the arts can be welcomed to explore the field by lowering the barriers to participationthe most straightforward measure could be transport services, for exampleor by inviting residents to participate in the planning and development of their municipality's artistic activities.

Researchers also find it important to try to abandon the rigid idea that each sector only has its own narrow set of obligations to meet. In fact, arts services should be integrated as part of elderly care, services for the unemployed, parish activities, and healthcare institutions.

The report also notes that institutions that are responsible for offering artistic activities should not simply wait for communities and arts enthusiasts to find their way to the arts, and instead, professionals in the field of arts and arts education could actively reach out to people and go to the places where the target group of the activities is already present.

The report also outlines four distinct future scenarios for the arts. It suggests the following phenomena as some of the trends that could shape the future, and consequently the social attitudes towards the arts, as well: the neoliberal requirement of market conformity, rise in neo-nationalism, an increasingly socially aware society, and society that invests in wellbeing.

A joint effort of a hundred researchers

The "ArtsEqual: Equality as the future path for the arts and arts education services" report has been written by Leena Ilmola-Sheppard, Pauli Rautiainen, Heidi Westerlund, Kai Lehikoinen, Sari Karttunen, Marja-Leena Juntunen, and Eeva Anttila.

The report, published in October, provides an analysis of the findings from the largest research project in the arts in Finland.

The ArtsEqual project (20152021), coordinated by the University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki), examined how art could increase social equality and wellbeing in Finland of the 2020s if it were understood as a public service. The project was funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland.

The ArtsEqual research consortium comprised five universities and research institutions. Uniarts Helsinki (coordinator), Foundation for Cultural Policy Research Cupore (Center for Cultural Policy Research Cupore), Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT), University of Turku and Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.

When research was first launched, over 30 researchers began studying questions related to the arts and equality. By spring 2021, the project had already involved nearly a hundred researchers, artists and doctoral students.

Explore further A free hobby as part of the school day for all children in Finland

Provided by University of the Arts Helsinki
Intake for fine particle pump at Pic du Midi Observatory (French Pyrenees). Credit: Jeroen Sonke

From Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, microplastics are everywhereeven high in the Earth's troposphere where wind speeds allow them to travel vast distances, a study showed Tuesday.

Microplastics are tiny fragmentsmeasuring less than 5 millimetersthat come from packaging, clothing, vehicles and other sources and have been detected on land, in water and in the air.

Scientists from the French national research institute CNRS sampled air 2,877 meters above sea level at the Pic du Midi Observatory in the French Pyrenees, a so-called "clean station" because of the limited influence exerted on it by the local climate and environment.

There they tested 10,000 cubic meters of air per week between June and October of 2017 and found all samples contained microplastics.

Using weather data they calculated the trajectories of different air masses preceding each sample and discovered sources as far away as North Africa and North America.

The study's main author Steve Allen of Dalhousie University in Canada told AFP that the particles were able to travel such distances because they were able to reach great altitudes.

Intake for fine particle pump at Pic du Midi Observatory. Credit: Jeroen Sonke

"Once it hits the troposphere, it's like a superfast highway," he said.

The research also points to microplastic sources in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

"The marine source is the most interesting," Allen said.

"Plastic leaving the ocean into the air that highit shows there is no eventual sink for this plastic," he said.

"It's just moving around and around in an indefinite cycle."

While the amounts of miroplastics in the samples at the Pic du Midi don't pose a health risk, study co-author Deonie Allen notes that the particles are small enough for humans to breathe in.

And she says their presence in a zone thought to be protected and far from pollution sources should give pause.

"It questions the relationship we have with plastic," she said, adding that the problem is global.

Allen said that it also shows that disposing of plastic by shipping it abroad is a flawed strategy.

"It's going to come back to you," he said.

Explore further Microplastics found in Europe's largest ice cap

More information: Steve Allen, Evidence of free tropospheric and long-range transport of microplastic at Pic du Midi Observatory, Nature Communications (2021). www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27454-7 Journal information: Nature Communications Steve Allen, Evidence of free tropospheric and long-range transport of microplastic at Pic du Midi Observatory,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27454-7

 2021 AFP
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Consumers' choices about health products are influenced heavily by public information. A new study analyzed how media outlets responded to the endorsement of weight-loss products by TV personality Dr. Oz. The study found that media tended to amplify rather than rectify misleading information, resulting in the further spread of misinformation. The authors call for government oversight to lessen the risk of spreading inaccuracies.

The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and New York University (NYU), appears in the Journal of Marketing Research.

"Access to health care information is a cornerstone of the Internet era," suggests Kannan Srinivasan, Professor of Management, Marketing, and Information Systems at CMU's Tepper School of Business, who co-authored the study. "But the rapid proliferation of medical information in the public domain, including from less credible sources, can pose a serious risk of harming consumers with erroneous or exaggerated claims."

Mehmet Oz, a celebrity physician, has promoted supplements on his show that promise to burn fat, leading to a surge in sales of these products. The impact of his show, "The Dr. Oz Show," has been termed the Oz effect. Medical professionals and associations, as well as the U.S. Senate, have expressed concern because his promotions are not based on scientific studies.

Because Oz publicly makes strong claims about the effectiveness of certain ingredients, and because these claims either lack rigorous scientific backing or are based on small studies published in marginal outlets, the authors of this study labeled the health information conveyed about the effectiveness of certain ingredients (e.g., green coffee bean extract for weight loss) "hype news." They defined this as information that is taken out of context, exaggerated, and overgeneralized to attract public attention. While social media platforms try to identify and eliminate fake news, hype newswhich is based on a grain of truthis more difficult to eliminate. Nor is hype news limited to Dr. Oz's show: Other celebrities have endorsed products that lack evidence of their effectiveness.

Researchers sought to determine whether hype news about over-the-counter (OTC) weight-loss products promoted by The Dr. Oz Show amplified or mitigated information. They also examined market responses to the show. OTC weight-loss products have a broad appeal in the United States, where more than 70 percent of adults age 20 and over are overweight or obese.

Researchers examined data from weight-loss products available on Amazon from 1996 to 2014, including product reviews and product-level metadata (e.g., prices, ad spending), extracting each product's key ingredient. Next, they checked whether the ingredients were recommended on The Dr. Oz Show in 2012, finding 10 matches. Of the more than 6,000 weight-loss products in the data set, the study found that more than 1,800 contained one of the 10 key ingredients mentioned by Oz.

Then, the researchers collected publicly available information about the 10 ingredients mentioned on the show, looking at articles from credible news media, peer-reviewed research articles, articles on health-related websites, consumers' product reviews, and online product discussions, as well as manufacturers' spending on advertisements. They found:

Mention of a product on The Dr. Oz Show boosted the amount of news coverage about the ingredients in the product. Rather than critically examining Oz's endorsements, credible media not only transmitted the information but also amplified it.

Hype news from The Dr. Oz Show boosted the volume of consumer searches about the recommended ingredients 30 percent.

Only one of thousands of peer-reviewed scholarly articles directly corrected Oz's claims on the show.

Website articles written by health experts were scarce and also failed to correct the misinformation originating from The Dr. Oz Show.

Customer reviews left by consumers on e-commerce platforms were largely positive, again amplifying the misleading information.

The intensity and language of online product discussions shared on forums and social media did not change after the Dr. Oz Show.

The prices of products containing ingredients endorsed by Oz rose significantly after they were mentioned on the show.

"The bottom line is that all the media outlets we studied created an information cascade that inflated the hype," explains Xiao Liu, Associate Professor of Marketing at NYU's Stern School of Business, who co-authored the study; Liu is a former doctoral student at CMU's Tepper School of Business. "The hype then piqued consumers' interest in the ingredient, which enabled merchants to offer more products that contained the endorsed ingredient and to charge more for those products."

"Our study calls for more effective government regulation of OTC products and also of endorsements to address the problem of spreading hype news," says Zijun Shi, Assistant Professor of Marketing at HKUST, a coauthor who is also a former doctoral student at CMU's Tepper School of Business. "Relying on self-policing is unlikely to resolve the issue."

Among the study's limitations, the authors say they did not measure sales of each product and thus were unable to quantify the direct Oz effect on sales. In addition, the study did not examine the interdependence of different information sources and examined only written media, not information disseminated via video and audio.

More information: Zijun (June) Shi et al, Hype News Diffusion and Risk of Misinformation: The Oz Effect in Health Care, Journal of Marketing Research (2021). Journal information: Journal of Marketing Research Zijun (June) Shi et al, Hype News Diffusion and Risk of Misinformation: The Oz Effect in Health Care,(2021). DOI: 10.1177/00222437211044472
Platyope mongolica mating and anatomic imaging of female's epigynum. (a) Oral sexual contacts between male and female. (b) Malefemale copulation. (c) Epigynum from individuals without any oral sexual touches, in posterior view under anatomic imaging. (d) The epigynum from individuals after oral sexual contacts (dorsal view). Credit: DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6595

A team of researchers from China, the U.K. and the U.S. has found that a species of darkling beetles engage in oral sex prior to copulating. In their paper published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the group describes their study of the beetles and what they learned about their mating habits.

As the researchers note, males giving females oral genital stimulation is rare in invertebrates. So they were surprised when they found male darkling desert beetles contacting and orally manipulating female genitalia multiple times prior to copulation.

The work by the researchers involved venturing to Mongolia to places where Platyope mongolica livenamely the region's desertsto study their mating habits. The group collected multiple samples of both genders of the beetle during the mating season and brought them back to their lab for closer scrutiny than would be possible in the wild.

As the researchers watched, the females advertised their willingness to mate by pushing their abdominal terminus upward. Males responded by advancing to the female and then using their maxillary palpi (a sense organ located on the mouth) to stimulate the female's genitalia. As the males did so, the females generally stopped moving around to allow for easier access. During the oral stimulation, the females appeared to judge its effectivenessif she was not satisfied, she would end things by lowering her rear end and walking away.

The researchers studied the oral stimulation routine in more detail by disabling different parts of the males or females (by taping antennae or putting Vaseline on the female's genitalia), hoping to learn more about how important it was to the mating process. They found that it was quite importantunsuccessful oral stimulation typically led to unsuccessful mating attempts. They also found that there was some wiggle room, so to speak. Males that limited their time providing oral stimulation but still managed to keep the female from wandering away, tended to be less successful in their attempts at copulation. The researchers conclude that in addition to aiding copulation in a physical sense, oral copulation also serves as a test of sorts, allowing females to better judge who will produce superior offspring.

Explore further Extra-long spiny male genitalia shows benefit for female seed beetles

More information: Xinghu Qin et al, Precopulatory oral sex contact plays an important role in copulatory success in a cryptic desert beetle, Ecology and Evolution (2021). Journal information: Ecology and Evolution Xinghu Qin et al, Precopulatory oral sex contact plays an important role in copulatory success in a cryptic desert beetle,(2021). DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6595

 2021 Science X Network
Credit: Peter Griffin/public domain

What do you think is the best way to raise children? One method is psychological control where parents attempt to improve their children's behavior by making them feel shame or guilt about their actions. Another form of psychological control is the "silent treatment," where parents ignore their kids following bad behavior in order to discourage future undesirable behavior. These methods may sound excessively strict and it's often assumed that they will have a negative impact on a child's social behaviorfor example, making them less willing to help or to care for other people.

However, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) have revealed a more complex picture. Studies led by Professor Maayan Davidov at HU's Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare have shown that a child's response to such stern discipline can depend on the religious commitment of the parent. Her research, in collaboration with Maya Oren-Gabai and Dr. Islam Abu-Asaad, assessed the social behavior of children aged between six and 12 years old in 300+ secular and religious Israeli Jewish and Muslim families. The findings were published in Child Development.

The results showed that in secular Jewish families, mothers' use of psychological control did appear to have a negative effect on their kids, making them less likely to help others. However, in religious Jewish families, there was no such "cost" to this parenting style. Furthermore, in religious Muslim families, this style of parenting actually appeared to have a positive effect: It was associated with more helpful behavior on the part of the child, while among secular Muslims there was no discernible effect either way.

For the purposes of this study, more than 315 parents filled out a detailed questionnaire to assess their religiosity level, parenting style, and use of psychological control in everyday situations. Their children were then given tests to assess their social behavior, especially their willingness to help a stranger with the simple task of picking up paperclips that had been "accidentally dropped" by a lab assistant.

"It is important to bear this mind," shared Davidov, "when providing parenting programs and guidance to parentsparenting behavior doesn't work in the same way in different cultural and religious contexts. For example, what is detrimental in one context may not be harmful in another context."

According to Davidov, these findings are consistent with the theory that in religious families, parents' psychological control of their children is driven by a system of values. These values are understood by parent and child, it's accepted that parents know what is best for their child's development and that children are obligated to respect their parents and the religious values they bestow. In contrast, however, when parents exert psychological control in a secular context, they are acting in a way that is inconsistent with larger secular cultural values of autonomy and self-direction. In such cases, shaming and guilt-tripping on the part of the parents is likely viewed by the child in a negative light and as expressions of hostility or rejection which may undermine kids' positive social development.

Davidov is planning follow-up research to investigate parental behavior that promotes empathic behavior in their children. "I want to connect the dots," says Davidov, "so that we can better understand why parental behavior can have different consequences in different families."

More information: Maayan Davidov et al, Religiosity as a moderator of the links between parental psychological control and children's prosociality, Child Development (2021). Journal information: Child Development Maayan Davidov et al, Religiosity as a moderator of the links between parental psychological control and children's prosociality,(2021). DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13678
GALWAY  The Saratoga County Sheriff's Office made an arrest in the investigation at the Galway Central School District on Friday.

A call was placed around 3:40 a.m. Friday from a staff member of the school district to report an unknown subject inside the building, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Upon arrival, the sheriff's office conducted a K-9 search of the property and determined nothing out of the ordinary in the building, the news release stated. Galway Central School District canceled classes Friday in light of the ongoing investigation.

Following the search of the premises, investigators said they worked with faculty and staff of the school to determine the identity of the alleged intruder.

The suspect, Dylan Vandermark, 20, was interviewed at his home in Galway on Friday before being charged with a misdemeanor count of unlawful entry of a school by forcing a door open with the intent to commit larceny, the Sheriff's Office said.

Vandermark was arraigned in the Milton Town Court and released on his own recognizance.
Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, D-Round Lake, said the funds come at the right time to help rebuild the economy in the two counties.

As our communities continue to recover from the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, Im working hard each and every day to ensure critical local projects are funded so that they can be completed in a timely and cost-efficient manner, said Woerner in a news release. Thanks to this influx of state funds, Saratoga and Washington counties can repair critical infrastructure, improve recreational opportunities and breathe new life into local towns and villages.
I am a storyteller. I look at sacred scripture and biblical authors and I try to teach those lessons. Some of those lessons relate to the best moments and the worst moments of people on the path of life, Weis said. It is not the story of perfect people; they are stories about people who are more like us with flaws and problems. But we can learn that if those people can rise above it, then so can all of us.

Weis spoke of the importance of relationships that he has fostered over the years at Beth Israel, with youth, with the community, and with the Interfaith Council. It is all about relationships we share.

Asked if there was one thing hoped the congregation would remember about his tenure, Weis said, I hope they remember that Judaism is aspirational. I hope that they aspire to live lives of honor and integrity and seeking justice. Better they forget about me and remember the Torah because if they remember the Torah, they will remember to be committed members of the congregation and the community.

Weis will remain as rabbi emeritus while Beth Israel brings in a new rabbi. He and his wife plan to remain in Northfield.

After 33 years, this is our home, said Weis. He will continue to teach at Stockton and his wife Susan Fischer Weis will remain in her position as the director of the Board of Jewish Education of Atlantic and Cape May counties.
MAYS LANDING  Atlantic City Electric is making a last call for pandemic-related energy assistance.

With a Dec. 30 deadline looming, the company said millions of dollars in free money is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Customers do not need to be behind on their bills to receive a grant.

The state Department of Community Affairs extended the deadline to Dec. 30 for grant applications through the New Jersey Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

Through the program's American Rescue Plan Utility Relief, the department is offering assistance to limited- to moderate-income households with overdue bills during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company said.

1:06 Cape May wins USA Today award for holiday light display CAPE MAY  The Victorian-themed seaside city has one of the best public holiday light displa

For more information about energy assistance programs, visit atlanticcityelectric.com/help. Customers also can call 800-642-3780.

This year, more than 35,000 Atlantic City Electric customers have received $28.4 million in assistance. An additional $2.9 million has been awarded during the 2022 program year, which began Oct. 1, company spokesperson Frank Tedesco said last week.
In 1940, Ho was ordered back to China. After that, he was part of the Nationalist Chinese struggle against the Japanese occupation. The book includes a photo with Ho and Nationalist leader Chaing Kai-Sheck. When the Communists defeated the Nationalist in 1949, Ho followed the Nationalists to Taiwan, according to the book.

Ho continued his work as a diplomat, serving as Taiwans ambassador to several countries. Ho retired in 1973, settling in San Francisco. He wrote a memoir, My Forty Years as a Diplomat, first published in 1990. Ho died in 1997 at the age of 96.

In 2000, Israel declared Ho as Righteous Among the Nations, which recognizes people from multiple countries and faith who risked their lives and liberty to help Jews during the Holocaust.

The list of rescuers is seemingly endless and this should give us pause when we think that the world is purely evil and never contains any good, Holden wrote. All of these rescuers became determined, each in their own way, to step up and do the right thing; to be human to their fellow man.

Holden concludes the book with a quote from Ho, I thought it only natural to feel compassion and want to help. From the standpoint of humanity, that is the way it should be.

He also praised Kolitskys work on the book. He said he taught her in the fourth grade, and even then recognized her talent.

Contact Bill Barlow: 609-272-7290 bbarlow@pressofac.com Twitter @jerseynews_bill

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A wide range of topics that have recently troubled Pleasantville residents, including public safety and education are expected to be discussed at a town hall meeting scheduled for Dec. 28.

Other issues to be covered at the town hall, to be held at 6 p.m. at the Winsan Center of Mount Zion Baptist Church at 353 S. New Road, include civil rights, school segregation and the role of the church in todays world. A flyer to the event indicates that speakers at the town hall will also discuss how to get our district back on track.

The Pleasantville School District has been mired in conflicts over its administration since a critical Oct. 12 Board of Education meeting. The board voted at that meeting to put Superintendent Natakie Chestnut-Lee on leave and to fire then Board Solicitor Lester Taylor. It voted at the meeting to oust Board President Julio Sanchez as well, although that vote was later determined to be invalid.

Subsequent board meetings were generally dominated by arguments between a bloc of board members who supported the actions taken on Oct. 12 and bloc of members who opposed them.
The neighborhood is in an area of Pleasantville where residential and industrial uses co-exist.

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Under a bill signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in September 2020, the DEP must evaluate the environmental and public health impacts of facilities when looking at permit applications.

The law defines an overburdened community as any community in which 35% of households qualify as low-income according to the U.S. Census, 40% of households are a minority, or 40% of households have limited English proficiency.

In August, more than 100 residents came to a special meeting in Pleasantville to hear more about the plans from developer James DiNatale of RGC3 LLC.

At that meeting, DiNatale said the facility would move 100,000 tons of construction debris per year, with the company agreeing to pay the city $4 per ton, which could mean $400,000 in additional revenue to the city.

His facility would help extend the life of the Atlantic County Utilities Authoritys landfill in Egg Harbor Township, DiNatale said.

The ACUA has been critical of the project, going so far as to put signs throughout the city reading, Stop the Dump in reference to the project.
Now is just not the time, said Wildwood Crest Mayor Don Cabrera. He cited recent labor shortages, saying it will be difficult to staff up a beach tag team, and added that there will be two new members of the Board of Commissioners in January as a result of the November election.

In previous interviews, and last week, Cabrera said he believes beach tags are on the way to the Wildwoods, sooner or later. Its not fair to keep looking to local taxpayers to fund the beach operations, he said early this year.

Byron is looking at the potential revenue.

Ive said this before: There are already beach fees in the Wildwoods. They are called taxes, he said.

Currently, the full cost of the lifeguards, of beach maintenance and other expenses fall to municipal taxpayers, he said.

That money could be used for other purposes, Byron said, possibly allowing the city to accelerate long-term plans for the reconstruction of the Boardwalk. The first phase of that project began this year, but with a total cost estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, the complete work is expected to drag on for years.
A Long Beach Township man accused of having thrown a homemade explosive device at police during protests in western Pennsylvania following the death of George Floyd last year has pleaded guilty to a federal obstruction charge.

Nicholas Lucia, 36, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Pittsburgh to a charge of obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that he faces a two-year prison sentence under a plea agreement with prosecutors that is to be served at the same time as a state sentence for related conduct that has yet to be imposed.

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Federal prosecutors said Lucia threw the device, described by the defense as a firecracker, at Pittsburgh police officers near Mellon Square during protests in downtown Pittsburgh on May 30, 2020.

Following late night assembly approval, Casino PILOT bill heads to Murphy's desk TRENTON  It took a long time, but the state Legislature passed a bill Monday that would giv

Prosecutors said the device hit an officer in the chest, bounced off his protective vest and exploded on the ground, and an officer sustained a concussion as a result. Lucia and defense attorney Patrick Livingston indicated agreement with the recitation of facts offered by the government with the exception of the degree of the officers injury.
Legislators and prosecutors have consistently struggled to make sense of victimized defendants. Since Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which established federal sex trafficking crimes and protections for victims, we continue to see how the categories of victim and defendant have proven to be less than tidy.

According to a recent study from the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, women and girls represent the majority of human trafficking victims. They also make up a large portion of those prosecuted for trafficking-related crimes. The study notes that while most countries report female offenders accounted for less than 15% of total crimes, 30% of trafficking cases involved female defendants. The report also found that traffickers use victims to shield themselves from prosecution.

Many victims who play a role in the trafficking are themselves victims of gender-based violence. Indeed, they are often intimately connected to the lead perpetrators. They are their partners, their sisters and their mothers.
Rapid City Regional Airport is preparing to solicit bids to construct a new sanitary sewer collection system to replace the outdated sewage lagoon that has caused environmental concerns in the past.

The estimated $2.5 million project would build a new gravity sewer line from the airport's main collection system to carry wastewater to the city's Water Reclamation Facility. It includes 4,820 feet of eight-inch piping that will travel along Airport Road to a new lift station. The lift station would then send the wastewater through another 12,200 feet of four-inch pipe west along State Highway 79, where it would connect to the city's existing sewer infrastructure.

Airport Executive Director Patrick Dame said Tuesday that bids should be opened by Jan. 27 and anticipates the new sewer system will be completed in November 2022.

"We will have some easements that will have to be purchased, and after the first of the year will get those easements taken care of," he said. "That will allow us to dig in some portions of the right-of-way. Hopefully, that should be moving ahead pretty quick."

The 1960s-era lagoon is too small to serve the airport during the peak travel season and does not have the capacity to serve in the future.

During the summer of 2019, the airport had to spread approximately 74,100 gallons of sewage on the northern end of the property. That emergency discharge was done without proper permitting from the then-named South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Although the state agency later found that no contamination was caused by the emergency discharge, it brought the lagoon's age and limitations to light and airport administration began studying how to fix the capacity issue in the long term.

A 2020 Environmental Assessment indicated connecting the airport's collection system with the city's wastewater network was the preferred option over constructing a new aerated lagoon.

During the summer peak travel season, the airport had to pay a company thousands of dollars to pump out the lagoon because of capacity issues again.

In other business Tuesday, the Airport Board of Directors approved new policies and procedures for ground transportation companies that service the airport after the Rapid City Council approved new rates and charges during a Monday meeting.

The policy includes an annual operator permit fee of $200 for companies that pick up and drop off riders. The annual fee will be delayed until 2023 to allow operators time to prepare.

There would also be new charges based on the size and types of vehicles, which would go into effect on April 1. For airport shuttles, taxis and limousines operators that seat one to eight people, the fee would be $2 per one-way trip. Larger vehicles that seat between nine and 15 people would be charged $4 for a one-way trip. Companies that operate vehicles seating 16 or more passengers would be charged $1.50 per person.

Rideshare companies, such as Lyft and Uber, would be assessed a fee of $2 per one-way trip. Peer-to-peer car sharing companies, such as Turo, would be charged a fee of 6% of gross revenue.

The policies outlined an application and permitting process for a new ground transportation center island that will be established in outside lanes of the drive in front of the terminal building.

Dame said Airport Express Shuttle is the only company that has paid to use airport facilities in the past and other shuttle, bus, taxi, limo and ride-share programs have not. Dame said there were some issues with other ground transportation companies that were realized during the 2021 summer season and the move to establish a set policy is necessary to level the playing field.

"We have actually been working on this over the last four to five years," Dame said. "This past summer has really driven a need to put something in place here and get some regulation to what's going on between the businesses' operators in the field.

"Airport Express Shuttle is the only one contributing to partner and pay the airport... They are the only ones who are contributing to the costs at the airport. The other businesses that are doing business out here are not," he said.

Contact Nathan Thompson at nathan.thompson@rapidcityjournal.com.

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Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has drafted a bill that would block teaching critical race theory in South Dakota schools, public universities and technical colleges.

Critical race theory is an academic concept that originated in the 1970s. It focuses on how racism is embedded in legal systems in the United States.

South Dakota education officials say critical race theory isnt part of state curriculum in schools or colleges.

Noem's bill would prohibit teaching that any race, religion, sex or ethnicity is inherently superior or inferior; that anyone should feel guilt, anguish or distress because of their race, religion, sex or ethnicity; or that people are inherently responsible for past actions because of their race, sex, religion or ethnicity.

The ACLU of South Dakota opposes the bill, saying it could censor U.S. history discussions and local school districts should decide their own curriculum.

Twenty-nine other states have introduced similar bills or taken steps to restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers discuss racism and sexism, according to Education Week. North Dakota has blocked critical race theory teachings.

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As of mid-day Monday, no cases of the omicron variant of COVID-19 had been detected in South Dakota. But health officials are watching for it and taking precautions, said Dr. Shankar Kurra, vice president of medical affairs at Monument Health.

We are coming down from a surge, which started in late August, he said, and there is a clear indication that we will have a surge from the new variant, the omicron.

Kurra, speaking Monday in his office, said numbers from the omicron variant are climbing in the northeast, and he expects cases to be detected here soon. He pointed out that identifying a variant entails sending out a portion of positive tests to another lab  outside of the hospital  for further tests.

The omicron variant appears to be about three times more transmissible than the delta variant, Kurra said, and he added that its too soon to determine how serious the illnesses it spawns may be. Reports of hospitalization and death, he said, take months to accumulate.

Kurra emphasized that the pandemic is not over. Even as the omicron variant approaches, he explained, the delta variant is active right now in the community, especially among people who have not been vaccinated.

Kurra pointed repeatedly to the much-discussed treatment of vaccines as the most effective defense.

Its very straightforward: its the vaccine, he said. He noted far greater rates of death and hospitalization from COVID among those who are not vaccinated. The latest figures from Monument Health show 29 people hospitalized due to COVID-19, 25 of whom are unvaccinated. Nine people are in the intensive care unit with COVID-19. All are unvaccinated. Seven people, all unvaccinated, are on ventilators.

The vaccines, Kurra said, are extremely safe, extremely effective.

He pointed to boosters as especially important in the coming months. He said they appear to be effective in fending off illness from the omicron variant, and he recommended  based on advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  the Moderna and Pfizer boosters, even if a person initially received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The CDC released a statement on Thursday expressing a clinical preference for individuals to receive an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine over Johnson & Johnsons COVID-19 vaccine. ACIPs (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) unanimous recommendation followed a robust discussion of the latest evidence on vaccine effectiveness, vaccine safety and rare adverse events, and consideration of the U.S. vaccine supply.

Kurra acknowledged a persistent wave of misinformation regarding vaccines.

There are a lot of myths or false beliefs about vaccines, he said, but he added: Since weve started immunization against COVID, weve (prevented) at least a half a million deaths from COVID in the United States.

As for holiday celebration, he said, I would exhort everyone to go get the vaccine, to stay masked indoors, to avoid large gatherings, and if youre planning on a Christmas party, make sure its just your family and maybe another family.

Large gatherings, he added, are to be avoided.

Regarding travel, Kurra advised taking a rapid test on the day of departure and the more rigorous PCR test five days later.

Kurra said Monument Health staff members are drawing on experience with past surges as they prepare for a possible influx of COVID patients from the omicron variant. One preparation involves making sure enough testing supplies are on hand.

These are all based on allocations (from the South Dakota Department of Health), he said, noting that Monument Health has been in close collaboration with the department in order to receive those supplies. They include test kits and reagents, key chemicals in the process, for the tests.

Kurra said Monument Health has developed a playbook for surges.

Weve built our playbook, which is a very elaborate, more than 200-page book that has a series of contingencies, he said. Well have small surge, big surge, medium surge, and how we respond.

He said physical space is not an issue, but staffing is. He noted a national shortage that includes nurses, respiratory technicians, lab technicians and others needed to provide care.

Like any surge, there is also going to be some impact from our own employees getting sick from the virus, he said.

Supplies of items such as personal protective equipment, he said, are far more plentiful than they were early in the pandemic.

Kurra noted that the effects of a surge  if there is one  can send ripples to other people needing care.

When you have a large number of COVID patients, it reduces the capacity to care for a patient population that is not COVID, he said.

People can visit https://monument.health/ for vaccine scheduling information, and vaccines are also widely available at local pharmacies.

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If there is a child care crisis (affordable and available) in SD, has the time come for one parent or the other to stay home and care for their own children?

If Kate Thomas is president of our school board, I think she should have to disclose which medical professional is informing her that COVID is the same as the flu and the pandemic is over.

It is shocking how little our school board president, Kate Thomas, knows about COVID and formulating school policy. The Rapid City school system deserves better.

I suggest that the whole school board go to Monument Health and visit the COVID area. It is just unbelievable the ignorance these school board members are displaying.

I can't wait to tell my 53-year-old cousin that he is not dead from COVID. It was only the flu.

In addition to listing the number and age of South Dakota COVID-related deaths each day, how about listing how many of the dead were vaccinated?

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Christmas trees have been part of Dave Phillips life since his older brother grew some for a 4-H project when they were kids. Since then, the Phillips Christmas Trees business near Heyworth, Ill., just kept growing, with thousands of trees ready for people to cut these days. No pre-cut trees here  visitors choose, cut and carry the one they want. Phillips, who is also a trucker, opens his McLean County tree farm before Thanksgiving to give military families a chance to get a tree early since many cant be home at Christmas time.
CHICAGO (AP)  The initial handling of allegations that former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett had staged a fake attack in Chicago represented a major failure of operations" by the local prosecutor's office, according to a lawyer who was appointed to review the case.

The 68-page report released Monday detailed multiple instances of false statements by State's Attorney Kim Foxx and others in her office in 2019, when they first prosecuted Smollett before abruptly dropping the charges weeks later.

Some of her office's actions may be violations of legal ethics, special prosecutor Dan Webb concluded, though he found nothing criminal.

Smollett, who is Black and gay, was recently convicted of lying to police in January 2019 about what he said was a racist, homophobic attack. Webb, who took over the case, said Smollett staged the attack to get publicity. Smollett is expected to be sentenced in 2022.

Webb released a portion of the report, including its major conclusions, in 2020. The full report released Monday documents interviews with Foxx, dozens of employees in her office, Chicago police officers and friends and family members of Smollett.

Foxx had recused herself from the Smollett case before it was dropped. She told Webb's team that she was surprised when all 16 counts against Smollett were dropped, and that she believed he should have been required to admit some wrongdoing.

Foxx also said she believed prosecutors in her office wanted to get this guy out of town because of the media attention that accompanied the case.

Foxx later said in a media statement that the case was dropped just like thousands of other similar cases, which Webb concluded was not true.

The fact that such a significant mischaracterization could be asserted without sufficient vetting ... is unacceptable for an office that must be transparent and maintain public confidence, Webb's report states.

Webb also found that Foxx improperly changed her public position about the strength of the evidence against Smollett. After calling the case against him strong, she wrote in a Chicago Tribune editorial shortly after the charges were dropped that securing a conviction was uncertain. That pivot was false and misleading, Webb concluded.

In response Monday, the state's attorney's office said it remains steadfast that the office acted within its broad prosecutorial discretion.

A prosecutors discretion is as broad as any in the law, and differences of opinion as to how a case was handled do not signify an abuse of discretion," the statement said.

Webb also pursued the investigation against Smollett, and a grand jury in 2020 indicted him on new charges of lying to police. A jury convicted the 39-year-old earlier this month on five of six counts of disorderly conduct, a low-level felony.

Smollett has maintained his innocence, and his attorney said they will appeal the conviction.

Judge Michael Toobin, who appointed Webb as special prosecutor, said the full report should be made public now that Smollett's trial is complete.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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" " Although they're both fine white powders, baking soda and baking powder are quite different (baking soda is pictured here). skhoward/Getty Images

If you're in the mood to bake, the recipe you grab will almost certainly call for baking powder or baking soda. That's because both ingredients are leavening agents used to make your favorite baked goods light, fluffy and moist. But while baking powder and baking soda are similar, they're definitely not the same.

Baking soda is made from one ingredient  sodium bicarbonate. Sodium bicarbonate is a base (alkaline) that's activated when it comes in contact with an acid, such as buttermilk, yogurt, brown sugar or vinegar (usually the acid is part of your recipe). When baking soda activates, it immediately releases carbon dioxide bubbles that help your baked goods rise and become light and fluffy.

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On the other hand, baking powder is a combination of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and two acids, often monocalcium phosphate and sodium aluminum sulfate. These two additional ingredients work to extend the leavening process. The monocalcium phosphate reacts to the sodium bicarbonate first, when the baking powder is stirred into a wet batter or dough; then the sodium aluminum sulfate reacts to the sodium bicarbonate when it's both moist and hot (i.e., when your baked goods go into the oven).

This two-stage activation process  which gives baking powder the tag "double-acting"  means you can delay baking the batter or dough up to 20 minutes without affecting its leavening power. Recipes using baking soda, on the other hand, require immediate baking for the best results, since baking soda reacts to an acid as soon as the two are mixed.

If you've only got baking soda on hand and need baking powder, no worries. You can substitute baking soda for baking powder with two precautions. First, you need enough acidity in the mixture to activate the baking soda. A good rule is that you need 1 cup of buttermilk or 1 teaspoon of lemon juice per 1/2 teaspoon baking soda for activation. Second, you must calculate the proper amount of baking soda to use. Baking soda is four times stronger than baking powder, so a recipe calling for 1 teaspoon of baking powder translates to 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda.

If you happen to have cream of tartar at home, you can make your own baking powder by combining it with baking soda. A 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda and 5/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar will be equal to 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

While it's relatively easy to substitute baking soda for baking powder, the opposite is not true. If a recipe calls for baking soda and all you have is baking powder, it's best not to proceed, as baking powder is a combination of several ingredients, so adding it may affect the texture or flavor of your baked item. Also baking soda is stronger than baking powder so you'd need about three or four spoons of baking powder (and a reduction in salt and other acidic ingredients in the batter) to approximate the substitute.

One more caveat when using baking soda or baking powder: Measure carefully. Too much baking soda can cause your baked goods to fall, while too much baking powder can lend a bitter taste to your goodies. And too little of either of these leavening agents can result in heavy goods without enough rise.

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING Baking powder first debuted in England in the late 1840s, a combination of cream of tartar and baking soda. But cream of tartar was pricy, and Americans had to import it from Europe. So in 1856 an American chemist created modern baking powder, which substitutes monocalcium phosphate for cream of tartar. By the close of the 19th century, the American baking powder industry was worth millions.

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Originally Published: Dec 26, 2019
" " A plate of plain and fruit scones is set out for tea. British scones are quite similar to American biscuits. Flavia Morlachetti/Getty Image

American fans of "The Great British Baking Show" (originally "The Great British Bake Off" in the United Kingdom) and readers of British baking cookbooks quickly learn that Americans and Brits have very different definitions of common baking terms. For example, if an American followed a British biscuit recipe expecting something buttery and flaky for an egg-and-bacon sandwich, she'd be in for a disappointing breakfast.

To clear up the confusion, we asked some experts to fill those in the U.S. in on the biggest differences between British and American baking terms and ingredients, so they won't end up wandering the aisles of an American supermarket fruitlessly searching for black treacle (that's molasses in the U.S.) or a sandwich tin (U.K. term for a layer cake pan).

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A Biscuit (U.K.) is a Cookie (U.S.)

Well, sort of.

Tim Brown is department chair of the International Baking and Pastry Institute at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. Born and raised in South Africa, Brown worked as a pastry chef in the U.K. before moving to the States. Brown says his American culinary students think of cookies as these moist, chunky treats stuffed with chocolate chips and other rich delights.

British biscuits, on the other hand, are much plainer, thinner and dryer, he explains. Some are sandwiched around a layer of cream like an Oreo, and others are jazzed up with a coating of chocolate. But none are anything close to moist and chewy.

"I don't think Americans can get their heads around how dry and brittle a biscuit is," says Brown, explaining that biscuits, like Italian biscotti  both derived from the Latin for "twice-baked"  are meant to be dipped in tea or coffee.

Then there are digestives, a subset of British biscuit that's traditionally round, hard and plain, but can now be found covered in all sorts of tempting flavors.

" " British biscuit company McVitie's surprised people going home from the Glastonbury music festival in England with free digestive biscuits and a cup of tea on June 26, 2017. Adam Gasson/Getty Images

"There is no American equivalent to a digestive," says Lee Faber, an American-born writer and cookbook editor who has lived in the U.K. since 1981. Faber has Americanized or Anglicized more than 200 cookbooks and says that when a British pie recipe calls for pulverized digestives in the crust, she substitutes graham crackers for the American version. And no, there are no graham crackers in the U.K.

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A Biscuit (U.S.) Is a Scone (U.K.)

A British biscuit is not remotely similar to the fluffy and filling American biscuits made famous in Southern American cuisine. The closest British equivalent to those buttery miracles is a scone, which ain't too bad either. Both baked goodies use flour, fat, liquid and a leavening agent. The main differences are that scones tend to have less butter (because you'll add butter to it when you eating it  or else, clotted cream or jam) while American biscuits tend to have more butter and light layers. Biscuits are generally served as part of a main meal (for instance, the dish chicken and biscuits), while scones are served at teatime and can be savory or sweet, depending on what is added to them. The American scone is usually a triangular-shaped cookie-like baked good, full of butter, very sweet and loaded with blueberries, chocolate chips or other add-ins.

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An English Muffin (U.S.) is a Muffin (U.K.)

Nineteenth-century baker Samuel Bath Thomas may have popularized his English muffins in the United States, but he did not invent them. Over in the U.K., English muffins are simply called muffins and have been around for centuries. In fact, they're the fresh-baked goodies that inspired the traditional British nursery rhyme "Do You Know The Muffin Man?" (hint: he lives on Drury Lane).

In America, they associate muffins with those cakey, cupcake-shaped blueberry muffins or poppy seed muffins. In the U.K., those are sometimes called American muffins. Ask for an English muffin in the Liverpool, though, and you might get some funny looks.

Then there's the crumpet. A crumpet is both similar to what Americans call an English muffin and completely different. At first glance, the two look alike, and both can be toasted and slathered with butter and jam. But Brown says that crumpet dough is more like a thick pancake batter and the resulting baked good is more rubbery than an English muffin, but in a good way.

Also, crumpets are traditionally cooked on a griddle on only one side, so their air bubbles show up on top, whereas muffins are cooked on both side and the air bubbles (aka "nooks and crannies") are trapped in the middle.

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Pudding (U.K.) is Not Pudding (U.S.)

Thanks to the dominance of Jell-O pudding in the United States, most Americans have a singular definition of pudding, namely a custard-like instant treat enjoyed alone as a dessert.

Pudding in the U.K. is a lot more complicated. Technically, British pudding includes an array of dishes, both sweet and savory, that are traditionally boiled or steamed. That list includes truly questionable delicacies like black pudding (blood sausage), white pudding (basically blood sausage without the blood) and, yes, haggis. Yorkshire pudding, on the other hand, is like an eggy popover.

On the sweet side, says Faber, the word pudding is commonly used as shorthand for dessert, as in, "What would you like for pudding?" even if the pudding in question isn't "pudding" at all.

Brown says that the closest thing in the U.K. to American-style pudding is custard, which isn't traditionally eaten by itself, but layered into dishes like trifle or enjoyed with some simple stewed fruit.

Now That's Handy Lee Faber gave us a few extra tips for translating a recipe from English (U.S.) to English (U.K.): Baking pans (U.S.) are called tins (U.K.) as in muffin tins and cake tins, even if the tin is made of glass. Golden raisins (U.S.) are the far more poetic-sounding sultanas (U.K.). Shortening (U.S.) is the far less poetic-sounding solid vegetable fat (U.K.).
"We are rebuilding that capacity," Haaland said.

But without the climate bill, tax incentives to build large-scale solar will drop to 10% of a developers total capital costs by 2024, instead of rising to 30%, said Xiaojing Sun, head solar researcher at industry consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

Incentives for residential-scale solar would go away completely by 2024, she said.

It will significantly slow down the growth of solar, Sun said.

However, she added that streamlining access to federal land could help the industry, as large solar farms on non-federal lands face growing local opposition and cumbersome zoning laws.

The Bureau of Land Management oversees almost a quarter-billion acres of land, primarily in Western states. Agency director Tracy-Stone Manning said boosting renewable energy is now one of its top priorities.

Forty large-scale solar proposals in the West are under consideration, she said.
Yet there seems to be little vagueness about how Robertson, an Army veteran, felt about the presidential election.

A legitimate republic stands on 4 boxes, he wrote Nov. 7, 2020, on Facebook, prosecutors say. The soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box and then the cartridge box.

We just moved to step 3. Step 4 will not be pretty, the post continued. I cannot speak for others, but being disenfranchised by fraud is my hard line. Ive spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. Im about to become part of one, and a very effective one.

Other online comments suggest that Robertson ardently believed Trumps claim that the election was stolen. There has been no evidence of the widespread voter fraud Trump decried in urging a large crowd to fight like hell shortly before the Capitol was stormed.

More than 700 people, including two others from Western Virginia, have been charged with taking part in the insurrection.

Robertson was allowed to remain free on a personal recognizance bond following his arrest in January. He continued to air heated online rhetoric, writing that we actually attacked the government who is the problem, according to court records.
Spanberger, a two-term incumbent who in 2018 broke the longtime Republican grip on a 10-county district anchored in Richmonds suburbs, still wont declare her candidacy in the proposed new district. She filed for re-election in her current district more than a year ago.

However, Spanbergers campaign acknowledges that she has been calling legislators privately about her potential candidacy in the proposed new district that would encompass Prince William and Stafford counties; the cities of Fredericksburg, Manassas and Manassas Park; and a small portion of Fairfax County.

Shes not declaring anything at this time, a campaign spokesperson said. She is having conversations with state legislators.

Shes planning for several contingencies, the spokesperson said.

The congressional map proposed by Grofman and Trende has drawn public criticism primarily because of the effect on the Richmond area.

The proposed map would split Spanbergers base of support in the Richmond suburbs, which the districts supporters have told the court is a community of common interest.
Laura Hawkins Frazer, his childhood sweetheart and the model for his beloved character, Becky Thatcher, was there. Her role in the community was as the matron of the Home for the Friendless, a charity organization for widows, mothers with dependent children and adolescent girls: all vulnerable people who depended on Frazer to keep the doors open, sparing them from the horrors of homelessness and despair.

Frazer, after not seeing Twain for a period of time during which he ascended to what was then the equivalent of rock-star status, had worried if he would be spoiled by the fame. Then, though, she rethought the sentiment, saying, I suppose if there was any danger of that, it would have happened long ago.

Garth and his wife, Helen, also a childhood friend, had briefly moved to New York City, where he prospered in the banking, brokerage and manufacturing industries; they returned to their roots and built their opulent home.

They also returned to give back to the community that launched their pursuit of the American dream. They provided jobs, donated to worthy causes such as the Home for the Friendless and attended church shoulder to shoulder with the people in the community. And when Garth died, his wife donated $25,000 for a stand-alone library to be built in the center of town.
The way Thomas T.J. Robertson tells it, the only thing he did inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was pose for a photograph while other supporters of then-President Donald Trump ran amok.

Mr. Robertson, like many other defendants, had no direct bearing on what others in various parts of the crowd ... were doing, his attorney wrote in a motion filed earlier this month that seeks dismissal of a felony charge against him.

Federal prosecutors have cited various comments from the former sergeant with the Rocky Mount Police Department, made before and after the insurrection, that they say show he was an active participant in an effort to obstruct Congress as it met to certify the results of a Nov. 2, 2020, election won by President Joe Biden.

But his words, defense attorney Mark Rollins wrote in the motion filed in Washington D.C.s federal court, should be protected by the First Amendment.

The opinions allegedly expressed by Mr. Robertson were just speech, and no matter how unpopular, they cannot be considered criminal conduct punishable by the government, the motion states.

In response, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi argued that Robertson is being prosecuted not for what he said, but what he did.

That his own statements about his conduct will serve as evidence of his intent to commit this crime does not render the prosecution in violation of the First Amendment, she wrote in court filings.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said in an order filed Friday that he will rule on all pre-trial motions by March 29. An April 4 trial has been scheduled for Robertson and Jacob Fracker, a fellow police officer who accompanied him inside the Capitol while the riots were underway.

Roberson and Fracker, who were off-duty at the time, were fired from their police jobs shortly after the disclosure of a selfie photograph taken of them standing in front of a Revolutionary War heros statue in the buildings Crypt.

They are each charged with obstruction of an official proceeding  a felony  and three misdemeanors: entering a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in such a place, and disorderly conduct in the Capitol.

Robertsons motion to dismiss the felony count contends that it is unconstitutionally vague as applied to his actions. He also argues that the indictment fails to specify what proceeding he is charged with obstructing, and that the Jan. 6 electoral count by Congress is not an official action covered by the law.

Yet there seems to be little vagueness about how Robertson, an Army veteran, felt about the presidential election.

A legitimate republic stands on 4 boxes, he wrote Nov. 7, 2020, on Facebook, prosecutors say. The soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box and then the cartridge box.

We just moved to step 3. Step 4 will not be pretty, the post continued. I cannot speak for others, but being disenfranchised by fraud is my hard line. Ive spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. Im about to become part of one, and a very effective one.

Other online comments suggest that Robertson ardently believed Trumps claim that the election was stolen. There has been no evidence of the widespread voter fraud Trump decried in urging a large crowd to fight like hell shortly before the Capitol was stormed.

More than 700 people, including two others from Western Virginia, have been charged with taking part in the insurrection.

Robertson was allowed to remain free on a personal recognizance bond following his arrest in January. He continued to air heated online rhetoric, writing that we actually attacked the government who is the problem, according to court records.

In July, Robertson was charged with violating the conditions of his bond after a search of his Ferrum home found what prosecutors call an assault-style rifle, a cache of ammunition and a partially assembled pipe bomb. In the months after Jan. 6, Robertson had placed online orders for an arsenal of more than 40 firearms, according to a motion to have his bond revoked.

The 48-year-old had been ordered not to possess or transport any guns as a condition for staying free pending trial. He has been held in the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange since early August.

About 710 people from around the country have been arrested on charges of taking part in the insurrection. Some are charged with forced entry and assaulting police officers. Others are accused of obstructing Congress by their mere presence in the Capitol at such a turbulent time.

As of Dec. 6, 145 defendants have pleaded guilty, according to a summary by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia. Judges have imposed sentences for 45 of them, 19 of which involved incarceration.

The toughest punishment to date was imposed last week, when a rioter was sentenced to more than five years in prison for attacking police officers as they tried to hold back the angry mob.

In his motion to dismiss Robertsons charge, his attorney noted that participants have been convicted for a wide variety of actions under the same law, which he cited as evidence that the felony charge was too vague.

Aloi responded that any inconsistencies are taken into consideration at sentencing.

None of the Capital breach defendants are the same, she wrote.

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A Texas man must serve 15 months in prison for his role in a gas pump skimming scheme that took more than $40,000 from nearly 300 people in the Roanoke Valley and beyond.

Leandro Leo Sanchez, 32, received the sentence Monday from U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon.

When citizens pump gas into their cars, the last thing they should have to consider is whether their banks accounts and identities are being compromised, Assistant U.S. Attorney Coleman Adams wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Unfortunately, 291 individuals in the Western District of Virginia must now think differently due to the sophisticated scheme perpetrated by members of this conspiracy.

Sanchez was one of about a half-dozen people involved in a ring that operated out of Miami, authorities said.

In the fall of 2017, skimming devices were placed in gas station pumps in Clearbrook and Collinsville to capture account information from debit or credit cards that were inserted into the machines by customers.

The cards were then returned to their unknowing owners.

Using data that was accessed from the cards, the scammers re-encoded it onto new cards that were used to withdraw cash from ATMs and make purchases from stores that included the Walmart in Clearbrook, prosecutors have said.

Acting on a tip from one of the victims, Roanoke County police went to a credit union on Electric Road found a man and a woman in a car with a large amount of cash, bank cards and receipts. That and other information led to arrests.

Defense attorney David Damico contested assertions from two co-defendants that Sanchez was the leader of what he described as a loosely organized conspiracy.

He certainly knew what was going on, attempted to profit from it, and was acting cooperatively with the others, Damico wrote in court documents. But that is different from running it.

In the end, prosecutors chose not argue that Sanchez was the groups leader, which reduced his possible term under sentencing guidelines. Dillon allowed him to remain free on bond until he is told to report to prison.

Sanchez and his co-defendants were ordered to make $40,777 in restitution to several banks and credit card companies, who have already reimbursed the victims in the case.

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Sen. Tim Kaine has re-introduced a bill to increase representation of rural, underserved and students of color in medical school. The Expanding Medical Education Act would help grow health-related programs at Virginia Union University and help the university develop new ones, a spokesperson for the university said.

The bill would also provide funds to establish or expand medical schools in medically underserved areas or at minority-serving institutions.

The Health Resources and Services Administration designates most of Virginias rural counties as medically underserved, including Charles City County, Goochland County and King William County, as well as the city of Petersburg.

Kaine first sponsored the bill in July 2020, but it was not approved by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The 2021 version is cosponsored by Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

A cost has not been determined. The Department of Health and Human Services would determine how many schools receive funding and how much each would receive, a spokesperson for Kaine said.

Kaine has pushed for the legislation to be included in the Build Back Better bill, a $2 trillion education, health care and climate package led by President Joe Biden. The bill received a blow Sunday when Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said he would oppose the bill.

Even before the pandemic, underserved, rural and minority communities faced too many barriers in accessing health care, Kaine said in a statement. This has only been exacerbated by nationwide physician shortages. One way we can address this issue is by diversifying and expanding our physician pipeline, as medical students of color and those from rural areas are more likely to practice in the communities theyre from.

At Virginia Union students can pursue a bachelors in health science or a masters in public health. Within each degree, the university offers tracts in health disparities. Kaines bill would help VUU in its commitment to finding ways to help our underrepresented communities have access to quality health care with physicians who understand and identify with the ailments that affect communities of color, said Pamela Cox, a spokesperson for VUU.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, is telling state legislators privately that she will run in the newly configured 7th Congressional District in Northern Virginia if the state Supreme Courts proposed map becomes final, despite public concerns about the maps effect on representation of the Richmond suburbs.

In a recording left with a state legislator on Friday, Spanberger said nothing is finalized about the proposed map, which would move the 7th District from the Richmond suburbs to a base in Prince William County, more than 50 miles from her current home in western Henrico County.

But if the proposed map is finalized, I will continue running in the new 7th District, which will incorporate a whole lot of new counties, she said in the message, which was provided to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Spanberger has not commented publicly since court experts Bernard Grofman  nominated by Democratic legislators  and Sean Trende  nominated by GOP lawmakers  released a proposed new congressional map to accommodate population shifts based on the U.S. Census.

The state Supreme Court has held two public hearings on the experts proposed legislative and congressional maps and will soon decide whether to accept or amend the proposed boundaries.

Spanberger, a two-term incumbent who in 2018 broke the longtime Republican grip on a 10-county district anchored in Richmonds suburbs, still wont declare her candidacy in the proposed new district. She filed for re-election in her current district more than a year ago.

However, Spanbergers campaign acknowledges that she has been calling legislators privately about her potential candidacy in the proposed new district that would encompass Prince William and Stafford counties; the cities of Fredericksburg, Manassas and Manassas Park; and a small portion of Fairfax County.

Shes not declaring anything at this time, a campaign spokesperson said. She is having conversations with state legislators.

Shes planning for several contingencies, the spokesperson said.

The congressional map proposed by Grofman and Trende has drawn public criticism primarily because of the effect on the Richmond area.

The proposed map would split Spanbergers base of support in the Richmond suburbs, which the districts supporters have told the court is a community of common interest.

Western Henrico would become part of a solidly Republican 1st District, a seat currently held by Republican Rep. Rob Wittman, who lives in Montross on the Northern Neck. The sprawling, newly drawn 1st District would extend from Fluvanna County southeast to York County and Poquoson. It would continue to include Hanover and New Kent counties.

Western Chesterfield County would become part of a newly drawn 5th District that extends southwest to Danville. Republican Rep. Bob Good now holds the seat.

Rep. Donald McEachin, D-4th, who lives in South Richmond, would be the only Richmond-area resident remaining in the House of Representatives under the new map. The 4th District would remain largely unchanged from 2016, when the courts adopted a new map, also drawn by Grofman. The 4th would continue to include the city of Richmond, eastern Henrico and eastern Chesterfield.

Congressional representatives dont have to live in the districts they represent, but getting elected isnt easy if they dont. Spanberger and her husband have three school-age children in Henrico.

Prospective competition

Spanberger could face formidable competition for the Democratic nomination in the proposed Northern Virginia district, which would be a Democratic-leaning seat. A number of prominent Prince William Democrats are considering a run if the new district becomes official, including former Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy.

Carroll Foy left her House seat to run for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this year, finishing second to former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who lost the general election to Republican newcomer Glenn Youngkin. The proposed district includes her former House district.

The proposed district would have a minority population of 43.26%. Spanberger, who is white, could face several candidates of color in the primary field.

Other potential Democratic candidates from Prince William include Del. Elizabeth Guzman; School Board Chairman Babur Lateef; Sen. Jeremy McPike; Del. Luke Torian; and Ann Wheeler, chair of the county Board of Supervisors.

Torian, current chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said Monday that he hasnt spoken to Spanberger, but added, I heard that shes thinking about running.

I think theres going to be a crowded field and everybody needs to wait, he said. The maps are still not final. I think its premature for anyone to declare theyre running.

Spanberger, in the recorded message to a legislator, expressed gratitude for the persons prior offer to help with her potential candidacy. And so as I look toward new counties, I just wanted to be in touch about what sort of relationships or folks you might know in Prince William or Stafford, she said.

Id love to create some new connections and also, ideally, you can speak to the work Ive done and engage directly on county [elected officials] on county priorities.

Court experts' proposed Virginia congressional map would draw Spanberger out of 7th District The proposal would extend the 9th Congressional District to include parts of Roanoke and Bedford counties and all of Franklin County. Much of the Roanoke Valley would remain in the 6th Congressional District.

mmartz@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6964 Jeff E. Schapiro contributed to this report.
RICMOND  Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin announced Monday he has chosen Aimee Rogstad Guidera to serve as his secretary of education, turning to the former head of a nonprofit that promotes use of data to improve student achievement.

Guidera is the first Cabinet secretary Youngkin has announced, underscoring the importance of the issue to the governor-elect, who ran on claims that Virginias schools are underperforming and teaching left-leaning content. He also has promised to increase the number of charter schools in the state.

Her leadership, intellect, and talent will be tremendous assets as we ensure Virginia kids are the best prepared in the country to succeed, and that they are taught how to think, not what to think, Youngkin said in a statement. She will help us recharge a system that has settled for too long.

The president of Guidera Strategy, she was founder and chief executive of the Data Quality Campaign. She led the national organization for over a decade, advocating for improved quality, accessibility and use of education data to increase student achievement.

Guidera previously served as the director of the Washington, D.C., office of the National Center for Educational Achievement. She started her career working on education policy at the National Governors Association.

Through her work, Guidera has supported charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run. Youngkin promised to vastly expand the number of charter schools in Virginia, which now has just seven. Youngkin said his goal is to bring up the number in Virginia to match North Carolina, which has more than 200.

Aimee will be a critical partner in restoring expectations of excellence; overseeing a record education budget to invest in teachers, facilities and special education; rolling out innovation lab and charter schools; and standing for a curriculum that prepares Virginias children for a dynamic future and removes politics from the classroom, Youngkin said.

Youngkin appeared to gain traction late in the contest for governor with Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe by pushing education issues, particularly emphasizing parents role. Parents matter became a mantra for Youngkins campaign after the second debate, in which McAuliffe said: I dont think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.

The Republican called on every school in the state to have a law enforcement officer on its campus, or face losing state education funding. Heated school issues  COVID-19 restrictions on students, whether teachers should talk about systemic racism, rules around transgender students, school choice and, school safety  appeared to boost Youngkins popularity among the swing voters he needed to overcome McAuliffe in a state that had favored Democrats in recent years.

A Monmouth University survey late in the race found that education and schools had become one of the two issues voters cared about most, along with jobs and the economy; moving past COVID-19.

Guidera, who is originally from Maryland, moved to Virginia in 1995 with her husband and daughter, who attended Fairfax County public schools.

Youngkin takes office Jan. 15. Guidera, like other Cabinet nominees, will face confirmation by the General Assembly during its regular session, which starts Jan. 12.
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" " This arial view of a German industrial area is a good example of how humans are affecting the planet via pollution and industrialization. Dirk Meister/Getty Images

Thanks to greenhouse gas emissions, the percentage of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere grew by 2.87 parts per million (ppm), increasing from an average of 407.05 ppm on Jan. 1, 2018, to 409.92 on Jan. 1, 2019, according to readings at NOAA's atmospheric observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. What's worse is three of the four highest annual increases have occurred in the past four years.

These readings also indicate a sharp increase from what the levels were even 60 years ago. The World Meteorological Organization says Earth's atmosphere hasn't seen such a high concentration of the gas in 3 to 5 million years.

Harmful emissions are just one of the environmental concerns that today's leaders must confront. Trash accumulation is another. Since the 1950s, humans have generated about 9 billion tons (8.3 metric tons) of plastic and dumped most of it in landfills. Plus, Homo sapiens are overpopulating like crazy. As our numbers skyrocket, loads of other species find themselves on the decline. You and I are now witnessing one of the biggest mass extinction events of all time.

"We are a geologic force in and of ourselves," says Donald Prothero, a paleontologist, geologist and bestselling author.

Mankind's overall impact on planet Earth has been so dramatic that some scientists think a change to the geologic time scale is in order. According to them, we should reclassify the (very) recent past as a new unit in time  defined by humanity's long-lasting marks on the world's climate, geology and biological makeup.

This proposed unit has a name: The Anthropocene epoch, or age of humans.

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The Geologic Time Scale

Earth is about 4.54 billion years old. Geologists have split its history into large blocs of time called eons, which are further subdivided into eras. Those in turn are made up of smaller units called periods. Finally, the little divisions within a period are known as epochs.

So right now, we're living in the Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era, which is part of the Phanerozoic eon. But the question is, what's the current epoch?

Well, therein lies the debate. Earth's most recent ice age ended 11,700 years ago. That point in time is recognized as the end of the Pleistocene epoch, which began just less than 2.6 million years ago, and the dawn of the Holocene epoch.

The dividing lines between epochs correspond with important moments in Earth's history  like abrupt changes in the climate. Evidence for these events is typically found within the layers  or strata  of rock on our planet. (Ice core samples may also contain clues.)

"Nowadays, epochs are defined by a section of rock that has distinctive boundaries at the top and bottom," Prothero says. He adds that specific epochs are also sometimes characterized by the presence or absence of "key fossils."

The end of the last ice age marked the beginning of the Holocene and established its lower boundary. It's traditionally been thought that this particular epoch is still going on today.

But in 2000, Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen helped popularize an alternative viewpoint. That year, he and biologist Eugene F. Stoermer argued that recent human activities had pushed the world out of the Holocene and into a new epoch. Decades earlier, Stoermer had coined the term "Anthropocene"  derived from the Greek word for "human"  as a possible name for this hypothetical new unit of geologic time.

It stuck.

" " Trash and waste from humans ends up polluting the oceans, and impacts wildlife, like these seal pups who are entangled in fishing line. Images copyright of Jamie Lamb - elusive-images.co.uk/Getty Images

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Our Rocky Legacy

The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) is the body that standardizes the Geologic Time Scale. It has yet to recognize the Anthropocene as an official epoch, although the topic has been discussed. As of this writing, the ICS maintains that the Holocene is still ongoing.

But maybe scientists will feel differently someday. Prothero's heard it argued that geologists living in the far-off future  perhaps even tens of millions of years from now  "could tell when humans were here because we've left so many traces in the rocks; chemical traces as well as actual physical objects like trash."

Seawater absorbs about one-fourth of our CO2 emissions. This has led to widespread ocean acidification, which will doubtless leave telltale limestones behind. Dissolved carbonates in the sediment are going to be another one of our calling cards. Future paleontologists may also notice the sudden disappearance of a great many species from the fossil record.

We would also expect as-yet unborn researchers to discover the radiometric signatures of nuclear weaponry. All around the world, plutonium 239  which is uncommon in nature  was embedded in sediments that lay exposed to the air during the nuclear tests of the 1950s.

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Drawing the Line

That brings us to a bone of contention about the Anthropocene. If it really is a legitimate geological epoch, what moment in history should we recognize as its starting point?

The possibilities are legion. One argument is that the Anthropocene began in the 1940s with the first atomic weapons detonations, like the famous Trinity Nuclear Test of 1945, occurred.

"Others have wanted to push [the lower boundary date] all the way back to when humans really started transforming the planet at the beginning of civilization and agriculture, at least 10 or 11,000 years ago," Prothero tells us. Another option might be to define the Anthropocene as everything that's happened since the Industrial Revolution kicked off.

But now the 34-member Anthropocene Working Group thinks they have the exact date in mind. The panel voted in May 2019 to submit a formal proposal for the new epoch by 2021 to the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Before their submission, they plan to identify a definitive geologic marker. The group actually has 10 sites in mind, including a cave in northern Italy, coral in the Great Barrier Reef and a lake in China.

Regardless, if the geological community ever officially splits up the Holocene and rebrands these past few decades, centuries or millennia as the Anthropocene, a potential benefit might be the gesture's symbolic value. Crutzen and many others hope it'd send a powerful message to governments and private citizens alike. As Prothero puts it, "When you use that term, everyone else then realizes that geologists are making a statement about what we've done to the planet."

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING The Cenozoic era is popularly known as "The Age of Mammals" because it began in the wake of the mass extinction that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Mammals then stepped in to take over the vacant niches that the dinos and other extinct reptiles left behind.
" " Currently, Chimney Rock stands 325 feet (99 meters) tall, but its slowly eroding away. Nebraska Tourism

Independence Hall, the St. Louis Arch, the Golden Gate Bridge and other manmade landmarks help tell the story of America  but only up to a point. The country's deep past is also recorded in geology.

In days gone by, settlers and explorers used our natural wonders as navigational tools. Now, these rock formations are popular vacation destinations. The Grand Canyon, for instance, attracted 6.3 million visitors in 2018 alone. During that same year, some 11,000 outdoor enthusiasts sought permits to climb Mount St. Helens in Washington state. We're drawn to such places because of the stunning views they offer, and the sense of awe they inspire.

And knowing a little bit about how awesome landmarks like Nebraska's Chimney Rock or North Carolina's Pilot Mountain formed will only enhance your appreciation for them. To that end, we're throwing a salute to some of America's geological treasures.

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1. Chimney Rock National Historic Site

You may recognize Chimney Rock from its appearances in the "Oregon Trail" computer games. A natural spire in Nebraska's panhandle, it greeted thousands of westbound travelers during the 18th century. The realOregon Trail ran right past Chimney Rock, and so did the equally-historic Mormon and California trails.

At present, Chimney Rock stands 325 feet (99 meters) tall. But it's slowly eroding away. This trailside marker is made up of geological strata that were deposited between 34 and 23 million years ago. Prehistoric volcanoes in Utah and Nevada used to emit huge clouds of ash that would settle on the great plains. There, the ash mixed with sands, clays and silts brought down from the Rocky Mountains by local waterways. The result? Brand-new layers of rock.

Within the past 5 million years, water and wind carved these layers up. Erosion sculpted Chimney Rock out of the existing strata, along with Nebraska's famous Courthouse and Jailhouse Rocks. Slowly but surely, the same process is still whittling all three landmarks down. Don't worry, though. They're not likely to disappear anytime soon.

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2. Pilot Mountain

Thomas Jefferson's father, Peter, helped map this tree-topped beauty way back in 1751. Originally known as "Jomeokee," which means "great guide" in the language of the Saura Native Americans, Pilot Mountain is a great example of a monadnock.

Monadnocks are isolated hills, knob-like protuberances, or small mountains with steep sides. The terrain surrounding them is more or less flat and they rise sharply above it. Another name for monadnock is "inselberg," which is German for "island mountain."

Well, Pilot Mountain certainly fits the bill. A member of North Carolina's Sauratown Mountain Range, its peak stands 1,400 feet (427 meters) above the mostly level countryside at its base. Pilot Mountain's summit is a rounded knob dubbed the "Big Pinnacle." Some 200 feet (61 meters) in height, its walls are almost vertical. While the bulk of this mountain is covered in trees, those rocky walls are pretty much naked.

Pilot Mountain is largely made up of hard quartzite, which is very resistant to erosion. Therein lies the secret to its longevity. Birders may be interested to know that Big Pinnacle is now a protected nesting area for ravens and turkey vultures.

" " North Carolina's Pilot Mountain is a great example of a monadnock, which are isolated knob-like bulges. Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

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3. Mount St. Helens

More than 75 percent of all the world's active and dormant volcanoes are located in the Pacific "Ring of Fire." A belt of volcanically active sites and earthquake-prone areas, it passes through New Zealand, the Indonesian Archipelago, the Philippines, Japan, Russia and the western coastlines of the Americas.

The ring encompasses North America's Cascade Mountain Range. Stretching from California to British Columbia, the range is a byproduct of tectonic subduction. For millions of years, the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate in the northwestern Pacific has been getting pulled (or "subducted") underneath the more buoyant North American continental plate.

On its way down, water trapped inside the oceanic plate gets released. Once freed, it produces magma: liquid and semi-liquid molten rock. This stuff can travel upward and erupt onto the Earth's surface as lava.

The volcanoes in the Cascade Range were formed by a combination of erupting lava and magmas that accumulated below the surface. Mount St. Helens is particularly infamous. Located 96 miles (154 kilometers) south of Seattle in Washington state, it underwent a catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980. The disaster claimed 57 lives and Mount St. Helens lost about 1 cubic mile (4.1 cubic kilometers) of rock in the process, severely lowering the volcanic mountain's peak.

" " Mount St. Helens lost about 1 cubic mile (4.1 cubic kilometers) of rock during its massive eruption in 1980. Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

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4. Barringer Crater

About 50,000 years ago, an asteroid measuring just 150 feet (46 meters) across smacked into the northern Arizona desert, some 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of where Flagstaff now sits. Striking the planet with the force of 2.5 tons (2.26 metric tons) of TNT, it left behind an otherworldly crater.

At 570 feet (173 meters) deep and 4,100 feet (1,250 meters) wide, Barringer Crater is a sight to behold. Geologists think the violent impact from the asteroid displaced about 175 million tons (159 million metric tons) of southwestern rock.

We know the asteroid itself mainly consisted of an iron-nickel alloy. Mathematical models suggest that it fractured into pieces before striking Earth. An especially large hunk probably hit Earth at the incredible speed of 7.45 miles per second (12 kilometers per second).

Barringer Crater is also known simply as "Meteor Crater." Yet its true identity wasn't always obvious. Scientists used to think the great pit was formed by volcanic activity. However, in 1903, geologist Daniel Barringer correctly surmised that it was an impact crater left behind by some extraterrestrial object. By the early 1960s, this had become the scientific consensus.

" " About 50,000 years ago, an asteroid hit what's now Arizona leaving behind a massive crater. Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

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5. The Grand Canyon

A whole lot of history is written on the Grand Canyon's breathtaking walls. The oldest material, exposed near the bottom of the Upper Granite Gorge (and some other areas), resides in a layer called the Vishnu Basement Rock. Approximately 1.84 to 1.66 billion years old, this layer includes granites, schists and gneiss. Some Vishnu Basement Rock deposits were radically transformed when the North American continent collided with volcanic island chains.

Meanwhile, one of the youngest strata is the Kaibab Limestone, which hugs the canyon's rims in several places. According to the National Park Service, it was laid down a scant 270 million years ago  shortly before the biggest mass extinction event that our world's ever seen.

Of course, extinctions can't happen on a lifeless planet. And the Grand Canyon is jam-packed with a diverse collection of fossils, representing all kinds of different organisms like trilobites, ammonites and ancient plants  to name a few.

Nobody knows when the canyon itself formed. Some researchers think it may have emerged in phases, with the Colorado River linking a series of smaller, variously aged canyons together into the 227-mile (446-kilometer) natural wonder that now graces Arizona. Proponents of this (rather controversial) hypothesis say the big merger could've been completed as recently as 5 to 6 million years ago.

" " The Grand Canyon is jam-packed with a diverse collection of fossils, representing all kinds of different organisms. Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING Mount St. Helens isn't the tallest volcano in the Cascade Range; that honor belongs to Mount Rainier. The 14,411-foot (4.392-meter) icon of the Pacific Northwest hasn't experienced a major eruption in several thousand years  although the last small-scale eruption took place in 1894.
Life reconstruction of a close-to-hatching oviraptorosaur dinosaur embryo, based on the new specimen Baby Yingliang.. Credit: Lida Xing

Over the last 100 years, many fossilized dinosaur eggs and nests have been found, but finding one with a well-preserved embryo inside is exceedingly rare. Now, researchers reporting in the journalon December 21 have detailed one such specimen discovered in southern China.

What's more, their studies lead them to suggest that oviraptorosaurs (a group of therapods closely related to birds) took on a distinctive tucking posture before they hatched, a behavior that had been considered unique to birds. It raises the possibility that tucking behavior may have evolved first among non-avian theropods during the Cretaceous, the researchers say.

"Most known non-avian dinosaur embryos are incomplete with skeletons disarticulated," said Waisum Ma of the University of Birmingham, U.K. "We were surprised to see this embryo beautifully preserved inside a dinosaur egg, lying in a bird-like posture. This posture had not been recognized in non-avian dinosaurs before."

The fossilized dinosaur embryo comes from Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, southern China.

It had been acquired in 2000 by Liang Liu, director of a company called Yingliang Group, who suspected it might contain egg fossils. But it then ended up in storage, largely forgotten until about ten years later, when museum staff during the construction of Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum sorted through the boxes and unearthed the fossils.

Animated life reconstruction of a close-to-hatching oviraptorosaur dinosaur embryo, based on the new specimen Baby Yingliang. Credit: Lida Xing

"Museum staff identified them as dinosaur eggs and saw some bones on the broken cross section of one of the eggs," Lida Xing of China University of Geosciences, Beijing, said. The fossils were then prepared, unveiling the embryo hidden within, which they named "Baby Yingliang."

In the new study, Xing and colleagues report that the head lies ventral to the body, with the feet on either side, and the back curled along the blunt pole of the egg, in a posture previously unrecognized in a non-avian dinosaur. That's especially notable because it's reminiscent of a late-stage modern bird embryo.

Comparison of the specimen to other late-stage oviraptorosaur embryos suggests that before hatching, oviraptorosaurs developed avian-like postures late in their incubation. In modern birds, such coordinated embryonic movements are associated with tucking, a behavior that's controlled by the central nervous system and is critical for hatching success.

Photo of the oviraptorosaur embryo Baby Yingliang. Credit: Xing et al./iScience

The notion that such pre-hatching behavior may have originated among non-avian theropods can now be further investigated through more studies of other fossil embryos. But first, the researchers say they'll continue studying this rare specimen in even more depth, using various imaging techniques to image its internal anatomy, such as skull bones, and other body parts that are still covered in rocks.

More information:

Waisum Ma, An exquisitely preserved in-ovo theropod dinosaur embryo sheds light on avian-like prehatching postures, iScience (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103516. www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext  2589-0042(21)01487-5

Provided by Cell Press
Let this be your notice, Wallace said. We know who you are and we know where you are. We will not allow this type of criminal enterprise to thrive in Marion County. When you hear a knock on your door in the next few days, it may not be Santa.
Dalondo Moultrie is the assistant managing editor of the Seguin Gazette. You can e-mail him at dalondo.moultrie@seguingazette.com .
 Eighth Circuit panel affirms time-served sentence for enticement of a (fake) minor when guidelines recommended 46-57 months | Main | A deep dive into extreme sentences in the Pelican State 

December 21, 2021

BJS releases "Employment of Persons Released from Federal Prison in 2010"

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released this fascinating new accounting of employment dynamics for over 50,000 persons who were released from federal prison in 2010. Here is how the report starts to explain its scope:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) produced this study to fulfill a congressional mandate in the Fair Chance to Compete for Jobs Act, part of the 2019 Defense Reauthorization Act (P.L. 116-92, Title XI, Subtitle B, Section 1124). Congress tasked BJS and the U.S. Census Bureau with reporting on post-prison employment of persons released from federal prison. The study population in this report includes 51,500 persons released from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) whose release records could be linked by the U.S. Census Bureau to employment and wage files from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program.

I cannot readily summarize all the findings from this report, but here are a few passages I found notable:

More than two-thirds (67%) of the study population released from federal prison in 2010 obtained formal employment at any point during the 16 quarters following release. However, the total study populations employment did not exceed 40% in any of the individual 16 quarters after release. The highest percentage of persons in the study population who were employed occurred in the first full quarter after prison release for whites (46%) and American Indians and Alaska Natives (37%), in quarter 2 for blacks (37%) and Hispanics (34%), and in quarter 5 for Asians and Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders (38%). Males who obtained post-prison employment worked for an average of 9.1 quarters during the 16 quarters following release, while females worked an average of 10.2 quarters.... A third (33%) of persons in the study population were employed 12 quarters prior to their admission to federal prison. This percentage declined in each subsequent quarter, with 18% employed in the last full quarter before admission to prison and 11% employed in the quarter of prison admission.... A higher percentage of persons in the study population who served time in federal prison for drug offenses before their 2010 release were employed during the 16 quarters after release (72%) compared to other offense types, while persons who served time for public order offenses had the lowest (60%). Seventy percent of persons in the study population who returned to federal prison during the time from their 2010 release to yearend 2014 found employment in at least 1 quarter of the follow-up period, compared to 66% of persons who were not reimprisoned by the BOP.... Persons in the study population worked in a wide range of jobs after prison, but five industrial sectors employed the majority of persons released in 2010: administrative support and waste management and remediation services; accommodation and food services; construction; manufacturing; and retail trade (table 7). Together, these sectors employed 72% of persons in the study population who obtained work in the first quarter after their 2010 prison release, declining to 66% in quarter 16. During each of the 16 quarters after release, the top nine employment sectors accounted for more than 85% of the jobs worked by the employed persons in the study population.

Because I do not see this report including any data about education levels or any in-prison vocational training efforts, I am not sure quite what to make of all these particulars. But the particulars are still quite interesting.

December 21, 2021 at 11:10 AM | Permalink

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Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNNs New Day Tuesday that Fox News Channel personality Jesse Watters should be fired on the spot for using words like ambush and kill shot while speaking about the infectious-disease doctor at Mondays AmericaFest 2021.

Thats horrible. Thats just such a reflection of the craziness that goes on in society, Dr. Fauci said. The only thing that I have ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public-health practices: to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask  and for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a killshot, to ambush me. I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days? Thats awful that he said that. And hes going to go, very likely, unaccountable. Whatever network hes on, is not going to do anything to him. I mean, thats crazy, the guy should be fired on the spot.

Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, its more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context, a Fox News spokesperson told TheWrap.

Watters is the host of Fox News Watters World.

Watch Faucis New Day appearance below.

"The guy should be fired on the spot," says Dr. Fauci about FOX News entertainer Jesse Waters.



Yesterday, Waters told a crowd to "ambush" Dr. Fauci with a "kill shot" so he "doesn't see it coming." pic.twitter.com/GEnuz1BzIO  Nora Neus (@noraneus) December 21, 2021

Readers can watch the AmericaFest 2021 moment in question via the video at the top of this post. Watters part begins at the 2-hour, 13-minute mark and the Fauci stuff starts 11 minutes later.

Story continues

While the language Watters uses  words like ambush and kill shot  is certainly inflammatory and arguably purposeful, he is referring to a guerrilla cell-phone interview and not actual physical violence. Watters is imploring the college student attendees to ask Fauci about funding gain-of-function research in overseas labs, including in Wuhan, China.

Watters added: You get that footage to us, you get it to Fox, you get it to Human Events, you get it to Brietbart, you get it to Daily Caller, you get it to the Turning Point pipeline  Get us that! Thats what we want! That changes the whole conversation of the country. Ive authorized it, just make sure its legal.

He then goes into a hypothetical kill shot for Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Find more about the Turning Point USA event here. Charlie Kirk is the founder of Turning Point USA. Other speakers at the event include Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  In a major tonal shift from six days ago, North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and state health officials on Monday issued their strongest public health warning yet heading into the holidays, saying they anticipate the omicron variant of COVID-19 will soon severely strain hospitals, become the dominant variant and lead to the highest daily case counts since the pandemic first hit the state in March 2020.

As officials brace for omicron to represent the majority of new cases by mid-January, Cooper and his outgoing and incoming health secretaries, Mandy Cohen and Kody Kinsley, unveiled plans to bolster free at-home testing and issue clearer  but unenforceable  guidelines.

While Cohen described the situation as a moment to act, she and Cooper on Monday declined to reimpose any statewide mandates or use financial perks to encourage residents to get a third dose of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Earlier this year, Cooper's administration used such incentives to persuade North Carolinians to get their first shots.

We are not at the point of any of those statewide requirements at this time, Cooper said. The message is strong and clear.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday evening released data showing omicron is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of new infections last week.

In place of mandates, North Carolina officials are hoping additional testing resources and a strong informational campaign appealing to the roughly 62% of vaccinated individuals who have not yet come in for a third shot will suffice.

We've seen with the omicron variant that you can get real protection from boosters, Cooper said. This is the first news conference we've had where boosters is the main message. The second message is testing. Those two things right now can help us get through this.

Cooper, Cohen and Kinsley were not alone in pushing for people to get an extra shot.

Duke University, which has been widely praised for its management of the pandemic and has limited exposure risk during the fall semester, announced on Monday that it will require all students and employees to provide proof of receiving the COVID-19 booster shot in January or as soon as they are eligible.

Overall, 73% of North Carolina adults have gotten at least one shot and 69% have received at least two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the J&J vaccine. But early studies suggest the vaccinated will need a booster shot for the best chance at preventing an omicron infection. Officials are also continuing to encourage those who have not received any shots to do so.

In the meantime, Cohen advised all North Carolina residents not to visit unvaccinated family members over the holidays in maskless, indoor settings. Though blunt conversations may be uncomfortable, she encourages families to discuss their pandemic safety plans on how to limit their COVID-19 exposure.

She further advised that people get tested before traveling and that hosts hold their gatherings outdoors, keep visitors masked while indoors or, at minimum, crack open a window to improve air flow. If everyone is masked and boosted, she said groups should feel safer gathering inside a home.

We are seeing this incredibly fast takeoff (of cases) in other countries and in the northeast, and we want to take the opportunity of the fact that it's not dominant here in North Carolina yet," Cohen said. "We have time to act, and we want folks to act right now.

Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

Follow Anderson on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BryanRAnderson.

Anderson 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.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Nebraska saw its coronavirus-related cases and hospitalizations decrease last week, providing a bit of a break in what had been a long upward trend.

The state tallied 5,435 cases in the week ending Friday, down from 7,052 the prior week, according to a World-Herald analysis of federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

While about half of states saw decreases, Nebraskas was among the highest by percentage. But nationwide, cases continue to trend upward.

Nebraska hospitals, meanwhile, saw their first relief after a month of steadily rising numbers of COVID-19 patients. The count dropped from a peak of 633 on Dec. 13 to 579 by the end of last week. Hospitalizations remain about 50% above levels a month ago.

Some 35 deaths were reported last week, according to the CDC, bringing the states pandemic total to 3,298. The state now has recorded 327,858 cases of COVID-19, according to the states hospital capacity dashboard.

Dr. James Lawler, a co-executive director of the University of Nebraska Medical Centers Global Center for Health Security, said Nebraska has seen fluctuations in COVID-19 numbers for months. He expects to see downturns and troughs. But he doesnt expect a downturn overall. Instead, he sees a high likelihood of an increase when the state gets hit with the brunt of the fast-spreading omicron variant in the next couple of weeks.

Some 59.2% of Nebraskas population has been vaccinated, up half a percentage point from the previous week but still trailing the 61.4% U.S. rate.

Of 60,000 shots administered last week, almost two-thirds were boosters. Some 39.6% of fully vaccinated Nebraska adults have now received boosters, well above the 32% national rate.

But Nebraska continues to lag in vaccinating children. Only 36.6% of children ages 5 to 17 have received at least one dose, below the 40.2% U.S. rate and ranking 28th among states.

Nebraskas child vaccination rate is less than half the rates of top states, including New Hampshire at 95% and West Virginia at 88%.

Those states have made concerted efforts to vaccinate children. New Hampshire set up clinics in schools and in McDonalds restaurants. In Nebraska, the Douglas County Health Department has held vaccination clinics in middle and high schools, an effort that continues this week.

In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice launched a child vaccination campaign called Do It for Babydog, named after the governors French bulldog. Getting vaccinated made students eligible to win educational savings funds of up to $100,000 in a series of drawings.

The Ricketts administration has not launched a vaccination campaign aimed specifically at Nebraska children, although the governor has repeatedly urged the states residents to get vaccinated.

Childrens Hospital & Medical Center and the Nebraska Department of Education launched a Max the Vax campaign earlier this month aimed at keeping kids healthy and in school.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A judge has ruled against the San Diego public school systems COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students, saying the requirement set to begin Jan. 24 conflicts with state law.

San Diego Superior Court Judge John Meyer ruled Monday that the San Diego Unified School District does not have the authority to establish its own vaccine mandate, KNSD-TV reported.

The Board of Education unanimously voted Tuesday to appeal the ruling.

Vaccines remain the best way to protect the health and safety of our students, and we are 100-percent determined to maintain the vaccination mandate," the school district said in a message to staff and families.

The judge's tentative ruling sided with the parent group Let Them Choose, which filed the lawsuit in October. The group argued the decision to mandate vaccines must be made at the state level and also needs to include a personal belief exemption  unless the state Legislature acts to eliminate the exemption.

All California public schools will eventually come under a state mandate requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for in-person school attendance, but a deadline has not been set yet because the state requirement is tied to full approval of the vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has encouraged local districts in the meantime to impose their own student mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine.

San Diego Unified announced in September it would require all students 16 and older to get the COVID-19 vaccine to attend in-person classes starting Jan. 24. Unvaccinated students, unless they have a medical exemption, would have to transfer into the districts remote learning program, according to the mandate, which does not include religious or personal belief exemptions.

In his ruling, Meyer said that San Diego Unified will be required to allow students to attend in-person as long as they have received the 10 vaccines mandated by the state, which does not include the COVID-19 shot.

The judge also said that state law requires independent study programs to be voluntary  and a forced transfer into such a program violates state law.

Meyer has five days to sign Mondays ruling during which the ruling cant be enforced.

Mark R. Bresee, an attorney for San Diego Unified, expressed disappointment with the ruling.

The judge concluded only the state can act regarding vaccinations, even though the law specifically allows and encourages local vaccination programs, Bresee said in a statement. Even Judge Meyer acknowledged in his ruling that the vaccine mandate appears to be necessary and rational, and the districts desire to protect its students from COVID-19 is commendable.

San Diego Unified is one of several large school districts in California to announce such mandates. Other districts with similar mandates include Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and West Contra Costa Unified school districts.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Under the new district map from Woodbury County, three districts -- 1, 2 and 4 -- would be wholly within the city of Sioux City. Two others -- 3 and 5 -- would take in portions of the city, as well as more rural areas of the county.
SIOUX CITY -- For the first stretch of his speech Monday to the Rotary Club of Sioux City, former Rep. Steve King sifted through the not-so-distant past in the context of a new book he's touting.

In particular, King, a Kiron Republican who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 until 2021, wanted to focus on a January 2019 New York Times article on immigration, where he was quoted by the paper as asking, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization  how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?"

Following the incident, Republican House leaders stripped him of committee assignments, which he never regained. On Monday, King said all of that added up to make him one of the most-hated and most-high-profile "canceled" men in America for a time.

Since then, King, who lost a primary in 2020 to now Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull, has insisted he was misquoted by the Times. He continued to make that case Monday at the Sioux City Convention Center, saying his new book, "Walking Through the Fire," proves he was taken out of context.

"You won't know whether it's willful or whether it's accidental but you will know that's a misquote," King told the Rotarians.

Spinning outward from that episode, which he positioned as a part of his exodus from Congress, King took aim at Republicans such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and liberals like billionaire investor George Soros.

In the case of the former, King accused McCarthy of putting the interests of D.C. lobbyists above the party. As for Soros, who has given extensively to progressive causes, King invoked his name while implying there's been a concerted effort to weaponize and boost the phrase "white nationalist" in Internet searches.

According to King, one example of that alleged assault on language is the terming of the Confederate flag as a symbol of hate. He said that images of the flag don't appear when searching the term "slavery" on Google. In 2020, a Quinnipiac poll found that 56% of American respondents found the flag to be representative of racism.

Before wrapping up his speech, King gave his summation of where he thinks the country is currently at.

"American exceptionalism is under assault today," he told the audience. To try and support the claim, King said that younger generations are now raised to "question everything about America."

He then told those there that they need to know about their history and to "stand up and defend your freedom."

Per King, his book is going to be nationally published at the end of February and he will head out on a publicity tour. Currently, he is promoting the book at smaller gatherings around Iowa. After Monday's meeting, the former congressman sold copies of the book, which retails for $28, and offered to sign each one.

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 @TwoHeadedBoy98.

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SIOUX CITY -- The Sioux City Council approved second reading of a change to the municipal code on Monday, which would allow Coffee & Purrs, a proposed cat cafe, to open in the Commerce Building, 520 Nebraska St.

The council voted 4 to 0 in favor of a zoning text amendment to alter the definition of animal boarding, which would permit the cats to reside in the cat cafe overnight. Councilman Alex Watters, who supported the first reading, was absent from the meeting. Only a vote on the third and final reading remains for the cafe to become a reality.

The cat cafe would feature a separate area from the coffee shop where customers could interact with cats. It would be located in the brick building's commercial space, below 71 apartments known as Bluebird Flats.

Megan Thompson, who wants to open the cat cafe, clarified that she would like to have a maximum of 40 cats residing in the cat room, an area where patrons could pay to cuddle with cats, which would be separate from the coffee shop.

In the future, she said she would like to add a kitten room -- so, eventually, 30 spayed and neutered adult cats and 10 kittens would live at Coffee & Purrs at a time until they could be adopted.

"We want to have between 15 and 30. We don't need to have 30 cats in there at a time, but I would say that would be our maximum adult cats that we can have in there," Thompson said.

Councilwoman Julie Schoenherr asked Thompson if the cats would have their own kennel to sleep in at night in the 785-square-foot cat room. Thompson responded that the cats would sleep on the beds and the couches in the room.

Mayor Bob Scott asked Thompson what kind of ventilation system she plans on having in her business, noting that cats have a "very distinct odor." Thompson said the rooms will have separate HVAC systems.

"To keep the smell away, we are going to clean on the hour," said Thompson, who said an employee will come in in the morning to deep clean the concrete floors and the area rug.

The current definitions of animal boarding prohibit the keeping of animals for profit in the Downtown Commercial zoning district. The proposed zoning text amendment would alter the definition of animal boarding to permit the cats to reside in the cat cafe overnight. The change, however, would also permit pet stores to have animals available for sale or adoption downtown, but animal boarding and breeding would remain prohibited there.

Preston Moore, Iowa state director for the Humane Society of the United States, told the council that he highly recommends that the city works with Thompson so that she can open the cat cafe. However, he urged the council not to adopt language that would permit the sale of commercially-bred dogs and cats in downtown Sioux City. The pet shops that would likely spring up if such code changes were adopted would sell animals obtained from puppy and kitten mills.

"We see a lot of potentially harmful diseases that are transmitted through these facilities to people," Moore said. "In Iowa City there was a pet store where a little girl contracted antibiotic-resistant campylobacter from a dog she purchased from that pet store. She was rushed to the hospital and her father was also taken to the hospital."

Thompson previously told The Journal that the cat cafe would have a huge observation window between the coffee shop and the cat room so that patrons could watch the cats while they drink their coffee. She said the cat room would have a custom-built structure with tunnels for the cats to climb on. The cats would be adoptable through the Siouxland Humane Society, Noah's Hope Animal Rescue, and the Sioux City Animal Adoption and Rescue Center.

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SIOUX CITY -- MercyOne physicians are advising all eligible people 6 months and older to get a flu shot.

The health system said in a statement that flu vaccinations across the country and the state of Iowa are significantly lower than a year ago.

With COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations once again rising, controlling flu cases is expected to play a key role again in keeping health care resources available, according to the statement.

"In 2020, we essentially had no influenza season because we were practicing COVID-19 mitigation measures, like masking, and had significant increases in influenza vaccinations," said Dr. Steven Joyce, a MercyOne Internal Medicine and Pediatrics physician. "This year, most mitigation measures are not being practiced and large gatherings have resumed. So far, influenza vaccination rates are woefully inadequate to provide community protection."

Iowa Department of Public Health data shows Iowa flu vaccination is down. Presently, 28.7% of Iowans ages 6 months and older are vaccinated compared to 38.5% receiving flu shots for the 2020-2021 flu season. Breaking that down even more, 21.1% of Woodbury County residents are currently vaccinated compared to 36% for the 2020-2021 flu season.

With holiday gatherings ahead, the statement said MercyOne is confident in the safety of the flu vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

"Receiving a flu shot can help prevent getting sick with the flu. While a flu infection is still possible, the vaccine can help reduce symptoms and the need for hospitalization," the statement said.

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HART, Mich. (AP)  The father of four Christian missionaries from Michigan who were among 12 who escaped from kidnappers in Haiti expressed gratitude Tuesday and said they're in good shape.

Two more family members were also kidnapped but were released a few weeks ago. They're associated with Hart Dunkard Brethren Church in Hart, about 190 miles (306 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.

A church elder, Ron Marks, read a statement from Ray Noecker, whose wife, Cheryl, and five of their children were kidnapped in October.

My family is all together and in good health. We are rejoicing together over the many ways that God answered the prayers of his people from all around the world, said Ray, who added that the family plans to return to Michigan soon.

Church member Carleton Horst identified the six hostages from Michigan as Cheryl Noecker, 48, Brandyn Noecker, 15, Kasondra Noecker, 14, Courtney Noecker, 18, Shelden Noecker, 6, and Cherilyn Noecker, 27.

Cheryl and Shelden were released a few weeks ago, Horst said.

They were in Haiti on behalf of Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries and were among 17 people abducted on Oct. 16, shortly after visiting an orphanage in Ganthier, in the Croix-des-Bouquets area.

Twelve made a risky overnight escape last week, walking for miles over difficult terrain with an infant and other children in tow, according to the organization known as CAM. Five were released earlier.

Ray Noecker, 49, was in Haiti with his family but was not at the orphanage when the abduction took place.

Horst and Marks offered no details about the escape in a Zoom conference call with reporters.

The story is for them to tell, Horst said.

Captors from the 400 Mawozo gang initially demanded millions of dollars in ransom. It is unclear if a ransom was paid.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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ATLANTA (AP)  GE Appliances, a unit of Chinese appliance maker Haier, announced Tuesday that it will invest more than $118 million to expand its factory in northwest Georgia, hiring 600 additional workers by the end of 2024.

Spokesperson Julie Wood said the company needs to expand because of increased demand for the electric ranges, wall ovens and gas and electric cooktops it makes at the Walker County facility.

Consumers continue to be at home cooking and using their appliances more, and we dont see that trend changing  especially as more people are deciding to work from home permanently, she wrote in an email.

The growth will boost GE Appliances employment to more than 2,600 workers at its LaFayette factory, which uses the Roper Corp. name. The company also has another 400 workers combined at a distribution center in Commerce, a logistics facility in Crandall and a factory service dispatch center in Marietta.

The company makes products under the GE, GE Profile, Monogram, and Cafe brands in LaFayette.

Investing in U.S. manufacturing allows us to be closer to our consumers and serve them better and faster, which is critical to GE Appliances business strategy, Bill Good, vice president of manufacturing for GE Appliances, said in a statement.

GE Appliances announced a $130 million expansion in Georgia in 2019, including $43 million at the LaFayette plant, the $55 million Commerce distribution center, and a $32 million logistics hub in Crandall near the Georgia Ports Authoritys inland rail port in Murray County.

The two rounds of investment are expected to increase the capacity of the LaFayette plant by 50%. Wood said the company will spend to install more robots to automate processes or aid workers, as well as autonomous vehicles to carry materials around the plant.

The company says it's already hiring for the 600 new jobs, and that new workers will be paid as much as $17.50 an hour when they start.

GE Appliances could claim various tax breaks, including an income tax credit allowing it to annually deduct $2,500 per job from state income taxes, up to $7.5 million over five years. The company could also get local property tax breaks.

General Electric Co. sold the unit to Haier and an investment firm for $5.6 billion in 2016. The 12,000-employee unit remains based in Louisville, Kentucky, where the company announced a $450 million expansion in October. It also has assembly plants in Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee. Haier, based in Qingdao, China, has the rights to use the GE brand name through 2056.

Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

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TIRANA, Albania (AP)  The leaders of Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia met Tuesday to discuss and agree on furthering their Open Balkan initiative to promote political and economic ties.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama hosted the two-day meeting in the capital, Tirana, with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.

Ministers who accompanied them signed labor market, electronic identification, and agro-veterinary deals, and they agreed to lift non-tariff barriers for businesses from which tens of thousand of people will profit directly very soon, according to Rama.

Our goal is that the Balkans have no more borders for the people, for the movement of goods, capital and services  four European Union principles, Rama said.

The Open Balkan summit is part of the Berlin Process cooperation initiated by Germany and France to promote regional development.

Let us not lose time with discussion of the past or we cannot do anything for the future, Vucic said. We are here to build bridges, to build the future.

The three Western Balkan countries are at different stages on the path to EU membership.

While Serbia has launched full membership negotiations, Albania and North Macedonia have both fulfilled the criteria for beginning membership negotiations. But EU member Bulgaria opposes North Macedonias membership, citing a bilateral dispute over history and national identity. Since the two countries bids are linked and launching accession talks requires unanimous approval from all 27 EU nations, the veto has also prevented Albania from moving forward.

When the EU fails (to invite us) we are obliged to launch constant initiatives to Europeanize our region and bring a better life for our citizens, Zaev said.

Three other Western Balkan countries  Bosnia, Kosovo and Montenegro  haven't joined the Open Balkan initiative.

The next summit will be in Skopje, North Macedonia, at the end of February.

Follow Llazar Semini at https://twitter.com/lsemini

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WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Monday introduced the newest member of his family, a purebred German shepherd puppy named Commander, while the first lady's office said the cat she promised more than a year ago to bring to the White House will finally join them in January.

But the news wasnt as paws-itive for another member of the Biden animal family. The family decided it was best for their other German shepherd, Major, to live in a quieter environment with friends after some biting incidents.

Biden shared a photo on his official Twitter account of the 3-month-old male puppy with a caption that said, Welcome to the White House, Commander." He also released a brief video of him tossing a ball to Commander and walking the leashed dog into the White House.

Commander was born Sept. 1 and arrived at the White House on Monday afternoon, a gift from the president's brother, James Biden, and sister-in-law Sara Biden, according to Michael LaRosa, a spokesperson for first lady Jill Biden.

His name appears to be a play on Biden's status as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces.

The first lady had said shortly after Biden won the November 2020 presidential election that they would be getting a cat. LaRosa said the feline will join the family in January.

The Bidens had two other German shepherds  Champ and Major  with them at the White House before Commander.

But Major, a 3-year-old rescue dog, ended up in the proverbial dog house following a pair of biting incidents in the months after his arrival last January. He was sent home to Delaware for training before he was returned to the White House. White House officials had explained Major's aggressive behavior by saying he was still getting used to his new surroundings.

But he was sent away again. Now, his permanent exile from the executive mansion appears official.

After consulting with dog trainers, animal behaviorists, and veterinarians, the First Family has decided to follow the experts collective recommendation that it would be safest for Major to live in a quieter environment with family friends, LaRosa said in an emailed statement. This is not in reaction to any new or specific incident, but rather a decision reached after several months of deliberation as a family and discussions with experts.

Champ died in June at age 13.

CNN first reported on Commander's arrival after he was seen scampering around the White House South Lawn on Monday.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  New California congressional maps finalized Monday leave the Los Angeles area with one fewer U.S. House seat and set up a handful of highly competitive races for next year's midterm elections.

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission was tasked with drawing new state political maps based on census data, a process that happens once every 10 years. California lost a U.S. House seat for the first time, going from 53 to 52, because the state grew more slowly than others. But the state of nearly 40 million people still has by far the largest House delegation.

The borders of each California seat shifted slightly to fit the requirement that they represent 760,000 people. But it was the LA-area seat held by Democratic Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard that was effectively eliminated, with a huge portion of her district folding into another in Long Beach. Roybal-Allard, the first Mexican American woman elected to Congress, announced Monday she won't seek re-election.

Nor will Democratic Rep. Alan Lowenthal, who currently represents Long Beach. The city's mayor, Democrat Robert Garcia, has already announced plans to run for Congress. Garcia is a close ally of Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Though California is a heavily Democrat state, it also has Republican strongholds in the northern region and parts of the agricultural Central Valley, home to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The GOP currently holds 11 of California's 53 seats.

Democrats have more registered voters in 43 of the newly drawn districts, according to California Target Book, an organization that analyzes redistricting data. But a registration edge doesnt always translate to electorate wins.

The Central Valley and suburban Orange County have seen some of the country's most competitive U.S. House races in recent midterm elections, and that's poised to continue with the new maps. Democrats knocked off seven Republicans in 2018, only for the GOP to take four of those seats back in 2020.

The borders of Fresno area districts represented by Democratic Rep. Jim Costa and Republican Reps. David Valadao and Devin Nunes shifted significantly. Nunes has already announced he won't run for re-election and plans to lead a media organization launched by former President Donald Trump. Like Valadao, Democratic Rep. Josh Harder saw his Modesto-area district sliced almost in half, perhaps creating a more complicated path to re-election.

In Orange County, a major piece of Democratic Rep. Katie Porters district, including Irvine, has been combined with beach communities along the coast that make up the bulk of Republican Michelle Steels district, potentially creating a race between the two incumbents. The new district has a miniscule registration edge for Republicans. Porter is a fundraising powerhouse with more than $14 million in her campaign account. Steel, meanwhile, has $1.3 million.

Elsewhere, the suburban Los Angeles County district held by Republican Rep. Mike Garcia grew slightly more Democratic, while the coastal district represented by Democratic Rep. Mike Levin that includes Carlsbad and Oceanside turned slightly less Democratic.

California is one of 10 states that relies on an independent commission to draw lines, rather than judges or partisan lawmakers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Commissioners arent allowed to consider a districts partisan makeup when drawing lines. Alongside creating districts with even population, the state constitution requires the commission to consider geographic continuity and compliance with the Voting Rights Act, which sets rules for racial representation.

Latinos, who account for 40% of Californias population, will make up a majority of the voting-age population in 16 of the 52 new districts, said Evan McLaughlin, a redistricting expert who works with Democrats.

The 14-member commission included five registered Republicans, five registered Democrats and four people registered without a political party. They were selected through a lengthy process run by the state auditors office. Voters created the commission in 2008 in an effort to remove partisanship from the process of drawing new political lines.

Im so proud of the work that together we have completed to serve all Californians," Commissioner Pedro Toledo, who has no party affiliation, said as the commission finished reviewing the proposed lines. Despite a difference of opinion at times, there was always commitment to our common goal: The goal of creating representative and fair maps for all Californians."

The commission faced some criticism for a lack of transparency. Commissioners regularly made map changes in live meetings and sometimes did not upload the new maps for days, making it difficult for the public to understand the changes. Delayed Census data due to the pandemic shortened how much time the commission had to complete its work.

Other California lawmakers who don't plan to seek reelection are Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier, who represents the San Francisco Bay Area, and Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, who plans to run for mayor of Los Angeles.

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)  A Republican state senator who has helped spread conspiracy theories about last year's presidential election and led opposition to pandemic-related shutdowns, vaccine mandates and masking orders is all but officially declaring that he will run for governor.

Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, said in appearances online over the weekend that he has reached the fundraising goal he set to formally become a candidate for governor and is organizing an announcement rally on Jan. 8 near his home in southcentral Pennsylvania.

Mastriano is the third state senator to enter the double-digits-deep Republican field seeking the nomination to potentially succeed outgoing Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat. On the Democratic side, second-term state Attorney General Josh Shapiro has effectively cleared the primary field with his candidacy.

Mastriano, 57, has become a one-man force in conservative politics in Pennsylvania, leading anti-mask protests last year, pushing to overturn former President Donald Trumps reelection loss and showing up outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection. That prompted Democrats to call for his resignation, although Mastriano maintains that he did nothing wrong and was not charged.

Mastriano positions himself as an anti-establishment candidate, dismissing politicians as corrupt and belittling many of his fellow Republicans as not conservative enough.

He warned in a Facebook video over the weekend that other Republicans will lie, cheat and steal to beat a peoples governor and suggested that the other candidates arent popular enough to hold a rally to kick off their candidacy.

Almost all the other 17 or 18 candidates on the Republican side, its a press release such as one of the other candidates has done, or another individual spoke with a reporter from one of the liberal rags, Mastriano told a conservative interviewer online Saturday.

Mastriano was first elected to the Senate in 2019 from a solidly pro-Trump area after retiring as a colonel from the U.S. Army and losing an eight-way primary for an open congressional seat.

Mastriano has long dangled the likelihood that he would run, even saying last May that Trump asked me to run" for governor.

He has boasted of speaking with Trump at least 15 times and organized an election hearing in Gettysburg that featured Trump's lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, and a phone call appearance by Trump.

Mastriano in July launched a forensic investigation of Pennsylvania's 2020 presidential election, mimicking a widely criticized partisan effort in Arizona before he was stripped of his Senate committee chairmanship by a rival for the gubernatorial nomination, Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, in a dispute over how to run it.

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter

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BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  A former newspaper publisher who spent five years on the North Dakota Public Service Commission has been appointed to take over as tax commissioner, Gov. Doug Burgum announced Tuesday.

Brian Kroshus, who was appointed by Burgum to the PSC in 2017, will replace Ryan Rauschenberger, who is resigning to focus on recovering from alcohol problems. Rauschenberger has been tax commissioner for seven years. He had one year remaining on his four-year term.

Burgum said a combination of private and public sector experience made Kroshus the top prospect for the job. Kroshus was picked by Burgum for the PSC in February 2017 after Brian Kalk stepped down early. Kroshus was elected by voters in 2018 and reelected in 2020.

Kroshus, who will take over on Jan. 4, said he will treat taxpayers with fairness, transparency and efficiency.

Well also continue to work across state government and with our tribal and private sector partners to create and maintain a stable tax and regulatory environment that will support economic growth and prosperity for all, he said.

Rauschenberger has been involved in several alcohol-related incidents during his time in office. He resigned from the post the day after police placed him in detox for allegedly passing out drunk in a hotel room that wasnt his.

The state Tax Office has a two-year budget of $64.4 million and is authorized for 118 full-time employees. The tax commissioners annual salary is $121,814.

A Fargo native and North Dakota State University graduate, Kroshus was publisher of The Bismarck Tribune from 2005 to 2015. He also was a division leader and executive team member for Lee Enterprises, including a stint as group publisher for a network of agricultural newspapers across a 15-state region.

Kroshus stepped down as head of The Bismarck Tribune in 2015 to run for state auditor, but did not receive the Republican endorsement.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Jurors weighing the case of the suburban Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed Black motorist Daunte Wright asked the judge after a full day of deliberations Tuesday what they should do if they cant reach a verdict.

Judge Regina Chu told them to continue working, as was explained in the initial instructions she gave them. The jurors resumed deliberations for about 90 more minutes, then ended for the day shortly after 6 p.m. The jury also deliberated for about five hours on Monday.

Former Brooklyn Center officer Kim Potter, who is white, is charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter. If convicted of the most serious charge, Potter, 49, would face a sentence of about seven years under state guidelines, though prosecutors have said they will seek more.

Potter said she meant to use her Taser on Wright rather than her gun, and the jurors also asked if they could remove zip ties keeping Potters gun in an evidence box so they could hold it. The judge said they could, overruling an objection from Potter attorney Paul Engh that the gun should remain in the box for safety purposes.

During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence on the differences between the gun and the Taser, including weight, feel, size, color, and that the gun was holstered on Potter's right side and the Taser on her left.

Prosecutor Erin Eldridge said in her closing argument that the jurors would be able to hold both the Taser and the gun to compare them, to get a feel for the two, and to get a sense of all those differences that you heard about in court, and see for yourselves how different they really are.

The jury's question about deliberating, read in court by Chu, said: If the jury cannot reach consensus, what is the guidance around how long and what steps should be taken?

The judge then reread from the jury instructions, telling the jurors to continue to discuss the case with one another and deliberate with a view toward reaching agreement if you can do so without violating your individual judgment.

Potter's attorneys objected to the judge rereading that instruction, arguing that doing so inappropriately emphasized that paragraph over the rest of the instructions. Chu overruled.

Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, noted that the jurors didnt say they were at an impasse.

Judge (Regina) Chu is going to let them keep deliberating if they dont express concern or distress about how its going, Moran said.

The judge has ordered that the jury be sequestered during deliberations  meaning they remain under the courts supervision in an undisclosed hotel and cannot return home until they have reached a verdict or the judge has determined they can't reach one. Her order allows them to communicate with family members as long as they avoid discussing the trial.

During closing arguments, prosecutors accused Potter of a blunder of epic proportions in Wright's death in an April 11 traffic stop  but said a mistake was no defense.

Potter's attorneys countered that Wright, who was attempting to get away from officers as they sought to handcuff him for an outstanding warrant on a weapons charge, caused the whole incident.

The mostly white jury got the case after about a week and a half of testimony about an arrest that went awry, setting off angry protests in Brooklyn Center just as nearby Minneapolis was on edge over Derek Chauvin's trial in George Floyd's death. Potter resigned two days after Wright's death.

Eldridge called Wrights death entirely preventable. Totally avoidable. She urged the jury not to excuse it as a mistake: "Accidents can still be crimes if they occur as a result of reckless or culpable negligence."

Potter attorney Earl Gray argued that Wright was to blame for trying to flee from police. Potter mistakenly grabbed her gun instead of her Taser because the traffic stop was chaos, he said.

Potter testified Friday that she didnt want to hurt anybody and that she was sorry it happened."

Chu told jurors that intent is not part of the charges and that the state doesnt have to prove Potter tried to kill Wright.

The judge said for first-degree manslaughter, prosecutors must prove that Potter caused Wrights death while committing the crime of reckless handling of a firearm. This means they must prove that she committed a conscious or intentional act while handling or using a firearm that creates a substantial or unjustifiable risk that she was aware of and disregarded, and that she endangered safety.

For second-degree manslaughter, prosecutors must prove she acted with culpable negligence, meaning she consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm.

Associated Press writer Kathleen Foody in Chicago contributed to this story. Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin.

Find the APs full coverage of the Daunte Wright case: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-daunte-wright

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LOS ANGELES (AP)  Long-serving California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, the first Mexican-American woman elected to Congress, announced Monday she will not seek re-election in her Los Angeles-area district.

The decision by the 80-year-old Democratic congresswoman comes as her district appeared headed for elimination, as part of California's once-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts to account for population shifts. California is losing a congressional seat for the first time because other states are growing faster, dropping to 52 seats from 53 seats, though it will remain the largest House delegation by far.

Shifting district boundary lines appear to have played a role in other House departures. Among them: Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, who was one of former President Donald Trumps most ardent loyalists in Congress, is leaving the House at the end of this year to join Trumps fledgling media company, and Democratic Rep. Alan Lowenthal, who represents a district anchored in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, announced he would retire at the end of his term.

In other prominent departures, Democratic Rep. Karen Bass is running for mayor of Los Angeles and will not seek re-election, and Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier has said she will retire after the end of her term; she represents a San Francisco Bay Area district.

Roybal-Allard was first elected in 1992. She is the daughter of the late Rep. Edward Roybal, who spent three decades in Congress and died in 2005. When her father was elected to the House in 1962, Roybal was the first Hispanic from California to serve in Congress since 1879.

In Congress, Roybal-Allard was known for her work on immigration issues, and was one of the original co-authors of legislation to give legal status to people who entered the U.S. illegally as children.

After 30 years in the House "the time has come for me to spend more time with my family," she said in a statement.

Redrawn congressional district maps show Roybal-Allard losing key areas in her district, with parts of it merging into the district now held by Lowenthal.

The state commission redrawing the lines faces a Dec. 27 deadline to finalize its maps.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  The suburban Minneapolis police officer who says she meant to use her Taser instead of her gun when she shot and killed Black motorist Daunte Wright made a blunder of epic proportions and did not have a license to kill, a prosecutor told jurors on Monday shortly before they began deliberating in her manslaughter trial.

Kim Potter's attorney Earl Gray countered during closing arguments that the former Brooklyn Center officer made an honest mistake by pulling her handgun instead of her Taser and that shooting Wright wasn't a crime.

In the walk of life, nobodys perfect. Everybody makes mistakes," Gray said. My gosh, a mistake is not a crime. It just isnt in our freedom-loving country."

The mostly white jury began deliberating shortly before 1 p.m. and quit for the day around 6 p.m. without reaching a verdict. They will be sequestered until they finish. Potter, who is white, is charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter in the April 11 shooting, which came after Wright was pulled over for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.

Prosecutor Erin Eldridge said during her summation that Wright's death was entirely preventable. Totally avoidable. Claiming it was a mistake is not a defense, she said, pointing out that the words accident" and mistake don't appear in jury instructions.

Accidents can still be crimes if they occur as a result of reckless or culpable negligence, Eldridge said.

She drew a deadly weapon, Eldridge said. She aimed it. She pointed it at Daunte Wrights chest, and she fired."

Gray argued that Wright caused the whole incident because he tried to flee from police during a traffic stop. Potter mistakenly grabbed her gun instead of her Taser because the traffic stop was chaos, he said.

Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately," he asserted.

Potter, 49, testified Friday that she didnt want to hurt anybody, that she was sorry it happened and that she doesnt remember what she said or everything that happened after the shooting, as much of her memory of those moments is missing.

Eldridge said Monday that the case wasnt about whether Potter was sorry.

Of course she feels bad about what she did.  But that has no place in your deliberations, she said.

Playing Potters body camera video frame by frame, Eldridge sought to raise doubts about Potters testimony that she fired after seeing fear on the face of another officer, then-Sgt. Mychal Johnson, who was leaning into the cars passenger-side door and trying to handcuff Wright.

The defense has argued that Johnson was at risk of being dragged and that Potter would have been justified in using deadly force. But Eldridge pointed out to jurors that for much of the interaction Potter was behind a third officer, whom she was training, and that Johnson didn't come into her camera's view until after the shot was fired  and then it showed the top of his head as he backed away.

Sgt. Johnson was clearly not afraid of being dragged, Eldridge said. He never said he was scared. He didnt say it then, and he didnt testify to it in court.

Jurors sent a note to the judge Monday afternoon asking for the date that Potter spoke with Laurence Miller, a psychologist who testified for the defense. The judge told the jurors that all the evidence was in, so you should rely on your collective memories. They then returned to the jury room.

When Potter was testifying, she agreed with Eldridge that she had decided to use her Taser after she saw that Johnson looked scared. But Eldridge pointed out an inconsistency, saying that when Potter spoke to Miller, she told him she didnt know why she used her Taser. Potter told the jury she didnt recall saying that.

It wasn't clear from Potter's testimony when Miller interviewed her over Zoom.

Eldridge, in her closing argument, also noted that Potter put other people at risk when she fired her gun, highlighting that the third officer was so close to the shooting that a cartridge casing bounced off of his face.

Members of the jury, safe handling of a firearm does not include firing it into a car with four people directly in harms way, she said.

Gray started his closing argument by attacking Eldridge's summation, highlighting how she had played extremely slowed-down depictions of events that Potter saw in real time.

Playing the video not at the right speed where it showed chaos, playing it as slow as possible  thats the rabbit hole of misdirection, Gray said. He also noted that Potter's body camera was mounted on her chest and gave a slightly different perspective than her own vision.

As prosecutors have done throughout the three-week trial, Eldridge stressed that Potter, who resigned from the police force two days after the shooting, was a highly trained and highly experienced 26-year veteran, and said she acted recklessly when she killed Wright.

She made a series of bad choices that led to her shooting and killing Daunte Wright, Eldridge said. This was no little oopsie. This was not putting the wrong date on a check. ... This was a colossal screw-up. A blunder of epic proportions.

Although there is a risk every time an officer makes a traffic stop, that didn't justify Potter using her gun on Wright after he pulled away from her and other officers as they were trying to arrest him on an outstanding weapons possession warrant, Eldridge said.

This case is not about Daunte Wright, Eldridge said. Daunte Wright is not on trial. Hes not the reason were here today.

Eldridge also downplayed testimony from some other officers who described Potter as a good person or said they saw nothing wrong in her actions: The defendant has found herself in trouble and her police family has her back.

Wright's death set off angry demonstrations for several days in Brooklyn Center. It happened as another white officer, Derek Chauvin, was standing trial in nearby Minneapolis for the killing of George Floyd.

Judge Regina Chu told jurors that intent is not part of the charges and that the state doesnt have to prove she tried to kill Wright.

The judge said to prove first-degree manslaughter, prosecutors have to prove that Potter caused Wrights death while committing the crime of reckless handling of a firearm. This means they must prove that she committed a conscious or intentional act while handling or using a firearm that creates a substantial or unjustifiable risk that she was aware of and disregarded, and that she endangered safety.

For second-degree manslaughter, the state must prove that she acted with culpable negligence, meaning she consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm.

State sentencing guidelines call for just over seven years in prison upon conviction of first-degree manslaughter and four years for second-degree, though prosecutors have said they plan to push for longer sentences.

Associated Press writer Michael Tarm in Chicago contributed to this story. Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin.

Find the APs full coverage of the Daunte Wright case: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-daunte-wright

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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DOVER, Del. (AP)  Congregations affiliated with the United Methodist Church have agreed to contribute $30 million to a fund for victims who say they were molested as youngsters in the Boy Scouts of America, an attorney said Tuesday.

A committee representing United Methodist churches that sponsored Scouting activities also agreed to help raise an additional $100 million for the fund.

Jessica Lauria, an attorney for the BSA, told Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein about the planned agreement during an online hearing Tuesday in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. Lauria said the United Methodist-affiliated churches would receive protected party status, which means they would be released from further liability for abuse claims.

The proposed trust is expected to grow to more than $2.6 billion and would be the largest sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history.

More than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case. Victims who say they were abused must vote by Dec. 28 on a Boy Scouts reorganization plan.

Judge Silverstein had originally scheduled a hearing starting Jan. 24 to consider the voting results and to decide whether the plan meets the requirements of the bankruptcy code and should be approved. But on Tuesday, the judge pushed the hearing start date to Feb. 22 to give attorneys more time to prepare.

Tuesdays announcement involving United Methodist churches comes a week after attorneys said a tentative settlement was reached with one of BSA's largest insurers, Century Indemnity Co. and affiliated companies had agreed to contribute $800 million into the fund in return for being released from further liability for abuse claims.

Other agreements involve another major Boy Scouts insurer, The Hartford, and the BSAs former largest troop sponsor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church. The Hartford has agreed to pay $787 million into the victims fund, and the Mormons have agreed to contribute $250 million. In exchange, both entities would be released from any further liability involving child sex abuse claims.

The BSA is continuing to negotiate with Roman Catholic-affiliated churches that sponsored Scouting units.

The Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, sought bankruptcy protection in February 2020, seeking to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a fund for victims who say they were sexually abused as children.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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OMAHA  It was a June 2020 weekend in the new Capitol District in downtown Omaha. Early in the pandemic. Early in the morning.

Both factors led to a light crowd at the Epoca Cantina, a Mexican restaurant that alternates as a dance club after dinner. Maybe a couple dozen people were there, some at tables, some on the dance floor.

A group of 20-somethings had gathered to celebrate the birthday of the DJ performing that night, Luis Sandoval. People were dining, drinking, dancing. Lincoln resident Jose Juarez was sitting next to his girlfriend of a couple months, Sharon Miranda, the couple occasionally canoodling.

The calm was soon pierced by chaos: Prosecutors say Mirandas estranged husband, Marlon Miranda Jr., 27, was near the music stand, talking with the DJ. Then he grabbed Juarez, 26, from behind as he sat at the table. A struggle ensued. Employees broke it up and thought that they sent Juarez and Miranda separate ways, one out the front door and one out the back.

It would be the least of the violence that night. Within minutes, prosecutors say, Juarez was shot multiple times near 12th and Davenport streets, Sharon Miranda was screaming hysterically as her estranged husband slammed her head against the brick wall of a parking garage, and off-duty Bellevue Police Sgt. John Stuck fired off nine shots at Marlon Miranda.

Hit twice, Miranda survived. So did Sharon Miranda. Juarez  full name Jose Santos Parra Juarez  did not.

The chaos  some on camera, most of it not  was replayed last week as Miranda is tried in Douglas County District Court on a charge of first-degree murder and weapon use.

Authorities have called Stucks actions heroic, saying he stopped Mirandas rampage and most likely saved Sharon Mirandas life. But defense attorney Bill Pfeffer took aim at Stucks actions, questioning why he shot at Miranda and noting repeatedly that he missed seven of his nine shots.

Youre an expert marksman.  You fired nine shots from that close, and you missed seven times, Pfeffer said.

Stuck said he didnt believe that he missed seven, then later relented that he might have. At first, he was point shooting  in which an officer fires without looking through a guide. Two shots hit Miranda  one went through his leg near the knee, the other grazed his ankle.

The shots worked. Prosecutors John Alagaban and Desiree Stormont say Miranda let go of Sharon Miranda and threw his gun to the side. Tests later determined that the gun was the same one used to shoot and kill Juarez.

Pfeffer didnt just go after Stuck. As testimony from bar patrons, the off-duty officer and Sharon Miranda suggested that Marlon Miranda fired out of rage, Pfeffer tried to set up a self-defense argument, suggesting that Juarez was the instigator and wanted to fight Miranda.

According to testimony:

As the night dragged into the early morning of June 13, 2020, Marlon was hanging out by the DJ booth, his attention fixed on Sharon.

Sharon testified Friday that she wasnt surprised that her estranged husband was there, even though she was with her boyfriend. The two had been separated for 10 months and were sharing custody of their daughter. All of them, including Juarez and Marlon, were there to celebrate their friends birthday.

We were supposed to have fun, enjoy our time together and dance and celebrate Luis, Sharon said.

Then Marlon approached his estranged wife and Juarez at the bar. He waved away a greeting from Juarez and hugged Sharon and her cousin. He later asked Sharon and the cousin to dance. They both said no.

He was very upset, Sharon said. Aggressive.

About 1:30 a.m., the silent footage of security cameras showed the unspeakable events. Juarez, in a white shirt, leaned over to smooch Sharon as they sat at a table. Soon after, Sharon went to the bathroom. Soon after, a man in a multicolored shirt  prosecutors say it was Miranda  leaned over as if to whisper in Juarezs ear.

He instead grabbed Juarez by the neck, twisting his head like a wrestler. Juarez got to his feet, and the two tussled and fell to the ground. A bar manager and security guard separated them. Juarez emerged with a cut to his eye. Bar owner Juan Magana took Juarez to a bathroom and gave him a towel to wipe off the blood. A security guard escorted Miranda out the front door.

Miranda soon returned and grabbed his jacket from near the DJ stand.

Sharon said she emerged from the bathroom to hear that Marlon Miranda had attacked Juarez. She and Juarez were led out through the back door.

I was pretty distraught, Sharon said. I stopped Jose because I kept apologizing for Marlon attacking him in the bar.

Just then, a cousin walking ahead screamed at Sharon that Miranda was rushing up behind them.

Miranda was screaming, shouting something  I cant recall what, Sharon said. In seconds, he was on top of the couple.

Between long, tear-filled pauses, Sharon testified that she tried to yell at Marlon to get away when he reached over her and shot Juarez. In the process, Miranda knocked Sharon down. She looked up, she said, to see Marlon.

He stood right over (Juarez) and shot him some more, Sharon said, weeping.

Sharon testified that Miranda then grabbed her off the ground and dragged her to a brick wall.

At that point, Stuck was in his fourth hour working security in the district, a courtyard where bar patrons can mix among several establishments.

Wearing a polo with POLICE on the back and khaki tactical pants and his gun, he had watched as security dismissed the man later identified as Miranda.

Then Stuck heard gunshots. He scaled the steps on the north side of the Capitol District onto Davenport Street, which looks like an alley.

He headed west toward 12th Street and saw a man down, with people tending to him. From about 15 yards away, he saw a gunman slamming a womans head against the brick wall of the downtown Marriott parking garage. A gun was in his right hand, angled toward the woman.

Police! Stop! Stuck yelled.

The woman, later identified as Sharon Miranda, was screaming. Stuck pointed his handgun and pulled the trigger.

Pfeffer, Mirandas attorney, suggested that Stuck was endangering bystanders by firing into the night. Stuck resisted that line of questioning, saying a concrete pillar from Interstate 480 was his backstop in case he missed.

Pfeffer persisted, challenging Stuck on whether he was shooting first and asking questions second. He suggested that Stuck defied police protocol by never ordering Miranda to drop the gun.

Thats not how it works, Stuck said matter-of-factly.

A woman was in danger, with a gunman holding her, he said. Stuck further pushed back at Pfeffers suggestion that his bullets could have hit the woman. The gunman was facing east; the woman west. Stuck said he angled himself so that he was shooting at the gunman, toward the north.

You fired nine times and missed seven? Pfeffer asked.

I dont think I missed seven, Stuck said.

Pfeffer: Well, he got shot once in the knee and once in the ankle. Where did the other seven go?

Stuck: To the backstop.

Rather than rip Stuck, authorities have praised his instincts and quick reaction. No one knows whether Sharon Miranda would have survived had Stuck not intervened. The actions of a hero, one law enforcement official said.

The trial is expected to conclude this week.

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A federal court in Missouri on Monday temporarily blocked President Joe Biden's administration from mandating vaccines for federal contractors in 10 states, including Nebraska.

Two months ago, Nebraska was a co-leader in a coalition that filed suit to stop the mandate.

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said the preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri is significant for federal contractors and their employees.

The court ruled that the Biden administration lacked the authority to issue the mandate. An appeal of the ruling is expected.

"This means that employees of federal contractors will not need to be vaccinated in order to keep their jobs and that federal contractors will not need to implement the federal governments vaccine policies," Peterson said in a news release.

The ruling applies to 10 states: Nebraska, Missouri, Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. The lawsuit was filed Oct. 29.

Monday's action comes on top of a nationwide injunction issued earlier this month by a federal judge in Georgia.

In the latest case, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce said the vaccine requirement likely exceeds the president's power to set purchasing rules as spelled out in federal law. Federal rules for contractors typically cover such things as employees' rights, wages and nondiscrimination policies, he said.

Peterson is participating in three lawsuits challenging vaccine mandates issued by Biden. The other two involve mandates directed at health care workers and companies covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

On his website, Peterson said he became involved because some employees were concerned and confused about the mandates and whether they could lose their jobs.

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A seven-month security review of Iowas prison system shows crowding and challenges recruiting and retaining staff create potential security risks in Iowas nine prisons.

The systemwide review was sparked by the March 23 murders of two employees at the Anamosa State Penitentiary by offenders Michael Dutcher and Thomas Woodard. The Iowa Department of Corrections launched the investigation in May, following a request for proposals in which consultant CGL Companies, based in Florida, was selected to conduct the review.

Dutcher and Woodard both were convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for fatally striking Correctional Officer Robert McFarland and nurse Lorena Schulte in the head with prison-issued hammers. The offenders took another employee hostage briefly and seriously wounded another inmate.

The Corrections Department did not make the entire security review public, instead releasing just a four-page summary and a timeline of events since March 23.

A point emphasized several times in the summary was Iowas prison system cant recruit and retain enough correctional officers and nurses to adequately staff its prisons.

The Iowa Department of Corrections would benefit from bolstering staffing to meet current facility security requirements and the challenges of managing a modern correctional system, CGL Companies wrote in a four-page summary. Existing staffing gaps create high levels of overtime that exacerbate the already difficult issue of staff retention.

CGL recommends using retention bonuses to keep employees and continuing time-and-a-half pay for nurses. The consultant says the department also should enhance and standardize training, key to keeping good employees.

The Iowa Legislature in May approved $20 million in additional money for the Corrections Department, with a large share to be used to fill vacancies. It is not clear whether the security review addressed staffing levels before or after the cash infusion.

The summary notes Iowas prison system  unlike those in other states reducing offender population  continues to be overcapacity. As of Dec. 13, the system was 16 percent overbooked, with 8,106 offenders in facilities with a total capacity of 6,990, the summary states.

This level of crowding exacerbates existing operational challenges in security, offender management, and service delivery, while placing significant additional pressure on custody staff, the summary states. The additional workload and heightened tension created by crowding is a major factor in the Departments current staff recruitment and retention issues.

The summary does not give any recommendations for reducing crowding in the facilities.

Because Dutcher and Woodard used hammers to kill Schulte and McFarland and tried to cut through prison bars with a metal grinder, the review focused in part on access to tools in Iowas prisons and on offender work roles.

CGL found the Corrections Department needs to develop a better screening process to match offenders behavior history and characteristics to their work assignments.

At each facility, we found varying levels of tool and toxic chemical control practices, the consultant noted. To improve consistency of the control of toxic chemicals we recommend transitioning to a system of centralized storage and issuance of chemicals/toxics at each facility. To better facilitate offender movement, the IDOC should institute consistent inmate movement protocols.

Since the attack, Iowa prison staff have restricted offender movement, particularly within the Anamosa prison, which is maximum/medium security. Fewer inmates are involved in work training and several apprenticeship programs have been eliminated because they involve working with tools.

Corrections Director Beth Skinner said in a prepared statement the agency plans to work hand-in-hand with our facilities around the state to implement recommendations made in CGLs report.

Some lawmakers questioned the selection of CGL, whose subsidiary, CGL Facility Management, paid a $750,000 settlement in 2018 related to a Mississippi bribery scandal involving a state corrections official, the Des Moines Register reported. Corrections officials told the Register they did not have a problem with the lack of disclosure because it was only CGL Facilities Management, not CGL Companies, involved in the Mississippi incident.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Terry Branstad, Iowa's former governor and the former U.S. ambassador to China, has formed a company to consult with business leaders and investors on how to conduct business between the U.S. and China.

Branstad will form the Branstad Churchill Group with Steve Churchill, his chief of staff in China when he was ambassador.

Branstad said in a statement posted on the firm's website that the company will offer planning, government and regulatory analysis, political insight, data security and privacy analysis, market entry strategy and other services to clients.

Branstad, a Republican, was appointed ambassador by former President Donald Trump and left the position last year.

Since then he has served as a consultant to Iowa businessman Bruce Rastetter, who owns an Ames company, Summit Carbon Solutions. The company is trying to build a $4.5 billion pipeline to sequester carbon from corn ethanol plants across 30 Iowa counties.

Branstad also was named ambassador-in-residence at Drake University in Des Moines last month and plans to donate records from his 45-year political career to Drake.

Churchill, in addition to serving as Branstad's chief of staff in Beijing, was elected to the Iowa House from 1993 to 1999.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  An Iowa man charged earlier for his participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was arraigned Tuesday on a new federal indictment that includes a felony count that could carry up to 20 years in prison.

Leo Christopher Kelly, 36, of Cedar Rapids, who has been free on pretrial release, appeared via video for his arraignment. His attorney, Kira West, entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

The most serious of the seven charges Kelly faces is obstruction of an official proceeding. Two other charges of entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct in a restricted building carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. The remaining charges are misdemeanors carrying up to six months in prison.

A plea agreement apparently is no longer under consideration, according to the information that prosecutor Michael Gordon James provided Judge Royce Lamberth during the hearing.

The parties have discussed a negotiated plea but that will not occur in this case so this matter should be set for trial, James said.

Lamberth said he will set at trial date later. He scheduled a status update hearing for Feb. 25.

Kelly was arrested in Iowa on Jan. 18 after participating in an internet interview with members of an anti-abortion organization. Kelly said he followed the Jan. 6 crowd into the U.S. Senate chamber, where he said he remained for 30 minutes to an hour. Kelly said he was caught up in the moment, but that he wasnt armed and didnt vandalize anything.

He was released Jan. 19 by a federal magistrate who noted his extremely limited criminal history.

Federal prosecutors issued a new indictment on Dec. 3.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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LINCOLN, Neb. (AP)  The last Nebraska community still requiring masks is dropping its mandate.

Lincoln Lancaster County Health Director Pat Lopez said in a news conference Tuesday that a health order requiring indoor masking will expire at the end of the day Thursday.

The county reinstated the mask requirement in August amid the delta surge. No other city or county in the state has required masks in indoor settings over the past four months, the Lincoln Journal-Star reports.

Lopez said the county has made critical progress over the past year in battling the virus, helped largely by the vaccine. Even without the requirement, she said masks are strongly" recommended in schools and at indoor sporting events, theaters, gatherings of groups indoors, including church and faith-based services.

This does not mean the pandemic is over, and it does not mean no more masks, said Lopez.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Lincoln Journal Star.

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has drafted a bill that would block teaching critical race theory in South Dakota schools, public universities and technical colleges.

Noem announced the legislation on Monday, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported.

Critical race theory is an academic concept that originated in the 1970s. It focuses on how racism is embedded in legal systems in the United States.

South Dakota education officials say critical race theory isnt part of state curriculum in schools or colleges. But Noem said the theory teaches a false and divisive message.

Her bill would prohibit teaching that any race, religion, sex or ethnicity is inherently superior or inferior; that anyone should feel guilt, anguish or distress because of their race, religion, sex or ethnicity; or that people are inherently responsible for past actions because of their race, sex, religion or ethnicity.

The ACLU of South Dakota said Monday it opposes the bill, saying it could censor U.S. history discussions and local school districts should decide their own curriculums.

Twenty-nine other states have introduced similar bills or taken steps to restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers discuss racism and sexism, according to Education Week. North Dakota has blocked critical race theory teachings.

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 turns out that birds are not real. Just check out the billboards, T-shirts, social media postings and the messages on a truth van touring the country. Birds are actually government surveillance drones that recharge themselves by perching on power lines right over our heads. That explains a lot. The fact that Twitter has a little bird as its symbol should tell people everything they need to know about the powerful forces at work.

We stopped by WREG Channel 3 this past week to discuss our beautiful billboard

Of course, the pro-bird crowd will make the typical, predictable arguments about how theres nothing to worry about, and that these are just, well  birds. But clued-in people know better. Wake up, America! Especially you Cardinals fans.

A healthy movement is afoot across the country to inject a little bit of humor into the crazed conspiracy truther mindset that inspired some of the insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6. QAnon has finally met its match in 23-year-old Peter McIndoe, principal messenger behind the Birds Arent Real movement.

This viral movement underscores how easy it is to create conspiracy theories out of something as stupid as the existence of birds. Just as Stephen Colbert stayed in character for 11 seasons as a crazed conservative in order to poke fun at crazed conservatives on his nightly Comedy Central show, McIndoe has insisted since 2017 that his movement is genuine.

A video on his website, purportedly recorded in 1987, shows his team intensively researching to expose the biggest crime ever perpetrated on the American people. Since the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. government has been committing genocide, killing billions of birds to replace them with sophisticated robot replicas. A photo on his birdsarentreal.com website displays as evidence a photo of President John F. Kennedy with his hands on a Thanksgiving turkey that has a sign hanging from its neck: Robot bird Prototype.

McIndoe travels in a white van covered with messages exposing the truth about birds. Theres even a satellite dish on the vans roof. He stood atop the van in July near the Gateway Arch to burn a Cardinals flag in protest of the flags pro-bird message.

McIndoe insisted in an interview on WREG-TV in Memphis that hes not the founder of the movement but merely a messenger. Wearing a T-shirt that states: Bird watching goes both ways, he sat for a serious interview with two incredulous, unsuspecting morning show hosts. One interviewer suggested with a nervous laugh that this is really satire and asked what the message was with his movement. An uncomfortable silence followed. McIndoe leaned forward to state, deadpan, Honestly, thats kind of offensive.

His Memphis billboard proclaiming, Birds Arent Real in giant black letters has prompted what he says is an outpouring of support from bird truthers. The billboards have spread to Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.

The truthers are everywhere. But then  so are those birds.

This is seriously funny stuff  for a nation that badly needs to recover its sense of humor.

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On Saturday night, rapper Drakeo the Ruler was lined up to perform at the Once Upon a Time in L.A. festival, a multistage concert series founded by Snoop Dogg and featuring other local legends, like Cypress Hill. But Drakeo wouldnt get to take the stage: A fight broke out backstage at 8:30 p.m., with an assailant stabbing 28-year-old Drakeo in the neck. The festival was canceled; Drakeo was rushed to the hospital, only to be declared dead by Sunday. Police are still searching for his killer.

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Drakeos loss of life at so young an age comes after a lifetime of personal tragedies, years of fighting unfair charges from his citys punitive criminal justice system, and a rapid-pace run of popular and highly acclaimed projects, including one album recorded entirely from behind bars. It was a jolt across the rap world, to his friends and children, to fans who loved his already-influential work and had rallied to free him from the system.

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Drakeo the Ruler, born Darrell Wayne Campbell, was raised by a single mother in the gang-heavy Hundreds section of South Central L.A. He was caught up in petty crime in the troubled neighborhood from a young age, landing in jail before hed even turned 13. As so many from his hometown had done before, Campbell and his brother Devante turned to rapping as a way to escape the punitive cycle of the streets, inspired by artists like Boosie and Webbie, the Hot Boyz, and the battle rapper Cocky. In his 20s, Campbell began releasing mixtapes under the stage name Drakeo the Ruler, taken from the ancient Greek legislator Draco, and was discovered in 2015 by DJ Mustard, the party-favorite producer whod come to fame working with fellow West Coast artists YG and Ty Dolla Sign. Mustard remixed Drakeos song Mr. Get Dough to widespread attention, signed the young upstart to his 10 Summers label, and featured Drakeo on that labels first compilation mixtape. A few months after those features, Drakeo released his official debut mixtape under 10 Summers, titled I Am Mr. Mosley. By the time he released that tapes sequel in 2016, hed established the rap collective Stinc Team with Devantewho assumed the stage name Ralfy the Plugalong with their cousin Rassy Bugatti, as well as other rappers from their area.

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With these projects, Drakeo had made his name in the L.A. rap scene. His gravel-voiced, mumbly, tongue- and rhythm-twisting flows conveyed his sharp storytelling skills, replete with hilarious punchlines, creative slang, and nonstop shit-talking. His style quickly became iconic in the area, and within no time Drakeo had multiple imitators as well as collaborations with regional heavyweights like Mozzy. But as the Stinc Team was coming up, the city it came from kept up attempts to persecute its members. In January 2017, the LAPD raided the condo where Drakeo and the Stinc Team had shot some music videos and arrested the crew, nabbing the Ruler on alleged weapons charges. Drakeo maintained his innocence, but he was kept behind bars for 11 months, missing the birth of his first son. However, he snuck a phone into his cell and kept promoting himself and the Stinc Team, keeping him in the mind of loyal Angeleno fans. After being released that November, he went on a 10-day recording spurt, culminating in the masterful 16-track album Cold Devil. The tape got Drakeo more attention than ever before and introduced slang he had createdflu flamming, uchies, Pippy Long Stockinto a wider national audience while elevating the profile of his Stinc crew. Rappers like Lil Yachty and Shy Glizzy soon co-signed Drakeos music and added their own spins to it.

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Still, the law kept coming for the Ruler, and he was booked on murder charges in March 2018, relating to a shootout in December 2016. Much of the Stinc Team was also targeted and rounded up by the LAPD while they were on tour. But there was never any hard evidence linking Stinc to the crime; as music journalist Jeff Weisswho, full disclosure, I know personallyreported for the Fader in 2019, the case against Drakeo depended on a combination of hearsay, false statements from imprisoned informants, and even a probe of his videos and lyrics. The detective in charge relied on this flimsy portfolio, along with baseless allegations that the Stinc Team was actually an organized gang as opposed to a music crew, to keep Drakeo in L.A. Countys Mens Central Jail, including time in solitary confinement, until his trial. Briana Younger would later write for the New Yorker:

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Investigators found that Drakeo was not the gunman, nor did he have a hand in the violence, but prosecutors sought to present the murder as the result of an old beef between Drakeo and another rapper, who was not even at the party or otherwise connected to it. When those ties proved nonexistent, prosecutors combed Drakeos music for menacing gestures and proximity to weapons.

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In July 2019, Drakeo was acquitted of the murder charges, but the jury was hung on the additional charges of shooting from a motor vehicle and a criminal street gang conspiracy. ThenLos Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey refiled both charges in September, which, for Drakeo, meant the possibility of life in prison. His trial was set for August 2020, and he remained incarcerated through that time. In response, rappers and fans of Drakeo organized a campaign to free the rapper and vote out Lacey from her position; Earl Sweatshirt did a remix of Drakeos Ion Rap Beef and kicked off his verse with choice words: Fuck the DA. Free the Ruler. Drakeo used his time behind bars to record the album Thank You for Using GTL; he rapped verses over the phone to producer JoogSZN, who then outfitted them to beats that brought out Drakeos voice and flow, stifled as it was by the low-quality (and expensive) GTL prison line. Nevertheless, the two crafted a masterpiece, released to the public in June 2020. Months later, Jackie Lacey lost her reelection bid to George Gascon, one of the many progressive prosecutors whove won important municipal offices in recent years. The day after Laceys loss, her office presented a plea deal to Drakeo, which he accepted, finally securing his freedom.

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Incredible news: The DA suddenly offered Drakeo a plea deal for time served. He took it. The Ruler will be coming home tonight. @IamMRMOSELY is free.  Otto Von Biz Markie (@Passionweiss) November 4, 2020

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Just like after his previous release from prison, Drakeo used the moment to dive straight into recording, dropping the tape We Know the Truth in December 2020. Throughout 2021, he kept up his prolific clip, with a studio album, The Truth Hurts, in February, along with two more tapes in July and December, respectively. This string of releases showcased both the development of Drakeos style and his increased prominence; stars like Drake and Sean Kingston joined Stinc members as features on various songs.

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Its clear Drakeo was on the course for only more fame and an even wider impact in the coming years. But now, well never know what could have been.

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Drakeo was ultimately victim of both circumstance and a criminal justice system that had it out for rappers like him. The LAPD, like several city police departments, has long been notorious for brutality, corruption, outsize targeting of Black Americans, and a conspicuous lack of care when it comes to rapper-related cases. Just this November, the Guardian reported that L.A. cops targeted the street corner where the late Nipsey Hussle owned his clothing store, and that the police consistently harassed passersby who came through. Thanks to a massive, dedicated fan base willing to organize against the prosecutors who were keeping him bound, Drakeo was gracefully able to flee L.A. Countys wrath, an outcome still out of reach for too many other unjustly incarcerated Americans. But Drakeo only got a year to enjoy this freedom. It shouldnt have been this way.

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The murder of Drakeo occurred just days after another one of Los Angeles own, Slim 400, was shot to death in the city; just a month after Young Dolph was likewise gunned down in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee; and nearly a year after Stinc Team member Ketchy the Great perished in a car accident. In between these killings, other hip-hop elders have recently succumbed to health issues: 55-year-old Kangol Kid of the pioneering group UTFO died of colon cancer; 62-year-old Leonard Hub Hubbard, a founding member of the Roots, died of blood cancer; and 64-year-old Greg Tate, a longtime rap scholar, was a victim of cardiac arrest. As I wrote back in the spring, these past few years have been some of the most fatal, and brutal, in rap history, with older legends prematurely lost to disease and younger creatives murdered in grisly fashion. Its horrific and unacceptable for this to be the norm. Hip-hops diverse, unique, ever-evolving artists and creators deserve long, rich livesto not be hounded by the system, to get the protection and care they deserve, to be able to enjoy success without being punished for it. Over the past few years, more of the U.S. has finally come to grips with the cruel, vindictive institutions that keep far too many Black Americans in awful, desperate circumstances. Its long past time for major change.

And yet this trend of untimely death, sadly, does not seem to be abating anytime soon.
Care and Feeding is Slates parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am really concerned about my oldest daughter Kendra. Shes 34 and a mother of two children, ages 5 and 9. She has always struggled with anxietyeven as a childbut refuses to go on medication, as she says she doesnt want to mess with her brain. COVID has really put Kendra into a spiral. Although she, her husband, and her two children are fully vaccinated, Kendra refuses to let them go to school or see anyone outside of their immediate family. I havent seen them in-person since February 2020 despite living in the same city, being fully vaccinated, and still having a quarantine pod myself. I dont engage in any sort of high-risk behaviors. I have tried numerous times to reason with Kendra, understand her fears, encourage her to get therapy, etc. to no avail. Her husband is pretty compliant with whatever she wants so he is on-board with her approach to quarantining. Im really starting to worry about her children. We FaceTime every week, and theyre sad they dont get to see friends or people outside the house. I have to believe this is damaging to their mental health and socialization. Every time I think were making progress with the pandemic, theres a new variant and it sends Kendra back to square 1. What, if anything, can I do to help her and my grandchildren?

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Mom in Memphis

Dear Mom,

Im not going to waste any time debunking your daughters beliefs about COVID and schooling, because its pretty obvious shes being unreasonable, so lets get into solution-mode instead. This may sound drastic, but Ive been in Kendras shoes before which is why Im going to suggest it. You may need to drag her (possibly literally) to a therapy session with a mental health professional or love her from a distance.

When I was at my lowest point in my depression, I wouldnt listen to any of my loved ones who politely asked me to seek help. I would say that I was fine, didnt need meds, and thought therapy was for soft and weak men. Finally, my brother ripped me a new one by getting in my face and telling me that I had a problem, and I had to grow up and get help or else he would be done with me. At first I thought he was being a jerk for keeping his word by not speaking to me, but deep down I knew he was rightand I finally took the requisite steps to meet with someone. He did it because he loves me, and I can say without hyperbole that his outburst saved my life.

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You need to have a similar conversation with Kendra. Forget the polite encouragement to go to therapyyou need to flat out demand that she go, or else. You can say something along the lines of, I feel that youre on a self-destructive path, and I cant sit here and watch it happen. Youve had anxiety all of your life, and its impacting your kids, and you need to talk to a therapist. Ill schedule it and go with you, but if you decide not to go, then I cannot be a part of your life. Having allies standing with you will help as well. I know her husband is falling in line with her beliefs, but does he really agree with her or is he just afraid of upsetting her? I think you should pull him aside and try figure out where his heads at and see if you can pull him to your side when you have the conversation with her.

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Yeah, I know its extremebut what you describe is extreme behavior, and sometimes thats what it takes to wake someone up (it worked for me). Unfortunately, this also comes with a price. What if she doesnt listen to you? Are you willing to walk away from her and your grandchildren? I know its easy for me to advise you to cut off your family, but I also know that few things are more painful than having a front row seat as your daughter destroys herself and her kids. If you pull out all of the stops regarding getting her the help she desperately needs and she still declines, then you have to be at peace with it. No matter how you slice it, you cant save someone whos unwilling to save herself.

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I hope her story turns out as well as mine did, but its going to require a very firm and uncomfortable conversation in order to get there.

Catch Up on Care and Feeding

 If you missed Mondays column, read it here.

 Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have a close relationship with a three-year-old, Mary, my priests oldest daughter. She was the flower girl in my wedding and her parents have told me that she talks about my husband and me even when were not there. I love this girl more than I thought possible for a non-blood relative, and every time I get to hold her for a few minutes during a service, I just melt. I dont think Mary and her 2-year-old sister Elizabeth have many other friends their age. Mary was supposed to go to preschool this fall, but my impression is that their parents did not send them because of mask requirements. Basically every time that I see Maryat least once a weekshe asks if I can come over to her house to play or to watch a movie. While this often isnt immediately possible because of my work schedule, its clear that shed like to spend more time with me. My husband and I do not yet have any children of our own. What very little childrens books and materials we have at our home is in my heritage language that Id like to teach my own children. I have no experience with kids and never even babysat them as a teen, so I dont know what normal relations between adults and children (that arent their own) look like. Is there a non-weird way to take Mary up on her offer? Do we have to include Elizabeth, even though shes much more of a handful and less comfortable with us? My priests wife is nine months pregnant, so Id like to make their lives a bit easier if possible.

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BFF to a Toddler

Dear BFF,

You brushed over an important aspect of this story that I think is important. Mary didnt attend preschool because of the mask requirement? Im assuming that means her parents are against their daughter wearing a mask to school in the middle of a pandemic, which is a huge red flag in my eyes. I have no idea what your vaccination status is, but we all know that a three-year-old is unable to receive the COVID vaccine right now. Would you feel comfortable babysitting a mask-less, unvaccinated toddler for a few hours? Maybe you would, but I sure wouldnt. Not to mention, shouldnt her parents be concerned about who their vulnerable child hangs out with? Nothing against you and your husband of course, because Im sure youre fine peoplebut a lot of fine people have passed COVID onto others.

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All of that said, Im not against you hanging out with this little girl, but Id advise you to create some ground rules first. I know the weather is cold in most areas of the country, but if you happen to live in a warm-weather city like I do, you should do your part to keep the playdate outdoors, so she can feel free to run around without a mask on. If you have to stay inside, then I would require everyone to wear a mask to be safe. Id also state that you only feel comfortable with Mary right now and not her sister.

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If youre able to clear those hurdles with her parents, I wouldnt be too concerned regarding your lack of babysitting experience. Your main goal is to keep her safe and alive, and if you love this kid as much as you say you do, then that should be pretty easy to do. Ask her parents what snacks she enjoys, borrow a couple of her favorite books from them, grab some pull-ups in case there are any accidents, and otherwise you can play simple games like hide and seek and the playdate will be over before you know it.

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Theres nothing at all weird about hanging out with this little girl  but you definitely want to ensure she is as safe as possible when it comes to COVID and its nasty variants. The rest should be easy.

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,

I am a 23-year-old female. My brother just turned 25. I just found out his girlfriend (27 I think?) is pregnant! This is terrible news! My brother is irresponsible and certainly cannot handle the responsibility required to be a father. He and this girl have been on and off for the past two years, and they have never gone longer than two months of being together as far as Im aware. Every time they break up he is devastated and when they are together my brother just complains that he hates her. I thought it was stupid when they signed a one-year lease together, and now that I know shes pregnant I think thats extra stupid! My parents told me if I had nothing nice to say to not say anything at all, but this is clearly a terrible situation. Am I supposed to smile and say congrats? I cant see myself handling this with civility this Christmas.

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Distressed Future Aunt

Dear Distressed,

I hear what youre saying, but this doesnt involve you. Honestly, how can you say for certain that your brother cant handle being a father? I know plenty of people who I thought would be crappy parents who ended up becoming amazing moms and dads to their children, and your brother could be one of them.

You also dont know the intimate details of their relationshipyoure only aware of the limited parts you have access to, and that doesnt tell the whole story. What may seem like dysfunction to you, may not be dysfunction at all.

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Your parents are absolutely right hereif you dont have anything nice to say, say nothing. Playing the role of Judgment Judy only serves to alienate you from your brother and his partner. I mean, what would you want him to do now that he knows his girlfriend is pregnant? Leave her? Demand she get an abortion? Instead, why not just say, Hey, Im here for you big bro and give him the benefit of the doubt? You may end up being surprised.

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Dont make Christmas weird or uncomfortable when it doesnt have to be.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

We have a gift-receiving conundrum. My mother-in-law, who we arent very close to, sends our toddler several gifts each birthday and holiday. Often these gifts are redundant of things our toddler already has or are things hes not interested in, so we have ended up giving many of them away. Our MIL has struggled financially and we recently learned that she is ordering these gifts from a retailer that allows payment on monthly installments. We know these gifts probably mean a lot for MIL, but we feel very conflicted that she is financially stretching herself to send us gifts that we dont really use. In an ideal world, wed love her to send just one gift and perhaps a handwritten note or card that we can keep in a scrapbook. Is there a kind way to ask her to scale back the gift giving?

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Drowning in Gifts

Dear Drowning,

Maybe Im missing something here, but this seems to be a relatively simple fix. If youve read my column before, you know that Im all about the direct approach and you can say something like, We really appreciate your generosity, but we dont have any use for the gifts youre sending. Instead, just check in with us on a video call or send a card. That would mean a lot more. Notice how I didnt mention anything about her financial situation, because that would only serve to make her feel bad, and quite frankly, it doesnt have much relevance to your situation.

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I think a lot of grandparents have the idea that sending material gifts shows how much they love their grandchildren, but as a parent, that couldnt be further from the truth. Think about it  can you remember any gifts you received during your birthday parties when you were 5, 6, 7, 8 years old? Probably not. However, I bet you could remember calling your grandparents on the phone, or going on vacation with them, or having them stop by your house to visit. Those are things that really matter, and you should remind your mother-in-law of that.

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If shes a reasonable and self-aware adult, she will probably cool it with the gifts going forward. If she doesnt follow your message, then I would be a little firmer by saying, To be honest, were giving away many of the gifts youre sending us because we dont have any use for them. Please just send cards instead. Keep hammering that message over and over until she falls in line, and eventually she will get it.

Experiences are greater than material gifts every day of the week  including birthdays and holidays.

Doyin

More advice from Slate

I was quite surprised last weekend when my eighth-grade daughter was invited to a coed party last weekend that the parents knew about, but for which they werent present. I did not think to ask if parents were present, and my daughter genuinely did not know this would be the case. My daughter is not inclined to get into trouble, and nothing happened at the party. But the following weekend, the same kid had another party, approved by the parents, with no supervision. These kids are too young for such parties, right? How should I handle this?
COVID is on the rise again in the United States in a big way, with the CDC estimating that the omicron variant is now responsible for 73 percent of new cases. Omicron might cause less severe illness than previous variants, or it might not; whats clear is that it spreads more quickly than the others, and that individuals whove only gotten the initial doses of a vaccine, and not a booster, are highly susceptible to infection from it.

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Reports across the country indicate that PCR testing centers are overloaded and at-home testing kits are hard to come by. Meanwhile, something like 20 percent of eligible individuals in the United Statesmeaning, of the set of Americans who are 5 years old or olderhavent received even one vaccine dose. The situation, then, is one in which a faster-spreading COVID is moving through a population that is having a harder than usual time testing itself to determine whether it needs to quarantine. And this is happening during the holidays, when people tend to gather indoors in large groups. This is going to mean, scientifically speaking, a mondo load of cases, including potentially enough serious ones to fill hospital ICUs.

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In recent weeks, a number of public-health experts and journalists have expressed concern about the governments level of preparedness for the surge. (On Dec. 8, White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question in this vein, about the availability of testing, by riffing facetiously about how crazy it would be to imagine that a free test could be sent to everyone in the country.) Cultural events have been canceled; some day cares are closing. Parents have started to think darkly about the renewed possibility of life-upending K12 school closures.

On Tuesday at the White House, President Joe Biden announced a plan for responding to omicron. It was headlined by a reversal of course: The administration, he now says, is committed to sending free tests to everyone in the country who wants one. (According to the White House, the plan is to purchase 500 million tests and create a website where Americans can order them for free. As the New York Times noted judiciously, it was not immediately clear where the tests would come from. The U.K., which already had such a home-delivery system in place, recently ran out of tests.) Biden also says that the federal government, via the military and FEMA, will deploy additional resources and manpower for testing and vaccination and to hospitals.

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The most practically and politically salient part of the presidents speech, however, may have concerned something he has no formal control over: public schools. We dont have to shut down schools because of COVID-19, Biden said, arguing that testing and vaccine technology can isolate and mitigate outbreaks in a way that was not possible when districts shut down in March 2020. We can keep our K12 schools open. Thats exactly what we should be doing.

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Bidens remarks included several passages intended to persuade vaccine-hesitant Americans to get shots, including both warnings that they are at elevated risk of dying and an aside about former President Donald Trump having recently said that he has received a vaccine booster. Given the general political leanings of the unvaccinated population, odds are not great that this will have any effect, Trumps personal decision notwithstanding. Teachers unions and state governmentsor at least state governments in states that would be considering further closures in the first placemay be more easily influenced by the soft power of the presidential pulpit.

Step 1 for the president was having a press conference and a plan ; mission accomplished there. Step 2 is getting at-home tests out, setting up new testing sites, and bolstering Americas hospitals before omicron lands fully. How all of that works out will be what actually determines whether the country experiences the social chaos (and political fallout) that Biden seems, a bit belatedly, motivated to avert.
In July of 2021, St. Louis yielded to a 50-year-old call for change, popularized by Percy Green, a longtime civil rights activist. A Klansmen character named the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan was disinvited to his own party, the St. Louis Independence Day parade. This victory came months after public controversy surrounding the actress Ellie Kemper, aka Erin from The Office, who, as a teenager, served as the Veiled Prophets queen in 1999. This years 2021 debutante celebration is secretly planned, like all VP balls, but a source tells me its scheduled for Wednesday, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, right next door to the Arch.

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As far as Percy Greens victories go, the diminishment of the Veiled Prophet is symbolic but significant. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we know that Green had a miles-long COINTELPRO record. In the course of his activist career, he mastered a rapidly evolving media environment in the 1960s, won a Supreme Court case against the military-industrial complex giant McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing), and made enemies of almost every powerful institution in St. Louis. From churches to power companies, to banks and Monsanto, Wonder Bread to the Veiled Prophet: The elites knew Percy, and Percy knew the elites.

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Green was arrested more than a hundred times, four or five times a year in a 20-year period. His status as a lesser-known civil rights figure goes hand in hand with his being a Black activist in the Midwest, but its these underexamined local struggles that can yield insight on the most crucial lessons today. Especially when it comes to media and image, in matters of which Green wasand isa genius. As the latest Veiled Prophet ball approaches, lets take a look at how he did it.

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Greens career in activism started in the organization CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. His political education began in 1935 St. Louis, as a Black boy growing up in the Compton Hill neighborhood. Green had graduated from Vashon High School in the city and took night classes in electrical engineering while working as an orderly at Barnes Hospital. Certificate in hand, Green worked his way up to become the only Black engineer in a research-and-development department at McDonnell Aircraft.* He attended CORE meetings on the advice of a fellow Machinists Union member and entered a local activism scene with a long tradition of struggle; the Gateway to the West has always been a hotbed of race and labor politics.

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Sit-in protests were COREs specialty, but Green eventually found them unsatisfying. This is the era he later called the tea and cookies period of Black struggle. After a CORE protest at Kroger grocery, Green recounted that activists confronted management, and management came back with mere tea and cookies; Street-wise, cant you see thats bullshit  a stalling mechanism? By the 60s, Green felt that COREs strategy wasnt pushing the envelope hard enough. The members had battle fatigue or something, I guess, Green told a reporter in 1970. We needed a group that would be a spark for change in St. Louis.

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After decades of integration strikes and sit-ins, two days after Martin Luther Kings 1963 I Have a Dream speech, members of CORE got back from D.C., charged off the buses, and began a protest that would split the group. The Jefferson Bank Demonstration is a landmark in St. Louis civil rights historythe bank served a majority-Black clientele but employed zero Black tellers and had no integration among employees higher on the pay scale, either. CORE advocated inclusion and meritocracy. Doctors for Equality read some of the signs during the Jefferson Bank protest. Responsible People Want Justice! But the younger generation of activists, including Green, wanted morethey wanted economic justice not just integration.

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The Jefferson Bank protest went on for months and lead to many arrests before concessions were made. The aftermath birthed ACTION, the Action Committee to Improve Opportunities for Negroes. This new group was composed of many CORE members, Black and white professionals, women and men, students, teachers, or professors from the local colleges. This new group wanted to be more radical but remain strategically integrated like CORE. As historian Thomas Spencer notes, members like Jacqueline Bell, a Black woman, believed that integration within civil rights activism reflected the real world in which all kinds of people live together and needed to work together in order to achieve justice. But for ACTION, Black leadership was the only absolute organizational rule: Black folks had the right to make mistakes for Black people, Green explained, rather than to have white people make mistakes for them.

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On July 14, 1964, ACTION staged its first protest near St. Louis most famous parabola, the Gateway Arch. At the time, the Arch was under construction via federal contract and hadnt hired any Black workers. A decoy picket line outside the Old Courthouse drew the press downtown with the primary demand: 1000 skilled jobs now, read the signboardsnot just low-level jobs, skilled jobs. Once the press was gathered at the picket, Percy Green and a white activist named Richard Daly entered the construction site and scaled the side of the Arch via partially enclosed steel ladder.*

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Green and Daly came down, and were arrested. The press got lots of photos from the event, and the point was made.* Green and Daly had risked life and limb to climb the citys big symbolic structure, and ACTION was truly born.

Green became known for his ACTION stylegreen fatigues, a Black Pantherish beret, and a tigers tooth necklace helped him play the role of champion for the St. Louis Black community. ACTION mixed nonviolent sit-ins with guerrilla street theater. Green climbing the half-finished, metaphorical gateway was the kind of viral stunt designed to trouble the idea that the Black working class of St. Louis was going to stay quiet and sit idly by watching, without objection, as contracts and resources continued going only to white people.

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St. Louis had not been doing well since the turn of the century. Many 1950s suburbanites didnt feel it in the midcentury period, because deindustrialization came for Black neighborhoods first, but as the historian Colin Gordon points out, The Gateway City is, by any measure, one of the most depopulated, deindustrialized, and deeply segregated examples of American urban decay. In the late 1960s, ACTION targeted capital intereststhe biggest companies in the cityto demand a shot at what economic prosperity was left. At the very least, the public should hear the pain of the citys marginalized.

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ACTIONs protests were dramatic and visceral. In 1969, ACTION demonstrated at churches with financial interests tied to the citys utility companies, which were frequent targets of the group, due to ACTIONs conviction that the utilities had racist hiring practices. Wielding buckets of black paint and brushes, they blackwashed the ivory-white statues of saints and holy figures. In July of 1970, Green and the ACTION activists entered Southwestern Bells headquarters disguised as janitors. They staged a stick-in by pouring molasses in the lobby of the company headquarters. Gooey Protest at Bell Brings Arrest for 2, read the Globe-Democrat headline. In Greens words, as cited in Grassroots at the Gateway by Clarence Lang, the choice of fluid had meaning: Number one, were going to stick right with them until they do the things that we want done. Also, racism is sticky. In 1975, at the downtown Union Electric Co. building, activists posing as laborers sprayed a strong, ammonia-based substance over desks and typewriters, symbolizing their determination to clean up the companys service and employment practices.

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When acting as the chairperson of ACTION, Green went after his own employer. The ACTION activists chained the doors of McDonnell Aircraft, because the aerospace manufacturer started a labor dispute with Green not long after the Arch stunt. In the middle of proceedings, someone from the Defense Department sent Green a letter, thanking ACTION for information it had provided about job discrimination allegedly practiced by local defense contractors. Green mailed them a bill for consulting services.

This dispute with McDonnell would land Green in court and, after a series of appeals, culminate in a Supreme Court case. In McDonnell Douglas Corporation v. Green, the highest court in the land ruled that plaintiffs in a racial discrimination suit needed only to establish minimum proof that they were denied employment or discharged due to racism. This set a standard for private discrimination cases and earned workers a powerful weapon in the war against corporate employers.

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Confrontations with capital came at a price. Clarence Lang notes the rumors among activists at this time said Richard Nixons concentration camps were ready for political dissidents. This paranoia and disinformation were an active project of the U.S. government. In the 50s, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover launched the Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, as part of a larger offensive against American communists, civil rights leaders, the Black Power movement, and antiwar organizations. In 1967, Green made the FBIs Rabble Rouser Index.

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COINTELPRO operations instigated police raids, arrests, and assassinations. It bankrolled informants, maintained surveillance of groups, and fed negative stories about activists to cooperative newspapers like St. Louis Globe-Democrat. According to historian Walter Johnson, the Globe-Democrat was a local megaphone for the bureau, and paid extremely granular attention to the Civil Rights struggle in St. Louis. The newspaper went as far as to suggest (with a racist twist) the police should beat Green up and put a stop to his monkey shines. The FBI broke into homes to plant wiretaps, and Green reported that on many occasions, his wife at the time would receive a phone call falsely claiming hed been killed. The people on the phone would say she needed to come down to the morgue and view the body.

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Green and ACTION were undeterred. Since 1878, there had been no better venue for addressing every business tycoon, CEO, and hiring manager in the greater St. Louis metropolitan area than the one night of the year when all gathered for the Veiled Prophets debutante ball. Annually, the affluent families of the citythe Busches, the Danforths, the Kempersgathered in the Kiel Auditorium for a debutante parade where the Veiled Prophet crowns his Queen of Love and Beauty.

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In St. Louis, in the 1950s, the acceptable discourse among white people discussing the Veiled Propheta local phenomenon most Black St. Louisans understood to be racistwent from the liberal view (The hooded man in golden robes is a Midwestern tradition) to the conservative one (The hooded man in golden robes is a charming, lovable Midwestern tradition). The Veiled Prophet, full of meaning for the city, became the perfect target for ACTION.

ACTION protested the Veiled Prophet every year from 1965 to 1984. At first, the strategy was to run out in front of the Fourth of July parade, block it up, and get arrested. From there, things escalated. Activists jumped the barriers and ran out in front of the parade, handcuffing themselves to the floats. Then, an activist with society written on their shirt would lay down in the road, while a third activist with justice written on a white doctors coat would revive the fallen society. The parade would be disrupted, everyone would get arrested, and the public got the message. Out of fear of the protests, the Veiled Prophet queen and maids ceased to take part in the parade after 1967. In 1968, the parade moved from downtown to the Central West Endan affluent white district of St. Louis.

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In 1969, ACTION threw a counter-debutante ball celebrating the Black Veiled Prophet and his Queen of Human Justice. The royal couple presented a blue slip of paper to the Veiled Prophet Ball officer at the door of the Kiel Auditorium and demanded entrance to the publicly funded building. They were going to take the stage alongside the white Veiled Prophet, but everyone was arrested for peace disturbance and released on $500 bond. A few hours later, after their release, they were greeted with handshakes at the Velvet Plastic Ball, a parody-party.

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During the 1972 ball, ACTION members Gena Scott and Jane Sauer pulled off the big one. The women infiltrated the ball and caused a scene in the balcony. Scott swung down onto the ballroom floor by spotlight cable and landed near the VPs throne. She managed to throw off the Veiled Prophets hood, revealing the man beneath: a vice president of Monsanto, Tom K. Smith. All local media withheld the exposed officials name, except the St. Louis Journalism Review. No image of Smiths face made it out of the ceremony.

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In the aftermath, Gena Scotts car was bombed, and her house was vandalized. Its only because of the Freedom of Information Act that we know that a letter accusing Jane Sauer of infidelity with Black male ACTION members was, in fact, a poison pen letter authorized by the FBI for the purpose of breaking up Sauers marriage. It succeeded.

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Veiled Prophet protests continued, including a cry-in in 1976, which turned public opinion against ACTION; in this protest members ran across the stage spraying tear gas into the air. But many smaller civil rights organizations founded in the 1960s disbanded in the 70s , as activists energy moved in different directions; ACTION broke up in 1985. In 1993, Percy Green joined Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr.s administration to direct the minority- and women-owned business utilization program, and stayed in that position under Mayor Clarence Harmon. He was terminated from that role by Mayor Francis Slay in 2001, but Green remains active in St. Louis politics. In a TEDx interview in 2020, Green said his ACTION program for the present, if the group still existed, would be an annual taxation on megacorporations refusing to raise the minimum wage. According to Green, the Fight for 15 should be the Fight for 26. Next year, Fight for 27.

In 2021, American politics feels arrested. It takes record-breaking protests to popularize the idea that Black people shouldnt be executed by police, and even those demonstrations (some argue) have not brought about policy changes. On the left, the levers of power are captured by a corporate Democratic Party thats free to water down progress and ignore systemic, overlapping crises: a militarized police violence, absurd health care costs, accelerating environmental catastrophes.

However immovable American politics feels, Green and the ACTION protesters faced a similar struggle, just as all working-class movements do. Green was a genius of media manipulation in an era of newspapers and television. Todaylike it or notmuch of our political space is digital. Memes are, arguably, more influential than newspapers, and when it comes to raising class consciousness, it helps if the messaging is funny, just like ACTIONs joyous punching up at the dusty conservatism of the St. Louis elites. After all, the Veiled Prophet is a kind of clown; Green and ACTION showed us that.
Rules for returning to schools will be fine-tuned during the holidays. People arriving in Slovakia from certain countries are asked to register for a PCR test.

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Good evening. Read the Tuesday, December 21 edition of Today in Slovakia to catch up on the main news of the day in less than five minutes. We wish you a pleasant read.

Slovak and Czech MFAs commented on the US and Russia development

Czech MFA Jan Lipavsky and Slovak MFA Ivan Korcok. (Source: TASR)

The Slovak MFA Ivan Korcok commented on the latest development concerning Russia during his joint press conference with the newly-appointed Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky.

The two ministers agreed that the latest development between Russia and the US deeply impacts Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Addressing the latest talks between Russia and the US, and the proposed treaties, Korcok said that it is important that countries in the neighbourhood of the Russian Federation are free to decide on their foreign policy orientation, including where they seek security assurances.

"Therefore, the result of this dialogue must not be the drawing of red lines or new spheres of influence," Korcok said.

It is essential for Slovakia that the result of this dialogue is not questioning the very existence of NATO.

About million people in Slovakia do not have antibodies

People queuing for the vaccination in Kosice. (Source: TASR)

More than half of the population of people unvaccinated against Covid do not have antibodies. When counting vaccinated people too, there are about a million people in Slovakia who do not have antibodies either from recovery from the disease or vaccination.

This stems from the first-ever research conducted on antibodies against Covid in Slovakia. In November and December, Slovak scientists looked into how many people have antibodies ahead of the Omicron wave in Slovakia, even though they admit that antibodies are not everything when it comes to protection against the virus.

The results in countries where similar studies have been conducted were better, according to the scientists.

Another poll showed that support for a vaccine mandate in Slovakia has increased slightly in December. People tend to support the mandatory vaccination of certain groups of the population more than mandatory vaccination for everyone who can get vaccinated.

A vaccine mandate for chosen groups of the population was also more popular among respondents than a lockdown.

More coronavirus and vaccination news

(Source: AP/TASR)

3,683 people were newly diagnosed as Covid positive out of 14,742 PCR tests performed on Monday. The number of people in hospitals is 2,967 people and 61 more deaths were reported on Monday. The vaccination rate is at 49.55 percent; 2,725,050 people have received the first dose of the vaccine. More stats on Covid-19 in Slovakia here.

out of 14,742 PCR tests performed on Monday. The number of people in hospitals is 2,967 people and 61 more deaths were reported on Monday. The vaccination rate is at 49.55 percent; 2,725,050 people have received the first dose of the vaccine. More stats on Covid-19 in Slovakia here. Slovakia will receive 340,000 doses of the Nuvaxovid from Novavax vaccine , which was approved following conditional registration by European Medicines Agency on Monday. Slovakia should receive them in the first half of 2022. "Several experts recommend using this vaccine as the third dose of the vaccine; a protein vaccine is also recommended for autoimmune diseases," the health ministry said.

, which was approved following conditional registration by European Medicines Agency on Monday. Slovakia should receive them in the first half of 2022. "Several experts recommend using this vaccine as the third dose of the vaccine; a protein vaccine is also recommended for autoimmune diseases," the health ministry said. There were three other Omicron cases confirmed in Slovakia, bringing the total up to seven in Slovakia so far . Two people were vaccinated with two doses, one was unvaccinated. The first vaccinated person was infected in a common household with people who were infected with the Omicron variant. The second vaccinated person had not travelled abroad, but the third unvaccinated person returned to Slovakia from Africa.

. Two people were vaccinated with two doses, one was unvaccinated. The first vaccinated person was infected in a common household with people who were infected with the Omicron variant. The second vaccinated person had not travelled abroad, but the third unvaccinated person returned to Slovakia from Africa. People arriving in Slovakia from the UK, Denmark and Norway are asked to register for a PCR test, even if they are fully vaccinated. It will be paid by the state.

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Photo of the day

After five years, the Golgotha sculpture, which is a national cultural monument, has returned to the Calvary in Trnava. Stone crosses and pedestals, as well as metal statues of Christ, the Virgin Mary, St. John the Evangelist and two criminals, have recently undergone restoration funded by the city. The work, which is about 120 years old, was mechanically damaged, said restorer Tomas Kucman.

Feature story for today

High-skilled workers ready to take up jobs may be hard to come by in Slovakia. This is particularly true for IT professionals, the biggest Slovak job search website reports.

How to deal with the shortage of highly qualified workers Read more

In other news

The Prosecutor of the Special Prosecutor's Office filed a charge against 11 accused persons out of a total of 20 offenses in the Ocistec (Purgatory) case through the Specialised Criminal Court. Last year, the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) detained several police officers as part of the Purgatory operation, including former police president Tibor Gaspar, who was released from custody on November 4, almost a year later. The group allegedly operated around Nitra businessman Norbert Bodor.

through the Specialised Criminal Court. Last year, the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) detained several police officers as part of the Purgatory operation, including former police president Tibor Gaspar, who was released from custody on November 4, almost a year later. The group allegedly operated around Nitra businessman Norbert Bodor. The newly created LearningLab educational laboratory, which opened at the Community Center in Lunik IX in Kosice, will serve to increase digital, functional and information literacy, as well as the use of innovative approaches and digital technologies. The aim is to improve the skills, competencies and general conditions of the Roma community.

as well as the use of innovative approaches and digital technologies. The aim is to improve the skills, competencies and general conditions of the Roma community. The Education Ministry will update the rules for returning to schools and inform the public about possible changes in the school Covid automat alert system after the Christmas holidays. Minister Branislav Grohling (SaS) explained that the rules for returning to schools will be fine-tuned during the holidays . According to the plan, pupils and students should thus return to schools on January 10, 2022.

. According to the plan, pupils and students should thus return to schools on January 10, 2022. The former head of the Constitutional Court Ivetta Macejkova has stepped down as a judge of the Supreme Court . "Judge of the Supreme Court Ivetta Macejkova has informed the President of the Supreme Court that on November 25, 2021, she asked the Justice Minister to suspend her office according to the Law on Judges, as of December 31, 2021," said the spokesperson for the court. Macejkova was at the helm of the Constitutional Court between 2007 and 2019.

. "Judge of the Supreme Court Ivetta Macejkova has informed the President of the Supreme Court that on November 25, 2021, she asked the Justice Minister to suspend her office according to the Law on Judges, as of December 31, 2021," said the spokesperson for the court. Macejkova was at the helm of the Constitutional Court between 2007 and 2019. The National Bank of Slovakia (NBS) estimates the public finance deficit at 7.4 percent of GDP in 2021 , which is 1.9 points more than last year. According to the central bank, the economic recovery should have a positive effect on the public sector's performance.

, which is 1.9 points more than last year. According to the central bank, the economic recovery should have a positive effect on the public sector's performance. In November this year, 5,704 new passenger cars were sold in Slovakia, down 17.6 percent y-o-y. Skoda was the best-selling brand again. Last month, 644 small commercial vehicles were registered, down 9.7 percent compared to the same month last year. The most popular brand was Opel, according to data disclosed by the Automotive Industry Association.

Do not miss on Spectator.sk today

Slovakia has vaccines for children but registration has not been launched Read more

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If you have suggestions on how this news overview can be improved, you can reach us at editorial@spectator.sk.
The test will be free for incomers from these countries.

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The Health Ministry asks all inhabitants of Slovakia who are arriving in the country either from the UK, Denmark or Norway, to register at www.korona.gov.sk and request a PCR test. This test will be free for incomers from these countries.

Our paywall policy The Slovak Spectator has decided to make all the articles on the special measures, statistics and basic information about the coronavirus available to everyone. If you appreciate our work and would like to support good journalism, please buy our subscription. We believe this is an issue where accurate and fact-based information is important for people to cope.

The ministry is responding to concerns over the Omicron variant, which has become dominant in the UK and causes the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19. The situation is significantly deteriorating in Denmark and Norway as well, according to the ministry.

The Health Ministry, therefore, asks everyone returning from the UK, Denmark and Norway, even the fully-vaccinated, to register for free PCR testing, the ministry announced.

Due to the rapidly spreading omicron mutation in the UK and other countries, it is essential that people stay in quarantine and do not meet anyone outside their home until they receive the test result, the ministry wrote.

At the same time, the obligation to register in eHranica for all those returning from abroad to Slovakia still applies. There have been seven confirmed cases of Omicron in Slovakia as of December 21.

How to travel to and from Slovakia during COVID-19 Read more

How to register for a PCR test 1. Go to www.korona.gov.sk and choose Registration for PCR test. 2. When choosing between the options in the section Vyberte priznaky alebo dovod vysetrenia (Choose symptoms or reason of the examination), mark the reason Prisiel som zo zahranicia (I arrived from abroad). 3. From the list of countries, choose either the UK, Denmark or Norway. Source: Health Ministry

More on coronavirus development in Slovakia
The parliament passed a national park reform that environmentalists praise as a step towards the development of sustainable tourism, but zoning plans needed.

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Slovak national parks will attain the European level in terms of the environment and nature protection, which should happen after the amendment approved last week by the parliament.

The main change of the reform involves the transition of state-owned land to another ministry. The state-owned land should no longer be managed by the Agriculture Ministry, but by the Environment Ministry under the rules.

This should result in the unified management of state-owned lands located within the national parks.

This significant step has removed a historical anomaly in the administration of the national parks, said General Director of State Nature Protection governmental organisation, Dusan Karaska, as quoted by the TASR newswire. By approving the proposed reform, we have embarked on the path of the sustainable protection of our most valuable territories.

The unified management and legal subjectivity of national parks will not only increase the quality of nature protection, but also improve the socio-economic development of the regions concerned, Karaska opined.

Environment Minister Jan Budaj expects Slovak national parks to soon resemble their counterparts abroad. The approved reform is a chance for the regions to gain money from the EU recovery fund, he added.

I want to have national parks we will be proud of at the end of the process, and where local inhabitants will regard the protection of nature and natural wealth not as a hindrance to the region's development, but as the basic tool for better future and overall development, said OLaNO MP Jaromir Sibl, one of the lawmakers who authored the reform, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

The passed reform is more the beginning of changes, observers agree. A lot will depend on the zoning of the national parks.

Next step: zoning

As of April 1, 2022, when this amendment becomes effective, only the administration of state-owned lands will move to the individual administration of Tatra National Park, Pieniny National Park and Slovensky Raj National Park.
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/academic-russian-military-has-pretty-good-tactics-acts-fast--is-very-well-equipped-1091701832.html

Academic: Russian Military Has Pretty Good Tactics, Acts Fast, & is Very Well Equipped

Academic: Russian Military Has Pretty Good Tactics, Acts Fast, & is Very Well Equipped

Russian Defence Minister Serigei Shoigu held an extended ministerial meeting on 21 December and assessed the preparedness of the Rusian Armed Forces.

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world

europe

us

russia

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vladimir putin

sergei shoigu

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mig-31

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"In general, the Russian military is considered to be an agile force, a force that is ready, that is prepared, that is able to act fast. That is a very good thing. That absolutely makes the Russian military one of the best in the world", says Dr Michele Groppi, lecturer on challenges to the international order at the Defence Studies Department at King's College, London and president of ITSS Verona.Furthermore, the Russian military has undergone a process of modernisation, Groppi notes: Earlier in the day, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu highlighted during the ministerial meeting that the Russian Armed Forces occupy a leading position in the world in terms of modernity despite being ranked ninth in terms of defence spending.He specified that the Russian Army and Navy are equipped with modern weapons at 71.2%, while the share of modern weapons in the nuclear triad of Russia has grown to a historic record and is 89.1%.The Russian Defence Ministry summit came amid soaring tensions between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine. Previously, the US and its NATO European allies speculated about Russia's apparent plan to launch an invasion of Ukraine, something that Moscow resolutely shredded as nonsense. During a high-level video conversation between President Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden, the US president outlined a list of potential anti-Russian sanctions in the event of a military escalation in Ukraine. However, Putin warned his counterpart against pinning the blame on Russia and referred to NATO's expansionist efforts on Russia's doorstep.Groppi laments the fact that the concept of Russia's regional "sphere of influence" was recently defied by the US and NATO leadership.Thus, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated earlier this year that the US would not recognise Russia's "sphere of influence" in its post-Soviet neighbourhood, calling it a thing of the past. For his part, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg claimed on 1 December that "Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence". The remarks came in response to Moscow warning that Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership as well as NATO's military expansion in the post-Soviet space are "red lines" for Russia.Russia is Boosting Its Defensive CapabilitiesRussias national security spending envisaged for 2021 was estimated at 3.1 trillion rubles (roughly $41.9 billion)  significantly less than the Pentagon's $778 billion.However, much has been done in recent years in terms of boosting Russia's defensive capabilities, according to Sergei Shoigu.In particular, a separate aviation regiment has been formed in Russia's Aerospace Forces, armed with MiG-31 aircraft carrying Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. Four modernised Tu-95MS strategic bombers were handed over to the military; aviation and anti-aircraft missile regiments were formed; 151 items of new and modernised aviation equipment were delivered to the Aerospace Forces, according to the defence minister.Meanwhile, the air defence and anti-missile defence forces have received over 30 types of weapons, including the S-400 Triumph and S-350 Vityaz anti-aircraft missile systems. According to Shoigu, the Russian military has started receiving the Inokhodets (Orion) and Forpost reconnaissance and strike unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In addition to this, trials of the the Sokol Altius, a medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned combat aerial vehicle, have also been completed.The defence minister highlighted that the tests of the Zircon sea-based hypersonic cruise missile have been successfully finished, adding that the system's serial deliveries to the Russian Armed Forces will begin in 2022. It is expected that the number of Russian long-range high-precision weapons carriers will increase by 30% by 2026, while the number of cruise missiles of various types of basing will double, concluded the minister.

https://sputniknews.com/20211221/russian-army-is-global-leader-in-modernity-defence-minister-shoigu-says-1091698673.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211208/is-aggressive-us-rhetoric-against-russia-the-result-of-bidens-poor-standing-at-home--1091363298.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211211/did-us-learn-cuban-missile-crisis-lesson-right--could-moscow-and-washington-avert-its-repetition-1091425391.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211221/pentagon-struck-new-contract-seeking-ways-to-counter-russian--chinese-hypersonics-report-says-1091700632.html

Notta Snowflake Yank troops will not get out of their vehicles, they cannot march 30 miles in 22 hours with a full 45 kilo pack nor carry on a heated battle on a divisional level for over 5 days. IMO in the first six months of face-to-face conflict, all US combat zone troops will either be neutralised or surrender with their pants full of poop. 8

Ladyshadow And the great US military that couldn't beat the Taliban, LOL? 7

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/astana-format-talks-on-syria-open-in-nur-sultan-on-tuesday-1091684588.html

Astana Format Talks on Syria Open in Nur-Sultan on Tuesday

Astana Format Talks on Syria Open in Nur-Sultan on Tuesday

NUR-SULTAN (Sputnik) - The new round of talks on Syria are opening on Tuesday in the Kazakh capital of Nur-Sultan and will primarily focus on the situation in... 21.12.2021, Sputnik International

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asia & pacific

kazakhstan

syria

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According to Kazakhstan, which organises the event, the parties will review the current situation in Syria, maintaining the peace in de-escalation zones in line with earlier agreements reached during the Astana Process.Additionally, the parties will discuss the prospects of the Syrian Constitutional Committee with a view to give an impetus to the Geneva talks within the United Nations.The delegations from Russia, Turkey, Iran, the government of Syria, and the Syrian opposition will take part in the negotiations. Representatives of the UN, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq are expected to attend as observers. The consultations in Nur-Sultan will last for two days.Syrian Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Susan will represent the Syrian government, while Ahmad Tomah is set to lead the Syrian opposition delegation. Turkey will be represented by the Foreign Ministry's Director General for Syria Selcuk Unal, while the Iranian delegation will be headed by Ali Asghar Khaji, a special assistant to Iran's foreign minister for special political affairs.The UN side will be headed by Deputy Special Envoy Khawla Mohammed Ali Matar.Meanwhile, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry has yet to confirm that the Russian, Turkish, and Iranian foreign ministers will meet in Nur-Sultan as part of the talks. Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi previously said that a meeting of the top diplomats of the Astana format was under consideration.Negotiations to resolve the Syrian war, which broke out in 2011, have been ongoing in Nur-Sultan since 2017 with the mediation of the 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 the main political forces in Syria. The main result of the congress was the decision to create a Constitutional Committee, which operates in Geneva and whose primary task is to prepare constitutional reform in Syria.

TruePatriot As an additional outcome, the US and Turkey need to be told to leave as they were not invited and are not wanted and have been told they have no place being in the country unlawfully and in violation of international law. 1

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/beijing-takes-reciprocal-countermeasures-in-response-to-us-anti-china-sanctions-over-uyghur-issue-1091698248.html

Beijing Takes 'Reciprocal Countermeasures' in Response to US Anti-China Sanctions Over Uyghur Issue

Beijing Takes 'Reciprocal Countermeasures' in Response to US Anti-China Sanctions Over Uyghur Issue

China has banned entry to four people from a US panel on religious freedom, in a tit-for-tat move against sanctions that Washington recently imposed on Chinese entities over Beijing's alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang

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China has banned entry to four people from a US panel on religious freedom, in a tit-for-tat move against sanctions that Washington recently imposed on Chinese entities over Beijing's alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.The spokesman dubbed Beijing's move "reciprocal countermeasures" that he said were taken in accordance with China's Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law.According to him, the US sanctions "seriously interfered" in China's internal affairs, harshly violated the basic norms of international relations, and seriously damaged Sino-American relations.He spoke after the US Departments of Commerce and Treasury announced sanctions last week targeting Chinese biotechnology and surveillance firms it asserts are involved in the mass repression of the Uyghur minority in western Xinjiang Province in China.US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a statement that China "is choosing to use these technologies to pursue control over its people and its repression of members of ethnic and religious minority groups".Under the Trump administration, the White House imposed a host of economic and visa sanctions on Chinese officials purportedly implicated in the alleged repressions of Uyghurs, blacklisting certain Chinese entities.The US and other Western nations have repeatedly alleged that China is holding up to one million ethnic Uyghurs in "concentration camps" in the Xinjiang region under the pretext of fighting terrorism and religious extremism. Beijing dismisses all the accusations of maltreatment of its Muslim minority as unsubstantiated.

https://sputniknews.com/20211209/us-house-passes-bill-to-ban-imports-from-chinas-xinjiang-1091366624.html

https://sputniknews.com/20201203/china-denounces-us-claim-about-forced-labour-of-uyghurs-at-cotton-facility-in-xinjiang-1081348602.html

vot tak No doubt the "US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)" also claims Palestinians persecute israeli Jews and deprive them of religious freedom. 5

Zeke Aln This tit-for-tat response that China and Russia etc. Retaliate with is not going to stop this evil hegemonic monster, it needs to be much more aggressive! 5

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/biden-omicron-outbreak-will-not-send-us-back-to-march-2020-1091702717.html

Biden: Omicron Outbreak Will Not Send US 'Back to March 2020'

Biden: Omicron Outbreak Will Not Send US 'Back to March 2020'

US President Joe Biden told Americans in a nationwide address on Tuesday that the country was much better prepared for a new COVID-19 outbreak driven by the Omicron variant than the US was in March 2020, when the pandemic began.

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omicron covid strain

joe biden

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We should all be concerned about Omicron, but not panicked," Biden said Tuesday, speaking from the White House.Covid has been a tough adversary, but weve shown that were tougher," he said, noting that vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and the country's "resolve" were potent weapons.However, he deflected criticism over the shortages of COVID-19 tests being reported across the country by noting Omicron had spread "more rapidly than anybody thought."He encouraged Americans to get vaccinated, noting that while there will be some breakthrough cases, the vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness from developing.He noted that even if people are fully vaccinated, they should still wear masks while indoors in public spaces as an additional layer of protection.If youre not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned, Biden said, adding that almost all of the 400,000 Americans who died from Covid over the last year were unvaccinated.Cases of COVID-19 have exploded in the US in recent days, driven heavily by the Omicron variant, which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday had become the dominant strain the US just three weeks after the first case was detected in the country.The variant was first detected just last month by South African scientists, prompting several nations to institute travel bans on flights from several southern African countries, which those nations decried as unfair. Biden told reporters on Tuesday that since Omicron is already so widespread in the US, his administration was considering dropping the travel ban.

bones289 Old Joe needs to check out his dates. The covid 19 was in Oct-Nov of 2019. I know because I was exposed to it and fought it off within 24 hours by the Grace of God and without a trip to the Ventilator room. History can be a b##ch. 3

bones289 Northwestern University said in 2020 that at least 2 different strains were in play in the US. A Chicago type and a New York variant. I believe they were correct. 2

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joe biden, covid-19, christmas, omicron strain
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/danish-intelligence-report-lists-russia-among-greatest-threats-1091687057.html

Danish Intelligence Report Lists Russia Among Greatest Threats

Danish Intelligence Report Lists Russia Among Greatest Threats

The new report by the Danish Intelligence Service highlighted Russia's rearmament and modernisation "in several disciplines" as a worrying development.

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denmark

military & intelligence

russia

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spying

scandinavia

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Russia is "purposefully" spying on Denmark, including telephone tapping, cyberattacks, and more classic instruments from the espionage toolbox, where sources are recruited to reveal secrets, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (FE) has claimed in its annual risk assessment, which also highlighted Russia's military superiority.Compared to previous releases, this year's report places a greater overall emphasis on Russia, which is seen as challenging Denmark in other domains, including the Arctic, where both nations have territorial claims. "We are using more force to describe Russia's instruments, its rearmament and modernisation of the armed forces that we have seen in several disciplines. This is a worrying development", Dalgaard-Nielsen said.The report described Russian forces as having "a very high quality, which in some areas is also superior to modern, high-tech opponents". According to the Danish intelligence community, after five years of rearmament and modernisation of the military, Russia has now reached parity with NATO in some areas. This, according to Dalgaard-Nielsen, is especially true for the Baltic Sea region.The Defence Intelligence Service also asserted that Russia has a deep distrust of the West, which creates the risk of an unintentional escalation.According to her, Russia is currently the strongest in the Baltic Sea and would have an advantage in the event of a conflict, as it could "prevent reinforcements from other NATO countries from reaching the area".This is not the first time that Russia has been treated as a threat. Denmark's Nordic peers, Sweden and Finland, have repeatedly expressed concern about the modernisation of Russia's military and made similar spying allegations. Earlier this year, Swedish Navy Chief Ewa Skoog Haslum identified Russia and China as the biggest threats to the Scandinavian nation.Alongside Russia, the Danish annual report also listed China and terrorism, not least from Islamist networks, as major threats. China is said to "use economic weight to put political and economic pressure" to promote its "global ambitions and more offensive behaviour" and "purposefully use cyber espionage". As for terrorism, the largest threat is considered to emanate from individuals and smaller networks, rather than larger groups such as al-Qaeda* or Daesh*.Russian-Danish relations have soured over reciprocal allegations and criticism. In late November, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova ventured that Danish justice operates "in line with the country's general Russophobic course", commenting on the trial of a Russian scientist who was sentenced to three years in prison for espionage, after a court found that he had transferred data from the Technical University of Denmark and companies in North Jutland to Russian intelligence. Zakharova said the court failed to consider the case impartially and created a dangerous precedent, noting that Russian scientists may become victims of "witch hunts".* Terrorist organisations banned in Russian and many other nations

https://sputniknews.com/20211210/sweden-to-deepen-military-cooperation-with-uk-citing-russia-as-only-threat-1091406954.html

Roger Misso Noone is surprised by the "deep, deep mistrust". The "west" (read "wild west") has rightly earned it with decades of unending lies and treachery. 5

Golem "Russia doesn't want war with NATO. But it worries us that the Russian leadership has a deep, deep distrust of the West and the West's motives.......".................... With VERY GOOD REASONS you bunch of murderous hypocritical lunatics. 4

9

denmark

scandinavia

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Igor Kuznetsov

Igor Kuznetsov

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Igor Kuznetsov

denmark, military & intelligence, russia, espionage, spying, scandinavia
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/electricity-restored-in-indias-jammu-as-power-department-employees-end-four-day-strike-1091685439.html

Electricity Restored in India's Jammu as Power Department Employees End Four-Day Strike

Electricity Restored in India's Jammu as Power Department Employees End Four-Day Strike

Electricity has been restored in India's Jammu region after protesting employees from the Jammu & Kashmir Power Development Department called off their strike.

2021-12-21T08:45+0000

2021-12-21T08:45+0000

2021-12-21T08:45+0000

kashmir

electricity

india

electricity

jammu

power outage

jammu

electricity

electricity supply

power outages

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Electricity has been restored in India's Jammu region after protesting employees from the Jammu & Kashmir Power Development Department called off their strike. After getting a written assurance from the administration that the proposed privatisation of the power sector would be put on hold, the employees' association decided to call off their protest. The latter had lasted four days.The administration also agreed on other issues, including the release of salaries.The written assurance to the JKPDD employees was given after fresh talks were held overnight Monday between Divisional Commissioner of Jammu Raghav Langer and the employees' association.Twenty thousand power department employees had gone on an indefinite strike against the government's move to merge the J&K Power Development Department into the Power Grid Corporation of India and the handing over of its assets to private companies.Their employees' main demands were that the government should reverse the decision to privatise assets, regularise daily wages for power employees, and release their salaries.After the JKPDD employees boycotted the services, Divisional Commissioner Langer wrote to the Department of Military Affairs of the Ministry of Defence requesting help from the Indian Army to restore essential services.

kashmir

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jammu

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kashmir, electricity, india, electricity, jammu, power outage, jammu, electricity, electricity supply, power outages, electricity blackout, electricity supplies, electricity power crisis, electricity grid, jammu and kashmir, india
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/fauci-fires-back-says-fox-news-host-should-be-fired-on-the-spot-for-violent-kill-shot-rhetoric-1091703716.html

Fauci Fires Back, Says Fox News Host 'Should Be Fired On the Spot' for Violent 'Kill Shot' Rhetoric

Fauci Fires Back, Says Fox News Host 'Should Be Fired On the Spot' for Violent 'Kill Shot' Rhetoric

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), stated on Tuesday that Fox News should promptly deliver a pink slip to Watters over his incendiary "kill shot" rhetoric.

2021-12-21T21:39+0000

2021-12-21T21:39+0000

2021-12-21T21:33+0000

fox news

public health

anthony fauci

jesse watters

covid-19

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, and top US immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), stated on Tuesday that Fox News should promptly deliver a pink slip to Watters over his incendiary "kill shot" rhetoric. "That just is such a reflection of the craziness that goes on in society," Fauci told CNN's John Berman. The latter refused to broadcast Watters' statement in full. "The only thing that I have ever done, throughout these two years, is to encourage people to practice good public health practices: to be vaccinated; to be careful in public settings; to wear a mask," the chief medical adviser to president said. On Monday, Watters addressed a crowd of young conservatives, encouraging them to go for a rhetorical "kill shot" against Faucithe nation's top immunologist and director of the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseasesby pressing him about allegations that the NIH funded "gain-of-function" research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He also urged the young conservatives present to record a verbal encounter with Fauci so that it could be broadcast by Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson and other right-wing media, such as Breitbart and the Daily Caller. "Get us that! That's what we want," Watters declared. "That changes the whole conversation of the country." Despite the uproar surrounding Watters' rhetoric, it appears unlikely that Fox News will take action against Watters after the conservative cable news channel defended him in a statement: Late last month, Fox Nation host Lara Logan also received blowback from Fauci and the public after she compared the top US infectious disease expert and chief White House medical officer to Joseph Mengele, a 20th-century Nazi doctor at the Auschwitz extermination camp whose murderous actions led him to be widely referred to as the "Angel of Death." "And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this," Logan claimed. Days after her remarks, Fauci told MSNBC's Chris Hayes that he was "astounded" that the Fox network had failed to take action. "What I find striking, Chris, is how she gets no discipline whatsoever from the Fox networkhow they can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action," he said.

https://sputniknews.com/20211130/fox-news-host-in-crosshairs-over-comparison-of-fauci-to-nazi-angel-of-death-1091150713.html

TruePatriot Fraudci is the last one that should speak on accountability. When will this clown be arrested and prosecuted for his multitude of crimes against humanity? 6

Nonyank Fauci should be jailed for impersonating someone with a brain! 4

7

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Evan Craighead

Evan Craighead

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Evan Craighead

fox news, public health, anthony fauci, jesse watters, covid-19
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/frustrated-over-bbb-demise-aoc-calls-senate-old-boys-club-that-needs-a-crack-down-1091680809.html

Frustrated Over BBB Demise, AOC Calls Senate Old Boys Club That Needs a Crack Down

Frustrated Over BBB Demise, AOC Calls Senate Old Boys Club That Needs a Crack Down

Disappointed AOC Slams Manchin, Saying Senate Is Old Boys Club That Needs to Be Cracked Down

2021-12-21T00:19+0000

2021-12-21T00:19+0000

2021-12-21T00:19+0000

us

us senate

sen. joe manchin (d-west virginia)

alexandria ocasio-cortez

build back better

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NY Rep. and Squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Monday that Democrats need to crack down on the very entitled, very privileged and very protected Senate, which she compared to an old boys club.The lawmaker called Manchins refusal to support the Build Back Better (BBB) plan a farce.However, the population of West Virginia currently stands at approximately 1.8 million people, while New Yorks 14th Congressional District that Ocasio-Cortez represents is comprised of about 750,000 people.Meanwhile, according to Ocasio-Cortez, its the House of Representatives that most reliably delivers the actual will of the majority of people.The Democratic lawmaker was particularly critical of the filibuster in the Senate, suggesting opposing lawmakers might have to actually show up and stand or sit and actually have to talk and actually live out the threat of their filibuster.She called on lawmakers in the upper chamber to adopt institutional discipline as she seemed outraged with the fact that Manchin waited for so long before announcing his position, letting the White House and House Democrats hold lengthy negotiations.Earlier, progressive Democrats criticized their own party leaders for allowing the separation of the BBB plan from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, passed in both chambers and signed by the president last month.On Sunday, Manchin told the Fox News that he would not support the bill., saying he has tried everything that is possible." In a statement, released after the interview, Manchin said the big social spending would seriously damage the country's ability to withstand the coronavirus pandemic and geopolitical threats.The lawmaker was severely critisized by his fellow Democrats. While negotiations with Manchin were difficult, the White House hoped over the recent days that they would eventually reach an agreement.White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that Manchin's remarks have breached his commitment to find common ground as he came to the White House several days before to submit a written outline for a Build Back Better bill that was the same size and scope as the President's framework, and covered many of the same priorities.While that framework was missing key priorities, we believed it could lead to a compromise acceptable to all, she said.Last week, after speaking with Manchin, Biden said the senator had reaffirmed "his support for Build Better-Than-It funding at the level of the framework plan," which the president announced in September.

astrodetective More boring anti male rhetoric from these aspiring power wimmin 0

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Alexandra Kashirina

Alexandra Kashirina

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Alexandra Kashirina

us, us senate, sen. joe manchin (d-west virginia), alexandria ocasio-cortez, build back better
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/gas-futures-in-europe-hit-new-all-time-high-above-2150-per-1000-cubic-meters-1091699523.html

Gas Futures in Europe Hit New All-Time High Above $2,150 Per 1,000 Cubic Meters

Gas Futures in Europe Hit New All-Time High Above $2,150 Per 1,000 Cubic Meters

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The price of European gas futures is growing by over 27% on Tuesday, exceeding $2,150 per thousand cubic meters for the first time in... 21.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-21T16:04+0000

2021-12-21T16:04+0000

2021-12-21T16:15+0000

europe

gas prices

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The price of January futures on the Dutch index TTF opened the trading session on Tuesday near the $1,800 mark. As of 15:04 GMT, the price had risen to $2,187, which is 27% higher than Monday's finish of $1,716.7.Earlier in the day, gas futures had already topped a record, reaching $2,004 per 1,000 cubic metres.Since autumn, Europe has been experiencing skyrocketing natural gas prices. Gas futures surged to an at the time all-time high of $1,900 per thousand cubic metres in early October after the post-pandemic recovery in Europe spurred demand and a rush to fill gas storage ahead of the winter season.

Hampar Tokatlian Let the EU lapdogs see the future without NS2. 11

4Justice The brilliant tacticians in the EU have everything under control. First, rely too much on wind and solar, then let the storages go empty and then refuse Nord 2. May I suggest a few more intelligent moves. Ask all citizens to open all their windows and turn the thermostat up all the way in their homes. Burn gas in open fields and ask people to come out and warm their hands up. Blow up all gas lines coming from Russia. Finally, offer the US to pay them 3 times the amount for LNG shipped all the way from the US. Maybe my ideas are too late, already thought of by these geniuses. 8

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europe, gas prices
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/hong-kong-brushes-aside-west-concerns-about-its-parliamentary-elections-1091690011.html

Hong Kong Brushes Aside Western Concerns About Its Parliamentary Elections

Hong Kong Brushes Aside Western Concerns About Its Parliamentary Elections

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Hong Kong government on Tuesday condemned attempts by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States to... 21.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-21T09:02+0000

2021-12-21T09:02+0000

2021-12-21T09:04+0000

china

hong kong

asia-pacific

elections

election

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The statement stressed that any external or internal destructive force and political conspiracy trying to interfere with Hong Kong's internal affairs would be addressed and prevented.On Sunday, the first parliamentary elections under the reformed electoral system took place in Hong Kong. The vote, held under the "patriots only" principle, was won by pro-Beijing candidates. A day after, foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US in a joint statement expressed their "grave concern" over the "erosion of democratic elements" of the Special Administrative Region's electoral system. Hong Kong's reformed electoral system eliminated any meaningful political opposition, they said.The elections held under the reformed electoral system fully implemented the "patriots" only principle, and the legislators elected on 19 December came from different backgrounds demonstrating "political inclusiveness" of the improved electoral system, according to the statement.Under the "patriots administering Hong Kong" system, only 20 out of the 90 legislative seats were elected by the direct voting, while the rest were picked by the Election Committee or groups of interest such as trade and business.The new composition of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong will officially begin its operation on January 1 and the first meeting will take place on 12 January.The election was originally set to take place on 6 September 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, the Chinese parliament passed the reform plan for the Hong Kong electoral system, which changed the procedures for electing the head of the city's administration and forming the legislative body.The changes prompted criticism from a number of Western countries that believe the overhaul undermines Hong Kong's independence. China has repeatedly stated that matters relating to Hong Kong are an internal affair and has warned against external pressure.

china

hong kong

asia-pacific

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china, hong kong, asia-pacific, elections, election
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/interior-minister-hostage-taker-in-paris-arrested-no-one-injured-1091690178.html

Interior Minister: Hostage Taker in Paris Arrested, No One Injured

Interior Minister: Hostage Taker in Paris Arrested, No One Injured

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - An armed man, who held two women hostage in Paris was arrested, no one was injured, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on... 21.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-21T09:07+0000

2021-12-21T09:07+0000

2021-12-21T09:07+0000

france

europe

paris

hostage

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The minister thanked the police for carrying out the operation.A Sputnik correspondent reported from the scene on Monday evening, that the attacker took two women hostage in a shop in the d'Aligre quarter of the French capital. According to the Paris police, the hostage-taker released one of them six hours later.The man is known to be mentally ill, according to the French BMFTV news channel.

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paris

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france, europe, paris, hostage
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/libya-is-readying-itself-for-elections-but-are-they-even-possible-1091688454.html

Libya is Readying Itself for Elections But Are They Even Possible?

Libya is Readying Itself for Elections But Are They Even Possible?

The oil-rich nation was supposed to head to the polls in 2019 to elect a new president, but the date was postponed due to the raging war in the country. Now with the battles finally over, many are hopeful the race will create unity, but experts have already warned it might only escalate the situation.

2021-12-21T09:28+0000

2021-12-21T09:28+0000

2021-12-21T09:28+0000

libya

khalifa haftar

africa

elections

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On 24 December 2021, 2.5 million Libyan voters will flock to polling stations across the nation to choose their next president.Libya descended into chaos after the outbreak of a NATO-backed revolt in 2011 that toppled then-leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was subsequently murdered by rebels.Since then, the country has largely been split. In the East, it has been under the control of General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army. In the West, it fell under the internationally recognised Government of National Accord, while the South of the oil-rich nation has been in the hands of various tribes and a number of extremist groups.December's general elections are intended to help the North African nation to move past the decade of violence and establish unity. But taking into account the current atmosphere in Libya, there is no guarantee they will be held.What are the issues plaguing Libyans and their dreams of stability? Here are the three main obtacles.Technical DifficultiesWith less than a week left until the nation heads to the polls, the official list of candidates hasn't been released yet. The names of the contenders for the top position were supposed to be revealed 15 days before the elections but on 11 December it was announced that the deadline had been pushed back indefinitely.Some of the names have already been unveiled. General Haftar is one of them. Another presidential candidate is the son of the slain leader, Seif Al Islam Al Gaddafi. But the identities of dozens of others are still a mystery and if this is the case, Libyans will find it hard, if not impossible, to determine their next head of state.Acute Security IssuesThe ouster of Muammar Gaddafi created a political void that was soon filled by various terrorist groups including Daesh*. Although their presence in the oil-rich country was largely eliminated in 2016, pockets of extremists still exist in Libya and they continue to pose a threat to the nation's stability.In June, Daesh* militants carried out a terrorist act in the southwestern Libyan city of Sebha, killing a number of military officers and injuring several others.The dire security situation has placed Libya on the list of the world's most dangerous countries, and under such conditions it will be extremely difficult to maintain stability amid national polls.Bitter RivalsSo far, 96 contenders have registered for the elections. Many represent the Government of National Accord and its affiliates. Others belong to the camp of General Haftar and his allies.Each of those camps is determined to establish full control over the country that ranks 9th in the world for its proven oil resources. Neither of them is prepared to admit defeat and let the other side take over, something that has already sparked fears that the upcoming polls will plunge Libya into yet more political and security turmoil.The involvement of foreign powers in Libya also poses a problem, with each pulling in its own direction.Turkey, for example, has an agreement with the Government of National Accord that provided Ankara with access to the rich oil reserves located in its area in exchange for military support against the forces of General Haftar.Egypt, on the other hand, has largely backed Haftar because it believed he would restore stability in the region, eliminate the pockets of extremism and keep the Turks, Cairo's main regional challengers, at bay.Those players, as well as other regional and international players, will be watching the presidential race closely. The second round of elections is expected on 24 January. If everything goes according to plan, the name of the new president will be revealed shortly thereafter.*Terrorist organisation banned in Russia and many other nations

libya

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Elizabeth Blade

Elizabeth Blade

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Elizabeth Blade

libya, khalifa haftar, africa, elections
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/london-murder-linked-to-swedish-assassination-bid-in-which-target-dropped-his-baby-uk-trial-told-1091698019.html

London Murder Linked to Swedish Assassination Bid in Which Target Dropped His Baby, UK Trial Told

London Murder Linked to Swedish Assassination Bid in Which Target Dropped His Baby, UK Trial Told

Six men are on trial for their various alleged roles in the murder of a Swedish gangster who was shot dead in London in front of his wife and child on Christmas Eve 2019. The jury has been hearing evidence about violent rivalry between two organised crime networks in Sweden.

2021-12-21T14:26+0000

2021-12-21T14:26+0000

2021-12-21T14:26+0000

london

sweden

malmo

uk

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A detective leading the investigation into the murder of a Swedish-Albanian gangster in London has told the trial how the killing was linked to a feud between rival crime gangs in the Swedish city of Malmo.Flamur Beqiri, 36, was shot eight times in the back as he returned to his home in Battersea, south London, with his girlfriend and young son on Christmas Eve 2019.Four men deny murdering Beqiri - who was known to friends as Alex - and two others plead not guilty to perverting the course of justice.Anis Hemissi, 31, Estevan Pino-Munizaga, 35, Tobias Andersson, 32, and Bawer Karaer, 23, all deny murder.Kajsa Delmar Wigstrom, who leads an organised crime unit in southern Sweden, appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday. 21 December, by videolink from her home near Malmo and was asked a series of questions by prosecutor Peter Ratliff.The jury has been told the killing was linked to an escalating series of violence since 2018, which included the murder of the girlfriend of Mr Beqiris friend, Naief Adawi, in the Swedish city of Malmo in August 2019.Detective Inspector Wigstrom was asked about assassination attempt on Mr Adawi.Mr Ratliff asked her if, when the assassins ran towards him and shot at him, Mr Adawi dropped his newborn baby daughter and ran off.Thats correct, she replied.She confirmed that the childs mother, Karoline Hakim, was shot dead by the two gunmen but her boyfriend, Mr Adawi, survived and got away.The jury was also told that Mr Adawi was among 15 people who were recently charged by Swedish police with a series of crimes, including attempted murder and conspiracy to murder.Mr Ratliff asked: Do those he allegedly planned to kill include those believed to be linked to the attempt on his life?Thats correct, she replied.She confirmed Beqiri was born in Albania, came to Sweden as a child and became a Swedish citizen in 1994.Mr Ratliff asked: Is it the understanding of the Swedish police that Mr Beqiri was involved in serious and organised crime?Thats correct, replied Detective Inspector Wigstrom.He asked: Was he suspected of involvement in international drug smuggling since 2007?Thats correct, she replied.The prosecution claim Beqiris murder was linked to a Swedish underworld feud which had claimed several other lives.The jury heard two individuals who had been investigated in connection with the murder of Ms Hakim, Tarek Bekar and Gabriel Hassoun, were are also responsible for part of the money chain that led to the booking in London of accommodation in July, done by Pino-Munizaga.Mr Pino-Munizaga allegedly booked Airbnb accommodation at an apartment in Battersea which was later used by the gunman who killed Mr Beqiri.The trial continues.

mandrake The cops in sweden are about as efficient as a broken flashlight with no batteries! With other words, useless! 0

Bonny King A man that turns his back to wife and child deserves what's coming 0

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london

sweden

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london, sweden, malmo, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/new-docs-clinton-2016-campaign-investigated-in-durham-probe-into-trump-russia-inquiry-1091696326.html

New Docs: Clinton 2016 Campaign Investigated in Durham Probe Into Trump-Russia Inquiry

New Docs: Clinton 2016 Campaign Investigated in Durham Probe Into Trump-Russia Inquiry

A new motion by Special Counsel John Durham says that the Clinton 2016 campaign and its former employees are currently represented by lawyers "in matters before the special counsel" and may potentially be called to testify at Igor Danchenko trial.

2021-12-21T13:16+0000

2021-12-21T13:16+0000

2021-12-21T13:16+0000

investigation

donald trump

world

us

opinion

hillary clinton

clinton campaign

fbi

christopher steele

steele dossier

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John Durham is apparently investigating Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and its former employees, according to a special counsel motion filed on 17 December 2021. The motion stems from the case of Igor Danchenko, a primary subsource of ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the author of an uncorroborated "dirty dossier" on Trump. The former British spook compiled the dossier at the request of Fusion GPS, which, in turn, was hired by the Clinton campaign's legal firm Perkins Coie.Danchenko was arrested on 4 November in Northern Virginia on a five-count indictment by Durham, who is looking into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Durham's latest motion discusses a potential conflict of interest because of Danchenko changing his legal team: now Steele's former subsource is represented by Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears.What's more interesting, the blog highlights, is that in addition to their representation of Danchenko, "a separate lawyer at the firm is currently representing the 2016 'Hillary for America' presidential campaign (the 'Clinton Campaign'), as well as multiple former employees of that campaign, in matters before the Special Counsel".The Reactionary's author, Techno Fog  a nom de plume for an American lawyer and writer - draws attention to yet another excerpt in the motion which indicates that members of the Clinton campaign may also potentially be "called to testify" at Danchenko's trial.According to Techno Fog, "it seems like the Clinton Campaign's involvement in the dossier might be deeper than anyone really knows".Previously, Durham's unusually lengthy indictment of ex-Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann shed light on Clinton campaign operatives' communications with a team of researchers who tried to link the Trump Organisation to Russia's Alfa Bank. The FBI later debunked the Trump-Alfa bank story as groundless.The indictment of Danchenko also focuses on Steele's subsource's communications with longtime Clinton aide Charles H. Dolan Jr., an American political strategist. Durham pointed out at least one instance of Dolan feeding false information to Danchenko. Then this false information was repeated in the Steele Dossier.Techno Fog presumes that Hillary Clinton's campaign could have received updates both in the Trump-Alfa bank story and Steele's "dirty dossier". But that is not all the lawyer notes, wondering whether Clinton campaign operatives were also "informing" the work of the investigators.Techno Fog notes that a similar assumption was cited by The New York Times in September 2021. The newspaper highlighted that "some of the questions that Mr Durham's team has been asking in recent months  including of witnesses it subpoenaed before a grand jury, according to people familiar with some of the sessions  suggest he has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the FBI about Russia and Mr Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign".Assuming that this is potentially the case it is hardly surprising why the Clinton campaign and its former employees have entered Special Counsel John Durham's crosshairs.

https://sputniknews.com/20211106/analyst-as-steele-dossier-source-charged-with-lying-all-roads-lead-to-hillary-clinton-campaign-1090517273.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211110/steele-dossier-isnt-russian-disinformation-but-a-clinton-campaign-product-journo-says-1090632787.html

TruePatriot And, so the axe begins to fall..... 1

1

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investigation, donald trump, world, us, opinion, hillary clinton, clinton campaign, fbi, christopher steele, steele dossier, john durham
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/not-tiktok-alone-us-china-sanctions-war--shifts-to-drone-manufacturers--big-data---report-1091683155.html

Not TikTok Alone: US-China Sanctions War Shifts to Drone Manufacturers & Big Data - Report

Not TikTok Alone: US-China Sanctions War Shifts to Drone Manufacturers & Big Data - Report

As numerous critics in the US claim that Chinese drone manufacturers, such as SZ DJI Technology Co., are sending reams of sensitive data to Chinese intelligence agencies, ranging from essential infrastructure such as bridges and dams to personal data like heart rates and facial recognition, American politicians are trying to end the company's hegemony, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

2021-12-21T05:42+0000

2021-12-21T05:42+0000

2021-12-21T05:42+0000

drone warfare

military & intelligence

us

china

sanctions

drone

us-china relations

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As numerous critics in the US claim that Chinese drone manufacturers, such as SZ DJI Technology Co., are sending reams of sensitive data to Chinese intelligence agencies, ranging from essential infrastructure such as bridges and dams to personal data like heart rates and facial recognition, American politicians are trying to end the company's hegemony, Bloomberg reported on Monday.According to the report, a bipartisan effort is currently being applied to a bill that would prohibit the federal government from purchasing DJI drones, while a member of the Federal Communications Commission wants the company's goods removed from the nation's market entirely.The Shenzhen-based drone manufacturer has become the face of what the US perceives as one of the most important threats to the nation, that is Beijing's capacity to access sensitive data on millions of Americans.Over the course of the past couple of months, former top officials from both the Obama and Trump administrations have cautioned that Beijing may be collecting personal data on citizens of competing countries while keeping data on China's 1.4 billion people strictly private.According to Oona Hathaway, a Yale Law School professor who served in the Pentagon under President Obama, and who wrote an article in Foreign Affairs earlier this month, "each new piece of information, by itself, is relatively unimportant" for the purposes of surveillance and monitoring.Per another report from late November by Matt Pottinger, a former deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been far ahead of the West in grasping the importance of data in achieving both an economic and military advantage. Given this, the war for data and using data is certainly at the centre of the strategic conflict between the US and China, and it has the potential to transform the global economy in the coming decades, especially because of the internet of things, where everything from vehicles to armbands is now gathering and transmitting data. And as scholars and media experts note, harnessing that data is essential for dominating technology like artificial intelligence, which will drive the modern economy, as well as exploiting the flaws of strategic foes.According to Bloomberg's take on the issue, citing Paul Triolo, a former US government official who specialises in global technology policy at the risk consultancy Eurasia Group, data security concerns "will be a defining issue for the next decade" as technological improvements lead to "explosive demand" for ever more bits of information. He then told the news agency that the result will very certainly be a complete bifurcation of the internet, reflecting the different ideologies of the two nations.The Great Data WarIt is no secret that data security worries are already fracturing manufacturing supply chains and financial markets, with fears that governments could use data obtained from smartphone apps, medical devices, and consumer products like drones to utilise information as a weapon. In the past couple of years, both the US and China have put stronger safeguards in place to protect their citizens' data, especially from each other. In 2020, the Trump administration honed in on the issue, announcing plans to completely ban two of China's most popular apps, TikTok and WeChat, while pressing allies to embrace a "Clean Network" free of Chinese firms and equipment.And the Biden administration's decision to halt American investments in DJI come a year after Trump banned it from obtaining parts from the US. Trump signed an act in 2019 preventing the Defence Department from buying Chinese-made drones and drone parts. DJI was then placed on the Commerce Department's Entity List a year later, preventing US suppliers from selling to it without an exemption. At the same time, according to the report, Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) have co-sponsored the bipartisan American Security Drone Act, which would prohibit any federal purchases of DJI drones, while Senate Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has proposed identical restrictions in a separate bill.As one might think, one of the main reasons behind targeting DJI is that the company virtually owns the US drone market. According to the FCC data cited in the Bloomberg report, the Chinese company controls more than half of the market, and a separate study reportedly estimates it sells nearly 95% of consumer-targeted unmanned aerial vehicles priced between $350 and $2,000.Since Trump's decisive actions against the Chinese entities, the bans on TikTok and WeChat have been lifted, with President Biden ordering a broad review to come up with recommendations on how to protect sensitive American data. His administration has not yet released the findings or defined whether data constitutes a national security concern.'Huawei on Wings'In an October interview, one FCC commissioner, Brendan Carr, suggested that the agency explore a block on DJI equipment approvals, citing the "vast amounts of sensitive data" collected by the company's drones.Carr warned that DJI may be a "Huawei on Wings", referring to the Chinese telecommunications behemoth that the US has tried to stifle with penalties over espionage concerns in recent years.China has repeatedly slammed measures by the US to deny its companies access to particular technologies and markets, accusing Washington of exploiting the notion of national security "to hobble Chinese companies". Yet, according to multiple statements, politicians in Beijing have emphasised the importance of becoming self-sufficient in crucial technologies such as sophisticated processors in order to reduce reliance on Western technology.Per Bloomberg, concerns about the security threats allegedly posed by DJI's drones are starting to hurt the company's bottom line. The firm's stake in the $2 billion global commercial drone industry fell to 54% in the first half of 2021, down from 74% in 2018, the news agency noted, citing a report by the private research firm DroneAnalyst.Kay Wackwitz, CEO of Drone Industry Insights, however, told the outlet that the nation's attacks on the company are more about safeguarding America's ability to manufacture drones than data concerns."The amount of data is way too big, so where is the actual harm? To me, it appears to be a reason to push the Chinese manufacturers out of the market", he said.

https://sputniknews.com/20211217/china-deplores-new-us-sanctions-against-xinjiang-tech-companies-1091613326.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210602/no-malicious-code-or-intent-pentagon-audit-reportedly-clears-two-china-made-drones-for-govt-use-1083058225.html

Kiwi Can't wait to see China retaliate and ban Apple. 2

Hess What a BS? Americans politicians have turned into retard homosexuals who can not think. 1

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/pentagon-struck-new-contract-seeking-ways-to-counter-russian--chinese-hypersonics-report-says-1091700632.html

Pentagon Struck New Contract Seeking Ways to Counter Russian & Chinese Hypersonics, Report Says

Pentagon Struck New Contract Seeking Ways to Counter Russian & Chinese Hypersonics, Report Says

In December 2021, Pentagon signed a research contract with aerospace company Stratolaunch to understand how to engage and intercept hypersonic threats.

2021-12-21T17:07+0000

2021-12-21T17:07+0000

2021-12-21T17:07+0000

news

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us

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asia & pacific

china

hypersonic weapons

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hypersonic glider

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A December contract struck by the US Missile Defence Agency (MDA) and the aerospace company Stratolaunch is aimed at matching and defeating Russian and Chinese hypersonic arms, suggests Asia Times' contributor Gabriel Honrada.Stratolaunch announced on 8 December that it had concluded a research contract with the MDA, the Pentagon's section that works on ballistic missile defence systems for the US.On 15 December, Stratolaunch released further updates concerning the new project. The firm is preparing to complete its next set of Roc carrier aircraft test flights. In April 2021, the company's carrier aircraft  the world's largest airplane which is designed to launch hypersonic and space vehicles  performed its second test flight over California's Mojave Desert.What's more important, the firm is planning to examine and assess the applicability of a "re-usable hypersonic testbed system for Missile Defense Systems (MDS) applications".It boasts of making considerable progress in building its first two Talon-A test vehicles: TA-0 and TA-1. The two gliders are rocket-powered, autonomous, and reusable. Launched from Roc carrier aircraft, they are capable of carrying customised payloads at speeds above Mach 5 (3806.04 miles per hour), according to the producer.The TA-1 is expected to start its power-on testing by the end of year, "keeping the company on track to begin hypersonic flight testing in 2022 and to deliver services to government and commercial customers in 2023", according to Stratolaunch.Gabriel Honrada notes that the MDA-Stratolaunch contract is the latest move in the US efforts to develop "hypersonic weapons and countermeasures", suggesting that Talon-A vehicles would simulate nothing other than Russian and Chinese hypersonic gliders.Earlier this month, The Drive's Joseph Trevithick voiced a similar idea observing that the Talon-A design "could be viable for use as a surrogate for hypersonic weapons that use unpowered boost-glide vehicles, such as Russia's Avangard or China's DF-17".Trevithick also compared Talon-A with "the mysterious fractional orbital bombardment system-like weapon", or FOBS, that China allegedly tested earlier this year, according to the Financial Times. Beijing vehemently denied testing any hypersonic vehicles of that kind and shredded the FT's October 2021 report.However, the Pentagon and American defence observers have raised the alarm over the alleged Chinese FOBS. First, the supposed weapons system is hard to detect and track; second, it is also difficult to quickly attribute such a system to a particular country. On top of this, "defenses and tracking sensors against that sort of threat do not presently exist [in the US]", acknowledges The Hill.The US is currently racing against the clock to catch up with its geopolitical competitors, according to Politico. Last month, Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations, told the Halifax International Security Forum that the Pentagon is "not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programmes". Although the DoD's programmes are up and running, the US Army "isnt slated to field its first missile until 2024", Politico underscored.

https://sputniknews.com/20211130/us-space-force-raises-alarm-over-chinas-orbital-hypersonic-weapons-us-cant-combat-1091148959.html

shahid khan seems they have lost an arms race that they didnt know they started ? 4

Princewill Ejekwu With this latest advancement in hypersonic arms race,it may take the Yankees more than 2 decades to catch-up on advance hypersonic weapons with Russia and china. 4

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/pentagon-to-report-to-congress-on-missing-weapons-following-media-investigation-1091702021.html

Pentagon to Report to Congress on Missing Weapons Following Media Investigation

Pentagon to Report to Congress on Missing Weapons Following Media Investigation

The reform demanding more accountability on missing weapons from the Pentagon is included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that was passed by Congress earlier in the month and is now expected to be signed by President Joe Biden.

2021-12-21T21:51+0000

2021-12-21T21:51+0000

2021-12-21T21:51+0000

us

weapons

army

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https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/105742/15/1057421507_0:58:1920:1138_1920x0_80_0_0_6774d2ab4a56e443da5b4679476ad596.jpg

The US Department of Defense will change its approach to keeping track of missing weapons hitting America's streets, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.The reforms under the NDAA follow an AP investigation into missing weapons that later hit US streets, among them assault rifles, machine guns, handguns, armour-piercing grenades, artillery shells, mortars and others.The Pentagon must now assemble an annual report to Congress on the loss of weapons. In order to do so, the military will reform the way it accounts for weapons and explosives.Among the coming reforms will be an overhaul of the procedure of military response to law enforcement investigations, as well as a long-awaited digitization of records. Particularly, according to Army spokesman Lt. Col. Brandon Kelley, the US Army is now developing an app that would search the property record database of each service. The Marine Corps said it will review its internal procedures for improved oversight and increased inspection of units. In the Navy, units will be required to notify a higher level of authority when reporting the loss of a weapon, and the Air Force is also said to have replaced its munitions property books with a commercial network application.The new NDAA requirements envisage the Defense Secretary reporting confirmed thefts or recovery of weapons to the National Crime Information Center, run by the FBI. The reports highlighting the problem of weapons missing from the US military emerged in June, with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark Milley saying that he would mull a systematic fix" in how the military accounts for its weapons, even though the Pentagon claimed at the time that they could account for over 99.9% of firearms.The June report pointed to how the Army could not account for over 1,500 weapons, with many reportedly later used in violent crime.

None of this Matters They'll show up in the hands of "moderate rebels" somewhere soon enough 6

TruePatriot Does this mean the US is going to ask Daesh to give them back? 4

5

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/president-putin-attends-russian-defence-ministry-board-meeting-1091689562.html

President Putin Attends Russian Defence Ministry Board Meeting

President Putin Attends Russian Defence Ministry Board Meeting

The event is gathering top military officials, government members, and representatives of public organisations to evaluate the progress of the Russian military... 21.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-21T10:33+0000

2021-12-21T10:33+0000

2021-12-21T10:33+0000

russia

vladimir putin

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Sputnik is live from Moscow as Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in this year's final expanded meeting of the Russian Defence Ministry Board. The annual event is held to evaluate the results for the country and set goals for the military for the next year. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu is expected to deliver a speech on the development of Russian military infrastructure, rearmament, and the outcome of military exercises held over the year.Follow Sputnik's Live Feed to Find Out More!

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russia, vladimir putin, 
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/russia-pushes-security-demands-gabriel-boric-wins-chile-election-israel-backs-off-iran-attack-1091681796.html

Russia Pushes Security Demands; Gabriel Boric Wins Chile Election; Israel Backs Off Iran Attack

Russia Pushes Security Demands; Gabriel Boric Wins Chile Election; Israel Backs Off Iran Attack

Tensions rise in Eastern Europe as Russia pushes for an immediate answer to their demands of a security zone on their border. 21.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-21T07:32+0000

2021-12-21T07:32+0000

2021-12-21T09:33+0000

stepan bandera

julian assange

israel

iran

sen. joe manchin (d-west virginia)

kamala harris

jcpoa

the critical hour

radio

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Russia Pushes Security Demands; Gabriel Boric Wins Chile Election; Israel Backs off Iran Attack Tensions rise in Eastern Europe as Russia pushes for an immediate answer to their demands of a security zone on their border.

Dr. Linwood Tauheed, associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, joins us to discuss the death of the "Build Back Better" legislation. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has said that he will not support the legislation, signaling the death of President Biden's signature legislation. Also, Vice President Kamala Harris gets heated in an interview with Charlamagne Tha God, and President Biden's approval rating dips as independents abandon his regime in droves.Mark Sleboda, Moscow-based international relations security analyst, joins us to discuss the tense situation in Eastern Europe. Tensions rise in Eastern Europe as Russia pushes for an immediate answer to their demands of a security zone on their border. The Eurasian power is indicating that they are prepared to act firmly in the event their demands are ignored. Has NATO pushed the zone of military aggression too far?Dan Kovalik, writer, author, and lawyer, joins us to discuss Chile's election results. Chile's elections have resulted in another win for left-leaning candidates in the Global South. Center-left millennial Gabriel Boric defeated a far right-wing candidate who tied his legacy to the murderous Pinochet regime that was installed in a US-backed coup in the early 1970s.Dan Lazare, investigative journalist and author of "America's Undeclared War," joins us to discuss Ukraine. Lazare joins us to discuss his article about the legacy of Nazi collaboration in Ukraine and its ties to modern-day political movements. Also, we discuss the US empire's willing support of the Ukrainian Nazi movement and its work to protect them from exposure.Jim Kavanagh, writer at thepolemicist.net and CounterPunch author of "Danger in Society: Against Vaccine Passports, and Branko Marcetic, Jacobin staff writer and author of "Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden," joins us to discuss Julian Assange. MSNBC has printed a new article in which they revive several debunked allegations putting together Donald Trump, Julian Assange, and Russia. Also, we discuss The Guardian's assertive effort to spread false and misleading information about the beleaguered publisher.Yolian Ogbu, member of the Black Alliance for Peace and Horn of Africa Pan-Africans for Liberation and Solidarity, joins us to discuss Africa. US hawks are pushing to use humanitarian motives as an excuse to wage a colonial regime change war against Ethiopia. Also, we discuss the US policy of intervention and imperialism regarding Ethiopia.Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emeritus at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California, joins us to discuss Assange. Cohn argues that the recent revelations that the US plotted to kidnap and kill Julian Assange should be enough to prohibit the publisher from being extradited to the United States.Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, joins us to discuss Iran. The JCPOA seems effectively dead as Iranian diplomats report that the US is not making a legitimate effort to rejoin the deal. Also, Israeli officials are dialing back their assertions that they are planning a war with Iran.We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/russian-army-is-global-leader-in-modernity-defence-minister-shoigu-says-1091698673.html

Russian Army is Global Leader in Modernity, Defence Minister Shoigu Says

Russian Army is Global Leader in Modernity, Defence Minister Shoigu Says

Russian national security spendings envisaged for 2021 were estimated to be 3.1 trillion rubles (some $13,5 billion).

2021-12-21T15:30+0000

2021-12-21T15:30+0000

2021-12-21T19:07+0000

military & intelligence

russia

defense

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Russia is a world leader in terms of modernity of weapons and equipment, despite only being the ninth in the world when it comes to military budget, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.The minister delivered his remarks during Tuesday's extended meeting of the Russian Ministry of Defence that was attended by President Vladimir Putin.Shoigu also noted that the military potential of the Russian Army increased by 12.8% in the last year and added that he had ordered to conduct the strategic military exercises "Vostok" (East) and "Grom" (Thunder) in 2022.Additionally, according to the defence minister, the share of modern weapons in the nuclear triad of Russia has grown to a historic record and is 89.1%.The minister offered a look into several major Russian military accomplishments. Among other things, he revealed that tests of the long-duration Altius-RU drone have been completed and the supply of Inokhodets and Forpost reconnaissance and strike complexes to the armed forces has begun.The Russian Navy also conducted a first-ever covert deployment of ships in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean during exercises, Shoigu said.The minister added that the Umka complex Arctic expedition, which has no analogues in the world, had been carried out in the Franz Josef Land archipelago. According to Shoigu, in conditions of high latitudes and low temperatures, all weapons confirmed their technical characteristics.He also stated that Russia has reliably covered its borders in the Arctic from foreign aggression through the construction of military bases. Particularly, the minister said two military bases have been created in the region of the Arctic islands, archipelagos, and in remote areas of the coast. Additionally, the reconstruction of five airfields able to receive all types of aircraft is almost finished.

Sputnik Brat Shoigu, tovaris, dont LIE! 73%+ of all equipment is totally modern. Check nubmers! 1

landauroj Then prove that is not just 'bla', 'bla'. Do something that shows your teeth. 1

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/russian-mod-on-nukes-in-belarus-all-options-on-table-if-nato-refuses-to-discuss-security-proposals-1091691606.html

Moscow on Nukes in Belarus: All Options on Table if NATO Refuses to Discuss Security Proposals

Moscow on Nukes in Belarus: All Options on Table if NATO Refuses to Discuss Security Proposals

Russian MoD on Nukes in Belarus: All Options on Table if NATO Refuses to Discuss Security Proposals

2021-12-21T09:49+0000

2021-12-21T09:49+0000

2021-12-21T10:29+0000

belarus

russia

us

ukraine

security

nato

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All options, including the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus, will be considered in the event of NATO's refusal to discuss the security proposals, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.The ministry also underlined that sending US military personnel to Ukraine will escalate the situation, noting that Moscow hopes Washington understands the dangerous consequences of doing so.Aside from this, Rudenko said that Russia sees no need to involve Ukraine in the negotiations with NATO and the United States on the security guarantees. Rudenko said that Moscow is waiting for an official response from the United States and NATO on the security proposals - which include the demand that NATO not put offensive weapons in the countries neighbouring Russia.Simmering TensionsThe West continues to accuse Russia of "amassing troops" in the vicinity of the Ukrainian border and "preparing to invade" its neighbour. Moscow, for its part, has repeatedly said that Russian troops move within the country's borders and do not pose a threat to anyone. With tensions heating up, Belarusian officials warned Western countries that the Baltic States will be "swept off the face of the Earth" should a serious military conflict unfold in the region.Belarusian Security Council deputy chief Maj. Gen. Vladimir Archakov accused the Baltic countries and other Western nations of aggravating regional tensions, particularly pointing to Washington's use of Polish airspace to conduct optical-electronic reconnaissance of Belarusian territory.Earlier, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that Minsk will suggest that Russia deploy nuclear weapons in Belarusian territory if NATO does the same in Poland.Moscow has consistently underlined that it is up to the West to take action in order to de-escalate the situation and negotiate the security proposals that Russia rolled out last week, demanding that the NATO alliance give up the idea of placing offensive weapons in Eastern Europe.While several states, like Norway and Sweden, have already blasted the security proposals as "completely unrealistic" and "unacceptable", others, like China, welcomed them as something that could reduce the risk of conflict.On Monday, the US announced that it is ready to engage in diplomacy with Russia, stressing that the dialogue must be based on reciprocity and "address our concerns about Russias actions".

https://sputniknews.com/20211218/belarusian-official-warns-baltic-states-would-be-completely-wiped-out-in-event-of-european-war-1091629076.html

discoversci It's about time, someone stands up and shows that NATO is unwelcomed. NATO - Notorious American Terrorist Organization. a.k.a. primitive retards... 10

Charlie McD It's only fair. 5

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Daria Bedenko

belarus, russia, us, ukraine, security, nato
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/school-teacher-fired-in-england-over-footage-showing-her-kicking-horse-1091693662.html

School Teacher Fired in England Over Footage Showing Her Kicking Horse

School Teacher Fired in England Over Footage Showing Her Kicking Horse

According to local media, the footage was recorded in November by an anti-hunting group and then posted on social media, where it sparked outrage. The womans... 21.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-21T12:44+0000

2021-12-21T12:44+0000

2021-12-21T12:45+0000

england

united kingdom

society

animal cruelty

horse

schoolteacher

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A 37-year-old primary school teacher has been fired after she was identified as the individual who kicked and slapped a horse in Leicestershire, England, local media reported. Sarah Moulds, who was a senior leader and class three team teacher at her local Somerby School was sacked by Mowbray Education Trust following a six-week investigation.The woman also held a voluntary position at the Pony Club, which claims to be the "largest association of young riders in the world" with 30,000 members in the UK alone. The organisation has condemned her actions and also axed her."The welfare of horses and ponies is of the utmost importance to The Pony Club, therefore the lady in question has been removed from her voluntary position as a team organiser for a Branch", the organisation said in a statement.A neighbour of Sarah Moulds told the Mail on Sunday that the woman was forced to move to another location after she received vast amounts of "vile" abuse on social media as well as death threats.Mrs Moulds uncle David Kirkham described the woman as "a very upright person, a fantastic person who absolutely loves her horses". He argued that the incident captured on the video has nothing to do with animal cruelty and claimed that his niece was berating the animal.However, experts seem to disagree. Zoologist Megan McCubbin described Sarah Moulds actions as "disgusting behaviour". The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals described the video as "really upsetting" and said it will launch an investigation into the incident.

Cedric Dankworth Horses have been known to remember mistreatment and even take revenge. 0

Nonyank Ok horse, swing around and show that Bitc- what a kick REALLY IS! 0

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Max Gorbachev

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/swedish-defence-minister-on-russias-security-requirements-unacceptable-1091686496.html

Swedish Defence Minister on Russia's Security Requirements: 'Unacceptable'

Swedish Defence Minister on Russia's Security Requirements: 'Unacceptable'

Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist has called Russia's recent security requirements to NATO and the US, spelled out in a proposal published last Friday, 17 December, "unacceptable".

2021-12-21T06:21+0000

2021-12-21T06:21+0000

2021-12-21T06:21+0000

military & intelligence

russia

united states

sweden

peter hultqvist

nato

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Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist has called Russia's recent security requirements to NATO and the US, spelled out in a proposal published last Friday, 17 December, "unacceptable".According to Hultqvist, Russia's requirements would mean that Sweden would be unable to implement current security policy.One of the foremost requirements is for NATO to stop its further enlargement. This would preclude Sweden and Finland, currently non-aligned as a matter of tradition, from potentially joining the alliance, which several of their parties, including the Swedish Moderates and the Finnish National Coalition Party, advocate for. Hultqvist went so far as to venture that Russia's reqiurements are contrary to international law, according to Dagens Nyheter."Small nations must have the right to make their own decisions about their own future. Any attempt to build spheres of interest where some countries are considered to have some kind of supremacy over others is unacceptable", Hultqvist said.Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt earlier called Russia's security proposals "completely unrealistic".On 17 December, the Russian Foreign Ministry published two draft agreements on security guarantees between the Russian Federation, the US, and NATO.Among other things, NATO is asked to scale down its military activities in those nations that became member states after 1997 and stop making advances to former Soviet republics. At the same time, both NATO and Russia are required to refrain from to deploying intermediate and short-range missiles within striking distance of each other. Similarly, both parties are required not to conduct exercises above the brigade level near an agreed upon border zone, to regularly exchange information on one another's military drills, and to establish hot lines for emergency contacts.Despite assurances of non-expansion that were provided to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, NATO has since expanded to include swaths of the former Warsaw Pact and even some ex-Soviet republics, such as the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia). Nevertheless, the Western media continues to frame Russia as "assertive" and "aggressive".Moscow earlier called for a resumption of NATO-Russia communications amid simmering tensions near the Ukrainian border, which the West rushed to portray as a potential Russian "occupation", to the point of numerous outlets publishing maps of the "invasion" and discussing concrete manoeuvres. Kiev, at the same time, is seeking help from the West in the form of lethal weapons to "defend" itself and is attempting to guarantee the backing of NATO, which it is not a member of.The Kremlin dismissed the allegations as absurd, yet insisted that the deployment of various types of weapons near Russian territory for ostensible "protection" will require countersteps to balance the situation.No formal answer from the US or NATO has followed so far, despite Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov saying that Moscow "urgently" needs a response from Washington.

https://sputniknews.com/20211220/norwegian-foreign-minister-calls-russias-security-proposals-to-us-nato-completely-unrealistic-1091658967.html

Hess Peter Hultqvist sounds like a retard. If it was the US not Russia, Hultqvist will have difficulty define the word sovereignty. Russia has never threatened any country let alone Sweden. 13

keyboardcosmetics So says the Sweden, a nation never at war that is rich because of its arms industry which helps other people to kill other people. 11

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/the-biden-administration-threatens-americans-1091681271.html

The Biden Administration Threatens Americans

The Biden Administration Threatens Americans

On todays episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events including Spiderman: No Way Home grossing over two... 21.12.2021, Sputnik International

2021-12-21T07:30+0000

2021-12-21T07:30+0000

2021-12-21T09:30+0000

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military-industrial complex

amnesty

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meta

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The Biden Administration Threatens Americans On todays episode of The Backstory, host Lee Stranahan and co-host John Kiriakou discussed current events including Spiderman: No Way Home grossing over two hundred and fifty million in the U.S., and President Biden scheduled to address the nation about the Omicron variant.

GUESTBob Schlehuber - Political Misfits Co-Host | Meta NFT, Ceasefire in Ethiopia, and US Military Interference in AfricaAndrew Arthur - Former Immigration Judge, Center for Immigration Studies | Immigration Detention Centers, The DC Sniper, and Real ID LawsIn the first hour, Lee and John spoke with Bob Schlehuber about attack drones used in Ethiopia, US involvement in Ethiopia, and political violence in Sudan. Bob discussed the announced ceasefire in Ethiopia and his prediction of how long the ceasefire will last. Bob spoke about the reported drone use in Ethiopia and the countries involved with supplying the drones.In the second hour, Lee and John spoke with Andrew Arthur about the immigration laws, Mexico, and cartel smugglers. Andrew talked about the US border patrol and the priorities of border agents caring for children. Andrew spoke on the amnesty package removed from the Build Back Better bill and how Democrats misuse the term "immigration reform".We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com

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us, nigeria, drones, military-industrial complex, amnesty, the backstory, tplf (tigray people's liberation front), meta, nft , , radio
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/two-polish-opposition-figures-were-spied-on-with-nso-software-ahead-of-elections-media-says-1091692534.html

Two Polish Opposition Figures Were Spied on With NSO Software Ahead of Elections, Media Says

Two Polish Opposition Figures Were Spied on With NSO Software Ahead of Elections, Media Says

Two Polish opposition figures were spied on with the NSO developed software Pegasus, the Associated Press has reported, citing University of Toronto-based internet watchdog Citizen Lab. The organisation could not tell who was behind the snooping, but both individuals  lawyer Roman Giertych and prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek put the blame on the incumbent government led by the Law and Justice Party (PiS).

2021-12-21T11:20+0000

2021-12-21T11:20+0000

2021-12-21T11:21+0000

europe

poland

snooping

spying

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Two Polish opposition figures were spied on with the NSO developed software Pegasus, the Associated Press has reported, citing University of Toronto-based internet watchdog Citizen Lab. The organisation could not tell who was behind the snooping, but both individuals  lawyer Roman Giertych and prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek put the blame on the incumbent government led by the Law and Justice Party (PiS). A government spokesperson, Stanislaw Zaryn, has not confirmed or denied whether the government ordered the hacks or purchased the infamous spyware only stating: "Suggestions that Polish services use operational methods for political struggle are unjustified".They Scanned My LifeAccording to Citizen Lab, the phone of lawyer Roman Giertych was hacked 18 times in the last four months of 2019, four months before parliamentary elections in Poland. At the time, Giertych represented former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is the leader of Civic Platform, now the largest opposition party in the country.The lawyer also represented an Austrian developer, who accused Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of PiS of not paying him under a deal the two reportedly struck. Under the agreement, the businessman was to build twin towers on land owned by the political party, which is illegal under Polish law. The deal eventually was scrapped, but the developer insisted that Kaczynski did not pay him for the work he did.Yet another client of Roman Giertych at the time of the snooping was former Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who in 2014 became the victim of a wiretapping case, which saw the minister saying unflattering remarks about Poland's military cooperation with the United States. Sikorski has argued that the recordings, which did not contain any evidence of illegality, were part of an attack on the government and suggested that Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his allies could have been behind it.According to Citizen Lab, most of the hacking attacks on Roman Giertych's phone were conducted in the days ahead of the 2019 parliamentary elections. John-Scott Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, said the "jaw-droppingly aggressive" intensity of the spying campaign on Roman Giertych, which was conducted day-by-day and even hour-by-hour suggested "a desperate desire to monitor his communications". Roman Giertych said his phone was hacked twice when he was in Rome, Italy, where he handled some matters for Donald Tusk, then-president of the European Council.The lawyer also stated that other high-profile figures in Poland could have been the victims of spying too.Tweet: "My conversations were overheard with, among others: Donald Tusk, Radosaw Sikorski, [former leader of the party Civic Platform] Grzegorz Schetyna, [former Minister of Justice] Borys Budka, [US journalist and historian] Anne Applebaum, [billionaire] Leszek Czarnecki, [MP] Stanisaw Gawowski, [former Minister of Labour and incumbent leader of the Polish Peoples Party] Wadysaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, [MP] Piotr Zgorzelski. They could also be victims".The Associated Press writes that just hours before it questioned the government spokesman on the spying allegations, a prosecutor filed a motion seeking arrest of Roman Giertych over money laundering. The lawyer has dismissed the case as absurd and trumped-up.Another purported victim of the snooping campaign in Poland was prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek. Last year, she called for an investigation into the 2020 presidential election, which the government decided to hold by postal voting due to the coronavirus pandemic. The decision has caused outrage in Poland, with three former presidents and six former prime ministers calling for a boycott of the vote. The candidate from the ruling PiS party won the election. The Civic Platform challenged the results, citing alleged voter irregularities. The Supreme Court ruled the election valid.When Ewa Wrzosek ordered an investigation into whether the presidential elections should be postponed because they might threaten the health of voters and election workers amid the coronavirus pandemic, she was stripped of the case and transferred from the capital Warsaw to the provincial city of Srem with two days' notice.According to Citizen Lab, the prosecutor's phone was hacked shortly after she returned to the capital and resumed media appearances in which she criticised the government. Wrzosek learned that she was being spied on from Apple, which sends message to individuals who have been targeted by the Pegasus spyware.In July, 17 outlets led by the Paris-based non-profit journalism group Forbidden Stories published a joint investigation that revealed the Pegasus software, which is used to combat terrorism and crime, had in effect been used to spy on thousands of people worldwide, including current and former heads of state, opposition politicians, journalists, and human rights activists.Among the individuals targeted were French President Emmanuel Macron and five ministers in his cabinet, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, King of Morocco Mohammed VI, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Iraqi President Barham Salih, and President of the European Council Charles Michel.The Israeli company NSO Group, which developed the software, has dismissed the findings of the investigation describing it as full of "wrong assumptions" and "uncorroborated theories".

vot tak The israelis are helping poland's "democracy". :-D 1

Rot Hchild Strange how the author disclosed child killer child rapist apartheid Israel as the owner of NSO company in the last paragraph. This important information should be in the headline. 1

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https://sputniknews.com/20211221/uk-agrees-2022-fisheries-access-quotas-with-norway-1091702169.html

UK Agrees 2022 Fisheries Access, Quotas With Norway

UK Agrees 2022 Fisheries Access, Quotas With Norway

The United Kingdom and Norway have reached an agreement on fisheries access and quotas for 2022, Fisheries Minister Victoria Prentis said on Tuesday.

2021-12-21T18:51+0000

2021-12-21T18:51+0000

2021-12-21T18:51+0000

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fisheries

uk

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I am pleased to announce that we have concluded bilateral negotiations between the UK and Norway, securing an agreement on fishing arrangements for 2022 including the establishment of a mutual North Sea waters access zone, Prentis said in a press release published on a governmental website.According to the press release, the new agreements provisions provide the UK fishing industry access to 30,000 tonnes of its various whitefish stocks in Norwegian waters, including over 7,000 tonnes of cod in the arctic worth $21.2 million (16 million), which is 1,500 tonnes more than in 2021.On December 10, the UK announced a deal with the European Union and Norway that will limit fishing catch in six jointly-managed fish stocks in the North Sea.The deal marks the end of only one in a series of annual fisheries negotiations. The UK is still in talks with the Faroe Islands on quota and access arrangements for 2022 as well as with the EU concerning the total permissible catch.

https://sputniknews.com/20211210/uk-agrees-2022-limits-for-north-sea-fishing-catch-with-eu-norway-1091424732.html

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norway, fisheries, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/us-considering-halting-russias-imports-of-smartphone-aircraft-and-auto-parts---reports-1091703592.html

US Considering Halting Russia's Imports of Smartphone, Aircraft and Auto Parts - Reports

US Considering Halting Russia's Imports of Smartphone, Aircraft and Auto Parts - Reports

US officials will meet later on Tuesday to discuss measures against Russia that may include halting its ability to import smartphones, aircraft and automobile parts, should it invade Ukraine, reports claim.

2021-12-21T21:25+0000

2021-12-21T21:25+0000

2021-12-21T21:25+0000

russia

ukraine

import

troop movements

biden administration

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US officials will consult with major partners in Europe and Asia that may be impacted by these measures, the report said.Tensions around Ukraine have been aggravated in the past several weeks by an alleged Russian troop buildup near the Ukrainian border and claims of preparations for an invasion. Moscow has repeatedly denied those accusations, pointing to NATO's military activity near Russian borders, which it deems a threat to its national security. Russia has also said it has the right to move forces within its own territory.The United States would use extraordinary export control measures to prevent Russia from importing industrial and consumer technologies, which could have a big impact on Russian consumers, industrial operations and employment, the report said.The Biden administration would specifically use the same tools the Trump administration used to ban Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from accessing certain advanced semiconductors, the report said.The Trump administration added Huawei to the "entity list" in May 2019, which basically prohibited American companies from doing business with the Chinese tech giant without prior US government approval. The US sanctions brought serious challenges to Huawei's smartphone business, as the company struggled to secure supplies of microprocessors for its devices because of US dominance in the smartphone chipset industry.

https://sputniknews.com/20211106/cia-chief-was-reportedly-dispatched-to-russia-to-warn-against-alleged-troop-build-up-near-ukraine-1090513564.html

Nonyank US is a major LOOSER! 18

TruePatriot The US has nowhere near the ability or the power to pull such a thing off. They are certainly showing all evidence of a dying and demented State. 14

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ukraine

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russia, ukraine, import, troop movements, biden administration
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/us-senators-call-for-probe-on-amazon-over-unfair-dismissals-tornado-deaths-1091683963.html

US Senators Call for Probe on Amazon Over Unfair Dismissals, Tornado Deaths

US Senators Call for Probe on Amazon Over Unfair Dismissals, Tornado Deaths

E-commerce giant Amazon needs to be investigated by the US Labour Department for harsh labour practices that include wrongful dismissals and lack of sensitivity to emergencies, such as the one that killed six workers in a tornado, US Senators Sherrod Brown and Marco Rubio said in a letter to Labour Secretary Martin Walsh.

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marco rubio

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probe

sherrod brown

amazon

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The senators said in the letter that recent reports have "brought to light troubling working conditions at Amazon that suggest improper treatment of its employees, to the detriment of workers and families across the country".The call by Brown and Rubio represents a bipartisan effort to rein in various business practices by Amazon objected to by US lawmakers and regulators over the past year. In February, New York Attorney General Letitia James said Amazon may have broken the law when it fired an employee for attending a protest against working conditions at a warehouse owned by the company.In their complaint, the senators cited media reports of allegations by Amazon employees of how the company mismanaged their benefits and pay, set grueling work hours and showed a general lack of response to their concerns due to its highly-automated management practices.The senators highlighted reports of "workers not having time to use the restroom on the job, and being forced to resort to extraordinary measures such as urinating in bottles to meet work quotas".Brown and Rubio also pressed Secretary Walsh to look into the investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of Amazon's conduct over the collapse of its warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, after a tornado struck the facility earlier this month, killing six people.Reports indicated that one of the employees who died in that incident had texted his girlfriend, claiming that the company would not let him leave to go home during the storm, the senators said. Workers also voiced concerns about Amazon's alleged lack of emergency response training and expectations that workers continue to work during tornado warnings.

https://sputniknews.com/20211020/labor-activists-hail-striketober-as-over-100000-union-workers-across-us-prepare-work-stoppages-1090055313.html

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marco rubio, us, probe, sherrod brown, amazon
https://sputniknews.com/20211221/white-house-staff-member-who-contacted-biden-dec-17-tests-positive-for-covid-19-1091683725.html

White House Staff Member, Who Came Into Contact With Biden on 17 Dec, Tests Positive for COVID-19

White House Staff Member, Who Came Into Contact With Biden on 17 Dec, Tests Positive for COVID-19

A White House employee who came into contact with US President Joe Biden on 17 December has tested positive for COVID-19, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

2021-12-21T03:45+0000

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joe biden

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"On Monday morning, a mid-level staff member, who does not regularly have contact with the president, received a positive result for a COVID-19 test. Three days earlier, on Friday, that staff member had spent approximately 30 minutes in proximity to the president on Air Force One, on the way from Orange, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania", Psaki said.Psaki said the staff member is fully vaccinated and boosted, and tested negative prior to boarding Air Force One, as required for everyone travelling with the US president."As CDC guidance does not require fully vaccinated people to quarantine after an exposure, the president will continue with his daily schedule", she said.

TruePatriot Just goes to further demonstrate that the vast majority of new infestations are from those that are jabbed and the totally unreliable results of the PCR and antigen tests. The world is now facing the pox of the vaccinated. 2

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joe biden, us, air force one, covid-19
Larry Stalbaum wrapped up his training title at Saratoga Casino Hotel on Monday afternoon (Dec. 20) when his Big Box Hanover scored impressively in the matinees feature.

Stalbaum took home the award for both Trainer of the Year and Horseman of the Year after having just a sensational 2021 season at the Spa. On Monday, Big Box Hanover won the Open Trot for the third time since joining the Stalbaum stable in November. The four-year-old son of Uncle Peter is wrapping up his third consecutive season of six-figure earnings and although he was a beaten favourite in the two installments of the Open leading up to Mondays try, he proved up to the task in impressive fashion.

Big Box Hanover wound up in the pocket behind aggressive and speedy leader Gigfy (Alek Chartrand), who has consistently finished second or third all year long and certainly of late. Gigfy tried to fend off Big Box Hanover in the stretch but his efforts were thwarted as the Stalbaum trainee cruised by to win in an impressive 1:54.2. Gigfy finished second while Xcuseme (John Stark Jr.) earned the show spot.

The win time serves as a new lifetime mark for Big Box Hanover, whose Open victory was his third in six local tries. He is owned by the Red White & Blue Racing Stable of Matamoras, Pennsylvania.

Stalbaums Bucketlist Hanover completed a double for the Horseman of the Year as he came from off the pace to score in a $10,700 race for trotters.

Live racing continues on Tuesday afternoon for closing day of the 2021 meet at Saratoga, with racing set to resume on February 5, 2022. Closing day will feature a jackpot carryover of $9,370 in the Jackpot Super High Five, which takes place in the afternoons finale. First post time on Tuesday is set for 12 noon.

(With files from Saratoga)
The stage is finally set for Albertas two biggest harness races: the Western Canada Pacing Derby and the Century Casinos Filly Pace on New Years Eve at Century Mile.

Pushed back by an equine virus, two elimination legs -- originally scheduled for November 27 -- for both races were held this past Saturday morning after frigid temperatures forced those eliminations to be pushed from Friday night. There was no wagering and there were no fans other than horsepeople.

The top four finishers in each elimination made it to the finals. The ninth starter in both the Derby and the Filly Pace will be drawn by lot between the fifth-place finishers. The first-place finishers in the two eliminations for both finals will draw to see who gets the rail and who gets post two. The other positions will be a random draw.

Sunshine Boy exceeded my expectations, said the horses trainer/driver, Brandon Campbell, after Sunshine Boy got a perfect trip popping out of the two-hole down the stretch to win his elimination for the Derby by 2-1/2 lengths in 1:55.4. I wasnt sure how tight he would be. He got the virus so we gave him plenty of time to get over it. Hes had lots of jogging but not much training.

He also hadnt raced since November 19.

I thought he raced super. Im very happy with him, said Campbell after he tagged along behind Samba Beat for most of the race.

Show Stop made an enticing late rush to grab second; Tajmania finished third; Saltwater Savage took fourth. Samba Beat, who tired badly, ended up fifth.

We were always high on Sunshine Boy, said Campbell of the horse owned by Jodi Loftus, Dana Shore and George Rogers. Shore is also the breeder of Sunshine Boy. He always had a lot of talent but he was a runaway -- he was hard to manage. Hed get to the top of the stretch and hed start looking at things. He also didnt pace strong down the lane. But then the light switch went on and he figured out what hes supposed to be doing. We taught him to finish.

The elimination victory was his ninth win in 25 career starts.

Earlier this year, Sunshine Boy won the $74,870 Ralph Klein final at Calgarys Century Downs when he was sent away at 14-1. He wont be close to those odds on New Years Eve.

Hell get an inside draw for the Derby which will help a lot, said Campbell. I hope he comes up with the same type of performance in the final and I think he will. Hell be tough.

The other Derby elimination on Saturday was taken by Nevada Vacation, who avoided interference going into the first turn, also got a perfect trip and ended up winning by a length and a half in 1:57.3 --- albeit almost two full seconds slower than Sunshine Boy.

The first quarter was slow. The half was slow. Everything about the race was slow. But they dont put that on the purse cheque so thats okay, said Nevada Vacations trainer and co-owner Chris Lancaster.

Codename Cigar Box, who didnt avoid the interference when Carro B Bunsen broke stride and got tangled up with Momas Son Byrne, took second.

It definitely cost him the win, said Codename Cigar Boxs trainer/driver and co-owner Kelly Hoerdt. When (Carro B Bunsen) broke stride, he created havoc for me and (Momas Son Byrne). But Codename Cigar Box finished really well so I was happy with that.

Third went to Shark Week; Jim Strikesitrich was fourth and Momas Son Byrne was fifth.

Nevada Vacation has been a nice consistent colt, said Lancaster. We bought him at the Alberta Yearling Sale for $16,000. He was a very stocky stud when I bought him for myself and Chris Lambie. But he was a very spooky horse. He would see ghosts. Hes gotten better with age and I think hes only going to get better. Hes setting up to be a nice horse.

In the Century Casinos Filly Pace eliminations, there were no surprises. Exotic Dragon, who won her fourth race in a row after sweeping the Mary Murphy stakes series at B.C.s Fraser Downs, went wire-to-wire in 1:56.3. In the other elimination, Graceful Horizon duplicated what Exotic Dragon did -- also going wire-to-wire in 1:56.3.

I thought it was a perfect prep for the final, said Exotic Dragons trainer/driver Nathan Sobey, who has had an outstanding year. She wasnt too stretched out. She didnt have to stress. There was still lots left in the tank. She was well in control.

Burning Hot finished second -- by a length -- to Exotic Dragon, followed by In High Cotton, Outlaw Spiced Rum and Lost Control. In the other Filly Pace elimination, Graceful Horizon won by two comfortable lengths.

Graceful Horizon is an awfully nice filly, said Lancaster of the horse he owns with Derek Gilbert and his mother Velda Olding. "Shes a player.

Coz Im Special was second; Uptown Hanover was third; Cheese Whiz was fourth and Outlaw Sharktastic fifth.

She doesnt need the front end to win but it would be nice to get the rail, said Lancaster. The worst she could do is start from post two.

As he has maintained all year, Sobey said the Filly Pace will come down to three horses: his horse Exotic Dragon, Burning Hot and Graceful Horizon.

Those three have been ultra tough all year. Any one of them can pull it off. Exotic Dragon is going to come back on December 31 and be really tough. But I expect the same out of the other two. It should be a great race.

So should the Derby.

(With files from Curtis Stock / thehorses.com)
Nebraska state parks will have their time in the spotlight this January, appearing in an episode of a Discovery Channel reality TV show.

An episode of "RV There Yet?" which premieres on Jan. 8 at 8 a.m., will feature several Nebraska state parks including Arbor Lodge State Historical Park, Platte River State Park and Chadron State Park.

"RV There Yet?" features a cast of four that travels from Florida to South Dakota in RVs. Along the way, they make stops at primarily national parks to hike, mountain bike and explore nature.

The show's producer and host, Patrice McCabe, is originally from Nebraska and knew she had to seize the opportunity to show off her home state.

I am proud to have Nebraska roots and couldnt wait to show our audience why its called The Good Life, McCabe said. When Nebraska Game and Parks told us about celebrating 100 years of state parks in 2021, it was a no-brainer: We simply had to do an episode.

The crew started their journey this summer, landing at Arbor Day Lodge in June. There, they learned about Arbor Day and explored Arbor Day Farm.
Prior to the serving of the warrant, the WING Task Force surveilled Hunt the morning of the shooting and allegedly observed him selling methamphetamine to a confidential informant. According to an arrest affidavit included as evidence in the case, authorities accused Hunt of selling methamphetamine five prior occasions from March 22 to June 23.

Scotts Bluff County Sheriffs Deputy Matt Dodge, who had been leading the investigation that involved Hunt, described him as a street dealer. That was described as someone who sells methamphetamine in quantities of 3 grams or more. With sales of half an ounce to an ounce each time, Hunt faced a minimum of five to 50 years imprisonment on the drug charges identified in the warrant that officers had been trying to serve.

The task force had been granted a no-knock search warrant, allowing them to enter the RV that he lived in at 123 Second Ave. in Bayard without immediate prior notification to Hunt or other residents. As one team of officers closed in on the RV in a form described as a stack, with officers in a line behind an officer with a large shield, Hunt came out of the RV and saw them. He fled, going into a tent-like structure that consisted of a tarp draped over forms. Most of the officers could not see into the tent, according to their testimony.
Knapper said that he believed that the commissioners salary increase was among the issues that voters considered when he was elected to the seat over previous commissioner Sherry Blaha. He called it a sticky subject. Both Knapper and Meyer said that commissioners got crucified when approving a raise during in 2018.

It was an issue cited during the election, as well. When Commissioner Mark Harris ran in 2018, in a Star-Herald candidate survey, he noted being concerned that county commissioners had given themselves a 38% raise. He won the seat over longtime commissioner Mark Masterton.

However, now as a commissioner, Knapper has seen the work that commissioners do in a new light.

This isnt just Monday nights up here at the table, you know. This is many, many hours of travel, time away from kids, you know, theres a lot of lost opportunity doing this. ... Its a grind, he said as he talked about family, school and job obligations. He compared it to a part-time job and said if he did not hold the commissioner seat, he would seek another part-time job.

The other thing is, I think more people would be apt to run for these positions if the wages were in the right place, he said.
When I saw the story this morning, I thought it was worth making some inquiries of both prosecutors and defense counsel alike as to whether this is an anomaly, whether this is something we ought to deal with and, frankly, to see whether it is something as were doing our sentencing reform that could be addressed, he said.

The task force, formed by Gov. Jared Polis last year to review and suggest changes to the states sentencing laws, began its work with misdemeanor cases and has not yet considered reforms to felony sentencing, said Maureen Cain, a task force member and director of legislative policy and external communications for the Colorado Public Defenders Office. That work should start next year.

Aguilera-Mederos intends to appeal the jurys verdict, Colgan said, and is also considering a variety of challenges to the sentence, though those challenges will have to wait until the appeal process concludes. An online petition calling for Polis to commute Aguilera-Mederos sentence had more than 1 million signatures Wednesday night.

The law is just so frustrating because it ends up in miscarriages of justice like this, Colgan said Tuesday. The law is poorly written.
Crow encouraged everyone eligible to get vaccinated and boosted to help prevent major illness and protect our community. He also said he would continue to push for affordable access to rapid and reliable testing for all Americans.

In separate statements Sunday, Warren and Booker said they had been fully vaccinated with two doses and a booster and their symptoms were mild. They also encouraged others to get the trio of shots if eligible.

Warren tweeted: Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms & am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated & boosted."

She didnt elaborate on where she might have contracted the virus but said she's regularly tested and turned up negative for COVID-19 earlier this past week. Spokespeople for her office didn't respond to an email seeking comment Sunday.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  A federal jury on Wednesday, Dec. 15 found a northeastern Nebraska man guilty of voluntary manslaughter and obstruction of justice in the killing of his fiance last year on the Winnebago Indian Reservation.

Jonathan Rooney, 27, faces as many as 20 years in prison on the obstruction of justice by destruction of evidence charge and 15 years for voluntary manslaughter in the death of 22-year-old Kozee Decorah, the Sioux City Journal reported.

Rooney had been charged with second-degree murder, but the jury instead found him guilty of the lesser sentence of voluntary manslaughter, sparing him from the possibility of life in prison.

Part of the reason manslaughter was so upsetting is it put some of the blame for Kozees death on her, Stacey Schinko, one of Decorahs relatives, told the newspaper. It was really a slap in the face today that (jurors) couldnt see it the way we see it.
As is, the Munger Mountain parcel returns small annual fees to the school trust. About $1,900 a year is generated, the bulk of which comes from a grazing lease.

An Office of State Lands study completed in fall 2020 described the Under Canvas proposal as feasible.

Under Canvass proposal will allow the state to retain control of their land by increasing the lease income and allowing a low impact and sustainable development that will encourage and promote best land management, wildlife habitat practices, and the opportunity to maintain other leases in place on the subject land, a project summary stated.

This past summer Crowder and state office colleagues visited the Munger parcel as part of a tour of state lands in Teton County. They hiked around the square-mile chunk, concluding that the topography, in areas, was friendly for development, Crowder said.

But he also said that the glamping proposal is not running on any kind of inside track to win a lease agreement through his office.

I havent been in contact with this group, Crowder said. I know about them, and thats it. I dont know what their purpose is. They havent really approached us to look for anything.

While theres no timeline for releasing a request for proposals for the Munger parcel, the state is actively soliciting commercial development proposals for another section of school trust land in Jackson Hole. That state-owned parcel, just south of Teton Village, has been broken into nine individual tracts that can be bid on, ranging from 0.91 acres to 5.73 acres. The request for proposals went out Tuesday, with pitches due Feb. 1.

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Jackson Hole (Wyo.) News And Guide.

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Perhaps the most telling sign is that even Trump himself doesnt think its a foregone conclusion he could secure the nomination. Hes reportedly livid with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for not publicly declaring he wont run for president if Trump does. Part of that is Trumps ego-driven desire to demonstrate his dominance, but its also a sign that he feels the need to clear the field rather than compete in it. He could certainly be goaded into running again, just as he was in 2016. But the more likely scenario is that Trump will continue to keep everyone guessing until the last minute to maximize attention and profit. The best way to ensure he doesnt run again is for Republicans like DeSantis to signal hell have to work for it and thus risk looking like a loser -- twice.
Armenia will host the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022. The executive director of the state-funded Public Television of Armenia, Hovhannes Movsisyan, informed about this on Facebook.

"As a result of negotiations with the European Broadcasting Union, it has been confirmed that Armenia will host Junior Eurovision next year. We must all prepare for this large-scale event as of tomorrow already. We need the support of each and every one of you here. Well, welcome to Armenia," Movsisyan wrote.

As reported earlier, Armenias representative Malena won the Junior Eurovision 2021 held on December 19 in Paris.

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When Haylee Norred was about 8 years old, she said she lived alone in a locked Longview room without furniture, heat or light. She was punished when she escaped to find food in the dumpster, and called names like pig when she ate table crumbs amongst locked kitchen cabinets.

Woman charged with starving, isolating child pleads guilty to second-degree criminal mistreatment Monday A woman charged with starving and isolating a child in her care for about 10 years, pleaded guilty Monday to a lesser charge.

Nearly 13 years later on Monday, her abuser and aunt Jennifer Norred, 42, was sentenced to 90 days of incarceration, after pleading guilty in October, bringing independence to her niece.

Im finally free, Haylee Norred said.

For almost a decade, Haylee Norred said she lived isolated and starved under her aunts care. Today, the girl who wasnt able to play with friends, attend school or even eat until full, has been given a second chance.

Six positive COVID cases in Cowlitz County Jail since Friday Six inmates inside the Cowlitz County Jail have tested positive for COVID-19 from Friday through Wednesday, report officials.

I hoped and prayed every day something would change, but I didnt know when, she said. I never knew the darkness would end.

I didnt know it was wrong

Court records show Jennifer Norred was arrested in February 2019 for two counts of criminal mistreatment and was released from jail that March on a $2,000 bond. She was sentenced Monday and is scheduled to be taken into custody Dec. 27.

Jerrie Larsen pleads guilty to kidnapping, assault in Joshua Frazier's death A man pleaded guilty Monday in Cowlitz County Superior Court to kidnapping and torturing Joshua Frazier of Kelso prior to his early 2021 death.

Haylee Norreds great-aunt Cindy Stauffer said charges came after the children in Jennifer Norreds care were able to tell their grandmother about living conditions. Stauffer said a family member called the police during a fight between Jennifer Norred and her boyfriend and the children were taken away. A police report states six children were taken from Jennifer Norreds care in 2018.

Under her grandmas care, Haylee Norred said she started to question whether her aunts treatment of her was abuse. Grandma treated me differently, she said, by providing three meals a day. Eventually, she told her family and a social worker about her living situation.

I didnt know it was wrong until I told them, she said.

A probable cause statement for Jennifer Norreds arrest states she told people an eating disorder and a mental disability attributed to Haylee Norreds social isolation and small demeanor. When officials took the child in 2018, police reported the 17-year-old weighed 84 pounds. The report states her weight and IQ score increased after she was taken from her aunts custody.

At Mondays sentencing, Jennifer Norred said she was in an abusive relationship which she depended on for housing during the time she cared for her niece and other children. She said she has done a lot of self-work, is different now and loves her niece.

Ill never forgive myself for what my kids went through, Jennifer Norred said.

Wasnt allowed to be normal

Haylee Norred said life with her aunt Jennifer Norred didnt start off badly. Her aunt asked to take her when Haylee Norreds biological mother couldnt care for the 7 year old. At first, Haylee Norred said she had a bed and desk. She spent time listening to music and cleaning with her aunt.

That changed, Haylee Norred said, when her aunt gave birth to her first girl, and slowly, more chores were delegated to the 8 year old, then furniture, food and socialization was stripped away.

Inside what she called the back room of a 17th Avenue home, Haylee Norred said she used pieces of cable wiring and her bare hands to claw through a closet in hopes of reaching a food pantry. When she broke through the wooden bedroom door to find food, a steel door took its place, she said. When she escaped through the window to grab stale bread from a dumpster, plywood was nailed over the opening and light was shut out.

Stauffer said shed see the shy youth with thick glasses about four times a year at holiday gatherings, but Haylee Norred never talked, and never played with other kids. Stauffer said Jennifer Norred told the family her niece was autistic and had a disorder that made her eat food uncontrollably, prompting her to lock the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator.

We believed she was autistic and had an eating disorder, Stauffer said. She fooled everybody.

Haylee Norred said her aunt also told her she was autistic and physically threatened her before family functions to not talk to others and disclose information about her living situation.

When the state agency that investigates reports of child abuse paid visits, Haylee Norred said the barren back room she lived in was given a bed and TV. When Child Protective Services left, the items would disappear and the child didnt know why.

I wasnt allowed to be normal, Haylee Norred said. It was like she had control of my mind.

There is always a way out

Today, Haylee Norred is living on her own near Warrenton, Ore. She has a boyfriend, two cats and a best friend she said she can call anytime and will always get an answer.

She learned to drive a car, graduated from high school at the age of 20 and took her first plane ride to California last summer.

She said shes close with her extended family, but fears running into her aunt when visiting Longview. She said journaling and counseling has helped her cope with the trauma, as nightmares persist, but still hopes Jennifer Norred gets the help she really does need.

Because thats my aunt, Haylee Norred said.

She said she is studying criminology at Clatsop Community College to be a lawyer or police officer to help people trapped in similar situations as her experience from about 8 to 17 years old.

I know many people are out there in the same place I was in, she said. But, there is always a way out. You just need to find it.

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The Port of Woodland is preparing to settle its lawsuit against the city of Woodland over a change to how the city handles utility billing.

The port filed the suit in June in an attempt to prevent the city from implementing a new policy that would bill building owners for utilities instead of their tenants. Superior Court Judge Gary Bashor issued a preliminary injunction in November to allow the ports lawsuit to continue advancing.

The settlement agreement is on the agenda for Woodland City Councils Monday night meeting. After a scheduled executive session, the council may authorize Mayor Will Finn to sign off on the settlement at the meeting.

In the proposed settlement, the city agreed to return to providing direct utility billing for 10 port tenants. The direct billing will apply for as long as the businesses occupy those specific premises at the port. The Port of Woodland agreed to rescind any public records requests it submitted to the city over the past four months.

With the agreement, neither the city nor the port admit to any liability, wrongdoing or legal violations.

Port of Woodland Director Jennifer Wray-Keene and the ports attorney declined to comment about the settlement Monday.

The Woodland City Council passed the resolution changing the utility billing system in April, partially as a way to hold property owners more accountable for their tenants unpaid utilities. Public Works Department Director Tracy Coleman said the city had $187,000 in overdue utilities and needed to hold tenants and owners accountable to recoup those balances. No business at the port had an unpaid account when the resolution was put into place.

The port argued the resolution was unconstitutional if it applied to the port, as covering the utility payments for a renting business could count as a public entity providing an illegal loan. Woodland said that, even if the bill passed through the port first, the businesses still would have to pay for their own utilities or risk eviction.

Bashors comments at previous court hearings largely focused on Woodlands ability to implement changes to its utility practices. At hearings in August and September, Bashor pushed the citys attorney to explain how the new billing system related to the explicit and implicit contracts that already were in place with the port.

What the ordinance does is retroactively modify contracts. Thats what I am trying to understand the basis of where does the city get the power to void that, Bashor said at an August hearing.

The preliminary injunction largely was a moot point even when it was issued. Woodland verbally agreed to keep up direct billing to the ports tenants and maintain the status quo before the court ruling made the decision binding.

Neither the preliminary injunction nor the current settlement agreement is meant to address the legal merits of the ports lawsuit. The settlement also has no effect on how billing works for the residential and commercial renters in Woodland.

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Cowlitz County residents should take the rapidly spreading COVID-19 omicron variant into the equation while planning for the holiday weekend, according to health officials.

I expect people to get together for the holidays. I dont think anything I or anyone else says is going to make a difference, said Dr. Steve Krager, county deputy health officer. We have to acknowledge people who are not vaccinated or have no immunity will be at risk if they go to gatherings. ... Were going to see people get sick and go to the hospital and die, thats just whats going to happen.

People, vaccinated or unvaccinated, can take steps to lower their risk this weekend. COVID-19 vaccinations, including booster shots, are the best way to prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death, Krager said.

Most people gathering with family are unlikely to wear masks, but may consider it, especially if in a crowded setting, Krager said. Opening a window to increase ventilation also is a good idea, as well as keeping gatherings a little shorter, he said.

Anyone, vaccinated or not, should get tested for COVID-19 before gathering, Krager said. Local pharmacies may have at-home tests available, but Krager said he doesnt know how large the supply is in Cowlitz County. Residents may be able to order at-home tests online.

Appointments for PCR or rapid tests administered at pharmacies appear to be limited or booked several days out, Krager said. People can contact their doctors office about making an appointment for a test.

Although its too late to be fully vaccinated before the holidays, Krager said now is always the best time to get vaccinated.

As of Saturday, 58.5% of Cowlitz County residents had initiated vaccination and 53.5% were fully vaccinated. About 21,115 residents had received an additional dose. That includes boosters or third doses for people who are immunocompromised and didnt develop adequate immunity with the two-dose series.

Cowlitz County recorded 73 new confirmed cases over the weekend, bringing the total to 13,225 confirmed and 1,675 probable cases. The county has recorded 273 COVID-19 deaths.

PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center had 14 COVID-19 patients as of Monday morning.

Omicron spreading

Omicron is now the dominant variant in the United States, making up 73% of new infections last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Monday, Clark County Public Health announced two cases had been identified as the variant, including one linked to outbreaks among wrestling teams. Both cases are among fully vaccinated people, according to public health.

I want people to understand just how quickly its going to cause a rise in cases, Krager said. I think people will be surprised by the number of people they know who will get ill, vaccinated or not. ... Im not trying to scare people, but I want people to understand how quickly this will spread and that taking precautions can go a long way.

The University of Washington Virology Lab estimates 50% of cases its sequencing are omicron, Krager said. The variant is in the region and likely will be the dominant strain in the coming days, he said.

Its still unclear if omicron causes more severe illness than the delta variant. The potential of omicron being more mild refers to if more people are being hospitalized compared to past variants and doesnt mean everyone who gets omicron is going to have a mild case, Krager said.

Krager said he is concerned that even if the variant causes less hospitalizations than delta, it will strain hospitals because of how fast its spreading.

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Google has discontinued the Home Mini in some markets. The Nest Mini is the only small smart speaker Google sells.

Back in 2017, Google stunned the world with the Google Home Mini. Google's compact smart speaker had the ambition to take over most households wearing a cutesy design. Google later updated the speaker under the Nest brand and improved the audio performance as well. After four years, Google seems to have discontinued the Home Mini is several countries.

The Google Online Store in the US region now shows the Google Home Mini as no longer available. However, stores in other regions have long stopped selling the Home Mini, especially after the arrival of the Nest Mini. In India, Flipkart continues to sell remaining stocks of the Home Mini at a higher price than the Nest Mini.

Google Home Mini is gone

The removal of the Home Mini from the listing page shouldn't be a big deal for most consumers, given that Nest Mini is cheaper and much better in terms of audio performance. However, the Nest Mini itself is in dire need of a major update, given that several other players have stepped into the small smart speaker segment.

Apple launched its HomePod Mini in 2020 alongside the iPhone 12 and this year, Apple came up with multiple colour variants of the HomePod Mini but with no major audio performance upgrades. However, note that the HomePod Mini costs substantially more than the Google speaker, priced at 9,900. Amazon has come up with multiple versions of the Echo Dot and Echo smart speakers running on Alexa voice assistant.

In fact, Xiaomi also launched an affordable Mi Smart Speaker in India last year that costs almost the same as the Google Nest Mini speaker.

Google, meanwhile, has only launched the Pixel Buds Series A earbuds in India this year priced close to 10,000. The Pixel 5a and Pixel 6 series from the global markets did not make it to India.
Innovative research is enabling persons with disabilities to be more mobile. Credit:  Halfpoint, Shutterstock

People with a disability can look forward to many new advances in technology to make their lives easier while navigating public transport systems, or even crossing the street, thanks to several new initiatives in Europe.

Once known for its matchstick industry, the small Swedish city of Jonkoping has another claim to fame. It is one of the most accessible cities in Europe for people with disabilities.

The winner of the 2021 Access City Award, Jonkoping was recognized for its inclusive and universal bottom-up approach. Working closely with disability organizations, city officials rolled out a wide range of initiatives to make buildings, products and environments accessible to as many people as possible.

City-wide improvements include tactile maps and signage, audio descriptions, tactile paving, easy to read facilities, accessible pavements and barrier-free wheelchair access. From the concert hall to the matchstick museum (one of only three in the world), Jonkoping's attractions, shops, public buildings and infrastructure meet the long list of accessibility criteria.

Jonkoping is one of many examples of European cities that are friendly to people with disabilities. And with one in five Europeans living with some form of disability, city actions are proving indispensable in order to cater to a growing need for accessibility.

Making it easier to move around

To rise to the challenge of universal accessibility, cities can benefit from innovative technologies that promote a barrier-free and inclusive society. Solutions may involve the use of augmented reality, wearables and artificial intelligence. These are just some of the smart tech solutions that scientists are co-designing together with disabled persons in line with the EU's Urban Mobility Framework.

Transportation researchers in the Netherlands recently made an important discovery by surveying disabled commuters. They learned that the single most popular item in demand amongst users with different types of disability would be a simple, smart information tool. Imagine a special version of Alexa for travelan interactive accessible journey planner that would greatly improve people's mobility and willingness to travel.

The researchers, who are working closely with a Europe-wide network of disabled citizens and are supported by the TRIPS project, are drawing on this finding to develop and test mobility solution models.

According to Kristina Andersen, Assistant Professor at the Future Everyday cluster of the Department of Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology, a smart planner is needed to provide accurate information on the accessibility of transport. It could include, for example, the availability of seats on the next bus or whether certain accessibility infrastructure is "out of order." The smart planner would provide this information in multiple wayssign language, audio, lip-readingas well as be integrated with smart glasses. It would also be free to use and not require registration.

"Poor access to public transport means people are stopped from accessing job opportunities, education, social and leisure activities and other services," explained Andersen.

To showcase how such co-designed mobility solutions can provide inclusive urban transport for all, TRIPS is rolling out case studies in seven pilot cities: Brussels, Bologna, Cagliari, Lisbon, Sofia, Stockholm and Zagreb.

By inviting those with disabilities to highlight the problems they face in using public transport and empowering them to co-design solutions through brainstorming with experts, Andersen and her team hope to address the most serious risk facing people with disabilities: that of social exclusion.

"By focusing on the experience and needs of disabled people, we can address a wide variety of barriers such as age, health or language in current urban transport systems," said Andersen.

All of this information is not just helping with new innovative services, but also sheds light on what's needed when designing future transport systems.

Leveraging digital technologies

The user perspective is important when designing and testing mobility solutions for persons with disabilities.

In this context, researchers from the MOBI Mobility, Logistics and Automotive Technology Research Centre at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) are conducting a pilot study in Antwerp. They are testing a new method to assist visually impaired people at pedestrian crossings by sending audio and vibrating messages to their smartphones, so they can safely cross the road.

"In most cities, only a select few traffic lights have pedestrian signs with audible signals," said Assistant Professor Imre Keseru, who is the lead researcher on the INDIMO project. "Often, these get installed on demand and cause complaints from local residents due to the noise produced. They are not always reliable and can malfunction. Therefore, more often than not, blind people have to trust in their own hearing to make sure the pedestrian light is definitely switched to green."

Keseru also noted that until recently, digital mobility solutions were mainly developed to address the needs of average users, leading to the exclusion of specific groups with very specific needs.

Additionally, "While significant achievements have been made mainly in terms of improving the physical accessibility of transport, digital accessibility and inclusion have not been fully addressed," said Keseru.

INDIMO researchers are tackling this issue, working with policymakers, tech developers, transportation operators and persons with disabilities. They have created a toolbox featuring universal design principles that include accessibility standards for transport services, plus cybersecurity and privacy guidelines to encourage more accessible and inclusive digital mobility solutions for all.

While the first version of this toolbox is being tested in Antwerp with the intelligent traffic light system, four additional pilot projects (in Spain, Italy, Germany and Israel) are exploring innovative solutions such as on-demand ride sharing in tandem with multimodal route planning.

What all research projects have in common is a call for better digital services to aid disabled users' mobility and overall quality of life. They also highlight the need for better digital education and tools to enhance social inclusion for those at risk.

Online holiday booking site for travelers with a disability

Planning a holiday or business-related travel is usually more challenging for those with disabilities, who may worry about whether their accommodation will have access ramps for wheelchairs or information in braille, for example.

A unique online booking system for accessible accommodation may help solve this problem. Developed by a Swedish father whose son suffers from a muscle disease and needs a wheelchair when traveling, Handiscover aims to simplify the search for special accommodation. Simply put, it's a community-based holiday accommodation-booking website with a unique classification system that allows users to search based on their level of mobility.

"We take into account issues like the number of stairs, distance to the parking space, the width of doors," said Sebastien Archambeaud. "This information makes it easier to choose where to stay."

Building on Handiscover, he has also launched a secondary website to assist hotels, retail shops and other businesses to better understand accessibility and disability through education workshops.

"With half of the 65+ age group having some form of disability, and 70% of all disabilities not visible, it's important not to associate disability with a wheelchair," noted Archambeaud. "Let's not forget the visually and hearing impaired."

By placing technology at the heart of building and revamping our cities and transportation systems, digital technology and innovation now have the potential to make life easier for people with disabilities.

Explore further Smart tech gives a new spin on the classic wheelchair
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

AT&T will sell its advertising marketplace platform Xandr to Microsoft, the company disclosed Tuesday morning in a release.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by either AT&T or Microsoft. AT&T said the sale does not include its advertising business that supports DirecTV, and that the transaction will be subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory review.

"Microsoft's shared vision of empowering a free and open web and championing an open industry alternative via a global advertising marketplace makes it a great fit for Xandr. We look forward to using our innovative platform to help accelerate Microsoft's digital advertising and retail media capabilities," Xandr VP and general manager Mike Welch said in a statement.

In July, Axios reported that AT&T was quickly trying offload the advertising business as it had been losing "tens of millions a year" under AT&T's gross mismanagement. AT&T reportedly wanted to get around $1 billion for the business.

AT&T had previously shopped the advertising business to Roku, MediaOcean and Microsoft, Axios also reported.

In a release, Microsoft said its acquisition of Xandr "can accelerate the delivery of digital advertising solutions for the open web by combining Microsoft's audience understanding, technology and global advertising customer base with Xandr's large-scale, data-driven platforms for advertising."

Xandr was created under previous AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson by combining AppNexus, which was acquired for $1.6 billion, and TV ad tech firm Clypd.

AT&T has been looking for a buyer for its ad unit since announcing plans to spin off media entities including DirecTV and WarnerMedia.

Explore further Microsoft sheds some of its ad business, mapping service

More information: 2021 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The EU on Tuesday cleared Microsoft's purchase of artificial intelligence and cloud computing company Nuance, one of the biggest transactions in the fast-growing telemedicine sector.

The bloc's powerful antitrust authority said the $19.7 billion buyout posed no competition concerns in the European Union.

After an investigation, the European Commission said that "the proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns on any of the markets examined" and that it "cleared the case unconditionally".

The European greenlight came as the EU is preparing new rules that would put tighter limits on the ability of tech giants, including Microsoft, to buy out rivals.

Nuance's technology is used extensively in medical records and is currently employed in more than three-quarters of US hospitals.

This acquisition builds on the existing partnership between the two companies, which have been collaborating since 2019 in telemedicine, a sector whose growth has been spurred exponentially by COVID-19 lockdowns around the world.

The deal comes on the heels of Microsoft's 2016 purchase of LinkedIn for $27 billion and represents "the latest step in Microsoft's industry-specific cloud strategy," the company said.

Explore further UK antitrust watchdog investigates Microsoft's Nuance deal

 2021 AFP
The box containing the SkyCAM-5 camera system is about 70 centimetres high. Credit: Hakan Kayal / University of Wurzburg

Time and again, people see strange luminous phenomena or other phenomena in the sky that they cannot explain.

"Most of these observations concern known phenomena or objects such as birds, aircraft, satellites or clouds. But for a very small proportion, the cause remains unexplained even after intensive investigation by experts," says Hakan Kayal, Professor for Space Technology at Julius-Maximilians-Universitat Wurzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany.

It is precisely these Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) that Hakan Kayal has been interested in for years. That is why he has established a special research focus at his professorship: There, technical systems are developed and operated with which UAP can be detected, evaluated and analyzed.

In use since mid-December

The latest product of this work is the SkyCAM-5 camera system, which is based on four predecessor models and has been in test operation on the roof of a JMU university building on the Hubland campus since mid-December 2021.

SkyCAM-5 is a test platform that works autonomously. With customized image processing algorithms, it continuously observes the sky. It can detect objects there, but also short-term luminous phenomena such as lightning or meteors. The JMU professor will use this system to test and further develop algorithms and software components for detecting UAP.

Training during operation

Behind SkyCAM-5 is a complex software architecture. Here is the client with the reports on the observations and their classification. Credit: Hakan Kayal / University of Wurzburg

Machine learning methods are used to reduce the number of false detections. "When the camera detects known objects, it recognizes them with a Convolutional Neural Network, classifies them and stores the corresponding video sequences in a database," Kayal explains.

This works very well, he says: SkyCAM-5 has correctly recognized and classified birds, planes and helicopters several times since it began operations. This considerably reduces the effort required to evaluate the camera data.

SkyCAM is supposed to become smarter and smarter over time. That is why it is trained during operation. If, for example, it classifies a passing butterfly as unknown, it is taught by humans that the animal with the fluttering flight is called a butterflyso in future it will correctly classify a peacock butterfly as a butterfly.

SkyCAM expansions planned

Professor Kayal wants to acquire funding for a further expansion of the UAP detection system.

The next step would be to place a second SkyCAM-5 next to the first. A movement in the sky would then only be recorded if it is seen by both cameras at the same time. With such a dual camera system, it would be possible, for example, to exclude sensor errors, which can occur sporadically.

The aerospace engineer from Wurzburg is also planning special extensions. "I would like to equip the camera system with additional infrared sensors to be able to observe the sky in another spectral range. It would also be advantageous to have a tracking system in the form of a telescope that quickly aligns itself with moving objects, zooms in on them and follows them on their path."

And one stage further, there would then be many such double camera systems distributed and networked across Germany, Europe or the world. With such an arrangement, moving objects could be tracked over very long distances.

Explore further Flashes on the moon
The first SMS was a 15-character message sent to Vodafone employee Richard Jarvis wishing him 'Merry Christmas'

The first SMS ever sent over a mobile phone in 1992 was sold Tuesday as an NFT at auction for 107,000 euros ($120,600), the Aguttes auction house said.

The buyer, whose identity was not disclosed but is a Canadian involved in the tech sector, is now the owner of a unique digital replica of the first SMS message in the form of a Non-Fungible Token, or NFT.

The first SMS was a 15-character message sent to Vodafone employee Richard Jarvis wishing him "Merry Christmas".

NFTs are digital items that can be bought and sold using blockchain technology. They have become immensely popular for collectors, including artwork which sold for nearly $70 million at auction earlier this year.

Among those in the auction hall was 18-year-old blockchain entrepreneur Luigi Caradonna, who bowed out of bidding when the price rose above 75,000 euros.

"I thought it would be interesting to have this piece of history to hold it as an asset until next year and to sell it next Christmas," he told AFP.

Mobile network operator Vodafone has said it plans to donate its proceeds from the sale to the UN's refugee agency.

 2021 AFP
In this Dec. 11, 2017, file photo, solar arrays line the desert floor of the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone as part of the 179 megawatt Switch Station 1 and Switch Station 2 Solar Projects north of Las Vegas. The Biden administration on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, issued a solicitation for interest in developing solar power on public lands in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. Credit: Michael Quine/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, File

U.S. officials moved Tuesday to open public lands in portions of three western states to potential solar energy development, as part of the Biden administration's effort to counter climate change by shifting from fossil fuels.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management issued a call to nominate land for development within "solar energy zones" in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico that combined cover about 140 square miles (360 square kilometers).

The solicitation of interest comes as officials under Democratic President Joe Biden promote renewable wind and solar power on public lands and offshore to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet.

BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement that government support for renewable energy was a top priority for the agency, which oversees almost a quarter-billion acres of land primarily in western states.

The land bureau in early December issued a draft plan to reduce rents and other fees paid by companies authorized to build wind and solar projects on public lands.

The recent actions mark a pronounced shift from Republican President Donald Trump's emphasis on coal mining and oil and gas drilling.

The Biden administration was unsuccessful in an attempt to suspend oil and gas sales from public lands and waters, after a judge ordered sales to resume following a lawsuit from Republican-led states. Biden suffered another huge blow to his climate change agenda this week, as opposition from West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin tanked the administration's centerpiece climate and social services legislation.

The solar development zones were first proposed under the Obama administration, which in 2012 adopted plans to bring utility-scale solar energy projects to public lands in six states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. Officials to date have identified almost 1,400 square miles (3,500 square kilometers) of public land considered for potential leasing for solar power development.

If all that land were developed, the bureau says it could support more than 100 gigawatts of solar power, or enough electricity for more than 29 million homes. Current solar production from federal lands is a small fraction of that amount.

In November the land bureau awarded solar leases for about 8 square miles (19 square kilometers) of land in Utah's Milford Flats solar zone. Solar leases are expected to be finalized by the end of the month for about 13 square miles (34 square kilometers) of land at several sites in Arizona, officials said.

Solar power on public and private lands accounted for about 3% of total U.S. electricity production in 2020. As installation costs fall, that figure is expected to grow sharply, to more than 20% of production by 2050, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected last month.

Explore further Plans for largest US solar field north of Vegas scrapped

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
I dont care what happens to Noth. In fact, up until this weeks revelations, the only time I thought of him was when I watched the endlessly looping reruns of Law and Order, seasons 1-5 (the only ones worth watching, in my opinion.) Im 60, hes older, and thats about it.

But even forgettable cads have a right not to have their reputations trashed by women who emerge from the shadows like avenging handmaids, wanting to tell their stories of woe to strangers.

Its not enough that they might have spoken to friends about their alleged ordeals the morning after. And they certainly know they cant get any legal redress at this late stage. They dont seem to want celebrity, because many of them hide their identities.

The only thing I can think is that they see this shining bandwagon in the distance, chugging along the social justice highway, and they want to jump on. They want to make sure men with bad attitudes are publicly shamed because for so very long, they werent.

They want to shift the societal axis toward what they believe to be payback for women, but which I am certain they would call justice. But its not justice, because all they will be getting is some after-the-fact affirmation that they were wronged.
Buena Vista University student-athlete Landon Weber is one of 38 BVU student-athletes recently named to the 2021 Fall All-Academic Team by the American Rivers Conference. Weber, a major from Hastings, is one of 613 total student-athletes from the A-R-Cs eight fall championship sports that met the requirements for the recognition. To be eligible for All-Academic Team honors, a student-athlete must be on the eligibility list for the sport of nomination, at least a sophomore in academic standing with at least one year in residence and attain an accumulative grade point average of 3.5 or better (on a 4.0 scale). BVU is located in Storm Lake, Iowa.
(Pusel) knew a guy who was that of the Korean War, I believe, whose family had basically put him into like a long-term care center. They havent had contact with him. (Pusel) and his wife would try to send things to the guy every Christmas and write cards because he just doesnt get any mail. It really has helped make a difference in his life.

They were talking about how hard it is for a lot of that during the holidays because they just dont tend to get a lot of mail, or they dont have a lot of living relatives or friends around anymore.

Her fathers idea fit.

If we could do some cards, he just thought that might make a major difference.

Every Westridge eighth-grader participated, and about one-third of the schools student body, Zeller said. Koch was one of the students spreading the word around school, he said.

I told my friends all about it. I told them, you should go and make some cards, because the veterans deserve cards because they served our country.

The cards, many of them donated, have caught the attention of those outside the Tri-Cities, Zeller said.
YORK  A man who was caught with 30 pounds of marijuana and initially charged with three felonies has had his charges amended to a single misdemeanor count.

Kevin Putbrese, 64, of Des Moines, Iowa, reached a plea agreement with the prosecution and pleaded no contest to attempt of a Class 4 felony, which is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

The case began when a deputy with the York County Sheriffs Department was on regular patrol in the middle of the night on Interstate 80 and he saw a motorist speeding and driving over the shoulder line.

A traffic stop was initiated and Putbrese was the driver. In court documents, the deputy says he could smell an overwhelming odor of burned marijuana and the deputy, in having a conversation with Putbrese, began to suspect Putbrese was transporting a large amount of illegal narcotics. The deputy request consent to search, which was denied.

However, due to the odor of the marijuana, a probable cause search of the vehicle was conducted.
Preparing Students For Tech Careers

Washington State Partners with Amazon to Train, Certify High-Schoolers in Cloud Computing

Washington public schools are partnering with Amazon Web Services in a statewide program to train and certify 2,500 high school students in cloud computing over the next three years, according to a recent announcement from the states Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

OSPI said it will collaborate with AWS to prepare high school students for cloud computing careers, including modernizing and expanding course offerings across Washington to train students in artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, cybersecurity, and other cloud-related skills.

The new courses will launch next fall, and high school educators scheduled to teach the courses will be offered professional development to prepare them to teach the cloud computing classes, OSPI said. Each course will emphasize preparing students to earn industry-standard certifications upon completion of the coursework.

Along with support from the Washington Training and Education Coordinating Board, the initiative will provide high school students with technical training and education mapped to in-demand skills, paving the way for careers in tech, the OSPI announcement said.

Our economy and the needs of employees and employers are evolving, and the K-12 system has to evolve with it, said Chris Reykdal, Washingtons State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The announcement marks the first statewide collaboration with AWS focused exclusively on training and educating K-12 students. Through AWS Academy, participating Washington high schools will have access to ready-to-teach, cloud computing curriculum that helps prepare students for in-demand jobs and industry-recognized AWS Certifications. Secondary schools participating in the program may receive free professional development, technical training, and a select number of certification exams for educators who will begin teaching cloud computing courses to their students starting in fall 2022.

Washington state has been a global leader in technology development for decades. This new initiative will help provide the next generation of Washington students with the know-how needed to take on and create the jobs of tomorrow, Lt. Gov. Denny Heck said in the news release. Through this initiative, students across Washington will be able to obtain skills to make them successful and competitive in the global workforce. This initiative also provides an opportunity for equitable, substantial educational development for all students across our state  east, south, north, west, and central. Im excited that Washington state is piloting this initiative using AWS education programs and building up the diverse, high-skill workforce we need.

Cloud computing jobs are in high demand across the country, according to Economic Modeling Specialist International, which reported that in 2020, 165,486 unique cloud jobs were posted in Washington state alone, with 88,642 of those jobs going unfilled.

Schools and educators participating in the program will use content and instructional tools from AWS education programs to help students prepare for a variety of certifications, including AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, AWS Certified Solution ArchitectAssociate, AWS Certified DeveloperAssociate, and more.

Amazon Web Services vice president for U.S. education, Kim Majerus, noted that bringing STEM-related programs to students at the K12 level will help bolster the numbers of young adults entering those career fields.

Research tells us that when you spark a students interest in STEM earlier in their education journey, they are more likely to explore related careers before even enrolling at a college or university, said Majerus. We want to inspire the next generation of tech leaders through engaging and modern cloud computing curricula that have students excited to take the next step in pursuing a tech career  whether thats securing a job through a certification or advancing their knowledge at a higher-education institution. Washington state and OSPI have created an opportunity with AWS to empower high school students in one of the nations fastest growing tech hubs at an age where teens are thinking about future careers.

The new collaboration with public schools is the latest example of AWSs commitment to skills training in Washington: In November, the company opened in Seattle a new AWS Skills Center  Amazons first in-person cloud learning space open anyone curious about cloud computing, related career possibilities, and gaining the skills required for such careers.

Visit Amazons career training and certification website to learn more about AWS education programs.
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NORMAL  Rivian Automotive on Monday said the company made the first deliveries of its all-electric R1S sport-utility vehicle from the Normal factory to Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough and CEO R.J. Scaringe.

"Were working towards ramping production over the next few months on our way to full volume production. Thanks to our team for all the hard work to make it happen!" the company said on social media.

The California-based EV maker launched the R1T pickup truck in September and has delivered 11 of those vehicles, according to a quarterly filing made last week. A total of 71,000 trucks are ordered, the filing said.

Rivian reported it lost $2.23 billion for the first nine months of the year as production started on the truck.

An electric delivery vehicle line is also being developed.

The company last week also announced plans to build a factory in Georgia. Production at the new plant is projected to start in 2024, with capacity of 400,000 vehicles per year.

Additional expansions are planned at the plant in west Normal as well, the filing said.

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Three Southern Illinoisans face criminal charges for allegedly poaching a buck, bobcat and turkey on private land following an investigation by the Illinois Conservation Police, according to a release from the state.

The three individuals include: Justin Bauersachs and Greg Cottom, of Pinckneyville, and Sally Albers, of Breese.

Conservation Police received a complaint in January about a potentially poached large white-tailed buck in Perry County, according to the release.

The officers began an investigation into the allegation and identified Albers as the hunter who allegedly harvested the deer. She did not have a hunting license or habitat stamp as required to lawfully take the deer, the release said.

A photograph was provided to conservation police indicating potential additional violations, including unlawfully hunting on properties without the landowner's consent. Through initial interviews, police determined Bauersachs assisted Albers with unlawfully taking the deer, the release said.

Search warrants were obtained through Perry County, and police discovered multiple violations and additional suspects during the investigation, according to the release.

On Dec. 10, conservation officers arrested Bauersachs under suspicion of criminal trespass to private property and multiple conservation violations in Jackson and Perry counties. Additionally, Cottom and Albers were each issued citations for conservation violations as a result of the investigation.

Bauersachs face numerous conservation citations in Perry County, including: unlawful hunting without the consent of a landowner (two counts); unlawful possession of a migratory game bird during closed season; unlawful possession of a protected species during a closed season; unlawful take of a turkey after legal shooting hours; unlawful possession of wildlife unlawfully taken; unlawful possession of wild turkey (two counts); failure to tag wild turkey immediately after harvest; failure to report harvest of wild turkey; falsification of deer harvest report; contributing to the unlawful take of an eight-point buck; and accessory to hunting without a valid hunting license.

Also in Perry County, Albers was cited for unlawful hunting without the consent of landowner (two counts); unlawful hunting without a hunting license; and unlawful take or possession of deer.

Bauersachs faces criminal charges in Perry County for criminal trespass to private property (two counts) and criminal trespass on a motor vehicle to a field capable of growing crops, the release said. Additional criminal charges are pending review by the Perry County states attorney.

In Jackson County, additional conservation citations were issued.

Cottom was cited for failure to register a bobcat harvest; unlawful possession of a bobcat pelt not tagged per federal regulations; unlawful possession of an unlawfully taken bobcat; and unlawful take of a bobcat without a valid permit.

Bauersachs was cited for possession of unlawfully taken wildlife; hunting without the consent of landowner (two counts); and unlawful hunting of a protected species more than a half-hour after sunset.

Albers was cited for hunting without consent of landowner (two counts).

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MOUNT VERNON  The Jefferson County Sheriffs Office has determined all use of force during the Oct. 26 courthouse shooting of an inmate was justified, but not all security protocols were followed.

Sheriff Jeff Bullard released a video on Sunday, Dec. 19, detailing the results of the Sheriffs Office administrative investigation into the shooting of inmate Fredrick Goss, 55, after allegedly attempting to grab an officers gun.

The probe not only showed a lawful use of force, but also found that there was a disregard for additional safety protocols on correctional officer Jeff Clarks part.

Due to the seriousness of the charges against him, Goss required additional security during transport.

The investigation found Clark did not follow the additional security protocol, putting both himself and potentially the public in a dangerous situation.

Despite this disregard of these protocols, Clark is set to receive a Purple Heart medal for his actions that day. And Deputy Dave May, who came to Clarks aid during the scuffle with Goss, will be receiving the Medal of Valor for his heroic actions.

He will also be named the Illinois Sheriff's Association 2021 Deputy of the Year.

Administrative investigation results

May and Clark, two officers involved in the incident, were placed on administrative leave for three days while the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office investigated the Oct. 26 incident.

Goss's charges, which included armed robbery and aggravated discharge of a firearm, both Class X felonies, required that he be escorted by two officers to court.

Clark escorted and transported Goss alone rather than requesting assistance, Bullard said. Clark followed all other procedures correctly, Bullard said.

The administrative investigation also found that the use of force by both May and Clark are lawful and follow the sheriffs office guidelines, Bullard said.

Bullard said he believes any disciplinary action given by the sheriffs office to Clark or May for any regulations that may have not been followed is seen as a confidential personnel matter.

Clark was injured during the scuffle with Goss and has not returned to duty. May has returned to full duty.

Bullard said he has been proud of the communitys response to this situation and investigation.

"Respecting the integrity of any investigation is crucial for learning the truth, Bullard said. I am thankful for our community leaders and the family of detainee Goss who did not rush to judgment but rather waited for the truth to be uncovered. It is a true testament to the community we live in."

The Oct. 26 incident

At 1 p.m. on Oct. 26, ISP was requested by the county sheriff's department to investigate an officer's shooting of the inmate, according to a news release.

Clark had been transporting Goss to the courtroom for a jury trial.

During the transport, Clark called May, who was manning security at the courthouse, to open the sally port doors, Bullard said.

May continued to watch security footage of the sally port while Goss and Clark arrived.

While in the sally port, Goss was unhandcuffed by Clark as Goss was not to appear before the jury in restraints, the release stated.

After the handcuffs were removed, Goss was transferred from the transport vehicle into a wheelchair, ISP said.

Goss then allegedly grabbed the correctional officers sidearm and after a struggle, disarmed Clark, video footage of the incident showed.

May, who was still watching the security cameras, noticed the struggle and ran to Clarks aid, Bullard said

Upon Mays arrival, a shot was fired, ending the struggle between Clark and Goss.

May discharged his firearm, striking Goss.

Goss was transported to an area hospital and eventually transferred to a St. Louis area hospital for treatment of his injuries, Bullard said

Once Goss was released from the hospital he was taken to Marion County Jail.

He is still being held there, Bullard said.

The sheriffs office, as well as other law enforcement agencies, will now use the video from the incident and the incident itself as a part of training, Bullard said.

The Illinois State Police are still conducting their investigation into the matter, and should any wrongdoing be found, the Jefferson States Attorney will handle prosecution.

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CARBONDALE Rainbow Cafe has served the Southern Illinois LGBTQ community for 21 years. Now, they need more space than their current building provides.

To raise funds for the new building, Carrie Vine, vice-chair and Rainbow Cafe board member, and Kimberly Needham, an active volunteer, helped put together a 2022 calendar called Farms & Faces featuring Southern Illinoisans showing their support.

Michael Coleman, a board director for Rainbow Cafe, said the group wants a new building because it has a number of plans and initiatives that their current building cant accommodate.

Currently, Rainbow Cafe is in a strip mall on Giant City Road where it has a small garage space, and two small rooms. It shares a bathroom with other businesses and a church.

Vine said the Rainbow Cafe has gone from just serving youth in the past few years, to serving the entire LGBTQ population. The center even changed its name officially from the Rainbow Cafe LGBTQ Youth Center to the Rainbow Cafe LGBTQ Community Center.

Our programming is hugely expanding and we just don't have the room to do what we want to do, Vine said. We're ready to be out, I mean, we're ready to have our own space to just kind of move in and have our own permanent place, and do more with the space that we have.

Coleman said the Rainbow Cafe hopes to move somewhere more visible in Carbondale  a location more easily accessible. The group said they are looking at locations on the Carbondale strip.

The idea to create a calendar featuring farmers arose because within the Cafes community efforts and fundraising efforts, many farmers have always been supportive.

So many individuals wanted to participate in the calendar, models had to be turned away, Vine said.

Vine said she hopes the calendar challenges peoples perceptions and helps to fight the stigma of things like HIV and ageism.

It just became a big thing about talking about stigma, and showing what people living with HIV and fighting the stigma of HIV, because there's two long-term survivors of HIV in the calendar. There's elders in the calendar. You know, not your stereotypical, you know, models per se, Vine said. So I think it's important to have those people, you know, showcase that everybody is beautiful.

All funds from the calendars will go towards the Rainbow Cafes new building fund.

Needham said she hopes the calendar sheds light on ageist perceptions that some people hold and shows farmers in this area can be supportive of the LGBTQ community and are not a stereotype.

So many of our farmers in our area, who are big supporters of ours, they all have that bad rep, Needham said. So we really wanted, you know, to advertise for them too, because they always support us.

As described in the calendar, the models are:

Karl Mackenbach, January

Karl never grew up with the farm life but has taken to it with enthusiasm. Hes dedicated to his family and family farm that includes chickens, goats, a pig, a cow and his bees. Foraging, raising and farming food for his family brings him joy and purpose.

Curt Wilson, February

Curt is a longtime Carbondale area musician, computer nerd, Buddhist, father, partner and activist who is hoping to help move the human race forward and hopes you do too.

Matt Sronkoski, March

What defines a person? Career? Progeny? Accomplishments? Well, those are all fine and good, but when we get right down to it, when we really get deep into the gizzard of it all, it is the chicken which perches highest upon lifes roost. My name is Matt and I am a proud chicken parent.

Steven St. Julian, April

Steven has been a life-long advocate for HIV awareness and prevention. After his own diagnosis in 1987 Steven moved back to Southern Illinois and spent his career at Jackson County Health Department advocating for clients and providing support. Steven is also a proud founding member of Rainbow Cafe and is a Board Member Emeritus. Steven retired from JCHD in 2019 and now spends his days in his Makanda home with his husband, Bruce, Mitzi the dog and Maxine the cat. Steven enjoys taking care of their home and socializing with friends.

Jonny Gray, May

Jonny is an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University. Since January of 2013, he has been the host of Isnt It Queer, a weekly LGBTQ+ news and talk show aired as a podcast on local community radio, WDBX. He is married to Craig Gingrich-Philbrook with whom he shares a home in Makanda. He has lived in Southern Illinois since 1999. In that time he has been involved in a variety of community projects including performances at the Kleinau Theatre, working as a beloved puppetista for the All Species Puppet Parade and volunteering at Rainbow Cafe. He is currently a founding member of SOIL Sisters: The Dirtiest Hoes of the Sacred Heartland, an aspirant house working towards recognition as a mission house for the international organization, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. He manifests as Sister Mothra Stewart, the kaiju of crafting. He enjoys doing all manner of crafts including painting, drawing, beading, sewing, baking and quilting. Its a good thing!

Faim Lee Jewls, June

Who rescued who? When hes not busy on-stage capturing hearts, Faim Lee Jewls (also known as Julie off stage) is busy saving four-legged fur babies as he and his husband run their no-kill animal rescue shelter, MARS of Illinois. Pictured with him is his smallest rescue dog, Twinkie. Faim was born and raised in southern Illinois. As the current title holder of Southern Illinois Pride King, he has been involved in many community functions benefiting the Rainbow Cafe LGBTQ center. If you are interested in adding a new pup to your family, or wish to donate to the cause please visit MARS of Illinois at www.dogsfrommars.net.

Bob Iltis, July

Bob is the 64-year-old baby from a family of Badgers (Cheeseheads). After a stint in the Peace Corps, where he met his future spouse, Bob returned to the US from seven years in Nepal to pursue a masters degree in Agriculture from SIU Carbondale. In 1994, Bob married Sharon Fletcher and the two purchased a home east of Cobden IL. The two began raising poultry, a few horses and a donkey, several dogs and cats, and beef cattle. Bob taught Ag. classes at SIU then became a licensed professional land surveyor in 2009, all the while also playing and singing country and western dance tunes in several ensembles and writing and performing in the comic folk duo, RognboB. By accident, Bob became a Tomato Fertility King in 2008. He is an Eagle Scout. He supports progressive causes that promote peace, justice and tolerance.

Mike Hatfield, August

The Hatfield family (Michael, Jessica, Iris and Oliver) are the owners of Flyway Family Farm, which is a small family farm specializing in organically grown gourmet mushrooms. They are nestled in the heart of the Shawnee Hills, surrounded by Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge. The health and happiness of their plants, fungi, animals and soils is their top priority year-round. They sell fresh mushrooms, mushroom jerky, pickled shiitake, seasoning salts and grow kits. www.flywayfamilyfarm.com.

Marvin Miller, September

Marvin has been around horses all his life. Marvin grew up Amish and learned how to plow fields using horses from a very young age. He has been a farmer for 30 plus years. He joined the team at Rose O Sharon Equine Farm in the spring of 2014. R.O.S.E. Farm is a family-owned business (Ann and Katie Garrett) in Makanda, IL, which Marvin, his partner Katie and their 2-year-old son, Wesley Patrick, all manage the farm together. They teach both Western and English riding as well as the groundwork and recently they have started holding equine-assisted mindfulness and equine-assisted personal growth and development workshops at the farm. www. roseosharonfarm.com.

T-roy Bandy, October

Bandys Pumpkin Patch was founded in 1986. For 34 years it was ran by the original generation. Then James Troy Bandy II, his wife Kelly and their 11-year-old son, took over the family business in 2021 and are dedicated to making the farm welcoming and inclusive to everyone. Bandys Pumpkin Patch offers a large selection of pumpkins, fall decorations, a 10-acre corn maze, wheelchair accessible hayrides, a 4200 sq ft activity barn for the kiddos, a sensory fire pit and 2 private fire pits available to rent out for private parties. The Bandys actively spread the message Be Kind and push for acceptance of all walks of life. Located at: 15020 Pumpkin Patch Rd in Johnston City, IL. www.bandyspumpkinpatch.com.

Whitney Tyson, November

Whitney is a transgender man, husband, father and soon to be grandfather. He came out while living in San Diego in the early 80s. This was during the early days of the AIDS crisis, and he lost many friends to this terrible virus. He participated in LGBT rodeo before moving to the midwest, eventually settling in southern Illinois. He loves spending time with family and friends, travel, woodburning and photography.

Anthony Wyatt, December

Anthony has been an active volunteer with Jackson County Health Department since 1995. Tony serves as a Client Representative/Peer Navigator for Southern Illinois Care Connect Program. Tonys position is three-fold. He provides support and education for those living with HIV. He provides education to the community as a whole and specifically targets the youth population to reduce the transmission and increase the knowledge about HIV. Lastly, Tony serves on a variety of state-wide and local advisory boards, lending his expertise and advocacy experience to issues and policies regarding HIV. Please visit www.jchdonline.org to find out more about PrEP and the Southern Illinois HIV Care Connect Program.

A preview of the calendar can be viewed here: https://issuu.com/rainbowcafe/docs/farms_and_faces_for_issuu-2?fbclid=IwAR3ZEFXJpUvwkpCvZ2u4fH1IeVEjH-Cts-RF0QjUSpLP-4HI-VGIm0xXaek

Calendars are $15 to purchase if bought in person and $20 with shipping. They can be found at Rainbow Cafes website, the Neighborhood Co-op, Muddy Roots Collective, The Carbondale Farmers Market, or at the Last Chance Gift Fair at Buckwater on Sunday, December 19 from 11-3.

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BELVIDERE  Police are investigating the deaths of a man and his two young sons found in a northern Illinois home as a triple homicide as they search for the dead man's missing vehicle.

Belvidere police said that Andrew Hintt, 31, and his two sons, 5 and 7, had apparently died from gunshot wounds. Autopsies on the victims were pending.

Four shell casings were found at the scene, but no weapons have been recovered, police said.

Officers found their bodies Sunday night after a landlord called 911 after being contacted by the boy's mother, who had not heard from anyone with the family, police said.

Belvidere Police Chief Shane Woody said the deaths are being investigated as a triple homicide.

Whoever did this horrific act is truly evil, he said Monday during a news conference.

Officers are searching for Hintts vehicle, a silver or gray 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk with Illinois registration: CT92923.

Police asked anyone who knows anything about the vehicle's whereabouts or anything else regarding the case to contact the Belvidere Police Department at 815-544-2135 or Boone County Crime Stoppers at 815-547-7867.

Belvidere is located in Boone County about 12 miles east of Rockford.

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(TBTCO) - Blue-chips tiep tuc chao ao trong phien hom nay nhung van con tru neo giu iem cho VN-Index tang. Tuy vay su soi ong, tham chi la rat nong, van chi tap trung trong nhom au co vua va nho. ay cung la nhung ma hut tien nhat.
Fire burned a house near downtown Casper on Tuesday hours after law enforcement responded to the home for an apparent domestic dispute.

Firefighters responded to the blaze at a home near the intersection of 10th and Poplar streets on Tuesday afternoon and brought it under control. The residence suffered significant damage that will displace the occupants, authorities said.

Employees of a nearby gas station said authorities surrounded the same house earlier in the day while responding to a domestic dispute. A Casper police officer at the scene said there was likely a connection, but authorities werent sure of the details yet.

Along with firefighters, police officers and sheriffs deputies were at the scene. They were accompanied by a BearCat armored vehicle.

Witnesses also reported seeing officers carrying long guns at the scene. Although several sheriffs deputies and patrol cars were seen outside the home, a spokesperson for the sheriffs office deferred any questions to the Casper Police Department, citing its jurisdiction over the incident.

The fire is under investigation to determine whether there was any criminal activity involved, Casper police spokesperson Rebekah Ladd said. Further updates may be available Wednesday.

Depending on any criminal nature of the fire CPD may or may not be involved, Ladd said in a text message.

No one was harmed in the fire, Casper Fire-EMS said.

Casper Fire-EMS spokesman Dane Andersen said authorities didnt know the cause yet and were not ruling anything out. Fire investigators were on scene.

According to the Casper Police Department, a neighbor had called 911 Tuesday morning to report a domestic dispute at the residence. Police set up a perimeter around the home.

The apparent victim was taken out of the home and to Wyoming Medical Center with unknown injuries, police said.

The other person involved in the reported dispute, the apparent subject according to police, was not found at the home that morning.

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Victoria Eavis State politics reporter Follow Victoria Eavis Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today
Seventy-seven percent of the Wyoming National Guard reported receiving at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Monday, according to a spokesperson for the agency.

The states National Guard consists of more than 2,800 members, meaning that almost 2,200 have received at least one shot.

The states traditional National Guard consists of the Air Guard and the Army Guard, which reported having significantly different vaccination rates, likely because their deadlines to get vaccinated are six months apart.

Eighty-eighty percent of the Wyoming Air Guard has received at least once dose of vaccine, with 86% fully vaccinated. It required its 1,270 members to be inoculated by Dec. 2.

The Army Guards deadline is June 30 and currently has more members with only one dose of a two-dose course. About two-thirds of the guard has received at least one shot. Slightly less than 51% is fully vaccinated.

Although the Army Guard is trailing the Air Guard, both forces are vaccinated well in excess of the statewide rate, which now sits at 47%.

The Wyoming National Guard has not run an vaccine incentive program, according to Deputy Public Affairs Officer Alyssa Hinckley.

The U.S. Army recently said 98% of its active-duty force received at least one shot, the Marine Corps said 95% of its force got one dose and roughly 97.5% of the Air Force and Space Force have received at least one shot. Over 98% of the Navy is fully vaccinated.

Branches of the U.S. Military have started to discharge members and levy disciplinary actions against troops who refused to comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. That hasnt been the case in the Wyoming National Guard.

As I understand, no disciplinary actions have been taken for Wyoming soldiers and Airmen, Hinckley said. Those decisions are still being worked due to ongoing legal challenges.

The roughly 2,800 total Wyoming guardspeople are currently serving under Title 32, meaning that they are under Gov. Mark Gordons orders.

When Guard members are activated under Title 32, the states governor has been authorized by the president to mobilize the statewide National Guard. While these Guard members are under state control, they still receive pay and benefits from the federal government.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense recently said that all National Guard members who arent vaccinated against COVID-19 may face disciplinary action that could eventually result in loss of their Guard status.

In response, Gordon and four other Republican governors signed onto a letter requesting that those under Title 32 (serving in a state capacity) be exempt from the disciplinary actions.

The Wyoming Governors office said it has not yet received a response to the letter.

Wyoming and a litany of other Republican-leaning states are also fighting mandates pertaining to federal contractors, certain employees at private businesses and health workers in facilities that take Medicare or Medicaid funding. Some of those challenges have so far been successful, leading to pauses in certain parts of the nation.

Follow state politics reporter Victoria Eavis on Twitter @Victoria_Eavis

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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.
Pioneer of the sub genre known as Kaisojazz music, Clive Zanda Alexander, passed away this
Above all else, it is your understanding of the science of the mind that determines your des
There are roughly 600 nursing vacancies in Tucson and, as a direct result and coupled with the current COVID surge, the number of intensive care beds available keeps dipping: six were available in Pima County Friday.
The complaint is full of specifics of how the regents contend Brnovich has violated his obligations to his client.

One of the two lawsuits is the bid by Brnovich to have the method of setting tuition at the states three universities declared unconstitutional and as violating constitutional requirements that instruction be as nearly free as possible. He charged that regents were acting illegally by essentially deciding first how much they want to charge and then justifying the amount later.

But courts ruled he had no right to sue.

Still pending is the claim that it was illegal for ASU and the regents to enter into a deal to build a new hotel and conference center.

In both lawsuits, AG Brnovich is not only suing his own client, he is also slipping his position on the same issues that the AGs office has previously defended ABOR on, Penley wrote.

During the pandemic, Penley said, Brnovich made public statements last year with utter disregard both for the truth and for the interests of the AGs clients.
For right now, however, that means mandatory testing is definitely on the table, especially with everyone coming back from break, Jensen said. But we also have to make sure that we dont cross the governor or that the governor doesnt write another order that prevents testing when we get back.

Students and staff are already required to wear masks in all indoor spaces when social distancing is not possible. On Tuesday, the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted to approve a countywide mask mandate for all indoor spaces in light of the omicron variants rise. The UA said it will maintain full compliance with that order.

As this goes on, and the predictions come true, and we see a massive skyrocket in the county and around the state, (mandatory testing) will definitely be a possibility, Jensen said. The No. 1 thing we want people to remember is that its so important to be vaccinated. But also, anyone who got vaccinated six month ago, its also important to get the booster because this is spreading so fast.

In Arizona, where COVID-19 is the leading cause of death and hospitalizations are at a high point, health officials are also urging residents to take omicron seriously and get vaccinated  and boosted.
The supervisors first adopted a countywide mask mandate in June 2020 and rescinded the mandate in May 2021 with the recommendation unvaccinated residents continue to wear a mask indoors.

With the mandate back in place, the county hasnt specified plans to enforce it, but Heinz said it will give leverage to business owners enforcing the mandate on their premises.

The idea is that this is a pro-business move to make sure that the businesses dont have to have the clerk at the front desk be the enforcer, they can say, Hey, the countys requiring it, see what the sign says, Heinz said.

Scott disagreed the mandate is a pro-business measure and said while he encourages county residents to continue mask-wearing, the onus of enforcing the mandate will fall on business owners, not the county.

I am not willing to tell you that you must wear masks because I know that many of you will choose to ignore or defy that mandate, Scott said. The people who will have to deal with your choices are not members of this board, nor do they work for county government. I am absolutely unwilling to ask those workers to deal with the consequences of any defiance or ignorance of a new mask mandate, so I will be sadly voting against this item.
The proposal is to protect pygmy owl populations not just in Arizona, but in south Texas, northern Sonora, western Mexico and northeastern Mexico. The wildlife service legally has the ability to list as endangered or threatened endangered species living in Mexico, but its enforcement powers for Mexican birds are limited compared to those in the United States.

David Godlewski, president of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, whose lawsuit led to the earlier removal of the pygmy owl from federal protection, said the group has not yet decided how involved it will get now.

The groups original opposition and legal strategy was tied to the fact that the owl is much more common in Mexico than in Southern Arizona, where its known population typically did not go above about 40.

Any time there is an issue that could make it harder to build, increase the cost of housing and set back our economy  such as an endangered or threatened species listing  we take it seriously. At this point, however, we have just begun to learn of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services decision on the pygmy owl and are evaluating whether, and to what extent, we will engage, said Godlewski.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  Retail giant Walmart illegally dumps more than 1 million batteries, aerosol cans of insect killer and other products, toxic cleaning supplies, electronic waste, latex paints and other hazardous waste into California landfills each year, state prosecutors alleged Monday in a lawsuit that the company labeled unjustified.

As we shop the brightly packed aisles there are products that will never make it into the cart  returned, damaged or pulled from the shelves for a variety of reasons, said California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

When a big box store disposes of unwanted goods, just like the rest of us, they need to do so properly. Unfortunately, Walmart  the largest company in the world by revenue  has failed to do that on a grand scale here in California," Bonta said.

The attorney general's office settled a previous similar lawsuit in 2010 in which Walmart, which operates more than 300 stores in California, paid $25 million and agreed to stop the dumping into local landfills that are not equipped to contain the hazardous products.

It paid $1.25 million to Missouri in 2012 to settle a similar lawsuit.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP)  Israeli troops on Tuesday killed a Palestinian man who allegedly tried to ram his vehicle into a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, army officials said.

According to Palestinian media, the soldiers opened fire at the vehicle, killing the man and causing his car to veer off course, crash into a military vehicle and burst into flames near the northern West Bank town of Jenin.

The identity of the slain Palestinian was not immediately announced, and there were no reports of injuries to the Israeli forces.

Lone Palestinian attackers have been accused in numerous stabbing and car-ramming attacks in recent years. Palestinians and rights groups accuse Israel of often using excessive force and in some cases, even killing innocent people.

Tuesday's incident came days after a weekend of intensified Israel-Palestinian violence across the West Bank, sparked by the death of a Jewish settler who was shot dead by at least one Palestinian gunman on Thursday evening. The death of Yehuda Dimentman ignited a string of settler retaliation attacks, leaving at least three Palestinians requiring hospital treatment.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP)  An F-15 fighter jet traveling over central Illinois created a sonic boom that rattled the region Tuesday, prompting concerned residents to flood local police stations with calls about the noise, a state agency said.

The Illinois Emergency Management Agency said in a statement that the department was alerted about 11:20 CST about a large noise and shaking felt by many residents" across central Illinois.

The state agency said it began investigating with federal, state and local officials and found that the sound was a sonic boom created by a military fighter jet.

It was determined that an F-15 fighter jet in the airspace above central Illinois course corrected creating a sonic boom. When the aircraft broke the sound barrier, the pressure wave created an audible noise and minor shaking in the region," the state agency said in a statement.

There have been no reports of damage caused by the noise, it added.
OPINION: "Our goal is to make good on our commitment to transparency. But the only way we get from transparency to accountability is through the engagement of the citizenry of Pima County. We need you to engage us intellectually, to challenge us  with both honesty and seriousness  to come up with the best solutions to violence and injustices that our community faces," writes Pima County Attorney Laura Conover.
TOKYO (AP)  Japan will keep in place its recently reimposed strict border controls, which ban most foreign entrants, until more information is known about the omicron variant of the coronavirus, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.

Kishida said he will also require 14-day quarantines at government-designated facilities for those who come in close contact with omicron patients, instead of the current stay-at-home policy.

He made the comments at a news conference marking the end the current parliamentary session, which approved a record 36 trillion yen ($317 billion) extra budget to fund COVID-19 measures and revive the pandemic-hit economy.

Kishida did not specify a timeline for the border controls, among the toughest in the world, which had been briefly eased but were then reinstated amid the global upsurge of the omicron variant.

Kishida said the increase in omicron infections in the United States is causing uncertainty for his desire to visit Washington for talks with President Joe Biden.
That self-described victory lasted a few months. Then in February, with the encouragement of his girlfriend and her parents, Maddox switched to part-time hours at his job and enrolled at Webster High School after TPS resumed in-person classes for secondary students.

Susan Allen is the counselor at Webster High School. Although she has had additional support from the schools social worker and faculty members to help maintain regular contact with students, this has been a particularly difficult year to get her 72 seniors across the graduation stage.

Several have had to get jobs to help their families during the pandemic. Others, like Maddox, were missing required courses for any number of reasons.

It has been very challenging, she said. Its been a scramble to get the buy-in that it wasnt too late to get the credits. When we came back in person, those kids got busy and its really paying off now.

When Maddox arrived on campus, she made it plain that graduating in May was probably not a realistic option for him. In addition to the classes he needed to take that spring, he was still short all the necessary credits from the fall 2020 semester.
Austin, meanwhile, continued growing at 3% to 4% per year and its population caught up to Tulsas sometime around mid-1985. By the end of the decade, the capital of Texas was nearly 100,000 people bigger than the former Oil Capital of the World.

And Austin wasnt the only city to overtake Tulsa. Metropolitan Albuquerque was 15,000 people smaller than metropolitan Tulsa in 1982. Now its 155,000 people bigger. Tuscon, Arizona, was roughly the same size as Tulsa 38 years ago. Nows 219,000 people bigger. Raleigh, North Carolina, was 224,000 smaller than Tulsa. Now its 726,000 bigger.

Tulsa basically stood still for a decade and has never caught up.

The Regional Chamber of Commerce recently conducted a nationwide search for a new senior vice president of economic development. Maybe its just a coincidence that the search ended in Austin, where 38-year-old Arthur Jackson helped the city get the $1 billion Tesla factory that Tulsa wanted so badly.

He spent five years with the Austin Chamber of Commerce, most recently as senior director of economic development, where he marketed the city to Merck, Apple, Pfizer and other big-time investors.
Oklahomas medical marijuana laws are so different than any other states, said OMMA Director Kelly Williams. Licensing fees are much lower; there are no caps; theres no qualifying conditions for patients.

A lot of the limitations in other states arent in place here, so there wasnt a good way to predict what this market would look like. It really is unique.

Framed by State Question 788, passed overwhelmingly by state voters three years ago, Oklahomas medical marijuana laws tried to favor small, local operators by limiting out-of-state ownership stakes, setting license fees low and putting no cap on the number of business licenses that could be issued.

But lawmakers and others say the residency requirement for businesses is routinely circumvented and that the low licensing fees and unlimited number of licenses have encouraged large operators to buy up dozens or even hundreds of licenses, which are used to confuse investigators.

The result is that the OMMA has issued almost 8,000 growers licenses  far more than is needed to support the states legal medical marijuana market.
Haynes said a public nuisance was created in 1921 when a white mob looted, destroyed and murdered in Greenwood, with subsequent governmental practices and policies to this day that elevate and exacerbate the nuisance.

Haynes said she was most struck by the absence of a hospital in north Tulsa. One was destroyed in the massacre and never rebuilt.

Our survivors are victims and witnesses to the worst act of domestic terrorism that this country has ever seen, Haynes said. Theyre witnesses to murder, to arson, to other heinous crimes.

Damario Solomon-Simmons is the Tulsa lawyer leading the Justice for Greenwood Foundations lawsuit.

Similar to the Marshall Plan, which sent billions of dollars in economic aid to Western Europe after World War II, he said there needs to be a Greenwood Plan to revive the economic, cultural and social fabric of the community decimated by the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Solomon-Simmons said research indicates that the wealth disparity between white and Black Tulsans is more than six times that of the national average. He also nodded toward the 11- to 14-year life expectancy gap identified by the Tulsa Equality Indicators report.
This story, originally published on May 19, 2021, in Tulsa World, is being reissued among top stories of the past year during a free-to-read week presented by Bill Knight Automotive.

Little stores and shanties are being opened up for business ... selling everything from fresh meat to ice cream cones.

Tulsa Daily World

June 6, 1921

The embers had barely cooled before Black Tulsans began rebuilding Greenwood Avenue. Amid the rubble of their beloved Black Wall Street, they found ways to keep going, just as they always had.

Black Wall Street rose again  and fell again  and for more than half the past century has been trying to figure out its place in a world so much different than the one in which Greenwood flourished.

Dwain Midget, a son of Greenwood and Black north Tulsa, has for more than 30 years been one of the citys top development officers. He says the Black Wall Street and Greenwood Avenue are not necessarily geographically intertwined.

Black Wall Street is to be honored, he said. Its to have continual recognition and acknowledgement in history. But we will never have that Black Wall Street on Greenwood again.

To me, you remember it, and then you make a new Black Wall Street, he said.

Midget thinks the new Black Wall Street could be north of Pine Street on Peoria Avenue. An active business area is becoming more entrenched, he said, and housing is improving, especially in the Lacy Park neighborhood.

All of that, Midget said, began with planning 30 years ago.

Things are happening, he said. Theyre too incremental, but thats because ... of systemic, institutionalized racism that has to be overcome. It can still be done, and its being done, just not fast enough.

As segments in a timeline, the 10 decades since 1921 roughly mark stages in the life of a place and maybe even a dream.

Greenwood, says Tulsa historian, author and lecturer Hannibal Johnson, is a mindset as much or more as it is a place.

Its psychological, he said. Its aspirational.

1921-31: Recovery

Defying efforts to keep them from rebuilding, Black Tulsans erected buildings at night to evade enforcement of a fire code passed by the city commission expressly to pressure them to sell. They also pulled cash from unsuspected reserves or found credit to put up new brick buildings that complied with that code.

By the end of July 1921, the Tulsa World reported, several Black owners, including Charles M. Goodwin and Vernon A.M.E. Church, had obtained building permits.

Ten days later the Tulsa Tribune said 65 wood structures and several brick ones had been completed or were under construction.

Tulsas 1922 city directory shows more than 80 businesses with North Greenwood Avenue addresses. In 1926, five years after it was burned to the ground, the 100 block of North Greenwood alone was home to more than 50 enterprises of just about every description.

Perhaps the crowning moment occurred in 1925, when Tulsa hosted the National Negro Business Leagues annual convention.

1931-1941: Good bad times

The 1930s were tough for most Americans, and Black Americans were certainly no exception. Yet somehow Greenwood managed to grow and even prosper.

By the end of the decade, the neighborhood was nearing its peak in terms of population and business activity.

But that success was largely built on a segregation that forced more and more Black Tulsans into the confines of a neighborhood with little room to grow, and created a ready-made customer base for the little shops lining Greenwood Avenue and the neighboring streets.

That would change dramatically in the decades ahead.

1941-1951: Peak years

By one count, the Greenwood District counted almost 180 businesses and more than 1,400 residences in 1942.

Data compiled by researcher Amanda Coleman in the late 1990s indicates Greenwood continued to grow through the war years to the end of the decade.

But in 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the race restrictive title covenants that effectively segregated housing in many American cities, including Tulsa. That was good for Black Tulsans, but not so good for Greenwood.

1951-1961 Hollowing out

The Dreamland Theater closed in 1952. Now an iconic symbol of Black Wall Street at its height, the Dreamland became one of the first casualties of the social, political and economic forces conspiring against Greenwood.

As early as 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled cities and states could not segregate housing based on race. But that was wired around through title covenants that prohibited the transfer of property to non-whites.

When the title covenants were thrown out, African Americans were free to move out.

Red-lining and other obstacles remained, to be sure, but U.S. Census data shows clearly how Black Tulsans spilled out of the old boundaries  Detroit to the old Midland Valley railroad tracks  into adjoining neighborhoods.

1961-1971 Bottoming out

By 1960, the city of Tulsa classified half of the Greenwood Districts housing stock as dilapidated. Five years later, to the dismay of many Greenwood residents, it initiated an urban renewal project that some might argue has never really ended.

The project originally encompassed only the northern portion of the Greenwood neighborhood but was soon extended to the inner dispersal loop, a total of 309 acres.

1971-1981 Urban renewal

Midget says community leaders such as Homer Johnson and later Julius Pegues and Ralph McIntosh did their best to blunt urban renewal.

Johnson, for one, predicted urban renewal would result in Black Tulsans losing ownership of the fading ribbon along Greenwood Avenue. The northern half of the 309-acre project was successfully redeveloped as Heritage Hills, but the southern half attracted little interest and zero investment.

1981-1991 False promise

Formed in 1938, the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce found new purpose during the urban renewal era: saving what remained of Deep Greenwood.

By 1981, the only business remaining in the 100 block of North Greenwood was the Oklahoma Eagle. Three other businesses  a diner, a small grocery and an upholstery shop  held on six blocks north, between Haskell Place and Independence, but would soon be gone.

In 1980, the Greenwood Chamber received a $1.6 million grant to renovate the 11 remaining buildings in Deep Greenwood. It would be three more years, though, and a host of headaches before work began. The renovations would not be completed until 1985.

Despite much fanfare, the Greenwood Centre, as it was then called, landed on the commercial real estate market with a thud. Tenants were so scarce the city had to kick in $1.6 million to avoid a default.

Concurrently, the wheels fell off a deal to develop housing, hotels and commercial space on 90 acres north of the IDL. With no other prospects and the economy in a swoon, the city committed $6.5 million to build the University Center at Tulsa  now Oklahoma State University-Tulsa  on the same tract.

Adjoining it, ground was broken in 1985 for the Greenwood Cultural Center.

1991-2001 Reawakening

By 1991, Deep Greenwood was again home to a handful of businesses. But with no adjoining population base, most of them were struggling and the complex depended largely on government offices to stay open.

Arguably, Greenwood now extended as far north as Turley and west into Gilcrease Hills, and a business district was coalescing around Pine Street and Peoria Avenue.

In 1997, legislation creating a commission to examine the 1921 Race Massacre earned Greenwood an international celebrity that would only grow over the next two decades.

2001-2011: Encroachment

Renewed investment in downtown Tulsa brought more interest and money to the old Greenwood, but also what many Black Tulsans regarded as unwanted encroachment.

Construction of ONEOK Field in the historic district quashed the Greenwood Chamber of Commerces plans for a mixed use development on a portion of the site and led to extension of the adjoining Arts District onto Greenwood turf.

2011-2021: Centennial

Redevelopment of Tulsas inner city, Black Tulsans fierce sense of ownership and the approaching 100th anniversary of the 1921 massacre have brought to the surface disagreements both old and new.

Tenants of the Greenwood Centre  the 11-building complex comprising the 100 block of North Greenwood  continued to complain about the buildings management.

The Greenwood Chamber, the Centres manager, says its doing the best it can given limited revenue and aging facilities.

Meanwhile, across Archer, new apartments and retail space are about to open  as is the Greenwood Rising History Center.

That the new construction is largely owned by non-Blacks rankles some but is fine with others who figure the increased traffic will help everyone.

The decade began with the opening of John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park two blocks west of Greenwood. Itll end with a once-in-a-hundred-years test of that concept.

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OKLAHOMA CITY  Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. on Monday signed an executive order asserting the tribes treaty rights for its citizens to hunt and fish within the tribes reservation.

The action comes after Gov. Kevin Stitt and two tribes could not agree on terms of a new compact.

The move would allow Cherokee citizens the right to hunt and fish within the tribes 7,000-square-mile reservation without state licenses, Hoskin has said.

The Choctaw Nation took similar action, according to its website.

Our position is that all Oklahomans, unless excepted otherwise under Oklahoma law, must purchase hunting and fishing licenses in order to engage in those activities within the state, said Charlie Hannema, a Stitt spokesman.

Hoskin said the Cherokee Nation will rely on its existing law to regulate hunting and fishing activities among Cherokee citizens within the tribes reservation area in northeast Oklahoma.
Turnpikes are an irritating fact of life in Oklahoma in general, and they have a virtual stranglehold over Tulsa commerce in particular.

But they arent going away anytime soon or, frankly, ever.

Some people will never accept this, but theyre the fairest way to finance the construction of needed highways  a straightforward user fee.

As former OTA Board member John Kilpatrick was fond of saying, there is no such thing as a free road. You either pay for your highway with tolls or your pay for it with taxes. Paying with tolls means the heaviest users pay the most and the nonusers dont pay at all. Thats the model of fairness, as voters accepted when they affirmed the OTAs mission in 1954.

The new collection system has some obvious problems. For one, the car owner is being held responsible for tolls, even if someone else is driving the vehicle. The OTA customer service people will work with people who can prove they arent responsible for tolls  such as tolls that are run up after a cars sale  but the bottom line is that if you own the car, youre going to held responsible for the tolls.
This isnt the first time Union officials have tackled potentially thorny issues. The school went through a lengthy and thorough process of re-evaluating the districts mascot, which was seen by many to be denigrating to Native Americans.

Despite reluctance in some quarters to make the change, the district scrapped the old mascot, then embarked on selecting a new one with input from patrons and students in the district.

It should be noted that it takes a certain level of courage to plow ahead with these initiatives in the face of current political realities.

With House Bill 1775, the Oklahoma Legislature has pushed back against efforts to teach history from different perspectives when it comes to race and gender.

School boards across the country have been criticized, protested and even threatened over perceptions that students are being taught principles of critical race theory.

The temptation to steer clear of diversity, equity and inclusion issues might be strong, but Unions administration and board has been unified in making sure the district takes all students welfare into consideration.
Vietnamese State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his entourage arrived in Phnom Penh on Tuesday morning, beginning his two-day state visit to Cambodia at the invitation of King Norodom Sihamoni.

Upon arriving at Phnom Penh International Airport, State President Phuc was welcomed by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Royal Palace Samdech Chaufea Veang Kong Sam Ol and other high-ranking Cambodian officials.

Vietnamese Ambassador to Cambodia Nguyen Huy Tang was also at the reception.

After the welcoming ceremony, Phuc is slated to meet King Norodom Sihamoni, Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk, Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen, and National Assembly leaders of Cambodia.

He will also witness the signing of bilateral cooperation agreements and attend the inauguration of the Cambodian parliaments new administrative building, a project funded by Vietnam.

In addition, the Vietnamese president will lay wreaths at the Independence Monument, the statue of the late King Norodom Sihanouk, and the Vietnam - Cambodia Friendship monument.

On the second day, President Phuc will meet with the Vietnamese community and representatives of Vietnamese businesses in Cambodia, among other activities.

Vietnamese State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc is seen reviewing a guard of honor during the welcoming ceremony upon his arrival in Phnom Penh on December 21, 2021 for a two-day state visit to Cambodia. Photo: N. A. / Tuoi Tre

This trip, marking Phucs first official visit to Cambodia in his role as state president, is among a series of activities to celebrate the Cambodia - Vietnam Year of Friendship and the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

As part of the defense and security ties, Vietnam and Cambodia had completed 84 percent of the demarcation and marker planting on the land border between the two countries. They signed two legal documents on October 5, 2019 recognizing this border demarcation.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the two countries have seen two-way trade reach US$8.63 billion over the first 11 months of 2021, a sharp year-on-rise rise of 84 percent, according to the General Department of Vietnam Customs.

The figure is expected to climb to $9.3 billion by the year-end, up 75 percent from 2020.

Vietnam now has 188 investment projects worth $2.88 billion in Cambodia, ranking fifth among the host countrys foreign investors.

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Here are todays leading news stories:

Politics

-- Vietnamese State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc is scheduled to pay a state-level visit to Cambodia on December 21 and 22, aimed at enhancing political trust and intensifying multifaceted cooperation between the two countries, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

Society

-- Storm Rai weakened into a tropical depression in the East Vietnam Sea on Monday night and no longer causes much effect on the weather at sea and on the mainland, the National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting reported.

-- A countdown event to mark the 2022 New Year will be organized on Nguyen Hue Pedestrian Street in downtown Ho Chi Minh City on December 31 if the city is at low or medium risk of COVID-19 transmission, according to a plan issued by the municipal Peoples Committee on Monday.

-- The administration in District 10, Ho Chi Minh City has decided to limit crowded events and alcohol sales at F&B establishments as the district is currently the only orange zone, or a locality at high COVID-19 risk, in the city.

-- Vietnams homegrown COVID-19 vaccine Nano Covax has met all requirements on safety and immunogenicity, the National Ethics Committee in Biomedical Research stated, adding that it still needs additional reports on the vaccine efficacy before any emergency use authorization can be granted.

-- Police in the central province of Quang Nam have arrested two men for illegally trading eight metric tons of cyanide, a highly poisonous chemical that is commonly used in gold mining.

-- Officers in Hoc Mon District, Ho Chi Minh City on Monday apprehended a 22-year-old man for setting his girlfriend on fire over a conflict. The victim survived but suffered serious burns.

-- A fire broke out at a scrap warehouse covering hundreds of square meters in Thu Duc City, Ho Chi Minh City early on Tuesday morning, damaging a lot of property at the venue.

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The surge of new COVID-19 infections in Hanoi in recent days has strained local health units, causing delays in giving support to a certain number of patients who are now struggling to find treatment at home through online advice.

Requests for medical advice have constantly poured into an online group managed by medics to provide support for COVID-19 patients at home, as observed by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters.

T.H., whose seven-month-old baby has had a fever, a cough and tested positive for the coronavirus after getting into contact with a COVID-19 patient, said that she could not contact her local medical agency.

H. has been wondering what she should do although her babys appetite remains good.

D.V.L., who had one of her six family members in Gia Lam District test positive for the pathogen on December 12, said that it was not until his third attempt that the local medical force took the sick patient to the hospital.

Notably, the infected person had not been vaccinated against the virus due to their underlying diseases.

N.T.H., a resident of Hai Ba Trung District, was not as lucky as L. when three of her four family members caught the virus in the wake of a testing round conducted by health workers in their ward.

H. said the health workers have been out of reach afterward even though she has tried to contact them for transporting her infected 60-year-old mother, who is unvaccinated, to the hospital as she had difficulty breathing.

H. eventually had no choice but to use the ambulance service to take her mother to a private hospital.

Fortunately, my mother is now being treated, H. said.

If I had reacted slowly, I dont know what her condition would be.

Meanwhile, H.s other two sick family members have been treated at home.

I have mainly relied on information on the Internet to self-medicate and have not received any guidance or care from the local health unit, H. complained.

Nguyen Thi Trang, a nurse at the medical station of Dong Mac Ward in Hai Ba Trung District, affirmed that there has been a lack of medications for housebound COVID-19 patients.

Trang said that her unit has just started giving COVID-19 treatment pills to local residents after receiving an allocation from the Hanoi Department of Health.

Were providing guidance for home treatment for more than 120 patients, which is a large number compared to the medical staffs capability, Trang said.

We cant talk to every patient over the phone every day.

We have worked at full capacity and hope for the understanding of the people."

Medical staff in Dong Da District have also had to multitask due to the increasing number of infections, according to Nguyen Chi Thanh, head of the disease control department at the district medical center.

Recently, there have been many new patients, while medical staff monitor not only patients treated at home, but also those at quarantine facilities, not to mention tracking new cases, Thanh said.

So there has been a dearth of support for some home-treated patients, the number of whom, however, is little."

The Hanoi Department of Health has not responded to a request for comment from Tuoi Tre.

Hanoi has documented more than 25,800 COVID-19 infections since the fourth virus wave hit Vietnam on April 27, with the number of daily cases on a constant rise, from 1,000 on December 13 to 1,612 on Monday.

Over 6.8 million adults out of eight million people of the Vietnamese capital city have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, with more than 5.9 million of them fully vaccinated, according to the national COVID-19 vaccination portal.

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Many households in a commune in Vietnam have barred the ongoing building of a wind power plant to claim compensation for house and crop damage allegedly caused by the construction.

Over the past several days, many residents have gathered in front of the construction site of a licensed wind power project in Thanh Hai Commune, Thanh Phu District, Ben Tre Province to express their opposition, local authorities said.

Alleging that the building of the plant has caused damage to their houses, crops, and aquaculture, the protestors have prevented trucks carrying building materials from entering the site, Mai Van Hung, deputy chairman of the communes administration, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Monday.

The district has changed positively since the project was implemented, with some roads having been built, facilitating the transport of local farmers agricultural and aquatic products and thereby relieving peoples difficulties, Hung said.

However, a number of farmers have come together to demand a halt to the project, arguing that the ongoing construction of the wind power plant has adversely affected their houses and shrimp farms, the official claimed.

They are afraid that such damage will continue after the plant is completed and put into operation, Hung added.

Le Thuy Trang, a local farmer, expressed her anxiety that the operation of wind power poles will be detrimental to her plants and crops.

Another resident told Tuoi Tre that wind turbine blades will create hoarfrost, destroying local vegetation.

Currently, about 12 households claimed compensation ranging from VND20 million (US$880) to VND500 million ($21,900) for damage allegedly caused by the project, local authorities said.

Le Thien Thinh, deputy director of Ecowin Energy Corporation, the projects investor, said that his company had paid satisfactory compensation to relevant residents before the construction started.

However, some households have claimed very unreasonable compensation," Thinh claimed.

"They live several hundreds of meters apart from the construction site but they demanded damages for their dead clams or slow-growing shrimp.

The director lamented that the protests have caused the projects progress to run behind schedule, resulting in a total loss of VND100 billion ($4.37 million).

Within this month, local authorities will persuade locals to facilitate the development of the project while asking the investor to pay adequate compensation to households for any actual damage, if any, Hung said.

If this problem is still not resolved, we will handle it by law, the official stated.

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Ransomware increased nearly 200 percent in Vietnam in July 2021 compared to early 2020, according to a report by Googles VirusTotal service.

This report, which reviewed 80 million ransomware samples from 140 countries, said that more than 130 families of ransomware were activated from 2020 to July 2021.

Among these ransomware programs, GandCrab was the most powerful, accounting for 78.5 percent of the samples.

Israel, South Korea, Vietnam, China, Singapore, India, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Iran, and the UK are the 10 most affected territories based on the number of submissions to VirusTotal, according to the report.

Windows accounted for 95 percent of the ransomware targets mentioned in the report, compared to two percent for Android.

This has happened in Vietnam and around the world as people have become used to working online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, exposing themselves to more risks in cyberspace, especially from ransomware or phishing emails, the report said.

After infiltrating personal computers or business systems through phishing methods, ransomware encrypts data files on the devices and demands ransom in digital currency.

Victims cannot decrypt information to recover data encrypted by ransomware.

In fact, ransomware is not a new security risk in Vietnam but there has been a continuous increase in the number of attacks and the level of danger in recent years.

In January-August, there were 5,082 cyberattacks that caused information security problems in Vietnam to jump 25.82 percent over the same period last year, according to data from the Vietnam National Cyber Security Center.

In May 2021, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky warned that the number of users attacked by targeted ransomware climbed 767 percent compared to 2019.

Two groups of targeted ransomware that were the most famous at that time were Maze and Ragnar Locker, which not only encrypted but also stole data, then threatened to make the confidential data public if the victim failed to pay a ransom.

However, WannaCry is still the most common ransomware, which targets tens of thousands of users and typically only requires the victims to pay a relatively small amount of money to get their data back.

Targeted ransomware attacks will likely continue to be on companies and large organizations, Fedor Sinitsyn, a security specialist at Kaspersky, said on its website.

That means ransomware attacks will continue to become more sophisticated and more destructive," the expert warned.

"Its imperative that businesses adopt a holistic, comprehensive set of security practices to protect their data,

Ngo Tran Vu, director of Ho Chi Minh City-based NTS Security Company, advised that enterprises should conduct cybersecurity drills to be ready for possible cyberattacks in the future.

Business owners must always keep an eye on the latest trends of cyberattacks to update their response capacity and continuously encourage employees to report suspicious findings.

Particularly for individual users, Vu recommends regularly updating security software, paying attention to warnings from such software, protecting online data by using strong passwords and two-factor authentication, and installing reliable security solutions for all communication devices, including mobile phones.

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Police in Vietnam have arrested two men for illegally trading eight metric tons of cyanide, a highly poisonous chemical that is commonly used in gold mining.

The Department of Public Security in Quang Nam Province on Monday apprehended and initiated legal proceedings against Le Van Linh, 36, and Doan Van Giau, 31, for illicitly trading and transporting poisonous substances.

Linh resides in Phu Ninh District, Quang Nam, while Giau is a Ho Chi Minh City resident.

Preliminary investigation showed that there has been unlawful gold mining in Tam Lanh Commune, Phu Ninh District.

The illegal miners often used cyanide for their operation, which resulted in environmental pollution.

Local police initiated an investigation into the case and found that Linh played a key role in the trading and distribution of cyanide in the locality.

Linh and his gang traded 100-300 kilograms of the chemical in each transaction.

Officers expanded their probe and identified Giau as the supplier of cyanide.

The ring has traded more than eight metric tons of cyanide so far, investigators noted.

In addition, Linh was also charged for running a gambling racket, whose transactions were worth over VND200 million (US$8,700) a day.

Further investigation is ongoing.

Producing, storing, transporting, using, or trading toxic substances against the law are punishable by one to 20 years in jail or a life sentence, depending on the severity of the offense, according to Vietnam's Penal Code.

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Thach Sanh loves the ordinary but he has put in extraordinary efforts to make sure everyone around him is safe and happy.

The 40-year-old, who left his hometown in the Mekong Delta province of Soc Trang along with his family for Ho Chi Minh City years ago, was named after a good-natured, intrepid protagonist from the namesake folk tale.

Sanh runs different kinds of errands around Tan Kien Commune in the outlying district of Binh Chanh but gets by mostly by shouldering cargoes at a porterage facility and catching fish from the rivers nearby.

When he is not at the facility, he reaches out to those who might need his help.

He recently risked his own well-being to save the life of a distressed woman who attempted suicide and retrieve her young childs body.

An ordinary hero

Sanh still remembers clearly how he rescued the woman, who jumped off Binh Dien Bridge in Binh Chanh District, with her toddler on November 4.

When the man was casting his fishing net around nine oclock that morning, he heard something flop down behind him into the fast currents.

At first, I thought someone was dumping their garbage and didnt realize what was really going on until I noticed some passers-by on the bridge signaling to me for the rescue, Sanh recalled.

He quickly steered his sampan around and pinpointed where the woman had fallen.

Spotting the woman struggling in the fierce currents, Sanh bravely jumped off his sampan and grabbed her tight.

As his boat shook violently and almost sank while he was trying to reach the victim, he could not pull her aboard and thus summoned all his strength to swim against the strong currents with one arm, with the other holding her head above the water.

Sanh was on the point of collapse when a man from a passing barge pitched in and helped haul the woman to safety.

Drenched to the bone and exhausted, Sanh performed first-aid procedures on the woman, who could sit up on her own after a while.

Relieved the woman was now safe and sound, his heart broke for her as her one-year-old child, who had also fallen into the water, was feared dead.

Rescuers swiftly arrived at the scene but failed to retrieve the childs body.

Two days later, the womans family went to see Sanh at his tenanted home, pleading with him to bring back the body of the child, whose life was taken too prematurely.

Unsure what to do when they asked him for help while divers had failed to retrieve the childs remains, Sanh willingly spent half a working day doing the family another favor.

By sheer destiny, I found the child a few kilometers from the scene just a while into the search, he said.

Making life a little better

Born and raised in a rural area in Soc Trang Province in the Mekong Delta, Sanh dropped out of high school and did all kinds of odd jobs to help support his parents and two younger siblings.

After being discharged from compulsory military service in 2005, he followed his family to Ho Chi Minh City, where he later settled down with his wife and two children.

As his heart always goes out to others, he often shares his fish catch with fellow tenants, most of whom are also internal migrant workers.

Sanh is also active in helping local police retrieve dead bodies from rivers, day or night.

He makes sure the corpses stay secure at the accident sites, waiting for police officers to arrive.

Sanh said that despite being scared of spotting human remains while going fishing at late hours, he never walks away from them.

Despite my humble education, I understand human life really matters, their passing and bodies must be respected, he said.

Sanh is also someone for his neighbors and even strangers to turn to for help.

According to his neighbors, in his latest good deed, the kind-hearted man helped push a passer-bys motorbike to a filling station and even gave them VND50,000 (US$2.2) as they did not have any money left for fuel.

Its not really my name that inspires me to do good deeds. We have to do the right thing whatever the situation is, Sanh said with a smile.

According to Huynh Van Thi, the people-elected head of a hamlet in Tan Kien Commune, Sanh and his wife, a factory worker, have worked hard to provide for their children over the past few years.

Many of his neighbors and local authorities really appreciate Sanh for his honesty and willingness to reach out to those in need, Thi said.

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The Ministry of Health documented 16,325 new COVID-19 cases throughout Vietnam on Tuesday, along with 50,191 recoveries and 250 virus-related deaths.

The latest infections, including nine imported and 16,316 domestic transmissions, were registered in 62 provinces and cities, the ministry said, adding that 11,309 patients caught the pathogen in the community.

Hanoi logged 1,704 of the newest local cases, Ca Mau Province 1,590, Tay Ninh Province 939, Ho Chi Minh City 813, Khanh Hoa Province 798, Can Tho City 797, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province 378, Thua Thien-Hue Province 370, Dong Nai Province 284, Lam Dong Province 254, Binh Thuan Province 248, Hai Phong City 235, Bac Ninh Province 202, Da Nang 169, Binh Duong Province 134, Quang Nam Province 120, and Quang Ninh Province 91.

Vietnam had detected 14,966 locally-acquired infections on Monday.

The country has found 1,566,261 community transmissions in all its 63 provinces and cities since the fourth virus wave erupted on April 27. A combined 1,157,273 of them have recovered from COVID-19.

Ho Chi Minh City has been hit the hardest with 496,183 patients, followed by Binh Duong Province with 289,464, Dong Nai Province with 95,496, Tay Ninh Province with 65,900, Long An Province with 39,760, Dong Thap Province with 37,192, Can Tho City with 34,925, Tien Giang Province with 31,652, An Giang Province with 29,874, Hanoi with 27,583, Khanh Hoa Province with 25,108, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province with 24,322, Binh Thuan Province with 23,683, and Da Nang with 9,616.

Vietnam reported merely 1,570 locally-transmitted infections in total in the previous three waves.

The health ministry confirmed 50,191 recovered patients on Tuesday, taking the total to 1,160,090.

The toll has mounted to 30,041 fatalities after the ministry announced 250 deaths on the same day, including 58 in Ho Chi Minh City, 31 in Tay Ninh Province, 20 in Dong Nai Province, 15 in Tien Giang Province, 14 in Binh Duong Province, 12 in Can Tho City, and the remaining in 20 other provinces and cities.

Vietnam has recorded 1,571,780 patients since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the country early last year.

Health workers have administered over 140 million vaccine doses, including 981,748 shots on Monday, since vaccination was rolled out nationwide on March 8.

More than 76.1 million of the countrys 98 million people have received at least one dose while above 62.9 million have been injected twice.

The number of third doses  including additional primary shots for immunocompromised people, boosters, and third jabs of Cubas Abdala vaccine  has climbed to 1,363,917.

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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A woman from Ho Chi Minh City who was a popular TV comedy show contestant has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for robbing a local bank, stating that she decided to commit the crime as she had had recurrent dreams about it.

The municipal Peoples Court on Tuesday handed the jail term to Phung Thi Thang, 26, who hails from northern Bac Giang Province, for robbery.

Her indictment showed that Thang planned to rob a bank in October last year to pay her debts.

To prepare for the heist, the woman followed some online guidelines to make two bomb-like objects that did not contain any dynamite or detonator.

At 12:20 pm on October 10, 2020, she put on a wig, sunglasses, and a face mask before arriving at a branch of Techcombank in Tan Phu District, Ho Chi Minh City.

Thang used the fake bombs to threaten the bank employees, forcing them to put money into her bag.

She then left the venue with about VND2.2 billion (US$96,000) but was arrested at a shopping mall later the same day.

At the trial, Thang denied having robbed the bank due to heavy debts.

The defendant stated she was capable of paying her debts without having to commit the crime.

Thang claimed to have had recurring dreams about a bank heist and decided to realize these dreams.

She stressed that she neither intended to hurt anyone and nor cared about how much money she took, adding that she was obsessed with action movies.

Thang became a quite familiar face on TV after participating in a popular comedy competition in early 2020.

She had dropped out of a university in Hanoi before moving to Ho Chi Minh City.

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Chris Noth has been dropped from US drama The Equalizer following sexual assault allegations made against him by two women.

Universal Television and CBS confirmed he would no longer be part of filming effective immediately.

Noth has played a former CIA director on the series which stars Queen Latifah. He will appear in at least one upcoming episode in the USA.

Two women accused Noth of sexual assault last week, describing similar alleged rapes by the 67-year-old actor more than a decade apart. Both say they met Noth in their early 20s.

Noth vehemently denied the allegations, which date back to 2004 and 2015. In a statement he called the claims categorically false. These stories couldve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago  no always means no  that is a line I did not cross, he said.

The encounters were consensual. Its difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I dont know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women, he added.

One of the women said his reprisal of his Mr Big character on the Sex and the City sequel, And Just Like That, prompted her to speak out.

Actors Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis said in a joint statement, We are deeply saddened to hear the allegations against Chris Noth. We support the women who have come forward and shared their painful experiences. We know it must be a very difficult thing to do and we commend them for it.

Noth has also been dropped by talent agency A3 Artists Agency, following the allegations.

A representative for Noth declined to comment other than to reiterate that the actor stands by his statement and his denial.

After a third woman came forward to accuse him of assault in 2010 a representative said the details of that report were a complete fabrication and that Chris has no knowledge of who this individual is.

The Equalizer airs in Australia on Nine.

Source: Variety, The Guardian
Strategic partnerships and informal alliances play a vital role in determining the geopolitical realities of the Caspian Sea basin. The region has demonstrated several successful cases of tripartite configurations that could untie complex knots, Geopolitical Monitor writes.

Triangles became an effective tool to realize the economic and geopolitical objectives of countries without antagonizing others. Utilizing its geo-strategic location and natural resource potential, Azerbaijan plays an active role in developing multilateral cooperation formats conducive to the regions sustainable peace and prosperity. Baku has been a driving force for establishing trilateral partnerships based on the balanced foreign policy principle. Agreements developed in Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey, Azerbaijan-Turkey-Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan-Pakistan-Turkey, and Armenia-Azerbaijan-Russia trios have signaled prospects of new pathways for cooperation in the near future.

A particularly successful example of trilateral diplomacy has been the long-standing cooperation between Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. The connectivity projects developed between the three states bypassed the territories of regional spoilers  Iran and Russia  and necessarily increased their proximity to the Western markets. Upholding similar or related aspirations with respect to issues of integration and security, the countries showed a powerful model of trilateral dialogue in the fields of connectivity, mutual direct investment, military alignments, and political support. The trilateral military exercises held under the label of Eternity 2021 and recent discussions on customs issues indicated strengthening ties as relations are elevated to a new level in the context of the new geopolitical realities established after the Second Karabakh War.

The strategic partnership developed between Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Turkey has its roots back in the 1990s as Pakistan was one of the first countries officially recognizing the independence of Azerbaijan following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The shared history of territorial disputes that brought the two countries closer, bolstered by Pakistans refusal to recognize Armenia as an independent state, was explicit in Pakistans unconditional support for Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh War. The relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey, based on a principle of one nation, two states, acted as a building block of the triangle while Turkey and Pakistan generated a solid base to support each others cause in regional affairs. Subsequently, the joint military drills held in Baku in September 2020 signaled the strong military configuration formed in the region.

In this regard, relations between Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkmenistan have been much more controversial primarily in matters pertaining to energy resources. Since 1997, Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan relations have been volatile due to the diverging interests in the Caspian Sea. The former president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurad Niyazov, referring to Turkmenistans concerns about the disputed oil field famously said that the Caspian Sea is smelling of blood. The unresolved dispute over the status of the Caspian Sea had generated diplomatic tensions since access to the sea became a vital topic of interest, and the discord on resource exploration surfaced until the convention on the legal status of the sea was signed in 2018. International companies operating in the sea have witnessed a series of disagreements between the two countries as both sides were blame-shifting on the grounds of crossing borders during field work. In this regard, the formerly known Sardar/Kapaz field, located in the middle, was the main source of discord which Turkmenistan even considered taking to the International Arbitration Court.

Azerbaijan has occasionally encountered problems with its southern neighbor too, home to a sizeable number of Azerbaijanis. The contrasting positions of Iran and Azerbaijan on the status and delimitation of the Caspian Sea triggered hardline politics in already complicated relations. The unevenly distributed resources and shortest coastline prompted Iran to appeal to alternative methods and haggle over its shares as a losing party. Explorations in the Caspian Sea and its undefined status rendered diplomatic tensions inevitable as sides could not agree on borders. Although Azerbaijan and Iran established a pragmatic partnership during the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, relations went south when Iranian trucks were noticed illegally entering Karabakh without Azerbaijans permission after the Second Karabakh War.

Regional tensions subsided after the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea was signed in 2018, following years of negotiations. Proceeding the agreement on the division of the resource-rich seabed, a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan in January 2021 resolved the status of the long-disputed field. As the joint operation is agreed in the formerly known Sardar/Kapaz field, symbolically renamed Dostluk (meaning friendship in both languages), a much closer partnership is expected from the two countries, and one of high export potential. Moreover, the recent misunderstanding between Iran and Azerbaijan was carefully dealt with after the call and, subsequently, the meeting of foreign ministers of the two countries.

Accordingly, amid growing demand for gas and increasing prices in Europe, the 15th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization brought about remarkable results in terms of developing cooperation among states as a trilateral gas swap deal was signed between Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkmenistan at the sidelines of the meeting. Consequently, Turkmenistan agreed to export 1.5 to 2 billion cubic meters of gas to Iran which would later deliver the same amount to Azerbaijan through the established pipelines. The so-called gas swap deal became conducive to the improvement of ties between the three countries, which have generally been the weakest link in Azerbaijans trilateral diplomacy.

As part of the EUs gas supply diversification plan, Azerbaijan has recently increased its gas production to meet growing demand in the Western markets. The import of gas from Turkmenistan is of vital importance for Azerbaijan since the completion of the Southern Gas Corridor and commencement of the first deliveries of gas to European customers entail a need for balanced supplies. This deal will ensure the transportation in an adequate and timely manner, as well as meet the growing demand at home. In the framework of the postponed billion-dollar Trans-Caspian project, the gas swap deal is expected to contribute to bolstering connectivity between the Caspian Basin and Europe. The deal is particularly valuable for Turkmenistan as a state largely dependent on Russian and Chinese markets. The global economic disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic did not bypass Turkmenistan either, where diversification is at the lowest levels. The trilateral deal will be helpful to ameliorate the countrys unsatisfactory reputation in attracting investments, essentially deriving from previous problems concerning its poor protection scheme. As for Iran, the agreement is a big chance to improve its relations with neighboring countries after years of being circumvented in key partnerships. The improving relations can move Iran closer to the region and increase its stake in regional connectivity. From another perspective, the deal will benefit the Iranian people too, as following the suspension of gas imports from Turkmenistan over debt-related issues, the northern and north-eastern parts of Iran have been facing major difficulties in securing gas supply.

The gas swap deal has become one of the main pillars of Azerbaijans trilateral diplomacy following the victory in the Second Karabakh War. Considering the existing infrastructure between Iran and Turkmenistan, also between Azerbaijan and Iran, the deal was concluded without taking on a massive political and economic burden. Resolving one of the most complicated and long-term disputes of the region, which the U.S. as an active convener failed to broker, will open doors for further partnership.

That being the case, the deal was followed by an agreement between Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Iran over the establishment of a transit route that would realize Irans long-standing plan to connect the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea, at the expense of its previous preference of a route through Armenia. Last but not least, taking into account Turkeys significant influence in the area, the countries are expected to meet in alternative platforms as well, as observed in the evolving Azerbaijan-Turkey-Turkmenistan trilateral cooperation format aimed at establishing a firm link between the East and West.
Since the beginning of December, Russia has taken various diplomatic measures to reduce tensions with the West. First, Russian President Vladimir Putin asked for written guarantees that NATO would not expand to the East. Then, on December 17, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the drafts of two documents for the US and NATO to sign. These initiatives were in response to persistent accusations made by American and European politicians against Russia of its plans to attack Ukraine.

The first document (an agreement between the Russian Federation and the United States on security guarantees) implies:

refraining from actions that undermine each others security and fundamental interests; non-use of the territory of third countries for an attack; non-expansion of NATO to the East; refusal to establish military bases in the post-Soviet space and in non-NATO countries; non-deployment of weapons in areas posing a threat to the United States and the Russian Federation; the termination of flights of heavy bombers and the sailing of ships at a dangerous distance from the borders; refusal to deploy short- and medium-range missiles outside its territory and phasing out the already deployed, destruction of infrastructure for nuclear weapons outside national territory.

A similar document on security measures is addressed to NATO. It suggests:

"hot" telephone contacts for emergency situations and confidence-building; assurances that NATO and the Russian Federation do not consider each other to be "adversaries"; refusal to deploy armed forces on the territory of other European States; refraining from deploying short- and medium-range missiles in areas from which they can strike NATO and Russian territory; non-expansion of the bloc and renunciation of "military activity on the territory of Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia"

In an interview with reporters on December 20, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov noted that the United States has not yet responded to Russia's proposals on security guarantees. If Washington ignores them, this could lead to a new round of escalation, the Russian diplomat had previously warned. Ryabkov also noted that Moscow has not yet decided whether it will abandon the moratorium on intermediate and shorter-range missiles in Europe if the Americans and NATO ignored the proposals on security guarantees.

Despite the delay in responding, there are intense debates on the Russian initiative in NATO and the United States itself. The day before, the State Department announced that the United States, together with its European allies, are ready to propose a list of their demands and concerns about Russian actions. On the same day, December 20, a telephone conversation took place between the aide to the President of the Russian Federation, Yuriy Ushakov, and the adviser to the President of the United States for national security, Jake Sullivan. The latter declared Washington's readiness to participate in diplomatic efforts jointly with Russia through a bilateral format, as well as through Russia-NATO and the OSCE. Sullivan believes that the dialogue with Russia should be carried out in coordination with the European allies.

"Vestnik Kavkaza" asked Sergey Markov, director of the Institute for Political Research, to what extent Russias proposals are implementable. The expert believes that NATO's demands to move the Russian troops away from the Ukrainian border make the negotiations themselves unrealistic.

It seems to me that it (the treaty - editor's note) is completely unrealizable. They have already made reciprocal demands that only in order for negotiations to begin, Russia must change the deployment of military units on its territory to please NATO. Only after that they will start negotiations. At the same time, it is clear that the negotiations will end in nothing, since they consider them a provocation of Russia. And Russia, basically, demands that the West stop behaving aggressively. The West, of course, does not want to stop being an aggressor, but it wants to subjugate Russia. Therefore,agreements of this kind are impossible, until Russia has taken any tough action", he said.

Markov believes that as long as the ultimatum is not followed by concrete actions, they can be perceived as an "empty phrase". In his opinion, Russia is not ready for such actions, with the exception of a "small operation" on the territory of Ukraine, which the West itself fully admits. Such an operation will strengthen the anti-Russian orientation of the Ukrainian state system, the political scientist believes.

As for the proposal of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the West is not going to respond to it, but is waiting for how Russia will react to ignoring this initiative. Based on this reaction, the West will build its further steps, added Markov.

In one of the points of the proposal to NATO, the Russian Foreign Ministry denoted "a refusal to military activity on the territory of the South Caucasus". What exactly do the diplomats from Smolenskaya Square mean here? Is there a hint, for example, of cooperation between Turkey and Azerbaijan?

"There is no hint of Turkey here. Russia makes no demands on Turkey. It is about the US not deploying its military infrastructure in Georgia", Markov explained.

Meanwhile, the British newspaper Financial Times, citing sources, reports that the NATO allies cannot agree on negotiations with Russia on security assurances and their format. At the same time, the NATO countries understand the need for negotiations with Russia, and their military want to "avoid a direct refusal" from Moscow's proposal and are trying to find "areas of mutual agreement and calm the situation."
German leaders are considering tougher contact restrictions and an accelerated booster campaign among other measures after experts warned that the Omicron coronavirus variant could bring critical infrastructure to breaking point.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he supported the likely decision of a meeting of federal and state leaders planned for Tuesday to restrict private contacts for those who have been vaccinated, or have been infected and recovered.

Scholz said the meeting would also focus on the continued operation of critical institutions such as hospitals, police stations and electricity providers in case of high infection numbers, as well as handing out more boosters.

According to a draft document seen by Reuters, access to restaurants, theatres and other cultural venues will remain open to the vaccinated and recovered, who will be limited to a maximum of 10 people from Dec. 28 for private gatherings. Clubs and discos will also be closed, the document said.

The government's scientific advisory panel said on Sunday it was necessary to further limit contact, with data so far showing boosters alone would not be enough to contain the virus' spread, Reuters reported.

The German Hospital Federation (DKG) also warned the fifth wave could bring a deadly twofold blow of seriously ill patients and massive staff shortages due to coronavirus infections.

A report in the Bild newspaper citing government sources said on Monday all departments and all state and federal ministries have been instructed to draw up emergency plans in case workers and civil servants have to enter quarantine.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach on Sunday ruled out a lockdown before Christmas and said he did not expect a "hard lockdown" after the holidays either.

Some 70.3% of Germany's total population are considered fully vaccinated, while 31.5% have received an additional booster shot, according to official figures.

The Robert Koch Institute infectious disease body reported 16,086 new coronavirus cases within 24 hours on Monday, the smallest rise since early November. The death toll increased by 119 on Monday, to reach a total of 108,352.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan may hold another meeting in Russia by the end of this year, Armenian media reported.



Their sources clarify that if the negotiations do take place, they will become "final".



In addition, it is known that the meeting will be held in an expanded format: it will be joined by Deputy Prime Ministers of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, Alexey Overchuk, Shahin Mustafayev and Mher Grigoryan, as well as the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs.
Iran's envoy to Yemen's rebel Houthi movement has died of COVID-19 after being repatriated last week, Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, blaming unnamed countries for his delayed transfer from the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

The ambassador, Hasan Irlu, "was evacuated in poor condition due to delayed cooperation from certain countries," ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told state media.

Khatibzadeh honoured Irlu as a "martyr" and said he was a survivor of chemical attacks in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Reuters reported.
Attempts to bring Georgia into NATO by force will be perceived by the Russian side as a violation of the "red line", Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said today at a press conference.

The diplomat clarified that during the negotiations with the foreign ministers of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, no hypothetical scenarios were discussed, including those related to attempts to force Georgia into into the North Atlantic Alliance, contrary to the will of a large part of its people.

"Our position on NATO expansion is well known: it will be a red line if the alliance continues to move closer and closer to the Russian Federation's borders", TASS quotes the Russian minister.

Lavrov explained that Russia's proposals on security guarantees, previously expressed in the context of common security in the entire Euro-Atlantic region, demonstrate that Moscow is genuinely interested in ensuring that events do not develop in a negative way according to scenarios that "some NATO strategists" come up with.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Kremlin press service informs.

"A telephone conversation took place between President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Olaf Scholz", the message says.

It is specified that Putin congratulated his interlocutor on assuming the office of chancellor. The heads of state expressed their readiness to maintain bilateral relations through various channels.
Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked the Russian peacekeepers in the Karabakh region for professionalism, endurance, and persistence.

"Our peacekeepers have been assisting to maintain stability in the Karabakh region for more than a year," Putin said at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry on December 21.

"The humanitarian situation has been improved, the territory of a number of districts has been cleared of mines, social infrastructure has been restored, historical and cultural monuments have been preserved thanks to the efforts of our peacekeepers," he noted.

"I would like to thank the personnel performing peacekeeping tasks for professionalism, endurance, and persistence," Putin added.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu spoke at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry board with the participation of President Vladimir Putin about plans to re-equip the army for 2022.

"Priority tasks for 2022 ... To supply the Ground Forces, Airborne Forces and Coastal Troops of the Navy with more than 1,000 modern means of armored and artillery weapons," the head of the Ministry of Defense enumerated.

He said that next year it is also planned to supply the Aerospace Forces and the Navy with 257 new and modernized aircraft, 5 divisional sets of the S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft missile system.

In addition, he said that in 2022 the Navy will include 5 submarines, 11 surface ships, 3 combat boats, 2 coastal missile systems and a new nuclear-powered submarine of the Borei-A project - Generalissimo Suvorov.

Let us remind you that the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin said at today's meeting of the Defense Ministry board that in 2022 it is necessary to continue the planned and balanced equipping of troops with modern weapons.
Ural Airlines will launch a new flight on December 31.

The company's planes will fly between the Moscow Region airport in Zhukovsky and the city of Sofia in Bulgaria. Flights will be operated once a week, on Fridays. The carrier will take the first passengers to Sofia on New Year's Eve.
Washington, DC will reinstate an indoor mask mandate beginning December 21 until the morning of January 31, Mayor Muriel Bowser said on Monday.

The mayor added that all employees, contractors and grantees of the District of Columbia government must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and must have a booster shot. There will be no test-out option, the mayor said. There was no deadline specified for the vaccination guidance.

Bowser announced she would declare a state of emergency and urged Washingtonians to get vaccinations and booster shots, and limit their social activities over the holidays.

Bowser lifted the mask mandate in late November, a move that drew some public criticism that she was moving ahead of the science and easing restrictions at a time when infection numbers still listed the region as a zone of substantial transmission. A majority of the D.C. Council issued a rare public letter asking her to reconsider the decision, The AP reported.
The World Health Organization (WHO) plans to organize an inspection in Russia in February 2022 as part of the procedure of approving Russias Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, Rogerio Gaspar, Director of the WHO Regulation and Prequalification (RPQ) Department, said on Monday.

According to Gaspar, the process of considering Russias application on Sputnik V "was restarted" and now there are "two deadlines for the submission" of documents. Part of the package is to be submitted by December 30 and the rest - by late January, he explained.

"We hope the applicant will conclude the submission of the application by the end of January," he said, adding that meanwhile the WHO is beginning to plan a GMP inspection in Russia.

"Our plan right now, provided all information is onboard <> by the end of December, we will be able to perform GMP inspection locally on Sputnik in February," TASS cited him as saying.
In the annual budget estimate submitted to the National Assembly, the Government always sets an increase in Vietnam's public debt payment obligations compared to the previous year.

The local media recently reported that the Cat Linh - Ha Dong urban railway route in Hanoi, which uses loans from three loan agreements signed with the Import-Export Bank of China totaling US$690.62 million, has not opened but has had to pay debts to China. Such projects are proof that the use of borrowed money has not been effectively used.

It is said that the Ministry of Finance has had to pay hundreds of millions of USD of debt for the Cat Linh - Ha Dong project on behalf of the Government.

According to the Government report: public debt decreased sharply, from 63.7% of GDP at the end of 2016 to 55% of GDP at the end of 2019. In 2020, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, public debt increased slightly to 55.3% of GDP, but still was lower than the target set for the 2016-2020 period of no more than 65% of GDP.

However, looking at the data on public debt, it can be seen that public debt typically increases every year.

In the coming period, the pressure to pay public debt will become clear as the debt repayment period gets closer and closer. In the public debt report to the National Assembly, the Government noted the need to continue implementing measures to restructure the Government debt because the debt repayment obligation due after 2021 is highly concentrated in 2024 and 2025.

According to the Government's report, the total debt repayment of the Government in the first nine months of 2021 was VND 289,328 billion, about 73.3% of the whole year plan. Total debt repayment of the Government in 2021 is expected to be about VND 365,932 billion (92.8% of the plan).

In general, for the public debt payment obligation in 2021, Vietnam will have to pay a total of more than VND449 trillion.

In the annual budget estimate submitted to the National Assembly, the Government always sets an increase in Vietnam's public debt payment obligations compared to the previous year.

In 2022, the Government plans to borrow another VND571,014 billion and to repay the principal at VND288,264 billion and interest and fees at VND129,856 billion. In total, in 2022, Vietnam will have to pay VND 418,119 billion in both principal and interest. In 2022, it is also expected to record the first time the public debt balance has reached more than VND4 quadrillion.

In 2021, the Government's loan mobilization structure still focused on domestic sources. It is estimated that in 2021, the Government's domestic debt accounts for about 67.5% of the total Government outstanding debt (up from 63.8% at the end of 2020), and the Government's external debt accounts for 32.5%.

It is worth noting that the current budget is still not enough to pay the debt. In order to pay debts on time, the Government must "borrow new debt to pay old debt". Therefore, it is urgent to strengthen public debt management and improve the efficiency of public debt use. If there are more projects like the Cat Linh - Ha Dong urban railway, the risk to financial security will be very unpredictable.

Luong Bang
The world economy is speeding up while Vietnams growth is slowing down. Economists believe that the VAT (value added tax) should be reduced to stimulate demand, because it could result in immediate benefits.

Small and medium sized enterprises in Vietnam account for 98 percent of total enterprises, making up 40 percent of GDP every year with 5 million jobs. They desperately need money and support to maintain operation.

Dau Anh Tuan from Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) said the government programs aiming to help enterprises have been poorly executed and organized.

A quick survey by VCCI on 500 enterprises in August 2021 found that most support packages are ineffective and some of them are not feasible.

Regarding the tax support package (delay of tax payment and reduction of corporate income tax (CIT), personal income tax (PIT), VAT and other kinds of taxes and fees), only 35.3 percent of enterprises said the package was accessible. The high percentage of businesses unable to access the package reflects problems in implementation.

Of these enterprises, only 15.69 percent said it was easy to access the packages, while nearly 20 percent said it was difficult and very difficult.

Only 9.3 percent of them said the support packages could satisfy their requirements, while 21.57 percent said the packages could partially satisfy them and 10.46 percent said very little.

Asked about the impact of the support packages on their operation, more than 24 percent of enterprises said the impact was at a medium level, while 7.84 percent said low level and only 3.27 percent said high level.

Vu Tien Loc, Chair of the Vietnam International Arbitration Center (VIAC), said that tax remission, especially Corporate Income Tax, doesnt have much significance, because enterprises dont have to pay CIT if they take a loss. The number of beneficiaries from the CIT reduction policy is not high.

He said that a VAT reduction would have an impact on a large scale. This would help stimulate consumption, helping enterprises overcome difficulties.

Jay Roop from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said Thailand and Vietnam have a common characteristic in that 98 percent of enterprises are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and create 40 percent of annual GDP. These are the most vulnerable in the pandemic. The Thai Government has applied solutions to support enterprises, including a VAT reduction and a co-payment program.

The program in Thailand has helped to stimulate demand, boosting sales and improving business revenue.

Reducing taxes

Tuan from VCCI said VCCI has strongly suggested a VAT reduction. The Government reduced the VAT by 30 percent for businesses in fields hardest hit by the pandemic (tourism, transportation).

The support has been useful, but the number of beneficiaries remains modest. For tourism firms with zero revenue, the 30 percent reduction does not have much significance.

He said the VAT should be cut by 2 percent, and on a large scale, in all business fields. The solution would bring many benefits and is easily implemented.

As both enterprises and people can enjoy preferential taxes, both demand and supply will be encouraged, he explained.

The World Bank (WB), in its Vietnams macroeconomy report in December, also recommended that with the current fiscal space and the difficulties recognized, the Government should consider measures related to budget collections to support domestic demand. This could be a VAT reduction in 2022, which would support private consumption.

James Villafuerte, from ADB, stressed that in current difficult conditions, businesses need capital and support to maintain their operations. Along with monetary policies, the Government should cut taxes to stimulate demand.

Tuan from VCCI said many other countries launched big bailouts at an early stage. The worlds economy is speeding up, while Vietnams GDP is slowing down. Vietnam needs solutions to promptly bring direct benefits to people and businesses. Reducing the VAT is a feasible solution.

Nguyen Minh Cuong, Chief Economist at ADB in Vietnam, said the time to implement support packages for economic recovery still exists, but there isnt much time left. He stressed that it will be too late if Vietnam begins a bailout package when other countries begin their recovery period.

Vietnams GDP is predicted to grow by 2 percent this year, lower than the targeted 6.5 percent.

Tran Thuy

Vietnamese economy getting back to speed: IHS Markit After a rocky third quarter due to the fourth wave of COVID-19, business activities have gradually resumed to normalcy since early October in Vietnam.
The Hanoi Urban Planning Institute (HUPI)s plan on underground space development will be appraised by the Hanoi Authority for Urban Planning & Architecture and submitted to the municipal authorities.

The underground designed by City Solution

In November 2021, Hanoi put into operation the Cat Linh  Ha Dong Urban Railway with total length of 13.5 kilometers. The total investment capital of the project was over $900 million, or $68.5 million per kilometer.

The Nhon - Hanoi Station railway project is under execution and the elevated railway section from Nhon to Cau Giay (on Kim Ma Road), 8.5 kilometers long, is expected to be put into operation soon. There are 318 spans on the section, with 3 bridges across Nhue River, and Belt Roads No2 and 3. The construction and installation package has value of 64.8 million Euro, or VND1.872 trillion.

The next section, 4 kilometers long, connecting to the Hanoi Station, has approved investment capital of VND9.669 trillion, or VND2.417 trillion, or $100 million per kilometer, which is 10 times more expensive than the elevated section.

The bidding package wrapped up at VND6.5 trillion, or VND3.17 trillion lower than the investment capital. However, the contractor has stopped construction, citing tardiness in handing over the construction site, claiming VND2.5 trillion for compensation. It is still unclear if the section is reasonable or expensive.

Hanoi plans to get foreign loans to build an underground urban railway, 8.3 kilometers long, from Hanoi Station to Hoang Mai and 0.5 kilometer surface section at the last station, capitalized at $1.72 billion, which means an investment rate of $200 million per kilometer, or 20 times more expensive than an elevated railway.

In 2018, the World Bank (WB) released an instruction on planning urban railway development, recommending that cities with limited budgets, experience and administrative capability consider carefully the development of underground railways.

Hanoi has just kicked off execution of the first four underground railways and is encountering problems. It appears to be risky to consider another railway with double length.

The route is unreasonable, from O Dong Mac to HoangMai. The suggested railway is expected to go under Kim Nguu River and through areas with no valuable landscapes that need preservation or special commercial attractiveness. Meanwhile, the anticipated number of passengers is lower than the required minimum level.

What benefits would the underground railway valued at over $1 billion bring to the public?

Underground space

In 2016, a Hanoi transport plan by 2030 with a vision towards 2050 was approved, which targeted building eight urban railway routes, with total length of 460 kilometers, of which 194 kilometers on five routes was scheduled to be completed by 2020.

By November 2021, Hanoi had just completed the construction of 22 kilometers of elevated railway, of which 13.5 kilometers had been put into operation, or just 7 percent.

With the current speed of execution, Hanoi would need 100 more years to fulfill the plan designed for 2020.

City Solution suggested an underground corridor with links among lines and areas, strengthening the connections between underground, surface and elevated railways from the existing routes.

Under the approved underground space, the development needs to be associated with five urban railway routes and 22 stations within four inner districts. The question is how Hanoi would develop its underground space if it doesnt know when it can finish the construction of 40 kilometers of underground and 150 kilometers of surface routes and elevated routes as planned.

Investment capital

High-cost underground works should be located within the old quarter, 10 square kilometers, covering the districts of Hoan Kiem, Ba Dinh and a part of Hai Ba Trung and Dong Da.

The documents from the Japan Tunneling Association and World Bank show that investors can reduce the investment rate by enhancing connections among underground works, using them for multi-purposes and bringing multi-benefits to attract investors.

Depending on conditions, Hanoi can choose a suitable excavation method to save money. For example, an open excavation method would be safer, less costly and create more useful spaces than the TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine) method.

If the former method is chosen, domestic businesses would have opportunities to participate in the projects. If the latter is chosen, the cost will be extremely high as all the equipment and labor force needs to be imported.

In 2021-2025, Hanoi plans to put the 8.5 kilometers of Nhon  Cau Giay elevated railway into operation first, followed by the four kilometers of underground railway connected to Hanoi Station.

The city intends to take over the 35 kilometers of old railway and four deserted stations and turn them into urban railways, and will seek solutions for the 25 kilometers of urban railway from Nam Thang Long that goes through the citys center. This will be a very difficult task if done separately.

City Solution has suggested an integrated HanoiLink that can dispel the problems. The estimated investment would be VND40 trillion, or $1.72 billion.

HanoiLink can bring three benefits. First, the total efficiency of passenger service per kilometer may increase by 2-300 times; second, Hanoi can arrange capital by selling 40,000-50,000 parking lots in the inner city; and third, Hanoi can use internal resources and not rely on loans.

Tran Huy Anh(Hanoi Architect Association)

Vietnam needs "revolution" in railway transport Vietnams railway system, after more than 100 years of operation, is outdated.
The quality of online exams is in doubt as there is no effective solution that can prevent cheating on exams.

Le Thu, a parent in district 3, HCM City, admitted that she had helped her daughter a little when the girl was doing her mid-semester math test.

The teacher asked students to turn on cameras and microphones. However, it was impossible to capture every corner. And I didnt have to say anything. I just needed to write it down on the paper, she said.

Thu said her daughter had been a good student since the first grade and was one of the top 10 students last academic year. However, her learning capability has gone downhill since the beginning of the new academic year.

Thu received a call from the math teacher a week before the exam, who said that her daughter had a 2 out of 10 score on the mock test. So she decided to hire a private tutor and help the daughter during the test.

Im sure that my daughter had never cheated at the exam before as I always told her not to do this, until the latest test, she told VietNamNet.

However, her ineffective online learning had made me rethink. I really wanted to let the teacher understand the low effectiveness of online teaching, but I was afraid that the bad marks would affect my daughters learning records, she explained.

In principle, periodic tests for summative evaluation need to be implemented at school. Online exams are considered an alternative, a temporary solution when students cannot go to school amid the pandemic. The biggest concern for online exams is how to prevent exam cheating.

Thanh Huong in Binh Thanh district is the mother of a girl who is in the fifth grade. She was not at home on the day when her daughter did math and Vietnamese language tests.

The girl did not have any problems with the laptop. Huong only helped the daughter take pictures for Fine Arts, record videos for Physical Education and Music, and then post them on the app called Shub Classroom.

Huong was not worried about exam results because they will not be considered when admitting students for secondary schools next year.

I think that if students have to study online with streamlined knowledge, there is no need to organize such tests as they dont have much significance, she said.

Stress levels

Nguyen Ngoc Anh, a teacher at a secondary school in Tan Binh district in HCM City, said she asks students to do periodic and mid-semester tests via Shub Classroom with both multiple-choice and essay forms.

Anh said its not difficult to prevent cheating. For multiple-choice tests, she gives questions that require answers after several minutes, which is not enough for students to look up in books. Students cannot ask each other how to solve the questions because she can swap the questions and answers on Shub Classroom.

It is easier to catch cheating on essay-based tests, because teachers can discover similarities among students papers. Students cannot copy sample texts from books when doing literature tests because teachers know the texts well.

However, Anh reassured parents that there was no need to worry and put pressure on children because the knowledge designed for online teaching has been streamlined.

Do Duc Anh, a literature teacher at Bui Thi Xuan High School, said students have to cope with many problems when studying online, so he doesnt want to create stress about online tests.

The questions for tests are diverse and not difficult. They could be video clips with comments, a set of photos, or an essay about impressions and feelings. Students use different kinds of software or send works via email, he said.

Students already have a lot of problems when studying online. Dont lose confidence in your students and dont think students will cheat at exams, he said.

If you are afraid students may crib, you should create questions in a way that will not cause students to be deceitful. I dont think teachers need to have many difficult questions in order to prevent cheating, he said.

He said that with online exams, teachers should not focus on assessing students honesty but should create favorable conditions that will allow them to be creative in their work.

Phuong Chi

Vietnamese-made teaching software, tech platforms needed for online study The problems in online teaching in Vietnam are due mostly to the lack of a locally made technology system specifically designed for teaching online.
Provinces and cities want to add to the national power development plan 110,000 MW of offshore wind power, but the Ministry of Industry and Trade has only approved an additional 5,000 MW.

This information was released by Dang Hoang An, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, at a recent workshop on developing offshore wind power in Vietnam.

According to An, with Vietnam's commitment to reach zero emissions by 2050 at COP 26, there will be a detailed roadmap for industries, including clean energy and renewable energy.

He said the Ministry of Industry and Trade is finalizing the draft power plan VIII, with a target to develop 5,000 MW of offshore wind power by 2030 and about 40,000 MW by 2045. Compared to the scenario introduced in early November of 4,000 MW by 2030, in this updated plan, offshore wind power capacity increased by 1,000 MW.

Out of 5,000 MW of offshore wind power that Vietnam will develop by 2030, the North will develop 2,000 MW, and the South will develop 3,000 MW. By 2045, with a capacity increase to over 40,000 MW, offshore wind power will account for 12% of the total power sources.

90% of workers who lost jobs stop looking for new position

According to a study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), about 90% of Vietnamese workers who lost their jobs have stopped looking for a new job.

The assessment was made based on data provided by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam. Specifically, 4.4% of officially recruited workers lost their jobs in the third quarter of 2021 (equivalent to 1.8 million people losing their jobs, an increase of more than 700,000 people compared to the second quarter and 620,000 people compared to the second quarter in 2020). About 90% of them left the labor force and 9% applied for unemployment insurance benefits.

Nearly 1,600 containers of scrap remain at Cat Lai Port

According to the customs agency, by the end of November Cat Lai port in HCM City had 2,408 abandoned containers, including 1,594 scrap containers. The port authorities are seeking ways to deal with these containers.

Hanoi to set off New Year's Eve fireworks at only one spot

The capital city plans to set off New Years Eve fireworks at Thong Nhat Park. The show will be broadcast live. The organizer will be the Capital High Command and the fund will be mobilized from private sources.

19 students awarded Labor Medal

In 2021, Vietnam sent 37 students to participate in regional and international Olympic competitions. Eight students who won gold medals in Olympic competitions were awarded the second-class Labor Medal; 11 silver medalists were awarded the third-class Labor Medal. Among the remaining students, six were awarded certificates of merit by the Prime Minister, and six received certificates of merit from the Minister of Education and Training.

CDC Hanoi: Hanoi will not impose large-scale lockdown

In recent days, Hanoi has recorded more than 1,000 cases of Covid-19 cases per day, including hundreds of locally transmitted cases. A representative of the Hanoi Center for Disease Control (CDC) said that non-essential activities will be restricted only in communes, wards, and districts rated at a high risk of Covid-19.

Fake document ring with 10,000 buyers detected

The police agency of Thua Thien-Hue Province has detected a ring that makes fake documents of state agencies and organizations. At least about 10,000 individuals nationwide have purchased fake documents from this ring.

Indian billionaire may build car factory in Vietnam

During a recent meeting with National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue, billionaire Prakash Hinduja of Hinduja Group said that he was considering building an automobile assembly plant in Vietnam. Mr. Hue said that Vietnam is an attractive investment destination for foreign investors and wished to have more Indian investors in Vietnam. For Hinduja's investment plan in Vietnam, he suggested the group set up a representative office to prepare for its first projects in the country.

PV
The Waco-McLennan County Public Health District reported 81 new cases and 364 active cases, the highest numbers since the last wave was winding down in the first half of October. One death was also reported Monday, bringing the total death toll to 729.

The newest mutation of the SARS COV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has raced across the world since South African scientists reported it as a potentially serious new variant less than a month ago.

The CDC reported Monday that omicron has become the dominant strain in the pandemic in America, surpassing the delta variant that had accounted for 99% of cases in late November.

Verner said the combination of omicrons contagiousness and the holidays does not bode well.

Its two to four times as infectious as delta, and its going to coincide with our Christmas traveling, visiting and gathering, he said.

In McLennan County, the seven-day average for new cases reported on Monday was 57, the highest the average has been since mid-October.
A man who joined a mob in one of the most violent attacks on police during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Monday to nearly four years in prison.

Devlyn Thompson, 28, wrote an apology letter to the officer whom he assaulted during a melee in a tunnel where police battled with dozens of rioters for more than two hours. He also expressed remorse for his actions in a letter to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who sentenced him to three years and 10 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

The attack on the Capitol that day was an attack on the very rule of law in our country, Lamberth said.

Justice Department prosecutors recommended a four-year prison sentence for Thompson, a longtime resident of Washington state who moved to Georgia approximately six months before the riot.

Defense attorney Elizabeth Kelley requested a one-year prison sentence for Thompson. He has autism spectrum disorder and functions in many ways as a young child, Kelley wrote in a court filing. She said Thompson's condition influenced his behavior on Jan. 6 and distorted his understanding of what happened that day.
GOMA, Congo (AP)  Residents of eastern Congo's largest city launched violent protests Monday amid fears that police from neighboring Rwanda had entered the country, leaving at least four people dead, authorities said.

Gunfire rang out across Goma, a city of 2 million near the Rwandan border, and demonstrators later put up barricades in several areas.

Three police officers and one protester died amid the unrest, according to Gen. Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the military governor of North Kivu province. Seventeen other people were seriously injured, he said.

Congo's relations with Rwanda have been fraught over the past 30 years, with Rwanda accusing Congo of giving shelter to ethnic Hutus responsible for carrying out the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Rwanda was later among the neighboring countries that invaded Congo during its back-to-back civil wars, and in the years since the two countries have accused each other of supporting opposing armed militias.

The latest anti-Rwandan sentiment in eastern Congo was sparked by a memorandum of bilateral cooperation signed a week ago, which authorities say is aimed at combating cross-border crime.
And as this year unfolded, and we saw an attorney generals report into sexual harassment allegations, and more records being released throughout the year, it was really fascinating to see how important it was to have that skepticism about the administration ... and its a pretty unique opportunity to have there be an investigation that partly looks at how a governors administration was trying to spin and hide problems.

I definitely just felt a lot of pressure to responsibly report on these womens stories, while also verifying everything.

I think it was really interesting to see how members of Cuomos circle, including his brother, really pushed to control the governors response, and tried to get a sense of what other allegations were out there and just how they were going to respond to the allegations.

I think it was really eye opening to see that evolution. And again, it reinforced the need to be skeptical about what were hearing from government officials. And I think its really not clear at all what the former governor is going to be doing now. Were trying to keep an eye on whether he might return to the private sector anytime soon, or run for office in a few years.
In addition to the funding at Offutt, the bill includes $11 million for barracks construction at the Nebraska National Guards training site near Mead, about 30 miles west of Omaha.

Other notable items:

* Accelerated procurement of mission systems and engines for the 55th Wings new EC-37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft, which are based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.

* A provision directing the Air Force to look for ways to increase the operational availability of the 55th Wings Offutt-based RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance jets.

* A provision nudging the Air Force to move forward with replacement of the E-4B Nightwatch aircraft  now more than 45 years old  with a new airframe.

* Encouragement of the Pentagon to expedite plans to build a new laboratory for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. The current lab, which opened in 2013, is in the former Glenn L. Martin Bomber Plant, built in 1941.

* A continuation of full funding of replacements for various parts of the nations nuclear arsenal and a prohibition on reductions in the intercontinental ballistic missile force, currently at 400.
Dear Doctors: There was a story in the news recently about a man who had a tapeworm living in his brain. Our two teenage boys also saw it and are now obsessed. Theyre grossed out and fascinated, and they are asking lots of questions. An explanation would be welcome.

Dear Reader: Youre referring to a case study that, because of the startling details, jumped from the New England Journal of Medicine into the news cycle. It concerns a 38-year-old man in Boston who was rushed to the emergency room after he fell out of bed, then became combative, disoriented and began speaking gibberish.

During his exam in the E.R., which included lab tests that ruled out liver or kidney dysfunction, the man suffered a prolonged seizure. Due to the fact that he had no other health issues, and with the important clue that he had previously lived in a rural part of Central America, the doctors began to suspect they were dealing with a parasitic infection. Detailed brain scans revealed three distinctive lesions, and a diagnosis emerged.

The cause of the mans seizures, as well as his altered mental state, was neurocysticercosis. Thats the most severe form of a parasitic infection known as cysticercosis, which can occur when someone ingests the eggs of the pork tapeworm. Although rare in the U.S., cysticercosis is found worldwide. Its most common in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, South America and Central America, where the patient was from.

To understand what happened to the patient, we need to look at the life cycle of the pork tapeworm. It includes a stage of development known as larval cysts, which are fluid-filled sacs that contain the immature stage of the parasite. When tapeworm eggs are ingested, they hatch inside the body. The resulting larval cysts can enter the bloodstream and circulate, becoming lodged in the muscles, eyes and brain. In neurocysticercosis, the prefix neuro indicates that tapeworm larvae have reached the tissues of the brain.

Larval cysts can grow to considerable size. In a different case, which also made the news, surgeons were operating on a patient they believed had brain cancer. Instead of a tumor, though, they found a larval cyst the size of a quails egg in the patients brain. When they cut it open, a small tapeworm was inside.

Larval cysts can be transmitted via the fecal matter of an infected person. This can happen when the carrier fails to wash their hands properly after using the bathroom. They can transfer tapeworm eggs and larvae to any surface they touch, including food. Someone who eats that food or touches those surfaces and then touches their mouth is at risk of infection.

Neurocysticercosis is a serious condition. It can cause the seizures and altered mental state that the patient you heard about was experiencing. It can also lead to death. The patient was fortunate to have a good outcome. Antiparasitic agents and anti-seizure medications were used to prevent a return of the seizures. But because the larval cysts caused structural changes to his brain, he is expected to continue taking anti-seizure medications for the foreseeable future.

Send questions to askthedoctors@mednet.ucla.edu, or write: Ask the Doctors, c/o Media Relations, UCLA Health, 924 Westwood Blvd., Suite 350, Los Angeles, CA, 90095.

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CEDAR FALLS  More than $5,000 was generated by AMVETS Post 49 for its sister post in Owensboro, Kentucky, to help people in the southeastern state devastated by tornadoes earlier this month.

The Cedar Falls AMVETS post, with the assistance of the Main Street Social Club, hosted a spaghetti dinner and 50/50 raffle fundraiser Thursday, and gave attendees the option to make a free-will donation to help the AMVETS Post 199 in Owensboro fulfill its mission.

According to AMVETS organizer Amanda Krie-Blum, close to 80 people attended the event, and $1,350 was raised in a matter of a couple hours.

The organization continued to collect donations through Sunday, and raised $1,750 to help meet the basic needs of the Kentucky victims.

The overall effort wasnt surprising to Krie-Blum, who said the group prides itself in coming together to help others. Upon hearing about the request from its sister post, she knew right away people who would step up to help prepare the noodles and sauce in the kitchen.

I get choked up talking about it, but Ive been here since 2007, and these people just drop whatever they are doing to help. Its neat to see, and you really have to be there to understand what these people do and how unselfish they are, Krie-Blum said.

With an additional $500 out of the AMVETS Post 49s budget, another $1,000 from the local AMVET Riders and Sons of AMVETS, and $2,000 from its state affiliates, $5,250 was raised to help those in Kentucky.

Tornadoes swept across six states Dec. 10 and 11, killing at least 77 people and causing widespread destruction. But Kentucky was arguably the hardest hit by the torrid weather event.

Living in Iowa, we all understand what destruction can come from storms and tornadoes, so lets chip in and help them out with whatever donations we can, said Dan Macdonald, Iowa AMVETS commander, in a letter to local posts and their families.

Theres still time to help. A check can be sent to:

AMVETS Post 119 C/O Sam Byrd

1400A Triplett St.

Owensboro, KY 42303

PayPal is another option: paypal.me/SamByrdAmvets119

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WASHBURN  An Evansdale woman has been arrested for allegedly taking money from a Washburn home improvement business where she worked.

Black Hawk County sheriffs deputies arrested Sarah Leigh Weber, 42, on Saturday on one count of first-degree theft and five counts of forgery. She was later released from jail pending trial.

According to court records, Weber had worked at All Iowa Home Improvement on LaPorte Road, and between April and July she allegedly forged more than 34 business checks totaling over $10,000, some of the payments going to her mortgage company.
WATERLOO  Authorities continue to look for a teenage detainee wanted for attempted murder who escaped in Waterloo as he was being transported to a youth facility Monday night.

Officials have identified the escapee as 17-year-old Simon Gerson Agar of Des Moines, who was facing charges of attempted murder, robbery, willful injury causing serious injury, gang participation and conspiracy when he jumped from a vehicle at the intersection of Broadway Street and Wagner Road and disappeared into the darkness around 4:50 p.m. Monday.

Polk County sheriffs deputies said Agar was charged in Johnston. He was being transported back to the Northern Iowa Juvenile Detention Center on West Dunkerton Road in rural Waterloo following a Polk County court appearance when he fled from a juvenile detention center transport vehicle.

At the time, Agar was believed to be handcuffed with the cuffs linked to a waist belt, Lt. Ryan Evans with the Polk County Sheriffs Office. It wasnt immediately clear if he had leg shackles.

Further details of the escape werent available and are under investigation.

Waterloo police and Black Hawk County sheriffs deputies searched the area, which includes Brinker Lake in George Wyth State Park, late Monday using drones, dogs and officers on foot.

Brinker Lake had open water Monday but had frozen to an ice covering overnight, conservation officials said. Overnight temperatures dipped down to 12 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.

On Tuesday morning, authorities renewed their efforts in the search.

Agars charges stem from a January incident in Johnston where a man was shot during a supposed marijuana transaction that had been set up over SnapChat, according to court records. The buyer told police two people came to his home to sell him marijuana, and one of the men shot him in the hip. A second shot was fired as the victim ran off.

Investigators traced the SnapChat account to an accomplice who was under GPS monitoring at the time, and police were able to track the suspects down and detain them, according to court records.

Agar, who is accused of pulling the trigger, is charged as an adult in the case.

Gerson is described as a black male, about 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighing 125 pounds. He was last seen wearing a dark blue jumpsuit, blue sweatshirt and orange sandals.

Anyone with information on Agars whereabouts is asked to call local authorities.

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INDEPENDENCE  U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson took questions on a wide variety of topics, from the Jan. 6 commission to enhanced unemployment benefits to a proposed carbon pipeline that threatens to cut through farmers land, during a town hall meeting Monday in Buchanan County.

Hinson, a Republican who represents Iowas 1st District, spent an hour Monday morning at the Independence Public Library answering questions and explaining her recent votes on bills in the House of Representatives.

Hinson said it was her 17th town hall in 2021  a dozen in-person, and five virtual. She noted Mondays stop marked the completion of her fourth full tour of all 20 counties in her district to get feedback from constituents.

When I ran for this job, I specifically wanted to target the chaos and dysfunction in Washington, D.C., she said. Standing up for taxpayers, first and foremost, I see as my most important job. ... Its also important that we have safety and security in our communities, and also that rural Iowa has a voice and that that voice is heard and not being overpowered.

Though Republicans are in the minority in the House, she said her priority was pushing back on policies that I dont think are right for the district, but still trying to find common ground whenever thats possible.

Hinson said that includes getting the economy jump-started, though she doesnt support spending money that we dont have on the proposed Build Back Better bill. She said dealing with the situation at the (U.S./Mexico) border is a priority, along with providing ways for Iowans to continue to celebrate freedom and find new opportunities.

State Sen. Craig Johnson, who represents District 32 in Independence, said the amount of federal spending proposed in bills like Build Back Better is absolutely, phenomenally crazy. Hinson said she preferred targeted spending, and worries about the governments debt being passed on to future generations.

I voted against these large spending packages this year for that very reason, she said. Its not healthy for our country.

A woman from Cedar Rapids asked Hinson about her votes against the Jan. 6 commission, not voting to require Mark Meadows to honor a subpoena, and voting against censuring Rep. Paul Gosar after he shared a violent animated video in which he is depicted killing a Democratic congresswoman.

Mark Meadows was cooperating with the commission as much as a few days before this vote came to the floor, Hinson replied, noting she felt these votes are not in Congress lane ... for criminal contempt. She also noted that she condemned Gosars language.

Another woman asked if the federal government was still paying people to stay home, noting businesses need workers. Hinson said federal enhanced benefits for unemployment expired across the country in September. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds ended them statewide in June.

We do have proposals from fellow colleagues of mine ... that would extend those enhanced unemployment benefits long term, Hinson said.

She didnt say she was necessarily opposed to that, noting the country was seeing another (COVID) variant surface in omicron. But she said the enhanced benefits also caused a lot of fraud, to the tune of more than $80 billion. The Labor Department estimates around 10% of unemployment benefits annually are lost to improper payments, including around $87 billion of the $872 billion enhanced payments.

Before we enact sweeping policies that may have been well-intended at the time, and I think they were, we need to be cognizant that there were a lot of problems with those programs, she said.

Hinson also took questions on the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act, restoring wetlands to prevent future flooding in the driftless area, electric vehicles, nuclear power and carbon sequestration pipelines that would require taking land from farmers to construct.

At least two pipelines for moving carbon from ethanol plants, for example, to carbon sequestration reservoirs are under discussion.

Hinson said she sat in on a presentation on carbon sequestration technology, and my understanding is its safe. But shes also heard from landowners worried about companies exercising eminent domain.

Obviously, Im concerned about private property rights, she said. Many of the property owners calling our office are fighting it, and its their right to do that.

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WATERLOO  MercyOne Waterloo Foundation received a $15,000 grant from Variety - the Childrens Charity to help fund a 3D ultrasound machine for the Maternal Fetal Medicine program at MercyOne Waterloo Medical Center.

MercyOnes Maternal Fetal Medicine program focuses on managing health concerns of mom and baby before, during and after pregnancy. Dr. Neil Mandsager sees patients and works in collaboration with providers at MercyOne Waterloo OB/GYN.

MercyOne Waterloo Foundation is a nonprofit organization serving the Cedar Valley through developing resources to support the health care needs of individuals served in all areas of the hospital.

Variety - the Childrens Charity is dedicated to improving the lives of children who are underprivileged, at-risk, critically ill or living with special needs. Grant funding is provided to programs and initiatives that directly impact the well-being of children.

For more information on Variety grants and programs, visit varietyiowa.com.

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In Memoriam Ian Hore-Lacy

It is with tremendous sadness that World Nuclear Association received the news that our dear friend Ian Hore-Lacy, one of our longest-serving colleagues, passed away on 2nd December 2021 in a tragic accident during a camping trip. He was 81.

After university, Ian worked as a Senior Biology Master at the Geelong College, before moving to CRA Limited (later Rio Tinto) in 1974 as an environmental scientist. His skills as a communicator and educator then led him to become General Manager of the Uranium Information Centre in Melbourne in 1995.

Ian joined World Nuclear Association in 2001 as Director for Public Communications, and later Senior Research Analyst.

Ian single-handedly created the Information Library, the worlds most authoritative online resource on all things nuclear, a library that over the years has been extensively used and referenced by industry, academics, students, journalists, and policymakers alike. Its more than 180 papers, which Ian tirelessly updated and developed, constitute one of his many legacies, and it will also be a lasting homage to his dedication to nuclear education.

In 2006, Ian received the WNA Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Peaceful Worldwide Use of Nuclear Technology for his services as an educator on nuclear energy. He leaves behind an incredible legacy that will continue to benefit the nuclear community and scholars everywhere for many, many years to come.

Ian was also a prolific author, having published six books on nuclear energy, sustainability and Christianity, three topics very close to his heart. Between 1978 and 2018, he published 11 editions of a comprehensive and accessible book about nuclear power later issued as Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century. It has become the key reference for the World Nuclear Universitys Summer Institute, in many ways combining Ians passion for nuclear energy and helping young people excel in life.

In 2017, Ian decided to reduce his time with the Association to focus on other key priorities such as his family, his church, mentoring young people, and driving 4x4s in the Australian outback. He became Senior Advisor to then-Director General, Agneta Rising, and in 2020, to her successor, Sama Bilbao y Leon. He continued to publish the Weekly Digest, in which he provided perspective to key news items. Ian was a guest in the Titans of Nuclear podcast just over a month or so ago.

Ian will be sorely missed by his friends and colleagues at the Association and throughout the global nuclear community. Our thoughts and prayers are with Ian's wife Libby, and their children Anna, Will, Fiona, Dave, and their families.

If you would like to us to share any thoughts or memories you have of Ian please send your comments to info@world-nuclear.org and we will add them below.

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Ian was a friend. He was one of my most diligent and committed supporters as I (naively and without guile) went on a journey of taking a position regarding nuclear technologies. Ian made me better at what I do without ever making me feel inferior or not-valued. He brought wisdom.

His book "Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century" is an almost perfect generalist handbook for understanding nuclear energy, technology and industry. I reach for it often, and luckily for me it has his inscription. The number of times I have confidently relied on his information pages is far too many to count.

Ian was kind, Ian was generous. A genuine theologian and theist who also embraced science and technology in full, I so respected his intellect and his ethics.

I cannot quite believe I will not hear his booming voice and get that firm handshake at the next nuclear event. I think I had even got him used to getting a big hug from me. I will miss Ian greatly, and I hope he has gone to God as his faith deserves.

My thoughts are with his close friends and family right now.

Ben Heard

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We at Kazatomprom are deeply saddened to hear of Ian Hore-Lacys passing; it is, without question, a heartbreaking time for his family, friends, and colleagues.

As is undoubtedly the case for all those who knew and worked with Mr. Hore-Lacy over his extensive career in the nuclear industry, his hard-earned credibility, exceptional experience, and outstanding personality will be dearly missed. From a professional perspective, Mr. Hore-Lacy will be forever remembered for his contributions to the development of the nuclear industry across the world.

On behalf of Kazatomprom, I wanted to express our sympathy and let you know that Mr. Hore-Lacy, and all those who loved him, are in our thoughts. Please accept our deepest condolences during this difficult time.

Askar Batyrbayev

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Really sad news. Ian did a great job reporting extensively and honestly about all developments in nuclear power. The textbook he wrote and revised is excellent material for a wide audience and his WNA reviews of all relevant topics of extreme value to anyone in the field.

He will be missed.

Charles McCombie

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I first met Ian in about 1995 when he had recently taken over the reins at UIC and I was an Information Officer at the Uranium Institute, and our paths crossed frequently over the years. A few years after Ian joined World Nuclear Association I found myself back on board and working alongside him. I don't think I've ever come across anyone with such an extensive breadth of knowledge about the nuclear industry, and the library of Information Papers he developed are a magnificent legacy.

Ian stood for no nonsense. When asked a question, his response would often be "It's in the Information Papers". And lo and behold, it usually was - and on the rare occasions that it wasn't, Ian would make sure the information would be tracked down and the offending paper updated. He expected a similar level of dedication and attention to detail from others - working alongside Ian made me raise my game.

A larger-than-life character, who has touched many lives.

My heartfelt condolences to Libby, Anna, Will, Fiona, Dave and their families.

Claire Maden

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Ian had a tireless ethic that never seemed to grow weary into his later years. I believe this ethic was derived from the pleasure he received from lifting everyone up around him, alongside his love for God. He told me one of the main reasons for his wonder in nuclear related matters was to reach a closer understanding of God's creation. " [nuclear energy is...] considered indicative of Gods providence in the sense of liberality of Gods provision for human needs.

I've been unbelievably lucky to have brushed paths with Ian and all the more richer for having done so. He will be forever missed from all corners of the globe, all walks of life.

Dylan Hem

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I am deeply saddened to hear of Ians passing. It was only relatively recently that I met Ian at the Australian Nuclear Association conference in 2019, but I had known of him for many years through colleagues in the uranium business at Rio Tinto Energy. When I asked Ian recently to review the report of our preliminary concept study on what would be required for nuclear plants to be operating in Australia from the 2030s he diligently and systematically worked through the draft picking up a number of errors, providing comments and making suggestions that others had missed, while at the same time providing helpful words of encouragement. Ian struck me as someone who gave his heart to seek and search out wisdom, and who did his work with all his might, even beyond four score years, until he was suddenly taken from us to his eternal rest.

Stephen Wilson

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I first met Ian when I moved to Australia in 1999. Ian was working at the UIC, I joined ANSTO as an analyst supplying data to the UIC and we were in regular communication. When he joined the WNA he established the Information Library that is the first place anyone looks for information as it is always up to date. He will always be remembered for this legacy.

Ian will be sorely missed by the global nuclear community, but especially here where he supported and encouraged the small group working to get nuclear accepted in Australia. He was always generous with his time and would provide comments and intelligent suggestions on the regular e-mail discussions.

At the time of the Fukushima accident, Ian used his contacts to get the most accurate and up to date information which we could then use to provide the Australian print and TV media with facts and minimize the more sensational reports.

Ian will be very much missed at conferences where he had a real presence. You immediately knew he was there when your heard that voice.

He gave many excellent presentations at Engineers Australia Nuclear Engineering Panel meetings and of course always attracted a large audience.

Immediately the AUKUS agreement was announced on 16 September 2021 Ian was onto it. I received an e-mail saying In light of todays announcement I have spent a couple of hours updating WNAs info paper on Nuclear Powered Ships. Typical Ian, always totally professional.

We have lost a much-respected man.

My deepest condolences to his family.

Tony Irwin

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I met Ian 2001 in London when he was newly recruited to the World Nuclear Association, and I was at the time the Chairman of the Association. Since then, we have worked together in different ways, and it has been interesting, fruitful and pleasant at all times. Ian was always well respected for his knowledge, and his Information Library is contributing to a whole world, understanding more about nuclear energy, its history, role and technical development, now and tomorrow. Later on, I travelled the world as Director General and wherever I came Ians work was talked about and praised. Many times, people came to me to give their respect and thanks for the Information Library and that was all Ians work. It was students, professors, consultants, staff at embassies and ministries, and they used the outstanding source of information for reports, presentations, speeches and in contact with clients. And indeed, I got the information that one countrys energy policy is based on information from Ians papers, of course for the very good quality, updated facts and accurate information on everything that has to do with nuclear. I know Ian was very keen and contributed substantially also to his own country, as it is aiming for an effective climate policy. Ian was absolutely fantastic to have on board in our team, and I am so thankful for the many years we could enjoy his wisdom, somehow he never grew old. We will miss you and the world will miss you, but your work will still be followed and is continuing to make a difference. I am thankful that I had the chance to work with Ian!

I'm deeply saddened by Ians passing.

My heartfelt condolences to Libby, Anna, Will, Fiona, Dave and their families.

Agneta Rising

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Ian had a rare talent to distil vast amounts of information  some highly technical - into essential briefing notes and books on nuclear. His work rate was prodigious, his knowledge was encyclopaedic. He was equally good at doing media interviews.

The World Nuclear Association contracted with Elsevier in 2006 to publish Ians book Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century. But Ian felt the price we were charging put the book out of reach of what the layman could afford; so subsequent editions of the book were published in-house. It was a similar story with the briefing notes or information papers, which we considered putting behind a pay wall. Ian argued that the narrative about nuclear needed to be publicly available, and his view prevailed.

This strategy worked in the long run: the body of work that is the information papers - now maintained by colleagues at the Association - have directly or indirectly persuaded many influencers, notably fellow environmentalists, to support nuclear.

Ian was an inspiration to many, and took time to support and provide encouragement to younger colleagues. I will miss his reports - delivered with real insight and aplomb - about a nuclear issue. I am glad that he was still active and near the top of his game right until the end.

Serge Gorlin

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Ian Hore  Lacy was a great member of the University of New England community in the 1960s. He was one of the first people that I met when I first enrolled in Wight College, UNE. A botantist at that stage he showed a great interest in exploration/camping and formed the University of New England Exploration Society. He organised for the then Governor General of Australia, Lord Casey to become the Societys patron.

I took part in one of his Land Rover driving courses in my freshman year. He had everyones attention when he went around the side of a hill and rolled down the hillside several times, sitting right next to him the glass from the shattered windscreen went past my face several times and I felt the ground on my back each roll. Fortunately there were no injuries, he tipped the now slightly worse for wear Land Rover back on its wheels and continued on. An impressive performance.

He had a great sense of derring do at that stage off his life. With a zest for living, he embraced university life in the best sense of the term.

A most generous person and it has been my honour to have been on many camping trips with him to the New England National Park.

Ian MacCulloch

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Valentinos MD finance & operations Luca Vianello set to leave By



Dominique Muret Translated by

Nicola Mira Published

Dec 21, 2021

Luca Vianello is about to leave , after a long career within the Italian luxury groups senior executive team. The news, first reported by Italian media, was confirmed to FashionNetwork.com by the Roman label, which also indicated that the group's management hierarchy has been revised, and the new arrangements will be made public in January.





Valentinos headquarters in Rome - Valentino



Vianello is stepping down from the post of managing director finance and operations after a 20-year career in the Italian luxury labels senior executive team, having opted to pursue a new professional challenge. He has worked at Valentino ever since the label was bought by the group, and through the latest phase, after it was acquired by Qatari investment fund Mayhoola in 2012.

Vianello has notably been the right-hand man of former CEO , who left the group in 2020, handing over the reins to new CEO Jacopo Venturini. In 2020, Valentino generated a revenue of 882 million, down from the 1.2 billion recorded in 2019 before the pandemic.
Bringing out more of their best requires recognizing the many good things they do. Caregivers sometimes make light of all the tasks they complete each day but lie awake every night with what they didnt get done weighing heavily on their minds. Negative bias is what the cognitive behavioral therapists call it. Or, stated differently, it is unfairly ignoring the positive. Caregivers should resolve to practice greater self-compassion and to remember each day the powerful impact of their loving care.

2. I will spend more time cherishing supportive friends and relatives than dwelling on those who have disappointed me.

Of course, caregivers feel betrayed when people who should be pitching in instead disappear. But if those deserters wont change  and frequently they dont, no matter how much family caregivers implore them  then the question arises, How do disappointed caregivers go forward filled with calm determination, not bitterness? The answer lies in focusing on being grateful for the good people who, sometimes unexpectedly, do step up to help. It could be a neighbor, fellow congregant or distant relative. It could be a miracle-working home health aide. Caregivers should resolve to embrace them this year as literal godsends.

3. I will compartmentalize more, preserving time for myself.

Its not as if caregivers dont know they should practice self-care. But finding the time for self-care activities, such as exercising and doing artwork, is a challenge when there never seems be an end to the caregiving tasks. It takes steely discipline to protect even one hour of guilt-free time a week for rest and replenishment and not to allow a loved ones needs to intrude. Resolving to defend that hour as if their well-being depends on it will help caregivers make it from January to December without burning out.

4. I will be grateful for what Im learning about myself.

What do loving family members learn about themselves when they become caregivers? Not much at first; they are too immersed in the everyday struggle to realize how theyre growing. But, aside from getting a crash course in reading health insurance explanation-of-benefit forms and navigating byzantine health systems, caregivers typically learn that they are tougher and more resilient than they ever knew. It also dawns on them, sometimes long after caregiving ends, that they have strengthened positive qualities in themselves, such as compassion, patience and quiet self-confidence. Caregivers should resolve in 2022 to pay greater attention to how caregiving is changing them  often for the good.

5. I will aim for joy.

Lifes enjoyment doesnt need to end when caregiving begins. In truth, the circumstances of caregiving are often sad and sometimes dire. What finding joy in being a caregiver requires is taking new pleasure in small things  a care recipients smile, a well-cooked meal from a magazine recipe, accurately filling a pillbox. As they dream of returning to their old lives of movies, travel and social outings, caregivers should note what moves them or makes them laugh even when they are buried in adult briefs and drudgery. To resolve to find joy in caregiving is to commit to looking harder for whats good, if ordinary, in life. It can create a way of thinking that will make every day, even after caregiving, more joyful.

Barry J. Jacobs, a clinical psychologist, family therapist and health care consultant, is the coauthor of Love and Meaning After 50: The 10 Challenges to Great Relationships  and How to Overcome Them and AARP Meditations for Caregivers. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
Peer-led support groups. The Well Spouse Association, a national support organization for people caring for spouses, facilitates a network of support groups around the country, all run by volunteers. We've been in their shoes, and we can share, says Dorothy Saunders, the association's former copresident and a caregiver for more than 40 years. Someone may be thinking, I'm really losing my patience. I'm always at his beck and call. That's normal.

Groups led by a trained facilitator. A social worker, psychologist or member of the clergy can help keep the discussion on track and stop one person from monopolizing the conversation. Facilitators can also steer participants toward useful educational programs with elder law or legal aid attorneys, adult day care providers and other professionals.

Online and telephone caregiver groups. These groups can offer priceless support to people who can't travel to a face-to-face meeting (or who prefer not to during the pandemic) or need to talk to someone during off-hours. Though you give up opportunities for local networking and face-to-face contact, research has found that online groups provide the same positive effects as in-person groups when it comes to emotional support and validation.

Support groups for young caregivers. Children are an often-overlooked subset of the family caregiver population. There are more than you may suspect: The 2020 Caregiving in the U.S. report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving estimates that more than 3.3 million people under age 18 in the country are providing care to an adult recipient.

Caregiver education groups. Some caregivers may worry that the very idea of accepting support means others will judge them to be struggling. A more appealing option might be caregiver education groups, at which invited speakers address relevant topics, such as stress management or dealing with Medicare. There are typically discussions among attendees after the presentation, through which caregivers still gain support.

Tips for finding a group that fits

Get out of your comfort zone. Caregiver support groups are underutilized, often because people think they don't have the time or feel self-conscious about speaking about personal subjects with strangers. As Jacobs puts it, There are a lot of introverts in this world. Try to push yourself through your resistance and take the plunge.

Search online. Enter your zip code or city at the federal government's Eldercare Locator to find the nearest Area Agency on Aging and other state and local services for seniors and caregivers. Disease organizations such as the Alzheimer's Association and CancerCare often offer tools to find in-person and online support.

Find out what the format is. Does the group have a facilitator? Some have a trained leader; others don't. You may prefer one approach over the other. And ask about the group's confidentiality policy. You'll want one that follows Las Vegas-style rules: What's said in the group stays in the group.

Know that most groups are free to join. I would be wary if a fee is being charged, says John Schall, chief executive officer of Caregiver Action Network, a national organization working to improve the lives of the nation's 53 million unpaid family caregivers. Some, though, may ask you to join their organization and pay dues. That's the case with the nonprofit Well Spouse Association, which charges membership dues of $30 a year but offers reduced fees to caregivers with financial hardships.

Keep an open mind. Don't dismiss a support group just because it's not perfectly targeted to you, especially if you don't have many options in your area. (And don't assume you need to belong to a congregation or have sought care at a medical center to join a caregiver group there. Call first if you're concerned, but most likely they'll welcome you.) Most caregivers face similar challenges  emotional stress, financial pressure and navigating the health care system, to name a few. A well-run, general caregiver group may meet your needs just fine.

The important thing is to find a space where you can share stories, feelings and advice with people who can relate and won't judge. Knowing that you are not alone can make a world of difference.
Why did American IVF research fall behind? Public pressure and fear. Some critics questioned the ethics of creating and destroying human embryos. Others worried about the health of any children created by the technique, predicting they could have serious deformities. And some objected on religious grounds, claiming that, in the words of Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell Sr., researchers were delving into an area that is far too sacred for human beings to be involved in. After the failed Columbia University IVF attempt in 1973, the federal government instituted a freeze on funding for IVF research.

But after Browns birth in the U.K. demonstrated just how normal a test-tube baby could be, the resistance in the U.S. began to drop away. In 1980 the Joneses, who had reached Johns Hopkins mandatory retirement age of 65, opened the countrys first IVF clinic, in Norfolk. As Dr. Howard once told The Washington Post, We thought it was an alternative to fading away. Within a year, my mother had become one of their first patients.

My familys story

My parents, Judith and Roger Carr, both came from close families. Married young, they started trying for a baby as soon as my mom graduated from college with her teaching degree. But Judith, now 68, experienced three ectopic pregnancies  the fertilized eggs grew outside her uterus  leading to miscarriages and damage to her fallopian tubes that left her unable to conceive naturally. My devastated parents first learned about IVF from my mothers primary care physician. The doctor said he didnt understand much about it, my mother recalls. Although I had no idea how complex the process would be, Roger and I were willing to explore the possibility.

As one of the first 50 couples admitted to the Joneses new clinic at the Eastern Virginia Medical School, my parents commuted via airplane for hormone treatments, the harvesting and fertilization of the egg that would become me, and prenatal checkups. The fee at the time, not covered by insurance, was not insignificant for a young couple: up to $4,850 in lab fees and doctor fees for each attempt. But at ages 28 (Mom) and 30 (Dad), my parents made history as the parents of the first IVF baby born in the U.S.

I realized at a very young age that my birth was momentous. I was the only kid in my class whod been on the cover of Life magazine and the subject of a Nova documentary. The Joneses helped me memorize a two-sentence explainer of my origins for anyone who asked: The sperm and the egg were combined and fertilized in a petri dish. Once the egg was fertilized, it was put back in the womb, and nine months later, I was born, just like every other baby. I remember Dr. Georgeanna once telling me, Your parents wanted you so very much. They just needed a little help from science.
Caregiving is hard, but dont let your home make it harder.

Bathrooms, dim lighting and even furniture pose risks when taking care of a loved one. But new tools and techniques can improve the safety of a home, making caregiving a bit easier. And it doesnt need to be complicated in order to be helpful.

Household items and a home environment, once innocuous, need to be reconsidered through a new lens, says Monica Moreno, senior director of care and support at the Chicago-based Alzheimers Association, which offers a home safety checklist to help caregivers keep those living with dementia safe and independent as long as possible. AARPs free Homefit Guide features smart ways to make a home comfortable and a great fit for people of all ages.

Here are nine tools designed to help caregivers ease the burden of daily challenges.

1. Sit-to-stand toilet

Research shows that a quarter of falls take place in the bathroom, so assistive toilet seats with adjustable handlebars and seat heights  for safe and stable toilet transfers  are helpful when dealing with weakness and instability issues.

Its common for individuals to easily sit down to go to the bathroom, but then they cant get off the toilet, says registered nurse Eboni I. Green, cofounder and CEO of Caregiver Support Services, based in Omaha, Nebraska. Or if they have the ability to get off, they might grab on to an unsecure towel rack and can easily fall.

2. Adjustable beds

These may be costly, but theyre a real investment in helping to adjust comfort levels with the push of a button, says Green. These beds can help create an upright position for eating and are a good tool for preventing bedsores. They also allow for quicker repositioning, and safer and faster transfers in and out of bed. These beds are revolutionary, Green says.

3. Walk-in shower with handrails
Ari Ezra Waldman, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, spent three years studying dating platforms for gay men and interviewed hundreds of users. Waldman, who is gay, says he did so because its important to protect the gay community not only from haters on the outside but from predators within. The FTCs warning was overdue, he adds.

Hostile local communities are among the reasons gays turn to dating on cyberspace, he says.

Waldman says LGBTQ+ adults have the freedom to send graphic selfies and counsels against victim blaming. Still, he suggests users share graphic images only after they can trust the person they are communicating with  and only on platforms that take steps to protect privacy. Waldman faults some but not all LGBTQ+ dating sites for selling users data, including their HIV status, for a profit.

Grindr silent on number of complaints

Grindr, headquartered in West Hollywood, California, would not say how many sextortion complaints it had received. Instead, it issued a statement: We are disturbed and disappointed to hear of scams targeting elders, queer people, or anyone. Grindr is committed to maintaining an open platform for the LGBTQ+ community  and we continually take steps to facilitate a safe experience.

Grindr lists prohibited conduct in its 41-page terms of service: stalking, harassing, abusing, defaming, threatening or defrauding others. It says, though, that it does not conduct criminal or background screenings of users nor verify identities.

The company also pointed to its Scam Awareness Guide, Holistic Security Guide and safety tips. Feeld, based in London, did not respond to requests for comment.

Sextortion reported to AARP

AARPs Fraud Watch Network helpline, 877-908-3360, has heard from victims of sextortion that arose on dating apps including those for LGBTQ+ adults. All have an inherent risk of criminals lurking behind fake profiles to steal, says Amy Nofziger, who oversees the helpline and urges daters not to share intimate photos with people they dont know. It might seem like harmless, provocative fun, but there are criminals out there targeting people looking for lust and love."

Before sharing, Nofziger recommends considering how you would feel if what you sent appeared on Page 1 of your newspaper. If you hesitate, dont send it, she says.

Tips from the FTC:

Check out to whom youre talking. Do a reverse-image search of the persons photo. (You can use a site such as images.google.com.) If the photo is associated with another name or details dont match up, thats a sign of a scam.





Dont share personal information such as your cell number, email or social-media profile with someone you just met on an app.





Dont pay scammers to destroy photos or conversations; theres no guarantee they will. The FBI does not condone paying online extortion demands.





Remember, once you share photos, you cant take them back.

The FTC says if you think someone is trying to extort you, report it to the agency and a local FBI office or the bureaus Internet Crime Complaint Center, ic3.gov.


Moblan Drilling Planned SYA Eyes Lithium Resource Expansion

Brisbane, Dec 21, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Emerging lithium producer Sayona Mining Limited ( ASX:SYA ) ( FRA:DML ) ( OTCMKTS:SYAXF ) is launching a major new drilling program in partnership with SOQUEM Inc. at the Moblan Lithium Project in Northern Quebec, with the aim of further expanding its lithium resource base amid accelerating demand for the key battery metal.The drilling program will commence in February 2022 and will consist of 55 drill holes totalling nearly 9,000 metres. The program is being conducted in partnership with SOQUEM Inc, which holds a 40% stake in the Moblan project, with Sayona holding the remaining 60% interest. SOQUEM will use its indepth knowledge of the project and the region to act as operator.Sayona Managing Director Brett Lynch commented: "Having just completed our investment in Moblan in mid-October, Sayona is moving quickly with plans to expand its resource, consistent with our accelerated lithium development program."The new drilling at Moblan will add to other planned resource upgrades in 2022 across our projects, helping to further build capacity with the aim of ultimately going downstream to produce lithium carbonate/hydroxide, potentially the first to do so in North America."The Moblan project is located about 100km north of the town of Chibougamau and approximately 85 kilometres from the Cree (First Nations) community of Mistissini. The project is accessible year-round via the Route du Nord and its proximity to Chibougamau and Mistissini with their available infrastructure makes it an ideal location for exploring and mining deposits of industrial energy minerals.The program aims to investigate the lateral and shallow extensions of the deposit, which has already been identified over a length of 1.5 kilometres and remains open in all directions (refer ASX release 30 September 2021). It also aims to test the Moleon areas, as well as several spodumene pegmatite dykes that were investigated during previous prospecting campaigns.Sayona is committed to engaging local communities as the project progresses, including First Nations and other local community members, consistent with its stakeholder engagement approach.North American Lithium (NAL) advancesSayona's plans to resume spodumene production at NAL have picked up speed, with the Company recruiting new local personnel to advance the project.Sayona Quebec has recently added a number of senior recruits to its growing team, including Carl Corriveau, Exploration Director; Annie Blier, Environmental Director; and Cindy Valence, Director, External Affairs, together with new NAL hires including OHS Coordinator, Philippe Caron.The construction management team has been mobilised and various inspection and preparatory work has already started on-site.A site visit by a team from Investissement Quebec has further emphasised plans to upgrade the NAL plant to facilitate the production of lithium carbonate/hydroxide, facilitating plans by the Quebec Government to develop a 100% local battery chain from mining to processing.A project review has shown the potential to expand the lithium resource at NAL, with consultants BBA Inc. engaged to produce an updated Canadian NI 43-101 study to facilitate conversion to Australia's JORC standard. The results of this study are expected in the new year.A scoping study is also underway examining the production of spodumene (lithium) concentrate at NAL from 2023, combined with Sayona's nearby Authier Lithium Project. The study results are expected in February 2022.Authier drillingSayona has developed the leading lithium asset base in North America following its successful acquisitions of NAL and a 60% stake in the Moblan Lithium Project, together with its Authier and Tansim projects.At Authier, recent drilling further enhanced the Company's confidence in the quality and expansion potential of its resource. A 25-hole, 3,908m diamond drill program was undertaken with the results of the first 22 holes received (refer ASX release 1 December 2021). Assay results are expected soon from the additional three holes.Product testingThe purity of the Quebec spodumene product has already been confirmed by successful CSIRO tests, which showed Authier spodumene is capable of being processed into 99.99% lithium hydroxide (refer ASX release 7 July 2021).Canada, for further testing to confirm the product's conformance with commercial battery cells.Testing at Novonix has been delayed due to COVID-19 shipping delays and customs clearance issues, however new samples have subsequently been provided from ICS Lithium for retesting in Canada in January. These results are expected to show the product's conformity with lithium-ion battery standards and enable performance comparisons in commercial cells suitable for potential offtake partners.WA lithium developmentConcerning the Company's Western Australian lithium portfolio, Sayona's earn-in partner, Altura Mining (now known as Morella Corporation Limited), has announced the completion of an extensive technical review over the Mallina Lithium Project and the rest of the tenement package related to the earn-in in the Pilbara.Drawing upon its geological knowledge and experience in the region, Morella plans to commence drilling at Mallina during the first half of 2022, with the potential to define another key lithium resource.Sayona's Pilbara gold leases are prospective for intrusion-related gold mineralisation, similar to De Grey Mining's Hemi discovery. Subject to the necessary drilling and heritage approvals, Sayona aims to undertake the first drill testing of these Hemi-style targets in 2022.On the corporate front, Sayona has seen its shareholder base expand enormously over the past year, from approximately 4,600 shareholders in September 2020 to currently around 27,000. The Company's Annual General Meeting is now scheduled for late January 2022 and the Board looks forward to engaging with shareholders on the growth opportunities ahead.Speaking from Quebec, Sayona's Mr Lynch said the outlook was bright for the Company's lithium resource expansion in the Canadian province."Quebec continues to attract enormous investment interest from EV and battery makers globally, with the Quebec Government highlighting the province's potential to produce the greenest battery with the most reliable supply chain in the world," he said."Our projects in the province are well placed to benefit, as we build the largest lithium resource base in North America, facilitating the electrification of transport and industry as part of the global decarbonisation drive. "Having been among the ASX's top performers in 2021, the year ahead is looking equally exciting as we advance our North American lithium production plans."About Sayona Mining Ltd

Sayona Mining Limited (ASX:SYA) (OTCMKTS:SYAXF) is an Australian, ASX-listed (SYA) company focused on sourcing and developing the raw materials required to construct lithium-ion batteries for use in the rapidly growing new and green technology sectors. The Company has lithium projects in Quebec, Canada and in Western Australia.

Please visit us as at www.sayonamining.com.au
NEW YORK  Former President Donald Trump revealed he received a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, drawing boos from a crowd in Dallas.

Trump made the disclosure Sunday night during the final stop of The History Tour, a live interview show he has been doing with former Fox News host Bill OReilly.

Both the president and I are vaxxed, OReilly said at the American Airlines Center, drawing some jeers from the audience, according to video shared online by OReillys No Spin News.

Did you get the booster? he asked the former president. Yes, Trump responded. I got it, too, OReilly said, eliciting more hectoring.

Dont! Dont! Dont! Dont! Dont! Trump told the crowd, waving off their reaction with his hand.

While Trump has expressed opposition to vaccine mandates, he has long taken credit for the vaccines developed on his watch. At the same time, he has refused to urge his supporters to take them, even though Republicans remain far less likely than Democrats to be protected.

For instance, while other world leaders, including former Vice President Mike Pence, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, received their doses publicly to promote the lifesaving medicine, Trump chose to receive his in private  an acknowledgement of the unpopularity of the vaccine with large swaths of his base. And while he has blamed the Biden administration for high levels of vaccine skepticism, he repeatedly undermined public health recommendations while in office, encouraging the use of unproven treatments and playing down the threat the virus posed as he tried to prioritize economic recovery and secure a second term.

Trump had told the Wall Street Journal in a September interview that he probably wouldnt get a booster shot.

I feel like Im in good shape from that standpoint, he told the paper. Ill look at stuff later on. Im not against it, but its probably not for me.

The U.S. has been urging all eligible Americans to get booster shots as quickly as possible as the country faces a surge in the new, highly contagious omicron variant. Both Moderna and Pfizer have said that booster shots of their COVID-19 vaccines appear to offer protection against the new strain, which preliminary evidence suggests can better evade vaccines than previous versions.

Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October 2020, weeks before the presidential election, and received experimental monoclonal antibodies treatment. His former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, revealed in a book released this month that Trump was far sicker than the White House disclosed at the time.

Before the booing, Trump on Sunday told the audience that they should take credit for the success of the vaccines developed while he was in office.

Look, we did something that was historic. We saved tens of millions of lives worldwide. We together, all of us  not me, we  we got a vaccine done, three vaccines done, and tremendous therapeutics Trump said. This was going to ravage the country far beyond what it is right now. Take credit for it. Take credit for it. Dont let them take it away. Dont take it away from ourselves.

Youre playing right into their hands when you sort of like, Oh the vaccine,' he added. If you dont want to take it, you shouldnt be forced to take it. No mandates, he said, drawing cheers. But take credit because we saved tens of millions of lives. Take credit. Dont let them take that away from you.

Trump aides did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
SANTA FE, N.M.  New Mexicos Democratic governor on Monday renewed her call for state legislators in the major oil producing state to approve requirements for fuel producers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement that New Mexico must pass a clean fuel standard in the upcoming legislative session.

The governor has discretion over which nonbudgetary initiatives are heard during the 30-day legislative session that starts Jan. 18.

Earlier this year, a Democrat-sponsored bill to impose low-carbon fuel standards stalled in the state House of Representatives after winning Senates endorsement on a party-line vote with Republicans in opposition. The proposal would not have applied to retailers, including gas stations.

Similar programs have been implemented in California and Oregon. Low-carbon fuel standards are aimed at reducing greenhouse emission in the transportation sector by going beyond vehicle fuel efficiency requirements and setting benchmarks for fuel producers or importers or both.

The regulations typically quantify the environmental impacts fuels or blends  such as oil, ethanol or hydrogen  from their extraction or manufacturing process through its end use. The rules require providers to make gradual improvements in their production processes to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide or other pollutants into the air.

In California, oil refineries can be rewarded for incorporating renewable sources of electricity like solar panels or wind turbines to power the refining process  or by sequestering carbon underground instead of releasing it into the air.

Lujan Grisham applauded Mondays move by the administration of President Joe Biden to raise vehicle mileage standards to significantly reduce emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, reversing a Trump-era rollback that loosened fuel efficiency standards.

Republican House minority leader James Townsend of Artesia warned in a statement that the governors policies could increase fuel prices in rural areas in an effort to please environmental activists.

New Mexico is producing more petroleum than ever before, surpassing North Dakota in recent months as the nations No. 2 producer after Texas  boosting greenhouse gas emissions that are created when customers burn the states oil or natural gas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to tighten federal methane regulations for the oil and natural gas industry. The New Mexico Environment Department is crafting its own rules aimed at reducing direct greenhouse gas emissions from oilfield equipment and prevent the release of methane, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides.
SANTA FE  New Mexicos COVID-19 infection and test positivity rates have shown signs of dropping over the last two weeks, even as state health officials brace for a new phase of the pandemic in the form of the increasingly prevalent omicron variant.

After several weeks of rising COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations due to the highly contagious delta variant, New Mexico last week saw a decrease in the number of new confirmed cases over a weeklong period.

While New York City and other locations have recorded record-high COVID-19 infection rates in recent days, New Mexicos test positivity rate has declined from 13.9% as of Dec. 6 to 9.5% as of Monday.

And thats not just due to more testing, as the 3,110 new cases reported Monday over a three-day period that spanned the weekend were, by daily average, slightly lower than the average of 1,133 new cases per day during a recent weeklong period.

There were also 539 people hospitalized around New Mexico due to COVID-19 as of Monday  down from 610 individuals hospitalized a week earlier.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams administration this month updated a public health order all hospital employees and those working in state prisons and other congregate facilities to get their booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by Jan. 17.

That followed a September order that such employees be fully vaccinated against the virus.

As of Monday, roughly 31.8% of New Mexicans age 18 and older had gotten a booster dose of the vaccine, according to state Department of Health data. In all, 88% of adults statewide have received at least one vaccine dose, while 75.4% had completed their initial vaccine series.

Meanwhile, the recent spread of COVID-19 variants has led to an increase of fully vaccinated New Mexicans testing positive for COVID-19. However, unvaccinated individuals still make up the majority of those contract the virus and of those who are hospitalized because of it.

During a four-week period that ended Dec. 13, unvaccinated people made up 72% of new cases recorded statewide and 81.2% of those hospitalized. In addition, of the 141 deaths attributed to COVID-19 during that time period, 115 were unvaccinated  or 81.6%  and 18.4% were fully vaccinated.

That means New Mexicans who are not fully vaccinated had a seven times higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than fully vaccinated individuals, according to DOH data.

Despite some positive recent trends, New Mexicos death toll due to the virus has continued to rise.

State health officials reported 37 additional deaths on Monday, bringing the total number of those deaths have been linked to COVID-19 to 5,614 since March 2020.
Bernalillo County Metro Court Judge Henry A. Alaniz will retire late this month after serving more than a decade in the post.

Alaniz was appointed to the Metro Courts criminal division in March 2011, Metro Court officials said in a written statement.

As the courts Chief Judge from 2014 to 2017, Alaniz advocated for equal funding for the judiciary in presentations to state lawmakers and community groups, the statement said.

A Roswell native, Alaniz is a former president of the State Bar of New Mexico. He currently serves as a member of the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners and as co-chair of the Character and Fitness Committee.

The Metro Court nominating commission on Jan. 25 will interview eight applicants seeking the vacant post.
FARMINGTON  The community has come together to turn a setback into a victory by raising about $30,000, and donating hundreds of toys and items of clothing to the Farmington Salvation Army after its van full of toys was stolen last week.

Volunteers and members of the Salvation Army Farmington Community Center were busy at work Monday morning distributing gifts to children in need as part of the organizations Angel Tree program.

About 20 to 25 volunteers filled the former thrift store run by the organization, sifting through bags of gifts for children to hand out to vehicles idling in the alley behind the store.

It was about a week ago that a Toyota minivan belonging to the organization and containing about $6,000 worth of gifts was stolen from the Walmart at 4600 E. Main in Farmington.

The Farmington Police Department issued an arrest warrant for 37-year-old Anthony Crespin in connection with the vehicle theft.

Farmington police spokesperson Nicole Brown told The Daily Times the van was found in Sandoval County, but the toys were gone. Brown said law enforcement officials are still searching for Crespin.

The suspect was helping a Salvation Army employee shop for the toys before allegedly stealing the vehicle.

Salvation Army Farmington Corps Officer Lt. Christopher Rockwell told The Daily Times that the organization was overwhelmed by the communitys response to ensure children in the area have a merry Christmas.

He estimated the nonprofit organization received 500 to 600 toys, 400 to 500 pieces of clothing and approximately $30,000 in cash donations.

Rockwell added that the response demonstrates that people in the community have a big heart.

God has a way of taking tragedies and turning them into blessings, Rockwell said. Thats what hes done here and the people have responded amazingly.

Rockwell said the Angel Tree program typically serves 350 area kids a year. He believes the Salvation Army could possibly help 500 to 600 children this year with the number of toys donated.

Heidi Palacio and her daughter Jacqueline Palacio were volunteering Monday, dressed as elves as they helped get bags of gifts to those in need.

Heidi told The Daily Times the van theft was a tragic event, but she was happy to see how the community responded.

It was a tragic thing that happened, but, through this, we have seen how powerful, caring and loyal the community is, she said.

The Farmington Salvation Army is devising ways to distribute the remaining gifts it has received. Rockwell shared one idea of possibly reaching out to Navajo chapter houses in the area to donate the toys, but he was still finalizing plans Monday.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

Most of New Mexico is not expected to have a white Christmas this year  but it could be a windy one.

Todd Shoemake, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Albuquerque, said snow this week will likely be relegated to areas above 8,000 or 9,000 feet.

Any precipitation will generally favor western to north-central New Mexico, and youll have to go pretty high to see any appreciable (snow) accumulation, Shoemake said.

Albuquerques forecast shows a high of 54 degrees on Tuesday and 55 on Wednesday.

Windy and dry conditions could mean critical fire weather for such places as Clines Corners, Fort Sumner and Santa Rosa.

Thursday in Albuquerque is expected to reach 57 degrees, as a storm system moves into the state.

Some of that moisture will finally start to come this way into the American Southwest, Shoemake said. Well start to see rain and snow showers take shape over mostly western and parts of north-central New Mexico through late Thursday.

Winds will start to pick up across the state on Thursday night and into Friday morning, although they wont be as widespread or severe as the state experienced last week.

Taos Ski Valley recorded wind speeds of 103 mph on Dec. 15. The Las Vegas airport clocked gusts of 90 mph and winds in Gallup reached 75 mph.

We do anticipate quite a few places, especially the high-elevation places  could be looking at some 70 mile-an-hour gusts, Shoemake said. Along the central mountain chain, a lot of those places could be hit really hard.

Albuquerque is forecast to hit a high of 57 degrees on Friday, with a 20% chance of rain.

Wind speeds could slowly taper off on Friday night.

Christmas Day is expected to be partly sunny and reach 54 degrees in Albuquerque, and the city has a 10% chance of precipitation.

Sunday could reach 54 degrees.

Albuquerque has yet to record any measurable snowfall this season.

Since 1931, the average date for the city to first record at least 0.1 inches of snow is Nov. 30.

But the latest date for the first snow in Albuquerque occurred in 1967, when the first measurable snow fell Feb. 27.

Theresa Davis is a Report for America corps member covering water and the environment for the Albuquerque Journal.
SANTA FE  New Mexicos Democratic governor on Monday renewed her call for state legislators in the major oil-producing state to approve requirements for fuel producers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement that New Mexico must pass a clean fuel standard in the upcoming legislative session.

The governor has discretion over which nonbudgetary initiatives are heard during the 30-day legislative session that starts Jan. 18.

Earlier this year, a Democrat-sponsored bill to impose low-carbon fuel standards stalled in the state House of Representatives after winning the Senates endorsement on a party-line vote with Republicans in opposition. The proposal would not have applied to retailers, including gas stations.

Similar programs have been implemented in California and Oregon. Low-carbon fuel standards are aimed at reducing greenhouse emission in the transportation sector by going beyond vehicle fuel efficiency requirements and setting benchmarks for fuel producers or importers or both.

The regulations typically quantify the environmental impacts fuels or blends  such as oil, ethanol or hydrogen  from their extraction or manufacturing process through its end use. The rules require providers to make gradual improvements in their production processes to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide or other pollutants into the air.

In California, oil refineries can be rewarded for incorporating renewable sources of electricity like solar panels or wind turbines to power the refining process  or by sequestering carbon underground instead of releasing it into the air.

Lujan Grisham applauded Mondays move by the administration of President Joe Biden to raise vehicle mileage standards to significantly reduce emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases, reversing a Trump-era rollback that loosened fuel efficiency standards.

Republican House minority leader James Townsend of Artesia warned in a statement that the governors policies could increase fuel prices in rural areas in an effort to please environmental activists.

New Mexico is producing more petroleum than ever before, surpassing North Dakota in recent months as the nations No. 2 producer after Texas  boosting greenhouse gas emissions that are created when customers burn the states oil or natural gas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to tighten federal methane regulations for the oil and natural gas industry. The New Mexico Environment Department is crafting its own rules aimed at reducing direct greenhouse gas emissions from oil field equipment.
OECUSSE, East Timor  A defrocked American priest accused of sexually abusing orphaned and disadvantaged young girls under his care in East Timor was found guilty Tuesday and sentenced to 12 years in prison, in the first case of its kind in the staunchly Catholic nation.

Richard Daschbach, 84, who spent decades as a missionary in the countrys remote enclave of Oecusse, faced charges of child sexual abuse as well as child pornography and domestic violence.

The trial began in February but was postponed several times before concluding last month. During the proceedings, victims complained about threats and online attacks. Daschbach maintains strong backing from some, including former President Xanana Gusmao, who went to the court on Tuesday. East Timor is the most Catholic place outside the Vatican and Daschbach is revered for his role during the tiny Southeast Asian nations fight for independence.

The church and foreign donors who once supported Daschbachs shelter said he confessed to the abuse, but the former priest and his lawyers have at various times refused to comment. They did not make their legal strategy public and court proceedings were closed.

Daschbach, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, was ordained in 1964 by the Society of the Divine Word at its headquarters outside of Chicago. He arrived in the country now known as East Timor several years later, setting up a shelter in the 1990s named Topu Honis, which means Guide to Life.

Hundreds of children passed through the shelter under Daschbachs care. More than a dozen females came forward with abuse claims, but only nine were registered in the case due to legal technicalities. The Associated Press spoke with five of the accusers.

They recalled their experiences in vivid detail, saying Daschbach kept a list of young girls on his bedroom door and that every night one of those girls would sit on his lap, surrounded by a ring of children and staff members praying and singing hymns before bed.

They said the girl on his lap would then sleep with him that night and that various types of abuse - from oral sex to rape - would occur, sometimes involving other children too. The accusers have not been identified because of fears of retribution.

Daschbachs lawyer, Miguel Faria, said they are disappointed with the courts verdict and plan to appeal the decision issued by the three judges.

Evidence provided by the shelter matron and former students who lived in the orphanage were ignored by the court, Faria told reporters, alleging that some accusers changed their statements made earlier to authorities in Oecusse after being taken to the capital, Dili, and the new statements became the sole basis for the judges decision.

We cannot accept this and will appeal, Faria said.

Dozens of Daschbachs supporters, including several children brought by Gusmao from Dili, wept and some were screaming as it became clear the court would sentence the former priest to jail. Some in the impoverished enclave revere Daschbach so highly, they believe he possesses special powers and is the victim of a conspiracy.

In a statement Tuesday, JU,S Juridico Social, a group of human rights lawyers representing the accusers, applauded the verdict but said it would appeal, arguing that the sentence should be harsher. Under the law, Daschbach faced more than twice the prison time he received.

The history written today is a bitter history for the entire nation, the group said. Our children were subjected to horrendous crimes for such a long time because we, as a society, were blinded by the belief that a figure as the defendant in this case would not commit such crimes against children.

Separately, a U.S. federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Daschbach in August. He faces seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct at the shelter. If convicted in the U.S., Daschbach could receive up to 30 years in prison for each count, but the Department of Justice has not said whether it plans to try to extradite the ex-priest.

Daschbach also is wanted in the U.S. on three counts of wire fraud linked to one of his California-based donors, which accused him in a court case of violating an agreement to protect those under his care. An Interpol Red Notice has been issued internationally for Daschbachs arrest.
Albuquerque police early Tuesday arrested a woman for vandalizing the main police station at 400 Roma NW by spray painting vulgar and indecent statements on walls, stairs, planters, benches and glass doors.

It was the second arrest for the same crime for Jennifer Otte, 45, police said in a news release.

Otte was previously arrested and booked into MDC for similar felony criminal damage charges last Wednesday. She was released a few days later.

Her latest arrest on Tuesday is for one count of felony level criminal damage to property and one count of misdemeanor criminal trespassing. She was transported and booked into MDC again.

Clean up crews responded to the scene to clean up the vandalism.
PHOENIX  The federal government is sending medical personnel to Arizona to help with the ongoing COVID-19 surge.

The White House announced Tuesday that Arizona is one of a handful of states expected to receive additional resources this week.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is deploying ambulances to help in quickly taking patients from full hospitals to facilities with open beds. Twenty paramedics are heading to Arizona, according to a news release.

The states largest hospital systems have warned that they are under immense strain caring for patients with COVID-19 or who delayed care for other illnesses. With a shortage of nurses, they may have to ration care.

With the highly transmissible omicron variant now the dominant variant nationwide, there is fear that scenario isnt far off. The University of Arizona in Tucson announced Tuesday it had identified seven cases of omicron in the community. A university genetics lab detected the variant in samples from saline gargle tests. The school is now in the process of contact tracing.

Scientists dont yet know whether omicron causes more serious disease, but they do know that vaccination should offer strong protections against severe illness and death.

Also in Tucson the Pima County Board of Supervisors approved a mask mandate in a 3-2 vote Tuesday. Face coverings will be required in indoor public spaces where social distancing at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) is not possible.

Arizona reported 2,395 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and 223 more deaths Tuesday. The daily death toll hasnt been that high since February. Hospitalizations for the virus statewide came in at 2,539.

The states pandemic totals now stand at 1,341,377 cases and 23,742 deaths.

Arizonas seven-day rolling average of daily new cases decreased over the past two weeks, going from 4,038.1 on Dec. 5 to 2,914.6 on Sunday. However, the seven-day rolling average of daily deaths increased in that same time frame from 51 to 68.
DENVER  An online petition has gathered millions of signatures calling for leniency for a 26-year-old truck driver who was sentenced to 110 years in prison for vehicular homicide in an explosive accident at the base of a Colorado mountain highway that killed four people in 2019.

More than 4.5 million people had signed the change.org petition urging Gov. Jared Polis to grant clemency or commute Rogel Aguilera-Mederos sentence by Tuesday, The Denver Gazette reports. Truckers nationwide have voiced outrage over the sentence on Twitter, using the hashtags #NoTrucksToColorado and #NoTrucksColorado, among others.

The Democratic governors office said it would welcome an application, while Aguilera-Mederos attorney told KDVR-TV that a request could take time because the sentence was just handed down Dec. 13.

Aguilera-Mederos was convicted in October of vehicular homicide and other charges stemming from the April 25, 2019, crash. He testified that he was hauling lumber when the brakes on his semitrailer failed as he was descending a steep grade of Interstate 70 in the Rocky Mountain foothills.

His truck plowed into vehicles that had slowed because of another wreck in the Denver suburb of Lakewood. He was traveling at least 85 mph (137 kph) on a part of the interstate where commercial vehicles are limited to 45 mph (72 kph).

The chain-reaction wreck involving 28 vehicles ruptured gas tanks, causing a fireball that consumed vehicles and melted parts of the highway.

Prosecutors argued that as Aguilera-Mederos truck barreled down from the mountains, he could have used a runaway ramp alongside the interstate that is designed to safely stop vehicles that have lost their brakes. Aguilera-Mederos testified he was struggling to avoid traffic and to shift his truck into lower gears to slow it down.

In imposing the sentence, District Court Judge Bruce Jones said it was the mandatory minimum term set forth under state law  and suggested a lesser punishment was warranted. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws required that sentences on 27 counts of vehicular assault, assault, reckless driving and other charges run consecutively.

I will state that if I had the discretion, it would not be my sentence, the judge said.

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King, whose office prosecuted the case, filed a motion asking the court to schedule a hearing to reconsider the sentence, her office said Tuesday. The motion states that Colorado law allows reconsideration in an exceptional case involving unusual and extenuating circumstances but didnt elaborate.

Prosecutors are consulting with victims in the case to get their input prior to any proceedings, the motion states.

King had said after sentencing she would welcome a reconsideration of the punishment. But she also told The Denver Post that Aguilera-Mederos didnt accept efforts to negotiate a plea deal, and that the convictions recognized the harm caused to victims of the crash.

Polis office issued a statement saying that we welcome an application from Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos and will expedite consideration but have not received one yet at this time.

Aguilera-Mederos attorney, James Colgan, told The Post he intends to appeal the jurys verdict and that any application for clemency or leniency would have to wait pending that appeal. Among other factors, an application requires input from the Department of Corrections.

The crash killed 24-year-old Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano, 67-year-old William Bailey, 61-year-old Doyle Harrison and 69-year-old Stanley Politano.

Relatives of victims said at Aguilera-Mederos sentencing he should serve time for the crimes.

Duane Bailey, the brother of William Bailey, asked the judge to sentence Aguilera-Mederos to at least 20 years, the Post reported. He made a deliberate and intentional decision that his life was more important than everyone else on the road that day, Bailey said.

Baileys wife, Gage Evans, told The New York Times the drivers sentence shouldnt be commuted but that lawmakers should instead examine the sentencing laws.

This person should spend some time in prison and think about his actions, Evans said, adding she and other victims relatives object to a public narrative that Aguilera-Mederos is a victim. We are truly the victims, she said.

Aguilera-Mederos wept as he apologized to the victims families at his sentencing. He asked for their forgiveness.

I am not a murderer. I am not a killer. When I look at my charges, we are talking about a murderer, which is not me, he said. I have never thought about hurting anybody in my entire life.
The New Mexico Economic Development Department has awarded more than $2.3 million to six companies in December through its Job Training Incentive Program, capping off a record year for the state program.

Decembers round of awards funded a total of 196 trainees, including 180 in Farmington, according to a news release from the state agency. The six companies receiving funding include the following:

 Process Equipment & Service Company, which received nearly $2 million to support 180 trainees in Farmington at an average hourly wage of $15.56.

 X-Bow Launch Systems, which received $225,520 to support 10 trainees in Albuquerque and Socorro at an average wage of $32.73.

 Specifica, which received $35,853 to support a pair of trainees in Santa Fe at an average wage of $31.59.

 Olive Tree Pharmacy, which received $33,966 to support two trainees in Rio Rancho at an average wage of $33.75.

 BennuBio, which received $11,280 to support one additional trainee in Albuquerque at an average wage of $23.50.

 Sombra Cosmetics, which received $6,920 to support one trainee in Albuquerque at an average wage of $18.50.

In 2021, EDD awarded JTIP funds to 122 companies, for a total of $27.6 million. Those funds supported 2,925 trainees across 15 counties, according to EDD.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

More than 24 years ago a woman let her cat back into her Northeast Albuquerque apartment and left the back door slightly ajar so air could circulate. It was around 5 a.m. on July 7, 1997.

About 30 minutes later a man forced his way into her home, held her at knife point, ripped off her underwear and raped her. Afterward, she said, he forced her to shower and stole her briefcase containing her credit card and drivers license.

On Tuesday, 2nd Judicial District Attorney Raul Torrez announced there had been an arrest in the case.

In a news conference, Torrez said his office had hired a contractor, BODE Technology, to use forensic genealogy to track down a suspect by matching DNA collected in a rape kit to open-source data from people who had gotten their DNA tested as a way to learn more about their family trees. They narrowed in on 63-year-old Edward Gilbert Duran and investigators collected a DNA sample from a fork he threw out.

The DAs Office said it learned the DNA was a match almost two weeks ago and Duran was arrested Tuesday. He is charged with two counts of criminal sexual penetration and was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center. Its unclear who his attorney will be. The statute of limitations does not apply to first-degree felonies or in rape cases where a suspect hasnt been identified.

And Durans DNA has been linked to seven other rapes between 1990 and 1997, Torrez said. Duran had been convicted of criminal sexual penetration in 1979 and again in 1989 but Torrez said that was before authorities regularly collected DNA samples from felons to enter into CODIS  the national database.

By combining technology and smart investigating, my office was able to link Duran to this crime and bring him into the light, Torrez said. We hope that this victim and others feel a sense of security and closure by todays arrest and our work to link Duran to his past crime.

This is the second case using forensic genealogy in which Torrezs office has charged a suspect.

Angel Gurule, who raped a woman who was running in the bosque on Christmas Eve in 2015, pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal sexual penetration in the second degree in May 2020. The technique first surfaced when investigators in Northern California used it to catch the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, in 2018. DeAngelo pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison in 2020.

Womans rape kit untested for years

In the 1997 Albuquerque case, the offender took the woman to the bathroom after the rape, ripped off her nightgown, and told her to wash off, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. She told detectives she stayed in the bathroom for 15 to 30 minutes because she was afraid and because she felt comforted in the shower.

When she got out the suspect was gone and the woman called 911.

She told detectives she had the feeling that he had raped women before. He was not nervous once he had literally beaten me into submission; contrary, he was assured, commanding, and knew every step. He was very smooth, and knew exactly what he would do next,' a detective wrote in the complaint.

The woman underwent a sexual assault examination and DNA of the suspect was collected. An Albuquerque Police Department detective conducted a follow-up interview with her a couple of months later but then the case went cold. Along with thousands of others, the womans rape kit sat on a shelf, untested for decades.

The kit was finally tested in February 2020 and by the following August, APDs crime lab had uploaded the DNA into CODIS and found that while it did not match any known offenders, it did match samples collected from seven other rape cases. Torrez said his staff recently talked to the woman who was raped in 1997 and told her they had a match and would file charges. He said the woman now lives out of state and prosecutors are in the process of tracking down the other seven victims as well.

One of the assaults  in 1990  was committed while Duran was being prosecuted for the 1989 rape, Torrez said. In 1991 he was sentenced to spend six months in jail and 2 years probation. Six other assaults were committed while Duran was on probation between 1992 and 1994, Torrez said.

Clearing backlog just the beginning

In 2016, Tim Keller  then state auditor, now Albuquerques mayor  announced that an audit found New Mexico had the highest number of untested rape kits per capita in the nation. About three quarters of the 5,302 kits  dating back to 1988  were from the Albuquerque area.

In the years that followed the city received federal grants to test all the kits and they were finally completed in April. But in many ways clearing the backlog was just the beginning.

One of the things that is clear not only from this case, but from other cases that we have initiated from the backlog is that testing the kits is just the first step, Torrez said. There was an extraordinary amount of investigative resources put in to identifying this suspect and gathering the necessary evidence.

Torrez said his office has one investigator and two victim advocates dedicated to the backlog. APD has three detectives assigned full time to investigating the backlog and civilian advocates who work to contact the victims.

Connie Monahan, the executive director of SANE, which provides support and treatment to rape victims, said advocates knew there were going to be a series of backlogs after the kits were all tested.

Now the backlog has moved to law enforcement, the investigation, she said. In time the backlog will be on the courts. There is a big peak of cases moving through the system.

Outside team helps case move faster

Whereas the last case Torrezs office prosecuted using forensic genealogy was done by his own staff  led by then special agent in charge Kyle Hartsock  now prosecutors are working with an outside team to move more quickly. Torrez said his office has 11 other cases with victims identified that could use the same technique.

Hartsock, now a deputy commander with APD, said sex crimes detectives worked with the DAs Office to identify the 1997 case as one that could benefit from forensic genealogy.

The really shining part is that the DAs Office now has the capability to do a lot of this stuff independently from us as well, Hartsock said. Where our resources might be strained and tied up to do a lot of this work in the current moment, the DAs Office is able to come in and help tie this case off at the end, which resulted in todays arrest.

Torrez said Duran was identified through a distant relative who did not even know who he was. He said BODE Technology mapped out the family trees and provided his office with a list of people to investigate.

We get a list of potential suspects and then special agents in the district attorneys office go about the business of collecting additional evidence to enable that point to point comparison, Torrez said, referring to comparing DNA collected from a suspect to DNA in a rape kit. Once thats done were in the position to effect the arrest, which we did today.

Duran still lives in Albuquerque  less than a mile and a half from where the woman was raped in 1997. Torrez said when he was arrested he denied assaulting anyone. He denied involvement in this case in the charges that are related to this crime and to the others, he said. So I think a lot of what this is really going to come down to is the genetic probability it is a number so astronomical that it would be virtually impossible for a different individual to have been connected to this.
PARADISE, Calif. - A community center in Paradise will be rebuilt near the Performing Arts Center after it was burned down in the Camp Fire.

We are looking forward to being able to rebuild and open up the center again for the communitys use. It was a very active center and we would like to have that back," said the Community Center Board of Director's President Connie Wilhite.

Wilhite has been on the board for 14 years as it was previously the Paradise Ridge Senior Center, but will now be renamed the Paradise Community Center to better display what they offer.

Several people in the community tell Action News Now they are just excited to see rebuilding efforts taking place.

Anythings that coming back and giving us the opportunity for a little bit of normalcy is fantastic," said the Mayor of Paradise Steve Crowder.

North Valley Community Foundation awarded the community center, along with 9 other organizations in the Camp Fire burn scar, a total of $460,000 in grants from the Butte Strong Fund. The money comes from donations to NVCF, the Aaron Rodgers NorCal Fire Recovery Fund and fundraising efforts from Sierra Nevada.

We know its a long process. You know $40,000 to $50,000 to some of these organizations does not by itself build something, but it does get the ball rolling. You cant build a community center without the plans," said NVCF Executive Vice President of Communications David Little.

This center used to host several events, but there was never really a replacement for this center in place.

Right now, if you want to get together for a group meeting, its difficult to find a place to accommodate that, so I think this center will be a great resource for the community," said Wilhite.

The board plans to use these funds to pay for building estimates and to develop a design for the new center.

The North Valley Community Foundation has awarded more than $47.5 million for community relief since the Camp Fire.
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - Butte County Sheriffs Office said it is offering a $50,000 reward for information the leads to an arrest and conviction for the murder of Marc Thompson in 2014.

On Sept. 3, 2014, sheriff deputies responded to the Oroville-Quincy Highway and Mountain House Circle area in Brush Creek, California where a vehicle was engulfed in flames with a person dead inside the vehicle.

Detectives said 25-year-old Thompson, a Chico State student, was shot and killed. The case has been investigated but is still unsolved.

The sheriffs office requested Gov. Gavin Newsoms Office issue a reward through the Governor's Reward Program. The office issued a $50,000 reward after reviewing the case.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Sergeant Patrick McNelis or Detective Tristian Harper at (530) 538-7671.
Cashfree Payments, a leading payment and API banking solutions company, today announced the launch of its brand campaign, Yeh Mera Idea Tha, focusing on encouraging budding entrepreneurs to take a leap of faith and execute the business ideas they have long cherished.

Cashfree Payments has conceptualised the campaign on the very idea of the importance of payments in startups' growth journey when starting a business. At some point in life, we all have come across a new venture or startup and thought to ourselves, I too had the same idea, it could have been me to start this business. Accordingly, the Yeh Mera Idea Tha campaign features a video film that underscores the fact that an entrepreneur needs a good business idea and the best payment solution to give that idea a concrete shape.

Reeju Datta, Co-founder, Cashfree Payments, said, We are pleased to launch our brand campaign and be a part of the growth journey of future entrepreneurs, who are full of innovative ideas. With the Yeh Mera Idea Tha campaign, we aim to become a one-stop solution for payments and related issues for founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs and developers, and at the same time build our brand so that we achieve top-of-mind recall among our target audience.

The campaign speaks to the Indian startup ecosystem which has emerged as the third largest in the world after the US and China. Through innovation and scalable technology, the Indian startup ecosystem continues to grow exponentially and generate impactful solutions. So far, in 2021, India has emerged as the 3rd largest ecosystem for startups globally with over 59,000 DPIIT-recognized startups across 634 districts of the country. It is this startup and entrepreneurial culture that Cashfree Payments targets through "Yeh Mera Idea Tha", at the core of which lies the power of an idea. Whenever an indigenous startup launches in the market, startup enthusiasts are quick to claim that they were the ones to come up with the idea first. Thats the core essence of Yeh Mera Idea Tha.

Vaibhav Mehrotra, Head, Brand and Marketing, Cashfree Payments, said, "Payments is a key component of a startup's growth journey, and we understand that the appetite of entrepreneurs across the country is growing for radical payment solutions. Through the creative storytelling in our 'Yeh Mera Idea Tha' campaign, we celebrate both the idea and the entrepreneur who pursues it. Our brand campaign stands true to our commitment to fostering innovation in the business and startup ecosystem. With this TV and digital campaign, we hope to build a strong brand connection and strengthen our position in the category.

Yeh Mera Idea Tha is a 360-degree campaign driving the message of innovation across multiple touch points through TVCs, social media, contests, webinars, and much more. As an extension of the campaign, Cashfree Payments has also announced Yeh Mera Idea tha contest for the startup community. The winning idea is expected to win up to Rs 50 lakh worth of free credits.

The Yeh Mera Idea Tha campaign has been designed by Cog Culture, and features TVF actors Naveen Kasturia and Badri Chavan in the video films.

Anoop Dixit, Founder Partner & CEO, Cog Culture, said, Taking a company that's disrupting the payment solutions space through the mainline and digital route for brand building is the most exciting experience. We wanted to build something that every Indian can relate to - the experience of coming up with an idea only to see it being turned into reality by someone else. #YehMeraIdeaTha makes the communication relevant and exciting for the audience. In fact, the communication works seamlessly between TV, print and digital."

Cashfree Payments is the Payments Partner on the first-ever version of Shark Tank India on TV as well as OTT. The show is set to start from December 20, 2021 on Sony and SonyLIV.
Dentsu India has appointed Ramsai Suriyanarayanan as Managing Partner- Trading, Media. In his new role, Suriyanarayanan will lead media investments for Reckitt and play an integral role in developing dentsu Medias investment model and portfolio.

Suriyanarayanan has over 25 years of experience, with almost 14 years at senior positions across Procurement, Sales and Marketing functions in the media industry. In the past, he has driven many industry-first innovations across multiple clients and sectors.

Speaking on the appointment, Divya Karani, CEO Media South Asia, dentsu said, We are elated to welcome Suriyanarayanan to the team. He will collaborate with our agencies and media partners to create ROI and deliver value to our clients across media in today's dynamic media industry.

Commenting on his new journey, Ramsai Suriyanarayanan added, I am excited to join one of the worlds fastest-growing client-centric networks, dentsu. It is a privilege to join this team that combines the needs of the clients with consumer intelligence insights, unlocking unique possibilities for sustainable value and lasting change. I look forward to the association and contribute to the greater objectives of dentsu and our clients.
The American watches brand Esprit is all set to strengthen its position in India and has appointed Indian Bollywood actor Ananya Pandey as its celebrity brand ambassador. Esprits India partner AP Group is all geared to reconstruct the brand in the market with a big bang. Announcing the association, the company said that the actors youthful and unstoppable persona, confident outlook, and positive vibes resonate completely with the brand and make her an obvious choice.

AP Group looks to pursue an aggressive expansion plan for Esprit watches in India and the brand is eyeing to regain the market share in the watch category.

Founder & CEO of Time Management Services (TMS), the official licensee of Esprit Watches- Mr. Marco Sieber, said, Since 1968 Esprit as a brand has come a long way. In the last 50 years, the brand has maintained the image of being the most transparent fashion brand in the world, connecting with the customers through positivity, innovation, and sustainability. Indian market is very important to us as we do see that customers are always looking for new designs and trends. We are ready to bedazzle Indian customers with a specially crafted range of watches just for them. Ananya Pandey being a youth icon is the right choice to bring on board to re-create the connect of Esprit with Indian youth.

AP Group Managing Director, Mr. Hamza Patel said, We have noticed that the Indian customer buying behavior is not as it was a decade back. Indian customers are always looking for new trends and designs, but now they are also looking for brands with which they can connect on a much deeper level. So, to build trust and a bond of familiarity with Esprit Watches, we chose Ananya Pandey to endorse Esprit Watches. Ananya is perfect to promote Esprit Watches as she is just not a celebrity, but a successful young woman, who connects the millennial and Gen Z to the upcoming fashion trends through her style sense. She will be promoting our new collection of watches specially tailored as per the need of Indian customers and are priced attractively between Rs.8000  Rs.10000.

Talking about her association with Esprit, Ananya Panday said that I am delighted to be part of the Esprit community, as its intricately designed watches are a style statement on their own. Esprit watches are not only sturdy and fashionable but are classy as well, which appeals to my design aesthetics.

Esprit is revamping its entire watch range and bringing exciting and trendy new products in playful colors, stylish stone dials, designer bracelets, and unconventional fashion aesthetics. Currently, Esprit is targeting young female customers who are looking to add zing to their style statement.

The brand is taking forward its India journey with great enthusiasm while creating high-quality, affordable premium fashion for millennials and Gen Z. With positivity and sustainability and the core, the brand is looking forward to a dynamic comeback in the Indian market.
About WhatsApp New Years Eve Global Campaign:

Year over year people all over the world uses WhatsApp to connect, celebrate and share their best wishes for the year with their loved ones. In fact, on New Years Eve 2020, WhatsApp set some new records:

100 billion messages were sent on WhatsApp, more than on any other day prior in the apps 10-year history.



1.4 billion video and voice calls placed on New Years Eve 2020the most ever in a single day on WhatsApp.

WhatsApps new campaign celebrates the most popular messaging day for users, and takes viewers around the globe on New Years Eve to tell the world that,Its not the New Year until you get the message youve been waiting for.

The campaign will appear in social, digital video, broadcast, and cinema channels in five countries: Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, and was created in collaboration between Metas WhatsApp marketing team and BBDO.

Directed by Cannes Lions winner Niclas Larsson and shot by Oscar-winner cinematographer Linus Sandgren, the campaign shows that the new year isnt officially rung in at midnight, but rather when you get that special, celebratory message youve been waiting for - whether that's from a partner, parent, or close personal friend.

From a church in Nigeria to a typical Mumbai courtyard and the beaches of Brazil, each clip is a glimpse into a different celebration where each person is frozen in time until they get that all-important message ringing in the New Year.

The campaign will kick off on Monday, December 20th.

Speaking on this, Vivian Odior, Global Head of Brand Marketing  WhatsApp said "WhatsApp has always been an integral part of New Year's Eve. Every year people all over the world rely on the app to stay connected with their loved ones and to share their best wishes for the year that is about to start", says Vivian Odior, head of global brand and integrated Marketing at WhatsApp". "This is why our new campaign focuses on telling a diverse set of stories that all demonstrate the private and personal moments that help people move into the new year."

Tres Colacion, Global Creative Lead  BBDO said New Years Eve is one of the few global moments that really brings people together, so it was great to pair this with the universal insight that on a personal level the celebration doesnt really happen until you hear from the people you know and love, and that more often than not those people can only reach you in that moment through WhatsApp. In each format, we set out to capture the essence of what it feels like to receive the message youve been waiting for. While the work takes us across the globe, the team worked tirelessly to craft a visual world where each of our protagonists is the main character of their own night.

Niclas Larsson, Director said, One of the most exciting things about partnering with WhatsApp on this project was to figure out how to convey emotional memory in the story. We approached this by playing with speed, maneuvering between slow motion and real speed and by experimenting with light, using a shutter box to bend light. Playing between these two elements allowed us to create a dramatic visualization of dreams and memories that I think really brought the emotional performances to life.
Its go time once again in America  time for the unvaccinated to roll up their sleeves...not to get an injection, but to fight against a new variant of political and medical hysteria. Unlike the COVID variants, which have symptoms that grow progressively milder with each wave, the authoritarian variants tend to grow harsher with each progressive mutation.

Indeed, the battle over vaccines has been waged through successively more draconian waves of pressure to see the whole world come to the saving knowledge of the grace of vaccines. Those who have thus far stood firm in their resolve to retain their bodily autonomy may be feeling weary from the fight, but they must continue to fight.

To be sure, the resolve and grit of those who are unvaccinated will most likely continue to grow stronger as more information comes out concerning the effectiveness of vaccines versus natural immunity, the incidence and severity of adverse reactions to the vaccines, and the virality of the lies told by the media and our politicians to obtain compliance and amass their power.

The first of the vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech) was granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) on Dec. 11, 2020, which was, interestingly, a little over a month after the 2020 presidential election. Prior to the election and the vaccine announcement, Kamala Harris declared that [] if Donald Trump tells us that we should take [a vaccine]. Im not taking it. Likewise, Brandon expressed his sincere distrust for anything created on Trumps watch.

The Moderna vaccine arrived shortly thereafter, receiving EUA on Dec. 18, 2020, followed by Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) on Feb. 27, 2021.

During the first few months of 2021, as vaccine tyranny was in its infancy, efforts to vaccinate the public included gimmicks ranging from free doughnuts to Mayor Bill De Blasio grotesquely stuffing a burger and fries into his face (note: obesity increases susceptibility to COVID), to vaccine lotteries...may the odds be ever in your favor.

Somehow, though, the sight of a greasy-faced De Blasio disgustingly talking with his mouth full of food on national TV was not enough to convince many to abandon their reluctance to get one of the wonder vaccines, and neither was the prospect of winning a lottery.

At the same time that businesses and local politicians were doing the free food schtick, Brandon and his media cheerleaders were playing the patriotism and selflessness angles. Brandon, who initially distrusted the vaccines when he thought that they might help Trumps reelection chances, now called them the most patriotic thing [Americans] can do. Myriad articles encouraged (and still do) their readers that the vaccines were really about protecting ones fellow man.

The message was clear that only the most heartless and unpatriotic would decline to allow themselves to be injected with one of the EUA vaccines. Big media, working off of government talking points and in an attempt to close off all other doors, went a bit further and banned the mention of natural immunity and therapeutics such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

The calls to patriotic duty, however, rang hollow, coming from those who, just a few short months earlier, had championed the burning and looting of an America that they deemed irredeemable and founded on a plethora of isms, including racism and sexism. The censoring of any discussion of natural immunity, which many of the unvaccinated possessed, along with bans on even the mention of alternative treatments served only to further their determination to avoid the jab.

Delta eventually made its way to America with great fanfare from the media and Washington. The most notable aspect of the new variant was that of transforming the gimmicks and pleas of governors, mayors, and the Resident into mandates. FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, to be marketed as Comirnaty, also helped kick the mandates into high gear (this, despite the fact that Comirnaty doesnt actually appear to be available and does not seem to be discussed in any definitions of fully vaccinated).

Democrats, trying to cover for their own failed policies and actions, began mandating vaccinations, first locally and then for federal employees, military personnel, health care workers, and employees of certain-sized companies.

Despite the mandates and despite illegal firings and dismissals, many continued to hold out.

When the courts began issuing injunctions against the mandates, the Brandon administration began asking companies to ignore the courts and force their employees to vaccinate. The administration also began doubling down on its talking point that America was in the midst of a pandemic of the unvaccinated despite the vaccinated also transmitting COVID.

In spite of the shaming and increased pressure upon workers, many Americans would still not comply.

Now, America is entering the third major wave of COVID as the omicron variant begins its ascent. Public officials are giddy with excitement as they talk of increased testing, renewed mandates, and lockdowns, as well as passports. What they omit in their fervor is that while it is more transmissible, omicron is much less deadly...but that logic doesnt appear to be a factor in taming their zeal.

It is also true that as America and the world enter the third major wave, the vaccines are beginning to fail. Johnson & Johnson has fallen out of favor as blood clotting issues are being discovered, the CDC is beginning to admit that vaccines can cause heart issues in younger Americans, the omicron variant appears to be immune to the vaccines, and the CDC is indicating that it will take 75 years to release its data on the Pfizer vaccine.

Despite these effects, its still full speed ahead: The CDC merely recommends that people take the mRNA vaccines over Johnson & Johnson, that younger Americans continue to take the shots despite the risks, and that all Americans continue to place unmerited trust in the science.

Those that have held out thus far are beginning to see the return on their investment. These individuals resisted the gimmicks, the name-calling, the shaming, the threats, the emotional and national blackmail, and now they are hardened and battle-tested for the fight ahead. As this next variant of political and medical hysteria begins to wash across the land, these unvaccinated individuals should continue to hold the line and do what is best for their bodies and for their families, come what may.

While Brandon and the media would have America believe that the unvaccinated are facing a winter of severe illness and death, the truth appears more likely that the unvaccinated will be fine, just as they have been through each wave of pressure and tyranny over the last two years.

What is more likely the case is that, as the resistance grows and the vaccines continue to fail, it is the tyrannical machinations, narratives, and fear porn of Brandon, governor tyrants, and the media that now face a winter of severe illness and death.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License

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Defenders of government-imposed COVID vaccine mandates frequently cite the 1905 Supreme Court case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts to argue that such mandates are valid. The arguments are typically presented as though the Court decided that question without qualification or exception. A careful reading of the case demonstrates that it is a limited and tenuous precedent for current COVID policy.

Jacobson involved a Massachusetts statute that gave the board of health of a city or town the authority to "require and enforce the vaccination and revaccination of all the inhabitants thereof," and imposed a five-dollar fine on adults who refused to comply. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and then the United States Supreme Court, upheld the statute, but their grounds for doing so lend little support either to COVID vaccine mandates in general or to federal COVID vaccine mandates in particular.

Justice John Marshal Harlan, in writing the majority opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court, recognized that "[t]he authority of the State to enact this statute is to be referred to what is commonly called the police power..." An immediate issue arises, at least in the matter of federal mandates, in that there is no general federal police power. The Supreme Court has explicitly declared that "The Constitution... withhold[s] from Congress a plenary police power." This is a well-established constitutional principle, as noted by Justice Clarence Thomas in United States v. Lopez (1995). Thus, the stated authority for the vaccine mandates approved in Jacobson is explicitly lacking in the case of a federal vaccine mandate. To the extent that the federal government has any authority to impose vaccine mandates in the case of COVID, that authority is not found in the Jacobson opinion, and that case is largely irrelevant to the issue, except perhaps as an illustrative analogy. Jacobson does not establish a federal authority to impose COVID vaccine mandates. The Court specifically stated The safety and health of the people of Massachusetts are, in the first instance, for that Commonwealth to guard and protect. They are matters that do not ordinarily concern the National Government.

Beyond the issue of constitutional authority, the Jacobson case relies on circumstances that are inapplicable to the COVID pandemic. Following Jacobson's conviction in the trial court, he complained that he was not allowed to present evidence that the risk of vaccination outweighed the benefits. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court dismissed this argument by observing:

[...]for nearly a century, most of the members of the medical profession have regarded vaccination, repeated at intervals, as a preventive of smallpox [...]and that not only the medical profession and the people generally have for a long time entertained these opinions[...]

The Massachusetts court, quoted approvingly by the U.S. Supreme Court, took it as indisputable that vaccination prevented the spread of smallpox, so much so that contrary evidence need not be considered.

Like the Massachusetts Court, the U.S. Supreme Court presumed the efficacy and safety of smallpox vaccination, describing them as "the knowledge which, it is safe to affirm, is common to all civilized peoples touching smallpox and the methods most usually employed to eradicate that disease[...]" After some discussion, the Supreme Court noted "[...]vaccination, as a means of protecting a community against smallpox, finds strong support in the experience of this and other countries[...]." This is far from the case with COVID vaccines. The efficacy of the available COVID vaccines in preventing the spread of infection does not "find strong support in the experience of this and other countries," nor is it the case that "the people generally" entertain this opinion.

The available data at least engender good faith controversy as to whether any available vaccines effectively prevent the spread of COVID. These data include recurrent surges of infection in highly vaccinated populations and an observed inability of the vaccine to reliably prevent either viral replication in infected persons or transmission of infection from one person to another. The evidence suggests that, in the best of circumstances, vaccine effectiveness wanes over a period of months requiring an as-yet-undetermined course of repeated booster shots. The experience in highly vaccinated populations such as the United Kingdom, Israel, the Seychelles, and states such as Vermont raise valid questions as to whether any of the available vaccines effectively prevent the spread of COVID-19 and its variants.

The Jacobson Court did not have to contend with the scenario in which definitions of "vaccine" or "fully vaccinated" were time-limited. It did not have to address smallpox variants. The Court in 1905 could also rely on "nearly a century" of demonstrated smallpox vaccine efficacy and safety, whereas rationales for COVID vaccine mandates rely on poorly supported and rushed conclusions regarding efficacy and safety, dissembling opinions from experts whose credibility wanes in the same manner as vaccine effectiveness, and malleable explanations for the exact objective of widespread vaccination. The smallpox vaccination at issue in Jacobson was not a novel technology like the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, the long-term effects of which, if any, are necessarily unknown. The Jacobson Court could not have ruled as it did unless it had established knowledge of both smallpox and the long-term consequences of vaccination; knowledge which is not nearly as well developed in the case of COVID. The Jacobson opinion is a poor precedent for COVID vaccine mandates because the assumptions upon which the Court could confidently rely do not apply to COVID.

References to the Jacobson opinion typically omit significant limiting language. The Court stated:

[T]he police power of a State, whether exercised by a legislature or a local body acting under its authority, may be exerted in such circumstances or by regulations so arbitrary and oppressive in particular cases as to justify the interference of the courts to prevent wrong and oppression.

The Court then said:

We are not inclined to hold that the statute establishes the absolute rule that an adult must be vaccinated if it be apparent or can be shown with reasonable certainty that he is not at the time a fit subject of vaccination []

The implication is that if the statute did establish such a rule, it would run afoul of constitutional protections. The Jacobson court assumed that the statute contained legitimate exceptions to a general mandate, specifically if a person could show that he was not, at the time, a fit subject of vaccination. A reasonable reading of this comment would suggest that vaccine mandates, whether state or federal, must contain, at least, medical exemptions. These should apply, for example, to persons who have autoimmune diseases or who had significant adverse reactions to the initial injection and declined the subsequent shots and boosters. There is likewise the open question of whether people who were previously infected with COVID are fit subjects of vaccination.

The evolving evidence is that COVID vaccines work to some degree, but they apparently do not work as hoped as public health interventions, and not well enough to support a regime of mandatory vaccination, as was the case in Jacobson. The reliance of vaccine advocates on Jacobson as authority for vaccine mandates is misplaced.

Image: Picryl

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In these highly polarized times, it is useful to look at our Christian forefathers to understand: Why did they do that?

The COVID-19 pandemic exposes how secularized most churches have become. Two axioms can help find a way forward. First, there is nothing new under the sun. The characters and technology have changed. But as in all past tyrannies, vanity and greed consistently drive the desire to control and subjugate. This especially applies to pride-filled Marxists. Second, those who do not learn history are bound to repeat it. In 1846, Pope Pius IX was warning about communisms destruction of everyones laws, government, property, and even of human society itself. The churches now seem to have a greater desire for some ambiguous version of safety, instead of promoting rights of conscience and zeal to worship.

There are few times in history that churches have closed for significant periods. More often, Christians were instead willing to risk their own health to help those who were ill. Rather than fleeing the cities and the source of the latest plague, many of the early faithful chose to remain or even come to the cities, to treat and to minister. The risk of death was secondary to their mission to save souls. The pagans marveled at their actions. Many considered them reckless or foolhardy. Many others were converted, however, when they saw the joy, and the lack of fear of death, of these adherents to the Way. The number of Christians rapidly increased.

The Christian zeal to love others, which included ministering to the sick and evangelizing the pagans, is replete in our history. Many ministered to the sick at great personal risk, including saints Roch, Catherine of Sienna, Charles Borromeo, Don Bosco, and Damien of Molokai. Think of how many hospitals were started by orders of sisters in North America in the recent past. The zeal was still there, at least recently.

In the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, many governments required that gatherings be limited, or canceled altogether. This also applied to churches. As our understanding of the virus increased, and the treatments for those infected improved, then the governments basis for these restrictions disappeared. COVID-19 can be quite harmful to at risk people. However, most, especially the young, have a tremendously high survival rate. This virus is not smallpox or polio, as is evidenced by the mortality rates.

We have a duty to act for the common good. Acting in a reckless or culpably negligent manner regarding the spreading of disease is not appropriate. A well-formed conscience will provide for the common good. Does a well-formed conscience allow one to refuse the current COVID-19 vaccines? The National Center for Catholic Bioethics answers this question: There is no universal moral obligation to accept or refuse [the vaccine], and it should be a voluntary decision of the individual. The Center states that one should use other reasonable measures to prevent the spread of the virus if choosing not to be vaccinated. No credible Christian theologian has disagreed with this stance.

Protecting the right to a well-formed conscience is a duty of the Church. We still marvel at saints who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect their conscience rights, such as Saints Thomas More, John Fisher, and Thomas Becket. Why would they do that, when the ease of simply acquiescing was clearly available? And why do we venerate them now? We do not have feast days for the other English bishops who acquiesced to the kings oath contained in the Succession Acts. Clergy must realize that there is no prior example in modernity of a disease compelling a person to accept a drug which they have reasonable ethical and medical reasons to avoid. They must act to protect the well-formed consciences of all persons of goodwill if the Church still believes it is a primary guardian of conscience rights.

There are many times in the past 23 months that governments and businesses have taken excessive actions. In the Canadian province of New Labrador, the Grand Falls Catholic Diocese has enacted requirements that people present the NLVaxPass to attend Mass. Those who are not vaccinated are excluded from church services, which is a form of apartheid. New Brunswick province also has rules prohibiting grocery stores from selling food to the unvaccinated. The clergy and laity must recognize that a digital vaccine passport is a necessary and logical extension of the coercive measures to promote vaccination. Even now, New York and California are requiring proof of vaccination to participate in polite society. Germany is warning it will mandate everyone be vaccinated by February 2022, period.

The tyranny and division promoted by Marxism are back in a new iteration and must be resisted. The clergy might do well to make it clear they will not participate in any passport system. Many wonder if their shepherds listen more closely to actuaries determining liability risks than their own flocks pleas for access to the sacraments. At this point, the clergy should understand that the Church is to be a beacon of hope, even during a pandemic, and do whatever it takes to provide access to services and sacraments.

A belief that medical apartheid is an acceptable way to keep the faithful safe within church buildings is a misunderstanding of our duty to promote the common good. Segregating our brethren for this particular disease offends our religious duty to evangelize by our example, creates unnecessary division, and is unconstitutional. The Church cannot ignore how much damage the lack of access to the community of worship and the sacraments has caused. Christians cannot again willingly participate in such COVID-19-borne restrictions.

Christian churches have a duty to resist closure, medical apartheid, and the whitewashing of conscience rights. Marxists know their ideology thrives on this type of division. Christianity is to be the counterpoint ideology to such tyrants. Clergy must promote Christian zeal to worship as a community, even during a pandemic, must remember their duty to oppose tyrants, and must be the guardians of conscience rights that all free people own.

Image: Horia Varlan

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In a video recently uploaded onto YouTube, Bahgat Saber, a Manhattan-based Muslim Brotherhood activist who enjoys life and liberty in the USA, exhibited two aspects that Muslims zealous over their religion often exhibit: extreme vulgarity and warped logic.

Regarding the first point, he spent much of his time attacking Fr. Zakaria Botros (whom I first introduced to the English-language world in this 2008 NRO article). A Coptic Christian priest from Egypt, now in his mid-eighties, Fr. Zakaria has for over two decades been appearing on satellite television, examining and exposing Islams many problematic doctrines -- for example, sex slavery -- often in comparison to the doctrines of Christianity. Although some of his episodes appear under provocative titles -- as Was Muhammad a Messenger from God or Satan? or On the Perverse Sexual Habits of Muhammad -- his mission, as he has repeatedly stated is to attack Islam, not to attack Muslims but to save them because they are deceived. As I love Muslims, I hate Islam.

His approach, as might be imagined, has been received in diametrically opposed ways: some Muslims, who left Islam, love and credit him with leading them to Christ; others -- arguably the majority -- despise him and call for his death (radical outfits including al-Qaeda issued fatwas calling for his murder, with hefty rewards).

New Yorks Bahgat Saber is of the latter variety. In his video, he launched a number of vulgarities against the Coptic priest. (and apparently Christians in general). (Note: translating idiomatic Arabic obscenities to English is no easy task, hence why the following, largely literal translation may read awkwardly.)

Zakaria Botros, that son of a f*cked whore who, as they say, has a towel in her c*nt, [is] living in Cyprus, that son of a f*cked whore He does not live in America -- and if he does, give me his address and Ill beat the sh*t out of him Anyone who has information on Botros, this son of a dogs religion, this Christian dog, these queer sons of a f*cked whore, this byproduct of a pig-priest who spread his mothers legs open when he was walking her to crap, f*cking her, or whatever. We have been silent for too long.

What does one make of Sabers avalanche of profanities -- this NY Muslim Brotherhood activist who otherwise presents himself as an upright Muslim? Simple: as with widespread Muslim prayers of hate, vulgar language against infidels is not only permitted by Islam but encouraged. That is, at least, what a number of Muslim clerics have said, as I documented in this 2013 article, Islams Outrageous Obscenities.

Thus, when Sheikh Abu Islam was criticized for using obscene language to criticize Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef, he responded to his critics by saying: Shame on you Muslims; learn your religion well. The Koran itself curses them, curses the likes of Bassem Youssef, those before him and after him. He went on to give examples, quoting Koran verses that refer to infidels as dogs, donkeys, and cattle. Are these curses or not? asked the cleric. Well, its your lord who curses, who insults Cursing and insulting is from Allah almighty, praise and glory to him.

Abu Islam proceeded to quote Muhammads words, as recorded in a hadith, for support:

Now hear the words that the prophet counsels me to use against people like you [Bassem Youssef]. He tells me to tell you Bite your fathers penis, and do not whitewash. In other words, Im supposed to tell you to go bite your fathers male member, but Im supposed to use the real word [penis] without whitewashing. The prophet orders me to mention your fathers male member, but without whitewashing [instead of saying male member he should say penis]. You see how well-mannered I am -- I cannot even bring myself to use the words the prophet commanded me to use on you. I just cant do it!

In short, Sabers obscenities directed at Fr. Zakaria are standard and have a long track record within Islamic tradition.

Now consider this in conjunction with the second telling aspect of Sabers recorded diatribe, which he continued by saying

Theres another son of a f*cked whore named Magdi Khalil who lives here in America, but [unlike Fr. Zakaria] he speaks about Islam in an incorrect way. Thats fine, no big deal; criticize the religion at your leisure. But if this son of the dogs religion ever thinks that he will turn us against the prophet, I will beat the shit out of you! ...Big deal if someone [a Muslim] attacks Christianity; hes attacking the religion -- you son of a dogs religion. He attacks the mistakes of your religion. Go and converse with him -- your mothers c*nt! But when you lie about our prophet, and you know you sons of a f*cked whore that the punishment for hurting our prophet is decapitation. Decapitation you sons of a f*cked whore! -- in this theres no debate. Any homo son of a slut whose mother fingers his a**hole -- its decapitation immediately, you sons of a filthy whore.

So its okay to criticize Islam, to honestly and openly debate Muslims, says Saber and countless Muslims like him, but its not okay -- its the death penalty -- to say anything that might offend or hurt the prophets reputation. On the surface this may seem reasonable -- discuss the doctrines, dont offend their founders -- until one realizes that no Islamic doctrine can be discussed or criticized without tracing it directly back to and thus implicating Muhammad, as he is their ultimate source: whether through the hadith, Muhammads words and teachings, or whether through the Koran, Muhammads words and teachings masquerading as the words of God.

Going back full circle to Fr. Zakaria Botros, this is precisely why the Christian priest is so reviled by some Muslims: as he frequently laments, everything he discusses is from your books -- the Koran, hadith, sira, and tafsir! The things you get angry at me for saying were first said or done by your prophet -- or so you teach. Im just the messenger!

Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Image: Mustafa Hassona

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Democrats claim that democracy is under attack in America and Democrats must act decisively to protect it. Theyve been trying to end the filibuster, nationalize voting, and pack the Supreme Court. The most ominous fix, which hinges on the myth of a January 6 Insurrection, sees retired generals argue that the military must purge the ranks of Trump supporters and prepare for a military coup to block a future contested election. This is unconstitutional, illegal, and spells the end of American democracy.

Victor Davis Hanson notes that leftists are loudly worrying about democracys end while ignoring all theyve done to end democracy, such as bringing in millions of illegal aliens, many of whom are being given the vote; destroying centuries-old governing traditions such as the filibuster; packing the court; ending the Electoral College; and more.

If Democrats can kill the Senate filibuster (and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the only thing stopping them, not the craven Senator Mitch McConnell), they have the unfettered ability to enshrine vote fraud and pack the Supreme Court. The latter move spells the finaland deeply unconstitutionalprogressive rewrite of our Constitution, and ends our constitutional republic.

The wild card in all of this, though, is what would the military do if, in fact, the progressives were able to achieve these goals (or even if they werent). Three retired officers have signaled that they want to purge the military of Trump supporters, and then plan a takeover of the military and related federal agencies that coordinate with the military to effect a coup in 2024. Considering the current state of the Pentagon, this may be more than a progressive fantasy.

Thirty years ago, when I was a U.S. Army Infantry Officer, our military was unquestionably a politically neutral, colorblind institution. It was the single most well-integrated institution in our nation and, indeed, was the primary engine integrating our nation. But progressives have done everything they can to turn the military into a dysfunctional machine warped by racial, sexual, and gender identity divisions. This began with Obama, who injected the toxic myth of white supremacy and the tenets of critical race theory.

In 2019, Kyle Smith explained:

A curious thing happened in the second half of the Obama era: The commander-in-chief began viewing the military less as an entity designed to destroy enemies but [sic] a tool with which to achieve progressive goals. Warriors were turned into social-justice warriors. Men and women with risible-to-nonexistent military records were made heads of the services. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus (who had logged all of two years service as a junior officer) named ships after Cesar Chavez and Harvey Milk.

Obama also purged the military of any flag rank officer not reliably progressive, a process Andrea Widburg document at her blog and at American Thinker (here and here). Those who remain today are nothing but progressive race hustlers, such as the odious Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, or traitorous politicians in uniform, such as General Mark white rage Milley.

Enter now three retired U.S. Army Generals: Major Generals Paul D. Eaton and Antonio M. Taguba and Brigadier General Steven M. Anderson (the Three). In a Washington Post opinion piece, 3 retired generals: The military must prepare now for a 2024 insurrection, they contend that events in 2020 revealed an incipient military coup and that, to save our nation, the U.S. military must act preemptivelyradically and unilaterally. What they write should frighten every American.

The Three assert that those unarmed Americans who, on January 6, did nothing more than quite innocently enter Congress, walk around, and then leave voluntarily, were all insurrectionists. They spout this deadly canard although no one arrested has been charged with 18 U.S.C.  2381 (Treason),  2383 (Rebellion or insurrection),  2384 (Seditious conspiracy), or  2385 (Advocating overthrow of Government). The Three stick to their risible narrative because only through lies can they scare people enough to accept their unconstitutional and illegal recommendations that, if accepted, will put the final nail in our national coffin.

Image: National Guard Troops in D.C. YouTube screen grab.

To justify whats essentially a military coup, the Three bemoan that a disturbing number of veterans and active-duty members of the military took part in the attack on the Capitol. They note that [M]ore than 1 in 10 of those charged in the attacks had a service record. Thats statistically meaningless. Well over 7% of all Americans are active duty or veteransnone of whom gave up all their First Amendment rights when they donned a uniform. Even active-duty soldiers can lawfully attend a political rally out of uniform.

The Three then contend that questioning an elections legitimacy is tantamount to treason. Their authority? A group of 124 retired military officials, under the name Flag Officers 4 America, released a letter echoing Donald Trumps false attacks on the legitimacy of our elections. In other words, anyone who supports Trump or questions progressive legitimacy is a traitor to our nation.

The Threes final example supporting their argument that the military must be purged is this:

Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, the commanding general of the Oklahoma National Guard, refused an order from President Biden mandating that all National Guard members be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Mancino claimed that while the Oklahoma Guard is not federally mobilized, his commander in chief is the Republican governor of the state, not the president.

Mancino has a colorable legal argument. Thus, the governor could fire him if Mancino were to ignore his orders while he and the Oklahoma Guard are under state control.

Based on those three examples, the Three baldly assert, that The potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan linesfrom the top of the chain to squad levelis significant should another insurrection occur. Thats a hysterical strawman, not facts or intelligence speaking. However, their recommendations clearly signal a proposed military coup.

First, they demand that the House Select Committee and Justice Department prosecute the leaders who inspired the insurrection. Under what possible charge, the Three do not say, but as is always the case with progressive justice for political enemies, sentence firstevidence afterwards.

Second, the Three utter a sentence I never expected to come out of the mouths of our military leadership: [T]he military cannot wait for elected officials to act....

Thats a stunning statement from anyone who understands our military history and our Constitution. The single most basic rule of our military is that it is wholly and completely under civilian control. So, what would the Three have the military do unilaterally?

Among other things, they argue that the military should undertake intensive intelligence work at every military base to remove those people they define as potential mutineersi.e., Trump voters. This would be the U.S. militarys first ideological purge, one consistent with the old Soviet Union. Maybe Milley and Austin will install political officers in each unit.

Lastly:

[T]he Defense Department should war-game the next potential post-election insurrection or coup attempt to identify weak spots. It must then conduct a top-down debrief of its findings and begin putting in place safeguards to prevent breakdowns not just in the military, but also in any agency that works hand in hand with the military.

The intentionally muddy writing shouldnt obscure that this is a plan for a military coup. The Posse Comitatus Act, 18 U.S. Code  1385, prevents the military from acting as a police force within the U.S. under all but the most limited of circumstances. If the Defense Department is unilaterally planning to take over any agency that works hand in hand with the military to ensure progressives remain in power if the next election is contested, then our modern military will have recast itself in the mold of a Third World military junta.

Wolf Howling (a pseudonym) blogs at Bookworm Room.

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Watkins Elementary School is part of what's called the Capitol Hill Cluster. Thirty-two percent of its students are "economically disadvantaged," and at least one of its staff members is allegedly a sadistic, antisemitic monster. Only someone like that would force third-graders (an average of eight years old) to "re-enact" the Holocaust and would also tell the students the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves because they "ruined" Christmas.

The story is straightforward and appalling:

An instructor at a DC school has been placed on leave after she allegedly told third-graders to re-enact scenes from the Holocaust  including digging mass graves and having a Jewish student cast as Adolf Hitler. The principal of Watkins Elementary School told parents in an email that the staff member told the students "to portray participants from the Holocaust like Adolf Hitler, digging ditches to serve as mass graves, and simulated shootings," Fox 5 reported. "It was also alleged that the staff member leading the lesson made anti-Semitic statements," added Scott Berkowitz, who did not name the clueless educator. The principal said the students had been taking a library class to do a self-directed project before winter break  but the library instructor had them take part in the hideous re-enactment instead.

Parents also reported what their traumatized children told them about the event. One little girl was told to pretend to choke and die in a gas chamber. Another boy was told to pretend he was on one of the cattle cars bringing people to the camp, to mime shooting at his peers, and then to pretend to die in the gas chamber. A Jewish student was told to play the part of Hitler. His mother said of him that he "is not doing well at all."

The students reported one other fact that made it appear that this exercise was not intended to increase the students' empathy for those murdered during the Holocaust but was, instead, a sadistic little bit of playacting involving children as the unwitting and unwilling participants in this bit of theater. When the students asked the woman responsible for this macabre exercise to explain why these horrible things happened to the Jews, she replied that it was "because the Jews ruined Christmas."

The school librarian, however, had a different take on the matter:

The school librarian told Fox 5 that she believed "somebody's misquoting what happened in the library that day." She insisted that there was no Holocaust re-enactment or hate speech by the staffer, but would not answer when asked whether there was any discussion about the Holocaust.



Image: Crying child. Piqsels.

I must admit that I can go either way on the truth of this one. In favor of the librarian's take on the matter (that it couldn't be what really happened), young children are utterly unreliable reporters of events. Part of the reason the horrific witch hunt against pre-school teachers occurred in the 1980s was that youngsters can so easily be brought to believe as true things that never happened but were, instead, only suggested to them, including suggestions from other students. By third grade, children are becoming more reliable narrators, but they're still dangerous to believe completely.

I also find weird the antisemitic statement that the "Jews ruined Christmas." Even for an antisemite, that's a statement that makes no sense. It could come from a child's fertile imagination  or it could be a child misunderstanding the antisemitic statement that "Jews murdered Christ."

However, a lot of things operate in favor of believing the story. The children went home and told their parents the same story, and many were genuinely traumatized. Even if the children garbled the point about Jews ruining Christmas, it seems likely that someone tied the two concepts (Jews and Christ) together in a negative way. The school is in a heavily leftist community, and leftists, from Hitler on down, hate Jews.

The school student body is over 60% Black, which suggests that a lot of faculty members are Black, too, which leads to a very sad point about Blacks and Jews: Blacks don't like Jews. Second to Muslims, they are the most antisemitic segment of the American population, which is another tragedy of the Black community.

The fact is that, since biblical times, people who have gotten along well with Jews have thrived. I'm making a world of assumptions here, but it seems to me that a majority-Black school in a hard-left community won't be friendly to Jews.

My last point in favor of believing, rather than disbelieving the narrative, is that it happened in a public school, and if the COVID hysteria has taught us one thing, it's that public schools are broken, both academically and morally. With luck, this unsavory event will be yet another nail in the coffin that is American public primary education.

UPDATE: Kimberlynn Jurkowski is the name of the librarian who allegedly traumatized third-graders by making them reenact the Holocaust and then made antisemitic remarks. As I suspected, she is Black. She's also a convicted felon, having defrauded a school district of $24,000 for tutoring work she didn't perform, and was cited for animal cruelty when she let one of her dogs freeze to death outdoors (the last in a list of allegations of dog abuse). Clearly, despite its shiny website, the Watkins Elementary School is having a hard time vetting the people to whom parents entrust their children.

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In 2020, U.S. political figures began to propose reassigning some  or all  police responsibilities and resources to social workers. This was presented as if it were a brand new idea, not one floated since the concept of social work began to settle into academia at the end of the 19th century.

In spring 2021, Representative Cori Bush (D-Mo.) proposed "The People's Response Act." Its numerous goals include grants to replace police with social workers, reimagining law enforcement, increased mental health resources, and addressing violence against people with numerous specific characteristics.

At first glance, it might seem plausible that specially trained professionals, working long-term with troubled individuals might guide some away from antisocial choices, even expecting high failure rates because individuals can resist ideas, even ideas likely to have positive consequences.

The Oxford Reference website describes two main schools of criminology. Classical criminology assumes that criminals act out freely chosen, rational decisions. Positivist criminology, embraced by social workers, places the causes of crime outside the individual, using statistical analysis to uncover nefarious influences that cause antisocial behavior.

In their own writings, social workers reject a person-centered approach to interactions with clients. An article in the British Journal of Social Work states, "Social work practice is not able to hold true to the value & principle of respecting service users' basic autonomy & right to self-determination." Instead, the answers to crime spring forth from collective action within the crime-ridden community.

In a fraught situation, appealing to the individual's ability to think and act rationally might have better success reducing tension. For an agitated stranger, a social worker's preferred demeanor of "unconditional positive regard" might appear condescending.

After perusing some materials about and by social workers, it seems some of the most vigorous proponents of social workers as an alternate-reality police-lite option have been social workers. It appears that, to social workers, physical tools like specially equipped cars, weapons, kevlar vests, and handcuffs are incompatible with police using conversational techniques to defuse tension if the opportunity arises.

Social workers are aware that social workers are subject to violent attacks by clients. In 2011, 58% of 1,129 social workers surveyed said they had "direct experience of client violence." After the killings of social workers in Boston and Kansas, social workers set up campaigns supporting federal and local legislation addressing violence against social workers. It's already illegal to beat up anybody, so let's make beating up a social worker double-plus-illegal. Another goal is greater public awareness of the potential for violence against social workers. What exactly public awareness of violence toward social workers accomplishes is not explained.

When facing threats to their own physical safety, social workers have surprising awareness of real-world information that might be useful for dealing with agitated antisocial individuals. In a 2011 webinar on social worker safety, Christina Newhill, Ph.D., ACSW encourages risk assessment of every client, noting prior violence; drug or alcohol use; weapons; and demographic, clinical, and biological characteristics. There are even imminently practical suggestions, like removing from offices objects that can be used as weapons. Omitted are outside forces affecting behavior. The characteristics to be assessed, if mentioned by police or the public in connection to criminal behavior, in the current year, would be depicted as bigotry.

Anyone considering moving funding to social workers and from police should access and compare any available information about the efficacy of the two professions in reducing crime rates.

A 2018 Brennan Center paper describes an NYU project centered on 264 cities in the years 1990 to 2013. Every new nonprofit in cities of over 100,000 is claimed to lower homicide rates by 1.2%, violent crime by 1%, and property crime by 0.7%. The American Sociological Review article by the NYU study authors says a "theoretical and empirical literature on the crime decline" overlooks "how violence is regulated through informal sources of social control internal to communities." "Our goal is to present causal evidence on the impact of these organizations on crime and violence in U.S. cities." The study used "a fixed-effects framework and adapt an instrumental variable (IV) strategy to identify the causal effect of nonprofits on crime." Fixed effects are designed to control for omitted variables, and instrumental strategy is used for "controlling unobserved sources of variability" and assume no direct effect on outcome. The impact of nonprofits on crime was not tested but assumed.

The above research assumes that nonprofits organically develop within the community and depicts police as imposed from the outside. This ignores nonprofits operating locally but created by federal funds, and police being under the control of local, elected officials.

Police numbers in the U.S. increased with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which earmarked $1 billion for community policing grants that put 7,000 new police officers on the street. Steven Mello of Princeton University Industrial Relations Section saw an opportunity for a natural experiment. Mello compared changes in police numbers and crimes, finding large and statistically significant effects of police on robbery, larceny, and auto theft, even correlating with fewer murders. The even better news is that decreases in crime following increases in police numbers don't correlate with increased numbers of arrests or a spillover effect into other communities. According to Mello, "[t]he results highlight that fiscal support to local governments for crime prevention may offer large returns, especially during bad macroeconomic times."

Even the most routine interactions between police and the public have the potential to suddenly escalate to a violent crisis. For the safety of the general public, individuals experiencing or creating a crisis, criminals being apprehended, and the public servants expected to resolve dangerous situations, the best, most reliable tools should be readily available. The use of physical instruments for communication, transportation, protection, and control, and talking to calm agitated individuals are both methods successfully employed by police every day. Where social workers fit into crime reduction efforts is unclear, even with a century of attempts to assume usefulness and claim influence on decreasing crime rates that coincide with increased police presence and resources.

Image via Needpix.

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Donald Trump has been gaslighted by the media into believing that he did not make strong gains in the Jewish community and that American Jews did not appreciate his unprecedented support for Israel because they do not care about Israel. Both are not true.

Trump won a historic 30.5% of the Jewish vote in the 2020 presidential election and 43% of the Jewish vote in the critical swing state of Florida. Trump carried Florida because the Jewish vote switched. Trump's Jewish support was the largest for a Republican since 1988.

Trump's gains among Jewish voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona must have terrified the Democrats. That is why they have spent so much time and effort trying to convince the Jews and Trump that the Jewish vote did not move toward Trump. As the Democrat party abandons its support for Israel, they want to convince Jews that Jews do not care about Israel.

The media have gaslighted Trump, who said in an interview released last week that American Jews "either don't like Israel or don't care about Israel" since the Jews voted for Biden rather than Trump.

The media are also gaslighting the Jews: manipulating statistics to convince Jews and Trump of a false narrative. From the recently published interview with the leftist Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, it appears that this leftist gaslighting has affected Trump's understanding of the Jewish community and the election results.

The left is doing this with manipulative gaslighting polls to dupe Jews and the wider public. It appears that they have succeeded with Trump. The claim fueled by the left that Jews don't widely support Israel is wrong,  and dangerous. Media outlets cite a poll done by the Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI), which they incorrectly label a non-partisan outfit.

But JEI is not non-partisan; it is a fiercely partisan organization with an agenda to gaslight Jews and the wider public. It is a spin-off of a Jewish Democratic organization. Haile Soifer is the registered agent of JEI. She's also the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDC). Not coincidentally, both JEI and the JDC share the same address in D.C. (1440 G St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20005).

The JEI poll reported that "Israel is the lowest policy priority for Jewish voters."

Honest polls can provide a useful picture of current trends. But polls can also be used as a tool for political manipulation. Dr. Alex Joffe, in a study for the Israeli think-tank the Besa Center, concluded that the JEI poll was "gaslighting of Jews by other Jews on behalf of the Democratic Party and its progressive causes is in keeping with longstanding Obama-Biden-era practice."

Joffe points out:

The Obama administration pioneered the creation of the progressive echo chamber with ostensibly independent think tanks and communal organizations, such as J Street and NIAC, all of which were tied to prominent Democratic donors and dark money sources. The goal was to shape the information environment by regurgitating administrative talking points through studies and legitimizing them through polls. The Jewish Electorate Institute is another iteration.

The JEI poll seeks to counter and bury the uptick in Jewish support for Trump in strategic states, including Florida and Ohio. If the misleading, politically motivated JEI poll demonstrated the "basis" for Trump's claim that the Jews do not support Israel, Trump has been deceived. That is the important story.

Other polls by unbiased organizations have found strong support among Jewish Americans for Israel. A Pew Research poll of Jewish Americans in 2020 found that among Jews of all ages, 58% feel very/somewhat attached to Israel. For Jews over the age of 50, 88% said that Israel was essential to what being Jewish means to them or is very important. Only 10% responded that Israel is not important to them. That latter number rose to 27% for American Jews under the age of 30. But for all Jews of all ages, a majority responded that Israel was important to them.

A 2021 Gallup study, "Americans' Religion and Their Sympathies in the Middle East" analyzed Gallup polls over the years 20062013 compared to 20142021. It found:

Jews in the U.S. have been in the past, and continue to be, overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel ... 94% of Republican Jews are sympathetic to Israel, more than to the Palestinians, compared with a slightly lower 87% of Democrats.

Support for Israel among Evangelicals is well known, but according to the Gallup study, Trump is likely incorrect in saying that it is higher than among Jews. Gallup did not single out Evangelicals, but it did measure church attendance. The 20182021 data show that 73% of Protestants who attend services weekly are sympathetic to Israel compared to 6265% of those Protestants who seldom or never attend.

This is very strong support for Israel, but it is lower than the 8794% recorded for American Jews.

The Gallup and Pew results were confirmed by an American Jewish Committee 2021 survey of American Jewish opinion. As in the Pew poll, AJC found that 58% of respondents said that being connected to Israel is either very or somewhat important to their Jewish identity. Using the metaphor of a family, the poll found that 72% of respondents described Israeli Jews as part of their family. And this is in a poll in which only 21% of the respondents said that they voted for Trump in the 2020 election.

The Left is gaslighting the public by manipulating data to show that support for Israel has faded among American Jews. This pernicious effort to make American Jews deny the reality of their own feelings has seemingly worked on Trump. It is important that he learn the truth, not the distortions in the mainstream media.

Carol Greenwald is chairman, Jews Choose Trump.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.

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I was pleasantly surprised by the tone of a New York Times' recent report from Gaza by Patrick Kingsley, "Hamas, Claiming Victory Over Israel, Is Stuck in Same Old Cycle"  a tone I don't think I have heard from that paper before. With bemused irony, the article ridiculed Hamas's claim that it won the latest round of fighting with Israel in May and laughed off its leaders' assurances that "[t]he state of Israel will be history" and their plea to "Palestinians outside Palestine: Prepare your papers. You will return to Palestine after the liberation."

The punch line came at the end of the article:

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of the movement, said the group simply needed to wait patiently for Israel's downfall, just as the Taliban waited two decades for American forces to leave Afghanistan. To him, Israelis are a temporary colonial presence, rather than a people with a millennia-long connection to the land. "Once the Taliban succeeded," Dr. al-Zahar said, "the Americans escaped."

This implicit affirmation of the reasonableness of Jewish claims to the land, and the stress on the ridiculousness of the Palestinian position that Israel is an invading foreigner rather than a native to the area, that it is a temporary colonial power rather than a viable and legitimate national project, is also highly unusual for the New York Times.

I wonder: what happened? Is it just an aberration, a one-time blip in a usually hostile coverage? Or does it signify a genuine change of heart on the part of the New York Times?

It could go either way. Recently, the paper wound up with egg on its face when, due to investigation by CAMERA  an organization that keeps an eye on the accuracy of Middle East coverage, and points to factual errors and omissions in it  a New York Times article by the same Patrick Kingsley about a Palestinian professor of literature objectively and sympathetically teaching his class Hebrew poetry proved to be utterly bogus, causing the paper to issue a de facto retraction. So the piece on Hamas may have been written to compensate for that blunder. Or maybe (and hopefully) the paper's editors realized that their overall viewpoint on the conflict was simply wrong and that they took their sympathy for the Palestinians too far and are now correcting their editorial course.

Only time will tell. The reports from the area appear in the paper with a great deal of regularity; Mr. Patrick Kingsley, who reports from the area for the New York Times, is a busy writer. It won't take long for us to see whether his change of tone toward Palestinians and Israelis signified the change of heart on the part of the paper. One certainly hopes that it does. We'll know soon enough.

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The accepted wisdom among conservatives is that Joe Biden is a demented buffoon who is under the control of a leftist cabal in the White House, the individual members of which are unknown. However, Don Surber, who is one of the conservative blogosphere's most astute political writers, has a different theory. He thinks Biden is a savvy political operative as evidenced by a successful political career that has spanned almost fifty years.

When most conservatives look at Biden's malapropisms, Grandpa Simpsonesque stories that seamlessly intermingle lies and delusions, and disastrous policies, we assume that he's a congenitally stupid man who, thanks to the Peter Principle, has risen to the top of the heap. (For those who weren't around during the 1970s, Laurence J. Peter's principle is a management concept holding that people in a hierarchical organization rise until they've essentially reached peak incompetence.)

Don Surber, though, has a different theory:

Voters and pundits misread Biden. They thought they were getting a harmless and befuddled old man who would keep the seat warm while the two parties sorted things out Apres Trump. Basement Biden has played that role well. He hints at handlers running the show and the gullible fall for it. He is no moderate. He is no fool. He knows how to stage and frame his presidency. Being seen as a puppet gives him a great advantage because he is never held accountable. Someone else is pulling the strings. In fact, being manipulated by unseen hands makes him the victim. Poor Joe.

In the same post, Don points out that Sen. Joe Manchin, having stomped on the Build Back Better bill, claims that, for several months, it was the White House  not Biden, but the White House  that led him on, causing him to believe that a real negotiation was taking place regarding his concerns about the federal debt.

Thus, when speaking on West Virginia's Hoppy Kercheval's show on Monday, Manchin said, "This is not the president  this is staff. They drove some things, and they put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable." In Manchin's telling, Biden had nothing to do with the negotiation.



Image: Joe Biden  criminal mastermind? YouTube screen grab (edited in befunky).

Don Surber thanks Manchin is misreading the situation:

Biden is the president, and he calls the shots. He  not his staff  gave Kamala the cold shoulder at Bob Dole's funeral. He  not the generals  surrendered Afghanistan. He  not liberals in Congress  demanded socialism and green energy nonsense stay in the BBB bill. Biden is no centrist, but he plays one on TV.

Don notes that Blinken exemplifies the "amateurs" with whom Biden surrounds himself. "Do you think for a moment that Blinken calls the shots as secretary of state?"

I'd be inclined to disagree with Don except for one thing: Biden has proven to be an adept criminal mastermind. For decades, he has funneled millions of dollars to his children and siblings and, especially, to his debauched, deviant son, Hunter.

Biden got away with it because he cleverly left himself out of the direct line of the bribes from foreign governments. Moreover, he sold himself as "good ol' Joe from Scranton," even as the Big Guy was taking cuts from Hunter's "salary" (i.e., the bribes Hunter worked for). I would assume he got the same cuts from his other family members.

Despite constantly boasting about his relative poverty compared to other Congress members and his poor roots, Joe Biden has done very well for himself, considering that he's worked for the government for almost 50 years. He owns two very nice homes, the second of which is a beach house he purchased for $2.7 million. He also managed to earn $17.3 million in just the four years between leaving the White House in 2017 and returning in 2021  although, interestingly, he claimed to be worth only $8 million. I'm thinking Swiss or Caribbean bank accounts that he set up years or decades ago, although that's pure surmise on my part without any facts interfering.

The other reason Don Surber's theory appeals to me is that it reminds me of a classic Saturday Night Live sketch, back in the day when the show could be funny. The sketch posits that Reagan's public persona, which the media perceived as bumbling and stupid, was in fact cover for his being a brilliant political mastermind covering up the entire Iran Contra affair:

If SNL were still capable of actual comedy and political honesty, can't you just see the same sketch made in 2021, except that, when the press is gone, the bumbling, confused Biden turns into a fiendish criminal mastermind, collecting bribes from the most corrupt regimes around the world?

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Less than one year since he assumed office, Joe Biden has managed to turn his presidency into a deeply unpopular monarchy. No longer is he the genial but generally harmless buffoon who entertained most of us while he was in Congress with his mispronunciations, misquotes, and embellished tales of dubious authenticity. As a result of the 2020 presidential election that was, at best, questionable, Biden was elevated well past his ability, and he proceeded to wreck virtually everything he touched as leader of the free world.

On his first day in office, via executive order, Biden closed the Keystone pipeline for no other reason than a spiteful rebuke of President Trump's energy independence program. It was a hare-brained sop to his fellow environmentalist lunatics who believed that this gesture would somehow "heal the planet" and reduce the phantom scourge of climate change. How that was supposed to make a difference is anybody's guess. It did, however, immediately succeed in reducing the supply of petroleum to our nation and raising the price of consumer gasoline and oil, as well as transporting goods. Great start there, Joe!

In August, Biden began a bizarre, ill-advised, and poorly executed withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which stranded many U.S. civilians and military personnel there and left a reported $85 billion in taxpayer-funded, top-of-the-line, and completely operational military equipment for our Taliban enemies to plunder, which they did. Biden decided that it was a great idea to evacuate troops first and let the rest of the area and our abandoned facilities fall into chaos afterward. Images of people running to catch airplanes out of the war-torn cesspool flooded the airwaves, which served to underscore the incredibly bone-headed decision to remove the troops who enforced the rules and prevented the area from descending into chaos for many years. With one stupid decision, Biden handed Afghanistan back to the savage and repressive regime that held it before. This will be Joe's legacy.

During 2021, Biden's ongoing battle with the American public over COVID-19 revealed the utter contempt he had for anyone who didn't accede to his demands. His laughably useless mask mandate gave way to his demand that everyone in our nation get an increasingly large cocktail of experimental medicines, with his nonmedically supported goal of getting rid of all of the COVID variants due to his mistaken belief that only unvaccinated people could carry and spread the COVID virus. Once again, Joe was wrong, but he wouldn't stop to admit it. Rather than consult actual medical experts and not fame-hungry media personalities who sought more time on TV, Biden gave orders for COVID vaccinations and demanded that the populace obey without question. Like a child who didn't get his way, Biden became increasingly frustrated when anyone dared oppose him, regardless of medical or scientific evidence that countered his opinions. He surrounded himself with sycophants who swore fealty to him and twisted logic into pretzels to make sense of Biden's decrees. Former CNN talking head and current press secretary Jen "circle-back" Psaki proved to be especially adept at this.

The summer of 2021 brought hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into this country via an unenforced border that many described as "porous." Despite draconian COVID restrictions and required testing for many Americans who live here, Biden turned a blind eye to health concerns and guarding our border. Instead, he allowed what can only be described as a foreign invasion from virtually anyone, regardless of COVID or vaccination status, who wanted to enter our country along our alleged southern border. The border wall that President Trump worked to build and fought Congress to fund was disregarded by Biden, and ramshackle, filthy tent cities were set up inside our country by the hordes of illegal migrant families who walked into our country to gain de facto citizenship, courtesy of the Biden administration. For their trouble, illegal aliens were rewarded with free (American taxpayer-funded) health care, welfare, transportation, career and education assistance, and even $1,400 stimulus checks.

The icing on the leftist cake of idiotic accomplishments was Biden's appointment of pretend woman Richard "Rachel" Levine to the position of assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Biden's HHS secretary lackey, Xavier Becerra, crowed about the historic nature of having a deluded and mentally ill (and yes, gender dysphoria is a mental illness) man who wears a dress as "the first openly transgender four-star officer." Anyone who didn't participate in Biden's version of make-believe and instead pointed out Mr. Levine's actual sex was labeled a bigot by the lapdog news media and scolded by fellow leftists. Science!

Throughout his only career in his life, in which he lived on the taxpayer's dime, Biden's main skill seemed to be his ability to win re-election to the Senate by projecting the home-spun image of "Joe from Scranton," which bamboozled voters into believing he was a regular guy who was on their side in D.C. Below the surface, the reality was quite different, as even his former running mate, Barack Obama, reportedly said, "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f--- things up." After witnessing the events of Biden's first year in office, I believe that every sober-minded American would agree with Mr. Obama's warning.

Political observers knew of Biden's authoritarian leanings before he took office, but they were on full display for everyone once he was sworn into office as president. With such a disastrous beginning that illustrates Mr. Biden's leadership capabilities, it's already apparent that his presidency will be remembered as an embarrassing footnote in our nation's history. Hopefully, the elections of 2022 and 2024 will restore some measure of sanity and order to our nation's government.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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The Huawei P50 Pocket is coming on December 23, and its specs have just leaked. Before we get down to it, though, its worth noting that the Huawei P50 Pocket is Huaweis Galaxy Z Flip 3 competitor. This device will become the companys first-ever clamshell foldable smartphone.

The Huawei P50 Pocket specs leak points to powerful hardware

So, what can you expect in regards to specs? The Huawei P50 Pocket is said to feature a 6.85-inch display. On the back, it will include a 1-inch circular display, that will be its secondary panel.

Three cameras will sit above the secondary display, in their own circular module. A 50-megapixel main camera (Sonys IMX766 sensor) will be backed by a 13-megapixel ultrawide unit, and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera (3x optical zoom).

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The Kirin 9000 SoC is said to fuel the Huawei P50 Pocket, and it will support 4G connectivity. A 4,100mAh battery has also been mentioned, while it will support 66W fast wired charging.

Thats all the spec info that surfaced thus far. Having said that, the Huawei P50 Pocket design surfaced during a recent photoshoot, basically confirming its design. The variant that appeared is gold-colored, kind of.

There will be two circular cutouts on the back of the phone

There will be two circular cutouts on the back, one for the cameras, and one for the secondary display. The phones main display will be protected when the device is folded, and it will fold right down the middle.

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We still havent seen the phones main panel, so were not sure if Huawei will utilize a hole punch or not. Chances are it will, though. The bezels around that display are expected to be quite thin.

This is not Huaweis first rodeo when it comes to foldable smartphones, not at all. The company already released the Huawei Mate X, Mate Xs, and Mate X2. All those phones were larger, the Galaxy Z Fold series competitors.

The Huawei P50 Pocket is the first smaller, clamshell foldable from the company. This phone wont include Google services, by the way, as the US ban is still in effect.
Animals Asia welcomes six more bears to our Vietnam sanctuary 21 December 2021

Today, just in time for Christmas, Animals Asia welcomed six beautiful bears including a cub to our Vietnam sanctuary.

The bears, who weve named Angel, Noel, Giang Sinh (meaning Christmas in Vietnamese), Tuyet (meaning Snow), Thong (meaning Pine tree) and cub Pudding to honour the special time of their arrival, were transferred from the Hanoi Wildlife Rescue Centre (HWRC) where they've lived since being rescued from the bile farming industry.

A long-standing relationship

Animals Asia has worked closely with HWRC - a government-owned and-run wildlife sanctuary - for many years. Weve provided specialist assistance and advice to support the rehabilitation of their rescued animals, including earlier this year when we met the precious moon bear cub, Pudding, for the first time.

The sweetest Pudding

In April 2021, Vietnamese Forest Protection Department rangers confiscated two small bear cubs from north western Vietnam and arranged for them to be taken to HWRC.



Both cubs were seriously ill, so the sanctuary staff called Animals Asia to ask for our help in giving them the best chance of survival.

Tragically, one of the cubs passed away before reaching the centre. So as soon as the remaining cub arrived at HWRC our team of veterinary and husbandry experts sprang into action, using all their skills, knowledge and experience to help this broken cub.

Thankfully, the little cub who weve named Pudding, made it through the night and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We couldnt save his sibling in time, but we were going to make sure Pudding had the very best life possible by providing ongoing advice to HWRC on bear cub nutrition and enrichment, and veterinary care.

Strengthening our reputation and partnerships

After 20 years of rescuing bears and running the only GFAS-accredited wildlife sanctuary in Vietnam, Animals Asia has become the go-to organisation for the government and other NGOs for our expertise in bear management, veterinary care and rehabilitation, and in captive animal welfare.

Our Captive Animal Welfare Team led by Dave Neale, has been providing comprehensive support, advice and guidance to HWRC to enhance the facilities for their rescued animals, for many years.

Dave explains, Weve established a positive relationship with HWRC who have worked hand in glove with us to make vast improvements to the animals living spaces and daily lives. The staff have been keen to learn about animal sentience and welfare and have welcomed our suggestions for improvements whole-heartedly.

Working together to rescue wildlife

While Animals Asias Vietnam sanctuary is a specialist centre for the rehabilitation of bears, HWRC is a multi-species facility that houses monkeys, tigers, myriad species of birds, porcupines, reptiles, turtles and otters.

After working with our veterinary, husbandry and animal welfare experts, HWRC realised that Animals Asia could provide the very best care for their five rescued moon bears and sun bear. And that by transferring the bears they would have more space to rescue other animals in desperate situations.

Tuan Bendixsen, Animals Asias Vietnam Director, said, This recognition of Animals Asias expertise and subsequent request for our help by the government demonstrates their belief in our work and our commitment to providing world-class support for rescued bears. Having the governments support will be invaluable over the coming years as we work with bear owners to encourage them to hand their bears over to our care. This is how were going to achieve our founding mission to end bear bile farming in Vietnam forever.

Building a new bear sanctuary

With the addition of these six new beautiful bears, our Vietnam sanctuary is getting closer and closer to full capacity. We now have just four spaces left, and yet we need to rescue hundreds more bears.

We made a promise to not only the Vietnamese government and to ourselves, but to the hundreds of desperate bears who remain languishing in dark isolation on bile farms and ex-bile farms across the country.

With your help, we will build a new sanctuary for these bears and as soon as we do, we can start to go out and get them, and leave no bear behind. Please help us keep our promise to these broken bears and give them a second chance to live the life theyve been so cruelly denied, yet so desperately deserve.

Read more:

Animals Asias rescues in 2021
(ANSAmed) - A British judge has handed down a record high amount to be paid in a divorce case filed against Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, 72, a very wealthy sultan of Dubai, by his ex-wife Princess Haya, a sister of the king of Jordan.



A London judge on Tuesday ordered the sultan to pay his ex-wife some 550 pounds sterling, about 635 million euros, for the maintenance of their two minor children.



She had daringly fled with the children from the United Arab Emirates to London in 2019 (where she has lived in a luxury residence since then), saying she was "terrified" of her husband.



Her husband has meanwhile also been reported to the authorities in the UK for the treatment inflicted on his eldest daughter, allegedly held prisoner in Dubai.



The previous record handed down by a British court in divorce proceedings involved a Russian oligarch that had been forced to pay his ex-wife Tatiana Akhmedova around 450 million pounds in 2016.
SANAA - Humanitarian flights arriving at the airport of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, in the hands of the Houthi rebels, were halted on Tuesday due to airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition, according to an official at the airport.



Due to the airstrikes, he said, "the airport is no longer able to receive aircraft operated by the United Nations or international humanitarian organisations".



The official spoke on condition of anonymity.



On Monday, the coalition had urged civilians and humanitarian aid workers to "immediately" evacuate the airport, warning that the site had been "transformed into a military base" of the rebels.



A conflict has been underway in Yemen for the past seven years between Iran-linked rebels and the Saudi-led coalition of Arab nations, which support the loyalist forces controlling some territory in the central and southern parts of the country.



The Houthi rebels, instead, hold the capital Sanaa and a large part of the territory in the central and northern parts of the country.



For weeks, the parties to the conflict have been fighting for control of Maarib, a strategic city east of Sanaa that is at the center of an oil-rich region.



The UN has said that the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world is in Yemen with a million inhabitants dependent on humanitarian aid.


NEW YORK - An UAE agency installed Pegasus spyware on the cellphone of Jamal Khashoggi's phone in the months leading up to his killing, Washington Post reported on Tuesday.



The website cited new legal evidence contradicting what had been stated by NSO, an Israeli company that produces the software and that had said Khashoggi's wife, Hanan Elatr, had not been targeted.
New restrictions are unlikely to stop Christmas celebrations this week but Boris Johnson has urged caution amid speculation further measures will be needed to halt the spread of the Omicron variant.

But as the Prime Minister promised to keep the data under constant review, the Queen abandoned her Christmas at Sandringham and London mayor Sadiq Khan cancelled the capitals New Years Eve celebrations.

After a special two-hour meeting of the Cabinet on Monday, the Prime Minister said the Government needs to be clearer about the rate of hospital admissions associated with Omicron, and the effectiveness of vaccines against it, before imposing additional measures in England to prevent the spread of the virus.

But Boris Johnson said the Government will reserve the possibility of implementing new restrictions, causing opposition politicians to accuse him of lacking a clear plan.

The Financial Times said a senior Government insider told the paper: We are not planning to introduce new restrictions this side of Christmas.

But although Mr Johnson stopped short of imposing new official restrictions, the Prime Minister said the Government wants people to focus on exercising caution.

The Queen has now decided to spend Christmas in Windsor rather than to travel to Sandringham in what one royal source said was a precautionary approach.

And London Mayor Sadiq Khan later announced the cancellation of the capitals New Years Eve celebration in Trafalgar Square in the interests of public safety.

Meanwhile the Welsh Government has said sporting events will be played behind closed doors from Boxing Day to help control the spread of the new Omicron variant.

Labour, which has said it would support the Government over any further public health measures that were needed, accused the Prime Minister of putting party interests before the country.

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said Boris Johnson was failing to set out a clear plan, saying the Prime Minister is instead choosing to protect himself from his own MPs by simply not saying anything.

And Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said that Mr Johnson had offered only chaos at a time when the country needed clarity.

Families want to know urgently what Covid measures to expect, so they can plan for the days ahead. Ducking the difficult decisions is not a plan, he said.

Esther McVey, Conservative MP for Tatton and a former minister, tweeted to say the Government are now listening to their backbench MPs and for once pushed back on the scaremongering by the lockdown fanatics.

Government sources reported by The Times said the focus would be on restrictions after Christmas, with a two-week circuit breaker banning household mixing being considered for December 28.

The Prime Minister said the arguments for taking action in response to Omicron were very, very finely balanced and that the Government is keeping the data under constant review.

He said there were still uncertainties around the severity of the new strain, as well as the rate of hospital admissions associated with it, and its impact on the effectiveness of the vaccines.

There are still some things that we need to be clearer about before we decide to go further, he said.

(PA Graphics)

Mr Johnson added: Unfortunately I must say to people that we will have to reserve the possibility of taking further action to protect the public, to protect public health, to protect our NHS.

We are looking at all kinds of things to keep Omicron under control and we will rule nothing out.

But at the moment, what I think we want people to focus on is exercising caution  so ventilation, masks in the appropriate places, all the usual stuff about washing hands, but remember how contagious Omicron really is.

Ministers were briefed on the latest situation by the Governments chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and Englands chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty.

(PA Graphics)

The Daily Telegraph reported that the Prime Minister was blocked by his Cabinet from imposing new Covid rules immediately, saying at least a dozen ministers spoke out against proposals for new restrictions.

Earlier on Monday, Downing Street did not deny reports that a number of ministers  including Chancellor Rishi Sunak  had pushed back against calls for action without more evidence of the impact the virus would have.

The Prime Ministers official spokesman said it was part of the job of ministers to scrutinise any advice they were given.

The Government has said that it will if necessary recall Parliament to allow MPs to vote on any new regulations it proposes for England.

(PA Graphics)

However, some MPs have questioned whether the Prime Minister would risk another backbench revolt at a time when he is politically weakened by an ongoing row over Downing Street parties and the Tories crushing defeat in the North Shropshire by-election.

Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will give a statement on Covid-19 to MSPs in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday afternoon.

The Northern Ireland Executive is due to meet on Wednesday to discuss further restrictions.

The latest Government figures showed there were a further 91,743 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases in the UK as of 9am on Monday, with a further 44 deaths of people within 28 days of testing positive for the disease.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said there had been 8,044 additional confirmed cases of the Omicron variant reported across the UK, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 45,145.
The UK Governments plans to replace human rights laws are ill-judged and irresponsible, John Swinney has said.

UK Justice Secretary Dominic Raab last week unveiled plans for a new Bill of Rights which would revise and replace the framework provided under the Human Rights Act.

Deputy First Minister Mr Swinney said the proposals amount to an attack on human rights and there should be no changes to the law.

Dominic Raab unveiled the proposals last week (Aaron Chown/PA)

Human rights laws are devolved and responsibility for overseeing obligations in Scotland rests with the Scottish Parliament.

In a letter to Mr Raab, the Deputy First Minister said the Human Rights Act is woven directly into the fabric of the current constitutional settlement so changes would require legislative consent from Holyrood.

Mr Swinney said: The Human Rights Act has a 20-year track record of delivering justice, including for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Expert evidence gathered by the UK Governments own independent review demonstrates beyond argument that replacing the Act is not just unnecessary, but undesirable.

The UK Governments plans are ill-judged and irresponsible.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly emphasised that there must be no changes to the Human Rights Act that would undermine or weaken existing human rights safeguards in Scotland, or indeed elsewhere in the UK.
Festive food is a big part of Christmas celebrations and this year the royal kitchens have revealed their recipe for the perfect gingerbread house.

Shared on the royal familys official Twitter page, Buckingham Palace chefs have put together a step-by-step guide on how to bake and decorate the gingerbread from scratch.

In the run up to Christmas, the chefs in the Royal kitchens have shared their recipe for making the perfect Gingerbread House. Make with warming ground ginger and decorate to your own style! The full recipe is available here- https://t.co/axYRHjDmdB pic.twitter.com/DwsLFAJy2K  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) December 21, 2021

A video created by the cooks features guidance on how to decorate the house, with a time-lapse showing the delicate piping techniques used.

The recipe even includes a diagram with the exact measurements to help bakers build the festive structure.

This year the Queen has decided to remain at Windsor Castle for the Christmas period, rather than travel to Sandringham as usual.

The Duchess of Cambridge helps a child make a gingerbread house (Toby Melville/PA)

It has not yet been confirmed where the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be spending Christmas.

You can try out the royal recipe for yourself here: https://www.royal.uk/royal-chefs-gingerbread-house
On Anderson Cooper 360 Monday, fill-in host John Berman interviewed Dr. Brook Watts, the chief medical officer at the MetroHealth System in Cleveland, following the issue of a simple, but powerful, ad in which a group of Ohio hospitals begged for "help."

A message from our health systems in todays Plain Dealer. pic.twitter.com/B60AnzgBJu  Kaitlin Durbin (@njKaitlinDurbin) December 19, 2021

"We're in crisis here in Northeast Ohio," Watts said. "I think the health systems, together, said it best this weekend, when we took out a joint ad with all hospitals in our region and it said one word. It said, 'Help.' It said help because our hospitals are filled with patients with COVID and we're struggling."

On Monday, it was also reported that the Omicron variant is now the most dominant strain in the U.S. and, just last week, as Ohio's COVID-19 case count hit its highest point in just over a year, the state deployed its National Guard to hospitals to help with staffing shortages.

"They will be coming into our Cleveland area to help offer access for testing. Right now, because we have so many COVID cases, there isn't a rapid test to be found, and the PCR tests that are offered generally at testing sites, the wait period is approximately seven days. So the National Guard will be helping us by setting up the testing site," Watts explained.

With a record-breaking amount of COVID patients in Ohio's hospitals, Watts also shared that the majority are unvaccinated and, surprisingly, young.

"We continue to see that most of our patients, particularly the patients in the ICUs, are unvaccinated," said Watts, adding, "I think what felt a little bit, perhaps, different for me this time having taken care of COVID patients since the beginning of the pandemic is I do feel like we are seeing more younger folks. There is nothing more heartbreaking than walking into a COVID patient's room, and seeing pictures of their young children. So, young parents."

While it seems like Watts might be overwhelmed or scared during this time, she actually just said she feels exhausted. "Last year, we were in a similar situation but we sure had a lot of hope that we were going to get to a better place. I just don't think any of us saw this coming. For us right now, most of the patients in the hospital still have the Delta variant, but as you mentioned in your intro, Omicron is coming on fast and strong and we are all sort of waiting to see what happens next," Watts said. "And I think that unknown and that fear is contributing to the exhaustion we are all feeling."

Anderson Cooper 360 airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on CNN.

Watch Alabama residents struggling with 'America's dirty secret':

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Sarah Jessica Parker is responding to allegations that her And Just Like That costar Chris Noth sexually assaulted multiple women. She released a joint statement with costars Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon on Monday, December 20.

Read article

We are deeply saddened to hear the allegations against Chris Noth, a message shared to all three of the Sex and the City stars Instagram Stories reads. We support the women who have come forward and shared their painful experiences. We know it much be a very difficult thing to do and we commend them for it.

Shutterstock (2)

On Thursday, December 16, two women came forward and described alleged nonconsensual encounters with the actor, 67, to The Hollywood Reporter.

Zoe alleged that the Sex and the City alum rape[d] her from behind in 2004 when she was 22. She recalled the painful experience to the outlet, saying, I realized there was blood on my shirt. I got out of there. I went to my friends apartment [in the same West Hollywood apartment building]. I had stitches. Two police officers came. I wouldnt say who it was.

Read article

The other woman, Lily, claimed that she was totally violated by the Wisconsin native in 2015 in Noths apartment.

He said marriage is a sham. Monogamy is not real, Lily explained. [He] was having sex with me from the back in a chair. We were in front of a mirror. I was kind of crying as it happened.  I went to the bathroom and put on my skirt. I was feeling awful.  All of my dreams with this star I loved for years were gone.

The Equalizer star, who has been married to wife Tara Wilson since 2012, denied the claims in a statement to Us Weekly, saying, The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false. These stories couldve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago  no always means no  that is a line I did not cross. The encounters were consensual. Its difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I dont know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.

Earlier this month, Noth joined Parker, 56, and more of his former Sex and the City costars in HBO Maxs revival, And Just Like That. The Golden Globe nominee, who plays Mr. Big, died in the first episode after riding his Peloton bike and having a heart attack.

Read article

The stationary bike company reacted to the December 9 episode that same day. Im sure SATC fans, like me, are saddened by the news that Mr. Big dies of a heart attack. Mr. Big lived what many would call an extravagant lifestyle  including cocktails, cigars, and big steaks  and was at serious risk as he had a previous cardiac event in Season 6, Peloton told Us in a statement. These lifestyle choices and perhaps even his family history, which often is a significant factor, were the likely cause of his death. Riding his Peloton bike may have even helped delay his cardiac event.

If you or someone you know have been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
By Katya Golubkova, Christoph Steitz and Susanna Twidale

MOSCOW/FRANKFURT/LONDON, Dec 21 (Reuters) - European gas prices hit a new record high on Tuesday after a pipeline that brings Russian gas to Germany switched to flow east, a move the Kremlin said had no political backdrop, while two big German customers said Gazprom was meeting supply obligations.

Westward gas flows through the Yamal-Europe pipeline, one of the major routes for Russian gas to Europe, had been falling since Saturday and, after stopping early on Tuesday, reversed direction, data from network operator Gascade showed.

Some western politicians and industry experts have accused Russia of withholding gas deliveries to Europe amid political tensions over Ukraine, as well as delays in the certification of another pipeline, Nord Stream 2.

Russia denies any connection.

"There is absolutely no connection (to Nord Stream 2), this is a purely commercial situation", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call on Tuesday, asked on possible links between Yamal flows and Nord Stream 2.

Traders said the reverse flows added to bullish factors for the gas market, such as strong power station demand, with many French nuclear plants closed, and colder weather.

The front-month wholesale Dutch gas price, the European benchmark, rose more than 16% to a record high of 171.40 euros ($193.46) per megawatt hour on Tuesday, and the equivalent British gas contract also hit a new peak at 4.29 pounds ($5.68) per therm.

"Europe has very little storage buffer this winter and Europe's balance is therefore a lot more dependent on imports than in previous years," James Waddell, head of European gas at Energy Aspects, said.

"Additionally, Gazprom has traditionally shipped around 20% of its supply to Europe through Poland, but these flows have been inconsistent this year and driving up uncertainty about how much gas Europe will actually receive from Russia."

REQUESTS MET

Gazprom did not reply to a request for comment. On Monday, when flows were going westwards in reduced volumes, it said it was meeting customers' requests.

Record gas prices have affected Europe's power markets, already struggling with reduced French nuclear capacity. German baseload power for 2022 delivery a European benchmark, set a new contract high of 278.50 euros, up nearly 10%.

In November, levels of gas flows and their direction through Yamal had alternated between flowing eastward towards Poland and westward for around a week.

Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has been booking extra capacity at auctions for delivery via Ukraine and to Germany via the Yamal route when it sees requests. It had not booked capacity for exports via Yamal for Tuesday.

Spokespeople for RWE and Uniper, which are among Gazprom's biggest gas buyers in Germany, said the Russian group was meeting delivery obligations.

Gascade, which takes gas from the Yamal pipeline, said on Tuesday it was transporting gas according to incoming requests. "Depending on the situation, we receive higher nominations for the transport in one or the other direction, which is the reason of the change of flow direction."

Yamal flows are expected to stay in the reverse mode at the Mallnow metering point on the German-Polish border at an hourly volume of over 1,250,000 kilowatt hours (kWh/h) for the rest of Tuesday, data from Gascade shows.

Radoslaw Kazimierski, spokesman for Poland's gas monopoly PGNiG, said on Tuesday it was getting everything from Gazprom in full.

"As for the reverse, it is indeed happening, but I cannot confirm whether the gas coming back from Germany is going to PGNiG," he said, citing commercial confidentiality.

($1 = 0.8860 euros) ($1 = 0.7548 pounds)

(Reporting by Katya Golubkova, Oksana Kobzeva, Vladimir Soldatkin and Gleb Stolyarov in Moscow, Christoph Steitz in Frankfurt, Jason Hovet in Prague, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw and Susanna Twidale in London Editing by John Stonestreet and Jane Merriman)
FILE PHOTO: A Boeing logo is seen at the company's facility in Everett

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun and Airbus Americas CEO Jeffrey Knittel on Monday urged the Biden administration to delay planned deployment of new 5G wireless services, saying it could harm aviation safety.

The executives in a joint letter seen by Reuters asked U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to support postponing AT&T and Verizon's Jan. 5 deployment of C-Band spectrum 5G wireless.

"5G interference could adversely affect the ability of aircraft to safely operate," the letter said, adding it could have "an enormous negative impact on the aviation industry."

The industry and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have raised concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters.

The FAA this month issued airworthiness directives warning 5G interference could result in flight diversions. The agency plans to provide more information before Jan. 5

The Boeing Airbus letter cited an analysis from trade group Airlines for America (A4A) that if the FAA 5G directive had been in effect in 2019, about 345,000 passenger flights and 5,400 cargo flights would have faced delays, diversions or cancellations.

Buttigieg's office did not immediately comment.

In November, AT&T and Verizon delayed commercial launch of C-band wireless service by a month until Jan. 5 and adopted precautionary measures to limit interference.

Aviation industry groups said that was insufficient. Boeing and Airbus said they made a counterproposal that would limit cellular transmissions around airports and other critical areas.

United Airlines Chief Executive Scott Kirby said last week that FAA's 5G directives would bar the use of radio altimeters at about 40 of the country's biggest airports.

Wireless industry group CTIA said 5G is safe and accused the aviation industry of fearmongering and distorting facts.

The Air Line Pilots Association on Monday said that aviation and communications regulators are at a stalemate. "That's a big problem for passengers, shippers and the American economy," the group said.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Parents protest outside Vista Unified School District in San Diego County in July against a mask requirement for students. (Kristian Carreon / San Diego Union-Tribune)

A San Diego County judge has struck down the student COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the San Diego school system, a ruling with potential implications elsewhere, including in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

In a four-page decision, Superior Court Judge John S. Meyer concluded that California school systems did not have the authority under state law to establish their own vaccine mandates. His ruling applies only to San Diego Unified. In separate vaccine mandate litigation against L.A. Unified, an L.A. County judge recently appeared to be leaning in the other direction, siding with the right of the Los Angeles district to impose its own requirements.

Since the litigation was filed, L.A. Unified officials have postponed enforcement until next fall, citing their resolve to avoid a massive academic disruption on Jan. 10, when about 28,000 unvaccinated students would have been barred from campus and transferred into independent study. District officials insist their mandate is legal.

In San Diego, the ruling allows thousands of unvaccinated students to remain in their current classes, avoiding an involuntary transfer to a district-run independent study program. The San Diego mandate was to have taken effect at the start of the second semester.

"Judge Meyer agreed with our legal arguments that school districts do not have authority to mandate vaccines, they cannot force students into distance learning, and personal belief exemptions for new vaccines are protected under California state law," said Sharon McKeeman, founder of the groups Let Them Breathe and Let Them Choose, which has pursued litigation against vaccine mandates. "This decision ... shows that parents coming together in a grassroots movement to uphold our childrens rights is powerful and effective.

The San Diego policy applied to students 16 and older  the age for which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has fully approved a COVID vaccine. The L.A. Unified mandate affected students 12 and older. Students ages 5 to 15 are eligible for a vaccine under a federal emergency-use authorization.

About 20% of San Diego Unified's roughly 14,000 students age 16 and older had not gotten any dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Dec. 15, according to data previously provided to the San Diego Union-Tribune by the school district.

An attorney for San Diego Unified expressed disappointment.

"The judge concluded only the state can act regarding vaccinations, even though the law specifically allows and encourages local vaccination programs," said Mark R. Bresee. "Even Judge Meyer acknowledged in his ruling that the vaccine mandate 'appears to be necessary and rational, and the district's desire to protect its students from COVID-19 is commendable.'

The district is considering its options in response, said spokeswoman Maureen Magee.

The administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom has said that local districts have the legal right to impose a student mandate for the COVID-19 vaccine.

The effect of the ruling elsewhere remains to be seen; only a handful of districts approved mandates  with the rest holding back because of concerns including litigation and compliance.

In San Diego County, Sweetwater Union High School District approved a COVID-19 vaccine mandate that is scheduled to take effect at the start of next school year. In L.A. County, a deadline already has passed for students in Culver City Unified  with officials taking no immediate action against students not in compliance.

In his ruling, Judge Meyer noted that the Legislature has stipulated mandates for 10 vaccines, including those for smallpox, polio and tuberculosis  and that the state public health department has a process for adding vaccines to that list.

On Oct. 1, Newsom announced that state health officials would begin the process to require a COVID-19 vaccine for children 12 and older. But it would not take effect until the semester after the FDA fully approved a vaccine for children in that age range. The state mandate would include both a medical and a personal-belief exemption  unless the Legislature acted to eliminate the exemption for personal beliefs.

Meyer built his argument on state authority in this arena.

"The statutory scheme leaves no room for each of the over 1,000 individual school districts to impose a patchwork of additional vaccine mandates, including those like the [San Diego Unified vaccine] that lack a personal-belief exemption and therefore are even stricter than what the [state health department] could itself impose upon learned consideration," Meyer wrote.

Neither the San Diego Unified nor L.A. Unified student mandates include an exemption for personal or religious belief.

Meyer also wrote that state law requires independent study to be voluntary  and a forced transfer into such a program violates state law.

San Diego Unified officials have argued that the district's mandate was needed to help keep staff, students and students' families safe by reducing the chances for spread of COVID-19 in schools.

In the L.A. cases, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Michael Beckloff appeared sympathetic to that argument. On Dec. 13, Beckloff denied a request for an immediate injunction against the L.A. Unified mandate.

Beckloff suggested that state authority applied only to the rules for admitting students to a school system. The L.A. Unified resolution approving the mandate, he noted, was not denying enrollment.

"Instead, the resolution instructs on the method of instruction for certain students  how educational services are delivered  and who may be physically present on a[n] LAUSD campus," Beckloff wrote. "Each student will receive legally required instruction. The resolution does not deny a public education or education services to any students."

A spokeswoman for L.A. Unified said the district's legal department is reviewing the San Diego ruling.

McKeeman said her group hoped to build on its victory in San Diego.

"On Jan. 7 our attorneys will be arguing these same legal arguments in the case against LAUSD," she said. "We are moving forward with litigation against other districts if they do not immediately drop their mandate."

The San Diego judge's ruling did not speak to the district's vaccination mandate for employees. About 15% of the district's 14,000 staff had not complied with the district's mandate as of Dec. 15, according to the school district.

L.A. Unified recently fired nearly 500 unvaccinated employees who did not receive an exemption.

Times staff writer Blume reported from Los Angeles. Taketa writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Latino voters would see a major boost in political clout under new congressional and legislative districts approved unanimously Monday by the independent citizen panel charged with redrawing the state's political map.

Although the panel, created by voter initiative in 2008, does not take partisan balance into account in drawing district lines, the maps it produced all but guarantee that Democrats will retain super majorities in the Legislature and their current lopsided majority in Californias congressional delegation.

Nearly one-third of the state's 52 new congressional districts would have a majority of Latino citizens of voting age under the new maps. That's an increase of three districts even as California lost a seat for the first time in its history because its population did not grow as fast as other states'.

Latino civil rights advocates said the increase in political power  which probably will lead to an increase in the number of Latino representatives  was fitting since much of the state's population growth over the past decade has taken place in their communities.

This is a substantial increase in the potential for candidates supported by the Latino community to be elected to Congress, said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

It's a long time coming and appropriate for a state that is now 40% Latino in population and 27% of registered voters," Saenz said.

Advocates for Black and Asian American voters, who had feared their communities' voices would be diminishedunder earlier drafts of the maps, said they were pleased by the final product.

The commission managed to avoid pitting one minority group against another, said James Woodson, policy director of the California Black Census and Redistricting Hub.

The key question was how can we expand Latino political power while continuing to protect Black political power?" Woodson said. "It was doable, and I think the commission got there eventually, with some pushing. We landed in a good place.

The commission must formally submit its maps to the Secretary of States office by Dec. 27. Candidates have a mid-March deadline for filing for office, with primary elections held in June.

The state's 42 Democratic congressional incumbents largely fared well in the once-a-decade process of redistricting.

"Democrats gained some electoral opportunities, said Evan McLaughlin, vice president of Redistricting Partners, a Sacramento-based firm that consults with local governments.

On the other side of the political aisle, nearly half the state's 11 Republican members of Congress will see their districts grow more blue  putting their political futures more at risk.

"Whereas Republicans are on offense in most of country, they could be on defense in California," said redistricting expert David Wasserman, senior editor of The Cook Political Report.

Rep. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita, for example, won last year by 333 votes. His district, which stretches over much of northern Los Angeles County, will grow more Democratic partly because of the loss of Simi Valley. Garcia blasted the commission as biased.

The commission has shown they were not acting independently when they drew all of the Democratic incumbents into safer seats while making five out of the 11 Republican districts more vulnerable, but I know we will win in this new district regardless," he said in a statement to The Times.

Earlier this month, Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare, whose current district also became substantially more Democratic, announced he would leave Congress before the end of this year to take a job with the new media organization that former President Trump is planning.

In addition to those two, Reps. Michelle Steel of Seal Beach, David Valadao of Hanford, Ken Calvert of Corona and Tom McClintock of Elk Grove would have fewer Republican voters in their districts.

The crunch for the GOP reflects the state's political demographics  Republicans account for fewer than one-quarter of California's registered voters and are heavily out-numbered in the state's major population centers.

Under the new lines, at least a half dozen congressional seats could be considered competitive in the 2022 midterm elections and draw significant spending, Wasserman said.

The outcomes of those races could have a major impact on the partisan makeup of Congress because the state has the largest delegation in the nation, despite the loss of a seat.

Republicans are currently favored to retake control of the House of Representatives next year as midterm elections typically go badly for the party in the White House. But Democrats might be able to buck that trend in California, mitigating their losses elsewhere.

Retirements will also be a major factor in reshaping the delegation. In addition to Nunes on the Republican side, four Democrats already have made plans to retire: Reps. Karen Bass of Los Angeles, who is running for mayor, and Jackie Speier of Hillsborough made their announcements this fall. Rep. Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach announced his retirement last week, and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard of Downey said Monday that she would not seek reelection.

"Over my many years of public service, I have always strived to do that which is best to help improve my community and my country. After thirty years in the House of Representatives, the time has come for me to spend more time with my family," Roybal-Allard said in a statement.

Los Angeles County will lose one representative under the new lines, reflecting its slow population growth, and Lowenthal and Roybal-Allard, both 80, had been drawn into the same district. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia has announced plans to run and is considered a strong favorite for that seat.

In a delegation that includes several octogenarians and septuagenarians who have a five-hour airplane commute each way to the nations capital, several more retirements are expected, particularly among the Democrats, who are likely to be in the minority after the midterms.

Some of the most competitive seats will be in the one-time Republican bastion of Orange County, which has been the focus of intense political battling in recent years. In 2018, Democrats won all seven of the countys congressional seats. Republicans won back two in 2020.

Steel's likely district will be among the most competitive in the state.

The new map delivered good news for three other Orange County incumbents  Democratic Reps. Katie Porter of Irvine and Mike Levin of San Juan Capistrano and Republican Rep. Young Kim of La Habra. Kim's district would become more Republican, and the two Democrats appear relatively safe, although all three are expected to face spirited reelection campaigns.

Sam Oh, a political advisor to Steel and Kim, said both women are "weighing their options now that the congressional maps have been finalized and approved by the redistricting commission."

In other parts of the state, some incumbents, including Reps. John Garamendi of Walnut Grove and Josh Harder of Turlock,will be playing a game of musical chairs to retain a seat in Congress. Because of the way the lines have shifted, they'll be running in swaths of the state that are substantially new to them.Members of Congress are not required to live in their districts, unlike members of the state Legislature.

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission was created by the states voters in 2008 to end gerrymandering, partisan redistricting and incumbent protection in the drawing of legislative districts. In 2010, voters expanded its role to include congressional redistricting.

Made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four members not affiliated with either party, the panels first charge is creating equal-size congressional districts of roughly 761,000 voters. Its second duty is complying with the federal Voting Rights Act to avoid disenfranchising minorities.

Later considerations include creating contiguous districts, trying to respect community boundaries and drawing districts that are geographically compact.

The maps drawn for legislative districts also reflected the states sharp demographic changes over the past decade. Because state law requires legislators to reside in the district they represent, the commissions maps are likely to force some incumbents to run against each other, move to a new home or leave the Legislature after the 2022 elections.

In both houses, Democrats would be poised to maintain or slightly expand their electoral dominance. Early analyses of the new maps by both partisan and nonpartisan groups show Democrats dominate in at least 30 of the 40 state Senate districts and 63 of 80 Assembly districts.

State Senate districts were subject to an additional wrinkle. The upper houses members serve four-year terms, which means only half of the seats will be on the ballot next year.

The commission's work this year was significantly complicated by the delay in the U.S. Census reporting population data  a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. That pushed back the start of the redistricting process by more than three months.

Over the last 12 weeks, the commission has been holding marathon meetings and has received more than 34,000 pieces of public comment from elected officials, interest groups and residents over issues as varied as minority and LGBTQ representation, the proposed splitting of cities such as San Jose and Sacramento, and shared interests such as foothill residents who are regularly visited by the states curious black bears.

Their work was collegial but at times chaotic. At one point, the commission seemed to mistake a predominantly white neighborhood in Fresno County for a nearby Black enclave.

The commission also faced extensive criticism over its practices, with outside parties questioning everything from the bodys adherence to transparency and open-meeting requirements to one members attendance as he appeared to take part in a reality television show.

At times, the process grated on commissioners.

Ill miss all the snarky tweets, commission member Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College, wrote this month.

Still, several commissioners grew emotional in the lead-up to Monday night's vote.

"We set out to create fair and representative maps  with Californians," said Commissioner Patricia Sinay, a Democrat from Encinitas. "Democracy is beautiful and it's very messy."

Times staff writer Jennifer Haberkorn in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. The humanitarian situation has improved in Nagorno Karabakh thanks to the presence of the Russian peacekeepers, President of Russia Vladimir Putin said during the enlarged board session of the Defense Ministry.

It has already been more than a year our peacekeepers help to maintain the stability in Nagorno Karabakh. The humanitarian situation has improved mostly thanks to their efforts, demining of territories of several regions have been carried out, the social infrastructure objects have been restored, the historical and cultural monuments have been preserved, Putin said.

He thanked the peacekeepers for the professionalism and endurance.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. President Armen Sarkissian received Ambassador of Japan to Armenia Fukushima Masanori, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

The Armenian President and the Japanese Ambassador exchanged views about the current agenda of the bilateral relations, the possibilities of deepening the mutual partnership in different areas, stating that there is a big mutually beneficial cooperation potential in the fields of high technologies, energy, education and culture.

The regional affairs were also touched upon.
According to information published by the Bladi.net website on December 18, 2021, Morocco has taken delivery of the first batteries of Chinese-made FD-2000B surface-to-air defense missile systems at a military base near the city Sidi Yahya El Gharb.

Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link



Chinese launcher unit of FD-2000B surface-to-air defense missile system. (Picture source Army Recognition)

The Moroccan defense budget was increased by 4% for the purchase of defense equipment in 2021. The Moroccan militarys modernization focus can be seen through its 2030 Modernization plan, established in 2017 and launched in 2020, which outlines the countrys stated goal of being interoperable with the United States and NATO, by modernizing the equipment of its army, air force, and navy.

The Moroccan military is both large and committed to modernization efforts. It consists of 235,000 active personnel and an additional 250,000 reserves, divided between the army, which accounts for 88% of the armed forces, the navy, and the air force.

Currently, the armed forces of Morocco use Chinese military equipment including VT-1A main battle tanks, Type 56 7.62mm assault rifles, HJ-8L anti-tank missiles, PHL-03 and WS-2D MLRS Multiple Launch Rocket System, Sky Dragon 50 Medium-Range Surface-to-Air defense missile, and Type 90 35mm anti-aircraft gun.

The FD-2000 is an export version of the Chinese-made HQ-9 advanced long-range air defense missile weapon system designed and manufactured by the Chinese Defense Company CPMIEC (China Precision Machinery Import & Export Corporation).

The FD-2000B is an improved version of the FD-2000 long-range air defense missile system which is able to intercept and destroy all types of current aerial threats at different altitudes such as conventional aircraft, stealth aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. This air defense missile system is able to counter multiple targets from short to long-range and can be connected to an air defense network with other weapon systems.



In the Chinese Armed Forces, an HQ-9 (FD-2000) battery includes a command vehicle, six control vehicles, 6 targeting radar vehicles, 6 search-radar vehicles, 48 missile-launch vehicles, and 192 missiles; plus a positioning vehicle, a communications vehicle, a power supply vehicle and a support vehicle. A battalion reportedly contains 8 missile launch vehicles.

The FD-2000B launcher erector truck (TEL) has four missile containers. In firing position, the missiles containers are placed at the vertical to the rear side of the truck, two stabilizers are deployed at the rear and center of the chassis. The FD-2000B surface-to-air missile is armed with a 180 kg warhead. It can fly at a maximum speed of Mach 4.2. , and has a maximum range of 300 km up to an altitude of 30 km.
According to information published by "The Korea Herald" news website on December 15, 2021, the Army of South Korea has started the deployment of new mobile short-range air defense KW2 based on an 8x8 armored vehicle chassis fitted with a two-man turret armed with two 30mm Rheinmetall Air Defense (Oerlikon) KCB automatic cannons manufactured under license by the South Korean S&T group.

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The new South Korean 30mm Anti-Aircraft Gun Wheeled Vehicle System. (Picture source Hanwha Defense)

On June 27, 2020, Army Recognition has reported that the South Korean Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) had signed a $200 million contract with the South Korean Defense company Hanwha Defense to acquire a new 30mm Anti-Aircraft Gun Wheeled Vehicle System (AAGW).

The new short-range air defense system will replace the Vulcan Air Defense System (VADS) which is in service for many years with the South Korean Armed Forces. The AAGW will be more efficient against low-flying aircraft and drones.

The AAGW is based on the K808, an 8x8 wheeled armored vehicle personnel carrier developed by the South Korean company Hyundai Rotem. The vehicle is fitted with a two-man turret mounted in the center of the hull, which is the same turret used on the tracked armored anti-aircraft vehicle named BIHO.

The AAGW is armed with two 30mm Rheinmetall Air Defense (Oerlikon) KCB automatic cannons manufactured under license by the South Korean S&T group. The cyclic rate of fire for a single gun is 600 rounds per minute. Each gun is provided with 300 rounds of ready-to-use ammunition. The Biho fires HE-FRAG rounds which can be used to destroy air targets with an effective firing range of approximately 3 km.

The firing control system of the AAGW includes Electron Optical Targeting Systems (EOTS) and a Visual Targeting System enabling Automatic Tracking and Self-Targeting Capabilities. The EOTS is fitted with one infrared camera, a TV camera, and a laser range finder. During testing, the EOTS demonstrated the tracking of a small UAV target (2.5 meters x 2.0 meters) moving at a speed of 200 Km/h at a distance of 5 km.

The hull and the turret of the AAGW provide protection against small arms fire and artillery shell splinters. It is likely that the front side withstands hits from 12.7 mm armor-piercing rounds. Add-on armor can be fitted for a higher level of protection. The APC has a V-shaped hull for protection against mine blasts.

The AAGW is powered by a Hyundai turbocharged diesel engine, developing 420 coupled to an automatic transmission with 7 forward and 1 reverse gears. It has a maximum road speed of up to 90 km/h.
Jammu and Kashmir and Odisha on Tuesday recorded their first cases of the Omicron variant of Covid

New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir and Odisha on Tuesday recorded their first cases of the Omicron variant of Covid as the count of the new strain in 14 states and Union territories crossed 200 even as the Centre said there is a need to activate war rooms, take pro-active action and consider night curfews.

According to the latest data from the Centre and the states on Tuesday night, India recorded 220 cases of the Omicron variant, 19 days after the first two cases in the country were detected in Karnataka on December 2.

While health authorities in J&K said three persons in the union territory tested positive for the Omicron variant in Jammu, the tally in Maharashtra and TS rose to 65 and 24 respectively with the addition of 11 and four cases of the potentially contagious strain. Officials in Jammu said the three affected people have no foreign travel history and their condition is stable.

Three Omicron cases confirmed by NCDC, Delhi from a cluster in Jammu. Sample taken on 30th November. RTPCR testing of the entire locality ordered, the health and medical education department J&K wrote on its official twitter handle.

At least two people in Odisha tested positive for the Omicron variant, the first cases of the latest version of coronavirus in the state, state officials said.

Both of them have travel history to foreign nations - Nigeria and Qatar, the officials said.

In a letter to the states and UTs, health secretary Rajesh Bhushan advised implementing strategic interventions for containment like imposition of night curfew, strict regulation of large gatherings, curtailing numbers in marriages and funerals besides increasing testing and surveillance.
Buffer stocks of medicines and oxygen had been prepared and 48,000 ventilators had been distributed to the states, the minister said

New Delhi: Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya told the Rajya Sabha on Monday that India was fully prepared to fight the Omicron variant of Covid-19 and that the countrys vaccine production capacity, which was now 31 crore doses per month, would be ramped up to 45 crore doses in the next two months. He added that buffer stocks of medicines and oxygen had been prepared to mitigate any crisis and 48,000 ventilators had been distributed to the states.

The health minister said more than half of the countrys population had now been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. He was speaking at the end of the short duration discussion on the Covid-19 situation in the country. The discussion couldnt take place as Opposition members demanded that the suspension of the 12 Opposition MPs be revoked.

Dr Mandaviya told the House: As of now, India has 161 Omicron cases... We are monitoring the situation daily with experts. With our experience during the first and second waves, to ensure that we dont face problems if the variant spreads, we have arranged a buffer stock of medicines.

He further added: Due to the efforts of our health workers, 88 per cent of the first dose and 58 per cent of the second dose have been taken in the country. He said states and Union territories have sufficient doses of vaccine available with them. Today all the states and UTs have adequate quantities of vaccines: 17 crore doses are available with them.

On the new Omicron variant, he said: To protect against Omicron, we have issued SOPs (standard operating procedures) for travellers coming from abroad. I myself also interacted with the states, we are constantly assessing this variant with the expert team.

The Upper House was adjourned in the morning till lunch within four minutes. The Opposition has been demanding that the suspensions be revoked, but the treasury benches are of the view that there can be no revocation till the members apologise, and so the stalemate continues.
The BJPs well-oiled electoral machinery has begun moving at a breakneck speed to reach out to people in all 403 Assembly constituencies

New Delhi: Chahe jitna zor laga lo, chahe jitna shor macha lo jitenge BJP hi, ayenge phir Yogi ji . The song blares in almost all the BJP rallies in Uttar Pradesh. On Sunday, top state leaders of the BJP simultaneously flagged off the partys Jan Vishwas Yatra from six places in UP. The BJPs well-oiled electoral machinery has begun moving at a breakneck speed to reach out to people in all 403 Assembly constituencies. Even as a divided Opposition is trying to cash in on the Centres U-turn on the controversial farm laws and Covid-19 deaths during the second wave, defeating the BJP, which has nearly 50 per cent of the voteshare, could possibly be a formidable task.

With the Mayawati-led BSP yet to pick up pace and the Congress so far not able to make any impact through its campaigns, the Akhilesh Yadav- led Samajwadi Party is the main challenger to the ruling BJP, which is targeting 350-plus seats this time to retain power. While the saffron poll managers are concerned over the anti-BJP votes going entirely to the SP, if it is not divided among the BSP, Congress and SP, the BJPs latest survey suggests that the EBC (extremely backward caste) and upper caste votes are still intact. The SPs efforts to woo the upper caste votebank have been marred by Mr Yadavs Jinnah statements and also the SPs persistent demand for OBC census and its stand on the entire reservation issue. The survey suggests that each EBC and Mahadalit (non-Jatav) family in the state has benefited with at least three Central schemes. The Yogi Adityanath government has also been making extra efforts to promote state government schemes in areas having significant EBC, Mahadalit and OBC populations. The state has nearly 35 per cent OBC (non-Yadav) and around 21 per cent dalits and the BJP has been strategically reaching out to all of them.

If the BJP and its leadership has been focusing on the development plank, with the Ram Mandir construction on in full swing and the recently-inaugurated Kashi Vishwanath Dham Corridor, the party is also honing its Hindutva edge. In his rallies, Union home minister Amit Shah continues to target the Opposition over minority appeasement. He branded the Samajwadi Party as a supporter of JAM -- J for Jinnah, A for jailed Rampur MP Azam Khan and M for jailed Mau MLA Mukhtar Ansari. Yogi Adityanath had claimed that people who said Abba Jaan had got all the rations under previous governments. The decision by Asaduddin Owaisis AIMIM to contest 100 seats is also being seen as to the BJPs advantage as it will divide Muslim votes, which otherwise will strengthen the SP, whose core votebank is Yadav-Muslim. The states population has around 19 per cent Muslims and 20 per cent Yadavs.

Some feel that the BJPs over-dependence on religious polarisation might not be enough to return to power. High unemployment, lack of all-round development, a devastating second wave of Covid-19 have somewhat shaken the saffron roots in the state. In a bid to gloss over the apparent failures, the BJP has come with a slogan soch imandar, kam damdar. Speculation is rife that the BJP top brass will replace at least 30-40 per cent of its MLAs, including sitting ministers, to ward off any anti-incumbency.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is already zipping across the state, laying foundation stones for upcoming projects ranging from the Jewar airport to the ambitious 594-km-long Ganga Expressway. Heaping praise on the chief minister, the Prime Minister had said: UP + Yogi = Bahut UPyogi (Uttar Pradesh plus Yogi have great utility). Many in the BJP feel that Mr Modis praising the CM on many occasions is also an attempt to counter the anti-incumbency sentiments against the CM and also a message to the saffron cadre who were concerned over reports of dissidence against Yogi Adityanath within the BJP state unit.

Regardless of the hurdles, a fragmented Opposition provides the BJP with a distinct advantage. The Akhilesh Yadav-led SP, which has tied up with smaller parties, has ruled out any form of alliance with the Congress and the BSP. In this four-cornered election, the BJP, that has the largest voteshare, is expected to benefit.

However, the BJP, which now has a brute majority (312 of 403 Assembly seats) is expected to come down by at least 100 seats, said a senior BJP leader. Even then we are far ahead in the race, he pointed out.
The incident took place around 8.30 am when a joint team of various security forces was out on a road security operation near Bodli camp

The security forces cordoned off the entire area and recovered four live IEDs, planted by Naxals. (Representational image: ANI)

Raipur: An assistant constable of the District Reserve Guard (DRG) was injured on Tuesday when Naxals denoted an improvised explosive device (IED) in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district, a police official said.

The incident took place around 8.30 am when a joint team of various security forces was out on a road security operation near Bodli camp, located over 400 km from the state capital Raipur, Dantewada's Superintendent of Police Abshishek Pallava said.

A team of personnel belonging to the DRG, the Special Task Force (STF) and the Chhattisgarh Armed Force (CAF) had launched the operation on a hypersensitive patch from Bodli towards Kariametta village, he said.

About 650 metres away from the camp, Naxals hiding in a forest triggered an IED blast in which an assistant constable received minor splinter injuries, the official said.

The rebels also exploded another command pipe IED in the area at around 10 am to target security forces, but the latter escaped unhurt, he said.

Later, the security forces cordoned off the entire area and recovered four live IEDs, planted by Naxals, the police official said, adding that a DRG team and a bomb disposal squad were rushed to the site.

The injured cop was evacuated from the spot and provided preliminary treatment, while the operation was still underway, he added.
No voting allowed, Opposition walks out, TMC MP threw rule book at Chair?

New Delhi: Heavy drama materialised in the second session of the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday as the government moved to pass the bill for a change in the electoral laws that, among other things, would enable the linking of Aadhaar numbers with voter ID cards. The bill had already been passed in the Lok Sabha on Monday amid fierce Opposition protests.

As the government moved the bill for passage, the Opposition members walked out of the House, alleging that a division on sending of the bill to a select committee had not been allowed. In the middle of this drama, Trinamul Congress MP Derek OBrien was suspended from the Upper House for the remaining part of the ongoing Winter Session for unruly behaviour in the House on Tuesday. He had allegedly thrown the Rajya Sabha Rule Book towards the Chair during the discussion on the Election Laws (Amendment Bill) 2021. The incident took place after the Chair did not allow voting, citing disorder in the House. There are only two days of the session left: Parliament is due to be adjourned on Thursday.

Soon after his suspension, the TMC leader said that the last time he had got suspended from the Rajya Sabha was when the government was bulldozing the farm laws. He said: We all know what happened after that. Today, suspended while protesting against BJP making a mockery of #Parliament and BULLDOZING #ElectionLawsBill2021. Hope this bill too will be repealed soon.

In another tweet, he said: After breaking every rule and precedent, the BJP has the gall to give lectures about the Rule Book. Irony just died. (Only two people at the funeral.) Guess who. He also tweeted a five-minute video of his arguments in the House in which he is seen citing several rules to the Chair. This is the second time that members in the Upper House have been suspended in the Winter Session of Parliament.

Congress chief whip Jairam Ramesh said: Today in the Rajya Sabha the Chair didnt even allow a vote on the Oppositions motion to send the Electoral Roll-Aadhaar (Link) Bill to a Select Committee. The Opposition walked out in protest. Like the farm bills, this bill too was passed undemocratically.

Referring to Derek O'Brien throwing the rule book, Leader of the House Piyush Goyal said in the Rajya Sabha that the incident was not just an insult to the House, not just the Chair, but to the whole country. The bill was later passed through a voice vote after the entire Opposition, including the Congress, DMK, TMC, AAP, Shiv Sena, Left parties, RJD, Samajwadi Party and BSP, had staged a walkout accusing the Chair of not allowing a division. Deputy chairman Harivansh Narayan Singh did now allow a division, it was said, as several members were in the Well of the House.

Taking on the Opposition, law minister Kiren Rijiju said: Only those who use bogus voters lists will oppose the bill. The country has well understood how necessary this electoral reform bill is.

Earlier, both Zero Hour and Question Hour were once again washed out in the Rajya Sabha. The Opposition members have been demanding the revocation of the suspension of 12 members. On Tuesday, they raised the issue of Lakhimpur Kheri as well, and demanded that minister of state for home Ajay Mishra Teni be dropped from the council of ministers. The Opposition parties also took out a protest march from Parliament to Vijay Chowk demanding the immediate sacking of Ajay Mishra Teni. As the march started, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said: Teni will not be spared. Later, speaking to the media, he said: The Opposition has once again come together to raise the issue of Lakhimpur Kheri. We have repeatedly said that a ministers son has murdered farmers using his jeep. A report has said that it is a conspiracy and not an isolated incident. The Prime Minister is not doing anything about the minister. He added that neither the media nor the government was doing its job properly.
The police said that they were assisted by the security forces in effecting the arrests

They were also providing shelter and other logistic support to the active terrorists operating in Awantipora and Tral areas of Pulwama.  Representational image/PTI

SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir police on Monday claimed that it arrested two terrorist associates in southern Pulwama district.

In a statement here, the police said that they were assisted by the security forces in effecting the arrests. It also said that the duo was linked with proscribed Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) outfit and that incriminating materials including ammunition were recovered from their possession.

The statement read, Acting on specific input, Pulwama police along with 55 Rashtriya Rifles and 182nd Battalion of the CRPF apprehended two terrorist associates linked with JeM. They are Umer Ramzan and Javid Ahmed Mala, both residents of Pulwaman. During the preliminary investigation, it was revealed that both were in touch with JeM commanders and were involved in transportation of arms and ammunition. It added. They were also providing shelter and other logistic support to the active terrorists operating in Awantipora and Tral areas of Pulwama.
Till the filing of this report the talks between the employees' unions and the government had not made any headway

SRINAGAR: Many parts of Jammu and Kashmir continued to face electricity outage on the second consecutive day on Monday even after the Army stepped in the previous night by taking the control of some of the power houses after the civilian administration requested it to restore the essential service.

The crisis was set off by a strike of the employees of the J&K Power Development Department and associated agencies against the proposed privatisation of electricity in the Union Territory. They are also deadly opposed to the proposed merger of the department with the Power Grid Corporation of India.

However, Union Power Minister, RK Singh, on Monday said that there has only been a minor impact in some places of the strike and that by and large things are normal. He claimed that only 15 to 20 percent of the feeders were affected in the entire J&K and that there was no situation of blackout as such. Talks are currently underway with employees unions to know about their demands and grievances , he added.

Reacting to it, former chief minister and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah tweeted, Mantri ji, J&K stretches beyond Jammu city & the plains of Jammu. Can you please find out what is happening in the far-flung areas of Jammu? J&K also includes Kashmir and things are not nearly as rosy as your answer would suggest.

Till the filing of this report the talks between the employees' unions and the government had not made any headway. Official sources said that the government has while making an appeal to the employees to call their strike off agreed in principle to put on hold its privatisation plan, the employees union leaders are insisting on a written assurance from no less a person than Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha himself. In its talks with the employees unions, the government is being represented by Jammus Divisional Commissioner, Raghav Langar. and additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Mukesh Singh.

The PDD employees on the second day running on Monday held anti-government protests in twin capitals of Srinagar and Jammu, demanding in writing from the Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha that it has shelved the proposal of privatisation. Over 20,000 employees of the PDD are on an indefinite strike.

Amid the deadlock electricity continued to remain snapped to many areas, pushing people in a difficult situation.

While hundreds of COVID-19 patients are struggling to keep their oxygen concentrators on, the routine work at various industrial units and other projects has been affected badly due to non-availability of electricity. The Jammu University on Monday announced postponement of offline and online examinations for undergraduate and postgraduate students which were scheduled to be held on Tuesday. Common consumer too has suffered due to the outage.

Reacting to the proposed privatisation of the PDD, former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti tweeted, GOI has made its criminal agenda behind scrapping J&Ks special status clear. Motive behind state sponsored loot of our natural resources - illegal auction of sand mining to outsiders, conversion of agricultural land to privatising power transmission is to plunge J&K into chaos.

J&K Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, while reacting to criticism said, "I do not want to name them, but some people have criticised that the Army has been called to restore electricity. Personnel from REC, NTPC NHPC, and officers from the army engineering corps have also come. This only shows our commitment that we restored 60 percent electricity yesterday and by tomorrow we will achieve 100 percent restoration".

He asserted that there can be no compromise on the issue of ensuring access to the basic amenities to our people.

He added, "If some people think that the system will work as per their whims and fancies, it cannot be allowed. The system will work for 1.25 crore citizens without any discrimination. Every step of the UT administration is meant for the betterment of 1.25 crore citizens of J&K."
Ex-CM and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said she had no faith in the Commission and so, boycotted the deliberations

SRINAGAR: Various Kashmir-centric political parties have termed as totally unacceptable the draft recommendations of the Delimitation Commission, proposing six additional Assembly seats for Jammu region and one for the Kashmir Valley while reserving nine constituencies for Scheduled Castes and seven for Scheduled Tribes.

Soon after a meeting of the commission with its associate members from two major mainstream parties National Conference (NC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in New Delhi earlier during the day on Monday, former chief minister Omar Abdullah took to micro-blogging site Twitter to allege that the commission was allowing the political agenda of the BJP to dictate its recommendations.

He said, It is deeply disappointing that the commission appears to have allowed the political agenda of the BJP to dictate its recommendations rather than the data which should have been its only consideration. Contrary to the promised scientific approach its a political approach.

In another tweet, he said, The draft recommendation of the J&K Delimitation Commission is unacceptable. The distribution of newly created Assembly constituencies with six going to Jammu and only one to Kashmir is not justified by the data of the 2011 census.

Earlier NC Member Parliament who along with its present Farooq Abdullah, also an MP, attended Mondays meeting had said that they were shown a draft proposing six additional seats for Jammu and one for the Kashmir Valley which is totally unacceptable as it is disproportionate as per the 2011 census.

However, Union minister of state and BJP leader Jitendra Singh who was also part of the deliberation while asserting that the document the commission has come out with is objectively prepared claimed that the NC members were also satisfied with the parameters followed by it. He said, The Delimitation Commission has come out with a document that is objectively prepared. All associated members regardless of parties appreciated work done by it. The NC members were also satisfied by parameters followed by the Commission, he said.

But NC spokesman Imran Nabi Dar termed it an absolute lie. He told reporters here that there was no truth to what Mr. Singh was saying. Contrary to what is being shared by BJP and its cronies in Kashmir, JKNC MPs have expressed complete resentment on the Delimitation Commission draft on seat sharing, he said. He added, Its draft recommendations, a reek of brazen discrimination, is totally unacceptable. The distribution of newly created Assembly constituencies with six going to Jammu and only one to Kashmir is not justified by the data of the 2011 census. The recommendations also give ditch to scientific approach and are simply meant to serve BJPs political interests,"

The NC while reacting to Mr. Singhs assertion tweeted, Misrepresenting and distorting the facts with malicious intention! Very misleading statement. We have clearly expressed our resentment over the draft of the Delimitation Commission, the biassed process of seat sharing. The party will NOT be a signatory to this report.

Former minister and Peoples Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone also rejected the commission proposals. He tweeted, The recommendations of the Delimitation Commission are totally unacceptable. They reek of bias. What a shock for those who believe in democracy.

Former chief minister and Peoples Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti who had last week said that her party has no faith in the commission and hence boycotted its deliberations said, My apprehensions about the Delimitation Commission were not misplaced. They want to pitch people against each other by ignoring the population census and proposing six seats for one region and only one for Kashmir.

She also wrote on micro-blogging site, This commission has been created simply to serve BJPs political interests by dividing people along religious and regional lines. The real game plan is to install a government in J&K which will legitimise the illegal and unconstitutional decisions of August 2019.

The J&K Apni party headed by former minister Syed Altaf Bukhari who is known to be very close to the BJP leadership too has resented the commissions draft recommendations saying that these will alter the electoral map of J&K illogically and unfairly.

However, the BJP and likeminded parties and groups whose political base is condensed mainly in Jammu have welcomed the draft recommendation of the commission, asserting these would on their implementation put an end to decades of injustice meted out to the region. Javaid Rahi, founder Secretary of Tribal Research and Cultural Foundation said, The draft recommendation of the 'Delimitation Commission' regarding the reservation of 9 seats for Tribal (STs) in JK Assembly is a step that will prove historic towards tribal development.

The Delimitation Commission set up on March 6, 2020 by a law ministry notification was initially asked to examine the issue of redrawing the LoK Sabha and Assembly constitutions simultaneously in J&K, Assam and some other North-Eastern states. But later, when the commission had already laid the groundwork to start the delimitation exercise in these states, the government excluded Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland from its purview for the time being, raising many eyebrows in J&K and beyond. The Centre also extended its term by one-year in March last year.

Headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai the commission had said in July this year that the responsibility assigned to it was somewhat convoluted and not merely a mathematical game. It, however, assured that the exercise it has taken up will be very transparent and had asked the people, political parties, and other stakeholders in the Union Territory (UT) to thrust aside all their fears and apprehensions.

It had also announced that the delimitation will be conducted based on the 2011 census and the final draft prepared after taking all demands and recommendations into account. Also, the final draft will be put in public domain for objections and debate, it had assured.
New measures have been published and will come into force on March 1, 2022. The rules apply to masses, sermons, formation and all religious information services. This is the "democratic" control of religions sought by Xi. Bans have been imposed on Christmas celebrations, a "western" threat to Chinese culture.

Rome (AsiaNews) - It will no longer be possible to conduct religious activities online without government authorisation in China, according to an announcement yesterday from the State Administration of Religious Affairs.

The body which comes under China State Council - the central government - announced that on December 3 it had approved "Administrative measures for religious information services on the internet". Adopted in conjunction with the State Ministry of Security and other ministries, the new rules will come into force on 1 March 2022.

The new clampdown on religious freedom reflects Xi Jinping's directives. During the working sessions of a national religious conference held in early December, the Chinese president and general secretary of the Communist Party (CCP) announced his intention to improve "democratic" control over religions. In other words, to tighten religious repression by the regime.

Xi made it clear that religions must adapt to the fact that China is a socialist country. According to the supreme leader, the "core" of the CCP, the masses of believers must unite around the Party and the government, and reject all foreign influence.

Organisations and individuals wishing to provide religious information online must apply to the provincial Department of Religious Affairs. Sermons, homilies, ceremonies and formation activities run by religious bodies, monasteries, churches and individuals may be broadcast online only after obtaining a special licence.

It has also been established that no organisation or individual can fundraise "in the name of religion" on the internet. Online religious activity is also forbidden for foreign organisations present in China.

According to the new rules, religious information on the web must not "incite subversion of state power, oppose Party leadership, undermine the socialist system, national unity and social stability". Nor should it "promote extremism, terrorism, ethnic separatism and religious fanaticism". Initiatives aimed at young people are also targeted: online communications must not "induce minors to become religious, organise them or force them to participate in religious activities".

The regime's aim is to further promote the "sinicisation" of religion, a process officially launched in 2015.

In February, the State Administration for Religious Affairs had made public the 'Administrative Measures for Religious Personnel', a document on the management of clergy, monks, priests, bishops, etc., which was published by the government.

In February 2018, the Party had adopted "New Regulations on Religious Activities", according to which religious personnel can only carry out their functions if they adhere to "official" bodies and submit to the CCP.

As for the Catholic Church, the signing in 2018, and renewal in October 2020, of the Sino-Vatican Agreement on the appointment of bishops has not stopped the persecution of its members, especially the unofficial ones.

Not even the Christmas celebrations have been spared. According to AsiaNews, authorities in Rong'an County (Guangxi) have banned Christmas celebrations in local schools. The official reason is that as a "Western holiday", Christmas is a threat to Chinese national culture. The proliferation in recent years of events related to 'Silent Night', the Chinese term for Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day is seen by the regime as an aggression against Chinese culture. Teachers and Party members are asked to work to uphold Chinese tradition, while all citizens are asked to report cases of Christmas celebrations to the police.
At Christmas, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands turns its thoughts to those who lost everything in the riots, to asylum seekers stuck for years by Australia on the island of Manus who will become the responsibility of Papua New Guinea on 1 January.

Port Moresby (AsiaNews)  Riots broke out in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, in the last week of November, a stark reminder of how easily the peace-loving people of the Pacific can suddenly be overwhelmed by political passion, recrimination, and revenge, reads the Christmas message of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands (CBCPNGSI), released at a press conference held today in Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea (PNG).

In their pastoral letter for 2022, the bishops go on to say: Since its beginnings in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands the Catholic Church has contributed to the betterment of society by shedding the light of the Good News of Jesus Christ on destructive cultural practices (sorcery, polygamy, warfare, and the suppression of women), by promoting positive cultural practices, and providing social, educational and health services to all without discrimination.

As Christmas approaches, some acutely suffering human beings are in our thoughts and in our prayers, particularly those who have lost everything in the Honiara fires, the women and children tortured in the PNG Highlands and elsewhere due to senseless sorcery accusations, the victims of COVID-19 and their families, the young people left to fend for themselves.

Those suffering, the bishops point out, include the asylum seekers confined by Australia to the island of Manus since 2013, who will now be completely left in the hands of the PNG government as of 1 January.

In another plea, CBCPNGSI President Archbishop Anton Bal of Madang calls for action on behalf of seniors and the sick. We are particularly and extremely worried about a list of a dozen people, whose conditions will soon descend into utter despair and physical destitution. For them we ask from the Australian government prompt intervention.

Archbishop Bal also made an appeal for dialogue in West Papua, the part of the island of New Guinea under Indonesian sovereignty where tensions have risen again in recent months. We believe that fifty-eight years of conflict are reason enough for all to accept that West Papua is not a settled issue and never will be in the current conditions.

A political compromise may not be easy and may not come fast. As a pre-condition, it requires a total ban on the use of force and the determination to negotiate till an agreement is reached to the satisfaction of all.

Finally, the president of the Bishops' Conference made an appeal to young people ahead of the general elections on 25 June 2022 in Papua New Guinea. Noting that the turnout among young people was very low in 2017, Archbishop Bal urges young adults eligible to vote to register. Make your voice heard. Its your future at stake! he writes.
by Vladimir Rozanskij

The Ukrainian autocephalous Church would like to switch to the Gregorian calendar, used throughout the world and a reference for Catholics. The Metropolitan of Kiev calls for celebration on 25 December and no longer on 7 January. The staggered dates, however, favour ecclesiastical exchanges between the two communities.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The head of the Ukrainian autocephalous Church, Metropolitan Epifanyj (Dumenko) of Kiev, has again intervened on the choice of the date for Christmas, which in the Orthodox Church of the Eastern Slavic countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia) is celebrated on January 7, which corresponds to December 25 according to the Julian calendar.

The reform of the Gregorian calendar, the one now in use throughout the world, was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The Russians established the Moscow Patriarchate seven years later, and the insistence on the old calendar was one way of distinguishing themselves from the 'heretical' Christians of the West. In the non-Slavic Orthodox Churches, the issue is not as symbolic, and many of them have adapted their liturgy to the Gregorian calendar.

Epifanyj believes the insistence on the Julian calendar is "an error that needs to be corrected", as he said in an interview with Radio Svoboda. The Metropolitan explained: "I think that within about ten years we will be able to bring the dates back to normal, let's see how we will be able to achieve this transition, for which extensive information work will be needed". In fact, the issue risks further stirring up conflicts with the Russian Orthodox, especially since liturgical dates have traditionally been a source of misunderstanding among Christians since ancient times.

Ukraine is a multi-confessional country, with large Catholic and Protestant minorities celebrating on 25 December, drawing the local population well beyond denominational affiliations. When it comes to the Orthodox' 7 January, the festive mood is far meeker, with the civil New Year prevailing over the religious holiday.

In the context of Ukrainian disputes, the issue also accentuates the harmony between the autocephalous Orthodox and the Greek Catholics, united by ritual tradition despite their different jurisdictional obedience: the former submit to Constantinople and the latter to Rome, but niether appear greatly contradictory today, when compared to Kiev and Constantinople's disagreement with Moscow.

The move by Epifanyj, who has already repeatedly reiterated his preference for the transition to the universal calendar, is not, however, an anti-Moscow provocation. In fact, even in Russia the date of 25 December, while remaining a working day, is widely honoured, albeit on a "secular" and consumerist level, by analogy with the rest of the world, distinguishing between pagan "Christmas" and Christian Christmas.

In the past, Russian Catholics had been willing to make the opposite sacrifice, more for Easter than for Christmas, by adapting to the Gregorian calendar. No such agreement was ever reached, not least because the divergence of dates basically makes it possible for ecclesiastical hierarchs to pay each other courtesy visits on their respective dates, and for mixed families to celebrate Christian holidays twice.

On 19 December, for example, it was the turn of the Russian variant of the feast of the nation's patron saint, St Nicholas of Bari, to which Metropolitan Ilarion (Alfeev), first aide to the patriarch of Moscow, paid a visit. He was also received as a guest of honour in the city hall by Mayor Antonio Decaro. The double feast, which is repeated in May and December, allows the people of Bari to celebrate and promote the international prestige of a saint from the East, who is also capable of uniting the West without being overly concerned about calendars.
Major General Tamir Hayman admitted that Israel played a role in the Iranian generals death. Taking out the head of the Qods force was one of two significant and important assassinations during his tenure. Israel has conducted multiple operations against its main enemy Iran.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews)  Israel has admitted playing a leading role in the US operation that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in early January 2020, this according to former Israeli army intelligence chief Tamir Hayman.

Experts note that this is the first time an Israeli official admits to a targeted killing of a major Iranian official or someone tied to the Islamic Republic. Hitherto, the Jewish State refrained from making any claim.

Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force, was killed in a drone attack while near Baghdad International Airport. He was thought to be the mastermind of pro-Iranian proxies in the Mideast.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Major General Tamir Hayman told the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Centre that Soleimani's killing was one of "two significant and important assassinations" during his tenure, which ended in October.

The other assassination, he said, was that of the military leader of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Bahaa Abu Al-Ata.

For Hayman, "Soleimani's assassination is an achievement, since our main enemy, in my eyes, are the Iranians. But Israel carried out multiple operations to disrupt the spread of Iranian weapons and funds throughout the region.

Several days after the assassination, US-based NBC News reported that Israeli intelligence had helped the United States kill Soleimani.

According to the report, informants at Damascus international airport tipped off the CIA about the time Soleimani's plane took off for Baghdad, while Israel confirmed the intelligence provided to the Americans.

Considered the second most influential figure in the country after Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 62-year-old martyr was a national hero, even among those who do not support the ruling clergy. His funeral turned into a moment of collective tribute.
by Mathias Hariyadi

The local Catholic community has obtained the Izin Mendirikan Bangunan, the document required to build new places of worship. For years, Christians in the capital have gathered in parish halls and faced protests from Muslims.

Jakarta (Indonesia) - Yesterday, Jakarta's governor, Anies Baswedan, granted permission to build a church in Kampung Duri parish in Tambora, West Jakarta. The Izin Mendirikan Bangunan (Imb) was handed over to parish priest Matheus Widyolestari during a ceremony also attended by the archbishop of the Jakarta diocese, Card. Ignatius Suharyo.

"If we want the Jakarta area to become a home for all, then the impartial opportunity to obtain building permits must be real," said Governor Baswedan, who laid the first stones of the building. "I hope that the construction of this place of worship will be smooth and will benefit the congregation".

In Lubang Buaya, East Jakarta, the Kalvari parish church will also receive a building permit, Fr Ferdinand Wishijer told AsiaNews: "Governor Baswedan is expected to grant the Ibm this afternoon".

Often in Indonesia permission for Christian buildings are revoked because of pressure from radical groups. This is what happened, for example, to the Church of St Bernadette in Ciledung parish: the State Administrative Court revoked Imb after a group of radical Islamists first staged a protest and then filed a lawsuit.

Kampung Duri was initially part of the Mother of the Sacred Heart Parish in Tomang. It became a separate parish in 1987. For a long time, local Catholics could not build a church and were forced to use a parish hall for celebrations. On several occasions, groups of Muslims have prevented regular weekend services, blocking or interrupting masses with mass protests.
by Nirmala Carvalho

The Court orders federal and state governments to issue ID papers to sex workers making them eligible to social benefits. For Sr Prema Chowallur, this decision will bring recognition and relief to millions of people who lived years together in the backyards of the country.

New Delhi (AsiaNews)  The Supreme Court of India issued an order on 14 December directing Indian states to provide sex workers with identity papers so that they can receive ration cards. This follows a plea by some sex workers who described their destitution during the pandemic.

In rendering its decision, Indias highest tribunal slammed governments for not following directions it issued a decade ago.

The fundamental rights are guaranteed to every citizen of the country irrespective of his/her vocation, reads the ruling. There is a bounden duty on the government to provide basic amenities to the citizens of the country.

For this reason, The central government, state governments and other authorities are directed to commence the process of issuance of ration cards, voter ID cards and Aadhaar cards[*] [to sex workers] immediately.

The Court suggested that the authorities seek the help of the National Aids Control Organisation to draw up the lists, checking them with the information provided by local community-based groups.

Sister Prema Chowallur welcomed the Supreme Court's decision. A member of the Sisters of the Cross of Chavanod, the catholic nun has been involved in Assam for years helping sex workers and homeless transgender people.

As a person involved in working for the development of marginalised people, I welcome this reasonable and valuable decision of the Supreme Court whole-heartedly, she said.

Sex workers are a group of people who are pushed to the margins of society, with a stigma that so far has not given them the opportunity to enjoy entitlements guaranteed to other Indian citizens.

"I am confident that this decision will bring recognition and relief to millions of people who lived years together in the backyards of the country, either by force or choice, without enjoying basic human rights to food and citizenship.

[*] Aadhaar (English: foundation or base) is a 12-digit individual identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India on behalf of the Government of India. It is a proof of identity and address, anywhere in India.
Today's headlines:Rise of Taliban heavily impacts news from Afghanistan; 82% of female journalists have lost their jobs; Beijing sends aid for typhoon victims in the Philippines; Turkish citizens' distrust of the country's economic prospects grows; Pyongyang commemorates 10 years since Kim Jong-il's death.

JAPAN

Japan executed three people this morning. These are the first executions since December 2019 and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's taking over government leadership in October. The authorities have not revealed their identities. There are currently more than 100 inmates on death row, while public support for capital punishment remains high despite international criticism.

AFGHANISTAN

The impact of the Taliban on information in Afghanistan has been "dramatic", as denounced by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) experts. More than four out of ten media outlets have disappeared (from 543 at the beginning of the summer to 312) and 60% of journalists and employees of newspapers and TV stations are no longer able to work. Women have suffered far more than men: 84% of them have lost their jobs.

CHINA - PHILIPPINES

The Chinese government today began distributing basic necessities for thousands of victims of Typhoon Rai in the Philippines. The updated, but still provisional, toll is at least 375 dead and 56 missing. Ambassador Huang Xilian said that "our hearts are with all the affected families." Collected 20 thousand food parcels containing 5 kg of rice, 10 boxes of food and noodles.

MALAYSIA

At least 14 people have died and tens of thousands have been displaced by one of the worst floods in decades in Malaysia. Three days of massive torrential rains over the past weekend caused severe flooding in eight states, partially submerging towns and villages. The government has come under fierce criticism for its delayed and inadequate response to the emergency.

TURKEY

82% of Turkish citizens say their purchasing power has declined. A survey by NG Research shows that 7 out of 10 people believe that the economy is set to worsen for the next few years. 94% are of the opinion that rising exchange rates will negatively affect future prospects. Among the factors behind the crisis is the Covid-19 pandemic.

RUSSIA

A group of Russian parliamentarians has presented a bill to the Duma that would only allow access to surrogacy services for citizens of the Russian Federation. Vice-presidents Petr Tolstoy and Anna Kuznetsova, initiators of the proposal, intend to defend the Russian nationality from dispersion caused by foreign interference.

NORTH KOREA

Pyongyang has imposed a ban on laughing, drinking and shopping on all North Korean citizens for 11 days to coincide with the mourning period that began Dec. 17 for the 10-year anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the former leader and father of Kim Jong-Un. During that period, people cannot even celebrate their birthdays. Those who break the rules face arrest.

GEORGIA

The political appeasement initiative attempted by Georgia's president, Salome Zurabishvili, and blessed by the Orthodox Katolikos Ilya II, has been challenged by the opposition led by the National Movement of former president Mikhail Saakashvili. The latter summoned in the Gori prison hospital where he is detained the leaders of the party to decide the anti-government line.
A sign alerts people of Pitkin Countys indoor mask mandate at the entryway of a clothing store. Along with being fully vaccinated, and boosted upon eligibility, county officials have also stressed the importance of wearing masks indoors to slow the spread of COVID-19.
If the name doesnt ring a bell, maybe you are not a true Corvette fan, as Callaway Cars gained its reputation tuning these sportscars. The brand became famous for its extreme take on the Corvette dubbed SledgeHammer , the car that broke the 254 mph (410 kph) speed record for street-legal cars back in 1988. The predecessors DNA wasnt lost after the record run, but it found its way into other marvelous Callaway creations, like this yellow car on auction at Bring a Trailer We are talking about a convertible version of the C4 Corvette that was delivered to Callaway Cars in Connecticut in 1991, where it was modified with the same coveted Callaway AeroBody that adorned the SledgeHammer, as well as a Twin Turbo package for its 5.7-liter V8. Of course, its not as extreme as the speed record holder, but still rare, with only 25 C4 Callaway Twin Turbos that received the AeroBody.The 5.9-liter V8 engine was fitted by Callaway with two turbochargers and intercoolers, as well as with strengthened internal components and an oil cooler. It delivered 402 horsepower and 575 lb-ft (780 Nm) of torque when new, and we have no further information about the current performances. However, it is a far cry from the 880 horsepower and 772 lb-ft (1,047 Nm) of the SledgeHammer.Despite its sporty DNA, this 1991 Corvette Callaway Twin-Turbo Convertible still features comfort options like automatic climate control, power windows, power-adjusted seats, or Bose audio system. The car shows 18,000 miles (29,000 km) on the odometer and is offered with manufacturers literature, a clean Carfax report, and a clean Texas title in the sellers name.The auction ends on December 23rd, with the $49,000 bid at the time of writing. We dont know how high it will go or if it will meet the owners reserve, but it suffices to say The SledgeHammer was sold for a price above $500,000 earlier this year
On the other hand, it was probably just a matter of time until someone found a way to use the AirTag for more nefarious purposes despite all the privacy safeguards implemented by Apple.In theory, someone who believes they might be tracked can always scan for a nearby AirTag on both iPhone and Android, therefore discovering any device used by a stalker or a criminal to monitor their location.But Twitter user @Sega_JEANAsis has recently reported a case thats very likely to cause a whole new series of concerns for drivers. On Twitter, she described how an unknown individual installed an AirTag to the underside of the front wheel well, pretty much because they wanted to track their location and thus figure out where they are all the time.Her iPhone eventually managed to discover the nearby AirTag, but given it was placed in such a tough sport, it was impossible at first to find the tracker. A friend eventually discovered the tracker and threw it away, therefore blocking what many considered to be a modern stalking activity.Apple is indeed offering some ways to determine if youre being tracked or not, but on the other hand, the AirTag is becoming more and more concerning for drivers out there.A few weeks ago, the police warned that AirTags could be used by various actors to track the location of luxury cars by placing the devices under the bumpers. Once the cars were parked, they could proceed with the theft, in many cases driving away with the vehicles right from the home of the owner.Fortunately, AirTags can start beeping away when theyre no longer close to the owner, but it goes without saying such a feature isnt necessarily helpful in a car when the noise could cover all the warnings.
ICE

EV

Bugattis first modern reincarnation was headlined by the Italian-built EB110 series. After the Volkswagen Groupe acquired the remains of the Romano Artioli-led effort, Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. continued along the same EB path with its initial EB118 and EB218 concepts.Only afterward did it dive head-first into the Veyron EB 16.4 era, complete with numerous technical wonders and one-offs. Everything culminated with the top speed record, of course. And more special editions, bespoke creations, and whatnot, of course.Then, just like it happened back in 1999 when Bugatti presented the 18/3 Chiron concept car at the years IAA Frankfurt Motor Show, the production series Chiron dropped the EB moniker from its official name. Which may or may not have been to the liking of everyone.Now, Francesco Ruga, a Switzerland-based virtual artist dwelling on Behance , has revealed a futuristic Bugatti vision that focuses on a potential Veyron reincarnation for the decades to come. And guess what, EB is back in fashion with this one. Nicknamed Bugatti EB4, this streamlined concept feels like a grandchild of the graciously-aging Veyron. If the former had virtual children with the track-focused Bolide.Which isnt a bad thing if one loves to explore the extremes . Alas, given that we are dealing with just a name and a set of digital sketches, one could speculate just about any outcome. Perhaps this isnt a mid-engine hypercar. Maybe its the vision of a sleek grand tourer. Or even a concealed four-seater. Who knows?Unfortunately, since there are no attached explanations, its anyones guess. This is a bummer because we would have loved to hear the designers opinion about what kind of powertrain this Bugatti should make us of. A traditionalderivative, something electrified, or perhaps even a full-blownsetup?
HVAC

EV

All Wheel Steering

The Consumer Electronics Show is one of the most important events of the year, and its worth a trip just to experience Elons Boring Tunnel as a way to save your aching feet. My own experiences began with Sony in 2012, when they transformed my boss R8 V10 Spyder into a carbon fiber endorsement of their car audio system, so we hope they will finally give their mobility project the green light.For those who enjoy the outdoors, Brunswick Corporation is the parent company of Sea Ray, Bayliner, and the Freedom Boat Club; and they will preview five new electric solutions for pleasure boats, combining, Navigation, Infotainment, and a glimpse of carbon-zero boating weve been waiting for.The push for fully autonomous hardware will be see 21 universities from around the world compete in high-speed laps at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with the winner taking home a million dollars along with bragging rights.Vinfast is showing the world what Vietnam is capable of, and their GlobalDay celebration kicks off Janyary 5th at 1pm Eastern. Each guest who pre-registers will be offered a $500 voucher when placing a deposit for one of their two models, and a tree will be planted in Phu Quoc National Forest on their behalf. For some reason, Mark Zuckerberg wants in on the action, so META will be offering enhanced Lidar systems along with Nanolithography. This process allows a transparent metal substrate to be bonded to any glass, offering 3D heads-up abilities, instant de-fogging, and the ability to include a massive 5G antenna.Next up, Hyundai is offering a glimpse of their future with a skateboard chassis named the Mobile Eccentric Droid, or MobED. This comes on the heels of their first deliveries of the Ioniq 5 reported earlier this week. A glance at Stelantis will hopefully yield a production-ready version of the Chrysler Airflow concept, because their luxury brand will be down to three models once the 300 (and the L/X platform itself is sent out to pasture.The recent noise amongst enthusiasts regarding the death of the replacement of their Hemi by a new straight six will hopefully be extinguished. But curiously absent is mention of the Dodge Ram. Full-size electric trucks will be the next battleground. Leading the way should be Rivian , but supply chain issues have forced them to cut production estimates by a few hundred units this year. Nevertheless, their R1T remains priced at $70,000 thanks to backing from Jeff Bezos.With that in-mind, GM CEO Mary Barra will reprise her role as keynote speaker this year. Lauded for throwing everything in her arsenal at the EV battle, production versions of the Hummer EV will monopolize the attentions of the press. Her year has been punctuated by transforming the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant into Factory ZERO, a carbon-free blank slate that will soon be building Hummer, Chevy, and GMC electrics. But by far, the star of the show is going to be her trucks.The Silverado E and the GMC Sierra Electric will be powered by the same Ultium battery technology that underpins the Hummer, and weve seen teasers of panoramic glass roof panels along with the mention of. Riding on an all-new BT1 platform, the power and range will hopefully trickle down to smaller utilities and crossovers.Staying silent so far, Tesla would be wise to offer any updates on the Cybertruck, and we would like to see VW offer a production version of the I.D. Buzz. Until then, stay with us as more previews will undoubtedly be rolling in, and have a Merry Christmas from all of us!
SUV

This joint venture has been in the works since earlier this year, and could also involve joint operations in China, which would allow Renault to restart its operations in the Peoples Republic, as per Reuters . The French company would then form a new, plug-in hybrid-focused brand, which they will manage jointly with Geely.These new cars would ride on Geelys so-called Compact Modular Architecture (CMA), which the Chinese brand shares with Volvo. The JV would also use Geelys supply chains and manufacturing facilities in China, added sources familiar with the matter.Renault meanwhile will handle the design aspect, as well as sales and marketing for the new brand. From Geelys perspective, this could also land them a production foothold in South Korea, plus access to Renaults manufacturing facility, where the latter has been making cars for over 20 years through the Samsung Group unit.One model Geely might want to produce at Renaults plant in South Korea is the Lynk & Co 01, which is currently available as a plug-in hybrid, conventional hybrid and as a non-hybrid.Heres where the story becomes even more interesting though. One of the sources also stated that Geely could gain a backdoor entry in the U.S. market if this deal goes through, benefiting from South Koreas free-trade agreement with the United States. As a result, they could export Lynk & Co models to the U.S.As for Renault-Samsung , they could make their own versions of various Lynk & Co products, in a bid to spark a sales growth locally in South Korea, where theyve struggled in recent years.
kWh

The latest one happened on December 20 with a WM EX5, a compact crossover presented in May 2018. With two battery pack options (52.5and 69kWh), it offers 400 kilometers (249 miles) and 520 km (323 mi) of range in the Chinese test cycle. However, things started getting ugly for the EX5 by the end of September 2020.In only one month, four units of the electric crossover caught fire. WM then made a recall to replace the battery packs of 1,282 EVs. The company said that the battery supplier made cells with impurities that led to unusual lithium precipitation in the batteries, dendrite formation, and thermal runaways.The EX5 that burst into flames on December 20 was bought about eight months ago, around April. According to Hexun Auto Channel , the fire started at 4:30 AM, while the owner was charging the vehicle. Theoretically, this unit did not go through the recall and was already produced with updated cells. If that is really the case, the first diagnosis for the problem may have missed something.Far from being something to demote people from buying electric cars, this is a warning for them to keep track of the brands and battery suppliers with the best records. For automakers, it demands more care, transparency, and proactivity in solving any issues they find, especially if they are related to the battery packs.Although the shift to electric cars is a given, they have to be highly reliable to help people build confidence in them. Fire episodes with EVs may be more difficult to happen, but these blazes are harder to extinguish and, consequently, more damaging. Either car manufacturers reinforce battery production quality controls, or the efforts to adopt EVs will get increasingly more complicated.
The Russian Space Agency announced that, on the morning of December 20, the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft descent vehicle made it back to Earth, landing at a designated area in Kazakhstan. Yusaku Maezawa  one of the richest people in Japan, who built his fortune in the e-commerce sector, his assistant and producer Yozo Hirano, as well as the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, the spacecraft commander, have come back, all in good health.But when coming back from space, youre not supposed to just jump right back into your normal routine. All three of them will have to go through a program of post-flight rehabilitation, which will last at least two weeks and up to 21 days.At the Prelaunch Training and Post-Flight Rehabilitation Complex for Cosmonauts (Astronauts) in Star City, close to Moscow, the crew will work on regaining physical form under medical supervision, which means theyll be exercising and focusing on muscle strength.Its been 12 days of fun for the eccentric billionaire, who kept his social media followers up to date on his apparently trivial activities in space  Maezawa showed everyone what its like to brush your teeth or eat snacks in space, for example. But, as superficial as it may seem, there are indeed curiosities that many people would have when it comes to living in space as a simple tourist instead of a professional cosmonaut.The jaw-dropping $80 million space adventure was only a trial run for Maezawa, who is actually gearing up for his greatest endeavor yet  in 2023, hes set to become the first private passenger on the highly-anticipated SpaceX trip to the moon.He probably wont be able to show off his initials on Elon Musks rocket, as he did with the Soyuz spacecraft that took him to the International Space Station (ISS), but his name will still be remembered for generations to come.
EV

SUV

We made our first R1S deliveries last week from our factory in Normal, IL to RJ and our CFO Claire. Were working towards ramping production over the next few months on our way to full volume production. Thanks to our team for all the hard work to make it happen! pic.twitter.com/Ql9Di2ySBE  Rivian (@Rivian) December 20, 2021

Rivian is a hot subject these days, as the company plans to ramp up production and at the same time is looking to build new plants to expand its tiny foothold into the automotive world. The Americanmaker is already underway with R1T pick-up truck deliveries but R1Sis still missing in action, at least from the perspectives of the customers who ordered it.Nevertheless, Rivian announced the first two deliveries of the R1S SUV last week , with more to come by the end of the year. This is despite an announcement made earlier that warned customers of lengthy delays that could push the deliveries as far as next summer. Now, Rivian also revealed who were the lucky folks that put their hand on the R1Ss wheel.The company shared in a tweet the two cars were handed over to the companys CEO RJ Scaringe and CFO Claire McDonald. It is not unusual, at least for Rivian, as you remember the first R1T pick-up was also delivered to RJ Scaringe. Most of the initial R1Ts ware also delivered to Rivians employees and only recently did the outside customers start receiving their cars.Based on that, we expect the next R1S deliveries to also be for Rivian employees, presumably to those who didnt want or need a pick-up truck. It could be considered as some sort of internal beta-testing before the cars get in the hands of actual customers. This allows for ironing out some teething problems, mostly software we guess, as not much can be changed that far into the production cycle.Based on the recent Q3 2021 report, Rivian has more than 70,000 preorders for the R1T/R1S duo. As of December 15, the production count reached 652, with 386 of those already delivered, including the two R1S SUVs.
From multiple projects that support the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and research programs for emission-free propulsion systems to several pioneering demonstrations of SAF-powered aircraft or electric aircraft, the aviation industry has made some significant steps this year towards a more sustainable future. Although the infamous net-zero emissions goal by 2050 is much more challenging for this sector compared to the automotive one, changes are still taking place.Rolls-Royce is one of the names at the forefront of these changes, with a complex strategy that includes making sure that the next-generation mtu engines are compatible with SAF, a new, state-of-the-art aerospace testing facility in Indiana, plus several projects revolving around hydrogen fuel cell system and electric propulsions systems  seen as the long-term answer for sustainable aviation.The aerospace experts future research program, recently announced, will be carried out together with easyJet. The two-year-long study, starting in January 2022, will focus on several low-carbon and zero-emissions technologies and how they can be best applied to commercial aircraft. This extensive project will analyze all the elements involved in the operation ecosystem, from full production to transportation, storage, and handling. The goal is to accelerate the development of electrical and hydrogen-based power systems.SAF is currently considered the fastest way to drastically cut CO2 emission levels, but researching and developing alternative propulsion systems is the key to transforming aviation on a deeper level.EasyJet has been actively involved in sustainability projects even since 2016, when it was working with the Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, to develop and install a hydrogen cell container in the airplanes cargo hold in order to store energy while taxiing. It might seem like a small change from todays perspective, but it was an ambitious step at the time.The airline operator believes that electricity and hydrogen fuel cells could change short-haul flights in the near future.
Darwin Deasons success was the typical American dream story  a decade ago, he had sold his company to Xerox in a multibillion-dollar deal, he was married to the famous actress Katerina Deason, who was 27 years his junior, and they were both spending a big chunck of time each year onboard the gorgeous Apogee superyacht.Built in 2003 by the sophisticated Italian shipyard Codecasa , the 205-footer (63 meters) was originally meant for someone else, but Deason ended up purchasing it the following year and redesigning it to his taste. It was an upgrade from his previous boats, so he didnt hold back when it came to customizing it. He wanted several bars and a fully-equipped gym. The main saloon, covered in dark mahogany paneling, could be described either as classic or outdated, depending on personal preference.The sky lounge is one of the yacht s main attractions  with sumptuous interior decor, it hosts an extensive bar, a game table, a jukebox, a karaoke machine, and even a dance pole. Deason wanted to recreate the atmosphere of his favorite hotel in Monte Carlo, and he intended to enjoy as many parties as possible with his friends  which is why the luxurious vessel also flaunted a whopping 12-people jacuzzi for basically all the guests on board.Although the billionaire didnt spare anything to turn Apogee into his dream boat, he confessed to Forbes that To me it also represents the peak of spending absolutely foolish money. Its not rational, but I love it  referring to the yachts name of Greek origin, translated as "the pinnacle."Today, Deasons insane party yacht is worth almost $25 million, and its up for grabs. The 81-year old was claiming to be ready for another upgrade, an Apogee on steroids, years ago, so the perfect time for that has probably come.
According to Catchpole, the 458 was a car of firsts and lasts for Ferrari. It was the last time to have a naturally aspirated V8 engine under the hood. It was also the first mid-engine V8 that came without a manual transmission. Instead, it came with a dual-clutch automatic gearbox, another first coming from a single clutch gearbox.With a starting price of 170,000 in the UK when it first went on sale, the Ferrari 458 Italia was a big move from the F430 (before options). I know life is unfair (we all do), but with a price tag like that, Ferrari seemed to be on a trajectory toward developing finer rewards for the affluent The 458 Italia can do the 0 to 62 mph (100 kph) in 3.4 seconds, and a lap time around Fiorano is two seconds quicker than an F50. At the back, it has three tailpipes, a signature design, and a nod to the F40. At the front, Ferrari developed adaptive winglets that deform during speed to create more downforce.The Ferrari 458 came with a different interior, perhaps due to the lack of manual transmission, but Ferrari insists it had a lot of input from racing legend Michael Schumacher.It also came with a super-quick steering - down from 16.9 to 1 to 11.9 to 1 in terms of the steering ratio compared to the F430.This Ferrari of many firsts puts out 562 hp from a mid-engine V8 and it weighs 1,380 kg with forged wheels and racing seats.What a car, it feels so agile and lively, Catchpole said. Weve got that sort of fighter jet-feel. That almost sort of instability, such as the turning of this car. He added.
Weve heard of all types of creatures, such as worms and tardigrades, being flown this year to space, to help advance human health, but this time its all about cells. Human muscle cells as big as rice grains will be placed into 3D-printed containers the size of pencil sharpeners and launched on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket taking off today, at 10 a.m. (GMT), from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.In the absence of gravity, astronauts muscles are weakened, as if they were growing old. This is why, by studying the changes that muscle tissue goes through in space, scientists can better understand the process of ageing and how to prevent it. On the ISS, the flying muscle cells will be electrically stimulated to mimic contractions, while researchers analyze them. This experiment could have a significant impact on preventing health conditions such as musculoskeletal disease.It took three years to develop the scientific hardware required for taking the muscle cells to space . Normally, the electronic equipment alone would fill a large desk, as Professor Malcolm Jackson from the University of Liverpool explained, but it was downsized to something thats no bigger than a pack of cards. In fact, these types of automated and miniaturized systems are essential for most types of scientific experiments carried out in space.The MicroAge experiment will be completed by January 2022, when its due to return to Earth. The mission patch was designed by a nine-year-old, the winner of a competition launched by the University of Liverpool, which got kids involved in this exciting space experiment.The next scientific study funded by the UK Space Agency will fly to the ISS in October 2022, with the goal of studying complex fluids in microgravity. Its an exciting time for scientific research in space, particularly for the UK, which has been working hard for a spectacular relaunch of its space sector.
In 2019, the government team, along with industry partner Boeing , conducted the first test flight of the MQ-25 test asset, known as T1. Since then, T1 has spent more than 60 hours in the air, helping the team understand more about its aerodynamic performance.Recently, the U.S. Navy and Boeing conducted a demonstration aboard the USS George H.W. Bush, which allowed the study of the MQ-25 systems integration into the carrier setting. The team focused specifically on how the ground control system and the aircraft worked together.The T1 carried out a series of tasks meant to verify the capability of the deck handling system during both day and night operations. The tanker drone taxied on the flight deck, connected to the catapult, and parked as well.These maneuvers helped the team gather significant data on how the decks motion and the wind affect the ability to control the aircraft.Our initial look at taxi operations on the flight deck successfully demonstrated the MQ-25s ability to maneuver just like a manned aircraft in the shipboard environment, said Captain Chad Reed, Unmanned Carrier Aviation program manager.Once operational, the MQ-25 Stingray will be piloted from an Unmanned Aviation Warfare Center (UAWC) on aircraft carriers, where the air vehicle operator will carry out a pre-planned mission.The MQ-25 will be used by the Navy mainly as a carrier-based tanker drone for aerial refueling. It will play a crucial role in increasing the range and capabilities of the carrier air wing (CVW), and it will also pioneer the integration of the manned-unmanned teaming concept. Eventually, the Navy will use the aircraft aboard all of the Nimitz and Ford-class carriers in the future.
EV

The first thing the autonomous driving tech company told us was that Waymo cars perform both autonomous testing and manual testing. The latter uses drivers to help the company collect data. The idea with manual testing sessions is to train and advance Waymo Driver. That was the mission the Jaguar I-PACE had on that occasion when it hit the still unidentified pedestrian.According to the company, it left the headquarters in manual mode and was that way for over an hour. It was when thereached Haight Street, midblock between Webster Street and Buchanan Street, that everything happened.We also asked if Waymo had any idea why AEB (automatic emergency braking) did not work as it should. Theoretically, it could have avoided making contact with a pedestrian, as the company puts it. Waymo said that it did not have further details to share at this point. Ironically, thats precisely what the company gave us.According to the autonomous driving tech company, having a pedestrian wearing dark clothes at night standing in the road behind the bright lights from a vehicle passing in the opposite direction was very challenging. It would make perfect sense if we were talking about a Tesla and its exclusive camera-based detection system, but we thought that the I-PACE also had radar for that goal. Waymo also added LiDARs to its cars, but it is not clear if Waymo adapted it to work with the AEB the electric Jaguar has.Finally, we wanted to learn if the pedestrian hit by the EV is ok. According to Waymo , he was taken to the SFGH (San Francisco General Hospital) with non-life-threatening injuries. We are still trying to learn what happened when he got back home, but it is good to know he is apparently ok.
New data shows that the Omicron variant is not jumpstarting Americans' engagement in COVID news, despite indications that it may be one of the fastest-spreading variants to date.

Why it matters: News attention spiked early in the Delta wave, but Omicron is not yet having the same effect. A lack of widespread appreciation of the threat could hamper the response.

"My sense of things is that the lower levels of public engagement are due to pandemic fatigue setting in, and a perceived sense of this variant is probably no more dangerous than previous variants," said Chris Haynes, a political science professor at the University of New Haven.

Details: Social media interactions (likes, comments, shares) on news articles on COVID have declined dramatically during the course of the pandemic  from 1,171 per article in March 2020 down to 326 in December 2020, and then dropping to an average of 108 over the last three weeks, according to exclusive data from NewsWhip.

Between the lines: This doesnt necessarily mean total interest in COVID news has gone down, but it has gone down on a per-article basis, meaning individual articles don't get as much attention as they used to.

Google searches about COVID have ticked up since Omicron arrived in the U.S., but are well below the August interest in the Delta variant so far.

CDC data on online conversations shows that Omicron became the most-talked-about COVID topic starting on Nov. 25  the day after South Africa reported the discovery of the concerning variant to the WHO.

The big picture: The urgency and novelty of COVID news in the early days of the pandemic has given way to fatigue as news readers grow used to the same cycles of coverage.

The arrival of the pandemic in early 2020 created a media frenzy unlike any other news story in modern history as consumers sought information about what the virus meant for daily life.

Since then, the COVID picture has vacillated between grim and promising as waves of cases, hospitalizations and deaths rise and fall.

Partisan debates  about lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates and alternative treatments  have become repetitive as they draw out.

"[T]hose who engaged in vigilant information seeking in the past may no longer feel the same need to do so," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Vaccinated people "may have concluded that there is not much more they can do or need to learn," Jamieson said, while unvaccinated people "assume that infection is unworrisome or inevitable or that they have already survived infection or that they are invulnerable to it."

What to watch: As the Omicron variant spreads, interest in COVID news could start to spike in coming weeks, especially as it pertains to holiday travel.
Pro-Beijing candidates claimed victory in Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) election under the new "patriots only" system, per Reuters.

Why it matters: This was the first LegCo since Beijing lawmakers passed a sweeping law to ensure only "patriotic" figures can run for positions of power  which U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called a "denial of democracy."

Voter turnout was the lowest on record  30.2%, the BBC notes.

All candidates running to be members of the electoral college were vetted by China's government.

What they're saying: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam acknowledged at a news conference Monday the low voter turnout, but said she couldn't outline the "specifics" of this, according to Reuters.

"But 1.35 million coming out to vote  it cannot be said that it was not an ... election that did not get a lot of support from citizens," Lam added.

Kenneth Chan, a political scientist at Hong Kong's Baptist University, told AFP the turnout was "hugely embarrassing" for the government.

In a joint statement, Blinken and his counterparts from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K., expressed their "grave concern" over the election outcome.
The WHO and EU have now cleared Novavaxs COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, adding another shot to the global arsenal.

Why it matters: The biggest impact will likely be in the developing world as the American company has promised over 1 billion doses to the WHO-backed COVAX initiative. The vaccine can be stored at normal refrigerator temperatures and proved highly effective in clinical trials.

Because the vaccine was developed using long-established technology, theres some hope it could also help reduce vaccine hesitancy among those who dont trust mRNA vaccines.

Novavax, which is producing the vaccine in conjunction with the Serum Institute of India, has yet to request approval from the FDA due to manufacturing issues, but it plans to do so later this month, per the WSJ.

More COVID headlines: Omicron cases doubling fast; Variant accounts for 73% of new U.S. cases; Netherlands locks down
Russia may take new measures to bolster security if the U.S. takes aggressive action and ignores requests ruling out NATO's eastward expansion into Ukraine, a senior diplomat said Saturday, AP reports.

Driving the news: Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Saturday that Western allies are "extending the limits of whats possible" regarding relations with Russia, per AP.

Ryabkov also warned that Moscow would "take care of our security and act in a way similar to NATOs logic" if the organization doesn't take Russia's demands seriously.

He didn't specify what actions Russia may take if the West rejects its demands, per AP.

The big picture: Ryabkov's remarks come one day after the Russian government released a draft of a new treaty proposal with NATO that would rule out eastward expansion and all military activity in former Soviet republics, Axios' Zachary Basu reports.

The proposal also demands that the U.S. and NATO do not cooperate with former Soviet states, including Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.

The treaty proposal comes as the threat of Russian invasion over Europe looms, and as the U.S. and other NATO allies have increased their military presence and activities in the alliance's "eastern flank."

What he's saying: "We dont want a conflict. We want to reach an agreement on a reasonable basis," Ryabkov said.

"Before making any conclusions what to do next and what steps could be taken, we need to make sure that the answer is negative. I hope that the answer will be relatively constructive and we engage in talks."

Go deeper: U.S. to consider Russia's NATO proposal, but calls some demands "unacceptable"
Pecresse met with President Armen Sarkissian, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, parliament speaker Alen Simonian and Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Official Armenian press releases on the separate meetings indicated that she was received in her capacity as head of the Ile de France region of greater Paris.

The region is home to a large part of Frances influential Armenian community numbering some 600,000 people. French presidential candidates will vie for their votes during the tight presidential race.

A new poll released over the weekend showed Pecresse as the likely challenger to Macron in the second round of the elections slated for April 2022. They were trailed by two far-right candidates, Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen.

Zemmour chose Armenia for his first campaign trip which he took a week ago. The former journalist known for his controversial statements against Islam and immigration urged strong Western support for what he described as a Christian nation situated in the middle of an Islamic ocean.

Unlike Pecresse, Zemmour was not received by high-ranking Armenian officials. He met with several senior parliamentarians representing Armenias ruling party.

During her trip Pecresse was accompanied by former French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier and Bruno Retailleau, who leads the conservative Les Republicains partys group in the French Senate. Pecresse won early this month the opposition partys primary to be its presidential candidate.

Sarkissian described her as a good friend of Armenia and the Armenian people. The Pecresse campaigns Twitter page said they spoke for two hours to evoke the strong ties between Armenia and France.

The president and the other Armenian leaders also discussed with Pecresse the aftermath of last years war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

While in Yerevan Pecresse laid flowers at the Armenian genocide memorial and the Yerablur military cemetery where hundreds of Armenian soldiers killed during the six-week war were buried.

What happened to Armenia last year is a warning that we would be wrong to assume that this does not concern us, Julien Neny, a French journalist covering the trip, quoted her as saying afterwards.

Pecresse also told reporters that if elected president she will organize an international conference in Paris in support of Armenia.

Her visit coincided with Macrons 44th birthday anniversary. In a congratulatory message sent on Tuesday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian wished the French president unwavering will, strength and unshakable faith to lead the French people to new victorious horizons.

I assure you that in that high mission, Armenia stands with your and friendly France, ready to defend the common values, universal rights and civilizational heritage that unite us, Pashinian wrote.

Macron and Pashinian most recently met in Brussels on December 15 during trilateral talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

We will never abandon the Armenians, Macron tweeted after the meeting. We will always seek solutions for a lasting peace.
FDA now allows abortion pills by mail. But that remains a crime in Texas
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Texas records whats believed to be first known omicron death in US
Lightsource bp Closes $100 Million Financing on One of the Largest Solar Projects in Alabama
Qatar Airways is taking Airbus to court charging the manufacturer of failing to correct what it says is accelerated surface degradation impacting the Airbus A350 aircraft.

The airline said Monday that it's seeking a rapid resolution in the High Court in London. The airline has now grounded 21 A350 aircraft citing the conditions of the plane.

Qatar Airways said in August that it was forced to ground of the aircraft over what it described as fuselages degrading at an accelerated rate in the long-range aircraft, further escalating a monthslong dispute with the European airplane maker.

While Airbus declined to specifically discuss the announcement, Qatar Airways decision to ground the aircraft raised questions about the A350s carbon composite fuselage, designed to make the twin-aisle aircraft lighter and cheaper to operate by burning less jet fuel. Qatar Airways also is one of the worlds top operators of the aircraft.

In its statement, Qatar Airways said it had been monitoring the degradation beneath the paint on the fuselage of the aircraft for some time. It described the issue as a significant condition, without elaborating.

We strongly believe that Airbus must undertake a thorough investigation of this condition to conclusively establish its full root cause, the carrier said Monday. Without a proper understanding of the root cause of the condition, it is not possible for Qatar Airways to establish whether any proposed repair solution will rectify the underlying condition.

Qatar Airways has a fleet of 53 Airbus A350s in both its 1000 and 900 series. The airline has another on order with the Toulouse, France-based airplane manufacturer, making its total order of 76 aircraft  the most of any airline worldwide. In June, Qatar Airways said it wouldnt take any more A350s unless the problem was fixed.

Airbus declined to specifically discuss Qatar Airways grounding.

As a leading aircraft manufacturer we are always in talks / working with our customers, a statement said. Those talks we keep confidential. We have no further comment on our customers operations.

Currently, Singapore Airlines is the worlds top operator of the A350, with 56 now in its fleet. The airline said it has not experienced the issues reported. In America, Delta Air Lines has 15 in its fleet. The Atlanta carrier did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The A350 has a list price as much as $366.5 million, though buyers often get discounts in bulk deals.

Qatar Airways CEO, Akbar al-Baker, is known for his hard-changing, confrontational approach in negotiating with manufacturers and others.
BEIRUT (AP)  The U.N. chief warned Tuesday that the international community is unlikely to come forth with much-needed support for Lebanon amid its persistent government paralysis and as the country struggles through a very dramatic crisis.

Antonio Guterres remarks came at the end of his three-day visit during which he repeatedly urged Lebanon's political leadership to work together to resolve the economic and financial crisis. He also met with members of civil society groups and the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.

The crisis has pushed more than three quarters of Lebanon's population of 6 million into poverty; the national currency is in perpetual collapse while the Lebanese blame the political leadership for years of corruption and mismanagement.

Guterres said several initiatives were in the works to help Lebanon deal with the crisis, including holding an international conference, but that the government's paralysis bodes ill for international support.

The international community will probably ... not be responding as we need to respond if they see the country paralyzed and if they do not see a number of clear reforms in relation to the economic, social and the political life of the country, guaranteeing that the Lebanese institutions are putting the country on the right track, Guterres told reporters.

Lebanons Cabinet has not met since mid-October amid a disagreement over the course of a domestic probe into the massive August 2020 explosion in Beiruts port that killed over 200 and injured thousands. Powerful political groups accuse the judge leading the investigation of bias and demand he be removed.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati insists the probe is in the hands of the judiciary and refuses to interfere. Mikati himself came to office after a deadlock that lasted over a year as politicians haggled over the distribution of power within the Cabinet.

Lebanons political system is based on a delicately balanced sectarian power-sharing agreement that often holds decision-making hostage to backroom deals. The current paralysis has also impacted negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a much needed recovery plan.

The international community has declined to offer help until Lebanon's government implements major reforms. Humanitarian aid has been dispersed to deal with worsening living conditions while the government struggles with empty coffers, dwindling foreign reserves and revenues, and an increasingly desperate population.

Guterres called for an independent and impartial investigation into the port explosion, saying the people deserve answers. Three U.N. staffers lost family members in the blast, including two children.

Asked if he would call for an international probe, Guterres said that if an impartial and fully independent Lebanese investigation can not be guaranteed, then I believe it would be important for the international community to act.

Lebanons government has previously dismissed an international probe, calling it a waste of resources and time.
With just one day left in the election to keep or end union representation at ExxonMobils Beaumont complex, both sides are unsure if an answer will actually come before the end of the year.

The election, which was led by at least 35% of the employees  both union and non-union  represented under the United Steelworkers Union, is just the latest high point in a now eight-month lockout action that impacted over 600 workers when it first began in May.

The election stands to impact the future of labor representation for one of Beaumonts largest employers, but it also could immediately end the work stoppage, as the company has repeatedly said in updates to employees and the media that workers could return back to their positions soon after an affirmative decertification vote.

Those comments are a part of a new federal complaint the USW has lobbied against the company through the National Labor Review Board that could keep the election decision on hold until well after the first of the year.

Related: ExxonMobil, USW decertification ballots going out

USW District 13 Staff Representative Bryan Gross said that the union filed a complaint against the company earlier this month alleging that its comments were equivalent to making a promise to reward workers for a result in the election, which is illegal under NLRB guidelines.

We think they are making promises about bringing people back in if they choose to derctify, which undermines the entire point of an employee-led decertification movement, Gross said.

The union also filed a complaint alleging that the company wasnt providing information about which workers were still employed by ExxonMobil, limiting its ability to challenge votes if it suspects they came from someone not represented under the contract.

The company addressed these complaints on Dec. 16  shortly after they were officially filed. Representatives with ExxonMobil told employees that the company wasnt in violation because it was simply stating a fact that the lockout wouldnt continue, since there wouldnt be a potential for a strike if union representation ended.

Related: USW, ExxonMobil agreement unlikely before Nov. 1 deadline

Of course, the Company will also end the lockout if we reach a new agreement with the Union, the company wrote. We have always been clear about this and will enthusiastically welcome employees back either way.

As for the information, the company said it has already answered over 100 information requests from the union during the lockout, and it did give the USW Bargaining Committee some information that it asked for, even though it felt the request had nothing to do with the unions official role in negotiations.

Gross said the argument was disingenuous, as the lockout could have been avoided altogether if the company had chosen to keep workers on the job while negotiations continued, but the fallout of that decision will likely color the companys legacy in Beaumont for years to come.

I think it gives them a black eye in the community, Gross said. Its obvious that there is no reason for this lockout, and I think it will be a toxic environment when we get back to work.

Related: USW sets vote for potential contract ratification

Regardless of the way both sides feel about the charges, it will be up to the NLRB to decide whether the integrity of the election has been impacted.

That also means that the agency could decide to impound the cast votes that are supposed to be counted on Dec. 29, waiting instead to either count them or void the election entirely after all the charges against the company and union have been decided.

There have now been several charges filed against both sides including accusations of toxic work environments, surveillance, unsafe work practices and a number of other labor violations.

There hasnt been an official negotiation meeting since the third week of October, but both sides did meet for some sidebar conversations at the beginning of November.

Related: Amid lockout, Exxon workers spend Labor Day on strike

The USW has alleged that the company hasnt been willing to meet, but ExxonMobil has said it has been waiting for a request from bargaining representatives.

In the meantime, it has said it best and final offer  rejected by a majority of union members in an October vote  is still on the table whenever the union wants to accept it.

The Companys offer (inclusive of November 1 modifications) will remain on the table and available for ratification until the Company decides to withdraw it or issue a new offer; however as we have repeatedly stated in bargaining sessions, the USW bargaining committee has not compelled the Company to issue a revised offer at this time, representatives for the company wrote.

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/jd_journalism
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP)  A truck driver who was convicted of causing a fiery pileup that killed four people and injured six others on Interstate 70 west of Denver was sentenced Monday to 110 years in prison.

District Court Judge Bruce Jones imposed the sentence against Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, after finding it was the mandatory minimum term set forth under state law, The Denver Post reported.

I will state that if I had the discretion, it would not be my sentence, the judge said.

Aguilera-Mederos was convicted in October of vehicular homicide and other charges stemming from the April 25, 2019, crash. He testified that the brakes on his semitrailer failed before he plowed into vehicles that had slowed because of another wreck in the Denver suburb of Lakewood.

But prosecutors argued he could have used one of several runaway ramps as his truck barreled down from the mountains. The chain-reaction wreck ruptured gas tanks, causing flames that consumed several vehicles and melted parts of the highway.

Those killed were Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano, 24; William Bailey, 67; Doyle Harrison, 61; and Stanley Politano, 69.

Sometimes it feels like being half a person when you lose your spouse, said Kathleen Harrison, who was married to Doyle Harrison. We were a team.

A Jefferson County jury convicted Aguilera-Mederos of four counts of vehicular homicide, six counts of first-degree assault, 10 counts of attempted first-degree assault, four counts of careless driving causing death, two counts of vehicular assault and one count of reckless driving.

Aguilera-Mederos, who was hauling lumber, was traveling at least 85 mph (137 kph) on a part of the interstate where commercial vehicles are limited to 45 mph (72 kph) because of a steep descent from the Rocky Mountain foothills, according to investigators. The initial impact caused a 28-vehicle chain-reaction wreck.

Police said that just before the crash, the truck traveled past a ramp on the side of the interstate that is designed to safely stop trucks and other vehicles that have lost their brakes.

Aguilera-Mederos wept as he spoke during the sentencing, apologizing to the families of the victims and asking for their forgiveness.

I am not a criminal, he said. I am not a murderer. I am not a killer. When I look at my charges, we are talking about a murderer, which is not me. I have never thought about hurting anybody in my entire life.
The Houston police officer who hit and killed a man walking to his barber Dec. 4 sped onto the sidewalk to avoid crashing into another car, according to details in a crash report.

Michael Wayne Jackson, a 62-year-old laborer who lived with his brother in Sunnyside, was pronounced dead on scene. The report identified the driving officer as Orlando Hernandez, a 25-year-old beat cop with fewer than two years on the force. Ofc. Anthony Aranda, 25, was in the cruiser's passenger seat. The two were automatically placed on three days' administrative duty but have since been listed as active duty, Houston Police Department spokesperson Jodi Silva said Wednesday. Silva declined to answer if either officer was back behind the wheel of a patrol car or was assigned to a desk.

Investigators determined that Hernandez was "traveling at an unsafe speed" westbound along the 4100 block of Reed Road that Saturday evening. With lights and sirens activated, the pair was rushing to help fellow officers detain five individuals who fled from their car on foot after a short pursuit. As Hernandez approached the intersection of Scott Street, he encountered stopped traffic, according to the report.

Investigators said Hernandez "performed a faulty evasive action" by driving onto the sidewalk to avoid colliding with a car. He hit Jackson from behind, throwing the 6-foot, 195-pound man nearly 60 feet. The cruiser continued into an adjacent parking lot and stopped after crashing into a Dumpster. It is not noted whether Hernandez had control of the cruiser by the time it hit the bin.

"I need HFD here," Hernandez told dispatchers at 5:41 p.m., according to archived police radio traffic. "I just got wrecked out, uh, Scott and Reed. One male patient is going to be knocked unconscious, not breathing, uh, bleeding from the head."

Paramedics with the Houston Fire Department rushed to the scene and pronounced Jackson dead. An autopsy from the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences determined Jackson died from "multiple blunt force injuries." His manner of death was determined to be an accident.

Hernandez and Aranda declined to give statements to investigators for the crash report, which was filed by an officer in HPD's vehicular crimes division. Hernandez was not tested for alcohol or drugs, it was noted in the report.

"It looks like to me, maybe the guys couldn't drive that well," Jackson's adult brother Timothy Jackson said in the days following the collision. "They just weren't ready. Their skill level in pursuits maybe wasn't that good, because they came out of the street onto the sidewalk. They put anybody that's on the sidewalk in danger."

At a press briefing on the night of the collision, HPD Executive Asst. Chief Larry Satterwhite and prosecutor Sean Teare each maintained that the officers were en route to a "volatile" call.

"The officers were responding to a violent felony," Teare said. "That's something we're going to take into account. We're looking at all of this. This is not a normal crash. A normal crash in situations like this would probably constitute different charges than we're even going to think about in this case."

A grand jury will decide if the officers are charged. That process could take weeks, Teare said. He did not explain on potential charges.

The late Jackson's car broke down a few months ago, forcing him to walk nearly everywhere, take the bus, or catch occasional rides to work from his brother.

"He was always making jokes," Timothy said of his brother. "He was real sociable like that. He liked to try to sing a little bit. He was proud of a lot of people he's met, musicians and so forth. He knew B.B. King. That's who he was. He was a happy person."

HPD has not yet returned a request made Wednesday for department data that shows how many officers have been involved in collisions that left someone dead or seriously injured. In 2019, another HPD officer crashed into a pedestrian during a pursuit. The victim in that case was hospitalized.
As the United States braces for a potential omicron surge, you may be asking: Should I cancel or alter my holidays plans?

"No, I would not advise vaccinated people to change their holiday plans due to omicron," said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases doctor at UCSF.

Gandhi's response is very different for people who havent gotten a COVID-19 vaccination. "I would avoid parties and travel if I were an unvaccinated adult," she said. "Please get vaccinated if you are not yet vaccinated, as the vaccines are safe and effective."

Gandhi noted that, although disease-fighting antibodies from a COVID infection or vaccine can wane over time, and the virus can evolve to make it harder for antibodies to bind, theyre not the only line of defense.

"T cells from the vaccine still work against Omicron and B cells (generated by the vaccines) adapt the new antibodies they produce to work against variants," Gandhi explained in an email. "Therefore, we see that mild symptoms can still occur (with antibodies being the main protective modality in the nasal passages), but the vaccines are still protecting omicron-infected individuals from severe disease."

RELATED STORY: Vaccinated? You can stop worrying about omicron

The omicron variant, a strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spurred a new wave of cases in South Africa in November and is beginning to appear in the United States. While delta remains the dominant variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data Wednesday suggesting omicron cases will increase sharply in January.

Early evidence indicates the variant is highly transmissible, and the Bay Area already saw a mini-outbreak among a group of fully vaccinated, boosted employees of Kaiser Permanente's Oakland Medical Center. None of the staffers seemed to have passed it on to anyone, and they all had mild symptoms, according to a statement from Kaiser.

"The omicron variant may be more transmissible, but all the data so far is pointing to this variant being more mild" than earlier strains, said Gandhi.

Despite that hopeful message, theres been a lot of conflicting information. So we asked the experts how vaccinated people should think about parties and travel during the next few weeks.

Can vaccinated people attend holiday parties and feel safe?

Vaccinated people should feel comfortable attending indoor holiday parties at friends' homes and removing masks if everyone is vaccinated and not having any symptoms, Gandhi said. That includes elderly relatives, along with anyone who is immunocompromised or who has multiple medical conditions  especially if theyve gotten a booster shot.

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases doctor at UCSF, advised that people hosting holiday gatherings, dinners and reunions with a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people move them outdoors. If you decide against asking people about their vaccine status, you should probably assume some of them are unvaccinated, and keep the festivities outside. Asking everyone to take a rapid antigen test can be used for additional security, Chin-Hong said. Over-the-counter tests can be purchased online or at most pharmacies and give you results in 15 minutes. Theyre not as reliable as PCR tests, but you can take them at home, and theyre likely to catch anyone whos at their most contagious.

"You can consider, who's elderly, unboosted, immunocompromised?" Chin-Hong said. "Are there kids under 5? Those are the factors that might push you into additional testing."

You can also check your local public health orders for guidance on indoor private gatherings. For example, while San Francisco doesn't require individuals hosting private events in their homes to confirm the vaccination status of guests, the public health department recommends masks regardless of vaccination status when different households are mixing indoors.

Should vaccinated people alter their holiday travel plans?

Both Gandhi and Chin-Hong also encouraged vaccinated people to keep their travel plans, whether road tripping or hopping on a plane.

"For vaccinated people, especially if youre boosted, I think you can travel with confidence this year," Chin-Hong said. "You have to travel with COVID smarts, thinking about who you are, where youre going. Look at the vaccination status of the community where you're going. Is [COVID-19] surging? If it is, it doesnt mean you dont go, but it means you should be more careful with crowded indoor settings."

What if you're traveling with kids 4 and under who can't be vaccinated?

Gandhi said she considers travel with young kids to be safe. "Children under 4 are very low-risk for COVID, and omicron seems to be even more mild of a variant," she said.

Chin-Hong added that families should consider whether any of their kids have pre-existing conditions when making their decisions: "Think about the risk factors for kids getting ill ... the kids getting sick are those with neurological diseases or who are immunocompromised. You may be more careful with that child."

Gandhi noted that travelers should key into restrictions and requirements around travel, as some places are clamping down in response to omicron. Some countries may require you to provide a negative COVID test before arrival, regardless of vaccination status. "You might want to check ongoing travel bans and travel restrictions to ensure that these dont ruin your trip," she added.
Courtesy /U.S. Customs and Border Protection

A man claimed he was threatened in Mexico to smuggle more than $1 million in crystal meth into the United States, according to an arrest affidavit.

Luis Francisco Mercado, 46, a Mexican citizen, was arrested and charged with import, attempt to import and conspire to import the meth.
Texas last attempt to scour its voting rolls for noncitizens two years ago quickly devolved into a calamity.

The state flagged nearly 100,000 voters for citizenship checks and set them up for possible criminal investigation based on flawed data that didnt account for immigrants who gained citizenship. After it became clear it was jeopardizing legitimate voter registrations, it was pulled into three federal lawsuits challenging its process. Former Secretary of State David Whitley lost his job amid the fallout. And the court battle ultimately forced the state to abandon the effort and rethink its approach to ensure naturalized citizens werent targeted.

This fall, the state began rolling out a new, scaled-down approach. But again, the county officials responsible for carrying it out are encountering what appear to be faults in the system.

Scores of citizens are still being marked for review  and possible removal from the rolls. Registrars in some of the states largest counties have found that a sizable number of voters labeled possible noncitizens actually filled out their voter registration cards at their naturalization ceremonies. In at least a few cases, the state flagged voters who were born in the U.S.

The secretary of states office says it is following the settlement agreement it entered in 2019  an arrangement that limited its screening of voters to those who registered to vote and later indicated to the Texas Department of Public Safety that they are not citizens. Flagged voters can provide documentation of their citizenship in order to keep their registrations, officials have pointed out.

But the issues tied to the new effort are significant enough that theyve renewed worries among the civil rights groups that forced the state to change its practices. They are questioning Texas compliance with the legal settlement that halted the last review. And for some attorneys, the persisting problems underscore their concerns that the state is needlessly putting the registrations of eligible voters at risk.

Were trying to get a grasp of the scale, but obviously theres still a problem, which I think we always said would be the case, said Joaquin Gonzalez, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, which was involved in the 2019 litigation. Its definitely something we were concerned would happen if they tried to restart this process.

The review process tries to identify noncitizens using the Department of Public Safetys massive drivers license and ID database. It takes people who indicated they were not citizens when they obtained their IDs and then matches them to the voting rolls. But civil rights groups have been wary of that strategy because the database can contain inaccuracies and is prone to human error.

It made sense to improve the process [in the settlement], but I think all parties were aware that there were still fundamental problems with the database and how they matched records, Gonzalez said.

Texas voter citizenship review has persisted through the tenure of multiple secretaries of state and has been backed by state Republican leaders who have touted the broader review effort as a way to ensure the integrity of the voter rolls, though there is no evidence that large numbers of noncitizens are registered to vote.

The current iteration was formally initiated in early September before the appointment of the states new secretary of state, John Scott, who helped former President Donald Trump challenge the 2020 presidential election results in Pennsylvania.

Thats when the state sent counties 11,737 records of registered voters who were deemed possible non-U.S. citizens. It was a much smaller list than the one it produced in 2019, when it did not account for people who became naturalized citizens in between renewing drivers licenses or ID cards they initially obtained as noncitizens.

But when Bexar County received its list of 641 flagged voters, county workers quickly determined that 109 of them  17% of the total  had actually registered at naturalization ceremonies. The county is able to track the origin of those applications because of an internal labeling system it made up years ago when staff began attending the ceremonies, said Jacque Callanen, the countys administrator.

Election officials in Travis County said they were similarly able to identify that applications for 60 voters on the countys list of 408 flagged voters  roughly 15% of the total  had been filled out at naturalization ceremonies.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, another group that sued the state in 2019, is still assessing the extent to which the states new attempt to review the rolls may be defective. But those figures alone should give everyone pause, ACLU staff attorney Thomas Buser-Clancy said after The Texas Tribune provided him those tallies.

What we do know is that every time the secretary of state tries to do something like this it fails and that these efforts, which inevitably ensnare eligible voters, should not be happening, Buser-Clancy said.

In an advisory announcing the revised process, the secretary of states office told counties that they should first attempt to investigate a voters eligibility. If they are unable to verify citizenship, the county must then send out notices of examination that start a 30-day clock for the voter to submit proof of citizenship to retain their registration. Voters who dont respond with proof within 30 days are removed from the rolls  though they can be reinstated if they later prove their citizenship, including at a polling place.

Beyond the figures from Bexar and Travis counties, local election officials in other counties, including Cameron and Williamson, confirmed theyve heard back from flagged voters who are naturalized citizens. After mailing 2,796 notices, officials in Harris County said 167 voters had provided them with documentation proving their citizenship. In Fort Bend, officials received proof of citizenship from at least 87 voters on their list of 515 possible noncitizens. Last week, Texas Monthly reported on two cases of citizens in Cameron County who were flagged as possible noncitizens.

This process, agreed upon by all parties and stakeholders, will ensure that only qualified U.S. citizens remain on the voter rolls in Texas 254 counties, said Sam Taylor, the secretary of states spokesperson. We do not want any legitimate, qualified U.S. citizens to be canceled from the voter rolls, and this process protects U.S. citizens right to remain registered and to vote.

In its advisory, the secretary of state suggested voter registrars could attempt to confirm a flagged voters eligibility by consulting with other county governmental entities that may have verified their citizenship or by trying to identify voter registration applications that originated from naturalization ceremonies.

To the extent that counties were able to confirm their citizenship status and they were kept on the rolls  thats exactly how the agreed-upon process is supposed to work, Taylor said of the naturalized citizens identified by officials in Bexar and Travis counties.

However, county officials have previously told the state they often have no way to independently verify someones citizenship status to avoid sending out the 30-day notices. And most counties dont appear to track applications from naturalization ceremonies.

So far, 2,327 voter registrations have been canceled as part of the review  88% of them because the voter did not respond to the notice within 30 days. Just 278 were canceled after voter registrars verified they were not citizens. In some cases, county officials said, this occurs because of clerical errors. Nearly 17 million Texans are registered to vote.

The rest remain pending, largely because the state is now under a federally mandated moratorium on registration cancellations within 90 days of a federal election  in this case, the upcoming March primaries. (Various counties did not send out notices until the last few weeks, meaning any cancellations for failing to respond cannot be carried out until after the primary election.)

Voters flagged through the review process have every opportunity to confirm their U.S. citizenship status and remain on the rolls, including at the polls when they go to vote, Taylor said.

But lawyers involved in the 2019 litigation said the state cannot rely on that as a failsafe if the review process is systematically including eligible voters.

Whatever the flaw is, its systematic with respect to naturalized citizens, said Nina Perales, the vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which also sued the state in 2019.

In the shadow of the states botched 2019 effort, some county elections officials told the Tribune they approached the renewed effort with hesitation. But unlike two years ago when many of them held off on acting on the states lists, county voter registrars are now under financial threat if they dont cull through them.

The Texas Legislature this year empowered the secretary of states office to withhold funds from them if they fail to timely perform voter roll maintenance duties, including those related to voters flagged as possible noncitizens. Keith Ingram, the director of the offices elections division, reminded locals of this in a Nov. 15 email in which he noted that a number of counties had taken no action on the registrations his office put into question.

Ingrams email appears to have prompted several counties to send out notices of examination, while others are still seeking additional data or information that could allow them to confirm that voters are citizens without sending the notices.

Gretchen Nagy, the director of voter registration in Travis County, sees it as due diligence owed to the voters, recalling the phone conversations she had with anguished naturalized citizens who were caught up in the states 2019 review.

It was really difficult when people on the other end were really upset and emotionally distraught, [asking] Is there something wrong? Did I do something wrong? Nagy said. Were basically trying to think outside the box  any agency, any department that we can reach out to  to see if we can do a confirmation of citizenship before these individuals ever have to hear from us.

Up the road, election officials in Williamson County last week were waiting on guidance from the state in regard to nearly a fifth of the voters on their list of 138 possible noncitizens who appeared to have registered through the Department of Public Safety, which only registers individuals once their citizenship has been verified.

The state erroneously included 25,000 of those types of records in its 2019 review  a mistake it began quietly walking back within days of announcing the review effort.

The secretary of states office confirmed its current review includes a limited number of those matches, though it did not respond to a request for an exact number. Taylor, the spokesperson, said the state determined that some voters who initially registered through DPS were flagged because they marked yes on the citizenship field but later marked no on the same field at a subsequent visit to DPS. Those records could also include voters who were unable to provide citizenship documents to DPS.

As a result, these records were flagged for citizenship review, Taylor said.

The issues with the revised review appear to even be reaching voters who were born in the U.S.

Among them is Ivan Henson, a certified public accountant in Tarrant County, who was puzzled when he found in his mailbox a notice from the county dated Nov. 30 indicating his citizenship was in question. He was born in New Mexico.

There is absolutely no reason I should be on this list, Henson said.

Hensons name appeared alongside more than 600 others on the list of possible noncitizens Tarrant County received from the state. County officials said they reviewed the list to see if they could find any clerical errors but ultimately sent out the notices following the states instructions.

Recalling news coverage of the states voter rolls debacle from two years ago, Henson made copies of his birth certificate and passport and quickly mailed them to the county, but he said he worries others who dont have time to mess with it wont be able to comply as easily.

I am self-employed with my own copier and my own resources and my own time, Henson said. You know who this letter is going to disenfranchise.

Disclosure: Texas Monthly, the Texas secretary of state and the ACLU of Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribunes journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Over the weekend Jump Festa 2022 had some of the biggest announcements in anime for the year. These were some of our favorites.

Last Saturday and Sunday Shueisha, the publisher of Shonen Jump and the Jump publications, hosted Jump Festa. This annual event features announcements about some of our favorite anime and manga. It includes continuations, entirely new shows, news we sort of saw coming, and some bombshells that we were delighted to be surprised by.

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is finally here!  pic.twitter.com/7NXLiO82HB  VIZ (@VIZMedia) December 18, 2021

The final arc of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War was released on Saturday with a teaser trailer and cast. Fans of the series will be looking forward to an October 2022 premiere date in Japan with no word on international releases, streaming services, or the possibility of simulcast.

But VIZ media confirmed their license for the upcoming season, so check in with them for more information as the premiere date gets closer.

One Piece Red

On August 6th the next One Piece feature film, One Piece Red, will open in Japanese theaters. Fans have been looking forward to a 1,000th episode movie announcement, so this one wasnt a huge surprise to most of us.

The concept art is pretty awesome, though. One Piece Red will follow the Straw Hat Pirates as they join a music festival.

Yu-Gi-Oh! GO RUSH!!

You read that right. In April there will be new Yu-Gi-Oh! as the series comes back for its 8th, nostalgia fueled season. Two siblings in elementary school stumble upon a space ship and meet an alien who came to Earth in search of the Rush Duel.

This sounds like nonsense, but lets all be honest and admit well at least check out an episode or two when its time to d-d-d-d-duel in April.

Chainsaw Man

Weve known about Chainsaw Man for a while, but Jump Festa confirmed a summer 2022 release date for part two of the manga as well as a 2022 premiere for the upcoming anime. This is one of the most anticipated animes of the year, so its no surprise it was big news at Jump Festa, too.

Jujutsu Kaisen 0 Trailer

Jujutsu Kaisen 0s Japanese premiere is days away on December 24th, but they released a last minute brand new trailer to get some last minute excitement, and it looks like it worked. But you knew about the movie already, you want to know about something new.

How about the Jujutsu Kaisen stage production? Appearing in Tokyo and Osaka in July and August of next year, we need to know what the action and demons will look like and if anyone will be recording it for international viewers to enjoy.

Demon Slayer Stage Adaptation

Jujutsu Kaisen isnt the only action filled anime getting a stage adaptation. Nomura Mansai II will direct a Demon Slayer production utilizing Noh-Kyogen style dramatic performances. Fans can see this show in Tokyo and Osaka in summer and winter 2022 respectively.

These were some of our highlights from Jump Festa 2022, but what were yours? Which announcement were you most excited about? What upcoming anime are you looking forward to the most? Let us know in the comments!

Ja Ne, Adventures!
Handout photo from the Cabinet Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia

President Joko Jokowi Widodo talks to officials at the site of a project to construct a 30,000-hectare (116-square-mile) industrial estate in North Kalimantan, a province in the Indonesian section of Borneo Island, Dec. 21, 2021.

Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo broke ground Tuesday on a U.S. $132-billion green industrial estate on Borneo to be built with investments from China and the United Arab Emirates and electrified by a Chinese-funded hydropower plant.

When finished the 30,000-hectare (116-square-mile) industrial zone in North Kalimantan province would be almost as big as the island-nation of Malta and be a manufacturing hub for solar panels, batteries for electric cars, industrial silicon, and other products.

The government is targeting 2024, Jokowis final year in office, to complete construction of the so-called Green Indonesian Industrial Estate, located in Bulungan regency.

A leap in Indonesias economic transformation starts from here, Jokowi said at a ceremony at the site to launch construction of the industrial zone.

The new zone will create jobs and contribute significantly to state revenue, he said.

This is a cooperation between Indonesia, Indonesian investors, investors from the United Arab Emirates, and investors from China  all of them together, he said.

What will be produced in North Kalimantan are almost all finished goods, so they will provide great added value for our country because we will sell them already in the form of finished goods, Jokowi said.

Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, said the project would cost up to 1,848 trillion rupiah ($132 billion).

So far, at least 10 major investors from China have committed to investing in the zone, Luhut said.

They are investors who have proven to have very good investment track records and have invested tens of billions of dollars in downstream nickel production in Indonesia in recent years, Luhut said at the ceremony.

Officials at Luhuts ministry declined to provide details on those Chinese investors.

Nickel, a metal mined in the Sulawesi and Moluccas regions of Indonesia, is used for making batteries for electric vehicles.

According to information from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Chinese-linked companies dominate the nickel smelter industry in Indonesia. These firms include PT Sulawesi Mining Investment, PT Virtue Dragon Industry, PT Huadi Nickel Alloy, and PT Harita Nickel.

In May, Chinas Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co. said it would partner with EVE Energy, a maker of batteries for electric vehicles, to establish a $2.08-billion nickel and cobalt plant on Halmahera, and island in the Moluccas chain.

Hydropower plant and dams

Meanwhile, construction already is underway for a 9,000 megawatt hydroelectric plant that would power the future industrial zone.

Kayan Hydro Energy is building the $17.8 billion plant with funding from the Power Construction Corporation of China (PCR), Luhut said.

The hydropower project, which began in 2019 and includes the construction of five dams, has attracted other investors, he said.

At first, the response was lukewarm, but towards the end of 2019, some investors began to respond very seriously, Luhut said. And this requires courage, good execution skills, and great financial strength to realize a hydropower plant.

There are concerns however, that the five dams being built on the Kayan River and other rivers in the province will threaten the regions pristine forests and ecosystem. The Kayan River runs through the northern part of Kalimantan, the Indonesian section of Borneo Island, where vast swaths of forest have been cleared for logging, mining, and the cultivation of palm oil.

Fabby Tumiwa, executive director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), a private think-tank, said the government should live up to the green label of the industrial zone and make up for forest areas lost in its construction.

The presidents dream is to make a truly green area, so everything produced there must be environmentally friendly, Fabby said, adding that the government needed to impose strict rules allowing only renewable energy in the area.

Indonesia, Southeast Asias largest and most populous country, is the worlds eighth most polluting one with 2 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions to its name, according to the World Resources Institute.

If we talk about China, domestically they are consistent about pollution control. They even have the strictest industrial standards in the world, requiring industries there to reduce the use of coal, Fabby told BenarNews.

What needs to be seen is how good local regulations are. Do they provide incentives and require incoming investors to comply with the latest, most efficient technology?

No. 2 investor

China is the second-biggest investor in Indonesia. Its investments here doubled to almost $4.8 billion in 2020 from $2.4 billion in 2017.

China is funding projects in Indonesia as part of Beijings ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) worldwide infrastructure-building program. These include the $6 billion Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

According to a study by AidData released late September, Indonesia owes $17.28 billion in hidden debt to China, more than four times its $3.90 billion in reported sovereign debt.

Nearly 70 percent of Chinas overseas lending is directed to state-owned companies and private-sector institutions. For the most part, the debts do not appear on government balance sheets, said AidData, a U.S.-based international development research lab.

The hidden debt problem is less about governments knowing that they will need to service undisclosed debts (with known monetary values) to China than it is about governments not knowing the monetary value of debts to China that they may or may not have to service in the future, it said.

But this is not hidden debt, according to a deputy at the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs.

They are investments by Chinese companies, Iskandar Simorangkir told BenarNews in October.
Bennington, VT (05201)

Today

Mostly cloudy with snow showers during the morning. High around 30F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 90%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of snow after midnight. Low around 25F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 70%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.
Features Editor

Jennifer Huberdeau is The Eagle's features editor. Prior to The Eagle, she worked at The North Adams Transcript. She is a 2021 Rabkin Award Winner, 2020 New England First Amendment Institute Fellow and a 2010 BCBS Health Care Fellow.
2021 brought many business and restaurant closures to Berkshire County. However, many entrepreneurs decided to take the leap and start something new.

Here are some of the establishments that celebrated new beginnings in 2021:

(If this story doesn't load in the Berkshire Eagle app, visit BerkshireEagle.com to read.)

La Chalupa La Enchilada, a food truck in Pittsfield

RJ's, Berkshire Palate, Flat Burger Society restaurants offer new dining options in Pittsfield Three new restaurants have recently opened in Pittsfield, all in dining spaces that were vacated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

RJ's Restaurant, Berkshire Palate, and Flat Burger Society, restaurants all in Pittsfield

Rem Roc's Fried Chicken and Soul Food, restaurant in Pittsfield

Is this Great Barrington cafe an early sign of life after COVID-19? GREAT BARRINGTON  Recognizing the significance of a business opening amid the landscape of closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and w

twoflower, cafe in Great Barrington

The word on the street: New bookstore/gallery space opens in downtown Pittsfield PITTSFIELD  Independent bookstores often struggle to find a foothold these days, but a Berkshire County couple believe they have found a form

Familiar Trees, bookstore in Pittsfield

BB's Hot Spot brings 'isle of spice,' taste of Caribbean to Pittsfield Braised oxtail, jerk chicken and curried goat are just some of the Caribbean American food specialties now offered at BB's Hot Spot on Columbus Avenue in Pittsfield.

BB's Hot Spot, restaurant in Pittsfield

A new take on Friendly's: Clear Sky Cannabis debuts in North Adams NORTH ADAMS  A few months from now, a walk-up window at the former Friendlys restaurant at 221 State Road will reopen  the same window that

Clear Sky Cannabis, cannabis dispensary in North Adams

Robertos Pizza, restaurant in Sheffield

He always dreamed of opening a record store. Along came COVID  and a cheap lease in Great Barrington. GREAT BARRINGTON  Rob Brannock remembers riding in the back seat of a wood-paneled station wagon on the way to his first day of junior high s

Robs Records & Audio, music store in Great Barrington

Norad Toy & Candy Company, candy and toy store in North Adams

'Anthropologie meets Goodwill': Secondhand store Terra opens its doors in North Adams A secondhand store selling vintage clothing, home goods and other items opened last month on Ashland Street in North Adams.

Terra, vintage thrift store in North Adams

Miss Adams Diner reopens to traditional diner fare, reflecting more than 70 years of history Restaurateur Pete Oleskiewicz reopened Miss Adams Diner on Thursday, more than a year after purchasing the iconic building on Park Street in Adams.

Miss Adams Diner, restaurant in Adams

Pittsfield woman's job loss during pandemic brings 'pipe dream' to fruition Jillian Bamford always had dreamed of opening her own fitness studio. Losing her job because of COVID-19 provided her with the opening she needed to make it happen.

On Pointe Barre and Fitness, fitness studio in Williamstown

In Housatonic, an extra-special cafe plans for a fall opening A non-profit that provides a niche into mainstream adult life for people with special needs will soon carve its own niche in the heart of Housatonic.

ExtraSpecialTeas, cafe in Great Barrington

Lighter fare: Lanesborough's first pot shop opens Friday Lanesborough's first retail recreational marijuana store opens on July 30 after three years of planning and going through local and state permitting process. The store is in the former Lanesborough Super Market on North Main Street (Rt. 7) across from the Lanesborough police station. In addition to various cannabis products, the store will have works from local artists on display.

Liberty Market, cannabis dispensary in Lanesborough

Freight Yard Pub owners open new takeout option, Craft Food Barn NORTH ADAMS  Empire-building is hard, slow work, especially during a pandemic. But the Taylor family is getting there.

Craft Food Barn, restaurant in North Adams

With an Ace in hand, Pittsfield building supply owner expanding family business The owner of Johns Building Supply on Crane Avenue has decided to expand the 73-year-old company's offerings by opening a two-story, 11,000-square-foot hardware store across the street.

Johns Building Supply and Johns Ace Hardware, hardware store in Pittsfield
Investigations editor

Larry Parnass joined The Eagle in 2016 from the Daily Hampshire Gazette, where he was editor in chief. His freelance work has appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, CommonWealth Magazine and with the Reuters news service.
HINSDALE  The town of Hinsdale is lining up mutual aid to cover the loss of 80 percent of its Highway Department, with wintry weather forecast for Wednesday, and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Four of the five members of the department have tested positive for COVID-19, leaving the town with a severely depleted road crew.

Quote As soon as we had one [positive case], we were concerned about what could potentially happen. The next day, we got another.  Bob Graves, Hinsdale town administrator

Weve been scrambling, and were trying to make alternative plans, said Town Administrator Bob Graves.

To fill the gap over the next week, officials appealed to a few people who hold commercial licenses to operate large trucks. One of them began to help, but then came down with the coronavirus. Another is heading off to vacation in Florida, Graves said Tuesday.

The staffing problem will persist, because affected employees tested positive over a span of days, pushing the quarantine period out for some.

As soon as we had one [positive case], we were concerned about what could potentially happen, Graves said. The next day, we got another.

The road chief in Peru got in touch to offer assistance, as did Edward M. Bud Hall, the Dalton Department of Public Works superintendent who formerly worked in Hinsdale.

He said, Look, well do anything we can to help, Graves said.

This week, Hinsdale is offering backup to the Dalton Police Department, after five of its 13 staff members tested positive for the virus.

The state handles plowing and sanding on Route 8, but not Route 143, which links Hinsdale to Peru on the east side of town.

By long-standing agreement, the road crew in the town of Washington cares during the winter for Pittsfield Road.

A notice on Hinsdales website warns residents that limited staffing will force lags in treating winter roads.

Please understand that services may be subject to delay, the post says.

The National Weather Service predicts a slight chance of freezing rain, sleet and snow Wednesday morning.

On Friday night, snow is likely, starting after 1 a.m. Saturday. The weather service said snow will fall during Christmas morning, then possibly turn to a mixture of rain and snow.
A priests warning that building needs might force the closing of the St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Adams set the phones ringing at the parochial school next door. People were in shock about the possibility of the school closing, its principal says.
The whir of the coffee grinder in the still dark of the morning relaxes my soul. The kettle bubbles with boiling water, and the ground beans froth in the French press when it pours in. Coffee isnt just caffeine to me, its become a part of my morning routine.

What started as just a different way to brew coffee in the morning eventually became a several-step process which I enjoy every minute of. I use a specific coffee bean, and when the coffee is brewed, I begin the four-step process of adding more ingredients, dependent upon what season it is.

My morning cup of coffee has its own name, and the jokes about how high maintenance my coffee habit has become are many. But I dont mind it. I enjoy telling the story of how my coffee habit has evolved over the years! Its not the same, I realize, but it reminds me of the work the Holy Spirit has done, and continues to do, in my life.

Hebrews 5:12 says,

It may sound a little like coffee snobbery, but I would never voluntarily go back to drinking drip coffee, or gasp gas station coffee! Nor would I trade all of the priceless ways Jesus has grown the roots of my faith from tiny seeds throughout my life.

The author of Hebrews was calling attention to the believers of that time period to act like they had been following Christ as long as they had! When my daughter is unraveling from the plethora of emotional challenges junior high brings, I try to stick to simple truths. I remind her who she is, Whose she is, and what God says about her life and the people He has placed in it. The NIV Study Bible explains Six fundamental doctrines are mentioned: repentance, faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgement.

Going back to the basics of our faith is a great way to reset when we are in a downward spiral, but we cant stay there. We cant go back and act like the hand of God hasnt redirected our steps the way He has.

The recipients of the letter we call Hebrews were not babies in their faith. They were not recent converts. Having taken the first steps toward becoming (mature) Christians, the NIV Study Bible explains, they had slipped back to where they started. Jesus warned, the enemy was out to steal, kill and destroy us. It doesnt matter how long weve been following Christ, we are never immune to an attack from the enemy. Though we are sealed the moment we give our lives to Jesus, the enemy can distract and derail us. People whom we thought could never fall away from their faith can be victims of struggle as much as anyone else. Scripture tells us to pay attention, guard our hearts, and put on the armor of God.

The New American Standard Bible translation of Hebrews 6:1-2 reads:

Maturity doesnt happen automatically. Physically, we grow and thrive as long as our basic needs are met. Spiritually, we grow and thrive as we actively seek God through His Word and prayer. Bible study fuels our faith, as the main way God communicates to us through Scripture! Maturity, in the original Greek definition, means the state of the more intelligent; moral and spiritual perfection. Maturity in faith is evident in the way we live our daily lives. The Lord encourages us to apply the Word. Paul wrote to the Colossians,

Maturity of our faith is evident in the fruit of our lives. We allow Gods Word to settle, convict, and change us through the supernatural incarnation of the Holy Spirit in us through Christ Jesus. The foundation the author of Hebrews is alluding to is the continual seeking of Christ in our daily lives. It creates a firm foundation for our lives when we build upon His Truth.

Stop going over the basic truths over and over doesnt mean never to look back or repeat the foundational truths of the Word of God. This passage of Scripture is not only talking about believers who have drifted from the Lord, but those among them who had heard about the Lord but not yet given their lives to Him. Therefore suggests that there were among the Hebrews those who were too long in the state of incomplete faith, close to believing in Jesus but not fully decided, Moody Bible Commentary explains. This exhortation is directed to readers who were considering abandoning the messianic community and retiring to temple worship. They are called to move from the OT foundations of faith to the complete or perfect faith in the Messiah Jesus.

The basic truths of Scripture are worth repeating. The author of Hebrews is advising us not to stay there. And for those who have heard the truth and have not yet given their lives to Christ, the time is now. The VOICE paraphrase of Hebrews 5:12 reads:

The recipients are being encouraged to grow spiritually, and to leave the legalistic mindset of the Old Testament in exchange for the new covenant promises of the New Testament. Moody Bible Commentary explains, It is inconceivable that one would return to the elementary principles (the milk), when the teachings and reality of the perfect new covenant and the Messiah were available.

Before the Word of God was bound into the Bible we read today, Gods people would have been familiar with the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament. The writer of Hebrews is urging them to make the connections from the Torah to the Messiah. These people were going back to the temple, instead of turning towards the Messiah. The Voice paraphrase of Hebrews 6:1-2 reads:

Maturity requires commitment. The kind of resolve which builds upon the foundation of our faith. I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Paul wrote,

Let us be committed, not to abandoning the roots of our faith, but to continually growing and allowing the Lord to prune us as we grow in Him. It may seem easier to revert back or shy away from the difficult things we are called by God to do. But if we shrink back and shy away from what He is calling us to do, what He has purposed for our lives, we will actually cause ourselves more pain. For even in the trials we face under the fire of refinement, the joy and peace of the Lord are exponentially more comforting than the fleeting ease of the flesh.

Like Paul, we can persevere. Perhaps, repeating the basic truths, and asking the Holy Spirit to reveal them in new layers of application as we continue to seek God with all of our hearts, all of our souls and all of our minds. One step at a time, He is leading us home.

More from this author

Jesus, Our Powerful Redeemer and Rescuer

Meditate on the True Reason for the Christmas Season: Jesus

Seize Every Chance to Experience  and Share  the Love of Christ



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Christmas Eve celebrates the most important event in history: The Creator entered creation to save it. God expressed his great love for humanity by becoming Immanuel (which means God with us) on the first Christmas in Bethlehem. Christmas Eve prayers can help you experience the peace and joy of Gods presence with you. By praying on Christmas Eve, you can take in the wonder of Christmas and enjoy Gods gifts to the fullest. Make time for prayer this Christmas Eve. When you pray during this holy night, the true meaning of Christmas will come alive for you. Here are 4 inspiring Christmas Eve prayers for you and your family.

Christmas Eve Prayer to Take in the Wonder of Christmas

Dear God, help me experience Christmas wonder on this holy evening. May I feel awe for the ultimate gift youve given humanity. Reach out to me so I can perceive your wonderful presence with me. Help me perceive the everyday miracles of your work around me during this most wonderful time of the year.

May the light of hope you offer help me transcend my worries and inspire me to trust you. Light broke through the darkness of night as angels announced Jesus Christs birth on the first Christmas. As I look at Christmas lights tonight, may I remember the wonder of that Christmas, when shepherds received that good news from your messengers. Let every burning candle and twinkling light bulb in my home remind me that you are the light of the world. When Im outside this evening, remind me to look up at the sky. Let the stars I see help me ponder the wondrous Star of Bethlehem that guided people to you. This Christmas Eve, may I see you in a new light because of wonder.

As I savor the wonderful foods of Christmas, may I be inspired to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). When I eat a variety of wondrous foods at Christmas dinner tonight, remind me of your awesome creativity and generosity. Let the Christmas candy and cookies I eat remind me of the sweetness of your love. Im thankful for the people around the table with me on this holy night. Bless us all as we celebrate together.

May the Christmas carols I listen to help me encounter wonder. Music is a universal language that goes beyond words to express your messages. When I hear Christmas music, let it resonate in my soul and evoke feelings of awe within me. Let me feel free to enjoy playful fun, with childlike wonder, when Christmas songs move me to do so. Encourage me to turn up the volume for Christmas carols, and even sing and dance along, with the wonderful awareness that youre celebrating with me.

A Christmas Eve Prayer to Say as a Family before Bed

Happy birthday, Jesus! Thank you for coming from heaven to earth to save the world. Thank you for being with us now through your Holy Spirit. Lord, it was your love that led you to be with us. Help us to respond to your great love together. Show us how to love ourselves, each other, and you more. Inspire us to choose words and actions that reflect your wisdom. When we make mistakes, help us learn from them and ask for forgiveness from you and those weve hurt. When others hurt us, may we not let bitterness take root in us, but instead forgive them with your help, as you call us to do. Give us peace in our home and in all our relationships. Guide us so we can make the best choices and fulfill your good purposes for our lives. Help us notice signs of your work in our lives together and be encouraged. Fill us with hope for our future as a family together with you.

As we prepare to sleep on this holy night, we trust you with all of our concerns and ask for your peace in return. Inspire us through our dreams this Christmas Eve. When we wake up tomorrow on Christmas morning, may we experience great joy.

A Prayer to Let Go of Stress and Enjoy God's Gifts on Christmas

Jesus, our Prince of Peace, please clear worries out of my mind and calm my heart. As I breathe in and out, let my breath remind me to appreciate the gift of life youve given me. Help me exhale my stress and inhale your mercy and grace. Through your Holy Spirit, renew my mind so I can shift my focus away from Christmas commercialism and toward worshiping you. May I rest in your presence and enjoy uninterrupted time in prayer and meditation with you. Thank you for your promise in John 14:27: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. Your presence with me is the ultimate gift, which leads me to true peace and joy.

A Prayer of Thanks on Christmas Eve for Christ Our Savior

Wonderful Savior, thank you for incarnating on earth to save the world. Through your redemptive earthly life that began on Christmas Eve and finished on the cross, you have made it possible for me  and all of humanity  to connect with God for eternity. As 2 Corinthians 9:15 declares, Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

I would still be lost in sin without my relationship with you. Thanks to you, Im free  free to live with faith rather than fear. Im grateful beyond words for all youve done to save my soul from death and give me eternal life, Jesus. Thank you for loving me, forgiving me, and guiding me.

This Christmas Eve, Im celebrating the good news of your birth as I remember the angels announcing it to the shepherds. Im pondering your incarnation and treasuring it, as your earthly mother Mary did. Im seeking you and worshiping you like the wise men did. I give you thanks for your saving love, tonight and always.

Christmas Eve Bible Verses

Matthew 1:23: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means God with us).

John 1:14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Isaiah 9:6: For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Luke 2:4-14: So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 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. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.

Luke 2:17-21: When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Praying on Christmas Eve connects you with Jesus as you prepare to celebrate his birth. When you pray, you can discover the wonder of his presence with you. That will help you open the gift of Christmas on this holy night and beyond.

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Whitney Hopler is the author of the Wake Up to Wonder book and the Wake Up to Wonder blog, which help people thrive through experiencing awe. She leads the communications work at George Mason Universitys Center for the Advancement of Well-Being. Whitney has served as a writer, editor, and website developer for leading media organizations, including Crosswalk.com, The Salvation Army USAs national publications, and Dotdash.com (where she produced a popular channel on angels and miracles). She has also written the young adult novel Dream Factory. Connect with Whitney on Twitter.





This article is part of our Prayer resource meant to inspire and encourage your prayer life when you face uncertain times. Visit our most popular prayers if you are wondering how to pray or what to pray. Remember, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us and God knows your heart even if you can't find the words to pray.

Serenity Prayer

The Lords Prayer

Prayer for Peace

Morning Prayers

Good Night Prayers

Prayer for Healing

Prayer for Protection

Prayer for Gods Help

Prayer for Anxiety

Prayer for Strength
Is Judging Someone a Sin?

When Jesus encountered the woman who was found committing adultery  she had been judged and sentenced to death by stoning  it was Jesus who stood to free her from the wrong judgment (see John 8:7). In this account, many scholars believe that Jesus began writing in the sand all the sins of the womans accusers. Perhaps Jesus was prompting them to consider and deal with their own sin first before they were to stone the woman for her sins.

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye, when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye (Matthew 7:2-5).

Part of judging correctly is that we must first deal with our own sin, then we can see clearly to help others who are caught in sin. Judging others becomes sinful behavior when we judge with pride, comparison, or to belittle another. Judgment like this can harden our hearts, increase arrogance, and can hurt those that we judge.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? (James 4:11-12).

We should not judge others out of anger or deal with them harshly. The apostle Paul warned against contempt toward another and judging other believers over minor differences that causes internal strife (see Romans 14:1-13). Wrong judgment can divide the body of Christ. It can draw us away from God and the work He is doing in our own lives, and from bearing the fruit of the Spirit and furthering Gods kingdom. When we judge correctly in love and humility, we honor both God and the other person by helping them pursue righteousness.

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All four of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) record events from Jesus earthly life and ministry, but Mark, or John Mark as he is called in the book of Acts, omits Jesus ancestry and birth and starts his record with Jesus baptism and ministry, focusing more so on Christs humanity.

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it (Mark 8:34-35).

Luke

Luke, a medical doctor, a gentile, and the author of both this gospel and the book of Acts, focused largely on Jesus healing ministry in his account of Jesus life, and his two-volume set of Luke and Acts (written for Theophilus) gives us an overview of Christ, the origins of Christianity, and the birth of the Church!

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught (Luke 1:1-4).

Related - 8 Important Mini Lessons from Jesus in Luke 12

John

John, one of Jesus 12 disciples, and one of the sons of thunder along with his brother, James, wrote his gospel after the other three were written and focused his eyewitness account on supplying supplemental information, perspective and details complementary to the other gospels.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Related - Why Is John the "Disciple Whom Jesus Loved"?

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One of the great realities of Scripture is the prophetic nature of the Bible. There are predictions made in Scripture that have already come true, and there are many that we are waiting to come true  for example the second coming of Jesus Christ. Yet, before he comes the second time he had to come the first time.

The prediction of Jesus' first coming was foretold all throughout the Old Testament. You might be wondering where does the Old Testament predict Jesus birth and death? I am glad you asked because we are going to look at some of these predictions.

Old Testament Prophecies of Jesus

Before we dive in and answer the question of where the Old Testament predicts Jesus birth and death, lets take a moment to answer another question: How can you trust biblical prophecy? The answer is found in the very Scripture itself:

You may say to yourselves, How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord? If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed (Deuteronomy 18:21-22).

You can test the prophetic accuracy of Scripture by asking this one question: Did it come to pass? This is really the only way to know if something that is prophesied is true or not. Lets consider some of these prophecies from the Old Testament.

Let's look at 11 places where the Old Testament accurately predicts Jesus birth and death. In answering the question of where the Old Testament predict Jesus birth and death, I want to divide the listings into two categories. We will first start with those pointing to his birth, and then those pointing to his death.

Old Testament Predictions of Jesus' Birth

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1. Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

From the very beginning, right after Adam and Eve disobeyed God, he gave indication that a savior would be coming from the seed of the woman, Eve. God revealed right away that this seed would be the one that would crush the head of the serpent. We know that seed pointed to Jesus. Moses is credited as the author of the book of Genesis. The time of his writing isnt one hundred percent certain, but is estimated to be about 1500 years before Christ was born.

2. Genesis 12:3

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

In this verse, God is making a promise to Abraham that he would make him into a great nation. As part of that promise he tells him that all people on earth will be blessed through you. This blessing of all mankind points to the one who would redeem peoples from every tribe and tongue on the face of the earth. The blessing of salvation was for all who would believe.

3. Isaiah 7:14

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

This Scripture points to the manner in which he will born, and also to one of the names given to Christ: Immanuel, meaning God with us. This was pointing to both his human birth and his divine nature. This was written over 700 years before Christ was born.

4. Micah 5:2

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

We know Jesus was born in Bethlehem and this Scripture tells us in advance the place Jesus would be born. This prophecy was written by Micah approximately 800 years before Christ was born.

5. Hosea 11:1

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

This prophecy was written by Hosea also approximately 800 years before Christ was born. This verse looks backward and forward. Remember the Israelites were slaves in Egypt when God brought them out. Also remember that Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt with the baby Jesus to avoid the slaughter by Herod. This verse can apply to both of those situations. However, it was referred to by Matthew in his writings (Matthew 2:14-15).

Old Testament Predictions of Jesus' Death

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One place we can turn to that accurately predicts Christs death is Psalm 22. I will highlight a few verses from this Psalm.

6. Psalm 22:1

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

7. Psalm 22:7-8

All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord, they say, let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.

8. Psalm 22:16-18

Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.

This Psalm was written by David approximately 1000 years before Christ came. I just want to highlight within this Psalm the many references to the actual crucifixion of Christ. I will include the New Testament reference for each of these:

The accuracy and specific nature of Davids prophecy has caused some skeptics to believe it was written after the crucifixion had already taken place. But the evidence shows this was written about 1000 years before. If someone should ever ask you where the Old Testament predicts Jesus birth and death, this Psalm should be included in the conversation. Especially if you are talking about his death.

Another great passage to turn to is Isaiah 53. The whole chapter refers to Christ, but I want to highlight a few verses.

9. Isaiah 53:5

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

10. Isaiah 53:7

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

11. Isaiah 53:9

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Again, when you read the scriptures, it is amazing how accurate and reliable Bible prophecies are. If you consider the test of the truth of prophecy, mentioned in Deuteronomy, then the Bible passes with flying colors.

What Does All This Mean?

As we have looked back to consider Old Testament prophecies, there is one thing I want you to take away from all this. The Bible can be trusted. It is the living active word of God and you can depend on what God has spoken in his word. What has been predicted has either already come to pass or it will. Its just a matter of time. I want to leave you with two truths about Scripture that Jesus stated about the word of God:

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished (Matthew 5:18).

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away (Matthew 24:35).

When it is all said and done and every prophecy has been fulfilled, Gods word will still be standing. You can count on that.

Further Reading

What Are the Prophecies about Jesus?

10 Powerful Prophecies That Were Fulfilled by Christ

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VANCOUVER, WA - Amid the regional debate over hydropower, new survey data shows strong majorities of Pacific Northwest residents support hydropower and the carbon-free energy provided by the lower Snake River Dams in Eastern Washington. Conversely, Washington Governor Jay Inslee recently issued a policy directive aimed at potentially replacing the benefits of the four lower Snake River dams.

The survey, produced by DHM Research, an independent and nonpartisan research firm, was conducted from July 26 to August 3, 2021, and polled a diverse range of 1,200 residents from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, with a likely margin of error of +/- 2.8% overall and +/- 5.0% when broken down by state. To ensure an inclusive and accurate data pool, the poll targeted residents of all backgrounds and accounted for differences in age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, and geographical location.

Only 17 percent of participants who participated in the survey opposed the dams and 23 percent remain undecided. When asked directly about plans to breach the lower Snake River dams only a minority--29%--said they would support breaching the dams.

The analyzed data reflected that residents are mainly concerned about increased electricity costs, loss of a carbon-free energy source, and the agricultural impacts associated with dam removal.

Todays survey results ultimately demonstrate that Pacific Northwest residents understand the integral role hydropower plays in supporting our clean energy grid and fish recovery and our policy leaders should take note, said Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners. With national inflation now hitting a 30-year high and soaring energy prices, affordable access to hydropower is more critical than ever when it comes to achieving our regions ambitious decarbonization and economic justice goals.

Other key findings from the survey suggested that support for the lower Snake River Dams is bipartisan and geographically diverse with both metro and rural residents indicating high levels of support.
DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion (00:02:10) by Wenqian Huang and Andreas Schrimpf BIS Quarterly Review, December 2021

Decentralised finance (DeFi) is touted as a new form of intermediation in crypto markets. The key elements of this ecosystem are novel automated protocols on blockchains  to support trading, lending and investment of cryptoassets  and stablecoins that facilitate fund transfers. There is a "decentralisation illusion" in DeFi since the need for governance makes some level of centralisation inevitable and structural aspects of the system lead to a concentration of power. If DeFi were to become widespread, its vulnerabilities might undermine financial stability. These can be severe because of high leverage, liquidity mismatches, built-in interconnectedness and the lack of shock absorbers such as banks. Existing governance mechanisms in DeFi would provide natural reference points for authorities in addressing issues related to financial stability, investor protection and illicit activities. 1

JEL classification: G18, G23, O39.

Crypto markets are underpinned by various forms of intermediation. While some forms of crypto intermediation have direct analogues in traditional finance, others  known as decentralised finance, or "DeFi"  are fundamentally new and have recently gained more traction. DeFi provides financial services without centralised intermediaries, by operating through automated protocols on blockchains. The DeFi ecosystem revolves around two elements: (i) novel protocols for trading, lending and investing, and (ii) stablecoins, which are cryptoassets that facilitate fund transfers and aim to maintain a fixed face value vis-a-vis fiat currencies, mainly the US dollar.

While the main vision of DeFi's proponents is intermediation without centralised entities, we argue that some form of centralisation is inevitable. As such, there is a "decentralisation illusion". First and foremost, centralised governance is needed to take strategic and operational decisions. In addition, some features in DeFi, notably the consensus mechanism, favour a concentration of power.

In principle, DeFi has the potential to complement traditional financial activities. At present, however, it has few real-economy uses and, for the most part, supports speculation and arbitrage across multiple cryptoassets. Given this self-contained nature, the potential for DeFi-driven disruptions in the broader financial system and the real economy seems limited for now.

Key takeaways Decentralised finance (DeFi) aims to provide financial services without intermediaries, using automated protocols on blockchains and stablecoins to facilitate fund transfers.

There is a "decentralisation illusion" in DeFi due to the inescapable need for centralised governance and the tendency of blockchain consensus mechanisms to concentrate power. DeFi's inherent governance structures are the natural entry points for public policy.

DeFi's vulnerabilities are severe because of high leverage, liquidity mismatches, built-in interconnectedness and the lack of shock-absorbing capacity.

DeFi would need to satisfy a number of conditions if it is to become a widely used form of financial intermediation. For one, blockchain scalability and large-scale tokenisation of traditional securities would need to be improved. No less importantly, DeFi will need to be properly regulated. Public authorities would need to interface with DeFi's inherent governance structures, so as to ensure sufficient financial stability safeguards as well as to enhance trust by addressing investor protection issues and illegal activities.

This special feature examines DeFi mainly from a financial stability perspective, drawing attention to vulnerabilities that stem from leverage and liquidity mismatches. As a key attribute of crypto markets, leverage amplifies their volatility and procyclicality. In addition, the crypto ecosystem lacks internal shock absorbers, such as banks, that can provide liquidity at times of stress. This increases the potential for stablecoin runs that could sever links across investors and platforms, eroding the "networked liquidity" that is a defining feature of DeFi.

The rest of this special feature is organised as follows. The first section provides an overview, focusing on the building blocks of the DeFi ecosystem. The second outlines the decentralisation illusion. The third discusses key vulnerabilities from a financial stability perspective. The final section concludes with policy considerations.

The DeFi ecosystem

An overview

Decentralised finance (DeFi) is a fast-growing part of the crypto financial system. The rise of cryptoassets can be traced back to a whitepaper (Nakamoto (2008)) outlining a peer-to-peer transaction mechanism  blockchain  and the creation in 2009 of the first consequential cryptoasset  Bitcoin (BTC). Numerous blockchain technologies, as well as the respective cryptoassets that serve as mediums of exchange, have mushroomed since then. A key milestone was the development of Ethereum and its associated cryptoasset Ether (ETH). This technology supports automated contracts with pre-defined protocols hosted on blockchains, commonly referred to as "smart contracts",2 and was instrumental to spurring on the DeFi ecosystem.

The term DeFi refers to the financial applications run by smart contracts on a blockchain, typically a permissionless (ie public) chain.3 Table 1 juxtaposes DeFi with centralised finance (CeFi) in crypto markets, as well as with the traditional financial system. The key difference between DeFi and CeFi lies in whether the financial service is automated via smart contracts on a blockchain or is provided by centralised intermediaries. While DeFi records all the contractual and transaction details on the blockchain (ie on-chain), CeFi relies on the private records of intermediaries, such as centralised exchanges and other platforms (ie off-chain).

DeFi aims to provide financial services without using centralised entities. Namely, it digitises and automates the contracting processes, which  according to its proponents  could in the future improve efficiency by reducing intermediation layers. Importantly, it also provides users with much greater anonymity than transactions in CeFi or traditional finance. Such propositions have been key drivers of the heightened interest in DeFi platforms and the strong price rises of the attendant cryptoassets (Graph 1 left-hand panel). The expansion of DeFi in turn has hastened the emergence of alternative blockchain designs that host smart contracts and seek to rival Ethereum.4

The building blocks of DeFi

DeFi differs from traditional finance not so much in terms of the types of service it seeks to provide, but rather in how it performs them. Each row in Table 1 represents a specific service, grouped under three broad functions: trading, lending and investment. This section analyses the main building blocks of these services, and how the underlying mechanisms compare with those in CeFi and traditional finance.

Stablecoins are cryptoassets that strive to tie their values to fiat currencies, such as the US dollar. They play an important role in the DeFi ecosystem, facilitating fund transfers across platforms and between users. Stablecoins allow DeFi market participants to avoid converting to and from fiat money at every turn. They also act as a bridge between the crypto and the traditional financial systems, which share a common numeraire  ie fiat currencies.

The growth of stablecoins has been exponential since mid-2020, when DeFi activities started to take off. As of late 2021, the value of the major stablecoins in circulation reached $120 billion (Graph 1, centre panel), as compared with the roughly $200 billion size of the largest money market fund. In particular, USD Tether has gained substantial scale as a "vehicle currency" for investors who seek to trade in and out of cryptoassets (right-hand panel). Being the first stablecoin, its growth has benefited from a user base built up early on, which has attracted new adopters seeking ease of trading (network externalities).

The mechanism for assuring a stable value varies across different designs.5 The majority of stablecoins are CeFi  eg USD Tether  as they are managed off-chain. Others, such as DAI, are DeFi stablecoins that are managed on-chain. In the case of CeFi stablecoins, a designated intermediary manages issuance and redemption as well as the reserve assets backing the stablecoins. Some of these assets are bank deposits or their close substitutes. Other assets may comprise short-term securities  such as Treasury bills, certificates of deposit and commercial paper  as well as cryptoassets themselves. To the extent that DeFi relies on such stablecoins, it remains dependent on CeFi and traditional finance.

DeFi stablecoins record all transacting histories directly on-chain, without the involvement of centralised intermediaries. They rely on an overcollateralised pool of cryptoassets, ie the underlying assets are worth more than the stablecoins in circulation. Since crypto collateral has a very high price volatility, as measured in the reference fiat currency, DeFi stablecoins incentivise users to actively monitor the collateralisation ratio. To do so, the smart contracts behind these stablecoins allow any user to seize the collateral when the collateralisation ratio falls below a certain threshold (which is higher than 100%) and to redeem the stablecoins.6 Such a design ensures that the value of stablecoins remains tied to the fiat currency. Other DeFi stablecoins have attempted to minimise their price volatility vis-a-vis a fiat currency by relying solely on algorithms (ie dispensing with collateral). They do so by adjusting the supply of stablecoins to match their demand. So far, no purely algorithmic stablecoin has been widely adopted.

In sum, stablecoin issuers receive assets (collateral) in exchange for their own liabilities (stablecoins). While this mechanism looks superficially similar to how banks operate, there are fundamental differences. Issuers lack public backstops, such as deposit insurance, and rely on private backstops (collateral) to ensure that stablecoins maintain a steady value and are suitable as mediums of exchange. As such, the expansion of the balance sheets of stablecoin issuers, at least currently, is driven more by the appetite of investors to hold the stablecoins than by any desire of the issuers to acquire more assets. In other words, this growth is liability-driven, while the expansion of bank balance sheets is commonly asset-driven (McLeay et al (2014)).7

Trading of cryptoassets can take place on both centralised exchanges (CEXs) and decentralised exchanges (DEXs). The former are structured around the same principles as their conventional counterparts. CEXs maintain off-chain records of outstanding orders posted by traders  known as limit order books. By contrast, DEXs work in substantially different ways, by matching the counterparties in a transaction through so-called automated market-maker (AMM) protocols. AMMs follow mathematical formulas to determine prices based on transaction volumes. Box A discusses how AMMs incentivise liquidity provision; it also looks at their susceptibility to market manipulation. Both CEXs and DEXs have seen substantial growth since 2020, although the share of DEXs in the overall transaction volume on crypto exchanges has remained below 10% (Graph 2, left-hand panel).

At present, it seems to be costlier to trade on DEXs than on CEXs, especially for smaller transactions. For instance, the relative bid-ask spread for the Tether-ETH pair on a popular DEX has been up to 30 basis points wider than on a CEX (Graph 2, centre panel). In addition, trading on DEXs incurs execution costs when transactions are validated on the blockchain. These stem from so-called gas fees, which are designed to compensate validators. Gas fees increased markedly as cryptoassets gained popularity and blockchains such as Ethereum became more congested (compare left- and right-hand panels). Although transaction costs are higher in DEXs, some traders still prefer these platforms, in part due to their greater anonymity and interoperability with other DeFi applications (the so-called "DeFi Lego").8

Lending in DeFi tends to be overcollateralised. The reason is similar to that underpinning the overcollateralisation of DeFi stablecoins  the inherent lack of trust in anonymous transactions, together with the high volatility of the cryptoassets used as collateral. To protect the lender, loans can be automatically liquidated when the collateralisation ratio falls below a threshold. At present, the need for crypto collateral stands in the way of lending to households and businesses, eg for house purchases or productive investment. Nonetheless, outstanding loans on the major lending platforms have increased rapidly, to $20 billion in late 2021 (Graph 3, left-hand panel). Rudimentary forms of unsecured lending, known as "credit delegation", are available on some platforms. This often involves entities with established off-blockchain relationships, making collateral unnecessary.

DeFi lending platforms also offer a unique financial instrument, typically referred to as flash loans. These allow arbitrageurs to act without their own capital by taking out a loan for the entire arbitrage trade and then repaying the loan. Such loans are of zero duration and are essentially risk-free (requiring no collateral), as they are granted only if the arbitrage trade ensures the repayment of both principal and interest. Crucially, this is possible as all legs of the transaction can be attached to the same block (ie settled) simultaneously on the blockchain.9 Flash loans have increased in popularity, with the largest platform granting a total of about $5.5 billion of such loans between their inception in mid-2020 and late 2021.

The growth of DeFi lending platforms has also encouraged the development of applications similar to investment funds in traditional finance. These decentralised portfolios follow pre-determined investing strategies, eg aggregating funds from investors and automatically shifting them across crypto lending platforms to profit from the best yields. As of late 2021, the funds held by two popular decentralised portfolios stood at around $10 billion (Graph 3, centre panel).

The "decentralisation illusion" in DeFi

DeFi purports to be decentralised. This is the case for both blockchains and the applications they support, which are designed to run autonomously  to the extent that outcomes cannot be altered, even if erroneous.10

But full decentralisation in DeFi is illusory. A key tenet of economic analysis is that enterprises are unable to devise contracts that cover all possible eventualities, eg in terms of interactions with staff or suppliers. Centralisation allows firms to deal with this "contract incompleteness" (Coase (1937) and Grossman and Hart (1986)). In DeFi, the equivalent concept is "algorithm incompleteness", whereby it is impossible to write code spelling out what actions to take in all contingencies.

This first-principles argument has crucial practical implications. All DeFi platforms have central governance frameworks outlining how to set strategic and operational priorities, eg as regards new business lines.11 Thus, all DeFi platforms have an element of centralisation, which typically revolves around holders of "governance tokens" (often platform developers) who vote on proposals, not unlike corporate shareholders. This element of centralisation can serve as the basis for recognising DeFi platforms as legal entities similar to corporations. While legal systems are in the early stages of adapting, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), which govern many DeFi applications, have been allowed to register as limited liability companies in the US state of Wyoming since mid-2021.

In addition, certain features of DeFi blockchains favour the concentration of decision power in the hands of large coin-holders. Transaction validators need to receive compensation that is sufficient to incentivise them to participate without committing fraud. Blockchains based on proof-of-stake, which are expected to improve scalability, allow validators to stake more of their coins so that they have a higher chance of "winning" the next block and receiving compensation. Since the associated operational costs are mostly fixed, this setup naturally leads to concentration (Auer et al (2021)).12 Many blockchains also allocate a substantial part of their initial coins to insiders, exacerbating concentration issues (Graph 3, right-hand panel).

Concentration can facilitate collusion and limit blockchain viability. It raises the risk that a small number of large validators can gain enough power to alter the blockchain for financial gain. Furthermore, large validators could congest the blockchain with artificial trades between their own wallets ("wash trades"), steeply raising the fees that other traders pay them. Another concern is that validators can front-run large orders for higher trading profits (see Box A). Although front-running also occurs in traditional finance, it incurs punitive measures from regulators. These rent-seeking behaviours are detrimental to investors and may erode DeFi's appeal going forward.

Discussions about changes to governance protocols, in particular to rein in collusion, have gained momentum in the DeFi community.13 However, adopting these changes would not alter the basic fact that some centralisation is unavoidable.

Vulnerabilities and spillover channels

While DeFi is still at a nascent stage, it offers services that are similar to those provided by traditional finance and suffers from familiar vulnerabilities. The basic mechanisms giving rise to these vulnerabilities  leverage, liquidity mismatches and their interaction through profit-seeking and risk-management practices  are all well known from the established financial system. Some features of DeFi could make them particularly destabilising, though. In this section, we focus first on the role of leverage and run-risk in stablecoins due to liquidity mismatches, before covering spillover channels to the conventional intermediaries.

Leverage

DeFi is characterised by the high leverage that can be sourced from lending and trading platforms. While loans are typically overcollateralised, funds borrowed in one instance can be re-used to serve as collateral in other transactions, allowing investors to build increasingly large exposure for a given amount of collateral. Derivatives trading on DEXs also involves leverage, as the agreed payments take place only in the future. The maximum permitted margin in DEXs is higher than in regulated exchanges in the established financial system (Graph 4, left-hand panel). And unregulated crypto CEXs allow even higher leverage.

High leverage in crypto markets exacerbates procyclicality. Leverage allows more assets to be purchased for a given amount of initial capital deployed. But when debt eventually needs to be reduced, eg because of investment losses or depreciating collateral, investors are forced to shed assets, putting further downward pressure on prices. Such procyclicality can be amplified by the trading behaviour typical of markets at an early stage of development  eg the outsized role of momentum trading, which can add to price swings. In addition, the built-in interconnectedness among DeFi applications can also amplify distress, since the system's stability hinges on the weakest links.

Financial intermediation in DeFi relies exclusively on private backstops, ie collateral, to mitigate risk and enable transactions when participants cannot trust each other. Thus, there are no shock absorbers in DeFi that can cut in during stress periods. By contrast, in traditional finance, banks are elastic nodes that can expand their balance sheets (extending loans or purchasing distressed assets) via the issuance of bank deposits, which are a widely accepted medium of exchange. The ability of banks to do so rests on their access to the central bank balance sheet (Borio (2019)).

The destabilising role of leverage came to the fore in the latest cryptoasset crash in September 2021. Forced liquidations of derivatives positions and loans on DeFi platforms accompanied sharp price falls and spikes in volatility (Graph 4, centre and right-hand panels).

Liquidity mismatches and run-risk in stablecoins

Stablecoins are inherently fragile. They are designed to target a fixed face value using various types of reserve asset. This arrangement gives rise to mismatches between the risk profiles of these assets (the underlying collateral) and the stablecoin liabilities. The vulnerability is similar to that of traditional intermediaries, such as money market funds, whose investors expect to be able to redeem in cash at par. Thus, contrary to what their name suggests, stablecoins are not money substitutes, since they lack a "no-questions asked" status (Gorton and Zhang (2021)).

The exact nature of stablecoins' vulnerabilities depends on their design. Coins backed by short-term securities with illiquid secondary markets, such as commercial paper, feature liquidity mismatches. Those backed by volatile collateral, such as cryptoassets, are exposed to market risk, because the value of these assets can quickly drop below the face value of stablecoins. Even though overcollateralisation generally offsets such risks, it can be exhausted when volatility spikes.14

Liquidity mismatches and exposure to market risk raise the possibility of investor runs. The viability of stablecoins hinges on investors' trust in the value of the underlying assets. Opaqueness and lack of regulation can easily erode this trust. If investors have doubts about the quality of the assets, they have an incentive to be the first to sell stablecoins or convert them to fiat currency. In turn, such a first-mover advantage can set off runs, leading to fire sales of the collateral.15 Furthermore, an evaporation of trust in stablecoins could have wide repercussions for DeFi. Transfers of funds across investors and platforms would become more costly and cumbersome, impinging on the "networked liquidity" that is a key feature of DeFi.

Linkages with the traditional financial system

While DeFi is largely separate from the traditional financial system at present, connections could increase. This would raise the potential for spillovers, which would stem from linkages through both the asset and liability side of banks, as well as the activities of non-bank institutions that bridge the two systems.

A conservative regulatory approach has, so far, restricted banks' participation in the crypto ecosystem. On the asset side, banks' exposures are limited, in terms of both loans and equity investments (BCBS (2021)). The equity investments of large banks in crypto-related firms range from $150 million to $380 million in size as of late 2021, representing just a small fraction of their capital (Graph 5, left-hand panel).16 On the liability side, some banks could receive funding from DeFi, since stablecoins might hold their certificates of deposit or commercial paper. As a result, runs on stablecoins could generate a funding shock for banks  akin to the familiar implications of a run on money market funds.

In addition, traditional non-bank investors are taking a growing interest in DeFi, as well as in the broader crypto markets. At present these investors include primarily family offices and hedge funds, which often receive credit from major dealer banks through prime brokerage. Funds with meaningful crypto exposure, some of which focus exclusively on DeFi while others are more diversified, have increased their assets from about $5 billion in 2018 to about $50 billion in 2021 (Graph 5, centre panel). In a related sign of this increased involvement in crypto as an emerging asset class, leveraged investors, a category that includes hedge funds, are now a major participant in the trading of Bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (right-hand panel). Looking ahead, many intermediaries and infrastructures appear set to develop their business in crypto markets, including DeFi, alongside their traditional finance activities. This could potentially strengthen the links between the traditional and crypto systems. The recent popularity of a Bitcoin futures-based ETF is a tell-tale sign of this growing interest (see Todorov (2021) also in this issue).

Policy considerations and conclusions

Although it has grown rapidly, the DeFi ecosystem is still developing. At present, it is geared predominantly towards speculation, investing and arbitrage in crypto assets, rather than real-economy use cases. The limited application of anti-money laundering and know-your-customer (AML/KYC) provisions, together with transaction anonymity, exposes DeFi to illegal activities and market manipulation. On balance, DeFi's main premise  reducing the rents that accrue to centralised intermediaries  seems yet to be realised.

History shows that the early development of novel technologies often comes with bubbles and loss of market integrity, even while generating innovations that could potentially be of broader use down the road. With improvements to blockchain scalability, large-scale tokenisation of traditional assets, and most importantly, suitable regulation to ensure safeguards and enhance trust, DeFi could yet play an important role in the financial system.

The growth of DeFi poses financial stability concerns. One is leverage-driven procyclicality, which arises from changes in collateral value and fluctuations in the associated margins. Since collateral prices fall and margins rise at times of distress, downward price spirals often arise and may spread to the rest of the financial system. Due to the largely self-contained nature of DeFi, episodes of rapid deleveraging have thus far had little effect outside crypto markets.

Another concern applies more specifically to one of DeFi's main building blocks  stablecoins. If the attendant risks are not well managed, stablecoins are prone to runs, which would compromise their ability to transfer funds within the DeFi ecosystem. In addition, possible fire sales by a stablecoin of its reserve assets could generate funding shocks for corporates and banks, with a potentially severe impact on the broader financial system and the economy.17 These risks are compounded by the fact that users treat stablecoins as a medium of exchange, although they are neither central bank money nor commercial bank money.

Since the main challenges in DeFi resemble those in traditional finance, established regulatory principles can serve as a compass. The basic tenet "same risks, same rules" should apply, not least to counter regulatory arbitrage. From a systemic perspective, policy measures should lead DeFi participants to internalise costs arising from the procyclicality of leverage. To address the run-risk in stablecoins and the associated possibility of wider contagion, policymakers can draw on precepts in bank regulation and supervision, on current initiatives in securities regulation about strengthening investment funds' prudential framework, and on international risk management standards for payment infrastructures.18 Likewise, authorities focused on market integrity and illicit financial activities will need to expand their realm to cover DeFi.

The decentralised nature of DeFi raises the question of how to implement any policy provisions. We argue that full decentralisation in DeFi is an illusion. And indeed, platforms have groups of stakeholders that take and implement decisions, exercising managerial or ownership benefits. These groups, and the governance protocols on which their interactions are based, are the natural entry points for policymakers. These entry points should allow public authorities to contain DeFi-related issues before this ecosystem attains systemic importance. Regulatory safeguards would also help to ensure that the innovative potential of DeFi brings overall benefits to finance.

Box A Trading in the DeFi era: automated market-makers Sirio Aramonte, Wenqian Huang and Andreas Schrimpf Trading of cryptoassets in DeFi relies on new and unique matching mechanisms. One widely used mechanism in traditional finance is the centralised limit order book, which entails keeping electronic records of all outstanding orders. Likewise, crypto centralised exchanges (CEXs such as FTX, Binance or Kraken) rely on limit order books managed off-chain. But in DeFi, the sheer volume of orders would render the management of an on-chain limit order book very costly. Another mechanism in traditional finance  the dealership model, where dealers use inventories of assets in over-the-counter (OTC) trading  revolves around establishing trustworthy relationships with counterparties. Such intermediation is not feasible in DeFi due to the anonymity of transactions, and it also goes against the stated aim of building an intermediary-free ecosystem. To dispense with limit order books and the dealership model, decentralised exchanges (DEXs) resort to so-called automated market-maker (AMM) protocols. AMM protocols allow traders to exchange one cryptoasset for another automatically on a blockchain. They build on the idea that traders can become liquidity-providers by making their cryptoassets (eg ETH and Tether) available in liquidity pools. In turn, protocols allow other traders demanding liquidity (ie liquidity-takers) to buy or sell the cryptoassets in the pool, with relative prices set on the basis of quantities. One popular type of AMM sets the liquidity-takers' exchange rate between token X and Y on the basis of the following constant product function that links relative prices and quantities (also known as the bonding curve): Amount of token X * Amount of token Y = constant. Graph A illustrates this AMM with an example of a liquidity pool comprising Tether and Ether. When a trader wishes to provide liquidity, they need to deposit Tether and Ether in proportion to the two cryptoassets' dollar values in the pool (which is one at step ). The liquidity-provider's claim on the pool is proportional to its contribution. The AMM protocol incentivises liquidity provision in two ways. First liquidity-takers pay to the providers a fee that may range from a few basis points to several percentage points. Second, at each extraction of liquidity, the bonding curve generates an automatic transfer from the liquidity-taker to the providers. In the example in Graph A, the liquidity-taker pays a premium to acquire 1 ETH (equal to 333 units of Tether at step ). This makes the overall pool  and the claim of the liquidity-provider in particular  appreciate in value (bottom of right-hand panel). That said, liquidity-providers can suffer losses if the relative price of the two cryptoassets on other exchanges diverges substantially from that implied by the bonding curve. The loss is realised when the liquidity-takers withdraw the cryptoasset that has increased in value, leaving the liquidity providers worse off than if they had kept their funds outside the pool. The transaction fees may not be high enough to offset this loss, which is commonly referred to as "impermanent loss". Certain features of AMMs expose liquidity-takers to market manipulation on DEXs. The execution of trades in AMMs requires validations based on the blockchain's consensus protocol, ie buy and sell orders are stored in a public memory pool, so that validators (also known as "miners") can add them to the blockchain. When submitting orders, liquidity-takers are uncertain about the timing of their orders' execution and the execution prices, as these depend on the execution sequence. Importantly, the order quantities become public knowledge before their price impact has materialised  which is easily predictable from the bonding curve. This time lag opens the door to malicious activity, whereby a trader may try to place a buy and an offsetting sell order immediately before and after, respectively, the pre-announced buy order. When the latter order is large enough, the bonding curve implies that the malicious trader's sell order will be executed at a higher price than his buy order, thus generating a profit. Such front-running behaviour is particularly attractive to large validators because they have a higher chance to "win" the next block and time their front-running trades optimally. The profits sometimes are called "miner extractable value". More and more analytical work on the pros and cons of AMMs is emerging. On the one hand, AMMs enable on-chain trading without intermediaries, improving interoperability with other DeFi platforms such as lending and investment platforms. Compared with a limit order book model, the bonding curve in AMMs also mitigates overcompetition between liquidity-providers on prices, potentially enhancing liquidity provision overall (Lehar and Parlour (2021)). On the other hand, the strict bonding curve in AMMs limits the flexibility of liquidity-providers and exposes them to impermanent losses, thus deterring traders from liquidity provision. The risk of being front-run may also push traders away from AMM protocols. As the DeFi ecosystem remains in flux, AMM designs are still evolving. One emerging feature brings AMMs closer to the traditional limit order book model. Specifically, liquidity-providers can choose which range of the pricing curve they would like to provide liquidity to. When the transacted price falls within this range, the mechanics described above apply. Otherwise, the liquidity-providers' assets are removed from the active liquidity pool. In addition, the types of cryptoasset that can be traded via AMM protocols are also expanding, ranging from non-fungible tokens to tokenised equity shares. The views expressed in this box are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the BIS. The AMM trading mechanism shares similarities with the framework of Shapley and Shubik (1977), which ensures market-clearing. See L Shapley and M Shubik, "Trade using one commodity as a means of payment", Journal of Political Economy, vol 85, no 5, pp. 93768, and H S Shin, "Comparing the robustness of trading systems to higher-order uncertainty", Review of Economic Studies, vol 63, no 1, pp. 3959. Decentralised trading is often fragmented. If there are multiple pools trading the same asset pair, one may use a smart order router for the best prices.

References

Arner, D, R Auer and Frost (2020), "Stablecoins: risks, potential and regulation", Financial Stability Review, Banco de Espana, no 39, Autumn.

Auer, R (2019): "Beyond the doomsday economics of 'proof-of-work' in cryptocurrencies", BIS Working Papers, no 765.

Auer, R, C Monnet and H S Shin (2021): "Permissioned distributed ledgers and the governance of money", BIS Working Papers, no 924.

BCBS (2021): "Prudential treatment of cryptoasset exposures", Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, consultative document.

Borio, C (2019): "On money, debt, trust, and central banking", Cato Journal, no 39, pp 267302.

Coase, R (1937): "The nature of the firm", Economica, vol 4, no 16, pp 386405.

Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures-International Organization of Securities Commissions (CPMI-IOSCO) (2021): "Application of the principles for financial market infrastructures to stablecoin arrangements", CPMI Papers, no 198, October.

Frost, J, H S Shin and P Wierts (2020): "An early stablecoin? The Bank of Amsterdam and the governance of money", BIS Working Papers, no 902, November.

G7 Working Group on Stablecoins (2019): "Investigating the impact of global stablecoins", CPMI Papers, no 187, October.

Gorton, G and J Zhang (2021): "Taming wildcat stablecoins", working paper, September.

Grossman, S and O Hart (1986): "The costs and benefits of ownership: a theory of vertical and lateral integration", Journal of Political Economy, vol 94, pp 691719.

IMF (2021): International Monetary Fund Global Financial Stability Report, Chapter 2, "The crypto ecosystem and financial stability challenges", October.

Lehar, A and C Parlour (2021): "Decentralized exchanges", working paper, August.

McLeay, M, A Radia and R Thomas (2014): "Money creation in the modern economy", Bank of England, Quarterly Bulletin, Q1, March.

Nakamoto, S (2008): "A peer-to-peer electronic cash system", White Paper.

President's Working Group (PWG) (2021): "Report on Stablecoins", President's Working Group on Financial Markets, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, November.

Todorov, K (2021): "Launch of the first US bitcoin ETF: mechanics, impact, and risks" BIS Quarterly Review, December.

Walch, A (2019): "Deconstructing decentralization: exploring the core claim of crypto systems", in C Bummer (ed), Cryptoassets: legal, regulatory, and monetary perspectives, Oxford University Press.
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Especially with the challenges brought forward by Covid-19, it is essential that opportunities are created, specifically for emerging creatives, to help nurture the creative economy. In South Africa, the Wild Bean Design-A-Cup Competition is one such campaign.

Belinda Peterson

Why did the Design-A-Cup initiative start initially?

Have you reached the goals you set out originally with the initiative?

How do you think campaigns like this can enrich the lives of young creatives in South Africa?

How do you think we can move past the challenges Covid poses in the creative industry?

What does creative economy mean to you, and how is it significant to your company?

What advice would you give to young creatives trying to make it to the top?

Tell us a bit more about yourself and the work you do?

How did your career path lead you to this point?

The UN General Assembly declared 2021 as the International Year of the Creative Economy for Sustainable Development - a testament to the industry as a crucial part of global sustainability.We spoke with the convenience general manager of BP, Belinda Peterson, to find out more about the campaign, her thoughts on the creative economy, and some advice for youth trying to enter the industryThe Wild Bean Design-A-Cup Competition has now been running for three years and was borne out of a desire to engage with the communities that we serve. The initial thoughts were actually to give school children an opportunity to create artwork and then the idea evolved to student designers - as they are our coffee lovers. We wanted to engage our customers and give them the opportunity to have their artwork showcased on cups throughout the country. This is an initiative started in South Africa and has now been shared with our other global regions within Wild Bean Cafe to inspire more young designers across the world.Each year the campaign attracts more designs and there is more engagement - particularly through social media - but there is still more to come, keep watching this space to see how the campaign will evolve and get bigger.Our youth have had an extremely challenging two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic; this campaign aims to shine the spotlight light on South Africas young talent. At BP, we believe in investing in future generations. We have a strong graduate programme and have been recognised by the youth as a top employerWe need the industry to gain momentum again - in a safe and appropriate way.The creative economy provides young and old with a platform to express their talents, ideas, and creativity and make a living from these. In view of the youth unemployment challenges in South Africa, BP is investing in the dreams of young artists to help play our part in ensuring that the creative economy sustains itself and thrives.Keep going, keep believing in yourself and never let anyone dampen your passion. A career is a journey, not a destination, enjoy each and every stage and dont try and run before you can walk. Good things come to those who wait.I head up the convenience business across SA for BP. This means I oversee a team that looks after our shopping brands - BP Express, Pick n Pay Express and BPs international coffee shop brand - Wild Bean Cafe. My team is also responsible for partnerships that we have with various quick-service restaurant brands on our forecourts and our home delivery business. Im a passionate retailer at heart and enjoy putting myself in the shoes of our customers to continually see how we can offer our shoppers more reasons to choose BP.My career actually started off in property development, and I discovered retail through my position as a development manager in the UK working for a leading shopping centre owner and developer. For the first time in my life, the project wasnt just about bricks and mortar; my eyes were opened to the world of retail and designing and building spaces that delighted customers. I was intrigued by customer behaviour and what leads us to spend our hard-earned money at one store vs the next. Retail is detail and there is so much to get right to delight customers.
South African consumers are expected to have spent R250bn in 2021 - a 20% increase from 2020, and it is customer experience that will differentiate one retailer from another, especially during peak shopping months such as December.

Source:  diego vito cervo 123rf

A postive experience

Three way to up customer experience

Hire the right people

The use of digital recruitment tools allows candidates to be matched with available roles based on cognitive ability and behavioural profiling, rather than age-old factors like experience and education.



Not only does this mean that you are removing barriers to entry for South African job seekers, but you are going to have the right people for the role  enhancing their chance at being successful and delivering the very best customer experience, notes Patel.



Examples of important skills for retail customer experience agents include problem solving, empathy, and a high EQ. Making use of digital recruitment tools will allow employers to reach untapped talent pools who are currently being overlooked, he says.

The use of digital recruitment tools allows candidates to be matched with available roles based on cognitive ability and behavioural profiling, rather than age-old factors like experience and education. Not only does this mean that you are removing barriers to entry for South African job seekers, but you are going to have the right people for the role  enhancing their chance at being successful and delivering the very best customer experience, notes Patel. Examples of important skills for retail customer experience agents include problem solving, empathy, and a high EQ. Making use of digital recruitment tools will allow employers to reach untapped talent pools who are currently being overlooked, he says.

Cover all touchpoints

As investment into digital customer experience channels grows, gone are the days of simply having a phone line for customer queries.



2020 consumer research from Merchants found that when asked what their preferred method of interacting with a business or brand was:

- 42% of consumers said contact centres

- 39% said they use whatsapp or chat as a preferred method

- 36% said social media

- 35% said live chat services like chatbots

- 68% said email



Not only do retailers need to be available on all channels, but the service needs to be of the same standard throughout. If a consumer decides to switch from web application to email to contact centre, the experience needs to be seamless  all the moving parts need to work as one, explains Patel.

As investment into digital customer experience channels grows, gone are the days of simply having a phone line for customer queries. 2020 consumer research from Merchants found that when asked what their preferred method of interacting with a business or brand was: - 42% of consumers said contact centres - 39% said they use whatsapp or chat as a preferred method - 36% said social media - 35% said live chat services like chatbots - 68% said email Not only do retailers need to be available on all channels, but the service needs to be of the same standard throughout. If a consumer decides to switch from web application to email to contact centre, the experience needs to be seamless  all the moving parts need to work as one, explains Patel.

Scale your teams at peak times

Peak times like Black Friday or the festive season mean retail staff are working longer hours and serving more clients  often leading to burnout and fatigue, which can affect the experience for the end customer.



If your customer experience partner is able to scale your teams at peak times and add capacity for dealing with queries through social media, email, and telephone channels, then your in-store staff will have more time to focus on providing the best experience in store and your customers will be happier, notes Patel.

With the rise of the e-commerce model, for the most part, pricing and product offerings are beginning to converge across the board and are no longer setting retailers apart from one another.According to NTTs, 57.9% of global consumers strongly agree that customer experience is a way for organisations to differentiate themselves from the competition.While 90.9% of organisations agree that it is a primary differentiator, less than 50% of organisations are investing directly into customer experience. Zain Patel, managing director at Merchants, explains that for retailers this is no longer an option.Consumers are faced with more choice than ever, and the presence of online stores has meant a rise in the number of shoppers carrying out online research prior to purchasing products, so when they make the decision to leave the house, they do so with a very clear intention to purchase, rather than spending time browsing the store.Whats more, they are willing to switch retailers in an instant for better customer experience  both digital and in-store.Quite simply, the digital path to purchase and in-store experience need to be seamless to complete the sale. What keeps consumers loyal is a positive experience with a retailer, before, during and after purchase, he says.Consumers want to feel valued, and they demand a personalised experience from service providers throughout the path to purchase  be it enquiring about pricing, tracking an order using your WhatsApp chat bot, or communicating with your team about returning an item purchased online.Patel notes that there are three ways retailers can up their customer experience game, today.
Via: RAIR Foundation USA:

Japans Ministry of Health of health website encourages citizens to receive the vaccine; however, they stress it is not mandatory,

Although we encourage all citizens to receive the COVID-19 vaccination, it is not compulsory or mandatory. Vaccination will be given only with the consent of the person to be vaccinated after the information provided.

In addition, the government recommends those who are considering taking the shot carefully consider both its effectiveness and side effects.

Please get vaccinated of your own decision, understanding both the effectiveness in preventing infectious diseases and the risk of side effects. No vaccination will be given without consent.

Furthermore, they stress that businesses do not force employees to receive the experimental gene therapy. Nor should employees discriminate against those who refuse the injections,

Please do not force anyone in your workplace or those who around you to be vaccinated, and do not discriminate against those who have not been vaccinated.

The government even links to a Human Rights Advice, including instructions for handling any complaints if individuals face vaccine discrimination at work.
Manitoba doctors say its sad they have to legislate civility with the public, but its for the safety of medical staff and patients as the pandemic wears on.

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MIKAELA MACKENZIE/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (FILE) Dr. Kristjan Thompson, president of Doctors Manitoba.

Manitoba doctors say its sad they have to legislate civility with the public, but its for the safety of medical staff and patients as the pandemic wears on.

The federal government passed Bill C-3 on Friday, which ensures the protection of health-care workers from harassment and intimidation, both in-person and online.

This was a necessary step considering the growing number of physicians who are reporting unsafe situations, in some instances, physical violence, brought on by rising COVID-19 cases and related measures, said Dr. Kristjan Thompson, president of Doctors Manitoba.

The onset of the more contagious omicron variant, tighter health restrictions and medical staff stretched thin wont make it any better.

"We get it, you are tired; we are all frustrated, too," Thompson said at a Zoom conference on Monday. "But doctors are in your corner, we are on your team. We are here for you. Please, be kind and understanding."

Thompson pointed to key findings in a recent survey Doctors Manitoba conducted among physicians to track violence and harassment. The findings showed among those who responded, 57 per cent experienced incidents of mistreatment in November and 52 per cent appear to be linked to the pandemic in some way. Those incidents include verbal abuse, threats, bullying and even physical assault, such as being pushed, spat on and trapped in exam rooms with aggressive patients.

Incidents have been happening for more than year, with 59 per cent of physicians reporting increased frequency. Most incidents occurred in doctors offices or hospitals, though there were some incidents that occurred on social media, in public places and at physicians homes.

Many of these incidents seemed to be triggered by the pandemic, whether it be frustration over health restrictions and vaccination requirements, while others were brought on by longer surgical wait times, visitation restrictions and lack of vaccine supply.

Incidents of mistreatment appear to occur more frequently among physicians who are women, Black, Indigenous or people of colour, or working in family medicine. Physicians located in rural communities experienced mistreatment more frequently, too.

The abuse and harassment is leading to higher burnout as physicians have to worry about their personal safety, as well as the safety of their families and colleagues, Thompson said.

They are relying on those in government and hospital administration to take what the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has done and make it a priority.

"The tone at the top matters," he said. "This is a multi-pronged issue. Yes, we need to look at de-escalation, having on-the-ground supports for frontline staff, but the support has to come from the top."

There is real concern about what this will mean for the recruitment and retention of physicians across this province.

"Ive worked in the Southern Health region for decades and Ive never seen anything like this," said Dr. Don Klassen, a family physician who works at Boundary Trails Health Centre between Winkler and Morden. "Ive heard from several physicians who are considering early retirement or relocation at least in part because of the threats and verbal abuse theyve faced. Please know that physicians are going through this pandemic with you, every step of the way, and well get through this together."

Dr. Katharine Smart, president of the CMA, said neither she nor any of her colleagues felt they would need to reach out to the public, government and media to talk about violence against medical staff.

Doctors Manitoba and the CMA partnered to bring this issue to the public and governments attention. Doctors and medical staff are already burning out from the heavy workload brought on by the pandemic and having to pivot to fight COVID, as well as their regular medical duties. Now they are facing increasing violence.

This is why they were happy to see the federal government pass Bill C-3. It shows they have been listening to physicians concerns and are supporting them in ensuring their safety.

Protecting medical staff means they can protect their patients and the public.

"Our goal is to care for Canadians and get as many people as they can through this pandemic safely," she said. "This will help us reclaim our identity in what makes us Canadian, which is caring for each other."

The other critical component is to stop normalizing violence in the medical field. This isnt a new issue, but it is escalating. She said hospital administration should make it very clear they are not tolerating this behaviour and are supporting staff when it does happen, as well as calling it out when it is seen.

 kmckinley@brandonsun.com
Some elective surgeries in Manitoba will be postponed to make room for urgent operations, including ones performed at Brandon Regional Health Centre.

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MIKE DEAL/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dr. Ed Buchel, surgery lead with Shared Health.

Some elective surgeries in Manitoba will be postponed to make room for urgent operations, including ones performed at Brandon Regional Health Centre.

COVID-19 patients are filling up hospitals, Shared Health said yesterday, and to ensure emergent, urgent and cancer surgical cases are prioritized for available slates and staffing in the coming days, some scheduled elective procedures have been postponed as of Monday.

Dr. Ed Buchel, surgery lead with Shared Health, explained this is not a reduction, this is re-prioritizing capacity to the most urgent cases to get as many of them completed this week.

The surgical prioritization plan will have two components: rural and city. In rural areas, which include Brandon, the priority is to maintain capacity in anticipation of rising COVID cases during the holidays and into January.

At Brandon Regional Health Centre, elective endoscopy will be postponed and staff will be redeployed to the intensive care unit to maintain the current beds and to add two beds as needed. They are still running urgent and emergent endoscopies.

Buchel said that enhanced surgical capacity is expected to be maintained for the next two to four weeks, which he said is normal for the Christmas break. The ICU is over regular capacity for the region.

All affected patients will be informed directly. No procedures have been postponed, yet, but he said he anticipated that would happen in the coming days.

From a surgical standpoint, he said, Brandon Regional Health Centre and other rural hospitals had been doing very well during the pandemic. There are wait lists for surgery and endoscopy in Prairie Mountain Health, but they are comparably smaller than many regions.

"That is a testament to the work that is being done by the administration, the nursing staff and the nursing team picking up extra shifts to run surgical services and staff their ICU."

There have been calls for anyone who is not vaccinated to be given lower priority for surgery. Buchel said that is not happening. They are putting priority on quality of life. If they are not vaccinated, they will encourage the person to get vaccinated in time for their procedure. They also will encourage them to isolate until the day of their surgery and test them before surgery. Staff attending will continue to wear personal protective equipment to ensure their safety.

"It is a significant burden on staff and significant risk to health-care providers and a big risk to those already in hospital," he said. "It is a scientifically and medically wrong decision to make and absolutely hurts our ability to provide care and jeopardizes the people who are trying to keep them alive. But, we do not prioritize them any differently than any other patient other than the needs of that patient from a medical and surgical standpoint."

At Carman Memorial Hospital, outpatient surgeries and endoscopies scheduled this month and in January will be postponed so staff can be deployed to keep 10 beds open at Boundary Trails Health Centre in Winkler.

The city plan is of course focused on Winnipeg operating rooms being prioritized for only the most urgent cases as the health-care system braces for another surge of COVID-19 patients, driven in part by the highly contagious omicron variant.

Elective surgeries at Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface Hospital and Grace Hospital have been postponed as of Monday.

About 1,200 surgeries will be carried out this week in Winnipeg and priority is being given to patients who are in hospital or cancer patients who require immediate surgery.

He added between 40 and 60 people are waiting for emergency surgery at any given time.

Shared Health officials have said previously at a rate of two COVID-19 ICU admissions a day, other health services, including surgeries, would be reduced to meet demand from COVID-19 patients. At a rate of three or more admissions a day, out-of-province transfers could be necessary.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon and Ron Schuler, the minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Organization, had asked the federal government to send between 15 and 30 ICU nurses for a six-week period.

In a statement Saturday, a spokesperson for federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair confirmed up to eight nurses would be deployed to Manitoba until Jan. 17, and that may be extended. The number of nurses available to Manitoba reflected Ottawas supply and the needs both governments outlined during negotiations. The eight critical care nurses with the Canadian Red Cross arrived in Manitoba on Monday and were deployed to the Health Sciences Centre, the spokesman said.

Buchel insisted the lower than requested number of nurses did not influence the decision to postpone or re-prioritize surgical slates this weekend.

If they do not see significant hospitalizations and ICU admissions from the omicron variant over the next few weeks, the province will go back to the current slating for surgeries and procedures.

 kmckinley@brandonsun.com, with files from the Winnipeg Free Press
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shares his late father's disdain for the constitutional "notwithstanding clause" and he's not ruling out asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on Quebec's pre-emptive use of it to trample the rights of religious minorities.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participates in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press in Ottawa, on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shares his late father's disdain for the constitutional "notwithstanding clause" and he's not ruling out asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on Quebec's pre-emptive use of it to trample the rights of religious minorities.

In a year-end interview with the Ottawa bureau of The Canadian Press, Trudeau said the the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is supposed to be "a bulwark against popular measures that attack the rights of  minorities."

But the charter's notwithstanding clause allows a government to say, "regardless of the fact that we are attacking your fundamental rights or limiting your fundamental rights, and the charter says that's wrong, we're still going to go ahead and do it."

"It's basically a loophole that allows a majority to override fundamental rights of a minority. And that's why I agree with my father that it's not a great thing to have in a Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

The clause enables federal and provincial governments to enact laws that violate certain rights and freedoms guaranteed in the charter. They can invoke the clause for renewable periods of five years.

Controversy over the override clause has heated up recently with the news that a Muslim teacher was removed from her elementary school classroom in Chelsea, Que., because she wears a hijab  in violation of Quebec's two-year old secularism law.

The law, known as Bill 21, prohibits public sector workers considered to be in positions of authority, including police, judges and teachers, from displaying or wearing religious symbols while at work. The Quebec government pre-emptively invoked the notwithstanding clause to prevent the courts from striking down the law as a violation of the charter.

During negotiations with premiers to patriate Canada's Constitution with a charter of rights in 1982, Trudeau's father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, reluctantly agreed to provincial demands for a notwithstanding clause. His calculation, his son said, was that it was better to have a charter with the clause "than to not have a charter at all."

The thinking at the time was that the clause would be invoked sparingly because Canadians would exact a high political price on any government that used it to infringe upon fundamental rights.

"Unfortunately, many years later that political cost hasn't appeared or materialized in a way that perhaps my father would have hoped and we now get to reflect on whether or not there can even be pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause," Trudeau said.

Quebec has also invoked the clause pre-emptively to thwart court challenges to Bill 96, which would bolster French as the province's official language. Some anglophones in the province fear this will come at the expense of their minority rights.

Quebec is not the only province to invoke the clause. Ontario Premier Doug Ford used it recently to re-impose restrictions on third-party election advertising that had been struck down as unconstitutional. And he threatened in the past to use it on legislation that slashed the size of Toronto city council.

No federal government has ever invoked the clause.

Some constitutional experts have suggested that drafters of the charter never intended for the notwithstanding clause to be used pre-emptively. Rather, it was envisioned as a safety-valve mechanism to enable a government to reinstate a law that's found by the courts to violate the charter.

Trudeau, who has not ruled out federal intervention "at the appropriate time" in the ongoing court battle over the secularism law, said his government is "in constant and full reflection on different avenues that could be taken." He indicated those avenues could include a reference to the Supreme Court to clarify how the notwithstanding clause should be used.

"The ultimate reflection I have is what would be most effective in continuing to move Canada forward in the right way and ensuring that people's rights are protected," he said.

"And that is the lens at which we look at everything, including timing of a potential future intervention, how we position ourselves now, whether we do references to the Supreme Court."

Prompted by Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, a number of city councils, including Toronto's, are donating or considering donating money to aid the legal battle against the secularism law, which is being challenged by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the National Council of Canadian Muslims, among others.

Trudeau said that "underlines how there are a lot of people who are asking the question: can a society that wants to be free and open really force a woman  or force anyone to choose between his religion and his job?"

Quebecers themselves are reflecting on that question, he noted, adding that polls suggest Quebecers are among the most fervent supporters of the charter of rights.

While such reflections should be encouraged, Trudeau added: "What scares me is, if it starts to turn into 'Quebec bashing,' it will harm the conversation."

Trudeau was clear that he is opposed to the secularism law as it applies other public sector workers, not just teachers.

"I think that when you  start to say that someone who is religious would make a worse policeman or judge than someone else, you are undermining the confidence that people can have in our institutions, he said in French.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 17, 2021.
A Labor majority in the Inner West Council has been thrown into question following requests for a recount in two wards.

Zoi Tsardoulias and Timothy Stephens became the partys seventh and eighth representatives on the 15-person council following the declaration of results on Monday, with their elections to the second Labor spot in Marrickville-Midjuburi and Leichhardt-Gulgadya wards respectively.

Labors Zoi Tsardoulias, Mat Howard, and federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese outside the Marrickville Town Hall polling station on December 4.

Labor was celebrating on Monday, with deposed former mayor Darcy Byrne taking to social media to announce he would be seeking the support of caucus on Tuesday to be reelected.

With this majority we will have a big responsibility to govern in the interests of all Inner West citizens - no matter who you voted for, he wrote.
A Queensland police officer has been suspended after he was charged with raping a woman 22 years ago.

The Queensland Police Service confirmed the 52-year-old male officer was charged following an investigation into the alleged sexual assault of a woman in 1999 while he was off duty.

A police officer accused of raping a woman in 1999 has been suspended from duty. Credit:Queensland Police Service

The officer was charged with one count of rape on Tuesday.

The woman, who was known to the man, was 27 at the time of the alleged offence.
Australias election watchdog is taking legal action against Liberal National MP Andrew Laming for five social media posts in the lead-up to the last election that did not declare they were authorised by the Queensland politician.

Dr Laming on Tuesday apologised for the lack of authorisation, saying nothing is more important than the integrity of our political process, and I apologise for the lapse of process.

Andrew Laming operated more than 30 Facebook pages. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Dr Laming, who has announced he will quit politics at the next election, in 2018 set up a Facebook page called Redland Hospital: Lets fight for fair funding, which repeatedly criticised the Labor Party.

While his involvement was declared in the pages About section, it did not include any party branding or authorisation on the main section of the page or in many of the posts.
Singapore: Personal protective equipment giant Ansell is being taken to task over its ties to a Malaysian glove maker alleged to have subjected workers to forced labour and squalid living conditions inside shipping containers.

The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Tuesday banned imports from the Brightway Group, the fifth such sanction it has imposed against a single-use glove manufacturer from Malaysia in the past two years.

Malaysia Minister of Human Resources M Saravanan inspects a Brightway workers dormitory in Selangor state last December. Credit:Malaysia Ministry of Human Resources

Malaysias Minister for Human Resources M Saravanan last December described conditions at Brightway Holdings facility near Kuala Lumpur as akin to modern slavery following a raid.

The Malaysian Labour Department later said 781 employees had been living inside three shipping containers.
Singapore: Richard Daschbach, the defrocked American priest whose child sex abuse trial has shaken deeply Catholic East Timor, has been found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The 84-year-old learnt his fate on Tuesday in the District Court of Oecusse, the western Timorese enclave where he abused children at a remote shelter he ran for girls and boys for more than two decades.

Revered to such an extent that his followers believed he had special powers, Daschbach was suspected of abusing at least a dozen young girls at the Topu Honis orphanage.

On Tuesday, he was found guilty of the sexual abuse of four female children there.
Thailand will reinstate its mandatory COVID-19 quarantine for foreign visitors and scrap a quarantine waiver from Tuesday due to concerns over the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The decision to halt Thailands Test and Go waiver means visitors will have to undergo hotel quarantine, which ranges between seven to 10 days.

Thailand will again require foreign visitors to enter quarantine in a bid to head off Omicron variant cases. The countrys important tourism industry was hard hit by the pandemic. Credit:AP

Meanwhile, a so-called sandbox program, which requires visitors to remain in a specific location but allows them free movement outside of their accommodation, will also be suspended in all places except for the tourist resort island of Phuket.

After December 21, there will be no new registrations for Test and Go, only quarantine or Phuket sandbox, deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhanadirek said.
Delaware: Anthony Fauci is calling on Fox News to fire Jesse Watters after the host told a crowd to ambush Fauci in public and send the footage to his network.

The guy should be fired on the spot, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during an interview on CNN Tuesday.

Dr Anthony Fauci speaking from the White House. Credit:AP

During a Monday appearance at AmericaFest, a right-wing conference in Phoenix, Watters used incendiary language in a call for people to confront and harass Fauci over his role combatting the COVID-19 pandemic under President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump.

Watters directed members of the audience to go in for the kill shot, ambushing Fauci with misleading Republican claims that Fauci lied to Congress about research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, Because he doesnt see it coming.
Washington: President Joe Biden has introduced the newest member of his family to Twitter - a pure-bred German shepherd puppy named Commander.

But the Bidens other dog, Major, the first rescue shelter dog to live at the White House, is to be rehomed.

The family decided it was best for the dog, not quite four years old, to live in a quieter environment with friends after some biting incidents.

Biden shared a photo on his official Twitter account of his new three-month-old male puppy with a caption that said, Welcome to the White House, Commander. He also released a brief video of him tossing a ball to Commander and walking the leashed dog into the White House.
Three persons were killed and 44 others suffered injuries in a fire that broke out in the Haldia Refinery of the Indian Oil Corporation in West Bengal's Purba Medinipur district on Tuesday afternoon, police said.

The IOC, in a statement, said the incident occurred at a unit of the refinery during shutdown-related works and that fire has been extinguished and the situation is under control

"In the motor spirit quality (MSQ) unit, during shutdown related works, at around 1450 hrs, today an incident occurred. The primary cause seems to be a flash fire leading to burn injuries to 44 persons and 3 persons have unfortunately succumbed to their injuries. The fire has been immediately extinguished and the situation is under control.

"After preliminary first aid to the injured, they have been shifted to Haldia Refinery Hospital for treatment. District Administrations support has been solicited to ensure immediate evacuation of the injured. A green corridor has been operationalised with the support of the district administration for shifting the injured and critical cases to institutes of higher medical management. Authorities are inquiring into the cause of the incident," said IOC.

Out of the 44 injured, 37 are being referred to a hospital in Kolkata, a senior police officer of Purba Medinipur district told PTI.

The condition of seven of them are stated to be critical, he added.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed anguish at the death of three persons in the refinery fire.

"Deeply anguished by the fire in IOC, Haldia. Three precious lives were lost and my thoughts are with the bereaved families in this hour of grief. Those injured are being brought to Kolkata through a green corridor. GoWB will extend all assistance to ensure their speedy recovery," she tweeted.
Kolkata-based road developer Bharat Road Network has sold its entire 40 per cent stake in the 67-km-long Shree Jagannath Expressway in to an arm of the marquee Canadian infrastructure-focused fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) for Rs 2,100 crore, according to two sources.

The Srei Group, which was sent to the NCLT by the Reserve Bank of India recently, owns 30 per cent in the toll road project through one of its alternate investment funds called Trinity Investment Managers.

The deal is between Bharat Road Network and India Highway Concession Trust, one of the infrastructure investment trusts set up by in the country, one of the sources told PTI.

Neither of the responded to calls.





The 67-km toll road from Bhubaneswar to Chandikhole in started operations in December 2011 with an initial concession period of 26 years, is given an enterprise value of Rs 2,100 crore, the second source added.

The deal, which has all the approvals barring an NHAI nod and the customary regulatory approvals, is likely to be completed anytime now, the first source said, adding Srei and other creditors would get over Rs 2,020 crore from the sale. This excludes additional claims of Rs 200 crore that are in advance stage of realisation and will get added towards the overall corpus, the source added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gruhas Proptech, backed by promoter and Puzzolana Group, plans to launch a USD 150 million proptech focussed fund in the first quarter of next financial year that will invest in incubators, and special situations, its officials said.

The company is currently in discussion with the large global investors for the launch of the proptech focussed fund, its promoter Abhijeet Pai told PTI.

Gruhas, focused on real estate investments and prop tech, is promoted by entrepreneur Pai and Zerodha's co-founder Nikhil Kamath.

Operational in India, Gruhas is also exploring initiatives in the Middle-Eastern and African countries to democratise the proptech asset class to optimise the offerings in the realty sector using technology in a manner that decarbonizes the sector, Pai said.

This is not only aligned to global sustainability goals but also revives the fixed income market, he added.

"Because of the immense success of the current portfolio, and razor sharp focus on disruptive prop focus Gruhas has strategic interest from large global firms for launching a proptech fund of USD 150 million in the first quarter of 2022," Pai said.

Gruhas has so far invested in eight across fractional ownership, green materials, debt, new age tech, low-cost housing, mapping rural communities, drone technology, water management and other proptech initiatives.

Among the invested by Gruhas are Strata, Basic, WeGot and GruhasLumos.

Gruhas is also accepting applications for the incubator while exploring investment opportunities in developing markets and some developed markets.

"Real estate is at an inflection point where the confluence of technology, sustainability goals will make real estate more accessible. Proptech have been catalyzed during the pandemic, with the advent from remote working but the gap between haves and have-nots remains stark. The way real estate is structured, impacts us all," Kamath said.

"Whether it is buying, selling, renting or investing in real estate there is an opportunity to democratise, decarbonise and usher in global practices and technology. Application of technology and digitalization has come late in the real estate industry but has become a necessity," he added.

Despite the resistance by the different stakeholders in the real estate market, India accounts for the largest proportion of proptech investments outside the US along with Europe and the UK, yet there are few affordable investment alternatives.

"We are grappling with issues which have solutions that have not been implemented, from pollution to water management to providing affordable investment alternatives. Gruhas will democratise realty offerings for individuals looking for alternatives to FDs stagnant 4 per cent," Pai.

According to him, Gruhas was founded with this intention to disrupt the status-quo in real estate.

"At Gruhas, we are also investing into a sustainable living with a keen focus on impact and ESG (environment, social and governance) focused disruptors in the world's second largest industry type with an urgent need to revamp for the future consumer," he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) on Tuesday said Honda de Mxico has initiated exports of NAVi bike to the

HMSI had commenced export of NAVI CKD kits to Mexico in July 2021 and has so far dispatched over 5,000 kits to the country.

"The NAVi deliveries to the via Honda Mexico has further strengthened our export portfolio in advanced markets, the new expansion has given us an opportunity yet again to set new standards of global manufacturing quality in India," HMSI Managing Director, President and CEO Atsushi Ogata said in a statement.

Honda NAVi is a crossover, which combines the advantages of a scooter with the characteristics of a motorcycle.

The product that originated from India is garnering a cult following with great success in overseas markets.

HMSI started NAVi exports in 2016.

Since then, the company has dispatched over 1.8 lakh to 22 diverse export markets led by Asia, Middle East and Latin America.

(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.)
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on Tuesday said it has acquired a nearly 5 per cent stake in Indian Gas Exchange Ltd - the country's first automated national level exchange for the trading of

IOC joins the likes of explorer ONGC, gas utility GAIL Torrent Gas Pvt Ltd and Adani Total Gas Ltd which already have acquired 5 per cent equity each in IGX.

"It is hereby informed that the Board of IndianOil at its meeting held on December 20, 2021 has accorded approval for the acquisition of 36,93,750 equity shares of the face value of Rs 10 each equivalent to 4.93 per cent of the share capital in Indian Gas Exchange Limited (IGX)," IOC said in an exchange filing.

At face value, the acquisition will cost IOC Rs 3.7 crore.

IGX is India's first automated national level gas exchange, which ensures transparent price discovery in and facilitates the growth of in India's energy basket, it added.

IOC, the nation's largest oil refining and fuel marketing firm, said the acquisition of an equity stake in IGX is a strategic opportunity for it to become part of India's natural gas market and to increase its presence to achieve a leadership position in the market.

IGX is envisaged to play an important role to facilitate achieving the government's target of increasing the share of natural gas in India's energy basket from the current 6.5 per cent to 15 per cent by 2030.

The exchange started operations on June 15, 2020, as a gas trading platform and has been operating as the Gas Exchange since December 2020. The Exchange operates under the regulatory framework of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB).

In a separate filing, IOC said its board has approved an investment of Rs 9,028 crore for laying a crude oil pipeline from Mundra in Gujarat to Panipat in Haryana.

The pipeline will have a capacity to transport 17.5 million tonnes of imported crude oil per annum from the Gujarat port to its refinery in Haryana.

"The project will meet the enhanced crude oil requirement arising out of the capacity expansion of Panipat refinery from 15 million tonnes per annum to 25 million tonnes," it said.

The project is expected to be completed within 36 months and would be synchronized with the commissioning of the Panipat refinery expansion project, it added.

Panipat is one of the 10 refineries that IOC owns and operates.

IOC's 10 refineries have a total capacity of 80.20 million tonnes or roughly 32 per cent of the nation's total refining capacity of 249.4 million tonnes.

(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.)
Leading London-based entrepreneur Lord Swraj Paul has revealed plans in the UK and India in the coming months, once the very dark times of the Omicron variant related COVID-19 surge abates.

The 90-year-old founder of Caparo Group said this week that his team had identified a few potential acquisitions, which will be finalised after site visits are made possible as COVID-hit travel eases up.

The focus will be on the company's strengths in the manufacturing sector, with businesses in the field of steel products under consideration.

In India, we have a presence in 20 states already, so the new will be wherever we find a steel friendly scenario, Paul told PTI.

In the UK, we are looking at new businesses related to the manufacture of industrial goods. Our expertise is in the field of steel products for cars, planes, railways, and my motto has always been to do what you know best, he said.

Asked about the time frame for these new buys, the House of Lords peer and billionaire businessman added: These are very dark times. We have had to close offices again amid the latest surge in COVID cases. So, it is about wait and watch, but not watch indefinitely.

Paul, among the richest men in the UK's annual Sunday Times Rich List' with an estimated fortune of GBP 2 billion, founded his first business in Huntingdon, England, in 1968. After a steel industry crisis around six years ago, Caparo Group's operations in the West Midlands were sold off after going into administration. The bulk of his company's operations are now in the US, India, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

For the New Year, he has set his sights on the UK once again and is ideally on the lookout for a manufacturing business within 150 miles of London.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
will start showing its drivers the approximate drop location and mode to its drivers in order to reduce instances of ride cancellation, the ride hailing company said on Tuesday.

"We're taking steps to fix this industry wide issue. drivers will now see approx drop location & mode before accepting a ride. Enabling drivers is key to reducing cancelations," tweeted co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal.

Aggarwal, a computer engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, founded ride-hailing firm Ola in 2010 along with his college mate Ankit Bhati.

Ola was valued at $6.5 billion when it raised funding from South Korean vehicle maker Hyundai in 2019. Ola has raised around $4.5 billion from investors to date. Last week, filings showed that it had raised a fresh round of $139 million at $7.3 billion valuation as the company prepares for an IPO early next year.
Value e-commerce marketplace plans to expand into omni-channel distribution using an asset-light model, invest in a portfolio of "power brands" and continue to grow its unit Unicommerce within India and international markets as part of its growth strategy.

According to Snapdeal's preliminary documents filed with markets regulator Sebi on Tuesday, the company is "well-positioned to tap into the unique attributes of the value lifestyle retail market", which it believes will be driven by consistent growth in consumption of value shoppers and increase in base of digitally-native users.

Outlining its growth strategy, said the company intends to create a distribution channel through offline stores, partnering with existing neighbourhood stores and new franchisees, across the country as part of its expansion plans.

"We believe that our wide network of sellers, technology, marketing and data science capabilities will offer a competitive advantage to our partners and further increase our reach in the value segment...Further, we can derive service and cost advantages from being closer to users. The potential omni-channel model can derive advantages by virtue of our current position and capabilities," it added.

is looking at a public issue that comprises fresh issuance of equity shares worth Rs 1,250 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of 3.07 crore equity shares.

According to market sources, potential listing could value Snapdeal at about USD 1.5-1.7 billion.

According to Snapdeal's draft red herring prospectus (DRHP), the company's high brand awareness, platform integration and digital marketing capabilities can be used to drive footfalls in Snapdeal branded stores.

"Further, we can use Unicommerce's proprietary omni-channel technology solutions, which they have been deploying for their clients, in our proposed omni-channel expansion," it stated.

Besides, Snapdeal intends to grow Unicommerce, which was profitable for financial years 2019 and 2021 and the six months ended September 30, 2021, within India and international markets.

"We believe that there is scope for increasing the scale of Unicommerce by expanding its client base and geographical coverage, which we expect will further drive the growth of our revenues...We plan to grow Unicommerce's existing client business in India through client acquisition initiatives," the document said.

Unicommerce has already entered international markets such as the Middle East and South East Asia and plans to scale client acquisitions in these geographies.

"In addition, we intend to enter new geographies, such as North America and Europe. Our plans for doing so include monetising and retaining existing clients, as well as identify and capitalise on growth pockets in adjacent domains," it noted.

Snapdeal highlighted that it has a portfolio of 13 'Power Brands' that accounted for 5.6 per cent of the total orders on its platform for the six months ended September 30, 2021.

'Power Brands' are brands owned by Snapdeal that it licenses to sellers. The sellers of products under its 'Power Brands' are responsible for manufacturing the products under the 'Power Brands', and Snapdeal does not manufacture or own any inventory relating to these brands.

"We aim to significantly increase the share of 'Power Brands' to the total sales on our platform, and aim to do this by selecting appropriate products to develop Power Brands and adding new sellers to our platform. We plan to explore deeper tie-ups with manufacturers across a range of product categories," Snapdeal said.

The company also plans to increase the quantity and diversity of product offerings of its existing power brands as this presents an opportunity to specifically target demand gaps, through data-driven insights and joint product development with sellers, it added.

Value-conscious consumers who demand quality products at affordable price points are a significant growth driver of the value lifestyle Retail market.

This market's size is expected to grow from USD 88 billion in financial year 2021 to USD 175 billion by the financial year 2026, at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of approximately 15 per cent, it added.

As per the document, Snapdeal's revenue from operations was at Rs 238.5 crore for the period ended September 2021, Rs 471.7 crore for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021 and Rs 846.3 crore for FY20.

Snapdeal's restated loss for the six months ended September 30, 2021 was at Rs 177.07 crore, Rs 125.4 crore for financial year 2021 and Rs 273.5 crore for FY20.

The company noted that it typically incurs significant marketing and business promotion expenses to promote its platform. For the six months ended September 30, 2021 and FY2021, its marketing and business promotion expense was at Rs 126.2 crore and Rs 176.6 crore, respectively.

Since FY2018, 50.37 million customers have transacted on our platform, and 42.04 million of these customers have come from locations outside metro cities, showcasing our nationwide reach.

During the six months ended September 30, 2021, Snapdeal had an average of 40.15 million MAUs (ie, persons who visit and browse Snapdeal's platform).

It had 14.82 million and 13.88 million annual transacting customers for the 12 months ended September 30, 2021 and FY2021.

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With innovations such as the introduction of new variants and the launch of tetra packs, Mohan Meakin (MML) aims to achieve a record high sales of around 10 million units of in 2022.

From almost 3 million units a few years ago, sales volume has rebounded substantially. "Today, we are over 8 million units and are targeting record sales of 10 million next year, said Vinay Mohan, the director of Mohan Meakin (MML).

Mohan said the company had started giving franchisees in states where tetra packs have good sales. This is the second time that the company is trying its luck in the segment. "We had once done in Karnataka, now we have re-launched it."

According to Mohan, the size of the rum market in India is above 50 million units. There were speculations that the brand was set to come out with a sachet pack, which he denied.

Though was the market leader till the early 2000s, it lost to aggressive marketing by brands like McDowells No. 1 Celebration. Mohan expects sales, which contributes around 70 per cent to the companys topline, to grow 50-60 per cent in the next three years.

The company also started the sale of beer brand Old Monk 10000 (American Malt Liquor) in August. "It was never popular in the North. We have just launched it in the premium segment and got a very favourable response," he said.

The company has a minimal ad spending of Rs 2 crore per year. "For a brand like Old Monk, advertisement is not required. It is still one of the largest brands exported out of the country," said Rocky Mohan, a promoter family member.

The firm sells 0.5 million cases in the global market.

"Today in all the airports, we are the number one seller. We have our products available in all the countries," he said.
Captain Fresh, an online seafood marketplace, has raised $40 million in an investment round co-led by and Prosus Ventures (formerly Naspers Ventures).

Existing investors Matrix Partners India, Accel India, Ankur Capital, and Incubate Fund have also participated in the Series B round.

Captain Fresh helps small fishermen and farmers by aggregating countrywide retail demand on its platform. The company said it would use the to build a real-time trading marketplace, AI for pricing and quality standardisation and applying robotic automation to move volumes with precision. Captain Fresh will also utilise the funds towards expanding its team and distribution network across geographies.

"For centuries, the fish and seafood industry has stayed the same with very little innovation and we have a unique opportunity to revolutionize the sector utilising technology, said Utham Gowda, chief executive officer and founder, Captain Fresh.

Captain Fresh said it has rapidly emerged as a preferred monetization partner for supplier communities across the Indian coast. Its tech-enabled distribution network that spans 20 cities and more than 2,000 retail businesses.

Captain Fresh has demonstrated six-fold growth in 12 months and is transforming retail across B2R, B2B and B2B2C segments. Its reseller segment (B2B2C) has demonstrated an increase of 20x within just three months of launch, retailing about 1.2M kgs of fish and seafood every month. Its positive unit economics, coupled with industry-leading gross margins, high frequency and rapid expansion make it the leading fish & seafood marketplace in India.

The team has demonstrated impressive execution and strong unit economics, said Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments, India, Prosus Ventures. We are confident about their ability to utilise technology to solve for efficiency and scalability challenges and at the same time make a very positive impact on a large number of fishermen in the country.

Barath Shankar Subramanian, Partner at Accel, said that Captain Fresh has exhibited an impressive growth with positive unit economics.

"Captain Fresh has experienced exponential growth over the last 12 months and this fundraise is a testament to their supply first tech-enabled business model that has helped them scale rapidly while improving economics by optimising for losses and dump in the seafood supply chain," said Sudipto Sannigrahi, Principal, Matrix India.

Elluminate Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Captain Fresh on this transaction. The global fish and seafood demand is estimated at $400 billion.
The Zambian subsidiary of resources giant Resources Ltd has further committed to assisting the fight against the increasing number of Covid-19 infections in the southern African nation.

On Monday, distributed 4,000 masks to commuters, adding to the 10,000 masks already distributed to the communities living around its operations in Zambia.

remains committed to helping Zambians in their battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. With the new variant posing a significant threat to public health, Vedanta reaffirms its commitment to help support the communities in as best way they can, Vedanta said in a statement.

As a concerned corporate citizen this act by Vedanta goes some way in cushioning the public from the adverse effect of the Covid 19 pandemic, said Dr Moses Banda, Country Director for Vedanta.

In view of the rising case numbers of the new omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus recorded in Zambia, (Vedanta) has moved in to raise public awareness and has distributed thousands of re-usable face masks in Chingola and Chililabombwe, he added.

Banda said Vedanta was also supporting schoolgirls who often miss classes because of a lack of sanitary items.

To the young schoolgirls, Vedanta has donated 1,000 reusable sanitary pads and 6,000 reusable facemasks.

A company representative recently attended International Day of the Disabled, in order to better understand how Vedanta can assist further, not only in the disabled community, but also wider vulnerable women groups, Banda said.

Vedanta Limited, a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Limited, is one of the world's leading oil, gas and minerals company with significant operations across India, South and Namibia.

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At least 64 cases of 4.2 variant of COVID-19 have been reported in the country as on December 16, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya informed Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

These include 42 cases from Chhattisgarh, 11 from Gujarat, 4 from Tamil Nadu, 3 from Bihar, 2 from Assam and one case each from Maharashtra and Telangana.

No COVID-19 case with AY4.2 variant has been reported from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, Mandaviya said in a written reply.

The health ministry continues to keep a close watch over COVID-19 situation across the country and globally, he said.

Given the emergence of mutated variants with variable impact on transmissibility, virulence and effectiveness of vaccines, likelihood of resurgence of COVID-19 trajectory in the country is examined by various expert committees under Indian Council of Medical Research, Directorate General of Health Services and other relevant ministries and departments, Mandaviya said.

The public health measures to control its further spread are the same as the measures taken for various variants of SARS-CoV-2.

States and union territories have been repeatedly advised through formal communications as well as during regular video conferences to continue to focus on five-fold strategy of test-track-treat-COVID appropriate behaviours and vaccination, the minister said.

The states and union territories have also been advised to undertake genomic sequencing of positive samples through designated laboratories in the INSACOG networks of laboratories.

The health ministry has issued detailed guidelines related with containment and clinical management for managing COVID-19.

The government is supporting states in their endeavour to manage COVID-19 since the beginning of pandemic. Requisite support is provided to states and union territories to enhance preparedness and response capacities against COVID-19 and other public health emergencies, the minister said.

The ministry has stressed on continued monitoring of areas where cluster of positive cases emerge, and further strengthening of COVID-19 testing infrastructure and ensuring early identification of cases through adequate testing across the states.

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Chief Minister on Tuesday approved a proposal for releasing sick and old prisoners lodged in various jails of the state.

According to an official statement, the Chief Minister has approved the proposal for premature release of such prisoners who have served most of their sentences in good faith or are suffering from serious diseases and are old.

According to the proposal, premature release may be given to such prisoners who are suffering from cancer, AIDS, leprosy, dependent on others for daily activities and other serious diseases or are blind or handicapped and have been sentenced to imprisonment for a term other than life imprisonment.

Along with this, men who are 70 years and above and women, who are 65 years or more and have served one-third of their sentence will be able to get premature release.

Under the proposal, those prisoners can also be released who are serving life term and have served 14 years imprisonment but it will be based on their conduct in prison in the last two years.

Apart from this, those prisoners who are serving a sentence other than life imprisonment, whose two-third parts of the jail term has been completed and the conduct has been satisfactory for the last two years may also be released prematurely.

Prisoners who have been sentenced by courts to imprisonment for a term of three months or less may also be released.

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The protection offered by the Oxford-Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine declines after three months of receiving two doses of the preventive, according to a study published in The Lancet journal.

The findings drawn from datasets in Brazil and Scotland suggest that booster programmes are needed to help maintain protection from severe disease in those vaccinated with AstraZeneca, known as Covishield in India.

The researchers analysed data for two million people in Scotland and 42 million people in Brazil who had been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

In Scotland, when compared with two weeks after receiving a second dose, there was approximately a fivefold increase in the chance of being hospitalised or dying from COVID-19 nearly five months after being double vaccinated, the researchers said.

The decline in effectiveness begins to first appear at around three months, when the risk of hospitalisation and death is double that of two weeks after the second dose, they said.

The researchers from Scotland and Brazil found that the risk of hospitalisation and death increases threefold just short of four months after the second vaccine dose. Similar numbers were seen for Brazil, they said.

"Vaccines have been a key tool in fighting the pandemic, but waning in their effectiveness has been a concern for a while," said Professor Aziz Sheikh, from the University of Edinburgh, UK.

"By identifying when waning first starts to occur in the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, it should be possible for governments to design booster programmes that can ensure maximum protection is maintained, Sheikh said.

The team was able to compare data between Scotland and Brazil as they had a similar interval between doses -- 12 weeks -- and initial prioritisation of who was vaccinated -- people at highest risk of severe disease and healthcare workers.

The dominant variant was different in each country during the study period -- Delta in Scotland and Gamma in Brazil.

This means the decline in effectiveness is likely because of vaccine waning and the impact of variants, according to the researchers.

The study also estimated vaccine effectiveness at similar fortnightly intervals by comparing outcomes of people who have been jabbed with those who are unvaccinated.

However, the experts warned that these figures should be treated with caution because it is becoming harder to compare unvaccinated people to those vaccinated with similar characteristics, particularly among older age groups where so many people are now vaccinated.

"Our analyses of national datasets from both Scotland and Brazil suggest that there is considerable waning of effectiveness for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, with protection against severe COVID-19 falling over time," said Professor Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi from the University of Glasgow in the UK.

"Our work highlights the importance of getting boosters, even if you've had two doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, as soon as you are able to," Katikiredd added.

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The (BCI) on Tuesday said it will write to the central government seeking investigation by the CBI or NIA of a lawyer's alleged murder on Sunday in the Alappuzha District of Kerala.

Advocate Rajnith Srinivas was hacked to death inside his house in front of his mother, wife and daughter on Sunday Morning.

The BCI, being the representative body of the advocates is not supposed to sit tight over such brutal murders of advocates. Such incident of killings of the advocates is increasing day by day and the BCI has been demanding for the proper law to protect the Advocates and their family, the CBI said.

BCI Chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra said the council has resolved to write to the government of India demanding the matter to be investigated by some central agency like NIA or CBI.

Only a central agency can find out the truth and the guilty could be punished, it said.

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The has issued a whip to its party MPs in the to be present in the House when two crucial Bills come up for passage on Tuesday amid stiff resistance from the opposition.

"Law Minister Kiren Rijiju to move the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, Bill further to amend the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Representation of the People Act, 1951, as passed by Lok Sabha, be taken into consideration, also to move that the Bill be passed."

The Bulletin also said that the House will take for consideration and return The Appropriation (No.5) Bill, 2021.

"Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to move that the Bill to authorise payment and appropriation of certain further sums from and out of the Consolidated Fund of India for the services of the financial year 2021-2022 as passed by Lok Sabha, be taken into consideration Also to move that the Bill be returned," the bulletin said.

The Appropriation Bill is a money Bill so the government wants to pass it.

The Lok Sabha on Monday passed 'The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021' amid protest by the opposition parties.

The Bill seeks to link electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem. This will allow the electoral registration officers to seek the Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters for the purpose of establishing the identity.

--IANS

miz/dpb

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A man, who had returned to Kolkata from last week, tested positive for Covid-19 following which he was hospitalised on Tuesday, a health department official said.

The department is waiting for the genome sequencing report of the 27-year-old man to check if he was afflicted with the Omicron variant of coronavirus, he added.

"The man who has been working in Dublin, Ireland, for the last five years, arrived in the city flying from Manchester via Abu Dhabi and New Delhi. He was admitted to a hospital on Tuesday morning," the official said.

His genome sequencing report from the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) at Kalyani is expected within 72 hours, he added.

"He had tested negative for Covid on December 16 at a lab at Dublin, a day before his flight, and then again upon arrival at Delhi airport. He reached Kolkata on December 18 evening and went straight to his home.

"From Monday morning, however, he started running a high-grade fever (103 degrees Fahrenheit or above) along with body ache, malaise and headache, after which a test showed that he was Covid positive," the official said.

The patient has said he had been indoors since his arrival in Kolkata, as per the guideline for international travellers which says they have to remain in home isolation for eight days, and venture out only after testing negative through an RT-PCR test.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, West Bengal's Covid-19 death toll rose to 19,688 after 12 more fatalities were reported in the last 24 hours, a health department bulletin said.

Three deaths each were registered in Kolkata, North 24 Parganas and Nadia districts while Hooghly and Birbhum districts recorded two and one fatalities respectively.

Altogether 440 new cases pushed the state's Covid tally to 16,27,930, the bulletin stated.

In the last 24 hours, 451 patients recovered from the disease taking the total number of cured people to 16,00,791. The discharge rate remained at 98.33 per cent.

The number of active cases is 7,451.

A total of 32,871 samples were tested for Covid-19 in on Tuesday, taking the total number of such clinical examinations to 2,10,59,843.

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India on Tuesday reported a net decrease of 3,170 in active cases to take its count to 79,097. Indias share of global active cases now stands at 0.34 per cent (one in 294). The country is twenty-sixth among the most affected countries by active cases. On Monday, it added 5,326 cases to take its total caseload to 34,752,164 from 34,746,838  an increase of 0.1%. And, with 453 new fatalities, its Covid-19 reached 478,007, or 1.38 per cent of total confirmed infections.

With 6,456,911 more Covid-19 vaccine doses being administered on Monday, Indias total count of vaccine shots so far reached 1,383,478,181. The count of recovered cases across India, meanwhile, reached 34,195,060  or 98.4 per cent of total caseload  with 8,043 new cured cases being reported on Tuesday.

Now the twenty-sixth-most-affected country by active cases, third by deaths, second by total cases and recoveries, India has added 48,520 cases in the past 7 days.

India now accounts for 0.34% of all active cases globally (one in every 294 active cases), and 8.98% of all deaths (one in every 11 deaths).

India has so far administered 1,383,478,181 vaccine doses. That is 3980.98 per cent of its total caseload, and 98.9 per cent of its population.

Among Indian states, the top 5 in terms of number of vaccine shots administered are Uttar Pradesh (192192865), Maharashtra (133084852), West Bengal (105115272), Madhya Pradesh (101257198), and Bihar (95521885).

Among states with more than 10 million population, the top 5 in number of vaccine shots per one million population are Gujarat (1422562), Delhi (1391098), Kerala (1360960), Jammu and Kashmir (1346502), and Uttarakhand (1299161).

Backwards from here, the last 1 million cases for India have come in 82 days.

The count of active cases across India on Tuesday saw a net reduction of 3,170, compared with 1,646 on Monday. States and UTs hat have seen the biggest daily net increase in active cases are Maharashtra (25), Jharkhand (15), Chandigarh (11), Odisha (11), and Manipur (9).

With 8,043 new daily recoveries, Indias recovery rate stands at 98.4%, while fatality rate remained unchanged at 1.38%.

The Indian states and UTs with the worst case fatality rates at present are Punjab (2.75%), Nagaland (2.18%), and Uttarakhand (2.15%). The rate in as many as 14 is higher than the national average.

Indias new daily closed cases stand at 8,496  453 deaths and 8,043 recoveries. The share of deaths in total closed cases stands at 5.33%.

Indias 5-day moving average of daily rate of addition to total cases stands at 0.0%.

Indias doubling time for total cases stands at 4522.4 days, and for deaths at 731.1 days.

Overall, five states with the biggest 24-hour jump in total cases are Kerala (2230), Tamil Nadu (605), Maharashtra (544), West Bengal (414), and Karnataka (222).

India on Monday conducted 1,014,079 to take the total count of tests conducted so far in the country to 666,126,659. The test positivity rate recorded was 0.5%.

Five states with the highest test positivity rate (TPR)  percentage of tested people turning out to be positive for Covid-19 infection (by cumulative data for tests and cases  are Dadra & Nagar Haveli-Daman & Diu (14.76%), Kerala (12.79%), Sikkim (11.49%), Goa (11.24%), and Maharashtra (9.8%).

Five states with the highest TPR by daily numbers for tests and cases added  are Mizoram (73.81%), Kerala (5.6%), Manipur (2.49%), Goa (1.97%), and West Bengal (1.84%).

Among states and UTs with more than 10 million population, five that have carried out the highest number of tests (per million population) are Delhi (1707946), J&K (1369238), Kerala (1142830), Punjab (1069412), and Karnataka (820648).

The five most affected states by total cases are Maharashtra (6650140), Kerala (5219819), Karnataka (3002649), Tamil Nadu (2740411), and Andhra Pradesh (2075879).

Maharashtra, the most affected state overall, has reported 544 new cases to take its tally to 6650140.

Kerala, the second-most-affected state by total tally, has added 2230 cases to take its tally to 5219819.

Karnataka, the third-most-affected state, has reported 222 cases to take its tally to 3002649.

Tamil Nadu has added 605 cases to take its tally to 2740411.

Andhra Pradesh has seen its tally going up by 75 to 2075879.

Uttar Pradesh has added 27 cases to take its tally to 1710722.

Delhi has added 91 cases to take its tally to 1442288.
Delhi air again slipped to 'very poor' category on Tuesday, a deterioration that came as the pollution panel uplifted the ban on construction and demolition work in the national capital and the entry of trucks into the state.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) in the national capital was at 316--'very poor'-- at 8 am, according to the Ministry of Earth Sciences' air quality forecast agency SAFAR. Readings below 50 are considered safe, while anything above 300 is considered hazardous or 'severe'.

The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) on Monday lifted the restrictions on construction and demolition activities in Delhi-NCR in view of an improvement in air quality and meteorological forecast. This came after the panel had on Friday allowed authorities in Delhi-NCR to resume physical classes for students in classes 6 and above, colleges and other educational institutions with immediate effect.

Delhi this morning was the world's topmost polluted city with an AQI of 414, said iQair, a website that tracks air quality worldwide. Kolkata and Mumbai were the only other Indian cities on the list at the sixth and seventh spot with an AQI of 177, 169, respectively.

Delhi's air quality in November was the worst in seven years, data showed. The air 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.

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.
The national capital on Tuesday reported 102 fresh COVID-19 cases and one fatality, while the positivity rate stood at 0.20 per cent, according to data shared by the health department.

On Sunday, the city had reported 107 cases, its highest daily rise since June 25, and one death with a positivity rate of 0.17 per cent. On June 25, had logged 115 cases and four deaths, according to government data.

With the fresh COVID-19 cases, Delhi's tally has increased to 14,42,390. Over 14.16 lakh people have recovered from the disease, the department said in a bulletin.

The death toll due to COVID-19 stands at 25,102, it said.

Delhi has recorded four deaths due to the viral disease so far in December. Seven deaths were reported in November, four in October and five in September.

The city reported 91 cases on Monday at a positivity rate of 0.20 per cent, 107 cases on Sunday at a positivity rate of 0.17 per cent, 86 cases on Saturday and 69 on Friday with a positivity rate of 0.13 per cent and 0.12 per cent, respectively.

The rise in daily cases comes amid an Omicron scare in Delhi.

A total of 51,544 Covid tests, including 45,429 RT-PCR tests, were conducted in the city on the previous day, the bulletin stated.

There are 557 active cases, up from 531 on Monday, it stated.

The number of people in home isolation stands at 262, up from 243 on Monday, the bulletin said.

The active case count crossed the 500-mark after over four months on Sunday. The national capital had 513 active cases on August 15.

The number of containment zones in the city stands at 173, up from 163 on Monday, the bulletin said.

On Monday, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said all samples that test positive for COVID-19 will now be sent for genome sequencing.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) during which the Omicron situation, including its possible effects and steps to deal with it, was discussed, according to the chief minister.

He also urged the Centre to allow the administration of booster shots to the fully vaccinated city residents.

"About 99 per cent of our eligible population has received the first dose and about 70 per cent has been vaccinated with both doses," he had said.

Kejriwal also said the home isolation system will be strengthened in Delhi as according to experts the Omicron variant only causes mild symptoms.

He said the government has made adequate arrangements for hospital beds, oxygen, medicines and everything else that may be needed to combat the virus.

"We will not let the people of Delhi face any difficulty in their treatment," he added.

The chief minister held a meeting on November 30 to review preparations to tackle a possible third wave of and the spread of the Omicron variant.

It has been assessed that 30,000 Covid beds are ready in Delhi.

The government will be able to arrange 100 beds per ward on a two-week notice, which will take the total bed capacity in Delhi to over 64,000, according to an official statement.

Additionally, 6,800 ICU beds will also be ready very soon. Medicine stocks are currently being added and home isolation arrangements are being strengthened, the government statement said.

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Demanding complete loan waiver and compensation to kin of those killed during the anti-farm law stir, blocked rail tracks at various places for the second day on Tuesday, affecting the movement of 156 trains in the state.

Ferozepur division railway officials said, 84 trains were cancelled, 47 were short-terminated and 25 were short-originated.

under the banner of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee started the agitation on Monday, demanding besides loan waiver, compensation to families of those among them who died during the year-long anti-farm law stir and the cancellation of criminal cases slapped against them.

They are also demanding a compensation of Rs 50,000 per acre for the damaged crops, the release of pending payment of sugarcane crops and the abolition of the contract system.

Satnam Singh Pannu, a farmer leader said they will not lift their 'dharna' till their demands are met.

During a meeting on September 28, we were given assurance by Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi but the state government later backed out. Besides four places where are sitting presently on dharna, we will start the protest at three more sites in from tomorrow, he said.

Farmers are presently squatting on railway tracks at different places in Ferozepur, Tarn Taran, Amritsar and Hoshiarpur.

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20 channels and two websites on Monday were taken down by India after the Union government, for the first time, invoked the emergency powers under the intermediary guidelines and digital media ethics code in the that was notified recently, according to a news report in Economic Times. The channels and the websites were allegedly running anti-India content from Pakistan.

According to the newspaper, I&B secretary Apurva Chandra directed and the Department of Telecom to ban the content as it infringes upon the sovereignty and integrity of India.

I&B officials said that the 'anti-India content' was being run by Pakistan with the help of Inter-Services Intelligence. One of the groups identified on YouTube was 'Naya Pakistan' that had more than 2 million subscribers and was running 'false news' on various issues such as Kashmir, farmers protests in India, Article 370, and Ayodhya. The total subscriber base of these YouTube channels is estimated to be more than 3.5 million and have a total viewership of 500 million, according to the officials.

These channels were flagged first by the security agencies after which the information ministry conducted its own inquiry. "This is for the first time that the emergency powers under the IT Rules, 2021 have been cited to ban anti-India propaganda websites," a senior official was quoted as saying in the report.
The Delhi has directed the city government to carry out a 'social audit' in the city, saying that freedom of movement has to be honoured and assured to those with in every possible way and it cannot be restrained by lack of civic amenities.

Justice Najmi Waziri stated that non-availability of requisite enabling infrastructure is glaring throughout the city, which violates Article 21 of the Constitution, and asked the Delhi chief secretary to appoint an officer of a rank not lower than the director to undertake the audit within six weeks.

The court hoped that in three months, "streets not less than two kilometres each in the south, east, north, west and central regions will be identified, and made ready, in terms of the social audit".

The judge said that it would be open to the to take the assistance of the School of Planning and Architecture and clarified that all agencies who provide public facilities, such as DTC, DMRC, Railways, airports authority, etc., shall assist and coordinate with the designated officer in the process.

"The practical way forward would be that a Nodal Officer be appointed by the Department of Social Welfare, GNCTD (Delhi government). Let an officer of a rank not lower than the Director be appointed by the Chief Secretary for enabling persons with requisite facilities... The said officer will be appointed in a week of receipt of this order, she/he shall ensure that a Social Disability Audit is carried out, preferably within six weeks," the court stated in its order dated December 16.

"All agencies shall endeavour to respect the dignity and individual autonomy of persons with disabilities. It needs to be borne in mind that this exercise is necessary and needs to be carried out in terms of objectives and context of the enactment of the Rights of Persons with Disability Act, 2016," said the court.

It further directed each public agency to appoint a senior officer not below the rank of the Executive Engineer to assist and coordinate with the designated officer.

The court was hearing a plea by a woman who was permanently debilitated below the waist when she was a school-going girl.

The court noted that the petitioner was now inconvenienced or unable to use footpaths, narrow streets, and transportation facilities such bus or metro as she was unable to optimally use her wheelchair to access public transportation or wheel herself out of her residence on to a footpath.

"A part of the compensation provided to the petitioner under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, would be meaningless, if the public infrastructure in the city limit her movement," the court said.

"The non-availability of requisite and enabling infrastructure for persons with disability is glaring and apparent throughout the city. It is also a violation of the Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Freedom of movement has to be honoured and assured in every way possible, it cannot be restrained by lack of civic amenities," the court observed.

The court noted that while the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) did robustly assist the petitioner in an earlier exercise to facilitate her travel from her residence to Connaught Place and back, ordinarily, women personnel from the Corporation were not available for such assistance.

The court stated that it hoped that the DMRC would ensure due assistance to the petitioner through lady members at the metro station.

The matter would be heard next in February.

(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's production of crude oil, which is refined to produce petrol and diesel, continued to decline in November, with lower output from state-owned firms leading to an over 2 per cent drop, official data released on Tuesday showed.

production in November was 2.43 million tonnes, down from 2.48 million tonnes a year back and 2.5 million tonnes in October 2021.

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) produced 3 per cent less at 1.6 million tonnes in November due to delays in mobilising equipment at western offshore fields.

Oil India Ltd (OIL) produced 2,41,420 tonnes of in November, down from 2,43,200 tonnes a year back and 2,52,990 tonnes in October.

India is 85 per cent dependent on imports to meet its crude oil needs as domestic output is insufficient to meet demand.

During April-November - the first eight months of the current fiscal year - India's crude oil production fell 2.74 per cent to 19.86 million tonnes. ONGC produced 4.18 per cent less oil at 12.94 million tonnes.

Natural gas production was, however, 23 per cent higher at 2.86 billion cubic meters (bcm) in November, mainly due to output from newer fields in the KG-D6 block, operated by Reliance Industries Ltd and BP plc.

ONGC produced 5.28 per cent less gas at 1.72 bcm, while the output from eastern offshore - where KG-D6 is situated - jumped 1,251 per cent to 581.34 million cubic meters.

The data did not give individual field output.

Reliance-BP last year started gas production from newer fields in the KG-D6 block, and such output has contributed to the overall rise in availability in the country.

Delays in the mobilisation of equipment and the start of output from its eastern offshore fields due to COVID impacting supply chains were the main reasons listed for lower output by ONGC.

Gas production in April-November was 21.78 per cent higher at 22.77 bcm. ONGC produced 6.14 per cent less gas at 13.78 bcm, while eastern offshore output jumped 1,163 per cent to 4.46 bcm.

With the economy rebounding from COVID induced slowdown, fuel consumption has been on the rise, leading to higher crude processing at refineries.

Refineries processed 3.38 per cent more crude oil at 21.48 million tonnes in November and 11.7 per cent higher in April-November at 155.73 million tonnes.

Refineries operated at 102.7 per cent of their capacity in November as compared to 89.81 per cent a year back. During April-November capacity utilisation was 93.23 per cent as opposed to 83.42 per cent a year back.

(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's stature on the global stage has grown significantly and the world expects more from the country, External Affairs Minister said on Tuesday.

In an address at an event, he said there has been a profound transformation in the international order and its expressions are many.

"We find ourselves in a different strategic environment. Our stature on the global stage has grown significantly. The world expects more from us and in a globalised era," he said.

"There is so much that we too can seek from the world for our development. All of this has direct relevance to good governance," Jaishankar said at the event organised to mark 'Good Governance Week'.

The external affairs minister said the COVID-19 pandemic posed an unprecedented challenge before the country that compelled it to address many issues with greater urgency.

"Among them was to keep the supply chains open at a time when many borders were closed," he said.

Jaishankar highlighted the way the government extended assistance to the Indian nationals abroad and the diaspora community in the wake of the pandemic besides referring to the "active role" played by the Indian missions in many countries in the procurement of medicines and medical equipment.

He said the Ministry of External Affairs led from the front in ensuring that stranded Indian nationals come back home safely.

Referring to the 'Vande Bharat' mission, operation 'Devi Shakti' and assistance provided to Indian nationals facing difficulties, Jaishankar said, "We are a human-centric government dedicated to ease of living".

Under the 'Vande Bharat' mission, India brought back home lakhs of stranded Indian citizens from various parts of the globe following the pandemic.

The operation 'Devi Shakti' was launched to evacuate Indian nationals and others from Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power in Kabul on August 15.

"In so far as our nationals abroad and diaspora are concerned, we have again demonstrated through our whole of the government approach involving different ministries that we are there when they really need us," Jaishankar said.

"It could be the Vande Bharat' mission, or operation 'Devi Shakti' or the expanded use of Indian Community Welfare Funds. We are a human-centric government dedicated to ease of living," he said.

Jaishankar also spoke about the significant improvement in services relating to the issuance of passports.

"Our efforts at facilitating the issue of passport is illustrative of the changes brought in since 2014. At various levels, there has been an effective use of technology for the public good. This has made applications easier to receive and processed," he said.

Jaishankar said the use of post offices for passport services is a real case of "minimum government and maximum governance".

"All these are central to our goal of approaching the world as a global workplace," he said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After several rounds of negotiations with the government and power blackouts in several regions for the past two days, power departments employees in Jammu & Kashmir decided to end their strike on Tuesday.

In a notice by divisional commissioner Raghav Langer signed by J&K Power Employees and Engineers Coordination Committee (JKPEECC), it was decided that the department will resume normal functioning and the government will work on their demands.

It has been decided that the proposed joint venture between J&K Power Transmission Company Ltd (JKPTCL) and Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) shall be put on hold. A committee comprising members of JKPEECC will make recommendations on the way forward, said the note, which was reviewed by Business Standard.

The note also mentioned that salaries of employees will be regularised. It said, The interest of serving employees of JKPDD, JKSPDCL, JKPTCL (the three arms of the power department) shall be protected and shall not be varied to their disadvantages in terms of service benefits.

Employees of the three arms had called a strike to oppose the move by J&K Power Development Department to privatise the in the Union Territory and also merge the transmission arm JKPTCL with PGCIL.

This led to power cuts in several areas of the UT and delay in servicing, which caused a blackout situation.

Political leaders have condemned the situation. Omar Abdullah, Vice President, J&K Conference, tweeted, Arrived in Jammu where the neighbourhood has had no electricity since yesterday. The same story is repeated across J&K as the power department employees are on strike. The administration seems to have adopted a hands off approach & the people are being left to suffer.

Local reports said the Indian Army was stationed over the last two days at power stations to restore electricity.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last year in her Covid relief package announced that companies (discoms) of all Union Territories will be privatised.

The latest amendments to the Electricity Act 2003 seek to abolish power distribution licence and allow any company to supply electricity in an area, after regulatory approval. With this, the Centre plans to end the monopoly of existing discoms  mostly state-owned entities  and throw open the market to private discoms.
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The Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government in faced fire over alleged underreporting of cases, even as it registered a sound performance in Lok Sabha and Assembly bypolls held in the state during the year.

Blaming the state government for underreporting Covid-related deaths, former chief minister Kamal Nath claimed that over one lakh people died from the infection in March and April across the state.

Bhopal police lodged an FIR against Kamal Nath, Leader of in the Assembly, for his controversial Indian Variant remark.

The ruling BJP accused Kamal Nath of spreading misleading information through his remarks on the B.1.617 variant, which he referred to as the Indian Variant.

While state Congress spokesman K K Mishra claimed that over two lakh people died during the pandemic, health officials put the death toll so far at 10,529.

Mishra cited figures from various cremation grounds in the state to prove his point. National and international media highlighted the large number of deaths in the state but the BJP government continues to hide the real figures, he said.

After a tumultuous 2020 that saw the fall of the Congress government, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this year was largely stable on the political front.

Sixteen months after joining the BJP, former Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia was inducted as Union minister in July this year.

At the Janjatiya Gaurav Divas Maha Sammelan in Novemer, organised to mark the birth anniversary of revered tribal leader and freedom fighter Birsa Munda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the birth anniversary of Munda will be celebrated on the lines of Gandhi Jayanti and Ambedkar Jayanti.

Modi also inaugurated the newly-revamped Rani Kamlapati Railway Station, earlier known as Habibganj railway station. It has been named after the famous Gond queen.

The ruling BJP in retained the Khandwa Lok Sabha seat and wrested Prithvipur and Jobat Assembly seats from Congress during the bypolls, but lost the Raigaon seat to the main party. Congress also won the Damoh bypoll in May.

The BJP now has 28 of the total 29 Lok Sabha seats from the state. After the Assembly bypolls, BJP's strength in the 230-member House is 127, while Congress has 95 members there.

Officials said 82 per cent of the eligible population in received both the doses of vaccines so far. Chouhan congratulated people, social workers, institutions, crisis management committee members, health staff and public representatives for this achievement.

In March, the Assembly passed the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Bill 2021 to check religious conversions through marriage or by any fraudulent means, with provision of 10 years imprisonment in some cases and hefty fine for violators. Soon after it was passed, cases were filed against religious conversions in Khargone, Jhabua and Barwani districts.

In December, right-wing activists and local residents barged into St Joseph School in Ganj Basoda town, about 110 km from Bhopal, and pelted stones and vandalised property. Similar organisations also ransacked the sets of web series Ashram in Bhopal claiming it maligned Hindu culture.

Ahead of the Assembly winter session, which began on December 20, Madhya Pradesh government cleared a draft bill to penalise those who destroy government and private property during protests, demonstrations, strikes and riots and recover double the amount of damage.

Fifty-four bus passengers died after the vehicle fell into a canal near Patna village in Sidhi district in February.

More bad news came as the year was about to end as Group Captain Varun Singh and Lance Naik Jitendra Kumar, who hailed from the state, died in a helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu.

Among the victims was Madhulika Rawat, originally hailing from Shahdol district, and wife of the country's first Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, who also died in the crash.

Four infants died in a fire that broke out in the special new-born care unit of a government hospital in Bhopal in November, prompting the government to order a high-level probe into the incident.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union Home Minister said on Tuesday that the Narendra Modi-led government has created a strong infrastructure to deal with cyber crimes in the last seven years and now the system is fully integrated up to the police post level.

Chairing a meeting of the consultative committee of the Ministry of Home Affairs on 'Cyber Crime: Threats, Challenges and Response', Shah said Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) have been implemented in all the 16,347 police stations of the country, and in 99 per cent of the police stations, 100 per cent FIRs are being registered directly in CCTNS, including the newly-established police stations.

"The work of making analytical tools against cyber crimes has also been completed up to 40 per cent while the efforts are being made to train the police and lawyers for the prevention of cyber crime," the minister said.

Stating that efforts are being made to train the police and lawyers for the prevention of cyber crime, Shah said that e-initiatives by the Ministry of Home Affairs to deal with cyber crimes, such as the Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), facilitate the complainants to report cybercrime online.

"So far, more than six lakh complaints have been received and 12,776 FIRs have been registered, while the Cybercrime Threat Analysis Unit (NCTAU) has issued 142 cybercrime prevention advisories and has blocked 266 mobile apps," the Home Minister said.

Stating that seven Joint Cyber Crime Coordination Groups (JCCTs) have been constituted, which include all the states and UTs, Shah informed the panel that the Cybercrime Training Centre (NCTC) registered 8,075 police personnel for online training and issued 1,877 certificates while five research and development proposals of National Cyber Research and Innovation Centre (NCR&IC) were selected.

During the meeting, various measures taken by the Home Ministry towards prevention of cyber crimes were shared with the members of the committee, including National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, a centralised system to report cyber crimes online 24x7 from anywhere, cyber capacity building by setting up of Cyber Forensic-cum-Training Labs in states and UTs, training of law enforcement agencies etc.

Ministers of State for Home, Nityanand Rai, Ajay Kumar Mishra, Nishith Pramanik and several senior officials of the ministry were present in the meeting.

--IANS

ams/arm

(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.)
Airports in the south, such as Chennai, Calicut, Trichy and Cochin, have witnessed the highest amount of smuggled gold seizures by customs and other authorities so far this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

In a written reply to Member of Parliament John Brittas, Sitharaman said till November of the current fiscal year (2021-22), about 130 kg of gold was seized at Chennai airport, the highest among 21 major airports for which data was available. This was followed by Calicut, at about 28 kg. Relatively tiny Trichy airport saw the same amount of gold seized  78 kg  as the countrys largest airport in Delhi, the data tabled by Sitharaman said.

As the chart shows, seizures of gold came down drastically in 2020-21, due to flight and international travel restrictions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. Even last year, Chennai and Calicut saw the highest amount of seizures, in terms of weight.

Before the pandemic, in 2019-20, the highest seizures in terms of combined weight were in Delhi and Mumbai airports, at 494 kg and 403 kg, respectively. This was followed by Chennai (328 kg) and Calicut (262 kg).

The most gold seized in any airport in the last five years was in Mumbai in fiscal year 2018-19, at 763 kg.





When asked by Brittas if cases had gone up, Sitharaman replied in the negative. However, the minister did not give any reasons on how instances of seizures had been kept from rising, and why southern states had more seizures than other parts of the country.

India is one of the worlds largest consumers of gold, a country where festive gold buying season can make or break global precious metal markets. According to the Directorate of Revenue Intelligences 2019-20 annual report, about $185 million worth of gold was seized around the country. This would include airports, ports, land and sea borders.

Experts believe that the amount of gold seized is just a fraction of the amount of gold that is actually smuggled into the country.
A majority of State Road Transport Corporation employees did not report to work on Tuesday even though the last trade union linked to the ongoing strike has announced its withdrawal from the stir, while the MSRTC managed to operate nearly 3,000 during the day, officials and union leaders said.

An MSRTC official said out of the total 93,226 employees of the corporation, 20,935 reported to duty, a day after the Rajya Kanishtha Vetanshreni ST Kamgar Sanghatana, a lesser known union, announced an end to the strike, which started in late October demanding a merger of the loss-making transport body with the state government. After the Sanghatana's decision, no other trade union is now involved in the nearly two-month-old strike. Another senior official said they were able to run more on Tuesday than the previous day. The MSRTC operated 2,963 till 6pm as compared to 2,916 buses on Monday. An MSRTC spokesperson said as per discussion between transport minister Anil Parab and leaders of the union, the corporation has issued a circular withdrawing disciplinary actions such as suspension, transfer, dismissal and termination against the employees during the strike period if they re-join duty by December 22 and 23. Since October 28, a majority of MSRTC employees are on strike, which was intensified in November. The agitating employees are seeking a merger of the cash-strapped corporation with the state government for better salaries and other benefits. Ajaykumar Gujar, president, Rajya Kanishtha Vetanshreni ST Kamgar Sanghatana, on Monday announced his union's withdrawal from the strike after a meeting with Parab, and later told media persons that the employees will resume duty by December 22. After the meeting, Parab had told the media that the government was ready for discussion with the union on its demand that MSRTC employees be given salaries at par with state staffers. Also, both the minister and Gujar had agreed to accept whatever verdict the Bombay High Court gives on the merger demand. The MSRTC is one of the biggest public transport corporations in the county with a fleet of more than 16,000 buses. The loss-making corporation used to ferry over 65 lakh passengers daily before the pandemic. However, the 55-day-long strike has left the corporation financially bleeding, whereas the passengers are going through hardship.

(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 Tuesday reported 327 new cases, a jump of more than 100 from a day ago, and one fresh death due to the infection, a civic officer said.

With these additions, the overall tally of COVID-19 cases climbed to 7,67,658, while the death toll rose to 16,366, he said. The financial capital has reported 123 more cases as compared to Monday, when it logged 204 COVID-19 infections and zero fatalities. The BMC official said 37,973 COVID-19 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, taking their cumulative number in the city to 1,32,46,703. The city now has 2,159 active cases after 227 patients were discharged from hospitals during the day following recovery. The cumulative number of recovered patients stood at 7,46,555. Mumbai's recovery rate is 97 per cent. The overall growth rate of the COVID-19 infection stood at 0.03 per cent between December 14 and December 20, while the case doubling rate was 2,050 days, he said. The official said presently has 16 sealed buildings (where more than five residents have tested coronavirus positive in each of them), but no containment zones in slums and 'chawls' (old row tenements) since the past few months. This year, reported the highest cases at 11,163 on April 4 and most deaths at 90 on May 1 during the second wave of the pandemic.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The count in district of Maharashtra rose to 4,13,335 with an addition of 53 new cases on Tuesday, while one more patient succumbed to the infection, health department officials said.

With one fresh fatality, the death toll in the district rose to 8,747, they said. Also, 34 patients were discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours, pushing the tally of recovered cases to 4,04,128, the officials said. As many as 29,86,142 swab samples have been tested till date in the district, of which 4,763 were examined during the day, they 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.)
The Prime Minister is the leader of the nation and not of a political party and citizens "need not be ashamed" to carry a vaccination certificate with his photograph and "morale boosting message", the said on Tuesday and dismissed a plea seeking removal of PM's photo from the COVID-19 immunisation certificates.

"Nobody can say that a Prime Minister is a Congress Prime Minister or a BJP Prime Minister or the Prime Minister of any political party. But once a Prime Minister is elected as per the constitution, he is the Prime Minister of our country and that post should be the pride of every citizen.

".. they can differ on the policies of the government and even the political stand of the Prime Minister. But the citizens need not be ashamed to carry a vaccination certificate with the photograph of the Prime Minister with a morale boosting message, especially in this pandemic situation," the high court said.

It also said that when COVID-19 pandemic can be eliminated only by vaccination, if the PM gave a message with his photograph, in the certificates, that with the help of medicine and strict control, India will defeat the virus, "what is wrong with it?"



The court dismissed the petition with a cost of Rs 1 lakh, saying it was "frivolous", filed with "ulterior motives", "publicity oriented" and the petitioner probably also had a "political agenda".

"According to my opinion, this is a frivolous petition filed with ulterior motives and I have a strong doubt that there is a political agenda also to the petitioner. According to me, this is a publicity oriented litigation. Therefore, this is a fit case that is to be dismissed with a heavy cost.

"A citizen of this country argues before the High Court that carrying the photograph of his Prime Minister in the vaccination certificate with a morale boosting message in a pandemic situation is an intrusion to his privacy. The petitioner says that it is a 'compelled viewing'. As I observed earlier, these are frivolous contentions, which one never expects from a citizen," Justice P V Kunhikrishnan said.

The court directed the petitioner -- Peter Myaliparampil -- to deposit the cost in favour of the Kerala State Legal Services Authority (KeLSA) within six weeks.

The court said in case of failure to deposit the cost within the stipulated period, KeLSA shall recover the amount from his assets by initiating revenue recovery proceedings against him.

It also said that the "petitioner should study the respect to be given to the Prime Minister and others by watching at least the parliamentary proceedings, which are available live on national TV".

The court said that if the petitioner does not want to see his PM or if he was ashamed to see the PM's photo, "he can avert his eyes to the bottom side of the vaccine certificate".

"Therefore, the argument by the petitioner that the photograph of the Prime Minister of India with a morale boosting message to his fellow citizens through the vaccination certificate is a compelled viewing of the photograph of the Prime Minister of India is to be rejected. This is also a frivolous contention raised by the petitioner," the judge said in his 32-page judgement.

The court also said that 'compelled listening or viewing' is only there when the government forces someone to listen or view its messages.

The court also said, "What is wrong with politicians? Since a small percentage of politicians are having a bad history, the entire politicians need not be ignored. They are the builders of our nation with innovative ideas."



While imposing the cost, the judge said he was aware the amount was big as far as a citizen was concerned, but when such frivolous contentions are raised by a petitioner, he should know its effect and "the society also should know that if frivolous petitions are filed, the court will not accept the same".

"Thousands of convicted persons in criminal cases are in jail in our country waiting for hearing of their appeals. Thousands of people are waiting for a result in their matrimonial disputes. Thousands of people are waiting for the result of their property disputes.

"In such a situation, this court has to consider those litigations as early as possible and this court is doing that every day. In such a situation, when frivolous petitions are filed, that should be dismissed with a heavy cost," it said.

"If the petitioner is coordinating this type of campaign, I have nothing to say but to pity him," the judge added.

The petitioner had contended that the certificate was a private space with personal details on record and therefore, it was inappropriate to intrude into the privacy of an individual.

He had contended that adding the Prime Minister's photo to the certificate was an intrusion into an individual's private space.

The petitioner, a senior citizen, had contended in his plea that the Prime Minister's photo on his vaccination certificate was a violation of fundamental rights.

(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 today and will transfer around Rs 1,000 crore in the bank accounts of Self Help Groups (SHGs), benefitting around 16 lakh women members of the SHGs.

According to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), this transfer is being done under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM), with 80,000 SHGs receiving Community Investment Fund (CIF) of Rs 1.10 lakh per SHG and 60,000 SHGs receiving Revolving Fund of Rs 15,000 per SHG.

"PM Modi will visit on December 21 and participate in a one of its kind programme that will be attended by over two lakh women, at around 1 PM," reads the release.

The programme is being held as per the vision of the Prime Minister to empower women, especially at the grassroots level, by providing them with the necessary skills, incentives and resources.

The programme will also witness the Prime Minister encouraging Business Correspondent-Sakhis (BC-Sakhis), by transferring Rs 4,000 as the first month's stipend in the account of 20,000 BC-Sakhis.

When B.C.-Sakhis commence their work as providers of doorstep financial services at the grassroot level, they are paid a stipend of Rs 4,000 for six months, so that they get stabilized in their work and then start earning through the commission on transactions, the PMO informed.

During the programme, PM Modi will also be transferring a total amount of over 20 crores to more than one lakh beneficiaries under the Mukhya Mantri Kanya Sumangala Scheme. The Scheme provides conditional cash transfer to a girl child at different stages of her life. The total transfer is Rs 15,000 per beneficiary.

"The stages are at birth (Rs 2,000), on completing one-year complete vaccination (Rs 1,000), on admission in class-I (Rs 2,000), On admission in class-VI (Rs 2,000), on admission in class-IX (Rs 3,000), on admission in any degree or diploma course after passing class X or XII (Rs 5,000)," it added.

In addition, the Prime Minister will also lay the foundation stone of 202 Supplementary Nutrition Manufacturing Units. These units are being funded by the Self Help Groups and will be constructed at the cost of approximately Rs 1 crore for one unit.

These units will supply Supplementary Nutrition under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in 600 blocks of the state, the PMO said in its release.

(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.)
Criticising the practice of borrowing funds by a PSU to purchase equity stake in another PSU, government auditor Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said it defeats the spirit of disinvestment. The made this observation while commenting on the disinvestment of Kamarajar Port Limited (KPL) which was sold to Chennai Port Trust (ChPT). As part of strategic disinvestment, Government of India (GoI) sold (March 2020) its entire 66.67 per cent equity in Kamarajar Port Limited (KPL) to Chennai Port Trust (ChPT) for Rs 2,383 crore, General Purpose Financial Audit Report on CPSEs presented in Parliament said. Due to poor financial condition, it said, ChPT had to raise a loan of Rs 1,775 crore at a rate of interest of 8 per cent per annum for purchasing the GoIs stake in KPL. In addition to principal repayment, it put an additional interest burden of approximately Rs 142 crore (per annum) on the ChPT.

Thus, the proceeds realised by GoI from disinvestment of KPL was substantially borrowed from the market by ChPT, which defeated the spirit of disinvestment, it said.

Get foolproof IT system to check errors, CBDT told Pointing out significant errors and irregularities in Corporation Tax assessments, on Tuesday asked the Central Board of Direct Taxes to put in place a foolproof IT system and internal control mechanism to avoid such recurrences. audited 356 high value cases pertaining to Corporation Tax. Extraction stage of groundwater at 63%: Report The stage of extraction of groundwater in the country has increased from 58 to 63 per cent from 2004 to 2017, the CAG report said, adding Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan have a stage of extraction of more than 100 per cent, meaning extraction of groundwater has surpassed the recharge level. AI paid avoidable Rs 44-crore fine: CAG paid an avoidable penalty of Rs 43.85 crore to Boeing for non-adherence with the contractually stipulated timelines under the agreement for an aircraft component service programme, CAG said.

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Parliament on Tuesday passed a Bill to link electoral roll data with the ecosystem with passing it by voice vote amid a walkout by the Opposition.

The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which was passed in Lok Sabha on Monday, seeks to weed out fake voters from electoral rolls.

The opposition parties were demanding a division of votes as they had moved a motion to send the Bill to a select committee, which was rejected by voice vote.

TMC member Derek O'Brien cited rules for a division of votes even as Deputy Chairman Harivansh urged members to go to their seats to enable the division.

However, opposition members continued to raise slogans in the well. O'Brien threw the rule book on the table where officials sit and staged a walkout.

Ruling party members strongly condemned his behaviour.

Members of Congress, TMC, Left parties, DMK and NCP also walked out from the House in protest.

Members of BJP, JD(U), YSRCP, AIADMK, BJD and TMC-M supported the Bill, saying it will help in eradicating duplicate and fake voters from electoral rolls.

Earlier, Congress, TMC, CPI, CPI-M, DMK and Samajwadi Party opposed the Bill saying it infringes on voters' right to privacy.

Terming the Bill "very good", Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said the legislation will help end fake and bogus voting in the country and make the electoral process credible.

Dismissing the Opposition's apprehensions about the Bill as "baseless", the minister said the Opposition was "misinterpreting" the Supreme Court's judgement on personal liberty.

The Bill has been discussed in detail with the Election Commission & Law Ministry, keeping the pros/cons & Parliamentary Standing Committee's recommendation in mind. Everyone's supporting it, only 1-2 people want to make it a controversial issue: Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju pic.twitter.com/KiLdkB2ahb  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2021

"There is no basis of your opposition to the Bill. The Election Commission and the government have held many meetings and the EC's biggest concern is that the same person has (his or her) name in multiple electoral rolls and there is no other system to check this," Rijiju said.

"In our democracy, the electoral process should be clean and that can happen only if the electoral rolls are clean.

"This Bill will be opposed only by those who take advantage of fake voting. Otherwise, there is no basis for opposing this Bill," he said.

The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek number of people who want to register as voters "for the purpose of establishing the identity".

It also seeks to allow the electoral registration officers to ask for number from "persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in electoral roll, and to identify registration of name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency".

At the same time, the amendment Bill makes it clear that "no application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll shall be denied and no entries in the electoral roll shall be deleted for inability of an individual to furnish or intimate Aadhaar number due to such sufficient cause as may be prescribed".

Such people will be allowed to furnish other alternative documents as may be prescribed.

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Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Jha on Tuesday gave suspension of business notice under Rule-267 in Rajya Sabha to discuss the implications of privatisation of public sector banks.

In his letter, Jha said, "...the House must discuss the proposal to privatise public sector banks as part of the disinvestment strategy and the implications caused by it."

"This matter requires urgent attention of the House as citizens have expressed their discontent against this and bank unions have resorted to strikes," he added.

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Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla left for Tuesday evening on a two-day visit, in the first such high-level outreach from India after that country's military evicted the democratically-elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup on February 1.

Shringla, during his two-day visit that begins on Wednesday, will hold discussions with the State Administration Council, political parties and members of civil society, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said.

"Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla will pay a two-day working visit to on December 22 and 23. During the visit, the foreign secretary will hold discussions with the State Administration Council, political parties and members of civil society," it said.

"Issues relating to humanitarian support to Myanmar, security and India- border concerns, and the political situation in Myanmar will be discussed," it said in a statement.

The powerful State Administration Council (SAC) is headed by General Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power in February.

It is learnt that the recent spurt in militant activities in Manipur and Nagaland is one of the key issues that Shringla will flag in his meetings with Myanmarese authorities.

Myanmar is one of India's strategic neighbours and it shares a 1,640 kilometre-long border with a number of northeastern states including militancy-hit Nagaland and Manipur.

India has been concerned over some militant groups from the North-East region taking shelter in Myanmar.

On February 1, Myanmar's military grabbed power in the coup and imposed a state of emergency after detaining Nobel laureate Suu Kyi and other leaders of her League for Democracy (NLD).

The country witnessed massive protests following the coup.

As the Myanmarese military continued its crackdown on civilians protesting against the coup, India in April condemned any use of violence and said it stands for the restoration of democracy in Myanmar.

According to reports, hundreds of people including children were killed in the crackdown by Myanmarese authorities.

Earlier this month, Suu Kyi was sentenced to four years of imprisonment by a court in Myanmar after holding her guilty of inciting dissent. Her sentence was later reduced from four years to two years.

India said it is "disturbed" at the verdicts relating to Suu Kyi and others.

"We are disturbed at the recent verdicts. As a neighbouring democracy, India has been consistently supportive of the democratic transition in Myanmar," MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said.

"We believe that the rule of law and the democratic process must be upheld. Any development that undermines these processes and accentuates differences is a matter of deep concern," he said.

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A consultative committee on Tuesday suggested CPSEs to explore of reserves manganese ore and other minerals in states like Jharkhand, Odisha and Karnataka, an official statement said.

The Consultative Committee of Parliament for Ministry of Steel also suggested for a research and development (R&D) team to be constituted to work out the possibility of usage of manganese in battery-powered vehicles.

During the meeting of the committee, Steel Minister Ram Chandra Prasad Singh who is the Chairman of the body along with Minister of State (MoS) for Steel Faggan Singh Kulaste directed the CPSEs under his ministry to take up the issue of manganese ore exploration with state governments and explore possibilities of new manganese bearing areas in India, the steel ministry said.

"Members of the committee suggested for exploration and survey of minerals in Jharkhand, Odisha and Karnataka and that a Research & Development team to be constituted to work out the possibility of usage of manganese in E-vehicles batteries," it said.

The committee also discussed a "wide gamut of issues" including usage of manganese ore, its production in India and contribution of state-owned MOIL in country's manganese production. MOIL is contributing around 45 per cent of domestic production and has drawn up plan to increase production up to 1.8 million tonne (MT) by year 2024-25 and 3.5 MT by year 2030.

Speaking on steel output, Minister Singh said as per the current progress, the production is likely to achieve a record production of 115 MT this year.

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Chief Minister on Tuesday thanked Prime Minister and Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri for taking steps for capacity expansion of the country's oldest operating refinery at Digboi.

In a letter to the chief minister, Puri said that the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) has already initiated action for expansion of its Digboi refinery from 0.65 million metric tonnes per annum to 1 MMTPA.

"I am so happy to receive the letter from the Union minister about action on capacity expansion of Digboi Refinery," Sarma tweeted.

He attached the letter to his Twitter post.

" bows in gratitude to Hon PM Sri @narendramodi for his generous margdarshan and support," the chief minister said in the tweet.

He also thanked Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Rameshwar Teli.

In his letter, Puri said the configuration study is expected to be completed by January 2022 followed by first stage investment approval by March 2022.

"IOCL has also taken up the matter for increasing the existing Duliajan-Digboi crude pipeline capacity from 0.65 MMTPA to one MMTPA with Oil India Limited (OIL) to meet the crude requirement for the enhanced capacity of Digboi refinery," Puri said in the letter.

Digboi Refinery, commissioned on 11th December 1901, is India's oldest operating refinery and one of the oldest operating refineries in the world.

"Further, the capacity expansion from one MMTPA to 1.2 MMTPA of Guwahati Refinery of IOCL is in progress and is expected to be completed by October, 2023," the letter read.

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Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal on Tuesday said that the 12 suspended MPs from the Opposition had lowered Parliament's dignity while adding that the government will consider revoking the suspension if they apologize.

"They have (suspended MPs) lowered Parliament's dignity. They should have some remorse. If they apologize, the government will think about revoking the suspension. It has been Parliamentary tradition if some MP does something to lower Parliament's dignity, they apologized," Meghwal told ANI. Union Min AR Meghwal

Asked about the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Parliamentary Party meeting, the Union Minister said, "Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju gave a presentation that why does the country need the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill that was passed in the Lok Sabha yesterday. Our national president (JP Nadda) addressed us at the end that we have to celebrate December 25, the birth anniversary of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as Good Governance Day."

BJP Parliamentary Party meeting took place at the Ambedkar International Centre in the national capital on Tuesday.

Since the beginning of the Winter Session on November 29, has been facing a ruckus over the revocation of the suspension of 12 MPs from the House.

In a move that angered the Opposition and set the stage for acrimonious exchanges, a dozen members of Opposition parties in were suspended from the winter session on the very first day on Monday following a motion brought in by the government.

The members were suspended for alleged unruly conduct towards the end of the monsoon session in August when marshals were called after Opposition members stormed the Well of the House during the passage of the General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Bill, 2021.

The suspended members comprise six from the Congress, two each from Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena, and one each from CPI and CPM: Phulo Devi Netam, Chhaya Verma, Ripun Bora, Rajamani Patel, Syed Nasir Hussain and Akhilesh Prasad Singh of Congress; Dola Sen, Shanta Chhetri of Trinamool Congress; Priyanka Chaturvedi, Anil Desai of Shiv Sena; Elamaram Kareem of CPM; and, Binoy Viswam of CPI.

All the suspended 12 MPs used to sit near Mahatma Gandhi statue inside the premises since they were suspended from the House, and the Opposition parties have been relentlessly disrupting House proceedings every day over the issue barring a few occasions.

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halted its quarantine-free entry program after less than two months, citing concerns about the potential spread of the variant by arriving tourists.

The Covid-19 panel chaired by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha suspended approval of visitors for quarantine-free entry from Tuesday to Jan. 4 amid rising imported cases of the strain. The Covid panel will reassess the policy on Jan. 4, said Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow.

Tourism-dependent waived the requirement for more than 60 jurisdictions last month provided travelers were fully vaccinated and had negative tests for the virus both before and immediately after arrival in the country.

About 200,000 visitors previously approved to enter without quarantine will still be allowed in, although they would be closely-monitored and must comply with additional measures like having more PCR tests while in Thailand, Government Spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana said at a briefing.





ALSO READ: Thailand welcomes more int'l tourists after travel program expansion

Of the travelers approved for quarantine-free entry, 110,000 have already arrived. Reimposing a lockdown will be a last resort, Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said.

The baht dropped to its weakest in nearly three weeks, trading at 33.685 per dollar at 3:57 p.m. local time. The benchmark SET equity index pared gains of as much as 0.8% after the announcement.

The suspension threatens the nascent economic recovery of Thailand, where the government forecasts as many as 15 million tourists in 2022 would provide revenue of as much as 1.8 trillion baht ($53.4 billion). The World Bank last week warned that reimposing travel restrictions could lead to an economic contraction of 0.3% next year instead of the 3.9% growth it was projecting.
Prime Minister said that the government reserves the "possibility of taking further action" to protect public health because of the raging spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.

In his remarks on Monday, the Prime Minister said he is following the data "hour by hour" and warned the rules could still be tightened in the days to come, reports Xinhua news agency.

Britain reported 91,743 cases in the last 24-hour period, the second highest recorded daily number ever, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 11,518,116, according to official figures.

Another 8,044 Omicron cases have been detected in the UK, taking the total tally to 45,145, the Health Security Agency (UKHSA) confirmed.

The country also reported a further 44 fatalities, raising the national death toll to 147,722.

Meanwhile, Ministers have reportedly pushed back against calls from scientific advisers for new measures to tackle the Omicron variant before Christmas.

Around one third of the cabinet are said to be reluctant to support new restrictions in the coming days, with Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak among them, according to The Times newspaper.

The government's advisory scientists have warned extra restrictions are needed "within days" to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by Omicron.

More than 89 per cent of people aged 12 and over in Britain have had their first vaccine dose and over 81 per cent are fully inoculated, according to the latest figures.

Some 50.4 per cent have received the booster shot.

--IANS

ksk/

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Sensing the increasing resentment among the Nishads on the reservation issue, the government in Uttar Pradesh has sent a letter to the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India seeking guidance over the reservation to the community under the Scheduled Caste (SC) category.

A state government spokesperson said that special secretary of the Rajnish Chandra has sent the letter in which he has drawn the attention of both the authorities towards the Majhwar caste which is mentioned at number 53 in the list of SCs of the

The memorandum given to the state government by Sanjay Nishad, president of the Nishad Party, has also been attached with the letter. The Nishad Party is an ally of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

Sanjay Nishad has stated in his letter that Majhi, Majhwar, Kewat, Mallah and Nishad surnames are used by people of Majhwar caste in different areas of the state.

"Due to the use of various surnames, they are not issued SC certificates whereas other SC people using various surnames are getting benefits meant for SC members," he said.

"He has demanded that all the people with surname of Majhwar caste should also be given SC certificates," the spokesperson added.

The Nishad Party chief had raised the demand for the inclusion of Nishad, Majhwar, Kewat and Mallah communities in SC category and quota for them in govt jobs.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah had earlier assured the Nishad community that the government would fulfil their demands and resolve all the problems.

However, Shah did not mention the reservation issue at the joint BJP-Nishad rally in Lucknow on December 17, which angered the community who went on rampage at the rally venue.

Reacting to the letter, Sanjay Nishad said: "The party thanks the BJP leadership and Chief Minister for taking up the issue. The Nishad community has been fighting for justice since long. The reservation to the Nishad community under SC category was one of the main demands of the community."

--IANS

amita/ksk/

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With less than a fortnight to go before the new card data storage norms of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) kick in on January 1, banks, merchants, and other stakeholders are racing against time to comply with the central banks diktat to ensure a smooth transition to the new regime.

Players in the ecosystem would have liked more time for this, but given the strong stance the RBI has taken, they are working towards meeting the deadline, experts said. According to the norms, merchants, payment aggregators, and acquiring banks can no longer store the card details of customers. ...
The first phase of the final placement season at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has seen the institute post a 162.5 per cent jump in the highest domestic cost-to-company (CTC) package.

has received the highest domestic CTC package of Rs 1.68 crore per annum this year compared to Rs 64 lakh per annum (lpa) last year.

The premier institute also posted a 35.86 per cent rise in average cost-to-company package received this year, compared to last year phase one. has received an average CTC package of Rs 25 lakh per annum (lpa) this year compared to Rs 18.40 lpa last year.

This year the highest international CTC in the first phase of placement at was $287,000 per annum while the same was EURO 157,000 per annum last year in the said period.

Phase one of placement season, from December 1 to December 18, saw the institute secure 1382 selections so far, including Pre-Placement Offers (PPOs), from 315 companies. This is an all-time high record of number of offers in Phase-I of at IIT Bombay, even as it expects some more offers in the coming days.

While the PPOs grew from 182 in 2020-21 to 248 in 2021-22, the campus placement offers received in phase one grew from 946 last year to 1475 this year, amounting to a total of 1723 of which 1382 offers were accepted by students.

Sectorwise, the highest number of offers was in the engineering and technology sector, which saw an average CTC of Rs 21.54 lpa this year compared to Rs 16.95 lpa last year. The other top sectors at IIT Bombay included IT/Software with an average CTC of Rs 27.05 lpa, finance (Rs 28.40 lpa), research & development (Rs 25.12 lpa) and consulting (Rs 18.02 lpa), respectively.

The institute also saw two public sector undertakings (PSUs) coming in Phase-I of this year, making nine offers even as more PSUs are expected to recruit during Phase-II of campus

According to IIT Bombay, the institute received a total of 45 international offers from different countries like USA, Japan, UAE, Singapore, Netherlands, Hong Kong and Taiwan. "The Placement Office also focused on connecting with growing start-ups and industry with diverse roles to tackle the market slowdown. Number of international offers above Rs one crore are seven and domestic offers above Rs one crore are five," the institute stated.
Congress' former working president Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco joined the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) in Kolkata on Tuesday, ahead of the Assembly polls due early next year.

On Monday, Lourenco resigned as a member of the Legislative Assembly as well as from the Congress, before heading to Kolkata.

TMC's official handle on Tuesday tweeted, Today, former @INCIndia Curtorim MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco joined us in the presence of our Chairperson @MamataOfficial and our National General Secretary @abhishekhaitc. We extend a very warm welcome to him! Together, we shall work for the betterment of all Goans.

Lourenco, a two-term MLA from Curtorim Assembly seat, was recently elevated as the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee's working president.

After his resignation, the Congress' strength in the 40-member Goa Assembly has been reduced to two.

The Assembly elections in Goa, currently ruled by the BJP, are due in February 2022.

The TMC has announced that it will contest the Assembly polls in the coastal state.

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The World Health Organization's top official in urged governments on Tuesday to prepare for a significant surge in cases across the continent due to the omicron variant, which is already dominant in several countries.

We can see another storm coming, regional director Dr. Hans Kluge said at a press conference in Vienna.

Within weeks, omicron will dominate in more countries of the region, pushing already stretched health systems further to the brink.

Omicron has been detected in at least 38 of the European region's 53 members, Kluge added, noting that it is already the dominant variant in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Portugal.

Last week, 27,000 people died from in the region and an additional 2.6 million cases were reported, Kluge said.

Although these cases include all variants, not just omicron, he noted this figure is 40 per cent higher than during the same period last year.

The sheer volume of new COVID-19 infections could lead to more hospitalisations and widespread disruption to health systems and other critical services, he said.

Thus far, Kluge said 89 per cent of those with confirmed omicron infections in reported symptoms common with other variants, including cough, sore throat, fever. The variant has mostly been spread by young people in their 20s and 30s in the region, he added.

Although much remains unknown about omicron, Kluge said it appears to be more infectious than previous variants, leading to previously unseen transmission rates in countries with a significant number of omicron cases. In those countries, cases of the variant are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days.

European governments should keep ramping up their vaccination campaigns, introduce additional measures to slow the spread of the variant, and prepare critical infrastructure like health care systems for the coming surge, Kluge said.

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A Chinese military plane flew into Taiwan's air defence identification zone on Sunday.

A single People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Shaanxi Y-8 electronic warfare plane entered the southwest corner of the ADIZ, according to the Ministry of National Defense (MND).

In response, sent aircraft, issued radio warnings, and deployed air defense missile systems to track the PLAAF planes, News reported.

A total of 60 Chinese planes have been tracked in Taiwan's ADIZ so far this month, including 36 fighter jets, two bombers, and 22 spotter planes. Chinese military aircraft have been monitored in the identification zone every day this month except for on Dec. 5, 12, and 17.

has been regularly sending warplanes into Taiwan's air defence zone.

Taiwan's defence ministry has been publishing information about such flights since September 17 last year, amid a growing incidence of intrusions into its ADIZ by Chinese military planes.

Air defence identification zones are early warning systems that help countries detect incursions into their airspace.

Any aircraft entering such an area is supposed to report its route and purpose to the "host" nation, though the zones are classified as airspace and pilots are not legally bound to make such a notification.

Since mid-September of last year, Beijing has stepped up its grey-zone tactics by regularly sending planes into Taiwan's ADIZ, with most instances occurring in the southwest corner of the zone and usually consisting of one to three slow-flying turboprop planes.

Beijing claims full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.

Taipei, on the other hand, has countered the Chinese aggression by increasing strategic ties with democracies including the US, which has been repeatedly opposed by Beijing. has threatened that "Taiwan's independence" means war.

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Oil prices rose on Tuesday, though investors remained worried about the rapid spread of the Omicron variant globally and the possibility that countries may consider more restrictions, potentially denting fuel demand.

Brent crude futures increased by 29 cents, or 0.4%, to $71.81 a barrel by 0753 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose by 49 cents, or 0.7%, to $69.10 a barrel.

"After a rough couple of days, crude prices are rebounding as much of the COVID wall of worry has been priced in," said Edward Moya, senior analyst at OANDA.

"The short-term hit to economic growth from borders closing is still unknown and oil prices will remain sensitive to any stricter requirements with travel."

New Zealand delayed the planned reopening of its border because of the sweeping spread of Omicron around the world on Tuesday, as several other countries reimposed social distancing measures.

Many nations are on high alert just days ahead of Christmas and New Year celebrations, with Omicron infections multiplying rapidly across Europe, the United States and Asia, including in Japan where a single cluster at a military base has grown to at least 180 cases.

Still, Moderna Inc said on Monday that a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine appeared to be protective against the fast-spreading Omicron variant in laboratory testing, providing some hope to investors.

On the supply front, OPEC+ compliance with oil production cuts rose to 117% in November from 116% a month earlier, two sources from the group told Reuters, indicating production levels remain well below agreed targets.

In the United States, crude oil inventories were expected to have fallen for a fourth consecutive week, while distillate and gasoline stockpiles likely rose last week, a preliminary Reuters poll showed on Monday.

The poll was conducted ahead of reports from the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, due on Tuesday, and the EIA, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, due on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Tom Hogue)

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Underlining that the humanitarian crisis in has not seen significant improvement in the recent months, India has called for a nationwide comprehensive ceasefire, saying doing so will help to expand crossline humanitarian aid operations in the country.

At a United Nations Security Council briefing on on Monday, Pratik Mathur, Counsellor in India's Permanent Mission to UNGA, said decade-long conflict and involvement of external players has adversely affected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of

He added that it is for the Syrians to determine and decide what is best for Syria and their own future.

"India has been reiterating since the beginning of the conflict that imposing external solutions cannot help in the resolution of the conflict," he said.

On the security front, he said India remains concerned with the overall situation in Syria, including the increasing incidents of ceasefire violations in North-West Syria.

Mathur noted that the ongoing cross-border operations will continue to negatively impact the sovereignty of the Syrian State.

"The humanitarian crisis in Syria has not seen significant improvement in the recent months. We believe that a nationwide comprehensive ceasefire is paramount to the interest of the Syrian people; it will also help to expand crossline humanitarian aid operations. In this context, we note that progress has been made to expand the overall humanitarian response and facilitate crossline access. In the northwest, we believe there is considerable scope for expanding crossline operations," he said.

Mathur called on all sides involved in the Syrian conflict to desist from any actions, including military provocations like missile strikes that may lead to violence and disturbance in Syria.

"Further, the growing influence of terrorist groups in IDP camps like Al-Rukban and Al-Hol needs to be urgently addressed and the issue of repatriation of foreign citizens from these campsites needs to be dealt with, on priority," he said.

He also said that the global fight against terrorism cannot and should not be compromised for narrow political gains.

"UN-designated terrorist groups such as ISIL and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as mentioned in Secretary General's recent reports, have continued to gain in strength in Syria. Da'esh, has also continued to launch attacks in areas across Dayr al-Zawr, Hasakah, and eastern rural Homs," he said.

Taking into consideration the difficult economic and social situation in Syria, which has been further compounded by the global Covid-19 pandemic and the onset of winter, Mathur said that there is a need to scale up humanitarian assistance.

On its part, India has continued to extend developmental assistance and human resource development support to Syria through grants and lines of credits for developmental projects, supply of medicine and food, artificial limb fitment camps and capacity building training programs, he pointed out.

"Since the beginning of the conflict, India has always stood by the Syrian people. Let me conclude by reaffirming India's commitment to a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned UN-facilitated political process in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2254," he noted.

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Dubais ruler was ordered to provide his estranged wife and their children at least 554 million pounds ($734 million) in the largest financial award the U. K. family courts have ever seen.

A London judge ordered Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to pay Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein 251.5 million pounds within three months to cover security and lost items like jewelery and clothing. He must also make annual payments of around 11 million pounds toward costs for his children while they are in education, which will be secured by a 290 million-pound bank guarantee, the judge ruled. The remaining millions account for backdated sums and a learning fund.

This would provide Princess Haya with a clean break from the sheikh following their divorce, Judge Philip Moor said in a ruling published Tuesday.

He said the sheikh, who didnt give evidence in the case, has brought the unusually high award for security on himself, after another judge found that he ordered the hacking of phones belonging to her and her legal team.

The total amount the sheikh will have to pay to his family is likely to be much higher because of annual security costs he must pay directly to his children after theyve completed education.

Lawyers for both the sheikh and Princess Haya declined to immediately comment on the ruling.

Londons family courts have been a popular destination for high-value legal fights, with judges typically prepared to order a more equal share of a couples assets. Before Tuesdays decision, the largest publicly known judge-ordered award in a divorce was 450 million pounds to the wife of billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov -- though the two settled with a payment of less than one-third of that amount.

Under Siege

Over the past two years, Londons courts have played host to a number of explosive allegations and rulings concerning the royal family.

Princess Haya said during the case that she was under siege, and that the sheikhs surveillance of her could not be more intrusive and distressing, according to the ruling. The only claim for financial provision she made for herself was for security and some lost personal possessions.

The case has also revealed the lavish spending enjoyed by middle-eastern royalty.

As part of the settlement, Judge Moor awarded the family over 5 million pounds a year to spend on vacations, including for flights on private jets. Theres nearly 300,000 pounds annually to cover the upkeep of their horses and other pets and even 39,000 pounds to install two trampolines.

Princess Haya said during the hearing that her reliance on periodical payments would put incredible additional pressure on the family because they will be living always under the shadow of possible litigation. Judge Moor ruled that she can be trusted with the lump-sum awarded to her.

He acknowledged the truly opulent and unprecedented standard of living enjoyed by these parties in Dubai and said he had to reach a conclusion as to what is reasonable while remembering that the exceptional wealth and remarkable standard of living enjoyed by these children during the marriage takes this case entirely out of the ordinary.
The US has designated Indian-origin diplomat Uzra Zeya as its Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues and she has been tasked with promoting "substantive dialogue" between China and the Dalai Lama or his representatives in support of a negotiated agreement on

Zeya, who was once posted in New Delhi during her diplomatic career, had quit the foreign service in 2018 in protest against the policies of then president Donald Trump.

She is also the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.

As the US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, Zeya will coordinate the US government policies, programmes and projects concerning Tibetan issues, consistent with the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, as amended by the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020.

I have designated Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights Uzra Zeya to serve concurrently as the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, an important role she will take on effective immediately, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

She will also continue to serve as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, a position for which she was sworn in on July 14, 2021, he said in a statement.

Specifically, she will promote substantive dialogue, without preconditions, between the Government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Dalai Lama, his representatives, or democratically elected Tibetan leaders in support of a negotiated agreement on Tibet, according to the US Department of State.

China is accused of suppressing cultural and religious freedom in However, China has rejected the accusations.

Negotiations between China and the representatives of the Dalai Lama on the issue have not taken place in recent years.

Since becoming China's President in 2013, Xi Jinping has pursued a firm policy of stepping up security control of Tibet.

Beijing has been cracking down on Buddhist monks and followers of the Dalai Lama, who despite his exile remains a widely admired spiritual leader in the remote Himalayan region.

Beijing views the 86-year-old Dalai Lama as a separatist.

Last month, China's ruling Communist Party appointed Wang Junzheng, sanctioned by the US, Britain, the EU and Canada for his alleged role in the human rights violations against Uygur Muslims in Xinjiang, as the head of the party unit in Tibet.

The Dalai Lama has been living in India in-exile ever since he fled Tibet in 1959 following China's takeover of the Himalayan region.

Zeya will promote respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Tibetans, including their freedom of religion or belief, and will support efforts to preserve their distinct historical, linguistic, cultural and religious heritage, the State Department said.

She will further support US efforts to address the humanitarian needs of Tibetan refugees and diaspora communities, including those in the US who have faced threats and intimidation instigated by China, it said, adding that the special coordinator will promote activities to protect the environment and sustainably manage the water and other natural resources of the Tibetan plateau.

Consistent with the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2018, she also will seek to increase access to Tibet for US officials, journalists and other citizens.

Special Coordinator Zeya will work closely with Tibetan cultural, religious, and political leaders, the US Congress, allies and partners, and civil society representatives on these matters, the state department said.

This designation demonstrates the Biden administration's commitment to advance the human rights of Tibetans, help preserve their distinct heritage, address their humanitarian needs, and meet environmental and water resource challenges of the Tibetan plateau, it added.

In April, while introducing Zeya during her confirmation hearing for the position of Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Senator Tim Kaine said that Zeya has previously served five presidents, three Republicans and two Democrats, with distinction for 28 years as a foreign service officer on four continents.

She's fluent in Arabic, French and Spanish. She was acting assistant secretary of human rights, democracy, and labour. In that post, she led UN-US human rights dialogue with China, Egypt, and Bahrain, among others, he said.

Zeya had told lawmakers that her grandfather was a freedom fighter in India.

She is a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

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The Iranian foreign ministry denied has a claim by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that there were direct talks between the two countries over the past few months, official news agency IRNA reported.

"Since the beginning of the negotiations on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna, has held no direct talks with the US," Saeed Khatibzadeh, the ministry spokesman, was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying.

On Friday, Sullivan had told reporters in Washington that the US has "communicated both through the Europeans and directly to Iran".

" has received some messages on the issues of negotiations in written and unwritten forms through EU mediators since the start of the talks in Vienna, to which answers were given on the spot," Khatibzadeh noted.

In May 2018, former US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the Iranian nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and reimposed unilateral sanctions against Tehran in a bid to hammer out a new deal.

Since early April this year, representatives from China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and have held seven rounds of negotiations in the Austrian capital, with the United States involved indirectly, aiming to bring the United States back to the JCPOA and prepare the ground for its full implementation.

The seventh and latest round of the talks started on November 29 and concluded on Friday.

"Today, We have two new agreed-upon texts, which are the results of the intense negotiations over the past few days in the Austrian capital," Khatibzadeh said.

"The new texts have incorporated Iran's views compared to the previous ones. We now have texts according to which we can continue the future talks," he added.

On the US approach to the talks and its intention, the Iranian spokesman said Washington has offered "no tangible proposal or text" to other parties, placing "a big question mark on America's intention."

--IANS

int/shs

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on Tuesday executed three people who were on death row, marking the first time the was carried out under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government, Kyodo news agency reported.

The three were identified as Yasutaka Fujishiro, 65, who killed seven of his relatives in Hyogo Prefecture in 2004, and Tomoaki Takanezawa, 54, and Mitsunori Onogawa, 44, who were convicted of killing two pachinko parlour employees in Gunma Prefecture in 2003, as per the media outlet.

The last execution in was on December 26, 2019, Kyodo reported.

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With the omicron variant on the march, President plans to announce 500 million free rapid tests for Americans, increased support for hospitals under strain and a redoubling of vaccination and boosting efforts.

In a speech scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, Biden is detailing major changes to his COVID-19 winter plan, his hand forced by the arrival of the fast-spreading variant, whose properties are yet not fully understood by scientists.

The world is confronting a second straight COVID-19 holiday season as families and friends begin to gather. Scientists don't yet know for sure how serious the disease caused by omicron can usually be, but they do know that vaccination should offer strong protections against severe illness and death.

The White House provided details on the proposals Biden will announce in his speech.

A cornerstone of the plan is Biden's decision for the government to purchase 500 million rapid tests for free shipment to Americans starting in January. People will use a new website to order their tests, which will then be sent by US mail at no charge, the White House said.

It marks a major shift for Biden, who earlier had called for many Americans to purchase the hard-to-find tests on their own and then seek reimbursement from their health insurance. For the first time, the US government will send free COVID-19 tests directly to Americans, after more than a year of urging by public health experts.

Experts had criticized Biden's initial buy-first, get-paid-later approach as unwieldy and warned that the US would face another round of problems with testing at a critical time. Testing advocates point to places like the UK and Germany, which have distributed billions of tests to the public and recommend people test themselves twice a week.

The federal government will also establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. The first new federally supported testing site will open in New York this week. The new testing sites will add to 20,000 already available. White House officials said they're working with Google so that people will be able to find them by searching free COVID test near me.

Still, Biden's testing surge would fall far short of the levels needed for all Americans to test at the recommended rate of twice weekly.

The US would need 2.3 billion tests per month for everyone 12 and older to do that, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. That's nearly five times the half-billion tests Biden will deploy.

Currently, the US can conduct about 600 million tests per month, with home tests accounting for about half, according to researchers from Arizona State University.

In another prong to Biden's amped-up plan, he is prepared to deploy an additional 1,000 troops with medical skills to assist hospitals buckling under the virus surge. Additionally, he is immediately sending federal medical personnel to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont. There are also plans to ready additional ventilators and protective equipment from the national stockpile, expanding hospital resources.

As a backstop, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will deploy hundreds of ambulances and paramedic teams so that if one hospital fills up, they can transport patients to open beds in other facilities. Ambulances are already headed to New York and Maine, and paramedic teams are going to New Hampshire, Vermont and Arizona.

But vaccination remains the main defense, since it can head off disease in the first place. The government will support multiple vaccination sites and provide hundreds of personnel to administer shots. New rules will make it easier for pharmacists to work across state lines to administer a broader range of shots.

For those who are already fully vaccinated, booster shots have been shown in lab tests to provide strong protection against omicron.

Although reports of breakthrough cases abound, data show that vaccinated people who become infected are much less likely to suffer serious disease leading to hospitalisation or death.

To the unvaccinated, Biden plans to deliver a stern admonition that they're risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

In a preview of Biden's speech, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Monday's press briefing that the Democratic president doesn't plan to impose any lockdowns and will instead be encouraging people to get vaccinated and, if they're eligible, to get their booster shots.

Some prominent experts said that Biden's plan is a step in the right direction but the president hasn't gone far enough to try to get ahead of the virus, given the risks of infections and hospitals being overwhelmed.

I don't know that the measures being proposed are going to be adequate, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Hotez said the government may need go a step further by authorizing a second booster shot for health care workers to prevent infections that would sideline clinicians when all hands are needed.

Dr. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, said the administration finally sees the light on testing with Biden's plan to ship 500 million tests, but the type of test being provided is important at a time when the disease can spread quickly.

We don't have control of this pandemic here, said Topol. We need to pull out all the stops, and we're not doing that still.

Topol said the government could redefine fully vaccinated as three shots instead of two of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Biden could order the Federal Aviation Administration to bar air travel by people who are not fully vaccinated, and the government could use its authority to ramp up production of high quality masks for free distribution.

There's a lack of boldness, Topol said. I am disappointed.

Scientists say omicron spreads even more easily than other strains, including delta. It accounted for nearly three-quarters of new U.S. infections last week.

Underscoring the reach of the virus, the White House said late Monday that Biden had been in close contact with a staff member who later tested positive for COVID-19. The staffer spent about 30 minutes around the president on Air Force One on Friday. The staffer, who was fully vaccinated and boosted, tested positive Monday, Psaki said.

Psaki said Biden has tested negative twice since Sunday and will test again on Wednesday. Citing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Psaki said Biden didn't need to quarantine and would continue with his regular schedule.

In New York City, nearly 42,600 people citywide tested positive from Wednesday through Saturday compared with fewer than 35,800 in the entire month of November. The city has never had so many people test positive in such a short period of time since testing became widely available.

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Meta (formerly Facebook) has filed a federal lawsuit in California court in the US to disrupt phishing attacks designed to deceive people into sharing their login credentials on fake login pages for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

This phishing scheme involved the creation of more than 39,000 websites impersonating the login pages of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

On these websites, people were prompted to enter their usernames and passwords, which Defendants collected.

Phishing is a significant threat to millions of Internet users. These attacks lure victims to a website that appears to be operated by a trusted entity, such as a bank, a merchant, or other service.

The website, however, is a deception, a fake, and the site's fake content is designed to persuade a victim to enter sensitive information, like a password or email address.

"Reports of phishing attacks have been on the rise across the industry and we are taking this action to uncover the identities of the people behind the attack and stop their harmful conduct," Meta said in a statement late on Monday.

As part of the attacks, Defendants used a relay service to redirect internet traffic to the phishing websites in a way that obscured their attack infrastructure.

This enabled them to conceal the true location of the phishing websites, and the identities of their online hosting providers and the defendants.

"Starting in March 2021, when the volume of these attacks increased, we worked with the relay service to suspend thousands of URLs to the phishing websites," said Meta.

--IANS

na/ksk/

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Nikola Corp. will pay a $125 million penalty to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over allegedly misleading statements its founder and former chief executive officer made to investors about the electric-vehicle startup.

The former CEO, Trevor Milton, deceived investors about the companys technological advancements, in-house production capabilities and truck reservations, according to a Tuesday statement from the SEC. Nikola settled the SECs allegations without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

Nikola Corp. is responsible both for Miltons allegedly misleading statements and for other alleged deceptions, all of which falsely portrayed the true state of the companys business and technology, said Gurbir S. Grewal, head of the SECs enforcement division. The misconduct -- and the harm it inflicted on retail investors -- merits the strong remedies todays settlement provides.

The settlement, which Nikola said last month it was expecting, brings the company a step closer to moving past the controversy surrounding its founder, who stepped down in September 2020. Bloomberg first reported in June of last year that Milton had exaggerated the capability of Nikolas debut truck, citing people familiar with the matter.

Nikola said in a statement Tuesday that it was pleased with the SEC settlement and the company has now resolved all government investigations. It said it would pay the fine in five installments over the next two years and reiterated its intention to seek reimbursement from Milton for the costs and damages in connection to the investigation and other government probes.

Representatives for Milton didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

Criminal Charges

Milton is currently facing criminal and civil charges for his statements. He asked a federal judge last week to throw out an indictment accusing him of misleading investors, saying his comments were merely promotional speech in support of the company.

Nikola is vying for a slice of the budding market for EVs with plans to produce both battery-electric and fuel-cell semi trucks. It also aims to establish a hydrogen fueling network. The Phoenix, Arizona-based manufacturer stock has dropped below $10 a share after topping $79 last year as a poster child for SPAC-listed clean-energy upstarts.

News of the settlement sent Nikolas shares up as much as 5.4% in premarket trading Tuesday in New York.
The Omicron variant of the is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the Covid-19 disease, the world health body warned on Monday.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking in Geneva, remarked, An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled. Its better to cancel now and celebrate later, than to celebrate now and grieve later. There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the briefing. And it is more likely people vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19 could be infected or re-infected, Tedros said.

A number of countries have acted to try to halt the spread of the variant, including imposing travel curbs. The WHO has also said it would be unwise to conclude from early evidence that Omicron was a milder variant. Dr Tedros said that all of us are sick of this pandemic. All of us want to spend time with friends and family. All of us want to get back to normal. But he said that everyone, leaders and individuals, had to make difficult decisions to protect people.
The House panel investigating the January 6 US. Capitol insurrection requested an interview with Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania on Monday, marking the first time the committee publicly sought to interview a sitting member of Congress.

The latest request launches a new phase for the lawmakers on the committee, who have so far resisted going after one of their own as they investigate the insurrection by President Donald Trump's supporters and his efforts to overturn the election. Perry and other congressional Republicans met with Trump ahead of the attack and strategized about how they could block the results at the January 6 electoral count.

In a letter to Perry, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said the panel had received evidence from multiple witnesses that Perry had an important role in efforts to install Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general.

Acting Attorney General Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue have provided evidence regarding these issues, and we have received evidence that others who worked with Mr. Clark were aware of these plans," Thompson said.

The letter requests an interview with Perry, who pushed the Justice Department to overturn the election and met with Trump ahead of the violent attack, according to investigators.

The lawmaker representing Pennsylvania's 10th District was cited more than 50 times in a Senate Judiciary report released in October outlining how Trump's effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat brought the Justice Department to the brink of chaos and prompted top officials there and at the White House to threaten to resign.

Perry, who has continuously disputed the validity of President Joe Biden's victory in Pennsylvania, has said he obliged Trump's request for an introduction to Clark, then an assistant attorney general whom Perry knew from unrelated legislative matters. The three men went on to discuss their shared concerns about the election, Perry has said.

The Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud in Pennsylvania or any other state, and senior Justice officials dismissed Perry's claims.

The recent Senate report outlined a call Perry made to then-Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue last December to say the department wasn't doing its job with respect to the elections. Perry encouraged Donoghue to elicit Clark's help because he's the kind of guy who could really get in there and do something about this, the report said.

Perry has previously said his official communications with Justice Department officials were consistent with the law.

The panel voted in November to hold Clark in contempt after he showed up for a deposition yet declined to answer questions. But Thompson has said he will hold off pursuing the charges and allow Clark to attend another deposition and try again. Clark's lawyer has said Clark intends to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, but the deposition has been repeatedly postponed as Clark has dealt with an unidentified medical condition.

The panel has already interviewed around 300 people as it seeks to create a comprehensive record of the attack and the events leading up to it.

Trump at the time was pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud and lobbying Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of Congress to try to overturn the count at the January 6 congressional certification. Election officials across the country, along with the courts, had repeatedly dismissed Trump's claims.

An angry mob of Trump supporters were echoing his false claims as they brutally beat Capitol police and broke into the building that day, interrupting the certification of Biden's victory.

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The Saudi-led coalition fighting in on Monday said it carried out air strikes on what it called military targets at Yemen's Sanaa airport, from where drone strikes have been launched against Saudi targets.

The Yemeni capital is held by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, which has been battling the coalition for seven years. During the conflict, which has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions, Houthi forces have sent drones and fired missiles into Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi-led coalition has retaliated with air strikes inside

Tuesday's strikes hit six sites, including places used for launching drone attacks, training drone personnel, housing trainers and trainees, and storing drones, the coalition said. It said it had asked civilians to evacuate the airport before the strike, according to a statement carried by Saudi state media.

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The situation at the China-India border is "generally stable" and both sides are maintaining dialogue and communication through diplomatic and military channels to ease the border situation following the standoff at eastern Ladakh, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian made the remarks while responding to a question on how view the current situation at the India- border and progress in the dialogue between the two countries following Foreign Minister Wang Yi's remarks on Monday that has "effectively managed and controlled" frictions in certain border areas.

"I can tell you (that) currently the border situation between China and India is generally stable, Zhao told a media briefing here.

"The two sides are maintaining dialogue and communication through diplomatic and military channels to work for easing the border situation, he said, without directly referring to the prolonged military standoff at eastern Ladakh.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Wang said that China and India have maintained dialogue through diplomatic and military channels, and effectively managed and controlled frictions in certain border areas, under a shared commitment to improving and developing the bilateral relations.

Wang's remark comes in the midst of the lingering border row between the two countries in eastern Ladakh.

The military standoff at Eastern Ladakh has brought the relations between the two countries to a standstill.

The border standoff between the armies of India and China erupted on May 5 last year following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas and both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry.

As a result of a series of military and diplomatic talks, the two sides completed the disengagement process in the Gogra area in August and in the north and south banks of the Pangong lake in February.

The two sides held the 12th round of talks on July 31. Days later, the two armies completed the disengagement process in Gogra, which was seen as a significant forward movement towards the restoration of peace and tranquillity in the region.

Both sides have remained engaged at the level of foreign ministers and between the top military commanders besides through the WMCC (Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination) to keep the tensions under control.

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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put eight more countries on its list of states that Americans should avoid due to the high risk of being infected with the novel coronavirus, including Spain and

"Avoid travel to Spain," the CDC said in one of the identically-worded travel alerts for the eight countries that include Chad, Lebanon, Bonaire, Gibraltar, Monaco and San Marino. "If you must travel to Spain, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel. Because of the current situation in Spain, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants."

The CDC also urged travelers to follow recommendations or requirements in the eight countries, including wearing a face mask and staying six feet apart from other individuals.

The CDC's ravel alerts are usually for countries regarded to be on Level 4 for coronavirus infections, signifying "very high" risk.

Monday's alerts came after the Netherlands went into a lockdown at the weekend and more European governments contemplated implementing additional COVID-19-related restrictions ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays.

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The and the United Kingdom sent cyberwarfare teams to over concerns Russia could potentially launch a cyber attack, the New York Times reported.

The report said on Monday that the and the United Kingdom think Russian President Vladimir Putin may soon attempt to launch a cyberattack targeting Ukraine's electrical grid, banking system and other critical infrastructure.

US officials declined to describe the type of cyber teams that were sent to while the government described its support to as defensive in nature, the report said.

The report added, citing US intelligence, that Putin may be trying to make Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy look inept.

Tensions around Ukraine have been aggravated in the pa several weeks by an alleged Russian troop buildup near the Ukrainian border and claims of preparations for an invasion. Russia has repeatedly denied those accusations, pointing to NATO's military activity near its borders that it deems to be a threat to its national security. Russia has also said it has the right to move forces within its own territory.

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The said it is working with UN bodies to find ways to allocate humanitarian aid to and infuse its economy with liquidity to alleviate the crisis in the country.

During a press briefing, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said: "We are working with various UN bodies, including the UNDP to find creative ways that we can infuse not only humanitarian aid but also liquidity into the Afghan economy. "

The believes that is experiencing an acute humanitarian crisis that was preexisting before the US withdrawal in August and has become worse since then, Sputnik reported citing Price.

The Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, on Monday said that Afghanistan's economy is in "free fall".

He was addressing the 17th Extraordinary Session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers in Islamabad.

Since the takeover in mid-August by the Taliban (under UN sanctions over terrorist activities), the World Bank and the Monetary Fund have suspended financial aid which previously accounted for nearly 75% of Afghanistan's public expenditure, while the froze billions of dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan Central Bank.

Addressing the OIC briefing, Afghanistan's acting foreign minister Amir Khan Motaqi urged the United States must unfreeze billions of dollars of as the country desperately needs cash.

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The Russian president on Tuesday reiterated his demand for guarantees from the US and its allies that NATO will not expand eastwards, blaming the West for tensions that are building up in Europe."



Vladimir Putin's speech at a meeting with Russia's top military brass came just days after Moscow submitted draft security documents demanding that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet countries and roll back the alliance's military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe bold ultimatums that are almost certain to be rejected.

The demands contained in a proposed Russia-US security treaty and a security agreement between Moscow and NATO were drafted amid soaring tensions over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine that has stoked fears of a possible invasion. Russia has denied it has plans to attack its neighbor but pressed for legal guarantees that would rule out NATO expansion and weapons deployment there.

Putin charged Tuesday that if US and NATO missile systems appear in Ukraine, it will take missiles only minutes to reach Moscow.

"For us it is the most serious challenge a challenge to our security, he said, adding that this is why the Kremlin needs long-term, legally binding guarantees from the West, as opposed to verbal assurances, words and promises that Moscow can't trust.

Putin noted that NATO expanded eastward in the later 1980s and early 1990s, depite what he said were assurances that Russia's worries were groundless.

"What is happening now, tensions that are building up in Europe, is their (US and NATO's) fault every step of the way, the Russian leader said.

"ussia has been forced to respond at every step. The situation kept worsening and worsening, deteriorating and deteriorating. And here we are today, in a situation when we're forced to resolve it somehow."



Russia's relations with the US sank to post-Cold War lows after it annexed Crimea in 2014 and backed a separatist insurgency in Ukraine's east. Tensions reignited in recent weeks after Moscow massed tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine's border.

Putin has pressed the West for guarantees that NATO will not expand to Ukraine or deploy its forces there and raised the issue during a video call with US President Joe Biden two weeks ago.

The Russian president said Tuesday that Moscow hopes for a clear, comprehensive response to its demands from Washington, and there are certain signals that the US is prepared to give it.

"We hope for constructive, meaningful talks with a visible end result and within a certain time frame that would ensure equal security for all. This is what we will strive for, Putin said.

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The price of 10 gram of gold decreased by Rs 40 on Tuesday, with 24 carat gold trading at Rs 48,640 and 22 carat at Rs 47,640.

The price of 1 kg of silver decreased by Rs 300 and the precious metal is selling at Rs 61,900.

In Delhi, the price of 24-carat gold stands at Rs 52,200, while in Mumbai it is at Rs 48,640, according to the Goodreturns website.

The price of 10 gram of 22-carat gold in Delhi and Mumbai is at Rs 47,850 and Rs 47,640, respectively.

In Chennai, 10 gram of 24-carat gold is selling at Rs 50,100 on Tuesday, while 10 gram of 22-carat gold is selling at Rs 45,910.

In Kolkata, 24-carat gold is selling at Rs 50,650, while 22-carat gold's price is at Rs 47,950, according to the Goodreturns website.

The price of gold varies across the country due to excise duty, state taxes, and making charges.

In Chennai, the price of 1 kg of silver is at Rs 65,960, while in Delhi and Mumbai, the metal is selling at Rs 61,900.

Silver is selling at Rs 61,900 per kg in Kolkata and Bengaluru, while in Hyderabad, the metal is selling at Rs 65,960 a kg.
Shares of dipped 8 per cent to Rs 491 on the BSE in Tuesday's intra-day trade in an otherwise firm market. In thepast two trading days, the stock of the information technology (IT) consulting & software company has slipped 17 per cent as the mandatory lock-in of anchor investors expired for the stock on Monday, December 20, 2021.

With the past two days' decline, the market price of has corrected 35 per cent from its 52-week high level of Rs 755 touched on November 26, 2021. It had hit a 52-week low of Rs 462 on November 23, 2021.

Anchor investors are marquee institutional investors who are allotted shares in a company ahead of its initial public offer (IPO). The company had allocated a total of 13.55 million equity shares to 34 anchor investors at Rs 197 apiece, amounting to a transaction size of Rs 267 crore.

Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Ashoka India Equity Investment Trust Plc, Axis Mutual Fund (MF), ICICI Prudential MF, Aditya Birla Sun Life MF, Edelweiss MF, SBI Life Insurance Company and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company were among the anchor investors, according to a circular uploaded on BSE website on November 9, 2021.

Shares of data analytics firm saw robust market debut, with stock listing at Rs 530 per share, a 169 per cent premium against the issue price of Rs 197 per share. Post listing, the stock climbed by up to 283 per cent against its issue price.

Latent View is among the leading pure-play data analytics services companies in the country. The company functions in areas such as consulting services, data engineering, business analytics and digital solutions.

The company serves clients across countries in the United States, Europe, and Asia through its subsidiaries in the United States, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, and Singapore, and its sales offices in San Jose, London, and Singapore.

At 10:27 am, Latent View was 5 per cent lower at Rs 506.25, as compared to a 1.4 per cent rise in the S&P BSE Sensex. The counter has seen huge activity with trading volumes jumping 1.5 times. A combined 2.2 million shares had changed hands on the counter on the NSE and BSE till the time of writing of this report.
The stock of CE Info Systems (popularly known for its brand MapmyIndia) made a strong debut on the bourses on Tuesday. The stock got listed at Rs 1,581  a gain of 53 per cent above its issue price. The stock could not hold on to its gains and ended the session at Rs 1,394.5  a gain of 35 per cent above its issue price.

The initial public offering (IPO) of CE Info Systems was subscribed 154.7x. The institutional investor portion was subscribed 196x, the high networth individual portion 424x, and the retail investor portion 15x. The company had priced its IPO between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,033 apiece.

Ahead of its IPO, the company raised Rs 312 crore from 24 anchor investors. Investors, including Fidelity, Nomura, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Aberdeen, HSBC, and White Oak, were allotted shares. The IPO was an offer for sale worth Rs 1,039 crore.





The company is a data and technology product and platform company, offering proprietary digital maps-as-a-service (MaaS), software-as-a-service (SaaS), and platform-as-a-service (PaaS). is a leading provider of advanced digital maps, geospatial software, and location-based technologies.

As of September 30, the company has serviced over 2,000 customers. During 2020-21 and the six months ended September 30, the company had over 500 customers on its MaaS, SaaS, and PaaS platforms.

The companys customers include PhonePe, Flipkart, Yulu, HDFC Bank, Airtel, Hyundai, MG Motor, Avis, Safexpress, and the Goods and Service Tax Network.

The companys digital maps cover 6.29 million kilometres of roads in India, representing 98.5 per cent of Indias road network. It provides location, navigation, analytics, and other information for 7,933 towns, 637,472 villages, and 17.79 million places.

The details are provided across many categories, such as restaurants, retail shops, malls, automated teller machines, hotels, police stations, and electric vehicle-charging stations. Axis Capital, JM Financial, Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, and DAM Capital Advisors (formerly IDFC Securities) were the book-running lead managers to the issue.
The key benchmark indices may seek a relief rally after two days of severe drubbing taking cues from the neighbouring Asian counterparts and SGX Nifty. As of 08:10 AM, the SGX Nifty futures indicated a gap-up opening of near around 150 points. Meanwhile, here the top stocks to focus in trade on Monday.

CE Info Systems (MapmyIndia): The IPO had received strong response and was subscribed 154.71 times, the NIIs (wealthy investors) portion was subscribed a huge 424.69 times. Breaking the recent trend of new listed, the stock is likely to debut at a premium on the bourses on Monday.

Shriram Group: Shares from the Shriram group are likely to be in focus as the group plans to foray into supply chain finance as well as trade financing and scale up its loans against property (LAP) under the combined entity Shriram Finance. Umesh Rewankar, executive vice-chairman and CEO of Shriram Transport Finance Company (STFC), said there are short-term lending opportunities on radar. READ MORE



Adani Enterprises: The company has won Indias largest-ever expressway project awarded to a private company under the public-private partnership (PPP) framework, worth Rs 17,000 crore. According to a release issued to the BSE by the company, it has received a letter of award from Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority to implement three major stretches of the greenfield Ganga Expressway.

Wipro: The IT firm informed BSE, that it will acquire Austin, Texas-headquartered Edgile for $230 million, a move that will strengthen the IT major's play in the cybersecurity services space. Edgile's experienced cybersecurity and risk management professionals will allow to further enhance its cybersecurity and risk consulting capabilities for the benefit of its customers, the regulatory filing said. READ MORE



The countrys largest bulk tea producer, expects its debt-restructuring plan to be finalised in the next few months. McLeod owes banks about Rs 1,800 crore and with unpaid interest, the total amount is said to be around Rs 2,300 crore. Bankers are fully in support of the company as it engages "very consciously" with them for a restructuring plan, said Aditya Khaitan, McLeod Russel CMD. READ MORE The Anil Agarwal-led company has acquired Goa-based Nicomet, a leading nickel and cobalt producer. In a press release issued by the mining major it said, the company is making the acquisition when the nickel market is tightening with a surge in battery demand and an increase in global stainless-steel production in recent years--a trend expected to continue into 2022. READ MORE The private lender plans to raise up to Rs 5,000 crore by issuing bonds. According to a release issued by the bank to the BSE, it will be issuing senior unsecured taxable redeemable non- convertible debentures of Rs 10 lakh each for cash at par with base issue size of Rs 2,000 crore and green-shoe option to retain over-subscription of Rs 3,000 crore thereby aggregating up to Rs 5,000 crore.

Railtel Corporation of India: The company has informed BSE, that it has received an order from Defence R&D Organisation for Expansion and Enhancement of CIAG Network Capacity at a total cost of Rs 68.31 crore. The order needs to be executed in a period of 7 months.

V-Guard Industries: The companys board has approved the amalgamation plan of Indian business of the Spain-based Simon Group, Simon Electric with itself. The value of the deal is said to be around Rs 27.30 crore.

Tantia Construction: According to the companys FY21 audited earnings, its net plunged 75.4 per cent to Rs 50.33 crore for the full-year ended March 2021 as against Rs 204.56 crore in the corresponding period a year ago. Total income, however, was up 98.3 per cent YoY at Rs 350.95 crore from Rs 176.96 crore in the same period.

Eldeco Housing & Industries: The companys board has approved stock split in the ratio of 1:5, accordingly each equity share with a face value of Rs 10 will be sub-divided into 5 equity shares with face value of Rs 2 each. The company has fixed January 18 as the record date for determining eligible shareholders for the stock split.

Stocks in F&O ban: Escorts and Indiabulls Housing Finance are the only two stocks in the F&O ban period today.
A day after they registered their sharpest decline in three weeks, the Indian benchmark indices made a smart recovery on Tuesday on the back of value-buying, positive global cues, and positive on the efficacy of vaccines against the Omicron variant of coronavirus. But the sell-off pressure continued and the indices could not hold on to the intraday surge and pared more than half of the gains from the days high.

The benchmark ended the session at 56,319, up 497 points or 0.9 per cent. The Nifty, on the other hand, ended the session at 16,770.85, a gain of 156.6 points or 0.9 per cent. Intraday, the two indices had touched a high of 56,900.74 and 16,936.35, respectively.





Analysts said there was a bit of value-buying after the recent correction. There was buying at the bottom. But there is still nervousness as Omicron cases are rising. There is not much conviction in why the should go higher, said Andrew Holland, CEO, Avendus Capital Alternate Strategies.

Analysts cautioned that selling from the highs signalled that sentiment remained weak, and investors were eager to book profits at the earliest opportunity.

Overall, selling pressure is intact at higher levels, and traders are using any recovery or bounce to sell in the market. Thus, for the near-to-short term, we maintain a cautious view and suggest traders continue with the sell on rise strategy, Siddhartha Khemka, head-retail research, Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

While the market trend may be volatile in the near term on account of potential risk from the Omicron variant and fragile global cues, we suggest long-term investors take benefit of such volatility in the market and add to their portfolios gradually at lower levels, Khemka said.



reports on the possibility of US President Joe Biden reviving his $2-trillion economic agenda brought some cheer. Market sentiment was dented after Democrat Senator Joe Manchin rejected Bidens economic package. However, a call between the two has rekindled hopes about a potential reconciliation.

Pharma major Modernas statement that a booster dose of its Covid-19 vaccine appeared to protect against Omicron cheered investors. And Chinas push to help troubled developers further boosted investors sentiment.

Investors in Indian equities are grappling with a bunch of concerns, including the rise in Omicron cases, the hawkish turn by central banks, and continued selling by foreign portfolio investors (FPIs). Analysts said updates on the new variant will keep the choppiness high in the equity going forward.





We expect this trend to continue in the near future. Participants should limit leveraged positions until we see some stability, said Ajit Mishra, VP-research, Religare Broking.

The market breadth was positive, with 2,239 stocks gaining against 1,095 stocks declining on the BSE. As many as 377 stocks were locked on the upper circuit, and 199 hit 52-week high. More than two-thirds of constituents rose.

HCL Technologies was the best performing stock and gained 3.9 per cent. Reliance Industries rose 1.44 per cent and contributed most to the Sensex gains. All the sectoral indices gained on BSE. Metal stocks gained the most, and its index gained 2.9 per cent.
Benchmark indices ended with strong gains on Tuesday amid bargain hunting after a recent steep fall. The Nifty ended below the 16,800 mark after hitting the day's high of 16,936.40 in afternoon trade. All sectoral indices on the NSE ended in the green. Metal, media and IT stocks were in demand.

As per the provisional closing data, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, rose 497 points or 0.89% at 56,319.15. The Nifty 50 index gained 156.65 points or 0.94% at 16,770.20. The Nifty tumbled 3.68% in the past two sessions.

Broader markets outperformed the benchmark indices. The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index rose 1.43% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index rallied 1.29%.

Buyers outnumbered sellers. On the BSE, 2,287 shares rose and 1,031 shares fell. A total of 113 shares were unchanged.

Primary Market:

The initial public offer (IPO) of CMS Info Systems received bids for over 1.25 crore shares as against 3.75 crore shares on offer, according to stock exchange data at 15:27 IST on Tuesday, (21 December 2021). The issue was subscribed 34%.

The issue opened for bidding on 21 December 2021 and it will close on 23 December 2021. The price band of the IPO is fixed at Rs 205-216. An investor can bid for a minimum of 69 equity shares and in multiples thereof. The IPO consists entirely of an offer of sale (OFS) comprising raising of Rs 1,100 crore.

New Listing:

Shares of C E Info Systems (MapMyIndia) were currently trading at Rs 1376 on the BSE, at a premium of 33.2% as against the issue price of Rs 1,033. The scrip was listed at Rs 1581, representing a premium of 53.05% to the initial public offer (IPO) price. So far, the scrip has hit a high of Rs 1586.85 and a low of Rs 1330. Over 11.41 lakh shares of the company have changed hands in the counter till now. The initial public offer (IPO) of C E Info Systems (MapMyIndia) was subscribed 154.71 times. The issue opened for bidding on 9 December 2021 and it closed on 13 December 2021. The price band of the IPO was fixed at Rs 1,000-1,033 per share.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Indian Oil Corporation rose 0.64%.

The PSU OMC will acquire 36,93,750 equity shares, equivalent to 4.93% stake of Indian Gas Exchange (IGX), a subsidiary of Indian Energy Exchange (IEX). As per the company's press statement, the acquisition of equity stake in IGX will provide an opportunity for Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) to become part of india's natural gas market and increase its presence to achieve leadership position in the market.

Additionally, in a separate announcement, Indian Oil intimated regarding the approval for an investment proposal of new crude oil pipeline system with nameplate capacity of 17.5 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA) from Mundra (Gujarat) to Panipat (Haryana) alongwith with augmentation of crude oil tank farm at Mundra, at an estimated cost of Rs 9,028 crore. The project will meet the enhanced crude oil requirement arising out of capacity expansion of Panipat Refinery to 25 MMTPA from 15 MMTPA. The project is expected to be completed within 36 months (3 years) and would be synchronized with the commissioning of Panipat Refinery expansion project.

Adani Enterprises rose 1.89%. The company said it received Letter of Awards (LoAs) from Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) for three Greenfield Ganga Expressway Projects - Group II, III and IV from Badaun to Prayagraj in the state of Uttar Pradesh on DBFOT (Toll) basis. The combined estimated cost for project is Rs 17,085.16 crore.

RailTel Corporation of India added 1.49% after the company received work order from Defence R & D Organisation for Expansion and Enhancement of CIAG Network Capacity at a total cost of Rs. 68.31 crore (Inclusive of GST).

Piramal Enterprises advanced 3.87% after Piramal Pharma (PPL) announced an investment of Rs 101.77 crore in Yapan Bio (Hyderabad), a CDMO providing expertise in biologics and vaccines. The investment would aid in augmenting the capabilities of PPL's contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business, Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS). PPL holds 27.78% equity stake in Yapan Bio as a result of this investment.

Strides Pharma Science rose 1.78% after the company said that Stelis Biopharma has commissioned its large-scale fully integrated vaccine manufacturing facility at Bengaluru, India. The facility was successfully inspected by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO). Stelis has also received an initial Export No Objection Certificate (NOC) from CDSCO to export up to 50 million doses of the Sputnik Light vaccine.

Hatsun Agro Product fell 2.3%. The company announced it commenced commercial production at Govindapur Ice Cream manufacturing plant in Telangana with effect from 19 December 2021.

Globus Spirits jumped 7.5% after the company announced commencement of commercial production at the enhanced capacity in the West Bengal Unit.

Shilpa Medicare jumped 4.27% after the drug maker on Tuesday announced the launch of chronic constipation drug for adults. The drug company launched PRUCALSHIL (Prucalopride), an orally disintegrating strips of 1 mg and 2 mg in India. Prucalopride is used for symptomatic treatment of chronic constipation in adults in whom laxatives fail to provide adequate relief. Prucalopride medicine in the form of orally disintegrating strips and are most convenient dosage form for geriatric patients.

Global Markets:

Shares in Europe and Asia advanced on Tuesday. Investors continued to monitor the situation surrounding the omicron Covid variant.

U. S. stocks ended lower on Monday as investors grappled with the resurgence of Covid cases spurred from the newfound omicron variant.

The omicron variant is raging across to the world as the winter holiday season approaches. U. S. cases are jumping into year-end with more than 156,000 reported on Friday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The strain has been found through testing in 43 out of 50 U. S. states and around 90 countries, and the number of cases is doubling in 1.5 to 3 days in areas with community transmission, according to the World Health Organization.

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Paisalo Digital on Tuesday signed Co-lending loan agreement with Punjab National Bank.

This agreement is in conformity with the latest RBI circular on Co-lending of loans as released on 05 November2020.

PNB-Paisalo Co-lending platform will leverage on PNB's low cost of funds on the liability side and Paisalo's origination and rule engine underwriting capabilities on the asset side, with the help of end-to-end digital platform for sourcing, servicing, and recovery of small ticket income generation priority sector loans.

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Piramal Enterprises advanced 3.04% to Rs 2527.90 after Piramal Pharma (PPL) announced an investment of Rs 101.77 crore in Yapan Bio (Hyderabad), a CDMO providing expertise in biologics and vaccines.

The investment would aid in augmenting the capabilities of PPL's contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business, Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS).

PPL holds 27.78% equity stake in Yapan Bio as a result of this investment.

Yapan Bio provides process development, scale-up, and cGMP compliant manufacturing of vaccines and biologics/bio-therapeutics, including high containment product classes (up to BSL-2+), recombinant vaccines, RNA/DNA vaccines, gene therapies, monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic proteins, and other complex biologics.

Yapan's FY21 turnover was Rs 12.4 crore. The company has already earned revenues of Rs 11.8 crore for H1 FY22 and is poised for fast growth in response to strong market demand.

The investment in Yapan Bio allows PPS to broaden its service offerings in the fast-growing biologics CDMO space. Biologics capabilities can be synergistic with the company's anti-body drug conjugation capabilities; specifically, for customers who prefer the speed and simplicity benefits of an integrated program that involves development, manufacturing, conjugation, and fill finish.

PPS currently offers integrated payload, conjugation, fill finish services, and the addition of anti-body capabilities enhances that offering.

Many pharma innovator companies are looking for CDMOs to support their biologics development and manufacturing requirements. PPS expects that adding these capabilities and expertise will enable the company to further enhance its offerings in this attractive, fast-track growth sector.

Nandini Piramal, chairperson, Piramal Pharma, said, The expertise found at Yapan will help Piramal provide existing customers with wider capabilities for developing and manufacturing large molecules.

Peter DeYoung, CEO, Pharma Solutions, Piramal Pharma, said, During the past decade, biologics and their accompanying development services are the fastest growing segments of the CDMO market.

This investment, coupled with the market-leading capabilities of our Grangemouth, UK site in antibody drug conjugations and our sterile fill/finish capabilities in Lexington, USA, demonstrates our commitment to growing our service offerings in the large molecule CDMO space.

Piramal Pharma offers a portfolio of differentiated products and services through end-to-end manufacturing capabilities across 15 global facilities and a global distribution network in over 100 countries. PPL includes Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS), an integrated contract development and manufacturing organization; Piramal Critical Care (PCC), a complex hospital generics business, and the India consumer healthcare business, selling over-the-counter products.

Piramal Enterprises (PEL) has diversified business interests in financial services and pharmaceuticals.

The company reported 32% fall in consolidated net profit to Rs 426 crore on a 6% decline in net sales to Rs 3,106 crore in Q2 FY22 over Q2 FY21.

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The main indices were hovering near the day's high with strong gains in mid morning trade. The Nifty was trading above the 16,850 level. All sectoral indices on the NSE were in the green. Metal, media and realty stocks were in demand. Positive Asian stocks boosted sentiment.

At 11:31 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 854.76 points or 1.53% to 56,676.61. The Nifty 50 index added 263.65 points or 1.59% to 16,877.55.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index surged 1.77% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index added 1.95%.

The market breadth was strong. On the BSE, 2,439 shares rose and 724 shares fell. A total of 109 shares were unchanged.

Primary Market:

The initial public offer (IPO) of CMS Info Systems received bids for over 69.14 lakh shares as against 3.75 crore shares on offer, according to stock exchange data at 11:18 IST on Tuesday, (21 December 2021). The issue was subscribed 18%.

The issue opened for bidding on 21 December 2021 and it will close on 23 December 2021. The price band of the IPO is fixed at Rs 205-216. An investor can bid for a minimum of 69 equity shares and in multiples thereof.

The IPO consists entirely of an offer of sale (OFS) comprising raising of Rs 1,100 crore.

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty Realty index jumped 2.54% to 464.15. The index lost 13% in the past six days.

Indiabulls Real Estate (up 5.76%), Macrotech Developers (up 5.05%), Brigade Enterprises (up 4.35%), Oberoi Realty (up 3.44%) and DLF (up 2.65%) were the top gainers. Among the other gainers were Prestige Estates Projects (up 2.2%), Sunteck Realty (up 2.07%), Sobha (up 1.95%), Godrej Properties (up 1.65%) advanced.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Piramal Enterprises advanced 3.04% to Rs 2527.90 after Piramal Pharma (PPL) announced an investment of Rs 101.77 crore in Yapan Bio (Hyderabad), a CDMO providing expertise in biologics and vaccines. The investment would aid in augmenting the capabilities of PPL's contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business, Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS). PPL holds 27.78% equity stake in Yapan Bio as a result of this investment.

Strides Pharma Science rose 2.29% to Rs 421.35 after the company said that Stelis Biopharma has commissioned its large-scale fully integrated vaccine manufacturing facility at Bengaluru, India. The facility was successfully inspected by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO). Stelis has also received an initial Export No Objection Certificate (NOC) from CDSCO to export up to 50 million doses of the Sputnik Light vaccine.

Global Markets:

Asian markets were trading higher on Tuesday as investors continued to monitor the situation surrounding the omicron Covid variant.

U. S. stocks ended lower on Monday as investors grappled with the resurgence of Covid cases spurred from the newfound omicron variant.

The omicron variant is raging across to the world as the winter holiday season approaches. U. S. cases are jumping into year-end with more than 156,000 reported on Friday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The strain has been found through testing in 43 out of 50 U. S. states and around 90 countries, and the number of cases is doubling in 1.5 to 3 days in areas with community transmission, according to the World Health Organization.

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SGX Nifty:

Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates that the Nifty could advance 151 points at the opening bell.

Global markets:

Overseas, Asian stocks are trading higher on Tuesday as investors continued to monitor the situation surrounding the omicron Covid variant.

U.S. stocks ended lower on Monday as investors grappled with the resurgence of Covid cases spurred from the newfound omicron variant.

The omicron variant is raging across to the world as the winter holiday season approaches. U.S. cases are jumping into year-end with more than 156,000 reported on Friday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The strain has been found through testing in 43 out of 50 U.S. states and around 90 countries, and the number of cases is doubling in 1.5 to 3 days in areas with community transmission, according to the World Health Organization.

Domestic markets:

Back home, the domestic equity barometers tanked on Monday, mirroring weak global cues. The S&P BSE Sensex, slumped 1,189.73 points or 2.09% to 55,822.01. The Nifty 50 index tumbled 371 points or 2.18% to 16,614.20.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth Rs 3,565.36 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs), were net buyers to the tune of Rs 2,764.02 crore in the Indian equity market on 20 December, provisional data showed.

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Strides Pharma Science rose 2.29% to Rs 421.35 after the company said that Stelis Biopharma has commissioned its large-scale fully integrated vaccine manufacturing facility at Bengaluru, India.

The facility was successfully inspected by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO). Stelis has also received an initial Export No Objection Certificate (NOC) from CDSCO to export up to 50 million doses of the Sputnik Light vaccine.

In March 2021, Stelis partnered with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia's sovereign wealth fund) to produce and supply the Russian Sputnik vaccine.

Stelis has now started manufacturing the Sputnik Light vaccine at a commercial scale, and as previously committed, the company is on track to commercialize this vaccine for Global markets in Q4 FY22.

Stelis' greenfield vaccine facility is one of the largest viral vector manufacturing sites. the site can offer flexible technologies to manufacture lentivirus, adenovirus and retrovirus products/ vaccines along with adherent and suspension-based processes. The drug product block of the facility is designed to produce up to 720 million doses in a year.

Stelis Biopharma is a vertically integrated biopharma and vaccines company that can develop and manufacture different sets of complex biologics, biosimilars, and vaccines.The company operates three business divisions viz. the Product division for biosimilars, Global CDMO Services and Vaccines. Stelis Biopharma is the biotech arm of Strides Pharma Science.

Strides Pharma Science is a global pharmaceutical company. The company mainly operates in the regulated markets and has an 'in Africa for Africa' strategy along with an institutional business to service donorfunded markets. The company focuses on difficult to manufacture products that are sold in over 100 countries.

The company reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 162.55 crore in Q2 FY22 as against a net profit of Rs 80.94 crore in Q2 FY21. Revenue from operations during the quarter fell by 9.08% YoY to Rs 721.47 crore.

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The offer received bids for 103.89 crore shares as against 1.45 crore shares on offer.

The initial public offer (IPO) of Supriya Lifescience received bids for 1,03,89,66,318 shares as against 1,45,28,299 shares on offer. The issue was subscribed 71.51 times.

The non institutional investors category was subscribed 161.22 times. The retail investors category was subscribed 56.01 times. The qualified institutional buyers category was subscribed 31.83 times.

The issue opened for bidding on 16 December 2021 and it closed on 20 December 2021. The price band of the IPO was fixed at Rs 265-274 per share.

Ahead of the IPO, the company on 15 December 2021, finalized allocation of 1,14,96,351 equity shares to anchor investors at an allocation price of Rs 274 per share, aggregating to Rs 315 crore.

The IPO comprised of fresh issue of equity shares worth up to Rs 200 crore and an offer for sale of Rs 500 crore by existing shareholders.

Satish Waman Wagh, the promoter of the company, currently holds an aggregate of 7,26,42,390 equity shares, aggregating to 99.26% of the pre-offer issued share capital. The post IPO shareholding for the same is expected to be around 68.24%.

The objectives for the fresh issue are funding capital expenditure requirements of Rs 92.3 crore, Rs 60 crore for repayment/pre-payment, in full or part of borrowings and remaining amount will be used for general corporate purposes.

Supriya Lifescience is one of the key Indian manufacturers and suppliers of active pharmaceuticals ingredients (APIs), with a focus on research and development. As of 31 October 2021, the company has niche product offerings of 38 APIs focused on diverse therapeutic segments such as antihistamine, analgesic, anesthetics, vitamin, anti-asthmatic and antiallergic.

The business operations of the company are supported by a modern manufacturing facility located in Parshuram Lote, Maharashtra, which is approximately 250 km from Mumbai. Its manufacturing facility has received approvals from USFDA, EDQM TGA-Australia, KFDA-Korea, PMDA Japan, NMPA (previously known as SFDA)- China, Health Canada, in relation to the products being exported to the relevant jurisdictions.

The manufacturing facility is spread across 23,806 sq.mt, having reactor capacity of 332 KL/ day and seven cleanrooms. In addition, company has acquired a plot of land, admeasuring 12,551 sq.mt, near the present manufacturing facility, wherein the Company intends to expand its manufacturing infrastructure.

The company intends to continue to drive R&D initiatives towards the development of innovative APIs. It also intends to improve its R&D capabilities, with a focus on capturing more high-value first-to-market opportunities in key international markets, as well as leveraging broad product basket to enhance market position globally.

The company reported a net profit of Rs 65.96 crore on sales of Rs 224.80 crore in six month ended September 2021.

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Union Home Minister on Tuesday asked Telangana's leaders to be ready for the state Assembly elections whenever they are held, and work hard to bring the party to power.

The state leaders led by Union Minister for Tourism and Culture G. Kishan Reddy called on in Delhi.

Shah has directed the leadership to educate people about the corruption indulged in the by Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government.

The senior BJP leader reviewed the political situation in the state and gave directions to the state leadership to achieve the goal of bringing the BJP to power.

State BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, BJP national vice president D.K. Aruna, former minister Eatala Rajender, MP D. Aravind, former MPs Vijay Shanti, G. Mohan Rao, Jitender Reddy and others attended the meeting with Shah.

The meeting is likely to give a boost to BJP's efforts to focus on ahead of Assembly elections in 2023. Shah, however, asked the BJP leaders to be prepared even if the TRS goes for early polls.

The Union Minister asked the state BJP leadership to expose the rice scam and other corruption by the TRS government and suggested that they demand a probe into the same.

Shah also wanted the BJP leaders to effectively counter the allegations being made by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao against the BJP. The Central minister wanted the BJP leaders to prepare an action plan to expose the TRS over the issue of paddy procurement.

The meeting was held a day after the TRS organised state-wide protests against the Centre over 'anti-farmer' policies. The protesters set afire the effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Union ministers.

The meeting also discussed the strategy to counter the allegations by TRS against the Central government over the procurement of paddy.

Stating that the government and party are different, Shah said the party should carry on its activities irrespective of the relations between the state and the Central governments.

The Union Minister also suggested to the party leaders to chalk out programmes to remain in the midst of the people. Referring to the first phase of Bandi Sanjay's 'praja sangrama yatra', he advised him to work out plans to launch the second phase.

After the meeting, Sanjay said they briefed Shah on bad governance, family rule and the attempts by the TRS government to crush dissent by foisting cases against BJP leaders.

also congratulated Eatala Rajender over his victory in the recent by-election to Huzurabad Assembly seat. Rajender had quit TRS and joined BJP after KCR dropped him from the state Cabinet following the allegations of land encroachment.

Shah told BJP leaders that he will visit for two days after the current Parliament session and will address a few public meetings.

State BJP leaders claim that following its victories in the by-election to Dubbak Assembly seat last year and the recent win in Huzurabad, BJP has emerged as the only viable alternative to TRS.

--IANS

ms/pgh

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Chief Minister met former Congress chief on Tuesday and discussed the preparations for the upcoming assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, sources said.

Baghel, who is a senior observer of the party for the polls, discussed the party's roadmap in getting battle ready for the elections and the involvement of Congress leaders in the election preparations.

Sources close to Baghel said the issue of Cabinet reshuffle in was also discussed with Gandhi. They said the Chhattisgarh chief minister is in favour of giving a chance to some fresh faces in the Cabinet.

Baghel left for Lucknow after meeting Gandhi and is expected to deliberate with senior party leaders from the state on the poll preparations.

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Chief Minister is visiting New Delhi where he is likely to meet party leaders and Rahu Gandhi on Tuesday.

According to sources, there might be meetings with interim president Sonia Gandhi, party MP and general secretary Priyanka Gandhi.

Baghel is also scheduled to visit Uttar Pradesh for two days where he will address public meetings and election rallies along with Uttar Pradesh in-charge Priyanka Gandhi in Lucknow and Lakhimpur Kheri and other areas.

Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh are slated for early next year.

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The Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021, was passed by the (RS) on Tuesday amid bitter contestation, claims and counterclaims as the walked out. As he left the House, Trinamool Congress leader and MP Derek OBrien flung the rule book at the Chair, something leader of the House Piyush Goyal termed reprehensible. Later, OBrien was suspended for the rest of the winter session, which ends on Thursday.

Earlier, the protested at the hurry in which the Bill was sought to be passed as it was brought before the Business Advisory Committee (BAC), which decides the agenda, literally hours before it was to be discussed. As a result, the House was adjourned soon after the Bill was tabled. The returned when the Upper House re-assembled.

Some opposition parties  the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIDMK), the YSR Congress (YSRC) and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD)  supported the Bill though they agreed with the opposition that some clauses give rise to concerns. Several amendments were moved by opposition MPs but the Chair did not permit division (voting recorded by voting machines) because opposition MPs were not in their seats.

Unlike the where little or no discussion took place, the Bill was discussed in the though amid continual interruption and chants of we want justice. Placards saying sack Teni and protect Indian fishermen from Sri Lanka Navy were held up by MPs even as their colleagues were speaking.

While the opposition had no objection to the amendment that enabled those above 18 a chance to enrol in the voters list four times in a year instead of once; and generally endorsed the substitution of wife by spouse, there was near unanimity that linking Aadhaar card to the electoral rolls is a dangerous step, as many Indian citizens who do not possess Aadhaar cards could be left out of the voters list or those who have fake ones could be included.

The government said Aadhaar was the best way of verifying citizens residential status. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sushil Modi said the opposition concerns were motivated by ensuring their minority voter base of persons who were not citizens but were voters stayed safe. He said this kind of voter had influenced the recent assembly elections in West Bengal, which is why it had gone against the BJP. Modi also said the issue of the linkage was discussed extensively in the Standing Committee on Law and Justice in its 105th report. At that forum, the very parties that were now opposing the Aadhaar-voter ID linkage, had supported it as a way to weed out duplicate voters.

Law Minister Kiren Rijiju explained that the linkage was a voluntary provision and not a mandatory one. He reminded the House that it was the Standing Committee that had made this recommendation.

Sujeet Kumar of the BJD made the case for checks and balances. He said that while it was necessary to ensure the sanctity of the electoral process, protecting the privacy of individuals in the absence of a data protection law, was also imperative. You are saying you will link voter ID to the Aadhaar ecosystem. This means Aadhaar data will be shared by many in the government, including the Commission, leaving the identity of individuals vulnerable to possible disenfranchisement, racial profiling and hacking. This is unacceptable he said.

With both the government and the opposition on edge, a simple tweak in the law became a battle of wills, assertion and strength. Goyal later addressed a House that did not have a single opposition MP, saying the behaviour clearly demonstrated the oppositions intent was to disrupt parliamentary functioning.

Outside Parliament, it was clear that MPs including those who had been suspended, were in no mood to apologise. Former Congress party president Rahul Gandhi held a press conference which was addressed by the Shiv Sena and other opposition leaders as well. The issue was the dismissal of Union Minister of State for Home, Ajay Mishra Teni whom Gandhi dubbed a criminal.
Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan on Tuesday claimed that the recent Income Tax raids on some of her party colleagues were linked to the ruling BJP feeling "jittery" ahead of the assembly polls in

She also scoffed at the government's claim that the central agencies work independently, saying if "we are illiterate, uneducated" to believe it.

Incidentally, Bachchan's daughter-in-law and actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan also appeared before the Enforcement Directorate on Monday for questioning in a case linked to the 2016 'Panama Papers' global tax leaks case.

Her statement was being recorded under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), official sources had said.

Jaya Bachchan, however, made no direct remarks about the questioning of her daughter-in-law.

To a question about central agencies' action against her party leaders, she said, "They (government) are jittery. They have many instruments and are misusing them... 'Hawa badi karari hai, lal topi sab pe bhadi ha' (Wind is blowing sharply. Red cap rises above everyone else)". Red caps are politically associated with the SP whose members often wear it in their programmes.

Speaking to reporters, the wife of Hindi film megastar Amitabh Bachchan also slammed the government for the suspension of 12 Rajya Sabha members of different opposition parties and accused it of not allowing discussion in Parliament on important issues like price rise, unemployment and farmers' concern.

During the discussion on a bill in Rajya Sabha on Monday, Bachchan had expressed her anger at some "personal" remarks made against her and lashed out at the BJP with a "curse" that it will soon face bad days.

An agitated Bachchan also told the Chair that it should be fair and alleged that an attempt was being made to stifle the voice of opposition.

She told reporters on Tuesday that she only gave voice to her heartfelt feelings and as an expression of solidarity with the suspended members, who have been staging a sit-in daily near Mahatma Gandhi's statue in the Parliament House Complex.

The opposition members have been demanding that their suspension be revoked. Their suspension was effected for their alleged unruly conduct and the government has demanded an apology from them.

Her remarks were also expression of frustration as opposition members are seeking justice from a government which was "unjust and unfair," she alleged.

They (government) are selling the country, and opposition cannot even raise it voice, she said in an apparent reference to disinvestment of public sector firms.

(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 Trinamool Congress Tuesday stormed back to power in the 144-member strong Municipal Corporation for the third consecutive time, bagging 89 seats and leading in 44 wards, a senior State Election Commission official said.

The has emerged victorious in one ward so far and is leading in three others, he said.

"The TMC has won the KMC board as it has already crossed the majority mark. The party has thus far won 89 seats and is leading in 44 wards. The TMC in total is either leading or has won 133 seats," the official said.

The Congress won two seats, but the CPI(M)-led Left Front, which is leading in two wards, is yet to open its account.

(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.)
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo on Tuesday offered prayers at the famous Maa Kamakhya temple in Guwahati, while her party in celebrated Trinamool's landslide victory in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) elections.

After visiting the Kamakhya temple in the city's Maligaon area, Banerjee, who was accompanied by her close relatives, left Guwahati for Kolkata.

The Trinamool chief was received in Guwahati by the party's Rajya Sabha MP, Sushmita Dev.

"I welcome my leader Chief Minister of West Bengal and Chairperson of AITC to Assam. She is here to offer her prayers to Maa Kamakhya and seek her blessings," Dev, who hails from Silchar and is presently leading the Trinamool in Tripura, said in a tweet.

Recently, 12 Congress MLAs from neighbouring Meghalaya led by former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma had joined the Trinamool. The ruling party of West Bengal is making all efforts to make inroads in BJP-ruled

Meanwhile in Tripura, the Trinamool celebrated the party's resounding victory in the KMC polls by distributing sweets among the leaders, workers and people.

The Trinamool registered a historic victory in the KMC elections by winning 134 out of the 144 seats. In 2015, it had won 113 seats, which was so far the highest in recent times. The BJP could manage just three seats, followed by the Left Front and Congress at two each, while three seats were won by Independent candidates.

Addressing a gathering in Agartala, former West Bengal minister Rajib Banerjee and Trinamool leader Subal Bhowmik said that the party would be successful in the 2023 Assembly polls in the northeastern state, and defeat the BJP to restore democracy.

Rajib Banerjee said that the BJP in Tripura is frightened after seeing Trinamool's vote share in the recent civic polls in the state.

--IANS

sc/arm

(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.)
West Bengal's ruling TMC gained control of the 144-member Municipal Corporation on Tuesday clinching nearly 72 per cent of votes, in a ringing endorsement for the party seven months after its landslide win in the state assembly polls.

Mamata Banerjee's party won 132 seats and was all set to pocket two more to post a hat-trick of wins, decimating a frail challenge from the opposition BJP, the Left Front and the Congress, officials said.

The BJP, which lost much of its steam after the assembly poll defeat, managed to win just three wards, a senior State Election Commission official said. The Congress and the CPI(M)-led Left Front bagged two wards each, and Independents three.

The Left Front, despite the mauling, finished second to the TMC in terms of vote share.

Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, who has been trying to expand her party's footprint beyond her native state, saw in the victory a leg-up for her national ambitions.

"I want to dedicate this triumph to the people of the state and 'Maa, Mati, Manush' (mother, land and people - TMC slogan for many years). Several national parties like the BJP, Congress, and CPI(M) fought against us, but they were all defeated. This is a victory of a daughter of the soil. This victory will show the way in national in days to come," a visibly pleased Banerjee told reporters outside her residence.

The TMC had swept all the 16 assembly segments in the city in the assembly polls and the BJP was its main challenger. The saffron party was second after the TMC in the assembly elections in all the wards constituting the 16 seats in terms of vote share.

Riding the momentum of its massive victory in the state polls and the recent UNESCO 'Intangible Heritage' tag for Kolkata's Durga Puja, the TMC bagged about three-fourths of the votes polled.

The TMC bagged 71.95 per cent of the votes polled, whereas the Left Front and the BJP bagged 11.13 and 8.94 per cent each. The Congress clinched 4.47 per cent of the votes and Independents 3.25 per cent.

The TMC got 22 per cent votes more than the 2015 KMC polls and increased its vote share by 11 per cent compared to the April-May assembly elections.

The BJP, which garnered six per cent less votes compared to the last KMC polls, saw a sharp decline of 20 per cent vote share compared to the assembly polls in the KMC area seven months back, when it had bagged 29 per cent votes.

Although the Left lost the chief opposition status to BJP in the KMC in terms of number ofseats won, it got a bigger share of the electoral pie by way of votes than the saffron camp, and bagged seven per cent more votes than what it had polled in the Assembly elections. The Left's vote share, however, was 13 per cent less than the last KMC polls.

Several high profile candidates of the TMC, including former Mayor Firhad Hakim, former deputy mayor Atin Ghosh, and others like Mala Roy, Debashis Kumar, Tarak Singh, Paresh Pal, won by impressive margins.

The highest victory margin was recorded by TMC candidate Faiz Ahmed Khan in ward no 66. He won by a whopping 62,045 votes, followed by TMC's Ananya Banerjee, who emerged victorious by a margin of 37,661 votes from ward no 109.

Kajari Banerjee, the sister-in-law of Mamata Banerjee, also won from ward no 73.

BJP's sitting councillor and former deputy mayor Mina Devi Purohit won for the sixth consecutive time.

TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee also thanked the people of for the "huge mandate".

"People of have once again proven that of HATE & VIOLENCE have NO PLACE in BENGAL! I thank everyone for blessing us with such a huge mandate. We are truly humbled and shall always remain committed in our goals towards YOUR BETTERMENT! Thank you Kolkata," he tweeted.

Senior party leader and former Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim described it as victory of the party's developmental work in the last decade in the city.

"Our development efforts since 2010 was enough to ensure this victory. Right now, we will focus on improved civic services including environmental issues. We will strive to make the city Covid-free in the near future," Hakim, a minister in the Banerjee cabinet, said.

The BJP, however, termed the results a reflection of the "reign of terror" that the TMC has unleashed. "This result was expected because free and fair polls didn't take place in the absence of central forces," BJP leader Shamik Bhattacharya said.

However, senior CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty saw a silver lining in the results as in most of the wards, "the Left has emerged the main opposition." Had the elections been fair, our results would have been much better," he said.

Over 63 per cent of the nearly 40.5 lakh voters had exercised their franchise on Sunday.

The TMC has been in power in KMC since 2010. In the last KMC polls in 2015, it had won 124 seats, whereas the Left Front bagged 13. The BJP and the Congress had secured five and two seats, respectively.

The newly elected TMC councillors will meet on December 23 to elect the city's next mayor.

In the 145-year history of Kolkata Municipal Corporation, nationalist leaders like Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bidhan Chandra Roy, also a former chief minister, graced the mayor's chair in pre-Independent India. Hakim was the first Muslim mayor of the city since Independence.

(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.)
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Tuesday urged the Centre to establish India's traditional rights in Palk Strait and guard the lives of the nation's fishermen.

Citing the arrest of 13 more fishermen from Tamil Nadu's Pudukottai district and the seizure of their 2 boats, Stalin said the incident comes just after the arrest of 55 fishermen and 8 boats on December 19. The 13 apprehended fishermen have been taken to Mayilatti harbour, he added.

Writing to the Union government, Stalin said action should be taken to prevent such 'fearsome' incidents and attacks on fishermen.

The Chief Minister underscored that the nation's traditional rights in the Palk Strait region should be established. "It is our duty to protect the lives of our fishermen and their belongings (their boats and gear)."



Immediate action should be taken to secure the release of all the 68 Indian fishermen arrested so far who hail from Tamil Nadu and a total of 75 fishing boats (including boats seized in previous occasions), the Chief Minister urged.

The CM's letter (dated December 21, 2021) to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, was handed over to him in Delhi by a delegation of DMK MPs led by Parliamentary party leader T R Baalu, an official release here said.

This year, there were 19 incidents of apprehension of fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy and in two specific instances of attack, five fishermen were killed, according to the state government.

Reportedly, several fishermen in the past have been apprehended while they were fishing around or off the Palk Strait.

(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 started assembling its new flagship 13 in India, as the tech giant prepares to manufacture/assemble its top-of-the-line in the country.

Industry sources told IANS on Tuesday that 13 is being assembled on trial basis at the Foxconn plant in Chennai, in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of 'Make in India'.

Foxconn is the company's largest manufacturing partner globally.

The 'make in India' 13 will be available in the domestic market, as well as for exports from the country by early next year, the sources said.

generally begins assembling new and environment-friendly iPhones in India after three-four month of their global and domestic launch.

is reportedly ramping up production of iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other devices in India and Vietnam to end its dependence on China.

The tech giant is already assembling its highest-selling models iPhone 12, iPhone 11 and XR in India, along with iPhone SE, 7 and 6S.

Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017 with iPhone SE.

The Apple iPhone 13 series for which pre-orders were thrown open in India on September 17, received a record response.

iPhone 13 had grabbed 3 per cent market share in Q3, and the newly-launched series was set to break all records in the festive quarter (Q4) in the country.

Apple registered a whopping 150 per cent growth (on-quarter) for iPhones in the July-September period (Q3) in India, shipping over 1.53 million units in the country, as per insights from market research firm CyberMedia Research (CMR).

On the year-on-year (YoY) front, iPhones registered a 28 per cent growth.

For the entire year, iPhones are estimated to have 3.5 per cent market share in India.

The iPhone 13 starts at Rs 79,900 for 128GB storage, Rs 89,900 for 256GB and Rs 1,09,900 for the 512GB option.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A new forecast has claimed that short video platform is expected to become the world's third-largest social network in 2022.

The report by Insider Intelligence -- the firm previously known as eMarketer -- predicts that will reach 755.0 million monthly users in 2022, after seeing 59.8 per cent growth in 2020, followed by 40.8 per cent growth in 2021, reports TechCrunch reported on Monday.

"The rise of is especially challenging for Snapchat, with which it competes head-to-head for the youth audience," Insider Intelligence principal analyst, Debra Aho Williamson was quoted as saying by the website.

"Although TikTok does not share much similarity to Twitter, its massive size relative to the more-established platform is a clear reflection of the addictive nature of TikTok's content," she added.

Meta-owned Facebook, as of its most recent earnings, reported 2.91 billion monthly active users after seeing 6 per cent year-over-year growth. And recently, photo-sharing platform Instagram employees leaked its network had surpassed 2 billion monthly users, up from the 1 billion monthly user milestone reported in June 2018.

However, the forecast is referencing its own 2022 predictions, which uses a slightly different set of calculations. The firm has its own definition of a monthly active user that may differ from those of each company it analyses, the report said.

For example, it only counts users who log in at least once a month consistently over a calendar year period, and it attempts to weed out the fake accounts from its estimates. This is meant to provide clients with a more consistent "apples to apples" comparison across all platforms.

--IANS

vc/ksk/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The benchmark indices slid 2% yesterday as a surge in Omicron cases, along with an FPI sell-off in India, troubled investors. As FPI selling may increase due to the year-end factor and with more western countries exploring stricter measures to stem the spread of coronavirus, equities could remain under pressure in the near term. We delve into the strategies that investors could adopt to ride this uncertainty. After a strong run, markets have become volatile towards the end of the year. But for exports this year has been great. Indias goal of clocking $400 billion in merchandise exports now looks more attainable than ever. A depreciating rupee and a continued recovery in global demand is helping India sustain its export momentum. However, the forecast for 2022 is not as certain.

Know the factors that are contributing to Indias export growth and the major risks that threaten to stall the momentum. Besides exports, another area in which we are hoping to see a pick-up in momentum is EVs. Most of us are thrilled with the idea of But the one question that pops up every time we speak of them is  what about the charging of batteries? An answer could be swappable batteries. Very soon, you will be able to refuel your EVs battery at a nearby kirana store. Your discharged battery would be replaced by a charged one within minutes. Take a look at how this battery-swapping technology could help catapult the EVs into the mainstream. Moving on, while some industry experts were disappointed by the Centres U-turn on three agriculture laws, farmer unions thought differently. They were cheering when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement on November 19. Farmers hailed the decision and vacated the protest sites, but only after the government promised to look into another of their demands  to legalise Minimum Support Price or But what exactly is How did it come into being in the 1960s? Lets understand how is it benefitting farmers and more in this episode of the podcast.
At the beginning of this fiscal, the Centre had set a merchandise export target of $400 billion for FY22, which at the time seemed ambitious. After all, our FY21 exports fell 7.3% to $290 billion from $313 billion the previous year. The fall was mainly due to a sharp drop in exports of petroleum products as Covid-19 lockdowns curbed transportation activities and hurt the demand for fuel. Even if we consider FY21 as an oddity due to lockdowns around the world, Indias exports put up an impressive show this fiscal. From April to November this year, they are up 51% to $263 billion and set to cross last years numbers by December. The rise in Indias exports could be attributed largely to the growth momentum in advanced economies and the resultant increase in global import demand. The depreciating rupee has come as a blessing in disguise as it makes Indian goods from labour-intensive sectors like textiles and clothing more competitive globally. India is also aggressively negotiating free trade agreements with the European Union, Australia, the UAE, the UK and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Any such deals materialising in the next few months will ensure greater access for Indian goods. The recently introduced PLI schemes will also support growth particularly in mobile, electronics and pharma sectors as incremental production will push additional exports as well. Further, the government has introduced export incentive schemes and cleared some pending tax refunds to exporters to improve their liquidity. To give us insight on whether Indias export growth can sustain at this rate, we have with us professor Amita Batra of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Considering all these factors, can the export momentum spill over to the next fiscal? The answer comes with several caveats Global demand will depend on whether the countries would be able to contain Covid-19 and the new Omicron variant. Another key obstacle is the container shortage and high freight rates. With increasing Indian imports and Chinas export growth slowing down, the container shortage has eased slightly in India but freight costs are still nowhere near pre-pandemic times. The average container prices at Chennai and Mumbai ports are still about 150% higher than 2019 levels. Exporters have in fact asked the government for freight support. Further, India Ratings and Research opined that it will not be easy to maintain the current export growth momentum, as the stimulus-induced demand in developed economies might normalise in 2022 and it could tilt back in favour of services. India is doing all it can to provide an impetus to outbound shipments but things that are out of its control threaten to put brakes on the export party.
Percona, a leader in open source database software and services, celebrated record growth for Q3 2021, including 44 percent Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) growth year over year. With more than 10 million downloads of its open source projects and tools, Percona actively enables developers and database administrators in their roles powering business applications.

Percona brings together database distributions alongside open source tools and contributions to build enterprise-ready database products. This model represents the potential of the open source approach to make a real difference in how developers build the applications that their companies need and how DBAs manage their database environment most effectively.

We support global retail customers with their critical payment infrastructure, and we plan ahead so that we can always deliver what our customers need. Percona offers round-the-clock expert support to ensure our databases are running at peak performance. We can rely on Perconas unbiased approach as we consider any future deployments too, said Delia Pedersoli, Chief Operating Officer at MultiPay.

Percona continues to take an independent approach to open source and databases, collaborating with a wide range of organizations across industries. Since inception, the companys services and support expertise for managing, scaling, and optimizing database performance has been infrastructure agnostic. This supports customers to achieve value faster, deliver better availability for their applications and achieve flexibility in deployment to help their organizations win. Percona has recently expanded its approach, including the recent announcement of its new unified Percona Platform for multiple database distributions, management tools, private Database as a Service (DBaaS), and support.

Our future as a company is based on packaging up our skills and experience in new ways, beginning with Percona Platform. The platform will make it easier for developers and DBAs to get the value of the work that we have put in over the years, bringing everything together in one place. Well continue to support customers running individual databases, whether they are running our distributions or not, as this is part of the value that open source provides to the market, as well as expanding how we deliver our expertise over time, said Ann Schlemmer, President at Percona.

"Over the last decade-plus, the typical enterprise has seen a dramatic expansion in the number and type of databases leveraged. In many cases, the only thing that the databases have had in common was the fact that they were open source," said Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst with RedMonk. "This presented challenges for buyers, however, as negotiating with an ever-growing number of infrastructure vendors was both difficult to scale and limited the leverage buyers could bring to bear. What many have been looking for is a single vendor to supply them with support for multiple databases, and this is the exact opportunity Percona has targeted."

Percona was founded to support companies that wanted to run open source databases for their applications and remains fully committed to the ideals of free and open source software. The company celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2021, and has grown by embracing remote work and flexibility from the start. Today, Percona has staff based across 42 countries.

An overview of Perconas anniversary is available at https://www.percona.com/about-percona/15th-anniversary and Percona Platform is available as a preview at https://www.percona.com/platform-preview.

Links

Percona Products - https://www.percona.com/software

Percona database optimization services - https://www.percona.com/solutions/optimize-database-performance



About Percona

Databases run better with Percona. Percona is the only company that delivers enterprise-class products, support and services for a range of open source databases including MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL across traditional deployments, cloud-based platforms and hybrid IT environments. The company is committed to supporting open source as an approach to software licensing, development and deployment - its database management tools are used by millions of application developers, database administrators and IT professionals worldwide.

Percona equips businesses with the freedom to choose, the freedom to create, and the freedom to make a difference  helping them scale with speed as they grow. The company supports global brands such as PayPal, Vimeo, RockStar Games, Duolingo, Fiserv, Slack, Cisco Systems, and Rent the Runway, as well as smaller enterprises looking to maximize application performance while streamlining database efficiencies. For more information, visit www.percona.com.

Percona is a registered trademark of Percona LLC. All other registered and unregistered trademarks in this document are the sole property of their respective owners.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211220005345/en/
Electric cars /

Cover Story: How Chinas EV battery king is defending its throne

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., known as CATL, is clearly a darling of investors betting on the future of electric vehicles and energy storage in the global economys green transition.

Established 10 years ago, the battery maker has grown into the third-most valuable publicly traded company in China behind national liquor maker Kweichow Moutai and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. CATLs Shenzhen stock closed at 651.19 yuan ($102.16) a share Friday, giving it a market value of 1.52 trillion yuan ($238.45 billion). The valuation has increased 1.6 times since the beginning of the year and 6.4 times from early 2020.

While investors are betting on CATLs dominant position as a producer of batteries for electric vehicles, theres no guarantee the company will be able to continue cashing in on it over time.

Blacklist /

U.S. blacklists 34 more Chinese entities for alleged support to Iran

The U.S. government added 34 more Chinese companies and research institutes to an export blacklist for allegedly diverting U.S. goods to Irans military programs.

The U.S. governments entity list bans the export of American technology to entities on the list unless the exporter receives a government license. The U.S. Commerce Departments Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) also imposes a presumption of denial for the entities in license reviews.

FINANCE & ECONOMY

Over the past three years, China has accelerated the opening-up of its financial sector, giving foreign investors greater access to its capital market. Photo: VCG

Stocks /

China to broaden stock connect program to incorporate Swiss, German exchanges

China is planning to expand a program linking the Shanghai and London stock exchanges to incorporate bourses in Shenzhen, Switzerland and Germany as part of continuing efforts to open Chinas capital markets and facilitate cross-border investment and financing, the countrys securities regulator said in a statement.

Launched in 2019, the Shanghai-London stock connect program allows eligible companies listed either on the Shanghai or the London exchange to issue depositary receipts  which represent ownership of their shares  on the other bourse.

Under the program, eligible U.K.-listed companies can issue Chinese depositary receipts (CDRs) in Shanghai, while Shanghai-traded businesses can likewise issue global depositary receipts (GDRs) in London. Investors can buy these depositary receipts to gain exposure to companies listed elsewhere.

Fiscal /

China takes in 11.2% less fiscal income as power shortage tax relief bites

Governments in China brought in 11.2% less fiscal revenue in November than the same month a year earlier, the third straight month of decline, according to Caixin calculations based on Ministry of Finance data (link in Chinese) released Friday.

Chinas central and local governments suffered aggregate year-on-year fiscal revenue declines of 0.1% in October and 2.1% in September, according to ministry data. The ministry pinned last months drop on the tax relief that the government provided to companies that run coal-fired power plants, heating companies, as well as micro, small and midsize manufacturers.

Quick hits /

Hong Kong to allow SPAC listings Jan. 1

Chinese banks cut borrowing costs to counter economic slowdown

Editorial: With speculation curtailed, the peoples housing needs remain a priority

BUSINESS & TECH

Education /

Offcn Education plunges on disclosure probe

Vocational education operator Offcn Education Technology Co. Ltd. said it has been placed under investigation by Chinas securities regulator on suspicion of violating disclosure rules.

Shares of the company plunged nearly 10% in Shenzhen to close at 8.77 yuan ($1.38) Friday following the announcement (link in Chinese), which did not provide details. The stock shed another 7.87% Monday to close at 8.08 yuan.

Offcn Education  which provides examination training for recruitment of civil servants, public institution employees, teachers and medical workers  shocked investors in October when it predicted a net loss of between 700 million yuan and 900 million yuan in the first three quarters of this year, reversing a net profit of 1.3 billion yuan for the same period in the previous year.

Livestreaming /

Livestreamer slapped with record $210 million fine for dodging tax

Chinas top livestreamer Huang Wei, nicknamed Weiya online, has been fined a record 1.34 billion yuan ($210 million) for income tax evasion, following the first pair of such penalties last month in the flourishing but underregulated industry.

The tax authorities in the eastern city of Hangzhou found Huang Wei evaded $110 million of personal taxes through underreporting and illegally classing personal income as business income, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The record amount includes personal taxes Huang evaded, and administrative and overdue fines.

HNA /

HNA units under investigation linked to embezzlement, financial misconduct, sources say

Two listed subsidiaries of HNA Group Co. Ltd. revealed that they are subject to an investigation that sources with knowledge of the matter said may be linked to allegations that shareholders embezzled company funds and illegally used corporate assets as collateral for loans.

The investigations mark the governments latest move in untangling the risks posed by the formerly free-wheeling financial conglomerate that is now going through bankruptcy restructuring.

Short selling /

Chinese tycoon who built Zhongzhi Enterprise Group dies

Xie Zhikun, the founder and controlling shareholder of sprawling Chinese investment conglomerate Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, died Saturday morning, Caixin learned from multiple sources.

Xie, 61, apparently died of a heart attack during morning exercise, Caixin learned.

He had a history of heart disease and felt a sudden discomfort when doing Pilates, said a person close to the Xie family. He was sent to the hospital but didnt make it. He suffered a large-scale myocardial infarction.

Quick hits /

Real estate services provider KE hits back at revenue fraud allegation

Evergrande declared in default by S&P for failed coupon payments

SenseTime reopens IPO, gets $512 million from cornerstones

GALLERY

Expressway bridge ramp collapse kills four

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Photo: Castanet Staff The COVID-19 testing facility in Kamloops.

Interior Health says it will add COVID-19 testing capacity as needed based on demand, after the health authoritys online booking platform glitched Monday morning.

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has been behind significant spikes in case counts in a number of countries overseas, as well as in Quebec and Ontario.

In B.C., where Omicron has been detected but is not yet known to be dominant, the variant is leading to an increased demand for COVID-19 testing, where hours-long lines were found outside testing facilities in the Lower Mainland on Monday.

In Interior Health, those looking for a test have to book one with the health authority.

This week, wait times for tests in the largest cities in the Interior are more than 24 hours. As of Monday afternoon, the next available testing appointment in Kamloops was on Wednesday morning; in Kelowna, appointments for Tuesday evening were still available, but only after 6 p.m.

On Monday morning, Interior Healths COVID-19 test appointment form was failing to load for many looking to book tests.

The COVID-19 test booking site is currently working, IH told Castanet in a statement Monday in reply to a number of questions.

We were experiencing slow load times earlier [Monday] morning, but it has been worked out.

In the statement, the health authority said demand for testing has increased in the region.

We are currently seeing an increase in testing demand in some communities, the statement said.

Appointments are available up to 72 hours in advance and more appointment spaces are added each night. We will closely monitor appointment availability and will work to add additional appointment capacity in areas where we are seeing an increased demand for testing.
Photo: BC Gov Flickr

The provincial government has announced 2,550 new cases, including 268 in the Interior Health region, over the past three days.

The new cases bring B.C.s total since the pandemic began to 228,335, although just 5,435 cases remain active. Of the active cases, 185 individuals are in hospital and 77 are in intensive care.

In the Interior Health region there are 688 active cases, where 43 people are hospitalized, 20 of whom are in intensive care.

The cases were confirmed over the weekend as follows:

Dec. 17-18: 911 new cases

Dec. 18-19: 832 new cases

Dec. 19-20: 807 new cases

In the last 72 hours, three new deaths have been reported, for an overall total of 2,402.

As of Monday, 87.3% of eligible people five and older in B.C. have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 82.6% have received their second dose. Twelve-plus figures are at 91.7% and 88.8%, respectively.

The new/active cases include:

877 new cases in Fraser Health  Total active cases: 1,707

909 new cases in Vancouver Coastal Health  Total active cases: 1,823

268 new cases in Interior Health  Total active cases: 688

81 new cases in Northern Health  Total active cases: 236

415 new cases in Island Health  Total active cases: 1,021

The provincial government says it will outline additional COVID-19 measures during Tuesdays media briefing. An update on the Omicron variant of concern will also be provided on Tuesday.

From Dec. 10-16, people not fully vaccinated accounted for 39.4% of cases. From Dec. 3-16, they accounted for 71.4% of hospitalizations.

Past week cases (Dec. 10-16) - Total 3,721

Not vaccinated: 1,397 (37.5%)

Partially vaccinated: 69 (1.9%)

Fully vaccinated: 2,255 (60.6%)

Past two weeks cases hospitalized (Dec. 3-16) - Total 154

Not vaccinated: 104 (67.5%)

Partially vaccinated: 6 (3.9%)

Fully vaccinated: 44 (28.6%)

Past week, cases per 100,000 population after adjusting for age (Dec. 10-16)

Not vaccinated: 190.7

Partially vaccinated: 34.3

Fully vaccinated: 49.7

Past two weeks, cases hospitalized per 100,000 population after adjusting for age (Dec. 3-16)

Not vaccinated: 23.8

Partially vaccinated: 4.9

Fully vaccinated: 1.0
Photo: The Canadian Press In this courtroom sketch, Ghislaine Maxwell, left, sits at the defense table with defense attorney Jeffrey Pagliuca while listening to testimony in her sex abuse trial, Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

The fate of Ghislaine Maxwell is now squarely in the hands of a jury.

The jury received the case in Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial just before 5 p.m. Monday, after prosecutors and Maxwell's defense attorneys delivered closing arguments.

The trial speeded to a finish Monday with a prosecutor labeling her a dangerous and sophisticated predator who recruited and groomed teenage girls to be sexually abused by financier Jeffrey Epstein while a defense attorney told jurors during closing arguments that Maxwell is an innocent woman.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe said Epstein could not have preyed on teenage girls for more than a decade without the help of the British socialite, who she described as the lady of the house as Epstein abused girls at a New York mansion, a Florida estate and a New Mexico ranch.

Ghislaine Maxwell was dangerous, Moe told jurors, saying Maxwell accepted over $30 million from Epstein over the years. Maxwell and Epstein committed horrifying crimes.

Defense lawyer Laura Menninger said prosecutors had failed to prove any charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ghislaine Maxwell is an innocent woman, wrongfully accused of crimes she did not commit, Menninger said.

That portrayal conflicted with Moe's depiction of Maxwell as a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing. She ran the same playbook again and again and again.

She manipulated her victims and groomed them. She caused deep and lasting harm to young girls. It is time to hold her accountable, Moe said.

The summations came at the start of the fourth week of a trial that was originally projected to last six weeks. With a coronavirus outbreak in New York worsening by the day and a holiday weekend ahead, Judge Alison J. Nathan urged lawyers to keep their closings tight so the jury could begin deliberating as early as Monday.

Menninger's closing revisited a theme defense attorneys pressed at the trial's start: that Maxwell was made a scapegoat after Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan federal jail cell in August 2019 as he awaited a sex trafficking trial.

Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jeffrey Epstein, Menninger said.

Maxwell, 59, was supported in court by four siblings who sat next to one another in the first row of spectators.

Maxwell has been jailed without bail since her arrest in July 2020. The judge has denied her bail repeatedly, despite her lawyer's arguments that the pledge of her $22.5 million estate and a willingness to be watched 24 hours a day by armed guards would guarantee her appearance in court.

The closings came after two dozen prosecution witnesses testified, including four women who say they were abused by Epstein with the help of Maxwell when they were teenagers.

Moe faced the jury as Maxwell, in a white sweater, sat behind her at the defense table and wrote notes, occasionally turning the pages of a notebook. Later, Maxwell turned in her chair toward the jury, sometimes pulling down her black mask to sip from a water bottle.

The prosecutor told jurors that Maxwell was a posh, smiling age-appropriate woman who provided cover for Epsteins creepy behavior.

She asked them to ignore the testimony of a psychology professor who testified for the defense, saying the testimony that memories can fade over time and be influenced by what people hear, see or read was a total distraction.

These women know what happened to their own bodies, she said. Your common sense tells you that being molested is something you never forget, ever.

But Menninger defended the testimony of the memory expert, citing instances in which Maxwells accusers never mentioned the defendants name when they first spoke of the abuse they endured from Epstein.

She said the testimony from accusers was manipulated by civil lawyers representing them as they pursued millions of dollars in payouts from a special fund set up after Epsteins suicide to compensate his victims.

Menninger said the women suddenly recovered memories that Ghislaine was there.
Photo: The Canadian Press Trade Minister Mary Ng.

The federal Liberals have put the White House on notice that Canada will officially challenge the legality of an American decision to hike duties on softwood lumber heading south of the border.

The government is filing the grievance under the recently renewed North American free trade pact.

Trade Minister Mary Ng says in a statement that she expects Canada to be successful, as it has been in previous challenges to what she calls unwarranted duties on Canadian lumber.

She adds that the extra costs are likely to hit American homebuyers and homeowners hardest, saying the duties are also a tax on U.S. consumers that will raise construction and renovation costs.

Late last month, the U.S. government nearly doubled the tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber as part of a long-running dispute that stems from the U.S. industry's belief that their northern counterparts get help from the federal government.

The Liberals have been under fire from opposition parties for not preventing the new round of tariffs, particularly given expectations that trade disputes would dissipate with Joe Biden in the White House rather than Donald Trump, with his protectionist policies.

The government had hinted that it was prepared to impose countervailing measures, or take a more formal stance in challenging the duties under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

Ng says the government remains interested in negotiating a settlement to the trade issue, but decided to go the route of a trade challenge in the absence of any movement from the Americans.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The jury deliberating at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial asked Tuesday to review testimony of three of four women who said the British socialite aided financier Jeffrey Epstein in the sexual abuse they experienced when they were teenagers.

The jury in Manhattan federal court requested the transcripts less than an hour after resuming deliberations in a large room where they could spread out for coronavirus safety reasons.

They had begun their deliberations late Monday after closing arguments consumed most of the day, but they worked less than an hour before going home.

They are deciding whether Maxwell, 59, assisted her former financier boyfriend in the sexual abuse of teenage girls from 1994 to 2004. Prosecutors say she recruited and groomed the girls, making them feel that sexualized massages of Epstein were normal behavior.

Maxwells lawyers say the government has used her as a scapegoat after Epstein killed himself in 2019 as he awaited a sex trafficking trial of his own.'

The transcripts requested by the jury pertain to the testimony of two women who testified anonymously as Jane and Carolyn, along with the testimony of Annie Farmer, who identified herself by name and has spoken publicly about her experiences with Maxwell and Epstein.

Maxwell has been held without bail since her July 2019 arrest.
Photo: YouTube screenshot Fred Sharp, seen here in an undated short film moonlighting as an actor, has been criminally charged of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud in the United States.

Former Vancouver lawyer turned offshore company facilitator Fred Sharp is facing a US$52.9-million judgment against him after he defaulted on a stock fraud case filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Aug. 5.

The commission is requesting an order in the federal District Court of Massachusetts to have Sharp repay $21.76 million in estimated net profits from an alleged scheme that involved over $1 billion worth of stock transactions involving hundreds of U.S. penny stock companies.

The alleged scheme netted an estimated $770 million in profits for company insiders and other co-conspirators such as lawyers, stock touts and financial agents. Sharp is considered to have masterminded the scheme between 2010 and 2019, by setting up offshore shell companies to facilitate illegal insider trading.

The commission is also seeking interest of $7.17 million and a civil penalty of $23.99 million. This amounts to $68.4 million in Canadian dollars today.

Sharp knew that his business was a course of conduct that operated as a fraud on the purchasers of numerous securities  and caused fraudulent securities sales, noted the commissions application, penned by SEC enforcement accountant Trevor Donelan, who notes Swiss-based Wintercap SA was among the principle trading outlets for Sharp. Wintercap SA was controlled by convicted securities fraudster Roger Knox, who was jailed last year.

The commission charged Sharp with violating anti-fraud provisions and registration provisions of the U.S. Securities Act. These civil charges are in conjunction with criminal charges of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud brought forth by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), also in a Boston federal court.

Much of the evidence brought forth in charging documents, to date, stems from intercepted encrypted communications from Sharps servers located in Curacao. Sharp dubbed the network Q and referred to himself as Bond while his alleged wiring expert Yvonne (Zhiyeng Chen) Gasarch of Richmond was dubbed Wires.

While the criminal case has yet to proceed, the commissions case against Sharp is considered nearly closed as a notice of default was entered against him on Nov. 15, after Sharp failed to respond to multiple attempts to serve him following his Aug. 10 summons. Hence, the court accepts as true the factual allegations of the complaint against defendant Sharp, who has defaulted, and finds that the court has jurisdiction over this action, states the commissions proposed final judgment.

Along with the monetary judgment, the commission seeks to finalize a permanent ban on Sharp conducting any business in the U.S. markets, aside from personal stock purchases.

The commission says it took steps to serve Sharp formally through the Hague Convention but he was still not served in person with the complaint, summons and temporary orders against him.

Sharp was not served because after multiple attempts, lights on in residence, car in driveway, window open, no one came to the door, noted a deputy sheriffs certificate filed in a Boston court in November.

Meanwhile, the DOJ has issued an arrest warrant for and frozen assets of Sharp, including numerous bank and brokerage accounts.

The 69-year-old is known to reside in the West Vancouver neighbourhood of Caulfeild. If he is in Canada, he could face an extradition process, which can typically run for years.

Sharp was called to the B.C. bar in May 1981.

In 1995, his name first became publicly linked to improper activity, when he was suspended by the Law Society of B.C. for one year.

In 1997, Sharp relinquished his licence to practice law and went on to incorporate the Vancouver office of Panama investment firm Mossack Fonseca the following year. Although it dissolved in April 1999, Sharp carried on business under different corporate entities elsewhere.

In what may turn out to be an explicit case of life imitating art, Sharp wrote a fictional book in 2002 about securities fraud, the commission has noted in its filings.

In May 2016, Sharp became more widely known across the country as the Canadian face of the Panama Papers  a massive leak of documents of Panamanian company Mossack Fonseca that revealed a vast network of offshore companies acting as tax havens. He helped register 1,167 offshore entities from his Vancouver office, according to the documents.

Sharp is also presently responding to Canada Revenue Agency investigations via court proceedings.
The United Nations has welcomed the United States' willingness to find ways to ensure liquidity into Afghanistan's economy.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States is cooperating with the United Nations to find ways to deliver aid in Afghanistan and ensure liquidity in the country's economy.

"We welcome the willingness of the US to find ways to ensure liquidity in Afghanistan's economy," UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told Sputnik on Monday.

The United States believes that Afghanistan is experiencing an acute humanitarian crisis that was preexisting before the US withdrawal in August and has become worse since then, Price said.
Argos announces US$23m investment in Honduran strategic projects

ICR Newsroom By 21 December 2021

Argos will invest US$23m in several projects to improve operations at its Honduran plants. The investment is also expected to support the countrys growth and development.

The company will expand its installed capacity at Piedras Azules, Comayagua, to increase its annual cement production by 35 per cent as it forecasts accelerated market demand.



Furthermore, Argos will invest in renewable energy by expanding its solar farm in Comayagua, which was opened in 2020, and currently consists of 32,160 panels that supply up to 20 per cent of the plants energy requirement. The expansion will see an additional 5MW installed, increasing capacity to 15MW, or 25 per cent of the plants energy requirement. Argos will also build a 1.2MW solar farm at its plant in Rio Blanquito, Choloma, by installing approximately 2000 panels.



In addition, it will strengthen its waste management and co-processing programme through the acquisition of new equipment and facilities to prepare and use waste-derived fuels. Argos targets a 12 per cent thermal substitution rate by 2030, reducing CO 2 emissions by up to 14 percent as well as contributing to the responsible management of more than 5500tpa of solid industrial waste.



Between 2022-23 the company expects to generate more than 500 direct jobs during the construction phase of these projects.



"This investment is a vote of confidence of Argos in Honduras and represents our commitment to the country's economic reactivation and our firm determination to contribute to the consolidation of prosperous and sustainable communities based on competitive and visionary initiatives. We will continue our efforts to promote the development of Honduran families through the creation of social value at a national level, says Luis Eduardo Tovar, CEO of Argos Honduras.

Published under
Former Commissioner Joe Graham formally announces his candidacy for Hamilton County Commission District 11 in the August 2022 general election. He said he is a strong advocate for safe Hamilton County Schools, positive growth and infrastructure needs.

He is a husband, father, grandfather, commissioner, businessman, local activist, community leader and volunteer. His many years of experience as a commissioner gives him the knowledge of working hand in hand with the mayor, school board, county sheriff, and any departments committed to making Hamilton County a better place, said officials.

While in office, Former Commissioner Graham worked to fight for schools and teachers, ensuring the communities had what they needed to succeed while keeping taxes low, said officials.

"Each person of District 11 deserves bold leadership and a comprehensive strategy of working together with local, civic, and non-profit groups," he said. He said he is confident he can provide bold leadership, which will help him work closely with many organizations regardless of partisanship to serve the district.

"The people of District 11 deserve honest, hardworking, diligent, and experienced representation," he said.

Former Commissioner Graham has the knowledge, integrity, and years of experience to give the people of District 11 a strong voice while being an advocate for the needs of every part of the district. He is readily available to listen to every person about any and all issues there may be. With his experience in county government and his leadership abilities, he will formulate a plan of action to resolve the issue, said officials.
Our culture is in a steep moral decline-a decline that has been made possible by the gradual and fundamental transformation that has taken place in our childrens minds via the taxpayer funded

public school system. Over the centuries we have been warned by Christian leaders and theologians not to fall into the trap of a government-sponsored, tax-subsidized system of public education. Regrettably, their warning only served to slow down the process at best or was completely ignored at worst.

One of such warnings came in the year 1887 from Dr. Archibald Hodge, professor at Princeton Seminary, who said, I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christs reign, that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social, and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen. Could this be the reason why the framers of the Constitution did not prescribe the federal government to be in charge of the education of our children?

For the first 220 years of American history (from 1620 to around 1840), we had a fully private, Christian, parochial, and home school model for educating our children. Children excelled in this system, where parents, guardians, tutors and the church were the overseers of what went into the minds and souls of the youngsters. As a result, America was built by men and women with a strong ad rich academic foundation and a forged Christian character, who revered God and gave Him precedence in every area of society and government. As a nation, America was led by Biblical principles. Gods blessings were abundantly poured over the young nation and it quickly became the shining city on a hill, the indisputable principal world-wide leader in all aspects of life and governance.

This education model stood until 1840, when Horace Mann, inspired by the government run education model he discovered in Prussia, established the first public-school K-12 model in Massachusetts; it spread surprisingly quickly throughout the country and by 1900 it became the new main education model in the United States.

His successor, the openly Marxist and atheist John Dewey, took on Manns mantel and brought it to the next level. Dewey attempted to redefine God. He said that God was not a supernatural being, but community, ideals, whatever made people want to strive to be their best. In 1916 he wrote the book Democracy and Education which essentially eliminates God from the equation and elevates the concept of progressive education.

As these ideas began to infiltrate the public school system, we have seen a progressive decline of Americas moral fiber and character. The tactics of the Left against America have been well crafted and subtle. One idea here, another one there, until an entire new and atheistic worldview is developed in childrens minds, replacing traditional values, introducing fake science as factual and calling that which is good, evil, and that which is evil, good. All this, in addition to the concurrent academic dumbing down that makes most children now incapable of reading and solving even the simplest mathematical equation.

All the while, parents and Christians leaders were in a deep sleep, making the wrong assumptions about the quality and content of the education the children were receiving. We are now harshly awakened to the fact that the so-called public schools have been deliberately and steadily indoctrinating our kids on immoral and dangerous Marxist values. Our children now struggle and sadly, most succumb to the indoctrination. All we have to do is look around and readnot in the main stream, fake media, of course about the staggering rates of teen and even child suicide and mental health issues plaguing our nation today.

And make no mistake, the Common Core curriculum may not be referred to by that name any longer, but its standards continue to be alive and well. No new standards have been written. The common core standards continue to be taught in K-12 government schools and include social ideologies such as the Critical Race Theory among other destructive teachings.

Another fact to bear in mind is that any school, private or Christian, that receives state or federal funding is required to teach to the standards. The money comes with strings attached.

Abraham Lincoln understood it clearly when he said: The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

How could it be possible for a government to institutionalize gay marriage, propose transgender protections, attempt to legalize pedophilia and trample over parental rights? Its simple: by the steady brainwashing of the minds of children over time, who one day become the teachers, political, economic and even religious leaders in the nation.

If theres any hope for America, it is up to conservatives and Christians to take a stand to restore the values that once made this country a beacon of hope and an inspiration to the world. But time is short. While the answer to this enormous problem is complex and may take many, many years to correctone thing is clear, as author Alex Newman wrote: the public- school building is on fire: Get your children out, now!

Lizzy Cohen
The County School Board on Monday afternoon approved a four-year contract for new superintendent Dr. Justin Robertson.

There will be a base salary of $225,000, but an opportunity to earn more by meeting certain goals.

Dr. Robertson, a veteran of the County School system, was selected after Dr. Bryan Johnson announced he was leaving for the private sector.

Here is the contract:

This Contract is entered into this 16th day of December, 2021, by and between the Hamilton County Board of Education, hereinafter called the BOARD, and Dr. Justin Robertson, hereinafter called the DIRECTOR. This Contract replaces and supersedes any employment relationship between the DIRECTOR and the Hamilton County Schools prior to this date.

The BOARD and the DIRECTOR, for the consideration herein specified, agree as follows:

1. TERM OF CONTRACT. The BOARD hereby employs the DIRECTOR as DIRECTOR of the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS for a period commencing on the 1st day of January 2022 and ending on the 31st day of December 2025.

2. PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATION. Throughout the term of this Contract, the DIRECTOR shall keep and maintain any and all necessary certification required by the State of Tennessee for directors of schools and shall file any such certification with the BOARD chairman.

3. DUTIES.

a) The DIRECTOR shall perform those duties specified in the Tennessee Code Annotated as well as those duties listed in the DIRECTORS job description as adopted by the BOARD and as may be amended from time to time

during the term of this Contract. These duties are adopted by reference as if fully stated herein.

b) The DIRECTOR shall devote full-time attention, knowledge, skills and energies to the business and interests of the BOARD and the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS as are necessary to perform the above-referenced job duties. These duties will generally be performed during normal business

hours, but it is expressly agreed that the duties of this position will require the DIRECTOR to work during time other than normal business hours and may, from time to time, require travel in and out of the County.

c) No later than September 1, 2022, and each subsequent September 1 during the term of this Contract, the DIRECTOR shall develop a proposed strategic plan for the upcoming school year for the BOARDS review and

consideration. By October 1 of each such year, the BOARD shall review the DIRECTORS proposal and shall develop and adopt a Strategic Plan for the Hamilton County Schools containing specific goals and objectives that the DIRECTOR will pursue with all diligence.

4. COMPENSATION.

a) ANNUAL BASE SALARY. Beginning on January 1, 2022, the BOARD shall pay the DIRECTOR a starting annual salary in the amount of Two Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars ($225,000.00) in twelve (12) equal monthly installments in accordance with BOARD policy. In no event shall the DIRECTOR be paid less than the starting annual salary set forth in this section of the Contract.

b) DEFERRED COMPENSATION. At the end of each year of this Contract that the DIRECTOR remains employed by the BOARD, the BOARD will contribute Three Percent (3.0%) of the DIRECTORs taxable compensation to a retirement plan for the benefit of the DIRECTOR.

c) PERFORMANCE-BASED COMPENSATION.

i. As set forth in Section 4.c) ii. below, the BOARD shall compensate the DIRECTOR for achieving any of these system-wide

performance metrics:

1. Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) when at least half of

all third-grade students are on-track or achieve mastery

as measured by the TNReady English Language Arts

assessment;

2. Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) when Thirty-Eight

Percent (38%) of all students across all grades are on

track in Algebra I;

3. Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) when the average ACT

composite for the class of 2023 is 21;

4. Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) if 90% of students who

entered high school in the 2019 cohort graduate by

Summer 2023; and

5. Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) if the Hamilton County

Schools maintain at least a Level 4 TVAAS score.

ii. The compensation set forth in Section 4.c) i above will be treated as either a raise to the Directors annual base salary or a cash bonus

depending upon the following:

1. If in the preceding 12 months the Board has raised the

teachers salaries by a percentage that, if it were applied to

the DIRECTOR, would meet or exceed the compensation set

forth above, then the compensation will be treated as a raise

to the DIRECTORs base salary; but

2. To the extent that any such compensation does not meet or

exceed whatever raise the Board has provided to the

teachers, then any such compensation will be paid to the

DIRECTOR as a one-time cash bonus.

iii. The compensation set forth in Section 4.c) i.  1-4 above may be earned only once even if the conditions were to be repeated.

iv. The BOARD and the DIRECTOR agree that, in the event the Tennessee Department of Education should remove any schools

from the jurisdiction of the BOARD and any such removal should impact the scores of the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS, then the raises set forth in this Section 4.c) shall be calculated to remove the impact of this removal.

d) PERIODIC REVIEW: From time to time, the BOARD, in its sole discretion, may choose to increase the DIRECTORs annual base salary.

5. BENEFITS. Except as provided in this Contract, the BOARD will provide the DIRECTOR with the same benefits granted to other HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS licensed employees, including holidays, medical, life, and disability insurance.

6. PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY. The BOARD shall maintain liability insurance covering alleged wrongful acts and omissions of the DIRECTOR in the scope of his employment with the BOARD. The BOARD shall, to the extent permitted by law, directly or through insurance, defend the DIRECTOR, bear defense costs, and indemnify and hold the DIRECTOR harmless on demands, claims, suits, and legal proceedings brought by third parties against the DIRECTOR in his official capacity as agent and employee of the BOARD, except that this obligation of the BOARD shall not exist with respect to violations of criminal law, intentional torts, improper personal gain, or willful misconduct, and in no event will individual BOARD members be considered liable for indemnifying the DIRECTOR against such demands, claims, suits, and legal proceeding.

7. PROFESSIONAL GROWTH. The DIRECTOR is encouraged and expected to participate in professional growth and development activities, including maintaining membership in professional organizations, including the Tennessee Association of School Administrators and the American Association of School Administrators, and attending professional conferences at the local, state, and national levels. As a result, the BOARD shall pay the membership dues for such professional organizations and shall pay for the DIRECTOR to attend the professional meetings approved by the BOARD, including the actual and necessary expenses of said attendance (not paid by the State Department of Education) in accordance with BOARD policy.

8. WORK YEAR AND LEAVE.

a) Pursuant to Section 3.b) above, it is understood and agreed that the DIRECTOR will devote however much time may be necessary to accomplish his duties. The BOARD expects the DIRECTOR to maintain appropriate office hours during the two hundred sixty (260) day work year and to be accessible and responsive at all other times.

b) The DIRECTOR shall accrue two-and-a-half days of vacation per month up to the limit established by the BOARDs policy. At the end of each year of this Contract, the DIRECTOR, at his option, may be paid for up to ten (10) days of unused vacation leave at the per diem annual salary rate then in effect. Vacation time should be avoided at the beginning and end of the school year.

c) The DIRECTOR may accumulate and use personal leave days in accordance with state law and the BOARDs policy.

d) The DIRECTOR shall be granted one (1) day of sick leave for each month of employment. The DIRECTOR may accumulate unused sick leave days. Any unused sick leave days may be used for retirement credit in accordance with the policies of the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System. The DIRECTOR may carryover any accumulated sick leave from his previous district pursuant to state law.

9. EXPENSES.

a) The BOARD will pay the DIRECTOR an automobile allowance in the amount of One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) per month for any travel within Hamilton County. Subject to the terms of BOARD policy, the BOARD will reimburse the DIRECTOR those actual expenses necessitated by travel outside of Hamilton County in the performance of his official duties.

b) The BOARD will provide the DIRECTOR the technology necessary to carry out the duties of the Director, including a laptop, home

printer/fax/scanner, a smart phone, tablet or similar device, and any monthly charges associated with the use of such technology. Proper documentation and purchase orders are required for payment of reimbursement of expenses.

c) The BOARD recognizes that it is critical to the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS for the DIRECTOR to be involved in civic organizations. As a result, the BOARD will pay the DIRECTORS membership fees in up to three (3) civic organizations of his choice.

d) The BOARD shall reimburse the DIRECTOR for reasonable and necessary expenses incurred by the DIRECTOR in the course of HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS business.

10. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION.

a) Annually, and no later than the 30th day of August each calendar year during the term of this Contract, the BOARD shall evaluate the

DIRECTORS performance as DIRECTOR of the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS.

i. In conducting this evaluation, the BOARD shall use the evaluation format pursuant to section 10.b) below and shall include: a review of the DIRECTORS progress toward goals established by the BOARD pursuant to sections 3.c) above; the working relationships between the DIRECTOR and the BOARD, the staff, the students and the

community at large; and any other matter relative to the duties of the DIRECTOR pursuant to section 3.a) of this Contract.

ii. Prior to this evaluation, the DIRECTOR shall provide the BOARD a written self-appraisal using the evaluation format pursuant to section 10.b) below and the BOARD shall consider the DIRECTORS self appraisal in conducting the review of the DIRECTOR.

iii. The BOARD shall provide the DIRECTOR with a written copy of its evaluation. The DIRECTOR shall have the right to make a

written response to the evaluation, which shall be attached to the

BOARDS written evaluation.

b) The BOARD and the DIRECTOR will endeavor to agree upon the evaluation format no later than October 31st of the preceding year. In the event that the BOARD and the DIRECTOR cannot agree, the BOARD may develop the format and inform the DIRECTOR.

11. BOARD/DIRECTOR RELATIONSHIPS/COMMUNICATIONS.

a) The BOARD and the DIRECTOR agree that they shall work with each other in the spirit of cooperation and teamwork and shall provide each other periodic opportunity to discuss BOARD/DIRECTOR relationships and communications.

b) The DIRECTOR acknowledges the BOARDS role to govern the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS as the elected representatives of the citizens of Hamilton County. Accordingly, pursuant to Board Policy No. 5.101, the DIRECTOR agrees to discuss any significant changes in the operation or structure of the administration of the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS with the BOARD prior to implementing any such changes.

c) The BOARD agrees that individual BOARD members will not give direction to the DIRECTOR or any employee of the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS regarding the management of the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS or the solution of specific problems and that they shall refer all personnel complaints or other communications concerning the

administration of the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS to the DIRECTOR for investigation and report to the BOARD.

d) The BOARD, collectively or by its individual members, shall promptly refer to the DIRECTOR all criticisms, complaints and suggestions called to their attention relative to DIRECTORS performance of his duties of the operation of the HAMILTON COUNTY SCHOOLS for the DIRECTORS study and recommendation.

12. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES. The DIRECTOR may engage in professional activities, including speaking and writing, with or without compensation, provided that doing so does not detract from the duties of his employment.

13. CONTRACT TERMINATION.

a) Mutual Agreement, Retirement or Death. This Contract may be terminated by the mutual agreement of the parties or by the retirement or death of the DIRECTOR.

b) For Cause. This Contract may be terminated by the BOARD for cause in accordance with the provisions of Title 49, Chapter 2, Part 2 or Chapter 5, Part 5 of the Tennessee Code Annotated. If the BOARD terminates this Contract for cause, the DIRECTOR will be entitled to no further benefits or compensation except any accrued and unpaid benefits and expenses at the time of termination of this Contract.

c) Removal from Office. This Contract shall be terminated if the State Board of Education, in accordance with the provisions of Title 49, Chapter 1 of the

Tennessee Code Annotated as enacted or hereafter amended, orders the removal of the DIRECTOR. If such removal is ordered, the DIRECTOR shall be

entitled to no further benefits or compensation except any accrued and unpaid benefits and expenses at the time of termination of this Contract.

d) Disability. The BOARD may terminate this Contract for disability of the DIRECTOR. Disability shall mean that the DIRECTOR is unable to perform the essential functions of his position because of disability, as defined by the Americans with Disability Act, with or without reasonable accommodations for an aggregate of one hundred twenty (120) days within any one hundred eighty (180) consecutive days during the term of this Contract. If this Contract is terminated for disability, the Board shall pay the DIRECTOR any accrued and unpaid benefits as of the date of the termination of this Contract.

14. AMENDMENTS. Any modifications to this contract shall be made by mutual agreement of both parties and only in writing. Neither party shall be bound by any oral representation concerning modification of this contract.

15. ENTIRE AGREEMENT. This Contract constitutes the entire agreement between the parties and the parties hereto acknowledge that neither has relied upon any oral representation of any agreements by the other and that no such oral representations or agreements shall in any way affect the terms of this agreement and that this agreement may not be modified or changed except by written instrument executed by the parties.

16. NEPOTISM. The DIRECTOR will not hire immediate family members in administrative roles.

Made and executed by the parties on this date: _____________________________

_________________________________ _______________________________ Dr. Justin Robertson, Tucker McClendon, Chairman, Director of Hamilton County Schools Hamilton County Board of Education

________________________________ _______________________________ Date




Governor Bill Lee has recognized December 2021 as Hope Marches On Month to raise awareness of The Salvation Armys vital community programs and poverty alleviation efforts across the state.

The Salvation Army plays an important role in caring for Tennessee children and families in need, said Governor Lee.

I commend their selfless service, and Im thankful for their work across our state and nation.

There are still many people in Tennessee who are without food and shelter this winter, and many families are at risk of being evicted. The Salvation Army works to feed the hungry, provide warm clothes and shelter for those experiencing homelessness, assist with disaster relief efforts and support people in need of other critical essentials. Additionally, life-changing Salvation Army programs help people break the cycle of poverty, achieve self-sufficiency and create better lives for themselves and their families.

Were definitely grateful to have the support of Gov. Lee, said Major Mark Smith of The Salvation Armys Chattanooga Area Command. The Salvation Army team in Chattanooga is very passionate about supporting those who need our assistance, so it means a lot that our governor is encouraging people to participate in that mission.

The Salvation Army is in need of donations to continue their vital work in the community. To support The Salvation Armys work in Chattanooga, visit csarmy.org or call 423 756-1023.
Last Christmas in Nashville a bombing shattered a holiday that marks peace on earth and goodwill. For those in Tennessee is was a difficult ending for an already tumultuous pandemic-filled year. This year has also proven to be challenging for many citizens in our state.

While the Dickens character Scrooge edged his way along the crowded paths of life, he warned all who practiced human sympathy to keep their distance. Are we that different today than Scrooge? I would like to think so, but I am not so sure.

The Ghost of Christmas Past. In Christmas 1983, I was spending Christmas courtesy of the United States Marine Corps at the luxurious accommodations provided at the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, Japan. I was a member of the Marine Air Support Squadron 2, nicknamed the Pacific Vagabonds. We were part of the Marine Air Control Group 18, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. After the Beirut Bombing in 1983, there was an attitude shift returning from the lost admiration the military suffered after an ill-advised war in Vietnam. We learned that respect lost can be regained.

Throughout our history, we respected the police, teachers, military, and people in authority. The respect for those in authority positions is seemingly gone today. We respected our teachers in the past. In communities across the nation educators were people to be admired. Society respected those responsible for the education of the next generation. Education was a valued and esteemed career.

The Ghost of Christmas Present. Today, a lack of respect, low pay for the amount of work required, and unrealistic expectations are commonplace. We have dealt with teachers being physically and verbally assaulted regularly. These statistics are underreported statewide and nationally. In December alone we have dealt with a few troubling cases, and the actions of school administrators were not supportive of the educator. School Resource Officers who want to do the right thing to protect the educators and other students are increasingly finding themselves being thwarted by school administrators who either fear parents or do not want the negative publicity. To be fair, some forward-thinking districts are very supportive of educators that are assaulted or attacked. Districts that are not supportive are finding teachers no longer want to work there.

Social media was once a tool to connect communities is now becoming a vehicle to bash educators. In social media, only one side of a story is presented. The other side is often prevented from responding. It is a growing issue and it is largely ignored. That is not to say there are no legitimate issues to be confronted, but social media is not a very reliable source of news like traditional media. One of the great concerns is the predatory algorithms used by some social media platforms can drive a false narrative and manipulate negative behavior. Eric Schmidt added, The Internet is the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.

The Ghost of Christmas Future. I am still that optimist that focused on hope instead of fear. I welcome the possibilities of the future. I see value in every life and believe children are gifts from God. Every child in Tennessee, and America, deserves a future centered on hope and opportunity. I wish for every child to be wanted, loved, and cared for in a home with parents who provide a nurturing environment and a state that provides quality education for every child. That every child receives an education that allows them to realize their full potential.

We must hope for a state that values and funds education. We need the message to come from the statehouse, county commissions, school boards, and every home in a community that our educators are worthy of respect and being treated with dignity. We need to look at ourselves and take responsibility for working toward that future. Nelson Mandela said that history will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children. We cannot do that without the women and men who are on the frontlines every day already doing the work. I ask that you support them in their efforts, and not be a Scrooge.

Merry Christmas to All. And God Bless Us, Everyone.

JC Bowman

Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee
The recent talk and push to make businesses who employ more than 100 people, responsible to do the governments job, is confusing to me. Why are we going to force the large businesses, which make up only 1.9 percent of all employers responsible to vaccinate their people, at their expense? Yes, I said their expense. While the vaccine is free the administration, production interruption, and business impacts are not. Why should businesses be expected to bear the cost anyway? I am sure one could argue, its a drop in the bucket for big businesses, since vaccinating larger populations of workers will solve the problem  but will it?

Only 39 percent of the U.S. population over 18 works at companies having more than 100 employees. 10 million people, or 6.3 percent of our able bodied population are not working at all. Another 4.7 percent are on SSDI, and 17 percent are retired. That is 28 percent of the population. When you factor in 18 and under, that number is roughly 50 percent of the population that will not be vaccinated under this program. And guess which population is more likely to be out and about?Certainly not the workers at big production facilities having greater than 100 people!

This rule fails to address roughly half the U.S. population at all. Why? Because instead of finding a way to adequately make a rule to vaccinate the entire country, our elected officials are hiding behind the skirt of OSHA  the government agency tasked with protecting Americans against workplace related illness and injury. COVID is a national health issue, not a workplace issue. OSHA is not staffed or set up to be the governments enforcer of this law. OSHAs minimal rules can barely keep employers from killing employees as it is.

Now, there could be validity that in a hospital or healthcare setting, the exposure to COVID is a workplace risk, but Janie up in accounts payable? Uh, no. In a normal setting, an employer would deny that claim and be backed up by the work comp office in any state.

Why are our elected officials backing this stupidity? Its clear to me  future votes. After all, when election time comes, they can say I never forced anyone to get vaccinated. But  shouldnt they have?

I am a vaccinated Republican. I believe it is our civic duty to protect each other. It may be an old-fashioned way of thinking, but, it is how we used to be raised.



Pass a law that applies to everyone, but dont hide behind OSHA.

Kaye Fiorello

* * *

Perhaps we should not pass a law regarding any required medical treatment or vaccination.

Last I checked I live in the United States of America with certain inalienable freedoms granted by my Creator.

If you want to live in a land of forced medical treatment, perhaps North Korea, China, or any number of other countries run by tyrannical dictatorships.

And, by the way, my body, my choice.

Dwayne Cales
The Catoosa County Economic Development Authority (EDA) board of directors has approved an agreement with Enots, LLC to accept the transfer and donation of the former Hutcheson Hospital building and campus to the EDA. CHI Memorial Hospital Georgia will continue to serve north Georgia until a new hospital is built through a leasing agreement with the EDA.

Built in 1953, the 378,000 square foot hospital building at 100 Gross Crescent Circle in Fort Oglethorpe and its 30 acre campus owned by Enots, LLC is valued at $9.7 million.

The donation to the EDA will allow the community to maintain control of future development on the campus while CHI Memorial Hospital Georgia continues to operate from its facilities in the main building.

We are excited to begin the process of including community input with the goal of having a master plan for the site completed by mid to late 2022, said Catoosa County EDA Director Keith Barclift. Even if the EDA decides not to redevelop the property, having community ownership allows us to work with a redevelopment partner whose vision aligns with that of the community.

The hospital has been a cornerstone of our community for generations,  said Catoosa County Board of Commissioners Chairman Steven Henry. With this agreement, the hospital serves a new purpose to enhance economic development and further strengthen community relationships.

As CHI Memorial Hospital Georgia completes the process of obtaining a certificate of need from the Georgia Department of Community Health for its planned new hospital, Catoosa Countys Board of Commissioners and Economic Development Authority will continue their working relationship with CHI Memorial to ensure their health care operations are maintained until the new hospital is completed.
As soon as Gino arrived in Panama on the Dec 19 episode of 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days Season 5, the baby talk began. Many fans got secondhand embarrassment listening to these two lovers to talk to each other like babies.

Gino and Jasmine, 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days Season 5 | TLC

Gino comes to Panama to meet Jasmine for the first time

On the second episode of Before the 90 Days Season 5, 52-year-old Gino is flying to Panama City, Panama, to visit his 34-year-old girlfriend, Jasmine for the first time. Gino left Jasmine a voice message while he was on his flight. He says, Whos my little baby? Whos my pretty bonita Latina, hot Latina.

Jasmine explained, We have what we call baby talk, and I love it. After arriving at the airport, Gino and Jasmine began their signature baby talk. Gino tells Jasmine, Give me the baby talk. And Jasmine says, Whos my little baby? Whos my gringo bonito?

90 Day Fiance fans get secondhand embarrassment hearing Gino and Jasmines babytalk

90 Day Fiance fans thought the baby talk was a bit much. One fan wrote a Reddit post, When Gino and Jasmine do their baby talk, it makes you feel.? Fans commented, It makes me feel like one or both of them have major daddy issues.

Another fan wrote, Uncomfortable. Secondhand embarrassment. His voicemail was the worst. And another Redditor commented that Gino and Jasmines baby talk makes them feel creeped out!

Whats next for the 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days couple?

So far this season, Gino has expressed what he wants out of this relationship with Jasmine. During his two-week trip to Panama, Gino hopes to propose to Jasmine and hopes to get her pregnant. While he wants to start a family immediately, Jasmine, a single mother to two young boys, is a little more hesitant.

Gino is so eager for children that he even brought along pregnancy tests for Jasmine to check to see if shes pregnant by the end of the trip. However, Jasmine hasnt told him that shes currently on birth control pills.

For the preview for 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days Season 5, it appears that there will be a lot more to worry about than baby talk. It seems things take a turn for the worst. Jasmine confronts Gino, One of your exes sent me a message. She asks him, Did you send her naked pictures of me? In the preview, Jasmine then leaves the table sobbing. It appears the relationship is over. Gino tells the cameras, I really dont know where we go from here.

90 Day Fiance fans will have to continue watching to see if their relationship will recover from Gino making a terrible choice and disrespecting Jasmine. It appears baby talk could be the least of this couples worries. 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days airs Sundays on TLC and discovery+.

RELATED: 90 Day Fiance: Jasmine Had Lip Injections To Fulfill Ginos Fantasy
Jessica Albert quit Below Deck after admitting that she was too exhausted to handle the job  but avoided saying farewell to nearly everyone on the crew.

After being placed on service for the charter, she constantly felt as though she couldnt keep up with the demands placed on her.

She could also tell chief stew Heather Chase and second stew Fraser Olender were frustrated with her. Albert dropped the news on Chase first thing in the morning. I really, really whole-heartedly wanted to do this, she admits during a one-on-one chat with Chase. But my body is just shutting down.

And while Chase isnt the first stew to quit, she may be the first to leave without saying anything to her crew  or Captain Lee Rosbach.

Why did Jessica Albert quit Below Deck?

Albert adds, I could not anticipate how taxing this would be on my system. And my body is just not letting me do it. Im really sorry. I hate to put you guys in a bad place. I have to go.

Jessica Albert and Captain Lee Rosbach from Below Deck Season 9 cast photo |Laurent Bassett/Bravo

Obviously I wanted to fulfill my end of the bargain, she says in a confessional. And admits, Im leaving them pretty high and dry. I get it. But at the end of the day, I come first.

Chase quietly sat by nodding her head. Alright, she replies. You have one hour to pack.

Heather Chase breaks the news to Fraser Olender they are going to be down a person

Albert rushes back to her cabin and says nothing to anyone, passing chef Rachel Hargrove in the galley kitchen. Meanwhile, Chase returns to Olender muttering b**** under her breath. Bravo Jess, Chase says sarcastically clapping her hands in a confessional. Leaving us three hours before a charter when I could have called in someone yesterday, Im f****** pissed!

Chase calls Rosbach on the radio to alert him they are down a stew. But before she talks to Rosbach, she breaks the news to Olender that they are going to have a rough charter ahead.

RELATED: Below Decks Wes ODell Laughs About Seeing Jake Foulger Naked  Which Was Pretty Often (Exclusive)

Jess just pulled me aside and said Im gonna leave, she tells him. Olender is heard sighing in the background. Am I shocked? No, Chase continues.

Olender says he was shocked. As much as previously I was for getting rid of her. Right now Im feeling the reality of the situation. We have a full charter arriving. And we have two stews to do the role of three. Were not in a good place. This is really worrying.

Captain Lee said this may be a first for him on Below Deck

Albert took Chases comment about needing to leave in one hour very seriously. She packed up quickly and runs into Olender on her way out. They have a sweet embrace and he helps her carry her luggage up the stairs. Im already putting these people in a predicament by leaving, Albert says in a confessional. Theres only a few hours before theyre picking up another charter. So I dont want to make this any bigger than it needs to be. I just kinda wanna get my stuff, get out, and let these people go about their day.

Albert is seen telling Chase she is sorry as she walks by her but no goodbyes were exchanged.

RELATED: Below Deck: Wes Teases Romance With Jessica, Reveals Who He Got Close to From the Crew (Exclusive)

Chase breaks the news to Rosbach. Shes already walked her sweet a** off the yacht, she says to him. She didnt even give me 10 seconds. Rosbach takes the news pretty calmly.

I dont think Ive ever had a crew member leave without saying something, he says in a confessional. Like bye, f*** you, go to hell? I did expect more out of Jess than just this silent departure. This is as f***** up as a Georgia road blizzard.

Also, shocked Albert left without saying anything? Wes ODell had some romantic chemistry with Albert and seemed pretty disappointed. Yeah, it sucks, ODell says in a confessional. She didnt say goodbye or anything like that. And just dipped out. I wish she would have at least waved. Acknowledged. Absolutely thought we had a connection. Still do.
Any Korean drama fan has looked up the name of South Korean actor Kim Seon-ho. Over the last couple of years, Kim has climbed the ladder of fame, starring in Start-Up and other known K-dramas. In 2021, he became a fan-favorite after playing the male lead in Netflixs Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha K-drama.

After the K-drama gained immense success, Kims hard work plummeted. An online post by his ex accused him of forcing her into an abortion and then leaving her. The actor faced cancel culture instantly. But Kim was supported by his fans and continues to rebuild his career.

Kim Seon-ho in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha K-drama | via Netflix

Kim Seon-hos ex made an anonymous post abut their past relationship

Dispatch broke the news of Kims past relationship with his ex-girlfriend. Multiple media outlets covered the story. According to Soompi, on Oct. 18, a netizen posted on a Korean online community a post titled I am disclosing actor Ks two-faced and shameless true nature. The subject, named A, stated she dated an actor before calling it off over claims that he forced her to get an abortion after becoming pregnant.

Subject A claims Kim coerced her to get the abortion based on a lie that she would be liable to pay damage fees if she had the child. She claimed Kim broke of the relationship despite having promised to get married. After the post went public, Kims agency issued an apology letter and admitted the actor in question was Kim.

According to Soompi, Dispatch later released another report of the messages between Kim and his ex. Kim later addressed the controversy and explained the abortion was a mutual decision between him and his ex. The subject named A later reported she had accepted Kims apology letter and apologized for the situation.

The South Korean actor will star in Sad Tropics movie

Ahn Bo Hyun reportedly replacing Kim Seon Ho in film '2 OClock Date', joining Girls' Generation's YoonAhttps://t.co/QbUdeEFJXF  allkpop (@allkpop) December 14, 2021

RELATED: Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha: Who Is the DOS K-Pop Idol June in Real Life

After the first report of the scandal, Kim was dropped from his movie projects and shows. The actor removed himself from the variety show 2 Days & 1 Night Season 4. After Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, there were no plans for Kim to appear in a K-drama. But, the actor was dropped from his role in the movies Dog Days and 2 OClock Date.

According to Sportskeeda, Dog Days has replaced Kim with Lee Hyun-woo. Yumis Cells star Ahn Bo-hyun will replace Kim in 2 OClock Date. Despite the controversy, fans will see Kim in the movie Sad Tropics.

According to Soompi, Kim will star in the movie alongside Go Ara, Kim Kang-woo, and Kang Tae-joo. The movie centers on a male character born to a Filipino mother and Korean father. He dreams of becoming a boxer and travels to Korea to find his father. Along the way, he meets bad people.

Fans supported Kim Seon-ho and his reinstatement in his projects

RELATED: 3 of Park Hyung-siks Most Recognized K-Dramas Besides Happiness

Cancel culture is prevalent in South Korea, whether an actor, celebrity, or K-Pop idol. The mere beginning of a rumor can be catastrophic. After Kims controversy, he was dropped by his endorsement brands and upcoming projects. After the first episode of 2 Days & 1 Night Season 4 aired with Kim edited out, fans rallied behind him.

According to Soompi, fans have uploaded petitions on KBSs viewers rights center protesting against the actors departure from the show and asking for his reinstatement.

The South China Morning Post claims the South Korean actor has done the unimaginable and survived cancel culture. Some of Kims endorsements reinstated him, he did not pay penalty fees, and his Instagram followers increased. At the 2021 Asia Artist Awards, Kim won the RET Popularity Award (Actor) and U+ Idol Live Popularity Award (Actor).
It looks like the relationships on Selling Sunset are becoming even more complicated. Chrishell Stause and Jason Oppenheim have reportedly broken up. This is what they said about possibly breaking up before the news was revealed.

Chrishell Stause and Jason Oppenheim of Selling Sunset dated

#4 show worldwide!!! Thanks so much for watching everyone!!! Woke up to the news that we are the #1 show in 19 different countries, and were the #4 show on Netflix, Worldwide which is in 192 countries!



THANK YOU FOR WATCHING! #Netflix @netflix #SellingSunset pic.twitter.com/8UeQUoKQIm  Chrishell (@Chrishell7) November 26, 2021

RELATED: Selling Sunset: Chrishell Stause Addresses a Rumor Christine Quinn Started About Her Relationship With Jason Oppenheim

Stause was previously married to This Is Us actor Justin Hartley. He surprisingly filed for a divorce, and Selling Sunset fans watched her get her heart broken.

The reality star then started dating again. But many fans couldnt predict that she would date Oppenheim. They have been working together for some time, with Stause working at his brokerage.

The couple dated two months before going public with their relationship. They revealed it on a trip with their cast members in Italy in July.

Will Chrishell Stause and Jason Oppenheim stay friends after their reported split?

Chrishell Stause and Jason Oppenheim attend Disneys Premiere of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

RELATED: Selling Sunset: Chrishell Stause Says Dating Jason Oppenheim Doesnt Benefit Her at Work

Fans are still looking forward to seeing Stause and Oppenheim as a couple on Selling Sunset. But sadly, the romance has already ended. Sources told Us Weekly the couple has called it quits.

There isnt any further news about their breakup. But Stause recently talked about their future and what would happen if they broke up.

We became best friends and no matter what happens in the future, whether thats aligned or not, I think that well always have that friendship, she told Elle. Thats what felt safe about sharing it with people, because I didnt have that fear, because this is real life.

She added, And hopefully when two adults really love and respect each other, at the end of the day, I feel like that will always be there. So thats what I am excited about, that I dont have that fear of sharing that respect that we both have, and it just kind of grew from there.

Stause recently addressed her dating timeline

What Not To Do On A Blind Date*



*as demonstrated by Chrishell's date on Selling Sunset pic.twitter.com/Y1KB2s8B6I  Netflix (@netflix) December 2, 2021

RELATED: Selling Sunset: Is Chrishell Stause Acting on the Show? She Says I Wish I Dialed It Down

Season 4 showed Stause single and buying her first home after her divorce. She was set up on one date with Robert Drenk, and fans watched the awkward meeting on a yacht.

Drenk addressed their bad date on Twitter on Dec. 14. In your defense would you say the real reason the date went sideways from the second I showed up was because your boyfriend Jason was right there? I guess hiding your man from the man that came to a blind date makes for lots of cringe, he tweeted.

Oh hi Robert! Jason was not my boyfriend here. In fact that step came much later. But if thinking that makes you feel better about your behavior, I get it, Stause replied.

Stause and Oppenheim havent given a statement about their reported break up yet.
The Tragedy of Macbeth features an absurdly talented ensemble working on a project that doesnt have much of a reason to exist. Writer/director Joel Coen splits ways with his brother, Ethan, for the first time. The Tragedy of Macbeth is led by brilliant performances from Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, yet the movie begs the question: does the world really need another take on this particular William Shakespeare tragedy?

What is The Tragedy of Macbeth?

L-R: Denzel Washington as Macbeth and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth | A24

Coens The Tragedy of Macbeth is based on Shakespeares Macbeth, which was first published in 1623. The story follows a Scottish general named Macbeth (Washington), who discovers a trio of witches (Kathryn Hunter). They inform him of his future of becoming the King of Scotland. Macbeth takes this news back to his wife, Lady Macbeth (McDormand), who encourages him to take action for the crown.

The pressure from this prophecy and Lady Macbeths words inspire Macbeth to do whatever it takes to seize the Scottish throne. However, his actions dont go unpunished. Macbeth falls into a pit of madness as he finds himself trapped in a downward spiral full of murder, deceit, and paranoia. Theres no turning back.

Joel Coen brings Shakespearean theatre to the silver screen

Coens The Tragedy of Macbeth keeps some elements of Shakespeares tragedy the same. However, some tweaks are made to make it his own. Elements of madness, power, and corruption are all still present. The trio of witches news fully realizes both Macbeths greatest dreams and nightmares.

The Tragedy of Macbeth incorporates the cost of desire in multiple facets. Macbeth finds himself at several intersections in this regard, including his rise to kinghood, his relationship with Lady Macbeth and his subjects, as well as his very mortality.

Coens biggest contribution to The Tragedy of Macbeth is the added subtext of aging. This iteration of Macbeth is largely sprung into action as a result of only having so much longer. He dreams of a better life for himself and Lady Macbeth. Their very mortality is constantly looming under the surface of every motivation. By making a slightly older Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Coen achieves an additional layer of nuance.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is yet another Shakespeare adaptation

Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth | A24

The Tragedy of Macbeth is filmed with Bruno Delbonnels gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. He has 5 Oscar nominations for other features including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Inside Llewyn Davis. The Tragedy of Macbeth is further proof that his collaboration with Coen is unstoppable. The film visually blends theatre gravitas with cinematic style.

The traditional Shakespearean speak may take some time for audiences to adjust to. However, Washington turns in one of his most brilliant performances. McDormand shows every ounce of her passion for the content through her phenomenal performance. Yet, Hunters trio of witches steals the spotlight every time shes on the screen. Shes truly haunting and immediately commands attention with a stellar screen presence.

Coens The Tragedy of Macbeth is far from the first adaptation of the famous Shakespeare tragedy. There are over 25 movie adaptations that have taken a stab at it. This is the type of A24 film that Shakespeare lovers will eat up, but its not very accessible. Its beautifully shot and wonderfully acted, yet its far from the best Macbeth film adaptation out there.

The Tragedy of Macbeth comes to theaters Dec. 25 and will stream on Apple TV+ starting Jan. 14.

RELATED: The Tragedy of Macbeth: Joel Coen Explains Why the Coen Brothers Split Ways
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The past two years have seen the acceleration of online learning among students with schools embracing a blended-learning approach to education. As parents, weve had to experience our children learning both in the classroom and virtually. Moving forward too, HBL and online learning will continue to play a major role in our kids education.





Parents like us today are faced with a unique set of challenges: "How can we find ways to support our childrens learning journey and help them stay motivated beyond the traditional classroom setting, yet while managing their physical and mental well-being?





Of course, different methods work for different families, but I think we can all agree that we can and should make technology work smarter for us and to our benefit - so that our children are equipped with digital skills to thrive in the future workplace.





And it is apt that Lenovo and KooBits have come together with the goal of making that happen.





KooBits is a pioneer in online learning, having developed their learning platform over 10 years in collaboration with educators, child-development experts and product designers. Their mission is to empower children to self-learn, self-assess and master critical knowledge with minimal adult supervision in a safe, 100% ad-free platform. Their flagship product, KooBits Math is a personalised Math e-learning platform, based on the latest MOE syllabus for Primary 1-6 children. Their offering performs well with Lenovo, which has been paving the way for healthier digital habits through their Smart Learning offering. Lenovo aims to deliver its vision of 'Smarter Technology for All' through their wide portfolio of technology products and services.





Coupled together, Lenovo's Lenovo Aware and KooBits worked together like a charm... as Ale found out.









I'm sure most parents will be familiar with KooBits, no? An online Math portal, KooBits has come a long way since it was founded in 2007. Personally, I consider KooBits to be the pioneer in online learning for Math as my two boys were first exposed to the learning portal way back in 2015 when they were still in lower primary.

I kid you not when I say that back then, both Ash and Ayd were genuinely motivated to tackle Math questions via KooBits every single night, without me having to nag! All because KooBits made it so fun for kids to complete Math assignments - and earn reward points in the process. It is a pity that six years ago, there was no technology yet that was 'smart' enough to watch over them while they are learning because erm, they did spend a little too much time for my liking in front of the screen. 





Fast foward 6 six years later, and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised that KooBits has upped the ante and totally gamified the entire learning platform AND they have partnered Lenovo Singapore to further enhance students' digital learning experience!









And what could be a better complement to an engaging and effective learning platform? A tool that helps kids build healthy digital habits, all without having a parent nag or remind them!





With the increase of HBL and online learning these days, poor eye health, bad sitting posture and general fatigue have all been associated with an overload of screen time. And that is where 'Lenovo Aware' comes in. A smart learning solution that aims to address digital challenges brought about by the increased online learning, Lenovo Aware helps to keep students focused and motivated, while engaged in online classes and improve their digital well-being,







No apps to download or no tricky installations required, Lenovo Aware comes pre-bundled with its latest generation of laptops. The software leverages on the laptop's built-in camera to detect a persons body movement and eye contact with the device. In fact, the software runs quietly in the background while Ale went about with her KooBits practice questions.









KooBits' core mission has not change all these years - which is to make learning Math fun again for kids aged 6 to 12 using a world-class methodology, animated videos and clever reward systems.









Aligned closely to MOE's Math curriculum, KooBits breaks down the usual tedious Math problem-solving homework into several bite-sized challenges and enables students to tackle Math challenges as and when they are free and willing.





Ale is already familiar with the KooBits portal as her primary school has been using it as well. So she is already well-versed in the art of trying to score more points to climb up the leaderboard on KooBits! 



So while she completes more Math questions, there has to be SOMEONE (or something) marking them, no? I think it is safe to say all parents dread marking assessment books. With KooBits, that's totally irrelevent because the portal comes with auto-marking features. Step-by-step solutions for all questions are provided using problem solving strategies, heuristics, models and diagrams.



In fact, should Ale be stuck on a question, she can get instant feedback with its video explanation. Each video breaks down concepts in a way that is easily understood by a child. And instead of revealing the answer, these videos encourage her to seek out the solution on her own. Nothing like promoting independent learning, eh?

But midway through her KooBits session, Ale got an alert on the bottom right corner of the screen.





It was a prompt from Lenovo Aware, which reminded her to maintain a good posture. Ok, considered me sold on the benefits of Lenovo Aware because instead of having me as a parent to keep nagging my kids to sit upright and/or take a break from the screen, I can outsource the 'nagging' to Lenovo Aware! This is a function that parents could only dream about before this! 



Not only does Lenovo Aware detects whether the user is sitting correctly and alerts the user when there is consistent incorrect sitting posture for a period of time, it can also detect the distance between the user's face and the PC screen to prevent the distance from being too close to affect eyesight.



Lenovo Aware also incorporates an Attention function which is mainly aimed at children to determine whether they are currently in a state of concentration. Parents can also set Break reminders so that it will automatically remind the child to take breaks according to the computer usage time settings.



So after taking a 15-min break, Ale was back at her Lenovo laptop to check out a new feature of KooBits - KooClass!



KooClass is a series of interactive, animated classes to help primary schoolers learn about real-world applications of math topics taught in school. In each lesson, kids are able to watch an educational video taught by friendly and lovable characters. After that, they are tasked to do a hands-on practice with an interactive segment in the form of questions, assignments or activities and unlock achievements after completing the lesson!

I guess for Ale, the main draw of KooClass is the chance to earn credits, or KoKo credits, in order to advance to the next class. It's like earning XP points to level up while playing an RPG game - yet another way that KooBits has gamified the Math learning process.







Speaking about levelling up, there is another new feature of KooBits that I find to be refreshing and innovative and that is Higher-Order Thinking Skills or HOTS, for short.

Positioned as the ultimate challenge for Math Mastery, HOTS presents the toughest questions available on the KooBits platform. Ok wait, before you think that HOTS is only for gifted and high-performing students, IT IS NOT.



HOTS questions require students to truly understand a concept, and not simply rely on memorisation. They train kids to apply probem-solving to everyday life, so as to better prepare them beyond the standard school maths curriculum, and empower them to interpret ideas, information, discover new solutions and improve their understanding in maths. HOTS questions require students to truly understand a concept, and not simply rely on memorisation. They train kids to apply probem-solving to everyday life, so as to better prepare them beyond the standard school maths curriculum, and empower them to interpret ideas, information, discover new solutions and improve their understanding in maths.





Oh, and did I mention that parents can also check the progress of their kids on KooBits? Oh, and did I mention that parents can also check the progress of their kids on KooBits?





With the easy download of the Parent app, I can check on the daily, weekly and monthly progress of Ale's work on KooBits, see her performance, and even set her some assignments to complete!















With so many engaging content on KooBits, it is no wonder that Ale spent a fair amount of time in front of the laptop trying to earn as many reward points as possible. Fortunately, Lenovo Aware gave me the peace of mind of knowing that her digital well-being was being taken care of.



I had the opportunity to see it in action while Ale was completing her KooBits Math work on the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i laptop and I was mightily impressed! Inevitably, her posture went from good to bad due to prolonged sitting but Lenovo Aware was always on hand to remind her to keep to a good posture and an adequate eye distance so that she didn't feel fatigued.



Better yet, it prompted her to take a break from the laptop... even though she wanted to continue to earn more points! 



Well, Lenovo Aware had the final say in the end and she (begrudgingly) closed the laptop for a well-deserved break.

With e-learning here to stay, it is fitting that KooBits and Lenovo has partnered one another with the aim of not only making learning fun but also healthy for kids by taking into account of their mental and physical wellness.

On one hand, Koobits has gamified the learning process through the use of engaging content and fun challenges while on the other hand, Lenovo has recognised the need to address the long-term effects on a child's posture, health and overall wellness due to prolonged screen time through its Lenovo Aware software.



And that to me, is the best of both worlds because seeing how hybrid and digital learning is growing more relevant, having the ideal mix of software and device is vital in ensuring that our kids remain productive and engaged.

Want the best of both worlds too? Lenovo and KooBits are currently offering a limited offer for the FIRST 100 customers - enrol your child in the 1-Year KooBits Premium subscription at $198 and get the Lenovo Tab M7 for FREE (Worth $179)!!! That's more than a 47% discount and the offer is valid until 15 January 2022. Visit HERE for more details.

For other models, visit their website for exclusive KooBits X Lenovo deals.

I can even tell if she is not getting much practice.... 
To say that the past few years have been full of trauma and difficulty is, well, an understatement.

While the world collectively endured griefs and pains of all different shapes and sizes thanks to a global pandemic, all the while individual life was just as hard. People still lost loved ones. People still faced disappointments. Life didnt turn out the way so many of us had envisioned  and that is all on top of the shifts brought on by a worldwide disruption.

As believers, we are called to be a place of comfort. Mourn with those who mourn, Romans 12:15 tells us. And yet, nothing seems harder than sitting face to face with someone who is grieving or struggling as their life unfolds in a way they never expected or imagined. Even if we have known grief ourselves, it is still difficult to know how to care for others in their heartache.



There is no better biblical example of how our words can be stinging rather than a salve than in the story of Job. After losing his children, his wealth, and his health, his friends immediately showed up and cried with him. In fact, when they initially realized the depth of Jobs pain, they actually mirrored himwailing and mourning beside their friend.Neuroscience reveals that our brains cannot handle seeing someone who is hurting and therefore, we will naturally tend and bend towards saying something that we think will offer consolation, something we believe will fix them, or balance the scales of their grief. When, all too often, the words we speak end up adding more pain, rather than subtracting it.

But then, they opened their mouths.

When they tried to explain his pain, they turned from being comforters into perpetrators of hurt.

At one point in their long-winded explanations and blame-game, Job exclaims, you are miserable comforters, all of you (Job 16:2 NIV)! How many of us can relate to that? We have been in the lowest point in our lives, only to have a well-meaning friend compound our hurt with poor reasoning, or some pithy platitude.

But, if were honest, weve all be that friend too. Its not that we intend to do harm, but intention does not always matter; the discomfort of being confronted with someone elses hurthurt, that we know we cannot take away can lead us to feeling helpless. So we fill that sense of powerlessness with empty promises.

It can be a challenge know what to say to a person in pain, but there are a few things that most of us can agree are not helpful:

At least:

While you may be trying to find a bright side, what most hurting people need, especially in those early moments of grief or pain, is to just feel the hurt. Starting a sentence with At least tends to minimize their current feelings or reality.

Everything happens for a reason:

This old adage may in fact be true, but in their hurt, people dont need a platitude to wash away their pain.

God needed an angel:

Sometimes we seek to try to explain pain with unbiblical and bad theology. God doesnt need angels. People dont become angels in death.

Time heals all wounds:

While time can bring healing, there are some wounds such as the loss of a loved one that are chronic. Healing can come, but the pain may be felt over a lifetime.

You can have another child/get another job/_________:

Like At least, this one seeks to minimize pain as quickly as possible. We must allow people mourn losses in real time.

Shouldnt you be over this by now?:

Grief has no timetable. So much of how people respond to their hurt is connected with past traumas and pains. Grief is something we must learn to carry, not get over.

You need to move on:

Moving on insinuates that certain things shouldnt hurt anymore. But there are some aches that we cannot move on from. With Gods help and with the help of safe, supportive community, we can choose to move through.

I understand what youre going through:

None of us can truly understand what another person is going through and so often, this line sends the message that we are comparing our grief to theirs.

Gods in control:

Even though it is true, discussions of Gods sovereignty may not be helpful in the raw wounds of another.

You have to be strong:

Often times by strong we mean visibly okay and we unknowingly encourage others to stuff their true feelings and grief, rather than expressing it in a healthy way.

Just dont think about it:

When another persons life has changed, it is nearly impossible (and unhelpful) to tell them to just not think about it.

The hard part, even with a list like the above, it can feel like you cant win when it comes to helping a person in pain. It can feel like saying anything will just add more hurt and so the best course of action is just to avoid the person, but that will make an isolating situation feel even more so for them.

So, what can you do for the person who is hurting? Check back tomorrow for part two of this post.

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Pastors Brian From and Aubrey Sampson host The Common Good podcast Monday through Friday from 4 to 6pm (CT) on AM1160 Hope for Your Life. Aubrey is the author of The Louder Song: Listening for Hope in the Midst of Lament and the upcoming Known: How Believing Who God Says You Are Changes Everything. Brian leads Four Corners Community Church in Darian, Illinois. They are passionate about civility, compassion, and unity in a divided world.
2021 was an exciting year for podcasting at CT. In addition to launching The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, our first longform narrative series, we continued to produce a diverse network of shows, like Quick to Listen (about to start its sixth year), Cultivated, and new shows like Adopting Hope, The Art of Pastoring, and Church Law. To wrap up the year, we asked our podcasters to share their favorite episodes of 2021.

Mike Cosper, host of Cultivated and The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill

Ill kick things off with an episode of Cultivated from all the way back in January 2020: a conversation with my friend Makoto Fujimura. We talked about Makos work as a painter who blends global and historical traditions, his sense of the world as a place of abundance, and the mysterious relationship between suffering, trauma, and renewal. It was a remarkable conversation, full of wisdom that came hard earned through Makos own experiences of death and resurrection.

Morgan Lee, cohost of Quick to Listen

Ive known about Chinas one-child policy for nearly as long as Ive known the country itself existed. The same is true for the persecution that the church faces at the hands of the government. But Id never heard much about how Christians themselves dealt with these policies. After China officially began allowing families to have three children, longtime house church pastor Raymond Yang joined Quick to Listen to share his story about the advice he heard from Christian leaders when his wife became pregnant with their second child and the cost it imposed on their family for their son to be born. Its a privilege to host a show where we hear from members of the body of Christ grappling with how to live out their faith, even when it calls for sacrifice.

Ted Olsen, cohost of Quick to Listen

My favorite Quick to Listen episodes are the ones where we start with great ingredients but have no idea what were cooking up. I knew Old Testament Wisdom for Renaming Public Schools would be good: We had a couple of hot debates, some rough thoughts about what biblical concepts might connect, and a brilliant guest. I did not expect to have this much fun talking about how much God cares about the identity of people, places, and communities. It was a very 2021 episode, but one Ill be thinking about five and ten years from now.

Heather Thompson Day, host of Viral Jesus

My favorite episode from our first season was with Karen Swallow Prior. She explains that it is not enough to just have a platform; we (content creators) have to do the work. And if we serve the work faithfully, it will create the foundation for our platform. Its a conversation I want every single one of my college students to listen to.

Sandra McCracken, host of Steadfast

If you only have a few minutes to spare, my conversation with Curt Thompson offers us a hearty, therapeutic encouragement as were all slowly recovering from these past few disorientating years. Beauty and community are true conduits of Gods hope in the here and now.

Russell Moore, host of The Russell Moore Show

My favorite episode would have to be the first, a live event with a studio audience recorded here in Nashville. My guest was my friend Beth Moore, to talk about Lessons in Leaving and Staying. Afterward, as we stood around and talked with guests and friends, I kept hearing listeners saying a similar thing about that episode: I didnt expect to laugh. And they were rightwe laughed together through the whole episode. That became sort of a metaphor for me, not just of that episode but also of the past several years: new joy on the other side of pain, new community on the other side of exile.

I realized that 2015 Russell Moore could not have hosted that episode. And 2015 Beth Moore would not have shown up with photoshopped slides of my baby pictures. Neither of us could have done that show in 2020 even. But here we were.

I suppose thats why I love that episode best. It represents what Ive learned the last half-decade or so, that there is joy in unlikely circumstances, community in unlikely places, friendship in unlikely people. And, in all of it, the same Jesus who was there at the start. I guess what I mean is that I didnt expect to laugh.

Rasool Berry, host of Where Ya From?

I really loved my conversation with Christina Edmondson. We often think we have to choose between dealing with the serious issues of injustice or embracing a life filled with humor and joy. Dr. Edmondson breaks down that false choice thoughtfully and with a lightness that reveals her fascinating insight: Laughter and trauma live in the same building. In these times, when we've had to deal with the absurdity of life, her insights are refreshing and encouraging.

Ronnie Martin, cohost of The Art of Pastoring

I really enjoyed our episode Ministry in the Face of Fear. It was such a great opportunity to discuss the commonality we share with all pastors, which is that we all struggle with trusting that God is going before us. This is probably a universal theme we can highlight from the past two years, but thankfully, God has compassion for us in our weaknesses.

Jared Wilson, cohost of The Art of Pastoring

My favorite episode of The Art of Pastoring was the engagement Ronnie Martin and I had on anxiety (Episode 1). As one who suffers under this looming shadow, in ministry and out, it was a very personal conversation for me, and I trust our transparency might encourage others as well.

Clarissa Moll, cohost of Surprised by Grief

Estimates tell us that more than 167,000 children in the US have lost a parent to COVID-19 since the pandemic began. In light of that heartbreaking statistic, I cant think of a more important episode. Whether you experienced loss in childhood, are parenting a grieving child, or interface with students regularly at church or work, Suffer the Little Children offers vital insight into childhood grief and discusses how adults can love and support children as they carry burdens beyond their years.

Joyce Koo Dalrymple and Sasha Parker, cohosts of Adopting Hope

Brian and Amy Shaw tearfully recounted their journey of adopting seven children, knowing Brians battle with brain cancer was coming to an end. Just five weeks after the episode aired, Brian, at the age of 47, went to be with his Jesus. In the midst of unexpected and painful circumstances, the Shaws chose to hope over and over again. Even in the interview, they pointed their 11 children to the reality of eternal life and Christs deep love for each of them. The cry of Brians heart was My life is yours, Lord, glorify yourself.

Oliver Hersey, cohost of Transforming Discipleship

As someone whos passionate about developing healthy communities, I found this conversation with Scot McKnight to be very informative. Hes brilliant and on point with his suggested habits for creating a good culture. Recording this episode during Lent, we also chose to offer questions that would help listeners evaluate the levels of good and evil in their own communities by looking at themselves and their communities, and seeking to tell the truth about what God reveals.

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Kevin Miller, cohost of Monday Morning Preacher

Alison Gerber draws on her background as a screenwriter to help us bring biblical scenes to life. This episode has changed my preaching more than any other from 2021.

Steve Carter, host of Craft and Character

Steve shared about what leadership anxiety is, how easy it is for pastors to feel this daily, and gave some deeply practical insight on what to do about it. One of my favorite moments from the podcast was when Cuss unpacked when a congregant sent him a simple text about going for a walk and how that simple text request brought on all these internal stories that were grounded in anxiety. He walks through this and shares a simple practice to manage your leadership anxiety.

Erika Cole, host of Church Law

This first season of the Church Law podcast has been so well received by you, our listeners! You have told us that the podcast is a much-needed addition to the podcast world and that the information shared is timely and relevant  [for addressing] church and ministry issues.

While Ive enjoyed sharing each episode, Episode 8 gave voice to a critical issue. According to research, two-thirds of churches do not have a written succession plan, and with the shifts in church dynamics (exacerbated by COVID-19), many pastors and church leaders are committing to planning for the longevity of their church.

Check out the rest of our 2021 year-end lists here.
Join us for Christmas Eve! read the homepage for the District Church in Washington, DC, as the congregation planned to gather for the holiday for the first time since 2019.

The District Church, a multiethnic, nondenominational church in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, had scheduled three in-person services for Friday. But last Sunday, lead pastor Aaron Graham announced that due to the spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19, Christmas Eve would be filmed and shared online instead.

We had not planned this, but we just didnt really know who was going to be in town [Christmas] week, and we just had a lot of people gone, said Graham. The District Church had already made plans to briefly go virtual online for the two Sundays following Christmas to give their 20-member staff time to unwind for the Christmas and New Year season.

With cases increasing in DCthe last two days have been higher, we just said, You know what? Let's just pivot online. We can go online and not lose momentum in the church overall. The pandemic taught us that.

Fellow church leaders, especially in major cities where coronavirus cases are taking off, have made similar announcements, while others are weighing the risks as public health officials project record-high cases levels coinciding with holiday travel and gatherings.

This isnt the scenario pastors expected. Months ago, nearly all US churches had finally returned to in-person worship, and countries had lifted church lockdowns. Even as Advent began just four weeks back, the rapid availability of COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shots made it seem like this Christmas would be different than last year and churches would be able to celebrate together in person. But then came omicron.

The variant took off earlier in the United Kingdom, with record case loads reported last week. Days ago, Christmas gatherings at two of Londons biggest evangelical churches were rescheduled. Holy Trinity Brompton Church (HTB) and Hillsong Church London postponed their popular carol services. HTB will not be holding in-person or online services for the rest of the year.

Hillsong issued a statement saying that several church staff and volunteers had already tested positive.

The steps we are taking are to help keep our staff, volunteers, you and your families safe, read the statement. We want to ensure the health and safety of everyone involved is our main priority so people can enjoy Christmas together with friends and family.

In most churches, Christmas is one of the best-attended celebrations of the year. Plus, annual festivities like carol services, dinners, pageants, and other celebrations draw big crowds.

The cancellations prompted by omicron take on a weightier significance than missing one special service. Theyre an indicator thatdespite the hopes and prayers and precautions of the past yearthe pandemic continues to take its toll.

As a pastor, Im actually becoming more concerned with the spiritual/mental health and social isolation risk that Im seeing, said Graham at the District Church.

There are a lot of other pandemics that are also happening right now. While we, as DC-educated people, value our physical health, we can sometimes be less aware of what this prolonged pandemic is doing to our spiritual life, our intimacy with God, our relationships with other people in community, and our mental health.

His church, which averaged 800 in weekly attendance prior to the pandemic, has seen in-person attendance cut in half since reopening last July, while the rest of the congregation still attends virtually. The church still plans to return to an in-person format in January.

In New York, where record-high infections have led some to call off Broadway shows and temporarily close restaurants, churches have to weigh whether in-person services can continue safely as omicron takes over as the dominant variant.

The New York Times reported that St. John the Divine, the Episcopal Cathedral in Manhattan, was the first major house of worship in New York to cancel in-person services before Christmas, calling off holiday services, regular weekend services, and special concerts until further notice.

Most churches in Manhattan had already planned to celebrate Christmas at December 19 services, since a significant portion of their flocks would be leaving New York for the holiday itself, according to Drew Hyun, pastor of Hope Church Midtown. Because of the concern surrounding the omicron cases, many congregations went virtual that week.

Leaders at Hope Midtownwhich saw its attendance drop by half, down to around 150, during the pandemicdecided on Saturday night to go online for December 19. The church still plans to hold an in-person and digital Christmas Eve service in conjunction with another partnering church, contingent on new information and data coming in.

For Hyun and Hope Midtown, the pandemic has made them more agile in preparing for the unexpected.

Were more obviously ready for some of these transitions than ever, Hyun said. We know that, just as we got through it last year, that will get through it this year. In many ways, thats what the Christmas story is about, like God working in against-all-odds kinds of circumstances.

Even with rates rising, many churches are keeping in-person services but reiterating the need to take precautions and reminding people to stay home if theyre sick or have been in contact with a sick person.

As for Graham, despite the challenges caused by the omicron variant, he remains hopeful for the upcoming new year in 2022.

I believe that there are times that we go through, like moments found throughout Scripture, for instance, that refine us and prepare us for a move of God, said Graham. And I really believe that we're on the cusp of a spiritual awakeningthat the church is, in some ways, getting smaller so that we can figure out whos radically committed to being a disciple of Jesus. And I think what comes out of that is going to be absolutely beautiful.
Missionaries staged daring escape from kidnappers in Haiti, CAM reveals

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The final 12 of the 17 Christian Aid Ministries missionaries who were kidnapped in Haiti on Oct. 16 executed a daring escape plan after they prayed, allowing them to gain freedom last Wednesday, the international charity has revealed.

Over the time of their captivity, God gave various hostages a desire to attempt an escape, but it took them a while to all agree on when or how this should take place. To attempt such a thing would be dangerous! They sought God in prayer over and over again, seeking direction from Him, CAM spokesman Weston Showalter revealed in a statement shared at a press conference Monday.

The group, he explained, included a married couple, a 10-month-old baby, a 3-year-old child, a 14-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy, four single men, and two single women.

It took time and Gods work, but after much discussion and prayer, they became solidly united and decided God was leading them this way. The hostages shared that this eventual sense of unity was in itself a great miracle, he said. On several occasions, they planned to escape, but they had decided if specific things didnt happen, they would accept that as Gods direction to wait.

Twice when they planned to escape, God gave clear signs that this was not the right time. On both occasions, on the very minute they had discussed, the exact thing took place they had requested as a sign. God was at work, but the timing was not right, Showalter added.

The group kept strategizing and praying until they miraculously united and agreed that they would make their great escape from a barricaded house where they were being held on Dec. 15.

During the night, as God directed, they prepared, put on their shoes, and packed pouches of water in their clothes for the journey. They stacked their mattresses in a corner and prepared to leave, Showalter said. When they sensed the timing was right, they found a way to open the door that was closed and blocked, filed silently to the path they had chosen to follow, and quickly left the place they were held, despite the fact that numerous guards were close by.

Once they were away from the hostage camp, the missionaries moved toward a mountain feature identified as a landmark and journeyed northwest under starlight, according to CAM.

With Gods help, protection, and leading, they quickly made their way through the night. They walked for possibly as much as ten miles, traveling through woods and thickets, working through thorns and briars. One of the hostages said, Two hours [of the walk] were through fierce brambles. We were in gang territory the whole hike, Showalter noted. The moon provided light for their path. During times they werent sure which way to go, they stopped and prayed, asking God to show them.

The group eventually found someone who helped them make a phone call for help.

Later that day, all of them flew on a coast guard flight to Florida, Showalter said. Prior to this final deliverance, we praise God for how He made a way for the other hostages to be released. All of these steps were obviously leading up to the end of this two-month journey of difficulty. No doubt your prayers to Almighty God played a part in all the hostages now being reunited with their loved ones.

The international charity first announced the final 12 missionaries were free 11 days after the release of three others on Dec. 5 by the 400 Mawozo gang. Some two weeks prior to that, the gang released two missionaries described as sick adults.

In discussing best practices learned from the kidnapping of the missionaries, which included 16 Americans and one Canadian, David Troyer, general director of the Ohio-based ministry, acknowledged that while all the missionaries were aware of the dangers of working in Haiti, and tried to take proper security precautions, they intend to improve their security protocols.

We appreciate the desire of our staff to minister, even in dangerous places. However, this event has given us a heightened awareness of the need to strengthen our safety protocols and better instruct our people about the dangers involved, Troyer explained in a statement.
NY Gov. Hochul tells churchgoers to get vaccinated, 'spread the love of Christ' this Christmas

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The governor of New York encouraged a Baptist congregation to spread love and spread friendship during the Christmas season rather than the coronavirus as she pleaded with churchgoers to get vaccinated.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, delivered a video message to Bethany Baptist Church in Brooklyn on Sunday. She touched on various issues, including gun violence, education and COVID-19 vaccination. Hochuls speech took place as concerns about the omicron variant of the coronavirus have led several colleges and school districts to suspend in-person learning.

So during this holiday season, I have one request. We dont want to spread COVID. We will spread love and we will spread friendship and spread the love of Christ during this holiday season, stated the 63-year-old politician.

Remember why we are together. It was the birth of Christ that we honor and we celebrate. And that is the spirit that fills all of us during Christmas. And lets not lose sight of that. We all have each other and were going to continue to fight for each other, protect each other because thats what Christ would want us to do.

Hochul spoke about her upbringing in the 1960s, describing herself as a member of a social justice Catholic family where we didnt just listen to the teachings of Christ on weekends, we also put ... those words into action.

My parents helped start a neighborhood center to help people who had so many needs. And as a child, I went and saw this in person and realized all of us are called to serve, she continued.

Describing herself as hard-wired since the very beginning to serve Godspeople, she cited her ascendancy to the governorship as the latest example of how she had been pulled to public service.

That sense of faith has guided me on the right path every single day, she maintained. As I asked God for ... his prayers, and I ask all of you for your prayers to continue to lift me up.

Hochul spent most of her remarks focusing on the efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

As she wore a necklace emblazoned with the word vaxxed, the governor called on worshipers to take advantage of the available defenses to fight against this omicron.

Get our grandkids vaccinated. I dont want anybody else to miss a single day of school, she added.

We have to rebuild them. We have to get them back in a classroom, get them in that nurturing environment, she added.

The governors video appearance at Bethany Baptist Church was not her first attempt to encourage the faithful to take the coronavirus vaccine.

In a late September speech at the Brooklyn-based Christian Cultural Center, Hochul told those gathered to be my apostles and encouraged them to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Jesus taught us to love one another and how do you show that love but to care about each other enough to say, Please get the vaccine because I love you and I want you to live, Hochul stated at the time.

I want our kids to be safe when theyre in schools. I want to be safe when you go to a doctorsoffice or to a hospital and are treated by somebody. You dont want to get the virus from them.

In August, then-Lt. Gov. Hochul became the first female governor of New York when her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, resigned after a state attorney general investigation concluded that he had sexually harassed several women.
Trump says Evangelicals 'love Israel more than Jews' in America, accused of antisemitism

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Former President Donald Trump has been accused of authoring an antisemitic trope when he recently claimed that Evangelical Christians in the United States love Israel more than Jewish people in the U.S.

In an interview with Tel Aviv-based Israeli journalist Barak Ravid for a new book on how the U.S.-led Abraham Accords are changing the political dynamics of the Middle East, Trump recounted his relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and offered his thoughts on the state of U.S.-Israeli relations.

Ravids book, which was just released and is available only in Israel, is titled Trumps Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East.

In comments that some in the mass media saw as jaw-dropping, Trump also remarked in his 90-minute interview about which religious groups in the U.S. love Israel.

The comments were first heard on Yonit Levis podcast Unholy. Levi is a journalist with Israels Channel 12, who together with a Guardian journalist, played audio sound bites from Ravid.

There are people in this country that are Jewish [yet] no longer love Israel, Trump said.

Ill tell you, the Evangelical Christians love Israel more than Jews in this country.

It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress, he continued. And today, I think its the exact opposite. And I think Obama and Biden did that. Yet in the election, they still get a lot of votes from Jewish people, which tells you that the Jewish people ... in the United States either dont like Israel or dont care about Israel.

New quotes from Trump to @BarakRavid: Most US Jews don't love Israel. Exclusive for Unholy podcast

@Freedlandpic.twitter.com/Hv4joYkbCN  Yonit Levi (@LeviYonit) December 17, 2021

He expressly referred to The New York Times, claiming that the national newspaper hates Israel and that the Sulzberger family that runs The New York Times is Jewish.

Major Jewish groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, issued statements in response, saying that Trumps remarks were outrageous and furthered antisemitic stereotypes.

His past support for Israel doesnt give him license to traffic in radioactive anti-Semitic tropes  or peddle unfounded conclusions about the unbreakable ties that bind American Jews to Israel. Enough! the AJC said in a Friday tweet.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told CNN in an interview Friday that Trumps comment plays into this trope about Jews controlling media.

Antisemitism is a conspiracy theory, he said. It adapts and it morphs and it shapes to the times and the particular pathologies of the person pushing out the prejudice. That is what we have here.

Ravid, however, said on the Unholy podcast that he does not consider the 45th president antisemitic, noting that Trump's son-in-law is Jewish, his daughter converted to Judaism, he has Jewish grandchildren and has several Jewish advisors.

Conservative Jews were not surprised by Trumps remarks.

In a retweet of Levi, Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer clarified: The actual quote is, either dont like Israel or dont care about Israel. Hammer added: And sadly, hes right.

Echoing Ravid, Josh Mandel, a Jewish man and former state treasurer of Ohio running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, tweeted: Unlike most liberal Jews, President Trump actually has Jewish grandkids.

Trump was the best President for Israel and the Jewish people. Period, Mandel argued.

During the interviews Ravid conducted in April, which totaled 90 minutes, Trump reportedly revealed that he hadnt spoken to Netanyahu since the 2020 elections and felt blindsided when Netanyahu announced at the White House in January 2020 that Israel intended to apply Israeli sovereignty to approximately 30% of the West Bank. The West Bank is often referred to as either disputed territories or occupied territories, depending on ones political perspective.

The author said that then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman did not tell Trump of Netanyahus plan and that Trump later said to his advisors in a private meeting, What the Hell was that?

Friedman has claimed that Ravids version of this is false," according to AllIsrael.com.

Ravid also reported that during the winter of 2020, Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and one of the leading figures working on the peace deal, once became so angry with Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer that he threw Dermer out of his office.

Ravids account also notes that Trump was furious with Netanyahu for publicly congratulating Biden when the 2020 presidential election results were declared, going so far as to drop the F-bomb and accuse the former Israeli prime minister of being disloyal.

Another aspect of the tension between Trump and Netanyahu, as described by Ravid in Trumps Peace, is one day before the historic peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates was announced in August 2020. Netanyahu reportedly tried to leave the agreement, afraid it could damage his re-election campaign.

Earlier this year, Netanyahu was ultimately ousted and replaced by his former ally Naftali Bennett, who formed a coalition with left-wing and secular Israeli political parties. Yair Lapid, the leader of one of those parties, formed a rotation government with Bennett and is the alternate prime minister.
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The New York Times warns of rising hospitalizations from the delta variant, and The Atlantic opines that the omicron variants emergence augurs the pandemic of the vaccinated.

Within hours of that variants discovery, President Joe Biden banned travel from several South African nations, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a disaster emergency. She later revived a statewide mask mandate, as did the California governor.

New York Citys outgoing mayor upped the ante with mandated vaccinations for employees of private companies and barred unvaccinated children from restaurants and theaters.

Before succumbing to a repeat of the panic of last years holiday season  a time before vaccines, unlike today, when nearly 203 million Americans, or more than 61% of the population, are fully vaccinated  lets try to sort out what we know and dont know about the rise in COVID-19 cases, the emergence of a new variant, the effectiveness of vaccines, and the prospect for new treatments.

COVID-19 cases are rising again. This year began with the hope that vaccines would end the pandemic; 2021 concludes with another surge in infections. While scientists have not declared COVID-19 endemic  a disease that, like the flu, will always be out there  it will still be with us in 2022 and perhaps beyond. That would mean adjusting our expectations from eradicating COVID-19 to coexisting with it.

COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths are also rising, but hospital capacity remains robust. Hospitalizations increased by 50% between Nov. 6 and Dec. 9, from nearly 40,000 to nearly 60,000. That number, though concerning, must be placed in context. As of Dec. 11, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that just 79% of hospital beds were filled, and COVID-19 patients occupied only 9% of them. Intensive care unit occupancy rates also were at 79%, with 19% of the beds filled by COVID-19 patients. ICU capacity is still solid, even in states tested by surges in COVID-19 hospitalizations. Michigan ICUs were operating at 88% capacity (39% with COVID-19); Maine at 68% capacity (38% with COVID-19); and Missouri at 89% capacity (27% with COVID-19). Spikes in cases can create episodic crises for hospitals confronting twin challenges of supply (fewer workers) and demand (more patients). But the U.S. is not facing a widespread hospital crisis.

Vaccines may be less effective against COVID-19 infection and transmission than initially advertised. In July 2020, FDA official Dr. Peter Marks said that if 70% of the population were vaccinated against COVID-19, that would help wipe that infectious disease out. With cases still rising in the U.K., which is fast approaching the 70% threshold, public health officials rarely talk about wiping out SARS-CoV-2. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges that vaccinated people can contract and transmit the disease, although their risk of infection with the delta variant is lower than for the unvaccinated.

Vaccines significantly reduce the risk of COVID-related hospitalization and death. If vaccinated people still can be infected and spread disease, why get jabbed? Because scientists continue to believe that vaccines greatly reduce the risk of severe illness and death. Theres great value in a product that makes it less likely that COVID-19 will land you in a hospital bed, on a ventilator, or in a morgue.

The Food and Drug Administration may soon authorize medications that reduce the risk of COVID-related deaths. Last December, the FDA authorized two vaccines against the virus that causes COVID-19. This December, it may clear two new COVID-19 treatments. An interim analysis found that Pfizers oral COVID-19 medicine (paxlovid) reduced hospitalizations and deaths by 89%. Merck reported that its oral antiviral (molnupiravir) reduced COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths by 30%. An FDA advisory panel recommended authorization of Mercks medicine, and Pfizer has asked the FDA to review its product. If soon after being infected, patients can take pills that fend off severe illnesses, COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths could plummet in 2022, even if infections rise.

Scientists dont know much yet about the omicron variant. The South African government reported it on Nov. 24. Since then, scientists have produced some very preliminary information about the variant, leaving three questions unanswered:

1. Is omicron more contagious than previous variants?

New COVID-19 cases in South Africa, where omicron likely accounts for most new infections, rose from fewer than 300 per day in mid-November to more than 19,000 on Dec. 12.

Scientists report that two vaccinated people quarantining in separate hotel rooms in Hong Kong both tested positive for the omicron strain, although they had no contact with one another, suggesting that even quarantine may not prevent its spread. This doesnt prove that omicron is more contagious than previous variants or that it will supplant delta as the dominant strain, but it provides plausible evidence that it might.

2. Is omicron as lethal as previous variants?



The preliminary information on severe illness is more heartening. One study found that most patients in a South African hospital diagnosed with the omicron strain of the pathogen were not oxygen-dependent. This is the opposite of the pattern the hospital observed during previous COVID-19 outbreaks. Hospitalizations in South Africa remain very low despite a surge in COVID-19 infections.

There were no deaths and just one hospitalization among the first 43 U.S. cases reported to the CDC. That patient, who was vaccinated, was released after two days. Although thats not nearly enough evidence to conclude that the omicron variant is less likely than earlier strains to cause severe sickness, the early data suggest it might infect many people, but produce milder illnesses.

3. Do natural immunity and vaccines protect against infection with the omicron variant?

Several early studies suggest they may not.

A study out of South Africa examined reinfection rates among 2.8 million patients who had recovered from COVID-19 throughout the pandemic. While reinfection rates were low for the beta and delta variants, the study found that the omicron variant had substantial ability to evade immunity from prior infection.

A study involving laboratory samples from 12 patients who had received the Pfizer vaccine found that the omicron variant has considerable escape from vaccine-elicited immunity.

An unpublished study out of Israel found that a full course of the Pfizer vaccine did not protect against omicron, but that a third dose provides some protection, albeit four times less than against delta. The CDC study of the first 43 U.S. cases found that 34 were fully vaccinated, 14 of whom had received boosters.

While vaccines may be less effective against infection with omicron than with previous strains, theres evidence that they do protect against severe illness. Discovery Health, a firm that helps administer South Africas health system, found that the Pfizer vaccine reduced hospitalizations by 70% among those infected by the omicron variant.

These results are still preliminary and hardly definitive, but they suggest that although omicron is more likely than previous strains to infect vaccinated and previously infected people, vaccines still greatly reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.

People respond differently to uncertainty and risk. For some government officials, rising cases and the specter of a new variant prompts a return to familiar restrictions and mandates.

The alternative to the heavy hand of government? Candor, honesty and trust. Provide Americans with truthful information, acknowledge that much remains unknown and remind them that the disease continues to pose grave risks to the elderly and those with certain underlying medical conditions.

Government officials should note that vaccines provide the best protection against the worst outcomes. They should equip individual Americans to learn their COVID-19 status by making rapid, self-test kits ubiquitous and affordable. And, pending FDA authorization, they should enable widespread production and distribution of medicines to treat COVID-19 patients.

In short, communicate clearly and honestly, treat people as adults, and facilitate informed decision-making.

This approach is less dramatic than carding five-year-olds outside restaurants, but it is evidence-based, reasonable and consistent with democratic values.

Originally published at The Daily Signal.
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One Christmas, just a few years after my graduation from Wellesley College, I traveled home to Virginia to be with my family for the holidays. My brother, Tim, who had recently returned from studying at LAbri, a Christian community in the Swiss Alps, was there too.

Tim had been struggling for years to find his way, having dropped out of three universities, even though his grades were excellent. The Tim I encountered that Christmas, however, was remarkably changed. I was amazed to find him to be warm, loving, and much to my surprise, very concerned about my spiritual well-being. He was, simply, a new person.

Tim had become a Christian.

I wasn't a Christian, and I had given up on my search for truth after majoring in philosophy in college  looking for answers but finding none. Tim gave me a copy of Francis Schaeffers Escape from Reason and asked me to read it. I found it so fascinating that I read through it in one sitting! In this small book, I was astonished to find answers to big questions that Id long ago dismissed as unanswerable. As a result of Tims loving concern and Schaeffers brilliant book, I decided to reopen my quest for truth.

Eventually, I wrote to LAbri, where Tim had become a Christian, and asked if I could become a student there. After sending the letter, I got back into my routine and forgot about the request. Then, much to my surprise, I received a letter from LAbri notifying me that I had been accepted to study there for three months. I wasnt so sure that this was a good idea. I had to decide if I really wanted to leave my job and my familiar lifestyle in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Instinctively, I knew that if I left, I would never return to my current way of life.

It was a struggle, but eventually, I made the life-changing decision to go to LAbri. I was hoping that my studies there would help me find a solid foundation to build my life on. The stakes were high: I was searching for absolute, unchanging truth!

When I arrived in Switzerland a few months later, Tim and his newlywed Swiss wife were living in Lausanne. I stayed with them for a few days while I recovered from jetlag. Then, on a gloriously snowy Sunday morning, they drove me to nearby Huemoz, a lovely Alpine village where the main branch of LAbri is located. That night, while trying to sleep on a mattress in the middle of the floor of an overcrowded bedroom, I began to question my decision to leave everything behind. Thankfully, I was soon sent to French LAbri in Thollon, a tiny village in the French Alps. There were only about fifteen students at this branch, and I was grateful to have my own bed  even though it was the creaky top bunk of an ancient metal bed.

I spent my mornings at a desk in the audiocassette library, listening to tapes of Schaeffer and other brilliant Christian teachers. Increasingly, I became convinced that Christianity was real and true. I was also helped by my conversations with a gifted Christian counselor. I remember my first meeting with her quite clearly. I went into the room where she was waiting, and she told me to close the door. Before I even had time to sit down, she asked me: Are you a Christian?

Im not sure, I answered.

I told her I wanted to be a Christian and I was convinced Christianity was true, but I didnt really understand why I needed Jesus. At the time, I thought that knowing God might be enough. Then, she asked me a question that cut through to the heart of the matter.

What can you not forgive yourself for?

Suddenly, I was brought face-to-face with my sinfulness; immediately, I understood my need for Jesus  to save me from my many sins.

It was nighttime, and after I left this meeting, I went walking alone in the dark. I needed time to ponder what had happened and to absorb the life-saving truth of the Gospel. For a few days, I went through a tumultuous time  engaged in a spiritual battle. Eventually, however, I broke free from the powers of darkness that were trying to keep me captive. I was able to ask Jesus to forgive all my sins; I trusted Him as my Savior.

One night, shortly after my conversion, I decided to go walking alone in the pristine snowy mountains. I went into a deeply wooded area, awed by the cold, moonlit beauty. The air was crisp and dry, piercing to inhale. After a while, I came into an open area and stopped walking. Time seemed to stand still as I gazed around me in wonder. Suddenly I became aware of a loving Presence with me, and I found myself whispering, Sweet Jesus. This experience of Jesus Presence was far more personal than just finding answers to my intellectual search for truth.

The moment I trusted God as my Savior, He forgave all my sins  past, present, and future. This glorious gift of grace, however, not only ensured that my ultimate destination is Heaven, it also enabled me to have a relationship with the Creator of the universe!

On that first Christmas, so long ago, God gave us the gift of Himself. The first people to hear the news of Gods great gift were a group of lowly peasants, shepherds who were watching over their sheep. Suddenly, an angel appeared before them with a proclamation that would change the world forever.

Do not be afraid; the angel said, for see  I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger (Luke 2:10-12.)

As I ponder the angels wonderous proclamation to the shepherds, I rejoice in my beloved Savior.

Jesus was, and remains, the greatest gift of all.
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America has lost the great patriot, former United States senator, and presidential candidate Bob Dole. When I heard the news of his December 5 passing, I was awash in emotion and thankful the senator and I had been able to talk and pray together just a few weeks ago.

Bob Dole and I had planned to meet in person, but wanting to be cautious because of COVID-19 we talked on the phone instead. At 98, he was still lucid, good-humored, and staunchly patriotic. We shared some thoughts about current events, politics, and Kansas, of course. He never left his roots. We talked about the future. Then we prayed that God would bless, guide, and protect us and this nation we both care about so much. Bob Dole never spoke much publicly about his Christianity  his wife, Elizabeth Dole, is more vocal. But he lived out his faith and was always ready to say "Amen".

After Bob Doles passing, accolades streamed in from both sides of the political aisle and all walks of life. I had the honor of attending his memorial service in Washington, D.C. (on Friday) and the gathering for him in Topeka (on Saturday). As the military honor guard carried him out of the National Cathedral, it felt like the chapter closed on what is often called the Greatest Generation  the World War II generation that Bob Dole epitomized.

For me, Bob Doles passing was profound and personal. Not only was I elected to fill his seat in the Senate in 1996, but we became friends. This week I have found myself reflecting on his legacy and looking deeper, pondering the character of the man who loved his nation. But what made him a success? What endeared him to so many? How can we now follow in his footsteps?

I had just turned 12 when Dole was first elected to the Senate in the 1960s. At the time, I lived in Parker, Kansas, a small farming community south of Kansas City. Dole lived in Russell, some 260 miles west and across the plains. We had never met, of course. I am not sure that I even knew who he was until a few years later. Our paths first crossed in the 1970s when I was an officer with Future Farmers of America. There is a funny photo of two other young men and me posing with Senator Dole  I had a trendy three-inch afro-style haircut. Senator Dole often met with ordinary citizens like us  a practice he carried out through his entire life.

I remember Bob Dole speaking to farm audiences years ago when I was Kansas Secretary of Agriculture. He would rattle off one-liner after one-liner for an hour before spending the last five minutes of his speech promising he would work to get wheat prices higher. He knew the value of a hard days work. Bob Dole never disappointed. He loved his people and the people loved him.

After Bob Dole resigned from the Senate in 1996 to focus on his presidential campaign, I was elected to fill his seat. Years later I had the privilege of serving as governor of Kansas. We often met and talked. In many ways, he was a mentor to me and countless others.

This was a man who understood the power of relationships and nurtured them. He maintained contact with thousands of people. Good relationships. Close relationships. I once heard a minister say, The world moves at the speed of relationships. This is true. The stronger the relationships one has, the more that can be achieved. Bob Dole operated this way. Thats why he was so effective in the Senate. Thats why he was a giant of the Senate. Thats why he was the leader of the Senate for such a long period of time.

And thats why the people of Kansas loved him. He understood relationships. Because he had a genuine rapport with people, he grasped their needs. He could feel what made their hearts beat, never simply relying on something in a poll or a news article. This is a lesson we can relearn today.

When Bob Dole was a senator  and when I was a senator  it was easier to cross the aisle on issues both sides could address because relationships existed that gave space for common ground to be found. Today this happens infrequently. If better relationships were established where people respected each other, more issues could be addressed for the good of the nation.

Bob Dole lived according to the principles of his faith, too. He cared for others, particularly those in the most difficult of circumstances. He would fight for the oppressed whether they were persecuted by fascism, communism, or a power-hungry dictator.

A few years ago, I was in Kosovo. There is a statue of Bob Dole there. The Kosovars erected it because he had stood up for them when they were oppressed. He had helped them get out from underneath persecution. He also stood up for oppressed Romanian Christians in the 1980s when some churches were being bulldozed there. He was always the champion of the underdog.

Bob Dole loved freedom everywhere and he loved America. He was the personification of the World War II generation: God-fearing, selfless, determined, and ready to do whatever it took to stand up for the United States of America. Bob Dole left an incredible legacy and big shoes to fill. If we dare love freedom, build relationships, and live out our faith as he did then we can hope to have a measure of the same impact he had.

I miss Bob Dole already. As it is said, one cannot tell the height of a tree until it is on the ground. Bob Dole was a tall one: a towering American, a legendary Kansan, and the epitome of a son of the prairie.

God rest his soul.
Joe Rogan: People hate Chris Pratt because 'he just believes in Jesus'

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Chris Pratt has faced adverse treatment in Hollywood and on social media because he just believes in Jesus, according to Joe Rogan, who has the No. 1 most-listened-to podcast in the United States.

On Tuesday's episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (offensive language warning), the eponymous host lamented that people in Hollywood are terrified that if they step outside the lines, they will experience criticism and ostracization from their overwhelmingly liberal and secular colleagues.

Chris Pratt gets in trouble because hes Christian, Rogan remarked, explaining that the adverse treatment Pratt has received is unwarranted. He described the actor as the nicest ... guy Ive ever met in my life. ... He's done nothing. Hes so nice.

Hes kind of outside of the lines in terms of his ideology. Hes a Christian and pretty open about it, he added. Because of that, they attack him. Its something so simple, like, he just believes in Jesus and he  likes to be a good person.

Most recently, Pratt experienced backlash for a Nov. 2 Instagram post expressing gratitude for his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt, and illustrating how faith has played an important role in their relationship.

Guys. For real. Look how shes looking at me! I mean. Find you somebody that looks at you like that!! You know? We met in church. Shes given me an amazing life, a gorgeous healthy daughter, she chews so loudly that sometimes I put in my ear buds to drown it out, but thats love!

Pratt received criticism for the post because it didn't acknowledge his son with his ex-wife, Anna Faris, who's had health issues. In response to the pushback he received for the Instagram post, Pratt posted an Instagram story declaring that while he woke up depressed as a result of all the negative feedback he had received, I knew that if I put on my Christian music playlist, and I got out of the woods and ran that Id feel better.

Although he "just didn't want to" at first, Pratt said he did it anyways and, gosh, was I right. It felt amazing. I got out of the woods, got my blood pumping. After noting that listening to Christian music made him feel better, he proclaimed: All glory to God.

In 2019, actress Ellen Page, who now identifies as Elliot Page, claimed in a tweet that Pratts Church, the Zoe Church in Los Angeles, was infamously anti lgbtq.

Pratt denied the allegation in an Instagram story: It has recently been suggested that I belong to a church which hates a certain group of people and is infamously anti LGBTQ. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Oh. K. Um. But his church is infamously anti lgbtq so maybe address that too? https://t.co/meg8m69FeF  Elliot Page (@TheElliotPage) February 8, 2019

I go to a church that opens their doors to absolutely everyone. Despite what the Bible says about divorce, my church was there for me every stop [sic] of the way, never judging, just gracefully accompanying me on my walk. They helped me tremendously offering love and support. It is what I have seen them do for others on countless occasions, regardless of sexual orientation, race or gender, he wrote.

While Rogan noted that Hollywood has an anti-Christian bias, Pratt offered a different take in 2018, telling The Associated Press that he thinks theres this narrative that exists out there that Hollywood is anti-Christian, but its just not the case. He added that They are kind of not anti-anything.

In recent years, Pratt has discussed his faith in numerous social media posts, interviews and public appearances. As his wife gave birth to their son last year, Pratt took to Instagram to share the Bible verse Psalm 127:3-4.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are the children of ones youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate, Pratt declared.

In a 2019 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Pratt credited his faith with saving him from the lions den of fame, which he warned has the power to kill those it entraps.

As he delivered an acceptance speech at the 2018 Teen Choice Awards, Pratt thanked God before telling the audience that I always do that when Im up on a big platform in front of a bunch of young faces. I say, I love God! Thats my thing, I love Him  and you should too!
750 killed at Ethiopian Orthodox church said to contain Ark of the Covenant: report

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Around 750 people were killed in an attack on an Orthodox church, which is said to contain the Ark of the Covenant described in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, in northern Ethiopias war-torn Tigray region  home to thousands of churches and monasteries  according to reports.

Hundreds of people hiding in Maryam Tsiyon Church in Aksum amid an armed conflict were brought out and shot to death, and local residents believe the aim was to take the Ark of Covenant to Addis Ababa, the Belgium-based nonprofit European External Programme with Africa reported in this months situational report, released on Jan. 9.

The number of people killed is reported as 750, it said. The church, the most ancient and sacred of Ethiopian Christianity and also known as the Church of St. Mary of Zion, belongs to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Ive not heard more than rumours about the looting of the Arc from Maryam Tsion, but if its true that up to 750 died defending it, it is conceivable that the attackers didn't stop there, said Michael Gervers, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, according to The Telegraph.

"The government and the Eritreans want to wipe out the Tigrayan culture. They think theyre better than rest of the people in the country. The looting is about destroying and removing the cultural presence of Tigray, Gervers explained.

Former BBC World Service Africa editor and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Martin Plaut, said that those who escaped the Aksum massacre had reported that the attack began after Ethiopian federal troops and Amhara militia approached the church, the U.K.s Church Times reported.

People were worried about the safety of the Ark, and when they heard troops were approaching feared they had come to steal it. All those inside the cathedral were forced out into the square, Plaut was quoted as saying.

About 1,000 people were believed to be in the church complex at the time of the attack. The EEPA said the massacre was carried out by Ethiopian federal troops and allied Amhara militia that are fighting the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front.

The church and and the Ark have likely not been damaged, Plaut added.

The fighting began in Tigray since Nov. 4 when the regions ruling political party Tigray Peoples Liberation Front captured the Northern Command army base in the regional capital Mekelle as part of an uprising, after which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military offensive. Abiy claimed on Nov. 28 that the Ethiopian National Defense Force had regained full command of Mekelle.

However, humanitarian workers say the fighting continues.
How should parents talk to their kids about Santa Claus? Al Mohler weighs in

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr. suggested to Christian parents that they shouldn't treat Santa Claus as an imaginary figure.

In an episode of his podcast The Briefing that was posted on Friday, a listener asked Mohler about his views on how parents should talk to their children about Santa Claus.

Mohler recommended that parents do not speak of Santa Claus as an imaginary figure, but instead, when asked about him, focus on the historical figure of Saint Nicholas.

There is something you're able to say to a child which is, you know, there was an early Christian who lived long ago who was very kind to children and gave gifts, Mohler explained.

But the reality is, you don't have to say there never was a Santa Claus, you just have to say, you know, our attention at Christmas isn't toward any particular human being at all.

Mohler went on to state that Christmas is about the baby born in Bethlehem's manger and that is something that took place, not just as a story but is true.

Christians need to be generous. The reality is that Christians need to love children. And so, we don't have to go around talking about how much we don't believe in Santa Claus; we go around talking about how much we do believe in Jesus, he added.

Mohler was also asked by a different listener about whether Nativity displays violated the Second Commandment, which prohibits the creation of any graven image.

The Southern Baptist leader explained that while he was not fond of putting images of Jesus in his office or home, he did not consider the practice to be inherently wrong.

I'll simply say, I do not believe that having a Nativity scene in your home obscures the truth of Christmas, said Mohler. But it does need to be the opportunity to tell the truth about Christmas.

Recently, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Noto, which is based in Sicily, issued an apology when its bishop told a group of children that Santa Claus did not exist and that his red outfit was created primarily to help market Coca-Cola.

I express my sorrow for this declaration which has created disappointment in the little ones, and want to specify that [Bishop Antonio Staglianos] intentions were quite different, said diocesan spokesman the Rev. Alessandro Paolino in a post shared on the diocese's Facebook page.

He also said that the diocese certainly must not demolish the imagination of children, but draw good examples from it that are positive for life.

Santa Claus is an effective image to convey the importance of giving, generosity, sharing. But when this image loses its meaning, you see Santa Claus aka consumerism, the desire to own, buy, buy and buy again, then you have to revalue it by giving it a new meaning, Paolino said.
The Christian Post's top 10 news stories of 2021 (part 2)

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In this year's list of top 10 news stories, The Christian Post highlights the unrelenting persecution religious minorities have endured, including the Chinese Communist Party's genocide of its Uyghur population, the crises in Haiti, and the plight of Christians in Northern Ethiopia's Tigray region where thousands have been killed and millions displaced amid a civil war.

We also featured changes within the Southern Baptist Convention, the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan, COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and the debates swirling around public education among our top news stories of the year.

Though we prayed that COVID-19 would cease to monopolize people's lives in 2021, the U.S. experienced an increase in infections and deaths from the virus, even though a majority of Americans are now vaccinated and millions of others have natural immunity.

CP extensively covered the impact COVID-19 has had on pastors and their flock, and the ongoing debates over controversial vaccine mandates and court decisions.

In the following pages, we count down CP's top 5 news stories of 2021 that were selected by our editors. To read the latter half of CP's top 10 list, click here.
Pro-lifers rip FDA for lifting in-person dispensing requirement for abortion pills

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Pro-life groups are warning against the Food and Drug Administration for permanently eliminating the in-person dispensing requirements for the abortion pills, thereby allowing women to obtain the drugs by mail and end their pregnancy without seeing a doctor first.

On Thursday, Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, the director of the FDAs Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, sent a letter to Dr. Graham Chelius of the Society of Family Planning informing him that the agency intended to modify the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation System (REMS) program for the abortion pills, referred to in the letter as Mifepristone. The agency has determined that the Mifepristone REMS Program continues to be necessary to ensure that the benefits of the drug outweigh the costs, she wrote.

However, we have determined that it must be modified to minimize the burden on the health care delivery system of complying with the REMS and to ensure that the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks, Cavazzoni said.

The modifications to the REMS will consist of: (1) removing the requirement that mifepristone be dispensed only in certain healthcare settings, specifically clinics, medical offices and hospitals (i.e., the in-person dispensing requirement); and (2) adding a requirement that pharmacies that dispense the drug be specially certified.

In a chemical abortion, women are given two drugs: mifepristone or RU-486, and misoprostol. Mifepristone works by blocking the effects of the natural pregnancy hormone progesterone. Misoprostol induces contractions and a miscarriage.

The Society of Family Planning sent a letter to the FDA earlier this year arguing that the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pills confers no benefit in terms of safety, efficacy, or acceptability of the drug mifepristone and instead creates barriers to use that negatively impact public health and equity in access to care.

The Society of Family Plannings letter followed the FDAs May 7 announcement that it was reviewing the REMS and its April announcement that it was suspending the in-person requirements for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pro-life groups condemned the FDAs move to permanently lift the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pills, also known as a chemical abortion.

Tessa Longbons, the senior research associate at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, pushed back on the idea that the abortion pills are safe and not in need of safeguards, such as the in-person dispensing requirement: Peer-reviewed research confirms a 500% increase in the rate of chemical abortion-related emergency room visits.

The FDA claims that complications are rare, yet peer-reviewed research from the United States, Finland and Sweden confirms the abortion [pills have] a much higher complication rate than surgical abortion, she added. As a woman who has studied abortion trends on a state-by-state level and analyzed major studies on chemical abortion, I find todays FDA decision to be historically bad. The FDA is putting women and girls at considerable risk through regulatory malpractice.

Stephen Billy, Charlotte Lozier Institutes executive director, characterized the FDA's move as a Christmas gift to the abortion industry. Sue Liebel, state policy director for the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, elaborated on how the Biden administrations reckless move puts countless women and unborn children in danger in a statement.

Abortion activists longtime wish has been to turn every post office and pharmacy into an abortion center. They promote abortion drugs as easy, painless and private. Science says otherwise. Women who take chemical abortion pills are significantly more at risk of serious complications and more likely to require a visit to the emergency room, she added.

Some women even die. Already-exhausted ER doctors and nurses will be forced to clean up after an abortion industry that puts profits before safety and wont regulate itself  all to please [President Joe] Bidens radical base and pay back political allies.

In a statement, Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life, asserted that the FDAs decision today places women at risk. According to Tobias, These changes do not make this abortion process safer for women. What these changes do is make the process easier for the abortion industry.

The FDA knows the dangers of this abortion drug combination, but in the name of political expediency, has limited the safety measure requiring an in-person doctors visit, she continued. With this move today, the FDA further expands the scale of chemical warfare on the unborn, putting the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of women at risk for the sake of a powerful, political abortion industry.

Tobias characterized the experiment with mail-order abortion as a deadly experiment with womens lives. She maintained that women are at risk everywhere because abortion activists want abortions to be available at any time, anywhere, and for any reason.

Making this change permanent puts women at greater risk because they may not be adequately screened to make sure they have no disqualifying conditions like allergies or ectopic pregnancy and are not so far along that the drugs will not work or are more likely to result in life-threatening complications, warned Randall OBannon, director of education and research at National Right to Life.

OBannon expressed concern that Without that screening or monitoring, the likelihood of hemorrhage, infection, and missed ectopic pregnancy are greatly increased, and there is a greater possibility that a woman experiencing these adverse events may end up in the emergency room and could arrive too late for life-saving treatment.

The FDAs abandonment of the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pills comes as the U.S. Senate is considering Robert Califf, Bidens nominee to serve as the commissioner of the FDA. Pro-life groups have also spoken out in opposition to Califfs confirmation, citing his efforts during his previous tenure as FDA commissioner during the Obama administration to allow abortion pills to be taken as late as 10 weeks into a pregnancy.

While Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins urged senators to oppose Califf in a letter, four Republican senators have already indicated that they plan to support his confirmation. Meanwhile, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have come out against Califfs confirmation, although they cite reasons other than his actions on behalf of chemical abortions.

In a previous interview with The Christian Post, Sue Turner, director of Physicians for Life, said that when mifepristone first came out, the U.S. FDA had a protocol for it to be used through seven weeks or 49 days from conception.

Because many abortion clinics in the U.S. were ignoring the FDAs protocol and using the drug in chemical abortions up to 60 days, states began passing regulations saying they had to follow the FDAs protocol. They didnt want to have to follow the FDA protocol, so [then President] Obama made the FDA change it to the later date, the 60 days, to match up with what the abortion providers were doing.

The drug was less effective," she said, and abortionists then had to also perform a surgical abortion, which meant that women were being charged for both chemical and surgical procedures.

Describing the complications that arise from taking abortion pills [specifically misoprostol, the second pill] that induce a miscarriage, Turner added: I shudder to think what happens to her and what she goes through in that process because in about 30 minutes she starts having horrific contractions. And women can die. If the cervix doesnt open it can cause all kinds of horrible problems for her."
Fewer than half of American adults pray daily; religiously unaffiliated grows: study

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Less than half of American adults pray daily as church membership continues to decline and the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated swells, according to a study published by the Pew Research Center.

Data from the National Public Opinion Reference Survey conducted by Pew Research Center from May 29 to Aug. 25 among a nationally representative group of respondents found that 45% of U.S. adults say they pray daily compared to 58% who reported doing so in 2007 and 55% who said they prayed daily in 2014.

Some 32% said they seldom or never pray, which is close to the 29% of U.S. adults who identify as religious nones  people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular, the study says.

The nations share of religious nones is now 6% higher than it was five years ago and 10% higher than it was a decade ago, showing what appears to be a galloping trend of secularization.

Even though Christians are still the largest religious group in the U.S., they now only make up a collective 63% of the adult population. When the Pew Research Center began measuring religious identity in 2007, Christians outnumbered nones 78% to 16%.

The study noted that the decline in the number of Christians nationwide was mostly concentrated among respondents who identified as Protestant. Their numbers declined by 10% in the last decade and 4% in the last five years.

While the share of Catholics had fallen between 2007 and 2014 to 21% of the adult population, that number remains the same today.

Protestants were found to be predominantly born-again or [E]vangelical Christian, among both black and white respondents in the study. Some 58% of white Protestants identify as born-again or Evangelical, while 66% of blacks did so.

When it comes to church attendance, black Evangelical Christians were found to be the most faithful churchgoers, with 70% of them attending services monthly. Some 63% of black Protestants reported attending church religious services at least once or twice monthly. Only 56% of white Evangelical Protestants said they attended religious services at least once a month.

Among Catholics, church attendance fell even lower. Just 35% reported attending services monthly or more.

Earlier this year, political scientists David E. Campbell and Geoffrey C. Layman of the University of Notre Dame and John C. Green of the University of Akron highlighted data in their new book, Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics, showing that the marrying of religion and politics among conservatives to create the well-known and powerful religious right had led some Americans to abandon their ties to the Christian faith and join the ranks of secularists.

According to the researchers, the rising tide of secularism in the U.S. means that some voters are on opposite sides of a religious-secular fault line fueling the flames of political polarization.

[A] secular-religious divide in politics also may illuminate why, above and beyond their ideological differences, ordinary Democrats and Republicans increasingly dislike and distrust the leaders and members of the other political camp  what political scientists have labeled affective polarization,'" they wrote. "Their very different worldviews may spur Secularists and Religionists to view each other with suspicion and perhaps even hostility, thus encouraging animosity and distrust between their political teams."
Christian photographer can't decline gay weddings, federal court rules

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A federal judge has ruled that a New York-based Christian photographer must provide services for same-sex wedding celebrations despite holding religious objections to gay marriage.

Judge Frank Geraci, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, rejected a request by Emilee Carpenter of the upstate New York-based Emilee Carpenter Photography to grant a preliminary injunction against a state anti-discrimination law.

In his ruling Monday, the Obama appointee concluded that New York has a compelling interest in ensuring that individuals, without regard to sexual orientation, have equal access to publicly available goods and services, and that the Accommodation clause is narrowly tailored, as applied to Plaintiff, to serve that interest.

As a result, even if the Accommodation clause compels speech or expressive association in a manner that implicates Plaintiffs free-speech and free-association interests, the provision survives strict scrutiny, added Geraci.

New Yorks public accommodation laws are neutral. By only bringing an as-applied challenge, Plaintiff virtually concedes that the laws are facially neutral.  She raises no non-conclusory factual allegations that the laws were enacted with any kind of religious (or anti-religious) motivation.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit that has successfully argued religious liberty cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, represents Carpenter in her legal proceedings.

ADF Senior Counsel Jonathan Scruggs denounced the decision in a statement and vowed to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

The courts decision continues down a dangerous path of the government compelling artists to speak messages that violate their religious beliefs  or imposing steep fines, closing their businesses, or throwing them in jail, Scruggs maintained.

Scruggs referenced Lorie Smith, the owner of the web design company 303 Creative. Smith is suing Colorado over a law that would require her to create websites celebrating gay marriages if she chose to expand her business to offer wedding website designs despite her objections to same-sex weddings.

In July, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled against Smith, concluding that she must create websites for weddings that conflict with her religious views if she offers weddings website design services. ADF has appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Artists like Emilee and Lorie Smith in Colorado are protected under the Constitution to freely live and work according to their religious beliefs, stated Scruggs.

Emilee and Lorie happily serve all people; they just cannot promote messages which contradict their religious beliefs, including their views on marriage.

In April, Carpenter sued New York Attorney General Letitia James; Johnathan J. Smith, interim commissioner of the New York State Division of Human Rights; and Weeden Wetmore, district attorney of Chemung County.

At issue were provisions in state law that prohibit unlawful discriminatory practices ... because of sexual orientation in any place of public accommodation. Since the law defines public accommodations as retail ... establishments dealing with goods or services of any kind, Carpenter concluded that the law applies to her business.

 the Accommodations Clause forces Emilee to celebrate same-sex engagements or weddings and would require her to promote messages that violate her religious beliefs or require her to participate in religious ceremonies that violate her religious beliefs, something she cannot do, stated the lawsuit.

Likewise, the Publication Clause prohibits Emilee from asking prospective clients questions sufficient for her to learn whether they are seeking photography services celebrating same-sex engagements or weddings so that she can be honest with them about the photographs she does and does not create.

The lawsuit expressed concern that New York officials can force her business and her personallyto pay limitless damages and a $100,000 fine, require her to create artwork against her beliefs via court order, revoke her business license, and lock her up in jail for up to a year.
home World Archaeologists discover second synagogue in Mary Magdalene's Galilean hometown

Archaeologists say a second synagogue dating back to the Second Temple period has been discovered in what is believed to have been the birthplace of Mary Magdalene of the Bible and is changing our understanding of Jewish life in this period.

While excavating the Galilean town of Magdala, known today as Migdal, archaeologists say they found the remnants of a second synagogue dating back to the Second Temple period  which in history was a time that is believed to have lasted between 515 or 516 B.C. up until 70 A.D.

This is the second synagogue from the Roman period that has been uncovered in the village  and the first case of the existence of two synagogues in any locality from the Second Temple period, a period when the Temple in Jerusalem was still standing, the Israel Antiquities Authority shared on Facebook.

Prof. Adi Erlich, who heads the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, and Dina Avshalom-Gorni, who directs the excavation of the site on behalf of the University of Haifa, believe the discovery sheds light on the social and religious life of the Jews in the Galilee during this period. They contend that the finding indicates the need for a special building for studying and reading the Torah and social gatherings.

The first synagogue in Migdal was uncovered in 2009 through an excavation that found ritual baths, streets, a marketplace and industrial facilities in the ancient village.

The second synagogue was first discovered by probes conducted by Barak Tzin of the Israel Antiquities Authority and lies less than 200 meters away from the first synagogue. The IAA statement states that the discovery of the second synagogue is changing our understanding of Jewish life in this period, IAA stated.

We can imagine Mary Magdalene and her family coming to the synagogue here, along with other residents of Migdal, to participate in religious and communal events, excavation co-director Avshalom-Gorni told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The discovery was made amid a plan to build new infrastructure in the town of Migdal. But while the areas were being excavated  a typical practice in advance of construction  the second synagogue was discovered by the IAA, Y.G. Contractual and the University of Haifa.

Avshalom-Gorni told the newspaper that the first synagogue had a decorative mosaic floor and the second one had a compacted, plastered and earthen floor.

The second synagogue is said to be smaller and not as ornate as the first.

The first synagogue was in an industrial area, while the second was located in a residential street, which suggests they were built within the social fabric of the settlement, Avshalom-Gorni told The Times of Israel.

The Times of Israel reports that the second synagogue consisted of the main hall and two side rooms. A stone bench was also recovered. Archeologists found bases for two of the buildings six pillars that held up the roof. The walls of the synagogue were colorfully decorated and covered in plaster. Archeologists believe that a room at the south end of the main hall with a shelf may have stored scrolls.



Originally published in The Christian Post.
NXP Semiconductors (NXPI) closed the most recent trading day at $217.65, moving -0.48% from the previous trading session. This move was narrower than the S&P 500's daily loss of 1.14%. Elsewhere, the Dow lost 1.23%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.36%.

Coming into today, shares of the chipmaker had lost 1.15% in the past month. In that same time, the Computer and Technology sector lost 4.36%, while the S&P 500 lost 1.37%.

NXP Semiconductors will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release. The company is expected to report EPS of $3.01, up 12.31% from the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $3 billion, up 19.73% from the prior-year quarter.

NXPI's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $10.58 per share and revenue of $11.03 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +34.78% and +28.02%, respectively.

Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for NXP Semiconductors. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As such, positive estimate revisions reflect analyst optimism about the company's business and profitability.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell). It has a remarkable, outside-audited track record of success, with #1 stocks delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate remained stagnant. NXP Semiconductors is holding a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold) right now.

In terms of valuation, NXP Semiconductors is currently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 20.67. This represents a discount compared to its industry's average Forward P/E of 24.3.

We can also see that NXPI currently has a PEG ratio of 0.94. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. The Semiconductor - Analog and Mixed industry currently had an average PEG ratio of 1.57 as of yesterday's close.

The Semiconductor - Analog and Mixed industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 6, which puts it in the top 3% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

You can find more information on all of these metrics, and much more, on Zacks.com.

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According to the U.S. Energy Information Administrations (EIA) latest Drilling Productivity Report, oil output in the Permian Basin will surpass 5 million barrels per day in January. The agency forecasts that crude volumes from the region in the western part of Texas and the south-eastern part of New Mexico will go up from 4,960 thousand barrels per day (Mbbl/d) in December to 5,031 Mbbl/d next month. The projected production figure for January would be a new record for Americas biggest oil field and reflects the steady addition of rigs. As proof of improvement in activity, the rig count in the Permian Basin has risen to 288 from an all-time low of 116 in August 2020.

As far as combined U.S. oil supplies from seven major shale formations (Anadarko, Appalachia, Bakken, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Niobrara and Permian) is concerned, EIA expects it to increase from 8,342 Mbbl/d in December to 8,438 Mbbl/d in January. With crude prices hovering around the $70-barrel level, production is expected to increase in six of the seven unconventional plays, with the largest gain of 71,000 barrels per day happening in the Permian Basin.

The effects of strong oil prices can also be seen in the number of wells that are being drilled but not completed, or wells that could be turned on at short notice. The EIA said that the number of such wells declined by 226 over the past month, with 105 of those in the Permian.

Experts say that its cheaper to drill and complete oil wells in the Permian Basin as compared to most other major fields. Moreover, there are certain parts of the shale play whose well-returns are the best in the U.S. Permians attractive economics. This means that producers can make money and sustain growth there at the current price. According to estimates, the average breakeven prices in most of the Permian well locations is below $50 per barrel  the lowest in the United States.

Its not surprising that the United States top energy moguls have renewed their focus on the largest U.S. shale play. The likes of ExxonMobil XOM, Chevron CVX and ConocoPhillps COP are placing long-term bets on the Permian Basin to take full advantage of the commodity upcycle.

ExxonMobil continues to invest heavily in the low-cost play. The company recently unveiled its plans to spend between $20 billion and $25 billion each year out to 2027. Along with offshore Guyana developments, XOM will allocate the lions share of the budget toward Permian.

At the third-quarter end, ExxonMobil produced 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the Permian Basin, which comprised more than 40% of its total production in the United States. XOM has a strong presence in the prolific area, where it continues to lower its fracking & drilling costs.

Chevron, meanwhile, announced that for 2022, it intends to spend $4.5 billion on shale, with the lion's share (or $3 billion) going to the lucrative Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico alone. In fact, CVXs existing project pipeline is among the best in the industry, thanks to its premier position in the lucrative play.

Driven by robust output in the showpiece region, Chevron's U.S. volumes so far this year have increased some 10% from the year-earlier level to 1,113 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day. CVX currently holds approximately 2.2 million net acres in the Permian  primarily in the prolific Midland and Delaware basins.

Another big U.S. company ConocoPhillips' Permian footprint has expanded significantly over the past year, culminating with the recent purchase of 225,000 net acres in the core of the oilfield. The acquisition added 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of production to Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) COPs portfolio, putting it just behind ExxonMobil to become the second-largest hydrocarbon producer in the Lower 48.

You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

To further frame the Permian's importance for ConocoPhillips, COP expects a company-wide capital expenditure of $7.2 billion in 2022, which includes $700 million associated with the Permian asset acquisition.

In conclusion, crude production in the Permian Basin  the lowest-cost shale region  seems to have taken off with commodity prices stabilizing at around $70-a-barrel. As major operators hit the accelerator on drilling activity, the region is set to experience significant gains in oil production next year, taking it past the pre-pandemic levels.
Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo at a Monday afternoon press conference confirmed the county'sand likely the United States'first COVID-19 death attributed to the Omicron variant, per the Houston Chronicle's Sam Gonzalez Kelly.

"I know for folks in Harris County this feels like whiplash," Hidalgo said. "We saw the downward trend in hospitalizations and cases only to see things trend back up again, and it is so frustrating. I feel it, too."
Dr. Anthony Fauci said Fox News host Jesse Watters should be fired on the spot for telling a crowd that they should ambush the nations leading infectious disease doctor. But Fauci said it was unlikely Watters would be punished by Fox News. Hes gonna go, very likely, unaccountable, he said. I mean, whatever network hes on is not going to do anything for him.

Watters made the comments at Turning Point USAs AmericaFest on Monday, encouraging attendees to confront Fauci in public by sharing a conspiracy theory that the doctor funded dangerous research in a Wuhan lab that led to the coronavirus outbreak. (The viruss exact origins are still unknown.)

Watters told college students in the crowd that he was going to deputize them to be little James OKeefes, referring to the Project Veritas founder and activist who uses hidden cameras and deceptive editing to film gotcha videos in an attempt to expose mainstream media outlets and progressive groups as frauds. And he used a violent metaphor to get his point across.

All right, lets just say Fauci comes to town, Watters said. You gotta ambush a guy like Fauci, OK? The host then told the audience to ask Fauci questions about funding research at the Wuhan lab.

You have to be respectful, Watters said, adding, First you identify yourself Do you mind, Dr. Fauci, if I ask you a few questions  Then you hit him with the first question.

Later, Watters said, You have the goods because hes been able to dodge and weave on ABC and NBC. No ones ever hit him in the face like this. Not even Rand Paul has been able to get in his face and point with the grant in his face, so then hes in trouble. Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesnt see it coming. This is when you say, Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab, the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people dont trust you, dont you? Boom! He is dead. He is dead. Hes done. Now you do that  30 seconds, its all you need. Now you get that footage to us, you get it to Fox.

Watters continued, Now you get that footage to us, you get it to Fox Imagine Tucker Carlson teases that. He added, Give us that. Thats what we want. That changes the whole conversation to the country. Ive authorized it. Just make sure its legal.

Fauci on Tuesday said he was confused by why he has been vilified by the right. The only thing that I have ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices  to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask, Fauci told CNNs John Berman early Tuesday. And for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot, to ambush me? I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days?

Dr. Anthony Fauci says Fox News Jesse Watters should be fired on the spot for telling a crowd to ambush Fauci with the kill shot. But, he adds: Hes gonna go, very likely, unaccountable. I mean, whatever network hes on is not going to do anything for him. pic.twitter.com/K3X0V3jZdM  The Recount (@therecount) December 21, 2021

The guy should be fired on the spot, the doctor added.

Fox News said in a statement about the remarks by Watters, Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, its more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context.

In late November, Lara Logan, a host on the networks streaming platform Fox Nation, compared Fauci to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who performed inhumane experiments on the prisoners at Auschwitz. At the time, Fauci said he was astounded by the networks silence on the matter.

This story has been updated.
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For years, Warner Bros. has dreamed of making another Matrix movie, but the Wachowski siblings  architects of a cyberpunk classic whose appeal rests largely on bending rules and questioning authority  resisted the pressure, insisting theyd said everything they wanted to with the original three films. Lets not forget: By the end of the trilogy, Trinity died, Neo sacrificed himself and the humans were freed from their virtual shackles, which means anyone hoping to continue that story had their work cut out for them.

That explains a clever moment of self-awareness early in The Matrix Resurrections, a welcome but undeniably extraneous fourth installment  more of a patch than an upgrade on the franchise that came before, reframing deja vu not as a bug but as a feature of the brand. In said scene, employees of a San Francisco video game company sit around a corporate conference table, brainstorming how to build upon the Matrix saga. Our beloved parent company, Warner Bros., has decided they will make a sequel to the trilogy, one says, explaining that the studio is planning to do it with or without the creators.

Well, if you cant beat em, join em, or so director Lana Wachowski seems to be telling us, slyly stepping back from the dazzling infinity mirror presented in the earlier films to reveal one more layer: the real world in which we the audience reside. Sadly, thats about as wild and/or meta as The Matrix Resurrections gets, while the rest could fairly be described as more of the same: more time- and gravity-defying action, more Goth-geek fashion pointers, more free your mind mumbo-jumbo.

Essentially a greatest hits concert and a cover version rolled into one (complete with flashback clips to high points from past installments), the new movie is slick but considerably less ambitious in scope than the two previous sequels. Where those films set out to break sound barriers in our brains  the way bullet time, the highway sequence and Neos final battle against an apparently infinite number of Agents Smith did  this one largely eschews innovation. Rather, Resurrections takes comfort in the familiar, fleshing out the emotional core of a world that always felt a little hollow.

In short, Wachowski doesnt add much to the rich mythology she and sister Lilly have established, but shes careful not to mess it up either.

By reviving Neo (Keanu Reeves), Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and a handful of other key characters (some, like Agent Smith and Morpheus, requiring new actors to step in), Resurrections tethers its latest iteration to the simulation hypothesis  the theory, given oxygen by Elon Musk, that video game technology is advancing at such a clip that odds are good youre already living in one. The difference, compared with Matrix 1.0: The sheeple in the movies brave new world have that potentially liberating information, and still they choose to sleepwalk through their lives. Just like  you?

Its been more than two decades since The Matrix issued the wake-up call. So what are you doing chained to whatever career/family/hobby numbs you to what really matters? Like fanboy audiences  who passively watch heroes disrupt the system, watching, rather than participating in, social reform  the humans in this latest simulation stay blind. Neo has reverted to his Thomas Anderson identity, only now, hes head designer for WB-owned game company Deus Machina and described as a balding nerd, though its still Keanu that audiences see, sporting rock-star bangs and a surfer-guru beard.

It wouldve been much edgier to present Reeves as an aging incel with receding hair and a dandruff-speckled turtleneck  or better yet, as a self-deprecating version of himself, like the one he played in Netflix rom-com Always Be My Maybe. Storytelling has evolved by quantum leaps since 1999, and as futuristic as the Matrix franchise once felt, it all seems rather quaint today, what with the advent of reality TV (consider Paris Hiltons recent claim that shes been playing a character all along) and such ontological series as The Good Place and The OA (the latter ended with the characters crossing into a new dimension, where theyre all actors on the show weve been watching). The Matrix may have made 1982s Tron look primitive by comparison, but even that franchise has evolved, leaving this one in the dust.

Thats not to say the sequel is simply The Matrix Recycled  although the title is every bit as apt as the more biblical-sounding one they went with, teasing (but never directly addressing) the messianic dimension of Neos earlier arc. Off screen, Lana Wachowski has completely reinvented herself in the interim, sharing much of that journey via Netflixs stunning Sense8, whereas Thomas Anderson is stuck back in brainwashed mode, wrestling with relatively mundane midlife-crisis questions.

Self-doubts aside, Anderson drags his feet when Morpheus (now embodied by Candyman star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) kicks open a door and tries to offer him the old red-pill enlightenment. Meanwhile, his shrink (Neil Patrick Harris as the Analyst) has him on a steady prescription of blue pills. And then a spunky young cyber-anarchist named Bugs (Jessica Henwick) shows up, having narrowly escaped an obvious-trap modal, or training exercise, where she rescues the new-and-improved Morpheus (Abdul-Mateen is great but seems green vis-a-vis the sage and sorely missed Laurence Fishburne).

Speaking of green, the phosphorescent glow that defined the trilogy (extrapolated from old-school CRT monitors) has been all but banished here. Yes, a stream of green glyphs spells out the opening titles, and the human survivors of Zion (many played by members of the Sense8 cast) search for signs of Neo and Trinity on outdated screens. But compared with the grim and grimy real world spared from a Sentinel attack in Revolutions, the dimension where Anderson reunites with Trinity  now married with kids and going by the name Tiffany (but still played by Moss)  is rich in color and detail. Strange then that it should look so cheap, conspicuously lacking a striking visual signature.

Far removed from the shadowy film-noir vibe of the original, its easy to imagine humans being seduced by such a setting, especially when presented in the magic-hour glow of recent Marvel movies  and against which the grungy post-apocalyptic realm of spaceships and people pods seems less appealing than ever. That has always been the trouble with the Matrix movies: They insist that waking life is far worse than the illusion, asking us to care about the fate of a garbage dump where brain-jacked humans serve as an energy source for the Machines.

Of course wed rather spend time in San Francisco  or Berlin, where shooting shifted. These days, instead of battling actor Hugo Weavings square-jawed man in black (the original Agent Smith appears only in flashback), Anderson works for a snappily dressed human Ken doll also named Smith (Jonathan Groff, whose good looks reinforce the notion that everything got a major aesthetic upgrade). Once Neo starts to question his reality, its Smith he must face off against, again. The subsequent showdown feels overly choreographed, stuck in late-20th-century Hong Kong mode, versus the brute-force fighting style weve since seen in Bond movies. Even Neos ability to stop bullets and blast energy waves from his hands pales against so many of the superhero abilities to which weve been desensitized.

The great irony of The Matrix Resurrections is that a property that was once so appealing for being cutting-edge is now being mined for its nostalgia value  what a screenwriter friend of mine has dubbed CuisinArt, wherein studios are forgoing fresh ideas in order to rehash everything audiences love about the past.

Lana Wachowski has said she agreed to make a Matrix sequel after her parents died, taking comfort in being reconnected with fictional family Neo and Trinity. Many viewers will agree, even if it would have made more sense to reboot with an all-new cast of characters. But in a world where Space Jam can hack into the Matrix IP, this far-from-radical add-on seems distractingly preoccupied with justifying its own existence, rather than seeking a way to take fans to the next level.

Reviewed at Imax, Los Angeles, Dec. 14, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 148 MIN.

Running Time: Running time: 148 MIN.

MPAA Rating: R

Production

A Warner Bros. Pictures release, presented in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, Venus Castina Prods. Producers: James McTeigue, Lana Wachowski, Grant Hill. Executive producers: Garrett Grant, Terry Needham, Michael Salven, Karin Wachowski, Jesse Ehrman, Bruce Berman.

Crew

Director: Lana Wachowski. Screenplay: Lana Wachowski & David Mitchell & Aleksandar Hemon, based on characters created by the Wachowskis. Camera: Daniele Massaccesi, John Toll. Editor: Joseph Jett Sally. Music: Johnny Klimek & Tom Tykwer.

With

Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jonathan Groff, Jessica Henwick, Neil Patrick Harris, Jada Pinkett Smith, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Christina Ricci, Lambert Wilson.

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MANISTEE COUNTY  Hospitalizations in the Munson Healthcare system continue to dip but that may be short-lived with the omicron variant spreading the U.S.

It was declared the dominant variant across the country as of Dec. 20. However, in northwest Michigan, delta remains the dominant variant of coronavirus.

Dr. Christine Nefcy, Chief Medical Officer for Munson Healthcare, said on Tuesday during a virtual press conference that Michigan remains a hot spot despite numbers trending now.

Currently, there are 103 people with COVID-19 who are hospitalized across the Munson Healthcare system, which is down from a peak of 146 people. The test positivity rate is 16.7%.

Nefcy noted that of 103 hospitalized for COVID-19, 82 were unvaccinated versus 21 who have been vaccinated. Of the 36 people in the ICU, 33 were unvaccinated and three were vaccinated. Of the 18 on a ventilator, all were unvaccinated.

As of Dec. 21, the 30-39 age group has the highest rate of cases and case counts, Nefcy said. As of Dec. 6, the case rates in all age groups by the onset date of initial infection are between 345 and 792 cases per million.

Dr. Christopher Ledtke, of the Infectious Diseases department at Munson Healthcare, also spoke during the press conference, providing information on what is currently known about the omicron variant of coronavirus and how it may impact Munson Healthcare.

"In Michigan, delta is still the dominant variant but omicron has been detected in six counties including Genesee, Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Kent," Ledtke said.

He also noted that it might be an undercount as far as the real number of omicron cases that are circulating in Michigan.

"It's likely that the true burden of omicron is probably much higher than this. We rely on sequencing from at the state level to identify which COVID cases that we submit are omicron and there is a delay in that and (the state) only does a small percentage. So, it's likely that there's more spread than we're aware of," Ledtke said.

He said that omicron is more contagious than delta.

"It's about four times more contagious from what we've seen so far. In reality, it's one of the most contagious viruses known to man," he said.

Ledtke noted, that despite its high transmissibility, early data suggests that omicron may cause less severe disease than delta. He cited a report out of Hong Kong, noting the places the virus infects in the body can determine both transmissibility and the severity of the disease.

"It appears to be very good at infecting respiratory mucosa  meaning airways, nasal passages, and a significant amount of virus is shed from those sites which is possibly part of the reason it's so incredibly contagious," he said.

He noted that it did not infect the lung tissue as much, which is why it may not be as severe. Ledtke noted the data was from lab testing and may not indicate how it would work in the actual human body. He said that data as recent as last week, from South Africa  and with a large population sample  showed that there was a 29% lower hospitalization rate than the delta variant for adults. However, Ledtke also noted that hospitalization rates for those under 18 were 20% higher.

Also on Tuesday, at a press conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer highlighted plans to combat the new omicron variant of coronavirus.

As omicron becomes the dominant COVID-19 variant in the United States, we all have to step up this holiday season to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe, said Whitmer. Our hospitals and healthcare workers have been working tirelessly to save lives, and we are in for a tough four to six weeks. We must all take action to protect ourselves and help our healthcare workers and hospitals do their jobs."

Whitmer noted the importance of booster shots in battling omicron.

"I encourage every Michigander who is eligible to get their booster shot. Together, we can help 1 million more Michiganders, including 95% of all eligible nursing home residents get their boosters by the end of January 2022. We know from preliminary data that the booster offers more robust protection against omicron. A 15-minute appointment to get your booster can help keep you out of the hospital and save your life. If you still have not gotten vaccinated yet, know that it is not a matter of if you will get sick but of when. We have safe and effective vaccines. Please get your shots," she said

To view the full Munson Healthcare virtual press conference visit facebook.com/munsonhc/videos/595306891554828.
To show support for both active military members and military veterans, Woodforest National Bank recently donated $150,000 to the Montgomery County Veterans Memorial Park.

Along with commission members, the presentation took place in early December with Woodforest leadership and staff who served in the U.S. military at the ceremony.

Woodforest National Bank is honored to support the recognition of our veterans through the Montgomery County Veterans Park. This memorial means so much to our community and it highlights the dedication and sacrifice of those who have served in our military. We are thankful for the service of all veterans and extremely proud to see the names of Woodforest employees who have served among those recognized on The Line. Veterans who protect our country are true heroes, said Jay Dreibelbis, President and CEO, Woodforest National Bank.

On YourConroeNews.com: State Rep. Will Metcalf secures $7M for veterans park

The Montgomery County Veterans Memorial Commission is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating, illuminating and enriching youth, families and communities from this state and this nation to the services, experiences and sacrifices of our United States Veterans and First Responders. In May, the commission dedicated the Montgomery County Veterans Memorial Park at Interstate 45 and Texas 105 in Conroe.

In June, State Rep. Will Metcalf announced the park will receive $7 million from the Texas Parks and Wildlife to fund the parks next phase which includes an education center among other enhancements at the park.

The Woodforest sponsorship will be on display in front of The Line on Victory Lane at the park. As a part of the donation, Woodforest also added the names of bank employees who are veterans to The Line monument. Woodforest employees added to The Line include Jason and Michelle Howze, Tony Ross, Dawn Yates, Steve OMara and Grant Hass.

The Line honors all active duty service members and veterans from across the country. Currently six name panels and four landmark signs are on display under the 17 flags on Victory Lane lining the eastern edge of the park.

On YourConroeNews.com: Veterans Memorial Park dedicated in style

The monument will grow with up to 20 additional name panels and then cross over the reflection pond to also line the westernmost side of the memorial. QR codes can be scanned to listen to individual accounts and sacrifices veterans have made.

When you view the names, you will not find rank, just their name and branch of service, said Jimmie C. Edwards III, Chairman of the veterans commission and Ret. U.S. Marine. Each of these people served our nation honorably. They deserve our appreciation. This contribution helps us with our mission to transition from a local to a nationally recognized memorial. We are not scratching names on a granite wall and walking off. It is important to show the country and state what Montgomery County is about.

It is Edwards intention that The Line honors veterans from across the nation.

In eight months, we received over 600 names from 19 states on this monument. One family brought over 20 members from Tennessee to Conroe this summer and held a personal ceremony to commemorate their grandfathers service. Eventually this memorial will honor over 10,000 men and women just like him. Without enthusiastic and willing partners like Woodforest National Bank, it would take a lot longer to expand the park, said Howard Wood, Director of Public Relations for the commission and U.S. Marine Corps Veteran.

Learn more about the Montgomery County Veterans Memorial Commission at www.honoredmission.org or through their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/honoredmission .

shernandez@hcnonline.com
A motorist died Sunday afternoon on Texas 105, according to media reports.

Just before 4 p.m., a Nissan Versa pulled out of the Lake Conroe subdivision onto 105 westbound to Montgomery, failing to yield to an eastbound Toyota Corolla. The Nissan was struck on the drivers side and rolled over, according to the Montgomery County Police Reporter.

Video from the cleanup of the crash showed the Nissan flipped on its side.

Paramedics were unable to save the Nissan drivers life, according to the Police Reporter.

On Tuesday, the Texas Department of Public Safety identified the deceased driver as Dennis Bernard Hann, 70, of Montgomery.

The male and female occupants of the Toyota were hospitalized with minor injuries, according to the Police Reporter.

Montgomery County Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace Jason Dunn ordered an autopsy on the Nissan driver, the Police Reporter added.

jose.gonzalez@chron.com

twitter.com/jrgzztx
MOBILE, Ala. (AP)  An Alabama woman pleaded guilty to charges of helping prepare dozens of fraudulent applications for federal pandemic relief funds involving more than $1 million, news outlets reported.

Corine Campbell of Saraland, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, was accused of helping with more than 50 bogus applications for money through the government's Paycheck Protection Program.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  An arrest warrant has been issued for a former nursing home owner on eight Medicaid fraud charges involving his facilities in Arkansas, the state's attorney general said Monday.

Joseph Schwartz also faces two counts of state tax violations for failing to pay taxes that were withheld from employees' paychecks, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said.
BEIJING (AP)  China announced sanctions on Tuesday on four members of the U.S. government's Commission on International Religious Freedom in retaliation for penalties imposed on Chinese officials over complaints of abuses in the countrys northwestern Xinjiang region.

The tit-for-tat sanctions add to spiraling tension over Xinjiang. Washington has banned imports from the region that might be made with forced labor, while activists are calling for a boycott of Februarys Winter Olympics in Beijing. China has denied accusations of abuses and earlier retaliated by publicizing calls for boycotts of foreign shoe and clothing brands.
Preparing to direct A Journal for Jordan, a bittersweet love story opening on Christmas Day, Denzel Washington says he took a master class.

That master class consisted of starring in a movie directed by Joel Coen, The Tragedy of Macbeth, which opens the same day. I steal from the best, Washington says with a smile.

Denzel Washington the actor has some 60 films under his belt, plus two Oscars, and at 66 is universally regarded as one of the all-time greats. Denzel Washington the director has just completed his fourth feature. I dont call myself a director, he said matter-of-factly in an interview last week. Im still learning.

Before A Journal for Jordan, based on the book by former New York Times editor Dana Canedy about her fiance, who fought and died in Iraq, and the journal of life lessons he left their baby son, Washingtons most recent directorial effort was Fences. The 2016 film version of the August Wilson play starred Washington himself and Viola Davis, who won an Oscar.

Washington directed himself in his other two feature outings as well  The Great Debaters in 2007 and Antwone Fisher in 2002. But he says he'd rather stay offscreen when he's at the helm.

I prefer not being in the films," he said. "Early on, it had to do with me being able to raise the money to get the films made. Then Fences, obviously we had great success onstage, so that translated to film. But I enjoy being a more behind-the-scenes kind of guy.

Aside from his recent collaboration with Coen, whom he calls one of the greatest directors, Washington says he sought insight from some other directors he admires.

I spent a great day with Paul Thomas Anderson a month or so ago, to listen to how he works, he said. And Steve McQueen, Ive been talking with a little bit. Im learning how to do it, so Im interested in learning from the best. So, Ive been talking to the best.

Michael B. Jordan says he, too, is interested in learning from the best  which is why it was so impactful for him to be directed by Washington. The actor gives a charismatic performance as Canedys fiance, 1st Sgt. Charles Monroe King, who was killed in Iraq in 2006 at age 48. (Canedy is portrayed by Chante Adams.)

To be able to work so closely with him was really important, Jordan said in an interview. It was a master class, honestly.

As an actor, you know, growing up, watching all his movies, watching his performances and being curious about his process  like, Man, I wonder how the greatest of all time rehearses' or how he breaks down his character, Jordan mused. His perspective of character is so layered. You really realize, Oh, THIS is why youre Denzel, got it! Ive been doing great, but then this is the next level.

And Jordan said working with Washington was especially important given that hes about to embark on his own directorial debut, directing  and starring in  the upcoming Creed III.

Knowing that I was directing Creed III next, he made it a point to take me to the side a lot, you know? I was always kind of in his back pocket, watching and asking questions and (him) giving me little gems, Jordan said.

The actor told the story of how Washington asked him one day whether he had a storyboard artist lined up  he hadnt, and wasnt planning to for several months  and within moments, Washington was making introductions.

He was like, No, no, get one now, Jordan said. He picked up his phone and he called this guy, Warren Drummond. And he was like, Warren, its D. I got Mike B. here, and hes getting ready to direct Creed III. Washington put Jordan on the phone, and soon a deal was made.

So its from something as generous as that to, he was always giving me advice for what to look for because theres another layer to it  theres not a lot of people who have directed themselves," Jordan said. And that's what's really challenging for me on this one. Washington, Jordan says, told him that he needed to identify the few opinions that youre really going to anchor your choices on, because youre not going to have time to run back to the monitors every take and see what you got.

Washington said the original plan was not for him to direct; he became involved with the project through longtime producing partner Todd Black 12 years ago, shortly after Canedy wrote her story. It took eight years to develop a script. When Washington saw the screenplay, penned by Virgil Williams, he said Shoot, I'd direct this! He says he was drawn by the beauty of the love story  sad, but uplifting.

Jordan, who also was attached to the project for several years before the movie got made, says he found a lot to identify with in a father journaling for his infant son.

I journal a lot, and I think about legacy all the time, Jordan says. And one day having a family. And I think about my time on this Earth, and what do I do with it?"

But another key reason he stuck with the film, as it developed and his own dance card filled up rapidly in Hollywood, was Washington. Denzel directing was a dream come true, he says.

Washington says mentorship was important to him as well  beginning with an English and theater teacher at Fordham University, Robinson Stone, one of my first mentors who could see the potential I had.

And just over the years, Ive been blessed to work with some of the greatest filmmakers ever, so I steal from the best, he said. Trying to learn from the best, from Spike (Lee) to Tony Scott, Ridley Scott, Norman Jewison, Richard Attenborough, Jonathan Demme. I take a little from all of them, and try to apply it to what Im learning how to do.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  A Des Moines man has been found guilty of killing a woman and her two children, months after another jury failed to reach a verdict.

KCCI-TV reports that Marvin Esquivel Lopez on Monday was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in the 2019 deaths of 29-year-old Rossibeth Flores-Rodriguez, her 11-year-old daughter, Grecia Daniela Alvarado-Flores, and 5-year-old son, Ever Jose Mejia-Flores.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  A former doctor whose medical license was revoked in 2019 has been accused in Las Vegas of making a false terrorist threat against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City.

Isaac Hearne, 55, of Las Vegas, was arrested last week after a recorded telephone call to church headquarters Dec. 13 from a man who identified himself as Hearne and threatened to kill everyone in the building, according to a Las Vegas police report cited by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
NEW YORK (AP)  Fox News defended Jesse Watters on Tuesday after he used the phrase kill shot in a speech urging young conservatives to confront Dr. Anthony Fauci in public with a hostile interview.

Fauci, asked about it on CNN, said that Watters should be fired on the spot but predicted he wouldn't be held accountable for his language.

Fox said Watters' words had been twisted completely out of context.

Watters, a host on Fox News Channel's panel show The Five who made his initial mark doing aggressive interviews for Bill O'Reilly, spoke Monday to a group of college and high school conservatives. His audience booed at the mention of Fauci's name.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the government's most visible spokesman on the COVID-19 pandemic, has been the subject of frequent criticism by some Fox News commentators who have been seeking to appeal to audience members resistant to vaccinations.

Watters said that Fauci should be confronted on the subject of whether the National Institute of Health funded research at a lab in Wuhan, China, the city where the COVID-19 virus originated. He said an interviewer should suggest he lied about the topic  something Fauci has disputed.

Now you go in for the kill shot, the kill shot with an ambush, deadly, because he doesn't see it coming, Watters said.

He suggested an interviewer say, you know why people don't trust you, don't you?' Oh, he is dead. He's dead. He's done."

The interviewer should make sure the encounter is filmed and the footage given to conservative media, Watters said. It's a confrontation technique that has been used elsewhere in conservative politics by the group Project Veritas.

Just make sure it's legal, Watters said.

A partial clip of Watters' speech, beginning with the kill shot quote, spread around the internet, with some commentators suggesting that he had advocated assassinating Fauci.

During an interview with Fauci on Tuesday, CNN's John Berman referred to Watters as a Fox News entertainer, and asked about the comments without playing the clip, saying it was dangerous. Berman referred to a rhetorical kill shot, and asked Fauci how much that language concerned him.

Fauci noted that for two years, he's been encouraging people to protect themselves against COVID-19 by practicing good public health practices and get vaccinated.

For that, you have some guy out there saying people should be giving me a kill shot, to ambush me? he said. I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days? That's awful what he said. And he's going to go, very likely, unaccountable. Whatever network he is on is not going to do anything. The guy should be fired on the spot.

Fauci, in a 60 Minutes interview in October, discussed death threats he had received and his need for a security detail.

In a statement, Fox said based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it's more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions ... and his words have been twisted completely out of context.

Watters' reference to kill shot, however, baffled some people in television news.

I've never used, or heard, that term used and I did my share of ambush interviews as an investigative producer, said Mark Lukasiewicz, dean of Hofstra University's School of Communication and a longtime journalist at NBC News.

Last month on Fox, Tucker Carlson compared Fauci to Italian World War II dictator Benito Mussolini, while Lara Logan said Fauci, to some people, represented Josef Mengele, the Nazi death doctor.

Fox has not commented on the statements that Carlson and Logan made about Fauci. Logan, a contributor to the Fox Nation streaming service who had appeared as a commentator on the television network, hasn't been on since.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  The Trump administration overpaid corn farmers by about $3 billion in federal aid in 2019 and farmers in the South were paid more for the same crops than those elsewhere in the country, a federal watchdog agency has found.

The Government Accountability Office said in a report released Monday that international disputes resulting from tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump hurt farmers but that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's county-by-county methodology for computing the extent of damage was flawed, leading to overpayment and inconsistent compensation.

Though corn yields are higher in the Midwest and West, corn producers received an estimated average of $69 per acre in the South, $61 in the Midwest, $34 in the Northeast, and $29 in the West, the report said.

GAO also estimated that payments to corn producers were approximately $3 billion more than USDAs estimate of trade damage to corn, while payments to soybeans, sorghum, and cotton producers were lower than their estimated trade damages.

National Corn Growers Association CEO Jon Doggett said the USDAs higher compensation for corn farmers in 2019 included items the GAO did not consider in its analysis, including the trade damage value for corn ethanol and a high protein livestock feed byproduct of ethanol production.

Both 2018 and 2019 were terrible years for farmers who experienced net losses due to decisions in Washington and adverse weather conditions. In fact, farmers suffered a $6.3 billion loss in 2018 alone during that time because of the tariffs.

The GAO report was requested by the Senate Agriculture Committee chaired by Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

This report confirms that the Trump USDA picked winners and losers in their trade aid programs and left everyone else behind," Stabenow said in a statement. Making larger payments to farmers in the South than farmers in the Midwest or elsewhere, regardless of whether those farmers actually experienced a larger loss, undermines our future ability to support farmers when real disasters occur.

GAO said it audited the UDSA's Market Facilitation Program.

GAO recommended that the USDA Office of the Chief Economist revise its internal review process to ensure transparency of its documentation and that the agency conduct a review to ensure proper baseline methods are used in analysis.

Dr. Seth Meyer, the USDA chief economist, responded to the report in an Oct. 21 letter. He said the USDA analysis was based on a widely accepted trade model and methodology that the USDAs Office of Inspector General found to be reasonable, and was applied consistently across a range of commodities for the 2018 and 2019 trade mitigation packages.

He said the USDA Office of the Chief Economist did not make the policy decision, and it provided options to policy makers.

The policy decisions to select between a variety of alternatives that GAO has flagged as problematic were made by senior USDA leaders under the previous administration and not OCE, he said.

Trump imposed higher tariffs on certain products from China, Europe, Canada and other key trading partners in 2018. China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Turkey, and India responded with tariffs targeting U.S. products, including agricultural commodities. In 2018 and 2019, many U.S. agricultural exports declined and the Trump administration poured money into support for farmers including the Market Facilitation Program that was the subject of the GAO audit.

Corn, cotton, sorghum, soybean and wheat farmers were paid more than $21.7 billion in 2018 and 2019. Dairy and hog farmers were paid more than $900 million, and specialty crops including tree nuts, cherries, cranberries, ginseng and table grapes were paid $346 million.

Before he lost the November 2020 election, Trump made it clear he was courting farmers' votes with federal aid. In a late October 2020 campaign appearance in Omaha, Nebraska, Trump said he believed farmers were better off getting government payments than relying solely on their farming receipts.

In 2019, one-third of U.S. farm income came from direct government payments and last year it was nearly 40% of their income.

Some farm groups questioned the way the federal money was being distributed to commodity and livestock farmers.
HONOLULU (AP)  Hawaii health officials reported another 707 new confirmed and probable coronavirus cases Tuesday, the fifth straight day of elevated infection numbers.

Hawaii had a seven-day average of about 100 daily cases in early December. Now, after several days of high case counts, there are more than 5,600 active cases among Hawaii's 1.5 million residents, according to the state Department of Health.

Health officials said there were at least 50 omicron variant coronavirus cases as of Monday. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week that early data suggests omicron is more transmissible than the delta variant.

Hawaii Lt. Gov. Josh Green said he wants more testing and vaccination sites to be established.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that Green sent a memorandum to Gov. David Ige and other state officials saying Hawaii has enough federal funding to set up more vaccine booster and testing sites across the islands.

It stands to reason that now were seeing the large omicron surge that we get as many people boosters as possible," Green said, adding that only 22% of vaccinated people have received boosters.

Vaccinated U.S. travelers to the state are no longer required to take tests prior to their arrival. Anyone who is not vaccinated must be tested before departure to Hawaii or face a quarantine upon arrival.

On Oahu, where the vast majority of the new cases are being reported, Mayor Rick Blangiardi said last week that officials had no plans to set up more coronavirus testing or vaccination sites before the holidays.

Its really hard to do before Christmas. Its really a manpower issue, he said. Were just going to encourage people who are available to get their third shots to get them.

Oahu has a test positivity rate of 9% and the statewide average is 7%.
HONOLULU (AP)  Officials with Hawaiis Health Department testified Monday about past problems with a Navy fuel storage facility blamed for contaminating Pearl Harbor drinking water, including corroding steel tanks, behind-schedule maintenance and tanks that havent been inspected in more than 20 years.

The state issued an emergency order to stop running the underground tanks and remove the fuel after tests in recent weeks detected petroleum in the Navys tap water system. The Navy is contesting the order, which prompted an evidentiary hearing that started Monday and could continue Tuesday.

Water is life, Wade Hargrove, a deputy state attorney general, said in his opening statement. This case should speak for itself.

Thousands of families have been affected, including some who have been displaced from their military homes, said Dr. Diana Felton, state toxicologist. She said people have complained of abdominal pain, skin rashes, headaches and other ailments.

Carly Lintner, whose husband is in the Army and lives in military housing, testified about how the family is showering at a hotel, but sleeping at home because the couple has a dog and a 16-month-old son.

She described how her son developed a rash and a Thanksgiving dinner made with Navy water with neighbors and friends led to everyone having a stomach ache that they initially thought was food poisoning.

Through tears, she shared how her normally thirsty dog refused to drink tap water and was vomiting. The dog now drinks bottled water, which Lintner also uses to wash her son's bottles.

She said they have a reservation at the hotel until Christmas, but will have to find another hotel after that.

Fuel has so far only been detected in the Navys water system, which serves 93,000 people. Schools and businesses that receive water from the Navy have also been affected.

All branches of the military use fuel from the tanks, which were built underground into the side of a mountain ridge near Pearl Harbor in the early 1940s.

One of the aging tanks, by the Navy's estimation, hasn't been inspected in 40 years, testified Lene Ichinotsubo, acting chief of the state Health Department's Solid and Hazardous Waste Branch.

Under questioning by Jon McKay, a lawyer representing the Navy, Ichinotsubo agreed that concrete bound to steel liners with pressurized grout protects against corrosion.

Navy officials believe a one-time spill of jet fuel inside an access tunnel on Nov. 20 contaminated one of its wells and the tap water. Officials said they dont believe leaking fuel tanks tainted the water.

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply and Sierra Club of Hawaii are intervening in the hearing.

Honolulus water utility is concerned leaked fuel could taint its water supply and an aquifer that it shares with the Navy.

The fuel there is really am imminent threat to the aquifer," testified Erwin Kawata, program administrator for the Board of Water Supply.

When the utility learned of a 2014 leak, officials saw the large amount of fuel stored there as a threat to the groundwater aquifer, he said.

Kawata agreed that the utility hasn't detected any petroleum in its wells, when asked by McKay.

The hearing got underway as Hawaii's congressional delegation announced that the Department of Defense inspector general intends to investigate, at the request of the members of Congress.

Navy officials said they are flushing clean water through the overall water system and water systems in all homes. They said they hope to complete that process by Christmas.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Jurors weighing the case of the suburban Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed Black motorist Daunte Wright asked the judge after a full day of deliberations Tuesday what they should do if they cant reach a verdict.

Judge Regina Chu told them to continue working, as was explained in the initial instructions she gave them. The jurors resumed deliberations for about 90 more minutes, then ended for the day shortly after 6 p.m. The jury also deliberated for about five hours on Monday.

Former Brooklyn Center officer Kim Potter, who is white, is charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter. If convicted of the most serious charge, Potter, 49, would face a sentence of about seven years under state guidelines, though prosecutors have said they will seek more.

Potter said she meant to use her Taser on Wright rather than her gun, and the jurors also asked if they could remove zip ties keeping Potters gun in an evidence box so they could hold it. The judge said they could, overruling an objection from Potter attorney Paul Engh that the gun should remain in the box for safety purposes.

During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence on the differences between the gun and the Taser, including weight, feel, size, color, and that the gun was holstered on Potter's right side and the Taser on her left.

Prosecutor Erin Eldridge said in her closing argument that the jurors would be able to hold both the Taser and the gun to compare them, to get a feel for the two, and to get a sense of all those differences that you heard about in court, and see for yourselves how different they really are.

The jury's question about deliberating, read in court by Chu, said: If the jury cannot reach consensus, what is the guidance around how long and what steps should be taken?

The judge then reread from the jury instructions, telling the jurors to continue to discuss the case with one another and deliberate with a view toward reaching agreement if you can do so without violating your individual judgment.

Potter's attorneys objected to the judge rereading that instruction, arguing that doing so inappropriately emphasized that paragraph over the rest of the instructions. Chu overruled.

Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, noted that the jurors didnt say they were at an impasse.

Judge (Regina) Chu is going to let them keep deliberating if they dont express concern or distress about how its going, Moran said.

The judge has ordered that the jury be sequestered during deliberations  meaning they remain under the courts supervision in an undisclosed hotel and cannot return home until they have reached a verdict or the judge has determined they can't reach one. Her order allows them to communicate with family members as long as they avoid discussing the trial.

During closing arguments, prosecutors accused Potter of a blunder of epic proportions in Wright's death in an April 11 traffic stop  but said a mistake was no defense.

Potter's attorneys countered that Wright, who was attempting to get away from officers as they sought to handcuff him for an outstanding warrant on a weapons charge, caused the whole incident.

The mostly white jury got the case after about a week and a half of testimony about an arrest that went awry, setting off angry protests in Brooklyn Center just as nearby Minneapolis was on edge over Derek Chauvin's trial in George Floyd's death. Potter resigned two days after Wright's death.

Eldridge called Wrights death entirely preventable. Totally avoidable. She urged the jury not to excuse it as a mistake: "Accidents can still be crimes if they occur as a result of reckless or culpable negligence."

Potter attorney Earl Gray argued that Wright was to blame for trying to flee from police. Potter mistakenly grabbed her gun instead of her Taser because the traffic stop was chaos, he said.

Potter testified Friday that she didnt want to hurt anybody and that she was sorry it happened."

Chu told jurors that intent is not part of the charges and that the state doesnt have to prove Potter tried to kill Wright.

The judge said for first-degree manslaughter, prosecutors must prove that Potter caused Wrights death while committing the crime of reckless handling of a firearm. This means they must prove that she committed a conscious or intentional act while handling or using a firearm that creates a substantial or unjustifiable risk that she was aware of and disregarded, and that she endangered safety.

For second-degree manslaughter, prosecutors must prove she acted with culpable negligence, meaning she consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm.

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Associated Press writer Kathleen Foody in Chicago contributed to this story. Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin.

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Find the APs full coverage of the Daunte Wright case: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-daunte-wright
LOS ANGELES (AP)  The chief of staff for the Los Angeles County district attorney was arrested on suspicion of public intoxication earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

Joseph Iniguez, 36, serves as the chief of staff for George Gascon, who oversees the nation's largest local prosecutorial office. Iniguez told the Times that his arrest was retaliation for filming his fiance's encounter with police at a drive-through restaurant in suburban Azusa.
MOSS BLUFF, La. (AP)  A southwest Louisiana park closed since August 2020 by Hurricane Laura could open next spring but will have far fewer trees, Louisiana State Parks Director Brandon Burris said.

Four-fifths of the trees at Sam Houston Jones State Park either toppled or were damaged beyond recovery, Burris told The American Press.

Its going to look different, but were going to work to tie the history of the area back to where it was," he said.

Burris said crews have cleared 80% of the 1,087-acre (440-hectare) park in Moss Bluff. Other continuing work includes rebuilding cabins, water and sewer treatment systems, bathrooms, the parks entrance station, the pavilion and other facilities.

Depending on weather, the park could reopen by late March or early April, he said.

Were at a good pace now, he said.

Burris said the state is paying to clear the downed and damaged trees while negotiating for reimbursement by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Insurance covered repairs to buildings and other structures, he said.

The rainy spring and summer slowed tree clearing, Burris said.

It required very heavy equipment to get it cleaned up, and it just wasnt working in the mud, he said. We had to wait 10-14 days for it to dry, only for it to rain again once we got the equipment back out there.

About 20 state park employees who normally work on larger-scale maintenance projects at north Louisiana parks have been brought in to help, Burris said.

The recreational vehicle campground will be improved rather than simply restored, with larger parking pads and a sewer system with hookups, Burris said. RV areas at most state parks were designed decades ago and are not fitted for todays recreational vehicles, he said.

Burris said the state is working with The Nature Conservatory, an environmental organization, to plant 5,000 new trees, covering about 20 to 25 acres (8 to 10 hectares), in early spring. The park is lucky to get them, since Louisiana growers were severely hurt this year by Hurricane Ida, he said.

Ten new two-bedroom, one-bathroom cabins already were planned as part of improvements using $16 million in BP oil spill settlement money at five south Louisiana state parks. Concrete slabs for the cabins were poured one week before Lauras landfall, he said. Each cabin will have a full kitchen, a screened front porch with a fireplace, and TVs in the porch, living room and both bedrooms.

They will be the nicest cabins in our system, he said.

A Facebook group called SHJSP Recovery Initiative has attracted nearly 700 members interested in helping to restore the park and to share updates on recovery.

Creator Tonya McKnight, an avid runner, said she regularly ran the trails at Sam Houston Jones State Park.

I consider that place my sanctuary, she said. It was so heartbreaking to see all the damage.

Volunteers can't help with clear trees, but McKnight said Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and other state park officials were excited to hear about the group.

They didnt realize so many people love the park and want to help out, she said.

Burris said days will be scheduled to let volunteers help with the park's cleanup.

Weve had a lot of inquiries from the public about that, he said.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  A former Michigan state employee who pleaded guilty to multiple felonies for embezzling $855,690 from the state was sentenced to jail time Tuesday in an Ingham County court.

Joseph Pettit, who worked for the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy from 1996 to 2020, was charged by the state attorney general's office in April after EGLE leadership noticed discrepancies in September 2020.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP)  State regulators who three years ago issued an air quality permit for a proposed copper-nickel mine in northwestern Minnesota stood by their decision in a report released Monday that said the mine did not provide misleading information on its plans.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency report is a blow to several environmental groups and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, although it does not clear the way for construction. Other major permits remain up in the air because of ongoing court cases or administrative work.
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP)  The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a man's murder conviction in a deadly 2018 shooting outside a suburban Kansas City shopping mall because he wasn't allowed to argue at trial that he acted in self-defense.

The high court ruled that the trial judge hamstrung Tyler Gates' attorneys by not allowing them to argue it was self-defense and violated Gates' constitutional rights.

Jurors convicted Gates in June 2019 of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the killing of 17-year-old Matthew Haylock at the Independence Center. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Gates co-defendant, Luis Ramirez, was sentenced to concurrent terms of eight years in prison for attempted robbery and three years for armed criminal action in the same case.

Prosecutors said the shooting occurred after Gates, who was 18 at the time, and Ramirez, who was also a teen, decided to rob Haylock of a gun. Gates, however, claims he did not rob Haylock. He said he fired in self-defense after Haylock tried to rob him. But he was barred from presenting the self-defense argument at trial.

The state Supreme Court's ruling sends the case back to a lower court.

Gates attorney, Jeannie Willibey, said in a statement that she is pleased that the Court upheld the fundamental right of a criminal defendant to tell the jury in his own words his version of what happened and that fairness requires a new trial.

Mike Mansur, a spokesman for the Jackson County prosecutors office, said the office is reviewing the decision.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP)  An F-15 fighter jet traveling over central Illinois created a sonic boom that rattled the region Tuesday, prompting concerned residents to flood local police stations with calls about the noise, a state agency said.

The Illinois Emergency Management Agency said in a statement that the department was alerted about 11:20 CST about a large noise and shaking felt by many residents" across central Illinois.

The state agency said it began investigating with federal, state and local officials and found that the sound was a sonic boom created by a military fighter jet.

It was determined that an F-15 fighter jet in the airspace above central Illinois course corrected creating a sonic boom. When the aircraft broke the sound barrier, the pressure wave created an audible noise and minor shaking in the region," the state agency said in a statement.

There have been no reports of damage caused by the noise, it added.

The emergency agency's spokeswoman, Rebecca Clark, referred questions about the origin of the F-15 fighter jet to the Federal Aviation Administration's Kansas City office. The Associated Press emailed the FAA's media relations office asking about the fighter jet's point of origin and for information on the type of maneuvers it was performing at the time.

Decatur Fire Departments Deputy Chief Dan Kline told the Herald & Review that the noise prompted concerned calls to Decaturs police and fire departments.

I went up on the roof of Station One after we heard it and looked around but didnt see any smoke or anything, Kline said. He said the noise was so loud that he thought someone had dropped something heavy upstairs in the fire department building.
SANDPOINT, Idaho (AP)  An Idaho man accused in the September killing of a man has been charged with the additional crime of cannibalism and authorities in court documents said the suspect believed he could cure his brain by eating some of the victim.

The new charge was filed last week by the prosecutor in northern Idaho's Bonner County against suspect James David Russell, 39, who already faced a first-degree murder charge, the Bonner County Daily Bee newspaper reported.

Russell was arrested Sept. 10 in the killing of David Flaget, whose body was found that day in his pickup truck after officials were called to the scene near the small town of Clark Fork. Authorities said parts of Flagets body were found at Russells home.

Russell believed that he could heal himself by cutting off portions of flesh to cure his brain, the newspaper reported, citing court documents. Authorities said some of Flagets remains have not yet been found.

Theres a lot of facets we will certainly never know, Bonner County Detective Phillip Stella told the newspaper. It wasnt the bloodiest crime scene, but its more of the psychological, what the heck is going on here?"

Stella added: "Its a walk down the dark path that we dont see very often.

Russell in October was found unfit to stand trial and ordered into the Idaho Security Medical Program at the Idaho State Maximum Security Institution, with a review focusing on his competency set for for Dec. 28.

A phone message seeking comment from the Bonner County Public Defender's Office, which represents Russell, was not immediately returned on Tuesday.

Authorities didn't state a possible motive for the killing, but Stella said Flaget had had several conflicts with Russell.

Flaget's body was found in the passenger seat of his pickup truck with his wrists duct taped together, according to court documents.

First-degree murder in Idaho is punishable by up to life in prison with the possibility of the death penalty. A cannibalism conviction carries a maxiumum penalty of 14 years in prison.

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WINSTED  As 2021 draws closer to an end, Finance Director Bruce Stratford gave his final report to the Board of Selectmen this week and was thanked for his service as he prepares to leave the post.

I just want to say that its been a capstone of my financial career to be here, Stratford said. I really enjoyed working in this situation. We have great people here in town, and I recognize that its been a team effort. Im always happy to be part of a team.

Stratford will retire at the end of the month, with a replacement  Ann Marie Rheault, who has worked in Plymouth Town Hall  ready to assume the role in January.

Town Manager Josh Kelly said Rheault was a good choice to take over.

Any candidate coming into the position has, as the saying goes, big shoes to fill, but ... (the town) is pleased to announce that it has found the right match who is up to the challenge of maintaining and enhancing her predecessors legacy, Kelly said.

Rheault has been finance director in Plymouth for nearly seven years. Prior to her tenure as finance director, Plymouth experienced an embezzlement scandal similar to that experienced in Winsted, Kelly said, referring to former finance director Henry Centrella, who embezzled $2.5 million from Winsted since 2005 and was accused of tax fraud totaling more than $150,000. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2014.

Ann Marie was instrumental in Plymouths efforts to restructure its internal checks and balances and reposition itself for future success, Kelly said. Her experience in Plymouth is similar to that of ... Bruce Stratford, who leaves Winchester with corrected financial policies and procedures and a vastly improved financial position after many years of hardship before he joined the towns service.

Ann Maries experiences in Plymouth allow her to appreciate all of the hard work and energy that has gone into Winchesters financial improvements to date, and it puts her in a great position to continue Bruces tradition of excellence, Kelly said.

Before working in Plymouth, Rheault worked for Carrier Corp. in Farmington and for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hartford, in various senior accounting, audit and managerial roles. She is a graduate of the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, where she earned a degree in business administration. Outside of her professional work, she volunteers for many local groups in and around Plymouth, including the Small Wonders Back to School and Holiday Giving Programs and Plymouth Police Special Olympics Connecticut, according to Kelly.

Stratford and Kelly plan to work with Rheault to make sure she has all the information she needs to succeed on the job starting in January, and Bruce will remain available to work with Ann Marie in early 2022 on an as-needed basis, Kelly said.

Rheaults starting salary is $105,000 and includes a range of benefits.

Winchester has been blessed to have Bruce working in its favor, and I wholeheartedly believe that Ann Marie is the right person to help us continue and build upon our current upward trend as a community, Kelly said.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has drafted a bill that would block teaching critical race theory in South Dakota schools, public universities and technical colleges.

Noem announced the legislation on Monday, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported.

Critical race theory is an academic concept that originated in the 1970s. It focuses on how racism is embedded in legal systems in the United States.

South Dakota education officials say critical race theory isnt part of state curriculum in schools or colleges. But Noem said the theory teaches a false and divisive message.

Her bill would prohibit teaching that any race, religion, sex or ethnicity is inherently superior or inferior; that anyone should feel guilt, anguish or distress because of their race, religion, sex or ethnicity; or that people are inherently responsible for past actions because of their race, sex, religion or ethnicity.

The ACLU of South Dakota said Monday it opposes the bill, saying it could censor U.S. history discussions and local school districts should decide their own curriculums.

Twenty-nine other states have introduced similar bills or taken steps to restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers discuss racism and sexism, according to Education Week. North Dakota has blocked critical race theory teachings.
BARBOURSVILLE, W.Va. (AP)  Authorities are investigating after three inmates at a West Virginia jail overdosed on unknown drugs, officials said.

The inmates at Western Regional Jail were treated at a hospital Saturday and returned to the facility, news outlets reported. No charges had been filed as of Monday,
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP)  A special commission plans to review Connecticut's laws that govern public health and civil preparedness emergencies, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and make recommendations for how they might be changed.

The five-member group created by the state's Legislature met Tuesday for the first time. It includes a lawmaker, legislative attorneys, staff and others.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  A Rhode Island man has pleaded guilty to his role in a conspiracy to file fraudulent applications for COVID-19 unemployment relief funds in multiple states using stolen Social Security numbers and other personal information, federal prosecutors said.

Courtney Hilaire, 29, pleaded guilty Monday to multiple counts of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, possession of device making equipment and other offenses, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office in Providence.
The Texas Department of Public Safety announced on Monday that a smuggler was arrested who was bringing people across the border by raft.

Juan Enrique Lugo Guzman was arrested at the scene. The 47-year-old man was arrested for human smuggling and resisting arrest.
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP)  Nurses at a Massachusetts hospital who have been on strike for more than nine months are scheduled to vote next month on whether to ratify a tentative agreement with management that will end the work stoppage, their union said Tuesday.

The vote by nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester is scheduled for Jan. 3, according to the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

The specific terms of the deal are being withheld until they can be shared with nurses and the ratification vote is held.

The tentative agreement between about 700 hundred nurses at the hospital and Tenet Healthcare, which is based in Dallas, was announced on Friday following mediation by U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, a former Boston mayor and labor leader.

This agreement, and the improvements it includes was hard fought, and represents a true victory, not only for the nurses, but more importantly, for our patients and our community, who will have access to better nursing care, which was why our members walked that strike line for the last nine months through four seasons, Marlena Pellegrino, St. Vincent nurse and co-chair of the bargaining unit, said in a statement.

The strike started on March 8, and according to the union, is the longest nurses' strike in state history.

The strike was originally over staffing levels, but later became about whether striking nurses would be able to return to their old jobs after the hospital started hiring replacements.

The hospital in a statement Friday said 700 nurses will be able to resume their old jobs and the nurses hired to replace them will also be able to retain their current positions.

"We are glad to finally end the strike and put our sole focus back on patient care, Carolyn Jackson, the hospital's chief executive, said Friday.

The union is now mailing the full agreement to all nurses for their review and will be holding in-person and online meetings over the next several days to ensure that members are informed about all aspects of the deal.

Meanwhile, the nurses have agreed to suspend picketing outside the hospital as a show of good faith," the union said.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Doling out pardons is a holiday tradition for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who around every Christmas grants them to a handful of ordinary citizens, typically for minor offenses committed years or decades ago.

But one name stands out on his desk: George Floyd.

Abbott has not said whether he will posthumously pardon Floyd this year for a 2004 drug arrest in Houston by a former officer whose police work is no longer trusted by prosecutors. Texas' parole board  stacked with Abbott appointees  unanimously recommended a pardon for Floyd in October.

Since then, the two-term Republican governor, who is up for reelection in 2022, has given no indication of whether he will grant what would be only the second posthumous pardon in Texas history. Floyd, who was Black, spent much of his life in Houston before moving to Minnesota, where his death under the knee of a white police officer last year led to a U.S. reckoning on race and policing.

It doesnt matter who you think George Floyd was, or what you think he stood for or didnt stand for, said Allison Mathis, a public defender in Houston who submitted Floyd's pardon application. What matters is he didnt do this. Its important for the governor to correct the record to show he didnt do this.

A spokeswoman for Abbott did not respond to requests for comment.

Pardons restore the rights of the convicted and forgive them in the eyes of the law. Floyds family and supporters said a posthumous pardon for him in Texas would show a commitment to accountability.

In February 2004, Floyd was arrested in Houston for selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting. He pleaded guilty to a drug charge and served 10 months in prison.

His case happened to be among dozens that prosecutors revisited in the fallout over a deadly drug raid in 2019 that resulted in murder charges against an officer, Gerald Goines, who is no longer with the Houston force. Prosecutors say Goines lied to obtain a search warrant in the 2019 raid that left a husband and wife dead, and the office of Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has since dismissed more than 160 drug convictions tied to Goines.

Goines has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys accuse Ogg of launching the review for political gain.

Abbott has several primary challengers from the far right, and his ongoing silence about a potential pardon for Floyd has raised questions by Mathis and others over whether political calculations are at play. His office has not responded to those charges.

Abbott attended Floyds memorial service last year in Houston, where he met with the family and floated the idea of a George Floyd Act that would take aim at police brutality. But Abbott never publicly supported such a measure months later when lawmakers returned to the Capitol, where Republicans instead made police funding a priority.

State Sen. Royce West, a Democrat who carried the George Floyd Act in the Senate, said he understands the politics if Abbott was waiting until after the GOP primary elections in March. But he said the governor should act on the recommendation.

As hes always said, he is a law and order governor," West said. And this would be following the law."

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Find APs full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd
SAN ANTONIO (AP)  A San Antonio man was sentenced to life in prison Monday after being convicted of killing an 11-month-old boy he was babysitting in 2017.

Last month, Bexar County jurors found Miguel Gutierrez, 27, guilty in the death of Xzavier Cortez. A judge sentenced him Monday.
Don Treeger/AP

CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  The trial for a truck driver charged with causing the deaths of seven motorcyclists in northern New Hampshire in 2019 is now expected to start in July  more than three years after the crash  to give the defense more time to find and work with a crash reconstruction expert.

Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 25, of West Springfield, Massachusetts, was days away from jury selection in November when his lawyers filed a motion saying they could no longer present their accident reconstruction expert at trial.
CAIRO (AP)  More than 160 migrants drowned in two separate shipwrecks off Libya over past week, a United Nations migration official said Tuesday. The fatalities were the latest disasters in the Mediterranean Sea involving migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

Safa Msehli, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration, said at least 102 migrants were reported dead after their wooden boat capsized off Libya on Friday. At least eight others were rescued and returned to shore, she said.

The second shipwreck took place Saturday. The Libyan coast guard retrieved at least 62 bodies of migrants, Msehli said. The same day, the coast guard intercepted a third wooden boat with at least 210 migrants on board, she said.

The new deaths have brought the tally in the central Mediterranean route to around 1,500 migrants drowned this year, Msehli said.

Recent months have seen a surge in crossings and attempted crossings from Libya as authorities accelerated their deadly crackdown on migrants in the capital of Tripoli.

Around 31,500 migrants were intercepted and returned to Libya in 2021, compared to nearly 11,900 migrants the previous year, according to the IOM. Around 980 migrants were dead or presumed dead in 2020, the U.N. agency said.

Libya has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. The oil-rich country plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

Human traffickers have benefited from the chaos in the oil-rich nation and smuggled migrants through the countrys lengthy border with six nations. They pack desperate migrants into ill-equipped rubber boats, then embark on risky voyages through the perilous Mediterranean Sea.

Those returned have been taken to detention centers rife with abuses, including forced labor, beatings, rapes and torture. The abuse often accompanies efforts to extort money from families before migrants are allowed to leave Libya on traffickers boats.

U.N.-commissioned investigators said in October that abuse and ill treatment of migrants in Libya could amount to crimes against humanity.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  The information technology agency that serves Virginias legislature is still working to fix problems caused by a ransomware attack earlier this month, a state official said Tuesday.

The attack substantially affected operations and occurred during preparations for a legislative session that is set to start Jan. 12.

Dave Burhop, executive director of Virginias Division of Legislative Automated Systems, told The Associated Press in an email that the agency's goal is to have the General Assembly session operational to the greatest extent possible."

Our technical, investigative and administrative teams have been working tirelessly, Burhop wrote.

Burhop said a full forensic analysis generally takes several weeks. And he said he hopes the initial analysis will be finished just after the New Year.

As of today, these teams continue to perform a meticulous, around-the-clock forensic analysis of our systems, servers and all connection points, Burhop wrote Tuesday.

The Division of Legislative Automated Systems, or DLAS, is the General Assemblys IT agency. The attack marks the latest in a ransomware scourge that has exploded over the past year, with attacks against governments, critical infrastructure and major corporations.

Cybersecurity researchers who track ransomware said earlier this month there was no previous record of a state legislature suffering an attack.

A top agency official told Virginia legislative leaders in an email obtained by The Associated Press last week that hackers using extremely sophisticated malware had accessed the system Dec. 10. A ransom note with no specific amount or date was sent, according to the email.

All of the agencys internal servers, including those for bill drafting, the budget system and the General Assembly voicemail system, were affected, the email said.

Anything to do with bill drafting or bill referrals  all of that has been impacted, Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar said earlier this month.

Brett Callow, a threat analyst at the firm Emsisoft, said Virginia is the 74th state or local government hit by ransomware attacks this year, though the first legislature hes ever seen attacked.

Honestly, Im surprised it hasnt happened before, Callow said.
Jael Ornelas, Arnoldo (A.J.) Montanez and Parker Tew were born in different parts of the country; however, when they met each other in Midland as young high school students, it all just seemed to click.

Now the trio enjoy spending time together attempting to find mathematical solutions to solve social problems while being mentored by MC Math Instructor Jamie Kneisley.

I moved to Midland when I was in the ninth grade, Ornelas said. A.J. was one of the first people I met at Midland Freshman School. Then we both were accepted into ECHS (Early College High School at Midland College) as 10th-grade transfer students.

It was in ECHS@MC that Ornelas and Montanez joined Tew in their affinity for math. They are now high school seniors taking dual-credit college courses at Midland College.

Last winter, Kneisley proposed to the three students that they enter the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC) research competition. They performed practice research projects during February and then in March were given the competition problem, which required students to develop a flight plan to Mars that focused on providing food to sustain a flight crew for an extended period of time and to develop a plan to maintain a future colony.

Jael and I were taking Trig from Ms. Kneisley, and we decided to do the competition as an honors project, Tew recalled. We convinced A.J., who was taking another math class to join us. I remember practicing during the February snowstorm. It gave us an opportunity to really concentrate on math modeling. It was the first time any of us had ever done anything like that.

When the team received the competition challenge problem, they immediately got to work and developed a plan for establishing agriculture, communication with Earth and maintenance. Their research contained a shipment plan for the amount of food needed for survival to sustain life for long periods and meals needed to last crewmembers for six months for the initial trip to Mars. It also included new shipments accompanied by two astronauts to last the crew a year. The teams meal plan consisted of variety and nutritional value. They also considered the cost of meals and ranked the meals on a variety-nutrient-cost scale, which examined the calorie intake of the astronauts. In addition, the project established hydroponics of kale, beets, potatoes and rainbow trout on Mars to create an intertwined ecosystem providing all the necessary nutrients required for survival while being self-sustaining and relying on minimal support from Earth. AMATYC selected the teams submission as one of the top-three submissions from the Southwest region.

When we told Ms. Kneisley that we wanted to enter the competition, we didnt have any idea what type of problem we would be given, Ornelas explained. It just so happened that this particular scenario about Mars and growing food appealed to our interests. I am from a farming family, and I enjoyed the farming aspect of the problem. A.J. and Parker like astronomy, so the Mars aspect really appealed to them.

When we started working together on the project, our work flowed and ebbed really well, Montanez said. We did a little bit of research, came up with a problem statement and then discussed a way to solve the problem.

This coming May, all three young men will not only graduate from high school at ECHS@MC, but also receive Associate of Science degrees from Midland College. They all want to pursue degrees in engineering with the hopes of transferring to Colorado School of Mines in August. Montanez is considering petroleum engineering; Tew wants to either become an aerospace or mechanical engineer; and Ornelas is interested in mechanical engineering with a biomedical specialization.

Engineers solve problems, Ornelas said. I want to be able to give back to my community by solving those problems.

By taking ECHS@MCs accelerated curriculum and obtaining an associate degree by the time they graduate from high school, Ornelas, Montanez and Parker will be able to have a bachelors degree in less than three years.

While they have decided to major in Engineering, they also have other interests. Both Tew and Ornelas enjoy computers. Ornelas prefers coding and networking, and Tews hobbies include building computers.

Ornales is also a self-taught musician and plays the guitar, drums, bass, ukulele and harmonica. He said that he picked up the guitar when he was 12 inspired by his father who is also a guitarist.

My outside interests are a little different from A.J.s and Jaels, Montanez said. Right now, all my spare time is centered around my Labradoodle puppy!

These three young men have been a pleasure to work with, Kneisley said. They are thoughtful, funny and engaging, and they make an excellent team, complementing each others strengths and weaknesses. The problems they used as practice for the competition problem included developing models to describe and evaluate the long-term feasibility of converting existing semi-truck fleets to electric fleets and determining the risks to the U.S. National Parks due to climate-related sea-level changes. Their projects have included a prioritization of funding when costs are incurred due to these changes.

Currently, they are working on a long-term project to develop a theoretical model to address factors leading to teacher attrition in MISD. They will be looking at factors related to school funding, the boom-and-bust cycle of the oil economy, and demographic and socioeconomic information for the Midland population as a whole and the student and teacher population of MISD, in particular.

They each seem to have a significant desire to better their environment, and the problems they have looked at during our time together are evidence of this. When creating the project for this year, they came up with several ideas but ultimately chose the teacher attrition problem because they thought, that even a theoretical solution would have the greatest impact on their community.

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Rebecca Bell is the executive director of Institutional Advancement at Midland College.
DEL RIO  George P. Bush stood less than the length of a football field from the Rio Grande in early December and pointed at the rivers calm current, which he said allowed for easy passage for migrants trying to cross into Texas from Mexico.

Wearing a white George P. Bush for Attorney General polo shirt and surrounded by Border Patrol agents, he said Texans all along the border are having their lands, livelihood and safety threatened by migrants and violent smugglers who trespass on their property.

That would be grounds for prosecution under state law, said Bush, currently the Texas land commissioner, who is running to be the states top law enforcement official. [But] we haven't promptly processed a lot of these cases that are being brought by private landowners, farmers [and] ranchers.

Bush said thats because fellow Republican incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton has failed to deploy resources to help overwhelmed county officials process the hundreds of migrants charged with state crimes, like trespassing, under Gov. Greg Abbotts executive order to crack down on immigration.

But under his leadership, Bush said, the attorney generals office would deploy a mobile prosecution unit to help local officials process and prosecute the border-crossers arrested for state crimes, he told reporters during a recently completed border tour.

Texans have through and through said this is the No. 1 issue wherever we traveled to the state, he said. Paxton declined to comment for this story.

As he ramps up his campaign to unseat Paxton, Bush is making border security one of his top priorities. In July, he used his authority as land commissioner to sue the Biden administration for halting construction of the border wall in South Texas. Last month, he authorized construction of a state-funded border wall on state land.

Current Texas Land Commissioner and candidate for attorney general George P. Bush speaks to National Border Patrol Council labor union reps on Dec. 7, in El Paso. Credit: Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune

Members of the Texas National Guard work 12 to 13-hour shifts guarding the Texas border wall, construction crews and materials near Del Rio on Dec. 8, 2021. Thousands of National Guard troops were deployed to Del Rio after an increase in migration at the southern border. Credit: Kaylee Greenlee Beal for The Texas Tribune

First: George P. Bush speaks to National Border Patrol Council labor union representatives in El Paso. Last: Members of the Texas National Guard work 12- to 13-hour shifts guarding the Texas border wall, construction crews and materials near Del Rio. Credit: Ivan Pierre Aguirre and Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune

Earlier this month, his campaign went on a Secure the Border tour through El Paso, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Laredo and McAllen that focused on the need for a border wall and stricter immigration enforcement by federal authorities. This weekend, Bush stood next to Abbott and other state lawmakers to tout the start of construction on a state-funded border wall on state land in Starr County.

But Bush isnt the only one in the crowded Republican primary race talking about the border. Political watchers say its a risk to pitch himself as the border candidate when Paxton has former President Donald Trumps endorsement and a record of suing the Biden and Obama administrations on immigration policies.

If youre someone who really cares about border security, youre probably pretty satisfied with Paxtons commitment there, so I dont know how much margin there is for him to gain, said Matt Mackowiak, a GOP political consultant. The land commissioner is playing catch-up.

The other two Republicans in the race, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Tyler, also support bolstering security at the border.

Guzman questioned Bushs ability to successfully tackle border issues, criticizing the land offices response to Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts and its struggles on the plan to redesign the Alamo.

The border is more than a photo op or a Republican Primary talking point, its an issue that affects Texas for decades to come and it will take an attorney with skill and experience to hold the Biden Administration accountable for fulfilling its responsibility and securing the border, Guzman said in a statement, pitching similar proposals. That is not George P. Bush.

Gohmert declined to comment for this story.

Republican officials throughout the state have blamed the Biden administrations policies for an increase in the number of migrants coming across the border this year. Nearly every month this year, Border Patrol has had more than 100,000 apprehensions at the countrys southwest border, with a high of 213,000 in July.

Republicans say that increase from the numbers seen during the Trump administration, which had a high of 144,000 apprehensions in May 2019, shows why the border wall must be completed and policies like remain in Mexico, which requires asylum-seekers to wait outside of the U.S. while their claims are processed, must stay in place. The Biden administration recently restarted the program after a federal judge ordered it.

Bush said hes the first candidate in the attorney general race who has proposed ideas to bolster how the state helps federal authorities deal with migrants. As attorney general, he said, he would free up state lawyers to aid local officials prosecuting migrants arrested for state offenses, and would institute tougher criminal penalties for drug smugglers and human traffickers.

The AG has got to lead on this, and thats where Ken, unfortunately, has not stepped up to the plate, he said, adding that Paxton is too busy dealing with his securities fraud indictment and an FBI investigation into accusations of malfeasance.

George P. Bush visits the border barrier that separates Sunland Park, New Mexico, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Credit: Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune

Political theater

To some, Bushs border security strategy appears to be a ploy to score points with immigration hardliners who often swing the Republican primaries.

Hes got to win over some social conservatives if he has any chance of winning the nomination, said Juan Carlos Huerta, a political scientist at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. [For] anybody seeking the Republican nomination for statewide office in Texas, if theyre not running tough on the border, theyre not going to do well.

His opponents have also taken notice of his focus on the issue. Rochelle Garza, a Brownsville Democrat who is running for attorney general, blasted his border visit as political theater that ignored the regions other serious problems.

George P. Bush, along with the rest of the Texas GOP, use the Rio Grande Valley and border communities as a scapegoat for their failed leadership, she said. As an RGV native, Ive seen what our communities need. We need Medicaid expansion, diversification of job opportunities, investment in infrastructure, including rural broadband, and affordable housing. We deserve better than to be treated as a pawn for the GOPs divisive politics.

But Bush said he has always supported tough border security and immigration enforcement. Those who question his commitment to the issue, he said, have not been paying attention.

He points to his endorsement by the National Border Patrol Council, the Border Patrols 18,000-member union, as proof that he has backed up his talk with action. Brandon Judd, the unions president, said Bush has long pushed for the state to become more involved in helping federal immigration authorities deter migrant crossings.

This has been an issue for him for an awful long time, not just during the election, Judd said. This is something that hes wanted to accomplish from day one. Thats the reason why we supported him.

George P. Bush visits the border barrier that separates Sunland Park, New Mexico, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Credit: Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune

Border balancing act

Bushs border tour also gives him an opportunity to visit with conservative Latino voters hes cultivated for years in the Rio Grande Valley  ones who, like him, want tougher border security.

George P. is counting on South Texas and the RGV to be a major area where he can overperfrom in the March primary, Mackowiak said. It gives him the opportunity to earn media, show them hes in their community and hes focused on issues that affect their lives.

But it also forces him into a careful balancing act between playing up his border security credentials and the vision hes pushed for years of a more diverse GOP.

Bush is the son of a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico. During his eight years as land commissioner, hes at times been outspoken about the Republican Partys need to reach out to voters of color and has expressed compassion for immigrants.

In the aftermath of the El Paso shooting in 2019, the suspected shooter told authorities he wanted to stop the Hispanic invasion of Texas. Bush was the first GOP official to denounce the attack as domestic terrorism by a white extremist.

But hes also engaged in tough-on-immigration rhetoric that blames the Biden administrations border policies for what he called disorder, anarchy and chaos at the border. In July, he tweeted a video of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers chasing a car full of migrants near the border and wrote, This level of invasion is unsustainable.

Critics drew parallels between Bushs language and that of the El Paso shooter. He later walked back the comment, saying it lacked eloquence and was meant to refer to the violence of drug smugglers and human traffickers.

Still, Bush is confident he can straddle the line between growing the Republican tent and securing the border.

I think you can do both, Bush said, adding that the Mexican trade that fuels much of Texas border economies depends on safe borders.

I am the son of a legal immigrant, he told reporters in Spanish. If you want to come here and be part of our great country, you have to respect the law.

That response is in line with the establishment GOPs thinking on immigration, which Bushs family helped popularize at the turn of the century through its call for compassionate conservatism. Bushs uncle, former Texas Gov. George W. Bush, pushed for comprehensive immigration reform as president in 2007 that included a path to legalization for unauthorized immigrants.

But the Republican Partys views on the issues have shifted to the right in the years since, Mackowiak said, and George P. Bushs stance on immigration enforcement has always been tougher than that if his uncle or father, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Thats not a question, Mackowiak said. But the question Republican voters are going to ask is, Is he more conservative than the attorney general? I dont think hes saying that. Hes saying, Im going to give you a better option without the scandals and the legal troubles.

A U.S. Border Patrol airboat patrols the Rio Grande alongside shipping containers that form a makeshift border wall in Eagle Pass. Credit: Nick Wagner for The Texas Tribune

Is border enforcement working?

During his tour, Bush stopped at an unfenced part of the border in Laredo where officials say Border Patrol is understaffed and overwhelmed by frequent border crossings. In Del Rio, he visited the site of an encampment of more than 10,000 Haitians in June that brought the city to a halt. Then he visited part of former President Donald Trumps unfinished border wall.

In Eagle Pass, he toured the so-called Steel Curtain, a makeshift barrier of shipping containers backed up by razor-wire fencing on the banks of the Rio Grande that is meant to deter migrant crossings. The barrier is on city property in between Eagle Pass two international bridges, which account for nearly half of the citys yearly revenue.

What does this do for the mayor, for the city manager, for the City Council, if you suddenly have another caravan of 20,000 folks shut down the bridge and close down the economy? Bush said, recounting the havoc Del Rio officials said the Haitian migrant camp wrought on the citys economy.

George P. Bush listens to National Border Patrol Union Local 2455 members Chris Cabrera and Oscar Vela in Laredo as they explain how the area is monitored. Credit: Danny Zaragoza for The Texas Tribune

As he visited with National Guard soldiers deployed to the border by Abbott, law enforcement officials spotted a group of people on the Mexican side of the river scouting a potential crossing. They opted against it after noticing the soldiers tracking them through binoculars.

Bush says its proof that the deterrence tools are working.

But Scott Nicol, a McAllen activist who opposes a border wall, said the barriers are ineffective because a majority of border crossers are asylum-seekers looking to turn themselves in to federal authorities.

They walk to it and stay there to get picked up by the Border Patrol, Nicol said. It doesnt deter anybody. It doesnt stop anybody. And the people coming arent bad people anyway. Its a fake issue.

The humane thing to do is to say OK, we have asylum seekers coming, they need our assistance, lets try and help them out, he added.

Bushs border tour garnered much media attention in the cities he visited, with the land commissioner easily gliding between English and Spanish at press conferences. But Bush said he wasnt worried about convincing anyone about his border security credentials.

I'm not going to pander, he said. I'm just going to go with my agenda, my focus, and people can join us and restore integrity to this important position.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Teeradej Srikijvilaikul /TNS

Did you know that Apple and Android phones have had COVID-19 contact tracing apps built into their operating systems? No? Well it doesn't matter, because Texas will not let residents use the system anyway. This might be particularly troubling as the omicron variant looms.

Texas is one of 29 current states that hasn't opted to use the COVID-19 Exposure Notifications program that launched in May 2020, which will tell iPhone and Android phone users whether they were exposed to someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. The notifications, assuming a smartphone allows them, utilize third-party apps promoted by public health officials.
"Analysis: A rose by any other name could stink up the Texas ballot" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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Texas Republicans are going to start the 2022 election cycle with an IQ test, asking voters whether they really know anything about their candidates for governor.

The incumbent, Greg Abbott, is seeking a third four-year term against six opponents in the Republican primary, including one who will appear on the ballot as Rick Perry.

This is not the Rick Perry who served in state government from 1985-2015 as a state representative, agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor and governor, and then as the energy secretary on Donald Trumps cabinet.

This is another one: Ricky Lynn Perry, a computer engineer from Springtown, a town northwest of Fort Worth, in Parker County.

Theres some grumbling that the candidate is tinkering with his name, trying to fool voters.

But name games are pretty common, even without the busy hands of political tricksters. Lots of candidates run under names that dont match their official records. James Richard Perry is the full name of the former governor with whom Ricky Lynn is likely to be confused. Texas Democrats have a candidate for governor known to his friends, family and most of the voters as Beto, though his full name is Robert Francis ORourke. The state has a U.S. senator whose name is Rafael Eduardo Cruz, who is better known as Ted.

Ballots are full of out-of-the-ordinary names. In 2018, one of Abbotts primary opponents was SECEDE Kilgore. All capital letters and everything. His friends know him as Larry. And he was the choice of 1.3% of the states GOP primary voters that year.

Even so, having Rick Perry on the ballot is at least as worrisome as having a Don Huffines or an Allen West there  not to mention Paul Belew, Danny Harrison, Kandy Kaye Horn and Chad Prather. Huffines is a former state senator from Dallas. West is a former chair of the Texas Republican Party and a one-term congressman from Florida. Theyve been the noisiest of Abbotts challengers, generating attention with everything from billboards (Huffines) to rallies outside the Governors Mansion and elsewhere (West).

Abbott is no Taylor Swift, but hes well known to Republican voters, a regular name on their statewide ballots since the mid-1990s, when he became a justice on the Texas Supreme Court.



GOVERNOR'S DESK: Will Gov. Abbott pardon George Floyd this Christmas?

It would take very bad news  like a winter storm knocking out the electric grid  or a bigger name on the ballot to make him vulnerable in a party primary.

Thats why Rick Perry is going to be a test. Incumbents always get some no votes, even in their own primaries. And well-known challengers are a real threat. In his last race for governor, Perry faced U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and the lesser-known Debra Medina, and managed to hold onto 51.2% of the vote.

This isnt exactly the same thing. That was the real Kay Bailey Hutchison, not just an unknown with a good political name. And Perry, by that time, had accumulated the cuts and bruises of a longtime officeholder. By that point in his career, some Texas voters were looking for someone new.

Abbott led the Republicans on the ballot in 2018, getting 90.4% in the Republican primary and 55.8% of the vote in the general election. Hes the favorite again in 2022. In an October University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, Abbott led Democrat Beto ORourke by 9 percentage points in a hypothetical general election matchup, and 56% of Republican voters said they would vote to give Abbott the nomination.

An incumbent would like to do better than that, and Abbott certainly expects to  even if a famous name was added to the race at the last minute.

Hell have to take any Rick Perry seriously  even if he wont do so in a public way. If a candidate named SECEDE Kilgore can get 20,501 votes in a Republican primary, anything can happen.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/20/texas-election-rick-perry/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Gov. Greg Abbott has announced an additional $38.4 million will go toward his "Operation Lone Star" just days after construction broke ground his state-funded border wall. Abbott in a news release Monday said his Public Safety Office will award the additional funds for law enforcement, jail operations, and court administration activities for the program.

The office has already dedicated $74.8 million in funds since the operation began in March, including $22.3 million for projects that prosecute border crimes and provide prosecution resources, $14 million to enhance interagency border security operations, and $100,000 to provide training, technical assistance and coordination planning activities for border sheriffs, according to the news release.

"From deterring illegal immigration, to preventing the smuggling of drugs and weapons, to curtailing human trafficking, the deployment of resources and personnel needed to arrest and jail criminals along the border is imperative to our comprehensive border security strategy under Operation Lone Star," Abbott said in the news release. "This additional funding will strengthen our response to the border crisis and ensure our law enforcement and local partners have the resources they need to keep our communities safe in the federal government's absence."

Approximately $19.5 million of the funding will go toward law enforcement equipment and supplies such as patrol vehicles, interoperable radios, surveillance equipment, bulletproof vests, thermal/night vision technology and search and rescue equipment, the release said. Another $16 million will fund overtime, contract, and salaried peace officers, jailers, prosecutors, indigent defense counsel and administrative court staff.

About $1.9 million will be designated to the construction of regional emergency communication/radio towers, as well as additional capacity in county jail facilities, according to the release. Approximately $800,000 will cover travel costs associated with non-border counties providing law enforcement assistance to border disaster-declared counties, as well as specialized training for law enforcement and prosecution personnel.

Operation Lone Star has been heavily criticized by immigrant and civil rights organizations. Last Wednesday, 10 of these organizations filed a joint 50-page complaint with the Department of Justice outlining the border arrest programs discriminatory nature.

Despite any disapproval, as part of the program Abbott Saturday debuted the first stretch of his state-funded border wall in Starr County, which would finish off the wall started by the Trump administration at the Texas-Mexico border. Approximately 888 feet of barrier have been installed so far, according to the Texas Tribune.

In September, Abbott's office allocated $250 million of state money as a down payment for the wall, while lawmakers approved $750 million for border barriers during one of the legislative sessions this year. The Tribune reports approximately $54 million in private donations has also been collected for the project, mostly from Timothy Mellon, a chair of Pan Am Systems, a privately-held transportation and freight holding company.
December is traditionally the month where small children rip the wrapping paper off the stack of presents under the tree, but this year its the month where all of Seattles new restaurants are ripping the brown paper off their windows and opening their doors to the public.

Its been a busy month for the area, which gained a vegan Vietnamese restaurant, a Japanese-Peruvian spot and a dessert shop selling ice cream bowls that look like Muppets, among so much more.

Read on to see whats opened since our previous roundup in early November and what's coming soon.

Open: Roji Monster Ice Cream

The first U.S. location of this Taiwanese dessert shop that makes ice cream into monster faces softly opened in early December. The menu offers a standard spread of Taiwanese-style coffee and tea, toast, and soft serve ice cream, but the signature comes with googly eyes. Shaved ice, stacked in the shape of a furry monster face, complete with eyes, comes in a handful of flavors and colors, including green Uji matcha and purple sweet potato, plus a choice of two toppings, like rice dumplings, honeycomb or mango passionfruit jam.

Open: Jackalope

The long-awaited Tex-Mex spot from Jacks BBQ now serves the owners famous Texas brisket in enchilada form, alongside a full menu of Texas-style treats like San Antonio puffy tacos and chile con queso. But theres also a few Pacific Northwest treats on the menu, like a ceviche tostada made with local rockfish and a campechana  think seafood cocktail  with Dungeness Crab and wild Texas shrimp. The drink menu toes a similar line with plenty of mezcal and the Lone Star State classic of ranch water.

Open: The Cottage Bakery

After years of honing his craft in his home kitchen and pop-up bakery, Conor ONeill opened the doors to his Edmonds shop this month, giving more consistent access to his sourdoughs, pretzels, shortbreads, and chocolate chunk rye cookies. The new shop also sells take-and-bake pizza dough and currently offers a slate of Christmas treats available for pre-order, including pumpkin pie and coffee cake.

Open: Dick's Drive-In, Bellevue

While Seattle still mourns the (temporary) loss of the beloved burger chains Capitol Hill location, the Eastside finally gets a permanent location after years of driving across the water and months of a food truck serving the famous specials. The eighth outlet of the local treasure opened its doors at Crossroads Mall this week with a grand celebration as befits the first Bellevue venture for the company since 1974.

Open: Stumbletown Ballard

The nickname for this small pocket neighborhood at the corner of 3rd Avenue N.W. and N.W. 65th Street makes a delightfully fitting moniker for the casual bar and sandwich shop that opened earlier this fall. A big patio and a short but sweet list of tap beers and wines by the glass make it a hot spot to settle in for an Italian-style sandwich on Seawolf bread. Currently, they serve the sandwiches just Friday to Sunday, but the bar is open with a food truck on-site on Thursdays  recently Where Ya At Matt and Pecos Pit.

Open: Founders Club

As part of its huge $25 million remodel, Downtowns historic Fairmont Olympic Hotel created a speakeasy-inspired new reservations-only bar. Hidden behind a bookcase, it features lots of rich colors and leather seating for the 30 guests allowed in at a time and cocktails by well-respected local bartender Jesse Cyr. If youve ever wondered what a $70 cocktail tastes like, this is the bar for you  though they do have some less-shockingly priced selections, with the featured cocktails averaging around $30.

Open: Made in House

The owners of Georgetowns Bopbox took over the central Fremont space from Silence Heart Nest and features a counter-service dining room similar to Bopboxs and also a new concept that is a takeout deli featuring Korean classics like gimbap, japchae, salads, and soups. Heartier offerings include the Made Daily plate featuring an assortment of their deli case that day, a daily bento and bibimbap, but all parts of Made in House focus on  as the name implies  scratch-made foods, especially those honoring the owners Korean heritage and local, seasonal ingredients.

Open: Electric Cello

Slipping into Georgetown quietly late this fall, this sweet bistro from the Oola Distillery folks uses their acclaimed spirits as the inspiration for small plates. Cocktail flights paired with appetizers, oyster and vodka pairings, and Nordic-influenced dishes like broccolini with lingonberry and grilled citrus pesto bring fresh ideas to the space previously occupied by Hitchcock Deli.

Open: Crackle Mi

Joining an increasingly honed genre of crisp Vietnamese fast casual restaurants (Sizzle & Crunch, Banh Town, Banh Mi Deluxe, Mr. Saigon) around the city, a slight enhancement of the classic banh mi shops, Crackle Mi opened in the former Gather space in Ballard in November. Beyond the large menu of sandwiches, rice bowls, big salads, and noodles, this spot earns kudos for the comforting house soup with spareribs and radishes.

Nguyen H. via Yelp

Open: Ba Bar Green

One of the citys best-known Vietnamese restaurants opened this vegan walk-up window on the side of their South Lake Union shop. The grab-and-go plant-based menu departs from the classic Vietnamese dishes served at Ba Bars other restaurants, branching into Lao cuisine with crispy rice salad, Malaysian Laksa, and Korean garlic and kimchi fried rice.

Opening: Bake Shop

This bakery, cafe, and mini-mart in Uptown opened this week and is ready to serve its spelt focaccia and Yukon gold potato rolls with mustard, ham, and sharp cheddar to customers. The intriguing sounding menu includes herby Caesars and chickpea salad on a roll among the pastries, wine and sandwiches. But bring your own cup, as one of the focuses of this new shop is minimal waste.

Opening soon: Senor Carbon Peruvian Cuisine

This pop-up gone permanent officially begins welcoming customers to its Pioneer Square location on December 22, offering Seattle a menu full of traditional Peruvian foods  including the Nikkei and Chifa dishes that come from the country long history of immigration from Japan and China, respectively. The soft opening menu gives a peek at the variety of dishes, including a traditional ceviche with plantain chips, tuna nigiri served with crispy quinoa, and a creamy pasta huancaina with grilled shrimp.
If youve been searching for tickets to the sold out JoJo Siwa concert in Houston, youre in luck. Weve rounded up tickets you can still buy safely online at fairly reasonable prices. The JoJo Siwa D.R.E.A.M. The Tourwith special guests, The Bellesconcert event in Houston is all set for January 29; all thats missing is you.

By using online ticket resellers like Vivid Seats, StubHub, and Ticketmaster, you can buy authentic sold out event tickets at major Houston venues without the worry of being scammed. For detailed information on the guarantees provided by these online ticket marketplaces, keep scrolling.

How to buy tickets to the JoJo Siwa D.R.E.A.M. The Tour concert

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Stubhub customers get valid tickets to any event or their money back with the Stubhub Fan Protect Guarantee. Even if an issue arises with your order, the customer service team at Stubhub works to find replacement tickets for you. If your event is canceled and not rescheduled, you can count on receiving either a credit worth 120% of the amount you paid for the event or a cash refund. The choice is yours.

COVID-19 Protocols at the Toyota Center

Houstons Toyota center strongly encourages all attendees to the JoJo Siwa D.R.E.A.M. concert to wear masks, although its not required. On December 20, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo raised the COVID-19 threat level to orange, so be sure to check the JoJo Siwa concert page for the most up-to-date information about these protocols. Additionally, the Toyota Center will attempt to send updates to ticketholders via your registered email.

More information about the JoJo Siwa D.R.E.A.M. tour

If your kids love rocking out to Boomerang, Hold the Drama, and Kid in a Candy Store this event is the perfect Christmas, actually after-Christmas gift! They will have the honor of joining JoJo Siwa on her first-ever live concert tour as she brings D.R.E.A.M. The Tour to Houston. You wouldnt want to miss this opportunity to have your little ones crown you the best mom (or dad) in the whole wide world, would you?

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Micolette Davis is the Managing Curator for Local Commerce at Hearst Newspapers. Email her at micolette.davis@hearst.com.
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AI and big data analytics are allowing healthcare providers in the Middle East to make faster, more cost-effective diagnostics, according to a broad cross-section of healthcare professionals. Along with the increasing use of AI and big data, though, security concerns about data privacy are also growing.

AI is one of the fastest growing segments of the global healthcare market today. According to Frost & Sullivan forecasts, it will reach US$6.6 billion by the end of this year. Such growth rates are possible thanks to the huge amounts of data generated by a wide variety of devices, which can be analysed and acted on.

In the Middle East, healthcare professionals attest to the effectiveness and increasing usage of AI.

We started the digital transformation journey last year with the focus on technology being the core to the foundation of the American Hospital. Weve teamed up with some big names like Oracle and Microsoft to build a new level of intelligence when it comes to models, said Ahmad Yahya, CIO of American Hospital Dubai.

The hospitals IT team created a new COVID diagnostics application built on its clinical database and modelling from Cerner. It was customised and validated by the clinical staff at the hospital intensive care unit, and helped identify risk factors for patients, as well as in deciding who would go to the ICU.

Two other AI-based diagnostic applications are aimed at identifying asthma patients and predicting whether emergency patients will go to an in-patient ward.

We are currently working on all these AI models with one of them, the COVID one, having been already validated, while the other two are close to being validated. We are also working on going live early next year with real-time monitoring of patients sentiments, satisfaction, and (hospital) capacity, which can serve to help allocate resources, Yahyah disclosed earlier this year, at the Arab Health 2021 event in Dubai.

With a wealth of historical medical records available for analysis, AI can be helpful in making a diagnosis and choosing an appropriate treatment, providing the doctor with a third opinion, healthcare professionals say. AI applications are able to analyse all available medical information about a specific disease, and find out which treatments and drugs have been the most effective in the entire history of medical practice.

Big data fuels growth of AI applications

Medicine is a data-rich field in which accuracy is perhaps the most critical factor. The more data that algorithms process, the more accurately and correctly they will be able to formulate conclusions based on them. Meanwhile, different types of technology in use today are generating an increasing volume of health data, according to Massimo Cannizzo, CEO of Gellify, a venture capital company that in October launched a US$50 million fund with management group Azimut to invest in companies providing healthcare and emerging technology in the Middle East.

There are, for example, various wearable devices that are gaining popularity and generating health information, including portable heart rate and blood pressure monitors  devices that can continuously monitor your heart rate or blood sugar.

As their cost decreases and the functionality of the already popular fitness bracelets expands, AI-based diagnostic systems will receive even more data on the health of each individual patient, giving the doctor the opportunity to more accurately and efficiently prescribe a treatment plan.

The rise of so-called augmented healthcare is demonstrated by the growth figures of wearables market in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, where 25% of the adult population is expected to be using a wearable device by 2022, according to Cannizzo.

AI for disease, workflow optimisation

Algorithms and AI models  programmes or sets of algorithms that use a set of data to recognise patterns and perform tasks  are constantly improving, and this progress is already finding expression in specific applications in the medical field.

AI will not only help make clinical assessments, but will also streamline operations and workflow, according to Kentaro Suzuki, general manager at medical equipment maker Canon Medical. For example, it can shorten the scan time in MRI, Suzuki said.

We believe AI is a tool for the medical profession in order to improve the current capability of the imaging equipment, Suzuki said.

AI applications can analyse medical images and find early signs of a disease that a doctor may not notice. It will never replace humans or directly diagnose patients, Suzuki said. The third opinion that AI can offer, though, is especially relevant for oncological diseases, in which an early start of treatment can significantly improve the prognosis for a speedy recovery.

The role of AI in genomics

AI can also change the way we think about genetics, and push the boundaries of genomics research. Recent research shows that an artificial neural network is capable of identifying and detecting patterns in large amounts of genetic data, thus revealing groups and sequences of genes associated with specific diseases.

Since diseases are encoded in the genetic sequence of a person, the ability to understand genetic information at the most detailed level is currently the key to determining how to treat them.

Advances in genomics have been difficult to make due to the complexity of genetic data. Thanks to the ability of AI to classify and analyse a wide range of data in a short period of time, though, practitioners now expect breakthroughs in genomic study.

I think we are all shifting towards more automated work flows and smart technologies, including in genomics by default because we generate large amount of data that is impossible to manually assess and to make sense of, said Prof. Walid Mohammad Abuhammour, clinical molecular geneticist, director of the genomics centre at Al Jalila Childrens Specialty Hospital, and associate professor of genetics at Mohammed bin Rashid University.

AI can, in particular, make headway in helping to cure rare diseases. Some 80% of the so-called rare diseases are genomic, with 50% of them found in children, noted Joshua Symons, director of data strategy at Genomics England.

We want to embed the combination of AI and genomics into routine medical care to approve outcomes and therapies for patients to discover new drugs and improve lives on a national scale, Symons said.

These types of approaches, embedded into routine clinical medicine, will enable decision support systems to determine what the best therapies are for patients, who, for example, now can perform diabetes blood tests at home, Symons said. Technology is evolving that will allow cancer patients to take their own blood sample and have the ctDNA(circulating tumor DNA) analysed to determine whether they are responding to treatment, he said.

AI security concerns on the rise

As an increasing number of companies apply emerging technologies such as AI and robotics to healthcare, however, concerns about security and patient privacy are on the rise.

We have a lot of companies in digital health and many of them use AI. We also have companies that use surgical robots or manufacture robotics. The number of those companies is increasing, said Marwan Janahi, managing director of Dubai Science Park (DSP), created to position the UAE as a major destination for research and development.

There are more than 400 companies at DSP, with over 4,000 people working there and the healthcare sector is constantly evolving, Janahi said. The role of AI in healthcare is increasingly important, but at the same time healthcare professionals should be very careful about the information concerning patients and how their privacy is secured, he said.

There are a variety of ways to approach security for patient data. For instance, the UAE ICT law that was issued in January 2019 requires patient data to be stored in the country, where there are very strict data protection laws, Janahi said.

The data should be owned by the patient, but the same time there is a need for flexibility because sometimes there is a need to share information with other parts of the world to advance healthcare knowledge, and to get second opinions, Janahi pointed out.

Healthcare officials should take a variety of approaches toward data security, said American Hospitals Yahyah. We use a typical approach when it comes to cybersecurity, like having firewalls, etc. But the weakest link is your people and what is really important is [security] awareness, which is critical to us, he said.

As a preventive measure the hospital does some mock demo attacks to raise awareness among its people within the enterprise, he said.

More AI training is needed

While healthcare has evolved to be one of humanitys great success stories due to advances in medicine and technology, at the same time it is in a crisis because of challenges it is facing, said Khalid Ghaloua Adine, director of solutions marketing for digital healthcare at Etisalat Digital.

While life expectancy is higher today than ever before, there is a huge shortage of healthcare professionals to cover the demand. There is also a concern on how to manage and control costs. Thats the reason why healthcare professionals seek new technologies that can optimise costs and support human caregivers, he said.

To be prepared for the challenges ahead, there is a need for more data scientists, data governance engineers, and other types of roles. In addition to CIOs, why not a chief AI officer? Adine asked.

Healthcare organisations should look ahead at skill sets they need to have in the future, he suggested.

For the last 20 years we have been generating data that will need a huge number of people to process it. If we dont have people with the right set of skills to interpret and model that information then we will not be able to overcome those challenges, Adine said.
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Over the weekend, the first Fox News Sunday of the post-Chris Wallace era made headlines thanks to one of its guests: Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia. Bret Baier, in as a guest host, asked Manchin about the status of the Build Back Better bill, a package of social and climate spending that is a crucial part of President Bidens agenda and already passed the House, but has stalled in the Senate as Manchin, the key vote, has dragged his feet. Ive always said this, Bret: if I cant go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I cant vote for it, Manchin said. And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just cant. Baiers eyebrows visibly shot up. Youre done? he asked. This is this is a no? Manchin confirmed that this is a no on this legislation. The political mediasphere quickly went into overdrive. As Niall Stanage, The Hills White House columnist, noted, the Fox hit was the third time that Manchin, Democratic senator from one of the nations poorest states, has used a right-of-center news outlet to punch a hole in Bidens agenda, having recently also done so via the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal and an executive summit hosted by the same paper.

Manchin did not give Baier advance warning that he would be committing news on his show; nor, apparently, did he give the White House or top Congressional Democrats much of a heads up, informing them of his impending remarks half an hour before he went on air, and only then through an aide. A few hours later, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, hit back in a blistering statement that was reportedly authorized by Biden himself, claiming that Manchin had been privately on board with a sizable spending package as recently as a few days prior, and effectively accusing him of lying. The Dem-on-Dem drama, inevitably, proved irresistible to political reporters, and multi-bylined postmortems of Biden and Manchins working relationship quickly ensued. At yesterdays White House briefing, reporters barraged Psaki with questions on the same theme: What was the rationale behind her statement? Did the White House regret its treatment of Manchin? After taking Senator Manchin to the woodshed, would the White House now reach out to him? Had Biden done so already? Did Biden feel betrayed by his friend? (Im not going to relitigate the tick-tock of yesterday, Psaki said, before repeatedly referring back to her statement.) Psaki was also asked if shed read an op-ed by Steve Clemons, of The Hill, making the case that the White Houses incivility was to blame for losing Manchin. Politico splashed Clemonss claim, referring to him as the Manchin whisperer.

New from CJR: Misinformation and the saga of Paul is Dead

Not that the press really needed a Manchin whispererby this point, hed spoken again for himself, not to Fox or the Journal, but on MetroNews, a West Virginia radio station where the host, Hoppy Kercheval, asked Manchin to explain himself to his voters. Manchin replied that while other Democrats had figured they could simply badger and beat [him] up to get his vote, Im from West VirginiaIm not from where theyre from, where they can just beat the living crap out of people and think theyll be submissive. Manchin also seemed to suggest that, for all his hurt feelings, he was never really likely to vote through Build Back Better in the first place, and some media commentators have since suggested that his fellow Democrats were naive to ever think that they could get him to yes; Elana Schor, Politicos Congress editor, accused them of magical thinking. If this is the case (and its not totally clear if or how it is, more on which below), then some members of the presswho have spent months glued to Manchins every utterance, and centered him in political coverage to a (sometimes literally) absurd degreemight be guilty of the same. Manchin is a powerful figure, sitting as he does at the center of an evenly divided Senate, and his stances merit close media scrutiny. As Ive written before, he also sits at the center of less obviously useful storylines that are nonetheless catnip to many journalists: intraparty drama and the appearance of inter-party dialogue.

As Ive also written, recent coverage of Manchin reflects broader problems with coverage of Bidens domestic agenda as a whole: too much of it has obsessed over personalities, topline cost estimates, and procedural jargon, while too little coverage has elucidated the crucial stakes of the policies Biden is proposing, not least to counter the climate crisis. There has been coverage of these stakes, including around climateat the height of a previous Manchin-fueled news cycle, for instance, major news outlets reported on the effects of climate change in West Virginia and Manchins deep financial ties to the states coal industrybut climate has been nowhere near as central as it should be to coverage of Bidens agenda, especially on TV. Weve seen a similar pattern in the latest burst of Manchin coverage. Major outlets ran sharp stories, including around Manchins history of fighting key climate bills; even Baier, on Fox News Sunday, asked him about his coal interests. Elsewhere, the climate story has gotten woefully lost amid the media focus on mudslinging. By my count, across six hours of programming yesterday evening, Manchins name was mentioned nearly a hundred fifty times on CNN; the word climate was mentioned ten times. At the White House briefing, just one reporter asked Psaki whether, without Build Back Better, Biden can hit the climate targets hes set for 2030.

Similar dynamics apply to coverage of the social-spending provisions in the bill, many of which have been largely ignored at the top levels of the news cycle, others of whichthe extension of Bidens child tax credit, for exampleare often covered, in political journalism, more as sticking points or polling issues than real money that affects real families. It is important, of course, to cover sticking points because policies only have an impact if they become law. But coverage organized around legislative inflection points, and not the policies themselves, can drive a perception of the process that feels untethered and circular, which in turn can affect lawmakers incentives to act or not. And it can be easy to overreact to individual inflection points in isolation. Much of the early coverage of Manchins Fox interview was highly finalistic, but that tone has since given way to greater uncertainty, with reporters and opinionators debating whether Build Back Better is really dead yet, and Politico reporting that Manchin and Biden have now spoken and share a sense that talks will resume in some form. On MSNBC last night, Lawrence ODonnell suggested that while the press heard Manchin say no on Fox, Biden, a former senator himself, will have heard Manchin say no on this legislation. (Emphasis mine.)

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On Sunday, in the aftermath of the Fox interview, Politicos Playbook newsletter concluded that Build Back Better is dead. The only question is whether some new, more Manchin-shaped bill can be revived that salvages some key pieces of the Biden climate and social policy agenda. This is actually a pretty crucial questionultimately, Build Back Better is a slogan, and the death of a slogan isnt really important. The huge scope of the bill has long defied media attempts to communicate its stakes in shorthand so its understandable that we fell back on its name, but the individual policies have always mattered most and that will remain the case going forward, whatever rubric they fall under. The bills ambitious sweep has often been lauded by its supporters, but its also true that the sweep is a consequence of Americas dysfunctional political system; in many other democracies, policy priorities get passed one at a time, which makes it easier for the press to scrutinize them in individual detail. The American press must do this work of disentanglement itself. Even if its easier to stick to what Joe Manchin said on Fox.

Below, more on Build Back Better, Manchin, and Biden:



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: The Omicron surge and the illusion of individualism

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Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.
OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma could be years away from paying billions of dollars to address the U.S. opioid crisis after a judge blew up a deal that gave legal immunity to the Sackler family that owned the company, people close to the negotiations said.

In a surprise ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan found that a bankruptcy judge overstepped his authority by approving the plan that gave the Sacklers immunity in return for $4.5 billion for those harmed by Purdue.

The deal had been hammered out over two years by U.S. states, local governments and others who had filed thousands of lawsuits accusing Purdue and the Sacklers of aggressively marketing OxyContin while downplaying its addiction and overdose risks.

The company and family members have denied the allegations.

Purdue said it will appeal McMahons ruling, which it said would not impact its operations but will delay or even end the ability of states and others to receive billions of dollars.

Representatives for the Sackler family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Eight hold-out states and the U.S. Department of Justices bankruptcy watchdog had challenged the plan in part because of the legal protections it granted the Sacklers. The appeal process wont end with McMahon, who encouraged the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review her decision.

The family has come under scrutiny for withdrawing $10 billion from Purdue between 2008 and 2017.

The Sacklers have said almost half the money went to paying taxes, but opponents of the plan allege the withdrawals strengthened the familys hand in bankruptcy negotiations and gave them leverage to demand legal immunity.

Purdue has been estimated to be worth around $2 billion without the Sackler contribution, making their participation critical.

Those involved in the case doubt a new deal could be agreed before the appeals court weighs in, a process that could take up to 18 months given the importance of the issue of so-called nondebtor releases in corporate bankruptcy cases.

Ryan Hampton, who served through most of the bankruptcy as the co-chair of the unsecured creditors committee, a key player in the deal negotiations, said there were talks earlier this year on a plan that excluded a Sackler contribution.

It was almost dead on arrival, he said. It will very hard to negotiate something before the 2nd Circuit decides because Ive seen it live and in-person trying to negotiate a deal without a Sackler contribution, he said.

If the plan had gone into effect, it would have started providing funds to state and local governments and others to address the damage caused to communities reeling from the opioid epidemic, which has claimed 500,000 lives since 1999.

The appeals might not end at the 2nd Circuit, as Washingtons attorney general has vowed to take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, a process that could add another year.

Even then, resolving the question of Sackler immunity might require sending the entire deal negotiation back to the bankruptcy court to start over.

There is also the possibility the Sacklers kick in more money, something the family did during the bankruptcy process to win over about a dozen states.

Maybe the Sacklers put up more money and maybe the objecting parties drop the objections and we reach unanimity, said Scott Bickford, who represented a committee of children born dependent on opioids, a plan supporter.

The bankruptcy court judge, Robert Drain, said he approved the plan including immunity for the family in part because it was unclear whether the Sacklers could be held liable and uncertain if judgments against them could be collected.

The family has used trusts organized in the Bailiwick of Jersey, in the Channel Islands between England and France, among other jurisdictions, to hold their wealth, according to McMahons opinion.

Bickford said any plan without Sackler funds leaves Purdue with less money and victims with difficult legal claims.

Essentially everyone takes a haircut and then we pursue the Sacklers for 100 years, he said.
Employers may be warming up to the idea that fighting some workers compensation claims and medical treatments can be counterproductive, and new emphasis should be placed on keeping injured workers happy  and out of the courtroom.

The workers comp system should be self-executing and so many times, its not, said Michele Adams, vice president of risk management for Walmart.

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Adams spoke Monday at the Workers Compensation Institutes 75th annual educational conference in Orlando, which organizers said is the largest gathering of workers comp professionals in the country. The opening session was provocatively titled, Does Our System Do Harm? and included a range of speakers who said that, at least in some cases, the answer is yes.

Susan Shemanski, vice president for corporate risk management at the Adecco Group, one of the worlds largest temporary staffing firms, appeared to take issue with limits on benefit amounts and durations that a number of state legislatures have enacted in recent years in efforts to reduce costs to employers and insurers.

Its really not fair to the injured worker. I think this is an area that does harm to the injured worker, Shemanski said.

Its almost like a penalty for doing well, Adams added, noting that better comp benefits can help recruit and retain good workers.

Shemanski said that some injured workers have been thrown into near-poverty conditions while living on comp disability, have contemplated suicide and have turned to opioid medications to relieve physical and mental stress. She related the story of one amputee who couldnt make car payments with the level of indemnity payments he was receiving. That, in turn, made it difficult to get to work when he was ready to return.

About 90% of comp claims are accepted and paid without much disagreement, the panelists said. But some 10% end up in litigation or mediation, and thats too many. When injured employees feel cheated or ignored or have been denied benefits, or face utilization reviews, that drives many to seek legal counsel, adding significantly to the loss adjustment expense on claims, they said.

I perceive that theres way too much inclination toward litigation, said David Langham, the chief workers compensation judge in Florida. Im probably not going to make any friends with this statement, but I think that probably, out there among us, there are way too many lawyers with little else to do.

Advertising by plaintiffs lawyers, particularly in Florida, is so commonplace now that workers cant help but feel they are due more than the amount of comp benefits they may be receiving, panelists said. Seeing that claimants are cared for, with proper benefits, can get them back to work sooner  and away from the television and its regular stream of attorney advertisements, they argued.

At another WCI session, on managing risk and exposures to improve employers bottom lines, claim experts said giving extra attention to injured workers is gaining new acceptance across the country. Claim advocacy, in fact, has become the new buzzword in the industry, said Scott Clark, a Florida-based vice president and claim advocate for Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services.

Injured workers who have become isolated run to attorneys offices where they feel theyll have representation, Clark said. And you dont want that.

He said employers should make sure that injured workers are involved in and informed about the claim process, at every step. That includes soliciting claimants input on medical treatment, and often sending them to a specialist physician, not to a doc in the box urgent care clinic.

Adams, of Walmart, said that, with comp benefits and procedures differing so much from state to state, new efforts should be made to research the practices that work best and reduce friction in the system. And with so much data now available, surely more ways can be found to utilize it, along with artificial intelligence and competent claims adjusters, in order to avoid litigated claims and unneeded utilization reviews.

After multiple tornadoes ripped through parts of the South and the Midwest Saturday, injured workers and families of workers killed will now face a wide range of benefits. Some will see more assistance than others, officials at the conference said.

In Kentucky, one of the states hit hardest by the twisters, workers at a candle factory saw the building collapse around them, killing as many as two dozen workers. But some of those workers will not qualify for post-traumatic stress disorder benefits, explained Dwight Lovan, a former commissioner at the state Department of Workers Claims.

Kentucky law, unlike statutes in several other states, allows mental stress benefits only if the worker has also suffered a physical injury.
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"We are going to send food to the food pantry so everyone can get all the food they need," said third grader Sage Miller.
12/21/2021

Photo (c) Images By Tang Ming Tung - Getty Images Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 51,127,557 (50,896,569)

Total U.S. deaths: 808,128 (806,635)

Total global cases: 275,666,580 (275,036,978)

Total global deaths: 5,365,183 (5,357,666)

The government will reportedly hand out free COVID-19 tests

The Biden administration is reportedly planning to give away free at-home COVID-19 tests to anyone that asks for one. NBC News quotes a senior administration official who says the tests will be delivered by mail.

According to the report, the administration plans to ship as many as 500 million test kits. Its reportedly setting up a website where people can submit requests.

The federal government is also said to be in the process of setting up new testing centers around the country in response to the spread of the Omicron variant. Currently, 20,000 such centers are in operation.

Pandemic slows population growth to record low

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the U.S. population grew at the slowest rate on record this year, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report attributes the slow growth to decreased net international migration, decreased fertility, and increased mortality due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Population growth has been slowing for years because of lower birth rates and decreasing net international migration, all while mortality rates are rising due to the aging of the nations population, said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Population Division at the Census Bureau. Now, with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this combination has resulted in a historically slow pace of growth.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. population only grew by 444,464, or 0.13%.

Trump tired of supporters booing him for being vaccinated

During Donald Trumps last year as president, his administration launched Operation Warp Speed to assist the development of vaccines to fight the coronavirus epidemic. When the vaccines became available, he got vaccinated and urged others to do so.

But since then, many of Trump's strongest supporters have refused to be vaccinated and criticize anyone who gets the jab, including the former chief executive. At a Dallas appearance Monday, Trump was booed by some in the audience when he said he had gotten the booster.

Oh, dont, dont, dont! said the obviously irritated former president. He later added, We saved tens of millions worldwide by creating the vaccine.

Around the nation

New York: New York City has stepped up its COVID-19 testing programs amid a record surge in new cases, fed mostly by the spreading Omicron variant. Mayor Bill de Blasio said hes trying to avoid shutdowns in the city by increasing the number of testing centers.

Michigan: The Autism Alliance of Michigan has gone on the record by urging parents to make sure their autistic children receive a COVID-19 vaccination. The group said its acting because research has shown that people with severe autism can face a higher risk from the virus.

Arkansas: State health officials report that the death toll from COVID-19 continues to go up while the number of cases and hospitalizations goes down. On Monday, the state reported the highest daily increase in the number of deaths due to COVID-19 since early November.

Texas: Officials say the Austin area has seen a sharp spike in COVID-19 cases, with the number nearly doubling in the last week. So far, many of the cases dont appear to be severe. There has been little increase in the number of cases requiring hospital treatment.
1024com.com scored 40 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 13 Dec 2012, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the 1024com homepage on Twitter + the total number of 1024com followers (if 1024com has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the 1024com homepage on Delicious. The total number of people who shared the 1024com homepage on StumbleUpon. The total number of people who shared the 1024com homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the 1024com homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if 1024com has a Facebook fan page).

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE 1024____ - DESCRIPTION 1024-(1024com.com)1024P720p1080p KEYWORDS , , , 1024, , ,  OTHER KEYWORDS



The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The title found in the head section of the homepage. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE GBK DETECTED LANGUAGE SERVER Microsoft-IIS/6.0 (ASP.NET,PHP/5.2.17) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003

Operative System running on the server. Type of server and offered services. Character set and language of the site. The language of 1024com.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0)

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for 1024com.com by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines.

Facebook link

FACEBOOK PAGE LINK NOT FOUND

The type of Facebook page. The total number of people who like website Facebook page. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users. The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The URL of the found Facebook page.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND
Dibdabdoo.com scored 50 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2.5/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 26 Dec 2012, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

The total number of people who shared the dibdabdoo homepage on StumbleUpon. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the dibdabdoo homepage on Twitter + the total number of dibdabdoo followers (if dibdabdoo has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the dibdabdoo homepage on Delicious. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the dibdabdoo homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if dibdabdoo has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the dibdabdoo homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button.

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE Dibdabdoo.com child kid safe search DESCRIPTION KEYWORDS OTHER KEYWORDS



The title found in the head section of the homepage. The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Strict CHARSET AND LANGUAGE ISO-8859-1 DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER LiteSpeed (PHP/5.3.10) OPERATIVE SYSTEM

Character set and language of the site. Operative System running on the server. Type of server and offered services. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) The language of dibdabdoo.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms.

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for dibdabdoo.com by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines.

Facebook link

FACEBOOK PAGE LINK NOT FOUND

The URL of the found Facebook page. The type of Facebook page. The total number of people who like website Facebook page. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND
In 2012, the National Art Gallery in Athens was closed for renovations. That meant it was a lot harder for thieves to slip in and rob the place while pretending to be tourists, but it was a lot easier to rob the place overall because the museum seriously cut back on security. Two thieves entered the place dressed as builders. This wasn't an especially cunning disguise; the thieves were builders.

The lead thief (whose name was never released to the media, so let's just call him Bob) cased the building for six months. On the day of the heist, his partner set off one of the place's alarms in a far part of the building. This diverted the few security guards, letting Bob collect four pieces: Picasso's Woman's Head, Piet Mondrians Stammer Mill With Summer House, another painting by Mondrian, and a sketch by Guglielmo Caccia from the 16th century.

On the way out, he dropped one of the Mondrian paintings. That was a fair chunk of the heist lost right there. Then he found he'd sliced himself open, breaking through all that glass. He needed to stop the bleeding quick, or he'd be spotted before he made it back home. So he wrapped up the cut in the nearest thing available: the Caccia sketch. When he got home, the sketch was of course ruined, so he flushed it down the toilet.
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Theres something uniquely bittersweet about the ending of a sitcom. For viewers, once a show has run its course with relatable characters, running gags, and soundstage sets to which weve grown attached, the finale can feel like a high school graduation where we say a tearful goodbye to people weve grown to love, and whom we loved to watch grow.

Conversely, the finale might feel like a high school graduation where we flip the bird at all the losers we got tired of seeing three years ago and drive off into the sunset, wondering why we even showed up for it in the first place.

To take the end of high school metaphor one step further for the sitcoms themselves, it sure seems like many, if they don't flunk out, end their runs drinking a flat soda outside a convenience store, staring up at a flickering streetlight, not at an all-night rager bonfire where they finally kiss that person they've waited all of high school to kiss.

Paramount Pictures Fun fact: In this scene, Arnold Toht was actually watching season 9 of How I Met Your Mother

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Until Netflix achieves its goal of giving every living person on the planet their own series, neither I nor anyone else outside of a select few executives will ever know what it feels like to end your lifes work and to tell a cast and crew with whom youve been in the trenches with for a decade that today will be their last day.

On top of that, there are plenty of people out there who believe that their favorite sitcom should last forever, and cannot imagine letting go of something they love so much. Hell, you can even find people who liked the post-Michael Office seasons more than the early ones!
Christmas music  some of its great, some of it is that goddamn Paul McCartney song. And while, as soon as December rolls around (way earlier if you work in customer service), we often celebrate the icons of holiday music like Nat King Cole, Vince Guaraldi, and Mariah Carey, this year wed like to nominate another yuletide king for your consideration: Bob Dylan.

When Dylans Christmas in the Heart hit record stores in 2009, no one totally knew exactly what to think. Some fans literally believed it to be a hoax. But arguably, its one of the most important works of the music legends career. Seriously.

For one thing, its genuinely impressive that Dylan, then in his late 60s, was still able to shock people. After going electric in the 60s, becoming a born-again Christian in the 70s, and showing up on Dharma & Greg in the 90s for some reason, it seemed as though Dylan had no career surprises left in him. Then came news of his Christmas album, and in retrospect, singing songs about Santa and Baby Jesus is one of the most punk rock moves he could have made from a certain point of view.

The record itself is flawless in its weirdness. The arrangements of the familiar songs are calculatedly traditional and unabashedly old-fashioned  but Dylans vocals are as rough and gravelly as a country road paved with razor blades. Tracks like Here Comes Santa Claus, complete with backup singers and jaunty sleigh bells, sound like a drunken Tom Waits traveled back in time while possessed by the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu, then burst into a Bing Crosby recording session, murdered him, and somehow forced all of the musicians to continue making an album. Merry Christmas.
GLASTONBURY  Members of the local school board voted overwhelmingly Monday night to keep its school mascot, defying a movement that wanted the high school mascot to revert back to the Tomahawks, a name associated with Native American imagery.

The Glastonbury Board of Education voted 7-1 to reaffirm its decision to no longer use the Tomahawks as the mascot, Doug Foyle, the boards current chair confirmed. He declined to comment further.

A public hearing last week to discuss reverting to the old name drew widespread attention after an unknown man was caught on film punching one of the school board members, Secretary Ray McFall. The video appears to show McFall pushing the man away, who then punches McFall in the face, knocking him to the ground. The incident occurred during a break in the meeting.

Glastonbury police have not yet announced any arrests in connection with the Dec. 14 incident.

Parents and members of the community expressed shock in the wake of the video, saying it set a bad example for children. The districts superintendent, Alan B. Bookman, issued a statement saying it is critical that we listen to each other with respect and follow meeting rules so that everyone can be heard.

Glastonbury High Schools mascot was changed from the Tomahawks to the Guardians in July 2020 as protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police rocked the country, a movement that also saw many cities and local communities reconsider monuments and place names. That same month saw the name and logo of the Washington Redskins retired after a backlash.

But a petition calling for the Tomahawks to be restored as the school mascot prompted the school board to reexamine the issue, leading to the public hearing last week. The online petition has since drawn more than 3,000 signatures

Monday nights special meeting of the school board was scheduled for 7 p.m. and held over Zoom. Unlike last week there was no public comment period  it had been closed at the Dec. 14 meeting.
NEW YORK (AP)  A jury began deliberations Monday, tasked with considering whether Ghislaine Maxwell is a dangerous predator who recruited teens to be sexually abused by financier Jeffrey Epstein  as prosecutors put it  or the innocent woman a defense attorney described.

The jury received the case just before 5 p.m. after two prosecutors and a defense lawyer delivered their closing arguments over a six-hour period. They deliberated less than an hour and went home after being told to return at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Maxwell, 59, had been composed, if not cheerful, as she interacted with her lawyers and family members for the first three weeks of the trial. But she seemed emotional as Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey rebutted defense arguments and asserted the British socialite believed her four trial accusers were beneath her.

In her eyes, they were just trash, Comey said as Maxwell shook her head slightly and then drooped her eyes.

Earlier, she had wiped her eyes twice as Comey attacked defense portrayals of the women who testified about abuse they incurred as teenagers. The prosecutor said Maxwell played a pivotal role in Epstein's quest to sexually abuse teenage girls.

Defense lawyer Laura Menninger had argued that the women's recollections of abuse by Epstein and Maxwell were flawed memories manipulated decades later by lawyers seeking payouts or U.S. government investigators seeking a scapegoat after Epstein killed himself in a federal jail in 2019 while awaiting his own sex trafficking trial.

Comey called a defense claim that Maxwell didn't know about abuse that occurred for more than a decade a laughable argument.

Those four witnesses gave you the most damaging testimony in this trial, she said. These women put themselves through the hell of testifying at this trial even though they have nothing to gain.

Comey added: They did it for justice.

The prosecutor started her remarks by disputing a claim by the defense that nearly all the evidence pertained to Epstein, and Maxwell did not deserve to be blamed as an conspirator in his crimes.

This case is about that woman, Comey said, pointing at Maxwell, who sat at the defense table in a white sweater as four of her siblings watched from the first bench of spectators in a courtroom where everyone followed spacing rules dictated by the coronavirus.

Earlier, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe called Maxwell the lady of the house when Epstein abused girls at a New York mansion, a Florida estate and a New Mexico ranch.

Ghislaine Maxwell was dangerous, Moe said. She cited over $30 million that Maxwell received from Epstein over the years. Maxwell and Epstein committed horrifying crimes.

Menninger, though, said prosecutors had failed to prove any charges beyond a reasonable doubt: Ghislaine Maxwell is an innocent woman, wrongfully accused of crimes she did not commit."

Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jeffrey Epstein, Menninger stated plainly.

She cited numerous inconsistencies in statements made by women over the years, saying their memories are highly flawed and there are "many reasons to hesitate and many reasons to doubt.

Shes being tried here for being with Jeffrey Epstein. Maybe thats the biggest mistake of her life, but its not a crime, Menninger added.

The summations came at the start of the fourth week of a trial that was originally projected to last six weeks. With a coronavirus outbreak in New York worsening by the day and a holiday weekend ahead, Judge Alison J. Nathan urged lawyers to keep their closings tight so the jury could begin deliberating as early as Monday.

Maxwell has been jailed since her arrest in July 2020. The judge has denied her bail repeatedly, despite her lawyer's arguments that the pledge of her $22.5 million estate and a willingness to be watched 24 hours a day by armed guards would guarantee her appearance in court.

The closings came after two dozen prosecution witnesses testified, including the four women who say they were abused by Epstein with the help of Maxwell when they were teenagers.

Moe told jurors that Maxwell was a refined age-appropriate woman who provided cover for Epsteins creepy behavior.

She asked them to ignore the testimony of a psychology professor called by the defense, saying the testimony that memories can fade over time and be influenced by what people hear, see or read was a total distraction.

These women know what happened to their own bodies, she said. Your common sense tells you that being molested is something you never forget, ever.

But Menninger defended the testimony of the memory expert, citing instances in which Maxwells accusers never mentioned the defendants name when they first spoke of the abuse they endured from Epstein.

She said the testimony from accusers was manipulated by lawyers representing them as they pursued millions of dollars in payouts from a special fund set up after Epsteins suicide to compensate his victims.

Menninger said the women suddenly recovered memories that Ghislaine was there.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Democrats are struggling to pick up the pieces after Sen. Joe Manchin effectively crushed President Joe Bidens big domestic policy bill. But they face serious questions whether the $2 trillion initiative can be refashioned to win his crucial vote or the party will be saddled with a devastating defeat.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed on Monday that the chamber would vote early in the new year on Bidens Build Back Better Act as it now stands, so every senator has the opportunity to make their position known on the Senate floor, not just on television." That was a biting reference to Manchin's sudden TV announcement against the bill on Sunday.

Biden and Manchin spoke later Sunday, according to a person familiar with the call, first reported by Politico. It was cordial and respectful, said the person who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

But the conservative West Virginia Democrat and his party are so far apart, his relationships so bruised after months of failed talks, its unclear how they even get back to the negotiating table, let alone revive the sprawling more than 2,100-page social services and climate change bill.

Were going to work like hell to get it done, said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, repeating the phrase several times at a briefing but never saying how.

The setback throws Biden's signature legislative effort into deep doubt at a critical time, closing out the end of the president's first year and ahead of congressional midterm elections when the Democrats' slim hold on Congress. is at risk.

Coupled with solid Republican opposition, Manchin's vote is vital in the 50-50 split Senate on this and other initiatives, including the Democrats' priority voting rights legislation that Schumer also promised would come to an early vote.

From the White House, Psaki struck a more conciliatory tone than her weekend hardball reaction to Manchin, saying Biden is a longtime friend of the senator and the president is focused on moving forward.

Vice President Kamala Harris told CBS News the stakes are too high for this to be about any specific individual. She said, "This is about lets get the job done."

Steeped in the politics of a state that Biden lost decisively to Donald Trump, Manchin has little to gain from aligning too closely with fellow Democrats, raising fresh questions over whether he still has a place in the party.

In a radio interview Monday, he reiterated his position that the social and environment bill has far too much government spending  on child care, health care and other programs  without enough restrictions on incomes or work requirements.

But the lifelong Democrat was less clear when asked if the party still has room for him  describing himself as "fiscally responsible and socially compassionate.

Manchin said: Now, if theres no Democrats like that then they have to push me wherever they want.

After months of negotiations with the White House and Senate staff members as well as Biden and fellow senators, he lashed out at hardline tactics against him by those he said just beat the living crap out of people and think theyll be submissive.

The next steps remain highly uncertain for the president and his party. Biden returned to Washington from his Delaware home, and lawmakers assessed their options with Congress on recess for the holiday break. The president's reputation as a seasoned legislator who wants to show the country government can work hangs in the balance along with his proposals.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a leader of the progressive caucus, spoke with Manchin early Monday, but emerged warning her colleagues the senator was an untrustworthy partner who went back on his word.

Jayapal said Democrats were working with the White House on alternative means of reaching the bill's goals through executive or administrative actions, without legislation.

We cannot make the same mistakes twice, she said on a conference call with other progressives. We cannot hang the futures of millions of Americans on the words of one man."

The White House appeared to take interest in Manchin's preference for a reimagined bill that would tackle a few top priorities, for longer duration, rather than the multifaceted and far-reaching House-passed version.

But it will be extraordinarily difficult for progressive and centrist Democrats to rebuild trust to launch a fresh round of negotiations having devoted much of Biden's first year in office to what is now essentially a collapsed effort.

For example, Manchin wants to authorize the social programs for the full 10 years of a standard budget window  rather than just a few years as Democrats would as a way to keep the price tag down. That change would force painful cuts elsewhere in the package.

Despite Biden's long courtship of Manchin, the senator has been clear throughout that the Democrats' bill does not fit his vision of what the country needs, even though many residents in his state are low income, some in desperate need of the health, education and child care services the bill would provide.

The sweeping package is among the biggest of its kind ever considered in Congress, unleashing billions of dollars to help American families nationwide  nearly all paid for with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

For families with children, it would provide free pre-school and child care aid. There are subsidies for health insurance premiums, lower prescription drug costs and expanded Medicaid access in states that do not yet provide it. The bill would start a new hearing aid program for seniors. And it includes more than $500 billion to curb carbon emissions, a figure considered the largest federal expenditure ever to combat climate change.

A potential new deadline for Biden and his party comes with the expiration of an expanded child tax credit that has been sending up to $300 monthly directly to millions of families bank accounts. If Congress fails to act, the money won't arrive in January.

Talks between Biden and Manchin deteriorated during a final round last week that turned heated, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the private talks.

In a stunning repudiation of his party, Manchin gave the president's staff just a 20-minute heads-up he was about to announce his opposition to the bill.

It called to mind the famous thumbs-down vote by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that killed President Donald Trumps 2017 effort to repeal the health care law enacted under President Barack Obama.

Republicans hailed Manchin as a maverick, but Democrats and the White House were merciless in their criticism.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck an optimistic chord at an event in her San Francisco district. This will happen, she said. Im not deterred at all.

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Darlene Superville, Colleen Long and Hope Yen contributed to this report.
CT State Police / Contributed

WESTBROOK  A local man suffered serious injuries when he was hit by a vehicle while crossing the street on Monday, according to Connecticut State Police.

Troopers shut down traffic on Route 1  Boston Post Road  at Linden Avenue in Westbrook around 5:30 p.m. after a crash involving a pedestrian.
Go ask a seventh grader to carve Connecticut into five regions, each with exactly the same population. Tell her the idea is to keep cities and towns together in regions where people tend to shop, attend cultural and sports events and work in the same parts of the state.

She would come back with a map showing Fairfield County along the Stamford-Norwalk-Bridgeport corridor; greater New Haven; and greater Hartford. All of that follows the main highways, Interstate 91, Interstate 95 and the Merritt/Wilbur Cross parkways.

Thats what the U.S. Census and other federal agencies use to determine standard metropolitan statistical areas.

For the other two regions, she would lump together the large number of towns in the northwestern part of the state, crisscrossed by the Route 8 corridor though Torrington up to Winsted and by Interstate 84 from Danbury through Waterbury and Southington. Then shed be left with the vast eastern half of the state as her fifth region.

That natural order is how Connecticut Republicans propose to draw the lines for congressional districts, which makes a lot of sense.

Ben Proto, the GOP state chairman, showed me the partys suggested map and it has the added advantage of not breaking up Waterbury and Torrington into different districts.

But its not going to happen. With one day left before the Dec. 21 deadline to redraw the map, the bipartisan Redistricting Commission appears to be deadlocked.

Democrats insist on keeping the lobster claw shape of the 1st District, which has New Britain and the Farmington Valley in the 5th and Winsted, Bristol and most of Torrington in the 1st.

The reason: Its a combination of history and good, old-fashioned political gerrymandering of the sort we love to hate when we see Republicans doing it in places like Texas and North Carolina.

The history part of it stems from 2001, when Connecticut lost a seat in Congress. Then-Rep. Nancy Johnson, a New Britain Republican, wanted to keep her job in the old 6th District, so the two parties agreed to include New Britain and Meriden in the new 5th, which set in motion the lobster claw shape of the 1st. Republicans kept Johnson in office; Dems gained the long-term upper-hand.

The political part of it is this: The current configuration gives Rep. Jahana Hayes, the Democrat elected to the 5th District in 2018, an advantage over any Republican, compared with doing away with the claw.

How big a benefit? Its significant. Figures Proto provided, based on the GOP suggested map, show the current 5th District has a partisan voter index of 52 percent Democrat compared with 45.5 percent Republican. Thats based on how people actually voted in recent elections, not voter registration.

The new map, as the GOP proposed it, gives the GOP an edge, just under 50 percent Republican to just under 48 percent Democrat. And the population of racial minority or Hispanic residents in the 5th would fall from 32.5 percent to 27 percent.

The district lines need to change somewhat, to meet the new Census numbers and rebalance the state. Democrats want to keep things more or less where they are, with just enough tweaks to balance the numbers.

A big change in the 5th District would be an enormous ask for Democrats at precisely the worst time. As it stands now, Hayes is the only one of the five incumbents, all Democrats, who could lose her seat in November, in a likely race against former state Sen. George Logan, a Republican. The rest are safe seats for the Dems.

And making matters dire, Republicans are more than likely to take control of the U.S. House, which would elevate Rep. Kevin McCarthy, now the Republican leader, as House Speaker. This is the same Kevin McCarthy who is so beholden to former President Donald Trump that he led the charge in the shameful Jan. 6 attack on the Electoral College  actually voting to reject legitimate election results hours after a Trump mob stormed the Capitol.

Democrats could be excused for doing everything in their power to avoid giving McCarthy another member. McCarthy and his gang of fake patriots represent a threat to free elections. To be clear, Logan is not in that gang and is not especially tied to Trump or McCarthy but hed be in their caucus as a conservative vote.

Either way, the Dems need to do the right thing, right now, when it comes to redistricting. The lobster claw is just plain wrong and anyway, voting patterns will evolve over the next decade and beyond. If a Democratic incumbent cant beat a challenger in blue Connecticut in a closely divided district, she shouldnt be in Congress.

What were talking about is a blockbuster trade: New Britain, Farmington, Plainville, Avon, Simsbury and Canton from the 5th to the 1st. Bristol and the bulk of Torrington, along with five low-population towns up that way (including the borough or Winsted) would move from the 1st to the 5th.

The 3rd District, greater New Haven, would gain most of Meriden, which is now in the 5th. Oxford, now in the 4th, would move to the 5th. The 1st would become less Democratic-leaning, but its already so far that way that a Dem would have to be indicted for murder to lose.

The current map, the claw, the leg, whatever you want to call it, is designed to achieve a political outcome, Proto said. The Democrats want everything as is usually the case, even if it means that the people in thse discticts are not properly served by communities of interest.

I spoke briefly with Sen. Martin Looney, D-New Haven, the Senate president pro-tempore and a member of the commission. He confirmed that the political implications make it unlikely the Dems will give in.

Democrats say its not clear-cut. Just because its clean does not mean its not a gerrymander, said one Dem operative, who added that Danbury, Waterbury, Meriden and New Britain give the 5th a large Hispanic population  which amounts to a community of interest.

Rep. Vin. Candelora, R-North Branford, the GOP House leader, holds out hope for a compromise. The map provided by Proto is not the same as the version he and other Republicans gave Dems a few days ago.

If we stand our ground on moving New Britain into the 1st then obviously thats not going to be acceptable to them, Candelora said The question is, what change is acceptable?

Obviously theres no perfct solution when it comes to comminities of common interest. For example, Cheshire belongs in the 3rd with Wallingford and Meriden but it stays in the 5th under the current GOP plan and Madison remains split from Guilford.

If the commission remains deadlocked and the map-making reverts to the state Supreme Court, the changes will be minor  as the court itself said in an opinion 10 years ago.

Painful as it may be, Democrats, who are fighting against gerrymandering with a proposed law in Congress and with federal lawsuits, must set an example in Connecticut by doing the right thing. Then they can fight like hell to keep the seats they hold.

dhaar@hearstmediact.com
THE BACKGROUND: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo entered 2021 seeing his reputation as a leader in the COVID-19 fight starting to fray. But nearly everyone expected it to be a year of triumph  over both his handling of the virus and anyone who stood in the way of an expected run for a fourth term.

Instead, trouble came in waves. In January, the states attorney general issued a report confirming that thousands more people had died of COVID-19 in New Yorks nursing homes than Cuomos administration had previously acknowledged.

In February, a former adviser who had previously made a comment on social media about having been sexually harassed by the Democrat, published an essay detailing what she said were unwanted touches, suggestive comments and a kiss on the lips.

More women followed with tales of being leered at, subjected to questions about their sex lives and comments on their looks. One woman accused him of groping her breast.

Onetime political allies called for Cuomo resignation, but he clung to office until August, when the state attorney general issued a report finding he had sexually harassed 11 women. He resigned as state legislators began to take steps toward impeachment.

In October he was accused in a criminal complaint of forcible touching, though it is yet unclear whether prosecutors will continue with the case.

And in December, the ex-governors brother, Chris Cuomo, was fired from his anchor job at CNN after new revelations that hed tried to help Andrew discredit his accusers.

Here, The Associated Press reporter who covered the Cuomo administration reflects on the story and her own experiences.

___

MARINA VILLENEUVE, correspondent, Albany, N.Y.

THE WOMEN: In 2020, with the COVID pandemic, Cuomo became this huge, internationally known figure leading New Yorks response, and he was holding daily press conferences for quite some time. And that was really interesting, because he had been known to be the kind of governor who didnt typically have a lot of press availability.

Then, early this year when accusations of sexual harassment came up, when women were were coming forward with stories of sexual harassment against him, he didnt have press availability anymore. Instead, he reverted to doing speeches and holding a couple of press conferences, His office was very protective of the governor throughout the past year, and I just had to remember to always be very skeptical of the answers Id get from them.

And as this year unfolded, and we saw an attorney generals report into sexual harassment allegations, and more records being released throughout the year, it was really fascinating to see how important it was to have that skepticism about the administration ... and its a pretty unique opportunity to have there be an investigation that partly looks at how a governors administration was trying to spin and hide problems.

___

I definitely just felt a lot of pressure to responsibly report on these womens stories, while also verifying everything.

I think it was really interesting to see how members of Cuomos circle, including his brother, really pushed to control the governors response, and tried to get a sense of what other allegations were out there and just how they were going to respond to the allegations.

I think it was really eye opening to see that evolution. And again, it reinforced the need to be skeptical about what were hearing from government officials. And I think its really not clear at all what the former governor is going to be doing now. Were trying to keep an eye on whether he might return to the private sector anytime soon, or run for office in a few years.

___

THE NURSING HOMES: At the start of the pandemic in 2020, I and other reporters were asking a lot of questions about how COVID was impacting nursing homes, and the Cuomo administration would at times argue that releasing the data would jeopardize patients' privacy. The governor also claimed that New York's nursing homes were much less badly hit than other states, but he based that on partial data. And as the data came in  through my own reporting and others reporting as well  we learned that the administration wasnt providing the full picture and was only reporting some deaths ... to make it seem that there werent as many people dying of COVID in nursing homes. And there remain a lot of questions about whether the state could have done more to prevent deaths, whether any policies made outbreaks worse and what lessons there are going forward.

___

It felt pretty shocking because nursing home outbreaks were such a serious crisis, and you couldnt really imagine that the approach of a government would be to mask how bad outbreaks were. So yeah, I guess it was shocking for me. I think for some other journalists who have been around longer covering the governor, they were aware of his reputation, or this New York style of sort of exaggeration, but it was shocking, for sure.

Early this year, the Attorney Generals Office released this big and thorough investigation that really confirmed what I and others at AP had pieced together. We did a lot of just calling up nursing homes and asking how many deaths there had been, or how many infections. And there would always be a lot of discrepancies between the federal data in the state data. There was a lot of trying to ask the health department about the reasons for those gaps or those discrepancies. And I did a story this summer just looking at how up until just before the governor resigned, New York was still reporting this lower, statewide death toll that did not include confirmed COVID deaths at peoples homes. It was only including confirmed COVID deaths at hospitals. And thats something that the new governor changed on day one.

___

For a full overview of the events that shaped 2021, A Year That Changed Us: 12 Months in 150 Photos, a collection of AP photos and journalists recollections, is available now: https://www.ap.org/books/a-year-that-changed-us
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Shuang-Ye Wu, University of Dayton

(THE CONVERSATION) Alongside a lingering global pandemic, the year 2021 was filled with climate disasters, some so intense they surprised even the scientists who study them.

Extreme rainstorms turned to raging flash floods that swept through mountain towns in Europe, killing over 200 people. Across Asia, excessive rainfall inundated wide areas and flooded subway stations in China. Heat waves shattered records in the Pacific Northwest, Europe and the Arctic. Wildfires swept through communities in California, Canada, Greece and Australia.

The area around Boulder, Colorado, was so unusually dry on Dec. 30, 2021, that a powerful wind storm sent grass fires racing through neighborhoods in Superior and Louisville, burning hundreds of homes in a matter of hours. Officials said the winds were so strong, there was little firefighters could do but evacuate homes and businesses in the fires paths.

In the U.S. alone, damage from the biggest climate and weather disasters is expected to total well over US$100 billion in 2021. Many of these extreme weather events have been linked to human-caused climate change, and they offer a glimpse of what to expect in a rapidly warming world.

In the U.S., something in particular stood out: a sharp national precipitation divide, with one side of the country too wet, the other too dry.

As a climate scientist, I study the impact of global warming on precipitation and the water cycle. Heres what happened with precipitation in the U.S. in 2021 and why were likely to see similar scenarios in the future.

The east-west weather divide

The eastern U.S. weathered storm after storm in 2021. Record rainfall in Tennessee triggered deadly flash flooding in August. The remnants of Hurricane Ida merged with another front days after the hurricane hit Louisiana and became so intense they set rainfall records and flooded subway stations and basement apartments in New York and Pennsylvania, with devastating consequences. Severe storms hit several states with deadly tornadoes in December.

Almost the entire West, meanwhile, was in some stage of drought, helping to fuel wildfires that swept through forests and towns.

This kind of east-west weather divide can be enhanced by La Nina, a periodical phenomenon fueled by Pacific Ocean temperatures that tends to leave the Southwest drier than normal and the North and much of the eastern half of the U.S. wetter.

But something else is going on: Global warming fuels both dryness and extreme rainfall.

3 impacts of global warming on rainfall

Three things in particular happen to precipitation when the planet warms.

1) Global warming increases evaporation, leading to more drying of land and plants and also more overall precipitation.

Higher temperature increases evaporation from Earths surface, drying out vegetation and soils, which can fuel wildfires. It also increases the atmospheres capacity to hold moisture at a rate of about 7% per degree Celsius that the planet warms. With more moisture evaporating, global precipitation is expected to increase, but this increase is not uniform.

2) Global warming leads to more intense precipitation.

With higher temperature, more moisture is needed to reach the condensation level to form precipitation. As a result, light precipitation will be less common. But with more moisture in the atmosphere, when storm systems do develop, the increased humidity leads to heavier rainfall events.

In addition, storm systems are fueled by latent heat  the energy released into the atmosphere when water vapor condenses to liquid water. Increased moisture in the atmosphere also enhances latent heat in storm systems, increasing their intensity.

Research shows that both the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events has increased since the 1950s over most land areas.

3) Global warming tends to make wet places wetter and dry places drier.

Precipitation is not distributed evenly over the planet because of the global atmosphere circulation pattern. This global circulation brings moisture to places where winds come together, such as the tropical regions where we find most of the worlds rainforests, and away from places where winds diverge, such as the midlatitudes where most worlds deserts are located.

Assuming no significant changes in global wind patterns, increases in evaporation and moisture will mean more moisture is transported from dry areas to wet areas and into the storm tracks at higher latitudes. Global warming could also potentially change the global circulation pattern, causing a shift in the worlds wet and dry regions.

Mountains, moisture and the east-west divide

These dynamics are also affected by local conditions, such as the shape of the land, the types of plants on it and the presence of major water bodies.

The western U.S., with the exception of the West Coast, is dry in part because it lies in the rain shadow of mountains. The westerly wind from the Pacific Ocean is forced upward by the mountain ranges in the West. As it moves up, the air cools and precipitation forms on the windward side of the mountains. By the time the wind reaches the leeward side of the mountains, the moisture has already rained out. As the wind descends the mountains, the air warms up, further reducing the relative humidity.

Higher temperature in areas like these where the moisture supply is already limited means less humidity in the air, leading to less rain. Higher temperature and less precipitation would also reduce snow packs in the mountains and cause earlier melt in spring. All these changes are likely to increase aridity in the West.

The eastern U.S., on the other hand, receives abundant moisture from the North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico carried by the easterly trade wind. With abundant moisture supply, increasing temperature means more moisture in the atmosphere, leading to more precipitation and stronger storms.

This is what years of precipitation records show and what is projected for future precipitation based on climate models. Both show a decrease in annual precipitation in the West, likely meaning more long periods of drought, and an increase in the East with global warming.

[Read The Conversations newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

This article was updated Dec. 30, 2021, with the fires in Boulder County, Colorado.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/devastating-colorado-fires-cap-a-year-of-climate-disasters-in-2021-with-one-side-of-the-country-too-wet-the-other-dangerously-dry-173402.
BRIDGEPORT  Residents and officials overwhelmingly agreed Monday that the development of apartments at Steelpointe Harbor would benefit the city. But some raised concerns about the potential gentrification of the neighborhood if the affordable housing units the developers must build as part of their contract are not constructed on site.

The City Council held a public hearing Monday night on a proposed tax incentive deal for the development of luxury apartments at Steelpointe. At months end the council will consider authorizing the tax break the developers are seeking to help finance the 400 high-end market-rate apartments, which will be located off of East Main Street south of Stratford Avenue and cost about $100 million to build.

Many people spoke positively of the father-son team whose Bridgeport Landing Development organization has spent a slow but steady several years transforming the East Side land situated between the waterfront and Interstate 95.

They said the development has taken a once blighted neighborhood and made it a destination, paving the way for further opportunities. The first tenants  Bass Pro Shops, Chipotle restaurant and a Starbucks coffee shop  opened in late 2015, followed by a marina and then, in 2019, Boca Oyster Bar.

Steelpointe is a major development and has provided local jobs and real opportunities to minority-owned businesses, said Diana Washington, vice president of the Southern Connecticut Black Chamber of Commerce. The project has really improved our image and reputation statewide. People now come to Bridgeport and enjoy our many attractions and restaurants.

Committed developers

Others lauded the generosity and character of Robert Christoph and Robert Christoph Jr.

Robert Dzurenda, executive director of Hall Neighborhood House, said that Steelpointe has been very active in our community on the East Side.

Theyve really stepped up during COVID and actually reached out to us and the community around our facility to help out and they contribute a lot, Dzurenda said. They have done a great job in re-branding that area. Im not from Bridgeport but its definitely added to Bridgeport and surrounding towns.

The Christoph family, from my point of view, represents all that is good about who we are and what we believe in as a society, said John Torres, executive director of Bridgeport Caribe Youth Leaders. They invest in people and they invest in our future.

For years we have wondered what could be of the beautiful waterfront property off I-95, Torres said. Now we have the chance to add to the vibrant waterfront by supporting this project.

A handful of people who opposed or raised questions about the possible deal said they didnt doubt the Christophs are generous or good developers  but said the city should take a closer look at the tax break theyre seeking.

Callie Heilmann, president and co-founder of the Bridegport Generation Now, said everyone in her group wants housing and development at Steelpointe  but also wants the City Council to negotiate an equitable and inclusive deal.

Its not about good people vs. bad people, Heilmann said. Its about good vs. bad policies. And Bridgeport has its share of housing discrimination, racial and ethnic segregation and wealth inequality.

Those opposed to the deal included two members of the City Council, Maria Pereira and Michele Small. Other council members, like Ernest Newton, pledged support.

Although the Steelpointe redevelopment was proposed a few decades ago, visitors and passersby will still find plenty of vacant land.

Two years ago the Christophs stated they wanted to break ground on the market-rate housing in 2020, but then the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

This month Christoph Jr. said, I think the time is now (for the housing). Bridgeport has a real opportunity and its moment to really shine.

The agreement

The proposed tax agreement before the council calls for a two-year construction period and an additional year to occupy the units. Under that deal, Bridgeport would receive $23,900 in taxes for those three years the apartments are being built/leased, then $1.26 million in year four, and then, in years five through 10, the payments would increase by 2 percent, reaching $1.47 million.

The Christophs initial contract with Bridgeport for Steelpointe required they also either build or help finance affordable and so-called workforce housing representing 10 percent of their total market-rate units. And most of it can be around town rather than all at Steelpointe.

Heilmann and Generation Now co-founder Gemeem Davis said that number should be at least 20 percent  and that the affordable units should be fully integrated into the Steelpointe development, not elsewhere.

The lack of guaranteed affordable units at Steelpointe is a segregationist policy, and one that will ensure that Steelpointe is and forever will be economically and racially segregated, Heilmann said.

Davis said the developers should be ashamed of themselves for even proposing having a deal set up in such a way that would leave predominantly black and brown people out of that area. She pointed to other development deals across the country that mandated more on-site affordable units.

This is not something thats out of the ordinary. Its not unreasonable to ask for, she said. Its about what we want our city to look like and who our city is for.

Newton and state Rep. Antonio Felipe were among those who said it could be insulting to ethnic minorities to suggest they cant afford housing, and said many already occupy luxury homes in the city.

Yes, we need affordable housing, but we need people that have got money to come into this city, Newton said. Why? Because they will spend money in those neighborhoods.

Davis later pointed out those living in so-called affordable housing include people with modest incomes. No one is saying were talking about poor people who cant afford anything. That is not the issue, she said.

Council member Jeanette Herron said the deal isnt etched in stone.

Well go back to the table and well consider a lot of whats been said, she said. So people have to understand the work is still going to be done. But lets give ourselves a little more credit than we have here. Absolutely, we need more affordable housing in this city. But we also need development. We also need tax base.

Another council member, Wanda Simmons, echoed the sentiment, but also said those who spoke out against the deal raised legitimate points.

Development is good in the city of Bridgeport, she said. We definitely need development over here on the East End. But we also need to look at the structural, systemic issues that do segregate and gentrify our neighborhoods.
BRIDGEPORT  Terrance Boyd helped police solve a cold case but now hes behind bars while the alleged killer, Shawn Gibson, walks the citys streets.

Thats the argument Boyds lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Isaias Pedraza, made Monday afternoon as he stood beside Boyd and requested a lower bond before Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton.

Mr. Boyd assisted police to his detriment, I cant even imagine the amount of fear he went through, Pedraza appealed to the judge. Gibson posted $250,000 bond and is now out to do whatever he wants.

Dayton said she understood what Pedraza was arguing but was still setting a $2.5 million bond for Boyd.

Last week, the 45-year-old Gibson, of Hamden, was charged with murder in the 2013 beating death of 24-year-old Aryndel Castro in a Bridgeport rooming house.

Boyd, who was extradited from South Carolina, is also charged with murder in the case.

Since May 2014, according to the arrest warrant affidavit, Boyd repeatedly told police that he had witnessed Gibson beat Castro to death and that he had helped Gibson bury Castros body.

But the lead investigator in the case, Police Lt. Christopher LaMaine, told Hearst Connecticut Media they had no physical evidence to support Boyds claims and a problem with Boyds credibility.

In 2013, Boyd had just finished serving a 25-year prison term for a home invasion in New Canaan in which he had bashed a 63-year-old housewife in the head and then drowned her in her swimming pool.

Then, following his arrest, Gibson agreed to lead police to where he buried Castros body in exchange for being released on bond pending trial. Police found Castros body buried six feet under a detached garage behind a house on Noble Avenue.

I hear what you are saying, the judge told Pedraza, who continued to urge leniency for Boyd. But Mr. Boyd has a prior murder conviction and I understand Gibson cooperated with police to locate the victims body.

But if Mr. Gibson gets some consideration for his cooperation, I dont understand why my client is not, Pedraza argued.

According to the warrant affidavit, Boyd told police in four video recorded interviews in 2014 that Gibson had ordered him to bring Castro to a Noble Avenue rooming house Gibson owned because Castro had previously stolen some tools from Gibson.

Boyd claimed he was afraid of Gibson because Gibson had previously beaten him up. He said when he brought Castro to the rooming house Gibson began beating Castro with his fists, police said. Boyd said the beating was so bad he vomited. But he agreed to help Gibson clean up and get rid of Castros body, the affidavit states.

The affidavit states that Boyd agreed to make recorded phone calls to Gibson but Gibson did not say anything incriminating on the calls.

At the time he cooperated with police in the Castro case, police said Boyd was familiar with the adage that the person who cooperates first in a crime gets the best deal.

On Dec. 10, 1986, 63-year-old Ann Viner was alone in her large white colonial home near New Canaans country club. Her husband, the president of a N.Y. investment firm, was attending an office holiday party. When he came home later that evening, he found the house in disarray, according to news reports at the time. The couples car was missing, their dog had been struck on the head and drawers and closets had been rifled.

He later found his wife floating in the swimming pool.

The autopsy report stated she had drowned after being hit in the head with a log.

Four days later police arrested Boyd and Tyrone Wilson, who had done odd jobs in the neighborhood.

Wilson later wrote a 9-page confession to the crime, according to reports.

Wilson told police the two men entered the Viner house through an unlocked back door. He claimed he only wanted to tie Viner up but Boyd beat her and threw her in the pool.

Wilson later agreed to testify against Boyd at trial in exchange for a 20-year prison term.

Based almost solely on Wilsons testimony, Boyd was convicted of felony murder, burglary and larceny charges in 1988 and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

But in March 1990, the state Supreme Court overturned Boyd's felony murder conviction and ordered a new trial.

In September 1998, facing a second trial, Boyd instead pleaded guilty to felony murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, according to court records.
The new omicron variant took only a few weeks to live up to dire predictions about how hugely contagious it is but scientists dont yet know if it causes more severe disease even as the world faces exploding cases just before Christmas.

Everything is riskier now because omicron is so much more contagious, said Dr. S. Wesley Long, who directs the testing lab at Houston Methodist Hospital  and over the past week has canceled numerous plans to avoid exposure.

Omicron now is the dominant variant in the U.S., federal health officials said Monday, accounting for about three-quarters of new infections last week.

The speed that it's outpacing the also very contagious delta variant is astonishing public health officials. In three weeks, omicron now makes up 80% of new symptomatic cases diagnosed by Houston Methodists testing sites. It took the delta variant three months to reach that level, Long said.

The mutant's ability to spread faster and evade immunity came at a bad time  right as travel increased and many people let down their guard. But what the omicron wave will mean for the world is still unclear because so many questions remain unanswered.

Heres the latest on whats known and whats still to learn about omicron.

HOW MUCH PROTECTION DO VACCINES OFFER?

Vaccines in the U.S. and around the world do not offer as much protection against omicron as they have against previous versions of the coronavirus. However, vaccines still help  a lot. Lab tests show while two doses may not be strong enough to prevent infection, a booster shot of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine produces virus-fighting antibodies capable of tackling omicron.

Antibody levels naturally drop over time, and a booster revved them back up again, by 25 times for Pfizers extra shot and 37 times for Modernas. No one knows exactly what level is high enough  or how long it will be before antibody levels begin dropping again.

After a booster, the protection against an omicron infection still appears about 20% less than protection against the delta variant, said Dr. Egon Ozer of Northwestern University.

But if the virus gets past that first line of defense, the vaccinated have additional layers of protection.

The vaccines are going to protect you against severe disease, hospitalization and death, said Houston Methodist's Long. And thats really the most important thing.

Those extra defenses include T cells that mobilize to beat back the virus, plus memory cells that, once reactivated, race to make more and stronger antibodies.

WHAT ABOUT NATURAL IMMUNITY?

A prior infection doesnt seem to offer much protection against an omicron infection although, like with vaccination, it may reduce the chances of severe illness.

In South Africa, where omicron already has spread widely, scientists reported a jump in reinfections that they hadnt seen when two previous mutants, including delta, moved through the country.

In Britain, a report from the Imperial College of London on Friday found the risk of reinfection from omicron was five times higher compared to the earlier delta variant.

Health experts say anyone whos survived a bout of COVID-19 still should get vaccinated, because the combination generally offers stronger protection.

WHY ELSE DOES OMICRON SPREAD SO FAST?

Scientists are trying to decode the dozens of mutations that omicron carries to figure out what else is going on. Researchers in Hong Kong recently reported hints that omicron may multiply more quickly in the airway than delta did, although not as efficiently deep in the lungs.

What scientists can't measure is human behavior: Many places were relaxing restrictions, winter forced gatherings indoors and travel has jumped right as omicron began spreading.

IS OMICRON CAUSING MILDER ILLNESS?

Its still too early to know  especially given that if the vaccinated get a breakthrough infection, it should be milder than if omicron attacks the unvaccinated.

Early reports from South Africa suggested milder illness but doctors were unsure whether thats because the population is fairly young  or that many retained some protection from a recent delta infection.

And that British study found no evidence that omicron has been milder than delta in Britain, even with young adults  who would be expected to have milder illness  having higher rates of infection with omicron.

"Theres a hint, and I think many of us are hopeful, that omicron will be less severe. But I dont think we can bet the farm on that. Were still talking about SARS CoV-2, a virus that has killed millions of people, said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, who monitors variants for a research collaboration led by Harvard Medical School.

WHOS MOST AT RISK?

Based on the behavior of other variants, if youre older, if you have underlying conditions, if youre obese, youre more likely to have severe disease. I dont think its going to be any different than other variants, said Dr. Carlos del Rio of Emory University.

But even if you dont get very sick, an omicron infection could certainly ruin the holidays. Experts agree that in addition to getting vaccinated and boosted, it's wise to get back to the basics of protection: Wear masks indoors, avoid crowds and keep your distance.

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AP Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this report.

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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.
SANTA CATARINA IXTAHUACAN, Guatemala (AP)  Hundreds of demonstrators laid coffins on a platform to block a highway in Guatemala Monday to protest the weekend killings of a dozen people.

The protesters placed eight coffins on an improvised wooden platform to demand justice in the case. They carried banners reading, We have The Right to Live in Peace.
DURHAM, N.C. (AP)  Police in a North Carolina city are looking into the fourth shooting death in a week after a man who was found shot died at a hospital.

Durham police officers responded to a shooting call shortly after 6:30 p.m. Sunday, The Herald-Sun of Durham reported. The officer found a man whose identity hasn't been released. He was taken to a local hospital where he died, police said.
DAYTON, Ohio (AP)  An Ohio man convicted of murdering two teenagers inside his detached garage more than two years ago has been sentenced to 21 years to life in prison.

Victor Santana, 65, of Dayton was sentenced Monday in Montgomery County Court on convictions of murder and felonious assault in the deaths of Devin Henderson and Javier Harrison. Prosecutors had sought the maximum term of 36 years to life.
At the start of the pandemic, the need for the food that Jaron Barganiers nonprofit provides to children throughout Texas exploded.

Not only did many children lose the free breakfasts and lunches they had normally received at their schools, which were closed because of the COVID-19 outbreak. What's more, Barganiers nonprofit, Be a Champion, lost its access to those schools  and, more important to the food supplies, their refrigerators and freezers  as distribution hubs.

With demand having more than tripled to about 100,000 meals a day, Barganier turned for help to The PepsiCo Foundations Food for Good.

They basically created a way for us to serve our kids outside, said Barganier, Be a Champions CEO. When they learned some of these families dont even have access to refrigeration at home, they created a shelf-stable menu of products.

The PepsiCo Foundation says that as it built out its Food For Good program across America, it focused on addressing individual communities needs. And it plans to continue that focus as it expands Food For Good around the world, hoping to feed 50 million people by 2030.

Jon Banner, president of the PepsiCo Foundation and executive vice president of PepsiCo global communications, said the company and its philanthropic arm want to combat the worlds hunger crisis, which was severely exacerbated by the pandemic.

Roughly 800 million people around the world suffer from hunger, Banner said. Its a tragedy that doesnt need to happen. We had made so much progress, but I think, in one year, the pandemic has set us back 15 years.

The PepsiCo Foundation has pledged $100 million in new food security initiatives and sustainable agriculture development by 2030. It has also expanded its work with the United Nations World Food Programme, pledging additional money to create a multi-country partnership in the Middle East and North Africa to secure food for communities affected by climate change.

Like a growing number of corporations, PepsiCo plans to offer its business knowhow to nonprofits around the world, in addition to its money. Banner said PepsiCos agronomists and supply chain experts work with farmers around the world to try to increase their crop yields and make them more sustainable, which benefits both the businesses and the communities.

The leveraging of PepsiCo business knowledge for its foundations nonprofit partners will continue both in the United States and internationally.

Silvia Cruz-Vargas, The PepsiCo Foundations director of international programs, said the organization has similar goals in all its markets.

We talk about access to food security, access to water and access to economic opportunity as our three main pillars, she said. One goes hand-in-hand with the other ones when you are able to cover the most basic needs of those communities in which we live and work.

Expanding the Food For Good program globally will combine what the foundation has learned with its Access to Water initiatives in the past 12 years with what it has learned in America in its food programs, Cruz-Vargas said. But one thing the foundation has learned is that every community is different.

It doesnt mean that we are going to copy and paste a solution that is particularly relevant in North America in countries where that may not be applicable, she said. We have an outstanding network of local partners that are embedded within the fabric of the communities in which we operate.

Be a Champions Barganier said Food For Goods operational help has already directed his nonprofit to expand to new areas.

Founded in 2001 to help underprivileged youth in the Houston area, Be a Champion started with in-school tutoring and afterschool programs, as well as college outreach to introduce teenagers to university campus life. The nonprofit expanded into the distribution of food to the students once it realized how many of them weren't getting enough to eat. That led to its partnership with PepsiCos Food for Good in 2015 and helped Be a Champion grow into Texas second-largest nonprofit meal provider, offering millions of meals each year.

With the help of Food for Good, Barganier hopes to bring food to more communities in the Rio Grande Valley, as well as East Texas. But he is also looking forward to seeing the program expand around the world to help others.

Theyre going to do very well globally because they have the ability to adapt, Barganier said.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Wilton Police / Contributed

WILTON  A miniature horse was attacked by two dogs in town over the weekend, police said.

Around 2:30 p.m. Sunday, police were sent to a Wilton address for a report of a dog attacking a miniature horse on the property.
Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

STRATFORD  Police say a threat posted on social media Monday night targeting one or both of the towns middle schools was deemed not credible and a juvenile who shared it has been arrested.

Police said the Detective Bureau investigated the threat and found it not to be credible. Police reminded residents that all threats are taken seriously and fully investigated.
BRIDGEPORT  Students, and the broader public, could soon have a louder voice in school decisions under new and possible policy updates by the Board of Education.

In recent weeks the board has considered two significant changes to its meetings. The first  which added student representative reports to the agenda  passed unanimously on Monday night, and will come after roll call every meeting.

In the event we have a lengthy agenda, we want you to be able to have your report in the event you have to leave early because you have school the next day, said board chair John Weldon. We want to put you as close to the top as we can.

The move has been in the works for several board meetings, since the group re-invited student representatives from each high school to participate in regular meetings earlier this school year. Many of the final details were hashed out at a governance committee meeting last week.

Weldon suggested that each high school submit one report, either from the student representative or an alternate, who may be a grade younger and take on their role the following year. Students also do not need to speak if they have nothing to report, he said.

Weldon also explored the idea of, if not a time limit, an understanding of how long each oral report should take.

Superintendent Michael Testani suggested the board create a template for students to follow, which could include highlights, upcoming events and issues at their schools. He stressed his goal to hear from the students  before public comment, and unadulterated from principals and other school administrators.

Id rather hear from the students first, Testani said.

The group also considered other opportunities to solicit student input outside the allotted reports. Board member Joseph Sokolovic encouraged the students to participate throughout the board meetings, including discussions about new business. Testani said students can reach out to him via Microsoft Teams, and invited them to his office for food and to talk.

If you wouldnt mind having lunch with me, Ill buy, Testani said.

The governance committee also took another look at the boards public comment policies.

In recent years, discussion has been limited to agenda items only. The board is still ironing out the details, but in the meantime, Monday night marked the first time the portion of the meeting was officially open to all topics since the guidelines were introduced.

Weldon proposed a fixed cap on the number of speakers to 15 people and two minutes per person, or breaking it into two parts  agenda items only at the beginning, and other topics at the end. Some members, and Testani, suggested there should be a separate public forum if more than 15 people turn out to speak on a single issue.

The chairman also raised if speakers should have to sign in and introduce their comments to district staff, so they could not save spots for comment, or speak on issues outside the boards purview or that could introduce bias. Bobbi Brown, another board member, noted the state requires the same to testify.

Sokolovic said he was reluctant to add requirements.

Im very hesitant to restrict public comment in any way, shape or form, he said, except at special meetings, which are usually convened to address single topics.

Testani wondered if there may be a way to ensure the parents of current students get to speak first, but ultimately the group decided proving that status with report cards or by other means was too burdensome.

Next steps include a new policy draft, which may be discussed again among the governance committee before being moved to the full board.
NCUA issued a Letter to Credit Unions (21-CU-16) to provide clarity on the already existing authority of federally insured credit unions to establish relationships with third-party providers that offer digital asset services to the members, provided certain conditions are met.

This includes third-party provided services to allow federally insured credit union members to buy, sell, and hold uninsured digital assets with the third-party provider outside of the FICU.

Digital assets are one of many terms used to describe distributed ledger technology (DLT) based tokens.

NCUAas insurerdoes not prohibit federally insured credit unions from establishing these relationships. The authority for federal credit unions to establish these relationships is described in in the letter.
Its not always easy to see the value of data governance when there isnt an immediate cost savings or cash windfall. But what if you discovered that ineffective data governance could cost your credit union $400 million?

That isnt hyperbole. Its the actual amount of an Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) fine faced by a well-known financial services company for not having effective data governance practices. At the most basic level, every business, including credit unions, should see the value of data governance as cost avoidance. I believe if you use this as a driving force to take action, youll soon discover its so much more.

Have Your Audits Shown Data Governance Deficiencies? Act Now.

If youve had an audit thats revealed a lack of data governance  first, let me offer assurances that youre not alone. Credit unions, like businesses everywhere, are still grappling with how to create the policies, processes, roles, and systems that govern data management.

But second, view this as a prompt to begin establishing a dedicated data governance team  and start now. The financial services company that was fined actually had a team engaged in data governance. So, their particular problem wasnt a lack of governance  but more likely, ineffectiveness. Prior audits had shown deficiencies in the institutions data governance. When they werent resolved, the OCC implemented the fine.

Their misfortune can provide valuable lessons for the rest of us. Even better, proactively implementing good data governance practices is simpler than you may think.

How To Get on the Path to Good Data Governance

Since no credit union wants a multi-million-dollar wake-up call, lets use this example to illuminate why governing your credit unions data should become an important internal role that is taken seriously to protect the institution and its members.

And, theres even more upside. Data governance is not difficult and its also not expensive. At its core, its about people and processes. Here is a roadmap to getting a solid program in place.

Implement systems that reduce the opportunity for human error. Good data management practices make use of systems, automation, and alerts that simplify processes and reduce the opportunity for costly mistakes. For the financial institution that was fined, a major overpayment on a manual transaction got them in trouble. Now, on top of the fine, they are trying to recoup the overpayment too. Sound processes and intelligent systems will reduce these risks greatly.

Good data management practices make use of systems, automation, and alerts that simplify processes and reduce the opportunity for costly mistakes. For the financial institution that was fined, a major overpayment on a manual transaction got them in trouble. Now, on top of the fine, they are trying to recoup the overpayment too. Sound processes and intelligent systems will reduce these risks greatly. Investigate and address data quality issues. Data quality issues in financial services simply cannot be ignored. Both risk management and compliance are affected. Member data degrades over time. Addresses and phone numbers change along with financial and credit histories, and as new data sources are integrated, there are increased opportunities to introduce dirty data. When data errors arent addressed in a timely manner, even a single error can multiply quickly through downstream processes, becoming increasingly difficult to correct. Regular attention must be given to maintain complete, accurate, and valid data before it becomes problematic.

Data quality issues in financial services simply cannot be ignored. Both risk management and compliance are affected. Member data degrades over time. Addresses and phone numbers change along with financial and credit histories, and as new data sources are integrated, there are increased opportunities to introduce dirty data. When data errors arent addressed in a timely manner, even a single error can multiply quickly through downstream processes, becoming increasingly difficult to correct. Regular attention must be given to maintain complete, accurate, and valid data before it becomes problematic. Data management must grow with your credit union. As your credit union grows, expands or merges, it is crucial to have a plan for data growth as well. Your data infrastructure should be designed to accommodate ongoing developments, and databases should be properly integrated into a single source of truth. Laying the right data groundwork upfront is actually quite simple  trying to clean up data after-the-fact can be overwhelming and time-consuming. Make a mental note now!

Its important for credit unions to begin the process of establishing a data culture where everyone respects data, understands what it means, and treats it properly. Set yourself up for success with a team that can lead and guide your credit union through sound data decisions. Dont risk working in an ungoverned environment. As youve now seen, there are 400 million reasons to heed this advice.
Countdown viewers have defended the quiz show's first black presenter after she became the target of racist trolls on social media who claimed Channel 4 selected her because of her skin colour rather than her credentials.

Anne-Marie Imafidon, 31, who was born in London to Nigerian parents, is temporarily replacing Rachel Riley on Channel 4's Countdown while the TV presenter takes maternity leave for the birth of her second child.

Mathematician Anne-Marie, who was voted the Most Influential Woman in IT in the UK in 2020, made history as the youngest ever graduate with a Masters degree from Oxford at the age of 19 and passed A-Level computing at just age 11.

She speaks six languages, and worked for banks including Goldman Sachs, before setting up Stemettes, which helps women pursue careers in STEM.

Despite her accomplishments, viewers have had to defend her from racists claiming she has been given a role on Countdown to 'tick boxes'.

Anne-Marie Imafidon, 31, (pictured) who lives in London, is presenting 60 episodes of Channel 4 Countdown, while Rachel Riley is on maternity leave after the birth of her second child

Channel 4 took to Twitter to announce Anne-Marie joining Countdown from Monday 13 December.

Sharing a snap of Anne-Marie on the set of the show, they wrote: 'TODAYS EPISODE... The incredible @aimafidon will be joining our Countdown family for 60 episodes

'Tune in for some funky trainers, amazing hair-dos, show-stopping necklaces & some good old fashioned arithmetic. Monday 13th Dec 2021 - Channel 4 - 2.10pm GMT.'

The post racked up over 300 likes, while a number of separate threads also emerged with people debating the channel's choice of presenter.

Among the backlash, one person wrote: 'Something tell me there's politically progressive motivations behind Rachel Riley's replacement.'

Another said: 'That poor woman, must be awful knowing you didn't get the job because of your intelligence alone but that the main driving factor was your skin colour.'

A third commented: 'Another programme I flatly refuse to watch. The list just keeps growing.'

A thread on Twitter announcing Anne-Marie on Countdown was flooded with comments promising to boycott the show

Dawn Butler MP led the commenters defending Anne-Marie by listing her impressive qualifications, saying: 'Do you research before assuming something negative based on the colour of a person's skin.

'@aimafidon is phenomenal! 2 A-Levels at 11, at 20 Master's degree in mathematics and computer science from University of Oxford. There's more but I ain't got time.'

Another wrote: 'Not all heroes wear capes. It's so massive to see incredible women like Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon on a main TV channel. My maths isn't great but I'll be tuning in and brushing up my skills. Keep going! We're all behind you.'

'There is so much racist crying over Dr Imafidon being on Countdown, and it would be stupid enough even if it wasn't for the fact that she is is an actual genius,' a third said.

Family support: Born in Barking, London, Anne-Marie is the eldest daughter of Professor Chris Imafidon, right, an ophthalmologist who emigrated from Nigeria and was responsible for nurturing his daughter's prodigal talent. Left, Anne-Marie receiving her MBE in 2017

An overwhelming number of viewers have shown support for Anne-Marie, while defending her from comments made by racists

Britain's brainiest family: How Anne-Marie and her siblings achieved extraordinary successs All five of the Imafidon children have achieved extraordinary academic success, passing GCSEs when they were as young as six and going on to study for degrees at universities including Oxford and Harvard. Anne-Marie, 31, passed A-level maths aged 11; Christiana, 28, passed GCSE maths at nine; Samantha, 24, passed GCSEs in maths and statistics aged six; while twins Paula and Peter, 21 passed GCSE maths aged six and A-level maths aged seven. Their exceptional talent earned them the nickname 'Britain's brainiest family'. Professor Imafidon encouraged sibling rivalry, gave out medals when his children succeeded and supported them playing computer games to learn. They also learnt two musical instruments and competed in a number of sports, as well as learning languages. Paula and Peter, pictured in 2010, passed GCSE maths aged six and A-level maths aged seven. They are now 21 years old Advertisement

Another added: 'If you went to state school, you have to be ridiculously talented (like Anne-Marie Imafidon) or incredibly lucky to make it anywhere in public life. Still they'll give you s***!'

Born in Barking, London, Anne-Marie is the eldest daughter of Professor Chris Imafidon, an ophthalmologist who emigrated from Nigeria and was responsible for nurturing his daughter's prodigal talent.

All five of his children have broken age records in educational attainments, passing GCSEs when they were as young as six and going on to study for degrees at universities including Oxford and Harvard.

Anne-Marie, 31, passed A-level maths aged 11; Christiana, 28, passed GCSE maths at nine; Samantha, 24, passed GCSEs in maths and statistics aged six; while twins Paula and Peter, 21 passed GCSE maths aged six and A-level maths aged seven.

Their exceptional talent earned them the nickname 'Britain's brainiest family'.

While at St Saviour Church Church of England Primary School, now an academy converter school, Anne-Marie achieved two A-Levels: Mathematics and Computer Science. She was the youngest ever girl to pass the computer science exam.

In 2003, aged 13, she received a scholarship to study mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, in Maryland. Two years later she was admitted a degree programme by the University of Oxford.

At 17 years old, she began a Master's Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science, graduating before she reached the age of 20. She is the youngest ever graduate with a master's degree.

Alongside her extraordinary mathematical talent, Anne-Marie has learned languages and speaks six fluently.

Professor Imafidon encouraged sibling rivalry, gave out medals when his children succeeded and supported them playing computer games to learn.

They also learnt two musical instruments and competed in a number of sports.

Anne-Marie with Dame Kelly Holmes and Boris Johnson at an International Women's Day event in 2020

In a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph, he said he wanted to 'ban black and white text books' and teach 'Shakespeare as an app with Bart Simpson quizzing Shakespeare' because children are 'digital natives'.

After graduating from Oxford, Anne-Marie has forged an enviable CV, including positions at Goldman Sachs, Hewlett-Packard and Deutsche Bank.

She also holds Honorary Doctorates from Bristol University, Open University and Kent University, and an Honorary Fellowship at Keble College, Oxford.

Nine years ago, she founded Stemettes, an award-winning social initiative dedicated to inspiring and promoting the next generation of young women in the STEM sectors.
A mom has finally reunited with her newborn and two young daughters - after spending 100 days in the hospital and two months on life support because of COVID-19.

Autumn Carver, 35, from Indiana, is 'counting her blessings' after a long battle with the virus, which left her close to death and forced her to spend more than three months apart from her children - including a son that she gave birth to while sick.

The mom-of-three has 'miraculously' recovered after doctors told her family time and time again that she was most likely not going to survive.

A mom has finally reunited with her newborn and two young daughters - after spending 100 days in the hospital and two months on life support because of COVID-19

Autumn Carver, 35, had a long battle with the virus, which left her close to death and forced her to spend months apart from her children - including a son that she gave birth to while sick

Autumn contracted the virus back in August, while she was almost nine-months pregnant with her third child

Autumn contracted the virus back in August, while she was almost nine-months pregnant with her third child.

She and her husband, Zach, welcomed a son, Huxley, on August 27 during an emergency C-section, but she was immediately separated from the newborn because of her illness.

She wasn't allowed to meet him for more than two months, and during that time, her health deteriorated.

Things got so bad that at one point, she was put on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machine - which is designed to remove carbon dioxide from the blood.

She was forced into a medically-induced coma while the machine did her breathing for her - so that her lungs could attempt to heal.

And during that time, her family had no idea if she would ever wake up and get to meet the son she had just given birth to.

She gave birth to a son, Huxley (pictured), on August 27 during an emergency C-Section, but she was immediately separated from the newborn because of her illness

She wasn't allowed to meet him for more than two months, and during that time, her health deteriorated. Things got so bad that at one point, she was put into a medically induced coma

Finally, in October, she started to improve. Autumn woke up and was allowed to meet Huxley for the first time - a day she called 'precious'

Finally, in October, things started to improve. Autumn was taken off the machine and allowed to see Huxley for the first time - a day she called 'precious.'

On December 1, 2021 - after 100 days in the hospital and just in time for the holidays, the mom-of-three was allowed to leave and reunited with her two daughters, Harlow, 5, Sadie, 4.

She said that since coming home, it's been a hard adjustment for the little girls, but that they're happy to have their mom back.

'The kiddos are still young enough that they're resilient, but it's taking them some time still to adjust,' she said during a recent interview with Good Morning America.

'Having my whole family under one roof for the first time was - I don't have words to put on that.

'Happy and joyful... they don't compare to what I really feel. We're just all so happy to be together, especially right before Christmas. It's been awesome, better than expected.'

According to Autumn, her husband - who also had COVID but didn't get nearly as sick - was by her side almost every day that she was in the hospital, while both sets of grandparents took turns taking care of the kids.

According to Autumn, her husband was by her side almost every day that she was in the hospital, while both sets of grandparents took turns taking care of the kids

On December 1, 2021 - after 100 days in the hospital and just in time for the holidays, Autumn was allowed to leave and reunited with her two daughters, Harlow, 5, Sadie, 4, for the first time

She said that since coming home, it's been a hard adjustment for the little girls, but that they're happy to have their mom back

'We would just pray together and use that to stay motivated. We would look forward and we were just taking one day at a time,' she recalled of what got them through the traumatic experience.

Now, she is able to breath on her own, however, her lung capacity is only at 40 per cent due to the damage caused by the illness - but her doctor still called her recovery 'miraculous.'

'I think using the word "miraculous" is a very appropriate word,' Dr. Ankit Bharat - who is chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern Medicine - told the outlet.

'She's not going to get her lung function back to where it was before COVID hit her, but she'll be able to lead a normal life.

'Even though her recovery has been miraculous, she's still 40 per cent and that's significant.

'It's a reminder that this virus can affect anybody, whether you're young or healthy, and you cannot take this lightly.'

She told Good Morning America: 'We're just all so happy to be together, especially right before Christmas. It's been awesome, better than expected'

Now, she is able to breath on her own, however, her lung capacity is only at 40 per cent due to the damage caused by the illness - but her doctor still called her recovery 'miraculous'

Before she caught COVID, Autumn had no preexisting conditions and was pretty healthy - doing CrossFit workouts daily.

At the time that she contracted the disease, Autumn was not vaccinated. The couple explained that they had previously suffered three miscarriages and were told 'not to get it,' however, she now has plans to receive the shot.

She added that she has a 'renewed outlook on life' and that she counts every day as a 'blessing.'

'As much as nobody wants to get up in the middle of the night [with a baby], it's easier for us to just count it as a blessing,' she continued.

'We just take the time and sit down and do whatever they want us to do because we missed that so much for so long.

'I tell our girls every morning to be kind and to make somebody smile. Our world could use a lot more kindness and forgiveness and joy.'
Adventure-seeking Australians are flocking to a spectacular ancient swimming hole with crystal clear waters in the middle of the Queensland rainforest.

Just one hour's drive south from Cairns lies the Devil's Pool at Babinda Boulders at the foot to Queensland's tallest mountain, Mt Bartle.

Devil's Pool is a spiritually significant site for the local Indigenous people and is surrounded by lush green rainforest and huge boulders that have been smoothed out by the flowing waters.

Travel lovers are flocking to this stunning crystal clear swimming hole in the Queensland rainforest

Just one hour's drive south from Cairns lies the Devil's Pool at Babinda Boulders at the foot to Queensland's tallest mountain, Mt Bartle

Devil's Pool is a spiritually significant site for the local Indigenous people surrounded by lush green rainforest and huge boulders that have been smoothed out by the flowing waters

It is a 1.3km walk downstream from the Babinda picnic area on an undulating track that takes you past two viewing platforms where you will see a series of stunning waterfalls, granite boulders and water holes.

Devil's Pool is the perfect place to take a refreshing dip to cool off from the tropical Queensland heat however visitors must be careful as its deceptive currents can be dangerous.

Babinda Creek's fast flowing waters have claimed 18 lives since 1959 with most victims behaving carelessly or ignoring warnings.

Devil's Pool is the perfect place to take a refreshing dip to cool off from the tropical Queensland heat however visitors must be careful as its deceptive currents can be dangerous so it is important to stick to the designated swimming pools, observe the signs and steer clear of the strong currents and slippery boulders

Devil's Pool is a 1.3km walk downstream from the Babinda picnic area on an undulating track that takes you past two viewing platforms where you will see a series of stunning waterfalls, granite boulders and water holes

Those venturing to the area are advised to stick to the designated swimming pools, observe the signs and steer clear of the strong currents and slippery boulders to enjoy the incredible spot the way many locals have for thousands of years.

Keen adventures can discover many more attractions close by to the Babinda Boulders including the aptly named Crystal Cascades, the picturesque Josephine Falls and Behana Gorge where you can book a tour to go canyoning, abseiling, cliff jumping or rock sliding.

For more information on how to visit the Babinda Boulders, head to the Cairns Attraction website.
Renowned cook Maggie Beer has revealed how to make the perfect pavlova and it only requires six ingredients.

The Australian cook shared her method, tips and tricks for creating the classic dessert just in time for Christmas Day.

Maggie begins making the six ingredient pavlova by first preheating her oven to 160 degrees celsius.

Scroll down for video

Renowned cook Maggie Beer has revealed how to make the perfect pavlova and it only requires six ingredients

The Australian cook shared her method, tips and tricks for creating the classic dessert just in time for Christmas Day

Next the cookbook author places the whites of four eggs and a pinch of salt into a bowl and whisks the whites up until stiff peaks form.

Maggie suggests in the video that 'its always better to have eggs at room temperature' when making meringue.

She then adds in 220 grams of sugar to the meringue mixture and whisks well until the mixture is glossy.

She then adds in 220 grams of sugar to the meringue mixture and whisks well until the mixture is glossy, then then adds cornflour and one tablespoon of either lemon juice or verjuice then pours the meringue mixture into a circle like shape onto a baking tray lined with baking paper

To check if the sugar is dissolved she suggests rubbing the mixture in between your fingers.

Maggie then adds a 'few teaspoons' of cornflour and one tablespoon of either lemon juice or verjuice and completes a final whisk. She reveals that these ingredients give the pavlova stability.

Next she pours the meringue mixture into a circle like shape onto a baking tray lined with baking paper.

How to make Maggie Beer's perfect pavlova: Ingredients: 4 egg whites

1 pinch of salt

220 grams caster sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice/ verjuice 1 tbsp cornflour

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup almond flakes (optional)

1 cup creme fraiche (optional)

Apricots (optional) Method: Preheat oven to 160 degres celsius. Place four egg whites and a pinch of salt in a bowl and whisk until stiff peaks form. Add 220 grams of sugar to the mixture and whisk well until the mixture is glossy. Add in one tablespoon of cornflour and one tablespoon of either lemon juice or verjuice and give the mixture a final whisk. Pour the meringue into a circular shape onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake the pavlova in the oven and reduce temperature to 150 degrees and bake for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes reduce the temperature to 120 degrees for another 45 minutes. Turn the oven off and leave the door ajar, let the pavlova cool inside the oven. Whip cream until it form soft peaks and add a spoonful of creme fraiche, whip the mixture for another 30 seconds. Spoon the cream onto the meringue and top with apricots, almond flakes and verjuice syrup. Advertisement

Pavlova Welcome to my Barossa home kitchen for one last time. The biggest thank you to every single one of you who has tuned in, cooked along and sent messages and photos. From tomorrow we will be posting one episode a week to be filmed from the Farm Shop, but I thought it fitting to end home filming on an all time favourite....Pavlova. Happy Cooking! #cookwithmaggie Recipe link in comments- Team MB x Posted by Maggie Beer on Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Then she places the pavlova into the oven and reduce the temperature to 150 degrees celsius and bake for 45 minutes. Maggie suggests to reduce the temperature to 120 degrees for another 45 minutes.

Once cooked, turn the oven off and open the oven door slightly so it is ajar, Maggie insists on the pavlova to cool completely in the oven.

For the topping whip cream into soft peaks, the Australian cook also adds creme fraiche into her cream for a following 30 seconds.

Cook the pavlova for 90 minutes according to the recipe and begin whipping cream into soft peaks, She spoons the cream onto the pavlova and tops it with apricots, almond flakes and finished with Verjuice syrup to finish

She spoons the cream onto the pavlova and tops it with apricots, almond flakes and finished with Verjuice syrup.

'Of all the desserts, pavlova is a firm favourite that is hard to resist. The pavlova has got to be my favourite dessert of all,' Maggie said.

The pavlova is a simple dessert that many both love and look for at each family gathering and what better time to make Maggie's treat than this Christmas day.
Conversations with Friends follows two young women Frances and Bobbi as they navigate their unusual attraction to mysterious, sexy married couple, Nick and Melissa.

And now the first imagery from the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney's best selling novel has now been revealed ahead of its highly-anticipated release next year.

Rooney's 2017 book sees Frances, who will be played by newcomer Alison Oliver, embark on an erotic affair with Nick, while trying to reconcile her feelings for best friend and ex-girlfriend Bobbi, played by Utiopia actress Sasha Lane, 25, whom she is in love with.

In the snap, which was released this week, Alison can be seen gazing at the camera while wearing a khaki coloured jacket and a black polo neck.

Sally Rooney fans have been offered a first glimpse of actress Alison Oliver as the protagonist in the BBC adaptation of Conversations with Friends

The novel is packed full of racy moments which will set viewers hearts thumping and will likely follow in the footsteps of Rooney's Normal People, which wowed viewers with its intimate, realistic sex scenes.

Alison has previously been spotted on set with actor Joe Alwyn, who plays Nick, in Bray, Co. Wicklow in Ireland.

Unlike the rest of the cast, little is known about the show's lead role of Frances, who will be played by emerging talent Alison.

She will make her debut in the series having graduated from drama school Lir Academy in Dublin, Ireland.

While the snap offers fans a first glimpse of the actress in character ,Alison has previously been spotted on set with actor Joe Alwyn, who plays Nick, in Bray, Co. Wicklow in Ireland

Like Rooney's 2018 smash, Conversations With Friends is also set in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

The plot follows best friends and ex-girlfriends Bobbi and Frances, who meet mysterious and sexy older couple Melissa and Nick at a poetry night in Dublin.

The 2017 book follows a mysterious, sexy married couple, Nick and Melissa, and their unusual attraction to two younger women, Frances and Bobbi

Bobbi immediately becomes infatuated with Melissa and openly begins a flirtation with the older woman, who appears flattered by the attention.

Meanwhile Frances and Nick embark on an elicit affair, with the foursome become more and more entangled with one another.

Nick ultimately reveals the affair to his wife, who accepts the relationship having had her own affairs, and Nick begins to date Frances openly within the group.

Eventually Frances rekindles her romantic relationship with both Bobbi and Nick, with the four continuing their elicit attraction to one another despite the complexities.

The new series comes after the success of Rooney's 2018 novel Normal People which was adapted into a ratings smash hit TV series last year.

It saw show leads Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, who took on Connell and Marianne's love story, soar to fame after it aired during the first lockdown.

Normal People has been the most watched show on BBC Three ever with more than 23 million downloads globally and over 6.75 million devices watching the first episode. This makes it the most popular programme on the channel ever.

The 12-part drama is based on Rooney's bestselling novel about the turbulent relationship between working-class Connell [Mescal] and well-heeled Marianne [Edgar-Jones], has been praised for its unflinching take on sexuality.

Huge hit: Normal People has been the most watched show on BBC Three ever with more than 23 million downloads globally and over 6.75 million devices watching the first episode (Mescal and Edgar-Jones pictured in show still)

Intimate: Paul Mescal, 24, shot to fame last year alongside Daisy, 22, in the BBC drama, about two young lovers - gaining particular attention for their intimate, realistic sex scenes

Author Rooney hit the headlines in October after she defended rejecting the publisher's offer to translate her new book - which topped UK and Irish charts since its release in September - saying she backed a cultural boycott of Israel.

However the decision sparked a wave of criticism against the author and screenwriter.

Some took to social media to label Miss Rooney's decision as 'anti-Semitic', while others questioned why her books were published for an audience in China - which has been accused of human rights abuses over its treatment of Uighur Muslims.

But the author defended her decision - which she said was not to have the book published by an Israeli-based publishing house - and that the Hebrew language rights were 'still available'.

Watch Normal People, exclusively on Stan in Australia.
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Chris Noth's wife of nine years Tara Wilson was pictured for the first time yesterday after her husband was accused by rape in an explosive report that has already led to financial consequences for the star.

Last week, Noth, 67, was accused of rape by two women, who both shared details of their alleged assaults with The Hollywood Reporter  with one of the women saying she was just 22 when Noth, then 49, attacked her and left her needing stitches.

The report led another woman to come forward and accuse Noth of groping her, while actress Zoe Lister-Jones recalled behavior that made her describe him as a 'predator'  and he has since lost a planned $12 million deal to sell his tequila brand and was fired from the series The Equalizer.

His wife, 42, is reportedly 'very upset' and 'not doing well,' and was seen on Monday climbing into an SUV outside their gated home in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she didn't appear to be wearing her wedding ring.

Chris Noth's wife of nine years Tara Wilson was pictured for the first time yesterday after her husband was accused by rape in an explosive report

Wilson was pictured in blue leggings, a green puffer coat, and Ugg boots outside the home she shares with Noth

Wilson didn't appear to be wearing her wedding ring on Monday, though she did have it on earlier this month

Wilson (pictured with Noth earlier this month) was seen climbing into an SUV outside their gated home in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles on Monday

Wilson had on both her wedding ring and diamond engagement ring when she attended the And Just Like That premiere with Noth earlier this month

Wilson was pictured in blue leggings, a green puffer coat, and Ugg boots outside the home she shares with Noth. She did not seem to have a ring on her finger, though she was wearing a large rock at the And Just Like That premiere earlier this month.

Apparently unaware of the camera, she looked tired as she held her phone in her hand and climbed into the car, after putting her youngest son into the backseat.

Wilson and Noth share two children: Orion, 13, and Keats, 18 months.

This is the first time that Wilson has been pictured since last Thursday, when The Hollywood Reporter published its report on the allegations.

Noth has vehemently denied that he assaulted the women, but did admit to sexual relations with them, describing the incidents as 'consensual encounters.'

Whether or not the incidents were rape or consensual, a source told The Sun that Wilson was caught unawares that he was having anything to do with other women.

'He may be non-monogamous, we have established that his wife didn't know,' the source said.

'If anything, he is guilty of that. She is in LA and is very upset she's not doing well. They planned to spend Christmas together but that is now unknown.'

The source, a friend of Noth's, also insisted that the actor is 'no Weinstein' and that 'all his friends are sticking by him.'

Wilson, 42, is reportedly 'very upset' and 'not doing well' since the report

Noth has vehemently denied that he assaulted the women, but did admit to sexual relations with them, describing the incidents as 'consensual encounters'

She was seen putting her younger son, Keats, into the backseat of the vehicle before climbing in herself

'He may be non-monogamous, we have established that his wife didn't know,' a source said

On Monday evening, the actor's Sex and the City co-stars, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis, issued a statement about the accusations made against him, saying: 'We are deeply saddened to hear the allegations against Chris Noth.

'We support the women who have come forward and shared their painful experiences. We know it must be a very difficult thing to do and we commend them for it.'

Noth met Vancouver-born Wilson in 2001 when he was in his mid-40s and she was in her early 20s. Wilson was a bartender at the New York jazz club The Cutting Room, which Noth co-owns.

They welcomed their first son in 2008, got engaged in 2009, and married in Hawaii in 2012, with then-four-year-old Orion serving as ring bearer. Their second son arrived in early 2020.

It's unknown whether Wilson was made aware of the allegations against her husband before they were published. The Hollywood Reporter had reached out to Noth prior to publication, which would have given him at least some time to break the news.

In the report, both of Noth's accusers  who went by pseudonyms Zoe, now 40, and Lily, now 31  claimed that he raped them from behind in front of a mirror. The first attack allegedly took place in 2004, while the second reportedly occurred in 2015, three years after Noth married his wife, Tara Wilson, with whom he has two children.

Both women claimed that the recent publicity surrounding the Sex and the City reboot 'stirred painful memories' of their encounters with Noth and 'triggered' them to go public with their claims.

Noth has two sons with Wilson - Orion (left), 13, who was born in 2008, seven years before the alleged second attack took place, and Keats (right), 18 months, who was born in 2020

Noth met Vancouver-born Wilson in 2001 when he was in his mid-40s and she was in her early 20s. Wilson was a bartender at the New York jazz club The Cutting Room, which Noth co-owns

The couple welcomed their first son in 2008, got engaged in 2009, and married in Hawaii in 2012. Their second son arrived in early 2020 (pictured in 2002)

The first, Zoe, said she met Noth while working 'in an entry-level position at a high-profile firm where Noth and other celebrities regularly had business' in 2004.

She claimed that the actor  who was then at the height of his Sex and the City fame and, according to Zoe's then-boss was seen as a 'god' by her and colleagues  began flirting with her in the office.

At the time, Noth had been dating Wilson for three years. However, according to Zoe, Noth began leaving 'flirty' messages on her voicemail  which she was alerted to by her boss.

Zoe claimed that she was raped by Noth in his West Hollywood apartment when she returned a book he had lent her.

She said he 'kissed her' as soon as she walked through the door, then moved her to his bed and removed her shorts and bikini bottoms before raping her 'from behind' while they were 'facing a mirror.'

She also claimed that the actor did not use protection, that he 'laughed at her' when she asked him to get a condom  and that she was left bleeding after the assault, and had to go to the hospital to get stitches.

'It was very painful and I yelled out, "Stop!"' she told THR. 'And he didnt. I said, "Can you at least get a condom?" and he laughed at me.'

Last Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter published explosive allegations against Noth (seen in Sex and the City reboot And Just Like that with co-star Sarah Jessica Parker), with two women claiming that he raped them

One woman claimed that the alleged attack took place in Noth's Greenwich Village apartment ( pictured) and that he raped her from behind, in front of a mirror

'I had stitches. Two police officers came. I wouldnt say who it was,' she says, claiming that she feared she would 'not be believed' and could 'be fired' if she publicly accused Noth of rape.

Noth's second accuser, Lily, who is now working as a journalist, told a similar story to THR, alleging that the actor raped her in his home in Greenwich Village after they struck up a flirty relationship while she was working as a server at former New York nightclub No.8 in 2015, when she was 25.

After the report was published, Zoe Lister-Jones described Noth was a 'sexual predator'

Lily said she was 'truly star-struck' when he began 'hitting on her' and ended up going with him to a restaurant.

Afterward, Noth invited her back to his home to 'sample his collection of whiskeys'  and says he began trying to 'make out with her' when they got there.

'I should have said no more firmly and left,' she said, claiming that 'the next thing she knew' he had pulled down her pants and 'was standing in front of her' before 'thrusting his penis into her mouth.'

She said that she mentioned the fact that he had a wife and child, only for the actor to tell her that 'marriage is a sham' and 'monogamy is not real.' Lily claimed Noth then raped her from behind in a chair in front of a mirror.

'He was having sex with me from the back in a chair. We were in front of a mirror. I was kind of crying as it happened,' she said.

After the alleged assault took place, Lily said she went to the bathroom and put on her skirt, claiming that she 'felt awful' and 'totally violated.'

'All of my dreams with this star I loved for years were gone,' she added.

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Noth admitted that he had 'consensual encounters' with the two women, but he strongly denied any accusations that he assaulted them.

In her Instagram story on Thursday, Lister-Jones said she was 'relieved' by Big's death because she remembers him being 'consistently sexually inappropriate' with a female promoter

'The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false,' the statement reads.

'These stories couldve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago  no always means no  that is a line I did not cross. The encounters were consensual.

'Its difficult not to question the timing of these stories coming out. I dont know for certain why they are surfacing now, but I do know this: I did not assault these women.'

Though Officer Drake Madison of the LAPD initially told Deadline on Thursday that 'there is no investigation at this point' into the claims against Noth, an LAPD spokesperson later told People that they are 'looking into the nature of the report' and trying to figure out 'when, where or even if a report was filed.'

However, Officer Madison added: 'At this time, there's no record of a report being filed. Without a report, there is no investigation.'

Late on Thursday, actress Zoe Lister-Jones also detailed her encounters with the embattled actor, claiming that he was 'sexually inappropriate' to women who worked at a New York City club he owned, and sniffed her neck while drunk on set of the detective show.

'Last week, my friend asked me how I felt about Mr. Big's death on And Just Like That, and I said honestly, I felt relieved,' she wrote on Instagram.

'He asked why, and I told him it was because I couldn't separate the actor from the man, and the man is a sexual predator,' she went on, before detailing some of her experiences.

Then a third woman accused Chris Noth of sexual assault for allegedly groping her at a Manhattan restaurant in 2010 when she was 18.

She also recalled him sniffing her hair when she guest starred on Law and Order: Criminal Intent

She concluded her statement by cursing out Noth's character on Sex and the City, claiming that he capitalized on the role to seduce women

The unnamed 30-year-old Canadian tech executive claimed Noth, then 55, groped her while she was working as a hostess at the Da Marino restaurant in Midtown, the Daily Beast first reported.

Noth came in intoxicated, allegedly telling her, 'I love Canadian women' as he pressed her against 'his erection.'

'I remember how electrifying his hand, the hand I watched hold Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, felt grabbing me,' Ava said.

She claimed Noth then followed her into the back office and began kissing her and pressing her against a desk.

She alleged that that he pulled down her tights and touched and clung onto her so strongly that after she managed to push and kick him away, her 'limbs hurt in the morning.'

'It felt as though I was the only person in the universe who could hear me saying no,' she told the outlet.

She said the actor also felt her tampon and asked if she was at the end of her period before continuing to grope her.

Despite Ava's protests, Noth allegedly carried on until she told him 'not here,' convincing him that they could carry on somewhere else.

'I haven't been able to shake the memory of how the kitchen staff looked at me as I emerged from the office with Chris Noth,' she said.

Noths publicist told the Daily Beast that the actor 'denies this as ever happening and has no idea who this woman is.'
Princess Charlene of Monaco has shared a sketched Christmas portrait of her family and 'wished everyone a beautiful and safe festive season' as she remains in a treatment facility.

The former Olympian, 43, took to Instagram today to share her festive greeting with her followers, posting a colourful piece of artwork depicting herself in a golden gown when standing next to Prince Albert.

Her husband appears equally charming in the drawing, sporting a navy suit with a light blue tie, while seven-year-old twins Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella don all their finery for the image.

With the family posing next to an elaborately-decorated Christmas tree in the artwork, Charlene captioned the design: 'Wishing everyone a beautiful and safe festive season, all my love.'

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 her home country.

Princess Charlene of Monaco has shared a sketched Christmas portrait (pictured) of her family and 'wished everyone a beautiful and safe festive season' as she remains in a treatment facility

With the family posing next to an elaborately-decorated Christmas tree in the artwork, Charlene captioned the design (pictured): 'Wishing everyone a beautiful and safe festive season, all my love.'

Prince Albert revealed last month his wife (pictured with her family upon her return to Monaco) 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 .

In the drawing, Charlene rests her hand on Albert's shoulder, while her other holds on to her daughter, who is dressed in a light pink frock.

She teams her elegant dress with golden shoes, matching her mother's gem-encrusted, floor-length gown.

Meanwhile, her brother appears dashing in a blue blazer, navy trousers and a white shirt while standing next to the tree, which is covered in red and gold decorations.

Three colourful presents surround the family in the drawing. It's currently unclear who created the portrait.

Announcing his wife had been admitted to a European treatment facility, Albert 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.

The royal missed the seventh birthday of her twins Gabriella and Jacques but shared photos of the celebration on Instagram, writing: 'Happy birthday my babies. Thank you God for blessing me with such wonderful children. I'm truly blessed. Love mom.'

Earlier this month, Princess Charlene of Monaco 's seven-year-old twins Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella attended a traditional Christmas event without their mother (pictured)

Also today, the Belgium royals posed for their yearly family photo before a Christmas tree, taken at the occasion of the Christmas concert, in the Throne Room at the Royal Palace in Brussels

Speaking to Page Six, 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.

The royal (pictured upon her return to Monaco) missed the seventh birthday of her twins Gabriella and Jacques

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.'

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'.

Missing their mother: Meanwhile Prince Albert has continued to make public appearances with their twins, Jacques and Gabriella, who held up these signs to Charlene during the Monaco National Day celebrations on November 19

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.
The Macomb County Sheriff's office in Clemens, Michigan is in the business of keeping track of who is naught and nice year-round  but in December, they get some extra help from their very own Elf on the Shelf.

The toy, which they've named Snitch, has been a staple of the department for several years now, and they document his 'shenanigans' on their official Facebook page.

This year, Snitch has been pictured making a mess while dusting for fingerprints, taking a breathalyzer, and getting a stern talking-to from detectives after using yellow 'police line' tape to cordon off a door.

He's spent time in the local jail, too, where he served lunch, shopped in commissary, and messed up the clean laundry in the laundry room.

Snitch has earned plenty of fans on Facebook  and even some of the prisoners seem to enjoy elf and posed for pictures with the him.

Day 1: The Sheriff's office celebrated Snitch's return on December 1, writing: 'As always, his first stop was a visit to the Sheriff. He police lined the Sheriff's office, pulling his first prank. It appears that the shenanigans are already starting.'

Day 2: 'Snitch is visiting the jail which required a COVID test,' they wrote. 'He was a little nervous so the kind Sergeant held his hand. The nurse was gentle, and afterwards, Snitch told us that it was no big deal.'

Day 3: 'Snitch has already met a few Detectives!' they said. 'He was found in the jail trying to police line a few more things. He was "snitched" on and ended up here. Detectives spoke with him and told him if he doesn't stop with the naughty, and start with the nice, they will be calling Santa on HIM!'

Day 4: 'Snitch went to visit the Lieutenant at our Macomb Township sub-station. He was being extra sweet, with a dash of mistletoe.'

Day 5: 'More nice behavior! Snitch was out on patrol with one of our deputies this afternoon when the Deputy was going to write a violation on a traffic stop. Snitch decided that the driver would benefit from a verbal warning so the citation was ripped up!'

Day 6: 'Snitch was so excited to be patrolling the roads yesterday,' they wrote. 'He tried to drive one of our transport vans today. The deputies located him on the steering wheel and he was all business. Unfortunately, Snitch was unable to provide a proper license and had to magically move on.'

Day 7: 'Snitch is once again trying to be nice and helpful in Dispatch. Snitch is sure the caller is calling regarding cold exposure and says that he knows ALL about the cold. Snitch is trying to point out what to do but the dispatchers are already on top of it.'

Day 8: 'Snitch wanted to help us dust for some fingerprints, but instead made this huge mess,' the office said. 'And lifted zero fingerprints! Better luck with his next assignment.'

Day 9: 'Snitch has made it over to the garage! Our mechanics welcomed him and even found an elf sized wrench,' they said, adding that there were 'no shenanigans when it comes to vehicle safety!'

Day 10: 'If you visit our Records Office please do not let the elf assist you,' they warned. 'He looks sweet, but he is a menace with those stamps! Our clerks will be happy to help you as we keep Snitch, and the stamps, behind the glass.'

Day 11: 'Snitch was found in the mailroom. The Deputy has the letter Snitch may be looking for.'

Day 12: Snitch was back in dispatch, but they said it 'would be more helpful if Snitch would actually tell the deputies where to respond, instead of singing Christmas carols to them.'

Day 13: 'Snitch is in the jail helping out with deputy rounds,' they wrote.

Day 14: 'Snitch is always smiling so we had to make sure he hasnt been hitting the eggnog. He blew all zeros; the only thing in his system is sugar and Christmas spirit.'

Day 15: 'Snitch was in the jail helping to serve lunch. He is definitely eyeing those cookies. Snitch is not only a fan favorite outside of the jail, but inside the jail too.'

Day 16: 'Snitch is hanging out in the jail. One of the kind nurses showed him how to properly use hand sanitizer.'

Day 17: 'Snitch was not happy to be ignored as our Public Information Officer was trying to get things ready for the giveaway this morning. Really?!? Silly string?!?'

Day 18: 'Snitch is back in the jail helping write letters to Santa. What will you be asking for this year?'

Day 19: 'Snitch has been doing a little Christmas shopping in our commissary! Those on the Nice list get the best snacks.'
Liz Elgar is the first to admit she might appear overzealous about sun protection. 'I'm that mother you see in the park or on the beach running around after her children applying a thick layer of factor 50,' she says.

'I then apply it to myself and reapply every hour.'

But Liz has reason to be cautious. In 2012, she was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer  despite rarely going in the sun, never using a sunbed and always applying sunscreen.

It was back in 2008 that she first spotted a tiny new mole.

'I'd recently given birth to my second son and was breastfeeding when I noticed a mole on my upper chest,' says Liz, 48, an office worker who lives in Hertfordshire with her husband Jeff, 47, a local government officer.

The mole was a malignant melanoma  the most dangerous form of skin cancer, which can quickly spread elsewhere in the body and claims more than 2,000 lives each year in the UK [File photo]

'It looked normal and I thought perhaps it was hormonal after pregnancy.'

Some pregnant women do find they are more prone to moles and skin tags as a result of the surge in hormones.

The mole didn't seem to grow, itch or change shape, so Liz, who has two sons, George, 16, and Francis, 13, forgot about it. Then one day in 2012 she was dressing when she noticed a change.

'The mole was bigger and had changed shape from round to jagged and asymmetrical. It was now the size of a five pence piece and lots of different shades of brown. My stomach lurched.'

Liz saw her GP the next day and was referred to a dermatologist, who said 'it was probably OK, but that I should have it removed and tested to see if it's cancerous', says Liz.

Two weeks later, the mole and some surrounding tissue were removed under anaesthetic; three weeks later, she got the results.

'I wasn't too worried because it didn't itch or bleed and so I didn't think it was bad,' says Liz.

'I sat opposite the consultant and she began speaking. I heard a word . . . 'malignant' and my heart sank.'

'I'm that mother you see in the park or on the beach running around after her children applying a thick layer of factor 50,' she says

The mole was a malignant melanoma  the most dangerous form of skin cancer, which can quickly spread elsewhere in the body and claims more than 2,000 lives each year in the UK.

It occurs when the melanocytes, the cells that make the pigment that gives skin its colour, grow out of control, forming tumours.

While the cancer can begin in an existing mole, more commonly it starts in a new one.

'I instantly thought of my children growing up without a mother,' she says. 'I thought: Will I die? And what might the treatment be?'

The doctors explained that as the mole was at stage 1B (one of the earliest), her outlook was better than it could have been.

Cases of melanoma are on the rise, says Dr Rachel Abbott, a consultant dermatologist in Cardiff and spokesperson for the British Skin Foundation. There are about 15,400 new cases a year  50 per cent more than a decade ago.

'That's 42 new cases every day,' says Dr Abbott.

The sharp rise is thought to be because of the ageing population, exposure to the sun on foreign holidays and the use of sunbeds.

While UV radiation from the sun is estimated to cause nine out of ten melanomas, other factors including having fair skin, lots of moles (more than 50) and sunburn early in life can also raise the risk.

Rates in men have increased by 64 per cent, compared with 39 per cent in women  it's thought men are less likely to take precautions or examine their skin for suspicious changes.

Many people can find moles 'appear' during their lifetime. Dr Abbott says this is normal, 'but a new mole appearing after age 40 should be monitored closely as it is unusual to develop moles after this age.'

She stresses that a mole does not have to itch to be melanoma. And while melanomas begin in the melanocytes  pigment cells  they are not always black or brown. They can also be skin-coloured, pink, red, purple, blue or white  and may not even start as a mole.

In fact, 'melanoma most commonly arises from normal-appearing skin,' says Dr Abbott. She adds that the reason a mole changes colour as the melanoma progresses is that the melanocytes spread deeper into the skin, giving it a 'blueish' appearance.

After her diagnosis, Liz had surgery under general anaesthetic to have a wide border of tissue removed and examined for any spread of cancer. A sample of the nearest lymph node, a common site of spread, was also taken from her right armpit.

'I waited for six weeks for my results, which was very worrying,' says Liz. But the news was good: there was no evidence the cancer had spread and she needed no further treatment.

'I felt elated,' she says, 'and so very lucky.

'I'm telling my story to make other people aware that a mole can look ordinary or appear after something like pregnancy, but you should never ignore it.'
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The Omicron variant is now the dominant Covid strain in the U.S., and the nation's top health officials are issuing stern warnings that the situation will only get worse if Americans don't take action to curb the virus's spread.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert who serves as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Tuesday that the rapid spread of this variant is something he has not often seen.

'Certainly this is unprecedented to see this rapidity for which any individual virus spreads throughout the world. It is really extremely unusual. It's a doubling time of two to three days closer to two days,' he told ABC's Good Morning America.

'That is truly unprecedented in the rapidity in which a virus spreads.'

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data Monday night showing that the highly infectious variant now accounts for 73 percent of U.S. Covid cases. The agency also revised last week's data, increasing the share of the variant from 2.9 percent to 12.6 percent. This means the prevalence of the variant jumped six fold week-over-week. It has overtaken the Delta variant, which had been the nation's dominant strain since July.

In New York and New Jersey, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, and the Northwest, the Omicron variant now account for more than 90 percent of new cases.

While other regions currently have lower Omicron prevalence, the variant is spreading fast enough that officials expect it will be dominant throughout the country within weeks.

America also reported its first confirmed death from the variant on Monday night, when an unvaccinated Texas man between ages 50 and 60 succumbed to the variant.

Dr Anthony Fauci (left), the nation's top infectious disease expert, warns that the Omicron variant is spreading at an 'unprecedented' rate and will double in cases every two days. Dr Rochelle Walensky (right), director of the CDC, said that people who have been boosted are 20 times less likely to die of Covid than an unvaccinated person. She also said her agency is reviewing the definition of 'fully vaccianted'

The Omicron variant (purple) is now the dominant Covid strain in the U.S., making up 73% of cases last week. It overtakes the Delta variant (orange) which had been dominant since July

"Its really extremely unusual. Its a doubling time of two to three days  that is truly unprecedented in the rapidity in which a virus spreads."  Dr. Fauci on the omicron variant's dominance in the U.S. https://t.co/r43LRwieVO pic.twitter.com/r6cSEsPLA8  Good Morning America (@GMA) December 21, 2021

Overall, cases of the variant have been relatively mild compared to Delta and other strains. It is a promising sign, but Fauci warns that the quick transmission of the virus could negate any positive effects of a less severe strain.

'The idea that it can spread so rapidly, even if in fact it is less severe, and it appears at least from the South African data that there is less of a ratio of hospitalization to cases and duration of stay in the hospital, so it very well may be less severe. We're hoping that that's the case, and we're hoping that as this evolves here in the United States that that will be our experience,' he said.

'Even if it is, quantity of infections, given the extraordinary efficiency of spread might actually obviate that diminution of severity to the point that you still get significant disease so we can not take this lightly at all.'

Overall cases in the U.S., which we now know are mostly of the newly discovered strain, have shot upwards as well. Johns Hopkins University report 253,954 new cases on Monday. It is the highest total since September 7 - the peak of the Delta wave - and only the third time since January the 250,000 daily case mark was eclipsed.

The nation is currently averaging 143,164 new cases every day, with that number likely to increase if Monday's high case total becomes normal. New cases are up 20 percent over the past two weeks.

Deaths have stabilized, with America still at 1,299 deaths per day - a steady figure for the past two weeks. Hospitalizations have increased though, with 68,970 Americans receiving treatment for severe infection every day - a 14 percent increase over two weeks.

Confirmed Omicron cases increased by 37 percent day-over-day as well, up to 1,485 as of Tuesday morning, up from 1,079 on Monday. These figures are highly undercounting that total level of cases in the U.S., though, as it likely makes up hundreds of thousands - potentially millions - of cases at this point.

While things are trending in the wrong direction in the U.S, the situation in the UK is starting to stabilize. The nation was among the first to experience a massive surge in cases caused by the variant, with London in particular erupting as a global hotspot. Daily infections have remained relatively flat since last week, a promising sign that the variant is already burning out.

Still, some British health experts are fearing the worst, believing that new daily cases will jump from 91,743 a day to around 460,000 a day by the end of the year. Some, like Neil Ferguson, are even calling for lockdowns in some areas to curb the spread of the virus.

This situation in America is erupting right as the holiday season hits fully swing. Christmas is Saturday, and this week, millions of people will travel around the country and attend large gatherings with family and friends.

Fauci believes that holiday travel and festivities is still safe as long as a person is fully vaccinated, boosted, and takes other precautions to protect themselves from the virus.

'If you are vaccinated and particularly boosted, and you are going to be involved in an indoor home setting with family, relatives, who are also vaccinated and boosted, you could feel comfortable in doing that social interaction,' he said.

Unvaccinated people who caught Delta have virtually no protection against Omicron infection, lab study suggests - but people who've had it AND been jabbed have incredible 'super immunity' People who are unjabbed but previously had the Delta Covid variant may have very little protection against Omicron infection, a lab study suggests. Austrian scientists tested the blood of those who had beat the older strain of the virus against the new super-variant to measure antibody levels. They found only one out of seven samples produced enough of the infection-fighting proteins to neutralize Omicron. It suggests that prior infection alone offers virtually no protection against catching Omicron  but the jury's still out on severe illness. The best result overall was seen in five samples taken from those who had both survived a previous Covid infection and then later got a vaccine, a group of people the researchers dubbed the 'super-immune'. Antibody studies look at one very specific part of the immune response to Covid and do not take into account T cell and B cell immunity, which are vital for protection against severe disease but more difficult to measure. Most scientists believe people who have had Covid still enjoy some protection against serious outcomes, but immunity is known to wane significantly after six months. This chart shows how the blood samples of people who had received vaccines and and survived a previous Delta infection performed when exposed to Omicron in terms of producing neutralizing antibodies, measured here as 'IC50', a measures of effectiveness. Any combination that failed to get higher than IC50 16 failed to produce enough antibodies to significantly fight off Omicron. These bars are averages based on all the samples of their respective combinations. It shows a previous Delta infection fails to provide any significant protection in terms of antibody production, but a combination of previous Covid infection and a vaccine provoked the best response This chart on the right shows how antibodies from Delta (variant designation B.1.617.2) performed against different Covid variants, from left to right Alpha (B.1.1.7) Beta (B.1.351), Delta, and Omicron (B.1.1.529). A IC50 level above 16 meant the antibodies were sufficient enough to significantly fight off the virus. The chart on the right shows the results for 'super-immune individuals, the bars on the left show the results for individuals infected than jabbed, against Delta and Omicron, and the bars on the right show persons vaccinated and then infected These charts show how two doses of Moderna's vaccine performed and the right shows the same for two doses of AstraZeneca, the numbers in the top right of each graph indicate how many samples maned to exceed the IC50 threshold The chart on the right shows how one dose of AstraZeneca and Pfizer performed and the right two doses of the Pfizer jab Advertisement

Before the arrival of Omicron, many of these trips would be totally safe. According to CDC data, 73 percent of Americans have received at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, and 61.5 percent are fully vaccinated. Early data shows that the current crop of available vaccines are not enough to protect from the new strain.

Early data shows the initial two-shot regimens of the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines - or one shot of the J&J vaccine - do little to prevent infection from the variant, though the two former may be able to prevent hospitalization or death.

The Pfizer and Moderna booster shot re-establish some of that protection, research has found, and health officials are now urging Americans to get their additional shot.

Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, told CNBC's Shepard Smith that the definition of 'fully vaccinated' is up for discussion based on new data from the variant.

'We're examining this definition of course, but what I want to be very clear about is CDC recommendations right now say that everyone who is over the age of 18, when they become eligible should get their booster shot,' she said.

Walensky also noted that CDC data shows a person who is fully vaccinated and boosted is 20 times less likely to die from Covid than an unvaccinated person.

She also warns that the current two-dose vaccine regimens do not protect people from infection from the new strain. And while infection is often mild, especially for vaccinated people, there is still the risk of developing 'long Covid' or other complications as a result of the virus.

"We don't know yet the longterm manifestations of omicron, the long Covid that we've seen with other variants. So, that would be one reason certainly to try and avoid getting it altogether," says @CDCDirector, as she confirms omicron is now the dominant Covid strain in the U.S. pic.twitter.com/HZsxcVjwwG  The News with Shepard Smith (@thenewsoncnbc) December 21, 2021

Fauci is pushing the unvaccinated to get the shots to prevent the spread of the virus, and even stop future variants from forming. He also echoed a grim warning issued by the White House to unvaccinated people last week.

'One of the ways we can get it to stop is to get a lot more people vaccinated. It's very unfortunate that we still have about 50 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not [gotten] vaccinated,' Fauci told NBC's TODAY.

'[Covid] will stop when we get the overwhelming majority of people vaccinated and boosted.'

'When the people who don't get vaccinated, ultimately, this virus is going to find them, they will get infected and many of them will suffer, and get hospitalized and some will die.'

Testing shortages have become an issue for Americans as well. Due to a run on tests ahead of holiday travel, many retailers have had trouble keeping tests on the shelves. In cities like New York, public testing sites have been plagued with long lines.

To quell the issue, the Biden Administration plans to distribute 500 million tests across the nation in the next few weeks. The military will also be deployed to testing sites in an effort to speed up some of the process. The comes in an effort to avoid the need for Covid mandates ahead of Christmas despite a recent surge in cases.

New York is has retaken the dubious honor of leading all states in confirmed Omicron cases, with 192 sequenced as on Tuesday morning.

The state has also seen a recent uptick in Covid cases, and recorded 22,258 new cases on Tuesday.

Wisconsin has suffered a recent surge in Omicron cases, sequencing 187, trailing only New York. On Monday, state health officials issued a public health advisory, warning residents to get vaccinated and boosted before holiday travel later this week.

The New York City area has been a clear Omicron hotspot in recent weeks.

Last week, the CDC announced that Omicron was causing 13 percent of new Covid cases in New York and New Jersey.

This week, the CDC reports that 92 percent of new Covid cases in the region are caused by Omicron.

New York state has reported record Covid cases in recent days, and average daily case counts in NYC more than doubled during the week ending December 17.

'We're going to see a really fast upsurge in cases, we're going to see a lot of New Yorkers affected by omicron,' Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a public Covid update on Monday.

Despite the recent surge, de Blasio has ruled out instituting more Covid related lockdowns, saying it would 'ruin the lives' of some residents.

Some restaurants, dealing with surges within their own staff, are choosing to close themselves due a lack of available workers.

Omicron's spread in NYC was likely aided by Anime NYC, an anime convention held in Manhattan during the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Several Omicron cases have been connected to the convention, including among attendees who traveled from other states.

While NYC's surge has dominated headlines, the new CDC data also show that other regions are experiencing similarly high Omicron levels.

Omicron is causing 95 percent of new Covid cases in the national health agency's Southeast region, which includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Last week, health officials in Orlando, Florida found that the surrounding county's wastewater samples were dominated by Omicron - even though the variant had yet to be identified in many clinical cases.

Hospital systems in Florida are anticipating a surge in cases, the Orlando Sentinel reports .

In several Midwestern states, Omicron is causing 92 percent of new cases: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Michigan hospitals are already overwhelmed , as the state has seen record case and hospitalization numbers in recent weeks - higher than at any other point in the pandemic.

Similarly in the Gulf Coast, Omicron is causing 92 percent of new cases. This region includes Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

On Monday, Texas officials reported that an Omicron patient had died . The patient, a man in his 50s, was unvaccinated.

The case is the first Omicron death to be reported in the U.S.

Texas and surrounding states are bracing for a surge of Omicron cases , though hospitalization numbers are currently lower than in other regions.

The Northwest - Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska - has the highest share of cases caused by Omicron of any region, at 96 percent.

Idaho's Panhandle region emerged from crisis standards of care on Monday after more than 100 days in this precarious position, according to the Idaho Capital Sun .

'While this is good news for Idaho, we're still watching the omicron variant very closely because this is a precarious time,' said Dave Jeppesen, director of Idaho's public health department.

'Omicron seems to spread more easily between people,' he said, 'and we all need to keep taking precautions against COVID-19 by getting vaccinated or getting a booster dose, wearing masks in crowded areas, physically distancing from others, washing our hands frequently, and staying home if we're sick to avoid overwhelming our health care systems again.'

New England, the mid-Atlantic region, parts of the Midwest, and the Southwest all have lower shares of cases caused by Omicron, according to CDC data.

The region including Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska has the lowest share of Omicron cases, at 30 percent.

Still, at the rate that Omicron has spread through the country, even this region will likely be dominated by the variant within the next week.

Scientists estimate that Omicron spreads three to five times as fast as Delta , making it the most highly contagious variant by far.

Preliminary research has shown that Omicron may cause more mild disease than other variants.

One South African study found that Omicron patients had a 29 percent lower risk of hospitalization than patients infected in the country's spring 2020 wave.

However, because Omicron is so transmissible, scientists are concerned that the U.S. could see such a high number of cases in such a short time that hospitals are still overwhelmed by the variant.

Booster shots can aid in protecting against Omicron infection, studies have shown, while one or two vaccine doses reduce the risk of severe disease from this variant.

In the UK, things are going in the opposite direction. Despite fears that the nation would suffer around a half-million cases a day by Christmas, the spread of the virus seems to have stagnated.

Officials reported 91,743 new Covid cases on Tuesday, the third straight day the nation recorded more than 90,000 cases. While it represents a sharp, 68 percent increase in cases over the past week, the rate of case growth has slowed.

Earlier this month, Health Minister Sajid Javid was warning the nation would suffer one million cases by the end of the year, with the darkest outlooks projecting more than 400,000 cases per day. It seems like the variant has hit its ceiling in the UK though, and case growth has slowed to a halt in recent days.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson even instituted some measures to prevent the spread of the virus earlier this month, instituting a work from home order, enacting a mask mandate and requiring proof of vaccination or negative test to enter some venues.

Hospitalizations have also stagnated, being about even week-over-week, with deaths in the nation not keeping up with cases either - up 15 percent over the past week.

In London, one of Europe's first major hotspots of the new variant, case growth seems to have tapered off as well. The nation's capital recorded 22,750 cases on Tuesday.

Despite this tapering off in cases, the UK still leads the world in confirmed Omicron cases. The 45,145 cases in the nation are 20,000 more than any other country in the world.

South Africa's daily Covid cases fall for the THIRD day in a row and hospital admissions drop 20% in a week as Omicron wave fades in the epicenter Daily Covid cases in South Africa have fallen week-on-week for the third day in a row and hospital admissions are tumbling just a month into its Omicron outbreak. Data from the National Institute For Communicable Diseases (NICD) shows just 8,515 people tested positive in the past 23 hours, down from 13,992 last Monday. The 40 per cent drop is the biggest since the Omicron outbreak hit the country. In another sign the wave is fading, hospitalizations fell by a fifth today with just 323 people admitted. It's the second day they've fallen after they dropped 53 per cent yesterday. But there was a big dip in testing today, with 28,000 carried out compared to 45,000 last week, which may be influencing the case numbers. But the test positive rate has also slightly dropped on last week, suggesting that the outbreak could be waning. Fatalities - which are the biggest lagging indicator - rose to 105 today in a 855 per cent hike last Monday. It marked the highest daily figure in South Africas latest wave, but is a fraction of the 844 daily deaths the country recorded at the peak last winter. South African doctors have insisted for weeks that Omicron is milder since raising the alarm about it on November 24. But there has been ongoing debate over whether it is intrinsically milder or if South Africa is benefitting from very high levels of natural immunity after being battered by Delta just months ago. South Africa has accused the UK of panicking about Omicron, where Government scientists are warning of up to 6,000 daily deaths and 10,000 hospital admissions at the peak this winter. Advertisement

In South Africa, the nation where the variant was first detected, Covid is beginning to recede, a promising sign that the nation's Omicron fueled outbreak is running out of steam after a month.

The nation's average daily Covid cases has dropped to 19,400 per day, a 17 percent decrease from only last week when cases peaked at 23,437. While it is still a much larger figure than what the country was reporting only a month ago, it signals that the variant is potentially burning out.

Hospitalizations are on the way down, though, with eleven times fewer South Africans being hospitalized with Covid now than were during the Delta surge over summer - a sign of hope going forward as the U.S. and UK begin their own struggles with the virus.

South Africa recorded 6,887 Covid related hospitalizations last week, a decrease from the 7,433 recorded a week earlier.

Denmark only trails the UK in Omicron cases, having confirmed 23,038 cases of the variant as of Tuesday morning. The Nordic nation was struck early by one of the largest confirmed Omicron outbreaks and the situation has only been exacerbated since.

A Christmas lunch event in the Viborg region, attended by 150 students on November 27 from two local high schools has been linked to 70 cases of the variant, though all were mild.

Currently, the nation is averaging a record 8,984 new cases per day, a logged the largest single day Covid case total ever on Thursday with 9,999 cases added to the ledger.

Prime Minister Mette Fredericksen announced new measures to prevent spread of the virus last week, joining the UK.

People who can will now be ordered to work from home, and virtual schooling has been extended as well. On Friday, she announced that concert halls and theatres will be closed in response to a recent surge.

This comes after orders earlier this month, where bars and nightclubs were forced to have reduced operating hours, being forced to close at midnight now, in an effort to prevent transmission.

In the Netherlands, where 183 Omicron cases have been confirmed as of Tuesday morning, lockdowns have returned.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced Saturday that indoor gatherings will be limited to only two people each, with that limit extended to four on Christmas and New Years.

German officials, whose nation has recorded 1,052 Omicron cases as of Tuesday morning, are also considering new lockdown orders after Christmas, Reuters reports.

European Union officials are sounding alarms as well, saying that the variant could be the continent's dominant strain by mid-January.
The Omicron variant is now causing about three in four new COVID-19 cases nationwide, and 90% of cases in at least five states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Monday.

In New York and New Jersey, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, and the Northwest, the Omicron variant now account for more than 90 percent of new cases.

While other regions currently have lower Omicron prevalence, the variant is spreading fast enough that officials expect it will be dominant throughout the country within weeks.

Omicron spreads three to five times as fast as the Delta variant, scientists estimate.

Even if it causes more mild disease, high numbers of cases can still create an enormous burden for already-overstretched hospitals.

New York, along with New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Washington, and other states, has over 90% of its new Covid cases now caused by Omicron, according to the CDC. Pictured: New Yorkers wait in line for Covid tests in Times Square as cases surge, December 2021

The Omicron variant (purple pie chart slices) has overtaken the Delta variant (orange slices) in almost every region of the country, save parts of the Northeast and Midwest

Nationwide, Omicron has jumped from causing 13% of new Covid cases to 73% of new Covid cases in about a week. It was first identified less than a month ago

The Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa and Botswana in late November. Within a month, it's become the dominant variant in the U.S.

Omicron's capacity to spread more rapidly than any other variant has allowed it to take over in a matter of weeks, new CDC data show.

As of December 18, the Omicron variant is causing 73 percent of new Covid cases nationwide.

That's about a six-fold increase from the prior week, when it caused 13 percent of new cases.

The CDC also updated its estimates for previous weeks, showing that Omicron was causing 0.1 percent of new Covid cases in the week ending November 27.

In other words, Omicron was already in the U.S. and spreading widely on Thanksgiving.

The New York City area has been a clear Omicron hotspot in recent weeks.

Last week, the CDC announced that Omicron was causing 13 percent of new Covid cases in New York and New Jersey.

This week, the CDC reports that 92 percent of new Covid cases in the region are caused by Omicron.

New York state has reported record Covid cases in recent days, and average daily case counts in NYC more than doubled during the week ending December 17.

'We're going to see a really fast upsurge in cases, we're going to see a lot of New Yorkers affected by omicron,' Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a public Covid update on Monday.

Omicron's spread in NYC was likely aided by Anime NYC, an anime convention held in Manhattan during the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Several Omicron cases have been connected to the convention, including among attendees who traveled from other states.

While NYC's surge has dominated headlines, the new CDC data also show that other regions are experiencing similarly high Omicron levels.

Omicron is causing 95 percent of new Covid cases in the national health agency's Southeast region, which includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Last week, health officials in Orlando, Florida found that the surrounding county's wastewater samples were dominated by Omicron - even though the variant had yet to be identified in many clinical cases.

Hospital systems in Florida are anticipating a surge in cases, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

In several Midwestern states, Omicron is causing 92 percent of new cases: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Michigan hospitals are already overwhelmed, as the state has seen record case and hospitalization numbers in recent weeks - higher than at any other point in the pandemic.

Similarly in the Gulf Coast, Omicron is causing 92 percent of new cases. This region includes Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

On Monday, Texas officials reported that an Omicron patient had died. The patient, a man in his 50s, was unvaccinated.

The case is the first Omicron death to be reported in the U.S.

Texas and surrounding states are bracing for a surge of Omicron cases, though hospitalization numbers are currently lower than in other regions.

The Northwest - Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska - has the highest share of cases caused by Omicron of any region, at 96 percent.

Idaho's Panhandle region emerged from crisis standards of care on Monday after more than 100 days in this precarious position, according to the Idaho Capital Sun.

'While this is good news for Idaho, we're still watching the omicron variant very closely because this is a precarious time,' said Dave Jeppesen, director of Idaho's public health department.

'Omicron seems to spread more easily between people,' he said, 'and we all need to keep taking precautions against COVID-19 by getting vaccinated or getting a booster dose, wearing masks in crowded areas, physically distancing from others, washing our hands frequently, and staying home if we're sick to avoid overwhelming our health care systems again.'

New England, the mid-Atlantic region, parts of the Midwest, and the Southwest all have lower shares of cases caused by Omicron, according to CDC data.

The region including Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska has the lowest share of Omicron cases, at 30 percent.

Still, at the rate that Omicron has spread through the country, even this region will likely be dominated by the variant within the next week.

Scientists estimate that Omicron spreads three to five times as fast as Delta, making it the most highly contagious variant by far.

Preliminary research has shown that Omicron may cause more mild disease than other variants.

One South African study found that Omicron patients had a 29 percent lower risk of hospitalization than patients infected in the country's spring 2020 wave.

However, because Omicron is so transmissible, scientists are concerned that the U.S. could see such a high number of cases in such a short time that hospitals are still overwhelmed by the variant.

Booster shots can aid in protecting against Omicron infection, studies have shown, while one or two vaccine doses reduce the risk of severe disease from this variant.
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People who are unvaccinated but were previously infected by the Delta Covid variant may have very little protection against Omicron, a new study finds.

Researchers from the Medical University of Innsbruck, in Austria, tested the blood of those who had beat the older strain of the virus against the new super-variant to measure antibody levels.

They found only one out of seven samples produced enough of the infection-fighting proteins to neutralize Omicron.

Covid survivors who were also fully vaccinated showed an increased ability to combat the strain, though.

It suggests that prior infection alone offers virtually no protection against catching Omicron  but the jury's still out on severe illness.

The Austrian study looked at the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not available in the U.S., and did not include the Johnson & Johnson jab, one of three shots that is available to Americans.

This chart shows how the blood samples of people who had received vaccines and and survived a previous Delta infection performed when exposed to Omicron in terms of producing neutralizing antibodies, measured here as 'IC50', a measures of effectiveness. Any combination that failed to get higher than IC50 16 failed to produce enough antibodies to significantly fight off Omicron. These bars are averages based on all the samples of their respective combinations. It shows a previous Delta infection fails to provide any significant protection in terms of antibody production, but a combination of previous Covid infection and a vaccine provoked the best response

This chart on the right shows how antibodies from Delta (variant designation B.1.617.2) performed against different Covid variants, from left to right Alpha (B.1.1.7) Beta (B.1.351), Delta, and Omicron (B.1.1.529). A IC50 level above 16 meant the antibodies were sufficient enough to significantly fight off the virus. The chart on the right shows the results for 'super-immune individuals, the bars on the left show the results for individuals infected than jabbed, against Delta and Omicron, and the bars on the right show persons vaccinated and then infected

These charts show how two doses of Moderna's vaccine performed and the right shows the same for two doses of AstraZeneca, the numbers in the top right of each graph indicate how many samples maned to exceed the IC50 threshold

The chart on the right shows how one dose of AstraZeneca and Pfizer performed and the right two doses of the Pfizer jab

Antibody studies look at one very specific part of the immune response to Covid and do not take into account T cell and B cell immunity, which are vital for protection against severe disease but more difficult to measure.

Most scientists believe people who have had Covid still enjoy some protection against serious outcomes, but immunity is known to wane significantly after six months.

The latest study found that if Delta survivors go on to get a vaccine they become 'super-immune', even against infection.

In the samples of the blood of Delta survivors, which contained antibodies from the prior infection, Austrian researchers found only one out of seven samples tested managed to inhibit Omicron.

This essentially means the antibodies did not recognize Omicron as a threat due to its heavily mutated nature compared to the Delta variant.

Two does of the Pfizer jabbed fared better, with nine out of 20 samples producing enough antibodies to fight off the new Covid variant before it causes infection.

A test for two doses of the Moderna jab showed only one out of 10 was successful in generating antibodies against Omicron.

But the best result overall was seen in five samples taken from those who had both survived a previous Covid infection and then later got a vaccine, a group of people the researchers dubbed the 'super-immune'.

Professor Lawrence Young a microbiologist from the University of Warwick, in England, said although the study has small numbers it added to research demonstrating Omicron's ability to dodge immunity.

'This paper with small numbers of samples confirms data from previous studies and further emphasizes the immune-evasive properties of the Omicron variant,' he said.

He added that while it was 'dangerous' to infer any findings from the study, he said it reinforced the importance of getting a booster, and those that do would likely enjoy similar Omicron protection as the study's 'super-immune.

'Its dangerous to extrapolate what this data means for immune protection in vaccinated individuals other than reinforcing the value of booster vaccination  which is likely to be similar to the super immune individuals in this study,' he said.

According to official data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just over 60 million Americans - or around 18 percent of the population - have received booster shots.

The microbiologist also commented on the seeming disparity between the study's findings and the South African experience of Omicron.

At a glance the findings appear at odds with the with the low severity of cases in South Africa, which first alerted the world to the new Covid variant, which has ben partly attributed to an antibody boost from a relatively recent Delta wave.

Professor Young this could be due other non-antibody parts of the immune system, such as T-cells, which are vital for protection against severe disease but more difficult to measure, though he added demographic factors could also be at play.

'Perhaps this T cell response explains the situation in South Africa, although I think other factors like the younger average age of the population is also playing a part,' he said.

Professor Ian Jones a virologist from the University of Reading, also in England, discussed the limitations of the study.

He said that since the study measured Omicron's ability to infect but not how severely ill those infected might become, several questions about how seriously to deal with the new Covid variant remained unanswered.

'They only measure virus entry into cells, not disease so the current dilemma of planning for a serious outcome to the current wave remains in place,' he said.

'The assays measure neutralizing antibodies, which are only one part of the overall protective response.

'Add in the data that Omicron appears not to infect lung tissue to the same degree and the, mostly anecdotal, reports that it is milder overall and the infection equals hospitalization argument remains unanswerable at the moment.'
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Scientists have used an electron microscope to map how the mutations of the Omicron variant help it bond with human cells more effectively, making it a more infectious strain of coronavirus.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia, in Canada, studied the variant using cryo-electron microscopy, a technique that provides images of the virus at incredibly high resolution.

Images created by the team show how the variant's 37 spike mutations bind to a human cell receptor called ACE2, which is located throughout the body - in the lungs, heart, blood vessels, gastrointestinal tract, and other organs.

Through the microscopic imaging, Dr Sriram Subramaniam's team found that some of the new mutations create additional bonds between the virus and ACE2 receptors.

Dr Sriram Subramaniam said that 'Omicron has far greater binding affinity than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus' due to new bonds created between the virus and human cell receptors.

In addition, the researchers tested Omicron against human and monoclonal antibodies, finding that the variant is more resistant to these immune system particles than other variants.

This study was posted as a preprint and has yet to be peer-reviewed, but it aligns with other recent research on the Omicron variant's highly contagious properties.

The researchers used a cryo-electron microscope to image how the Omicron spike protein (in purple) binds with human cells (light blue). They found that Omicron's 37 spike protein mutations create new links with the humane ACE2 receptor (inset and below)

One reason for the Omicron variant's high contagiousness may be spike protein mutations allowing it to bond more efficiently with human cells, a new study finds

This illustration shows how Omicron's 37 spike protein mutations create new links with the humane ACE2 receptor (top) when compared to Delta (bottom)

The Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa in late November, and has since spread rapidly around the world.

This variant is now the dominant strain in the U.S., accounting for 73 percent of new cases, according to official data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Omicron spreads three to five times faster than Delta, according to one estimate, and its case count doubles every two days.

The new research may help explain why this variant is so highly contagious. The study was posted Tuesday as a preprint, and has not yet been peer reviewed.

'The Omicron variant is unprecedented for having 37 spike protein mutations - that's three to five times more mutations than any other variant,' said Subramaniam, the lead author on the study and a biochemistry professor at the University of British Columbia, in a statement.

Increased mutations on the spike protein are important for two reasons, said Subramaniam, who is also a former investigator at the Biophysics Division of the National Institutes of Health.

'Firstly, because the spike protein is how the virus attaches to and infects human cells,' he said.

'Secondly, because antibodies attach to the spike protein in order to neutralize the virus.'

As a result, small spike protein mutations can significantly alter how the coronavirus is transmitted and how well the immune system can fight it off.

Subramaniam and his colleagues used cryo-electron microscopy to investigate the Omicron variant's mutations.

In this microscopy technique, scientists use powerful electron microscopes to look at the coronavirus in intensive detail - down to the individual atom.

The researchers used powerful electron microscopes to look at the Omicron variant in intensive detail, examining mutations on its spike protein The red areas show where mutations make the spike protein more effective at binding with human cells

Among the Omicron variant's 37 spike protein mutations, 15 are located in the part of the virus that binds to human cells.

The coronavirus specifically binds to a human cell receptor called ACE2, which is located throughout the body - in the lungs, heart, blood vessels, gastrointestinal tract, and other organs.

While some of the Omicron variant's cell-binding mutations are also found in other variants, several of them are unique to Omicron.

Through microscopic imaging, Subramaniam's team found that some of the new mutations create additional bonds between the virus and ACE2 receptors.

These new mutations appear to 'increase binding affinity,' Subramaniam said, indicating that Omicron can attach more strongly to human cells.

The researchers compared Omicron's binding affinity to that of the Delta variant and the original strain of the coronavirus, using an imaging technique that provides data on how small molecules interact with each other.

'Overall, the findings show that Omicron has far greater binding affinity than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, with levels more comparable to what we see with the Delta variant,' Subramaniam said.

Omicron's binding affinity was slightly higher than Delta's and significantly higher than the original coronavirus', the results showed.

The Omicron variant (bottom left) had a slightly higher binding affinity to human cell receptors than the Delta variant (top right), and a significantly higher affinity than the original coronavirus strain (top left)

Subramaniam's team also examined the Omicron spike protein's ability to evade both human antibodies and antibodies from monoclonal antibody treatments.

This analysis confirmed real-world data, showing that Omicron is more capable of evading antibodies than previous variants - meaning that treatments are less successful.

'Notably, Omicron was less evasive of the immunity created by vaccines, compared to immunity stemming from natural infection in unvaccinated Covid patients,' Subramaniam said.

'This suggests that vaccination remains our best defense against the Omicron variant.'

Both the Omicron variant's increased binding affinity and its capacity to evade antibodies are 'likely contributing factors to its increased transmissibility,' Subramaniam said.

On Twitter, other scientists commented on Subramaniam's team's speed in analyzing the biology of a variant that was completely unknown one month ago.

While his team's study has yet to be peer reviewed, it aligns with other recent research on Omicron's capacity to spread rapidly.

Last week, a research team at Hong Kong University reported that the Omicron variant multiplies about 70 times faster than the Delta variant within the human respiratory tract, during the first day of a patient's infection.

This fast replication in the respiratory tract suggests that, when someone infected with Omicron breathes, more virus particles are produced than with past variants.

Additional research on Omicron will provide more insight into treating patients infected with this variant, as well as patients infected with other variants that may mutate from Omicron.

'A big focus for our team is identifying neutralizing antibodies that will be effective across the entire range of variants, and how those can be exploited to develop variant-resistant treatments,' Subramaniam said.

'That could help us get ahead of the variants once and for all.'
Israel has taken a drastic step to prevent the spread of the Omicron Covid variant, with health officials announcing Tuesday night that people over the age of 60 will now be eligible for fourth shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The move makes Israel the first country to introduce a fourth shot to its population, a move that some U.S. health officials have flirted with in recent weeks.

Medical personnel will also be eligible for the additional shot.

Officials from the Middle Eastern nation cite the spreading of the Omicron variant as reason for the move, as the highly infectious, highly mutated, strain has shown an ability to evade protections offered by the vaccines.

The country has recorded 341 confirmed cases of the new strain, only trailing 12 other nations as of Tuesday afternoon. More than 100,000 cases of Omicron have been confirmed worldwide.

Israeli officials have approved fourth doses of the Pfizer Covid vaccine for healthcare workers and residents aged 60 or older. The move comes as a response to the vaccine-evasive Omicron variant. Pictured: An elderly man in Jerusalem, Israel, receives a shot of a COVID-19 vaccine

'Another vaccine for people over the age of 60 and for medical staff of all ages,' Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said in a tweet.

'This is our top priority for Omicron: Protecting the adults who are most vulnerable and keeping the medical staff safe.

'No need to wait. Go get vaccinated.'

The rollout of the fourth shots will start immediately.

While Covid cases in Israel remain relatively low, the country has suffered a recent uptick. It is averaging 833 cases per day, a 57 percent increase over the past two weeks.

Residents of the nation are also banned from traveling to the U.S. or the UK, among many other European, Asian and African countries that are currently suffering from the variant.

Israel was lauded early in its vaccine rollout for quickly racing ahead of the rest of the world.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 71 percent of the population has received one shot of a vaccine, and 65 percent are fully vaccinated. Officials numbers also report that 46 percent of Israelis are boosted.

Early data from Pfizer - which produces the vaccine primarily used in Israel - shows that only receiving the first two doses of the jab leaves people vulnerable to the Omicron variant.

The new strain, discovered by South African officials last month, is the most highly mutated version of the virus yet discovered. It has more than 50 mutations, including 37 on its spike protein.

The many mutations that Omicron has allows it to evade both vaccine produced antibodies, and antibodies generated naturally be a previous infection.

Pfizer and BioNTech - which partnered with the New York City-based company in the research and development of the shots - revealed earlier this month that its booster dose would re-establish some protections a person has against Omicron infection.

Some fear that protection would wane over time, just like it did from the first two doses.

With Israel making booster shots available as early as July, the earliest recipients of the additional shots are already five months removed from receiving the shots, and immunity has likely waned.

In the U.S., booster shots are still fairly new, and a majority of fully vaccinated Americans still have not had a chance to get them.

The shots were not approved for a majority of the fully vaccinated population until November. According to official data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 60 million Americans - or 18 percent of the U.S. population - has received their booster.

Some health officials are already thinking about the potential for a fourth dose.

Earlier this month, Fauci, along with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, said the idea of a fourth shot for Americans was being explored.

The U.S. has often followed behind Israel, and used data from the nation to make decisions for Americans. Israel opening the door for fourth shots means they may come to the U.S. in the coming months as well.
Retail investors must be offered better access to British businesses listing on the London Stock Exchange, investing giant Interactive Investor (II) has continued to urge.

The financial services business said that without the investment trust sector, the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) available to retail buyers would be minimal.

This is despite the surge in IPOs on London markets in 2021, including food delivery giant Deliveroo, online greetings card firm Moonpig and bootmaker Dr Martens.

Small fry: II said that without the investment trust sector, the number of initial public offerings that retail customers would have been able to access would have been minimal

All three companies locked out retail investors when they debuted earlier this year, II noted, adding that without the actions of the investment trust industry, 'it would have been a poor year for IPOs' for retail buyers.

The investment platform revealed that the eight most popular public listings among its customers since January were investment trusts, with HydrogenOne Capital Growth taking the top spot.

Four of the eight were also trusts involved in renewable energy infrastructure, including VH Global Sustainable Energy Opportunities, ThomasLloyd Energy Impact Trust and Atrato Onsite Energy.

II also pointed out that these trusts had been in strong demand from private investors, with recent figures showing that 14.8billion of new cash has been raised for investment companies in the year to date.

However, its head of equity strategy, Lee Wild, reiterated the firm's call to expand retail investors' access to public flotations, which has included demands for a quota system that ensures they are not excluded.

'From Dr Martens, Moonpig, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, through to the high profile, troubled start of Deliveroo, all took a VIP approach to their IPO listings and left private investors out in the cold,' he remarked.

Acquisition: A fortnight ago, II agreed to be taken over by fund management group Abrdn in a 1.5billion deal that will keep the platform as a standalone business

'This has to stop. After a year-long campaign by interactive investor calling for retail access to IPOs to be broadened, DIY investors continue to be left out.

'We have called for a quota system, where companies are compelled to involve ordinary investors when they float.

'There are growing numbers of retail investors in the UK, and most of them manage their portfolios via investment platforms that can provide quick and easy access to IPOs. Shareholder democracy has to start with open access to IPOs for all.'

Earlier in December, II agreed to be taken over by fund management group Abrdn in a 1.5billion deal, which will keep the platform as a standalone business and Richard Wilson as its chief executive.

In return, Abrdn will gain assets under administration of around 55billion and more than 40,000 new customers, many of whom have come to investing for the first time during the pandemic.

Firms like Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell have also benefited from an upsurge in users of retail trading apps since March 2020, and there could be further gains resulting from the economic volatility caused by the Omicron variant.

This has led these two companies to post record results - AJ Bell attracted over 87,000 more customers, net inflows of 6.4billion and its highest ever assets under administration level of 6.4billion in the 12 months to September.

The Manchester-based firm hopes to further capitalise on the trend for retail apps by launching Dodl, an investment app that will enable customers to make a range of investments without paying commission charges.
Troubled online retailer The Hut Group (THG) received a boost after one of its critics had a change of heart.

The Manchester-based company, which sells clothes, make-up and protein shakes, jumped 6.5 per cent or 12.4p, to 202.4p after City researcher The Analyst withdrew its recommendation to short  or bet against  the stock, effectively saying that the share price has no further left to fall.

It marks a change in tone for The Analyst since October when it issued a note suggesting its clients short THG shares, saying the companys ecommerce business was highly overvalued.

The Hut Group boss Matt Moulding (pictured), has seen a horror show since September when concerns about its business sent the share price plunging

It also flagged concerns about the firms corporate governance and cash flow.

THG has experienced a horror show since September when mounting concerns about its business sent the share price plunging and saw several large backers including Goldman Sachs and Blackrock slash the size of their stakes.

The companys founder and chief executive, Matt Moulding, attempted to stem the bleeding but instead added fuel to the fire as a disastrous investor meeting in October caused the stock to sink even further.

Stock Watch - Futura Medical Futura Medical was in good health after flagging multiple interested parties for its fast-acting erectile dysfunction gel. The group was in advanced discussions around potential licensing agreements covering major regions and countries of the world. The treatment, known as MED3000, is undergoing a clinical study involving over 100 patients. Futura is planning to submit it to US regulators next year. The shares rose 6.7 per cent, or 2.1p, to 33.7p.

The share price rout sparked a massive overhaul of the companys business model and a weakening of Mouldings control over the business, including the relinquishing of his golden share which would have allowed him to veto any takeover approaches.

THG is also on the hunt for an independent chairman to add a new voice in the boardroom.

However, despite yesterdays rise the shares are still valued at less than half of their 500p listing price when THG floated in September 2020. Shares reached an all-time high of nearly 800p in early January.

The FTSE 100 dropped 0.99 per cent, or 71.89 points, to 7198.03 while the FTSE 250 sank 1.01 per cent, or 230.5 points, to 22549.88.

Soaring cases of the Omicron variant and a lockdown in the Netherlands over the weekend sent markets into a downward spiral.

Oil prices fell to their lowest levels since the start of December to around $70 a barrel as traders fretted lockdowns will hit demand for fuel. Shell shed 1.4 per cent, or 21.6p, to 1574.2p while BP slipped 3.1 per cent, or 10.4p, to 323.3p.

Rolls-Royce, which makes engines for passenger aircraft, was also under pressure falling 3.3 per cent, or 3.82p, to 110.48p amid worries the pandemic could dent demand from airlines.

Meanwhile, fears that more restrictions will hit High Street footfall and consumer spending in the critical festive period hammered retailers.

Primark-owner AB Foods lost 2.1 per cent or 40.5p, to 1912p while luxury fashion firm Burberry shed 0.5 per cent, or 9p, to 1736p.

The prospect of fresh clamp downs on socialising also dented event organiser Informa, which sank 5.3 per cent, or 26.6p, to 475.4p.

Travel stocks took a battering early in the session but managed to regain ground in late afternoon.

British Airways-owner IAG briefly plunged to a 13-month low of around 125p before recovering to close at 130.94, down 0.8 per cent, or 1.1p on the day.

Premier Inn-owner Whitbread saw similar fortunes, dropping sharply in early deals before slowly climbing to finish up 0.7 per cent, or 18p, at 2787p.

Chilean copper giant Antofagasta tumbled 5.5 per cent, or 75.5p, to 1294p after the victory of Left-wing presidential candidate Gabriel Boric in the countrys presidential election on Sunday.

Boric has previously voiced opposition to mining projects on environmental grounds, raising fears his administration will clamp down on the sector.
Kwasi Kwarteng has been urged to intervene in the 5.5billion takeover of Inmarsat. Tom Tugendhat, chairman of Parliaments Foreign Affairs Committee, called on the Business Secretary to launch a national security review into the deal to buy the satellite telecommunications company.

Tugendhat told Kwarteng that Inmarsats sale to US rival Viasat could diminish the UKs sovereign capabilities in the critically important sector.

Viasat swooped on the London-based company just two years after it was sold to foreign private equity groups including Warburg Pincus in a controversial 4.7billion deal.

Security fears: Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has been urged to launch a review into the 5.5bn takeover of British satellite group Inmarsat

Inmarsats technology is the largest provider of in-flight Wi-Fi for airlines, as well as the top provider of internet connections for ships worldwide.

It has 14 satellites in orbit and plans to launch another seven in future. These are counted as critical national infrastructure.

Tugendhat said the deal should be investigated under takeover rules, which come into effect on January 4.

The National Security and Investment Act gives the Government the power to investigate and potentially block takeovers of companies in strategic industries.

Tugendhat said: Such transactions, while offering many benefits to the UK economy, also risk reducing the UKs sovereign capabilities.

We are concerned that the sale of Inmarsat overseas will diminish the UKs sovereign capabilities in this critically important sector.

Kwarteng, meanwhile, said the Government was monitoring the deal, adding: I can assure you that this transaction will be considered thoroughly.

A Viasat spokesman said: We have made a clear commitment to build on Inmarsats presence in the UK, uphold previous commitments made by Inmarsats owners, and grow the investment of the combined company in UK space communications.
The World Economic Forum has postponed its annual gathering of the global elite in Davos as the Omicron variant rips across the globe.

The organisers said the uncertainty and high transmissibility of the strain made it extremely difficult to deliver a global in-person meeting at the Swiss ski resort.

The 2022 event was due to take place between January 17 and January 21.

Postponed: Davos World Economic Forum organisers said the uncertainty and high transmissibility of Omicron made it extremely difficult to deliver a global in-person meeting

The annual junket sees politicians, captains of industry and corporate fat cats rub shoulders with diplomats, bankers and celebrities.

Rich and powerful attendees and speakers have included European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, Prince Charles, veteran investor George Soros, Bill Gates and Donald Trump.

It has also hosted celebrities including Bono, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Spacey, Will.i.am and Pharrell Williams as well as broadcaster Sir David Attenborough.

This is the second year that Davos has been rescheduled. The last in-person event took place in January 2020, just as the first wave of Covid was hitting China.

Since then it has been forced to change its meeting plans at least six times, scrapping alternative dates and locations from Switzerlands Lake Lucerne and Singapore.

Around 2,000 people had registered for the summit next month  roughly two-thirds of the number who went in 2020.

It had arranged stringent testing protocols, as well as guidelines that included discouraging people from hugging and replacing buffets with individual portions of food.

The World Economic Forum was set up by economist and engineer Klaus Schwab in 1971. The organisation says it aims to improve the state of the world by bringing together leaders from business, politics and academia.

Davos was the place where North and South Korea held a ministerial-level meeting for the first time in 1989.

But it has also been widely criticised as being elitist and jargon-filled, with the 2020 theme of Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World.

Schwab, 83, said: The deferral of the annual meeting will not prevent progress through continued digital convening of leaders from business, government and civil society.

Public-private co-operation has moved forward throughout the pandemic and that will continue apace.

We look forward to bringing global leaders together in person soon.

The January 2022 event will be replaced by a series of online sessions, with another in-person meeting planned for some time early next summer.

A spokesman form the World Economic Forum said: Despite the meetings stringent health protocols, the transmissibility of Omicron and its impact on travel and mobility have made deferral necessary.
Canada's departing ambassador to China has been appointed as chairman of Rio Tinto and lead its rehabilitation.

Dominic Barton will take over from Simon Thompson after the mining giants annual meeting in May.

Barton, 59, has been Canadas leading diplomat in Beijing since 2019 and has been praised by prime minister Justin Trudeau for playing an integral role in shaping and pursuing Canadas priorities with respect to China.

Safe hands: Canada's departing ambassador to China Dominic Barton (pictured) will take over from Simon Thompson at Rio Tinto after the companys annual meeting in May

He also recently secured the release of two businessmen accused by Chinese authorities of espionage.

Barton previously worked for consulting giant McKinsey, with stints leading its teams in Shanghai and Seoul.

His appointment shows Rio is keen to focus on its relations with China, where it makes around 58pc of its revenue.

But the choice of chairman is also controversial. Rio had been under pressure to put Australians in charge of its recovery from a major crisis last year after it blew up two 46,000-year-old Aboriginal rock shelters in the Juukan Gorge in Western Australia.

The incident triggered a global outcry, outrage from shareholders, an Australian parliamentary inquiry and a boardroom clear-out  which saw former chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques and two other executives ousted within months.

Thompson, 62, announced his resignation last April shortly before the companys annual meeting.

He said he was ultimately responsible for the Juukan Gorge tragedy.

The hunt for a replacement was overseen by two of Rios independent board members, Sam Laidlaw and Simon McKeon. Rios shares fell 2.4 per cent, or 116.5p, to 4759.5p.
Standard Chartered has become the latest bank to be punished by regulators after it was fined 46.5million.

The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which is overseen by the Bank of England, said the FTSE 100 lender repeatedly misreported its liquidity position and failed to be open and cooperative.

It was the biggest fine the PRA has ever levied in a case where it was the only watchdog involved.

The Prudential Regulation Authority, which is overseen by the Bank of England, said Standard Chartered repeatedly misreported its liquidity position and failed to be 'open and cooperative'

The fine follows a spate of penalties levied against banks including HSBC and NatWest in recent weeks.

The PRA said Standard Chartered made five errors in reporting an important liquidity measurement that was a key indicator of its financial health between March 2018 and May 2019.

This meant it was difficult to tell how secure its finances were.

At one point, the bank failed to notify the PRA of an error until after it concluded a four-month internal probe.

The punishment is humiliating for chief executive Bill Winters, who was in charge at the time of the mistakes, and for Standard Chartereds head of regulatory affairs, former Financial Conduct Authority boss Tracey McDermott.

The penalty comes two months after the Reserve Bank of India slapped the companys Indian arm with a minor fine for breaking rules on reporting frauds.

And it follows an embarrassing few weeks for British banks with HSBC fined 64million and NatWest 265million for lax anti-money laundering controls. City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority led both investigations.

HSBC was found to have had a catalogue of failings in its anti-money laundering systems that may have led to terrorist financiers, fraudsters and modern-day slavers going undetected for eight years.

Humiliation: Standard Chartered's chief executive Bill Winters was in charge at the time of the mistakes

And NatWest was fined after admitting it failed to prevent one company laundering around 365million.

Criminals deposited sums of cash  sometimes in black bin bags so full they would split  in dozens of branches.

At the start of December HSBC, Barclays and NatWest were also forced to pay huge fines to the European Commission for their roles in a foreign currency trading cartel through a chatroom named Sterling Lads.

Standard Chartereds largest ever fine was an 842million settlement with US and UK financial authorities in 2019 for breaching anti-money laundering regulations and trading with countries such as Iran and Syria, violating sanctions.

Sam Woods, chief executive of the PRA, said: Standard Chartereds systems, controls and oversight fell significantly below the standards we expect of a systemically important bank, and this is reflected in the size of the fine.

The penalty from the PRA was originally 66.5million, but this was cut by around 30 per cent because Standard Chartered agreed to settle.

The PRA had been keeping an eye on Standard Chartered because in 2017 the regulator had placed a more stringent requirement on the banks US dollar holdings.

It was concerned about the amount of dollars that had left the lender the previous year and wanted to make sure the bank had a significant buffer in case more were withdrawn.

Standard Chartered is based in the UK and listed on the London Stock Exchanges FTSE 100 index. But it does most of its business in Asia  with Hong Kong its biggest market worldwide  and Africa.

A Standard Chartered spokesman said the bank accepts the findings of the PRA, adding that it has cooperated with the PRAs investigation and has made significant improvements to and substantial investment in its liquidity and regulatory reporting processes and controls and remains committed to accurate regulatory reporting.
City of London Group slumped to a pre-tax loss of 5.8million in the six months ending 30 September, down from a loss of 2.6million the previous half.

The group said 5.6million of the latest half-year loss stemmed 'from Recognise Bank, in line with its business plan, as it develops its business'.

In September, Recognise Bank, a SME-focused lender and subsidiary of COLG, had its deposit restrictions lifted by the Prudential Regulation Authority, enabling it to launch its personal and business savings products, and to start taking deposits.

Figures: The City of London Group slumped to a pre-tax loss of 5.8m in the six months ending 30 September

According to COLG, Recognise Bank launched its first personal savings products within two working days of receiving its full licence.

It added: 'Both the market leading five-Year Fixed Rate account and 95-Day Notice account proved popular with depositors, attracting deposits of over 60million.'

COLG said Recognise Bank received over 1billion of lending proposals since November and partnered with over 60 commercial finance brokers.

COLG also said it raised 11.6million before expenses in September from shareholders, including two of its major shareholders.

It added: 'The net proceeds, together with funds generated from the sale of non-core businesses and internally, have been invested in Recognise Bank to support its capital base and allow it to continue to focus on building its lending portfolio.'

Philip Jenks, chair of City of London Group, said: 'We are delighted that our subsidiary, Recognise Bank, became a fully licensed UK SME bank in September when the PRA lifted all restrictions, so allowing entry to the UK savings market.

'Recognise Bank successfully launched its first savings products within two days of this and is now in a position to drive forward its business plan and focus on meeting the future needs of the UK SME business sector.

'In achieving a UK banking licence, we are indebted to the hard work and vision of the Recognise Bank team and also to the continuing support from engaged shareholders who understand the SME market and share our vision to deliver a successful, safe and sustainable bank deploying the latest technology.

'The results for the six months reflect the costs incurred in developing the Recognise Bank business and are in line with the business plan.

'During the six months, the divestment of the Group's non-core businesses has been completed, subject to regulatory approval for the sale of Milton Homes. The run-off of the PFS and CAML/PFL portfolios continues to progress smoothly with future customer lending requirements being considered through Recognise Bank.

'While uncertainties on the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic remain, we believe the fundamentals in the UK continue to point to steady economic recovery.

'Recognise Bank, which has no legacy book and a highly experienced management team, is well positioned to capitalise upon the opportunities this will offer. The funds invested in Recognise Bank to date will support future balance sheet growth as Recognise Bank implements its business plan and moves towards break even.'

In August, COLG sold its advice firm Acorn to Oaks Financial Services as its shifted the focus of its operations to its banking arm.
Lily Sullivan, whose body was found at Pembroke Mill Pond

A man has been charged with the murder of an 18-year-old woman in Pembrokeshire.

Lewis Haines, 31, of Flemish Court, Lamphey, is accused of killing Lily Sullivan.

The teenager was found near Mill Pond, in Pembroke, in the early hours of Friday morning.

Miss Sullivan's family said in a statement: 'Lily was a kind and caring daughter who will be deeply missed by everyone.'

Haines will appear at Haverfordwest Magistrates Court on Tuesday, Dyfed-Powys Police confirmed.

Lily's body was found in the beauty spot ponds in the shadow of Pembroke Castle in West Wales in the early hours of Friday morning.

Detectives have appealed for information over Lily's death as they try to pinpoint her final movements.

Lily is believed to have been out with friends in the west Wales town from about 7.30pm on Thursday night and officers want to speak to anyone who may have seen her.

Detective Supt Paul Jones, said: 'I would like to thank everyone who has contacted police with information, which is helping us build a picture of what happened to Lily.

'I would also like to thank the community for their support as the investigation continues.'

Forensics officers working near Pembroke Castle in west Wales where Lily's body was found

A large police cordon that was set up over the weekend had now been taken down

Her body was recovered from Pembroke Mill Pond - a popular area for tourists visiting the traditional market town - at around 4am.

A large cordon set up around the ponds has now been removed.

Dyfed Powys Police said Lily was out with friends in the town from around 7.30pm Thursday,

They said Lily was wearing a white cropped top, blue jeans with ripped knees, white belt and black patent boots. She had a spider tattoo visible on her chest, and had black hair, which was bleached at the front.

The spokesman added: 'Her family is being supported by specialist officers.'

Anyone with information that could help in the inquiry is asked to report it to Dyfed-Powys Police, through the force's dedicated public portal or anonymously via the independent charity Crimestoppers by calling 0800 555111, or visiting crimestoppers-uk.org.

In an online tribute, friend Menna Williams wrote: 'I will never forget our times together growing up, it feels like yesterday.

'The moments you shared with us all will always speak of the great person that you were. May you rest in peace Lily Sullivan.'

The Pembroke Mill Pond powered the ancient corn mill was built soon after the castle was founded and granted to the Knights Templars in 1199

The castle was the birthplace of Henry Tudor and was the original family seat of the Earldom of Pembroke and dates back to 1093. It is the largest privately owned castle in Wales.
A part-time service station attendant's decision to surf the web instead of doing his uni assignment began a head-spinning journey to becoming a cult crypto currency investor and globetrotting influencer.

At 22, Danny Maegaard was procrastinating on his psychology essay for Sunshine Coast University, when he became distracted by an online article about Bitcoin.

Now Mr Maegaard is worth a fortune after making $10million by hedging bets on various cryptocurrencies for four years, then building a collection of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) worth at least $12million - which he hopes could be worth $100million 'one day'.

'While I was at university studying psychology, I just found myself procrastinating on assignments and taskwork,' Mr Maegaard said.

Daniel Maegaard, a former attendant's decision to surf the web instead of doing his uni assignment began a head-spinning journey to becoming a cult digital currency investor and globetrotting influencer

Leading NFT collector and investor Daniel Maegaard, 30, is pictured with his glamorous girlfriend Claire Slunecko

'I basically came across an article while I was procrastinating, it was talking about a cryptocurrency called Bitcoin. It had just gone from $15 to $30 something really caught my eye about it.

'I delved deeper and went on to a Bitcoin forum. After I started doing some homework, I realised this could potentially revolutionise the whole financial system.'

After researching the new subject, Maegaard decided to plunge every cent of his $4,000 savings from stacking shelves in a petrol station, into bitcoin.

'Everyone thought I was crazy,' he says. 'But my philosophy was that this was the time for me to take risks  when I was young and didn't have responsibilities like a mortgage, kids, and bills to pay.'

By the end of his first year investing in bitcoin, the currency has increased in value nearly 10 times.

Over the next four years he invested in various altcoins  a term used to refer to any cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin  and sold out making $600,000 in 2017 to buy a house.

After finishing his degree in psychology, he moved onto study law. But an old reluctance to do a nine-to-five job resurfaced and he quit plans for a law career - upsetting his lawyer father.

'I really loved the idea of play to earn, being able to make an income online. Who doesn't want to be able to make an income online?,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Everyone's trying to do it, being an influencer, or writing a blog.'

Mr Maegaard admits his parents didn't understand it.

Maegaard went onto work fulltime in cryptocurrency investing and in a stroke of brilliance, he cashed out with almost $10million before Bitcoin reached its peak.

He admits he got out of crypto when it became so mainstream that his grandma called to ask his advice on investing.

'Random people, like my grandma, started calling me and asking me about Bitcoin,' Maegaard recalls. 'It was reaching a saturation point, and I knew it was time to exit.'

He is pictured with his favourite NFT CryptoPunk #8348 over his face as he DJs. He paid $18,000 for CryptoPunk #8348 and claims to have been offered $4.2million for it

After making a fortune in Bitcoin, Maegaard turned his focus to NFTs in late 2018, just before they gained popularity in the mainstream.

Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, NFTs are non-fungible, meaning that one cannot be exchanged for another. The digital assets have collectors value, and can represent items including still images, GIFs, videos, music and more.

'People thought I was an absolute madman,' he says. 'I don't think a lot of people could understand how, or why, one of these would be worth thousands of dollars.'

Now speculators 'flip' their NFTs for eye-watering profits within days or even hours.

'I just thought this is going to be a brilliant way to be literally sitting on a beach in Mexico or anywhere, as long as they've got an internet connection, they can harvest resources within a game world, and then sell that to someone who needs those resources.'

Today, Mr Maegaard is a high profile NFT collector under the username Seedphrase, with more than 120,000 followers on Twitter.

His profile picture is of one of his favourite NFTs, CryptoPunk #8348 - which he paid $18,000 for less than a year ago and has been offered $4.2million for since.

His incredible fortune has allowed him to travel the world, and he shares photos of his glamorous lifestyle on social media.

Photos show him playing falconer in Dubai, hiking in Norway and at Machu Piccu in Peru, then with his feet dangling out of a helicopter above Manhattan and admiring the Swiss alps from his infinity pool.

Now 30, Maegaard is worth a fortune after millions after making $10million by hedging bets on various cryptocurrencies for four years, then building a collection of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) worth at least $12million - which he hopes could be worth $100million 'one day'

Maegaard learned the value of committing quickly and fully in various cryptocurrencies, a skill he's translated to NFTs to build his fortune before he was 30

Maegaard's crypto fortune has allowed him to travel the world in recent years. He is pictured snowboarding in Canada

Despite Mr Maegaard's success in bitcoin, Australia's most powerful banker recently issued a chilling warning about cryptocurrencies as the government cracks down on decentralised finance.

The volatility of the currency - falling below $70,000 recently, almost triple the value of a year ago - 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.

'There is still a lot of uncertainty about the long-term usefulness of these assets,' he warned.

'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.

'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.

'Households might be less influenced by fads and a fear of missing out and might start to pay more attention to the warnings of securities regulators and consumer protection agencies in many countries about the risks of investing in something with no issuer, no backing and highly uncertain value.'
A mother was reportedly wrapping the two children's Christmas presents when she received the knock on the door to tell her they had been killed in a tragic light plane accident.

Catherine Di Blasio recalled the moment detectives knocked on her door on Sunday afternoon to inform her that her children, Lavinia Mocanu, 10, and her brother, Lucas, 9, had been killed when the Cessna plane they were in crashed shortly after taking off at Redcliffe, north of Brisbane.

Travelling with them was their father Cris Mocanu, 41, and pilot Robert Watterson, 67, who also both died.

'When they came to my house, the detectives, I was wrapping the kids Christmas presents,' Ms Di Blasio told The Courier-Mail.

Catherine Di Blasio (centre) pictured with her two children Lucas, 9 (left) and Lavinia, 10 (right) on the Gofundme page set up to help the family after the tragic deaths

The upturned plane is seen in the waters off Redcliffe, north of Brisbane. It's believed the four-seater aircraft crashed shortly after take-off on Sunday

She said the joy flight had been a surprise for her son Lucas' birthday in November. Ms Di Blasio's ex-partner, Cris, worked for Mr Watterson's company, Lincom Group.

Ms Di Blasio took the children to meet their father ahead of the trip on Sunday morning but was not aware they would be taking the flight that day.

'I just told them "have fun guys, I love you",' she said.

'My son turned around and said love you too mum and they left.'

An Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation into what caused the four-seater Rockwell International light plane to crash has commenced, with some reports the engine stopped shortly after take-off.

'Early reports are that [the crash] was not long after take-off, but we'll need to confirm that with air traffic control,' Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said on Sunday.

'Equally anything we can get from the aircraft itself, any types of recorders that may have been aboard the aircraft and any other information, such as witnesses, to confirm exactly what stage of flight [the crash happened].'

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating what happened to cause the aircraft to crash shortly after take-off

Businessman Robert Watterson, 67, was the pilot of the Rockwell International light plane that took Mr Mocanu and his two children, Lavinia and Lucas, on the joy flight on Sunday

Vans belonging to a funeral home departing the Redcliffe Coast Guard at the Scarborough Marina after a plane crashed into nearby waters

Mr Mocanu had moved to Australia with Ms Di Blasio, a registered nurse, from Montreal, Canada 14 years ago.

Her family are expected to travel from Canada in the next fortnight to support her following the tragic deaths of her children.

Ms Di Blasio revealed she was giving her daughter a pair of sneakers and clothes for Christmas, while Lucas was getting Pokemon cards and clothes.

'They each wanted a gold chain so I had bought them one with my savings a couple of months ago and was looking forward to giving it to them,' she said.

A Gofundme page set up by the sister of Ms Di Blasio's current partner had already raised more than $15,000 by Tuesday morning.

'Catherine adored her children and is a much loved and hard-working registered nurse who has worked tirelessly through this pandemic so let's all get behind them and show our support and give them the wonderful send off that they deserve,' Tracey Baughman wrote on the page.

'This is a tragic accident ... in the lead-up to Christmas and the last thing that any family need to go through at this time of the year, at any time,' Police Inspector Craig White said.
Truckers and citizens alike are demanding clemency for the driver of an 18-wheeler sentenced to 110 years in prison for causing a huge crash that killed four on a Colorado interstate.

More than 4.4 million people have now signed a petition urging Governor Jared Polis to lessen the driver's sentence and social media users are calling on truckers to boycott Colorado.

A protest in support of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26 - the former truck driver who allegedly caused the crash - was held in Denver on Monday. Despite the outpour of support he has received online, only eight people turned up for the demonstration.

'Our goal is to bring local and national awareness so that we CAN find someone who will support Rogel in creating change in this sentencing,' protest organizers told CBS 4. 'Let's join together and RISE UP in support for Rogel! Let Governor Polis Know the TIME doesn't fit the 'Crime'. If we do not stand up for him, who will?'

Meantime, relatives of the victims dispute the narrative circulating the internet and claim that Aguilera-Mederos is not a victim, as many of his supporters allege.

'This person should spend some time in prison and think about his actions,' Gage Evans, the 65-year-old wife of William Bailey who died in the crash, told the New York Times Sunday. 'I don't think he should be let off with a slap on the wrist.'

'We are truly the victims,' she said, noting that she believes Aguilera-Mederos made 'bad decisions all along the way that day.'

A spokesperson for Polis said the governor's office will 'welcome an application' for clemency from the defense 'and will expedite consideration but have not received one yet at this time.'

Truckers and citizens alike are demanding clemency for Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26 (pictured at his Dec. 13 sentencing) - the driver of an 18-wheeler sentenced to 110 years in prison for causing a huge crash that killed four on a Colorado interstate

Relatives of the victims are disputing the narrative circulating the internet and claim that Aguilera-Mederos is not a victim, as many of his supporters allege (Pictured: The fiery fatal crash on I-70 in Jefferson County on April 35, 2019)

Aguilera-Mederos was driving a semi on April 25, 2019 down Interstate 70 in Lakewood, Colorado, when he crashed into two dozen vehicles - including four other semi-trucks stuck in rush-hour traffic. The impact caused a fireball explosion that incinerated cars and trucks, and killed four people.

More than two years later, on Dec. 13, Aguilera-Mederos, of Texas, was sentenced to 110 consecutive years in prison by county court Judge A. Bruce Jones, who said his hands were tied due to mandatory minimum laws in the state.

The judge sentenced Aguilera-Mederos to the minimum in the range available to him on all 27 criminal counts, the Denver Channel reported.

During his trial, the ex-trucker testified the brakes on his semi failed before he plowed into the other vehicles. However, prosecutors argued he could have taken steps to prevent the crash, such as choosing to use one of several runaway ramps as his 18-wheeler barreled down the Denver-area mountains.

In wake of his sentencing, social media has erupted with calls for clemency.

'Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 23, has nothing on his driving record, or on his criminal history,' the Change.org petition for Aguilera-Mederos' clemency, which was addressed to Colorado Governor Jared Polis and Jefferson County courts, reads.

'He had complied with every single request by the Jefferson County courts, and investigators on the case.'

Pictured: A screenshot of the 4.4 million signature Change.org petition for clemency for Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, the driver of an 18-wheeler jailed for 110 years for killing four people

His supporters argue the punishment Aguilera-Moderos was sentenced to is not equal to his crime. Gov. Jared Polis' office said they are aware of the petition (pictured), will 'welcome an application' for clemency from the defense 'and will expedite consideration but have not received one yet at this time

A protest in support of Aguilera-Mederos, 26 was held in Denver on Monday. Despite the outpour of support he has received online, only eight people turned up for the demonstration

Twitter and TikTok users are now urging truckers to boycott the state, saying Aguilera-Mederos' punishment 'was far too much'.

'It makes me happy to see truckers standing up for the 26 year old Latino who got 110 years. That's a ridiculous sentence for what was obviously an accident. Meanwhile you have privileged yt boys getting no jail time for pre-planned murders,' wrote Twitter user @Not_YouFatJesus.

'We (Brown Eagle LLC) have joined the protest and are not getting any loads out of or to Colorado until Rogel gets justice cause 110 years is ridiculous. The company should be held accountable!' echoed @AOrtega_80, a CDL Class A driver.

However, the movement supporting the 26-year-old, which has taken on the hashtag #NoTrucksToColorado, is flooding with misinformation, The Trucker reported.

'Feel for driver,' Colorado Motor Carriers tweeted, adding: '#NoTrucksToColorado has some info that is not accurate.

'Not mech. failure  brakes gave way due to inexper. driver traveling in mtns above posted speeds/ not gearing down  overheated brakes gave way. He knew of hot brakes yet bypassed runaway truck ramp.'

The protestors also misconstrued the meaning behind a photo circulating TikTok that showed 18-wheelers backed up for miles on a Colorado interstate. The social media users alleged the back-up was in response to the Aguilera-Mederos verdict, however the trucks were actually gridlocked because of icy weather.

Meantime, many are calling the boycott 'unnecessary' and believe the ex-trucker should face strict punishments.

Social media users have taken to Twitter and TikTok to share their opinions on the verdict. Some are urging truckers to boycott Colorado, saying Aguilera-Mederos' punishment 'was far too much,' while others are slamming the driver for his alleged negligence

'I suggest truckers and new truckers take every load available going to and from Colorado,' Twitter user @JamesonTaj wrote.

'There's a strike of #NoTrucksToColorado and it's the perfect time to make extra money for the holidays. Let them protest for their criminal and let us make money #colorado #rogelaguilera.'

Michael W. Teague, a spokesman for the Colorado First Judicial District Attorney's Office, argued on behalf of the punishment, saying Aguilera-Mederos' actions had 'grave impacts.'

'We initiated plea negotiations but Mr. Aguilera-Mederos declined to consider anything other than a traffic ticket,' Teague told the Times.

He added, if an appeal is sought, the state will 'again pursue an appropriate outcome if that opportunity arises, after consulting with the victims and survivors and receiving their input.'

James Colgan, a lawyer for Aguilera-Mederos, argued the punishment was unjust: 'I have been in this system for 32 years and I have never seen anything like this.'

Protestors also misconstrued the meaning behind a photo circulating TikTok that showed 18-wheelers backed up for miles on a Colorado interstate. The social media users alleged the back-up was in response to the Aguilera-Mederos verdict, however the trucks were actually gridlocked because of icy weather

TikTok user iamnolting shows support for Aguilera-Mederos, while also saying the justice system is to blame - not the entire state of Colorado

TikTok user venessajimenez1 shows support for Rogel Aguilera-Mederos

TikTok user dogknot420, a truck driver, shows support for Rogel Aguilera-Mederos

The attorney called the sentence 'truly something that is out of the ordinary' and claimed 'chances are pretty good' that Polis will 'look at that favorably'.

Colgan is seeking a commutation of his client's sentence, which lessens the severity. He is not seeking a pardon which would excuse or forgive the offense.

The lawyer notes that commutation does not change the jury decision to convict Aguilera-Mederos, only changes how much time - if any - he would spend incarcerated.

'We're not saying he's innocent and didn't make mistakes, [but] the punishment has to fit the crime and this punishment does not fit the crime,' Colgan stated.

The governor is the only person who can grant clemency at the state level. Polis most recently commuted four sentences and issued 18 pardons in December 2020. Clemency usually results in a sentence reduction or a pardon.

Aguilera-Mederos, pictured, of Texas, as he was sentenced on Dec. 13 to 110 consecutive years in prison, who said his hands were tied due to mandatory minimum laws in the state

Meantime, Aguilera-Moderos' supporters are arguing that his actions are the result of a negligent trucking company, not because of the driver himself.

'He's passed all of the drug and alcohol tests that were given including a chemical test,' the change.org petition reads.

'This accident was not intentional, nor was it a criminal act on the drivers part. No one but the trucking company he is/was employed by should be held accountable for this accident.'

'We are trying to hold the person who needs to be held responsible, responsible. The trucking company has had several inspections since 2017, with several mechanical violations.'

The petition goes on to say that Rogel could have 'done things differently to avoid the courts,' but ultimately commended him for taking responsibility and apologizing to the victim's families.

'Some of the families even offered forgiveness,' the petition continues.

'Rogel is not a criminal.'

It will become one of the website's top signed petitions after it reaches 3 million signatures, according to the Change.org page.

One of website's petitions successfully forced AT&T, Ernst & Young, Intel, and UPS to cease donating to the Boy Scouts after the organization came under heavy scrutiny for its controversial exclusionary policy against gay scouts and leaders this year.

Among the vehicles he crashed into were four other semi-trucks

Prosecutors say Aguilera-Mederos, of Texas, was driving at 85mph when he crashed into two dozen cars on April 25, 2019 near the Denver West Colorado Mills Parkway

A giant fireball formed from the impact of the crash, incinerating some cars and trucks

And 14-year-old Julia Bluhm successfully petitioned Seventeen magazine on Change.org to stop doctoring photos of its teen models. The magazine announced it would no longer Photoshop its models in July, making it the first mainstream teen magazine to take the 'no Photoshop' pledge, Business News Daily reported.

Aguilera-Mederos, of Texas, was working for a Houston-based trucking company at the time of the fatal crash. He was driving an 18-wheeler loaded with lumber.

Prosecutors said he was eastbound coming down the interstate from the mountains at about 85mph. They said he also swerved at times, forcing others off the road before he crashed into two dozen vehicles causing a giant fireball, FOX 31 reports.

It left behind a scene of 'significant, just unbelievable carnage,' Lakewood Police Spokesman Ty Countryman said in a news conference following the crash, noting that some bodies were still in the wreckage hours later. Video showed cars stopped in every direction as the huge fire spread, sending smoke billowing.

'This is looking to be one of the worst accidents we've had here in Lakewood,' Countryman said.

Four were killed in the crash, including: Doyle Harrison, 61, of Hudson, Colorado; William Bailey, 67, of Arvadal; Miguel Angel Lamas Arrellano, 24, of Denver; and Staney Politano, 69, of Arvada.

Six others were taken to the hospital for their injuries.

The Truck Safety Coalition - an organization that works with families of truck crash victims - commented on the verdict in a statement released on Twitter Thursday.

'We hope that this outcome will result in commercial motor carriers prioritizing safety,' the group wrote.

He was found guilty in October on 27 criminal charges including vehicular homicide, assault and reckless driving for a fiery crash in April 2019, and a county court judge on Monday said he had to sentence Aguilera-Mederos, pictured with his attorney, according to state minimums

Among the victims of the deadly crash were Stanley Politano, 69, of Arvada, Colorado, left, and Miguel Angel Lamas Arrelano, 24, of Denver, right,

Doyle Harrison, pictured, was also killed in the inferno

Victim William Bailey is pictured with his wife, Gage Evans

Aguilera-Mederos claimed the brakes in his truck had failed and he lost control, but prosecutors argued in court that he could have taken steps to prevent the crash, including using a runaway truck ramp miles before the wreck. He made a 'bunch of bad decisions' instead, they said.

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, was sentenced on Monday to 110 consecutive years in prison

His defense attorney claimed he did not know that his truck brakes were smoking or that he would not be able to stop.

He also argued that Aguilera-Mederos' actions were a series of negligent decisions, and that he did not intend to hurt anybody.

But in October, a jury found him guilty of 27 criminal charges, including:

Four counts of vehicular homicide

Two counts of vehicular assault

Six counts of assault in the first-degree with extreme indifference

10 counts of criminal attempt to commit assault in the first degree

One count of reckless driving

Four counts of careless driving causing death

He was also found not guilty of 15 counts of criminal attempts to commit assaults in the first degree.

Before his sentencing on Monday, Aguilera-Mederos pleaded with the judge to be lenient, breaking down in tears as he spoke.

'It's hard. This was a terrible accident, I know,' he said. 'I take the responsibility, but it was an accident.

Some of the lumber Aguilera-Mederos was transporting was strewn across I-70 as traffic was stopped in both directions

Smoke billowed throughout the sky in the aftermath of the crash

'I have never thought about hurting anyone in my entire life and Jesus Christ, he knows that, he knows my heart,' he continued.

'I am not a criminal, I am not a murderer.'

'The accident - it wasn't intentional, it wasn't intentional, Your Honor. I did all that I can as a man. I put myself in harm's way to avoid harming anyone else.'

He claimed that he tried to avoid the traffic, and noted that he did not flee in the aftermath 'because I respect the laws.

'I want to say sorry, sorry for the loss, sorry for the people injured,' he concluded, noting: 'I ask ... God many times why them and not me.'
A Fox News anchor experienced her own Ron Burgundy moment on Monday after she failed to read the teleprompter correctly which resulted in a hilarious mispronunciation.

Anchor Harris Faulkner, 56, was reporting on the smash and grab thefts in Los Angeles when she had tripped on her own words in a similar light to the popular Anchorman character.

In the vein of Burgundy, the anchor began spouting gibberish when referencing LA district attorney George Gascon who has been slammed for his liberal policies and failing to address the city's rising crime rate.

Faulkner read 'Las liberal da scraping jail times for juveniles convicted of felony crimes' while seemingly unaware she pronounced the acronym for Los Angeles and district attorney completely wrong. She should have said 'LA's liberal DA scrapping jail times for juveniles convicted of felony crimes.'

She was then targeted for the mishap and was compared to Burgundy's famous teleprompter mishap from the film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

Fox News host Harris Faulkner experienced a Ron Burgundy moment after she misread a teleprompter copy while reporting on the smash and grab crimes in Los Angeles

The fictional movie anchor, played by Will Ferrell was famous for reading the teleprompter copy exactly as it appears without hesitation

The fictional anchor, who is played by actor and comedian Will Ferrell, is best known for his catchphrase 'Stay Classy San Diego' and of course his signature 1970's style.

In the 2004 film, the character is also famous for reading the teleprompter exactly as it appears.

As he is signing off, a question mark is accidentally put in the end of his name with Ferrell saying 'I'm Ron Burgundy?' with a confused look on his face.

The producer in the filmed, played by Fred Willard, is angered over the mistake as he knows Burgundy will read the teleprompter word for word without hesitation.

'For the last time, anything you put on that prompter, Burgundy will read!' the producer says.

This gag also reappears later in the film after the teleprompter copy is tampered with as he says 'Go F*** Yourself San Diego' in place of his usual catchphrase.

Social media users also noted the comparison on Twitter

Like in the film, the mispronunciation and the error in the teleprompter copy are common mishaps in everyday newsrooms.

Faulkner, unlike her counterpart, also has six Emmys to her name for her work in broadcasting, as noted by the Daily Beast.

Social media users also commented on the humorous mishap on Twitter.

'I'm Harris Faulkner?', @NPSbuffbartlet tweeted, in comparison to the same mistake made by Burgundy.

'Show writer is going to have to spell it Dee AYYY next time,' @pbrown999 tweeted.

'I don't know what's funnier: las liberal da or saying scraping instead of scrapping,' @lovedforaday noted.
A member of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police who became 'the face' of the injured and assaulted officers - to the anger of many of his colleagues - has announced that he is quitting the force and joining CNN.

Michael Fanone, 41, handed in his resignation on Monday and blasted his former colleagues who he claims believe their oath is to Donald Trump, rather than the American public.

He will leave on December 31 after 20 years on the force - five years short of being able to retire with benefits.

During the Capitol riot, Fanone was beaten by the mob attacking the seat of the federal government, and testified in July that he feared for his life.

'I was among a vastly outnumbered group of law enforcement officers protecting the Capitol and the people in it, I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country,' he testified on July 27.

'I was at risk of being stripped of, and killed with, my own firearm as I heard chants of, 'Kill him with his own gun!' I can still hear those words in my head now.'

Michael Fanone is seen on December 12 attending the CNN Heroes gala in Manhattan. On Monday he resigned from the Metropolitan Police, and announced he is joining CNN as a law enforcement commentator

A panicked Fanone is seen in the midst of the pro-Trump mob, trying to storm the Capitol

Fanone is pictured being attacked by the mob on January 6, with his helmet ripped off by the frenzied crowd

Tasing and assaulting Officer Fanone who nearly died on January 6th. These are the traitors who Kevin McCarthy defends and gives cover to.#SubpoenaTraitorMcCarthy. pic.twitter.com/iils193gBp  Bruno Amato (@BrunoAmato_1) October 26, 2021

After the riot Fanone became a frequent commentator on CNN - often on Don Lemon's show. His colleagues were unimpressed, and Fanone told The Washington Post that he was mocked in online internal chat rooms.

Fanone was on the cover of the August 23-30 issue of Time magazine

'Clearly there are some members of our department who feel their oath is to Donald Trump and not to the Constitution,' Fanone said on Monday, adding that there are only two current D.C. police officers he still counts as friends.

Brian Stelter, CNN's media correspondent, confirmed that Fanone would be joining the network in the new year.

'A CNN rep confirms that Michael Fanone will start as an on-air contributor in January,' Stelter tweeted.

Fanone voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but did not in November 2020, he said.

After the Capitol riot, he became a strident critic of the then-president.

In July, while testifying, he made headlines by slamming his fist on the table and berating those politicians who still refused to acknowledge the facts of the insurrection.

'Nothing, truly nothing, has prepared me to address those elected members of our government who continue to deny the events of that day,' he said.

'And in doing so, betray their oath of office.'

Fanone is pictured on July 27, testifying before Congress

Fanone on July 27 delivered an impassioned speech, condemning the politicians who denied the facts of January 6

Fanone is seen on August 5, at a ceremony at the White House where Joe Biden honored law enforcement

Fanone was off work until September, receiving treatment for injuries both physical and mental.

He returned to work in the crime statistics division - not the training academy, as he had hoped.

Earlier this month he had his firearm and full arrest powers returned to him, which he told The Washington Post was important, to show he was not being forced out.

The mayor of Washington DC, Muriel Bowser, has not commented on his departure, and neither have the Metropolitan Police.
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A 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck offshore in the Cape Mendocino area of Northern California, the United States Geological Service said on Monday, shattering windows and sending those affected rushing outdoors.

The quake struck at a depth of 9 km (5.6 miles) in the Pacific Ocean about 24 miles (39 km) west of the tiny community of Petrolia along the rocky wilderness of California's Lost Coast region in Humboldt County.

It could be felt as far south as San Francisco and as far north as Medford, Oregon.

It was slow rolling at first, but then it really got going, Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal told CNN. We havent had a shake like this since 2010.

The quake did not trigger a tsunami warning because of the nature of the fault system from which it came, seismologist Lucy Jones posted on Twitter.

No injuries were immediately reported after the quake struck at 12:10 p.m. local time, Humboldt County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Samantha Karges, said in an email to Reuters.

Some buildings had minor damage including broken glass, with the contents of supermarket shelves also sent flying, but no evacuations were ordered in the sparsely populated region. Local journalist Caroline Titus, who resides in Ferndale, California, shared photos of the damage in her town on Twitter.

Workers and crews were deployed to check for damage to roadways, and two roads were closed due to rockslides caused by the shaking, Karges said.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates economic losses of less than $10 million.

Valley Grocery in Humboldt County saw many items including glass bottles shatter, moments after the quake. The owner of the store said ten volunteers showed up to help cleanup and reopen

Windows shattered during the quakes, forcing local residents in Ferndale, California, to flee outdoors. The Humboldt County Sheriff said the tremor was the strongest that he had felt since 2010

The 62. magnitude earthquake occurred just after noon and was centered off the coast about 210 miles (337 kilometers) northwest of San Francisco, just off the Cape Mendocino area. The nearest populated center, Eureka, is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north.

Residents in Ferndale, California, walked down the city's Main street once the earthquake was over. Many of them sought refuge outdoors, after observing many shops suffering damages during the natural disaster

A scientist in San Francisco had felt the shaking about 200 miles (320 km) away, the California Geological Survey posted on Twitter.

'Moderate to strong shaking was recorded by the seismic network along the coast,' a posting on the agency's Twitter feed said. 'The earthquake was felt in San Francisco by this CGS geologist!'

In 1992, the same region was rattled by a series of earthquakes that damaged more than 1,100 homes and businesses, destroying about 200 structures, the Los Angeles Times reported later that year.

The largest of the 1992 quakes measured 7.2, about 10 times the magnitude of Monday's quake. A small tsunami about 2 feet (0.61 m) high was also recorded.

The Humboldt County Fire Department did not immediately respond to a request for information on whether there had been injuries or damage.

More shattered windows at Transcon Engineering on Main Street, Ferndale, California. The fire department in the area is currently helping store owners with damage inspections

The 6.8 magnitude earthquake in the county occurred following more than 40 tremors from magnitude 3.5 to 5.8 struck the coast of Oregon on December 7.

The California Governors Office of Emergency Services tweeted it is actively monitoring the situation and coordinating closely with local partners in the region to protect communities from any secondary impacts.

Humboldt County has an estimated population of 135,000 residents and is about 4,000 square miles long. It is 270 miles north of San Francisco, near Californias border with Oregon.

The earthquake in the county happened after more than 40 tremors from magnitude 3.5 to 5.8 struck the coast of Oregon on December 7.
The billionaire mate of James Packer mate who split with his wife of 30 years a day after his CEO walked out has now seen his company lose a massive $23.3 billion and its biggest client dropped.

Hamish Douglass, the besieged Magellan Financial executive chairman, urged for calm after the latest departure saw the Magellan share price drop by 33 per cent, the company's worst day on record.

The colossal blow to Magellan happened on Monday, just 12 days after Douglass announced the end of his marriage, which was a day after his longtime business partner left the building, making it a horror fortnight for Douglass.

The latest setback came in the stroke of a pen when UK fund manager St James's Place (SJP) - Magellan's biggest investment mandate - made a sudden exit on Monday.

Hamish Douglass (left, above) has seen his Magellan Financial suffer a massive financial setback with its biggest client worth $23 billion leaving - less than two weeks after he split with his wife and CEO

Hamish Douglass (right) on James Packer's superyacht in St Tropez in July where the two friends who have known each other since school days relaxed with friends

Financial commentators are now predicting there are 'real fears there will be more pain to come' for Magellan which was co-founded by Douglass who is considered a 'rock star funds manager'.

The 'monastic' Douglass, who religiously fasts and exercises, catches the bus to work and claims he is 'uninterested in the trappings of wealth' has seen Magellan's worth shrink by a fifth.

Valued at $116b just a few weeks ago, it is now down to $93b and the departure of Magellan's largest investment mandate saw $1.8b wiped off the company's market capitalisation.

Billionaire Hamish Douglass (centre) has had a third massive blow, with his Magellan Financial losing a colossal $23 billion after its biggest client left - just two weeks after he split with his wife Alex (left) and the company CEO abruptly walked out

Alex Douglass (above) and estranged billionaire husband Hamish, the so-called 'rock star fund manager' of Magellan Financial, were forced to announce the end of their marriage on December 8

The latest event has commentators saying 'the magic has gone' for the 53-year-old investment guru, a childhood friend of James Packer who the casino mogul once sought advice from on how to invest the $1.8b he made selling part of Crown Resorts in 2019.

Douglass was photographed on Packer's $200m superyacht IJE in St Tropez earlier this year while working overseas for three months, mostly meeting investors in London where SJP is based.

Magellan Financial CEO Brett Cairns (above) suddenly walked out of the company on December 7 after a 14 year close business partnership with Douglass

It was during this time that Douglass' marriage to his wife Alex is believed to have finally ended, although the couple did not announce their separation until December 8.

That was a day after Magellan CEO and co-founder Brett Cairns abruptly walked out of Magellan Financial, sending the share price reeling, although the latest drop saw it down to a five-year low of $19.70 and resting around $20.16 on Tuesday.

The two men had worked closely for 14 years acquiring Magellan's stakes in elite brands including Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba, Yum, Nestle, Facebook Alphabet, Starbucks, PepsiCo and the luxury goods brand, LVMH.

It is not suggested that the ending of the marriage had anything to do with Brett Cairns.

Hamish and Alex Douglass issued a joint statement on December 8, saying the end of their marriage did not mean there would be a carve-up after the split of the Douglass' stake in Magellan.

'We can confirm that we have no intention to sell any of our shares in Magellan Financial Group,' the former spouses said.

Alex and Hamish Douglass (above) moved swiftly to assure investors the company would not be affected, but on Monday Magellan lost its biggest client UK fund manager SJP, worth $23B

Hamish Douglass and James Packer have been friends for years, but the Magellan chairman, who Packer once sought investment advice, from has now suffered a multi-billion dollar blow

But with Monday's sharp share drop after SJP flew the coop, financial observers were saying Douglass needed to restore market trust and 'step back' from his dual role as Magellan's executive chairman and chief financial officer.

Douglass has told staff in an internal memo on Monday that Magellan 'still had a very strong business that was very well diversified'.

'We are obviously disappointed. As is the case with all the clients we have to respect their decision,' he told Magellan staff.

But Douglass had 'great confidence our team and process will stand the test of time'.

He said Magellan's global equity strategy had underperformed over the past 12 months, a time when Douglass' personal net worth dipped from more than a billion down into the multimillions.

While his company is losing money, Douglass, 53, is undertaking a colossal $4.5m renovation of the former family home which now has a 20m deep hole drilled into bedrock

Hamish Douglass owns the house, a former nunnery, as well as estates in the NSW Southern Highlands and a property in the US

Mr Douglass owns a property in the US, estates in the NSW Southern Highlands and a house in exclusive Neutral Bay on Sydney's north shore which is undergoing a monumental renovation.

A huge excavation pit has been bored 20m deep through sandstone bedrock beneath the former marital home on the 1162 sq m site of the former Sisters of St Joseph nunnery, 'Nazareth'.

Douglass has lodged a new development application which would skyrocket his renovation costs to more than $4.5m, although neighbours told Daily Mail Australia he had rarely lived there with his wife and four children even before the marriage split.

Douglass models himself on 90-year-old legendary investment billionaire Warren Buffett, saying when choosing stock to invest in he is 'fairly emotionally detached ... Im an oddball.'

In an interview at the 2019 Morningstar Investment Conference, Douglass said, 'I want people to invest with us because they have decided we are good at what we do and they genuinely want to have our strategy.'
A teenager who allegedly knew he had Covid-19 but kept partying was reportedly kissing women and sharing cigarettes while out at a popular nightclub.

The 19-year-old spent the night at the Loverboy club in Adelaide's city centre despite having already been notified he had tested positive to Covid-19.

He is understood to have received a text message from SA Health at 10.18pm - but allegedly ignored the warning and entered the club at 10.45pm last Friday.

The venue has since been declared a close contact exposure site, forcing 150 club-goers and staff into isolation for a week just days away from Christmas.

Witnesses say they saw the former private school boy hugging other revellers, kissing at least two women and leaving with a woman in the early hours of Saturday morning, The Advertiser reported.

The boy is now quarantining in a medi-hotel but claimed he didn't see the message informing him of his positive result.

The teenager, 19, spent the night at the popular nightclub Loverboy in Adelaide's city centre (pictured) despite receiving notification he had tested positive to Covid-19

Anyone at the club between 10.45pm on Friday and 4.15am on Saturday has been dubbed a close contact by health officials.

Vaccinated attendees will be asked to quarantine for seven days and the unvaccinated must be in isolation for 14 days.

His actions sparked understandable anger, but the teenager has asked his critics to move on.

'I reckon we just drop it. I've admitted to my mistakes and am truly apologetic,' the young man wrote to social media.

South Australia is reporting record numbers of locally acquired infections as the Omicron variant threatens the festive period.

Loverboy described the infected-patron as 'selfish' in a statement and warned the venue planned to take legal action.

'Christmas is supposed to be a time to celebrate with family and loved ones, however, because of the actions of one selfish person, that won't be the case for many,' the statement read.

'We have to close our doors for the busiest week of the year and will be opening presents in isolation. We will be seeking justice.'

SA Police will investigate if the teenager has breached the state's Emergency Management Act, which could mean the issuing of a $1,092 fine.

Rumours of a Covid-positive patron in the Hindley Street nightlife area spread on Friday, prompting many nightspots to close early, and remain shut in the lead-up to Christmas so the festive period is not ruined for staff and patrons.

It is understood the teen received the text message from SA Health at 10.18pm but allegedly ignored the warning and entered the popular venue (pictured) at 10:45pm last Friday

Premier Steven Marshall said the teenager's actions were 'regrettable'.

'I think there's been pretty strong public outrage,' he said.

'I think it just serves as a lesson to everybody that we've done well as a state but it does rely on everybody doing the right thing.'

The premier on Friday announced restrictions would ease when 90 per cent of the eligible population were vaccinated, earmarked for December 28.

Once the vaccine benchmark is reached, density restrictions will be axed and capacity for indoor venues as well as gyms and nightclubs will be expanded.

Across Australia, thousands of families eager to celebrate the festive season will be spending Christmas in isolation as the Omicron variant continues to spread.

The revelation comes as worrying new international data finds Omicron is 'no milder' than the Delta variant - but five times more likely to re-infect.

Although 90 per cent of the Australian population over 16 are fully-vaccinated, the new variant is managing to spread in record numbers with the figure at 4,000 cases a day nationally and soaring.

Adding to the Christmas holiday panic is the immense strain on testing clinics as Australians desperate to travel interstate flock for swabs.

Most interstate travel requires a negative test before departure but with results taking two to three days, the wait is sending travel plans into turmoil.

Queensland and Tasmania have both reintroduced mask mandates in indoor settings, amid rising case numbers as holiday visitors start to flood interstate.

The Sunshine State recorded 42 new cases on Sunday, while South Australia saw 80 infections and Victoria saw a slight drop to 1,240.

Prior to the outbreak South Australia had recorded less than a thousand cases throughout the entire pandemic, and now has a total of 1,216.

NSW Health has revealed it is now longer testing Covid patients for the Omicron variant unless 'clinically relevant' - leaving officials with no idea how many cases of the strain are now in the state.
The father of the rookie New York City police officer who was filmed giving a lap dance to her married lieutenant during a raunchy Christmas party says his daughter has been crying over the ordeal and that he plans on suing.

The angry dad made the comments on the same day that Lieutenant Nick McGarry's wife furiously confronted a New York Post reporter who approached the couple for comment outside their home in Orange County, New York, about 70 miles north of Manhattan.

The unnamed rookie's father told the Post on Monday that his daughter told him: 'Daddy, I made some mistake. I'm very embarrassed about what I did. I embarrassed you and my family.'

The father told the Post that his daughter is 'frustrated' over the incident.

'She cried and cried,' he said. 'She is young. She doesn't know how but he is married, the lieutenant. He should know better.

Melissa McGarry (right), the wife of NYPD Lieutenant Nick McGarry (left), furiously confronted a New York Post reporter who approached the couple for comment outside their home in Orange County, New York, about 70 miles north of Manhattan

'I am going to sue them.'

Meanwhile, there was further drama when the lieutenant and and his wife were approached by a reporter outside their home in Orange County, New York.

'F*** you!' Melissa McGarry told the Post reporter and a photographer outside the couple's home in New Windsor as she was restrained by her husband.

'It's not worth it, get back in the car,' the lieutenant told his fuming wife as she continued her rant.

Nick McGarry is the NYPD lieutenant who was filmed smiling as a scantily-clad rookie officer gyrated on him during a Christmas party at a bar in Yonkers on Thursday

Lt. Nick McGarry, pictured, has now been reassigned to Transit District 12

'F*** you!' Melissa McGarry told the Post reporter and a photographer outside the couple's home in New Windsor as she was restrained by her husband

According to her social media page, Melissa McGarry is a leasing assistant and resident events coordinator at Water Club Luxury Living, an apartment and condominium complex in Poughkeepsie, New York. Phone calls to a number listed under her name went unanswered

Melissa McGarry told the press members: 'There are other things to worry about in this world!'

As the couple drove away, Melissa McGarry took her hands off the steering wheel and flipped the bird to the reporter with both hands, screaming: 'F*** you! F*** you! F*** you!'

According to her social media page, Melissa McGarry is a leasing assistant and resident events coordinator at Water Club Luxury Living, an apartment and condominium complex in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Phone calls to a number listed under her name went unanswered.

Her husband has reportedly been reassigned to a Transit unit after he was filmed receiving a lap dance from one of his underlings during a raucous holiday party.

The 44th Precinct's annual holiday party charged $75 per person, had DJ and open bar

The shocking video from the 44th Precinct's annual bash shows the rookie female officer in a checkered mini-skirt and knee-high boots grinding her backside on Nick McGarry's lap as he sits in a chair and holds onto her thighs in the middle of a bar.

In another video, she turns around to face McGarry and straddles the precinct commander as he grabs her by the waist. She then holds onto the lieutenant's head as she continues to gyrate on him.

Police brass wasted no time in disciplining McGarry, who has been with the NYPD since 2010, after the tawdry video surfaced from Thursday's $75 per-person party, which featured a DJ and open bar.

He has reportedly been reassigned to Transit District 12 in the Bronx, with an unnamed source telling the New York Post, that the lieutenant 'knows he f***** up.'

'Messing with your subordinate is a no-no on the job,' the source said, adding that the rookie cop 'doesn't know any better because she just came on the job.

'I can't even tell you how many times they tell incoming supervisors that,' he said, noting: 'It sets a bad precedent.'

It is unclear who the female officer is or if she will be disciplined. The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.

The lap dance took place at Rory Dolan's bar in Yonkers, according to the flyer for the event.

An Instagram post geotagged at the bar shows a different young woman posing in front of a Christmas tree with the hashtags #NYPD and #holidayparty.

The rookie officer in the video appears carefree as she throws her hands in the air and dances on her superior to cheers from the crowd.

One onlooker, meanwhile, yelled 'Oh my God,' and another appeared to hand the lieutenant a wad of cash.

In a different scene, she grinds on a different person, who is bent over and facing the floor.

Law enforcement sources say the two cops have yet to be questioned, but that higher-ups are furious at the situation, and have since reassigned McGarry.

McGarry apparently worked in the nearby 42nd precinct in 2017, when he was admitted to the Sergeant's Benevolent Association, before taking the helm at the 44th precinct

The lap dance took place on Thursday at a holiday party at Rory Dolan's Bar in Yonkers, above

McGarry has been an officer with the NYPD since July 2010 and has served as a lieutenant at the 44th Precinct since April, according to 50-a.org, a website that compiles public records to make profiles of individual officers.

He made $188,000 last year, the website states, and has been named in multiple lawsuits, resulting in settlements totaling at least $130,000, though his direct role in the allegations is unclear.

The NYPD found that the the complaints were 'unsubstantiated.'

McGarry apparently worked in the nearby 42nd precinct in 2017, when he was admitted to the Sergeant's Benevolent Association, before taking the helm at the 44th precinct - which covers about two miles of southwest Bronx, including Grand Concourse, Bronx Terminal Market and Yankee Stadium.

The Police Benevolent Association, the largest NYC cop union, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.

Keechant Sewell, 49, will be the next NYPD commissioner after being chosen by incoming Mayor Eric Adams

Crime levels in New York City drastically spiked in 2020 and has continued to climb in 2021

Crime levels in New York City drastically spiked in 2020 and has continued to climb in 2021

The embarrassing incident occurred just days before Keechant Sewell takes over as the NYPD's first female top cop. She will inherit a murder rate that is 50 percent higher than it was before the pandemic and shootings that have doubled since 2019, according to the most recent crime statistics released by the NYPD.

Sewell is set to become the first black woman to hold the post after being tapped for the position by Mayor-elect Eric Adams on Wednesday.

Crime statistics published by the NYPD show shootings, murders and auto grand larceny have all nearly doubled while murder is up 50 percent in the city compared to 2019 as of December 5.

There have been 1,470 shootings, 443 murders and 9,595 cases of auto grand larceny, according to the latest data for the year.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, who departs at the end of the month, has blamed bail reform laws enacted by the Democratic-dominated state Legislature for the spike in violent crime.
A chemical company shutting down its factory next year is receiving $29.4million from taxpayers to ramp up AdBlue production and avert Australia's diesel crisis.

Incitec Pivot in November announced it would be closing the Gibson Island fertiliser plant in Brisbane in December 2022 - the country's only factory for the main ingredient in AdBlue, a diesel fuel additive which keeps trucks running.

As recently as last Friday, the business emphasised its decision to shareholders, blaming expensive natural gas.

But on Monday, the $6.2billion company's chief executive Jeanne Johns posed in a picture with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor to announce Incitec Pivot would be ramping up the production of refined urea used to make AdBlue.

A chemical company shutting down its factory next year is receiving $29.4million from taxpayers to ramp up AdBlue production and avert Australia's diesel crisis. Incitec Pivot in November announced it would be closing the Gibson Island fertiliser plant in Brisbane in December 202 (pictured is CEO Jeanne Johns, right, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison)

Without the move, Australia's existing supplies of AdBlue were expected to run out by the middle of January with no new local alternatives, which could stop half the trucks and many utes and four-wheel drives from starting.

Modern diesel engines won't run unless AdBlue is in the exhaust system to filter out nitrogen oxide pollution and service stations like BP are now restricting how much customers can buy.

Incitec Pivot is Australia's only manufacturer of urea melt, the key ingredient in AdBlue, and global supplies are dwindling after China banned fertiliser exports.

The federal Department of Industry and Energy has confirmed the company is getting a $29.4million grant to produce 5,000 tonnes a month of technical grade urea, from the end of January 2022, for domestic AdBlue manufacturers.

'The government is providing Incitec Fertilizers Pty Ltd (IPL) with a grant of $29.4million to secure Australia's domestic supply of AdBlue,' a spokeswoman said.

'On completion of successful tests, IPL expects to commence commercial production by January 2022 for supply to the Australian market.'

On Monday, the $6.2billion company's chief executive Jeanne Johns posed in a picture with Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor to announce Incitec Pivot would be ramping up the production of refined urea used to make AdBlue

On December 9, Mr Taylor revealed Australia only had 15million litres of AdBlue in stock, which would only be enough to last until mid-January.

Why is AdBlue shortage a worry? Without AdBlue, diesel engines in truck, utes and four wheel drives won't start It contains urea, which is commonly used as a fertiliser A refined version of this urea is added to diesel engines to reduce nitrogen 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 China supplies 80 per cent of the Asia-Pacific region's diesel-grade urea But Australia's biggest trading partner has banned urea exports in a bid to contain food prices This has seen a scramble to source urea from alternative markets like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Qatar Source: National Road Transport Association Advertisement

Supplies bound for Australia would add another two weeks until the start of February.

Mr Taylor's department confirmed the government subsidy to Incitec Pivot, to manufacture 5,000 tonnes of technical grade urea, would be sufficient to produce 15million to 17million litres of AdBlue to meet 'normal monthly demand in Australia'.

The Australian Trucking Association supports the Incitec Pivot deal but chairman David Smith said immediate supply issues were still needed to be addressed.

'We have operators calling us from across Australia telling us that theyre nearly out of AdBlue,' he said.

'The ATA intends to work closely with government on contingency plans.

'The ATA also supports an industry proposal for an AdBlue hotline.'

Trade Minister Dan Tehan met with the Australian trucking industry's peak body on Monday after announcing Indonesia had agreed to give Australia another 5,000 litres of refined urea, enough to produce a month's supply of AdBlue.

A fortnight ago, Korea announced it had secured 120,000 tonnes a year of urea for three years from Indonesia.

Korea in November sent Australia 27,000 litres of urea.

The National Road Transport Association estimates China supplies 80 per cent of the Asia-Pacific's urea, which means alternative supplies of the diesel additive need to be sourced from Indonesia and the Middle East.

On Friday, Ms Johns reiterated the company's decision to close the Gibson Island plant in December 2022, and instead import fertilisers as its explores making green ammonia in Brisbane instead.

'This provides the potential to transition Gibson Island to a renewable manufacturing future, following our decision in November to cease operations at the end of 2022,' she told shareholders at the annual general meeting.

'This difficult decision was reached after being unable to secure, long-term, affordable gas supply.'

Australia's existing supplies of AdBlue are expected to run out by the middle of January, which could stop half the trucks and many utes and four-wheel drives from starting (pictured is a road train in outback Australia)
Australians have as little as one day left to get tested for Covid if they want a negative result before Christmas Day as demand for a swab soars across the country.

Clinics have been hit with hours-long queues in recent days amid a surge in cases and a frantic rush to meet interstate testing requirements.

Those wanting to see their family on Christmas Day but cautious about spreading the virus to their vulnerable loved ones have also been caught in the chaos as they too join the queue for a test.

In South Australia - which as of Tuesday morning was only open to millions of fully-vaccinated residents from Victoria and NSW if they got tested on arrival - the wait for a test overnight was as long as nine hours.

Cars snaked through Victoria Park in central Adelaide, with one motorist saying he waited from 10.30pm Monday until about 8am Tuesday to reach the front of the line.

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Pictured is a queue at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Covid-19 testing centre in Sydney on Tuesday. The processing times to turn around samples has ballooned to as much as 48 hours in NSW

Adelaide ex-Pat James Endean has been waiting to get a #COVID19 test at #VictoriaPark drive-through clinic since 4AM. Line stretches back about 1km. People have been waiting ~8 hours, as #SAHealth asks for patience. pic.twitter.com/pVhkSWAeI2  Sara Tomevska (@STomevska) December 20, 2021

SA Premier Steven Marshall hours later ditched testing on arrival rules for interstate travellers, as long as they don't have symptoms, after the long lines sparked outrage.

However visitors from NSW, Victoria and the ACT still need a negative test within 72 hours of arriving into SA.

Over in Melbourne, a line for a Covid-19 walk-in testing centre could be seen stretching around the block in Chinatown on Tuesday.

The processing times to turn around samples has also ballooned, with one Sydneysider telling Daily Mail Australia she is still waiting for her result 48 hours after her test.

Those wanting a negative result by Christmas Day in NSW would therefore need to get tested by Wednesday at the very latest to turn around their sample in time.

The lengthy processing times could spell disaster for those in virus-hit NSW, Victoria and the ACT who need a negative result within 72 hours of travelling to interstate destinations such as Queensland and SA.

Deakin University Chair in Epidemiology Professor Catherine Bennett told Daily Mail Australia states needed to shift away from requiring interstate travellers to test before departure.

#Breaking: A COVID-19 testing centre in Melbourne's CBD has turned people away within half an hour of opening its doors, as queues snaked for hundreds of metres through city streets and laneways. #COVID19 #Melbourne pic.twitter.com/ESno28f204  10 News First Melbourne (@10NewsFirstMelb) December 19, 2021

Cars snaked through Victoria Park in central Adelaide, with motorists reporting wait times of anywhere between six and nine hours

A queue at Sydney's RPA Hospital for Covid testing. Many of those in a queue across Australia want to see their loved ones on Christmas Day but are cautious about spreading the virus to those must vulnerable

'The issue we have is the longer the wait times are, the less immediate the result,' she said.

'Unless you then isolate until Christmas Day, the test would only tell you what you have today - not in three days time.'

Professor Bennett urged those eager to know if they have Covid before seeing a vulnerable relative to combine their PCR test with multiple rapid antigen tests in the days before December 25.

She said the long queues of Covid-free Australians waiting for a test were taking away capacity for those who were sick and may actually have the virus.

PCR test queue at 7.30am  we are going super early tomorrow, and if we dont get our results in time well pay for fast testing pic.twitter.com/GUNMKzC4ci  Corky Saint Clair (@CorkyMelbourne) December 20, 2021

Masked Sydneysider sit on a ledge outside the RPA Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday. The lengthy processing times could spell disaster for those in virus-hit NSW, Victoria and the ACT who need a negative result within 72 hours of travelling interstate

'It's overloading our testing system - we have to find other ways to manage the borders,' she said.

Professor Bennett said she expected state and federal leaders to discuss winding back testing requirements at an emergency national cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

One woman waiting for a test in the Victorian capital earlier admitted she had left it late to get swabbed, given she needed to fly interstate with a negative test the next day.

'I waited for two and a half hours yesterday so thought I'd come her early today to try and get in this time,' she told 10 News Melbourne.

Motorists queue inside their cars at the St Vincent's Bondi Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday

'I'm about to see my family tomorrow interstate so I had to get tested within 72 hours - I really need that negative test.'

Meanwhile, pharmacies and shops are running out of rapid antigen tests as residents race to prove they are Covid-free without the hassle of an official PCR test.

National President of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia Trent Twomey says there are sufficient supplies in Australia but they need to be distributed to where demand is greatest.

'They are all at their major distribution hubs which are down in Victoria,' he told the Nine Network on Tuesday.

Pharmacies would get more deliveries by Wednesday.

'They assure us over the next 24 hours there will be trucks and ships and trains and all sorts of things getting that stock out of major distribution hubs in Melbourne out to the rest of the states and territories,' he said.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant is urging caution this Christmas and recommended people take a rapid antigen test before going to an indoor gathering.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant is urging caution this Christmas and recommended people take a rapid antigen test before going to an indoor gathering

'Choose outdoor, well-ventilated places for gatherings and limit the size of those gatherings,' she said.

Victorian health authorities offered similar advice, recommending outdoor Christmas celebrations and limiting indoor gatherings to less than four hours.

'Have Christmas on the verandah or reduce your time inside a house with others to less than four hours,' a Victoria Department of Health statement read.

'You may still have to get tested but your time in isolation will be shorter.'

The testing chaos comes as NSW's Covid-19 cases again exploded on Tuesday with 3,057 new infections, the state's highest spike in daily infections since the pandemic began.

A queue at the RPA Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday. NSW's Covid-19 cases again exploded on Tuesday with 3,057 new infections, the state's highest spike in daily infections since the pandemic began

Two deaths were also recorded as NSW recorded a spike of more than 500 cases recorded 24 hours earlier.

Hospitalisations are also on the rise with 284 cases admitted, including 39 in intensive care.

Victoria recorded 1245 cases and six deaths on Tuesday, slightly down from 1,302 infections reported on Monday.

Around 392 cases are being treated in hospital, including 73 in intensive care.

NSW remains agonising close to the 95 per cent vaccination milestone with 94.9 per cent of over-16s having had one dose and 93.4 per cent now double-vaxxed.

Almost 137,000 residents came forward for testing on Monday, placing overwhelming demand on testing clinics with some sites running out of swabs.
Australian teens hooked on addictive e-cigarettes have been urged to quit vaping immediately, as thousands of the pens are sold every day despite nationwide bans.

Vaping has taken off across the country in recent years, with thousands of teenagers seen clutching the brightly-coloured pens wherever they go.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States recently moved to legalise vape pens, sparking backlash from parents, doctors, and experts.

The FDA ultimately decided the benefits of helping adults quit smoking tobacco outweighed the risk of young people becoming addicted to the devices.

In Australia, nationwide laws that came into effect on October 1 make it illegal to import the pens, pods or liquids containing nicotine without a valid prescription.

Australian teens hooked on addictive e-cigarettes have been urged to quit vaping immediately, as thousands of the pens are sold everyday despite nation-wide bans

The vape pens (pictured) can be easily stowed in handbags or pockets and come in fruity flavours like grape, watermelon, pineapple and blueberry

But some corner stores are content to risk fines by selling disposable vapes, a popular alternative to unhealthy and increasingly expensive cigarettes.

And the laws have done little to stem the use of the dangerous devices which were recently seen being used by Year 12 students at Schoolies celebrations.

The pens can be easily stowed in handbags or pockets and come in fruity flavours like grape, watermelon, pineapple and blueberry.

The highly-available pens can still be bought for as little as $20 at convenience stores or tobacconists and heed no warning of the long-term health effects.

Experts say vaping can be particularly damaging for young people because it damages DNA, promotes tumours and can cause a number of respiratory issues.

Findings from an investigation into the contents of 50 over-the-counter vapes done by Curtin University found vapes can contain paint, disinfectant, crude oil and even a drug used to kill fish.

The highly-available pens (pictured) can be bought for as little as $20 at convenience stores or tobacconists and heed no warning of the potential long-term health effects

A 15-year-old Sydney student (pictured) was left with a life-threatening lung illness seven months after she started using the vape pens at school

More than half of the vapes tested contained chemicals toxic to humans if repeatedly inhaled and some were linked to lung cancer.

Many have completely 'unknown effects on respiratory health'.

A 15-year-old Sydney student was left with a life-threatening lung disease seven months after she started using the vape pens at school.

Dakota Stephenson was ultimately diagnosed with hypoxia - meaning her lungs weren't getting enough air - and spent three days on partial ventilation.

Her doctors at Randwick Children's Hospital believe she was suffering from a lung condition called EVALI that was first reported in the US in 2019.

The alarming revelations have prompted the Australian Medical Association to raise concerns the highly-addictive pens were still being readily accessed.

Since October, the Australian Border Force has been intercepting packages of the outlawed devices, however vapes are still getting into the hands of teenagers.

It's estimated at least 200,000 Australians are currently using the pens which can only be legally purchased with a doctors prescription.

The alarming health effects of vapes have prompted the Australian Medical Association to raise concerns the highly-addictive pens were still being readily accessed

It's estimated at least 200,000 Australians are currently using vape pens which can only be legally purchased with a doctors prescription (stock image of e-cigarettes)

Max Fichkin, who runs The Steamery in Sydney, said the laws hasn't stopped commercial suppliers from smuggling massive shipments into Australia.

'There has always been a black market, and the more the government tries to quash it with legislation, the more the black market will thrive,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Tobacconists, milk bars and corner stores are selling them under the counter - and there has been very little reinforcement.

'If you jump on Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace and search key words there are black market sellers who will deliver nicotine vaping products to your house.'

After penalties were boosted earlier this month, those caught selling e-cigarettes with nicotine can now be fined up to $1650 or jailed for six months - or both.

Despite the risks, Mr Fichkin does not think black market sellers will be deterred.

'The fine increase is minor. The profits far exceed the costs. I don't see corner stores earning less than $1600 a day selling disposable vapes,' he said.

'It is a lucrative area to be in.'

The Therapeutic Goods Administration handed Shosha, a smoke store in Darlinghurst (pictured), a $106,650 fine for selling vape pens to customers without a prescription

The TGA alleges the website has advertised over 400 nicotine-based products including vape pens with flavours like watermelon, guava, grape and cherry (stock image of vape pens)

A Sydney smoke store was recently handed a $100,000 fine for allegedly selling the illegal vape pens to customers who didn't have a prescription.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration also handed Shosha, the store in Darlinghurst in the city's inner east, eight infringement notices in November.

The TGA alleges the website has advertised over 400 nicotine-based products including vape pens with flavours like watermelon, guava, grape and cherry.

Mason Online allegedly advertised the use and supply of nicotine vaping products on its websites and failed to come into compliance,' a TGA statement reads.

'Under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, vaping products that contain nicotine are prescription-only medicines and cannot be advertised to the Australian public.'
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection requested an interview and documents from Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania on Monday, marking the first time the committee publicly sought to sit down with a sitting member of Congress.

The latest request launches a new phase for the lawmakers on the committee, who have so far resisted reaching out to one of their own as they investigate the insurrection by President Donald Trumps supporters and his efforts to overturn the election. Perry and other congressional Republicans met with Trump ahead of the attack and strategized about how they could block the results at the Jan. 6 electoral count.

In a letter to Perry, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said the panel had received evidence from multiple witnesses, including then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, that Perry had "an important role" in efforts to install Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general.

The committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection has requested an interview with Rep. Scott Perry. The Republican lawmaker is the first sitting member of Congress the panel has requested to speak with.

The letter requests an interview with Perry, who pushed the Justice Department to overturn the election and met with Trump ahead of the violent attack, according to investigators. The panel also asked for any documents and correspondence between Perry and Trump, his legal team or anyone involved in the planning of Jan. 6 events.

A request for comment left with Perry's office was not immediately returned.

The lawmaker representing Pennsylvania's 10th District was cited more than 50 times in a Senate Judiciary report released in October outlining how Trumps effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat brought the Justice Department to the brink of chaos and prompted top officials there and at the White House to threaten to resign.

Perry, who has continuously disputed the validity of President Joe Bidens victory in Pennsylvania, has said he obliged Trumps request for an introduction to Clark, then an assistant attorney general whom Perry knew from unrelated legislative matters. The three men went on to discuss their shared concerns about the election, Perry has said.

The committee wants to know about Perry's efforts to get President Trump to install Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general

Perry is the first sitting lawmaker the Jan. 6th committee is seeking to question

The letter says Perry used encrypted messaging to communicate with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows

The Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud in Pennsylvania or any other state, and senior Justice officials dismissed Perrys claims

The recent Senate report outlined a call Perry made to Donoghue last December to say the department wasnt doing its job with respect to the elections. Perry encouraged Donoghue to elicit Clarks help because hes "the kind of guy who could really get in there and do something about this," the report said.

Perry has previously said his "official communications" with Justice Department officials were consistent with the law.

The letter sent Monday night is the first time the panel has publicly released a request to a fellow member of Congress as it investigates Trumps communications with his Republican allies. But the panel notably did not subpoena Perry, as it has other witnesses close to Trump whom lawmakers believe have relevant information.

In his letter to Perry, Thompson added that the panel "has tremendous respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its Members. At the same time, we have a solemn responsibility to investigate fully all of these facts and circumstances."

The panel voted in November to hold Clark in contempt after he showed up for a deposition yet declined to answer questions. But Thompson has said he will hold off pursuing the charges and allow Clark to attend another deposition and try again. Clarks lawyer has said Clark intends to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, but the deposition has been repeatedly postponed as Clark has dealt with an unidentified medical condition.

The panel has already interviewed around 300 people as it seeks to create a comprehensive record of the attack and the events leading up to it.

Trump at the time was pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud and lobbying Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of Congress to try to overturn the count at the Jan. 6 congressional certification. Election officials across the country, along with the courts, had repeatedly dismissed Trumps claims.

An angry mob of Trump supporters were echoing his false claims as they brutally beat Capitol police and broke into the building that day, interrupting the certification of Bidens victory.

In his request for a meeting with Perry, Thompson wrote: "We would like to meet with you soon to discuss these topics, but we also want to accommodate your schedule."
Vice President Kamala Harris went easy in a Monday interview on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who the day before went on TV and tanked President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill.

In a sit-down with CBS' Margaret Brennan that aired Monday night, the vice president said it's not about 'any specific individual' and she won't get caught up in 'personal politics.'

'No, I don't feel - I don't have any personal feelings about this. This is about let's get the job done. Let's get it done,' she answered when Brennan asked if she felt betrayed.

In an interview with CBS News that began airing Monday night, Vice President Kamala Harris went easy on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin despite Manchin tanking President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill

Biden hasn't yet personally expressed to the press his feelings on Manchin.

He ignored shouted questions when arriving back at the White House Monday morning.

But White House press secretary Jen Psaki put out a strongly worded statement Sunday calling Manchin's announcement on Fox a 'sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the president and the senator's colleagues in the House and Senate.'

'Just as Senator Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word,' Psaki said.

'In the meantime, Senator Manchin will have to explain to those families paying $1,000 a month for insulin why they need to keep paying that, instead of $35 for that vital medicine. He will have to explain to the nearly two million women who would get the affordable day care they need to return to work why he opposes a plan to get them the help they need,' Psaki went on. 'Maybe Senator Manchin can explain to the millions of children who have been lifted out of poverty, in part due to the Child Tax Credit, why he wants to end a program that is helping achieve this milestone - we cannot.'

Sen. Joe Manchin went on Fox News Sunday one day ago and said he wouldn't be voting for President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill, comments the White House called a 'sudden and inexplicable reversal'

Psaki made more peacable comments during Monday's briefing and Harris was upbeat during the CBS interview.

If Manchin had gotten on board approval of the $1.75 trillion bill, Harris - as president of the 50-50 Senate - would have broken the tie for the Democrats to get it through.

'In fact, the president and I joke when I leave one of our meetings to go break a tie he says, "Well, that's gonna be a winning vote." Whenever I vote, we win. It's a joke we have,' Harris said.

'The stakes are so high. I refuse to get caught up in what might be personal politics,' she added.

Brennan also asked Harris about the emerging Omicron variant and the Russia's military escalation on its border with Ukraine.

'We are prepared for it,' Harris said on Omicron.

Harris said Americans had the 'power today' to end the coronavirus pandemic, pointing to vaccinations and boosters, but wouldn't specifically blame the unvaccinated for prolonging the crisis.

'I don't think this is a moment to talk about fault,' she answered. 'It is no one's fault that this virus hit our shores or hit the world. But it is more about individual power and responsibility, and it's about the decisions that everyone has the choice to make, no doubt.'

Harris said that the Biden administration is 'prepared to issue sanctions like you've not seen before,' if Russia invades Ukraine, but she wouldn't say if Russian President Vladimir Putin would be sanctioned directly.

'I'm not going to talk about specific sanctions, but we are making that clear to him,' Harris said.
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President Joe Biden will mail 500 million rapid COVID tests to homes across America, deploy 1,000 medical personnel to hospitals and set up new federal testing sites as part of the Omicron battle plan he will announce in full on Tuesday afternoon.

He will also issue a stark warning to the 40 million unvaccinated Americans and assure the rest of the country they won't have to cancel their Christmas plans, despite a surge in cases across the country and the U.S. recording 250,000 daily cases on Monday for the first time since early September.

The administration is not calling for any new lockdowns or travel restrictions and will instead address existing steps like masking indoors, testing, and vaccines. The White House will also set up a website where Americans can order free at-home virus tests just two weeks after Press Secretary Jen Psaki rejected the idea and sarcastically said: 'Should we just send one [test] to every American?'

Biden will tell the nation 'we know we have the tools to get through this wave,' according to a senior administration official who briefed the media on the effort  including the new testing component.

He will speak less than 24 hours after America recorded its first Omicron-related death - a Texas man in his 50s who was unvaccinated and had already been infected before - and with lines building at testing centers across the country.

The news of the first fatality caused by the new variant was announced by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Monday night, around the same time the Centers for Disease Control confirmed that Omicron is now the dominant COVID strain in the US, accounting for 73 per cent of all new cases.

Hidalgo did not name the victim, who had undisclosed underlying health conditions, and who was treated with Regeneron antibody therapy in an unsuccessful attempt to save his life.

Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Tuesday morning said the spread of Omicron is 'unprecedented' and cases will 'double' every two days, but insisted vaccinated Americans can enjoy Christmas with their families.

States like New York and New Jersey in particular are getting slammed by the new variant. New York City has recorded record infections in 24 hours over the past week and Hawaii is currently the U.S. leader in growth of cases, up 383 per cent over the last two weeks.

Hospitalizations have not kept pace, though, only growing six per cent during that time span, a sign that the 63 per cent of the population that is vaccinated has some protection from the virus.

'The President will tell the American people that if they are vaccinated and follow the process that we all know well, especially masking while traveling, they should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays,' said the White House official.

As part of his plans, Biden will:

Direct Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to mobilize an additional 1,000 troops to deploy to Covid-hit hospitals during January and February.

Deploy six emergency response teams with more than 100 clinical personnel and paramedics to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont immediately.

Set up a new federal testing sites around the country with the first coming to New York City this week.

Purchase a half-billion free at-home rapid tests to send to American homes from January

Americans will be able to order the rapid, at-home tests from a website at the beginning of 2022

FEMA is pre-deploying hospital equipment to prepare for an expected surge, with 'hundreds of millions of high-quality masks' and other equipment

The government is deploying hundreds of ambulance and EMS crews to transport people out of overwhelmed hospitals

President Joe Biden will mail 500 million rapid COVID tests to homes across America, deploy 1,000 medical personnel to hospitals and set up new federal testing sites as part of his Omicron battle plan he will announce in full on Tuesday afternoon. He will also issue a stark warning to the 40 million unvaccinated Americans and assure the rest of the country they won't have to cancel their Christmas plans, despite a surge in cases across the country

Unvaccinated people who caught Delta have virtually no protection against Omicron infection, lab study suggests  but jabbed survivors are 'super immune People who are unvaccinated but were previously infected by the Delta Covid variant may have very little protection against Omicron, a new study finds. Researchers from the Medical University of Innsbruck, in Austria, tested the blood of those who had beat the older strain of the virus against the new super-variant to measure antibody levels. They found only one out of seven samples produced enough of the infection-fighting proteins to neutralize Omicron. Covid survivors who were also fully vaccinated showed an increased ability to combat the strain, though. It suggests that prior infection alone offers virtually no protection against catching Omicron  but the jury's still out on severe illness. Antibody studies look at one very specific part of the immune response to Covid and do not take into account T cell and B cell immunity, which are vital for protection against severe disease but more difficult to measure. Advertisement

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump sent out a statement attacking Biden's COVID response that said: 'Joe Biden was supposedly elected because he was going to quickly get rid of COVID-19, sometimes referred to as the China Virus. Hows that working out?'

Republicans have also accused the White House of talking down to Americans and criticized pandemic policies. Senator Roger Marshall, who is also a physician, told DailyMail.com on Tuesday: 'Unfortunately, the White House message is talking down to the American people  the first thing we learned in medical school is that you dont talk down to patients. Instead, Joe Biden should be focused on getting booster shots in the arms of seniors and those at high risk  we know that they work and that they will save lives.'

Biden will keep up the tough talk he rolled out last week, when he warned the unvaccinated they faced potential illness and death and urged Americans to get their booster shots.

'We will also note that if you are unvaccinated you are at high risk of getting this variant. This variant is highly transmissible and the unvaccinated are eight times more likely to be hospitalized and 14 times more likely to die from covid,' said the official previewing the speech.

With 40 million Americans still unvaccinated, and the highly-transmissible Omicron variant on the rise, 'We are prepared for cases arise,' said the official.

The White House has placed heavy blame on the unvaccinated and have referred to persistent COVID problems as the 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'.

Kamala Harris did break with Biden in an interview with CBS News on Monday night and refused to blame those who haven't got a shot.

'I don't think this is a moment to talk about fault,' Harris said during an interview with CBS when pressed on the matter. 'It is no one's fault that this virus hit our shores or hit the world.  It is more about individual power and responsibility and the decisions that everyone has the choice to make.'

Fauci also told Good Morning America on Tuesday morning that families where everyone is vaccinated 'should have an enjoyable Christmas'.

'What you want to stay away from is indoor congregant sittings in which you do not know the vaccination status of the people around you. That would be quite risky,' he added.

Having the feds provide tests directly to Americans is a reversal from prior policies of letting Americans get them locally and pick up the tab through reimbursements, even as some European countries took the step of providing tests to the public.

The feds plan to purchase half a billion home rapid tests, which will be 'distributed for free to Americans that want them,' said the official. They will be offered through a web site, which isn't up yet, with the products not being available until January.

Omicron has raced ahead of other variants and is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of new infections last week, federal health officials said Monday

The Omicron variant (purple) is now the dominant Covid strain in the U.S., making up 73% of cases last week. It overtakes the Delta variant (orange) which had been dominant since July

The administration is announcing it is purchasing 500 million home tests that will be sent to Americans who request them. The first will be set up in New York where huge lines have been forming at testing centers

But the pace is uncertain. The 'initial delivery' is set for next month. The official said the tests would be available 'this winter.' The announcement comes with many local pharmacies sold out of popular home tests, even as more schools and events start relying on tests to screen out people who have been exposed to covid-19.

Biden is also taking other steps to prepare for a spike in cases  some of which recall the dark period of early 2020 when hospitals were overwhelmed.

World Health Organization tells people to scrap or scale back Xmas: WHO warns it's better to 'cancel now and celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later People were today told to scale back their Christmas by the the World Health Organization (WHO) as Omicron races around the world. The global health agency warned that 'an event cancelled is better than a life cancelled'. The US is in the midst of an Omicron spread but the White House and public health experts have said holidays can still go ahead for the vaccinated. WHO said it was not in favor of 'big lockdowns', warning that they were too damaging on people's mental and physical wellbeing. WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters today: 'All of us are sick of this pandemic, all of us want to spend time with friends and family, all of us want to get back to normal. 'The fastest way to do this is for all of us, leaders and individuals, to make the difficult decisions that must be made to protect ourselves and others. 'In some cases, that will mean cancelling or delaying events, just as we have had to cancel the reception we planned to have with you (journalists) today.' Advertisement

The administration is still working on such details as how many free tests Americans could get on the site. It goes in concert with another program that could be more cumbersome, allowing people to claim reimbursement for tests through insurance.

The administration is not calling for any new lockdowns, instead addressing existing steps like masking indoors, testing, and vaccines.

'There is no need to lock down our schools and our economy and youll hear that from the president tomorrow,' said the official.

The Delta strain now accounts for an average of just 26 per cent of new infections, after raging across the US all summer. As of Monday night, Johns Hopkins figures showed the US has recorded close to 51.1 million COVID infections, and nearly 808,000 deaths.

And across much of the country, Omicron's prevalence is even higher than the 73 per cent average, the CDC warned.

It is responsible for an estimated 90 per cent of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest.

Since the end of June, the Delta variant has been the main version causing U.S. infections.

As recently as the end of November, more than 99.5 per cent of coronaviruses were Delta, according to CDC data.

Scientists in Africa first sounded the alarm about Omicron less than a month ago and on November 26 the World Health Organization designated it as a 'variant of concern.' The mutant has since shown up in about 90 countries.

CDC's estimates are based on thousands of coronavirus specimens collected each week through university and commercial laboratories and state and local health departments.

Scientists analyze their genetic sequences to determine which versions of the COVID-19 viruses are most abundant.

In the week that ended December 11, Omicron's share of new infections in the U.S. increased to 2.9 per cent from 0.4 per cent the week before, the CDC previously reported.

But CDC on Tuesday said they are revising some of the earlier numbers, after analyzing more specimens.

The new numbers indicate that about 13 per cent of the infections the week of December 11 were Omicron, and not 3 per cent, CDC officials said.

Florida, with a 226 per cent increase in cases over the past two weeks, and Connecticut, with a 137 per cent increase, have also seen cases more than double over the past two weeks, with the latter also suffering a 69 per cent increase in hospitalizations in that time - despite 74 per cent of the population being fully vaccinated.

New York and New Jersey are the states believed to have the largest prevalence of the new variant, and both are experiencing an increase in cases as well.

The country as a whole is not suffering a COVID surge, though, with the virus even starting to recede in some areas.

States in both the Northeast and Great Plains - both regions that experienced a sharp increase in COVID cases in early fall - are now seeing those surges decline.

In Montana, for example, cases have dropped 53 per cent over the past two weeks, with hospitalizations down 27 per cent.

Neighboring Wyoming has experienced a 40 per cent drop in cases, with hospitalizations down 11 per cent.

North Dakota, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota also have case numbers trending in the right direction.

New York is once again America's COVID epicenter, with Omicron estimated to be causing 90 per cent of its new COVID diagnoses. Neighboring New Jersey has also seen COVID cases rocket, with Omicron estimated to be causing nine tenths of new infections in the Garden State too

The Omicron variant is responsible for an estimated 90% of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest

This chart shows how the blood samples of people who had received vaccines and and survived a previous Delta infection performed when exposed to Omicron in terms of producing neutralising antibodies, measured here as 'IC50', a measures of effectiveness. Any combination that failed to get higher than IC50 16 failed to produce enough antibodies to significantly fight off Omicron. These bars are averages based on all the samples of their respective combinations. It shows a previous Delta infection fails to provide any significant protection in terms of antibody production, but a combination of previous Covid infection and a vaccine provoked the best response

New Yorkers wait in line for a COVID test in Times Square on Monday night
The head of the Police Federation was dramatically suspended yesterday after being accused of sexual misconduct by a female officer.

Federation chairman John Apter, who represents 130,000 rank-and-file officers in England and Wales, is facing a probe by the police watchdog after being accused of sexual impropriety.

The high-profile officer had his warrant card taken away by colleagues from his home force  Hampshire Police.

Mr Apter, who had been due to stand down as chairman next April, was suspended as a result yesterday, according to The Sun.

Pictured: John Apter, the head of the Police Federation was dramatically suspended yesterday after being accused of sexual misconduct by a female officer and is now under investigation

The Independent Office for Police Conduct is investigating him over four alleged incidents of gross misconduct.

It is understood two relate to alleged sexual touching in a public place.

An IOPC spokesman said: We can confirm that, on Friday, December, 17 we received a referral relating to a police constable from Hampshire constabulary and we have started an independent investigation.

'On Monday, December 20, the officer was served with a notice of investigation for potential breaches of police professional standards relating to four separate alleged incidents.

His suspension will send shockwaves through the ranks he represents ranging from constables to chief inspectors.

Mr Apter is said to have formed a close working relationship with Home Secretary Priti Patel during his tenure as chairman.

Mr Apter is said to have formed a close working relationship with Home Secretary Priti Patel (pictured, left, together at the National Police Memorial Day Service) during his tenure

He was elected head of the highly influential staff association in May 2018 after becoming a Police Federation representative for Hampshire in 2001.

He has previously spoken out against misogyny. He said: Misogyny is not just a problem for women  its a problem for us all.

'Far too often there is silence when this takes place and through this inaction we are failing each other and wider society.

We need to consign to the history books some of our canteen culture where sexist nicknames and derogatory remarks are made.

'When banter crosses the line to become sexist, derogatory or homophobic, thats when it ceases to be banter.

Yesterday Mr Apter was served with a notice of alleged gross misconduct.

Hours earlier he was tweeting support for a newspaper campaign about officers mental health.

He was unavailable for comment last night.
Fears the NHS could be overwhelmed with Omicron cases, one of the key concerns that spooked ministers into talk of Christmas lockdowns, appear to be unfounded based on the current data, it was claimed last night.

London's hospitals have seen a spike in cases of patients with coronavirus, leading to fears hospitalisations are following the exponential increases seen with cases in recent weeks.

However, figures show up to 40 per cent of new Covid admissions in the past week only tested positive after arriving at hospital, possibly for a different illness or ailment.

Cambridge professor Sir David Spiegelhalter said it suggested Covid was rife in London and many people had it without knowing.

But he cautioned that even those diagnosed with inside hospital will still consume extra resources and put additional strain on the health service because they need to be isolated from others.

If the rise in Covid cases in hospitals was because people were becoming severely ill with Omicron symptoms, admissions could be expected to continue to increase swiftly.

But if all that is happening is a higher proportion of the public have the disease, and some of them end up in hospital in the normal manner, then although hospitalisations 'with Covid' will rise, overall admissions should remain manageable and numbers may not rise exponentially.

Sir David said experts will be watching the situation in London carefully in the coming days.

'The speed by which [hospitalisations in London] are going up may be slowing down,' Sir David said. 'It's not looking quite as bad as it was in terms of the speed of increase.'

Ministers, MPs and health experts have demanded better data on the impact of Omicron amid a row over the modelling used to push the case for new Covid curbs.

At an emergency Cabinet meeting lasting more than two hours, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Grant Shapps were among several ministers who are said to have called for more precise information on the likely impact of the variant.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Alister Jack and Nigel Adams were also said to have opposed any reintroduction of punitive curbs without clearer evidence of Omicron's severity.

And cases - which were predicted to be doubling every two or three days - have stalled at around the 90,000-a-day mark for the past four days.

Yesterday a leaked NHS document said hospitals and the ambulance service in the capital are 'likely to become overwhelmed due to rising Covid demand in the next 2-3 weeks'.

Sir David Spiegelhalter said hospitalisations in London do not appear to be rising as quickly as cases had been

Shoppers, some wearing face coverings, walk in Manchester on December 20. Ministers, MPs and health experts demanded better data on the impact of Omicron last night

Graph shows London's daily Covid cases by date reported. It reveals they appear to be staying level despite predictions that Omicron infections are still doubling every two to three days

CUT ISOLATION FROM 10 DAYS TO SEVEN: GP A senior GP last night backed calls to slash the quarantine period for coronavirus cases from ten to seven days. With Health Secretary Sajid Javid said to be looking hard at relaxing the rules, Dr Rosemary Leonard claimed it was now time to look at whether the lengthy quarantine period was 'really necessary'. She said she was very concerned about the 'huge staff shortages' now facing the health service because so many were being forced to isolate. Most of those catching the Omicron variant only have mild illness and recover quickly, she added. Ministers have asked their scientific advisers for advice on reducing the period, with a response expected within a week. Previous studies have suggested this can be done safely, if patients are required to have a negative test result before they are released. Dr Leonard said on BBC Breakfast: 'I'm very concerned. We've had two staff already go off  both double vaccinated and actually interestingly, neither of them were ill.' She said one of the cases was discovered by a lateral flow test, adding: 'She was very frustrated to have to go home for ten days. 'We need to look at whether this ten-day isolation period is really necessary with more and more people going off sick whether they could come back earlier when they've got a negative lateral flow test, because otherwise we're going to have huge staff shortages in the NHS and the emergency services.' She added: 'In the majority of vaccinated people, this new variant does not appear to cause a serious disease. 'It would seem we have very good, accurate lateral flow tests and when your lateral flow is negative, why on earth can't you get back to work?' Dr Leonard is a senior partner of a practice in South London and writes on medical matters for newspapers and magazines. Advertisement

It says services are facing 'significant operational pressure' as a result of the current surge in Covid cases fuelled by Omicron. But it is this warning that could prove unfounded.

Government figures show there were 1,819 patients with coronavirus in the capital's hospitals yesterday - significantly less than the 7,840 in January.

The number in hospitals has increased by 77 per cent over the past month but confirmed cases in the wider community across the capital have increased more than five-fold over the same period.

Sir David told Channel 4 News: 'People are going to be watching London very carefully over the next few days, which has had a huge surge in Omicron, doubling every couple of days.

'But their admissions in London the speed by which they are going up may be slowing down. It's not looking quite as bad as it was in terms of the speed of increase.'

He added: 'Around half the extra admissions in London with Covid were in fact diagnosed with Covid after they had been in hospital, in other words they had Covid anyway, which vast numbers of people in London now do, and then they found out they had Covid once they'd gone to hospital.'

Separate figures published on the NHS England website show there were 1,248 patients in hospital with coronavirus in London on December 14, the latest date available, but only 963 of them were there because of the virus.

The remainder - almost a quarter - were being treated for something else and their positive test was merely incidental.

Sir David cautioned that there was still a lot of uncertainty in the models due to unknowns with the Omicron variant, meaning it was 'very difficult to say' where hospitalisations would ultimately end up.

'The models, they tend often to be quite pessimistic, but even so they can project the worst it will get will be considerably less than it was last winter  but it could be considerably more,' he said. 'I know that sounds a rather vacuous statement but there is huge uncertainty.'

A growing number of experts have pushed back at the 'pessimistic' modelling and 'implausible' predictions of thousands of deaths and soaring hospital admissions.

Their opposition followed a growing row over forecasts presented to the Cabinet by the Government's Sage scientific advisers on Saturday, which claimed that Covid deaths could reach 6,000 a day without more restrictions soon.

Details of the modelling were leaked to the BBC.

Several experts and MPs publicly questioned the assumptions behind it, suggesting that Sage scientists needed to show their working before it could be used to justify new restrictions.

They pointed out that  amid growing evidence that Omicron causes 'milder' illness  there was still huge uncertainty over what proportion of cases end up in hospital and how effective vaccines are at preventing infection, serious illness and death.

Professor Carl Heneghan, director of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, condemned the apparent obsession with 'worst case scenarios' and said the country was in a 'very different place' to last year because of vaccines.

Mark Harper, chairman of the Tory backbench Covid Recovery Group, said: 'These are big decisions affecting everyone's lives, people's livelihoods and mental wellbeing across the country.

We all deserve to see the data ministers see. Show us your workings. We can do so much better than this.'

At yesterday's virtual Cabinet meeting, several ministers were said to have made clear they were unwilling to bring in restrictions until they had better data.

The number of confirmed cases of Omicron in England increased by 69 per cent on the previous day's total - up 9,427 to 23,168, figures from the UKHSA showed today

However, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove was one of those arguing in favour of tough action. He was backed by Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

Ministers are waiting for updated modelling from Imperial College London, expected tomorrow, before any further decisions.

Last night, former Cabinet minister Esther McVey praised Boris Johnson for holding off from toughening restrictions.

She tweeted she was pleased the Cabinet and PM 'are now listening to their backbench MPs and for once pushed back on the scaremongering by the lockdown fanatics'.

Labour, meanwhile, were in a muddle, unable to say which further curbs they would support.

Asked on Good Morning Britain what restrictions Labour would specifically introduce, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves replied: 'That's not the job of the Opposition. We don't have the information.'

She then said the party would follow Sage advice, adding: 'At the moment Sage aren't calling for any specific measures but they are saying that more action is needed.'

Referring to a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee convened over the weekend at which decisions were taken on increasing funding to tackle Omicron, Miss Reeves said: 'If I was in government, I would have been at those Covid meetings yesterday to get all of that evidence and make a decision.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak (pictured) didn't show up to a Cobra emergency committee convened over the weekend

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves (pictured) told Good Morning Britain that if the Labour party was in charge, it would follow Sage advice despite concerns over the data's validity

'The Prime Minister and the Chancellor didn't even turn up. They are not interested in hearing the advice.

'If we were in government, we would be at those meetings and put in place the measures.'

Figures from South Africa, where Omicron was first identified, suggest it is far less deadly than the previous dominant variant, Delta.

Dr Pieter Streicher, from the University of Johannesburg, said the case fatality rate  the number who test positive and die  has fallen from 3 per cent to 0.16 per cent.

Assuming only one in ten infections are detected would mean 1.6 people in every 10,000 infected die - down from 30.

He added that cases are coming down 'rapidly' in Gauteng, the province which was the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak, with hospital and intensive care bed numbers peaking.

Professor Heneghan warned that overly pessimistic modelling meant Britain was in danger of imposing yearly lockdowns.

He said the rollout of vaccines, booster jabs and antivirals had cut the risk of hospitalisation and death, which is 'as good as it gets', and people should be trusted to make their own decisions about the risks they want to take.

Professor Graham Medley, who chairs the modelling group that feeds into Sage, suggested that the committee does not consider optimistic scenarios because 'that doesn't get decisions made'.

Professor Keith Willison, a chemical biologist at Imperial, criticised the models as 'widely pessimistic', adding they were being used to 'frighten the UK population into submission and further lockdown'.

Why London holds the key Ministers have been spooked by a rise in Covid patients in London hospitals but many are there with the virus, rather than because of it. Hospitals and the ambulance service in the capital are 'likely to become overwhelmed due to rising Covid demand in the next two to three weeks', a leaked NHS document warned last night. It says services are facing 'significant operational pressure' as a result of the surge in Covid cases fuelled by Omicron. Government figures show there were 1,819 patients with coronavirus in the capital's hospitals yesterday  significantly less than the 7,840 in January. The number in hospitals has increased by 77 per cent in the past month but confirmed cases in the wider community in London have risen more than five-fold in the same period. Sir David Spiegelhalter, a professor at Cambridge University, told Channel 4 News: 'Around half the extra admissions in London, with Covid, were in fact diagnosed with Covid after they had been in hospital.' Advertisement

He added that cases are coming down 'rapidly' in Gauteng, the province which was the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak, with hospital and intensive care bed numbers peaking.

Professor Heneghan warned that overly pessimistic modelling meant Britain was in danger of imposing yearly lockdowns.

He said the rollout of vaccines, booster jabs and antivirals had cut the risk of hospitalisation and death, which is 'as good as it gets', and people should be trusted to make their own decisions about the risks they want to take.

Professor Graham Medley, who chairs the modelling group that feeds into Sage, suggested that the committee does not consider optimistic scenarios because 'that doesn't get decisions made'.

Professor Keith Willison, a chemical biologist at Imperial, criticised the models as 'widely pessimistic', adding they were being used to 'frighten the UK population into submission and further lockdown'.

Britain is banking on jabs so we can see in the New Year: Analysis by ELEANOR HAYWARD

By Eleanor Hayward for the Daily Mail

Resisting pressure for another round of draconian restrictions, Boris Johnson last night insisted he was monitoring data on Omicron 'hour by hour'.

Officials in Downing Street will spend the four remaining days until Christmas poring over hospital admission figures, along with studies from around the world.

This data will determine if we will be allowed to celebrate New Year's Eve with friends and family.

People queue at Covid vaccination centre in Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford, London this Monday. Ministers remain hopeful Omicron may be less severe than previous variants

While Government scientists have argued for further curbs to prevent the NHS toppling under a wave of Omicron patients, the Prime Minister and his team remain unconvinced.

They insist there is not sufficient evidence to justify plunging Britain into a fourth lockdown, with all the catastrophic economic and social damage this would entail.

With the situation 'very, very finely balanced', the Government is waiting for more evidence on three key issues.

SEVERITY

There is no doubt Omicron is more infectious. The mutant strain arrived in Britain less than a month ago, but has already outcompeted Delta to become dominant.

Infections are higher than ever, with 102,297 positive tests recorded last Wednesday, the first time daily cases have topped 100,000.

At any other point in the pandemic, this ferocious growth would almost certainly have been followed by new restrictions.

But ministers remain hopeful Omicron may be less severe than previous variants  and there is some evidence that this will prove to be the case.

Scientists in South Africa say Omicron patients are 29 per cent less likely to need hospital treatment than with previous variants.

A study of 211,000 Covid patients also found the proportion requiring intensive care was half that of previous waves, and most recover at home within three days.

Meanwhile, two studies have provided plausible biological reasons for why Omicron is less likely to cause severe disease and lung damage.

A team of Cambridge University researchers, led by Professor Ravi Gupta, found signs Omicron is less effective than other variants at infecting cells in the deep part of the lung.

This tallies with findings from the University of Hong Kong which suggested the variant replicates at a tenth of Delta's speed in the lungs, reducing the severity of illness.

HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS

Ministers have stressed they will only consider another lockdown if the NHS faces a wave of Covid hospitalisations that would cause other care to collapse.

But the Prime Minister yesterday said there is considerable 'uncertainty' over the key question of 'how many people does Omicron put into hospital'.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies told ministers last week that daily hospital admissions would reach 3,000 in January without further restrictions. Sage said early action is needed to avert a crisis.

But their modelling assumes Omicron is no less severe than previous variants.

If  as hoped  vaccines provide a good level of protection, a lockdown may prove unnecessary.

In South Africa admissions are at just 57 per cent of the previous peak despite the number of cases being similar. And latest NHS data shows hospitalisations remain stable.

While weekly cases have surged 61 per cent, admissions are up just six per cent.

Currently an average of 864 Covid patients are being admitted a day, down from 4,200 at the January peak, and more than 2,000 this time last year.

And on January 18, a record 39,254 Covid patients were in hospital beds across the UK  five times yesterday's figure of 7,482.

VACCINES AND BOOSTERS

Government scientists and politicians can agree on one thing: Without vaccines the UK would be in a 'massive, massive mess'.

It is clear existing vaccines, in particular boosters, protect against Omicron. But there is enormous uncertainty about whether the ramped-up vaccine rollout will be sufficient to fight off the variant.

Data from the UK Health Security Agency shows two doses are not enough to prevent infection by Omicron. But a booster of Pfizer or Moderna tops up protection to around 75 per cent compared with the unvaccinated.

A person receives a Covid vaccine in London this Sunday. With 50 per cent of Britain's over-12s now boosted, vaccines provide the strongest argument against new restrictions

Three doses are also likely to offer higher protection against severe disease, keeping hospitalisation and death rates low.

With 50 per cent of Britain's over-12s now boosted, and nearly one million jabs being delivered each day, vaccines provide the strongest argument against new restrictions.

Eight in ten UK adults have now been double-jabbed. Although this may no longer be enough to prevent infection, it is still likely to offer some protection against severe disease.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: If dodgy data is being used to manipulate us into a fresh Covid lockdown, it's a scandal that way eclipses cheese and wine

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, but don't go making any plans for New Year just yet. That appeared to be the message coming out of Downing Street tonight.

The good news is we've been granted a stay of execution. The bad news is that this time next week we could be back in lockdown.

After today's emergency Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister postponed a decision on whether to impose further Covid restrictions.

With only three days to go, it is highly unlikely that Christmas will be cancelled. But Boris Johnson said after the Cabinet meeting that nothing was being ruled out.

He insisted ministers still don't have enough data to determine what happens next. Pity he didn't reach that same conclusion before he pressed the panic button prematurely over a week ago and brought in Plan B, unleashing a fresh wave of uncertainty and inflicting serious collateral damage on the already-struggling hospitality industry.

Still, we should perhaps be grateful for small mercies. There was a clear and present danger that Christmas could have been kiboshed for the second year running. There were apparently three alternative plans on the table yesterday, up to and including a return to full lockdown.

After today's Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister postponed a decision on whether to impose further Covid restrictions. With only three days to go, it is highly unlikely that Christmas will be cancelled. But Boris Johnson said after the Cabinet meeting that nothing was being ruled out

For our reprieve, however temporary, we can thank those 100 Tory MPs who broke ranks and voted against the Government last week and members of the Cabinet vehemently opposed to any further curbs of civil liberties.

After losing his Brexit blood brother Lord Frost, Boris couldn't afford any more ministerial resignations. Trapped between the Zero Covid fanatics and his backbenchers, he chose to delay the day of reckoning.

How long that position will hold remains to be seen. By all accounts, Whitehall officials have already drawn up plans for a two-week long 'circuit breaker' starting as early as next Tuesday, December 28.

Even that doesn't go far enough for some of the more extreme members of SAGE, the scientific advisory committee, who want lockdown to last the whole of January, if not for ever.

We're not out of the woods yet. What the nation could have done with was firm leadership. Instead we got vacillation.

As I wrote recently, Boris is at his best when he gambles and leads from the front  just as he did when winning two London mayoral races, the Brexit referendum and a thumping General Election victory.

Right now, he's a shadow of his former self, buffeted by events. By nature, he's always been a risk-taker, but since contracting Covid himself he's become increasingly risk-averse.

Yesterday, he hid behind an alleged lack of data. But he's got data coming out of his ears. If he studied it carefully, he would see that the number of hospitalisations and deaths from/with Covid is actually falling.

True, the Omicron variant is especially infectious, but in all but a handful of cases it isn't fatal. Or even seriously debilitating. Most people don't even know they've got it until they have to take a lateral flow test. Others report mild flu-like symptoms or say it's a bit like having a bad hangover.

People still have Covid Stockholm Syndrome who have been spooked into staying at home and wearing masks indoor. Pictured: empty desks inside Lloyds of London building on Monday

Since when did anyone ever think of cancelling Christmas and New Year celebrations on the grounds that some people might get a bad hangover? Yet SAGE and others continue to pump out ludicrous, blood-curdling predictions, which invariably prove wildly inaccurate.

Up until now, we have been told that Boris has always 'followed the science' and tailored his Covid policies accordingly.

But that version of events has been contradicted by a fascinating exchange on social media between Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator magazine, and the chairman of the Sage committee which predicted Omicron would kill 6,000 people a day in Britain.

Nelson asked Professor Graham Medley why the committee had ignored evidence from South Africa that Omicron was much less deadly than the earlier Delta variant? Medley admitted SAGE was encouraged by 'decision-makers' to produce worst-case scenarios. 'We generally model what we are asked to model,' he said.

That suggests ministers are telling The Science to come up with alarmist 'evidence' to support decisions which have already been taken, not the other way round.

Is it any wonder that some of us refuse to believe a single word the 'experts' say about Covid any more?

These are the questions the BBC and the rest of the broadcast media should be asking, instead of screaming for ever tougher measures and obsessing over cheese and wine 'gatherings'.

Yes, the notion of one rule for them and another for the rest of us grates. But the Guardianista hysteria over whether Boris and his civil servants shared a platter of Camembert and a bottle of Soixante Neuf du Pape after a hard day in Downing Street is merely a distraction from the main event.

If dodgy data is being used deliberately to manipulate us into another lockdown, and it turns out there is no danger of the NHS being overwhelmed this winter, it's a scandal which needs investigating.

If what Nelson has uncovered is true, there's absolutely no justification for ministers even considering further restrictions.

So why on earth are we still facing the prospect of a crippling 'circuit breaker' starting after Boxing Day?

Uncertainty has already cost bars, pubs and restaurants billions of pounds in lost revenue. Any kind of shutdown over New Year would be catastrophic. Pictured: empty tables outside in Soho

The uncertainty has already cost bars, pubs and restaurants billions of pounds in lost revenue. Any kind of shutdown over New Year would be catastrophic.

Yes, there are still plenty of people with Covid Stockholm Syndrome who have been spooked into staying at home and wearing masks indoors.

But I detect that the patience of an increasing number is beginning to wear thin. Millions of us have already decided enough is enough. Thus far and no further.

We don't trust the politicians to dictate where we can go or who we can meet any more. Not now we have been double, triple, flu and pneumonia jabbed.

Boris may have told everyone who can to work from home and wear a mask whenever they leave the house.

But that hasn't stopped millions of us from heading into town to meet friends and do a bit of last minute Christmas shopping.

I can only speak for my patch of North London, but the local shops seem to be doing brisk business and, unless I'm imagining it, plenty of people are ignoring the exhortation to wear masks.

Colleagues who ventured into London's West End at the weekend report that the place was rocking and rolling. It's the same story in towns and cities across the country.

Just study the photos of shoppers in Manchester and Birmingham, the revellers in Newcastle and Leeds.

While Boris frets over whether to impose a fresh lockdown, apparently on the basis of dodgy science, half the country has already decided that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

So ignore the disciples of doom. The NHS can look after itself for a change. It's Christmas.

Eat, drink and be merry, while you still can.

Because if The Science is right, tomorrow . . . WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!
Surging Omicron cases have sent a shudder through many Australian families as anxiety grows it will ruin their Christmas plans and summer holidays.

The 'fourth wave' of Covid arrived right before the festive season - with cases doubling every 48 hours in Queensland and surging above 3,000 in NSW - sparking fears revellers will come into contact with infected people and miss out on the holiday season.

Health experts have offered advice on the best ways to be Covid-safe over Christmas and New Year to reduce the risk of infection and transmission as the new variant takes hold in the community.

Health experts advise that holding Christmas functions outdoors rather than indoors can help reduce the risk of transmission of Covid

Outdoors instead of indoors

'The main precaution we should be taking is to be outdoors more than indoors. Outdoors there's much less transmission than indoors,' Professor Peter Collignon from ANU's Medical School said yesterday.

'Have a barbecue during the day instead of a dinner at night.

Prof Collignon said a person's risk of infection indoors was in proportion to the number of people at the event.

'As long as you keep your distances, being outside could give you more protection than, say, doing a lot of rapid antigen tests.'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison backed up the health advice about outdoor gatherings at a press conference on Tuesday.

'I didn't say don't go to the pub [but] go and sit in the outdoor areas.

If you're getting together with friends, be outside. That's immediately going to be a more practical way to avoid the variant and the virus.

'If you're inside, you know, a bit of distancing. You don't need to crush into a mosh pit. That's probably not a good idea if you're going to see your grandmother on the weekend.'

The Federal health department also recommends people bring their own food and drinks to Christmas gatherings.

'Avoid touching commonly used surfaces. Do not use shared items such as serving utensils. Bring your own disposable cutlery and throw it out after the gathering,' it advises.

Australians have rushed to secure supplies of rapid antigen testing kits as a quick, accessible way to determine their Covid status before attending Christmas functions

Rapid antigen tests

Australians have rushed to secure the DIY testing kits, stripping shelves in pharmacies and supermarkets and inflating the price of the kits as they seek a fast, accessible way to determine their Covid status before Christmas functions.

Long queues at PCR testing clinics and a delay of two or more days to get the results back is also driving the rush on the 'RAT' tests.

The at-home tests are less accurate than the lab tests, particularly for asymptomatic people, and a PCR test is still required if a person tests positive using a RAT.

But health experts such as University of NSW epidemiologist Professor Mary-Louise McLaws say the rapid tests are better than nothing, and called on the Federal government to make the tests free to reduce the risk of people spreading the virus while travelling during the holidays.

Professor McLaws said that for people deemed a casual contact of a Covid case, a PCR test could be followed by the person self-administering rapid antigen tests to avoid having to quarantine for seven or 14 days.

The accuracy of rapid antigen tests when used in conjunction with the PCR test increased the accuracy of the DIY tests to 99.99 per cent.

'That's what you'd be doing over Christmas to allow people to have a fairly decent time if they're double vaccinated and they haven't been found to be very close contacts at all, but just somewhere in the vicinity (of a known case),' she told News Limited.

Smaller, more intimate Christmas gatherings are advised this festive season, with the health department advising people try and maintain 1.5metres distance between each other and mask up, particularly if elderly or immunocompromised people are in attendance

Socially distance, mask up and avoid large gatherings

While venues have reopened and larger gatherings are once again permitted, the tranmissibility of Omicron has renewed calls for people to keep their distance from others, avoid crowds indoors or avoid large gatherings altogether.

Unfortunately the call comes at a time of year when people have gathered for office Christmas parties, harbour cruises, end-of-year graduations and other typical festive season events.

Yesterday, Queensland's Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard nominated a Griffith University graduation ceremony for nursing and paramedic students at Brisbane's Convention and Exhibition Centre, attended by more than 2600 people last week, as a 'cluster of concern'.

It's feared the event will prove to be a superspreader event in the coming days and weeks.

The Newcastle Omicron cluster, with more than 650 identified cases, also began indoors at the Argyle House nightclub, reinforcing that attending crowded indoor venues increases your risk of infection.

Smaller, more intimate Christmas Day functions are advised, particularly if vulnerable elderly people are attending. Ensuring your indoor function is well ventilated is another precaution Christmas entertainers should take.

'If your gatherings can be outside, that's a really great idea if it's possible. Or, if they can't, let's have good ventilation,' Burnet Institute Deputy Director Margaret Hellard told the ABC.

Avoiding crowded gatherings in the lead-up to Christmas is one way to reduce the risk of having to into quarantine after coming into contact with a positive Covid case

The Federal health department also recommends guests at a social gathering stay 1.5 metres away from each other.

While Queensland and Tasmania have reintroduced mask mandates in retail, rideshare and other public settings in the wake of Omicron's arrivals, larger states such as NSW have so far resisted the call to do so.

But in indoor settings with large groups of people where ventilation is limited, Covid experts say wearing a mask can dramatically reduce the risk of infection.

Melbourne University epidemiologist Tony Blakely estimates two people wearing masks reduce their chances of infection from Covid by more than 75 per cent.

The traditional Christmas Day travel to visit multiple family members is a potential driver of infections, according to respected epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett

Restrict movement between families

One of the biggest causes of transmission in the first wave of the pandemic was the movement of extended family members between the houses of different relatives.

While Christmas is typically a time when people visit more than one household on Christmas Day, experts suggest that honouring this tradition puts them at risk of being infected or infecting others this year.

Deakin University's Professor Catherine Bennett identified 'mixing of households' as 'a potential driver of infections'.

Her warning was backed up by Dan Suan, an immunologist from Sydney's Garvan Institute, who warned in a Facebook post that Christmas Day loomed as a 'simultaneous, superspreader event all across Sydney in thousands of houses'.

Skipping Christmas Day festivities if you have any of the well known Covid symptoms is one sure precautionary way of keeping loved ones safe

Stay home if unwell

A repeating story of the pandemic is outbreaks caused by people who refused to isolate while waiting for a negative test result, or even after receiving a positive test for Covid.

The current Newcastle outbreak is believed to have started this way, while a South Australian teenager who spent the night at a nightclub in Adelaide's city centre despite receiving a notification he had tested positive to Covid-19 forced more than 150 club-goers into isolation last weekend.

Skipping the Christmas Day festivities if you have any of the well known Covid symptoms - headache, runny nose, sore throat, lack of taste and smell - is one sure precautionary way of keeping loved ones safe.

All of these suggestions are even more important if elderly, immunocompromised or other people with medical conditions that render them vulnerable to the virus are attending.

'Avoid handshakes, hugs and kisses with people you don't live with,' the health department also advises.

Of course, it's all easier said then done for family members who have may not have seen each other in many months.
Britain's pensioners risk becoming a generation of gambling addicts after more than half a million turned to online betting during the pandemic.

Research shows 625,000 over-65s took up gambling on the net during lockdown  a greater jump than in any other age group.

Some 13.5 per cent of Britons who bet online are now over 65  compared to 8.7 per cent in September 2019, a Royal College of Psychiatrists report reveals.

This surge in silver surfers taking up the potentially damaging habit coincided with lockdown, when high street betting shops were closed and isolated elderly residents spent more time online.

Research shows 625,000 over-65s took up gambling on the net during lockdown  a greater jump than in any other age group (stock image)

The report, based on data from the Gambling Commission, found betting on the net has risen among all age groups in the two years since the pandemic began.

It said: The shift to online gambling is partly due to the closure of physical betting shops during the pandemic as well as limited opportunities to undertake other activities because of lockdowns.

Online gambling brings potential risks due to its 24/7 availability, particularly when people are at home more and may be experiencing financial uncertainty.

Some 12.1millon adults in England gambled online in 2020 - up 12 per cent from before the pandemic, latest data shows.

Analysis by the RCP found that the sharpest rise has been in the over-65s, followed by middle-aged adults, as many gamble online instead of in-person.

Over the past two years some 341,445 people in the 45- to 54-year-old age range have taken up online betting, while the proportion placing bets in-person fell from 23 to 17.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, the number of 16- to 34-year-olds who gambled online fell by around 307,000 over the same period.

Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones of the RCP said: The pandemic has shaken our lives in so many ways and these data show that many more older people are gambling online than were before the start of the pandemic.

Not everyone who gambles will develop a gambling disorder, but some will. Gambling disorder is an illness and, if left untreated, can lead to significant depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones of the RCP said: The pandemic has shaken our lives in so many ways and these data show that many more older people are gambling online than were before the start of the pandemic

Burcu Borysik, Head of Policy at Royal Society for Public Health said: These latest figures from the Royal College of Psychiatrists represent a deeply concerning increase in online gambling activity.

'Online gambling is a hidden public health crisis, and it is especially worrying to see this increase is greatest in the over-65 age group, who are particularly likely to be socially isolated, and experience greater levels of gambling harm.

Sadly this news comes as no surprise. We already know that the pandemic has led to increased at-home consumption of other potentially harmful products such as alcohol, a known risk-factor for harmful gambling activity.

'Mental health has also been severely impacted, which likewise dramatically increases the likelihood of harmful gambling activity.

To ensure that this worrying increase does not continue beyond the pandemic, the government must ensure legislation on online gambling is fit for purpose. In particular, policies that address ease of access to online gambling, including: affordability checks, stake limits on online gambling products, and greater data sharing to identify at-risk gamblers should be implemented. The upcoming Gambling Act Review represents a vital opportunity to address this.

Since 2019 the NHS has included gambling disorder in its long-term plan and a number of clinics are available across the country to deliver treatment to anyone who needs it, including family members.
Having a few too many drinks over the festive season can be a recipe for disaster in a myriad of ways but experts are warning it can also drastically increase the risk of skin cancer.

Alcohol consumption often leads to people spending too much time in the sun, with little regard for the need for sunscreen.

But researchers now say it can also massively increase a person's melanoma risk.

While people are enjoying a few extra drinks over the holidays experts are warning it can drastically increase the risk of skin cancer

A German study that investigated the dual impact of alcohol and sun exposure found liquor increased not just the risk of sunburn but also the severity

A German study that investigated the dual impact of alcohol and sun exposure found liquor increased not just the risk of sunburn but also the severity.

'Participants in the study each consumed three drinks before being exposed to UV light with the tests showing their skin burned faster,' dermatologist Niyati Sharma said.

Another study found a 20 per cent increase in the risk of melanoma for those who drank liquor compared with those who don't drink alcohol regularly.

Another study found a 20 per cent increase in the risk of melanoma for those who drank liquor compared with those who don't drink alcohol regularly

For those who drink the equivalent of five beers a day, the increase in risk climbs to 55 per cent.

Drinkers had lower levels of carotenoids - an antioxidant that protects against UV exposure - which Dr Sharma says is likely responsible for their increased vulnerability to the effects of the sun.

Studies have also found the risk of basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma - the two most common types of skin cancer - is also heightened by alcohol consumption.

Studies have also found the risk of basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma - the two most common types of skin cancer - is also heightened by alcohol consumption

Dr Sharma says it is a timely prompt for Australians to get their skin checked.

The country has one of the highest melanoma rates in the world, with around 16,000 Australians diagnosed annually and an estimated 1300 dying from the disease each year.

'The onset of summer is a welcome reminder to us all of the dangers of melanoma and the need to be vigilant with sun protection and the monitoring of any areas of concern.'

'Skin checks are vital in early detection of melanoma or other types of skin cancer.'
The White House said Monday evening that President Joe Biden spent 30 minutes with an aide on Friday, who has since tested positive for COVID-19.

'On Monday morning, a mid-level staff member, who does not regularly have contact with the President, received a positive result for a COVID-19 test,' press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. 'Three days earlier, on Friday, that staff member had spent approximately 30 minutes in proximity to the President on Air Force One, on the way from Orange, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.'

Since the exposure, the president tested negative using an antigen test Sunday and received a negative result with a PCR test Monday morning.

President Joe Biden spent around 30 minutes with the staffer on board Air Force One after delivering the commencement address at South Carolina State University. He was traveling to Philadelphia to spend the weekend in Wilmington, Delaware

White House press secretary Jen Psaki sent out a statement Monday night about the president's exposure to a now COVID-positive staffer after being asked about it in the briefing room Monday afternoon

He'll be tested for the virus again on Wednesday.

The aide was vaccinated and boosted and received a negative COVID test Friday before boarding Air Force One.

'As CDC guidance does not require fully vaccinated people to quarantine after an exposure, the President will continue with his daily schedule,' Psaki said.

The admission was previewed at Monday's press briefing when a New York Times reporter asked the press secretary if Biden was in quarantine.

'Has there been an outbreak of COVID at the White House, the NSC, the State Department and at the Treasury? And has the president been in close contact with a COVID-positive person and thus in need of quarantine?' journalist Michael Shear asked.

Psaki answered, 'The president has a full schedule today and is not in need of quarantine.'

'We will provide information to all of you as outlined with our commitment from just a few months ago about being transparent about close contacts,' Psaki said. 'I don't have any updates to you at this time,' she added.

She said breakthrough cases of COVID should be expected 'across the country.'

'And certainly within the federal government,' she said.

Psaki said 99 per cent of the White House staff was vaccinated and that aides have been advised to get booster shots.

'We have a very thorough process here that people abide by, that are going to have close contact with the president and even beyond that,' she said. 'And those protocols go above and beyond CDC guidelines.'

The 79-year-old Biden received his booster shot of Pfizer in September.

The White House has tried to prevent Biden from following in his predecessor's footsteps and contracting COVID-19.

Former President Donald Trump had COVID and was hospitalized for it in October 2020, just weeks before the presidential election.

Earlier this month, Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, revealed in his book that Trump received a positive test days before he publicly acknowledged he had the disease.

Since another COVID test Trump took that day was negative, the then-president continued with this schedule, including participating in the first presidential debate with Biden in Cleveland and traveling to several campaign rallies.

Meadows pushed back on the media buzz over the admission by saying he believed Trump's test was a 'false positive.'
A world-first study led by Australian scientists and clinicians is giving children with high-risk cancer a better chance of survival.

Researchers have shown how more personalised and better-targeted drug treatments can help improve therapy options and increase survival rates through genomic testing of each patient's cancer.

The landmark study published in the EMBO Molecular Medicine journal outlines the clinical results of 56 patients who participated in the Zero Childhood Cancer Program designed by clinicians at the Children's Cancer Institute and Sydney Children's Hospital.

Scientists analyse each child's cancer at a genomic level to determine what's driving the growth of the cancer and how it may be best targeted before providing treatment recommendations.

Ka'ili Giteau-Tai (pictured left with mum Kristy) is a success story of a world-first study giving children with high-risk cancer a fighting chance

The program has been so successful that it will be expanded and become accessible to all young cancer patients across Australia.

Ka'ili Giteau-Tai, the niece of former Australian Wallabies rugby union star Matt Giteau is among the study's success stories.

Ka'ili, then aged four, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in mid-2019 after a tumour the size of a rockmelon was found in her kidney.

She initially responded well to chemotherapy and had the shrunken tumour removed before suffering a relapse less than 12 months later.

Given a 30 chance per cent of survival, Ka'ili joined the Zero program earlier this year, where researchers used genetic analysis and preclinical testing to identify a drug to specifically target her cancer.

Ka'ili Giteau-Tai (pictured in 2019 before her cancer diagnosis) was a a cheeky, happy and active four-year-old before a tumour the size of a rockmelon was found in her kidney

Nine months on, six-year-old Ka'ili is in remission and is doing well in kindergarten.

'I'm so thankful for the world-class treatment Ka'ili received,' mum Kristy Giteau said.

'Without Zero, I dread to think what options we would have been left with. All the testing done on Ka'ili's cancer led to finding a treatment that worked for her, and I couldn't be more grateful.'

'I believe everything happens for a reason, and we were given the task of beating cancer so we could help others.'

She added Ka'ili's journey has taught the family many things and changed their perspective on life.

'What used to be life prior to treatment will never be the same for us! Ka-Ili has taught me the importance of health and has been the epitome of resilience,' Ms Giteau said.

Ka'ili joined the Zero Childhood Cancer Program in March after suffering a relapse (pictured in hospital). She is now back in remission and is doing well

The study found new treatments for 70 per cent of its patients, while 53 per cent changed therapy based on their genetic analysis.

'We were surprised to find that preclinical testing, in many instances, proved even more accurate than molecular analysis in predicting patient response to the recommended therapy,' program clinical lead and co-senior author on the paper Professor Glenn Marshall said.

'Adding preclinical testing can therefore not only provide independent proof of drug efficacy suggested by molecular analyses, but also help avoid the use of ineffective treatments.

While not every child treated using a personalised medicine approach experiences a positive outcome, it's hoped future research will lead to further improvements.

'Our research strongly suggests that adding preclinical testing to the diagnostic platform has the potential to improve clinical outcomes for children with high-risk cancer,' clinical trial leader Associate Professor David Ziegler added.

'We believe this is a major advance in the field, and one that will provide fresh hope to children with cancer and their families.'

The Zero Childhood Cancer Program has been so successful that it will be expanded across Australia. Pictured is the program's clinical leader Professor Glenn Marshall

Of the 1500 young adults and children currently battling cancer in Australia, an estimated 200 will suffer a relapse.

'At the moment, we don't have very good tools to predict that or to treat it, so the majority of those people will die. And that's unacceptable to us,' Professor Marshall told The Australian.

'We've got to be very careful that we're not promising too much.

'For the bigger picture, we want to start curing people. But I think  this is a major step in the right direction and it will provide hope.'
Thousands of Sydneysiders are choosing to wear face masks despite mandates being dropped  as the government urges Aussies to take 'personal responsibility' for their health as we move to the next stage of the pandemic.

Since December 15, NSW residents have no longer been required to wear masks or check into venues via QR codes for most indoor settings as the state adjusts to its new 'Covid normal'.

As eased restrictions came into effect last Wednesday, Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant advised people to continue mask-wearing indoors amid fears case numbers could balloon to 25,000-a-day by January.

Many people across NSW's capital city have heeded Dr Chant's advice, donning face coverings in public in a bid to avoid spending Christmas in lockdown as the super-mutant Omicron sweeps across the state.

Thousands of Sydneysiders have opted to wear face masks in public settings to protect their health prior to the festive season as debate rages on over whether mandates should be introduced. Pictured: Shoppers in Sydney's Pitt St Mall ahead on Christmas

But despite Australians proactively seeking to protect their health, leading epidemiologists have called for masks to be introduced to deter the escalating outbreak.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has refused to bow down to pressure, urging Aussies to take responsibility for their wellbeing by accessing vaccines and booster shots.

'Whats key to us is personal responsibility. Vaccination has been key, booster shots are crucial to keep people safe, and as we move through the next phase, case numbers will increase,' he said on Sunday.

'That is the new normal.'

Scott Morrison took a similar position on Tuesday - which saw NSW and Victoria collectively record more than 4000 new cases - saying he would urge states to refrain from reimposing tough restrictions at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The prime minister, who called high-levels talks to discuss the nation's Omicron response, said he would tell state leaders Australia needs to learn to live with the virus.

'The states have the total authority when it comes to public health orders,' Mr Morrison said.

'The Commonwealth does not have the power to direct those state and territory governments.

Scott Morrison has voiced his opposition to reintroducing mandates, saying on Tuesday: 'We have to move from a culture of mandates to a culture of responsibility'

'What I will be saying to them, and I know a number of premiers agree with this, is we have got to move to the next phase of how we live with this virus.

'The time for that heavy hand is behind us. We just need to live with this virus sensibly and practically.'

The prime minister's comments flew in the face of advice state leaders were given yesterday by the Commonwealth's top doctor.

On Monday, Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly wrote to the premiers urging them to implement 'minimal to moderate restrictions' to protect their hospitals from being overwhelmed.

Masks remain compulsory for shopping in Victoria and Queensland but optional in NSW where Mr Perrottet wants to treat his citizens 'like adults'.

Despite Professor Kelly's support for mandates, Mr Morrison told a press conference in Brisbane on Tuesday morning that he does not back mandates and instead only wants state governments to issue updated advice to wear masks.

'We are putting in place measures that Australians can live with. What that means is we have to move from a culture of mandates to a culture of responsibility. That's how we live with this virus into the future,' he said.

NSW scrapped QR codes for most venues from December 15 as Covid vaccination rates soared past 90 per cent

'We have got to get past the heavy hand of government and we have got to treat Australians like adults and we all have our own responsibility in our communities and for our own health.'

The NSW government lifted a raft of rules last week amid high vaccination rates, with 93.4 per cent of residents over 16 now fully jabbed and 94.9 per cent having received one dose,

Under the eased restrictions, face coverings are now only mandatory in hospitals, airports, public transport, or for indoors front-of-house hospitality staff who arent fully vaccinated.

Similarly, check-ins are only required at high-risk venues including pubs, nightclubs, hospitals, gyms, hairdressers and beauty salons, funerals and indoor music festivals with more than 1,000 people.

As end-of-year celebrations kick off around the country, NSW on Tuesday recorded the nation's highest-ever daily of Covid cases, 3057, while Victoria's counted 1245 infections.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet (pictured) has vowed to refrain from reintroducing mask mandates -despite the state's Covid case numbers continuing to climb

Despite soaring case numbers, Mr Perrottet has vowed to maintain the state's hard-earned freedoms, emphasising the focus should be on hospital admission figures - not infections.

'We are taking a balanced and proportionate response that is completely focused on keeping people safe while at the same time opening up our economy end ensuring that people are able to work and provide for their families,' he said.

Meanwhile, health ministers in both New South Wales and Victoria have issued a joint letter urging the Federal Government to fast-track the booster roll-out, allowing Australians to access the jab just four months after their second dose instead of five.

It comes after a study found a third dose increased the level of neutralising antibodies in Omicron patients by around 37 times compared to waning immunity from two doses.

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation last week decided to maintain the five-month wait time between doses, but is constantly reviewing the interval.

The national vaccine advisory body is also considering requiring three jabs for someone to be considered fully vaccinated in light of the Omicron strain.

Omicron appears to be less severe than previous strains like Delta, but the variant is much more transmissible.

Huge lines of cars are seen at a Covid-19 test at Bondi Beach in Sydney as thousands scramble to get tested before seeing family over Christmas

Shoppers wear masks as they pick up presents ahead of Christmas in Sydney's CBD

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee warns even if Omicron is less severe the surge in cases could greatly 'strain health system capacity'.

There are currently 833 people in hospital with Covid in Australia, compared to a peak of 1,541 on September 21.

Thousands of Australians have been avoiding going to pubs and parties in the build up to Christmas to prevent being plunged into isolation if they are deemed a close contact of a positive case.

Testing centres have also seen an influx of people preparing to travel interstate, with most states and territories demanding a negative PCR test within 72 hours of arriving.

Such restrictions are not in place between Victoria and New South Wales, due to similarly high case loads.

Although the prime minister has ruled out re-introducing lockdowns and mandates, he has urged Australians to be cautious ahead of the festive season.

Despite high-risk venues now being open, Mr Morrison urged people to refrain from mingling in densely packed spaces to avoid catching the virus.

'Omicron is moving substantially amongst the younger population,' he said.

'They are at parties, nightclubs, hospitality venues.

'I would encourage them, particularly if youre going to spend time at Christmas with older family members, you want to give that big night out a miss, particularly if youre going to see one of your elderly relatives over Christmas.'
Shamed former Rep. Katie Hill says she has COVID while eight months pregnant despite being fully-vaccinated and receiving her booster.

Hill, 34, made the announcement on Twitter on Saturday, and said that she is not suffering from severe symptoms.

'I'm boosted and got COVID and am now quarantined for Christmas while almost 8 months pregnant,' her tweet read.

'And though my symptoms are mild I really wish I'd cancelled my plans for the couple weeks before this so stay safe out there, folks,' Hill added.

The former Congresswoman later shared on social media that she 'never stopped wearing masks' when asked if she had stopped protecting herself from COVID-19 after getting her booster shot. On Monday evening, the Centers for Disease Control announced that Omicron is now the dominant COVID strain the US, accounting for 73 per cent of all new cases - but up to 90 per cent of diagnoses in states including New York and New Jersey.

Meanwhile, the United States' first confirmed Omicron death has also been recorded - an unidentified man in his 50s from Houston who was unvaccinated and who had underlying health conditions.

Hill tweeted a photo of herself with her boyfriend, Alex Thomas, on November 28 at what appeared to be their baby shower for their soon-to-be-born son, Flinn

Last month, the bisexual former lawmaker also revealed that she is naming her baby boy Finn, in a photo posted on social media with her boyfriend Alex Thomas, a former playboy reporter.

Hill announced on November 28 that she is pregnant and expecting a boy, posing in a bikini for Vanity Fair two years after resigning from office under a cloud when her 'throuple' with a female campaign staffer was exposed.

'We cant wait to meet Finn in just a few short months,' she wrote on Twitter.

'Thank you so much to everyone who has celebrated with us. This next chapter will be the best yet!

Speaking to the upmarket magazine, Hill described the pregnancy as a 'miracle'.

She also shared her battle with endometriosis, which left her with one ovary.

The California Democrat resigned from office in 2019 while facing a House ethics probe, after a DailyMail.com article revealed her three-way relationship with her then-husband Kenneth Heslep and 22-year-old campaign staffer Morgan Desjardins.

Nude photos of Hill also emerged, and she unsuccessfully sued DailyMail.com for running the snaps.

Prior to her fall from grace, Hill was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, flipping a traditionally Republican seat in the US House in the 2018 election and cultivating a close relationship with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Hill fell from grace when her three-way relationship with her then-husband Kenneth Heslep and 22-year-old campaign staffer Morgan Desjardins was exposed (all three pictured together)

Prior to her resignation in 2019, Hill was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, flipping a traditionally Republican seat in the US House in the 2018 election and cultivating a close relationship with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Meanwhile, the number of lawmakers and public figures that have tested positive for coronavirus has increased as the omicron variant continues to spread across the US.

Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced over the weekend that they were the latest high profile figures to test positive against the virus.

'I learned today that I tested positive for COVID-19 after first feeling symptoms on Saturday. My symptoms are relatively mild,' Booker said in a statement tweeted on Sunday.

'I'm beyond grateful to have received two doses of vaccine and, more recently, a booster  I'm certain that without them I would be doing much worse,' he added.

Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) revealed his positive COVID diagnoses on Sunday, saying he is 'grateful to have received two doses of vaccine and, more recently, a booster  I'm certain that without them I would be doing much worse.'

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also shared her positive tests against coronavirus in a statement on Sunday

As of Monday morning, 133,012 Americans are testing positive for Covid every day, a 21 per cent increase over the past two weeks.

The daily average case count in the U.S. was up to 133,012, up 21 per cent from two weeks ago, as of December 19

The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 was up to 69,387 per day on average, a 16 per cent increase from two weeks ago.

Deaths were up 9 per cent, to 1,296 per day.

About 61 per cent of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
No one stood to win a fortune predicting that Boris Johnson's political enemies would take potshots at his decision not to impose gruelling new Covid restrictions.

With tiresome predictability, their criticisms came thick and fast. He was weak, indecisive and running scared of his backbenchers. Consequently, they whined, he was gambling with the nation's health.

The Daily Mail disagrees wholeheartedly. The Prime Minister showed good sense to resist pressure to hit the panic button and send the country hurtling down the slippery slope to Lockdown 4.0.

Of course, he dreads a tsunami of Omicron cases which would put intolerable pressure on the already groaning NHS.

But draconian restrictions inflict colossal damage on lives and livelihoods.

Based on Sage's latest modelling, Boris Johnson could not possibly justify repressive measures

Businesses wrecked. Workers thrown on to the scrap heap. The mental deterioration of those unable to see loved ones. The countless patients whose conditions go undiagnosed. All kill as surely as the most virulent virus.

Based on Sage's latest modelling, Mr Johnson could not possibly justify such repressive measures.

This time, these scaremongering quacks (who, in every instance, have been proved wildly wrong) warned of 6,000 Covid deaths a day without urgent action.

Even in the most fantastical realm, how could that be? In the grip of last winter, daily fatalities reached only a quarter of that. Between then and now, Britons have received 130million vaccine doses.

So the Cabinet is right to demand 'incontrovertible' evidence on the danger of Omicron, which seems to be a less severe variant, before toughening up curbs.

Troublingly, Mr Johnson has not ruled them out before New Year  risking another flashpoint with mutinous Tory MPs.

Yet if the NHS truly can't cope with Covid surges, even after a jabs blitz and receiving gargantuan sums of money, it needs radical reform.

The PM promised that the vaccines would put us on the irreversible path back to normality. What happened to that?

He should give us the appropriate information, offer guidance if necessary, trust in our common sense and let us live our lives. Another lockdown would be a despicable betrayal.

Slash self-isolation

It is a desperate situation. Shops, pubs, theatres and restaurants closed instead of doing a roaring Christmas trade.

Doctors and nurses sitting idle at home  risking chaos in the NHS. And police officers twiddling their thumbs rather than cracking crime.

Such are the grim consequences of Britain sliding into a lockdown by stealth.

Fearing Omicron, many are avoiding crowded places to dodge the virus in case it ruins their own festive plans.

And over-restrictive rules are forcing those who test positive to self-isolate for ten days  even if they are no longer infectious.

This perfect storm of dwindling customers and staff absenteeism is crippling business, jeopardising the fragile recovery and putting public services under huge strain.

How can ministers tackle this crisis? First, by slashing quarantine to seven days. And then ordering their scientists to rein in the alarmist rhetoric.
A peckish crocodile looking for an afternoon snack has snapped up a baby bull shark in North Queensland.

The stomach-churning encounter was uploaded to YouTube on Sunday by Daniel Johnson who was fishing near Proserpine in the Whitsundays region.

Footage shows the four-metre saltwater crocodile, known as 'boofhead', swim along the riverbank towards a bull shark snagged in a fishing line.

Daniel Johnson was fishing near Proserpine in the Whitsundays region when a four-metre crocodile devoured a baby bull shark snagged in a fishing line (pictured)

The massive croc quickly swoops in on the shark devouring it in less than a minute.

'Sometimes you hook a shark and it gets eaten by a crocodile,' he says in the footage.

'Just an average day fishing up here.'

Mr Johnson said the four-metre reptile was somewhat of a celebrity among the riverbank but to capture close up footage was a rare occurrence.

'He's a bit of a celebrity. This crocodile is always there but it's not often it takes a fish from you when you're fishing,' he told Nine.

'To capture it that close up was amazing, to be able to see it. I've been there so many times,' he said.

Mr Johnson said the four-metre reptile was somewhat of a celebrity among the riverbank but to capture close up footage was a rare occurrence

Earlier this year a research scientist and photographer was lucky enough to capture an even rarer moment which involved a Nile crocodile feasting on a bull shark in North Queensland.

Mark Ziembicki, 46, said Nile crocodiles, are rarely spotted in salt water environments.

However, excessive rainfall had washed the species downriver to places occupied by the salt water bull shark.

'We'd been observing both the crocodiles and sharks in the area for several hours and were wondering what would happen if the two might meet,' he said.

There was really no match for the shark, however. The Nile crocodile has the most powerful bite in the animal kingdom, which is about eight times greater than that of a great white shark.
Kyle Rittenhouse was met with standing ovation and deafening cheers as he took the firework-filled stage at the Turning Point USA conference in Phoenix on Monday.

The 18-year-old waved to his adoring audience as he strutted onto the huge stage at the event on Monday night for a panel discussion on the 2020 Kenosha shootings which saw him kill two protesters last year.

Lavish pyrotechnics signaled Rittenhouse's arrival, with loud rock music playing and deafening cheers erupting from the thousands of young conservatives who'd paid to see him, and who got on their feet to signal their approval.

Fox News reporter Elex Michaelson was among attendees, and tweeted: 'Kyle Rittenhouse gets a rock star reception at the Turning Point USA event in AZ.

'The teen was found not guilty of criminal charges after admitting to shooting & killing two people in WI. He says it was self defense. Hes now seen as a hero by some activists on the right'

Kyle Rittenhouse was met with standing ovation and deafening cheers as he took the firework-filled stage at the Turning Point USA conference in Phoenix on Monday (pictured)

During his panel appearance, Rittenhouse reflected on how his murder trial, which ended with his acquittal last month, matured him and the role his faith played in his experience.

'It's helped me grow a lot, it's helped me mature,' Rittenhouse told the crowd. 'My mentors who have been in my life  they've helped make me the person I am today, so thank you for them.'

He shared how he leaned into prayer to help him get through the stressful trial and that he believes the Lord remains with him, even after he was acquitted of first-degree intentional homicide and four other felony charges.

'I believe God's been with me every day of the trial, every day since Aug. 25  I pray to him every single night  I pray for strength to get through whatever happens to me.'

A month after his acquittal, donning a blue suit and tie, Rittenhouse walked out on the Phoenix stage Monday surrounded by roaring cheers from the audience which was mostly comprised of high school and college-aged people.

He was joined by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and conservative commentators Jack Posobiec, Elijah Schaffer and Drew Hernandez for a panel called 'Kenosha on camera,' which addressed the events of Aug. 25, 2020.

During the panel, the teen shared how he found strength and talked about his decision to take the stand to provide his account of the shootings.

'I wanted to tell the world what happened in Kenosha, the truth, unlike what the prosecution tried to do, and that's why I took the stand,' he shared.

Rittenhouse's lengthy two-week trial added to the already divisive narrative on racial injustice that has flooded the nation.

His attorneys argued the teen acted in self-defense when he fired the shots that killed two men and injured a third during a protest in Wisconsin over the shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer.

Rittenhouse (right) was joined by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk (middle) and conservative commentators Jack Posobiec (left), Elijah Schaffer and Drew Hernandez for a panel called 'Kenosha on camera,' which addressed the events of Aug. 25, 2020

A month after his acquittal, donning a blue suit and tie, Rittenhouse walked out on the Phoenix stage Monday surrounded by roaring cheers from the audience which was mostly comprised of high school and college-aged people

The prosecution portrayed Rittenhouse - who had been charged with homicide, attempted homicide and reckless endangerment in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz, 27 - as the instigator of the violence, claiming that he 'provoked everything' by bringing a rifle to the protests.

The state also tried to paint him as a 'wannabe soldier' who had gone looking for trouble, while his supporters regarded him as a patriot who took a stand against lawlessness.

Rittenhouse was ultimately successful thanks to multiple blunders by prosecutors, which painted a picture of the teen as someone who did indeed act in self-defense when he shot Rosenbaum and Gruber dead.

Rittenhouse, speaking at the conference Monday, shared that although he had 'really long days' preparing for the trial, the risky decision to take the stand was ultimately the right one.

'I wanted to tell my story,' he stated.

Kyle Rittenhouse gets a rock star reception at the Turning Point USA event in AZ.



The teen was found not guilty of criminal charges after admitting to shooting & killing two people in WI. He says it was self defense.



Hea now seen as a hero by some activists on the right pic.twitter.com/fBvl2pKT6q  Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) December 21, 2021

Rittenhouse told the crowd: 'I wanted to tell the world what happened in Kenosha, the truth, unlike what the prosecution tried to do, and that's why I took the stand'

Rittenhouse fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum (left), 36, with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle after Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse across a parking lot and threw a plastic bag at him shortly before midnight on August 25, 2020. Moments later, as Rittenhouse was running down a street, he shot and killed Anthony Huber (right), 26, a protester from Silver Lake, Wisconsin. The teen was acquitted on all charges connected to their deaths

The teen also shared how he watched the trial turn in his favorite, alleging the prosecution knew their case was failing.

'I thought they knew they were losing and wanted a mistrial. My favorite part though was 'don't get brazen with me,'' he said, referencing the comment Kenosha County Judge Bruce Schroeder scolded Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger over his cross-examination of Rittenhouse.

While his future remains uncertain, Rittenhouse did hint the audience may want to 'be on the lookout' for a lawsuit against the media outlets he feels misconstrued what happened before and at the Kenosha shooting.

He did, however, applaud a handful of reporters for sharing his story.

'Thank God for all of these independent journalists like Elijah and Drew [and Julio], if they hadn't been there... shout out to all of the independent journalists who help to provide the truth,' he told the crowd.

Rittenhouse (pictured left on Aug. 25, 2020) traveled to Kenosha during a protest that broke out after a white Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake, a black man, in the back last summer

Rittenhouse (pictured on Aug. 25, 2020) said that he went from his home in nearby Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha to protect property from rioters but that he acted in self-defense after he came under attack and feared for his life

Rittenhouse also offered his supporters some advice, reminding them to 'always be humble and look at the positive in life'.

He added: 'Focus on today and not tomorrow, you can only live one day at a time.'

Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz. The shooting occurred during a tumultuous night of protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake.

Businesses in Kenosha, Wisconsin were ransacked and burned in the nights that followed Blake's shooting.

Rittenhouse said that he went from his home in nearby Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha to protect property from rioters but that he acted in self-defense after he came under attack and feared for his life.
The body of a 19-year-old girl who fell into the water at a picturesque rainforest rock pool has been recovered by rescue workers.

The teenager slipped and fell into the creek at Babinda Boulders, 60km south of Cairns in far north Queensland, about 3pm on Monday.

Emergency crews initially failed to find her after being called to the scene, before discovering her body about 8am on Tuesday.

The body of a 19-year-old girl who fell into the water at Babinda Boulders, 60km south of Cairns in far north Queensland, on Monday has been recovered about 17 hours later

Authorities are now in contact with the family of the teenage girl, who was from the Cairns suburb of Edmonton.

Babinda Boulders is often referred to as Devil's Pool and located at the base of a hiking trail popular with backpackers and travellers.

Visitors have been known to take for granted the calm surface and miscalculate the strength of the current underneath.

In October 2020, 37-year-old Shanon Hoffman's lifeless body was pulled from the swell, which is said to have been cursed by a spirit.

He had been dragged under just two days earlier, and locals feared he would become just the latest in a long line of fatalities at the 'haunted' spot.

The undercurrent has been described as a 'washing machine' which sucks people under and makes it near impossible for them to swim to safety.

According to Aboriginal lore, Babinda Boulders is haunted by the spirit of Oolana, a young woman from ancient times who drowned in that very spot.

According to Aboriginal lore, Babinda Boulders is haunted by the spirit of Oolana, a young woman from ancient times who drowned in that very spot

The legend says Oolana was from the Yindinji Tribe, and had been promised to a respected tribal leader when she was of age.

But she met a handsome young warrior, Dyga, who belonged to another Queensland tribe and fell in love with him.

Knowing she wouldn't be able to stay with him, the couple fled their respective tribes and escaped into the wilderness, where they relied on the land to keep them alive.

The couple remained in love and continued their affair while elders searched high and low for them.

There are 20 known deaths at the far north Queensland pools since the 1940s, of which 17 were men

After some time, they were captured.

Dyga was dragged away and, out of despair, Oolana flung herself into nearby springs, which later became known as Devils Pools.

Legend says Oolana's spirit haunts Devils Pools, luring men to the springs before dragging them under water and to their deaths as part of her endless search for her lost love.

Of the 20 known deaths that have taken place at Devils Pools since the 1940s, 17 victims have been men.
Queensland has reported 86 new Covid cases as the state introduced new quarantine rules for fully vaccinated people who come in close contact with positive cases.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles announced double vaccinated close contacts will now only have to isolate for seven days, rather than 14 days, beginning on Wednesday.

Those people will need to return a negative PCR test on day zero and day five of the quarantine period, Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said.

'This is consistent with the national guidelines,' Dr Gerrard said.

The increase in positive cases reported between Monday and Tuesday was due to the sharp rise in the numbers of tests.

The 86 positive results came from 35,493 tests - a positive rate of 0.24 per cent - compared to 59 positives from 12,371 tests recorded on Monday - a positive rate of 0.47 per cent.

The isolation relaxation came as more than 225,000 people applied for permits to enter the Sunshine State for reunions with family and friends during the festive season.

The changes allayed fears those arrivals would miss Christmas and New Year gatherings if they came in contact with a positive case.

Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles announced those who are double vaccinated and are deemed close contacts of positive cases will now be able to quarantine for only seven days, rather than 14, from tomorrow

Mr Miles said 61 of the new cases were the Omicron variant, while 75 people were in hospital and one person in ICU.

Six of the new cases were acquired interstate, 18 were locally acquired and 67 remain under investigation.

There are now 2569 active cases in the state.

The new cases are the highest number reported in a 24-hour period in Queensland since the start of the pandemic.

NEW QUEENSLAND QUARANTINE RULES From 1am, Wednesday December 22, the following rules apply to fully vaccinated close and casual contacts of positive Covid cases. Casual contacts * Get tested immediately and quarantine until a negative test result is received. * Wear a mask outside the home for 14 days after their quarantine. Close contacts * Quarantine for seven days and get a PCR test on day zero and and then again on day five of the quarantine period. * Exit quarantine on day eight depending on a negative test result. * Wear a mask and avoid high density venues from day eight to 14. * Household members of vaccinated close contacts who are also fully vaccinated do not need to quarantine but must get a PCR test on day one and five. * Unvaccinated household contacts will be required to quarantine for seven days. Unvaccinated close contacts * Quarantine for 14 days and get a PCR test on days one, five, and 12. * Household members of an unvaccinated close contact will need to follow the same quarantine rules and testing requirements as the close contact unless they can separate from them. Advertisement

Changes to quarantine for close contacts of positive Covid cases announced on Tuesday address fears reuniting family members would miss Christmas and New Year gatherings as a result of having to quarantine if they came in contact with a positive case. Pictured: A family reunion at Brisbane Airport when the border reopened on December 13

Dr Gerrard confirmed that most of the new cases had only 'minimal symptoms'.

'We have one patient who has been placed in an intensive care unit as a precaution.

'I have spoken with the doctors looking after this patient, she is only moderately unwell.'

One new case was detected in the town of Emerald in Central Queensland.

'You can assume the virus is widespread across Queensland,' Dr Gerrard said.

'We are seeing two cases of Omicron for every one case of Delta, so it's becoming the dominant strain in Queensland.'

Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard could expect 'thousands of cases' during the current fourth wave of the virus. Pictured: Pedestrians in the Brisbane CBD

Dr Gerrard said Queensland could expect 'thousands of cases' during the current fourth wave of the virus.

Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said 225,000 people had applied for a general vehicle pass to enter the state since the border reopened on December 13, but that many people were turning up to the border with incorrect paperwork or without a negative PCR test in the 72 hours prior to arrival.

'We are seeing some people not making a genuine effort to get the PCR test and wait for that required period to get the test back and come into Queensland.'

She said there were now seven police officers who had tested positive to Covid and 111 officers now in quarantine.

'Some of those officers will be back out on the streets in the next couple of days,' she said, pointing out that nearly all police were fully vaccinated under the mandate for the force.

Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said many people were approaching the Queensland with incorrect paperwork or without having received a negative PCR test result. Pictured: Police monitor cars entering Queensland at Coolangatta

Mr Miles and Dr Gerrard were forced to defend the current health requirement for visitors to the state to take a PCR test on day five after their arrival, with anecdotal evidence suggesting many were not taking the test.

Yesterday Dr Gerrard said the test was not a priority concern of the public health messaging.

'We're trying to reduce seeding events, we know that seeding events introduced from outside are associated with an increased rate of transmission of the virus... that is the rationale behind the policy of screening visitors,' Dr Gerrard said.

'It's not unreasonable for Queenslanders to expect that people coming to our state meet the requirements of their border pass,' Mr Miles said.

'It wasn't that long ago these people couldn't come to Queensland at all. Now they can and they're coming to Queensland in their hundreds and thousands and one of the measures we've put in place to keep Queenslanders safe is that PCR test.'

There were now 84 per cent of eligible Queenslanders fully vaccinated and 89.8 per cent with a first dose of a Covid vaccine.

The 90 percent first dose threshold was expected to be passed today, while the 90 per cent full vaccination mark - when further border controls including the need for the PCR test are expected to be dropped - is forecast for the first half of January.
It's enough to make Widow Twankey choke on her custard pie.

Following in the footsteps of such rigorous university courses as surf science and stand-up comedy, students can now take the world's first pantomime degree.

From next September Staffordshire University will offer a master's degree in 'contemporary pantomime practice'.

Over 13 months, budding Cinderellas and Dick Whittingtons will combine research with practical study into the British tradition, which dates back to the Victorian era.

'Dame Trot', played by Clive Rowe, speaks with a traditional pantomime cow during an evening performance of 'Jack and The Beanstalk' at the Hackney Empire this month. Students can now take the world's first pantomime degree

They will master key elements from slapstick to audience participation before performing their own show.

Students will also examine panto through a '21st century lens' by looking at how it has been changed by Covid, the #MeToo movement and Disney.

Around 260 professional pantomimes are staged in Britain each year, generating nearly 63million for theatres.

Panto stars Stephen Mulhern and Christopher Biggins back the course. Mr Mulhern said: 'Pantomimes have become the highest grossing productions for theatres  the lifesaver in the industry due to the profit each generates.'

Christopher Biggins (pictured in his dressing room at Orchard Theatre last month) and other panto stars back the course

Mr Biggins, the star of Aladdin, Cinderella and Winnie The Pooh, added: 'When I was starting my pantomime career over 50 years ago I wish I could have gone along the route of getting an MA. We should be preserving traditions... and Britain's heritage.'

Course leader Richard Cheshire calls pantomime 'one of Britain's great contributions to world theatre'.

Course co-developer Dr Robert Marsden hopes it will help quash the perception that pantomime skills are acquired informally.

Dr Marsden, who is touring his 27th pantomime in Halifax, said: 'Pantomime is unique. The style of performing and all that goes with it is very difficult.

'The reality is that producers won't risk casting inexperienced performers, so formal training opportunities are badly needed.'
The 'lockdown by stealth' continued to hit businesses yesterday as tourist attractions, pubs and restaurants shut their doors.

Staffing shortages and a fall in shoppers on high streets related to a surge in cases of the Omicron variant have caused devastation to city centres across the country.

The Christmas plans of thousands were also thrown into potential chaos after one in four rail operators cancelled services yesterday because of staff illness.

On what would typically have been one of the busiest tourism weeks of the year, the Natural History Museum closed yesterday owing to staff absences because of the ten-day isolation requirement.

It was joined by a string of other London museums and art galleries as well as Edinburgh Castle.

Meanwhile, West End shows including The Lion King and The Book of Mormon were also cancelled for a week because of Covid outbreaks among cast and crew, and performances of The Nutcracker at the Royal Opera House have been called off until January.

Theatre impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh told the BBC: 'Whether we're shut by the Government or shut by stealth because of all the mixed messages the Government does need to step in and help.'

A tale of two Christmases: Clear lanes on the M25/M23 intersection in Surrey at 8.45am yesterday suggested many were staying at home

His call came as the capital's New Year's Eve celebration planned for Trafalgar Square was cancelled 'in the interests of public safety'.

Pubs, restaurants and bars recorded a 40 per cent slump in sales at the weekend while the owner of the Greene King chain said some sites were down 80 per cent on pre-pandemic levels.

Emma McClarkin, of the British Beer and Pub Association, said Government caution over the Omicron variant  with the introduction of Plan B measures such as working from home  had caused public confidence to 'nosedive'.

'Our recovery has been set back by at least six months,' she added. 'We are right back to square one  it is like snakes and ladders.'

Simon Emeny, of pub chain Fuller, Smith and Turner, announced at the weekend he had decided to close 20 of its busiest London venues because of a lack of footfall.

He said yesterday: 'The Plan B advice is damaging city centres. The Christmas party season has been severely curtailed.

'Once people have had a booster there is no reason they shouldn't get on with their lives. If Plan B is kept any longer than necessary it will halt our recovery.'

Packed pavements: It was thought many were staying at home due to fears over the new variant but hundreds packed Regent Street for last minute Christmas shopping yesterday afternoon

It is feared one in ten pubs  around 5,000  have had to close permanently since the start of the pandemic, with a slump in Christmas takings potentially signalling a death knell for many more.

Yesterday Michelin-starred restaurant Portland was among dozens in the capital to announce it was closing until January with customer numbers slumping.

Industry body UK Hospitality said up to 10,000 sites could close permanently without urgent Government support. Chief executive Kate Nicholls called for an extension to business rates relief.

Andrew Taylor, who owns gastropub Mr Fox in Croydon, south London, which has faced an 80 per cent drop in bookings, said: 'Hospitality is locked down in all but name. It is going to cause thousands of businesses to close and tens of thousands of job losses.'

Meanwhile, rail operators warned passengers to prepare for further delays and cancellations caused by staffing shortages.

Yesterday around 13 per cent of trains were cancelled or behind schedule, with eight of the 28 major rail operators experiencing coronavirus-related staff problems.

It came as next week's episodes of ITV's breakfast show Good Morning Britain were axed to 'protect' staff amid fears over Omicron. It will return on January 4.
The battlefield where Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated and the Jacobite rebellion crushed in 1746 is connected to the slave trade, heritage experts have declared.

The Culloden site  where Young Pretender Charles Edward Stuarts revolt was suppressed by the Duke of Cumberland  was added to the list as Charles sailed from Nantes on a French slave ship owned by plantation owner Antoine Walsh.

The battlefield, near Inverness, is the first in Britain to be linked to the slave trade by an official organisation.

A National Trust for Scotland report said that in the aftermath of the battle descendants of defeated Scots and prisoners of war were transported to British colonies where they later owned slaves, worked enslaved crews and managed plantations.

The battlefield where Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated and the Jacobite rebellion crushed in 1746 is connected to the slave trade, heritage experts have declared

The Culloden site  where Young Pretender Charles Edward Stuarts revolt was suppressed by the Duke of Cumberland  was added to the list as Charles sailed from Nantes on a French slave ship owned by plantation owner Antoine Walsh

The report, which follows Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, linked more than a third of NTS sites directly or indirectly to the slave trade or its abolition.

Other locations, such as the birthplace of Peter Pan author JM Barrie, have a link more broadly to a slavery-driven economy.

His familys weavers cottage in Kirriemuir has been added because the industry produced clothing for slaves.

Scottish historian Sir Tom Devine told The Daily Telegraph that every nook and cranny of Scottish life had been affected by the slave trade at some point and so by the farcical logic of the NTS, every person of note in that period, whether slavers or not, are fair game.
Tens of thousands of New Zealanders have been left heartbroken after their travel plans were ruined by Jacinda Ardern's decision to push back quarantine-free entry into the country to the end of Februrary.

Fully-vaccinated Kiwis returning home from Australia were set to be allowed to self-quarantine for seven days from January 17.

All returning travellers will now have to quarantine in managed isolation rooms for ten days - up from the previous seven day limit.

Thousands of New Zealanders will no longer be able to self-isolate at home as Jacinda Ardern's government backtracks on the country's reopening plan

Travellers will also need to get a test within 48 hours of departure, instead of 72 hours.

Many Kiwis hoping to return home in the New Year will have to delay their reunion plans as spaces in hotel quaratine are limited with tens of thousands of travellers having to fight for a spot.

The country's Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the dramatic change had been made to protect New Zealanders amid the threat of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.

Mr Hipkins said it would also give residents more time to get their booster shot, with the time between people getting their second dose and booster jab now pushed forward from six months to four months.

'Waiting till the end of February will increase New Zealand's overall protection and slow Omicron's eventual spread,' he said on Tuesday.

Fully-vaccinated Kiwis returning home from Australia were set to be allowed to self-quarantine for seven days from January 17 but this has now been pushed back to the end of February (pictured at Auckland Airport)

'There's no doubt this is disappointing and will upset many holiday plans, but it's important to set these changes out clearly today so they can have time to consider those plans.'

This will mean just over 82 per cent of New Zealanders will be eligible for their booster shot by the end of February.

The government also confirmed the rollout of vaccinations for children aged between five and 11 will begin on January 17.

Mr Hipkins said vaccinations for this age group will not be mandatory.

He added that evidence has pointed to Omicron being the 'most transmissible variant yet'.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NEW ZEALAND'S NEW BORDER RULES New Zealanders travelling home from Australia were due to be allowed to self-isolate from January 17 Due to the threat of the Omicron Covid variant, self-quarantine for Kiwis has been pushed back until the end of February Returning travellers will have to quarantine for ten days instead of seven in managed isolation rooms They will need to show proof of a negative test 48 hours before departure Advertisement

'But experts still don't know how severe it is. So while it's sweeping the globe at a bewildering speed and appears to be the dominant variant, how sick it makes people and the impact it has on health systems is not yet fully understood,' he added.

It comes after New Zealand recorded 28 new Covid infections on Tuesday.

There are currently 22 cases from the Omicron variant.

There are 57 cases in hospital. Of these, seven are in an intensive care or high dependency unit,' New Zealand's ministry of health said.

'Of the 10,320 cases in the current outbreak, 83 per cent (8,593) are not fully immunised. Of the 531 hospitalised cases in the current outbreak, 93% (495) are not fully immunised.

'For the purposes of this data, fully immunised means they received both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at least 7 days before being reported as a case.'
Doctors should stop prescribing antidepressants because there is no decent clinical evidence that they work better than a placebo, a study has found.

About one in six British adults take the tablets, but there is rising concern about their overuse and the risk of withdrawal symptoms and side-effects.

Experts at University College London reviewed all existing evidence on common antidepressants and concluded there remains considerable uncertainty about the benefits.

They urged doctors to give the drugs to fewer patients, for shorter periods of time because so many struggle when they stop taking them.

Doctors should stop prescribing antidepressants because there is no decent clinical evidence that they work better than a placebo, a study has found (stock image)

The study found that much of the evidence came from trials lasting just six to 12 weeks and the results dont meet the threshold for a clinically important difference between antidepressants and placebo pills.

The study, which was published in the journal Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, comes after the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) last month ruled that the NHS should offer patients with mild depression group therapy sessions before pills.

Lead author Dr Mark Harowitz said: The prevalence of side effects may be even higher among those taking antidepressants for more than three years, and can include emotional numbness and mental fogginess.

Patients trying to come off their treatment often experience withdrawal symptoms: these can include anxiety, insomnia, depression, agitation and appetite changes, and can interfere with social functioning and professional life, particularly if treatment is stopped abruptly.

About one in six British adults take the tablets, but there is rising concern about their overuse and the risk of withdrawal symptoms and side-effects (stock image of Seroxat tablets)

Dr Harowitz found that the findings in teenagers and children were even less convincing despite the number of 12 to 17-year-olds on antidepressants more than doubling since 2005.

The study said antidepressants may work for severe depression, but added: The cons may outweigh the pros in those with mild to moderate depression or in those whose symptoms dont yet qualify as depression.

Its authors concluded: In light of this uncertain balance of benefits and harms, we should re-visit the wide- spread and growing prescription of antidepressants.

Latest data shows about 7.8million adults in England take antidepressants.

The most common drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as sertraline.

Prescriptions are also 50 per cent higher for women.
An arrest warrant has been issued for the millionaire businessman who plunged Byron Bay into lockdown and then took off to Serbia.

Zoran Radovanovic, 52, jetted off to return to his homeland after he was charged with multiple offences for sneaking out of Sydney during lockdown in August.

After he failed to appear for sentencing at Lismore Local Court on Monday on seven related charges, Magistrate Michael Dakin issued the warrant.

Radovanovic faced four counts of failing to comply with electronic registration directives and three counts of not complying with Covid-19 directions.

He had previously admitted the offences, but flew off to Serbia before he could be sentenced.

Zoran Radovanic (pictured with son Kristian) has flown to Serbia before he could be sentenced for plunging the Byron Bay area into lockdown. A warrant has now been issued for his arrest

Earlier on Monday Kristian, now 20, was fined $35,000 for four related offences in his absence. He is also believed to be in Serbia with his father.

He pleaded guilty to four charges at Waverley Local Court following the Sydney family's trip to NSW's northern rivers to buy a farm in late July.

Kristian was fined $5,000 and $7,500 for not using a QR code or wearing a mask in a shop, and and another $12,500 and $10,000 for repeating the same offences in a taxi.

Magistrate Paul Mulroney said all offences involved a disregard for public health and safety.

'He did not care at all about the rest of the community,' he said.

'What he did was not just irresponsible, not just criminal, but had the real potential to put the lives and the wellbeing of the community at serious risk.'

Kristian Radovanovic (pictured) was fined $5,000 and $7,500 for not using a QR code or wearing a mask in a shop, and and another $12,500 and $10,000 for the same offences in a taxi

The pair had travelled to Byron Bay on the NSW north coast but didn't check in anywhere before later coming down with Covid and ending up in Lismore Hospital.

They refused to comply with health officials and plunged Byron Bay, Richmond Valley, Lismore and Ballina into lockdown.

They later returned to their luxury rented Rose Bay mansion in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs but in October, neighbours revealed they'd both left the country.

One told Daily Mail Australia they had seen shipping containers outside the home with removalists loading them up with furniture and belongings.

The family had moved to thir rented mansion in Rose Bay after selling their luxury home in Forestville (pictured) on Sydney's North Shore two years ago

Wife Tiana was left behind in the home with the family dog but she too appeared to have left soon after. The whereabouts of their teenage daughter is unknown.

The family had moved to Rose Bay after selling their luxury home in Forestville on Sydney's North Shore two years ago.

The parents marriage had started to crumble around that time, with Mrs Radovanic taking out an AVO against her husband who faces criminal charges over a bizarre row with his wife about a broken umbrella.

In the wake of the Byron Bay incident, details of Zoran's criminal past were revealed, including drugs and theft convictions before he was granted Australian citizenship on appeal.
Wisconsin's governor received a complaint Monday seeking the removal of Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm after his office recommended $1,000 bail for a man who authorities say later drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in a nearby county, killing six people.

A group of people who say they are Milwaukee County taxpayers filed the complaint Friday asking Evers to remove Chisholm to prevent similarly low bail recommendations in future cases involving violent offenders such as suspected car killer Darrell Brooks.

The governor's office confirmed it received the complaint Monday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

'The devastation resulting from Chisholm's dereliction of duty to protect the public has reached outside the borders of Milwaukee County,' the complaint says.

It was signed by Orville Seymer and six people who did not list their addresses or return phone calls from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Seymer has long been affiliated with a local group called Citizens for Responsible Government that formed in the wake of a 2002 Milwaukee County public pension scandal.

Wisconsin residents are demanding that Governor Tony Evers remove Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm (left) from his post after his office recommended $1,000 bail for Darrell Brooks (right)

Democratic Governor Tony Evers has not yet had a chance to review the complaint, a spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for Chisholm, who is also a Democrat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under state law, a governor may remove an elected district attorney for 'inefficiency, neglect of duty, official misconduct, or malfeasance in office.'

Brooks is being held on a $5million bail for the six homicide charges he faces in the November 21 parade deaths in Waukesha, a Milwaukee suburb that is in Waukesha County.

Waukesha County District Attorney Susan Opper has also said additional charges are likely. No possible motive has been given.

He was released on bail just days earlier after allegedly running over the mother of his child with his SUV.

Chisholm has been under intense criticism for the bail recommendation, having previously spoken of his desire to reduce jail populations, and even conceded that the policy would likely result in deaths

Chisholm has called it 'inappropriately low' given the circumstances of the crimes Brooks was facing and his prior history.

Brooks is being held on a $5million bail for the six homicide charges he faces in the November 21 parade deaths in Waukesha, a Milwaukee suburb that is in Waukesha County

Police allege that Brooks was behind the wheel of the red SUV that plowed into parade-goers in Waukesha on November 21

Earlier this year, Evers launched an investigation into Eau Claire County District Attorney Gary King, also a Democrat, over alleged sexual harassment in the workplace after receiving a complaint from Kings former colleagues.

Chisholm said Brooks' low bail amount was the result of 'human error' by an overworked rookie prosecutor who was previously identified as Michelle Grasso (above)

King resigned before the investigation concluded.

Earlier this month, Chisholm blamed a rookie prosecutor in his office for freeing Brooks. He didn't name her, but she was previously identified as Michelle Grasso.

Chisholm said Grasso, who set the $1,000 bond Brooks was freed on two weeks prior to the parade massacre, had looked at his most recently posted bail of $500 and decided to double it.

He claimed she didn't have risk management computer data available to her that could have kept Brooks behind bars.

'You had a young (assistant district attorney) trying to do the very best she could under really difficult circumstances and she made a mistake,' Chisholm said during a Milwaukee County Board Judiciary and Public Safety Committee hearing.

The district attorney has been scrutinized over the low hit-skip bail amount since Brooks was arrested and charged in the parade incident.

'That is a decision on its face ... that I believe was inappropriately low given the context of what we knew about the defendant,' Chisholm said.

'That's human error. It set in motion a chain of events that resulted in a tragedy. Again, I'm not trying to lessen our responsibility for that, but that's it.'

Brooks (pictured in Waukesha County Court on Nov. 23) faces six counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the Waukesha parade incident, with additional charges likely. No possible motive has been given

Chisholm noted that Grasso did not have access to the defendant's pretrial risk assessment that looks at several factors, including prior convictions, when she made the decision to set Brooks' bail because it had not yet been uploaded into the system, CNN reported.

The DA, who has a history of trying to reduce incarceration and the number of suspects freed on cash bail said he was angry and 'extraordinarily saddened by the circumstances that have impacted so many people' in Milwaukee County and reiterated that higher cash bail should have been recommended for Brooks. Grasso's supervisor, Carole Manchester, has also been slammed over the low bail amount.

'I put the finger on myself and that's my obligation, that's my responsibility,' Chisholm said, adding that the risk assessment system was in place when Brooks was released.

'There was a public safety assessment that was done that characterized this situation as a high-risk situation. Our default position in this case because of the laws in Wisconsin is that we recommend higher amounts of cash,' he said, explaining the protocol that 'should have been followed.'

Court records show Brooks was charged with endangerment in Milwaukee County in July 2020 after he allegedly fired his gun at his nephew.

He was set to stand trial in February but Chisholm's office had to push the proceeding back as it struggled with a backlog of cases due to pandemic-induced courtroom closures.

The Christmas parade began on Sunday, Nov. 21 at 4pm, with participants starting at Main St. and Whiterock Ave. It was always intended to be a short parade, ending half a mile away at the northeast corner of Cutler Park. At 4.39pm, the red SUV is filmed speeding down Main Street. It smashed into the crowd, and sent bodies flying, before carrying on down towards the end of the parade, where the car broke through barriers. The SUV was found less than five blocks away and the driver was taken into custody but it's unclear exactly where

Since prosecutors couldn't provide him with a speedy trial, they reduced his bail from $7,500 to $500. He posted that in March.

On Nov. 5, weeks before the parade, he was charged with endangerment again, this time for allegedly running over the mother of his child with his SUV.

Brooks was assessed as a high risk to reoffend, but the prosecutor who handled his initial appearance still sought the $1,000 cash bail. He posted it on Nov. 19.

Chisholm's office has taken heat for setting bail the low bail, with critics saying he essentially enabled Brooks to attack the parade.

Chisholm and the county's chief judge, Mary Triggiano, also tried painting a picture of a Milwaukee County court system that has been limping along since the pandemic struck.

Triggiano noted that the county is dealing with a backlog of 1,600 felony cases and 3,100 misdemeanor cases. Chisholm said the jail has a capacity of 920 inmates and is currently housing about 890, including 175 awaiting trial in homicide cases and 100 awaiting trial for first-degree sexual assault alone.

'In this particular case, the ADA didn't make a decision just in a vacuum with lots and lots of time to assess it,' Chisholm said.

'It doesn't excuse it, but it puts it into context when you're dealing with high volume triage, trying to sort what the most serious offense is, just trying to get the case in the system and move on to the next one, sometimes errors are going to occur.'

He added: 'I want to make it clear that there are explanations for what happened. There are no excuses.'

Milwaukee County Judicial Court Commissioner Cedric Cornwall was also criticized for approving the low bail amount.

Cornwall approved the low bond for Brooks during his arraignment for the alleged hit-and-run, despite the fact that he's been bailed twice this year and has a lengthy criminal history stretching back to 1999.

Cornwall, who has served as commissioner since 2005, has a history of low bonds, Fox News reported.

On the same day he set the $1,000 bond for Brooks, he also set bail at $500 for a man accused of strangulation, battery and domestic violence. The day before he set bail at $1,000 for a woman charged with three felonies, including child abuse.

In 2006, the commissioner set bail at $100,00 for a foreign exchange student accused of a sex crime. Cornwall didn't require the man to surrender his passport and he fled to China where he was later arrested on and unrelated charged and extradited back to the United States.

Similarly, Chisholm is known for his push to end cash bail, saying it's not fair to poor defendants.

He wants to implement a new system in which only violent offenders are jailed until trial. That's left him walking a fine line between angry residents who hold him at least partly responsible for the carnage at the parade and progressives looking to reduce incarceration rates.

The district attorney is also being criticized for a comment he made to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in 2007, arguing the state's risk assessment system could not 'perfectly predict' who might commit violence.

'Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into a treatment program, who's going to go out and kill somebody? You bet,' he said at the time.

He also argued in favor of programs that reduce recidivism, such as alternatives to incarceration.

In Wisconsin, defendants are screened with a pretrial risk assessment that looks at several factors, including their prior convictions, to evaluate the risk of them failing to appear in court or their likelihood to commit another crime.

Judges and court commissioners are then given this risk score, along with recommendations from the defense and prosecution, to aid in setting bond and release conditions.
Johnna Rhone, 59, a Jefferson Middle School art teacher for the last 21 years, was ordered not to have any contact with anyone from the school after she was charged in court with making a false report or threat of terrorism

A 59 year-old Detroit art teacher has been charged with posting hoax notes under the doors of three classrooms in her own school warning that it would be bombed by a terrorist.

Johnna Rhone, 59, wrote at least three notes with threatening language last week at Jefferson Middle School in St. Clair Shores, Macomb County prosecutor Pete Lucido said.

One of the notes read: 'Start break early. He's gonna do it. Just don't be in the hall after lunch. Boom! Get it?'

The three hand-written notes by Rhone were found under the doors of a classroom, the library and the media center. Surveillance cameras at the school caught the footage.

After her arrest, Rhone was charged with making a false threat of terrorism, a felony that could result in the teacher serving twenty years behind bars, if found guilty. No motive for the bizarre crime has been shared, although schools in the area have been hit by multiple false alarms since four children were shot dead at the nearby Oxford High School on November 30.

Rhone is the first teacher to have been accused of issuing such a threat.

Rhone's attorney, Andrew Leone, denied the allegations. Rhone is a creative arts teacher that has taught at the school for 21 years.

'I only read things like this and it has one plain straightforward meaning,' Macomb County Prosecutor Pete Lucido said at a news conference after the court hearing.

'I wouldn't want to be around the school nor would I want my own child or children to be around that school. And I don't think any parent would want their kid around the school when somebody is making a threat of that nature. We are all on high alert.

These are unprecedented times with unprecedented things that are happening,' Lucido concluded.

Classes at Jefferson Middle School in St. Clair Shores, a Detroit suburb, were not canceled following Rhone's arrest on Friday. Police searched the teacher's home and said there weren't any guns or weapons to be found

Throughout her time at the school, Rhone has never been subject to any serious complaints or concerns raised against her by students, parents or staff, according to a statement from Lakeview Public Schools Superintendent Karl Paulson.

'This alleged behavior is unacceptable and disappointing,' Paulson said in a statement. 'Lakeview is committed to providing a quality education for the students and families of our community.'

Rhone was placed on administrative leave, while the school district coordinated with local authorities to facilitate her arrest Friday. Police said Rhone did not cooperate with them and refused to comment on the issue.

In court, as the evidence was unfolded in front of the judge, Rhone was on a video conference call from inside the cell of the St. Clair Shores Police Department saying: 'not true, not true, not true.'

Rhone appeared in court on a video conference call from inside the cell of the St. Clair Shores Police Department saying: 'not true, not true, not true' after prosecutor Peter Lucido read one of her notes that said: 'Start break early. He's gonna do it. Just don't be in the hall after lunch. Boom! Get it?'

If Rhone is released on bond, then she is not allowed to have any contact with anyone from Jefferson Middle School.

Meanwhile, parents are afraid to send their children to school in a 'post-Oxford world,' assistant prosecutor Patrick Sierawski said in court, a reference to the Nov. 30 shooting at Oxford High School that killed four students and injured seven more people.

Since the deadly shooting three weeks ago, nearly a hundred kids in the Detroit metropolitan area have been charged with making similar threats.

However, Rhone is the first adult  a teacher.

'Somebody either cried out for help. Somebody who's maybe desperate. Somebody wants a day off. But I don't have a crystal ball to give you an exact answer as to why some adult who's in supervision and control of our children in the classroom would even think about doing something like this,' Pete Lucido told reporters.

Classes were not canceled following Rhone's arrest. Police searched the teacher's home and said there were no guns or weapons to be found.

Her bond is set at 10 percent of a $75,000, house arrest with a GPS tether and psychological testing.

A probable cause conference for Rhone has been set for February 1.
An American priest has been jailed for 12 years in East Timor after being found guilty of 'horrendous' child sex abuse at a remote orphanage he founded.

Richard Daschbach, 84, was convicted of sexually abusing young girls in his care at the Topu Honis shelter, in the first case of its kind in the staunchly Catholic nation.

He spent decades as a missionary in the country's remote enclave of Oecusse, setting up a shelter in the 1990s named Topu Honis, which means 'Guide to Life', where hundreds of young girls passed through his care.

He was charged with sexual abuse as well as child pornography and domestic violence - and faces similar charges back in the US after he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in August.

The East Timor trial began in February but was postponed several times before concluding last month.

Campaigners have applauded the verdict but said they would appeal for tougher measures as under the law, Daschbach faced more than twice the prison time he received.

American priest Richard Daschbach, 84, (pictured in 2013) has been jailed for 12 years in East Timor after being found guilty of child sex abuse at a remote orphanage he founded

Campaigners have applauded the verdict but said they would appeal for tougher measures as under the law, Daschbach (pictured sitting in the defendan'ts chair during his trial hearing in Oecusse, East Timor, today)

Daschbach maintains strong backing from some, including former President Xanana Gusmao, who went to the court on Tuesday.

East Timor is the most Catholic place outside the Vatican and Daschbach is revered for his role during the tiny Southeast Asian nation's fight for independence.

The church and foreign donors who once supported the shelter said Daschbach confessed to the abuse in 2018, when he was defrocked by the church.

But he maintains strong alliances and the former priest and his lawyers have at various times refused to comment.

They did not make their legal strategy public and court proceedings were closed.

Daschbach, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, was ordained in 1964 by the Society of the Divine Word at its headquarters outside of Chicago.

Hundreds of children passed through his shelter, set up in the 1990s, with many going on to study in the US, Australia and Indonesia.

Daschbach, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, started Topu Honis (pictured) in 1992 in the remote enclave of Oecusse

More than a dozen females came forward with abuse claims, but only nine were registered in the case due to legal technicalities. During the proceedings, victims complained about threats and online attacks.

The Associated Press spoke with five of the accusers. They recalled their experiences in vivid detail, saying Daschbach kept a list of young girls on his bedroom door and that every night one of those girls would sit on his lap, surrounded by a ring of children and staff members praying and singing hymns before bed.

They said the girl on his lap would then sleep with him that night and that various types of abuse - from oral sex to rape - would occur, sometimes involving other children too. The accusers have not been identified because of fears of retribution.

Daschbach's lawyer Julio Farma said they are disappointed with the court's verdict and plan to appeal the decision issued by the three judges.

'Evidence provided by the shelter matron and former students who lived in the orphanage were ignored by the court,' Farma told reporters, adding that some accusers changed their statements made earlier to authorities in Oecusse when they were examined in the capital, Dili, and the new statements became the sole basis for the judges' decision.

'We cannot accept this and will appeal,' Farma said.

Dozens of Daschbach's supporters, including several children brought by Gusmao from Dili, wept and some were screaming as it became clear the court would send the ex-priest to jail.

In a statement Tuesday, JU,S Juridico Social, a group of human rights lawyers representing the accusers, applauded the verdict but said it would appeal, arguing that the sentence should be harsher.

Under the law, Daschbach faced more than twice the prison time he received.

Dozens of Daschbach's (pictured in outside court in East Timor in February 2021) supporters, including several children brought by Gusmao from Dili, wept and some were screaming as it became clear the court would send the ex-priest to jail

'The history written today is a bitter history for the entire nation,' the group said.

'Our children were subjected to horrendous crimes for such a long time because we, as a society, were blinded by the belief that a figure as the defendant in this case would not commit such crimes against children.'

Separately, a US federal grand jury in Washington, DC, indicted Daschbach in August. He faces seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct at the shelter.

If convicted in the US, Daschbach could receive up to 30 years in prison for each count, but the Department of Justice has not said whether it plans to try to extradite the ex-priest.

Daschbach also is wanted in the US for three counts of wire fraud linked to one of his California-based donors, which accused him in a court case of violating an agreement to protect those under his care.

An Interpol 'Red Notice' has been issued internationally for Daschbach's arrest.
A man who spent 23 years in a Georgia prison for a murder he did not commit was freed on Monday, over a decade after DNA tied a convicted killer to the crime.

Devonia Inman, 43, was greeted by his mother and stepfather, Dinah and David Ray, as he left Augusta State Medical Prison.

'I'm happy,' he said. 'It's been a long time.'

Inman was 20 when he was arrested for the 1998 killing of Donna Brown, a night manager at Taco Bell in Adel, Georgia.

He was jailed after prosecutors withheld evidence pointing to his innocence, and remained there for 10 years after DNA identified a convicted murderer as Brown's actual killer.

Brown, a 40-year-old mother to a seven-year-old son, was leaving for the night with a bag containing $1,732 in cash.

A gunman shot her in the face, stole her car and drove off with the bag of money.

Devonia Inman is seen embracing his mother Dinah Ray and stepfather David Ray on Monday, after he was released from Augusta State Medical Prison

Inman is embraced by his mother as he walks out of prison on Monday a free man

Inman, who had moved from California only a few months before to live with relatives, having fallen in with a bad crowd on the West Coast, was arrested shortly after based on the accounts of four witnesses.

One, Marquetta Thomas, was his girlfriend's sister; another was a jailhouse snitch; and a third was a Taco Bell employee.

Inman is seen in his booking photo, aged 20

All three later admitted they lied: the Taco Bell employee to satisfy persistent detectives, and the snitch to reduce his own sentence.

'Basically, I made it up, just to get him out of the picture,' said Thomas, who was the first to implicate Inman.

He was in a volatile romantic relationship with her younger sister, WSB reported.

'I was like, 'I'm going to get this guy,'' Thomas admitted.

At trial, the judge refused to allow Inman's lawyers to bring in witnesses who said that another man, Hercules Brown, who worked at the Taco Bell - no relation to Donna Brown - had admitted to the killing.

Inman always insisted he was innocent, but in 2001 he was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole.

Donna Brown, 40, was shot and killed in 1998 as she left the Taco Bell where she worked carrying $1,700 in takings

A decade later, the Georgia Innocence Project took up his case, after DNA evidence revealed that a ski mask worn during the robbery had Hercules Brown's DNA on it.

Hercules Brown was convicted of two murders, two years after Donna Brown was killed

A similar homemade ski mask was found in Hercules Brown's car after another attempted armed robbery.

By this point, Hercules Brown was already in prison, having been convicted of the murder of two more people in an Adel convenience store two years after Donna Brown was killed.

In 2014 they petitioned for a new trial, but the case was rejected, without explanation.

In 2017, the case became the subject of a podcast created by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Inman's lawyers from Troutman Pepper filed yet another appeal, in 2018, asking that Inman's conviction be overturned on grounds he is actually innocent.

Inman is seen as he is driven away from the prison, with his three-year-old granddaughter Alona Jackson looking on

Inman hugs his tearful mother on Monday, after he was finally freed from prison

The state Attorney General's Office tried to get the latest appeal dismissed, but the state Supreme Court allowed it to proceed - with David Nahmias, the presiding justice on the Supreme Court, saying that of the more than 1,500 murder cases he had reviewed, this was among the most troubling.

'Of the multitude of cases in which a new trial has been denied, Inman's case is the one that causes me the most concern that an innocent person remains convicted and sentenced to serve the rest of his life in prison,' Nahmias wrote.

In November this year, a North Georgia judge found that prosecutors withheld critical evidence at Inman's trial and orders a new trial.

On Monday, hours after Cook County prosecutors dismissed the murder charges against Inman, he walked out of prison a free man.

'I can breathe now,' his mother said.

'For 23 years, I've felt like my life was on hold.'
Kyle Sandilands will have his day in court next year when he appeals a decision by NSW Police to refuse him a gun license.

Sandilands, 50, is taking the Police Commissioner to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal after he was denied a license over claims he's not a 'fit and proper person' to own a gun license.

A lawyer for Sandilands briefly appeared in court on Tuesday and a hearing date has been set down for March 7.

Sandilands already owns a handgun licence which permits him to operate guns under supervision at a pistol club in Sydney's southwest.

Kyle Sandilands (pictured at a gun range in LA with Karl Stefanovic in 2020) has been denied a gun licence as police tally a list of reasons against the host owning firearms

Authorities are concerned by the Sandiland's (left) friendship with convicted drug trafficker Simon Main (second from left) who spent four years in an Italian prison

However, the radio host wants to take his passion for firearms to the next level by buying a pistol and a rifle - but has been blocked by police.

Authorities claim they are concerned by the Sandiland's recent friendship with convicted drug trafficker Simon Main, who spent four years in an Italian prison.

Main attempted to shift 333,000 ecstasy pills worth about $10 million in 2000, considered the world's largest bust of the illicit drug at the time.

A close friend of the radio host told The Australian that his sometimes chaotic on-air antics was also used as justification for why he could not be trusted with a firearm.

The notorious shock jock (pictured) wants to take his passion for firearms to the next level by purchasing a pistol and a rifle but has been blocked by police

They said shooting was Sandiland's only hobby, adding that pre-conceived ideas of how the host might handle a gun were incorrect.

Under licensing rules, police must determine if an individual applying for a gun permit is a 'fit and proper' person through a gruelling process including multiple background checks.

Applicants may be refused if they have a history of mental health problems, domestic violence charges, or are associated with any criminal intelligence.

A person seeking to own a gun can also be rejected if it is not in the 'public interest' for them to acquire one or if they could be a 'danger to public safety or the peace'.

A close friend of the radio host (pictured) told The Australian that his sometimes chaotic on-air antics was evidence as to why he could not be trusted with a firearm
The ACT are hours away from reinstating the mandatory wearing of masks as a concerning spike in Covid-19 cases soars in neighbouring NSW.

Masks must be worn in all indoor settings, including retail, hospitality venues, workplaces, aged care facilities and on public transport in Canberra

The reinstated rules come into effect 11.59pm Tuesday.

'In the past week we have seen a significant increase in case numbers in the ACT, and around half of our active cases have been confirmed as the Omicron variant,' ACT's acting chief minister Yvette Berry said.

The wearing of masks will be reinstated in public indoor settings in the ACT from midnight

'Wearing a mask indoors is a small price to pay to keep your family and friends safe. In addition to wearing a mask indoors, we all have a responsibility to continue our COVID-safe behaviours, practise physical distancing and good hygiene.'

Visitor limits will also be reintroduced at aged care facilities, where residents will be restricted to five visitors per day and at any one time.

There is no daily limit on the number of visitors for end-of-life visits.

'While we have world-leading vaccination rates here in the ACT, it is important that we continue to strive for the right balance in our public health and social measures to keep our community safe,' health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said.

'Reinstating mandatory mask wearing indoors is a sensible step to mitigate the risks posed by Omicron. We will continue to monitor the situation over the holiday period, listen to the health advice and respond further if needed.'

The reinstated rules will remain place in the nation's capital over the Christmas/New Year period and will be reviewed further in January.

Of the 124 current cases in the nation's capital, 62 are of the Omicron variant

ACT Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry announced the reinstated restrictions on Tuesday

The ACT recorded 16 new cases on Tuesday while NSW recorded 3,057, Australia's highest spike in daily infections during the pandemic.

The nation's capital has recorded 91 cases in the last week.

Half of the 124 current active cases in the ACT are of the Omicron variant.

There's growing pressure on NSW to also reinstate masks in public indoor settings a week after the restrictions were scrapped.

Health officials recommend the wearing of masks, amid fears cases could grow to a daily spike of up to 25,000 by the end of January.

Australia's chief medical officer Paul Kelly has written to premiers and chief ministers to recommending 'masks should be mandated in all indoor settings including retail, hospitality when not eating or drinking, and entertainment facilities'.

Masks have been reinstated as the ACT experiences a 'significant' increase in case numbers

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet urged his state to 'live with the virus.'

'We are taking a balanced and proportionate response that is completely focused on keeping people safe, while at the same time opening up our economy and ensuring that people are able to work and provide for their families,' he said.

'There will always be new variants of this virus. The pandemic is not going away. We need to learn to live alongside it.'
Pentagon officials have issued new guidance to try and combat the rise in service personnel with extremist beliefs, after a sharp increase in members with worrying views.

The new guidelines, issued on Monday, come nearly a year after some current and former service members participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol, triggering a broad department review. They outline what could constitute extremist activity - and warn that service members liking extremist posts on social media could find themselves being monitored as a result.

Around 100 members of the US military were confirmed to have been involved in some form of extremist activity over the last year - well up from the 'low double figures' number from the previous survey, the Pentagon announced.

However, Department of Defense officials warn that the number may grow given recent spikes in domestic violent extremism, particularly among veterans.

Monday's guidelines don't specifically ban service members from participating in extremist groups, because of their First Amendment right to free speech. They've been created to try and deter or dissuade members from joining in the first place, or becoming actively-involved, which can lead to punishment.

Among active service members accused of partaking in extremist activity is Marine Major Chris Warnagiris. He was the only active duty member of the military to have been charged for participating in the January 6 Capitol attack, so far.

A Department of Justice criminal probe against active Marine Major Christopher Warnagiris, the only active member of the military present at the January 6 riots last year at the Capital contains screen grabs taken from camera footage at the Capitol of the suspect believed to be Warnagiris (pictured)

He pleaded not guilty to multiple violent crimes, including physically assaulting or impeding officers at the Capitol, after 'push himself through' the doors of the Capitol East Rotunda, where officers are said to have 'lost ground' to rioters already inside the building who were attempting to open the doors.

Once inside and aiding other extremists in getting in, a police officer inside the Capitol attempted to shut the doors. However, Warnagiris allegedly resisted and instead confronted the officer, pushing him away to keep the door open, according to investigators' review of security and open-source videos from that day that is described in court documents.

Warnagis is now facing a superseding indictment. He has been a Marine since 2002 and was stationed at Camp Quantico, in Virginia, as of late.

A Board of Inquiry was held at Marine Corps Base Quantico earlier this year for Warnagiris to argue his case to stay in the Marine Corps. The outcome is pending.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin Defense Secretary, among several leaders, is doubling efforts to reduce extremism across the U.S. after it was evident that military veterans and some active service members were among the crowd at the January 6 insurrection

The Pentagon's new policy lays out in detail activities which could get personnel flagged as extremists. They range from advocating terrorism or supporting the overthrow of the government to fundraising or rallying on behalf of an extremist group or 'liking' or reposting extremist views on social media.

The rules also specify that commanders must determine two things in order for someone to be held accountable: that the action was an extremist activity, as defined in the rules, and that the service member 'actively participated' in that prohibited activity.

Anyone found to have actively participated in extremism faces punishment, although further details on what exactly could be done to an extremist service member have not been shared.

Previous policies banned extremist activities but didn't go into such great detail, and also did not specify the two-step process to determine someone accountable.

The Pentagon said it had drawn up the rules partly to offer specifics from service members, who have called for greater clarity on what they can and cannot do.

Pentagon officials shared new strict rules on Monday, banning active service members from participating in extremist activities. The new set of rules follows current and former service members participating in the riot at the U.S. Capitol, triggering a broad department review.

According to the Pentagon, around 100 military members are known to have engaged in proven cases of extremist activity in the past year. But they warn that the number may grow given recent spikes in domestic violent extremism, particularly among veterans. Pictured: Violent insurrections loyal to President Donald Trump try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021

The Pentagon, in its report on extremism, said that available data generally shows that cases of prohibited extremist activity among servicemembers were rare. Among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a group of camouflage-clad individuals, some of whom wore observable Oath Keeper patches (pictured)

The military has long been aware of small numbers of white supremacists and other extremists among the troops. But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other leaders launched a broader campaign to root out extremism in the force after it became clear that military veterans and some current service members were present at the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

In a message to the force on Monday, Austin said the department believes that only a few service members violate their oath and participate in extremist activities.

But, he added, 'even the actions of a few can have an outsized impact on unit cohesion, morale and readiness - and the physical harm some of these activities can engender can undermine the safety of our people.'

The risk of extremism in the military can be more dangerous because many service members have access to classified information about sensitive military operations or other national security information that could help adversaries. And extremist groups routinely recruit former and current service members because of their familiarity with weapons and combat tactics.

The number of substantiated cases may be small compared to the size of the military, which includes more than 2 million active duty and reserve troops. But the number appears to be an increase over previous years where the totals were in the low two-digits. But officials also noted that data has not been consistent so it is difficult to identify trends.

For now, Marine Maj. Christopher Warnagiris (circled in red) was the only active duty member of the military to have been charged for participating in the January 6 Capitol attack. Warnagris can be seen storming inside the Capitol, resisting retainment

Marine Maj. Christopher Warnagiris (circled in red) can be seen at the Capitol door, trying to open it for extremists

The new rules do not provide a list of extremist organizations. Instead, it is up to commanders to determine if a service member is actively conducting extremist activities based on the definitions, rather than on a list of groups that may be constantly changing, officials said.

Asked whether troops can simply be members of an extremist organization, officials said the rules effectively prohibit membership in any meaningful way - such as the payment of dues or other actions that could be considered 'active participation.'

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters that 'there's not a whole lot about membership in a group that you're going to be able to get away with.' He added, 'In order to prove your membership you're probably going to run afoul of one of these criteria.'

Kirby also said that commanders will evaluate each case individually, so simply clicking 'like' on one social media post, for example, might not merit punishment depending on all the circumstances involved.

He also noted that the Pentagon does not have the ability or desire to actively monitor troops' personal social media accounts. Those issues would likely come up if reported to commanders or were discovered through other means.

The regulations lay out six broad groups of extremist activities and then provide 14 different definitions that constitute active participation.

In this Jan. 6, 2021 photo, insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump try to open a door of the U.S. Capitol as they riot in Washington. At least a dozen of the 400 people charged so far in the Jan. 6 insurrection have made dubious claims about their encounters with officers at the Capitol.

In this Jan. 6, 2021, photo, smoke fills the walkway outside the Senate Chamber as supporters of President Donald Trump, including Eric Bochene, far right, are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers inside the Capitol in Washington

Supporters of President Donald Trump, including Jacob Chansley, right with fur hat, are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Senate chamber inside the Capitol during the capitol riot in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. Chansley was sentenced on Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021, to 41 months in prison for his felony conviction for obstructing an official proceeding

Soon after taking office, Austin ordered military leaders to schedule a so-called 'stand-down' day and spend time talking to their troops about extremism in the ranks.

The new rules apply to all of the military services, including the Coast Guard, which in peacetime is part of the Department of Homeland Security. They were developed through recommendations from the Countering Extremist Activities Working Group. And they make the distinction, for example, that troops may possess extremist materials, but they cant attempt to distribute them, and while they can observe an extremist rally, they cant participate, fund or support one.

The rules, said the officials, focus on behavior, not ideology. So service members have whatever political, religious or other beliefs that they want, but their actions and behavior are governed.

In addition to the new rules, the Pentagon is expanding its screening for recruits to include a deeper look at potential extremist activities. Some activities may not totally prevent someone from joining the military, but require a closer look at the applicant.

The department also is expanding education and training for current military members, and more specifically for those leaving the service who may be suddenly subject to recruitment by extremist organizations.

More than 650 people have been charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, including dozens of veterans and about a half dozen active duty service members.
Former State or Origin and NRL star Michael Jennings has been ordered to pay his ex-wife $500,000 in damages after a bitter court case.

Kirra Wilden, Mr Jennings ex-wife, sought damages against the former star centre after alleging he had abused her during the relationship.

The allegations included that Mr Jennings raped her four times between October 2014 and early 2016.

Ms Wilden sued for personal injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder, she said she sustained during the relationship.

Former NRL star Michael Jennings is iictured with his ex-wife Kirra Wilden at the 2015 Dally M Awards. She has ben awarded $490,000 in damages, plus court costs, after alleging he abused her throughout their relationship

Judge David Wilson ruled in Ms Wilden's favour in the NSW District Court on Tuesday and ordered Mr Jennings pay her nearly $490,000 in damages.

The award included $200,000 in general damages, $51,000 for costs related to future treatment, and $100,000 for economic loss.

'It is plain that Ms Wilden has suffered enormous insult, humiliation, embarrassment and shame by the conduct of Mr Jennings, and that ought to be reflected in an award of damages,' Judge Wilson said in his judgement.

Mr Jennings was ordered to pay Ms Wilden's legal costs.

Judge Wilson also referred the case to NSW police for further investigation.

Mr Jennings has has never been charged in relation to the case. He denies sexually assaulting Ms Wilden and said if she suffered PTSD, he was not the cause

Jennings was considered one of the NRL's premier centre during a 13-year first-grade career playing with the Penrith Panthers, Sydney Roosters and Parramatta Eels

Mr Jennings has has never been charged in relation to the case. He denies sexually assaulting Ms Wilden and said if she suffered PTSD, he was not the cause.

During the proceedings Ms Wilden gave evidence that Mr Jennings had verbally abused her and physically assaulted her while drunk.

She testified that Mr Jennings had sex with her in October 2014 after she'd said 'no' but that she did not regard it as rape at the time because she felt it was her 'duty' to have sex with him.

The court heard Ms Wilden answered banging on the front door to find Jennings on his hands and knees before he crawled through the front door, laughing.

She testified that he touched her in bed while accusing her of sleeping with other men and called her 'a slut.'

Ms Wilden said she resisted Jennings' advances but that he 'pulled my underwear down'

'He... then began having sex with me and I just laid there, looking away and crying.'

She said she sat in the shower afterwards feeling 'violated and disgusting'.

The contents of some 47,000 text messages between the pair were used in evidence in the trial, with Mr Jennings' defence team arguing the messages supported his denial of sexual assault.

In one series of texts from October 2013, it was apparent Mr Jennings had called Ms Wilden a c*** during an episode in which he was 'acting crazy, punching the car and burning (his) left hair off'.

Mr Jennings acknowledged that he would get angry when drunk, but attributed the anger to the behaviour of Ms Wilden.

Justice Wilson found Ms Wilden a 'credible' witness whose testimony in the trial was 'consistent'.

By contrast he described that Mr Jennings would often smile or laugh while giving evidence, 'which raised concerns as to the seriousness which he attached to the proceedings generally.

'Whilst those characteristics might be excused on the basis that he may well have been nervous, there were also inconsistencies in his evidence which caused doubts as to his reliability.

'He also gave evidence that he had a history of lying to Ms Wilden, mostly as to his social life.'

The court heard evidence of Mr Jennings' drug use, including using cocaine during Mad Monday celebrations at the end of seasons between 2013 and 2016.

Justice Wilson issued an order protecting Mr Jennings from prosecution for his drug use in exchange for his testimony in the case.

Mr Jennings was considered one of the NRL's premier centre during a 13-year first-grade career playing with the Penrith Panthers, Sydney Roosters and Parramatta Eels. He also represented Australia seven times between 2009 and 2015.
An epidemiologist from Western Australia has bragged about attending Christmas parties with no masks in sight due to the state's ability to 'sustain zero Covid'.

Dr Zoe Hyde, an infectious disease expert from the University of WA, said she went to two end of year celebrations recently where 'not a single person was wearing a mask'.

'And it was okay, because there's no epidemic where I live,' she continued in a tweet on Monday night.

'Western Australia has managed to sustain zero Covid for nearly 2 years. Eliminating Covid-19 was always possible. The world chose not to.'

The tweet sparked a major debate online with one woman asking 'at what cost?', referencing the thousands of families who were unable to see loved ones for two years due to Premier Mark McGowan's tough border closures.

Dr Zoe Hyde, an infectious disease expert from the University of WA, said she went to two end of year celebrations recently where 'not a single person was wearing a mask'

'People have been separated from their families for two years. Loved ones have died alone with no compassion or exemptions applied. It's beyond cruel,' she wrote.

'Good on WA, but if any place had the right conditions to achieve Covid zero it was WA - Perth being the most isolated capital city in the world. Comments like these minimise the efforts and sacrifices made by Vic, NSW citizens to keep case numbers down Australia wide (incl WA)' wrote another.

But others defended Dr Hyde and the state's hardline approach to the virus.

Premier Mark McGowan said quarantine-free travel would resume from February 5

'Cruel is spreading covid to your family and others,' one said,

'What is beyond cruel is that you want to infect, kill and destroy the lives of many!' tweeted another.

WA has remained relatively Covid-free throughout the pandemic and the borders have remained shut tight for nearly the entirety.

Earlier this month the premier announced quarantine-free travel into his state would finally resume from February 5.

Dr Hyde had earlier called for the borders to remain shut until residents had received all three Covid-19 vaccinations.

'We need to know how well our vaccines are going to hold up against [Omicron],' she told ABC News.

'I think our existing plan would have worked if we were facing the Delta variant... but I think the conditions are very different now.

'If we open with our current levels of vaccination, I think the virus is going to spread like wildfire,' she said, adding the February re-opening would likely lead to hundreds of Covid deaths in WA.
Tucker Carlson assailed House Rep. Eric Swalwell for suggesting that air travelers should be required to get vaccinated while bizarrely accusing the California congressman of having contracted multiple chlamydia infections.

The Fox News host made the claim during his primetime talk show on Monday night. During the segment, he included a graphic which portrayed Swalwell in bed with Fang Fang.

Fang Fang is a reference to Christine Fang, a suspected Chinese spy who helped raise money for several Democratic Party politicians, including Swalwell.

Tucker Carlson slams Eric Swalwell, who he calls "probably the most physically unclean member of Congress," for thinking unvaccinated Americans should be banned from airplanes. pic.twitter.com/JFbfGl9BuH  The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 21, 2021

Fox News host Tucker Carlson (left) posted a graphic depicting House Rep. Eric Swalwell, the Democrat from California, as 'in bed with Fang Fang'. Carlson also alleged on his show that Swalwell contracted multiple chlamydia infections

Fang Fang is a reference to Christine Fang, a suspected Chinese spy who helped raise money for several Democratic Party politicians, including Swalwell. Swalwell has not confirmed or denied allegations that he and Fang were involved sexually

Carlson lambasted Swalwell for his suggestion that those who fly should be required to get vaccinated

THE FANG FANG MYSTERY - WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON'T KNOW WHO IS 'CHRISTINE' FANG FANG? Fang - if that is her real name - arrived in the U.S. as a Chinese national student at Cal State East Bay in 2011 as an undergraduate - although she appeared to be in her late 20s or early 30s. She became president of the Chinese Student Association then used her position to become part of the area's Democratic political scene. HOW DID SHE MEET SWALWELL? Sometime in 2012, although exactly how is unclear but she was almost ubiquitous at political events - not just Democratic ones - in the Bay area between 2013 and 2015. Swalwell won his district in 2013, and before that was a member of the Dublin City Council. Pictures of them together are all at political events in the Bay area. DID THEY HAVE SEX? He refuses to say, saying their relationship is a matter of national security. If the FBI was following her and bugging her, they may have a good idea of whether the two did or not - but they could not legally have eavesdropped on him as a congressman, and if they did so intentionally, that would be a major breach of the law. Swalwell was divorced from his first wife by 2012 and married his second wife, Brittany Watts, in 2016. HOW DID THE FBI FIND HER OUT? Fang seems to have been monitored since she was a student but exactly when the FBI surveillance operation started is unknown. It is known that she had contact with a suspected Chinese intelligence officer stationed at its San Francisco consulate. Diplomatic communications are routinely monitored. WHO ELSE DID SHE ENSNARE? Fang had sex with two unnamed mayors, one of an 'obscure' Ohio city (anywhere with a population of more than 5,000 in Ohio is a city) and one an 'older' mayor from the midwest. They had sex in a car but he claimed he was teaching her English. Both encounters were overheard by the FBI. She is also Facebook friends with current and former mayors and attended get-togethers for urban leaders. WHY WASN'T SHE ARRESTED? It is unclear but counter-intelligence operations by the FBI are often intended to simply disrupt enemy spying and get them out of the country. Fang seems to have known she was compromised when she vanished in 2015. DID SWALWELL DO ANYTHING WRONG? So far the leaked FBI investigation and Swalwell's own account is clear that he acted properly, cutting ties with her when the FBI told her she was a danger to national security. However her lingering presence in his family's Facebook friendship circuit must raise questions about the extent to which he cut ties. WHY DIDN'T WE KNOW ABOUT THIS BEFORE? The FBI keeps its secrets close to its vest and disrupting a spy who was targeting at least two members of Congress would have been a major coup for its counter-intelligence agents. Letting China know just how much the agency had come to understand of Fang's activities in her four years in the U.S. helps them hone their espionage in future to make it more difficult to detect. Advertisement

Swalwell, who married his second wife Brittany in 2016, has not confirmed or denied allegations that he and Fang were involved sexually.

Swalwell, the Democrat from California, drew Carlson's ire after tweeting: 'On a flight now to Bay Area and it is one-hundred percent batty that the unvaccinated are allowed to fly.

'It's unsafe in the cabin and we are transporting the virus.

'Requiring the vaccine to fly is the LEAST we can do to stop the spread.'

Carlson blasted Swalwells suggestion during his monologue on Monday.

'Well, the lesson that Eric Swalwell is drawing from all of this is that unvaccinated Americans should be banned by law from flying on airplanes in their own country,' said Carlson.

'Now, the airlines disagree with this. They thought a lot about it. So does any sane physician. They have too.

'But Eric Swalwell, who's probably the most physically unclean member of Congress, now imagines himself a public health official with the power to make these decisions.

'So before we go any further and grant Eric Swalwell that power, we probably oughta see his medical records.

'It'd be kind of ironic if a guy with multiple chlamydia infections was lecturing the rest of us about how to keep safe from a virus.

'We await that data.'

There is no suggestion that Swalwell has ever contracted any STIs, and Carlson offered no further evidence to back up his assertion.

Carlsons mention of Swalwell was preceded in the segment by his noting of the fact that two Democratic senators - Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts - announced they tested positive for COVID-19.

Booker and Warren had at least six vaccine injections and now theyre sick, Carlson said.

So what is the lesson here exactly?

In 2015, Fang fled the United States after spending years allegedly targeting up-and-coming politicians in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere who had potential to become prominent on the national stage.

It has been alleged that Fang used her charm and network abilities to gain proximity to powerful figures. Current and former US intelligence officials told Axios she may have been involved sexually with at least two Midwestern mayors.

Fang is said to have taken part in fundraising activity for Swalwells re-election campaign in 2014.

She is also alleged to have placed an intern in Swalwells office. Photographs surfaced showing Fang and Swalwell posing together.

In 2015, federal investigators alerted Swalwell to their suspicions that Fang was working on behalf of Chinese intelligence.

The California lawmaker cut ties to Fang and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

During the investigation into her activities, Fang fled the country in 2015.

Federal investigators have alleged that Fangs activities are part and parcel of escalating Chinese efforts to gain access to key American policymakers.

Swalwell has said he is not compromised by his relationship with Fang, and says the controversy would not cost him his seat on the Intelligence Committee.

Swalwell said he first became aware that Axios was looking into Fang's activities in July 2019, around the time he was ending his brief bid for the Democratic presidential nomination  during which he was a strong critic of the president.

While Fang interacted with other current members of the House, Swalwell believes the information was leaked to specifically target him.
After a three-course Italian dinner, champagne, red wine and board games with friends, Mandy Melzer-Head told her partner she wanted to end their relationship.

They had enjoyed a good night but Trefor Kingdon, 65, was in the middle of a divorce, his relationship with his children had deteriorated and she felt there was a lack of commitment from him.

Ms Melzer-Head was, like all women in her situation, entitled to end the relationship without retribution, Victorian Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry said on Tuesday.

Trefor Kingdon (pictured), 65, was sentenced on Tuesday to at least 16 years in prison

Mandy Melzer-Head (pictured) had wanted to break up with him and told him after they spent the evening having dinner with friends

She should have been able to do so without Kingdon's violent reaction.

He stabbed her 11 times with a kitchen knife in the home they shared in Bendoc, in Victoria's northeast.

'I think I've killed Mandy,' Kingdon said as he staggered into the room where his friend was staying.

The friend called triple zero and performed CPR until help arrived, but Ms Melzer-Head died on the kitchen floor.

She and Kingdon had been childhood sweethearts who reunited decades later after a school reunion.

Justice Lasry lamented this was yet another example of violence against a woman, ending with a man killing a woman he professed to love when she tried to leave him.

'It carries the implication of 'look what you made me do',' he said.

Ms Melzer-Head's daughter Alexandra described perpetual darkness and despair since the murder but hopes she can some day remember her mother's endless energy, creativity and compassion with fondness rather than pain.

'I hope I can find the strength because mum, her life, her laughter and her light deserve to be celebrated,' she said.

Georgie Head said not seeing her mum make new memories with her own children left her with 'a sadness that hurts my body to the core'.

Ms Melzer-Head's (pictured) daughter said she feels a 'sadness to her core' that she will not get to know her grandchildren

Kingdon, a former mortgage broker, was jailed on Tuesday for 23 years.

He had no history of domestic violence offending.

'I know I've caused so much pain to so many people ... I know I will be punished for what I did and that's just and right,' he said in a statement.

Justice Lasry accepted Kingdon was remorseful but found his moral culpability was high.

Kingdon must serve at least 16 years and three months before he will become eligible for parole.

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Pharmacies across Britain are running out of lateral flow tests amid a supply chain crisis following a huge scramble by people to get hold of kits before Christmas.

More than 11million test kits were sent out to pharmacies last week  double the number in the previous week - but this was not enough as many Britons are taking to social media to complain they still cannot not find a pack anywhere locally.

Some pharmacies placed signs inside their branches saying they were temporarily out of stock, while people have also been struggling to order the tests online.

The 'unprecedented' demand has been further accelerated by people desperate to get themselves tested before seeing or staying with relatives over Christmas.

However, there do appear to be plenty of slots available across the UK for PCR tests for those who test positive on a lateral flow as well as members of their household.

It comes after the Government announced on December 12 that fully vaccinated contacts of people who had tested positive would no longer need to self-isolate themselves but instead take a lateral flow test each day for seven days.

A huge surge in demand shortly after this statement by Boris Johnson prompted the Government website to say they were 'not available right now' for order.

A woman points at a sign in the window of a pharmacy in North London on Saturday which has run out of lateral flow test kits

This poster by the UK Health Security Agency is a common sight at pharmacies across the UK

Health experts have also been discussing when is the appropriate time to take the tests as people can change from being testing positive to negative in just hours.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said pharmacies across England received 'record numbers' of lateral flow tests during the week of December 13.

How can you get hold of lateral flow tests? The NHS has a searching tool which allows people to find their nearest pharmacies which have tests available to collect. It is: www.maps.test-and-trace.nhs.uk. Alternatively, people can order a pack from Gov.uk to be delivered to their homes. One pack can be ordered per day. They can also be collected from community collection points or people can visit a testing point near to their homes. Advertisement

Contractors offering the 'Covid-19 lateral flow device distribution service' said there was a surge in demand for the kits after the Prime Minister's statement, reported the Pharmaceutical Journal.

On December 14, pharmacy leaders said 'numerous contractors' warned that supplies of the kits at pharmacies were unable to match public demand.

But the UKHSA said yesterday that 'over 11 million test kits [were] sent to pharmacies across the UK' in the week starting December 13 and that the supply chain issue 'is being resolved and normal service will resume shortly'.

A spokesman added: 'There is no shortage of free rapid tests and there are a range of ways that people can get them to help combat the spread of Covid-19.'

According to the Pharmaceutical Journal, an update from Alliance Healthcare on Sunday said 'unprecedented demand for lateral flow test kits from people testing due to the Omicron variant, combined with precautionary testing before the Christmas period, continues'.

Last week, people reported being unable to order lateral flow tests on the NHS website while pharmacies displayed posters saying they had run out of stock.

People trying to book walk-in PCR tests also encountered problems, with some being directed to sites several miles away or being told no slots were available.

Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UKHSA, has downplayed suggestions of a shortage, and said requests for lateral flow tests 'have been absolutely astounding', with 'unprecedented demand' for PCR tests.

How accurate are lateral flow tests? A study by the Queen Mary University of London, the University of Oxford, the Institute for Advanced Studies based in Vienna, and the Medical University of Graz published in July found that lateral flow tests detected more than 95 per cent of the cases found by PCR and correctly identified 89 per cent of cases as negative. In March 2021, the Royal College of Pathologists said positive results by LFTs should be confirmed by PCR tests and people should self-isolate before they receive their PCR result. Last week, the Health Security Agency (HSA) said lateral flow tests are as likely to detect Omicron as other variants of coronavirus. PCR tests are still considered to be the most accurate tests when diagnosing coronavirus but should only be used by people who are showing symptoms. Advertisement

Sir Chris Wormald, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, said issues getting hold of tests laid with distribution, rather than availability.

The Company Chemists' Association (CCA), the trade association for large pharmacy operators in England, Scotland and Wales including Rowlands and Superdrug, said demand had outstripped supply in some areas.

Chief executive Malcolm Harrison said: 'CCA members continue to receive supplies of lateral flow tests but we are aware that in a few areas there have been difficulties as demand outstrips supply, especially in the lead up to Christmas.

'Pharmacies are managing the demand as best as they can and we urge members of the public to be patient at this challenging time for us all.'

A spokesperson from Boots said the chain provides lateral flow tests at more than 2,100 pharmacies in the UK but 'there may be a small number of stores that are experiencing temporary shortages due to higher demand in certain areas'.

Lloyd's Pharmacy said tests were available but there was 'significant demand'.

Currently, there are no issues with ordering tests on the Government's website.

Lateral flow tests, or antigen tests, are the rapid tests which tell people whether or not they have coronavirus.

Lateral flow tests provide results and tell people in 30 minutes if they have coronavirus by detecting proteins from the virus in the nose and throat samples.

Scientists have mixed views on their accuracy. PCR tests are, however, extremely accurate but take up to three days for results to come through.

They detect the genetic material from a specific organism, specifically coronavirus, and are the best way to test if you have a current infection.

According to the Royal College of Pathologists, lateral flow tests should be taken by people who do not have symptoms.

A factsheet on the RCP's website states: 'These tests are very different from PCR. They are not suitable for diagnosing individual patients who suspect they may be infected because they have symptoms.

'People with symptoms need a PCR test. Lateral flow tests are intended for picking up additional infected cases who would otherwise be missed because they don't have any symptoms.'

On the NHS website, it also says that people who have symptoms of coronavirus should also complete a lateral flow test rather than a PCR test.

People have also been struggling to order lateral flow tests online (pictured on December 13). Currently, there are no issues with ordering tests on the Government's website

Current advice states that if you test positive on a lateral flow you should follow up with a PCR test.

People are advised to do lateral flow tests before mixing with crowds in indoor places or visiting someone who is at high risk of getting Covid-19.

It's also advised that if you're vaccinated, but have been in contact with someone who then tests positive for coronavirus, you should do a lateral flow test.

On Sunday, Irene Petersen, a professor of epidemiology at University College London, said official advice should be updated to say that people should take the tests just before they are about to meet others due to the fast infection rate of Omicron.

She added that tests results 'expire quickly' as people 'may switch from being non-infectious to infectious within hours'.

Government guidance currently recommends taking a test 'if you will be in a high-risk situation that day'.

Professor Stephen Reicher told BBC Breakfast yesterday that people should be doing lateral flow tests before meeting up with friends and family this Christmas.
Queensland is refusing to back down from forcing travellers to produce a negative PCR test before entering the state.

Paranoid premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's demand is causing massive testing delays for visitors, putting Christmas plans in jeopardy.

Queensland chief health officer John Gerrard confirmed the testing requirement would stay in place until the state is 90 per cent vaccinated.

Travellers must have their test within 72 hours of showing up to the border, but as well over 200,000 people get tested a day, the wait time can be longer.

This would not only result in the traveller being unable to cross the border on time, but would render their test ineligible through no fault of their own.

Some desperate holidaymaker are turning up to the border without their results - and being promptly turned away.

Motorists queue inside their cars at the St Vincent's Bondi Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday in Sydney's east - many require a negative PCR test before travelling to venues such as Queensland for Christmas

The delays are also significant in states such as Victoria and South Australia, as people scramble to receive negative results before travelling interstate

'We are seeing people actually flout this at the moment so the strong message is if you don't have that negative PCR test, you will be turned around,' Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said.

'We have taken a compassionate approach in extreme cases, placing people in quarantine, however, we are seeing people not making a genuine effort to get the PCR test and wait for that required period to get the test back and come into Queensland.'

According to the Courier Mail, in the past 24 hours, 36,271 vehicles crossed the border - with 325 turned around.

Ms Carroll also confirmed there was one arrest and four fines issued for non-compliance.

'We've seen a number of people failing to comply with the Covid health directions in terms of wearing masks and being asked to do so, and trying to get into premises while unvaccinated,' she said.

Many Australians will need to get tested for Covid by Wednesday if they want a negative result before Christmas Day, as demand for a swab soars across the country.

Clinics are swamped with extensive queues in recent days amid a surge in cases and a frantic rush to meet interstate testing requirements.

In Melbourne, a line for a Covid-19 walk-in testing centre stretched around the block in Chinatown on Tuesday.

It was a similar story at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, with the wait for some at least five hours.

The processing times to turn around samples has also ballooned, with one Sydneysider telling Daily Mail Australia she is still waiting for her result 48 hours after her test.

The lengthy processing times could spell disaster for those in virus-hit NSW, Victoria and the ACT, who need a negative result within 72 hours of travelling to interstate destinations such as Queensland and South Australia.

A queue at the RPA Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday. NSW's Covid-19 cases again exploded on Tuesday with 3,057 new infections, the state's highest spike in daily infections since the pandemic began

Pictured is a queue at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Covid-19 testing centre in Sydney on Tuesday. The processing times to turn around samples has ballooned to as much as 48 hours in NSW

A queue at Sydney's RPA Hospital for Covid testing. Many of those in a queue across Australia want to see their loved ones on Christmas Day but are cautious about spreading the virus to those must vulnerable

Deakin University Chair in Epidemiology, Professor Catherine Bennett, told Daily Mail Australia states needed to shift away from requiring interstate travellers to test before departure.

'The issue we have is the longer the wait times are, the less immediate the result,' she said.

'Unless you then isolate until Christmas Day, the test would only tell you what you have today - not in a few days time.'

Professor Bennett went onto urge those eager to know if they have Covid before seeing a vulnerable relative to combine their PCR test with multiple rapid antigen tests in the days before December 25.

She said the long queues of Covid-free Australians waiting for a test were taking away capacity for those who were sick and may actually have the virus.

'It's overloading our testing system - we have to find other ways to manage the borders,' she said.
A Kentucky man accused of travelling to Syria to join an Islamic State training camp has been charged in a US federal court after being deported back to the United States, the Justice Department said.

The federal court unsealed an indictment on Monday charging Mirsad Hariz Adem Ramic, a dual US-Bosnian citizen, with providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

The defendant was also charged with receiving military-type training from ISIS, the DOJ said.

Mirsad Hariz Adem Ramic, 31, of Bowling Green, Kentucky has been charged with providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)

Court documents claim Ramic, 31, of Bowling Green, Kentucky and two co-conspirators each left the United States for Istanbul, Turkey in order to support the Islamic State in 2014.

All three then purchased tickets to fly to the Turkish city of Gaziantep near the border with Syria. From there, it is alleged they crossed the border to join the Islamic State.

After joining, Ramic allegedly attended an Islamic State training camp where he received weapons and physical training and fired an AK-47, the DOJ said.

The FBI obtained photos of Ramic in Islamic State territory which depict him wearing camouflage clothing and standing in front of a pickup truck outfitted with an anti-aircraft gun and the Islamic State flag, the Justice Department added.

After joining, Ramic allegedly attended an Islamic State training camp where he received weapons and physical training and fired an AK-47, the DOJ said. Pictured: A propaganda photo of IS militants

The FBI obtained photos of Ramic in Islamic State territory which depict him wearing camouflage clothing and standing in front of a pickup truck outfitted with an anti-aircraft gun and the Islamic State flag. Pictured: A parade of IS fighters moving through Mosul, Iraq in 2014

After joining the militant group, Ramic and his co-conspirators remained in contact with each other and discussed, among other things, Ramic's presence in Raqqa, Syria, and his use of an anti-aircraft weapon to shoot at planes, according to the DOJ.

It was also reported one of the co-conspirators had twice emailed Western Kentucky University to say Ramic had traveled to Syria and joined the Islamic State group and now wanted its fighters to 'conquer' the US.

He had since been incarcerated in Turkey and was deported to the United States. He arrived Thursday evening and made his initial appearance in court on Monday.

He is charged with providing material support and conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. He is also charged with receiving military training from the group.

If convicted of the charged offenses, Ramic faces a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison, a fine of $750,000 and term of supervised release up to life, the Justice Department said.

The FBI was investigating the case.
Japan has hanged three prisoners in the country's first executions for two years and the first under new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Yasutaka Fujishiro, 65, was hanged as punishment for killing his 80-year-old aunt, two cousins and four others during a hammer and knife rampage in 2004.

Tomoaki Takanezawa, 54, and Mitsunori Onogawa, 44, were also hanged for killing two clerks at an arcade game parlour in 2003.

The Japanese government defended its use of the death penalty, saying it is necessary to deal with 'atrocious crimes'.

Japan executed three death row inmates by hanging on Tuesday, its first executions in two years (pictured, the execution chamber in Tokyo)

Japan is one of only a few developed nations to continue using the death penalty and currently has around 100 prisoners on death row, mainly for mass murders.

It carries out the penalty by hanging, using a purpose-built chamber in Tokyo with a trap door below the prisoner and a rope attached to the ceiling.

The executions were the first under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who took office in October.

'Whether to keep the death sentence or not is an important issue that concerns the foundation of Japan's criminal justice system,' deputy chief cabinet secretary Seiji Kihara said.

'Given that atrocious crimes keep occurring one after another, it is necessary to execute those whose guilt is extremely grave, so it is inappropriate to abolish capital punishment.'

His comments come against the backdrop of an arson attack on a mental health clinic in Osaka last week, which killed at least 25 people.

The suspect, a 61-year-old patient, is accused of deliberately starting a blaze on the clinic's fourth floor and of trying to seal the exits using tape to stop people escaping.

Japan executed three prisoners in 2019 and 15 in 2018 - including 13 from the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out a fatal 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

Japan's government defended the use of the death penalty after the executions, saying it is necessary in the face of 'atrocious crimes' (pictured, the Ministry of Justice in Tokyo)

For decades, authorities have told death row inmates just hours before an execution is carried out.

Two prisoners are suing the government over the system, which they argue is illegal and causes psychological distress.

The pair are also seeking compensation of 22 million yen ($194,000) for the distress caused by living with uncertainty about their execution date.

Documents and news archives show that Japan used to give death row inmates more notice, but stopped around 1975.

In December 2020, Japan's top court overturned a ruling blocking the retrial of a man described as the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, raising new hope for the now 85-year-old.

Iwao Hakamada has lived under a death sentence for more than half a century after being convicted in 1968 of robbing and murdering his boss, the man's wife, and their two teenaged children.

But he and his supporters say he confessed to the crime only after an allegedly brutal police interrogation that included beatings, and that evidence was planted.

Worldwide, at least 483 people were executed last year in 18 countries, according to rights watchdog Amnesty International.

That represents a drop of around a quarter from the year before, and fits a downward trend since 2015.

The figure does not, however, include the 'thousands' of executions believed to have been carried out in China, which keeps such data secret, along with North Korea and Vietnam.

Japan and the United States are the only members of the G7 group of developed countries that still use the death penalty.
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If you have ever dreamt of being King of your own castle and landlord of your own pub - a new vacancy on a tiny island may be just the ticket.

The hunt is on for the right candidate to run the Ship Inn on the 50-acre Piel Island, which sits off the coast of Cumbria near Barrow-in-Furness.

The lucky manager will also become 'King' of the island, with tradition dictating that, to be crowned, they have to wear a helmet and hold a sword while sitting in an ancient chair and having beer poured over them.

The previous landlord and king, Steve Chattaway, departed with his wife Sheila in March after 13 years in charge of the pub.

The island also boasts a 14th century castle which was once used as a base by a 10-year-old Yorkist pretender to the English throne.

A temporary partnership called the Piel Island Pub Company then ran the Ship Inn when it reopened in July after lockdowns and Covid-19.

Now, a permanent landlord is being sought by Barrow Borough Council. The successful applicant will take up their post early next year.

As well as running the pub, the new landlord will also have to manage and maintain the island itself.

If you have ever dreamed of being in charge of your own pub and are prepared to have beer tipped over your head - a new landlord vacancy on the tiny Piel Island may be your calling

The hunt is on for someone to run the Ship Inn (pictured) on the 50-acre Piel Island, which sits off the coast of Cumbria near Barrow-in-Furness,

When not in use, the king's helmet, sword and throne  which is made from an old barrel - are stored at Barrow's Dock Museum.

At each coronation, the outgoing king has crowned the incoming king. There has never been a queen.

New knights of Piel Island go through the same ceremony as the incoming king.

The first step of the ceremony involves the knight sitting on the throne before the king holds the sword and reads the 'charter', which declares that the recipient is 'of good behaviour' and 'steady'.

The recitation then continues: 'Let it be impressed on your mind, that you must be a free drinker, a moderate smoker and an ardent lover of the opposite sex.'

The lucky manager will also become 'King' of the island, with tradition dictating that, to be crowned, they have to wear a helmet and hold a sword while sitting in an ancient chair and having beer tipped over them. The previous landlord and king, Steve Chattaway (pictured), departed with his wife Sheila in March after 13 years in charge of the pub

The knight is also obliged to help the king prevent any 'bull-baiting, cock-fighting or pigeon shooting' on the island.

The new landlord of the Ship Inn will also have to cope with the uncertain weather and - because only around 10 people live in the island's eight cottages - the isolation.

Local guide John Murphy told the Guardian that whoever gets the job will need to be 'massively dedicated'.

He added: 'You can't just nip across to Tesco for a loaf of bread when you're on Piel Island,' he said. 'You'll need to have dedication and a strong passion for isolation and peace and quiet. It takes a special personality.'

The island can be reached on a ferry which runs from April to September, or by foot when the tide is low.

On the bright side, the island is also home to 70 grey seals and boasts spectacular views in all directions.

At each coronation, the outgoing king has crowned the incoming king. There has never been an official queen. Pictured: The coronation ceremony of a previous king in 1950

The Ship Inn's guest book boasts a 19th century sketch of the king of Piel Island sitting on his 'throne'

When not in use, the king's helmet, sword and throne  which is made from an old barrel - are stored at Barrow's Dock Museum

When Mr Chattaway and his wife departed in March, they said: 'We wish the very best to whomever takes up the highly rewarding challenge of being the next King/Queen of Piel Island and we can't wait to be on the other side of the bar enjoying all the island has to offer.'

The island's future - off the southern tip of the Furness Peninsula - was discussed last week by Barrow Borough Council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

Committee vice-chair Cllr Frank Cassidy said: 'It's important the right people are installed, people with sound local knowledge, a feel for the island and its history.'

The island also boasts a 14th century castle which was once used as a base by a 10-year-old Yorkist pretender to the English throne

The new landlord of the Ship Inn will also have to cope with the uncertain weather and - because only around 10 people live in the island's eight cottages - the isolation

On the bright side, the island is also home to 70 grey seals and boasts spectacular views in all directions

Sandra Baines, head of visitor economy and culture at the council, said it was 'very much about preserving its beauty, its natural habitat'.

But she added there were also potential drawbacks of life on the island and it is 'not the dream people might think it is'.

While Chris Jones, the council's head of programme management and climate change, said: 'There are significant constraints to living and working on Piel Island and people need to think about that.'

Supporters who started a petition to save the island called it 'the jewel in the crown' of the area and a 'vital part of our heritage'.

The future of the island will now be considered by the borough council's executive committee in January.

A report to councillors describes Piel Island as a unique place but 'any operator needs to appreciate the constraints offered by power, weather, access and its location within an area of site of special scientific interest.'
An alleged terrorist accused of fatally stabbing Sir David Amess has appeared at the Old Bailey to deny murdering him.

Charged Ali Harbi Ali appeared in court

Ali Harbi Ali is charged with killing the Conservative MP for Southend West during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex.

The 25-year-old is also charged with preparing acts of terrorism between May 1 2019 and September 28 this year.

On the morning of October 15, Ali is alleged to travelled by train from his home in Kentish Town, north London.

He would go on to attend Sir David's surgery at Belfairs Methodist Church, it is claimed.

During the meeting, he allegedly stabbed Sir David.

The veteran MP was pronounced dead at the scene at 1.10pm.

Wearing a light blue jumper over a plain grey tracksuit with black glasses and a black facemask, Ali, of Lady Somerset Road, Kentish Town, spoke only to deny the charges when he appeared at the Old Bailey in person.

He stood with his arms cross as the court rose at the end of the hearing.

Police and ambulance crews rushed to the church after Sir David was stabbed in October

Sir David Amess, MP for Southend West, was killed at a constituency surgery back in October

Senior Judge Mr Justice Sweeney has already identified a provisional trial date of March 7 next year.

Sir David's death during his weekly constituency surgery has shocked Britain and is likely to change the way MPs are protected and meet voters forever.

His family said their hearts had been 'shattered' by his 'cruel and violent death' at a constituency surgery in Essex.

Forensic officers at the scene near the Belfairs Methodist Church in Eastwood Road North, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex on the day of the murder

People look at flowers left by the police cordon nearby the Belfairs Methodist Church

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer join Home Secretary Priti Patel and the Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle as they pay their respects to Sir David

They said they could not understand why the 'patriot and a man of peace' was targeted by a knifeman he had never met.

The 69-year-old father of five was ambushed at his Friday meeting with the public and stabbed 17 times in a frenzied attack. In a heartbreaking statement his family called for people to 'set aside hatred', adding: 'Nobody should die in that way. Nobody.

'Whatever one's race, religious or political beliefs, be tolerant and try to understand.

'We are absolutely broken, but we will survive and carry on for the sake of a wonderful and inspiring man.'

The Home Office scheme, which has an annual budget of around 40million, has been under scrutiny for years after a series of terrorists slipped through its net, including Reading attacker Khairi Saadallah.

But the independent review did not start formally until earlier this year and has still not reported back to Miss Patel.

Former justice secretary Robert Buckland called for a shake-up of Prevent to ensure a more 'joined-up' approach. He said more co-operation between schools, the NHS and other public agencies was required to ensure security forces could intervene early.

Police officers erect a tent outside a house in north London, thought to be in relation to the death of Sir David

'Nobody should die in that way. Nobody': Family of murdered MP Sir David Amess say 'our hearts are shattered'  but urge people to 'show love to all' and support causes he championed in his memory so 'some good can come from this tragedy' The devastated family of Conservative MP Sir David Amess said they are 'absolutely broken' by his killing, adding in an emotional statement: 'As a family, we are trying to understand why this awful thing has occurred. Nobody should die in that way.' In a statement released through the Metropolitan Police, Sir David's family said: 'The family would like to thank everyone for the wonderful, wonderful tributes paid to David following his cruel and violent death. It truly has brought us so much comfort. The support shown by friends, constituents and the general public alike has been so overwhelming. As a family it has given us strength. 'We have realised from tributes paid that there was far, far more to David than even we, those closest to him, knew. We are enormously proud of him. Our hearts are shattered. However, there was still so much David wanted to do - this we know from the events of the last few days. So, this is not the end of Sir David Amess MP. It is the next chapter and as a family we ask everyone to support the many charities he worked with. There are so many to mention, so find one close to your hearts and help. 'David had recently joined a campaign to help raise funds for a memorial to Dame Vera Lynn. To him she epitomised the strength and courage of our nation. We would ask as many people as possible to support this and meet the target to complete the project. 'Closer to home, David was working hard for Southend to gain city status. In his memory, please show your support for this campaign. Strong and courageous is an appropriate way to describe David. He was a patriot and a man of peace. So, we ask people to set aside their differences and show kindness and love to all. This is the only way forward. Set aside hatred and work towards togetherness. 'Whatever one's race, religious or political beliefs, be tolerant and try to understand. As a family, we are trying to understand why this awful thing has occurred. Nobody should die in that way. Nobody. Please let some good come from this tragedy. We are absolutely broken, but we will survive and carry on for the sake of a wonderful and inspiring man. 'We ask at this time that the family's privacy be respected so that we can grieve in private.' Advertisement

'I very much hope that when it comes to community supervision and community involvement, that it is much more joined-up between health services, education,' he told Times Radio.

'And that element of being joined-up is what we really need to work on urgently.'

He added: 'There may be records or information from schools or colleges or from the health service which can tell us much more about individuals and their activities. We need to join this up much more effectively because what we're talking about here is community prevention.

'We've got to make sure that every arm of the state is absolutely working together in order to understand as much as possible about these individuals, and then to intervene if we judge the risk to be so significant that an intervention could prevent the sort of appalling incident that we saw not just last week but also in the Jo Cox case and other examples.'

Mrs Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, was murdered by a far-Right fanatic in the street in 2016 as she was about to carry out a constituency surgery.

A Tory former Defence Minister doubled-down on his call for a temporary suspension of public meetings between MPs and their constituents, as he warned 'there could be a copycat-style attack' following the killing of Sir David.

Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the Commons Defence Select Committee, urged a 'pause in face-to-face' consultations between parliamentarians and members of the public until a safety review had been completed in the wake of Sir David's death on Friday.

His proposal was shot down by defiant Conservatives including former Cabinet minister David Davis. Labour's Harriet Harman called for an official review of MPs' safety, while ex-Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott also rallied against 'airport-style screening' - but told the BBC she would support meeting constituents behind a screen to prevent possible stab attacks.

Miss Patel insisted MPs must keep meeting voters, telling the BBC's Andrew Marr Show it would be 'unacceptable' for the killing to 'break the link between an elected representative and their democratic role, responsibility and duty to the people who elected them'.

However, the killing of Sir David at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea as he met with Southend West constituents has prompted the Government to look at ensuring every MP gets police on guard at their weekly surgeries - a move backed by Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

Speaking to Channel 4, Mr Ellwood doubled-down on his proposal, warning: 'Ultimately we have to recognise that there could be a copycat-style attack.

The police have already made that clear. Let's make sure that our lifestyles and the way we go about is not altered, that they do not win.

But we need to do that in a cognitive way to make sure that MPs, staff and indeed the general public are kept safe.'

The MP for Bournemouth East, who was hailed as a hero for his attempts to save the life of Pc Keith Palmer during the Westminster terror attack in 2017, also told the broadcaster that he had discussed the security implications of the withdrawal from Afghanistan for terrorism and extremism with Sir David last week as they visited Doha in Qatar.
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The Queen is likely to be joined by at least ten senior royals including her children Princes Andrew, Edward and Princess Anne for lunch at Windsor Castle on Christmas Day, despite cancelling her plans to visit Sandringham.

Visitors on December 25 are most likely to include the Duke of York and his former wife, Sarah, Duchess of York, plus their two daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, both of whom are new mothers.

The Earl and Countess of Wessex are also almost certain to be there, with their children, James, Viscount Severn, and Lady Louise. Princess Anne and her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, are also likely to attend.

However it is not yet known whether the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will spend Christmas Day with the Queen, her first as a widow following Prince Philip's death in April.

Andrew and his lawyers will be preparing for a hearing in New York next month when a judge will decide whether a sex abuse lawsuit being brought against him by Virginia Giuffre can go to trial. He strongly denies her claims.

The 95-year-old monarch cancelled her plans to spend Christmas at Sandringham in Norfolk and will remain at Windsor Castle as Covid-19 cases surge. Sources said the personal decision was taken yesterday by the Queen.

A source said plans were 'still being confirmed', with just three days to go until the family's traditional gathering on Christmas Eve. But a senior royal source said some family would 'be present on Christmas Day'.

How the royals normally celebrate Christmas at the Sandringham estate During the 1960s, when the Queen's children were young, many festive seasons for the Royal Family were celebrated at Windsor Castle. But in 1988, when the castle was being rewired, the royal Christmas moved to Sandringham, the Queens country estate in Norfolk. The family preferred the space and privacy of the 20,000-acre estate in Norfolk and have returned there ever since. The Queen traditionally spends both Christmas and New Year at the estate, before leaving in February. She usually returns to London or Windsor on the anniversary of her father's death on February 6. And this coming February will be a particularly poignant date, for it marks the 70th anniversary of the death of her father, King George VI  and the point at which the Queen will have been on the throne for seven decades. Advertisement

They added: 'The decision was a personal one after careful consideration and reflects a precautionary approach.

'There will be family visiting Windsor over the Christmas period and all appropriate guidelines will be followed.'

William, Kate and their three children George, Charlotte and Louis are unlikely to change their plans to spend Christmas at Anmer Hall, their family home in Norfolk - but they would go to see the Queen before they depart.

Last year, Prince Charles and Camilla spent Christmas Day at Highgrove, his country estate in Gloucestershire, and their plans for this Christmas have not yet been revealed.

The Queen will not attend church in public but will worship in her private chapel at Windsor Castle.

She has already recorded her annual Christmas message to be broadcast on the day.

It is the second consecutive year in which she has been forced to switch her Christmas celebrations from Norfolk to Windsor.

Last year, however, she was in a 'bubble' with Philip, her husband of 73 years, and a handful of loyal staff.

This year is her first without him following his death at the age of 99.

The Queen has not been seen in public since October following a string of health scares.

She was admitted to hospital overnight for preliminary investigations and ordered by her royal doctors to rest.

The monarch also sprained her back and was advised to pull out of attending several events, including the Remembrance Sunday service.

She has cancelled all public engagements to carry out 'light duties' at her desk.

2019 -- The Queen leaves St Mary Magdalene's Church after the Royal Family's Christmas service on December 25, 2019

2018 -- The Queen arrives at St Mary Magdalene's Church for the Royal Family's Christmas Day service on December 25, 2018

2017 -- The Queen leaves St Mary Magdalene's Church in Norfolk after the Christmas Day service on December 25, 2017

The Royal Family spent Christmas at Windsor until 1988, when they moved to Sandringham while the castle was rewired.

But they preferred the space and privacy of the 20,000-acre estate and have returned there ever since.

The monarch had hoped to be back in Norfolk this year.

But sources indicated that, given official pleas for people to act with caution, the Queen felt it was 'too difficult' for her family and staff to move between residences safely.

'Her Majesty always leads by example,' said one.

Her Majesty will be so bitterly sorry not to see the family: The Queen's decision not to celebrate Christmas at Sandringham this year will be a crushing blow, writes RICHARD KAY

Make no mistake the disappointment will be crushing. For all the good intentions, the Queen will be bitterly sorry that she will not be celebrating Christmas this year at Sandringham.

It is not just the fact that, for the second year running, she will be absent from the Norfolk estate which is home to so many of her most treasured Christmas memories, but also that she will be deprived once again of the company of many of her family.

Their absence, particularly of her great-grandchildren, will be felt especially keenly.

After a year which began with the loss of her husband Prince Philip and ended with her having to cancel public engagements after a lengthy bout of ill health, her hopes had been raised by the prospect of a first family gathering at Sandringham since 2019.

It had promised to be one of the biggest royal get-togethers for years, with US-based Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex and their children the only absentees.

Despite the murmurs from royal aides that the Queen will be visited by family over Christmas  with all appropriate guidelines followed  it inevitably means that the normal celebrations will be considerably scaled back.

Palace officials insist the Queens decision was a personal one and only taken after careful consideration, which is thought to have included medical advice.

2014 -- Queen Elizabeth II leaves St Mary Magdalene's Church after the Christmas Day service on December 25, 2014

It also seems likely that next years Platinum Jubilee events almost certainly featured in the decision-making process.

The Jubilee is a significant  and personal  landmark, and Her Majesty wishes to minimise any risk to events, says a courtier.

Putting herself, potentially, in harms way with a big family gathering is one such possible threat. Up to 50 family members were set to join the Queen, who had been expected to travel to Sandringham by helicopter either today or tomorrow.

Other royal guests were due to arrive by Christmas Eve.

Although not bubbled with key staff at Windsor as earlier in the pandemic, special precautions had been taken to keep the Queen safe and Covid-free. They include her personal staff taking daily lateral-flow tests.

I understand that one servant had tested positive in recent days, but this played no part in the Queens decision to remain at Windsor.

However, I do understand that aides were concerned about the possibility of the Queen being exposed to infection with such a big group assembling at Sandringham  the same reason why this weeks wider Royal Family lunch was cancelled.

The question now is which members of the family will be with the Queen on Christmas Day.

The Queen receives the Sultan of Oman and his wife, the first lady of Oman, during an audience at Windsor Castle- on December 15 in what was one of her most recent official engagements this month

It seems likely that beleaguered Prince Andrew, who lives close by at the Royal Lodge, may remain at Windsor to be with his mother, as could Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex and their children.

Although the plans are not yet firm, I am told the Queen will not be eating her Christmas lunch alone.

It was not immediately clear if some family members will still travel to Sandringham, though it is understood Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge are set to spend the holiday break at Anmer Hall, their Norfolk home close to Sandringham House.

Last year, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall spent Christmas Day at Highgrove, his country estate in Gloucestershire.

This year will mark the second time in 33 years that the Queen has spent the festive season away from Sandringham.

Until the 1980s, Christmas was regularly spent at Windsor Castle, but the arrival of her grandchildren meant the royals needed the additional space of the Norfolk mansion.

It is still possible that the Queen will be able to travel to spend some of her winter break up at Sandringham  she usually remains there until February 6, which is the anniversary of her father King George VIs death. Next year will be an especially poignant date, for it marks the 70th anniversary of her accession.
There are concerns of a coronavirus outbreak in Western Australia after a Covid-positive couple in their 30s crossed the state's hard border.

The pair arrived in Perth on December 19 on Virgin Australia flight VA470 from Brisbane.

The couple travelled before Queensland was elevated to medium risk and are understood to have tested negative for Covid before boarding their flight.

Premier Mark McGowan (pictured) has previously said quarantine-free travel would resume from February 5

The pair flew into Western Australia on Virgin Australia flight VA470 (file image)

They are now isolating with four relatives in WA who have all returned negative results.

It has not yet been confirmed if the pair have the Omicron variant.

Health officials have listed new exposure sites visited by the couple including Perth Airport on Sunday between 10pm and 11pm and a 7-Eleven store in Midland, in the city's east, about 12pm on Monday.

Anyone who was at those locations at those times should get a Covid test if they notice any symptoms.

The state's plan to lift travel restrictions from February 5 has been clouded by a dramatic rise in cases in NSW and Victoria.

National cabinet will meet on Wednesday to discuss the influx of Omicron infections amid calls from the Australian Medical Association to adopt a national response, including venue density limits and mandatory indoor mask-wearing.

WA's government has avoided imposing such restrictions for much of the past two years at the expense of keeping borders closed.

But AMA President Omar Khorshid believes already-strained hospitals will struggle to cope unless the nation slows the spread of Omicron.

'We expect hospitals to be under extraordinary pressure ... even if Omicron is more mild in a vaccinated population, even if we don't see huge numbers of hospitalisations,' Dr Khorshid told reporters in Perth.

'The fact healthcare workers can't go to work with Omicron, they can't go to work if their child has Omicron, we expect that impact itself to really restrict our ability to deliver healthcare, to effect elective surgery, to effect our performance in dealing with emergency presentations.

WA has remained relatively Covid-free throughout 2020 and 2021 and the borders have remained shut tight for nearly the entirety

'All of that, we think, should be avoided by sensible measures now.'

WA's government on Tuesday played down concerns from doctors at a major regional hospital in Bunbury who had written to the health department warning about the facility's inability to cope with a major outbreak due to understaffing.

The McGowan administration has poured billions of dollars into the health system in recent months as public hospitals struggle to cope with low staffing and other performance issues.

WA has largely been closed off to the rest of the country for two years (pictured: Perth airport)

Dr Khorshid said WA authorities would be closely watching the situation in NSW after the state on Tuesday posted a record 3057 new cases in a single 24-hour period.

'If we get to late-January and we're seeing large numbers of cases but really not a lot of severe illness, then WA's border may well open the way it's been set,' he said.

'But I think if we're seeing the hospital system in NSW collapsing, I would expect the premier to keep our border either shut or at least very heavily restricted.'

WA's border reopening is expected to align with the state's double-dose vaccination rate for residents aged 12 and over reaching 90 per cent.

The state reached that threshold over the weekend for first doses.

Vaccination rates in WA have been surging in recent weeks (pictured: Cottlesloe Beach)

'We have now achieved something remarkable ... without the virus in the community, or any restrictions in place,' Premier Mark McGowan posted on social media.

'This means we are absolutely confident we will have the double dose vaccination rate we need for our Safe Transition Plan to be implemented from February 5.'

A low take-up in the regions remains a significant concern and will almost certainly prompt the introduction of localised restrictions for unvaccinated people in those areas.
George Floyd could be pardoned posthumously for a drug arrest almost 20 years ago made by a disgraced ex-Houston police officer with Texas Governor now weighing up the case.

Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended the pardon to Abbott in October.

He is known to pardon a handful of ordinary citizens - typically for minor offences committed years ago - every Christmas as part of a holiday tradition. However, he has yet to announce his decision.

Floyd, whose death at the hands of white Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin last year at the age of just 46 sparked worldwide protests against police brutality, was arrested by Officer Gerald Goines in 2004.

He was accused of selling $10 worth of crack and sentenced to ten months in a state jail after pleading guilty to a drug charge.

George Floyd (pictured left), who grew up in Houston, was arrested in February 2004 by Officer Gerald Goines (pictured right) and accused of selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting. Floyd later pleaded guilty to a drug charge and was sentenced to 10 months in a state jail

Doling out pardons is a holiday tradition for Governor Abbott, who around every Christmas grants them to a handful of ordinary citizens, typically for minor offenses committed years or decades ago.

The two-term Republican governor is up for reelection in 2022 and has given no indication of whether he will grant what would be only the second posthumous pardon in Texas history.

Floyd, who was Black, spent much of his life in Houston before moving to Minnesota, where his death under the knee of a white police officer last year led to a U.S. reckoning on race and policing.

Political observers are watching whether Texas Governor Greg Abbott (pictured) will posthumously pardon George Floyd for a 2004 arrest before the end of the year

Floyd, who was Black, spent much of his life in Houston before moving to Minnesota, where his death under the knee of a white police officer last year led to a U.S. reckoning on race and policing

Allison Mathis is a public defender in Houston who submitted Floyd's pardon application.

She said: 'It doesn't matter who you think George Floyd was, or what you think he stood for or didn't stand for.

'What matters is he didn't do this. Its important for the governor to correct the record to show he didn't do this.'

A spokeswoman for Abbott did not respond to requests for comment.

Pardons restore the rights of the convicted and forgive them in the eyes of the law.

Floyds family and supporters said a posthumous pardon for him in Texas would show a commitment to accountability.

In February 2004, Floyd was arrested in Houston for selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting. He pleaded guilty to a drug charge and served 10 months in prison.

Former Houston police officer Gerald Goines arrives at the 338th District Criminal Court in January last year

His case was among dozens prosecutors revisited in the fallout over a deadly drug raid in 2019 that resulted in murder charges against an officer, Gerald Goines, who is no longer with the Houston force.

Prosecutors say Goines lied to obtain a search warrant in the 2019 raid that left a husband and wife dead.

Since Goines was discredited, the office of Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has since dismissed more than 160 drug convictions tied to Goines.

Officer Gerald Goines casework has been under scrutiny following a deadly 2019 drug raid he led that resulted in the deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59 (left), and his wife, Rhogena Nicholas, 58 (right)

'We lament the loss of former Houstonian George Floyd and hope that his family finds comfort in Mondays decision,' wrote Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg in an October 4 press release

Goines has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys accuse Ogg of launching the review for political gain.

Abbott has several primary challengers from the far right, and his ongoing silence about a potential pardon for Floyd has raised questions by Mathis and others over whether political calculations are at play.

Abbott attended Floyds memorial service last year in Houston, where he met with the family and floated the idea of a 'George Floyd Act' that would take aim at police brutality.

Protesters march in downtown Brooklyn over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police officer on June 05, 2020 in New York City

A Black Lives Matter protest march going through Regent Street in London, on June 21, 2020

Protesters participate in a Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney, Saturday, June 6, 2020 against the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody and solidarity with the US protests for George Floyd

Yet Abbott never publicly supported such a measure months later when lawmakers returned to the Capitol, where Republicans instead made police funding a priority.

State Senator Royce West, a Democrat who carried the 'George Floyd Act' in the Senate, said he understands the politics if Abbott was waiting until after the GOP primary elections in March. But he said the governor should act on the recommendation.

'As he's always said, he is a law and order governor,' West said. 'This would be following the law.'
A new Russian stealth warship has suffered 225million worth of damage after it caught fire during construction.

The scale of the blaze which started on Friday in St Petersburg has caused a major setback to the Kremlin's naval modernisation.

Footage showed devastating fire damage to the 307 million stealth ship, intended to carry Vladimir Putin's lethal Mach-9 hypersonic missiles.

A new Russian stealth warship has suffered 225million worth of damage after it caught fire during construction. Pictured: A still grab taken from footage of the fire in St Petersburg

The scale of the blaze (pictured) which started on Friday in St Petersburg has caused a major setback to the Kremlin's naval modernisation

Pictured: Smoke can be seen rising from the construction yard in St Petersburg after the the corvette Provornyy (Agile) caught fire while it was under construction

Huge flames and thick smoke were seen rising from the corvette Provornyy (Agile) at Severnaya Verf shipyard where it was under construction.

The warship has been almost totally destroyed by the fire - the latest of a spate of mysterious blazes at top secret naval shipbuilding facilities - with the damage running into hundreds of millions of pounds, say reports.

Russia says there were no weapons or crew on board the stealth corvette when fire erupted, however, other reports said three crew were injured, with Military.com reporting that two required hospitalisation.

The hull is said to be intact but the entire superstructure and decking must now be dismantled after its destruction in the inferno, say reports.

A criminal probe has been launched into the major blaze on the Provornyy - designed to carry Russia's deadly new Zircon - or Tskirkon - hypersonic missile.

The 6,670 mph weapon is seen as 'unstoppable' by current Western technology, and will initially be deployed on frigates but Putin said it would 'definitely' be used with Project 20385 corvettes like the blitzed Provornyy.

Huge flames and thick smoke were seen rising from the corvette Provornyy (Agile) at Severnaya Verf shipyard where it was under construction

Pictured: Smoke is shown rising over St Petersburg as fire engulfs a Russian warship under construction at a shipyard

The Gremyashchiy corvette - the first of this new type of corvette - was recently deployed to the Russian Pacific coast where it has been armed with Kalibr missiles.

The Russian government recently gave the go-ahead for full-scale production of Zircon missiles at a top-secret plant at Reutovo, near Moscow.

Late last month, Russia also revealed a 'successful' test of its the Zircon missile, fired from a warship in the White Sea.

The 'unstoppable' weapon hit a target some 250 miles away from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate, the Moscow defence ministry said on November 29.

Putin today awarded the Zircon's creator, Boris Obnosov head of Tactical Missile Corporation, the Hero of Russia honour.

Damage from the fire on the warship has been put at around 225 million.

'One of the main questions of the investigation is why it caught fire, given that a warship should be made of non-combustible materials,' said a source.

The warship has been almost totally destroyed by the fire - the latest of a spate of mysterious blazes at top secret naval shipbuilding facilities - with the damage running into hundreds of millions of pounds, say reports. Pictured: The damage on the ship

A rendered image of Provornyy corvette. The part of the corvette highlighted in yellow is believed to have been destroyed by fire

In February a fire was extinguished on the Ural nuclear icebreaker at another plant, and in 2020 three workers were injured on the Ivan Papanin ship while under construction for the navy.

Among other naval fires, a blaze on the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in 2019 caused an estimated 972 million in damages.

Fontanka media outlet said: 'The stench from the major fire covered all of the Kirovsky district of the city.

'It was rare case when taxpayers could literally sense their burning billions,' it said. 'This is the finale of regular fire emergencies at St Petersburg's shipyards.'
A thug has admitted killing a father with a single 'forceful' punch to the head during a row outside a Slug & Lettuce in Birmingham city centre as he enjoyed a night out with his son.

Matthew Carroll, 50, suffered serious head injuries during the altercation near the busy bar in the early hours of August 29.

He was rushed to hospital with a fractured skull and facial injuries, but died later the same day.

Matthew Mahony, 33, has now pleaded guilty to manslaughter at Birmingham Crown Court.

However, the court heard that Mahony's 'basis of plea', namely his account of events, is not accepted by the prosecution.

The case was subsequently adjourned for a trial of issue hearing which will take place on January 28.

Matthew Carroll, 50, who was killed on The Water's Edge in Brindleyplace, Birmingham, on August 29

A police cordon outside the Slug & Lettuce bar in Birmingham following Mr Carroll's death

CCTV footage captured the incident outside the Slug & Lettuce in The Water's Edge, Brindleyplace, at around 1.30am.

Christopher Millington, representing Mahony, said in mitigation that the defendant delivered a forceful blow to Mr Carroll, who was on a night out with his son.

Mr Carroll 'self-reported' the incident before he was contacted police, but died in hospital later the same day.

Judge Paul Farrer QC told the court the remaining issues could make a significant difference to the sentence Mahony, Edgbaston, faces.

Addressing the defendant, he said: 'I take the view that in order to do justice both to you and to the victim in this case, I need to resolved two issues.

'Firstly, whether you were in any sense motivated by a belief you needed to protect your friends.

'Secondly, whether your punch caused the fractures to the right side of Mr Carrolls face.

'I will resolve those issues on Friday, January 28. It will take a day. I will sentence you on that day subject to the possibility of it moving if events overtake it.

'In the meantime you are remanded in custody.'

Matthew Mahony, 33, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter at Birmingham Crown Court

Mr Carroll was described by his family as a 'loving father, always devoted to his children' following his death.

A statement said: 'We are all devastated and heartbroken to lose such an amazing, thoughtful and kind man.

'He had a heart of gold and would put anyone before himself. He was loving father, always devoted to his children.

'Hes always been a hard worker and enjoyed going the gym.

'He was a social and friendly person, who loved being around family and friends. He always made people feel welcome and made people laugh.

'Our hearts are shattered into a thousand pieces, we are all still in shock, it doesnt seem real.

'Our lives will never be the same without him.'
A top infectious diseases expert has dismissed new Covid modelling that predicts Australia will see 200,000 cases a day by the end of January.

The Doherty Institute, which drafted Australia's long road out of lockdown, prepared a report for national cabinet outlining its alarming data and urging all states to reintroduce face mask mandates and restrictions of gatherings.

But Australian National University professor Peter Collignon AM told Daily Mail Australia the grim prediction is 'completely unbelievable'.

'I don't know where they've come up with this modelling but it's not based on any real world data,' he said.

'They are assumptions that do not correlate to anything we've seen before in summer in any other country.

'If there were 200,000 cases a day, the whole of Australia would be infected in just a few months. That hasn't happened anywhere in the world.'

A leading infectious diseases expert has rejected new Covid modelling that predicts Australia will see 200,000 cases a day by the end of January, calling it 'ridiculous'. Pictured: Sydney Christmas parties are in full swing despite rising Covid cases

The Doherty Institute prepared a report for national cabinet outlining their alarming data and urging all states to reintroduce face mask mandates and restrictions of gatherings. Pictured: Sydney bars are packed ahead of Christmas

Infection rates across Australia soared at record levels ahead of Christmas due to the rapid spread of the super-mutant Omicron strain.

Official figures on Tuesday revealed more than 4,500 new cases but many health officials fear the real number is likely to be much higher.

The Doherty Institute claims without low-to-medium restrictions, including limits on visitors and density in pubs, cafes and restaurants, the country could face millions of Covid cases within weeks.

As a part of the predicted 200,000 cases a day, researchers predicted hospitalisations could hit 4,000 a day - putting a heavy strain on the medical system.

This would lead to between 8,000 and 10,000 patients in ICUs over the course of the wave, based on modelling of how many would get sick enough to need it - even with Covid booster rollouts in full swing.

'Looking at the impact of increasing uptake over time, a rapid booster program would likely enable control with minimal public health safety measures by end of March,' the modelling concluded according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

'The epidemic peak could be delayed with public health safety measures until the boosters kick in, allowing the program to have greater impact.'

Official figures on Tuesday revealed more than 4,500 new cases but many health officials fear the real number is likely to be much higher. Pictured: Health workers at a vaccination clinic in Melbourne

Professor Peter Collignon AM (pictured) told Daily Mail Australia the grim prediction by the Doherty Institute is 'completely unbelievable'

COVID CASES SURGE ACROSS AUSTRALIA: NSW: 3,057 new cases Victoria: 1,245 new cases Queensland: 86 new cases Tasmania: 4 new cases ACT: 16 new cases SA: 154 new cases NT: 14 new cases WA: 1 new case. *Covid case recorded on Tuesday. Advertisement

If the dire prediction is accurate, Australia would have four times the number of cases as Britain did in its horror summer when infections peaked at about 45,000 cases a day.

'They've got twice the population of us and far less vaccination. So I just find that figure unbelievable and not realistic,' Professor Collignon said.

'We haven't seen this in South Africa or anywhere else in the world.'

Professor Collignon also explained why the potential reintroduction of mask mandates may not have much of an impact on containing the spread.

'Face masks might decrease your risks by about 10 per cent but over the medium to long term it won't really make a lot of difference, particularly in summer when people won't use them properly. That's the reality of it,' he said.

'I find their figure of 200,000 unbelievable, therefore I find their assumptions about masks probably unbelievable too.'

The Doherty Institute's data based off current restrictions, which include no lockdowns, no retail restrictions, and open schools.

It assumes Omicron has the same severity of disease as Delta, something that has yet to be proven with many experts of the belief it is a more infectious but milder variant.

Doherty Institute modelling has not proved accurate throughout the pandemic and is criticised for flawed methodology and small timeframes that don't account for full pictures.

As a part of the predicted 200,000 cases a day, researchers predicted hospitalisations could hit 4,000 a day - putting a heavy strain on the medical system. Pictured: An extremely busy Covid testing clinic in Sydney's Bondi

Doherty modelling suggests another hard lockdown would see the outbreak under control by the end of January - something leaders have promised will not be an option going forward. Pictured: A heath worker administers a swab test at a Covid testing clinic in Sydney's Maroubra

The failure to include children under 12 in the data and correctly model the severity of variants has also come under criticism from health experts.

Politicians have been accused of using the modelling to exaggerate successes based on its pessimistic predictions.

Australia's ex-deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth earlier on Tuesday also hit out at doomsday experts predicting the worst with the latest outbreak.

University of NSW modelling has suggested NSW could have up to 25,000 new cases a day by February - eight times higher than the current number.

However, Dr Coatsworth slammed that figure as not 'accurate', challenging claims by clinical immunologist Dr Dan Suan that the state was 'sleepwalking into an Omicron disaster'.

Dr Nick Coatsworth (pictured) has slammed doomsayer experts fearing the worst about the new Omicron variant

'The people who are most worried about this in the scientific community were saying its early days four weeks ago and are still saying this. And both can't be true,' Dr Coatsworth told News Corp before the Doherty report was made public.

'People who take Dan's position believe that the peak will be enormous. UNSW modelling says 25,000 a day, I just don't think that's accurate.

'The key period will be the next seven days. We will be able to see how many of the 2,500 odd testing positive every day are actually going into hospital.'

Doherty modelling suggests another hard lockdown would see the outbreak under control by the end of January - something leaders have promised will not be an option going forward.

'Looking at the impact of increasing uptake over time, a rapid booster program would likely enable control with minimal public health safety measures by end of March,' the Institute's report published on December 17 says.

'The epidemic peak could be delayed with public health safety measures until the boosters kick in, allowing the program to have greater impact.'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resisted calls for national Covid restrictions over Christmas. Pictured: Women get their photo taken by a Christmas tree in Sydney
A manslaughter lawsuit has been filed against the British Coast Guard by a humanitarian group for allegedly failing to help a boat that capsized in the English Channel, killing 27 people.

The lawsuit filed in Paris on Friday by Utopia 56 similarly accuses two French authorities: the maritime prefect of the Channel and North Sea and the Regional Operational Centre for Surveillance and Rescue of Gris-Nez in the Pas-de-Calais.

Lawyers for the French non-profit claim that as the boat was sinking in French territorial waters on November 24 'the refugees sought to contact British and French rescue services, who passed the buck.'

The humanitarian group 'intends that investigations be carried out to determine the responsibilities of the French and British rescue services in this tragedy.'

Only two people of the 29 aboard the vessel on November 24 survived in what is believed to be the greatest loss of life from a single migrant crossing on the Channel. The youngest victim was just seven years old.

The flimsy and dangerous dinghy that sank off Calais, killing 27 people, on November 24

Smugglers threatened to shoot migrants, including bride-to-be Mariam Nouri Dargalayi (pictured with fiance), unless they boarded the doomed dinghy that went down in Channel

Twana Muhammad (pictured), 18, an Iraqi-Kurd student who is believed to have died in the tragedy

The family of 27-year-old Deniz Ahmed Mohammed (left) said he left them a final voicemail saying 'just pray for us', while Riaz Mohammed, 12, (right) is also feared to be among dead

The deaths sparked a diplomatic row between Britain and France amid record numbers of migrant crossings - tripling this year.

Emmanuel Daoud, the lawyer representing Utopia 56, told The Guardian: 'The victims and their families are owed truth and transparency.

'We know that as their boat was sinking, the exiles and refugees sought to contact British and French rescue services, who passed the buck.

'They did not come to the aid of people who were in distress, and from that moment we consider that the question of responsibility  in the criminal sense of the term  has arisen.'

The only two survivors of last month's disaster told Kurdish media that the migrants on the boat made distress calls that were ignored as their canoe deflated and their engine broke.

They claim the British said the boat was in French waters, and the French the reverse.

These accounts were confirmed by victim family members, who were in telephone contact during the attempted crossing.

The maritime prefect of the Channel and North Sea was not immediately available for comment Monday.

In London, proceedings have also formally been launched by families of victims from Iraqi Kurdistan.

Earlier this month, 26 victims were formally identified, including seven women, a teenager and a 7-year-old girl. The identity of one migrant remains unknown.

Investigators were able to confirm the identity of 16 Iraqi Kurds, including four women, a 16-year-old teenager and a 7-year-old girl.

The victims also included an Iranian Kurd, three Ethiopians including two women, a Somali woman, four Afghan men and an Egyptian man, the statement said. The adults ranged in age from 19 to 46.

Shakar Ali, 25, (left) and Harem Pirot, 23, (right) who grew up as neighbours in Iraq and set off together to find a new life in the UK are believed to have been on board the dinghy

Hadya Rzgar, 22, Mubin, 16, Hasta 7, with their mother Kazhal Rzgar (right), the Kurdish family, who lived in Grande-Synth camp in Dunkirk, are missing and feared dead are, they are thought to be among at least 27 migrants who died in last week's Channel tragedy

The boat set off at around 10pm on November 23 and sailed for more than three hours before deflating off the coast of Calais.

The bodies of the dead were discovered by a French fisherman more than 12 hours later a few miles from the coast in French waters.

The incident worsened tensions between London and Paris, which have been simmering in recent months over a range of disputes including Channel crossings and post-Brexit fishing rights.

Britain has accused France of failing to stop migrants illegally crossing, despite promising to pay Paris 54 million in installments to increase beach patrols along its northern coastline.

So far this month, 1,327 migrants have been detained by UK Border Force. This compares with 211 in December 2020.

So far this month, 1,327 migrants have been detained by UK Border Force. This compares with 211 in December 2020. Overall, 27,938 irregular migrants have been detained in 2021. The crossings have tripled this year compared to 2020.

Overall, 27,938 irregular migrants have been detained in 2021. The crossings have tripled this year compared to 2020.

A spokesperson for HM Coastguard said of the legal action launched in France: 'It is not appropriate for us to comment on the specifics of this legal action.

'On 24 November, Her Majesty's Coastguard received over 90 alerts from the English Channel area including 999 emergency calls.

'Every call was answered, assessed and acted upon, including the deployment of search and rescue resources where appropriate. We always have and always will respond to anyone in distress, as we did that day.'
Donald Trump flew at least seven times on Jeffrey Epstein's private Lolita Express jet - six more times than was previously known, new documents released at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial have revealed.

The former president travelled on the plane four times in 1993, once in 1994 and once in 1995 with his ex-wife Marla Marples and children Tiffany and Eric, flight logs show.

It was previously reported that Trump had flown on Epstein's plane from Palm Beach, where both had homes, to Newark, in 1997. Epstein is also said to have flown on one of Trump's private planes.

Trump and Epstein knew each other in the 1990s when they were both New York City playboys and successful entrepreneurs.

The documents, which comprise more than 100 pages of flight logs covering the period 1991 to 2006, were released publicly on Sunday ahead of Monday's closing arguments in Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial.

As previously reported, they show former President Bill Clinton was a frequent flyer on the Lolita express, taking at least nine flights with Epstein, and reveal Prince Andrew, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and former US Senator George Mitchell were also passengers.

Neither Trump nor Clinton have been linked to any of Epsteins sex-trafficking crimes. Andrew, Dershowitz and Mitchell have all strenuously denied allegations of wrongdoing.

It comes as jury deliberations in Maxwell's trial began on Monday as they try to determine whether she is a dangerous predator who recruited teens to be sexually abused by financier Epstein - as prosecutors put it - or the 'innocent woman' the defense have described.

Donald Trump flew at least seven times on Jeffrey Epstein's (pictured together in Palm Beach in 1997) private Lolita Express jet, newly released flight logs have revealed

Trump flew on Epstein's (pictured, with Ghislaine Maxwell on the notorious plane) Lolita Express jet four times in 1993, once in 1994, once in 1995 and once in 1997

Flight logs released during Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial show Donald Trump travelled on Epstein's Lolita Express on one two-leg trip in May 1994 with ex-wife Marla Maples, his then-infant daughter Tiffany and a nanny

The former President travelled on Epstein's private jet from Palm Beach, Florida, to Teterboro Airport, New Jersey, in March 1993, according to new documents

Trump also flew with Epstein and Maxwell, who appears to be listed here as GM, and his son Eric in August 1995, the documents reveal

On January 5, 1997, as was previously reported, Trump travelled with Epstein from Palm Beach to Newark

The documents show Epstein was regularly on the move between his homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, New Mexico and his now-notorious 'paedophile island' in the US Virgin Islands.

Flight logs show Trump, Epstein and Maxwell, among others, flew from Palm Beach in Florida to Teterboro in New Jersey on October 11, 1993 and October 1993.

The former President then travelled on the Lolita Express with his ex-wife Marla Marples and his infant daughter Tiffany in 1994.

On August 13, 1995, he travelled with his son Eric alongside Epstein and Maxwell, written in the log as 'JE' and 'GM', from Palm Beach in Florida, to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

And on January 5, 1997, as was previously reported, Trump travelled with Epstein from Palm Beach to Newark.

Prince Andrew appears in the logs three times and flew with with Epstein on at least one other occasion, as has previously been reported.

He flew with Epstein to the Virgin Islands on February 9, 1999, returning on February 12 with Maxwell and one of the prince's security officers as well as other guests.

A source close to Andrew reportedly said in 2019 that the Duke has 'no recollection' of being on the 1999 flight.

Andrew also flew on Epstein's Gulfstream from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to West Palm Beach on May 12, 2000.

And although not covered by the new release of flight logs, it is understood Andrew took a flight on the Gulfstream with Maxwell from London Luton to Edinburgh on September 1, 2006  six weeks after Epstein was arrested for sex offences.

A further mention of the prince appears on April 16, 1998, where the log notes: 'Met Princess Sarah Ferguson + kids on the ground.'

As previously reported, Epstein met Ferguson, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice while the royals holidayed in Nassau, the Bahamas in 1998.

At the time, Epstein was the only person flying on the plane and he returned to Palm Beach - making a 400-mile round journey - after seeing Prince Andrew and his family.

Epstein also transported President Clinton and actor Kevin Spacey, travelling with them from JFK Airport to the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, on September 21, 2002, according to the log.

And on one of Clinton's flights with Epstein, the pair were accompanied by Naomi Campbell.

After Epstein's death in jail in 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges, then-President Donald Trump fueled widespread conspiracy theories that suggested he had been murdered and said 'I wish her well' in reference to Maxwell

The Lolita express has been the subject of scrutiny throughout Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial in New York.

Last month, the jet's pilot Larry Visoki testified under oath that he remembered Trump being among the passengers on some of his flights.

Asked to describe his experience and list the famous passengers he had flown, Visoki said: 'I certainly remember President Trump, but not many people associated with him.'

Others who Visoki said he had flown included Bill Clinton, the actor Kevin Spacey and Prince Andrew.

Epstein and Trump's relationship soured when the financier hit on a young girl at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach club, in the early 2000s, before he was convicted of soliciting child prostitution.

They were still on good terms in 2002, when Trump gushed in an interview with New York Magazine: 'Ive known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy.

Hes a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it  Jeffrey enjoys his social life.'

Trump was in office when Epstein killed himself in prison in the summer of 2019.

Afterwards, Trump fueled widespread conspiracy theories that suggested Epstein had been murdered.

'Her boyfriend died in jail, and people are still trying to figure out how did it happen. Was it suicide, was he killed?

'And I do wish her well. I'm not looking for anything bad for her. I'm not looking bad for anybody.

'And people took that and they made it such a big deal, but all it is is her boyfriend died. He died in jail. Was he killed, was it suicide? I do. I wish her well,' he said of Maxwell, referring to Epstein as her 'boyfriend'.

Ghislaine Maxwell (right) is currently on trial for allegedly helping Jeffrey Epstein (left) her then-boyfriend, traffic young girls

Prosecutors in the case have released pictures of Maxwell with Epstein vacationing in Europe

The jury are set to return at 9am today to continue deliberating the case against Maxwell, 59, who, if found guilty, faces the rest of her life behind bars.

She faces six counts including enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

The prosecution has argued Maxwell played a pivotal role in Epstein's quest to sexually abuse teenage girls.

But defense awyer Laura Menninger argued that the women's recollections of abuse by Epstein and Maxwell were flawed memories manipulated decades later by lawyers seeking payouts or US government investigators seeking a scapegoat after Epstein killed himself in a federal jail in 2019 while awaiting his own sex trafficking trial.

She cited numerous inconsistencies in statements made by women over the years, saying 'their memories are highly flawed' and there are 'many reasons to hesitate and many reasons to doubt.'

'She's being tried here for being with Jeffrey Epstein. Maybe that's the biggest mistake of her life, but it's not a crime,' Menninger added.

Assistant US Attorney Maurene Comey called a defense claim that Maxwell didn't know about abuse that occurred for more than a decade a 'laughable argument.'

'Those four witnesses gave you the most damaging testimony in this trial,' she said. 'These women put themselves through the hell of testifying at this trial even though they have nothing to gain.'

Comey added: 'They did it for justice.'

The jury are set to return at 9am today to continue deliberating the case against Maxwell, 59, who, if found guilty, faces the rest of her life behind bars

Earlier, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe called Maxwell the 'lady of the house' when Epstein abused girls at a New York mansion, a Florida estate and a New Mexico ranch.

'Ghislaine Maxwell was dangerous,' Moe said. She cited over $30 million that Maxwell received from Epstein over the years.

'Maxwell and Epstein committed horrifying crimes.'

The summations came at the start of the fourth week of a trial that was originally projected to last six weeks.

With a coronavirus outbreak in New York worsening by the day and a holiday weekend ahead, Judge Alison J. Nathan urged lawyers to keep their closings tight so the jury could begin deliberating as early as Monday.

Maxwell has been jailed since her arrest in July 2020. The judge has denied her bail repeatedly, despite her lawyer's arguments that the pledge of her $22.5 million estate and a willingness to be watched 24 hours a day by armed guards would guarantee her appearance in court.
Police are trying to track down a gang of thugs who attacked a 33-year-old man, beat him with a chair and knocked him out in a violent beating in Brooklyn, New York City.

The attackers ran after the victim along 1910 Coney Island Avenue at around 4.20pm December 11.

One of the group threw the victim to the ground as seen in video released by the New York Police Department.

Police are trying to track down a gang of thugs who attacked a 22-year-old man, beat him with a chair and knocked him out in a violent beating in Brooklyn

The gang were dressed in an array of red, white and black jackets and coats. One of the gang picked up a chair (right) to use in the attack

The gang kicked and punched the man and one person even battered him with a chair until he was unconscious.

Some of his possessions were taken before the assailants fled.

Emergency services took the victim to Coney Island Hospital for injuries including cuts to his head and face.

NYPD released a series of images of the gang. Anyone who recognises them can call the Crimestoppers tipline on 1800-577-8477.

The 33-year-old victim was left unconscious with cuts to his face and head after he was attacked

The group of the thugs left the man on the sidewalk after chasing him down 1910 Coney Island Avenue at around 4.20pm December 11

New York Police Department released images of nine of the suspects in the victim's beating

Members of the public who recognise any of the assailants can call Crimestoppers on 1800-577-8477

The incoming New York City police commissioner faces a murder rate that is 50 percent higher than it was before the pandemic and shootings that have doubled since 2019, according to the most recent crime statistics released by the NYPD.

Keechant Sewell, who is set to become the first black woman to hold the post after being tapped for the position by Mayor-elect Eric Adams on Wednesday, will be charged with the daunting task of reversing the violent crime that has plagued the city.

Crime statistics published by the NYPD show shootings, murders and auto grand larceny have all nearly doubled while murder is up 50 percent in the city compared to 2019 as of December 5.

Crime levels in New York City drastically spiked in 2020 and has continued to climb in 2021

New York City is currently experiencing soaring crime rates and an increase in shooting incidents not seen since the mid-2000s

Unemployment levels in New York City remain more than double its pre-pandemic levels

There have been 1,470 shootings, 443 murders and 9,595 cases of auto grand larceny, according to the latest data for the year.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, who departs at the end of the month, has blamed bail reform laws enacted by the Democratic-dominated state Legislature for the spike in violent crime.

'You have to look at the incarceration levels. It's a hard topic to talk about but there's been such a drastic reduction,' Shea said. 'I think that's part of what you're seeing play out.'

'At the state level, we are down significantly. Many people get out of prison and turn their life around, but, unfortunately, we all realize that many do not. You're seeing those unintended consequences on the street at times,' Shea claimed.

Keechant Sewell, 49, will be the next NYPD commissioner after being chosen by incoming Mayor Eric Adams

Mayor Bill de Blasio (pictured) and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea addressed New York City's rising crime in their last monthly press conference on crime statistics on December 8

In early 2020, criminal justice reform measures passed by the New York State Legislature and signed into law by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo took effect.

The new law has received increasing scrutiny over its rules that allow New York courts to release people who would have remained in jail under the old rules.

The statute, which went into place at the beginning of the year, eliminated cash bail and pretrial detention for a wide majority of low-level cases and nonviolent felonies.

The law also allows courts to release a person under certain conditions, such as a travel or firearm restriction.

Shea and others have claimed that the new law is to blame for the increase in violent crime.

But defenders of the law say that violent crime has increased in most of the country - including in jurisdictions that did not enact any criminal justice reform measures.
From Black Lives Matter to Bob The Builder: 'Hate incident' cases PRO-BREXIT PUNDIT'S INTERVIEW WITH DAVID STARKEY AT HEIGHT OF BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS Darren Grimes was interviewed by police on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred after David Starkey (pictured) appeared on the Brexiteer commentator's YouTube channel A video chat between a pro-Brexit pundit and David Starkey in which the historian used the phrase 'damn blacks' is to be officially recorded as a 'non-crime' hate incident despite the investigation being dropped. Darren Grimes was interviewed by police on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred after Dr Starkey appeared on the Brexiteer commentator's Youtube channel. But the Metropolitan Police dropped the case after a backlash from free speech campaigners and withdrew their invitation to interview Mr Grimes and Dr Starkey under caution. They confirmed no further action was being taken and that no offence took place. However, the incident will still be recorded as a hate crime allegation, police said, and could show up on future checks. The interview in question, which appeared on Mr Grimes's Reasoned UK YouTube Channel on June 30 last year, came at a time when Black Lives Matter protests were occurring regularly around the country following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Dr Starkey had told Mr Grimes: 'Slavery was not genocide otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there?' RETIRED TEACHER'S LETTER TO MOTHER OF CHILD WITH DOWN'S SYNDROME DEFENDING PARENT'S RIGHT TO ABORT Douglas Kedge penned a letter to a woman protesting about an episode of Emmerdale in which a couple decided to terminate a pregnancy after the baby was diagnosed with the condition Douglas Kedge, 85, penned a letter to a woman protesting about an episode of Emmerdale in which a couple decided to terminate a pregnancy after the baby was diagnosed with the condition. He wrote that although he understood some may regard having a child with Down's as a 'great privilege and joy', there are other 'perfectly decent people' who may wish to avoid what could be an 'appalling change in their lives'. Mr Kedge sent the note to Rachel Mewes, who has a three-year-old child with Down's syndrome, in response to a letter she sent to The Times last November. Ms Mewes, a disability campaigner, then complained to police - and Thames Valley Police later called Mr Kedge to inform him that a record had been made of his involvement in a 'non-crime hate incident'. But former parish council chairman Mr Kedge told MailOnline that he fears he will now be remembered as a 'victimiser' despite living a 'virtuous' life and dedicating himself to public service. He said: 'I am absolutely appalled that I now have a police record. I'm 85 and I have lived a fairly virtuous life up until now. I worked as an English teacher since 1957. 'I was chairman of the parish council and been the governor for two schools. But now at the age of 85 I find I have a police record. I am annoyed, very annoyed. 'The police have branded me a 'suspect' of a hate incident for writing a letter defending a woman's right to abort a baby with Down's syndrome. They have described Mrs Mewes as the victim, which makes me the victimiser.' MAN GETS 'HATE INCIDENT' RECORD FOR WHISTLING THE BOB THE BUILDER THEME TUNE AT HIS NEIGHBOUR A man has been landed with a police record for 'racial hatred' for whistling the Bob The Builder theme tune at his neighbour A man has been landed with a police record for 'racial hatred' for whistling the Bob The Builder theme tune at his neighbour. Officers in Bedfordshire recorded the incident as a non-crime hate incident, which will remain on file for six years and could be disclosed to prospective employers. Few other details about the 'crime' are known, but it is just one of the bizarre cases unearthed by an investigation into the controversial practice of recording 'hate incidents' even if no law has been broken. Advertisement

Campaigners have called for 120,000 'hate incidents' to be deleted from police records after a court found that College of Policing guidance which saw tweets about transgender issues recorded as a 'hate incident' had a 'chilling effect' on freedom of expression.

Yesterday former policeman Harry Miller accused the College of Policing of operating as 'Stasi by stealth' after he won a landmark Court of Appeal challenge against police guidance on 'hate incidents'.

Mr Miller, who describes himself as 'gender critical', launched the legal bid after an anonymous complaint was made about dozens of allegedly 'transphobic' posts on his Twitter account concerning changes to gender recognition laws.

The 56-year-old was visited by police at work and threatened with prosecution if he did not stop discussing the issue, and was told that the matter had been recorded as a 'non-crime hate incident'.

'Non-crime hate incidents' were introduced in 2014 following recommendations by the independent Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. They are 'any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice', according to College of Policing guidance. Reports of 'non-crime hate incidents' can show up in criminal record checks for six years, yet there are no grounds to appeal against them.

One man was landed with a police record for 'racial hatred' for whistling the Bob The Builder theme tune at his neighbour.

Other cases of the controversial practice include a swimming teacher in West Yorkshire given a police record after a child's mother claimed her son had been allowed to bang his head against the side of the pool 'due to his ethnicity', and a gay man who alleged he had been ripped off by a drug dealer because of his sexuality.

Mr Miller's lawyers had argued that the College's guidance  which serves as national policy for police forces  was 'completely irrational'.

Following a two-year legal battle, senior judges ruled yesterday that the guidance breached the former policeman's rights to freedom of expression. They also advised the College to review its guidance to add in more safeguards for free speech.

Campaigners have now called on police forces  or failing that, the Government  to delete thousands of 'hate incidents' from people's records.

Speaking to MailOnline, pro-Brexit pundit Darren Grimes claimed 'Orwellian ''non-crimes'' are used 'to stifle speech and debate'.

And Toby Young, director-general of the Free Speech Union, today suggested that anybody who has lost their job because they had a 'hate incident' recorded against their name could now sue the police following yesterday's ruling.

Mr Grimes said: 'Thousands of us have had these wretched things attached to our names, wasting precious police time and resources. Let's get our coppers back on our streets and off of our damn tweets. I'm not sure further litigation is necessary, the judgment is there in black and white. It's time for the Government to get the police back to focusing on the people's priorities.'

Asked if 'hate incidents' should be removed from people's records, he added: 'The Government should look to do that for thousands of people up and down the country.'

Mr Grimes was interviewed by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred after historian David Starkey appeared on the Brexiteer commentator's YouTube channel at the height of last year's Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Dr Starkey had said: 'Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there?'

Reacting to yesterday's ruling, Mr Young told MailOnline today: 'Police forces have no choice but to delete all these records immediately.

'What this judgment means is that ''non-crime hate incidents'' have been recorded against people's names on an unlawful basis. The Court was unambiguous about that, describing the mandatory recording of these incidents as an unlawful interference with freedom of expression and a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.'

Conservative commentator Calvin Robinson said: 'Non-crimes should not be logged. That goes against the premise of innocent until proven guilty, it goes against our idea of privacy, it's invasive and it's wrong. Why are we allowing police forces to log information about innocent civilians?'

And free speech campaigner Emma Webb added: 'The nation owes its thanks to Harry Miller for his steely determination and courage.

'Given this landmark ruling, which confirms ''non-crime hate incidents'' represent an unlawful interference with freedom of expression and their recording on a police database is likely to have a ''chilling effect'' on public debate, it is only right that all ''non-crime hate incidents'' should be scratched from police records.'

In April, Home Secretary Priti Patel said allegations of hate incidents should be wiped from an individual's record if no crime is found to have been committed.

A Home Office source said: 'These so-called ''non-crime hate incidents'' have a chilling effect on free speech and potentially stop people expressing views legally and legitimately.

'If people are found to have done nothing wrong the police shouldn't punish them.'

Under the Hate Crime Operational Guidelines, adopted in 2014, forces are required to record any actions deemed to be motivated by an element of hate, even if there is no evidence to prove them.

In total, 10,840 non-crime hate incidents were logged last year, bringing the total in the past five years to 120,000.

South Wales Police were found to have logged the highest number of 'hate incidents' with 13,856 cases, while the Met logged over 9,000 in the same time period.

However, Freedom of Information requests sent to 43 police forces in England and Wales failed to identify a single crime that had been solved as a result.

One retired teacher received a police record for committing a 'hate incident' by writing a letter defending the rights of a mother to abort a baby with Down's syndrome.

Douglas Kedge, 85, penned a letter to a woman protesting about an episode of Emmerdale in which a couple decided to terminate a pregnancy after the baby was diagnosed with the condition.

He wrote that although he understood some may regard having a child with Down's as a 'great privilege and joy', there are other 'perfectly decent people' who may wish to avoid what could be an 'appalling change in their lives'.

Yesterday former policeman Harry Miller accused the College of Policing of operating as 'Stasi by stealth' after he won a landmark Court of Appeal challenge against police guidance on 'hate incidents'

Pro-Brexit pundit Darren Grimes (left) claimed 'Orwellian 'non-crimes' are used 'to stifle speech and debate'. And Toby Young (right), director-general of the Free Speech Union, today suggested that anybody who has lost their job because they had a 'hate incident' recorded against their name could now sue the police following yesterday's ruling

What are 'non-crime hate incidents' and what will happen to them after the Court of Appeal's ruling? WHAT ARE 'NON-CRIME HATE INCIDENTS'? Non-crime hate incidents were introduced in 2014 following recommendations by the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. They are 'any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice', according to the College of Policing's guidance on hate crimes. Reports of non-crime hate incidents can show up in criminal record checks for six years, yet there are no grounds to appeal against them. Dame Victoria Sharp has now ordered the College of Policing to come up with new 'safeguards' to make sure that any future recording of non-crime hate incidents does not disproportionately interfere with the legal right to speak their mind. This means non-crime hate incidents will still exist but the guidance around their use will be tightened. WHAT DID THE COURT OF APPEAL RULE? Dame Sharp said: 'The recording of non-crime hate incidents is plainly an interference with freedom of expression and knowledge that such matters are being recorded and stored in a police database is likely to have a serious 'chilling effect' on public debate.' The judge, sitting with Lord Justice Haddon-Cave and Lady Justice Simler, found that records of such incidents could be disclosed in an enhanced criminal record check, adding to the chilling effect. She continued: 'The concept of a chilling effect in the context of freedom of expression is an extremely important one. 'It often arises in discussions about what if any restrictions on journalistic activity are lawful; but in my judgment it is equally important when considering the rights of private citizens to express their views within the limits of the law, including and one might say in particular, on controversial matters of public interest.' Giving the High Court ruling, Mr Justice Julian Knowles said Mr Miller's tweets were 'for the most part, either opaque, profane or unsophisticated' but were still entitled to freedom of expression protections. Mr Miller previously said that he was 'not antagonistic to those who self-identify as a gender which is contrary to their biological sex'. Dame Victoria said the discussion around gender involved 'plainly important matters of public interest on which strong views are held and publicly expressed'. She continued: 'Mr Miller belongs to a group of people who could easily be stigmatised for their opinions and be subject to complaints by those offended by his views.' The senior judges also found that while the guidance had legitimate aims of preventing crime, those aims could be achieved by less intrusive measures. Dame Victoria later rejected the High Court judge's finding that a 'common-sense discretion' not to record should be read into the guidance. 'Though the judge said the police have a common-sense discretion not to record irrational complaints and the police say they exercise such a discretion, nothing is said about this in the revised guidance,' she said. 'The guidance contemplates on its face, the recording by the police of incidents as non-crime hate incidents, which are, to put it shortly, non-crime non-hate incidents.' Advertisement

Mr Kedge sent the note to Rachel Mewes, a mother from New Harley in Northumberland who has a three-year-old child with Down's syndrome, in response to a letter she sent to The Times last November.

Ms Mewes, who is a disability campaigner, then complained to police - and Thames Valley Police later called Mr Kedge to inform him that a record had been made of his involvement in a 'non-crime hate incident'.

But former parish council chairman Mr Kedge told MailOnline that he fears he will now be remembered as a 'victimiser' despite living a 'virtuous' life and dedicating himself to public service since 1957.

He said: 'I am absolutely appalled that I now have a police record. I'm 85 and I have lived a fairly virtuous life up until now. I worked as an English teacher since 1957.

'I was chairman of the parish council and been the governor for two schools. But now at the age of 85 I find I have a police record. I am annoyed, very annoyed.

'The police have branded me a 'suspect' of a hate incident for writing a letter defending a woman's right to abort a baby with Down's syndrome. They have described Mrs Mewes as the victim, which makes me the victimiser.'

One man was landed with a police record for 'racial hatred' for whistling the Bob The Builder theme tune at his neighbour.

Officers in Bedfordshire recorded the incident as a non-crime hate incident, which will remain on file for six years and could be disclosed to prospective employers. Few other details about the 'crime' are known.

Others include a swimming teacher in West Yorkshire given a police record after a child's mother claimed her son had been allowed to bang his head against the side of the pool 'due to his ethnicity', and a gay man who alleged he had been ripped off by a drug dealer because of his sexuality.

In Norfolk, a Portuguese national said an unknown person had deliberately left a burger bun on their driveway 'due to their ethnicity'.

Rupert Matthews, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, said: 'The police have got more than enough to do and if it is not a crime then we cannot be putting resources into it. The public is right to ask why are police investigating things that are not crimes.'

In a damning judgment yesterday, the Court of Appeal said that although the guidance was aimed at protecting people and avoiding crime, there were 'less intrusive' ways of doing this.

Dame Victoria Sharp, one of the country's most senior judges, said there is no 'common sense discretion' in the rules to stop irrational complaints from being recorded.

The judgment said: 'The recording of non-crime hate incidents is plainly an interference with freedom of expression and knowledge that such matters are being recorded and stored in a police database is likely to have a serious ''chilling effect'' on public debate.'

Announcing the court's decision, Mr Justice Julian Knowles said Mr Miller's tweets were 'lawful' and that the effect of the police turning up at Mr Miller's place of work 'because of his political opinions must not be underestimated'.

He added: 'To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.'

Speaking outside court, Mr Miller said being offensive was 'one of the cornerstones of freedom'.

'Being offensive is not, cannot and should not be an offence,' he said. 'Only when speech turns to malicious communication or targeted harassment against an individual should it be a problem.'

He told TalkRadio: 'These people [College of Policing] are complete and utter idiots. They went all through the High Court trying to argue that there's such a thing as a non-crime, crime and non-hate, hate. They need shutting down.

'The consequences are far reaching. Up until today, a non-crime hate incident could appear on your record and police could send it to your employer to prevent you from getting a job or a promotion. This is a great day for British democracy and freedom. We have kicked it out the park.'

An anonymous member of the public had complained about Mr Miller's tweets, leading to Humberside Police recording the complaint as a 'hate incident' in January 2020.

Mr Miller challenged Humberside Police's actions and the College's guidance at the High Court.

He was successful in his battle against the force, with the court ruling Humberside Police's actions were a 'disproportionate interference' to his right to freedom of expression. But Mr Miller was unsuccessful in an additional challenge to the College, after it was found its guidance 'serves legitimate purposes and is not disproportionate'.

In March, Mr Miller's lawyers told the Court of Appeal that police guidance over 'hate incidents' 'violates the right to freedom of expression'.

Lawyers for the College argued any interference with the right to freedom of expression 'is proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued by the guidance'.

The court heard guidance had been 'fully replaced', with updates including 'a strong warning against police taking a disproportionate response to reports of a non-crime hate incident', including directly referencing the High Court's ruling.

Conservative commentator Calvin Robinson (left) added: 'Non-crimes should not be logged. Why are we allowing police forces to log information about innocent civilians?' And free speech campaigner Emma Webb (right) added: 'The nation owes its thanks to Harry Miller for his steely determination and courage'

One of the messages which Mr Miller retweeted was a poem which included the line: 'Your vagina goes nowhere'

An example of one of the tweets Mr Miller has posted on his social media account

Assistant Chief Constable Iain Raphael, College of Policing, said in a statement yesterday: 'Freedom of expression within the law is a fundamental right which should be protected.

'Policing strives every day to protect the vulnerable from harm, uphold fundamental rights and enforce the law.

'The College of Policing supports this work through setting standards and sharing knowledge that helps forces and individuals provide better service to the public.

'Complaints of hate are often complex and our guidance seeks to help officers understand how best to do a difficult part of their job.

'The balance we have always aimed to strike is between the need to protect vulnerable people and communities from harm with the need to facilitate and protect freedom of speech.

'The court has found we need to make safeguards in our guidance more explicit to help police officers proportionately enforce the law. We will listen to, reflect on, and review this judgment carefully and make any changes that are necessary.

'The judgment provides clarity that police have the power to record, retain and use a wide variety of data and information to keep people safe.

'By recording correctly, the police can gain insight into potential tensions in communities and harm caused to individuals. All police guidance is kept under continual review and is adapted to keep pace with the complex demands of protecting the public.'
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The UK recorded more than 100,000 Covid cases in a single day for the first time ever last week, new data shows after the emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

A total of 102,297 people tested positive for the virus last Wednesday, according to backdated Government figures  marking the first time they have risen above triple digits officially since the start of the pandemic.

The figure looks at positive cases by 'specimen date', the day someone took the test, and is different from daily reported cases announced by Government every day, which looks at when someone received their result.

It can take up to five days for the number of positive tests on any single day to be fully counted so more days where Covid cases have breached 100,000 may emerge in the coming days.

But case numbers are still well below the projections of gloomy Government modelling which said there were up to 400,000 infections a day last week and that this could rise to 1million by the peak this winter.

Doubts about No10 experts' projections are believed to be the reason Boris Johnson has pumped the brakes on tougher Christmas curbs despite huge scientific pressure, with ministers waiting for more concrete data on how severe Omicron is, how well vaccines protect against and how fast it's really spreading.

It came as MailOnline's analysis of hospital data found a quarter of London's daily Covid hospital admissions in the last week were not primarily for the virus.

That was double the proportion in the week before the Omicron variant was first detected in the UK, when Delta was dominant, raising more questions about the new strain's severity.

London has become a hotbed for the ultra-infectious strain and daily Covid admissions have doubled from 100 to 200 in the past three weeks, which is fuelling fears of a national rise in hospital pressure.

But NHS England figures show that 332 out of 1,349 admissions in London in the week up to December 18 were only picked up after the patients had arrived in hospital (25 per cent) for another ailment.

This was double the proportion in the week before the first Omicron case on November 27, when just 72 out of 638 cases (11 per cent) were 'incidental' cases.

ICU rates in the capital have stayed flat in the three weeks since the variant was first spotted in the UK, hovering around 200, but there is a longer lag between infection and intensive care admission.

Experts told MailOnline it was important to distinguish between admissions primarily for Covid so that rising numbers do not spook ministers into more social restrictions or scare the public from going to hospital.

South African doctors have insisted for weeks that Omicron is milder since raising the alarm about it on November 24. But there has been ongoing debate over whether it is intrinsically milder or if South Africa is benefitting from very high levels of natural immunity after being battered by Delta just months ago.

Meanwhile, about one in four local authority areas in the UK are recording their highest rate of new Covid cases since mass testing began in summer 2020, new analysis shows.

The areas include two-thirds of authorities in London, more than half in South East England and nearly a half in eastern England. Most of the rest of the country has yet to reach record levels, however, with only a handful of areas in the north and west seeing rates at an all-time high.

The above graph shows Covid cases recorded in the UK by specimen date, which is the date that a test was carried out rather than when the result was processed. It reveals 100,000 people who took swabs last Wednesday tested positive for the virus

NHS England figures show that 332 out of 1,349 admissions in London in the week up to December 18 were only picked up after the patients had arrived in hospital (25 per cent) for another ailment. This was double the proportion in the week before the first Omicron case on November 27, when just 72 out of 638 cases (11 per cent) were 'incidental' cases. The above chart shows the proportion of Covid admissions that were not primarily for Covid

Graph shows London's daily Covid cases by date reported. It reveals they initially shot up when Omicron first emerged, but may now be stabalising despite predictions that infections are doubling every two to three days

Deaths and ICU admissions - which are the biggest lagging indicators - have remained flat even as hospital admissions have doubled

About one in four local authority areas in the UK are recording their highest rate of new Covid cases since mass testing began in summer 2020, new analysis shows. The areas include two-thirds of authorities in London, more than half in South East England and nearly a half in eastern England. Most of the rest of the country has yet to reach record levels, however, with only a handful of areas in the north and west seeing rates at an all-time high

This chart shows how the blood samples of people who had received vaccines and and survived a previous Delta infection performed when exposed to Omicron in terms of producing neutralizing antibodies, measured here as IC50 a measures of effectiveness. Any combination that failed to get higher than IC50 16 failed to produce enough antibodies to significantly fight off Omicron. These bars are averages based on all the samples of their respective combinations. It shows a previous Delta infection fails to provide any significant protection in terms of antibody production, but a combination of previous Covid infection and a vaccine provoked the best response.

Dr Raghib Ali, a Cambridge University clinical epidemiologist, said: 'If you've got very high prevalence of Omicron in the community then there is a higher chance anyone who comes to hospital for any reason, even people with broken legs, will have Covid.

'It's just feature of having so much Omicron in the community. It is essential to distinguish between admissions that are primarily for Covid and those that are not.

'It's not only helpful but in many ways essential to know the primary diagnosis and to know how many daily admissions there are for every condition  that would give us an indication of the true pressure on the NHS.'

Sturgeon CANCELS New Year over Omicron fears: First Minister orders NO mixing between Scottish households Nicola Sturgeon today cancelled large scale New Year celebrations in Scotland as she unveiled additional coronavirus restrictions to slow the spread of the Omicron variant. The Scottish First Minister said the advice for Christmas Day remains unchanged, with people allowed to meet with family but urged to be cautious. But from December 26 for three weeks there will be attendance limits placed on live public events which will torpedo Hogmanay events. The limits will not apply to private life events like weddings, but Ms Sturgeon said for indoor standing events the limit will be 100 people, for indoor seated events it will be 200 and for outdoor events 500 seated or standing. This will mean that from Boxing Day football and other sporting matches in Scotland will effectively be spectator-free. Ms Sturgeon also said that from December 27 the Scottish Government is advising people to return to limiting their social contacts 'as much as you possibly can' as she urged to nation to 'please stay at home'. The decisions will pile the pressure on Boris Johnson after he yesterday delayed making a decision on imposing new coronavirus curbs in England. Ms Sturgeon appeared to fire a shot at the Prime Minister as she said 'we know from experience that if we wait until the data tells us conclusively that we have a problem... it will already be too late to act to avoid that problem'. Her announcements came after Rishi Sunak unveiled a 1billion bailout for stricken businesses as Mr Johnson sits on the fence over Covid curbs amid infighting among ministers and top scientists. The Chancellor has announced grants of up to 6,000 for hospitality and leisure firms being crippled by a wave of cancellations following the emergence of the Omicron strain. The taxpayer will also cover the cost of statutory sick pay for Covid-related absences for companies with fewer than 250 employees. The move - which was given a broad welcome by industry - comes despite the PM declaring last night that there will be no more restrictions in England yet, defying massive pressure from experts who warn the NHS is at risk of being overwhelmed by the mutant strain. Mr Johnson admitted the decision was 'finely balanced' - with speculation that the government could still need to act with a 'circuit breaker' before New Year if new crucial evidence due today and tomorrow show the situation deteriorating quickly. They include an assessment from an Imperial College team on the severity of Omicron. However, it now looks too late to bring in any legal restrictions before December 25, with the premier having vowed to give restive MPs a say in advance. Advertisement

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, an eminent statistician at Cambridge University, told MailOnline: 'It looks like there is an increasing number of people being admitted to hospital who turn out to have Covid, presumably the Omicron variant.

'This is perhaps inevitable with a fast-spreading variant in which the majority do not experience symptoms.

'But it means there is an extra burden on the hospitals in caring for infected patients.'

There are 1,819 Covid patients in hospitals across the capital at present, up 65 per cent on a fortnight ago when 1,102 patients suffering from the disease were on wards.

Nationally, hospitalisation and death rates are yet to move but it can take from three weeks to more than a month for these to again start trending upwards.

London's seven-day average for daily Covid cases has risen more than 150 per cent in a week amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

The capital was recording 21,700 infections a day yesterday, compared to just 8,715 a week ago.

But there are now early signs that infections may be slowing down despite predictions they are doubling every two to three days.

There were 22,750 infections recorded yesterday, which was up slightly from the day before but dropped below the highs of 26,0000 from this weekend.

Lambeth has the highest infection rate in the capital (2,104 cases per 100,000 people), followed by Wandsworth (2,024) and Southwark (1,802).

On the other end of the scale, Harrow has the lowest infection rate (826.7), followed by Hounslow (848.5) and Redbridge (921.6).

In terms of ICU admissions, in London they have not surged despite the rampant spread of the Omicron variant.

Some 207 emergency beds had Covid patients in them by December 14, compared to 198 at the start of the month.

But experts said it was likely very few of these were Omicron patients, because of the time taken for a patient to become seriously ill after catching the virus.

They added that patients can often spend a long period of time on ICU wards.

Nationally there were 925 patients in ICU compared to 868 at the start of the month.

Meanwhile, Government specimen date data shows the second biggest day of infections was on December 14, when there were 94,551.

December 16 is already in third place with 91,312, even before every swab taken on that day is analysed.

The only day in top five of the most Covid cases in the UK that has not occurred in the past few weeks is December 29 2020, when 81,481 cases were recorded.

At this time many parts of the UK had limits on what shops could open and how many people from different households could meet indoors, if at all.

This is still not as bad as Government modelling has suggested, which has led to fury from experts and MPs over the reliability of the data.

It comes as about one in four local authorities in England are now recording their highest ever Covid infection rates since mass tests were rolled out in summer 2020.

The areas include two-thirds of authorities in London, more than half in south-east England and nearly a half in eastern England.

Most of the rest of the country has yet to reach record levels, however, with only a handful of areas in the north and west seeing rates at an all-time high.

In the South East 47 of 64 authorities are now seeing record rates, with the highest levels in Elmbridge (1,384.7), Reigate and Banstead (1,317.3) and Epsom and Ewell (1,271.6).

In the East of England 21 of 45 local authorities are now recording their highest ever rates, while in the East Midlands 12 of 40 have seen infections break previous records.

Additionally, 21 of the 32 local authorities in London now have record Covid case rates, with the capital accounting for the top 10 highest rates in the UK, and 20 of the top 25.

Four London areas have rates above 2,000 cases per 100,000 people: Lambeth (2,461.4), Wandsworth (2361.9), Hackney and City of London (2,096.8) and Southwark (2,064.0).

And in south-east England, 37 of the 64 local authorities are now seeing record rates, led by Elmbridge (1,384.7), Reigate and Banstead (1,317.3) and Epsom and Ewell (1,271.6), all of which are in Surrey.

In eastern England 21 of the 45 local authorities have record case rates, including St Albans (1,311.3) and Cambridge (1,177.0).

These are not the highest rates in the region, however - Brentwood (1,460.3) and Thurrock (1,342.2) in Essex are higher, though this is slightly below the record for both areas, which was set during the second wave of the virus last winter.

In the East Midlands 12 of the 40 areas are at a record high, led by South Northamptonshire (970.8), Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire (917.8) and Charnwood in Leicestershire (916.6)

All figures are for the seven days to December 16, as data for more recent days is still incomplete.

In total, 102 of the 377 local authority areas in the UK, 27 per cent, are now recording their highest Covid case rates since mass testing was rolled out across the country in May and June 2020.

Figures for case rates in the early months of the pandemic are not directly comparable, as only a small number of people were being tested, mostly in hospitals and care homes.

Of the 102 areas, only 11 are outside the south and east: six in north-west England (Bury, Cheshire West and Chester, Manchester, Salford, Stockport and Trafford); three in Scotland (East Lothian, Edinburgh and West Lothian); one in Northern Ireland (Ards and North Down); and one in the West Midlands (Newcastle-under-Lyme).

The contrast between the south and east, and the north and west, reflects how Omicron has spread in recent weeks - in particular how London was the first area of the UK where it became the dominant version of Covid.

Although nine in 10 local authorities in the UK are currently recording a week-on-week rise in rates, most areas in the north and west of the country have yet to hit levels seen during the second wave of the virus.

But this could change in the days and weeks ahead, once Omicron has become the dominant variant in all parts of the country.

A row erupted yesterday over modelling that had appeared to raise the threat of Christmas being 'cancelled' for a second year in a row.

In forecasts leaked over the weekend, the SAGE expert committee warned that without rapid action daily deaths could hit 6,000 in the worst case  and hospital admissions 10,000.

But with huge uncertainty over the severity of Omicron, ministers, MPs and experts rejected the 'implausible' predictions.

Tory former leader Iain Duncan Smith referred to SAGE modeller Graham Medley as 'Graham Meddler' during an interview BBC Radio 4's Today programme, although it was not clear if it was a slip of the tongue.

Criticising blood-curdling claims of up to 6,000 deaths a day if there are no addition restrictions, Mr Duncan Smith said the government should only make a decision based on a 'wider range of information on the effect of lockdown'.

'We need to understand the effect of lockdown is dramatic across so many areas of people's lives, which equates to the same as people going into hospital,' he said.

It comes as Rishi Sunak unveils a 1billion bailout for stricken businesses from today, announcing grants of up to 6,000 for premises including hospitality and leisure firms being crippled by the current wave of cancellations.

The taxpayer will also cover the cost of statutory sick pay for Covid-related absences for companies with fewer than 250 employees.

Boris Johnson yesterday pushed back a decision on whether to introduce more Covid curbs amid a vicious row in his cabinet. It now appears likely no new measures will come into force before Christmas Day.

In South Africa, their Omicron wave appears to now be flattening off about a month after the Omicron variant first sent cases in the country skyrocketing.

Data from the National Institute For Communicable Diseases (NICD) shows just 8,515 people tested positive yesterday, down from 13,992 last Monday. The 40 per cent drop is the biggest since the Omicron outbreak hit the country.

In another sign the wave is fading, hospitalisations fell by a fifth in the nation yesterday with just 323 people admitted. It was the second day they've fallen after they dropped 53 per cent yesterday.

But the figures may be down to a big dip in testing, with 28,000 carried out yesterday compared to 45,000 the same time a week ago.

The test positive rate has also slightly dropped on last week, however, suggesting that the outbreak could be waning.
Star Hobson's mother has been warned she is a 'marked woman' after being put on the lifers' wing at HMP New Hall where notorious serial killer Rose West is also locked up.

Frankie Smith, 20, was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for causing or allowing Star's death, while partner Savannah Brockhill, 28, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years for her murder.

Smith is understood to be serving her time in a single cell alongside 'lifers' at the closed category prison in West Yorkshire.

However, she is said to have a target on her back and is a likely target of an attack after details of Star's death emerged at trial.

A source told The Sun Online: 'Shes a marked woman and it wont be long before someone gets to her.

'Shes on the lifers wing so there are plenty of women with very little to lose who will attack her for the price of a few bars of chocolate or some toiletries.'

In an alarming post online, another person wrote: 'Leave her cell door open'.

It is understood Smith will eat meals alongside other prisoners on the Willow House wing and share communal showers.

It is not clear if West, who with her husband Fred tortured and murdered at least nine young women between 1973 and 1987, is on the same wing or another special unit.

Brockhill, meanwhile, is currently serving her life sentence at HMP Styal in Cheshire, where she collapsed twice and suffered a cardiac arrest before being given life saving resuscitation.

Frankie Smith (pictured) was jailed for eight years at Bradford Crown Court for causing or allowing the death of her 16-month-old daughter Star Hobson

Smith (right), 20, pictured holding her toddler daughter Star (left). The infant was murdered by her partner Savannah Brockhill

Brockhill (pictured) was jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years for the murder of Star

Star from 'utterly catastrophic' injuries at her home in Keighley, West Yorkshire in September 2020

An aerial view of HMP New Hall, Flockton, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, where Smith is serving her eight-year prison sentence

A timeline of failures: How social services and police missed abuse of tragic Star January 23, 2020 - A referral from Smith's friend and sometimes babysitter Holly Jones went to social services. She flagged up potential domestic violence issues and the fact Star was increasingly being left in her care. Three days later police visited but there were no concerns raised. Social services tried to visit Smith on January 28 but she was not home. Her family were spoken to and no problems were raised, so the case was closed on February 27. May 5, 2020 - Star's great-grandmother Anita Smith contacted social services over concerns over how the baby was being treated. They visited but there were no bruises to either the baby or her mother. Social services spoke to Frankie Smith and Brockhill and the latter gave them permission to do police checks on her. June 21, 2020 - Jordan Hobson, Star's father, referred Smith and Brockhill to social services after seeing pictures the couple had shared of his daughter's bruised face. Police again visited their home and saw the markings on the baby's head. Smith told them Star had hit her head on the handle of a coffee table. A medical examination found two bruises on her cheek and four on the back of her leg. Smith and Brockhill's explanation that they were from her playing with a puppy were believed. June 23, 2020 - Social services were again contacted by Rachel Whiteley, a close friend of Smith's mother Yvonne Spendley. She had been concerned how Smith had treated Star at a barbecue, picking her up roughly. Ms Whiteley said at the time: 'I thought it was disgusting, giving her barbecue food, the way she handled her.' Social services closed the case in July, it is not clear what was done. September 2, 2020 - Frank Smith  Star's paternal great-grandfather  alerted social services to a video of Star with bruises on her face. When they visited her, her mother was said to have been in Scotland. The next day they went again unannounced and found her at home with Brockhill. They noticed Star was so unsteady on her feet she walked into a sofa while they were there. There were also bruises on her cheek and right shin but were told by Brockhill she had fallen down the stairs. The murderer told police later what the social worker had said, adding: 'Social services came to see Star, she checked her body, her bedroom, chatted with us about Star, she said the report was malicious.' On September 15 social services closed the case, indeed concluding the referral had been 'malicious'. A week later Star was murdered. Advertisement

Smith is said to be 'upset' by calls for her eight-year sentence to be reviewed.

She phoned her grandfather David Fawcett - who is one of the two relatives who speaks to her - earlier this week to moan about her jail term after the Attorney General urged a review into the 'lenient' sentence.

David, 61, told the Sunday People: 'She phoned me on Thursday and she's a little upset because they're reviewing the sentence. People don't think eight years is long enough.

'She's upset about it, to be honest. She's lost a daughter and has to live with that for the rest of her life, that's all she talks about.'

After giving birth at 17, Smith was initially a 'good mother' but began neglecting Star, preferring instead to drink in the pubs of Bradford - often with her mother, Yvonne Spendley.

On one of her nights out, she met Brockhill at a pub where she was working as a bouncer, and despite never having dated women before, fell for her 'confident' personality and quickly became 'obsessed' with her.

Brockhill, a self-proclaimed 'psycho', regularly beat Smith and - when she continued to attract male attention - threatened to 'kneecap' anyone who 'even looked at her'.

The amateur boxer also began physically abusing Star and went on to beat the defenceless toddler to death in one final act of sickening violence.

During their trial, it emerged social services received at least five referrals from numerous friends and family members worried Star's life was in danger but social workers allowed the toddler to stay with her terrible mum.

Some of her extended family had opposed the relationship due to it being with another woman, as well as due to Brockhill's background as a traveller.

These concerns would later go on to affect how the case was later dealt with by social services, the trial heard.

Faced with numerous referrals from concerned family members, social workers accepted Smith's story that they were 'malicious' and motivated by prejudice, the jury were told.

The first social services referral was made on January 23 last year  eight months before Star died.

Babysitter Holly Smith noticed bruising on her and raised her fears about potential domestic abuse, which resulted in police and social services visiting Smith.

No action was taken.

Just nine days later Mrs Smith contacted social services after, the court heard, learning about play-fights in the flat with Star that involved a 'choke-slam' wrestling manoeuvre.

Mr Fawcett was also concerned about Brockhill's desire to shave Star's hair in accordance with gipsy tradition - something that may have fuelled social services' mistaken belief that his complaints were motivated by prejudice.

When they visited, social workers saw no bruising and found Star to be comfortable with Brockhill.

No action was taken.

Mrs Smith and Mr Fawcett were then banned from seeing Star by the couple.

But in June the authorities were called in for the third time when Smith's older sister Alicia Szepler took photographs of bruises on her niece and sent them to police.

She told officers her sibling swore at Star and deprived her of food.

A custody picture of Rose West, the infamous House of Horrors killer, murdered at least nine women along with her husband Fred

Smith, pictured above, is serving an eight-year prison sentence at HMP New Hall in West Yorkshire

The allegations coincided with Star's biological father, Jordan Hobson, who had also been sent the picture of his bruised daughter, voicing his concerns with social services.

The toddler was taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary. The doctor who examined Star accepted Smith's excuse that she bumped into a coffee table and sustained other bruising while playing with a puppy.

No action was taken.

Two more referrals  the fourth and fifth  were made to social services by friends and relatives.

No action was taken.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General's Office confirmed they received a request for the sentences to be examined, and law officers have 28 days from the date the terms were given to consider the case and make a decision.
Vladimir Putin has warned he is willing to take 'military measures' in response to 'unfriendly' Western action in Ukraine, in the clearest sign yet that the Russian strongman is gearing up for war.

Putin, speaking during a meeting at the defence ministry on Tuesday, said Russia will 'react toughly to unfriendly steps' and stressed 'that we have every right to do so.'

America has been warning for weeks that Putin appears to be readying tens of thousands of troops, tanks and artillery pieces to invade Ukraine, but Putin has insisted it is merely a defence force - until now.

He spoke just days after Russia issued a list of demands to NATO, including that Ukraine never be allowed to join the alliance and that its forces be withdrawn from former Soviet states.

Dmitry Kiselyov, a media mogul known as Putin's mouthpiece, yesterday threatened to 'put a gun to America's head' if NATO forces are stationed in Ukraine and warned the alliance to back off 'otherwise, everyone will be turned into radioactive ash.'

Vladimir Putin has threatened to take 'military measures' in response to 'unfriendly' Western actions around Ukraine (pictured, Russian forces currently massed in border regions)

Russian paratroopers take part in training exercises near Moscow in footage released Tuesday amid fears they could be used to invade eastern Ukraine

Russian paratroopers take part in mid-winter training drill near Moscow this week

Putin said Russia would be 'within our rights' to take military measures in Ukraine

'We need long-term legally binding guarantees,' Putin told the meeting on Tuesday, even as he warned against taking America at its word.

'The United States easily withdraws from all international treaties that for one reason or another become uninteresting to them,' he added.

'What is going on, this tension that builds up in Europe, it is their fault, At each step Russia had to respond somehow.

'At each step the situation got worse and worse, degraded and degraded. And today we are in the situation when we need to decide something.'

Russia 'cannot allow' the West to put its weapons so close to Moscow, he added.

'If this infrastructure moves, if the US and NATO missile systems appear in Ukraine, then their flight time to Moscow will be reduced to 7-10 minutes, and with the deployment of hypersonic weapons - to five,' he said.

US and UK preparing Ukraine for Russian cyberattacks The US and UK have dispatched cybersecurity teams to Ukraine in secret to prepare for Russian attacks on the country's computer networks. Washington fears Putin will use cyber warfare as the first stage in what may become a full-blown invasion of the country, by turning off power grids or shutting down the banking system. Russian hackers have already successfully attacked Ukraine's power grid - once in 2015, and again in 2016. American officials told the New York Times that a 'widespread campaign' has been underway for months as hackers target 'Ukrainian government agencies, the national police, and electric utilities.' The aim, the officials say, could be to weaken the country ahead of a ground assault by tens of thousands of Russian troops massed nearby. Or, if the hacking is particularly successful, it could destabilize the government to such an extent that President Volodymyr Zelensky is ousted and replaced by another leader who is more sympathetic to Moscow. Advertisement

The Kremlin said today that high-level talks between the US and Russia are underway over the list of demands, but said no agreements have yet been reached.

The White House has said it will consult with NATO allies over the demands, but it was willing to make no promises.

Asked about those demands by the BBC on Monday, Mr Kiselyov responded: 'If Ukraine ever joins NATO or if NATO develops military infrastructure there, we will hold a gun to America's head. We have the military capability.'

Russia is 'one hundred per cent' willing to use force to defend its red lines, Mr Kiselyov added, saying that it is a 'matter of life or death' for his country.

He also warned of the risk of a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis if NATO deploys missiles in regions where they can quickly strike Moscow.

'It would be good to harmonise our interests and not put Russia in a position where missiles could reach us in four minutes,' he added.

'Russia is ready to create a comparable, analogous threat, by deploying its weapons close to decision-making centres.

'But we are suggesting a way of avoiding this, of not creating threats. Otherwise, everyone will be turned into radioactive ash.'

Meanwhile a presenter on another state-owned channel, Rossiya 1, was warning viewers on Monday that 'maybe we really are on the verge of war with NATO.'

The presenter said: 'The United States must sign off on its hegemony; its hegemony is over.'

'Either they step back voluntarily or we'll make them do it by force. And Russia makes no guarantees about the survival of Ukraine, especially as a sovereign state.

'Maybe we really are on the eve of war with NATO.'

While top diplomats from both Russia and the US have 'discussed' the Kremlin's demands, Moscow says it has yet to receive a 'substantive' response to them.

The White House has said only that it will 'discuss' the list with its allies, but added that Russia cannot be allowed to interfere in the security policy of other nations.

Amid the rising tensions, Washington advised all US citizens against travel to Ukraine due to the imminent threat of Russian invasion.

The warning was contained within a travel alert issued on Monday that raised the alert level for Ukraine to four - the highest the scale goes.

US citizens were warned of the risk 'that Russia is planning for significant military action against Ukraine' and that the security situation in border areas and around Crimea 'could deteriorate with little notice'.

Dmitry Kiselyov, known as Putin's mouthpiece, said Russia will 'hold a gun to America's head' if NATO forces are allowed to enter Ukraine

Hard to not view this as Russia priming its population for war.



Russia placed the US in a Catch-22. Either they step back voluntarily or well make them do it by force. And we make no guarantees about Ukraines sovereignty Maybe we really are on the verge of war with NATO. pic.twitter.com/2IVg388wTv  Matthew Luxmoore (@mjluxmoore) December 20, 2021

At the same time the notice was issued, White House sources were briefing journalists that there is a 'four week window' to deter Putin from invading.

One official told CNN that Washington has been coordinating closely with allies to build a broad consensus on action if Russia attacks.

The White House has also been raising the stakes for Putin by drafting sanctions including so-called 'nuclear options' of cutting his regime off from international banking markets.

High-level intelligence sharing has also taken place with other NATO member states and Ukraine to ensure they are prepared for whatever comes their way.

'What we have been doing is very calculated. But we only have about a four-week window from now,' the official told CNN.

Pentagon chiefs had previously warned that a Russian invasion could take place as early as next year, once forces have finished massing on the border.

Putin is already thought to have between 75,000 and 94,000 men in border regions, along with tanks, artillery, and support vehicles. Another 100,000 men are said to be sitting in reserve.

On Tuesday, Russia said that contacts with the US have begun on the issue of security guarantees but no agreement has been reached.

Russia has yet to decide what steps it will take if the Washington-led NATO bloc refuses to consider its position, senior security negotiator Konstantin Gavrilov said, but Brussels understands that Moscow is not bluffing.

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

It comes after the White House National Security Council said national security adviser Jake Sullivan had spoken by phone with his Russian counterpart, Yuriy Ushakov, to stress the United States is prepared to talk.

Sullivan 'made clear that any dialogue must be based on reciprocity and address our concerns about Russia's actions, and take place in full coordination with our European allies and partners,' a council spokesman said.

'He also noted that substantive progress can only occur in an environment of de-escalation rather than escalation.'

Konstantin Gavrilov, a Russian diplomat in Vienna, said that relations between Moscow and NATO had reached a 'moment of truth'.

'The conversation needs to be serious and everyone in NATO understands perfectly well despite their strength and power that concrete political action needs to be taken, otherwise the alternative is a military-technical and military response from Russia,' he was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.

The U.S. response is likely to shape Moscow's calculus over Ukraine, which has become the main flashpoint in East-West relations.

The United States and Ukraine say Russia may be preparing an invasion of its ex-Soviet neighbour. Russia denies that and says it is Ukraine's growing relationship with NATO that has caused the standoff to escalate.

It has compared it to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the world came to the brink of nuclear war.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow had so far received no response from the United States.

'I think they'll try to turn this into a slow-moving process, but we need it to be urgent, because the situation is very difficult, it is acute, it tends to become more complicated,' he was quoted by RIA as saying.

The Kremlin said it was still too early to assess the West's response, but that information from 'various sources' about a readiness to discuss the ideas was positive.

Asked separately about a Belarusian proposal to host Russian nuclear weapons in the event of similar deployments in its vicinity by the West, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had numerous options.

'It's no secret the deployment of different types of armaments near our borders that could pose a danger would require corresponding steps to be taken to balance the situation. There are all sorts of options here,' he said.
A newborn baby girl has been found alive, but covered in cuts and insect bites, after spending two days abandoned in a remote forest in Thailand.

The two-day-old infant had grazes and bruises on her face as well as bugs on her skin when villagers collecting rubber from trees noticed her in Krabi province on Sunday.

She had no clothes on and was lying in the dense green banana leaf plants covering the ground.

Villagers picked up the baby and she started crying as her eyes opened, before the child was laid out on the ground waiting for police and an ambulance to arrive.

A two-day-old baby girl was discovered alive, but covered in cuts and insect bites in a forest in Thailand on Sunday

Villagers collecting rubber from trees discovered the newborn in the Krabi province

Locals were tending to the newborn baby at the scene when the paramedics arrived, as they did not want to risk carrying her for more than an hour through the night back to their village.

The little girl was wrapped in a blue cotton blanket and put on a stretcher in an ambulance before being driven to hospital where she was treated for dehydration.

She has been kept under observation but is healthy and not expected to have any lasting health problems from the ordeal.

Incredibly, she survived, despite having been found in an area which is home to dangerous animals such as cobras and pythons, as well as surging temperatures of up to 35C in the daytime.

A police spokesman said they are searching for the girl's mother but without CCTV cameras in the woodland, it would be difficult to re-trace the person's footsteps.

Police Colonel Prasit Yodthong said: 'The newborn girl had worms and insects crawling over her body. The nearest hospital records showed that no women had given birth there.

'It is likely that the mother gave birth elsewhere and abandoned the child in the middle of the hill.

The locals that found her unwound plant from around her body and cared for her until paramedics could arrive. Once the ambulance was on site, the child was wrapped in a blanket and transported to Khao Phanom hospital, where she will remain until she is fully recovered

We are currently tracking down the newborns mother. She will be prosecuted. The baby could have died and we think that whoever left the girl, knew this.

'We think that the baby had been left outside for at least two days. She was there for a whole night but survived.

'Officers are interviewing people from nearby villagers to try and find anyone who was pregnant recently.'

The baby has been sent to the Khao Phanom hospital for health monitoring. She will then be taken to the Krabi provincial administration once she is fully recovered.

Police said it is likely that she will then be put into the government's system for orphans.
A devastated father is calling for all new cars in Australia to be fitted with child detection systems after his 'bright and bubbly' three-year-old daughter died inside a sweltering car.

Peter Black's daughter Rylee was left in her mother's locked Toyota Prado on a 32C day in November 2020 in Townsville, north Queensland.

Police charged Rylee's mother Laura Peverill and her boyfriend Aaron Hill, who they allege left the child in the car after dropping her sisters off at school at 9am and did not discover her until 3pm when school pickup began.

She was rushed to hospital but doctors were unable to revive her.

Peter Black said he has 'nightmares' about what his daughter Rylee (pictured together) must have gone through after she died when she was left in her mother's Toyota Prado on a hot day

'She's a beautiful little girl and she was full of life,' Mr Black told Seven News.

'I have dreams of her in the car and how she must have struggled to get someone's attention,' he said.

Though the outside temperature was 32C, the temperature inside the car is estimated to have reached more than 50C.

Mr Black said he was overwhelmed with anger when he learned his little girl was dead, but then decided he needed to do something constructive.

He launched a Facebook page Remember Rylee and a parliamentary petition which is open until December 29.

He has launched a petition calling for all new cars to have child detection systems fitted in honour of the 'bright and bubbly' three-year-old (pictured)

The petition calls for life-saving electronic systems that alert drivers and passersby when a child or pet has been left alone in a vehicle.

Mr Black was told people walked by the Toyota Prado on the day Rylee died, but had no clue she was inside the car and couldn't raise the alarm.

Some cars already have the technology, such as the Hyundai Santa Fe that sounds an alarm if motion is detected inside the car when it is locked and the keys are not nearby.

But Mr Black said the systems should be included as standard in all new cars.

'There is no requirement in the Australian Design Rules for vehicles to include electronic warning systems for the detection of children left alone in vehicles, to alert relevant people to the imminent danger they are in,' he wrote in the petition.

Police allege her mother left Rylee in the Toyota Prado (pictured) after dropping he sisters off at school and didn't discover her until 3pm that day

The government said they are 'in discussions' about the proposal.

Road Safety experts are also warning parents as temperatures heat up over summer to take extra caution especially when handling car keys.

'The vast majority of calls we get are accidental... people going to the shops, loading up the car, putting the kids in and closing all the doors, not realising the keys are in there,' Dimitra Vlahomitros from NRMA said.

Every year in Australia about 5,000 children are rescued from locked vehicles and over the past five years there have been 10 fatal cases of children's left in hot cars.
Not a single Covid patient in Australia's ICU wards has the Omicron variant even a month after the mutant strain arrived on our shores.

Panic is setting in across the country as cases rise at an astronomical rate, worst in NSW which had a record 3,057 new infections on Tuesday.

But Health Minister Greg Hunt downplayed the seriousness of the latest Covid outbreak, insisting 'you are less likely to go to hospital with Omicron and you are less likely to lose your life with Omicron'.

There are currently no Omicron cases that have been admitted to intensive care in Australia as the country's federal health minister calls for calm

'But having said that, the best protection is to be vaccinated. And if you are eligible and due for your booster, now's the time to come forward.'

A national cabinet meeting on Wednesday between state and federal leaders is set to map out the festive season for Australia, with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet pushing to reduce booster wait times from five months to four.

There are 37 Aussies who have been hospitalised with Omicron, but none have yet been admitted to ICU, something experts say is thanks to high vaccination rates.

Mr Perrottet wants Australians to be able to get third third shot four months after their second after health advice it protects against to new variant.

Greg Hunt (pictured) has called for calm over skyrocketing Omicron cases after revealing zero patients infected with the variant have been admitted to intensive care

'The health and safety of our people comes first, but we will make those changes based on fact, not fear,' Mr Perrottet said.

'I understand there is some new modelling from the federal government presented tomorrow at the national cabinet.

'We will work through those issues and make sure we do everything we can in our state, as we have done over the last two years, to keep people safe, to keep the economy moving, to keep people in jobs.'

Mr Perrottet was speaking in response to new modelling by the Doherty Institute claiming Australia would have 200,000 new cases a day by January unless restrictions were re-imposed.

State leaders are looking to resist bringing back restrictions in the face of skyrocketing cases as a result of the Omicron variant

In data released Tuesday, the Doherty Institute claims without low-to-medium restrictions being mandated, including limits on visitors and density in pubs, cafes and restaurants, the country could face millions of Covid cases within weeks.

As a part of the predicted 200,000 cases a day, researchers predicted hospitalisations could hit 4,000 a day - putting a heavy strain on the medical system.

This would lead to between 8,000 and 10,000 patients in ICUs over the course of the wave, based on modelling of how many would get sick enough to need it.

'Boosters alone will not be fast enough to halt the spread of Omicron,' the Doherty Institute said.

The Doherty Institute concluded the data based off current restrictions, which include no lockdowns, no retail restrictions, and open schools.

It also assumes Omicron has the same severity of disease as Delta, something that has yet to be proven and is widely believed to be incorrect by experts.

Australian National University professor Peter Collignon AM told Daily Mail Australia the grim prediction is 'completely unbelievable'.

A leading infectious diseases expert has rejected new Covid modelling that predicts Australia will see 200,000 cases a day by the end of January, calling it 'ridiculous'. Pictured: Sydney Christmas parties are in full swing despite rising Covid cases

COVID CASES SURGE ACROSS AUSTRALIA: NSW: 3,057 new cases Victoria: 1,245 new cases Queensland: 86 new cases Tasmania: 4 new cases ACT: 16 new cases SA: 154 new cases NT: 14 new cases WA: 1 new case. *Covid case recorded on Tuesday. Advertisement

'I don't know where they've come up with this modelling but it's not based on any real world data,' he said.

'They are assumptions that do not correlate to anything we've seen before in summer in any other country.

'If there were 200,000 cases a day, the whole of Australia would be infected in just a few months. That hasn't happened anywhere in the world.'

If the dire prediction is accurate, Australia would have four times the number of cases as Britain did in its horror summer when infections peaked at about 45,000 cases a day.

'They've got twice the population of us and far less vaccination. So I just find that figure unbelievable and not realistic,' Professor Collignon said.

'We haven't seen this in South Africa or anywhere else in the world.'

Professor Collignon also explained why the potential reintroduction of mask mandates may not have much of an impact on containing the spread.

'Face masks might decrease your risks by about 10 per cent but over the medium to long term it won't really make a lot of difference, particularly in summer when people won't use them properly. That's the reality of it,' he said.

'I find their figure of 200,000 unbelievable, therefore I find their assumptions about masks probably unbelievable too.'
Four men who tried to make millions by smuggling 69 Albanian migrants including two pregnant women into Britain on a converted fishing boat have been jailed for a total of more than 35 years.

The 100-foot converted trawler 'Svanic', built nearly 60 years ago, was intercepted off the Norfolk coast on November 17 last year after setting sail from the Ostend area of Belgium, heading towards Great Yarmouth.

A single trip stood to make more than 1 million for the criminals involved, and journeys were planned to happen at least weekly, Chelmsford Crown Court was told.

But the crew caught the attention of authorities, first off the coast of Sweden where the boat ran aground and later in the UK where it was intercepted with 69 Albanian migrants on board.

The vessel, which had 20 lifejackets on board for 72 people, was escorted into Harwich international port and the three crew members were arrested by the National Crime Agency on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration.

NCA investigators seized a laptop from the vessel which enabled them to identify the UK-based gang which had orchestrated the attempt.

The 69 migrants were handed to Immigration Enforcement.

Five men were convicted of conspiring to assist unlawful immigration, with 35-year-old Arturas Jusas, of Lambeth, admitting the offence, and four others found guilty after a trial.

The 100-foot converted trawler 'Svanic', built nearly 60 years ago, was intercepted off the Norfolk coast on November 17 last year after setting sail from the Ostend area of Belgium, heading towards Great Yarmouth

Five men were convicted of conspiring to assist unlawful immigration, with 35-year-old Arturas Jusas (pictured being arrested) admitting the offence

Jusas, along with 39-year-old Kfir Ivgi, left, and Sergejs Kuliss, right, of Newham, were described by prosecutors as 'UK-based organisers'

Latvian national Aleksandrs Gulpe, left, and 57-year-old Ukrainian national Igor Kosyi, right, were both described by prosecutors as crew members

Jusas, along with 39-year-old Kfir Ivgi, of Finchley, and Sergejs Kuliss, 32, of Newham, were described by prosecutors as 'UK-based organisers'.

Jusas was jailed for nine years and nine months, Ivgi for 10 years and Kuliss for nine years.

Latvian national Aleksandrs Gulpe, 44, and 57-year-old Ukrainian national Igor Kosyi, both described by prosecutors as crew members, were arrested when the boat reached land in the early hours of November 18.

Kosyi was jailed for seven years, but Gulpe is due to be sentenced at a later date as he was isolating with Covid symptoms.

A sixth defendant, Ukrainian national Volodymyr Mykhailov, 49, who the court heard was arrested when the boat reached land, was cleared of the charge.

Judge David Turner QC, sentencing, said the fishing vessel had been 'made to look innocuous in a North Sea context'.

He described conditions on board as 'terrifying', adding that organisers had 'plainly rounded up migrants and insisted they board in Ostend (in Belgium) - weapons it seems were produced by some of the organisers'.

He told the defendants: 'This was organised crime. Your aim was gain and profit, you cared little for safety and welfare.'

Charlene Sumnall, prosecuting, said the trawler was sourced from Latvia and had been 'chosen for the very reason that she was cheap'.

'She had been sat rotting in a dry dock for a number of years,' she said. 'This one trip alone would garner those involved in the criminality over a million pounds.

'This was very much a commercial enterprise. The valuable cargo being the 69 souls, including two pregnant women, who were on board the unseaworthy vessel.'

A clip of his arrested emerged after four others were found guilty of conspiring to smuggle 69 Albanian migrants into the UK on a converted fishing boat

The near 30m-long trawler (pictured), called the Svanic, was intercepted by UK Border Force vessels in the North Sea late on November 17 last year and was escorted into Harwich in Essex

Ms Sumnall said the venture was 'far more sophisticated than small boat crossings, dinghies and the like' and that criminals were 'using the squalid and dangerous conditions on board the Svanic to line their own pockets'.

She said it was 'not a voyage doomed to fail', adding: 'There were planned to be at least weekly trips, 50 people at a time.'

But the boat was intercepted by UK Border Force vessels in the North Sea late on November 17 last year as it sailed from the Ostend area of Belgium towards Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.

It was escorted into Harwich in Essex.

There were 20 lifejackets on board for 72 people, an earlier trial was told.

Martin Rutherford QC, for Ivgi, said the Svanic 'ran aground in Sweden and elsewhere due to her navigation that caught the attention of authorities both in Sweden and the UK'.

'Whatever the conspirators hoped for in this case, it in fact was highly likely there wasn't going to be a second trip due to the competence or otherwise,' he said.

Narita Bahra QC, for Jusas, said 'none of the migrants were injured in any way'.

Jeremy Lynn, for Kuliss, said the vessel was 'fundamentally seaworthy' but there were 'some mishaps that were the fault of the clumsy crew'.

NCA Director of Investigations Nikki Holland said: 'There is no stronger example of how organised criminals are prepared to risk the lives of the people they smuggle for profit.

The boat, built almost 60 years ago, had been heading towards Great Yarmouth in Norfolk after it set sail from the Ostend area of Belgium

'The Svanic was in an appalling condition, and in no fit state to make the perilous journey from Belgium to the UK. Had it got into trouble, the consequences could have been fatal as there was only one lifeboat and 21 lifejackets.

'The dangers wouldn't have crossed the minds of these men, whose sole motive was to line their pockets. They were planning to use this deathtrap over and over again.

'Cases like these strengthen our resolve to come down hard on the organised criminals behind people smuggling, who ply their trade on exploitation and misery.'

David Fairclough, Deputy Director, Immigration Enforcement Criminal Investigation, said: 'These callous criminals had big plans to orchestrate a lucrative criminal operation at the expense of people's safety using an unseaworthy vessel with only 20 lifejackets onboard.

'It is sickening that criminal gangs like this have no regard for the value of human life only seeing them as a way to make money. As recent tragic events show these journeys are unnecessary, perilous, and sadly sometimes fatal.

'Thanks to the culmination of efforts across the Home Office and NCA, we've slammed the breaks on this ruthless crime gang, and they will now receive the justice they deserve.'
Supporters of the primary school teacher who was filmed kicking and slapping a horse have said she should not have been sacked from her job.

Sarah Moulds, 37, who was condemned by the RSPCA for alleged animal cruelty last month, lost her job at Somerby School in Leicestershire after footage emerged of her repeatedly kicking, slapping and punching the animal.

The mother-of-two, from Somerby, near Melton Mowbray, was dismissed from her position yesterday after a six-week investigation by education chiefs.

Speaking on the decision Mowbray Education Trust Chief Operating Officer Paul Maddox said: 'I can confirm that Sarah Moulds' employment with the Trust has been terminated.

'As a Trust we are committed to ensuring the best standard of education for all of our young people and we look forward to continuing this throughout the 2021/22 academic year and beyond.'

However some social media users have now criticised the decision by the Trust, with one saying the incident was 'unrelated to teaching'.

It comes after the RSPCA said it would 'look into complaints made about animal welfare' but was 'unable to comment' on whether they would be prosecuting Mrs Moulds for the filmed incident.

Sarah Moulds, a foxhunter who was filmed appearing to punch and kick a horse, lost her job as a primary school teacher after an investigation by the school in relation to the viral video

Mrs Moulds was a senior leader and class three team teacher at her local Somerby School (pictured) and was also a director of the Knossington and Somerby Pre-School before her termination

Last month footage appeared to show Mrs Moulds repeatedly kicking and slapping a horse after a hunting event organised by Cottesmore Hunt, a group based in Rutland, East Midlands

An RSPCA spokeswoman said: 'We understand there is a lot of interest in this incident and we would like to reassure people we will always look into complaints made about animal welfare.

'However, we are unable to discuss complaints about specific people and what action may have been taken.

'We understand how frustrating that is for animal lovers but releasing information could prejudice a future prosecution or could lead to us being fined. We are unable to comment further at this time.'

Taking to social media today one person wrote: 'I don't condone the kick or the slaps, but the horse ran into the road beforehand and none of us watching the video (filmed by a group that has a motive to present things in the word possible light) knows the full story.

'To lose her job on the basis of that? I hope she doesn't read the spiteful comments here. Humans suffer too.'

While another added: 'Is it right that a woman who may be a very good teacher is sacked for behaving badly with an ill-tempered horse? This is yet another social media witch hunt.'

Meanwhile another person said: 'A farmer told me I don't understand country ways and foxes need to be controlled as they kill for fun. Probably. But I don't like the class divide of ritualistic blood sports.

'However, I do think that it is an overreaction regarding Sarah Moulds. A witch hunt unrelated to teaching.'

Mrs Moulds was a senior leader and class three team teacher at her local Somerby School and was also a director of the Knossington and Somerby Pre-School before her termination.

The 37-year-old was seen lashing out at the horse following a Cottesmore Hunt meet in the county earlier this year.

A clip captured by anti-hunt activists went viral, sparking outrage nationally and globally.

The Pony Club, which claims to be the world's largest equestrian youth organisation with more than 30,000 UK members, also terminated the school teacher's position as a team manager while condemning her actions as 'unacceptable'.

Some social media users criticised the decision, with one saying the incident was 'unrelated to teaching'

The RSPCA described the incident as 'upsetting' and appealed for witnesses to get in touch

In the aftermath of the video going viral, Mrs Moulds received abuse and death threats and moved to a secret location away from her semi-detached 350,000 property for several days.

A neighbour previously told how she had fled because she 'feared for her life,' saying: 'She's had to go away after receiving death threats and loads of vile abuse. It's awful and has got very much out of hand. She fears for her life.'

The neighbour added: 'I don't know what happened and in what context but what is now happening to Sarah is horrible. She's terrified of being in her own home in case someone targets her or her kids there.'

The local rider added: 'She has young children and she is worried about them as well as herself.

'She's well known and respected in equestrian circles and her social media was bombarded with comments from very angry people after the video went viral and she's now had to close it down.'

Her uncle David Kirkham from Bonsall, Derbyshire, insisted: 'She is a very upright person, a fantastic person who absolutely loves her horses.

'I've seen the video but we don't know what the horse had been doing and if it was out of control. But we know it ran out onto the road and she told it off.

'She was reprimanding the horse. There was no malice intended. She is very well thought of and respected.'

In the footage, a white horse trots away from the back of a horse trailer before it is stopped by a young rider.

A woman dressed in cream breeches and a navy jacket then grabs the reins of the animal before kicking its body and slapping it repeatedly as it tries to pull away.

The Hertfordshire Hunt Saboteurs, who say they use 'non-violent direct action to save wildlife', shared the video on its Twitter page and tagged the RSPCA.

The group said that the incident took place on November 6 after a Cottesmore Hunt, one of the oldest hunts in Britain, and the incident demonstrated 'violence running through their veins'.

Cottesmore Hunt said it did not condone the actions shown in the video 'under any circumstances'.

The group said it 'will be reminding all of our supporters that this will not be tolerated'.

Countryside campaigner Chris Packham also called on the RSPCA to 'urgently investigate and definitively prosecute this appalling abuse - thus upholding our standards of animal welfare protection'.

Pictured: An RSPCA card with a note was pinned to the front door of Mrs Moulds's house

The RSPCA confirmed it had seen the footage which it described as 'upsetting', with a business card seen outside Mrs Moulds's home days after the incident.

Meanwhile, BBC Springwatch presenter and zoologist Megan McCubbin said the footage showed 'disgusting behaviour'. She said: 'Yet another ugly side of an activist some call 'sport'.'

The Hunting Office also criticised the footage and said the perpetrator does not belong to its hunting associations, adding that 'it expects the highest level of animal welfare at all times'.

Anne Brummer, the CEO of animal welfare organisation Save Me Trust, said: 'Absolutely disgusting, she should be prosecuted and not allowed near a horse again. No one around her seems socked, what is wrong with these people.'
A cheetah who was hand-reared by Carrie Johnson's wildlife charity has tragically died after it was pierced in the heart by the horn of an antelope during a hunt in South Africa.

Saba, four, was raised by Damian Aspinall, who runs the Aspinall Foundation, and became the first captive-born cheetah to ever be successfully re-wilded from Europe, along with his brother Nairo.

He was flown to a private game nature reserve near Cape Town in South Africa in February last year and the pair had been thriving in their new surroundings while fending for themselves.

However, tragedy struck at the summit of the 20,000-acre area's second highest peak and it is thought Saba caught his prey on the mountain before suffering a stab wound to the chest while on top of the animal.

Cheetah Saba, four, who was hand-reared by Carrie Johnson's wildlife charity has tragically died after it was pierced in the heart by the horn of an antelope during a hunt in South Africa

Saba, four, was raised by Damian Aspinall, (pictured) who runs the Aspinall Foundation, and became the first captive-born cheetah to ever be successfully re-wilded from Europe, along with his brother Nairo

Saba was previously pictured with Boris Johnson in 2019 before he became Prime Minister

Boris Johnson's wife Carrie, a former Conservative Party comms chief, began working for the Aspinall Foundation, run by Tory donor Damian Aspinall, in January.

The cheetah was previously pictured with the Mr Johnson's arm around him when the pair met in 2019, before he became Prime Minister.

According to Damian's wife Victoria, who works as the head of communications alongside Mrs Johnson, Saba 'made quite an impression'.

At the time of the meeting, she said: 'Damian and I invited Boris to sit in Sabas indoor quarters with us and introduce himself.

'Boris nervously joked, "Its like meeting someone with strong but undeclared views on Brexit. Im not sure whether hes going to give me a slobbery kiss or take my head off!" In the end, Saba just nibbled Boriss woolly hat.'

A post-mortem found the fatal injury caused by a horn, likely from a species of antelope, would have resulted in a quick death.

The specialist monitoring team deployed a helicopter after noticing his tracking collar was no longer updating data.

An Aspinall Foundation spokesman said: 'Saba's body was quickly discovered, and it was immediately apparent that he had sustained a chest wound. He was airlifted from the mountain top.

'His death was quick; he died within minutes of the stab wound to his heart, and given the inaccessibility of the location, there is simply no way anyone could have rescued him in time.

Victoria publicly documented his development on her Instagram page. But he hit the headlines in October 2018 after managing escaping into a neighbouring enclosure, causing two panicked deer to run into a wooden fence and die

A post-mortem found the fatal injury caused by a horn, likely from a species of antelope, would have resulted in a quick death

Saba will now be given a 'dignified burial in his favourite spot in the vast expanse of the Great Karoo reserve' at Mount Camdeboo

'We will never forget Saba, who, along with his brother, was a pioneer for the species: the first captive-born cheetahs to ever be successfully rewilded from Europe. He enjoyed two remarkable years in the wild.'

Saba was born and raised at Howletts Wildlife Park near Canterbury, Kent, run by the Aspinall Foundation alongside Port Lympne Safari Park near Hythe, Kent.

They have 'taken comfort in the fact Saba died a hero, hunting as a truly wild cheetah and pursuing his prey'.

The once not-so big cat was raised by Damien Aspinall at his mansion at Howletts, which had its own enclosure for the cheetah.

Victoria publicly documented his development on her Instagram page. But he hit the headlines in October 2018 after managing escaping into a neighbouring enclosure, causing two panicked deer to run into a wooden fence and die.

Saba will now be given a 'dignified burial in his favourite spot in the vast expanse of the Great Karoo reserve' at Mount Camdeboo where Nairo will continue to live.
Up to 30 migrants, including two children, were brought ashore by Border Force officers today after they made the most of the calmer waters to cross the English Channel.

The group of migrants, who were wrapped in blankets and wearing life jackets, were brought into the Dover Marina, in Kent, at around 9am before they were led up a gangway by staff and taken to a facility on the quayside.

Among the migrants was a man who was seen carrying a young child over his shoulder as they disembarked.

Small boat crossings had briefly stopped due to high winds and strong tides in recent weeks, but have since restarted due to calmer waters in the Channel.

The scenes come after figures showed more than 27,000 people have made the 21-mile journey to the UK this year after navigating busy shipping lanes from France in small boats - compared to 8,400 in 2020.

Migrants, including children, are brought into the Dover Marina, in Kent, are led up a gangway by staff and taken to a facility

A man carried a young child as walk towards a facility on the quayside after crossing the Channel this morning

Border Force assist children off boats and take them to a facility on the quayside today

On Sunday, the UK authorities intercepted 274 people from 11 boats - a higher figure than the 211 people accounting for the entirety of December last year - amid thick fog hampering visibility.

The Border Force cutter Speedwell brought in the first group, consisting of around eight men draped in red blankets for warmth, at around 8.30am.

Their large black dinghy was towed in as they were escorted up the gangway at Dover Marina, Kent for processing.

Young children were on board Border Force's huge catamaran Hurricane when it docked around 10am.

A father was seen carrying a young barefooted boy, no more than three years of age, wearing a blue coat as his mother carried his shoes.

Their partially deflated khaki RHIB filled with lifejackets and foil blankets was left in the harbour.

And 34 migrants were brought to shore at Dungeness, Kent on a RNLI lifeboat around 11am.

On Friday, British authorities rescued 358 people from 10 boats, and French authorities intercepted at least 317 people in 11 boats on Thursday and Friday.

The Home Office is yet to confirm exactly how many made the 21-mile crossing today.

Last month a total of 27 people were thought to have died, including seven women, a teenager and a seven-year-old girl, when their boat sank while trying to cross the Channel.

Figures show more than 27,000 people have made the 21-mile journey to the UK this year

An inflatable boat, life vests and other remains left on a sand dune of the Wimereux beach, northern France, are pictured on December 20, 2021

Dan O'Mahoney, clandestine Channel threat commander, said: 'Last month's tragedy is a devastating reminder of the dangers of Channel crossings and we are determined to work with our European and international partners to target the ruthless organised criminal gangs behind them.

What happens to migrants after they arrive in the UK? Migrants who have been picked up after landing or intercepted at sea are taken to a Border Force processing centre, usually near Dover Here arrivals are triaged to identify any medical needs or vulnerabilities, fed and checked to see if they have a criminal record. Adults have an initial interview before being sent to accommodation centre across Britain, paid for by UK taxpayers and provided by private contractors. The migrants are given 37.75 per week for essentials like food, clothes and toiletries while they wait for a decision on their asylum application. Kent County Council normally takes unaccompanied children into its care, although other local authorities are also involved in this programme. Other migrants might be kept in a detention centre ahead of a plan to send them back to Europe. However, just five were deported last year as ministers admitted to 'difficulties'. While a member of the EU, Britain was part of the Dublin Regulation, an EU-wide deal that required migrants to apply for asylum in the first member state they arrive in and could be deported back to that country if they moved on to another. However, since Brexit there has been no formal arrangements to allow migrants to be deported to France or another EU member country. Advertisement

'Unbelievably, these gangs continue their deadly trade with more crossings taking place today, shamelessly putting lives at risk.

'People planning to make the journey should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach instead of risking their lives by crossing the Channel from a safe EU country.

'The Government's New Plan for Immigration will be firm on those coming here via illegal routes and fair for those using safe and legal routes. This will reduce the pull factors in the current asylum and immigration system.'

It came as the Inspectorate of Prisons and the Dover and Heathrow Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB) - made up of volunteers tasked by ministers - published their findings on migrant detention facilities visited in the last three months.

Women who said they had been raped by smugglers were 'not adequately supported' and lone children were being held with unrelated adults, the report said.

Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, said up to 45 children were seen sleeping on the floor 'in an incredibly cramped facility with the lights on all night', adding that one unit contained an adult with a criminal record.

Mr Taylor told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'They [the children] get processed when they first arrive at Tug Haven then they're moved to somewhere called Kent Intake Unit, where we're seeing what looks like a normal doctor's waiting room.

'We're seeing up to 45 children having to spend the night not even on mattresses, but just on the floor in an incredibly cramped facility with the lights on all night.

'The other concern is they're supposed to be for children only but we're actually seeing adults in there including one adult with a criminal record, and also families in there as well, without a proper assessment of the risk these children may potentially be suffering.'

Speaking on the report's findings, he added: 'There have been a few minor improvements but we're really concerned about the number of people who are arriving and the general chaos at Dover, and the fact that children unaccompanied, and often very vulnerable, just aren't being looked after properly.'

In a statement, the Chief Inspector of Prisons also said: 'Our last inspection in September 2020 found that these facilities were badly equipped to meet their purpose.

'Following that inspection, we were assured by the Home Office that rapid action would be taken to improve both strategic planning and the conditions in which detainees were held.

'However, despite some limited progress, detainees, including large numbers of unaccompanied children, continued [in 2021] to experience very poor treatment and conditions.

'It is unclear why there had been such delays following the assurances that we were given by the Home Office after our last inspection.

'Leaders told us of difficulties in co-ordinating the various partners whose co-operation was required, but this was not a sufficient explanation for why, one year later, we still found people being held for even longer in conditions that were so inadequate.'
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Britons marked the winter solstice today with a swim at the beach and yoga sessions outside an 11th century castle to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year as hopes continued to build for a white Christmas.

Brave swimmers went for a dip at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh this morning, while other early birds took part in a yoga session at the National Trust's Corfe Castle in Dorset to watch the sunrise.

The winter solstice for the northern hemisphere marks the start of astronomical winter and the day with the shortest amount of daylight - Shetland being the most extreme example with just five hours and 49 minutes.

It comes as parts of Britain face a 'whiteout' Christmas with snow expected to start falling as early as tonight to herald a wintry run-up to Christmas Day and beyond - although which regions will be hit worst is still in doubt.

Scotland, the far North of England and Northern Ireland are the areas most likely to enjoy a white Christmas on December 25, particularly on higher ground, with temperatures expected to drop as low as -6C (21F).

It comes after the UK's coldest night of the winter for the third night in a row, with -9.3C (15.3F) at Braemar in the Cairngorms last night, after -9.1C (15.6F) on Sunday night and -8.9C (16F) on Saturday night in the same village.

(From left) Charlotte Gardiner, Sasha Udell, Andrea Taylor, Clare Donoghue, Patricia Yeyti and Agnes Pachacz take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh today to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year

People gather on Glastonbury Tor in Somerset this morning on the day of the winter solstice to watch the sun rise

People take part in a winter solstice yoga session at the National Trust's Corfe Castle in Dorset to mark the solstice today

People gather on Glastonbury Tor this morning on the day of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere

The winter solstice for the northern hemisphere marks the start of astronomical winter and the day with the shortest amount of daylight - Shetland being the most extreme example with just five hours and 49 minutes

This graphic from the Met Office shows cold air moving in from the north, but milder air heading in from the south-west

But the Met Office admitted that it was still unclear exactly where the boundary between cold and milder air will be, saying that this was 'key as to where can expect any snow over Christmas'.

Conditions are forecast to become more unsettled from tomorrow, with bands of rain expected across the UK. Sleet, snow and ice are predicted over higher ground in Scotland before more snow is expected on Thursday.

Will it snow in your area of Britain on Christmas Day? William Hill has provided these odds for snow on Christmas Day at the airports in the cities below: Edinburgh: 4-9 Leeds-Bradford: 4-9 Newcastle: 10-11 Birmingham: 10-11 Manchester: 10-11 Glasgow: 6-5 Liverpool: 11-8 Belfast: 2-1 Cardiff: 9-4 Bristol: 11-4 London Gatwick: 11-4 London City: 11-4 Advertisement

Blizzards could be in store in Scotland on Christmas Eve thanks to strong winds. Edinburgh and Leeds are joint favourites with William Hill for snow at 4-9, with Newcastle, Birmingham and Manchester all at 10-11.

Areas further south are expected to remain mild and cloudy with some rain, and there is also the risk of fog across southern parts of England and Wales on Christmas Eve, which could affect travel.

The Met Office is uncertain about where Britain's snow 'boundary' might be  between snowy and non-snowy parts of the country  but its official Christmas outlook, predicted Scotland is the most likely place to see snow.

The boundary will be driven by strengthening northerly winds during Christmas Eve.

They will make it feel very cold, with the chance of blizzards over high ground.

In the south, mild air remains in place, with cloud and spells of rain from the west.

The 'blizzard' forecast for Scotland could precipitate severe weather warnings for the festive period.

Temperatures will dip through the week, with overnight freezes as cold as -6C (21F).

Helen Caughey, deputy chief meteorologist at the Met Office, said: 'With colder air meeting milder air over the UK, the specific details of the forecast for Christmas Day are still a little uncertain.

'Milder air moves north-east over much of the country by the middle of the week, with spells of rain for most at times, which will turn to snow over higher ground in northern Scotland initially.

People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh this morning to mark the occasion

A woman feels the cold as people take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh this morning

(Left to right) Agnes Pachacz, Sasha Udell, Charlotte Gardiner and Andrea Taylor at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh today

Charlotte Gardiner, Sasha Udell, Andrea Taylor, Clare Donoghue, Patricia Yeyti and Agnes Pachacz in Edinburgh today

People take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh this morning to witness the dawn

Swimmers take part in a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh this morning mark the day

People take part in a winter solstice swim in Edinburgh today to witness the dawn after the longest night of the year

Swimmers go into the water for a winter solstice swim at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh this morning

'The boundary between the milder and colder air is then forecast to sink south later on Christmas Eve and through Christmas Day, introducing colder, clearer conditions for some.

'However exactly where this boundary gets to is hard to pin down at the moment, and is key as to where can expect any snow over Christmas.'

Bookmaker William Hill today made Edinburgh and Leeds 4-9 favourites for a white Christmas in 2021, adding that all 13 major UK airports are now at their lowest level in over a decade.

The collective book on a white Christmas is 11-4 or shorter, which the company said is considerably lower than the widespread White Christmas in 2010, when there was snow on the ground at 83 per cent of stations - the highest amount ever recorded - but snow or sleet also fell at 19 per cent of stations.

William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams said: 'As ironic as this may sound, we're now seeing forecasters slowly warming to the idea of a white Christmas.

People take part in a winter solstice yoga session at the National Trust's Corfe Castle in Dorset this morning

National Trust's Corfe Castle in Dorset is pictured as people take part in a winter solstice yoga session this morning

Corfe Castle, pictured today, dates back to the 11th century and was one of the first to be built at least partly from stone

People take part in a winter solstice yoga session at the National Trust's Corfe Castle in Dorset this morning

Corfe Castle's hilltop position helps make it a popular tourist destination - and a yoga session was held there today

People take part in a winter solstice yoga session at the National Trust's Corfe Castle in Dorset this morning

People take part in a winter solstice yoga session at Corfe Castle in Dorset to mark the solstice this morning

'There has been a quiet confidence about the prospect, behind closed doors, for some time, but many have been unwilling to stake their reputation on it.

'As soon as we ticked into the crucial five-day window of being able to forecast snow, those calling snow on the big day got a bit louder and as a consequence punters have been indulging in a festive flurry flutter with renewed confidence.'

The company said all that is needed to technically declare a white Christmas is the observation of a single snowflake falling in the 24 hours of December 25, at one of 13 major UK airports.

There have been white Christmases in four of the past six years, but they involved only a small number of locations.

William Hill added that since 1960, there have been only four occasions when at least 40 per cent of UK weather stations have reported snow on the ground at 9am on December 25  those being 1981, 1995, 2009 and 2010.
An autistic man who has been detained in hospital for 20 years was treated 'like an animal', a whistleblower has alleged.

Tony Hickmott, 44, was sectioned under the Mental Health Act in 2001 and taken from his parents' home in Brighton, East Sussex.

Though his family were initially told he would be away for nine months, he has lived in a secure Assessment and Treatment Unit for two decades  and was only declared 'fit for discharge' by psychiatrists in 2013.

Mr Hickmott is still waiting for local authorities to find him a suitable home, and his elderly parents are now fighting to get him rehoused in the community. The hospital has not been named for his care and wellbeing.

He is one of 100 people who have spent more than 20 years in ATUs. A BBC investigation found that 350 people have been detained in specialist hospitals for more than a decade, and more than 2,000 patients are being held in hospitals and other secure settings across England.

Details of Mr Hickmott's ordeal became public last month, after an order preventing reporting of the case was overturned in court.

A support worker where the 44-year-old has been detained has now claimed that Mr Hickmott was the 'loneliest man in the hospital' and that  like 'an animal'  only his basic needs were met.

Phil Devine described how he felt complicit in the autistic man's 'neglect and abuse' while he worked at the private, low-secure hospital between 2015 and 2017.

Tony Hickmott, 44, was sectioned under the Mental Health Act in 2001 and moved away from his parents' home in Brighton, East Sussex

Phil Devine (pictured) described how he felt complicit in the autistic man's 'neglect and abuse' while he worked at the private, low-secure hospital between 2015 and 2017

The BBC investigation found that 350 people have been detained in specialist hospitals for more than a decade. And 100, including Mr Hickmott, have spent more than 20 years in ATUs

Mr Hickmott is still waiting for local authorities to find him a suitable home, and his elderly parents (pictured) are now fighting to get him rehoused in the community

How patients are being sectioned and sent to 'short-term' ATU placements for years Assessment and Treatment Units are designed to be short-term secure placements for people with learning disabilities to receive treatment before moving back into the community. However, all too often, patients are being sectioned under mental health laws and sent to ATUs where they languish for years. People with autism placed in ATUs are particularly vulnerable: they can respond badly, even aggressively, to anxiety, stress or unexpected events. Many sectioning orders are for a maximum of 12 weeks, but patients can then be shifted into a different category of indefinite length  although there are meant to be discharge plans made from the start. The average stay for these patients at ATUs is five and a half years. Without proper help from trained staff, stress levels for people with autism and learning disabilities can spiral as they react by fighting, fleeing or freezing. They can then get stuck in seclusion, sedated with drugs as their issues intensify. Advertisement

Some of the patients there had committed crimes, while others such as Mr Hickmott were detained under the Mental Health Act, he claimed.

Mr Devine alleged that Mr Hickmott had very little freedom, unlike many other patients in the hospital, and spent all his time in segregation. He believes this may have been because of the risk from other patients in the hospital.

'He had never committed a crime, but here he was, living in solitary confinement,' he told BBC News.

'He was fed, watered and cleaned. If anything happened beyond that, wonderful, but if it didn't, then it was still OK.

'The management at the hospital said to us: ''Here's a care plan. At so and so time get breakfast, at so and so time get him dressed''.

'That's just a schedule  that's not a care plan. It was strict, it was rigid. But that was all Tony had.'

ATUs are designed to be short-term secure placements for people with learning disabilities to receive treatment before moving back into the community.

However, all too often, patients are being sectioned under mental health laws and sent to ATUs where they languish for years.

People with autism placed in ATUs are particularly vulnerable: they can respond badly, even aggressively, to anxiety, stress or unexpected events.

Many sectioning orders are for a maximum of 12 weeks, but patients can then be shifted into a different category of indefinite length  although there are meant to be discharge plans made from the start.

The average stay for these patients at ATUs is five and a half years.

Without proper help from trained staff, stress levels for people with autism and learning disabilities can spiral as they react by fighting, fleeing or freezing. They can then get stuck in seclusion, sedated with drugs as their issues intensify.

Mr Hickmott's case is being heard at the Court of Protection, which makes decisions on welfare matters for people who lack mental capacity.

Senior Judge Carolyn Hilder, who is hearing the case, criticised 'egregious' progress in finding him the right care.

His mother Pam, 81, said her son no longer 'believes he's coming home'.

She added: 'If he'd murdered someone he'd be out now. He's lost his family, he's lost his home. He's just a shadow of the human he used to be. There are so many families like us  crying and screaming. We are our children's voices.'

Last year, the hospital was put into special measures because it did not always 'meet the needs of complex patients'.

Some of the patients there had committed crimes, while others such as Mr Hickmott were detained under the Mental Health Act

His mother Pam said her son no longer 'believes he's coming home'

A report highlighted high levels of restraint and overuse of medication, a lack of qualified and competent staff and an increase of violence on many wards. The Care Quality Commission said that the hospital has now been taken out of special measures but still 'requires improvement'.

In 2015, the Government launched a programme aimed at ending the scandal of adults with learning disabilities and autism being kept for years in in-patient units.

This followed horrific revelations in 2011 about the neglect of patients with learning disabilities at Winterbourne View hospital in Gloucestershire.

The Huntercombe Group, which ran the hospital, was sold last year by its parent company, Four Seasons, which is currently in administration. While the name still exists, the previous company is no longer in existence.

In a statement, the group said: 'The Huntercombe Group that ran this hospital up to the end of 2020 are a different legal entity to the current Huntercombe Group, who were not established at the time and therefore not involved in providing services.

'All patient records from the hospital are held by the previous owners of the former group, and as such the current Huntercombe Group hold no records of patients.'

An NHS spokesman said it was working to ensure 'appropriate care and support is in place' for Mr Hickmott.
A man who absconded from hotel quarantine in Hobart and sparked a three-day lockdown across southern Tasmania has been sentenced to five months' jail for breaching public health orders.

Much of the island state, including the capital, was forced into lockdown on October 15 after Timothy Andrew Gunn, 31, from NSW returned a positive coronavirus test having spent time in the community.

He had been directed to quarantine at Hobart's Travelodge hotel for two weeks when he landed several days earlier on a flight from Melbourne.

Gunn told emergency staff he had been in Queensland for the 14 days before arriving when he had in fact spent time in NSW.

Tasmania had banned travel from NSW at the time.

Timothy Andrew Gunn has been jailed for five months after fleeing hotel quarantine back in October in Tasmania, sparking a police hunt and lockdown

When he arrived in Tasmania, Gunn told authorities he had been in Queensland. He in fact spent time in NSW, where at the time travellers were banned from

Soon after he was arrested in Tasmania, Gunn returned a positive result for Covid - once police caught up with him, Gunn caused a lockdown across most parts of the state (pictured) for almost a week

Gunn had earlier pleaded guilty to failing to comply with the lawful direction of an emergency management worker, and knowingly providing false or misleading information.

He was sentenced in Hobart Magistrates Court on Tuesday to five months' jail, with two of those suspended.

The sentence was backdated to late October when Gunn was taken into custody.

After leaving hotel quarantine, he spent time at a Woolworths in Hobart's northern suburbs as well as a house with several other people.

After being arrested he returned a positive test, prompting the state government to enforce restrictions across the south and a mask mandate that lasted about a week.

No Covid-19 cases linked to Gunn were recorded.

As a result of the breach, the state government tightened security measures at the Travelodge and introduced enhanced surveillance.

Gunn was also sentenced to five months' jail with two months suspended for breaching family violence orders, taking his overall sentence to 10 months with four months suspended.
A woman who served as a helicopter pilot for the Afghan Army and believed to have been stoned to death in the ruthless Taliban takeover of the country in August, is instead alive, safe and living in the United States.

Safia Ferozi, one of just four female pilots who served in the surrendering Afghan forces, publicly refuted online images and video that allegedly showed her being stoned to death by a mob during the chaos in Kabul.

Former Captain Ferozi, 31, further revealed to US military news outlet 'Stars and Stripes' that she had been spirited out of the country by US forces on August 15 - the same day of the Taliban took the city.

Safia Ferozi, 31, publicly refuted claims this weekend that she had been killed following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August. The ex-Afghan soldier fled the country during the chaos in the city's capital, and now lives with her family in the US

Miscaptioned images and video footage depicting a public stoning in Kabul that surfaced after the August attacks erroneously stated that the woman in the photos was Ferozi, and that she had been murdered by Taliban insurgents during the hostile takeover

During a telephone interview, the pilot told Stars and Stripes that she, her husband, Jawad Najafi, 36 - also a captain in the Afghan air force - and their 5-year-old daughter Nargis were flown by an American transport to Qatar where she gave birth to another baby girl at a US military base.

The pilot did not have internet access early in her stay in the Middle Eastern country, and only found out about the viral videos and images when a doctor showed her the disturbing content at the hospital, she revealed to the outlet.

The photographs and footage, depicting a badly bloodied woman pleading with a Kabul crowd as they surround her and pelt her with stones, erroneously captioned the victim depicted in the 2015 attack as Ferozi.

However, a fact check by the news outlet Reuters later that year revealed that the images and video had been miscaptioned, and were not actually Ferozi.

Instead, the savaged woman in the disturbing images and video was revealed to be Farkhunda Malikzada, who was falsely accused of burning the Koran and was murdered by the irate crowd in the capital city in 2015.

Speaking to Stars and Stripes, Ferozi revealed that the miscaptioned media shocked her to no end - as well as those close to her.

After giving birth, the ex-air force captain focused on letting friends and relatives know she had not suffered the terrible fate seen on the internet.

The photographs and footage show a badly bloodied woman pleading with a Kabul crowd as they surround her and pelt her with stones, eventually killing her. Contrary to captions that surfaced along with the photos on social media, the stoning actually took place in 2015

Since the images depicting Malikzada's stoning surfaced, Ferozi's fellow pilots had been deeply concerned for her well-being, including fellow chopper-pilot Abdul Rahman Rahmani, who had desperately searched for evidence of his former colleague's fate.

'I was scared,' the Afghan soldier admitted over the weekend.

Upon leaving Qatar, Ferozi revealed that she and her family spent three months in a New Jersey military facility and are planning to settle in their new West Coast location.

The pioneering pilot believes she escaped certain death and it will be a long time before there will be women to follow her in her homeland, but the continued persecution of women in Afghanistan has forced her to admit that is highly unlikely.

She has named her new daughter Helen, because she said she wanted 'strong' name for her daughter.

And while Ferozi cheated death, she believes she likely would have been added to the distressing statistics in the wake of the Taliban's bloody takeover.

More than 100 former members of the Afghan security forces have been executed or forcibly disappeared by the Taliban despite a proclaimed amnesty, said a recent report by Human Rights Watch.

'If I was in Afghanistan, I'm sure it would have happened to me,' Ferozi said.

Ferozi served in the Afghan military for six years as a captain and helicopter pilot before fleeing the county during the unrest in August. It was not her first time fleeing her homeland amid a hostile takeover, however. She first fled the country as a young girl in the 90s, before the Taliban first took over the country. She returned after the group lost power 20 years ago

Ferozi was just the second female pilot to serve in the Afghan Army, and one of just four before she left after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban earlier this year

Ferozi's family first fled from their home in Kabul when she was a child in the 90s, during the then ongoing civil war. Then just a young girl, Ferozi and her family took refuge in Pakistan, returning to the country only after the fall of the Taliban.

Years later, as a teen in post-Taliban Afghanistan, Ferozi saw a TV commercial urging women to join the country's military.

Spurred by the advert, Ferozi quickly decided to enroll in the military academy, where she studied to become a communication officer.

However, shortly after signing on, the aspiring soldier changed course, after it was announced at the academy that Afghanistan's air force was looking for women to become pilots.

Ferozi and a dozen other women applied for the program. She was the only one of the 12 who passed the tests to enter the training.

During her training at an airfield in the western province of Herat, she met then-Captain Najafi, with the pair marrying shortly after, in 2014.

Ferozi graduated from training in 2015. She gave birth to their first child later that year.

For a time, Ferozi was one of only two female pilots in the Afghan air force, a number that has since grown to four.

During her training at an airfield in the western province of Herat, she met Captain Jawad Najafi. The pair would later marry in 2014, and now live in the US with their two daughter

The pair pictured sitting in a C-208 plane at the Afghan military airbase in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2016

Now, after overcoming several obstacles and surviving multiple Taliban takeovers, Ferozi says she hopes to inspire other women.

'As a woman you face many challenges, but you have to deal somehow with all those problems,' she told the AP in 2016.

'When I wear military uniform, I really, really feel proud of myself as a woman.'
An actor who was charged in the overdose deaths of a Los Angeles model and her designer friend has now been charged with sexually assaulting four other women.

David Pearce, 39, was charged on Friday, December 17, with two counts of forcible rape, one count of raping an unconscious or asleep person and one count of sexual penetration of a foreign object. The incidents all occurred in Los Angeles from 2010 to October 2020.

According to a news release from the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, Pearce is accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2010, raping another woman in 2019 and raping two more women in February and October of last year.

Pearce, a self-professed movie producer, amateur actor and club promoter, is scheduled to appear in court for an arraignment and possible plea deal on Wednesday.

He was charged with the sexual assault claims on Friday and is being held on a $3.4 million bond, as he also awaits charges for the overdose deaths of model Christy Giles and interior designer Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola.

'This case is evolving and we continue to work with law enforcement in developing evidence of other possible crimes,' District Attorney George Gascon said in a statement.

More information about the sexual assault charges were not made publicly available. DailyMail.com has reached out to the District Attorney's Office for more information.

David Pearce, 39, right, was arrested last week on manslaughter charges for the deaths of model Christy Giles and her friend Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, right, who were with him at a warehouse party in East Los Angeles just hours before their deaths on November 13. He is now facing additional charges for allegedly sexually assaulting four other women

David Pearce, left, and Mike Ansbach, 47, right, are seen with Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola on the night she and Christy Giles went partying in East LA

The sexual assault charges against Pearce came just two days after he and two others - Brandt Osborn 42, and Mike Ansbach, 47 - were arrested on suspicion of felony offenses in connection with the shocking deaths last month of model Christy Giles, 24, and interior designer Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, 26.

Phone location data showed Giles and Arzola went back to Pearce's apartment near Beverly Hills with the three men in the early hours of November 13 after an East LA warehouse party.

Texts between the two women showed Giles sent a message to Arzola at 5:30am when they were at the apartment, reading: 'let's go.' Hilda replied: 'Yes. I'll call an Uber' - however, the two were never picked up.

About 12 hours later the women's cold bodies were dumped at two hospitals by men in balaclavas driving a black Toyota Prius with no plates, caught on CCTV according to Giles's husband, Jan Cilliers, who was in San Francisco visiting his father at the time of her death.

A car matching the Prius was photographed parked in Pearce's driveway after the incident.

Giles was pronounced dead at Southern California Hospital in Culver City around 5pm that day. Cabrales-Arzola was in a coma in Kaiser Permanente West L.A., until her family took her off life-support on November 28, the day before she would have turned 27.

Pearce has been charged with manslaughter. He was arrested at 11am last Wednesday by LAPD's West Bureau and is being held in a department jail.

LA Sheriff's Department booking records obtained by DailyMail.com show he was being held on $1million bail.

Ansbach, meanwhile, was arrested at 11:10am last Wednesday and held on $100,000 bail and Pearce's roommate Osborn, 42, was arrested shortly after at 12:30pm the same day and assigned $100,000 bail.

Both men were charged with accessory to manslaughter, but the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office later rejected the case against Osborn, and his arrest was reduced to a detention, the New York Post reports.

Police say they believe both women were given drugs at Pearce's apartment.

'It is believed that both women were given drugs and overdosed at a residence in the 8600 block of Olympic Boulevard in the City of Los Angeles,' an LAPD statement said.

'West Bureau Homicide Detectives responded and continue to investigate this case.'

The police added that they had brought in the FBI to help investigate.

Giles's husband Jan Cilliers was in San Francisco visiting his father when her lifeless body was dumped outside a hospital last month

Texts between the two women showed Christy sent a message to Hilda at 5:30am when they were at the apartment, reading: 'let's go.' Hilda replied: 'Yes. I'll call an Uber' - however, the two were never picked up

Four minutes later at 5:36am, a friend called Eddie who was at the official after party the girls had planned to go to texted Christy: 'Where you at?' - but that message was never read

Giles and Cabrales-Arzola were at SoHo on Friday, November 12, when they left for a warehouse party. Giles' husband said he traced her phone to an apartment complex before the women were dropped off at their respective hospitals

In the aftermath, Scarface actor Steven Bauer told DailyMail.com he witnessed Pearce allegedly raping a woman, and former Scorpions bassist Ralph Rieckermann told DailyMailTV that Pearce kept a stack of women's IDs in his apartment which he handed out to young girls, as well as dozens of credit cards not in his name and several high-end laptops.

Bauer, who played Cuban drug lord Manny Ribera in the 1983 movie Scarface, said Pearce repeatedly made comments to him about drugging women to have sex with them, and that at a Beverly Hills party the two men attended, a girl told him Pearce had locked her in a room and raped her.

The actor said that while at the house party around 2008, Pearce disappeared for a while with a young Latina woman, and her female friend became concerned.

Bauer said that as he and the female friend started looking for the missing woman, she burst out of a room sobbing, shortly followed by Pearce.

'He was trying to hustle me out of the party so that nobody else would hear,' Bauer told DailyMail.com. 'He said, 'Don't listen to her. This is a stupid party, let's get out of here Get in the car, get in the car'.'

Scarface actor Steven Bauer told DailyMail.com he witnessed Pearce allegedly raping a woman. He is pictured at a movie screening in October

Bauer said he told Pearce to drive the two women home with them. He said as Pearce sped off, they sat in the back, one crying and the other asking her what happened. Then she made a startling accusation.

'She said 'he cornered me and he locked the door. And I told him I didn't want to do anything. I didn't like him. And he said yes you like me. And he forced himself on me.'

'I said, 'Did he hurt you?' And she said, 'He raped me.'

'So I asked him straight out I said 'Answer me. What she's saying is that you raped her.'

'He goes, 'She's a liar. What, you're going to believe her? She's a f***ing maid. She's gonna brag about this later.'

'He goes, 'Stop being a p***y. She's a liar. She's a housekeeper or something.'

'I said, 'I'm going to start walking, and I'm going to tell the police where you live. If you don't let the girl out, I'll get her home.'

'He called me all kinds of names. He called me a p***y and that I was a party pooper and I was a hypocrite and that I knew all along what was going on.

'He would do that, he would deflect and spin whatever worked for him.'

Bauer said that all the while, Pearce was speeding through Beverly Hills while drinking an alcoholic drink in a glass tumbler he took from the party, and when Bauer told him to put the drink down, Pearce threw the glass out the window.

'I was going to strangle him while he was driving,' Bauer said. 'I just lost my temper. I grabbed him by the hair and I said, 'Listen, you'd better focus right now. Pull over. And he said, 'Oh, you're a girl, you pulled my hair.' And that was probably the last time I saw him, or hung out with him.

'I told him I wanted to get all my clothes out of his apartment, that I was done. I didn't want to see him anymore.'

The Scarface actor told DailyMail.com he first met Pearce at a party shortly after moving back to LA, and when the self-described movie producer learned Bauer needed a place to stay, he offered his spare room.

Bauer said Pearce was on his 'best behavior' for the first week or so, but that he began to make dark and troubling comments about drugging women in order to sleep with them.

'He didn't show his colors until he finally basically lost his patience with me,' the actor said.

David Pearce, right, attended a function at Les Deux Nightclub in Hollywood with Scarface actor Steven Bauer in 2008. Bauer said the two were roommates

Former Scorpions bassist Ralph Rieckermann, left, said that about 15 years ago he would regularly see Pearce at parties at the Playboy Mansion and other celebrity house parties in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Rieckermann is pictured at a concert with Rudolf Schenker

David Pearce is pictured at events with Paris Hilton in 2007 and adult film star Ron Jeremy in 2009

'He was always implying that he had either Quaaludes or date rape drugs.

'He would say, 'What do you think I'm going to do with her?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, but you can't just scam your way past all young females, and he said 'You want to bet? I have other ways  as if you don't know what I'm talking about.'

Ralph Rieckermann said he saw a stack of 50-70 credit cards on Pearce's desk not in his name, which Pearce refused to explain to him.

'I'd say, 'Don't even joke about that around me. You know I don't approve of that. I hope you're kidding. And he'd say, 'Watch me.'

Bauer said when he asked what drugs his temporary roommate intended to use on women, Pearce refused to elaborate.

'He'd say, 'Forget it. I'm not telling you. You're liable to go crazy and turn me in or something.'

And in another exclusive interview with DailyMailTV, Rieckermann said that about 15 years ago he would regularly see Pearce at parties at the Playboy Mansion and other celebrity house parties in Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

The former Scorpions bassist said he once visited Pearce's apartment to meet Bauer, his close friend, but was instead greeted by Pearce and shown around.

'He had extremely large televisions, which was unusual for an apartment at that time, and a lot of electronics standing around, like 3-5 laptops,' Rieckermann said.

'All of a sudden he came out of the bedroom, which by the way, had porn playing in the late afternoon. He came out and showed me a whole stack full of IDs of girls.

'He said 'these are the IDs I use to get girls into the clubs.' I said, 'Why do you need IDs to get girls in clubs?' 'Well a lot of the girls we're hanging out with are underage.' I said, 'Why are you hanging out with underage girls?'

'That was an extremely weird, big red flag to me.'

Rieckermann said he also saw a stack of 50-70 credit cards on Pearce's desk not in his name, which Pearce refused to explain to him.

'Then a few girls started showing up and they were very, very young, and very insecure. My gut feel was they were definitely underage,' the 59-year-old retired rock star said.

'He said he was going to go out with them later and he was passing out all these IDs to these girls. That's when I said okay, I'm out of here. I gotta go.'

Rieckerman said he wanted to speak out to encourage witnesses to come forward and for police to investigate all possibilities in Christy and Hilda's case.

He said he later discovered Pearce had been 'blacklisted' from further house parties after a host allegedly caught him on security cameras stealing a laptop.

Court records show Pearce was convicted of a petty theft in April 2015, though it is not clear whether the incident was related to any alleged theft from a house party.

He was also charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance in 2015, but the case was designated as dismissed or not prosecuted in March that year.

In 2018 Pearce made a hoax call to police claiming 'there were men with guns in his hotel room and they weren't letting him leave.'
Police are hunting combatants in a vicious brawl that erupted outside a pub that seriously injured two men.

Two groups of men crossed paths on Kent Street in the Sydney CBD outside a hotel and started arguing about 3.20am on November 21,

The altercation quickly turned physical when a 26-year-old man was attacked by one of the other group before another man joined in, police alleged.

Police want to speak to two men who they say can assist with their inquiries (pictured is one of the men)

A second 26-year-old man then stepped in and attempted to break up the fight but was also allegedly attacked.

Both of the men suffered facial injuries and were treated by paramedics before being rushed to hospital.

The two alleged attackers were last seen walking off along Kent Street towards Liverpool Street.

Police investigating the brawl released CCTV of two men they believed could assist in their inquiries.

Another man had distinctive tattoos and was wearing a gold chain (pictured)

The second man has tattoos covering his entire back as well as another of his chest (pictured)

The first man is described as being of Middle Eastern appearance and aged 20 to 25 with a medium build and short black hair.

He was wearing a black t-shirt, black jeans ripped open at the knees, and black shoes with white soles.

A second man is described as also being of Middle Eastern appearance and aged between 20 and 25.

He has obvious chest and back tattoos, short black hair, and was wearing black jeans ripped open at the knees, black shoes, and a gold chain.

Anyone with information about the identity of the men, or who may have witnessed the brawl, is urged to contact police.
Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado accused her House colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota of faking tears and playing 'victim' in order to fundraise off her public spat with the Republican firebrand on Monday.

Less than a month prior Boebert issued a public apology aimed at Muslim Americans for making incendiary jokes comparing Omar to a suicide bomber.

She had stopped short of making a public apology to Omar herself. The Minnesota Democrat said she asked Boebert to issue one during a phone call but hung up on the GOP lawmaker when she refused.

Boebert made the recent comments during an interview ahead of her appearance at right-wing group Turning Point USA's multi-day AmericaFest 2021 event.

Her interviewer prompted, 'It could have been made into a much lighter situation if she had handled it differently.'

'Yes but she needed more fundraising for this quarter, this quarter was a little slow for her, so let's go on TV, shed some tears and, you know, play the victim,' Boebert replied.

Boebert has relished in the polarizing identity she established for herself in Congress, arriving at the Capitol along with a slew of new pro-Trump lawmakers who have built their names on controversial headlines.

Boebert accused Omar of trying to fundraise off their feud weeks after she herself sent an email to supporters asking for $17.76 in light of the fallout from her racist joke

She frequently uses her social media presence to accuse Democrats in Congress and President Joe Biden himself of trying to take away Americans' rights and plunge the country into socialism. In the past Boebert claimed it was her right to bring a gun onto the House floor, and she joined dozens of her GOP colleagues in refusing to certify Biden's 2020 victory.

Boebert joked on two separate occasions that Omar was a suicide bomber

Boebert sparked outrage in November when a video of her surfaced, in which she told similar anecdotes of being in an elevator with Omar, one of three Muslim lawmakers in Congress.

She joked that she told a Capitol police officer she was safe in an elevator with Omar because she didn't have a backpack, alluding to the racist trope of Muslims being suicide bombers.

Boebert repeated the backpack line in a separate video that surfaced a short while later. In both she referred to Omar as the 'jihad squad.'

Democrats in Congress immediately began calling for Boebert to be stripped of her committee assignments. One such resolution was introduced earlier this month by Omar's fellow Squad member Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated support for punishing Boebert but has yet to endorse a formal resolution on it.

But on Monday, Boebert told the Turning Point USA crowd that such measures would only 'empower' her.

Appearing on stage at Turning Point USA's multi-day event, Boebert claimed Democrats' efforts to strip her of committee assignments just 'empower' her

The defiantly unapologetic Lauren Boebert claims Nancy Pelosis leadership said punishing her for the Islamophobic comments will only empower her. pic.twitter.com/iCrGAS6uhN  PatriotTakes  (@patriottakes) December 20, 2021

She accused progressives of trying to 'cancel' her 'in Congress.'

'They said, "What should we do? Should we censure her? Should we strip her committee assignments?" Well Nancy Pelosi's leadership got together and they discussed that,' Boebert said.

'They said, "Well actually, Madame Speaker, that will only empower Lauren Boebert if we try to cancel her".'

The crowd broke into applause and cheers.

Boebert continued, 'They aren't after me folks, they're after you.'

After the initial fallout over Boebert's suicide bomber joke, the Republican appeared to express regret on Twitter: 'I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep Omar. I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly.'

'There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without unnecessary distraction.'

Boebert offered an apology on Twitter Friday to the Muslim community, but said that she would speak with Rep Omar directly

But her subsequent phone call with Omar only fueled tensions further when Boebert released a video fuming at the progressive for hanging up on her, calling her anti-American and anti-Semitic.

Both women had demanded apologies of each other, and neither budged.

'I told Ilhan Omar that she should make a public apology to the American people for her anti-American, antisemitic anti-police rhetoric,' Boebert said in a video posted to Instagram.

'She continued to press and I continued to press back and then representative Omar hung up on me.

'Rejecting an apology and hanging up on someone is part of cancel culture 101.'

Omar released her own account of the conversation, which she called 'unproductive.'

Omar asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy to punish Boebert

'Instead of apologizing for her Islamophobic comments and fabricated lies, Rep. Boebert refused to publicly acknowledge her hurtful and dangerous comments,' she said in a statement.

'She instead doubled down on her rhetoric and I decided to end the unproductive call.

'I believe in engaging with those we disagree with respectfully, but not when that disagreement is rooted in outright bigotry and hate.'

But before accusing Omar of capitalizing on their feud, Boebert launched a fundraising campaign of her own.

In late November she sent supporters an email asking for a donation of $17.76.

'The Left has launched unprecedented attacks on her these past few weeks. They are trying to stop me from being your voice! I won't back down,' Boebert's email reads.
An unvaccinated father-of-seven who died of Covid in hospital after 'putting off his jab' has left his devastated family to face his funeral just two days before Christmas.

Martin Mulcahy, from Camp Hill in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, tested positive for coronavirus on November 4 after doctors found his oxygen levels were low and he was left struggling to breathe.

The 50-year-old security guard was taken by ambulance to the George Eliot hospital where he was placed on a ventilator - but tragically he died on December 5.

Martin had not been vaccinated because he 'hadn't got round to it' and his wife, Tracey, 45, who 'didn't believe in the vaccine at first' has now scheduled an appointment for her first dose.

She said it is now her 'priority' because she has 'witnessed the devastating effects first-hand'.

Unvaccinated father-of-seven Martin Mulcahy (left), from Camp Hill in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, died of Covid in hospital after 'putting off jab' - but his wife, Tracey (right), 45, who 'didn't believe in the vaccine at first' has now scheduled an appointment for her first dose

The father-of-seven, who work as a security guard, was taken by ambulance to the George Eliot hospital where he was placed on a ventilator but tragically he died on December 5

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Tracey, who is unvaccinated, said: 'As a family we are heartbroken. He was the best father to our seven children and the most caring man on the planet.

'I still haven't processed what's happened and I keep expecting him to walk through the door any minute. It feels like a nightmare that won't end.

'Martin caught Covid after myself and our seven children - aged between nine and 25 - tested positive in late October.

'He'd always been fit and healthy, but after contracting the virus he constantly complained of shortness of breath and tiredness. He was like a different man.

'The symptoms seemed to get worse and after calling an ambulance, he was later admitted into the intensive care unit at the George Eliot hospital on November 13.

'I was sceptical of the vaccine at first and didn't believe in it, but now I have booked an appointment for my first dose after Christmas. I've even told my kids that they are all having it. It's a priority'

Martin's health rapidly declined when he was admitted to hospital, but Tracey was able to see him the day before he tragically died on December 5.

Tracey, who had been in a relationship with Martin for over 20 years, said: 'I was able to stay with him a few hours, which I'm incredibly grateful for, as it ended up being the last time I would see him alive.

'It was heartbreaking seeing him. He was lying on the hospital bed with tubes coming out of him and surrounded by different machines and wires, whilst on a ventilator. I held his hand the entire time to let him know I was there.

'A matter of hours later, I was delivered the news that he had passed away. I'm still numb - it doesn't feel real.

'I am unsure whether Martin had contracted Delta, or Omicron, but it has spurred me to get the first dose of my vaccine.

'Now I will make sure every one of our children has it. If Martin had been jabbed, he may still be with us today.

Martin's health rapidly declined when he was admitted to hospital, but Tracey was able to see him the day before he tragically died on December 5

'We have seven amazing children together and they are all devastated and struggling to process the news. Three of our children are autistic and it's been so hard to keep positive - especially as the funeral is two days before Christmas day.'

Martin's bank account has also been frozen and Tracey is struggling to make ends meet as she has no extra income and is worried about Christmas.

She added: 'A GoFundMe page was set up by my sister Deborah Lea and I'm incredibly grateful to those who have donated money.

'It's a tough time of year for everyone and I appreciate every single penny that people have given my family.

'Everything I have is in Martin's name and the bank have told me his account won't be active until the New Year.

'So I am relying on donations, friends and family to get through Martin's funeral and the festive period.

'Despite the tragic circumstances, I am determined to try and keep positive for the sake of my children.'

To donate to the family's GoFundMe appeal to help raise money for Martin's funeral and Christmas, click here.

This news comes after official data revealed that almost six in 10 Covid deaths among the under-50s in England last month were unvaccinated people.

Data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows 156 people aged 50 and under died within 28 days of a positive Covid test and 89 of them had not come forward for a single Covid jab.

Data from the UK Health Security Agency shows 156 people aged 50 and under died in November within 28 days of a positive Covid test and 89 of them had not come forward for a single Covid jab. There were 61 deaths among vaccinated people, while the vaccination status were not recorded among six fatalities.

The figures equate to 57 per cent of deaths in the age group and lay bare how the unvaccinated are most at-risk from severe outcomes after catching Covid.

Nearly 80 per cent of 18 to 49-year-olds in England are double-jabbed, meaning the number of unvaccinated deaths occured in a much smaller group of people.

NHS workers say they are frustrated with the figures, because hospital admissions and deaths among unvaccinated Britons could be avoided if they came forward for a vaccine.

Meanwhile, a 'fit and healthy' mother-of-two has died from Covid-19 after ignoring her best friend's pleas to get vaccinated.

Nuria Daniela Gomes, 38, tested positive on December 2 and passed away just seven days later, leaving her daughters, Erica, 20, and Myra, 17, bereft.

Ms Gomes, originally from Angola, told her friend, Mena Tando, she had Covid on December 3 - but said 'there was no need to worry about it'.

Ms Tando said she tried to persuade Ms Gomes to get vaccinated, but the mother-of-two was 'concerned' about things she had read on social media.

Ms Tando, 37, said: 'I tried to persuade her to get vaccinated, but she was concerned. She had read things on social media about there being possible consequences in a couple of years. I am missing her a lot.'

Ms Tando said she dropped groceries off on Ms Gomes' doorstep in Liverpool and kept in touch for the next few days.

By December 7 Ms Tando was concerned about her friend's persistent cough. Then, she had a missed call at 1am.

When Ms Tando rang back, Myra said her mother had been taken to hospital. By 2am on December 9, Ms Tando was told Ms Gomes had died.

She said: 'It was a big shock for me, I had been speaking to her all week and to get a call to say she had passed away I just could not believe it.

Ms Gomes' daughter Erica recalled the traumatic minutes when her mother's health dramatically worsened.

Nuria Daniela Gomes (pictured), 38, tested positive on December 2 and passed away just seven days later, leaving her daughters, Erica, 20, and Myra, 17, bereft

She said: 'Mum didn't want to sleep alone so we put a mattress in her room. We could hear she was struggling to breathe. I was panicking, but she said she was fine.

'When we switched the light on we saw her hands were purple, her lips were purple and her eyes looked huge. It was really disturbing.'

The two sisters called an ambulance and performed CPR until paramedics arrived, but their mother died before she made it to Whiston Hospital.

Erica said: 'It was all happening so quickly. I still have flashbacks and then I try to quickly forget.'

Myra said she and her sister prayed for their mother as she struggled. 'Ever since we were little my mum has been taking care of us on her own. She is all we had.

'She was so hard-working, caring, lovely, funny, she brought us up with respect and taught us everything we know. We were really close. She always heard us when we wanted to talk.

Erica recalled the traumatic minutes when her mother's health dramatically worsened. Pictured, Ms Gomes

'She taught us to be grateful for everything we had. She always helped everyone she met and was the most genuine soul anyone could ever meet.

'Everything I am is because of her. She impacted my life in a way no one else could.'

Ms Gomes' closest friend, Elizabeth Neto, 35, said they were all 'massively shocked' and left trying to come to terms with what has happened.

Ms Neto, a foster carer and administration officer from Salford, said: 'It's surreal, it's unbelievable, it's a massive shock.'

She remembers Nuria as 'very open, very friendly, always smiling, always in a good mood'.

They had both moved to the UK from Angola, and bonded 17 years ago when a mutual friend introduced them.

When they both became mothers they were always part of each other's milestone celebrations.

Ms Neto said: 'We would be at weddings together, we shared celebrations. I am trying to come to terms with it.'
A man was shot and killed by a police officer at a New Jersey mobile home park over the weekend after neighbors say he hijacked a backhoe and used it to damage and flip over several vehicles, including a patrol car and an ambulance.

A Vineland Police Department officer opened fire during the encounter at the Penn Lincoln Mobile Home Park at around 5.30am on Saturday, the New Jersey attorney generals office said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene less than 20 minutes later.

As of Tuesday evening, the suspect's name has not been made public.

Neighbors told reporters that before the pre-dawn shooting, the backhoe driver overturned several cars, including a police SUV and an ambulance.

A hijacked backhoe is seen in a woman's cellphone video ramming a police SUV during a chaotic incident in Vineland, New Jersey, early Saturday

The backhoe flips over the SUV, as seen in cellphone video recorded by eyewitness Aida Morales

The backhoe is seen smashing into another police vehicle and a woman's red sedan at the Penn Lincoln Mobile Home Park

Shocked neighbors described the incident and its aftermath as 'something out of a movie.' Pictured: an overturned vehicle and a badly damaged sedan are in the middle of the road

Cellphone video recorded by eyewitness Aida Morales shows the backhoe ramming the police vehicle and overturning it.

'Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Oh, my goodness,' a woman exclaims off camera.

When the backhoe pivots and appears to pursue another police SUV, the witness recording the video cries out: 'run, run, run, go! He's after you, go!'

The driver also inflicted significant damage to another police SUV and a woman's red Toyota sedan, and destroyed the front porch of a nearby home.

Morales described the chaotic scene to Fox 29 'like something out of a movie.'

Theresa Jeffrey told 6abc Action News she was driving her red Toyota sedan on her way to work when the backhoe crashed into her multiple times.

The stolen backhoe is seen in Vineland following the officer-involved shooting. The driver of the vehicle has not been named

An ambulance is seen resting on its side after being flipped over by the backhoe

Theresa Jeffrey told local outlets she was driving to work when the backhoe smashed into her red Toyota, badly damaging the car and leaving her traumatized

Jeffrey said she was not physically harmed, but the experience has traumatized her.

'I cry every day, and I get headaches, I can't sleep. I can't eat,' she said. 'It's so stressful. He could have killed me.'

Another neighbor, Diane Trout, told WCAU-TV of the violent incident's aftermath: 'its like a hurricane came through here. Just total destruction.'

She said she is friends with the woman whose front porch was destroyed, and the backhoe also ripped a hole in the front of the home.

Three Vineland police officer suffered minor injuries during the incident

'I feel so bad for her, she was upset and crying,' Trout said. 'Its Christmas!'

Authorities have not officially connected the shooting to the destruction described by the neighbors and havent released the mans name or other details.

Three Vineland officers were treated for minor injuries. The New Jersey Attorney Generals Office is investigating, as is required by law in deaths during encounters with law enforcement.

DailyMail.com on Tuesday reached out to the office, seeking comment on the incident and the investigation.
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As the Omicron variant of the coronavirus sweeps through the U.S. as the now-most dominant strain, New York  particularly New York City  is facing the brunt of its impact.

Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday ruled out city-wide closures and said he refused to 'devastate the lives of New Yorkers' by implementing blanket shutdowns, though some restaurants have been closing on their own after experiencing breakthrough infections among staff.

Some Broadway performances have also been paused and the fate of Times Square's often jam-packed New Year's Eve celebration is still up in the air with de Blasio vowing to announce its official plans by the end of the week.

The state broke its own record for the fourth straight day and logged 23,391 cases in 24 hours on Monday evening about 1,000 more than the 22,478 cases reported the day before.

There were 12,293 positive cases reported in NYC on Monday, down 5,893 from the 18,186 reported on Sunday  which was the highest number of cases NYC has ever seen in a single day and beat the city's previous record of 16,715 cases reported on May 24.

Omicron now accounts for 90% of all New York cases and 73% of all cases country-wide.

As of Monday morning in NYC, 5,946,903 or 71% of adults and 475,659 or 40% of children are fully vaccinated and 1,724,122 third doses have been administered. The NYC Health Department does not contain data showing the number of percentage of residents who have received their boosters.

To combat the spread, all New Yorkers who get their booster shots at a city-run clinic will be offered a $100 incentive, de Blasio announced at a news conference on Tuesday, where he made his pledge to avoid shutdowns.

'Adamantly I feel this, no more shutdowns,' de Blasio said. 'We've been through them, they were devastating, we can't go through it again.'

'In this case, we weather the storm because we were prepared with a high level of vaccination already, we were prepared with a strong health care system, we are prepared to get through,' he added.

New York and NYC are being hit hardest by the uptick in Omicron cases across the country, with a record of 23,391 cases reported as of Monday evening. Above, residents wait on line for a COVID test ahead of the holidays

Mayor Bill de Blasio has refused to 'devastate the lives of New Yorkers' by implementing blanket shutdowns. Above is one of many hours-long lines across NYC to get a COVID test

De Blasio (above) is also offering a $100 incentive to all who get their booster shots at city-run clinics

A contributing factor to the rise in positive cases is the uptick in residents getting tested ahead of Christmas, as some have reported waiting on six-hour lines across the five boroughs.

The city currently has 89 testing sites and is adding 23 more this week because of the 'serious, increased demand,' Dr. Neal Shipley, the medical director of Northwell - GoHealth Urgent Care, told CNN.

'It feels a lot like it did last year, where the demand...is really straining the health system,' Shipley said, noting, however, that the state is not short on tests.

'Most people get tested because they have a very particular worry,' Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.

The mayor says a record-breaking 130,000 tests, at least, are being administered daily at city sites  double the number of tests done three weeks ago.

'This uptick is folks who are just seeing so much of it around that they're going to a lot of extra precaution,' de Blasio said. 'They want the reassurance, and they want to be very careful.'

And while the number of positive cases is soaring 'sharply,' the number of hospitalizations is fortunately lagging behind, NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi told the news outlet.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC ) released data Monday night showing that the Omicron variant now accounts for 73 percent of U.S. Covid cases. The agency also revised last week's data, increasing the share of the variant from 2.9 percent to 12.6 percent.

Portions of Staten Island and lower Manhattan are being hit the worst, as seen in the above map from the NYC Health Department

This means the prevalence of the variant jumped six fold week-over-week. It has overtaken the Delta variant, which had been the nation's dominant strain since July.

In Manhattan, a nurse told DailyMail.com that patients hoping for COVID tests waited up to six hours at the CityMD Urgent Care on East 14th Street on Monday.

An operator for NYC Health + Hospital's COVID Hotline couldn't predict wait times at any of its more than 50 COVID testing centers across the five boroughs, but said that 'hundreds and thousands of people' were lined up throughout the city on Monday afternoon.

'Make sure to dress super warmly and make sure to pack a dinner,' COVID Hotline operator Nathan Wilkes suggested those planning to join the staggering queues in the coming days.

New York and New Jersey are the states believed to have the largest prevalence of the new variant, and both are experiencing an increase in cases as well. Most recent data published by the CDC last Tuesday estimates that a combined 13 percent of cases in the two states are of the Omicron variant - far outpacing the 2.9 percent national rate and every other region.

'We now have people who took their test on Thursday and we now have people calling me at the airport and screaming that their results aren't in. You have no idea how many positive test results that I'm reading,' he told DailyMail.com.

'It's just that bad.'

At least 50 restaurants have been closing on their own after experiencing breakthrough infections among staff. Above is an empty White Tiger eatery on Bergen and Vanderbuilt Ave in Brooklyn .

Above is an empty Vanderbilt Restaurant on Bergen Street in Brooklyn

Raoul's Restaurant in Soho was one of the many that had to close temporarily due to breakthrough COVID exposure among vaccinated staff members

On Saturday Raoul's Restaurant in Soho posted on its social media (left) letting patrons know that 'due to Covid exposure we are closing immediately, and will remain closed for the next week. We plan to reopen on the 27th of December.' Winona's on Flushing Ave in Brooklyn has also shut down due to breakthrough cases among staff

Bernie's, the popular Brooklyn restaurant, announced that it would temporarily shut its doors after a staffer tested positive for Covid-19

As a result of the spike in cases, at least 50 restaurants have closed across New York City's five boroughs, including Boilermaker in Manhattan's Lower East Side, whose Sippin' Santa annual holiday pop-up cocktail bar is a seasonal favorite.

Contento, the popular East Harlem eatery, shut its doors after a customer who dined there last Tuesday tested positive for the virus.

Soon afterward, a restaurant employee tested positive for the virus, according to Eater.

Other well-known restaurants in the city, including Bernie's in Brooklyn, and tasty Vietnamese spot Di An Di, also announced they would close temporarily after staffers became infected.

Di An Di owner Tuan Bui said it was the first time since April 2020 - just after the start of the pandemic - that he was forced to close down.

Restaurant trade associations who spoke to DailyMail.com indicated that the goal remains to keep eateries and bars open to the public.

On Saturday Raoul's Restaurant in Soho posted on its social media letting patrons know that 'due to Covid exposure we are closing immediately, and will remain closed for the next week. We plan to reopen on the 27th of December.'

A sign was also spotted in the eatery's window, which read: 'Gone Fishin' (Actually, we're quarantining because there's a global pandemic).'

Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, told DailyMail.com: 'New York City has a proof of vaccination requirement to work in a restaurant or dine indoors at one, and these businesses are still struggling, and hoping to safely serve their customers and keep people employed during the holiday season.'

A top executive with the National Restaurant Association is asking Congress to step up and help owners in need. If they don't, some businesses face the risk of 'permanent closures'.

'The last few months have been difficult and chaotic for the restaurant industry,' said Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs for the National Restaurant Association.

'The increase in COVID cases is yet another gut punch to battered small businesses that were hoping for a busy holiday season without all of the pandemic pressures,' Andrew Rigie, director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, told Side Dish.

James Mallios, owner of Amali on East 60th Street, told the New York Post that Omicron has slammed some of his restaurants, including Bar Marseille, which opened in the Rockaways during the pandemic.

'We are still building the business and the client base,' Mallios said of the new eatery. He said he'd hired new staff for the holidays  and beyond, especially amid optimism at the start of November after the gates were opened to travelers from Europe.

'Now,' he said, 'I had to lay off people and scale back staff.'

On Broadway alone, the week of Dec. 13 saw nine separate Broadway productions shutting down for single or even multiple performances, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The city and state's concurrent rise in cases was reflected on New York's stages, which had spent months serving as a leader for safely navigating the pandemic.

However, 'we have absolutely no plans to shut down,' Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin told the Hollywood Reporter. 'We are paying serious attention to the protocols. The other 20 to 30 shows continue to perform because we're following the protocols that we set up, and it shows they're working. People are tested before they get in with everybody else, and if their test is negative, then they get to go on.'

Several popular Broadway plays were also thrown into major crises ahead of the holidays - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hamilton, and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, which all canceled shows due to the Covid outbreak.

Ain't Too Proud, Ms Doubtfire, Freestyle Love Supreme and Wicked also canceled upcoming performances due to positive Covid cases among actors and stagehands.

Mary McColl, executive director of Actors' Equity Association, which represents actors and stage managers, said the cancellation of shows means that Broadway producers are taking cases seriously and acting appropriately.

In New York, the rules have tightened for children and opera-goers: All kids aged 5 to 11 must now show proof of receiving at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to attend a Broadway show and must be accompanied by a vaccinated adult.

If the child was vaccinated fewer than 14 days before the performance, he or she must also provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test for entry.

And the Metropolitan Opera is requiring the audience and employees to receive Covid booster shots for entry starting January 17.

The company said anyone not yet eligible to receive a booster shot will be allowed a two-week grace period after they become eligible.

Broadway is facing a major crisis ahead of the holidays after most of its shows canceled upcoming performances due to surges in cases among cast and production staff

De Blasio has yet to announce the official plans for New Year's Eve in Times Square, but sources say that it will be scaled back at some capacity.

When 2022 is ushered in at the 'crossroads of the world,' there will likely be a reduced capacity and masks will be worn by all, sources with knowledge of the plans told FOX 5.

Requirements to attend the worldwide spectacle already included proof of vaccination. Those who cannot be vaccinated due to a disability must show proof of a negative COVID test taken within 72 hours. Those under 5 years old must be accompanied by a vaccinated adult.

The country as a whole is not suffering a Covid surge, though, with the virus even starting to recede in some areas. States in both the Northeast and Great Plains - both regions that experienced a sharp increase in Covid cases in early fall - are now seeing those surges decline.

In Montana, for example, cases have dropped 53 percent over the past two weeks, with hospitalizations down 27 percent. Nearby Wyoming has experienced a 40 percent drop in cases, with hospitalizations down 11 percent. North Dakota, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota also have case numbers trending in the right direction.
An Ohio Good Samaritan is being hailed a 'hero' for chasing down a thief who snatched an 87-year-old woman's purse from a shopping cart.

But Deshawn Pressley said being honored by the Butler County Sheriff's Office wasn't all he got from the good deed - he also made a friend in Pat Goins, who he helped during her time of trouble.

Goins was shopping at a Lemon Township Kroeger earlier this month when a man - identified by police as 58-year-old Derek Vaughn - absconded with her purse.

Hearing her cries for help, Pressley chased the culprit down and retrieved her belongings.

'I'm glad that he received this honor because he's my hero,' Goins told FOX11.

Deshawn Pressley (right) was praised by locals and deputies at the Butler County Sheriff's Office for retrieving 87-year-old Pat Goins' (left) purse a thief on December 5

Before the December 5 ordeal, Pressley and Goins had a friendly conversation with his one-year-old daughter at the grocery store.

They briefly parted ways, before Pressley heard Goins shriek, 'My purse!'

'I heard her screaming and yelling  it was the yell that I need help,' Pressley said. 'And I just turned around and did what I needed to do as a citizen.'

He chased after the purse snatcher, eventually making a citizen's arrest before the bandit could reach his car.

As for Pressley and Goins, the award ceremony won't be the last time they met; they've already made plans for a dinner date.

Pressley didn't think twice and went after the purse snatcher, eventually making a citizen's arrest and preventing Vaughn from getting inside his car and fleeing the scene

Pressley didn't think twice and went after the purse snatcher, eventually making a citizen's arrest and preventing Vaughn from getting inside his car and fleeing the scene

Security footage from December 5 shows Goins following Vaughn out of the store and into the parking lot, preventing the thief from reaching his car

Derek Vaughn, 58, was arrested and charged with robbery and theft. Vauhn has a history of minor traffic violations and drug abuse, criminal records show

Pressley was in a different aisle when he heard Goins' call for help. He and at least other 15 shoppers went after Vaughn, but Pressley outran them all.

Security footage shows Goins following Vaughn from the store and into the parking lot, preventing the thief from getting away.

Pressley said Vaughn was surprised to see fellow shoppers on his tail.

'He was running and looking back, running and looking back, and I was like 'yeah, I'm on you're a--,' Pressley said.

'And he ran right past me and I chased him down,' Pressley added. 'He got to his car and everything, but I grabbed him, held him to the floor, got him down. Did what I had to do until the police arrived.'

Once Vaughn was nabbed, fellow shoppers ordered him to apologize.

'They told him he better apologize to me. He said he was sorry, he said he was sorry,' Goins told FOX11.

As for Pressley and Goins, the award ceremony won't be the last time they will be spending time together. They said they've already made plans for a dinner date

Goins said Vaughn hadn't tried to attack her and he was only after the $60 inside her purse. For his heroic efforts, Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones awarded Pressley with the Citizen's Award, with Goins in attendance.

Goins said Vaughn hadn't tried to attack her and he was only after the $60 inside her purse.

For his heroic efforts, Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones awarded Pressley with the Citizen's Award last Thursday, with Goins in attendance.

'You make us very very proud, not just here, but [everywhere] in the country,' the sheriff said to applause.

'I'm glad that I helped her because she is a wonderful, lovely lady and I just love helping people, especially older women,' Pressley said. 'They need love, they need security just like every other woman, no matter the age.'

He added: 'When I was young I always shoveled snow for older women, without paying. Like I told them I didn't even want the money, I just did it because I cared. I have a heart.'

Pressley and Goins said that they will remain in contact following the award ceremony.

'This is not the only day we are going to see each other, we are going to remain in contact,' Pressley said.

'And we've got a dinner date,' Goins added.

Pressley said he went after Vaughn because of the way he was raised by his grandmother, who instilled good values in him.

'She did very good by me,' he said. 'It was good that she taught me what she taught me, and I'm thankful for her.'

Vaughn was arrested and charged with robbery and theft.

Jones said the charges 'send a message' and that he hopes Vaughn 'is still in his jail' but did not clarify whether he remained locked up.
Fast food giant McDonald's is set to limit the portion of fries they offer to customers in Japan as a result of global supply chain issues.

McDonald's Holdings Company Japan said earlier today it would suspend the sale of medium and large-sized french fries for a week starting on Friday due to supply chain bottlenecks.

The company is seeing delays in potato shipments due to supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as from shipping disruptions in Canada.

Despite the potato shortages, the popular fast-food company said that fries will still be sold in small-size portions.

McDonald's stores in Japan are set to limit the portions of fries customers can buy with their meals to just smalls - removing medium and large for a week (stock image)

A spokesperson for the company said earlier today that a 'continuous supply' of french fries would be available thanks to the emergency rationing.

Additionally, the company will be offering a small discount on meal prices as a result of the disruption.

The company did not quantify the financial impact that the the temporary suspension of medium and large fries would have.

Japan represents one of McDonald's largest consumer markets outside of the US anywhere in the world - with 2,900 restaurants found in the country.

This isn't the first time that McDonald's have been affected by global supply chain issues.

The company is seeing delays in potato shipments due to supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as from shipping disruptions in Canada (stock image)

In October, McDonald's restaurants in the UK were plagued by a shortage of its popular Chicken Legend burger - resulting in stores removing it from their menus.

McDonald's initially said supply chain woes were 'impacting the availability' of the Chicken Legend and that it was working hard to return the item as soon as possible.

In a later statement to Mail Online it said the item should still be available inside restaurant chains, just not for delivery orders.

While in August, restaurants were also hit by a shortage of milkshakes as supply chain issues took hold.

Since September, countries around the world, including Japan, the UK, the US and Canada - where the potatoes are imported from - have been battling snarled supply chains.

Ships have spent days off the coasts of the world's major ports, unable to unload their cargo due to a shortage of delivery drivers and technical staff.

Japan represents one of McDonald's largest consumer markets outside of the US anywhere in the world - with 2,900 restaurants found in the country (file image of a store in Tokyo in 2008)

Container ships have plied their routes with their vessels only partially loaded, due to logistical issues in ports and warehouses.

The crisis has led to fears that stores and restaurants may not have enough supplies for the holidays.

The potato shortage comes amid a busy period for fast food restaurants in Japan - which traditionally sees rival KFC dominate the festive market.

For 51 years, many families in Japan have turned to KFC as their meal on Christmas Day.

The manager of the country's first-ever KFC store initially marketed 'party barrels' as an alternative to roast turkey on Christmas day.

The campaign proved so successful that it was eventually launched nationwide in Japan and has since become a tradition for many families.

In 2019, it was estimated that Christmas sales of KFC represented around five per cent of the company's total annual revenue in Japan.

And in a bid to dethrone KFC as the festive fast-food favourites, McDonald's has launched a campaign pushing chicken nuggets as an alternative to turkey.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot pleaded with Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday to send Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents to the city for six months after the city reaches a 25-year high in the number of murders.

The woke mayor announced at a news conference in Garfield Park on Monday that she made a formal request to Garland to send ATF agents to Chicago for six months, a well as more federal prosecutors and federal marshals to help get illegal guns off the streets.

This comes after the democrat proposed slashing $80 million from the Chicago Police Department budget in 2020 during 'defund the police' protests.

The proposal was later scaled back and 3.3% of the budget - or $59 million - was cut and Lightfoot has since denounced the 'defund' movement, but Chicago's police union still issued a vote of 'no confidence' in the mayor earlier this year.

'The federal government remains uniquely qualified to help address the scourge of gun violence,' Lightfoot said on Monday. 'We need these additional resources well in advance of next summer.'

Chicago is currently fighting a 25-year high murder rate, with 767 homicides occurring within the city so far this year.

It is also seeing a 7.5 percent increase in violent crime this year when compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to an analysis from Axios, with some parts of the city seeing double the number of fatal shootings.

In a statement to DailyMail.com, a representative from Garland's office said: 'We're aware of the Mayor's request and concerns raised.'

He noted that Garland has previously sent ATF agents into the city in July.

Chicago has recorded 767 murders in 2021 so far - the highest number in 25 years

Chicago is also seeing a 7.5 percent increase in violent crime this year when compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, with some parts of the city seeing double the number of fatal shootings. Overall, crime rates are slightly lower than in 2017

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced on Monday she is asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to send ATF agents to Chicago for six months, a well as more federal prosecutors and federal marshals to get illegal guns off the streets

Lightfoot, a Democrat, blamed the rise in crime on gang violence - caused by poverty and neglect - and too many illegal guns on the streets.

'I know people are scared,' the mayor told residents at the news conference, noting: 'I want to ensure you that from Day One public safety has been and will be my top priority.

'I have and I will commit every bit of law enforcement muscle to fighting this fight, but I so know that lasting peace and safety will only come to this city when the underlying causes of violence and crime are addressed once and for all.

'There are no quick solutions to the problems we are facing,' she continued, but said: 'We must do better immediately and in the short term to take back control from the criminals who are preying upon us and making all of us less safe.'

She said her goal is to 'proactively and relentlessly bring peace to our city once and for all,' noting that she has brought back the Chicago Police Department's dedicated gun teams, and added more homicide detectives.

Lightfoot also said she has invested in programs to reduce crime, and touted her budget's Our City, Our Safety violence reduction plan.

But the mayor also slammed the Cook County court system, calling for a moratorium on violent offenders being allowed out on electronic monitoring.

Lightfoot said the practice is a 'slap in the face' to the criminal's victims, and said that in many cases the offenders are released with 'virtually no supervision.'

She called the system 'fundamentally broken,' and asked: 'How many more have to die before there is an end to this dangerous practice of letting violent, dangerous criminals out into the very communities in which they are alleged to have caused harm, often without meaningful supervision, or in the absence of any meaningful intervention.'

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents are seen here investigating the scene of a shooting in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicago last year

So far this year, 767 Chicago residents have been murdered - more than any year since 1996, when murders totaled 796 at the end of a crime wave fueled by the crack cocaine epidemic.

At the same time, shooting incidents 9 percent over last year and 68 percent since 2019, with sexual assault incidents up 28 percent from last year and thefts up 20 percent, according to Chicago Police Department data.

In total, Axios reports, violent crime is up 7.5 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels from 2019 and some neighborhoods of the city have seen a 100 percent increase in fatal shootings this year.

The mayor has previously announced a 'refund the police' budget last - a U-turn from Lightfoots proposal last year which slashed $59 million from the CPD budget, or 3.3 percent, and 600 vacant positions from the department, amid Black Lives Matter protests throughout the summer of 2020.

The city's 2021 - 2022 budget will now pump $41 million more into the mayor's Our City, Our Safety violence reduction plan, which focuses on 15 of Chicago's most violent neighborhoods.

Of that, Axios reports, $8.5 million would go to violence reduction programs and $62 million will go to affordable housing.

Following her press conference on Monday, both law enforcement and people on the left criticized the mayor's plan.

'There are so many different organizations in [the] city of Chicago that are doing great work,' community organizer William Calloway told ABC 7, 'but if we're going to get federal resources it should fund those operations, not add more law enforcement on the street. That's crazy.'

Several police aldermen also criticized Lightfoot's plan, with Second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins telling ABC 7 he thought it was 'light on specifics for an action plan, for what we're going to do about the ongoing crisis and street crime, gang-elated violence, gang-related shootings, carjackings and armed robbery.'

And Fifteen Ward Alderman Rap Lopez said: 'For me, what I find most disappointing is that the mayor did a lot of asking, but not a lot of leading.'
A Washington man has been jailed for nearly four years for hitting a cop with a metal baton and hurling a speaker at officers during an 'hours-long' involvement in the January 6 riots.

Devlyn Thompson, 28, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of assaulting a police officer earlier this year after he smashed a pepper spray canister from an officer's hand with a metal baton during the Capitol riot.

Thompson also attempted to throw a speaker at cops - missing and instead hitting a fellow rioter - during the riot.

At trial he claimed he had not realized what he was doing because he has autism spectrum disorder and the social understanding of a child.

But Thompson spent 'hours' at the Capitol during the riot and was part of a mob that seized riot shields from police officers during the pro-Trump riot, the court heard.

Rioters breached the Capitol on January 6 during a 'Stop the Steal' rally which claimed Donald Trump had won the election as Congress met to count electoral votes and certify Joe Biden's presidential election win.

Devlyn Thompson, 28, (pictured at the Capitol on January 6, 2021) has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for assaulting a police officer during the January 6 Capitol riot in Washington

Devlyn Thompson attempted to throw a speaker at cops - missing and instead hitting a fellow rioter - before smashing a pepper spray canister from an officer's hand with a metal baton during the Capitol riot earlier this year

Rioters breached the Capitol on January 6 during a 'Stop the Steal' rally which claimed Donald Trump had won the election as Congress met to count electoral votes and certify Joe Biden's presidential election win

During sentencing District Judge Royce Lamberth said Thompson 'deserved credit' for cooperating with police but that it was not a significant enough factor to 'justify' going below sentencing guidelines.

'The violence that happened that day was such a blatant disregard to the institutions of government,' he said, describing the riot as 'an attack on the very rule of law in our country.'

'You didn't just come up and sock a guy in the face... You're shoving and pushing...and participating in this riot for hours.'

Thompson's had defense argued he had diminished responsibility because, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and with the social understanding of a child, he did not realize what he was doing.

According to court documents, Thompson's attorney wrote: 'In contrast to individuals who planned to change the election results by storming the Capitol building with brute force, Mr. Thompson's understanding of what was happening was naive and inaccurate.'

Thompson also apologized for his actions in a letter to the officer, describing his behaviour as 'inexcusable'.

'I'm deeply sorry for the danger that you were put in on behalf of my recklessness,' he wrote.

Violent pro-Trump protesters carrying 'Trump 2020' flags breach the Capitol as they try to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden's presidency on January 6, 2021

Pro-Trump rioters seen on and around Capitol building on January 6. Rioters broke windows and breached the Capitol building in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election

Thompson is the second rioter to be sentenced for a felony, by more than 140 others face the same charge for their involvement in the January 6 attack.

He also received one of the longest sentences yet handed down to a January 6 rioter behind Robert Palmer who on Friday was sentenced to five years and three months for repeatedly assaulting police officers.

Palmer, 54, of Tampa, Florida, attacked cops with a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole.

And last month, the bare-chested face of the Capitol riot Jacob Chansley, 34, nicknamed the 'QAnon Shaman' was jailed for 41 months.

Violent insurrections loyal to President Donald Trump try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington on January 6

Pro-Trump protesters clash with police during a January 6 riot to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election by the US Congress
Donald Trump will hold a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate on January 6 where he plans to rail against Democrats and 'RINOs' and promote election fraud conspiracy theories exactly one year after the Capitol riot, he announced on Tuesday.

At the same time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is preparing a 'solemn observance' marking a year since the deadly insurrection, she told her Democratic colleagues on Monday.

Their polar opposite approaches are emblematic of the growing divide between Democrat and Republican lawmakers over their recollections of the day - even for those who were forced to hide while violent Trump supporters shattered through glass and overwhelmed law enforcement.

In a lengthy statement sent out this morning, the ex-president accused the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol attack of deliberately overlooking 'the rigged Presidential Election of 2020.'

He also described the January 6 attack as an 'unarmed protest' and said the real 'insurrection' was Election Day 2020.

'Why isnt the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020? Does anybody notice that they want to stay as far away from that topic as possible, the numbers dont work for them, or even come close,' Trump said through his Save America PAC. 'The only thing they can do is not talk about it.'

Trump and Pelosi's dueling events on January 6 are emblematic of how Republicans and Democrats have since represented the insurrection

He went on to rehash his previous claims that elections are rigged in a handful of battleground states that narrowly went to Biden in 2020.

'Look at what is going on now in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and, to a lesser extent, Michigan where the numbers are horrendously corrupt in Detroit, but the weak Republican RINOs in the Michigan House and Senate dont want to touch the subject,' Trump said.

'RINO' stands for 'Republican In Name Only,' an attack Trump frequently invokes against those within his party that don't agree with him.

'In many ways a RINO is worse than a Radical Left Democrat, because you dont know where they are coming from and you have no idea how bad they really are for our Country,' the ex-president fumed.

'The good news is there are fewer and fewer RINOs left as we elect strong Patriots who love America.

'I will be having a news conference on January 6th at Mar-a-Lago to discuss all of these points, and more.

'Until then, remember, the insurrection took place on November 3rd, it was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th,' Trump said.

Trump's lengthy statement also took aim at the January 6 committee and Republicans who have criticized him

But while Trump holds his media appearance in Florida, lawmakers at the Capitol are preparing for a day full of events including introspective discussions looking back at the riot and a silent vigil.

'Our nation will soon mark one year since the January 6th deadly attack on the United States Capitol. While the House will not be in session that week, a number of Members have expressed interest in being involved in commemoration activities,' Pelosi wrote in a letter addressed to her Democratic colleagues.

'Already, preparations are underway for a full program of events, including a discussion among historians about the narrative of that day; an opportunity for Members to share their experiences and reflections from that day; and a prayerful vigil in the evening.'

Those events will all be live streamed, she said, 'so that Members can watch and participate from their districts.'

'As always, we will continue to work with the House Historian to establish and preserve our records in this regard,' Pelosi said.

DailyMail.com reached out to the Speaker's office for comment on Trump's event.

Trump has been ramping up his attacks against the Democrat-led January 6 committee as the panel closes in on his inner circle.

Yesterday the committee asked to speak with GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, marking the first time they're publicly requesting to hear from a sitting member of Congress.

In a letter published online, Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson said he was looking for text messages and emails Perry exchanged with Trump and his advisers in the lead-up to January 6.

The panel is also requesting information on Perry's efforts to help install Jeffrey Clark, a former low-level pro-Trump lawyer at the Justice Department, as Acting Attorney General during the final months of Trump's presidency.

Clark, who has already been subpoenaed by the committee, allegedly tried to pressure his superiors with Trump's support to weaponize the DOJ against election counts in certain states that narrowly went to Biden in 2020.

The committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection has requested an interview with Rep. Scott Perry. The Republican lawmaker is the first sitting member of Congress the panel has requested to speak with

Perry and other Republicans also met with Trump ahead of the Capitol attack and discussed how they could block the formal certification of President Joe Biden's victory in Congress on January 6.

In his letter Thompson noted they were seeking Perry's voluntary cooperation because of their 'tremendous respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its Members.'

'At the same time, we have a solemn responsibility to investigate fully all of these facts and circumstances,' Thompson wrote.

Last week the committee recommended criminal contempt charges for Trump's former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for his refusal to appear for a deposition.

The decision on whether to bring those charges forward will have to come from Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Lawmakers voted to hold ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt for a similar charge. Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury in November and faces a fine of up to $100,000 and up to a year in jail.
A 'well-loved' paramedic who had 'everything to live for' took her own life during lockdown after being 'pushed over the edge' by a Facebook post shaming her for littering, an inquest has heard.

Charlotte Cope, 23, was found dead by her mother in a bedroom at the family home in Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales, on April 13 last year.

The day before her death, photos of Ms Cope in her Welsh Ambulance Service uniform were uploaded to social media by a member of the public claiming she had seen her littering outside her home.

Ms Cope had been on her way to work a night shift when she was stopped and pictured standing outside her car next to a pile of food waste and packaged food items.

She was then told about the post targeting her by a line manager at Gelli Ambulance Station, before admitting to the wrongdoing and saying she would pay any fine that was issued.

However, by the time she woke up the following day, the post had been shared hundreds of times, according to her family.

Charlotte Cope was found dead at her family home in April 2020 following a Facebook post shaming her for littering

Her mother, Heidi, told an inquest into her death at South Wales Central Coroner's Court that the Facebook post 'pushed her over the edge'.

Her father Roger Cope said: 'As a family we were very close and would spend time together. We used to go running together and take part in running events. In lockdown, I helped her set up a gym in the house so she could continue training.'

At the time of her death on April 13, 2020, Ms Cope was described as a 'much-loved' member of the ambulance service and a 'very promising and proud paramedic adored by all who knew her.'

An inquest into Ms Cope's death at Pontypridd Coroner's Court today heard how she loved working as a paramedic, and told family that this was her 'comfort'.

But the young paramedic struggled with mental health issues, having been diagnosed with an eating disorder as well as anxiety, but her mother insisted her daughter had 'everything to live for'.

She told the court Ms Cope was a happy child who was enthusiastic about sport, having become Welsh judo champion on three occasions.

However, in 2012 at the age of 15, she developed anorexia and spent several weeks in hospital undergoing treatment for the disorder.

Ms Cope, pictured, was 'pushed her over the edge' by the Facebook post, her mother told an inquest into her death at South Wales Central Coroner's Court

Ms Cope went on to study health and social care in college and attended Plymouth University to train to become a paramedic, joining the Welsh Ambulance Service in 2018 following her graduation.

She was said to have been a well-liked member of the team who 'loved her job' and enjoyed helping and saving people.

Despite this, though, she continued to suffer with her mental health at times and family members said they believed she had never recovered from her eating disorder - describing her as a 'troubled soul'.

On April 13, the day of her death, Ms Cope (pictured) had spent time downstairs with her parents before returning to her bedroom at around 1.30pm

On April 13, the day of her death, Ms Cope had spent time downstairs with her parents before returning to her bedroom at around 1.30pm to sleep after her night shift the previous night, with everything said to have appeared 'normal'.

However, she was found dead by her mother at around 8.30pm.

Paramedics who the 999 call were colleagues and friends of Ms Cope and, in statements read at the inquest, told of how 'shocked' they were and described her as 'popular and well-loved'.

A message found on Miss Copes body directed family members to look at the notes she had written on her phone.

Notes found on Ms Cope's phone said she wanted the 'horrendous' and 'disturbing' thoughts in her head to stop and repeatedly said she was sorry

The notes said she wanted the 'horrendous' and 'disturbing' thoughts in her head to stop, repeatedly said she was sorry, and thanked her colleagues for all the memories they shared.

Assistant coroner Rachel Knight told the court: 'Charlotte had a complex history including a longstanding eating disorder, depression and anxiety, and was further upset by a post on social media that likely caused her to be embarrassed.'

Recording the cause of death as suicide, Ms Knight said to the family: 'I want to say how truly sorry I am for the loss of Charlotte. It is obvious to me how much you loved her, and how much she is missed.'

Speaking after the inquest, Ms Cope's mother said she believed the Facebook post had contributed to her daughters death.

Ms Cope (pictured) was said to have suffered from an eating disorder and anxiety, but her mother insisted her daughter had 'everything to live for'

She added: 'I believe she would be here today if it wasnt for that post.

'She loved her family, her job, and the gym. Shed recently bought a car, booked to go on holiday with her friends, and got concert tickets to see Pink live. She had everything to live for.

'Charlotte did have anxiety and was obviously still struggling with her eating disorder and we supported her with that - we even built her a gym in the garage so she could continue to work out during lockdown. But I think the post pushed her over the edge.

'That day she woke up to find the post had been shared hundreds of times and the messages being written about her were vile and she was too embarrassed.

'I just want people to realise what a dangerous and nasty place Facebook can be, and what they post can have an impact on someone and their family.'

**For confidential support call Samaritans on 116123 or visit a Samaritans branch**
A newborn baby abandoned by her parents in India survived a night out in the cold after a litter of puppies kept her warm.

The baby girl was discovered in a field in the Saristal village of Lormi in India's Chhattisgarh province, nestled alongside the puppies, completely uninjured, by locals who heard her crying.

It is thought that the puppies' mother initially found the baby - who was naked and still had her umbilical cord attached - and lay down alongside her.

Local representative Munnalal Patel said that a group heading out for daily chores had found the newborn.

A newborn girl was kept warm by a litter of puppies after she was abandoned in a field in India

It is thought that the puppies' mother initially found the baby - who was naked and still had her umbilical cord attached - and lay down alongside her near the Saristal village of Lormi in India's Chhattisgarh province

They said: 'At 11 in the morning, we saw that there is a newborn baby girl who was crying and lying alongside puppies in our village.

'We panicked and informed the health department before the newborn was taken to the hospital for further check-up'.

Another local, who wished to remain anonymous, said: 'It's possibly the warmth from puppies and their mother itself who had kept this new born alive.'

They added that it was 'sheer luck' that the girl, who has been named Akanksha, survived the night given how the temperature dips during the night - particularly at this time of year.

After Akanksha was discovered, a branch of local government known as the panchayat was contacted, who involved the police.

Officers arrived shortly after and transported the child to hospital so doctors could examine her condition.

The girl, who has since been named Akanksha, was transported the child to hospital so doctors could examine her condition

An investigation is now underway by police who are also searching to find the child's parents

The Child Line Project has also been made aware of the child's situation.

One local, Premnath, said it was a 'miracle' the baby had survived the night, because stray dogs can be vicious, he said.

They said: 'They are not parents, they are criminals. It is a miracle only to find new born baby surviving when stray dogs are lurking every now and then at the dead of the night'.

An investigation is underway, and police are searching for the newborn's parents.
Four men have denied a plot to murder Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson who is still in hospital seven months after being shot in the head at a house party.

The mother-of-two, 27, dubbed the 'Black Panther of Oxford', was shot in the head at a 30th birthday party in Peckham, south London, early on Sunday May 23, and was left in a 'critical condition'.

On the night of the attack, security guards challenged four people who had gained entry to the party, the court heard.

The mother-of-two (pictured), 27, dubbed the 'Black Panther of Oxford', was shot in the head at a 30th birthday party in Peckham, south London, early on Sunday May 23, and was left in a 'critical condition'

Prince Dixon, 25, Troy Reid, 19, Devonte Brown, 19 and Cameron Deriggs (pictured in a court sketch), 18, are all alleged to have been involved in a plot connected to the shooting

Metropolitan Police officers are pictured at the scene of the house in Peckham where the shooting happened

A gun was fired during the confrontation - leaving one guard shot in the leg and Ms Johnson shot in the head, prosecutor Nahiedh Khan said previously.

Prince Dixon, 25, Troy Reid, 19, Devonte Brown, 19 and Cameron Deriggs, 18, are all alleged to have been involved in a plot connected to the shooting.

They appeared dressed in tracksuits at the Old Bailey via video-link from HMP Belmarsh, speaking to confirm their identities and answer the charges.

Dixon, of Gravesend, Kent, Reid, Brown, both of Southwark, and Derrigs, of Lewisham, all deny conspiracy to murder and possession of a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life.

Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson joins anti-racists, community activists and school children at a protest against police violence as they march from Park View School to Tottenham Police Station, December 11, 2020

On the night of the attack, security guards challenged four people who had gained entry to the party, the court heard

A six-week trial is due to start on March 7 next year.

The four defendants are next set to appear at the Old Bailey on 21 February next year for a pre-trial hearing.

Ms Johnson's mother Ellet Dalling said the family had been left 'devastated' by the shooting and her daughter's children keep 'asking where their mummy is'.

In a statement, Ms Dalling said: 'Sasha is passionate about standing up for others, please come forward and stand up for Sasha.'

Ms Johnson, who works in community activism and community support, has been a leading figure in the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK and is a member of the Taking the Initiative Party.
New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams has ordered a complete review of all cases handled by disgraced Judge Michelle Odinet during her time as a prosecutor nearly 30 years ago, after she was caught on video repeatedly using the n-word.

Odinet, who has served as a Lafayette City Court judge for just a year, has been suspended from the bench without pay in the wake of the scandal sparked by the footage.

The short recording caused widespread uproar, earned a mention on Saturday Night Live and prompted Governor John Bel Edwards to call for Odinet's resignation. It shows a TV set at her home displaying security footage of what appears to be a thwarted burglary.

Laughter and racist slurs are heard from the viewers - who are not visible on camera - as they watch two people capture the suspect, who is black.

Disgraced Lafayette City Court Judge Michelle Odinet (left and right) is on unpaid leave for using racial slurs targeting a black burglar. All her old cases from her time as a prosecutor will now be reviewed

Video footage captured the moment Odinet, 52, said the 'n-word' twice, referring to a black man who allegedly had attempted to break into her home

On the recording, one of Odinet's children says, 'And mom's yelling n****r, n****r,' to which the Republican judge responds: 'We have a n****r. It's a n****r, like a roach.'

Odinets lawyer, Dane Ciolinio, confirmed that the judge used a racial slur. Ciolino said the 52-year-old judge feels 'humiliated, embarrassed, and sorry' for the harm she caused the community.

In announcing the review of Odinet's old cases on Monday, Williams called the language heard in the video 'deeply concerning to any person who genuinely cares about fair outcomes in our criminal system,' Nola.com reported.

The suspect Ronald Handy, 59, who is black, was arrested and charged with two counts of simple burglary

Williams' statement went on to say that 'no act, including a criminal act, justifies the denial of basic dignity inherent in the language used by Judge Odinet. That a judge and former prosecutor so comfortably employed a racial epithet serves as a telling reminder that the attitudes which fostered mass incarceration continue to undermine our pursuit of equal justice.

'Moreover, the casual dehumanization displayed by Judge Odinet raises serious questions about her impartiality and the presence of bias and discrimination in her work on the bench and during her time as a prosecutor.

Odinet, a member of a prominent New Orleans family of doctors, lawyers and philanthropists, served as a prosecutor and assistant district attorney in Orleans Parish in the 1990s under her maiden name, Michelle Miller.

During her two-year tenure in the office of District Attorney Harry Connick, she helped successfully prosecute Robert Graves, who carried out a deadly stabbing rampage in the French Quarter, in 1995.

Later that same year, she married Dr. Kenneth Odinet Jr and moved to Lafayette, where she joined a private legal practice.

New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams has ordered a complete review of Odinet's cases, saying that he found the language heard in the viral video 'deeply concerning to any person who genuinely cares about fair outcomes in our criminal system'

Odinet Jr, who comes from an influential and politically connected family, currently serves as the Lafayette Parish Coroner, and he also runs a plastic surgery clinic. He and Michelle have two sets of twins.

It was not immediately clear how many cases Odinet prosecuted during her time in the Orleans Parish DA's Office, which would now have to be reviewed.

Williams' announcement comes after widespread condemnation from local officials, including the Lafayette City Marshal and the president of the local chapter of the NAACP.

'If something happens in your house, you are responsible for it,' City Marshal Reggie Thomas told KLAF. 'When something like that is said from a leader, then it has to be addressed.'

The full video had shown Odinet and her family laughing as they watched the footage with other members making racist and vulgar comments.

Suspect Ronald Handy, 59, who is black, was arrested and charged with two counts of simple burglary and is being held at Lafayette Parish Jail on $10,000 bond.

Handy was seen being detained by two members of the Odinet family on the front lawn of their home in Lafayette during the attempted burglary.

Odinet confirmed that the video was recorded in her home but said she had taken a sedative at the time and had 'zero recollection of the video and the disturbing language used during it.'

'My children and I were the victim of an armed burglary at our home,' she told The Current.

'The police were called and the assailant was arrested. The incident shook me to my core and my mental state was fragile.'

'Anyone who knows me and my husband, knows this is contrary to the way we live our lives.

'I am deeply sorry and ask for your forgiveness and understanding as my family and I deal with the emotional aftermath of this armed burglary.'

Handy, however, was not found with a weapon at the time of his arrest.

Gov Edwards, a Democrat, said Odinet should step down.

'Theres no place for that kind of language, especially among members of the judiciary who have the most important role in administering justice in our state,' he said when asked about the video.

'If she were not to resign, perhaps all of the litigants before her who were African American would seek her recusal, and Im not sure that she has a valid basis for denying that recusal and so there is no efficient administration of justice if she stays on the bench,' he said.

'So, it would be my hope that this period of reflection that shes going through will lead her to that same conclusion.'

Some 100 private citizens and community organizers have filed complaints against Odinet with the Louisiana Judiciary Commission.

Odinet is married to Lafayette Parish Coroner Dr. Kenneth Odinet Jr, and the couple have two sets of twins (pictured together)

Odinet was elected in November 2020 to the Division A seat at Lafayette City Court. Only the state Supreme Court has the ability to remove her from the bench

The Louisiana Supreme Court is the only body that can remove Odinet because she holds a position that can not be recalled by the public.

In order to be removed, an investigation must be made by the Judicial Commission, which can take months.

Odinet was elected in November 2020 after winning 57 percent of the vote against candidate Jules Edwards III.

She took over the Division A seat for Judge Francie Bouillion at Lafayette City Court.
At least four members of a neo-Nazi group who reportedly plotted to unleash a wave of attacks in Brazil on New Year's Eve, targeting Jewish and black residents, were arrested, as part of an operation between Brazilian and United States authorities.

One of the four suspects arrested last Thursday told authorities he was planning to set off explosives during New Year's festivities in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo.

The 43-year-old man worked as a security in the city of Campinas and allegedly recruited younger people to bomb a nuclear plant in the Rio de Janeiro municipality of Angra dos Reis, Brazilian newspaper O Dia reported.

The suspect, who identified himself to the authorities Matheus Hades NS, told cops in a recorded confession that 'there is so much wrong in the world that I can't take it anymore.'

When asked by a police officer what were his plans, Matheus Hades NS admitted he sought to 'kill and then commit suicide' while adding that he would spare anyone 'as long as they are good, honest, hardworking people. With the rest, I don't worry.'

A 43-year-old man was among four members of a neo-Nazi group who were arrested in Brazil last Thursday as part of a joint operation by Brazilian and United States authorities. The group was plotting to carry out attacks against Jewish and Black civilians and public location targets on New Year's Eve

Brazilian authorities were tipped off May 8 by Homeland Security Investigations agents based in Brasilia, the federal capital, who had discovered that the hate group was utilizing U.S.-based internet platforms 'to call for violence against Jewish and black' residents in Brazil. A series of raids were carried out across seven states in Brazil last Thursday, leading to the arrest of four suspects as well as the confiscation of weapons and Nazi paraphernalia

Nazi paraphernalia seized from the 31 search warrants that produced four arrests in Brazil after authorities there were alerted by their U.S. counterparts of a neo-Nazi group's plan to launch mass casualty attacks on New Year's Eve

The three other suspects were taken into custody in the Sao Paulo city of Suzano and the Rio de Janeiro municipalities of Campos dos Goytacazes and Valenca.

Authorities seized homemade bombs, weapons, documents containing attack plots and Nazi paraphernalia after conducting 31 search warrants across the states of

'The individuals in question were part of neo-Nazi cell that were planning attacks against public areas, such as schools, as well as hate crimes against Jewish and black civilians,' U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations said in a statement.

Weapons and gear seized from alleged members of a neo-Nazi group that was being investigated for plotting New Year's Eve attacks targeting Jewish and Black residents as well as public locations

Brazilian authorities were tipped off May 8 by Homeland Security Investigations agents based in Brasilia, the federal capital, who had discovered that the hate group was utilizing U.S.-based internet platforms 'to call for violence against Jewish and black' residents in Brazil.

On May 12, the Rio de Janeiro police took PCERJ into custody and discovered potential targets for attacks after searching his cell phone and computers.

'Through continued investigative collaboration, members of dangerous anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi cells were apprehended before they caused a possible mass casualty event,' said HSI Brasilia Acting Attache Patrick Chen. 'The success of Operation Bergonis a prime example of the importance of international partnerships in dismantling criminal organizations that threaten public safety and innocent lives.'
A lorry driver died on Sunday evening after being attacked by three migrants who climbed onto his truck in an attempt to reach the UK, according to reports.

The incident took place at a rest area along the A16 motorway in Beuvrequen, where the lorry driver was punched before suffering a fatal heart attack five minutes later.

According to France Bleu, the driver - a Portuguese national - had attempted to remove the three migrants from his trailer.

A lorry driver died on Sunday evening after an altercation with three migrants who climbed onto his truck in an attempt to reach the UK, according to reports. Pictured: Migrants on the roof of a lorry along the A16 in Calais [file photo]

Investigators were told by the co-driver, also a Portuguese national, that the truck driver was punched by one of the migrants after he ordered them to leave.

The news website reported that the driver had been suffering from prior health conditions, and was already being treated for a heart issue.

He was overweight and a smoker, France Bleu reported.

Police were called on the spot at the Epitre motorway rest area around 10:30 p.m.

Local investigations into the full details of the incident are still underway, with officials saying the driver had reported the migrants on his trailer to the police.

Sunday evening's clash was not the first violent incident involving drivers and migrants hoping to reach the UK via Calais.

In 2017, a Polish driver of a van was killed after migrants put tree trunks on roads to slow traffic and sneak on to lorries. Nine Eritrean nationals were later arrested over the incident.

In the same year, a migrant struck a lorry driver in the head with a brick as others hijacked the man's vehicle.

Both of the incidents in 2017 also occurred on the A16.

In May this year, a British haulier accused migrants in Calais of attacking one of his company's lorries in an attempt to cross the English channel.

A British haulier accused migrants in Calais of attacking one of their lorries in an alleged desperate attempt to cross the English channel in May this year. Pictured: Damage to the lorry

Ed Rogers, owner of E.M. Rogers Transport, told the MailOnline that one of his lorries was attacked in France with iron bars and breeze blocks in a road ambush.

In December last year, it was reported that a gang of 15 migrants left a British driver bloodied after smashing the window of his cab with a rock as he waited in a queue.

Andy Couper, 57, was left with blood pouring down his face after being attacked by the gang while waiting in his vegetable-filled lorry to board a ferry at the French port.

He told The Telegraph after the incident how some of the migrants tried to get into his lorry before 'someone hit the truck' and the 'whole passenger window' was smashed, leaving him injured.

News of the incident comes as the Paris prosecutor's office said it has received a manslaughter lawsuit for failure to help in the tragic capsizing last month of a boat in the English Channel that cost the lives of at least 27 people trying to reach Britain.

The manslaughter lawsuit, filed Friday by the French humanitarian organisation Utopia 56, accuses the maritime prefect of the Channel and North Sea, the Regional Operational Centre for Surveillance and Rescue of Gris-Nez in the Pas-de-Calais and the British Coast Guard of not doing enough to prevent the deaths.

Utopia 56 said it 'intends that investigations be carried out to determine the responsibilities of the French and British rescue services in this tragedy,' adding that the people were abandoned 'despite calls to the English and French rescue services.'

In London, proceedings have also formally been launched by families of victims from Iraqi Kurdistan.

Pictured: An aerial view shows dinghies stored in a Port Authority yard, believed to have been used by migrants picked up at sea whilst crossing the English Channel, in Dover, southeast England, on December 21, 2021

Earlier this month, 26 victims were formally identified, including seven women, a teenager and a 7-year-old girl. The identity of one migrant remains unknown.

Investigators were able to confirm the identity of 16 Iraqi Kurds, including four women, a 16-year-old teenager and a 7-year-old girl.

The victims also included an Iranian Kurd, three Ethiopians including two women, a Somali woman, four Afghan men and an Egyptian man, the statement said. The adults ranged in age from 19 to 46.

Their boat capsized on Nov. 24 off the coast of northern France, in what the country's interior minister called the biggest migration tragedy on the dangerous crossing to Britain to date.

Ever-increasing numbers of people fleeing conflicts or poverty are risking the perilous journey from France, hoping to win asylum or find better opportunities in Britain. The crossings have tripled this year compared to 2020.

The tragedy prompted a new political crisis between Britain and France, who each accused each other of not doing enough to deter people from crossing the Channel.

European migration officials agreed to send a plane to monitor the shores of the English Channel for smuggling activity.
A bipartisan group of five lawmakers who are medical doctors released a PSA Tuesday encouraging Americans to get their COVID-19 booster shots.

Republican Sens. Roger Marshall and John Barrasso joined forces with Democratic Reps. Ami Bera, Raul Ruiz and Kim Schrier and recorded the short spot that will air on the radio on yet to be determined stations.

The message comes after former Republican President Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that he received his COVID-19 booster shot, after initially saying he might not get one.

A bipartisan group of doctor-lawmakers put together a pro-booster PSA. They included (from top center, clockwise) Sen. Roger Marshall, Reps. Ami Bera, Raul Ruiz, Kim Schrier and Sen. John Barrasso

'Like my grandmother always said, "If you have your health, you have everything,"' Marshall said in the PSA. 'This holiday season, the best gift you can give the people you love is the gift of life. Get your booster.'

Bera argued that while there's uncertainty surrounding the new Omicron COVID variant 'you will likely benefit from the COVID booster as well.'

And Ruiz pointed out that those who have been boosted are 14 times less likely to be hospitalized for COVID if they catch the virus and 10 times less likely to die.

'Get your booster and live life fully,' Barrasso said, concluding the spot.

While Marshall spearheaded the PSA, he also offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would prevent servicemembers from receiving dishonorable discharges for refusing the vaccine.

In turn, they'd still be eligible for veterans' benefits.

'I support the vaccine, but I also support those who are defending our freedoms and have carefully weighed their decision on whether to receive the COVID vaccine,' the Kansas Republican explained in a statement.

Former President Donald Trump (left) was heckled in Dallas Sunday for confirming he received his COVID-19 booster shot alongside former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly (right)

Trump made his triple-vaccination status known onstage in Dallas Sunday alongside former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly.

'Both the president and I are vaxxed,' O'Reilly said. 'Did you get the booster?' he asked Trump.

Trump answered, 'yes,' to which O'Reilly replied, 'I got it too,' as members of the crowd started to yell.

'Don't, don't, don't, don't ... no, no, no,' Trump responded, wagging his hand at a section of the crowd. 'There's a very tiny group over there,' the ex-president said, pointing.

Trump had encouraged the crowd to 'take credit' for the vaccine. 'You're playing right into their hands when you're sort of like 'oh the vaccine,'' the ex-president said.

Data shows that Republicans are much more skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccines than their Democratic counterparts.

And while Trump has touted his Operation Warp Speed - the public-private partnership his White House spurred for swift COVID-19 vaccine development - he's also allowed anti-vaccination sentiment to fester by giving it some cover.

He did so Sunday by telling the audience that they didn't have to get their shots.

'If you don't want to take it you shouldn't be forced to take it,' Trump said. 'No mandates,' he said to cheers.

He previously refused to get his COVID-19 vaccine on-camera, doing it quietly before leaving the White House in January.

In September, Trump floated that he might not get the booster.

'I don't think so,' he told Sharyl Attkisson for her show Full Measure. 'I mean, I don't think so - I really feel I'm in pretty good shape with respect to that. But let's see what happens.'

'If I feel it's good, if I feel it's necessary, I would get it,' the ex-president added.

He, again, didn't get his booster shot televised.

While in the White House, Trump also downplayed the benefits of wearing a mask.

He held large rallies against the advice of public health professionals in the months leading up to the November 2020 election.

Trump was infected with COVID in October 2020 and was hospitalized.

Still, he considered his administration's handling of the pandemic a triumph.

Trump's spokeswoman Liz Harrington sent out a crowd shot of the Dallas event, after part of the crowd heckled the ex-president and Bill O'Reilly when they revealed they had been boosted

'We did something that was historic,' he boasted on Sunday. 'We saved tens of millions of lives worldwide. We, together, all of us. We got a vaccine done, three vaccines done, and tremendous therapeutics like Regeneron and other things that have saved a lot of lives.'

'We got a vaccine done in less than nine months. It was supposed to take from five to 12 years,' the ex-president continued.

Trump said it could have been like the 'Spanish flu of 1917 where up to 100 million died.'

The Spanish flu pandemic happened between 1918 and 1919 and 50 million died worldwide, with an estimated 675,000 fatalities occurring in the United States.

The COVID-19 death count in the United States has surpassed 800,000.

'Take credit for it,' Trump told the audience about the vaccines. 'What we've done is historic. Don't let them take it away. Don't take it away from ourselves.'

Trump previously got booed at a rally in Alabama in August when he recommended to the crowd that they get their shots.
Boris Johnson suffered a fresh blow tonight as a poll showed his personal ratings have plunged to a new low, with 71 per cent saying he is doing a bad job.

The PM has been struggling to shake free of months of allegations about sleaze and lockdown-busting parties, as well as suffering Tory mutinies over 'Partygate'.

And according to the latest YouGov research, the barrage has been taking a serious toll on his standing with voters.

The proportion who think Mr Johnson is performing well has slumped to 23 per cent, while those saying he is doing badly has soared to 71 per cent.

The net rating of minus 48 is the lowest since he entered No10, and a dramatic turnaround from May, when he had an overall positive score. At that point 48 per cent approved of his performance, and 47 per cent disapproved.

Boris Johnson has been struggling to shake free of months of allegations about sleaze and lockdown-busting parties, as well as suffering Tory mutinies over 'Partygate'

YouGov found the proportion who think Mr Johnson is performing well has slumped to 23 per cent, while those saying he is doing badly has soared to 71 per cent

Downing Street will also be worried about evidence that Keir Starmer is opening up a lead on the 'best PM' metric, and is now preferred to Mr Johnson by 33 per cent to 23 per cent - although Labour is still not widely seen as ready for government

Downing Street will also be worried about evidence that Keir Starmer is opening up a lead on the 'best PM' metric, and is now preferred to Mr Johnson by 33 per cent to 23 per cent - although Labour is still not widely seen as ready for government.

The grim figures, with the latest survey carried out yesterday, emerged as Mr Johnson reels from the rout in the North Shropshire by-election last week.

He suffered another major setback at the weekend as ally Lord Frost dramatically quit slating Covid curbs and high taxes.

The Brexit minister walked out with a parting shot at the 'direction of travel' and saying he had hoped the end of lockdown would be 'irreversible'.

Mutinous backbenchers have been retweeting messages suggesting that it might be 'too late' for the premier to save himself, after the massive mutiny over Plan B curbs last week.

Mr Johnson is also facing pressure to push through new restrictions to combat the surging Omicron variant, which would be deeply unpopular with many of his own MPs and ministers.
A juror who helped convict a Texas trucker for a deadly Colorado crash says his 110-jail sentence is 'not right,' as a petition for clemency surpasses 4.5 million signatures.

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, was driving a semi-truck on April 25, 2019, along Interstate 70 in Lakewood, Colorado, when he slammed into two dozen vehicles - including four other transports stuck in rush-hour traffic.

The impact caused a fireball explosion that incinerated cars and trucks, killing four people.

He was sentenced last week on 27 criminal charges and his harsh sentence drew criticism among millions of people - including a juror who found him guilty.

'I cried my eyes out,' the juror, who remained anonymous, told FOX31 regarding the sentence given to Aguilera-Mederos.

The juror called the sentence '100-fold of what it should have been' and said that while the trucker was responsible for the crash, Judge A. Bruce Jones should have given him a 'more suitable sentence.'

Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, 26, was driving a semi-truck on April 25, 2019, along Interstate 70 in Lakewood, Colorado, when he slammed into two dozen vehicles - including four other transports stuck in rush-hour traffic

The impact caused a fireball explosion that incinerated cars and trucks, killing four people. The driver was convicted of 27 criminal counts and sentenced to 110 years

Jones has said his hands are tied due to mandatory minimum laws.

'There is just something wrong to where a judge cannot intervene in some way and say the way this is written is not right,' the juror added.

The juror also told FOX31 he feels for the families of the victims, but feels compelled to speak in favor of reducing Aguilera-Mederos' sentence.

'I don't [think] the governor should sit there and offer him clemency and let him off,' he said. 'But to step in and say this would be a more suitable sentence for what had happened.'

More than 4.5 million Change.org petitioners are calling for the trucker's sentence to be lessened.

'Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos ... has nothing on his driving record, or on his criminal history,' says a petition addressed to Colorado Governor Jared Polis and Jefferson County courts.

The governor is the only person who can grant clemency at the state level. Polis most recently commuted four sentences and issued 18 pardons in December 2020. Clemency usually results in a sentence reduction or a pardon.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis said on Thursday he hasn't received a clemency application from Aguilera-Mederos. 'We review all clemency applications, we've yet to receive one from the individual but every clemency application that we receive, we review and make a determination,' he said

The petition goes on to say that Aguilera-Mederos could have 'done things differently to avoid the courts,' but ultimately commended him for taking responsibility and apologizing to the victim's families.

It has become the website's third most signed petition, according to the Change.org page.

Polis said last Thursday he hasn't received a clemency application from Aguilera-Mederos.

'We review all clemency applications, we've yet to receive one from the individual but every clemency application that we receive, we review and make a determination,' he said.

During his sentencing December 13, Aguilera-Medero burst into tears.

'I am not a criminal,' he said. 'I am not a murderer. I am not a killer. When I look at my charges, we are talking about a murderer, which is not me. I have never thought about hurting anybody in my entire life.'

Judge A. Bruce Jones has said his hands are tied due to mandatory minimum laws. He sentenced Aguilera-Mederos to the minimum in the range available to him on all 27 criminal counts

A Change.org petition to reduce Aguilera-Mederos' sentence has become the website's third most signed petitions after it reached 4.5 million signatures, according to the page

Pictured: a screenshot of the petition for Aguilera-Mederos, who was sentenced to prison for 110 consecutive for causing a fireball crash that killed four people

Viral TikToks reportedly show angered Colorado drivers protesting the 110-year jail sentence of a fellow driver who caused a huge crash that killed four on a Colorado interstate. It is unclear whether these are current photos.

Aguilera-Mederos claimed the brakes in his truck failed and he lost control, but prosecutors argued in court that he could have taken steps to prevent the crash, including using a runaway truck ramp miles before the wreck. He made a 'bunch of bad decisions' instead, they said.

On December 13, Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced to 110 consecutive years in prison by Jones, who sentenced him to the minimum in the range available to him on all 27 criminal counts, the Denver Channel reported.

The sentencing prompted a series of minor protests from truck drivers.

According to TikTok videos, truck drivers are now refusing to enter the state as a way to denounce the sentence they've deemed harsh and unfair.

Although the videos have gained traction in recent days, the Colorado Motor Carriers Association said on Friday they were not aware of serious attempts of a boycott.

Greg Fulton, president of the association told ABC News he hasn't seen concerning evidence of a boycott.

'I'm not seeing really anything that's showing up of that boycott in terms of companies missing shipments or other things like that,' Fulton told the outlet.

Fulton also said that while he feels for the driver, calling the crash a mechanical failure, as the petition states, is incorrect.

'I think in our eyes is inexperience, a lack of familiarity with the driver of the mountains...I don't think the company should have put them in this situation,' he said.

Aguilera-Mederos (pictured in a file photo) burst into tears during his sentencing, saying: 'I am not a criminal. I am not a murderer. I am not a killer'

Among the vehicles he crashed into were four other semi-trucks

A giant fireball formed from the impact of the crash, incinerating some cars and trucks

Aguilera-Mederos was working for a Houston-based trucking company at the time of the fatal crash. He was driving an 18-wheeler loaded with lumber.

Prosecutors said he was eastbound coming down the interstate from the mountains about 85mph. They said he swerved at times, forcing others off the road before he crashed into two dozen vehicles causing a giant fireball, FOX 31 reports.

It left behind a scene of 'significant, just unbelievable carnage,' Lakewood Police Spokesman Ty Countryman said during a news conference following the crash, noting that some bodies were still in the wreckage hours later. Video showed cars stopped in every direction as the huge fire spread, sending smoke billowing.

'This is looking to be one of the worst accidents we've had here in Lakewood,' Countryman said.

Those killed in the crash include: Doyle Harrison, 61, of Hudson, Colorado; William Bailey, 67, of Arvadal; Miguel Angel Lamas Arrellano, 24, of Denver; and Staney Politano, 69, of Arvada.

Six others were taken to hospital.

He was found guilty in October on 27 criminal charges including vehicular homicide, assault and reckless driving for a fiery crash in April 2019, and a county court judge said he had to sentence Aguilera-Mederos, pictured with his attorney, according to the state minimum

Among the victims of the deadly crash were Stanley Politano, 69, of Arvada, Colorado, left, and Miguel Angel Lamas Arrelano, 24, of Denver, right,

Doyle Harrison (left) was also killed in the inferno, as was Victim William Bailey (pictured right with his wife, Gage Evans)

Aguilera-Mederos was sentenced to 110 consecutive years in prison

His defense attorney claimed he did not know that his truck brakes were smoking or that he would not be able to stop. He also argued that Aguilera-Mederos' actions were a series of negligent decisions, and that he did not intend to hurt anybody.

But in October, a jury found him guilty of 27 criminal charges, including:

Four counts of vehicular homicide

Two counts of vehicular assault

Six counts of assault in the first-degree with extreme indifference

10 counts of criminal attempt to commit assault in the first degree

One count of reckless driving

Four counts of careless driving causing death

He was also found not guilty of 15 counts of criminal attempts to commit assaults in the first degree.

Before his sentencing, Aguilera-Mederos pleaded with the judge to be lenient, breaking down in tears as he spoke.

'It's hard. This was a terrible accident, I know,' he said. 'I take the responsibility, but it was an accident.

Some of the lumber Aguilera-Mederos was transporting was strewn across I-70 as traffic was stopped in both directions

Smoke billowed throughout the sky in the aftermath of the crash

'I have never thought about hurting anyone in my entire life and Jesus Christ, he knows that, he knows my heart,' he continued.

'I am not a criminal, I am not a murderer.'

'The accident - it wasn't intentional, it wasn't intentional, Your Honor. I did all that I can as a man. I put myself in harm's way to avoid harming anyone else.'

He claimed that he tried to avoid the traffic, and noted that he did not flee in the aftermath 'because I respect the laws.

'I want to say sorry, sorry for the loss, sorry for the people injured,' he concluded, noting: 'I ask ... God many times why them and not me.'
A Real Housewives Of Cheshire star's brother who was shot dead in front of his family on Christmas Eve was 'involved in serious and organised crime', a court heard today.

Father-of-two Flamur Beqiri, 36, sister of Misse Beqiri, 35, was allegedly murdered outside his home in Battersea, south-west London, by a masked assassin on December 24, 2019.

Swedish police detective inspector Kajsa Delmar-Wigstrom told Southwark Crown Court he was part of an organised crime network involved in a 'violent rivalry' with another group in the Scandinavian country.

Flamur 'Alex' Beqiri, 36, was killed in front of his wife Debora Krasniqi (they are pictured together)

The officer said the Swedish/Albanian national was suspected of 'international drug dealing' since 2007 and had been arrested on 'several occasions' in Europe.

His close friend Naief Adawi, 37, who lived nearby in London, was jailed for eight years in Denmark in 2010 for aggravated robbery with a lethal weapon, described to jurors as 'one of the largest such crimes' in the country's history.

Adawi was targeted by gunmen outside his Malmo apartment on August 26, 2019 while he was carrying his newborn baby daughter, who he dropped while running away.

He and his child survived but his partner Karolin Hakim, 31, was shot several times and killed.

Adawi has recently been arrested and charged, along with 15 other people, with offences including attempted murder, preparation to commit murder, instigation to commit murder and illegal possession of firearms.

The jury was told the targets of the plot were members of a rival organised crime network linked to Amir Mekky, 24, who was involved in 'large scale trafficking of cocaine and cannabis'.

Prosecutor Peter Ratliff said: 'The allegation is they were the targets because they were believed to be responsible for the attempt on his life?'

'Exactly,' detective inspector Wigstrom said.

CCTV footage allegedly shows Anis Hemissi, 24, donning the disguise of a litter picker for more than four hours outside their 1.5million home

Daniel Petrovski, 38, another close associate of Mr Beqiri, has also been charged alongside Adawi, after he was sentenced to five years imprisonment in June for an aggravated drugs offence.

The court heard Mekky associate Zakaria El-Khayyati was murdered after he was arrested and released over the kidnap of Petrovski's younger brother.

Mr Beqiri's wife, Debora Krasniqi, has previously denied her husband was a criminal, telling jurors he was involved in the music business.

She can be heard screaming and cradling her two-year-old son in dramatic CCTV footage of the shooting, moments after they arrived hand in hand with the victim.

Their three-month old baby and the children's three grandparents were inside as Mr Beqiri was hit by eight bullets as he was shot at 10 times.

Alleged shooter Anis Hemissi, 24, is said to have worn disguises, including latex masks and a litter picker's outfit, to carry out reconnaissance in the days before the murder.

Another angle shows the gunman wearing dark clothing and a second latex mask during his stake out of the property

Misse starred on The Real Housewives of Cheshire from March 2016 to May 2017

Hemissi, who flew into London on December 20 and left the country for Copenhagen, Denmark, in the early hours of Christmas Day, was allegedly part of a team of four killers from Sweden.

They are alleged to have planned Mr Beqiri's killing for about six months, hiring local people to clean up once they had returned home.

Hemissi denies murder and possession of a self-loading pistol.

Swedish nationals Estevan Pino-Munizaga, 35, Tobias Fredrik Andersson, 32, and Bawer Karaer, 23, who are alleged to have been sent to assist Hemissi, also deny murder.

UK national Clifford Rollox, 31, of Islington, north London, and Dutch national Claude Isaac Castor, 21, from Sint Maarten in the Caribbean but resident in the UK, deny perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.
A man has died after reportedly being struck by a steel girder that fell from a crane on a London building site.

Metropolitan police officers were called at 1.25pm today to a building site on East Road in Hoxton, north east London.

An air ambulance attended along with the London Fire Brigade but despite paramedics' best efforts, the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

A man has died after reportedly being struck by a steel girder that fell from a crane on a London building site. Pictured: emergency services at the scene after the incident

Police are working to inform his next of kin.

A London Ambulance Service spokesperson said: 'We were called at 1.19pm today to reports of an incident on East Road, N1.

'We sent an ambulance crew, a medic in a car, a clinical team leader, an incident response officer, and members of our hazardous area response team.

'We also dispatched by road London's Air Ambulance.

'Sadly, despite best efforts of emergency service colleagues, a person died at the scene.'
Dr. Anthony Fauci is demanding that Fox News anchor Jesse Watters be fired for telling attendees at a conservatives conference to go after him 'with a kill shot'

On Monday, Watters, a conservative commentator on Fox News, gave audience members at the right-wing Turning Points USA conference tips on how to 'ambush' the chief White House medical adviser to catch him off guard during interviews about his involvement in gain-of-function research.

'You got to ambush a guy like Fauci ... you got to be respectful because they'll turn the tables on you and you can't have it blow up in your face,' he told the audience.

Watters then goes on to tell them if they encounter Dr. Fauci to 'first introduce yourself' before hitting him with the first question, which can't be one with a 'yes or no' answer.

'Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn't see it coming,' Watters said.

'This is when you say "Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab, the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people dont trust you, don't you?" Boom! He is dead!,' Watters tells the crowd, who applauds.

He advised the students that once they got the confrontation clip they could send in the footage to Fox News and other conservative websites and networks and it would go viral.

'Imagine Tucker Carlson teases it out of the A block, "Coming Up: Brave college student confronts lord Fauci at dinner," he said. 'Get us that! that's what we want'

A stunned Dr. Fauci reacted to the comments on Tuesday during an appearance on CNN's New Day, calling Watters comments 'horrible' and saying they were 'a reflection of what goes on in society.'

'The only thing that I have ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices: to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask,' Fauci said.

'And for that you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot to ambush me? I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days?,' he continued.

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On CNN's New Day, Dr. Fauci called Watters comments 'horrible' and saying they were 'a reflection of what goes on in society'

Fauci told host John Berman that Watters should 'be fired on the spot,' but said that it was 'very likely' Watters would go 'unaccountable' at Fox News.

People online had a similar reaction to Watters' comments, calling it inappropriate and dangerous.

'The incendiary, dangerous, violent rhetoric against Dr. Fauci continues at AmericaFest. Fox News host Jesse Watters tells them how to go after him to harass him in public: "Now you go in with the kill shot - deadly. Because, with an ambush, he doesnt see it coming,"' one person tweeted.

Another person tweeted: 'Cheering talk about ending Faucis life. For the sin of trying to save theirs.'

'This should be handled by law enforcement. Encouraging people to harm a public figure is dangerous,' someone else tweeted.

This is not the first time Fauci- who has become a lightning rod for conservatives opposing vaccination and mask mandates - has called on Fox News to take action against employees.

Earlier this month he criticized Fox Nation host Lara Logan for her comments comparing him to an infamous Nazi war criminal, calling the conservative journalist's comparison 'slanderous' and 'disgusting.'

Watters, a conservative commentator on Fox News, gave audience members at the right-wing Turning Points USA conference tips on how to 'ambush' the chief White House medical adviser

During an appearance on MSNBC Fauci called on Fox to take disciplinary action against Logan for comparing him to Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor whose hideous experiments on Jewish concentration camp victims during World War II earned him the chilling moniker 'Angel of Death.'

'It's an insult to all of the people who suffered and died under the Nazi regime in the concentration camps,' Fauci, 80, fumed on Hayes' primetime political commentary program All In.

'What I find striking, Chris,' the irate immunologist continued, 'is how she gets no discipline whatsoever from the Fox network.

'How they can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action? I'm astounded by that!'

In a statement from Fox News, a spokesperson said: 'Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it's more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context.'
The number of congressional Democrats testing positive for the coronavirus in recent days has grown to four, with a list that includes Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania.

'He tested positive on Saturday,' his Communications Director Colleen Eagen Gerrity told Times News Online. She said Cartwright, who represents an area that includes Scranton, had received two vaccine shots. It was not known if he had received a booster shot.

He is quarantining at home after experiencing flu-like symptoms.

Word of Cartwright's test makes him the fourth Democrat to test positive in just a matter of days.

Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania is isolating at home after testing positive for the coronavirus. He is one of four lawmakers to test positive in recent days. He received two vaccine shots, according to an aide

Democrat Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado announced he tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday night, hours after Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker tweeted news of their own diagnoses.

The number of members of Congress who have tested positive for the virus since the start of the outbreak in 2020 has now surpassed 100, according to a list kept by PBS News Hour.

The Senate and House have each gone home for its holiday recess, avoiding the chance of more transmission between lawmakers themselves, although many lawmakers hold events with constituents while away from Washington.

The spate of new infections among Democratic lawmakers is further fueling fears that the Omicron variant causing chaos around the globe has worked its way inside the United States Capitol.

The Centers for Disease Control announced Monday that it now accounted for 73 per cent of new U.S. infections.

President Joe Biden has scheduled a speech Tuesday to address the nation about steps to combat the variant, including shipping 500 million at-home tests, bolstering hospitals, and sending out military medics.

In addition to the lawmakers, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced on Monday that he also tested positive for the virus.

'This morning, as part of my regular testing routine, I received a positive rapid test for COVID-19. I have been vaccinated and boosted, and I am feeling fine at the moment,' the Republican elected official wrote on Twitter.

'As the Omicron variant becomes dominant, I want to urge you to get vaccinated or get your booster shot as soon as possible.'

Crow, who recently returned from a Congressional trip to Ukraine, revealed his diagnosis just after 9 p.m. Sunday night.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (left) and Colorado Rep. Jason Crow (right) are the latest high-profile politicians to announce positive COVID-19 diagnoses

The military veteran said his symptoms were mild and credited the efficacy of his initial vaccines and booster shot for keeping him safe.

Like Warren and Booker did during their announcements, Crow used his illness as an opportunity to urge unvaccinated or un-boosted Americans to get their shots.

'I just returned from an official congressional delegation visit to Ukraine and tested positive for a breakthrough COVID infection,' Crow wrote.

'I'm thankful to be fully vaccinated and boosted and experiencing only mild symptoms (the vaccine is safe and effective).'

In a follow-up post he continued, 'Everyone eligible should get vaccinated and boosted to help prevent major illness and protect our community. I'll continue to push for affordable access to rapid, reliable testing for all Americans.'

Crow is now isolating at home.

Crow revealed his diagnosis after returning from a Congressional delegation to Ukraine

Maryland's Republican governor announced he also tested positive for COVID on Monday morning despite being fully vaccinated and boosted

It's not immediately clear who else was in the delegation to Ukraine. DailyMail.com has reached out to Crow's office.

The number of Omicron cases in the US nearly doubled overnight from Friday to Saturday and has been detected in at least 44 states. As of Saturday morning, there were 830 cases of the new strain confirmed by DNA sequencing across the country, a 97 percent spike from Friday morning - but the number is likely much higher.

It's not known if Crow, Warren and Booker are suffering from the Omicron variant or the still-more prevalent Delta strain.

Lawmakers who normally would be back home for the legislative holiday have remained in Washington, DC in a long shot bid to score a win for President Joe Biden's agenda before the new year.

Warren, 72, was the first to announce her diagnosis and said her infection was mild and that she had both vaccine doses as well as her booster shot.

'I regularly test for COVID & while I tested negative earlier this week, today I tested positive with a breakthrough case,' the progressive Democrat wrote.

'Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms & am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated & boosted.'

She used her Sunday announcement to make a public plea for people who haven't yet been inoculated to get it done.

'As cases increase across the country, I urge everyone who has not already done so to get the vaccine and the booster as soon as possible - together, we can save lives,' Warren wrote.

Booker, 52, also made the public announcement only a few hours after Warren had confirmed her own diagnosis.

Elizabeth Warren revealed her positive diagnosis on Twitter Sunday afternoon, and Cory Booker announced his a few hours later

Senator Warren announced her diagnosis on Twitter and also urged others to get vaccinated amid the rise in COVID cases and the Omicron variant

Booker announced that he began feeling symptoms on Saturday but have only been relatively mild

'I learned today that I tested positive for COVID-19 after first feeling symptoms on Saturday,' he said on Twitter.

'My symptoms are relatively mild. I'm beyond grateful to have received two doses of vaccine and, more recently, a booster  I'm certain that without them I would be doing much worse.'

The lawmakers' positive diagnosis comes as the newly discovered Omicron variant wreaks havoc across the world just as people ready to gather for the Christmas holiday.

Warren became the ninety-second member of Congress to test positive for coronavirus since the pandemic began, making Booker the ninety-third and Crow the ninety-fourth.

One lawmaker, GOP Rep. Ron Wright of Texas, died after a battle with COVID in February 2021. Representative-elect Luke Letlow died of the virus a week before he was due to take office.

Warren's brother Don Reed Herring previously died last year after he had contracted the virus at the age of 86.

Herring, who served in the United States Air Force for 20 years, died on April 21, 2020 after contracting coronavirus in an inpatient rehabilitation facility in Oklahoma where he was recovering from pneumonia.

The family was told that other patients staying at the same facility were infected with coronavirus and Herring tested positive in early April but did not show symptoms for eleven days.

After his diagnosis, Warren said she spoke with her brother nearly every day, but she, his wife, and the rest of the family were unable to visit him due to the highly contagious nature of the pathogen.

'He had had pneumonia and had been hospitalized,' Warren explained.

'This is back in February. He wanted to go home after he'd been hospitalized and his doctor said, 'No, I want you to just go to a rehab and just get some of your strength back'. Pneumonia really takes it out of you. And, you know, he's old.

'And so, he went to the rehab and was ready to go home. He was packed up and ready to go home when somebody tested positive, and they wouldn't let him leave. And I called him every day for 11 days, and every day he would say, 'I'm just fine'. In fact, he said, 'I think I probably had it before and I'm just too tough and didn't even notice'.

Warren with her brother Don Reed Herring who passed away from COVID in April 2020

Warren is seen with her three brothers Don (left), John (right center) and David (right)

Warren is seen as a young girl with her three brothers, including her brother Don wearing an Air Force uniform

On April 15, however, Herring was rushed to Norman Regional Hospital, where he was placed in intensive care without a ventilator. He died six days later.

'And then he got sick, and then he died, by himself. That's the hard partreally hard part,' Warren said of being unable to visit her brother when he became ill.

'It's hard to process things like this because everything is happening at a distance. And human beingswe're not set up for that. We're wired to be with each other. It makes it hard.

'I lost three very important people in my life many years ago in what felt like a short period of time: my mom, my daddy, and my Aunt Bee,' she added.

'Each of them died differently. My mother, very suddenly and unexpectedly. My daddy, lingering cancer. I held his hand as he died. With my mother, I had been there on the day that she died, in the night. My Aunt Bee got sick and then couldn't recover.

'But I was with them. And I was with my brothers and my cousins and my kids. And we shared memories; we grieved together.'

Warren said that she could 'remember thinking I couldn't breathe' when she heard of Herring's coronavirus diagnosis at first but that when he didn't show symptoms for more than a week, they had begun to think about him leaving the hospital.

'And for 11 days, I'd call him in the morning, call him in the evening, and he'd tell me, 'Oh, it's fine', and laugh,' she said.

'And he was irritated that he couldn't leave. And I had begun to think, 'This is okay. We're going to get him out of there'. In fact, I'd been talking: Would Davidmy other brotherbe the one to pick him up, or was John going to come? You know what I mean: working on the logistics of how to get him out of there.'

The former Democratic presidential candidate added that all she could do was imagine what her brother was going through as she could not be with him or either of her other two brothers

'And then I called, and no one answered his phone, his cell. And that had happened a couple of times because he'd been doing something else. But nobody answered,' she said.

'And so, a little while later I called back, and then I got the news that he had been taken to an emergency room. In any other state of the world, I would have been there with him. We all would have been there with him. And instead he was by himself. I just kept imagining what's happening to him. Is he afraid? Is he cold? I kept thinking about whether he was cold.

'There's no one there to talk to him while he waits for the doctor. There's no one there to be with him while he receives the news.

'Then I found out they put him in intensive care. I would get the information via the nurses about what his blood-oxygen levels were. And all I could do would be talk by phone with my brothers. It's not the same. You need to touch people. We have to hug; we have to be with each other.'

Warren had not revealed a member of her family had coronavirus before she confirmed Herring's death in late April 2020 in a statement to the Boston Globe.

'I'm grateful to the nurses and other front-line staff who took care of my brother, but it is hard to know that there was no family to hold his hand or to say 'I love you' one more time.

'And now there's no funeral for those of us who loved him to hold each other close,' she said.

'I will miss my brother.'

The announcement of Warren's diagnosis comes after the rise of COVID cases that has swept throughout the US amid the recent development of the Omicron variant.

Since the start of December, both U.S. COVID cases and deaths have risen about 50 percent and the number of hospitalized COVID patients climbed 26 percent, according to a Reuters tally.

The presence of the new Omicron variant, which is believed to be responsible for the most recent surge, has so far been identified in 830 cases across the country.

Kentucky, Arkansas, Maine, Kansas and Wyoming confirmed new Omicron cases on Sunday, bringing the total to 45 states.

The surge in recent cases is a 40 percent increase from November's numbers, with 118,717 cases being reported each day.

Testing has now confirmed the presence of Omicron in every US state except for Oklahoma, Montana, North and South Dakota, Indiana, and Vermont, though the eventual arrival of the highly transmissible variant in every state seems assured.

Highly vaccinated states in the Northeast seem to be struggling the most at the moment as cold weather, waning immunity and the new variant all contribute to a new case surge.

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island also recorded record high daily cases this week.

In the past month, 60,000 patients have been newly treated in hospitals across the country with doctors and officials urging the United States' unvaccinated population - 39% of Americans - to receive the shot in order to create space for non-COVID patients.

This increase has spiked hospitalization rates in various Midwestern states, as well as California, and there are 67,306 patients currently treated nationally.

On average, 1,290 people have died from the virus daily during the past week; the virus has killed more than 800,000 Americans since the pandemic began.

More than 50.7 million others have contracted the virus.
Daily Covid cases in South Africa have fallen for the fourth day in a row as Omicron continues to fade in the variant's epicentre.

Data from the National Institute For Communicable Diseases (NICD) shows 15,424 South Africans tested positive in the last 24 hours, down by a third on the nearly 24,000 cases confirmed last Tuesday.

A fifth fewer people were tested for the first in the last 24 hours compared to the same period last week, but test positivity  the proportion of those tested who are infected  has been trending downwards for eight days.

But hospitalisations and deaths  which lag two to three weeks behind the pattern seen in case numbers due to the delay in an infected person becoming seriously unwell  have risen.

More than 630 people were hospitalised across the country, up only 5 per cent in a week but the highest daily number in the country's fourth wave.

The previous record was last Wednesday when 620 people were hospitalised. Meanwhile 35 deaths were recorded, a 46 per cent uptick on last Tuesday.

The falling case numbers come despite only 25 per cent of South Africans being double-jabbed and boosters not being dished out in the country.

It raises hopes that the UK's Omicron wave will also be short-lived, with Britain also having a layer of protection in its booster programme.

It comes as UK scientists wait for data on how deadly the Omicron surge will be, with uncertainties about how severe it is and how well vaccines protect against serious outcomes.

But promisingly, cases already appear to be plateauing in the UK, with around 90,000 daily infections recorded for the last six days.

That's despite gloomy Government modelling warning that 1million Britons could be catching the virus daily by the end of the year.

Boris Johnson today said no to Christmas curbs because there is 'no evidence' on Omicron to justify it.

The NICD confirmed 55,877 people had been tested across South Africa in the last 24 hours and 15,424 (27.6 per cent) tested positive.

And test positivity dropped to 27.6 per cent, which is the lowest figure recorded in 10 days and marks the eighth day of infection rates trending downwards.

New Covid cases stay flat for FIFTH day in a row at 90,629 as expert says it 'looks like Omicron has peaked' Britain's daily Covid cases have plateaued for the fifth day in a row as an expert claimed that the Omicron wave may have peaked already. There were 90,629 infections in the past 24 hours across the UK, up 52 per cent on last Tuesday's toll but down slightly on the figure yesterday  despite wild projections of up to a million daily infections by New Year, Cases have remained flat since last Friday when they hit a peak of more than 93,000. In London, which has become a hotbed for Omicron, the wave also appears to be slowing. A total of 20,491 cases were recorded in the capital today, down slightly on yesterday's tally of 22,750. The slowing statistics may be behind Boris Johnson's decision not to bring in tougher restrictions before Christmas , with the Prime Minister claiming today there was 'not enough evidence to justify' them. Gloomy Government modelling presented to ministers last week said the mutant variant was doubling every two days and was infecting up to 400,000 daily by the weekend. Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases expert at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline that Mr Johnson had made the right decision because cases 'look like they've peaked'. He said: 'It's not all doom and gloom, it does look like Omicron has stopped growing. The numbers over the last few days seem to have plateaued and maybe even be falling. 'It's a bit too soon to be absolutely sure about that, but if it is the case Boris Johnson will breathe a sigh of relief. We have to be a little bit careful because it's only a few days. 'And because we're getting closer to Christmas there is nervousness that people may not come forward for testing because they don't want to test positive and miss out on meeting relatives. 'Omicron overtook the other variants around December 14 so most of any changes from there on would be down to Omicron. So if it was still doubling every two days that would have shown and we should have been at 200,000 cases yesterday and certainly more than 200,000 cases today. 'But the fact it has been around 91,000 raises the point that it might actually have peaked. But it will probably take until at least Wednesday to get an idea of a day that is not affected by the weekend. But I am more optimistic than I was a few days ago.' Advertisement

Some 3.3million people in the country have tested positive since the pandemic began, but the true figure will be many millions more as not everyone who catches the virus is tested.

The majority of the new cases were recorded in Kwazulu-Natal (4,009), followed by Western Cape (3,324), as the virus spreads away from the ground zero Gauteng.

The province, which is home to Johannesburg and is where Omicron was first spotted, recorded the third-most cases (3,316).

Meanwhile, 633 people were hospitalised in the last day, up 5.7 per cent in a week, bringing the countrys total number of hospitalisations since the pandemic began to 459,844.

A total of 9,023 people are currently receiving hospital care.

And a further 35 Covid deaths were recorded, up 45.8 per cent on last Tuesday when 24 fatalities were registered.

The data from the country suggests the outbreak is fading around a month after it was first detected, while ministers and scientists in the UK are panicking about the impact the wave will have over the coming weeks.

And the UK has strengthened its response to the variant through its booster campaign, while third jabs have not been dished out in South Africa and just 23 per cent of its population are vaccinated.

However, UK experts have warned Britain's older and denser population is more susceptible to a big and deadly outbreak.

England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whity last week said he expected to see the UK's daily cases rise extraordinarily due to Omicron, but also 'come down faster than previous peaks', mirroring South Africa's experience with the strain.

Professor Whitty told MPs on the Health and Social Care Committee last week: 'I think what we will see with this is  and I think were seeing it in South Africa  is that the upswing will be very incredibly fast even if people are taking more cautious action.

He added: 'Itll probably therefore peak really quite fast.

'My anticipation is it may then come down faster than previous peaks but I wouldnt want to say that for sure.'

It comes as Britain's daily Covid cases have plateaued for the fifth day in a row as an expert claimed that the Omicron wave may have peaked already.

There were 90,629 infections in the past 24 hours across the UK, up 52 per cent on last Tuesday's toll but down slightly on the figure yesterday  despite wild projections of up to a million daily infections by New Year.

Cases have remained flat since last Friday when they hit a peak of more than 93,000.

In London, which has become a hotbed for Omicron, the wave also appears to be slowing. A total of 20,491 cases were recorded in the capital today, down slightly on yesterday's tally of 22,750.

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases expert at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline that Mr Johnson had made the right decision because cases 'look like they've peaked'.

He said: 'It's not all doom and gloom, it does look like Omicron has stopped growing. The numbers over the last few days seem to have plateaued and maybe even be falling.

'It's a bit too soon to be absolutely sure about that, but if it is the case Boris Johnson will breathe a sigh of relief. We have to be a little bit careful because it's only a few days.

'And because we're getting closer to Christmas there is nervousness that people may not come forward for testing because they don't want to test positive and miss out on meeting relatives.

'Omicron overtook the other variants around December 14 so most of any changes from there on would be down to Omicron. So if it was still doubling every two days that would have shown and we should have been at 200,000 cases yesterday and certainly more than 200,000 cases today.

'But the fact it has been around 91,000 raises the point that it might actually have peaked. But it will probably take until at least Wednesday to get an idea of a day that is not affected by the weekend. But I am more optimistic than I was a few days ago.'

There were 1.49million tests conducted today which is down from 1.56 million last Wednesday, but Professor Hunter said the 'relatively small drop' in testing would not hide a virus truly doubling every two days.

Test positivity is slowly increasing though with 13 per cent of samples positive for the virus by December 15, up from around 9 per cent the month before.

Latest hospital figures show there were 847 Covid admissions across the UK on December 17, up only 7 per cent on the previous week. There were a further 172 Covid deaths today, up 14 per cent.
Police have released CCTV images showing a 20-year-old student leaving a nightclub in London shortly before they disappeared.

Harvey Parker left Heaven nightclub near Charing Cross railway station in Westminster at around 2.15am on Friday, December 17.

Further CCTV footage shows Harvey then entering Craven Street and walking south towards Embankment, but the music student has not been seen since.

Prior to attending the LBGTQ+ club, it is understood the 'kind and gentle' York University student had been at a Lil Simz concert at the O2 Academy in Brixton.

Police, along with Harveys friends and family, said they are now growing 'increasingly concerned' for his welfare after having no contact with him for four days.

Harvey, from Lambeth in south London, has been described as 5ft 8in, mixed race, slim and with short black hair.

Harvey Parker, 20, (pictured) has not been seen or heard from since the early hours of Friday, December 17

Police have released CCTV images showing Harvey Parker leaving Heaven nightclub near Charing Cross railway station in Westminster at around 2.15am on Friday, December 17

Detective Sergeant Dick Nation, from the Central South Safeguarding Unit, said Harvey was last seen on Craven Street, walking south towards Embankment

Detective Sergeant Dick Nation, from the Central South Safeguarding Unit, said: 'We have not been able to contact Harvey, and his family have still heard nothing from him.

'There is no reason why he should have gone missing and his family and friends are extremely worried by his disappearance.

'To assist the public, we are releasing images of Harvey from the night he went missing.

'We know he was last seen on CCTV on Craven Street, walking south towards Embankment.

'This is a terrible ordeal for Harveys family and friends and I would urge anyone who saw him or has any information to contact police immediately.'

The Theatre Royal Stratford East said Harvey was a front-of-house member of staff and issued an appeal for help in the search.

The tweet was shared by playwright Jonathan Harvey and others.

A friend of Harvey's said the University of York music student had been to a Little Simz concert in Brixton, south London, before going to Heaven nightclub.

Little Simz has since retweeted an appeal by a friend of Harvey's.

Harveys relatives have also taken to social media to ask for help in locating him, including uncle Sylvester Lennon who tagged LBC presenter James OBrien in the appeal.

Mr OBrien responded, saying he would mention Harvey on his show after saying he had seen a missing poster on his way in to work.

Another unnamed relative added that the family was 'desperate' for information and asked for the public to re-post the polices online appeal to find Harvey.

A further Twitter user added: 'He is 20, autistic, non-binary, vulnerable.

'Hes missed 3 work shifts and not on socials since 1.30 Friday morning - unheard of - and not in touch with any friends.

'His family has visited all London hospitals and informed police.'

Harvey's friends and family have posted appeals on social media to help find the missing student. Pictured, CCTV image of Harvey leaving Heaven nightclub by Charing Cross railway station

Police, along with Harveys friends and family, said they are now growing 'increasingly concerned' for his welfare after having no contact with him for four days.

Westminster School in London also tweeted an appeal using the hashtag #FindHarvey, stating Harvey was a former pupil.

Cordelia Hobbs, one of seven students who share a flat with Harvey at York University, wrote on Facebook that she and others were 'all extremely worried' for the 20-year-old's safety.

One of Harveys school friends Angus Colwell, who is an editorial assistant at the Spectator, added on Twitter: 'Ive known Harvey for years, and several of my close friends are v tight with him.

'Please contact the police if you know / see anything. We are all worried.'

Another school friend, Oxford University student Alex Foster, wrote: 'Harvey has been missing since Thursday evening.

'They went to a concert in Brixton before going to Heaven Nightclub near Embankment and leaving there at 4am.

'If you see them or have any information, PLEASE text me.'

Following an appeal, a police spokesperson said: 'Harvey left the nightclub alone and there is nothing to indicate any reason for him to go missing.

'Police and Harveys family are growing increasingly concerned for his welfare.

'Harvey is described as 5ft 8ins tall and of slight build.'

Anyone with information is asked to call 101 or tweet @MetCC, quoting CAD 3134/18DEC21.
A suspected Saudi Arabia terrorist was busted by U.S. Border Patrol agents after he illegally crossed the United States-Mexico border in Arizona last week.

The 21-year-old was intercepted on Thursday night by agents assigned to U.S. Border Patrol's Yuma Sector, chief patrol agent Chris T. Clem revealed in a tweet posted Monday.

The man, whose name was not released, was encountered by border officers near County 8  and the Levee Road.

The migrant was identified 'as a positive match linked to several Yemeni subjects of interests,' the U.S. Border Patrol's Yuma Sector said.

A 21-year-old Saudi national with ties to a Yemeni terror group was stopped for illegally crossing the United States-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, last Thursday

The suspect was wearing a volunteer paramedics jacket from an ambulance company in Central Oneida County, New York

The suspect was wearing a volunteer paramedics jacket from an ambulance company in Central Oneida County, New York.

Central Oneida County EMS chief Thomas Meyers told NBC affiliate KVOA that he was not sure how the terror suspect gained access to the jacket.

'We have policies in place when an employee leaves employment that we retrieve all the property, but that particular jacket we used for about 10 years which is well before my time,' Meyers said. 'So in the course of ten years one or two have probably slipped through the cracks.'

DailyMail.com contacted a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection who declined to comment on the arrest.

Two men aged 26 (left) and 33 (right) from Yemen were taken into custody earlier this year after they illegally crossed from Mexico to the United States and wee found to be on the FBI's terror suspect list

The Saudi man's arrest comes eight months after CBP announced the arrests of two Yemeni nationals with links to a terror organization who had been stopped for unlawfully crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Calexico, California.

Both men were on the FBI's terror watch list and had been placed on a 'no-fly' list.

One of the suspects was taken into custody on January 29. The other was arrested on March 30.
A Colorado deputy district attorney is facing a barrage of backlash and calls for disciplinary action after she posted a now-deleted Facebook image of a 'trophy' she received for securing the controversial 110-year sentence for a truck driver who killed four people.

Kayla Wildeman shared a photo of a semi-truck's brake shoe that was gifted to her by fellow deputy DA Trevor Moritzky as congratulations her for her work in the conviction of 26-year-old Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, who claimed his brakes had failed in the tragic accident on April 25, 2019.

He was found guilty of 42 counts, including vehicular assault, first-degree homicide, first-degree assault, reckless driving, and careless driving, and slapped with the stern sentence on December 13.

Soon afterwards, Wildeman, 27, touted her team's success in the since-deleted, undated post to social media.

'Get yourself a trial partner as great as Trevor Moritzky,' Wildeman wrote in a contentious caption for the photo, referring to her fellow Colorado deputy DA who gifted her the trophy. 'He turned a brake shoe from a semi-truck into a memento.

'What a special gift from truly a special person.'

State prosecutor Kayla Wildeman, 27, celebrated securing 26-year-old Rogel Aguilera-Mederos' stern sentence in a since-deleted Facebook post

'Get yourself a trial partner as great as Trevor Moritzky,' Wildeman wrote in a contentious caption for the photo, referring to her fellow Colorado deputy DA who gifted her the trophy. 'He turned a brake shoe from a semi-truck into a memento'

Wildeman and Moritzky were co-chairs in the conviction, and the lengthy sentencing has led to an outraged cry for clemency for the driver - backed by a petition with more than 4.5 million signatures and a boycott staged by truckers in Colorado.

The petition was posted on Change.org in 2019 and called for the trucking company to be held responsible rather than Aguilera. It also calls for his sentence to be commuted to time served or for Governor Jared Polis to grant him clemency.

'I made this petition because I am a native to Colorado, who believes this man is NOT a criminal and this was purely an accident,' wrote organizer Heather Giblee.

The crass social media slip-up by the Colorado attorney comes amid continued social unrest after last Monday's sentencing, which saw Rogel Aguilera-Medero (pictured) weep upon learning he could serve 110 years in prison for the crash, which he claimed was an accident

Relatives of the victims are disputing the narrative circulating the internet and claim that Aguilera-Mederos is not a victim, as many of his supporters allege (Pictured: The fiery fatal crash on I-70 in Jefferson County on April 35, 2019)

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King assured DailyMail.com in a statement Tuesday the matter has been addressed 'internally,' and clarified that the trophy was 'not a piece of evidence from the case,' but 'was in very poor taste and does not reflect the values' of her administration.

In the statement, King said through a spokesperson that she became aware of Wildeman's post on Monday, and 'took immediate action.'

'We have addressed it internally,' the attorney asserted.

More than 4.5 million people have signed a petition for clemency or commutation for ex-trucker Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos

Organizers of the petition as well as a slew of other onlookers have slammed last week's sentence as unnecessarily harsh

The Colorado DA did not specify what measures were taken or whether Wildeman and Moritzky have been terminated for the widely seen gaffe.

She did, however, assert that the brake shoe used in the trophy was not a piece of evidence recovered from the scene of the fiery 28-car pile up.

The Colorado prosecutor further declared that it is not customary for state attorneys to exchange gifts to commemorate trial victories.

Meanwhile, Aguilera-Mederos' outraged attorney James Colgan argued to The Denver Post Monday that 'Lives are ruined all around, and they celebrate,'

The livid legal eagle added that the post was decidedly 'unprofessional.'

Latino civil rights organization The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) has also since registered its outrage over the post, demanding that the state of California stage 'immediate disciplinary action' against the prosecutor, who the org asserted should issue 'a formal apology.'

'To say we are disgusted over this so-called trophy is an understatement,' National President Domingo Garcia told The Post Monday.

'LULAC demands a full investigation into the matter to identify the people who are involved so that they face the maximum disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal.'

Other Colorado jurists also reacted to Wildeman's widely seen post as well, slamming the young state attorney for celebrating Aguilera-Mederos' sentencing.

'This is very disturbing,' Tristan Gorman, legislative policy coordinator for the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, told The Post about the incident.

'It obviously flies in the face of the prosecution's ethical obligation to seek justice rather than a conviction.

'It's just bragging rights about a trial win, where people on both sides, their lives were either ended or forever changed. The tone of it seems almost like the prosecutor is treating it like a game she won.'

The sentence has since spurred a boycott staged by truckers in Colorado, whom are refusing to enter the state until clemency is granted for Aguilera-Mederos

Moreover, Douglas Cohen, a defense attorney and former prosecutor for King's Office, conceded to the paper that while 'high-fiving colleagues is common for trial lawyers on both sides of the aisle... the brake shoe memento shows a total lack of empathy and dishonors the role of prosecutors.'

Neither Wildeman nor Moritzky could not be reached for comment concerning the incident Tuesday.

The crass social media slip-up by the Colorado attorney comes amid continued social unrest after last Monday's sentencing, which many have deemed unnecessarily harsh.

Aguilera-Mederos was slapped with the 110-year judgment last Monday.

Conor Cahill, a spokesman for Colorado Governor Jared Polis, said in a statement Monday that the office would consider a clemency application from Aguilera-Mederos if sent, but added that the truck driver has not yet submitted such a request.

King, meanwhile, said last week that she would 'welcome' a reconsideration of Aguilera-Mederos' sentence - despite her office fighting tooth and nail throughout court proceedings to ensure that Aguilera-Mederos was indeed sentenced.

The sternness of the sentence, however, stemmed from the fact that under Colorado law, first-degree assault and attempted first-degree assault considered 'crimes of violence,' in which prison sentences must run consecutively, and not concurrently, when stemming from the same incident.

Cohen said the supposed trophy should not distract from the larger issues in the recently wrapped case.

'Why did the district attorney, who has unfettered discretion in the filing of charges, seek a century-long sentence for a tragic accident?' the attorney said. 'It's a fair question that the legal community and community at large is asking.'

The governor is the only person who can grant clemency at the state level. Polis most recently commuted four sentences and issued 18 pardons in December 2020. Clemency usually results in a sentence reduction or a pardon.

During court proceedings, Aguilera-Mederos had claimed the brakes in his truck had failed and he lost control, but prosecutors argued in court that he could have taken steps to prevent the crash, including using a runaway truck ramp miles before the wreck. He made a 'bunch of bad decisions' instead, they said.

Aguilera-Mederos, 26, was sentenced to 110 consecutive years in prison last week

But his defense attorney claimed he did not know that his truck brakes were smoking or that he would not be able to stop. He also argued that Aguilera-Mederos' actions were a series of negligent decisions, and that he did not intend to hurt anybody.

But in October, a jury found him guilty of 27 criminal charges, including:

Four counts of vehicular homicide

Two counts of vehicular assault

Six counts of assault in the first-degree with extreme indifference

10 counts of criminal attempt to commit assault in the first degree

One count of reckless driving

Four counts of careless driving causing death

He was also found not guilty of 15 counts of criminal attempts to commit assaults in the first degree.

Before his sentencing on Monday, Aguilera-Mederos pleaded with the judge to be lenient, breaking down in tears as he spoke.

'It's hard. This was a terrible accident, I know,' he said. 'I take the responsibility, but it was an accident.

Some of the lumber Aguilera-Mederos was transporting was strewn across I-70 as traffic was stopped in both directions

Smoke billowed throughout the sky in the aftermath of the crash

'I have never thought about hurting anyone in my entire life and Jesus Christ, he knows that, he knows my heart,' he continued.

'I am not a criminal, I am not a murderer.'

'The accident - it wasn't intentional, it wasn't intentional, Your Honor. I did all that I can as a man. I put myself in harm's way to avoid harming anyone else.'

He claimed that he tried to avoid the traffic, and noted that he did not flee in the aftermath 'because I respect the laws.

'I want to say sorry, sorry for the loss, sorry for the people injured,' he concluded, noting: 'I ask ... God many times why them and not me.'
Nearly 50 Republican lawmakers signed onto a legal brief supporting a group of Navy SEALs and other servicemembers who have sued the Pentagon over being denied a religious exemption from getting the mandated COVID-19 vaccine.

Those signing on to the amicus brief included a number of headline-generating conservatives including Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, along with Reps. Lauren Boebert, Ronny Jackson, Paul Gosar and Louie Gohmert.

The group of SEALs and sailors are Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant and claim they have 'sincerely held religious beliefs [that] forbid each of them from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine for a variety of reasons based upon their Christian faith as revealed through the Holy Bible and prayerful discernment,' the lawsuit said.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (left) and Sen. Ted Cruz (right) are among the 47 GOP lawmakers who signed onto an amicus brief in support of Navy SEALs and other servicemembers who are suing the DOD over being denied a religious exemption to not have to take the COVID vaccine

A group of Navy SEALS and other servicemembers who are Catholic, Easter Orthodox or Protestant 'claim they have 'sincerely held religious beliefs [that] forbid each of them from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine for a variety of reasons based upon their Christian faith as revealed through the Holy Bible and prayerful discernment'

It will be heard in federal court Monday.

The lawmakers argue that the court should look to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and allow the military members to have their religious carve-out from the Pentagon's mandate that all servicemembers must be vaccinated against COVID-19.

'Plaintiffs' religious liberty and the government's asserted interest in protecting our service members from COVID-19 need not be in conflict, especially where, as here, the individuals seeking an exemption are willing to adopt non-vaccination measures to protect themselves and others from the spread of COVID-19,' the amicus brief said.

The brief also pointed out that the military is willing to accommodate others who do not receive the vaccine for non-religious reasons, including those with medical issues, like a vaccine allergy, and those who took a placebo during a vaccine medical trial.

The Navy, the brief said, 'has already admitted that not every person must be vaccinated.'

'Plaintiffs here have all agreed to take other, non-vaccination steps to stop the spread of the disease in lieu of vaccination, as, presumably, would all service members seeking religious accommodation - mitigation strategies that worked for more than a year prior to vaccinations becoming widely available,' the brief continued.

In August, the Defense Department announced that all branches of the military would need to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Each branch could set its own deadline.

Soldiers were allowed medical, religious or administrative exemptions, however no servicemembers have been granted a religious exemption.

Republicans in Congress have pushed to have the Pentagon reverse its vaccine mandate, arguing that it could deplete troop strength.

Earlier this month, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said about 96.4 per cent of active duty personnel have gotten at least one shot. However, whenever the National Guard and Reserves are added in, that total plummets to 74 per cent.

Last week the Air Force discharged 27 people for refusing to get vaccinated, what officials believed were the first servicemembers ousted for not getting the shot.

Those members didn't ask for an exemption

Earlier this month, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which included a provision that barred the Pentagon from giving servicemembers who refuse to be vaccinated dishonorable discharges.

The amendment was sponsored by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who is also a medical doctor.

Marshall also signed on to the amicus brief.

'I support the vaccine, but I also support those who are defending our freedoms and have carefully weighed their decision on whether to receive the COVID vaccine,' the Kansas Republican explained in a statement.
Progressive 'Squad' member Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York tore into West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin on Monday night, accusing the moderate Democrat of not caring about women, minorities or the poor.

He's the latest House Democrat to openly criticize Manchin for his refusal to vote for President Joe Biden's $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill.

Bowman said he was 'infuriated' but not 'surprised' with 'white man' Manchin's announcement on Sunday that effectively killed Democrats' effort to pass Biden's sweeping social reform and climate change plan before the new year.

'We had been sounding the alarm on this for several months, worried about what Manchin was gonna do when it was time for him to make a decision,' Bowman said in reference to his fellow Squad members and others in the Progressive Caucus' fears that Manchin would do exactly what he did.

He said Manchin and the special interest groups and donors behind him 'did not want this bill to pass.'

'Why? Because this bill disproportionately supports people of color. It supports women. It supports children. It supports those who are poor and lifts them out of poverty. Why wouldnt Manchin want to support that when this would benefit West Virginia tremendously?' Bowman questioned.

'Its tremendously frustrating for me as a black man in America because once again, its an example of Joe Manchin as a white man showing that he doesnt care about Black people, he doesnt care about Latinos, he doesnt care about immigrants, he doesnt care about women, and he doesnt care about the poor.

Bowman was the latest Squad member to express outrage at Joe Manchin's stunning announcement that effectively killed Democrats' chances of passing Build Back Better in 2021

He posted his CNN interview where he tore into Manchin on Twitter, where he also accused the West Virginia senator of leaving people 'behind'

'He is a millionaire, and he has the privilege to kick the can down the road and not vote for this bill while the people in my district are suffering.'

Bowman's district covers part of the Bronx and parts of New York just north of the city.

He posted his interview on Twitter Tuesday afternoon, writing: 'When Joe Manchin showed us who he was, I believed him  and everyone else should have too. Gutting Build Back Better because special interests want it gutted is not an option. The people cannot be left behind.'

West Virginia, while disproportionately white, is among the poorest states in the nation. Its economy ranks 48th out of 50 according to the latest numbers cited by US News & World Report.

With a 50-50 split in the Senate and no Republican support for his bill, Biden needed every Democrat in the upper chamber to vote yes for it to pass.

Manchin is one of two Democratic senators responsible for chipping away at the initial $3.5 trillion price tag of Biden's package

Manchin's hesitations along with those of Arizona Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema have forced lawmakers to drastically shrink the package from its initial $3.5 trillion price tag.

West Virginia's economy ranks 48th out of all 50 states West Virginia ranks among the lowest in the nation in terms of economic growth, poverty rates and employment. The state's economy is ranked 48th in the nation, according to US News & World Report. It's also 48th in terms of employment, with only Alaska and Mississippi beneath it. When it comes to attracting and building new private businesses, the state ranks dead last. According to the latest census data, West Virginia's median household income, per capita income and poverty rates are below the national average. The US-wide median household income is $62,843, while in WVA it's $46,711. Per capita income in the state is $26,480, nearly $10,000 lower than the national average of $34,103. WVA's poverty rate is also 15.8 percent, significantly higher than the US-wide 11.4 percent poverty rate. Advertisement

Democrats in Congress and the White House thought they were nearing an understanding with Manchin when he suddenly told Fox News Sunday that he'd 'done everything humanly possible' to support the bill but couldn't in the end.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki issued a lengthy, caustic statement on Sunday calling Manchin's 'sudden and inexplicable reversal' a 'breach of his commitments to the President.'

It was reported by the Washington Post on Monday that Manchin pitched Biden an alternative plan that included free universal pre-K for a decade, an Obamacare expansion and a hefty climate investment - though the notable exception was Biden's popular child tax credit, which expires this year.

Progressives pushing for the bill hoped that substantial cuts made to the climate provisions, many of which Manchin opposed, would have been enough to entice him.

The watered-down version contained $320 billion for wind, solar and nuclear power production and purchasing, a tax credit on electric vehicles of up to $12,500 and $6 billion aimed at making buildings more energy efficient, among other provisions.

Manchin had been opposed to penalties on the fossil fuel industry but was more open to incentives for clean energy.

Bowman, a self-described Democratic Socialist, was not the only Squad member unleashing on Manchin for his refusal.

During an appearance on MSNBC yesterday morning, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said 'it is unconscionable the way the Senate operates. It's fundamentally undemocratic' over Manchin's ability to sink Democrats' agenda by himself.

'We need to really make it very clear that this bill, this framework was signed off by Joe Manchin. And so this is a Joe Manchin Build Back Better Act. And so this idea that we're going to go back to the table and give him the pen again for a bill that has already has his ink all over makes very little sense,' Ocasio-Cortez said.

She also took aim at him for 'legislating' on Fox News.

Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri went after moderate Democrats in both the House and Senate who insisted on first passing Biden's bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal. Progressives had warned that passing moderates' bill first instead of tying it to BBB would kill the larger bill because those moderates would have no incentive to get it passed.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for reforms in the Senate, railing against it as an institution and calling it an 'old boys club'

'Honestly, I'm frustrated with every Democrat who agreed to tie the fate of our most vulnerable communities to the corporatist ego of one Senator. No one should have backed out of our initial strategy that would have kept Build Back Better alive,' Bush wrote on Twitter.

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota echoed Bush's statement while also cranking up the heat on Manchin directly.

''Let's be clear: Manchin's excuse is bulls**t,' the progressive wrote on Twitter. 'The people of West Virginia would directly benefit from childcare, pre-Medicare expansion, and long term care, just like Minnesotans.'

She added: 'This is exactly what we warned would happen if we separated Build Back Better from infrastructure.'

Massachusetts Squad member Rep. Ayanna Pressley went on CNN Sunday shortly after Manchin broke the news.

'To be clear, my lack and deficit of trust was about Senator Manchin,' Pressley said.

Bush, a progressive Democrat from St. Louis, also blasted Manchin on Sunday

Rep. Ilhan Omar also pounced on Joe Manchin. The progressive Minnesota lawmaker dismissed Manchin's reasoning for not voting for Biden's package as 'bulls***t'

'He has continued to move the goalposts. He has never negotiated in good faith. And he is obstructing the president's agenda, 85 per cent of which is still left on the table.'

Even his own fellow Senator, Vermont's Bernie Sanders, was furious at Manchin.

'Well, I think he's gonna have a lot of explaining to do to the people of West Virginia,' the Independent Senator said on CNN Sunday.

Sanders called for a floor vote on BBB so that Manchin's fatal blow to the package would be recorded on his legislative record.

'If Mr. Manchin doesn't want to support us  well look, we've been dealing with Mr. Manchin for month after month after month,' Sanders said. 'But if he doesn't have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of West Virginia and America, let him vote no in front of the whole world.'
A 'predatory' bouncer who raped a woman suffering a panic attack after luring her into a restaurant office on the pretext of helping her was today jailed for six years.

Neil Brown, 50, was working at a restaurant in Quayside, Cambridge.

His victim came to the restaurant in August 2018 and he discovered she was having a panic attack.

He lured her into the staff office on the pretext of helping her but forcibly removed her clothing and raped her

Brown was today jailed for six years and eight months at Cambridge Crown Court

Neil Brown, 50, (pictured) was working at a restaurant in Quayside, Cambridge, on 4 August 2018 when he raped his victim

He was later arrested and said in interview he had never met the victim.

Forensic tests revealed a full DNA match but Brown, of Ronald Avenue, Stratford, London, continued to protest his innocence.

After a trial at Cambridge Crown Court, Brown was found guilty of rape and sexual assault by a jury.

DC Faye Patterson, who investigated, said: 'Brown was a predator who saw opportunity in a vulnerable woman and took full advantage of her helplessness.

'He has shown absolutely no remorse throughout the investigation and court case.

'This case shows the value of forensic evidence and how seriously both the police and the justice system take sexual offences.'
Sickening new details have emerged from a new court filing related to the case of disgraced CNN producer John Griffin, including allegations that the father-of-three had made attempts to pay off witnesses, offered a woman $30,000 for a mother-daughter weekend with him, and was caught on video standing in his underwear next to a naked nine-year-old girl.

Griffin, 44, Chris Cuomo's long-time producer, was arrested earlier this month after being indicted by a federal grand jury on three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity, among them a nine-year-old girl who had stayed with her mother at the suspect's Vermont home last year.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont Nikolas Kerest on Monday filed a motion for detention, asking a judge to keep Griffin in jail pending trial.

'Griffin has tried to deceive, delete, and spend his way out of being held accountable,' the prosecutor wrote. 'He is a wealthy man who will be desperate to avoid facing justice.'

A federal prosecutor's motion seeking to keep Chris Cuomo's former producer John Griffin (left and right with Chris Cuomo) jailed alleges that he tried to pay off witnesses and once offered a woman $30,000 for a 'mother daughter weekend' with him

Griffin is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.

Kerest filed the motion laying out evidence against Griffin after the defendant's lawyer, David Kirby, signaled his intention to file a motion seeking a pre-trial release.

According to the indictment against Griffin, from April to July of 2020, the CNN staffer used the messaging apps Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with people purporting to be parents of young daughters, telling them, among other things, that a 'woman is a woman regardless of her age,' that women are 'the dirtiest sluts possible,' and that they should be sexually subservient and inferior to men.

Federal prosecutors stated that Griffin sought to convince parents to allow him to train their daughters to be sexually submissive, and bragged about training girls as young as seven years old.

He allegedly offered virtual training, where he 'planned to instruct the 14-year-old and her mother to remove their clothing and touch each other' on webcam. He also told them about how in-person sessions would include 'spanking' and 'c**k worship.'

Griffin was quoted as referring to a young girl as 'just another piece of s*** wh***' in an online conversation with her mother nearly a year ago.

In February 2020, Griffin allegedly offered a woman $30,000 for a 'mother daughter weekend or week with me.' He stressed that while he did not want to have intercourse with the daughter, 'of course' he expected there to be 'SEXUALITY involved.'

Less than two weeks later, Griffin offered another woman $5,000 in exchange for having sex with him in the presence of her children, according to the motion.

In July 2020, a woman and her nine-year-old daughter traveled from their home in Nevada to Boston, where they were picked up by Griffin in his red Tesla and driven to his $1.8million ski home in Ludlow, Vermont.

The indictment alleged that Griffin paid the woman $3,300 to cover her travel expenses.

'At the house, [the child] was directed to engage in, and did engage in, unlawful sexual activity,' federal prosecutors said.

Griffin, a dad-of-three, allegedly sexually abused a nine-year-old girl after paying her mother $3,300 to travel cross country to stay at him Vermont ski home (pictured)

The nine-year-old claimed that Griffin sexually abused her and called her a 'little s***,' 'little wh***,' and 'little b****.' Pictured: Griffin's bedroom at his Vermont home

A subsequent criminal investigation has uncovered that Griffin and the woman engaged in BDSM, and that the child was allegedly forced to take part in the sexual activity.

Kerest wrote in his motion that while the Nevada mother and her daughter were staying with Griffin, he viewed 'web-pages featuring pornographic videos about sex with mothers and daughters.'

Federal prosecutors have since obtained drone footage allegedly showing 'the completely naked nine-year-old girl, standing immediately next to Griffin in his underwear.'

When confronted with the video, 'Griffin's first response was merely to suggest he was not looking at the naked girl, despite that she was standing so close to him to be touching,' the motion alleged.

Griffin was arrested earlier this month after being indicted by a federal grand jury on three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity

The girl would later accuse Griffin of sexually assaulting her, telling FBI agents that he called her a 'little s***,' 'little wh***,' and 'little b****.'

After the mother and daughter returned to Nevada, he exchanged messages with their relative, denying any wrongdoing.

The relative replied that while the mother was 'too pilled out to remember, little one do [sic],' and added: 'U lmk if ur feeling helpful within the hour or so.' A short time later, Griffin sent the relative $4,000 through Venmo.

'This apparent pay-off of a potential witness is not only further evidence of wrong-doing, it is an independent reason for Griffins detention,' the prosecutor wrote.

The nine-year-old's mother was arrested in August 2020 on two counts of child abuse, two counts of sexual assault against a child under 14 and one count of lewdness with a minor under 14. She is due back in court on Wednesday.

Drone footage allegedly showed Griffin standing in his underwear next to a completely naked nine-year-old girl in his yard. Pictured: Griffin and Cuomo

As part of his argument for keeping Griffin behind bars, the federal prosecutor brought up an unrelated incident from October 2020, during which he said the former producer of Chris Cuomo Prime Time allegedly tried to pay off the driver of a car he had crashed into. The other driver rejected the offer and called the police, resulting in Griffin being charged with DUI.

Kerest also noted that out of the six letters from his friends, his estranged wife and his father, which were submitted by Griffin's lawyer this year, vouching for his character, four have since been withdrawn by their authors, among them his wife.

'One friend explained that he was blatantly lied to about the nature of the investigation when he agreed to write on Griffins behalf,' the motion stated. 'That Griffin employed false pretenses to obtain a letter of support undermines any argument that Griffins character is sound. Such tactics indicate an unusual degree of desperation not to be held accountable.'

Kerest also revealed that after Griffin was arrested on December 10, he told FBI agents, unprompted: 'without incriminating myself, I just want to let you guys know that Im ashamed you even know my name at all.'

The disgraced CNN producer added: 'in the time Im with you guys, in the event I do anything inappropriate, I just want you to know that Id feel the same way you guys would if I were in your situation. Thank you.'

Griffin (right) was fired from CNN after eight years on the job. Chris Cuomo (left) was also fired for aiding his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as the politician faced sexual harassment allegations

If convicted of the charges against him, Griffin faces a minimum of 10 years in federal prison and could be handed a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for each count.

CNN initially suspended Griffin while awaiting the conclusion of the investigation but later moved to fire him.

'The charges against Mr. Griffin are deeply disturbing. We learned of his arrest Friday afternoon and terminated his employment Monday,' a CNN spokesperson said in a statement.

Griffin had previously worked with Cuomo at ABC News between 2005 and 2013.

Cuomo was fired earlier this month for helping his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as the politician faced sexual harassment allegations.
Procter and Gamble (P&G) has released a voluntary recall list of 30 aerosol spray hair products due to a 'cancer-causing' chemical.

It is the second massive recall the Cincinnati-based company has issued this year, citing concerns over the presence of benzene, a human carcinogen linked to leukemia, in its products.

The recalled products, which include big-name brands Herbal Essences, Pantene, and Aussie, were removed from shelves December 17.

P&G disclosed on Tuesday the name of the products, and said benzene was detected in the propellant used to spray the product out of the can and not the product itself.

The company said it is pulling the goods 'out of an abundance of caution,' and will refund affected customers.

Thirty P&G aerosol spray hair products have been recalled due to a 'cancer-causing' chemical

Customers can determine if a product they've purchased is on the recall list by checking the serial number underneath the aerosol can

Benzene can potentially cause cancer, depending on the level and extent of exposure.

'While benzene is not an ingredient in any of our products, our review showed that unexpected levels of benzene came from the propellant that sprays the product out of the can,' P&G said in a statement.

The company said it had not received any reports of adverse events related to the recall, but added that daily exposure to the level of benzene detected in the products would likely not cause cancer.

Customers can determine whether if a product they've purchased is on the recall list by checking the serial number underneath the aerosol can.

If the number starts with 0297, they should stop using and discard the product, the company said.

Customers can also request a refund through P&G's website.

P&G disclosed on Tuesday listed the 30 affected products, and said benzene had been detected in the propellant used to spray the product out of the can and not the product itself

Cincinnati-based parent company Procter and Gamble (P&G) released a 'voluntary' recall list December 17

It is the second massive product recall the Cincinnati-based company has issued this year, citing concerns over the presence of benzene, a human carcinogen linked to leukemia, in its products

In November, 18 Old Spice and Secret deodorant sprays were also recalled over benzene exposure concerns.

Products recalled at the time included the Old Spice Pure Sport gift set, as well as popular scents like Swagger and Powder Fresh.

The company said the levels of benzene in the products had a low chance of causing consumers harm.

Earlier this year, U.S. pharmacy chains pulled some Johnson & Johnson's sunscreen products from shelves after the company said it had detected benzene in some samples.

People are exposed to benzene daily, the company said, which can occur through 'inhalation, orally, and through the skin.'

In November, 18 Old Spice and Secret deodorant sprays were also recalled over concerns that customers would be exposed to benzene. Products recalled at the time included the Old Spice Pure Sport gift set, as well as popular scents like Swagger and Powder Fresh

The most common ways one is exposed to benzene are through cigarettes and gasoline, according to the National Cancer Institute.

It can also be found in glues, adhesives, cleaning products and paint strippers.

Exposure e can lead to 'leukemia and blood cancer of the bone marrow and blood disorders which can be life-threatening,' P&G said.

The company has already notified retailers to remove these products and consumers can receive refunds for the recalled products.
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President Joe Biden told vaccinated Americans they can enjoy Christmas safely, insisted we are not going back to March 2020 and toned down his attacks on the unvaccinated as he announced his plan to tackle the surge of Omicron over the winter.

His battle plan includes sending 1,000 troops to overwhelmed hospitals sending 500 million tests to American homes amid a nationwide shortage and with lines forming at testing centers.

Coughing into his hand at points, Biden unveiled his winter COVID strategy that focuses on testing, boosters and vaccines and does not include any lockdowns or harsher travel restrictions.

Biden spoke after Dr Fauci warned Omicron is spreading at an 'unprecedented rate' and cases across the U.S. could double every two days.

'If you're not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned,' Biden said, with studies showing the unvaccinated have virtually no immunity against Omicron.

Biden also acknowledged it can be hard to get an appointment for covid testing  coughing into his hand as he made the point, as well as at another point during his remarks.

But he snapped when asked a question about experts who have advised for months that the nation needed a surge of testing, and whether it was a failure that they weren't available.

'No, it's not. Because COVID is spreading so rapidly  notice it just happened almost overnight, just in the last month,' he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data Monday night showing that the highly infectious variant now accounts for 73 percent of U.S. Covid cases. The agency also revised last week's data, increasing the share of the variant from 2.9 percent to 12.6 percent. This means the prevalence of the variant jumped six fold week-over-week. It has overtaken the Delta variant, which had been the nation's dominant strain since July.

In New York and New Jersey, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, and the Northwest, the Omicron variant now account for more than 90 percent of new cases.

While other regions currently have lower Omicron prevalence, the variant is spreading fast enough that officials expect it will be dominant throughout the country within weeks.

America also reported its first confirmed death from the variant on Monday night, when an unvaccinated Texas man between ages 50 and 60 succumbed to the variant.

'This is not March 2020,' Biden said, citing the fact that 61.5 percent of Americans are vaccinated and we are better prepared.

He once again pleaded with the unvaccinated to get their shots  but without some of his harshest recent comments, where he said 'sickness and death' awaits.

'You have an obligation to yourselves, to your family and quite frankly, I know Ill get criticized for this, to your country,' Biden said. 'Please get vaccinated. Its the only responsible thing to do,' he said.

He called Omicron 'serious, potentially deadly business for unvaccinated people.' Getting vaccinated his your 'patriotic duty', he added  while also urging Americans to get booster shots six months after their second vaccine shot. 'I got my booster shot as soon as they were available,' he said.

He even credited former President Donald Trump, who said publicly that he got his own booster shot. 'It may be one of the few things he and I agree on,' Biden quipped.

As part of his winter COVID plans, Biden will:

Direct Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to mobilize an additional 1,000 troops to deploy to Covid-hit hospitals during January and February.

Deploy six emergency response teams with more than 100 clinical personnel and paramedics to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont immediately.

Set up a new federal testing sites around the country with the first coming to New York City this week.

Purchase a half-billion free at-home rapid tests to send to American homes from January

Americans will be able to order the rapid, at-home tests from a website at the beginning of 2022

FEMA is pre-deploying hospital equipment to prepare for an expected surge, with 'hundreds of millions of high-quality masks' and other equipment

The government is deploying hundreds of ambulance and EMS crews to transport people out of overwhelmed hospitals

President Joe Biden told vaccinated Americans they can enjoy Christmas safely, insisted we are not going back to March 2020 and toned down his attacks on the unvaccinated as he announced his plan to tackle the surge of Omicron over the winter. His battle plan includes sending 1,000 troops to overwhelmed hospitals sending 500 million tests to American homes amid a nationwide shortage and with lines forming at testing centers

He spoke to Americans' frustration with yet another surge. 'Well get through this,' he said from the State Dining Room of the White House.

He began his remarks by acknowledging 'how tired, worried and frustrated I know you are. I know how you're feeling. For many of you, this will be the first or even the second Christmas where you look across the table being an empty kitchen chair there. Tens of millions have gotten sick, all experienced upheaval in our lives.'

But he said the nation was 'tougher' than covid, 'because we have the power of science and vaccines to prevent illness and save lives.'

In addition to trying to pressure the unvaccinated, Biden sought to shame media companies and personalities who he blasted for spreading and profiting from 'misinformation.'

'Look, the unvaccinated are responsible for their own choices. But those choices have been fueled by dangerous misinformation on cable TV and social media,' he said. 'You know these companies and personalities have been making money by peddling lies and allowing misinformation that can kill their own customers and their own supporters. It's wrong. It's immoral, I call on the purveyors of these lies and misinformation to stop it, stop it now.'

Biden made an attempt to ease frustrations over the long test lines by stating the obvious to Americans already waiting in lines of up to six hours at already overwhelmed clinics: that you could find a testing site by searching 'COVID test near me' on Google.

'We have arranged for it to be easier for you to find a free COVID testing site near you on Google. Just enter 'COVID test near me' in the Google search bar and you could find a number of locations nearby where you could get tested,' he said.

The White House announced Monday that Biden had come into contact with an aide who had tested positive, having spent about 30 minutes with the mid-level official.

Biden tested negative Monday, and will take another PCR test on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.

Overall cases in the U.S., which we now know are mostly of the newly discovered strain, have shot upwards as well. Johns Hopkins University report 253,954 new cases on Monday. It is the highest total since September 7 - the peak of the Delta wave - and only the third time since January the 250,000 daily case mark was eclipsed.

The nation is currently averaging 143,164 new cases every day, with that number likely to increase if Monday's high case total becomes normal. New cases are up 20 percent over the past two weeks.

Deaths have stabilized, with America still at 1,299 deaths per day - a steady figure for the past two weeks. Hospitalizations have increased though, with 68,970 Americans receiving treatment for severe infection every day - a 14 percent increase over two weeks.

The Omicron variant (purple) is now the dominant Covid strain in the U.S., making up 73% of cases last week. It overtakes the Delta variant (orange) which had been dominant since July

Cars line up a testing facility in Sterling, Virginia, on Tuesday ahead of the Christmas travel rush

Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert who serves as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Tuesday that the rapid spread of this variant is something he has not often seen.

'Certainly this is unprecedented to see this rapidity for which any individual virus spreads throughout the world. It is really extremely unusual. It's a doubling time of two to three days closer to two days,' he told ABC's Good Morning America.

'That is truly unprecedented in the rapidity in which a virus spreads.'

Overall, cases of the variant have been relatively mild compared to Delta and other strains. It is a promising sign, but Fauci warns that the quick transmission of the virus could negate any positive effects of a less severe strain.

'The idea that it can spread so rapidly, even if in fact it is less severe, and it appears at least from the South African data that there is less of a ratio of hospitalization to cases and duration of stay in the hospital, so it very well may be less severe. We're hoping that that's the case, and we're hoping that as this evolves here in the United States that that will be our experience,' he said.

'Even if it is, quantity of infections, given the extraordinary efficiency of spread might actually obviate that diminution of severity to the point that you still get significant disease so we can not take this lightly at all.'

While things are trending in the wrong direction in the U.S, the situation in the UK is starting to stabilize. The nation was among the first to experience a massive surge in cases caused by the variant, with London in particular erupting as a global hotspot. Daily infections have remained relatively flat since last week, a promising sign that the variant is already burning out.

Still, some British health experts are fearing the worst, believing that new daily cases will jump from 91,743 a day to around 460,000 a day by the end of the year. Some, like Neil Ferguson, are even calling for lockdowns in some areas to curb the spread of the virus.

This situation in America is erupting right as the holiday season hits fully swing. Christmas is Saturday, and this week, millions of people will travel around the country and attend large gatherings with family and friends.

Fauci believes that holiday travel and festivities is still safe as long as a person is fully vaccinated, boosted, and takes other precautions to protect themselves from the virus.

'If you are vaccinated and particularly boosted, and you are going to be involved in an indoor home setting with family, relatives, who are also vaccinated and boosted, you could feel comfortable in doing that social interaction,' he said.

Floridians line up in their cars in Hialeah after the state reported 18,000 Omicron cases over the last two days

Socially-distanced New Yorkers line up around the block in Manhattan to get their COVID test before the holidays

Unvaccinated people who caught Delta have virtually no protection against Omicron, but vaccine boost immunity People who are unjabbed but previously had the Delta Covid variant may have very little protection against Omicron infection, a lab study suggests. Austrian scientists tested the blood of those who had beat the older strain of the virus against the new super-variant to measure antibody levels. They found only one out of seven samples produced enough of the infection-fighting proteins to neutralize Omicron. It suggests that prior infection alone offers virtually no protection against catching Omicron  but the jury's still out on severe illness. The best result overall was seen in five samples taken from those who had both survived a previous Covid infection and then later got a vaccine, a group of people the researchers dubbed the 'super-immune'. Antibody studies look at one very specific part of the immune response to Covid and do not take into account T cell and B cell immunity, which are vital for protection against severe disease but more difficult to measure. Most scientists believe people who have had Covid still enjoy some protection against serious outcomes, but immunity is known to wane significantly after six months. This chart shows how the blood samples of people who had received vaccines and and survived a previous Delta infection performed when exposed to Omicron in terms of producing neutralizing antibodies, measured here as 'IC50', a measures of effectiveness. Any combination that failed to get higher than IC50 16 failed to produce enough antibodies to significantly fight off Omicron. These bars are averages based on all the samples of their respective combinations. It shows a previous Delta infection fails to provide any significant protection in terms of antibody production, but a combination of previous Covid infection and a vaccine provoked the best response This chart on the right shows how antibodies from Delta (variant designation B.1.617.2) performed against different Covid variants, from left to right Alpha (B.1.1.7) Beta (B.1.351), Delta, and Omicron (B.1.1.529). A IC50 level above 16 meant the antibodies were sufficient enough to significantly fight off the virus. The chart on the right shows the results for 'super-immune individuals, the bars on the left show the results for individuals infected than jabbed, against Delta and Omicron, and the bars on the right show persons vaccinated and then infected These charts show how two doses of Moderna's vaccine performed and the right shows the same for two doses of AstraZeneca, the numbers in the top right of each graph indicate how many samples maned to exceed the IC50 threshold The chart on the right shows how one dose of AstraZeneca and Pfizer performed and the right two doses of the Pfizer jab Advertisement

Before the arrival of Omicron, many of these trips would be totally safe. According to CDC data, 73 percent of Americans have received at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, and 61.5 percent are fully vaccinated. Early data shows that the current crop of available vaccines are not enough to protect from the new strain.

Early data shows the initial two-shot regimens of the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines - or one shot of the J&J vaccine - do little to prevent infection from the variant, though the two former may be able to prevent hospitalization or death.

The Pfizer and Moderna booster shot re-establish some of that protection, research has found, and health officials are now urging Americans to get their additional shot.

Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, told CNBC's Shepard Smith that the definition of 'fully vaccinated' is up for discussion based on new data from the variant.

'We're examining this definition of course, but what I want to be very clear about is CDC recommendations right now say that everyone who is over the age of 18, when they become eligible should get their booster shot,' she said.

Walensky also noted that CDC data shows a person who is fully vaccinated and boosted is 20 times less likely to die from Covid than an unvaccinated person.

She also warns that the current two-dose vaccine regimens do not protect people from infection from the new strain. And while infection is often mild, especially for vaccinated people, there is still the risk of developing 'long Covid' or other complications as a result of the virus.

Fauci is pushing the unvaccinated to get the shots to prevent the spread of the virus, and even stop future variants from forming. He also echoed a grim warning issued by the White House to unvaccinated people last week.

'One of the ways we can get it to stop is to get a lot more people vaccinated. It's very unfortunate that we still have about 50 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not [gotten] vaccinated,' Fauci told NBC's TODAY.

'[Covid] will stop when we get the overwhelming majority of people vaccinated and boosted.'

'When the people who don't get vaccinated, ultimately, this virus is going to find them, they will get infected and many of them will suffer, and get hospitalized and some will die.'

Testing shortages have become an issue for Americans as well. Due to a run on tests ahead of holiday travel, many retailers have had trouble keeping tests on the shelves. In cities like New York, public testing sites have been plagued with long lines.

In South Africa, the nation where the variant was first detected, Covid is beginning to recede, a promising sign that the nation's Omicron fueled outbreak is running out of steam after a month.

The nation's average daily Covid cases has dropped to 19,400 per day, a 17 percent decrease from only last week when cases peaked at 23,437. While it is still a much larger figure than what the country was reporting only a month ago, it signals that the variant is potentially burning out.

Hospitalizations are on the way down, though, with eleven times fewer South Africans being hospitalized with Covid now than were during the Delta surge over summer - a sign of hope going forward as the U.S. and UK begin their own struggles with the virus.

South Africa recorded 6,887 Covid related hospitalizations last week, a decrease from the 7,433 recorded a week earlier.

Denmark only trails the UK in Omicron cases, having confirmed 23,038 cases of the variant as of Tuesday morning. The Nordic nation was struck early by one of the largest confirmed Omicron outbreaks and the situation has only been exacerbated since.

A Christmas lunch event in the Viborg region, attended by 150 students on November 27 from two local high schools has been linked to 70 cases of the variant, though all were mild.

Currently, the nation is averaging a record 8,984 new cases per day, a logged the largest single day Covid case total ever on Thursday with 9,999 cases added to the ledger.
One of Australia's leading doctors has hit back at critics who have dismissed calls to reimpose Covid restrictions in NSW, after the state reported a record 3,057 cases.

Vice president of the Australian Medical Association, Chris Moy, said that now was the time to take action to curb the spread of the new variant during an appearance on The Project on Tuesday night.

'Omicron is new. We need to slow down, be careful. Work out where we stand and put in things like masks and QR code check-ins and also maybe reduce density limits while we slow things down,' Dr Moy said.

However, his sentiments were in opposition to those of Australia's ex-deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth who disagrees with reinstating restrictions.

When host Hamish McDonald asked Dr Moy about how he felt about Dr Coatsworth's reluctance to bring back restrictions he appeared hesitant to answer the question.

'I don't want to engage with Nick because I was the chair of the ethics committee, and it's normally thought to be unprofessional to be engaging in disparaging comments about other doctors or other health professionals,' he replied.

Dr Chris Moy (pictured) said that now was the time to take action to curb the spread of the new variant during an appearance on The Project on Tuesday night

Australia's figures indicate Omicron is highly infectious but less potent than previous strains of the virus (pictured, Sydneysiders enjoy the warm weather on Saturday)

'He did, in fact, call our organisation a 'peanut organisation' or something like that. I don't think it was quite as simple as that.

'Nevertheless, the flip-side is that where we are at the moment, most of the epidemiologists, including those at Doherty, are saying we should be taking this more seriously.'

Dr Moy said that if the Omicron variant turns out to be serious and nothing is done, the country will have missed an opportunity to take early action.

The top doctor added 'a lot' of the epidemiologists, including Doherty, were taking the same line as the AMA who have called for the return of restrictions.

It comes after Dr Coatsworth slammed fearmongering predictions about the impact of the new variant and said people calling for more rules would be proven wrong.

Australia's figures indicate Omicron is highly infectious but less potent than previous strains of the virus, particularly given the nation's very high rate of vaccination.

The percentage of tests giving a positive result has climbed from 0.76 per cent on December 1 to 2.12 per cent on Tuesday.

Dr Chris Moy told The Project host Hamish McDonald (pictured) that if Covid restrictions were not reimposed Australia will have missed out on an opportunity to take early action

The percentage of tests giving a positive result has climbed from 0.76 per cent on December 1 to 2.12 per cent on Tuesday just days away from Christmas (pictured, Bronte Beach in Sydney)

However, in the same period, the number of active cases requiring hospitalisation has fallen from 3.59 per cent to 2.52 per cent.

Despite that available data, those advocating a return of lockdown restrictions, mask mandates, and such measures were pushing for more safety-first policies because it is too soon to tell how severe Omicron could be.

'The people who are most worried about this in the scientific community were saying its early days four weeks ago and are still saying this. And both can't be true,' Dr Coatsworth told NewsCorp.

University of NSW modelling has suggested NSW could have up to 25,000 new cases a day by February - eight times higher than the current number.

Dr Coatsworth slammed that figure as not 'accurate', challenging claims by clinical immunologist Dr Dan Suan that NSW was 'sleepwalking into an Omicron disaster'.

'People who take Dan's position believe that the peak will be enormous. UNSW modelling says 25,000 a day, I just don't think that's accurate,' he said.

'The key period will be the next seven days. We will be able to see how many of the 2500 odd testing positive every day are actually going into hospital.'

There were 284 cases being treated in NSW hospitals on Tuesday - 1.51 per cent of active cases - while 39 were in intensive care, compared to 242 at the peak of the Delta wave in late September.

ustralia's ex-deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth (pictured) disagrees with reinstating restrictions in NSW despite the state reporting a record number of cases

There were 284 cases being treated in NSW hospitals on Tuesday while 39 were in intensive care (pictured, Sydneysiders celebrate the festive season)

During his appearance on The Project, Dr Moy further emphasised the need to heed the advice of chief health officers from around the country to 'slow down'.

The leading doctor said the AMA would consider the worst-possible outcome of 200,000 cases by February, as modelled by the Doherty Institute.

Dr Moy said he thought the reluctance of the Australian public to adhere to more restrictions was because the outbreak had happened so close to Christmas.

'The AMA position is very much given Omicron and what we don't know about it and the concern that it could be more infectious and breakthrough our vaccines, it could create a very sharp peak in cases and then lead to a lot of people ending up in hospitals,' he explained.

'Although we may be sounding like the Christmas grinch, I think the ultimate Christmas grinch would be a really terrible Omicron outbreak which we could have actually altered the destiny of earlier on.'

Australia's chief medical officer Paul Kelly called for mandatory masks to return as case numbers surge in the country's most populated states, NSW and Victoria.

Australia's chief medical officer Paul Kelly called for mandatory masks to return as case numbers surge in NSW and Victoria (pictured, people get tested for Covid-19 in Bondi)

However, Dr Coatsworth said it was understandable the Covid-weary public would ask for more specific evidence if restrictions were to be reimposed.

'There's a growing sentiment among Australians that people have made a lot of sacrifices in the last couple of years, and they may not feel the evidence we have on Omicron justifies extra restrictions,' he said.

The leading doctor said while he welcomed the criticism, the AMA had not always been on the same page as the NSW government.

'They've been very critical of the NSW government, and they've ultimately proven to be wrong. They were wrong last Christmas, and they'll be wrong this Christmas as well.'

As of Tuesday, 93.4 per cent of the eligible population had received two doses of a Covid vaccine, while 94.89 per cent had had one.
Bisi Bennett, 38, (pictured) of Orlando, Florida, received a shocking $550,134.76 hospital bill in the mail after her first-born son Dorian was born in November 2020

A Florida mother was billed more than half a million dollars following the birth of her son - and the hospital offered to let her cover the tab in a dozen $46,000 monthly installments.

Bisi Bennett, 38, of Orlando, Florida, welcomed her firstborn Dorian, now one, in the family's Mitsubishi Outlander as her husband drove her to the hospital near midnight on November 12, 2020.

Already a startling entrance to the world, as the baby boy was born premature in the breech position - meaning his head came out last - the new parents received an extraordinary bill of $660,553, with the patient responsibility being $550,134.76.

The payment plan wasn't any better, as the hospital Advent Health Orlando - an in-network facility that accepts Bennett's insurance - offered to let the new family cover the bill in $45,843.73 installments over the course of a year.

The offer was populated by the medical facility's billing system, as all non-profit hospitals have to offer financial assistance under the Affordable Care Act. The financial assistance policy went into effect in 2010.

'It was ridiculous, I don't have $46,000 to pay a month,' Bennett told CBS Mornings.

The cause of the gigantic bill came down to miscommunication, as Bennett's health insurance switched from United Healthcare to UMR the first of the year - a move Bennett made sure the hospital knew of in advance.

Instead of splitting the bill between the two providers - billing United Healthcare for the 2020 expenses and UMR for 2021 - both companies were billed the charge in full, which both denied due to the 'uncovered' time on the bill.

Bennett and her husband Chris, 39, (pictured) who was diagnosed with stage four cancer in April, were offered an almost $46,000 a month payment plan to pay off the bill in 12 months. 'It was ridiculous,' Bennett said. 'I don't have $46,000 to pay a month'

The bill was tallied after a miscommunication between the hospital and her insurance companies. Bennett, who works in the insurance industry, switched healthcare companies on January 1 in accordance with her company's policy

The insurance companies denied the bill because it contained dates where Dorian was not covered under each one's respective plan.

'I called the hospital several times to let them know: "Hey, you're lumping the bill together, you need to split it out,"' Bennett told CBS Mornings.

'I was scared that I was going to go into collections,' she said. Her bill - which was eventually adjusted to $300, plus her $6,000 deductible - wasn't updated until September.

United Healthcare said it did not receive the 2020 bill until Fall 2021 and told CBS Mornings that its portion of the bill has been paid.

The new mom received a half-a-million-dollar bill after both insurance companies denied to pay the bill due to Dorian not being covered under it the full stay

The new mom then had to take on the battle of informing the hospital that the bill had to be split. Dorian was born on November 12 and didn't leave the hospital until January 7, and his treatment would have to be divided between her healthcare insurers.

Baby Dorian spent 56 days in the NICU and needed highly technical, lifesaving respiratory and nutritional care after being be born premature, according to NPR.

Dorian's parents were concerned their son was born stillborn after he didn't cry, but doctors, who cut the umbilical cord while the pair were rolled into the hospital, informed the new parents 'he has a pulse.'

During his almost two-month stay, he also received laboratory, radiology, surgery, cardiology and audiology services and treatments.

He didn't leave the hospital until January 7.

On top of that, her husband Chris, 39, was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroendocrine cancer in April.

With the bill still unresolved at that time, Bennett said she felt she was 'going crazy' at times. Advent Health Orlando told the new mom that it would have the billing issue cleared up by March, but it wasn't resolved until September.

United Healthcare claimed it informed the hospital to revise the bill in the spring, according to NPR.

'They're in charge of billing, and I shouldn't be the one having to tell [Advent Health Orlando], "Bill my one insurance for dates in 2020 and bill my other insurance for dates in 2021," but I did,' she told NPR.

Dorian received extensive medical treatment during his stay as he was born premature. He spent 56 days in the NICU

The bill for Dorian would eventually be adjusted to $300, plus the deductible, which is $6,000

'I kept having the same conversation over and over.'

The bill eventually went from $550,000 to $300 after both companies paid its' portion, leaving the total patient bill at $6,300.

Advent Health Orlando spokesperson David Breen told NPR that the company 'understand[s] this has been a confusing and challenging experience for Ms. Bennett, and we apologize for the frustration this has caused.'

The healthcare facility also said in a statement to CBS Mornings that 'future patients' will hopefully not to deal with the stress and frustration Bennett did as the experience 'has allowed us to identify opportunities within our system to improve the billing and communications process.'
As thousands of Australians fly interstate for Christmas, a new survey has found many travellers remain concerned about borders being slammed shut.

More than six in ten travellers said they were discouraged from booking flights amid border restriction uncertainty, a survey commissioned by the Australian Airports Association found.

A new survey shows Australians are still concerned about border closures over the Christmas period

More than half of people were worried they would be placed into lockdown and forego their savings on lost flights and accommodation.

AAA chief executive James Goodwin said there was fear over the capricious border rules.

'There is a real fear among the travelling public that borders could close again as a result of the current Omicron strain and rising case numbers,' Mr Goodwin said of the research, a survey of 500 Australians who have travelled by plane in the past five years.

'There is going to be a long lag between the opening of state and territory borders and full consumer confidence when it comes to taking to the skies again.'

Australian Medical Association vice president Dr Chris Moy said border inconsistency resulted in a lack of trust from travellers.

'It's much better if people are doing the same thing,' he told the Ten Network.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ruled out a return to lockdowns, saying Australia must move forward and learn to live with the virus.

He is due to discuss the threat of the new Omicron variant with state and territory leaders on Wednesday as national cabinet deliberates over mask mandates and booster shots.

But Mr Morrison expressly ruled out any hard lockdowns on Tuesday, telling reporters the government would not go back to shutting down people's lives.
Detectives working on cracking the murder of JonBenet Ramsay are now exploring genetic DNA testing as they continue to hunt for the killer in the infamous 25-year-old cold case.

Six-year-old Ramsay was found dead in the basement of her family's Boulder home on December 26, 1996, bludgeoned and strangled, several hours after her mother called 911 to say her daughter was missing and a ransom note had been left behind.

Her death was ruled a homicide, but nobody was ever charged in the case.

As the anniversary of Ramsay's death approaches, Boulder police announced on Monday that they are looking into 'genetic DNA testing processes to see if they can be applied to this case moving forward' and are working closely with state investigators on 'future DNA advancements.

'As the Department continues to use new technology to enhance the investigation, it is actively reviewing genetic DNA testing processes to see if those can be applied to this case moving forward,' it said.

While police did not specify what genetic DNA processes are, they could possibly include databases generated from at-home DNA tests, KDVR.com reported.

Cold case detectives have increasingly turned to genealogy DNA databases to crack crimes, and in 2018 used it to uncover the identity of the Golden State Killer who terorrized neighborhoods in the 1970s and 80s.

Former cop Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., 72, was arrested after DNA testing linked him to some of the 12 murders and 51 rapes carried out during that time.

Investigators linked nearly 40-year-old DNA from crime scenes to a distant relative, and eventually to a discarded tissue they surreptitiously sneaked from DeAngelo's garbage can in suburban Sacramento. He was sentenced in August to consecutive life sentences.

In Oregon earlier this year, a man was accused of killing two people who disappeared 20 years apart after forensic genealogy linked him to the 1999 disappearance and presumed death of one of them. Christopher Lovrien has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

The body of JonBenet Ramsay (pictured) was found bludgeoned and strangled in her basement hours after she was reported missing on December 26, 1996

No one in the family was ever charged in the death, but for years tabloids and members of the public believed one or more were the culprits

JonBenet Ramsay who was found dead inside the basement of her parent's palatial home in Boulder, Colorado in 1996 (pictured)

Boulder police said that as of December 2021 they have analyzed nearly 1,500 pieces of evidence related to the murder of JonBenet Ramsay, including 1,000 DNA samples.

Police said those 1,000 DNA samples include 750 reference samples through the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Police said they have also reviewed or investigated 21,016 tips, letters and emails and have interviewed 1,000 people across 19 states.

Investigators are still looking to match unidentified DNA on Ramsey's underpants and the waistband of her longjohns, which have not been a match for any person of interest in the case.

Despite their best efforts, JonBenet's older half brother, John Andrew Ramsey, wants police to do more.

'What the Boulder police have done to date is not enough,' Ramsey told The Denver Gazette. 'What our family wants is results. We don't care who gets us to the finish line, whether it's the Boulder police, great. If it's another agency, great. Whatever it takes to find JonBenet's killer.'

Six-year-old JonBenet was found covered by a white blanket with a nylon cord around her neck, her wrists bound above her head and her mouth covered by duct tape

John and Patsy would remain the primary suspects in their daughter's death for more than a decade, and it was not until 2008 that police finally cleared them of any wrongdoing

The use of the genetic DNA testing is the latest update in one of the most controversial unsolved crimes in American history that started when the body of JonBenet was found bludgeoned and strangled in her basement hours after she was reported missing on December 26, 1996.

She was covered by a white blanket with a nylon cord around her neck, her wrists bound above her head and her mouth covered by duct tape.

Her parents John and Patsy had called police to report her kidnapping and said they found a note demanding a ransom of $118,000 for her safe return, which instructed them not to contact the authorities.

Despite this, police arrived to their home shortly after in clearly marked vehicles.

John and Patsy would remain the primary suspects in their daughter's death for more than a decade, and it was not until 2008 that police finally cleared them of any wrongdoing.

Patsy, who passed away in 2006 from ovarian cancer, was suspected by members of the public of being the murderer after reports emerged that handwriting on the ransom note was similar to her own, but after she willingly provided a sample to police it was determined she did not write the note.

Many also suspected someone in the family, as they claimed there were no footprints in the snow around the house.

Burke Ramsey was suspected of being responsible for killing his sister- despite the fact that he was only nine-years-old at the time

In 2006 - 10 years after JonBenet's death - a 41-year-old schoolteacher named John Mark Karr confessed to killing the little beauty

No one in the family was ever charged in the death, but for years tabloids and members of the public believed one or more were the culprits.

Several years ago, CBS aired The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey, which concluded with investigators revealing that after extensive research into the events that happened on the night of the murder they believed Burke Ramsey was responsible for killing his sister- despite the fact that he was only nine-years-old at the time.

Burke sued the network and settled that case after demanding damages of $750million.

Private investigator Ollie Gray, who continued to investigate the murder case even after he stopped working for the Ramseys, claimed in 2016 that the child's killer was a local 26-year-old whose family owned a junkyard on the outskirts of the city - Michael Helgoth.

On February 13, 1997, Alex Hunter, who was the district attorney at the time of the murder, held a press conference where he spoke to JonBenet's unknown killer, saying: 'The list of suspect narrows. Soon there will be no one on the list but you.'

Helgoth died of an apparent suicide two days later at his home.

A few years after his death, however, Helgoth was cleared when it was revealed that none of his DNA was found under JonBenet's fingernails or in her underwear.

In 2006 - 10 years after JonBenet's death - a 41-year-old schoolteacher named John Mark Karr confessed to killing the little beauty.

He was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, but he was never charged with the murder because his DNA did not match that found on the girl's body.
The prime minister will discuss an indoor mask mandate with state and territory leaders after the ACT reimposed the measure and other states weigh it up.

Scott Morrison will use the "informal" national cabinet meeting on Wednesday to urge states to hold the line on restrictions, having dismissed a return to lockdowns.

'We're not going back to lockdowns. We're not going back to shutting down peoples' lives,' he said.

'We're going forward to live with this virus with common sense and responsibility. There will be other variants beyond Omicron and we have to ensure we are putting in place measures that Australians can live with.'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is holding a national cabinet meeting with COVID-19 cases rising

National cabinet will also receive advice on whether three jabs will be needed for someone to be defined as fully vaccinated, as well as if the time frame between a second and third jab should be shortened.

But Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid poured cold water on the thought that early boosters would be a silver bullet in stopping the spread, saying more people being eligible won't help the pace of the rollout.

'I know everyone's desperately keen to get their booster but changing eligibility doesn't magically mean the rollout is going to go faster,' he said.

"The problem with rolling out boosters is your access to vaccinators, to people who actually put the needle into the arm. We don't have the capacity ... to actually deliver more boosters than are being done at the moment."

More than 1.3 million Australians have received a booster shot and the double-dose vaccination rate for people aged 16 and older has surpassed 90 per cent.

Dr Khorshid said sensible measures like wearing masks or simple social distancing requirements were needed to put a "handbrake" on the spread without destroying Christmas while the booster rollout caught up.

He also called upon leaders to enact a national plan in direct response to the Omicron variant.

'Omicron ... may be mild, but we just don't know,' he said.

'Now is not the time to be taking risks with people's lives and with our economies going into next year."

It comes as the Nine newspapers cite modelling being prepared for national cabinet predicting up to 200,000 cases a day by late January or early February if there are no low to medium level restrictions in place.

NSW had a record 3057 new infections and two more deaths on Monday, while Victoria recorded 1245 new cases alongside six additional deaths.

Meanwhile South Australia reported 154 new infections, Queensland 86, the ACT 16, the Northern Territory 14 and Tasmania four.
The vice president of the Australian Medical Association has called on the government to reintroduce mask mandates amid concerns about the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 - but not everyone agrees it's time to hit the panic button.

Dr Chris Moy believes now is the time to bring back restrictions after modelling from the Doherty Institute predicted Australia could face 200,000 daily cases and up to 8,000 people in intensive care units with Covid.

The latest numbers from the influential Doherty Institute have sparked fears Christmas could be ruined for many - a wildly unpopular prospect after months of Delta lockdowns in NSW and Victoria.

But Australia's former and current chief health officers, Dr Nick Coatsworth and Dr Paul Kelly, both urged caution over Omicron fears and over calls for compulsory restrictions to be reintroduced.

The latest numbers from the influential Doherty Institute have sparked fears Christmas could be ruined for many - an extremely unpopular prospect after months of Delta lockdowns in NSW and Victoria

The vice president of the Australian Medical Association has called on the government to reintroduce mask mandates amid concerns about the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19

Dr Moy said the AMA is 'pleading' with governments to reintroduce controls such as compulsory wearing of masks and QR code check-ins.

'That's why the Australian Medical Association is pleading with governments across Australia, state and federal, to really take precautionary approach to this and get in front of this,' he told the Today show on Wednesday.

'And that means simple things like masks and some use of QR codes and some density limits, just to slow this thing down while we get more data,' he told the Today Show.

He and other experts believe the 'personal responsibility' approach which is being widely favoured, is not enough.

'We dont rely on personal responsibility for seat belts, drink driving or smoking inside restaurants. We do make laws to protect the public health of us all,' said Michael Toole, an epidemiologist with the Burnet Institute told news.com.au.

But the AMA's alarm is not shared by everyone.

In a stinging response to the AMA, Dr Coatsworth claimed the AMA had a poor track record in predicting Covid health outcomes.

He also believes it will be proved wrong if, as many experts believe, the Omicron variant is not as severe as the Delta strain.

In a stinging response to the AMA, Dr Coatsworth claimed the AMA had a poor track record in predicting Covid health outcomes

Dr Paul Kelly, Australia's current chief health officer, said he would be wearing a mask indoors, and recommended others do the same. But he stopped short of calling for mask mandates

'They were wrong last Christmas and theyll be wrong this Christmas as well,' he told news.com.au.

He said people were right to question whether Omicron is severe enough to justify extra restrictions.

'My own view is that after two years, unfortunately the government is not in a position that it can jump at the first sign of trouble, he said.

They would simply not have the public support to do that.

Dr Paul Kelly, Australia's current chief health officer, said he would be wearing a mask indoors, and recommended others do the same.

As of Wednesday December 21, 850 people are in Australian hospitals with Covid, only 113 of them sick enough to be in intensive care units

He said Australia's response to Omicron should be based on vaccination and urged 'every single person eligible' to get a booster shot.

But Dr Kelly stopped short of calling for mask mandates in his latest statement.

He also made a point of playing down fears that hospitals are likely to be overrun with Omicron cases.

'Early indications around hospitalisation, ICU admission and death show that Omicron could be far less than Delta and other variants,' Dr Kelly said.

'Importantly, after almost four weeks of Omicron in Australia there are currently no confirmed Omicron cases in ICU and no deaths confirmed to date.'

As of December 21, 850 people are in Australian hospitals with Covid infections, with 113 of those in ICUs.

Dr Kelly contradicted 'misleading' reporting based on high profile modelling, although he did not refer to the Doherty figures, saying they represented 'worst case' scenarios.

The problems with the modelling being discussed, he said, included 'assumptions that the Omicron variant is as severe as the Delta variant, an absence of hospital surge capacity, a highly limited booster program, no change to baseline public health and social measures and an absence of spontaneous behaviour change in the face of rising case numbers.'

'None of these five assumptions represent the likely state of events, let alone all of them together, therefore presenting that scenario as the likely scenario that will occur is highly misleading.'
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday indicated she regretted her response on sending at-home COVID tests to all Americans, given two weeks before President Joe Biden announced such a policy.

'I would say there's not a day that goes by that I don't leave this podium and wish I would have said something with greater context or more precision or additional information,' Psaki admitted during her daily White House press briefing.

She was responding to her question about her comment at her December 6th press briefing, where she mocked the idea of sending out at-home tests nationwide. 'Then what happens if you  if every American has one test? How much does that cost, and then what happens after that?,' she said at the time.

Psaki was slammed by medical professionals for appearing to mock the idea. Other nations, including those in Europe and Asia, send out at-home, free tests.

'Should I have included that additional context - again and that answer is yes,' Psaki said on Tuesday. 'Going back I wish I would have done that.'

Her regret came the same day President Joe Biden announced a plan to ship 500 million COVID at-home tests to Americans in the new year and as people experience long lines and testing shortage ahead of the holiday season.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki indicated she regretted her response on sending at-home COVID tests to all Americans - her original comment was made two weeks before President Biden announced such a policy

Two weeks ago, Psaki was criticized by medical experts for mocking a reporter who questioned her about at home testing.

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS ROOM EXCHANGE: And I have one quick question on testing. Last week, obviously, the President explained some ramp-up in testing, but there are still a lot of countries, like Germany and the UK and South Korea, that basically have massive testing, free of charge or for a nominal fee. Why cant that be done in the United States? PSAKI: Well, I would say, first, you know, we have eight tests that have been approved by the FDA here. We see that as the gold standard. Whether or not all of those tests would meet that standard is a question for the scientists and medical experts, but I dont suspect they would. Our objective is to continue to increase accessibility and decrease costs. And if you look at what weve done over the course of time, weve quadrupled the size of our testing plan, weve cut the cost significantly over the past few months, and this effort to push  to ensure  ensures youre able to get your tests refunded means 150 million Americans will be able to get free tests. Q Thats kind of complicated though. Why not just make them free and give them out to  and have them available everywhere? PSAKI: Should we just send one to every American? Q Maybe. Im just asking you  there are other countries  PSAKI: Then what  then what happens if you  if every American has one test? How much does that cost, and then what happens after that? Q I dont know. All I know is that other countries seem to be making them available for  in greater quantities, for less money. PSAKI: Well, I think we share the same objective, which is to make them less expensive and more accessible. Right? Every country is going to do that differently. And I was just noting that, again, our tests go through the FDA approval process. Thats not the same process that  it doesnt work that way in every single country. But what were working to do here is build on what weve done to date and continue to build out our testing capacity, because, Mara, we absolutely recognize that this is a key component of fighting the virus. Advertisement

NPR's Mara Liasson, on December 6th, asked the White House press secretary why the government would not simply give out the tests free of charge to everyone, as is done in countries like the UK, Germany and South Korea.

Psaki met the NPR correspondent's suggestion with apparent contempt, saying in response with a sarcastic smirk: 'should we just send one to every American?'

'Maybe,' Liasson shot back, before again trying to point out the example of other countries, only to be cut off by Psaki.

'Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost, and then what happens after that?' the White House spokesperson demanded.

Liasson replied: 'I don't know. All I know is that other countries seem to be making them available...in greater quantities, for less money.'

The testy briefing room back-and-forth quickly caught the attention of doctors and public health experts, who wasted no time raking Psaki over the coals for what one commenter described as her 'terrible, flippant, wrong' response.

'Actually stunned by this response by the @PressSec @WHCOVIDResponse @WhiteHouse,' tweeted Rick Bright, CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation. 'We should remove all access barriers to rapid tests. They're too expensive, in short supply & adding extra insurance barriers isn't the answer. Yes, mail them to all Americans.'

Gregg Gonzalves, a Yale University researcher did not mince words, writing in a tweet: 'this answer was terrible, flippant, wrong. Rapid tests are hard to get, expensive & could be a key intervention in fighting #COVID19. Other countries have figured out better ways to get these tools into the hands of their citizens. Do better.'

Dr Craig Spencer, Director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, pointed out that the US government has already spent billions of dollars of vaccines, so 'tests should be no different.'

President Biden, meanwhile on Tuesday, tried to calm American fears about a pandemic surge just in time for Christmas.

'This is not March 2020,' he said, citing the fact that 61.5% of Americans are vaccinated and the country is better prepared.

He once again pleaded with the unvaccinated to get their shots.

He even credited former President Donald Trump, who said publicly that he got his own booster shot.

'It may be one of the few things he and I agree on,' Biden quipped.

Biden also acknowledged it can be hard to get an appointment for covid testing  coughing into his hand as he made the point, as well as at another point during his remarks.

He spoke to Americans' frustration with yet another surge. 'We'll get through this,' he said from the State Dining Room of the White House.

He began his remarks by acknowledging 'how tired, worried and frustrated I know you are. I know how you're feeling. For many of you, this will be the first or even the second Christmas where you look across the table being an empty kitchen chair there. Tens of millions have gotten sick, all experienced upheaval in our lives.'

But he said the nation was 'tougher' than covid, 'because we have the power of science and vaccines to prevent illness and save lives.'

President Joe Biden announced a plan to send 500 million at-home COVID tests to Americans in the new year

Americans have been experiencing long lines and delays in getting tested for COVID ahead of the holidays

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data Monday night showing that the highly infectious variant now accounts for 73 percent of U.S. Covid cases. The agency also revised last week's data, increasing the share of the variant from 2.9 percent to 12.6 percent. This means the prevalence of the variant jumped six fold week-over-week. It has overtaken the Delta variant, which had been the nation's dominant strain since July.

In New York and New Jersey, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, and the Northwest, the Omicron variant now account for more than 90 percent of new cases.

While other regions currently have lower Omicron prevalence, the variant is spreading fast enough that officials expect it will be dominant throughout the country within weeks.

America also reported its first confirmed death from the variant on Monday night, when an unvaccinated Texas man between ages 50 and 60 succumbed to the variant.

Overall cases in the U.S., which we now know are mostly of the newly discovered strain, have shot upwards as well. Johns Hopkins University report 253,954 new cases on Monday. It is the highest total since September 7 - the peak of the Delta wave - and only the third time since January the 250,000 daily case mark was eclipsed.

The nation is currently averaging 143,164 new cases every day, with that number likely to increase if Monday's high case total becomes normal. New cases are up 20 percent over the past two weeks.
Bless your heart, Bette Midler.

Yesterday, you tweeted, 'What #JoeManchin, who represents a population smaller than Brooklyn, has done to the rest of America, who wants to move forward, not backward, like his state, is horrible. He sold us out. He wants us all to be just like his state, West Virginia. Poor, illiterate and strung out.'

When I read that, I just shook my head and muttered, 'Bless your heart, Bette Midler.'

I felt sorry for you, because you obviously never kayaked the Greenbrier River. You never watched the sun rise over Dolly Sods. You never heard Bill Withers belt out, 'Lean On Me' at church on Sunday morning.

You never experienced the hospitality of a West Virginian who would literally give you the shirt off their back and the food on their plate if you came through town needing help.

I'm a lifelong West Virginian, and we've heard the jokes our whole lives. Jokes about dental care, substance abuse, and statehood.

One time this country boy checked into a hotel in the big city. I presented my driver's license for proof of identity. The clerk said, 'Oh, you're from the western part of Virginia?'

'No ma'am, I'm from West Virginia.' She replied, 'I didn't know it was a separate state.'

'Yes ma'am,' I replied, 'We've been the keepers of God's country since 1863.'

Contrary to your short-sighted tweet, we hold a long history of substantive contribution to American democracy that has helped move the country forward

West Virginia is the home of Katherine Johnson, who was such a brilliant mathematician that her colleagues at NASA trusted her more than their advanced computers.

When I read that tweet, I just shook my head and muttered, 'Bless your heart, Bette Midler.' You never experienced the hospitality of a West Virginian who would literally give you the shirt off their back and the food on their plate if you came through town needing help. (Above) West Virginia State Senator Stephen Baldwin (D-Greenbrier)

It's Christmas, after all, and we accept your apology. We all say things in the moment we don't really mean. We are interested in more, though. As readers of the Good Book, we believe that forgiveness is the first stepand reconciliation is the big leap. (Above) Midler attends the 44th Kennedy Center Honors on December 05, 2021 in Washington, DC

West Virginia is the home of Woody Williams, who is America's oldest living Medal of Honor recipient.

West Virginia is the home of James Rumsey, the inventor of the steamboat.

West Virginia is the home of Booker T. Washington, who was born into slavery and yet became one of the leading American intellectuals of the 19th century.

West Virginia is the home of Chuck Yeager, who was the first human being to break the sound barrier.

West Virginia is the home of Pearl S. Buck, who remains one of America's greatest authors.

Despite this rich history, do we struggle? Yes.

One quarter of our children live in poverty. Our overdose rate is the highest in the nation. Our greatest export is our high school studentsthey graduate and leave.

As a pastor and state senator, these are the issues I spend every day working to overcome alongside my fellow mountaineers.

Honestly, we could use your help rather than your judgment. You're a wealthy, well-known professional.

Conde Nast recently named West Virginia one of the best travel destinations for 2022.

And that's what I want to invite you to do, Ms. Midler. Come visit West Virginia.

When Anthony Bourdain, God rest his soul, visited us in 2018, he said, 'Here, in the heart of every belief system I've mocked or fought against, I was welcomed with open arms by everybody.'

As a fellow New Yorker, I think you will find the same thing. We will welcome you with open arms.

Despite West Virginia's rich history, do we struggle? Yes. One quarter of our children live in poverty. Our overdose rate is the highest in the nation. Honestly, we could use your help rather than your judgment.

It's Christmas, after all, and we accept your apology.

We all say things in the moment we don't really mean. We are interested in more, though.

As readers of the Good Book, we believe that forgiveness is the first step and reconciliation is the big leap.

That's why we hope you will visit.

So we can work together to be reconciled beyond the viciousness of the news cycle that will surely die down sooner than later as America moves on to the next outrage.

In some ways, I'm glad you said what you did. It provides an opportunity to talk about a larger issue facing us as Americans todaydivision.

In 1792, as President George Washington finished his second term, he delivered a farewell address. He challenged the American people to remain united despite threats of being torn apart.

At that time, 229 years ago, Washington believed the largest threats to American democracy were political parties and 'factionalism.'

As much as it pains me to admit it, that threat has become a reality in America today.

People are for you or against you, with no middle ground.

Political parties stand in opposite corners and lob bombs at each other. Compromise is a dirty word. Personal attacks far outnumber personal relationships. People tweet things they wouldn't dare say in person.

A house divided cannot stand. Our nation cannot take much more of this division. And while we all know the usual culprits, I think a deeper divide is the driving force.

I'm talking about the rural/urban divide. City slickers and country folk. Us and them. Forward and backward. It's a geographic divide that goes deeper than the others.

Rural America is often criticized for being out of touch with the modern world. I think the modern world is out of touch with the real America.

The real America is a land of contrastsbig and small, rich and poor, black and white, young and old, city and country.

Most people spend time in both worlds, and most of us see the value in both worlds.

The truth is that we need each other.

America is not America without the country and the city.

The country pastor and the city actress. Me and you, Ms. Midler.

So bless your heart. Seriously.

I wish you all the best and God's blessings this holiday season.

Let's you and I do our part to heal this deep divide in America today.

Come on down to West Virginia and see why it's called 'Almost Heaven.' We'll save you a seat at our table.

Senator Stephen Baldwin (D-Greenbrier) is pastor of Ronceverte Presbyterian Church and WV Senate Minority Leader. Reach him at stephen.baldwin@wvsenate.org or on social media @BaldwinForWV.
Alexis Sykes, 23, of Roselle, was sentenced to ten years in jail after entering a plea deal and pleading guilty to one count of aggravated battery by caustic substance

An Illinois woman was sentenced to 10 years in jail for pouring scalding water on her boyfriend while he slept on a couch and posting the attack on Snapchat.

Alexis Sykes, 23, of Roselle, proceeded to describe how her boyfriend's skin fell off his burned arms, adding that he begged her to take him to the hospital while she hid the car keys.

'I kinda feel bad now because he got 2 & 3rd degree Burns from face to waist & they rushin him to burn center but oh well, bi***' officials said Sykes, of Roselle, posted on the social media platform after the attack on January 2.

The victim, who has not been named by police, eventually found the keys and drove himself to a hospital.

Sykes fled to Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, where she was arrested and charged by police on January 19, DuPage County States Attorney Robert Berlin said Tuesday.

On Monday, Sykes was sentenced to 10 years in jail after pleading guilty to one count of aggravated battery by caustic substance as part of a plea deal.

After the attack, Sykes fled Illinois for two weeks, until she was located and arrested in Mississippi on January 19. Since then she has remained in custody at DuPage County Jail

Sykes captioned the Snapchat post on the attack with a shrugging shoulder and blowing kiss emojis.

'[He] still cried & beg me to drive him to the hospital,' she wrote.

The victim was transported to Loyola University Medical Center Burn Unit, where he spent two weeks recovering.

Authorities said he underwent skin graft surgery.

The victim was transported to Loyola University Medical Center Burn Unit, where he spent two weeks recovering

Sykes was initially charged with two counts of aggravated battery by caustic substance and two counts of aggravated domestic battery after the attack at the Roselle residence she shared with the victim.

'The cruelty displayed by Ms. Sykes as she doused her sleeping boyfriend with a pot of boiling water is extremely disturbing,' Berlin said in a statement to local news station WMAQ.

'Considering her complete disregard for the amount of pain and suffering she caused her victim, one can only come to the conclusion that she has most certainly earned every year of her ten-year sentence,' he added.

She has been held in custody at DuPage County Jail since her arrest.

She will have to serve at least eight-and-a-half years before being eligible for parole.
Lina Sardar Khil was reported missing Monday

Police in San Antonio are frantically searching for the three-year-old daughter of Afghan refugees who disappeared from a playground at the apartment complex where her family lives on Monday afternoon.

The San Antonio Police Department issued an Amber Alert on Monday night for Lina Sardar Khil, who was last seen in the 9400 block of Fredericksburg Road. Officials say the child could be in 'grave, immediate danger.'

Although police say they do not have a description of a possible kidnapping suspect, they are investigating the case as a child abduction.

There is no evidence at this time to suggest that the child is with a family member.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday that Lina was last seen at a playground outside the Villas Del Cabo complex, where she resides with her family, sometime between 5pm and 6pm on Monday.

According to the chief, around that time, the girl's mother left, but returned 'a short time later.' McManus said there were other children with adults at the playground at that time.

Police in San Antonio are frantically looking for little Lina, who vanished from an apartment complex's playground on Monday afternoon

Although police say they do not have a description of a possible kidnapping suspect, they are investigating the case as a child abduction

The child was last seen in the 9400 block of Fredericksburg Road between 5 and 6pm Monday

When Lina's mother returned, the three-year-old was gone.

McManus said Lina's family did not contact the police until about 7:15pm to report her missing. It is unknown at this time why the child's mother had left.

The police chief said Lina's mother and other residents have been cooperating with the investigation.

Officers have been searching for Lina since Monday night by scouring the complex and the surrounding area on foot and from the air, going door-to-door to question all residents, checking cars and dumpsters, and looking for surveillance footage.

Chief McManus said his department is 'sparing no assets or resources' to find the little girl.

On Tuesday, local officials asked FBI to help with the search, given the suspicious circumstances surrounding Lina's disappearance and the length of time she's been gone.

Margaret Constantino, with the Center for Refugee Services, confirmed to KSAT that Lina's family are Afghan refugees.

On Tuesday, local officials asked FBI to help with the search, given the suspicious circumstances surrounding Lina's disappearance and the length of time she's been gone

Police are appealing to the public for help with locating Lina, who was last seen wearing a red dress, a black jacket and black shoes

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus told reporters his agency is sparing no assets to find Lina

'We will continue this until, hopefully, we find Lina but we are not stopping,' McManus said.

Lina is four-feet-tall and weighs 55lbs, with brown eyes and straight, shoulder-length brown hair tied in a ponytail. She was last seen wearing a black jacket, a red dress and black shoes.

Authorities are asking anyone who has information on Lina's whereabouts to call SAPD Missing Persons Unit at 210-207-7660.
Australians need to get swabbed for Covid by Wednesday morning at the latest to receive a negative result by Christmas Day as the holiday rush inundates testing clinics.

In NSW, more than 426,000 residents have showed up at PCR Covid testing centres since Friday - including 137,000 in the 24 hours to Monday night alone.

NSW Health has warned those waiting for their sample could be waiting up to 72 hours for a result, rather than the standard 48 hours.

The backlog could be disastrous for those who want to be tested before seeing vulnerable relatives on Christmas Day, or who need to travel interstate and require a negative test result within three days of departure.

The Albert Park testing clinic in Melbourne was at capacity about 6am on Wednesday, with the queue first forming at 4.30am.

Testing lines this morning are pretty wild. This is North Ryde, where cars are backed up onto the M2. Everyone I spoke to is trying to get tests for travel, most arent hopeful they will have them in time. These travel requirements are severely clogging the system. @9NewsSyd pic.twitter.com/as4KpnPMoq  Lauren Tomasi (@LaurenTomasi) December 21, 2021

Australians need to get swabbed for Covid by Wednesday at the latest to guarantee a negative result by Christmas Day. Pictured is a line at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Covid-19 testing centre in Sydney

Pictured is a drive-through Covid testing queue at North Ryde in the city's north-west backing up onto the M2 motorway on Wednesday morning

The clinic, which didn't open until 7am, was forced to turn away hundreds and tell them to try another centre or come back at a different time.

Wait times are also still high in Sydney in the run-up to Christmas, with the drive-through queue at North Ryde in the city's north-west backing up onto the M2 motorway.

Frustrated Sydneysiders took to social media to vent their frustration at the slow turnaround times, which for many was preventing them from travelling away for the holiday season.

'I've been at three different places in the last two days and people are turning around in droves,' one person wrote.

'Stop tests being allowed for interstate travel. It should be for symptomatic and case contacts only,' another said.

The 72-wait times for some mean those wanting a negative result by Christmas Day morning need to get swabbed by Wednesday morning.

In South Australia on Tuesday the wait for a test overnight was as long as nine hours.

Cars snaked through Victoria Park in central Adelaide, with one motorist saying he waited from 10.30pm Monday until about 8am Tuesday to reach the front of the line.

Frustrated Sydneysiders took to social media to vent their frustration at the slow turnaround times, which for many was preventing them from travelling away for the holiday season

Pictured is a queue at a drive-through Covid testing centre in western Sydney on December 21

Adelaide ex-Pat James Endean has been waiting to get a #COVID19 test at #VictoriaPark drive-through clinic since 4AM. Line stretches back about 1km. People have been waiting ~8 hours, as #SAHealth asks for patience. pic.twitter.com/pVhkSWAeI2  Sara Tomevska (@STomevska) December 20, 2021

SA Premier Steven Marshall hours later ditched testing on arrival rules for interstate travellers, as long as they don't have symptoms, after the long lines sparked outrage.

However visitors from NSW, Victoria and the ACT still need a negative test within 72 hours of arriving into SA.

Deakin University Chair in Epidemiology Professor Catherine Bennett told Daily Mail Australia states needed to shift away from requiring interstate travellers to test negative before departure.

#Breaking: A COVID-19 testing centre in Melbourne's CBD has turned people away within half an hour of opening its doors, as queues snaked for hundreds of metres through city streets and laneways. #COVID19 #Melbourne pic.twitter.com/ESno28f204  10 News First Melbourne (@10NewsFirstMelb) December 19, 2021

Pictured is a queue at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday

'The issue we have is the longer the wait times are, the less immediate the result,' she said.

'Unless you then isolate until Christmas Day, the test would only tell you what you have today - not in three days time.'

Professor Bennett urged those eager to know if they have Covid before seeing a vulnerable relative to combine their PCR test with multiple rapid antigen tests in the days before December 25.

She said the long queues of Covid-free Australians waiting for a test were taking away capacity for those who were sick and may actually have the virus.

PCR test queue at 7.30am  we are going super early tomorrow, and if we dont get our results in time well pay for fast testing pic.twitter.com/GUNMKzC4ci  Corky Saint Clair (@CorkyMelbourne) December 20, 2021

Cars snaked through Victoria Park in central Adelaide, with motorists reporting wait times of anywhere between six and nine hours

'It's overloading our testing system - we have to find other ways to manage the borders,' she said.

Professor Bennett said she expected state and federal leaders to discuss winding back testing requirements at an emergency national cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

One woman waiting for a test in the Victorian capital earlier admitted she had left it late to get swabbed, given she needed to fly interstate with a negative test the next day.

'I waited for two and a half hours yesterday so thought I'd come her early today to try and get in this time,' she told 10 News Melbourne.

Masked Sydneysiders sit on a ledge outside the RPA Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday. The lengthy processing times could spell disaster for those in virus-hit NSW, Victoria and the ACT who need a negative result within 72 hours of travelling interstate

'I'm about to see my family tomorrow interstate so I had to get tested within 72 hours - I really need that negative test.'

Meanwhile, pharmacies and shops are running out of rapid antigen tests as residents race to prove they are Covid-free without the hassle of an official PCR test.

National President of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia Trent Twomey says there are sufficient supplies in Australia but they need to be distributed to where demand is greatest.

'They are all at their major distribution hubs which are down in Victoria,' he told the Nine Network on Tuesday.

Pharmacies would get more deliveries by Wednesday.

'They assure us over the next 24 hours there will be trucks and ships and trains and all sorts of things getting that stock out of major distribution hubs in Melbourne out to the rest of the states and territories,' he said.

Motorists queue inside their cars at the St Vincent's Bondi Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant is urging caution this Christmas and recommended people take a rapid antigen test before going to an indoor gathering.

'Choose outdoor, well-ventilated places for gatherings and limit the size of those gatherings,' she said.

Victorian health authorities offered similar advice, recommending outdoor Christmas celebrations and limiting indoor gatherings to less than four hours.

'Have Christmas on the verandah or reduce your time inside a house with others to less than four hours,' a Victoria Department of Health statement read.

'You may still have to get tested but your time in isolation will be shorter.'

The testing chaos comes as NSW's Covid-19 cases again exploded on Tuesday with 3,057 new infections, the state's highest spike in daily infections since the pandemic began.

A queue at the RPA Covid-19 testing centre on Tuesday. NSW's Covid-19 cases again exploded on Tuesday with 3,057 new infections, the state's highest spike in daily infections since the pandemic began

Two deaths were also recorded as NSW recorded a spike of more than 500 cases recorded 24 hours earlier.

Hospitalisations are also on the rise with 284 cases admitted, including 39 in intensive care.

Victoria recorded 1245 cases and six deaths on Tuesday, slightly down from 1,302 infections reported on Monday.

Around 392 cases are being treated in hospital, including 73 in intensive care.

NSW remains agonising close to the 95 per cent vaccination milestone with 94.9 per cent of over-16s having had one dose and 93.4 per cent now double-vaxxed.

Almost 137,000 residents came forward for testing on Monday, placing overwhelming demand on testing clinics with some sites running out of swabs.
A nursing couple who run a recruitment agency supplying care homes have been arrested on suspicion of modern slavery offences  after claims their workers were so hungry they ate residents leftovers.

In what investigators said was a sign that unscrupulous opportunists were exploiting the care worker shortage, the pair allegedly took advantage of nine Indians living in Britain on student visas.

The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) was tipped off that they were turning up at work tired and unwashed.

Officers arrested the couple  a 31-year-old British-Indian man and a 29-year-old Indian woman  at their plush detached house in Abergele, North Wales.

At the same time they searched two properties in nearby Colwyn Bay and found the workers sleeping on mattresses on the floor in cramped, cold and unsanitary conditions, they said.

Officers arrested a couple - a 31-year-old British-Indian man and a 29-year-old Indian woman  at their plush detached house in Abergele, North Wales, and searched two properties in nearby Colwyn Bay where officers found workers sleeping on mattresses on the floor in cramped, cold and unsanitary conditions

The workers were said to be always hungry and were even spotted eating leftovers from meals given to residents of six care homes where they worked.

The tip-off came in a call to the Modern Slavery Helpline.

According to the GLAA, they are believed to have been recruited from areas of India to which the suspects had close links.

While it is not known whether they were also studying legitimately in the UK, they are thought to have been working longer than the permitted 20 hours a week, with their wages said to have been controlled by their alleged exploiters.

Investigators believe the workers were transported to and from work each day, with the suspects dropping them off and collecting them close to the care homes.

Senior investigating officer Martin Plimmer said: There is a well-publicised shortage of workers within the care industry which has been amplified by the Covid-19 pandemic.

'This presents real risks as opportunists and unscrupulous employers may look to fill this void by exploiting vulnerable workers.

Following last Thursdays raid, the suspects  both registered nurses who run a recruitment agency  were interviewed on suspicion of offences under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 before being released under investigation.

Care bosses have warned of a staffing crisis, with more than 100,000 UK vacancies.
Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to agree with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has argued that Democrats don't have a shot in maintaining control of Congress without doing something about student loans.

'Well, I think that we have to continue to do what we're doing and figure out how we can creatively relieve the pressure that students are feeling because of their student loan debt. Yes,' Harris replied.

CBS Margaret Brennan had asked Harris if Democrats needed to make moves on the debt issue before next year's midterms.

Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to agree with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has argued that Democrats don't have a shot in maintaining control of Congress without doing something about student loans.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has argued that the Democrats won't retain control of Congress without the party doing something on the student loan debt issue

Harris said that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is working on what can be done with student loans.

'It's a real issue,' the vice president said. 'Students across- well graduates and former students across our country are literally making decisions about whether they can have a family, whether they can buy a home.'

Harris recalled how she had her own student loans to pay off and had a 'coupon book' she would use to send in her check every month.

Progressives have argued that Biden can unilaterally write-off $50,000 in debt for every borrow, but the president has been reluctant to do that with the strike of his pen.

Biden has said he'd be comfortable writing off $10,000 of debt per borrower, but last week, press secretary Jen Psaki said the president wanted Congress to act.

'If Congress sends him a bill he's happy to sign it. They haven't sent him a bill on that yet,' Psaki said after a reporter asked her if the president planned to make good on his pledge to absolve Americans of $10,000 of their student loan debt.

On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the Biden administration was considering lengthening the moratorium on student loan debt after saying earlier this month that loan repayment would begin again on February 1.

Student loan payments have been paused since early 2020 due to a provision in the CARES Act, the first Congressional package dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the administration earlier this month to extend the moratorium again.

'We've been paused because of COVID. It ought to be extended, COVID is not over,' Schumer said.

'Students still have these huge burdens and they're just readjusting to life where they may have missed school or missed jobs or not gotten fully paid. So we need to certainly pause these payments,' he continued.

'But we also urge the administration to take the next important step in granting borrowers relief by cancelling student loan debt,' the New York senator added.
One of the Home Office's main tactics to combat Channel migrant boats was in disarray yesterday as judges quashed three people-smuggling convictions.

The Court of Appeal overturned the sentences of Iranians who had piloted migrant dinghies.

Judges ruled that the convictions were 'unsafe' because the original prosecutions had not addressed whether the men or their passengers intended to enter this country illegally.

The Home Office has secured scores of convictions against would-be asylum seekers after gathering evidence  including video footage  showing they had been at the helm of small boats in the Channel.

The Court of Appeal overturned the sentences of Iranians who had piloted migrant dinghies (file image)

Yesterday's ruling will cast doubt on the use of those tactics and a host of other sentences could now be challenged on similar grounds.

Judges yesterday disclosed that seven other similar appeals are already pending.

The Court of Appeal quashed charges of 'assisting or facilitating unlawful immigration' against Samyar Bani, Mahamoud Al Anzi and Fariborz Taher Rakei.

Mr Bani had been convicted in November 2019 and sentenced to six years' in prison. The court heard Border Force agents saw him piloting a small boat with four other adults and a child aboard in June 2019.

They were intercepted at sea and brought to Dover. A mobile phone in Mr Bani's possession had been used to make calls to buy the boat and check the weather forecast before the crossing, his trial was told.

Mr Al Anzi, one of 12 people aboard a dinghy in June last year, was convicted in February and sentenced to three years and nine months' in prison.

Yesterday's ruling will cast doubt on the use of those tactics and a host of other sentences could now be challenged on similar grounds (file image)

The following month Mr Rakei was convicted over a separate incident and sentenced to four years and six months' imprisonment. He had been one of 13 aboard a rigid-hulled inflatable and had a compass and three mobiles on him.

An appeal by a fourth Iranian man  Ghodratallah Zadeh, who pleaded guilty in October last year to assisting unlawful immigration and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment  was not formally quashed as he is expected to face a retrial.

The Court of Appeal judges, chaired by Lord Justice Edis, found that in all four cases it was unclear whether the occupants of the boat intended to commit an offence by failing to declare their arrival in the UK by, for instance, landing on a beach and running away.

A migrant picked up by the British authorities in the Channel is not committing an offence, they noted.

'A matter which the prosecution must prove  that at the time of the facilitation the appellant knew or had reasonable cause to believe that his act was assisting entry or attempted entry into the United Kingdom without leave  was not properly investigated and was then not left for the jury to decide,' the ruling said.

'We cannot accept the submissions of the prosecution that convictions are safe notwithstanding these failures. The errors were too fundamental for that.'

The Home Office said: 'We need to fully digest this judgment.'
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Trees are up in living rooms across the country, with fridges stocked full of festive food. But for days, the nation's plans have been on ice.

And while Boris Johnson finally ruled out cancelling celebrations for the second year running last night, he cautioned: 'Naturally we can't rule out any further measures after Christmas.'

But the Prime Minister explained there was not enough evidence at the moment to justify stricter controls, and cited doubts about the severity of Omicron, uncertainty about hospitalisation rates, and what the impact of the vaccine rollout might be.

He promised to watch the data  and act if necessary.

The public, though, has so far been denied the full picture: the Government has refused to give any information about the 14 who have died from Omicron, whether they have underlying health conditions and, crucially, whether they are unvaccinated.

And the issue of vaccination is critical  London is the worst hit area of the country, and it has by far the lowest vaccination rates. Coincidence?

Here are the key questions as we edge towards December 25...

While Boris Johnson finally ruled out cancelling celebrations for the second year running last night, he cautioned: 'Naturally we can't rule out any further measures after Christmas'

HOW QUICKLY IS OMICRON SPREADING?

Whisper it, but the ferocious surge in cases already appears to be levelling off. Yesterday 90,629 Covid infections were confirmed across the UK. This is twice the level of a fortnight ago, but down on Friday's 93,045.

After the first Omicron case was detected in the UK on November 26, the variant quickly became dominant and cases doubled roughly every two days.

Scientists expected this 'eye-wateringly high' exponential growth to continue  warning of up to one million daily infections by New Year's Eve. In fact, new infections have been stable for nearly a week.

Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer, said that the Omicron wave will 'peak quite fast' as it is so infectious. Cases are already falling in South Africa. It arrived quickly and is fading fast.

WILL 'LOCKDOWN BY STEALTH' SLOW SPREAD?

Professor Whitty last week urged the public to 'think carefully' about festive socialising and 'prioritise interactions that really matter to them'. Although his dire warnings prompted fury from Tory MPs, millions of Britons heeded his advice  essentially putting themselves into lockdown.

High street traders say footfall is down 60 per cent, and across the country pantomimes and office parties have been called off. In London half of West End theatres, along with dozens of pubs and restaurants, have closed.

While this has led to a 'nightmare before Christmas' for the hospitality industry, the shift to more cautious behaviour has slashed opportunities for the virus to spread.

WHY ARE LONDON RATES SO IMPORTANT?

Omicron took off quickly in London, and the capital's high infections may well be linked to its low vaccination rate  one in three Londoners is completely unvaccinated, three times higher than the national average.

Its infection rate of 1,455 cases per 100,000 people is twice the national average. Ministers are closely monitoring data and, so far, signs are positive. Cases are dipping in London after reaching record highs last week. Hospital admissions remain low compared to previous peaks, and the number in intensive care remains flat.

Yesterday some 245 patients were admitted in London, compared to more than 900 a day in January. There are currently 1,904 Covid-19 patients in hospital in the city.

This is up 41 per cent from last week, but less than one quarter of the 7,917 recorded on March 2. And about half of this weekly increase is due to more 'incidental' admissions of patients who test positive after going to hospital with a different illness. Cambridge University statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter said: 'It's not looking quite as bad as it was in terms of the speed of increase [of admissions].

'Around half the extra admissions in London had Covid anyway, which vast numbers of people in London now do, and then they found out they had Covid once they'd gone to hospital.'

Michael Bartley, a critical care matron at King's College Hospital in the capital, said in an interview this week '80 to 90 per cent' of Covid patients in the beds he was responsible for were unvaccinated.

WILL HOSPITAL RATES BE LOWER FOR OMICRON?

The Prime Minister yesterday highlighted 'continuing uncertainty about the severity of Omicron and the hospitalisation rate'. But vaccination means a smaller proportion of total cases are likely to need hospital treatment compared to earlier waves.

Nine in ten of the most severely ill Covid patients are unvaccinated. The NHS is also rolling out antiviral drugs that are expected to prevent thousands of hospitalisations this winter. And there are hopeful signs that Omicron is intrinsically less severe than previous variants.

Data from South Africa suggests patients are 29 per cent less likely to end up in hospital and symptoms are milder. Hospital admissions in South Africa are just 55 per cent of their previous peak, despite case numbers being similar.

HOW IS THE NHS COPING?

Waiting times and ambulance delays are at record highs as hospitals struggle to clear the Covid backlog. Existing problems are being exacerbated by staff shortages due to Omicron, with nearly one in ten staff in London isolating. NHS chiefs in London say hospitals are likely to be 'overwhelmed due to rising Covid demand in the next two to three weeks'.

However, the number of Covid patients is low compared to previous peaks. There are currently 7,801 patients in hospital with the virus across the UK , compared to 20,000 this time last year and almost 40,000 in January. Winter flu has not taken off as feared and is below pre-pandemic years.

WHAT ABOUT DEATHS?

There have so far only been 14 confirmed deaths from Omicron in the UK. Weekly deaths from Covid have fallen to a two-month low as the vaccine rollout saves tens of thousands of lives, though it is true we will need to wait another several weeks to know what the impact of Omicron is on the death toll. Yesterday 172 fatalities were recorded in the UK, compared to more than 1,000 at the peak.

HOW WELL DO VACCINES WORK AGAINST OMICRON?

Vaccine efficacy has been blunted but they still achieve their primary aims of preventing hospitalisation and death. Two doses are no longer enough to stop infection.

This is because the sheer number of mutations on Omicron's 'spike' protein allows it to evade antibodies and infect cells. But the immune system's T-Cells, which kill infected cells and prevent severe disease, still work well.

Boosters have never been more important. They top protection against infection back up to 70 per cent  and even higher for hospitalisation and death.

An astonishing 52 per cent of Britons over the age of 12 have now had three doses  making it one of the best-placed countries in the world to fend off Omicron.
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It used to serve up traditional pie and mash. But now this former East London shop is dishing up a delicious new interior after being transformed into a 1million home.

The current exterior doesn't give away many clues about the property's internal transformation.

The J Gooding's pie 'n' mash shop continues to look like a trading outlet from the street as it retains its original signage - although that is now a little worse for wear and the translucent glass windows mean the interior isn't visible from outside.

The East London property was once a Pie 'n' Mash shop, but has been transformed into a modern 1m family home

As it was then: The property was once a thriving pie 'n' mash shop but closed its doors to customers for the last time

And now... the Hackney home has been given a modern makeover while retaining original features such as the shop's wall and floor tiles

Back then: The shop had plenty of room for customers to sit and eat their pie 'n' mash, and the original floor tiles remain in the property today

Step across the threshold and the interior tells a different story. A glossy modern makeover awaits its new owner as the property is currently on the market for 1.05million via Mr & Mrs Clarke estate agents.

The agent explains in its advertising material that the former shop has been transformed into a 'trendy, eclectic and eco-conscious home'.

The property is in the fashionable London borough of Hackney and boasts three bedrooms and a private courtyard. It also has a converted store room that is now used as an office.

It has a spacious living area, which the agent describes as 'the soul' of this property in Hackney's Homerton.

The design features includes crittall windows and wooden floorboards, as well as some original features, such as the shop's tiles on the walls and floor. There is also an eco-friendly roof with living plants.

The terrace house has a spacious living area that includes a dining area, a seating area and a trendy wood-burning stove

Some of the original wall tiles at the shop (pictured) have also been kept at the property that is now a family home

The former shop has been transformed into a 'trendy, eclectic and eco-conscious home' that features a living green roof

The London house boasts its own private courtyard that has a seating area with a table for entertaining outside

The property spreads across three floors and has three bedrooms, including this one with wooden flooring and plenty of light

The property was last sold in August 2002 for 170,000, and was listed for the first time since then in August this year - 19 years later - for 1.1million.

The asking price has since been reduced by 50,000 in October, according to Zoopla.

The property website suggests that the average price of a property in the area - Homerton, Hackney - is 478,558. It compares to an average of 335,833 for the country as a whole.

The Hackney property has good access to public transport and schools, and is less than half a mile from Homerton rail station and Cardinal Pole Catholic School.

A store room has been transformed into an office space, ideal for those working from home during the pandemic
Botox injections can reduce anxiety by up to 72 per cent, surprise findings from a new study reveal.

Scientists in California have found reductions in anxiety symptoms for people receiving Botox, regardless of where it was injected.

Botox, or Botulinum toxin, a medication derived from a bacterial toxin, is injected to ease wrinkles, migraines, muscle spasms, excessive sweating and incontinence.

It's not clear how exactly it reduces symptoms of anxiety, although researchers speculate botulinum toxins may be transported to the regions of the central nervous systems involved in mood and emotions.

If Botox is commonly used to treat chronic conditions that may contribute to anxiety  for example, wrinkles  its success in relieving the underlying problem may indirectly also relieve anxiety.

Clinical trials will be necessary to establish the best site and dose to administer Botox specifically for anxiety, according to the study authors.

Botox, or Botulinum toxin, a medication derived from a bacterial toxin, is commonly injected to ease wrinkles, migraines, muscle spasms, excessive sweating and incontinence. Researchers have found it reduces reported anxiety symptoms regardless of injection site

BOTOX: THE FACTS Botox, short for 'Botulinum toxin', is a neurotoxic protein made by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. It is one of the most potent poisons known to humankind. Botox halts the release of a chemical messenger in the body that is involved in the activation of muscles. While it can be used to relax muscles and treat issues from spasms to overactive bladders, it has become known for its cosmetic potential. By relaxing face muscles, Botox can cause wrinkles to relax and soften, albeit on a temporary basis. Advertisement

The research was performed by experts at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California San Diego, in collaboration with two physicians from Germany.

More than one million Britons get Botox injections every year, and the procedure is even more common in the US.

The potential dangers of Botox, including pain, swelling or bruising at the injection site, headaches, droopy eyelids, drooling and eye dryness - have been well-documented.

'A large number of diverse adverse effects are being reported to the FDA and the main objective usually is to find those harmful side effects that had not been identified during clinical trials,' said study author Ruben Abagyan, professor of pharmacy at University of California San Diego.

'However, our idea was different. Why dont we do the opposite? Why dont we find beneficial effects?'

For the study, Abagyan and colleagues studied the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)s Adverse Effect Reporting System (FAERS) database.

FAERS contains over 16.5 million individual reports of negative effects after taking various medications  among them, reports from nearly 40,000 people of what happened to them after Botox treatment, taken for a variety of reasons.

In the UK, the cost of Botox injections can vary from about 100 to 350 for each treatment, depending on the clinic and the area being treated

COULD BOTOX PREVENT COVID? It's designed to stop wrinkles in middle-age  but Botox could also protect people from catching Covid, according to a French study. Researchers said that out of their almost 200 patients who got the treatment up to July 2020, only two had signs of being ill. For comparison, they suggested 4.4 per cent of the French population had already been infected with the virus. But experts described the study as being 'extremely poor' and insisted that it proved nothing about whether Botox had any promise in the fight against Covid. Read more: Botox could protect people from getting Covid Advertisement

The team scoured the database for the absence or reduced frequency of anxiety and anxiety-related disorders as a health complaint, compared to a control group, when taking Botox.

Then the team applied a mathematical algorithm to look for statistically significant differences between Botox users and patients who received different treatments for the same conditions.

People receiving Botox injections at four different sites on the body  including the forehead  reported anxiety significantly less often than patients undergoing different treatments for the same conditions, they found.

The reported anxiety risk was 22 to 72 per cent lower in Botox-treated patients for four of eight conditions and injection sites: facial muscles for cosmetic use; facial and head muscles for migraine; upper and lower limbs for spasm and spasticity; and neck muscles for torticollis.

Torticollis, also known as wryneck, is a twisting of the neck that causes the head to rotate and tilt at an odd angle.

For the other four injection sites, there was not enough data for statistically significant confidence intervals, according to Abagyan.

The team said they excluded reports in which a person was also taking antidepressants (often used in treating anxiety) or anxiolytic medications.

However, they admit that the use of other prescription and over-the-counter medications could have been underreported in some cases.

Abagyan and his team published another study last year using the same database that found Botox to be an effective treatment for people with depression.

People who received Botox injections reported depression significantly less often than patients undergoing different treatments for the same conditions.

Both studies found a decrease in reported symptoms regardless of injection site.

So this challenges any speculation that patients may have felt happier just because they have fewer wrinkles, or because Botox prevents frowning.

Although researchers don't know the specific molecular mechanisms by which Botox reduces depression and anxiety, they might be different between the two conditions.

The new study has been published today in the journal Scientific Reports.
Dimming the dining room lights may be the answer to making your dry turkey taste amazing this Christmas.

In experiments, scientists in the US investigated what effect lighting levels can have on peoples enjoyment of food.

They found that dimmer, ambient lighting 'subconsciously influences perceptions' and tricks the brain into thinking sweet or salty food tastes better.

However, the effect seems to be weaker when eating foods that combines multiple tastes  such as sweet and salty popcorn or sweet and sour Asian dishes.

A Christmas meal with all the trimmings can be a difficult feat to pull off, with overboiled veg and dried-out meat being potential pitfalls for the home chef. New research investigated what effect lighting levels can have on peoples enjoyment of food

THE FIVE TASTES - Sweet - Salty - Sour - Bitter - Umami Umami was discovered by a Japanese scientist in 1908. It can be translated as 'pleasant savoury taste'. Advertisement

The study was led by Sarah Lefebvre, a specialist in food and beverage consumption behaviours at Murray State University, Kentucky, and two other US-based experts.

The findings appear to contradict a study published in 2020, which found dimming restaurant lights can actually make a meal taste worse.

'Based on our findings, venues serving single taste dimension foods can dim their lighting to reduce visual input and enhance taste perceptions,' the team say in their paper, published in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.

'This can apply to venues such as movie theatres, where snacks typically consist of a salty (popcorn) or sweet (candy) taste dimension.'

Over the course of three experiments, the researchers gave more than 300 participants food to eat. In the first two experiments, the participants were wearing either wearing glasses with dark-tinted lenses or glasses with clear lenses as they ate.

The darkened sunglasses served as a 'manipulation of visual input' to mimic dimmed lighting found in restaurants, while the clear lenses acted as the control condition.

Ever wondered why restaunts dim the lights? It might help improve perceptions of how food tastes

In the first experiment, participants were given a piece of chocolate to eat before rating its taste on a seven-point scale.

In the first two experiments, participants ate food while fitted with either glasses with dark lenses or glasses with clear lenses (pictured)

In the second experiment, participants ate snack items that consisted of either a sweet or salty taste and varied in texture and consistency, before they also rated taste on a seven-point scale.

The snack items were raisins (sweet and chewy), cookies (sweet and crunchy), cheese (salty and chewy), and potato chips (salty and crunchy).

In the third experiment, the method was changed. Researchers altered the luminance in the room rather than making participants wear glasses.

Also, they were given plain salty popcorn which acted as a 'single dimension food' (salty), and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which served as a 'multi-dimensional food' taste (sweet and salty), before likewise rating their meal on a seven-point scale.

Overall, the researchers found that taste perceptions were marginally more favourable when visual input was reduced by the dark lenses.

Researchers found the effect was reduced in force when a food contained multiple taste dimensions (i.e., sweet and salty, or sweet and sour). Pictured is sweet and sour chicken

ROMANTIC MOOD LIGHTING AT A RESTAURANT MAY MAKE FOOD TASTE WORSE According to a study published in 2020, dimming restaurant lights can actually make a meal taste worse. Guests exposed to bright ambient light perceived the overall taste of the dish as more intense compared with guests exposed to dim light, authors of this study found. This was possibly because good light makes colours more vibrant, which is likely linked with flavour and taste perceptions. Read more: Dimming restaurant lights can compromise food's taste, study finds Advertisement

In the third experiment, when sampling a single-flavor food in a dimly lit room, results replicated the results of the first two experiments  participants rated taste higher under dimmer conditions.

However, when the sweet and salty food was consumed (the peanut butter and jelly sandwich), taste perceptions were not impacted by room lighting.

In other words, the positive effect of dim light was reduced for food with more than one taste (sweet and salty) as opposed to single taste dimensions (just sweet), although it's unclear why this is.

It's possible signals that are sent to the brain when we interpret taste are somehow distorted by low light, or that low light is deemed as more pleasurable or complementary to our eating experience.

The research made the distinction between taste and flavour  two terms that are often used interchangeably but are quite different.

Smell is responsible for our brain registering hundreds if not thousands of different flavours, while the five tastes  salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami  register on the tongue.

First identified by a Japanese researcher in 1908, umami generally describes rich, meaty foods, like beef and broths, as well as yeast extracts like Marmite.

According to the team, further research could test the effect of different ambient light on perception of sour, bitter and umami foods too.

Conditions including lighting and surrounding noise are already thought to affect our perceptions of a meal.

Some US restaurants, such as Washington, DC, steakhouse Mastro's, and San Francisco's Opaque, serve dishes in near-complete or complete darkness in the hopes of intensifying the flavors of foods, according to the team.

A study from 2010 found providing consumers with larger portions in a dark room led them to consume 36 per cent more food.

Other research published in 2004 also identified that the colour of a room to impact the amount of food consumed by diners.
Asteroid Ryugu contains some of the 'most primordial material' ever examined, scientists claim, saying it could solve the mystery of how the solar system formed.

Samples from the diamond shaped, half-mile diameter space rock were returned to Earth for study by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2020.

New analysis of those samples revealed they are also among the darkest materials ever examined, reflecting just two per cent of the light that hits them, according to the team behind one of two studies, from the University of Queensland, Australia.

They are also very porous, and could hold the key to understanding how the first building blocks of life came to arrive on Earth 4.5 billion years ago, the team said.

Samples from the diamond shaped, half-mile diameter space rock were returned to Earth for study by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2020

New analysis of those samples revealed they are also among the darkest materials ever examined, reflecting just two per cent of the light that hits them, according to the team behind one of two studies, from the University of Queensland, Australia

KEY FINDINGS Two studies of the samples returned from asteroid Ryugu looked at their make-up and origin. One found that the material was incredibly dark, reflecting just two per cent of the light that hits it. This study also revealed it was incredibly porous, which backs up earlier studies into the samples. The second study found that it was made of a 'clay-like' matrix, complete with carbon-linked materials. Advertisement

The carbon-type near-Earth asteroid, Ryugu, is about 3,000ft in diameter and is in an orbit between the Earth and Mars. It occasionally crosses Earth's orbit.

Two researchers papers, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, examine samples of this rock, brought back to the Earth by Japanese scientists.

About 0.19 ounces of rock arrived on Earth in December 2020, returned to the planet by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft from Ryugu.

The first paper, by Toru Yada and colleagues from the University of Queensland, looked at how much light the samples reflect - finding it to be one of the darkest objects ever examined.

It was 'pitch-dark', reflecting just two per cent of the light that hit the samples.

They also discovered that the bulk density of the samples was much lower than expected for a carbonaceous meteorite - which this resembles.

It suggests the rocks are very porous, with pockets of empty space for water and gas to flow, between the grains of material in the rocks.

The second paper, by Cedric Pilorget and team, from the Paris-Saclay University in France, looked at its chemical makeup, by examining it in different wavelengths of light - in the visible and infrared spectrums.

Professor Pilorget and colleagues discovered that the sample is composed of a hydrated matrix, such as clay, with a variety of organic matter embedded.

However, they also found that some of the individual parts of the sample were made of substances such as carbonates and volatile compounds.

'Some of the material properties were close to those of the carbonaceous chondrites that we have in our collections, while some were clearly distinct,' Pilorget said.

Professor Pilorget and colleagues discovered that the sample is composed of a hydrated matrix, such as clay, with a variety of organic matter embedded

Hayabusa2 first visited Ryugu in June 2018; from there, it took measurements and samples of the asteroid, before leaving for Earth in November 2019

This isn't the first study to suggest that Ryugu may be more porous than first thought, with a team from Rikkyo University determining that boulders on the asteroid would have an average porosity of more than 70 per cent.

This would be as high as the earliest planetesimals, or early proto-planets from the dawn of the solar system, 4.6 billion years ago.

As well as opening the door to questions on the origin of the solar system, the samples confirm that Ryugu is a carbon-rich chondrite asteroid - but darker, more porous and more fragile than any meteorite sample previously examined.

'We are just at the beginning of our investigations, but our results suggest that these samples are among the most primordial material available in our laboratories,' explained Pilorget, in an interview with LiveScience.

They don't know the exact age of the material, but suspect they date to the very earliest formation of the solar system - and hope to confirm the age in future studies.

To understand the origins and makeup of the samples, while also preserving them for future study, they kept the material in a vacuum chamber.

Researcher, Toru Yada told LiveScience this meant they could handle the samples 'without exposing them to Earth's atmosphere'.

A NASA spacecraft is on the way back from asteroid Bennu with samples of the space rock, and multiple agencies are working on a sample return mission from Mars.

The findings have been published in Nature Astronomy.
This year's hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer  which grew to be larger than Antarctica  is finally set to close this week, atmospheric scientists have said.

Acting like a shield, ozone absorbs UV light from the sun. Its absence means more of this high-energy radiation reaches the Earth, where it can harm living cells.

The ozone layer is depleted by chemical reactions, driven by solar energy, that involve the by-products of human-made chemicals that linger in the atmosphere.

The size of the annual hole  which forms during the southern hemisphere's summer  is strongly dependant on weather conditions, and boosted by cold.

Despite these natural fluctuations, experts expect the hole to close permanently by 2050, in response to restrictions on ozone-depleting chemicals introduced in 1987.

The current hole, which has been unusually large, is on track to last only a few days less than its counterpart last year, which was the longest-lived on record since 1979.

According to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), this year's hole was the 9th largest on record, reaching 8.8 million square miles.

In fact, at its maximum extent, the hole was as large as the area of Antarctica and Europe combined, ECMWF experts told MailOnline.

In contrast, 2020's hole was the 11th largest  at 8.7 million square miles  with the largest on record having formed during 1998, at 9.4 million square miles.

Scroll down for video

This year's hole in the Earth's ozone layer  which grew to be larger than Antarctica, as pictured here on Oct. 15  is finally set to close this week, atmospheric scientists have said

The current hole, which has been unusually large, is on track to last only a few days less than its counterpart last year, which was the longest-lived on record since 1979. Pictured: the total column ozone field forecast for December 20 2021, showing how the hole has nearly closed

HOW THE ANNUAL OZONE HOLE FORMS An ozone hole presently forms over Antarctica each year during the southern hemisphere's winter. The so-called polar vortex accumulates chlorine and bromine-containing substances during the Antarctic winter, which remain inactive in the darkness. However, when the sun rises over the pole, its energy releases chemically-active chlorine and bromine atoms which break down ozone molecules, creating a local depletion in the Earth's protective ozone layer. These chemical reactions are aided by ice crystals which form in polar stratospheric clouds, with temperatures in the vortex capable of falling as low as -108.4F (-78C). Advertisement

'Both the 2020 and 2021 Antarctic ozone holes have been rather large and exceptionally long-lived,' said the ECMWF's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) director Vincent-Henri Peuch.

'These two longer-than-usual episodes in a row are not a sign that the Montreal Protocol is not working though, as without it, they would have been even larger.

'It is because of interannual variability due to meteorological and dynamical conditions that can have an important impact on the magnitude of the ozone hole and are superimposed on the long-term recovery.

'CAMS also keeps an eye on the amount of UV radiation reaching the Earths surface and weve seen in recent weeks very high UV indexes  in excess of 8  over parts of Antarctica situated below the ozone hole.'

(The UV index goes up to 11. For humans, a level of eight means a very high risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure.)

The depletion of the ozone layer was first detected by scientists in the 1970s, and was determined to be greater than could be accounted for by natural factors like temperature, weather and volcanic eruptions.

Instead, it was determined that human-made chemicals  in particular halocarbons refrigerants and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)  were exacerbating the depletion.

In 1987, these manufacture and consumption of these products began to be phased out under an international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol.

However, the fact that many ozone-depleting substances can stay up in the stratosphere for decades means the ozone layer's recovery is very slow process.

In fact, experts have predicted that it will take until the 2060s before the harmful substances used in refrigerants and spray cans have completely disappeared from the atmosphere.

'CAMS monitors and observes the ozone layer by providing reliable and free-to-access-data based on different types of satellite observations and numerical modelling,' said Dr Peuch.

This, he added, 'makes the monitoring of the inception, development and closure of the yearly ozone holes possible in a detailed way.

'The compiled data, along with our forecasts, allows us to follow the ozone season and compare its development against the ones of the last 40 years.'
The world's first octopus farm is set to open in Spain next year despite fierce opposition from the scientific community.

Conservation experts are calling for the project to be shut down amid concerns the 'sentient' animals can feel pain and emotions.

Some 350,000 tonnes of octopus are caught each year  more than 10 times the number in 1950  with the animal particularly popular as a delicacy across Asia and the Mediterranean.

Demand is so high that companies worldwide have spent decades trying to uncover the secret of how to breed the octopus in captivity, because its larvae only eat live food and need a carefully controlled environment.

Now Spanish multinational company Nueva Pescanova has announced that it will start marketing farmed octopus next summer, to sell in 2023.

Controversy: The world's first octopus farm is set to open in Spain next year despite fierce opposition from the scientific community (stock image)

INTELLIGENT OCTOPUSES ARE 'HONORARY VERTEBRATES' Octopuses are believed to be highly intelligent, more so than any other kind of invertebrates; but their learning capability is still much debated among biologists. The creatures have been known to break out of aquariums and into others in search of food, and they have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to eat crabs stored inside. They are the only invertebrate which has been shown to use tools, with some species, as pictured above right, retrieving discarded coconut shells and reassembling them to use as shelter. In laboratory experiments they can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns. In several widely contested studies, they have even been shown to practise observational learning. In some countries, octopuses are on the list of experimental animals on which surgery may not be performed without anaesthesia. British animal testing laws regard them as 'honorary vertebrates', extending them protections not afforded to other invertebrates. Advertisement

It has been suggested that the farm will produce 3,000 tonnes of octopus per year.

However, Nueva Pescanova has refused to reveal what conditions the octopuses will be kept in, including the size of the tanks, the food they will eat and how they will be killed.

Many scientists have reacted with dismay at the news, saying octopuses should never be commercially reared for food.

In a study by the London School of Economics and Political Science, experts said they were 'convinced that high-welfare octopus farming was impossible' and the government 'could consider a ban on imported farmed octopus' in future.

The research looked at more than 300 scientific studies and concluded that octopuses were 'sentient beings' that could experience pain, distress and harm as well as excitement and pleasure.

There is also no scientifically validated method for their humane slaughter, campaigners say.

A separate group of international group of researchers called for the Nueva Pescanova project to be scrapped because it is 'ethically and ecologically unjustified'.

Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) has written to the governments of a number of countries  including Spain  urging them to ban octopus farming.

Dr Elena Lara, CIWF's research manager, told the BBC: 'These animals are amazing animals.

'They are solitary, and very smart. So to put them in barren tanks with no cognitive stimulation, it's wrong for them.'

She added that anybody who had seen the Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, released on Netflix last year, would appreciate that.

The documentary follows a filmmaker who forges an unusual friendship with an octopus after going diving in a South African kelp forest.

From unlocking aquarium tanks to instantly camouflaging, octopuses are famous for engaging in complex behaviours.

In laboratory experiments they can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns.

Some 350,000 tonnes of octopus are caught each year  more than 10 times the number in 1950  with the animal particularly particular as a delicacy across Asia and the Mediterranean

Several widely contested studies also claim that they have been shown to practice observational learning.

They have even been observed using coconut and sea shells to hide and defend themselves.

However, they are also very territorial so scientists fear if there was more than one octopus in a tank they could try to eat each other.

If the octopus farm in Spain does get the go-ahead, creatures bred there would have little protection under European law.

That's because EU law covering farm animal welfare is only applied to vertebrates, or creatures that have backbones.

On its website, Nueva Pescanova says that it is 'firmly committed to aquaculture [farming seafood] as a method to reduce pressure on fishing grounds and ensure sustainable, safe, healthy, and controlled resources, complementing fishing.'

Despite this, evolutionary biologist Dr Jakob Vinther, from the University of Bristol, said octopuses were 'extremely complex beings'.

'I think as humans we need to respect that if we want to farm them or eat them,' he added.
Microplastics are able to travel across continents, according to scientists, who found them in the pristine Pyrenees mountain air, 2,800 miles from their source.

These tiny particles of plastic pollution were originally produced in Africa and add to evidence microplastics have reached everywhere on Earth - from Antarctica to the North Pole.

The microplastic pollution crossed thousands of miles of continent and ocean, according to the team from the University of Birmingham.

Previous studies suggested plastic particles were transported at 'regional scales', but the new study suggests they cross continents in the Earth's atmosphere.

It is still unclear how widespread this phenomenon is, according to the team.

Previous studies suggested plastic particles were transported at 'regional scales', but the new study suggests they cross continents in the Earth's atmosphere

Microplastics are able to travel across continents, according to scientists, who found them in the pristine Pyrenees mountain air, 2,800 miles from their source

These tiny particles of plastic pollution were originally produced in Africa and add to evidence microplastics have reached everywhere on Earth - from Antarctica to the North Pole

Microplastics can cause cell death and allergic reactions in humans Microplastic particles can cause cell death, cellular wall damage and allergic reactions in humans - at levels ingested by people via their food, a study has warned. Researchers led from the University of Hull reviewed 17 previous studies on the toxicological impacts of microplastics on human cells in a laboratory setting. The team then compared the levels of microplastics required to cause cellular damage with those taken in via drinking water, seafood and table salt. The team found that the extent of the cellular damage increased with the amount of microplastics absorbed, while irregularly-shaped particles were more harmful. However, the experts warned, the health impact on an actual human body remains unclear, as it is not known how long microplastics remain in our systems. Advertisement

The study, by Steve Allen and colleagues from the University of Birmingham, involved collecting atmospheric microplastics from high altitude locations.

They then worked to track their original source to see how far they journeyed.

Air containing the particles was found to have travelled an average of 2,800 miles in the week up to the point it arrived at the observatory.

The particles travelled from the west and south, over the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to reach the thin air above the Pyrenees.

As well as North Africa, the researchers say particles may also have arrived from North America and western Europe.

This suggests a 'trans-continental and trans-oceanic transport through the free troposphere', which is the layer of atmosphere above the clouds.

This means that even regions with little to no local plastic usage could be impacted by microplastic sources continents away.

The pollution included bits of polystyrene and other plastic, most of which comes predominantly from packaging.

Dr Allen said: 'Previously detected in rivers, oceans, and snow, microplastic has now been found in the high-altitude air surrounding the Pic du Midi.'

The astronomical observatory is at the summit of the mountain and sits almost 9,500 feet above sea level.

For this study, the team analysed more than 10,000 cubic metres of air.

They calculated a microplastic concentration of around one particle in every four.

Dr Allen says it doesn't impose a direct threat, but regardless, its presence is far from sources of pollution, which is 'nonetheless surprising'.

'It offers an explanation for their presence at the poles, on Mount Everest, or in other remote regions of our planet,' he said.

The particles - less than five millimetres long - are invisible to the naked eye, with governments and campaigners focused on reducing proliferation.

They are driven mainly by concern for wildlife and worries over unsightly drinks bottles or abandoned fishing nets on beaches.

The microplastic pollution crossed thousands of miles of continent and ocean, according to the team from the University of Birmingham

More than 4 MILLION pounds of microplastic is stored in coral Microplastics are a danger to ocean life, as the pollution carries traces of metals and toxic chemicals and a new study reveals their impact on coral. A team of scientist from the University Giessen in Germany found up to four million pounds of microplastics may be stored in coral skeletons every year. And the research determined nearly three percent of the toxic pollutants are estimated to be in the shallow, tropical waters where corals thrive. Corals consume microplastics thinking they are food, which can cause bleaching and tissue necrosis in the living organisms. Advertisement

Plastic bag usage has been cut in many parts of the world, and various projects are exploring how to gather up the floating waste in oceans.

But little has yet been done to deal with the 'hidden risks' of polluting particles humans cannot see - known as microplastics.

They also come from cleaning and cosmetic products, tyres and fibres shed from tumble driers and washing machines.

Microplastics are in every environmental system investigated to date - including record-breaking quantities in river sediments in the UK.

Finding them in the remote air over the Pyrenees came as a surprise to Dr Allen, who said the region is normally considered pristine.

'The emerging threat of atmospheric microplastic pollution has prompted researchers to study areas previously considered beyond the reach of plastic.

'Investigating the range of transport is key to understanding the global extent of this problem,' Dr Allen said.

Their occurrence in the 'free troposphere' - the lowest region of Earth's atmosphere - shows they can travel further than previously feared.

'It also indicates a potential risk to environmental and human health due to absorbed chemicals and bacteria or virus being transported long distances to pristine locations and vulnerable areas,' said Dr Allen.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.
A new genus of bird-like dinosaur with huge slashing talons and finely serrated teeth that was an ancient relative of the Velociraptor has been found on the Isle of Wight.

The creature has been named 'Vectiraptor greeni' in honour of local collector Mike Green, who found its fossils at Compton Bay, on the island's south coast, in 2004.

Palaeontologists from the Universities of Bath and Portsmouth who studied the find said that it was 10 feet long in life  bigger than its Velociraptor descendants.

The team believe that the feathered V. greeni used brute strength to overcome its prey, using its killer talons to ruthlessly dispatch its prey.

It lived some 125 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous  50 million years before Velociraptors evolved  at which time the Isle of Wight was a forest.

The discovery marks the first time a large raptor has ever been found in England.

A new genus of bird-like dinosaur with huge slashing talons and finely serrated teeth (depicted) that was an ancient relative of the Velociraptor has been found on the Isle of Wight

The creature has been named 'Vectiraptor greeni' in honour of local collector Mike Green, who found its fossil bones (pictured) at Compton Bay , on the island's south coast, in 2004

Palaeontologists from the Universities of Bath and Portsmouth who studied the find said that it was 10 feet long in life  bigger than its Velociraptor descendants. Pictured: a silhouette for scale of a man and Vectiraptor greeni (with the position of its recovered bones in white)

The team believe that the feathered V. greeni used brute strength to overcome its prey, using its killer talons to ruthlessly dispatch its prey. Pictured: one of the predator's fossilised bones

ABOUT THE RAPTORS Vectiraptor belonged to a group of dinosaurs known both as the dromaeosaurs and raptors. These bird like-dinosaurs were specialist hunters and  just like their modern counterparts  were covered in feathers. They sported huge scythe-shaped claws on their feet that were likely used to slash at their prey, along with blade-like serrated teeth ideal for tearing through flesh. Well-known raptor species include Velociraptor  found in Mongolia  and, from the US, Deinonychus and giant Utahraptor. Advertisement

The new species  whose remains to date consist only of a pair of vertebrae and part of the hips  has been described by palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist Nicholas Longrich of the University of Bath and his colleagues.

'This was a large, and very heavily constructed animal,' Dr Longrich explained.

'The bones are thick-walled and massive. It clearly didn't hunt small prey, but animals as large or larger than itself.'

This means that V. greeni, while not the biggest fish in its pond, would nevertheless have posed a threat to smaller dinosaurs and the young of larger species of the time.

The top predators of the Early Cretaceous in what we know as Britain included the allosaur Neovenator, spinosaurs like Baryonyx and an early tyrannosaur called Eotyrannus, the researchers explained.

Given its strong limbs and talons, it is possible that V. greeni was able  much like modern leopards  to climb trees. Certainly, the team noted, its heavy bones suggest an animal that relied on strength and surprise, not speed, to tackle its prey.

V. greeni, Dr Longrich added, provides 'a tantalising hint at the diversity of dinosaurs in England at this time.'

'This dinosaur is incredibly exciting, adding to the huge diversity of dinosaurs here on the Isle of Wight and helping to build a bigger picture of the Early Cretaceous world,' agreed paper co-author Megan Jacobs of the University of Portsmouth.

'This little dinosaur also serves as an excellent example of the importance of amateur fossil collectors, and how working with them can produce important scientific research, which would otherwise not be possible.'

Given its strong limbs and talons, it is possible that V. greeni was able  much like modern leopards  to climb trees. Certainly, the team noted, its heavy bones suggest an animal that relied on strength and surprise, not speed, to tackle its prey

V. greeni lived some 125 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous  50 million years before Velociraptors evolved  at which time the Isle of Wight was a forest. Pictured: cross-sections of the Vectiraptor's bones in close-up

V. greeni, while not the biggest fish in its pond, would nevertheless have posed a threat to smaller dinosaurs and the young of larger species of the time. The top predators of the Early Cretaceous in what we know as Britain included the allosaur Neovenator, spinosaurs like Baryonyx and an early tyrannosaur called Eotyrannus (depicted in silhouette), the team said

'There's an extraordinary diversity of dinosaurs known in England in the Cretaceous, and even after more than a century of study, we continue to find new species,' explained Dr Longrich.

At this time, when Earth's continents were positioned much closer together, it is thought that England was something of a crossroads for dinosaur species  a fact supported by the discovery of other raptors in Mongolia and the Unite States.

'Although palaeontologists have been studying these dinosaurs for a long time, it's hard going,' Dr Longrich added.

'We have to wait for the sea cliffs to fall and expose bits of bone, or for the waves to wash them out of the rocks.

'We've spent two centuries on the Isle of Wight piecing together our picture of English dinosaurs,' he concluded.

With their investigation of the specimen complete, the fossil has been donated to the Dinosaur Isle Museum at Sandown on the Isle of Wight.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Cretaceous Research.

At this time, when Earth's continents were positioned much closer together, it is thought that England was something of a crossroads for dinosaur species  a fact supported by the discovery of other raptors in Mongolia and the Unite States. Pictured: a map of the landmasses of the Cretaceous, showing potential dinosaur dispersal routes

'This dinosaur is incredibly exciting, adding to the huge diversity of dinosaurs here on the Isle of Wight and helping to build a bigger picture of the Early Cretaceous world,' said paper co-author Megan Jacobs of the University of Portsmouth. Pictured: Compton Bay

The creature has been named 'Vectiraptor greeni' in honour of local collector Mike Green, who found its fossil at Compton Bay , on the island's south coast, in 2004
Paul Merson believes Gabriel Martinelli is like a '50million new signing' for Arsenal after the Brazilian's recent spike in form for Mikel Arteta's Gunners.

The 20-year-old attacker has scored four goals and registered two assists in his last six Premier League outings in north London, including a brace in the 4-1 victory over Leeds last Saturday.

The Brazilian's form has coincided to Arsenal's rise up the Premier League table to the Champions League places, but former Gunners midfielder Merson has raised questions about the winger's fitness.

Paul Merson has described in-form Gabriel Martinelli (left) as a '50m new signing' for Arsenal

The Brazilian has four goals and two assists in his last six Premier League games for Arsenal

Martinelli is a very special talent, Merson told Sky Sports. I like him, but the question is: how long is he going to be fit for?

If he can maintain his fitness, Arsenal have got a new signing  a 50m player.

On top of that theres Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe, Martin Odegaard is starting to look like the decent player he was meant to be when he arrived at Arsenal, Thomas Partey is starting to play now.

Martinelli has recently returned to the Arsenal starting line-up after struggling with injury problems over the past 18 months,

However, Merson (above) has questioned whether the 20-year-old 'special talent' can stay fit

The Brazilian picked up an anterior cruciate ligament at the start of 2020 which ruled him out until the end of the calendar year, before sitting on the substitutes' bench for most of the next 12 months.

But Martinelli has now taken advantage of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's exile from the Arsenal team following his axe as Gunners captain, with the north Londoners now sitting in fourth place as we near the half-way stage of the Premier League season.

Merson has called on his former club to start showing some consistency but claims defeats in big matches - such as recent losses to Manchester United and Liverpool - will not define their success this term.

Arsenal are starting to look decent but, as I say, they are still a bag of Revels, you put your hand in and youre never sure what youre going to get!

Martinelli's (right) goals have helped Mikel Arteta's (left) side into the top four at Christmas

They got beat at Old Trafford and Goodison Park, Manchester United and Everton didnt play well those two games, they werent, they just beat Arsenal. The problem with Arsenal is consistency, that has been their problem for the last 10 years.

They will put in some good performances, weve just seen that against Southampton, West Ham and Leeds, and they have a chance of finishing in the top four because they are not in Europe and play just once a week.

Arsenal do deserve credit for being in the mix, as long as they carry on beating the teams beneath them they have a chance.

If they lose against any of the big three it wont make a difference because none of the other teams vying for fourth will beat the big three.
The Apprentice will return for its stellar 16th series in January.

The BBC's award-winning business show will kick off in its new Thursday night slot from January 6, promising plenty of fireworks in the highly anticipated comeback - with Lord Sugar looking as brooding as ever in a new publicity shot.

The Amstrad mogul, 74, is joined by longtime ally and advisor Baroness Karren Brady and series one winner Tim Campbell, who is replacing an injured Claude Littner for the series. Claude is recovering from multiple surgeries after a serious accident.

Filming for this series was planned to begin in Spring 2020 but the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic forced the BBC to postpone production to a later date.

It's back! The Apprentice will return for a stellar 16th series in January after being forced off air for two years due to Covid, with the line-up posing in a new publicity shot (from L-R: Baroness Karren Brady, Lord Alan Sugar and Tim Campbell)

In May, it was announced that filming would finally take place later in the year.

With 16 new candidates competing to win a life-changing 250,000 investment in their business, the series launches with a challenge that is anything but plain sailing.

Aboard a brand-new cruise ship laid on by Lord Sugar, the candidates are split into teams as they're tasked with designing an advertising campaign for a destination cruise.

Anticipated return: The BBC's award-winning business show will kick off in its new Thursday night slot, promising plenty of fireworks in the highly anticipated comeback

After being thrown in the deep end during the first task, those who do survive will face a host of equally daunting challenges ahead as relationships are tested and competitive drive is flared.

The tasks include being launched into the world of children's oral care, an adventurous brief to boost Welsh tourism with zip lines and steam trains - and the development of an original video game concept will also take things up another level.

The budding entrepreneurs will also find themselves in the spotlight as they sell live on TV, negotiate fishy waters in Cornwall and navigate a racing inspired corporate away day at Silverstone.

There will be no easing gently back into boardroom life this series as Lord Sugar makes no secret that the stakes are higher than ever.

Resting up: While Lord Alan Sugar, 74 will have trusted advisor Baroness Karren Brady back by his side, Claude Littner (pictured) will be taking a series break as he recovers from multiple surgeries after a serious accident

Each task will end with the candidates being summoned in to fight their corner in the boardroom, with one final opportunity to escape the firing line.

Speaking from the boardroom in the first episode, Lord Sugar said: 'I must say, we are glad to be back in the boardroom again. But don't for one minute think I've gone soft. Due to the pandemic, the world of business is tougher than ever before and the same goes for this process. In this boardroom you don't get furloughed, you get fired.'

Over the years, Lord Sugar has invested close to a staggering 3million into winning pitches and this year's ambitious entrepreneurs will be doing their utmost to prove they mean business as they fight it out for the life-changing investment opportunity.

Comedian, writer and actor Tom Allen returns as host of The Apprentice: You're Fired, which will air each week on BBC Two straight after the main show.

Casting a wry eye over each week's events, Tom will be joined by a host of celebrity fans and business professionals to dissect and debate the candidates progress through each task.

Two special episodes, The Final Five and Why I Fired Them, will also return to reveal the stories behind the series before the finale.

The Final Five reflects on the journey of the candidates who make it through to the interviews, before they battle it out to secure their place in the final. Before the series finale, Lord Sugar will also reveal a further insight into his boardroom decisions in Why I Fired Them.

The Apprentice will air weekly on Thursdays at 9pm on BBC One from 6th January 2022, followed by Youre Fired on BBC Two
She's never been shy about sharing her many opinions on Covid-19.

And Abbie Chatfield has revealed she is 'losing her mind' over fears she might have contracted the Omicron strain, in a series of Instagram videos on Monday.

The 26-year-old also revealed why so many Australians are convinced they have coronavirus even though they don't.

Under pressure: Abbie Chatfield has revealed she is 'losing her mind' over fears she might have contracted the Omicron strain of Covid, in a series of Instagram videos on Monday

She pointed out that many Sydneysiders are convinced they have a fever simply because the city is going through a heatwave.

'Why am I so warm? Do I have a fever?' mused the Bachelor star.

'Oh [don't worry] it's just been 30 degrees in Sydney today,' she added, answering her own question.

'Can I feel my lymph nodes pulsing?' she asked in another Story, before adding: 'Oh that's just my literal pulse'.

Jumping at shadows: The 26-year-old pointed out that many Sydneysiders are convinced they have a fever because the city is going through a heatwave

Scared: Abbie is vigilantly testing for the virus, including taking an at-home rapid antigen test

She said she was vigilantly testing for the virus, including taking an at-home rapid antigen test.

Abbie revealed that she perhaps even went overboard with her testing, swabbing herself 'double time, triple time even'.

The test ultimately returned a negative result for Covid.

Too far: Abbie revealed that she perhaps even went overboard with her testing, swabbing herself 'double time, triple time even'

Her posts come after the influencer revealed she had received a horrifying death threat from an anti-vaxxer who tracked down her home address.

Last Wednesday, the public health advocate shared a private message she had received on Instagram from a troll account with zero followers.

The anonymous sender said they knew where she lived and warned: 'Watch your back door, could be now or in five years from now hahaha they're watching you.'

Credible threat: Influencer and public health advocate Abbie Chatfield (pictured) has received a horrifying death threat from an anti-vax extremist who tracked down her home address

The same account messaged her a day later: 'Good luck, you will need it.'

Abbie, who is known for her pro-vaccine stance, posted the threatening messages and asked her followers: 'Any suggestions of how to deal with this?'

She said she'd already contacted the police but they 'don't do anything' about anonymous death threats on social media.

'They either gaslight you and say you're being dramatic and to 'block them' or they say they can't do anything until they actually kill you,' she wrote.

Abbie rents an apartment in Sydney's eastern suburbs and also recently bought a home in Byron Bay. It's unclear which address was threatened specifically.

Horror: Abbie last week shared a menacing private message she'd received on Instagram from a troll account with zero followers

It's not the first time Abbie, who is dating former Bachelorette star Konrad Bien-Stephens, has spoken out about online trolling.

In October, she said she feared for her safety after receiving a string of anonymous death threats from anti-vaxxer trolls.

Abbie spoke about her ordeal during an interview with HIT Queensland's Cliffo & Gabi radio show.

When asked how she deals with online criticism, Abbie explained that while trolling usually 'doesn't both her', things had changed since the pandemic took hold.

'The anti-vaxxer trolls, they're a new breed,' she said.

Response: She said she'd already contacted the police but they 'don't do anything' about anonymous death threats on social media

'Voice note death threats are the worst ones; the text ones are fine, but the voice notes are scary,' she added.

'And the cops can't do anything, so you just have to put [the evidence] in a folder. I just screen-record it... just in case something happens to me, they'll know who did it.'

The radio hosts asked Abbie whether the messages had left her feeling afraid, and she replied: 'Yeah, I'm pretty scared... I do double check my locks at night.'

Worrying: In October, the former Bachelor star said she feared for her safety after receiving a string of anonymous death threats from anti-vaxxer trolls
Footy WAG Rebecca Judd has once again spoken out about the growing Omicron fears in Australia.

The 38-year-old influencer shared a screenshot on Instagram Stories from an article in The Australian by columnist Nick Cater, who is the executive director of the Menzies Research Centre.

Bec urged her followers to put the Omicron case numbers in 'perspective' - and seemed to agree that the new Covid-19 variant is one 'we may be able to live with'.

Having her say: Footy WAG Rebecca Judd has urged Aussies to look at the Omicron outbreak in 'perspective', saying it could be the Covid-19 variant 'we're able to live with'

The article said those who are infected with the Omicron variant and fully vaccinated are less likely to be hospitalised.

'The arrival of Omicron will be a blessing, not a curse, if data from South Africa holds good,' the column stated.

'Many of those it has infected so far have not developed symptoms, and the evidence so far is that a far smaller proportion of them will need hospital treatment.

'Oh that our public health officials had the character to tell us that and calm our fears, rather than exacerbating them. We should not have to delve into the data on the internet to reassure ourselves that Omicron is the variant we may be able to live with.'

Doing some research: Bec shared a screenshot on Instagram from an article in The Australian by columnist Nick Cater, who is the executive director of the Menzies Research Centre

The article went on to discuss the findings in the Doherty Institute modelling, which said vaccinations can help prevent people from going into intensive care with Covid, which the government has used to enable a road out of lockdown and restrictions.

Bec, who is the wife of AFL star Chris Judd, last month said all signs point to the mutation being a blessing in disguise after almost two years of gruelling lockdowns.

She reposted an article by Sky News commentator Rita Panahi that contrasted the hysteria of 'Covid catastrophists' with the more measured views of scientists who believe Omicron will not spell disaster for Australia.

The article quoted experts as saying Omicron symptoms so far appear to be mild - certainly less severe than the Delta strain - with many patients being asymptomatic.

'Brilliant article, Rita Panahi,' the mother of four, 38, wrote on Instagram Stories.

'For anyone triggered by the arrival of Omicron (myself included) and the associated "fearmongering for clicks" media articles, please read this.

'The expert opinions offered from many professionals are pointing in the right direction.'

Ms Panahi's column for the Herald Sun quoted former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth as saying Omicron could be the magic bullet that saves Australia from a more serious variant of Covid.

'If this is milder than Delta you actually want it to spread within your community,' Dr Coatsworth, the face of Australia's vaccine rollout, recently said on the Today show.

Findings: The article stated those who are infected with the Omicron variant and fully vaccinated are less likely to be hospitalised. It comes after Bec last month said all signs point to the mutation being a blessing in disguise after almost two years of gruelling lockdowns

'You want it to outcompete Delta and become the predominant circulating virus. So that shows you how much more we have learn about this

'It could be that we want Omicron to spread around the world as quickly as possible.'

The article also cited leading epidemiologist Professor Greg Dore, who said the best 'response to uncertainty is to accelerate evidence gathering' rather than 'pulling the panic levers'.

Ms Panahi went on to quote Dr Angelique Coetzee, the Chair of the South African Medical Association, as saying: 'For patients with mild disease we have easily treated them at home with no complications up until now; they're all healthy.

'It might be the same The same type of infectiousness as the Delta variant but the severity [of symptoms] that we are currently seeing is not so severe.'

On Tuesday, NSW reported a record high of 3,057 new Covid cases and 284 hospitalisations. Victoria reported 1,245 cases and 392 in hospital.
She is about to enjoy her fifth Aussie Christmas after her release from Bali prison for drug smuggling and deportation back home in 2017.

And Schapelle Corby began her festive celebrations early this year, posting a series of photos with her friends and family, including her sister Mercedes, to Instagram on Monday.

'And So It Begins ... Festive Season 2021,' the 44-year-old captioned the post.

'And So It Begins ... Festive Season 2021': Schapelle Corby began her festive celebrations early this year, posting a series of photos with her friends and family, including her sister Mercedes, to Instagram on Monday

The series of pictures showed the group of women smiling for the camera with a Christmas tree in the background.

As the images progressed, Schapelle comically lifted a big bottle of champagne towards her mouth.

The SAS Australia star also posted a selfie with Santa Claus at Waterford Plaza in Waterford West, Queensland and shared it to her Stories.

Joker: As the images progressed, Schapelle comically lifted a big bottle of champagne towards her mouth

Santa's little helper! The SAS Australia star also posted a selfie with Santa Claus at Waterford Plaza in Waterford West, Queensland and shared it to her Stories.

Schapelle celebrated her first Australian Christmas at the end of 2017.

She shared festive snaps with her family members and another photo with Santa to Instagram at the time.

For 10 years, between 2004 to 2013, Schapelle was forced to spend the festive season behind bars in Bali's most notorious prison - Hotel Kerobokan.

In Indonesia, well-behaved prisoners have their sentences cut on religious holidays as part of an annual remission program.

Home at last! Schapelle celebrated her first Australian Christmas after prison at the end of 2017. Pictured: A youthful Schapelle sits on Santa's lap

Schapelle had sentence cuts in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. She did not receive remissions in 2007 after being caught with a mobile phone.

Schapelle was arrested at Ngurah Rai airport on October 8, 2004 after being found with 4.1kg of marijuana wrapped in plastic inside her boogie board bag.

Schapelle has always maintained her innocence, denying the drugs belonged to her and insisting they were planted without her knowledge.

She was sentenced to 20 years at her 2005 trial, spending almost a decade in prison.
Former Home and Away actress Pia Whitesell has been living a life of luxury since moving to Los Angeles to be with her multimillionaire Hollywood agent husband Patrick earlier this year.

And on Monday, the couple began their Christmas festivities with their nearest and dearest during a family trip to Cabo, Mexico.

Posting to her Instagram Stories, Pia, 38, shared footage of a stunning pool and beach view at their accommodation.

Beach babe! Bikini-clad Pia Whitesell enjoyed pre-Christmas celebrations with her family and Hollywood agent husband Patrick in Mexico on Monday

She followed it up with a video alongside her partner, her mum Angelica, brother Jesus and sister-in-law, Stephanie Loyola.

In the footage, the brunette beauty was beach ready in a tiny lilac strapless bikini.

'Cabo with the familia,' she simply captioned the video, showing the group enjoying lunch at a beach-side restaurant.

Bikini-clad: In the footage, the brunette beauty was beach ready in a tiny lilac strapless bikini

On holiday: 'Cabo with the familia,' she captioned a video showing the group enjoying lunch at a beach-side restaurant. Pia (left) pictured with her sister-in-law, Stephanie Loyola

Nice view! Posting to her Instagram Stories on Monday, Pia, 38, shared footage of a stunning pool and beach view at their accommodation

Pia's post comes after she and Patrick enjoyed VIP seating at a Stevie Wonder concert in New York.

On Saturday night, the model looked appeared completely overjoyed as she sat front row at the event at David Geffen Hall.

Sharing several posts to her Instagram Stories at the time, Pia filmed the 71-year-old music icon in action at the piano.

Great seats: Pia's post comes after she and Patrick enjoyed VIP seating at a Stevie Wonder concert in New York last weekend

She also shared a photo of herself posing in front of the stage, looking thrilled to be there.

Further videos showed the Macabalm business owner clutching her face and saying 'Oh my god!' as she was overcome with emotion during the performance.

Pia relocated from Sydney to Los Angeles to be with her Hollywood agent husband Patrick Whitesell, 56, earlier this year.

Last week, she flew over to Las Vegas for a UFC match on a private jet, posting to her Instagram Stories to share candid moments from the match between Charles Oliveira and Dustin Poirier.

The star looked radiant as she nestled in close to Patrick for a front-row selfie, stunning in a black silk ensemble that revealed her lithe arms.

Patrick, who has amassed an estimated US$440million fortune (AU$642million), also dressed in black and beamed for the camera.

Fun: Pia relocated from Sydney to Los Angeles to be with her Hollywood agent husband Patrick Whitesell, 56, earlier this year. Last week, she flew over to Las Vegas for a UFC match on a private jet with Patrick (right) by her side

'You,' Pia simply captioned the photo alongside a love heart emoji.

Pia, who played police officer Kat Chapman on Aussie soap opera Home and Away from 2015 and 2018, married Patrick in May.

She announced her engagement to Patrick, the executive chairman of the Endeavor Talent Agency, on November 28 last year.
Queen guitarist Brian May has begged his fans to get the Covid vaccine as he continues his 'truly horrible' battle with the illness.

The musician, 74, announced on Saturday that he had tested positive for COVID-19, sharing a picture of his lateral flow test result on Instagram, insisting he had made the 'wrong decision' to go to a birthday lunch with wife Anita Dobson, 72.

And on Sunday he took to the social media site to implore his followers to protect themselves against the virus by getting jabbed, adding that the 'battle inside my body is still in progress' as he detailed his symptoms.

Speaking out: Queen guitarist Brian May, 74, has begged his fans to get the Covid vaccine as he continues his 'truly horrible' battle with the illness

In a video, he said: 'We decided we would go to a birthday lunch and we thought, well this is the last social function we would go to  not that we go to many anyway, well chance it, everybodys going to be triple-jabbed, everybodys going to be with one of these things [lateral flow test] which says youll be negative on the morning.'

Brian said he did not wear a mask at the party as he thought it was in a bubble and therefore safe.

He explained that two days after the party he learned eight guests had tested positive for Covid and both he and Anita were starting to notice symptoms despite testing negative on their lateral flow tests.

Open book: Brian also wrote about his Covid experience in a separate Instagram post, saying: 'My body was invaded by enough Coronavirus organisms to bring me down'

Unwanted result: The musician announced on Saturday that he had tested positive for COVID-19 , sharing a picture of his lateral flow test result on Instagram

Expressing his gratitude at having relatively mild symptoms, Brian told his fans: 'I cant emphasise to you enough: This is not the response that my body would have made on its own. Its making this response because Ive had three Pfizer jabs.

'And I beg you, and implore you, to go and get jabbed if youre not already. Because you need the help.

In a separate post, Brian wrote on the eighth day of his 10 day quarantine: 'Day 8 for me - the 8th day after my body was invaded by enough Coronavirus organisms to bring me down.

'Firstly, I think I was a little too optimistic yesterday, imagining that the red T line was looking fainter. Its a different test kit today - but the lines look pretty much of equal intensity today.

'So Im assuming the battle inside my body is still in progress. It also feels like it - that dry wheezy cough has returned today, and there is a kind of fountain of irritation on one side of my sinuses.

'I also keep falling asleep - not in a peaceful kind of way, but in a I cant keep my eyes open another second kind of way. So its a damn good job this happened at a time when Im NOT crazy busy as usual.'

Mistake: Brian said he'd made the 'wrong decision' to go to a birthday lunch with wife Anita Dobson, 72, where he believed the guests were vaccinated (pictured November)

He continued: 'Sorry - this stuff isnt entertaining any more - but I figure at least I can report it as info that might help somebody out there to feel less apprehensive.

'Im fundamentally OK. Just feeling a bit c**p and frustrated at not being able to be out and about at this time of year. But I think were all feeling a bit of that - right ?

'And its so clear that the new Omicron variant is completely out of control in the UK. And probably in the whole world of humans.

'Talking of which .. does anybody out there know WHICH variant they caught? I dont.

'I have been told that this information isnt available from the NHS tests. If thats the case, where are all these statistics coming from every day? Id be very interested to hear from anyone who knows the answer to this.

On the mend? 'It has been a truly horrible few days, but Im OK. And I will tell the tale,' May wrote, suggesting he was on the upswing

'Cheers all, and good luck out there. I say again  its very apparent now that although the lateral flow test is a useful guide, if you get a negative result tomorrow morning, you cannot 100% guarantee that you are not infected and infectious all day.

'So for the sake of everyone around you, keep the caution going - masks, social distance, common sense - and only go to a gathering in an enclosed space if you are really sure the risk is worth it.

'As my dear Mum used to say (in half-jest)  Do as I say - not as I do!"'

Brian told fans he had contracted coronavirus in an Instagram post last week.

'Yep. The shocking day finally came for me. The dreaded double red line,' he began his post.

The star included a close-up of what appeared to be a self-administered rapid antigen test.

He urged his fans not to bother with 'sympathy', as his condition seemed to be on the upswing.

'It has been a truly horrible few days, but Im OK. And I will tell the tale,' he continued.

The musician urged his followers and fans to 'PLEASE take extra care out there, good folks,' as the novel coronavirus was 'incredibly transmissible'.

'You really do NOT want it messing up YOUR Christmas,' he concluded, before signing off and wish his fans 'love'.

Frenemies: The Queen guitarist told The Independent in August that Eric Clapton (pictured in 2020) and other anti-vaxxers are 'fruitcakes'; Clapton seen in March 2020 in London

Brian has previously been vocal about his contempt for fellow guitarist Eric Clapton after he expressed anti-vaccine views and vowed not to perform in venues that require proof of vaccination against COVID-19.

'I love Eric Clapton, hes my hero, but he has very different views from me in many ways,' Brian told The Independent in August. 'Hes a person who thinks its OK to shoot animals for fun, so we have our disagreements, but I would never stop respecting the man.'

He then defended the science on the value of vaccinations and described vaccine conspiracy theorists as 'fruitcakes.'

'Anti-vax people, Im sorry, I think theyre fruitcakes,' he said. 'Theres plenty of evidence to show that vaccination helps. On the whole, theyve been very safe. Theres always going to be some side effect in any drug you take, but to go around saying vaccines are a plot to kill you, Im sorry, that goes in the fruitcake jar for me.'

Safe and effective: May went on to defend the science behind vaccines. 'On the whole, theyve been very safe,' he said; pictured in February 2020 in Sydney, Australia

The star's positive test comes amid a rise in coronavirus cases in the UK as the Omicron variant continues to grow in prominence.

At least 91,743 people tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday as Omicron threatens to wreck Christmas, with scientists urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose increased restrictions in a bid to curb the virus.

Johnson has rolled out a booster vaccine programme to curb the spread of Omicron. The booster dose will reach all double-vaccinated adults - excluding those who are ineligible - by January 11

Brian is best known for his blistering solos and lead lines with the band Queen, which featured the late Freddie Mercury on vocals, Roger May on drums and John Deacon on bass.

The band experienced a renewed wave of popularity following the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody, which earned Rami Malek an Academy Award for his portrayal of Mercury.

Health troubles: May suffered a heart attack earlier this year, which he said could have killed him. He later suffered a stomach hemorrhage from his heart medications, though he has since said he's doing well; pictured with Adam Lambert in 2019

In October 2020, Brian told Good Morning Britain 'I nearly lost my life' after he suffered a heart attack back in May, which required stents to be inserted to open blocked arteries.

He also admitted that he'd suffered a stomach haemorrhage, apparently as a result of the medications he was taking for his heart.

'It was pretty bad, and the complications that came afterwards were pretty bad,' he shared.

But the rocker added that he was focused on 'cardio rehab' now and said he was feeling much better.

'I'm getting strong. I'm going to be Ironman soon,' he joked.

Music makers: Brian (second from right) is pictured here with Queen band members Roger Taylor, Freddie Mercury and John Deason in January 1978
Georgia Fowler welcomed her daughter Dylan just three months ago.

And on Tuesday, the 29-year-old model showed off her post-pregnancy body while cradling her little one for a collage of Instagram snaps.

She posed for a series of mirror selfies as she held the adorable bub in front of her.

Mum and bub! Former Victoria's Secret model Georgia Fowler flaunted her sensational post-pregnancy body in a white bikini while holding her daughter Dylan on Tuesday

She wore a white bikini, including a crop top and high-cut bottoms, which drew attention to her long legs.

As the Victoria's Secret star pulled several facial expressions for the camera, her baby appeared to be more interested by her own reflection.

Earlier this month, Georgia shared a photo of herself breastfeeding her daughter and said feeding a newborn was 'a full-time job'.

Matching! Georgia wore a white bikini, including a crop top and high-cut bottoms, which drew attention to her long legs. Dylan also donned a white onesie

Making faces: As Georgia pulled several facial expressions for the camera, her baby appeared to be more interested by her own reflection

'Those early weeks of engorgement, the worry about your supply, the leaks through your tops, and, well, everywhere else - it's a messy time,' she wrote.

Promoting a range of eco-friendly baby products, Georgia offered a few encouraging words of support to fellow new mums: 'Go mamas, you got this.'

Georgia welcomed Dylan with her businessman boyfriend Nathan Dalah on September 17.

Candid: Earlier this month, Georgia shared a photo of herself breastfeeding her daughter and said feeding a newborn was 'a full-time job'

Motherhood: 'Those early weeks of engorgement, the worry about your supply, the leaks through your tops, and, well, everywhere else - it's a messy time,' she wrote in the post

The New Zealand-born beauty announced she was expecting her first child with the Fishbowl co-founder in April.

In November, Georgia paid tribute to her little girl on her two-month birthday, revealing her sweet nickname.

'Two months of Diddy. Thanks for being the coolest, most serene, and now the smiliest bub out. (And for sleeping six-hour stints). We love you more than life itself,' she wrote on Instagram.
The Real Housewives of Orange County star Noella Bergener said that her estranged husband 'Sweet' James Bergener left their family five months ago and relocated from Southern California to Puerto Rico, where he's attempted to send her divorce papers.

Noella, 36, on Sunday posted a long caption alongside a clip from the Bravo series showing 'the hell [she is] still in' after she was served with divorce papers by James, a personal injury attorney who she has been with for six years and married to since June of 2020.

Noella, who is mother to daughter Coco, seven, from a previous marriage, and James Jr., two, who is autistic, with James, said that three weeks before James left 'behind his life, family and home,' they had been arguing over tax debts she learned about.

The latest: The Real Housewives of Orange County star Noella Bergener, 36, said that her estranged husband 'Sweet' James Bergener left their family five months ago and relocated from Southern California to Puerto Rico, where he's attempted to send her divorce papers

She said that James has not visited their son, explained why he left or provided financial relief amid the difficult timeframe.

'My cards are still shut off, he hasnt paid a dime in support, he stopped paying for our home and is currently holding up our divorce unless I sign a statement saying that I lied about him, his business partner and his brand,' she said.

Noella said that James is the 'father of [her] child' and she wants him 'to be well,' and that she isn't looking to 'encourage James bashing with this post.'

Noella said that she has decided to remain on the Bravo series 'because frankly it was the only thing getting [her] out of bed and with the hope that others going through something similar could understand theyre not alone.'

Noella posted a long caption alongside a clip from the Bravo series showing 'the hell [she is] still in' after she was served with divorce papers by James, a personal injury attorney who she has been with for six years and married to since June of 2020

In the clip she posted, Noella was seen talking with her friend Nicole James about the issues she was dealing with in the wake of her spouse's departure

Noella is mother to Coco, seven, from a previous marriage, and James Jr., two

Noella said she has tried through a third party to reach out to James 'to provide insight' to his decisions, 'which he has repeatedly declined.'

In the clip she posted, Noella was seen talking with her friend Nicole James about the issues she was dealing with in the wake of his departure.

'I still need to find him in order to turn back on the credit cards and make sure the rent gets paid and in order to move forward with my son's therapy,' she said.

In another sequence, Noella told the show's Shannon Beador that James Jr.'s autism diagnosis 'was definitely a curveball we didn't anticipate,' and has 'been a journey.'

Noella has been candid about the lack of financial and parental support she has had in the wake of her husband leaving

Noella, speaking with People last week, said that amid 'ignorance' and a 'lack of education,' she perceived James Jr.'s autism diagnosis earlier this year as a 'death sentence.'

She said that her son has improved 'leaps and bounds' after she placed him in programs involving speech pathologists and pediatricians.

Noella said she was speaking out about the family's experience to 'help other families and really get the word out on how important early intervention is' when it comes to getting children evaluated.

The Real Housewives of Orange County can be seen on Bravo Wednesdays at 9/8c.
Mario Lopez looked happy to be soaking up some rays while staying at a resort on the Turks and Caicos Islands Monday.

The actor, 48, took a picture next to his beloved wife while sitting in a bright blue pool in Providenciales.

He posed without a shirt, in a pair of bright white shorts and a drink in hand. Lopez's better half Courtney Laine Mazza hung around his shoulders.

Enjoying his vacation: Mario Lopez looked happy to be soaking up some rays while staying at a resort on the Turks and Caicos Islands Monday

She donned a skimpy two-piece bikini while holding a green drink in her left hand.

The pair were later seen walking along a beach with his wife and kids. For that jaunt, Lopez threw on a black tank top that accentuated his bulging biceps.

The couple walked with their three children: 11-year-old Gia, 8-year-old Dominic and 2-year-old Santino.

Enjoying the cool water: Lopez and his wife were photographed sitting in the pool at the resort together

Walking with the fam: The pair were later seen walking along a beach with his wife and kids. For that jaunt, Lopez threw on a black tank top that accentuated his bulging biceps

The family of five also posed together on a small schooner while laughing and chatting.

While they're spending some time together during the holidays, the Grease Live! actor worked hard on several projects this year.

The star appeared in the second season of the Saved by the Bell reboot and in a new television movie for Lifetime titled Holiday in Santa Fe which premiered on December 10.

Family picture: The family of five also posed together on a small schooner while laughing and chatting

A very busy man: While they're spending some time together during the holidays, the Grease Live! actor worked hard on several projects this year (pictured September 2021)

Lopez recently opened up about the film in an interview with Parade.

In it, the star opened up about why he decided to do the film, calling Holiday movies 'my brand.' The former Dancing With the Stars contestant also talked about his feelings on love during the interview.

'There are no rules when it comes to love. I think thats what makes it fun and romantic. Especially during the holidays, its always a magical time and a great time to fall in love. Im a fan of romance,' Lopez said.

Watch the hit series Saved by the Bell, exclusively on Stan in Australia.
The Hit Network has hatched a plan to reinvigorate 2Day FM following years of poor ratings, insiders have revealed.

All eyes were on Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) this week after the shock departure of program director Gemma Fordham as part of a leadership restructure.

And sources say SCA is about to shake up its on-air product by poaching The Edge breakfast hosts Mike 'E' Etheridge and Emma Chow from rivals ARN.

Shake-up: Inside the plan to rebuild 2Day FM around an edgy team from a rival network - after The Morning Crew failed to find an audience and program director Gemma Fordham left the company. Pictured: The Morning Crew hosts Ed Kavalee, David Hughes and Erin Molan

The Western Sydney duo, who worked at The Edge for 11 years before departing this month, are tipped to host the Hit Network's national night show in 2022.

SCA reportedly spent 'big bucks' to get Etheridge and Chow, and it's possible there is a long-term plan for them to take over 2Day FM's Sydney breakfast slot in 2023.

The station's current breakfast show, The Morning Crew with Hughesy, Ed and Erin, has struggled in the ratings since its inception in 2020.

The program clocked a disappointing 2.7 per cent market share in the latest survey.

Exit: All eyes were on Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) this week after the shock departure of program director Gemma Fordham (pictured) as part of a leadership restructure

Edgy new show: Sources say SCA is about to shake up its on-air product by poaching The Edge breakfast hosts Mike 'E' Etheridge (right) and Emma Chow (left) from rivals ARN

Etheridge and Chow announced their departure from The Edge on December 6.

They said in a statement: 'It's very bittersweet saying goodbye to The Edge, which has been our home for 11 wild years.

'We're incredibly proud of the show we have created and the audience we have built, but it's time to grow and evolve. We're really excited about the next chapter of our broadcasting career and look forward to sharing it with you in 2022!'

New start: The Western Sydney duo, who worked at The Edge for 11 years before departing this month, are tipped to host the Hit Network's national night show in 2022

During their time at The Edge, the Mike E & Emma show helped grow the station into one of the best under-the-radar youth brands in Australia.

SCA bosses are no doubt hoping the Gen-Z and millennial appeal of Etheridge and Chow will translate into big ratings for the Hit Network.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted SCA for comment.

Rumours: SCA reportedly spent 'big bucks' to get Etheridge and Chow, and it's possible there is a long-term plan for them to take over 2Day FM's Sydney breakfast slot in 2023

The Morning Crew is the seventh breakfast team 2Day FM has put to air since The Kyle and Jackie O Show defected to the ARN-owned KIIS 106.5 seven years ago.

The Rove and Sam show, hosted by Rove McManus and reality star Sam Frost, was axed in 2017 after they were shunted to an evening time slot due to dismal ratings.

This program was replaced by The Em Rusciano Radio Show with Harley Breen, which was even less successful.

The team to beat Kyle and Jackie O? SCA bosses are no doubt hoping the Gen-Z and millennial appeal of Etheridge and Chow will translate into big ratings for the Hit Network

Axed: The Morning Crew is the seventh breakfast team 2Day FM has put to air since The Kyle and Jackie O Show defected to KIIS 106.5 seven years ago. The Rove and Sam show, hosted by Rove McManus (left) and reality star Sam Frost (right), was axed in 2017 after dire ratings

By November 2017, c omedian Harley Breen had announced his resignation.

He was subsequently replaced by TV personalities Ed Kavalee and Grant Denyer and the show was rebranded Em, Grant and Ed.

Further trouble came when Em resigned from 2Day FM in September 2018 after reports surfaced staffers were refusing to work with her because she was 'toxic'.

Years later Em would acknowledge her workplace behaviour was poor, but in her defence said her bosses and colleagues were not supportive of her either.

Incoming: This program was replaced by The Em Rusciano Radio Show with Harley Breen, which was even less successful. Comedian Harley Breen quit the show after less than a year

Moves: Harley was subsequently replaced by TV personalities Ed Kavalee (left) and Grant Denyer (right) and the show was rebranded Em, Grant and Ed

In August 2019, the entire 2Day FM breakfast team - including Ash London, who had replaced Em as co-host - was scrapped after 18 months of dismal ratings and replaced with a music playlist curated by Jamie Angel.

The axing marked the sixth failed attempt by 2Day FM to launch a successful breakfast show following Kyle and Jackie O's exit.

It was announced in late 2020 that Dave Hughes, Ed Kavalee and Erin Molan would take over the breakfast slot with The Morning Crew.

More bad news: In August 2019, the entire 2Day FM breakfast team - including Ash London (left), who had replaced Em as co-host - was scrapped after 18 months of dismal ratings

Loss: The axing marked the sixth failed attempt by 2Day FM to launch a successful breakfast show following Kyle and Jackie O's exit. Pictured: Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson

But by August 2021, the show had tumbled to an all-time low, slipping down 0.9 points to a 2.4 per cent market share.

It was a dramatic decline for the trio who began broadcasting together in January.

Just last week, co-host David Hughes revealed he would be moving to Sydney in 2022 to host the show.

The 51-year-old, who has primarily been hosting the program with Ed Kavalee in Melbourne, told The Daily Telegraph he was 'buying a property in Sydney in the next month or so'.
Ant Middleton shot to fame as a ruthless Chief Instructor on the gruelling SAS series.

And now, the real life SAS is reportedly being inundated with applicants 'looking to serve for three years then leave for a TV career' like the former British Special Forces solider.

According to The Mirror, some people are joining the Special Air Service because they want to become celebrities.

Following in Ant's footsteps: Real life SAS has been inundated with applicants 'looking to serve for three years then leave for a TV career' like Ant Middleton (pictured)

A former senior officer said: 'We often have the wrong type of person wanting to join.'

'There have been some soldiers turning up for their first day of SAS selection saying that if they pass, they'll serve for three years and then go on TV.'

'They are joining the SAS because they want to become celebrities and millionaires.'

Looking for fame: According to The Mirror, some people are joining the Special Air Service because they want to become celebrities

Last year, Ant reportedly earned almost $4million.

According to The Sun newspaper, the former British Special Forces solider made $3.98million in 2020.

Ant reportedly paid $797,069 in corporation tax, making him one of the most successful fitness personalities on television.

His company, Middleton Global Ltd, has $2,525,967 in assets and $823,272 in equity.

'There have been some soldiers turning up for their first day of SAS selection saying that if they pass, they'll serve for three years and then go on TV,' a former senior officer told The Mirror

This is a significant increase as Ant had previously earned $711,868 and his company had $2,923 in equity.

Ant became a chief instructor on SAS Australia after previously working on SAS: Who Dares Wins in the UK.

The British star made headlines for his tough-talking antics on the Australian series.
Kelly Clarkson's attempt to evict ex-husband Brandon Blackstock from her ranch has been blocked by a US judge.

The former American Idol winner is the sole owner of Vintage Valley Ranch in Montana, but is currently unable to utilize the property while Blackstock - her former manager - occupies it.

The ranch is said to cost $81K per month to maintain, and the 39-year-old pop powerhouse pays her 45-year-old ex a total $195,601 per month in child/spousal support.

'The order hasn't been formally signed off on': A judge has reportedly sided with Brandon Blackstock (L, pictured in 2020), whose famous ex-wife #2 Kelly Clarkson (R) has been attempting to evict him off Vintage Valley Ranch in Montana, which she solely owns

'The judge ruled in his favor, but the order hasn't been formally signed off on,' a source told Us Weekly on Monday.

'He has been living in it and said he doesn't have the financial means to afford to purchase a residence of his own at this time, citing the unresolved financial aspect of their divorce.'

'If Blackstock fails to keep up with the maintenance payments associated with the property, Clarkson can file a motion to sell the property,' an insider noted.

Vintage Valley Ranch was partially the reason for the acrimonious end of the Texans' seven-year marriage.

'Being in quarantine at the ranch together heightened their problems to the point of no return,' the source added.

A source told Us Weekly on Monday: 'He has been living in it and said he doesn't have the financial means to afford to purchase a residence of his own at this time, citing the unresolved financial aspect of their divorce' (pictured in 2020)

Earns $10K/month on his own: The ranch is said to cost $81K per month to maintain, and the 39-year-old pop powerhouse pays her 45-year-old ex-manager a total $195,601 per month in child/spousal support

Vintage Valley Ranch was partially the reason for the acrimonious end of the Texans' seven-year marriage: 'Being in quarantine at the ranch together heightened their problems to the point of no return'

Clarkson and Blackstock will face off in court in February and June in an attempt to finalize the Montana property situation.

The three-time Grammy winner - who earns $1.9M/month - has primary custody of their five-year-old son Remington Alexander and seven-year-old daughter River Rose.

Aspiring rancher and rodeo sponsor Blackstock - who earns a comparatively humble $10K/month - also fathered daughter Savannah, 19; and son Seth, 15; from his 11-year marriage to Melissa Ashworth.

Earns $1.9M/month: Kelly (pictured December 12) and Brandon - who became legally single on August 3 - will face off in court in February and June in an attempt to finalize the Montana property situation

Celebrating Christmas in her new San Fernando Valley home! Clarkson has primary custody of their five-year-old son Remington Alexander (L, pictured July 14) and seven-year-old daughter River Rose (R)

2020 family portrait: The aspiring rancher and rodeo sponsor (R) also fathered daughter Savannah (2-L), 19; and son Seth (L), 15; from his 11-year marriage to Melissa Ashworth

Clarkson already sold her Nashville and Encino mansions, and she's looking forward to spending Christmas with her kids and mother Jeanne Ann in her new San Fernando Valley home.

The singer - who joked she'll be 'single forever' - originally met Blackstock through his famous former stepmother Reba McEntire.

The Daytime Emmy Award-winning host currently executive produces and hosts The Kelly Clarkson Show - which features guests Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ana Gasteyer, Rachel Dratch, and more this Tuesday.
Lorne Michaels has said he might be ready to step down from Saturday Night Live after nearly five decades producing the show.

The 77-year-old, who created comedy hit SNL back in 1975, hinted at a departure date after the show's 50th anniversary season in 2024.

'My plan is to be here for the 50th  and then by that point, I really deserve to wander off,' he told Gayle King on CBS Mornings.

He added: 'I'd like to see that through, and I have a feeling that'd be a really good time to leave.

'But  I won't want the show ever to be bad. I care too deeply about it. It's been my life's work. So Im going to do everything I can to see it carry on and carry on well.'

The Canadian-born TV producer has long been the major driving force for the show behind the scenes, and has worked with comedy legends including John Belushi and Chevy Chase, and launched the careers of Bill Murray and Tina Fey.

He produced the show until leaving in 1980 and came back onboard from 1985 until present day.

The latest: Lorne Michaels, 77, said he might be ready to step down from Saturday Night Live after the show's 50th anniversary season in 2024. He was snapped at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington D.C. earlier this month

The SNL creator, speaking with Gayle King on CBS Mornings , said he's 'committed to doing this show until its 50th anniversary, which is in three years'

Michaels said that the show could 'of course' continue without him, and that he has 'a sense of where we're headed with that.'

When asked who could be his successor as the show's executive producer, Michaels said, 'I'm not going to go on about it - it's three years away.'

Michaels has received 20 Primetime Emmy Awards from 94 nominations, and holds the record for being the most nominated individual in the award show's history.

When he was honored earlier this month by the Kennedy Center, Michael said he was emotional in 'just seeing all the generations of the show' congregate for the series' 40th anniversary in 2015.

'You can't put anyone in the cast that you dont have complete faith in,' Michaels said. 'You may not know how itll turn out, but you want that decision to have been pure of heart.'

Michaels co-created the NBC comedy staple in 1975

When asked who could be his successor as the show's executive producer, Michaels said, 'I'm not going to go on about it - it's three years away'

Last year, Michaels set a similar timeline when outlining a potential retirement plan in speaking to NBC.

'My plan - and I'm not sure that I'll see it through - but my plan is to be here for the 50th  and then by that point, I really deserve to wander off,' the Emmy-winning producer told the show.

Michaels is also the executive producer of NBC late night franchises The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers.

The chat with the TV icon aired after SNL this week was broadcast with a ramped-down staff and no studio audience amid a spike in COVID-19 cases amid the spread of the omicron variant in New York City.

Michaels is also the executive producer of NBC late night franchises The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers

News of Michael's possible departure comes as the hit NBC show was forced to close its doors to its audience and its musical guest over fears about the Omicron Covid variant.

Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, and Kenan Thompson joined Paul Rudd on set in front of an empty studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza for a quickly reassembled performance after several staffers were infected with COVID-19.

Rudd was scheduled to host the show alongside musical guest Charli XCX, but the British singer-songwriter bowed out of the show after a minimal staff was permitted to be on set.

Instead of a traditional cold open before a live studio audience, Hanks and Fey appeared before the cameras and introduced Rudd.

During the taping of Saturday's installment of SNL, Thompson emerged to hand Rudd a robe reserved for those who have hosted the show five times.

Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, and Kenan Thompson joined Paul Rudd on set in front of an empty studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza for a quickly reassembled performance after several staffers were infected with COVID-19

'Due to the recent spike in the Omicron variant and out of an abundance of caution, there will be no live audience for tonight's taping of 'Saturday Night Live' and the show will have limited cast and crew,' a statement read

Pre-taped segments for the show included cameos from longtime Saturday Night Live staples Steve Martin (left) and Martin Short (right)

SNL then aired a tape of Steve Martin and Martin Short congratulating Hanks, even though the man of the hour was Rudd.

During their on-stage banter, Hanks quipped that Rudd deserved credit for being named People's 'sexist man alive.'

The show then re-aired classic sketches including the 'D*** in a box' music video starring Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake as well as bits featuring SNL alums Phil Hartman, Mike Myers, and Jan Hooks.

Fey and current cast member Michael Che co-anchored a bare-bones version of Weekend Update. Instead of the anchors being behind their desk with a television studio-like backdrop, Che and Fey read jokes from two chairs as Hanks, Rudd, and Thompson sat in the studio audience.

Fey was replacing Colin Jost, who was not in the studio at the time of taping.

Fey, who once held Jost's role as head writer of the popular sketch comedy series, co-anchored Weekend Update alongside Amy Poehler from 2004 until 2006.

She also shared the anchor role with then-SNL star Jimmy Fallon, who is currently host of the Tonight Show.

SNL is just the latest New York City institution that has experienced disruptions caused by positive COVID-19 cases among staffers. The Radio City Rockettes and several Broadway productions were forced to shut down after infections were reported among staffers.
She's the influencer who recently announced she was pregnant with her third child.

And on Tuesday, Tammy Hembrow showed off her burgeoning baby bump alongside her two children, son Wolf, six, and daughter Saskia, five.

The 27-year-old opted to go braless in a cropped blue tank top which she teamed with baggy mom jeans.

Growing family: Tammy Hembrow showed off her burgeoning baby bump in a crop top as her children, Wolf, six, and Saskia, five, cosied up beside her for an Instagram photo on Tuesday

She accessorised with oversized sunglasses and comfy black sandals

Her children each dressed in matching outfits comprising T-shirts and shorts, with Wolf in blue and Saskia in mauve.

Tammy also shared two more images on Instagram from their family trip to the Movie World theme park on the Gold Coast.

Going out! The 27-year-old opted to go braless in a cropped blue tank top which she teamed with baggy mom jeans. Her children each dressed in matching outfits comprising T-shirts and shorts, with Wolf in blue and Saskia in mauve

Exciting: Tammy also shared two more images on Instagram from their family trip to the Movie World theme park on the Gold Coast

She joined her kids on the merry-go-round ride, which her fiance Matt Poole photographed.

Tammy also shared a picture of Matt carrying Wolfe as they watched the parade.

She wrote in the caption: 'Funnest times w my tiny humans.'

Family fun: Tammy also shared a picture of her fiance Matt Poole carrying Wolfe as they watched the parade

Romantic: Ironman Matt proposed to Tammy on a luxury private yacht on November 24. Alongside him was Tammy's children, Wolf and Saskia, who looked cute as a button as they held up signs with the text, 'Mummy will you'

Ironman Matt proposed to Tammy on a luxury private yacht on November 24.

Alongside him was Tammy's children, Wolf and Saskia, who looked cute as a button as they held up signs with the text, 'Mummy will you.'

The following week, she announced she was pregnant with her third child, her first with Matt, in an Instagram video on December 5.

Mum's the word! Last month, Tammy appeared to confirm she has sole custody of Wolf and Saskia, whom she shares with ex-fiance Reece Hawkins. The exes were in a relationship for five years before splitting in 2018

Last month, Tammy appeared to confirm she has sole custody of Wolf and Saskia, whom she shares with ex-fiance Reece Hawkins.

The exes were in a relationship for five years before splitting in 2018.

Reece has since moved on with American model London Goheen. They secretly married at the end of 2020, and together share a nine-month-old son named Stone.
Married At First Sight bride Rebecca Zemek announced she was expecting her first child with boyfriend Ben Michell on Monday.

And on Tuesday, the 28-year-old spoke about the struggles she faced filming a reality show while secretly pregnant.

'Never again will I do television while pregnant,' she told Daily Mail Australia of her experience shooting Nine's Celebrity Apprentice, which airs next year.

EXCLUSIVE: 'Never again': Married At First Sight's Rebecca Zemek has spoken of the struggles she faced filming a reality show while secretly pregnant

Beck, who is almost four months pregnant, admitted to wearing baggy clothes during filming to try to hide her emerging bump.

'I don't like having to wear oversized denim jackets and avocados in public,' she laughed, referring to a costume she wore for one of the Apprentice challenges.

The Perth influencer said the avocado costume was the most subtle outfit she could find out of all the ones made available to the contestants.

First trimester: 'Never again will I do television while pregnant,' Beck (left) told Daily Mail Australia of her experience shooting Nine's Celebrity Apprentice, which airs next year

'I don't like having to wear avocados in public': Beck, who is almost four months pregnant, admitted to wearing baggy clothes during filming to try to hide her emerging bump

And while she waited until Monday to announce the news publicly, Daily Mail Australia understands her Celebrity Apprentice and MAFS co-stars were already told but sworn to secrecy.

'It all makes makes sense why Beck didn't want to come out for drinks or meet up while she was in Sydney,' a friend said.

The reality star confirmed her pregnancy on Instagram, showing off her growing baby bump in a selection of stunning images alongside her partner.

Secret: While she waited until Monday to announce the news publicly, Daily Mail Australia understands her Apprentice and MAFS co-stars were already told but sworn to secrecy

Stunning: The reality star confirmed her pregnancy on Instagram, showing off her growing baby bump in a selection of stunning images alongside her partner

'The secret is out!' she wrote in the caption.

'Ben and I are over the moon to finally announce we are expecting a bundle of joy in May 2022!'

'Thank you to everyone who has kept this a secret for such a long time! Also for all the wonderful support over the last few months' it truly means the world to us.'

New man: Beck debuted her relationship with Ben in April, posting a video of the couple going snorkelling together after being asked by fans on Instagram if she was single

'Who knew the best was yet to come, this is such a miracle for us and we are already over filled with love for you little one.'

The couple unveiled the news alongside a photo shoot by photographer Alex Howell - who goes by the Instagram handle @who_is_alex - which saw Beck dressed in a stunning peach gown which showed off her blossoming bump to perfection.

Beck soared to fame after appearing on MAFS Australia, where she failed to find love with on-screen 'husband' Jake Edwards.

She debuted her relationship with Ben in April, posting a video of the couple snorkelling together after being asked by fans on Instagram if she was single.
Fred Sirieix sought advice from his Olympic diver daughter Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix in a bid to help him succeed in the Christmas special of Strictly Come Dancing.

The First Dates star, 49, is set to perform with professional dancer Dianne Buswell, 32, on the show, which will air on December 25.

And the maitre d'hotel has taken inspiration from Andrea who competed with Team GB at the summer Olympics in Toyko this year, with the 17-year-old drawing on her sporting experience to give him some tips to make it through the gruelling training sessions.

In it to win it? Fred Sirieix, 49, and Dianne Buswell, 32 (pictured), will compete on the Strictly Christmas special, with Fred asking his Olympic diver daughter Andrea, 17, for training tips

Fred told the Mirror: 'When I started rehearsals I was joking that this was like I was representing France at the Olympics. I have been showing Andrea the dances since the first day of the rehearsals and she said to me, "Dad, you just have to focus", which was her main advice.

'She has been very supportive, she has seen my improvements and has been very encouraging.'

Andrea finished in seventh place in the womens 10m platform diving final at the 2020 Tokyo Games, which were held in 2021 after they were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Inspiration: Fred said he remembered his daughter's 'positive mental attitude' and confidence as he struggled through the gruelling Strictly training sessions

Competative: Andrea finished seventh in the womens 10m platform diving final at the 2020 Tokyo Games, which were held in 2021 after they were postponed due to the pandemic

And while Fred was unable to travel to Japan to watch his daughter compete, he said he was impressed by the attitude that helped her achieve in her sport as he watched her on the television at home, remembering her 'positive mental attitude' for Strictly.

He said: 'When I was getting ready for Strictly I was thinking about her and her confidence, because shes been there and shes done it, and now I have to do it and perform something very hard for a big audience.'

Fred and Dianne will perform a quickstep to the Shakin Stevens 1985 hit Merry Christmas Everyone.

Family affair: And while Fred was unable to travel to Japan to watch his daughter compete, he said he was impressed by the attitude that helped her achieve, remembering it for Strictly

Born to perform: Fred will be up against comedian Mel Giedroyc in the competition as she dances with Neil Jones

However, rehearsing for three weeks in the run-up to the filming of the show took its toll on Fred.

He said his feet were left bloodied and he vomited after a particularly strenuous day of rehearsals.

The television personality also lost half a stone in weight but pushed though, practicing up to 11pm some nights.

Fred will be up against The Repair Shop star Jay Blades, TV presenters Mel Giedroyc and Adrian Chiles, and newsreader Moira Stuart.

The Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special will air on BBC One on Christmas Day at 5.10pm.
He began his career playing the memorable bad boy Drew Curtis on Home and Away in 2006 at the age of 21.

And now Aussie actor Bob Morley has spoken candidly about the impact fame had on him during his early career.

'For me it was very difficult to process, the lack of anonymity,' the now 37-year-old told TV Week.

Reflection: Former Home and Away star Bob Morley has called his sudden fame 'difficult to process' after previously blasting the soap for treating him like a 'meat puppet'

Morley filled the boots of Drew Curtis for two years, leaving Summer Bay at the end of 2008.

He criticised Home and Away soon after his departure, telling The Daily Telegraph at the time that he felt the show treated him like a 'meat puppet'.

The actor, who was starring on the Australian drama series The Strip when he made the comments, explained he was glad he was now on a program 'where it's not based on taking your shirt off'.

Role: The actor played Drew Curtis for two years, leaving Summer Bay at the end of 2008

'It wasn't a good place to be in. Home and Away is a great place to learn, but it's a machine and it can chew people up and spit them out. I stepped out not really caring whether I had another job,' he said.

Bob later apologised for those remarks in an interview with News.com.au in 2014 and acknowledged he was being 'completely and utterly rude' when he made them.

'I'm still young and dumb, but I was even younger and dumber then,' he said.

'Upon reflection and after these years, it's one thing I regret doing. It was just my ignorance and my lack of experience and I projected that onto them.'

'Upon reflection and after these years, it's one thing I regret doing': Bob apologised for comments he made about Home and Away treating him like a 'meat puppet' in an interview in 2014. He acknowledged he was being 'completely and utterly rude' when he made them

'They were nothing but great and kind to me and looked after me,' he added.

Bob wrapped up his role as Bellamy Blake in the American post-apocalyptic series The 100, which he starred in with his wife and fellow Aussie Eliza Taylor, in 2020.

He is now set to star in Australian mini series Love Me, which 'explores modern love as experienced by different family members at different stages of life'.

Bob plays Peter, a model and father to a 15-year-old son. The show also stars Hugo Weaving and Bojana Novakovic.
Zendaya's character Rue Bennett appeared to be struggling with her drug addiction more than ever in the new trailer for Euphoria's sophomore season.

On Monday, HBO released the full-length trailer for the show's second season in which Rue is seen carrying around a suitcase full of drugs.

Rue also reunites by a campfire with her love interest Jules (Hunter Schafer), who asks her, 'When'd you relapse?'

Relapse: Zendaya's character Rue Bennett appeared to be struggling with her drug addiction more than ever in the new trailer for Euphoria's sophomore season

The official synopsis reads: 'Amidst the intertwining lives in the town of East Highland, 17-year-old Rue (Zendaya) must find hope while balancing the pressures of love, loss, and addiction.'

Other main cast members make appearances in the trailer including Maude Apatow, Angus Cloud, Eric Dane, Alexa Demie, Jacob Elordi, Barbie Ferreira, Nika King, Storm Reid, Algee Smith, Colman Domingo and Sydney Sweeney.

The trailer opens as Rue drags a suitcase into a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and takes a seat in the back.

Recovery: The trailer opens as Rue drags a suitcase into a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and takes a seat in the back

Love: A voiceover begins in which Rue reflects on her feelings for her love interest Jules as the trailer cut to shots of the two from the first season

Rue's sponsor Ali (Domingo) glances over at her from his seat in the front row.

A voiceover begins in which Rue reflects on her feelings for Jules as the trailer cut to shots of the two from the first season.

'When I first met her, I was just immediately in love,' Rue says.

First sight: 'When I first met her, I was just immediately in love,' Rue says

Disappointed: Jules asks Rue when she relapsed as the two reunite at a campfire

The scene cuts back to the present as Jules walks up to Rue and greets her at the campfire.

'As soon as I saw her, I was just immediately afraid to lose her,' Rue reminisces as she lays in bed.

The first season concluded with Rue leaving in tears after Jules abandoned her at a train station.

Cast: Other main cast members make appearances in the trailer including Maude Apatow, Angus Cloud, Eric Dane, Alexa Demie, Jacob Elordi, Barbie Ferreira, Nika King, Storm Reid, Algee Smith, Colman Domingo and Sydney Sweeney

Mystery: Rue later runs into her sponsor Ali as she pulls her suitcase behind her. He asks her, 'So, Rue. The $64,000 question is, whats in the suitcase?

Rue later runs into Ali as she pulls her suitcase behind her. He asks her, 'So, Rue. The $64,000 question is, whats in the suitcase?'

Musician Dominic Fike is a new addition to the cast and he is frequently seen throughout the trailer.

In one scene, he gives Rue some pills as she declares that he's 'her new favorite person.'

New look: One of the lighter moments features Kat (Ferreira) and Maddy (Demie) teasing Cassie (Sweeney) about her new look as the girls hang out in the school bathroom

Drama: The two-and-a-half minute trailer is filled with guns, violence, cops, raids, car chases and a lot of partying

The two-and-a-half minute trailer is filled with guns, violence, cops, raids, car chases and a lot of partying.

In one scene, Rue appears to be getting kidnapped from a car as a man covers her mouth with his hand.

One of the lighter moments features Kat (Ferreira) and Maddy (Demie) teasing Cassie (Sweeney) about her new look as the girls hang out in the school bathroom.

Drug trade: Throughout the trailer, Rue continues to carry around her suitcase, which is later revealed to be filled with drugs

Throughout the trailer, Rue continues to carry around her suitcase, which is later revealed to be filled with drugs.

'I came up with an amazing plan,' she says.

Rue is seen walking into rundown apartment where a woman asks her, 'So are you all ready to do some business?'

Rue's blue suitcase is sitting on the table in front of the woman.

In a later scene, Rue and her mother are seen screaming at each other.

The trailer concludes with a countdown to midnight on New Year's Eve as a drugged-out Rue asks Cassie, 'How's your New Years's going?'

'It's New Year's?' Cassie replies. 'I swear my boyfriend doesn't tell me anything.'

Euphoria's second season will begin streaming on HBO on January 9.
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Michelle Rodriguez showed off her golden tan in a tiny white bikini while vacationing with a mystery blonde in Tulum, Mexico over the weekend.

During her seaside frolic, the Fast & Furious star, 43, looked blissful as she soaked up the sunshine after taking a dip in the crystal-clear ocean.

While it is unclear if the duo are just pals or have a romantic relationship, Michelle walked with her arm wrapped around her companions waist as they held hands.

Working it! Michelle Rodriguez showed off her golden tan in a tiny white bikini while vacationing with a mystery blonde in Tulum, Mexico

Her travel companion rocked a cheetah-print swimsuit, which highlighted her incredibly toned midriff.

As the pair walked from the water back to chaise lounges outside their beachfront resort, the blonde handed Rodriguez a towel, which she tied around her waist before slipping into a pair of microscopic pair of white shorts.

Later, they were seen playing a lively game of ping-pong with hot pink and yellow paddles on the same beach.

Getaway: While it is unclear of the duo are just pals or have a romantic relationship, they both smiled on their trip, which included a few other women

Fierce: Her travel companion rocked a cheetah-print swimsuit, which highlighted her incredibly toned midriff

Making a splash: The women were inseparable on the trip as they dried off with towels after going for a swim

Sweet: As the pair walked from the water back to chaise lounges outside their beachfront resort, the blonde handed Rodriguez a towel, which she tied around her waist

And one day prior she had also been glimpsed with what looked to be the same companion as they held hands while taking a dip in the ocean.

This time Michelle rocked a black bikini while her female friend coordinated in a black and white bandeau bikini.

The two ladies looked to have a blast together as they frolicked in the waves and held hands while chatting throughout the day.

Drying off: The actress later into a pair of microscopic pair of white shorts

Having fun: After drying off, the two were seen playing a lively game of ping-pong with hot pink and yellow paddles on the same beach

A string of high-profile relationship: Rodriguez, who revealed she was bisexual in 2013, was previously linked to Cara Delevingne and Zac Efron

Comfortable in her own skin: She first revealed she was bisexual in November 2013 during an interview with Out Magazine

Honest: Two years later, she opened up about struggling to maintain long-term relationships because she is a 'lone wolf'

'I run by myself on most things. Ive got lots of really great friends, but the thought of being in a long-lasting relationship? Psh, I couldnt last more than six months with somebody,' she told Interview magazine

Speaking of whether she wants children, at the time, Rodriguez said: 'I just want that unconditional love, the kind you get with a family member. You might get lucky enough to find that unconditional love in a friend or a lover, but its very rare'

Rodriguez, who revealed she was bisexual in 2013, has previously been romantically linked to Zac Efron, Cara Delevingne Vin Diesel and more.

She first revealed she was bisexual in November 2013 during an interview with Out Magazine.

Two years later, she opened up about struggling to maintain long-term relationships because she is a 'lone wolf.'

Changing it up: The actress was seen a day prior wearing a black bikini while soaking up the sun with the same female companion

Having a blast: She looked carefree in a black bikini with studs while her female companion wore a coordinating bandeau bikini

Toned: Both ladies showed off their very toned and bronzed beach bodies throughout the day

Love tap: At one point Michelle was seen putting her hand on the woman's thigh

'I run by myself on most things. Ive got lots of really great friends, but the thought of being in a long-lasting relationship? Psh, I couldnt last more than six months with somebody,' she told Interview magazine.

Speaking of whether she wants children, at the time, Rodriguez said: 'I just want that unconditional love, the kind you get with a family member. You might get lucky enough to find that unconditional love in a friend or a lover, but its very rare.'

'So if I ever have a kid, itd be so that I could look in those eyes and know that this child is a piece of me and will love me the same way I love [him or her], but I think thats selfish of me,' the performer added.

Do you know Michelle's mystery woman? Email tips@dailymail.com

Taking the plunge: While diving under a wave she showed off her athletic abilities

I got you: The duo were seen holding hands as they emerged from the bright blue waters together

Luxury vacation: Michelle looked utterly relaxed to be in paradise for the week
She rose to fame as the 'hot teacher' on Married At First Sight.

And since her show-stealing appearance on the reality series, Alana Lister has quit her day job to become a raunchy OnlyFans star.

The 31-year-old offered a glimpse of what's on offer for paying subscribers on Tuesday by stripping down to a barely there bikini on Instagram.

Raunchy! MAFS bride-turned-OnlyFans star Alana Lister, 31, offered a glimpse of what's on offer for paying subscribers on Tuesday by stripping down to a barely there bikini on Instagram

She flaunted her figure in a racy leopard-print two-piece with gold hoop details across the bust and the hips.

Alana shared the risque photo without a caption, but added a swipe-up link to her OnlyFans account where followers can access X-rated content.

But she didn't stop there, as she also shared another photo of herself in a black bikini while posing at the beach.

'Teachers on holiday,' she captioned it.

Sizzling: Alana didn't stop there, as she also shared another photo of herself in a black two-piece while posing at the beach

In October, Alana revealed more than she bargained for as she posed in a daring ensemble that showed off a considerable amount of underboob.

She risked an Instagram ban with her tiny white top barely covering her modesty and looking like a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen.

She also showed off her trim pins in a multi-coloured mini skirt.

That's risky! In October, Alana revealed more than they bargained for as she posed in a daring ensemble that showed off a considerable amount of underboob

Alana joined subscription-based adult website OnlyFans in July.

For $20 a month, subscribers can access uncensored photos and videos of the reality star and former school teacher.

At the time, Alana told Daily Mail Australia that fans can expect to see photos that are too risque to share on Instagram.

Legs for days: She also showed off her trim pins in a multi-coloured mini skirt

Don't move an inch! She risked an Instagram ban with her tiny white top barely covering her modesty and looking like a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen

Cashing in: Alana joined subscription-based adult website OnlyFans in July

'It's been a crazy thing to actually commit to but I'm ready,' she said.

'I had all these bikini and lingerie pics from shoots that I didn't upload to Instagram because they seemed a little too sexual,' she added.

Alana explained she decided to finally join the platform because she was 'sick of all the Karens' trying to control her.

Too hot to handle! Alana explained she decided to finally join the platform because she was 'sick of all the Karens' trying to control her

'People have a problem with anything I do either way. Women should be allowed to feel sexy,' she continued.

Alana also said it was 'empowering' for women to join OnlyFans.

During an Instagram Q&A in April, Alana also revealed that her ample assets were surgically enhanced.

'My boobs are not natural. That question gets asked a lot,' she said, adding that her surgery took place in Thailand.

Rebel: Alana also said it was 'empowering' for women to join OnlyFans
Alexander Skarsgard returns to the silver screen as a Viking prince seeking vengeance in the first trailer for The Northman.

The film is the latest from Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse), which will hit theaters nationwide on April 22.

Skarsgard is joined by a diverse all-star cast including Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Bjork, and Willem Dafoe.

New trailer: Alexander Skarsgard returns to the silver screen as a Viking prince seeking vengeance in the first trailer for The Northman

Cast: Skarsgard is joined by a diverse all-star cast including Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Bjork, and Willem Dafoe

The trailer begins with a royal party approaching on horseback as a smiling young man proclaims, 'He's here! Mother, father is here!'

King Horwendil (Ethan Hawke) is seen riding through the village, while Hemir the Fool (Willem Dafoe) tells the young man, 'your fate is set and you cannot escape it.'

The King says how much he's missed his son, and adds, 'one day this kingdom will be yours,' as he thanks his father, with his mother, Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman) at the King's side.

King's daughter: The trailer begins with a royal party approaching on horseback as a smiling young woman proclaims, 'He's here! Mother, father is here!'

King: King Horwendil (Ethan Hawke) is seen riding through the village, while Hemir the Fool (Willem Dafoe) tells the young woman, 'your fate is set and you cannot escape it'

The king and his son are outside when the king is pierced by an arrow, when it's revealed that arrow was fired by the boy's uncle, Fjolnir (Claes Bang).

The young man runs off, screaming that he will avenge his father, save his mother and kill his uncle... when it morphs into the adult Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard).

He's seen rowing a large boat with many others, repeating his same promise in his head from all those years ago, seeing visions of his slain father.

Uncle: The king and his son are outside when the king is pierced by an arrow, when it's revealed that arrow was fired by the boy's uncle, Fjolnir (Claes Bang)

Amleth: The young man runs off, screaming that he will avenge his father, save his mother and kill his uncle... when it morphs into the adult Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard)

Slain: He's seen rowing a large boat with many others, repeating his same promise in his head from all those years ago, seeing visions of his slain father

Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) asks Amleth, 'why would you stow away to such a hellish place,' which he responds, 'To find what was stolen from me.'

When she asks what that was, he says, 'The kingdom' as we see his treacherous uncle beheading someone in the woods.

Amleth is told by a mysterious character that he must, 'choose between the kindness for your kin or hate for your enemies.'

Stolen: Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) asks Amleth, 'why would you stow away to such a hellish place,' which he responds, 'To find what was stolen from me'

Beheading: When she asks what that was, he says, 'The kingdom' as we see his treacherous uncle beheading someone in the woods

Kindness or hate: Amleth is told by a mysterious character that he must, 'choose between the kindness for your kin or hate for your enemies'

Olga tells Amleth he has the 'strength to break men's bones' but she has 'the cunning to break their minds.'

Amleth is seen carrying out his vengeful plan, wearing an animal's hide on his head as he begins his attack.

His mother Gurdun is seen as Amleth keeps pledging to 'save' her as he's seen charging into battle as the trailer comes to an end.

The Northman hits theaters nationwide on April 22, 2022.

Cunning: Olga tells Amleth he has the 'strength to break men's bones' but she has 'the cunning to break their minds'

Plan: Amleth is seen carrying out his vengeful plan, wearing an animal's hide on his head as he begins his attack

Mother: His mother Gurdun is seen as Amleth keeps pledging to 'save' her as he's seen charging into battle
Jagged Little Pill producers announced on Monday that the Broadway musical was closing permanently after 'multiple positive Covid-19 cases'.

'JAGGED LITTLE PILL played its final Broadway performance on December 17, 2021. For the tremendous honor and privilege of sharing this incredible experience - thank u,' the musical's producers posted on Twitter.

Producers Vivek J. Tiwary, Arvind Ethan David and Eva Price in a joint statement said they were proud of the show and company who told the Jagged Little Pill story in 'difficult circumstances'.

Covid closure: Jaggle Little Pill producers announced on Monday that the Broadway musical was closing permanently after 'multiple positive Covid-19 cases'

'This show about healing, human connection, and catharsis, has been a salve to audiences, and to all of us, throughout these trying times,' they wrote.

'Yet, the drastic turn of events this week with the rapid spread of the Omicron variant has, once again, changed everything. We are dismayed by what appears to be another substantial public health crisis, and - due to the detection of multiple positive Covid-19 cases within the company - need to prioritize the health and safety of the cast, crew, and entire team working on Jagged Little Pill,' the statement said.

The producers said they will be announcing plans in 2022 for subsequent productions after bringing Jagged Little Pill earlier this month to Australia.

'We also hope and intend to find a way to bring this vibrant and vitalizing musical back to the Broadway stage, once the current crisis is past,' the statement said whild adding that Friday's performance was its last.

Critically acclaimed: Jagged Little Pill premiered on Broadway on December 15, 2019 and Celia Rose Gooding, center left, is shown performing with the company

'There is nothing in the world like live theater. There is no community in the world like this great Broadway family of artists and audiences. We will make it through this, together,' the statement concluded.

Jagged Little Pill premiered on Broadway on December 15, 2019. It was initially set to run until July 3, 2022.

All tickets for cancelled performances will be refunded at the original point of purchase.

The jukebox musical is inspired by 1995 album of the same name by Alanis Morissette, 47.

Final performance: 'JAGGED LITTLE PILL played its final Broadway performance on December 17, 2021. For the tremendous honor and privilege of sharing this incredible experience - thank u,' the musical's producers posted on Twitter.

Hit album: The jukebox musical is inspired by 1995 album of the same name by Alanis Morissette, shown in December 2019 during opening night of the Broadway show

Jagged Little Pill received a leading 15 nominations at the 74th Tony Awards and won two awards.

It also won a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

The Jagged Little Pill musical deals with the themes of pain, healing and empowerment.
Ashley Graham posed completely naked for her latest social media uploads.

The heavily pregnant model, 34, stripped off and used her hands to cover her breasts as she showed off her burgeoning belly on Monday.

Ashley also shared a sweet snap of her husband Justin Ervin, 35, cradling her bare baby bump ahead of the imminent arrival of their twin boys.

Baring all: Heavily pregnant Ashley Graham, 34, shared a nude selfie on Monday which showcased her burgeoning belly as she used her hands to cover her breasts

While preparing to welcome their second and third children together, the supermodel and hunky film director posed for a joy-filled photo shoot.

'3/4 of my heart right here ,' she captioned the photo, which did not include her precious one-year-old son Isaac Menelik Giovanni.

In the image, she can be seen leaning her head on Ervin's shoulder as he placed one hand tenderly on her stomach.

She was rocking a gold necklace, cropped grey cardigan and black pants, while the cinematographer wore a charcoal hoodie and a dark pair of cargo pants.

Sweet moments: The model also shared a sweet snap of her husband Justin Ervin cradling her bare baby bump ahead of the imminent arrival of their twin boys

Up-close and personal: Stretch marks are a common occurrence for pregnant women, but they're not just relegated to pregnancy

Earlier this month, Ashley shared a nude selfie, which showcased her burgeoning belly as she used her hands to cover her breasts.

The model positively glowed while striking a few poses as she boasted that her husband Justin 'says my stretch marks look like the tree of life.'

Ashley was certainly feeling herself as she posed completely naked with her hand over her chest.

Stretch marks are a common occurrence for pregnant women, but they're not just relegated to pregnancy.

Genetics play a major factor in how any individual body responds to stretch marks and plenty of women (and men) also get the marks from other weight gain or loss, puberty, or genetic disorders as the hormone cortisol weakens elastic fibers in the skin.

The catwalk queen also shared a better angle of her marks as she got up-close and personal with the camera.

Hot mama: The catwalk queen previously shared a nude snap of her marks as she got up-close and personal with the camera

Choices, choices: Ashley's had no trouble putting people in place for criticizing her decisions to share her body on her social media platforms

She wore her gold wedding ring and a simple pair of matching hoop earrings, with her dark brown hair tied up into a messy bun.

Ashley's had no trouble putting people in place for criticizing her decisions to share her body on her social media platforms.

Graham clapped back at a troll who made a dig about her 'stretch marks' and how they would 'affect her career' last month.

The comment re-posted by Ashley was from a fellow mom of twins and read: 'I had twins but I did not get any stretch marks. I hope that does not affect your career.'

Most recently she has modeled for Kim Kardashian's Fendi X SKIMS and is a Michael Kors go-to (among other major brands), proving that her modeling career will be just fine regardless of her skin's elasticity.

Queen: Most recently she has modeled for Kim Kardashian's Fendi X SKIMS and is a Michael Kors go-to (among other major brands), proving that her modeling career will be just fine regardless of her skin's elasticity

Full house: In a touching video posted to her Instagram, the Nebraska-born model shared a clip showing her real-time reaction to the news she and Justin, 32, are expecting twins

Ashley rolled her eyes at the comment (in emoji form) and then responded back: 'Gosh - I hope I still have a career with my stretch marks.'

In a touching video posted to her Instagram, the Nebraska-born model shared a clip showing her real-time reaction to the news she and Justin, 32, are expecting twins.

'Are you serious? We're gonna have three boys?' she said between fits of laughter during an ultrasound appointment.

'Are you serious? We're gonna have three boys?' she said between fits of laughter during an ultrasound appointment

'You are kidding me!' Justin said as he stared in awe at the monitor.

Ashley announced the pregnancy in July with a beautiful portrait cradling her stomach while standing in a foggy field.

'The past year has been full of tiny surprises, big griefs, familiar beginnings and new stories. i'm just beginning to process and celebrate what this next chapter means for us,' she captioned the incredible image captured by her husband.
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Pete Davidson could not hide his smile as he left lady love Kim Kardashian's hotel in New York City on Monday.

The 28-year-old Saturday Night Live star had an extra pep in his step as he exited the Four Seasons Hotel in Tribeca in the early hours of the morning, after reportedly spending the night.

The sighting comes just two days after the pair were seen enjoying a movie date in his native Staten Island and amid reports the two are set to spend the holidays together.

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Fun night? The 28-year-old Saturday Night Live funnyman was seen with a huge grin plastered on his face as he left Kim Kardashian's hotel on Monday evening after reportedly spending the night

Pete looked to be on cloud nine as he was seen waltzing out of the luxury hotel accompanied by security.

He tried to play it cool as he took a phone call with a smoke in hand, before flashing a cheesy grin while heading to a waiting SUV.

The King Of Staten Island star kept it casual in black joggers and a green T-shirt with a cozy looking fleece, and rocked colorful New Balances on his feet.

The platinum haired funnyman also showed off bright red nail polish and a flashy Rolex  perhaps a little gift from Kim ahead of the holidays.

Afterglow? After reportedly shacking up with Kim for the evening, it appears as if they spent the whole day together as he left come nightfall

Playing cool: He tried to play it cool as he took a phone call with a smoke in hand, before flashing a cheesy grin while heading to a waiting SUV

Hiding something? Pete appeared to shield his neck from view, perhaps concealing another love bite

Though the SKIMS founder, 41, is known to stay uptown it seems she chose a downtown hotel this time around to make transportation to and from Pete's native Staten Island easier.

On Saturday evening the pair enjoyed a date at Atrium Stadium Cinemas where they were additionally joined by Scott Disick and Disick's friend Chris Reda.

Following the movie, the foursome headed to a local Italian joint, Angelina's Ristorante, where the establishment shut down the whole third floor for the A-list group.

The owner snapped an image with the hot new duo where they flashed matching peace signs after enjoying champagne and Italian fare.

Reportedly that night Kim even met the number one lady in Pete's life  his mom Amy. A source told HollywoodLife.com that they spent 'several hours' together and that it 'went really well.'

Dinner and a movie: The hot new duo enjoyed a date at Angelina's Ristorante in Staten Island after the movies on Saturday evening

Going strong: 'Kim and Pete have many upcoming plans and things are going really well' a source told E! News of the status of things

This week a source said that the pair are debating a myriad of joint holiday plans and that her family is 'excited' to spend more time with Pete.

'She's really excited about having him around and Kris is already obsessed with him,' a source told E! News. 'The whole family is a fan of Pete's and would love to spend a holiday with him.'

It had been reported that Kim was currently weighing whether or not she would be flying to Miami, Florida where he is set to co-host Miley's New Year's Eve Party with Miley Cyrus.

'Kim and Pete have many upcoming plans and things are going really well. She has even considered going to support him in Miami for New Year's. He has told her he'd love for her to be there.'

Cheesing hard! Kim's new love interest was seen getting the VIP treatment as he left the Four Seasons Hotel in Tribeca and was escorted to a waiting SUV

Walking it out? The King of Staten Island seemed to unwind with a joint after what appeared to be a whirlwind 24 hours

Pete has additionally made it no secret that he is 'all in' on Kim  who reportedly thinks he 'has been the best antidote' amid her ongoing divorce from Kanye West.

'He's so into her and is always "my girl" this and "my girl" that,' the source shared.

Previously a source close to Kim exclusively told DailyMail.com that Davidson is 'very aggressive' with her as he often 'grabs her waist, compliments her butt and touches her hair' when they are together.

'He is extremely sexual and in her face. He is making it crystal clear he likes her,' the confidant said. 'He definitely is not being aloof or playing coy, he is just going for it. And she seems to be loving the attention. It's nice to see her happy.'

His girl: Pete has additionally made it no secret that he is 'all in' on Kim, as he refers to her as 'my girl' with a DailyMail.com insider previously revealing that he is 'extremely sexual and in her face'

Making good with mom! A source told HollywoodLife.com that Kim even met Pete's mom after their Staten Island date night and that they spent 'several hours' together and it 'went really well'

Recently Kim filed to change her marital status to 'legally single,' while additionally petitioning to have her maiden name restored i.e. to drop the 'West' from her name.

The move came just one day after the Donda rapper had tailored a version of his song Runaway during his Free Larry Hoover Benefit Concert to include the words 'Run back to me ... more specifically, Kimberly.'

Amid her ongoing romance with Pete, it appears as if both West and Davidson may soon be under the same roof as the Kardashian Christmas party draws near.

'There is a possibility they will both be there,' an E! insider added of the always over the top holiday party, which may see both the father of her four children and her new boy toy in close quarters.

Humor wins: It has been said that the KKW Beauty founder thinks Pete 'has been the best antidote' amid her ongoing divorce from Kanye West
They've been a couple for 19 years.

And on Tuesday, radio host Dave Hughes shared a sweet throwback photo of himself and his wife Holly from the social pages of a newspaper in 2002 - taken only two weeks after the pair had met.

Dave, 51, posted the image to commemorate his wife's 42nd birthday.

Memories: On Tuesday, radio host Dave Hughes shared a sweet throwback photo of himself and his wife Holly from the social pages of a newspaper in 2002 - taken only two weeks after the pair had met

'This was May 2002. Today is this striking brunettes birthday. We still cruise together,' Dave wrote admiringly.

The 2Day FM radio star then added the hashtag: #luckyguy.

Dave's old newspaper clipping details a story of an event that he and Holly turned up to 19 years ago, two weeks after meeting at a bar in Melbourne.

Birthday girl: Dave, 51, posted the image to commemorate his wife's 42nd birthday

The couple had their first date three days after meeting.

During a segment on Dave's radio show last year, the duo celebrated 18 years together by reminiscing about the good times they've shared.

'Luckiest day of my life, no doubt about it,' Dave said on air.

'I was under a lucky star that night,' Holly agreed.

'It was the luckiest day of my life': During a segment on Dave's radio show last year, the duo celebrated 18 years together by reminiscing about the good times they've shared

It was revealed on that same show that Holly was unsure at the time they met if Dave was interested until he spoke about her on the following Monday morning on his radio show.

The comedian and TV host asked for her to call into the station, and after she did they went on a date that evening.

Dave sends Holly flowers on May 27 each year to mark the anniversary of their first official date.

The couple share three children: Tess, seven, Sadie, nine, and Rafferty, 11.
MasterChef Australia judge Melissa Leong has blasted an Instagram troll for accusing her boyfriend Rob Mason of being 'pretentious' and claiming his children looked 'miserable'.

Rob, a Melbourne hairdresser, had attracted criticism on Monday after he uploaded a series of artistic photos of his three young daughters showing off new haircuts he'd given them.

Melissa, who debuted her romance with Rob three months ago, was quick to praise the black-and-white photographs, calling them 'fashionable' in a gushing Instagram Story post.

Standing up for her man: MasterChef Australia judge Melissa Leong (left) has blasted an Instagram troll for accusing her boyfriend Rob Mason (right) of being 'pretentious' and claiming his children looked 'miserable'

However, not everyone was as thrilled with Rob's artsy photos.

On Tuesday, Melissa uploaded a screengrab of a negative Instagram comment she'd received from a critic, who wrote: 'Why does [Rob's daughter] look so sad? Fashionable? Not. She's a kid. '

'And your pretentious partner buys into it too because it's stylish? Kids need chocolate crackles, laughter and not to be forced to be an "art exhibition" to perpetuate your fame. With all due [sic] respect I just love kids,' the user ranted.

Proud father: Rob, a Melbourne hairdresser, had attracted criticism on Monday after he uploaded a series of artistic photos of his three young daughters showing off new haircuts he'd given them. Daily Mail Australia has chosen not to publish these images

Melissa also uploaded a screen grab of another comment from the same user, which read: 'I love how you guys just can't handle criticism because you're both so narcissistic [crying/laughing emojis]. Welcome to the real world.'

Incensed, Melissa hit back at the user in a lengthy Instagram Story essay, declaring: 'I am not a parent, but even I know you don't project your own judgment and damage onto strangers and their parenting.'

'My partner is an amazing dad and his beautiful, bada** girls love to style themselves into characters... nobody makes them.'

Ruffling feathers: On Tuesday, Melissa uploaded a screengrab of a negative Instagram comment she'd received from a critic, who wrote: 'Why does [Rob's daughter] look so sad? Fashionable? Not. She's a kid'

Hitting back: Incensed, Melissa hit back at the user in a lengthy Instagram Story essay, declaring: 'I am not a parent, but even I know you don't project your own judgment and damage onto strangers and their parenting'

'In the real world (not the one this sad human refers to), we do our best to be kind to one another. At least I do. But maybe that's because I'm "pretentious"?'

Responding to the user's mention of 'kids needing chocolate crackles', Melissa added: 'P.S. haven't yet made crackles for the school lunchbox, I've been making choc chip muffins. Does that count?'

Melissa debuted her relationship with Rob in October, just 10 months after her split with husband Joe Jones.

She first appeared on Rob's Instagram page in August, before finally making things official two months later.

It's love! Melissa first appeared on Rob's Instagram in August. She went Instagram official in October
Michael B. Jordan reflected on his return to the romance genre with A Journal For Jordan directed by Denzel Washington.

The 34-year-old actor has mostly starred in action roles in recent years with his credits including: Fantastic Four, Black Panther, the Creed franchise and Without Remorse.

'I've usually kind of strayed away from love stories in the past,' Jordan told the Dotdash Meredith outlet Blackprint on Monday.

Romantic lead: Michael B. Jordan, shown earlier this month in New York City, reflected on his return to the romance genre with A Journal For Jordan directed by Denzel Washington

The Los Angeles resident cited his youth and life experiences as reasons, and added that he feared he wouldn't be able to 'tap into real emotions in that type of way that could really connect with the character'.

Jordan also revealed that he connected with the journaling practice of his character 1st Sergeant Charles Monroe King.

'I journal a lot. So understanding the thought process behind leaving words and lessons in a journal for somebody to read later, I just love the idea of that. I connect with that personally,' he said.

He credited director Washington, 66, for being a key reason he joined the film.

Strayed away: 'I've usually kind of strayed away from love stories in the past,' said Jordan, shown in a still with A Journal For Jordan co-star Chante Adams

Dream team: Jordan credited director Washington, 66, for being a key reason he joined the film and they are shown at the world premiere in NYC

'And then, you have a phenomenal talent and icon in Denzel Washington as our leader and director. It was a dream to always work with him,' Jordan said.

Jordan and Washington are also co-producers of the film.

The Wire veteran said he wanted viewers to have a sense of hope and optimism after seeing the film and said its takeaway message was 'that even through tragedy, love is the strongest bond'.

Film co-star: Chante Adams who stars opposite Jordan is shown at the world premiere

A Journal For Jordan will be in theaters on December 25.

Jordan has been in a relationship with Lori Harvey, 24, since November 2020.

She recently posted photos on Instagram of the couple enjoying Thanksgiving together.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority is investigating a complaint over an ABC program's coverage of Fox News.

Sarah Ferguson's Four Corners segments on the Rupert Murdoch-owned cable station featured interviews with former employees who claimed the channel became a propaganda outlet for former president Donald Trump.

ACMA is investigating the complaint after the ABC dismissed claims of bias following an internal investigation, according to The Age.

Investigation: ACMA is investigating a complaint by Fox News that the ABC inferred the cable network had become a propaganda outlet for former president Donald Trump during Sarah Ferguson's (pictured) Four Corners segments in August

Fox News' 36-page complaint was dismissed by the ABC last month after a 59-day process, the newspaper reported.

ACMA confirmed it had 'commenced an investigation' into the episodes, which were broadcast on August 23 and August 30, 2021.

In their initial complaint to the broadcaster, Fox wrote 'The use of former disgruntled employees, some of whom were not part of the company during our coverage of the U.S. presidential election and its aftermath, completely discredits any credibility of this program.'

'As for the events of January 6th, Congressional hearings and the Biden Justice Department not only did not implicate Fox, but other media companies were cited as platforms for inciting and coordinating the Capitol riots.'

Bias? The broadcasts featured interviews with former employees who claimed the channel destabilised US democracy. Pictured: former President Donald Trump (left) and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch (right)

The latest criticism of the ABC comes after its chair, Ita Buttrose, doubled down on claims the federal government is using a Senate inquiry to 'intimidate' the national broadcaster.

Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg launched the inquiry into the complaints handling processes at the ABC and SBS last month after claiming 'public concerns'.

Buttrose accused Scott Morrison's government of 'blatant attempt to usurp the role of the broadcaster's board and undermine its operational independence'.

'This is an act of political interference designed to intimidate the ABC and mute its role as this country's most trusted source of public interest journalism,' she wrote.

ABC chair Ita Buttrose (pictured) has accused the Morrison Government of 'political interference' and 'intimidation'.

Buttrose doubled down on her barbed statement on ABC Radio National on Monday, accusing the government of meddling.

'What we have here, really, is a partisan political exercise under the guise of using its Senate legislation committee for government senators to undermine the ABC's independence,' she said.

'Does he agree with the notion of an independent public broadcaster and an independent board, or does he believe politicians should be able to meddle and dictate to the national broadcaster about content?

'Because that's where this is leading.

'I think it would be much better if the government and the national broadcaster had a better relationship. We are not the enemy.'

Radio host Ben Fordham accused Buttrose of having a a 'glass jaw' following a year at the ABC that included 'more clarifications... more corrections... more defamation actions than ever before'.

The inquiry was launched after ABC's complaints division told Fox News that none of its complaints about a Four Corners program on the American network were upheld.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison backed the inquiry saying the ABC was not above scrutiny from parliament.

'It is a government agency, they have their independence and nobody is questioning that, but they are not above the scrutiny of how they conduct themselves, using taxpayers money from any other government agency,' he said.

Ms Buttrose was appointed chair of the ABC by Scott Morrison (pictured) in 2019

'This is business as usual for the Australian Parliament. I don't know why they would consider themselves an exception to business as usual.'

The ABC already commissioned its first independent review in 12 years into its in-house complaints process.

Buttrose wants the Bragg inquiry called off or at least postponed until after that is completed.

Her furious statement on Sunday claimed the inquiry was 'an attempt to weaken the community's trust in the public broadcaster'

'If politicians determine the operation of the national broadcaster's complaints system, they can influence what is reported by the ABC,' she wrote.

Buttrose wrote that the broadcaster's independent review was well underway and already interviewed Senator Bragg.

'I will leave it to Senator Bragg to explain his motives, but the impact of this action is clear. As chair of the ABC board I am duty-bound to call out any action that seeks to undermine the independence of the national broadcaster,' she said

'A fundamental democratic principle underpinning the ABC has been its independence from interference by those motivated by political outcomes.

Senator Andrew Bragg (pictured) will lead an Senate inquiry into the complaints handling processes at the national broadcaster and SBS

'Politicians, like all citizens, are welcome to criticise anything they find wrong or objectionable that is published by the ABC but they cannot be allowed to tell the ABC what it may or may not say.'

Buttrose ended the lengthy statement by calling on the Senate to terminate or suspend the inquiry until the independent process commissioned by the ABC board was completed, when parliament resumed later in November.

Senator Bragg announced the Senate inquiry into the ABC and SBS last week, claiming public concerns were raised over the current system.

'As a strong supporter of the ABC, I am worried that complaints are not being seriously addressed and this is undermining the organisation,' he said.

'If mistakes are made, Australians expect the national broadcaster to swiftly resolve them.

'Having made extensive complaints myself, I am concerned this is not the case.'

Buttrose claimed a new Senate inquiry into the broadcaster is a 'blatant attempt to usurp the role of the ABC board'

The Senate's Environment and Communications Committee will take submissions and hold public hearings in the coming months, with the committee due to report by the end of next February.

The ABC will also seek public submissions for its own 'rigorous and thorough' review with findings will be released by the broadcaster two months later in April.

Opposition Labor's communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland vowed to defend the national broadcaster.

'This Senate inquiry has nothing to do with improving the national broadcasters and everything to do with the Morrison Government's aversion to scrutiny and accountability,' she said.
Kim Kardashian was back to business as usual, after yet another weekend rendezvous with Pete Davidson.

On Monday the 41-year-old billionaire entrepreneur took to Instagram to plug a SKIMS bodysuit as she shared an image featuring her with caramel crimped hair.

In line with the adage 'time is money,' her post came as the 28-year-old SNL funnyman was seen exiting her hotel after 'spending the night.'

Working woman: The billionaire business woman was all work as she plugged a SKIMS bodysuit ahead of Christmas while boy toy Pete Davidson was en route out of her hotel after 'spending the night'

In the image Kim modeled a nude catsuit which highlighted her famed curves, and draped a trench coat stylistically on one shoulder.

The minimalist shoot used cinderblocks as the backdrop, and featured an additional model rocking a strapless 'All-In-One' bodysuit in a different shade.

Switching up her signature brown locks, the KKW Beauty founder showed off caramel crimped hair with lots of body.

She flashed a deadpan expression while embodying a mannequin-like pose and teased of the latest SKIMS drop: 'One and done: this is shapewear you can wear everywhere.'

Afterglow? After reportedly shacking up with Kim for the evening, it appears as if they spent the whole day together as Pete was seen leaving come nightfall on Monday

Fun night? The 28-year-old Saturday Night Live funnyman was pictured leaving the Four Seasons Hotel in Tribeca, as she appeared to swap her usual uptown Ritz Carlton hotel for a location in closer proximity to his native Staten Island

Kim  who recently passed the baby bar exam  proved the hustle never stops as she continued on with her Monday grind following an action packed weekend with Pete.

The King Of Staten island star was pictured exiting the Four Seasons Hotel in Tribeca come nightfall on Monday, after reportedly spending the night.

He flashed a cheesy grin while rocking a pair of joggers and a green T-shirt with a cozy fleece, and puffed on a joint while walking to a waiting SUV.

On Saturday evening, the duo enjoyed dinner and a movie with tag-a-long pal Scott Disick as they were pictured entering the Atrium Stadium Cinemas in Staten Island followed by dinner at Angelina's Ristorante.

Dinner and a movie: The hot new duo enjoyed a date at Angelina's Ristorante in Staten Island after the movies on Saturday evening

Whirlwind weekend: After the pair were snapped entering the Staten Island cinema, it was additionally reported that she had met Pete's mom Amy for 'several hours' while in his native borough where things were said to have gone 'really well'

It was also reported that Kim met the most important woman in Pete's life  his mom Amy  during her trip to New York City.

A source told HollywoodLife.com that they spent 'several hours' together and that it 'went really well.'

And it seems as if the family love goes both ways, as the Kardashian-Jenner clan are 'excited' to spend more time with Pete and are both 'a fan' of him and the budding relationship.

Currently the hot new duo are looking towards the holidays, where Kim is said to have invited him to the Kardashian Christmas party, though estranged husband Kanye West may also be in attendance.

Additionally she is weighing spending New Year's Eve in Miami with him: 'Kim and Pete have many upcoming plans and things are going really well. She has even considered going to support him in Miami for New Year's. He has told her he'd love for her to be there,' and E! source said.
Henry Cavill said he'd consider playing the role of James Bond if it came his way.

The 38-year-old star told The Sunday Times that 'time will tell' if he becomes the latest actor to portray the iconic role, with Daniel Craig exiting the action franchise.

'You don't know which direction they want to take Bond in and so I like to say that everything's always on the table,' Cavill said.

The latest: Henry Cavill, 38, said he'd consider playing the role of James Bond if it came his way in a new interview with The Sunday Times. He was snapped in London earlier this month

The Superman alum, who was up for the role in 2005 when Craig was cast, speculated on who could be eyed for the role.

'We could be talking about Daniel's Bond, or whoever the next Bond is they will probably be in their 30s or 40s - or early 40s,' he said. 'Maybe they'll even go younger, like they were considering with me when it was down to me and Daniel.'

The British actor is currently working on the spy film Argylle with director Matthew Vaughn, who told The Hollywood Reporter last month that Cavill is a natural fit for the role.

'I needed someone born to play Bond - which Henry is - and then to nick him before Bond did,' said Vaughn.

The British actor is currently working on the spy film Argylle with director Matthew Vaughn. He was snapped earlier this month in Madrid

Cavill said that 'time will tell' if he becomes the latest actor to portray the iconic role, with Daniel Craig exiting the action franchise. Craig was snapped in September in London

Cavill has been on record for years indicating he's still interested in the coveted role should an opportunity arise.

He told GQ in 2020 that he 'would absolutely jump at the opportunity' if it arose, as he 'would love to play Bond' and that 'it would be very, very exciting.'

Speaking with Men's Health in 2015, Cavill said that 'the Bond people are wonderful, and [he'd] like to work with them.

'But it all depends on directors, and scripts, and whether they want me to do it. Plus there's a time factor.'

The actors to previously play the iconic role include Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Craig.
Adam Rippon and his fiance Jussi-Pekka Kajaala finally moved in together after spending over a year in a long-distance relationship.

The American figure skater, 32, posted several photos commemorating his big day including an image where the pair shared in a loving embrace.

Rippon wore a black and white shirt, a pair of khakis and dark sunglasses to shade his eyes.

Taking the big step: Adam Rippon and his fiance Jussi-Pekka Kajaala finally moved in together after spending over a year in a long-distance relationship

The athlete's better half donned a black leather jacket, a flannel button-down shirt, a pair of sunglasses and dyed-blonde hair.

In the background of their deep kiss sat a large heart created by the stream of an airplane in the bright blue sky.

The last photo showed Jussi sitting on the couch and looking at his phone.

Looking stylish: Rippon wore a black and white shirt, a pair of khakis and dark sunglasses to shade his eyes

Playing on his phone: The last photo showed Jussi sitting on the couch and looking at his phone

He captioned the photo, 'After over a year a waiting my beautiful fiance has finally moved to LA. o celebrate Im dressed as a mid level real-estate agent from Peoria, AZ. #iLoveYouJP #Dress4Success.'

The couple is finally living together after commuting back and forth from Los Angeles to Jussi-Pekka Kajaala's home country of Finland.

They met on Tinder in 2018 a source told People. The couple became engaged earlier this year while Rippon was visiting his better half in Finland.

A modern love story: The couple, pictured in 2019, met on Tinder a source told People. The couple became engaged earlier this year while Rippon was visiting his better half in Finland

Meaningful exachange: Getting their rings from Finland meant something to the couple too. Rippon explained that he enjoyed carrying a part of the European nation with them (pictured 2019)

Rippon told the publication earlier this year, 'I'm excited to marry JP because he's just the best. He's kind, he's funny, and he's just as beautiful on the inside as he is on the out (which is a lot). He's my cheerleader and I'm his. I just love him a lot.'

Getting the rings from Finland meant something to the couple too. Rippon explained that he enjoyed carrying a part of the European nation with them at all times.

'We bought the rings together and picked them up at the same time,' Rippon said. 'I really wanted us to have rings from Finland. I thought it would be fun to have a little piece of Finland with us all the time as JP is getting ready to move to Los Angeles hopefully by the end of the year.'
She is one of Australia's most in-demand models.

And Montana Cox certainly proved why this is the case on Tuesday, as she stripped down to a slinky black swimsuit during a photo shoot in Sydney.

The jaw-dropping 27-year-old looked gorgeous as she sauntered around in the high-waisted number, showing off her sun-kissed pins and svelte frame in the process.

Scorcher! Montana Cox looked effortlessly gorgeous as she stripped down to a slinky black swimsuit during a photo shoot on in Sydney on Tuesday

Montana donned minimal makeup on her already striking visage, and wore her shoulder-length brunette locks in a casual wavy style.

While some of the photos took place onboard a yacht, Montana was also spotted with another leggy model on-land.

She was pictured wearing a pair of Chanel sandals while sunning herself in the scorching Sydney sunshine.

Earlier this year, Montana revealed her jet-setter lifestyle led to her contracting Covid-19 twice last year.

Gorgeous: She was also spotted with another leggy model on-land, as she stood wearing Chanel sandals while sunning herself in the scorching Sydney sunshine

Behind-the-scenes: Montana put on quite the animated display as she waited to board the yacht

All smiles! She then beamed as she dashed from one location to the next, holding a pair of Chanel sandals in her hand

Divine: The 27-year-old looked absolutely gorgeous as she sauntered around on-deck in the high-waisted number, showing off her sun-kissed pins and svelte frame

Beaming: She even stopped to give a wave before continuing with the sizzling shoot

She said that after her ordeal she was so eager to return home that she left her belongings overseas and fled Down Under.

'I have half of my apartment in New York, half of my stuff still back in London. I came back [to Australia] quickly,' she told Stellar Magazine.

'I was in London when Covid happened and I still had my New York apartment. I got rid of the lease and got someone to pack all of my stuff.

Sitting pretty: Montana ensured all eyes were on her as she posed up a storm

Surely not: Montana looked picture perfect as she posed in the sun above signage that read 'trouble'

It's getting hot: The homegrown stunner looked sensational, even between takes

She's got legs! The glamazon flaunted her trim pins as she stepped off the luxury craft

Troubling year: Earlier this year, Montana revealed her jet-setter lifestyle led to her contracting Covid-19 twice last year. She said that after her ordeal she was so eager to return home that she left her belongings overseas and fled Down Under

Incoming: The brunette bombshell managed to put her best foot forward every step of the way

Hot to trot: Montana traversed the hot sand with ease, like she was on a catwalk in Paris

Natural beauty: Montana wore minimal makeup on her already striking visage, and wore her shoulder-length brunette locks in a casual wavy style

'I have half of my apartment in New York, half of my stuff still back in London. I came back [to Australia] quickly,' she told Stellar Magazine

Since returning to Australia, Montana has used her time in lockdown to fine-tune her acting skills.

In June, Channel Ten announced Montana was joining Neighbours.

It has since been revealed that Montana will make her acting debut on Ramsay Street as Brittany Barnes.

Montana first rose to fame on the 2011 season of Australia's Next Top Model.
Kylie Gillies has urged her fans to get skin cancer checks.

In a post shared to Instagram, the 54-year-old endorsed a 'Game On Mole' T-shirt, created by the GOM sun safety charity.

'Game On Mole. It's a phrase I rarely use, although Larry has been known to utter it to me at around 9 o'clock of a weekday morning,' she joked, referring to her Morning Show co-host Larry Emdur.

Game on! Kylie Gillies (pictured) has urged fans to get skin cancer checks. In a post shared to Instagram, the 54-year-old endorsed a 'Game On Mole' T-shirt, created by a sun safety charity

'This t-shirt is provocative and designed to spark conversation. For example... did you know Melanoma is the most common cancer for Aussies aged 20-39 ? And the first sign is often a new or changing mole,' she continued.

'I have sons approaching 20 years old and I lost a brilliant friend to melanoma. His name was Garry Siutz and he was the most wonderful husband and father to Leonie, Kiya and Oscar,' Kylie added.

'In the upcoming series of Dancing With The Stars, the Melanoma Institute Australia is the charity I'll be dancing for,' she added, referring to Game On Mole.

Be smart: 'Game On Mole. It's a phrase I rarely use, although Larry has been known to utter it to me at around 9 o'clock of a weekday morning,' she joked, referring to her Morning Show co-host Larry Emdur

Kylie and her husband Tony Gillies share two sons Archie, 17, and Gus, 19.

She married Tony, Editor in Chief of Australian Associated Press, in 1989, and they recently celebrated their 32nd anniversary.

Earlier this week, Kylie unveiled her very festive front door, adorned with a giant red bow for Christmas.

Happy family: Kylie married Tony Gillies (back), Editor in Chief of Australian Associated Press, in 1989. The loved-up pair share two sons, Gus, 19, (bottom right) and Archie, 17 (bottom left).

'Our front door.. and honestly, I'm like a kid on Christmas morning I'm so excited,' Kylie captioned the post.

'I posted a random front door that I admired from my walk last weekend,' she said. 'I just thought it was a very crafty neighbour! But, turns out, there's a company who makes these bows.'

She added that the red bows 'come pre-assembled and you just Velcro them on. Takes 2 minutes. Genius'.
Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson shut themselves away from prying eyes on Saturday evening by renting out an entire cinema auditorium for their latest date before spending the night at a five-star hotel.

The unlikely new couple enjoyed the luxury of an empty theatre during a visit to Staten Island's Atrium Stadium Cinemas, where they were accompanied by Scott Disick and a troupe of obligatory security guards at around 6:00pm.

However they may well have asked for a refund after choosing to watch Ridley Scott's fashion flop House Of Gucci, universally panned by critics following its release in November.

Reportedly that night Kim even met the number one lady in Pete's life  his mother Amy. A source told HollywoodLife.com that they spent 'several hours' together and that it 'went really well.'

Privacy: Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson shut themselves off from prying eyes on Saturday evening by renting out an entire cinema auditorium for their latest date

Speaking to TMZ, cinema owner Jesse Scarola revealed they booked out an entire screening room in order to watch the film, which stars Adam Driver and Lady Gaga, in relative privacy.

It's understood that Staten Island native Pete, 28, is a regular patron at the venue, but took the advance precaution of requesting entrance through the side-door with Kim, 41, ahead of his latest visit.

The couple are believed to have chatted with fans following their arrival at Atrium Stadium, where they were seen walking hand-in-hand through the cinema foyer.

Here they come: The new couple enjoyed the luxury of an empty theatre during a visit to Staten Island's Atrium Stadium Cinemas with their security guards (pictured)

Pete was wearing a light green colored jacket with his hair dyed blonde and a backpack that one Twitter user speculated may have contained his own snacks, while Kim dressed casually in all black.

The two were then seen laughing and appearing to enjoy one another's company riding in a car after leaving the theatre and making their way to the Four Seasons Hotel in Tribeca, where Kim had booked a suite.

Though the SKIMS founder is known to stay uptown it seems she chose a downtown hotel this time around to make transportation to and from Pete's native Staten Island easier.

Fun night? The 28-year-old Saturday Night Live funnyman was seen with a huge grin plastered on his face as he left Kim's hotel on Monday evening after reportedly spending the night

Davidson and Kardashian were joined by Kim's former brother-in-law Scott Disick on their movie adventure

Th TV personality all but confirmed her romance with Davidson on Thursday's episode of Honestly With Bari Weiss.

When asked to name her favorite Saturday Night Live cast member, the 41-year-old reality star chuckled and playfully called the question a 'setup.'

'What a setup, what a setup, Bari,' the mother-of-four, who has been seen on a number of dates with Davidson, 28, mused. 'You know who it is.'

Evasive: Kim Kardashian dodged a question about rumored boyfriend Pete Davidson on Thursday's episode of the Honestly With Bari Weiss podcast

Despite dodging the question, the KKW Beauty has been smitten with the comedian since filing for divorce from estranged husband Kanye West.

This week a source said that the pair are debating a myriad of joint holiday plans and that her family is 'excited' to spend more time with Pete.

'She's really excited about having him around and Kris is already obsessed with him,' a source told E! News. 'The whole family is a fan of Pete's and would love to spend a holiday with him.'

All set: Pete was wearing a light green colored jacket with his hair dyed blonde and a backpack that one Twitter user speculated may have contained his own snacks

Make way: He wore the same outfit while leaving Kim's hotel in New York City on Monday

It had been reported that Kim was currently weighing whether or not she would be flying to Miami, Florida where he is set to co-host Miley's New Year's Eve Party with Miley Cyrus.

'Kim and Pete have many upcoming plans and things are going really well. She has even considered going to support him in Miami for New Year's. He has told her he'd love for her to be there.'

Pete has additionally made it no secret that he is 'all in' on Kim  who reportedly thinks he 'has been the best antidote' amid her ongoing divorce from Kanye West.

'He's so into her and is always "my girl" this and "my girl" that,' the source shared.

Making good with mum! A source told HollywoodLife.com that Kim even met Pete's mother after their Staten Island date night and that they spent 'several hours' together and it 'went really well'

Previously a source close to Kim exclusively told DailyMail.com that he is 'very aggressive' with her as he often 'grabs her waist, compliments her butt and touches her hair' when they are together.

'He is extremely sexual and in her face. He is making it crystal clear he likes her,' the confidant said. 'He definitely is not being aloof or playing coy, he is just going for it. And she seems to be loving the attention. It's nice to see her happy.'

Recently Kim filed to change her marital status to 'legally single,' while additionally petitioning to have her maiden name restored i.e. to drop the 'West' from her name.
Bindi Irwin shared a rare glimpse inside her family home in Queensland this week, as she posed for a cute festive photo alongside her and Chandler Powell's dog, Piggy.

On Tuesday, the 23-year-old posted a picture of herself sat on the fireplace of the Sunshine Coast home, while their mammoth Christmas tree stood tall beside her.

'Merry and bright,' Bindi captioned the picture, as she beamed at the camera with the little pooch on her lap.

How cute! Bindi Irwin shared a rare glimpse inside her family home in Queensland this week, as she posed for a cute festive photo alongside their dog, Piggy

Bindi wore a black T-shirt and light denim jeans for the occasion, resting her bare feet on the family's gorgeous beige rug.

The home also features dark wooden floorboards, while presents already sit underneath the Christmas tree.

While there was a baby carrier next to her, the pair's daughter Grace Warrior wasn't pictured in the festive shot.

A peek inside: Bindi had already given a brief glimpse at the gorgeous room earlier this month, in a video shared to Instagram. In the footage, eight-month-old Grace was seen marvelling at the bright Christmas tree while being carried by her mother

Bindi had already given a brief glimpse at the gorgeous room earlier this month, in a video shared to Instagram.

In the footage, eight-month-old Grace was seen marvelling at the bright Christmas tree while being carried by her mother.

Grace then sat in her father Chandler's arms as she touched the branches of the tree and giggled.

The video also showed that the property boasts high ceilings and a Sixties-style stone fireplace with Christmas decor sitting atop.

Spacious: The property has high ceilings and a stone fireplace with a massive TV that sits above it

'Grace woke up to her very first Christmas tree in our house. I'm crying tears of happiness as I write this,' Bindi captioned the video.

Bindi and Chandler announced their daughter's birth on March 26, just one day after she was born on their first wedding anniversary.

'March 25, 2021. Celebrating the two loves of my life. Happy first wedding anniversary to my sweetheart husband and day of birth to our beautiful daughter,' she wrote on Instagram.

'Grace is named after my great-grandmother, and relatives in Chandler's family dating back to the 1700s.

Holidays with the Irwins! In the footage, eight-month-old Grace was also seen marvelling at the bright Christmas tree while being carried by her mother

'Her middle names, Warrior Irwin, are a tribute to my dad and his legacy as the most incredible Wildlife Warrior.

'Her last name is Powell and she already has such a kind soul just like her dad.'

Bindi first met Chandler in 2013, when the American former wakeboarder went on a guided tour of Australia Zoo in Queensland.

The pair married in a surprise ceremony at Australia Zoo in March last year.
Javier Bardem has doubled down on his support for Woody Allen calling the sexual assault allegations against him 'gossip' in a controversial new interview.

The actor, 52, who previously said he does not regret starring in Allen's films, insisted to the Guardian that people are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

He said: 'Pointing fingers at someone is very dangerous if it hasn't been legally proven. Beyond that, it's just gossip.'

Support: Javier Bardem has doubled down on his support for Woody Allen calling the sexual assault allegations against him 'gossip' in a controversial new interview

He continued: 'I try to go where logic dictates, which is: Let's follow the rules that exist to establish whether someone is guilty or innocent.

'If the case re-opens and he is proven to be guilty, I will be the first to say, "What a horrible thing." But so far, I haven't seen that.'

Bardem starred in Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona back in 2008, and won a Golden Globe for his performance.

In 2013, the director's estranged daughter, Dylan Farrow, accused him of sexual abuse. Allen has vehemently denied Farrow's claims.

Following the news of the claims, the Spanish actor goes out of his way to claim he is 'absolutely not' ashamed to have worked with the Oscar-winning director.

Opinion: The actor, 52, who previously said he does not regret starring in Allen's films, insisted to the Guardian that people are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law

He then went on to explain his reasoning with regards to the Dylan Farrow situation

'If there was evidence that Woody Allen was guilty, then yes, I would have stopped working with him, but I have doubts,' he told the publication.

The Skyfall star also revealed how he doesn't agree with the current furor surrounding the veteran director.

'I am very shocked by this sudden treatment. Judgments in the states of New York and Connecticut found him innocent. The legal situation today is the same as in 2007.'

Bardem is far from the only star who has come to the defense of Allen in the wake of the #metoo movement.

Diane Keaton has also expressed her support for Allen.

Longtime friend: Diane Keaton has also expressed her support for Allen

'Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him. It might be of interest to take a look at the 60 Minute interview from 1992 and see what you think,' Keaton tweeted on Monday.

The actress was referring to a 60 Minutes interview in 1992 when Allen publicly denied the allegations that he inappropriately touched Dylan, who was seven years old at the time.

That particular interview occurred during a bitter custody battle between Allen and his ex-partner Mia Farrow.

Allen and Keaton have remained close friends and collaborated throughout the years, most famously on the 1977 drama/romance Annie Hall.

Alec Baldwin has also continued his defense of the embattled director.

Previously, the actor had called Farrow's allegations 'unfair and sad' but, more recently he took his comments a step further and compared Farrow to Mayella Ewell, the character in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, who falsely accuses an African American man of rape.

'[One] of the most effective things Dylan Farrow has in her arsenal is the 'persistence of emotion,' Baldwin tweeted.

'Like Mayella in ['To Kill a Mockingbird'], her tears/exhortations [are] meant [to] shame u [into] belief in her story. But I need more than that before I destroy [someone], regardless of their fame. I need a lot more,' Baldwin added.

Most recently actor Wallace Shawn, who has appeared in six Woody Allen movies, defended the filmmaker against sexual abuse claims in an op-ed, writing that the allegations don't 'square with the sense' he has of Allen.

Shawn, 77, says Dylan may have misremembered what happened when she said Allen touched her inappropriately when she was seven years old in 1992.

He also wrote that Dylan may have been influenced by her mother Mia Farrow's feelings toward Allen.

At the time, Mia and Allen were estranged and Allen was just beginning a relationship with another one of Mia's adopted daughters, Soon-Yi Previn - who was a teen when the relationship began.

Shawn's defense, published in TheWrap , mirrors the lines put forth by Allen and his supporters since the case became public in the early 1990s as part of a custody battle between Allen and Mia.

Dylan's brother Ronan, a journalist who has reported on sexual assault by powerful men, has supported Dylan's allegations. Their brother Moses Farrow, Allen, and their adopted sister Soon-Yi, who's still married to Allen, categorically denies them.

In a lengthy 3,500-word essay, Shawn criticized Dylan's rebuke of actors who continue to work with Allen despite her allegations, which she resurfaced in a New York Times op-ed in 2014.

'The letter was a challenge to any actor who had appeared in a Woody Allen film or contemplated appearing in one in the future, and it wasnt difficult for me to realize that I had to take this personally,' he said.

The actor has appeared in six Woody Allen films, including Rifkin's Festival, which was released in Italy and Spain last year.
Katherine Ryan shared a risque swimsuit-clad throwback to Instagram on Tuesday as she reflected on how her life has changed in 2021.

The comedian, posed for the image alongside her partner Bobby Kootstra, and shared the snap with a recent post of her figure in a plunging green one-piece.

Posting the two images, Katherine reflected on how much her life has changed in recent years, including entering a civil partnership with her childhood sweetheart Bobby, and welcoming their son Frederick in June.

Hot stuff: Katherine Ryan shared a risque selfie to Instagram on Tuesday as she was joined by her partner Bobby Kootstra during a mystery sun-soaked getaway

In her caption, she wrote: 'Life comes at you fast @bobby_k__,' followed by a string of emojis including a champagne glasses, babies, a bride and a ring.

Going make-up free to showcase her natural beauty, she kicked up her leg to exhibit her bronzed leg while scrolling through her phone.

Meanwhile, Bobby put his washboard abs on display while going shirtless and framing his face with a pair of black sunglasses.

Katherine had impressively kept her pregnancy a secret until just two weeks before she gave birth to her son Frederick in June.

Wow! A follow-up shot saw the actress exhibit her ample assets once again in a busty green one-piece, as she took a break from her phone to pose alongside her man

Having a blast! In her caption, she wrote: 'Life comes at you fast @bobby_k__,' followed by a string of emojis including a champagne glasses, babies, a bride and a ring

A few hours after first sharing the news, the new dad also took to Instagram to reveal their little one's name and gush that Katherine was a 'total hero'.

Alongside, a stunning snap of the new parents about to head home with their son and posing on the steps of the Lindo Wing as well as a closer image of the tot.

Bobby penned: 'Our son Frederick Ryan Kootstra, born June 13th:)

'Mom has the reproductive organs of a finely tuned Sportscar, and in a flash raced this baby over the line just in time for kickoff. Shes a total hero 3 hours start to finish.'

The Duchess actress is also mother to daughter Violet, 12, from a previous relationship.

Bobby and Katherine first met in high school in Canada, and they rekindled their flame after she travelled back to her home country for the filming of Who Do You Think You Are.

The childhood sweethearts opted for a civil partnership back in 2019, with the ceremony taking place in Denmark, opted for a civil partnership over a marriage as they saw it as more equal, Katherine told MailOnIine.
It was recently claimed that she has 'turned her back' on a Hollyoaks return in favour of working on her OnlyFans account - after being offered an ultimatum by the show.

And Sarah Jayne Dunn put the issues in her professional life firmly behind her as she happily flaunted toned physique during her sun-soaked family holiday in Dubai on Tuesday.

The actress, 40, showed off her washboard abs in a tiny black bikini in sultry new Instagram snaps as she strutted her stuff on the beach as she continued her idyllic break away.

Work it: Sarah Jayne Dunn put the issues in her professional life firmly behind her as she happily flaunted toned physique during her sun-soaked family holiday in Dubai on Tuesday

Sarah, who played Mandy Richardson in the Channel 4 soap, was in great spirits as she flashed a dazzling smile while posing up a storm at the beach.

The star donned dark sunglasses and appeared to go make-up free for the sizzling snaps, while her blonde locks were loosely swept atop her head in a messy bun.

Captioning her post, she penned: 'Manifesting our next holiday because I am not ready to come home. So grateful that weve been able to have this trip, its been a long 3 years.'

Sarah has been holidaying with husband Jonathan Smith and their son Stanley, five, and has been giving her fans a glimpse into their luxe getaway via social media.

Flaunt: The actress, 40, showed off her washboard abs in a tiny black bikini as she strutted her stuff on the beach as she continued her idyllic break away

The holiday comes after Sarah reportedly turned down the opportunity to return to Hollyoaks after she was sacked from the soap over her OnlyFans account.

According to reports, she has turned her back on the show, despite bosses leaving the door open for her by not killing off her character of 25 years, Mandy Richardson.

Speaking to The Sun, a source said the former soap star has no desire to return, after walking away from the show after being given an ultimatum over the X-rated site.

They said: 'Now Sarah has had some breathing space following the row she has decided she definitely doesnt want to go back.

What drama? Sarah, who played Mandy Richardson in the Channel 4 soap, was in great spirits as she flashed a dazzling smile while posing up a storm at the beach

Stunner: The star donned dark sunglasses and appeared to go make-up free for the sizzling snaps, while her blonde locks were loosely swept atop her head in a messy bun

Much needed: Captioning her post, she penned: 'Manifesting our next holiday because I am not ready to come home. So grateful that weve been able to have this trip, its been a long 3 years'

'Her OnlyFans account is massive and she is in the top one percent of worldwide creators on the platform. Sarah's fans are loving it and so is she.

'The door is closed as far as she is concerned and she will not be going back.'

Sarah explained her decision to join the 18+ site as: 'Im simply moving my racier images to another platform.

Family time: Sarah has been holidaying with husband Jonathan Smith and their son Stanley, five, and has been giving her fans a glimpse into their luxe getaway via social media

'This is a decision Ive thought long and hard about.

'This is about taking control of your own images, your own choices and what you want to do with your body.'

Following her axe from the Channel 4 soap, the star defended having an account on the controversial site.

She insisted that her content is no different to photos of her which are posted on Instagram or appear in lads' mags.
Joan Collins and her husband Percy Gibson have unveiled their 2021 Christmas card.

The picture shows the couple embracing one another in front of a Christmas tree while offering festive well-wishes to their followers.

Joan, 88, shared the intimate moment to her Instagram account on Tuesday, with the caption: 'Wishing all my family, friends and fans a wonderful, and healthy, #Christmas!!'

Christmas Spirit: Joan Collins and her husband Percy Gibson have delighted fans with the release of their 2021 Christmas card

The actress displayed her glamorous fashion sense in a little black dress with diamond encrusted jewels which showed off her svelte legs, along with a fitted blazer.

The icon placed a protective hand on Percy's shoulder while showing off her huge wedding ring and accessorised with two pearl bracelets and bold statement earrings.

Joan wore a flick of smouldering black eyeliner and a bold red lip to draw her ensemble together.

Perfect pair: The couple tied the knot at Claridge's Hotel, in Mayfair in 2002

Joan's other half Percy also looked dapper in the festive snap as he donned a black tailored suit and white fitted shirt.

He beamed while he posed with his wife of almost twenty years as the couple celebrate yet another Christmas together.

The couple met in San Francisco in 2000 while Joan was starring in a play for a company that her now husband managed.

This is her fifth marriage and Percy's second, as he was previously married to Cynthia Bauer for over a decade.

During an appearance on Good Morning Britain in 2020, Joan was asked if she would have met Percy when she was in her 30's, to which she replied 'He wasn't born!' referencing the 31-year age difference between the pair.

They tied the knot at Claridge's Hotel, in Mayfair in 2002.

The screen star recently appeared on The Graham Norton show where she opened up about tensions on the set of Dynasty as she revealed her late co-star John Forsythe didn't speak to her for an entire season.

Appearing on the chat show, she explained how back in 1986 she accepted an award on-stage, on behalf of the television drama, leaving John seething and ultimately freezing her out for a whole season of filming.

Joan played Alexis Colby in the hit series, while John - who died in 2010 aged 92 - played her ex-husband Blake Carrington.

Happily ever after: This is Joan's fifth marriage and Percy's second, as he was previously married to Cynthia Bauer for over a decade

The soap opera, that aired on ABC from 1981 to 1989 followed the pair's toxic dynamic after Blake remarried Krystle Carrington, played by Linda Evans.

Talking about her time on Dynasty, Dame Joan explains to Graham Norton: 'I was in my 40s when I got the role, Linda (Evans) was in her 30s, and John was 62, but the press would go on about us as older women and never mentioned John's age.

'There was so much ageism in Hollywood, so I'd bring it up in interviews and Mr Forsythe didn't like it.

'Then when I accepted the People's Choice award before he could, he refused to speak and walked off stage.

'He didn't speak to me for a whole season after that and when I had to do a scene where he was supposed to try and strangle me, I insisted on having a stand-in!'
She sparked romance rumours with her Strictly Come Dancing partner Nikita Kumzin, during their time on the BBC competition.

And it has now been claimed that Tilly Ramsay, 20 - who was the ninth star to have been eliminated from the latest series of Strictly - has joined celebrity dating app Raya.

The daughter of chef Gordon - who has always insisted that she and professional dancer Nikita, 23, are 'best friends' - is seemingly looking for top-tier love now that the show is over.

Looking for love? Tilly Ramsay, 20 - who was the ninth star to have been eliminated from the latest series of Strictly - has reportedly joined celebrity dating app Raya

A source told The Sun: 'She joined ages ago and wasn't using the app as she was concentrating on Strictly.'

MailOnline has contacted Tilly Ramsay's representatives for comment.

The Raya report emerged as Nikita finally reunited with his long-term girlfriend Nicole Wirt back in Frankfurt, Germany.

The professional dancer took to Instagram on Monday evening to share a quick clip showing that they were together at a Christmas market.

Flirty: She sparked romance rumours with her Strictly Come Dancing partner Nikita Kumzin, 23, during their time on the BBC competition

Reunited: The Raya report emerged as Nikita finally reunited with his long-term girlfriend Nicole Wirt back in Frankfurt, Germany

It was previously claimed that the Strictly pro was previously in 'hot water' with Nicole after failing to return to Germany following his elimination from the show.

Nicole had hoped that Nikita would fly back to German straight after being eliminated from the dancing contest.

But it's understood that he was unable to fly back to his homeland until his contractual obligations with the show are officially over, while complications regarding the ongoing coronavirus crisis have further hampered his return.

Home for Christmas: The professional dancer took to Instagram on Monday evening to share a quick clip showing that he and Nicole were together at a Christmas market

A source told MailOnline at the time: 'Nikita hasn't made any decision not to return home, he wouldn't have been able to go home regardless of new variants as he is contracted to the show and so needed for group numbers etc.'

Insiders informed The Sun that the decision has been influenced by new quarantine rules which he would have to follow when leaving and entering the UK, but said that the choice had 'raised eyebrows, not least Nicole's.'

The source said: 'She hoped that as soon as Nikita was done with the competition he would be on the first flight to Germany to see her.'

Apart: It was previously claimed that the Strictly pro was previously in 'hot water' with Nicole after failing to return to Germany following his elimination from the show

Tilly and Nikita previously set tongues wagging when they were seen leaving his flat together.

However, last month a source told The Sun Online that Tilly sees Nikita as more like a big brother and she's also becoming close with his girlfriend Nicole Wirt.

They said: 'Tilly finds the stories really funny. Lovers? She's been saying he's more like a brother. Tilly says Nikita is literally the funniest person she's ever met but there's nothing at all going on behind the scenes.'
Love Island's Demi Jones has spoken about her relief at being given the all-clear from thyroid cancer.

The 23-year-old, who was diagnosed earlier this year in May, recalled the moment as she spoke with presenters Adil Ray and Charlotte Hawkins on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday.

Demi expressed that she was 'over the moon' after being told that she was cancer free after her seven-month battle, as her diagnosis had felt like a 'death sentence'.

'I'm over the moon!': An ecstatic Demi Jones, 23, recalled the moment that she was given the all clear from thyroid cancer as she appeared on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday

Speaking to Adil, she said: 'Honestly I was over the moon, but I kind of felt speechless.'

She continued: 'I think when people hear the word cancer you used to see it as a death sentence, so for me to go through this really emotionally and physically difficult year, [and for this to] come just before Christmas and relax and enjoy the great news now.'

Demi excitedly announced the great news on her Instagram last week before telling her family.

When ask how this came about she said: 'Your followers become like a family. My excitement just came over me and I just posted it!'

Speaking to Adil, she said: 'Honestly I was over the moon, but I kind of felt speechless!'

She continued: 'I think when people hear the word cancer you used to see it as a death sentence, so for me to go through this really emotionally and physically difficult year'

Posing next to the entrance sign for Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, she penned alongside the snap: 'IM CANCER FREE!!!! I did it! I got my full body scan results back and theres not a single cancer cell left in my body.

'Its been such a difficult year mentally and physically for me with my surgeries and treatment but Im beyond grateful for everyones kindness and support over this past year.

'I will continue to be an advocate for cancer awareness and all my love and strength goes out to those who continue to fight this awful disease, heres to a healthy and happy 2022.'

'Excitement just came over me!' Demi excitedly announced the great news to her Instagram last week before telling her family

She wrote alongside the snap: 'IM CANCER FREE!!!! I did it! I got my full body scan results back and theres not a single cancer cell left in my body'

The reality TV star has spoken publicly about her fight to get a diagnosis in the past, with her first appointment being postponed due to Covid.

As her stepdad had battle cancer Demi persisted to get a diagnosis, and explained on Good Morning Britain: 'If it wasnt for me pushing for it, this tumour would still be growing in my neck.'

She revealed: 'I went for multiple appointments and scans and blood tests everything came back fine. Because of the pandemic, my initial appointment was postponed six months. If it wasnt for me asking for more testing they would have left it.'

Been through it: Demi was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer back in May after discovering a lump on her neck; pictured after surgery

Demi was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in May after discovering a lump on her neck. Other than that, she had no other symptoms.

The disease develops in the cells of thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland found just below Adam's apple in the neck.

Tell-tale signs include a lump on the neck, swollen lymph nodes in the neck and hoarseness.

Demi, who took part in ITVs Strictly, The Real Full Monty dedicated her performance to her stepdad, as she said: 'Honestly, it was the best experience I've ever done. It was like counselling. For me it was a real comfort.'

If you have been affected by this story, call Macmillan Cancer Support on 0808 808 00 00
She'll play a spy from her native Germany in an all-female team on a quest to save the world in the CIA thriller The 355.

But Diane Kruger admitted 'everything changed with motherhood' as she discussed jumping back into work while also raising her now three-year-old daughter with fiance Norman Reedus in December's Women's Health magazine.

The 45-year-old actress, who has yet to reveal her little girl's name, noted that becoming a parent truly set the trajectory for her career as she prioritized more time at home than on just any old job.

Fierce: Diane Kruger admitted 'everything changed with motherhood' as she discussed jumping back into work while also raising her now three-year-old daughter with fiance Norman Reedus in December's Women's Health magazine

'Everything changed with motherhoodit's such a cliche, but it's true,' she said. 'The way I look at work is different. I love to work; in fact, I cherish it more today than I did before, but at the same time, you look at everything from a different angle.

'It's not: What's it going to do for my career? It's more about: Could it fit into my schedule? How can I make it work? Is it going to be worthwhile?'

It was confirmed that she and Reedus, 52, welcomed a daughter together (her first) in November 2018.

The couple, who first met on the set of the movie Sky in 2015, went public with their romance in 2017.

'Everything changed with motherhoodit's such a cliche, but it's true,' she said. 'The way I look at work is different. I love to work; in fact, I cherish it more today than I did before, but at the same time, you look at everything from a different angle.

Two weeks later, she was spotted out with a massive diamond on her left finger in photos obtained by DailyMail.com before she officially revealed the sparkler at the Met Gala on Sept. 13.

'It was daunting,' she said of making the decision to go back to work months after giving birth. 'But after six months of being a full-time mom, I was ready to get back to me, and to get out of the house. It was fun to have a few hours away each day to focus on my body and my work.'

Diane's challenging fight scenes include a mix of self-defense system Krav Maga, and she's often seen sprinting through Paris in the action-packed Simon Kinberg flick, no easy feat for an untrained actor.

'It was daunting,' she said of making the decision to go back to work months after giving birth. 'But after six months of being a full-time mom, I was ready to get back to me, and to get out of the house. It was fun to have a few hours away each day to focus on my body and my work.'

'It was exhilarating to go back to working outto lifting heavy, kicking higher, and trusting my body,' she said.

Diane was also impressed with the female-driven cast, and was thrilled to work with Lupita Nyong'o, Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Fan Bingbing.

'It felt great to work with girls, and there was no weirdness on-set,' Diane said. 'Jessica made sure all of the actresses were paid the same; we all own a piece of the movie. Regardless of how the film does, it was one of the most complete experiences. Being able to be heard and valued is so importantnot just in what I do, but everywhere.'

She added: 'One thing that was wonderful about this film was that many of us were mothers. We were allowed to bring our children to set and had a trailer for the kids. That was a lovely thing, where you can sense that the producer is a woman with a child.'
Janette Manrara has admitted she had 'never been more nervous' than during her triumphant return to Strictly Come Dancing for the show's final on Saturday.

The ballroom professional, 38, revealed she hadn't danced for a long time before her routine with husband Aljaz Skorjanec, 31, to Ed Sheeran's live performance.

Appearing on Tuesday's installment of Good Morning Britain, she said: 'It was so special. There were definitely tears in our eyes when we finished doing that.'

Candid: Janette Manrara has admitted she had 'never been more nervous' than during her triumphant return to Strictly Come Dancing for the show's final on Saturday

She continued: 'I don't think I've ever been more nervous on Strictly Come Dancing than I was dancing with Aljaz that night.

'I haven't danced in a long time because I've been doing It Takes Two which is exciting, and other projects, but dancing is at the core of what I am.'

Luckily, her husband of four years was with her every step of the way in order to put her at ease during the episode watched by 12 million.

'I'm a dancer, so to be able to come back and do it - not only with Aljaz, but also on the Strictly dance floor, on the Strictly final and with Ed Sheeran, it was definitely one of those pinch yourself moments that you'll remember for the rest of your life.

Wow! The ballroom professional, 38, revealed she hadn't danced for a long time before her routine with husband Aljaz Skorjanec, 31, to Ed Sheeran's live performance (pictured on Saturday)

Starstruck: 'Not only with Aljaz, but also on the Strictly dance floor, on the Strictly final and with Ed Sheeran, it was definitely one of those pinch yourself moments' (Ed pictured on Saturday)

'It was a big deal to come back. I almost was like, "Oh, do I still have my dance legs? They're still in here!"

'There's something about dancing with Aljaz that nothing else in the world touches, so to be able to share that with everybody on such a special night was awesome.'

EastEnders' deaf actress Rose Ayling-Ellis and her dance partner Giovanni Pernice lifted the glitterball as she was crowned the winner of Strictly on Saturday.

Adorable: Appearing on Tuesday's installment of Good Morning Britain, she said: 'It was so special. There were definitely tears in our eyes when we finished doing that'

Joker: 'It was a big deal to come back. I almost was like, "Oh, do I still have my dance legs? They're still in here!"

Giving her stamp of approval, the Cuban-American star said: 'She is probably one of the most remarkable human beings I've ever met.

'As a dancer you move through listening to the music, so to see that feeling and that kind of artistry can be created with someone who cannot hear anything is just so special.

'It goes to show you that dancing is more than just listening to a song that you like. It's a feeling, it's an emotion.

Adorable: 'There's something about dancing with Aljaz that nothing else in the world touches, so to be able to share that with everybody on such a special night was awesome'

'It's a vibrancy that goes through your body and Rose is such an example to all the people who want to do something that they think is impossible.

'To see her pick up the glitterball with Giovanni [Pernice] at the weekend - I think they are more than worthy winners - and she is the loveliest, funniest, kindest person backstage you could ever meet.

'So not only is she brilliant on camera, behind the scenes she just lit up everybody's day.'

Deserving: EastEnders' deaf actress Rose Ayling-Ellis and her dance partner Giovanni Pernice lifted the glitterball as she was crowned the winner of Strictly on Saturday (pictured on Saturday)

On being In Slovenia with Aljaz's family for the first time in two years, Janette explained: 'His sister had a baby in February and we hadn't met her yet, and last night when we landed it was very emotional.

'The two girls and Aljaz's sister and dad were there waiting for us and there were definitely tears.

'It's a little Christmas gift for us to be here with Aljaz's family and be with our nieces. It's been a long time coming, so very happy to be here.'
The Libertines star Pete Doherty is set to release a new biography documenting his incredible success and subsequent long-term battle with addiction.

The talented musician has charted his colourful life across 336 pages in forthcoming memoir A Likely Lad, loosely named after one The Libertines' biggest hits.

Biographer Simon Spence co-authors the book after working on similar projects for '70s pop group The Bay City Rollers and legendary Small Faces guitarist Steve Marriott.

Candid: The Libertines star Pete Doherty is set to release a new biography documenting his incredible success and subsequent long-term battle with addiction

Published by The Little Brown Book Group, A Likely Lad is expected to lay bare the highs and well documented lows of Doherty's life and career following his emergence with The Libertines in 2002.

The band released two albums - Up The Bracket and The Libertines - before imploding in 2004, shortly after Doherty spent two months in prison for breaking into bandmate Carl Barat's flat.

He would go on to form Babyshambles during a hiatus from the band, releasing three albums under the moniker over an 11-year period.

Coming soon: The talented musician has written a first-person account of his colourful life in forthcoming memoir A Likely Lad, loosely named after one The Libertines' biggest hits

The musician's lengthy struggle with crack cocaine and heroin addiction is also expected to feature prominently in the new book, as well as his numerous attempts at rehabilitation - among them a spell at an unorthodox treatment facility in Thailand.

Doherty's hectic love life will also be touched upon, including a chaotic relationship with supermodel Kate Moss and his role as a parent to son Astile with ex Lisa Moorish and daughter Aisling Erin with South African model Lindi Hingston.

The musician reunited with his Libertines bandmates on third album Anthems For Doomed Youth in 2014, with the group performing live as recently as December at the O2 Forum in London's Kentish Town.

Old times: Doherty onstage with second band Babyshambles in Leicester, September 2004

Romance: Doherty's hectic love life will also be touched upon, including a chaotic relationship with supermodel Kate Moss

The show came after the band were forced into isolation recently due to coronavirus.

They said in a statement last Friday: 'The Libertines have with a heavy heart decided to cancel their next week of dates, except for the December 17-18-19 London Forum shows, which will still go ahead.

'The ongoing challenges presented by Covid and quarantine restrictions are proving extremely frustrating.

'December 17-18-19 can happen because everyone in band and crew will have completed their legal post-exposure quarantine.'

A Likely Lad is expected to be released on May 19 2022.

Battle: The musician's lengthy struggle with crack cocaine and heroin addiction is also expected to feature prominently in the new book
Amelia Gray Hamlin is ready to move on and meet someone new after ending her 11-month romance with the much older Keeping Up with the Kardashians alum Scott Disick on September 7.

'She's not opposed to dating someone in the spotlight,' a source told People on Monday.

'And age is not a problem for her. She can date someone younger or someone older. It's not a deal-breaker.'

'It has to be the right person': Amelia Gray Hamlin is ready to move on and meet someone new after ending her 11-month romance with the much older Keeping Up with the Kardashians alum Scott Disick (R, pictured May 26) on September 7

The 20-year-old Women 360 Management Model has been 'focusing on herself right now and is in a really good place because of it.'

'It has to be the right person,' the insider added.

'She is taking some time to figure out what she wants in her next relationship but is having fun hanging out with guys and finding something new. She's done with Scott and she'd be fine never speaking to him again and her parents are happy about that.'

Before the 38-year-old father-of-three, Amelia dated Mercer Wiederhorn, the son of FAT Brands CEO Andrew Wiederhorn, for 17 months.

A source told People on Monday: 'She's not opposed to dating someone in the spotlight. And age is not a problem for her. She can date someone younger or someone older. It's not a deal-breaker'

'She's having fun hanging out with guys': The 20-year-old Women 360 Management Model has been 'focusing on herself right now and is in a really good place because of it'

Cookie time! Amelia just flew from Hawaii to her Los Angeles hometown to spend the holidays with her friends and family

'Big art': On Monday night, Hamlin - who moved to Manhattan last month - enjoyed decorating Christmas cookies and playing a game of Cards Against Humanity

Hamlin just flew from Hawaii to her Los Angeles hometown to spend the holidays with her friends and family.

On Monday night, the Vince Camuto paid partner - who moved to Manhattan last month - enjoyed decorating Christmas cookies and playing a game of Cards Against Humanity.

Amelia has to avoid contact with her mother Lisa Rinna, who confirmed her and Erika Jayne's COVID-19 diagnosis on Monday by reposting a meme captioned: 'Delta and Omicron showing up to ruin everyone's plans.'

The Vince Camuto paid partner has to avoid contact with her mother Lisa Rinna (R), who confirmed her and Erika Jayne's (L) COVID-19 diagnosis on Monday by reposting a meme captioned: 'Delta and Omicron showing up to ruin everyone's plans'

A source told TMZ on December 13: Lisa, Erika, Garcelle Beauvais, and a member of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills crew all tested positive, causing producers to suspend all filming on the 12th season. Thankfully, we're told symptoms are mild for all involved and they've all been vaccinated' (pictured December 7)

'Lisa, Erika, Garcelle Beauvais, and a member of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills crew all tested positive, causing producers to suspend all filming on the 12th season,' a source told TMZ on December 13.

'Thankfully, we're told symptoms are mild for all involved and they've all been vaccinated.'

Hamlin teams up with Pop Shop Live this Wednesday to promote her limited-edition lip kit for her 58-year-old mother's cosmetics company Rinna Beauty, which launched on November 29.

Launched on November 29! Amelia teams up with Pop Shop Live this Wednesday to promote her limited-edition lip kit for her 58-year-old mother's cosmetics company Rinna Beauty

Hamlin gushed: '[I'm going] to talk all things Rinna Beauty and I'm super excited! I'm going to show you all my favorite swatches and tones and maybe fill you in on some secrets...I can't wait to see you guys there and show you my favorite ways to use my new lip kit. Gonna be cute!'

'[I'm going] to talk all things Rinna Beauty and I'm super excited!' the NYU drop-out - who boasts 1.1M Instagram followers - gushed.

'I'm going to show you all my favorite swatches and tones and maybe fill you in on some secrets. I don't know yet, we'll see. Um yeah, come hang out with me.

'It's going to be so much fun and I can't wait to see you guys there and show you my favorite ways to use my new lip kit. Gonna be cute!'
Strictly Come Dancing's Gorka Marquez was rushed to hospital with a mystery illness and put on a drip just days before Christmas.

The Spanish professional dancer, 31, was taken to Fairfield Hospital in Manchester this week, where he was monitored by doctors overnight before being sent home.

Gorka took to Instagram on Thursday to share a series of pictures from his 24 hours in hospital, joking that his fiancee Gemma Atkinson thought it was an excuse to miss out on wrapping Christmas presents.

Oh no! Strictly Come Dancing's Gorka Marquez was rushed to Fairfield Hospital in Manchester this week, where he was monitored by doctors overnight before being sent home

Hospital visit: Gorka took to Instagram to detail his visit to the hospital, where he thanked the doctors and nurses for being 'so lovely'

One photograph showed Gorka sitting on his hospital bed with a drip in his arm, while another showed him posing with his half-eaten sandwich.

The father-of-one assured his fans that he was doing OK and had returned home after his hospital visit. He did not reveal the reason for his overnight stay.

He wrote: 'I was looking forward for Christmas at Home but that was interesting 24h in Hospital @glouiseatkinson thinks it was a excuse to avoid all the wrapping of the Christmas presents

'Anyway everything is okey and I am back home having cookies and cuddles of my little nurse.

'Thanks to the Doctors and Nurses at Fairfield Hospital for being so lovely to me. Feliz Navidad!!!' (sic)

Illness: The Spanish professional dancer, 31, joked that his fiancee Gemma Atkinson thought it was an excuse to miss out on wrapping Christmas presents

Peckish: Gorka took to Instagram to share a series of pictures from his 24 hours in hospital, with one photo showing him posing with his half-eaten sandwich

His friends and fans were quick to flood the comments section with well-wishes for Gorka, with many of his Strictly co-stars sending him messages.

His former Strictly celebrity partner Katie McGlynn commented: 'Noo! Hope youre okay.'

John Whaite, who reached the final of this year's series of Strictly with professional partner Johannes Radebe, said: 'I hope you are ok Gorksybabes.'

And Jowita Przysta wrote: 'Get well soon xxx sending you lots of positive energy.'

While Strictly professionals Katya Jones and Amy Dowden also sent their co-star 'get well soon' messages.

'Everything is OK!': The father-of-one did not reveal the reason for his overnight stay

Support: His friends and fans were quick to flood the comments section with well-wishes for Gorka, with many of his Strictly co-stars sending him messages

Earlier this year, Gorka competed on this year's series of Strictly alongside Hollyoaks actress Katie McGlynn, before they were the second couple to be eliminated from the contest during movie week.

Speaking on This Takes Two after they were knocked out of the competition, Katie, 28, insisted that the pair were going to stay friends.

She said: 'We're sad because it means we won't be rehearsing together, it means our journey's ended but we're still going to stay friends.

Back at home: Gorka assured his fans that he was doing OK and had returned home after his hospital visit

Strictly: Earlier this year, Gorka competed on this year's series of Strictly alongside Hollyoaks actress Katie McGlynn, before they were eliminated from the contest during movie week

'He lives in Manchester and I live in Manchester so we've already set up a dinner date so yeah, we're going to catch up. We've got mutual friends so we'll definitely stay in touch.'

It comes after Gorka announced his engagement to actress Gemma, 37 - who he shares a daughter Mia, two, with - on Valentine's Day this year.

The pair first met during the 2017 series of Strictly Come Dancing - where Gemma was paired with Aljaz Skorjanec and Gorka with Alexandra Burke.

Both pairings made the final - with romance rumours flying between Gorka and Gemma throughout.

They confirmed their romance as they celebrated their first Valentine's Day together in 2018.
Connor Smith, who appeared on MTV's dating series Are You The One?, was arrested last week for allegedly raping and assaulting a 16-year-old girl.

The former reality star was taken into custody in Cook County, Illinois, though the crime reportedly occurred in Indiana, TMZ reported on Tuesday.

Smith has so far been charged with one count each of rape and sexual battery, along with two counts of criminal confinement.

Horrific crime: Connor Smith, who appeared on MTV's Are You The One?, was arrested last week in Illinois for allegedly raping a 16-year-old girl in Indiana in July

An arrest affidavit obtained by the publication paints a shifting story from the teenage girl.

She reportedly told police that Smith had abducted her in July when she was visiting family in Indiana.

She claimed that they first made contact via snapchat when she messaged someone about a cat they were selling and gave the address of the house she was staying at.

The alleged victim said that a man ripped open the screen window on her bedroom that night and pulled her out of her room, before forcing her into his truck and tanking her to a motel when he set about sexually assaulting her.

But her story had shifted in subsequent police interviews, and she later told the authorities that she had snuck out of her own accord to visit Smith after they had matched together on a dating app.

Sex crime: The 16-year-old claimed Smith forced her to perform oral sex in his truck while driving to a motel, where he allegedly urinated on her and forced her to perform oral sex again; Smith (top left) seen on MTV's Are You The One? in 2015

She told police that she 'immediately had a bad feeling' after meeting Smith at his truck, and she alleged that he forced her to perform oral sex on him as they drove to the motel.

The teen claimed that he slapped her repeatedly and even tried to choke her during the harrowing drive, and once they were at the motel he allegedly urinated on her before forcing her to perform oral sex on him again.

Afterward, she said that Smith drove her back to the house and told her that he would return the following night to pick her up.

Police say that the girl's family were outside when they drove by as they searched for her, and they reportedly chased after his vehicle and were able to relay its description to the authorities.

Shifting story: The girl first claimed that Smith abducted her from her room, but later told police that she met him on a dating app, though she described the sex acts as nonconsensual

Smith was chosen out of a lineup by the girl, and police believe that he had traveled to Indiana from Illinois, where he was arrested.

He's currently being held in jail without bond.

In 2015, Smith was part of the cast of the MTV dating series Are You The One?, which featured a group of singles looking for relationship who all moved in together.

The contestants were paired off into ideal couples thanks to a matchmaking algorithm, and their task was to determine the chosen couples, with a prize of up to $1 million to be shared among the contestants if they could correctly identify all of the couples.
Disney is pushing ahead with the release of Death on the Nile despite the ongoing controversy surrounding lead star Armie Hammer in the wake of his rape allegations and cannibalism scandal.

On Tuesday, the latest trailer for Kenneth Branagh's long-delayed film - that cost an estimated $90million to make - was unveiled with a new release date now set for Feb. 11.

However, movie fans were quick to react with outrage and ruthlessly mock the trailer, that appears to have gone to great lengths in the editing suite to minimize Hammer's role in the film.

'This cursed movie should just be scrapped and reshot,' one movie fan tweeted, adding: 'Also, you have to laugh at this trailer cut making it seem like he's nothing more than mustachioed wallpaper.'

'This should have been scrapped': Death on the Nile trailer featuring disgraced Armie Hammer has sparked outrage among movie fans, after the actor's rape allegations

Hammer plays the male romantic lead alongside Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot.

The 34-year-old actor began trending in January this year, when a series of graphic DMs allegedly between him and several women were posted online.

In one message, Hammer allegedly described himself as '100% a cannibal' and told another woman, 'I want to eat you.' Hammer denied the claims as 'bull****.'

Hammer then checked into rehab for 'drug, alcohol and sex issues' in June this year, following allegations of rape that prompted an LAPD investigation.

This month, the LAPD wrapped up the investigation turning it over to the District Attorney, with charges 'unlikely' according to reports.

Backlash: Movie fans appeared outraged with one Twitter user calling the film to be 'scrapped' while others mocked how Hammer has been minimized in the trailer

His estranged wife Elizabeth Chambers had filed for divorce in July 2020, with rumors swirling that he had sent her a raunchy text message meant for someone else.

Meanwhile, the trailer was also under fire for featuring the stars Letitia Wright and Russell Brand, for their controversial views on the COVID-19 vaccine.

Brand has become popular among anti-vaxxers recently with his strong views on his YouTube channel, where he has cast doubt on the vaccine and questioned whether Americans should trust the FDA.

Casting: Russell Brand, who plays Dr. Linus Windlesham, has been raising questions about whether Americans should put their trust into the FDA amid the pandemic

Under fire: British star Letitia Wright has also come under scrutiny for sharing a conspiracy theorist video about the COVID-19 vaccines

Blink and you'll miss him! The latest trailer shows only glimpses of Hammer, pictured above kissing Gal Gadot with his full face out of view

Wright also came under fire this year for sharing a video that questioned the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine.

When she received backlash online for posting the video, she responded: 'my intention was not to hurt anyone, my ONLY intention of posting the video was it raised my concerns with what the vaccine contains and what we are putting in our bodies. Nothing else.'

One Twitter user commented: 'All I can think of here is Russell Brand and Letitia Wright exchanging anti-vax conspiracies while Armie Hammer was fantasizing about killing and eating the cast.'

The ensemble cast also features stars including Annette Bening, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, and Game of Thrones actress Rose Leslie.

Strong views: Fans have taken issue with stars such as Armie Hammer, Russell Brand and Letitia Wright in the much-delayed movie which one fan described as 'cursed'

Based on the 1937 novel by Agatha Christie, the movie was first in development back in 2017 - with filming beginning in September 2019.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic and Hammer's rape allegations, the murder mystery endured several release delays.

Director Branagh had previously discussed how he wanted to produce more films, and potentially create a 'cinematic universe' from Agatha Christie's novels.

Tough decision: The film is directed by Kenneth Branagh who also stars as famed detective Hercule Poirot

Awkward: Hammer plays the male lead in the $90 million-budgeted movie, but now his presence in the film is being downplayed
Joy Corrigan turned the heat all the way up during a recent photoshoot in Los Angeles.

The 26-year-old wore nothing but a floral bikini as she posed on a bubblegum blue 1956 classic Chevrolet Bel-Air while shooting a campaign for swimwear brand Maaji on Monday.

The Victoria's Secret beauty seductively gazed into the camera as she showed off her stunning physique and long legs in a variety of angles.

Sizzling: Joy Corrigan turned the heat all the way up during a photoshoot in Los Angeles on Monday

The Massachusetts-born babe rocked a sweet high-waisted lace-up floral two-piece with frilly sleeves as she played it up for the camera.

Not one to forget about the details, she also added a gold necklace and ring to complete her alluring look.

Joy finished her outfit with a pair of chic pink Gucci sandals, which retail for $380 at the store.

Glamorous: The 26-year-old wore nothing but a bikini as she posed on a bubblegum blue 1956 classic Chevrolet Bel-Air while shooting a campaign for swimwear brand Maaji

Bikini babe: The Massachusetts-born model rocked a high-waisted lace-up floral two-piece with frilly sleeves as she played it up for the camera

All in the details: She also added a gold necklace and ring to complete her alluring look

The Jimmy Choo model's blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders in dreamy loose beach waves.

She opted for light makeup for the shoot, wearing just a touch of lipstick and eyeshadow.

The professional model gave the photographer a lot to work with, as she switched up her poses to show off her spectacular figure from the front as well as from the back.

The 58 stunner seemed specifically intent on highlighting her long legs as she flexed them in a multitude of ways while shooting sultry gazes at the camera.

Cute shoes: Joy finished off the outfit with a pair of chic pink Gucci sandals

Picture perfect: The Victoria's Secret beauty seductively gazed into the camera as she showed off her stunning physique in a variety of angles

Legs for days: Joy showed off her bronze long legs from behind

She's a pro! The professional model gave the photographer a lot to work with, as she switched up her poses

Joy has been modeling since she was 14-years-old and has worked for brands like Guess, Victoria's Secret, and Jimmy Choo.

In a January interview with Maxim, the model discussed her laid back attitude towards showing her body in front of the camera.

'I love to be sexy and I love to show skin cause I work out really hard to get the body that I have. Ive always been very free-spirited about it,' she explained.

The blonde stunner added, 'I try to keep every shot I do very classy and a visual showcase of the beauty of what a woman can look like. Thats my goal.'

A woman of many talents, Joy has also been trying her hand at acting, starring in the movie Aftermath with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2017 and Reprisal, with Bruce Willis, in 2018.

In addition, she is also the co-founder and CEO of a clothing brand named Naked Species.

Revealing: The 58 stunner seemed specifically intent on highlighting her long legs as she flexed them in a multitude of ways

Light makeup: The model sported a touch of lipstick and eyeshadow for the photoshoot
Pete Davidson was spotted picking up new bling from a jewelry store as his romance with Kim Kardashian continues to heat up.

The SNL star, 28, was spotted leaving XIV Karats in Beverly Hills on Tuesday carrying multiple shopping bags before hopping into Kim's Rolls-Royce.

Earlier that morning Pete was spotted enjoying an early morning breakfast date with Kim, 41, at The Beverly Hills Hotel after spending several days together in New York City.

The couple have been enjoying plenty of overnight dates, with Pete pictured leaving Kim's Tribeca hotel in the early hours of Monday morning, while Kim had attempted to sneak out of the comedian's condo later that afternoon.

Buying bling for Kim? Pete Davidson was spotted shopping for jewelry at XIV Karats in Beverly Hills on Tuesday

Rise and shine! The actor got his day started with an early morning breakfast at The Beverly Hills Hotel with Kim

However, Kim was nowhere in sight as Pete purchased some new jewelry at the luxury store.

The actor wore a navy blue varsity jacket, gym shorts and chunky white trainers.

He took a brief smoke break outside the store before emerging with three glossy shopping bags and hopping into a sleek Rolls Royce owned by his new girlfriend.

It's possible Pete may have been purchasing something for Kim, with the twosome attached at the hip in recent days.

Class act! The actor dressed up his look with a navy blue varsity jacket

Smoke break: The star puffed on his cigarette as he stood outside the shop

The lovebirds couldn't have looked any happier as they enjoyed an early morning breakfast at The Beverly Hills Hotel on Tuesday.

Pete looked practically giddy as Kim showed him something on her phone at the Fountain Coffee Room at 7:30AM.

The timing of the date suggest Pete may remain in Los Angeles in order to spend Christmas with Kim and her children.

Surprise? Kim was nowhere in sight as Pete purchased some new jewelry at the luxury store

I'll be home for Christmas? The timing of the photos suggest Pete may remain in Los Angeles in order to spend Christmas with Kim and her children

In contrast to her usually all-dressed up appearances, Kim was the epitome of comfort in a light blue sweatshirt, hair bun and black face mask. Pete sported a T-shirt and tucked his covering beneath his chin.

Only hours ago Kim and Pete were spending time together in New York. Pete was spotted leaving Kim's hotel in the Big Apple on Monday after reportedly spending the night there.

The lovebirds had also been spotted on New York City's Staten Island on Saturday, where the comedian rented out a screening room at one of his preferred movie theaters so that they could watch Lady Gaga's fashion flop House Of Gucci.

Public displays of affection: Previously a source close to Kim exclusively told DailyMail.com that Davidson is 'very aggressive' with her as he often 'grabs her waist, compliments her butt and touches her hair' when they are together

Chit chat: The star spoke with another masked-up individual outside the store

The unlikely new couple enjoyed the luxury of an empty theatre during a visit to Staten Island's Atrium Stadium Cinemas, where they were accompanied by Scott Disick and a troupe of obligatory security guards at around 6:00pm.

Following the movie, the foursome headed to a local Italian joint, Angelina's Ristorante, where the establishment shut down the whole third floor for the A-list group.

The owner snapped an image with the hot new duo where they flashed matching peace signs after enjoying champagne and Italian fare.

Hitting his stride! Davidson grinned from ear to ear as he left Kim's hotel in New York City on Monday after reportedly spending the night

Bundled up: The actor wore a beige coat and track pants as he departed the hotel

On the line: Davidson left the hotel glued to his phone

Reportedly that night Kim even met the number one lady in Pete's life  his mom Amy. A source told HollywoodLife.com that they spent 'several hours' together and that it 'went really well.'

This week a source said that the pair are debating a myriad of joint holiday plans and that her family is 'excited' to spend more time with Pete.

'She's really excited about having him around and Kris is already obsessed with him,' a source told E! News. 'The whole family is a fan of Pete's and would love to spend a holiday with him.'

The ex factor: Kim's estranged husband Kanye West was spotted in Los Feliz on Monday

It had been reported that Kim was currently weighing whether or not she would be flying to Miami, Florida where he is set to co-host Miley's New Year's Eve Party with Miley Cyrus.

'Kim and Pete have many upcoming plans and things are going really well. She has even considered going to support him in Miami for New Year's. He has told her he'd love for her to be there.'

Pete has additionally made it no secret that he is 'all in' on Kim  who reportedly thinks he 'has been the best antidote' amid her ongoing divorce from Kanye West.

'He's so into her and is always "my girl" this and "my girl" that,' the source shared.

Previously a source close to Kim exclusively told DailyMail.com that Davidson is 'very aggressive' with her as he often 'grabs her waist, compliments her butt and touches her hair' when they are together.

Sealed with a kiss! Davidson shared a smooch with Kim during her hosting gig on SNL in October

Ringing in 2022 with a bang! It had been reported that Kim was currently weighing whether or not she would be flying to Miami, Florida where he is set to co-host Miley's New Year's Eve Party with Miley Cyrus

'He is extremely sexual and in her face. He is making it crystal clear he likes her,' the confidant said. 'He definitely is not being aloof or playing coy, he is just going for it. And she seems to be loving the attention. It's nice to see her happy.'

Recently Kim filed to change her marital status to 'legally single,' while additionally petitioning to have her maiden name restored i.e. to drop the 'West' from her name.

The move comes after the Donda rapper had tailored a version of his song Runaway during his Free Larry Hoover Benefit Concert to include the words 'Run back to me ... more specifically, Kimberly.'

Amid her ongoing romance with Pete, it appears as if both West and Davidson may soon be under the same roof as the Kardashian Christmas party draws near.

'There is a possibility they will both be there,' an E! insider added of the always over the top holiday party, which may see both the father of her four children and her new boy toy in close quarters.
She retired from the fashion runway years ago.

But model-turned-influencer Rebecca Judd proved she's still got it on Tuesday when she stripped down to a stylish swimsuit by sustainable fashion label Bond-Eye Swim.

The wife of AFL great Chris Judd showcased her incredible figure in the colourful cut-out design, which drew attention to her toned abs and lean legs.

She's still got it! Model-turned-influencer Rebecca Judd proved she's still got it on Tuesday when she stripped down to a stylish swimsuit by sustainable fashion label Bond-Eye Swim

The one-shoulder swimsuit resembled a mismatched bikini at first glance due to its two large cut-outs across the midsection.

But it was actually a single piece comprising a purple bikini-style top, red middle and high-waisted green bottoms.

Rebecca, 38, worked her best angles while filming a selfie video, posing in front of her bedroom mirror before turning around to show off her backside.

Glamazon: The wife of AFL great Chris Judd showcased her incredible figure in the colourful cut-out design, which drew attention to her toned abs and lean legs

Unique design: The one-shoulder swimsuit resembled a mismatched bikini at first glance due to its two large cut-outs across the midsection - but it was actually a single piece comprising a purple bikini-style top, red middle and high-waisted green bottoms

Working it: Rebecca, 38, worked her best angles while filming a selfie video, posing in front of her bedroom mirror before turning around to show off her backside

It comes after the mother of four spoke out about Australia's growing Omicron fears.

She shared a screenshot on Instagram Stories from an article in The Australian by columnist Nick Cater, who is the executive director of the Menzies Research Centre.

Bec urged her followers to put the Omicron case numbers in 'perspective' - and seemed to agree that the new Covid-19 variant is one 'we may be able to live with'.

Having her say: Meanwhile, Rebecca has urged Aussies to look at the Omicron outbreak in 'perspective', saying it could be the Covid-19 variant 'we're able to live with'

The article said those who are infected with the Omicron variant and fully vaccinated are less likely to be hospitalised.

'The arrival of Omicron will be a blessing, not a curse, if data from South Africa holds good,' the column stated.

'Many of those it has infected so far have not developed symptoms, and the evidence so far is that a far smaller proportion of them will need hospital treatment.

'Oh that our public health officials had the character to tell us that and calm our fears, rather than exacerbating them. We should not have to delve into the data on the internet to reassure ourselves that Omicron is the variant we may be able to live with.'

Doing some research: Bec shared a screenshot on Instagram from an article in The Australian by columnist Nick Cater, who is the executive director of the Menzies Research Centre

The article went on to discuss the findings in the Doherty Institute modelling, which said vaccinations can help prevent people from going into intensive care with Covid, which the government has used to enable a road out of lockdown and restrictions.

Bec last month said all signs point to the mutation being a blessing in disguise after almost two years of gruelling lockdowns.

She reposted an article by Sky News commentator Rita Panahi that contrasted the hysteria of 'Covid catastrophists' with the more measured views of scientists who believe Omicron will not spell disaster for Australia.

The article quoted experts as saying Omicron symptoms so far appear to be mild - certainly less severe than the Delta strain - with many patients being asymptomatic.

'Brilliant article, Rita Panahi,' the mother of four, 38, wrote on Instagram Stories.

'For anyone triggered by the arrival of Omicron (myself included) and the associated "fearmongering for clicks" media articles, please read this.

'The expert opinions offered from many professionals are pointing in the right direction.'

Ms Panahi's column for the Herald Sun quoted former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth as saying Omicron could be the magic bullet that saves Australia from a more serious variant of Covid.

'If this is milder than Delta you actually want it to spread within your community,' Dr Coatsworth, the face of Australia's vaccine rollout, recently said on the Today show.

Findings: The article stated those who are infected with the Omicron variant and fully vaccinated are less likely to be hospitalised. It comes after Bec last month said all signs point to the mutation being a blessing in disguise after almost two years of gruelling lockdowns

'You want it to outcompete Delta and become the predominant circulating virus. So that shows you how much more we have learn about this

'It could be that we want Omicron to spread around the world as quickly as possible.'

The article also cited leading epidemiologist Professor Greg Dore, who said the best 'response to uncertainty is to accelerate evidence gathering' rather than 'pulling the panic levers'.

Ms Panahi went on to quote Dr Angelique Coetzee, the Chair of the South African Medical Association, as saying: 'For patients with mild disease we have easily treated them at home with no complications up until now; they're all healthy.

'It might be the same The same type of infectiousness as the Delta variant but the severity [of symptoms] that we are currently seeing is not so severe.'

On Tuesday, NSW reported a record high of 3,057 new Covid cases and 284 hospitalisations. Victoria reported 1,245 cases and 392 in hospital.
Married At First Sight star-turned-powerhouse influencer Martha Kalifatidis is celebrating a major career milestone.

The former freelance makeup artist, 33, has just signed an ambassador deal with American fashion giant Calvin Klein.

Martha, who boasts an impressive 629,000 Instagram followers, shared her first sponsored post for the brand on Tuesday.

Career milestone: Married At First Sight star Martha Kalifatidis has signed with fashion giant Calvin Klein, sharing her first sponsored post for the brand on Tuesday

She posted a gallery of photos of herself in a black crop top and matching high-waisted bottoms.

'All day in my #mycalvins. @Calvinklein,' Martha wrote in the caption.

She confirmed she was a Calvin Klein 'partner' by adding the hashtag #ckpartner.

Martha stunned in her photo shoot, showing off her flat stomach and ample assets in the sporty crop top.

On the rise! She posted a gallery of photos of herself in a black crop top and matching high-waisted bottoms, and captioned it: 'All day in my #mycalvins'

Official: She confirmed she was a Calvin Klein 'partner' by adding the hashtag #ckpartner

She teamed this with matching underwear and baggy beige trousers, and slicked her hair back into a chic bun.

Martha accessorised with small hoop earrings and her makeup comprised dewy foundation and nude lipstick.

Earlier this year, Martha was slammed when she bragged about how much she earns as an influencer on Celebrity Apprentice.

Doing her thing: She teamed a sporty crop top with matching underwear and baggy beige trousers, and slicked her hair back into a chic bun

Criticism: Earlier this year, Martha was slammed when she bragged about how much she earns as an influencer on Celebrity Apprentice

'I'm a beauty influencer who probably makes your yearly wage in a month. So, you should probably take some notes because this is not a fluke,' she said

'Nobody listens to me because they think I'm just a beauty influencer. They don't understand,' Martha said of her team.

'I'm a beauty influencer who probably makes your yearly wage in a month. So, you should probably take some notes because this is not a fluke.'

Some viewers found the remark distasteful, with one posting on Twitter: 'Talk about having a chip on your shoulder.'

Martha and her fiance Michael Brunelli, whom she met on Married At First Sight in 2019, are currently on a holiday in New York City.
Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The actor was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate on December 20 over the Panama Papers leak case and questioned for nearly 6 hours.

Late-night visuals of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan returning to Mumbai after appearing before Enforcement Directorate in Delhi, in connection with Panama Papers case. pic.twitter.com/DlWtoUyVSt  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2021

The Panama Papers case is back in the news after quite some time. The leak became public in 2016 and the ED had since started an investigation. The case pertains to the leak of documents from Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca, which blew the lid off how the rich and the powerful evade taxes and hoard undeclared wealth.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is among nearly 500 Indians named in the case.

#WATCH Delhi | Aishwarya Rai Bachchan leaves from Enforcement Directorate office. She was summoned by ED in connection with the Panama Papers case. pic.twitter.com/zqxJlR7iPT  ANI (@ANI) December 20, 2021

Here are 9 points explaining how Aishwarya is linked to the Panama Papers and what the case is all about:

1. THE BACHCHAN FAMILY

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Amitabh Bachchan were named in the Panama Papers case. Photo: Getty Images

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is not the only Bachchan who has been named in the Panama Papers leak case. Her father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan has also courted unwanted attention because of the leaks.

Apparently, the Bachchans were helming several companies based in foreign countries with massive capital. In 1993, Amitabh Bachchan was named the director of 4 companies; 3 based in the Bahamas and 1 in the Virgin Islands.

The Panama Papers allege that Amitabh Bachchan is the director of tax haven registered companies, among which are Lady Shipping Ltd and Tramp Shipping Ltd. I mean nothing sounds fishy about that.  Kajol Srinivasan (@LOLrakshak) December 20, 2021

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was also reportedly named the director of the companies but later declared a shareholder. Aishwaryas parents and brother Aditya Rai were also declared shareholders. One of the companies was dissolved in 2008, reportedly soon after Rai wed Abhishek Bachchan.

Abhishek Bachchan was also grilled by the ED just a few weeks ago; in November this year.

2. WHAT DID ED ASK AISHWARYA?

Actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan at the ED office in Delhi on Monday. Photo: Getty Images

India Today accessed the questions asked by the Enforcement Directorate to actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan:

Amic Partners was a company incorporated and registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2005. What association do you have with this company?

Do you know the law firm where Mossack Fonseca registered the company?

This company's directors include you, your father, your mother, and your brother. What can you say about this?

The initial paid-up capital is US $50,000. Each share was worth US $1, and each director had 12,500 shares. Why did you become a shareholder from your position as a director?

Why was your status changed to shareholder in June 2005?

Why did the company become inactive in 2008?

Was permission from the RBI sought for financial transactions?

3. EVADING SUMMONS

This is not the first time actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was summoned for questioning by the ED. Rai evaded summons twice before, seeking more time.

4. THE ONCE-UPON-A-TIME HIGHEST TAXPAYER

Veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan made headlines several times in the past for being the highest taxpayer in the country. For 2012-13, Amitabh Bachchan was named the individual highest advance taxpayer in Central. The amount came up to Rs 25 crore.

However, the Bachchan family combined  that is Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan  paid taxes up to Rs 50 crore, the highest during the period.

5. JAYA BACHCHANS CURSE

While her daughter-in-law was being grilled by the ED, Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan lost her cool in Rajya Sabha over a personal remark made by another member. The upper house was discussing amendments to the narcotics control law (NDPS Act).

Jaya Bachchan fuming at house members protesting during her speech, and cursed out at the BJP saying, What is going on? This is terrible... Aap logon ke bure din aayenge (Your bad days will come)."

6. OVER RS 20,000 CRORE IN UNDISCLOSED CREDIT

The government informed the Parliament that the 930 India-linked entities in the Panama and Paradise Paper leak amount to nearly Rs 20,353 crore undisclosed credit. The Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary in a written reply in Rajya Sabha said that so far, nearly Rs 153 crore was collected in taxes in the Panama and Paradise Paper case.

The Paradise Paper leak is similar to the Panama Paper leak case. The Paradise Papers were first published in 2017, a year after Panama Papers.

7. PMLA CASE LODGED IN THE MATTER

The ED, which has been investigating the Panama Papers case since 2016, has registered a money laundering case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).

Further, the Income Tax Department will take action against anybody found involved in violation of laws like the Income Tax Act, 1961, and Black Money and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015, etc.

8. PANAMA PAPERS EXPOSED ILLEGAL ACTS

The nearly 11 million document leak of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca in 2015 revealed details of approximately 2,14,488 offshore entities, hundreds linked to India. The leaked documents disclosed financial information on prominent people around the world  including world leaders, celebrities, tycoons, etc  who paid the Panamanian firm and used the investment to evade taxes and international sanctions.

9. 200 COUNTRIES, 12 WORLD LEADERS, POLITICIANS INVOLVED

From Russian President Vladimir Putin to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, several prominent people in nearly 200 countries were named in the leak. Other than the Bachchans, actor Ajay Devgn, Indias largest real estate developer and founder of DLF KP Singh, Sameer Gehlaut, the owner of real estate firm Indiabulls, etc. were also named.
The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry blocked 20 Pakistani YouTube channels and 2 websites for spreading anti-India propaganda and fake news. The ministry invoked, for the first time, emergency powers under Rule 16 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

I&B Secretary Apurva Chandra requested department of telecom to direct the Internet Service Providers to block the news channels and portals. The official is also said to have written to YouTube, requesting the platform to ban content that disrupts India's sovereignty and integrity, Economic Times reported.

Here's what I&B Minister Anurag Thakur said on the recent development.

We have taken action against cross border activities aimed to spread unrest in India by way of spreading fake news and propaganda. YouTube channels and web portals were violating domestic laws and strong action has been taken against them: Union I&B Minister @ianuragthakur pic.twitter.com/ky9Ycbcvxc  Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (@MIB_India) December 21, 2021

Heres a quick glance at what all has been said and done by the government.

1. ANTI-INDIA CONTENT

The I&B Ministry in its statement has said that the websites that have been blocked belong to a string of coordinated disinformation networks that spread false information against sensitive topics in India like Kashmir, Indian Army, minority communities in India, General Bipin Rawats death, Ram Mandir, etc.

2. GENERAL BIPIN RAWATS DEATH

Pakistani YouTube channel Zain Ali Official banned by Indian government. Photo: PIB

The ministry swung into action after a lot of videos were put on these websites that questioned India's former CDS General Bipin Rawats death, which occured due to a helicopter crash in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu on December 8. Initially, the content was flagged by the security agencies, after which I&B Ministry conducted an inquiry and once it was clear that the flagged YouTube channels were spreading misinformation and hate, the ministry decided to block them. It tracked down 20 YouTube channels that promote anti-India content.

3. THE NAYA PAKISTAN GROUP

Pakistani channel Junaid Haleem Official banned by the Indian government. Photo: PIB

According to the ministry, the modus operandi of the anti-India campaign network emanates from the Naya Pakistan Group (NPG), which has a number of YouTube channels under its umbrella. There are also a number of channels that are not under the NPG, but they have been banned by the government.

The channels have a combined subscriber base of over 35 lakh, while their YouTube views on videos run up to 55 crore. The government also said that some of these channels are being run by Pakistani news channel anchors.

4. THE FIVE ELECTION STATES

The government in its statement also mentioned that some of these channels had an agenda of disrupting democratic process and affecting the election in the five Indian states that are going to polls in February 2022. The channels are also said to have posted against the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019, on the Farmers Protest in 2021 in India.

5. LIST OF BLOCKED PAKISTANI YOUTUBE CHANNELS
Union Minister for Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju speaks in the Lok Sabha during the Winter Session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. (LSTV/PTI Photo)

New Delhi: Amid vociferous protests by the Opposition parties, the Lok Sabha on Monday passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021 in less than 30 minutes. Among other things, the bill proposes to link Aadhaar with voter ID cards.

Several Opposition members  including Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Manish Tewari (Congress), Asaduddin Owaisi (AIMIM), Kalyan Banerjee (TMC), Ritesh Pandey (BSP) and N.K. Premchandran (RSP) -- opposed the bill at the introduction stage, and demanded that it be referred to a parliamentary committee for proper scrutiny of the legislation.

Responding to this, law and justice minister Kiren Rijiju said several proposals which are now part of the current bill have already been suggested and recommended by the standing committee on law and personnel and the government has thoroughly discussed all the recommendations with the Election Commission and the states as well. The minister further said the amendments in the bill will cleanse the election system. He added that the linking of Aadhar numbers with the electoral rolls was not compulsory or mandatory, but voluntary. The minister said that unlike earlier, now a person could get an opportunity to enrol as a voter four times in a year on the 1st day of January, April, July and October. The bill was passed through a voice vote after a brief discussion.

Opposing the bill, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said by linking Aadhaar, which was for residents, and voter IDs, which are for citizens, the government could be potentially giving voting rights to non-citizens.

Initiating the discussion on the bill, BJP member Nishikant Dubey accused the Opposition of doing vote bank politics over the Election Laws Amendment Bill. He said Bangladeshis and videshis should not be made voters in India and that the Opposition parties were opposing the bill because it hurts their vote bank full of Bangladeshis.

Later, NCP MP Supriya Sule, without naming the minister, said one of the ministers of the BJP is allegedly from Bangladesh. Now that Nishikant Dubey has said that the Congress vote bank is of Bangladeshis, then he must ask his government why there is a Bangladeshi citizen as a minister in the Union government, Mrs Sule said.

Earlier, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi gave an adjournment notice in the Lok Sabha demanding a discussion over granting Sixth Schedule status to Ladakh, and the formation of a committee with representatives from both the Leh Apex Body and Kargil Democratic Alliance.
Police has warned of stringent action against those putting up provocative and illegal posts. (Photo: PTI/Representational)

Alappuhza: Claiming 'good development" in the investigation of the recent killings of SDPI's K S Shan and BJP functionary Ranjith Sreenivas here, the police on Tuesday said several suspects have been taken into custody and interrogation is progressing fast to identify whether they were directly involved in the crime.

While SDPI state secretary Shan was killed by a gang on Saturday night while he was on his way back home, the BJP OBC Morcha state secretary, Sreenivas was hacked to death in front of his family by some assailants in his house on Sunday morning.

ADGP (Law and Order) Vijay Sakhare, who is heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the two separate cases, said all aspects including the conspiracy angle would be investigated after the culprits are identified.

Social media surveillance has been intensified in connection with the murders, the officer said and warned of stringent action against those putting up provocative and illegal posts.

The senior IPS officer also said there is good development in the investigation and he and his team were expecting to get a "breakthrough" in the case soon.

"We have taken several suspects into the custody. But it is too early to say whether they were directly involved in the crime. Our immediate target is to complete the interrogation at the earliest, identify the culprits and record their arrest," Sakhare told reporters here.

No specific confirmation could be given right now unless the story is clear to the investigators, he said.

Seeking to maintain the law and order situation and to check recurring of similar crimes, raids have been carried out across the district and several history sheeters have been taken into custody, the official added.

The Police on Monday had arrested two persons in connection with the death of Shan and claimed "substantial lead" in the investigation into the murder of Sreenivas.
A medic takes a nasal swab sample for the COVID- 19 test amid the rise in coronavirus cases, at a swab collect kiosk of urban community health center (UCHC), in Bhubaneswar. (Photo: PTI)

Bhubaneswar: At least two people in Odisha have tested positive for the omicron variant of COVID-19, the first cases of the latest version of coronavirus in the state, officials said on Tuesday.

Bhubaneswar-based Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) confirmed the existence of the variant in the two patients after conducting the genome sequencing of 12 samples.

Both of them have travel history to foreign nations - Nigeria and Qatar, respectively, they said.

The returnee from the African country is fully vaccinated, and is stable in hospital, Cuttack District COVID-19 Nodal Officer Umesh Ray said.

All his contacts have tested negative, he added.

The other patient is also stable in hospital.

Since the outbreak of the latest variant, 8,800 people arrived in Odisha from different countries, including 1,600 from at-risk nations, the officials said.

It was expected that omicron would make its way to the state. However, there is no need to panic as the new variant has mild symptoms on the patients.
SRINAGAR: The Pakistan border guards are reported to have halted construction across Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir after the Indian Armys raising objection to the activity.

A report said that the Indian Army had formally raised the issue of Pakistan Rangers starting a construction just across the LoC in Teetwal sector of J&Ks Kupwara district, asserting the activity went against the mutual agreements and understanding of maintaining a status quo on the de facto border unless informing the other side in advance.

Local news agency GNS reported that the Indian Army after noticing an unusual activity of construction by Pakistan Rangers close to the LoC on Tuesday objected to it. The Indian Army conveyed its displeasure and while using the public address system asked the Pakistan Rangers to stop the unwarranted construction.

The Pakistan Rangers who had started constructing some structure on the other side of the LoC, which however fell within 500 meters range from the fence, stopped the work immediately.

As a general protocol neither Indians or Pakistanis are allowed to do any sort of construction within the 500 metres range without informing the other side in advance, an official said.

It is not known if the Pakistan Rangers wanted to construct a barrack or a bunker close to the divide line.

Meanwhile, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Indian Armys Srinagar-based 15 Corps, Lt General, D.P. Pandey on Tuesday called on Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha at Raj Bhavan in Jammu to brief him on the prevailing security scenario in J&K.

Discussions were also held on several internal security-related issues and their effective management, a statement issued from Raj Bhavan said.

It added, The Lt. Governor lauded the Armys role in ensuring a safe and secure environment for the people of J&K and advised for heightened surveillance on vital installations while maintaining close synergy between the security forces and civil administration to effectively deal with any emergent situation.
Chennai: Sleuths of the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption raided 14 premises connected with former Minister P Thangamani in Namakkal, Erode and Salem on Monday, just five days after conducting a series of searches at 69 places across the State.

Sources said that raids at offices and houses of Thangamanis friends and relatives were based on evidence gathered during the earlier searches. However, unlike the searches on December 15, the DVAC did not come out with a statement on any seizures or detection of excess income.

Meanwhile, AIADMK Co-coordinator Edappadi K Palaniswami lashed out at the DMK government for being desperate to arrest former Ministers belonging to the AIADMK by foisting cases against them.

In a statement he referred to the case relating to AIADMK Virudhunagar West district secretary K T Rajendra Balaji and alleged that the police were harassing his relatives even after the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court had expressed displeasure over the arrest of two relatives and a driver.

Palaniswami said Balaji had moved the Supreme Court for bail, which was his legal right, and that the police were showing desperation in arresting him in connection with the false case.
New Delhi: Opposition MPs protest in the Lok Sabha during the Winter Session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. (RSTV/PTI Photo)

New Delhi: The government on Tuesday introduced the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill 2021 in the Lok Sabha, which seeks to raise the age of marriage for women to 21 years across all religions. The bill, which sets 21 years as the uniform marriage age for both women and men, was later referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for wider consultations.

Union minister Smriti Irani called it a decisive step in the countrys history, but some experts stressed that legislative changes alone will not solve the problem of early marriages unless its root causes are addressed. The bills introduction was opposed by some members who claimed that it infringed upon several personal laws in violation of fundamental rights and demanded that it be referred to a parliamentary committee.

The bill was not on the morning revised business list and was introduced by Ms Irani in the Lok Sabha as part of the supplementary agenda. The Opposition MPs protested, alleging that the government was bringing in new legislation in haste' without consulting all stakeholders. Last week the Union Cabinet had cleared the proposal to introduce the bill in the ongoing session.

Experts are divided on the issue of raising the age of marriage for women with some saying it will go a long way in empowering women and others laying emphasis on addressing the root causes behind early marriages such as the lack of education and poverty.

Addressing a rally in Prayagraj, UP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: We are trying to increase the age of marriage of women to 21 years so that they can have time to study and progress. The country is taking this decision for its daughters. Everyone sees who has problems with this.

Soon after the bills introduction, Ms Irani urged the Chair to refer it to a standing committee.

The bill seeks to amend seven personal laws -- Indian Christian Marriage Act, Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, Special Marriage Act, Hindu Marriage Act and Foreign Marriage Act.

Ms Irani said the bill also seeks to override all existing laws, including any custom, usage or practice governing parties in relation to marriage.

The Opposition members hit out at the government for bringing the bill in a hurry. Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the manner in which the bill was introduced was reflective of the nefarious intentions of the government of not holding any consultations.

Congress Lok Sabha deputy leader Gaurav Gogoi said the bill provisions were contrary to the Law Commissions recommendations that suggested making 18 years as the uniform marriage age for men and women.

We are in a democracy and 75 years late in providing equal rights to men and women to enter into matrimony, said Ms Irani. Ms Irani said this is a secular act and women from all religions, castes and communities should have equal rights in terms of marriage. The minister said nearly 23 per cent of girls were married below the age of 18 years even though the law doesnt allow it. She said that when there is 10 per cent chance of miscarriage among those who get pregnant between 15 to 18 years, this bill is being introduced to provide protection to them.

Ms Irani said if the Opposition members heard her patiently, they would have known the government was ready to refer the bill to the standing committee.

AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi termed the bill a retrograde step. This is against the right to freedom under Article 19. An 18-year-old can choose a Prime Minister, can have a live-in relationship, can have sexual relations under the POCSO Act, but the government is denying them the right to marriage. What have you done for the 18-year-old? The womens labour force participation in India is lower than Somalia, he added.

NCP leader Supriya Sule said this was the second or third time that the government was aggressively bringing in bills and no one from the Opposition was being consulted.

The amendments to the bill will become effective two years from the date it receives the presidential assent.

The Chartered Accountants, Cost and Works Accountants and Company Secretaries (Amendment) Bill 2021 was also referred to the standing committee. The committees report will have to be submitted during the Budget Session.
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By Olga Kharif and Vildana Hajric,

Index funds have long been pitched as a low-risk and inexpensive way to invest. Now theyre coming to the rollicking world of cryptocurrencies, but with plenty of caveats as well as expectations for eye-popping returns.

In a nod to the decentralized aspirations of crypto, the handful of funds offered -- which go by names such as Index Coop, Indexed Finance, PieDAO, and BasketDAO -- are run by DAOs, the decentralized autonomous organizations that are governed by software programs and user communities.

Over the past year, these community-run index funds have raised hundreds of millions. Launched about a year ago, Index Coop -- likely the biggest -- manages about $343.5 million for more than 26,000 users, said Simon Judd, head of business development. Synthetix, which offers a slew of non-index products as well as a decentralize finance, or DeFi-tracking index, has about $386 million in assets. Indexed Finance has nearly $11 million.

I see this as a maturing of the overall crypto ecosystem, said Bennett Adams, a New Yorker who said he invested about $50,000 into Index Coop. The to-the-moon swings are fun, but thats not a retirement strategy. What Index is building is going to work for a long-term hold.

The index DAOs are still relatively small, compared with around $2.2 billion invested in crypto index funds, according to a tally kept by James Seyffart at Bloomberg Intelligence.

The main attraction lies in turning index funds into tokens that people can trade, lend out and borrow to increase returns. Take Index Coop, which issues seven fund tokens, each focused on sectors such as DeFi or metaverse, and also lets people invest with leverage. Users can lend their tokens through DeFi projects such as Aave and earn returns. Or they can convert a fund token into its underlying tokens, such as converting DeFi Pulse Index token, or DPI, into tokens of Aave, Uniswap and Compound. The tokens trade on decentralized exchanges.

Imagine being able to take a share of SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF) and redeem it for the underlying S&P 500 companies, said Mike Taormina, who invests into Index Coops DeFi Pulse Index fund. Taormina worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co. before becoming one of five full-time contributors at Index Coop.

While only accredited investors can invest directly into many centralized crypto index funds, index DAOs are usually open to anyone. Much of a DAOs financial activity is also registered on the blockchain -- often, Ethereum -- for anyone to see.

Another benefit comes from being able to impact the index DAOs activities via related governance tokens. Index Coop, for instance, issues Index, which has been purchased by some large venture-capital investors. On Dec. 8, Sequoia Capital India invested $2.25 million, following in the footsteps of investors like Mike Novogratzs Galaxy Digital. The token can not only be used for voting on Coops future products and strategic direction, but also on all of the projects it invests in. So an investor with Index tokens can have a say in future development of Aave or Compound, for instance.







The positive aspect of investing through a DAO is you, as an average retail user, get to have more say in the products that come out, said Hany Rashwan, co-founder and CEO of 21Shares, a provider of crypto exchange-traded products. You and I, if we owned an index token could go and suggest an index of the metaverse to be created and maybe even have opinions of what should be in it; and if we can convince enough of the people, we can move forward and force the organization to do this.

Returns of index DAOs vary. DPIs price has more than doubled since the beginning of the year, though its down significantly from its May all-time high, according to data tracker CoinMarketCap.com. Its Metaverse Index, which includes tokens for popular projects such as Axie Infinity and Rarible, has more than doubled since the beginning of the year. Over the same time, Bitcoin is up about 60%, while Ether rose more than fivefold.

The index DAOs fees can be higher or lower than those for traditional exchange-traded funds, which take a 0.5% fee for passive investments on average. Indexed Finance said it doesnt collect a management fee. Most users, who simply buy, hold and trade the index tokens dont pay any fees, though there are fees for swapping assets within index pools and when users want to turn their index tokens into their underlying components.

But Index Coop takes about 1% for minting, or issuing a new fund coin, and a similar redeem fee if users exchange the fund token for underlying assets. Theres also a streaming fee for when the fund mints additional tokens that flow into the treasury.

The returns are going to be better with these products because its DeFi, said Les Borsai, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Los Angeles-based Wave Financial Group. Theyre taking aggressive returns.

DAOs have focused on investing from their very beginning. One of the first DAOs created on Ethereum in 2016 and called the DAO, was supposed to invest in crypto startups. It famously got hacked, and Ethereum had to undergo a software upgrade to stop thieves from making away with some $50 million of the funds. Today, PleasrDAO is a community of users acquiring digital artwork. ConstitutionDAO attempted to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution. Today, DAOs of all kinds hold about $10.7 billion in funds, according to tracker DeepDAO.

Hacking risks remain, and a DAO is hacked almost weekly. Also, with DAOs, theres obviously risk in terms of code, theres a risk of disproportionate ownership by core people, said John Wu, president of Ava Labs. These risk things are coded -- intentionally or unintentionally -- poorly.

The DAOs unusual structure -- often with no centralized legal entity with a given address -- also carries risks for the end users.

The drawbacks associated with it is you absolutely have zero legal protections on anything, Rashwan said. DAOs are run by people. Those people can be well-intentioned, they can also be thieves.

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Leading London-based entrepreneur Lord Swraj Paul has revealed acquisition plans in the UK and India in the coming months, once the very dark times of the Omicron variant related Covid-19 surge abates.

The 90-year-old founder of Caparo Group said this week that his team had identified a few potential acquisitions, which will be finalised after site visits are made possible as Covid-hit travel eases up.

The focus will be on the companys strengths in the manufacturing sector, with businesses in the field of steel products under consideration. In India, we have a presence in 20 states already, so the new acquisition will be wherever we find a steel-friendly scenario, Paul told PTI.

In the UK, we are looking at new businesses related to the manufacture of industrial goods. Our expertise is in the field of steel products for cars, planes, railways, and my motto has always been to do what you know best, he said.

Also Read  Steel industry needs govt support to reduce carbon emissions: Sajjan Jindal

Asked about the time frame for the new buys, the House of Lords peer and billionaire businessman added: These are very dark times. We have had to close offices again amid the latest surge in Covid cases. So, it is about wait and watch, but not watch indefinitely.

Paul, among the richest men in the UKs annual Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated fortune of GBP 2 billion, founded his first business in Huntingdon, England, in 1968. After a steel industry crisis around six years ago, Caparo Groups operations in the West Midlands were sold off after going into administration. The bulk of his companys operations are now in the US, India, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

For the New Year, he has set his sights on the UK once again and is ideally on the lookout for a manufacturing business within 150 miles of London.

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Drugmaker Sanofi SA will buy Amunix Pharmaceuticals Inc for an upfront payment of about $1 billion, marking the latest acquisition by the French drugmaker in the US biotech sphere as Sanofi aims to offset Covid-19 vaccine setbacks.

Sanofi, under pressure to revive its drug pipeline and eager to overcome setbacks in the Covid-19 vaccine race, added on Tuesday that it will also pay Amunix up to $225 million based on certain future development milestones.

"We are excited to rapidly advance Amunix's promising pipeline and to combine their innovative candidate medicines with complementary molecules in Sanofi's immuno-oncology portfolio," said John Reed, global head of research and development at Sanofi.

Earlier this year, Sanofi said it would buy two US biotechs, Kadmon Holdings and Translate Bio for $1.9 billion and $3.2 billion, respectively.

The Translate Bio deal has allowed Sanofi to acquire some significant know-how in the field of mRNA technology, which the group is expected to use in a majority of its vaccine-candidates.

Earlier this month, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline said they expected data from late-stage clinical trials of its booster dose of their Covid-19 vaccine candidate in the first quarter, instead of this year, marking another delay for the potential shot.

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Foxconn, a long-time supply partner of Apple has reportedly started trial production of the recently released iPhone 13 series model in India.

The company has plans to commence full-scale assembling of the iPhone 13 to meet domestic demand and also export to overseas markets as early as February 2022, reported The Economics Times citing reliable sources.

Also, Apple has managed to procure enough stock of chipsets for the iPhone 13 models and help speed up the full-scale production in India.

The company has a huge assembling plant in Chennai, which by the way also manufactures Apple's best-selling iPhone 12 along with the iPhone 11. It also previously assembled the iPhone XR (in 2019) as well.

Besides Foxconn, Wistron Corp too, makes Apple mobiles including iPhone SE (2020). The latter has two plants in Karnataka, one in Peenya, an industrial hub in western Bengaluru, and another massive plant in Narasapura, Kolar almost 70 km from the capital city.

It should be noted Wistron was the first Apple supply partner to commence assembling iPhones in India.

It started with Wistron producing older iPhone SE (1st Gen) in 2017, followed by iPhone 6S, iPhone 7, and later iPhone XR.

For now, Foxconn has plans to make only the regular iPhone 13 model and there is no word whether it will start iPhone 13 Pro or 13 Pro Max production as such.

Must read | Apple iPhone 13 review: Packed with features that matter

In October, while announcing the financial report, Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted the huge surge in demand for iPhones in India. Apparently, it scored double-digit growth and double its business in the subcontinent.

Must read | Apple iPhone 12 review: Rock solid premium mobile

The last Counterpoint Research Q3 2021 (July-October) report showed Apple recording a massive 212 per cent year-over-year growth and leads the ultra-premium (Rs 45,000 or more) category with a 74 per cent market share in India. Even in the Rs 30,000 and Rs 45,000 price segment, Apple has a 44 per cent share.

Must read | Apple India doubles its business in fiscal 2021

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.
The protection offered by the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine Covishield declines after three months of receiving two doses, according to a study published in the journal The Lancet.

The findings suggest that booster programmes are needed to help maintain protection from severe disease, said a team of researchers led by University of Edinburgh.

The researchers from Scotland and Brazil analysed data for two million people in Scotland and 42 million people in Brazil who had been vaccinated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine which uses an adenovirus, specifically a common cold virus from chimpanzees, to train the immune system to fight the virus.

In Scotland, when compared with two weeks after receiving a second dose, there was approximately a five-fold increase in the chance of being hospitalised or dying from Covid-19 nearly five months after being double vaccinated.

The decline in effectiveness begins to first appear at around three months, when the risk of hospitalisation and death is double that of two weeks after the second dose, the experts said, while the risk increases three-fold just short of four months after the second vaccine dose. Similar numbers were seen for Brazil.

"Vaccines have been a key tool in fighting the pandemic, but waning in their effectiveness has been a concern for a while. By identifying when waning first starts to occur in the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, it should be possible for governments to design booster programmes that can ensure maximum protection is maintained, said Professor Aziz Sheikh, Director of the University of Edinburgh.

"If eligible for a booster and you have not yet had one, I would highly recommend that you book one soon," he added.

The study also estimated vaccine effectiveness at similar fortnightly intervals by comparing outcomes of people who have been jabbed with those who are unvaccinated.

However, the experts warned that the figures should be treated with caution because it is becoming harder to compare unvaccinated people to vaccinated people with similar characteristics, particularly among older age groups where so many people are now vaccinated.

Meanwhile, a recent study led by Pune-based BJ Government Medical College (BJMC) and Sassoon hospital revealed high levels of protection (seroprevalence) against Covid-19 in over 500 healthcare workers even three to seven months after taking two doses of Covishield.

The study also showed that the antibody prevalence was above 90 per cent and immunity level was also high months after completion of two doses, suggesting no need for booster doses.

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The US has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on a heinous terrorist attack in Bangladesh in 2015 that left Bangladeshi-American atheist blogger Avijit Roy dead and his wife Rafida Bonya Ahmed seriously injured, the State Department announced.

Roy, a 42-year-old Bangladesh-born US citizen, was hacked to death by Islamist militants just after he left a book fair at Dhaka University on February 26, 2015. His wife Rafida Ahmed was also injured in the attack. Roy was an outspoken critic of religious fundamentalism.

The US Department of States Diplomatic Security Service, through its Rewards for Justice (RFJ) office, is offering a reward for information on the terrorist attack in Dhaka, Bangladesh that left US citizen Avijit Roy dead and his wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, seriously injured, the US State Department said in a statement.

Also Read  Pakistan didn't take action against Masood Azhar, Sajid Mir: US

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has authorised a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction in any country of anyone involved in the murder of Roy and the attack on Ahmed, it said.

On February 26, 2015, Roy and Ahmed, both Bangladesh-born US citizens, were visiting Dhaka to attend a book fair when they were attacked by assailants with machetes, it said, adding that while Roy was killed, Ahmed survived with critical injuries.

This investigation remains open, and we are seeking information that will assist law enforcement agencies in bringing to justice the perpetrators of this heinous terrorist attack. A total of six individuals were charged, tried and convicted in Bangladesh. Two of the convicted conspirators, Syed Ziaul Haque (aka Major Zia) and Akram Hussain were tried in absentia and remain at large, it said.

Ansarullah Bangla Team, an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist group based in Bangladesh, claimed responsibility for the attack. Shortly thereafter, Asim Umar, the now-deceased leader of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), posted a widely circulated video claiming that AQIS followers were responsible for the attack on Roy and Ahmed, the state department said.

In 2016, the Department of State designated AQIS as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224, which provides authority to sanction terrorists and those who support terrorists or terrorist acts, it added.

In 2015, the US had strongly condemned the "brutal murder" of Roy, terming the killing as an act of cowardice. "The United States condemns in the strongest terms the brutal murder of Avijit Roy, which was horrific in its brutality and cowardice," State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki had said.

Also Read  66 Indian-origin terrorists operating abroad with IS, which is also in India: US report

In February, a special anti-terrorism tribunal sentenced five members of a banned Islamist militant group, including a fugitive army major, to death and the sixth man to life in prison for killing Roy in 2015.

Bangladesh had witnessed an alarming rise in militant activities in 2015, when four "atheist" bloggers were murdered with authorities attributing the attacks to homegrown terrorists while Islamic State at that time had claimed responsibility for three attacks.

An attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka in 2016 was the worst terrorist incident, in which 22 people, including 17 foreigners, were killed. A Bangladeshi court subsequently sentenced seven of the eight suspects to death.

But it prompted the South Asian country with a Muslim majority population to virtually declare a total war against Islamists engaging Army, paramilitary and elite police units that saw a series of countrywide raids on militant hideouts and deaths of dozens of extremists.

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New Zealand delayed the planned reopening of its international border because of the sweeping spread of Omicron around the world on Tuesday, as several other countries reimposed social distancing measures.

Many nations are on high alert just days ahead of Christmas and New Year celebrations, as the latest health crisis also takes a toll on financial markets, which fear the impact on the global economic recovery.

Omicron infections are multiplying rapidly across Europe, the United States and Asia, including in Japan where a single cluster at a military base has grown to at least 180 cases.

Also Read | Omicron spreading faster than first Covid-19 strain in India

New Zealand Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said his country, which imposed some of the world's toughest Covid-19 measures, was delaying the start of a planned staggered reopening of its border until the end of February.

The government had previously said quarantine-free travel would reopen by mid-January for New Zealand citizens and residents in Australia - a timetable that would have allowed travel during the peak summer vacation period - and by April for foreign tourists.

"There's no doubt this is disappointing and will upset many holiday plans, but it's important to set these changes out clearly today so they can have time to consider those plans," Hipkins said at a press conference.

In India, New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urged citizens to wear masks and appealed to the federal government to allow booster vaccine doses as the country reported 200 cases of the variant across 12 states.

Also Read | Omicron sweeps across US, accounting for 73% of Covid-19 cases

In Singapore, the health ministry was carrying out testing to determine whether Omicron was behind a suspected cluster of cases at a gym and warned more cases were likely.

In the United States, officials said the variant claimed the life on Monday of an unvaccinated man in Texas after becoming the dominant strain in the country. Lines for Covid-19 tests wrapped around the block in New York, Washington and other US cities as people clamoured to find out if they were infected before celebrating the holidays with family.

South Korea, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland were among countries to reimpose partial or full lockdowns, or other social distancing measures, in recent days.

Israel added the United States to its "no-fly" list, citing concerns over the variant, while Kuwait said it would require incoming travellers to have received a booster shot if more than nine months had passed since their second vaccine dose.

Differing Approaches

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday said the situation was "extremely difficult" as hospitalisations rose steeply in London. His government was not ruling out any steps, including potentially limiting tourism.

Also Read | Texas health officials record first death related to Omicron variant

In Australia, where Omicron cases have surged but hospitalisations remain relatively low, Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged state and territory leaders to avoid further lockdowns.

"We're not going back to lockdowns. We're going forward to live with this virus with common sense and responsibility," he said.

The Omicron variant was first detected last month in southern Africa and Hong Kong and so far has been reported in at least 89 countries.

The severity of illness it causes remains unclear, but the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned it is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered from the Covid-19 disease.

Market impact

The rapid spread of the variant has ignited fears that more countries may impose economically disruptive restrictions, impacting markets.

US stocks ended trading on Monday down by more than one per cent, while oil investors feared that new restrictions in Europe would weigh on fuel demand, sending crude prices lower.

The negative mood brightened somewhat in Asian hours with European and US stock futures up and some assets battered in Monday's selling finding buyers, although volumes were thin heading into year-end holidays.

China's yuan inched up against a softer dollar, as investors cautiously returned to riskier assets.

The World Economic Forum on Monday postponed its annual meeting in Davos due to Omicron, putting off the event scheduled for January until mid-2022.

More than 274 million people have been reported to be infected by the coronavirus globally since the pandemic began and more than 5.65 million people have died.

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Britains Queen Elizabeth II has been forced to call off traditional Christmas plans at her Sandringham estate in Norfolk, eastern England, and will stay on at Windsor Castle amidst a surge in coronavirus cases being driven by the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

On Monday, she took what Buckingham Palace referred to as a personal decision to also call off plans to travel to Sandringham, where members of the royal family gather for church on Christmas morning.

The 95-year-old monarch had already called off an annual pre-Christmas lunch tradition for royal family members due to a surge in coronavirus cases being driven by the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

"It reflects a precautionary approach," Buckingham Palace aides were quoted as saying.

Also Read | Omicron's global spread prompts renewed lockdowns, delayed reopenings

It is the second year the pandemic has caused the cancellation of the Queen's traditional Christmas trip to Sandringham and the first without her husband Prince Philip, who passed away in April. The couple had spent Christmas together last year at Windsor Castle in Berkshire, south-east England.

This year, family members are expected to visit the monarch over the Christmas period at the castle and "all appropriate guidelines" will be followed, the palace said. Though it is unconfirmed which members of the family would be visiting over the course of this weekend.

The change of plan is in response to growing concerns about the pandemic and the Omicron variant, amid calls for limiting contacts during the Christmas festivities. Ahead of Christmas, the Queen generally invites her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to join her at Buckingham Palace in London before she departs for her annual Christmas stay at Sandringham.

This marks the second year when the pre-Christmas and Christmas get-togethers have been called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It comes as the government said it is monitoring data hour by hour on whether legal restrictions need to be imposed on Christmas gatherings as the UK recorded another daily COVID high of 91,743 infections.

Obviously, there's considerable uncertainty within the Omicron data  we're concerned about the increasing growth in cases, particularly in London, said UK Cabinet Office minister Steve Barclay.

With reference to further lockdown measures, he added: "But there is a considerable time lag between those catching the infection and presenting as cases at hospital and of course, that needs to be looked at... alongside the booster campaign, the increase in treatments, the changes in behaviour as a consequence of Plan B, which will also have an impact on those hospital admissions.

We're balancing that against the wider economic consequences of any further restrictions which also carry health risks... in terms of the mental health consequences, for example, as well as those wider economic consequences."

Current Plan B rules for England include COVID vaccine passes for events, face masks in most indoor settings and people being urged to work from home if they can. Other parts of the United Kingdom have similar rules, with Scotland asking people to limit social contact to three households at a time in the run-up to Christmas and Wales closing nightclubs from December 27.

Meanwhile, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced that a New Year's Eve celebration event planned at Trafalgar Square will not go ahead because of the surge in Omicron cases in the UK capital. He said the event, for 6,500 key workers and members of the public, was being cancelled "in the interests of public safety".

"This will be very disappointing for many Londoners, but we must take the right steps to reduce the spread of the virus, said Khan.

"I'm proud that we will still have an incredible broadcast spectacular to watch on our screens, which will showcase our great city to the rest of the world," he said.

Khan said more than 65,500 new confirmed cases have been recorded in the capital in the past seven days. It has caused a 29 per cent increase in London hospital admissions in the last week, while the city remains under the purview of a major incident to aid with the increased load.

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Kyiv is ready to meet Moscow in any format, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters on Tuesday, adding that Ukraine was "ready to implement what we have agreed to do".

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier on Tuesday in a phone call with France's Emmanuel Macron that the possibility of holding a new summit in the Normandy format would depend on the Kyiv authorities' concrete steps to implement the Minsk set of agreements.

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Around 200 Afghans marched in Kabul Tuesday to demand the release of billions of dollars of assets frozen by the international community -- a rare protest allowed by the Taliban as the country battles a major economic crisis.

There were no women in Tuesday's march, organised by a little-known group called the Afghan People's Movement which in the past has held peace rallies in the capital.

The Taliban have outlawed protests unless approved, cracking down hard on several demonstrations held by women clamouring for the right to jobs and education.

Tuesday's march clearly had the blessing of Afghanistan's new rulers, with Taliban social media accounts featuring multiple images and video clips saying participants spoke for ordinary citizens.

Also Read | Pakistan mustn't interfere in Afghan affairs: Hamid Karzai

"Let us eat" read one banner carried by a marcher near a square in central Kabul.

"Our main demand is that the United States should release our assets as soon as possible," organiser Shafiq Ahmad Rahimi told AFP.

"This is the wealth of the nation, not of any single person, group or government," he said.

Since the Taliban's August 15 return to power, nearly $10 billion of assets have been frozen by an international community loathe to give access to the funds directly to the hardline Islamists.

But the country is in the grip of a major humanitarian crisis and the United Nations says more than half of Afghanistan's 38 million people face hunger this winter.

Western countries have tied the unfreezing of assets to the Taliban respecting human rights -- especially with regard to women being allowed to work and girls to attend school.

Tuesday's march comes two days after the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) met in Pakistan and agreed to establish new ways of getting aid to Afghanistan.

The country's economy, already battered by decades of war, went into freefall after the Taliban's return.

Banks have also placed severe restrictions on withdrawals by private customers, and many in the capital have resorted to selling household possessions to buy food for their families.

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The United States will give $580 million in additional aid to international organizations to fight Covid-19 in the face of surging Omicron cases, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.

"The rapid spread of the Omicron variant reinforces that we must all continue to accelerate our efforts to end this pandemic and that none of us are safe until all of us are safe," Blinken said in a statement.

"The world is at a critical point in our global response to this virus."

Blinken said he was scheduled to hold a meeting later Tuesday with his counterparts from other countries to coordinate the international response to the new variant, which has already become the dominant strain in the United States.

"I call on my counterparts to fulfill and bolster their commitments in fighting the pandemic. We must work together, and we must act quickly," he said.

The additional funds to seven multilateral agencies bring overall US assistance to $19.6 billion, according to the State Department.

In addition to the 330 million vaccines Washington has given to the rest of the world, the $580 million "is a significant contribution to turn vaccines into vaccinations; strengthen public health capacity; support communities in need, and provide urgent, life-saving relief," Blinken said.

$280 million of the additional funds will go to the World Health Organization, which is once more at the heart of US health strategy under President Joe Biden, after a break under his predecessor Donald Trump.

UNICEF will receive $170 million to help with its efforts to vaccinate vulnerable populations.

"The United States has sought to galvanize global collective action with our own example and leadership, and it is critical that other governments fulfill their commitments and support those on the frontline of this pandemic," said Blinken.

His announcement comes hours before a much-anticipated speech from Biden on his government's response to the Omicron variant.

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Scientists at the Imperial College, London have shown that in a country like India with a large number of infections and low vaccination rate, a booster dose to the elderly and the vulnerables have greater public health benefits than fully vaccinating the younger lot.

We find that prioritising limited vaccine supply for boosters in the elderly, higher-risk population has a greater public health impact, reducing deaths by an additional 5 per cent compared to using these same doses to immunise younger age-groups in an effort to reduce transmission, the Imperial College researchers reported last week.

Read more: Can booster doses fight Omicron variant of Covid-19? Here's what experts have to say

The study that looked into the role of a booster shot to tackle the threat of an Omicron surge showed booster doses would be critical to mitigate the impact of future Omicron waves in countries with high levels of circulating virus.

Where dose supply is limited, targeting boosters to the highest risk groups to ensure continued high protection in the face of waning immunity is of greater benefit than giving these doses as primary vaccination to younger age-groups, adds the study.

"The Imperial College study shows that upto 5 per cent mortality can be prevented by giving a booster shot to those who are at risk such as the elderly and those having comorbidities. The least the government can do is to have a clear policy on boosters, said virologist Shahid Jameel, senior research fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford.

Prioritizing boosters and beds for those at risk of hospitalization was an important determinant of how well we fight Omicron in early 2022, said Giridhara Babu, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India, Bengaluru.

Earlier Mandaviya stated in the Parliament that he would wait for recommendations from the NTAGI (National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation) and NEGVAC (National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19) before taking a decision on the booster shot. Health ministry officials, on the other hand, said their priority would be to complete the two primary doses for 94.47 crore adults rather than the booster shot, on which scientific evidence was still evolving.

Responding to a debate on the Covid-19 situation, the Health Minister on Monday said 58 per cent of the adults were fully vaccinated with two doses whereas 88 per cent received at least one dose. Two more companies submitted their vaccine trial data to the regulator and are expected to receive the Emergency Use Authorisation soon, he added.

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Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on Monday said for the last 20 years the state government has been recommending that Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) be removed and Nagaland taken off the list of areas declared "disturbed areas."

Rio asserted this while moving a resolution demanding that the Government of India repeal the AFSPA from the Northeast in the state assembly which was unanimously adopted. The chief minister said that in view of the improved situation in Nagaland, the State Government has been consistently taking the stand that Nagaland should not be declared a 'disturbed area'.

Read | Nagaland Assembly passes resolution demanding repeal of AFSPA

This has been our stand for more than 20 years, he said, adding that the declaration of a state or any area as 'disturbed area' under Section 3 of the AFSPA is made by the Centre generally for a period of six months only at a time.

On the eve of expiry of the 6-month period, the Government of India seeks views and comments from the State Government. Every time, we have been taking the same stand, that there is no need or justification for extending the declaration of Nagaland as a disturbed area, he said. Nonetheless, the Chief Minister lamented that objections of the state government are ignored every time and the declaration is renewed "again and again".

Pointing out that the current declaration of Nagaland as 'Disturbed Area' is going to expire by the end of this month, Rio hoped that this time the Central Government will heed Nagaland's plea and desist from extending it any more. The resolution against AFSPA came in the aftermath of the killing of 14 civilians by security forces, including six in a botched anti-terrorist operation, and eight others in subsequent incidents in Mon district on December 4 and 5.

Read | AFSPA doesn't violate human rights in NE: NHRC

Rio pointed out that AFSPA was in force only in a few northeastern states and in Jammu & Kashmir but not in Maoist's affected states, where the Central government relies on State police forces and central police to deal with the situation. AFSPA was enacted by Parliament in 1958 in order to give the Indian Security Forces special powers to deal with Naga armed insurgency.

The resolution passed by the Nagaland legislature on Monday vehemently condemned the massacre that took place in Oting - Tiru village area in Mon District on 4th December, 2021 in the indiscriminate firing by the 21 Para Special Forces of the Indian Army in which 13 innocent people were killed, followed by killing of one innocent person by security forces at Mon town on 5th December 2021, and injuring of 35 persons during the incidents.

The House demanded an apology from the appropriate authority, and an assurance that justice will be delivered by applying the laws of the land upon those who perpetrated the "inhuman massacre and upon those who are responsible for the incidents".

It was for the third time in little over six years that the Nagaland Assembly passed a resolution for the repeal of the AFSPA, which gives sweeping powers to detain and arrest people without a warrant in areas designated as "disturbed". It had earlier adopted similar resolutions on March 3, 1971 and July 27, 2015.

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The Trinamool Congress has swept Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections, returning to regulate the civic body for a third consecutive term.

Amid allegations raised by the parties in opposition against the ruling Trinamool, city police and the state election commission, Trinamool has successfully won 134 seats of the 144 wards. The BJP has won three seats. The Left and the Congress won two seats each, and three seats went to independent candidates.

Trirnamool supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee gave voters the credit for the partys landslide victory. Much like the last assembly elections, the city polls, too, have been put forward as a mandate against the rest of the parties that form the opposition in the state.

The Trinamool is also observing the strong result in the framework of national politics, where the BJP, the Congress and the CPI(M) are important players. Mamata said that the victory must also be viewed in the context of national politics as other national parties also contested the election but have been defeated.

The BJP, the Congress and the Left have remained unhappy with the outcomes. Leaders of the Left and the BJP had already approached court a day earlier on the issue of the polls. While the Left candidates apparently stood second in most of the wards, the gulf between the Trinamool and second contestants is largely wide. Of the percentage of votes in the sixteen boroughs that comprise wards, the Trinamool has secured the most votes.

Mamata added that the landslide victory is because we are the son, the daughter of the soil and work on land, and do not suggest working in the sky, indirectly hitting at the absence of ground-support for the parties in the opposition, especially BJP.

Before she left for Guwahati, Mamata told the press that the mandate will help Trinamool in working for the development of the people and the party will work more humbly.

After Kolkata, it will be the turn of other municipal bodies in the state for elections. The BJP had initially demanded that elections be held simultaneously for all the municipal bodies in the state.

The Trinamools thumping victory, leaders feel, is the certification that people are standing with the party that is now on the lookout for expansion in different states  Goa, Tripura, and Meghalaya.

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Three people were arrested after the police was allegedly attacked by a mob in Assam's Barpeta district, officials said on Tuesday.

A police team was attacked with sticks and other weapons by a mob on Monday when they went to Helnar Pam village in Howly police station area to investigate a case related to a woman's assault, Superintendent of Police Amitabh Sinha told PTI.

The team returned to the police station after facing the mob, and later, a strong contingent went to the village to control the situation and picked up six people, he said.

Three people were arrested for allegedly attacking the police personnel and three others were detained for interrogation, the officer said.

A case has been registered against those involved in the attack, he said.

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The High Commission of India in Colombo has taken up with the Sri Lankan government the issue of detention of fishermen from Tamil Nadu by the navy of the island nation.

New Delhi conveyed its concern to Colombo over detention of the fishermen from Tamil Nadu by Sri Lankan authorities between December 18 and 20, Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said. He said that the Government of India had so far received information about 68 fishermen from Tamil Nadu and 10 boats being taken into custody by the authorities of the neighbouring country.

The officials from the Consulate General of India in Jaffna in Sri Lanka met the detained fishermen and are providing all necessary support, including clothes, toiletries, snacks, dry essentials and masks, besides facilitating phone calls to relatives. The CGI in Jaffna is also arranging legal representation for the detained fishermen.

Indias consular officer visited a hospital and met one of the detained fishermen as he was indisposed.

Our High Commission in Colombo has taken up the issue of early release of the Indian fishermen and boats with the Government of Sri Lanka, Bagchi said in New Delhi.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin also urged External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to ensure early release and repatriation of the detained fishermen from Sri Lanka. Jaishankar apprised him and others of the current situation and underlined Government of Indias efforts to secure early release.

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How could the Big Bang arise from nothing?
High drama was witnessed in Rajya Sabha during the passage of a bill to change election laws on Tuesday afternoon after Trinamool Congress floor leader Derek O'Brien threw the Rule Book at the reporters' table after the Chair did not allow voting citing disorder in the House.

The Opposition walked out of the House while the government condemned the behaviour of O'Brien.

"After breaking every rule and precedent, BJP has the gall to give lectures about the Rule Book. Irony just died. (Only two people at the funeral) Guess who," O'Brien tweeted.

After breaking every rule and precedent, BJP have the gall to give lectures about the Rule Book #Parliament  Irony just died. (Only two people at the funeral) Guess who.  Derek O'Brien |  ' (@derekobrienmp) December 21, 2021

Congress Chief Whip Jairam Ramesh said, "today in the Rajya Sabha the Chair didnt even allow a vote on the Opposition motion to send the Electoral Roll-Aadhaar Bill to a Select Committee. The Opposition walked out in protest. Like the farm Bills, this Bill too was passed most undemocratically."

Referring to O'Brien throwing the rule book, Leader of the House Piyush Goyal said in Rajya Sabha, the incident was not just an insult to the House, not just the Chair but to the whole country.

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Rajya Sabha proceedings on Tuesday were adjourned till post-lunch session without transacting any business after opposition parties objected to the allocation of time for passage of a bill to link voter rolls to Aadhaar without them being part of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting.

Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu adjourned the proceedings of the House till 2 pm as Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge raised objection to BAC allocating three hours for passage of The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021.

Soon after the listed official papers were laid on the table, Naidu said the BAC at its meeting on December 20 allocated time for government legislative business. This included three hours for discussion and passage of the electoral bill.

Also Read | Lok Sabha likely to pass amendments to laws governing chartered & cost accountants, company secretaries

While he was reading out the decision, opposition members from the Congress, the TMC and other parties questioned how the BAC could allocate time when they did not attend the meeting.

Besides the government, leaders of major opposition parties are represented at the BAC. The BAC decides on the time for discussions in the House.

"It is Business Advisory Committee, whoever attends it, attends it. Ok, you (opposition parties) have boycotted it... you have got a right to boycott," Naidu said.

The Chairman then went on to say that he had not admitted notices under rule 267, saying "let the House transact the business so that we can take up all these.

Also Read | Lok Sabha passes electoral reforms bill amid din

The Congress and other opposition parties had given notices under rule 267 on the Lakhimpur killings. The rule calls for setting aside the business of the day to take up the issue being raised.

"This is not the way to point. Let the Hosue be in order," Naidu said as opposition members protested against the time allocation for the bill.

Kharge said when the opposition was not part of the BAC, "why we should accept it.

"Don't accept it. The House accepts it," Naidu replied. "You are not understanding. If the members of (the Business Advisory Committee) choose not to come, what can anybody do."

TMC leader Derek OBrien wanted to raise a point of order but Naidu abruptly adjourned the proceedings till 2 pm.

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Opposition MPs from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on Tuesday took out a joint march demanding the removal of Union Minister Ajay Mishra for his reported links in the Lakhimpur Kheri killings, with former Congress president Rahul Gandhi saying that they will not spare the culprit and will not rest until he is sent to jail.

Besides Rahul, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress Leader in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Trinamool Congress Dola Sen, CPI(M)s Elamaram Kareem, CPIs Binoy Viswam, Shiv Senas Sanjay Raut and Priyanka Chaturvedi, RSP NK Premachandran among others marched from the Gandhi Statue in Parliament to Vijay Chowk.

Inside both the Houses too, the Opposition MPs demanded the sacking of Mishra, whose son is in jail in connection with the case and a latest Special Investigation Team report has said that the mowing down of farmers, which killed four farmers and a journalist, was allegedly part of a conspiracy.

Read more: Akhilesh compares equates Lakhimpur violence with Jallianwala Bagh, says BJP will be swept away in polls

Addressing the media, Rahul said the entire opposition in one voice was raising its demand for the sacking of the Minister.

Referring to the SIT report, he said, "we will not spare him (Ajay Mishra) and continue our struggle till he is sent to jail. The prime minister has not done anything on this. I know once I finish speaking there will be questions on some other issue to divert attention. Neither the media nor the government is doing its job."

"The Prime Minister on the one hand apologises to farmers, but on the other hand he keeps the minister who is involved in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident in the Council of Ministers. We will not accept what is being done against farmers," he said.

When a reporter sought his reaction on his tweet on lynching, Rahul shot back, dont do the bidding for the government.

Earlier in the morning, Kharge and Congress MP Deepinder Singh Hooda gave adjournment notices to suspend the business in Rajya Sabha to discuss the Lakhimpur Kheri issue.

"I have given a suspension of business/notice under Rule 267 to discuss the recent SIT report on the manslaughter of Lakhimpur. We demand that MoS Ajay Mishra be immediately removed from his position to ensure a free and fair trial," Kharge said on Twitter.

"In order to ensure a free and fair trial of the murder case of innocent farmers, the Mos, who is father of the accused, must immediately be removed from his position," Kharge said in his adjournment notice under Rule 267.

In Lok Sabha, Congress MP Manickam Tagore gave an adjournment notice on the same issue.
As the Winter Session enters its final days, the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 was passed by the Rajya Sabha in the afternoon. Meanwhile, demanding the sacking of MoS Home Ajay Mishra, the Opposition MPs held a joint march from Gandhi Statue in Parliament to Vijay Chowk. Stay tuned for live updates.
Congress on Wednesday announced the candidature of former Goa Chief Minister Pratapsingh Rane as its candidate from Poriem, a day after his son Vishwajit, a BJP Minister, asked him to retire gracefully, and said that if he does not, he would be ready to fight against his father.

The party had on December 16 put on hold Rane's candidature when the first list was released as their Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao submitted a note to Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the pressure faced by the former Chief Minister from the family against contesting.

DH had then reported that Rane was under pressure from family not to contest, as the BJP has plans to field his daughter or son's wife from the seat. The party high command was apprised of the situation then.

Also Read  TMC offering prospective candidates Rs 10 to 20 crore to join party: Congress

The party leadership released his name on Wednesday evening, a day after the senior Rane said that party workers had urged him to contest and he was fit for another battle.

At present, Vishwajit represents Valpoi seat and on Tuesday said that he had asked BJP to allow him to take on his father if he contests. Vishwajit Rane had shifted to BJP soon after the 2017 Assembly elections and became a minister.

Vishwajit said his father should perhaps think about "retiring gracefully" and reminded him that he has been a Chief Minister for nine terms. "My father will also have to think. At 83, why does he have to continue in politics? A person who is my idol and someone I have so much respect for, that person should gracefully retire, not retire in the battlefield. It will be a messy thing," Vishwajit said.

Sources said the Congress leadership went ahead with the announcement of his candidature after the veteran decided to stay in the fight. It also came at the right time for the Congress, which was on the backfoot after its working president Aleixo Reginaldo joined Trinamool Congress on Tuesday, days after being named as a candidate by the Congress.

Sources said they were surprised by Reginaldo's decision as he had met the Screening committee and made some party committees to recommend his name for the seat.

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Indias Omicron count crossed 200 on Tuesday amid expectations among medical experts that the countrys shrinking Covid-19 epidemic will reverse and slip into an Omicron-driven rise, even as the Union Health Ministry asked districts to watch local epidemic trends.

The ministry on Tuesday directed the district administrations to impose containment measures and restrictions if the test positivity rate in an area has gone up to 10 per cent or more over the past week.

Similar restrictions would fall into place when the occupancy of ICU or oxygen supported beds cross the 40 per cent mark, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote in his letter to the states.

Also Read  WHO approves Novavax as 10th authorised Covid vaccine

Based on the current scientific evidence, the Omicron variant (of SARS-CoV-2) is at least three times more transmissible than the Delta variant. Besides, Delta is still present in different parts of the country. Greater foresight, data analysis, dynamic decision making and strict and prompt containment action is required at the local and district level, Bhushan wrote in his letter.

The fresh warning from the Centre comes at a time when doctors and medical researchers said the number of Omicron cases would increase as local transmission of the highly infectious variant would overtake the infections detected at airports.

"There is no reason to believe what has been seen in other countries will not happen in India. The number will increase fast and doubling days will reduce. Since Omicron is highly transmissible, there will be a significant number of reinfection and breakthrough infection cases, Sandeep Budhiraja, Group Medical Director, Max Healthcare and one of the advisors to the Delhi government on Covid-19, told DH.

A rise in cases due to Omicron coming soon is highly likely. It is best to prepare for the worst, said Anurag Agarwal, Director of CSIRs Institute for Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi, one of the INSACOG laboratories sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Of the 200 Omicron cases recorded till early Tuesday, Maharashtra and Delhi reported 54 each, followed by Telangana (20), Karnataka (19) and Rajasthan (18). Kerala and Gujarat are the two other states with double-digit Omicron figures. Although the majority of the patients are international travellers, there are a few local cases without any established travel link.

Also Read  Karnataka govt imposes restrictions on New Year celebrations

The local transmission might have been established in some parts, suggested by reported cases without any obvious links to travel, said epidemiologist Giridhara Babu at the Public Health Foundation of India, Bengaluru.

We should start seeing a rise in cases by January. There's some evidence for community transmission already and we have travel links to the countries which are reporting a sudden rise in cases, such as the USA, the UK and South Africa. There's no reason to believe that, given what we know of the experience of other countries, something similar should not happen here, said Gautam Menon, a professor of physics and biology at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai and Ashoka University, who is closely tracking the pandemic.

Asked whether a rise in Covid-19 cases would mean increased hospitalisation, Budhiraja said, South African data shows that during the peak of the Delta outbreak, 19 per cent of the patients were hospitalised whereas during the Omicron peak, 1.8 per cent was hospitalised.

But even in such a scenario in India, there would be too many people requiring hospitals in a short span of time. So hospitals should be fully prepared, he said.

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Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the word lynching was practically unheard of before 2014 when the BJP came to power and mocked the Prime Minister with a "Thank you Modiji" even as the BJP hit back saying the Congress leader's father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was the "father of mob lynching".

"Before 2014, the word 'lynching' was practically unheard of. #ThankYouModiJi," Rahul tweeted.

The BJP hit back at the Congress, saying Rahul's father Rajiv Gandhi, who was a former Prime Minister had justified the anti-Sikh riots.

BJP's IT department head Amit Malviya tweeted with a short clip of Rajiv's speech, "meet Rajiv Gandhi, father of mob lynching, justifying blood curdling genocide of Sikhs. Congress took to streets, raised slogans like 'khoon ka badla khoon se lenge', raped women, wrapped burning tyres around necks of Sikh men while dogs gorged on charred bodies dumped in drains."

Meet Rajiv Gandhi, father of mob lynching, justifying blood curdling genocide of Sikhs. Congress took to streets, raised slogans like khoon ka badla khoon se lenge', raped women, wrapped burning tyres around necks of Sikh men while dogs gorged on charred bodies dumped in drains. https://t.co/LFAoAgIGVl pic.twitter.com/ntNovHNF3W  Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) December 21, 2021

Malviya also posted about various riots that happened under the Congress rule between 1969 and 1993.

Positing a video, BJP national spokesperson R P Singh tweeted, "Rahul Gandhi forgets that his father Rajiv Gandhi patronage mob lynching of more than 3000 Sikhs by Congress MP and workers."

Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey told reporters that hundreds of Sikhs were killed in the 1984 riots.

"Mobs killed Sikhs by burning tyres around their neck. Wasn't it lynching?" he said.

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As the Centre is expected to soon issue the final notification on Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) in the Western Ghats on the basis of the Kasturirangan committee report, the states through which the Western Ghats pass are pushing for relaxations. The Kasturirangan report is itself widely seen as a dilution of the recommendations of the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel, which was headed by noted ecologist Madhav Gadgil. Gadgil tells DHs Arjun Raghunath that his report was pro-people and democratic; the Kasturirangan report could be considered unconstitutional as it did not provide for considering the local peoples views.

How different is your report from the Kasturirangan report?

There seems to be a general confusion about what is Ecologically Sensitive Area as per the Kasturirangan report and what it is in our (Gadgil) report. Our report said there cannot be a rigid set of regulations on all areas of Western Ghats that have to be considered ESA. Instead, we recommended three levels of ESA zones  higher sensitivity, moderate sensitivity and lower sensitivity. But in the Kasturirangan report, there is no such distinction. It had just one zone.

The second major difference is that we suggested that certain activities should not take place in the ESA of higher sensitivity, but we also said that these recommendations should not be applied rigidly. The recommendations should be made available to the local grama sabhas and feedback obtained through a grassroots process and then appropriate decisions could be made. The Kasturirangan report, on the other hand, maintained that local communities can have no role in decision-making, which I think is completely unconstitutional. Now, the government is talking mostly about the Kasturirangan report only, which to my mind is flawed.

How do you say that your approach is right?

As per our report, the recommendations of the local community must be taken seriously. The problems cropping up regularly in the sensitive regions indicate that the local people have been kept away from the decision-making process. The recent disasters at Koottickal in Kottayam district of Kerala is a clear instance. Locals there told me that they had been agitating for more than 10 years to stop stone quarrying in the neighbourhood. Even on the day of the landslide, big blasts were carried out in those quarries. As per our report, that area is among the highest sensitivity zones. If our report was implemented, this feedback from the local community could have been obtained and the illegal quarrying could have been stopped.

State governments are justifying seeking relaxations in restrictions citing the livelihoods of local people and their requirement of raw materials for construction activities

That is just nonsense. The farmers are weeping as their livelihoods are facing a threat from the illegal activities in the sensitive region. The recent calamities are instances. With regard to construction activities, we have to see whether all this infrastructure  like roads, railways  are really required. The kind of infrastructure we need pertains to health and education. Priority can be given to housing as a large number of people are still homeless.

Read | Karnataka again rejects Kasturirangan report on Western Ghats

Most development activities now are aimed at benefiting only the rich. Destroying mangroves to set up high-rises is only for the rich. The level of economic disparity, the number of people suffering anaemia, etc., are on the rise. These issues need to be addressed.

Then what could be the real reason or the hidden agenda for states seeking relaxation?

The agenda is not hidden at all. The relaxations in ESA will benefit the quarries that make huge, illegal profits. It is being shared among politicians and bureaucrats. Some 10 years back, some mine-owners in Goa had told me about the huge rates they pay to the politicians, right from the bottom to the top. It is regretful that in all states, the ruling parties are in cahoots with the vested interest lobbies. Before the 2014 elections, the BJP strongly supported our report, but the moment they came to power, they took a 180-degree turn. When not in power they supported our report only to get some political mileage.

Those seeking relaxations in Kerala say that the major calamities were mainly due to poor dam management and not activities in the ecologically sensitive areas. Is that so?

Poor dam management was one contributory reason for the 2018 calamities in Kerala. But in the subsequent years also, there were major landslides. I had personally visited the Puthumala area of Wayanad where the landslide happened and claimed many lives. It was evident that the construction of roads and buildings on the steep slopes were contributing factors. In Konkan areas of Maharashtra, this year, landslide geologists who did field studies told me that the rubble from quarrying activities had reached the river. They have documented all this.

In Kerala, the Left Front government is pushing for a semi high-speed rail project. Does that pose an ecological risk?

I would say a straight no to the semi high-speed rail project proposal as it will definitely affect the natural flow of water. For instance, look at the floods in the Konkan region. There is good scientific data in this regard.

What do you expect from the government on the ESA notification?

The government should follow the democratic process. When that happens, then things will change. They will begin to respond only to pressure from the public below. Unfortunately, the government doesnt want democracy and hence my report that suggested collecting opinions from the local community is not considered. Even on the farmers protest, the government tried to suppress public pressure. But finally, they had to yield. So, if public pressure builds up, the government will yield. Otherwise, it will only go by the vested interests.
Ukraine, a lower-middle-income country in Eastern Europe, with a population of 43 million and an area of 603,550 square kilometres, finds itself in the crosshairs of the United States and Russia. Recently, the presidents of both the countries met virtually to discuss the latter's overtures on the borders of Ukraine, where Russia has positioned 100,000 of its troops, hinting at a massive military attack on the country. During the meeting, President Joe Biden threatened Russia with severe economic sanctions if it did not pull back its forces from the Ukrainian borders. Some analysts said its deja vu 2014 when Russia had annexed the Republic of Crimea without as much as firing a gunshot.

The history

We need to reflect on three significant years to decipher the situation today and understand Vladimir Putin's fascination for Ukraine. Until 1991, Ukraine was part of the USSR, when Putin was climbing the KGB ladder. That year, the USSR fell apart, and Ukraine, among other countries, became an independent country. Ukraine had always been viewed as part of the Russian cultural hegemony and an extension of Russia by the likes of Nikolai Gogol. The second important year in this timeline was 1999, when Putin ascended to power after Boris Yeltsin's ouster. From the beginning of his tenure, first as the prime minister and subsequently, in successive terms as Russia's president, Putin has been vigilant about his legacy, of laying the ground for being remembered as a 'great leader'. Russia, we must note, measures greatness with territorial expanse and not economic development of its people.

The year 2014 is the third important year, which saw the unseating of the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. He had declined fervent appeals for Ukraine's greater integration with Europe, resulting in widespread violent protests in Kyiv and other major cities. Yanukovych had to relinquish his post ultimately and take refuge in Moscow. Throughout his reign (three terms as the prime minister and a single term as the president between 2002-14), he was seen as Moscow's man. Putin took Yanukovych's removal as a personal affront to his leadership and as a western conspiracy to thwart the expanse of his ambition. In the ensuing months, thousands of Ukrainian citizens were killed by the 'rebels', who also went on to, probably accidentally, shoot down Malaysian Airlines 17. Over 14,000 of its citizens have been killed since 2014, Crimea has been annexed, and several parts of Ukraine are in Russian control.

Also read: Whats driving Putins Ukraine brinkmanship?

What will Putin do next?

Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has made claims that Russia is not only preparing to invade the country but also to remove him in a coup. It is not uncommon to see an autocrat claim another country as his own territory and deny its citizens their sovereignty and history. In this case, it is Putin who claims Ukraine as Russian territory. As we are aware, Ukraine became an independent country in 1991, but it was the seat of a medieval kingdom, which emerged in the 10th century Kyiv and ruled the current day Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and Belarus. It is this origin that both the Russians and the Ukrainians lay claim to. This is also the history Putin wants his country to hark back to, thereby making his indelible mark on the Russian society.

Earlier this year, Putin published his 5,000-word essay describing Ukraine as a western 'project' and said the country "is entirely the brainchild of the Soviet era and was to a large extent created at the expense of historical Russian lands." Throughout this diatribe, Putin continues to say that "I am convinced that true Ukrainian sovereignty is only possible in partnership with Russia. After all, we are one people." His assumptions are perfectly in line with populist leaders of countries bent upon taking their countries to their golden pasts and making them great again.

Will there be a war?

Biden is not looking to engage his country in a war with Russia, particularly after the recent experience in Afghanistan. Yet, he will do his best to maintain (or reclaim) the American hegemony in world politics. Albeit, it can be safely said that the American special forces will not be fighting in Kyiv. However, the US can ensure that Ukraine has all the tools it needs to unsettle the Russians. Putin, on the other hand, does not like unpredictability. This was one of the reasons Russia does not have a big footprint in Syria. It did not know which way it might have gone. Putin also knows if Russia does go through with its veiled threat of attacking Ukraine, NATO might get involved in what could end up becoming Europe's biggest land war since WWII. Putin perhaps believes he can overpower Ukraine without having to enter a full-scale war, and hence, the positioning of his army is an overture to Biden to come to the negotiating table, to withdraw support for Ukraine. If anything, this posturing has given him the headlines, the meeting with Biden, and the attention he so dearly seeks. It has also won him the first round of his preferred coercive diplomacy  the endgame of getting Biden to pledge to keep Ukraine out of NATO.

(The author is a former Chief of Communications with UNICEF in New York, where he worked for more than a decade.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.

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The Omicron variant is spreading rapidly worldwide. New travel restrictions and mounting anxiety have followed this heavily mutated version of the coronavirus, which has been reported now in more than 60 countries. In South Africa, where Omicrons 50 or so mutations were first identified, the variant has shown that it can reinfect people who already caught and survived earlier versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as people who have been vaccinated against it.

Scientists are now trying to model Omicrons global trajectory, which depends on two factors. One is its innate contagiousness, or transmissibility. The second is its capacity to evade human immune systems. Untangling how much transmissibility and immune evasion each contribute to the variants spread is what will allow us to predict how many people Omicron might infect and how fast, says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston.

Read | Is untreated HIV behind emergence of Omicron?

Transmissibility reflects the viruss ability to replicate in human cells and move from person to person. It depends on all sorts of biological processes, explains Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease modeler at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health. Does it bind more easily to receptors in peoples lungs? Do you shed it more efficiently and spew more of it out so you can infect more people? Immune system evasion, on the other hand, is the capacity of the virus to avoid antibodies that would otherwise mark it for destruction by the body, as well as an ability to dodge various immune system cells.

A key step in gauging a viruss spread is to start with one infected person and estimate how many other people will get the virus from that individual. In an ongoing pandemic, scientists try to capture that estimate with a value called the effective reproduction number, or Rt. The variable t represents the number of secondary infections and depends on the effects of other peoples immunity, seasonal weather patterns, public health interventions, and other limits on viral transmission. Rt can change from minute to minute depending on real-world conditions, Lipsitch says. We use it to determine how fast an outbreak is growing, or shrinking. A value of R2, for instance, means that one person will infect two others while a value of R5 means the person will spread the virus to five individuals, increasing the number of infected people much faster.

Rt estimates for Omicron are now emerging. On December 9, South Africas National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) reported that by early November, Rt in that country had stabilised at values below one, signifying cases were actually falling during a period when Delta was the dominant variant and it ran up against widespread immunity in the population. But then Rt shot up suddenly in mid-November. It is now greater than 2 throughout most of the country and exceeds 2.5 in the densely populated province of Gauteng, as well as KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga provinces. NICD scientists calculated the value using laboratory-confirmed cases and hospital admissions data. The Rt in this case includes other variants in addition to Omicron, but the sudden rise indicates that the new variant is in the mix and creating a lot of new infections, according to Carl Pearson, a mathematical modeler at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who works closely with the South African investigators.

Read | Omicron spreading and infecting the vaccinated, says WHO

Scientists with the United Kingdoms Health Security Agency have since reported an Rt of 3.7 for Omicron itself. That disturbingly high number, presented in a technical briefing released on December 10, is based in part on data showing that Omicron infections in the UK are doubling every three days. At that pace, Omicron presents a much larger threat in terms of case counts than Delta, wrote Trevor Bedford, an infectious disease modeler at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, in Seattle, in a detailed series of comments on Twitter.

Whats still unknown, Bedford emphasised, is how much of Omicrons rapid rise is because of its intrinsic transmissibility versus its capacity to evade immune defenses. If a given population is broadly immune to other variants, he theorised, then Omicron will spread quickly even if it does not have an inherently superior transmission ability, because peoples immune systems will suppress competing variants.

Evidence that Omicron does evade human immune responses is accumulating from different sources. One sign is that it reinfects people who already got the virus. A team led by Juliet Pulliam, an epidemiologist who directs the DST-NRF Center of Excellence in Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis at the University of Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, South Africa, reported on December 2 that more than 35,000 SARS-COV-2 reinfections had occurred in that country among 2.8 million people who tested positive for SARS-COV-2 within the past three months. A different study by a team led by Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, found that neutralising antibodies in blood samples from people inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were roughly 40 times less potent against Omicron than they were against other variants.

But whether Sigals lab experiments foretell reduced vaccine protection in real life is still uncertain, says Sarah Cobey, an epidemiologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. because immune escape is about much more than neutralising antibodies. Vaccines also activate specialised immune cells that destroy infected cells, so Omicron would have to avoid them as well. Immune escape cannot be definitively measured in a lab, Cobey says.

During the coming weeks, scientists will assess how Omicrons Rt values compare in places with different infection histories and vaccination rates. Shaman says it is not clear how much of whats been observed in South Africa is applicable to other places. For instance, the United States never experienced a wave of infections driven by the Beta variant, while South Africa did, and the exposure to different variants could alter the US populations immune responses. We went right from the ancestral Alpha variant to Delta, he says. And those sorts of things may change how much of the population is now susceptible to this new Omicron variant. Well just have to see how this settles out over time.

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The Karnataka Assembly on Tuesday passed a Bill to establish an AYUSH University in Shivamogga, amid criticism from opposition MLAs on the need for such a varsity now.

Health & Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar, who piloted the Karnataka State AYUSH University Bill, said it will a first-of-its-kind university in south India that will focus on research. "It will also address the publication of research material on Ayurveda, which is very less now," he said.

Congress MLA Dr HD Ranganath said he has concerns on the new university as it took the state government 20 years to approve cadre and recruitment rules for the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS). "The RGUHS does not have a separate campus till now," he said, urging the government to invest in RGUHS before floating any new varsity.

Former Congress minister Priyank Kharge questioned the suitability of promoting alternative medicine especially at a time when the state is facing a pandemic along with financial crisis.

Another Congress MLA Dr Yathindra was of the view that the state should allocate more funds for RGUHS rather than invest in a new university.

Meanwhile, Deputy Speaker Anand Mamani and MLA Bandeppa Kashempur urged the government to allot the varsity to Belagavi and Bidar, respectively. Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri advised the government to choose districts where such projects were essential, rather than allotting it to districts that already have various infrastructure.

The Assembly also passed a Bill to rename the University of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences in Shivamogga as Keladi Shivappa Nayaka Agricultural and Horticulture University.

Another Bill that was passed was the Karnataka Municipal Corporations and Certain Other Law (Second Amendment) Bill, 2021, which proposes a separate slab of property tax for industrial buildings in municipal limits.

Urban Development minister Byrathi Basavaraju, who piloted the Bill, said that the legislation was aimed at encouraging the establishment of industries in the State.

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The controversial anti-conversion bill was introduced in the Karnataka Assembly on Tuesday, angering the Congress whose legislators went up in arms accusing the BJP government of bringing it slyly without any prior notice.

Home Minister Araga Jnanendra tabled the Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill after the Assembly resumed post lunch. The bill was not on the agenda. A supplementary agenda was prepared for the Bill to be introduced.

We are against the introduction of the bill . Whats the emergency in this bill ? We weren't told that the bill will be introduced, Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah said, adding that the provisions of the bill violated Articles 21 and 25 of the Constitution.

Read more: Anti-conversion bill will be black mark on Karnataka: Shivakumar

Bringing such anti-people laws is wrong. Will you bulldose the House? Will you do whatever you like because you have a simple majority, Siddaramaiah asked the treasury benches.

Karnataka Congress president DK Shivakumar was seen tearing a copy of the supplementary agenda. Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri objected to this.

Last night, at the time of printing the agenda, the bill wasnt ready and thats why it wasnt included. This morning, the bill was ready and the government wanted to introduce it. Thats why a supplementary agenda was prepared. I had informed your partys whip about it, Kageri said, denying the Congress charge that the bill was introduced slyly.

The bill, which the Congress says will target minorities, proposes imprisonment of 3 to 5 years with a fine of Rs 25,000 for 'forced' conversion. Converting a minor, woman or an SC/ST person will attract a jail term of 3 to 10 years, with a Rs 50,000 fine. Mass conversion will attract 3-10 years of jail time with a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh.

While the draft bill required a person wanting to convert to inform the deputy commissioner within 60 days, the bill tabled in the Assembly has reduced this to 30 days. Also, the government has added colleague to the list of people who can lodge a complaint against forced conversion.

Siddaramaiah said similar laws in UP, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh had been challenged in the court. Jnanendra maintained that the bill will help people. Youre saying this just to keep your vote bank intact, he told Congress MLAs.

Kageri said he would put the bill to a vote on Wednesday. Siddaramaiah led his MLAs to walk out of the Assembly in protest.

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Amid Omicron threat, the Karnataka government on Tuesday announced restrictions on the celebration of New Year 2022. However, there will not be any restrictions on Christmas celebrations and prayer meetings at Churches.

Soon after holding a high-level meeting with his cabinet colleagues, senior officials of the Health department and Covid experts at Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai told media persons that the restrictions will be in place from December 30 to January 2.

"All public gatherings like revellers on MG Road, Brigade Road to welcome the New Year will be banned across Karnataka. There will not be any public celebration and special events in any part of the state," Bommai said.

Also read | Covishield jab protection wanes after 3 months: Lancet

"It will be a regular business in all the clubs and restaurants with 50 per cent occupancy. However, there will not be any permission to host DJ events, New Year parties. All staffers at these places must be fully vaccinated with two doses of Covid vaccine, besides the mandatory RT-PCR tests for the staff," the CM added.

The Chief Minister also said that directions have been issued to gated communities and large housing complexes to not have or host any special events on the New Year's occasion. "Respective RWAs or Apartment Associations have been told to comply with the decision," Bommai added.

Christmas as usual

Stating that all the churches are currently holding prayers and meetings as per the Covid rules, CM Bommai clarified that there will not be any restrictions on gatherings. "Regular mass and prayers shall be held inside the Churches as they have been doing all these days by adhering to Covid protocols," Bommai said.

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Over 15 lakh qualified women in India go on a career break each year. Bouncing back to work, however, is not easy, as Sandhya Prasad can tell you. She returned to work after a gap of 10 years this April, joining a company in Bengaluru as a senior content writer.

When the 45-year-old decided to start her second innings, the job market had changed a great deal and the pandemic was raging. Paper resumes were passe; one needed a strong LinkedIn profile to pass the AI technology that HR teams deploy to filter candidates, she learned.

I had to re-orient myself to new-age expectations. I enrolled in resume-improving workshops. I tried SEO-based resume writing. I took up upskilling courses.

She floated her resume on every job portal there is and tracked down ex-managers to give references.

Applications were rejected due to her age and contractual roles were offered over full-time stints. Would I be seen as a fresher or an experienced candidate? Would they base my CTC on my last salary? How would I work with people half my age? The fears were very real, recounts Sandhya.

Gladly, she has resumed her career on the same profile that she quit to raise her children. But she has a message: Consider career break if absolutely needed; take sabbatical instead.

Causes for a career break

A 2019 report by Avtar, a talent strategy consulting firm, found that 35% of Indian women quit their careers midway because of maternity, 45% to navigate motherhood challenges, and around 16% to care for the elderly. Most of them feel guilty for putting their careers ahead of the needs of their families.

LinkedIns Opportunity Index 2021 report from March 2021 is worrisome: 71% of working women in India said family care comes in their way of career development.

The return is fraught with challenges as 23% of women dont get family support and 36% suffer from a skill gap, it adds. Almost 69% fear lower salaries on re-entry, the Avtar report adds.

Depression can also put a pause on their ambitions, as it affects women twice more than men. Manveen Kaur from Mumbai knows this too well. The 33-year-old was diagnosed with postpartum depression in February after suffering a miscarriage.

I would stay in bed for days. I would not brush or take shower. I could do no work. I shut down my startup of five years, which was already hit by the pandemic, says Kaur. Her startup would organise DIY activities on weekends in Bengaluru and Mumbai.

She is out of therapy and back to work, this time, as an employee of an edutech startup. Her job hunt of two months was less than fair.

I had to make up stories to prove I will be available for work as my male colleagues. I am not into household work. My husband and I are into cats, not human babies. Career break was for no particular reason, I told them. I had to lie because, in my past stint, investors would say discriminatory things like we will fund your startup when your kids have grown up and you have time to focus on work, she recounts.

Market dynamics

Covid has also dented the second careers as many women had to take on additional roles  teaching kids, caregiving for the elders, more household chores.

On the upside, in the period May 2020 to May 2021, more returnees were hired for middle and senior-level jobs than before, up by 25%, the data by JobsForHer, an online platform for women to search for jobs, reskill and network, suggests.

There are a few reasons for the upswing. Shreya Prakash, co-founder of Flexibees, which helps women find part-time and project-based jobs, says the rise of flex-work culture (remote jobs, part-time opportunities, hybrid models, gig work), especially post-pandemic, has made it conducive for women to resume careers.

As per their new study, 56% of the companies surveyed have either already made organisational policy changes to enable flexible working or are considering it.

Plus, the companies globally are in need of good talent that is experienced, driven and can do specific jobs (say, digital marketing in pharma). And many women embody that as they want to prove themselves, Shreya explains.

Neha Bagaria, the CEO and founder of JobsForHer, says, We have seen women with 10+ years of career break getting the same salary as their peers in the workforce would.

Now families are rallying around the womens careers, realising it is important for them to be financially independent, and for families to have dual incomes to tide over tough times like the pandemic, she explains.

Likewise, women are determined to put in extra work to return. As per a JobsForHer survey, 60% of women opted to upskill this year against 23% in the last years study. LinkedIn findings are similar: 56% of Indian women are looking to learn new hard skills.

Most women are making a career comeback in metropolitan areas  Bengaluru, followed Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. However, WFH opportunities are opening up in tier-2 cities like Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Lucknow.

Second career opportunities are growing for tech roles but also sales, digital marketing, content (strategist, writer), design (graphic and UI/UX), HR, investment banking, says Shreya.

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Students, including those from Derry, studying at Queen's University in Belfast who have applied for Hardship Funding have still to receive funds to tide them over Christmas.

The Hardship Funding scheme, open to all students at Queen's, offers sums in the region of 500 to 800 for applicants who are struggling financially ahead of Christmas.

However, with Christmas only days away, Sinn Fein Foyle MLA, Padraig Delargy, has said a number of students who have applied for Hardship Funding are still waiting for their money.

And Mr Delargy has called upon Queen's to release funds to those students in need so that they can enjoy the Festive season without the stress of worrying about their finances.

He said: The University has an obligation to protect and support all their students. The hardship fund exists to support those who find themselves in challenging financial circumstances.

As a former Queen's University student, Im deeply disappointed to learn that the university has still not released payments of the hardship fund to eligible students before the end of this academic term.

Sinn Fein Foyle MLA, Padraig Delargy

Financially, Christmas is a difficult time for everyone. I have been contacted by students from across Derry and the North who are now in the worrying situation of paying rent and soaring utility bills in the absence of promised funding.

This puts an additional burden on students as well as their families over the festive period.

The university are obligated to deliver this funding and I fully expect them to do so promptly and without further delay.

I would encourage any other students who find themselves in this situation to get in contact with me via social media or by emailing my office at: padraigdelargy7@gmail.com

In response, Queen's University has said that a total of 107,000 has been paid to 246 applicants so far but given the vast volume of applicants they've had for Hardship Funding, some students may not receive their money before Christmas.

A Queen's University spokesperson said: Queens University focuses significant resources on processing the Hardship Fund to support students facing financial difficulties.

The Hardship Fund, which supports students in financial hardship and exceptional circumstances, has paid out 107000 to 246 applicants so far this academic year.

Applications are processed within four to six weeks. However, due to the volume of applications received from mid-November onwards, any applications after December 9 are not likely to be processed before the University closes for the Christmas break.
Sinn Fein Foyle MLA, Ciara Ferguson, has said a strategy is needed to maximise the potential of growing all-Ireland trade.

Her comments come following a report from the Dublin-based Economic & Social Research Insititute (ESRI) that exports from the North to the Republic of Ireland have increased to five per cent from 1.5 per cent after the Brexit deal, and imports originating in the North now account for 40 per cent of imports in Ireland from the whole of the United Kingdom.

Exports from Great Britain to the Republic of Ireland declined from 23 per cent in 2015 to 7.2 per cent in early 2021.

Ms Ferguson said: This report, which has been published by the ESRI and Department of Finance in the south, has highlighted the changing trading relationships and growing all Ireland trade as a result of Brexit.

The report shows a drop in imports from Britain to the south of Ireland and a less dramatic drop in exports from the south to Britain.

Some of the drop in imports has been offset by increased trade from the north to the south, which has been documented by the monthly CSO trade figures over the course of the year.

The increase in all island trade, which has been possible due to the protocol, needs to be built upon.

There has been a complete failure by the DUP economy minister to date to recognise the new trading realities, he can no longer be blind to opportunities that exist because it doesn't fit his political ideology.

We need a strategy to take advantage of the protections of the protocol and the north's continued access to the EU single market and to maximise growing all island trade, this can create more jobs and investment across the island.

One of the ESRI report's authors, Martina Lawless said: Although many supply chain challenges have come together since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the greatest driver of the reduction in Irish imports from Britain can be traced to a Brexit effect.

There has been a less substantial impact on exporters so far and continued good news coming from the deferral of customs checks on goods moving from Ireland to Great Britain which had been due to be introduced in January.
Christmas message from Ambassador O'Leary

Announcement

We wish you and your loved ones a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Nollaig shona daoibh!

Dear Friends, A Chairde,

On behalf of the Embassy of Ireland to Austria, Anne and I send our warmest Christmas greetings to you and yours.

This has been another challenging year for many of us, with many of us having suffered the loss of loved ones or being separated from our families for very lengthy periods. And while regrettably, many traditional Christmas activities will not take place in 2021, or will have to be severely curtailed, we have also achieved and learned a lot. We are relieved that the Covid vaccines made things a little easier this year on a personal, social, economic and indeed cultural level.

Regrettably, the pandemic continues to impact on all of our lives. I know I speak for all of us when I thank all those, in Ireland and Austria, who made a difference to us, including all those working tirelessly on the frontline.

St. Patricks Days 2021 took place in an entirely virtual format but we are hoping that a physical, or perhaps hybrid St. Patricks Day 2022 will be possible. We are in touch with some of you to share and exchange ideas and set this in motion.

The Embassies work for Ireland continues, despite the restrictions that have waxed and waned over the year. The bilateral and multilateral sides kept us busy as always with the Embassy hosting two ministerial visits over the summer and Ireland becoming a member of the IAEA Board of Governors in September. Ireland enjoys deep historical and cultural connections with Austria, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet with some of you and take part in a number of bilateral and cultural events such as the talk on George Bernard Shaw in the national library and the greenings of key Austrian landmarks for Saint Patricks Day.

Last, but not least, we also welcomed a number of new colleagues to the team, while bidding farewell to others. A word of thanks goes out to former colleagues who greatly supported this mission during their tenure.

Anne and I, and all of us at the Embassy wish you and your loved ones a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!

Beir Bua agus Beannacht.

Nollaig shona agus athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh.

Eoin and Anne.

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Over the past week, we have seen information that device manufacturers that don't support HDMI 2.1 features can market their TV as an HDMI 2.1 device. The information comes from TFTCentral and you can check it out in detail here. Put simply, the features of HDMI 2.0 are now a subset of HDMI 2.1. So a TV can claim HDMI 2.1 as marketing material without supporting all HDMI 2.1 features.

TFTCentral contacted HDMI.org, the HDMI Licensing Administrator to get clarification on the subject and the following are the responses that they got.

HDMI 2.0 no longer exists, and devices should not claim compliance to v2.0 as it is not referenced any more

The features of HDMI 2.0 are now a sub-set of 2.1

All the new capabilities and features associated with HDMI 2.1 are optional (this includes FRL, the higher bandwidths, VRR, ALLM and everything else)

If a device claims compliance to 2.1 then they need to also state which features the device supports so there is no confusion

While this revelation isn't something new, we can expect more and more TV makers to use HDMI 2.1 in their marketing without offering all the features.

What are the features of HDMI 2.1?

HDMI 2.1 has a higher bandwidth than HDMI 2.0. While HDMI 2.0 caps out at 18Gbps, HDMI 2.1 caps out at 48Gbps. HDMI 2.1 also supports features like 4K at 120Hz, 8K at 60Hz, VRR (Variable Refresh Rate), ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode), support for eARC, Dynamic HDR, and more. The image below, from TFTCentral, should give you a clear idea of the features supported.

So what is the cause for concern?

The cause for concern is that some TVs claim to have HDMI 2.1 but don't support all the features. Xiaomi has been marketing their Mi QLED TV 55-inch (review), Redmi Smart TV (review), Mi QLED TV 75 (review) and Mi TV 5X (review) in India with support for HDMI 2.1 offering features like ALLM and eARC but without the support for 4K at 120Hz, VRR or ALLM. However, Xiaomi has highlighted these features in their marketing material of the TV.

We have seen TVs like the Sony X90H (review), X90J (review), A80J (review) and more launch with support for HDMI 2.1 features like 4K at 120Hz, eARC and more but lack VRR with the promise of VRR coming at a later date.

The point is that buying a TV with HDMI 2.1 is going to get tougher and you will need to read the fine print to know whether the TV supports the HDMI 2.1 features you are looking for.

What devices support HDMI 2.1?

Right now, there are only a handful of devices with support for HDMI 2.1 like the PS5 (review), Xbox Series X (review), NVIDIA 30 series GPU and the Apple TV 4K to name a few. The Xbox Series X supports 4K at 120Hz along with VRR and ALLM while the PS5 does not support VRR. It isn't clear whether the console will get the feature via a future update.

Can my TV get HDMI 2.1 features via an update?

Yes and no. The answer isnt simple. The TV needs to support specific hardware to run HDMI 2.1 features. So while the Mi QLED TV 75 supports ALLM and eARC, it cannot get 4K at 120Hz support as it does not have that specific hardware for the feature. On the other hand, the Sony A80J, X90J and X90H support the necessary hardware and hence, Sony said during the launch of these TVs that support for VRR will come at a future date. TVs like the LG C1 (review) and LG G1 (review) support all HDMI 2.1 features from the get-go.

Read the fine print!

The point is quite simple - before purchasing a new TV you will need to read the fine print before purchasing. There are some HDMI 2.1 features that you can get in the future via an update, while others you will not be able to get as the TV will need the specific hardware for the TV to support it. While the applications for HDMI 2.1 are mostly limited to gaming, there are some HDR and surround sound benefits to the technology as well.
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SEATTLE  A Licton Springs apartment building at 1120 N. 93rd St. sold for just under $7.5 million, according to King County records.

The sellers were three local investor groups, which acquired the property in 2016 for $5.5 million.





. . .
The monitor, despite the design affinities with MacBooks, was not created just for Apple users, but - as Scuderi explains - for anyone looking for a premium product to use with their Windows laptop or to extend the potential of their Samsung Galaxy through Dex, turning it into a micro-portable. We have a kind of alliance with those who want to pay a little more to improve their workflow, explains Scuderi, who at the same time highlights the value of Espresso over tech giants like Lenovo or Dell, which he says do not apply a tailored approach to user needs. And this value was rewarded with the Red Dot: The award proved to us that the direction we have chosen for our product is the right one. A victory, he continues, that has given him the strength to carry on, like David in a world of tech Goliaths.

Imagine youre walking around the city and you have an idea and you want to sit down and develop it. You might be carrying a laptop in your backpack, but if youre an engineer or a designer, you probably need a bigger screen, Scuderi describes an ideal use case for the product he has created, emphasising the importance of being able to create anywhere, anytime. Using a magnetic system to attach the monitor to the case or mount is a key solution for speeding up processes. If it takes too long, you end up not using it. Speed and user-friendliness are everything in Espressos philosophy - the company is not called Espresso by accident, after all. The screen must be ready to use in two minutes.
The Government has announced a range of new support for businesses after it introduced fresh restrictions to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a result of the new measures, designed to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant, the Government plans to spend around 200 million on business and employer support in January alone.

It came as ministers promised better days ahead in the spring and summer, even amid uncertainty about whether the current level of restrictions will be enough to arrest a wave of infections over the coming days and weeks.

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar said on Tuesday that the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme has reopened for new applicants in the hospitality and arts sectors.

If you are an employee or self-employed & you have been instructed by your doctor or the HSE to self-isolate because of #Covid19, you may qualify for Enhanced Illness Benefit. Its paid at 350 per week & its payable from day 1. Further info here: https://t.co/WPfKq9yKX5 pic.twitter.com/6iNHlrPM6l  Department of Social Protection (@welfare_ie) December 21, 2021

He also confirmed that the Covid Restrictions Support Scheme will be available to all hospitality businesses that have closed because of the new restrictions.

This will be the case if businesses decide it is not practical or does not cover the cost to stay open.

Mr Varadkar said funding will be provided to businesses that choose to stay open but have a drop in turnover to 40% of the previous level.

He urged business owners: Please keep your staff on the payroll, if at all possible.

Mr Varadkar said the hospitality and arts sector will still be needed in the spring and summer, as ministers promise better days ahead once the Omicron wave has passed.

Leo Varadkar (Brian Lawless/PA)

You are not in any way to blame for this pandemic, he told businesses.

The Government is on your side. We are here to support you.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said changes to the eligibility criteria for the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme will provide greater support to a wider range of businesses.

Firms that de-registered from the scheme will be able to re-enter, Minister Donohoe said, if they can meet turnover criteria.

New restrictions were introduced on Monday, including an 8pm curfew on hospitality, while the chief medical officer and other health officials urged people to rethink their Christmas plans.

Minister Donohoe said he would not make predictions about what the next few months would bring, calling it really unknowable from a health point of view.

But he added: We are going to get to a better place with this pandemic due to our booster vaccination efforts, due to the way the country is following public health guidance. We will get to a point in 2022 that will be an awful lot better than where we are as we approach this Christmas.

Minister Paschal Donohoe (Julien Behal Photography/PA)

Minister for Public Expenditure Michael McGrath said the measures would help thousands of people retain employment.

He told the briefing: The public health restrictions announced after last Fridays Cabinet meeting are not ones that any Government would want to announce before Christmas.

He acknowledged the restrictions had caused anxiety and despair for many workers and business owners and many people were expected to lose their jobs.

Minister McGrath said it is imperative that we act swiftly to deal with the real-world consequences of the public health measures.

Ministers Donohoe and McGrath said they were confident that the measures to support businesses were the right ones.

The Finance Minister said support for businesses could not go on indefinitely but told reporters it is economically and ethically right that we intervene the way we are.

Minister McGrath said the Government had a choice when it came to businesses and employees.

The choice is to let them fold or help them survive, and it is always the better option to support businesses and give them the opportunity to survive.

He acknowledged not all businesses will survive once Government supports are withdrawn.

Taking questions from reporters, Leo Varadkar acknowledged the future was uncertain with case numbers rising, but the Government was monitoring the situation across the UK and Europe to learn from other countries and their experience of Omicron.
The Ireland Funds, global philanthropic network, have announced that in the current academic year 2021/22, 38 students from DEIS schools in Louth have received vital funding through its annual No Mind Left Behind scholarship programme.

The educational initiative was developed to give promising young people from areas of social disadvantage the opportunity to complete third-level education.

Under the programme, scholarships are allocated to students attending schools that operate under the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) action plan for educational inclusion.

In Louth, 38 students from Ardee Community School, Bush Post Primary School, O Fiaich College, Scoil Ui Mhuiri in Dunleer and St Oliver's Community College in Drogheda are among those who have benefitted from the fund.

In the current academic year, students received funding to the tune of 880,000.

Each scholar receives an annual allowance of 4,000 to cover the costs of books, accommodation and other key expenses associated with participating in third-level education.

Since 2011, The Ireland Funds has provided 253 scholarships to the value of 2,500,000 under the programme.

Of the 226 scholars who have received funding this year, 127 were students returning to year 2, 3 or 4 of undergraduate study and 99 were new recipients who enrolled in their first year of undergraduate education.

The current scholars participating in the programme are pursuing courses in 10 different academic faculties at 26 third-level institutions across Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands.

The academic progress of each of the students selected for the scholarship is continuously monitored as they must demonstrate successful progression in each year of their course in order to continue to receive support.

Caitriona Fottrell, President and CEO of The Ireland Funds, said:

The Ireland Funds is pleased to continue supporting deserving students from across the island of Ireland through the No Mind Left Behind Scholarship Programme.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the remarkable academic achievements of the students and to thank our donors who have supported us in allocating over 2.5 million to 253 students through this initiative to date.
EBRD supports Armenias private sector in upgrading technologies to EU standards

Financing will help SMEs to invest in green technology

Loans complemented by technical advice and incentive grants from EU

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is providing a 5 million financial support package to Armeconombank in Armenia to facilitate the private sectors transition to more sustainable, low-carbon and climate-resilient practices. The project is supported by the European Union (EU), with grant incentives allocated through Armeconombank.

The package is provided under the EU4Business-EBRD credit line, with incentives for on-lending to local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with export potential for investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation. It will also help SMEs to upgrade technologies and services to EU standards while promoting the use of green technologies. This is the fourth project to be signed in Armenia under the programme.

The EU4Business-EBRD credit line is a flagship initiative, helping local companies increase their competitiveness at home and abroad by upgrading their production facilities and processes to EU standards. The companies will be able to improve the working conditions of their employees and foster environmental sustainability. At least 70 per cent of the loan proceeds will be used to finance investments in green technologies in accordance with the EBRDs Green Economy Transition (GET) approach. Borrowers are eligible to receive incentive grants and technical advice, both funded by the EU under its EU4Business initiative. The programme is also available in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Dimitri Gvindadze, EBRD Head of Armenia, said: We are pleased to step up our support for SMEs in Armenia together with our long-standing partner Armeconombank. The funding aims to facilitate the competitiveness of local firms in Armenia by helping to invest in modern technology that will allow companies to strengthen their operations locally and take advantage of international trade opportunities.

Ambassador Andrea Wiktorin, Head of Delegation of the EU to Armenia, said: The EU is committed to supporting small businesses growth and sustainability. To this end, the EU4Business-EBRD facility supports SMEs with impact financing for green technologies. The overall contribution of the EU to the EU4Business-EBRD facility covering different Armenian banks is 6 million.

The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in Armenia. The Bank has invested more than 1.66 billion through 195 projects in the countrys financial, corporate, infrastructure and energy sectors, with 91 per cent of those investments in the private sector.

About the EU

The member states of the EU have decided to link together their know-how, resources and destinies. Together, they have built a zone of stability, democracy and sustainable development while maintaining cultural diversity, tolerance and individual freedoms. The EU is committed to sharing its achievements and its values with countries and peoples beyond its borders.
ST FIN BARRES has been sacred ground since Fionnbarra built a monastery there in the year 606, and walking through todays cathedral, looking up at its soaring, vaulted ceiling, it is easy to feel the weight of history, and perhaps even the breath of the eternal.

Visiting St Fin Barres is a special experience, and a tour from one of its guides will open the cathedral like a book.

The day The Echo visits, Stephen Malone is on duty, telling its story and revealing its secrets.

Just inside the door, for symbolic reasons, is the baptismal font. It is made of red, green, and white marble, and engraved with brass lettering reading: We are buried with Him by baptism into death.

Beside the font, on a ledge holding the water jug, is a carved head of John the Baptist.

The limestone walls of the cathedral are complemented by four separate types of marble, and he explains that each one represents a different province.

Thus, the black Kilkenny stone (marble stones as black as ink) represents Leinster, the green Claddagh marble Connacht, the white Armagh stone Ulster, and the red marble from Little Island Munster.

Stephen notes that the red marble is cut through with white splotches, only recently identified as fossils aged 300m years old or thereabouts. (Red and white being the Cork colours, by  presumably  happy coincidence.)

St Fin Barres Cathedral is entirely the realised vision of English-born architect William Burges, a Victorian eccentric and well-known opium user.

When the cathedral was commissioned in 1864, Burges was given a budget of 15,000. By the time the building was consecrated in 1870, Burges had spent 100,000 (roughly 43m in todays money) and the spires had yet to be raised.

The Bishop, John Gregg, was good at extracting funds from Corks merchant princes, and he convinced Michael Wise of the North Mall distillery that the price of a spire might greatly improve his social standing.

Then the bishop asked William Crawford of Beamish and Crawford whether Crawford would allow his business rival to outdo him, and the brewer promptly paid for two spires.

Within nine years, St Fin Barres had three spires, and the nickname the whiskey and porter cathedral.

A notable feature of St Fin Barres is just how bright the colours are in its 150 stained glass windows, and Stephen Malone says they have not faded because William Burges used an ancient chemical colouring process dating back to the 13th and 14th centuries.

Because of low literacy levels in the 1870s, Burges intended the cathedral to be a pictorial book, allowing the public to read Bible stories depicted in the windows.

The story of Genesis begins with Adam and Eve in the first window on the left at the back of the cathedral, across then to the first window on the right, back to the left, and so on, with the reader never turning their back to the altar.

The cathedral holds so many more surprises, and the guided tour is a steal at 6.

Christmas is always a very important time in St Fin Barres, the Dean, the Very Reverend Nigel Dunne, tells The Echo, and he is particularly looking forward to this years Nine Lessons and Carols, which takes place on Christmas Eve at 4pm, again this year, unfortunately, curtailed by Covid-19 regulations.

Thankfully, we had the good sense to go for half-capacity, and weve had to change things slightly, he says.

Sadly, nobody in the audience will be allowed to sing, and the choir will provide all the music. Were treating it more as a concert than a service.

The concert is ticketed, and although there is no admission charge, the Dean says that there is usually a charity collection during the event.

This year, were going to distribute half of the money raised through the Bishop of Corks fund, and were going to, selfishly, keep the other half to try to keep the doors open.

It has been a tough pandemic for St Fin Barres, as it has been for so many institutions and individuals, and the cathedral, which depends on tourist footfall for so much of its income, also missed out on much of its 150th anniversary celebrations.

For all of that, though, the Dean points out that Christmas is a time of joy and remembrance, and most of all, a time of hope.

He is particularly grateful to Cork City Council for again this year funding, through Glow, their mobile carols audio-visual truck, spreading Christmas cheer across the city.

The cathedral has been doing everything it can to give people some sort of solace and some sense of hope during the pandemic, and we are very well placed to that with our Christmas programme.

The Nine Lessons and Carols are a good starting point. Were going to have some fabulous music, provided by the choir. On Christmas Day, we have two services, at 9.30am and 11.15am.

This has been a holy place since Fionnbarra brought Christianity to Corcach Mor na Mumhan (the Great Marsh of Munster) in 606, and in time the settlements around Finbarrs monastery became the city of Cork.

There has been a cathedral here in Cork for about 700 years, and the current building is 151 years old.

For all that times change, and hard as it might be now, such permanence seems to tell us one thing: Well get through this.
PRIMARY schools around Cork are seeing lower attendance rates this week after some parents opted to keep children at home ahead of Christmas as Covid-19 cases continue to rise.

Schools are due to finish up for Christmas break tomorrow and though most students have been in attendance for the past few days, staff members who spoke with The Echo said they did expect absences this week.

We have seen reduced numbers, particularly in classes where there have been positive cases. I think its evident in all schools, said Scoil Padre Pio principal Ken Foley.

People are anxious to have a Christmas thats as normal as possible so we can see where theyre coming from. For the last couple of days that are in it, parents are just weighing it all up and making that decision.

Were open and the staff are in and were trying to make it a fun couple of days in school for the kids in a safe way but if parents want to keep children at home we can understand that.

A similar trend has been seen at Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers in Cork city.

There was a reduction yesterday morning of kids coming in. Some of them were children who had tested positive for Covid but there definitely hasnt been the same amount of parents at the gates in the mornings as usual, said principal Adrian Breathneach.

It makes sense. It can be hard to understand why we were brought back in for two and a half days.

Both secondary and primary schools are due to reopen on January 6 but some principals have already started preparing for a delayed return due to the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

I have a funny feeling were not going to go back on January 6. We sent all our books home with pupils last week and started practicing on Seesaw just in case, Mr Breathnach said.

They could delay it if cases keep rising so I told the teachers to prepare. At least all the books have gone home and were ready.

Staff in Scoil Padre Pio have also taken precautions by making sure families will be able to access their e-learning platforms in case of closures.

We are expecting to open but we have sent packs home and we have ensured that every family has the ability to log into our system and engage with online learning, Mr Foley said.

Weve been doing it all year anyway but were just trying to ensure that were ready to go with online learning if need be.

Earlier this week, Tanaiste Leo Varadkar said that he did not foresee schools staying closed past the expected reopening date.

The incidence and the number of cases in primary schools which had been very high has peaked and has been falling now for quite some time. So, theres no case to close the schools early and we intend for schools and colleges to reopen as planned in the New Year, he told Morning Ireland.

If there is any change to that youll hear it from the Minister for Education and nobody else.
A Cork home has been crowned Irelands Most Christmassy Home for 2021, winning thousands for a local charity in the process.

Sean and Noreen Mc Sweeney from Drimoleague took the prize following a public vote in Energias annual competition. Energia will donate 6,000 to the Bantry Hospice Project on behalf of Sean and Noreen.

The home of Sean and Noreen Mc Sweeney from Drimoleague.

The second and third place runners up will also receive 4,000 and 2,000 respectively, with Tony Fitzpatrick from Wexford, donating his 4,000 to Wexford Hospice Homecare, while Christina and Philip Walker from Carlow have selected Make-A-Wish to receive their 2,000 prize.

All of the Energia team would like to extend their warmest congratulations to Sean and Noreen for being crowned Irelands Most Christmassy Home, as well as to the runners up Tony Fitzpatrick and Christina and Philip Walker," Geoff Codd, Head of Energia Marketing and Retail Development said.

"This year, we saw particularly impressive entries across the country, with such a high level of effort, creativity, and festive spirit, all in the name of supporting worthy causes.

"We are delighted to have the opportunity to make donations on behalf of the winners to the Bantry Hospice Project, Wexford Hospice Project and Make-A-Wish who each play vital roles in our communities throughout the country. We would like to wish everyone throughout Ireland a very Merry Christmas from all of us here at Energia and look forward to the competition in 2022.

Over the past six years of the nationwide competition to find the countrys most festive home, the total donated to charities by Energia on behalf of the winners has grown to 48,000.

In addition to the charity donation, Energia has also gifted each of the finalists a 500 Smart Home Store voucher.




Inauguration of WEDA free farrowing pens in Finland underscores efforts towards better pig welfare

In recent years, Finland has become a pioneer in sustainable exercise pens for sows.

Finland's largest piglet producer, Timo Heikkila, is one of this pioneers. With the help of barn equipment supplier WEDA Dammann & Westerkamp, the farmer based in Rusko, 200 kilometres west of Helsinki, has successfully converted his farm to free farrowing. Heikkila's new movement pens have now been honoured at a ceremony by the Finnish government.

At the start of November, Jaana Husu-Kallio, State Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, inaugurated the new pens. With the new units, Heikkila now has a total of 12 barns with 32 movement pens each.

Husu-Kallio was particularly pleased that Finnish farms invest in animal welfare and thus create the conditions for species-appropriate husbandry.

For about five years, a Finnish government programme has been consistently promoting husbandry systems that ensure greater animal welfare. Since then, pig farms in Finland have increasingly been converting their barns.

From the beginning, WEDA has actively supported its Finnish customers and partners. Such efforts included several visits by Finnish farmers to WEDA.

The use of the new farrowing crates from WEDA is justified by the safety of piglets. Without adequate technology, sows can smother their piglets.

On Heikkila's farm, this risk is minimised by temperature differences: The sow, which produces much heat, needs a cool surface, while piglets seek warmth. The piglets are therefore housed in pens where heat lamps ensure a temperature of 35 degrees.

In the grate, the temperature is well below 20 degrees, and the conditions there are favourable for the sow. Due to the temperature differences, sow and piglet are separated in the pen most of the time.

The new pens also provide more safety for the barn staff. When necessary, it is possible to convert the pens into a temporary cage so that sows can be confined to clean the pens or for treatment. The space available to animals in the pen has also been carefully thought out, according to WEDA.

As such, the space for the sow is triangular. Experience on other farms has shown that a triangular shape is best suited to minimising piglet mortality.

In addition to innovations for animal welfare, solutions must also be efficient in order to improve productivity and reduce human labour input. This includes, above all, technologies that encourage the animal to behave naturally, as desired by the stable staff. For example, straw dispensers are placed in the pen in such a way that the manure lands on the grid rather than on the concrete floor. "This reduces the amount of work involved in keeping the barn clean, so the bottom line is that the technologies always have a positive effect on animals and people alike," Heikkila said.

- WEDA
The top management at Congatec (from left to right): Gerhard Edi CSO, Daniel Jurgens CFO, Dr. Dirk Haft CEO, Konrad Garhammer CTO, Thomas Schultze COO.

Deggendorf-based embedded specialist Congatec has made a change in its top management. Dr. Dirk Haft replaces Jason Carlson as CEO. The other four positions in the management team have also been prominently filled.

The new CEO at Congatec is Dr. Dirk Haft  Daniel Jurgens takes over as CFO. The new management team is completed by Gerhard Edi, Konrad Garhammer and Thomas Schultze. Edi, previously CTO, takes over the newly created position of CSO (Chief Strategy Officer). Konrad Garhammer, previously Director Engineering, takes over the duties of CTO. Thomas Schultze assumes the function of COO.

The aim of the newly formed management team is to accelerate internationalization and make the supply chains more reliable and efficient. The team is also expected to generate further growth in new markets such as functional safety and critical infrastructure. This requires building new competencies in both software and manufacturing.

Contributing many years of experience

Dr. Haft brings deep leadership experience to take Congatec to a new level of growth in the embedded and edge computing market. Before joining Congatec, Dr. Haft was a board member of Wittenstein SE and CEO of attocube systems. He holds a PhD in physics from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Daniel Jurgens adds international M&A and private equity experience to the management team. Before joining Congatec, he was CFO at VIA optronics. Based on his experience, Jurgens sees strong growth potential for Congatec. Gerhard Edi, co-founder of Congatec and a pioneer in the embedded industry, will be responsible for the future technology and product strategy as CSO, and will also be responsible for expanding strategic partnerships with technology suppliers, partners and customers.

The new CTO Konrad Garhammer joined the embedded specialist in 2016 from what is now Saab Sensor Systems Germany. Under the leadership of Gerhard Edi, as Director Engineering, he expanded the global development team to over 100 employees, developed it further and set it up in an organizationally agile manner. While Daniel Jurgens has already been working for Congatec since September 2021, Dr. Haft took up his new position on November 1st, 2021. Gerhard Edi, and Konrad Garhammer moved to their new positions on December 15th, 2021. The predecessors in office, CEO Jason Carlson and CFO Josef Wenzl, will accompany the new management team as Senior Advisors to ensure a smooth transition. The Advisory Board thanks Carlson and Wenzl for their dedication and leadership over the past years.
Council commends Probation Community Service programme

Douglas Borough Council has commended its partnership with the Isle of Man Prison and Probation Services Community Service Order programme.

The Community Service team have been assisting the Council by providing work groups for a range of community projects, the most recent of which was cutting back overgrown areas along Manor Lane in Willaston.

To facilitate the project, the Council provided the team with fuel and managed the green waste disposal.

Housing and Property Committee Chair Councillor Janet Thommeny said: Thanks to the Community Services team a number of our green spaces in Douglas are being rejuvenated. The Council is pleased to be supporting the Probation Community Service programme; it is a mutually beneficial scheme which not only helps with the rehabilitation of offenders but also improves the environment and benefits local communities.

The Probation Services Andy Sutton said: The Isle of Man Probation Community Service group are pleased to be given the opportunity to assist Douglas Borough Council in a number of projects. These are not only a benefit to the local community, but also gives the service users skills and pride in what they can achieve using teamwork.
The European Commission has approved Microsofts $19.7 billion bid to buy Nuance Communications. The regulator said on Tuesday the proposed acquisition would raise no competition concerns within the European Union. In analyzing the bid, it found that Microsoft and Nuance offer very different products. Moreover, it believes the company will continue to face strong competition from other firms in the future.

Before today, the US and Australia had both signed off on the purchase, but its not yet a done deal. On December 13th, the UKs Competition and Markets Authority said it would investigate the transaction. With the regulator accepting public comments until January 10th, 2022, its unlikely the deal will close by the end of 2021 as Microsoft had said it would when it first announced its intention to buy Nuance.
Since October , Microsoft and Adidas have been releasing commemorative Xbox-themed sneakers to mark the brand's 20th anniversary. It all started with a pair of Forum Tech shoes the two companies gave away to a group of lucky fans. Then, in November, they released a pair of Xbox 360-themed Forum Mid sneakers you could buy in the US and Canada. Now, for their third and final drop, the two have come out with an Xbox Series X-inspired design that's available to purchase worldwide.

This time around, Microsoft and Adidas say they went with the Tech Boost silhouette because, like the Xbox Series X/S, it's a design that acknowledges the past while incorporating new technologies. As with the other sneakers in the series, you'll find plenty of clever references. For instance, the inner lining of the shoes draws on the design of the Xbox Series X's vents. Meanwhile, the heel and sole of shoes mirror the grips of the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller.

"Overall, we wanted to create a shoe that cemented a moment in time, but also felt timeless," Microsoft said. "This is a shoe that is meant to be played in, meant to be worn, and meant to be enjoyed by our community  one that's always played in, and never played out."
The official trailer for the murder mystery Death on the Nile has been released. This intriguing 20th Century Studios' film is based on superstar mystery author Agatha Christie's novel of the same title. It chlornicles the story of when, as described by the official release,

Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot's Egyptian vacation aboard a glamorous river steamer turns into a terrifying search for a murderer when a picture-perfect couple's idyllic honeymoon is tragically cut short. Set against an epic landscape of sweeping desert vistas and the majestic Giza pyramids, this dramatic tale of love gone wrong features a cosmopolitan group of impeccably dressed travelers and enough wicked twists and turns to leave audiences guessing until the final, shocking denouement.



The phenomenal cast includes silver screen sensations such as Kenneth Branagh, Gal Godot, Emma Mackey, Letitia Wright, Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Rose Leslie, and others. This long awaited project was filmed back in 2019. Disney is now set to release Death on the Nile exclusively to theaters in February of 2022.

This film adaptation is one of the most highly anticipated projects of the new year. Agatha Christie is a time-tested sensation. Giving her works new life on the screen is the best way to honor her career. The Chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Ltd., James Prichard, said

More than 100 years after the publication of Agatha Christie's first novel, her crime fiction works remain immensely popular and continue to be discovered anew by people around the world. I'm thrilled that Disney and our partners believe in this franchise, which has helped introduce millions of new fans to Christie's classic works. We're honored to be in business with Disney, Ken, and all who are dedicated to preserving the long legacy of these titles for future generations.

We can't wait to see Death on the Nile in theaters on February 11, 2022.
The turmoil around President Joe Bidens signature economic plan is a temporary victory for crypto investors who were facing the possibility of higher capital gains taxes if it was enacted.

Tucked inside the Houses version of the plan passed in November were two measures that would limit tools those investors can currently use to lower their taxes -- restrictions that already apply to stocks and other securities. The provisions were retained in an unfinished version of the Senate Finance Committees portion of the plan released earlier this month.

Bidens $1.75 trillion tax and spending plan hit a wall Sunday when moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced his opposition after months of negotiations between lawmakers and the White House. Theres still a possibility that Democrats move a scaled-back version of the plan next year, but its unclear where or if the crypto measures fit into that.

The bill stalling is a win for crypto investors, said Lisa Zarlenga, a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP, who advises clients on crypto-related tax issues. But as you know, once legislative language is out there, it never really goes away, she said, suggesting the proposals could resurface at a later date.

One of the proposed changes would impose capital gains taxes when investors take offsetting short and long positions on a digital asset and the other would bar investors from claiming a deduction when they sell their crypto at a loss if they buy a substantially identical asset within 30 days before or after the sale.

Subjecting digital assets to these constructive sale and wash sale rules were estimated to bring in about $16.8 billion over 10 years to help pay for new social spending initiatives.

Allyson Versprille

: bloomberg.com
A weekend of bad news sent markets sharply lower at Mondays open.

The Netherlands has imposed a strict lockdown and many other countries are considering further restrictions.

The Euro has shown relative strength again, but is far from putting in a full reversal as EURUSD remains in a consolidation pattern.

Mondays session is off to a bearish start with heavy selling in Asia and stock market futures in Europe and the US. The Dax is down 3% with the FTSE close behind with a 2% drop from Fridays close. News out over the weekend reported fresh lockdowns in Europe and the threat of more to come. Coming after last weeks hawkish moves by three central banks (the Fed, BoE and even the BoJ), the market seems sensitive to any negative news and are more vulnerable to volatility as central bank liquidity is scaled back.

Other markets are also reflecting the risk off environment. Oil is down -5% as fresh Covid lockdowns once more threaten demand. Currencies, meanwhile, show notable strength in the Euro, which was also the case during the initial Omicron panic. The US dollar is lower against the Euro and the Yen. This doesnt necessarily mean that the Euro is replacing the USD as a safe haven during bouts of risk off, but is a function of the Euro having very little hawkish expectations for the ECB priced in. When markets turn sour, all the currencies with hawkish expectations turn lower as those expectations are dialled down a notch. This bias is clearly still on shaky ground.

More Lockdowns

Whether or not Omicron has milder symptoms doesnt seem to matter to some governments as further restrictions are imposed due to higher infection rates. This was the case in the Netherlands over the weekend as a strict lockdown was imposed over Christmas and New Year.

"The Netherlands is again shutting down. That is unavoidable because of the fifth wave that is coming at us with the Omicron variant," said Prime Minister Rutte. Failure to act now would likely lead to "an unmanageable situation in hospitals," he said.

All non-essential shops and services, including restaurants, hairdressers, museums and gyms will be closed from Sunday until January 14th, and all schools will be shut until at least January 9th.

Italy is also set to review imposing new restrictions and the UK has warned of the potential for further measures. Deaths caused by Omicron have been steadily growing which is a worry. Justice secretary Dominic Raab told Time Radio,

We have got 104 hospitalisations at the moment which are Omicron-based, we have had 12 deaths. But theres a time lag in the data and so we dont know quite how severe it will be.

Travel has been severely impacted and what is usually a busy time for airlines and hotels could again be a washout. France has already banned tourists from the UK and Thailand is considering whether to reinstate mandatory quarantine.

Currency Effects

This wave of bad news for the markets could be shrugged off like the initial Omicron panic was, but last weeks raft of central bank meetings made it quite clear the hawkish path will be maintained despite developments in the pandemic. Bad news therefore no longer means more dovishness and more central bank support. This is quite a change for markets to adjust to and could mean the sell continues over Christmas. It could also mean the Euro does not find as much relative strength as it did at the end of November as Omicron is unlikely to cause central banks to do a U-turn. EURUSD has bounced to 1.126 but remains in a consolidation pattern at the lows of its strong downtrend. Only a move above 1.14 would really start looking like a proper bullish reversal and breaking below 1.18 would signal a continuation lower.
In his debut novel, Beat, set in San Francisco in 1976, Richard Lewis Mater presents a moving exploration of the adrift lives of several characters in the aftermath of the 1960s counterculture movement.

Driving the story is a twenty-seven-year-old Billy Johnson. His daily life comprises selling drugs to friends and acquaintances, hanging out in bars with his best friend Manny, dancing at a club called "Dance Your Ass Off," and chasing women. Besides supporting himself as a small-time drug dealer, Billy is a sales clerk in a T-shirt shop called Aquarius Shirts in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The shop attracts tourists visiting the area where some well-known hippies lived in the 1960s. When asked where he works, Billy likes to inflate his position and mentions that he is a manager rather than a salesperson at the shop.

His means of transportation is a psychedelic-painted VW bus which he has named Kozmic.

You get the impression that his relationships with women seem to be hinged on his ability to provide them with drugs. There was, however, T-i, who perhaps was more sincere than the others. They both agreed to have an open relationship, yet T-i seems to have wanted more from Billy.

A brutal awakening occurs when Billy's roommate, Noel, commits suicide. Billy is shocked to discover Noel's naked body on his roommate's bed. Noel's father contacts Billy and instructs him to ship all his son's possessions.

There is no mention of Noel's journal that Billy finds among the belongings. The writings' pretty disturbing revelations come as a shock to Billy. He never really knew Noel other than he was a writer who had some success with the publication Paris Review.

Billy had hoped that Noel would give him some writing pointers, as he had aspirations in pursuing a career as a writer. His hope for a mentor was gone, and because Billy provided him with some drugs, he felt he was complicit in the calamity.

Manny, a savvy quick-witted rock-journalist for the magazine San Francisco Lifestyle, has minimal difficulty attracting women with his daring flirtations. Manny opens the door for Billy in entering the world of writing.

He introduces Billy to his publisher, Ed Bernstein, who agrees to give him a chance to submit an article. Billy writes an article about the dance club scene, and, perhaps you can say it was beginner's luck, hits pay dirt, and the piece is accepted.

Quite a propos is Mater's statement on the dedication page. Here we have a tiny glimpse of what is to unfold in the story where Mater states: "This book is dedicated to a time and a place and a group of people who passed through it." And this is what he accomplishes with this richly textured, intelligent, moving portrait of a now-gone era.

Billy and his friends' stories wind in and out, merging at times. Their themes continually recur, reflecting their carefree, non-conformist lifestyle that characterized the hippies of the 1960s. Readers are pulled in with Mater's effortless, conversational style, which is concise and direct, shifting perspectives from character to character. He pulls us in with muddled feelings as we visualize his array of colorful characters. Although, it feels depressing to read about young people that are destroying their lives hooked on narcotics, treading water and living on the ledge.

Follow Here To Read Norm's Interview With Richard Lewis Mater
An estimated 8.8 million Texans are hitting the road or flying out of state this holiday season.

Travelers flocked to San Antonio International Airport on Tuesday, undeterred by higher prices or the new surge in COVID-19 cases.

Airfares cost about 5 percent more than a year ago, according to AAA Texas. Car rentals are more expensive, too  up 20 percent on average.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

Our tickets were booked in August, said Danielle Schnyders, of Canton, Ohio, who came to San Antonio with her husband and kids to visit family. But we definitely talked about (COVID). Were a little more nervous now than we were two weeks ago.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio-area unemployment rate hit pandemic-era low in November

On Monday, the city reported 427 new cases of the virus, the highest single-day total since mid-October.

Despite the rise in new cases, AAA estimates that about 340,000 Texans will fly to their holiday destinations, an increase of 177 percent from a year ago.

Still, there will be about 20 percent fewer traveling by plane compared with the 2019 holiday season.

The vast majority of vacationers in Texas  8.3 million  will travel by vehicle this week and next, according to AAA.

On Tuesday, drivers in San Antonio paid just under $2.64 per gallon at the pump, the second-cheapest price for gasoline in the nation, according to gas price tracking site GasBuddy. A year ago, San Antonio motorists were paying about $1.71 per gallon of gas.

The only U.S. city with cheaper gasoline on Tuesday was Henderson, Ky.

Josie Norris / San Antonio Express-News

Drivers in Odessa and Midland were buying the most expensive gas in Texas, with prices topping $3.06 a gallon on average.

Gasoline prices plummeted early in the pandemic as demand for oil vanished. But prices have bounced back this year with the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines and the ongoing economic rebound.

Demand for gasoline the week of Dec. 10 hit 9.47 million barrels, a hair higher than demand in the same week in 2019, according to the most recent data. Gasoline demand was about 18 percent higher compared with the same time last year.

Even so, the price of gas in San Antonio has fallen about 10 percent since early November as the Omicron variant has dampened global demand for oil. Also, the Biden administration tapped 50 million barrels from the nations strategic petroleum reserve last month  before the onset of the new COVID-19 strain  to ease prices at the pump.

On ExpressNews.com: Chuys Mexican chain is opening first New Braunfels restaurant

We got a Christmas gift that few should complain about: falling gas prices at a time of year when millions of Americans are spending their hard-earned dollars on gifts for their loved ones, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

Still, even as gas prices have fallen, filling up at the pump in San Antonio is more expensive now than at any time since summer 2018. The city hasnt seen sustained gasoline prices over $2.60 per gallon since 2014, according to GasBuddy.

De Haan said gasoline prices should continue to moderate heading into 2022.

AAA spokesman Daniel Armbruster said he expects the price of gas to fall as the market continues to assess the latest possible economic impact of the omicron variant.

diego.mendoza-moyers@express-news.net
NEW YORK (AP)  Former President Donald Trump revealed he received a booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, drawing boos from a crowd in Dallas.

Trump made the disclosure Sunday night during the final stop of The History Tour, a live interview show he has been doing with former Fox News host Bill OReilly.

Both the president and I are vaxxed," OReilly said at the American Airlines Center, drawing some jeers from the audience, according to video shared online by OReillys No Spin News.

Did you get the booster? he asked the former president. Yes," Trump responded. I got it, too," O'Reilly said, eliciting more hectoring.

THE HISTORY TOUR: Donald Trump returns to Houston on Saturday for appearance with Bill OReilly

Don't! Don't! Don't! Don't! Don't! Trump told the crowd, waving off their reaction with his hand.

While Trump has expressed opposition to vaccine mandates, he has long taken credit for the vaccines developed on his watch. At the same time, he has refused to urge his supporters to take them, even though Republicans remain far less likely than Democrats to be protected.

For instance, while other world leaders, including former Vice President Mike Pence, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, received their doses publicly to promote the lifesaving medicine, Trump chose to receive his in private  an acknowledgement of the unpopularity of the vaccine with large swaths of his base. And while he has blamed the Biden administration for high levels of vaccine skepticism, he repeatedly undermined public health recommendations while in office, encouraging the use of unproven treatments and playing down the threat the virus posed as he tried to prioritize economic recovery and secure a second term.

Trump had told the Wall Street Journal in a September interview that he probably" wouldn't get a booster shot.

I feel like Im in good shape from that standpoint," he told the paper. Ill look at stuff later on. Im not against it, but its probably not for me.

VACCINES: Moderna says its booster increases antibody levels '37 fold' against Omicron

The U.S. has been urging all eligible Americans to get booster shots as quickly as possible as the country faces a surge in the new, highly contagious omicron variant. Both Moderna and Pfizer have said that booster shots of their COVID-19 vaccines appear to offer protection against the new strain, which preliminary evidence suggests can better evade vaccines than previous versions.

Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October 2020, weeks before the presidential election, and received experimental monoclonal antibodies treatment. His former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, revealed in a book released this month that Trump was far sicker than the White House disclosed at the time.

Before the booing, Trump on Sunday told the audience that they should take credit" for the success of the vaccines developed while he was in office.

Look, we did something that was historic. We saved tens of millions of lives worldwide. We together, all of us  not me, we  we got a vaccine done, three vaccines done, and tremendous therapeutics Trump said. This was going to ravage the country far beyond what it is right now. Take credit for it. Take credit for it.... Dont let them take it away. Don't take it away from ourselves."

You're playing right into their hands when you sort of like, Oh the vaccine, he added. "If you don't want to take it, you shouldn't be forced to take it. No mandates," he said, drawing cheers. But take credit because we saved tens of millions of lives. Take credit. Don't let them take that away from you.

Trump aides did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania on Tuesday rebuffed a request for him to sit down for an interview and turn over documents to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, joining other allies of former President Donald Trump in trying to stonewall the committee.

In a statement, Perry called the committee illegitimate.

In a letter to Perry on Monday night, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said the panel had received evidence from multiple witnesses, including then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, that Perry had an important role in efforts to install Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general.

The lawmaker's refusal will test how far the committee is willing to go in its quest for information as members have so far resisted subpoenaing one of their own as they investigate the insurrection by Trumps supporters and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The letter is the first time the panel has publicly released a request to a fellow member of Congress as the members inquire about the details of Perry and other congressional Republicans who met with Trump ahead of the Capitol attack and strategized about how they could block the results at the Jan. 6 electoral count.

Also in the letter, Thompson added that while the panel has tremendous respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its Members," it also has "a solemn responsibility to investigate fully all of these facts and circumstances.

The committee has also asked for any documents and correspondence between Perry and Trump, his legal team or anyone involved in the planning of Jan. 6 events.

The lawmaker, representing Pennsylvania's 10th District, was cited more than 50 times in a Senate Judiciary report released in October outlining how Trumps effort to overturn his election defeat to Joe Biden brought the Justice Department to the brink of chaos and prompted top officials there and at the White House to threaten to resign.

Perry, who has continuously disputed the validity of Bidens victory in Pennsylvania, has said he obliged Trumps request for an introduction to Clark, then an assistant attorney general whom Perry knew from unrelated legislative matters. The three men went on to discuss their shared concerns about the election, Perry has said.

The Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud in Pennsylvania or any other state, and senior Justice officials dismissed Perrys claims.

The recent Senate report outlined a call Perry made to Donoghue last December to say the department wasnt doing its job with respect to the elections. Perry encouraged Donoghue to elicit Clarks help because hes the kind of guy who could really get in there and do something about this, the report said.

Perry has said his official communications with Justice Department officials were consistent with the law.

The panel voted in November to hold Clark in contempt after he showed up for a deposition yet declined to answer questions. But Thompson has said he will hold off pursuing the charges and allow Clark to attend another deposition and try again. Clarks lawyer has said Clark intends to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, but the deposition has been repeatedly postponed as Clark has dealt with an unidentified medical condition.

The panel has already interviewed around 300 people as it seeks to create a comprehensive record of the Jan. 6 attack and the events leading up to it.

Trump at the time was pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud and lobbying Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of Congress to try to overturn the count at the Jan. 6 congressional certification. Election officials across the country, along with the courts, had repeatedly dismissed Trumps claims.

An angry mob of Trump supporters was echoing his false claims as it brutally beat Capitol police and broke into the building that day, interrupting the certification of Bidens victory.

Thompson, in his request for a meeting with Perry, wrote: We would like to meet with you soon to discuss these topics, but we also want to accommodate your schedule.

___

Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.
Kenneth Ferriera/AP

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Monday said he plans to endorse Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cheri Beasley in the coming days.

Asked about recent comments in which he appeared to back his party's presumptive Senate nominee, Cooper said he would soon formalize his support.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Wisconsin health officials and Gov. Tony Evers on Monday urged residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and take other precautions, such as wearing masks and keeping holiday gatherings small, as the new omicron variant is expected to create a surge in cases over the coming weeks.

Also Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the mask mandate in place in Dane County. The decision to take the case came just after the county health department announced it would be extended into February.

The court's ruling, which is unlikely before summer, would have implications on any orders other counties or local governments may want to put in place. The court this year struck down Evers' statewide mask mandate.

Evers joined with health officials Monday in urging people to take action in the face of the omicron variant.

I urge every Wisconsinite to take immediate action and get the COVID-19 vaccine and your booster dose if you havent received it already  this is critically important for mitigating surges in hospitalizations and deaths across our state, the Democratic governor said in a statement.

The highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 is expected to cause a rapid increase in disease activity in the coming weeks, the state Department of Health Services said in issuing a public health advisory.

There is a serious risk that continued, increased numbers of COVID-19 cases will overwhelm an already strained health care system, leading to dangerous situations where patients experiencing medical emergencies may not be able to receive immediate, adequate, life-saving attention and care due to lack of hospital capacity, Dr. Ryan Westergaard, a chief medical officer with the state health department, said in a public health advisory.

Westergaard urged everyone who can to get vaccinated, including booster shots for those eligible. COVID-19 vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and death from the delta variant, which still accounts for the vast majority of cases, he said. Fully boosted people are protected against serious illness and hospitalization from omicron, which is starting to circulate more widely.

Masks should be worn indoors when with others outside peoples households, and holiday gatherings should be small, Westergaard said. People with COVID-19 symptoms or exposure should get tested.

COVID-19 activity is critically high in 40 of Wisconsins 72 counties and very high in the rest, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. Statewide, just over 61% of residents have received at least one dose of vaccine and nearly 587% are fully vaccinated. Multiple cases of the omicron variant have been found.

As of Monday, 1,660 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 424 in intensive care, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association

The lawsuit the Supreme Court agreed to hear was brought by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of two Dane County residents. The court in November 2020 refused to hear it before it worked through the circuit courts first. It agreed to take it Monday after a Dane County judge threw the case out and the plaintiffs asked the court to take it without having to go through the appeals court first.
The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Roman Catholic order, pays no tax on its modern 3,500-square-foot clergy home.

Neither does it pay tax on the six clergy residences that occupy more than half a block across the street from the Oblates seminary.

Almost 4 miles south, in the prestigious neighborhood of Kings Highway, the organization also owns a tax-exempt 8,000-square-foot historic mansion worth $1.4 million.

Read the investigation: Some Texas religious leaders live in lavish, tax-free estates thanks to obscure law

A recent Hearst Newspapers investigation found that the parsonages erase more than $110,000 in taxes that could help pay for San Antonio schools and local flood control, health system and community college districts.

A similar trend plays out in communities across Texas thanks to a state law that allows religious organizations to receive property tax exemptions not only on houses of worship but also on houses for their clergy.

William Luther/Staff

Hearst Newspapers investigation revealed that Texas parsonage laws are vague, giving appraisers little leverage to question the legitimacy of a religion or clergy member. Theres also no state limit on parsonage tax exemptions and 28 clergy homes in the state are worth more than $1 million.

On ExpressNews.com: After Joel Osteen insult, fired TikTok user creates a GoFundMe page for nonprofits

This is costing local governments in Texas at least $16 million every year, the investigation found.

Presented with Hearsts findings, appraisers in Bexar and other counties said they would move to re-examine or restore back to the tax rolls religious properties that fell outside the law, most being parsonages larger than 1 acre.

Here are the religious organizations in San Antonio and Bexar County that take advantage of Texas generous tax exemptions. Click here to see where the other tax-free homes are in Texas and how much they cost taxpayers.

Google Maps

Capuchin Province of Mid-America Mission Fund: The organization purchased an 8,500-square-foot mid-century gated masterpiece in San Antonio valued at $1.43 million for its monks, who take a vow of poverty.

His Family Vision Center: The martial arts-based church, received a property tax exemption worth $23,000 a year for a 5,900-square-foot residence in Helotes. The application claimed a portion of the structure as living quarters.

Freedom Hill Church: The San Antonio-based organization received a property tax exemption worth $86,000 on vacant land next to the church to create a BMX bicycle track.

According to Hearsts investigation, other religious organizations dont seek an exemption for clergy residences. That includes the San Antonios Cornerstone Church. Founder John Hagee pays $42,000 annually in property taxes.

Original reporting for this story was done by staff writers Eric Dexheimer, Jay Root and Stephanie Lamm.

Timothy.Fanning@express-news.net
The Bexar County District Attorneys Office released a 10-page memo Tuesday detailing the evidence presented to a grand jury that did not return an indictment in the high-profile killing of a former Army sergeant at the hands of a sheriffs deputy.

Daryl Harris, chief of the offices Civil Rights Division, described the fatal shooting of 30-year-old Damian Daniels as a tragedy but said the state could not prove the deputys actions were unjustified.

It is the job of the grand jury only to determine if the tragic circumstances of his death constitute a crime, Harris wrote in the memo.

While the grand jury declined to issue a true bill of indictment, we must implore all federal, state and local leaders to recognize that the criminal justice system alone is ill-equipped to define and properly allocate the resources needed to address the mental health crisis in our communities  particularly among our veterans.

The memo Tuesday came a day after the Civil Rights Division presented evidence from the Aug. 25, 2020, fatal shooting of Daniels to the grand jury.

After their review, grand jurors decided to not indict Deputy John Rodriguez.

Robin Jerstad /Contributor

Family members called 911 four times over the course of 24 hours to report that Daniels, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, was in a mental crisis. They said he was hearing voices at his home in the 11000 block of Liberty Field in far West Bexar County.

Three deputies arrived and decided to perform an emergency detention  the process by which police take someone into custody for evaluation at a psychiatric facility when the person shows signs of a mental illness.

Daniels resisted, and a struggle ensued as deputies tried to get hold of a gun that could be seen under Daniels shirt.

Rodriguez, who said he feared that the weapon was going to be discharged, shot Daniels twice.

On ExpressNews.com: DA to move case of man killed during mental health crisis to grand jury

The death of Mr. Daniels was tragic, District Attorney Joe Gonzales said in a statement. This country needs to do a better job of helping those in mental health crisis.

Gonzales reiterated that every officer-involved shooting in Bexar County resulting in serious injury or death will be decided by a grand jury. He said his office reviewed the officers body-camera footage of the shooting with Daniels family members and informed them of the panels decision.

Rodriguez, 52, has been with the sheriffs office for 14 years.

Although Rodriguez wont be prosecuted, the shooting has led to changes in how county law enforcement responds to mental health calls.

Last year, county commissioners allocated $1.5 million for the Specialized Multidisciplinary Alternate Reponse Team, or SMART, which kicked off in October 2020. The team consists of four people who handle emergency calls, attempt to deescalate responses and assess proper follow-up for people going through mental health crises.

Daniels shooting was the catalyst for the program. This year, the county announced it planned to expand it.

The team dons soft uniforms with olive green shirts. It has an experienced paramedic, a licensed clinician and two deputies specially trained in mental health.

From its inception through July of this year, the team recorded 378 responses to calls and 143 follow-up actions, including referrals to substance abuse or mental health care, provided by another team  two care managers and a peer support specialist.

Sheriffs Office spokesman Deputy Johnny Garcia said via email Tuesday that because SMART has been such a success, We are now working on implementing a second team.

Sheriff Javier Salazar has said SMART is crucial to serving the countys large veterans community, stating, We owe it to them to take care of them. And we owe it to them to approach them in the right way when the time comes.

What happened

Shortly after the district attorneys office announced the no-bill, the sheriffs office released video footage of the shooting.

The following is based on a review of the body-camera footage and the DAs office memo.

Deputies were first called to Daniels home at 4:04 p.m. Aug. 24, 2020, after a representative from the American Red Cross called 911 and said Daniels was in need of medical assistance. Two deputies were dispatched, but they couldnt get hold of Daniels. They left.

Later that evening, at 10:32 p.m., Daniels called 911. I need emergency.  I need to go to the hospital.  for paranoia, Daniels said, according to the DAs office memo.

Two deputies were dispatched to his home, arriving at 11:29 p.m. Daniels told the first deputy theres something wrong with my house, describing it as haunted.

The two deputies asked Daniels if he was willing to go to the hospital, at which point he turned away. Deputies left his home and closed out the call.

The following day, Daniels brother called 911. He told dispatchers his brother was in a state of paranoia and was having a mental episode, the memo states.

A deputy arrived at Daniels home at 3:59 p.m. He too tried to get hold of Daniels but couldnt. He returned to his car and closed out the call.

About 50 minutes later, Daniels brother called 911 again and requested deputies return to the house. He told operators his mother had spoken to Daniels, and that Daniels was willing to open his door this time.

Deputy Enrique A. Cepeda, 49, a 23-year-veteran, arrived and spoke to Daniels, noticing that there was a noticeable bulge at his right hip, the memo states. Daniels retreated inside his home and shut the door.

Cepeda continued knocking, and Daniels came out again. Cepeda, Rodriguez and another deputy  Deputy Michelle Garriffa, 40, who has been with the office for 16 years  again attempted to talk to Daniels, but he wouldnt respond.

At 6:16 p.m., as they continued trying to talk to Daniels, Cepeda quickly moved toward Daniels and placed his right hand on the top of the bulge in Daniels waist. Rodriguez advanced, too, drawing his Taser.

Daniels grabbed the barrel of the Taser, and a struggle ensued, according to the DAs office memo. Daniels was eventually able to get his right hand free and it went toward his right hip, the memo states.

As the struggle continued, the gun was dislodged from its holster. Daniels got hold of the handle and moved it higher, the memo states.

Multiple times, Rodriguez and Cepeda told Daniels to let go of the gun, but Daniels didnt listen, the memo states.

Rodriguez eventually grabbed his service weapon and shot Daniels two times.

Ananda Tomas, executive director of ACT 4 SA, which has been vocal among coalitions seeking a nonpolice response at the city and county level for mental health crises and welfare checks, said Monday night that she wanted the family to have their space today, and declined to comment about the case without their permission.

Tomas shared a comment from Daniels brother, Brendan Daniels, who said in an email the family is taking this time to reflect and work on our next move with proceeding forward with Damians case. He said they would release a statement soon.

Emails sent to the law office of Lee Merritt, an attorney who has represented the Daniels family, were not immediately answered.

Scott Huddleston contributed to this article.

eeaton@express-news.net ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton, @elizabeth2863
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott visited Starr County on Saturday to inaugurate the first stretch of a border wall being built by the state, calling it an unprecedented investment in border security.

Construction crews on site said about 880 feet of barrier have been installed as of Saturday afternoon.

Abbott has made immigration enforcement one of his top agenda items as he seeks reelection next year. At a news conference in front of the new wall segment Saturday, Abbott condemned the federal governments immigration policies  though some were extended from the Trump administration  and criticized President Joe Bidens reversal of the efforts to build a barrier between the U.S. and Mexico.

This unprecedented action is needed for one single reason, and that's because the Biden administration has failed to do its job, Abbott said.

In fiscal year 2021, immigration enforcement agents reported 1.7 million encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border, breaking a previous high of 1.6 million encounters in fiscal year 2000. Encounters are defined as the number of times a migrant has been stopped by immigration agents.

The Biden administration currently enforces two strict Trump-era immigration policies. Title 42, a pandemic health order, was issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year to rapidly expel migrants to their home countries without the opportunity to ask for asylum. Following a court order, the Biden administration also revived the Trump administrations Migrant Protection Protocols, which forces asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as their cases make their way through U.S. immigration courts.

Abbott has been prioritizing border security as he runs for reelection with Trumps endorsement. Abbotts likely Democratic challenger, Beto ORourke, dismissed the governors Saturday announcement.

Border communities are tired of Greg Abbott hosting photo-ops instead of of fixing the real challenges facing our border communities today, like the Abbott Tax border families will pay on their utility bills because he has failed to fix the grid, O'Rourke said in a statement.

Abbott was joined by Texas General Land Office Commissioner George P. Bush, as well as representatives from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard.

Bush, who is currently running for Texas Attorney General, said this stretch of wall was being constructed on state-owned land that has been leased out to a local farmer.

It's on state acreage that we stand today where the people of Texas finally said, enough is enough, Bush said. Enough of open borders, enough of disorderly chaos  If the Washington, D.C. establishment doesn't do their job, Texas will.

Abbott announced in June that the state would build a wall along the Texas-Mexico border using state money and crowdfunded private donations. The governors office appropriated $250 million of state money as a down payment for the wall-building effort, and lawmakers appropriated an additional $750 million for border barriers during one of the legislative sessions this year.

As of Dec. 13, the state has collected $54 million in private donations, mostly coming from one single donor: Timothy Mellon, the chair of Pan Am Systems, a privately-held transportation and freight holding company. Mellon has previously donated to immigration enforcement efforts in the past.

In total, the state now has at least $1.05 billion for its border barriers.

Mandi Cai contributed to this report.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Smiley N. Pool/TNS

It's been a devastating year in Texas, as evidenced by Googles annual Year in Search trends recap, which looks back at trillions of words and phrases people searched for over the last 12 months.

This year, how to help Texas was the second-most-searched term in the U.S. in the how to help others category. The top searched topic in that category was how to help refugees in Afghanistan.
San Antonio police expanded their search area Wednesday as they continued to look for missing 3-year-old Lina Sardar Khil.

Police were searching Wednesday morning in the Oakdale Street area, roughly three miles from the apartment complex where Lina was last seen Monday evening, though officials would not say what led them to that area.

Whether this is a place of interest or its a close proximity, I dont have any details about why officers picked this location to search, San Antonio Police Department spokesman Cory Schuler said. We are still at that complex actively searching there, but our footprint does expand as the investigation continues.

Police initially focused their efforts at the Villas Del Cabo apartments, at 9400 Fredricksburg Road, where Lina had disappeared from the playground inside the gated complex. Throughout the day and into the night on Tuesday, police cordoned off the 300-unit complex in the Medical Center where her family lives.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said a K9 unit initially picked up Linas scent near the apartment complex but later lost it.

Timothy Fanning/San Antonio Express-News

The next day, police expanded their search to the area near Oakdale Street and Loop 410 frontage road, where K9 units and officers on ATVs appeared to be searching drainage ditches.

They also enlisted support from the FBIs San Antonio Field Office, and began reviewing hours of video footage from residents personal surveillance systems and phones.

McManus said the FBI has access to resources that the SAPD lacks, such as video editing software that enables them to sharpen video footage.

Despite those efforts, officers had not had much success in their search, McManus said.

The longer the time lapses, the less hopeful we become, McManus said.

On ExpressNews.com: Police focus search for missing 3-year-old Lina Sardar Khil at apartments near USAA campus

Police are asking anyone with information about Linas disappearance to call them at 210-207-7660. She is described as being 4 feet tall and weighing 55 pounds, with brown eyes and straight, shoulder-length brown hair that was last seen in a ponytail. At the time she disappeared, she was wearing a red dress, a black jacket and black shoes.

Courtesy of the San Antonio Police Department

On Thursday, The Islamic Center of San Antonio, a nonprofit that aims to support the Muslim community, announced that the reward for information that successfully helps find Lina had grown to $85,000.

Linas disappearance has been particularly devastating for people working to help families like hers in San Antonio. Her family came to the United States from Afghanistan in 2019.

We are all very worried and broken about the situation, said Margaret Constantino, executive director of the Center for Refugee Services. We have been trying to tell everyone, especially those in the Afghan community that they need to be on high alert to try and help find her.

Linas family is among thousands of Afghan refugees in San Antonio, Constantino said, and they have been clients of the center since they arrived in the U.S.

Constantino said the Afghan community in San Antonio is close-knit and hopes to help spread the word to bring Lina home.

Police have said they are treating Linas disappearance as a missing person case because they have no evidence to suggest that she was abducted.

Linas father told KENS5 news that the family initially suspected she went somewhere with another Afghan family but now thinks she may have been abducted.

During our entire lives we have not been as saddened as we were yesterday and today, Khil said through a translator before becoming emotional.

Staff writer Timothy Fanning contributed to this article.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net

emilie.eaton@express-news.net
A San Antonio man convicted of murder in November was sentenced Monday to life in prison for killing an infant he was babysitting in 2017.

Bexar County jurors handed a guilty verdict to Miguel Gutierrez, 27, on Nov. 1 for the brutal slaying of 11-month-old Xzavier Cortez. The boys mother left the child and his three siblings in Gutierrezs care on Nov. 3, 2017, while she worked as a stripper.

Testimony in a week-long trial this fall established Selena Moya and her children lived in her SUV, their existence filled with chaos, dysfunction and occasional violence for the children. The family at times relied on the Gutierrez household on the West Side for babysitting, beds and showers.

On ExpressNews.com: Somebody needs to do something!  S.A. jury hears frantic 911 call for dying 11-month-old boy

Xzavier was found unresponsive by paramedics in the home on North San Ignacio Avenue. Dispatchers pleaded with adults in the home, including the person who called 911, to do CPR and attempted to instruct them as they passed the telephone around.

The child later was pronounced dead at Childrens Hospital San Antonio. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the abdomen.

The jury saw autopsy photographs that depicted bruising, multiple prior injuries throughout his body and burns from a lighter. Someone had scrawled the words thug life on the babys stomach in black marker.

Gutierrez adamantly denied he hurt Xzavier, but under grilling by San Antonio police detectives following his arrest, he admitted he squeezed the child too hard.

Gutierrez chose to be sentenced by state District Judge Ron Rangel, who presided over the trial and a hearing Monday where two witnesses  one for the state and one for the defense  testified.

The infants grandfather, Martin Buenrostro, told the court, There is no way to describe that, when prosecutor Lauren Scott asked about the moment he found out the boy had died.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio boy bled to death internally, medical examiner testifies at murder trial

Buenrostro, stepfather of Jacob Cortez, Xzaviers biological father, is raising Xzaviers three other siblings with his wife, Emelda Cortez while the boys father serves a prison sentence.

Xzavier was a good little boy, a happy baby who was adored by his siblings and grandparents, Buenrostro said.

The grandfather said nothing could describe the pain he felt when he had to carry the childs little casket and seeing him put into the ground.

A baby. Eleven months old. How did this happen? No answers. That was the hardest part, Buenrostro told the court.

Buenrostro said he and his wife spent days trying to find the other children and their mother after learning of Xzaviers death. Child Protective Services had taken the children but the couple now have custody.

Its hard to explain to them what happened, he said of Xzaviers siblings, of whom the oldest is now 10.

Responding to questioning by defense attorney John Economidy about whether they ever offered support to Moya after their son went to prison, Buenrostro said they offered money, food, Pampers and a place to stay, when they could find her.

On ExpressNews.com: Girl, 10, testifying in San Antonio murder trial, says defendant regularly punched baby

Did she accept? Economidy asked. No, Buenrostro replied.

Testifying for the defense, Chrystal Gutierrez said she and the defendant, her younger brother, did not grow up in the best of circumstances, but that Miguel Gutierrez was not the killer he has been made out to be.

We grew up having to protect ourselves all the time. I dont understand how he could have done something like that when he was out of the room, she said. I cant see my brother hurting a child.

Chrystal Gutierrez said her brother, a father of three children, is not just a piece of paper.

All he did was try to help Selena, and it just turned around and bit him in the ass, she told the court.

When Economidy asked her to directly tell Rangel what punishment she felt her brother should receive, she asked for mercy.

We need our brother. So do his kids, Chrystal Gutierrez said.

Miguel Gutierrez had no reaction when Rangel sentenced him to life in prison. His sister and mother wept.

On ExpressNews.com: Grilled by San Antonio detectives, murder defendant admitted his grip on a baby was too hard

Buenrostro read a victim impact statement written by his stepson, Jacob Cortez, who said not a day went by that he did not think about what happened to his boy.

I forgive you, but I want to let you know that you took part of my soul, my kids soul, the statement said. When I see my kids, I still see Xzavier beside them.

Cortez urged Gutierrez to change his life for the betterment of his children.

I hope you rot in prison, Emelda Cortez told Gutierrez in an emotional statement read by Bexar County District Attorney Victims Advocate Alexis Smith.

I am never going to hear him say Grandma, I love you, Smith read, holding back tears. Every day I cry. My life will never be the same. I hope you get locked up for the rest of your life.

Gutierrez will have to serve at least 30 years in prison before being eligible for parole.

Moya, 25, was indicted in 2020 on a charge of endangering a child/risk of bodily injury, a state jail felony; and child abandonment/risk of bodily injury, a second degree felony, according to online court records. She is out on bond as she awaits trial.

She faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
We were living life as typical teenagers do. On that particular Saturday in March, my friend Juliana and I had planned to go to dinner at La Fonda on Main for our favorite dish: Alambre Mixto.

I knew she had had a doctors visit earlier in the afternoon for her occasional chest pain and shortness of breath that she suspected could be due to COVID-19. Thirty minutes before our reservation, her mother called me.

Her voice was trembling, and it sounded like she was crying. My mind raced.

What could be wrong?

All her mother could tell me was that Juliana was extremely sorry that she could not make it to dinner; she needed to stay at the doctors office for more tests. Juliana would have to explain it all in more detail later.

Ever since Id enrolled at St. Marys Hall my freshman year in 2018, Juliana had been my dearest friend. We have lived next to each other since 2013 but never interacted much despite our shared back fence. Then high school began a whole new chapter  meeting at our usual spot at the fence is now practically a daily routine.

Later that night, Juliana broke the devastating news: She had a tumor wrapped around her heart. Surgery wasnt possible as it was already so large. The only option was chemotherapy.

I was in utter shock, but I hid my fear from Juliana, imagining how she must have been feeling. Her life would never be the same.

I know its cancer, Berzhia, she told me with tears in her eyes. All I could do was give her a big hug.

/Courtesy of Berzhia Mizani

Julianas life was put on hold. She stopped going to school and out in public. She went from doctor to doctor for test after test.

Doctors diagnosed her with stage 2 Hodgkins lymphoma. According to the American Cancer Society, its the most commonly diagnosed cancer in teens aged 15 to 19, and an estimated 8,830 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with the disease every year. The five-year relative survival rate has improved over time to about 87 percent. However, the stage of Hodgkins lymphoma and a persons age affect these rates.

Mizani wrote this story for the Express-News Teen Team program, which connects high school students with reporters, photographers and other Express-News journalists for one-on-one training. To learn more, visit: wearesaen.com/teen-team.

Julianas tumor had spread into her lymph nodes, across her chest and into her neck. Within a week of the diagnosis, Julianas doctors inserted a port into her chest through which the chemotherapy would be infused.

Juliana had little time to process what was happening. The time for treatment had arrived, but she still had so many questions.

When will my hair fall out?

How will it grow back?

Will I finish high school with my classmates?

The unknowns were limitless, and the knowns were limited. Julianas usual coping mechanisms were taken away, too. She had always baked banana bread and apple muffins to alleviate stress. But now, she couldnt even do that because she had to cut out all sugary foods and most carbohydrates to starve the cancer cells.

The doctors determined she would have to undergo four rounds of chemo, combining in-hospital and outpatient infusions and pills. Shed be taking up to eight pills a day in addition to the chemo.

When she returned home from her first treatment, Juliana was so weak that she couldnt get out of bed. She was already thin at 107 pounds, and now she was losing weight rapidly due to her lack of appetite and jaw pain, side effects of the chemo. Juliana needed food to heal, even if that meant consuming mostly liquids (smoothies, shakes and soups). It was so concerning her mother worried she might actually starve to death.

Once I knew Juliana was home from the hospital, I messaged her mom to see if I could visit.

My best friend, who had a contagious smile and was always chatty, was so ill she could hardly speak. She told me about being in the hospital, and she did not know how she would ever be able to step foot in the Childrens Hospital again. Shed have to do it three more times.

She also told me how, during her first treatment, her mom insisted she snack on foods containing protein, which meant plenty of peanut butter and Goldfish crackers. She ate so much of these snacks, she said, she began to feel as if the hospital itself consisted of nothing more than these two food groups. To this day, Juliana cannot stomach peanut butter or Goldfish.

Despite the chaos, Juliana remained dedicated to completing her schoolwork. Always a straight-A student, she kept her grades up even while undergoing chemotherapy. The only times she slowed down, missed class or turned in assignments late were when she was too ill or at the hospital. Giving it her all, she said, made her feel like a normal teenager.

After four tough months of treatment, there was a positive prognosis; the tumor had disappeared. Juliana and I were finally able to take a trip together with her family to Telluride, Colorado. Making up for lost time, we hiked, dined at the best restaurants, went fly fishing, shopped, ziplined and even drove speedy off-road vehicles in the mountains.

One night we took a ride on a gondola, slowly traveling up from the town to the very top of the mountain. Everything grew smaller from up above. At the end of the ride, we spotted what we called our little landmark, the neon star lit up on the side of a mountain.

It was a reminder that our challenges, big and small, blend in with the rest of our lives. Juliana and I sat quietly, taking in the moment.

Most people have barely begun their lives at 17, but Juliana had already fought  and won  one of lifes most difficult battles.
With recent state legislation aimed at making medical marijuana more accessible in Texas, millions of state residents may be eligible to use it for various health problems.

But many may not know how to get a prescription?

The basic steps are determining whether you have an eligible condition, finding a prescribing physician and visiting that doctor for a prescription. Patients can fill prescriptions by ordering marijuana products from one of three licensed dispensing organizations in Texas.

Do I qualify?

In Texas, patients may be prescribed low-THC cannabis is they are diagnosed with certain conditions, including epilepsy, seizures, terminal cancer, multiple sclerosis, incurable neurological disorders, autism and ALS. In September, the program was expanded to include patients with cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder, while the amount of THC allowed in cannabis products was doubled to 1 percent.

Eligible patients must be accepted into the Texas Compassion Use Program with a physicians determination that the medical use of low-THC cannabis is appropriate.

PHOTOS: Inside a Texas medical marijuana facility

Patients must be permanent Texas residents. And while there is no minimum age limit, patients under 18 may need a legal guardians permission.

Cannabis prescriptions must be renewed every 365 days.

How to find a doctor

A list of cannabis-certified physicians registered with the state to issue medical marijuana prescriptions can be found at the Compassionate Use Registry of Texas, or CURT.

Some organizations like Texas 420 Doctors and the Texas Original Compassionate Cultivation offer telehealth appointments so that patients dont have to travel to consult a doctor.

At their appointments, patients or their legal guardians must bring identification and provide the physician with certain personal information, including social security number. Physicians may ask patients with preexisting conditions such as cancer or multiple sclerosis to bring prescriptions related to their conditions.

For those eligible, the physician will enter the prescription into CURT. Dispensaries in Texas can access prescriptions in CURT, so patients are not issued physical medical marijuana cards like they are in other states.

Getting on board the Cannabus

Goodblend Texas, a San Marcos-based company that is among the state-licensed dispensing organizations, is trying to make registration easier by bringing doctors and marijuana to patients. It has been traveling across the state in the Cannabus  a 36-foot-long renovated RV  to help Texans learn about and potentially register for the states medical marijuana program.

On ExpressNews.com: How to navigate Texas medical marijuana laws

And to make it even simpler for patients, the Cannabus features a mini dispensary so customers can buy marijuana products immediately after they qualify.

We didnt want to make the Cannabus tedious, so the patient leaves discouraged. We wanted to make it a powerful experience, goodblend patient advocate Terrance Ball said when the Cannabus stopped in San Antonio in November. It is neat, new and innovative, and will allow us to touch a lot more people in Texas.

Goodblend gave the Express-News a chance to go through the eligibility process to see what Texans must do to qualify for the medical marijuana program.

Once on the Cannabus, which is decorated like a doctors office, patients are given an iPad to complete an intake form. Most of the questions are standard medical inquiries, such as medical history and symptoms.

On ExpressNews.com: Weed on wheels: Texas dispensary brings first mobile clinic to San Antonio

Then, they sit with one of the physicians. For patients with PTSD, the doctor asks questions to determine whether they qualify for the program and whether medical marijuana could help. Those with diagnosed pre-existing conditions are asked to bring relevant medications to the intake interview.

The physician on duty during the Cannabus stop in San Antonio was Dr. Paula Vogel, a dermatologist with more than 30 years in medicine. Most patients spent about 20 minutes with Vogel in the makeshift doctors office as she asked questions to ascertain whether they qualify for the program and whether medical marijuana could help.

She asks patients about any trauma they may have experienced, whether they have any triggers or mood changes throughout the day, whether they see a therapist, and whether they have trouble sleeping or functioning throughout the day.

After Vogel determines whether a patient is eligible for a prescription, she goes over the options for cannabis products like gummies, tinctures, lotions and more, as well as what ratio of CBD to THC is most effective. She enters the information into CURT, and patients can exit the bus and visit the mobile dispensary outside to pick up their cannabis products.

Many people think you have to get high, and in fact, we dont want you to, Vogel said. We want you to have enough THC to help with your symptoms and still be a high-functioning individual.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
Another chapter of las nuevas tamaleras unfolds each Christmas, just like in the Mexican American classic by San Antonio playwright Alicia Mena.

The stage comedy delivers outrageous slapstick and tearful truths.

At its core, Las Nuevas Tamaleras gives us three ill-prepared, modern-day tamaleras who get a heavenly assist from two tamalada bosses whose spirits guide them through far more than how to get the masa, or dough, just right.

The story has connected with so many because it hits so close to home. Were all nuevas tamaleras who recall tamalada spirits of the past in one way or another.

In the San Antonio kitchens to which I show up, Im never the boss but at best second or third chair  the tamalera who can deliver essential ingredients the night before the big day.

This year I provided three pounds of poblano chiles, the biggest tub of lard on H-E-Bs shelves and five packages of ojas, the pliable corn husks that hold together the delicious morsels associated with South Texas holidays.

For at least a century, as documented in fading photographs, the women on my maternal side were the strongest women I knew and the best tamaleras.

They were insufferable critics and goddesses of gossip. No one was spared in Spanish, English and Spanglish.

During tamaladas, they revisited every good memory, family scandal and grievance.

As a girl, I listened and never interrupted a good story as I attempted to spread dollops of masa onto corn husks with the back of a spoon. Its a lot harder than it sounds.

I dont remember much about my grandmother around the tamalada table. But her daughters I remember. My mother was the youngest among them.

Every tamalada needs a boss. What she says goes. She sets the time and date of the event, plans every detail, assigns tasks and makes sure the kitchen is fully equipped.

Because two pots were in play this year, my molcajete took its place at the bottom of one of them. The volcanic rock was placed upside down for the steaming process and to keep tamales upright.

Cata served as tamalada boss. Shes my first cousin, my prima hermana, daughter of my mothers sister who served as tamalada boss in her day.

Cata and I grew up together. So, 6-year-old Emma was right to correct me recently when I referred to Cata, her grandmother, as my cousin.

But shes your sister! she insisted.

Her nickname is short for Catherine, English for Catarina. She was named for our grandmother who came to the United States as a child long before the Mexican Revolution.

Cata can be a stern tamalada boss, but is equally as kind. She didnt criticize my tardiness, at least, not to me. I have to go to an event and introduce the keynote speaker, I said, explaining why Id be late.

She didnt even roll her eyes. By the time I arrived, the hardest task, la embarrada, was done. Embarrar is Spanish for smear, in this case to smear masa on the ojas.

This year the boss said the traditional pork tamales would not be made. Cata decided wed fill our tamales with Oaxaca cheese and rajas, strips of roasted Poblano peppers. Others would feature jalapenos and refried beans.

Good thing that Catas refried beans could win championships.

In between each of the tamalada stages, there were stories. They reflected another tough year.

It claimed Catas brother, a former Marine, whose death was linked to drug addiction, another longtime pandemic.

Still, there was much for which to be grateful and joyous, including a pandemic baby who turned 1 this year.

Because were blessed with eternal optimism, we told far more stories of love and laughter than of loss. Emma made a couple of skinny tamales and listened quietly.

Cleanup was a breeze, thanks to planning. The broom was kept handy.

Cata squirreled away various pieces of old fabric that she used to cover every surface. As pots steamed tamales into being, she tightly wrapped up the dirty cloths and tossed them.

Evidence of the endeavor was posted on Facebook, where friends and relatives offered congratulations and salivated.

It was another successful tamalada, and our tamales are delicious.

Maybe your family doesnt have a tamalada. Perhaps you gather to make cookies or cocoa. You may barbecue instead.

It makes no matter. All such events have their bosses, and this year I wish you one as good as ours.

eayala@express-news.net
Families in South Texas could soon see their phone and internet bills go up $25 to $175 per month because state leaders defunded the Texas Universal Service Fund, which supports rural broadband.

That fund is a lifeline for those living in rural communities in counties such as Medina, Atascosa and Wilson. Because of how expensive it is for telecommunications providers to operate in rural areas, the Universal Service Fund subsidizes those providers to build out infrastructure, and provide phone and internet services at an affordable cost.

While the Legislature passed a bipartisan bill earlier this year to force the Public Utility Commission to fix the problems with the fund, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed the bill in June, leaving the funds fate up to the ruling in an appellate court hearing that took place Dec. 15.

This network crisis is part of a broader trend of state leaders turning their backs on rural communities.

About a month ago, I met with Jim Hogg County Judge Juan Carlos Guerra, who told me he could really use a partner at the state level to help repair outdated county roads and overhaul the water infrastructure that has exposed more than 5,000 people to arsenic concentrations that are more than four times the designated safe levels  a problem documented in more than 60 other Texas community water systems.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that the federal government passed in November could bring $35 billion to Texas to help expand broadband access, repair and rebuild our roads, and improve our water infrastructure. It will be up to the Abbott administration to decide how the money is spent, but last week, the governor expressed skepticism over the funds and advised state agency heads to think twice about accepting federal money.

This wouldnt be the first time Abbott has shown hostility toward federal funding that would provide a lifeline to rural communities.

Texas is one of just 12 states that has refused to expand Medicaid, leaving $100 billion in federal health care support on the table. Because of it, Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation, making it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain doctors in rural communities and forcing more rural hospitals to close than in any other state. In fact, one-third of Texas counties lack a hospital  including Goliad and McMullen, which dont even have EMS services.

Theres a lot more we could be doing to invest in rural education, too. Because Texas places such a heavy burden on local taxpayers to fund our public education system, paying on average just 40 percent of what it costs a local school district to educate our children, its nearly impossible for rural districts with a smaller tax base to fund the necessary educational and workforce development opportunities that would make these communities economically competitive.

It also makes it much harder for rural school districts to pay teachers what theyre worth. When districts in Zavala County, for example, can only afford to pay teachers, on average, $9,000 less than the state average, how can we expect those communities to recruit and retain the best and brightest educators if teachers have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet?

These are big challenges in rural areas, but the good news is these communities know exactly how to address them. As the mayor of Stamford told me a few weeks back in Jones County: I dont need anyone fixing anything for me. I just need state leaders to meet me halfway  or at least stop actively working against me.

By partnering with rural communities to guarantee affordable broadband access, make much-needed infrastructure investments, fully fund our schools, pay teachers truly competitive salaries, and expand Medicaid to keep rural hospitals open and ensure every Texan is well enough to live up to their potential, we can give young people a reason to stay, raise a family, start businesses and create new jobs in these places.

Thats the only way that rural communities  and, in turn, the rest of Texas  will thrive.

Former U.S. Rep. Beto ORourke, a Democrat, is a candidate for Texas governor.
COVID hospitalizations, often touted as one of the most significant metrics weighed by state and public health officials, have nearly quadrupled since a relative calm in the pandemic in early November as the infection rate has continued to climb, state data shows.

But with hospitalizations surging to a level not seen since the worst wave of the pandemic last winter, state officials are now downplaying the significance of the metric, insisting that Connecticut residents are in a much different place this year given widespread vaccine efforts.

On Tuesday, hospitalizations dropped by a net of three patients for a total of 834  still one of the highest levels since early February.

When asked if she had a particular benchmark for hospitalizations to consider stay home, stay safe guidance, state Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani said other factors would need to be weighed in the decision.

I dont think a particular number is relevant, Juthani said, pointing out that other factors would need to be considered.

We really have to look at the total picture. Its not just one number of COVID patients, Juthani said. Having said that, of course, that COVID number is driven by unvaccinated people who make up 80 percent of COVID patients who are in the hospital.

While the majority of the COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, the percentage has declined in recent weeks.

After reaching 79 percent on Dec. 3, the percentage of unvaccinated patients in Connecticut hospitals stood at 75.2 percent on Tuesday.

Gov. Ned Lamont and Juthani stressed they remain in frequent contact with Connecticut hospital networks. Last week, the governor said he was informed that hospital capacity was not yet an issue.

The biggest increase is not just on the COVID related, but all the other surgeries  that are going on right now. That gives them a bit of a dimmer switch to control access so that nobody is denied a bed when it comes to serious COVID-related, Lamont said.

While hospitalizations have been rising, the infection rate has seen a sharper increase. On Tuesday, Connecticut reported a daily positivity rate of nearly 9 percent  one of the highest rates since broad testing was established, Lamont said.

While hospitals have risen dramatically in recent weeks, the total census still falls short of where Connecticut was this time last year, when only a small number of people had been vaccinated in the first weeks of the rollout.

In December last year, Connecticut saw COVID hospitalizations peak at 1,269 before dipping slightly and rising again before dropping sharply through early 2021 into the spring.

But some experts believe hospitalizations in Connecticut will continue to rise in the coming weeks, especially after people gather during the holidays.

"We're about to see increased hospitalizations, that are going to resemble the spring of 2020. I think it kind of makes me just pretty sad that we're in this current state of affairs, in spite of having the defenses and the toolkit necessary to reduce COVID to something that could, from a public health standpoint, not be nearly as severe as what it is right now, said Dr. Scott Roberts, associated director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health.

Dr. David Banach, infectious disease physician and UConn Health epidemiologist, also believes hospitalizations could increase in the coming weeks, but said there are many factors that could impact the overall numbers.

I think, given that we expect that community transmission of COVID to be high, I think we're going to see high rates of hospitalizations. I think the trajectory depends on a few factors, Banach said. It depends on how this variant is affecting unvaccinated people and vulnerable people, because those are the groups that we're primarily seeing in the hospital.

Hospitalizations have been increasing by as much as 100 patients a week since early November, state data shows. If that trend continues, Connecticut could pass last winters spike by January.

Hospitalizations are being reported in all eight of Connecticuts counties, but the highest concentrations are in New Haven, Hartford and Fairfield counties, which are home to the largest hospitals.

Acknowledging the demands this pandemic has put on hospital workers, the state plans to sign a 60-day certification waiver that would allow certain medical professionals to work in Connecticut to ease the burden.

Amid similar pressure facing hospitals across the nation, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that 1,000 military members with medical backgrounds were being readied to help hospitals in need.

It remains unclear what role the newly discovered omicron variant will have on hospitalizations. State and health officials have pointed to early evidence that omicron infections tend to present with milder symptoms than delta, which has driven the fall surge in COVID-19 cases in Connecticut.

It looks like while it is much more transmissible, its much less virulent, much less risk. In many cases, more likely to be a bad case of the flu, especially if you were somebody who was previously vaccinated, Lamont said.

However, Banach believes omicron could drive up hospitalizations if it hits certain areas and communities.

This new omicron variant, if it spreads very quickly in communities where there's particularly vulnerable people, either vulnerable by their medical conditions or by not being vaccinated, I think we'll see hospitalizations rise. But I think there's a lot that's unknown about this particular variant as far as how it spreads, the severity of illness that it's going to cause in different populations, Banach said. Those are the key questions that are going to help us, you know, understand what to expect with hospitalizations.

Staff writer Jordan Nathaniel Fenster contributed to this story.
Its midnight Dec. 18, one day after the premiere of the Spider-Man: No Way Home. I found my emotional connection to this experience to be so moving that I had to get home immediately and write it down.

The film was entertaining, but that is irrelevant compared with what actually made the half hour internet quest for an open seat, the 15-mile trek each way on fogged-out rainy I-95 and the orbiting search for a rare parking spot so worth it.

For a few hours, the entire audience fled our divided, pained, stressed-to-the-max, bleak, new normal COVID Omicron existence, and felt the laughter, the togetherness, the lighthearted warmth, indeed the fun of what not that long ago we all called life.

Have you laughed a real laugh in the last two years? Have you sat on your couch in your robe or jammies with a beverage and not worried about what you read, saw, heard or were told was happening, will happen or just happened? Have you managed to go a day without hearing something you could not believe was happening in your family, your town, our country or our world? Have you gone a week without your eyes aching from rolling back so far in your head because of things you learned that week? Life after 2019 has been a spiral of divisive depressing and profoundly negative news pervading our world in a way none of us has ever known. No jaundiced pejorative, no pessimistic forecast of doom (whether true or false) is left untexted, untweeted, unreported, unsaid. We all feel it. We all know it. Despite how silly it seems, a quirky image-intense comic book story can transport you far from our tortured today to a unified, calm, wonderful, pre-COVID, pre-political, pre-divided world.

I was overwhelmed to the point of tears welling in my eyes twice. This movie touches that pit-of-your-stomach yearning for a better day. Theres a Crying Game moment in this movie. When this moment came, the reaction in the theater was overwhelming. People stood up and cheered. Real, honest-to- goodness happy-to-be-alive cheers. Happy shock, surprise of surprises and amazement. Suddenly, smiles, warmth, happiness and joy hidden for two years by COVID masks broke free!

Considering politics as well as COVID, its actually six long years our fraternity, our unity, our country, our families, our friends and coworkers have been on edge, ready to snap separated and divided like never before. But boom! All that was erased like a Marvel villain finger-snap, by a plot point in this comic book movie. When time is upended is two major scenes, the audience (like the plot) travels to the past. I could feel our modern dramas disappear. In those moments, everyone in the theater just gets so happy. We were all friends again, and with old friends again. Even wearing masks we could see smiles. Eyes wide, screams of joy, we were one country, one politic, one humanity again.

The movie was made by two competing studios, and the political metaphor of them putting their differences aside for the betterment of the greater endeavor was not lost on the audience. This movie is designed around the plot of finding a common ground, of working together, of unification not for the win, but for the philosophical sake. Brotherhood and oneness because its right, not just beneficial.

This film is the ultimate breaker of the fourth wall: It asks its characters to overcome the travesty of the moment by banding together and remembering there is a greater good that will bring everyone a better life, then it did exactly that to us, the audience. Who would imagine that a film could do what no politician, no news company, no radio talk show host, no news outlet, basically no one could? Spider-Man: No Way Home erased, for two hours, the horrors we keep hearing and fears we keep facing and dread that fills our days and made all of us in that theater feel really, really good.

Jakob Satir is a Greenwich Realtor.
The Welsh government is encouraging farmers to register to have their say in the next phase of designing the new Sustainable Farming Scheme.

The next phase will take place in the summer and farmers and landowners can register now to be part of the process.

The Sustainable Farming Scheme's first stage of co-design saw around 2,000 people take part.

But the next stage will give farmers the opportunity to share their opinions on the practicality of proposed actions underpinning the scheme and its structure and processes.

The scheme will support farmers to lower their farms carbon footprint, help improve the environment and support the production of food in a sustainable way.

The Welsh government is working with Plaid Cymru, as part of the co-operation agreement, to introduce a transition period as the system of farm payments is reformed.

Stability payments will continue to be a feature of the Sustainable Farming scheme during and beyond this Senedd term.

Working together, the Welsh government says they will develop the longer-term arrangements for Welsh agriculture, in partnership with farmers.

There will be a variety of ways for farmers to share their views, including through surveys and workshops.

The Welsh government says more details of these will be provided in due course.

The next phase of co-design forms part of an ongoing process of engagement with farmers, which will lead to a final consultation on the scheme and transition in spring 2023.

Rural Affairs Minister, Lesley Griffiths said: In September, I set out the next steps to introducing a new system of farm support which pays our farmers for the environmental benefit they deliver.

This support will be key in ensuring the long term sustainability and resilience of the farming sector and will further enhance the value of food produced within Wales based on its local and sustainable credentials.

I have always been clear about the need to work closely with our farmers to make sure their voices are heard as future support is designed.

I want to thank the 2,000 people who were part of the first stage of designing the new scheme and now encourage them and more to register their interest in being part of the second phase.

The scheme continues to be developed and we will share more details when we publish the outline next year.

To register to be involved in the second phase of co-designing the new scheme, farmers can register their interest on the Welsh governments website.

The scheme is set to be launched in 2025.
As the Omicron variant takes hold and the number of cases is increasing rapidly, Scottish livestock marts have updated their guidance for customers attending markets.

The updated changes made by the Institute of Auctioneers and Appraisers in Scotland (IAAS) are in line with legislation and advice received from the Scottish government.

The main addition to the current guidance is the reintroduction of physical distancing throughout market premises.

The IAAS, the body for livestock markets, valuers and auctioneers, says the measures are being taken to keep people safe, reduce the spread of the virus and protect the livestock trade.

The body says it expects to see an increase in inspections from local authorities and police to enforce these updated measures.

The IAAS also encourages livestock market staff to take a strong stance with anyone not complying.

Advice for attending a livestock mart

If farmers are considering attending a Scottish auction market, the IAAS says they should consider the following guidance:

 Take a lateral flow test before coming to the auction mart.

 Only attend if you are fit and well and should not be isolating.

 Pre-notify the market if you are expecting to attend. This will assist with completion of mandatory Test and Protect information.

 Attendees must wear a face covering in the market unless exempt.

 Attendees must use hand washing/sanitising facilities on entry to market and throughout.

 Attendees must follow all physical distancing requirements around market premises.

 IAAS strongly recommends that vendors adopt the drop and go policy previously in place.

 Only attend the live ring if you are transacting market business.

 Under 16s can no longer attend the market until further notice. This will help markets limit attendance in line with government requirements.

 Allied industry representatives are asked not to enter the live ring.

 Premises are all different shapes and sizes and as such one-way systems, physical distancing and access arrangements are likely to be site specific.

 Please be respectful to all market staff during these challenging times.

 Please comply with this guidance to help to keep mart attendees and staff members safe.
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The Republic of Turkey isnt exactly a breeding ground for the bird that we associate with Christmas. So, how did the land occupied by the Turks become associated with a North American bird?

The country

Turkey has been used to refer to land occupied by the Turks since the 1300s and was even used by Chaucer in The Book of the Duchess.

The word Turk is of unknown origin, but its used in such varying languages as Italian, Arabic, Persian, and many others to refer to people from this region. The land occupied by the Turks was known as the Ottoman Empire from the 1300s until 1922.

Following World War I and the fall of the Ottomans, the Republic of Turkey formed, taking on the name that had long referred to that region.

The bird

Turkeys are native to the Americas, but the Europeans first encountering them thought that they looked like a kind of guinea fowl, another large, ungainly, colourful-faced kind of bird.

Guinea fowl

Turkey hen

Male Turkey

The guinea fowl is actually native to eastern Africa and was imported to Europe through the Ottoman Empire. Europeans came to call the guinea fowl the turkey-cock or turkey-hen because the bird came from the Turks.

When settlers in the New World began to send similar-looking fowl back to Europe, they, out of familiarity, called them turkeys.

Turkey in Turkey

Turkey, for its part, does not use the term turkey at all. Instead, the birds are equally perplexingly known as hindi.

Turkey meets Christmas and Thanksgiving

By 1575, the English were enjoying the North American bird at Christmas dinner, and Shakespeare talked about it in Henry IV. Turkey with gravy became even more well known when Charles Dickens wrote about it in A Christmas Carol in 1843.

Once Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, the turkey had become a staple of Christmas dinner and quickly became a Thanksgiving treat, as well.

Source: Dictionary.com/Vox
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Katrina Kaif on Monday visited her in-laws, Sham Kaushal and Veena Kaushals house in Mumbai. Katrina and Vicky have moved into their new home and are Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohlis neighbour. But the newly weds have been visiting Vickys parents since they have returned from their wedding in Rajasthan.

In the pictures, Katrina can be seen sitting in the backseat of the car in a grey sweatshirt. She was spotted talking on a mobile phone and wearing a red chooda on her wrists. She opted for dark sunglasses, black mask and kept her hair loose.



Earlier on the same day, both Vicky and Katrina treated their fans with a beautiful picture on their social media. As the picture was clicked on the balcony, it also gave a glimpse of the sea view from their home.








CUPERTINO (dpa-AFX) - According to a recent report published by Burga, American smartphone giants, Apple Inc. (AAPL) bettered its game year-over-year to become the third biggest smartphone company in Russia. Apple has taken significant advantage of the ban imposed on Huawei which was third in third quarter of 2020.



Samsung is the most-sold smartphone across the globe during the July to September period with 20% of the market share, selling as many as 69.3 million smartphones. In Russia as well, the South-Korean phone maker has prevailed for the second consecutive year with a 34% market share since toppling the crown from Huawei back in 2019.



Meanwhile, Cupertino-based Apple is the second-largest phone-maker with a 14% market share globally but in Russia, the company has conceded the runner-up podium to Chinese company Xiaomi. Xiaomi has been preferred by 26% of the Russians while 15% have opted for iPhones.



Apple has enjoyed a major step-up year-over-year from having a 9% share after the fall from the grace of Huawei. Huawei has been banned from the US and is banned from using any US-based service which translates to the fact that any Google feature will be unavailable in the phones.



In a wider scenario, most of the major vendors of smartphone components have also denied collaborating with Huawei since its ban in May 2019. Chipmaker Qualcomm has also cut ties with the company resulting in it depending on in-house Kirin chipsets completely. These events have turned the customers away from their devices which has resulted in the increase of other companies' numbers.



In the case of Apple, its exorbitant pricing outside the US has long plagued the sales of the company. Despite launching arguably the best-in-class handsets, Apple has been undercut by Samsung in most of the markets due to Apple's premium pricing and Samsung's presence in most of the price segments.



Another fact that has played against Apple in the Russian market is the forever-brewing tensions between the two countries.



However, Apple's appeal is strong in Russia as well as Google's search keyword of iPhone 13 obtained a peak score of 100 in Moscow. In Moskovsky and Sakhalin Oblast, the score came in at 83, to confirm Apple's presence in the market



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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MINSK, Belarus, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New Era Biotechnology Co., Ltd is an enterprise from the Great Stone China Belarus Industrial Park (CBIP) in Minsk. It 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.

Contact: Ms. Xing Nizhen

Tel: 0037533-6249999

E-mail: novaerabiotech@mail.ru

Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48bS1JH9b9E

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1714020/NovaEra_Logo.jpg
Singapore, Singapore--(Newsfile Corp. - December 20, 2021) - Raffles Financial Group Limited (CSE: RICH) (FSE: 4VO) (OTCQX: RAFFF) The Company wishes to ensure that it continues to keep all of our shareholders updated on the affairs of the Company, and as such the Board is today releasing an update on the current status of finalising year-end financial statements, entering into a cloud-based system right-to-use agreement and an acquisition of two technology operators.

Raffles Status of Finalizing Year-End Financial Statements

As disclosed in the RFG's new released dated 10 December 2021, the delay in finalizing its financial statements is due to the fact a director and officer of the Company (who is now a former director and officer) in another foreign jurisdiction with the sole access to required financial information compulsory to completing fully disclosing audited financial statements had fallen seriously ill and all efforts by the Company to access the director and the information had not been successful.

Further to the above, RFG wishes to update shareholders that the Company has successfully retrieved certain financial information from a source in the above foreign jurisdiction (to be further elaborated in the below) that would be crucial in finalising its audit financial statement. RFG is now working closely with the Group's Auditors to pursue filing the Annual Filings as soon as they are available.

More details of the progress in retrieving the missing financial information

In view of the fact that the Company had been unable to access the former director who was the only China-based director in RFG's Board (the "China Director") with the sole access of required financial information, around the time the Company first made the News release on 26 November 2021 to disclose such circumstance that caused a delay in finalizing its financial statement, the Company appointed a China local emissary as the follow-up action to explore alternative ways to gather the missing information.

On 12 December 2021 night, the emissary reported to the Company that he managed to trace to a China enterprise called Changsha HuDuoBao Technology Co Ltd ("HDB") and found out that there was a non-legal binding Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") signed between RFG and HDB on 20 May 2021. A scanned copy of the said MOU was first made available to RFG by the emissary. The MOU appeared that was signed solely by the China Director. None of the RFG overseas directors were informed and aware of this signed MOU. The China Director had indeed introduced HDB to the RFG Board whereby RFG board had some preliminary discussion on the business collaboration potential with HDB before the date of the MOU. However, RFG had not been further updated by the China Director. He was then reported to bed-ridden with a heart-attack and became unreachable. Therefore, no further follow through work was done and no disclosure was made to the public shareholders as well.

As per the MOU and certain documents attached therein, RFG made a deposit of RMB 102 million for the first right of refusal to acquire 100% of HDB subject to due diligence satisfaction and both parties' board and shareholder approvals. The long stop date for this MOU is 31 December 2021.

RFG immediately went into discussion and negotiation with HDB and after the RFG board's deliberation, it is decided not to acquire HDB for now and instead to appoint HDB as the master solution and service provider for RFG's existing Finlaas business segment (Financial Technology Licensing as a Service). Finlaas is a suite of solution to enable RFG province representatives and clients to provide cloud-based technologies for online merchants and members with high-speed point of sales system, e-wallets and payment gateway, e-CRM loyalty and referral programs, virtual membership and payment cards and supply chain and logistics link. The details of the appointment with HDB will be further explained the Item 2 below.

RFG also checked with HDB and received an acknowledgment from their officers on the receipt of the deposit of RMB 102 million and the current amount due to RFG of the same amount.

In fact, RFG has always been interested in the collaboration potential with a business partner like HDB, because the management realized that the development of financial technology in the Asia Pacific region has brought a rapid increase in the demand for digital assets, e-commerce and cashless payment. This trend has created unlimited business opportunities for cloud-based resource sharing facilities. Therefore, RFG hope to find partners that are related in such fields to enhance RFG's existing Finlass business section, open up new customer groups and increase service incomes.

With reference to the RFG's Canadian Securities Exchange Form 2A Listing Statement filed with both the Canadian Securities Exchange and the securities commissions of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and the Yukon Territory and vailable for review on SEDAR and the CSE under RFG's profile on 5 May 2020, RFG disclosed its existing Finlass business operations and the significant potential of the Finlaas business and RFG intention to seek growth and expansion with Finlaas. Hence, the China Director has been tasked to seek collaboration parties to grow and expand this business. Under the global lockdown and travel restriction due to COVID-19, it was inevitable for RFG to delegate authorization and key responsibility to the China Director to develop business and administrate key affairs in China since its listing in May 2020, as no overseas directors except him were able to be on site in China to, among others, sign material contract and handle banking matters in person. This also explains the reason why the China Director was able to authorize deposit payment to HDB as he was the sole authorized person of the China bank account. On a side note, this China bank account was the only bank account RFG maintained in China and only the China Director was able to register and administrate this account because at the time of opening of this account for depositing incoming funds in May 2020, no overseas directors were able to travel to China to fulfill the physical onsite authentication procedure as required by the bank. Such corporate practice was intended to be temporary but was extended for an unexpectedly long period in tandem with the prolonged disruption caused by the pandemic till today.

The Company could have been better organized to ensure communication and business were not disconnected due to sudden calamities or illness. Furthermore, RFG has immediately put in steps to fully adopt international corporate governance standards.

Entering into a Cloud-based System Right-to-Use Agreement with HDB to secure RFG's Finlaas Master Solution and Service Provider

RFG today announced that it entered into a 3-Year "Solution As A Service" Cloud-based System Right-to-Use Agreement (the "SaaS Agreement") with HuDuoBao Network Technology Co., Ltd. ("HDB"). This Agreement is mainly to license RFG and its agent(s) a right to use HDB's cloud-based e-malls, cash-less payment Apps, POS system, payment gateways, point-of-sale systems, customer-merchant relationship management, order fulfilment linkage, supply chain and logistic link way, procurement & distribution, accounting & reporting generation in 30 defined provinces and cities in China ("Right-to-Use") to provide e-commence integrated solution to merchants. HDB shall provide instant 24/7 technical & application support and solutions to RFG as well. Pursuant to the SaaS Agreement, the Right-to-Use is on a period of 3 year for a monthly fee of RMB 2.5 million, to be deducted from the deposit that was placed in HDB as per the MOU.

Apart from this, RFG is currently in a discussion with HDB for granting RFG an option to acquire 100% equity interest of HDB for a consideration of ten times of their average audited annual net profit after tax upon completion of the Right-to-Use term. The consideration could be paid in cash or RFG shares priced at C$15 per share. However, no definite term has been reached between both parties at this moment.

RFG wishes to highlight that the SaaS Agreement is entered to extend the service coverage and enhance the profitability of the Finlass segment, which is the ordinary course of business of Raffles Financial Private Limited, the 100% owned subsidiary of RFG.

About HDB

HDB is a fintech solution provider that is keen to expand their "SaaS" (Solutions as a Service) business model in Asia-Pacific region. Currently HDB has a data centre based in the heart of China, Changsha as well as Fintech experts and equipment in various Provinces in China which is capable of providing various electronic malls apps, high speed POS payment system, member incentive points management, e-payment servers and platforms, various seamless cloud based financial technology solutions to online and onsite merchants in diverse industries.

"RFG realized that the development of financial technology in the RCEP region has brought a rapid increase in the demand for digital assets, e-commerce and cashless payment. This trend has created unlimited business opportunities for cloud-based resource sharing facilities. To equip RFG with required one-stop facilities to serve the clients of our newly acquired solution provider BV and DI, RFG hopes to find supporting partners that are related in such fields to enrich RFG Finlass service segment. This one-stop service is expected to offer RCEP's merchants and SMEs to enjoy the latest financial technology without having to invest in huge capital expenditures and long development time. Apart from this, HDB also incubates start-up companies in RECP region. With this long-term contract relationship, HDB enables RFG to expand its presence to its incubation network which would create opportunities for RFG to deploy its financial solutions to address the M+A, fund raising and overseas public listing needs of the start-ups," said Dr Charlie In, RFG Chairman.

Acquisition of two technology operators for expanding RFG's Finlass business

RFG has entered into a share purchase agreement on December 21, 2021 (the "Share Purchase Agreement") to acquire all of the outstanding share capital of Bruce Ventures Pte. Ltd. ("BV"), a Singapore-based company and Dayou Investment Ltd. ("DI"), a Hong Kong-based company ("Acquisition").

About BV and DI

BV vendor has been in the technology business for more than 15 years providing commercial-used hardware and software sales and solutions in China. DI vendor has been in the trading business of supplying various B2B computing hardware and software to clients in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia for more than 6 years.

Subject to prior approval of the Canadian Securities Exchange, Raffles Financial Group Ltd. shall complete the acquisition of BV and DI for the purchase price of SGD100.00 (CDN$93.71) each. Subsequent to the closing of the purchase of BV and DI, the Vendors of BV and DI shall be respectively entitled to a performance-based payment equal to ten (10) times BV and DI's audited net profit after tax for the financial periods ending December 31, 2022, payable in the Company's shares valued at CDN$10.00 per share.

"Both owners of BV and DI has been in the fintech hardware and software business for many years and have deep local representations and client's networks in the RCEP region which is the RFG key focus area. The market for fintech solutions in the ASEAN and China regions alone is huge with the escalation in e-commerce and cashless payments. The demand for systems integration in virtual cards payments, point-of-sale payment systems, payment gateways, delivery and logistics link-ways, procurement and distribution, accounting and report generation are badly needed by both seasoned and novice merchants. BV and DI will then belong to RFG's Finlass business unit and as the service providers of enhanced Finlass solution. This proposed Acquisitions provides RFG with their existing network of merchants and buyers to subscribe to RFG's fintech integrated solution for a fee," said Dr Charlie In, RFG Chairman.

About Raffles Financial Group Limited

Raffles Financial Group is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the stock symbol (CSE: RICH), the Frankfurt Stock Purchase under the stock symbol (FSE: 4VO) and the OTC Markets under the stock symbol (OTCQX: RAFFF).

Raffles Financial Pte Ltd is the operating subsidiary of Raffles Financial Group Limited

Please visit www.rafflesfinancial.co for more information.

Raffles Financial Private Limited (a wholly owned subsidiary of Raffles Financial Group Limited) is an exempt corporate finance advisory firm, registered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which provides public listing advisory and arrangement services. RFP serves as advisor for family trusts, family offices and investment funds.

For more information, please contact:

Dong Shim, CFO

604-283-9853 OR

Monica Kwok, Investor Relations

Phone: +65 6909 8765

Email: monica@rafflesfinancial.co

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. Certain statements contained in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" (collectively "forward-looking information") as those terms are used in Canadian securities laws. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated", "anticipates" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Company's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108181
MANILA, Philippines, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Surrounding yourself in nature holds many wellness benefits, from reducing stress to enhancing the immune system. In the Philippines, it is possible to experience this feeling of wellbeing while traveling to fun and nature-friendly destinations.

The Philippines Department of Tourism will be highlighting sustainable travel post-pandemic as it works towards inclusive growth and the protection of the natural and cultural heritage, and safeguards the integrity and diversity of the country's national resources.

Sustainable tourism ensures that destinations, especially nature-based, remain intact and will be preserved for future travelers.

Travel to these exciting destinations at the heart of nature and create a positive impact on its environment and local communities when international borders reopen.

1. Trek through Masungi Georeserve, Rizal

The sprawling landscape of the Masungi Georeserve is a conservation area that is a sanctuary for hundreds of native wildlife species. Take a three-hour trek on the Discovery Trail through the pathways with lush vegetation and limestone formations, walk over suspended bridges to take snapshots of your adventure, and crawl onto a spider-web view deck to get a spectacular view of the nature park and the expanse of the country's largest lake, Laguna de Bay.



Take the Legacy Trail and participate in the planting and nurturing of the trees that will be part of the reforestation of the area.

2. Go Dolphin Watching in Bohol

Enjoy a day out at sea to watch the marine life in the clear blue waters of Pamilacan Island in Bohol. Visitors can catch various species of dolphins and whales such as Risso's, Spinner, Bottlenose, Spotted, Bryde's, sperm whales, pilot whales, melon-headed whale, pygmy killer whale, and even blue whales splash around in their playground. Sustainable tourism in the area has helped keep the dolphins and whales safer from commercial fishing.

In the past years, the waters off the island are prime fishing waters for whale hunters who saw the activity as a source of income. Through marine preservation laws, community education and involvement, and using tourism as an alternative source of livelihood, whaling boats are now used as a comfortable ride for tourists on whale and dolphin-watching trips, instead. The boatmen are now tour guides and champions of marine conservation and preservation.

3. Swim at Campawan Curtain Falls, Davao Oriental

A trek through the forested area in the town of Baganga in Davao Oriental leads to the majestic Campawan Waterfalls. The au naturel beauty of nature that resembles a wide curtain that flows about 20 feet into a shallow basin of water is a quick retreat for a cool dip. Efforts have been initiated to transform the place as an eco-park for locals and tourists to enjoy.

4. Kayak in El Nido, Palawan

Palawan is a paradise for kayakers, with placid waters along El Nido's lagoons and coves that are teeming with marine life in crystal clear water. Kayaking through the limestone formations at the Small Lagoon and the Big Lagoon on Miniloc Island is an unforgettable, surreal experience.

To help protect the ecological balance of its popular destinations, the local government has introduced measures such as enforcing a carrying capacity policy for the lagoons. Motorized boats are barred from anchoring at the entrance of the Small Lagoon and from entering the Big Lagoon, except those issued with special permits for carrying persons with disabilities, senior citizens, and pregnant women.

5. Trek the La Union nature and eco trails

La Union Province is a charming paradise waiting to be discovered. A 20-minute trek through lush vegetation leads to Tangadan Falls in San Gabriel. This journey through the tropical weather is rewarded by a refreshing dip in the falls' cooling waters. Practice the art of forest bathing at the Arosip Ecotrail in Bacnotan, with its towering trees that offer shade along the 45-minute walk to the peak.

The cascading Tuddingan Falls in Naguilian are accessible through a cemented pathway, making it hike-friendly for beginners. Romantic nature-lovers can take a trip to Mt. Puraw in Bauang and catch the sunrise among a sea of clouds. Balay Anito Falls in Santol translates to Home of the Spirits, and it is easy to be enchanted at its picture-perfect view of water cascading over rock formations.

6. Visit the Mangrove Forest of Siargao Islands

While Siargao draws tourists for its surfing waves, it is also home to the country's largest contiguous mangrove stand. The Del Carmen Mangrove Forest offers a boat tour that takes travellers along the brackish waters that cover around 4,871 hectares that hosts 27 out of the 70 mangrove species in the world. This is the habitat of rare and endangered flora and fauna, most especially the endangered Crocodylus Porosus or Saltwater crocodile.

While the local communities have taken to cutting these mangroves for firewood out of economic necessity, they are now finding new livelihood from tourism, fishing, crab harvesting, and seaweed farming. They are being taught the value of protecting their mangroves, so that its benefits will be enjoyed by the generations to come.

Safe and Sustainable

The Philippines is a paradise for nature lovers and an ideal place to visit, especially for those who want to support sustainable travel initiatives that take care of the environment and local communities.

While preparing more eco-travel destinations among its more than 7,100 islands, the Philippines Department of Tourism is also focused on ensuring safe journeys. It is working on standardizing health and safety protocols in all channels of the industry when international travel is allowed.

In Metro Manila, 99% of tourism workers in DOT-accredited hotels and accommodation establishments, as well as 99% of tourism workers in accredited restaurants have had their anti-COVID jabs. This fascinating destination has received the Safe Travels stamp from the World Travel and Tourism Council, which selects destinations that meet international health and safety standards.

Receive latest Philippine updates and travel by visiting morefunawaits.com or through the Travel Philippines app at the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Click here for photos.
TOKYO, Dec 21, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Eisai Co., Ltd. announced today that, effective January 1, 2022, Biogen will reduce the wholesale acquisition cost (WAC) of ADUHELM (aducanumab-avwa) 100 mg/mL injection for intravenous use in the United States by approximately 50%. For a patient of average weight (74 kg), the yearly cost at the maintenance dose (10 mg/kg) will be $28,200.Over the past several months, Biogen has listened to the feedback of our stakeholders. Too many patients are not being offered the choice of ADUHELM due to financial considerations and are thus progressing beyond the point of benefitting from the first treatment to address an underlying pathology of Alzheimer's disease. Biogen recognizes that this challenge must be addressed in a way that is perceived to be sustainable for the U.S. healthcare system and Biogen is now taking important actions to improve patient access to ADUHELM.Biogen is taking this action with the goal of lowering out-of-pocket expenses for patients and reducing the potential financial implications for the U.S. healthcare system. ADUHELM's reduced price takes into consideration the questions raised about this first in class of therapies, the potential eligible population and revised pharmaco-economic assumptions. Biogen believes with insurance coverage, and access to diagnostics and specialized centers, approximately 50,000 patients may initiate treatment with ADUHELM in 2022.It is a critical time for the Alzheimer's disease community as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is considering the possibility of coverage of not only ADUHELM, but also this entire new class of Alzheimer's disease therapies that mainly have Abeta removing effects. We hope the actions today will facilitate patient access to these innovative Alzheimer's treatments.The reduced price is part of the Company's ongoing commitment to further inform treatment choice. Biogen recently presented new p-tau181 biomarker data at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease conference (CTAD) and announced its plan to complete the Phase 4 confirmatory post marketing study of ADUHELM in an accelerated timeline of four years. ADUHELM's accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has served as a catalyst for significant investment and additional research and innovation for Alzheimer's disease.In addition, the reduced price will have a minor impact on the consolidated result forecasts for the period ended March 31, 2022. There are no changes to the consolidated financial forecast announced on November 1, 2021.About ADUHELM (aducanumab-avwa) 100 mg/mL injection for intravenous useADUHELM is indicated for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Treatment with ADUHELM should be initiated in patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia stage of disease, the population in which treatment was initiated in clinical trials. There are no safety or effectiveness data on initiating treatment at earlier or later stages of the disease than were studied. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on reduction in amyloid beta plaques observed in patients treated with ADUHELM. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification of clinical benefit in confirmatory trial(s).Aducanumab-avwa is a monoclonal antibody directed against amyloid beta. The accumulation of amyloid beta plaques in the brain is a defining pathophysiological feature of Alzheimer's disease. The accelerated approval of ADUHELM has been granted based on data from clinical trials showing the effect of ADUHELM on reducing amyloid beta plaques, a surrogate biomarker that is reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit, in this case a reduction in clinical decline.ADUHELM can cause serious side effects including: Amyloid Related Imaging Abnormalities or "ARIA". ARIA is a common side effect that does not usually cause any symptoms but can be serious. Although most people do not have symptoms, some people may have symptoms such as: headache, confusion, dizziness, vision changes and nausea. The patient's healthcare provider will do magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans before and during treatment with ADUHELM to check for ARIA. ADUHELM can also cause serious allergic reactions. The most common side effects of ADUHELM include: swelling in areas of the brain, with or without small spots of bleeding in the brain or on the surface of the brain (ARIA); headache; and fall. Patients should call their healthcare provider for medical advice about side effects.Cost, Coverage and Co-Pay AssistanceThe WAC of ADUHELM, which is an infusion once every four weeks, will be $2,171.40 per infusion for a patient of 74 kg?the average weight of a U.S. patient with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or mild dementia. A 170 mg vial will be $479.40 and a 300 mg vial will be $846.00. The yearly cost at the maintenance dose (10 mg/kg) would be $28,200. The cost during the first year of treatment will be $20,500 due to the titration period. WAC is a list price and not the net price or the price paid by patients with insurance. The out-of-pocket cost for patients with insurance will vary depending on their coverage.For patients facing difficulty affording ADUHELM, financial assistance programs are available. For more information, please contact Biogen Support Services at +1-833-425-9360.Media Inquiries:Public Relations DepartmentEisai Co., Ltd.+81-(0)3-3817-5120Source: EisaiCopyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Voss Capital, LLC, a significant shareholder of Griffon Corp. (GFF), said that it has opposed Griffon's planned acquisition of Hunter Fan Company for $845 million in a transaction announced earlier today. Voss believes the acquisition is wrong for shareholders for many reasons, and unattractive valuation will destroy shareholder value. Voss said that, in its opinion, Griffon's decision to buy Hunter Fan Company from MidOcean Partners demonstrates the Board's continued disregard for shareholders and causes it further question whether Griffon's directors are protecting Griffon's shareholders' best interests. Voss noted that it has nominated several candidates for election as directors at Griffon's upcoming Annual Meeting in mid-February. 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.
Co-Founder and former Head of Strategy of the UK's Aerospace Technology Institute James McMicking joins as new VP Strategy

Shell's Former Global Hydrogen Technology Director Arnab Chatterjee named VP Infrastructure

named VP Infrastructure 35-year Boeing veteran and former Chief Engineer of Propulsion Jim Petersen joins advisory board

Hires follow the announcement of 460 order options from partners such as Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, and many others; funding reaches $115m

OEM partnerships represent a total 7,000 engine opportunity for ZeroAvia

KEMBLE, UK and HOLLISTER, Calif., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ZeroAvia , the leader in hydrogen-electric, zero-emission aviation, has added two new senior hires, and a new member to its advisory board, as it prepares to ramp up growth over the next 12 months.

James McMicking joins as ZeroAvia's first Vice President of Strategy from the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) - the body in charge of developing the technology strategy for the UK aerospace sector. As one of the original executives to set up the ATI, McMicking held several positions throughout the business over seven years, including its Head of Strategy and Operations.

"Through my work, in recent years I have seen first hand the rapid progression of zero-emission technologies for flight, so it is exhilarating to be joining a company that I believe is taking the right approach and is on the path to certification and market adoption in the very near future," said James McMicking. "True zero-emission technology will reduce aviation's climate impact, improve air quality around airports and enable better regional connectivity in the future."

A mechanical engineer by training, McMicking brings experience covering advanced R&D, business and innovation strategy, and transformation. At the ATI, McMicking worked extensively with organisations throughout the aerospace tech sector and UK Government to support world-class research and development, navigate complex strategic challenges and catalyse innovation.

At ZeroAvia, McMicking is now responsible for building a strategic roadmap for the business, both from a commercial and technical point of view to reach its 2024 target, working in collaboration with CEO Val Miftakhov and the rest of the executive team.

Meanwhile, Arnab Chatterjee also joins the business as Vice President of Infrastructure. Prior to ZeroAvia, Chatterjee spent almost a decade at Shell working on low carbon fuel, digital, e-mobility, and renewable energy solutions in a range of technical, commercial and strategy roles. Most recently, he has been driving Shell's efforts in hydrogen at a global scale. Chatterjee has a background in chemical product development, venture investments and corporate development. He has a PhD in electrochemistry from the University of Oxford.

At ZeroAvia, Chatterjee will be responsible for working with aviation and energy industry partners to deliver the hydrogen production and refuelling infrastructure required to support the adoption of hydrogen-electric propulsion.

Commenting on his new role, Arnab Chatterjee said: "Seeing ZeroAvia's aircraft in the sky for the first time last year was a real lightning bolt moment, and I have followed the R&D progress closely. With a 19-seat aircraft close to flight testing and commercialisation a little over two years away, ground infrastructure requires equal focus to ensure our success in transforming the future of flight. It is an exciting challenge ahead."

In addition, joining ZeroAvia's advisory board is Jim Peterson. An expert in propulsion integration, Peterson brings over 35 years of experience from his time at Boeing where he was Chief Engineer of Propulsion, responsible for integrating engines into various Boeing airframes.

"We're delighted to have these three remarkable leaders on our team," commented Val Miftakhov, CEO, ZeroAvia. "Adding strong strategic firepower to the business, as well as industry-leading expertise to continue our rapid R&D advancement, will help us to take things to a new level in 2022."

The executive and advisory board additions bookend an enormously successful year for ZeroAvia. Beyond being named one of the world's most innovative companies by Fast Company and a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, the company made significant strides on its R&D. It completed 35 test flights of its six-seat prototype, part of the UK Government-backed HyFlyer I project.

The company also ramped up work on the HyFlyer II project, focused on delivering its commercial entry product, a 600 kW hydrogen-electric powertrain for 10-20 seat aircraft. In September, ZeroAvia welcomed its Dornier 228 testbed aircraft to its new base at Cotswold Airport, immediately beginning work to install its powertrain technology, and the team is already well advanced in preparation for flight testing early next year.

ZeroAvia raised over $70 million in 2021, taking the total to $115 million, with the most recent round of $35 million announced in December. The company also increased its headcount to nearly 100 employees globally.

ZeroAvia also announced several highly significant commercial deals throughout the year's final quarter, amounting to more than 460 commitments for hydrogen-electric engines and several important joint development programmes. In the second half of the year, ZeroAvia also cemented a number of deals, including an intention to develop one of the world's first commercial zero-emission routes from London to Rotterdam the Hague Airport , investment and purchase options from airlines such as Alaska Airlines and United Airlines , and partnerships with a variety of aviation players such as De Havilland of Canada , Rose Cay , Hindustan Aeronautics Limited , ASL Aviation Holdings , and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Regional Jet division. The total number of engines (excluding spares) for in service or stored aircraft produced by the OEMs that ZeroAvia has signed deals with stands at over 7,000, showing the scale of the opportunity.

"This commercial traction alongside the technical progress has been a massive boost for the company," Miftakhov continued. "It demonstrates how receptive the market is for both our ZA600 and ZA2000 powertrains, as well as illustrates that hydrogen-electric is the only meaningful solution for zero-emission aviation."

About ZeroAvia

ZeroAvia is a leader in zero-emission aviation, focused on hydrogen-electric aviation solutions to address a variety of markets, initially targeting 500-mile range in 10-20 and 40-90 seat aircraft used for commercial passenger transport, cargo, agriculture, and more. Based in the UK and USA, ZeroAvia has already secured experimental certificates for two prototype aircraft from the CAA and FAA, passed significant flight test milestones, and is on track for initial commercial operations of its technology in 2024. The company's expanding UK operations are supported by grants from UK's Aerospace Technology Institute and Innovate UK, and ZeroAvia is part of the UK Prime Minister's Jet Zero Council. For more, please visit ZeroAvia.com, follow @ZeroAvia on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

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Mississauga, Ontario and Sacramento, California--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Bee Vectoring Technologies International Inc. (CSE: BEE) (OTCQB: BEVVF) (CVE: BEE) (the "Company" or "BVT") is pleased to announce that its US sales is progressing as projected for the 2022 growing season. The sales plan is on track in the Southeast, with additional growth expected in more recently opened markets in other key growing regions.

Sales commitments in the Southeast, with two months in the selling season still to go, has already exceeded last year's total acres. BVT is still in discussions with customers representing several hundred potential new acres. High customer retention has also been confirmed in the Southeast, with 80% of growers from last year already confirmed to use BVT's natural precision agriculture system for the upcoming blueberry bloom period in February.

"The cost of inputs for growers has skyrocketed, and having customers reorder when they are cutting back in other areas shows how important BVT is to their operation. Many traditional chemical products have risen by as much as 40 percent over the last year," says Ian Collinson, Sales Manager at BVT.

"Our expansion in the US market is progressing on schedule in terms of sales growth and retention," added Mr. Collinson. "We've secured sales in the Southeast as a solid foundation, since their growing season starts first. The bulk of BVT's new sales growth will occur over the next three to four months, aligned with later growing seasons in the Northeast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest and California."

To help with growth in the newer regional markets, BVT is leveraging the powerful results from 2021 university and grower trials of BVT's bee vectoring system and Vectorite with CR-7 biological fungicide. Some trial results are already in and BVT has put them to immediate use in the sales process. These trials were conducted with respected agricultural academic institutions, including the University of California and North Dakota State University, as well as growers in Oregon and California.

"The trial data is rolling in, and we're all excited by how promising it is," says Ashish Malik, CEO of BVT. "We're seeing big benefits in real-world applications, with higher yields, bigger berries, higher quality crops, and reduced disease incidence and severity. This validates previous experience in specific crops and regions, and gives a major boost to our product proof so we can effectively present the BVT solution to even more growers."

Growers rely on trials conducted under their own local growing conditions when they're deciding on new technology: those trials are critical for market penetration and growth in individual regions.

These are some of the 2021 trial results available so far:

California strawberry trials with two major growers in Watsonville, California who grow for one of the world's largest berry companies (when BVT was added on top of the grower standard spray program)

25% and 32% greater yields

50% and 62% reductions in diseased fruit

Reductions in culled fruit of 34% and 50% (culled fruit is fruit that is thrown away)

Post-harvest data: Fruit treated with BVT was healthier: 13% and 17% lower Botrytis (gray mold) incidence The severity of Botrytis decreased by 12% and 45% (this is how much area of the fruit is infected)



The California strawberry grower trials were a proof-of-concept of the BVT system for this large berry company, in a market where bees are currently not being used for pollination, and demonstrated the economic benefit of the BVT system. One trial was done at an organic farm, and one at a conventional farm.

University of California conventional almond research trial in Central Valley, California (spray trial)

CR-7 had over 80% efficacy in Monilinia laxa (brown rot blossom blight) disease control - the same level of control as leading chemical standards

(brown rot blossom blight) disease control - the same level of control as leading chemical standards CR-7 outperformed five other biologicals for control of Botrytis cineria (jacket rot)

2021 was a very dry growing season in California's Central Valley and there was little disease on the almond orchards. The data collected from this 2021 Central Valley trial positively confirmed 2019 collected data: CR-7 sprayed produced the same control of Monilinia incidence as leading chemical standards; and CR-7 outperformed other biologicals for Botrytis control.

Conventional almond research trial in Madera County, California (bee vectoring of Vectorite with CR-7)

17-24% greater yield over two blueberry cultivars

5-6% increased flower retention

Conventional blueberry grower trial in Columbia River Basin, Oregon

16% average increase in berry size

43% more large (12mm+) berries

Third-party packer reported higher yields over the grower standard (12mm+ sized berries)

Organic blueberry grower trial in western Oregon

90% reduction in Monilinia (mummy berry) disease with bee vectoring applied in 2021 compared to traditional methods used in 2020

(mummy berry) disease with bee vectoring applied in 2021 compared to traditional methods used in 2020 The section of the crop field with the lowest BVT treatment showed the highest disease incidence, but was still significantly lower than disease incidence in the previous year without bee vectoring used

Fruit size is very large compared to past crops, especially first pick, with second pick also larger than expected

Heavier fruit, with pallets weighting in at 1,100+ lbs.

"As a disruptive new technology, it's vital that BVT has strong, measurable third-party validation that helps customers make informed decisions," says Mr. Collinson. "We will be able to leverage this exciting data to drive sales growth in our new markets. It's a crucial tool for the BVT salesforce."

About Bee Vectoring Technologies International Inc

BVT, an agriculture technology company, is a market disruptor with a significant global market opportunity in the $240 billion crop protection and fertilizer market. BVT has pioneered a natural precision agriculture system that replaces chemical pesticides and wasteful plant protection product spray applications by delivering biological pesticide alternatives to crops using commercially grown bees. BVT's award-winning technology, precision vectoring, is completely harmless to bees and allows minute amounts of naturally-derived pesticides (called biologicals) to be delivered directly to blooms, providing improved crop protection and yield results than traditional chemical pesticides - and improving the health of the soil, the microbiome and the environment. Currently, BVT has over 65 granted patents, over 35 patents pending in all major agricultural countries worldwide, and has US EPA registration of its Vectorite with CR-7 (EPA Registration No. 90641-2) for sale as a registered biological fungicide for use on the labeled crops.

Additional information can be viewed at the Company's website www.beevt.com. To receive regular news updates from the Company, subscribe at www.beevt.com/newsletter.

Company Contact:

Ashish Malik, President & CEO

info@beevt.com

Investor Contact:

Babak Pedram, Investor Relations

Virtus Advisory Group

Tel: 416-995-8651

bpedram@virtusadvisory.com

The CSE has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Certain statements contained in this press release constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is defined in applicable Canadian securities legislation. The words "may", "would", "could", "should", "potential", "will", "seek", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions as they relate to the Company, "annual revenue potential", are intended to identify forward-looking information. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking information. Such statements reflect the Company's current views and intentions with respect to future events, and current information available to the Company, and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including: planted acres, selling price of competitive chemical pesticides and the US to Canadian dollar exchange rate. Material factors or assumptions were applied in providing forward-looking information. Many factors could cause the actual results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking information to vary from those described herein should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize. These factors include changes in law, competition, litigation, the ability to implement business strategies and pursue business opportunities, state of the capital markets, the availability of funds and resources to pursue operations, new technologies, the ability to protect intellectual property rights, the ability to obtain patent protection for products, third-party intellectual property infringement claims, regulatory changes affecting products, failing research and development activities, the ability to reach and sustain profitability, dependence on business and technical experts, the ability to effectively manage business operations and growth, issuance of debt, dilution of existing securities, volatility of publicly traded securities, potential conflicts of interest, unlikelihood of dividend payments, the potential costs stemming from defending third-party intellectual property infringement claims, the ability to secure relationships with manufacturers and purchasers, as well as general economic, market and business conditions, as well as those risk factors discussed or referred to in the Company's Filing Statement dated August 14,2020, filed with the CSE and securities regulatory authorities in certain provinces of Canada and available at www.sedar.com. Should any factor affect the Company in an unexpected manner, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information prove incorrect, the actual results or events may differ materially from the results or events predicted. Any such forward-looking information is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Moreover, the Company does not assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of such forward-looking information. The forward-looking information included in this press release is made as of the date of this press release and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable law. All figures are in Canadian dollars.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108177
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.
HANGZHOU, China, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Uniview held its 3rd Global Partner Summit "Transform. Evolve." in the form of live streaming during its 10th Anniversary. The invitation-only virtual event featured discussions on how surveillance industry can tackle the challenges after COVID-19 - forcing the transition to a new normal, post-pandemic future. CEO of Univew, Hermit Zhang, gave a strong opening for the Summit and Ximen Yan, the President of the International Business Department, delivered his quick take on what transformation Uniview is going to take, to evolve into the future. Over 1,500 partners attended the meeting.

Key findings from the presentations include:

Uniview launched video conference lines

Uniview SMB intelligent monitoring scheme enables all industries to reorganize order, improve efficiency and achieve growth

Uniview increased the digital marketing activity to empower partners and received considerable results

Sitting in the front line of the stage: new service, new product

Uniview launched a full series of heat-tracking equipment, "to help coping with the sudden shift of life and business", Product Marketing Director Liu said. New video conference line is designed to adapt users to new lifestyles, realizing qualitative non-contact communication. He demonstrated the company's approach to reorganize and transform product category so to cover smart security, smart home and smart business.

Offstage: industrial reformation for surveillance solutions

SMB intelligent monitoring scheme enables all industries to reorganize order, improve efficiency and achieve growth. While product lines at Uniview are being expanded, the according smart solutions include algorithms like, People Counting, People Flow Control, Smart Intrusion Prevention, etc., optimize business management. Joyce, Product Director, explained its take to effectively reinforce small to medium business dealing with industrial transformation via its need and technology based customizable solution approach.

What does the backstage looks like?

Product director, Jason, described the company's approach on intelligent algorithms, Tri-Guard and ColorHunter technologies. He mentioned, from traditional cameras to deep learning cameras, Uniview will continue to upgrade technology in image performance, video analysis, AI, big data, etc., and to improve innovation capabilities.

The Summit ended with significant accomplishments, including launches on online conferencing tools, as well as smart home gadgets, completed the product transition from traditional surveillance to smart home/ smart business. The summit also rewarded royal and dedicated partners for outstanding performances, and encourage to return in 2022 with stronger pledges to continuous dedication.

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INDIANAPOLIS (dpa-AFX) - Eli Lilly and Co. (LLY) said on Tuesday that in a phase III trial, its investigational monoclonal antibody Lebrikizumab considerably reduced the severity of moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis, when combined with topical corticosteroids. The combination arm of the phase III trial met the primary endpoints of Investigator Global Assessment (IGA) score of clear (0) or almost clear (1) skin with a reduction of at least two points from baseline and at least a 75 percent change from baseline in the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI) score, both at Week 16, according to the company. Lebrikizumab in combination with topical corticosteroids also achieved all key secondary endpoints in patients with atopic dermatitis, including skin improvement, itch relief, improvement in interference of itch on sleep, and quality of life. In August of this year, the company had reported encouraging results from two phase III trials, which evaluated Lebrikizumab as monotherapy in moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis, dubbed ADvocate 1 and ADvocate 2. Lilly has exclusive rights for development and commercialization of Lebrikizumab in the U.S. and rest of world outside Europe. Spanish pharmaceutical company Almirall has licensed the rights to develop and commercialize Lebrikizumab for the treatment of dermatology indications, including AD, in Europe. 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.
PARIS (dpa-AFX) - French drug major Sanofi (SNYNF, SNY) announced Tuesday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Amunix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an immuno-oncology company. Under the deal terms, Sanofi will acquire Amunix for an upfront payment of approximately $1 billion and up to $225 million upon achievement of certain future development milestones. The closing of the deal is subject to expiration or termination of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 and other customary closing conditions. Sanofi expects to complete the acquisition in the first quarter of 2022. Sanofi said the acquisition supports its efforts to accelerate and expand its contributions to innovative medicines for oncology patients, with approximately 20 molecules currently in development. Amunix's proprietary XTEN masks and cleavable linkers are a next-generation protein engineering approach. They allow biologics to circulate in 'stealth' mode, becoming active preferentially in disease specific micro-environments, with the aim to enable safer?and?more efficacious?medicines. Amunix's pipeline includes lead candidate, AMX-818, a masked HER2-directed TCE, which offers a strong strategic fit with Sanofi's focus on developing potentially transformative cancer therapies in immuno-oncology. In the deal, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP is acting as Sanofi's legal counsel. Centerview Partners LLC is acting as financial advisor to Amunix. 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.
Regulatory News:

Latecoere (Paris:LAT), a leading partner of the world's major aerospace manufacturers, has invested in breathing specialist Caeli Nova to support the development of its in-flight emergency oxygen system. Caeli Nova's innovative system will increase passenger safety in flight, reduce costs for airlines and diminish the carbon footprint of aircraft by enabling the most direct routes. It should be certified and installed as early as next year.

Latecoere is participating alongside other investors, including lead investor Ornament Health, in the Series A round of financing of Caeli Nova.

"Through this investment and industrial partnership, Latecoere is proposing to support a breakthrough technology that will simplify and improve flight safety by significantly extending the time during which passengers have access to an emergency breathing assistance system. We are pleased to be able to provide our advice in the current R&D phase as well as in the industrialization one in the future. We are thus realizing our ambition to serve the aerospace industry with innovative solutions for a sustainable world." says Serge Berenger, Director of Innovation and R&T at Latecoere.

Caeli Nova, co-founded by Swiss venture builder LG Capital in 2017, is a UK and Swiss-based company at the intersection of healthcare and aviation, that now has 40 experts specializing in breathing technology, initially starting with providing a novel emergency oxygen system for passenger aircraft. The company has already received financial support from the UK Government, via Innovate UK.

About Latecoere

As a "Tier 1" international partner of the world's major aircraft manufacturers (Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, Dassault, Embraer and Mitsubishi Aircraft), Latecoere is active in all segments of the aeronautics industry (commercial, regional, business and military aircraft), in two areas of activity:

Aerostructures (55% of turnover): fuselage sections and doors,

Interconnection Systems (45% of turnover): wiring, electrical furniture and on-board equipment.

As of December 31, 2020, the Group employed 4,172 people in 13 different countries. Latecoere, a French limited company capitalised at 132,745,925 divided into 530,983,700 shares with a par value of 0.25, is listed on Euronext Paris Compartment B, ISIN Codes: FR0000032278 Reuters: LAEP.PA Bloomberg: LAT.FP.

About Caeli Nova:

Caeli Nova's patented breathing technology can improve oxygenation of the human body in demanding situations such as altitude.

Caeli Nova's first product, Cordillera, is an emergency oxygen system suitable for commercial and military passenger aircraft. This key safety system is designed to protect passengers in the rare event of a loss of cabin pressure, known as a decompression. In addition, Cordillera removes operational constraints and limitations facing airlines, airframers and defence aerospace today, thereby allowing airlines to operate shorter flights, with associated reductions in fuel and carbon emissions.

For more information, visit: https://caelinova.com/

About LG Capital:

LG Capital AG, led by its founder serial entrepreneur Leo Grunstein and its Managing Director Ovunc Okyay, is a Switzerland-based venture builder that teams up with strong founding teams to realize big-idea ventures from scratch. It creates ventures from the ground up as co-founder with a 7-10+ year time horizon and supports them from foundation in the fields of C-level team building, strategy business planning, fundraising, international expansion, corporate finance and best practice sharing.

About Ornament Health:

Ornament Health AG is a Swiss company developing the app Ornament. Based on the principles of preventative medicine, the app helps users around the world monitor their health, download test results, and track the dynamics and analytics of biomarkers. Ornament Health AG was founded in 2019 and has dynamically developed health solutions by bringing together experts in the fields of medicine and technology. Since launching its app in late 2019, Ornament has now achieved an active monthly audience of more than 100'000 users.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211220005919/en/

Contacts:

Taddeo

Antoine Denry Investor Relations

+33 (0)6 18 07 83 27

Marie Gesquiere Media Relations

+33 (0)6 26 48 97 98

teamlatecoere@taddeo.fr

Media information:

Chiara Lawrance Kayla Wilkins Jane Lindsay

8020 Communications

CaeliNova@8020comms.com

01483 447 380
PRESS RELEASE

Indigo Diabetes Business Update





BELGIUM - Ghent, December21,2021 - Indigo Diabetes N.V. ('Indigo' or the 'Company'), a pioneering developer of medical solutions using nanophotonics, today provides an update on recent and ongoing business activities.

Clinical study progress

The GLOW study, which was initiated in March 2021 and is the first in human clinical study of its continuous multi-metaboliteunder the identifier NCT04782934, was designed to evaluate the safety of the sensor and the short-term integration into the tissue and was a prospective, single-center early feasibility study conducted at Antwerp University Hospital, Belgium. Data was also collected from the seven study participants and used to develop the device to allow real-time, continuous measurement of key metabolite levels in adults with diabetes. The GLOW study results are currently being analysed and due to be submitted for publication in the New Year.

Key appointments

In May, Indigo appointed Paul Moraviec as Chairman of its Board of Directors. Paul has amassed over three decades of global experience in the healthcare sector, having held multiple senior leadership positions and has brought highly relevant diabetes experience, having been Vice President of Abbott's Diabetes Care International division between 2002 and 2007.

In addition, Indigo appointed seven internationally recognised experts in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolic disease to form its newly created Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). The SAB members are all leaders in their field and will serve as a strategic resource to Indigo as it progresses its device and continues its journey to transforming diabetes management. The SAB, which held its first meeting in June 2021, comprises:

Prof. Dr. Tadej Battelino, Head of Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Prof. Dr. Michael C. Riddell, School of Kinesiology & Health Science, York University, Canada

Prof. Dr. Eric Renard, Head of Department Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism, Medical School, University of Montpellier, France

Prof. Dr. Christophe De Block, Head of Department of Endocrinology, Diabetology and Metabolic disease, University of Antwerp, Belgium

Prof. Dr. Thomas Danne, Director of Department of General Pediatrics Endocrinology/Diabetology & Clinical Research, Hannover Medical School, Germany

Prof. Dr. Ananda Basu, Division of Endocrinology, University of Virginia, USA

Dr. Anne Peters, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, USA





In December 2021, Indigo appointed Daniel Verstappen as VP Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs where he will form part of the senior management team. Daniel has approximately 30 years' experience working for medical device companies, most latterly as Global VP, Quality, Regulatory Affairs and Standard Management at Philip Morris, which is currently transforming into a life science company.

Daniel's appointment takes the total number of employees at Indigo to 40, representing almost a doubling in headcount over the last year.

Grant awarded tovalidate next generation system

In September, Indigo received a 3 million grant from VLAIO, the Flanders organisation for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, to conduct research into high volume production of its next-generation CMM system. Specifically, Indigo will use the grant to validate its CMM system in a large-scale clinical pivotal study, ENLIGHT.

Earlier this year, Indigo successfully closed the DiaMOND grant, awarded in 2018 under the umbrella of the EU Horizon 2020 SME Instrument framework. The grant was used to accelerate the development of Indigo's CMM system, a next-generation Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) device by obtaining severe clinical event prediction data and creating an excellent user experience via the GLOW study, a first-in-man trial.

Dr Danae Delbeke, CEO, Inventor and Co-founder of Indigo Diabetes, commented:"I am very proud of the significant progress made by our multidisciplinary team at Indigoto develop our CMM sensorin 2021. We are looking forward to sharing the full GLOW trial data when it is available next year as we continue to work towards our mission of providing an innovative, accurate and convenient monitoring solution to light up the life of millions of people living with diabetes."

- Ends -

About Indigo Diabetes N.V.

Indigo Diabetes N.V. .

About Indigo Diabetes's CMM sensor

Indigo Diabetes's CMM sensor is a small spectrometer-on a-chip to monitor in-vivo simultaneously and continuously multiple metabolites. The inert, miniature integrated silicon photonics spectrometer chip measures the absorption of light in the interstitial fluid to quantify the concentration of multiple metabolites simultaneously without the use of enzymes or fluorophores. Once inserted under the skin the CMM sensor is invisible to the naked eye and will connect securely and wirelessly to mobile devices to show and capture the concentration profiles of the metabolites for the user. A rechargeable sensor battery powers the measurements. It is expected that the sensor will have a lifetime up to 2 years. Preclinical studies have successfully demonstrated proof of concept with promising accuracy.

Contacts

Indigo Diabetes N.V.

Dr Danae Delbeke, CEO

Email: info@indigomed.com

Communications

Consilium Strategic Communications

Ashley Tapp, Alexandra Harrison, Isobel McLeod

Tel: +44
A version of this announcement containing all referenced maps can be found on the Company's website at www.atalayamining.com (the "Website Announcement").

Acquisition of 51% Interest in Rio Narcea Nickel, S.L. and Additional Investigation Permits in Spain

NICOSIA, CYPRUS / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Atalaya Mining plc (AIM:ATYM)(TSX:AYM) is pleased to announce that it has established a significant presence, covering approximately 1,114 sq km, in the Ossa Morena Metallogenic Belt, in southwest Spain. The Ossa-Morena Metallogenic Belt has strong exploration potential for a range of base and precious metals and is north of the Iberian Pyrite Belt where Atalaya operates its flagship Proyecto Riotinto mine (figure 1 on the Website Announcement).

This has been achieved through the execution of a definitive purchase agreement (the "Transaction") with Grupo Sacyr S.A. (the "Vendor"), which includes the following:

The acquisition of a 51% interest in Rio Narcea Nickel, S.L. ("RNN"), which owns 17 investigation permits.

The acquisition of a 100% interest in three investigation permits that are also located along the Ossa-Morena Metallogenic Belt.

This group of 20 permits will be known collectively as Proyecto Ossa Morena ("POM") and are strategically distributed along prospective zones of the Ossa Morena Metallogenic Belt (figure 2 on the Website Announcement), and in particular, along the southern flank of the major Olivenza-Monesterio Antiform ("OMA").

In addition to the POM permits, Atalaya is also acquiring from the Vendor a 51% interest in four investigation permits in the Sevilla province and a 100% interest in two investigation permits in the Almeria province, both in the south of Spain.

Atalaya will pay a total of 2.5 million in cash in three instalments, and grant a 1% net smelter return ("NSR") royalty over all acquired permits. The first payment of 0.5 million will be made following execution of the purchase agreement. The second and third instalments of 1 million each will be made once the environmental impact statement ("EIS") and the final mining permits for any project within any of the investigation permits acquired under the Transaction are secured.

POM Highlights:

POM includes the Alconchel copper-gold-iron project, which has a NI 43-101 compliant total indicated plus inferred resource of 23 Mt at 0.53% Cu, 0.15 g/t Au and 11.2% Fe (Golder Associates, October 2017).

Also includes two advanced-stage Au and Cu-Au exploration projects, Guijarro and Vicaria respectively, and several drill-ready coincident geochemical and geophysical anomalies. All these are located along the southern flank of the OMA.

Atalaya plans to conduct infill and step out drilling at Alconchel, and additional exploration drilling at Pallares, Vicaria and Guijarro projects among others. The aim of that work is to expand the known resources at Alconchel and advance the Pallares, Vicaria and Guijarro projects to the resource definition stage.

The POM exploration budget for 2022 is up to 2 million and, among other activities, will include approximately 10,000 metres of core drilling.

The Aguablanca Ni-Cu-PGE mine, now on care and maintenance, is located 15 km southeast of POM. The current owner of Aguablanca owns the remaining 49% interest in RNN.

Alberto Lavandeira, CEO, commented:

"With this acquisition, Atalaya has secured a prominent land position in one of the most prospective and underexplored metallogenic belts in Western Europe. Its location, close to the Iberian Pyrite belt where our Riotinto copper mine and other exploration projects are currently advancing, will allow us to carry out aggressive exploration programmes in a cost and time efficient manner. Priority will be given to advance the Alconchel copper-gold-iron project because of its excellent exploration potential which underpins our geologists' belief that the current known resources can be increased significantly. For example, the Pallares Cu-Au discovery, located 3.5km east of Alconchel and not included in the current resources, supports this thesis. This is an exciting time for Atalaya as it seeks new growth opportunities to build on its success at Riotinto and beyond."

Contacts:

SEC Newgate UK Elisabeth Cowell / Tom Carnegie + 44 20 3757 6880 4C Communications Carina Corbett +44 20 3170 7973 Canaccord Genuity

(NOMAD and Joint Broker) Henry Fitzgerald-O'Connor / James Asensio +44 20 7523 8000 BMO Capital Markets

(Joint Broker) Tom Rider / Andrew Cameron +44 20 7236 1010 Peel Hunt LLP

(Joint Broker) Ross Allister / David McKeown +44 20 7418 8900

About Atalaya Mining Plc

Atalaya is an AIM and TSX-listed mining and development group which produces copper concentrates and silver by-product at its wholly owned Proyecto Riotinto site in southwest Spain. Atalaya's current operations include the Cerro Colorado open pit mine and a modern 15 Mtpa processing plant, which has the potential to become a centralised processing hub for ore sourced from its wholly owned regional projects around Riotinto that include Proyecto Masa Valverde and Proyecto Riotinto East. In addition, the Group has a phased, earn-in agreement for up to 80% ownership of Proyecto Touro, a brownfield copper project in the northwest of Spain. For further information, visit www.atalayamining.com

Qualified Person Statement

Alberto Lavandeira has reviewed the technical information contained within this announcement in his capacity as a Qualified Person, as required under the AIM Rules for Companies. Alberto Lavandeira is the Chief Executive Officer for the Company and is a member of good standing with the Association of Mining Engineers of Spain, with over 42 years' experience.

Alconchel Copper-Gold-Iron Project

Alconchel is the most advanced project within POM. It is an outcropping Cu-Au-Fe replacement-type system hosted by an exhalative, iron-barite rich formation of Lower Cambrian age. To date, 81 core holes have been drilled totalling 21,706 metres (figure 3 on the Website Announcement).

In October 2017, Golder Associates completed a NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate at a 0.25% Cu cut-off as detailed below:

Zone Classification(1) Tonnage (Mt) Cu(%) Au(g/t) Fe(%) Alconchel Cu-Au-Fe Indicated Resources 7.76 0.66 0.17 12.25 Alconchel Cu-Au-Fe Inferred resources 15.03 0.47 0.14 11.18

(1) The consolidated Mineral Resources for Alconchel are reported in accordance with NI 43-101 and have been estimated in conformity with generally accepted CIM "Estimation of Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserves Best Practices" Guidelines. It is considered sufficiently robust and is representative of the sample data. Mineral Resource grade and tonnage estimates are based on assay data from 72 drillholes corresponding to 18,464 m of diamond drilling cores well organized and properly stored. 4,323 samples were assayed at an accredited laboratory with respective certificates. The database was closed in the first half of August 2017.

Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves and do not necessarily demonstrate economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any part of this Mineral Resource will be converted into Mineral Reserves.

Alconchel has open pit and underground mining potential due to its shallow dipping, stratiform geometry and the presence of significant higher-grade zones at depth, for example drill hole HER40 which cut 16.85 metres of true thickness at 3.26% Cu and 0.22 g/t Au from 143 metres depth. The mineralised system is still open in several directions (figure 4 on the Website Announcement).

Due to its simple mineralogy (chalcopyrite, pyrite, and magnetite/hematite) and geochemistry (no deleterious elements) the preliminary metallurgical test-work carried out to date returned encouraging results.

Pallares Cu-Au prospect

The regional exploration potential around Alconchel has been improved by the discovery of a similar style of mineralisation only 3.5km to the east, the Pallares prospect (figure 3 on the Website Announcement). Limited historical drilling returned promising intersections, including 20.70 metres at 1.14% Cu and 0.37 g/t Au from surface (DDH-01); 12.10 metres at 1.21% Cu and 0.07 g/t Au from 201.60 metres depth (DDH-03) and 7.55 metres at 1.4% Cu and 1 g/t Au from 156 metres depth (DDH-04).

Mineralisation at Pallares is related to a 1km long coincident soil geochemical and geophysical anomaly (IP chargeability) which remains mostly untested. The fact that the host rock for the mineralisation at Pallares is not the exhalate, barite-iron rich formation but the contact between shales and carbonates has very positive exploration implications at property and regional scale because it confirms that economic Cu-Au mineralisation can also be host at different stratigraphic levels and not only in the exhalative unit as in Alconchel.

Vicaria Copper-Gold Project

Cu-Au mineralisation at this project is characterised by massive and semi-massive sulphides hosted by strongly altered and brecciated carbonate rocks of Lower Cambrian age. Pyrite is the predominant sulphide mineral with subordinate chalcopyrite. Gossans are abundant at surface.

Previous exploration work includes four small drilling campaigns: Exxon in the 1970s (2 core holes, no data available), Rio Tinto Minera in 1992-1993 (815 metres in 23 shallow percussion drilling holes), Rio Narcea Gold Mines in 2005 (4 core holes totaling 683 metres) and Valoriza/Atalaya in 2019 (951 metres in 9 core holes).

A selection of best intersections includes: 36 metres at 1.2% Cu and 0.16 g/t Au (RTM); 7.50 metres at 1.44% Cu (RNGM) and 13.65 metres at 0.36% Cu (Valoriza/Atalaya).

Known mineralisation at Vicaria is associated with a large Cu soil anomaly which in some cases is coincident with geophysical, VTEM and IP chargeability anomalies. Most of this soil anomaly remains pending for drill testing (figure 5 on the Website Announcement).

Guijarro Gold Project

This is a low-sulphidation gold system related to acid volcanic rocks with strong silicification and disseminated pyrite mineralisation. Previous exploration work included two small drilling campaigns: 1,091 metres in 23 shallow holes in 1993 by Rio Tinto Minera (RC and core holes) and 1,148 metres in 8 core holes in 2006 by RNN. Among the best intersections to highlight: 40 metres at 1 g/t Au from surface (RC hole) and 21 metres at 3.60 g/t Au from 15 metres depth (core hole).

Gold mineralisation is associated with a large, >2km long, soil geochemical anomaly which to date has been drill tested at just two small zones: Guijarro and Chocolatero (figure 5 on the Website Announcement). Grab sampling in the westernmost part of that anomaly returned up to 135 g/t Au. Follow up work, including drilling, has not yet been conducted in that zone.

Glossary of Terms

Ag Silver As Arsenic Atalaya Atalaya Mining plc Au Gold Cu Copper Fe Iron g/t Grams per tonne Gal Unit of gravity Hg Mercury Inferred mineral resource That part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity, grade or quality, densities, shape and physical characteristics are estimated with sufficient confidence to allow the application of Modifying Factors in sufficient detail to support mine planning and evaluation of the economic viability of the deposit. Geological evidence is derived from adequately detailed and reliable exploration, sampling and testing and is sufficient to assume geological and grade or quality continuity between points of observation. An Indicated Mineral Resource has a lower level of confidence than that applying to a Measured Mineral Resource and may only be converted to a Probable Mineral Reserve. Ni Nickel NI 43-101 Canadian Securities Administrators' National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects Mt Million tonnes OMA Olivenza-Monesterio Antiform Ossa-Morena Metallogenic Belt A mineral belt located in the southwest of Spain and north of the Iberian Pyrite Belt Pb Lead PGE Platinum Group Elements POM Proyecto Ossa Morena RNN Rio Narcea Nickel, S.L. Zn Zinc

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

SOURCE: Atalaya Mining PLC

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Susan Clement-Davies and Professor Sir Robert Lechler join the Board on 1 January 2022

MiNA Therapeutics Limited ("MiNA" or the "Company"), the pioneer in small activating RNA (RNAa) therapeutics, announces the expansion of its Board, with the appointment of Susan Clement-Davies and Professor Sir Robert Lechler as Independent Directors, effective 1 January 2022.

Susan is an experienced life sciences financier with over 25 years of capital markets and investment banking experience, including as Managing Director of Equity Capital Markets at Citigroup Global Markets Limited and Managing Director at Torreya Partners LLC. Susan is currently a Non-Executive Director of Scancell Holdings, a UK listed biotechnology company developing innovative immunotherapies, EvgenPharma plc, a UK-listed clinical stage drug development company, and Exploristics, a world-leading provider of biosimulation software and biostatistics services for clinical trials. Susan is also Corporate Finance Advisor for Theolytics, a biotechnology company developing anticancer viral therapies, and an Advisor for Oxford Sciences Innovation, the world's largest university-partnered venture firm. In addition, Susan is a member of the Innovation Advisory Group for the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Robert is a recognised leader in biomedical research, management and governance with over 40 years of distinguished experience in academic medicine, having started his immunology career in 1979. Since then, Robert has held various leadership roles in a range of hospitals and laboratories, including serving as Head of Imperial College London's Division of Medicine, Vice Principal (Health) of King's College School, and Executive Director of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre. He has also been at the forefront of scientific innovation, nationally, through his Presidency of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Membership of the UK Council for Science and Technology, and Chairmanship of the UK MHRA Clinical Trials Expert Advisory Group. In 2012, Robert was Knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to academic medicine, which has centred around immunology, cancer and transplantation. He is currently a Non-executive Director of Quell Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company specialising in addressing a range of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases through cell therapy.

Nagy Habib, Chairman and Head of R&D of MiNA Therapeutics, commented:

"We are thrilled to welcome Susan and Robert to MiNA's Board of Directors to support our strengthened senior leadership team as we remain focused on driving the Company's next phase of growth. Susan's expertise in finance and as a biopharma company director, combined with Robert's leadership in biomedicine will be invaluable as we continue to advance our pipeline through clinical development and expand our partnerships to scale and amplify the impact of our pioneering RNAa technology for patients."

Susan Clement-Davies, Independent Director of MiNA Therapeutics, commented:

"I am extremely excited to be joining MiNA. What the team has achieved, particularly in recent years, is impressive and I hope to bring my experience in the life sciences sector to further unlock MiNA's significant potential."

Professor Sir Robert Lechler, Independent Director of MiNA Therapeutics, commented:

"This is a fantastic opportunity to be involved with a pioneering company in such an interesting space. The Company's RNAa approach and pipeline is a truly innovative way of treating diseases and I look forward to guiding MiNA on its journey, which I believe will be highly successful."

About MiNA Therapeutics

MiNA Therapeutics is the leader in small activating RNA therapeutics. Harnessing innate mechanisms of gene activation, small activating RNA therapeutics are a revolutionary new class of medicines that can restore or boost normal function in patients' cells. We are advancing a proprietary pipeline of new medicines with an initial focus on cancer and genetic diseases, while collaborating with leading pharmaceutical companies to apply our technology platform across a broad range of therapeutic areas. Based on our unique know-how in RNA activation we are expanding the possibilities of RNA-based medicine for patients. www.minatx.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211220005366/en/

Contacts:

MiNA Therapeutics

Robert Habib, CEO Robin Wright, CFO

Phone: +44 208 811 6700

E-Mail: info@minatx.com



Media requests:

Victoria Foster Mitchell Alex Davis Tim Stamper

FTI Consulting

Phone: +44 203 727 1000

E-Mail: MiNATherapeutics@fticonsulting.com
Regulatory News:

Groupe SEB (Paris:SK) is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with Preciber, a family- company in Morocco owned by Mr. Mohammed Berrada and Precima, leading to the creation of the joint venture Groupe SEB Maroc, which is 55% controlled by Groupe SEB.

Founded in 1971, Precima, which Mr Berrada is a founder is active in three main areas: the manufacture and distribution of cooking appliances such as pressure cookers under the EXPRESS brand, the manufacture and distribution of gas appliances, and the marketing of water heaters and boilers.

Relying on a strong local partner such as Preciber will enable Groupe SEB to accelerate the development of its sales in Morocco and to make the most of the strong potential of this market.

In concrete terms, Groupe SEB Maroc will import and distribute exclusively Groupe SEB products in Morocco (small household appliances and cookware), as well as distribute EXPRESS brand pressure cookers in modern distribution.

At the same time, Groupe SEB has invested via SEB Alliance in the CathayAfricInvest Innovation fund to identify start-ups active on the African continent in line with its innovation policy. This fund is one of the largest of its kind in Africa.

After the establishment of a joint venture in Egypt in 2018, Groupe SEB thus confirms its desire to have a strong foothold in Africa.

Next key dates 2022 January 25 | after market closes Provisional 2021 sales February 25 | before market opens 2021 sales and results April 28 | after market closes Q1 2022 sales and financial data May 10 | 3:00 pm (Paris time) Annual General Meeting July 21 before market opens H1 2022 sales and results October 24 after market closes 9-month 2022 sales and financial data

Find us on www.groupeseb.com

World reference in small domestic equipment, Groupe SEB operates with a unique portfolio of 31 top brands including Tefal, Seb, Rowenta, Moulinex, Krups, Lagostina, All-Clad, WMF, Emsa, Supor, marketed through multi-format retailing. Selling more than 360 million products a year, it deploys a long-term strategy focused on innovation, international development, competitiveness and client service. Present in over 150 countries, Groupe SEB generated sales of 6.9 billion in 2020 and has more than 33,000 employees worldwide.

SEB SA

SEB SA N RCS 300 349 636 RCS LYON with a share capital of 55,337,770 - Intracommunity VAT: FR 12300349636

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211220005715/en/

Contacts:

Investor/Analyst Relations

Groupe SEB

Financial Communication and IR Dept

Isabelle Posth

Raphael Hoffstetter

comfin@groupeseb.com

Tel: 33 (0) 4 72 18 16 04

Media Relations

Groupe SEB

Corporate Communication Dept

Cathy Pianon

Anissa Djaadi

com@groupeseb.com

Tel. 33 (0) 6 33 13 02 00

Tel. 33 (0) 6 88 20 90 88

Image Sept

Caroline Simon

Claire Doligez

Isabelle Dunoyer de Segonzac

caroline.simon@image7.fr

cdoligez@image7.fr

isegonzac@image7.fr

Phone: 33 (0) 1 53 70 74 70
Paris, 21 December 2021, 8:30 a.m.

PRESS RELEASE

Eramet targeted by a financial fraud

Eramet has identified a financial fraud within its central treasury management.

Eramet has immediately initiated the necessary investigations and mobilized all internal and external resources required to terminate these fraudulent activities and take remedial action.

Eramet will file a criminal complaint with the authorities and has taken immediate disciplinary measures against the identified staff. The Group will also take all possible measures to reduce the impact of this fraud on its accounts.

The financial impact of this fraud is currently estimated at EUR 45 million, before insurance or implementation of legal action. It will be accounted for in the operating profit for financial year 2021.

Eramet's Board of Directors has been informed of the situation and, with the assistance of the Audit Committee, will regularly monitor the progress of investigations and the implementation of corrective measures.

In addition to all existing controls, Eramet will examine all additional measures to further strengthen its internal control procedures and prevent such fraudulent acts.

Calendar

23.02.2022: Publication of 2021 annual results

28.04.2022: Publication of 2022 first-quarter turnover

ABOUT ERAMET

Eramet transforms the Earth's mineral resources to provide sustainable and responsible solutions to the growth of the industry and to the challenges of the energy transition.

Its 13,000 employees are committed to this through their civic and contributory approach in all the countries where the mining and metallurgical group is present.

Manganese, nickel, mineral sands, lithium, and cobalt: Eramet recovers and develops metals that are essential to the construction of a more sustainable world.

As a privileged partner of its industrial clients, the Group contributes to making robust and resistant infrastructures and constructions, more efficient means of mobility, safer health tools and more efficient telecommunications devices.

Fully committed to the era of metals, Eramet's ambition is to become a reference for the responsible transformation of the Earth's mineral resources for living well together.

www. eramet .com

INVESTOR CONTACT



Director of Investor Relations



Sandrine Nourry-Dabi

T. +33 1 45 38 37 02

sandrine.nourrydabi@eramet.com (mailto:sandrine.nourrydabi@eramet.com)











PRESS CONTACT







Communications Director



Pauline Briand



pauline.briand@eramet.com (mailto:pauline.briand@eramet.com)







Image 7



Marie Artzner

T. +33 1 53 70 74 31 | M. +33 6 75 74 31 73

martzner@image7.fr (mailto:martzner@image7.fr)

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Press release

December 21, 2021

Cameroon selects Edenred's digital solutions to optimize management of its new subsidy program for local coffee and cocoa farmers

With the Agri solution, offered byEdenred, the world leader in specific-purpose payment solutions, Cameroon's government is setting up a digital earmarked payment system to easily, quickly and securely grant agricultural subsidies. The initiative is part of its "Farmer Gateway" program, which will provide direct fundingto more than 600,000 cocoa and coffee farmers to develop this key sector of the country's economy.

Cameroon launched the new subsidy program for domestic coffee and cocoa farmers in early 2021 at the behest of President Paul Biya. It is being managed by the Cocoa and Coffee Sector Development Fund (known by its French acronym FODECC), a public institution supervised by the Minister of Trade and the Minister of Agriculture. Financed by export duties and taxes on local cocoa and coffee processing, and backed by the European Union and EGIS1, the Farmer Gateway program aims to support cocoa and coffee farmers and to modernize these sectors.

Cameroon is currently the fifth largest cocoa producer in the world. It intends to support the long-term development of this sector to produce 640,000 tons of cocoa by 2030 (compared with 260,000 tons in 2020). The country is also one of Africa's leading coffee producers, with plans to produce 125,000 tons of Robusta coffee and 35,000 tons of Arabica coffee in 2030.

The program kicked off with a budget of 6.3 billion CFA francs in 2021, but this amount could rise to 50 billion CFA francs within five years, according to FODECC.

A digital payment solution giving direct access to FODECC input subsidies

Cameroon has selected the Agri Edenred digital solution for the design and management of its agricultural input subsidy program for 600,000 local coffee and cocoa farmers.

Beneficiary farmers will receive an Agri Edenred card with an individual QR code, which will be remotely credited with FODECC subsidies without requiring any action on their part. Farmers with a smartphone will be able to upload an e-voucher directly via the Edenred Super App'.

With this solution, Cameroonian coffee and cocoa farmers will be able to take advantage of their subsidies without having to travel anywhere, as well as order their agricultural inputs entirely online.

For government authorities, the Agri Edenred digital solution guarantees transparent resource allocation, fund traceability and improved day-to-day program management. In particular, Agri Edenred will give Cameroon's government end-to-end control over the amount, beneficiary and use of subsidies allocated to local farmers, thereby ensuring they fulfill their purpose.

Agri Edenred: an Edenred Group solution harnessing tech for good to develop agriculture and food security in Africa

The solution will be piloted among 10,000 farmers in the Moungo region in 2022, before gradually being extended to the 600,000 coffee and cocoa farmers eligible for the Farmer Gateway program.

Edenred leveraged on significant technological investment, and its digital leadership to develop its Supper App', specially designed for the program's operational needs. Stakeholders including microlenders, cell phone operators and agricultural input distributors will be able to interact in a secure and traceable payment ecosystem, under the supervision of Edenred and FODECC.

Cameroon's Ministries of Agriculture and Trade will also be able to leverage real-time statistical data from the program to coordinate relevant policies more effectively.

Edenred's presence in Cameroon will help create a fair, transparent and virtuous payment ecosystem through the Agri solution and its Super App'. It will improve the productivity and food security of Cameroonian coffee and cocoa farmers.

"We're delighted to be working alongside the government to help develop Cameroon's coffee and cocoa production as part of this bold and visionary program. Agri Edenred's launch in Cameroon demonstrates Edenred's unique expertise in implementing digital earmarked fund solutions, our capacity for innovation and our commitment to Africa. It also resonates with our purpose, "Enrich connections. For good.". By creating a virtuous ecosystem that brings together the entire Cameroonian coffee and cocoa sector, Agri Edenred is promoting the development of local agriculture while improving local farmers' standard of living," said Daniel Ibrahim, Edenred's Director of Business Development for Africa.

With its Agri Edenred digital specific-purpose payment solution, Edenred is a partner of choice for ministries of agriculture, aid agencies and NGOs in the implementation of innovative agricultural input subsidy programs. The digital solution ensures transparent resource allocation, subsidy traceability and improved day-to-day program management.

Cameroon is the sixth country to roll out Edenred's Agri solution. Agri Edenred has already benefited more than 300,000 farmers, enabling them to increase their income by an average of 18% in the first year, according to an assessment by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC)2. Building on this success, Edenred will continue to explore innovative opportunities to support people at work in Africa.

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About Edenred

Edenred is a leading digital platform for services and payments and the everyday companion for people at work, connecting over 50 million users and 2 million partner merchants in 46 countries via more than 850,000 corporate clients.

Edenred offers specific-purpose payment solutions for food (such as meal benefits), mobility (such as multi-energy, maintenance, toll, parking and commuter solutions), incentives (such as gift cards, employee engagement platforms) and corporate payments (such as virtual cards).

True to the Group's purpose, "Enrich connections. For good.", these solutions enhance users' well-being and purchasing power. They improve companies' attractiveness and efficiency, and vitalize the employment market and the local economy. They also foster access to healthier food, more environmentally friendly products and softer mobility.

Edenred's 10,000 employees are committed to making the world of work a connected ecosystem that is safer, more efficient and more responsible every day.

In 2020, thanks to its global technology assets, the Group managed close to 30 billion in business volume, primarily carried out via mobile applications, online platforms and cards.

Edenred is listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange and included in the following indices: CAC Next 20, CAC Large 60, Euronext 100, FTSE4Good and MSCI Europe.

The logos and other trademarks mentioned and featured in this press release are registered trademarks of Edenred S.E., its subsidiaries or third parties. They may not be used for commercial purposes without prior written consent from their owners.

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CONTACTS

Communications Department







Emmanuelle Chatelain

+33 (0)1 86 67 24 36 emmanuelle.chatelain@edenred.com (mailto:emmanuelle.chatelain@edenred.com)







Media Relations







Matthieu Santalucia

+33 (0)1 86 67 22 63

matthieu.santalucia@edenred.com (mailto:matthieu.santalucia@edenred.com) Investor Relations







Cedric Appert

+33 (0)1 86 67 24 99

cedric.appert@edenred.com







Loic Da Silva

+33 (0)1 86 67 20 67

loic.dasilva@edenred.com

















1 EGIS is a major consulting and engineering firm that generated more than 1 billion in revenue in 2020.

2 International Fertiliser Development Center

Attachment
Helps automotive OEMs and Tier-1s to develop next-gen S32G vehicle processing designs and address software complexity and security challenges

BENGALURU , India, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- QuEST Global, a global product engineering services company, announced today its partnership with NXP Semiconductors to deliver software support for NXP's S32G Vehicle Network Processors. QuEST will provide valued services to help OEM's and Tier-1's unlock the true potential of the NXP S32G processors to deliver a highly-secure vehicle network that combines ASIL D safety, hardware security, high-performance real-time application processing and network acceleration for service-oriented gateways, domain controllers, zonal processors and safety processors. Through this collaboration with NXP, QuEST reaffirms its commitment in helping its partners build safer, greener and smarter future cars.

The evolution in automotive industry has shifted the demand towards electric, autonomous, connected and shared mobility. Vehicles are becoming more data-driven and software-defined, and safe and secure connectivity is becoming a key concern for the consumer. The S32G processor significantly helps in addressing the vehicle networking requirements by securely managing data transmission around the vehicle and protecting safety critical applications. With its trained and dedicated resources specialized on this platform, QuEST will support NXP S32G customers to help reduce development complexity, accelerate time-to-market and expand business opportunities for future data-driven and software-defined Automotive OEMs.

"The automotive industry is going through a massive transformation with deployment of new vehicle architecture to support the future of mobility", said Krish Kupathil, Head of Innovation, QuEST Global. He further added, "The S32G processors address the need for higher performance compute and networking bandwidth with enhanced security and functional safety. We will leverage our S32G expertise to support our common automotive customers, to build the platform required to deploy new connected services and upgradable features for next-gen vehicles."

"As the automotive industry is evolving, vehicle manufacturers will continuously need to deliver an enhanced, secure and hassle free data management for their vehicles. QuEST's support and software solutions can help our mutual OEM and Tier-1 customers realize the full potential of the S32G processors," said Carlos Prada, Director of Automotive Processing Partnerships at NXP.

NXP's S32G automotive network processors enable modern service-oriented gateways for rapid Over-the-Air (OTA) deployment of new capabilities and advanced edge-to-cloud analytics. They deliver higher processing and networking performance with ASIL D functional safety to support autonomous driving applications[1]. QuEST will be offering the following services for the S32G platform:

Hardware System Designing and Prototyping

Automotive System Software Engineering including Design, Development and Maintenance.

Integration of Connectivity Module and Features

Support NXP's customers in achieving Functional Safety, System Validation and Automation

Product Realization

As the automotive industry witnesses exponential growth, it also opens up challenges to manage data security for vehicle manufacturers. The new age vehicles will require a more secure and seamless information flow both within and outside the vehicle. QuEST and NXP's association will help in addressing these hard challenges and help Tier-1 and OEM's transform from carmakers into vehicle data-driven service providers.

About QuEST Global:

For nearly 25 years, QuEST Global has been a trusted global product engineering services partner to many of the world's most recognized companies in the Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Energy, Hi-Tech, Healthcare and Medical Devices, Rail and Semiconductor industries. With a presence in 13 countries, 54 global delivery centers and 11,500+ personnel, QuEST Global is at the forefront of the convergence of the mechanical, electronics, software and digital engineering innovations to engineer solutions for a safer, cleaner and sustainable world. QuEST Global's deep domain knowledge and digital expertise help its clients accelerate product development and innovation cycles, create alternate revenue streams, enhance consumer experience and make manufacturing processes and operations more efficient.

[1] NXP Unlocks the Full Potential of Vehicle Data with the S32G Automotive Network Processors | NXP Semiconductors
RIGA, Latvia, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today on December 21, JSC "Grindeks", the leading pharmaceutical manufacturer in the Baltic States celebrates its 75-year anniversary. Over these 75 years, "Grindeks" has become a global pharmaceutical industry company and has helped millions of patients worldwide.

Origins and development of "Grindeks"

The origins of "Grindeks" can be found in 1946, when the Vitamin and Hormones Plant was transferred from the supervision of the Ministry of Food Production to that of the Latvian Academy of Sciences with the goal of gradually re-establishing it as an experimental plant. The production of the Vitamin and Hormones Plant at the time differed greatly from the products produced by "Grindeks" today, those were food concentrates, soy sauce, primrose syrup, beer yeast, microelement mixtures, etc.

In 1957, the Vitamin and Hormones Plant was incorporated into the structure of the newly established Organic Synthesis Institute, establishing the Latvian Academy of Sciences Organic Synthesis Institute's Experimental Plant. During the second half of the 1970's, inventions from the molecular biology and microbiology laboratories were introduced into the manufacturing process, manufacturing technologies were improved and synthesis of new ingredients were mastered. The synthesis of Grindeks' brand product Mildronate was commenced.

In 1991, along with the regaining of Latvian national independence, the Latvian State medicinal drug research and manufacturing company "Grindeks" was founded on the basis of the Experimental Plant.

Today Grindeks Group consists of JSC "Grindeks" and its four subsidiaries. Each one of them is contributing to the growth of the Group and being an integral part of the corporation.

JSC "Kalceks" based in Latvia, is specializing in generics mostly for the hospital segment. "HBM Pharma Ltd.", based in Slovakia, is a pharmaceutical product manufacturer and operates in the field of producing injectable in ampules and tablets. JSC "Tallinn Pharmaceutical Plant", based in Estonia, produces ointments, in turn, "Namu apsaimniekosanas projekti Ltd." is responsible for managing "Grindeks" real estate.

"Grindeks" today

"Grindeks" has reached a record high turnover and profit in 2021. The largest demand is for medicines made to treat cardiovascular diseases, as well as central nervous systems. We are exporting our production to 97 countries worldwide.

An important development component is the brand and values of the company - humanity, simplicity and growth. The name "Grindeks" is based on the name of the first Latvian pharmacist, natural scientist, doctor, chemist Professor David Hieronymus Grindel. Honoring D. H. Grindel, grindelia flower sybmol was selected as one of the company's recognition marks.

By providing patients both in Latvia and worldwide with the necessary medicines, "Grindeks" is one of the largest employers and taxpayers in Latvia, with more than 13 million euros paid taxes in 2021. The company provides jobs for more than 800 employees in Latvia. The group altogether has 1500 employees.

Ph. D. Juris Hmelnickis, Chairman of the Board of JSC "Grindeks": "Our team prides itself on what the "Grindeks" Group is today and believes that only part of a significant path has been taken to make us one of the TOP 100 pharmaceutical companies in the world. I can assure that, because I have grown in "Grindeks" professionally and experienced how this company has developed purposefully over the years. I started as a laboratory trainee more than 20 years ago and even then I was looking forward to the company's upturn. Today, while running the company, I see every day that only thanks to the professional work of our employees and the spirit of our team we can achieve our ambitious goals and provide patients with the necessary medicines."

Year of anniversary and contribution to society

"Grindeks" celebrated its anniversary throughout 2021, organising and supporting conferences and various projects that promoted cooperation between health professionals and the pharmaceutical company. In 2021 "Grindeks" supported the "Annual Medicine Award", international congress "BALTANEST 2021" and The National Rehabilitation Congress, the company also organized an international online conference for doctors. This year the highest award of "Grindeks" - D. H. Grindel Award was given to Head of RSU Department of Internal diseases, professor Aivars Lejnieks.

Celebrating the 75-year anniversary of "Grindeks", the leading pharmaceutical manufacturer in the Baltic states invited high-school students to the "Grindeks Online Brain Games", which was attended by secondary school pupils from all over Latvia, promoting interest in chemistry and science among pupils. The contest took part in three rounds, bringing together more than 140 teams from all over Latvia.

In honour of its 75-year anniversary, "Grindeks" created a book for families that was delivered to 18 hospitals in Latvia, with a total of 15 000 copies. The aim of the book is to make it easier for families with children to wait in the hospital and other healthcare facilities while reading various fairy tales and playing games.

The future of "Grindeks"

In order not to halt at the results already achieved and to continue the gradual and sustainable growth of the Group in the long term, "Grindeks" pays particular attention to improving production infrastructure, which also includes the purchase of new production equipment. The new "Grindeks" Innovation centre will be built in Latvia, Riga, Asotes Street 12. It will include complex manufacturing processes for active pharmaceutical ingredients, modern technological equipment and ensure the production of new, innovative products in Latvia. It will be the largest pharmaceutical plant in the Baltic region with automated and energy-efficient solutions.

The company is actively developing new products and expanding its product portfolio. "Grindeks" product portfolio includes modern medicines for treatment of cardiovascular, central nervous systems, oncological diseases and diabetes, while JSC "Kalceks" offers medicines for the hospital segment. There are currently 64 new JSC Grindeks and 42 new JSC Kalceks medicines in development.

Kirovs Lipmans, Chairman of the Council of JSC "Grindeks": "One of the cornerstones of the success of "Grindeks" is international cooperation and export to 97 countries around the world this year. Smart investments and the implementation of forward-looking projects are needed to keep our growth steady. I am proud of the development of "Grindeks" and the ability to provide our patients with effective and high-quality medicines. By celebrating the 75-year anniversary of "Grindeks", I would like to thank the employees who do their work in good faith and responsibility every day, without that our development would not be possible. I am also very thankful for our trusted partners, healthcare professionals and patients."

Sustainability - protecting the environment and green thinking as a priority

While developing and expanding its product mix for patients around the world, "Grindeks" takes care of protecting the environment at the same time and is paying increasing attention to green thinking as a priority.

Green thinking includes both - sustainable use of resources: creating an energy-efficient environment, saving electricity, introducing environmentally friendly solutions in both sorting and reducing waste. By 2025, "Grindeks" has a goal to fully give up the circulation of paper documents in the company, demonstrating its commitment to environmental protection.

Photos: https://grindeks.eu/company/about-grindeks/photos/

www.grindeks.eu



Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1713422/75_steps_of_developments.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1713423/Grindeks_New_Equipment.jpg

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The NUVAXOVID brand name was developed by Brand Institute, the global leader in pharmaceutical and healthcare-related name development

MIAMI, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brand Institute is proud to announce its successful partnership with Novavax in naming their EMA-approved COVID-19 vaccine: NUVAXOVID. This approval marks the fifth COVID-19 vaccine authorized for use in the European Union.

"The entire Brand Institute and Drug Safety Institute Team congratulates Novavax on the EMA approval of NUVAXOVID," said Brand Institute's Chairman and CEO, James L. Dettore. "Protecting the public against COVID-19 requires ample supply of numerous safe and effective vaccines. We are excited to see this vaccine come to market."

Conceptually distinct from other approved COVID-19 vaccine brand names, NUVAXOVID pays homage to its developer, Novavax, with a suffix connoting its use as a COVID-19 vaccine.

EMA is the first health agency to approve NUVAXOVID. The approval of the product and its brand name by other global regulatory agencies will follow their respective 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

spiergrossi@brandinstitute.com

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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Tudor Gold Corp. (TSXV: TUD) (FSE: TUC) (the "Company" or "Tudor Gold") is pleased to announce that the Company's Board of Directors has appointed Mr. Ken Konkin as President & CEO and Ms. Natalie Senger to the Board of Directors. Furthermore, Mr. Walter Storm was appointed as Chairman of the Board.

Tudor Gold's President & CEO Ken Konkin is an award-winning Professional Geologist with over 40 years of industry experience throughout the Americas and Russia. Mr. Konkin spent 19 years with Silver Standard Mining Inc. and managed several advanced exploration programs including Manantial Espejo in Argentina, San Luis and Berenguela in Peru, and Snowfields-Brucejack in the Golden Triangle.

Subsequent to the sale of the Snowfields-Brucejack project in 2010, Mr. Konkin was appointed Project Manager of the newly formed Pretium Resources Inc. and was instrumental in the discovery of the Valley of the Kings Deposit. For Mr. Konkin's team's efforts, Pretium was awarded the Bill Dennis Award in 2013, and later in 2017 Mr. Konkin then became a co-recipient of the H.H. 'Spud' Huestis Award for 'excellence in prospecting and mineral exploration in B.C. and/or Yukon.' In February 2021, Mr. Konkin was appointed to the Tudor Gold Board of Directors.

Natalie Senger is the Chief Geologist for Tudor Gold. She is a Professional Geologist with over 12 years of academic, government and direct industry experience, in the fields of environmental geology and resource modelling. Prior to joining Tudor Gold, Ms. Senger worked with the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, focusing on permitting several mines in the province, including Red Chris, Kemess, Gibraltar and Mount Milligan.

Ms. Senger also worked with Mr. Konkin at Snowfields with Silver Standard Resources and later with Pretium Resources, where she was responsible for geological modelling and resource definition of the Valley of the Kings deposit, from discovery to mine construction.

Tudor Gold's President & CEO, Ken Konkin, comments: "I am extremely honored to be named President and CEO. Tudor Gold was created by the visionary thinking of its founder Walter Storm. He has been built this company into what it is today due to his leadership skills. We are very proud of what we have accomplished in such a short period of time as our company controls one of the biggest undeveloped mineral resources in the world with the goal to generate significant value for all stakeholders in the upcoming years. I look forward to working with our team and the Board of Directors, which continues to be led by Walter and I congratulate Natalie on her advancement to the Board. We will continue to build on our success by adding key management and technical personnel as the project rapidly grows. I welcome the new challenges that we will face, and I am committed to advance the exploration and development of the Treaty Creek Project from the field as this story has just begun."

In commenting about the change in management, Mr. Storm stated, "I believe these changes will enable the best management of Tudor Gold's affairs and fast-track the project development of Treaty Creek. Ken's passion and leadership shown during his role as Vice President of Exploration and Project Development has accelerated Tudor Gold towards becoming one of the industry's most respected exploration companies.

"Ken's track record speaks for itself and his ability to get the job done is supported by how quickly the Company has progressed since his involvement. I have no doubt that he will continue to lead and strengthen the Company's position to capitalize on the outstanding work completed by our exploration team as we advance our Treaty Creek Project. I also welcome Natalie to the Board of Directors, as she brings a wealth of experience in a technical role to the project. Tudor Gold will continue to acquire hard-working and talented individuals for our needs in various disciplines, and we look forward to Natalie's contributions moving forward!"

About Tudor Gold

TUDOR GOLD Corp. is a precious and base metals exploration and development company with properties in British Columbia's Golden Triangle (Canada), an area that hosts producing and past-producing mines and several large deposits that are approaching potential development. The 17,913 hectare Treaty Creek project (in which TUDOR GOLD has a 60% interest) borders Seabridge Gold Inc.'s KSM property to the southwest and borders Pretium Resources Inc.'s Brucejack property to the southeast. In April 2021 Tudor published their 43-101 technical report, "Technical Report and Initial Mineral Resource Estimate of the Treaty Creek Gold Property, Skeena Mining Division, British Columbia Canada" dated March 1, 2021 on the Company's Sedar profile. The Company also has a 100% interest in the Crown project and a 100% interest in the Eskay North project, all located in the Golden Triangle area.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

TUDOR GOLD CORP.

"Ken Konkin"

Ken Konkin

President and Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please visit the Company's website at www.tudor-gold.com or contact:

Chris Curran

Head of Corporate Development and Communications

Phone: (604) 559 8092

E-Mail: chris.curran@tudor-gold.com

or

Carsten Ringler

Head of Investor Relations and Communications

Phone: +49 151 55362000

E-Mail: carsten.ringler@tudor-gold.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 Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. "Forward-looking information" includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, including the completion and anticipated results of planned exploration activities. Generally, but not always, forward-looking information and statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negative connotation thereof or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotation thereof.

Such forward-looking information and statements are based on numerous assumptions, including among others, that the Company's planned exploration activities will be completed in a timely manner. Although the assumptions made by the Company in providing forward-looking information or making forward-looking statements are considered reasonable by management at the time, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be accurate.

There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's plans or expectations include risks relating to the actual results of current exploration activities, fluctuating gold prices, possibility of equipment breakdowns and delays, exploration cost overruns, availability of capital and financing, general economic, market or business conditions, regulatory changes, timeliness of government or regulatory approvals and other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information or implied by forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information.

The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108170
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - MAX RESOURCE CORP. (TSXV: MXR) (OTC Pink: MXROF) (FSE: M1D2) ("Max" or the "Company") is pleased to review the significant milestones achieved in 2021 and the exploration strategy for 2022 for its wholly-owned CESAR copper-silver project.

2021 Highlights

Two major discoveries: URU and CONEJO zones, both of significant size with high-grade copper-silver results, expands the CESAR North belt to over 90-kilometres in length.





URU discovery Highlight assay values: 14.8% copper and 132 g/t silver Expanded to 48-km over a major structural corridor, strike length increased 300% from initial discovery Received first mining concessions covering 70-km Engaged DigitalWorld Mapping for LiDAR survey covering 290-km Confirms major scale: identified 5 significant drilling targets over 15-km of strike, with widths of 10 to 25-metres over 500 vertical metres





CONEJO discovery Highlight assay values: 12.5% copper and 84 g/t silver Extends over 3.7-km of strike with average grades of 4.9% copper, using 2% cut off Drill program being prepared for 2022



2022 Exploration

Exploration to focus on the URU zone Infill mapping and modelling of the LiDAR data 3D drill design and permitting Conduct the first ever drill campaign targeting major copper deposits in the CESAR basin

Continue the regional exploration program over the Cesar basin

Receive additional mining concessions to drill CONEJO

"Max commends our in-country field team for the ground-breaking discoveries of a series of high-grade copper-silver zones in 2021. Our success was a direct result of the Max exploration team's hard work and targeted exploration programs throughout the previously unrecognized copper-silver belt," commented Max CEO, Brett Matich.

"It's been an amazing journey in 2021, highlighted by the URU and CONEJO discoveries. URU is to be Max's first drill program in Colombia, marking the area's first significant drilling event since the discovery of Cerrejon, the largest coal mine in South America and the basis for much of the critical infrastructure in the Cesar basin," he continued.

"In addition, with copper prices broke multi-year highs in 2021. Max shareholders are well positioned in 2022 to take advantage of the drilling phase, unlocking the true district-scale potential of Max's CESAR project," he concluded.





Figure 1 and Figure 2

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1 and Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3834/108183_04d6bc2964ad5afd_001full.jpg

QUALIFIED PERSON

The Company's disclosure of a technical or scientific nature in this news release was reviewed and approved by Tim Henneberry, P Geo (British Columbia), a member of the Max Resource Advisory Board, who serves as a qualified person under the definition of National Instrument 43:101.

ABOUT MAX RESOURCE CORP.

Max Resource Corp. (TSXV: MXR) is a mineral exploration company advancing its newly discovered district size CESAR copper-silver project (100% owned) in Colombia.

In addition, the RT Gold project (100% earn-in) in Peru, high-grade and potentially large-scale. Historic drilling program in 2001, returned values ranging 3.1 to 118.1 g/t gold over core lengths ranging from 2.2 to 36.0m.

Source: NI 43:101 Geological Report Rio Tabaconas Gold Project for Golden Alliance Resources Corp. by George Sivertz, Oct.3, 2011

For more information visit: https://www.maxresource.com/

For additional information contact:

Max Resource Corp.

Tim McNulty

E: info@maxresource.com

T: (604) 290-8100

Hudes Communications International

Nelson Hudes

E: nelson@hudescommunications.com

Phone: (905) 660-9155

*The Venture 50 ranking is provided by TSX Venture Exchange Inc. ("TSXV") for information purposes only. Neither TMX Group Limited nor any of its affiliated companies guarantees the completeness of this information and are not responsible for any errors or omissions in or any use of, or reliance on, this information. The Venture 50 program is not an invitation to purchase securities listed on TSX Venture Exchange. TSXV and its affiliates do not endorse or recommend any of the referenced securities or issuers, and this information should not be construed as providing any trading, legal, accounting, tax, investment, business, financial or other advice and should not be relied on for such purposes.

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.

Except for statements of historic fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements including, but not limited to delays or uncertainties with regulatory approvals, including that of the TSXV. There are uncertainties inherent in forward-looking information, including factors beyond the Company's control. There are no assurances that the commercialization plans for Max Resources Corp. described in this news release will come into effect on the terms or time frame described herein. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties that could affect financial results is contained in the Company's filings with Canadian securities regulators, which filings are available at www.sedar.com.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108183
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - French stocks advanced on Tuesday as traders hunted for bargains after recent declines on concerns about the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. U.S. drug maker Moderna Inc. said a third dose of its Covid-19 vaccine increased antibody levels against the omicron variant. The benchmark CAC 40 climbed 52 points, or 0.8 percent, to 6,922 after ending 0.8 percent lower the previous day. Drug major Sanofi was marginally higher. The company announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Amunix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an immuno-oncology company. Under the deal terms, Sanofi will acquire Amunix for an upfront payment of approximately $1 billion and up to $225 million upon achievement of certain future development milestones. 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.
TOKYO, Dec 21, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) announced today that it has successfully demonstrated its leading Open RAN massive MIMO capabilities for the PDFO-RAN ALLIANCE Global PlugFest 2021 at five of its venues, hosted by leading operators and the new windowTelecom Infra Project (TIP). PlugFests are aimed at demonstrating the functionality as well as the multi-vendor interoperability of O-RAN-based network equipment, while serving as a testing ground for advanced O-RAN operators to gauge the maturity of Open RAN.NEC is a leading Open RAN provider, recognized for its end-to-end Open 5G solutions and system integration capabilities. This year, NEC contributed as the first commercial provider of massive MIMO open Radio Units*, resulting in NEC's O-RU being integrated with O-CU, O-DU from Open RAN software vendors more than any other supplier*.NEC and its subsidiary Netcracker participated in multiple PlugFest venues across the globe this year, demonstrating their commercially proven, award winning Open RAN 5G massive MIMO radio units (O-RU), Open RAN Domain Orchestration solution (O-RAN SMO) and RAN software.The companies participated in the following PlugFest venues:Menlo Park, USAThis venue was hosted at the TIP Community Lab in Menlo Park (sponsored by Meta). NEC deployed its O-RU with Mavenir's O-CU/DU for multi-vendor interoperability.Torino, ItalyNetcracker deployed its Open RAN Domain Orchestration solution, aligned with the O-RAN Service Management and Orchestration environment, at the Joint European O-RAN & TIP PlugFest venue hosted by European OTIC in TIM Innovation Lab - Torino. 5G RAN slice provisioning was validated using CU/DUs from Radisys based on the O1 interface.Tokyo, JapanHosted by NTT DOCOMO, the operator and NEC succeeded in interoperability testing for 5G standalone (SA) built on 5G CU/DU and multi-vendor radio units (RUs). DOCOMO and NEC demonstrated the capability to migrate from a commercial 5G NSA into 5G SA through a software upgrade, using the same 5G CU/DU hardware.NEC also deployed its O-RUs in a lab hosted by Rakuten Mobile and successfully completed verification of open fronthaul interfaces and 3GPP RF conformance using Keysight Technologies' test solution.Seoul, South KoreaNEC contributed to the PlugFest venue hosted by LG UPlus in its 5G Innovation Lab in the LG Science Park, Seoul. NEC deployed O-RU in LG UPlus's lab with O-CU/DU from Altiostar, a Rakuten Symphony company, fronthaul gateway from DZS and Intel processors and FlexRAN reference software. 'E2E Open RAN on 5G standalone mode' was demonstrated using Keysight Technologies' test solution."The evolution of mobile networks to 5G standalone represents an opportunity for radio access networks to embrace an open and cloud-native architecture. The results of this year's O-RAN Global PlugFest with NEC and other partners validates the importance of software and radio solutions based on O-RAN specifications to drive the industry forward," says Anil Sawkar, Vice President of Engineering and Operations at Altiostar, a Rakuten Symphony company."The Open vRAN eco-system and roadmap continue to expand now, including massive MIMO capabilities, enabling CSPs to make efficient use of their 5G spectrum. Mavenir is pleased to have participated with NEC at the O-RAN Global PlugFest 2021, to showcase best-in-class and industry leading 5G Open vRAN capabilities. We are actively working with NEC to deploy these products in multiple service provider markets globally in the first half of 2022," says Puneet Sethi, SVP, GM, RAN Business Unit, Mavenir."Multi-vendor, high performance Open RAN is crucial to demonstrate market maturity. In 2021, the industry demonstrated great progress, and we are proud to have the first and only massive MIMO O-RAN product, making NEC the world's leader. We will continue working closely with customers and market-leading partners to deliver a vibrant ecosystem of open, high quality and high performance networks," says Patrick Lopez, Global VP of Product Management for 5G Products, NEC.*According to NEC research.About NEC CorporationNEC Corporation has established itself as a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies while promoting the brand statement of "Orchestrating a brighter world." NEC enables businesses and communities to adapt to rapid changes taking place in both society and the market as it provides for the social values of safety, security, fairness and efficiency to promote a more sustainable world where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. For more information, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com.Source: NEC CorporationCopyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
KISVARDA, Hungary, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tungsram Aero Space Power Kft. is a new company set up within the Tungsram Group headquartered in Budapest and with a site at Kisvarda, a workforce of 125 persons and an equity of HUF 2 billion. The company dealing with the repair and maintenance of aircraft engines, is ready to break into a market with a global turnover of USD 100 billion.

Founders Joerg Bauer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Tungsram Group, Istvan Herdon, owner of Xanga Group and the acting director of the newly created company, Attila Kurthy signed off the agreement which represents the launch of the operations at Tungsram Aero Space Power Kft. The new company is a rapidly growing division of Tungsram Group, specialised in MRO (maintenance, repair, overhaul) services provided to the aviation and energy sector.

MRO in the aircraft industry represents a USD 100 billion turnover globally, with a continuous further growing potential according to industry players. Two other areas accompany this field; parts production for energy industry and renewables. The company employs 125 people in the production hall of the Tungsram Kisvarda and aims at those markets. Current partners include GE Aviation, GE Power and GE Renewable.

"Tungsram offers first class quality solutions and engine repair services to the largest turbine manufacturers and MRO service providers", says Attila Kurthy. "We see a substantial growth potential on the industrial grade gas turbine market, we try to take a hold here as well."

Tungsram Aero Space Power is currently the single aircraft engine part manufacturer in the small region holding the certificates of both the European and American Aviation Authorities (EASA and FFA). The Kisvarda plant is a regional centre of excellence in the field of welding.

According to Joerg Bauer, President & CEO of Tungsram external strategic and financial partners had to be involved such as WEX TASP SHARE Kft. belonging to Xanga Group.

"The developments of Xanga Group completed in the field of aviation industry in the last 10 years have almost reached USD 100 M. We consciously guide our investments to the high added value MRO industry as we believe it is a significant area of development in the region" - says Istvan Herdon.

Tungsram Aero Space Power focuses already on the upcoming milestones, such as the procurement of the CAAC (Chinese Authority of Aviation) certificate.

Szonja Kiss, szonja.kiss@tungsram.com, +36 70/5257861
Agomab Therapeutics NV ('Agomab') today announced the expansion of its team with two key hires: Reginald Brys will join as Head of Research and Maria Nichol will become Head of Intellectual Property. Each brings more than 20 years of highly valuable experience in identifying and driving novel drug candidate development and international patent law and strategy, respectively.

"When we embarked on our ambitious growth plan, we knew that building the right team would be critical to our success. Onboarding Reginald and Maria is a good example of our progress to grow Agomab into a global leader," said Tim Knotnerus, Chief Executive Officer at Agomab Therapeutics. "Reginald has a long track record of success in leading research efforts that produce highly innovative drug candidates. Maria adds new depth and focus to our patent and intellectual property strategy. Following our acquisition of Origo Pharma and the expansion of our pipeline, we are entering a new stage in our company's development and we are thrilled to welcome them."

Reginald Brys will join Agomab from Galapagos NV, where he worked from 2000 in multiple leadership positions in the research organization. Most recently he served as Vice President, Head of Disease Biology. Under his leadership, the company developed deep portfolios focused on inflammatory, fibrotic and renal diseases. During his time at Galapagos, Reginald identified and advanced over 30 drug candidates through research into clinical development. Prior to Galapagos, Reginald worked at Janssen (Johnson Johnson). Reginald brings more than 20 years of drug discovery expertise and holds a PhD from the KU Leuven.

Maria Nichol will also join Agomab from Galapagos NV, where she worked from 2006. In her latest position, she served as Vice President, Head of Intellectual Property, in which she was responsible for Galapagos' Global IP management and strategy and was a key member of the corporate development transactions team. Prior to Galapagos, she worked at Biotica Technology Limited and Oxford GlycoSciences. Maria is a European Patent Attorney and Chartered Patent Attorney and studied Natural Sciences (Pharmacology) at Cambridge. Maria holds a D.Phil. in Alzheimer's disease from the University of Oxford.

About Agomab

Agomab is translating a deep expertise in growth factor biology to pioneer and develop novel treatments that aim to resolve fibrosis, repair tissue structure and restore organ function. Combining new scientific insights with robust drug development and a long-term corporate vision, we are building a broad clinical pipeline of differentiated programs with disease modifying potential in severe organ failure and fibrotic diseases.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005318/en/

Contacts:

For Agomab Therapeutics

Tim Knotnerus, CEO

E-Mail: tim.knotnerus@agomab.com

Media Requests for Agomab

Dr. Stephanie May or Dr. Laura Mittmann

Trophic Communications

Phone: +49 171 185 56 82 or 49 151 5798 4222

E-Mail: agomab@trophic.eu
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Oil prices were flat to slightly higher on Tuesday after a sharp fall in the previous session on worries about the disruptive impact of the new Omicron coronavirus variant. Benchmark Brent crude futures edged up 0.1 percent to $71.61 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up half a percent at $68.88. Covid-19 worries persist, with investors awaiting U.S. President Joe Biden's announcement on new steps he is taking to fight the Omicron variant. There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. Omicron accounted for 73 percent of new infections in the U.S. last week, a nearly six-fold increase in only seven days. The European Union approved its fifth Covid-19 vaccine Monday as new infections multiply rapidly across the region. In Asia, cases of coronavirus have surged in Australia and South Korea. New Zealand delayed the planned reopening of its international border because of the sweeping spread of Omicron around the world, just days ahead of Christmas and New Year celebrations. Meanwhile, U.S. drug maker Moderna Inc. said a third dose of its Covid-19 vaccine increased antibody levels against the omicron variant. Investors await inventory reports from the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy for further direction. 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.
MOSCOW, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Russian Standard Bank made it possible for its clients to transfer money to UnionPay cards. Now it is easy and simple to send money to cards of UnionPay Payment System through Russian Standard Mobile bank or Internet bank.

The relevance of such service is especially high against the background of the active development of trade and friendship between Russia and China. Now, money can be transferred to UnionPay cards issued by foreign banks. A new convenient service for cross-border fund transfers to UnionPay cards is available to cardholders of any Issuing bank of any Payment System on the website of Russian Standard Bank and RS Express.

For Russian Standard Bank cardholders, the transfer is also available via the Mobile bank or Internet bank. It is enough to select the account from which the transfer is planned, fill in the recipient's UnionPay card number, the amount and, finally, confirm the transfer. The fixed commission for sending funds to UnionPay cards is 1.5%. At the same time, from a ruble account, the minimum commission amount for one transfer will be 249 rubles, in US dollars - 4 $, in Euros - 3.5 . The minimum transfer amount is 1500 rubles.

Xia Yu, head of UnionPay International Russian Branch, said: "Money Express is UnionPay International's cross-border money transfer service that has been launched in 45 countries and regions, including the United States, Japan, Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom and Russia. We are glad that more and more Russian banks are connecting to Money Express, allowing local customers to transfer funds to UnionPay cards conveniently, quickly and safely. "

In its daily work, Russian Standard Bank focuses on expanding financial opportunities for its customers, constantly introducing new options and services. Soon, the bank plans to connect the transfer service to UnionPay cards issued by Russian banks in all remote service channels, as well as to UnionPay cards issued in Mainland of China.

About UnionPay International

UnionPay International (UPI), founded in 2002, is focused on the growth and support of UnionPay's global business. In partnership with more than 2400 institutions worldwide, UnionPay International has enabled card acceptance in 180 countries and regions with issuance in 70 countries and regions. In Russia, UnionPay acceptance coverage is 95%. More than 1.6 million POS terminals support UnionPay QuickPass payment technology, and over 4 million UnionPay cards have been issued.

About Russian Standard Bank

JSC "Bank Russian Standard" was founded in 1999 by one of the largest Russian entrepreneurs - Rustam Tariko. The General License of the Bank of Russia No. 2289 was issued indefinitely on November 19, 2014. Russian Standard is among the leaders of the banking industry with many years of experience. He became a pioneer in the key types of banking services in Russia: He was the first to launch POS-lending, credit cards and provided access to the world's best services. For the first time, the bank offered package products - "Bank in your pocket".

Russian Standard is a member of the Fintech Association. He relies on the development of innovative financial services. Its acquiring network is one of the largest in the country. He was among the first to provide the possibility of providing Internet acquiring services. Detailed information about the bank is available on the official website - https://www.rsb.ru/.

Related Link: http://www.unionpayintl.com/ru/
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Sino United Worldwide Consolidated Ltd. (OTC PINK:SUIC) SUIC Midas Touch partner and director Joa Chen, the Intel Grand Prize Awardee during the APEC O2O SUMMIT 2016 for the proprietary SoundNet Technology in Taiwan, is going to join the exclusive interview on Fox Business network set in January 2022. Joa Chen will talk about the four products of Midas Touch and their success after launching their products and services in October 2021.

SUIC Midas Touch Ecosystem is a dynamic peer-to-peer bridge platform that connects SME merchants to qualified lenders in an extremely cost efficient manner, solving liquidity issues through a strong risk management framework, high-level transparency on loans and favorable service levels that meet the burgeoning demands of borrowers while offering them attractive rewards. This ecosystem is designed to expedite capital turnover which is the blood line for the survival of all businesses whilst the supply chain processes are running efficiently for a first-class user experience.

Flash Pay Same Day Swipe-Funding where SME merchants can borrow and obtain immediate liquidity for the sale of their products Free Pay Delay Settlement to Offset Transaction Cost where the SME merchant acts like a lender CQ Pay is a P2P lending service for E-Commerce sales channels where they can get emergency loan from lender. Unified Procurement Combined Purchasing Powers Economies of Scale

Flash Pay, Free Pay, and Unified Procurement are the main drivers of the SUIC Midas Touch ecosystem's strategy

"Having achieved this milestone in just several months is remarkable. We owe this to Midas Touch and our teams for their tireless collaboration in promoting our SUIC Midas services and products: MT Flash Pay - Same Day Swipe & Funding, MT CQ Pay Emergency Loan with Double Revenues, MT Unified Procurement - Combined Purchasing Powers Economies of Scale and several other financial solutions. We expect to further attain explosive growth across the globe, expecting to double business in merchant size and turnover rate size and to triple revenues and net profits." says Joa Chen.

The Midas Touch business model is further enhanced by offering products and services across borders, supporting the SUIC Midas expanded communities and building stronger relationships in the process. Midas Touch breakthrough products and services allows alignment of SUIC Midas core principles with partners and merchants' financial success and this differentiated approach will grow partner and merchant relationships as SUIC executes its worldwide expansion strategy.

About Sino United Worldwide Consolidated Ltd., USA

The Sino United Worldwide Consolidated Ltd. provides research and development, venture financing for and investing in private enterprises and the public sector that develop products and services adopting core capabilities of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, mobile payment, Big Data, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence, to enhance and streamline existing processes, and establish new and exciting business models that will create revolutionary products and services. Shareholders of SUIC will be exposed to the diverse application of advanced services in various parts of the economy. Additionally, existing and potential customers can benefit from this company's diversified portfolio of technologies. As one of the pioneering publicly traded technology companies, SUIC will help build tech-enabled businesses of the future. To learn more, please visit www.sinounitedco.com.

Please also read the full company report on SUIC by Globe Small Cap Research,

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_f2vaVOfJT5_idLn87lM1Q_lGxnY_tHW/view

Forward-Looking Statement

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. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "ongoing," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "will," "would," or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. However, not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance or results and will not necessarily be accurate indications of the times at which such performance or results are achieved. This press release is considered considering all Company filings contained in the Edgar Archives of the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov.

Contact

Sino United Worldwide Consolidated Ltd.

New Release Department

929-391-2550

SOURCE: Sino United Worldwide Consolidated Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678543/SUIC-Partner-and-APEC-O2O-Summit-2016-Intel-Grand-Prize-Awardee-For-SoundNet-Technology-Joa-Chen-To-Interview-On-Fox-Business-Network-in-January-2022-To-Share-His-Success-With-Midas-Touch-Launch-In-October-This-Year
IQM Quantum Computers (IQM) strengthened its European leadership and opened its fourth European office in Paris. This news follows the most recent announcements from the company:

IQM opened an exclusive quantum fabrication facility in Finland.

IQM has delivered the first milestone of the Finnish quantum computer co-innovation project with VTT; the 5-qubit quantum computer is now operational.

IQM, as part of the Q-Exa consortium, is building a quantum computer in Germany that will be integrated into an HPC supercomputer for the first time.

IQM France will collaborate closely with customers in the aviation, space, and cybersecurity verticals using IQM's co-design approach. IQM is also part of Atos's Scaler program, and this subsidiary will focus further on HPC integration and offer quantum accelerators to supercomputing centers worldwide.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005096/en/

IQM Quantum Computers (Photo: Business Wire)

Through this new subsidiary, IQM joins the French quantum ecosystem that consists of world-renowned universities and research institutes and a fast-growing start-up scene and provides excellent industry infrastructure. IQM's expertise and reach, combined with this vibrant ecosystem, will create significant opportunities for partnerships and collaboration in Europe and across the globe.

In the first phase, IQM France aims to tap into the extended talent pool of quantum students, postdocs, and experienced professionals. The plan is to start with a core team of business developers, products managers, quantum scientists, and engineers in 2022. The aim is to create a center of excellence in specific industry verticals and systematically grow in subsequent years.

IQM France's office will be in the central hub at Spaces Les Halles on 40 rue du Louvre, Paris. Dr. Bjorn Potter will take on the role of Country Manager for France in addition to his role as Global Head of Products at IQM. Dr. Potter, who recently joined IQM, holds a PhD in physics and has extensive experience with digital technologies in the Aerospace and Cybersecurity industries. Dr. Potter has held several international leadership positions with a focus on technology and innovation, among others at Airbus.

"I am excited to see IQM start its French operations in the Paris region, where I have been working for several years. The Paris team will build the bridge between the various IQM teams around Europe and the high-quality French quantum ecosystem. The team will enable local operations for collaborative IQM projects in strategic industrial areas," said Dr. Potter.

Speaking about this announcement, Dr. Jan Goetz, CEO and cofounder of IQM, said, "France plays an integral role in the quantum scientific research and has been on our roadmap for a while. I'm extremely pleased to announce the operations of our French entity today, especially at a time when the French quantum plan is gaining momentum. This French subsidiary together with our co-design teams in Bilbao and Munich and the quantum hardware and software teams in Espoo, Finland, will strengthen European quantum leadership."

"The Paris region is proud to welcome a major European quantum computing player to the epicenter of the French quantum ecosystem. We support IQM's local setup and growth to help them make the most of the excellent research and talent available. We are also convinced that IQM will thrive in France's #1 aerospace region," said Alexandra Dublanche, President of Choose Paris Region and Vice President in charge of Recovery, Attractiveness, Economic Development, and Innovation of the Paris Region.

"We are very thankful to Choose Paris Region and also Business France for the active, pragmatic, and timely support, which allowed us to set up IQM France in a very short time," Dr. Potter added.

In March 2021, Dr. Goetz presented on deep tech and building global tech leaders' topics at the Scale-Up Europe event, where President Emmanuel Macron was an attendee. This presentation was part of the Scale-up Europe initiative facilitated by Sifted.

About IQM Quantum Computers:

IQM is a Pan-European leader in quantum computers.

IQM provides on-site quantum computing for research labs and supercomputing data centers and offers full access to its hardware. For industrial customers, IQM delivers the quantum advantage through a unique application-specific co-design approach.

IQM is building Finland's first commercial 54-qubit quantum computer with VTT, and an IQM-led consortium (Q-Exa) is building a quantum computer in Germany that will be integrated into an HPC supercomputer to create an accelerator for future scientific research. IQM has offices in Bilbao, Munich, and Espoo and employs over 130 people. More information: www.meetiqm.com

Links to the quoted press releases:

IQM opens its exclusive quantum fabrication facility in Finland

IQM has delivered the first milestone of the Finnish quantum computer co-innovation project with VTT; the 5-qubit quantum computer is now operational.

IQM, as part of the Q-Exa consortium, is building a quantum computer in Germany that will be integrated into an HPC supercomputer for the first time.

Registered office:

IQM Finland Oy, Keilaranta 19, 02150 Espoo, Finland

Choose Paris Region is the agency in charge of promoting the attractiveness of the Paris region in terms of international business. The agency works in partnership with all the region's key players to create an appealing and coherent territorial offer, ensure promotion of the region, and offer a tailor-made service to support international businesses and professionals in their expansion.

https://www.chooseparisregion.org/

Headquarters:

Choose Paris Region, 18 rue de Londres, 75009 Paris

contact@chooseparisregion.org +33 800 019 011

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005096/en/

Contacts:

Media:



IQM Quantum Computers

Raghunath Koduvayur, Head of Marketing and Communications

Raghunath@meetiqm.com, +358 50 4876509



IQM France

Dr. Bjorn Potter, Head of Product

Bjoern.Poetter@meetiqm.com, +49 171 649 6939
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - EMX Royalty Corporation (NYSE American: EMX) (TSXV: EMX) (FSE: 6E9) (the "Company", or "EMX") is pleased to announce the execution, by its wholly-owned subsidiary Bronco Creek Exploration Inc., of exploration and option agreements (the "Agreements") for four precious-metals projects (the "Projects" or individually a "Project") located in Idaho and Nevada to Hochschild Mining PLC (LSE: HOC) ("Hochschild"). The Agreements provide EMX with work commitments and cash payments during Hochschild's earn-in period, and upon earn-in for a given project, a 4% net smelter return ("NSR") royalty, annual advance royalty payments, and milestone payments. Prior to final execution of the agreements, EMX and Hochschild agreed to, and commenced, initial exploration programs on all four Projects.

The three Idaho Projects, Valve House, Timber Butte, and Lehman Butte are located in southern and south-central Idaho (see Figure 1). Valve House and Timber Butte host Carlin-style gold mineralization in prospective carbonate-rich lithologies. Lehman Butte hosts epithermal style veins in Eocene volcanic rocks and jasperoids in older Paleozoic carbonate rocks. The Speed Goat Project hosts an intrusion-related gold-copper target located in the greater Battle Mountain-Eureka gold belt of north-central Nevada.

The Projects were recently acquired by staking prospective open ground during EMX's ongoing regional scale, field-oriented royalty generation gold program. The Agreements with Hochschild serve as an example of the Company's successful execution of the royalty generation aspect of its business model. Part and parcel to EMX's business model, the Projects are now advancing with funding from a quality international mining company with EMX receiving pre-production payments while retaining upside optionality with retained NSR royalty interests.

Commercial Terms Overview. Pursuant to the Agreements, Hochschild can earn a 100% interest in a Project by (all dollar amounts in USD): (a) making option payments totaling $600,000, (b) completing $1,500,000 in exploration expenditures before the fifth anniversary of a given Agreement, and (c) reimbursing EMX the previous year's holding costs. For clarity, the above terms are per individual Agreement covering an individual Project.

Upon an option exercise, EMX will retain a 4% NSR royalty on a Project. Hochschild may buyback up to a total of 1.5% of the royalty by first completing an initial 0.5% royalty buyback for a payment of 300 ounces of gold (or the cash equivalent) to the Company prior to the third anniversary of the option exercise. If the first buyback is completed, then the remaining 1% of the royalty buyback can be purchased anytime thereafter for a payment of 1,700 ounces of gold (or the cash equivalent) to the Company. Hochschild will also make annual advance royalty ("AAR") payments of $50,000 that increase to $100,000 upon completion of a Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA"). The AAR payments for a Project cease upon commencement of production. In addition, Hochschild will make Project milestone payments consisting of: (a) $500,000 upon completion of a PEA, (b) $1,000,000 upon completion of a Prefeasibility Study, and (c) $1,000,000 upon completion of a Feasibility Study.

Project Overviews and 2021 Work Programs. The Projects optioned to Hochschild represent diverse styles of precious metals mineralization within, and along extensions of, key mineral belts in Idaho and Nevada.

Valve House, Idaho. Valve House is located approximately 25 kilometers southeast of Pocatello, Idaho. The Project covers 9.5 square kilometers of Carlin-style alteration and mineralization hosted within lower Paleozoic silty carbonate units. Gold mineralization is both structurally and stratigraphically controlled. The last noteworthy exploration, conducted in the 1980's, identified three separate areas of gold mineralization and jasperoid replacement in limestone lithologies. Historical drill intercepts from this work included 42.7 meters averaging 0.87 g/t gold (from 10.7 to 53.4 m, true width unknown) and 21.3 meters averaging 0.71 g/t gold (from 0 to 21.3 m, true width unknown)1. Mineralization remains open for expansion.

To date, Hochschild has conducted additional reconnaissance mapping and rock chip sampling, a property-wide soil survey and an induced polarization ("IP") geophysical survey. As well, Hochschild expanded the property position by staking additional claims. Hochschild's exploration results are pending.

Timber Butte, Idaho. Timber Butte is located approximately 15 kilometers northeast of Carey, Idaho. The Project is a Carlin-style target characterized by anomalous gold mineralization associated with jasperoid and decalcified carbonate bearing rocks along north-northwest oriented structures cutting Roberts Mountains Formation, a key host to Carlin-style mineralization in Nevada. Cordex explored a portion of Timber Butte in the 1970's and completed three rotary holes that intersected anomalous gold mineralization. EMX's work has extended beyond the historical target area with additional targets identified along trend and under shallow colluvial cover. EMX's rock chip sampling of altered outcrops on the main structural trend returned assay results including 1.25 g/t gold (n=19, avg. 0.1 g/t Au) along a strike length of approximately 3.2 kilometers.

After completing additional reconnaissance mapping and rock chip sampling, Hochschild expanded the land position, completed soil sampling geochemical surveys over key target areas, and collected stream sediment samples. An IP survey is planned for the first part of 2022 while awaiting assay results from the geochemical sampling programs.

Lehman Butte, Idaho. Lehman Butte is located in south-central Idaho, approximately 15 kilometers west-northwest of Mackay. The target at Lehman Butte is low sulfidation epithermal precious metals mineralization in quartz-sulfide veins cutting Eocene lavas and tuffs which overlie Paleozoic carbonate units. The quartz-sulfide veins are commonly greater than one meter wide and associated with widespread quartz-clay-adularia alteration in intermediate volcanic rocks, as well as with jasperoid alteration in the underlying Mississippian age limestone. The Project was identified from an EMX regional stream sediment geochemical program. Follow-up reconnaissance work included a rock chip sample of 3.1 g/t gold and 19.8 g/t silver (n=35, avg. 0.185 g/t Au and 6.7 g/t Ag) coincident with silicified zones and quartz-pyrite feeder veins. EMX and Hochschild are targeting bulk-tonnage precious metals mineralization hosted within permeable tuffaceous units.

Hochschild's recently completed work program entailed property-wide geologic mapping and rock chip sampling along with an 800-sample soil survey and ground magnetic geophysical program. Results are pending. An IP survey together with an initial drill test is planned for the spring of 2022.

Speed Goat, Nevada. Speed Goat is located within the Battle Mountain-Eureka Trend, approximately 30 kilometers northwest of the Phoenix-Fortitude intrusion-related skarn system in north-central Nevada. EMX identified gold-copper mineralization composed of sheeted quartz-iron oxide after sulfide veins cutting Jurassic granodiorite. Mineralization appears to be related to a series of north-south striking porphyry dikes. Reconnaissance soil sampling by EMX outlined a 0.6 by 1 kilometer gold-in-soil anomaly (n=73, avg. 82 ppb Au) coincident with rock chip assays from outcrop that included 5.1 g/t gold (n=20, avg. 0.67 g/t Au). The mineralization is also anomalous in pathfinder geochemical elements (e.g., Bi-As-Sb-Cu), consistent with other intrusion-related gold systems in the nearby Battle Mountain district.

At Speed Goat, Hochschild completed additional geologic mapping and select channel sampling across the target zone in addition to ground magnetic and IP geophysical surveys in preparation for an initial drill test.

Comments on Sampling, Assaying, QA/QC, and Historical Exploration Results. EMX's exploration samples were collected in accordance with industry standard best practices. The samples were submitted to ALS laboratories in Reno, Nevada and Vancouver, Canada (ISO 9001:2017 and ISO/IEC 17025:2017 accredited) for sample preparation and analysis. Gold assays were performed by fire assay with an ICP/AES finish. EMX conducts routine QA/QC analysis on its exploration samples, including the utilization of certified reference materials, blanks, and duplicate samples. Gold assays were performed by fire assay with an ICP/AES finish. Silver and other elements were analyzed by four acid digestion with ICP-AES or AAS finish.

From EMX's independent field work, including geological mapping and geochemical sampling, the historical drill results referenced from Meridian and Cordex are judged to be representative and relevant.

Michael P. Sheehan, CPG, a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and an employee of the Company, has reviewed, verified, and approved the disclosure of the technical information contained in this news release.

About EMX. EMX is a precious, base and battery metals royalty company. EMX's investors are provided with discovery, development, and commodity price optionality, while limiting exposure to risks inherent to operating companies. The Company's common shares are listed on the NYSE American Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol EMX, as well as on the Frankfurt Exchange under the symbol "6E9". Please see www.EMXroyalty.com for more information.

For further information contact:

David M. Cole

President and Chief Executive Officer

Phone: (303) 973-8585

Dave@EMXroyalty.com

Scott Close

Director of Investor Relations

Phone: (303) 973-8585

SClose@EMXroyalty.com

Isabel Belger

Investor Relations (Europe)

Phone: +49 178 4909039

Ibelger@EMXroyalty.com

Neither the TSX-V nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX-V) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain "forward looking statements" that reflect the Company's current expectations and projections about its future results. These forward-looking statements may include statements regarding perceived merit of properties, exploration results and budgets, mineral reserves and resource estimates, work programs, capital expenditures, timelines, strategic plans, market prices for precious and base metal, or other statements that are not statements of fact. When used in this news release, words such as "estimate," "intend," "expect," "anticipate," "will", "believe", "potential" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which, by their very nature, are not guarantees of the Company's future operational or financial performance, and are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause the Company's actual results, performance, prospects or opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and factors may include, but are not limited to: unavailability of financing, failure to identify commercially viable mineral reserves, fluctuations in the market valuation for commodities, difficulties in obtaining required approvals for the development of a mineral project, increased regulatory compliance costs, expectations of project funding by joint venture partners and other factors.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this news release or as of the date otherwise specifically indicated herein. Due to risks and uncertainties, including the risks and uncertainties identified in this news release, and other risk factors and forward-looking statements listed in the Company's MD&A for the quarter ended September 30, 2021 and the year ended December 31, 2020 (the "MD&A"), and the most recently filed Revised Annual Information Form (the "AIF") for the year ended December 31, 2020, actual events may differ materially from current expectations. More information about the Company, including the MD&A, the AIF and financial statements of the Company, is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the SEC's EDGAR website at www.sec.gov.







Figure 1: Locations of the EMX Projects optioned to Hochschild

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/1508/108153_6b64df24a4b0f9a6_002full.jpg

____________________________

1 Meridian Gold and Cordex Exploration, 1984-1991. Unpublished internal company data.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108153
OAK BROOK, IL / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Affluence Corporation (OTC PINK:AFFU), a diversified technology company focusing on innovative IoT and 5G enhancing technologies announced today that effective January 1, 2022 it will name Mark D. Moyer as Chief Financial Officer of Affluence as it begins the process to upgrade our management and investor financial reporting and analysis of becoming a fully reporting company. Mr. Moyer has held several C-Level positions in publicly listed technology and media companies and sits on several boards most notably as the a Trustee and Chair of the Audit Committee for several mutual funds, which collectively manage over $4 billion in assets.

"We are very fortunate to be able to attract a financial professional like Mark Moyer," said James E. Honan, Jr., Affluence's CEO. Mark was SVP and Chief Accounting Officer for Equant (now Orange Business Services) so he is quite familiar with our space and our operating management so he and will be a great addition to the team. Mark holds an MBA in Finance from New York University, with a BBA in Accountancy from the University of Notre Dame and he is a CPA," said Honan.

"With Mark's addition we have initiated the process to become a fully reporting company and he will spearhead the project," continued Honan. "Affluence has begun interviewing accounting firms and I have tasked Mark with having the requisite audit requirements completed by early second quarter. Becoming fully reporting, and the added accountability it brings, has been an ongoing goal of our board as well. These improvements will also enable as the ability us to eventually list Affluence up on other exchanges around the globe, which will only create further value for our shareholders," said Honan.

"I am very excited for this opportunity and confident that I can assist in setting the financial direction of Affluence and taking the company to the next level of accountability," said Moyer. "In doing my due diligence on Affluence I was really impressed with the strategic vision of the company, how they have grown the Smart City Software business, their partnerships with several world- renowned technology and service integrators, and their commitment to grow the company both organically and through acquisition. I am also looking forward to working again with Affluence's Global CFO Peter Cummings. Peter has over 30 years of financial experience and has held senior roles at British Telecom and Orange Business Services. I plan on leaning quite heavily on Peter's international finance background especially as Affluence keeps executing internationally," said Moyer.

About Affluence Corporation

Affluence Corporation (AFFU.PK) is a diversified technology company focused on innovative software solutions that capitalize on IoT, AI and 5G technologies. We are investing in mid-market businesses to create a cohesive unit which brings together technology for the next generation of internet. https://affucorp.com

About OneMind Technologies SL

OneMind Technologies SL is a wholly- owned subsidiary of Affluence Corporation. The OneMind Intelligent IoT solution builder is used to create applications for smart construction and smart city operations. Functioning as systems of systems, OneMind connects data sources to one single point of insight to provide real-time information on operational processes. It is a key component in the enterprise solutions currently being offered by several Fortune 50 companies that resell, distribute, and integrate smart city enterprise solutions. The OneMind Smart City solution is deployed in Barcelona, San Francisco, Guadalajara, Oslo and many other cities throughout the world. For more information go to https://www.onemindtechnologies.com

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. There are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including: general economic business conditions, competitive and technological factors, markets, services, products and prices, availability and the cost of capital, success of growth initiatives, limited operating history and other factors discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commissions. Additionally, this release may not be considered as legal, accounting, or investment advice, and is not, and may not be considered, a solicitation for the purchase of any securities issued by Affluence Corporation.

For further information contact Affluence Corporation Investor Relations at 720-295-6409.

SOURCE: Affluence Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678839/CORRECTION-Affluence-Corporation-Appoints-CFO-and-Initiates-Process-to-Become-Fully-Reporting
RAIPUR, India, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Stratview Research announces the launch of a new market research report on Aircraft Slat Systems Market by Aircraft Type (Commercial Aircraft, Regional Aircraft, Military Aircraft, and General Aviation), by Component Type (Slats and Fixed Leading Edge), by Material Type (Aluminum and Others), and by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World), Size, Share, Trend, Forecast, & Industry Analysis: 2021-2026.

This strategic assessment report, from Stratview Research, provides a comprehensive analysis that reflects today's aircraft slat systems market realities and future market possibilities for the forecast period of 2021 to 2026. The report segments and analyzes the market in the most detailed manner to provide a panoramic view of the market. The vital data/information provided in the report can play a crucial role for the market participants as well as investors in the identification of low-hanging fruits available in the market as well as formulate growth strategies.

Aircraft Slat Systems Market: Highlights

Slats are aerodynamic devices located on the leading edge of the aircraft's wings whose purpose is to increase lift during low-speed operations such as takeoff, initial climb, approach, and landing. They are used while landing or performing maneuvers to minimize drag. It comprises slats and a support system. Slats are supported by slat support, racks, and pinions.

The aircraft industry was booming till 2018. The year 2019 proved to be challenging mainly due to the grounding of B737Max aircraft across regions. The sudden outburst of COVID-19 further deepened the market challenges, causing unimaginable disruption and losses for the stakeholders. The aircraft slat systems market depends on the organic growth of the aircraft industry and follows the same trajectory.

The aircraft slat systems market experienced a colossal decline of -31.8% in 2020 amid the pandemic. However, the long-term market outlook is positive because it is backed by the industry's buoyant nature and strong fundamentals. It is gradually heading towards the path of healing and is likely to recoup from 2021 onwards, marking a healthy CAGR of 7.9% during 2021-2026 to reach an estimated value of US$ 0.6 Billion by 2026.

Click Here and Run Through the Detailed TOC of the Report: https://www.stratviewresearch.com/toc/2238/aircraft-slat-systems-market.html

Based on the aircraft type, commercial aircraft is expected to remain the largest segment of the market during the forecast period. The vast pile of aircraft order backlogs of Boeing and Airbus along with the expected entry of upcoming aircraft programs such as, C919, B777X, and MC-21, are some major factors that are likely to strengthen the segment's market growth soon.

Based on the material type, aluminum is projected to be the leading segment of the market during the forecast period. Slats are located on the leading edge of the wing which exposes to the rain, dirt, hail, etc., which might cause erosion to the slat and its support structures. Aluminum's high resistance to corrosion, high strength-to-weight ratio, and low cost make it the most preferred choice for slat systems.

Based on the component type, the market is segmented as slats and fixed leading edge (slat supports and racks & pinions). Slat is expected to remain the most dominant segment in the market and is also expected to experience faster growth during the forecast period. Slats are extendable high-lift devices on the leading edge of the wings, which helps the airplane to take off and land at lower speeds. Some modern aircraft are gradually using automatic slats and powered-controlled slats.

Register Here and Ask for a Free Sample on the Exclusive Report: https://www.stratviewresearch.com/Request-Sample/2238/aircraft-slat-systems-market.htmlform

In terms of regions, North America is expected to remain the largest region in the aircraft slat systems market during the forecast period. The USA is the growth engine of the region's market, as it is the manufacturing powerhouse of the aerospace industry, creating a humongous demand for aircraft slat systems in the country. Asia-Pacific is likely to mark the fastest recovery during the forecast period, majorly due to the long-term growth opportunities particularly in China, India, and Japan.

The supply chain of this market comprises several nodes including raw material suppliers, salt support system manufacturers, slat manufacturers, tier players, aircraft OEMs, and airline companies. Following are the key players in the aircraft slat systems market:

Sonaca Group

Spirit AeroSystems, Inc.

Triumph Group Inc.

Korea Aerospace Industries, Ltd.

ASCO

Turkish Aerospace

GKN Aerospace (A Melrose Company)

Kawasaki Heavy Industries

Premium AEROTEC

Kencoa Aerospace Corporation

Report Features

This report provides market intelligence in the most comprehensive way. The report structure has been kept such that it offers maximum business value. It provides critical insights on the market dynamics and will enable strategic decision making for the existing market players as well as those willing to enter the market. The following are the key features of the report:

Market structure: Overview, industry life cycle analysis, supply chain analysis.

Market environment analysis: Growth drivers and constraints, Porter's five forces analysis, SWOT analysis.

Market trend and forecast analysis.

Market segment trend and forecast.

Competitive landscape and dynamics: Market share, product portfolio, product launches, etc.

Attractive market segments and associated growth opportunities.

Emerging trends.

Strategic growth opportunities for the existing and new players.

Key success factors

This report studies the global aircraft slat systems market and has segmented the market in four ways, keeping in mind the interest of all the stakeholders across the value chain. Following are the four ways in which the market is segmented:

Aircraft Slat Systems Market Size, Share & Forecast by Aircraft Type

Commercial Aircraft (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and RoW)

Regional Aircraft (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and RoW)

Military Aircraft (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and RoW)

General Aviation (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and RoW)

Aircraft Slat Systems Market Size, Share & Forecast, by Component Type

Slats (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and RoW)

Fixed Leading Edge (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and RoW)

Aircraft Slat Systems Market Size, Share & Forecast, by Material Type

Aluminum (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and RoW)

Others (Regional Analysis: North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , and RoW)

Aircraft Slat Systems Market Size, Share & Forecast, by Region

North America (Country Analysis: The USA , Canada , and Mexico )

Europe (Country Analysis: Germany , France , the UK, Russia and Rest of Europe )

Asia-Pacific (Country Analysis: Japan , China , India and Rest of Asia-Pacific )

Rest of the World (Country Analysis: Brazil , Saudi Arabia , and Others)

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GENEVA" Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ACE & Company (ACE), a Geneva based global investment group specializing in private investments, has announced the closing of its fourth private equity co-investment fund ("ABO IV") at $244 million in commitments, surpassing its $200 million target. It is the largest fund raised to date across ACE's investment strategies. The ACE Buyout program has completed over 70 co-investments since 2011, establishing a reputation as a preferred partner to private equity sponsors.

Adam Said, Founder and CEO, comments, "We are humbled by the confidence and support from our investors amidst an unprecedented period of volatility and uncertainty. While others moved to reduce risk during the depths of the downturn, we deployed aggressively to capitalize on the dislocation. The timing of this fund, launched in May 2020, could not have been better."

ABO IV will continue the strategy of its predecessor funds, supporting high caliber sponsors in their core areas of expertise. While the fund has a North American focus, it will ultimately include 20 to 25 companies diversified by sector, size, deal archetype and general partner. Leveraging ACE & Company's extensive network, the Fund will identify and pursue the best opportunities across the private equity universe.

Relative to prior funds, ABO IV will include an increased allocation to emerging managers. Rob Callahan, Head of ACE Buyout Strategy, says, "We like these managers because they generally bring large cap experience, network, and resources to investments in the lower mid-market - a market in which high growth companies can be found at attractive valuations."

ABOUT ACE & COMPANY

ACE & Company ("ACE"), founded in 2005, is a global investment group specialized in private investments with total assets of over $1.6 bn across three investment strategies and investment solutions. Headquartered in Geneva with offices in London, New York, Hong Kong, and Cairo, ACE's global presence brings the company in direct contact with sourcing partners, investment firms, as well as entrepreneurs and provides investors unparalleled access to a network of opportunities. ACE is uniquely positioned to understand the needs and challenges facing private investors today and exclusively partners with stakeholders that have shared investment criteria and objectives. Through leveraging ACE's broad investment knowledge combined with best-in-class execution, ACE aims to actively improve investment returns by adding strategic value to both its portfolio companies as well as sourcing partners. ACE is regulated by the Swiss Financial Supervisory Authority FINMA in Switzerland.

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For more information Please contact:

Sandra Humbel - shumbel@aceandcompany.com

+0041223113333
Wellness Pet Company renaming harmonizes pet nutrition pioneer's mission of bringing nature, innovation, and science to premium pet nutrition with the Company's flagship Wellness brand

TEWKSBURY, Mass., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WellPet, LLC, the largest North America based independent branded premium natural pet food company, backed by Clearlake Capital Group L.P. (together with its affiliates, "Clearlake"), today announced it is changing its name to the Wellness Pet Company ("Wellness Pet," or the "Company"). With 100 years of premium pet food and treats heritage, Wellness Pet will build on its mission of fulfilling a shared life of wellbeing between pets and a new generation of pet parents. This expanded vision for Wellness Pet Company comes at a pivotal time as consumer interest in the premium natural pet food category has been fueled by step-change increase in U.S. pet adoption and pet parents seeking the benefits of premium natural nutrition first-hand.

"We felt this was the ideal time to re-introduce Wellness Pet, a company focused squarely on serving the next generation of pet parents at the beginning of their life-long pet parenting journey. Our relationships with pets are about more than just companionship. Pets provide a mutually beneficial emotional connection that makes each of our lives better every day, and proper, science-driven natural nutrition is one of the foundational elements needed to keep them healthy, happy, and well," said Reed Howlett, CEO of Wellness Pet Company. "Pet parents and their pets are at the center of all that we do, and we believe that natural, premium nutrition focused on proven health outcomes is the foundation of creating this mutual wellbeing. We're here to make a difference for even more pets and their families."

The premium natural category is the largest and fastest growing segment in the pet food industry, and Wellness Pet Company believes this is driven primarily by the desires of Millennial and Gen-Z pet parents, who are expected to make up 58% of American pet parents by 20251. This next generation of pet parents looks for credible brands they can trust and has a greater interest in feeding premium treats, toppers, and supplements that make them confident their pets' needs are being met. Wellness Pet will actively pursue its mission to create natural nutrition that provides physical, mental, and emotional benefits that pets can feel, and pet parents can see, like a healthy skin and coat, optimal energy, digestive health, healthy eyes, teeth and gums, and immunity.

"We see so much potential for Wellness Pet Company as a purpose-driven organization that continues to provide pet parents around the world with the quality products they deserve," said Jose E. Feliciano, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, and Arta Tabaee, Managing Director, of Clearlake. "We look forward to supporting the Company's strategic growth with the help of our Operations, People and Strategy playbook, O.P.S., while supporting initiatives important to pet parents, such as a continued commitment to natural nutrition, a science-driven approach, and sustainability."

Wellness Pet Company carries on the legacy of best-in-class product innovation and outcomes-based nutrition led by its flagship Wellness brand and includes well-known dental treat brand WHIMZEES by Wellness and all-natural dog treat brand Old Mother Hubbard by Wellness, in addition to premium food brands Holistic Select, Sojos, and Eagle Pack, all backed by its world-class operational and manufacturing capabilities rooted in quality and safety.

Wellbeing amongst pets and parents also means wellbeing for their communities and the environment they enjoy together. That's why Wellness Pet Company will remain committed to the global fight against climate change with more recyclable packaging, low-waste eCommerce shipping, and greater attention to manufacturing emissions while continuing to operate with the highest food safety and compliance standards. Equally important will be creating and cultivating diversity, inclusivity, and belonging in the workplace.

The new company name will be effective in early 2022. Wellness Pet Company will continue to be headquartered in Tewksbury, MA. The Company also recently opened a new Boston, MA office, the Consumer Connect Center (C3), a center of excellence that will focus on developing best-in-class nutrition solutions for the next generation of pet parents.

About Wellness Pet Company:

Wellness Pet Company, the largest North America based independent branded premium natural pet food company, is home to pet food and treats brands Wellness, WHIMZEES by Wellness, Old Mother Hubbard by Wellness, Holistic Select, Sojos, and Eagle Pack. Building on a 100-year legacy, Wellness Pet Company has a singular mission of fulfilling a shared life of wellbeing between pets and pet parents with premium natural nutrition that provides proven health benefits that pets feel, and pet parents can see, because when pets are well, pet parents are, too. Wellness Pet produces proprietary and exclusive formulations at its three state-of-the-art facilities in Indiana, Minnesota, and the Netherlands, supported by a supply chain spanning over 1.2 million distribution points across the globe. More information is available at the Company's website.

About Clearlake:

Founded in 2006, Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. is a leading investment firm operating integrated businesses across private equity, credit, and other related strategies. With a sector-focused approach, the firm seeks to partner with experienced management teams by providing patient, long-term capital to dynamic businesses that can benefit from Clearlake's operational improvement approach, O.P.S. The firm's core target sectors are technology, industrials, and consumer. Clearlake currently has over $55 billion assets under management, and its senior investment principals have led or co-led over 300 investments. The firm has offices in Santa Monica and Dallas. More information is available at www.clearlake.com and on Twitter @ClearlakeCap.

1 2019, Packaged Facts Pet Owner Survey

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CAITHNESS, United Kingdom, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- At the North Planning Applications Committee of The Highland Council on Tuesday the 7thDecember councillors voted unanimously to allow the Limekiln project variation application to move to the final decision-making stage with the Scottish Government Ministers. The decision, which will see two of the 21 turbines removed from the wind farm at Limekiln, south of Reay in Caithness will allow the application to progress unopposed by statutory consultees. As well as the removal of two turbines, the variation to the current consent seeks to bring a number of improvements to the project, including a revised track design, allowing improved access during the construction works to the core path network and an increase in tip heights to unlock full wind potential and proper alignment with the neighbouring Limekiln Wind Farm Extension project.

Esbjorn Wilmar, Managing Director of Infinergy said: "I am delighted that The Highland Council has taken such a positive decision. The revised scheme will see increased benefits to the local area, not only in terms of access around the site but in terms of increased community benefits. The communities of Caithness are some of those most in need of such benefits in the country and we are very pleased that Members recognised how projects such as Limekiln can contribute during their debate."

More energy produced despite fewer turbines

"While we are looking to improve the track design, we are also looking to increase the energy yield from the windfarm by increasing tip heights in line with our Limekiln Extension project and applying state-of-the-art turbine technology. Even with two less turbines, this variation will still allow us to generate more renewable energy than the existing consented scheme." continued Mr Wilmar. "We now await both the outcome from the Limekiln Wind Farm Extension public inquiry and the Minister's decision on this variation application which will then, if both are successful, be built as one development. In turn this will reduce the overall disruption during the construction stage. The increase in energy production and further optimizing the design of the site will also enhance the economics of the projects."

Limekiln Wind Farm at a glance

Enabling works have already been completed following the original 2019 Limekiln Wind Farm consent and onsite felling continues this year to ensure the site is set to promptly move forward again. Felling work is expected to last until the spring of 2022. Delaying the main construction contracts will allow the separate forestry work to proceed unhindered. Subject to consent being awarded, the operational date for Limekiln Wind Farm is expected to now be late 2024 at the earliest. Together with the Limekiln Extension proposal, the wind farm has a grid connection contract in place for 106 MW.

Located 2.8km South/Southwest of Dounreay Power Station, the proposal going forward to Ministers will now consist of 19 turbines and will provide sufficient electricity to meet the needs of at least 74,000 homes based on the average generation mix of UK power sources.

Limekiln Wind Farm comes with the industry standard community benefit fund of 5,000 per MW of installed capacity, equating to almost 400,000 per year (based on 4.2 MW turbines). In addition, up to 10% of the project will be made available to the local community as a shared ownership opportunity, giving the potential to increase the economic value of the wind farm across Caithness.

Infinergy and Boralex announced the execution of a 50-50 joint venture agreement in October 2017, aimed at developing a pipeline of onshore wind projects, including the Limekiln Wind Farm project, essentially located in Scotland for a total estimated capacity of 325 MW.

NOTE for EDITORIAL STAFF

Infinergy

Infinergy is a UK based renewable energy company, active in the UK, The Netherlands and Australia with a strong focus on the development of onshore wind energy in Scotland. Infinergy develops wind and solar energy projects from inception through to construction and operation. In the UK we develop most of our projects in close cooperation with Boralex. For more information visit http://www.infinergy.co.uk.

Boralex

At Boralex, we have been providing affordable renewable energy accessible to everyone for over 30 years. As a leader in the Canadian market and France's largest independent producer of onshore wind power, we also have facilities in the United States and development projects in the United Kingdom. Over the past five years, our installed capacity has more than doubled to 2.5 GW. We are developing a portfolio of more than 3 GW in wind and solar projects and nearly 200 MW in storage projects, guided by our values and our corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach. Through profitable and sustainable growth, Boralex is actively participating in the fight against global warming. Thanks to our fearlessness, our discipline, our expertise and our diversity, we continue to be an industry leader. Boralex's shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BLX. For more information, visit www.boralex.com or www.sedar.com. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

please contact: Media - Infinergy, Fiona Milligan, Project Manager, Infinergy, M: 07825 744712, info@limekilnwindfarm.co.uk; Media - Boralex | Investor Relations - Boralex, Isabelle Fontaine, Director, Public Affairs and Communications, Boralex Inc., 819 345-0043, isabelle.fontaine@boralex.com, Stephane Milot, Senior Director - Investor Relations, Boralex Inc., 514 213-1045, stephane.milot@boralex.com
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - VIVO Cannabis Inc. (TSX: VIVO) (OTCQX: VVCIF) ("VIVO" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Shai Altman and Glen Huber to the board of directors of the Company (the "Board"), effective immediately.

"I am very pleased to welcome Mr. Altman and Mr. Huber to the Board of Directors," said Ray Laflamme, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of VIVO. "Both Mr. Huber and Mr. Altman have strong leadership, financial acumen, public company and executive experience across several industries including, cannabis, consumer-packaged goods, real estate, and financial advisory. I have no doubt that Mr. Altman and Mr. Huber will provide excellent support with our continued growth and will be great assets to our VIVO family."

Mr. Altman brings over 25 years of leadership experience in the consumer-packaged goods industry across several categories and countries around the globe. Most recently he was the President and CEO of Zenabis Global, a Canadian licensed grower and exporter of cannabis products into the recreational and medicinal markets. He also previously served as President of McCain Foods Canada, President of Wrigley Canada, General Manager of Wrigley in India; and General Manager of Wrigley in Israel. Mr. Altman will serve as an Independent Director of the Board and as Chair of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.

Mr. Huber is the President of Brett Management Inc., a boutique financial advisory firm focussing on special situations for ultra-high net worth families as well as public and private companies. He is a Chartered Professional Accountant and Chartered Insolvency and Restructuring Professional. Mr. Huber has experience building public and private companies while serving as an officer and director, as well as being a Trustee of a large private trust. His prior cannabis industry experience includes serving as CFO and Director of Cronos Group. Mr. Huber will serve as an Independent Director of the Board and as Chair of the Audit Committee.

As a result of these appointments, Michael Bumby has resigned his position on the Board.

VIVO further announces that it has issued restricted share units of the Company ("RSUs") and deferred share units of the Company ("DSUs") under its Omnibus Equity Incentive Plan (the "Plan").

The Company issued an aggregate of 4,384,000 RSUs to certain officers and employees of the Company to be redeemable at the sole discretion of the Company and subject to the terms of the Plan.

Additionally, the Company issued an aggregate of 690,000 DSUs to non-executive directors under the Plan in settlement of directors' compensation in connection with their appointments to the Board. The DSUs are to be settled when a director retires from all positions with the Company, and are subject to the terms of the Plan.

About VIVO Cannabis

VIVO Cannabis is recognized for trusted, premium cannabis products and services. It holds production and sales licences from Health Canada and operates world-class cultivation facilities. VIVO has a collection of medical, health and wellness brands, each targeting different customer segments, including Canna Farms, Beacon Medical, Fireside, and Lumina. Harvest Medicine, VIVO's patient-centric, scalable network of medical cannabis clinics, has serviced over 150,000 patient visits. VIVO is pursuing several partnership and product development opportunities and is focusing its international efforts on Germany and Australia. For more information visit: www.vivocannabis.com

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

For further information:

VIVO Investor Relations

+1 416-848-9839

ir@vivocannabis.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vivo_cannabis/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vivo-cannabis-inc/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vivocanna/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vivo_cannabis

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information



Certain statements in this news release are forward-looking statements, which are statements that are not purely historical, including statements regarding the beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions of VIVO and its management regarding the future. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur or, if they do occur, what benefits the Company will obtain from them. Readers are urged to consider these factors carefully along with the more extensive risk factors included in the Company's most recent management's discussion and analysis available on SEDAR, in evaluating the forward-looking statements contained in this news release and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any such forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108188
COPENHAGEN (dpa-AFX) - Denmark's retail sales declined in November after rising in the previous month, figures from Statistics Denmark showed on Tuesday. Retail sales fell a seasonally adjusted 0.3 percent month-on-month in November, after a 1.3 percent growth in October. Sales of clothing and other goods decreased 4.4 percent monthly in November and those of food and grocery fell 1.1 percent. Meanwhile, sales of other consumables gained 1.2 percent. On an annual basis, retail sales increased 1.5 percent in November, after a 2.5 percent decline in the previous month. 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.


CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The pound climbed against its major counterparts in the European session on Tuesday, as European stocks rose following positive cues from Asia, amid a gain in commodity stocks.



Oil rebounded following a selloff on Monday as investors reassessed the risks from the Omicron variant.



Moderna announced on Monday that a booster dose of its Covid-19 vaccine increased antibody levels against Omicron.



The currently authorized 50 microgram booster dose increased neutralizing antibody levels against Omicron approximately 37-fold compared to pre-boost levels.



In another development, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that there will be a vote on a revised version of the Build Back Better Act in January.



In the U.K., PM Boris Johnson said that fresh curbs are unlikely to be imposed before Christmas, but cautioned that the situation was 'extremely difficult'.



The PM added that the government is looking to keep Omicron under control and cannot rule out implementation of additional measures after Christmas.



The pound was up at 4-day highs of 1.3261 against the greenback and 150.78 against the yen, following its prior lows of 1.3197 and 149.89, respectively. Next key resistance for the pound is possibly seen around 1.34 against the greenback and 153.00 against the yen.



The pound edged higher to 0.8507 against the euro and 1.2224 against the franc, rebounding from its early low of 0.8549 and near a 2-week low of 1.2144, respectively. The pound is seen finding resistance around 0.84 against the euro and 1.24 against the franc.



The safe-haven dollar fell amid an improvement in risk sentiment.



The greenback weakened to 1.1303 against the euro, from a high of 1.1273 seen at 7:00 pm ET. The greenback is likely to face support around the 1.14 region.



The greenback touched 4-day lows of 0.7137 against the aussie and 0.6759 against the kiwi, down from its early highs of 0.7099 and 0.6703, respectively. The next possible support for the greenback is seen around 0.74 against the aussie and 0.69 against the kiwi.



The greenback retreated to 1.2924 against the loonie and 113.56 against the yen, from its early high of 1.2947 and a 4-day high of 113.77, respectively. The greenback is poised to find support around 1.26 against the loonie and 112.00 against the yen.



The greenback declined to 0.9195 against the franc at 3:30 am ET, but it has since rebounded to 0.9226. The greenback may test resistance near the 0.93 level.



Looking ahead, Canada retail sales for October will be featured in the New York session.



Eurozone flash consumer sentiment index for December will be out at 10:00 am ET.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
- More and more countries are using Sputnik Light as a standalone vaccine and as a universal booster, including against Omicron variant.

MOSCOW, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia's sovereign wealth fund) today announced 7 million doses of Sputnik Light booster against coronavirus have been shipped to Venezuela becoming the biggest one-time global delivery of the one-shot vaccine.

Demand for Sputnik Light is increasing as more countries are using it as a standalone vaccine and a universal booster for other vaccines, including against the latest Omicron variant of coronavirus.

Sputnik Light is based on human adenovirus serotype 26 (the first component of Sputnik V). It has already been registered in more than 20 countries as a standalone one-shot vaccine and a universal booster to other vaccines (including in Argentina, UAE, Bahrain, Philippines, and San Marino).

Recent preliminary study announced by Gamaleya Institute showed that Sputnik Light as a booster significantly increases virus neutralizing activity against Omicron. According to Gamaleya Institute:

Sputnik Light as a booster significantly increases virus neutralizing activity against Omicron based on sera 2-3 months after revaccination. Virus neutralizing activity against Omicron 2-3 months after a Sputnik Light booster in this preliminary laboratory study is higher than VNA against the wild-type virus 6 months after Sputnik V vaccination. Based on these data the expected efficacy of Sputnik V with Sputnik Light booster against Omicron infection could be more than 80%, as Sputnik V showed efficacy of more than 80% against wild-type virus 6 month after vaccination.

100% of individuals revaccinated with Sputnik Light as a booster developed neutralizing antibodies against Omicron and demonstrated their high level 2-3 months after the revaccination.

Sputnik Light booster is expected to provide strong protection against infection, severe disease and hospitalization by Omicron.

Sputnik Light booster is recommended to strengthen efficacy of vaccines against Omicron. Heterologous boosting with Sputnik Light is the solution to strengthen and lengthen the quickly waning efficacy of many vaccines, including against Omicron, and extend the booster protection period.

Sputnik V standalone also induces robust neutralizing antibody response to Omicron variant, which is further strengthened by Sputnik Light booster.

Sputnik V elicits strong and long-lasting T-cell response, and as 80% of epitopes in the spike protein are not affected by the mutations in the Omicron variant, Sputnik V is expected to provide long-lasting protection against severe disease by Omicron. Sputnik V's long-lasting T-cell immunity contributes to 80% efficacy against Delta on months 6-8 compared with efficacy of less than 29% demonstrated by certain mRNA vaccines after 6 months.

In Argentina, a combination of Sputnik Light with other vaccines has demonstrated its effectiveness as a universal booster inducing stronger antibody and T-cell response compared to a two-shots homologous regimen. A combination of Sputnik Light with vaccines produced by AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Moderna and Cansino, conducted in 5 provinces (City and Province of Buenos Aires, as well as Cordoba, La Rioja and San Luis) has demonstrated that each "vaccine cocktail" combination with Sputnik Light provided higher antibody titer on the 14th day after administering a second dose when compared to original homogenous (same vaccine as first and second dose) regimens of each of the vaccines.

Sputnik Light efficacy data:

Sputnik Light has been proven to be safe and highly effective by real-world vaccination data. In particular, data from the Ministry of Health of Buenos Aires ( Argentina ) has demonstrated standalone efficacy of Sputnik Light between 78.6-83.7% among the elderly (over 40,000 people of 60-79 years old), which is higher than that of many two-dose vaccines.

( ) has demonstrated standalone efficacy of Sputnik Light between 78.6-83.7% among the elderly (over 40,000 people of 60-79 years old), which is higher than that of many two-dose vaccines. Findings by the Gamaleya Center based on data collected in Moscow have demonstrated Sputnik Light vaccine administered standalone has 70% efficacy against infection from the Delta variant of coronavirus during the first three months after vaccination. The vaccine is 75% effective among subjects under the age of 60.

have demonstrated Sputnik Light vaccine administered standalone has 70% efficacy against infection from the Delta variant of coronavirus during the first three months after vaccination. The vaccine is 75% effective among subjects under the age of 60. Sputnik Light and Sputnik V were developed on the basis of a safe and well-studied over 30 years technology and have not been associated with rare serious side effects as myocarditis or pericarditis.

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Addition of preeminent independent M&A advisory firm builds on momentum in investment banking and advisory segments

TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (TSX: CF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sawaya Partners ("Sawaya"), a leading independent M&A advisory firm to the consumer sector based in New York. This acquisition underscores the Company's commitment to expanding its advisory capability and builds upon its existing consumer practice, while providing a strong intersection with core CG focus sectors of technology, media, healthcare, and sustainability.

Since expanding its advisory business in 2019, Canaccord Genuity's U.S. capital markets business has been a growing contributor of revenue and net income. At the end of fiscal 2021, revenue from advisory activities in this business increased by 200% when compared to the end of fiscal 2018. Increased contributions from advisory activities have contributed to substantial earnings and margin growth in this business since 2019.

Founded in 2001, Sawaya Partners has established itself as a globally recognized, premium independent M&A advisory business with deep domain expertise in the consumer sector. Since its inception, the Sawaya Partners principals have established broad-based and lasting relationships with corporations and sponsors, which has allowed them to generate meaningful repeat engagements and revenue growth.

"We are excited to be building upon the success of our advisory practice with the high-quality team of professionals from Sawaya Partners and adding deep domain expertise and relationships in the consumer sector," said Jeff Barlow, President of Canaccord Genuity Capital Markets (U.S.). "This transaction creates an opportunity to meaningfully enhance our service offering to our combined clients, and advantageously positions us to capitalize on attractive industry trends."

To ensure a seamless transition for Sawaya' s clients and employees, Founder and Managing Partner Fuad Sawaya will join CG's U.S. operating committee and become Vice Chairman - Consumer and Global Head of CG's Consumer Investment Banking practice. Partners Jeff Kuhr and Slava Leykind will become Co-Heads of the U.S. Consumer Investment Banking group. All existing employees of Sawaya Partners will continue with the Company's U.S. capital markets business.

Sawaya Partners Founder and Managing Partner Fuad Sawaya adds: "Having just celebrated Sawaya Partners' 20th anniversary, we are delighted to begin the next stage in our journey as part of the Canaccord Genuity team. Both businesses share a similar entrepreneurial and collegial culture and a rigorously client-centric approach. This transaction presents a tremendous opportunity to expand our reach, while leveraging CG's extensive global footprint and capital markets capabilities to provide enhanced opportunities for our corporate and sponsor clients."

Keefe Bruyette & Woods, A Stifel Company is acting as financial advisor and Mayer Brown LLP is acting as legal advisors to Sawaya Partners. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP is providing legal advice to Canaccord Genuity.

The acquisition is expected to close at the end of calendar 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.

ABOUT CANACCORD GENUITY GROUP INC.

Through its principal subsidiaries, Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (the "Company") is a leading independent, full-service financial services firm, with operations in two principal segments of the securities industry: wealth management and capital markets. Since its establishment in 1950, the Company has been driven by an unwavering commitment to building lasting client relationships. We achieve this by generating value for our individual, institutional and corporate clients through comprehensive investment solutions, brokerage services and investment banking services. The Company has wealth management offices located in Canada, the UK, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Australia. The Company's international capital markets division operates in North America, UK & Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East.

Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. is publicly traded under the symbol CF on the TSX.

ABOUT CANACCORD GENUITY GLOBAL CAPITAL MARKETS

Canaccord Genuity's global capital markets division offers institutional and corporate clients idea-driven investment banking, merger and acquisition, research, sales and trading services from offices in North America, UK & Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. Our diverse team of capital markets and advisory professionals has deep industry and transactional expertise in key growth sectors of the global economy. We are committed to providing valued services to our clients throughout the entire lifecycle of their business and operating as a gold standard independent investment bank - expansive in resources and reach, but targeted in industry expertise, market focus and individual client attention. We are driven by your success. For more information, visit www.cgf.com.

ABOUT SAWAYA PARTNERS

Founded in 2001, Sawaya Partners is has established itself as a globally recognized, premium independent M&A advisory businesses with deep domain expertise in the consumer industry. Since inception, the Sawaya Partners principals have established broad-based and lasting relationships with corporations and sponsors in the consumer sector, which has generated meaningful repeat engagements. With differentiated execution capability and skill sets, Sawaya Partners are consistently sought after as trusted advisors by global corporations, private equity firms and privately held businesses.

CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release may contain "forward-looking information" as defined under applicable securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). These statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's expectations, beliefs, plans, estimates, intentions and similar statements concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances, performance or expectations that are not historical facts, including business and economic conditions and Canaccord Genuity Group's growth, results of operations, performance and business prospects and opportunities. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may", "will", "should", "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict", "potential", "continue", "target", "intend", "could" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and a number of factors could cause actual events or results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. In evaluating these statements, readers should specifically consider various factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement. These factors include, but are not limited 'to, market and general economic conditions, the nature of the financial services industry and the risks and uncertainties discussed from time to time in the Company's interim condensed and annual consolidated financial statements, its annual report and its annual information form ("AIF") filed on www.sedar.com as well as the factors discussed in the sections entitled "Risk Management" and "Risk Factors" in the AIF, which include market, liquidity, credit, operational, legal and regulatory risks. Material factors or assumptions that were used by the Company to develop the forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to, those set out in the Fiscal 2021 Outlook section in the annual MD&A and those discussed from time to time in the Company's interim condensed and annual consolidated financial statements, its annual report and the AIF filed on www.sedar.com. The preceding list is not exhaustive of all possible risk factors that may influence actual results. Readers are cautioned that the preceding list of material factors or assumptions is not exhaustive.

Although the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon what management believes are reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Except as may be required by applicable law, the Company does not undertake, and specifically disclaims, any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, further developments or otherwise.

Investor and media relations inquiries: Christina Marinoff, Vice President, Investor Relations & Communications, Phone: 416-687-5507, Email: cmarinoff@cgf.com, www.cgf.com/investor-relations
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Electric-truck startup Nikola Corp. (NKLA) has agreed to pay the U.S. SEC $125 million to settle charges that it defrauded investors by misleading them about its business prospects. As part of the settlement, Nikola has agreed to pay the settlement amount to the SEC in five installments over two years. The first installment will be paid by the end of 2021, and the remaining installments will be paid semiannually through 2023. Under the terms of the settlement, Nikola neither admits nor denies the SEC's findings in this matter. Nikola noted that it has taken action to seek reimbursement from its founder, Trevor Milton, for costs and damages in connection with the government and regulatory investigations. Nikola previously disclosed on November 4, 2021 that it had taken a $125 million reserve in its third quarter earnings to account for the expected settlement. In September 2020, Electric-truck startup Nikola Corp. was being inquired by the U.S. Justice Department, along with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, over fraud allegations. Nikola was accused of misleading investors by making exaggerated claims about the progress it made in developing key technology needed for new models. The federal prosecutors were conducting the inquiries following a report by short seller Hindenburg Research alleging Nikola deceived investors about its business prospects. 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.
Tachyum today announced it has entered into an agreement with another prestigious university in Slovakia. Tachyum will collaborate with Technical University of Kosice (TUKE) on optimizations of supercomputer and power efficient data centers, scientific research, and innovations in the field of Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI). Students and teachers will get access to Tachyum's Prodigy emulation system for selected projects.

"Signing a memorandum of understanding with Tachyum is an excellent signal and an inspiring example for our students and teachers in at least two respects. Firstly, we are proud that the founder and CEO of Tachyum, Radoslav Danilak, is a successful graduate of the Technical University in Kosice, which, we firmly believe, testifies to the quality work of our teachers. The excellent Dr. Danilak's results at the world level will clearly motivate our students to make even greater efforts to achieve similar success and fulfill their own dream," said Professor Anton Cizmar, vice-rector for Innovation and Technology Transfer at TUKE. "Secondly, it is a great opportunity for all of us at the university to work with Tachyum in such attractive areas as Big Data, AI or high-performance supercomputers, and thus use the potential and knowledge of our students for specific applications. Our university science park Technicom, which is the center of the innovation ecosystem in the region, will undoubtedly contribute to this effort with its infrastructure and research laboratories."

The MoU was signed in Kosice during Dr. Danilak's visit to Slovakia. "It has been my genuine pleasure to watch the information in the media about Radoslav Danilak as one of the world's most respected hardware architects in recent years," said Dr. Frantisek Jakab, Associate Professor, and Director of the TECHNICOM University Science Park, TUKE. "I see him standing with me in front of the door of Professor Jelsina's office, which led the subject of computer architecture. I remember how Radoslav held drawings in his hands with the architecture solution of a special arithmetic coprocessor, the solution which he wanted to show to the professor and which he had previously shown and described to me in detail. Therefore, I was really pleased when I had the opportunity to welcome Radoslav and his team in person at the TECHNICOM University Science Park of the TUKE and discuss his future plans and opportunities in collaboration with the Technical University."

TUKE is notable for its engineering and technology departments. Tachyum gives their talented faculty and students the opportunity to work with the latest world-class HPC technology for open-source public projects and scientific research activities, as well as active involvement in the construction of supercomputer centers.

"There are not many people in Slovakia who deal with microelectronics or chip architecture. There are world-class talents in Kosice, who do not want to move to Bratislava, so it is very important for us to cooperate with this community and help them to realize their potential," said Dr. Radoslav Danilak, founder and CEO of Tachyum. "We expect that our cooperation will boost the community growth."

For a complete list of partnering universities please see https://www.tachyum.com/resources/partners.

Prodigy has the potential to create unrivaled computational speed and vast energy saving capabilities for hyperscale, OEM, telecommunication, private cloud and government markets. Prodigy's 10x lower processor core power consumption will dramatically cut carbon emissions associated with data center usage. Prodigy's 3x lower cost (at equivalent performance) will also translate to billions of dollars in annual savings to hyperscalers like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba.

Tachyum's Prodigy processor can run HPC applications, convolutional AI, explainable AI, general AI, bio AI, and spiking neural networks, plus normal data center workloads, on a single homogeneous processor platform, using existing standard programming models. Without Prodigy, hyperscale data centers must use a combination of disparate CPU, GPU and TPU hardware, for these different workloads, creating inefficiency, expense, and the complexity of separate supply and maintenance infrastructures. Using specific hardware dedicated to each type of workload (e.g. data center, AI, HPC), results in underutilization of hardware resources, and more challenging programming, support, and maintenance. Prodigy's ability to seamlessly switch among these various workloads dramatically changes the competitive landscape and the economics of data centers.

Follow Tachyum

https://twitter.com/tachyum

https://www.linkedin.com/company/tachyum

https://www.facebook.com/Tachyum/

About Tachyum

Tachyum is transforming AI, HPC, public and private cloud data center markets with Prodigy, the world's first Universal Processor that delivers industry-leading performance, cost, and power efficiency for both specialty and general-purpose computing. When Prodigy processors are provisioned in a hyperscale data center, they enable all AI, HPC, and general-purpose applications to run on one hardware infrastructure, saving companies billions of dollars per year. A fully functional Prodigy emulation system is currently available to select customers and partners for early testing and software development. With data centers currently consuming over 3% of the planet's electricity, predicted to be 10% by 2025, the ultra-low power Prodigy Universal Processor is critical, if we want to continue doubling worldwide data center capacity every four years. Tachyum, Co-founded by Dr. Radoslav Danilak with its flagship product Prodigy, is marching towards tape out targeting Q2 2022, with software emulations and an FPGA-based emulator running native Linux available to early adopters. The company is building the world's fastest 64 AI exaflops supercomputer in 2022 in the EU with Prodigy chips. Tachyum has offices in the United States and Slovakia. For more information, visit https://www.tachyum.com/.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005150/en/

Contacts:

Mark Smith

JPR Communications

818-398-1424

marks@jprcom.com
HEIDELBERG, Germany and CAMBRIDGE, Mass, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Novaliq, a biopharmaceutical company focusing on first- and best-in-class ocular therapeutics based on the unique EyeSol water-free technology, today announced key results of the second pivotal Phase 3 trial (ESSENCE-2) evaluating the investigational drug CyclASol for the treatment of dry eye disease (DED).

CyclASol is a topical, anti-inflammatory and immunomodulating ophthalmic solution, containing 0.1% cyclosporine in EyeSol, developed for the treatment of DED. The ESSENCE-2 trial is a multicenter, randomized, double-masked, vehicle-controlled clinical trial in 834 subjects to assess efficacy, safety, and tolerability of CyclASol for the treatment of signs and symptoms of DED in patients not responding to artificial tears. ESSENCE-2 is the second pivotal trial and designed to replicate ESSENCE-1, a multicenter, randomized, double-masked, vehicle-controlled clinical trial in 328 subjects in the same indication.

CyclASol demonstrated superior effects over its vehicle on the primary sign endpoint, improvement of total corneal fluorescein staining (tCFS) at day 29 (p-value = 0.0278). The vast majority of patients receiving CyclASol (71.6%) responded within four weeks with a clinically meaningful improvement of =3 grades in total corneal staining. The proportion of responders was significantly higher compared to vehicle-treated patients (p = 0.0002). Responders showed also statistically significant improvements in a variety of symptoms compared to non-responders at day 29.

All key prespecified objective sign endpoints such as conjunctival staining, proportion of central corneal staining responders, and Schirmer responders (=10mm), showed clinically meaningful improvements and statistical significance over vehicle with an early onset of action starting after two weeks of dosing.

CyclASol demonstrated clinically relevant improvement over baseline for a variety of subjective symptom endpoints. The analysis for the primary, subjective symptom endpoint at day 29, Eye Dryness Score (VAS), showed that the improvement in CyclASol was comparable to vehicle.

The safety and tolerability of CyclASol was further confirmed in the ESSENCE-2 trial. The number of all adverse events (AEs) and ocular AEs, including instillation site reactions, were low. AEs were generally of mild intensity and similarly distributed between the two treatment groups. The drop comfort score showed excellent tolerability and was notably comparable in both treatment groups. More than 75% of patients rated their satisfaction with the CyclASol treatment positive or neutral at the end of the 4-week ESSENCE-2 trial.

"These results are extremely encouraging. Based upon two Phase 3 studies CyclASol has the potential to treat both, the clinical signs and symptoms of dry eye disease.," said John D. Sheppard, MD, MMSc, FACS, professor of ophthalmology at Eastern Virginia Medical School, and Mid-Atlantic Medical Director for Eye Care Partners. "A clean tolerability profile with a rapid onset of action are attributes of the water-free EyeSol technology offering the most novel vehicle in eye care."

The results of ESSENCE-2 are consistent with data from earlier studies, including the first pivotal phase 3 trial ESSENCE-1 [1] and the phase 2 trial [2], confirming that CyclASol has the potential to become the most potent anti-inflammatory dry eye disease treatment with an early onset of action, excellent safety, tolerability, and eyedrop comfort.

Novaliq will discuss the ESSENCE-2 results and next steps to submit a New Drug Application (NDA) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the near future. Novaliq will also work with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and other regulatory agencies to initiate the regulatory approval process in geographies outside the U.S..

"Dry eye is a condition with a wide range of symptoms leading to chronic ocular surface damage and interfering with a patient's vision and quality of life. Current treatment options have limitations. Prescribers and patients expect a fast acting and comfortable upon instillation drug addressing the root cause of the disease and being significantly better than OTC choices.", said Dr Christian Roesky, Chief Executive Officer Novaliq. "CyclASol's product profile has the potential to fill this therapeutic gap. We will continue to work with regulatory authorities worldwide to make this innovation available to millions of patients suffering from this ocular disease."

About Dry Eye Disease

Dry eye disease, one of the most common ocular surface disorders, impacts quality of life for millions of people. Although a multifactorial chronic disease, inflammation and immunologic processes play a key role in the pathology of dry eye. Infiltration of immune cells in the lacrimal glands, meibomian glands, conjunctiva, and cornea are dominant characteristics in dry eye disease. The inflammatory vicious cycle includes tear film instability and hyperosmolarity, inflammation and damage of the ocular surface tissues, the corneal and conjunctival cells. Intrinsic and extrinsic factors cause stress to the ocular surface, which accelerate the cycle and, in turn, exacerbate dry eye.[3]

About CyclASol Ophthalmic Solution

CyclASol is a topical anti-inflammatory and immunomodulating ophthalmic solution, containing 0.1% cyclosporine in EyeSol, developed for the treatment of dry eye disease. The multi-dose, preservative-free, smaller and more physiologic droplet size profile provides unique clinical benefits and outstanding tolerability. Notably, an improvement in visual function associated with a clinically significant reduction of corneal staining, as shown in clinical trials, differentiates CyclASol from existing therapies and are published in Cornea: The Journal of Cornea and External Disease .[1] Results from a dose-finding, vehicle-controlled Phase 2 clinical trial with an open-label comparator arm (Restasis, Abbvie) evaluating CyclASol were published in Ophthalmology . [2] The clinical development program for CyclASol is expected to conclude with an ongoing multi-center, open-label, single-arm, 12-month safety extension trial (ESSENCE-2 OLE).

About Novaliq

Novaliq is a biopharmaceutical company focusing on the development and commercialization of first- and best-in-class ocular therapeutics based on EyeSol, the worldwide first water-free technology.

EyeSol is Novaliq's proprietary water-free technology using ultrapure semifluorinated alkanes (SFAs) that are physically, chemically, and physiologically inert with excellent biocompatibility and a very good safety profile. Novaliq offers an industry-leading portfolio addressing today's unmet medical needs of millions of patients with eye diseases. CyclASol is the first drug product evaluated in a phase 3 clinical program utilizing EyeSol as a vehicle to enhance topical bioavailability of the drug on the ocular surface and at the same time provide an outstanding comfort and tolerability. Novaliq GmbH is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany and Novaliq Inc. has an office in Cambridge, MA, USA. The long-term shareholder is dievini Hopp BioTech holding GmbH & Co. KG, an active investor in Life and Health Sciences companies. More on www.novaliq.com.



References

Sheppard JD et al. A Water-free 0.1% Cyclosporine A Solution for Treatment of Dry Eye Disease: Results of the Randomized Phase II/III ESSENCE Study. Cornea, Volume 40 (2021) 1290-1297 Wirta DL et al. A Clinical Phase II Study to Assess Efficacy, Safety, and Tolerability of Waterfree Cyclosporine Formulation for Treatment of Dry Eye Disease. Ophthalmology, Volume 126 (2019) 793-800 Yamaguchi T. Inflammatory Response in Dry Eye. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci (2018); 59(14):DES192-DES199; Bron AJ et al. TFOS DEWS II pathophysiology report. Ocul. Surf. 15 (2017) 438-510

Any product/brand names and/or logos are trademarks of the respective owners.

 2021 Novaliq GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany.

Logo- https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1359866/Novaliq_Logo.jpg

Novaliq Media Contact:

Simone Angstmann-Mehr

info@novaliq.com

+49 6221 50259-0
RAMAPO is a telecommunication infrastructure contractor providing services to the major wireless carriers, tower owners, OEM's and government agencies for 25 Years; Empire Provides EV Charging Management Solutions Including Customer Services Issues

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Green Stream Holdings Inc. (OTC PINK:GSFI) ("the Company") (https://greensolarutility.com), an emerging leader in the solar utility and finance space, previously announced on July 2 and 6, 2021, announced that it has entered into a Joint Venture (JV) with Premiere Empire Energy, LLC, ("Premiere") to provide electric charging stations to both company's clients. Today it announces that it has entered into an MSA Agreement with RAMAPO to work on the project.

RAMAPO will furnish and install all equipment, installation costs and associated rebates (as available) for EV charging stations and shall be compensated for all work required for the completed installation of electric vehicle chargers by the JV. After completion of EV installation, the ownership of the charging equipment shall be transferred to "customer".

RAMAPO has a 25 year history of satisfying clients, Ramapo Communication Corp.

Specializes in providing construction and maintenance services for the wireless communication and fiber optic industry. Our expertise in all aspects of telecom facilities makes us the ideal choice for a wide range of build-to-suit projects for the wireless industry. For more information go to: https://www.ramapocommunication.com

Premiere provides EV charging management solutions made easy with premium customer service to its clients. It allows their customers to take advantage of valuable rebates available under federal and state sustainability programs; to control access, set pricing and review real-time data on station usage and performance; and to get help when needed, day or night, with 24/7 support for their customers and their drivers/customers.

CEO James DiPrima said: "This JV should be a substantial revenue driver for both companies. We will build solar and now electric car charging stations for our and their clients, all the while we will be helping them reducing their carbon foot prints. We will split the net profits on a 50/50 basis. We hope to deploy this model nationwide to give consumers options and helping gas stations reduce their carbon foot print."

About Premiere Empire Energy:

Premier Empire Energy is a leading New York Energy Supply Company (ESCO). Premier Empire Energy, provides energy services to small business, commercial, and residential customers in deregulated energy markets. We strive to provide our customers with the most competitive electricity and natural gas rates, in an effort to become New York's favorite energy supplier!?? ?

We look forward to providing our clients with our most competitive electric and natural gas rates, and becoming their favorite commercial energy supplier!

An Energy Service Company, commonly referred to as ESCO, is a licensed company that can purchase electricity and natural gas for customers. ESCOs, also referred to as third party supplier, operate in deregulated markets. ESCOs take over the Supply section of a customer's utility bill. Our customers will still be a customer of their Utility, as the utility will be in charge of the delivery of energy and maintenance of the customer's meter and wires.

At Premier Empire Energy, we pride ourselves on providing outstanding customer service with an honest, educational, and transparent approach to energy sales. We are committed to providing you with the information your home and business needs to make informed, efficient decisions about energy products and services. It is our goal to foster long term customer relationships that are maintained by open communication and flexibility.

About Green Stream Finance, Inc.

Green Stream Finance, Inc., a solar utility and finance company with satellite offices in Malibu, CA and New York, NY, is focused on exploiting currently unmet markets in the solar energy space, and is currently licensed in California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Colorado, Hawaii, and Canada. The Company's next-generation solar greenhouses constructed and managed by Green Rain Solar, LLC, a Nevada-based division, utilize proprietary greenhouse technology and trademarked design developed by world-renowned architect Mr. Antony Morali. The Company is currently targeting high-growth solar market segments for its advanced solar greenhouse and advanced solar battery products. The Company has a growing footprint in the significantly underserved solar market in New York City where it is targeting 50,000 to 100,000 square feet of rooftop space for the installation of its solar panels. Green Stream is looking to forge key partnership with major investment groups, brokers, and private investors in order to capitalize on a variety of unique investment opportunities in the commercial solar energy markets. The Company is dedicated to becoming a major player in this critical space. Through its innovative solar product offerings and industry partnerships, the Company is well-positioned to become a significant player in the solar space.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and is subject to the safe harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. That includes the possibility that the business outlined in this press release cannot be concluded for some reason. That could be as a result of technical, installation, permitting or other problems that were not anticipated. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Green Stream Finance, Inc. to be materially different from the statements made herein. Except for any obligation under the U.S. federal securities laws, Green Stream Finance, Inc. undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For All Inquiries Contact:

+1 (424) 280-4096

president@greenstreamfinance.com

Website: greensolarutility.com

Phone number: (646) 669-7007

SOURCE: Green Stream Holdings Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678804/Green-Stream-Holdings-Inc-Enters-Into-EV-Charging-Station-Installation-and-Management-Agreement-With-Ramapo-Communications-Corp-RAMAPO-For-Companys-JV-With-Premiere-Empire-Energy-To-Install-Electronic-Charging-Stations
Cloud DX Announces Multi-Year Contract with Ontario Clinic

Combining Telehealth and Remote Monitoring, Cloud DX's Connected Health enables the clinic to deliver virtual physical rehabilitation safely and efficiently in patient homes

News in Summary

Pulmonary rehabilitation helps patients with chronic respiratory diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and persistent COVID-19 respiratory symptoms (post-COVID conditions).

Cloud DX will supply Connected Health hardware and services for at-home pulmonary rehabilitation including remote group education and vital sign monitoring for three years, starting January 2022.

In Ontario, 23,600 patients per year are hospitalized for COPD 1 and ~78,000 have post-COVID complications including breathing problems and fatigue. 2

Cloud DX continues to be the preferred choice of respiratory experts for virtual care and remote monitoring.

WATERLOO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Cloud DX (TSXV:CDX) (OTCQB:CDXFF), Cloud DX announces a three year agreement with an independent Ontario clinic to supply Connected Health hardware, telehealth connectivity, and remote monitoring services for at-home pulmonary rehabilitation. The need for safe at-home pulmonary rehabilitation for those with severe COPD was already acute before 2020, and now the province is faced with tens of thousands of patients with persistent shortness of breath and lung damage due to COVID-19. The company's Connected Health will allow patients to participate in rehabilitation sessions safely at home, including group classes through its secure app. The client plans to broadcast a minimum of four rehabilitation sessions daily. Critical vital signs, such as pulse oxygen readings, will be gathered simultaneously and patient success will be measured accurately and automatically tracked within the Connected Health platform. The program launches in January 2022 with Connected Health kits deployed to patients on a rotating eight-to-twelve-week basis. Cloud DX charges an upfront fee for each Connected Health kit and ongoing monthly fees for connectivity and support services.

Robert Kaul, CEO and Founder of Cloud DX states: "Cloud DX has delivered state-of-the-art virtual care for patients with chronic respiratory disease since 2019, when we began the virtual outpatient COPD program at Markham Stouffville Hospital. Our extensive experience enables us to deliver effective, efficient, and patient-focused virtual pulmonary rehabilitation programs. The need has never been greater, and Cloud DX is proud to be able to deliver this important new care modality during the ongoing public health emergency."

This contract follows recent announcements, of 2,400 patient deployment by Hamilton Health Sciences and landmark partnership with Medtronic Canada, as another step towards the company's break-even goal of ~10,000 patients enrolled in Connected Health.

Sources: 1 Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2 Covid19-sciencetable.ca and Rehabilitation after COVID-19", MayoClinic.org

About Cloud DX

Accelerating virtual healthcare, Cloud DX is on a mission to make healthcare better for everyone. Our Connected Health remote patient monitoring platform is used by healthcare enterprises and care teams across North America to virtually manage chronic disease, enable aging in place, and deliver hospital-quality post-surgical care in the home. Our partners achieve better healthcare and patient outcomes, reduce the need for hospitalization or re-admission, and reduce healthcare delivery costs through more efficient use of resources. Cloud DX is the co-winner of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a 2021 Edison Award winner, a Fast Company "World Changing Idea" finalist, and one of "Canada's Ten Most Prominent Telehealth Providers." In 2021, Cloud DX became an exclusive partner of Medtronic Canada.

Follow Cloud DX online at: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram

Cloud DX Investor Site https://ir.clouddx.com/overview/default.aspx

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

# # #

For media inquiries please contact:

Janine Scott

Marketing Lead

888-543-0944

janine.scott@CloudDX.com

For investor inquiries please contact:

Jay Bedard

Cloud DX Investor Relations

647-881-8418

jay.bedard@CloudDX.com

SOURCE: Cloud DX Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678829/Cloud-DX-Announces-Multi-Year-Contract-with-Ontario-Clinic
- Real-time glucose data and alerts from the world's first and only long-term CGM system can now be remotely monitored by friends and family of Eversense users on Android and iOS operating system

Senseonics Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: SENS) a medical technology company focused on the development and manufacturing of long-term, implantable continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems for people with diabetes, today announced it received CE mark of the Eversense NOW Remote Monitoring App for the Android Operating System. The Eversense NOW iOS platform has previously been approved and is currently available in Europe.

"We're pleased to offer yet another tool for our Eversense users in Europe, now enabling access to this important feature for all our customers," said Tim Goodnow, PhD, President and CEO of Senseonics. "With the Eversense NOW app, Eversense users can enjoy the added peace of mind that comes with knowing friends and family can remotely view real-time glucose data, see trend graphs, and receive real-time glucose alerts from anywhere."

The Eversense NOW Remote Monitoring app for the Android operating system is expected to be available starting in the first quarter of 2022 on the Google Play Store.

About Eversense

The Eversense XL Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) System is indicated for continually measuring glucose levels in persons age 18 and older with diabetes for up to 180 days. The system is intended to complement, not replace, fingerstick blood glucose (BG) measurements for diabetes treatment decisions. The sensor insertion and removal procedures are performed by a health care provider. The Eversense XL CGM System is a prescription device; patients should talk to their health care provider to learn more. For important safety information, see https://global.eversensediabetes.com/safety-info/.

About Senseonics

Senseonics Holdings, Inc. is a medical technology company focused on the development and manufacturing of glucose monitoring products designed to transform lives in the global diabetes community with differentiated, long-term implantable glucose management technology. Senseonics' CGM systems, Eversense and Eversense XL, include a small sensor inserted completely under the skin that communicates with a smart transmitter worn over the sensor. The glucose data are automatically sent every 5 minutes to a mobile app on the user's smartphone.

Forward Looking Statements

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for Senseonics, including the availability and market acceptance of the Eversense NOW Remote Monitoring app, and other statements containing the words "believe," "expect," "intend," "may," "projects," "will," "planned," and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: uncertainties in the development and regulatory approval processes and timing for the 180-day Eversense product, uncertainties inherent in the commercial launch and commercial expansion of the Eversense product, uncertainties inherent in the transition of commercialization responsibilities to Ascensia Diabetes Care, uncertainties in insurer, regulatory and administrative processes and decisions, uncertainties in the duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, and such other factors as are set forth in the risk factors detailed in Senseonics' Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, Senseonics' Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2021 and Senseonics' other filings with the SEC under the heading "Risk Factors." In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent Senseonics' views as of the date hereof. Senseonics anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause Senseonics' views to change. However, while Senseonics may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Senseonics specifically disclaims any obligation to do so except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Senseonics' views as of any date subsequent to the date hereof.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005266/en/

Contacts:

Senseonics Investor Contact

Lynn Lewis or Philip Taylor

Investor Relations

415-937-5406

investors@senseonics.com
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hygiene and health company Essity has acquired the orthopedic specialist company AquaCast Liner, a provider of waterproof cast liners on the US market. Growing through acquisitions in Medical Solutions is a key strategic priority for Essity and with this acquisition the company is strengthening its leading market position in fracture management while extending its portfolio offering in the waterproof and water-resistant cast segment. The purchase price is not material relative to Essity's market capitalization and is not disclosed.

AquaCast Liner is a privately held company founded in 2012, based in Newark, Delaware. The product portfolio consists of waterproof rolls and hip spica liner products under the AquaCast Liner brand, which are sold to orthopedics professionals to be used in combination with fiberglass casting.

"The acquisition strengthens our position and offering in the orthopedics immobilization segment in the US. AquaCast Liner's product range is a good complement to our synthetic casting range and water resistant undercast material Delta-Dry," says Ulrika Kolsrud, President Health and Medical Solutions, Essity.

Essity is the global market leader in fracture management (casting, splinting, stockinette and padding) sold under the Delta-Cast brand.

CONTACT:

For further information, please contact:

Per Lorentz, Vice President Corporate Communications, +46 733 13 30 55, per.lorentz@essity.com

Johan Karlsson, Vice President Investor Relations, +46 705 11 15 81, johan.ir.karlsson@essity.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/essity/r/essity-acquires-us-medical-solutions-company-within-orthopedics,c3476433

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SINGAPORE, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On December 21, H.E. Justin Sun, after his visit to the Caribbean region, arrived at the WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, where he has been confirmed to his post. As reported, H.E. Justin Sun may reside in Geneva and hold meetings with relevant WTO officials. Recently he was officially appointed as the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Granada to the WTO and was authorized to represent Grenada at the WTO meetings during his mandate.

H.E. Justin Sun founded TRON, one of the top three public chains in the world, in 2018. TRON now boasts over 67 million users and a full-fledged ecosystem, which is a representative chain of global blockchain industry. Therefore, according to H.E. Justin Sun, he would leverage his resources and advantages in digital technologies and the digital economy, which have accrued from his years of experience in the digital field, to fully commit himself to supporting the growth of Grenada and its neighboring economies.

Grenada is situated to the south of the Caribbean, with agriculture and tourism as its mainstays. According to the Grenada government, the appointment of H.E. Justin Sun, a veteran in the digital field, as Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the WTO, is conducive to the digitization of its trade, investment, and governance.

All major countries around the world are now speeding up their efforts in digital technology to deliver wider connectivity of information, capital, talents, and credit investigation, etc. so that it can be a greater boon to the growth of the digital economy and socio-economic development, etc. The rapidly-growing blockchain technology which is the base of digital society, has now been widely applied in digital finance, IoT, smart manufacturing, supply chain management, digital asset trading, among many other sectors.

Media Contact

Name: Jessica ZHANG

E-mail: jessica.zhang01@tron.network

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Will use funds to fuel the expansion of its SaaS platform for rental real estate

TheHouseMonk, a B2B SaaS company focused on the rental real estate industry, announced its raise of $5M from Aurum PropTech Ltd as a combination of equity and debt. TheHouseMonk plans to deploy these funds to fuel its expansion into Europe and US, as well as consolidate its position in Asia, which serves as its core market today. The company also plans to hire aggressively into its tech team to build advanced AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine learning) capabilities, and to strengthen its overall product portfolio.

"We are very excited to partner with Aurum PropTech as we continue building the de-facto platform for the rental real estate industry. Adoption of technology has increased significantly due to the pandemic as landlords, property managers and tenants are looking for digital solutions to manage their relationship and our platform is perfectly positioned to serve this growing need in the market," said Ajay Kumar, Co-Founder, and CEO of TheHouseMonk

"Over the past few months, we have been on an inorganic growth spree and TheHouseMonk is another addition to our list of products and services enabling the creation of the entire PropTech value chain. We find TheHouseMonk as a great fit for enhancing efficiency in the residential rental business. It provides a compelling proposition for property owners and managers to monetize, maintain and manage their rental portfolio through its technology platform," said Ashish Deora, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aurum Ventures, the parent company of Aurum PropTech.

Fuelled by the Millennial and Gen Z behavioral pattern and growth of the IT-ITES industry, rental housing is booming. It has created a huge market for organized and new-age coliving and student housing players who are looking to scale up their business. Real Estate Private Equity companies are making large investments in buying single-family rental properties, while co-living and student housing operators have raised significant capital from venture capital firms recently. TheHouseMonk's software solution is an ideal platform for these players to organize and scale up their businesses.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211220005334/en/

Contacts:

Media contact: Shan Elangovan (shan@thehousemonk.com or +91- 95782 10141)
"Methods, Compositions and Devices for Treating Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder"

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Lobe Sciences Ltd. (CSE: LOBE) (OTCQB: LOBEF) ("Lobe" or the "Company") is pleased to announce its patent-pending therapeutic regimen that has been designed for treating Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been published by the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Philip Young, CEO & Director, commented, "The publication of our PCT patent application demonstrates our continued commitment to developing novel treatments for diseases where there is no approved treatment. Our partners at the University of Miami are continuing to run in vivo tests on these patent-pending combination therapies. I look forward to updating the investor community on our progress and plans for 2022."

The Company also announced today the resignation of Leighton Bocking from its Board of Directors for personal reasons. The Company wishes to thank Leighton for his many years of service and contributions during his tenure as a Director of the Company. The Company will immediately begin a search for a new independent board member to replace Leighton.

About Lobe Sciences Ltd.

Lobe Sciences is a life sciences company focused on psychedelic medicines. The Company, through collaborations with industry-leading partners, is engaged in drug research and development using psychedelic compounds and the development of innovative devices and delivery mechanisms to improve mental health and wellness.

For further information please contact:

Lobe Sciences Ltd.

Philip J Young, CEO

info@lobesciences.com

Tel: (949) 505-5623

NEITHER THE CSE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER HAVE REVIEWED OR ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACCURACY OR ADEQUACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Disclaimer for Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to the future operations of the Company and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will", "may", "should", "anticipate", "expects" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release, including statements regarding the future plans and objectives of the Company, research and development using psychedelic compounds, and the development of innovative devices and delivery mechanisms to improve mental health and wellness, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. This does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of offers to buy any securities. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers are cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of the forward-looking statements may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including changes to the regulatory environment;, that the Company's drug research and development activities may be unsuccessful; that drugs and medical devices produced by, or on behalf of, the Company, may not work in the manner intended or at all, and may subject the Company to product liability or other liability claims; that the Company may not be able to attain the Company's corporate goals and objectives; and other risk factors detailed in the Company's continuous disclosure filings from time to time, as available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. As a result, the Company cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize and the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made only as of the date of this news release and the Company does not intend to update any of the included forward-looking statements except as expressly required by applicable Canadian securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108169
CAESAREA, Israel, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Filterlex Medical, a cardiovascular medical device startup, announced today that it has been selected to receive 7 Million equity investment from the European Innovation Council Accelerator (EIC). The EIC equity investment will be a part of Filterlex's next round of financing. This combined funding will go towards clinical program expansion, regulatory approvals, and commercialization of the CAPTIS full-body embolic protection system to help transform left-heart procedures.

Following a rigorous screening process under Horizon 2020, Filterlex's innovative technology was selected as one of only 99 winning companies out of over 1000, from 21 countries to receive EIC funding from a total of 627 Million available. Entrants must meet EIC criteria for excellence, impact and risk-level, and by the time they reach the final selection stage are considered to be world-class, high-impact innovations. Filterlex was also one of only 19% of companies run by a female CEO.

The EIC investment commitment follows Filterlex's recent rapid closing of a US $6 Million series A1 investment round in November 2021. The company is also a past recipient of a 2.1 Million EU Horizon 2019 grant, which was pivotal in financing the CAPTIS first-in-human study.

Founder and CEO, Sigal Eli, said: "We are delighted to be selected to receive EIC funding for the second time. This EU validation will help us to further advance our technology and turn our vision into a reality to make the CAPTIS a best-in-class device for reducing the risk of stroke and other complications during catheter-based structural heart procedures such as TAVR."

Filterlex is currently enrolling patients to its successfully ongoing CAPTIS first-in-human study in Israel.

About Filterlex

Filterlex Medical Ltd. is a cardiovascular medical device startup developing the CAPTIS, a full-body embolic protection device. In 2016, Filterlex joined Alon MedTech Ventures incubator, owned by Dr. Shimon Eckhouse, a leading entrepreneur and investor in the field of medical devices. The company's founders have vast clinical knowledge and extensive experience in medical device development, commercialization, and marketing. For more information, please visit www.filterlex.com.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 881076

Press Contact

Sigal Eli

CEO

Filterlex Medical Ltd.

sigal@filterlex.com
Finix provides customized and innovative payment solutions that allows global SaaS platforms to turn transactions into revenue instantly

SAN ANTONIO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the North America payment infrastructure industry, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Finix with the 2021 North America Enabling Technology Leadership Award for its payment infrastructure. Finix's world-class payments management solution facilitates global SaaS platforms to turn transactions into revenue instantly. Finix is a leading American company focused on providing innovative financial tools to build and scale its customers' payments infrastructure with the latest trends in the industry, ensuring high-quality and cost-effective operations.

Click here to view the full multimedia page: https://best-practices.frost.com/finix/

Finix creates solutions and services that serve the ever-evolving financial needs of e-commerce platforms with best-in-class secure payments and robust features that enable platform-based businesses to accept, manage, and simplify payments. As a result, the company allows businesses to achieve seamless operations and business growth by earning revenue rapidly with reliable and cost-effective services.

"Finix offers an embedded financial solution that allows businesses to process, manage, and monetize payments from their customers," said Jesse Hollander, Senior Consultant at Frost & Sullivan. "Finix focuses specifically on platform-based companies. These businesses have entirely different needs from merchants, mainly due to scale and complexity. While merchants only have to worry about their own payments, platform businesses are responsible for the payments of thousands of merchants."

With the growing demand for sophisticated e-commerce financial solutions, the payment facilitation industry is considerably expanding, and Finix is establishing itself as a reliable provider of innovative developer-friendly payments and full-stack solutions despite the challenging global economic conditions. The company has demonstrated great adaptability to the dynamic financial market by adopting groundbreaking digital technologies and updating its portfolio of payment management tools.

In addition, Finix provides first-class support to help customers every step of the way and guarantee a smooth user experience. The company supports clients before, during, and after executing the product to guarantee a customized approach and sustainable business growth with continuing education, business insights, timely advice, and technical support.

"Finix also supports clients during and after implementation. Clients' needs vary greatly, and Finix leverages its expertise to advise them and guide them through the process," noted Jeffrey Castilla, Best Practices Research Team Leader at Frost & Sulivan. "Finix emphasizes a 'birth to growth' approach that allows clients to future-proof their payments stacks and evolve with Finix over time. Companies of all sizes start out using Finix's APIs and dashboard to accept payments and onboard merchants; then, as they grow and their payment facilitation needs change, they can migrate to full payments ownership or custom funds flow."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to one company developing a pioneering technology that enhances current products and enables new product and application development. The award recognizes the high market acceptance potential of the recipient's technology.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in various regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analyses, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

Contact:

Lindsey Whitaker

P: 1.210.477.8457

E: Lindsey.Whitaker@frost.com

Carolyn Reynolds

E: carolyn.reynolds@finixpayments.com

About Finix

Finix is on a mission to create the most accessible financial services ecosystem in history. To do so, we are building the global operating system for fintech, starting with payments. From start-ups to publicly traded companies, Finix offers everything SaaS companies need to build a world-class payments experience. Finix is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco with funding from American Express Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Homebrew, Inspired Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Visa, and others. To learn more, visit www.finixpayments.com.

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Likewize announces strategic acquisition of Optus Insurance Services and 15-year exclusive supply agreement with one of Australia's largest mobile phone operators

DALLAS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Likewize Corp. ("Likewize") today announced that it has entered into an agreement to buy 100% of the shares of Optus Insurance Services Pty Limited ("OIS"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Singtel Optus Pty Limited ("Optus"). Likewize also announced that it signed a fifteen-year agreement to exclusively provide Optus customers with device insurance services, plus device replacement and upgrade programs. The total consideration under these agreements is A$200 million (approximately US$140 million).

Likewize is the world's leading tech protection and support company, committed to making every tech problem painless. Optus is one of Australia's largest mobile phone carriers.

Likewize has transformed in recent years to be the world's leading tech protection and support company. During this transformation Likewize has made significant investments in technology platforms, made several strategic acquisitions to broaden its service portfolio and sold off operations in non-strategic markets. Today, Likewize has the most comprehensive product portfolio that ensures they protect customers against every eventuality, whether a device is lost, stolen, damaged, malfunctioning, in need of an upgrade, or someone doesn't know how to do something - Likewize has the solution.

Rod Millar, Likewize CEO said, "This is a very significant acquisition for us. It strengthens our device protection portfolio, creates a long-term partnership with one of Australia's leading mobile-carriers, and increases our ability to scale and deliver unprecedented levels of service to all customers in that market. We believe that this acquisition, together with several, recent large customer wins, position Likewize to continue to deliver strong growth moving forward."

Matt Williams, Optus Managing Director Products and Revenue, said "The structure of the arrangement also enables Optus to provide our customers with new, more flexible, and more complete products for device repairs, upgrades and replacements, provided through our partnership with Likewize, the world's leading tech protection company. This means Optus will go further in meeting customer needs, expanding our offering, and growing this part of our business accordingly."

The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of the 2022 calendar year, subject to regulatory approval.

About Likewize

When your tech goes wrong, Likewize makes it right. Likewize offers the most comprehensive protection against any technology disruption. Whether a device is lost, stolen, damaged, malfunctioning, in need of an upgrade or the user does not know how to do something, Likewize provides the solution. Trusted by the world's largest brands, telcos, and banks, to look after approximately a billion of their customers. We operate in over 30 countries, resolving 250 million problems each year across insurance, warranty, repairs, trade-ins, re-commerce and premium tech support. For more information, please visit: www.likewize.com.

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WATERLOO, Ontario, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- illumiSonics Inc., a medical tissue imaging company, announced today the appointment of Jochen Schweizer as COO. The company is further strengthening the executive team as they commercialize their cancer detection and diagnostics products using the proprietary PARS imaging platform technology.

Mr. Schweizer previously held executive positions at Danaher/Leica, responsible for the Microsurgery Portfolio in the business unit medical, defining strategy, target portfolio and product roadmap; was Sr. Director Product Management Light Microscopy at Carl Zeiss (Shanghai) Co. Ltd; and prior to that had technical management roles at SVS-VISTEK GmbH and Stemmer Imaging.

"Mr. Schweizer brings his extensive and world class experience in the field of optical imaging to illumiSonics. This happens at a critical time as we are developing our first product to market. Besides his knowledge and experience, Mr. Schweizer shares essential values with the rest of the team, he is passionate for making a positive change to our society. We are fortunate to have him in our team," said Dr. Parsin Haji Reza Chairman.

"Mr. Schweizer's rich commercialization history in micro-surgery, sales, product management and software development will add significant depth to the team as we enable cancer surgeons and pathologists to get direct to digital pathology during surgery, preventing second surgeries due to positive surgical margins," said Rocky Ganske CEO.

"I am excited to join a young, highly skilled and engaged team, to realize the full potential of Photo Acoustic Remote Sensing (PARS), and to make a positive impact on the health system. We will completely change the 100-year-old histo-pathology workflow and drive the transition of cancer diagnostics from a day/week workflow into intraoperative diagnostics. PARS from illumiSonics enables the acquisition of H&E stained histo-pathology images in a few minutes: contact free, without tissue preparation, without staining, without microscope - right in the operation room. We do that for better patient outcomes, enhanced efficiency in the OR and reduced health-care costs." said Jochen Schweizer.

illumiSonics' proprietary PARS photoacoustic remote sensing technology is a revolution in optical imaging. illumiSonics created PARS, a non-contact, high-resolution, label-free, non-destructive reflection-mode microscope. PARS captures all three light-matter interactions (scattering, absorption, and emission) to give unprecedented 3D images of fresh and living tissues, which provides incredible flexibility in how it can be deployed.

About illumiSonics

illumiSonics develops, patents and commercializes PARS advanced optical imaging systems for a wide range of pre-clinical and clinical applications. Founded in 2014, illumiSonics is a privately held medical device company with offices and R&D facilities Waterloo, ON, Canada. The company's executive team of medical device leaders holds an excellent track record of successfully building companies and improving outcomes for clinicians and patients. The technical R&D teams are the pioneers in PARS technology. illumiSonics works with market leading partners to develop systems for specific applications.

Contact:

For Investors and Media:

Rocky Ganske

CEO, illumiSonics Inc.

rocky@illumisonics.com

519-279-6824

www.illumisonics.com

Related Images











Image 1: PARS H&E Image





Mohs Skin Cancer Image









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DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei's popular design awards aims to bring together talented artists from all over the world to push the boundaries of design for a new era of mobile aesthetics

Huawei, the world's leading technology company, has announced the winners of its HUAWEI Mobile Services (HMS) design contest - The Next Design Awards 2021. An annual competition in its sixth year, it aims to bring together talented artists from across the globe to create unique and inspiring content for smartphone, tablet and smartwatch personalisation via HUAWEI Themes.

With over 1,300 registered entrants in Europe and more than 3,000 submitted entries globally, of which creatives from 21+ European countries participated, the entrants showcased the very best of tech design under the theme 'let inspiration flow'. Huawei has a number of design mediums available to users to personalise their devices, and the awards allowed entrants to get involved by creating their own innovative designs that were judged by a carefully selected panel.

The Next Design Awards 2021 honoured creatives across seven categories - Phone Themes, Watch Faces, Cities in Bloom, Foldable Screen Themes, Enjoy the Moment, Original IP and Wallpapers - with amazing prizes up for grabs including the Grand Prize, Stars of Tomorrow, International Artists, and Amazing Animators, with a total prize pool of US $200,000.

Dr. Jaime Gonzalo, Vice President of Huawei Mobile Services Europe commented: "We at Huawei are delighted by the success of the Next Design Awards 2021. The European turnout was incredible this year, coming in second to China, and we are so glad that so many European artists are being recognised for their talent through these prestigious awards. We really hope the success of the competition this year will encourage even more artists to share their amazing creations through HUAWEI Themes."

Across Europe, two entrants had incredible success, being awarded prestigious recognitions:

Commenting on his win, Robert Buerger said: "The Next Design Awards was a great experience to be a part of, especially when knowing you were creating a piece of art that was judged by such a professional and prestigious jury. HUAWEI Themes is a wonderful platform to have your personal creations available on, with the app having such a high visibility for amazing users. For anyone thinking about creating for HUAWEI Themes - definitely do it, you won't regret it!"

Damiroquai from Czechia also shared his thoughts on the competition after his Watch Face win. He said, "the Huawei Next Design Awards is a competition that no content designer should miss. It was a huge opportunity for me to showcase my design and to measure my sense of style and aesthetic identity amongst an array of global designers. I cannot wait to participate next year!"

The competition was not only popular because of the prizes, but the impressive judging panel as well. For this year's competition, Huawei invited Song Xiewei - Dean of the School of Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Klaus Hess - co-founder of German Hesse Design, plus Takashi Akiyama - an internationally-renowned illustrator and poster artist, to critique the masterpieces created.

All of this year's award-winning designs are now available on HUAWEI Themes to be downloaded to help users personalise their devices:

-Simply visit HUAWEI Themes (via the HUAWEI AppGallery if not already downloaded) to access all the certified HUAWEI Theme Designers' amazing collections

- Easily test out the new chosen theme - users are allowed a 5-minute free trial to see if the new statement really fits them before purchase

- To help make the theme just that little bit more special, match the design with Themes' icons to truly make it personal

- After choosing the new theme, users can show off their new look with just one click and show off the design with friends

- Customers can also purchase and gift Themes' products to loved ones to help brighten up their devices too

To find out more about the Huawei Next Design Awards 2021 and a full list of the winners, please visit: https://themes.cloud.huawei.com/next-design/award. And for more information on HUAWEI Themes, go to: https://consumer.huawei.com/uk/mobileservices/themes/

About Huawei Consumer Business Group

Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We are committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. As one of Huawei's three business groups, Huawei Consumer BG is the leader of the all-scenario AI life. It covers smartphones, PC and tablets, wearables, mobile broadband devices, family devices and device cloud services. Huawei Consumer BG is dedicated to delivering the latest technologies to consumers and sharing the happiness of technological advances with more people around the world. Walk the walk and make dreams come true.

For more information please visit: http://consumer.huawei.com/en

To become a Huawei Developer visit:

https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/doc/start/registration-and-verification-0000001053628148

For regular updates on Huawei Developers, follow us on:

Facebook: @Huaweidevs

Twitter: @Huawei_devs

YouTube: @Huawei Developers

LinkedIn: @Huawei Developers

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Omicron has replaced Delta as the most dominant variant of coronavirus in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in data published Monday.



The highly transmissible variant represents 73 percent of sequenced cases for the week ending December 18, while the previously dominant delta variant has caused infection in 26.6 of cases, according to CDC.



It marks a rapid turnaround from the previous week's scenario, in which the Delta variant made up 87 percent of cases to omicron's 12.6 percent, the data shows.



President Joe Biden had warned last week that the Omicron variant is going to spread much more rapidly in the beginning of the New Year.



Also on Monday, the head of the World Health Organization said that there is now 'consistent evidence' that the Omicron variant is outpacing Delta.



WHO Secretary General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on people to delay or cancel their Christmas holiday plans to protect public health, as the Omicron variant spreads, accounting for around 50,000 deaths worldwide every week.



'An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled. It's better to cancel now and celebrate later, than to celebrate now and grieve later,' the WHO chief said at a news conference.



'There can be no doubt that increased social mixing over the holiday period in many countries will lead to increased cases, overwhelmed health systems and more deaths', he told reporters.



Ghebreyesus said that the pandemic could be ended in 2022 if 70 percent of the population of every country is vaccinated by the middle of next year.



The United States on Monday reported one of the highest figures of coronavirus cases in this year.



With 253954 additional cases of infection reported on Monday, the total number of people infected with the pandemic in the U.S. has risen to 51,100,799.



With 1513 additional casualties, the total Covid death toll has risen to 807,952.



40,539,875 people in the country have recovered from the disease.



As per the latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 204,098,982 Americans, or 61.5 percent of the eligible population, have been administered both doses of Covid vaccine so far. This includes 87.5 percent of people above 65.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Southern Silver Exploration Corp. (TSXV: SSV) ("Southern Silver" or the "Company") has signed an option agreement with Bull Mountain Resources, LLC ("Bull Mountain") to acquire a 100% interest in the Hermanas gold/silver project in southwestern New Mexico, located approximately 40km east of Southern Silver's Oro Porphyry Copper/skarn/CRD project.

The Hermanas project consists of 83 lode claims on Federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The claims cover an area of epithermal quartz veining approximately 4km by 3km. Topography is gentle with large portions of the property covered by shallow alluvium. The vendors have collected 151 surface samples, with seven samples containing +4ppm Au (maximum 30.1ppm Au) and 22 samples containing +30ppm Ag (maximum 4,790ppm Ag). The Company collected nine surface samples to verify mineralization and seven samples assayed anomalous precious metals. Highlights include a sample from a small historic mine dump that assayed 6.7ppm Au & 150ppm Ag and a sample of outcropping banded quartz + carbonate vein that assayed 4.6ppm Au & 56ppm Ag.

Detailed geologic mapping and additional sampling are underway and, to date, only shallow historic drill holes have been found along the southern end of the vein zone, well away from the best vein zones identified by current sampling.

Southern Silver has reimbursed claim filing fees and will pay US$182,500 in staged Advanced Minimum Royalty ("AMR") payments over six years to earn 100% interest; however, subject to retained Net Smelter Return ("NSR") royalties. After exercising the option, Southern Silver will pay annual AMR payments of US$50,000 towards the retained NSR royalty of 2% on claims and 0.5% NSR of production of other land within an area of interest. Upon cumulative royalty payments of US$10 million, 2% royalties will reduce to 1% and 0.5% royalties will reduce to zero.

President, Lawrence Page Q.C. said: "Our primary interest is the development of our Cerro Las Minitas silver-lead-zinc property in Durango, Mexico where a PEA report is currently underway. For some years we have been developing the Oro project in New Mexico where a significant drill program will commence in January 2022. We believe that the Hermanas project is synergistic to Oro and can be explored on a cost-efficient basis while exploration and development proceeds at Oro."

The geologists with Bull Mountain Resources, LLC have a track record of successful discovery including the Los Gatos Mine, San Agustin Mine, San Sebastian Mine, Camino Rojo Mine, Rodeo Mine and La Pitarrilla Silver Project located in Mexico.

About Southern Silver Exploration Corp.

Southern Silver Exploration Corp. is a precious and base metal exploration and development company with a focus on the discovery of world-class mineral deposits in north-central Mexico and in the Southern USA. Our specific emphasis is the Cerro Las Minitas silver-lead-zinc project located in the heart of Mexico's Faja de Plata, which hosts multiple world-class mineral deposits such as Penasquito, San Martin, Naica and Pitarrilla. We have assembled a team of highly experienced technical, operational and transactional professionals to support our exploration efforts in developing the Cerro Las Minitas project into a premier, high-grade, silver-lead-zinc mine. The property portfolio also includes the 100% owned Oro porphyry copper-gold project located in southern New Mexico, USA. The Oro claim package covers a large zoned Laramide-age mineralizing system containing a number of highly prospective, drill -ready porphyry/skarn and distal gold targets. The Company recently acquired an option to earn 100% interest in the Hermanas gold -silver epithermal vein system 30km east of the Oro project. The Company engages in the acquisition, exploration, and development either directly or through joint-venture relationships in mineral properties in major jurisdictions.

Robert Macdonald, MSc. P.Geo, is the VP Exploration of Southern Silver Exploration Corp., is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and is responsible for the supervision of the Company's exploration programs and for the preparation of the technical information in this disclosure.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Lawrence Page"

Lawrence Page, Q.C.

President & Director, Southern Silver Exploration Corp.

For further information, please visit Southern Silver's website at southernsilverexploration.com or contact us at 604.641.2759 or by email at ir@mnxltd.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.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include the timing and receipt of government and regulatory approvals, and continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. Southern Silver Exploration Corp. does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108174
Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Beauce Gold Fields (TSXV: BGF) (Champs D'Or en Beauce), ("BGF"): is pleased to announce it has identified an important 4 km long Saddle Reef formation along an Antiform Fold structure that runs parallel to the NE and higher up the valley wall, of the historical placer gold channel found on the Company's Beauce Gold property located in Saint-Simon-les-Mines, Quebec. More than 60 grab samples were taken from stockworks & quarts veins along the axis of the Antiform.

Patrick Levasseur, President and CEO of Beauce Gold Fields said, "Our trenching and surveys have identified Saddle Reef formations that are associated with gold mineralization at the crest of Antiform Fold structures." Mr. Levasseur added: "Finding a long trending exposed Axis of an Antiform is an exciting discovery and we look forward to further exploring these structures."





Image 1: Saddle Reef cross cut diagram of Antiform Folds. To the right, Antiform Folds cut along the Ruisseau Giroux in the Rang Delery

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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This campaign was to investigate several strong gold anomalies ranging from 100 to more than 560 ppb Au first discovered in 2019 by Marc Richer-Lafleche of the INRS as part of geological and structural mapping the Beauce Gold property (BGF press release March 2, 2020). Several domes (anticline ridges) have been identified and traced for 4 km along the Apex of an Anticline to the North of the Gilbert River as well as North of the historical placer gold channel from the Saint-Charles Road, crossing the Rang De-Lery, Rang Chaussegros and the Rang Saint-Gustave ranges.

The structural pattern of Saddle Reef formations was observed near the Gilbert River and in the 2019-2020 trenches. It is repeated northwest of the property. More than 60 grab samples from significant mineralized stockwork outcroppings along the Axis of the Antifold located between the Saint-Gustave and De Lery ranges were collected and sent to a laboratory for analysis. The stockwork developed along an Axis of Antiform Folds and in the volcaniclastic rocks in Crack and Seal type quartz veins that can reach more than 10m wide at the apex of the folds. The white to blue-grey quartz veins observed are highly mineralized in sulphides. This type of mineralization can also contain visible gold as demonstrated in Trenches 2020 and Drill Hole SM-21-08 (BGF press releases May 12, 2021 and August 10, 2021).

Diamond Drill Program Update

In September, the Company completed its first diamond drill program of 38 holes to test numerous high-priority targets on the Company's Beauce Gold property. All the drill cores were logged and selected split drill core samples were sent to Actlab laboratory for analysis and for coarse gold processing. Results from this program are taking longer that expected due to a significantly inordinate backlog at assay labs.

The drill program and the sampling is supervised by Jean Bernard, B,Sc. Geo, a qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, who has reviewed and approved the technical information presented in this release.

Private Placements

The Company is pleased to announce that it is closing a non-brokered private placement of 3,120,000 Flow-Through units at $0.14 per unit for gross proceeds of $436,800 and 833,334 units at $0.12 per unit for gross proceeds of $100,000.08.

Each Flow-through unit will be comprised of one (1) Flow-through common share and of one half (1/2) common share purchase warrant of the company. Each full warrant will entitle the holder thereof to purchase one common share of the capital stock of the company at a price of $0.20 for a period of 24 months from the date of closing of the placement and each unit will comprise of one common share and one common share purchase warrant of the company which will entitle the holder thereof to purchase one common share of the capital stock of the company at a price of $0.18 for a period of 36 months from the date of closing of the placement. Each share issued pursuant to the placement will have a mandatory four-month-and-one-day hold period from the date of closing of the placement. The placement is subject to standard regulatory approvals. The company will use the proceeds of the placement for its exploration programs and general expenses.

In connection with the placement, the company will pay a cash finder's fee of $35,000.00 to GloRes Securities Inc. of Mississauga, Ontario. The company will also issue 195,833 warrants to GloRes Securities Inc. that will give GloRes Securities Inc. the right to purchase one common share of the company at $0.18 for 36 months following the closing of the placement, which will have a mandatory four (4) month and one (1) day holding period from the date of closing of the placement.

Lam Chan Tho and Patrick Levasseur, directors of the Company, have subscribed respectively for 35,714 and 40,000 Flow Through units. Following the completion of the private placement, Mr Tho will beneficially own or exercise control or direction over, directly or indirectly, 812,523 common shares, representing approximately 1.64 per cent of the issued and outstanding common shares of the company and Patrick Levasseur, 1,044,622 common shares, representing approximately 2.11% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the company.

The participation of Mr Tho and Mr Levasseur in the private placement constitutes a related party transaction within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 -- Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions, and TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.9 -- Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions. In connection with this related party transaction, the company is relying on the formal valuation and minority approval exemptions of subsections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101, respectively, as the fair market value of the portion of the private placement respectively subscribed by Mr Tho and Mr Levasseur does not exceed 25 per cent of the company's market capitalization. The board of directors of the company has approved the private placement, including the participation of Mr Tho and Mr Levasseur therein.

About Beauce Gold Fields

Beauce Gold Fields is a gold exploration company focused on placer to hard rock exploration in the Beauce region of Southern Quebec. The Company's flagship property is the St-Simon-les-Mines Gold project site of Canada's first gold rush that pre-dates the Yukon Klondike. The Beauce region hosted some of the largest historical placer gold mines in Eastern North America that were active from 1860s to the 1960s It produced some of the largest gold nuggets in Canadian mining history (50oz to 71oz). The intent of Beauce Gold Fields is to trace the placer gold workings back to the bedrock source and uncover economic bedrock gold mineralization.

Comprising 152 contiguous claims and 7 real estate lots, the project area contains a six-kilometer long placer gold channel consisting of unconsolidated gold-bearing auriferous units of a lower saprolite and an upper brown diamictite.

The Company has identified a major Fault Line in bedrock that coincides with geophysical findings of an interpreted fault structure across the property, referred to herein as the AMT Shear. Evidence suggests the erosion of the AMT Fault or related splay fractures as a probable source of the historical placer gold channel, and has conducted bedrock sampling and geophysics outside the expression of the placer gold channel. This is the target of the current drill program.

Beauce Gold Fields website www.beaucegold.com

Disclaimers:

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements containing the words "may", "plan", "will", "estimate", "continue", "anticipate", "intend", "expect", "in the process" and other similar expressions which constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements reflect the Company's current expectation and assumptions, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, our expectations regarding mineral exploration. Such statements reflect the current views of the Company with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and other risks detailed from time-to-time in the Company's on-going filings with the securities regulatory authorities, which filings can be found at www.sedar.com. Actual results, events, and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements either as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For further information contact

Patrick Levasseur, President and CEO Tel: (514) 262-9239

Bernard J. Tourillon, Chairman and COO Tel (514) 907-1011

www.beaucegold.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108214
DALLAS (dpa-AFX) - AT&T Inc. (T) on Tuesday agreed to sell its global programmatic advertising marketplace, Xandr Inc., to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT). The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The agreement builds on a decade-long relationship between Xandr, including its predecessor companies, and Microsoft for delivering global digital media solutions for advertisers. Microsoft and Xandr can shape the digital ad marketplace of the future. Xandr's technology strategically complements Microsoft's current advertising offerings and will help accelerate delivery of digital advertising and retail media solutions for the open web by combining Microsoft's audience intelligence, technology and global advertising customer-base with Xandr's scaled, data-driven platform. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory reviews. 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.
TAIZHOU, China, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Aimed at improving global governance and addressing common challenges of mankind, the 2021 Hehe Culture Global Forum was held in southeastern Zhejiang province's Tiantai county on December 9.

The forum focused on common prosperity, inclusive development, harmonious coexistence and ecological civilization.

"In the post-pandemic era, it is a common goal for us to promote a sustainable and fair recovery in the world, and harmony and cooperation are the key steps," said Han Nathan, Consul General of the Republic of Malta in Shanghai, said at the opening ceremony.

Tiantai County is the cradle of Hehe culture, which originated in Tiantai Mountain. Hehe refers to two homophones, meaning "harmony" and 'cooperation" respectively in Chinese.

The forum aimed to look for positive inspiration from the time-honored Hehe culture to tackle the difficulties faced by human beings. Some experts pointed out that different views on diplomacy should not refute each other's viewpoints. Instead, we must work hard to achieve reconciliation in order to have win-win outcomes.

American video journalist Jack Klumpp looks to explore how Hehe influences the Chinese culture as well as the civilizations of the rest of the world. He visits Guoqing Temple to understand the origin of Tiantai Buddhism, and learns to practice the handicraft called "yigenteng", an art assembling pieces of different sizes and shapes into one work.

Contact: Zhang Tong

Tel:0086576-88510329

E-mail:tzswwxb001@163.com

YouTube Link: youtu.be/Ko6tsllSeqA

Video - https://youtu.be/Ko6tsllSeqA

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Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - American Aires Inc. (CSE: WIFI) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the closing of an above market non-brokered private placement to the Company through the issuance of 2,460,000 units (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.10 per Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of $246,000.00 (the "Offering"). The net proceeds of the Offering will be used by the Company for working capital and for other general and administrative costs. Certain insiders of the Company subscribed for $46,000 in the Offering.

Each Unit consists of one common share (each a "Common Share") and one Common Share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one Common Share at a price of CDN$0.15 per Common Share for a period of twenty-four (24) months from the closing of the Offering (the "Warrant Term"), provided, however, should the closing price at which the Common Shares trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange (or any such other stock exchange in Canada as the Common Shares may trade at the applicable time) exceed CDN$0.30 for 10 consecutive trading days at any time following the date of issuance, the Company may accelerate the Warrant Term (the "Reduced Warrant Term") such that the Warrants shall expire on the date which is 30 business days following the date a press release is issued by the Company announcing the Reduced Warrant Term.

In connection with the Offering, the Company paid certain eligible persons (the "Finders") aggregate cash commissions of $19,350 and issued an aggregate of 193,500 broker warrants ("Broker Warrants"). Each Broker Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one Common Share at an exercise price of $0.15 for a period of (24) months from the closing of the Offering and subject to the acceleration provision noted above.

All securities issued under the Offering are subject to a four month hold period in accordance with applicable securities laws.

The Offering constituted a "related party transaction" as defined in Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Securityholders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"), as an insider of the Company acquired an aggregate of 460,000 Units. The Company is relying on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in sections 5.5(b) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101, as the fair market value of the participation in the Private Placement by insiders does not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of the Company, as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company did not file a material change report in respect of the related party transaction at least 21 days before the closing of the Offering, which the Company deems reasonable in the circumstances in order to complete the Offering in an expeditious manner. The Offering was approved by all independent directors of the Company.

About American Aires Inc.

American Aires Inc. is Canadian-based nanotechnology company which has developed proprietary silicon-based microprocessors that reduce the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation (EMR). The technology was developed by a team of highly credited scientists and confirmed by independent third-party validation including peer reviewed studies and publications in scientific journals. Aires' Lifetune products specifically target EMR emitted by consumer electronic devices such as cellphones, computers, baby monitors, Wi-Fi radiation, including the rapidly expanding next-generation high-speed 5G networks. Aires is listed on the CSE under ticker 'WIFI'. Learn more at www.airestech.com .

On behalf of the board of directors

Company Contact:

Dimitry Serov, CEO

Email: dimitry@airestech.com

Telephone: (905) 482-4667

Website: www.airestech.com

For further information please contact:

5 Quarters Investor Relations, Inc.

Cindy Gray, CEO & Managing Director

Email: wifi@airestech.com

Telephone: (403) 705.5076

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding future financial position, business strategy, use of proceeds, corporate vision, proposed acquisitions, partnerships, joint-ventures and strategic alliances and co-operations, budgets, cost and plans and objectives of or involving the Company. Such forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to management. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "predicts", "intends", "targets", "aims", "anticipates" or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases or may be identified by statements to the effect that certain actions "may", "could", "should", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. A number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors may cause the actual results or performance to materially differ from any future results or performance expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions and dependence upon regulatory approvals. Certain material assumptions regarding such forward-looking statements may be discussed in this news release and the Company's annual and quarterly management's discussion and analysis filed at www.sedar.com. 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 forward-looking statements. The Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by securities laws.

No securities regulatory authority has either approved or disapproved of the contents of this news release. The Common Shares have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States, or to or for the account or benefit of any person in the United States, absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any common shares in the United States, or in any other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. We seek safe harbour.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Not intended for distribution to United States Newswire Services or for dissemination in the United States. Any failure to comply with this restriction may constitute a violation of United States Securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108219
HAMBURG, Germany, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Funds managed and controlled by Starwood Capital Group, through a JV with operating partner CELLS Group, have sold two Hamburg office properties, Sachsenkamp and Kieler Park, with a total rental area of 22,900 sqm on December 1, 2021. The parties initially acquired the portfolio in December 2017. Both Sachsenkamp and Kieler Park were sold to European institutional investors for undisclosed purchase prices.

Federico Bianchi, Managing Director at Starwood Capital commented: "The high degree of investor interest in these properties confirms that well located and managed office assets continue to be in demand. Over the past four years, our value-add strategy for both properties was focused on securing high-calibre tenants of superior covenant strength, including public sector entities and blue chip national and international corporates."

Thomas Ostermann, Managing Director at the CELLS Group added: "Our hands-on asset management approach allowed us to successfully re-let under-rented space at market levels, achieving full occupancy on both assets within just two years and securing a considerable increase in net operating income. Both properties have proven very resilient throughout the pandemic and did not suffer any rent arrears."

Sachsenkamp is a 6,700 sqm, four-storey office building, developed in 1991 and part-renovated in 2013. The property is fully let, with the main tenant being an international pharmaceutical company with a top credit rating, occupying c.40% of total leasable area. The Hammerbrook S-Bahn station is only a short walk away from the property.

Kieler Park is a 16,200 sqm office complex consisting of four buildings, all developed in 1994. The property is fully let to a diversified tenant roster, the largest occupier being a publicly listed German manufacturing company. The complex is located in Hamburg's Eimsbuttel submarket within a ten-minute walk from the lively Osterstrae and close to the "Diebsteich" train station, which will undergo a major expansion over the coming years.

Starwood and CELLS Group received legal advice from GSK Stockmann and technical advice from CBRE. The buyers received legal advice from P + P Pollath + Partners, technical advice from WBRE and environmental advice from Arcadis. CBRE acted as intermediary.

About Starwood

Starwood Capital Group is a private investment firm with a core focus on global real estate, energy infrastructure and oil & gas. The Firm and its affiliates maintain 16 offices in seven countries around the world, and currently have approximately 4,000 employees. Since its inception in 1991, Starwood Capital Group has raised over $65 billion of capital, and currently has over $105 billion of assets under management. Through a series of comingled opportunity funds and Starwood Real Estate Income Trust, Inc. (SREIT), a non-listed REIT, the Firm has invested in virtually every category of real estate on a global basis, opportunistically shifting asset classes, geographies and positions in the capital stack as it perceives risk/reward dynamics to be evolving. Starwood Capital also manages Starwood Property Trust (NYSE: STWD), the largest commercial mortgage real estate investment trust in the United States, which has successfully deployed over $76 billion of capital since inception and manages a portfolio of over $21 billion across debt and equity investments. Over the past 30 years, Starwood Capital Group and its affiliates have successfully executed an investment strategy that involves building enterprises in both the private and public markets. Additional information can be found at starwoodcapital.com.

About the CELLS Group

The CELLS Group has been developing, realizing and managing residential and commercial properties in Germany for more than 25 years.

An experienced team of more than 100 employees in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Luxembourg ensures consistently high quality and sustainability of the real estate portfolio. The operational strength and reliability make the CELLS Group a recognized and renowned business partner for tenants, service providers, private investors, family offices and institutional investors.

Since it was founded, the CELLS Group has bought and implemented projects with a total volume of more than 3.6 billion euros.

Contact:

Tom Johnson

TBJ@ABMAC.COM

(917) 747-6990

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1044107/Starwood_Capital_Logo.jpg
DGAP-News: Nofar Energy

Nofar Energy enters the British renewable energy market with the largest energy storage project to be constructed in the United Kingdom



21.12.2021 / 16:00

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.





In line with its strategic plan, Nofar Energy ?(TASE-NOFR) continues its global expansion by moving into the UK renewable energy market. Today, the company reported that it had entered into an agreement with Interland, an investment group that is focused on real estate and energy storage investments in the UK and Europe. Under the agreement, Nofar and Interland will jointly own a dedicated platform for the origination, development, construction, financing, and operation of battery energy storage projects in the UK, that shall be held by the JV. Nofar will hold 75% of the joint venture, and Interland the remaining 25%.

The company today reported the first project of this new partnership. The report sets out an agreement entered into for the Cellarhead project, UK's largest planned battery energy storage project. The project will connect to UK's power grid using a 300 to 349 Megawatt connection, with a storage capacity of c. 700 MW/h. The estimated construction costs of the project are 214 million, with estimated annual revenues of 42 million and estimated annual EBITDA of 35.5 million respectively. The company plans to start construction in the first half of 2022 and connect it to the grid in the second quarter of 2024. Concurrently, the partnership is developing or working to develop additional battery energy storage projects on a substantial scale.

Nofar's entry into the UK is a significant step in its energy storage operations. Nofar constructed and connected Israel's first project to include battery energy storage, that was connected it to the national power grid, at Kibbutz Nir-Yitzhak. Nofar has also signed strategic procurement agreements with Tesla for the supply of battery energy storage with an aggregate capacity of 300 MW/h, and developed the first facility in Israel deploying Tesla's battery energy storage systems to the power grid (at Kibbutz Shoval). The new projects add to dozens of storage facilities to be run by Nofar's partnerships across Israel. Just last week, Nofar inked an agreement with Mivne Real Estate on developing, building and maintaining storage projects with an aggregate capacity of a 400 MW/h, the largest such undertaking in Israel.

Nadav Tene, CEO of Nofar Energy, said, "Nofar Energy continues to realize its expansion strategy by now entering into the battery energy storage field in the UK, which is characterized by significant growth and high yields. Moreover, battery energy storage requires specific engineering, operating, financing, and commercial expertise. The new partnership with Interland to jointly provide the UK's largest storage project represents significant progress for Nofar. It allows Nofar to leverage its entrepreneurial capabilities an organizational structure that includes global engineering and operational capabilities and leadership in the energy storage field in Israel."

Tene added, "We chose Interland as our partners in this venture because of their extensive proven record in initiating real estate projects in the UK, and their abilities with respect to battery energy storage. The partnership will generate significant growth, hundreds of megawatts, and a significant return on investment. I want to congratulate our new partners on this project and thank Nofar Energy's excellent team for their devotion and professional work over the past few months. I wish us all success in the new operations."

Oleg Vorobeichik, Managing Director, Interland: 'Interland continues its growth and diversification into new strategic business lines. Battery energy storage is the missing link that will allow stabilising the built-in volatility in renewable energy sources and driving the shift to renewable energies. We identified battery energy storage as a strategic growth segment that has the potential to generate significant long-term returns for our group and our partners at Nofar Energy.

We are excited to partner with Nofar Energy. Our joint venture's first investment in Cellarhead is the largest battery energy storage investment in the UK and one of the largest in the world. Interland's and Nofar Energy's track record in designing, planning, developing, executing and operating projects as well as our combined skill set would allow us to become a leading player in the UK Battery Energy Storage market and win significant market share in the coming years.

Teams from Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe (UK) and M. Firon and Co. (Israel) provided legal support to Nofar Energy on the joint venture arrangements with Interland. The capital markets team at Deloitte Israel served as investment bankers for the joint venture between Nofar and Interland. On the Cellarhead transaction, Nofar and Interland were advised by the energy team at Howard Kennedy LLP.

Nofar energy

DIKLA IVRI

+972 52-380-4085

DIKLA@IVRIPR.COM

https://www.nofar-energy.com/

21.12.2021 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases.

Archive at www.dgap.de


Canada's top mutual insurer will use Global IQX software to streamline group insurance new business and renewals

OTTAWA, ON and QUEBEC CITY, QC / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Beneva, the largest insurance mutual in Canada, has chosen Global IQX Sales & Underwriting Workbench as its underwriting tool for new business and renewals.

Beneva sought a best-of-breed new-business and renewal system, in both French and English, for its digital ecosystem for group insurance. Global IQX's end-to-end automation, granular configurability, powerful integrative capabilities, and domain expertise in the Canadian group benefits market made Global IQX a compelling choice for Beneva.

"We needed a modern, agile system for new business and renewals with state-of-the-art tools for underwriting and renewing our group business," said Eric Trudel, executive vice president and lead - group insurance at Beneva. "We chose Global IQX as our long-term solution to simplify our business processes, yield faster turnaround times, and improve our partners' digital experience. It will also allow us to provide our plan sponsors and advisors with online tools to simplify doing business with Beneva."

"We're excited about this new partnership with Beneva and look forward to supporting them in achieving their digital transformation," said Mike de Waal, Global IQX CEO. "Leveraging our platform will help Beneva stay at the top in this fast-evolving market that demands that carriers deliver advanced digital capabilities and fast turnaround times."

About Global IQX

Global IQX is North America's leading AI-driven group insurance procurement technology platform for new business and renewal underwriting. Global IQX offers a suite of business-configurable modules and microservices that digitize, streamline, and automate the new business and renewal processes for the true group, experience rating for all benefit and voluntary products. Some of the world's largest insurance companies continue to benefit from the scalability, security, and configurability of the Global IQX Workbench.

For more information, visit www.globaliqx.com.

About Beneva

Created by the coming together of La Capitale and SSQ Insurance, Beneva is the largest insurance mutual in Canada with more than 3.5 million members and customers. Beneva employs over 5,000 dedicated employees: people looking out for people. Its human approach is rooted in mutualist values that are shared by its employees. With $25 billion in assets, Beneva positions itself as a major player in the insurance and financial services industry. Its head office is located in Quebec City. Policyholders of contracts issued by an insurance company of Beneva Group Inc. are members of SSQ Mutual and La Capitale Civil Service Mutual.

For more information, please consult beneva.ca.

Policyholders of contracts issued by an insurance company of Beneva Group Inc. are members of SSQ Mutual and La Capitale Civil Service Mutual.

Media contact for Global IQX: Henry Stimpson

henry@stimpsoncommunications.com

Beneva

1 866 332-3806

media@beneva.ca

SOURCE: Global IQX

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678777/Beneva-Selects-Global-IQX-for-Group-Benefits-Underwriting
NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR THROUGH U.S. NEWS WIRES

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Nevada Silver Corporation ("NSC" or the "Company") (TSXV:NSC) is pleased to provide an update on its 100% owned subsidiary North State Manganese Inc ("North Star") and the Emily Manganese Project ("Emily"). Emily is in the Cuyuna Iron Range, Crow Wing County, Minnesota and was the subject of a June 2020 NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate by Barr Engineering Company (Table 1)1.

TABLE 1: NI 43-101 COMPLIANT INDICATED AND INFERRED MINERAL RESOURCE ESTIMATE

Review of NI 43-101 resource drill data highlights high-grade intersections

North Star recently commissioned a review of drilling and other technical data contained within the Barr Engineering mineral resource estimate. A number of high-grade drill intersections were identified within thicker zones of mineralization2, including:

Drill hole VC-01-11: 33.68 meters from 70.56 meters @ 16.93% Mn Including 8.99 meters @ 34.58% Mn; and Including 1.07 meters @ 50.10% Mn

Drill hole AC-01-11: 36.88 meters from 135.02 meters @ 9.98% Mn Including 7.47 meters @ 29.48% Mn; and Including 1.52 meters @ 43.00% Mn

Drill hole AC-02-11: 19.5 meters from 70.1 meters @ 18.5% Mn Including 8.84 meters @ 32.94% Mn; and Including 6.10 meters @ 39.33% Mn; and Including 3.05 meters @ 45.74% Mn

Drill hole AC-04-12: 9.0 meters from 137.2 meters @ 17.6% Mn Including 4.47 meters @ 24.47% Mn (Figure 1)



A summary of intersections of the drill holes included in the Barr Engineering NI 43-01 Technical Report is contained in the appendix.

FIGURE 1: DRILL HOLE AC-04-12 SHOWING HIGH-GRADE BANDED MANGANESE OXIDES BETWEEN 144.6-144.8 METERS (28.57% Mn)

Historical metallurgical work at Emily was undertaken by Montana Tech, of the University of Montana, Coleraine Minerals Research Laboratory, Hazen Research, Inc., Outotec, USA, and Kemetco Research, Inc. North Star is presently updating the metallurgical tests performed by Kemetco on samples from the Emily deposit. Historic samples were successfully upgraded to produce MnCO3 (manganese carbonate), EMD (electrolytic manganese dioxide - MnO2) and EMM (electrolytic manganese metal - Mn) (Figure 2).

FIGURE 2: MANGANESE CHEMICALS PRODUCED BY KEMETCO FROM EMILY SAMPLES

Emily is well located near regional industrial centers (iron mining and processing) with major transportation linkages (road, rail and shipping). In addition to its ownership and management rights, North Star also has exclusive surface leases and operational rights to the structures and facilities located at Emily (Figure 3).

Building A High-Purity Manganese Supply Chain In North America

It is North Star's ultimate aim is to produce high-purity manganese products for North American technology and energy markets. There are currently no producing manganese mines in the USA or Canada, and manganese is on the strategic metals list in both countries.

Manganese is a critical component to the lithium-ion battery (Li-B) supply chain, being used in two of the most prominent batteries in production, i.e., Nickel Lithium Manganese Oxide (LMO) and Manganese Cobalt (NMC) batteries. Within LMO batteries, there is approximately 61% manganese in the cathode, while in the NMC battery, manganese constitutes 20-30% of the total cathode material3. BASF recently unveiled ambitious plans to boost investment in battery cathode active materials (CAM), including a new family of manganese-rich products. Volkswagen and Tesla have each announced plans to mass produce a new battery that requires a high proportion of manganese with no cobalt (Tesla at ~ 33% Mn, and VW over 50% Mn)4.

"We believe the high-purity manganese market will be driven by the demand for these specialized products over the next decade" commented NSC's CEO Gary Lewis. "This is line with the North Star's aspiration to capture significant value of the supply chain for high-purity manganese products, from raw material extraction and product upgrading, through chemical processing and high-purity manganese sales in the North American marketplace."

FIGURE 3: SITE WORKS AND INFRASTRUCTURE AT THE EMILY PROJECT

Corporate update

The Company is continuing to assess options for the commercialization of the Emily Manganese Project to the benefit of NSC shareholders. Alternatives under investigation include potential joint venture arrangements and / or the spinning-out of North Star into a standalone listed entity. NSC will provide a further update early in the new year.

Qualified Person

The scientific and technical data contained in this news release was reviewed and approved by Ian James Pringle PhD, who is a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

For further Information please contact:

Gary Lewis

Group CEO & Director

Phone: +1 (416) 941 8900

Email: gl@nevadasilvercorp.com

About Nevada Silver Corporation

Nevada Silver Corporation (TSXV: NSC) is a multi-commodity resource company with two advanced-stage exploration projects in the USA. NSC's principal asset is the Corcoran Silver-Gold Project in Nevada. Corcoran has an existing NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate of 33.5M oz AgEq5. In addition, NSC has ownership and management rights over the Emily Manganese Project in Minnesota, which was the subject of a June 2020 NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate and contains North America's highest grade manganese resource.

About North Star Manganese Inc

North Star Manganese is a Minnesota-based company with ownership and management rights to the Emily Manganese Project ("Emily"). Emily consists of the mining and processing of manganese ores in the Emily District of the Cuyuna Iron Range in Crow Wing County, Minnesota. North Star is a wholly owned subsidiary of NSC. Emily has an existing NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate and has been the subject of significant technical and environmental studies, with US$24 million invested to date.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is generally identifiable by use of the words "believes," "may," "plans," "will," "anticipates," "intends," "could", "estimates", "expects", "forecasts", "projects" and similar expressions, and the negative of such expressions.

Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company's actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including, without limitation, risks as a result of the Company having a limited operating history and may have a wide variance from actual results, risks concerning the ability to raise additional equity or debt capital to continue its business, uncertainty regarding the inclusion of inferred mineral resources in the mineral resource estimate which are too speculative geologically to be classified as mineral reserves, uncertainty regarding the ability to convert any part of the mineral resource into mineral reserves, uncertainty involving resource estimates and the ability to extract those resources economically, or at all, uncertainty involving exploration (including drilling) programs and the Company's ability to expand and upgrade existing resource estimates, risks involved in any future regulatory processes and actions, risks from making a production decision (if any) without any feasibility study completed on the Company's properties, risks applicable to mining exploration, development and/or operations generally, and risk as a result of the Company being subject to certain covenants with respect to its activities by creditors, as well as other risks.

Forward-looking information is based on the reasonable assumptions, estimates, analysis, and opinions of management made in light of its experience and perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, and other factors that management believes are relevant and reasonable in the circumstances at the date such statements are made. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and the Company disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events, or developments, except as required by law.

1 The Emily Manganese Project's NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate is available at www.nevadasilvercorp.com. The Mineral Resource Estimate incorporates drilling results from two separate drilling programs in 2011 and 2012 for seven diamond drill core holes using an inverse distance squared method and evaluated at 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% manganese weight percent cutoff grades. Mineral resource tonnage and grades are reported as undiluted. Mineral resource tonnage and contained metal have been rounded to reflect the accuracy of the estimate and numbers may not add due to rounding. This Mineral Resource Estimate was prepared under the requirements of National Instrument 43-101 "Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects" of the Canadian Securities Administrators by Mr. Brad M. Dunn, CPG, Senior Mining Geologist, Barr Engineering Company and has an effective date of June 12, 2020.

2 3% Mn cut-off

3 http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/types_of_lithium_ion

4 https://finfeed.com/features/basf-betting-high-purity-manganese-supply-battery-makers

5 The Corcoran Canyon Silver-Gold Property Mineral Resource Estimate was prepared under the requirements of National Instrument 43-101 "Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects" of the Canadian Securities Administrators by Mr. G. Mosher, P.Geo., M.Sc. and Mr. D. Smith, P.Geo., M.S. and has an effective date of October 12, 2020. SOURCE: Nevada Silver Corporation Nevada Silver Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678880/Corporate-and-Project-Update-on-the-Emily-Manganese-Project
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - West Island Brands Inc. (CSE: WIB) (FSE: 39N0) (OTCQB: WIBFF) ("West Island" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that following the tremendous success of the Sweet Demon launch under the Limited Release program, West Island has been approved for a general listing of 2 new sku's in Ontario. The Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, doing business as the Ontario Cannabis Store (the "OCS") has approved the listing of West Island's Platinum Cake and Grandpa's Stash strains. Both strains are premium products with THC level's approaching 30 percent and terpene levels averaging above 3 percent.

The OCS is the sole wholesale distributor of cannabis for the province of Ontario. Ontario is the country's largest cannabis market with over 1000 cannabis retail outlets. Legal cannabis retailers in Ontario had over 120.1 million dollars in sales for June of 2021. Sales of cannabis in Ontario amounted for 37.7 percent of all Canadian cannabis sales for the month of June, 2021.

West Island CEO, Boris Ziger states, "Our first entry of OUESTTM brand premium craft cannabis into Ontario, 'Sweet Demon', was a huge success - selling out in less than a month. As with other regions of the country, our super premium product that has become an instant classic in Ontario also. We hope that our two new offerings will be as well received."

Management continues to aggressively expand the Company's commercial and production footprint to additional Canadian provinces.

About West Island

West Island is a multi-faceted, innovative company in the Quebec cannabis space. Its subsidiary, RoyalMax Biotechnology Canada Inc. is a Dorval, Quebec based Health Canada Licence Holder with standard cultivation licence, standard processing, medical sales and sales licences. The Company continues to work with Yunify Natural Technologies, a Quebec based health and personal care research and innovation company to develop proprietary products for West Island including topicals and ionic mists. Through its acquisition of Trichome Treats, an award winning chocolatier, the Company intends on introducing edibles into the West Island product mix.

For more information on West Island Brands please visit the website at: westislandbrands.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

WEST ISLAND BRANDS INC.

Boris Ziger

Boris Ziger, CEO & Chairman

The Company's public filings are available for review at www.sedar.com and www.thecse.com.

For further information, please contact Boris Ziger, at:

Telephone: 416-304-9935

E-mail: info@westislandbrands.com

Website: www.westislandbrands.com

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information

Certain information in this press release may constitute forward-looking information. This information is based on current expectations that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking statements. The Corporation assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those reflected in the forward looking-statements unless and until required by securities laws applicable to the Corporation. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in the Corporation's filings with the Canadian securities regulators, which filings are available at www.sedar.com.

This news release contains statements about the Company's information that may be made available on the S&P Capital IQ Corporation Records Listing Program and the business of the Company that are forward-looking in nature and as a result, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them as actual results may differ materially from the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements 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, except as required by law.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. We seek Safe Harbor.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108221
HOUSTON, TX and CALGARY, AB / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Cub Energy Inc. ("Cub" or the "Company") (TSXV:KUB) announces it has closed the sale of its 50% interest in CNG Holdings Netherlands B.V. ("CNG"), which in turn owns CNG LLC (Ukraine LLC), the 100% owner of the Uzhgorod licence in western Ukraine as originally announced on April 30, 2021.

Cub is to receive consideration of up to 800,000 (US $900,000) for its 50% interest in CNG consisting of 600,000 (US $675,000) in cash received on closing and 200,000 (US $225,000) as a contingent payment on certain future events including a commercial discovery.

Patrick McGrath, Cub's Chief Executive Officer, said "Cub is pleased to have monetized this asset as part of its strategy to divest non-core assets as it pursues new opportunities."

About Cub Energy Inc.

Cub Energy Inc. (TSXV:KUB) is a power and upstream oil and gas company, with a proven track record of exploration and production cost efficiency in Ukraine. The Company's strategy is to implement western technology and capital, combined with local expertise and ownership, to build a portfolio of assets within a high commodity price environment. For further information please contact us or visit our website: www.cubenergyinc.com

Patrick McGrath

Chief Executive Officer

(832) 499-6009

patrick.mcgrath@cubenergyinc.com

Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Cub believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable; however there can be no assurance those expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information.

Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: general economic conditions in Ukraine, the Black Sea Region and globally; political unrest and security concerns in Ukraine; industry conditions, including fluctuations in the prices of natural gas, power and foreign currency; governmental regulation of the industry, including environmental regulation; unanticipated operating events or performance which can reduce production or cause production to be shut in or delayed; failure to obtain industry partner and other fourth party consents and approvals, if and when required; competition for and/or inability to retain drilling rigs and other services; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; volatility in market prices for commodities; liabilities inherent in resource operations; competition for, among other things, capital, acquisitions of reserves, undeveloped lands, skilled personnel and supplies; incorrect assessments of the value of acquisitions; geological, technical, drilling, processing and transportation problems; changes in tax laws and incentive programs relating to the resource industry; failure to realize the anticipated benefits of acquisitions and dispositions; and the other factors. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive.

This cautionary statement expressly qualifies the forward-looking information contained in this news release. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking information to conform such information to actual results or to changes in our expectations except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Cub Energy Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678893/Cub-Energy-Announces-Closing-of-Sale-of-CNG-Interest
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Eurozone's consumer confidence deteriorated for a third straight month to its weakest level since March, preliminary results of the monthly survey by the European Commission showed Tuesday. The flash consumer confidence indicator fell to -8.3 from -6.8 in November. Economists were looking for a score of -8.0. The latest reading was the worst since March, when the score was -10.8. The corresponding indicator for the EU dropped to -9.6 from -8.2 in the previous month. That was also the worst reading since March. Both indicators are now well below its pre-pandemic level and approaching its long-term average in both areas, the commission said. The survey data was collected from December 1 to 20. The final figures are set to be released along with the monthly economic sentiment survey data on January 7. 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.
Reno, Nevada--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Nevada Canyon Gold Corp. (OTC Pink: NGLD) (The "Company" or "Nevada Canyon") is pleased to announce it has signed through its wholly owned subsidiary, Nevada Canyon, LLC, an Option to Purchase Agreement (the "Agreement") with Target Minerals, Inc ("Target"), a private Nevada company, to acquire 100% interest of Target's 1% production royalty on the Olinghouse Project, located in the Olinghouse Mining District, Washoe County, Nevada.

The Olinghouse Project is located approximately 30 miles east of Reno, Nevada. The property was operated by Alta Gold in the late 1990's and had a Feasibility Study completed in 1997. The mine went into production in 1999, however, due to historically low gold prices combined with a substantial debt load, Alta Gold went bankrupt shortly thereafter, in late 2000. The historic geologic resource outlined in the 1997 Alta Gold Feasibility Study was based on over 600 drill holes collared at 100 ft centers. The historic geologic resource contained 695,128 ounces of gold at an average grade of 0.0381 oz/ton gold at an 0.01 oz/ton cut-off. The property has had no modern exploration since the Alta Gold bankruptcy in 2000. The historical mineralized resource is open at depth and along strike, with excellent potential to increase the historical mineralized resources.

Nevada Canyon considers this historical estimate to be reliable and relevant, however it is not treating this historic estimate as current compliant mineral resources.

The Olinghouse Project's current owner is Lake Mountain Mining LLC, ("LMM"), a private Nevada company. LMM is currently reviewing its financing plans for additional exploration, required permitting, economic studies and various capital expenditures towards a production re-start decision in the near future.

Nevada Canyon has the exclusive right and option (the "Purchase Option"), exercisable at any time during the Option Period at its sole discretion to acquire 100% of a production royalty in the amount of one percent (1%) of the net smelter returns on all minerals and products produced from certain properties comprising the Olinghouse Project from Target as follows:

The term of the Purchase Option shall be for one (1) year, or sixty (60) days after the date on which Nevada Canyon delivers to Target a written notice to exercise the Option, subject to extension if Target's conditions to closing are not fully satisfied or otherwise waived by Nevada Canyon. Full consideration of the Agreement consists of the following: (i) an initial cash option payment of US$200,000 upon execution of a definitive agreement. (paid) (ii) US$2,000,000 which shall be paid by Purchaser to Vendor in either cash, or (iii) 2,000,000 common shares of Nevada Canyon, the determination of which shall be as follows:

(a) if the Nevada Canyon 10-Day volume weighted average price (VWAP) Calculation is less than US$1.25 per share, the Purchase Price shall be paid in cash (the " Cash Consideration "); or

(b) if the Nevada Canyon 10-Day VWAP Calculation is more than US$1.25 per share, the Purchase Price shall be paid in the form of Two Million (2,000,000) Nevada Canyon Parent's Common Shares (the " Share Consideration ").

"This initial royalty represents a significant milestone for the Company," said Nevada Canyon President and CEO Jeffrey Cocks. "The Olinghouse royalty has been a very sought-after asset within Nevada, I am very proud of the Nevada Canyon team for securing this asset and adding it to our growing royalty inventory.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Jeffrey A. Cocks"

Jeffrey A. Cocks

President & CEO

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Nevada Canyon Gold Corp.

(TEL)- (888) 909-5548, (FAX)-(888) 909-1033

Email: info@nevadacanyongold.com

Website: www. nevadacanyongold.com

Forward-Looking Statements

The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of exploration, delays in completing various engineering and exploration programs, Specifically, forward-looking statements in this news release include statements with respect to the potential mineralization and geological merits of the Company properties and various other factors beyond the Nevada Canyon Gold Corp.'s control. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events except as required by applicable securities legislation. Nevada Canyon Gold Corp. is neither an underwriter as the term is defined in Section 2(a)(11) of the Securities Act of 1933, nor an investment company pursuant to the Investment Company Act of 1940. Nevada Canyon Gold Corp. is not an investment adviser pursuant to the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Nevada Canyon Gold Corp. is not registered with FINRA or SIPC. Investors are advised to carefully review the reports and documents that Nevada Canyon Gold Corp. files from time to time with the SEC, including its Annual Form 10K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, Quarterly and Current Reports.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108225
Company's Third Major Acquisition Expands European Presence in Germany; Adds New Electronic Data Capture Tool to Enhance Real World Evidence Research

ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Emmes, a global, full-service Clinical Research Organization (CRO) dedicated to supporting the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation, today announced that it has acquired Institut Dr. Schauerte, a CRO headquartered in Munich, Germany. Founded in 1990, Institut Dr. Schauerte is a full-service, technology-oriented CRO that specializes in late-phase, non-interventional, and post-market clinical follow-up studies. It has conducted more than 400 studies across a range of therapeutic areas.

This is the third acquisition for Emmes in the last year, having previously purchased Neox, headquartered in the Czech Republic, in December 2020 and UK-based Orphan Reach in May 2021. The acquisition of Institut Dr. Schauerte augments Emmes' global reach by expanding the company's presence in Germany and adding new long-term strategic relationships with global biopharma companies. With Institut Dr. Schauerte, Emmes now has more than 1,200 employees.

Emmes Chief Executive Officer Dr. Christine Dingivan said, "This is another positive step in our growth and diversification strategy. Institut Dr. Schauerte has a 30-year history and deep expertise in the growing field of Real World Evidence (RWE) research. Its agile, technology-enabled approach is a perfect fit with Emmes and will enhance our digital capabilities."

She added, "Emmes Europe is growing quickly, and Institut Dr. Schauerte will be joining an integrated team across the UK and EU that is successfully collaborating with colleagues in Canada, India and the U.S. to conduct global clinical trials."

Institut Dr. Schauerte's clinical trial operations have been conducted in more than 20 countries, and the company has seen accelerating revenues from post-approval non-interventional studies. RWE and Real World Data have become increasingly important in improving patient care and influencing product development and lifecycle management decisions for drug, device and diagnostic manufacturers.

Institut Dr. Schauerte also expands Emmes' technology product line with its ClinDoc tool, a secure, intuitive CFR21 Part 11 compliant Electronic Data Capture (EDC) solution. It includes multi-language capabilities and interfaces for clinical trial management systems, electronic health records, and mobile health data from apps and wearables. ClinDoc complements Emmes' Advantage e-Clinical EDC system, giving the company even greater flexibility to meet diverse customer needs.

Institut Dr. Schauerte CEO and Founder Dr. Wulfram Schauerte said, "Our deep expertise in RWE and a thriving set of offices in Munich and Cottbus, Germany, will be strong assets in Emmes' global growth plans. We are excited about joining the company and working with our new colleagues in Emmes Europe. We share much in common; in addition to our dedication to high research standards, we place great value on employee engagement and long-term client relationships."

Dr. Schauerte and Institut Dr. Schauerte's leaders and staff will continue in their current roles.

"Emmes and Institut Dr. Schauerte have a combined legacy of over 70 years in business," noted Dr. Dingivan. "Our team is looking forward to collaborating to improve the care and treatment of patients throughout the world, leveraging RWE to enhance studies ranging from Phase I to Phase IV, and using our EDC solutions to achieve greater data quality and efficiency for clients."

About Institut Dr. Schauerte

Headquartered in Munich, Germany, and founded in 1990, Institut Dr. Schauerte is a technology-oriented full-service Clinical Research Organization that specializes in late-phase, non-interventional, and post-market clinical follow-up studies. Committed to providing high quality, bespoke RWE services and solutions, Institut Dr. Schauerte serves pharmaceutical and medical device companies across Europe in a broad range of therapeutic areas.

About Emmes

Founded in 1977, Emmes is a global, full-service Clinical Research Organization dedicated to excellence in supporting the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation. The company's clients include numerous agencies and institutes of the U.S. federal government and a wide range of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies throughout the world. To learn more about how our research is making a positive impact on human health, go to the Emmes website at www.emmes.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/220594/Emmes_Logo.jpg
Regulatory News:

Sopra Steria (Euronext Paris: SOP) (Paris:SOP), a European leader in digital transformation, has finalised the acquisition of cybersecurity firm EVA Group. The proposed acquisition had been announced on 12 October 2021.

This acquisition will significantly boost Sopra Steria Group's firepower in the highly promising and critical field of cybersecurity and will bolster its IT systems security offering for major clients. It will act as a springboard, propelling the Group into position as one of the top three players in the French cybersecurity market.

EVA Group was added to Sopra Steria's scope of consolidation on 21 December 2021.

Upcoming events

Thursday, 24 February 2022 (9 a.m.): Meeting to report 2021 annual results

About Sopra Steria

Sopra Steria, a European leader in consulting, digital services and software development, helps its clients drive their digital transformation and obtain tangible and sustainable benefits. It provides end-to-end solutions to make large companies and organisations more competitive by combining in-depth knowledge of a wide range of business sectors and innovative technologies with a fully collaborative approach. Sopra Steria places people at the heart of everything it does and is committed to putting digital to work for its clients in order to build a positive future for all. With 46,000 employees in nearly 30 countries, the Group generated revenue of 4.3 billion in 2020.

The world is how we shape it.

Sopra Steria (SOP) is listed on Euronext Paris (Compartment A) ISIN: FR0000050809

For more information, visit us at www.soprasteria.com

About EVA Group

EVA Group is a French cybersecurity and IT performance firm. Founded in 2007, the company has 240 consultants and 7 offices located in Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Toronto and New York. It offers a wide range of services, including governance and assistance for CISOs, compliance management, IT and cloud architecture security, maintaining systems in proper operating condition, penetration tests and certificate training programmes. EVA Group serves 80 active clients, most of which are large public-sector organisations and businesses listed on the CAC 40 and SBF 120 French stock market indices.

Secure and efficient IT

For more information, visit us at www.evagroup.fr

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005459/en/

Contacts:

Investor Relations

Olivier Psaume

olivier.psaume@soprasteria.com

+33 (0)1 40 67 68 16

Press Relations

Caroline Simon-Phelip (Image 7)

caroline.simon@image7.fr

+33 (0)1 53 70 74 65

Gabrielle Guerrini

gabrielle.guerrini@evagroup.fr
Regulatory News:

ESI Group, Paris, France, (ISIN Code: FR0004110310, Symbol: ESI) (Paris:ESI), announces the Board received the resignation of Alain de Rouvray as Director, effective December 16th, 2021.

Alain de Rouvray founded the company in 1973. He was Chairman and CEO of ESI Group until January 31, 2019. He remained Chairman of the Board of Directors until February 8, 2021.

Composition of the Board of Directors

Based on the above modifications, the Company's Board of Directors will be composed of seven directors (6 of whom are independent) and one board observer:

- Alex Davern Chairman of the Board and independent member

- Cristel de Rouvray Chief Executive Officer and Chairwoman of the Strategic committee

- Rajani Ramanathan Independent member and Chairwoman of the Technology Marketing committee

- Patrice Soudan Independent member and Chairman of the Audit Committee1

- Eric d'Hotelans Independent member and Chairman of the Compensation committee

- Veronique Jacq Independent member and Chairwoman of the Audit committee2

- Yves de Balmann Independent member

- Charles-Helen des Isnards Board observer

Upcoming events

Annual Revenues Results 2021 March 1st, 2022 (6pm CET)

About ESI Group

Founded in 1973, ESI Group is a leading innovator in Virtual Prototyping solutions and a global enabler of industrial transformation. Thanks to the company's unique know-how in the physics of materials, it has developed and refined, over the last 45 years, advanced simulation capabilities. Having identified gaps in the traditional approach to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), ESI has introduced a holistic methodology centered on industrial productivity and product performance throughout its entire lifecycle, i.e. Product Performance Lifecycle, from engineering to manufacturing and in operation. Present in more than 20 countries, and in major industrial sectors, ESI employs 1200 high level specialists around the world and reported 2019 sales of 146 million. ESI is headquartered in France and is listed on compartment B of Euronext Paris.

For further information, go to www.esi-group.com.

1 Effective on Janurary 1, 2022

2 Until December 31, 2021

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005523/en/

Contacts:

Press Shareholder Relations

ESI Group

Florence Barre

investors@esi-group.com

+33 1 49 78 28 28

Verbatee

Jerome Goaer, j.goaer@verbatee.com, +33 6 61 61 79 34

Aline Besselievre, a.besselievre@verbatee.com, +33 6 61 85 10 05
Finsbury Growth & Income Trust Plc - Transaction in Own Shares

For immediate release

21 December 2021

FINSBURY GROWTH & INCOME TRUST PLC

(the "Company")

MARKET PURCHASE OF COMPANY'S OWN SHARES

The Company announces that it has today purchased 75,000 of its own shares ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 900.44p per Ordinary Share. Such shares will be held in treasury by the Company.

The transaction was made pursuant to the authority granted at the Annual General Meeting of the Company held on 17 February 2021.

Following this transaction, the total number of Ordinary Shares held by the Company in treasury is 906,339; the total number of Ordinary Shares that the Company has in issue, less the total number of Ordinary Shares held by the Company in treasury following such purchase, and therefore, the total number of voting rights in the Company is 224,084,964.

The figure of 224,084,964 may be used by shareholders as the denominator for calculations of interests in the Company's voting rights in accordance with the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules.

For and on behalf of

Frostrow Capital LLP

Company Secretary

For further information, please contact:

Victoria Hale

Frostrow Capital LLP

Tel: 020 3 170 8732
Company Appoints Experienced Infection Preventionist as new VP of Clinical Affairs and Medical Liaison

DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / ActivePure Medical, LLC welcomes Caitlin Stowe as its vice president of clinical affairs and medical liaison. ActivePure, the global leader in surface and air disinfection technology, received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance on their Class II Medical Device in June 2020 and immediately built out its healthcare division, ActivePure Medical, LLC. With Stowe's addition, the company will accelerate the development of evidence-based science.

ActivePure's unique technology is proven to deactivate surface and airborne pathogens. The medical-grade technology is designed to treat pathogens that lead to healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and has been proven extremely effective at mitigating COVID-19 risks. ActivePure Medical can offer infection prevention audits to smaller healthcare facilities that don't have formal programs in place with the team fully developed.

In addition to directing both independent lab studies and healthcare-based trials demonstrating the efficacy of the ActivePure Technology, Stowe will oversee the development of ActivePure's efforts in contributing to the fight to achieve zero HAIs.

Stowe joined the company in October and will report to the President of ActivePure Medical, Dan Marsh. ActivePure Medical's global headquarters is in Dallas.

"Caitlin comes to us with an incredible background in infection prevention, public health and research. Her ability to help create awareness of the gaps in current practice for the cleaning and disinfection of the environment of care is critical. We are an infection prevention company, and as part of that, we work closely with our customers to help them achieve better outcomes by sharing our experience and knowledge. No one is better positioned to provide that consultative support than Caitlin," said Marsh. "ActivePure Medical is dedicated to continuous improvement and growth, and the addition of Caitlin to the team will add to those efforts."

"As a certified infection preventionist with a master's in public health and a Ph.D. candidate, I am dedicated to improving patient outcomes and preventing infections through practical application of best practice. I believe that we need to provide a bundle of practice solutions to move the needle on HAIs," said Stowe. "Joining ActivePure Medical provides me a great opportunity to fight preventable infections while providing educational resources, as well as supporting ActivePure's goals of providing a solution for the contamination that occurs between episodic interventions."

ActivePure Medical provides full-facility continuous surface and air disinfection specifically for healthcare systems, community health centers, long-term care facilities, as well as physician and dental offices. The infection prevention units, powered by the patented ActivePure Technology, have been tested by some of the world's top biosafety testing facilities. ActivePure has been proven to reduce up to 99.99% of pathogens, including C.dif, MRSA, Norovirus, Staph bacteria, Candida, Swine Flu, Hepatitis, Legionella, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), Avian influenza, E. coli, and more.

Stowe has worked in infection prevention roles for the past 12 years and has worked in the healthcare industry for more than 20 years. Most recently, she was the clinical affairs research manager for PDI Healthcare, where she played a significant role in developing an evidence-based science strategy for the post-market portfolio, initiating over 20 studies in two years. Stowe also assisted with evidence generation for product development. In addition, she helped create training and education for various of topics, from health quality metrics to emerging pathogens, to help foster best practices, to improve outcomes and lower infections.

Stowe has been an adjunct faculty member at South College in Knoxville, Tenn., teaching undergraduate biostatistics, health science research and epidemiology courses. "I am excited to be joining such an innovative and proven company that provides continuous and full-facility disinfection to address missed areas, recontamination and aerosolization, which has long been ignored in healthcare," Stowe said.

Stowe graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Central Florida. She earned her master's degree in public health specializing in global communicable disease and has a graduate certification in infection control from the University of South Florida. In addition to her multiple certifications in infection control, public health and health quality, she will attain her Ph.D. in health science from Nova Southeastern University in 2022.

For more information on ActivePure Medical, please visit ActivePureMedical.com or call 800-572-6241.

ABOUT ACTIVEPURE MEDICAL, LLC:

ActivePure Medical, the healthcare division of ActivePure, was launched in 2020 after the ActivePure Medical Guardian received Class II Medical Device clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ActivePure designed these medical-grade, automated and continuous disinfection units to combat some of healthcare's most resistant pathogens that lead to healthcare-associated infections. The ActivePure powered units have been proven effective in extensive independent laboratory and healthcare settings and are available in portable and induct HVAC configurations. All ActivePure Medical units are California Air and Resource Board (CARB) certified to meet ozone and electrical safety standards and designed for use facility-wide without interrupting the continuum of care. For more information on ActivePure Medical, please visit ActivePureMedical.com or call 800-572-6241.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Jo Trizila, TrizCom PR on behalf of ActivePure Medical

Email: Jo@TrizCom.com

Office: 972-247-1369

Cell/Text: 214-232-0078

Tonie Auer, TrizCom PR on behalf of ActivePure Medical

Email: Tonie@TrizCom.com

Office: 972-247-1369

Cell/Text: 817-925-2013

SOURCE: ActivePure Medical

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678714/ActivePure-Medical-Enhances-Infection-Prevention-Expertise
CALGARY, AB / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Labrador Technologies Inc. (the "Corporation" or "Labrador") (TSXV:LTX) provides the following corporate update in advance of an anticipated resumption of trading of the Corporation's common shares on the facilities of the TSX Venture Exchange Inc. (the "Exchange") and advises of a revised date for the upcoming Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders.

1) Corporate Update

a) Reliance on Previous Press Releases

Readers of the following corporate update are referred to the Corporation's press releases dated June 29, 2020, July 21, 2020, June 24, 2021 and July 16, 2021 which refer to a transaction with Claritas HealthTech Pte. Ltd. ("Claritas") which was terminated by mutual consent effective July 16, 2021. The prior press releases may be viewed under Labrador's profile on Sedar (www.sedar.com).

b) Previous Issuance of Common Shares for Debt

In connection with termination of the transaction with Claritas, the Corporation converted a $150,000 debenture ("Debenture") held by Churchgate Singapore Pte. Ltd. ("Churchgate") into 1,500,000 common shares of the Corporation. Churchgate is a party related to Claritas by virtue of common ownership. The Corporation made the necessary submission to, and received approval from, the Exchange for the issuance of the 1,500,000 common shares in relation to the Debenture conversion. However, the Corporation also issued 73,832 common shares to Churchgate in respect of accrued interest on the Debenture on the same date. The submission made to the Exchange in respect of the common share issuance to Churchgate did not include the accrued interest component of the Debenture such that the issuance of the 73,832 common shares to Churchgate was completed without Exchange approval.

To rectify this oversight, the Corporation made the required submission to the Exchange for the issuance of 73,832 common shares to Churchgate on December 20, 2021 which is subject to further TSXV review and acceptance.

c) Failure to Meet Continued Listing Requirements of the Exchange and Change of Business

After review by management of the Corporation, it has been determined that the Corporation does not currently meet the continued listing requirements of the Exchange. During October, management of the Corporation commenced discussions to complete a debt restructuring that, if completed, will result in a significant reduction in the debt of the Corporation. The debt reduction is intended to involve the conversion of $200,000 of the Corporation's debt into common shares of the Corporation at a price per common share that is equivalent to the trading price of the Corporation's common shares on the facilities of the Exchange.

Additionally, management of the Corporation is in negotiations to enter into certain agreements pertaining to the acquisition of oil and gas property interests. The agreements will include a funding agreement with arm's length parties. If completed, these agreements would result in a change of business of the Corporation. Funding would be provided as a loan facility that would allow the Corporation to complete operations that are intended to provide the Corporation with sufficient cash flow to meet its ongoing G&A expenses. As of this time, no agreements have been entered into and no definitive terms have been reached. Upon entering into an agreement those terms will be subject to Exchange review and acceptance at the time they are executed.

Management of the Corporation is of the view that completion of the debt restructuring together with the entering into of the agreements pertaining to the acquisition of oil and gas interests together with the loan facility would result in the Corporation meeting the continued listing requirements of the Exchange.

2) Revised Date for the Upcoming Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders

As the last annual meeting of shareholders of the Corporation was held on December 20, 2019, the Corporation is delinquent in holding an annual meeting of its shareholders ("AGM") in accordance with the policies of the Exchange. The Corporation previously announced that it intended to hold an AGM on January 24, 2022 for shareholders of record on December 20, 2021. Funding related to the costs of calling and holding the AGM were provided through the recently completed private placement of 3,000,000 common shares at a price of $0.01 per common share for gross and net proceeds of $30,000 (see the Corporation's press releases dated November 15, 2021 and November 29, 2021). The Corporation advises that to facilitate the completion of the information circular pertaining to the AGM, it will delay holding the AGM until January 31, 2022 for shareholders of record as of December 20, 2021, being the same record date.

3) Resumption of Trading

The Corporation expects that the common shares of the Corporation will be resumed for trading on the facilities of the Exchange on December 23, 2021.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the resumption of trading on the Exchange, the Exchange approval of the common shares issued in exchange for accrued interest, the completion of a transaction whereby the Corporation meets the continued listing requirements of the Exchange, the completion of the conversion of $200,000 of debt into common shares, and the holding of the AGM.

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Labrador disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

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.

For further information, please contact:

Kaan Camlioglu

Interim CEO, Labrador Technologies Inc.

Phone: (403) 818 1091

Email: kcamlioglu@icloud.com

SOURCE: Labrador Technologies Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678938/Labrador-Technologies-Inc-Provides-Corporate-Update-and-Revised-Annual-and-Special-Shareholders-Meeting-Date-in-Advance-of-Trading-Resumption


BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Switzerland stock market closed on a firm note on Tuesday, in line with markets across Europe, as worries about growth faded a bit after a report from Moderna Inc. said the laboratory test of a booster dose of its Covid-19 vaccine had shown itself to be effective against the Omicron variant.



Data showing a jump in Switzerland's exports in November contributed as well to the positive sentiment in the market.



The benchmark SMI, which climbed to 12,706.86 in early trades, ended with a gain of 92.64 points or 0.74% at 12,682.53.



Credit Suisse climbed more than 3.5%. Logitech, UBS Group, Swiss Re, Zurich Insurance Group, Holcim and ABB gaind 1.6 to 2.2%.



Swiss Life Holding gained about 1.4%, while Partners Group, Roche Holding, Novartis, Richemont and Swisscom advanced 0.8 to 1.2%.



Lonza Group declined by about 1.2% and Givaudan ended nearly 1% down.



Among the stocks in the Swiss Mid Price Index, Dufry gained about 4.25%, Straumann Holding climbed nearly 4% and Julius Baer gained 3.1%. Flughafen Zurich, Baloise Holding, Sonova, Helvetia, OC Oerlikon Corp, Adecco and Lindt & Spruengli ended higher by 1.5 to 2.15%.



Zur Rose plunged 16%. Tecan Group shares closed lower by about 1.6%.



Data from the Federal Customs Administration showed Switzerland's exports grew by a real 1.6% month-on-month in November, after a 2.1% decline in October.



Exports of chemical and pharmaceuticals rose 3% monthly in November, while imports increased 4.3% monthly in November, after a 4.5% decrease in the previous month.



In nominal terms, exports rose 4% in November and imports increased 5.6%.



The trade surplus increased to CHF 4.217 billion in November from CHF 4.303 billion in October.



According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, watch exports grew 8.6% year-on-year in November.



Meanwhile, the number of new daily Covid infections has slowed in recent days, health officials said Tuesday. However, officials have advised caution ahead of the possible rapid spread of the new Omicron variant.



'The short-term positive development in the number of cases is therefore more of a calm before another possible storm,' said Patrick Mathys of the Federal Office of Public Health.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Elisa Biava joins Excerp as Head of Corporate Development.

LONDON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Excerp , a media tech platform within the online written content industry, has announced another key hire. Elisa Biava is the latest addition to the team as Head of Corporate Development, responsible for identifying, planning and executing the company's growth opportunities.

"I am truly excited to join Excerp at such an early stage. I have been looking for an entrepreneurial adventure where I could start from the bottom and help build something great. When I learned about what was being built at Excerp, I was thrilled. The team is incredibly driven, and the company is growing fast," she says.

Prior to joining Excerp as Head of Corporate Development, Biava was an Investment Banker in the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs. She started her career at Goldman Sachs in 2016 in Investment Banking and joined the Mergers & Acquisitions team upon graduation from Bocconi. Biava earned a Bachelor's Degree in International Economics and Finance from Bocconi University.

Biava has extensive knowledge in corporate finance alongside experience advising with some of the largest corporations in Europe. She also has experience in raising capital in various formats and knowledge of established investment vehicles.

"We are very excited to welcome Elisa to Excerp, she is exceptionally talented with a strong growth mindset and brings in a very valuable skill set thanks to her experience in Mergers and Acquisitions. At Goldman Sachs, she has been instrumental at driving large M&A transactions and will be an invaluable asset for Excerp's continued growth", says Majid Sebti, co-founder of Excerp.

About Excerp

Excerp is building a digital media platform that will change the way content is produced and consumed online. Excerp was founded in December 2020. The company is headquartered in London and has over 20 employees.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1714637/Press_Release___Excerp___Elisa_Biava.jpg
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Vimian Group (STO:VIMIAN)

Vimian's MedTech segment Movora has today acquired IMEX. IMEX is a family-owned supplier of orthopedic implants for the veterinary market. The company was founded by Hall Griffin, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, in 1990 and is based in Texas, US. Today, IMEX has 17 employees and is a market leader within the niche of external fixation.

"Through the acquisition of IMEX we enter a new niche segment within surgical products and complement our existing product portfolio in Movora. IMEX has a strong reputation in the veterinary market with its high-quality product brands and long-term stakeholder relationships. I have known Dr. Hall Griffin for 30 years and I am excited to now work together with him and his team", says Chris Sidebotham, Co-CEO of Vimian's MedTech segment Movora.

The acquisition will have a marginal impact on Vimian Group's earnings per share. The acquisition is financed with available funds as well as an issue in kind, resolved by the Board of Vimian based on the authorization granted by the Annual General Meeting of 2021, of a total of 110,940 shares, comprising of 55,470 ordinary shares and 55,470 class C shares, to Dr. Hall Griffin as a reinvestment in Vimian Group. The total number of shares in Vimian Group following the acquisition will amount to 389,321,230 of which 364,445,155 ordinary shares and 24,876,075 class C shares. IMEX was consolidated into Vimian Group's MedTech segment today.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / December 21, 2021 / Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. (TSXV:BAY)(OTCQB:ATBHF) ("Aston Bay" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has closed a first tranche of the Company's non-brokered private placement, previously announced on November 29, 2021 (the "Offering"). Pursuant to this first tranche of the Offering, the Company has issued 13,473,500 units (each a "Unit") at a price of $0.06 per Unit, for aggregate gross proceeds of $808,410. The closing is subject to final acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Units continue to be available as part of the Offering, in which the Company may raise up to an additional $1,191,590. The Company expects to close a second tranche of the Offering in early 2022. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company and one full warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to acquire an additional common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.12 per Warrant for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance.

In connection with the closing of the first tranche of the Offering, Aston Bay has paid aggregate cash finder's fees of $28,926 to three arm's length finders, representing 6% of the proceeds raised from subscriptions by certain placees introduced by the finders. The Company has issued to the finders share purchase warrants (the "Finder's Warrants") entitling the purchase of an aggregate 482,100 common shares, on the same terms as the Warrants.

All shares acquired by the placees under the first tranche of the Offering, and shares which may be acquired upon the exercise of the Warrants and the Finder's Warrants, are subject to a hold period until April 22, 2022, in accordance with applicable Canadian securities legislation. Warrants and Finder's Warrants issued in the first tranche of the Offering are exercisable at $0.12 to purchase one common share of the Company until December 21, 2023.

Proceeds of this Offering will be used for exploration on Mountain Base Metals, Brownfields Gold and Buckingham Gold Properties in Virginia, USA and for general corporate purposes.

One insider of the Company participated in this first tranche of the Offering, which resulted in related party considerations pursuant to TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.9 and Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Company relied on Section 5.5(a) of MI 61-101 for an exemption from the formal valuation requirement and Section 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101 for an exemption from the minority shareholder approval requirement of MI 61-101 as the fair market value of the transaction insofar as the transaction involved interested parties did not exceed 25% of the Company's market capitalization.

About Aston Bay Holdings

Aston Bay is a publicly traded mineral exploration company exploring for gold and base metal deposits in Virginia, USA, and Nunavut, Canada. The Company is led by CEO Thomas Ullrich with exploration in Virginia directed by the Company's advisor, Don Taylor, the 2018 Thayer Lindsley Award winner for his discovery of the Taylor Pb-Zn-Ag Deposit in Arizona.

The Company has the exclusive option to lease the mineral rights to over 10,000 acres of prospective private land located in central Virginia. These lands are located within a gold-copper-lead-zinc mineralized belt prospective for mesothermal gold deposits and Virginia gold-pyrite belt deposits, as well as sedimentary exhalative (SEDEX), Broken Hill (BHT) and volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) type base metal deposits. Don Taylor, who led the predecessor company to Blue Ridge and assembled the dataset, has joined the Company's Advisory Board and will be directing the Company's exploration activities for the Blue Ridge Project. The Company is actively exploring the Mountain Base Metals Project Buckingham Gold Project in Virginia and is in advanced stages of negotiation on other lands in the area.

The Company is also 100% owner of the property Storm Project, which hosts the Storm Copper Project and the Seal Zinc Deposit and has been optioned to American West Metals Limited.

The Company's public disclosure documents are available on www.sedar.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Statements made in this press release, including those regarding the closing and the use of proceeds of the private placement, management objectives, forecasts, estimates, expectations, or predictions of the future may constitute "forward-looking statement", which can be identified by the use of conditional or future tenses or by the use of such verbs as "believe", "expect", "may", "will", "should", "estimate", "anticipate", "project", "plan", and words of similar import, including variations thereof and negative forms. This press release contains forward-looking statements that reflect, as of the date of this press release, Aston Bay's expectations, estimates and projections about its operations, the mining industry and the economic environment in which it operates. Statements in this press release that are not supported by historical fact are forward-looking statements, meaning they involve risk, uncertainty and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although Aston Bay believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which apply only at the time of writing of this press release. Aston Bay disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by securities legislation. We seek safe harbour.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

THIS PRESS RELEASE, REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE CANADIAN LAWS, IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES, AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO SELL ANY OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN IN THE UNITED STATES. THESE SECURITIES HAVE NOT BEEN, AND WILL NOT BE, REGISTERED UNDER THE UNITED STATES SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED, OR ANY STATE SECURITIES LAWS, AND MAY NOT BE OFFERED OR SOLD IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO U.S. PERSONS UNLESS REGISTERED OR EXEMPT THEREFROM.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONTACT:

Thomas Ullrich, Chief Executive Officer

thomas.ullrich@astonbayholdings.com

(416) 456-3516

Sofia Harquail, IR and Corporate Development

sofia.harquail@astonbayholdings.com

(647) 821-1337

SOURCE: Aston Bay Holdings Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/678933/Aston-Bay-Closes-First-Tranche-of-Non-Brokered-Private-Placement
Kelowna, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Corcel Exploration Inc. (CSE: CRCL) (the "Company" or "Corcel") is pleased to provide its inaugural update with respect to its Peak Mineral Property located near Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada (the "Peak Property" or the "Property").

The Company engaged Ridgeline Exploration Services Inc. of Kelowna, British Columbia, to complete an in-depth data compilation and analysis (the "Data Compilation") with respect to the Peak Property and surrounding vicinity. The goal of the Data Compilation was to allow Corcel to further refine targets for the Company's 2022 exploration plans which are expected to include an extensive soil sampling survey over the Peak Property.

Highlights of the Data Compilation include:

An extensive exploration database was successfully digitized and compiled from five historic assessment reports highlighting work programs completed from 1983 to 2015.

This exploration database now includes more than 900 B-horizon soil samples, 270 rock and chip grab samples, 15 silt samples, as well as 12 short diamond drill holes.

The majority of the work completed historically was centered around four BC MINFILE locations including the Peak Lake, High-Grade, CM-240, and Emma, all of which are prospective for mesothermal-vein and skarn-type precious and base metal mineralization.

The Company is now in the process of further analyzing and interpreting the various data within the exploration database, and will release further updates in regard to this work, as well as the Company's 2022 exploration plans, in due course.

The Company has been unable to dispatch a ground exploration crew to the Peak Property this month due to heavy snowfall in the region. The Data Compilation represents a practical first step for future exploration at the Peak Property once weather permits in 2022.

Qualified Person

The technical contents of this news release were approved by Case Lewis, P.Geo., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Corcel Exploration Inc.

The Company is a mineral exploration company engaged in the acquisition and exploration of mineral properties. Its initial objective is to focus on the exploration of the Peak Mineral Property located in British Columbia, Canada, for which the Company holds an option to acquire a 100% interest.

For further information contact:

Joel Freudman

President and Chief Executive Officer

Corcel Exploration Inc.

Tel: (647) 880-6414

Cautionary Statements

The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release. The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

This news release contains statements and information that constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information is based on the reasonable assumptions and estimates of management with respect to the Company's exploration program at the Peak Property, which may ultimately prove incorrect. Forward-looking information herein includes statements relating to the Company's exploration program at the Peak Property, and its overall corporate and strategic planning.

Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from the forward-looking information herein, including, but not limited to, challenges in analyzing exploration data, general risks associated with mineral exploration activities, volatility in commodity prices, and changes to corporate strategy. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking information herein, except as required by applicable securities legislation.

Not for distribution to United States newswire services or for release publication, distribution, or dissemination directly, or indirectly, in whole or in part, in or into the United States.



To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108248
- New contract advances CAES Gaisler Product portfolio to include a 16-core RISC-V platform that will enable the next generation of space-grade fault- and radiation-tolerant microprocessors.

CAES, a leader in advanced mission-critical electronics, has been awarded a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop a fault- and radiation-tolerant system-on-chip. Funded by the Swedish National Space Agency, the project will improve performance and power efficiency in satellite and spacecraft applications by developing a 16-core, space-hardened microprocessor based on the open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA).

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005587/en/

CAES to develop system-on-chip for European Space Agency (Photo: Business Wire)

The GR7xV processor will be designed into spaceborne controls and payload data management and processing systems to enable new kinds of observational, communication, navigational and scientific missions and services. These include advanced, flexible telecommunications satellite payloads, scientific and earth-observation payloads and robotics systems such as planetary exploration rovers.

The new fault- and radiation-tolerant processor will extend CAES Gaisler Product family of LEON processors, which have been used in space applications for decades and are based on legacy 32-bit SPARC V8 ISA microprocessor cores.

"ESA is proud to work with CAES on this new technology development as it will enable future missions and advance the technological standard for space processors," said Elodie Viau, Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications at ESA.

"The ESA contract further advances our development of a fault- and rad-tolerant space-grade microprocessor with unprecedented performance for its class," said Sandi Habinc, General Manager, CAES Gaisler Products. "The open RISC-V ISA has seen significant adoption in other markets, and this project is the first to develop a RISC-V-based ASIC for space applications."

The ESA contract follows a contract awarded earlier this year by Vinnova, Sweden's innovation agency, to extend the RISC-V processor platform to space-hardened applications for timing isolation and cybersecurity. The results of that study will be used to advance space-hardened GR7xV microprocessor development and will be shared with the industry at large.

About CAES

CAES is a pioneer of advanced electronics for the most technologically challenging military and aerospace trusted systems. As the largest provider of mixed-signal and radiation-hardened technology to the aerospace and defense industry, CAES delivers high-reliability RF, microwave and millimeter wave, microelectronic and digital solutions that enable our customers to ensure a safer, more secure planet. On land, at sea, in the air, in space and in cyberspace, CAES' extensive electronics and enhanced manufacturing capabilities are at the forefront of mission-critical military and aerospace innovation. www.caes.com

About ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe's gateway to space. ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. European Space Agency (esa.int).

The Telecommunications and Integrated Applications Directorate (TIA) supports innovation to boost the competitiveness of European industry in the global space market. This involves a wide range of activities, from space-based technology, systems, product for telecommunications development to the down-to-Earth application of space-based services. It also calls for engagement with a wide range of industrial, academic, and institutional partners.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005587/en/

Contacts:

Colleen Cronin

CAES

Colleen.cronin@caes.com
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Cinaport Acquisition Corp. III (TSXV: CAC.P) (the "Company"), a capital pool company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"), announced today that it has commenced legal proceedings against Coinberry Limited ("Coinberry") in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (the "Legal Action").

The Legal Action is in respect of, among other things, Coinberry's alleged breach of the standstill provisions (the "Standstill Provisions") of the binding letter of intent (the "Letter of Intent") dated February 12, 2021 between the Company and Coinberry in respect of the Company's proposed Qualifying Transaction under Policy 2.4 of the Exchange. As announced in the Company's press release dated December 13, 2021, Coinberry unilaterally terminated the Letter of Intent on December 12, 2021.

The Company discovered that Coinberry allegedly breached the Standstill Provisions during the term of the Letter of Intent. In connection with the Legal Action, the Company is seeking damages for breach of contract in the amount of $12 million and punitive damages in the amount of $2 million.

For more information, please contact:

Avi Grewal

President & Chief Executive Officer

Phone: (416) 213-8118 Ext. 210

E-mail: agrewal@cinaport.com

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 Press release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108253
Seattle, Washington--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - 22NW Fund, LP ("22NW") today provided an update on its requisition (the "Requisition") for a meeting (the "Meeting") of shareholders of DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd. ("DIRTT") under the Business Corporations Act (Alberta) (the "ABCA").

On December 9, 2021, 22NW announced that it had submitted to DIRTT a term sheet for a settlement proposal (the "Proposal") under which Todd Lillibridge, Denise Karkkainen and Steve Parry would retire from DIRTT's board of directors (the "Board") to be replaced by Aron English, Ken Sanders and Scott Robinson. Under the Proposal, 22NW would agree to support the director nominees of the Board at DIRTT's 2022 AGM, which would remain at eight. It was a condition of the Proposal that it be accepted no later than December 15, 2021. If DIRTT accepted the Proposal, the Requisition would be withdrawn.

22NW is the largest shareholder of DIRTT, holding almost 19 per cent of DIRTT's outstanding shares. The Board, in aggregate, holds approximately 1 per cent of DIRTT's outstanding shares.

The Proposal was not accepted by the Board. Since 22NW made the Proposal:

DIRTT announced in a December 10, 2021 press release (the "DIRTT Press Release") that it had filed a complaint (the "Complaint") with the Alberta Securities Commission against 22NW. The Complaint alleges breaches of securities laws by 22NW, another major shareholder of DIRTT and potentially other institutional shareholders of DIRTT.

DIRTT asserted in the DIRTT Press Release, by innuendo, that 22NW made the Proposal in connection with the Complaint. This was a false statement, made with no knowledge by DIRTT, intended only to attack 22NW's credibility. As the shareholder with the most to risk from a proxy fight, the Proposal was made by 22NW in an effort to resolve its differences with the Board.

22NW delivered a response to the Complaint to the Alberta Securities Commission on December 16, 2021. In that response, 22NW identified numerous facts refuting the Complaint. 22NW is seeking that the Complaint be dealt with in an expedited manner, so that it cannot be used as a tactic by the Board against the Requisition, and ultimately against the rights of DIRTT's shareholders under securities laws and the ABCA.

In the DIRTT Press Release, the Special Committee of the Board, described as having the mandate to review and consider the Requisition, "reiterated its commitment to being prepared to engage in discussions" with 22NW to "settle this unnecessary proxy fight." In fact, the Special Committee has attempted no negotiations with 22NW, instead exerting all of its efforts in examining the "validity" of the Requisition, making the Complaint against 22NW and other DIRTT shareholders, approving a date for the Meeting that is more than 5 MONTHS from the making of the Requisition and ignoring 22NW's requests for lists of US shareholders.

22NW has proceeded in preparing a proxy statement (the "U.S. Proxy Statement") pursuant to the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934. When the U.S. Proxy Statement is finalized, 22NW will update its Canadian information circular filed on SEDAR on November 22, 2021.

In making the Requisition, 22NW exercised a fundamental shareholder right under the ABCA. DIRTT has responded to the Requisition by attacking the business reputations of not only 22NW but other DIRTT shareholders as well. Calling the Meeting for a date more than 5 MONTHS from the making of the Requisition is a calculated affront to the substance and spirit of the requisition right under the ABCA.

The Board, in aggregate, holds approximately 1 per cent of DIRTT's shares. Its actions demonstrate the Board's attitude toward shareholders holding 99 per cent of DIRTT's shares. As a shareholder with far more at stake than the Board in DIRTT's success, 22NW intends to preserve its rights in relation to the Requisition and as a DIRTT shareholder, which may include recourse to securities regulators and Alberta courts.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For further information or to receive a copy of the report filed in connection with this press release, please see DIRTT's profile on the SEDAR website (http://www.sedar.com) or contact Aron English at 206-227-3078 or info@englishcap.com.

CERTAIN INFORMATION CONCERNING THE PARTICIPANTS

22NW Fund, LP, a Delaware limited partnership ("22NW Fund"), together with the other participants named herein (collectively, "22NW"), intends to file a preliminary proxy statement and accompanying WHITE proxy card with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") to be used to solicit votes for the election of its slate of highly-qualified director nominees at the meeting of shareholders of DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd., an Alberta corporation (the "Company") for which it has delivered a requisition to the Board of Directors of the Company pursuant to section 142 of the Business Corporations Act (Alberta).

22NW STRONGLY ADVISES ALL SHAREHOLDERS OF THE COMPANY TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT AND OTHER PROXY MATERIALS AS THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. SUCH PROXY MATERIALS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT NO CHARGE ON THE SEC'S WEB SITE AT HTTP://WWW.SEC.GOV . IN ADDITION, THE PARTICIPANTS IN THIS PROXY SOLICITATION WILL PROVIDE COPIES OF THE PROXY STATEMENT WITHOUT CHARGE, WHEN AVAILABLE, UPON REQUEST.

The participants in the proxy solicitation are anticipated to be 22NW Fund, 22NW, LP, a Delaware limited partnership ("22NW LP"), 22NW Fund GP, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company ("22NW GP"), 22NW GP, Inc., a Delaware S Corporation ("22NW Inc."), Aron R. English, Ryan W. Broderick, Bryson O. Hirai-Hadley, Alexander B. Jones, Cory J. Mitchell, Douglas A. Edwards, Scott L. Robinson, Scott C. Ryan and Kenneth D. Sanders.

As of the date hereof, 22NW Fund directly beneficially owns 16,097,165 Common Shares, without par value, of the Company (the "Shares"). As the investment manager of 22NW Fund, 22NW LP may be deemed to beneficially own the 16,097,165 Shares directly beneficially owned by 22NW Fund. As the general partner of 22NW Fund, 22NW GP may be deemed to beneficially own the 16,097,165 Shares directly beneficially owned by 22NW Fund. As the general partner of 22NW, LP, 22NW Inc. may be deemed to beneficially own the 16,097,165 Shares directly beneficially owned by 22NW Fund. As of the date hereof, Mr. English directly beneficially owns 214,869 Shares. Mr. English, as the Portfolio Manager of 22NW LP, Manager of 22NW GP, and President and sole shareholder of 22NW Inc, may be deemed to beneficially own the 16,097,165 Shares directly beneficially owned by 22NW Fund, which, together with the 214,869 Shares he directly owns, constitutes an aggregate of 16,312,034 Shares beneficially owned by Mr. English. As of the date hereof, Mr. Broderick directly beneficially owns 5,675 Shares. As of the date hereof, Mr. Hirai-Hadley directly beneficially owns 1,250 Shares. As of the date hereof, Mr. Jones directly beneficially owns 1,200 Shares. As of the date hereof, Mr. Mitchell directly beneficially owns 6,890 Shares. As of the date hereof, none of Messrs. Edwards, Robinson, Ryan and Sanders own beneficially or of record any securities of the Company.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108244
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - December 21, 2021) - Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. (TSX: AVL) (OTCQB: AVLNF) ("Avalon" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed a non-brokered private placement today consisting of 9,099,994 flow-through units at a price of $0.12 per unit and 2,920,000 non-flow-through units at a price of $0.10 per unit for gross proceeds of $1,384,000.

Each flow-through unit was comprised of one flow-through common share and one half of one common share purchase warrant, with each whole warrant entitling the holder to acquire one common share of the Company at a price of $0.18 for a period of 24 months from today. Each non-flow-through unit was comprised of one common share and one half of one common share purchase warrant, with each whole warrant entitling the holder to acquire one common share of the Company at a price of $0.15 for a period of 24 months from today.

Donald Bubar, President and CEO of the Company, subscribed for 250,000 flow-through units and Alan Ferry, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Company, subscribed for 300,000 flow-through units. The proceeds from this private placement will be used to fund a winter drilling program on the Company's Separation Rapids Lithium Project and for general working capital purposes.

In conjunction with this private placement, Avalon paid finder's fees of $90,580 and issued 788,900 non-transferrable finder's warrants, with each finder's warrant being exercisable to acquire one common share of the Company at a price of $0.18 for a period of 24 months from today. Pursuant to Canadian securities laws, the securities issuable under this private placement are subject to a hold period which expires on April 22, 2022.

For questions and feedback, please send an e-mail message to Avalon's President and CEO, Donald Bubar, at ir@AvalonAM.com.

About Avalon Advanced Materials Inc.

Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. is a Canadian mineral development company specializing in sustainably-produced materials for clean technology. The Company now has four advanced stage projects, providing investors with exposure to lithium, tin and indium, as well as rare earth elements, tantalum, cesium and zirconium. Avalon is currently focusing on developing its Separation Rapids Lithium Project near Kenora, Ontario while continuing to advance other projects, including its 100%-owned Lilypad Cesium-Tantalum Project. Social responsibility and environmental stewardship are corporate cornerstones.

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to statements related to how the Company plans to use the net proceeds from the Private Placement and that proceeds from this offering will be to fund work programs on the Company's Separation Rapids Lithium Project and for general working capital purposes. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "potential", "scheduled", "anticipates", "continues", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "scheduled", "targeted", "planned", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be" or "will not be" taken, reached or result, "will occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Avalon to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable at the time such statements are made. Although Avalon has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expected results described in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to market conditions, and the possibility of cost overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses as well as those risk factors set out in the Company's current Annual Information Form, Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure documents available under the Company's profile at www.SEDAR.com. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Such forward-looking statements have been provided for the purpose of assisting investors in understanding the Company's plans and objectives and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Avalon does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that are contained herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

This press release is not an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "US Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to US persons (as defined in Regulation S under the US Securities Act) absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/108269
BANGKOK, Dec 21, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - Britania PCL (SET: BRI) is debuting its IPO shares in the stock market, putting forward an impressive performance between 2018 and 2020 with an average annual growth rate of 113%. Revenue during the first 9 months of this year stands at 2,808.57 million baht, growing by 52%. Further plans include 9 new low-rise housing projects next year across the Bangkok Metropolis and certain provinces, valued at 10,800 million baht.Mrs. Supalak Chanpitak, Chief Executive Officer, BRI, reports that the trading of its IPO shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand starts today (Dec. 21, 2021) under the symbol "BRI".The CEO is confident that the BRI securities will receive a positive response from investors interested in real estate companies. As an expert developer of low-rise housing and a flagship company of Origin Property Public Company Limited, Britania is expected to gain investors' trust.Since its inception in 2016, BRI has been growing by leaps and bounds. In 2019, the company launched a single project. That number ballooned to 21 in 2022. Revenues and profits grew in step with the company's growth. Total revenue in 2018 came in at 515.47 million baht; it grew to 2,342.09 million baht in 2020 at the CAGR rate of 113.16%. The first nine months of this year generated 2,808.57 million baht in revenue, a growth of 52.18% over the same period last year which saw the revenue of 1,845.59 million baht.Profit, too, took a great leap during that time. In 2018 it stood at 71.65 million baht and grew to 348.72 million baht in 2020. During the first nine months of this year, 452.30 million baht was made in profit, increasing by 55.93% over the same period last year with a profit of 290.08 million baht. The company's stellar performance stemmed from launching of projects in locations that matched the need for housing as cities together with infrastructures and transportation systems grew.Mrs. Supalak says the proceeds from the capital raised in the SET will be invested in project development, and used to pay loans and maintain cash flow. Plans have been set for 2022 to develop nine new projects at the cost of 10,800 million baht by highlighting the brands "Britania" and "Grand Britania" to attract clients at the middle and upper levels in Bangkok and vicinity as well as provinces with high potential. Provinces targeted include Rayong and Udon Thani. Rayong is an important part of the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) and is home to several industrial estates. Udon Thani, meanwhile, is a leading economic province in the northeast, having a large population with high purchasing power.Mr. Pongsak Phrukpaisal, Managing Director, Kasikorn Securities Public Company Limited, as the IPO's financial advisor and underwriter, says Britania PCL is a highly successful real estate company. Its first IPO offers 252.65 million shares at 10.50 baht a share, which will yield a total of 2,652.83 million baht.Britania, he says, has been growing rapidly, having launched new projects continuously, with the result that income and profit have grown in step. The company is capable of managing capital efficiently, generating admirable rates of gross and net profits. Its consistent pace of growth means it could take advantage of the economy of scale in terms of negotiating lower prices for construction materials. It is also able to manage other costs efficiently. In addition, the company has received support from its parent company, Origin Property PCL, boosting its ability to gain advantage even more from the economy of scale and benefitting from new innovative researches conducted by the ORI Group.Mr. Payupat Mahabhol, Managing Director, Yuanta Securities (Thailand) Company Limited, co-financial advisor and underwriter, adds that Britania is a premier real estate developer of low-rise housing projects with a long-term growth potential as it spans out across the Bangkok Metropolis as well as leading provinces in various regions across the country.Mr. Payupat points out that the real estate sector is benefiting from the economic recovery that is underway. At the same time, the Bank of Thailand (BoT) has further eased the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio for mortgage lending to allow homebuyers to borrow loans of up to 100% of the property value. This will be a positive factor contributing to the growth of the real estate sector and boosting the number of projects to be launched by Britania.Released by Public Relations Dept., MT Multimedia Co. Ltd. for Britania PCLFor more information, please contact: Orn-anong pattaravejkulTel: 086-801-8888, 099-194-6597Email: ornanong.p@mtmultimedia.comSource: Britania PCLCopyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
OTCQX: SHWZ

Acquisition Adds to Schwazze's Retail Footprint in Colorado

DENVER, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Schwazze, (OTCQX: SHWZ) ("Schwazze" or the "Company"), announced that it has closed the acquisition of the assets of Smoking Gun, LLC and Smoking Gun Land Company, LLC ("Smoking Gun"). Total consideration for the acquisition was $4 million in cash and 100,000 shares of Schwazze common stock upon closing.

The Smoking Gun dispensary and assets are located on a prime retail corner on Colorado Blvd. in Glendale, Colorado in the center of the greater Denver metro area. This acquisition is part of the Company's continuing retail expansion plan in Colorado, and including the recently announced planned acquisitions in New Mexico (December 3, 2021), brings the total number of dispensaries to 32.

Since April 2020, Schwazze acquired or announced the planned acquisition of 32 cannabis dispensaries, including the ten R. Greenleaf New Mexico dispensaries. In 2021, the Company also acquired or announced the planned acquisition of seven cultivation facilities, three in Colorado - SCG Holding LLC, Brow 2 LLC and Star Buds - and four licensed in New Mexico. The New Mexico acquisition will also add a manufacturing asset, Elemental Kitchen & Laboratories, LLC, to the Company's manufacturing plant, Purplebee's in Colorado. In May 2021, Schwazze announced its BioSciences division and in August 2021 it commenced home delivery services in Colorado.

About Schwazze

Schwazze (OTCQX: SHWZ) is building a premier vertically integrated regional cannabis company with assets in Colorado and New Mexico and will continue to take its operating system to other states where it can develop a differentiated regional leadership position. Schwazze is the parent company of a portfolio of leading cannabis businesses and brands spanning seed to sale. The Company is committed to unlocking the full potential of the cannabis plant to improve the human condition. Schwazze is anchored by a high- performance culture that combines customer-centric thinking and data science to test, measure, and drive decisions and outcomes. The Company's leadership team has deep expertise in retailing, wholesaling, and building consumer brands at Fortune 500 companies as well as in the cannabis sector. Schwazze is passionate about making a difference in our communities, promoting diversity and inclusion, and doing our part to incorporate climate-conscious best practices. Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. was Schwazze's former operating trade name. The corporate entity continues to be named Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. Schwazze derives its name from the pruning technique of a cannabis plant to enhance plant structure and promote healthy growth.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "plan," "will," "may," "continue," "predicts," or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future events or performance, are based on certain assumptions, and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control and cannot be predicted or quantified. Consequently, actual events and results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with (i) our inability to manufacture our products and product candidates on a commercial scale on our own or in collaboration with third parties; (ii) difficulties in obtaining financing on commercially reasonable terms; (iii) changes in the size and nature of our competition; (iv) loss of one or more key executives or scientists; (v) difficulties in securing regulatory approval to market our products and product candidates; (vi) our ability to successfully execute our growth strategy in Colorado and outside the state, (vii) our ability to consummate the acquisition described in this press release or to identify and consummate future acquisitions that meet our criteria, (viii) our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses, including the acquisition described in this press release, and realize synergies therefrom, (ix) the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, (x) the timing and extent of governmental stimulus programs, and (xi) the uncertainty in the application of federal, state and local laws to our business, and any changes in such laws. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by law.

For further information: Investors, Joanne Jobin, Investor Relations, Joanne.jobin@schwazze.com, 647 964 0292; Media, Julie Suntrup, Schwazze, Vice President | Marketing & Merchandising, julie.suntrup@schwazze.com, 303 371 0387
ACE & Company, a Geneva, Switzerland-based global investment firm, closed its fourth private equity co-investment fund, at $244m.

Led by Rob Callahan, Head of ACE Buyout Strategy, ABO IV will continue the strategy of its predecessor funds, supporting high caliber sponsors in their core areas of expertise. While the fund has a North American focus, it will include 20 to 25 companies diversified by sector, size, deal archetype and general partner. The fund will identify and pursue the best opportunities across the private equity universe.

The firms buyout program has completed over 70 co-investments since 2011.

Led by Adam Said, Founder and CEO, ACE & Company is a global investment group specialized in private investments with total assets of over $1.6 bn across three investment strategies and investment solutions. Headquartered in Geneva with offices in London, New York, Hong Kong, and Cairo, ACEs global presence brings the company in direct contact with sourcing partners, investment firms, as well as entrepreneurs and provides investors unparalleled access to a network of opportunities.

ACE is regulated by the Swiss Financial Supervisory Authority FINMA in Switzerland.

FinSMEs

21/12/2021
Stacked, a Chicago, IL-based crypto-investing software that allows users to manage assets and invest in pre-built portfolios and strategies, raised $35m in Series A funding.

The round was led by Alameda Research, a core partner of FTX, and Mirana Ventures, venture partner of Bybit and BitDAO, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Alumni Ventures, Jump Capital, Motivate Ventures, CoinFund, Starting Line, Avon Ventures, Linkpad Fund, Chicago Trading Capital, Hyde Park Angels, Bitstamp, Cadenza Ventures, Launch Code Capital and Brian Barnes.

The company intends to use the funds to double its 40-person team and build out its suite of retail-friendly crypto portfolios and automated lending products.

Led by Joel Birch, Co-Founder and CEO, and Stephen Beavis, Co-Founder and COO, Stacked is a crypto investment and asset management platform that connects to exchange accounts and allows users to instantly access vetted trading strategies and investment portfolios. Pre-built stacks are designed to give users instant access to pre-built portfolios modeled after some of the most popular crypto indexes, hedge funds and other investor portfolios.

Stacked supports all major exchanges and is one of the few crypto native companies licensed as a registered investment advisor (RIA).

The company, which has now raised total funding of about $40 million since its launch last year, has automated over $10 billion worth of transactions for tens of thousands of new investors so far in 2021.

FinSMEs

21/12/2021
Apple will reportedly start assembling the latest iPhone 13 smartphone in India soon, as the company has started trial production of the phone in the Foxconn plant near Chennai. This news comes just three months after the flagship iPhone 13 series were introduced. Apple is expected to start the commercial production some time in February 2022 for both local sales and export.

Apple started assembling the iPhone 12, locally in India at the same Foxconn plant in Chennai earlier this year. The iPhone 12 officially received a Rs. 14000 price cut in September after the launch of iPhone 13, and it was sold during Flipkarts Big Billion Days Sale for Rs. 49,999.

It is doubtful if the iPhone 13 will get a price cut immediately after the company starts selling the locally assembled phone. Producing the new iPhone in India could possibly save Apple import duties.

In the past, Apple had manufactured the iPhone SE 2020, locally at the Wistron facility in Bengaluru. Based on recent reports, Apple is planning to open its first company-owned India outlet in Mumbai by next year.

Source
Lebanon Fire District crews responded to an alarm at around 3:30 p.m. at Green Acres Elementary School on Monday, Dec. 20, according to a news release from the agency.

Firefighters noticed smoke coming from the building when they arrived at the scene and upgraded the call to a first alarm level, making entry to the building and the roof. More smoke was discovered in two classrooms, leading incident command to push to a second alarm.

Further investigation revealed a heating system actuator and motor had malfunctioned, causing smoke to accumulate in the two classrooms and surrounding areas. The building was checked for heat and extension and was cleared of smoke. Twenty-two personnel responded with 11 units.

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The Corvallis City Council again waded into the challenges of funding social services and homeless aid and has upped the ante in how to allocate American Rescue Plan Act moneys, which are designed to help governments during the pandemic.

Councilors were considering Monday night, Dec. 20, a recommendation from the Budget Commission to allocate 53.5% of its $13 million in the federal funds for city facilities' upgrades and 5% for social service spending.

Councilors held firm on the 53.5% after working their way through a series of motions, but they agreed narrowly to triple the social service allocation to 15%.

The final motion passed on a 5-4 vote, with Charles Maughan (Ward 2), Hyatt Lytle (Ward 3), Gabe Shepherd (Ward 4), Tracey Yee (Ward 8) and Andrew Struthers (Ward 9) voting yes, and Jan Napack (Ward 1), Charlyn Ellis (Ward 5), Laurie Chaplen (Ward 6) and Paul Shaffer (Ward 7) opposing the approach.

All five members of the public who spoke during the community comments segment of the meeting urged the council to increase the social spending percentage, although those who included specific numbers called for an even larger allocation, somewhere between 20% and 30%.

I find this heartbreaking, said Laura King, one of the community members who advocated increasing the percentage. Its a complete abandonment of the citys people.

The Rev. Jennifer Butler of the First Congregational United Church of Christ, Corvallis, who has testified multiple times before the council about spending for the homeless, called for 30% and urged councilors to ask Benton County to match that figure.

City Manager Mark Shepard said staff will return with concrete ideas for spending the 53.5% (approximately $7 million) and the 15% (approximately $2 million) at a future meeting.

The fate of the additional 31.5% remains unknown at this time, although Shaffer noted that "there was no reason for the council to rush to judgment on this."

The final motion on the ARPA topic called for council leadership to communicate with Benton County and the Corvallis School District about the possibility of matching the city disbursement of ARPA or other COVID-19-related federal funds. It passed on an 8-1 vote, with Napack voting no because she didnt believe it was wise to interject city requests into other jurisdictions.

Another item relating to social service spending was tabled and will be considered at a future meeting. The item was listed on the consent agenda, which usually consists of noncontroversial items that can be addressed in one motion. It would have allocated $30,000 in City Council discretionary funds to pay for illegal camp cleanups and RV removals.

The motion to table it was unanimous. Ward 6's Chaplen, who moved to remove the item, noted that it should come to council for full consideration. No word was available regarding when the council might consider the issue.

"We have seen an uptick in folks using campers until they are no longer functional and then abandoning them," Shepard said. "The city is then forced to remove them and they are expensive to decommission appropriately. No city department budgets for this expense."

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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Oregon State University will most likely require a coronavirus booster shot for students, staff and faculty when eligible, according to a statement sent out Monday, Dec. 20.

The best way you can help is by becoming vaccinated and getting a booster shot, Provost & Executive Vice President Edward Feser wrote. Please be aware that while presently not a requirement, it is likely OSU will require all employees, as well as students engaged in on-site learning, to obtain the booster, as an appropriate follow-up to the universitys vaccination requirement.

The statement followed the University of Oregon's Monday announcement that it would require the booster shot for students, faculty and staff as soon as they are able to receive it.

Individuals are eligible for the booster six months after receiving their last dose of Pfizer or Moderna, and two months after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

OSU is monitoring the spread of the Omicron variant and has determined that current vaccines coupled with a booster shot provide significant protection from the virus, according to the statement.

The university also asks that those who are not vaccinated but are compliant with OSUs vaccination program through an exemption get vaccinated if they are medically able to do so.

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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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.
Covid-19 vaccine protection wanes after three months, study suggests

The protection offered by the Oxford-Astra Zeneca Covid-19 vaccine declines after three months of receiving two doses, a study says.

The findings  drawn from datasets in two countries  suggest that booster programmes are needed to help maintain protection from severe disease in those vaccinated with Oxford-Astra Zeneca, experts say.

Researchers from Scotland and Brazil analysed data for two million people in Scotland and 42 million people in Brazil who had been vaccinated with the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine.

In Scotland, when compared with two weeks after receiving a second dose, there was approximately a fivefold increase in the chance of being hospitalised or dying from Covid-19 nearly five months after being double vaccinated.

The decline in effectiveness begins to first appear at around three months, when the risk of hospitalisation and death is double that of two weeks after the second dose, experts say.

The risk increases threefold just short of four months after the second vaccine dose. Similar numbers were seen for Brazil.

Researchers were able to compare data between Scotland and Brazil as they had a similar interval between doses  12 weeks  and initial prioritisation of who was vaccinated  people at highest risk of severe disease and healthcare workers.

The dominant variant was different in each country during the study period  Delta in Scotland and Gamma in Brazil  meaning the decline in effectiveness is likely because of vaccine waning and the impact of variants.

The study also estimated vaccine effectiveness at similar fortnightly intervals by comparing outcomes of people who have been jabbed with those who are unvaccinated.

But experts warned these figures should be treated with caution because it is becoming harder to compare unvaccinated people to vaccinated people with similar characteristics, particularly among older age groups where so many people are now vaccinated.

The study is part of the EAVE II project, which uses anonymised linked patient data in Scotland to track the pandemic and the vaccine roll out in real time.

The research team included scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Strathclyde, and St Andrews; Public Health Scotland; Victoria University of Wellington; Fiocruz; Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and Universidade Federal de Bahia.

Professor Aziz Sheikh, Director of the University of Edinburghs Usher Institute and EAVE II study lead, said: Vaccines have been a key tool in fighting the pandemic, but waning in their effectiveness has been a concern for a while. By identifying when waning first starts to occur in the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine, it should be possible for governments to design booster programmes that can ensure maximum protection is maintained.

If eligible for a booster and you have not had yet had one, I would highly recommend that you book one soon.

Professor Vittal Katikireddi at the University of Glasgow said: Our analyses of national datasets from both Scotland and Brazil suggest that there is considerable waning of effectiveness for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, with protection against severe Covid-19 falling over time.

We studied two million people in Scotland and over 42 million people in Brazil who had received two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. More than four months after receiving a second dose, the risk of experiencing either a Covid-19 hospitalisation or death was approximately five times greater than the period of maximum vaccine protection after accounting for changes in infection rates and a range of other factors.

Our work highlights the importance of getting boosters, even if youve had two doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, as soon as you are able to.

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council, UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, the National Institute for Health Research and Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), and was supported by the Scottish Government.

Additional support was provided through the Scottish Government Director-General Health and Social Care, and the UKRI COVID-19 National Core Studies Data and Connectivity programme led by HDR UK.

Enquiries: ali.howard@glasgow.ac.uk or elizabeth.mcmeekin@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 6557 or 0141 330 4831
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MONTREAL, Dec. 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Imperial Mining Group Ltd. ("Imperial") (TSX VENTURE: IPG; OTCQB: IMPNF) is pleased to announce that it has partnered with Investment Quebec and the Baie-Comeau Regional Industrial Development Agency (IDM) to undertake a comprehensive scandium market study. The study will look at the benefits of establishing a North American supply of scandium and scandium-aluminum alloys products and determine the industrial and technological development impacts on the Baie-Comeau region, in general, and the Quebec aluminum industry, in particular.



In July 2021, a collaboration agreement was signed between Imperial Mining Group and Innovation et Developpement Manicouagan. This agreement was the catalyst for the awarding of a $100,700 grant by Investissement Quebec ($ 50,700) in the SME Action Plan program and the Entrepreneurial Equity Fund of ID Manicouagan ($ 50,000) to support scandium market research.

We are grateful to the Government of Quebec and Innovation and Development Manicouagan for supporting Imperial's vision for a strong North American scandium industry," said Peter J. Cashin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Imperial Mining Group. The results of the study will be an important input to the Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) currently underway and will quantify the significant growth potential of the global scandium alloy products market once our Crater Lake operation is commissioned. It will also demonstrate the significant economic and strategic benefits that a sustainable scandium supply chain will bring to the province of Quebec and its world-class green aluminum industry. From Imperial's perspective, the Baie-Comeau region offers significant advantages due to the availability of low-cost green hydropower, the deep-water port, the expertise of the aluminum workforce and a vibrant northern community.

"In Quebec, we can be proud to have the opportunity to produce scandium from an important mineral deposit like we see at Crater Lake and the greenest aluminum in the world, said Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of Economy and Innovation and Minister responsible for Regional Economic Development. It is now time to join forces and prepare Quebec industry for the arrival of scandium-aluminum alloys, making them more durable and more resistant. This metal will be an important contributor to reducing manufactured platform weight."

Baie-Comeau offers many opportunities for allied metal producers, such as Imperial Mining Group, to be strategically located near a major green aluminum production center and a value-added smelter for the North American automotive industry, said Guy Simard, Director of Industrial Development at ID Manicouagan. In addition, Imperial's project has the potential to contribute to the advancement of two important strategies of the Government of Quebec, namely the Quebec aluminum development strategy and the action plan for the value creation in critical and strategic mineral sector.

MARKET STUDY OBJECTIVES

IPG views that the industrial port zone of Baie-Comeau an ideal choice for the establishment of scandium oxide and master alloy production capacity for the Crater Lake development. The market study will look at the implications and impacts of establishing a scandium supply chain in the Baie-Comeau region, in general, and as well as the broad Quebec aluminum industry. The study will be addressing two broad themes, being:

Market Analysis and Economic Opportunities



Conduct market analysis of the potential scandium downstream applications, including identifying key trends, manufacturing techniques emerging market segments, including evaluating each market for cost sensitivity.

Estimate carbon offsets for each downstream application.



Conduct market outlook for scandium oxide consumption for a 25-year timeframe for each application.



Conduct SWOT analysis of the Imperial Mining Group. Market Sizing and Socioeconomic Impact Assessment



Assess the IPGs addressable market opportunities in Quebec.

Estimate direct, indirect, and induced economic impact of the IPG scandium oxide production and economic impact of the aluminum ecosystem in Baie-Comeau.

Assess broader socioeconomic benefits of the scandium production and applications in Quebecs industries, including but not limited to, follow-on investment, and strengthening of existing manufacturing clusters.



The market study work commenced on October 22, 2021 and will be completed by the end of Q1 2022. Results of the study will be incorporated into the Crater Lake project PEA which is currently being undertaken by WSP Canada (see Imperial Mining Press Release, November 5, 2021).

ABOUT IMPERIAL MINING GROUP LTD.

Imperial is a Canadian mineral exploration and development company focused on the advancement of its technology metals projects in Quebec. Imperial is publicly listed on the TSX Venture Exchange as IPG and on the OTCQB Exchange as IMPNF and is led by an experienced team of mineral exploration and development professionals with a strong track record of mineral deposit discovery in numerous metal commodities.

ABOUT ID MANICOUAGAN

An economic development organization, IDM supports entrepreneurship through advisory and financing services (loans and grants) to businesses and community organizations. It acts in the industrial development and socio-economic development of the Manicouagan area to maximize the benefits for the region and facilitate the networking of the various partners.

For further information please contact: Peter J. Cashin

CHF Capital Markets

President and Chief Executive Officer Cathy Hume, Chief Executive Officer Phone: +1 (514) 360-0571 Phone: +1 (416) 868-1079 x251

Email: info@imperialmgp.com Email: cathy@chfir.com

Website: www.imperialmgp.com Twitter: @imperial_mining

Facebook: Imperial Mining Group

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.
FOLSOM, NJ , Dec. 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Media Contact: Dominick DiRocco

(732)-239-4462

ddirocco@sjindustries.com

Investor Contact: Dan Fidell

(609) 561-9000 ext. 7027

dfidell@sjindustries.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SJI and REV LNG Break Ground on Four Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) Facilities in Michigan

FOLSOM, NJ December 20, 2021  SJI (NYSE:SJI) remains committed to advancing its infrastructure to meet the clean energy needs of the future. Consistent with this commitment, last week, SJI and development partner, REV LNG, LLC broke ground on renewable natural gas (RNG) facilities at four Michigan-based dairy farms, marking the partners first series of renewable energy projects to break ground outside of the Northeast region.

The projects will include constructing 2M gallon anaerobic digesters and related RNG facilities to capture methane produced by cow manure at each of the four farms: Double Eagle, Roto-Z, Goma and Z-Star. The projects will also entail implementing equipment that cleans the digester-produced biogas, transforming it into commercial-grade pipeline-quality renewable natural gas. REV LNG, a leader in developing RNG projects throughout North America, has led early-stage development for SJI and will preside over the construction of the RNG facilities, expected to be operational by late 2022.

REV LNG is committed to implementing creative energy solutions that help our company and the clients we serve to reduce our carbon footprints, said David Kailbourne, CEO, REV LNG. I am thrilled to see these projects break ground and look forward to REV LNG and SJIs continued partnership in this area of interest. In addition, Id like to thank the families at Double Eagle, Roto-Z, Goma and Z-Star farms for bringing these projects to life.

Together, the four sustainable, family-owned farms will help to produce nearly 3M therms of RNG per year. To put this into perspective, 3M therms of RNG is enough to offset the negative environmental impact of 1.8M gallons of gasoline consumed per year within the United States.

These projects fall on the heels of SJI and REV LNGs recent announcement to begin construction on an RNG facility at Oakridge Dairy, Connecticuts largest dairy farm. Because of SJI and REV LNGs continued partnership in this area of strategic importance, SJI is positioned well to become a national leader in waste-to-energy projects by 2025.

SJI recognizes that in order to achieve our goal of 100 percent carbon reduction by 2040, working collaboratively with organizations that share our same mission is critical, said Mike Renna, President and CEO, SJI. With that, SJI is proud to partner with REV LNG and dairy farms across the nation on these innovative clean energy projects that I am confident will result in positive environmental outcomes for the regions we serve and beyond.

For more information about SJI and its subsidiaries, please visit sjindustries.com.

About SJI

SJI (NYSE: SJI), an energy infrastructure holding company based in Folsom, NJ, delivers energy services to customers through two primary subsidiaries: SJI Utilities (SJIU) and SJI Energy Enterprises (SJIEE). SJIU houses the companys regulated natural gas utility operations, delivering safe, reliable and affordable natural gas to more than 700,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers across New Jersey via its South Jersey Gas and Elizabethtown Gas subsidiaries. SJIEE houses the companys non-utility operations primarily focused on clean energy development and decarbonization via renewable energy production and energy management activities. Visit sjindustries.com for more information about SJI and its subsidiaries.

About Rev LNG, LLC

REV LNG, LLC (REV) is a full-service supplier of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), and Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) based in Ulysses, Pennsylvania. Since the companys inception in 2013, REV has emerged as a leading provider of mobile gas solutions including transportation logistics, marine, mobile fuel solutions, and project development. Having safely sourced and delivered thousands of LNG loads to a variety of markets including Public Utilities, Renewable Gas projects, and Exploration and Production Companies, REV is focused on providing best-in-class turnkey mobile energy service with a focus on safety and environmental stewardship. REV LNG is a minority stakeholder of NiCHe LNG, which owns and operates the Towanda LNG Facility in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. The company has been recognized for its commitment to utilizing clean fuels by the State of Pennsylvania, receiving both the Governors Award as well as the Penn State Marcellus Center Innovation Award. REV has also received grants from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for utilizing LNG in its trucking fleet. Visit http://www.revlng.com for more information on REV LNG.

###
Portland , OR, Dec. 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to the report published by Allied Market Research, the South Asia kids toys market was pegged at $6.66 billion in 2020 and is estimated to hit $10.99 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 5.4% from 2021 to 2027. The report provides an in-depth analysis of the top investment pockets, top winning strategies, drivers & opportunities, market size & estimations, competitive landscape, and changing market trends.

Emergence of games in bars and cafes and increase in demand from children and young population drive the growth of the South Asia kids toys market. On the other hand, imposition of regulations, growth in digitalization, and widespread penetration of smartphones restrain the growth to some extent. However, reduction of carbon footprints and several environment-friendly initiatives are expected to create lucrative opportunities in the industry.

Get detailed COVID-19 impact analysis on the South Asia Kids Toys Market: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/14658?reqfor=covid

COVID-19 scenario:

Huge disruptions in the supply chain and interruptions in production activities, especially, during the initial phase of the lockdown, impacted the South Asia kids toys market negatively.

Nevertheless, as the situation gets better at a slow & steady pace, the market is projected to get back on track soon.



The South Asia Kids Toys market is analyzed across product, age group, sales channel, and country. Based on product, the dolls segment contributed to around one-fifth of the total market share in 2020, and is expected to lead the trail by 2030. The same segment would also cite the fastest CAGR of 6.3% from 2021 to 2030.

Based on age group, the 5 to 10 years segment accounted for more than two-fifths of the total market revenue in share in 2020, and is anticipated to rule the roost by 2030. The same segment would also grow at the fastest CAGR of 5.9% from 2021 to 2030.

Download Sample Copy of Report @ https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/14658

Based on country, India held the major share in 2019, generating more than four-fifths of the total market. The same region would also manifest the fastest CAGR of 5.7% during the forecast period. The other countries studied in the report include Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

The leading market players analyzed in the South Asia Kids Toys market report include Hasbro Inc., Mattel Inc.,Zephyr Toymakers Pvt. Ltd.,Funskool, Brainsmith, Sri Toys International, Tikiri Toys, LEGO Group, Masoom Playmates, and Shinsei. These market players have adopted different strategies including partnership, expansion, collaboration, joint ventures, and others to reinforce their status in the industry.

Schedule a FREE Consultation Call with Our Analysts/Industry Experts to Find Solution for Your Business @ https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/14658

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Avenue Library Subscription | Request for 14 days free trial of before buying: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/avenueTrial

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About Us

Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.
Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, December 21, 2021  IBA (Ion Beam Applications S.A., EURONEXT), the world leader in particle accelerator technology and the worlds leading provider of proton therapy solutions for the treatment of cancer, today announces it has signed a contract for the installation of a ProteusONE1 proton therapy solution with the New Mexico Cancer Center in Albuquerque, NM, USA. The contract includes a long-term operation maintenance agreement.

The contract is for the delivery of a ProteusONE solution, equipped with Pencil Beam Scanning (PBS), Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT), Hand Pendant with contextual menus for easy patient positioning and the patient focused healthcare environment Philips Ambient Experience. New Mexico Cancer Center expects to treat its first patients by 2024.

The typical end-user price for a ProteusONE system with a 10-year maintenance contract usually ranges between USD 40-50 million. IBA has received the first payment and will start recognizing revenue in 2021.

Olivier Legrain, Chief Executive Officer of IBA, commented: This new contract with New Mexico Cancer Center will enable the delivery of IBAs cutting-edge technology to the citizens of New Mexico for the first time. It is the 7th ProteusONE system and 19th proton therapy system we have sold in the US, underlining our leading position in the US proton therapy market, and continuing to build upon the strong momentum in the region as we enter 2022. We look forward to collaborating with the team in Albuquerque and are pleased to welcome them to our Campus2 platform, the largest community of proton therapy experts.

Barbara McAneny, Chief Executive Officer of New Mexico Cancer Center, said, As one of the first free-standing cancer centers expanding into Proton therapy, New Mexico Cancer Center selected IBAs ProteusONE based on its strong technology and proven track record in hospital based systems. The delivery of the Proteus One will allow New Mexico Cancer Center to provide the people of New Mexico the ability to access the most advanced solution to fight cancer integrated into other modalities of care, at an affordable cost with the convenience of staying close to home.

***Ends***

About IBA

IBA (Ion Beam Applications S.A.) is the world leader in particle accelerator technology. The company is the leading supplier of equipment and services in the field of proton therapy, considered to be the most advanced form of radiation therapy available today. IBA is also a leading player in the fields of industrial sterilization, radiopharmaceuticals and dosimetry. The company, based in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, employs approximately 1,500 people worldwide. IBA is a certified B Corporation (B Corp) meeting the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance.

IBA is listed on the pan-European stock exchange EURONEXT (IBA: Reuters IBAB.BR and Bloomberg IBAB.BB).

More information can be found at: www.iba-worldwide.com

About New Mexico Cancer Center (NMCC)New Mexico Cancer Center was the first freestanding cancer center in New Mexico, founded by New Mexico Oncology Hematology Consultants ltd. NMCC has always been a leader in the delivery of cancer care, as the lead practice of Dr McAnenys COME HOME CMMI award in 2012 establishing the Oncology Medical Home concept. Now a strong multi-disciplinary practice with an oncology focus, New Mexico Cancer Center offers a wide range of services and is proud to expand its radiation oncology services to include proton therapy.

CONTACTS

Soumya Chandramouli

Chief Financial Officer

+32 10 475 890

Investorrelations@iba-group.com

Olivier Lechien

Corporate Communication Director

+32 10 475 890

communication@iba-group.com

Consilium Strategic Communications

Amber Fennell, Angela Gray, Lucy Featherstone

+44 (0) 20 3709 5700

IBA@consilium-comms.com





1 ProteusONE is a brand name of Proteus 235

2 Connect on Campus-iba.com to join the largest community of proton therapy experts





Attachment
BRISBANE, Australia, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Allkem Limited (ASX |TSX: AKE) (Allkem or the Company) advises the release of the Feasibility Study and Maiden Ore Reserve for its wholly owned James Bay Lithium Project (James Bay or the Project) located in Quebec, Canada.



HIGHLIGHTS

Feasibility Study confirms a sustainable, high value hard rock lithium operation utilising renewable hydropower

Material ~2.5x increase in Net Present Value ( NPV ) from the Preliminary Economic Assessment ( PEA ) released in March 2021

) from the Preliminary Economic Assessment ( ) released in March 2021 Construction planned to commence in Q3 CY2022 with commissioning in the first quarter of CY24, subject to receipt of necessary environmental and other approvals

Strategically located in proximity to high-growth electric vehicle markets in North America and Europe

Project Details

Mineral Resource of 40.3Mt at 1.4% Li 2 O and Maiden Ore Reserve of 37.2Mt at 1.3% Li 2 O provides a long life, low cost spodumene operation

O and Maiden Ore Reserve of 37.2Mt at 1.3% Li O provides a long life, low cost spodumene operation Average annual production of 321ktpa of spodumene concentrate with a 19 year mine life

Shallow, near-surface mineralisation ideal for open cut mining with a low life-of-mine ( LOM ) strip ratio of 3.5: 1

) strip ratio of 3.5: 1 2mtpa process plant designed to produce up to 6% Li 2 O spodumene concentrate

O spodumene concentrate Very similar process design and flowsheet to that already successfully employed at Mt Cattlin

Low-cost, sustainable source of hydropower to provide approximately 45% of site power needs

Strong relationships with the Cree Nation of Eastmain, Cree Nation Government and all stakeholders

Project Financials

Capital cost estimate of USD285.8 million on the optimised mine plan, flowsheet and schedule

Cash operating costs (FOB Montreal) of USD333 per tonne of 5.6% Li 2 O concentrate

O concentrate Pre-tax NPV of USD1.42 billion at an 8% discount rate and post-tax NPV of USD823 million

Pre-tax Internal Rate of Return ( IRR ) of 45.8% and pre-tax payback period of 2.4 years

) of 45.8% and pre-tax payback period of 2.4 years Post-tax Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 35.2% and post-tax payback period of 2.9 years

Project Execution

Basic engineering has commenced alongside the procurement process for key equipment, temporary installations, contracts and preparation of construction permits

Completion of the feasibility study and report prepared in compliance with National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ( NI 43-101 ) allows the Impact and Benefit Agreement ( IBA ) negotiations and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment ( ESIA ) approvals to be continued and completed

) allows the Impact and Benefit Agreement ( ) negotiations and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment ( ) approvals to be continued and completed Further carbon studies and initiatives underway to align the project to Allkems target of transitioning to net-zero emissions by 2035

Downstream studies continue, examining options for value adding from the conversion of James Bays spodumene concentrate

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Martin Perez de Solay commented

The Feasibility Study results clearly demonstrate the exceptional value that will be generated for all stakeholders through the development of this project. It will utilise clean hydro-power to provide lithium into the EV and other low carbon industries. Supply chain and logistics emissions can be minimised by supplying into the rapidly expanding markets in North America and Europe.

PROJECT BACKGROUND

The Project is located in northern Quebec, approximately 130 km east of James Bay and the Cree Nation of Eastmain. The Company is proposing to develop a spodumene mine located adjacent to the Billy Diamond Highway (formerly the James Bay Highway) which provides access to key infrastructure in the region.

G Mining Services Inc. (GMS) was engaged by the Company to produce the Feasibility Study and technical report in accordance with NI43-101. GMS is a specialised mining consultancy based in Canada with wide experience in developing mineral projects.

Quebec, Canada

Quebec is a highly attractive investment destination for lithium production due to its supportive resource development sector, access to skilled labour and its proximity to the emerging European and North American electric vehicle markets. Canada also has free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union.

The province provides a viable source of low-cost, low-carbon power with its electricity production sector having one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world. The electricity produced is derived from sources that are more than 99.8% renewable, mainly hydropower.

The Quebec Government is also committed to reducing its carbon emissions and building accessibility and availability of battery metals to fuel the development of a green economy. Its 2030 Plan for a Green Economy targets a 37.5% reduction in carbon emissions compared to 1990 levels and outlines a framework for the electrification of transportation. The Government has also released a Plan for the Development of Critical and Strategic Minerals (2020-2025) which includes lithium and details commitments to share financial risk, as well as infrastructure improvements for projects in northern Quebec.

GEOLOGY & MINERALISATION

The Project is in the northeastern part of the Superior Province and lies within the Lower Eastmain Group of the Eastmain greenstone belt. This area predominantly consists of amphibolite grade mafic to felsic metavolcanic rocks, metasedimentary rocks and minor gabbroic intrusions.

The pegmatites delineated on the property to date are oriented in a generally parallel direction to each other and are separated by barren host rock of sedimentary origin (metamorphosed to amphibolite facies). They form irregular dikes attaining up to 60 m in width and over 200 m in length. The pegmatites crosscut the regional foliation at a high angle, striking to the south-southwest and dipping moderately to the west-northwest, with a true thickness that is wider than what is currently mined at Mt Cattlin.

Spodumene mineralisation at James Bay is coarse grained, high grade and outcrops along strike, supporting excellent recoveries, low strip ratio and open cut mining. No significant deleterious lithium mineralisation has been identified to date.

RESOURCE & RESERVE ESTIMATE

The Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve estimates set out below have been prepared in accordance with the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves 2012 (JORC) and the CIM Estimation of Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves Best Practice Guidelines (2019).

Mineral Resource Estimate

The Mineral Resource Statement presented herein represents the second mineral resource evaluation prepared for the Project, and remains unchanged since the release of the PEA in March 2021

The mineral resource model was released on December 4, 2017 by Galaxy Resources Ltd., and considered 102 core boreholes drilled by Lithium One Inc during the period of 2008 to 2009, 53 channel samples collected by Lithium One in 2009 and 2010, and 157 core boreholes drilled in 2017.

The resource estimation work has been certified by Mr. James Purchase, P.Geo of GMS , an independent Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101 and a Competent Person under JORC (for the purpose of this news release, a Qualified Person under NI 43-101 and a Competent Person under JORC will be collectively referred to herein as a Competent Person). Comprehensive verification of all data pertaining to the Mineral Resource Estimate released in 2017 has been undertaken, and a site visit to the project was conducted in June 2021. This estimate displayed in Table 1 below remains current, given that only minor geotechnical and metallurgical drilling has been performed since 2017, which has had no material effect on the estimate.

Table 1: James Bay Mineral Resource Estimate  (effective date November 23rd, 2017, restated in December 2021 by GMS)

Category Tonnage Mt Grade % Li 2 O Contained Metal (000) t Li 2 O Indicated 40.30 1.40 564.2 Total 40.30 1.40 564.2 Note: The Mineral Resource Estimate is reported at a cut-off grade of 0.62% Li 2 O inside a conceptual pit shell optimised using spodumene concentrate price of USD 950/t containing 6.0% Li 2 O, metallurgical and process recovery of 70%, overall mining and processing costs of USD 55/t milled and overall pit slope of 50 degrees. All figures are rounded to reflect the relative accuracy of the estimates. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.



Ore Reserve Estimate

The Mineral Reserve of 37.2 Mt at an average grade of 1.3% Li 2 O was prepared by GMS and demonstrates Probable Ore Reserves are economic for concentrate production (Table 2).

Table 2: James Bay Ore Reserve  December 2021

Category Ore tonnage (k dmt) Lithium grade (%Li 2 O) Contained Metal (000) t Li 2 O Proven 0 0 0 Probable 37,207 1.30 483.7 Proven + Probable 37,207 1.30 483.7 Notes: Effective date of the estimate is December 2021 ; Mineral Reserves are estimated using the following long-term metal prices (Li 2 O Conc = USD 950/t Li 2 O at 6.0% Li 2 O) and an exchange rate of CAD/USD 1.33; A minimum mining width of 5 m was used; Cut-off grade of 0.62% Li 2 O; Bulk density of ore is variable, outlined in the geological block model and average 2.7 g/t; The average strip ratio is 3.54:1; The average mining dilution factor is 3.0% at 0.38% Li 2 O.

Details of data collection and resource and reserve estimation techniques, methodology and material assumptions are provided in the JORC Table 1 checklist set out in Annexure B.

MINING AND PROCESSING

Mining

Mine engineering was performed by GMS and a summary of the key physicals are displayed in Table 3 below.

Table 3: Summary of Life of Mine Physicals for an estimated 18.8 year mine life

Key Physicals UoM Feasibility Study Mined material grade (after mining dilution) % 1.30 Strip ratio X : 1 3.54 Spodumene Concentrate Produced (total after transport losses) kdmt 6,026 Spodumene Concentrate Produced (annual average) kt 321 Recovery % 70.1 Spodumene Concentrate Grade % Li 2 O 5.6

The pegmatite deposit will be mined by conventional open pit methods. All material will require drilling and blasting and will be removed using mining excavators and haul trucks.

The preliminary pit design extends approximately 2km NW/SE along the strike of the pegmatite mineralisation and has an average width of 500m. The design is divided into three pits with depths of 160m, 170m and 260m.

Mining is scheduled to achieve low waste stripping in the initial years with a gradual increase later in the mine life. The average strip ratio for the LOM plan is 3.54:1.

Waste rock will be hauled to multiple Waste Rock and Tailings Storage Facilities (WRTSF) and run of mine (ROM) feed material will be hauled to the ROM pad, located to the northeast of the pits.

The preliminary mine plan / LOM schedule and shows the mine plan tonnages by year with pre-strip activities commencing two years prior (Y1 and Y2) to first production (Y3). Mining covers 18.8 years of production with 126.1 Mt of waste rock, 5.6 Mt of overburden and 37.2 Mt of ROM feed material for a total of 168.9 Mt of material mined.

In the pre-production period, the ROM material generated will be stockpiled for processing during production years. Site preparation including tree clearing, grubbing and peat/topsoil removal will occur during the Project construction phase.

Surface mining equipment requirements are based on mining 10m benches. Conventional excavator and truck fleet will be sized to meet the planned tonnage requirements to feed the concentrator at 2Mtpa. Haul trucks are required to transport tailings from the plant to the proposed waste rock and dry stacked tailings stockpile areas.

Processing

Process Plant engineering was performed by Wave International (Wave), an Australian-based engineering company with global development experience.

The process design is based on an annual throughput of 2Mt of ore to produce a final product grade of 6.0% Li 2 O, with operational flexibility to increase recovery by reducing concentrate grade to 5.6% Li 2 O. The selected process is similar to that currently utilised at the Companys Mt Cattlin mining operation in Australia which incorporates a similar flowsheet based on crushing and dense medium separation (DMS).

Processing involves a conventional three-stage crushing circuit, followed by a DMS plant. Similar to Mt Cattlin, crystal sizes are coarse and therefore grinding and flotation methods are not necessary, contributing to low operating costs. Other sub processes include:

Dewatering and dry stack tailings disposal system (combined with waste rock disposal);

water, air and ancillary services; and

spodumene concentrate stockpile and dispatch system.

The ROM ore will be fed to a three-stage crushing plant consisting of a primary jaw crusher, a secondary crusher and tertiary crusher. Prior to feeding the DMS cyclones, the material will be mixed with a ferrosilicon slurry, which acts as a densifying medium to enhance the gravity separation of the spodumene.

The primary coarse product from the DMS will report to the secondary coarse DMS cyclones where the process is repeated to achieve the target concentrate grade. The other DMS streams will be dewatered over a series of screens and conveyed to either the tailings loadout facility or secondary fine DMS for re-processing, eventually reporting to the final product. After processing, the concentrate is conveyed to the product stockpile from where it is loaded on to road trucks and transported to end users.

For recovery enhancement, the oversize material from the secondary floats screen is re-crushed using a rolls crusher. After removal of the ultra-fines material, which is sent to the tailing treatment area, the oversize is processed through the re-crush DMS plant which follows the same process as the primary and secondary DMS circuits.

Final Product Grade

Metallurgical test work was conducted by SGS Canada Inc. and Nagrom to determine optimal plant operating recoveries. For a final spodumene concentrate grading 5.6% Li 2 O, modelling indicates that a recovery of 71.2% in the early years and 66.5% in later operating years is a reasonable assumption.

Supply side tightness in raw materials is projected to continue for the medium to long term and in line with this market demand, project economics are based on the production and sale of a 5.6% Li 2 O final product grade. This product grade yields higher recoveries and revenues associated with higher concentrate production. Metallurgical modelling predicts a 6% improvement in recovery, an 18% increase in final product tonnage and a 12% increase in revenue under forecast spodumene concentrate prices, under this operating regime.

James Bay will produce an average of 321ktpa of spodumene concentrate for 18.8 years and retains ultimate flexibility to produce final product grade consistent with market and customer demand. Allkems final product specification will ultimately be determined in consultation with its customers.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Waste Rock and Tailings Storage facility engineering was performed by Golder Associated Ltd. (Golder) and site infrastructure engineering was performed by GMS.

Mine Infrastructure

The site infrastructure will include:

ROM pad and stockpile

Crushed ore covered stockpile

Four Waste Rock Tailings Storage Facilities

Overburden and peat storage area ( OPSF )

) Two Water Management Ponds and Plant Water Management Pond

Contact water ditches and non-contact diversion water ditches

Fine and coarse tailing warehouse

Spodumene concentrate warehouse

Emulsion and explosive storage

The ROM stockpile and spodumene concentrate warehouse will be located adjacent to the process plant. All storage areas were selected to minimise their environmental impact. A surface drainage network will be built to divert non-contact water from the ROM pad and stockpile, WRTSF, OPSF stockpiles and process plant. The same strategy will be used to manage the surface water run-off (contact) for all disturbed land.

Supporting Infrastructure & Logistics

The following infrastructure facilities are planned for the Project:

69 kV Main-substation

Administrative and laboratory buildings

Accommodation camp

Workshop and reagent buildings

Storage and communication facilities

Distribution facility for heating

Water and sewage treatment plants

James Bay is well serviced by key infrastructure in the region, including Hydro-Quebec power which provides a low-cost, clean energy source for the site and process plant. The process plant and supporting infrastructure will predominantly be powered by Hydro-Quebecs 69 kV overhead distribution system. The 69 kV distribution line is relayed through Hydro-Quebecs Muskeg substation and ultimately fed by the Nemiscau substation located roughly 100 km southwest of the Project site. An overhead distribution line extension will be built to the plant substation from the 69 kV line (L-614) located 10km south of the Project site. The 69 kV power supply is limited by a capacity of 8 MVA due to the sensitivity of the network and distance from the substation.

The Project is also accessible all year-round via the paved Billy Diamond Highway which allows oversized haul trucking to and from site, including the town of Matagami, located 382km south of the Project. Matagami is connected to a major railway, the Canadian National Railway network, allowing future production to be railed to various locations in North America or any port along the Saint-Lawrence River for international shipment.

The Eastmain airport is located 130 km from site and will be used to transport staff and contractors from major centres in southern Quebec. Discussions are underway with Transport Canada about necessary upgrades required to create more regular aerial services to support future operations. Fuel and accommodation are also available at the Relais Routier Km 381 Truck Stop, a sizeable facility, located adjacent to the Project site.

The Quebec Government and the Cree Nation signed a Grand Alliance agreement for collaborative, long-term, economic development in the James Bay region. The Grand Alliance plans to invest heavily in infrastructure, including railways and roads, providing future transport and logistic opportunities. Allkem continues to work with various stakeholders including the Cree Nation to understand how elements of the Grand Alliance can potentially be integrated into the Project.

FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

Capital and Operating Costs

GMS completed the capital and operating costs, incorporating engineering undertaken by other contributors.

The total initial project development capital expenditure (CAPEX) is estimated to be USD285.8 million. The CAPEX has been prepared to reflect optimised site layouts, mine scheduling, plant and equipment design, supply and installation. The estimate is detailed in Table 4 and includes processing, mine equipment purchases, infrastructure, contingency and other direct and indirect costs. Deferred CAPEX is also required during operations for additional equipment purchases, a truck shop bay addition, and mine civil works.

Operating costs (OPEX) are estimated to be USD333 per tonne of concentrate (FOB Montreal). OPEX includes mining, processing, general and administrative services, concentrate transportation and royalties as detailed in Table 4.

Table 4: Capital Cost Estimates and Operating Cost Estimate

Capital Costs USD M % Operating Costs USD / tonne Direct Costs Mine Fleet 27.1 9.4 Mining 101.9 Processing 65.9 23.1 Processing 61.4 Civil Works 25.3 8.9 Administration & Other 64.2 On site infrastructure 32.4 11.3 Transport & Port 87.9 Power Supply & Distribution 31.4 11.0 Royalties 17.4 Offsite Infrastructure 2.0 0.7 Total OPEX (FOB Montreal) 332.8 Total Direct CAPEX 184.1 64.4 Indirect Costs EPCM Services 16.5 5.8 Owners cost 4.6 1.6 Temporary Infrastructure 14.0 4.9 Other 30.7 10.7 Contingency 20.9 7.3 Cost escalation reserve 15.0 5.2 Total Indirect CAPEX 101.7 35.6 Total CAPEX 285.8 100.0

Since release of the PEA, Feasibility Study work undertaken has improved the accuracy of the capital and operating costs, particularly mining, processing and transport. The key findings include:

Review and optimisation of the mine plan and material movements during the detailed mine planning and scheduling phase;

Investigation into the automation of drilling and haulage to boost productivity;

Ongoing discussions with Hydro-Quebec to optimise delivery of power to site resulting in reduction of capital investment.

The key changes in capital expenditure from the PEA to the feasibility study are displayed in Table 5 below.

Table 5: Capital expenditure differences from the PEA to Feasibility Study

USDM Additional environmental protection systems 10 Inflation/market prices 7.5 Design change 4 Additional process equipment 7.5 Design growth 5 Savings on power contract (8.5 ) Addition of a Reserve (Market uncertainties) 15 Total 40.5

Spodumene Pricing Forecast

Lithium demand has historically been driven by macro-economic growth, but the increasing use of rechargeable batteries in electrified vehicles over the last several years has been the key driver of global demand. According to Roskill (Lithium 18th Edition Update 1  October 2021), global demand between 2015 and 2020 almost doubled, reaching 388.4 kt lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.0% over the period. Adding to this growth, global lithium demand in 2021 is expected to increase by 33.8% to 519.6 kt LCE as demand for rechargeable batteries grows further.

Roskill forecasts global lithium demand to grow at 19.21% CAGR over the next decade from 520 ktpa in 2021 to over 3,000 ktpa by 2031. Lithium demand is derived from the expected build-out of the battery production, with 2,733 GWh capacity required across all end-use applications.

Growth in lithium demand will outpace rising supply by 2025 when the mine market balance is expected to record a deficit. With additional capacity being brought on in 2023 and 2024 it is forecast that the market will return to a small surplus before entering a long-term structural deficit. Limited investments in both exploration and capacity over the last several years is likely to manifest itself from 2025 where increases in supply will be insufficient to keep up with the strong growth in demand for mineral feedstock by mineral converters. Without new supply from development of new projects, the supply deficit will continue to grow driving lithium prices upwards.

Spodumene concentrate will continue to feature as a key feedstock in the global lithium supply chain and increasing tonnages will be required to meet future demand for refined lithium. Roskill are forecasting contract prices for chemical grade spodumene concentrate to range between USD 754/t and USD 1,121/t between 2022 and 2031.

PROJECT ECONOMICS

An economic analysis was developed using the discounted cash flow method and was based on the data and assumptions for capital and operating costs detailed in this report for mining, processing and associated infrastructure.

The basis of forecast spodumene pricing was provided by Roskill for the period 2021 to 2031, with a longer term price of USD1,121 used from 2031 onwards for 6% Li 2 O.

The evaluation was undertaken on a 100% equity basis. The key assumptions and results of the economic evaluation are listed in Table 6 and Table 7 below.

Table 6: Key assumptions utilised in the project economics

Assumption Units Feasibility Study Annual Spodumene Concentrate Production1 kt 321 Commercial Production Estimate Years 18.75 Discount Rate % 8 Royalty % 1.5 CAPEX USDM 285.8 OPEX USD/ tonne 332.8 Average Selling Price2 USD/ tonne 1,001 Exchange rate USD:CAD 1.33

1 Final product grade of 5.6% Li 2 O

2 Based on spodumene price forecast provided from Roskill adjusted for 5.6% grade

Table 7: Summary of Financials over the estimated Life of Mine

Financial Summary Units Feasibility Study NPV (Pre-tax) USDM 1,419.9 NPV (Post-tax) USDM 823.0 IRR (Pre-tax) % 45.8 IRR (Post-tax) % 35.2 Payback Period (Pre-tax) Years 2.4 Payback Period (Post-tax) Years 2.9 Capital Intensity (processing) USD / dmtpa 142.8 NPV: Development Capex (Post-tax) X: 1 2.88:1

Sensitivity Analysis

As displayed in Table 7, the Feasibility Study demonstrates strong financial outcomes with a Pre-tax NPV 8% real of USD1,419.9 million and IRR of 45.8%. The NPV of the project is most sensitive to movements in the price of spodumene and foreign exchange fluctuations, followed by operating costs and development capital costs.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACTS

Environmental and Permitting work packages were performed by WSP Canada Inc., a global professional services and engineering firm with environmental expertise and significant experience in facilitating project approvals and development projects.

Carbon Emissions Management

Allkem is committed to the transition to net zero emissions by 2035 and is progressively implementing actions across the group to achieve this target. Each project within the group will contribute to this target in a different, but site appropriate manner.

As a greenfields project, James Bay has a unique opportunity to build a low carbon operation. The location of the project will provide access to hydro power supplied by Hydro Quebec which delivers a significant advance in the overall decarbonisation of the project.

As James Bay has only recently been integrated into the Allkem group through the merger of Orocobre Limited and Galaxy Resources Limited, much of the planning and project studies in this report were conducted without reference to Allkems target.

As such, the project represented in this report will source 40-45% of total site energy needs from sustainable energy (Hydro Quebec) which will be delivered via an 8 MW connection to the Hydro Quebec power network and will predominantly be utilised in the processing plant, fixed infrastructure and selected mobile equipment.

Future studies will focus on opportunities to increase the proportion of sustainable energy available to the project which will further reduce operational carbon emissions. The primary area to be investigated will be the supply of additional hydro power which may allow the potential conversion of the mining fleet and all site facilities away from fossil fuels. Allkem will work with project partners to identify and develop further emissions reduction opportunities within the project supply chain mostly around the availability of battery-power mobile equipment capable to operate in cold weather conditions. Additional studies are also planned to be conducted to replace petroleum hydrocarbons used for heating during cold winter with renewable sources.

Allkem will also engage with the Quebec government which has demonstrated a strong commitment for renewable energy with the 2030 Plan for a Green Economy. The goals of this plan are aligned with Allkems commitment to net zero via the replacement of fossil fuels in transport, buildings and industrial activity. The Quebec government has also committed to develop and consolidate energy networks through the territory, particularly for critical and strategic mineral developments.

Regulations and Permitting

An Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) was submitted to the federal and provincial authorities in October 2018 and was updated and submitted in July 2021 to reflect changes to the project presented in the PEA. As part of the technical review of the ESIA, the Company addressed information requests and clarifications received from the authorities.

Following ESIA approval from regulators which the Company anticipates receiving within a reasonable timeframe, additional ancillary construction and operation permits from provincial authorities will be required prior to construction. Preparation of these permits commenced in October 2021.

Community Engagement

The Cree Nation community of Eastmain located 130km east of the Project site is the nearest major community to the site. The Company has a strong working relationship with the Cree Nation of Eastmain and conducts regular and meaningful engagement and consultation with the Cree Nation.

On 18 March 2019, a Preliminary Development Agreement (PDA) was signed with the Cree Nation of Eastmain, Grand Council of the Cree and Cree Nation Government. The PDA will be replaced by an Impact Benefit Agreement (IBA) before construction is initiated.

Further engagement with the Cree Nation Government and stakeholders, including the communities of Waskaganish and Waswanipi, continue in relation to project updates.

The project will create approximately 250 full-time positions in the Eeyou Istchee/James Bay region.

EXECUTION STRATEGY

James Bay expects to commence construction in Q3 CY2022 with commissioning expected in the first quarter of CY24. To achieve these milestones, key focus areas for CY22 include:

Further engineering activities to finalise design, equipment and plant configurations;

Procurement for equipment, temporary installations and key contracts;

Development of sustaining initiatives for local stakeholders;

Progression of the ESIA, IBA and regulatory approvals.

CY22 and CY23 will see completed detailed design, development of construction work packages, procurement of long lead items, pre-mining of the starter pit and construction and pre-commissioning of the plant. Additional off-site and non-process infrastructure activities will also be established during this period.

Funding is expected to be provided through one or more of the following:

existing corporate cash;

existing or new corporate debt or project finance facilities;

cash flow from operations;

strategic offtake partner(s).

For the Execution Phase, the Company will implement the project delivery strategy described below:

All the procurement and contracting activities will be managed directly by the Project team;

The Company will implement an integrated team approach for construction management to carry out the Project`s construction activities;

An Owners Integrated Team organization will be put in place combining Company employees, main consultants and contractors to perform all technical / operational functions in-house and manage the required contractors to build the Project facilities.

In this approach, the contractors will be involved as early as possible with the detailed engineering and constructability development.

Downstream studies continue, examining options regarding the value adding conversion of James Bays spodumene concentrate.

This release was authorised by Mr Martin Perez de Solay, CEO and Managing Director of Allkem Limited.

Allkem Limited



ABN 31 112 589 910



Level 35, 71 Eagle St

Brisbane, QLD 4000 Investor Relations & Media Enquiries

Andrew Barber

+61 418 783 701

Andrew.barber@allkem.co Connect

info@allkem.co

+61 7 3064 3600

www.allkem.co

IMPORTANT NOTICES

This investor ASX/TSX release (Release) has been prepared by Allkem Limited (ACN 112 589 910) (the Company or Allkem). It contains general information about the Company as at the date of this Release. The information in this Release should not be considered to be comprehensive or to comprise all of the material which a shareholder or potential investor in the Company may require in order to determine whether to deal in Shares of Allkem. The information in this Release is of a general nature only and does not purport to be complete. It should be read in conjunction with the Companys periodic and continuous disclosure announcements which are available at allkem.co and with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) announcements, which are available at www.asx.com.au.

This Release does not take into account the financial situation, investment objectives, tax situation or particular needs of any person and nothing contained in this Release constitutes investment, legal, tax, accounting or other advice, nor does it contain all the information which would be required in a disclosure document or prospectus prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (Corporations Act). Readers or recipients of this Release should, before making any decisions in relation to their investment or potential investment in the Company, consider the appropriateness of the information having regard to their own individual investment objectives and financial situation and seek their own professional investment, legal, taxation and accounting advice appropriate to their particular circumstances.

This Release does not constitute or form part of any offer, invitation, solicitation or recommendation to acquire, purchase, subscribe for, sell or otherwise dispose of, or issue, any Shares or any other financial product. Further, this Release does not constitute financial product, investment advice (nor tax, accounting or legal advice) or recommendation, 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 or investment decision.

The distribution of this Release in other jurisdictions outside Australia may also be restricted by law and any restrictions should be observed. Any failure to comply with such restrictions may constitute a violation of applicable securities laws.

Past performance information given in this Release is given for illustrative purposes only and should not be relied upon as (and is not) an indication of future performance.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking information under the provisions of applicable securities legislation. Such forward-looking information is subject to various risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking information in this news release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) the economics and potential returns associated with the Project; (ii) the estimation of mineral reserves and mineral resources; (iii) the technical viability of the Project; (iv) the market and future price of spodumene concentrate and other commodities; (v) the ability to work cooperatively with other stakeholders, including local community groups and all levels of government; (vi) projected employment and other social benefits resulting from the Project; and (vii) the results of the Feasibility Study, including statements about future production, mining methods, future operating and capital costs, the projected IRR, NPV, construction timelines, permit timelines and production timelines for the Project. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and beliefs and, by their nature, are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results, performances and achievements to differ materially from any expected future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to, the risk of further changes in government regulations, policies or legislation; the risks associated with the continued implementation of the merger between Orocobre Limited and Galaxy Resources Ltd, risks that further funding may be required, but unavailable, for the ongoing development of the Companys projects; fluctuations or decreases in commodity prices; uncertainty in the estimation, economic viability, recoverability and processing of mineral resources; risks associated with development of the Company Projects; unexpected capital or operating cost increases; uncertainty of meeting anticipated program milestones at the Companys Projects; risks associated with investment in publicly listed companies, such as the Company; and risks associated with general economic conditions.

Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, subject to any continuing obligation under applicable law or relevant listing rules of the ASX/TSX, the Company disclaims any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements in this Release to reflect any change in expectations in relation to any forward-looking statements or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statements are based. Nothing in this Release shall under any circumstances (including by reason of this Release remaining available and not being superseded or replaced by any other Release or publication with respect to the subject matter of this Release), create an implication that there has been no change in the affairs of the Company since the date of this Release.

Competent Person Statement

The Information in this announcement that relates to Mineral Resources is based on information compiled by Mr James Purchase, a Competent Person who is a Member of LOrdre des Geologues du Quebec, a Recognised Professional Organisation included in a list posted on the ASX website from time to time. Mr Purchase is a full-time employee of G Mining Services Inc. Mr Purchase has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. Mr Purchase consents to the inclusion in the report of the matters based on his information in the form and context in which it appears.

The information in this announcement that relates to the December 2021 James Bay Ore Reserve is based on information compiled by Carl Michaud, P. Eng., a Competent Person who is a Member of LOrdre des Ingenieurs du Quebec, a Recognised Professional Organisation included in a list posted on the ASX website from time to time. Carl Michaud is a full-time employee of G Mining Services Inc. Carl Michaud has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralisation and type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the 2012 Edition of the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves. Carl Michaud consents to the inclusion in this announcement of the matters based on his information in the form and context in which it appears.

Technical information relating to the Companys James Bay project contained in this release is derived from, and in some instances is an extract from, the technical report entitled Feasibility Study  James Bay Lithium Project (Technical Report) which has been reviewed and approved by James Purchase, P.Geo (G-Mining Services Inc.,) as it relates to geology, drilling, sampling, exploration, QA/QC and mineral resources: Joel Lacelle, P. Eng. (G-Mining Services Inc.); as it relates to site infrastructure and capital cost and operating cost estimate: Carl Michaud, P. Eng. (G-Mining Services Inc.); as it relates to mining methods, mining cost, financial modeling and economic analysis: Christopher Larder, Eng. (Wave International); as it relates to mineral processing and related infrastructures: Darrin Johnson, Ontario P. Eng. (Golder Associated Ltd.); as it relates to waste rock and tailings management related infrastructures: Joao Paulo Lutti, Eng. (Golder Associated Ltd); as it relates to water management infrastructures: Simon Latulippe Eng. (WSP Canada Inc.); as it relates to environmental and permitting in accordance with National Instrument 43-101  Standards for Disclosure for Mineral Projects. The Technical Report will be filed within 45 days of this release and will be available for review under the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Not for release or distribution in the United States

This announcement has been prepared for publication in Australia and may not be released to U.S. wire services or distributed in the United States. This announcement does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, securities in the United States or any other jurisdiction, and neither this announcement or anything attached to this announcement shall form the basis of any contract or commitment.
Chinas carbon electrode exports started to recover after two years of decline. From January-July 2021, the supplies abroad totalled $1.2B, increasing by +31% compared to the same period in 2020. China remains the worlds largest supplier, accounting for 66% of global carbon electrode exports. More than half of its shipments go to Malaysia, Russia and Canada. Bahrain recorded the highest growth rate of purchases from China among the main trade partners.



LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- From January to July 2021, the carbon electrode supplies from China totalled $1.2B, rising by +31% compared to the same period of 2020, according to a recent report by a market research firm IndexBox. In physical terms, exports grew to 1.2M tonnes, an 11%-increase compared to the same period last year.

Chinas Carbon Electrode Exports

China is the worlds largest supplier in the carbon electrode market, with a 66%-share of global exports, IndexBox says. Over the last year, exports shrank from $2.9B to $1.6B, decreasing for the second consecutive year. In physical terms, the number of carbon electrodes exported from China surged to 1.9M tonnes, jumping by +22% compared with 2019 figures.

Malaysia (450K tonnes), Canada (308K tonnes) and Russia (271K tonnes) were the main destinations of carbon electrode exports from China, together comprising 53% of the total volume. The United Arab Emirates, Norway, Turkey, Bahrain, Germany, Azerbaijan and the Netherlands lagged somewhat behind, accounting for a further 33%.

In value terms, Malaysia ($287M), Russia ($195M) and Canada ($175M) appeared to be the largest markets for carbon electrodes exported from China worldwide, with a combined 42% share of total exports. These countries were followed by the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Norway, Germany, Azerbaijan, Bahrain and the Netherlands, which accounted for a further 28%.

Bahrain recorded the highest growth rate of carbon electrode purchases from China last year. Its imports increased nearly twofold.

In 2020, the average carbon electrode export price amounted to $821 per tonne. There were significant differences in the average prices for the major export markets. The country with the highest cost was Germany ($1,166 per tonne), while the average price for exports to Bahrain ($498 per tonne) was amongst the lowest. The most notable growth rate in prices was recorded for supplies to Azerbaijan, while the prices for the other significant destinations experienced more modest paces of growth.

About IndexBox

IndexBox is a market research firm developing an AI-driven market intelligence platform that helps business analysts find actionable insights and make data-driven decisions. The platform provides data on consumption, production, trade, and prices for more than 10K+ different products across 200 countries.

For more information, please visit

Website https://www.indexbox.io

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Companies Mentioned in the Report

GrafTech, Dan Carbon, GIL Graphite, SGL Carbon, Showa Denko Carbon, HEG, Tokai Carbon, Kaifeng Carbon, Nantong Yangzi Carbon, Schutz Carbon Electrodes, Graphite India, Nippon Carbon, Sutton-Garten Co., Weaver Industries, Inc., Standard Resistance Welder Co., Div. of Jim Dally & Associates, J V Precision, Inc., Chemical Store Inc., Shamokin Filler Co., The Welding Warehouse, Perimed Inc., Select-Arc, Etm, Abicor Binzel, Newmark Medical Components, A Platt Brothers Co., Williams Metals & Welding Alloys, Fuel Cell Earth LLC, Schunk Carbon Technology, C. H. Symington & Co., Graphite Machining, Inc., Minteq International, Micro-Mark, MSC Industrial Supply Co.

Sources

World - Carbon Electrodes - Market Analysis, Forecast, Size, Trends and Insights

China - Carbon Electrodes - Market Analysis, Forecast, Size, Trends and Insights

World - Carbon Electrodes for Furnaces - Market Analysis, Forecast, Size, Trends and Insights

World - Carbon Electrodes Not for Furnaces - Market Analysis, Forecast, Size, Trends and Insights

Asia-Pacific - Carbon Electrodes - Market Analysis, Forecast, Size, Trends and Insights
Pune, India, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global IoT security market size is expected to reach USD 20,776.1 million by 2027, exhibiting an excellent CAGR of 32.3 % during the forecast period. The increasing implementation of blockchain technology for improved security will have a massive effect on the growth of the market, states Fortune Business Insights, in a report, titled IoT Security Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Component (Software, and Services), By Enterprise Size (SMEs, and Large Enterprises), By Deployment (Cloud and On-Premise), By Product Type (Network Security, Endpoint Security, Application Security, Cloud Security, and Others), By Application (Smart Homes, Smart Manufacturing, Connected Logistics, Connected Healthcare, Smart Retail, and Others), By End-use Industry (Consumer IoT, Manufacturing, Retail, IT and Telecommunication, BFSI, Government, Transportation & Automotive, Energy & Utilities, Healthcare, and Others), and Regional Forecast, 2020-2027. The market size stood at USD 2,221.0 million in 2019.

The coronavirus crisis has disrupted the supply chain of every industry around the world. We understand that this health emergency has negatively impacted various sectors across the globe. Rising support from governments and several companies can help in the fight against this highly infectious virus. There are some industries that are struggling and some are thriving. More or less, nearly every sector is estimated to be impacted by this pandemic.

We are making endless efforts to uplift businesses in this crucial need of the hour. Our expertise and experience can offer enormous benefits to help regain during this global pandemic.

Request a Sample Copy of Report : https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/sample/iot-internet-of-things-security-market-103852

The report on the IoT security market encompasses:

Comprehensive analysis of dominant regions

Key Drivers and restraints

Latest trends

Key information about prominent players

Bird-eye view of the COVID-19 situation

Key Development :

January 2020: Mocana Corporation announced that it has collaborated with automotive-grade Linux (AGL), a Linux Foundation open source project to drive the security of connected and autonomous vehicles.

Lists of Key Companies in the IoT Security Market:

Cisco Systems Inc. (California, United States)

IBM Corporation (New York, United States)

Intel Corporation (California, United States)

Thales Group (Gemalto) (La Defense, France)

Forgerock (California, United States)

Infineon Technologies AG (Neubiberg, Germany)

Mocana Corporation (California, United States)

NortonLifeLock Inc. (Arizona, United States)

Allot Ltd. (Hod Hasharon, Israel)

Fortinet, Inc. (California, United States)

New Sky Internet Limited (Hong Kong)

Report Scope & Segmentation

Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2020 to 2027 Forecast Period 2020 to 2027 CAGR 32.3 % 2027 Value Projection USD 20,776.1 Million Base Year 2019 Market Size in 2019 USD 2,221.0 Million Historical Data for 2016 to 2018 No. of Pages 160 Segments covered Component, Deployment, Enterprise Size, Product Type, End-User Industry, Application, Geography



Growth Drivers Rising Security Concerns Associated with Malware Attacks to Augment Growth Shift towards Smart Connected Devices to Elevate Market Amid Coronavirus Rising Government Initiatives to Propel Market in Europe

Market Driver :

Rising Security Concerns Associated with Malware Attacks to Augment Growth

The growing malware attacks pertaining to IoT devices is expected to fuel demand for IoT security in the forthcoming years. For instance, Telnet, Mirai, and denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) have become prevalent. The Mirai malware can penetrate and attack enterprise IoT devices such as digital signage television sets (TV) or wireless presentation systems. The increasing need for security to prevent DDoS attacks by hackers will enable speedy expansion of the market. Besides, the escalating malware attacks will drive the IoT network security solutions among organizations.

Shift towards Smart Connected Devices to Elevate Market Amid Coronavirus

The inclination towards machine learning, artificial intelligence, will influence the healthy growth of the market during the coronavirus. The improvements in controlled vehicles and devices will simultaneously incite the development of the market. Moreover, the surging demand for wirelessly connected devices in the healthcare industry can have a tremendous impact on the market amid COVID-19. Besides, AI can assist in getting accurate data of COVID-19 symptoms in individuals, thus Promoting the scope of the market.

Regional Analysis :

Rising Government Initiatives to Propel Market in Europe

The IoT security market in Europe is expected to exhibit a rapid CAGR in the forthcoming years. The growth in the region is attributed to the rising government support for robust security integrated into wireless products. For instance, in October 2018, the government published the code of practice for consumer IoT security. Moreover, the announcement of regulatory proposals by the government will further foster the healthy growth of the market. For instance, in May 2019, the government of the U.K introduced a consultation on regulatory proposals regarding consumer connected devices security.

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Detailed Table of Content:

Introduction Definition, By Segment Research Methodology/Approach Data Sources

Key Takeaways

Market Dynamics Macro and Micro Economic Indicators Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities and Trends Impact of COVID-19 Short-term Impact Long-term Impact

Competition Landscape Business Strategies Adopted by Key Players Consolidated SWOT Analysis of Key Players PESTLE Analysis Porters Five Force Analysis Ecosystem Analysis Global Market Share Analysis and Matrix, 2019

Key Market Insights and Strategic Recommendations

Profiles of Key Players (Provided for Key 10 Players only) Overview Key Management Headquarters etc Offerings/Business Segments Key Details (Key details are subjected to data availability in public domain and/or on paid databases) Employee Size Key Financials Past and Current Revenue Gross Margin Geographical Share Business Segment Share Recent Developments

Primary Interview Responses

Annexure / Appendix

TOC Continued...!!!

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Access Control Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Component (Hardware, Software, and Services), By Type (DAC, MAC, RBAC), By Application (Homeland Security, Commercial, Residential, and Industrial), and Regional Forecast, 2020-2027

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Dublin, Ireland, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As we approach the holiday season, Research and Markets is delighted to be supporting Ronald McDonald House Charities by providing Santa toys to the families of children receiving care at Crumlin Childrens Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.



The mission of Ronald McDonald House Charities Ireland is to provide a Ronald McDonald House to support families whose children are seriously ill in hospital. The Ronald McDonald House provides accommodation and a caring and supportive environment for families whose children are seriously ill and are hospitalised or undergoing medical treatment at Childrens Health Ireland.



Research and Markets is headquartered in Dublin and are proud to be in the position to partner with Ronald McDonald House Charities to help support these children and their families.



Having a sick child in hospital is incredibly tough, but Christmas time is even harder. Our House isnt home, but its a place to be together and we know thats what matters most. Each Christmas Santa visits our House on Christmas Eve, like every other house in the country. Mum, Dad and siblings wake up and there are giant sacks stuffed with toys at their rooms door with toys specially picked by Santa himself for their family.



After this Mum and Dad head over to the hospital to get their ill child and bring them over to the House for the day. Being so close means they can dip in and out of the hospital for check-ups and treatments throughout the day, without having to spend the full day there. In the House, its a Christmas like any other. Toys, presents, visitors, Christmas dinner, movies and games all take place. Its a day to forget about the what-ifs and the worries and just enjoy being together.



Donations of toys mean we can make Christmas possible for these families. Research and Markets are now a part of so many families precious memories this year. Their huge toy donation will make for many smiles on Christmas morning and we are thrilled with their contribution. - Joe Kenny, CEO, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Ireland.



We were delighted to select Ronald McDonald House this year for our annual toy donation. The work they do supporting families with sick children is incredible. Members of our social committee had a tour of Ronald McDonald House last week and they were inspired by the work that is taking place there and the warm, welcoming atmosphere that has been created for the families of sick children that reside there. Its an honour for us to play a small part in their story this Christmas. - Ross Glover, CEO, Research and Markets.



The first Ronald McDonald House was opened in Philadelphia in 1974. There are 368 Ronald McDonald Houses in 64 countries. These accommodate families with hospitalized children under 21 years of age (or 18 or 26, depending on the House), who are being treated at nearby hospitals and medical facilities. Ronald McDonald's Houses provide over 7,200 bedrooms to families around the world each night.

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA and TORONTO, ON, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Claritas Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (TSX VENTURE: CLAS and OTC: KALTF) (the "Company" or "Claritas") today announced that it has entered into a License Amendment dated December 17, 2021 (the License Amendment) under which Salzman Group, Inc. (a Delaware corporation), Salzman Group, Ltd. (an Israeli corporation), and Salzman Group Pty. Ltd. (an Australian corporation), (collectively, the Salzman Group), have granted to Claritas an exclusive, worldwide license to develop and commercialize R-107 for the treatment of pulmonary diseases, including pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN). The Company has received all regulatory approvals for the License Amendment, including approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.



Highlights

Claritas is currently developing R-107, its proprietary nitric oxide-releasing compound, for the treatment of viral infections, including COVID-related ARDS, and COVID-related sepsis .

Under the License Amendment, Claritas will now have world-wide rights to develop R-107 for the treatment of pulmonary diseases, including PAH and PPHN. The Company will shortly issue a separate press release providing details regarding the medical and business rationales for developing R-107 as a treatment for PPHN.

T he Company expects to initiate a Phase 2a study of R-107 in PAH by Q3 2022 ; and a Phase 2a study of R-107 in PPHN by year-end 2022.

PAH and PPHN are lethal condition s , resulting from high blood pressure in the lungs.

The worldwide market for treatment of PAH exceeds $6 billion per year and is projected to grow to $9.8 billion by 2027 . 1

R-107 is the first and only drug to demonstrate a durable reversal of established disease in a validated animal model of PAH.

Claritas development strategy for R-107 in PAH is designed to expedite the potential monetization of this asset.





R-107 is a Nitric Oxide-Releasing Compound

R-107 is a liquid, nitric oxide-releasing compound with issued and pending composition of matter and method of use patents in approximately 40 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Brazil, China, Europe, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

The License Amendment

Claritas initially licensed R-107 from the Salzman Group for the treatment of COVID-19 and other viral infections under a License Agreement dated July 16, 2020 (the License Agreement). Claritas and the Salzman Group have now entered into the License Amendment to include the grant from the Salzman Group to Claritas of an exclusive, worldwide license to develop and commercialize R-107 for the treatment of pulmonary diseases, including PAH and PPHN.

Claritas Will Develop R-107 as a Nitric Oxide Therapy for Treatment of PAH

R-107 is a technology that transforms nitric oxide therapy from an impractical, expensive, and difficult to administer inhalation therapy, into a practical treatment that can be administered by capsule or by injection, stated Robert Farrell, Claritas President and CEO. It has been demonstrated that nitric oxide is clinically effective in the treatment of PAH.2 For this reason, we have now acquired exclusive, worldwide rights to develop R-107 as a nitric oxide therapy for PAH.

Exceptionally Positive Data from the Evaluation of R-107 in a Validated Animal Model of PAH

As previously disclosed, R-107 was evaluated in a validated animal model of PAH. The data from this study are unprecedented in the scientific literature, and suggest that R-107 is a potentially revolutionary new treatment for PAH.

Following are additional details regarding these data:

Prevention of Disease Progression: The data demonstrate that R-107 therapy halts the otherwise unstoppable progression of PAH. The level of protection was total, i.e., administration of R-107 stopped all further vascular damage and hypertensive disease. This is a critical benefit because PAH is a lethal disease, inexorably worsening until death from heart failure. Although existing drugs for treatment of PAH may reduce the severity of symptoms and provide a modestly improved quality of life, they do not meaningfully slow the progression of the disease, i.e., they are not fundamentally disease modifying. R-107 is thus poised to be the first therapeutic agent to transform PAH from a lethal condition to a chronic treatable disease that can be stabilized and lived with long-term.





The data demonstrate that R-107 therapy halts the otherwise unstoppable progression of PAH. The level of protection was total, i.e., administration of R-107 stopped all further vascular damage and hypertensive disease. This is a critical benefit because PAH is a lethal disease, inexorably worsening until death from heart failure. Although existing drugs for treatment of PAH may reduce the severity of symptoms and provide a modestly improved quality of life, they do not meaningfully slow the progression of the disease, i.e., they are not fundamentally disease modifying. R-107 is thus poised to be the first therapeutic agent to transform PAH from a lethal condition to a chronic treatable disease that can be stabilized and lived with long-term. Immediate and Near-Total Relief of Acute Symptoms: The data demonstrate that R-107 provides immediate and near total relief of the life-threatening symptoms of acute PAH. Rats treated with R-107 reproducibly responded within minutes of R-107 administration, as revealed by a prompt and near total fall in pulmonary blood pressure. In contrast, in the same animal model system, existing marketed drugs for treatment of PAH, such as sildenafil and bosentan, provide at best only half of this potency. Further, R-107 offered relief for a full 24 hours after a single dose, whereas sildenafil and bosentan were effective for a much shorter interval. Thus, R-107 is poised to be the most potent and long-lasting agent for relief of the life-threatening symptoms of acute PAH.



Reversal (Potential Cure) of Disease: R-107 appears to be the first drug that can actually reverse PAH, i.e., it remodels the lung so that it returns to normal function, and normal function is maintained even after treatment with R-107 is completed. Whereas existing drugs for treatment of PAH can lower pulmonary blood pressure transiently, they cannot turn back the clock on patients with established severe disease. In the gold-standard rat model of the disease in which R-107 was tested, the introduction of a 2-week pulse of R-107 therapy in animals with well-established PAH resulted in a 75% reduction in blood pressure elevation that persisted, even days after R-107 therapy was concluded. Such results are, to the best of our knowledge, unprecedented in the scientific literature. Successful translation of these results in rodents to a clinical population would herald that patients with severe PAH could obtain a cure of existing well-established lethal disease.





R-107 appears to be the first drug that can actually reverse PAH, i.e., it remodels the lung so that it returns to normal function, and normal function is maintained even after treatment with R-107 is completed. Whereas existing drugs for treatment of PAH can lower pulmonary blood pressure transiently, they cannot turn back the clock on patients with established severe disease. In the gold-standard rat model of the disease in which R-107 was tested, the introduction of a 2-week pulse of R-107 therapy in animals with well-established PAH resulted in a 75% reduction in blood pressure elevation that persisted, even days after R-107 therapy was concluded. Such results are, to the best of our knowledge, unprecedented in the scientific literature. Successful translation of these results in rodents to a clinical population would herald that patients with severe PAH could obtain a cure of existing well-established lethal disease. Superior Safety Profile: R-107 appears to be safer than existing drugs for treatment of PAH. Phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors, such as sildenafil, and endothelin receptor antagonists, such as bosentan, have myriad unwelcome side effects, including liver injury, flushing, dizziness, nasal congestion, and penile erection. In contrast, formal FDA-mandated toxicology and safety pharmacology studies of R-107 have demonstrated to date that the drug is extremely well tolerated.





Mr. Farrell went on to say, Based on the exceptionally positive data we saw in the validated animal model of PAH, we believe that R-107 could become a best-in-class, front-line therapy for PAH. If we can demonstrate similar data with R-107 in a Phase 2a clinical study in humans, we believe that R-107 will be viewed as a potentially valuable pharmaceutical asset that we might seek to out-license or sell. We will complete our Phase 1 clinical study by Q1 next year, and we expect to complete the Phase 2a study of R-107 in the treatment of PAH in 2022.

Mr. Farrell concluded, With the addition of R-107 for treatment of PAH, Claritas now has two programs addressing large commercial markets. In addition to our program developing R-107 for treatment of viral infections, including COVID-related lung disease, we now also have a potential breakthrough product that could provide unrivalled results in treatment of PAH.

Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH)

PAH is a critical unmet medical need. PAH is characterized by high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs. It is a serious condition that makes it difficult for blood to flow through the lungs, which, in turn, forces the heart to work harder than normal. It is a chronic and progressive disease. Over time, PAH will worsen, and may limit physical activities. Patients have a poor prognosis and low survival rate. There is currently no cure for PAH, although there are several approved drugs that can ease the symptoms of the disease. However, all of the currently approved drugs have significant side effects that limit their acceptability. The current market for such drugs exceeds $6 billion per year, and the market is projected to grow to $9.8 billion per year by 2027.3

Claritas Development Plan for R-107 in PAH is Designed to Expedite the Monetization of this Asset by Year-End 2022.

Claritas expects to complete the Phase 1 clinical study of R-107 in Q1 2022, and complete of a small Phase 2a clinical study of R-107 in hospitalized patients in 2022.

The Phase 2a clinical study will be conducted in Australia in hospitalized patients in the catheterization laboratory to establish proof of concept that R-107 is effective in reducing blood pressure in the lungs. Patients will be on study for 24-hours. Due to the short duration of the study and the relatively small number of patients that will be enrolled in the study, the Company believes that the study can be conducted at a single site, and completed within no more than one-month.

Demonstration of proof of concept could provide the scientific foundation for immediate sale or strategic licensing of the asset on highly favorable terms. If Claritas is able to demonstrate a drop or reversal of blood pressure similar to what was demonstrated in the validated animal model of the disease, the Company believes that R-107 will be viewed as a significantly valuable pharmaceutical asset, and achievement of the Phase 2a endpoints should constitute a major inflection point in value.

Terms of the License Amendment

Under the terms of the License Amendment, Claritas has agreed to provide the following compensation to Salzman Group:

Claritas will issue 1.2 million shares of Claritas common stock to Salzman Group Pty. Ltd. Provided, however, that Claritas will not issue any common shares to Salzman Grou p Pty. Ltd . unless Salzman Group Pty. Ltd . and all affiliates certify that the issuance of such common shares will not cause Salzman Grou p Pty. Ltd . and its affiliates to beneficially own in excess of 19.99% of the Companys outstanding shares of common stock;

Claritas has paid cash license fees of USD $12,300 to Salzman Group Pty. Ltd. and USD $287,70 0 to Salzman Group Ltd . ; and

Claritas will also pay the following cash milestone payments and royalties on net sales to Salzman Group : USD $ 2.0 million on successful completion of a pivotal Phase 3 registration study in the PAH indication USD $2.0 million on submission of an NDA to the U.S. FDA for R-107 treatment of the PAH indication USD $5 million on FDA approval for the PAH indication USD $5 million on EMEA approval for the PAH indication USD $5 million on Japanese approval for the PAH indication During the applicable term of any patent covering R-107 in the treatment of PAH, Claritas will pay to Salzman Group, Inc. a royalty of eight percent (8%) of the n et s ales for all R-107 products for the treatment of PAH







About Claritas Pharmaceuticals

Claritas Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing therapies for patients with significant unmet medical needs. Claritas focuses on areas of unmet medical need, and leverages its expertise to find solutions that will improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives.

Cautionary Statements

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.

This press release may contain certain forward-looking information and statements ("forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation, that are not based on historical fact, including without limitation in respect of its product candidate pipeline, planned clinical trials, regulatory approval prospects, intellectual property objectives, and other statements containing the words "believes", "anticipates", "plans", "intends", "will", "should", "expects", "continue", "estimate", "forecasts" and other similar expressions. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risk that future clinical studies may not proceed as expected or may produce unfavorable results. Claritas undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third parties, its securities, or financial or operating results (as applicable). Although Claritas believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking information in this press release are reasonable, such forward-looking information has been based on expectations, factors and assumptions concerning future events which may prove to be inaccurate and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond Claritas control. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and is made as of the date hereof. Claritas disclaims any intention and has no obligation or responsibility, except as required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact Information

Robert Farrell

President, CEO

(888) 861-2008

info@claritaspharma.com

1 Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Market Size Worth $9.8 Billion By 2027, Grand View Research, February 2020

2 Nitric Oxide and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, Glob Cardiol Sci Pract. 2017 Jun 30; 2017(2): 14.: Adrian H. Chester, Magdi H. Yacoub, and Salvador Moncada

3 Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Market Size Worth $9.8 Billion By 2027, Grand View Research, February 2020
New York, USA, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to Research Dive, the global conversational AI market is estimated to generate a revenue of $13,291.3 million by 2028, and grow at CAGR of 21.4% over the forecast period (2021 to 2028). The comprehensive report provides a brief summary of the present market scenario comprising key aspects of the market such as growth factors, lucrative growth opportunities, and restraining factors. Besides, the report provides all the conversational AI market trends, COVID-19 impact on the market, and market estimations making it easier, helpful, and useful for the new participants to understand the market.

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Global Conversational AI Market Dynamics

As per our analysts, the growing demand for AI-based customer support and the rising adoption of chatbot solutions in the healthcare, telecommunications, and retail & e-commerce industries across the globe are the significant factors estimated to foster the growth of the global conversational AI market over the forecast period. Besides, technological advancements in conversation AI and key developments by major market players are projected to create huge growth opportunities for the conversational AI market over the forecast period. However, lack of awareness and privacy concerns related to conversational AI-based slolutions are estimated to restrict the market growth in the projected timeframe.

COVID-19 Impact on the Global Conversational AI Market

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the global conversational AI market growth.

The impact on the conversational AI market share and size during the pandemic is majorly owing to lockdown restrictions, which had a negative influence on global production, logistics, and supply networks, as well as the continuity of operations in various industries. However, the demand for conversational AI services is predicted to increase post-pandemic as companies seek to develop personalized relations and improve customer experience.

Check out How COVID-19 impacts the Global Conversational AI Market: https://www.researchdive.com/connect-to-analyst/8249

Chatbots Sub-segment to Hold the Largest Market Share

By type, the chatbots sub-segment is predicted to have the maximum revenue of $7,588.7 million during the forecast period. The rapid growth of the sub-segment is majorly owing to the growing popularity of chatbots as it provide customers with round-the-clock service and improves the customer experience. Besides, numerous businesses, such as finance, government, retail & eCommerce, travel & hospitality, and telecommunications have changed their priority to quickly handling client queries. These factors are predicted to boost the growth of the sub-segment by 2028.

Natural Language Processing Sub-segment to be Most Lucrative

By technology, the natural language processing sub-segment is predicted to account for $4,594.7 million by 2028 and is expected to witness lucrative growth during the analysis period. This is mainly due to the increasing usage of natural language processing (NPL) in facilitating interactions between humans and robots. In addition, the rising need for voice-based solutions that integrates with NLP-based apps is another factor predicted to drive the sub-segments growth in the near future.

Access Varied Market Reports Bearing Extensive Analysis of the Market Situation, Updated With The Impact of COVID-19: https://www.researchdive.com/covid-19-insights

Healthcare Sub-segment to Witness Significant Growth

By end use, the healthcare sub-segment is estimated to generate a revenue of $2,335.3 million by 2028 and is anticipated to observe rapid growth in the global industry over the forecast period. The rapid sub-segment growth of the global conversational AI market is mainly because conversational AI solutions make it easier for healthcare practitioners, patients, and insurance companies to communicate with one another and are in high demand in the healthcare sector.

Asia-Pacific Region to Witness the Fastest Growth

By region, the Asia-Pacific conversational AI market is projected to garner a revenue of $3.022.4 million by 2028 and witness fastest growth during the forecast period. The rapid growth of the region can be attributed to the presence of technologically advanced APAC countries, such as India, Japan, China, and Singapore. In addition, government policies that promote globalization, industrialization, and digitization, and flexible economic conditions are other factors expected to drive the regional market growth by 2028.

Check out all Information and communication technology & media Industry Reports: https://www.researchdive.com/information-and-communication-technology-and-media

Key Players in the Global Conversational AI Market

1. Google

2. Microsoft

3. IBM

4. AWS

5. Oracle

6. SAP

7. Artificial Solutions Holding ASH AB

8. Baidu, Inc.

9. Conversica Inc.

10. Haptik

For instance, in March 2021, Google Cloud announced the availability of a managed machine learning platform, Vertex AI. This platform allow companies to accelerate the deployment as well as maintenance of AI models.

The report also summarizes many important aspects including financial performance of the key players, SWOT analysis, product portfolio, and latest strategic developments. Click Here to Get Absolute Top Companies Development Strategies Summary Report.

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1. Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Protection Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202027 (Download Free Sample Report: https://www.researchdive.com/download-sample/8335)

2. DevOps Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202027 (Download Free Sample Report: https://www.researchdive.com/download-sample/2801)

3. Cognitive Cloud Computing Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202027 (Download Free Sample Report: https://www.researchdive.com/download-sample/2800)
Toronto, Canada, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- From the moment Bingz Chinese Crispy Burger opened its first Canadian restaurant in Markham this year, it has been supported and welcomed into the community. NOW, Bingz wants to say THANK YOU!

Feeding those in search of good, healthy, and especially tasty meals is our goal, so we thought, feeding those feeding others, would be the perfect holiday celebration.

We are treating the North York Harvest Food Bank to lunch! We will be serving up our world-famous burgers and featured drink to client, volunteers, and staff of the food bank.

The pandemic has been a tumultuous and uncertain time for many families. We really love to make a little difference to community by giving away our great burgers. We appreciate North York Harvest Food Banks support to make it happen. Hope what we did would make this holiday brighter for each family. Xi Zhang, Chief Executive Officer, Bingz Canada

Our community members, volunteers and staff are absolutely delighted to enjoy a great lunch courtesy of Bingz Canada. During the holiday season, we appreciate any and all support from our generous community." Henry Chiu, Director of Development & Marketing, North York Harvest Food Bank

Where: North York Harvest Foodbank Lawrence Heights Community Food Space

When: Tuesday, December 14th, 2021 12:00am  13:00pm

Challenge: We challenge all restaurants in the GTA to show their support for our community by making a donation to area food banks and by helping ensure everyone has full stomachs this holiday season. PASS IT ON!

ABOUT BINGZ CHINESE CRISPY BURGER:

Bingz Crispy Burgers opened its first North American location in Markham, Ontario in May, 2021. The company was founded in 2014 in Beijing, China, by two Tencent programmers, and soon became one of the most iconic food chains in the country. Currently, Bingz has over 100 outlets in Beijing and many more locations in several other Chinese cities, with sales of more than 60 million burgers in the past seven years alone. And there are plans to further expand to cities across Canada.

The Bingz menu offers a variety of unique and delicious flavours. Customers can choose from slow cooked pork to tender beef with black pepper, all served on their iconic crispy buns, all baked on-site in Bingz's store.

Bingz burgers are so delicious you wont believe your taste buds!

FACT: Chinese burgers have been traced back 2,000 years, originating in the ancient Qin Dynasty.



ABOUT NORTH YORK HARVEST FOOD BANK:

With a vision of a community where all members are able to meet their food needs, North York Harvest Food Bank (NYH) has been providing dignified food assistance through its network of agencies for more than 35 years.

NYH has seen a 40% increase in demand compared to the same period prior to the pandemic. In fact, NYH distributed 3,000,000 lbs of food through its network in 2020. In addition to providing emergency food, NYH is also working on longer-term solutions to food access, supporting its agencies with investments and development programs and engaging in research on the communities it serves.

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TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PIMCO Canada Corp. (PIMCO Canada) is pleased to announce today that it has declared special cash distributions on the Class A Units (the Units) of the PIMCO Canada closed end funds (the Funds). The distributions will be paid on January 14, 2022 to the holders of record at the close of business on December 31, 2021.

Details of the distribution amounts are as follows:

Fund Name Ticker Cash Distribution per Unit PIMCO Global Income Opportunities Fund PGI.UN $0.09570 PIMCO Tactical Income Fund PTI.UN $0.90111 PIMCO Tactical Income Opportunities Fund PTO.UN $0.16389

Unitholders are reminded that the Fund offers a distribution reinvestment plan (DRIP) which will provide unitholders with the ability to automatically reinvest their distributions. Eligible unitholders are encouraged to contact the institution through which they hold their Units to confirm enrollment procedures and timelines. A copy of the DRIP is available at www.pimco.ca.

The Manager, PIMCO Canada, retains Pacific Investment Management Company, LLC, (PIMCO), to provide investment management services to the Funds.

About PIMCO

PIMCO was founded in 1971 in Newport Beach, California and is one of the worlds premier fixed income investment managers. Today we have offices across the globe and 3,000+ professionals united by a single purpose: creating opportunities for investors in every environment. PIMCO is owned by Allianz S.E., a leading global diversified financial services provider.

This is not an offer to sell Units and not a solicitation of an offer to buy Units in any region where the offer or sale is not permitted. Before you invest, you should carefully read the Funds disclosure documents and consider carefully the risks you assume when you invest in the Units. There can be no assurance that a Fund will achieve its investment objectives or be able to structure its investment portfolio as anticipated. Copies of the Funds disclosure documents may be obtained from your financial advisor.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements included in this news release constitute forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, those identified by the expressions expect, intend, will and similar expressions to the extent they relate to the Funds. The forward-looking statements are not historical facts but reflect each Fund, PIMCO Canada and/or PIMCOs current expectations regarding future results or events. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations, including, but not limited to, market factors. Although the Funds, PIMCO Canada and/or PIMCO believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and, accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein. The Funds, PIMCO Canada and/or PIMCO undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statement or information whether as a result of new information, future events or other factors which affect this information, except as required by law.

You will usually pay brokerage fees to your dealer if you purchase or sell Units on the Toronto Stock Exchange (the TSX). If the Units are purchased or sold on the TSX, investors may pay more than the current net asset value when buying Units and may receive less than the current net asset value when selling them. There are ongoing fees and expenses associated with owning Units. An investment fund must prepare disclosure documents that contain key information about the fund. You can find more detailed information about the Funds in these documents. Investment funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.

Each Fund is a closed end exchange traded investment fund. Closed end funds, unlike open end funds, are not continuously offered. After the initial public offering, shares of closed end funds are sold on the open market through a stock exchange. For additional information, contact your financial advisor.

For a summary of the risks of an investment in each Fund, please see the Principal Risks of the Fund section of the prospectus. Units of closed end funds frequently trade at a discount to their net asset value, which may increase risk of loss. Distributions are not guaranteed and are subject to change and/or elimination.

PIMCO as a general matter provides services to qualified institutions, financial intermediaries and institutional investors. Individual investors should contact their own financial professional to determine the most appropriate investment options for their financial situation. This material contains the current opinions of the manager and such opinions are subject to change without notice. This material has been distributed for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy or investment product. Information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but not guaranteed. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without express written permission. PIMCO is a trademark of Allianz Asset Management of America L.P. in the United States and throughout the world. 2021, PIMCO

The products and services provided by PIMCO Canada Corp. may only be available in certain provinces or territories of Canada and only through dealers authorized for that purpose.

PIMCO Canada has retained PIMCO LLC as sub-adviser. PIMCO Canada will remain responsible for any loss that arises out of the failure of its sub-adviser.

PIMCO Canada Corp. 199 Bay Street, Suite 2050, Commerce Court Station, P.O. Box 363, Toronto, ON, M5L 1G2, 416-368-3350

Contact:

Agnes Crane

PIMCO  Media Relations

Phone: +212 597.1054




Chicago, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The American Academy of Implant Dentistry (AAID) presented its highest awards at the recently concluded 70th Annual Conference in Chicago on Saturday, November 13, 2021. For background about each of the awards and the history of past winners, please visit aaid.com/awards.

The following are the top 5 AAID dentists in 2021.

The 2021 Aaron Gershkoff/Norman Goldberg Memorial Award was presented to Joel L. Rosenlicht, DMD, FAAID, DABOI/ID, of Manchester, CT, for his achievements in the field of implant dentistry and service to the AAID. Dr. Rosenlicht, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, has been in private practice and academics for more than 30 years. He graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University Dental School in 1975 and completed his Oral and Maxillofacial Surgical training at the combined programs of Tufts University and Boston University School of Graduate Dental Medicine in 1978. Dr. Rosenlicht became a Fellow in 1994 and an ABOI/ID Diplomate in 1991. He also served as AAID president in 2010.

The 2021 Isiah Lew Memorial Research Award was presented to Jack A. Hahn, DDS, FAAID, ABOI/ID of Cincinnati, OH, for his significant contribution to dental implant research. Dr. Hahn is a well-known pioneer in the field of oral implantology. He brings more than 52 years of implant expertise to his patients and continues to lecture worldwide. After graduating from dental school at The Ohio State University, Dr. Hahn became committed to treating dental implant patients and educating other dental professionals on how to perform surgical placements and prosthetic restorations. He has developed implant devices and techniques that are used worldwide and continues to participate in various clinical studies. He became a Fellow in 1985, an Honored Fellow in 1988, and an ABOI/ID Diplomate in 1990. He served as ABOI/ID president in 2007.

The 2021 Terry Reynolds Trailblazer Award was presented to Bernee Dunson, DDS, FAAID, DABOI/ID, of Atlanta, GA, for his contributions to fostering inclusion, outreach, and service within the dental community. Dr. Dunson received his dental degree from the University of Southern California in 1991 and completed a general dentistry residency program at Columbia University at Harlem Hospital in NYC. He obtained his oral implantology graduate certificate from Loma Linda University in 1997. Dr. Dunson is the founder and director of the Global Dental Implant Institute in Atlanta. He also is the Director of the Washington D.C. (Mid-Atlantic) MaxiCourse and has lectured at more than 10 MaxiCourses around the world. Dr. Dunson has been an AAID member since 1992, became a Fellow in 2009, and earned his ABOI/ID Diplomate in 2008. He served as president in 2020. (Picture can be provided upon request.)

The 2021 Paul Johnson Service Award was awarded to Shankar Iyer, DDS, MDS, FAAID, DABOI/ID, of Elizabeth, NJ, for his outstanding service to the AAID. Dr. Iyer graduated with honors from the New York University College of Dentistry and pursued graduate studies in Prosthodontics. He was a clinical assistant professor for several years at New York Universitys department of Post-Graduate Prosthodontics. He currently holds two appointments in the departments of Periodontics and Prosthodontics at Rutgers University Dental School in New Jersey. Dr. Iyer became a Fellow in 2000 and an ABOI/ID Diplomate in 2004. He has been involved with the AAID since 1996, serving on many committees including the Annual Conference Education Committee and as AAID President in 2017. (Picture can be provided upon request.)

The 2021 International Dentist of the Year Award was presented to Robert J. Miller, DDS, FAAID, DABOI/ID of Delray Beach, FL, for championing international growth of the AAID. Dr. Miller graduated with honors from New York University College of Dentistry and completed his general practice residency at Flushing Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Miller became a Fellow in 2002, an Honored Fellow in 2012, and an ABOI/ID Diplomate in 2001. He teaches implant dentistry at clinics around the world and serves on the editorial review board for the AAIDs Journal of Oral Implantology. (Picture can be provided upon request.)

Founded in 1951, the American Academy of Implant Dentistry (AAID) is the first professional organization in the world dedicated to implant dentistry. Its membership includes general dentists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, periodontists, prosthodontists, and others interested in the field of implant dentistry. As a membership organization, the AAID currently represents almost 5,000 dentists worldwide. For more information about the AAID, visit the AAID website at aaid.com or call the AAID office at 312.335.1550 or 877.335.AAID (2243).

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Denver, CO, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Associa Colorado team members Donna Nicholas and Karla Strader, CMCA, AMS, PCAM, were recognized at the annual awards ceremony for the Community Associations Institutes (CAI) Rocky Mountain chapter.

Ms. Nicholas received the Outstanding Management Company Support Staff Award. Against candidates from other Colorado management companies, she was selected for her dedication and commitment to providing 5-star customer service. Ms. Nicholas is an assistant community manager for Associa Colorado. An Associa employee since 2015, she joined the Associa Colorado team in 2020 as an assistant community manager.

Ms. Strader was re-elected to the Rocky Mountain chapters board of directors. She will be serving a three-year term and has been appointed as the board secretary for 2022. She is the director of community management for Associa Colorado. As a valued Associa team member since 2010, Ms. Strader has served at three different Associa branches, including Associa Colorado.

Associa Colorado has a reputation for cultivating community management leaders who are as invested in the advancement of the industry as they are in their individual client relationships, said Kim Corcoran, CMCA, AMS, PCAM, Associa Colorado president. We have many team members who are active with the local chapter of the Community Associations Institute, and we are honored that two of those individuals, Donna and Karla, were recognized by CAI for their accomplishments.

About Associa

With more than 200 branch offices across North America, Associa delivers unsurpassed management and lifestyle services to nearly five million residents worldwide. Our 10,000+ team members lead the industry with unrivaled education, expertise, and trailblazing innovation. For more than 40 years, Associa has provided solutions designed to help communities achieve their vision. To learn more, visit www.associaonline.com.

Stay Connected:

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/associa

Subscribe to the Blog: https://hub.associaonline.com/

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Join us on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/associa

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NEWARK, Ohio, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Park National Corporation (NYSE American: PRK) (Park) announced today its Board of Directors elected D. Byrd Miller III to serve as a director, effective January 1, 2022. Miller will also join the Board of Directors of Park National Bank, Parks banking subsidiary, effective on the same date.



Byrd has been connected to our organization as an advisory board member for our Carolina Division. He is a valued member of our leadership in the Carolinas and we look forward to having his voice at the board table, Park Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David Trautman said. He knows what we do, how we do it and why we exist  to help everyone with whom we come in contact flourish.

Miller is Managing Member, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of William Barnet & Son, LLC, a synthetic fibers, yarns and polymers company with offices and manufacturing facilities in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. As Global Financial Director, he is responsible for overseeing all financial operations of this company, including its foreign operations.

I admire what Park stands for and am thrilled to join both boards of directors. I hope my experience as a banker and a founding board member of the Carolina division (formerly Carolina Alliance Bank) will allow me to provide insight that adds value to the Park organization, said Miller. I look forward to making meaningful contributions to help propel the bank forward in its quest to serve customers and communities.

As a lifelong South Carolina resident, Byrd brings an important lens to the Park board. His experience in banking and international commerce augments his impressive leadership record, said Donna Alvarado, chair of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee for Parks Board of Directors.

Prior to his leadership at Barnet, Miller was a senior vice president at Bank of America.

Millers community service currently includes chairman of the Apella Health Management board of trustees (parent of the Spartanburg Regional Medical System) and member of the Clemson University Presidential Advisory Board. His past community endeavors include roles as chairman of the United Way of the Piedmont, trustee of the Mary Black Foundation, advisory board member for the Salvation Army, board member for the Arts Partnership, The Spartanburg Area Conservancy Inc., and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Wildlife and Fish Advisory Board. He has also served as a member of the board of governors for Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce and for Leadership South Carolina, and trustee of the Clemson University Foundation, where he was chair of its Investment Committee.

Miller earned a bachelors degree from Clemson University and is a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking.

Miller will serve in the class of directors whose terms expire on the date of Parks annual meeting of shareholders in 2023. Miller will also serve as a member of the Audit Committee of Parks Board of Directors. Including Miller, effective January 1, 2022, Parks Board of Directors will have 14 members plus one director emeritus.

Headquartered in Newark, Ohio, Park National Corporation had $10.0 billion in total assets (as of September 30, 2021). Founded in 1908, it offers a full range of financial services in Ohio, Kentucky, and the Carolinas. The bank consistently earns high marks and awards for its service, community leadership, and financial performance.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6db19807-5ec1-464a-8537-b3dc291c5e45
MEXICO CITY, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Community-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Polis is announcing a partnership with decentralized VC MCN Ventures. The collaboration, which is the first of its kind for Polis, will focus on building a cross-chain DeFi ecosystem on Polis Chain, Polis' native blockchain.

As part of the collaboration, four new projects are set to be deployed by MCN Ventures on Polis Chain in the next few weeks. These include decentralized stablecoins Xdollar and MinMax , farming ecosystem MCN Multiple, and Acheron, a third-party bridge for Polis Chain.

Speaking about the collaboration, Andreas Meyer, Business DAO Manager commented:

"For our project, it is the first time that we will work together with a venture fund. The special thing is that MCN is completely decentralized and has a huge network in the DeFi space. This brings us many new opportunities to grow our Polis Chain for 2022. We are looking forward to this collaboration and the future new projects on our chain."

Bill the Investor, a general partner of MCN Ventures also commented:

"The partnership between MCN and Polis will help Polis to build its DeFi projects fast and greatly enhance the MCN ecosystem."

The New Kid in DeFi

Polis' collaboration with MCN Ventures comes after a swathe of developments at Polis following its entry into the DeFi space, marking its 4-year milestone. In November 2021, Polis launched Hades Swap , its first decentralized exchange (DEX) in a key pivot into the DeFi space. The DEX had over $2.5 million in trading volume in its first week, with Total Value Locked (TVL) peaking at $2.5 million too. To date, $6.5 million worth of crypto assets has been traded on the platform.

Moreover, Polis successfully launched the Olympus Network, a blockchain within the Polis ecosystem capable of running smart contracts. This will allow developers in the ecosystem to easily create decentralized applications (dApps), a feature that is critical for its operation in the DeFi space.

Finally, in November 2021, Polis partnered with Meter.io to bridge the Olympus Network to Binance Smart Chain to facilitate transfers of stablecoin DAI. The Polis team has also been pursuing several additional partnerships which are due to materialize in the next few months.

Combined, these developments suggest Polis' pivot towards DeFi is not only well-funded, but well-resourced, ensuring Polis is positioned to become a leader in the DeFi space.

About MCN Ventures

MCN Ventures is a decentralized incubator, investor and liquidity provider. Its stakeholders comprise Twitter-based key opinion leaders, entrepreneurs, traders and analysts focussed on decentralized finance. Collectively, stakeholders invest in early-stage projects, providing a range of industry expertise as well as capital.

The MCN team leverages a platform of over 200,000 followers across Twitter, Telegram, WeChat and Weibo to help grow early-stage communities as well as providing technical expertise in the form of code audits and evaluations.

About Polis

Polis is the main asset on the Olympus Network. It allows users to pay for transaction fees, as well as transferring value stored in Polis within the network. Polis Chain is EVM-compatible, meaning developers can build applications that make use of smart contract technology.

The network started as a fork of popular payment platform DASH, adopting its own Proof-of-Stake rules in 2018. Moreover, Polis is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) which elects five managers responsible for the ecosystem's operation. All Polis members are able to vote for each of the positions as well as put forward and vote for specific proposals pertaining to the ecosystem's future.

For more information on the Polis and MCN Ventures collaboration, visit their website here .

Follow Polis on Twitter

Read the Polis blog on Medium

Join the Polis community on Telegram

Stay-up to date on all things Polis on YouTube

Media Contact Details

Contact Name: Maria Sidorova

Contact Email: maria@polispay.org

POLIS is the source of this content. This Press Release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

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NORFOLK, VA, Dec. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Old Dominion University earned the Research 1 Classification, indicating very high research activity, from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, placing it among the highest level of research institutions in the United States. The Carnegie Classification has been the leading measure of research activities at U.S. colleges and institutions for more than half a century.

The University joins a group of just 137, or 5%, of four-year research institutions with the R1 classification in the nation. The classification, produced this year by the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, is published every three years. Previously, ODU was ranked as a Research 2 institution for doctoral institutions with high research activity.

The Research 1 designation represents a key step in recruiting high-quality faculty and students, obtaining prestigious and larger research grants, and attracting industry and government agency partners.

This is a significant milestone for our campus community and a historic moment in our research efforts, said President Brian O. Hemphill, Ph.D. ODU is truly honored to join the elite ranks of the nations top-producing research institutions, which comprise less than 5% of all institutions. Our faculty are so deserving of this prestigious honor and the limitless opportunities and well-deserved recognition that come with it!

Governor Ralph Northam, a Norfolk resident, celebrated the Universitys designation, stating, Im so excited to move back home and live next door to a leading research university. Congratulations to the whole ODU team  this is an important achievement!

The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education developed the Carnegie Classification in 1970 to support its program of research and policy analysis. The classification is considered the leading framework for describing the diversity of U.S. colleges and universities. The tool informs research, grant-making and funding decisions, and annual rankings, including those by U.S. News & World Report.

Universities with the R1 classification engage in the highest levels of research activity. To be considered R1, universities must meet benchmarks across 10 indicators, including research doctorates awarded, total research expenditures, the aggregate level of research activity and the number of research staff.

ODUs designation as an R1 institution demonstrates its national standing as a top-tier research university, Virginia Secretary of Education Fran Bradford said. I am pleased that ODU has become the latest Virginia member of that elite academic club and thankful for all that ODU does for innovation and workforce development in Hampton Roads and the commonwealth.

Over the past decade, the number of scientific publications from ODU faculty has doubled, and over the past five years external funding for applied research projects has tripled, contributing to $69 million annually in overall research expenditures. More than half of ODU faculty have been involved in externally funded research projects, which have grown by 22% in total expenditures in the last decade. In the same period, ODU doubled the size of its nonfaculty Ph.D. research staff.

ODU has nationally known research strengths in coastal resilience, modeling and simulation, bioelectrics, port logistics and maritime engineering, and cybersecurity. ODU is a key academic partner for the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab), NASA Langley Research Center, NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Defense, among other agencies.

ODUs strategy has been to focus on research that is meaningful to people living and working in Hampton Roads that also is applicable globally, such as in maritime domains, Vice President for Research Morris Foster said. R1 designation recognizes the national significance of that local strategy.

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Austin Agho noted the classification could be attributed to the hard work and dedication of the ODU community.

This accomplishment represents the collective efforts of our faculty, scientists, students and staff to further ODUs mission as a leading public doctoral research institution, he said. Being named a Research 1 institution signals ODU is well-positioned to support research faculty, provide robust opportunities to undergraduates and graduate students, and work with partners to find innovative answers to complex and challenging questions.

The new classification, released Dec. 15, is undergoing a review and comment period that concludes at the end of January, when the classifications become official. The 2021 update will be the final administered by the IU Center for Postsecondary Research, now transferring responsibility to Albion College in Michigan.

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ABOUT OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY:

Old Dominion University, located in Norfolk, is Virginias forward-focused public doctoral research university with approximately 23,500 students, rigorous academics, an energetic residential community and initiatives that contribute $2.6 billion annually to Virginias economy.
Waukesha, WI (53187)

Today

A few snow showers scattered about the area this morning, otherwise a good deal of clouds. High 14F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 30%..

Tonight

Bitterly cold. Partly cloudy skies. Low -3F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Governor Northam Announces More Than $3.6 Million in Growth and Opportunity Virginia Grants

GO Virginia funding will attract businesses, support infrastructure and workforce development programs

RICHMONDGovernor Ralph Northam today announced more than $3.6 million in Growth and Opportunity for Virginia (GO Virginia) grants to support thirteen projects focused on expanding workforce development and talent pipelines in key industries, fostering business, and improving infrastructure.

GO Virginia allows us to address the unique needs of localities across the Commonwealth, said Governor Northam. This targeted support is critical, both for local projects and for encouraging long-term regional collaboration. These thirteen projects will foster innovation, support entrepreneurs, and drive economic growth across the Commonwealth.

This round of grants include 12 regional projects and one project through GO Virginias Economic Resilience and Recovery Program. The awarded projects will receive an additional $4.9 million in local and non-state resources.

Virginia boasts a diverse economy, and each geographic region has distinct economic characteristics, said Secretary of Commerce and Trade Brian Ball. GO Virginia has been effective in responding to those differences, as its regional approach fosters innovative ideas, programs, and strategies throughout the Commonwealth as demonstrated by these awarded projects.

Congratulations to today's awardees and to their respective regional councils, said GO Virginia Board Chair Nancy Howell Agee. GO Virginia has created a foundation over the past four years that is giving regions the tools to develop high-impact solutions that have helped us tackle the economic setbacks of the COVID-19 pandemic while also focusing on longer term economic development strategies and objectives. These projects are a testament to how thinking creatively and collaborating deeply with localities, private industry, and other stakeholders has proven to be successful, making a difference in the lives of all Virginians.

Since the programs inception in 2017, GO Virginia has funded 208 projects and awarded approximately $78 million to support regional economic development efforts. To learn more about the GO Virginia program, visit dhcd.virginia.gov/gova

2021 ROUND FOUR REGIONAL GRANT AWARDS:

Project Seed  Innovation Hub at Midtown Square | $674,304

Region 3: Counties of Cumberland and Prince Edward

Longwood University, in partnership with Hampden Sydney College, will connect the community to local and regional resources for business and social entrepreneurship development by establishing an Innovation Hub in Downtown Farmville. This hub will include a digital makerspace, a community co-working space, a Small Business Development Center office to accelerate business concepts and an educational outreach center to host youth entrepreneurship courses and educator professional development opportunities to develop entrepreneurial education practice in the classroom.



Pathway Park Infrastructure | $600,000

Region 1: Counties of Bland and Smyth

The Smyth County Economic Development Authority will further advance a business-ready development site by installing 2,000 feet of 8-inch water line and 1,600 feet of sewer line to Pathway Park, a 70-acre site in Smyth County. The project also includes the formation of a Regional Industrial Facilities Authority (RIFA) between Bland and Smyth counties to allow the localities to collaborate and competitively market the site for manufacturers and distribution centers.

Project Eagle+ | $599,437

Region 2: Montgomery County and the city of Roanoke

The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center (VTCRC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Virginia Tech Foundation (VTF), in partnership with the city of Roanoke, Montgomery County, and Johnson & Johnson JLABS, will support a three-prong approach to grow the regions health and life science cluster. Project Eagle+ will pilot a shared lab facility in Blacksburg at the VTCRC to meet the demand from small, early-stage companies, many of which are spinoffs from Virginia Tech and/or alumni of the Regional Accelerator & Mentoring Program (RAMP).

Agricultural Innovation Center | $550,000

Region 8: Cities of Buena Vista and Lexington, and the counties of Augusta and Rockbridge

The Advancement Foundation and partners will create a multi-use facility featuring a business incubator and classrooms, agriculture and food tech labs, and a small-scale manufacturing space, as well as a processing and product development space. Strategically located in downtown Buena Vista, the Agricultural Innovation Center will transform a vacant 37,000-square-foot factory into a flagship, agricultural innovation facility that will grow the regions entrepreneurial ecosystem, support Buena Vistas downtown revitalization and serve as a model for future agricultural enterprise facilities in the Shenandoah Valley.

Mobilizing the Supply Chain with Critical Infrastructure | $212,200

Region 1: Scott County, the city of Bristol and the town of Duffield

Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD) will create critical infrastructure in the food supply chain, including outfitting building space at Appalachian Harvest Food Hub with the equipment and space needed to process produce. This new infrastructure will help increase processing capacity and revenue for small scale agricultural product producers, a priority industry sector for Region 1. This facility will also enable trainees to learn value-added processing techniques in preparation for the increasing need for small-scale local food production and grocers needs for trained workers.



Convene and Collaborate  Region 7 REI | $193,751

Region 7: Counties of Fairfax and Loudoun

George Mason University (GMU) will lead Region 7s Regional Entrepreneurship Initiative through convening and collaborating with entrepreneurial ecosystem players to develop a comprehensive ecosystem strategy and identify a coordinator for the regions entrepreneurial ecosystem. GMU will engage with stakeholders through an advisory board, including regional council representatives, wide outreach to stakeholders for a series of engagement events, followed by the convening of workgroups and information synthesis garnered from events outreach.

Innovation Center Roadmap | $100,000

Region 7: Fairfax County and the city of Fairfax

NOVA Labs will develop a plan to expand their Innovation Center, add new tools and equipment, and support programs for member companies that will contribute to their success and growth. The projects long-term goal is to double the number of entrepreneur members and double the Innovation Centers prototyping capacity in order to enhance Region 7s start-up ecosystem, small business growth and technical workforce.

Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UxS) Route/Corridor Network Study | $100,000

Region 5: Cities of Hampton and Norfolk

Old Dominion UniversitysVirginia Institute for Spaceflight and Autonomy (VISA) will examine how a network of nodes and routes utilizing air, ground and water through unmanned systems could expedite the transport of goods, services and travelers between currently underutilized entry points. The study will help inform the Autonomous Systems Strategic Playbook for Region 5, and leverage state and federal investment in maritime- and aviation-related facilities at NASA Wallops, Accomack County Airport, Fort Monroe, Cape Charles and others.

The Future Kings STEM Pipeline Project Focused on Black and Latino Boys | $97,000

Region 7: Prince William County and the city of Manassas

Future Kings, a workforce development program that targets Black and Latino boys who are in grades 6 to 12, will lead a study to determine the feasibility of expanding the Future Kings program.

RIoT Pre-Accelerator Program | $96,804

Region 6: Counties of King George and Stafford, and the city of Fredericksburg

Regional Internet of Things (RIoT) will launch three six-week, pre-accelerator programs to help entrepreneurs who are still in the early-concept stage launch their new businesses. The pre-accelerator is a key component of a regional startup support system and will further the RIoT Accelerator Program (RAP). This project will create 12 businesses and 25 jobs, as well as generate $1.5 million in revenue.

Strategy and Roadmap for Growing the Controlled Environmental Agriculture (CEA) Sector | $77,053

Region 3: Counties of Amelia, Buckingham, Brunswick, Charlotte, Cumberland, Halifax, Lunenburg, Henry, Mecklenburg, Nottoway, Patrick, Pittsylvania, and Prince Edward, and the cities of Danville and Martinsville

The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR), in partnership with the Virginia Tech Center for Economic and Community Engagement, will develop a strategy and roadmap for supporting industry growth and workforce development for Controlled Environmental Agriculture (CEA) in Region 3. The strategy and roadmap will include an analysis of this emerging and dynamic agribusiness sector, including its industry and economic growth potential while identifying and validating needed facilities and infrastructure, workforce development issues, opportunities and applied research assets.

Project Veer | $49,750

Region 1: Counties of Washington and Wise, and the city of Bristol

InvestSWVA will perform a market analysis to evaluate opportunities for Region 1s manufacturers to participate in the onshore and offshore wind supply chain. Project Veer builds on the regions manufacturing history, recent efforts to become a key player in the renewable energy economy and regional strategies to advance as a manufacturing hub. This project will help manufacturers assess the business opportunity and assist companies in looking to diversify.

ECONOMIC RESILIENCE AND RECOVERY AWARDS:

Growing the Pipeline: Expanding Early Stage Entrepreneurship Support | $250,000

Region 4: Counties of Henrico and Chesterfield, and the city of Richmond

Startup Virginia (SVA) will lead an effort to expand support for early-stage entrepreneurs through the implementation of technology platforms, addition of staff, and enhancement of incubator services and further development of two programs designed specifically for earliest-stage startups, the Idea Factory and the Entrepreneur Certificate Course. This project will support the entrepreneurial rise created by the pandemic to cultivate and expand the pool of early-stage startups in Region 4 by increasing SVAs incubator capacity to support more aspiring entrepreneurs while enhancing incubator services for early-stage startups who desire to move beyond the idea stage.

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Statewide Checkpoint Strikeforce Campaign Aims to Reduce Holiday-Related Impaired Driving

116 Virginia law enforcement agencies join forces to stop drunk driving this holiday season

RICHMONDGovernor Ralph Northam today continued Virginias public education campaign and enforcement effort to spread awareness and deter drunk driving during the holiday season. The Checkpoint Strikeforce campaign combines law enforcement with research-based messaging to remind Virginians to make responsible decisions when drinking.

Keep your family, your community, and yourself safe by not drinking and driving this holiday season, said Governor Northam. You can always designate a sober driver, call a taxi, or use public transportation and rideshare services. We owe our thanks to law enforcement professionals for keeping people safe this holiday season. Together, we can reduce impaired driving and save lives.

In 2020, Virginia lost 272 lives in alcohol-related crashes. Since Checkpoint Strikeforces inaugural campaign in 2001, alcohol-related crashes have decreased 41.2 percent, fatalities have decreased by 24 percent, and injuries have decreased by half.

The holidays traditionally pose an increased risk for fatalities involving alcohol-impaired driving, said Richard D. Holcomb, Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles and the Governors Highway Safety Representative. Our goal is to ensure each and every Virginian gets home safely to their families this holiday season. Between Thanksgiving 2020 and New Years Day 2021 alone, 14 Virginians lost their lives in alcohol-related crashes. Our message is simple: as you celebrate with loved ones this holiday season, dont put lives at risk by getting behind the wheel after drinking.

Virginia State Police will work through the holidays as part of Operation CARE  the Crash Awareness Reduction Effort. CARE is a nationwide, state-sponsored traffic safety program that aims to reduce traffic crashes, fatalities and injuries caused by impaired driving, speeding and failing to use seatbelts.

116 Virginia law enforcement agencies will participate in the holiday wave of Virginias Checkpoint Strikeforce campaign from December 15 through New Years Day. Law enforcement officers will increase the police presence in high-risk areas and establish 55 sobriety checkpoints across the Commonwealth.

Complementing the high visibility enforcement, Checkpoint Strikeforce is running a surround-sound ad campaign called Act Like It. The campaign reminds viewers that drinking and driving is irresponsibleif you are old enough to drink, act like it. Get a safe ride home. To review alternative transportation options and to see the 30-second ad, visit www.ActLikeIt.org.

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The US Department of Energys (DOEs) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), joined by partners at Sandia National Laboratories and the Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute, launched the Heliostat Consortium (HelioCon), an international effort to drive down the cost of heliostats.

HelioCon, led by NREL, emphasizes the significance of heliostats as a key component of concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) technologies. CSP with low-cost thermal energy storage can be used either to produce dispatchable electricity or provide high-temperature heat to difficult-to-decarbonize industries, such as cement, steel, and chemical production.

Heliostats track the sun in order to reflect sunlight to a receiver, where it can be stored as heat for long-duration energy storage and converted into electricity. There can be more than 10,000 heliostats in a single CSP plant, representing 30%50% of the cost of system construction and a primary driver of operations and maintenance costs.





Heliostats stand in front of a solar tower at the Ivanpah concentrated solar power plant in Nipton, California. Photo by Dennis Schroeder, National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

DOEs Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is working to lower heliostat costs, with a target of $50 per square meter, to reach its goal of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour for next-generation CSP plants, which incorporate thermal energy storage.

HelioCon will leverage the expertise of researchers from national laboratories, industry, and other research institutions across the globe.

As part of the strategic roadmap, HelioCon will develop standards, metrology, techno-economic analysis, and field deployment technologies to address heliostat costs. In addition, it seeks to increase domestic manufacturing of solar technologies and to bring more professionals into clean energy careers.

HelioCon is actively seeking to broaden the community working on this technology through its industry board of advisors and future requests for proposals, which will engage new leaders in this area.

HelioCon is funded by SETO.
Findings from the North American Electric Reliability Corporations (NERCs) 2021 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA) indicate there is a high probability of insufficient resources and energy to serve electricity demand, as early as Summer 2022, in many parts of the Western Interconnection.

Extreme weather-related events and performance issues associated with some inverter-based resources, such as solar, wind and new battery or hybrid generation, may also have a potential negative impact on reliability.





The LTRA identifies a significant projected increase in variable generation and emphasizes the criticality of the role of natural gas as a balancing resource. More transmission is also needed to deliver renewable energy from remote locations to load centers, but the LTRA acknowledges that build-time and siting are additional constraints that need to be considered in planning and policy setting.

While the LTRA finds that all interconnections will face increasing reliability issues over the next 10 years, California, parts of the northwestern and southwestern United States and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) areas, in particular, are projecting capacity shortfalls and periods of insufficient energy due to declining reserve margins and generator retirements.

Texas, California and the Northwest United States project that peak demand cannot be met without some combination of variable generation and imports. In addition, natural gas infrastructure that supports electricity generation in New England, California, and the southwestern United States is susceptible to disruptions that can affect winter reliability. Regional coordination and resource adequacy planning among entities in these at-risk regions is strongly encouraged.

As our systems resource mix changes, so does the need to use different assessment approaches to identify reliability risk. Focusing only on the resource needs for expected peak electricity demand in summer or winter could neglect other risk periods, such as when variable generation is not producing as much energy as expected. Resource planning needs to ensure that system operators have at their disposal sufficient generation that can be dispatched to deliver needed energy at all hours of the day and in all seasons. Mark Olson, manager of Reliability Assessments

NERC provides specific areas of focus for the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) Enterprise, stakeholders and policymakers in the assessment.

Developing sufficient flexible resources to support increasing levels of variable generation uncertainty.

Improving coordination between the natural gas and electricity industries.

Rethinking the regulatory structure and oversight of natural gas supply for electric generation and its role in supporting the reliable operation of the bulk power system.

Focusing attention on energy sufficiency with the understanding that capacity alone does not provide for reliability unless the fuel behind it is assured, even in extreme weather.

Ensuring distributed energy resources are sufficiently incorporated into bulk power system planning and operations.

Ensuring planning studies and operating models accurately account for new inverter-based resources.

The 2021 LTRA is the ERO Enterprises independent assessment and comprehensive report on the adequacy of planned bulk power system resources to meet electricity demand across North America over the coming decade. It also identifies area trends and emerging issues that affect the long-term reliability and security of the grid.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is a not-for-profit international regulatory authority the mission of which is to assure the effective and efficient reduction of risks to the reliability and security of the grid. NERC develops and enforces Reliability Standards; annually assesses seasonal and longterm reliability; monitors the bulk power system through system awareness; and educates, trains, and certifies industry personnel.

NERCs area of responsibility spans the continental United States, Canada, and the northern portion of Baja California, Mexico. NERC is the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) for North America, subject to oversight by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and governmental authorities in Canada. NERCs jurisdiction includes users, owners, and operators of the bulk power system, which serves nearly 400 million people.
Rolls-Royce Group has reached agreement with Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar, to invest 85 million (US$112 million) in Rolls-Royce SMR Limited (Rolls-Royce SMR). Rolls-Royce SMR is building a new technology solution for small modular reactors to deliver affordable, low-carbon, nuclear power.

A single small modular reactor power station will occupy around one tenth of the size of a conventional nuclear generation site and power approximately one million homes.

QIA will join Rolls-Royce Group, BNF Resources UK Ltd and Exelon Generation Ltd as shareholders in Rolls-Royce SMR, taking a 10% share of the equity.

The Rolls-Royce SMR business is now fully funded, having secured 490 million (US$647 million) through commercial equity and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) grant funding. The development of SMRs is a core part of the UK Governments 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution.

Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd was established in 2021, with the mission of designing and delivering a turn-key, low-cost nuclear solution utilizing factory-built modularization solutions. Factory production of modules removes the cost and schedule risks of on-site manufacture on large-scale projects. Modules can be transported to site on a truck exactly when theyre required.

Rolls-Royce SMR will draw upon standard nuclear energy technology that has been used in 400 reactors around the world. A Rolls-Royce SMR power station will have the capacity to generate 470MW of low-carbon energy, equivalent to more than 150 onshore wind turbines. It will provide consistent baseload generation for at least 60 years.

Rolls-Royce Group will ultimately own approximately 70% of the Rolls-Royce SMR business.
X-MAT, the Advanced Materials Division of Semplastics, has successfully fabricated a full cell battery by combining a commercial cathode and its proprietary ceramic coal composite anode.

X-MATs material has various current applications including fireproof roof tiles, lightweight space mirrors, battery electrodes and 3D printed ceramics. The basic production process involves mixing raw powdered coal with a proprietary resin.

This coal composite material is currently undergoing testing and has already achieved more than 450 cycles at a third-party laboratorya significant step forward in the technology development. The teams next step is to scale this technology for testing in single-layer pouch cells.

The X-MAT technology can also be used to upcycle graphite from spent lithium-ion batteries, the company says.

Demand for lithium-ion batteries continues to grow, with no signs of it slowing down. Each year, demand is expected to grow by 25% resulting in 14x growth by 2030.

X-MAT has gained support for its work with batteries from the Department of Energys National Energy Technology Laboratory. In 2020, the company was awarded a nearly $1-million contract to help fund the research for utilizing coal in batteries. To date, the company has received $10.7 million in contracts and grants.

As the company continues its research on batteries, it has recently expanded its battery lab, located at the X-MAT headquarters.

X-MAT launched in 2013. X-MAT developed a high-performance material that combines some of the best properties of metals (electrical conductivity), engineering plastics (lightweight) and ceramics (high operating temperature). X-MAT has had several partnerships including work with NASA, Space Florida and the NETL.
For almost two decades, a 58-foot-long, 10-foot-wide and 6-foot-high pedestrian bridge sat idly in an overgrown field in Akron, Ohio. It had been removed from a nearby park for a restoration project, police said.

But early last month, a passerby noticed something was amiss with the structure. The brush around the bridge had been cleared and the deck boards were missing, police said.

A week later, the entire structure was gone.

On Friday, police arrested the alleged thief - 63-year-old David Bramley of Sharon Township, west of Akron. Bramley, who could not be reached for comment, was charged with felony theft, authorities announced Monday. Court records do not indicate if he has an attorney.

The alleged bridge theft is the latest heist of its kind to make national headlines. In 2011, police in western Pennsylvania arrested and charged two brothers with stealing a 50-foot-long, 20-foot-wide bridge. Authorities said the brothers sold 31,000 pounds of parts, earning more than $5,000, according to the Associated Press.

In March, police arrested a Burbank, Wash., man and charged him with stealing a 400-pound slide from a local playground. The man had cut off the top of the structure, painted the slide blue and secured it to his son's bunk bed, police said. He pleaded guilty in September.

Until around 2003 or 2004, the Akron bridge was located at Middlebury Run Park, a trail along the Little Cuyahoga River, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. It was removed for a wetland restoration project, police said, and relocated to a field on the other side of the river, next to a large office building. There were plans for the bridge to be reused in a project for a women's shelter, the Beacon Journal reported.

Someone first noticed the missing deck boards on Nov. 3, according to authorities, and the whole bridge was gone by Nov. 11.

A month later, on Dec. 10, Akron police informed the public of the missing bridge in a Facebook post calling for "any information or knowledge of the whereabouts." Over the next few weeks, investigators received "several tips and developed additional information critical to the case," police said Monday on Facebook. The investigation, they say, led them to Bramley.

Around 2:45 p.m. on Friday, Akron police searched a property in neighboring Medina County. They soon found the bridge, which had been partially taken apart, authorities said.

"Detectives discovered that Bramley . . . paid a local trucking company for a crane service," police said. "The crane was later used to place the bridge on and off a vehicle that transported it to the Medina County property."

The bridge will be brought back to Akron in the next few days, police said. Authorities did not say why the bridge was allegedly taken.

Bramley will be arraigned in Akron Municipal Court on Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Fighting the omicron variant surging through the country, President Joe Biden announced the government will provide 500 million free rapid home-testing kits, increase support for hospitals under strain and redouble vaccination and boosting efforts.

At the White House on Tuesday, Biden detailed major changes to his COVID-19 winter plan, his hand forced by the fast-spreading variant, whose properties are not yet fully understood by scientists. Yet his message was clear that the winter holidays could be close to normal for the vaccinated while potentially dangerous for the unvaccinated.

His pleas are not political, he emphasized. He noted that former President Donald Trump has gotten his booster shot, and he said it's Americans' patriotic duty to get vaccinated.

Its the only responsible thing to do, the president said. "Omicron is serious and potentially deadly business for unvaccinated people.

Biden chastised social media and people on cable TV who have made misleading statements to discourage people from getting vaccinated.

The outbreak from this latest strain of the coronavirus has required the federal government to get more aggressive in addressing the wave of infections, but Biden promised a weary nation that there would not be a mass lockdown of schools or businesses.

I know youre tired, and I know youre frustrated. We all want this to be over. But were still in it, Biden said. We also have more tools than we had before. Were ready, well get through this.

Scientists dont know everything about omicron yet, but they do know that vaccination should offer strong protection against severe illness and death. The variant has spread at such an alarming rate since it was identified in South Africa about a month ago that the Biden administration snapped into action to offer new tests and additional aid. Still more is needed, some medical experts said.

A cornerstone of the plan is for the government to purchase 500 million coronavirus rapid tests for free shipment to Americans starting in January. People will use a new website to order their tests, which will then be sent by U.S. mail at no charge. The 500 million could be increased, depending on developments.

It marks a major shift for Biden, who earlier had called for many Americans to purchase the hard-to-find tests on their own and then seek reimbursement from health insurance. For the first time, the U.S. government will send free COVID-19 tests directly to Americans, after more than a year of urging by public health experts.

Experts had criticized Biden's initial buy-first, get-paid-later approach as unwieldy and warned that the U.S. would face another round of testing problems at a critical time. Testing advocates point to nations including the U.K. and Germany, which have distributed billions of tests to the public and recommend people test themselves twice a week.

The federal government will also establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. The first new federally supported testing site will open in New York this week. The new sites will add to 20,000 already available. White House officials said they're working with Google so that people will be able to find them by searching free COVID test near me.

Still, Biden's testing surge would need to be supported by a further jump in production for all Americans to test at the recommended rate of twice weekly. The U.S. would need 2.3 billion tests per month for everyone 12 and older to do that, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Thats nearly five times the half-billion tests Biden will deploy.

Currently, the U.S. can conduct about 600 million tests per month, with home tests accounting for about half, according to researchers from Arizona State University.

In another prong to Biden's amped-up plan, he is prepared to deploy an additional 1,000 troops with medical skills to assist hospitals buckling under the virus surge. Also, he is immediately sending federal medical personnel to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont. And there are plans to ready additional ventilators and protective equipment from the national stockpile, expanding hospital resources.

As a backstop, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will deploy hundreds of ambulances and paramedic teams so that if one hospital fills up, it can transport patients to open beds in another. Ambulances are already headed to New York and Maine, and paramedic teams are going to New Hampshire, Vermont and Arizona.

But vaccination remains the main defense, since it can head off disease in the first place. The government will support multiple vaccination sites and provide hundreds of personnel to administer shots. New rules will make it easier for pharmacists to work across state lines to administer a broader range of shots.

Biden said in response to a question that he may lift the Southern Africa travel ban that was imposed to delay omicron from reaching the U.S.

Some prominent experts said that Bidens new actions are a step in the right direction but he hasnt gone far enough, given the risks of infections and hospitals being overwhelmed.

I dont know that the measures being proposed are going to be adequate, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Hotez said the government may need to authorize a second booster shot for health care workers to prevent infections that would sideline clinicians when all hands are needed.

Dr. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, said the administration finally sees the light with Bidens plan to ship 500 million tests, but "we need to pull out all the stops, and were not doing that still.

We dont have control of this pandemic here, said Topol.

He said the government could redefine fully vaccinated as three shots instead of two of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Biden could order a ban on air travel by people who are not fully vaccinated, and the government could use its authority to ramp up production of high quality masks for free distribution.

Theres a lack of boldness, Topol said. I am disappointed.

Scientists say omicron spreads even more easily than other coronavirus strains, including delta. It accounted for nearly three-quarters of new U.S. infections last week.

Underscoring the reach of the virus, the White House said late Monday that Biden had been in close contact with a staff member who later tested positive for COVID-19. The staffer spent about 30 minutes around the president on Air Force One on Friday. The staffer, who was fully vaccinated and boosted, tested positive Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Psaki said Biden has tested negative twice since Sunday and will test again on Wednesday. He cleared his throat several times at Tuesday's event but spoke firmly and appeared fine.

In New York City, nearly 42,600 people citywide tested positive from Wednesday through Saturday  compared with fewer than 35,800 in the entire month of November. The city has never had so many people test positive in such a short period of time since testing became widely available.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Perrone, Darlene Superville and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

___

This story has been corrected to show the trip was from Orangeburg, not Orange.
In a fight for their jobs, dozens of unionized workers are making an eleventh-hour push to delay $11 million in state loans to renovate downtown Hartfords Hilton hotel into apartments and a smaller number of hotel rooms.

The State Bond Commission is expected to vote on the funding request for the redevelopment project at its meeting Tuesday as a way of saving a flagging property in the capital city. But the union representing the hotel workers, Local 217 of Unite Here, at a rally outside the Hilton on Trumbull Street Monday afternoon and later at a virtual City Council meeting, called for a postponement.

Were asking for things to slow down until there is something in place to give security to these workers, said John Stanley, the unions secretary-treasurer. Theyre being asked to make a sacrifice here.

About 60 of the unions members face losing their jobs, Stanley said, adding that workers need more time to secure alternate employment or a financial remedy.

Before the pandemic, the hotel employed about 150 unionized workers compared with 98 currently. If the redevelopment project goes forward, only 30 to 40 employees would be needed, Stanley said.

These are good jobs, he said. Many of our members buy houses with these jobs.

The average hourly rate for a housekeeper, for example, is $19.72 plus health and retirement benefits. Kim Davis, a banquet server who has worked at the hotel for more than 30 years, said the job has helped her buy a home and send her son to college.

Now I help support my elderly mom and mentally disabled sister, said Davis, 63, who lives in Hartford.

The top Democrat in the Senate expressed support for the unions request to delay the vote. Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said in a written statement Monday that a limited, short-term delay in bond commission action on this item would not be unreasonable.

Looney, in his statement, pointed to a national fight by unions for better pay and benefits  an effort he said Democrats should support.

Workers across the country are unionizing to achieve better wages, health care an retirement. Connecticut needs to stand with our unionized workers and against corporate greed that for too long has exploited working people, Looney said in the written statement. Turning our back on unions in Democratic Connecticut would send a chilling message to every American fighting to earn an honest days pay for an honest days work.

But even a short-term delay could derail the Hilton project as the cash-strapped hotel is currently operating at about 20 percent occupancy, people involved in the project say. The Waterford Group, which owns and operates the Hilton, tried unsuccessfully to sell the property.

The Capital Region Development Authority, a quasi-public agency which is overseeing the project, sees it as the best solution to keep the hotel in business. Gov. Ned Lamont is chairman of the bond commission.

Its very critical that we hold this building as a hotel. This is the best solution we can come up with. Im hopeful it gets resolved, said Michael W. Freimuth, CRDAs executive director.

The XL Center and the Connecticut Convention Center, two major venues in Hartford, both rely on the hotel to meet demand from their events, Freimuth added.

The proposal currently on the table is to downsize the Hilton from 393 rooms to 166, turn it into a DoubleTree, and convert the upper half of the building into 147 residential units, 20 percent of which would be classified as affordable.

Up for approval by the bond commission Tuesday is $5.1 million for hotel renovations and $5.9 million for the residential project. The total project is expected to cost $29 million  about $11 million for the hotel project and $18 million for residential redevelopment.

julia.bergman@hearstmediact.com
DENVER (AP)  An online petition has gathered millions of signatures calling for leniency for a 26-year-old truck driver who was sentenced to 110 years in prison for vehicular homicide in an explosive accident at the base of a Colorado mountain highway that killed four people in 2019.

More than 4.5 million people had signed the change.org petition urging Gov. Jared Polis to grant clemency or commute Rogel Aguilera-Mederos' sentence by Tuesday, The Denver Gazette reports. Truckers nationwide have voiced outrage over the sentence on Twitter, using the hashtags #NoTrucksToColorado and #NoTrucksColorado, among others.

The Democratic governor's office said it would welcome an application, while Aguilera-Mederos' attorney told KDVR-TV that a request could take time because the sentence was just handed down Dec. 13.

Aguilera-Mederos was convicted in October of vehicular homicide and other charges stemming from the April 25, 2019, crash. He testified that he was hauling lumber when the brakes on his semitrailer failed as he was descending a steep grade of Interstate 70 in the Rocky Mountain foothills.

His truck plowed into vehicles that had slowed because of another wreck in the Denver suburb of Lakewood. He was traveling at least 85 mph (137 kph) on a part of the interstate where commercial vehicles are limited to 45 mph (72 kph).

The chain-reaction wreck involving 28 vehicles ruptured gas tanks, causing a fireball that consumed vehicles and melted parts of the highway.

Prosecutors argued that as Aguilera-Mederos' truck barreled down from the mountains, he could have used a runaway ramp alongside the interstate that is designed to safely stop vehicles that have lost their brakes. Aguilera-Mederos testified he was struggling to avoid traffic and to shift his truck into lower gears to slow it down.

In imposing the sentence, District Court Judge Bruce Jones said it was the mandatory minimum term set forth under state law  and suggested a lesser punishment was warranted. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws required that sentences on 27 counts of vehicular assault, assault, reckless driving and other charges run consecutively.

I will state that if I had the discretion, it would not be my sentence, the judge said.

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King, whose office prosecuted the case, filed a motion asking the court to schedule a hearing to reconsider the sentence, her office said Tuesday. The motion states that Colorado law allows reconsideration in an exceptional case involving unusual and extenuating circumstances but didn't elaborate.

Prosecutors are consulting with victims in the case to get their input prior to any proceedings, the motion states.

King had said after sentencing she would welcome a reconsideration of the punishment. But she also told The Denver Post that Aguilera-Mederos didnt accept efforts to negotiate a plea deal, and that the convictions recognized the harm caused to victims of the crash.

Polis office issued a statement saying that we welcome an application from Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos and will expedite consideration but have not received one yet at this time.

Aguilera-Mederos attorney, James Colgan, told The Post he intends to appeal the jurys verdict and that any application for clemency or leniency would have to wait pending that appeal. Among other factors, an application requires input from the Department of Corrections.

The crash killed 24-year-old Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano, 67-year-old William Bailey, 61-year-old Doyle Harrison and 69-year-old Stanley Politano.

Relatives of victims said at Aguilera-Mederos sentencing he should serve time for the crimes.

Duane Bailey, the brother of William Bailey, asked the judge to sentence Aguilera-Mederos to at least 20 years, the Post reported. He made a deliberate and intentional decision that his life was more important than everyone else on the road that day, Bailey said.

Bailey's wife, Gage Evans, told The New York Times the driver's sentence shouldn't be commuted but that lawmakers should instead examine the sentencing laws.

This person should spend some time in prison and think about his actions, Evans said, adding she and other victims' relatives object to a public narrative that Aguilera-Mederos is a victim. We are truly the victims, she said.

Aguilera-Mederos wept as he apologized to the victims families at his sentencing. He asked for their forgiveness.

I am not a murderer. I am not a killer. When I look at my charges, we are talking about a murderer, which is not me, he said. I have never thought about hurting anybody in my entire life.
BOSTON (AP)  Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announced Tuesday he will activate up to 500 members of the National Guard to support understaffed hospitals across the state facing a surge of COVID-19 patients and to bolster non-emergency medical transportation needs.

Up to 300 Guard members will begin training this week to provide nonclinical support at 55 acute care hospitals and 12 ambulance service providers, Marylou Sudders, state Secretary of Health and Human Services said at a news conference. They will be deployed Dec. 27.

The goal is to ensure that hospitals have sufficient capacity to care for both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients.

There's no question the next few weeks will be enormously difficult for our health care community," the Republican governor said.

The Guard members will provide support in five critical areas identified by hospitals and ambulance services: non-emergency transportion between health care facilities; observing patients at risk for harming themselves; security and helping to maintain a safe workplace; moving patients within hospitals, such as bringing them from their rooms to tests; and delivering meals to patients in their rooms.

This will allow hospitals to free up clinical staff to provide higher levels of care to those who need it," Sudders said.

In addition, the state Department of Public Health on Tuesday directed all hospitals effective Dec. 27 to postpone or cancel all nonessential elective procedures likely to result in admission.

The state's health care system faces a staffing shortage that has contributed to the loss of about 500 medical/surgical and ICU hospital beds this year, at a time when patient levels are on the rise, the office said.

The help was welcomed by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association.

The measures taken by the state today reflect how critical our circumstances have become in Massachusetts, and they have the full support of MHA and our members," President and CEO Steve Walsh said in a statement.

With the holiday season here, he urged people to wear masks, get vaccinated and boosted, get a flu shot, and to seek care from their doctor or urgent care center if not facing a medical emergency.

Massachusetts also updated its masking advisory, recommending that everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear a face covering in indoor, public spaces.

While there is no statewide mask mandate, many cities and towns, including Boston, require masks in indoor public spaces.
MIAMI (AP)  Omicron has overtaken the delta variant in Miami-Dade County as the dominant strain of the coronavirus in a matter of weeks, according to genomic surveillance data.

Genetic sequencing of the virus showed omicron grew from a tiny fraction of hundreds of samples taken the first week of December to nearly three of every four samples taken last week.
File / Hearst Connecticut Media

GREENWICH  A Greenwich man is due in court next week for arraignment on charges of allegedly setting a small fire on Greenwich Avenue and fighting with responding officers, according to police.

Officers were called to the area of 301 Greenwich Ave., which is the location of a Starbucks, on a report of a disorderly man creating a disturbance around 8:50 a.m. Dec. 10, according to the arrest report.
As 9to5Google reports, Googles $50 smart speaker that launched alongside the Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL and Google Home Max back in 2017 is officially out of stock on the Google Store.

The Google Home Minis status on Googles online Store is listed as No longer available. Since the initial launch of the small home speaker it has often been discounted and gifted with some YouTube or Spotify promotions for subscribers.

Google Home mini (2017)

The smart speaker sold for more than four years and with the Google Nest Home mini (with stronger sound, better microphones, and proximity sensors for illuminating the speaker) theres no longer a need for the original Google mini speaker.

Naturally, we expect that Google may be working on a successor to the Nest Home mini, though we are purely speculating. Amazon has released so many Echo smart speakers in various form factors over the years that the next logical step is for Google to reimagine its Nest Home mini. The entry-level smart speaker is important for Apple, Samsung, Google, and Amazon to introduce new customers to their ecosystems at more accessible price points.

Via
This morning, OnePlus founder Pete Lau has confirmed that the brands upcoming OnePlus 10 Pro flagship will arrive in January. The news was confirmed via a post made by the executive on the Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo.

The OnePlus 10 Pro will arrive with Qualcomms new Snapdragon 8 Gen1 chispet. Accroding to previous leaks and rumors, the OnePlus 10 Pro will have an improved 32MP selfie camera. Theres also word of a 6.7-inch LPTO QHD+ AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate with the selfie camera punch hole cut out in the same upper corner.

The 10 Pro will feature 12GB of LPDDR5 Ram and either 128GB or 256GB of storage. The triple camera system is said to consist of a similar setup as the 9 Pro with a 48MP main camera, 50MP ultrawide, and an 8MP 3.3X telephoto camera. Rumors point to a 5,000 mAh battery, supposedly supporting 80W fast wired charging and 50W fast wireless charging.

We now know that the OnePlus 10 Pro will launch in China next month, but theres not yet any word on when the new flagship would arrive to global markets  that was rumored to be April.

Source
Back in March Xiaomi officially unveiled its first ever foldable smartphone, the Mi Mix Fold. Now that it's quite a few months old, you may be wondering whether a sequel is in the works, and as it turns out - it is. Not a big shock, that, for sure.

According to a few hints from some certifications it's already gone through, the tentatively called Mix Fold 2 might reach stores at some point in mid-2022, though we're hoping this one won't stay forever confined to China like its predecessor.

The Mix Fold 2 is now rumored to use a Samsung-made internal folding screen, with Ultra Thin Glass (UTG) on top - just like the Galaxy Z Fold3 and the Oppo Find N. UTG ensures flexibility and durability by injecting special materials into a sheet of glass that's only 30 microns thick during processing, much thinner than traditional smartphone display glass.

The thinness is what allows for its flexibility, and while it can't be as durable as the Gorilla Glass that doesn't fold, it is still much more so than other materials.

The Xiaomi Mix Fold 2's internal screen size should be 8.1", and this should also be a high refresh rate panel (since Samsung is the supplier, we're assuming 120 Hz LTPO). Additionally, the Mix Fold 2's hinge is allegedly going to be redesigned and upgraded compared to its predecessor's.

Source 1 (in Chinese) | Source 2 (in Chinese) | Via
Parents eagerly looked through toys for different age groups to put under their Christmas tree at the Salvation Army Toys for Tots distribution in Tiyan on Tuesday.

This event its very helpful. Its so beautiful and it helps struggling families especially at this time and helps bring joy to all children for the holidays and a smile to their face, said mother Angela Salas, 44, from Mangilao, who was looking for presents for seven of her children age 1 to 15.

For her younger kids, she was able to find building blocks, squishies, and she said she was lucky to get a little tricycle. The older children can look forward to earphones and a watch.

We couldnt do this without the generous donations of the community, said Salvation Army Capt. Kari Rudd, Guams commanding officer and Micronesia coordinator.

Over 300 families with about 1,200 children will receive toys this year, which Rudd said is about the same number as last year as well as the same amount of donations.

We have been able to gift each child with three solid toys this year, so they can have a real Christmas. Its really good, Rudd said.

She said distribution this year is slow and was spread out Monday through Thursday in response to COVID-19 safety protocols. Two clients are scheduled to come in every 15 minutes.

Volunteers from the Salvation Army Lighthouse Recovery assisted clients with finding toys and carrying bags loaded with presents to cars. Food packages were also given to parents coming in.

Rudd said many different organizations, churches and companies, as well as the Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots initiative brought in thousands of toys to give to struggling families.

It helps that they will have something to open and wont be sad, said Patricia Camacho, 47 from Mangilao, as she was searching through a section of Barbies and other dolls for her daughters.

Camacho said that each of her 10 children will be able to get a present and not feel left out.

She said she learned about the Toys for Tots distribution last year and was excited to be able to participate again this year.
A long battle between the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Revenue and Taxation ended Tuesday when the Supreme Court of Guam ruled gaming machine licenses are void.

In its decision, the court affirmed a trial courts ruling that the Rev and Taxs gaming regulations and issued licenses werent valid because the agency didnt follow Guams Administrative Adjudication Law.

The regulations were submitted to the Legislature without public notice, public hearing or an economic impact study, which are required by law, according to a news release issued by the AGs office.

It is both rewarding and humbling to finish the work that was started 13 years ago, Attorney General Leevin Taitano Camacho stated in the release. The courts opinion affirms the position that this office has taken since day one: Gambling devices cannot and should not be licensed in Guam.

In its decision, the Supreme Court noted it was the third appeal in the case and the fifth appeal heard by the Supreme Court involving the licensing of electronic gaming machines.

In 2008, approximately 1,200 gaming devices were licensed, in violation of Guams amusement devices licensing laws, according to the AGs news release.

The attorney general informed Rev and Tax electronic gaming devices were illegal and advised the agency not to renew the licenses. The attorney general asked the court to revoke the licenses. A third party intervened and filed a new lawsuit in an attempt to force Rev and Tax to reissue the licenses.

The case was resolved in 2013, but within that year the enactment of a new law triggered the Office of the Attorney General to once again take action, the release stated.




Haiti - FLASH : The 400 Mawozo gang did not release the 12 hostages, they escaped





Monday, December 20, 2021, Christian Aid Ministries confirmed that the 12 American hostages member of the religious congregation, were not released but escaped on their own, contrary to the statements of the inspector Divisional, Garry Desrosiers, Spokesman for the National Police of Haiti (PNH) "We confirm the release of the 12 people who remained hostage" stressing that he could not" give more details for the moment" hhttps://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35497-haiti-flash-the-gang-400-mawozo-released-all-the-american-hostages.html "After several days of waiting and no action [to release them] God has worked miraculously to allow the hostages to escape" said David Troyer, Director of Christian Aid Ministries,



Weston Showalter, a spokesperson for the Ohio-based missionary congregation, at a virtual press conference explained that the group of 12 remaining hostages (1 10 month old baby, 1 three year old boy 2 teenagers, 5 men and 3 women) managed to outsmart their guards on the night of December 15-16 after planning several unsuccessful escape attempts and escape.



"When they sensed the timing was right, they found a way to open the door that was closed and blocked [...] left the place that they were held [...] avoiding numerous guards [...] they had wrapped the baby in clothes to protect it from prickly briars as they traversed in silence over difficult terrain [...] the group traveled towards a mountain they had seen a few days earlier, using constellations to guide themselves they walked for hours in gang territory for maybe 15 km through woods and thickets in the dark, at dawn they found someone who helped them make a call and ask for aid to the authorities" said moved Showalter "They were finally free" [After 2 months of captivity]



Separately, regarding the captivity of the hostages Showalter said that the gang members did not physically assault the hostages, although they threatened them, adding that the kidnappers had provided them with hygiene products and ventilators for the heat, but the contaminated water had made them sick and they suffered from hunger and insomnia.



Read also on this case :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35497-haiti-flash-the-gang-400-mawozo-released-all-the-american-hostages.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35513-haiti-flash-christian-aid-ministries-forgives-the-kidnappers-of-the-17-american-hostages.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35417-haiti-flash-3-new-american-hostages-released.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35299-haiti-flash-2-of-the-17-kidnapped-american-hostages-released.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35204-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-35112-icihaiti-insecurity-the-pnh-has-proof-that-the-16-american-hostages-are-alive.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35094-haiti-flash-joe-biden-sends-a-large-number-of-specialists-to-release-the-american-hostages-in-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35061-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35053-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35037-haiti-flash-the-gang-400-mawozo-demands-one-million-dollars-for-the-release-of-each-american-hostage.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35028-haiti-news-zapping.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35012-haiti-flash-at-least-fifteen-american-missionaries-kidnapped-in-port-au-prince.html



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - FLASH : Tragedy of Cap-Haitien, national funeral postponed this Tuesday





The Municipal Administration of Cap-Haitien informs the population in general and the families of the victims in particular that the national funeral of the victims of the tanker explosion which was previously planned for December 19, 2021 at the scene of the tragedy hhttps://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35502-haiti-social-tragedy-of-cap-haitien-national-funeral.html, will be celebrated on Tuesday, December 21, 2021, in the Basilica of Notre-Dame du Cap-Haitien located in rue 18 F, from 9:00 am, by HE Mgr Launay SATURNE.



"The national funeral of the victims of the tank truck explosion https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35481-haiti-flash-cap-haitien-more-than-120-victims-all-the-details-of-the-tanker-explosion-partial-toll.html will be sung on Tuesday, December 21, 2021 in the Cap-Haitien Cathedral at 9:00 am. The Municipal Administration of the Town Hall apologizes for this change of date and of place for reasons beyond its control. It takes the opportunity to once again express her sympathies to the families of the victims."



In addition, the deputy mayor of Cap Haitien, Patrick Almonor, gave a new partial assessment is now 90 dead after the deaths, during the weekend, of several seriously burned victims, 32 seriously injured and 12 light burns for a total of 134 victims



Read also about the tragedy :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35502-haiti-social-tragedy-of-cap-haitien-national-funeral.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35489-haiti-flash-the-toll-of-the-tragedy-in-cap-haitien-strongly-increase-and-stands-at-134-victims.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35485-haiti-drama-of-cap-haitien-rain-of-national-and-international-messages-of-sympathy.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35481-haiti-flash-cap-haitien-more-than-120-victims-all-the-details-of-the-tanker-explosion-partial-toll.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35473-haiti-flash-explosion-of-a-tanker-truck-in-cap-haitien-at-least-40-dead-videos.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





The 2 Momplaisir Professors released

Sunday, Professors Jean Raoul Momplaisir and his wife Roberte Bien-Aime Momplaisir were released after 6 days of kidnapping in the hands of their captors https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35504-haiti-news-zapping.html One do not know the conditions of this release.



National Penitentiary : correctional hearings

As part of the fight against prolonged preventive detention, Dean Bernard Sainvil and the Government Commissioner of the Court of First Instance of Port-au-Prince Jacques Lafontant, following their visit to the National Penitentiary, announce correctional hearings of December 22 2021 to 22 January 2022 next, as part of the fight against prolonged preventive detention concerning the files of detainees at the National Penitentiary in a state of trial. These hearings will be held at the Southern Section Tribunal due to the climate of insecurity during the Bicentenary.



Former DG of ONI, awaited by justice

The former Director General of the National Identification Office (ONI), Jude Jacques Elibert, who is banned from leaving the country, is expected this Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at the Port-au-Prince prosecutor's office. He must respond to the charges of theft and embezzlement of the institution's property brought against him, following his dismissal.



PM congratulates new President of Chile

"On behalf of the Haitian people and on my own behalf, I congratulate Gabriel Boric on his victory in the Chilean presidential election. I wish him success in his new role. I am convinced that relations between the two Republics will strengthen and last" declared Prime Minister a.i. Ariel Henry.



DR : "An n Pale ak biznismann nou yo"

Friday, December 17, 2021, the economic and commercial section of the Embassy of Haiti in the Dominican Republic, organized under the direction of Ambassador Smith Augustin, a meeting with more than ten Haitian entrepreneurs in Dominican territory from different sectors under the theme "An n Pale ak biznismann nou yo" in order to establish a communication channel between Haitian entrepreneurs and the Embassy. Smith Augustin took the opportunity to wish them a Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year with the commitment to meet them shortly to continue the work.



Haiti discusses Covid with Chile

On Monday, Dr. Alex Larsen, Minister of Public Health received the visit of the Ambassador of Chile to Haiti, Mauricio Leone Bravo. The strengthening of cooperation between Chile and Haiti as part of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic was at the center of the topics discussed.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2021/12/20 | Source

OTT wavve's new original drama "Tracer" released four posters with a variety of charms on the 20th.

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"Tracer" is a thrilling drama that takes place at the National Tax Service, the 5th Tax Bureau also known as 'the dump' which is scarier than the judge to some, depicting the fierce performance of a strongheaded man with a blind fury. The released character poster attracts attention as it contains various charms of the nationally recognized professional characters chasing bad money.

Im Si-wan, plays Hwang Dong-joo, team leader of the 5th Tax Bureau, and he heralds a different transformation as a shameless person who does not care about others and the copy "In the end, people are scarier than money" is added to expect him to track bad money in his own way.

The poster of Go Ah-sung, who plays Seo Hye-yeong, an investigator with the best footwork, said, "I told you to trust me", stimulates curiosity about how she will confront the cowardly world.

Meanwhile, Son Hyun-joo's strong charisma with the copy, "It's a game of deceiving or being deceived in the end", evokes tension by guessing the endless ambition of Tae-joon, the head of the National Tax Service, who is seeking the No. 1 position in the National Tax Service.

Park Yong-woo, who plays Oh Yeong, whose job is to not work, stands out in a calm expression, adding to the question of how realistic Oh Yeong, who is a realist, will undergo a change of heart with the copy, "Sometimes not embarrassing work is called for".

"Tracer" will be released for the first time on wavve on January 7th and will also be aired on MBC.
Officials urge vaccination, boosters, mask-wearing as U.S. cases could hit a million a day

The variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 that is raging around the world and is becoming the dominant strain in the United States has officially hit Montana.

Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services reported Monday that two vaccinated residents of Gallatin County who had visited South Africa - the country that first reported the variant to World Health Organization - caught the omicron variant of the disease.

The two had mild symptoms that are improving are self-isolating, DPHHS said in its release.

"This is not a surprise, as nearly every other state has reported omicron cases in recent weeks," DPHHS Director Adam Meier said in the release. "We continue to urge all Montanans to use all available tools to stay healthy this winter, including getting your COVID-19 vaccine and booster and taking other measures to prevent the spread of the virus."

President Joe Biden was scheduled to address the country about omicron.

Services report that retiring National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins said over the weekend that the new variant could cause up to one million new cases a day in the United States.

A senior administration official said in a briefing that Biden today will emphasize that people who are among the vast majority of Americans who are fully vaccinated, and especially if they received a booster shot, they have a high degree of protection against severe illness.

"Because omicron spreads easily, we will see fully vaccinated people get COVID-19, but vaccinated people who get COVID will likely have no symptoms or mild symptoms," the official said. "Because of that strong protection, the president will tell the American people that if they are vaccinated and follow the process that we all know well, especially masking while traveling, they should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays as they planned.

The official added that Biden will note that people who are unvaccinated are at high risk of getting sick.

"This variant is highly transmissible," the official said, "and the unvaccinated are eight times more likely to be hospitalized and 14 times more likely to die from COVID."

Officials also have noted that while the omicron variant may not generally cause as severe an illness in many cases, with the number of cases increasing by a huge amount, the number of hospitalizations also will increase dramatically, possibly overwhelming a U.S. health care system already under severe stress.

Centers for Disease Control notes that masking helps reduce the spread of the omicron variant as it does all variants. The virus is transmitted by moisture expelled on people's breath, and using masks reduces the moisture expelled by breathing, talking, or even coughing and sneezing - people also are urged to cover their mouths when coughing or sneezing - and so reduces the spread of the virus.

To help reduce the spread of both the delta and omicron variants, the DPHHS release encouraged all Montanans to take the following steps to protect themselves from becoming infected with COVID-19, including variants like omicron:

 Get vaccinated and if eligible get a booster. People can find vaccine locations at http://covidvaccine.mt.gov .

 Eligible Montanans who haven't gotten vaccinated and still have questions should consult with their health care provider.

 People should take steps to help prevent the spread of the virus such as using face masks, physical distancing, practicing hand hygiene and avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated spaces.

 People should get tested for COVID-19 when they feel sick or have been in close contact with someone who tests positive for the virus.

 People should stay home when they are sick.

For more information on the omicron variant, people can visit https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/omicron-variant.html.

In Hill County, vaccinations and booster shots are available through Bullhook Community Health Center, 406-395-4305; the Hill County Health Department, 406-400-2415; Northern Montana Health Care's Specialty Medical Center at 406-265-7831 or its Family Medical Center at 406-265-5408; Western Drug Pharmacy, 406-265-9601; Gary & Leo's Pharmacy, which takes walk-ins; Walmart ,; and the Rocky Boy Health Center 406-395-4486.

The Blaine County Health Department, 406-357-2345, and the Fort Belknap Health Center, public health nurse 406-353-3250 and pharmacy at 406-353-3104, can schedule vaccinations and booster shots.

Vaccine is available in Chouteau County at the Chouteau County Health Department, 406-622-3771, and Big Sandy Pharmacy at 406-378-5588.

People can call Liberty County Health Department at 406-759-5517 to schedule a vaccination.
As I write this, the quarters of a white-tailed buck deer I harvested over the Thanksgiving weekend hang in my garage. Its not that I couldnt find time in the last 10 days to get the cutting, grinding and packaging done. I wont butcher it until I get back the testing results for Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD.

CWD is an always-fatal neurological condition thats spreading rapidly in our countrys deer herds. It also affects elk and moose. Much of its workings are still a mystery to researchers. CWD is not caused by bacteria or a virus. Rather, it occurs in relation to mutated proteins (prions) that deform tissues, particularly in the brain. Its closely related to Mad Cow Disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease in humans. Its not known to infect humans, but health officials strongly recommend we dont eat animals that test positive.

Montana hunters are aware that CWD is a serious threat to our big game herds, particularly mule and white-tailed deer. Deer are the mostly widely hunted and harvested species in the state. Sales of deer tags for resident and nonresident hunters provide a substantial amount of the funding for the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Deer hunters drop hundreds of thousands of dollars into rural communities and stores in places like Billings, Great Falls and Helena. Venison feeds many Montana families (like mine) through the winter.

As weve seen in other states, deer numbers are dropping as CWD becomes more prevalent. Its no exaggeration to state that chronic wasting disease could cause the extinction of some local deer herds (especially mule deer) within a few decades. Investment in research and monitoring is key to combatting its effects. In a 2018 article in a national hunting magazine I wrote, this is an area where government investment in the form of tax dollars or higher license fees earmarked for CWD research is critical for detection, research and management.

Thats why hunters are baffled that Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale didnt even show up to vote on a key bill that provides critical funding to control CWD. The Chronic Wasting Disease Research and Management Act was sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat. It recently passed on an overwhelming 393-33 vote. Yet Rosendale, who represents a state in which big game hunting is a foundational element of the economy and culture, couldnt bother to vote.

The bill provides $70 million in federal funding for states to manage and research CWD. This could mean quicker turn-around times for hunters on test results, and perhaps the development of rapid testing protocols where animals could be tested in the field, not a laboratory.

Rosendale often claims to be for Montana hunters and rural voters. How does that square with an I cant bother to vote attitude toward something that literally threatens the survival of some of our most cherished big game species?



Jack Ballard of Red Lodge is running on the Democratic ticket for Montanas Second (eastern) Congressional District. He is a professional outdoors writer who has written hundreds of articles and several books on hunting, wildlife conservation and big game biology.
The security services of the Damascus government forces summoned more than 1,000 people who were subjected to compromises in the areas of Deir ez-Zor, al-Mayadin and al-Bukamal, to a 15-day military course in the Vanguard Camp within the 137th Brigade of the Fourth Division on the outskirts of Deir ez-Zor. After the course ended, they will be sent to desert of Deir ez-Zor to confront ISIS mercenaries, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In mid-November, the Damascus Government, with Russian support, transferred the model of settlements - useless - which it had implemented in the city of Daraa to Deir ez-Zor.

T/S

ANHA
This morning, Russian warplanes launched several air raids on locations where ISIS mercenaries are hiding in the desert of Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

While, SOHR reported the arrival of new military reinforcements for Damascus government forces to the desert of Deir al-Zor and Raqqa, as part of the preparations that Damascus government forces is carrying out with the groups loyal to it, to launch a "new campaign" against ISIS mercenaries, which is scheduled to start from two areas, (Raqqa in the south and west From Rasafa desert to Maskana district in Aleppo countryside, and the second axis from Bshri Mountains towards western region of Deir al-Zor.

This comes after ISIS mercenaries launched attacks on points and positions of "Qatrji and National Defense" groups affiliated to Damascus government in the vicinity of Kharata oil field in southwestern Deir al-Zor desert, which led to about 12 wounded.

ISIS mercenaries have intensified their attacks on Damascus government forces in the desert, and despite the intensity of Russian raids targeting their sites, Russian forces and Damascus government forces are unable to eliminate ISIS in the Syrian desert.

Sh-S

ANHA
DECEMBER 22: Schakels 10-day deal is now official, the Wizards announced in a press release. Itll run through December 31.

DECEMBER 21: The Wizards are calling up rookie wing Jordan Schakel from their G League affiliate, according to ESPNs Adrian Wojnarowski, who reports (via Twitter) that Schakel will sign a 10-day contract via a hardship exception.

Schakel, who went undrafted earlier this year out of San Diego State, joined the Wizards for training camp, but didnt make the teams regular season roster. The 23-year-old joined the Capital City Go-Go and has averaged 14.1 PPG and 3.1 RPG in his first 14 games (32.1 MPG) in the G League, knocking down an impressive 39.6% of his 7.9 three-point attempts per game.

The Wizards havent had major issues this month with COVID-19, but Kentavious Caldwell-Pope tested positive on Monday night and was placed in the protocols today, making the team eligible for a hardship exception.

Schakels 10-day deal wont count against team salary for cap or tax purposes.
Rebranding

21 December 2021

Opening in early 2022, Cosmopolita Rome joins eight Hilton hotels in the Eternal city.

Hilton (NYSE: HLT) announced the signing of a franchise agreement with G&W Invest Srl to open Cosmopolita Rome, Tapestry Collection by Hilton in Italy's capital. The new hotel will include 76 stylish guest rooms and will be the first hotel in Italy under Hilton's newest European brand when it opens early next year.

Once refurbishments are complete, the Cosmopolita Rome will have 76 tastefully decorated rooms, designed to help guests immerse themselves in the architecture of Rome, and will boast a scenic rooftop overlooking the historic city, where guests can enjoy their breakfast surrounded by the stunning architecture. With a newly renovated gym and meeting space for small business meetings, this unique hotel will be the ideal location to explore Rome.

Located in the centre of Rome, guests will be within a 10-minute walk of some of Rome's most popular sights, including the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and Colosseum. Rome's many renowned galleries, museums and landscaped parks make it the perfect destination for international guests looking to explore some of Europe's most celebrated attractions. By night, guests can explore Rome's 54 Michelin star restaurants or visit nearby bars and cocktail hotspots.

The new hotel is the latest addition to Tapestry Collection by Hilton, which is expanding rapidly in Europe. The continent's first Tapestry Collection hotel opened in Spain this year, with four more due to open in France, the UK and Portugal. Known for their vibrant and unique styles, each Tapestry Collection by Hilton hotel encourages guests to immerse themselves in the local area, creating authentic connections with destinations while offering an upscale and comfortable hotel experience.
Now Open

21 December 2021

Accor, the largest hotel operator in Australia, has opened its first The Sebel branded property in the Whitsundays in heart of tropical north Queensland with the opening of The Sebel Whitsundays Airlie Beach today.

The Sebel Whitsundays Airlie Beach features 54 newly refurbished apartment-style guestrooms, including a selection of One Bedroom Apartments, Two Bedroom Apartments, Three Bedroom Penthouses and Four Bedroom Presidential Suites, along with a 15m resort-style swimming pool and heated outdoor spa, fitness centre, and outdoor dining area with barbeque facilities.

The Sebel Whitsundays Airlie Beach has joined the Accor portfolio following the signing of a franchise agreement with the Australian-owned 'at Hotel Group'.

The tropical resort town and aquatic playground of Airlie Beach, the mainland hub of the Whitsundays, is the perfect base for holidaymakers looking to explore the Great Barrier Reef and Whitsunday Islands. The Sebel Whitsundays Airlie Beach is ideally located just a few minutes walk from downtown Airlie Beach and opposite the Port of Airlie marina, where daily cruises and island connections depart.

The Sebel Whitsundays Airlie Beach joins a network of more than 30 The Sebel properties across Australia and New Zealand. In the Whitsundays, Accor also operates Mantra Boathouse Apartments Airlie Beach and Mantra Club Croc Airlie Beach.

With flexible cancellations and enhanced ALLSAFE hygiene and cleanliness standards, guests can feel at ease when they choose to stay with Accor.
Pipeline

21 December 2021

Cambria Hotels, an upscale brand franchised by Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH), continues to expand around the country with the official start of construction on the Cambria Hotel Niagara Falls. This is the fourth hotel to break ground in Q4 2021 and tops off a year of growth across the brand with new openings in popular cities like Louisville, Orlando, and Napa Valley, as well as an additional hotel in Nashville, and a fifth hotel in Washington, D.C. The 120-room hotel is expected to open in the Spring of 2023. Representatives from Choice Hotels, franchisee and developer Plati Niagara Inc., and local dignitaries attended the groundbreaking to commemorate the occasion.

The Cambria Hotel Niagara Falls will feature upscale amenities and approachable indulgences that appeal to modern travelers, including:

Indoor and outdoor spaces for relaxation and productive work.

Locally inspired design and decor, reflecting the unique personality and rich history of the surrounding area.

Contemporary and sophisticated guest rooms, complete with design forward fixtures, abundant lighting and plush bedding.

Immersive, spa-style bathrooms with Bluetooth mirrors.

Bar and restaurant featuring freshly made food, local craft beers on tap, wine and specialty cocktails, as well as to-go options.

Multi-function meeting and event spaces.

State-of-the-art fitness center.

The Cambria Hotel Niagara Falls will be developed by Plati Niagara Inc., which also owns a Quality Inn in Niagara Falls. There are currently almost 60 Cambria hotels open across the U.S. in popular cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, and Phoenix, with over 70 hotels in the pipeline.

Located at 311 Rainbow Blvd. in downtown Niagara Falls, New York, the hotel will be two blocks from the world-famous Niagara Falls State Park, which welcomes over eight million visitors annually. Guests will be able to take advantage of popular tourist attractions like the Maid of the Mist boat tour or get closer to the Falls by descending into the Niagara Gorge at the Cave of the Winds. Future guests also will be able to visit the nearby Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant to see how the Falls serves as a hydroelectric power source.
Now Open

21 December 2021

Cambria Hotels, an upscale brand franchised by Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH), continues to expand in major markets across the country with the opening of the Cambria Hotel Calabasas. This marks Cambria's fifth franchised property in California, joining Cambria Hotel Anaheim Resort Area, Cambria Hotel LAX, Cambria Hotel Sonoma Wine Country and Cambria Hotel Napa Valley, which recently celebrated its grand opening.

Located at 26400 Rondell Street, the 125-room Cambria Hotel Calabasas is adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains with limitless trails for hiking and mountain biking and is only a short scenic drive through Malibu Canyon to some of Malibu's most beautiful beaches. Calabasas is near several corporate headquarters, including Cheesecake Factory and Harbor Freight, in addition to tourist attractions, such as Malibu Creek State Park, Pepperdine University, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Camarillo Premiere Outlet Malls and Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

The Cambria Hotel Calabasas features upscale amenities and approachable indulgences that appeal to modern travelers, including:

Multi-purpose indoor and outdoor spaces for productive work or relaxation, including an outdoor pool with mountain views and open-air dining patio.

Locally inspired design and decor, reflecting the unique personality of the surrounding community.

Contemporary and sophisticated guest rooms, complete with design forward fixtures, abundant lighting and plush bedding.

Immersive, spa-style bathrooms with Bluetooth mirrors.

Onsite barista coffee bar and dining option featuring freshly made food, local craft beer, wine and specialty cocktails, as well as to-go options.

Multi-function meeting and event spaces.

State-of-the-art fitness center.

The Cambria Hotel Calabasas was developed by Rondell Hotel, LLC, which is managed by the Malibu based Weintraub Real Estate Group. There are currently almost 60 Cambria hotels open across the U.S. in popular cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans and Phoenix, with over 70 hotels in the pipeline.
Press Release

21 December 2021

NZ Hotel Holdings Acquired QT Auckland, New Zealand

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New Zealand-based NZ Hotel Holdings Asset LP (NZ Hotel), a partnership between New Zealand governments New Zealand Superannuation Fund, New Zealand-based Russell Property Group Limited, and New Zealand-based Lockwood Auckland Properties Limited has acquired QT Auckland at an undisclosed sum. The 150-key QT Auckland was converted from the former Bayleys House office building and started its operation in November 2020. Situated in the heart of the Viaduct and Wynyard Quarter precincts, the hotel features a Mediterranean restaurant and the citys only rooftop bar, two event spaces, a fitness centre and a carpark. NZ Hotel has invested a total of AUD300 million portfolio in 2019 including the 164-key Adina Apartment Hotel Auckland Britomart, 255-key Four Points by Sheraton Auckland and the 263-key BreakFree On Cashel; the 82-key Sofitel Queenstown in 2020; and the 280-key The Rydges Wellington Hotel in November 2021.

Genting Hong Kong to Receive US$ 30 million Funding and Progressively to Resume Cruises Operation within Asia

Hong Kong Based Genting Hong Kong (GHK) has entered into a Bridge Facility Agreement with its majority shareholder and Chairman, Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, for an injection of US$30 million fund to boost liquidity. On the same week, the Minister of Transportation and Communications in Taiwan, Wang Kwo-tsai, has confirmed that the Central Epidemic Command Center has approved GHKs application to resume cruise operation via Explorer Dream Vessel in January, which has been halted since May 2021. GHK has been progressively recovering its cruise operations in different countries. In the month of December 2021, GHK has increased the passenger capacity for its Hong Kong sailings from 50% to 75%, GHK will also be opening to international travellers on its Singapore sailing as well as resuming Malaysia sailings via Star Cruises from 22 December 2021.

Vietnam to Resume International Flight to Nine Countries in January

The Vietnam government has announced that to resume international flights to nine countries in January. The following country lists include the United States, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The restoration of international connectivity is to hasten the recovery progress of the economy and tourism as well as allowing Vietnamese that are overseas to return for the upcoming Lunar New Year. The Deputy Prime Minister, Pham Binh Minh, emphasised that even though the resumption of flights is necessary, effective pandemic control must continue, such as fully vaccinated travellers must go through self-isolation upon arrival. The foreign affair ministry is currently in negotiations with the mentioned countries on mutual recognition of vaccine passport. Vietnam has grounded international flight since March 2020, only allowing its nationals, foreign experts, investors, and highly-skilled workers entering by special arrangement.

Japan Continues to Fund Tourism Campaign under New Stimulus Package

The draft of the latest stimulus package plan states that the government plans to aid money to promote domestic tourism and dining out to recover the tourism and F&B sector. The draft also includes a plan to create a fund to encourage investments in green technology, a nod to Prime Minister Yoshihide Sugas pledge that Japan will aim for net-zero emissions by 2050. Last month, Japan approved USD490 billion stimulus package to weather the coronavirus impact on the country. The government led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida supported the stimulus in hopes of recovering the third-largest economy that suffered from the prolonged fallout of the health crisis due to COVID-19. The stimulus plan would follow a combined USD2.2 trillion in two previous packages rolled out this year, and the government is planning another stimulus package to focus more on the economic recovery of the tourism and sustainability sector.
Press Release

21 December 2021

For a large part of the pandemic, U.S. cruise operations were suspended by the Centers for Disease Controls No Sail Order. Issued in October of 2020, and still in effect today, the Framework for Conditional Sailing replaced the No Sail Order and dictates the cruise industrys phased reopening, which is currently underway.

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On April 28, 2021, a panel of experts and industry leaders joined Kate Walsh, dean of the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration and E. M. Statler Professor, for a keynote webinar on the unique challenges faced by the cruise industry throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, lessons learned, and preparations for setting sail once again. The panel consisted of Frank Del Rio, president and chief executive officer of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.; Richard Fain, chairman and chief executive officer of Royal Caribbean Group; Dr. Helene Gayle, MD, MPH, president and chief executive officer of The Chicago Community Trust as well as public health expert; and Cornell Nolan School associate professor of services marketing Robert Kwortnik.

Produced by the Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) and eCornell, the webinar was titled Restarting the Cruise Industry: Challenges and Opportunities.

Here are some of the highlights of the discussion.

Prioritizing responses to the pandemic and working together

When faced with challenges like COVID, industry leaders had to prioritize and work together. According to Frank Del Rio, peopleguests and crewwere his top concern as the pandemic abruptly halted cruising and forced the industry into a holding pattern until operations could be deemed safe. Facing similar hurdles, Richard Fain spoke about the Healthy Sail Panel a collaborative effort between his and Del Rios organizations, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian, which brought leading public health experts, industry veterans, and academics (including the Nolan Schools very own Dean Kate Walsh) together to detail best practices [for protecting] the public health and safety of guests, crew, and the communities where cruise ships call.

Recognizing the need for industry-wide collaboration and support during these challenging times, the 69-page Healthy Sail Panel report has been shared with the entire cruise industry and any other industrywhich, as it turns out, are manythat might benefit from its recommendations. Professor Robert Kwortnik, an expert on the leisure cruise industry, gave some insight into the far-reaching effects of the pandemic and the CDCs No Sail Order on ports and other businesses that rely on revenue generated by cruisers. Since ships ceased sailing in 2020, explained Kwortnik, travel agents, airlines, hotels, restaurants, and tour operators cruise-related revenue ceased too, pitching many of these businessesand entire communitiesinto economic paralysis.

Ultimately, the reportsecondary to preserving peoples health and safetyis about knowledge-sharing within and across these interconnected industries and businesses with the hope that widespread implementation of its recommendations will help stop the spread of disease and spark a domino effect of recovery for all.

Controlled environments help maximize health and safety

At the start of the pandemic and prior to the emergence of vaccines, the gathering of large groups of people, especially in confined spaces like cruise ships, posed a health risk. But as the Healthy Sail Panel discovered, a cruise ships uniquely controlled environment actually proves advantageous for stopping the spread of the virus and mitigating other risks to health and safety. When equipped with infrastructure and personnel for testing, lab work, treatment, and individual medical care, each ship has the ability to proactively prevent and safely contain any potential outbreaks, more so than most other businesses and establishments that people have been frequenting during the pandemic.

More than guidance for onboard procedures, the Healthy Sail Panels report also recommends sailing to strictly controlled ports and destinations where cruise operators can ensure health and safety protocols are in place, including limited destinations, controlled excursions, and short trip lengths. Fain highlighted curated tours on which guests can visit a variety of pre-approvedmeaning that the proprietors have taken precautions against the spread of COVID-19onshore attractions in a controlled manner. Meanwhile, Kwortnik drew attention to private islands, which have found new use in the pandemic as additional controlled settings for guests onshore exploring.

Finally, Del Rio stressed that fully-vaccinated crews and passengers are the ultimate requirement for controlling the spreadeven if that means losing potential profit from families with children who are still too young to be inoculated.

Future of industry and broader implications for public health

Looking toward the future of the industry, Del Rio expressed optimism on demand, saying that Norwegian is substantially better booked for 2022 than for both 2019 and 2020. Kwortnik agreed, calling the industry historically very resilient and noting that in many ways, they are ahead of the curve in sanitation and operational procedures.

On her outlook, Dr. Helene Gayle noted the potential for the cruise industry to influence public health more broadly with what theyve learned, given the likelihood of more pandemics emerging in the future. She hoped that the Healthy Sail Panels work would provide a shortcut in terms of public health measures and build resiliency for future pandemics. Drawing attention to the imperative of vaccination for crew and passengers, she also raised the issue of overcoming inequality in international access to vaccinesespecially considering the cruise industrys global workforce, with many crew members coming from countries with less access to vaccines than in the United States.

Finally, Del Rio and Fain imparted some insights to future leaders. These included the importance of teamwork and communication, and navigating the new and evolving responsibilities of their jobs, such as talking with governments about health standards. In particular, Del Rio stressed the need to quickly develop a plan with input from ones team rather than feeling sorry for oneself, and to overcommunicate when in doubt. Fain placed emphasis on the human aspects of the industry, with regards to help[ing] people into new areas, saying that people are ultimately what it really does come down to.

The cruise industry has come together to create a multi-layered healthy cruise experience. It is likely one of the safest vacation experiences available to travelers, and with extraordinary pent-up demand, the industry is looking forward to its exciting return.

If youre interested in learning more, watch the recording for more details on restarting the cruise industry.
Press Release

21 December 2021

LOS ANGELES, CA - Today, youre going to feast on advice from a broad spectrum of hoteliers from around the globe. Plus, a private aviation business owner who flies travelers to their luxury vacations.

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As the info-packed presentations for the best boutique hotels share tips on tapping into your passion and purpose to create your unique brand

How Do the Best Boutique Hotels Turn Passion into Concept?

Youre about to find out

Peter Cole, the founder of Eclectic Companies shared his insights with Frances Kiradjian, Founder & CEO of BLLA. Peters backgrounds as CEO of Design Hotels and time spent as CFO with Ritz Carlton have given him an insight into hotel concepts that work (thats the abbreviated list of his credentials).

Peter shared this thought: Give them the content to identify with and continue to engage. Theyll be an evangelist for you and will be thinking about your hotel long after they leave.

The Eclectic Companies ideology is to be the hoteliers sounding board. In other words, they dont correct the journey, they help steer the journey. They become a part of their team and think through their goals.

Peters so good at this that they pick the clients, and then the project comes along.

Here are some tips for you to try at your hotel:

Engage in operational excellence as thats what drives financial benefit

Membership clubs go hand in glove with the boutique membership movement as your concept should give your guests a sense of belonging

Think about providing content like a book or guest speakers that match your brand and communicate what you believe

Your gift shop should reflect your brand as another way to communicate your beliefs

To sum it all up, guests are attracted to hotel experiences they can relate to. It makes for the perfect guest to hotelier synchronization.

What Does Your Brand as an Artisan Represent?

People are becoming far more untethered to the office as Zoom and other tech become the norm. Hotels today can be defined as mixed-use properties.

To get some clarity about hotels with an artisan expression, Ariela Kiradjian spoke with Eric Jafari, the CDO of the edyn Group (real estate development) 

And Jayson H. Seidman the founder and marketing partner at Sandstone Hospitality Developments.

Eric said this about being an artisan: Hotels have evolved into a five-sensory experience. From the type of food you serve, to the type of music you listen to. When your guest steps into your hotel, youre stepping into their minds and passions. I dont know of many other art forms that are so immersive.

edyn Group  Photo: BLLA

Eric and Jayson shared these observations:

Going further from a citys center, the market is unsaturated

Some hoteliers have sold to chain hotels because theyre getting offers they cant refuse. The chains then scale but lose what gives your brand a soul as they focus on features

Successful hotels have a diversity of revenue streams

Boutique hotels have contributed to residential neighborhoods becoming more transient. So, the community experiences vitality and resilience as theyre not reliant on the local primary businesses to survive

Theres room in the market for boutique hotels to complement each other, not compete

Heres Jaysons opinion about artisan expression: Perfect imperfection that expresses personality  Create a fluid environment that allows the guest to interpret how they feel. Have your property 85% done so the property lives and breathes on its own.

The Drifter  Photo: BLLA

Remember that the guests and hoteliers share a lifestyle, so your brand comes from your heart.

What Does Your Relationship with Your Guests Look Like?

Do you have your guests wait in line to check in on a busy day? If you do, you might want to rethink that. Ariela Kiradjian spoke with Richard Valtr, the founder of MEWS  MEWS simplifies and automates operations for modern hoteliers. Now, you might be thinking that automation isnt a boutique experience.

When personalized, you create time for your team to serve with excellence.

Richard commented: Re-label checking in as welcoming someone coming to your home. Think about how your welcome should go. Think about how to be there proactively instead of just waiting in line.

Here are some examples of personalized automation:

If youre using kiosks, set them up for privacy and give them personality in an easily accessible location  Dont tuck them away like an afterthought

Use team members for welcome experiences, even if a kiosk is used

Think about momentos  For example, PMS applications can be used to create handwritten style postcards to send to your guests before they arrive to make them feel like theyve made the right choice

Create a checklist to make changes to your hospitality process and commit to small changes to move forward and avoid overwhelm

Make sure your USP is special

So, automation isnt impersonal when used wisely.

Luxury Hotels Staying Afloat During Pandemic Restrictions

When Jennifer Hawkins, the founder, and CEO of Hawkins International and Maverick Creative held a think-tank session with three luxury travel operators she saw a theme emerge: Im starting to see some themes pop up here like remote and private.

Ira Bloom is the CEO of ANI Private Resorts with four exotic locations. His resorts boast private villas with all the amenities and services youd find at a 5-star resort. The pandemic has put his business in a better than ever position as travelers dont want to share spaces.

ANI Anguilla  Photo: BLLA

Ira had this to say about a new trend in luxury travel: People are traveling without their kids. Occasions like 40th birthdays and adults coming up with an excuse to leave the kids at home. We expect this trend to continue to grow.

David Zipkin is the founder of Tradewind Aviation. His company offers short flights to Nantucket, the Caribbean, and other exotic locations.

The new trend in luxury travel David has noticed is: A lot of people have a new work-life balance and thats here to stay. Whats great for us as a small operator is that it puts less pressure on us for the peak days. Were seeing more Tuesday and Wednesday travel, the non-standard days.

Andy Hogg is the founder of The Bushcamp Company in Zambia. He operates an 18-chalet lodge and a collection of intimate luxury bushcamps.

Andy offered this about improvements for his properties: Its always been small and remote with the activities being a big draw card. The quality of the experience would largely be the guides. Were continuing to strengthen that side of our business. We have increased our number of exclusive use properties and are planning a new project with individual family units with small swimming pools and offering something different from what weve got and different in our area.

All of these luxury hotel owners shared that helping their communities has played a huge role in carrying them through the pandemic:

Ira quipped that he made a selfish business investment as guests return because he supports his community. For example, hes funded drawing and painting academies at each location that are free to the community

David offers free delivery flights to natural disaster areas like Puerto Rico where he has a strong presence. Plus, free travel for kids who are cancer patients. He speaks fondly of the thrill it gives his employees

Andy feeds 3,500 local kids one meal a day and has built classroom blocks and clean water wells

In Andys case, to keep his 180 staff employed as his location hampered travelers during the pandemic, he ran sweepstakes and sold a cookbook. Also, clients donated money to keep their projects afloat.

This generosity and community spirit heightens the experiences their guests enjoy.

Does Your Hotel Have a Powerful Purpose?

Nile Tuzun, the founder and chief creative storyteller at Studio Nilebrand discussed mission-based brands with two entrepreneurial champions. They mesh their compassion, creative minds, and spirit to touch their guests and community on an emotional level.

Massimo Ianni is the founder and partner at Massimo & Partners. Massimo took a traditional hotel training path to master the elements of hospitality. He says this about the local guest experience: Authenticity and value paint the world with the color of where the adventure is.

Massimo & Partners  Photo: BLLA

Paul Salmon is the chairman of the Rockhouse Hotel and Rockhouse Foundation. The Rockhouse is listed as one of the top 100 hotels in the world. Heres what Paul says about developing hotels that live in harmony with the community: Hotel ownership has become more purpose-driven. Theres an opportunity in the marketplace, thats what the market is demanding. It brings spiritual rewards.

Paul has also used his success to build local schools, fund breakfast programs, and more.

Here are some tips from Massimo and Paul to help you employ purpose in your properties:

Take incremental small steps, engage with the community and let it grow  Plant the seed

Your gestures dont have to be grand

Use human connection through storytelling. For example, at Massimos Argentinean location they offer guests the opportunity to make and label their own wine. This taps into their emotions

Write a novel to enhance your brand and tell stories of your impact on the local community

Stay actively involved in your community

In a nutshell, making genuine connections and sharing your lifestyle with others is rewarding for you and your community.

The Best Boutique Hotels Exude Passion, Passion & Passion

Theres no doubt that all of todays presenters share a passion for touching their guests and community on a profound emotional level.

They seem to place value on relationships over money which has resulted in spiritual and financial rewards. Plus, enabled them to be counted as some of the owners of the best boutique hotels.

So, tap into your passion and watch your hotel and community flourish.
Opinion Article

20 December 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic had no doubt made an unprecedented impact on the hospitality and tourism industry. Yet, some products, such as home-sharing, extended stays, and quick-service restaurants, were able to adapt to the new changes quickly. Hence, they were not affected as much. Others might still need extra time to get back on their feet.

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It might seem that the global pandemic forced businesses to respond to the new changes in the market, but the truth is COVID-19 just accelerated many of the foreseeable changes we have already expected for the future. The businesses that can navigate through the COVID-19 crisis quickly are usually the ones that are flexible and have already made plans in response to the foreseeable future.

Now that the economy is getting ready for a strong recovery, it becomes critical for businesses to take a holistic approach in planning. Dealing with the operational issues on an ad-hoc basis will not work anymore because many of the changes we observed in the market today will likely stay beyond the pandemic. For example,

Labor shortage and soaring labor costs will not go away any time soon

Hospitality jobs are demanding and typically require irregular and long working hours. Still, hospitality workers usually earn minimum wages only. Furthermore, the front service staff is always expected to provide exceptional customer service even in an abusive situation by uncivilized customers. As a result, it is not surprising to see that some hospitality workers who were laid off or furloughed during the pandemic would have moved to other sectors. Plus, people might have developed different perspectives of family, life, and work after the pandemic.

A recent survey with about 13,000 job seekers reveals that more than 50% of U.S. hospitality workers would not go back to their old jobs. Moreover, over 1/3 would not even consider returning to the industry. The top reasons why they wanted to switch to other industries include different work settings (52%), higher pay (45%), better benefits (29%), and remote work opportunities (16%).

In reality, however, higher pay and better benefits alone do not appear to be the solution to such a challenge. A restaurant in New York City was paying $30 an hour for a host/hostess position in the summer but received no response two weeks after the position was posted. Before the pandemic, the exact position that paid $20 an hour would have attracted hundreds and hundreds of resumes already.

Even worse, such a labor shortage is not a unique challenge facing the hospitality industry. In July, the U.S. reported 10.9 million openings, but there were only 8.7 million unemployed workers in the market. That means, after every single of those unemployed workers has taken a job offer, the market still would have 2.1 million unfillable vacancies. Every industry reported more job openings in July 2021 than at the pre-pandemic level in February 2020. Hospitality companies are fighting with businesses in other sectors for workers. A labor shortage, and its consequences of higher wages, will be a long-term threat to the hospitality industry.

The work-from-home trend and bleisure travelers will linger

Many companies cut the budget for business travel since the pandemic hit. There is also an increasing number of organizations that let employees work from home permanently. When fewer people commute or travel for work, the work-from-home (WFH) trend does not help the hospitality and tourism industry. Many also believe there is no real sense of recovery until people travel for business again. Nevertheless, it does not seem the WFH trend will end soon.

Meanwhile, bleisure re-emerged as a new buzzword among hoteliers and travelers because more people will mix business with pleasure during a trip in the foreseeable future. To a large extent, the WFH and bleisure trends can explain why extended-stay hotels and home-sharing facilities were doing well even during the pandemic.

Home-sharing businesses will continue to grow

The pandemic also hit Airbnb hard. The company reported a 90% drop in booking or a $400 million adjusted loss in the second quarter of 2020. At the same time, Airbnb also laid off 7,500 employees, or 25% of its workforce, and cut its marketing budget by 14% from 2019. Within a few months, Airbnb booking had already bounced back.

During the weekend of June 5  7 in 2020, Airbnbs gross booking value had seen positive year-to-year growth for the first time since February 2020. The company also reported over 100,000 new guests in the U.S. who used the platform. In July 2020, Airbnb reported a 22% year-to-year increase in bookings. Most of all, people were booking long-term stays at Airbnb, for weeks or even for months.

Marriott also entered the home-sharing market with a pilot program in April 2018. One year later, the worlds largest hotel chain debuted its Home & Villas division. Although Marriotts Home & Villas division is still too small compared to either the total number of Airbnb listings or the number of hotel rooms Marriott has, it continues to grow and performs really well during the pandemic.

While Airbnb and Vrbo are fighting for more hosts to meet the strong demands, it is very likely that more hotel chains would either expand their existing home-sharing operations or get into the market. Home-sharing businesses will continue to grow in the future.

Consumers will want delivery and contactless self-service even after the pandemic

Delivery service in restaurants and supermarkets, among other sectors, had observed a boost since the pandemic hit in March 2020. Additionally, restaurants, hotels, and airlines have extended or rolled out contactless self-service through mobile apps, kiosks, and facial recognition technology.

A large number of fast-food chains also introduced new restaurant designs that embrace such a trend, including double- or triple-drive-thru lanes, conveyor belt delivery, and food lockers for pick-up orders. In some cases, dining rooms become optional, where the restaurants only focus on delivery and pick-up services.

To support contactless service, Amazon rolled out Amazon One in September 2020, a new biometric payment device that relies on cloud and palm recognition technologies. Palm recognition might become another popular biometric tool in the future as it has some advantages over those more commonly used facial or fingerprint recognition technologies.

It is still uncertain when the pandemic will end. By now, consumers have been using delivery and contactless self-service to avoid unnecessary human contacts during the pandemic. They would have gotten used to it when the pandemic is over.

What holistic approach can be taken in response to the above changes?

I encourage strategic leaders to look at the above post-pandemic changes holistically. For example, it is time to revisit the service roadmap and job designs. Here are some questions to be considered:

How can the existing offerings be redesigned with minimum human contacts and maximum human-machine interactions?

What types of jobs can be replaced with machines or robots?

How can the organization be restructured for lean operations?

In which areas can machines or technology help enhance productivity?

What new products/services (or even a new brand) can be developed to meet bleisure travelers demands?

In which touchpoints can valuable data be automatically collected? Such data can be further analyzed to inform business decisions.

Besides what is discussed above, what other post-pandemic changes do you anticipate? What suggestions will you make to respond to those changes?

Note: This article was published in the Hospitality News (magazine) in October 2021, with the original title of "Recover 2021! A holistic approach is needed to respond to post-pandemic changes."
Opinion Article

21 December 2021

They say that the only constant in life is change, and there is perhaps no better example of this adage at work than the world of technology. Technology is, after all, an agent of continued disruption. What once was will  at some point in time  no longer be, as innovation continues to rip the proverbial rug out from under our feet with one digital makeover after the next.

As new platforms and processes emerge with each passing year, our understanding of the world (and the way in which we interact with it) is subject to constant upheaval. We saw dial-up internet become high-speed connectivity, we saw the Walkman become the iPod, and then we saw the iPod cannibalized by the iPhone. We saw Blockbuster pushed out by streaming services like Netflix, and we witnessed (and likely partook in) the widespread embrace of formerly outlandish concepts like Uber and Airbnb. These evolutions represent incredible moments in history. In many cases, they also offer an important lesson to technologists and business owners who are eager to remain one step ahead of the continued technological revolution. In fact, the most valuable lesson of all can be gleaned from a brand that once dominated its respective market: RadioShack.

What Exactly Happened to RadioShack?

Initially founded in 1921, RadioShack was hailed as an industry leader in the tech world of the late 1970s and early 1980s with 4,300 franchises across North America. At that time, RadioShack was a beloved, one-stop-shop for all things electronic  from walkie-talkies to radios, stereos, cell phones, CD players, camcorders, and more. That is, until 2015. After decades of service, RadioShack made headlines as it underwent bankruptcy proceedings, and the brand was sold off to entities around the world. There was no denying it  RadioShack had made a fatal misstep and had failed to secure its place in the future while other tech brands surged ahead. So, what exactly went wrong?

From a product standpoint, RadioShack primarily focused its offerings on cell phones and various gadgets and components. While this initially worked, the retailer notably missed out on the personal computer revolution and instead chose to lean heavily into cell phones. The only problem? The sign-up process took 45+ minutes per customer and, as the cell phone market evolved, carriers began opening their own stores, which directly impacted RadioShacks primary revenue stream. But, perhaps, the real nail in the coffin was the rise of the iPhone.

The iPhone is, quite literally, a jack of all technological trades. The individual items that once lined the shelves of RadioShack (and therefore were sold separately) were suddenly rendered obsolete by a smartphone that could offer users everything  right in the palm of their hand. Personal stereo? iPhone. AM/FM clock radio? iPhone. Calculator? iPhone. Portable music player? iPhone. Handheld camcorder? iPhone. The list goes on. Back in the 1990s, a consumer would need to spend thousands of dollars to purchase all of the individual gadgets and items that are now encapsulated within one central, easy-to-use device.

By consolidating core features of popular gadgets and streamlining service delivery via a singular, connected device, Apple had cracked the code and created a product that was not only more convenient and future-proof but also far more affordable over the long-term. It was precisely this shift that was the beginning of the end for RadioShack, and today, we witness the same trend unfolding across the hospitality technology segment.

Single Platform, Unlimited Functionality

Hoteliers are no stranger to the mention of legacy technology. From the hotel CRM to PMS, RMS, CRS, and more, hospitality professionals have spent years clinging on to cumbersome, antiquated operating platforms that lack the ability to scale alongside the continued growth and evolution of hotel properties and guest demand. As such, hoteliers frequently find themselves seeking new platforms and applications to add to their existing infrastructure to acquire the functionality their core system cannot offer. In simple terms, rather than buying the iPhone, hoteliers are still shopping at RadioShack. Not only is this a less efficient and streamlined approach to platform innovation  its incredibly costly and difficult to manage.

Technology platforms should not act as handcuffs, nor should they be viewed as a cost of doing business. Instead, they should empower continued growth and scalability, ease of connectivity, and enhanced revenue opportunities. From a guest data standpoint, working with various platforms that cannot integrate effectively can lead to an influx of data silos that are increasingly damaging in a data-driven market. From a cost perspective, hoteliers still relying on disparate legacy systems can expect to pay bill after bill  from vendor fees to upgrade fees, training fees, integration fees, and more. Finally, from a service perspective, working with multiple vendors and platforms means precisely that  working with multiple vendors and platforms. Managing countless vendor relationships behind the scenes can be a timely and frustrating experience, especially if those vendors are unable to play nicely with other applications your property uses..

Fortunately, there does exist a solution  the iPhone of hospitality technology, if you will. Rather than subscribing to the limitations of legacy infrastructure, hoteliers can look to leverage a cloud-based microservices platform that is scalable, incredibly cost-effective, and entirely future-proof. Harnessing the power of a new architectural style, a microservices framework is a collection of services/applications that are loosely coupled, highly maintainable and testable, customizable, and independently deployable. Essentially, hoteliers can treat applications as digital building blocks that run independently of each other and integrate seamlessly to form a highly functional operational system. More importantly, this approach empowers horizontal scalability that  in the world of hospitality  creates the environment for growth and long-term success, rather than impeding on it.

Much like the consumers who turned their backs on RadioShack in favor of the iPhone, hoteliers switching to a microservices-based platform will benefit from reduced costs, streamlined service delivery, increased flexibility and agility, enhanced platform security, and a single point of contact. Finally, hoteliers can move away from a fragmented digital ecosystem to effectively manage their hotel from one singular, cloud-based hotel system that boasts deeper functionality and can effectively propel the hospitality industry forward. This begs the question  hoteliers, why are you still shopping at RadioShack?
Graham Laborde, the co-owner of Winnies, should be counting the holiday cash streaming into his restaurant in Midtown. But on Monday, he was too busy calling customers to cancel reservations.

Winnies, decorated to the hilt for Miracle Bar, a national pop-up that pairs over-the-top Christmas decor with holiday-themed cocktails, closed at 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday  four hours early. The restaurant will continue to run reduced hours as COVID-19 infections keep several employees out of work.

The Christmas spirit is quickly evaporating, said Laborde, who has made hundreds of phone calls to alert guests with reservations affected by the modified hours. When you tell them their Christmas plans are canceled its a bummer all the way around.

The highly contagious omicron variant has swept into Houston with full force, showing up in time to steal Christmas from a beleaguered hospitality industry that had looked forward to the holiday bump missed last year. Restaurants and bars were already struggling with labor shortages, and now that servers, bartenders and chefs are falling ill, it is making it difficult for them to stay open.

Adam Brackman, owner of the Midtown bar Axelrad, said hes had a couple employees out sick since omicrons arrival in Houston. As the variant spreads, he said hes had to cancel indoor events and push service onto his outdoor patio.

Its the worst time for this to be surging, he said. The hospitality industry has been kicked to the ground for the last almost two years, and heres our bread-and-butter holiday season and people are not going to be going out as much.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Holiday market will feature growing wave of businesses owned by Black women in Houston

The newest variant is highly contagious. Memorial Hermann doctors estimate Omicron was about 50 percent of Houstons cases last week, and anticipate it will be 100 percent of our cases by the end of this week, said Dr. Linda Yancey, infectious disease specialist, Memorial Hermann.

Houstons hospitality industry is the proof in the pudding. Chris Shepherds Underbelly Hospitality closed its One Fifth and Georgia James Tavern on Saturday, and followed with the closing of Georgia James steakhouse on Sunday. His other properties, UB Preserv and the Hay Merchant, also are closed through Tuesday.

Tiny Champions, the EaDo restaurant from the owners of Nancys Hustle, decided to close for in-person dining over the weekend. Omicron is a hell of a variant, the restaurant posted on social media Friday.

The latest uptick in cases could be especially harmful to small businesses, said Laura Murillo, CEO and president of the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. After being battered by the pandemic the last two years, some simply cannot afford to shut down again, she said.

On the other hand, if omicron keeps people home, paying staff to come in and not have any customers is also costly.

OMICRON IN HOUSTON: First omicron-related death in U.S reportedly in Harris County

Some cannot afford to shut down, and some cant afford to stay open. Its a catch 22 for these small businesses," Murillo said. They were just getting back on their feet.

As restaurant and bars fall one by one to the virus, Lindsay Burleson, owner Two Headed Dog in Midtown, said shes taking new steps to prevent spread among her staff. She increased employee testing at the bar from weekly to every two days.

She also adopted "pod" shifts, keeping the same set of people working together so if one shift is exposed, she'll have backup teams to step in. So far, no new cases have emerged, she said, but "it's not a matter of if. It's just a matter of when."

On HoustonChronicle.com: Supply chain struggliing to meet demand

The rise in cases is bringing business to Bloom Health, a Dallas company that offers onsite COVID-19 testing, said CEO Andrew Morton. In Houston, hes hearing from hospitality companies trying to keep holiday events intact and industrial companies looking to limit spread among employees.

Aaron Lyons, owner of the Houston restaurant chain Dish Society, said a couple key people have come down with COVID. Hes worried more cases will follow holiday gatherings this week.

This is the last thing we need, he said.

Rebecca Carballo contributed.

amanda.drane@chron.com

greg.morago@chron.com
Methane continues to leak from oil and gas operations in the Permian Basin, prompting action by industry and government to rein in the powerful greenhouse gas.

The Environmental Defense Fund recently reported that 40 percent of nearly 900 oil and gas wells surveyed in the Permian Basin by helicopter Nov. 12-21 were emitting significant plumes of methane.

The flyover found emissions from about a third of surveyed pipelines and about half of processing and transportation operations. It also found that a third of smaller wells had emissions that persisted for days, according to the EDF, which has been surveying oil fields in West Texas with a infrared camera mounted to a helicopter since 2019.

There are dozens of reasons why a site might be emitting high levels of methane. The only way to know whats going on and to ensure things are operating properly is to regularly check sites for problems that lead to massive pollution, said David Lyon, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. Our research has consistently shown that leaks can and do happen at all types of facilities  including smaller, leak-prone wells  and the best way to control emissions is to find and fix them.

The Texas Oil and Gas Association, an industry group, questioned the Environmental Defense Fund's findings, and questioned the studys methodology and data.

Reducing methane emissions is a top priority for the Texas oil and natural gas industry, and we've seen dramatic improvements as a result of companies' investments in technology and innovation such as handheld optical imaging cameras, drones, leak detection and repair techniques, and replacing pneumatic valves with zero-emission pneumatic controllers, Staples said. Texas has one of the lowest flaring rates of large oil and gas producing states in the country with an average rate of flaring that has remained significantly less than 2 percent for more than two years, and initiatives like the Texas Methane and Flaring Coalition and Environmental Partnership have brought operators together with the shared mission to reduce methane emissions even further.

The oil and gas industry faces mounting pressure from government regulators, environmental groups and investors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the face of growing concerns over climate change. In particular, oil companies and their regulators are focused on cutting the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the planet.

The Environmental Protection Agency last month proposed new regulations that would require oil and gas companies to regularly find and fix methane emissions at facilities built before 2015. At smaller facilities, operators would be required to conduct a one-time inspection, according to the proposed regulation, part of the Biden administrations goal to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The EPA is accepting public comments on the proposal through Jan. 31.

FLARING: Exxon Mobil to use satellites to detect methane emissions in Permian Basin

For their part, oil companies say they are aiming to cut emissions by reducing routine flaring -- the burning of natural gas produced during drilling, employing drones to detect leaks and using electricity to power production operations. Exxon Mobil, the nations largest oil company, recently said it would use two dozen satellites to detect methane leaks in the Permian Basin.

Flaring in the U.S., meanwhile, has been reduced to its lowest level since at least 2012, according to Norwegian energy research firm Rystad, falling to 380 million to 390 million cubic feet per day in September from a high of more than 1.4 billion cubic feet per day in June 2019.

Declines were measured across all U.S. shale fields, but were sharpest in the Bakken of North Dakota and the Permian, which straddles eastern New Mexico and West Texas, according to Rystad. The average flaring intensity among the 50 largest natural gas producers in the Permian was 1.6 percent in the third quarter, compared with 2.5 percent in the first half of the year and 3.2 percent in 2020. Flaring intensity is the amount of natural gas burned per barrel of oil produced.

While the reduction in the Bakken was largely in line with expectations, based on our analysis of satellite data, the rate of change in the Permian is surprising, said Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad Energy. The decline in flaring activity across the board is a concrete sign that best practices are spreading beyond just large producers to small, privately owned operators too, and this trend looks likely to continue in the foreseeable future.
DANVILLE, Ala. (AP)  Neighbors say new Alabama rules governing the spreading of poultry sludge on farmland aren't doing enough to reduce the smell of decaying chicken or the animals it attracts.

The Decatur Daily finds that the Alabama Department of Environmental Management has received 51 complaints about one site alone in Morgan County in the last year, almost all saying putrid odor makes it impossible for neighbors to use and enjoy their own property.

Another great week of chicken death up here, wrote Ken Thompson. Thanks ADEM for the smell of death up here at our homes.  Looking forward to a weekend and running to the car so you dont puke when the smell overtakes you.

That July 23 complaint and others target Hidden Valley Farm, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of Danville. It's owned by Georgia-based Recyc Systems Southeast, which in turn is owned by Arkansas-based Denali Water Solutions.

The poultry sludge is not chicken excrement. Rather, it is a slurry containing bits of dead chickens, along with other waste from rendering and processing plants.

Until April 2020, applying poultry sludge on farmland was unregulated in Alabama. Since then, regulations prohibit application or storage of the sludge within 500 feet (150 meters) of inhabited buildings or within 100 feet (30 meters) of waterways or the property line. No testing of materials is required. The applicator is supposed to develop a plan to minimize animals like rodents, bugs, coyotes and birds, and to minimize odors and fugitive air-borne dust.

Complaints have also been filed against Denali operations in Jefferson, Clay, Jackson, Barbour, Cullman, Russell, Etowah and Marshall counties. Alabama's other major poultry waste distributor, Synagro, has been targeted by 20 complaints this year. Most involved farms in Marshall and Blount counties.

The complaints have prompted dozens of ADEM inspections, but few citations. ADEM has notified Denali of violations six times this year on farms in Morgan, Russell, Etowah, Blount, Clay and Marshall counties, usually involving violations of setback requirements. Synagro has received two notices of violation this year and three warning letters.

Opponents have formed Waste Sludge Awareness, which had its inaugural meeting Dec. 2 in Guntersville.

Environmental group Black Warrior Riverkeeper began receiving complaints of foul odors coming from an old coal mine in north Jefferson County. ADEM issued a cease-and-desist order to Denali in March, and in August fined the company $34,500.

Black Warrior Riverkeeper's Nelson Brooke said waste companies save time and money by spraying lots of sludge in a small area.

They just dont follow the minimal regulations that we have, and the guidelines, which require this stuff to be tilled into the ground and sprayed at a smaller volume so it can adequately percolate into the ground, Brooke said.

That way they can get rid of way more of it quicker, get back to the tanker truck and completely spray that whole 18-wheeler and get on to the next one. Thats cheaper for them, cheaper for the company thats getting rid of it," Brooke said.

Southern Environmental Law Center is representing Black Warrior Riverkeeper and Alabama Rivers Alliance in a challenge to ADEM's regulations. Lawyer Barry Brock said Alabama's rules are weaker than any surrounding state, requiring no testing or treatment for pathogens.

In other states where they do allow that kind of industrial waste to be land-applied, they at least have requirements that it be tested," Brock said.

Rickey Turner, senior project manager at Denali, said his company provides an important service that saves money for poultry processors, disposes of waste that would otherwise fill landfills, and benefits farmers by fertilizing land.

Every single time we try to rebuttal, it always gets misrepresented. Were always made out to be the bad guy, Turner said.

He said extensive testing requirements are unnecessary because the chicken sludge is merely food waste. He said Denali does some testing, both for nutrient value and for the presence of some metals.

Theyre not showing the full picture of what ADEM is requiring us to do before we can even land-apply," Turner said. We have to have a nutrient management plan that shows soil samples, and metals in the sludge and nutrients in the sludge.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) 

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has returned to work following a week of isolation after testing positive for COVID-19, his office announced Monday.

Ramaphosa had mild symptoms and was treated at his official residence in Cape Town by South Africa's military health service as the country battled a wave of the virus dominated by the highly transmissible omicron variant.

President Ramaphosa repeats his call for everyone in the country to stay safe by being vaccinated, wearing face masks, washing or sanitizing hands frequently, maintaining a social distance and avoiding gatherings, his office said in a statement.

Ramaphosa is set to chair the last cabinet meeting of the year on Wednesday this week, the statement said.

In the last 24 hours, South Africa has reported 15,465 new COVID-19 infections and three deaths. South Africa's 7-day rolling average of daily new cases has risen over the past two weeks from 16.9 new cases per 100,000 people on Dec. 5 to 33.8 new cases per 100,000 people on Dec. 19.

Although South Africa's new confirmed cases of COVID-19 have surged since mid-November, the numbers of those hospitalized and those who have died have not followed the same upward trajectory.

As the country approaches the holiday season, during which many industries close and there is widespread travel to visit families, the vaccination drive appears to have stalled.

South Africa has administered over 27 million vaccine doses so that more than 38% of its adult population has been vaccinated, according to official statistics. The country has an estimated 19 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but the pace of vaccinations has dropped drastically from an average of about 120,000 per day in November to less than 20,000 per day last week. Just over 5,000 jabs were given in the last 24 hours. South Africa's target of vaccinating 70% of its population by the end of the year appears unattainable.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Iran's top diplomat to Yemen died Tuesday after reportedly contracting the coronavirus, Iranian state TV said, just days after he was abruptly recalled from his mission in the war-torn nation.

State-run media in Iran said Ambassador Hassan Irloo had become infected with the coronavirus in Yemen, where a conflict between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and a Saudi-led military coalition has raged for six years. Authorities said he was flown out of the country for urgent medical treatment in Iran over the weekend.

However, The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Irloo was being removed from his post over growing strains between Iran and the Houthis, who seized Yemens capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north in 2014. In an effort to oust the Iran-backed rebels on its southern border, Saudi Arabia intervened in the war months later with a U.S.-backed bombing campaign.

Iran's foreign ministry has denied that his departure was the result of tensions with the Houthis.

Houthi spokesman and chief negotiator Mohammed Abdul-Salam offered his condolences on Monday. He said earlier this week that the ambassador had departed Sanaa on an Iraqi flight made possible despite a Saudi air blockade on the capital through an Iranian-Saudi understanding via Baghdad."

Citing anonymous Middle Eastern and Western officials, the Wall Street Journal reported that Irloo's influence had stirred resentment among the rebels who were apparently seeking more distance from Tehran. The officials told the Journal that Irloo had shown no serious symptoms of COVID-19.

Not much is publicly known about Irloo, but the U.S. State Department under former President Donald Trump described him as a member of Iran's powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Tehran named him its ambassador to the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital last October.

Iran's semiofficial ISNA news agency on Tuesday praised Irloo as a friend and comrade of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the powerful leader of the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force who was killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad last year.

Houthi officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under regulations, told The Associated Press that Irloos illness provided an opportunity for the rebels to demand his departure. They said the group had complained to the Iranian leadership about Irloo's failure to coordinate with the rebels in his meetings with tribal and political leaders.

Later Tuesday, Irans state-run IRNA news agency ran an obituary for Irloo, and at one point said he was known as Abdul Reza Shahlai  the same name as that of a Guard commander in Yemen with a $15 million American bounty on his head.

Mideast analysts have previously described Shahlai and Irloo as operating in Yemen on behalf of the Guard and enjoying close relations with Soleimani, raising suspicion it was one and the same person. Shortly after IRNA's obituary was first published, the reference to Shahlai was removed without explanation.

On Jan. 2, 2020, the same day that the U.S. strike killed Soleimani, the U.S. military also tried but failed to take out Shahlai in Yemen, U.S. officials previously told the AP.

Western nations and the Saudi-led military coalition long have accused the Revolutionary Guard of training and smuggling weapons to the Houthis, who routinely fire missiles and drones at neighboring Saudi Arabia's airports and oil facilities.

United Nations experts also have pointed to weapons recovered on the battlefield that appear to have come from the Islamic Republic. Iran denies arming the rebels.

In announcing his death, Iranian state media also said Irloo was a veteran of the brutal Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and suffered the lifelong effects of chemical weapon attacks.

The viruss true spread in northern Yemen remains unknown, as Houthi authorities have denied the outbreak and reported only a few coronavirus deaths. Untold scores have fallen ill and died after having trouble breathing and displaying other virus symptoms, overwhelming a health system in ruins after years of war.

When asked about Tehran's move to recall Irloo, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price appeared to tie Irloo's departure to potential friction between Iran and the Houthis.

We hope it is a sign that Yemenis understand the profoundly destabilizing role that Iran has been playing in their country for some time now, Price told reporters on Monday. We as an administration are committed to countering the destabilizing influence and role that Iran is playing throughout the region, including with its support to proxies and other elements in Yemen.

The war in Yemen has spawned the worlds worst humanitarian crisis and killed over 110,000 people. The threat of widespread famine and infectious disease outbreaks hang over the country. Fighting has displaced millions of people.

Late Monday, the Saudi-led coalition escalated its offensive, pounding Sanaa airport with airstrikes after warning civilians and aid workers to evacuate. The rebels have canceled all U.N. humanitarian flights to and from the capital, the U.N. food agency said on Tuesday.

___

Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
Jay Jordan

A 30-year-old South Houston man was flown to a hospital after he opened the door of his apartment and was shot twice.

The shooting happened in the 1000 block of S Allen Genoa Street around 9 p.m. Monday.
OnScene

Two people were shot during a home invasion in east Houston early Tuesday after assailants followed them back from a game room, according to police.

One of the suspects forced their way through the front door of the home around 2:45 a.m. in the 12000 block of Harvey Lane in the Northshore neighborhood. One assailant confronted the couple with a shotgun, while the other had a pistol, police said.
In 2009, a 35-year-old surgical resident carefully watched Dr. Emmett Dean McKenzie, a revered cardiothoracic surgeon at Texas Childrens Hospital, perform the first lung transplant he had ever seen.

For the trainee, the experience was a foundational moment.

He has a reputation of being like the Michael Jordan of surgeons over here, said Dr. Erik Eddie Suarez, now the 47-year-old surgical program director of heart and lung transplantation at Houston Methodist Hospital. Everyone talks about how technically excellent he is, and how hes very precise and smooth. This is one of the ways you want to emulate how you operate.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Why this Houston-made COVID shot is a major win for vaccine equity

In May, Suarez applied those lessons when McKenzie lay on his operating table. The elder surgeon was now the one who needed new lungs to survive, facing acute respiratory failure following years of cancer treatment.

While other doctors had doubted McKenzies ability to recover from the aggressive transplant procedure, Suarez and the transplant team at Houston Methodist assured him he could.

If you were my dad, this is what we would do for you, Suarez told him.

McKenzie, 54, was diagnosed in 1997 with chronic lymphocytic leukemia  a form of cancer that starts in the blood and bone marrow  after finishing his general surgery residency at the University of Louisville. Despite regular chemotherapy treatment, he quickly became a leader in pediatric cardiothoracic surgery at Texas Childrens Hospital, where he co-founded the lung transplant program in 2002 and served as its surgical director until 2007.

He took a few days off each month to battle the side effects of his monthly chemotherapy treatment, which caused vomiting and hair and weight loss. He worked productively the rest of the month, developing a reputation as a surgeon who took on complex operations.

In 2015, McKenzie directed the surgical separation of 10-month-old conjoined twins Knatalye Hope and Adeline Faith Mata, who shared a chest wall, lungs, diaphragm, liver, intestines, colon, pelvis and lining of the heart. The first-of-its kind operation took 26 hours and made national headlines.

McKenzies cancer persisted over the years, mounting several aggressive attacks but controlled with advancing treatment. Eventually, in late 2018, the treatment led to pulmonary fibrosis, or scarring of the lung  a rare but known side effect. Doctors at MD Anderson Cancer Center managed his condition for a time. Then his cancer returned, and by this March he had developed acute respiratory failure.

Despite a critical situation, our expert care team was able to treat both his cancer and respiratory condition, said Dr. Elias Jabbour, professor in the department of leukemia at MD Anderson and McKenzies longtime doctor. His (cancer) was responding well, but a lung transplant ultimately was necessary in order for long-term positive outcomes.

McKenzie was evaluated and approved for a transplant at another Houston-area hospital but later removed from the waiting list because of his resurgent cancer. Lung transplants are uniquely complex operations that leave patients more vulnerable to infection after the surgery. The operation is not typically done for patients in active cancer treatment, said Jabbour.

As McKenzies options evaporated, his muscle mass disappeared and the diameter of his chest shrunk 6 inches.

I got worse and worse and worse, to the point that I was ready to die, said McKenzie.

Suarez learned that McKenzie was in a critical state at MD Anderson and visited him. After analyzing his medical history, Suarez determined a transplant was possible. He felt McKenzies specific form of cancer  and his treatment over the last two decades  made him well suited to handle the recovery process.

He really wasn't going to be on anything new that would increase his risk of a recurrence of his cancer as well, he said.

Suarez shared his outlook with McKenzie.

On HoustonChronicle.com: As child COVID hospitalizations double in four days, highly transmissible omicron poised to sweep Houston

I told him Im not doing this to save your life for a few hours, Suarez said. I really think we can give you some years. Thats what Im hoping for  many, many years of good quality life after this.

McKenzie matched with donor lungs in May. When Suarez stepped into the operating room, he zoned in on the hours-long task of cutting open McKenzies chest, slicing away the scarred organ and methodically suturing the new one into his body. The focus required for the surgery overshadowed Suarezs personal connection with McKenzie, but he practiced the same precise movements he witnessed as a young resident.

The emotions arrived later, after Suarez shed his surgical gown and McKenzie recovered.

After the transplant, when I could breathe, I was just a basket case emotionally, McKenzie said. Panic attacks and anxiety and just, you know, falling apart. It wasn't because I'm some crazy person. It's because I've been through a lot of trauma. But Im getting ready now to start being appreciative for what was done for me.

Seven months later, McKenzie is strong enough to jog and plans to enjoy Christmas at home with his family. He hopes to continue working in some capacity, but he understands the reality of a lung transplant better than anyone. Roughly 60 percent of transplant recipients survive beyond five years, and about 30 percent live 10 years.

He wants to make the most of his time.

Honestly, I feel like I owe something to my donor and this team for what they did for me, and Im not going to waste that, he said.

McKenzies career is an inspiring story of resilience and hope, said Jabbour. And I am pleased to see him doing so well after a successful lung transplant.

For Suarez, watching McKenzie recover has been a massive relief, more than anything.

We care about this guy and we want him to do well, he said. And Im frightened for him. I worry. I cry a little. I cant describe the joy and happiness I have knowing that hes doing well  and its kind of an affirmation like, hey, everything Ive done up to now has led to some real good, hopefully.

julian.gill@chron.com
Widespread flight delays in snowstorms and low visibility could occur once new 5G wireless service rolls out in early January, airline executives and aviation officials are warning with increasing alarm.

The officials say the new wireless signals threaten to interfere with equipment on planes and helicopters that track aircraft altitude, which could prohibit landings in poor visibility and create a cascade of delays, diversions and cancellations  a concern the wireless industry maintains is unfounded.

The issue is coming to a head as White House officials, regulators and industry groups struggle, without result, for agreement before the service starts Jan. 5. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have offered power reductions. The aviation industry calls such cuts inadequate.

5G signals will operate in airwaves near those used by radar altimeters, which determine altitude by bouncing radio waves off the ground. The aviation industry says tests show 5G can interfere with the altimeters, posing hazards especially during bad-weather landings. Mobile providers dispute that outcome, saying the 5G signals are sufficiently separated from the frequencies used by altimeters, and are set to operate at safe levels.

Jeffrey Shane, a former airline industry official who also served in the U.S. Department of Transportation, said flight disruptions were guaranteed and predicted a chaotic impact on aviation.

If the altimeters are considered unreliable by FAA, federal regulations would ban many emergency air-ambulance flights, the Helicopter Association International said in a filing in the Federal Register.

Medical copters transport 40,000 to 50,000 people a year from roadside crashes and other sites where the altimeters are required, the group said. Those may no longer be permitted in the dozens of major cities where At&T and Verizon are introducing 5G, the group said.

Similarly, with 5G set to begin in greater Houston and New Orleans, helicopter operations that service oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico from those regions could also face new restrictions, the group said.

The prospect of flight disruptions comes as airlines struggle to recover from the coronavirus pandemic that led to billions of dollars in losses last year. Carriers also have been dealing with staff shortages and thousands of unruly passenger episodes this year and the industry is concerned the 5G clash will cost as much as $2.1 billion in flight disruptions, according to the trade group Airlines for America.

If you were to ask us what our number one concern is in the near term, it is the deployment of 5G, Southwest Airlines Co. CEO Gary Kelly testified at a Senate hearing Wednesday.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and officials from the White Houses National Economic Council met Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

White House representatives didnt reply to queries about the meetings.

The Federal Aviation Administration, faced with even a remote prospect that safety could be threatened by the new 5G signals, must act conservatively.

What that means, ladies and gentlemen, is nothing less than a lot of flights are going to be canceled, Shane said speaking Dec. 10 at a government advisory panel on protecting radio frequency.

Airlines for America said the 5G service could disrupt as many as 350,000 flights a year, based on some worst-case assumptions.

Wireless providers paid at least $81 billion for rights to the contested airwaves. They rejected predictions of trouble.

The aviation industrys fear-mongering relies on completely discredited information and deliberate distortions of fact, said Nick Ludlum, a senior vice president at the trade group CTIA, which includes AT&T and Verizon as members.

5G operates safely and without causing harmful interference to aviation operations in nearly 40 countries around the world, Ludlum said in an email.

The FAA and aviation groups say other nations have imposed the kinds of protections they are seeking or that the frequencies used in those countries have been located farther away from those assigned to aircraft equipment.

The FCC, which approved the mobile providers airwaves use, has declined to impose additional restrictions and said it is working with aviation regulators to resolve the dispute.

One manufacturer of the so-called radar altimeters estimated that 70% of airliners equipped with its devices might be prone to interference and, therefore, subject to FAAs restrictions, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Similarly, the FAA said it may also prohibit certain satellite-guided approaches, which jetliners increasingly use to enhance efficiency.
On Friday morning, Frederick Ragston warmed up his wifes truck, kissed her at the door and, as always, told her he loved her as she left for work.

Have a great day, he said. Ill see you later.

But Abigail Ragston did not return home. The 59-year-old woman, who worked as an aide on a Hempstead ISD school bus for children with special needs, died when the bus crashed early that afternoon.

The bus was traveling south on FM 1887 in Waller County when the driver overcorrected and lost control for unknown reasons, sending the bus rolling across the road and into a field, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Ragston died at the scene. The driver sustained minor injuries. There were four children on the bus at the time of the crash, including a high school student who was airlifted in serious condition to the Memorial Hermann hospital in downtown Houston.

Two boys, ages 6 and 9, were transported by ambulance to the Memorial Hermann hospital in Katy.

The agency continues to investigate the fatal incident. No other vehicles were involved in the crash. Photos from the crash scene show that the bus sustained serious damage to all sides.

Ragston loved working as an aide on the school bus, a job she held for more than two decades, according to her husband. She helped kids with special needs stay in their seats and stick to good behavior on the way to and from school.

She loved those children, her husband said.

The woman had four children of her own, too, and eight grandchildren, Ragston said. They adopted and raised several more children throughout the years as well, he said. The married couple would have celebrated their 25th anniversary in April.

Outside of work, Ragston loved tending to the flower beds in her yard or taking drives through the country with her husband. The Hempstead native cheered for the Dallas Cowboys; her favorite color was orange. Ragston was a woman of faith who was actively involved at Greater St. Peters Missionary Baptist Church. She founded the churchs praise dance team, her husband said.

This loss is completely devastating but God has already provided us the strength to sustain, the senior pastor of the church wrote in a Facebook post. For those of you who knew her, she filled many lives with love, joy, positivity and a beautiful smile. She was a wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin and most of all, a friend to many.

This week, the couple was excited to attend The Nutcracker on Thursday before celebrating Christmas with their large extended family. Soon, they planned to take a roadtrip to visit Ragstons son in Colorado.

We had so many plans, he said.

Instead, Ragston is now planning his wifes funeral services.

At the scene of the crash, Ragston broke down when an officer confirmed that his wife was killed in the crash. Other people held him back from moving too close. Ragston wanted to see his wife, but the investigator intervened.

You dont want to see her like this, the investigator told the husband, according to Ragstons recollection.

It remains unclear how the bus crashed, authorities said. Ragston said he knows only the information that authorities have released.

We dont have no answers right now, Ragston said. All I know is, Abigail is not here no more.

anna.bauman@chron.com
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Doling out pardons is a holiday tradition for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who around every Christmas grants them to a handful of ordinary citizens, typically for minor offenses committed years or decades ago.

But one name stands out on his desk: George Floyd.

Abbott has not said whether he will posthumously pardon Floyd this year for a 2004 drug arrest in Houston by a former officer whose police work is no longer trusted by prosecutors. Texas' parole board  stacked with Abbott appointees  unanimously recommended a pardon for Floyd in October.

Since then, the two-term Republican governor, who is up for reelection in 2022, has given no indication of whether he will grant what would be only the second posthumous pardon in Texas history. Floyd, who was Black, spent much of his life in Houston before moving to Minnesota, where his death under the knee of a white police officer last year led to a U.S. reckoning on race and policing.

It doesnt matter who you think George Floyd was, or what you think he stood for or didnt stand for, said Allison Mathis, a public defender in Houston who submitted Floyd's pardon application. What matters is he didnt do this. Its important for the governor to correct the record to show he didnt do this.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD: Abbott, why won't you pardon George Floyd?

A spokeswoman for Abbott did not respond to requests for comment.

Pardons restore the rights of the convicted and forgive them in the eyes of the law. Floyds family and supporters said a posthumous pardon for him in Texas would show a commitment to accountability.

In February 2004, Floyd was arrested in Houston for selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting. He pleaded guilty to a drug charge and served 10 months in prison.

His case happened to be among dozens that prosecutors revisited in the fallout over a deadly drug raid in 2019 that resulted in murder charges against an officer, Gerald Goines, who is no longer with the Houston force. Prosecutors say Goines lied to obtain a search warrant in the 2019 raid that left a husband and wife dead, and the office of Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has since dismissed more than 160 drug convictions tied to Goines.

Goines has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys accuse Ogg of launching the review for political gain.

A POSTHUMOUS PARDON: Public defender asks for George Floyd to be pardoned of Gerald Goines arrest

Abbott has several primary challengers from the far right, and his ongoing silence about a potential pardon for Floyd has raised questions by Mathis and others over whether political calculations are at play. His office has not responded to those charges.

Abbott attended Floyds memorial service last year in Houston, where he met with the family and floated the idea of a George Floyd Act that would take aim at police brutality. But Abbott never publicly supported such a measure months later when lawmakers returned to the Capitol, where Republicans instead made police funding a priority.

State Sen. Royce West, a Democrat who carried the George Floyd Act in the Senate, said he understands the politics if Abbott was waiting until after the GOP primary elections in March. But he said the governor should act on the recommendation.

As hes always said, he is a law and order governor," West said. And this would be following the law."
Police in League City have linked a man accused in one homicide to the killing last spring of a man who was followed home from a Houston restaurant, robbed and shot in his garage.

Devan Jordon, 21, of Pearland was arrested Friday in the June 11 slaying of Jeffrey Johnson, who was robbed at his League City home after dining out with his wife. Jordon had followed the couple home for more than 30 miles from the Capital Grille on Westheimer, where they had dinner, according to police.

Lt. Michael Buffington said police believe Jordon was involved in several Galleria-area robberies aimed at stealing high-end jewelry.

Thats been the (modus operandi) on all these robberies up there, Buffington said, adding that police believe Jordon and others would target patrons at upscale restaurants and follow them home.

Jordons arrest comes four months after a similar crime, the killing of a New Orleans police officer and another man on the patio of Grotto Ristorante, also in the Galleria area. In that case, three men shot and killed a vacationing lawman, Everett Briscoe, and a friend during an attempted robbery. Three men have been charged in connection with those killings.

Buffington said Johnsons wife had gone inside by the time Jordon and two others allegedly confronted her husband in a garage. She heard a commotion  thinking that her husband had mistakenly knocked over their motorcycle  and stepped outside to find him on the ground with a gunshot wound and to see at least one suspect fleeing. Johnson died hours later at a hospital.

Buffington said Jordons DNA was found at the scene of the crime and that he had rented a white Mercedes SUV seen near the Johnson home on the night of his death.

Court records show Jordon has also been linked to a string of aggravated robberies and home invasions.

Ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, authorities allege, Jordon shot and killed Joshua Sandoval during an attempted robbery at his Rice Military townhome. Jordon was charged in July with capital murder in that death and held on $500,000 bail through late November.

His lawyer, Letitia Quinones, requested that a judge lower Jordons bail, but that motion was denied. In later court documents, Quinones said that the defendant will attempt to make current bond. He was released that same week.

He was ordered to wear an ankle monitor, which is how Houston police, whose officers made the arrest in Johnsons slaying, knew where to find him, Buffington said.

In March, police arrested Jordon on an evading charge after he crashed into a tree during a chase, according to court records. A search of the vehicle revealed an AR-15-style pistol with a 60-round magazine.

The rifle had a brass catcher attached to it, which gives it the capability to catch all the expended rounds that the defendant fires and prevents any evidence from being left at any shooting scene, an investigator wrote in court documents. Jordon walked out of the Harris County Jail in April on $5,000 bail related to the evading charge.

Jordan is now being held at the jail and is slated to be transferred to Galveston County to face the latest capital murder charge.

Court records related to Sandovals death were not available.

nicole.hensley@chron.com
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When the Llano County Library shuts down for three days this week, starting Tuesday, it wont be for the holidays.

Instead, a group of six librarians in this small Central Texas county will be conducting a thorough review of every childrens book in the library, at the behest of the Llano County Commissioners Court. Their mission will be to make sure all of the reading material for younger readers includes subjects that are age-appropriate. A new young adults plus section will be added to separate books written for an older teen audience from those geared toward younger readers.

The three-day closure of the library system in Llano County, about 80 miles northwest of Austin, also means a temporary shutdown of its virtual portal through the online book provider Overdrive.

I think we owe it to all parents, regardless if its a school library or a public library, to make sure that material is not inappropriate for children, Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham said.

The Llano County communitys push to scrutinize the local librarys book stacks comes two months after a Texas lawmaker first questioned the inclusion of more than 850 books about race, equality or sexuality in public school libraries.

And Llano County is not the only community in Texas asking harder questions.

The rise in public library book complaints

Local public libraries in Texas, including those in Victoria, Irving and Tyler, are fielding a flurry of book challenges from local residents. While book challenges are nothing new, there has been a growing number of complaints about books for libraries in recent months. And the fact that the numbers are rising after questions are being raised about school library content seems more than coincidental, according to the Texas Library Association.

I think it definitely ramped it up, said Wendy Woodland, the TLAs director of advocacy and communication, of the late October investigation into school library reading materials launched by state Rep. Matt Krause in his role as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating.

In response to Krauses inquiry, Gov. Greg Abbott tapped the Texas Education Agency to investigate the availability of pornographic books in schools. In the weeks since, school districts across the state have launched reviews of their book collections, and state officials have begun investigating student access to inappropriate content.

As more residents began turning their sights on local libraries, the state library association set up a peer counseling helpline for librarians to get support from others more familiar with book challenges.

A library may get one or two [book challenges] in two years, or some librarians have never had challenges, Woodland said. So this is very rare and very unusual and different from the way challenges have been brought forth in the past.

In Victoria, about 100 miles southeast of San Antonio, Dayna Williams-Capone says the number of complaints about books is the most shes seen in her nearly 13 years working at the Victoria Public Library.

In August, Williams-Capone, the director of library services in Victoria, said her office received about 40 formal requests for review of books, primarily books for children and young adults that touch on topics of same-sex relationships, sexuality and race.

After Williams-Capone and her staff reviewed the requests, they decided to keep the books in the library. Residents who filed the complaints pushed forward, appealing the decision to the librarys advisory board for about half of the books, Williams-Capone said.

Last Wednesday, the librarys board voted not to remove the books from library shelves.

I dont think theres a danger in asking the questions and having a civil conversation and learning from each other, Williams-Capone said. I think that the danger is when we lose that big-picture view of who all is a part of our community, and that the needs of some members of our community might be very different than what we think our own personal needs are or our own family needs.

One Victoria resident who pushed for book removals was Cindy Herndon.

Its nothing that I have against anybody in any community, said Herndon, 64. I dont have any resentment or lack of respect for them. Its just about protecting the children and exposing them to things that they really dont need to see right now.

One of the books she wanted removed was The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta, a coming-of-age novel about a mixed-race gay teen who becomes a drag artist.

After reading the book, Herndon said she was opposed to it because to her it seemed to sexualize children, especially into alternate lifestyles, and make them want to be someone else than who they were born to be.

Another Victoria resident, Amy Garvel, joined other residents, and the group combed through the librarys online catalog. They compiled a list of more than 200 books they found inappropriate, ranging from picture books to young adult books, Garvel said. Garvel herself submitted two requests for removal for the books If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo and Rick by Alex Gino.

Garvel, who describes herself as a conservative and has a 9-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter, said shes been very careful about what content they consume.

My goal is really to protect the children in our community in general, not just my own children, said Garvel, 43. Im hoping that [the library] sees that were not trying to censor books that were trying to protect our children. I mean, the library was one of the last places that we could feel safe.

Gustavo Huerta, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

How the process works and why its getting blowback

Local public libraries are not regulated by the state. Instead, they are usually part of a county or city budget funded by local taxpayers.

Williams-Capone, the Victoria library services director, described how books are selected in the first place, and her librarys process is typical for most. Staff members peruse lists of bestsellers and literary award winners. They scan literary journals. Library staffers also consider how often visitors check out certain titles or subjects to determine future purchases.

Rules for public libraries, including complaints about content, are determined at the local level.

A list of labels and their meanings helps to guide readers on the contents of certain books at the Llano County Library. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Texas Tribune

When a resident challenges a book, theres a process in place, to handle that complaint, said Woodland, the TLA spokesperson. That process is typically crafted in writing by local governments with input from library staff.

But in these latest challenges, there have been complaints from some local residents that the process may give library staff too much of an upper hand.

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by L. C. Rosen, which follows a gay teenager who starts a teen sex advice column, has seen challenges in Irving and elsewhere.

At the urging of local residents, City Council members were meticulously briefed on how the Irving Public Library handles complaints against books kept in its libraries. After the book underwent a request for consideration, which included an initial staff review and an appeal, it was kept in circulation.

Irving Mayor Rick Stopfer said he read the book in full, and even though he didnt particularly care for parts of the book, he understood the need for it.

If you read the full book, it tells you that you can have a loving relationship with a person of your same gender, Stopfer said during an Oct. 14 meeting. Everybodys not going to like everything. Its not something that I enjoyed reading, but I understood what the purpose of it was, and what the outcome was supposed to be.

In that same Irving City Council meeting, Flory Malloy, a self-described mother of seven with a doctorate in biblical studies, told council members she felt the library system and its appeal precess seemed pointless because in the end, books that are challenged remain on the shelves.

The process ended with a denied appeal to remove the book, she told council members as she described one challenge that appeared to go nowhere. It seems to be a point of pride for the Irving Public Library that they have never removed a book as the result of this process, so whats the purpose of this time-consuming review process?

In Tyler, city spokesperson, Julie Goodgame confirmed that library officials there have been informed about concerns regarding book content. But theres been no specific complaint about a particular book, she said.

More changes for libraries?

Back in Llano County, Cunningham, the county judge, said the library systems three-day closure is the first of perhaps many changes for the library. He said the county plans to soon establish a library advisory board that will help establish policies on requests to reevaluate books in circulation.

Although parents and lawmakers have stressed they are attempting to protect children from inappropriate content, authors of works that have been at the center of these disputes see the fights as a way to stifle and censor diverse representation in literature.

And librarians see their role as offering reading material for a wider audience.

These efforts to mute or censor diverse voices in books is part of the just overall extreme divisiveness in our country that was really just exacerbated by the pandemic, [and] the actions taken by Rep. Krause and others have added fuel to that, Woodland said.

She understands there will be those who may not like all of the books in a library. Thats not the point of a public library, she said.

No book is right for everyone, but one book can make a big difference in one persons life, she said. Thats what libraries are about  providing those windows and doors and mirrors to the community.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/20/texas-library-books/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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What to expect in 2022: Bobby Borg & Michael Eames share their music industry predictions

When Bobby Borg and Michael Eames look forward to 2022, their focus is on songwriters and music publishing. That should come as no surprise since 2021 saw the pair publish the essential Introduction To Music Publishing For Musicians.

By Bobby Borg and Michael Eames, authors of Introduction To Music Publishing For Musicians

Subscription Services to Digital Service Providers will continue to grow Twitter will finally be forced by the music industry to properly license music The CRB (Copyright Royalty Board) will uphold it 2018  2022 decision to increase mechanical streaming rates to songwriters and publishers The CRB will stay at the 15.1% 2022 mechanical streaming rate from 2023  2027, just like they stayed at the 9.1 cents mechanical rate for physical records and permanent downloads in 2006 While lobbying against the Digital Millennial Copyright act will continue, no changes will be made with regards to The Safe Harbor laws. Lobbying will continue on the American Music Fairness Act (payment of terrestrial radio performances to master owners), but nothing will happen While the fight will continue against the PROs consent decrees (i.e., the right for ASCAP and BMI to be able to negotiate their own rates with music users), nothing will happen The business of synchronization (licensing in film, TV), will continue to rebound after its decrease during COVID-19. We are going to hear more about artificial intelligence songwriting and more about the rights associated with it Independent musicians will become more savvy about the business of music publishing and more and more will build awareness through music synch

Bobby Borg and Michael Eames are the authors of the Introduction To Music Publishing For Musicians

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Baker Issues New Mask 'Advisory,' Stops Short of Mandate

BOSTON  Gov. Charlie Baker Tuesday announced that the state is encouraging residents to wear face coverings indoors regardless of their vaccination status for COVID-19 but balked at the idea of a statewide mask mandate.

We are saying more people should be masking, but people in Massachusetts know at this point that masking is one of the tools they can pursue, if they choose to do so, to protect themselves, Baker said in a morning announcement alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders.

Lets not forget: 5 million people in Massachusetts are fully vaccinated, and vaccines are, by far, the most effective tool we have in the toolbox to protect one another from COVID.

New new mask advisory is just one of the steps unveiled on Tuesday morning.

The Baker administration Tuesday announced that all non-essential elective procedures at hospitals in the commonwealth that are likely to result in an inpatient admission will need to postponed or canceled, effective Dec. 27.

And in order to support hospitals facing staffing shortages, the commonwealth is deploying up to 500 members of the Massachusetts National Guard in support roles for the health care system.

As for mask mandates, Baker declined to answer a question on whether he had authority to issue a directive without announcing another state of emergency, as he did in 2020. But he said that his administration supports municipalities who choose to do so.

I have no interest in putting a mandate on this issue, given all the tools that are available on a statewide basis for the people of Massachusetts, Ba ker said. If locals wish to pursue alternative options, they can do so.

We issued a mask mandate last fall because we had no other options available to us. At this point in time, we have vaccines, we have rapid tests, we have our testing sites and people know a lot more about what works and what doesnt with respect to fighting the virus. And if people wish to add an extra layer of protection by wearing a mask in indoor settings, we would urge them to do so, especially when we have cases rising across the commonwealth.

Baker stressed that even though case numbers are on the rise, the states status as one of the most highly vaccinated states in the union is holding down the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths associated with the novel coronavirus. Out of the 5 million people in Massachusetts who are fully vaccinated, only 2 percent have gotten COVID, Baker said. We know that among all the breakthrough cases in Massachusetts, 97 percent of them never end up in a hospital. And we know that of the 1.2 million people over the age of 12 and under the age of 30 who got vaccinated, not one has died of COVID. We know that out of nearly 2.5 million [vaccinated] people under the age of 60, less than 1 percent of these people, in fact 0.1 percent of them, have died from COVID. And we know for those over 60 who have been vaccinated, less than 3 percent of them have died from COVID. Baker said that of all the measures society has used to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines are the most effective. For the foreseeable future, Massachusetts and most of the country will see large numbers of new cases, but a new case today does not mean the same thing a new case meant a year ago, Baker said. The therapies and vaccines that offer near universal protection did not exist a year ago. Vaccinated people may test positive, but their chances of dying or getting seriously ill are so small they pale in comparison to so many riskier behaviors out there. Yes, cases may go up, but if youre vaccinated, your risk stays the same  that is, extremely low. That said, state officials Tuesday took steps to ease pressure on the healthcare system  pressures likely to be exacerbated by regular seasonal spikes in demand due to seasonal flu and the COVID-19 case spikes anticipated after the holiday party and travel season. National Guard members will be utilized to support 55 acute care hospitals and 12 ambulance services throughout the commonwealth, Sudders said. The citizen soldiers will be used to assist with non-emergency transport between facilities, provide security support, do in-hospital transport and deliver meals. What were pursuing with our hospitals is  think of it like giving hospitals the tools to maintain and expand capacity within their own footprint, Sudders said. Weve lost 500 acute care beds in Massachusetts because of staffing shortages. So by providing the non-medical side of the corps, it will hopefully allow them the ability to open up additional beds. Baker and Sudders were asked whether staffing shortages are due to hospitals vaccine mandates and the resistance among some employees. Based on the conversations weve had with the hospital community, I think they would say that the staffing shortages are something that started before anyone put mandates in place, Baker said. A staff member who gets sick cant work. A staff member who stays healthy can work. More than anything, we need our colleagues and our friends and our neighbors who work in the healthcare community to be safe and healthy because of the work they do  not just with COVID people but in general throughout the course of this time of year, which has always been a point in time when you see significantly more traffic in our hospitals than you would see at other times of the year. The coming ban on elective procedures is the result of regular conversations between state officials and hospital administrators, Sudders said. And she emphasized that there will be no impact on hospitals ability to treat life-threatening conditions. I want to be clear: Our hospitals remain ready to care for the urgent needs of the residents of the commonwealth, Sudders said.
In August 2021, investment analytics platform Aumni announced that it had closed a $50 million Series B funding round led by investing banking company J.P. Morgan, along with a host of other investors. Aumni announced its intentions to use investments from the funding round to deepen its presence with investors in the private capital markets and expand its offering to limited partners, law firms, and company founders.

Aumni leverages untapped data in private portfolios to track key investment rights, portfolio performance, and emerging investment patterns. The new information is used to provide insights and help clients make better investment decisions. With Aumni, access to structured data in private capital markets can now exist at scale.

The latest news from Aumni carries big implications for its offices in the Philippines. With its latest investment round, Aumni joins the throng of many multinational companies choosing to operate in the country.

Yet unlike many other companies, Aumni chooses to base its Philippine offices outside of Metro Manila. Rather than set-up base in the capital regions hustle-and-bustle, the investment analytics platforms head office is in the summertime capital of Baguio.

The case for shifting away from Metro Manila

According to VP of Culture Brendan Kussman, there are several reasons why Aumni chose to base their Philippine offices in Baguio.

First, large cities like Metro Manila are already saturated with similar multinational companies. By moving to a city like Baguio, Aumni has the opportunity to stand out and offer something different to employees in terms of lifestyle and balance.

Second, it helps that Baguio is a university town. This helps Aumni find talent capable of critical thinking and willing to learn complex topics (such as investment analytics), without having to deal with the same level of competition as in Metro Manila. Finally, it helped that Baguio was large enough (it is officially classified as a Highly Urbanized City) to support Aumnis growth.

Though many multinationals open offices in the provinces, they are usually in the BPO industry. Aumni bucks this trend and is one of the first investment analytics firms to look beyond the national capital. There is huge, raw, untapped talent in Northern Luzon that are hesitant to move to Manila, Kussman said. With a solid talent and development program for these folks, a company could establish an equally productive and highly performing organization in Baguio City.

Maggie Po, VP of Data Operations, also points out that having Aumnis offices in Baguio is beneficial for employee well-being. Work-life balance setup is much easier to execute in this city because we do not have to deal with the big time-consuming hurdle Manila employees face daily: the ugly traffic of the big city, Po observed. The cost of living here is also reasonably lower than in Metro Manila so it allows us to offer competitive compensation and benefits.

According to Aumni Founder and CEO Anthony Lewis, it is worth noting that Aumnis main offices are based in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. That was an intentional choice to leverage an educated workforce in a geographic region that allows for both outdoor recreation, room for families, and a sophisticated environment for arts and culture, Lewis said, noting similarities to Baguio. Baguio seems to offer a similar alternative for talented professionals in the Philippines. We care about our people and we believe that these locations are unique and offer something fresh.

Tech connects us all

The rise of remote work has further justified Aumnis decision to move away from the hustle and bustle of Metro Manila.

To better connect Aumnis Baguio offices with their counterparts abroad, the company uses an extensive stack of apps to bridge any communication gap. Additionally, Aumni follows the example of other North America-based companies and offers night shifts to foster much more efficient communication between the Baguio office and its US counterpart.

Beyond remote work, Aumni has also leveraged tech like artificial intelligence (AI) to process over 100,000 transactions. The practice has helped Aumni pride itself on the accuracy of its data and analysis.

Yet despite Aumnis growing use of tech in its operations, Chief Technology Officer Rob Wise is quick to point out that there will always be a place for human talent alongside the rise of AI. Though natural language processing technology has evolved greatly in recent years, human intervention and oversight will still be necessary to combat the technologys natural limitations and biases.

The two approaches work side-by-side in a symbiotic manner, Wise explained. As an example, we have sophisticated rule-based reasoning and threshold analysis system to identify data integrity issues. Aumni personnel then review and triage the results of the analysis accordinglya job that AI cannot perform on its own. It's a paradigmatic example of the marriage of automation and human capital that is at the heart of many of Aumni's processes.

Looking forward to tomorrow

The recent funding round is expected to make its impact felt soon in Aumnis Philippine office. Given that Aumnis Filipino team members play crucial roles in customer service (particularly with regards to ensuring data fidelity, decreasing customer onboarding time, and deriving insights that Aumnis customers can use), the company is heavily interested in fostering their career growth. With the Series B funding, Aumnis Filipino team members can look forward to playing a crucial role in the growth of the company and subsequently gaining new experience.

The importance of Filipino employees has been long-recognized in the top levels of the organization. We consider our team members in the Philippines to be one of our essential components to improving customer experience, particularly with regards to ensuring data fidelity, decreasing customer onboarding time, and deriving insights that our customers can use to improve their own bottom (and top) lines, Lewis said.

The timeline to grow the organization in Baguio has already escalated and the team has grown from 20 employees at the start of 2021 to 150.

Its thanks to the Series B funding that Aumnis Baguio team still continues to expandeven looking to expand to other provinces around the country. The expansion would require an additional level of management to ensure smooth transitions and operations, which is why Aumni is even going as far as offering relocation packages to any successful management hire.

Ultimately, Aumnis leadership recommends other companies follow suit and consider their options outside of Metro Manila to create a culture where productivity goes hand-in-hand with employee well-being. The millenials and Gen Z workforce are putting a lot more weight on mental health and workplace happiness when making their career choices, Kussman concluded. Moving away from the metropolis allows businesses to bring more into the table for the employees and in turn, happier employees turn in better performance at work.
The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) has extended assistance to expedite restoration of electricity services in areas that were severely affected by Typhoon Odette (international name: Rai).

The company immediately coordinated with the Department of Energy and the Visayan Electric Co. (VECO) and sent an advance party in Cebu on December 19 to help assess the extent of damage to power facilities.

Meralco will be deploying a contingent of around 50 engineers and linemen, 25 of which have arrived in Cebu today, December 21, to immediately help in clearing operations and power restoration in the province.

The company is also coordinating with concerned offices, including the Philippine Navy and PLDT, for the transportation of additional personnel, 15 vehicles, 11 generator sets, and heavy equipment to the work site.

More personnel and portable generator sets are currently on standby and ready to be deployed to other areas that would need assistance.

The Meralco Group, through One Meralco Foundation, is working closely with the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation, MVP Group, the government and private sector to provide immediate relief to those severely affected by the typhoon.

In addition, Meralco PowerGen Corporation and Global Business Power Corporation are providing 20,000 liters of diesel to help fuel the generator sets of PLDT and Smart, which are working to restore telecommunications services in the affected areas.
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Neobanks were first coined in 2017 and gained worldwide attention as they emerged as a significant competitor to traditional banks in terms of customer engagement, digital connectivity, reach, and user experience. With its technological prowess, flexible and lean business models, the neobanks can now provide all the services consumers can get from banks. It relies mainly on emerging internet penetration and smartphones worldwide to deliver retail and small and medium enterprise banking services rather than physical branches. Neobanks are challenging the status quo of traditional banks as they are not confined by legacy systems, tightly integrated supply chains, complicated organizational designs, or stringent regulatory requirements like their traditional counterparts.



The author of this article is Mr.Praveen Paulose, MD & CEO of Celusion Technologies



The views and opinions expressed are not of IIFL Securities, indiainfoline.com

Rising at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.1 per cent, the global market of neobanking will reach $333.4 billion by 2026 by using a customer-centric strategy for its service and experiences and lowering its costs. Hence, here are some pros as to why customers are more and more considering and opting for neobanking:The entire decision-making process at a neobank is driven by data. Neobanks have better access to data that analyses how their customers behave within the neobanking ecosystem due to their digitized platform powered by advanced technology. These observations enable the neobanks to create a group of customers based on their actions instead of just using a few data points.For example, Neobanks are using advanced technologies to develop more refined rules for credit scoring that use alternative and behavioural data, such as smartphone usage and payment trends, to address the problem of sparse data. For risk assessment, neobanks enabled with advanced AI assess unstructured data systems apart from the quantitative data that analyses contradictory spending patterns of customers.Neobanks offers synthetic bank-like services with digitized operations. The absence of physical branches reduces cost and complexity. With current and savings accounts, bank passbooks, and physical checks, they simulate the look and feel of a traditional bank account and offer low and transparent fees. Since all transactions are accounted for immediately, there are no overdraft or credit privileges. The critical element is the absence of credit due to which neo-banks can maintain low cost. As a result, neobanks can avoid the regulatory requirements that must be met, such as maintaining cash reserves and bureaucratic overhead. The absence of credit also enables the neobanks to scale by simplifying processes that avoid complicated risk management.Neo-banks provide a hassle-free banking experience to the users in the convenience of their smartphones at their fingertips, making it easier and faster for them to get their work done no matter where they are. Upon providing primary documents and completing the quick KYC form, accounts can be opened within 10 minutes. While facing any issues related to banking, customers can contact the Neobank spokesperson through a digital platform where the concerns are solved way faster, requiring less effort from the user.Almost 95% of India's industrial units are MSMEs or Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, but conventional banks are not able to cater to these companies in remote areas, due to the absence of physical presence of branches. Neo-banks offer financial products and services to the MSMEs under the underbanked consumer group with unstable earnings and lack of access to quality financial services but can still benefit from formal banking and credit systems. By offering a business banking platform, Neobank assists small and midsize firms in automating and managing their finances effectively. The Neobanks aims to revolutionize the banking experience for SMEs by bringing banking into an SME's workflow through APIs, instant receipts, payments gateways, and monitoring cash flow.Neobanks provides cloud-based, integrated, digital banking platforms that are customized to meet the needs of their customers, thereby increasing customer engagement, retention, and revenue. As a result, the neobanks offer highly customized products and services through advanced and enhanced features, such as instant account opening, expenses tracker, intelligent digital reporting, etc., resulting in a higher adoption rate.Globally, neobanks are being driven by accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and multiple banking and financial functions under one roof.Furthermore, FinTech startups are developing niche solutions for blue-collar employees and thin-file SMEs, which is a step forward. As traditional banks face increasing competition from new FinTechs, technology firms, and non-banks, it remains to be seen whether the potential market will support neobanks like NOW Money (Dubai), Dopay (Egypt), Rise (UAE), WeBank (China) amongst other to grow sustainably and responsibly.
Tata Steel has been recognised for its Safety and Heath Excellence initiatives by World Steel Association (worldsteel) under the category Occupational Health Management. The initiatives include two technology driven innovative concepts deployed at the Companys manufacturing units - POD concept and Digital Covid Safety Tracks.These applications ensured workforce safety and business continuity by mitigating COVID-19 risks and were rapidly implemented via the COVID Impact Centre.Sanjiv Paul, Vice President (Safety Health & Sustainability), Tata Steel, said: We are honoured to receive Safety & Health Recognition 2021 by worldsteel. At Tata Steel, we have implemented multiple tech innovations and leveraged our digital transformation journey to pursue workforce safety and business sustainability, aided by agile decision-making. This recognition will further motivate us to pursue excellence and prepare for future.On behalf of Tata Steel, Neeraj Sinha, Chief Safety, Tata Steel, received the award during the Safety & Health Committee Meeting in Brussels, Belgium on November 18, 2021.The POD, a workforce modularisation concept, introduced self-sufficient groups comprising operations and maintenance personnel, including contractors, with self-contained skill sets to perform specific jobs.The concept is built on a foundation of protocols, namely Entry-Exit norms, Shift Operating norms, and POD Breach norms, which constitute the key guiding principles.Digital Covid Safety Tracks successfully contained the spread of COVID-19 via real-time monitoring and compliance to standard operating guidelines. The tracks are broadly classified under three areas - Risk Mitigation, Risk Intelligence and Compliance. Three of the 14 digital tracks, namely COVID-19 Declaration, Risk Profiling and Risk Detection at Gate collectively mitigated the risk of a high-risk person entering the companys gates. A Proximity Analysis track was developed to identify high-risk cases at the workplace.Apart from these initiatives, the Company introduced beacon & RFID based Suraksha Card (Safety Card) for contact tracing of all employees within the plant, including work sites. For white collar employees who were not carrying the beacon & RFID based Suraksha Card, the company used Mobile device Bluetooth technology to function as a BLE tracker inside factory premises and integrated this with the IT systems for contact tracing inside the Plant. The Company developed a Suraksha App, installed on Android/iOS devices, to serve this purpose.World Steel Association also recognised Tata Steel Europe (Europe and USA) under Occupational safety management for its zero-harm logistics.
The biotech division of Strides Pharma Science Limited has informed on Tuesday that Stelis Biopharma Limited (Stelis), Strides) has commissioned its large-scale fully integrated vaccine manufacturing facility at Bengaluru, India. The facility was successfully inspected by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO). Stelis has also received an initial Export No Objection Certificate (NOC) from CDSCO to export up to 50 million doses of the Sputnik Light vaccine.In March 2021, Stelis partnered with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF, Russia's sovereign wealth fund) to produce and supply the Russian Sputnik vaccine. Stelis has now started manufacturing the Sputnik Light vaccine at a commercial scale, and as previously committed, the Company is on track to commercialize this vaccine for Global markets in Q4FY22.Further, Stelis' greenfield vaccine facility was built in a record time of less than 200 days with a best in class design and modularity to cater to several vaccine formats. It is also one of the largest viral vector manufacturing sites with a bespoke design for producing the Russian Sputnik Vaccine.In its current state, the site can offer flexible technologies to manufacture lentivirus, adenovirus and retrovirus products/ vaccines along with adherent and suspension-based processes. The site is equipped with a 40,000L Drug Substance bioreactor capacity at a 2,000L scale, using Single-Use Bioreactor technology, providing optimum flexibility and cost-effectiveness for any volume demand. The drug product block of the facility is designed to produce up to 720 million doses in a year.On Tuesday at a round 9:29 AM, Strides Pharma Science was trading at Rs427 apiece higher by Rs15.1 or 3.67% on Sensex.
Upset over alleged 'personal' remarks made to target her, Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan lashed out at the ruling BJP in Rajya Sabha with a "curse" that it will face bad days.

During her verbal spat and outburst, she also told the chair that he should be fair and alleged that an attempt was being made to stifle the voice of opposition.

Twitter

What led to Jaya Bachchan's emotional and aggressive outburst?

Twitter

Participating in the debate on NDPS (Amendment) Bill, Bachchan chose to raise the issue of the 12 suspended opposition members and said Bhubaneswar Kalita, who was in the chair, used to protest in the Well of the House.

This evoked a sharp reaction from BJP members.

"I don't want to thank you because I don't know whether I should remember when you used to walk into the Well shouting...or today when you are sitting in the chair," she said when called to speak on the bill.

Objecting to her remarks, Rakesh Sinha (BJP) said she was casting aspersions on the chair.

Dismissing Sinha's objection, Bachchan continued her speech and lamented that when the country is facing several important issues, the House had allocated 3-4 hours for a debate on rectifying a "clerical error" in the Bill.

Amid the din, she alleged that personal remarks were made against her and sought protection from the chair.

"I expect you to take action on the comment he made on me and my career. You want to be fair. You are sitting on the chair, and you don't belong to any party, sir," she said.

"How can they make personal remarks in the House...Aap logon kay buraey din aayengay (Your bad days will come), I curse you," she said.

The remarks claimed by Bachchan as "personal" could not be heard in the noise.

When #JayaBachchan, who has kept silence on Sushant Singh's death and supports Bollywood drug addicts, and Aishwarya Rai are questioned by the ED,   curses the BJP with bad days.



wow what an acting  pic.twitter.com/DuVAWfPkw8  Ajay Soni (@iajaysoni) December 21, 2021





Leaders of the BJP and the SP have been attacking each other as the crucial elections in Uttar Pradesh are due early next year.

The SP has accused the Centre of targeting its leaders due to political vendetta, a charge denied by the BJP. Kalita repeatedly urged Bachchan to confine herself to the Bill being debated.



She responded by saying that efforts were being made to stifle the voice of opposition members. Kalita said that the chair would go through the records and remove unparliamentary remarks if any.

tosshub.com

The chair, meanwhile, called the next member to speak on the Bill but soon after adjourned the House for 30 minutes because of the continuous din.

Rajya Sabha adjourned till 5 pm today as Opposition ruckus got fierce after a verbal spat between Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Jaya Bachchan and treasury benches pic.twitter.com/4dJCpysRqn  ANI (@ANI) December 20, 2021





Internet is not very happy with her outburst and choice of words. Condemning her choice of words, the internet is now demanding her suspension. Read more here:

#JayaBachchan what arrogance of Jaya. N third class attitude. She reacted like a safed posh caught steeling. How dare u can break law of country. U all r not untouchable. U r v practical n fine person, but what a curse to hv Jaya as wife. Brought the incident in limelight  Anoop Gupta (@anoopuma) December 21, 2021

Jaya Bachchan needs to calm down. Silly outrage, pointless anger, no research all this makes for a bad legislator.  Sunanda Vashisht (@sunandavashisht) December 20, 2021

If Amitabh Bachchan was angry young man, Jaya Bachchan is angry old woman.   Keh Ke Peheno (@coolfunnytshirt) December 20, 2021

Shame on Jaya Bacchan for unruly behaviour!! Crass



Heights of breaking the Parliamentary Decorum by speaking out of context and insulting and disrespecting other Parliamenterians!#Parliament #JayaBachchan pic.twitter.com/EfWdvpmXjU  Sanskar Rao (@SanskarBarot) December 20, 2021

Jaya Bachchan's remarks in Rajya Sabha yet again tell us why she does not belong to that place. She is as uncultured as the party she represents.  Aishwarya Mudgil (@AishwaryakiRai) December 20, 2021

Why did #JayaBachchan have her shrill, ill-mannered, filmy meltdown in Parliament today?

What's her real issue? She wants the government to not investigate the #PanamaPaperLeak ?  Smita Barooah (@smitabarooah) December 20, 2021

#JayaBachchan when is she not angry, we saw her on a recent promo episode of KBC. Her very annoyed expression on the show with Shweta Nanda, Navyanaveli and Amitji is evident to say she has a problem. Needs treatment pic.twitter.com/ip78sfNWDX  Padmaja  (@prettypadmaja) December 20, 2021

If Jaya Bachchan wants to have a melt down let her do it at home. Her arrogance is unbelievable.. Suspended her for the next couple of years @SrBachchan  Ramesh Menon  (@rameshmenon128) December 20, 2021

Such Arrogance!! Jaya Bachchan going totally hysterical & speaks on anything but Narcotic Bill & then crosses all maryada ki Rekha & gives a curse.. Shraap  #JayaBachchan #AishwaryaRaiBachchan pic.twitter.com/I2tJH9nq3V  Rosy (@rose_k01) December 20, 2021

Jaya Bachchan screaming I curse you in Parliament is a disgraceful act by a Parliamentarian. She must learn to distinguish between the language she uses at home and in our Nations Temple of Democracy.  Savio Rodrigues  (@PrinceArihan) December 20, 2021

How arrogant How cheap How shameless

She don't even obey #Parliament speaker. She needs to be immediately suspended for her worst behavior



  #JayaBachchan pic.twitter.com/UuBB4Zfxs1  Priya Chetwani (@PriyaChetwani5) December 20, 2021





Jaya Bachchan's outburst came on a day her daughter-in-law and actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan appeared before the Enforcement Directorate for questioning in a case linked to the 2016 'Panama Papers' global tax leaks case.

Her statement was recorded under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) provisions, official sources said.



(With inputs from PTI)



(To get the latest updates from Bollywood and Hollywood, keep reading Indiatimes Entertainment.)


2021 was the year of COP26, a platform for the world's leaders to come together and announce decisive actions to combat climate change, which at this point is no more something that will happen in the future, but is happening right before our eyes.

The summit this year was widely called the last, best hope for climate action.

But the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Glasgow, Scotland from October 31 to November 12 failed to come up with any concrete action or promise to reduce carbon emissions to ensure that global warming levels by 1.5 degrees by 2050, to avoid a disaster.

AFP

India at COP26

Though several countries have promised to phase out carbon-based fuels and achieve net-zero emissions, India the third-largest contributor of greenhouses, however, made a commitment for the same only in 2070.



Net Zero is achieved when the amount of greenhouse gas produced is offset by the amount removed from the atmosphere. This entails no future investment in coal or fossil fuels and greening several industries and economies.

AFP

I am giving a panchamrit  five targets that India is committing to join the global fight for climate change  by 2030. Our non-fossil capacity will touch 500 Gw and 50 per cent of our energy needs will come from renewable energy sources. From now to 2030, the projected carbon emissions will reduce by 1 billion tonnes and our overall carbon intensity of the economy will see a 45 per cent reduction, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said.

Given the sizes of the country and its population, India is on paper one of the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but it has some of the lowest per capita CO2 emissions, at 1.9 tonnes per person in 2019, compared with 5.5 tonnes in the UK and 16 tonnes in the US.

AP

Given the dependence of India on coal and other fossil fuels, many have said that the net-zero commitment for 2070 is, realistic, even though it might not be the most attractive or desired one.

One of the biggest criticisms COP26 has faced is it has failed to advance from the Paris Agreement, and in some cases went backward from what was agreed in 2015.

While some progress was made at COP26, the next 12 months will be crucial in determining if the formal agreements reached in Glasgow provide grounds for optimism that 1.5C remains firmly in sight, and are sufficient to build trust between countries and between citizens and governments.

Another major letdown, for many, was how COP26 settled for 'phase down' of coal and not phase out.

AFP

Scientists agree it is necessary to end the use of fossil fuels as soon as possible to meet the 2015 Paris accord's ambitious goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. But explicitly including such a call in the overarching declaration is politically sensitive, including for countries, such as Saudi Arabia, that fear oil and gas may be targeted next.

So instead of phase-out coal, it was agreed to phase down coal, a term which India, insists that it did not introduce to the draft.

Almost 200 nations at COP 26 in Glasgow had accepted the deal on November 13, which aimed at keeping the key global warming target alive, by "phase down" coal.

Some positives

But it was not all bad when it comes to new commitments in COP26. The most notable being an agreement to end deforestation by 2030.

The Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use, an initiative launched by the United Kingdom to protect and restore the earth's forests and end deforestation by 2030 is one of the most ambitious of its kind targets the world has ever agreed upon.

AFP

Recognise that to meet our land use, climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals, both globally and nationally, will require transformative further action in the interconnected areas of sustainable production and consumption; infrastructure development; trade; finance and investment; and support for smallholders, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities, who depend on forests for their livelihoods and have a key role in their stewardship, it said.

India was one of the most notable absentees in the list of countries that made the pledge.

According to India, the declaration interlinks trade to climate change and forest issues. Trade falls under the WTO and should not be brought under climate change declarations and wanted the word trade to be removed.

Too little too late?

Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a climate watchdog, during the COP26 had said that the world may fail to meet the Paris Agreement targets and is on track to be 2.4 - 2.5 degrees hotter than pre-industrial levels by 2050.

"We know that the window to keep 1.5 degrees alive is closing but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that it is still achievable," a COP26 spokesperson said in a statement. "As today's reports make clear, we've seen genuine progress in the first week of COP26, but we have a lot more to do. We need to be serious about both ambition and action this decade and that is why as COP26 Presidency, we are pushing hard through negotiations this week to build on progress to keep 1.5 degrees in reach."

Unsplash/Representational image

Scientists have repeatedly warned that if global warming breaks the 1.5 degrees threshold, the planet will go into a point of no return, where we will not be able to revere the effects of climate change, and will eventually lead to our doom.

Critics have pointed out that due to ocean levels rise and droughts millions around the world will be uprooted from their homes and will become climate refugees.

The world had to come together to the aid of such frontline countries this year at COP26, but those responsible for the crisis were largely indifferent to the plight of those on the receiving end as domestic politics and economy once again looked more import for them.

For more on news and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.
James Lassiter, an attorney representing the family of Indian American Bharti Shahani, a senior at Texas A&M who died several days after the concert, said the medical examiners findings confirmed her familys worst fears. Above: the Astroworld festival. (photo via IANS)
This post is part of a series sponsored by TransUnion.

Social and regulatory attention has been using fairness and equity as a lens to evaluate the outcomes of existing processes like insurance underwriting. For example, a new law in Colorado, which will come into effect at the beginning of 2023, will require insurers to provide analytical evidence that their operational processes that use inputs of consumer data and predictive models do not result in unfair discrimination against certain consumer groups. Credit-based insurance scores (hereinafter referred to as insurance risk scores) are one example of the inputs used in these operational processes

Insurance risk scores have become essential for insurers as they seek to quickly and accurately underwrite policies and attract new business. But the relationship between credit information and insurance risk evaluation is technical and complex. Most consumers are simply unaware that insurance risk scores are used in insurance underwriting, and when they get incomplete information about it, they may distrust their use.

This reality highlights two dimensions of fairness  the fairness of outcomes and the consumer perception of fairness towards these practices. These questions of fairness are important, and insurance companies must be able to demonstrate that their practices wont result in unfair outcomes and seem fair to consumers.

Fairness testing  the need to align on best practices

Actuarial science and predictive modeling are decades old and well honed. The insurance industry has become very good at building models that are empirically sound, demonstratively strong and stable. Within the insurance industry, however, fairness testing research and practice is still in its infancy, but it is more robust in academia.

Much of the current focus is on race, ethnicity and income; however, its against the law for insurance companies and consumer-reporting agencies to collect or store information on race and ethnicity, which makes it very difficult to analyze fairness and equity along these axes. The industry will need to evaluate options for capturing or estimating these characteristics.

Next, there will need to be a standard definition of fair. From a data science and predictive modeling perspective, a fair outcome is one in which the predicted outcome aligns with actual outcomes based on some measure of statistical significance. On the other hand, some would say that fair means equal treatment in outcomes across the population. As the industry works to define fair, consideration should be given to both variance in actual outcomes and population profile  a behavior-adjusted fair outcome.

Consumer perception of fairness

As for consumer perception of fairness, one of the most important academic researchers on this subject is Stanford Universitys Dr. Barbara Kiviat, who studies social attitudes towards credit scoring. In particular, she has elaborated on the concept of logical relatedness in the use of credit scoring: Consumers resist or resent the application of credit scores to areas of their lives if they dont see a clear connection between the two. And many consumers and legislators alike do not currently view credit as something logically related to insurance, which leads them to see insurance risk scores as unfair.

Dr. Kiviat, however, points out that If logically unrelated, morally heterogeneous data dont seem so bad if using them promises to expand the market to previously excluded individuals. In other words, even if consumers and policymakers dont see a logical connection between insurance risk scores and insurance pricing, will they appreciate their role in expanding the market?

Another important finding in Dr. Kiviats research is that consumers are more likely to find a credit-based score fair if they know it does not misclassify risks. As TransUnion has shown with the accommodations around the CARES Act, insurance risk scores can be tailored to exclude consideration of factors that are outside the control of the consumer and still remain stable and predictive.

An opportunity to raise awareness and educate consumers

Based on Dr. Kiviat research, in order for someone to accept use of consumer data, such as insurance risk scores, they must be provided with a clear causal theory that explains why and how the scoring system works. Insurers have the opportunity to provide a clearer understanding by taking a number of steps to raise awareness and educate consumers on the use of credit information in underwriting, including:

How and why credit information is used

The benefits and opportunities it provides to consumers

The protections and rights afforded to consumers in the current process

What would an education campaign about insurance risk scores look like in practice? TransUnion specifically recommends that insurers:

Provide consumers with an explanation of what insurance risk scores are, how they differ from financial credit scores and how insurers use them in combination with other variables to underwrite policies.

Explain to consumers why insurance risk scores are used in underwriting, with a focus on the benefits to consumers.

Provide consumers information on the protections and rules governing insurance risk scores, including rights that consumers have to access, dispute and direct how their personal credit information is used.

Describe to consumers the credit behaviors that can lead to an improvement in their score. By providing consumers with this information, you can empower them to control and manage their personal credit history, which can lead to greater financial inclusion and lower costs.

Finally, insurers must take their advocacy mission to local and national legislators, as well. Teams working with insurance risk score-informed products should work hand in hand with corporate government relations teams to identify potential trouble spots. Now is a great time to make your colleagues in government relations aware of this topic and ensure they are working to engage on your companys behalf.

Topics Market
Technology will continue to influence changes in insurance markets in 2022, especially among agents and digital carriers.

So say the people at Agentero, a digital platform and network that uses data and analytics to enable agents to proactively offer insurance choices to customers.

Agenteros founder and CEO Luis Pino was the first employee at CoverWallet and has also worked for McKinsey & Co.

Insurance markets are changing. For years, the discussion about technology adoption has been focused internally on improving manual processes. While thats still important, were seeing so much more.

Technology is a key factor in agents growth strategies, including how they uncover new opportunities, expand into new markets, and interact effectively with carriers, said Pino.

Analyzing data on its platform and research from others, Pino and his team identified four key trends for 2022:

1. Digital carriers become household names. Digital carriers are growing in brand recognition. Consumers are increasingly more comfortable buying policies from new carriers, and agents are more open to offering their products. According to S&P Global, year-over-year growth for Lemonade and Hippo was the highest in the industry for companies with at least $50 million in quarterly premiums, for example. New technologies are enabling digital insurers to get their products in front of large numbers of agents quickly, giving agents easy and fast access to newer product offerings. For many, the convenience factor and speed-to-market are opening doors to working with new carriers.

2. Big gains in supplementary products. Data analytics is helping agents uncover opportunities in their customer bases, such as car owners who rent, homeowners with pets, and small businesses that lack cyber protection. Its an important opportunity as many of these categories are growing rapidly. For example, many people are trading homeownership for renting, and theyre shopping for new insurance, according to JD Power. While in the past, selling supplemental policies manually often took too much time, technology is enabling agents to sell lower revenue products in higher volumes.

3. Fewer barriers for start-up agencies. The barriers to starting an agency are lower than ever. The pandemic has also created virtual opportunities in which agencies are not bound by location and can operate in states where they know the customers have an appetite for certain types of insurance. Technology also makes carrier appointments easier, enabling agents to begin working with new carriers quickly and easily.

4. The independent agent model advances. For years, many people have talked about the end of the agent model. That discussion should finally end as we see record growth among independent agents in 2022. Expect the independent agent channel to continue to become stronger as more carriers  including digital carriers that were founded on direct-to-consumer models  realize the benefit of agent distribution. In addition, more legacy carriers with captive agents in the past will follow the path of Nationwide and Liberty Mutual, enabling agents to sell coverage from additional insurers. According to Foundation Capital, there has been a 32% decline in captive agents as captive agents and carriers are becoming more independent.

Topics Agencies
Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed a sweeping executive order aimed at reducing pollution and addressing climate change Thursday, a month after pulling back his support of a regional climate initiative amid concerns it would further increase gas prices.

Under the order, the state will review all public buildings for energy efficiency, develop home appliance standards and building codes aimed at reducing energy costs, seek to make the state transit bus fleet all electric by 2035 and expand air quality monitoring statewide.

There will also be a new Connecticut Equity and Environmental Justice Advisory Council to address higher pollution levels and climate change mitigation, particularly in poorer and more racially diverse communities. The panel will advise the commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection on what steps the agency can take.

State officials will also assess whether Californias stricter emissions standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles can be adopted in Connecticut. And the order directs state officials to work with cities and towns on projects to guard against the effects of climate change, including flooding.

What we werent able to do through legislation here in Connecticut over the last year or two, were taking the lead right now with this executive order, Lamont said shortly before signing the order at a table outside the state Capitol. And its really important that we lead by example, state government leads by example.

Lamont, a Democrat, said the state will borrow some money to pay for the efforts, but didnt immediately say how much money. A state bond commission meeting is scheduled for next week. The state also will be using some of the hundreds of millions of dollars it is receiving from the federal infrastructure legislation for pollution-reducing and climate resiliency projects.

The proposed regional Transportation and Climate Initiative, aimed at dramatically reducing greenhouse gas pollution from transportation, lost support this fall, in part over worries that it amounted to a gas tax or a tax on carbon. Lamont and officials in Massachusetts and Rhode Island initially supported the plan, while leaders in the other New England states were skeptical.

It would have required large gasoline and diesel fuel suppliers to purchase allowances for the pollution caused by the use of the fuels they sell in the region. The number of emission allowances would have declined each year, according to the plan, generating billions for states to invest in carbon-reducing transportation options  like public transportation, zero-emission buses, cars, and trucks, and electric vehicle charging stations.

Lamont said Thursday he didnt think the regional proposal would return before the state legislature in next years session, but remains hopeful it will resurface at some point in the future.

The governors new executive order comes after a state report in September said Connecticut was not on track to meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% over 2001 levels by 2030.

Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said the state will not be able to meet its pollution-reduction goals without legislative action, but executive branch agencies will be doing all they can under their existing authority.

We know that this is the crisis of our time and it calls on all of us to get involved and get engaged, Dykes said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Climate Change Pollution Connecticut
A Maryland man has been arrested on arson charges stemming from a house fire that injured two firefighters, authorities said.

John Edward Cropper, 56, was arrested Friday on charges of first-degree arson, second-degree arson and malicious burning, the Worcester County fire marshals office said in a news release.

The Salisbury Daily Times reports that the early-morning fire on June 22 destroyed a house and boat house and damaged three other homes in West Ocean City. The destroyed house and boat house werent occupied when the fire broke out.

The Ocean City Fire Department said two firefighters were taken to hospitals with injuries that werent life-threatening.

Cropper lived in Ocean City at time of the fire. He was arrested in Snow Hill.

At his initial court appearance, he was ordered held without bail pending a bond review hearing this week, the fire marshals office said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Abuse Molestation Arson
Nephila, the Bermuda-based insurance-linked securities manager, has funded its newly launched Syndicate 2358, with capital provided through London Bridge Risk PCC (LBR PCC), a Lloyds-sponsored protected cell company.

The new transaction provides reinsurance capital from a diverse group of investors, including four pension funds, to support underwriting beginning with the 2022 year of account. The syndicate will focus on short to medium term business lines.

LBR PCC provides an access point into the market for both UK and international investors, including ILS investors.

Nephila has been active in the ILS market for more than 20 years and at Lloyds for nine years. By using LBR PCC to channel this investment, Nephila now brings part of its investment activity onshore in the UK.

In addition to this transaction, Lloyds also confirmed that Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, which was announced as the first investor to use LBR PCC in November, has recently provided a second tranche of capital via LBR PCC to cover further risks in 2022.

I am again delighted to see LBR PCC being used to support further ILS investments at Lloyds and to welcome such a prevalent ILS Investor as Nephila to the platform. This underlines the importance of this initiative to the Lloyds marketplace and shows there is real momentum behind ILS support of Lloyds, which is great to see, commented Burkhard Keese, CFO, Lloyds.

Adam Beaty, Nephila Syndicate CEO, said: Using the LBR PCC structure was an efficient way to bring our investors capital into Lloyds to back our new syndicate. It is encouraging to see an initiative like LBR PCC being introduced to the market by Lloyds and we are pleased to have had the opportunity to support it.

The PCC deploys funds in a tax transparent way into the market, explained Lloyds in a statement. Lloyds members can use this vehicle to manage their capital requirements by attracting new classes of investors, including pension funds, and will benefit from reduced set-up times and lower transactional costs.

Topics Auto Excess Surplus Lloyd's
Davis Automotive Group, Inc., doing business as BMW Cleveland, an automobile dealership located in Solon, Ohio, will pay $390,000 and furnish significant equitable relief to settle an age discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency announced. The EEOC said the company violated federal law by intentionally subjecting three older workers to age discrimination.

According to EEOCs lawsuit, the company refused to hire a former employee because of her age (52) and terminated two sales employees because of their ages (67 and 70). Such alleged conduct violates the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits discrimination in employment against people who are age 40 or older.

The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. Davis Automotive Group, Inc. t/a BMW Cleveland, Case No. 1:19-cv-02257) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process.

In addition to requiring payment of $390,000 in monetary relief to the three victims of BMW Clevelands discrimination, the two-year consent decree resolving the lawsuit enjoins BMW Cleveland from future discrimination against employees on the basis of age, and from retaliating against any person for asserting their rights under the decree, filing a charge of discrimination with EEOC, opposing unlawful age discrimination, or participating in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under the ADEA.

The company must maintain a policy prohibiting discrimination and retaliation and a complaint procedure designed to encourage employees to come forward with complaints of discrimination or retaliation. It also must designate an equal employment opportunity officer to ensure its compliance with the decree and to investigate and respond to complaints of potential discrimination and harassment.

The decree also requires annual training on discrimination and retaliation for all employees, including supervisors, management, and human resources personnel. In addition, the company periodically must provide information to EEOC about all hiring and termination decisions and any complaints of discrimination or retaliation and the companys responses. The company also must post a notice about the settlement in conspicuous locations where employee notices are customarily posted.

This settlement provides an important reminder to employers: from beginning to end, employment decisions should be based on ability, not based on age, said EEOC Philadelphia District Director Jamie R. Williamson.

Philadelphia District Office Regional Attorney Debra Lawrence added, We are pleased that this settlement provides significant compensation to the three former BMW Cleveland employees for the harm they suffered and will protect other applicants and employees from similar discrimination because of their age.

Source: EEOC

Topics Lawsuits Auto Ohio
They have decried COVID-19 as a hoax, promoted unproven treatments and pushed bogus claims about the vaccine, including that the shots magnetize the human body.

The purveyors of this misinformation are not shadowy figures operating in the dark corners of the internet. They are a small but vocal group of doctors practicing medicine in communities around the country.

Now medical boards are under increasing pressure to act. Organizations that advocate for public health have called on them to take a harder line by disciplining the doctors, including potentially revoking their licenses. The push comes as the pandemic enters a second winter and deaths in the U.S. top 800,000.

At least a dozen regulatory boards in states such as Oregon, Rhode Island, Maine and Texas recently issued sanctions against some doctors, but many of the most prolific promoters of COVID-19 falsehoods still have unblemished medical licenses. Policing doctors is no easy feat for boards that were created long before social media. Their investigations tend to move slowly, taking months or even years, and many of their proceedings are private.

Just because it is physicians, it is no different than if someone called you claiming to be the IRS trying to steal your money, said Brian Castrucci, president and chief executive officer of the de Beaumont Foundation. Its a scam, and we protect Americans from scams.

Castruccis organization, which advocates for public health, and No License For Disinformation, which fights false medical information, issued a report last week that highlighted some of the cases. The report emerged a week after the Federation of State Medical Boards released a survey that found that 67% of the boards had seen an increase in complaints about COVID-19 misinformation.

That figure is a sign of how widespread the issue has become, said Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, president and CEO of the federation.

Dr. Kencee Graves, a physician at the University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City, said one of her patients decided not to get vaccinated after listening to misinformation from a physician.

She was led astray by someone she should have been able to trust, Graves said, describing the patient as a very, very sweet older lady.

The woman later acknowledged her mistake, saying I realize now I am wrong, but that is who I thought I should listen to.

There is widespread support for cracking down on such doctors, according to a national poll conducted by the de Beaumont Foundation. In the survey of 2,200 adults, 91% of respondents said doctors do not have the right to intentionally spread false information.

But policing doctors is no easy feat for boards that were created long before social media. Their investigations tend to move slowly, taking months or even years, and many of their proceedings are private.

Castrucci said it is time for them to evolve, but doing so is challenging. This month, Tennessees medical licensing board removed from its website a recently adopted misinformation policy amid pressure from a GOP state lawmaker and a new law imposing sprawling virus-related restrictions.

Even individual board members have been targeted. In California, the president of the states medical board, Kristina Lawson, said a group of anti-vaccine activists stalked her at home and followed her to her office last week. She said the people identified themselves as representing Americas Frontline Doctors, a group that criticizes the COVID-19 vaccine and spreads misinformation.

The groups leader, Dr. Simone Gold, who was arrested during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, tweeted this month to her nearly 390,000 followers that nurses know that Covid patients are dying from government subsidized hospital protocols (Remdesivir, intubation), NOT from Covid.

Gold remains a licensed physician in California, although her emergency medicine certification lapsed last year. Complaints and investigations are not public in the state, so it is unclear whether she faces any.

In Idaho, the states medical association got so frustrated with pathologist Dr. Ryan Coles promotion of the anti-parasite drug ivermectin that it filed a complaint with the state medical board. Susie Keller, the associations chief executive director, said she believed it was the first time the group sought action against one of its own. Many doctors, she explained, are fed up.

The spreading falsehoods have actually caused our physicians and nurses to be subjected to verbal assaults by patients who are convinced that the fake information is true, Keller said.

Cole did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press, but his work voicemail said that he is unable to prescribe medications or issue vaccine or mask exemption letters. The voicemail also directed callers to the website of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, a group that champions ivermectin.

Under Idaho law, all investigations of physicians are conducted in private unless there is a formal hearing. The Washington state medical board, meanwhile, is investigating five complaints about Cole, spokeswoman Stephanie Mason said. Americas Frontline Doctors is a group that criticizes the COVID-19 vaccine and spreads misinformation. It has 390,000 followers.

Investigating misinformation is very challenging in that a lot of action isnt documented, she wrote in an email. Many examples happen quietly in an office.

In Ohio, the states medical board automatically renewed the license of Sherri Tenpenny in September after the Cleveland-based osteopathic doctor testified this summer before a state House Health Committee that COVID-19 vaccines cause magnetism.

Vaccine recipients can put a key on their forehead; it sticks, Tenpenny said.

Jerica Stewart, a spokesperson for the states medical board, said that a recent license renewal doesnt prevent the board from taking action.

Making a false, fraudulent, deceptive or misleading statement is grounds for discipline, Stewart said.

In Texas, Dr. Stella Immanuel appeared in a video that promoted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. You dont need masks. There is a cure.

In October, the Texas Medical Board ordered her to pay $500 and improve her consent procedures because it found she had prescribed hydroxychloroquine to a COVID-19 patient without adequate explanation of the potential health consequences, records show.

Immanuel did not respond to a Facebook message from the AP, and the medical practice where she works did not respond to an email.

Dr. Nick Sawyer, who heads No License For Disinformation, described the action against Immanuel as a small slap on the wrist and accused the nations medical boards of not doing their job of protecting public health.

He said he has seen the damage firsthand as he practices emergency medicine in Sacramento, California. He said a diabetic patient in her 70s insisted just this month that she didnt have COVID-19 despite testing positive, then demanded ivermectin and signed out against medical advice when the drug was denied.

She said, `If I have COVID, you gave it to me,' he recalled, blaming the womans resistance on misinformation-spreading doctors. It is killing us.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics COVID-19 Claims
In the months since President Joe Biden warned Russias Vladimir Putin that he needed to crack down on ransomware gangs in his country, there hasnt been a massive attack like the one last May that resulted in gasoline shortages. But thats small comfort to Ken Trzaska.

Trzaska is president of Lewis & Clark Community College, a small Illinois school that canceled classes for days after a ransomware attack last month that knocked critical computer systems offline.

That first day, Trzaska said, I think all of us were probably up 20-plus hours, just moving through the process, trying to get our arms around what happened.

Even if the United States isnt currently enduring large-scale, front-page ransomware attacks on par with ones earlier this year that targeted the global meat supply or kept millions of Americans from filling their gas tanks, the problem hasnt disappeared. In fact, the attack on Trzaskas college was part of a barrage of lower-profile episodes that have upended the businesses, governments, schools and hospitals that were hit.

The colleges ordeal reflects the challenges the Biden administration faces in stamping out the threat  and its uneven progress in doing so since ransomware became an urgent national security problem last spring.

U.S. officials have recaptured some ransom payments, cracked down on abuses of cryptocurrency, and made some arrests. Spy agencies have launched attacks against ransomware groups and the U.S. has pushed federal, state and local governments, as well as private industries, to boost protections.

U.S.-Russian Agenda

Yet six months after Bidens admonitions to Putin, its hard to tell whether hackers have eased up because of U.S. pressure. Smaller-scale attacks continue, with ransomware criminals continuing to operate from Russia with seeming impunity. Administration officials have given conflicting assessments about whether Russias behavior has changed since last summer. Further complicating matters, ransomware is no longer at the top of the U.S.-Russia agenda, with Washington focused on dissuading Putin from invading Ukraine.

The White House said in a statement that it was determined to fight all ransomware through its various tools but that the governments response depends on the severity of the attack.

There are some that are law enforcement matters and others that are high impact, disruptive ransomware activity posing a direct national security threat that require other measures, the White House statement said.

Ransomware attacks _ in which hackers lock up victims data and demand exorbitant sums to return it _ surfaced as a national security emergency for the administration after a May attack on Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast.

The attack prompted the company to halt operations, causing gas shortages for days, though it resumed service after paying more than $4 million in ransom. Soon after came an attack on meat processor JBS, which paid an $11 million ransom.

Biden met with Putin in June in Geneva, where he suggested critical infrastructure sectors should be off limits for ransomware and said the U.S. should know in six months to a year whether we have a cybersecurity arrangement that begins to bring some order.

He reiterated the message in July, days after a major attack on a software company, Kaseya, that affected hundreds of businesses, and said he expected Russia to take action on cybercriminals when the U.S. provides enough information to do so.

Lesser Impact

Since then, there have been some notable attacks from groups believed to be based in Russia, including against Sinclair Broadcast Group and the National Rifle Association, but none of the same consequence or impact of those from last spring or summer.

One reason may be increased U.S. government scrutiny, or fear of it.

The Biden administration in September sanctioned a Russia-based virtual currency exchange that officials say helped ransomware gangs launder funds. Last month, the Justice Department unsealed charges against a suspected Ukrainian ransomware operator who was arrested in Poland, and has recovered millions of dollars in ransom payments. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, told The New York Times his agency has begun offensive operations against ransomware groups. The White House says that whole-of-government effort will continue.

I think the ransomware folks, the ones conducting them, are stepping back like, `Hey, if we do that, thats going to get the United States government coming after us offensively, Kevin Powers, security strategy adviser for cyber risk firm CyberSaint, said of attacks against critical infrastructure.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, have shared a small number of names of suspected ransomware operators with Russian officials, who have said they have started investigating, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Its unclear what Russia will do with those names, though Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted the countries have been having a useful dialogue and said a working mechanism has been established and is actually functioning.

Its also hard to measure the impact of individual arrests on the overall threat. Even as the suspected ransomware hacker awaits extradition to the U.S. following his arrest in Poland, another who was indicted by federal prosecutors was later reported by a British tabloid to be living comfortably in Russia and driving luxury cars.

Some are skeptical about attributing any drop-off in high-profile attacks to U.S. efforts.

It could have just been a fluke, said Dmitri Alperovitch, former chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. He said asking Russia to crack down on large-scale attacks wont work because its way too granular of a request to calibrate criminal activity they dont even fully control.

Conflicting Answers

Top American officials have given conflicting answers about ransomware trends since Bidens discussions with Putin. Some FBI and Justice Department officials say theyve seen no change in Russian behavior. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said theres been a discernible decrease in attacks but that it was too soon to say why.

Its hard to quantify the number of attacks given the lack of baseline information and uneven reporting from victims, though the absence of disruptive incidents is an important marker for a White House trying to focus its attention on the most significant national security risks and catastrophic breaches.

Victims of ransomware attacks in the past few months have included hospitals, small businesses, colleges like Howard University _ which briefly took many of its systems offline after discovering a September attack _ and Virginias legislature.

The attack at Lewis & Clark, in Godfrey, Illinois, was discovered two days before Thanksgiving when the schools IT director detected suspicious activity and proactively took systems offline, said Trzaska, the president.

A ransom note from hackers demanded a payment, though Trzaska declined to reveal the sum or identify the culprits. Though many attacks come from hackers in Russia or Eastern Europe, some originate elsewhere.

With vital education systems affected, including email and the schools online learning platform, administrators canceled classes for days after the Thanksgiving break and communicated updates to students via social media and through a public alert system.

The college, which had backups on the majority of its servers, resumed operations this month.

The ordeal was daunting enough to inspire Trzaska and another college president who he says endured a similar experience to plan a cybersecurity panel.

The stock quote from everyone, Trzaska said, is not if its going to happen but when its going to happen.

Suderman reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Moscow contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Cyber
The 10 people who lost their lives in a massive crowd surge at the Astroworld music festival in Houston died from compression asphyxia, officials announced.

Medical examiners with the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences in Houston had to wait several weeks following the Nov. 5 concert by rap superstar Travis Scott for additional test results before making final determinations on cause and manner of the deaths.

The 10 people who died were among 50,000 who attended the festival and were in the audience when Scotts concert turned deadly.

The youngest victim was 9-year-old Ezra Blount. The others who died ranged in age from 14 to 27. Medical examiners said contributing factors in one mans death were cocaine, methamphetamine and ethanol, a form of alcohol.

Some 300 people were injured and treated at the festival site and 25 were taken to hospitals.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed over injuries and deaths at the concert, where fans surged toward the stage during Scotts concert, squeezing people so tightly together that they could not breathe or move their arms.

Scott and the event organizers are the focus of a criminal investigation by Houston police. No one has been charged. No timetable has been set for when the investigation would be completed.

Scotts attorney reached out to the families of the 10 who died, offering to pay for their loved ones funeral costs. Several families turned down the offer.

County Judge Lina Hidalgo _ the top elected official in Harris County, which includes Houston _ had proposed a third-party probe of the planning and execution of the festival founded by Scott.

The Harris County administrator instead will work with other city and county entities to review security, fire and other safety plans at the county-owned NRG Park, where the festival was held.

Other members of Harris Countys governing body, known as a commissioners court, were concerned Hidalgos investigation could lead to legal liabilities for the county.

Experts in crowd safety say an investigation by neutral outsiders into the tragedy could help avoid potential conflicts of interest and promote transparency.

A 56-page event operations plan for the Astroworld festival detailed protocols for dangerous scenarios including an active shooter, bomb or terrorist threats, and severe weather. But it did not include information on what to do in the event of a crowd surge.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
For the fourth time this year, a Florida appeals court has decided in favor of Peoples Trust Insurance Co., requiring homeowners to let the carriers chosen contractor make the needed repairs.

Yes, this is a big one, said Joshua Beck, the Boca Raton attorney who represented the insurer in Peoples Trust Insurance Co. vs. Miguel and Maria Tosar. The case was decided Dec. 15 by Floridas 3rd District Court of Appeal.

This reaffirms that the policy provisions are enforceable. The insurer has a right to repair, Beck said.

Peoples Trust, headquartered in Deerfield Beach, is one of the largest insurers in Florida. Its chief operating officer is Tom Gallagher, a popular former Florida insurance commissioner.

The company helped pioneer a new property insurance business model more than a decade ago when it created its own contractors, Rapid Response Team and Rapid Response Team Roofing Inc. In return for discounts on premiums, policyholders agree to let Rapid Response make the repairs.

Plaintiffs attorneys and homeowners in Florida, though, have complained that the in-house contractors have, at least in some cases, provided only limited repairs, have done inferior work, and have used cheaper materials. A 2020 lawsuit by Miami homeowners charged that the insurer gave bonuses to contractors who cut corners, and that the workers caused their own damage and left repairs unfinished.

In the Tosar case, the insureds Miami-area home was damaged by Hurricane Irma in 2017. A Peoples Trust adjuster inspected the home a few weeks later, estimating repairs at $7,083. With the couples deductible at $6,180, and $32 in depreciation, the payout on the claim came to only $871.

Peoples Trust informed the Tosars that the claim would be covered, but that Rapid Response would have to do the work. The letter also explained that under the policy, if the owners disagreed, they should provide their own repair estimate. Six months later, the Tosars did that. Peoples Trust demanded an appraisal panel, pursuant to the policys appraisal clause. Under that provision, both sides choose appraisers and the panel provides a final repair estimate.

Instead of participating in the appraisal, though, the Tosars in August 2018 filed suit against Peoples Trust in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. In its opinion, the appeals court stated flatly that the suit falsely alleged that Peoples Trust  had denied coverage.

Peoples Trust then filed its own motion, asking the trial court to compel the homeowners to comply with the insurers right to repair the property with its preferred contractor, pay their deductible amount, and to participate in an appraisal process. The circuit judge ordered an appraisal.

An appraisal panel accepted the homeowners adjusters estimate and calculated replacement value at about $54,000. The Tosars then proceeded to find another contractor who would make the repairs, arguing that they were due loss payments from the insurance company, in keeping with a section of the policy.

Peoples Trust argued that by signing with another repair company, the Tosars had breached the contract of the policy.

Miami-Dade Judge David Miller sided with the homeowners and ordered Peoples Trust to pay more than $42,000 for the restoration work. The insurer appealed.

The 3rd DCA panels opinion, written by Judge Edwin Scales, reversed the trial court. The decision said that the trial judge transformed the appraisal award into an award of monetary damages, which was not warranted.

The Tosars had argued that a policy provision authorized the policyholders to begin their own repair work in certain circumstances and that Peoples Trust should pay at least what it would have paid to its own contractor. But the appeals court found that was misguided. Unlike some insurance appeals, which have turned on poorly worded policies, the Peoples Trust policy endorsement in this case is not ambiguous, the court found.

Contrary to the insureds suggestion, this provision does not authorize an insured, after Peoples Trust has exercised its right-to-repair option, either to hire its own contractor to effectuate the repairs or to obtain a loss payment, the 3rd DCA wrote.

Construing the policy that way would upend the insurers right-to-repair option. Previous court rulings have established that under the preferred-contractor policies, the insurer has a right and an obligation to use its own contractor.

When Peoples Trust timely exercised its right to repair the insureds covered loss, Peoples Trust was obligated to make those repairs in lieu of making a loss payment, the appeals court said. And once the appraisal panel had decided on an appraisal amount, the insureds were then contractually obligated to authorize RRT (Rapid Response Team) to perform the repairs and to pay the hurricane deductible.

The appeals court instructed the trial judge to order the homeowners to authorize Rapid Response to perform the repairs and pay their deductible.

Beck, the lawyer for Peoples Trust, called the decision a win for the insurer and for the homeowners, because the preferred contractors work will be warrantied for three years. Although $42,000 is considerably more than the carriers original estimate, the contractor will do a thorough job, he said.

They are going to restore the property to its pre-loss condition, Beck said. If there are any issues at all, theres a warranty on everything thats being done.

The attorney for the Tosars, Timothy Crutchfield, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Topics Carriers Florida Contractors
A Florida man has been sentenced to five years in prison for setting fires behind the same Tampa Bay-area grocery store three days in a row starting on Christmas last year.

Robert Timon Lovett, 50, of Bradenton, was sentenced Monday in Tampa federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to arson in September.

According to court documents, Lovett started fires behind a Publix grocery store in Parrish on Dec. 25, 26 and 27 of last year. On the second and third days, Lovett actually entered the store and purchased the lighter fluid he used to start the fires, both of which he set while the store was open for business, prosecutors said. The fire he set on Dec. 26 caused significant heat damage to the back of the store.

Law enforcement officers apprehended Lovett on Dec. 28, when he returned to the same Publix and again purchased lighter fluid, officials said. Lovett admitted to investigators that he started the fires.

Defense attorney Kathleen Sweeney said in a sentencing memo that Lovett had suffered from lifelong drug abuse and depression. Lovett lost his 10-year-old son to a bacterial infection in 2019, prompting a downward spiral, Sweeney said.

At some point, Lovett began writing letters to his dead son but later decided to burn them, Sweeney wrote. The attorney said Lovett had been high on methamphetamine and various pills for several days when he chose to burn the letters behind the Publix because he didnt think the concrete building was at risk of catching fire.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida
Solicitation by roofers may be a problem in many states, but in Georgia, authorities are now searching for a man who offered to inspect a homes roof after a storm then deliberately damaged more than 200 shingles.

The Georgia Insurance Commissioners office said Monday that a warrant had been issued for Paul Jeffrey Kelley, 57, of Whitesburg. The man was asked by a homeowner to inspect the roof, in March. Home security cameras showed Kelly damaging 241 shingles, enough to force the homeowner to replace his entire roof, Insurance Commissioner John King said in a news release.

King did not say if Kelley had any known ties to roofing contractors. Anyone with information about Kelleys whereabouts is asked to call the Insurance Departments investigations division at 404-463-6363.

Topics Georgia
Over a month has passed since flooding inundated northwest Washingtons Whatcom County that caused some $50 million in damage.

As Roger De Bruin returned to his flood-damaged home in Sumas recently, the word devastation came to his mind, KING-TV reported.

De Bruin bought the modest rambler six years ago and completely remodeled it. About 26 inches of water filled the home. De Bruin and his wife lost almost everything.

Theyre now staying with a friend. He expects to be out of his home for another six to nine months as he waits for insurance money and aid to become available. Complicating matters are workforce and supply chain issues caused by the pandemic.

Its difficult, De Bruin said. You get the runaround. You call one and they transfer you to someone else. In the end, I dont know where its gonna end up.

In Sumas alone, floods damaged about 85% of the homes. Sandbags remained stacked in driveways. The streets were largely deserted.

Homes sat gutted and empty with peoples belongings left in soggy piles outside to be hauled away. Government assistance has been slow to trickle in.

Just because the floodwaters arent around us right now doesnt mean theres not a huge need, Sumas Mayor Kyle Christensen said.

Christensen said it will be another month, at the earliest, before people learn how much, if any, aid they will receive.

The tough part for these families and businesses is waiting so long after youve lost so much, he said.

Volunteers have been feeding flood victims and helping clear away debris. The Whatcom Community Foundation has been distributing grant money of about $1,500 per household.

Many more volunteers will likely be needed because so many people did not have flood insurance, Christensen said.

As for De Bruin, also a volunteer firefighter, he suffered a mild heart attack while rescuing people from their homes when the flood first hit.

By the next day, he was back out in the community. He believes that sort of work ethic will help him and his community soldier through until brighter days come.

Hopefully you just take it a day at a time and move on, he said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Flood Washington
She didn't ram Yeats, Boland, Shakespeare or Plath into our heads, she didnt have to.

Ms Carroll's sheer love of language was enough.

A generally quiet woman, the energy in her voice was enough to engage the room as she described how peeling potatoes could become an act more divine than any religious ceremony, just as Seamus Heaney had intended.

The gentle drop of each skin into an agricultural steel bucket, the only sound breaking the silence. Ms Carroll taught us that the simplest of words and sentences can often resound the loudest.

When all the others were away at Mass, I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

Beyond the classroom, she got us involved in debating, organising a minibus to ferry us Covent girls to schools in Dublin with high gates and posh sounding names.

She entered us in short story and poetry competitions.

Most people can probably refer back to their own Ms Carroll, a teacher who had a lasting impact on them.

From the artistic primary teacher who encouraged creativity at a young age, to the PE teacher who spent afternoons standing on rain-sodden sidelines, or the one who spotted the student struggling with a trauma going on at home.

The maths teacher, geography teacher, Irish teacher, physics teacher or university lecturer who sparked a curiosity and passion for their particular subject.

This cannot be passed on through a Zoom screen.

As the Omicron variant takes hold, the Government and Nphet must acknowledge that this is the real reason we need to keep our schools open.

That's not to say that unnecessary risk should be tolerated.

With the Omicron variant now advancing across the country, we as a nation need to make individual decisions to ensure we keep our schools open in the new year.

Since March 2020, teachers and principals have had to up-skill, they have become experts in online learning and pods, have graduated in contact tracing and now are expected to be qualified in the acquisition of Hepa filters.

They have stood at whiteboards with the mantra 'schools are safe' constantly repeated at them from medics and ministers.

The constant 'schools are safe' refrain from the Government is like one of those overplayed Christmas tunes we all sing along to without listening to the words.

During a press briefing immediately after his state of the nation address on Friday evening, Taoiseach Micheal Martin again stressed that schools are "not drivers of the virus". Chief Medical Officer Tony Holohan reiterated that schools are "controlled environments".

When Virgin Media political correspondent Gavan Reilly tweeted out the Taoiseach's lines, the hundreds of comments in response had one predominant theme  disbelief.

One person suggested that anyone who can still say that a junior infants class is a controlled environment must never have visited a school.

It was also pointed out that classrooms remain a "controlled environment" but theatres with high ceilings and fresh air circulation are not, even when seated and masked audiences who have all shown Covid certs are limited to 50%.

Schools are only safe if they are made safe.

With the Omicron variant now advancing across the country, we as a nation need to make individual decisions to ensure we keep our schools open in the New Year.

But we also need the Education Minister Norma Foley to do her part.

Speaking in the Dail during an education debate last week, Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon, in acknowledging Ms Foley was not there as she had left after 30 minutes, said: "I cannot help but feel this is symbolic of a department that is not in control of what is happening on the ground and has been absent for much of the time, while the crisis has got worse in our schools."

As we enter the final days of term two realities now exist  on the Government side schools remain safe, but in the classroom, cases are surging.

Mr Gannon pointed out that in the previous two weeks the highest recorded number of Covid cases was among those five to 12-year-olds who "sit in those cold classrooms every day" before going home to their parents and grandparents.

We were told by the Minister that there was no crisis in getting substitute teachers while at the same time school principals were going on Twitter to call for substitute teachers to go to their schools.

After continuously claiming that schools, the safe places that they are, don't require air filters, the Government finally relented last week by making 62m in funding available for primary, special and post-primary schools.

Donnchadh O Laoghaire: 'This grant puts these filtration systems in competition with other desperately needed projects within a school, and that is wrong, especially at a time when school budgets are already overstretched.'

But this was not a full admission, instead, the extra money was announced under what Sinn Fein's education spokesperson Donnchadh O Laoghaire described as "the cloak of the minor works grant".

This grant "puts these filtration systems in competition with other desperately needed projects within a school, and that is wrong, especially at a time when school budgets are already overstretched," Mr O Laoghaire told the Dail.

"It is putting filters in competition with broken windows, doors, gutters or whatever other items that are badly needed. This is at a time when kids are freezing in their classrooms with the windows open."

As we enter yet another Covid wave, schools need every support and should not be deciding between Hepa air filtration systems and replacing a boiler on the blink.

In refusing to let go of what many now consider a stubborn insistence that schools are safe, the Government is ignoring the real reason why we need to keep our children and students in the classroom.

To all the Carrolls out there a very merry Christmas and in the New Year let's hope the Government has truly made schools safe for your return.

Did you know? The light that shines from an upstairs window at Aras an Uachtarain, which is visible from the main road through the Phoenix Park, is a symbolic beacon. It is there to light the way for Irish emigrants and their descendants, welcoming them to their homeland. It was first placed there by President Mary Robinson and builds on an old Irish tradition of people putting a candle in their windows on Christmas Eve.

Political week in years gone by

1889

Dec 27: The Cork Examiner reported that on Christmas Eve the streets of Cork presented a very gay appearance. In language truly of its time, the report continued: All classes jostled one another in their eagerness to make their purchases. The horny-handed son of toil struggled with the wealthy-curled darling at the tobacconist shop.

1948

Dec 21: The Republic of Ireland Act 1948, was signed into law formally ending the statutory role of the British monarchy in this country. The Cork Examiner reported that in the quiet of his study as a newsreel camera hummed, President Sean T O Ceallaigh signed the Bill with a fountain pen.

1967

Dec 27: No news made the news in 1967 where under the headline Verdict: A Quiet Christmas, the Cork Examiner reported that indications are that Christmas was a very quiet holiday all round.

1994

Dec 22: The Cork Examiner carried a front page picture of the new marine minister Hugh Coveney giving the thumbs up after alighting from the Government jet in Cork. He had arrived back from Brussels where he had scored a major victory for the Irish fishing industry by forcing tough curbs on Spains powerful fishing fleet in Irish waters.

2009

Dec 22: In roundtable interview with reporters, then Taoiseach Brian Cowen admitted that 2009 would go down as the most difficult year in his political life. But he added: Ive been lucky to have good colleagues who are equally determined to put the country first. This wasnt about politics this year. The countrys future was at stake.

Looking back

With the Dail and Seanad on recess this week we are looking back, rather than forward, and what a year it has been...

January

We entered the year amid a Covid surge which put us back into level 5 lockdown as hospitals were under severe pressure. The much anticipated Mother and Baby Homes Commission report was also published. It revealed that government and other authorities knew everything but did little.

February

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly was forced to erect a 6ft fence around his home after being targeted by protestors.

March

President Joe Biden described his "deep, deep affection for Ireland," during a virtual St Patrick's Day meeting with the Taoiseach.

April

Announcing the reopening of retail, sports, hotels and nationwide travel, the Taoiseach announced that "a summer of hope and caution" was on the cards.

May

With restrictions on large gatherings still in place a marquee erected for wedding guests on a halting site was removed after gardai turned up in force.

June

Pubs and other hospitality was allowed to reopen, but for outdoor service only as the Government further eased restrictions.

July

The Cabinet appointed former Childrens Minister Katherine Zappone to a new role of Irelands Special Envoy to the UN for freedom of opinion and expression, which sparked a summer-long controversy.

Meanwhile, thousands of people were told to get private PCR tests costing up to 400 to allow them leave the country as international travel resumed and the Government's Covid cert helpline buckled under the demand of calls.

August

A rescue operation was mounted to get as many Irish citizens out of Afghanistan after the Taliban took control.

September

The much-anticipated 20bn Housing for All plan was published. It promised to provide deliver 160,000 homes over the next five years.

October

The night-time economy was the last remaining sector to get the go-ahead to reopen.

November

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive Sean FitzPatrick died.

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A Limerick councillors apology over racist comments against Travellers on social media means nothing unless it is backed up by positive actions, Traveller rights groups have said.

Fine Gael's Limerick City North councillor, Olivia O'Sullivan, has apologised for two tweets made in 2012, now deleted, in which she used the word 'knacker'.

One of the tweets in question made reference to "killing knackers".

I have deleted two tweets published before I entered public life. The posts, made in 2012, were wrong and disrespectful, I apologise for this and regret any hurt or offence caused, Cllr OSullivan said.

However, Mags Casey, chairperson of the National Traveller Mental Health Network, says the apology isnt enough and called on Ms OSullivan to follow up on it with her actions.

It is not good enough to just make an apology. She needs to come out and do something really positive, and bring about a change for Travellers. Actions speak louder than words. Her apology now means nothing to me, or the people I have in the graveyard, said Ms Casey.

Ms Casey said that members of the settled community in Ireland need to be aware of the pain associated with the word 'knacker'.

The horrible thing is that in Irish society, you wouldnt get away with using the N-word to describe black people, it would be unacceptable, and rightly so.

But when settled members of society call us knackers, it is accepted. It's actually normalised. And they don't actually know the damage that they're doing to us, and our kids and our community, Ms Casey said.

Martin Collins, co-director of Pavee Point, was shocked at the use of the term.

It is shocking racism one more time from a public representative. We need the leaders of these parties to take strong action to stamp this out, he said.

Traveller activist Rosemarie Maughan said it was heartbreaking to see a Tweet calling for our genocide.

We have to be the generation that says Travellers matter and hold those who express incitement to hatred against accountable, she said.

Ms Maughan also moved to call out people who were using these tweets and the reaction for their own political gain.

It is also vital one calls out anti-Traveller racism for the right reasons not simply to dig up dirt on opposing political parties. We are tired of being used and abused by our political system and their supporters, she said.
Vicky Phelan is to be granted the honorary freedom of the City after a vote by members of Limerick City and County Council today.

In an emotional special meeting of the council, tears were shed as councillors showed their support for the motion to honour the Cervical Check campaigner.

Mayor Daniel Butler said he had been inundated with an outpouring of love and respect for Ms Phelan:

Vicky is an inspiration. She has faced and continues to face her challenges head-on with a drive and a determination that has garnered the respect and admiration of all.

The honour, Mr Butler said, would be for her work in highlighting the cervical cancer scandal and her tireless support of women who have been affected and are fighting for justice.

Her work encapsulates the ideals of the freedom of Limerick. She has empowered women to be able to speak their truth and ensure their health is treated with respect and attention it deserves, he added.

The motion was passed unanimously. The Mayor said it was worth noting that Limerick has only ever seen four women get the honour since 1877.

Vicky Phelan and Charlie Bird met up in Limerick after the veteran broadcaster contacted Ms Phelan after her Late Late Show appearance.

This will make Ms Phelan, if she accepts the honour, the fifth recipient. The others are Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon, Maud Gonne, Kathleen Clarke, and Trudy Hunt.

Emotional scenes at council meeting Fine Gael councillor John Sheahan formally proposed the motion, which was seconded by his party colleague, Liam Galvin. Fianna Fail councillor Catherine Slattery said when we hear the name Vicky Phelan, we automatically think of the word brave". She also suggested Ruth Morrissey, another Limerick woman and Cervical Check campaigner who passed away last year, be recognised. Vicky Phelans impact on the members of the council was clear, as Fine Gael councillor Olivia OSullivan credited Ms Phelan as the reason she initially ran for election: I'm probably not the only woman motivated to run in the local elections in 2019 because of Vicky. Her story convinced me that we needed more women at all decision-making tables. Thank you Vicky for what you have done. Fine Gael councillor Sarah Kiely said Vicky had empowered her, and all women, to speak their truth, for themselves and for the good of others. The emotional importance of the vote to Ms Kiely was clear, as she struggled to hold back tears. Vicky has given me and the woman of Ireland the courage to push for change. She and her family have been through so much together. Something I can relate to, unfortunately, she added. Ms Kiely recently appeared on Claire Byrne Live on RTE television, where she bravely spoke of her husband's death during a debate about assisted dying. The Mayor, Daniel Butler, concluded by saying: We have all spoken with one voice today. We may come from different political realities. But I think we're united in our humanity. I think we're all united in our love and respect for Vicky.

Previously, Limerick City Council used to bestow the title Freeman of Limerick City prior to the amalgamation of the local authorities in Limerick in 2014.

Vicky Phelan joins President Michael D Higgins, US presidents John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II, UL founding president Ed Walsh, JP McManus, rugby legend Paul OConnell, Bill Whelan, Pat Cox and Thomas Ryan, Terry Wogan, Det Garda Jerry McCabe (awarded posthumously) and Det Garda Ben OSullivan as a recipient of the Freedom of Limerick.

The ceremony will be held in the New Year subject to Covid-19 guidelines.
Economy Global Clothing Factory Deal Ditched in Protest at Myanmar Junta

H&M appears to have returned to military-ruled Myanmar for supplies.

Action Collaboration Transformation (ACT), an agreement between 20 global brands, including Swedens H&M, Spains Inditex and Britains Primark, and IndustriALL Global Union (IGU) in pursuit of living wages for workers in clothing supply chains, has ceased operations in military-ruled Myanmar.

IGU represents 50 million workers in 140 countries in the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors, campaigning for solidarity, better working conditions and trade union rights.

On Dec. 15, ACT said the decision is the consequence of the withdrawal of the IGUs domestic trade union affiliate, the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar, from ACTs operations because it is no longer able to operate freely.

The decision was challenging because Myanmar has been an ACT priority country since 2018, the announcement said. ACT said it will reassess if the situation in Myanmar changes.

An employee from the Shwepyithar industrial zone in Yangon told The Irrawaddy: Our garment factory ceased operations this month. We were paid full compensation. The factory manufactures foreign-brand coats. The management said it was because there are no new orders.

A garment manufacturer, however, said the sector is operating as normal and orders are steady.

H&M, Zara of fashion group Inditex and Primark are supplied from factories in Myanmar, creating tens of thousands of jobs.

H&M paused its orders with around 40 suppliers in Myanmar following the military coup in February only to put in new orders in May.

Last year there were around 600 factories in Myanmar, providing around 450,000 jobs, according to the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association.

Companies from Australia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the US, Germany, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Norway and France have ceased or suspended operations in the 10 months since the coup.

Among them are Australian resource giant Woodside, Taiwans KOI Bubble Tea Shop, US pretzel retailer Auntie Annes, Japanese tire producer Bridgestone, German food giant Metro and Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas, Japanese retailer AEON, Thailands largest industrial estate developer Amata Corporation, French multinational electric utility company EDF, Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, UK energy and urban development company Sembcorp and British America Tobacco and Japanese automaker Toyota, according to the Institute for Strategy and Policy in Myanmar.

Norwegian telecom operator Telenor and Australias Myanmar Metals Limited have sold their operations, and Japanese beverage giant Kirin Holdings and Singapores Virginia Tobacco Company Limited have terminated partnerships with the military-owned conglomerate Myanma Economic Holdings Ltd.



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Burma A Dozen Junta Troops Killed in Landmine Blast in Myanmars Capital, Civilian Fighters Say

Myanmar military tanks, trucks and soldiers are seen on the road to Parliament and the Presidents Office in Naypyitaw, outside a government guesthouse for lawmakers on the first day of the coup on Feb. 1. / The Irrawaddy

Local resistance forces on Monday used landmines to ambush a military column in Pyinmana Township in the capital Naypyitaw, the military regimes seat of government.

The Naypyitaw Peoples Defense Force (PDF), a civilian armed resistance group, said in a statement that at least 12 junta soldiers were killed and five injured in the attack.

The group said it ambushed the column at around 11.30 a.m. on Monday. One of two military vehicles in the column plunged down the side of a cliff after hitting the landmines, it said.

At least 12 of those on board the vehicle that was blown off the cliff were killed, and five in the second vehicle were injured, the group said in the statement. The PDF group suffered no casualties, it added.

Locals said the PDFs claim to have carried out an attack was true, confirming that the military column was attacked with landmines. However, they couldnt verify the casualties, as the area is isolated.

In October, the group attacked a security gate in Pyinmana, killing six junta personnel. The group also targeted a branch of military-owned Myawaddy Bank in Pyinmana in October in an attack that killed two soldiers.

The Naypyitaw PDF announced on Dec. 5 that it would increase its attacks on regime forces in retribution for their deadly ramming of peaceful protesters in Yangon on the same day, and for brutally killing unarmed civilians across the country.

Since the Feb. 1 coup, regime forces have killed at least 1,348 people including children, student activists, protesters, politicians and striking civil servants, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a rights group. More than 11,000 people have been arrested since the coup.



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Myanmar Junta Shutters UN Special Envoys Office

Myanmar Junta Seizes Around 300 Mandalay Gem Traders

Scores of Myanmar Junta Troops Die in Failed Attack on MNDAA Base, Kokang Fighters Say
Burma Myanmar Junta Seizes Around 300 Mandalay Gem Traders

Jade and gem trading in Mandalay.

Myanmar junta troops raided two jade trading compounds in Mandalay on Sunday, detaining around 300 people, including Chinese brokers, according to gems traders.

More than 50 personnel were involved in the raids where jade is sold with the online Chinese payment platform, WeChat.

Nearly 200 traders were detained at the Happy Birthday jade and gems company in Maha Aung Myay Township and around 100 more were seized at the Shwe Duwun jade and gems company in Aungmyaythazan Township.

Jade is bought over the internet in China. The military regime has banned selling jade via WeChat where most of the trade is done but traders have no choice, said a Maha Aung Myay gem merchant.

The majority of detainees are brokers and only a small number are traders, said another merchant. The detainees were reportedly taken to Obo Prison.

There were reports that detainees will be fined 1 million kyats (US$563) each and 500,000 kyats to get a motorbike back.

One of my cousins was detained while selling jade at Happy Birthday. He said they were asked to pay 1 million kyats per person to get released. The junta troops have also kept their motorbikes, phones and jade, said the Maha Aung Myay merchant.

An owner of a jade and gem polishing business in Chanayethazan Township said: People have to do whatever job is available because of the instability. I think the junta troops raided because they are cash-strapped. It seems the junta commanders allowed subordinates to carry out the raids to support them.

There is a municipal jade market in Maha Aung Myay which closed in March last year due to COVID-19 and was reopened by the junta-appointed mayor in October.

However, most traders and brokers use unofficial markets as they did while the official market was closed.

The junta-appointed Mandalay City Development Committee called for all trade to be conducted at its Maha Aung Myay market. Junta troops have reportedly threatened to shoot anyone trading outside the official market.

A Chanmyathazi gem merchant said: The regime wants to control the trade. But no one dares to go there because they are afraid of both sides. Jade and gem traders and brokers are having a hard time. Few will use the official market because the regime makes random checks, asking for traders details. People prefer the unofficial markets.

Meanwhile, resistance groups have warned against trading at the official market to prevent the regime from receiving taxes and rent. There have been at least five explosions near the market since it reopened.



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Burma Myanmar Junta Shutters UN Special Envoys Office

Christine Schraner Burgener, UN Special Envoy for Myanmar, briefs the Security Council on the situation in Myanmar in February 2019. / UN

Myanmars military regime has shut down the office of the United Nations (UN) Special Envoy for the country, reasoning that the term of the envoy, Christine Schraner Burgener, is over.

The junta did not offer any further elaboration about the closure of the office in the Myanmar capital Naypyitaw in their statement released Monday.

Although Swiss diplomat Mrs Burgeners term ended in October, the mission is ongoing as in the same month UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed another diplomat, Noeleen Heyzer, to be the successor to Mrs Burgener.

The position of UN Special Envoy was first created in 2018 mainly to tackle the Rohingya crisis in western Myanmars Rakhine State, in partnership with the then National League for Democracy government. The envoys office in Naypyitaw was opened in December of the same year.

Since the juntas coup in February, the relationship between the regime and the UN has been bumpy. The world body condemned the military takeover, demanding the release of detained democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and others arrested. The UN has also delayed a decision on the regimes request to replace the Myanmar Ambassador to the UN with someone loyal to them, after the current ambassador openly denounced the junta at the UN.

Last week, the regimes Ministry of Foreign Affairs categorically rejected the adoption of a UN resolution on the Situation of Human Rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar at the Third Committee of the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly.

As the modalities of formulating the resolutions and organizing the dialogues are fundamentally flawed, it is unacceptable to see that the said resolution against Myanmar is full of distorted and erroneous elements including the term Rohingya which has never existed in any legal and historical context of Myanmar and has never been recognized by the people of Myanmar, said the junta.



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Burma Scores of Myanmar Junta Troops Die in Failed Attack on MNDAA Base, Kokang Fighters Say

MNDAA troops display firearms, ammunition and equipment seized from the Myanmar military after clashes in Mongkoe, Shan State on Sunday. / The Kokang

Almost 100 junta soldiers including several army captains were killed or wounded in fierce fighting with the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in northern Shan State on Sunday, according to The Kokang, an MNDAA information page.

The intense clash occurred near Phaung Sai Village in Mongkoe District when regime forces attempted to occupy a military base of the MNDAA, which is also known as the Kokang Group.

Around 500 junta ground troops from six battalions made 10 attempts to occupy the MNDAAs base. Military jet fighters bombarded the base and an artillery unit fired more than 1,500 artillery rounds at it, the local media outlet reported.

The regime forces were forced to retreat, however, leaving the bodies of their fallen combatants, a number of firearms and a quantity of ammunition on the battlefield. Two MNDAA troops were also killed and six others wounded.

Photos show the bodies of regime soldiers left on the battlefield as well as firearms and ammunition seized by the MNDAA.

The MNDAA and regime forces have been engaging in fierce clashes in Mongkoe and Pansai in northern Shan State since early July.

In the five months from July to November, almost 200 junta soldiers were killed and around 700 wounded during a total of 263 clashes with the MNDAA, according to Li Tianfu, a spokesperson for the ethnic armed organization.

Across the country the military regime is facing increasingly frequent attacks and ambushes by Peoples Defense Force groups and ethnic armed organizations including the Kachin Independence Army, MNDAA, Karenni Army and the armed wing of the Karen National Union.

Meanwhile, the regime is suffering heavy casualties daily as a result of continuous attacks by the PDFs and ethnic armed groups.

The military regime has been totally tight-lipped about the clashes and casualty figures, however, with the exception of a few PDF attacks.



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Burma UN Calls For Urgent Assistance For Myanmar Refugees Fleeing to Thailand

Civilians crossing the Thaung Yin River on Sunday to take shelter in Thailand after junta shelling near Myawaddy, Karen State. / The Irrawaddy

The United Nations (UN) refugee agency has stressed the need for urgent assistance and protection for displaced people from Myanmars Karen State who have fled to Thailand, as the number of people who have crossed into the country reached almost 4,000.

As fighting has intensified between the Myanmar military and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and civilian Peoples Defense Force (PDF) groups, residents of villages in Karen States Myawaddy Township on the Myanmar-Thai border have fled their homes. Some 3,900 people had sought shelter in Thailand by Monday, while an estimated 10,000 others are now internally displaced.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it is concerned for the welfare of these civilians and has approached the Thai authorities with offers of assistance including the provision of emergency aid, it said in a statement released on Monday.

UNHCR and NGOs have requested urgent access to the refugees to ascertain and deliver to them the necessary humanitarian and protection assistance, the statement said.

Fighting between junta troops and the KNLA broke out last week in Karen States Myawaddy Township after military regime raids on the new town of Lay Kay Kaw close to the frontier with Thailand. Many pro-democracy activists, striking civil servants and other people opposed to the junta have taken refuge in Lay Kay Kaw since the militarys February 1 coup.

During the raids, junta forces arrested around 40 people including two elected lawmakers from the National League for Democracy Party. Since then, fighting has intensified with the regime bombarding areas around Lay Kay Kaw with artillery.

On Monday, the Karen National Union issued a statement urging the UN to convene an emergency meeting to declare a no-fly zone in the Lay Kay Kaw area as the regime could carry out airstrikes in the region at any time.



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Commentary As War Brews in Myanmars Karen State, Civilian PDF Groups Welcome the Fight

Local PDF members at a checkpoint in southern Myanmar in October 2021. / AFP

A few weeks ago, a young man in his mid-20s with the alias Dragon made an urgent call to his family and told them the Myanmar military was preparing to launch an assault on Lay Kay Kaw new city in Karen States Myawaddy Township, where he and his colleagues were hiding.

I have no weapons to defend myself We are short of cash; can you help me buy a gun? he pleaded with them. Upon hearing the news, the family, with help from relatives and friends, managed to raise the money he neededaround US$3,000to buy an M16 A4 automatic rifle.

Dragon is one of thousands of Peoples Defense Force (PDF) members inside Myanmar who, desperate and ill-equipped, have placed themselves under the command of ethnic armed forces who have weapons and experience in guerrilla warfare. Many PDF groups have received little arms support so far, however, and have been forced to find their own funds to equip themselves.

Eventually, a grateful Dragon received the money from his family, who live in a major city in Myanmar, and placed an order for the rifle, but before his weapon could be delivered, the fighting arrived in the area where he and his friends were hiding and undergoing arms training.

Indeed, many believe the armed clashes in Lay Kay Kaw, which is located across the border from Thailands Mae Sot, herald the start of a wider armed conflict in Karen State. The military is better equipped than the Karen forces and the PDFs, but the latter are richer in morale and fighting spirit. They have been waiting for this war, though they know the enemy is powerful.

So far, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and cooperating forces including the PDFs have been able to push the regimes troops back out of the area controlled by the KNLAs Brigade 6.



Peace village under attack

Lay Kay Kaw was built from scratch starting in 2014 with the help of Japans Nippon Foundation after a ceasefire agreement was reached in January 2012 between the Karen National Union (or KNU, of which the KNLA is the armed wing) and the Myanmar military.

The construction of Lay Kay Kaw, which is located near Myawaddy close to the Thai border and administered by the KNLAs Brigade 6, was touted as a sign that the peace talks were working. In the mid-1980s the local Palu area had been the scene of serious armed clashes that had caused many of the local residents to flee.

According to media reports, in 2018, there were a total of 3,199 people living in Lay Kay Kaw, many of whom were villagers who had returned from refugee camps in Thailand. Today, they are again fleeing to Thailand or to safer places inside Karen State. The sad fact is that many of these people have spent their entire lives running.

Since the coup in February, many urban activists have fled to Lay Kay Kaw.

Military tensions escalated last week when some 200 junta soldiers raided the area, alleging that democracy activists and members of PDF civilian resistance groups were hiding there. Two MPs-elect from the National League for Democracy (NLD), U Wai Lin Aung and Dr. Pyae Phyo, were among around 40 people detained by the junta on Tuesday last week.

The raids and clashes followed the juntas accusation that the KNU, Myanmars oldest ethnic insurgent force, was supporting and sheltering striking civil servants and anti-regime armed resistance groups.

The junta claimed that brigades 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 of the KNLA offered training and gave shelter to those evading arrest by the regime and supplied arms to groups engaged in urban guerrilla warfare in a number of cities and towns in the country.

Thousands of activists, participants in the Civil Disobedience Movement, professors, physicians, politicians and MPs, as well as celebrities and their families have sought shelter in ethnic insurgent-controlled territories, and Karen State is one of the more popular destinations. The KNLA Brigade 6 area alone is now home to more than 3,000 dissidents and PDF members who have fled there since the coup.

Fighting broke out on Dec. 15 and has continued since. This week, Myanmar junta troops have sustained heavy losses in Lay Kay Kaw at the hands of a combined force of troops from the KNLA and PDF civilian resistance groups. A combination of Karen forces including the Karen National Defense Organization and Democratic Karen Benevolent Army have joined the fight with the help of Dragon and his many young PDF colleagues who have been waiting to join the melee.

The onetime peace village is now the scene of intense fighting; several video clips have emerged showing the bodies of dead junta soldiers scattered around.

So far, dozens of junta soldiers have been killed, prompting the military to bring in artillery. More than 100 shells have struck civilian residences, forcing thousands to flee to Thailand.

The much-touted Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), signed on Oct. 15, 2015 between the Myanmar military, the government of then President Thein Sein and eight ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) including the KNU, is all but dead.

Indeed, a full-scale war in southern Myanmars Karen State now appears inevitable.

Myanmars opposition forces including Karen and PDF groups are eager for this fight. Their fighting spirit is high and the level of support they enjoy from citizens, families and friends all over Myanmar is unprecedented.

Thailand has sent troops to man the border, as many thousands of villagers from Lay Kay Kaw and surrounding areas are now in need of shelter amid junta shelling and fears of airstrikes. Some 5,000 have fled across the frontier, many of them women and children, and approximately 10,000 more are still internally displaced.

Regarding the refugee situation, the shadow civilian National Unity Government (NUG) appealed to Bangkok to allow the IDPs fleeing Lay Kay Kaw and seeking refuge to cross the border safely as soon as possible.

The shadow government also urged the international community to provide urgent humanitarian and emergency assistance to the IDPs and urged the international community to strongly call for a de-escalation of violence.

Sadly, it may well be too late by the time international community wakes up to the reality of the situation in Karen State and in Myanmar.

What about the junta?

The regime has sent in more reinforcements, including heavy artillery and jet fighters. It is not going to back down, though initial reports indicate that they have suffered heavy casualties. Karen insurgents have noticed a difference between their current enemy and the Myanmar military they engaged in serious battles with in the 1980s and 1990s, during which they lost territory and many lives. These days the military has no public support, morale is low and commanding officers abilities are either poor or woefully compromised.

Overstretched, the junta is being forced to pursue a dual strategy. While it doubles down militarily in Karen State, it is offering an olive branch in the north.

Even as the fighting broke out with the combined Karen forces on Dec. 15, a junta peace delegation traveled to Mong La in the north to hold talksbrokered with Chinas helpwith insurgents based in that part of the country.

The six EAOs are all members of the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC) led by the United Wa State Army (UWSA).

The talks were also joined by Mong Las National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), the Arakan Army (AA), the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), Kokangs Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Shan State Progressive Party/Shan State Army North (SSPP/SSA-N). Notably, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) did not participate.

The KIA has accommodated and trained thousands of PDF forces in its territory. These PDFs are now engaging junta soldiers in upper Sagaing Region and Magwe Region. Undoubtedly, the PDF forces in the north are pleased to see the fighting in southern Myanmar. Indeed, they have been waiting for this to happen.

Notably, according to delegates involved in the talks in Mong La, the juntas top-ranking generals were surprisingly cordial and conciliatory toward the northern-based EAOs they once branded as terrorist organizations.

Several ethic insurgent leaders who have fought the Myanmars brutal military for decades have concludednot for the first timethat only if you have guns will the junta respect you. This time it seems they have been proved correct. And the PDF forces have heard the message.



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This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
Today

Partly cloudy this morning. Increasing clouds with periods of showers this afternoon. High 52F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with clearing overnight. Some mixed winter precipitation possible. Low 24F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.

Tomorrow

Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High 36F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
China blacklisted four members of a US federal commission on religious freedom on Tuesday in the latest tit-for-tat response to Washingtons own sanctions targeting alleged perpetrators of genocide in Xinjiang.

The plight of Chinas Muslim minority Uyghurs living in Xinjiang has contributed to worsening diplomatic relations between Western powers and Beijing, which denies any abuses.

Washington has slapped sanctions on a growing list of Chinese politicians and companies as well as a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics, sparking fury in Beijing and reciprocal measures.

On Tuesday China announced the latest targets  four members of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Beijings Foreign Ministry named chairwoman Nadine Maenza, vice chairman Nury Turkel, as well as commissioners Anurima Bhargava and James W. Carr as newly sanctioned.

These countermeasures include the prohibition of the above-mentioned persons from entering China and the freezing of their assets in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters.

Chinese citizens and institutions are also prohibited from dealing with these people.

Set up in 1998, USCIRF is a federal commission that surveys religious freedom around the world and has been a vocal critic of Chinas treatment of Uighur Muslims, a rare bipartisan issue in polarised Washington.

Campaigners say that at least one million Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in camps in Chinas northwestern Xinjiang region.

Human rights groups and foreign governments have found evidence of what they say is mass detentions, forced labour, political indoctrination, torture and forced sterilisation. Washington has described it as genocide.

After initially denying the existence of the Xinjiang camps, China later defended them as vocational training centres aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.
China blacklisted four members of a US federal commission on religious freedom on Tuesday in the latest tit-for-tat response to Washingtons own sanctions targeting alleged perpetrators of genocide in Xinjiang.

The move came as Beijing also hit out at Washington for appointing a new special coordinator for Tibet and blasted global powers over their criticism of local elections in Hong Kong that vetted out the opposition.

Chinas treatment of Tibetans, Muslim minority Uyghurs in Xinjiang and an ongoing crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong have contributed to worsening diplomatic relations between Western powers and Beijing.

Xinjiang in particular has prompted Washington to slap sanctions on a growing list of Chinese politicians and companies as well as a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics, sparking fury in Beijing and reciprocal measures.

On Tuesday China announced the latest targets  four members of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Beijings foreign ministry named chairwoman Nadine Maenza, vice chairman Nury Turkel, as well as commissioners Anurima Bhargava and James W. Carr as newly sanctioned.

These countermeasures include the prohibition of the above-mentioned persons from entering China and the freezing of their assets in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters.

Chinese citizens and institutions are also prohibited from dealing with these people.

Set up in 1998, USCIRF is a federal commission that surveys religious freedom around the world and has been a vocal critic of Chinas treatment of Uighur Muslims, a rare bipartisan issue in polarised Washington.

The announcement came days after the US unleashed a volley of new actions over Xinjiang that included a ban on virtually all imports from the region  a major global cotton producer  over forced labour allegations.

It has also recently blacklisted Chinese companies like drone maker DJI and artificial intelligence startup SenseTime over their alleged work with authorities in Xinjiang.

 Tibet and Hong Kong 

Chinas previous reciprocal sanctions have included European, British and US lawmakers, academics who study Xinjiang and a London law firm.

Campaigners say that at least one million Uyghurs and other Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in camps in Chinas northwestern Xinjiang region after a series of bloody attacks.

Human rights groups and foreign governments have found evidence of what they say is mass detentions, forced labour, political indoctrination, torture and forced sterilisation. Washington has described it as genocide.

After initially denying the existence of the Xinjiang camps, China later defended them as vocational training centres aimed at reducing the appeal of Islamic extremism.

On Monday the US also named a new special coordinator for Tibetan Issues, who will be tasked with restarting dialogue between the Dalai Lama and China, as well as promoting respect for the human rights of Tibetans.

Zhao said China was firmly opposed to the move.

Tibet affairs are purely Chinas internal affairs and brook no interference from any foreign forces, he said Tuesday.

He also took exception to criticism from G7 and European nations over this weekends poll in Hong Kong.

World powers condemned Sundays tightly vetted legislature vote in a series of coordinated statements that said Beijings decision to reduce directly elected seats and control who could stand had eroded democracy in the Chinese territory.

These Western countries should face up to the reality that Hong Kong has returned to China for 24 years, Zhao said.

ehl-jta/rox/rbu

DJI
Just a few weeks ago, New York City seemed to be a relative bright spot in the United States fight against the new crown virus. It is now a hot spot, facing a dazzling peak of cases, scrambled tests, the dilemma of major events and exhausting deja vu.

A wave of cases triggered by omicron is sweeping across the countrys most populous city, which was a nightmare test case in the country at the beginning of the pandemic. Although health officials stated that the spring of 2020 is no longer an important reason, some Broadway shows abruptly canceled their performances, the requirements for indoor masks have returned, and it is difficult to test them.

It is disappointing that we have not developed a better system for this, and we have not better prepared for another wave of epidemics, Jordan Thomas waited for testing at her health clinic in the city on Monday. Said in the fourth hour. Close to downtown Brooklyn.

With the temperature hovering near zero, Nina Clarke joined the team for the third time since symptoms began on Thursday. Once again, she finally walked away.

I stood there in the cold and said,I cant do this,' she said. No matter where you go, there is a line.

As officials and health experts urged people not only to conduct tests but also to bolster vaccines, a private pharmacy in Lower Manhattan lined up for an hour.

I just want to stay optimistic, Inga Chen said while waiting for the booster.

After closing some test centers and supporting pop-up test vehicles last month due to insufficient demand, the city once again raced to expand production capacity. The 130,000 tests conducted daily at city-sponsored sites have doubled the number three weeks ago. Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that the city will add 20 fixed sites and three vans this week.it is also Plan to distribute 500,000 home test kits.

Dr. Mitchell Katz, who is in charge of the citys public hospital system, said that officials did not expect so much news about omicron or insufficient supply of home test kits. At the same time, he said, the smaller test site encountered staffing issues this weekend because the workers themselves were infected with the virus.

Katz said the city will now ensure that someone is ready to fill in and take other measures to ease the pressure of testing.

The United States is responding to the rise of omicron and the months-long surge driven by the delta variant of the virus, and infection rates in many other areas of the United States are much higher than those in New York City last week. However, even after nearly two years of viral surprises, the speed of the impact here still makes health experts feel uneasy.

Well, we have never seen this in #NYC before, Dr. Jay Varma, the mayors public health adviser, said on Twitter on Thursday, referring to the rising number of positives in the previous few days. Detection rate.

From Wednesday to Saturday, nearly 42,600 people in the city tested positive, compared with less than 35,800 for the entire month of November. Since testing has been widely available, the city has never tested positive for so many people in such a short period of time; it is not clear how many people contracted the virus during the first surge in New York City in the spring of 2020.

The number of hospitalizations is also increasing, but at a much slower rate. As of the middle of last week, the number of new enrollments in the city averaged about 110 per day, about twice the number of a month ago. But the average at this time last year was about 230, and it exceeded 1,600 in early April 2020.

At that time, the average daily death toll was close to 800, and it was 100 in late January this year. As of the middle of last week, it was fairly stable, with about a dozen.

The number of hospitalizations and deaths tends to decrease as the number of cases rises and falls. But officials pointed out that in South Africa, where the omicron variant was first discovered, the surge in cases was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in hospitalizations and deaths.

The New York Hospital stated that they have seen moderate but controlled growth.

For example, Dr. John DAngelo, the general director of Northwell Health, the states largest private healthcare system, said that as of Friday, approximately 400 patients were positive for COVID-19 in nearly 20 hospitals in and around New York City. patient. operate. This number is an increase from the approximately 300 people a few weeks ago, but it is only a fraction of the 1,350 in January last year and the 3,500 in early spring 2020.

In addition, according to Dr. Fritz Francois, director of operations at Katz and NYU Langone Private Medical System Hospital, in general, todays COVID-19 patients do not need to stay as long as they did in the early days.

Nonetheless, hospitals are preparing for staffing tightening due to infection or exposure forcing staff to stay at home. Katz said that clinics in the public system are shifting to almost all virtual visits so that some nurses and assistants can be transferred to hospitals and testing points.

We know how to do this. We are ready, he said in a virtual press conference with the Democratic mayor.

In some respects, this is not comparable to the terrible first attack of the virus. At that time, no one was vaccinated, wearing masks was almost unheard of in New York, and clinicians were only just beginning to learn how to treat COVID-19.

Nevertheless, some public health experts say that officials here and elsewhere have not yet learned how to deal with it.

Dr. Stanley Weiss, a professor of epidemiology at Rutgers University, said: We have been seeing insufficient response. He believes that officials should immediately redefine full vaccination to include booster vaccination; restrict indoor public spaces to vaccination Vaccines, booster vaccines and frequent wearing masks; and measures such as improving indoor ventilation.

Regardless of the difference, there will still be some echoes in 2020.

The city is weighing whether it can continue a beloved traditionthis time its a New Years Eve celebration in Times Square, not the St. Patricks Day parade in 2020. Residents once again made decisions about daily activities that suddenly seemed risky.

Earlier this month, Sheldon Rogers attended his office holiday party, and he thought it seemed safe to celebrate with his colleagues at the technology company where he worked in the customer service department.

After the party broke out, he spent nearly three hours in a privately-run emergency care center in Brooklyn waiting for a test on Wednesday.

Its kind of reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic, he mused after testing negative on Monday.
As the number of COVID-19 surges, Kansas Rural Hospital is working hard to transfer patients, some patients were trapped in the emergency room for a week while waiting for beds.

Last winter and summer, when the delta variant first hit the state, space was in short supply. Motient, the company that signed a contract with Kansas to help manage the transfer, said the situation improved slightly this fall, but it has now worsened.

Its not just rural hospitals looking for beds. Overwhelmed hospitals as far away as Minnesota and Michigan have been calling for large hospitals in Kansas to find beds. There is usually no room at all.

Dr. Richard Watson, the founder of Motient, said on Friday that as the pandemic ends in the second year, long-distance transfers and long waits for beds are becoming commonplace.

There is no more crazy story than this, he said. Its crazy. When you talk about moving people from Minnesota to Kansas City for treatment. Its the opposite of the Mayo Clinic.

Jesse Thomas, also from Motient, said that the proportion of hospitals that need help with transfers is higher than ever before. He said on Monday that it takes an average of eight and a half hours to find a bed in a larger hospital from a smaller hospital to an ambulance or air transport, and it will take about five hours this summer. He pointed out that 8 1/2 hours does not include transportation time to the new facility, and emphasized that half of the patients wait longer.

When you see a patient who needs a higher level of care and the system is not able to provide it, the patient has to wait a few days, he said. It is difficult for that patient. It is also difficult for their family. . Its just becoming frequent, which is the crazy part, because it used to be rare, and its not rare now.

On Friday, there were 40 patients on the board awaiting transfer. Watson said some people struggled in the emergency room for days, sometimes even more than a week, while waiting for a referral.

Watson said that major hospitals do not want COVID-19 patients unless they are really sick, adding that some hospitals only accept COVID-19 transfers when they need to use ventilators.

They know their beds are expensive, and they have to keep them for those who need them, Watson said, adding that COVID-19 patients who only needed oxygen were eventually trapped. He said that the shortage of beds and staff to care for patients also puts patients suffering from heart disease and other health problems into trouble.

He said that the shortage of personnel in nursing homes is also one of the reasons for the shortage of beds, because it means that there is no place to transport patients who have improved but still need additional care.

If they cant clean it, you cant put them on that bed, he said.

Dr. Jackie Hyland, the chief medical officer of the University of Kansas Health System Topeka University St. Francis Campus, complained about the shortage of nursing homes in a recent phone call with hospital officials in Kansas and Missouri.

Hyland said: This will cause our emergency room to always have a backup, and keep the patients in the emergency room there to prevent them from being admitted to the hospital bed.

Watson said he had never seen such a large-scale problem.

You may have a patient here or there who is in difficulty. The hospital may be in a state of tension, but if the people in the entire system are locked under the same level of care for a few days, they really need to move out. This is a challenge for us. A different world, he said.

Watson said he expects the capacity problem will only get worse during the holidays.

People expect a different story, Watson said. But you know, we get it: this is someone who has not been vaccinated. Omicron passed through. No one noticed. They all hope it will disappear before Christmas. It will not disappear. The hospital is overcrowded, overcrowded, maybe more than three or four. It was worse a week or even a month ago, but we are still trying to convey the message to a group of people who dont believe that anything happened. Im not sure how it works.

In recent days, a small number of omicron cases have been detected in the state. The most recent two were announced in Wyandotte County in the Kansas City area on Monday. Health officials there said the infected person was a fully vaccinated adult under 40.
Federal health officials said on Monday that Omicron is already ahead of other variants and is now the main version of the US coronavirus, accounting for 73% of new infections last week.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that in just one week, the share of omicron infections has increased by nearly six times.

In most parts of the country, it is even higher. Omicron is responsible for an estimated 90% or more of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the Industrial Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest. National rates indicate that more than 650,000 omicron infections occurred in the United States last week.

Since the end of June, delta variants have been the main version that caused infections in the United States. According to data from the CDC, at the end of November, more than 99.5% of coronaviruses were delta.

Dr. Rochelle Varensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the new figures reflect growth in other countries.

These numbers are obvious, but not surprising, she said.

African scientists first issued a warning to omicron less than a month ago, and the World Health Organization designated it as a variant of concern on November 26. Since then, the mutant has appeared in approximately 90 countries.

Most of the content about the omicron variant is still unknown, including whether it will cause more or less serious illness. Early research shows that vaccinated people need to boost injections to get the best chance of preventing omicron infection, but even without additional doses, vaccination should still provide strong protection against serious illness and death.

All of us have an appointment with omicron, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Health and Safety Center. If you want to interact with society, if you want to live any type of life, omicron will be the thing you encounter, and the best way for you to encounter it is to be fully vaccinated.

Adalja said that considering the situation in South Africa, the United Kingdom and Denmark, CDC data shows that omicron surpasses delta in the United States. He is not surprised. He predicted that the holidays will spread, including breakthrough infections among vaccinated people and severe complications among unvaccinated people, which may put pressure on hospitals that are already burdened by the Delta.

Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research and Translation Institute, said that other countries have seen rapid growth in Europe and the United States, but data from the United States shows that significant growth has been achieved in such a short period of time.

Topol also said that it is not yet clear how gentle omicron is compared to other variants.

This is the biggest uncertainty right now, Topol said. We have to rely on omicrons large number of hospitalizations and many serious diseases.

The CDC estimates are based on thousands of coronavirus samples collected every week through universities and commercial laboratories and state and local health departments. Scientists analyze their genetic sequence to determine which version of the COVID-19 virus is the most abundant.

On Monday, after analyzing more samples, the CDC revised its estimate of omicron cases for the week ending December 11. Approximately 13% of the cases in that week came from omicron, instead of the 3% previously reported. In the previous week, omicron only accounted for 0.4% of cases.

CDC officials said they have not yet estimated how many people were hospitalized or died due to omicron.

Although there are still many new infections caused by delta variants, I expect that over time, omicron will crowd out the delta, Walensky said.
In 2021, more private equity companies will list their healthcare provider portfolio companies more than ever before, and a research company believes that this number will almost double by 2022.

Data analysis and research company PitchBook predicts that at least 10 private equity-backed healthcare provider platforms will go public next year, breaking the record of 6 such IPOs in 2021.The prediction is part of PitchBook U.S. Private Equity Outlook in 2022.

PitchBook found that there are 6 IPOs of PE-backed healthcare providers in a year that may not sound like many, but in contrast, there have been 0 to 2 IPOs per year in the past 10 years.

So what explains the unprecedented surge this year and the larger projected surge next year? Rebecca Springer, a private equity analyst at PitchBook and one of the authors of the report, said that this is actually very simple: the stock market is performing well.

Currently, the open market multiples are very, very strong, so under the same conditions, if you list the company instead of selling it to strategic investors, you can get a better return on investment, Springer Say. It is pointed out that the forecast of more PE-backed companies going public in 2022 is not limited to healthcare.

PE support companies that went public this year include doctor support companies Agilon Health and Privia Health, home care providers Aveanna Healthcare and InnovAge, behavioral health provider LifeStance, and non-surgical fat-reduction chain Elite Body Sculpture.

PitchBook excluded two PE-backed healthcare providers that went public in 2021 through the merger with special-purpose acquisition companies Cano Health and CareMax Medical Group. Both Cano and CareMax focus on providing value-based primary care for the elderly.

Private equity investments in the healthcare sector have driven growth in many areas of the industry, including Annual transaction value almost tripled Between 2010 and 2019.

As we all know, private equity firms are tight-lipped about how to operate their business. Springer said that even so, the increased public information disclosure required by listed companies does not seem to deter those who are prepared to take this step. She said that, on the one hand, disclosure is done at the company level, not at the private equity company level. Any listed company must decide whether the return is worthwhile, but it is not so flexible in strategy.

These multiples are so attractive on the open market that they are rewarded for being able to do this, Springer said.

The PitchBook report stated that there is reason to believe that public investors will want to buy companies whose business models revolve around value-based reimbursement, which are gradually gaining momentum among primary care providers, hospitals, and experts, and gaining bipartisan political support. Most of these are achieved through Medicare Advantage, a health insurance plan for people over 65 years of age that provides Medicare benefits through commercial health insurance companies.

They think this is the future of the industry, and they want to be on the right side of this trend, Springer said.

The PitchBook report emphasizes that cosmetic dermatology is an area where PE-supported suppliers can list their companies next year. Others include home care, behavioral health, and veterinary medicine. Springer said that large PE-backed dental groups like Aspen Dental can also do well on the open market.

Since the IPO this year, the stock prices of some PE-backed suppliers have fallen. For example, as of Friday, Agilons stock price has fallen by nearly a quarter since its April IPO. Aveannas stock price fell nearly 44% in the same time period.

Springer said that this may be a consideration for some PE companies considering listing their companies, but it will not discourage everyone.
The same Quartet. The same prime minister. Probably most of them are the same ministers.However, the fourth ruling coalition led by liberals Mark Rutte When it comes to the position of the Netherlands in the European Union, his tone is clearly different.New alliance protocol The implication is that The Hague will no longer act as a brake for the European Union, but as a locomotive. Rutte, he often likes his cast Mr. Not Europe, Now intends to be the vanguard of European integration.

The Hagues new enthusiasm for Europe bears the stigma of D66, the left-wing liberal pro-European party that won the election. The biggest loser is the more skeptical Christian Democrats in Europe. Ruttes authority was weakened by the welfare scandal that led to the collapse of his third government, and, like a chameleon, he had the opportunity to reinvent himself.

However, Catherine de Vries, a professor at Bocconi University, said that the new position of the Netherlands also reflects how geopolitical uncertainties, pandemics and the chaos of Brexit reinforce the internal The need for collective action.

The thrifty Dutch, who like to teach fiscal discipline to other EU governments, are opening up the spending spigot. The new government will increase spending on housing, education, childcare, and defense. It is setting up a fund to finance a decarbonization fund that accumulates 4.3% of GDP and another fund for rural diversification (including the closure of pollution-intensive farms), valued at 3.1%. The additional borrowing will put Dutch debt slightly above the EUs 60% ceiling. It is hardly in the same category as Italy (155%) or Greece (206%), but this restriction no longer seems sacrosanct. Marcel Klok, senior economist at ING, said the agreement amounts to saying goodbye to frugality.

The four coalition parties now say that they are open to the modernization of EU fiscal rules as long as they can promote fiscal sustainability and economic integration. It is vague, but in line with the somewhat flexible approach promised by the new German coalition government.

After Britain withdrew from the European Union, The Hague became the leader of the so-called thrifty nation, opposing the EUs huge expenditures, greater risk sharing, or any action that weakened the EUs fiscal rules.

Ruttes fourth government also hopes to become an advocate for deeper integration, such as ending the countrys veto power in foreign policy, strengthening the role of the European Parliament, and establishing carbon and digital taxes within the EU. If some EU capitals want to take the initiative, the Dutch want to be the vanguard.

The new position of the Netherlands is its second adjustment to Europe after Brexit.The first is that it leads an informal group composed of free trade, economic freedom, and fiscal hawks. It is called New Hanseatic League, They need to join forces to defend their own interests, not their powerful British ally.The group shrank to a hard core of thrift, trying to Blockage The European Union provides a recovery fund grant funded by a common debt.

Respected

De Vries said that the New Hanseatic League ensures that the EU listens to the opinions of small countries. But the Dutch began to ask Can you get more through constructive rather than some opponents. However, she warned that the strong Eurosceptic pressure in Dutch politics has not disappeared.

Pepijn Bergsen of Chatham House doubts that the Netherlands will undergo a fundamental change in EU fiscal policy, but said that the new alliance agreement reflects a consensus of slow changes in other areas of EU policy.

The alliance agreement is full ofStrategic autonomyAnd how it should strategically use its economic power through investment screening, fair competition field tools, and wise industrial policies.

Rem Korteweg of Clingendael of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations said: The Netherlands was once the last backbone of neoliberalism, free trade, and loose government ideas. Its a light protectionist approach. Dutch sounds a little less Dutch and a little more French.
Hospitals and other suppliers are experiencing lag in delivering 8,000 to 12,000 containers of critical medical supplies and equipment, and this setback may have a negative impact on patient care and public health.

Due to the following reasons, medical resources in the entire U.S. transportation system are delayed by an average of 37 days at most supply chain Congestion, according to Research From the Health Industry Distributors Association.

The medical cargo was held in a US port for approximately 17 days. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in California have the largest number of delayed medical containers on the West Coast. The association reports that the Port of Savannah, Georgia, is the most congested port on the East Coast.

HIDA estimates that a container can hold approximately 190,000 pieces of medical protective clothing, 360,000 syringes and 3.5 million pairs of surgical gloves. According to the distributor group, these containers were delayed by trains for an average of 11 days, and trucks were delayed for an average of 9 days.

The association currently represents 111 members and is responsible for managing logistics, providing customer service, and delivering medical products and supplies, including 51 billion pieces of personal protective equipment last year.

The organization stated that due to unprecedented transportation disruptions that limit the reliable and timely transportation of medical products, the Health Industry Distributors Association is cooperating with multiple associations and port leaders to provide healthcare professionals and front-line workers faster and more efficiently. Provide equipment.

Matthew Rowan, President and CEO of HIDA, stated in a press release: HIDA recommends a fast-track system that prioritizes the delivery of essential medical supplies to the frontline of healthcare through ports, rails and trucks. During a public health emergency. , The rules and regulations that hinder the timely and effective flow of critical medical supplies must be relaxed.
Chinas huge demand for natural gas has triggered a wave of deals with US fuel exporters, and has strengthened energy trade between the worlds two largest economies, although their relationship is increasingly worrying.

The most recent sale was announced on Monday, when Venture Global LNG, a company that built a pair of LNG export plants in Louisiana, said it had agreed to two contracts to ship 3.5 million tons of fuel to the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation. The company, the countrys largest importer of LNG.

The CNOOC transaction brings the number of large contracts signed by US exporters and Chinese customers to seven since October. Some contracts lasted for decades. Analysts said that China is expected to surpass Japan this year to become the worlds largest LNG buyer, while data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that next year the U.S.s LNG export capacity will surpass Australia and Qatar.

From Chinas persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang to the suppression of the Hong Kong democratic movement to its military activities near Taiwan, tensions between Washington and Beijing have escalated. At the same time, China accused the United States of acting hegemony and trying to create a cold war between major powers.

In contrast, natural gas sales are another sign of the link between the two countries on energy and climate issues.The two governments also ignored expectations of reaching consensus protocol At the COP26 summit held in Glasgow last month, the issue of climate change was resolved, and negotiations on climate change have been conducted Joint release Strategic oil inventories are used to cool prices.

U.S.-China relations are at a very low level in many respects, said Jason Boldorf, dean of the Columbia Climate Institute and a former energy official under President Barack Obama. But energy and climate are a potential bright spot, and despite the tensions and conflicts, there can be more cooperation.

Venture Capital Global Has signed an agreement In November, 4 million tons of liquefied natural gas were sent to Chinas state-owned oil and gas group Sinopec for a period of 20 years, and a short-term agreement totaling 3.5 million tons was signed with its trading subsidiary, United Petrochemical. One of the new contracts with CNOOC is also 20 years.

Mike Sabel, CEO of Venture Global, said that Chinas efforts to reduce carbon emissions by replacing coal with natural gas in power plants are behind these agreements. He added that Sinopecs deal is an opportunity to send a good message before the climate summit.

China is currently making progress on these new transactions faster than the rest of Asia, Sabel told the Financial Times. But when we announce these transactions, other countries will [respond] -And is responding-otherwise China will gain an advantage. 

We are at an extraordinary moment when the world really needs U.S. LNG, and U.S. LNG is the fastest, he added.

Chenier Energy, the largest U.S. LNG exporter, is betting that China will support growth. The Houston-based company recently reached a deal totaling 3 million tons per year with buyers including the state-backed Sinochem Group.

We believe that Asia is the growth driver for our industrys demand for LNG in the next few decades, and China is the largest piece of it, Chenieres Chief Commercial Officer Anatol Feygin, Tell Financial Times in October.

After stagnation during the Trump administration, transactions and natural gas flows are picking up, when China imposed tariffs on US natural gas in retaliation for its export tariffs.In the context of economic damage, Chinese companies have been seeking a safe supply of natural gas Power squeeze and a Global natural gas prices Jump.

According to trade data compiled by Refinitiv, the United States was Chinas second-largest supplier of LNG in the first nine months of this year. It is second only to Australia-another country whose relations with Beijing have been deteriorating.

Nikos Tsafos, director of energy and geopolitics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said: China gets half of its LNG from Australia and the United States-this cant make Beijing happy. But they have to go. Where the project is, this is where they are now.

According to a summary of the conversation between the two parties, Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President Joe Biden during the first meeting of leaders last month that he wanted to strengthen cooperation in the natural gas field. Chinese Foreign Ministry, Which shows that Beijing regards China as the center of its fuel supply.

However, after the price of domestic natural gas in the United States has recently risen above 6 million British thermal units, reaching the highest level since 2008, the sale of natural gas overseas has become more politically sensitive in the United States.

The influential Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to the chief executives of 11 major natural gas producers, including Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum, asking whether these companies had considered cutting, suspending, or terminating natural gas exports. Help alleviate the surge in domestic prices.

Some natural gas executives have Postpone, Describing the export of LNG as an opportunity for the United States to help other countries eliminate coal-fired power plants in order to support natural gas power plants.

Boldorf of the Columbia Climate School said that any reduction in exports would weaken peoples confidence in the United States as a reliable energy supplier. He drew parallels with European countries concerns about dependence on Russian supplies, which really have political and geopolitical dimensions for them.

For the Biden administration, the booming international natural gas trade is also politically embarrassing because it drives the economy to shift away from fossil fuels. Although natural gas emits less carbon dioxide when burned than coal, it is still an important source of greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Tsafos of the CSIS think tank, this reflects the chaotic reality of the energy transition-the world is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and the United States is a major producer of oil and natural gas.

The truth is, it makes both parties a little uncomfortable, he said.
In most years, the world will get better. It is true that people rarely feel this way, but it is human nature: we worry about disasters in the newsearthquakes, wars, famines, or pandemicsand miss the gradual but relentless increase in production, technology, and understanding. In recent decades, these forces have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, as social scientists such as Hans Roslin, Max Rother, and Steven Pink have described. By stopping and carefully accounting, you can see the process in action year by year.

When The last time I did this exercise was in 2019, It is easy to draw conclusions about life improvement. But some years are different. Since the nuclear standoff reached its peak during the Cold War, the chaos caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has been the biggest challenge for mankind to control its own situation. The interesting thing is: Has the world gotten better in 2020 and 2021? Or does the pandemic signal an actual setback for human progress? My answer is: possible and no.

Perhaps the best starting point is the pandemic itself.Although the statistics are only estimates, they directly lead to Approximately 275 million infections And 5 million people died and had a serious secondary impact on living standards. The lockdown and travel restrictions prevented us from contacting our families.

The emergence of Omicron is particularly tragic, but in the long run, Covid-19 may be worse. First, after decades of no pandemic, what has emerged may be more contagious and deadly-a large number of past diseases, including SARS in 2003, have killed more than 10% of infected people. What we have is survivable for most people. Second, the development of vaccines has achieved amazing success.Doctors pioneer and manage new mRNA technology Nearly 9 billion doses In just 21 months after the outbreak. Covid-19 is terrible, yes, but it is not a catastrophe.

Third, it is important to note that it is our prosperity that makes the virus so destructive. Developed countries are willing and able to pay a high price for saving a few lives. 50 or 100 years ago, when diseases swept much younger people, life would go on as usual. Whether the blockade is good or bad, we have the ability to make a choice.

The damage to the global economy is smaller than the Covid-19 incident might indicate. In fact, it is amazing. In most wealthy countries, output in 2021 is still lower than in 2019, but during the pandemic, the overall world economy grew by 2.6%. This proves the effectiveness of the capitalist system. Even in the most extreme health emergency in a century, it still achieved sufficient growth to lift people out of poverty.

Some countries, especially countries that rely on tourism or island economies, such as Thailand or the Caribbean, have seen a decline in living standards, while some very poor countries, such as Afghanistan and Myanmar, have suffered new political crises, which may cause Many countries have regressed. year. But they are offset by other emerging economies such as Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya, which have lost some of their growth but are still richer now than they were a few years ago.

So far, mankind has survived the pandemic, and its material prosperity is intact and even improved. However, on the contrary, many threats to our future security and prosperity have become worse.

The concentration of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Volcano Observatory continues to rise, from a peak of 414 parts per million in 2019 to nearly 420 ppm in 2021. Although carbon emissions did fall during the pandemic, they rebounded quickly. The Observatory said that when measuring the carbon concentration in the atmosphere, it did not find a clear signal of a pandemic.

The COP26 summit in Glasgow was as disappointing as ever. Encouragement for climate comes from private companies: 2020 and 2021 are the years when electric vehicles begin to become mainstream. They provide another technological cornerstone for achieving a zero-emissions future. More is still needed, but this progress inspires hope.

In contrast, geopolitics is not. Since 1989, a decisive factor in global growth has been peace and security. In Taiwan and Ukraine, this no longer seems guaranteed, which raises questions about the entire global trading system on which prosperity depends. The signs of a new nuclear arms race between the United States, Russia, and China are disturbingnuclear weapons are still the main contender for how humanity ultimately destroys itself.

Worst of all, this is a period of democratic retreat. According to Freedom House, 2020 is the worst year of 15 years of decline in democratic governance. The pandemic is a boon for authoritarians and a formidable challenge for liberal democracies. In the long run, freedom and prosperity are intertwined.

In general, humankind has become more prosperous to some extent, but the foundation of prosperity for peace, environmental stability, and freedom and democracy is deteriorating. Roughly call it uniform. This is the worst assessment in decades. However, since it was achieved in the context of a pandemic, perhaps there is still reason to cheer this Christmas.

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Creating a more diverse and inclusive nursing pipeline is a public health priority and requires the leadership of nursing schools. More and more research results show that when medical staff are more representative of their patient demographics, communication, access to care, and patient satisfaction will increase. However, although the Census Bureau predicts that more than half of the countries will shift in this direction by 2045, only one-fifth of nurses are from ethnic or ethnic minorities.

This is an industry-wide concern. As outlined in the National Academy of Medical Sciences Future of Nursing Report 2020-30 and the healthcare system, the nations largest nursing organizations have expressed this concern. Faced with so many risks, nursing schools must take more measures to have a positive impact on public health and educationfirst by training more than 360,000 students with a bachelors degree in nursing. According to the annual survey of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the participating 793 schools report that only 36% of students come from different backgrounds on average.

In order to increase the diversity of student channels, nursing schools must adopt evidence-based methods to address the different situations of each student. Through research on nursing school admissions and student support, we were inspired to create an actionable framework to encourage greater diversity in schools: the social determinants of learning. We are actively sharing this framework with healthcare and nursing focus organizations that recognize the need for systemic change.

The SDOL framework is described in detail in a case study co-authored by Carla Sanderson and Linda Hollinger-Smith. It first identifies the social determinants that may hinder student success: self-motivation, mental and physical health, economic stability, and physical and social environment. In fact, the study found that only a small part of the differences that drive NCLEX-RN nurse license results can be explained by academic factors-which means that many other factors, such as social determinants, are at work and can be addressed more effectively When recognizing.

As part of the framework development, we studied a range of practices that are being used by other nursing schools, including the American Association of Nursing Schools comprehensive study of the overall admissions process. At Chamberlain University, which has the largest nursing school in the country, 63% of the more than 11,000 licensed nursing students at the university believe that they are from different races or ethnic backgrounds (summer 2020), so we also have a unique opportunity to explore and internally Assess initiatives.

For example, in addition to adopting an overall student admission process, the university also incorporates personalized study plans, seminars, tutoring, and other resources to support students academic journey. According to preliminary analysis, from 2016 to 2020, the NCLEX pass rate of Chamberlain nursing graduates has increased by nearly 13%, and in 2020, this rate is higher than the national average.

Another targeted research area is solving students social and emotional health problems, which affect their ability to concentrate, retain information, and perform well on exams.

Ensuring more diverse caregivers requires a more diligent approach at the educational institution level. These efforts build on the Sullivan Committees 2004 key report on the diversity of the healthcare workforce and recent efforts such as Josiah Messi (Josiah Messi). Based on Macy Jrs 2020 recommendations. Base. Doing so ensures that we support the needs of the healthcare system by developing a workforce that can better represent the communities we serve.
JJ Jelincic achieved an important initial victory in his Public Records Act lawsuit against CalPERS. We have embedded Judge Michael Markmans order below.1

Jelincic has the upper hand on the issues most likely to embarrass CalPERS, and may also force the giant fund to be less blatant about breaches of confidentiality requirements.

As you will see under Orders and Writs on page 2, Markman discovered that the CalPERS Board of Directors held an improper private meeting on August 17, 2020, which was held when Ben Meng suddenly appeared Of a special board meeting. After we revealed that his holding of Blackstones shares violated the California Conflict of Interest Law, he discovered that the only part of the discussion that was truly a private meeting was the two parts of California Government Code 11126 (g), which allowed performance to be effective for the CEO and CIO. The review, hiring and dismissal of the company will not be conducted publicly. One must assume that these parts of the meeting are related to hiring Mengs substitutes; Markman more or less said so in his analysis.

We will not analyze this ruling as we usually do because, as we will explain, some things are still in progress and CalPERS can almost guarantee an appeal. Please note that most observers hope that CalPERS will appeal if it loses. Here, CalPERS lost on the most embarrassing issue, that is, the abuse of private meeting privileges, such as improperly categorizing matters that are required by law in public discussions as secret board discussions. Among other things, this discovery amounts to a verdict that Henry Jones, the chairman of the board, has committed a crime. Even though he was only punished for misdemeanorsSince Jones undoubtedly relies on the guidance of employees deemed trustworthy, this ruling should make Jones and other members of the board of directors careful not to trust so.

Keep in mind that CalPERSs motivation for appealing has little to do with its chances of winning. If appealed, CalPERS can try to insist that the matter is still unresolved and any negative comments on its actions are premature. Since CalPERS mistakenly posted an edited transcript in the public section of the court website (please view our copy here), CalPERS may also be able to suspend the publication of any other sections of the private meeting transcript that has not yet been made public.

Now back to the order. Obviously, Markman has not yet seen the complete minutes of the closed-door meeting. CalPERS detained some parts claiming that they enjoyed attorney-client privileges. Obviously, under California law, even in camera review, well-intentioned and sufficiently high-risk lawyer-client privilege matters may be blocked.

Please note that if there are any actual attorney-client privilege issues, General Counsel Matt Jacobs must submit a memorandum to the board of directors as part of the basis for validating the confidential discussions. Someone told me that during the hearing, CalPERS tried to insist that such a file had been created, but it cant be found now.

Markman seems to be very submissive again to ask CalPERS to give out his so-called wayward record:

Markman basically said that CalPERS needs to provide the allegedly missing documents so that he can assess its authenticity, or publish the entire transcript, or face sanctions. So this controversy will continue into the new year.

Those who follow CalPERS may have reason to worry that this is an invitation to CalPERS to fabricate the missing memo. This would be risky because the file was never provided to the board of directors, nor does it exist in the boards record system Diligent.

You will also see Markman ruled that CalPERS does not have to disclose its nearly $600 million in write-downs of real estate assets because they are part of the disclosure exemption provided by the legislature for alternative investments (listed and excluding real estate) and alternative investments. Investment tools. Markman also accepted CalPERS to hide some supporting memos by claiming trade secret status.

Unfortunately, this was because Markman fell, as the judges sadly did, because of the assertion that too much discussion of investment strategies or documents could hurt investors, just like an evil short-headed attack.

Equally disturbing is that Markman described the ruling as the first time any court has considered whether a California public pension fund that invests in real estate through a limited partnership is an alternative investment confidentiality shield. In 2010, the California Court of Appeals ruled against CalPERS against CalPERS on this issue, because CalPERS tried to hide documents related to the loss-making real estate investment Page Mill Properties. The judge ruled that real estate is a traditional investment and needs to be disclosed.

The problem is that when these laws protecting private equity and closely related investments were implemented across the United States in the early 2000s (ironically, in response to the settlement of the CalPERS Public Records Act litigation, the litigation required CalPERS to publish information about all of its private equity Fund once a quarter), argue that the company is a fragile thing, too much transparency may give underperforming people (they may go bankrupt because customers and potential employees avoid them) and good people (key employees may be Poached). This does not apply to real estate at all. If its super or management agent withdraws, the valuation of the building will not be affected. And events that do affect value, such as the termination of a lease or the eviction of tenants, become public events because the space is relaunched on the market. Similarly, the sale price is public, so there is no ability for private equity to claim that they (in some way) need to hide their transaction price.

In other words: as early as the Stone Age in the early 2000s, CalPERS and other investors were using limited partnerships and buying shares in REITs. If the legislature wishes to include real estate investment in alternative investments, one would expect it to be specified, as the legislature does with private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, and absolute return funds. The other is alternative investment vehicles through which public investment funds invest in portfolio companies. In the early 2000s and even now, industry professionals would interpret portfolio companies as operating businesses. Major brokers like Cushman Wakefield say that the only way a real estate-related business may qualify is whether it is a management company/service provider. But this does not seem to be an argument that Markman relied on. He curiously invoked the view that CalPERS, a real estate fund manager, is closely related to CIM, has established and/or purchased SPACS, and then used them to acquire real estate. How does this make real estate a portfolio company? And before that, CalPERS didnt even seem to claim that any write-down investment was actually or was in SPAC.

Let me briefly remind readers why a trade secret claim should be an impossible start. People want to know if Jelincis very competent lawyer, Michael Risher, took so much time to resolve the transcript/closed meeting issue that he didnt brief the real estate. Things are thorough. Markman doesnt seem to realize that at the design level of Intels proprietary chips, nothing in the private equity or real estate field can reach the level of commercial secrets, which is a very high legal threshold. The only type of investment possible in this area is exotic hedging or derivatives trading strategies that competitors have not yet imitated. These types of strategies, even if they are successful, often have a short shelf life. As we explained in 2014:

For decades, private equity (PE) companies have been claiming that limited partnership agreements (LPA), the contracts between them and investors, should be overall As a trade secret, it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act laws of any jurisdiction. These private equity general partners argue that the information in their contracts is very sensitive and needs to protect the eyes of competitors, otherwise their unique and vital know-how will be stolen and used against them. In particular, private equity firms frequently and powerfully claim that their limited partnership agreements provide valuable insights into their investment strategies. The industry believes these documents are as valuable to them as the Coca-Cola formula or the schematic diagram of Intels next microprocessor chip. Now we can look at the actual language in the limited partnership agreement. We can see that any skilled legal tool user will guess: the lawyers of the private equity company use the broadest and most general terms to describe the strategy and give private equity funds As much freedom as possible When KKR claims that the limited partnership agreement is a trade secret, it is not difficult to speculate that these tax games are an important part of what they are really trying to hide. But now that we can look at a series of limited partnership agreements, it is clear that the taxation strategies of various funds are highly parallel. If there is anything unique, it is a secondary detail related to the implementation of the tax plan, not its goal or design We see more of the same situation. In the new round of limited partnership agreements, there are no specific or sensitive details about investment strategies. In fact, just like the use of proceeds part of a public securities offering, you may want to describe the investment strategy in the most vague and general terms in order to provide the general partner with the greatest flexibility to enforce his authorization.

Why dont we throw this back to our seasoned readers. How can anyone have a real estate strategy that rises to the level of trade secrets, except that it depends on the rewards of unique illegal activities? There is no super deceptive technical skill to gain an information advantage.

The reason for discussing this issue is that, considering that CalPERS will almost certainly appeal, Jelincic and his lawyers will have to respond. If they defend the discovery of violations in private meetings, they may wish to continue to attack on real estate valuations because the legal interpretation seems to be problematic. Therefore, if we are really lucky, CalPERS will end at the appeal stage.

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1 The court issued 12 documents. This is the main ruling. We have not reviewed other materials, which is another reason for insisting on the big problem.

00 2021.12.20 JJJ v. CalPERS Order Partial Grant Writ Application


Yves has come to work at home for a long time and has been very suitable for me, because I am allergic to conference and office politics, which has created new class inequality. Not only is the super rich and the executive each living in their own class, but also only medium classroom knowledge. Workers now do not need to commute every dayThe price is sometimes having to fight with the children under their feet.

Although shelter-in-place is obviously preferable to having to show up and confront colleagues and clients who may be carrying Covid, I am still troubled by the loss of international travel. Its not that I have any plans to go abroad in the near future, for reasons of cost and time, and concerns about Covid. But I do remember the fond memories of seeing the world in the McKinsey Project, and I got a large international intermediary in an independent consulting job (although I must always work during this period), and used my dime to travel abroad.

The mention of nomadic visas in this article particularly touched me because it is something I should study. Given that the United States is becoming more and more a predatory/ rentier society, and the elderly are easy to choose, I really need to be an expat. But Covid means that even if money is not an obstacle, I cannot conduct due diligence. For example, I have been to Croatia and Costa Rica briefly, and stayed in Portugal a little longer, but it is not enough to give people more than the general impression, good place, friendly to tourists, which is hardly enough. Basic information for relocation decision. In theory, they are not the only place on the list.

It is a bit long-winded to say that the mobility of knowledge workers is not as arbitrary as this article suggests. But on the other side of the debate, the huge advantage of being able to (try to) survive the pandemic at home still exists.

Author: Agnieszka Weinar, an adjunct research professor at the Institute of Europe, Russia and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University, a former scientific coordinator and researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, and a policy officer of the European Commission.Originally published on Open democracy

The COVID pandemic has changed the way we view liquidity privileges. If before the pandemic, cross-border movement was a privilege of high skill, then during the pandemic, we saw a new privilege: immobility.

Historically, liquidity has been related to two types of privileges, from financial or cultural capital. In other words, the rich or highly educated (or both) can enjoy lower risk and relatively easy global mobility. Think of global professionals or global mobile elites or global talent competitions. Having skills or money means that the world is within reach, and the mobility restrictions associated with passports may be easier to overcome than others in society.

The pandemic that brought the world to a standstill in 2020 exacerbated the privilege of liquidity and emphasized the importance of capital or skills, just like all epidemics in history.

In 2020, people with capital or skills can move freely without suffering economic losses, and they will survive the difficulties on the planet. SingaporeFor example, due to low infection rates and fairly limited sanitation restrictions, it has become a popular hiding place for the super-rich in Asia.

Those who do not have the funds but have the right skills and a good Internet connection can choose to benefit from the development of the new policy.For example, a Croatias digital nomad visa Many middle-class and highly skilled immigrants with unstable working conditions have realized a way of life. If they stay in the super expensive urban hotspots through remote work, they will not be able to afford it.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that temporary labor immigrants from countries with similar health care standardsfor example, workers in the European Union or Europeans working in the U.S. or Canadadecided to return to their home country, and Work from there.

The privilege of staying in place

However, the epidemic has brought about a new phenomenon: its own way.

The privilege of movement becomes the privilege of immobility: choose to stay still and remain safe.Those who are able to work from home can do this-but only 25% In fact, all workers in the United States can work completely from home.

The ability to work from home is also the result of financial capital or a specific skill set.

Immigrants who can complete work online are more likely to continue working or find new jobs than those whose work requires them to be on-site.This means that highly skilled immigrants engaged in so-called non-essential occupations are less affected by the lockdown than others group.

This non-mobile privilege is also reflected in the practice of recruiting employees for positions around the world without requiring them to move to a country. Recruiting remotely to a virtual office has become more palatable for employers, and employees have adapted to the new requirements.This trend-the growth of remote work across time zones-is Biggest unknown The post-pandemic labor market.

However, highly skilled people do not always view immobility as a privilege. For many highly skilled immigrants who wish to move to a new country, the pandemic means it is difficult to delay.In the main destination of immigrants, such as Canada For example, halving immigration has left thousands of highly skilled immigrants waiting for an unknown future.

Whats next?

It is too early to understand the full impact of the pandemic on the flow of highly skilled migrants. Mainly because liquidity data is still unavailable and research is ongoing. However, the future of high-skill mobility itself will be one of the most important effects of the pandemic. As the company shifts to a virtual office model, international recruitment may become redundant, and talent competition will be conducted entirely online.

The potential for reducing high-skilled immigration and making better use of the global skill pool through remote work is huge. However, such a trend may bring about major social changes and turbulence. One result may be more virtual domestic workers: those who are ready to work and use their skills but will not move between regions can now be hired to work in companies far away in the same country.

Another consequence may be the migration of high-skilled jobs to foreign workers with skills in the international market. In this case, the immigration policy will mainly focus on low-skilled workers, who often risk their lives to emigrate abroad. Any post-pandemic immigration policy should take these trends into account.
The new rookie squad is finally ready to meet the viewers! Disney Plus Korea dropped the first "Rookie Cops" trailer, starring some of the brightest stars Kang Daniel, Chae Soo Bin, Lee Shin Young, and more.

Disney Plus Korea's 'Rookie Cops' Synopsis

"Rookie Cops" follows the stories of freshman recruits at the prestigious Korean National Police University, one of the most exclusive and conservative campuses in Korea.

Wi Seung Hyun (Kang Daniel) is an honor first year college student who wants to follow the footsteps of his father. Everything is going well in his life, not until he meets Go Eun Gang (Chae Soo Bin).

This will be a youth investigation series that depicts the students' dreams, romance, ambitions, and challenges in life.

The drama is written by Lee Ha Na and directed by Kim Byung Soo.

Disney Plus Korea Releases 'Rookie Cops' Trailer

In the trailer released by Disney Plus Korea, the clip started by showcasing the elite university and the freshmen busy training in the field. It also showed the fun relationship of Wi Seung Hyun, Kim Tak (Lee Shin Young), Yoo Dae Il (Park Sung Joon), and Seo Beom Joo (Kim Woo Seok), who share most of their days together as they live in the same dorm.

Similar to the girls, Go Eun Gang (Chae Soo Bin), Woo Joo Young (Min Do Hee), Shin A Ri (Chun In Seo), and Ki Han Na (Park Yoo Na) also live in the same dorm.

The trailer gives a glimpse of how these young students will overcome the challenges inside the campus while also learning to enjoy every moment of their youth.

Aside from the trailer, the drama also released its first official poster, which displays the characters' youthful charms.

"Rookie Cops" marks Kang Daniel's debut drama, that's why fans are looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, Chae Soo Bin will also return on the big screen with her new action-adventure movie "Pirates 2," set for release in January. She will also star in the new Netflix series "Fabulous."

Lee Shin Young just finished his web drama "Bite Sisters," alongside "My Roommate is a Gumiho" actress Kang Han Na.

Following the success of her previous series "True Beauty," Park Yoo Na is back on the small screen through "Rookie Cops." She also has an upcoming romance film with Jang Dong Yoon.

On the other hand, the youth-comedy drama "Rookie Cops" is scheduled to premiere in the first half of 2022 on Disney Plus Korea.

Are you excited to see the newest Kdrama squad in "Rookie Cops"? Share your comments with us!

For more Korean drama updates, keep your tabs open on Kdramastars.

Kdramastars owns this article.

Shai Collins wrote this.
After her major participation in the worldwide hit series "Hospital Playlist," actress Ahn Eun Jin is once again generating a lot of buzz as a terminally ill woman in the new JTBC drama "Only One Person."

Her current role in the drama, Pyo In Sook, a public bathhouse worker who is diagnosed with terminal illness, is gaining sympathy. In addition to that, she is receiving critical acclaim with her outstanding performance.

Curiosity about the actress' current love status is also amplified. Did the actress really date "Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha" actor Lee Sang Yi?

Ahn Eun Jin's Transition From Theater to Television

The "Only One Person" actress started her acting career as a musical actress, taking on challenging roles in "The Picture of Dorian Gray," "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" and "The Sorrows of Young Werther."

After her last musical, she ventured more into the television scene and debuted in the JTBC drama "Life" in 2018.

Although Ahn Eun Jin joined the show business rather late, she is still showered with many amazing projects like "Kingdom," "More Than Friends" and "Hell Is Other People," where she bagged to special awards in OCN Awards and Asia Artist Awards in 2020.

She recently graced the screen with a recurring role in the worldwide phenomena drama "Hospital Playlist."

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Ahn Eun Jin Admits to Having Sepanx With 'Hospital Playlist' + Actress Talks About Her New Melodrama and Plans in the Future

At the moment, she is diversifying her acting roles with the JTBC melodrama "Only One Person" alongside Red Velvet Joy, Kang Ye Won and Kim Kyung Nam.

Did Ahn Eun Jin Date Fellow Musical Actor and 'Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha' Actor Lee Sang Yi?

In an episode of SBS TV's long-running variety show "Running Man," Ahn Eun Jin, Lee Sang Yi and dance genius Bae Yoon Kyung made an appearance.

The cast of "Running Man" grew ultimately suspicious of the two actors, Ahn Eun Jin and Lee Sang Yi, after the former keeps on adding some details to the actor's introduction.

With teasing grins, HaHa, "Running Man" cast, got curious whether the two had been in a romantic relationship.

The two actors denied the accusation, but the cast seemingly loved to tease the two because of their hilarious reactions.

Naturally, Ahn Eun Jin jested that they were in a relationship during their younger years, earning laughter from their fellow celebrities.

However, the two stars revealed that they knew each other because they attended the same university, had the same classes and did some performances (theater plays and musicals) together.

"We saw each other to the point that we were sick of it," the actress jokingly said.

Despite the joke, fans and K-Drama lovers wish that the two really had a relationship more than friends. They also long to see Ahn Eun Jin and Lee Sang Yi in a television drama or a musical.

Ahn Eun Jin's Relationship Status in 2021

Currently, the "Only One Person" actress is single, and is adamant to date due to her prospering career.

When once asked about marriage, the actress dodged the question, saying that work comes first for her.

With that said, the actress is really great in her craft, the sole reason why she keeps on receiving new projects from one to another.

Ahn Eun Jin is starring in the newest JTBC melodrama "Only One Person" with Red Velvet Joy and Kang Ye Won. The drama airs every Monday and Tuesday at 11:00 p.m. KST.

Follow KDramaStars for more KMovie, KDrama, and celebrity updates!



KDramaStars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. -- Klamath County Public Health and their partners continue to offer easily accessible COVID-19 vaccine clinics throughout the county as public health officials monitor the Omicron variant. Sky Lakes Medical Center also offers drive-through testing.

NewsWatch 12 spoke with KCPH public information officer Valeree Lane on Tuesday about how the county has been able to support its residents with Covid-19 services.

After the first of the year on January 6, through the Oregon Health Authority and FEMA, they will be setting up a clinic first at the fairgrounds and then the second week at Klamath Community College to provide more vaccine opportunities whether theyre getting their first doses or their second dose, said Lane.

NewsWatch 12 also asked if the public health department has been able to keep up with the demand for Covid-19 testing, as people need negative results to travel, and Lane said that there have been no known barriers in that regard either.

Klamath County Public Health awaits what will come out of President Joe Bidens latest remarks on Covid-19, but in the meantime said that they will continue to monitor the situation and serve the community.
MEDFORD, Ore.  There's perhaps nothing more festive and romantic than a "White Christmas," something that Medford hasn't seen in decades and could see this year. That said, it's not something you want to travel through.

The StormWatch 12 team is tracking a series of storm systems heading through our region this week, all the way through the weekend. By Saturday and Sunday, snow levels could actually reach the floor of the Rogue Valley  setting up the possibility that there will be snow on the ground for Christmas festivities.

Lots of beneficial snow and rain is on its way (along with wind), but there will be plenty of hazards that accompany the weather. Here's our outlook for the week and the weekend. Spoiler: snow levels could drop to 1000 feet next weekend. #orwx #cawx pic.twitter.com/ppndk1u2tC  NWS Medford (@NWSMedford) December 19, 2021

Since record-keeping began, there have only been two years where Medford saw a white Christmas. The last time was in 1988, and in 1965 before that. The official definition of a white Christmas in the US (yes, there is an official definition) is at least an inch of snow on the ground on December 25.

But if you're planning to travel the region's roadways for the holidays, the forecast might be reason enough to rethink your plans.

Caltrans is actively discouraging travel through higher elevations due to the predictions for a series of storms bringing rain, wind, and heavy mountain snow. Chain controls are likely to be in place for mountain passes and high-elevation areas, and Caltrans has said that travelers must carry chains, be prepared for winter driving conditions, expect delays and possible closures, and follow instructions from Caltrans crews and law enforcement.

"Motorists who do not comply with chain control endanger their own safety and the safety of other motorists around them," Caltrans said. "They also jeopardize our vital maintenance operations."

Truck and possibly vehicle screening is likely to happen for northbound I-5 traffic at Fawndale Road, about ten miles north of Redding, once the weather hits.

A winter storm system last week resulted in transportation officials shutting down I-5 from Ashland to Redding overnight due to heavy snow and disabled vehicles. It's not outside the realm of possibility that this could happen again.

And Siskiyou County doesn't have a monopoly on higher elevations in our region  the Rogue Valley is ringed by hills and mountains, so heading anywhere is likely to get messy with snow levels this low. As usual, Klamath and Lake counties are also likely to see more snow than than their western neighbors.

Here's what the StormWatch 12 team of meteorologists have to say about the forecast for the days ahead:

Rain and snow will be ongoing this evening and into the overnight hours, although the intensity might wind down just a bit. Snow levels will hold steady at 4,500 ft, but be sure to continue using caution on those roadways above that elevation. Overnight lows will drop into the 40s along the coast and in the Rogue Valley, with mid-30s in northern California. Temperatures will drop off to around 30 degrees on the eastside.

More rain and snow will impact the region into Thursday with the biggest impacts to travel for our higher elevations, mainly above 4,000'. We should see rain and snow taper a bit later in the day.

The series of storm systems will continue right through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Snow levels will lower even further during this time frame with snow impacting travel over lower passes and potentially into some of our valleys. There's still some uncertainty if snow levels will make it to the valley floors ahead of Christmas morning. We do expect snow levels to likely reach the valley floors later on Christmas into Christmas night.

The snow will likely create difficult travel conditions for much of our region right around Christmas and through the weekend. It's looking like a cold and wintry holiday weekend forecast with more rounds of snow for even lower elevations and valleys on Sunday and even into Monday too. If you have travel plans later this week or weekend, be sure to stay updated on the forecast as details on snow amounts and travel impacts become more concrete.
EUGENE, Ore.  With the help of a local construction company, one 17-year-old is gaining hands-on experience that is helping him understand and discover a career path that fits best for him.

Craig Mozan is a recent graduate of Sheldon High School and now attends Oregon State University. Hes currently in the mentorship program within Essex General Construction.

Mozan has teamed up with Mark Bruer, the Vice President of Operations at Essex to build a customized conference table for Lane Workforce Partnership  a project that's been in the works since the spring.

I really like being able to work with my hands to do something thats not just sitting around, Mozan said. This project is big  bigger than anything I've ever done.

The groups involved in the project include Essex General Construction, Pivot Architecture, Homes For Good, Connected Lane County and Lane Workforce Partnership.

The mentorship kicked off with Bruer and Mozan building picnic tables and then came an even larger opportunity to build the 5x12 conference table.

The initial goal was to retrieve a tree from one of the burns up-river in the McKenzie area, and that proved to be problematic, Bruer said. We were unable to find an appropriate tree that had been either salvaged or harvested."

So, they found a better fit  a redwood tree more than 120 feet tall near 11th and Charnelton in Eugene where a low-income housing facility is being built for Homes for Good. The tree needed to be brought down to make way for the new building.

Lyle Lang is the Director of Youth for Lane Workforce Partnership and is a coordinator for the construction sector in Lane County.

Its a great opportunity, Lang said. It shows that there is so much willingness to give back in this community  whether that be by industry or an organization such as Homes for Good.

Lang explained why this type of mentorship is impactful.

Its a great opportunity for Craig because he is then able to take this experience forward, Lang said. It gives him a head start on different construction and woodworking opportunities. Getting to work side-by-side with a company like Essex is really a bonus.

John Stapleton is one of the owners of PIVOT Architecture. He said this type of partnership has been missing from school curriculums for a while.

The Lane Workforce Partnership, Lane Education Service District and all the school districts in Lane County have been working really hard over the last three years since Measure 98 passed to align workforce development and training that students receive in school in their CTE classes, Stapleton said.

He said its crucial that students are able to gain real-world job skills.

Craig is doing work that a furniture maker or a cabinet-making company would see as valuable real-world experience, Stapleton said. They can go look at it. It's being used. It's a real-world project.

Mozan said these hands-on opportunities give a much more realistic view of what his future could look like. He described the current project as a big opportunity.

Ive never worked on something this big, so it's just nice to be able to do something like this, Mozan said. These opportunities help a lot, so that I can do something bigger, develop those skills and have access to those tools and all these opportunities that I just wouldn't have without having reached out.

When it comes to mentorship, Bruer said that if youre going to be mentored  there has to be an internal passion to start with.

This is a case where there's something that's already embedded in that person that they want to pursue, and this gives them the opportunity to learn from someone who's been there and done that, Bruer said. There's wisdom. There's knowledge. There's tools. There's a process. There's equipment. There's things that you can learn and be able to move more quickly into what it is that you are passionate about.

The table is in its final stages and is expected to be completed by late January.

If you know a student looking for hands-on experience similar to this one  reach out to Connected Lane County.
Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) is calling on employers in Kilkenny to support their staff in availing of the online Springboard Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing Practice.

The part-time online programme which is delivered online on Thursdays from 2.00  8.00 pm starting on 20 January 2022.

Course leader, Dr Paul Morrissey, is delighted with the response to the course from businesses across the south east.

Were now into our fourth cycle of the PGDip in Digital Marketing Practice. With so much marketing activity now moved online weve had massive interest in the course from businesses across the South East. Were talking to them constantly and the feedback has been very positive.

Springboard+ is co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Social Fund as part of the ESF programme or Employability, Inclusion and Learning 2014-2020. Springboard courses that are scheduled to start at WIT in January are: a Cert in Automation Engineering, the online Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing Practice, the online Higher Diploma in Science in Computer Science, online Higher Diploma in Business Systems Analysis.

In addition there are a number of other courses starting in January that are useful for the workplace include: the 12 week Certificate in Human Resource Management and Certificate in Project Management courses and the 8-week Payroll and Computerised Accounts course.

In addition WIT runs 12-week Digital Marketing and Social Media and Introduction to Radio Broadcasting and Presenting courses.

The institute runs a number of courses aimed at nursing healthcare professionals. It also has two courses for music lovers and music teachers: Keyboard Skills Module and Western Art Music: Baroque to Mid-20th Century.

There is no need to wait until September to start a course. Applications for part-time flexible courses starting in January 2022 at Waterford institute of Technology (WIT) will close on 10 January, says Neil Quinlan, Head of the Department of Lifelong Learning at WIT.

See www.wit.ie/parttime and www.wit.ie/springboard.
Children's helpline Childline has said that it is concerned about a spike in incoming calls from children who have been detailing suicidal ideation and self-harm.

Between 25 and 30 children a week have been contacting the 24-hour service with suicidal thoughts, according to an article from The Irish Examiner: up from 0.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent.

The service added that, last year, it received 723 contacts from children, and a similar number can be expected this year.

However, Childline CEO John Church said that the past four to five weeks had seen a rise (though from a low base) in the number of contacts made with the service by children expressing suicidal ideation.

Mr Church said he "hoped it was a blip", but still admitted that the figure is concerning.

He also pointed to an increased awareness of domestic abuse, especially in the context of the pandemic, citing monthly reports from the Child and Family Agency Tusla, and also "the age-old alcohol issue (in Ireland)."

One person behind the phones at Childine, Megan Sarl, also told The Irish Examiner that she thinks "the tip of the iceberg" has yet to appear.

She explained that isolation has been having a notable effect on the mental health of many children: "It's much bigger than just the event that they have missed."

"To be honest, they are quite negative about it... they seem to be quite unclear if it is going to get any better."

Despite this, Ms Sarl insisted that she enjoys her job, and said that she considers it to be "a real privilege" to be able to help young people.

Childine typically receives up to 800 calls per day.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can visit Childline.ie or free phone 1800 666666 or free text 50101.

You can also freephone the Samaritans 24 hours a day for confidential support at 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org.
Jamie Dornan says his father told him he was proud of him every day before his death after contracting coronavirus.

The 50 Shades of Grey actor said his father had always been supportive of his career choices and attributes much of his success to him.

Speaking to The Times, Dornan, 39, said it was brutal that his father could not have seen his latest film Belfast, which comes out in January.

Jim Dornan, a prominent obstetrician and gynaecologist, died during a routine knee operation after testing positive for the virus.

Jamie said, Its been a brutal aspect of this whole journey. For my dad not to be able to see this movie hurts."

I take comfort in the fact that he knows I did it. He was so invested in my career. Some people go their whole lives without being told, Youve made your parents proud.

My dad would tell me every day.

On his decision to move to London to pursue his acting career, he added: It was a gamble, but he let me take it.

Few parents would go, What is it you want to do? Move to London and try that out? Go for it.

Dad did  thats the reason Im sitting here now.

Dornans mother died in 1998 from pancreatic cancer and he says his exposure to grief has helped him with his work.

I have been subjected, early on in my life and now, to a lot of pain and loss.

In a weird way Im lucky to access that understanding [of grief] and use it for my work.

It feels very timely and poignant that Belfast is the film Im talking about now in light of everything that has happened.

I feel very connected to my dad through this movie.
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Bitterly cold. Sunshine to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High near 10F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Bitterly cold. Mostly cloudy skies. Low around 0F. Winds light and variable.




By Lee Kyung-min







The Export-Import Bank of Korea (Eximbank) said that it has agreed to strengthen bilateral economic cooperation via the Economic Development Promotion Facility (EDPF) with Uzbekistan, Korea's key regional partner country.







The EDPF is a funding program developed by the state lender, characterized by combining of aid and commercial financing needed to overcome the limitations of current aid programs in promoting large projects.







The bank CEO Bang Moon-kyu signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Uzbekistan Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Investments and Foreign Trade Sardor Umurzakov, at Cheong Wa Dae, Dec. 17. The signing was observed by President Moon Jae-in and Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev who visited Korea a day earlier.







The two agreed to strengthen cooperation in building infrastructure, IT, health and medical services, mostly in transportation, energy and water treatment sectors as well as industrial complexes. Uzbekistan government-led public projects and public-private cooperation projects (PPP) will be promoted as a result.







"Uzbekistan is actively fostering renewable energy-generation projects including solar and wind power in the form of public-private cooperation projects, increasing opportunities for Korean firms to enter the market," Bang said.







The MOU followed a Dec. 15 agreement between Bang and Umurzakov concerning the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) in the amount of $74 million (62 billion won) to be provided to Uzbekistan. The funds will be used to enhance medical supplies and equipment in the country, in the face of growing need to strengthen medical services amid the COVID-19 pandemic.







Medical infrastructure in Uzbekistan is poor except in the capital city Tashkent, and the funds will help medical institutions buy new modern equipment in 14 regions, the bank said. This will in turn translate to stronger cooperation in the health and medical sectors between the two countries.







The bank has provided a total of $10.1 billion in aid programs to Uzbekistan using $9.5 billion in bank funds and $630 million in EDCF.














North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is the third most searched politician by internet users worldwide this year, data showed Tuesday.







Online searches for Kim totaled a monthly average of 1.9 million, behind U.S. President Joe Biden, who topped the list with 7 million searches, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson with 2 million, according to German data analytics firm Statista.







Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel ranked fourth with 1.4 million searches.







The most searched keyword related to the North Korean leader this year was "weight loss," separate analysis by Google Trends found.







In June, the 37-year-old Kim appeared at a politburo session appearing to have lost a significant amount of weight, raising speculation about his health and sparking keen public interest.







South Korea's state intelligence agency told lawmakers in October that Kim has lost around 20 kilograms from a weight of about 140kg but appears to have no major health problem. (Yonhap)


Members of the Korea University Progressive Association hold a press conference in front of the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul in this Oct. 21, 2019, photo to call for the release of four students who were arrested for breaking into the U.S. ambassador's residence. Yonhap



By Jung Da-min



The nation's top court has upheld lower court decisions that gave suspended jail sentences to three college students for intruding into the U.S. ambassador's residence in Seoul.



The Supreme Court announced Monday that it had confirmed the one-year jail sentence, suspended for two years, for the members of the Korea University Progressive Association (KUPA).



The three were among 17 members of the group who entered the Habib House compound in Jeong-dong, central Seoul, on Oct. 18, 2019, while holding a protest in front of the residence. They had been demonstrating against then-U.S. President Donald Trump's demand for a fivefold increase in Korea's share of the costs for the upkeep of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).



The students used a ladder to scale the wall of the residence and protested inside the compound, shouting slogans like, "(U.S. Ambassador to Korea Harry) Harris, leave this land," and "We absolutely oppose any increase of Korea's contribution to the defense cost-sharing deal."



At the time of the trespassing, Harris and his wife were not in the residence.



The intruders were all taken to police stations. The prosecution sought arrest warrants for seven of them, and a local court issued warrants for four of them.



A lower court said that there were circumstances to be taken into account for the students' motives, such as protesting the U.S.' demand to increase Korea's contribution of defense cost-sharing. But it gave the four students a suspended prison sentence, saying, "Their acts damaged the functions and safety of the U.S. Embassy."



It also ordered them to carry out 120 to 200 hours of community service.



The district court did not acknowledge the students' claim that they exercised their freedom of assembly guaranteed by the Constitution.



An appellate court also upheld the verdict of the first trial. Three of the four students appealed to the Supreme Court, but it upheld the verdict as well.



In a separate case, the appellate division of the Seoul Central District Court fined six other KUPA members between 700,000 won ($593) and 1.5 million won, Monday, for rushing the front gate of the U.S. Embassy during a demonstration out front on Jan. 31, 2019.



They had been holding a rally about 23 meters from the gate to protest the defense cost-sharing talks and demand the withdrawal of the USFK. Then they rushed the gate, and police guarding the building blocked them.



The prosecution charged them with violating the Assembly and Demonstration Act, under which demonstrations are prohibited within 100 meters of foreign diplomatic organizations or the residences of diplomatic envoys.


This file illustration picture shows vials with "COVID-19 Vaccine" stickers attached and syringes with the logo of U.S. biotech company Novavax. Europe's medicines watchdog on Dec. 20, approved a COVID jab by Novavax, which uses a more conventional technology that the biotech firm hopes will reduce vaccine hesitancy. AFP-Yonhap



The European Commission on Monday authorized a vaccine from U.S. company Novavax as its fifth official jab for use across the European Union, hours after the EU medicines watchdog gave approval.



Officials hope the vaccine, made from a more conventional technology than the others, will help persuade those hesitant about vaccination to come forward.



"At a time where the Omicron variant is rapidly spreading, and where we need to step up vaccination and the administration of boosters, I am particularly pleased with today's authorization of the Novavax vaccine," said EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.



The Novavax vaccine now sits alongside the EU's other authorized COVID jabs, from BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.



Called Nuvaxovid, the Novavax offering is a vaccine based on so-called protein subunit technology which is tried and tested, having been used for decades to vaccinate people against diseases including hepatitis B and whooping cough.



Unlike mRNA vaccines produced by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna, Nuvaxovid does not need to be stored in ultra-low temperatures, giving it a logistical advantage in difficult-to-access regions.





European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen / AP-Yonhap



'Promising results'



Earlier Monday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) gave the green light for the jab to be given conditional marketing authorization.



Careful study of clinical data from studies in Britain and in the United States and Mexico had showed it to be "robust", meeting EU criteria for "efficacy, safety and quality", it said.



Von der Leyen, in her statement, said she hoped the newest addition to the EU's range of vaccines would "offer a strong encouragement to everyone who has not yet been vaccinated or boosted, that now is the time to do so".



EU health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said that Nuvaxovid "shows promising results against COVID-19". Vaccinations and boosters were "today more important than ever if we are to stem the wave of infections and counter the emergence and spread of new variants", she said.



Novavax, a U.S. biotech firm based in the state of Maryland, has already won emergency-use approval for its vaccine in Indonesia and the Philippines, and Japan has agreed to buy 150 million doses.



It would also make an application to the U.S. regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, said the company, whose production and vaccine-vetting process has been plagued by delays.



Novavax said it has also filed for approval in Britain, India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and with the World Health Organization (WHO).





Members of the armed forces help out at the COVID-19 mass vaccination event inside the newly-set up Wembley Stadium vaccination center in London, Dec. 19. AFP-Yonhap




Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday that Russia is prepared to take "military-technical measures" in response to "unfriendly" Western actions over the Ukraine conflict, in a sharp escalation of rhetoric.







The Russian president has for weeks accused the United States and the Washington-led NATO military alliance of stoking tensions near Moscow's borders, but these were his first comments hinting at potential conflict.







"In the event of the continuation of the obviously aggressive stance by our Western colleagues, we will take appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures," he told a defense ministry meeting.







Russia "will react toughly to unfriendly steps," Putin said, adding that he wants "to emphasize that we have every right to do so."







The United States has been sounding the alarm since mid-November that Moscow could be planning a large-scale attack on its ex-Soviet neighbor Ukraine and has warned Putin of unprecedented sanctions.







Western governments have accused Moscow of amassing some 100,000 troops near its border with eastern Ukraine, where Kiev has been fighting pro-Russia separatists since 2014.







Russia denies plotting an invasion and has demanded legal guarantees over its security from the United States and NATO, demanding the alliance stop an eastward expansion.







Last week Moscow presented demands to the United States and NATO saying the alliance must not admit new members or establish military bases in ex-Soviet countries.







But Putin on Tuesday cautioned that he would not trust US security guarantees even if Washington provides them.







"We need long-term legally binding guarantees," Putin said, but warned that "we can't trust" them because "the United States easily withdraws from all international treaties that for one reason or another become uninteresting to them." (AFP)


Visitors at the exhibition, "Ottchil, the Coated Splendor of Asian Lacquerwares," at the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, Monday. The exhibition shows up to 263 lacquered objects from various Asian countries. Yonhap





By Park Ji-won







Toxicodendron vernicifluum, commonly known as lacquer trees, have been cultivated in Asian countries for centuries. In Korea, some people boil "samgyetang" or ginseng chicken soup with twigs of lacquer tree wood due to their health benefits. Lacquer tree wood is known for its antioxidant properties, which prevents or slows cell damage.







The lacquer trees' sap, called "ot" in Korean, can cause allergic reactions in people due to a compound called urushiol, which can trigger rashes.







But the sticky ingredient is one of the oldest and most effective natural paints used to create a shiny and glossy finish on furniture and crafts, resulting in a waterproof layer. The plant is also used as a natural ingredient to repel bugs and germs. This traditional usage of the sap is known as "ottchil" in Korean, which literally means, "painting the sap of a lacquer tree." It has also been used as a natural glue. Depending on its usage, lacquerware can last for a very long period of time and more than a thousand years in some cases.







If it is painted on wood, the sap normally turns reddish black in color. But the sap can be transformed into any color by adding various ingredients, such as iron powder.







The "ottchil" technique was largely used in Korea, China and Japan. There are not many lacquerware specimens showing exactly when the technique began to be used on the Korean Peninsula. But some relics show that lacquered objects existed on the peninsula as early as the 3rd century BC.







Korea, China and Japan shared a similar lacquerware culture until the Unified Silla era (668935). But they developed their own styles afterwards. For example, Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty (9181392) started to use mother-of-pearl on lacquered objects, while Japan during the Nara period (710784) started to develop a technique known as "maki-e" or drawing paintings on the surface of lacquerware by using sap and sprinkling gold and silver powder on the surface.







China also developed a distinctive lacquer technique of carving designs on thick layered coats of sap. The lacquer tree was also used in some Southeast Asian countries. Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam developed their own unique lacquerware techniques.







A special exhibition called "Ottchil, the Coated Splendor of Asian Lacquerwares" at the National Museum of Korea, which opened to the public on Monday, sheds light on the lacquerware cultures and products of Asian countries. Up to 263 lacquered objects from Korea, China and Japan, as well as Southeast Asian countries, are on display at the state-run museum until March 20 of next year.







"Trefoil-shaped covered box with chrysanthemum decoration" / Courtesy of the National Museum of Korea





One of the highlights of the exhibition is the "Trefoil-shaped covered box with decoration of chrysanthemum," which the museum purchased last year from a collector in Japan. The artifact has been unveiled for the first time to public. There are only three examples of that relic left in the world.







About thirty pieces came from the Shanghai Museum and five pieces from the Tokyo National Museum.







"Lacquer trees were mainly grown in Asian countries. And Korea developed its unique mother-of-pearl lacquerware culture and so did Thailand and Vietnam. We hope to shed light on the diverse aspects of the lacquerware cultures in Asia, which developed into unique forms using the lacquer tree's sap," Noh Nam-hee, curator of the exhibition said.







"Otchil, the Korean term to describe the painting with lacquer tree's sap, was hard to translate into English as there is no such concept in English. The word, 'Japan,' in English, means 'lacquer' if it's used as a noun. It means 'giving a gloss to or coating' as the country introduced their lacquered wares to Western countries, but is not used often."







Visitors at the exhibition "Ottchil, the Coated Splendor of Asian Lacquerwares" at the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, Monday. The exhibition shows up to 263 lacquered objects from various Asian countries. Yonhap





Divided into four sections, "Meeting Lacquerware," "Decorating Lacquerware," "Revealing Regional Characteristics" and "Transcending Boundaries," the artworks in each section show the development of the unique lacquer cultures of Asia in chronological order.







The exhibition focuses on explaining the broad concept of ottchil according to its origins, usage and how and when it was made. It presents lacquerware, such as a lidded box (mojahap), which formed a pillar of craft culture, along with pottery and metalware, and shows that the culture was developed through mutual exchanges of other artworks, such as ceramics, in the same era. The section also presents a video on making lacquerware products, aiming to show the laborious process in which it takes months to finish a product.







The "Decorating Lacquerware" section shows three basic techniques of finishing lacquerware: coating, painting and sticking.







"By using the three original techniques, the technique of decorating lacquerware with luxurious materials, such as gold and silver, which use the adhesive trait of lacquer, also emerged. It was developed into the 'pyeongtal' technique, a way to decorate lacquerware by sandpapering the surface of the objects after designing patterns made out of luxurious materials on it, and became popular in East Asia in the 7th-8th centuries.







In the section called "Revealing Regional Characteristics," visitors can compare lacquerware from Korea, China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar, which are displayed next to each other.







Visitors view the exhibition, "Ottchil, the Coated Splendor of Asian Lacquerwares," at the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, on Monday. The exhibition shows up to 263 lacquered objects from various Asian countries. Yonhap





"'Trefoil-shaped covered box with decoration of chrysanthemum' is a very rare piece showing the delicate and core technique of making lacquerware during the Goryeo period. A characteristic of the period is that artisans thinly sliced mother-of-pearl and created some patterned shapes as designs. People used other materials in decorating the lacquerwares, such as metal wire and tortoiseshell," Noh said.







She added that the lacquerware in Myanmar was luxurious by mixing up various ingredients as wel as transparent and colorful glasses on the surface. "Thailand and Vietnam have been making a lot of mother-of pearl lacquerware like Korea. In Korea, people only add mother-of-pearl designs on the surface and then sandpaper it to finish, but in Vietnam, artisans carve the dishes and put mother-of-pearl patterns designed to fit the carved frames."







In the "Transcending Boundaries" section, the exhibition traces the changes in lacquerware beyond regions and classes. In the later Joseon period, lacquerware, which had been used mainly among high-ranking people, started to be used among ordinary people, and can be seen even in daily necessities such as pillowcases







"The lacquerware made in Japan and China was exported to Europe beyond Asia after the 17th century. 'Nanban lacquerware,' a made-to-order product for export to European merchants, was developed in Japan. For example, the exhibition shows Bible stands that were made to be sold to European customers."







In the epilogue of the exhibition, works of contemporary artists inspired by lacquerware or using its traditional production techniques, will be shown revealing current interpretations of the traditional artisan techniques.






By Sharon Graham, Stuart Appelbaum and Christy Hoffman



Christmas trees, Hanukkah candles, New Year's countdown clocks  these are some of the ways we mark the holiday season. But Amazon workers have other, more brutal metrics this time of year. The company demands that they pick, stow, pack, ship and deliver at a faster rate and for longer hours.



The holidays, workers in Amazon warehouses tell us, is not a time of cheer, but backbreaking labor and relentless pressure. It can cost them their health and rob them of time with their families. In many ways, the "holiday crunch" is all that is wrong with the company's labor model, but amplified.



In Bessemer, Alabama, where a union drive was stymied earlier this year, workers have never stopped organizing with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, or RWDSU, despite the company's ongoing campaign to steamroll over their rights. Workers, for example, have stated and the National Labor Relations Board agrees with themthat Amazon meddled in the process by illegally pressuring warehouse staff to vote against joining a union.



What pushed these workers to seek a union was the punishing pace of work they were required to maintain, which was damaging both their physical and mental health.



The stress can be particularly hard on any day, but during the holiday shopping season, it can become unbearable. We know that at least two workers from the Bessemer facility have lost their lives this year: One died on the job; the other was rushed to the hospital after collapsing at work.



And several others have died there since it opened in 2020. Ambulances are sadly a regular occurrence at the Bessemer facility, as they are at many Amazon warehouses.



With its obsession with control, speed and disregard for workers' rights, "Bezosism" is a threat to all workers  not just those who work for Amazon. Without a strong voice on the job, workers will never get a fair chance when facing a corporation that has so much influence over commerce, the future of work and our data.



The first step to overhauling the company's systemic problems is to shift more power to Amazon workers. We know that workers can be agents for change when they join together  as we saw on Black Friday when thousands of Amazon warehouse workers and allies in more than 20 countries across six continents protested and went on strike as part of a global push to Make Amazon Pay. In Italy, drivers and couriers made significant improvements in working conditions and pay through their labor actions.



If Amazon workers want a better deal next holiday season, they need a union. And Amazon should stop standing in their way.



Amazon workers toil in different countries, with different cultures and different labor regulations. But the problems nearly every worker faces are the same: increasing concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a corporation that consistently mistreats and devalues its workforce.



The bottom line is that Amazon takes far too much for itself, while leaving workers and society with too little.



And that is why we are coming together, to push for change, to demand that workers are allowed to create a union without Amazon's relentless union-busting and interference. We will reign in the power of Amazon and strengthen labor rights around the world.





Sharon Graham is the general secretary of Unite the Union; Stuart Appelbaum is president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU); and Christy Hoffman is the general secretary of the UNI Global Union. This column was produced for The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.


Kendallville, IN (46755)

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Mainly cloudy with snow showers around this morning. High 18F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 70%..

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New Delhi, Dec 21 (PTI) Two men were arrested and a juvenile was apprehended for allegedly stabbing a man and robbing his belongings in west Delhi's Tilak Nagar, police said on Tuesday.

The two arrested men have been identified as Rahul Suri (23) and Rakesh (23), both residents of Tilak Nagar, they added.

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At around 3.05 am on Saturday, a call was received at the Tilak Nagar police station about the incident. The victim, who had multiple stab injuries, told the police that he was robbed of his belongings, a senior officer said.

During investigation, police identified the accused. Raids were conducted and the two men were arrested and the juvenile was apprehended, Deputy Commissioner of Police (west) Urvija Goel said.

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A mobile phone, four ATM cards, Aadhar and Pan cards and a stolen scooter were seized from their possession, police said.

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New Delhi [India], December 21 (ANI): In a major setback to Punjab Congress ahead of state Assembly polls, its senior leader Rana Gurmeet Singh Sodhi, who is known to be close to former State Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, on Tuesday quit the party and joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Sodhi, who represents Guru Har Sahai constituency in Punjab Assembly, joined the BJP in the presence of party's Punjab in-charge Gajendra Singh Shekhawat at BJP headquarters in the national capital today.

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Union Minister Bhupendra Singh Yadav, Union Minister Som Prakash, BJP General Secretary Dushyant Gautam were also present on the occasion.

Shekhawat welcomed Sodhi to the party and hoped that his joining will strengthen the party.

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"Gurmeet always think for the development of India and Punjab politics and the social life here has always been a place for him," said Yadav while welcoming him to the party.

After joining BJP, Gurmeet Sodhi said, "Punjab is a border state and the way communal harmony peace is being created here, the ruling government here will not be to handle it because their internal disputes are not coming to an end. I think only Narendra Modi's government will save Punjab."

Praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sodhi further said, "I worked with Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi. Congress has demolished secularism in the country. A personality like PM Modi can only save Punjab."

He further slammed the ruling party of Punjab and said that it is trying to divide the state on the basis of caste.

Speaking about his relationship with Captain Amarinder Singh, Sodhi said, "Today also, I have a lot of respect for Captain Amarinder Singh. He is like my elder brother. I have a good relationship with him."

After Amarinder Singh resigned from his post of Punjab Chief Minister, Sodhi was removed from his ministerial post.

The political scenario changed in Punjab after former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh left Congress after months of infighting with state party chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and formed a new party 'Punjab Lok Congress'.

Amarinder's party and BJP have also announced an alliance for the upcoming polls scheduled to be held early next year.

Punjab assembly polls are scheduled to be held in 2022.

In the 2017 Punjab Assembly polls, Congress won an absolute majority in the state by winning 77 seats and ousted the SAD-BJP government after 10 years. Aam Aadmi Party emerged as the second-largest party winning 20 seats in 117-member Punjab Legislative Assembly. The SAD could only manage to win 15 seats while the BJP secured 3 seats. (ANI)

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New Delhi, December 21: Stating that the entire country is a witness to the development that has taken place in Uttar Pradesh under the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that daughters of Uttar Pradesh have decided that they will not let the previous governments come back to power.

Addressing the people at the launch of 'Kanya Sumangala Yojana' in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj, the Prime Minister said, "Right now I got the privilege of transferring crores of rupees to the accounts of more than 1 lakh beneficiary daughters of Mukhyamantri Kanya Sumangala Yojana. This scheme will benefit the daughters of the state. Most of the beneficiaries are those girls who did not even have accounts until some time ago. But today they have the power of digital banking. Now daughters of Uttar Pradesh have decided that they will not let the previous governments come back to power."

Also Read | Uttar Pradesh Govt Provides Free Food Grains to Over 82% of Beneficiaries in December Under its Extended Scheme.

Attacking the Opposition over the issue of woman empowerment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Union Cabinet has taken a decision to increase the marriageable age of women from 18 years to 21 years but some people are troubled with the decision.

"The double engine government is working relentlessly to empower the future of daughters without any discrimination and favouritism. The central government has taken a decision. Earlier the age of marriage for sons was 21 years, but for daughters, it was only 18 years."

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"Daughters wanted that they should get time for pursuing studies, to progress and get equal opportunities. Efforts are being made to raise the age of marriage to 21 years for daughters. The country is taking this decision for the daughters, but people can see some are troubled by this decision," he stated.

Referring to the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' campaign, Prime Minister said the Centre has tried to awaken the consciousness of the society through the campaign to prevent female foeticide.

"Over 30 lakh houses in Uttar Pradesh have been built under PM Awas Yojana and about 25 lakh houses are registered in women's name. For generations, women did not have any property here but today they own the entire house. This is what true women empowerment is," he added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj on Tuesday. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath received the Prime Minister at the historical city.

Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh are slated for early next year.

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Mumbai, Dec 21: Polling was underway on Tuesday in 102 Nagar panchayats in 32 districts of Maharashtra, with the election being held without the reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

The nagar panchayat seats in Beed are expected see a contest between supporters of BJP leader Pankaja Munde and her cousin and state minister Dhananjay Munde of the NCP.

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Similarly, in Sindhudurg, the contest is likely to be between supporters of the Shiv Sena and BJP Union minister Narayan Rane.

The opposition BJP in Maharashtra won four of the six seats in the state Legislative Council polls held earlier this month.

The Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) last week said polls to local bodies from OBC reserved constituencies, which were scheduled for Tuesday, will now be held on January 18 and these seats will be converted as general category ones, an announcement coming two days after a Supreme Court ruling.

The elections to general, SC and ST seats in these local bodies will be held as per schedule on Tuesday, state election commissioner U P S Madan had said.

The Supreme Court last week directed the Maharashtra SEC to notify 27 per cent seats in the local bodies, which were reserved for the OBCs as general category so that the poll process can be taken forward.

The state government wanted the SEC to stay all local body polls till the OBC political quota was restored.

However, the apex court, while hearing an application filed by Maharashtra government seeking modification of a December 6 order, had directed the SEC to issue fresh notification for the 27 per cent OBC seats within a week.

In March this year, the apex court had said reservation in favour of OBCs in local bodies in Maharashtra cannot exceed an aggregate of 50 per cent of the total seats reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs taken together.

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Belvidere, Dec 21 (AP) Police in northern Illinois are investigating the apparent shooting deaths of a man and his two young sons as a triple homicide and are searching for the man's missing vehicle.

Officers found the bodies of Andrew Hintt, 31, and his two sons, 5 and 7, at their home in Belvidere on Sunday night, police said Monday. Autopsies are pending.

Also Read | China Trying To Increase Foothold Among Madhesis in Nepal.

Four shell casings were found at the scene, but no weapons have been recovered, police said.

The bodies were found after the boys' mother contacted the landlord to say she had not heard from anyone in the family. The landlord called 911 and officers responded, police said.

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Belvidere Police Chief Shane Woody said the deaths are being investigated as a triple homicide.

Whoever did this horrific act is truly evil, he said Monday during a news conference. Belvidere is about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of Chicago.

Officers are searching for Hintt's vehicle, a silver or gray 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk with Illinois registration: CT92923.

Police asked anyone who knows anything about the vehicle's whereabouts or anything else regarding the case to contact the Belvidere Police Department at 815-544-2135 or Boone County Crime Stoppers at 815-547-7867.(AP)

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Moscow [Russia], December 21 (ANI/Sputnik): Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, noted that Kiev was still stubbornly evading the fulfillment of its obligations under the Minsk agreements, which hindered the holding of the Normandy format summit, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

Putin had a phone conversation with Scholz on Tuesday. It noted that at the request of the chancellor, the problems of resolving the internal Ukrainian conflict had been thoroughly considered.

Also Read | China Trying To Increase Foothold Among Madhesis in Nepal.

"Vladimir Putin informed in detail about the state of affairs in this area, noting, in particular, that Kiev continues to stubbornly evade fulfilling its obligations under the 2015 Minsk agreements, which, in fact, hinders the possible holding of a new summit in the Normandy format," the statement says. (ANI/Sputnik)

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Boston, Dec 21 (AP) One of five Russian nationals who authorities allege made tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits by trading shares of companies using information stolen during hacks of US computer networks has been extradited to the US to answer to the charges, federal prosecutors in Boston announced Monday.

Vladislav Klyushin, 41, whose last name is sometimes spelled Kliushin, was arrested in Sion, Switzerland, on March 21 and was extradited to the US on December 18, acting US Attorney for Massachusetts Nathaniel Mendell said.

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"In simple terms, they hacked into US networks, stole inside information, and cheated honest investors out of millions of dollars," Mendell said at a news conference.

No defense attorney was listed for Klyushin in online court records.

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According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed parallel fraud charges against the defendants Monday, they made a total of USD 82 million through the scheme from 2018 through 2020.

The other four suspects remain at large, US authorities said.

One of them is a former officer in the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, known as the GRU, who was previously charged in July 2018 for his alleged role in a Russian effort to meddle in the 2016 US elections, prosecutors said.

He was also charged in connection with an alleged role into a hacking campaign that targeted international anti-doping agencies, sporting federations, and anti-doping officials, prosecutors said.

The information in the new case was acquired through unauthorized intrusions into the computer networks of two US-based vendors that publicly traded companies use to make filings through the Securities and Exchange Commission, prosecutors said.

The defendants accessed earnings-related files of several notable US companies including Tesla, Snap Inc., Roku, Nielsen and Kohl's days before earnings reports were made public, according to an FBI affidavit in the case.

On several occasions, the hackers used computer servers located in Massachusetts, according to the FBI affidavit.

By getting a company's financial information ahead of time, the defendants were able to make trades using brokerage accounts, sometimes in their own names, based on whether a company's shares would likely rise or fall following the public disclosure of the information, prosecutors said.

If a company was about to release positive financial results, they would buy shares of that company, and if a company was about to report poor results, they would sell, according to authorities.

Klyushin and two of the other defendants worked at M-13, a Moscow-based information technology company that purported to provide services to detect vulnerabilities in computer systems, and counted among its clients the Russian government, prosecutors said.

To access the vendor systems, they deployed malicious infrastructure to gather employees' usernames and passwords, which they then used to misrepresent themselves as employees in order to obtain access to the computer networks, and also used various methods to conceal their activities, prosecutors said.

Klyushin is charged with conspiring to obtain unauthorized access to computers, and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, and with obtaining unauthorized access to computers, wire fraud and securities fraud, prosecutors said. (AP)

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Invoking the emergency powers under the recently notified intermediary guidelines and digital media ethics code in the Information and Technology (IT) Act for the first time, 20 YouTube channels and two websites were banned by the Indian government for allegedly running anti-India propaganda from Pakistan
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh attended a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise this afternoon in Pune, Maharashtra. pic.twitter.com/nZTBDKDIPU ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2021

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The death toll in the Haiti truck blast last week rose to 90 on Monday, as the coastal city of Cap-Haitien continues to address the aftermath of devastating tragedy.

The number of death was confirmed by Cap-Haitien's Deputy Mayor Patrick Almonor on Tuesday, as the tragedy last week continue to unfold, Al Jazeera reported.

Despite identifying 90 deaths in last week's devastating accident, Almonor pointed out that the fatality count on the tragedy is "unfortunately incomplete." The deputy mayor explained that the reason behind the death toll not yet finalized is because of the "severe injuries" suffered by those who remained hospitalized.

According to France 24, the previous tally of deaths released by Haitian authorities stood at 75 death with 47 severely burnt due to the explosion.

As the death toll in the explosion rose, national funerals will be observed in Cap-Haitien's main cathedral on Tuesday. However, 25 caskets will be set up during that day. It can be recalled that the majority of the victims were buried shortly after the accident in a mass grave in the city.

Last week, Prime Minister Ariel Henry pointed out that his government is taking ion measures to help organize the commemorations for the victims of the truck last.

READ NEXT: Remaining 12 American, Canadian Missionaries Released by Haiti Kidnappers

Haiti Truck Blast's Effect in the City

Almonor pointed out that the damage to the city due to the explosion was extensive.

"We have nearly 50 houses impacted by the fire and most of them will need to be demolished," Almonor underscored.

He added that Cap-Haitien will need "a lot of help" to overcome the tragedy the city has experienced. Almonor furthered that the central government offered to help them, but the deputy mayor pointed out that they need more than just the central government to surpass the tragedy.

BBC also mentioned medical experts from Haiti claiming that their healthcare providers were overwhelmed, as they set up field hospitals in the area to help those affected in the explosion.

"We need human resources, and also material resources, namely serum, gauze, and anything that can be used in case of serious burns," Mayor Yvorse Pierre said last week.

Residents Rushed to the Truck After Crash to Collect Gas

According to Almonor, on the night of December 13, the driver of the gas truck, which was not identified, lost control of the vehicle when he served into a motor-taxi, causing the truck to overturn.

Witnesses alleged that residents rushed towards the tanker after the crash to collect some of the spilled gas before the truck exploded into a fireball that ravaged cars, buildings, and homes located in the neighborhood.

In recent years, Haiti experienced fuel shortages and high costs, as authorities regularly run out of cash to pay gas distributions. Furthermore, armed gangs also cut off access to fuel terminals around the country's capital, which is one of the factors that worsen the fuel shortage in the country.

Aside from fuel shortages, the country also experience a surge in gang violence and political instability after Haiti President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in early July.

READ NEXT: DHS Watchdog Declines to Investigate Claims of Horse-Mounted Border Agents 'Whipping' Haitian Migrants

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Haiti Fuel Truck Explosion: 75 Victims Buried in Mass Grave - From FRANCE 24 English
Former U.S. President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Monday against New York Attorney General Letitia James in his bid to block the civil fraud investigation into his company.

Trump and the company Trump Organization claimed in the lawsuit that James has violated their rights under the U.S. Constitution by pursuing a politically motivated investigation, according to a Reuters report.

Syracuse, New York received the lawsuit from Trump after James' office announced that it would probe the Trump Organization over its valuations of properties.

Trump's attorney, Alina Habba, said in a statement that they intend to not only hold James accountable for her blatant "constitutional violations," but also to "stop her bitter crusade" to punish James' political opponent in its tracks.

The lawsuit noted that the state probe is "baseless" and malicious" intended to harass Trump and violate his constitutional rights.

A person familiar with the matter said that James had been looking to remove Trump under oath on January 7 as part of the two-year investigation, according to an Aljazeera report.

James suspended her run for governor of New York earlier this month. She then started the probe in 2019 to know if Trump's company in Manhattan had been working over the value of the key assets for tax and insurance reasons.

Trump's camp had included an August 2018 tweet James posted before she took office.

James said in the tweet to "just wait until I'm in the Attorney General's Office."

READ NEXT: House Select Committee Issues a Subpoena to Retired Army Colonel for Creating PowerPoint Presentation Detailing How to Overturn Election Results in 2020

Fraud Investigation on Trump's Company and Lawsuit

James responded with a statement regarding the lawsuit that was filed against the New York Attorney General's Office. She said that the former president and his company was reportedly seeking to delay her investigation.

James said that their investigation will continue undeterred as no one is above the law, not "even someone with the name Trump," according to an NBC News report.

Trump also released a statement, replying to James' assertion. He said that it was not about the delay, but about the Constitution.

The former president went on to say that James was nothing but a "corrupt official doing the dirty work" of her own party.

James is also aiding the Manhattan district attorney's criminal investigation against Trump over tax fraud schemes, wherein the case charged its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, with tax fraud this year.

The company and Weisselberg have pleaded not guilty on the charges.

Meanwhile, the attorney general refuted claims of the investigation being politically motivated.

Former Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen testified before Congress in 2019, wherein he admitted that Trump inflated his assets when needed.

The former president also deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes, according to Cohen.

Cohen was sentenced in 2018 to three years imprisonment. The Manhattan federal judge called Cohen's case a "veritable smorgasbord" of criminal conduct.

Cohen's charges include facilitating secret payments to women who claimed they had had affairs with Trump, as well as lying to Congress about the former president's business dealings with Russia.

READ MORE: Donald Trump Jr. Begged Mark Meadows to Urge His Father to Stop Capitol Riot, Texts Reveal

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Trump Sues New York Attorney General - from CBS New York






A Magnitude 6.2 earthquake was recorded off the coast in the northern portion of the state of California early Monday afternoon, according to the report of the United States Geological Survey.

Magnitude 6.2 Earthquake Felt in Several California Areas

According to the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that the quake struck at around 12:10 p.m., 37 miles from Eureka, California. The agency said that the temblor was centered in the Pacific Ocean, about 24 miles west of Petrolia and 30 miles from Fortuna based on the USGS report.

Based on the latest report of Fox 5 San Diego, there were no immediate reports of any injuries or damage related to the earthquake.

Moreover, the Governor's Office of the state of California said that the Emergency Services is "actively monitoring" the situation based on a tweet from the agency. The agency also mentioned that they were already coordinating with their local partners in the region to protect nearby communities from any secondary impacts.

Meanwhile, the earthquake's preliminary magnitude was measured only at 5.8, but it was upgraded by the Geological Survey a short time later which heightened the situation.

Based on the website of the USGS, the shocks were felt throughout the northern portion of the state of California and as far as the Bay Area in the south.

The National Weather Service's Eureka office said that moderate to strong shaking was felt in the area. Some minor damage was also reported that resulted from the damages on some household items.

READ ALSO: 7.5-Magnitude Earthquake Hits Northern Peru

California Authorities Dismiss Possibility of Tsunami

The California Geological Survey also posted in their social media account that moderate to strong shaking was recorded by the seismic network along the coast. The agency also mentioned that the earthquake was felt in San Francisco by a CGS geologist. The city of San Francisco is about 250 miles from Petrolia.

Based on the report of seismologist Lucy Jones, the earthquake's location was off Cape Mendocino in the Mendocino Fracture Zone, which marks the southern boundary between the Juan de Fuca and Pacific plates.

Furthermore, a tsunami warning has not been issued in the nearby communities by the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center, NBC Bay Area reported.

Jones explained that the earthquake was a result of the movement in a transform fault. The seismologist pointed out that the movement or the motion of the plates were sideways or horizontal. Jones added that there was no vertical motion so little water was displaced and thus no tsunami warning was issued.

In the last 10 days, there has been one earthquake of magnitude 3.0 or greater recorded by authorities in the U.S. that was centered nearby.

On the other hand, an average of five earthquakes with magnitudes between 6.0 and 7.0 occur each year in the states of California and Nevada. The data was based on a recent three-year data sample gathered by U.S. agencies.

READ MORE: Mysterious Blue Lights Seen in Mexico Sky During a Powerful Earthquake Set off Apocalyptic Speculation

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: 6.2 earthquake shakes Northern California, no tsunami expected -KCRA News


Twelve missionaries out of the 17 members of the group abducted in Haiti had escaped their captors, the 400 Mawozo gangs.

A spokesman for the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries said that 12 missionaries prepared overnight and found a way to open the door that was closed and blocked, The Daily Wire reported.

The group who escaped includes a 10-month-old baby and three additional children. In their escape, the group reportedly used the stars and a mountain for direction as they traveled 10 miles away from where they were held.

The spokesman, Weston Showalter, said that the group had eventually found someone who helped make a phone call for help after hours of walking. He said that the group was taken to Florida through a Coast Guard flight.

Sam Stoltzfus was one of the group of 17 missionaries that were kidnapped in Haiti on October 16. He said they made preparations and packed their bags with some of their belongings. He added that the escape had been in the planning for a while, according to a Miami Herald report.

Stoltzfus said that he believes that the gang members were awake when they fled. The group then spent six hours on Friday with the Federal Bureau of Investigation sharing their story.

READ NEXT: Haiti Kidnappers Released Three Christian Aid Ministries Missionaries; 12 Still Held by the Captors

Abducted Christian Missionaries

Showalter said that the missionaries had set up a 24-hour prayer rotation, wherein they talked and sang through the walls to uplift the spirits of the hostages from other groups.

Stoltzfus confirmed that their captors were members of the 400 Mawozo gang. He said that he knew there were gangs in Haiti as he lived in the country for three years.

However, the missionary said that he never thought he would be a victim of kidnapping as the kidnapping of Americans had been unheard of.

Meanwhile, Showalter said that the hostages spoke to the gang leader on several occasions, talking about God's eventual judgment if he and the gang members continue to be part of the gang.

Showalter said that none of the hostages were physically hurt or abused by the kidnappers, although they were threatened on multiple occasions, according to an Aljazeera report.

The leader of the gang had earlier threatened to kill the missionaries in October.

The gang was reportedly using a Land Cruiser ambulance, a pickup truck, and another vehicle to abduct unsuspecting motorists.

Haiti has suffered from natural disasters, surging gang violence, and political turmoil made worse by the assassination of the country's president in July.

David N. Troyer, general director of Christian Aid Ministries, said that some unidentified people provided funds to pay for ransom and allow the negotiation process to continue.

Pierre Esperance said that missionaries' description of their escape was very unusual with mass kidnappings in the past have been resolved by the payment of ransom.

Esperance is a prominent human rights defender in Haiti.

Showalter said that the gang had also held other hostages in the same building.

READ MORE: Haiti Kidnapping: Haitian Gang Blamed for Abducting 17 American and Canadian Missionaries, Including 5 Children

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Kidnapped missionaries make daring escape in Haiti - from Associated Press






Jurors have started their deliberations in the sex trafficking and perjury trial of Ghislaine Maxwell at a New York City court.

Maxwell has denied claims of grooming underage girls for abuse by the late convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, BBC News reported.

Jurors have already heard the final statements of the prosecutors and Maxwell's defense lawyers, with the former calling the socialite as a "sophisticated predator," while the latter alleged "sensationalism."

Judge Alison Nathan said over the weekend that jurors would be instructed that they may choose to convict Maxwell if they conclude she either ignored or "consciously avoided" knowledge of Epstein's sex abuse of underage girls.

In her closing argument on Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe told jurors that Maxwell was a grown woman who preyed on vulnerable girls, adding that the socialite knew exactly what she was doing.

Moe added that Maxwell manipulated her victims and groomed them for sexual abuse, according to The Guardian.

"[Maxwell is a] sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing... She manipulated her victims and groomed them. She caused deep and lasting harm to young girls. It is time to hold her accountable," Moe noted.

Meanwhile, defense attorney Laura Menninger insisted that the claims against Maxwell were influenced by erroneous memories and money.

Menninger said the government played the people with a montage of Epstein's houses, bank accounts, and cars, among others, just like a "sensationalist tabloid would."

READ NEXT: Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein Pictured at Queen Elizabeth's Balmoral Residence; Photo Shown During Trial

Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell

The trial was initially projected to last six weeks, with Nathan urging lawyers to keep their closing statements tight so the jury could start deliberations as early as Monday with the COVID outbreak in New York in mind, NPR reported.

Ghislaine Maxwell's four siblings attended her trial, sitting next to one another in the first row of spectators.

The judge has repeatedly denied her bail despite her lawyer's arguments that the pledge of her $22.5 million estate and willingness to be watched 24 hours a day by armed guards would ensure her presence in court.

Defense lawyers maintained that Maxwell is the government's scapegoat for crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell's lawyers criticized the judge's move as a "backup option" if the jury does not find Maxwell an active participant during the abuses.

Jeffrey Epstein's Sex Trafficking Charges

Jeffrey Epstein was found in a jail cell in 2019 dead while he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Ghislaine Maxwell has been held at a U.S. jail without the chance of bail since she was arrested in July 2020. The charges against her covered a period between 1994 and 2004.

Prosecutors called two dozen witnesses over 10 days as they built a narrative of Maxwell's involvement in a "pyramid scheme of abuse" with Epstein.

Four accusers testified that Maxwell often set up, demonstrated, and took part in massages that turned into sexual acts with Epstein.

In addition, the government had released a series of unseen photographs, flight logs, and documents intended to link Epstein and Maxwell as "partners in crime."

Ghislaine Maxwell decided not to take the stand in her own defense on Friday, telling the judge that the claims against her were unproven.

Meanwhile, defense lawyers called nine witnesses in two days of testimony last week, including a cognitive psychologist who testified that people might reconstruct "false memories" of traumatic events.

If convicted on the six counts she faces at this trial, Ghislaine Maxwell could face up to 80 years in prison. She pleaded not guilty to all charges.

READ MORE: Jeffrey Epstein's Ex-Employee Says Late Sex Offender Had Young Girls at Palm Beach Estate While Ghislaine Maxwell Was the 'Lady of the House'

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Closing Arguments Delivered at Ghislaine Maxwell's Trial - From Sky News






A security official in Mexico said the 13 migrants, who had been kidnapped in Chihuahua near the U.S.-Mexico border, may have been killed during a turf war between Mexican drug cartels.

Based on the reports of Mexican and U.S. sources, rival gangs were fighting for control of local trafficking networks and smuggling routes in this northern state bordering Texas.

13 Migrants Allegedly Died in the Hands of Mexican Drug Cartels

The family members of the 13 migrants and a human rights advocate said some of the migrants, who disappeared this fall, headed for the Midland-Odessa and Dallas areas.

They said they were hoping the group, all men mostly from the Chihuahua state, was still alive or, at worst, being held for ransom or forced into labor for Mexican drug cartels.

But a Mexican security official familiar with the investigation told The Dallas Morning News that authorities were "looking for bodies," or what was "left behind" out in the desert.

The Mexican official, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said he believed the migrants were no longer alive.

The incident, which happened in late September, was considered part of a growing pattern of disappearances of migrants in the area. Despite being peaceful recently, the area has its reputation and long history of cartel-related violence.

READ NEXT: Mafia, Local Politicians Involved in Mexican Drug Cartel's Turf Wars; Evidences Revealed in Mexico's Recent Beachside Attacks

Migrants Crossing U.S.-Mexico Border End Up as Mexican Drug Cartels' Victims

Veteran human rights activist, who works with an organization called Centro de Derechos Humanos de las Mujeres, Gabino Gomez Escarcega, emphasized that the area is like a no man's land.

Before his statement, Gomez stood with family members of the missing migrants outside the state capitol's office in Chihuahua, protesting and demanding answers in the disappearance of their loved ones. They held posters emblazoned with their loved ones' faces and signs with messages saying that it was not just the group who had been victims of the drug-related turf wars but many others.

Veteran security and immigration experts were concerned that the violence was prompted by the restrictive immigration policies imposed by the U.S.

The current U.S. immigration policies have reportedly left tens of thousands of migrants in limbo along the border, lingering in dangerous Mexican towns where they could end up as victims of several criminal groups.

Critics said the policies had created a booming industry for smugglers. The director of the Justice in Mexico program at the University of San Diego, David Shirk, noted that the policies increased the number of individuals who were on the radar of the migrant smugglers.

The president of the Migration Policy Institute, Andrew Selee, noted that the Mexican drug cartels used to look down on human smuggling because they saw it as a secondary business and a much less lucrative business.

However, the numbers are changing as the smuggling of migrants becomes more attractive to try for the Mexican drug cartels.

READ MORE: 1 Dead, 14 Injured After Suspect Opens Fire on Crowd in Texas: Sheriff

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: U.S. Expels Thousands of Haitian Migrants From Texas Town on Mexico Border - From South China Morning Post
COVID-19 is now considered the number one cop killer in Florida, causing more than 85 percent of police fatalities in the state.

According to the Officer Down website, out of the 62 statewide line-of-duty deaths in the past two years, 53 of them were due to COVID-19.

COVID-19 Becomes the No. 1 Cop Killer in Florida

In South Florida, 33 law enforcement officers lost their lives in the line of duty over the past two years. Only three were killed by gunfire, one died in a car crash, and another died due to an injury.

The other 28 police officers died from COVID-19. The deadly virus, which caused a worldwide health crisis, attacked law enforcement officers from West Palm Beach to Miami, WebMD News reported.

The COVID-19 killed several corrections officers and agents of Customs and Border Patrol and took the life of a U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms officer in West Palm Beach.

Executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based national policy group Police Executive Research Forum Chuck Wexler told Orlando Sentinel that more cops would die from COVID-19 than be shot, stabbed, or die in traffic accidents.

"It is the number one killer of police, hands down," he noted. According to the Associated Press, most of the cops who died from COVID were white and Hispanic males in their 40s and 50s.

Based on reports, the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections lost the most number of officers, with seven. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office followed, losing five officers.

There were also three Customs and Border Protection officers assigned at the Miami International Airport who also died due to COVID-related illnesses in a matter of 15 days.

READ NEXT: Mafia, Local Politicians Involved in Mexican Drug Cartel's Turf Wars; Evidences Revealed in Mexico's Recent Beachside Attacks

Police Officers in Florida Were Hesitant to Get Vaccinated

President of Miami-Dade's Police Benevolent Association Steadman Stahl told AP that several officers hesitated to get vaccinated against the COVID during the early days of the pandemic.

Stahl did not release the exact figures but based on anecdotal reports, he said around 60 percent of the force had already received their COVID-19 jabs. He noted that the younger population of the force were more scared of getting their vaccines because of the fear of the unknown.

However, the current chairman for Miami-Dade Chiefs of Police COVID-19 committee and former Miami police commander Dave Magnusson expressed doubts about the said percentage of vaccination.

Magnusson noted that he has doubts that even half of the police force in South Florida have received vaccines since many cops think "they're invincible."

According to reports, the vaccines' availability does not also appear to reduce the number of fatal infections in the state.

It was reported that out of the 28 officers in South Florida who died from COVID-19 complications in the past two years, 18 died after the vaccines were made widely available.

The latest data showed that around 542 law enforcement officers nationwide have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of 2020.

READ MORE: 1 Dead, 14 Injured After Suspect Opens Fire on Crowd in Texas: Sheriff

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: COVID-19 Is Now The Leading Cause Of Death Among U.S. Police - From TODAY
Public views are being sought in Laois and other counties on a long promised plan that could deliver nearly 85 million in development funding to the midlands that have been hit by the ending of peat production.

The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communication, Eamon Ryan, has launched a public consultation on a draft of Irelands Territorial Just Transition Plan, in partnership with the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly.



A statement says the plan will set out how Ireland proposes to invest funding from the EU Just Transition Fund  to support a just transition in the wider Midlands region.

Just days after Laois Offaly TD Carol Nolan said the plan's publication was like Waiting for Godot, Minister Ryan's Department has published the draft plan which has seen 84.5 million has been allocated to Ireland under the EU Just Transition Fund over the period to 2027.

The Fund must be complemented with national resources and in Ireland the national co-funding rate will be between 30% to 50%. There are also specific rules in relation to the timing of expenditure and on eligible costs that may be supported by the Fund.



This public consultation is asking for stakeholders views on the transition process and the draft plan which, when finalised, will be submitted to the European Commission for approval. The consultation invites stakeholders to complete an online survey and to attend online workshops.



There will be two online workshops on January 18 and 25 for in-depth discussions on priorities for the EU Just Transition Fund. A third online workshop, for young people in the region, is being organised with national youth representative organisations to ensure that people impacted have the opportunity to shape the plan. There will also be specific information sessions for Oireachtas members, as well as relevant local authorities and their members.

The Department says views are views of individuals, communities, businesses, and representative bodies are particularly sought in the wider Midlands region of east Galway, north Tipperary, Longford, Laois, Offaly, Westmeath, west Kildare and Roscommon.



A statement announcing the consultation says the EU Just Transition Fund will support the goals of Irelands Climate Action Plan and its objectives, in relation to providing a just transition in the wider Midlands region. This is in response to the ending of peat extraction for electricity generation.

Minister Ryan's Department says analysis for the draft Territorial Just Transition Plan builds on extensive analysis and public engagement already undertaken. This considered the development needs of the region, including for the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy for the Eastern and Midland Region.

It identified the following proposed key development needs for the wider Midlands region, based on the scope of support from the EU Just Transition Fund:

Modernising the business environment and creating employment opportunities;

Enhancing the skills profile;

Promoting environmental sustainability and industrial heritage;

Enhancing the potential of region as a place to live and work.

Commenting on publication, Minister Ryan, said:



This Government is committed to a just transition for the Midlands region and has dedicated significant funding to support workers, companies and communities following the early closure, in 2020, of the peat-fired power stations and the ending of peat extraction to supply these power stations.



I am pleased to launch this public consultation on our draft Territorial Just Transition Plan, which is a significant step in helping to deliver further significant funding to the region, with support from the EU Just Transition Fund. I look forward to hearing peoples views on the draft plan. This will inform the final plan, which we will submit to the European Commission.



I am also pleased to announce that I have decided to appoint the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly (EMRA) as the Managing Authority to deliver this funding. The EMRA is the key statutory body representing the development needs of the region. It is extremely well placed, through its statutory functions and working in close cooperation with my Department and the other bodies administering EU funds in Ireland, to deliver EU just transition funding into the region, he said.

Laois Offaly Minister of State Pippa Hackett encouraged people to engage.

The Midlands deserves to be front and centre for EU Just Transition funding and this move by my colleague Minister Eamon Ryan is a step in that direction. Up to 84m is coming to Ireland and the Midlands is being prioritised for investment. It will create jobs, modernise business, and attract people into our towns.

"I would urge people with ideas for spending to join the online workshops on January 18 and 25. We will be having special session for young people at a later date. This is really positive announcement for the region, she said.

The consultation is open until the 14th February 2022.

The draft Territorial Just Transition Plan and consultation survey are available HERE.

A report summarising the responses received will be made available online after the consultation period.

The Department says the EU Just Transition Fund (EU JTF) is a newly established fund under the framework of EU cohesion policy and is being rolled out in all EU Member States. The Fund is governed by the EU Just Transition Fund Regulation (Regulation 2021/1056) and the EU Common Provisions Regulation (Regulation 2021/1060), which set out common rules for all EU cohesion policy funds. These regulations were adopted in June 2021.



The Just Transition Fund is designed to assist communities across Europe to meet the challenges of the green transition, in line with the objective of achieving EU climate neutrality by 2050 in an effective and fair manner  ensuring that nobody is left behind.



Member States must therefore concentrate the proposed investments in their territorial just transition plans on specific regions or parts of regions and justify the selection of those regions based on the economic and social impacts resulting from the transition, in particular with regard to job losses.



The wider Midlands region has been proposed as the territory for investment under the draft Territorial Just Transition Plan. This region comprises East Galway, North Tipperary, Longford, Laois, Offaly, Westmeath, West Kildare and Roscommon.



Territorial Just Transition Plans must address a number of areas, including:

outlining the national climate transition process;

identifying the most negatively affected territory and the economic, social and territorial impact of the transition;

identifying the development needs and objectives of that territory by 2030 consistent with other national, regional or

territorial strategies and plans;

setting out the types of investments envisaged; and

outlining the proposed governance mechanisms for the implementation of the EU JTF.

The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications has overall policy responsibility for the EU Just Transition Fund in Ireland. The Department will be supported by the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly (EMRA), which will be the Managing Authority  a requirement of the EU funds management system.



The Managing Authority is a key function within the overall architecture for the delivery of the funds and the EMRA will play a critical role in the development and ongoing management of Irelands JTF Programme for the forthcoming programme period, as prescribed by the EU Common Provisions Regulation. Other bodies may be selected by the Government to deliver specific elements of the territorial plan and programme.
Leo Varadkar has said it has become very clear that the Northern Ireland Protocol is working.

The Tanaiste said that while there are still issues to be ironed out in the post-Brexit agreement, Northern Irelands economic performance shows it has been a success.

He said the protocol would boost foreign direct investment in the region, which in turn would benefit the all-island economy.

He said: In relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol, I think its one thing that we should see as being very clear now, after about a year of the protocol being in place, is that its working.

It was designed to make sure that there was no hard border between North and South that there isnt.

It was designed to protect our place in the single market and it has.

And as was there in the original agreement with Prime Minister May, it is designed to protect the all-island economy, and thats thriving.

Trade north-south and south-north has increased dramatically, between 50 and 90%, depending on which way you count it.

He added: According to the UK Office of National Statistics, the Northern Ireland economy has outperformed the rest of the United Kingdom.

So if anyone told you a year ago, thats what the protocol would result in, I think that shows what a success it has been.

Speaking at an event by IDA Ireland, the group that oversees foreign direct investment (FDI), Mr Varadkar said that problems with the protocol still need to be addressed.

He said he was keen to work with Liz Truss  who has taken over responsibility for the UKs future relationship with the EU following Lord Frosts resignation  on resolving the issues.

It isnt perfect and were very keen to work with the European Union, Secretary Truss and the UK Government on ironing out some of the problems that have arisen, particularly when it comes to goods going from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, he said.

I think its a potentially huge selling point to attract FDI into Northern Ireland, because Northern Ireland will have access to both the British single market and the European single market.

But the uncertainty around the protocol doesnt help Northern Ireland in that regard. So as soon as we can get to a point of certainty, the better.

We want Northern Ireland to attract more FDI and we think that would benefit the island economy as a whole.

Addressing Lord Frosts resignation, Mr Varadkar said Dublin is happy to work with whoever the UK puts in charge.

The success of our #multinational sector has allowed us sustain other areas of our economy that are struggling. #FDI is central to our economic policy"  An Tanaiste @LeoVaradkar speaking at IDA Ireland's annual results launch this morning. For more  https://t.co/NmmWg9DQqM pic.twitter.com/Cpis8LfoMD  IDA Ireland (@IDAIRELAND) December 20, 2021

He said: From our point of view, when it comes to dealing with the UK Government, we just try to work with whoevers there.

Theres been a change of Prime Minister, theres been several Brexit secretaries, several foreign secretaries, several Northern Ireland secretaries.

And our job as an Irish government has tried to work with whoever is in those key positions, to build relationships.

Liz Truss is Simon Coveneys counterpart, hed be known to her, so that work has already started I suppose.
A housing service provider has said that it welcomed the news that 133 new tenants in Kildare would receive their 'lifetime' homes just in time for Christmas.

Respond, an Approved Housing Body and service provider, said today that they specifically delivered 38 new homes in Kildare in 2021.

It added that they welcomed 133 new tenants in Kildare to homes that they either own or mange from January to the end of November, bringing the total number of Responds tenants in Kildare to 804.

Respond further claimed that this number may increase again before year end.

The company said in a statement: "Nationally, Respond delivered 624 new social homes and commenced construction on 685 additional homes over the course of the year."

"The Approved Housing Body currently has 1,562 homes in construction and on-site."

It continued: "2,384 social housing tenants were welcomed into their lifetime homes this year.

"Respond, which h has a building programme valued in excess of 1bn, says it delivers homes in 15 to 18 months from commencement on site based on the homes in its current building programme."

Niamh Randall, a spokesperson for Respond, also said that the company's commitment has been "exceptional" this year, especially in relation to the pandemic.

She explained: "Respond, as a service provider, is committed to developing vibrant and diverse communities and empowering individuals, families and communities to reach their full potential."

"Reflecting over the past year, we are extremely proud of how our services have supported families and individuals across their life cycle through our Family Homeless services, Early Learning and School Age Care, Day Care Services for older people, Refugee Resettlement and Family Support services."

Ms Randall said: "We thank our tenants and service users who are at the heart of our work and the reason we do the work we do."

She also thanked all staff at Respond, its board of directors and partners in Local Authorities, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, the Housing Agency, the Housing Finance Agency, the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive and the Health Service Executive "for their continued hard work and support."

"We are looking forward to 2022 and continuing to deliver additional social and affordable homes to people and the provision of family homeless services and services in the community," Ms Randall concluded.
The hospitality sector across County Kildare has been left reeling by the latest Covid-19 restrictions including a 8pm closing time starting this week.

Pubs, restaurants, hotels and arts venues have been grappling to adjust to the new rules, while acknowledging the risk to public health of the new Omicron variant.

Premises including Kavanaghs in Naas and ORourkes in Newbridge said they have to reorganise rosters for staff and hope they get enough customers in the doors in coming days.

The Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge said it has to bring forward evening events to earlier times but said ticket holders have been very understanding.

County Kildare Chamber urged people to support local businesses after a very difficult year.

Joan ORourke of ORourkes Bar and Lounge in Newbridge said the 8pm restrictions will create havoc with the operation of pubs and restaurants.



ORourkes had already ordered in the usual amount of stock for the Christmas and New Year period - which may be too much now.

Joan said: We didnt need this on Christmas week. We had enough to be doing. Its a bit of a mess.

After the Taoiseachs speech, I had to re-jig the roster which wasnt easy because some of our night workers can only work

after 7pm.

And for customers, many might only be coming in at 7pm or later so it will be a big change for them too.

It might be the case that everybody comes at the same time, and we will have to say: sorry, were full.

Joan added: Its a tradition for many people to have a drink on Christmas Eve with family or friends, but the house will have to be cleared by 8pm now.

Joan also added that trade in December keeps bars going through the quieter days and nights in January.

She added: The thing about these restrictions is that once people go out the door at 8pm, they will be going to house parties,

the taxis will tell you that. At least a pub is a controlled environment with all public health restrictions in place.

Joan also said the financial supports for businesses should be clarified as soon as possible.



Cunninghams Bar in Kildare town, which recently opened The Dining Room restaurant, changed its opening hours to comply with the restrictions.

The business said it will be open every day from 1pm with the last sitting at 6pm.

A spokesperson said: We will be contacting everyone who had a previous booking that is affected by the new restrictions.

Proprietor Paul Hyland of 109-year-old Mooneys Bar in Monasterevin said that the hospitality trade was being victimised again and he called for similar restrictions to target busy supermarkets.

Mr Hyland told the Leader: Why is the Government going at the publicans again?

Its very, very unfair. The pubs and restaurants have been taking all the hits. Look at all the supermarkets, the car parks are full with lots of people circulating between aisles. Why arent they closing at 8pm as well?

The publican also made the point that a lot of staff depended on extra hours around Christmas and New Year time to make money to see them through the holidays.

He explained: A student would be glad of a few shifts and they would make it stretch when theyre in college.

He added; People are talking about the Pandemic Unemployment Payment and other supports  but if youve a family to support such as a partner and three teenaged children, you wont go very far compared to your regular wages.

Kamila Kleszcz, manager at Toughers restaurant between Naas and Newbridge, said staff and customers will have to adjust yet again to the new restrictions.

Its very hard... We do understand that safety does come first, but at the same time, every time the government announces restrictions, we (the hospitality sector) get hit.

We just have to go along with it and be hopeful for the future.

She added that the restrictions have created issues for the staff at the restaurant: It is difficult to retain staff with the restrictions.

We are very fortunate to have a very big, open premises for our restaurant, but recently we have had to spread out our staff across it.

For example, there are waiters and chefs, but now we also have staff regularly keeping an eye out for customers, sanitising tables and chairs, and checking Covid certs.

Ms Kleszcz also explained that the restaurant was due to host a Joe Dolan tribute live show, but it had to be cancelled as a result of the restrictions.

However, she reassured customers that Toughers will be making quality food over the festive season, especially through its turkey and ham dinners.

Disappointing

Meanwhile Alicia Farragher, owner of Kavanaghs pub in Naas, also echoed Ms Klezczs sentiments, saying: 8pm (for closing time) is very disappointing, especially for such a busy period... its not a nice position to be in, but we have to get on with it.



She added that the upstairs restaurant, Bouchon, has suffered a notable setback as a result of the restrictions.

Ms Farragher also said that a lot of staff members wont be getting their usual Christmas wages due to the decrease in footfall.

Its unfortunate because its two years on, and we thought were seeing light at the end of the tunnel and would have a fresh start for the New Year, but this wont be the case.

It will be interesting to see what will happen when January comes; we will keep going as much as we can.

The Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge said it has been forced to re-schedule some events to earlier times and praised the support of ticket holders.

Alex Rosiak, acting director of Riverbank Arts Centre, said: We are currently contacting all artists and companies impacted by the new restrictions.

Some events will happen at an earlier start time to comply with the new regulations.

Unfortunately some events will need to be postponed, but in our experience ticket holders have shown exceptional patience and support in these situations.
A Deputy Minister has asked farmers to be cautious and stay safe during Christmas and the New Year.

Deputy Martin Heydon TD, who is a Minister of State for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with Special Responsibility for Farm Safety, said in a recent statement: "To date there have been nine fatal accidents on farms in 2021, and while this is an improvement on recent years, it is still nine farms that have suffered an irreversible loss."

"We cannot get complacent; we need to see a sustained improvement in the years ahead."

The Fine Gael politician continued: "Now is the time for all farmers to reflect on 2021 and plan ahead for 2022... it is only through a cultural change on farms to one that focuses on safe behaviours and practices that the rate of serious and fatal incidents can be reduced further."

Deputy Heydon further explained that farmers should consider updating their Farm Risk Assessment which helps to identify and address risks on farms.

"We all need to ask ourselves: How many of the identified risks did I deal with over the last year? What risks that have been identified in the risk assessment will I address this year? Does the risk assessment reflect all the risks on my farm?"

The Kildare South representative added: "As we take time with our families over Christmas, we must remember that the most vulnerable people on any farm are children and those over the age of 65."

"A farm is a wonderful place to spend the holidays, but we must be conscious that they remain working environments."

He continued: "The calving season is also just around the corner and the first newborns will arrive in the coming days. Cows, and in particular heifers, can be unpredictable during or after calving, and may become aggressive.

"They are involved in more fatal incidents than bulls... now is the time to plan for a safe calving season.

"Start by asking yourself, are my facilities in good condition, do they allow me to always keep a barrier between myself and the cow when I am handling the calf; if changes are required to the facilities or systems, now is the time to do it."

Deputy Heydon added that he wants 2022 to be the year when farmers stop and think every morning before they go out on the farm "about what they are going to do for the day and how they will do it safely."

He concluded by saying he wishes "all farm families and happy, safe and peaceful Christmas and best wishes for the New Year."

Deputy Martin Heydon made headlines last week as he was among a number of Kildare politicians who gave a mixed reception to the news of a new school in the former Magee Barracks in Kildare town.
A man who was involved in a series of car crashes while he was in the middle of an episode of psychosis has been given a four-year suspended sentence.

Ali El Taweel (24) had abruptly stopped using cannabis, which it was accepted then led to an episode of psychosis.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that El Taweel left a car park without paying and got into a series of minor accidents across Dublin city centre, before finally crashing into a truck and a taxi on the south quays.

El Taweel, with an address at Abbey Park View, Clane, Co Kildare, pleaded guilty to two counts of endangerment at locations in Dublin city centre on April 24, 2018.

He also pleaded guilty to driving with no insurance, criminal damage and refusing to provide a specimen of urine or blood, also at locations in Dublin city centre on the same date. He has no previous convictions.

Passing sentence today, Tuesday, December 24, Judge Melanie Greally said El Taweels sequence of driving was prolonged and extremely dangerous and ultimately the inevitable occurred, referring to the fact that he collided with a taxi which was carrying a female passenger.

The judge noted from a victim impact statement that this taxi driver suffered both physical injuries and his mental health has been affected by the incident.

She said the background to the commission of the offence had been sent out in a large body of material including a psychiatric report and a comprehensive letter from his father.

The letter stated that El Taweel had developed a dependency to cannabis in the years before the incident and that a very abrupt withdrawal from the drug brought on a psychosis.

He felt in some way he needed to prove himself and did so in a highly distorted and manifestly dangerous manner, Judge Greally said before she noted that El Taweel has since engaged with mental health services. He is now stable on medication and no longer abuses cannabis.

The judge also accepted that El Taweel has since married and has a young son and a step-child, has completed a law degree and a probation report has deemed him to be at a low risk of re-offending.

If he continues to be compliant with his medication and continues to abstain from use of cannabis, there is no reason to believe there would be a repetition of this kind of behaviour, Judge Greally said after noting that El Taweel has the full support of both his parents and his wife.

In normal circumstances the driving involved and the number of people exposed to danger and those who were in fact injured would warrant a custodial sentence, the judge said but added that there were very particular considerations at play in this case which allowed her to impose a suspended term.

She accepted it was a once off incident during a time of severe mental health crisis, before she imposed concurrent terms of four years in prison which she suspended in full on strict conditions, including that El Taweel remain compliant with his medication. She disqualified him from driving for five years.

Judge Greally acknowledged that El Taweel had 5,000 in court to offer as a token of remorse to the victims and adjourned the case to January 20 next to allow for this issue to be dealt with.

Evidence to the court

Garda Jennifer Keyes told Pieter Le Vert BL, prosecuting, that on the afternoon of the date in question, El Taweel was behaving somewhat erratically when speaking to an attendant of a car park in the Stephen's Green area. He asked how much he owed, then said he had no ticket and no money.

Gda Keyes said El Taweel then got into his car and drove out without paying, driving down the wrong way on a one-way street. The attendant went out with a colleague and the accused returned, the attendant jumping out of the way when the accused revved the car and drove at him.

He then drove the wrong way on another nearby street, causing a motorcyclist to swerve out of the way. The car touched off the motorcyclist's calf, but he was uninjured.

The accused's car collided with two other cars at locations in the city centre, damaging both, before knocking off the wing-mirror of a garda patrol car on O'Connell Bridge. The garda car then took up pursuit of El Taweel.

A witness later told gardai he was walking along the south quays when he saw the accused's car crash first into a truck, then into a taxi before spinning out. The taxi, which contained a driver and a passenger, flew forward and struck a bus.

Both the taxi-driver and his passenger were knocked unconscious as a result of the crash and both sustained injuries. After the crash, El Taweel was observed sitting in his car talking to himself.

An investigation began, during which it was determined using CCTV that El Taweel had driven through four red lights throughout his offending. He refused to give a sample of either his urine or blood when requested to do so by gardai.

In interview with gardai a few months later, El Taweel said about a week before the incidents he began having weird dreams and felt as though the world was going to end.

El Taweel told gardai he did not remember details of the day, but did not dispute the statements of witnesses and identified himself on CCTV footage.

Gda Keyes agreed with Keith Spencer BL, defending, that witnesses she spoke to in the aftermath of the offences spoke of worrying behaviours from El Taweel in the lead up to the offences. She agreed his client was due to sit legal exams around the time of the offences.

The garda agreed El Taweel is now married and is a father. She agreed he is in full time employment and has attended treatment for his mental health difficulties.

Mr Spencer told the court that his client has not used cannabis since the incident.
A restaurant owner who himself was infected with Covid-19 has publicly called the COVID certificate a 'Nazipass'.

Luigi Perri, who runs the The Forge Restaurant and Pizzeria in Castlebridge, County Wexford, also told The Sunday World he will not check certs when he reopens.

Explaining his stance, he told the newspaper that he "will never bow to fascism."

Mr Perri elaborated: "I don't understand why I should ask for the Nazipass, if it is absolutely not for the safety of people."

"My problem is the Nazipass... do not discriminate against anyone."

He added: "The Nazipass does not guarantee you that you do not have the Covid so I'll never ask."

Mr Perri added his belief that, as the Nazipass "does not guarantee you that you do not have the Covid", he will never ask his customers for the certificates.

When pressed about his comparison of the certificates to Nazi badges, Mr Perri said that, while it is slightly different, history "is repeating itself."

The restauranteur made headlines last month when he launched an online fundraising campaign to fight the HSE, which he said was bringing him to court for refusing to check customers Covid certs.

According to the Irish Independent, the campaign has already raised over 17,500.

Reactions to Mr Perri's comments on social media have been mixed: while others applauded his decision, others were more critical.

One Twitter user who disagreed with Mr Perri said: "They all help. Were in a pandemic. Its a one in a hundred year event. Everyone doing their best. Nutters like this man do not help."

Another simply said: "Then he shouldnt get to reopen."

It should be noted that The Auschwitz Museum has taken great issue with people linking Covid safety measures to the atrocities committed by the Nazis, namely the practice that the Nazi party brought in that saw Jewish people being made to wear a yellow Star of David badge.

The Museum said in a statement: "The instrumentalisation of the tragedy of Jews who suffered, were humiliated, marked with a yellow star, isolated in ghettos and murdered during the Holocaust, in a debate on different systems that aim at protecting public health is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline."
Leitrim pubs and restaurants should be facing into their busiest few weeks of the year, but instead they are closing early, shedding staff and for many; contemplating their future.

The new 8pm closing time which is expected to last until January 30 was announced just last Friday. Last weekend was truly the last hurrah for many over the Christmas.

The Irish Vintners Association said unless Government reintroduces the CRSS for its members, who now face severe restrictions, many businesses will go to the wall.

While Government may see 8pm as a compromise the reality is that many pubs dont open until 5pm so three hours trading is unworkable for them. Even for pubs that open earlier the majority of their trade takes place at night time.

Given the relentless public health message over the past number of weeks to avoid socialising the public had already cancelled bookings in record numbers. There was no need to further restrict trading hours as our customers are safer in regulated pubs that adhere to guidelines instead of house parties and shebeens.

The quick turn around on the restrictions means that some restaurants have lost thousands of euros on food stock already ordered for the busy period.

The popular Cottage Restaurant in Jamestown has closed until February.

Chef Sham Hanifa told customers, Yet again weve had to make the painful and heartbreaking decision to close The Cottage tonight until February or whenever the restrictions are lifted. We made this decision as we cannot trade properly and deliver the quality service that we wish to under the current guidelines . We want to thank all our customers for your continuous support.

Pubs have had to change their opening hours to allow for earlier service, OCallaghan's Bar in Mohill said, New rules are a balls but the show goes on still a full line up of music next week. All playing 6 til 8 ... Just means ye have to come in earlier.

The Dugout in Aughavas said they got a raw deal but like many they have decided to soldier on and operate from 12-8pm.

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar indicated the number of covid cases of the variant would break all records as soon as next week.
Interested in a career in film or television? Or do you want to take the next step in your emerging or established profession?

The National Talent Academy for Film & Television (Academy) is launching three new opportunities for creative talent who want to develop a career in television or feature films. The focus on regional creative talent for these opportunities means the Academy is making individual calls to creatives in counties across the country  including Leitrim

All three initiatives are free and aimed at those new to the sector as well as those with emerging and established careers in the industry. They will be hands-on, immersive and highly interactive and are focused on screenwriting, directing and producing.

The Academy, which was established earlier this year, aims to roll out a suite of experiential and exciting programmes and opportunities  with a focus on diverse and regional creative talent  across 2022

The new website www.nationaltalentacademies.iee provides a range of information and skills development as well as launching its first three programmes.

They are:

Pathways- This is aimed at opportunities for new talent; for those who dont work in the industry and want to find out more.

Script Mentorship - This is a scheme for new writers and script editors. Ideally, for those who have gained a foothold in the industry but need to develop their craft to progress further.

Shadowing - This programme allows screenwriters, directors and producers the opportunity to gain on-set experience on high-end TV and feature film productions. This is for established talent who want to take their career to the next level.



More details about the initiatives and how to apply can be found on www.nationaltalentacademies.ie

The Academy is encouraging people interested in a career in screenwriting, direction and production and existing industry members who wish to develop their skills or talent pathway further to visit www.nationaltalentacademies.ie and view the current and future opportunities provided across a range of innovative opportunities and initiatives.
THE out-of-hours GP service ShannonDoc is urging members of the public to be patient as staff are expected to deal with a surge in calls over the Christmas period.

We normally deal with about 2,500 patients per week but that will more or less double over Christmas when GP practices will, of course, be closed for public holidays as well as weekends," said its chairperson. Dr Ailish Kenny

Over the course of the Christmas and New Year period, ShannonDoc expects to care for around 10,000 patients in total.

Thats a huge throughput and a credit to all our staff. Every year the organisation rises to the challenge and our staff have been incredible over the past 20 months with Covid-19, while the public, too, have been understanding and supportive in light of the challenges facing all healthcare providers," said Dr Kenny.

But it is going to be a very busy period and we would ask again for the continued patience of the public. Staff will be doing their absolute best in often trying circumstances due to heavy call volumes. If members of the public are not getting through as quickly as they would like, its because our team are dealing with other patients, but everyone will be dealt with, she added.

The ShannonDoc Chair also reminded the public of the change of telephone number to 0818 123 500 and not to contact ShannonDoc if the issue is an emergency.

It is an easy number to remember but people must ring for an appointment and it is not a walk-in service. It is important, too, that people remember that the service is for urgent medical matters only but not emergencies. If people feel a medical issue is very serious, they need to immediately contact the emergency services by phoning 999 or 112.

Patients attending ShannonDoc over the Christmas period are being reminded to bring their Medical or GP cards with them if they have one and, of course, to follow all Covid-19 guidelines when attending for appointment.

"Above all else, we want people to stay safe and well over Christmas," said Dr Kenny.

For further information on ShannonDoc operating hours or other information, see shannondoc.ie.
TWO members of the same extended family have been fined after they admitted walking their dogs more than 5km from their homes in the city during a Covid-19 lockdown earlier this year.

Timmy Casey, aged 31, of Clonlong, Southill admitted breaching public health regulations at Athlacca South, Athlacca on February 24, 2021 while Simon Casey, aged 41, also of Clonlong, Southill, pleaded guilty to a similar offence which occurred at Gortacloona, Knockainey, Hospital two days later.

At Kilmallock Court, Inspector Pat Brennan said the 5km travel restrictions were in place at the time and that both men were more than 25kms from their homes in the city when they were encountered by separate members of An Garda Siochana.

After guilty pleas were entered, he told Judge Patricia Harney he was aware that both men have some previous conviction but that none of them relate to Covid offences.

Barrister Liam Carroll, instructed by solicitor Sarah Ryan, said his clients had travelled out to exercise their dogs despite the regulations which were in place at the time.

He said lurchers are a large breed of dog which are ordinarily used for hunting rabbits and that there was no land suitable in the city where his clients could walk or exercise them.

Mr Carroll added that Timmy and Simon Casey also suffer from some mental health difficulties and he told the court they found the Covid restrictions difficult from that perspective.

While accepting they should not have travelled out to the county he asked the court to note that both men had found it helpful to walk and exercise their dogs from a mental health perspective.

Having heard details of the offending and noting Mr Carrolls submissions, Judge Harney said she found it difficult to believe the defendants had to travel more than 20kms from their homes to rural locations in County Limerick.

She noted that horses are able to roam freely in parts of the city, including at locations close to the defendants home.

The judge accepted the lurcher dogs had to be walked and exercised but she said this was not a valid reason for the defendants to breach the Covid-19 travel restrictions which were in place at the time.

"Everybody was locked up, she commented.

Each of the defendants was given one month to pay a 25 fine.
THREE LIMERICK charities are set to receive a 500 donation from Aldi staff - just in time for Christmas.

Over 79,500 will be donated to charities across the country through Aldis 2021 Community Grants Programme

Milford Hospice, Limerick Animal Welfare and Killeline Nursing Home have all been given donations from the retail giant.

The programme helps fund local charities and community organisations that contribute vital work and services in their local communities.

The Community Grants programme has supported 850 donations to local charities to date. By the end of the year, the programme will have donated over 450,000 since its inception in 2016.

Commenting, John Curtin, Group Buying Director, Aldi Ireland said: We are proud to continue supporting local charities across the country through the Aldi Community Grants programme and were pleased to see the impact of our donation in the local communities for County Limerick.

The Community Grants programme is one example of how Aldi is committed to investing and partnering with local communities and charities across Ireland and we look forward to continuing this engagement into 2022.
INSPIRATIONAL cervical check cancer campaigner and health advocate Vicky Phelan is to be given Limericks top civic honour.

At a special meeting of City and County Council this Tuesday afternoon, the plan to bestow the honorary Freedom of Limerick on the Annacotty woman was formally ratified.

The top honour required approval by the full council, and Ms Phelan will now follow in the footsteps of President Michael D Higgins, Paul OConnell, the late Terry Wogan and JP McManus in receiving the accolade.

Its the first time the honorary freedom of Limerick has been given since 2018 when then Mayor Stephen Keary gave the honour to Ben OSullivan and posthumously to Jerry McCabe, who was killed after an IRA attack in Adare in 1996.

It was back in 2014 that the mum-of-two was first diagnosed with cancer. Since it returned, she has used her formidable determination to challenge and question the medical service provided both to her and other women.

In 2011, she had taken part in the national cervical screening programme, with her test results wrongly reported as normal, a fact withheld from her.

It was only two years later, she developed cancer, with her experience serving as the catalyst for the establishment of a redress scheme to financially compensate women with cervical cancer.

A former Limerick Person of the Month, and the recipient of a special award at the annual Person of the Year ceremony, Ms Phelan has also received an honourary doctorate of letters from the University of Limerick.

Last month, she revealed she had made the difficult decision to stop chemotherapy to ensure that the remaining time she has left with her children is as enjoyable and memorable as possible.

It was in the wake of this news that the current mayor, Cllr Daniel Butler said his office was "inundated" with requests for the city to "show its love" to the campaigner.

"Vicky is an inspiration and continues to face her health challenges head on with a drive which has garnered the respect and admiration of all. Her work encapsulates the ideals of the Freedom of Limerick. She has empowered women to be able to speak their truth and ensure their health is treated with the respect and attention it deserves," the mayor said.

"In essence, her work has transformed the lives and saved the lives of Irish women and helped us talk of end of life in a healthy way, making Irish society richer and more equal. It truly embodies the spirit of the Freedom of Limerick."

There were emotional comments in the meeting in support of the mayor's motion to afford the honour, including from Fine Gael councillor Sarah Kiely who shed tears as she remembered her own husband Damien, who tragically died of cancer in 2018, and metropolitan district leader Cllr Catherine Slattery, who also called for Ruth Morrissey who died last year from cancer, to be honoured.

This was backed up by Labour councillor Conor Sheehan.

Ms Phelan is only the fifth woman to be given the Freedom of Limerick.
Television presenter Rachel Riley has been awarded 10,000 damages by a High Court judge after suing a former aide to Jeremy Corbyn for libel following an exchange on Twitter.

The 35-year-old, a numbers expert on the Channel 4 show Countdown, complained about a tweet that Laura Murray, who is in her early 30s, posted more than two years ago.

Mr Justice Nicklin oversaw the High Court case in London in May and delivered a ruling on Monday.

The judge said Ms Riley was entitled to vindication  but said there had been a clear element of provocation in the tweet she had posted.

Laura Murray arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

He had heard that both women posted tweets after Mr Corbyn, who was then Labour leader, was hit with an egg while visiting a mosque in March 2019.

Ms Riley initially posted a screenshot of a January 2019 tweet by Guardian columnist Owen Jones about an attack on former British National Party leader Nick Griffin, which said: I think sound life advice is, if you dont want eggs thrown at you, dont be a Nazi.

She added Good advice, with emojis of a red rose and an egg.

Later, Ms Murray tweeted: Today Jeremy Corbyn went to his local mosque for Visit My Mosque Day, and was attacked by a Brexiteer. Rachel Riley tweets that Corbyn deserves to be violently attacked because he is a Nazi. This woman is as dangerous as she is stupid. Nobody should engage with her. Ever.

Ms Riley said she was being sarcastic in her tweet, did not call Mr Corbyn a Nazi, and told the judge that Ms Murrays tweet caused serious harm to her reputation.

Ms Murray was stakeholder manager in Mr Corbyns office when he was Labour leader, and went on to be the partys head of complaints, before going into teaching.

She argued that what she tweeted was true and reflected her honestly held opinions.

Rachel Riley with Countdown co-stars Anne Robinson and Susie Dent (Rachel Joseph/Channel 4/PA)

Mr Justice Nicklin had ruled at an earlier hearing that Ms Murrays tweet was defamatory.

He had concluded that the tweet meant Ms Riley had publicly stated Mr Corbyn had been attacked when visiting a mosque; that he deserved to be violently attacked; by doing so she had shown herself to be a dangerous and stupid person who risked inciting unlawful violence; and that people should not engage with her.

The judge was asked to consider, at the May trial, whether serious harm had been caused to Ms Rileys reputation, and whether Ms Murray had a defence of truth, honest opinion, or public interest.

This case is unusual, said the judge in a written ruling on Monday.

It turns, largely, on two tweets: the good advice tweet and the defendants tweet.

I have found that the publication of the defendants tweet has caused serious harm to the claimants reputation, and I have rejected the defendants defences.

He added: The claimant is therefore entitled to a sum in damages.

Mr Justice Nicklin said Ms Murrays tweet had essentially misrepresented what Ms Riley had said in the good advice tweet.

He rejected Mr Rileys argument that Ms Murray had been motivated by any improper purpose.

I am satisfied that the defendant acted honestly, he said.

She made a mistake in the defendants tweet by not including the good advice tweet.

Rachel Riley arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice in London (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Mr Justice Nicklin said the posting of the good advice tweet could not be described as bad conduct by Ms Riley.

But he said it properly fell to be characterised as provocative, even mischievous.

There is a clear element of provocation in the good advice tweet, in the sense that the claimant must have readily appreciated that the meaning of the good advice tweet was ambiguous and could be read as suggesting, at least, that Jeremy Corbyn deserved to be egged because of his political views, said the judge.

The claimant can hardly be surprised  and she can hardly complain  that the good advice tweet provoked the reaction it did, including the defendants tweet.

He said those were matters which are properly to be taken into account when deciding on appropriate damages.

Ms Riley, who studied mathematics at Oxford University and is on maternity leave from Countdown after giving birth in November, had told the judge she is Jewish and has a hatred of antisemitism.

She said she speaks out against antisemitism and thought the Corbyn-led Labour Party was fostering antisemitism.

Thank you for all the support Ive received over this and much more besides, it really does mean a lot. I now hope to draw a line under this difficult period, and focus my time and energy on my family, and on much nicer things.  Rachel Riley (@RachelRileyRR) December 20, 2021

Ms Murray told the judge that her job had involved her working with the Jewish community to try to find solutions to the problem of antisemitism which was becoming evident within parts of the Labour Party membership.

Ms Riley said in a tweet that she was pleased.

Im extremely pleased to have won my libel case vs Laura Murray, former head of complaints for the Labour Party, she said.

This has been a very draining process and Im relieved to finally have vindication.
NEW DELHI : The Delhi high court will on Wednesday hear an execution petition filed by the Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt. Ltd (DAMEPL) to direct the Delhi Metro Rail Corp. (DMRC) to pay the amount it won in an arbitration dispute.

Under a Supreme Court order last year, DMRC must pay DAMEPL, owned by Anil Ambanis Reliance Infrastructure Ltd, an arbitral award of around 7,200 crore.

DMRC has submitted an affidavit to the Delhi high court claiming it had total funds of only 5,800.93 crore as of 17 December, lower than the entire arbitral amount award, a person aware of the matter said.

A DMRC spokesperson refused to comment on the matter saying that it was sub-judice. Reliance Infrastructure also did not comment on the matter.

DAMEPL had entered into a contract with DMRC in 2008 for running the airport metro line till 2038.

After the early termination of this contract and protracted litigation, DAMEPL won a Supreme Court case against DMRC on the issue of termination of the concession agreement last December.

In its earlier hearing on 6 December, the Delhi high court had directed DMRC to deposit 1,000 crore in an escrow account.

According to DAMEPLs execution petition, 2,945 crore is the principal amount, while the remaining 4,305 crore is the pre-award and post-award interest.

DMRC is yet to devise a clear plan to make the payment to DAMEPL.

At the last hearing, DAMEPL counsel Rajiv Nayar informed the Delhi high court that the delay in payment of the award is putting an additional interest burden of 2 crore per day on taxpayers money.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has been utilizing the project assets constructed or installed by DAMEPL as well as the project revenues since July 2013.

swati.luthra@livemint.com

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McDonalds Corp. said it will sell a digital startup it acquired nearly three years ago in a bid to boost sales at drive-throughs and digital kiosks to Mastercard Inc.

Dynamic Yield Ltd., which helps retailers provide personalized digital promotions to consumers using streams of customer data, has operated as a stand-alone company within the chain since its acquisition. For McDonalds, it provides personalized offers for customers of its stores. It also works with other retailers to boost online sales.

The worlds largest burger chain said Tuesday the deal would allow Dynamic Yield to further scale its capabilities and grow its third-party business. McDonalds said it would continue to work with Dynamic Yield and Mastercard to bring the technology to additional markets. McDonalds has worked with Mastercard on several of the fast food chains digital initiatives, it said.

With Dynamic Yields expertise and our scale and relationships, well be able to bring the connections between the end consumer and our customers to new heights," Mastercard President of Data and Services Raj Seshadri said in an emailed statement.

The companies declined to disclose the terms of the transaction. The deal is expected to close in the first six months of next year.

McDonalds acquired Dynamic Yield in March 2019 for more than $300 million, which was then its largest acquisition in decades. Executives have called it a central part of the burger chains evolving digital strategy as it and other fast-food chains focus more on digital sales through outdoor menu boards and apps following customers increasing preference to have food delivered or ordered with less human interaction.

McDonalds installed the Dynamic Yield suggestive-selling technology across thousands of drive-throughs and kiosks in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada, with the technology suggesting additional menu items for customers to buy upon placing their order.

McDonalds U.S. sales have grown during the pandemic, but franchisees have questioned the systems performance in the past year. McDonald has said that a review of transactions found that Dynamic Yields technology had contributed to sales less than originally reported.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text

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NEW DELHI : Sovereign wealth funds including Singapores GIC Holdings Pte Ltd, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and UAEs Mubadala Investment Co. are exploring investments in Reliance Industries Ltds clean energy unit, two people aware of the development said.

In June, Reliance Industries (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani unveiled a 75,000-crore push into clean energy over three years through unit Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd.

There is a lot of interest in RILs new energy business and also in Indias overall energy transition and decarbonization plans," said one of the two people cited above, requesting anonymity.

The growing interest in Indias green energy space comes amid investors focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. At the COP26 summit in Glasgow, India announced plans to increase non-fossil fuel power generation capacity to 500 gigawatts (GW) by 2030.

GIC Holdings, ADIA and Mubadala are no strangers to Indias growing green economy or RIL. While GIC and ADIA currently back Hyderabad-based Greenko, Mubadala owns Masdar, also known as the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., which acquired around 20% in Hero Future Energies Pvt. Ltd in November 2019 for $150 million.

Also, GIC and ADIA paid 5,512.5 crore each to buy 1.22% and 1.20% each in RILs retail arm, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd. Mubadala picked up a 1.4% stake in the retail unit for 6,247.5 crore. ADIA has invested 3,779 crore in Reliance Jios fibre network, and Mubadala bought a 1.85% stake in RILs Jio Platforms unit for 9,093.60 crore.

An ADIA spokesperson declined to comment. Queries emailed to the spokespeople for RIL, GIC and posted on Mubadala website on Monday night remained unanswered. Phone calls and text messages to a RIL spokesperson also remained unanswered.

Mint earlier reported that Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco), along with a clutch of financial investors, has shown initial interest in investing in Reliance New Energy.

Reliance New Energy recently announced its acquisition of REC Solar Holdings from China National Bluestar (Group) Co. Ltd for an enterprise value of $771 million. Mint reported on 8 July about RIL looking to buy REC Group.

RIL shall continue to be Saudi Aramcos preferred partner for investments in the private sector in India and will collaborate with Saudi Aramco & SABIC for investments in Saudi Arabia," RIL said in a 19 November statement.

According to a 7 December Goldman Sachs note to clients, RIL is adopting a manufacturing approach to net-zero emissions with a hyper-integrated model spanning solar, battery and hydrogen and a focus on the net-zero supply chain. We expect solar to drive the bulk of the capex related to new energy business near term followed by batteries as India downstream economics is competitive and RIL has already acquired leading-edge technologies."

As outlined by Ambani in June, RIL plans to spend 60,000 crore on four so-called giga factories for making solar photovoltaic modules, electrolyzer, fuel cell and energy storage. RIL, which generates more than half its revenue from refining and chemicals, is pivoting to clean energy, with plans to set up the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex on 5,000 acres in Jamnagar and plans to help set up 100 GW of solar energy by 2030.

Indias non-fossil fuel-based capacity has surpassed the earlier 40% target under its nationally determined contribution (NDC) at COP21. According to the government, India has reached 40.1% of its installed power capacity from non-fossil fuels. This will reach 66% by 2030.

India is running what will become the worlds largest clean energy programme, with the aim of having 175GW of clean energy capacity by 2022. Reliance BP Mobility Ltd and Mahindra Group recently announced a non-binding initial agreement to explore the creation of electric vehicle products and services.

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Investors gave a thumbs-up to Cipla Ltds announcement on Saturday that it had received the final approval for its Lanreotide depot injection in the US. Unsurprisingly, on Monday, when the broader markets were in mayhem, the Cipla stock was up nearly 4% vis-a-vis the 2% fall in the Nifty 50 index.

The development improves the prospects of Ciplas earnings performance. Commenting on the approval, analysts from Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) said: Given strong volume growth and the lack of competition, this is likely to emerge as a meaningful opportunity for Cipla in the near-to-medium term." The brokerage maintained that the approval is a positive surprise and was not factored explicitly into its earnings estimates.

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As such, the product size is expected to lead to earnings upgrades. According to Cipla, the active ingredient route of administration and strengths of Lanreotide depot are the same as Somatuline Depot, from Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals Inc. Furthermore, data from IQVIA shows that Somatuline had US sales of approximately $867 million for the 12-month period ended October.

Cipla has developed this limited competition product along with its partners. Currently, there are no generics available in the US markets for the product. Thus, market share gains are expected to be high. As a result, Cipla is likely to enjoy a good margin profile, which in turn, should contribute well to its profits.

Assuming 30-50% price erosion and 10-20% market share, the annual sales for Cipla can be $50-75 million, as per Nomura estimates. Expecting 60-65% gross margin (accounting for profit share/royalty with partners), Nomura estimates net earnings contribution of $25-35 million, which translates into earnings per share of 2.4-3.1, which is 6-8% of Nomuras current FY23 earnings per share estimate of 39.7. Ciplas market share gain can be aided by the fact that the product is administered in clinics (not self-administered) and it is a growing market, said Nomura analysts.

To be sure, competitive intensity can be expected in due course. For now, though, the launch of the product adds to Ciplas strong US prospects. Note that the launch of the generics of Albuterol inhaler last year has already boosted its US sales significantly. The developing respiratory pipeline for the US markets would further help.

Among the awaited product launches in FY23 include products such as generics of inhaler Advair, oncology treatment Abraxane and multiple myeloma drug Revlimid. These are expected to drive meaningful US sales growth over the next 18-24 months. As such, the launch of the drugs would be paramount given the high base in the US business now.

Domestic sales are also a big contributor to Ciplas revenues, accounting for about half of overall sales in the September quarter. Here, the company has benefited immensely from its strong product range for covid treatment, which included products such as remdesivir. This had led to strong growth momentum in domestic sales for Cipla last year.

True, the company reported robust growth of 68.5% year-on-year growth in domestic sales in Q1. However, analysts said domestic growth rate is likely to have peaked in Q1 as the base has become high while covid drug sales are on a decline. In Q2, domestic sales grew at a slower pace of 15.6% year-on-year. However, growth is likely to taper over the subsequent quarters. In a report on 11 December, Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd indicated that Ciplas secondary sales in November grew 7% year-on-year, the slowest pace among their coverage universe.

Perhaps, it is the tepid domestic growth expectations that can explain the 11% decline in Ciplas shares from their 52-week high on 29 September. This also caps the year-to-date gains for Ciplas investors to about 9%.

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Walmart was sued by California for allegedly dumping hazardous waste including toxic cleaning supplies, pesticides and batteries in local landfills.

The complaint against the retail giant for unlawfully disposing waste since 2015 at more than 300 stores was announced Monday by state Attorney General Rob Bonta.

"We are not talking about a few batteries and a can of insect killer here," Bonta said at a press conference. "Walmart's own audits found that the company is illegally disposing of hazardous waste in California at a rate of over more than 1 million items each year."

Bonta said the discarded products can "seep into the state's drinking water as toxic pollutants or into the air as dangerous gases."

Walmart didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

California's top attorney joined the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control, and 12 California district attorneys on the complaint, filed in Alameda County Superior Court.

Inspections by the state in 2015 showed that Walmart continued to illegally dispose waste after it reached a $25 million settlement with the state in 2010 over waste management, Bonta said.

"From 2015 to 2021, California investigators conducted 58 inspections across 13 counties of trash compactors taken from Walmart stores," according to a statement from Bonta's office. "In each and every single case, they found dozens of items classified as hazardous waste, medical waste, and/or customer records with personal information."

In addition to seeking damages under waste disposal laws, California also accused Walmart of failing to protect confidential customer information in violation of consumer privacy law.
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The 2022 AFI Awards luncheon is the latest Hollywood event to be postponed due to a surge of positive COVID-19 cases as the Omicron variant spreads.

The awards ceremony was planned for Friday, Jan. 7, but, in a release late Monday, the American Film Institute (AFI) announced plans to reschedule the event for a later date in response to the rising concerns over current health conditions. According to the Associated Press, the CDC has reported that Omicron is now most common coronavirus variant in U.S., accounting for nearly three-quarters of COVID-19 cases.

The goal of AFI Awards is to bring together the creative community at a private event founded in hugs and handshakes, AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale stated. Because that goal is not achievable at this time, we will be postponing the event until we can properly celebrate the artists in a manner worthy of the gifts they have given the world.

Earlier this month, AFI announced its top 10 films and television programs, which were deemed culturally and artistically representative of the year. AFIs movies of the year are CODA, Dont Look Up, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, Tick, Tick  Boom!, The Tragedy of Macbeth and West Side Story. The television programs of the year are Hacks, Maid, Mare of Easttown, Reservation Dogs, Schmigadoon!, Succession, Ted Lasso, The Underground Railroad, WandaVision and The White Lotus.

Kenneth Branaghs Belfast was recognized with an AFI Special Award, as internationally-produced films dont typically qualify for a top 10 listing. Also earning Special Award status were Netflixs Squid Games and the documentary Summer of Soul (Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), directed by Ahmir Questlove Thompson.

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Lawyers have completed their closing arguments in Ghislaine Maxwells sex-trafficking trial. In the prosecutions final rebuttal on Monday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey winnowed the jurys charge down to a single notion, referring to the four women who came forward as accusers: If you believe those witnesses, then thats it; the defendant is guilty, she said.

But the evidence in this case was much more than he-said, she-said. In her fiery final statement, Comey tried to demonstrate why it was nearly impossible for the women to be lying. It was powerful rhetoric, but also had the effect of once again illustrating how easy it can be to dismiss sex-crime allegations, even when evidence supports them. After that, the judge gave the jury instructions to begin deliberations and decide whether to convict Maxwell of six counts related to sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping Jeffrey Epstein procure underage girls. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Earlier that day, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe kicked off Mondays proceedings with the initial closing statement for the prosecution. Ghislaine Maxwell was dangerous, she said. She was a grown woman who preyed on vulnerable kids. Moe highlighted Maxwells closeness to Epstein and her complicity in his abuse. She called the testimony of the defenses false-memory expert, Elizabeth Loftus, a total distraction, noting that Loftus herself said on cross-examination that the core memory of trauma is stronger than other types of memory.

Epstein liked underage girls, Moe said. He liked to touch underage girls, and Ghislaine Maxwell knew it. And as the so-called lady of the house, as former employee Juan Alessi had described her, Moe said Maxwell was not only aware of what was happening but also intimately involved in the processes of the abuse. This was illustrated by the booklet of rules Alessi said shed distributed to house staff that instructed them to see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, and included a shopping list of 13 different massage oils and lotions. She managed all of the details, Moe said. Right down to the lotions and oils.

As Moe spoke to the jury, her back was to Maxwell, who busied herself shuffling papers and taking notes for a while, before staring over her black mask into the middle distance. Moe recalled the stages of grooming, as expert prosecution witness Lisa Rocchio had described them and as she claimed Epstein and Maxwell had executed them. It is not an accident that Jane and Kate and Carolyn and Annie came from single-parent households that were struggling in different ways, she said. Once theyd chosen their victims, she said, Maxwell and Epstein would get the girls alone, desensitize them to touch and sexual activity, and then control them to continue abusing them.

Details from the four accusers testimonies had been corroborated by additional witnesses like Alessi, three of the womens former boyfriends, and law-enforcement officers who searched Epsteins house and spoke to the witnesses, Moe said. Beyond that, the jury had seen phone-message records, the household manual, a little black book containing victims names, FedEx invoices, and bank records showing Epstein paid Maxwell $30.7 million during and shortly after the years of the abuse alleged by the four victims. She knew. She was complicit. She is guilty, Moe said.

The accusers have already been awarded millions of dollars, Moe said. Their civil cases are over. The witnesses have testified they have no financial stake in the verdict, and their stories are backed by documentation and other witnesses corroborating testimony, she said.

That didnt stop Maxwells lawyer Laura Menninger from arguing that after Epstein had died everyone lawyered up. The womens stories changed over time, she said, as they watched media, shared their stories, and talked with lawyers. Their memories had been manipulated in pursuit of money. Memory fades over time, she said. It can be manipulated, and money is a great manipulator.

She accused the prosecution of not presenting enough evidence to support its case and aimed once more to discredit the witnesses. She called Alessi, whod confessed to stealing from Epstein, a two-time burglar obviously with an axe to grind. She reserved particular ire for the witness known as Jane, telling the jury not to be fooled by claims that Jane may have struggled emotionally to disclose details of her abuse over the years, noting that she had two lawyers who were men and seemingly no difficulty disclosing details to them during a civil suit. Jane had testified like an actress who forgot her lines, she said, adding that when Jane had answered questions, her body language had shown uncertainty and hesitation.

Menninger brought up worthwhile questions, like why the women allegedly taking part in orgies with a 14-year-old Jane hadnt considered calling the police. Menninger suggested this was further evidence that Jane was lying, rather than possible evidence of additional co-conspirators in the abuse. She also implied a defense witness could not have taken part in orgies because she is now a housewife.

When Annie Farmer had visited Epstein and Maxwell in New Mexico, where Farmer claimed Maxwell had rubbed her breasts and showed her how to rub Epsteins feet, Menninger suggested Farmers arrival had been a surprise. Imagine being Ghislaine, she said to the jurors. Maxwell gave Farmer a tour of the ranch and bought her cowboy boots to entertain the child, not groom her, she argued.

She argued that Maxwell hadnt targeted the girls because theyd met Epstein through a sister, a friend, a roommate, and on their own. Maxwell was too successful, too beautiful, too educated a woman to fall into facilitating sexual abuse for one man, she said. At the same time, Menninger said, Epstein had manipulated Maxwell, seeing other women behind her back. Testimony showed he had assistants send flowers to other women and ordered Alessi to take down pictures of Maxwell in the house when other women would come over. Everyone knew Jeffrey was keeping secrets from Ghislaine besides Ghislaine, she said.

She asked the jury to hesitate over factors like victims changing stories, the absence of more testimony from victims relatives, and what the defense views as a lack of evidence, like no pictures of Maxwell with the victims or proof that Epstein had paid for Janes summer-camp sessions at Interlochen, an elite childrens arts program to which he had also donated large sums. Justice demands you acquit Ghislaine Maxwell, she said.

Comey finished out the afternoon with her impassioned rebuttal on behalf of the prosecution. The core of the defenses argument is that you cant believe the four women, she said. Never mind that they corroborate each other or the mountain of evidence that backs them up.

She said it was absurd for Maxwell to claim she didnt know her boyfriend and best friend of a decade had a thing for young girls. She knew her boyfriend was spending time with teenage girls, she said. He was doing it because he was attracted to them. He wanted to have sex with them.

The millions of dollars Epstein gave Maxwell wasnt just a standard bank transfer to his house manager to move money around, she posited. The 30 million is We molested kids together money.

The similarities among the victims stories is what makes their testimonies most credible, Comey continued, noting that three women said Maxwell had touched their breasts, and all described massages that escalated into sex acts. Each witness testimony was powerful corroboration for the others, she said.

Comey used a dark analogy of Thanksgiving memories to ask the jury to understand what it must be like to try to recall details of recurring sexual abuse. Looking back on Thanksgiving during your teenage years, you might not be able to remember which year a neighbor visited or which year you ruined a pie, but you know there was turkey, because that happened every time. Difficulty remembering certain things doesnt mean it didnt happen, she said. Carolyn remembers Maxwell as a fixture at Epsteins house, like the stuffing on Thanksgiving: there every time.

Further, Comey said, the defenses theory that the women all lied to make money didnt make sense. Carolyn had named Maxwell to the FBI as early as 2007. Besides, Comey argued, it didnt add up that four different lawyers had begun convincing their clients to perjure themselves in a federal trial in service of some payments that would already be made by then  and when one was working pro bono. Wouldnt the women take their millions and skip out on the testimony? Plus, theyd have needed to get Farmers mom and three of the womens ex-boyfriends in on the lie, too. And if you believed they were risking it all, wouldnt they have told a more elaborate lie? Why would Farmer be careful to say Maxwell didnt touch her nipples? Why would Jane specify that Maxwell had never witnessed intercourse or oral sex with Epstein? They should have implicated her more deeply, Comey argued. If these four women wanted to dirty Maxwell up for a huge payday, they wouldve told way bigger lies, she said. But they testified for justice, she added, in hopes that the defendant will be held accountable for her role in shattering their lives.

Its a familiar believe women refrain, and a compelling argument for why on earth these women would be here if they were liars. But thats often the case. Testifying about sex crimes is grueling, but that doesnt stop people from disbelieving victims over and over. The coming days will reveal what this jury believes in this case.
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As sharply engineered as a reel of razor wire, Shariff Korvers Do Not Hesitate is not the first film to expose the sheer lunacy of sending callow, heavily armed young men, versed in a machismo that sees sensitivity as weakness, into hostile territory and expecting everything to work out fine. But Korver sets his film, which is the Dutch international Oscar selection, apart from the Jarheads and the Full Metal Jackets of the world with the precision of its craft and the narrowness of its focus. This time, the story is told as though through the sights of a sniper rifle.

Directly in the crosshairs, theres Erik (major breakout Joes Brauers), a personable, level-headed young soldier and avid amateur drummer, who has been deployed to the Middle East on a peacekeeping mission. When their tricked-out transport vehicle stalls on a remote mountain path, Erik and a small squad are left to keep guard until relief helicopters, expected the following day, can arrive. While they set up a rudimentary camp under the parching sun, Erik sees movement in a nearby bush and alerts the lookout, Thomas (Tobias Kersloot), who opens fire. In the stillness after ceasefire is called, they move in warily, only to discover the source of the movement to be a goat, now bleeding out from multiple gunshots.

Theyre upbraided by Paula (Anna Keuning), their no-nonsense commanding officer, but the incident seems innocuous enough until a local boy (a brilliant, live-wire Omar Alwan), ferocious and not the slightest bit intimidated by these foreign military personnel, shows up screaming insults and curses at them in Arabic. They decipher that hes claiming the goat was his, but when hes offered a $50 note in compensation for it, he pockets the money and then demands more, spitting and snatching and snarling at them.

Still, hes little more than an aggravation, until Paula is ordered by radio to take half of the team to investigate a nearby lookout point, and Erik is left in charge of the vehicle with only hotheaded Thomas and the rather dull-witted Roy (Spencer Bogaert) as companions. The boy returns, but the trios squadmates do not, nor do the helicopters arrive. And once their dwindling supplies are stolen, heat, thirst and clashing personalities soon strain the arid, sinister atmosphere to paranoid snapping point.

The intelligence of Korvers approach, working from a fine, pared-back screenplay by Jolein Laarman, is to allow his excellent ensemble to breathe life into characters who are collectively the very embodiment of immaturity and inexperience, and individually representative of various conflicting ideologies. Half the time the three guys are bonding fiercely, engaging in highly physical roughhousing, their bodies fit and smooth as unused department store mannequins. The rest of the time is spent in surly silence or at each others throats. Thomas sums up their divergent approaches  which are demonstrated in the way each treats the local boy  cynically but not inaccurately: He is the outspoken, action-oriented pragmatist; Roy is the paycheck soldier; and Erik, Thomas insists with maximum derision, is the idealist.

And as initially played by Brauers with quiet good humor and thoughtfulness, Erik really does seem like the smartest and the most decent of the three, not participating in Thomas more vulgar horseplay, and trying to befriend the boy with protein bars and extra helpings of food. In the dry, bleachy sunlight, Nadim Carlsens calmly watchful camera makes Erik glow with a soft, youthful sweetness. With his close-shaven hair and peachy clear skin, he can look almost babyish in some lights; then like a skull in others.

Hard-edged as the film is, especially in terms of Ruben van der Hammens efficient, laconic editing, there is still a heady sense of being trapped inside the fraying, bewildered psychologies of its protagonists. Ella van der Woude and Juho Nurmelas nervy score sometimes goes entirely impressionistic, as when percussion on the soundtrack mimics Eriks impatient fingers drumming on the side of the vans gun turret. In dazzlingly crisp images, boxed in to a narrow aspect ratio and threaded together in increasingly jagged, unnerving rhythms, the tight, taut storyline proceeds inexorably toward its awful pivot point and beyond.

This is a loss-of-innocence story, but we do not just bear witness to the end of something good, but to the birth of something bad, something corrupt and repressive and inarticulate that will live on long after, as the lasting consequence of a terrible deed that is just as significant as the deed itself. The term war crime summons up enormous, dramatic evil, and Do Not Hesitate is small in scale. But its convincing in suggesting that perhaps this is the way war crimes really happen: with the smallest, ugliest of bangs and the longest, most drawn out of whimpers.

Reviewed online, Dec. 20, 2021. (In Tribeca Film Festival.) Running time: 90 MIN.

Running Time: Running time: 90 MIN.

Production

(Netherlands-Greece) A Lemming Films production, in co-production with NTR, Heretic. (World sales: TrustNordisk, Copenhagen.) Producers: Erik Glijnis, Emily Morgan, Leontine Petit.

Crew

Director: Shariff Korver. Screenplay: Jolein Laarman. Camera: Nadim Carlsen. Editor: Ruben van der Hammen. Music: Ella van der Woude, Juho Nurmela.

With

Joes Brauers, Spencer Bogaert, Tobias Kersloot, Omar Alwan. (Dutch, English, Arabic dialogue)

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Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos is set to receive $40 million in compensation next year, while chairman and co-CEO Reed Hastings stands to make north of $34 million.

Netflix disclosed the annual salaries and stock option allocation for 2022 for its executive officers in an SEC filing Tuesday. Hastings salary for next year will remain $650,000 and he is to receive options valued at $34 million. Sarandos will again get an annual salary of $20 million with an additional $20 million in stock options.

In 2020, Hastings and Sarandos earned $43.2 million and $39.3 million, respectively, in 2020, representing sizable bumps in their compensation.

Netflix elevated Sarandos to the co-CEO spot alongside Hastings in July 2020. At its shareholder meeting that year, We explained that the dual CEO model formalized the prior working relationship between Reed and Ted and was an effective leadership model to further support our continued growth and international expansion, Netflix said in 2021 its proxy statement.

Among other top Netflix execs, CFO Spencer Neumann will receive a pay package worth $14 million, comprising $7 million in salary (up from $6 million in 2021) along with $7 million in stock options. Neumann started at the company in January 2019 after serving as CFO of Activision Blizzard.

Greg Peters, COO and chief product officer, will see his annual salary rise from $12 million this year to $16 million in 2022, along with $8 million in stock, for $24 million total next year.

David Hyman, Netflixs chief legal officer and secretary, will get $11 million in 2022 ($6 million in salary and $5 million in stock options). Chief communications officer Rachel Whetstone, who joined Netflix in 2018, has a pay package in 2022 worth $6.5 million ($5.5 million in salary and $1 million in stock).

Netflix compensates employees with two components: base salary and stock options. We do not use performance-based bonuses as we believe that they tend to incentivize specific, typically short-term focused behavior rather than encourage long-term stockholder value creation, the company said in the 2021 proxy statement.

Pictured above: Reed Hastings, Ted Sarandos

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NEW YORK (AP)  The jury deliberating at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial finished its first full day of deliberations Tuesday without reaching a verdict, having asked to review the testimony of three of four women who said they were teens when the British socialite aided financier Jeffrey Epstein in sexually abusing them.

The Manhattan federal court jury requested the transcripts less than an hour after resuming deliberations in a large room where they could spread out for coronavirus safety reasons. At day's end, U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan reminded them to keep their masks on, except while eating.

The jury had begun deliberating late Monday, working less than an hour before going home after closing arguments consumed most of the day.

The jury is deciding whether Maxwell, 59, assisted her former financier boyfriend in the sexual abuse of teenage girls from 1994 to 2004. Prosecutors say she recruited and groomed the girls, making them feel that sexualized massages of Epstein were normal behavior.

Maxwells lawyers say the government has used her as a scapegoat after Epstein killed himself in 2019 as he awaited his own sex trafficking trial.

The transcripts requested by the jury pertain to the testimony of two women who testified anonymously as Jane and Carolyn, along with the testimony of Annie Farmer, who has spoken publicly about her experiences with Maxwell and Epstein.

Late in the day, jurors also asked for clarification on whether they could consider Farmer's testimony to support conspiracy charges. The judge gave a simple yes," despite vigorous defense objections arguing Nathan's answer needed more explanation.

Farmer, a 42-year-old psychologist, was the only one of four accusers who used her full, real name on the stand. She testified that Epstein held her hand and touched her inappropriately at movies in New York and New Mexico and that Maxwell touched her breasts during a massage in New Mexico when she was 16.

She also said Epstein climbed into bed with her and pressed himself against her before she fled to a bathroom until he left her room.

Her mother testified that Epstein told her that Farmer's trip to New Mexico would be with a group of up to 25 academically gifted high school students chaperoned by Maxwell, his wife. In reality, though, Farmer was the only student there  and Epstein and Maxwell were never married.

Jane said she was 14 when she met Maxwell and Epstein, and alleged that the pair fondled her together. Carolyn testified about what prosecutors called a pyramid of abuse encouraged by Maxwell, in which girls would recruit underage victims for Epstein to abuse.

Maxwell has been held without bail since her July 2020 arrest.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Maxwell was arrested in 2020, not 2019.
The annual Operation: Toy Drop was held at the Outlet Shoppes at Laredo on Monday afternoon which gave elementary children in military families a bag of goodies, toys and a full stocking.

The event was sponsored by Webb County Commissioner Pct. 4 Cindy Liendo along with Survivor Outreach Services, the U.S. Army National Guard and the Texas State Guard.

The event saw members of the U.S. armed forces handing out the gifts to children and taking pictures with them before seeing the kids head out with a toy in hand. Liendo said that as children share their parents with the country when they are on tour, the event is one of gratitude during the Christmas season.

She added that she was grateful for the national guard and the state guard for their service, as some have also taken part in helping the community in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the pandemic affecting millions throughout the world, Laredo residents have faced difficulties that have resulted in the community attempting to help out when possible.

A lot of families are trying to make ends meet, and so that means that sometimes they are going to have to go without gifts, Liendo said. You have to choose between do I put food on the table or do I buy Christmas gifts?

We really do like to focus on families that might be struggling and making sure that their children get to feel the spirit of Christmas, and so if we can help out by giving them some gifts, thats what we want to do.

U.S. National Guard Sgt. Joseph Twitti lauded the opportunity to help in the efforts of giving back to veterans and their families. The collaboration between the county and the service members allowed for some of Laredos children to receive a gift and go home with a smile on their face.

The collaboration between the Texas State Guard, the National Guard and the county is another opportunity to join together for the benefit of Texans. Twitti said that during the COVID mission, the Texas State Guard helped with the equipment and training to continue the fight against the pandemic and for the safety of families throughout the state.

Ray, Betsy, Ray Jr. and Alvin Sanchez attended the event and saw both Jr. and Alvin receive their gifts while being shown a variety of toys by the servicemen and women to see which one they preferred to take home with them. Between helicopters, building block toys, figures and candy, the event was all about the children.

Ray said that as a veteran family and a combat veteran who was deployed overseas during the holidays, the event organizers put on a special event that uplifted their spirits.

Personally, I like to see that the community comes together for the veterans, Betsy said. As a veterans spouse, I feel humbled and honored that the community does this type of events for our veterans, and they are remembered. Its a good feeling. It feels special.

And Ray said that while there can be more done for veterans, events such as Operation: Toy Drop has been a step in the right direction. Ultimately, he wants to see more unity across the veteran community without separation.

Dont forget the active service members that are deployed overseas right now, Ray said. I know that this is a community event, but theres a lot of people overseas or deployed in whatever duty station theyre at that are not going to spend the holidays with their families, so lets not forget about them.

As a community here in Laredo, lets continue to host these events and make a stronger veteran community overall.

cocampo@lmtonline.com

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The Rotary Club of Laredo Next Generation is a non-profit service organization that unites young business and community leaders to connect, learn and do more for Laredo.

As part of the end-of-year activities, Rotarians held two Club meetings: a panel of leaders to learn about the History and Foundation of the Club as well as a local entrepreneur.
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A Dip a Day in December 2021 is a challenge set by Mark Elliott in Sligo where he is getting into the chilly open waters around Sligo and Leitrim in just a pair of shorts and a swim hat with many people joining him each day.

The aim of this event is to create much needed funds for and awareness of North West STOP Suicide Prevention service.

Young Longford farmer is a YouTube sensation Philip Stewart, better known as Farmer Phil, is a beef and tillage farmer based in Ballinamore, Co Longford.

Suicide has unfortunately become far too common in society and this service is at the forefront in providing support to those in need of counselling.

Counselling is provided to those who are feeling suicidal or have been bereaved by suicide.

In the first 6 months of 2021 North West STOP have funded 630 counselling sessions to those seeking help.

With counsellors available in Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo, West Cavan, Donegal, Roscommon and Longford, they are committed to putting clients in touch with counsellors as fast as possible and free of charge.

If you or someone you know needs their services, then contact 0867772009.

You can follow the challenge on Facebook and Instagram by logging on to A Dip a Day in December 2021. The challenge event is hoping to raise 10,000 within the month of December. People can donate to this worthy event at https://gofund.me/f59ca24a
The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has today (21 December 2021) warned of the excessively long waits patients in the Midlands are experiencing before being treated or assessed by a Consultant in the regions acute public hospitals.

There are more than 35,000 people on waiting lists for an outpatient appointment, inpatient or day case treatment, or a gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy at the three public hospitals in Mullingar, Portlaoise and Tullamore. More than one third of those people (12,800) have been waiting for longer than a year.

Across Counties Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath, 9,400 more people are now waiting for public hospital care compared with November 2015  an increase of 36%.

At the Midland Regional Hospital (MRH) in Portlaoise, this number has more than doubled over the same period.

MRH Tullamore, which accounts for 47% (16,825) of the waiting lists across the three hospitals, has some of the largest waiting lists in the country, including the fourth largest ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) outpatient waiting list (5,408), and the fifth largest orthopaedic outpatient waiting list (5,940) nationally.

Those forced to wait a long time for procedures such as hip or knee surgery often have to cope with increased pain, while delays in ENT assessment can present particular concerns of a risk of a possible delayed diagnosis of cancer.

Across the region, the number of patients waiting longer than 12 months for inpatient/day case treatment have increased more than fourfold (+432%) over the past six years, with a dramatic 57-fold rise in these long waiters at the MRH Portlaoise.

The three specialties of Gynaecology (704 patients), General Surgery (698 patients) and Orthopaedics (618 patients) combined account for three quarters (75%) of the total number of those awaiting inpatient/day case hospital treatment in the Midlands.

Since 2015, there are now more than 500 additional women waiting for a gynaecological procedure across MRH Mullingar and MRH Portlaoise.

Ireland has the lowest number of medical specialists per 1,000 population in Europe at 1.48, 42% below the EU average of 2.54. The IHCA says the severe shortage of consultants across the Midlands is the main contributor to the unacceptable delays in providing care to patients. Across the region, 41 (25%) of the 165 approved consultant posts were vacant or filled on a temporary or agency basis (as at May 2021), with this percentage as high as 30% at the MRH Mullingar.**

A report published last week by the Medical Council revealed the severity of the Consultant recruitment and retention crisis. According to the report, 44% of specialist trainees intend to go abroad to practise medicine, meaning that at a time when more Consultants and doctors are badly needed, the health system in Ireland is losing them.

Commenting on the waiting lists, IHCA President Professor Alan Irvine, said: With a quarter of all approved Consultant posts in the Midlands vacant or filled on a temporary basis, people in Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath are being forced to wait much longer than they should for the essential hospital care they need.

Every single one of the 35,539 people in the Midlands waiting for public hospital assessment and treatment represents a person and a family seeking healthcare, often while experiencing pain, suffering and the psychological distress at not knowing when they will be able to receive it.

The Government must make good on its promise to deliver the extra beds, extra consultants and extra facilities so badly needed to meet the healthcare needs of all those currently waiting for care at hospitals in the Midlands.

The severe shortage of Consultants across the region is the main contributor to the unacceptable delays in providing care to patients. The Government needs to urgently act to resolve the consultant recruitment and retention crisis in order to alleviate this distress and facilitate the care these patients so desperately need.

Most importantly, the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly must deliver on his unambiguous commitment to resolve the pay inequity issue for all Consultants contracted since 2012. This is the most practical solution that will ensure timely care is provided not only to the thousands awaiting treatment in the Midlands, but to the 897,000 people waiting for hospital care across the county.
Gardai have issued a warning over bank 'jugging' for those handling cash over Christmas.

Although many personal commercial transactions now take place with cards or electronically, over the Christmas period, people may be in possession of larger amounts of cash in their homes.

Bank Jugging is a theft method where customers of financial institutions are watched by persons who wait for them to come out of the financial institution with a bank bag, coin box or bank envelope that looks like they may have a large amount of cash. The customer may then be followed with the thief looking for an opportunity to steal the cash, maybe by breaking into their car or a distraction theft from the victim directly.An Garda Siochana have been targeting criminal groups involved in this type of crime. In a recent operation, three men were arrested at the end of November 2021 and subsequently charged with multiple offences before the courts.

These men are currently remanded in custody. During the course of that Garda operation, the contents of a number of bank accounts were frozen and 110,000 in cash was recovered.



Gardai have issued advice and said if you are carrying out cash banking transactions please take the following general advice:



 Be aware of your surroundings, especially if something seems strange as you enter the bank.

 Conceal your bank deposit bags, coin boxes or envelopes as you enter and leave the bank.

 Take your bank bag or envelope with you into your next destination. Dont hide it in your vehicle.

 Always vary your routes and times for cash drops and collections.

 Consider using electronic funds transfer rather than depositing or withdrawing cash.

 If you feel like you are being followed, call 999 and drive to a Garda station.
Kevin Lunney spoke slowly and calmly as he described the fear he felt that nobody would come to help as he crawled along a country road, shivering from the cold, with his shin broken, knife wounds to his chest and blood dripping from his face.

Giving his evidence in a matter of fact style, he did not embellish or exaggerate. He was not cross-examined at any length; the truth of what he said was proven by the injuries he suffered.

Mr Lunney said his attackers repeatedly told him to resign from his position as a director of Quinn Industrial Holdings and to put a stop to litigation with which he was involved in Belfast and Dublin.

In opening the trial, prosecution counsel Sean Guerin SC said that what was done to Mr Lunney was connected to his directorship role and that his attackers were acting on behalf of others.

But, he added: "It is unnecessary to dwell on the background of the company in any detail." The men on trial, he said, were not connected to "any previous dealings with Quinn Industrial Holdings, or Mr Lunney or anyone connected to it." There was, he said, no personal motive involved.

Mr Lunney began by saying that at 6:30pm he had been driving up the country lane to his home in Derrylin, Co Fermanagh when he saw a silver BMW in front of him. He stopped, the BMW reversed at speed and crashed into his Toyota Landcruiser.

Two men wearing face masks and dark clothing jumped out of the BMW and dragged Mr Lunney from his car before a third man, nominated as 40-year-old YZ by the Special Criminal Court, pressed a Stanley knife against Mr Lunney's face, and ordered him into the boot of his Audi A4. They drove him to a remote farmyard and led him into a blue horse trailer where he was stripped to his boxer shorts, doused in bleach, beaten and threatened. YZ slashed him with a knife.

At one point Mr Lunney was forced to stretch out his leg and one of his attackers used a wooden bat to strike his shin. Mr Lunney felt the bone break but was struck again almost immediately in the same spot. The ordeal would end with Mr Lunney being dumped on the side of a country road. He dragged himself, with only the use of one arm and one leg, towards the light of a distant window until tractor driver Aaron Brady and local woman Celine Duignan discovered him, bleeding and helpless. They comforted him, covered him with blankets and gave him 7-Up.

When he arrived at Cavan General Hospital it was assessed that, apart from the obvious injuries, he was suffering from hypothermia.

His testimony, which was in line with what he told gardai, shone a light on how the investigation unfolded. In particular the investigation was spurred by his revelation that during the assault, his attackers decided they needed bleach to destroy forensic evidence.

Two of the attackers left and when they returned 15 minutes later they rubbed bleach into Mr Lunney's hands, legs, torso and face.

Gardai canvassed local shops and found that Luke O'Reilly (68) had bought a bottle of Domestos from a Gala shop at Killydoon in Cavan at almost exactly 8pm, a time that coincided neatly with the account given by Mr Lunney. They got a warrant to search Mr O'Reilly's home where they were greeted by Mr O'Reilly, who told them: "I know why you are here. Because I bought that bottle of bleach."

He handed over his mobile phone and gave gardai a statement, telling them he had nothing to hide.

When gardai checked Mr O'Reilly's phone, they saw that he had been in contact with known criminal Cyril McGuinness, also known as Dublin Jimmy, who is now deceased. When they seized records relating to McGuinness' number, they saw that at pivotal points during the preparation for and currency of the kidnap and assault on Mr Lunney, McGuinness was in contact with the accused man known as YZ. By tracing YZ's movements on CCTV and mobile phone contacts around the time of the kidnap, gardai formed the cases against Alan OBrien (40) and Darren Redmond (27).

Mr Lunney was also able to give gardai snippets of information that led them to where the assault took place. He said he was in the boot of the Audi A4 for about 45 minutes, travelling at speed for much of the journey. As he lay in the boot with the back seat down, he was occasionally able to see through the window and identified a Lakeland Dairies sign and a pub with a cream-coloured sign, about one metre in length running down the side of a building.

The trial judge would later remark that this account showed Mr Lunney's "uncanny ability to accurately estimate the passage of time even though his attackers removed his watch early on."

When he was taken from the boot, he could see that he was in a yard overgrown with weeds and with a number of trailers. The one he was taken to was a blue horse box with animal dung on the floor, and beside it, he said, was a white trailer and a brown building.

Three days after the abduction, a garda discovered a yard in Drumbrade, Ballina that seemed identical to the one described by Mr Lunney. It soon emerged that the yard belonged to Luke O'Reilly. Forensic testing revealed that blood DNA inside a blue horsebox in the yard matched that of Kevin Lunney.

When gardai examined the mobile phones of all the accused, they discovered that after buying the bleach in Killydoon, Mr O'Reilly drove north, away from his home at Kilcogy towards Drumbrade, where Mr Lunney was being held in a yard that he owned. At the same time, YZ's phone was pinging off masts running along the N55 heading south towards Mr O'Reilly.

The court acquitted Mr O'Reilly of all charges against him because, as was argued by defence counsel Michael Lynn SC, it was not proven that he knew what was to happen to Mr Lunney.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt said that what happened at the yard owned by Mr O'Reilly must have occurred with "some degree of consent and knowledge" on his part.

The phone calls with McGuinness that coincided with calls between McGuinness and YZ, the court said, must have involved "some apprehension on his part that criminal activity was afoot." The court therefore concluded that Mr O'Reilly was "providing some form of local advice or assistance". The court also said that it doubted whether Mr O'Reilly "could have believed that all of that effort was being deployed in pursuit of some trivial purpose."

The court further found that Mr O'Reilly did not offer a "full or truthful account of his movements and actions" when questioned by gardai and they did not accept his account that he bought the bottle of bleach for his wife. Mr Justice Hunt said it is "difficult to envisage" that the bleach used on Mr Lunney arrived from any source other than Mr O'Reilly.

The court, however, said that Mr O'Reilly was not charged with assisting a criminal organisation or criminal activity in a general sense, but as a principal offender for false imprisonment and intentionally causing harm to Mr Lunney. Mr Justice Hunt said: "Accordingly, the prosecution must establish that it is an inexorable inference that Mr OReilly knew or intended that his actions and assistance would be directed towards these specific offences."

Mr O'Reilly's casual demeanour in the Gala shop and open co-operation with gardai "offers some support for the construction that he did not know the specific reason why he was delivering bleach on behalf of Mr McGuinness," the court said.

Mr Justice Hunt added: "Even if we might consider the prosecution scenario more likely, a reasonable doubt arises as defined in criminal law."

The circumstantial cases against the three men who were convicted relied largely on mobile phone and CCTV evidence. Many days of the trial were taken up by legal argument over the legality of gardai accessing mobile phone data and using CCTV harvested from shops, pubs and other private operators.

Gardai were aware in 2019 of the legal difficulties around using mobile phone evidence and so accessed phone records using ordinary warrants rather than the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011. The court in this trial rejected the defence arguments and ruled that gardai had acted properly in using warrants to access information that was to be used in the investigation of serious crime.

The court also rejected the defence's arguments that the use of CCTV by gardai amounts to mass surveillance and should be forbidden.

In the case of YZ, the court listed 17 strands of circumstantial evidence which Mr Justice Hunt said were "sufficient to support beyond reasonable doubt the conclusion that Mr YZ was heavily involved in these crimes before, during and after the commission thereof."

The evidence included his being seen on CCTV driving a Renault Kangoo van on the day of the abduction and the previous day, traveling from Dublin to Cavan and back, taking in areas close to Mr Lunney's home and Drumbrade where the assault happened.

Mr Lunney's DNA was found in the van in an area of suspected blood staining that the prosecution said could only have been transferred inadvertently by one of Mr Lunney's attackers.

During the trial, YZ's defence counsel Michael O'Higgins SC asked the court to consider whether the prosecution had excluded the possibility that Mr Lunney's DNA was planted inside the Renault Kangoo, which was subsequently destroyed by a fire at a storage yard in Cavan in February 2020.

The court heard gardai were satisfied the fire was caused by batteries that were charging overnight in an office attached to the yard where the van was kept. The scene was examined by both gardai and by an insurance assessor who is an expert on fire damage, the trial heard.

Mr O'Higgins submitted that no access log was kept for the van while it was stored in a forensic examination unit and he pointed to the failure of forensic gardai to spot an area of brownish red marking in the van that, when examined two days later, was found to be blood.

Mr Justice Hunt however, said the failure of forensic gardai to find the area of blood staining was the result of oversight and not the result of an "implausible, complicated, unnecessary plan to plant evidence."

The judge said any such finding would require that a person had access to a sample of Mr Lunney's blood, which the judge said is "far-fetched to say the least".

The court concluded that the van was "used as a means of transport by those involved in the preparation for and execution of these crimes." YZ was also connected to the Audi used to kidnap Mr Lunney when gardai found an eFlow tag in YZ's home that belonged to the Audi's previous owner.

The court also found that from Mr Lunney's descriptions of his attackers, YZ was responsible for inflicting most of the serious injuries.

The court also found that despite the controversy during the trial, YZ's guilt was proven without the need to consider mobile phone evidence. It was, Mr Justice Hunt said, "of little or no decisive effect" given the other evidence showing YZ's obvious presence at the critical locations at critical moments in the preparation for and carrying out of the offences.

The main function of the mobile phone evidence, Mr Justice Hunt said, was to "add an additional degree of certainty and detail to a conclusion already established beyond reasonable doubt."

In relation to O'Brien, the court rejected his claim that he did not leave Dublin on the day of the abduction. The court was satisfied that O'Brien was the passenger seen on CCTV footage in the Kangoo with YZ and that he was one of the three men directly involved in the abduction and assault.

Turning to Redmond, the court found that there were three strands of evidence that proved his guilt: He was seen with YZ and O'Brien in Dublin before they left for Cavan on the day of the offences, his DNA was found in the Kangoo, and his mobile phone was traced traveling from Dublin to Cavan and back in tandem with the Kangoo.

In passing sentence Mr Justice Hunt described Mr Lunney as a "decent man" who was the victim of a brutal assault designed to stop him going about his lawful business. He sentenced YZ to 30 years imprisonment, O'Brien to 25 years and Redmond to 18 years with the final three suspended.
Landmarks in Ireland and Northern Ireland will illuminate in green for the winter solstice tomorrow night (December 21) to raise awareness of support available for those experiencing dark times over the Christmas period.

Dublins Convention Centre, Kilkenny Castle, the Rock of Cashel, Stormont in Belfast, the US Embassy and air traffic control towers will be among the buildings and landmarks lighting up in green to mark Samaritanss Longest Night.

The charity marks the date to remind those in need that its helpline will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, over the festive period, including Christmas Day.

Dorothy Ring, who has volunteered on Christmas Day for the last 10 years, said: Christmas is a time when, despite all the hype, some people feel more alone and isolated than ever.

I cannot stress how wonderful it is to be able to connect and empathise for even a small amount of time to help someone get through their day.

I volunteer on Christmas Day so I can give my presence and support as a gift to those who need it. Its very therapeutic and rewarding.

We want to remind anyone in need of support or a listening ear that were here for them 24/7 on freephone 116 123, or by email at jo@samaritans.ie.

Samaritans volunteers answered almost 35,000 calls in Ireland last December, with concerns over loneliness and isolation rising.

Niall Mulligan, executive director at Samaritans Ireland, paid tribute to the volunteers for being there for callers throughout 2021, as well as over Christmas.

Because of the dedication of our volunteers, many people will have someone to talk to if theyre feeling lonely or upset over Christmas, he said.

We are also delighted that so many landmarks across the country are lighting up on the Longest Night to show the public were here for them when needed most.
The High Court has allowed an Environmental group to bring a fresh challenge against a controversial flood relief scheme being constructed by Roscommon Co Council.

The action has been brought by Friends of the Irish Environment against the council over the construction of a 3km pipeline. designed to take water from Lough Funshinagh, a seasonal lake 12 km from Athlone to nearby Lough Ree.

The council is carrying out those works to help alleviate severe flooding, which it claims threatens the homes of people living close to Lough Funshinagh, which is a designated Special Area of Conservation (SAC).

At the High Court on Tuesday Mr Justice Garrett Simons said he was satisfied to grant FIE permission to bring judicial review proceedings aimed at setting aside the council's decision of October 14th last to approve the emergency flood relief scheme under section 152 of the 2001 Local Government Act.

FIE claims that the council's decision is unlawful, invalid and in breach of EU law.

The council's decision to approve the works without having to conduct assessments on the impact the proposed works will have on the local environment is wrong in law, FIE claims.

It also amounts to a material contravention of the Roscommon Development Plan, it is also claimed.

The judge, after being informed by Neil Steen SC for the council that some 57% of the pipeline has already been laid, also placed a temporary stay on any further works being carried on the project until January 14th next.

On that date the court will hear submissions from both sides on whether to keep the stay in place until the challenge has been fully determined by the High Court.

Mr Steen said his client will seek to have the stay lifted.

Works were due to cease over the Christmas holidays, and were not due to restart until early January, counsel added.

Counsel also told the court that with all things going to plan it was hoped to complete the works in March of next year when it is anticipated that the flood waters on the Lough would be at their highest.

In its proceedings FIE, represented by James Devlin SC, Stephen Dodd SC with John Kenny Bl instructed by solicitor Eoin Brady, seeks orders and declarations including an order quashing the Council's decision of October 14th last.

FIE also seeks several declarations from the court including that the Council erred in law and has breached EU directives on Habitats and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) by screening out the possibility that the proposed development will have significant on the local environment.

It further seeks a declaration that the decision contravenes the 2000 Planning and Development Act.

The scheme has been the subject of several hearings before the High Court.

Last August FIE, citing environmental concerns and breaches of EU laws, brought a challenge aimed at halting the pipeline's construction.

That action was resolved after the council accepted it had not fulfilled certain obligations it should have in relation to the works and agreed to remediate works it had already carried out.

FIE later claimed that the Council had breached the terms of the settlement agreement and was in contempt of court.

However, Mr Justice Simons dismissed FIE's application by (FIE) for orders that the Council's CEO Mr Eugene Cummins be attached and brought to court for his alleged contempt.

The council denied breaching any court order and said the remediation plan agreed in August was being complied with.
Community, Charity & Cause

By Chris Boyle Published: December 21 2021

Free hams and turkeys will be distributed to families in need.

The Suffolk County Police Department and the New York State Police are once again partnering to feed hundreds of Suffolk County families during the 14th annual Cops Who Care food drive in Bay Shore TODAY, Tuesday December 21, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Officers will distribute hams and turkeys free of charge and will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis and will be limited to one item per family. This years event will be held at the First Baptist Church, located at 175 2nd Avenue in Bay Shore.

In addition to the law enforcement sponsors, this event is supported by 7-Eleven and EKJ Edelman, Krasin & Jaye, PLLC.
(Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of London-listed company director and manager changes announced on Tuesday and not separately reported by Alliance News:







Hiscox Ltd - Hamilton, Bermuda-based insurer - Appoints Paul Cooper as chief financial officer. Cooper has more than 25 years of financial services experience, Hiscox says. He is currently interim CFO at FTSE 100 asset manager M&G PLC and also CFO of Prudential Assurance Co. He rejoins Hiscox, having previously served as finance director for Hiscox UK and Europe from 2006 to 2011. Cooper's start date will be confirmed in due course, Hiscox says.







Caledonia Mining Corp PLC - gold miner in Zimbabwe - Announces that Chief Executive Steve Curtis will retire on June 30 next year, after handing in his resignation. He will be succeeded as chief executive by Mark Learmonth, Caledonia's current CFO. Learmonth joined Caledonia in 2008, having spent over 17 years in corporate finance and investment banking, mostly in Africa. He has been Caledonia's CFO since November 2014, with the company describing him as being "experienced in the complexities and opportunities that arise from operating in Zimbabwe". Curtis will continue to serve as a director of Caledonia, transitioning from an executive to a non-executive role by the end of 2022. He will also act as a consultant to the company until the end of 2023.







BB Healthcare Trust PLC - London-based investor in healthcare businesses - Justin Stebbing, one of its directors, has been suspended from medical practice by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service for a period of nine months. Following the decision, Stebbing informs the BB Healthcare board that he is resigning as a non-executive with immediate effect. No details of the incident which led to Stebbing's suspension from practising medicine are provided, although BB Healthcare said full details of the findings of the verdict, sanctions and written judgment will be available on the MPTS website.







NextEnergy Solar Fund Ltd - London-based renewable energy investor - Names Josephine Bush as non-executive director with effect from January 1, 2022. Bush was previously a senior partner at Ernst & Young for 14 years specialising in the renewable energy sector.







PageGroup PLC - Surrey-based recruitment firm - Appoints Angela Seymour-Jackson as chair-designate with immediate effect. Seymour-Jackson will succeed David Lowden as chair when he retires from the board on April 30. She joined the company as a non-executive in 2017 having previously been chief executive of RAC. She has also held senior executive roles with Aegon UK and Aviva UK, part of Aviva PLC, and was senior advisor to Lloyds Banking Group PLC.







By Will Paige; willpaige@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Royal Dutch Shell PLC - Anglo-Dutch oil major - Signs agreement with government of Oman for gas production at Saih Rawl field. Shell, along with its partners OQ and TotalEnergies SE and OQ's joint venture Marsa Liquefied Natural Gas, have signed a concession agreement with Oman's Ministry of Energy and Minerals to develop and produce natural gas from block 10 of the gas field. The parties also signed a separate gas sales agreement for gas produced from the block.

"These agreements represent a major step for Shell and for our relationship with Oman. They generate value and strengthen our Integrated Gas business, which we need to deliver the energy Oman and the world need today," said Wael Sawan, Shell Integrated Gas, Renewables and Energy Solutions director.

Current stock price: 1,602.80 pence

Year-to-date change: up 23%

By Will Paige; willpaige@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Oncimmune Holdings PLC announced on Tuesday it had signed a number of commercial contracts within its ImmunoINSIGHTS business.

Shares in Oncimmune were up 9.4% at 170.59 pence on Tuesday afternoon in London following the announcement.

The Nottingham-based immunodiagnostics developer said it had signed a master service agreement and a commercial contract with an unnamed pharmaceutical company. The commercial contract is to provide autoantibody biomarker services measuring Immunoglobulin E autoantibodies for planned autoimmune studies.

"Immunoglobulin E plays an important part of the body's immune response but can also result in hypersensitivities such as allergic asthma" the company explained.

Oncimmune added that a second contract has been agreed with this company and is expected to be signed in the next few days. The second pending contract will evaluate the autoantibody profiles of patient samples collected in an autoimmune trial for chronic idiopathic urticaria, a chronic form of hives.

Both programmes are scheduled to be completed by the end of its 2022 financial year.

A commercial collaboration agreement was also signed with the European Organisation for Research & Treatment of Cancer. This contract involves an autoantibody profiling collaboration with the EORTC which will evaluate the autoantibody profiles of patient samples collected in an ongoing phase three trial investigating treatment Keytruda as monotherapy for surgically resected, high-risk melanoma.

Resection is the medical term for surgically removing part or all of a tissue, structure, or organ. Melanoma is a serious type of skin cancer that can spread to other organs in the body.

Additionally, Oncimmune said it was in the final stages of agreeing two new collaborations with US-based academic institutes that it did not name. These new collaborations will, in part, focus on segments for its existing technology platform, including chimeric antigen receptor cell therapy cells, known as CAR-T, and chimeric antigen receptor natural killer cells, known as CAR-NK.

CAR T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy in which a specialist collects and makes a small change to the body's T cells. After a few weeks, a drip containing these cells are put back into the bloodstream. The CAR T-cells then recognise and attack the cancer cells.

Natural killer cells are a critical component of the innate immune system. Chimeric antigen receptors re-direct these natural killer cells toward tumour cells carrying the corresponding antigens.

By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - NatWest Group PLC said Tuesday its investment bank has pled guilty in US Federal Court to manipulating US Treasuries markets between January 2008 and May 2014.

NatWest Markets pled guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud in connection with historical spoofing conduct by former employees.

The lender also said the "spoofing" took place during three months in 2018.

"The 2018 trading occurred during the term of a non-prosecution agreement between NatWest Markets Securities and the US Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut, under which non-prosecution was conditioned on NatWest Markets Securities and affiliated companies not engaging in criminal conduct during the term of the non-prosecution agreement. The relevant trading in 2018 was conducted by two NatWest Markets traders in Singapore and breached that non-prosecution agreement," NatWest said.

Under that deal, a subsidiary then known as RBS Securities Inc admitted its traders defrauded counterparties when dealing in mortgage securities and other loan-backed investments - using alleged manipulative trading, known as spoofing. In exchange, the US Justice Department agreed not to prosecute the bank, but has now said the 2018 trading violated the agreement.

As a result of the guilty verdict, NatWest will pay USD25.2 million in a criminal fines; about USD2.8 million of criminal forfeiture; and about USD6.8 million in restitution.

These amounts are fully covered by existing provisions, the lender noted.

It added: "In addition, NWM has also committed to compliance program reviews and improvements and agreed to reporting and cooperation obligations."

NatWest Markets Chief Executive Robert Begbie said: "We deeply regret the past behaviour of a small number of former employees which has led to today's guilty plea and the agreement with the US Department of Justice and US Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut and are pleased to resolve this matter. The behaviour of these individuals was unacceptable and has no place in the bank we are today."

On Monday last week, the lender was fined more than GBP264 million after admitting breaching anti-money laundering regulations in the UK.

Bradford jeweller Fowler Oldfield deposited GBP365 million with the bank over a five-year-period, including GBP264 million in cash, some of which was brought into a branch in bin bags.

NatWest in October pleaded guilty to three offences under the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, between November 8, 2012 and June 23, 2016. It is the first time a financial institution has faced criminal prosecution by the Financial Conduct Authority under anti-money laundering laws in the UK.

By Paul McGowan; paulmcgowan@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Tuesday and not separately reported by Alliance News:







GSTechnologies Ltd - Milton Keynes, England-based fintech firm - Net operating income for six months to September 30 USD2.4 million, surging from USD1.1 million year-on-year. Net loss widens to USD1.1 million from USD561,000. Says period saw progress despite pandemic. "Given the ongoing pandemic situation, forecasting the future is especially difficult. We expect uncertain worldwide economic conditions to continue, depending on how the pandemic evolves, particularly with the emergence of new Covid 19 variants. However, this is likely to have a much more significant impact on our EMS business, but with anticipated improvement in future construction demand we are optimistic for the future of this business," firm says.







DX Group PLC - Slough, England-based parcel freight, secure courier and logistics - Is launching review of growth strategy and capital allocation. "The review will consider the group's total shareholder returns and capital allocation policy, including dividend policy and share-buy backs, and will only be capable of being concluded once the group has published its 2021 audited annual report and accounts," it says. The review will ensure firm is in "best position" to take advantage of opportunities while maximising shareholder returns, says Chair Ron Series.







Firering Strategic Minerals PLC - Cyprus-incorporated operator of Atex lithium-tantalum mine project in Ivory Coast - Says that, as of Thursday last week, it has completed 240 auger holes as part of its Phase 1 exploration programme at its flagship Atex lithium-tantalum project. Says 1,283 auger drill and soil samples have been sent for sample preparation and will be assayed using a 4-acid digest. "We are extremely encouraged with the rapid progress at Atex, to date, considering we kicked off the two-year exploration drilling programme only in late November," says Chief Executive Yuval Cohen.







NetScientific PLC - London-based life sciences and sustainability, technology investment and commercialisation firm - Completes convertible loan investment and share acquisition totalling around GBP1.3 million in robotics and AI company Q-Bot Ltd. "The board considers that these transactions will result in a broadening of the group's portfolio, via its hands-on investment approach, and deepening its participation in a proven pioneering robotics and AI business with rapid scale-up potential," company says. Investment sees NetScientific take just shy of 19% stake in Q-Bot.







AEX Gold Inc - exploration licences in Greenland, including Nalunaq gold mine - Chief Executive Eldur Olafsson, in end-of-year update, says company is "very excited" about results from drilling campaign on the Valley Block, where "the early signs continue to be very encouraging". At Nalunaq, firm has completed 51 drillholes, predominantly on Valley Block, and says potential resource increase at Valley Block now significantly de-risked. He adds: "Given the interest in Greenland, the encouraging early signs from the drilling and the clarity from Halyard, in addition to being well capitalised for our near to medium term activities, the board considers there to be a rich pool of funding options available to extract the greatest value from the company's asset base."







Arecor Therapeutics PLC - Cambridge-based biotechnology company - Says it is pleased with progress being made with AT282, a co-development programme with Hikma. Under the pact, Arecor is responsible for optimising the novel formulation of the product using its drug formulation technology platform, and expects to transfer the final formulation to Hikma in the first half of 2022. Upon transfer, Arecor will receive a milestone payment. "We look forward to updating the market on our continued progress with this programme," says Chief Executive Sarah Howell.







Instem PLC - Staffordshire, England-based IT provider for life sciences - Has made further progress in Chinese market in second half of financial year. Says contract successes include Provantis preclinical software solution suite orders for a significant number of additional licensed users from two long-standing customers, and four additional new clients. "The deals highlight the strength of the company's position in the Chinese market, with the SaaS platform providing increasing earnings visibility and underlying margins growth," it says.







Mineral & Financial Investments Ltd - Cayman Islands-based investment company - Net asset value per share 18.22 pence at end of June, up from 15.5p a year before. "I believe M&FI's investment performance during this extraordinary and challenging year was satisfying in absolute terms, but also in relative terms," company says. While next 12 months also set to be challenging, believes it is well positioned.







Mila Resources PLC - natural resources company - Pretax loss for financial year ended June 30 GBP382,387, widening from GBP219,371 the year before. No revenue was generated in either year. "During the period under review, our primary focus was on the successful conclusion of the acquisition of an initial 30% interest in the Kathleen Valley gold project...We believe that with the initial interest now secured, and a defined development plan being executed to precipitate the transfer of the balance of ownership, Mila is in a strong position to deliver on its objective to become a post-discovery exploration accelerator," it says.







Gensource Potash Corp - fertilizer development company located in Saskatchewan, Canada - Buys additional potash permit area, Block 59 totalling 7,244 hectares, through the recent government of Saskatchewan public offering, for USD103,305. "Management believes that this is a cost-effective addition to Gensource's potash asset base," company says.







Kefi Gold & Copper PLC - Tulu Kapi gold project in Ethiopia - Plans firm placing to raise GBP715,000 and to settle outstanding debts and liabilities of approximately GBP2.6 million. Has also received further subscriptions totalling GBP1.2 million and, in addition, some directors and managers have chosen to receive shares in lieu of fees and salaries worth GBP1.9 million in total. "KEFI has arranged equity placings to tidy up its balance sheet going into year-end. The structure of the placings also provides attached 1 for 2 warrants which in part, intended to contribute to the project financing of the Tulu Kapi Gold Project," says Chair Harry Anagnostaras Adams.







By Lucy Heming; lucyheming@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Just days after the release of the trailer of the Fantastic Beasts: Secrets Of Dumbledore, Warner Bros along with HBO Max have gone on to release the new trailer of the Harry Potter Reunion episode.

And boy! It's pure magic!

It's been a long time since we bid farewell to the OG Harry Potter movies.

 Warner Bros

I mean, sure! We've had the Harry Potter spin-off, The Fantastic Beasts movie series starring Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, but let's be honest. It has not and cannot live up to the name of the original movies.



However, with Marvel really bringing on the superhero fever with Spider-Man: No Way Home, it looks like Warner Bros are looking to cash in on Pottermania again, with the new Harry Potter: Return To Hogwarts trailer.

And, let me just tell you, the trailer is amazing!

Bringing back almost the entire star cast of the eight Harry Potter movies, along with some of its previous directors like Chris Columbus and Alfonso Cuaron, the HBO special episode seems like something that fans are now really excited about.

The trailer begins with Emma Watson AKA Hermione Granger taking a trip down memory lane, as she walks on Platform 9 3/4 Quarters.

 Warner Bros

This is before she arrives at what looks like a Christmas spirited Great Hall inside the Hogwarts castle before bumping into Slytherin's house's bully boy Draco Malfoy's actor Tom Felton.



Following this, there are just moments of all past actors embracing each other, greeting one another, in what looks like a proper treat for fans all over the world.

Finally, the trailer goes to what would be the most special thing for Potterheads.

It goes to the part where the Harry Potter star trio of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint can be sitting in front of each other inside what appears to be the Gryffindor Common Room, a place which has remained the one happy place of every Harry Potter fan's memory.

 Warner Bros

I mean, this is where Harry, Ron, and Hermione they shared some of the most important humane moments during the seven books and the movies.



Moreover, the episode trailer goes on to show that the power that the OG Harry Potter series holds over the Fantastic Beasts movies is just incomparable.

Well, luckily for fans, they will get to witness both worlds, with the Harry Potter reunion episode airing on January 01, 2020.

Mischief Managed!
Veteran actor and a Samajwadi Party (SP) MP, Jaya Bachchan, is known for losing her cool while sharing her opinions out in public and this time was no different either. She had an outburst in the Rajya Sabha session and lashed out at Bharatiya Janata Party, saying that "their bad days would begin soon". This comes hours after her daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan appeared before the Enforcement Directorate.

Jaya got angry after a member hurled a personal remark at her during a discussion on the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Amendment) Bill. She went on to say, Aapke buren di aayenge (your bad days will come). I curse you. She added, We want justice. We don't expect justice from there (treasury benches), but can we expect it from you? How are you protecting the members of this house or the 12 members sitting outside? How are you protecting them?" She also called out the chair presided by Bhubaneswar Kalita for not hearing what the opposition had to say.

A verbal spat started after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker Rakesh Sinha objected to Bachchans remarks against the Chair. The situation almost seemed out of control and the video of her losing cool in the session has been going viral.

Heres the video:

As the video started doing the rounds on the internet, people bashed her for being arrogant and even said that her whole objective was to divert media attention from Aishwaryas investigation. People also added that Jaya is proof that money cant buy class as there have been numerous occasions wherein Jaya has lost her cool. People are in no mood to spare her for her fiery speech.

Here are the reactions:

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When asked about the Enforcement Directorate's grilling of her daughter Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in the Panama Papers case, she said she did not want to talk about herself and her family. She said, "What happens to a sinking ship? Who are the first ones to run? This is exactly what is happening here. They (BJP) are scared of UP polls."



When asked about her comment on the Lakhimpur Kheri violence case, she said, "Lakhimpur Kheri is a very good case of conveying to people that they (BJP) don't believe in justice and fairness."

What do you have to say about this fiasco? Let us know in the comments section below.
Rakhi Sawant surprised everyone when she announced she has gotten married via a bunch of wedding pictures on social media from which he was missing.

She then said her husband was a UK-based businessman and didnt want to reveal his identity.

However, speculations started about whether it was a gimmick, until her husband Ritesh made his first public appearance on the reality show Bigg Boss.

 Instagram/Rakhi Sawant

It had been only a few weeks since the couple were in the BB House together and the controversies regarding Riteshs first marriage and past violent behaviour towards his wife started doing the rounds.



Now, Ritesh has put the rumours at rest, finally revealing the truth about his marriage.

 Colors TV

After getting evicted from the house, he admitted to have never legally married Rakhi and also acknowledged his first marriage and allegations made by his wife Snigdha Priya in an interview with Hindustan Times. He said that he has filed for divorce from his wife and marriage with Rakhi is thus impending.



 Rakhi Sawant

He said, Mere previous wife ne jo allegations lagaya tha, mujhe pata tha ki yeh sab hai. Toh mujhe tha ki yeh sab clear up ho jaaye toh ek formal marriage hum log achchi tarah se karein. Bohot saare thoughts the, Rakhi ka bhi career tha, mere bhi bohot saare projects chal rahe the (I knew about the allegations of my previous wife and I wanted these things to get sorted out, so Rakhi and I could have a formal marriage. Plus, Rakhi had her career and I also had a lot of ongoing projects).



 Rakhi Sawant

He said that he and Rakhi intend to marry legally as soon as the divorce is finalised.



Ishwar ko sakshi maan ke hi usko apnaya hoon. Legal terms mein, main definitely yeh divorce ka wait kar raha hoon, jaise hi hoga, main formal marriage karunga Rakhi ke saath (With God as our witness, I accepted her as my wife. In legal terms, I am waiting for the divorce. As soon as it comes through, I will formally marry Rakhi), he added.

 Rakhi Sawant

Well, it does clear the air and put the rumours to rest.


Prices decreased due to globally weak market activity towards the year-end.The prices for Indian material decreased especially because of weak demand, according to sources in the UAE said.India offered 2mm thick hot-rolled coil at $810-820 per tonne cfr Saudi Arabia, falling from offers of $840-850 per tonne cfr last week No new offers were heard from Taiwan. Previously, offers for 2mm thick HRC had been at $890 per tonne cf. However, one buyer assessed the workable price at $830-850 per tonne cfr.

No major deals...
Former State Employee Sentenced for Embezzlement

Former State Employee Sentenced for Embezzlement

Attorney General

Media contact: Lynsey Mukomel 517-599-2746

Public inquiries: 517-335-7622

December 21, 2021

LANSING - A former employee of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) who previously pleaded guilty to embezzling will serve jail time and probation, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and EGLE Director Liesl Clark announced today.

Joseph Pettit, pleaded guilty in September to the following in Ingham County 30th Circuit Court:

two counts of embezzlement over $100,000, a felony punishable by up to 20 years and a fine of up to $50,000 or three times the value of the money or property, whichever is greater; and

one count of uttering and publishing, a felony punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

This afternoon, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina sentenced him to one year in Ingham County jail and three years' probation. Pettit will also forfeit his state pension in accordance with the Public Employees Retirement Benefits Act.

"State employees serve the many operations that keep Michigan running for our millions of residents," Nessel said. "Abusing that responsibility will not be tolerated by my office. I appreciate the hard work that went into securing the plea and, ultimately, accountability for Mr. Pettit's egregious acts."

"There are no winners here, least of all Michigan EGLE's 1200-plus public servants who exemplify the highest standards of ethics and are disheartened to learn a coworker violated those principles," Clark said. "We are doing all we can to prevent any reoccurrence of this type of incident, including strengthened internal financial controls that provide greater checks and balances against fraud."

As part of his sentence, Pettit will also be responsible for full restitution, which totals $855,690.

CASE BACKGROUND

In Michigan, any entity that wants to drill or operate any type of well has to apply for a permit and post a conformance bond with the Oil, Gas, and Minerals Division of EGLE. When the owner of the well changes hands, the original owner gets the bond back.

As an EGLE employee, most recently as an environmental quality specialist, Pettit was responsible for completing the process of releasing bonds back to companies and facilitating the transfer of bonds back to the original owner. Instead, Pettit created fake vendors and diverted these funds to bank accounts that he supplied for these vendors. Pettit worked at EGLE from 1996 until January of 2020.

EGLE leadership became aware of potential discrepancies in September of 2020 and immediately contacted Michigan State Police, which conducted the investigation.

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EGLE aquatic biologist: rock snot algae spotted for first time in Lower Peninsula could spread

EGLE aquatic biologist: rock snot algae spotted for first time in Lower Peninsula could spread



Aquatic biologists at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), in response to the didymo algae recently discovered in the Upper Manistee River in Kalkaska County, are stressing the importance of the State's "Clean, Drain, Dry" message to anglers and recreational users of Michigan's cold water streams. The sighting marks the first time the algae - commonly known as "rock snot" - has been spotted blooming in Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

A single-celled alga, didymo, when in bloom covers streambeds and reduces habitat for macroinvertebrates, which are important food for fish.

Despite its name, didymo is not slimy. It looks and feels like white or brown wet wool, and ranges from small, cotton ball-sized patches to thick blankets and long, rope-like strings that flow in currents.

Currently, there are no effective methods to eradicate didymo once it is established in a river or stream, notes Bill Keiper, EGLE aquatic biologist. "To prevent spreading didymo and other aquatic invasive species to new locations, it is critical for recreational users to thoroughly clean, drain and dry waders, equipment and boats upon leaving a waterway," he said.

Keiper says it's unknown what causes the algae to turn from an invisible one into one that develops long stalks when it blooms, making it visible on hard surfaces in the streambed.

Lake Superior State University's researchers, with support from the Michigan Invasive Species Grant Program, have been conducting a extensive studies of didymo in the St. Marys River and Upper Peninsula waters since didymo was first found in 2015. LSSU's ongoing efforts will help guide didymo research and management needs statewide.

The State's "Clean, Drain, Dry" message is the most effective way to prevent spread of rock snot, Keiper emphasized.

Clean by removing mud and debris from all surfaces.

Drain water from all bilges, wells and tanks.

Dry equipment for at least five days or disinfect with hot water or a dilute bleach solution.

"Over the next few months, we'll work with partners to assure aquatic invasive species signs are posted at access sites and to spread the Clean, Drain, Dry message to the fishing community," said Keiper. "We want to encourage local fly shops, fishing guides and conservation groups to help out by stressing the importance of decontaminating gear and equipment to protect these waters from didymo and other aquatic invasive species."

If you observe didymo in the water, either as small, cotton ball-sized patches or thick blankets with rope-like strings that flow in currents, take photos, note the location and report it by using the Midwest Invasive Species Information Network, available online at MISIN.MSU.edu or as a downloadable smartphone app. The MISIN smartphone app will take a GPS location point if a report is made at the site; it also will allow you to upload photos with a report.

Find more information on didymo and how to identify it at Michigan.gov/Invasives.

Michigan's Invasive Species Program is cooperatively implemented by the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, the Department of Natural Resources, and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Caption: Didymo from the Upper Manistee River caught on fishing gear. Credit: Samuel Day, LTBB.

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Governor Whitmer Takes Action to Protect the Great Lakes

Governor Whitmer Takes Action to Protect the Great Lakes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

November 30, 2021

Contact: press@michigan.gov

Governor Whitmer Takes Action to Protect the Great Lakes

To protect Michigan's waters, administration believes state court should have final say in Line 5 case

LANSING, Mich. - Governor Whitmer today announced that the State of Michigan is shifting its legal strategy to give Michigan state courts the final say in protecting the Great Lakes by voluntarily dismissing the governor's lawsuit against Enbridge in federal court. The governor's goal remains protecting the Great Lakes, which means shutting down the Line 5 dual oil pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac as soon as possible. By clearing the way for the lawsuit filed by Attorney General Dana Nessel to go forward in Michigan state court, today's action seeks to protect the Great Lakes and our state's natural resources, which support 1.3 million jobs, including 350,000 jobs in Michigan, and generate $82 billion in wages annually.

"Today, I took further action to protect the Great Lakes from an oil spill and help us stay focused on getting the Line 5 dual oil pipelines out of the water as quickly as possible," said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. "While I respectfully disagree, the federal court has now decided to keep the lawsuit I filed in November 2020. I believe the people of Michigan, and our state courts, should have the final say on whether this oil company should continue pumping 23 million gallons of crude oil through the Straits of Mackinac every day. After today's action, Attorney General Dana Nessel's lawsuit, filed in June 2019, should now be able to move forward expeditiously in state court. Our goal here remains the same: protecting the Great Lakes, protecting Michigan jobs, and protecting Michigan's economy."

"Michigan state courts should have the right to determine what happens in our Great Lakes," said Dan Eichinger, Director of the Department of Natural Resources. "No oil company should be able to dictate to Michiganders what happens in our sovereign lands and waters. This dismissal ensures that the people of Michigan have a say in protecting our Great Lakes."

"The National Wildlife Federation strongly supports Governor Whitmer's courageous and steadfast legal strategy to shut down Line 5 and protect Michigan's interest in the Great Lakes from interference by a Canadian oil company," said Mike Shriberg, Regional Executive Director of the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes Regional Center. "Line 5 is an urgent threat to the Great Lakes and the Governor's move to cut through Enbridge's legal delay tactics is the best way to move forward toward what really matters: protecting the Great Lakes from a catastrophic oil spill."

"The governor's action today is an important step to protect our Great Lakes from the ticking time bomb of a catastrophic oil spill by allowing the state's strong legal case to move forward and shut down the dangerous, aging Line 5 pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac," said Lisa Wozniak, Executive Director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. "Governor Whitmer and Attorney General Nessel are again showing that they are dedicated to protecting our Great Lakes, the source of drinking water for millions and a critical driver of our economy."

Background

Line 5 is 68-year-old dual oil pipeline running along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac with 23 million gallons of oil flowing through it every day. The governor and Department of Natural Resources Director Dan Eichinger issued a Notice of Revocation and Termination of Easement to Enbridge in November 2020 and filed in state court to enforce this action. Enbridge then removed the case to federal court. Although the state sought to return the case to state court, earlier this month, the federal court denied that request and decided to hear the case.

In June 2019, before the governor filed her lawsuit, Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a separate lawsuit in state court to shut down the Line 5 dual pipelines that run through the Straits of Mackinac. The Attorney General's lawsuit remains in state court, although the judge in that case has paused the lawsuit while the Governor's lawsuit proceeded in federal court.

Today the governor filed a notice in federal court to voluntarily dismiss her lawsuit. The governor's voluntary dismissal of her lawsuit should enable the Attorney General's case to move forward in state court where this matter finally belongs and can move quickly to shut down the dual pipelines and protect the Great Lakes from a catastrophic oil spill. The Attorney General has taken the position that her lawsuit in state court should proceed. While the governor has taken action to reshape the state's legal strategy, she is not withdrawing the Notice of Revocation and Termination of Easement, which she issued to Enbridge on November 13, 2020.

Today's action does not impact Enbridge's efforts to build a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac.

Securing Michigan's Energy Needs

To ensure Michigan's energy needs are met, Governor Whitmer has been laser-focused on diversifying the state's energy needs to ensure access to cheaper clean energy sources. Under Governor Whitmer's direction, the five-step MI Propane Security plan further ensures propane security for the residents of our state and businesses by:

Protecting consumers from price gouging and provide accessible heating assistance for families in need.

Sending clear signals to encourage market participants to invest in the development of alternative propane sourcing options.

Leveraging the tools of state government to encourage the development of alternative sourcing options.

Monitoring propane supply and coordinate responses to potential disruptions with the energy industry.

Maximizing propane efficiency while reducing energy costs in Michigan through efficiency, weatherization, and the transition to electrification and renewable energy.

Since early in 2019, the Whitmer Administration has been working with industry to preparing for and deploy alternatives to ensure energy security for both of Michigan's peninsulas in the event of a Line 5 closure.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the ninth in a 12 Daves of Christmas series being published in the 12 publication days before Christmas featuring Manistee County residents named Dave.

BEAR LAKE  December is a busy month for Santa Claus, but for Bear Lake resident Dave McMahon, the spirit of the season is a year-round affair.

McMahon has been Santa for over 40 years, having appeared in places like Philadelphia, Boston, Washington D.C. and New York City, where he took the place of honor at the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade in the mid to late-1980s.

First off, this is not a costume, this is me, he said pointing to his long white hair and beard. I live this, this is not seasonal for me.

Today, he and his Mrs. Claus, Billie Jo Wilson enjoy their semi-retirement with family in the Bear Lake area  a place his voicemail refers to as Santas summer home.

With modern technology, I can video chat with the elves and now with the elf on the shelf and stuff like that, I dont need to be in the North Pole 365 days a year  I only have to be in the North Pole one day a year, he said.

In December, this Santa visited children at events in Bear Lake, Honor and most recently at T.J. 's Pub in Manistee on Sunday.

Courtesy photo/Dave McMahon

For McMahon, the Christmas spirit is about sharing and caring, something the former contractor says was important to St. Nicholas, the original Santa Claus.

More Information INTRODUCING DAVE  Bear Lake resident for 3 years  Favorite Christmas movie is "White Christmas" or "It's a Wonderful Life"  Favorite (Dave) day of the year is Dec. 25 See More Collapse

"We're talking 1700 years ago, most of Europe at the time was impoverished, so you're either the king, or you were just about scraping by," he said. "And so (St. Nicholas) would see the kids just playing with mud and stones and sticks and actually having fun. But he would actually whittle toys and every time he would stop, and he would see a child with nothing to play with  not even a rocker stick  and give them the story. And his only phrase to the child is 'if you are done playing with this toy, pass it on to somebody else', and that's where that sharing and caring comes from."

McMahon explained how that ethos has informed his work as a volunteer with the First Baptist Church of Bear Lake.

I guess you could call me a carpenter because I built a lot of furniture when I was younger. And now, my way of caring and giving is I work with some churches ... and we've been going around and fixing up homes that are in dire need of repair, he said.

In addition to appearances as Kris Kringle, McMahon has spent much of December helping those in need of home repairs, including one Bear Lake family whose kitchen he said was falling apart.

"... as much as I do charity work, Manistee is fitting for me. Because it's actually one of the most impoverished counties that we have in Michigan," he said.

Im disabled  but I dont want to stand still. Every time I sit at home and do nothing, I get yelled at by Mrs. Clause, and then I get very lazy and sit on the couch, he continued.

Despite his ailments, McMahon said there was something special about donning the red suit around Christmas.

No matter how bad I feel, once I put that suit on my unhappiness, my pains, my agony, they all go away, he said. I'm just lifted, automatically lifted.

That Christmas spirit, he said, should be at the heart of anyone looking to follow in the footsteps of St. Nicholas, the original Santa Claus.

My main philosophy in life is that family should not suffer and have to pay money to have their picture with Santa Claus, he said.
MANISTEE COUNTY  The following includes reports made to the Manistee County Sheriffs Office from Nov. 21-23

All calls may not be reported. This is part of a lengthy report and is compiled by assistant editor Arielle Breen.

Nov. 21

 A property damage crash was reported at 6 p.m. in Manistee Township.

Nov. 22

 A traffic hazard was reported at 2:50 a.m. in Norman Township.

 Trespassing was reported at 9:21 a.m. in Cleon Township.

 A suspicious situation was reported at 10:44 a.m. in Manistee Township.

 Deputies assisted a citizen at 11:27 a.m. in Dickson Township.

 A suspicious situation was reported 12:40 p.m. in Filer Township.

 Deputies conducted a warrant arrest at 4:16 p.m. in Bear Lake Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 6:15 p.m. in Onekama Township.

 A suspicious situation and a breaking and entering were reported at 8 p.m. in Norman Township.

 Deputies assisted the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians at 6 p.m. in Manistee.

Nov. 23

 A two-vehicle property damage crash was reported at 7:12 a.m. in Norman Township.

 Larceny from a motor vehicle was reported at 9:05 a.m. in Stronach Township.

 Deputies conducted a pill collection at 9 a.m. at the Manistee County Sheriffs Office.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 9:30 a.m. in Manistee Township.
MANISTEE  The neighborhood might smell a little more delicious at the Manistee City Fire Department this week after it received a donation of a grill from two entities aiming to give a nice gift to the stations staff.

Both Transitions Women's Wellness Center and Bear Lake Ace Hardware teamed up to donate a Traeger wood pellet grill to the fire department and presented it with a bow on top on Monday.

Jennifer Cameron, of Transitions, said she and Bear Lakes fire chief wanted to help give back to the firefighter-paramedics at the Manistee City Fire Department. So they asked Manistee Fire Chief Mark Cameron what they could use or would like.

He indicated that their gas grill went to the grill graveyard this year and that the guys were missing it, Jennifer Cameron said in an email.

She noted that the department had gone above and beyond helping Transitions by taking steps such as extra training that benefits her patients.

We at Transitions Women's Wellness Center have called for their services a few times over the past year and are so comforted to know that theyre just minutes away! she said in an email. Weve asked them to increase their training for the safety of our patients as well, by maintaining certification in neonatal resuscitation in addition to their already rigorous continuing education requirements. This certification ensures that they can be valuable assets to us if needed.

She noted that the department always responds quickly and that its a thankless job.

These fellas are on call 24/7 and leap into action at a moment's notice to assist whoever calls them in whatever way they can! These last couple of years have been particularly trying for them, yet they still show up  quickly and with smiles on their faces (which are hidden by masks but still evident in their eyes and voices!)

Sean Adams, Bear Lake fire chief and vice president of Bear Lake Ace Hardware, said firefighting is a brotherhood and he wanted to be able to help everyone out.

The guys do a great job, and they help the whole county, not just the city, Adams said.

Mark Cameron said the grill might help the firefighters eat healthier and opt to make a meal in-house as opposed to going for fast food.

And its nice for when the families come around because then at Thanksgivingtime, Christmastime, usually the guys that are working on shift will have their family come in and maybe they can have a nice smoked turkey or something, he said.

The first step before using the new gift is to wax the outside of the grill to preserve it longer, Adams advised the department.
Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

Michigan consumers are being advised not to eat Fresh Express Sweet Hearts Romaine Sweet Butter Lettuce because a sample of the product taken by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development tested positive for the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes.

The product is packaged in a 9 oz. clear plastic bag with a green and red label with white lettering and has a use-by date and lot code of "DEC 08 Z324B05A 16:04 07; Product of USA" located on the upper right corner of the front of the bag, according to a press release issued Friday by MDARD.
Caregivers for veterans, known as hidden heroes, are finding some solace with the recent launch of I Am A Caregiver initiative by The Elizabeth Dole Foundation that is partnering with the Wounded Warrior Project and visited Edenville Saturday.

The Elizabeth Dole Foundation (EDF), along with representatives from the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) and Michigan Veteran Affairs, visited the Swanton Memorial Center to offer help and resources to veteran caregivers and let them know they arent alone. The event was open to people all over the state.

This was a cross collaborative event, said WWP Outreach Specialist Carley Wilson.

The EDF estimates there are 5.5 million Americans caring for the nations wounded warriors. Stories include a man who works two jobs and comes home to his children and wife who has debilitating injuries from fighting in Afghanistan; a mother who must explain to her young children whey their dad doesnt feel like playing as he recovers from his third tour of duty; or parents who quit their jobs to provide around-the-clock care for their severely-wounded son.

The event highlighted the importance veteran caregivers play in supporting their loved ones wellbeing and develop ties for caregivers. Hidden heroes play a huge role but arent often recognized. Representatives hoped the event would also bring inspiration to others to join the caregiving community and learn about available resources.

Stephanie Hall, of Edenville, is a veteran caregiver and advocate and 2019 EDF Fellow. With all the veterans and veteran organizations in the area, she felt it was important to foster the event.

Edenville signed on to be part of the Hidden Heroes because we wanted to bring more support to (Midland) County, Hall said.

WWP spokeswoman Mary Tallouzi talked about how she lived in isolation as a caregiver. She was always focused on caring for her wounded veteran son, that she lost her identity. She felt she was no longer Mary.

Wilson said the program offers resources to the caregivers so they dont feel so isolated and like they lose their identity.

Through the new caregiver initiative by EDF, representatives hope it will help caregivers self-identify as caregivers. Caregivers often say they are just a daughter caring for their father or mother or a mother/father caring for their child. They dont identify as a caregiver.

This was a great experience to be able to fellow with other caregivers, said Angelena Taylor, a 2021 EDF Fellow from Detroit.

Her father was wounded in Vietnam and she started taking care of him.

A lot of caregivers dont self-identify, she said. We just say my dad needs my help. Im here to help.

Taylor said there are a lot of resources once one identifies as a caregiver, such as home aid, respite care and other local resources.

Joey Hotovy, of Grand Rapids, knows firsthand the plight of being a veteran caregiver. She cared for her ex-husband for many years after he was injured in Iraq. He suffered a brain injury, epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments.

Its a lonely world for a caregiver, Hotovy said.

Events like this help keep you going at your low points, she said.

There are quite a few veterans, not sure how many, in the area, Hall said. We want to reach out to some of those people.

Hall would like to make this an annual event to support the veteran caregivers, noting there is a need for such services.

If you are a military or veteran caregiver, visit hiddenheroes.org to discover hundreds of carefully vetted resources and an online peer support community exclusively for caregivers: https://hiddenheroes.org/resources.

The Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency offers free and confidential services. Call 1-800-642-4838.

The Wounded Warrior Project can be reached at woundedwarriorproject.org or 1-888-997-2586.
MISSION, Kan. (AP)  Rural Kansas hospitals are struggling to transfer patients as COVID-19 numbers surge, with some patients left stranded in emergency rooms for a week while they wait for a bed.

Space also was in short supply last winter and again over the summer when the delta variant first hit the state. The situation improved slightly this fall, but now is worsening again, according to Motient, a company contracted by Kansas to help manage transfers.

It isn't just rural hospitals looking for beds. Overwhelmed hospitals as far away as Minnesota and Michigan have been looking for beds in larger Kansas hospitals. Often there simply isn't room.

Dr. Richard Watson, founder of Motient, said Friday that the long-distance transfers and long waits for beds are becoming commonplace as the pandemic ends its second year, adding, Its already as crazy as it can be.

"When you are talking about moving people from Minnesota to Kansas City for treatment. Its like Mayo Clinic in reverse," he said.

Kansas averaged 41 new COVID-19 hospitalizations a day for the seven days ending Monday, according to state health department data, as total confirmed and probable cases for the pandemic topped 500,000.

Gov. Laura Kelly said she has no plans to pursue the same aggressive strategy of closing schools and businesses statewide that she did in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature ended a state of emergency in June and curbed the power of the Democratic governor and even local officials to impose restrictions.

We have the tools to stop the spread, Kelly told The Associated Press Monday. People really do need to not only get fully vaccinated, they need to get the booster shot.

Jesse Thomas, also of Motient, said Monday that it takes an average of eight and a half hours from the time a smaller hospital starts looking for a bed in a larger hospital to when an ambulance or air transportation arrives, up from about five hours this summer.

It used to be rare, and now its not rare," he said of the long waits.

Forty patients were on the board waiting to be transferred on Friday. Some have been languishing in emergency departments while they await transfers for days, sometimes more than a week, Watson said.

Watson said larger hospitals don't want COVID-19 patients unless they are really sick, adding that some are only accepting COVID-19 transfers if they need to be on a ventilator.

They know that their beds are at a premium and they have to hold them for the people who need them," Watson said, adding that COVID-19 patients who just need oxygen wind up stuck. He said the shortage of beds and staff to care for patients also has stranded patients with other health issues, such as heart attacks.

He said staffing shortages in nursing homes also contribute to the bed shortage because it means there is nowhere to send patients who are improving but still need extra care.

You cant put somebody in that bed if they cant clean it out," he said.

Dr. Jackie Hyland, the chief medical officer at the University of Kansas Health System's St. Francis campus in Topeka, complained about the problems nursing home shortages were causing on a recent call with Kansas and Missouri hospital officials.

It causes a backup all the way through to our emergency room and holding emergency room patients there, preventing them from getting admitted to a hospital bed," Hyland said.

Watson said he has never seen a problem like this on such a broad scale.

You may have a patient here or there thats having a difficulty and the hospital may be in a tight spot, but to have the whole system with people just locked in place for days at a level of care they really need to move out of, thats a different world for us, he said.

Watson said he anticipated the capacity issues would only grow worse over the holidays.

People expect there to be a different story," Watson said. But you know, here we got it: Its unvaccinated people. Omicron moves through. Nobodys paying attention. They all want it to go away for Christmas. Its not going away."

A handful of omicron cases have been detected in the state in recent days. The latest two were announced Monday in Wyandotte County in the Kansas City area.

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Associated Press reporter John Hanna in Topeka contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  The White House says President Joe Biden had close contact with a staff member who later tested positive for the coronavirus and is experiencing symptoms of COVID-19.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Monday night that the staff member tested positive earlier in the day. Psaki says the staff member spent about 30 minutes around the president on Air Force One on Friday during a trip from Orange, South Carolina, to Philadelphia.

Psaki says the staff member is fully vaccinated and boosted and tested negative before boarding Air Force One. She says the staffer began experiencing symptoms Sunday night.

Psaki says the 79-year-old Biden is tested regularly for the virus and has had two negative tests since Sunday. She says he will be tested again Wednesday.

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HERES WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC:

 British nurses warn the health care system at a breaking point as omicron cases soar

 German military gives hospital an edge in treating COVID-19 patients

 Omicron prompts World Economic Forum to delay Davos meeting until summer 2022

 Austria ends 20-day lockdown, considers move a success as virus cases plummet

Go to https://APNews.com/coronavirus-pandemic for updates throughout the day.

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING TODAY:

HOUSTON  An unvaccinated man with health issues has become the first person in the Houston area whose death has been linked to COVID-19 caused by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced the death of the man in his 50s during a news conference Monday.

One Houston hospital system has reported the omicron variant is accounting for 82% of new COVID-19 cases it is treating.

The medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist Hospital said in a tweet Sunday that the omicron variant became the cause of the supermajority of new Houston Methodist cases in less than three weeks. In comparison, the delta variant took three months during the summer before it was the cause of more than 80% of cases.

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ATLANTA -- The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has risen almost 50% in Georgia in the last month, and the number of infections detected continues to accelerate.

More than 1,200 patients were hospitalized statewide Monday with the respiratory illness. Thats well below the record of roughly 6,000 that was reached in early September at the peak of Georgias fourth surge of virus cases. But it is well above the recent low of 824 patients recorded on Nov. 22.

Among those who have tested positive for the virus is Atlanta-mayor elect Andre Dickens, who has put himself in self-isolation though he reports feeling well with mild symptoms. Dickens, says he is fully vaccinated.

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EUGENE, Ore.  As the highly transmissible omicron variant spreads across the country, University of Oregon students, faculty and staff will be required to get a coronavirus booster shot as soon as they are eligible.

Currently the university and the states six other public universities require vaccinations for those on campus.

As of Monday afternoon, the University of Oregon is the only public university in the state to publicly announce a booster requirement.

University President Michael Schill says in a letter posted online that boosters are the next step in the evolving public health strategy in which we have adapted and responded as a community during the pandemic,

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RALEIGH, N.C.  North Carolinas governor has issued his strongest public health warning yet heading into the Christmas holidays.

Gov. Roy Cooper said Monday that officials expect the omicron variant of the coronavirus to soon severely strain hospitals and lead to the highest daily case counts since the pandemic hit the state in March 2020.

Cooper also says he will not reimpose any statewide mandates or roll out any financial inducements for residents to get a booster shot of coronavirus vaccine. In place of mandates, North Carolina will rely on additional resources for at-home test and an informational campaign to encourage the roughly 62% of vaccinated residents to get a booster shot.

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BATON ROUGE, La.  Louisiana is starting to see growing numbers of COVID-19 cases months after emerging from a fourth surge of the coronavirus outbreak, with the state at risk of another spike as the omicron variant spreads.

Data released Monday by the Louisiana Department of Health shows the number of new coronavirus cases reached more than 2,300 since Friday  and more than 4,800 over the last week. Thats more than double the amount of new cases from the prior week.

And the health department warned those numbers are expected to balloon as dozens of cases of the fast-spreading omicron variant have been confirmed in Louisiana.

Still, the number of people hospitalized in Louisiana with COVID-19 remains low so far, reported at 241 patients Monday. That continues to be among the lowest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations since March 2020 and well below the states peak of more than 3,000 in August.

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BOISE, Idaho  State health officials have deactivated crisis guidelines for rationing care at northern Idaho hospitals as COVID-19 cases have dropped.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said Monday that the number of COVID-19 patients remains high but no longer exceeds available health care resources.

The crisis standards for the states five most northern counties had been in place since Sept. 7.

Health and Welfare Director Dave Jeppesen says the situation remains precarious because of the omicron variant that appeared in Idaho last week. Jeppesen says getting vaccinated, getting booster doses and wearing masks in crowded areas could help prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed again.

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NEW YORK  Hamilton and Aladdin, two of Broadways biggest musicals, are shuttering their doors during the busy Christmas week after finding breakthrough COVID-19 cases in their companies.

All matinee and evening performances of Aladdin from Tuesday through Friday were canceled. Performances are scheduled to resume Sunday. Aladdin had previously canceled its Dec. 19 performance.

Hamilton canceled shows on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday and performances are scheduled to resume Dec. 27. The production had previously canceled its Dec. 17 through Dec. 19 performances, as well as its Dec. 15 show due to the detection of positive results.

The two hit shows join Mrs. Doubtfire, MJ and Aint Too Proud, among others, in announcing multi-day cancellations due to the virus. Shows often add performances around Christmas week and the holidays are usually the most lucrative shows of the year.

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MISSION, Kan.  Rural Kansas hospitals are struggling to transfer patients as COVID-19 numbers surge, with some patients left stranded in emergency rooms for a week while they wait for a bed.

Space also was in short supply last winter and again over the summer when the delta variant first hit the state. The situation improved slightly this fall, but according to Motient, a company contracting with Kansas to help manage transfers, the situation now is worsening again.

And it isnt just rural hospitals looking for beds. Overwhelmed hospitals as far away as Minnesota and Michigan have been calling looking for beds in larger Kansas hospitals. Often there simply isnt room.

Dr. Richard Watson, founder of Motient, said Friday that the long-distance transfers and long waits for beds are sadly becoming commonplace as the pandemic ends its second year.

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CONCORD, New Hampshire  Health officials say a child who was too young to have been vaccinated against COVID-19 is the first person under 18 from New Hampshire to have died from complications related to the virus.

The Department of Health and Human Services said in a news release that the death happened in September in another state and was identified after COVID-19 was listed as a cause of death on the death certificate, which was recently finalized.

We are all saddened by this loss and give our condolences to the family, said Dr. Benjamin Chan, state epidemiologist. It continues to be important for us all to take steps to protect those who are not yet able to be vaccinated, and those who are vulnerable and at risk for severe COVID-19.

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QUEBEC CITY  Quebec is closing bars, cinemas, gyms and spas because of a record number of coronavirus cases in the Canadian province.

Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube said restaurants must close by 10 p.m.

The province last week went to 50% capacity at restaurants and bars but is now announcing more restrictions. Quebec reported 4,571 COVID-19 cases Monday, a new single-day record since the beginning of the pandemic.

Elementary schools and high schools will close after Monday and in-person learning will resume Jan. 10, but schools will remain accessible until the holiday break for vaccinations or distributing rapid tests to students.

Spectators will not be permitted to attend professional or amateur sporting events.

Remote work, which before was recommended by authorities, will now be mandatory.

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LONDON  Queen Elizabeth II has decided not to gather the royal family for Christmas at the royal Sandringham estate in eastern England, amid concerns about the fast-spreading omicron variant.

The royal palace said Monday that the 95-year-old queen will spend the holidays at Windsor Castle, west of London, where she has spent most of her time during the pandemic.

Other members of the royal family are expected to visit over the Christmas period, with precautions taken against spreading the virus.

For years members of the extended family have spent the holidays at Sandringham, attending the local church as a group on Christmas Day.

The queen has cut down on travel and work in recent months since spending a night in hospital in October and being told to rest by her doctors.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio  Additional Ohio hospitals are announcing the postponement of elective surgeries as COVID-19 cases continue to fill up hospital beds in the state.

The decisions are in line with the crisis highlighted by Gov. Mike DeWine last week when he ordered more than 1,000 members of the Ohio National Guard into hospitals to help overwhelmed staff.

The Ohio State University medical center and the Columbus-based OhioHealth system both say theyre postponing new elective surgeries as the number of coronavirus cases spike. Ohio States policy, covering procedures that require an overnight stay, takes place Jan. 3 but doesnt affect currently scheduled procedures.

Hospital systems in northeastern Ohio including the Cleveland Clinic announced similar postponements earlier this month. The word Help dominated a full-page ad in The Plain Dealer Monday in which six Cleveland-area health systems urged people to receive the vaccine.

State Health Director Bruce Vanderhoff said last week the vast majority of people being hospitalized in Ohio arent vaccinated.

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MISSION, Kansas  A Missouri health official says the delta variant still accounts for 98% to 99% of the roughly 600 samples that are sequenced each week.

Over the past seven days, the state confirmed 14,156 new COVID-19 cases.

COVID-19 hospitalizations are on the rise in Missouri. The states Department of Health and Senior Services data shows the seven-day average hitting 1,972 on Thursday, up from 1,058 on Nov. 9, but still well below the peak of the summer surge.

Dr. James Stewart, the chief medical officer for North Kansas City Hospital, says the hospital has more than four times as many COVID-19 patients with active infections now as it did on Nov. 1.

Stewart says that if this continues, the hospital will surpass its previous peak.

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LOS ANGELES  The New Years Eve party planned for downtown Los Angeles Grand Park will not have an in-person audience due to the recent increase in COVID-19 cases in LA County, organizers said.

The NYELA Countdown to 2022 event will instead be streamed, as it was last year.

Organizers originally planned to have an invite-only audience of LA County frontline workers and first responders.

The program will feature the band Kinky and other musical performances starting at 11 p.m. on Dec. 31.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported more than 3,500 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday as the number of daily new cases tripled over the week.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  Kuwait has mandated that everyone who has been vaccinated against the coronavirus at least nine months ago receive a booster shot.

The Gulf Arab state says that booster shots will become compulsory starting Jan. 2 as the omicron variant courses across the region. Kuwait detected its first omicron case earlier this month.

The tiny sheikhdom has seen cases gradually trend upward this week after hitting record lows of under 50 infections a day. The government also urged all citizens and residents to avoid travel.
Midlands school resource officers (SRO) will be riding in style, after the Midland Police Department picked up one of four new patrol cars featuring local school pride on Monday.

The patrol cars feature school spirit-inspired decals that were funded through a SRO millage approved by Midland voters in November 2018. According to MPD, a 0.4 mills were levied each year for four years.

The city said the upgrade serves as a dual purpose, to update the vehicles and connect with the school communities in another fashion.

It allows for the school spirit to take place, but it also gives increased visibility to our officers within our schools, said Brennon Warren, who is a community relations officer with MPD. In the wake of the Oxford shooting, it allows us to show more support to our students.

There is no cost to the schools for the resource officer program. An average Midland homeowner with a $150,000 home, for example, paid $30 per year through the millage passed on Nov. 6, 2018.

Since the Thursday announcement on Facebook, the police departments cars have attracted more than 1,000 likes and more than 100 shares, mostly in support of the graphics.

The decals are coming from a graphics print shop based in Mount Pleasant. Just Fab Graphics is working with the city to complete a total of four vehicles.

The first completed vehicle highlights the huskies at Jefferson Middle School with a fresh graphics kit.

The vehicles are fully marked police cars which can also be used as a typical patrol vehicle. The department said Midland residents can expect to see the patrol cars in neighborhoods, driving on local streets and parked at city locations so officers can interact with community members.

All of the (SRO) patrol cars are parked out in front of the schools, they have their own designated area where they are parked and they can be seen from the main entrances of each building, Warren said. Once the (officer) is inside the school itself, they have a uniform that identifies them.

He said SROs can be found wearing a pair of khakis and a MPD polo shirt as an official uniform.

Its got the police (designation) in reflective lettering on the back, and then (there is an) embroidered badge on the front with each individual officers badge number along with their name on the other side, Warren explained.

Over the upcoming weeks, Just Fabs Lindsay Theisen said the remaining vehicles will have a new decal installed. The owner and graphic designer said the Just Fab Graphics crew is currently in the second phase of decaling.

Theisen said Northeast Middle Schools unit is the next vehicle for decal. She said the department is picking up vehicles as they are completed and dropping another vehicle off throughout the decal process.

Warren said the second patrol car should be done soon. However, the remaining units do not have an expected date of completion because of uncertainty with timelines in respect of shipping delays.

Many Michigan school districts were shaken by the Nov. 30 shooting at Oxford High School, which resulted in four deaths and other student injuries. In response to how Midlands school resource officers are doing after the incident, Warren said it has been a tough time.

School and student safety is obviously a main priority with our officers, he said. That's why the connections that we can make as resource officers  they're there for the students, their safety and wellbeing. This is just another way to promote their school safety, and I think it is a crucial thing. That is what the main goal is here.

According to the National Association of School Resource Officers, an SRO is a law enforcement officer with sworn authority. Warren said school resource officers also patrol Midland neighborhoods.

Theyre still full-time police officers, he said, adding that students will be able to easily identify their resource officer on city roads. We think (increasing community connections) is a very important thing to show (students) more support.

According to MPDs website, SROs also receive additional special training before working in their schools. For more information on the SROs, visit https://bit.ly/3GUzfWs.
The Department of Defense is overhauling how it keeps track of its guns and explosives, and Congress is requiring more accountability from the Pentagon -- responses to an Associated Press investigation that showed lost or stolen military weapons were reaching Americas streets.

The missing weaponry includes assault rifles, machine guns, handguns, armor-piercing grenades, artillery shells, mortars, grenade launchers and plastic explosives.

The Pentagon will now have to give lawmakers an annual report on weapons loss and security under the National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress approved this month and President Joe Biden is expected to sign. As APs AWOL Weapons investigation showed, military officials werent advising Congress even as guns and explosives continued to disappear.

To meet those reporting requirements, the military is modernizing how it accounts for its millions of firearms and mountains of explosives.

Clearly the accountability on this issue was stopping at too low of a level, said U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colorado, a U.S. Army veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee who supported the reforms. With the new requirements, if there are hundreds of missing weapons in that report, members of Congress are going to see it and they are going to be asked about it publicly and held accountable for it.

Pentagon officials have said that they can account for more than 99.9% of firearms, and take weapons security very seriously. Still, when AP published its first report on missing firearms in June, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he would consider a systematic fix.

In response, the Army, the largest branch with the most firearms, took on a major overhaul of how units report missing, lost or stolen weapons. Paper records are giving way to a digital form, and a central logistics operations center is collecting and verifying serious incident reports that  as with other armed services  didnt always go all the way up the chain of command.

The new system uses an existing software system called Vantage to give commanders a real-time look at what is unaccounted for, Scott Forster, an operations research analyst at the Army, said in a briefing with AP.

Other changes will affect how the military responds to law enforcement investigations.

When a gun is recovered or sought during a criminal case, the Defense Departments Small Arms and Light Weapons Registry is supposed to determine the last known location or unit responsible. But the registrys information was inaccurate and responses to law enforcement werent timely, according to internal Army documents obtained by the AP. (The Army runs the registry for the Pentagon.)

The Army is now developing an app that would search each services own property record databases, according to Army spokesman Lt. Col. Brandon Kelley.

The new law also requires the Defense Secretary to report confirmed thefts or recovery of weapons to the National Crime Information Center, which the FBI runs. Military regulations had required the services and units to self-report losses; the onus will now be on the highest level of the Pentagon.

The other armed services also are implementing reforms.

The Marine Corps said it is developing internal procedures for improved oversight through increased inspections of units. The Navy required units to notify a higher headquarters when reporting weapons losses. The Air Force has replaced its munitions property book system with a commercial application.

This summer, the Defense Logistics Agency began reporting to the Pentagon losses and thefts of firearms that the military loaned to civilian agencies under the Law Enforcement Support Office program. In its data release to AP, the Pentagon reported that 461 of these firearms had vanished, with 109 later recovered. APs reporting did not include LESO weapons.

After the APs initial report published in June, Gen. Milley tasked the service branches with scrubbing their data on firearms losses since 2010 -- the time period AP studied.

The Pentagon reluctantly shared the statistics it collected, which Milleys office has provided to Capitol Hill. The official numbers are lower than what AP reported -- but also incomplete, because some services failed to include stolen weapons as documented by the militarys own criminal investigators.

The number of missing, lost or stolen firearms was approximately 1,540 from 2010 through this summer, according to LTC Uriah Orland, a spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The majority have been recovered, he said. That total compares to the at least 2,000 firearms that AP had reported for 2010 through 2020, a tally was based on the militarys own data, internal memoranda, criminal investigation case files and other sources.

There are several reasons for the discrepancy. In conducting their analyses, each service used different standards and systems. Despite the detailed data search by each service, AP found lost or stolen items that were not in their official accounting.

Relying on its official weapons registry, the Navy data represented that none of its shotguns have been stolen and its only explosives losses during the 2010s were 20 concussion grenades. AP identified several shotguns and dozens of armor-piercing grenades, based on case files from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The Marines decided that any weapon that vanished in a combat zone didnt count -- even in cases, for example, when a rifle fell from a vehicle or aircraft, or disappeared from living quarters on overseas base. Their total of unaccounted for firearms since 2010 was 31.

The biggest explanation for the difference between APs numbers and official numbers is a significant downward revision of Army totals.

In June, AP reported the Army couldnt account for more than 1,500 weapons. Most of that total derived from internal Army memos that said 1,300 rifles and handguns were lost or stolen between 2013 and 2019. The Army had said the memos could include duplications and combat losses, which AP excluded when known.

Responding to Milleys order, personnel hand-searched records. Their conclusion was that, in the 2010s, only 469 firearms were missing.

Army officials didnt detail which weapons they excluded or their criteria for reaching the total, which AP was unable to verify independently.

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Hall reported from Nashville, Tennessee; contact her at https://twitter.com/kmhall. Pritchard reported from Los Angeles; contact him at https://twitter.com/JPritchardAP.

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Email APs Global Investigations Team at investigative@ap.org or via https://www.ap.org/tips/. See other work at https://www.apnews.com/hub/ap-investigations.
A new plan thats made its way through the state legislature to retain and attract businesses to Michigan has the support of Thumb-area lawmakers.

State Sen. Dan Lauwers, a Republican from Brockway Township, said the Make it in Michigan plan would better position Michigan as a premier state for the private industry to invest and create jobs.

The three bills that passed would create three different, but related, funds. Senate Bill 769 would create the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve fund within the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. It would receive funds through a legislative appropriation and can transfer those to the other two created funds.

Senate Bill 770 would create the Michigan Strategic Site Readiness Fund, which would provide grants, loans, and other economic assistance for eligible applicants to conduct activities that would create investments.

Senate Bill 771 would create the Critical Industry Fund, which would provide funds for qualified investments to businesses for deal-closing, gap financing, or other economic assistance that would new qualified jobs or capital investments.

The Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity must transmit reports on each of the three funds to each legislator, the governor, the House clerk, the Senate secretary, and the Senate and House fiscal agencies by March 15 of either year. Otherwise, no dollars from the unreported fund can be distributed until the report is submitted.

All the bills passed the Senate by a vote of 27-10 and the House by a vote of 93-10, with Lauwers excused for voting and State Representative Phil Green, a Republican from Millington, voting for it. Lauwerss family had a COVID positive test, so he had to quarantine when the vote took place.

Lauwers said these plans have been in development since Ford announced in September it was expanding electric vehicle manufacturing operations in Kentucky and Tennessee.

As the home of the auto industry, Michigan was faced with the stark reality that it needed to act to stay competitive and retain and attract job providers to our state, Lauwers said in a statement. At the same time, it was important that we not repeat past mistakes with business incentive plans that are bad for taxpayers.

Lauwers added the big three automakers of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler are all working on major projects and state lawmakers wanted to make sure Michigan was in the running for them and did not to see major plants moved to other states.

Instead of being tax abatements or state money going to companies, these funds would invest in land and infrastructure development needed to bring in and keep major projects.

That was one of the things Ford cited, Lauwers said. We dont have enough large lots of land with sewer and water available to it.

The projects would also have an impact on the tier 2 and 3 level suppliers for manufacturers, since if manufacturers move out state, their suppliers are going to move with them.

If any new development getting funds is not living up to agreed upon terms, it would be terminated so there are not any large tax credits hanging over the state. Any funds not used by the end of the year would return to the state.

The Senate also passed a supplemental budget item that would designate $1 billion for these programs.

As part of the approved legislation, the personal property tax exemption would increase from $80,000 to $180,000 for small businesses to help counter losses incurred because of COVID-19.

Michigan small businesses are still struggling to recover from the states response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lauwers said. Adjusting the PPT exemption is a smart way to reduce their tax burden so they can focus on growing their businesses. At the same time, we knew this change would impact local governments, so it was important to help ensure they can continue to operate and provide services. These changes, along with the Make it in Michigan Plan, will go a long way to boosting our local and state economies, which is good for all of us.

Lauwers acknowledged that even with this rollback of personal property tax exemptions, Michigan would still have higher property tax rates than surrounding states.

There was another $724 million fiscal year 2022 budget supplemental the Senate passed that is funded through federal grants in response to COVID-19, It includes the following items:

$150 million to assist K-12 schools in dealing with COVID testing

$193 million to assist local airports and rural transit authorities

$14 million to hire nurses at nursing homes and long-term care facilities

$10 million to support Teach for America to address the states ongoing teacher shortage

$1 million for the St. Clair County Convention Center

$100,000 in state funds to support mental health services in the Oxford High School community

All these items will go to Gov. Gretchen Whitmers office for signature and would go into effect immediately upon her signing them.
MANILA, Philippines (AP)  The governor of a central Philippine province devastated last week by Typhoon Rai pleaded on radio Tuesday for the government to quickly send food and other aid, warning that without outside help, army troops and police would have to be deployed to prevent looting because of growing hunger.

Governor Arthur Yap of Bohol province said he could no longer provide rice and other food aid after his contingency fund ran out and that many of the 1.2 million people in his island province, which remained without power and cellphone service five days after the typhoon struck, have become increasingly desperate.

The most powerful typhoon to hit the Philippine archipelago this year left at least 375 dead and more than 50 missing, mostly in the central region, including nearly 100 dead in Bohol, according to officials.

President Rodrigo Duterte visited Bohol over the weekend to see the extensive devastation. Yap said the governments social welfare department promised to send 35,000 food packs, an inadequate amount for the provinces 375,000 families, but even those have not yet arrived.

In an interview on DZBB radio network, Yap thanked Duterte for visiting his province but said, If you would not send money for food, you should send soldiers and police, because if not, lootings will break out here.

Some looting mostly of small merchandise stores have occurred, Yap said, adding that the situation remained under control. But he warned that the looting could worsen if people, especially in hard-hit island municipalities, grow more desperate. People cannot withdraw money from banks without cellphone connections and power, and fuel and water shortages have also sparked long queues, he said.

The national police said widespread looting was not a problem in typhoon-ravaged regions and added that they were ready to deal with any lawlessness.

Typhoon Rai packed sustained winds of 195 kilometers (121 miles) per hour with gusts of up to 270 kph (168 mph) at its most lethal point before blowing out into the South China Sea on Friday. At least 375 people were killed, mostly by falling trees and in flash floods, with 56 others missing and 500 injured, according to the national police. But the toll may still increase as emergency crews restore communications and power to more towns and villages.

Nearly a million people were lashed by the typhoon, including more than 400,000 who had to be moved to emergency shelters as the typhoon approached. Some have begun to return home but others either lost their houses entirely or need to do major repairs.

Emergency crews were working to restore electricity in 227 cities and towns, officials said Monday, adding that power had been restored in only 21 areas so far. Cellphone connections have been restored in at least 106 of more than 130 cities and towns. Two local airports remained closed Monday except for emergency flights, but most others have reopened, the civil aviation agency said.

Duterte said government emergency funds have been mostly used for the coronavirus pandemic but promised to raise 2 billion pesos ($40 million) from government agency savings to provide additional funds to typhoon-hit provinces.

The Philippines has not appealed for international help but Japan said it was sending power generators, camping tents, sleeping pads, water containers and tarpaulin roofing sheets to hard-hit regions, while China announced it was providing 20,000 food packs and rice.

About 20 tropical storms and typhoons annually batter the Philippines, which also lies along the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire region, where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions frequently occur, making the Southeast Asian nation of more than 100 million people one of the worlds most disaster-prone countries.
MOSCOW (AP)  The Russian president on Tuesday reiterated his demand for guarantees from the U.S. and its allies that NATO will not expand eastwards, blaming the West for tensions that are building up in Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech at a meeting with Russia's top military brass came just days after Moscow submitted draft security documents demanding that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet countries and roll back the alliances military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe.

The demands  contained in a proposed Russia-U.S. security treaty and a security agreement between Moscow and NATO  were drafted amid soaring tensions over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine that has stoked fears of a possible invasion. Russia has denied it has plans to attack its neighbor but pressed for legal guarantees that would rule out NATO expansion and weapons deployment there.

Putin charged Tuesday that if U.S. and NATO missile systems appear in Ukraine, it will take those missiles only minutes to reach Moscow.

For us, it is the most serious challenge  a challenge to our security, he said, adding that this is why the Kremlin needs long-term, legally binding guarantees from the West, as opposed to verbal assurances, words and promises that Moscow can't trust.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington is working with its European allies to address what he called Russian aggression with diplomacy but said President Joe Biden opposes the kind of guarantees sought by Putin.

The president has been extremely clear for many, many years about some basic principles that no one is moving back on: the principle that one country does not have the right to change by force the borders of another, that one country does not have the right to dictate the policies of another or to tell that that country with whom they may associate, Blinken told reporters in Washington. One country does not have the right to exert a sphere of influence. That notion should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Putin noted that NATO has expanded eastward since the late 1990s while giving assurances that Russias worries were groundless.

What is happening now, tensions that are building up in Europe, is their (U.S. and NATO's) fault every step of the way, the Russian leader said. Russia has been forced to respond at every step. The situation kept worsening and worsening, deteriorating and deteriorating. And here we are today, in a situation when we're forced to resolve it somehow."

Russias relations with the U.S. sank to post-Cold War lows after it annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that still controls territory there. Tensions reignited in recent weeks after Moscow massed tens of thousands of troops near Ukraines border.

Putin has pressed the West for guarantees that NATO will not expand to Ukraine or deploy its forces there and raised the issue during a video call with U.S. President Joe Biden two weeks ago.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu charged Tuesday that more than 120 staff of U.S. private military companies are currently operating in two villages in war-torn eastern Ukraine, training Ukrainian troops and setting up firing positions in residential buildings and different facilities.

Putin said the U.S. should understand we have nowhere to retreat.

What they are now trying to do and plan to do at Ukraines territory, its not thousands of kilometers away, its happening right at the doorstep of our house," he said.

Putin added that Moscow hopeds constructive, meaningful talks with a visible end result  and within a certain time frame  that would ensure equal security for all.

Armed conflicts, bloodshed is not our choice, and we dont want such developments. We want to resolve issues by political and diplomatic means," Putin said.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, said at a briefing Tuesday that Washington is prepared to discuss those proposals that Russia put on the table.

There are some things were prepared to work on, and we do believe there is merit in having discussion, Donfried told reporters after a visit to Kyiv, Moscow and Brussels.

There are other things in those documents that the Russians know will be unacceptable," she added, without specifying which ones.

Donfried said bilateral U.S.-Russia meetings are likely to happen in January, and talks within NATO-Russia Council, as well as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, are likely to see movement in January as well.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that he intends to call a new meeting of the NATO-Russia Council as soon as possible in the New Year.

Any dialogue with Russia needs to be based on the core principles of European security and to address NATOs concerns about Russias actions, Stoltenberg said.

On Tuesday evening, Putin talked about Russia's proposals in phone calls with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. According to the Kremlin, Putin informed Macron about Moscow's diplomatic efforts on the subject, and gave Scholz detailed comments on the drafts Russia-U.S. security treaty and a security agreement between Russia and NATO submitted last week.

In the conversation with Scholz, hope was expressed that serious negotiations would be organized on all the issues raised by Moscow, the readout said.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine was also discussed in both phone calls, with Putin claiming that Kyiv was reluctant to implement the Minsk agreements  a peace deal brokered by France and Germany in 2015 that helped end large-scale hostilities in the region.

Efforts to reach a political settlement of the Ukraine conflict, which has killed more than 14,000 people, have failed, however, and sporadic skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact.

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Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Paris and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.
MIDDLETOWN A North Carolina man, arrested by Middletown police in October after an alleged beating that caused a woman to partially lose her eyesight, appeared in court Tuesday.

Kasime L. Leary, 39, of Ahoskie, N.C., who did not enter a plea, was arrested Oct. 18 and charged with first-degree assault stemming from the incident, which took place Oct. 16, according to his arrest affidavit.

Learys bail was originally set at $500,000, but was reduced by the court to $200,000.

On the night of Oct. 16, the victim told police that she was at a house party and decided to go for a walk, the affidavit said.

The victim told police that she was then approached by Leary, who propositioned her for sex. She told officers that she knew him, but when she declined to fulfill his request, he began beating her, the report shows.

Leary dropped the victim off at Middlesex Hospital around 10:30 p.m. with significant injuries to her head, face and eyes, the affidavit said. She was transferred to Hartford Hospital due to the severity of her injuries.

Medical workers believed at one point that the victim would lose her left eye from the attack, the affidavit said. Hospital staff later told police that she would likely not lose the eye, but could not say whether shed be able to see out of it.

It was later revealed that Leary has a history of assaulting women, with multiple previous assault convictions in North Carolina with female victims, police said.

Learys next court date is scheduled for Jan. 18.
HARTFORD  The city-owned R M Keating Historical Enterprise Park, the location of a former typewriter business, will be remediated and upgraded to support start-up businesses courtesy of a state grant.

Gov. Ned Lamont has placed more than $124 million in new investments in small business growth, workforce training and community revitalization from the State Bond Commission, according to a news release.

In August, U.S. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro announced $1 million in federal funding will be used to continue the propertys revitalization.

The governor, who serves as chairman of the State Bond Commission and determines which projects get placed on the agenda, said the investments are expected to create thousands of jobs in the coming years.

Investing in our communities through revitalization projects, workforce development training, and small business support is a key part of our plan to accelerate long-lasting and equitable economic development in Connecticut, he said in a prepared statement. These investments are aimed at creating thousands of new jobs, improving the vibrancy and quality of life in our communities, and making all corners of the state even more attractive for investment and opportunity.

This year we saw steady progress on several economic fronts and these strategic investments are good way to build on that economic momentum in 2022 and beyond, Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner David Lehman said in the release.

In addition, several new investments in arts and cultural attractions across Connecticut will be up for consideration.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  He had been sober for years, a beacon in the recovery community who inspired dozens of people to get clean.

When the pandemic hit, the Narcotics Anonymous meetings that served as a sanctuary for him and so many others were shut down or went virtual.

Then, as those in recovery sometimes do, he faltered and started using again.

The man had told colleagues in the harm reduction community he was going to straighten up and wanted to get back to work.

But the 44-year-old never got the chance. He was found in a West Side parking lot in August, dead from an unintentional overdose after someone sold him a bag of heroin laced with fentanyl.

It was another notch in a disturbing trend.

Last year, the New Mexico Department of Health recorded 304 fentanyl overdose deaths between January and November, a 135% increase over 2019. From 2018 to 2019 officials had tallied a 93% jump, from 67 to 129, in fentanyl overdose deaths as 74% of overdose deaths in the state involved opioids.

The steep rise saw fentanyl-related overdose deaths catch up to meth overdoses, the largest contributor, for the first time. Full 2020 and 2021 data is not yet available.

But Dr. Robert Kelly, substance abuse epidemiology section manager at the state Health Department, told the Albuquerque Journal that fentanyl overdoses have continued that pace into the summer of 2021.

Were seeing deaths in people because they dont know theres fentanyl in there, he said.

Oftentimes, other drugs are found alongside fentanyl in overdose patients, mostly cocaine and benzodiazepines like Xanax.

As fentanyl overdose deaths spiked there was a slight drop of 2% in those involving heroin. Kelly said some people turn to fentanyl because it does the same thing as heroin but more and faster. Others dont know what theyre getting.

There are two groups of folks. And some of the folks who know how to use fentanyl, they go out and thats their drug of choice.  Its the folks who dont know that theyre getting fentanyl thats the problem, Kelly said.

In 2019, New Mexico had the 12th highest drug overdose death rate in the nation, with unintentional overdoses accounting for 85% of deaths.

Between 2015 and 2019, Bernalillo County had the highest number of unintentional drug overdose deaths and opioid-related overdose emergency room visits in the state. Rio Arriba County had by far the highest rate of overdose deaths, nearly double that of second place San Miguel County.

In that time, use of the overdose reversal drug Narcan went up more than 1,000% in the state  from 8,158 to 94,743 doses. Its recorded success, however, rose only 432%  from 779 to 4,144.. Those who hand out Narcan to opioid users and often revive people themselves say the reversal drug doesnt work as well, and sometimes not at all, for a fentanyl overdose.

___

Here to stay

Dr. Brandon Warrick, an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of New Mexico Hospital, put it bluntly: Fentanyl is here, and fentanyl is here to stay.

He said overdoses from the drug come into UNMH on a daily basis and they have seen the numbers ramping up very fast since 2019.

I have never seen such a rapid increase or shift in an illicit drug source  or come anywhere near what were seeing with fentanyl, said Warrick, whose work has centered around drug abuse for more than a decade.

He said a recent troubling trend at UNMH is fentanyl overdoses in children.

In the past year and a half, the hospital has treated 10 children for fentanyl overdoses. Before 2020, the hospital had treated only two children.

None of the children died, but one child suffered significant brain damage from the drug. Warrick said the children, some as young as 1 and 2 years old, often take pills that were left sitting out.

In other cases, kids have become hooked.

In Carlsbad, such an incident led to charges against a mother and a grandmother.

Alexis Murray and Kelli Smith, 35 and 55, were charged with child abuse in the Sept. 28 death of Murrays son, 12-year-old Brent Sullivan.

Police found the boy unconscious from a fentanyl overdose in his grandmothers backyard. Smith told officers she tried to give Narcan to Brent but it didnt work.

Murray told police she and Smith dealt fentanyl regularly and Brent had been stealing the pills from her for months. Murray said her son had overdosed three times prior and each time they had used Narcan to revive him.

The last time proved fatal.

Warrick said he has seen a noticeable decrease in those using heroin, with fentanyl essentially replacing that.

He said those who survive an overdose are not as receptive to treatment or rehab as those who develop complications, like an infection or disease, from their drug use.

The last thing that the person remembers is they were in their sweet spot, they were feeling good, Warrick said. The whole period of them being unconscious  near death  is experienced by everybody but the person who overdosed.

In an effort to encourage recovery, he said they often turn the lights up bright and announce welcome back from the dead when they revive someone from an overdose.

When you get bright lights and a whole bunch of strangers saying, welcome back from the dead, I mean, thats just like a scary experience, Warrick said.

Despite that, many fentanyl users are resistant to change. He said more so than the patients, the families hurt the most.

Whats more difficult than seeing somebody overdose is seeing  how their continued use really affects their personal lives  how much their children and families just suffer, Warrick said.

___

A dime a dozen

Before his death from an overdose at 18, Jennifer Burkes son used to tell her that heroin would call to him. Like a sirens song.

I think fentanyl is like that, times 10. It draws them back in. Its so potent and once it grabs ahold of these kids, its so hard for them to get back on their feet, she said.

Burke, who runs the rehab center Serenity Mesa in Albuquerque, said in the past year fentanyl has turned everything upside down. Clients, ranging from 14 to 21 years old, went from an even split of heroin and meth to 80% fentanyl users.

When fentanyl hit the market here in New Mexico, it took over really quickly, and I think people that had an addiction to opiates, that became their drug of choice, she said.

Burke said the influx was so great they have had a waitlist, often up to 20 people, stretching back a year. The facility has had more referrals in the past 18 months than it has ever had since it opened in 2015.

We havent been able to keep up, Burke said. Its hard because I dont want to turn anybody away, especially somebody whos young, whos struggling.

She said the whole point of their program is to catch them when theyre young before they end up in prison or worse. Burke said its much easier to help a young person turn their life around than a 40-year-old whos been using for decades.

Because of the drugs prevalence and profits, Burke believes the only solution is prevention.

Theres too many drug dealers out there making tons and tons of money, she said.  If nobodys going to buy the product, then theyre not going to make any money and theres no product to sell  we have to get people to stop using.

She said fentanyl users who are able to get into the 14-bed facility have a much harder time than those hooked on meth or heroin. The withdrawals are much more painful and they often see psychosis and mental health issues with the drug.

Burke said they sometimes take clients back two or three times after a relapse as the cravings and triggers can last for months. And the users are getting younger and younger.

I mean, 14- and 15-year-olds being addicted to fentanyl is not uncommon, Burke said.  Its really sad because its altering their brain.

For those who are still out there, Burke said its a game of Russian roulette.

These are drugs being made by people that really dont care if you live or die, they could care less, youre a dime a dozen to them, she said.  You dont know what youre getting when you buy  the next dose that you get could be fatal and thats what scares me the most.

___

Hooked as a teen

They were all baby-blue and stamped the same, but Hezekiah Beltran began to notice that each pill was different.

Not every pill had the same amount of whatever inside of it, he said.

One day, a day like any other, he said he smoked a fentanyl pill and suddenly got dizzy. The last thing he thought is he was overdosing.

Beltran said he woke up after the people around him, strangers who became friends over a shared vice, revived him with Narcan.

It was just another day for the 17-year-old.

I never thought that I would be anything more than a drug addict  thats what I felt my life was going to be, he said.

Beltran, who has been recovering from a yearslong fentanyl addiction at Serenity Mesa, said his foray into the world of drug use came early.

Being brought up in the lifestyle  crime, violence and stuff like that  I feel like I always knew too much at a young age, he said.

Beltran, of Raton, started smoking marijuana at 9 and by 15 had graduated to meth, using with the same people who once did drugs with his older relatives. After getting arrested for meth distribution and firearm possession, the teen skipped town.

He said he landed in a neighborhood in Rio Rancho where everyone was hooked on fentanyl. The next door neighbor sold it, $10 a pill before noon, $20 after midnight.

I just cut everybody off and at that point, it was a whole new group of people that I associated myself with. They were all fentanyl addicts, Beltran said.

It wasnt long before he was smoking five or six pills a day. He said the drug made heroin look like aspirin, it was that much stronger. And the sickness that came after was hell to pay: He couldnt move, was in pain all over and couldnt stop throwing up.

Those he hung around with were in the same boat, good people who just got caught up in the life. They ranged from their teens and up, committing petty crimes to support their habit.

Overdoses were common. One man bragged about having survived 27 of them.

Im very grateful that I got out of that mess. I could have easily died with all the things I was doing, he said. I feel lucky  because a lot of people dont get out.

Beltran thought back to a woman, in her 20s, who had stayed with him. He said they smoked fentanyl together and she overdosed. The Narcan, at least two doses, didnt work.

She didnt come back  they just kept on trying and trying, he said.  There was no color in her eyes. You know how my eyes are brown? There was nothing there. Ill never forget that look in her eyes.

___

There is hope

Beltran said a police call to the house he was living at in April saved his life.

He said he spent a month and a half withdrawing in quarantine at the Metropolitan Detention Center. From there, he went to a treatment center in Santa Teresa before landing at Serenity Mesa.

Maybe getting help is the only way to get through, but there is hope. There is a better future, he said.

Eight months later, Beltran said he has started feeling again. Happiness, sadness, worry, hope. At first, sobriety was scary and overwhelming. There are still triggers  a certain smell, crumpled tin foil  but he moves past them. Ever forward.

Beltran, set to be released soon, said he plans to move to Tennessee to live with family, get his GED and pick up a trade. For the first time in a long time, he is hopeful.

People are scared to get off of dope or get off fentanyl because theyre scared of the sickness, because theyve been minimizing feelings  for so long, Beltran said. It is hard, but I would like other people to know that it doesnt last forever, the sickness doesnt last forever, and there is hope.
NEW YORK (AP)  Pedro Almodovar has a theory that his films with male protagonists, like his autobiographical 2019 film Pain and Glory, are darker and more somber.

I look inside myself when I talk about male characters, says Almodovar.

Parallel Mothers, which Sony Pictures Classics begins releasing in theaters Friday, returns Almodovar to more melodramatic territory. Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit play young mothers who meet at the hospital where their newborns are accidentally switched at birth. This secret plays out in unpredictable ways while the film also investigates another hidden past: Spain's mass graves from the Spanish Civil War.

In recent years, a national dialogue in Spain has brought renewed interest and political discord over exhuming the graves from Francisco Franco's regime, which began with the 1930s civil war and ended with his death, in 1975. Some 19,000 of an estimated 114,000 victims have been recovered in the last four decades.

Parallel Mothers may not be as self-reflective as Almodovar's last film, but it's the 72-year-old director's most politically introspective movie and his first to grapple with the legacy of Franco's reign. Almodovar emerged as a filmmaker in Spain's liberated post-Franco years.

When Parallel Mothers was screening this fall at the New York Film Festival, Almodovar met a reporter at a midtown hotel where he spoke sometimes in English, sometimes through an interpreter, about a film that, like his 1999 masterpiece All About My Mother, is centrally concerned with motherhood.

Ill continue to be interested in mothers, he said. "You can have a thousand different mothers, and they can birth a thousand different genres."

___

AP: You've made an acclaimed short film, The Human Voice, with Tilda Swinton, and now Parallel Mothers during the pandemic. Have the last two years reframed anything for you about filmmaking?

ALMODOVAR: It made me aware of the solitude in which I was living. Because loneliness, despite the fact that I was condemned to confinement, was something that I already experienced in recent times while writing. I think that now I am overcoming loneliness by going out a little more, going to eat with friends, and precisely because it seemed very sad to me that when I was condemned to confinement, I discovered that I was already used to being confined.

AP: You began the pandemic writing wonderful diaries about your movie watching.

ALMODOVAR: At that moment, I was sick. I got the virus the first week. Even before the first week. I had just arrived from LA after being at the Oscars at the end of February. Then I felt like I had a flu and stayed at home. Three days later, they called for the quarantine. The days were so long that I tried just to talk and write something about the situation. One day, I was disobedient and went into the street to see Madrid completely deserted. It's a very impressive image that I wanted to have. So I pretended to go buy something just to see, just to see the town.

AP: It must have felt ironic that in the midst of a pandemic you were making a movie where swabs and lab tests, in proving the children's maternity, is central to the plot.

ALMODOVAR: When I was writing the movie a year before, it was like science fiction. But when we made the film, it did feel very familiar.

AP: What initially interested you in making a film that deals with the mass graves from the Spanish Civil War?

ALMODOVAR: This has come to me with maturity, in cinematographic terms and also in personal terms. Its been some time since Ive been wanting to make a movie about the mass graves, which Spanish cinema has not really touched on. One of the things that really struck me was when in about 2013, 2014 some UN rapporteurs came to take a look on the ground at what was happening in Spain. They were very struck by the fact that it was the great-grandchildren who were the ones demanding that we look at this problem of the past. Spain has a very bad relationship with the past. For the 40 years after the war, there was this almost pathological fear to speak of the war. There was this silence that enshrouded Spain. Its a generation born during democracy that are asking for the graves to be exhumed.

AP: Your entry point to that history, though, comes through a melodrama that cloaks the film's more political intentions.

ALMODOVAR: I didnt want to only make a movie only about the mass graves. I did it through a character that has a legacy from her mother, who saved her and raised her because she was an orphan. To open the mass grave is to demonstrate that they existed. What Franco did to them was to take all humanity away, to condemn them to non-existence. I was attracted to telling the story through this mother because shes committed to unearthing historical truth at the same time that she, in her personal life, is hiding that truth.

AP: Your early films in the 1980s followed years of censorship in Spain and contributed significantly to a new post-Franco period in the arts. Youve said before that Franco had to die for you to live. Was Parallel Mother motivated by a new surge in fascism?

ALMODOVAR: When I started making movies, he had just died. I would have never been able to make movies if he was still alive. In Spain, because we had that awful experience of civil war, it was as if we were inoculated against it. Even though I could see the far right growing in France  of course Trump happened here, Bolsonaro happened in Brazil  there was a part of me that thought that the far right wouldn't actually arrive in Spain because of that traumatic experience.

But sometimes I think this is the Trump effect. The fact that he was able to give voice to his far-right leanings emboldened others around the world. They lost their fear. It all boiled up, including in Spain. Now there are things happening that were impossible in the 90s and the 80s. There are more homophobic attacks, more xenophobia. Its a very negative feeling to see that all the values we fought for, we yet again have to rise up and fight for.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  A Mississippi legislative watchdog group is questioning the effectiveness of a nonprofit company that provides job training for people in prison.

The Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review, or PEER, said in a recent report that the Mississippi Prison Industries Corporation has not maintained a proper database to show how many inmates are receiving job training, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.

The PEER report said Prison Industries has been subjected to little oversight, neglected its statutory duties, and struggled with financial stability.

The report also said the corporation's "lack of operational and financial success has raised serious concerns regarding the entitys ability to remain viable.

The Legislature created Prison Industries decades ago to provide job training for inmates and reduce recidivism.

The PEER report said Prison Industries does not have enough data to give an accurate recidivism rate and has not targeted inmates most likely to need recidivism prevention. It also said the training offered has a slim chance of turning into a job.

Bradley Lum, the CEO of Prison Industries since 2019, told the Daily Journal that he respects the PEER committee but believes his organization's work speaks for itself.

We want to help every person that has touched our correctional facility to be the best person that they can be, Lum said.

He said during the past 12 to 18 months, the company has connected more than 200 inmates with jobs and only one of them has returned to the prison system.

The states goal in creating the prison industry corporation in the 1990s was to give incarcerated people skills and training they could use to gain a meaningful job once they got out of prison and to reduce the costs of running state government.

The Prison Industries employees would train the inmates who would produce goods that could be sold. Profits would transfer back into the organization.

Because of this arrangement, Prison Industries receives no money from the Legislature and must operate from the revenue it produces. The organization has continued to lose money the past several years, according to PEER.

A 2018 PEER report raised similar financial concerns. At the time, the group recommended three options: The corporation could seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, ask the Legislature to dissolve the organization or cut its unprofitable product lines. The organization chose the third option.

Mississippi is one of two states that operates its prison industry program through a nonprofit corporation. Most states use their corrections department to carry out inmate training programs.

In the recent report, PEER advised the Legislature to consider abolishing the nonprofit and merging its duties with the Department of Corrections.

Last week, the Department of Corrections said it is working with Mississippi Prison Industries and a veterans program to teach welding to some inmates as a way to prepare them for jobs once they leave prison.
The Biden administration has directed the Defense Department to ready 1,000 military medical professionals for deployment to U.S. hospitals as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 takes hold across the country.

According to the White House, military doctors, nurses, paramedics and other medical personnel will prepare for mobilization as needed in January and February.

They will be joining roughly 240 personnel already deployed in seven states. Teams of 20 Army, Navy and Air Force members are working in 12 hospitals in Indiana, Wisconsin, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana and New Mexico.

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Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that the DoD is working with the Department of Health and Human Services and Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine where the service members may be needed and has not yet decided which units will be tasked with the mission.

He added that they likely will be active-duty personnel.

"Right now, we're still sourcing the requirement, and we're working with interagency to do that appropriately. Then, of course, warning orders and alerts will go out to the services," Kirby said.

The U.S. military took on a significant role in the response at the start of the pandemic, setting up field hospitals across the country in anticipation of medical facilities becoming overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.

The services established and manned a hospital facility at the Javits Convention Center in New York City; sent the hospital ships Comfort and Mercy to New York City and Los Angeles; set up field hospitals in Seattle; and ran field hospitals in convention centers in New Orleans and Dallas.

Many of the facilities -- namely the hospital ships and field hospitals -- saw little use. DoD officials later found that deploying military personnel to relieve exhausted health workers in established civilian hospitals was most effective in ensuring that the country's medical system remained viable.

"Since COVID began, our military medical personnel have been committed to fighting the pandemic and supporting our local, state and federal partners and communities in need," said Lt. Gen. John Evans, U.S. Army North commander, in a press release. "As we look ahead to the holiday season and 2022, we must remain vigilant in our fight. ... We must keep in our thoughts the service members and healthcare professionals on the front lines."

The U.S. appears to be in a rising fifth wave of the pandemic, with cases up 20% in the last two weeks. Since February 2020, the U.S. has logged more than 51 million cases of COVID-19 and 808,093 Americans have died.

In anticipation of the increase, the Biden administration announced steps Tuesday to assist states, including establishing medical surge facilities in Louisiana and adding hospital beds to locations in Maryland and California.

The federal government also will expand access to free tests, purchasing half a billion at-home tests and establishing new federal testing sites, including the first in New York City to open this week.

Administration officials said they are concerned because the Omicron variant of the virus is highly transmissible, and more than 40 million Americans remain unvaccinated.

"The unvaccinated are eight times more likely to be hospitalized and 14 times more likely to die from COVID," a senior administration official said during a call with reporters Monday.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Defense Department has tallied more than 400,000 cases of COVID-19 among military personnel, civilian workers, family members and contractors, including 258,800 cases in U.S. troops.

Of those cases, 625 people have died, including 80 service members, 382 civilian employees, 34 dependent family members and 129 contractors.

Cases within the Department of Veterans Affairs have topped 400,000 as of Tuesday including patients and employees. More than 17,467 veterans in the VA Health System have died from the illness, as have 237 employees.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

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Santa may need to put his reindeer on high alert this Christmas Eve to ensure he doesn't collide with another high-flying object this year -- NASA's long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope.

At 7:20 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, just as Jolly St. Nick should be delivering toys to children in the Eastern Pacific, the world's largest, most powerful space telescope is scheduled to shoot into orbit around the sun aboard an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket launched from French Guiana.

It may be the first time Santa will need to keep his eyes on a rocket that can fly more than 10,000 meters per second that's carrying a payload weighing roughly 14,300 pounds.

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But officials at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which will begin tracking Santa across the globe beginning at 6 a.m. EST on Dec. 24, believe the old man will be ready.

"Santa is an excellent pilot, and he certainly can maneuver and dodge anything that flies his way," NORAD spokeswoman Air Force Capt. Sable Brown told Military.com.

The launch of the telescope has been delayed several times since 2018, most recently last week when it was shifted from Dec. 22 to Christmas Eve as the result of a problem with a data cable.

NASA officials said the team is not taking any chances on getting the 30-year project into space.

"We are absolutely not taking any risks with Webb because this is already risky enough. So we are making absolutely sure that everything works," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science missions, in announcing the delay.

Santa, however, doesn't seem to scare NASA.

"There's so much riding on this," NASA administrator Bill Nelson told The Associated Press, "opening up just all kinds of new understanding and revelations about the universe."

The launch adds a twist to NORAD's 66th year of tracking Santa -- an effort that began in 1955 when Air Force Col. Harry Shoup answered the phone at the command's predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center, and was asked if he was Santa.

The caller, a child, had seen a newspaper ad that accidentally had listed the command's number as a point of contact for Santa, according to the Air Force. Not wanting to be a Scrooge, Shoup answered that he was not, but his command was keeping tabs on the red-suited, flying benefactor.

Shoup then directed others working that evening to say the command was tracking Santa, and a tradition was born.

This year, nearly 600 volunteers will make the NORADSanta.org website and app come alive, answering phone calls made to 1-877-Hi-NORAD, or 1-877-446-6723, beginning at 6:00 a.m. Dec. 24.

As with last year, pandemic protocols will be in place, with calls handled by volunteers all snug in their Who Houses.

The website and app will show Santa's location in real time as he crosses the globe and reaches the U.S.

"Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, NORAD defends North America by tracking airplanes, missiles, space launches and anything else that flies in or around the North American continent," said Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, NORAD commander, in a press release.

"As we have since 1955, this December 24th we are once again ready for our no-fail mission of tracking Santa, " VanHerck said.

According to NORAD, the command uses its North Warning System, with 47 installations across Alaska and northern Canada, to pick up Santa as soon as he leaves the North Pole.

Officials then track him via satellites using infrared sensors, which can detect the signal coming off Rudolph's nose.

Visual confirmation is achieved by pilots in Air Force F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-22 Raptor fighter jets, as well as Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornets.

The pilots rendezvous with Santa off the coast of Newfoundland to welcome him to North America and "escort him safely through North American airspace until he returns to the North Pole," according to NORAD.

The effort has become exceedingly high tech. In addition to the website, there's an available app, and the navigation service OnStar, as well as Amazon Alexa, are programmed to help track Santa.

In 2020, 11 million visitors from more than 200 countries and territories visited the NORAD Santa tracking website and the call center received more than 20,000 calls, according to NORAD, while Alexa answered 12.3 million queries to locate Santa and OnStar got 12,400 requests.

Santa tracking also is available on Facebook @noradsanta, @NoradTracksSanta_Official on Instagram and @noradsanta on Twitter.

In addition to tracking Santa on Christmas Eve, NORAD definitely will be monitoring the space telescope launch, as it does with every missile and rocket launch that occurs around the globe, Brown said.

"We will assure Santa's safety for every adult and child who believes in him," Brown said.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the rocket's speed.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

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Experts who study extremism are calling the Pentagon's latest report and plan to combat extremism in the ranks a step in the right direction, but one that relies on an already problematic approach -- leaving the issue for commanders to fix.

The 21-page report, released Monday, created new guidelines for activities that are banned for service members by adding more detail and clarity on what constitutes extremist activity as well as "active participation."

Since the Pentagon began discussing a crackdown, it has lacked a clear definition of what types of actions would get service members in trouble. Most troops aren't broadcasting membership in extremist groups, and what constitutes support had previously been ambiguous.

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The new policy bans a range of things from advocating terrorism or supporting the overthrow of the government to fundraising for an extremist group  even something as basic as "liking" or reposting extremist views on social media. The report also emphasized that "military personnel are responsible for the content they publish on all personal and public Internet domains."

The Pentagon's spokesman, John Kirby, explained during a press briefing Monday that the new policy is "a more clear explanation of what commanders' authorities and responsibilities are" and stressed that military leaders will look to unit commanders to enforce it "because they know their units and they know their people better than anybody."

He also stressed that the Pentagon is not planning systemic surveillance of service members' social media accounts to find infractions.

However, Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq War veteran who has spent years studying extremism in the ranks, told Military.com in an interview that this mechanism is a major weakness of the Pentagon's intended fix.

"The average commander is focused on getting their troops combat ready; they're not spending any time learning what 1488 means," he said, citing a symbol popular with white supremacists.

Goldsmith explained that much of the online extremist activity that he has tracked and studied "is encoded language that the average person is not going to understand."

"These individuals with extreme views on race and anti-government sentiment  their ability to camouflage is a survival tactic," he added.

Kirby stressed that the newly prohibited behavior "wouldn't be something that the command or the department's going to be actively fishing for."

The military's reliance on unit commanders to address problems in the ranks has not always been successful. Years of failure by leaders to deal with an epidemic of sexual assault has led to congressional efforts to remove commanders from the equation.

"Just like in incidents of sexual assault, if you have people in charge who are not specialists, you are going to do a very, very poor job of addressing the problem," Goldsmith said.

And with extremist rhetoric and even action becoming an increasingly prominent feature of the political sphere, commanders may not always take action.

A National Guardsman who was part of the mob that rampaged through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 is still serving in Wisconsin despite having been sentenced by a federal court to probation and a fine for his actions. Fellow soldiers and his commander wrote letters of support ahead of his sentencing.

A major in the Marine Corps was arrested in May for his part in the Capitol riot but is also still on active duty. The Corps held a hearing in September on whether to let him keep serving but has yet to reach a decision on the matter.

Kirby said that leaders in the Pentagon "have full confidence in our commanders' ability when something's reported to them to treat it appropriately and to look into it in the manner that they see fit."

Andrew Mines, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said in an interview with Military.com that some of the suggestions and recommendations in the report show promise for future action.

The report recommends centralized centers dedicated to the issue of extremism, something that Mines believes could be particularly helpful for supporting service members who have become entangled in extremist ideologies.

"I really think the best option for their side of things would be to kind of create more of a centralized office that is staffed by a bunch of case managers ... focusing on nonpunitive measures first," Mines said.

Mines, who is also wary of leaving the issue to commanders to solve, noted that this approach would alleviate much of that criticism.

"You can give commanders all the training you want, they're still never going to be at the point where they have the same kind of competencies and expertise that folks with mental health background, with kind of generalist backgrounds in extremist organizations and extremist ideology."

Mines said that the next step would be for the Pentagon to focus more on prevention than punishment.

"If you  don't focus on the primary prevention side, you're always going to be playing whack-a-mole," he said

Goldsmith also noted that, on the whole, the report is a positive step. "In defining extremist activity and behavior and giving an affirmative way for commanders to measure it -- we've got the most important step," he said.

"No one policy change, no one administration is going to do this," Goldsmith said. "The insider threat is never going away, and it is going to constantly evolve."

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Related: 10 Airmen Investigated for Trespassing at Capitol Riot, New Military Extremism Report Shows
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The most prestigious awards scheme for young entrepreneurs and startups in Ghana - Young Entrepreneur Awards, organized by the Ghana Startup Network, have recognized and celebrated over 30 young Entrepreneurs across several sectors and regions over the weekend at the Accra City Hall, inside the A.M.A building.

The Awards places high value on innovative, enduring and daring individuals who realize bold and clear-sighted ideas to establish businesses that create job opportunities for others, thus complementing existing efforts to solving Ghanas developmental needs.

In his welcome address, Mr. Solomon Adjei, the Executive Director of Ghana Startup Network, praised and congratulated all nominees for the 5th Edition of this awards scheme for their courage and exemplary life for other young people to follow. He went ahead to present certificates of honor to all the nominees in celebration of their successes as entrepreneurs.

For the past 6 years, the Ghana Start-Up Network, with support from Pan African SMEs Network, Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA), National Youth Authority (NYA), National Entrepreneurship and Innovations Program (NEIP), and other corporate organizations have been organizing this program to recognize and celebrate Ghanaian job creators, in accordance with the SGD Goal 8.

Speaking at the event, under the theme: Celebrating Young Entrepreneurs to Inspire Generations, the keynote speaker  Lawyer Dennis Owusu-Appiah Ofosuapea (Esq), thanked the various entrepreneurs for filling the void and creating jobs for themselves and their fellow citizens. He reiterated, that like the Judeo  Christian God, the young entrepreneurs have created heaven on earth, and he admire their courage of refusing to give up and putting their entire spirit behind their creations.

At the end of the day, some of the entrepreneurs and businesses that went home with awards include; Kandwe Ephriam (EphisShea Butter Production Company Ltd) and Ivy Wereh (Cafmag Enterprise) as the Male and Female Agrobusiness Entrepreneurs, Abubakar Ali (Number 1 Construction and Real Estates Ltd) as the Construction and Real Estate Entrepreneur, Mariama Alhassan (Divas Touch) and Emmanuel Gyasi (EG Collections) went home with the Male and Female Fashion Entrepreneur awards, Michael Larbi (Marqmike Logistics) and Awura Akua Ansah Obiri-Yeboah (Western Montessori School) Male and Female Entrepreneurs, Adomba Konadu Yiadom (Star College of Communication) and Koiwa Koi-Larbi Ofosuapea (Action on Preeclampsia) winning the Male and Female Social Entrepreneurs of the year.

The other winners include; Alhassan Suleiman (Jah Bless Marketing Link) and Ivy Yayra Tessu (Verdant Global Business Solutions Ltd) as the Male and Female Service Provider Entrepreneurs, Kwame Bekoe (Eurasian Express Ltd) and Hannah Hema Akomeah (Hannys Prime Ventures) Male and Female Start up Entrepreneurs, Sandra Serwa Kyere (Green Diversity Foundation) Green Entrepreneur, Anastacia Acquah (Anapat Choice Enterprise) Manufacturing Entrepreneur, Ronald Tagoe (Mnotify Chatbots Africa) as the Technology Entrepreneur of the year.

At the regional level, the following were also adjudged the Regional Entrepreneurs of the year; Emmanuel Marfo (Phinklife Institute - Ahafo), Michael Omane Donkor (Omd Best Electronics  Ashanti), Janat Issifu (Wan-Hive Ghana - Bono), George Antwi Boassako (Agrico Hub  Bono East), Kobina Adomadzi Longdon (Tech Farm Hub  Eastern), Mary Lancelot (MLC Fashion  North East), Princess Tanye (Purple Holdings - Northern), Simeon Martey (Developers Academy  Oti), Ewuntomah Joana (Ave Hope Foundation  Savanna), Gideon Awelana Buluse (Giwaland Enterprise  Upper West), Issahaque Serikpera Naa (Yison Tech Hub  Upper West), Gladys Afetsi Ama (Tongulink Entreprise  Volta), Philomena Adjei (Flylinks Travel and Tours  Western) and Sarah Viera (Makarios Food and Snacks  Western North). Also, Eunice Owusu Karikari (E-Juice Company Ltd) was specially recognized for being the outstanding Female Entrepreneur of the Ashanti Region

The award went on to recognized and celebrate Narh Richmond Nartey (Rolwat Schools) and Roberta Yaa Asiwu (Ray Robbie Enterprise) as the Male and Female Student Entrepreneurs for defying all odds to start their own business while in school.

As part of the recognitions, all the nominees of the student categories are specially recognized for their determination as entrepreneurs while students - Rita Sarpomaa Boahene (Sarps Trend), Deborah Brown (Neys Facility Management), Mellon Florence Mensah Williams (Mezmell local Bar) for the Female student category, while Korwutor Benedict Kofi (Mr.Joli Food Processors), Emmanuel Appiah (Smooth Outlook Enterprise), Bismark Mireku (Autonomous Business Center), Akudago A Daniel Akugiri (Do Stone Printing Press) and Justice Hutchful (Exclusive Calculators) are recognized for the Male Student Entrepreneurs category.

The organizers outlined various benefits for the winners, including periodic capacity building seminars during the next 1 year, access to funding, mentors, and global markets, extended publicity/visibility of their brands, and a self-funded exchange program to a country to be announced later.
The most anticipated stage play, Emergency Wedding, is happening this Saturday at National Theater. Trending on Twitter this week, the expectation of patrons is high as the twice-cancelled event finally gets to be premiered.

Like all of Kobina Ansahs plays, Emergency Wedding is set to thrill theater lovers and give them a run for their money. Tagged Man has his timelines but God has the clock, the play addresses the deadlines we give to life and how some of these deadlines can force us into taking regrettable decisions.

Happening at 3pm and 7pm this Saturday, Emergency Wedding is unmissable because;

Great music

Most of Kobina Ansahs plays are musicals and Emergency Wedding is not any different. Laced with good music, patrons will be treated to the sweet vocals of cast members of the play. People who miss the play will be missing out on the live music that will aid in telling the story.

Thrilling suspense

Emergency Wedding is suspense-filled. Patrons will be held spell-bound by the story until some secrets begin to unfold. The main character of the play, Sika, is in for the shock of her life because the wedding she is all enthused about is only a setup.

Amazing cast

The well-selected cast of the play come in with their own headaches. Patrons must be prepared to be moved emotionally to tears. This is because of the sensitive nature of some of the themes of the play which are perfectly expressed by the cast.

Creativity

Bringing in a deaf interpreter to interpret the story to hearing impaired audience means a lot of hard work and creativity on stage. From music to dance, creativity is expressed at different heights to sustain the emotions of patrons.

Deep lessons

It goes without saying that every Kobina Ansah play carries some deep lessons for its audience. Emergency Wedding creatively touches on times and seasons as it dramatically illustrates how man has his timelines but God has the clock.

Visit www.scribeproductions.com for more details or WhatsApp 0546098082.

Source: Scribe News
Tigrayan rebels announced on Monday they had withdrawn from northern Ethiopia's Amhara and Afar regions and retreated to Tigray, marking a new turning point in the 13-month war which has left thousands of people dead.

"We decided to withdraw from these areas to Tigray. We want to open the door to humanitarian aid," Getachew Reda, spokesman for the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), told AFP.

The decision was made a few weeks ago, Getachew said, later tweeting: "We have just completed the withdrawal of our forces from both #AmharaAfar regions."

The move marks a major reversal by the rebels, who previously dismissed the government's insistence on their withdrawal from Afar and Amhara for talks to begin as "an absolute non-starter".

But Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's spokeswoman Billene Seyoum said Monday's rebel announcement was a cover-up for military setbacks.

"The TPLF have sustained great losses over the past weeks and hence are claiming 'strategic retreat' to make up for defeat," she told AFP.

"There are still pockets in the Amhara region in which they remain as well as other fronts they are attempting to open the conflict."

The war between pro-Abiy forces and the TPLF has triggered a severe humanitarian crisis and last week the UN's top rights body ordered an international probe into alleged abuses.

Since late October, the two sides have each declared major territorial advances, with the TPLF at one point claiming to be around 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa by road.

Abiy, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner, headed to the front last month, according to state media, and the government has since claimed to have retaken several key towns.

Communications have been cut in the conflict zone and access for journalists is restricted, making it difficult to verify battlefield claims.

Appeal to UN

The fighting has sparked alarm among the international community, as diplomatic efforts led by the African Union to broker a ceasefire failed to yield any visible breakthrough.

Getachew said TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael had written to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to inform him about the decision, with the Security Council expected to hold a closed-door meeting about Ethiopia later Monday.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed headed to the front last month according to state media. By EDUARDO SOTERAS (AFP/File)

Ireland's UN envoy Geraldine Byrne Nason, who called the meeting, told reporters the TPLF pullout offered "a welcome opportunity to hopefully create political space for dialogue".

According to copies of the letter circulating on social media, Debretsion asked the Security Council to ensure the withdrawal of Amhara forces and Eritrean troops from western Tigray.

"I can confirm that the letter is being studied," said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for Guterres.

Both Amharas and Tigrayans lay claim to western Tigray, which has been occupied by Amhara forces since the war erupted, triggering large-scale displacement and US warnings of ethnic cleansing.

"We need the international community to take action," Getachew said.

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch last week accused Amhara forces of systematically detaining, torturing and starving Tigrayan civilians living in the contested region.

Humanitarian 'siege'

Previously TPLF leaders had refused to pull out of Amhara and Afar unless the government ended what the rebels describe as a humanitarian "siege" of Tigray.

Aid workers have repeatedly complained that security and bureaucratic hurdles are impeding access to the region, where some 400,000 people are thought to be on the verge of famine.

Map of Ethiopia and its regions. By Simon MALFATTO (AFP/File)

The UN also suspended humanitarian flights from Addis Ababa to Tigray's capital Mekele in October amid a campaign of government air strikes in the region. The flights resumed in November.

Fears of a rebel march on the capital prompted countries such as the United States, France and Britain to urge their citizens to leave Ethiopia as soon as possible, although Abiy's government insisted the city was secure.

The war broke out in November 2020 when Abiy sent troops into Tigray to topple the TPLF, accusing it of attacking army camps.

The Nobel Peace laureate vowed a swift victory but the rebels mounted a shock comeback, recapturing most of Tigray by June before advancing into Afar and Amhara.

The fighting has displaced over two million people while 9.4 million need food aid, according to UN estimates, with reports of massacres and mass rapes by both sides.

On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council voted to send international investigators to Africa's second most populous nation amid warnings of looming generalised violence, in a move slammed by Addis Ababa.
Four people including a baby were killed and at least 12 others injured as police clashed with protesters in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) city of Goma on Monday, local officials said.

Two police officers were among the dead, said regional military spokesman Colonel Sylvain Ekenge.

The demonstrators, protesting against rising crime, converged on arterial roads early in the morning, setting up barricades and burning tyres in the capital of North Kivu province.

Police fired tear gas and used live ammunition to disperse the crowd, an AFP reporter said.

The demonstrators were also protesting against the alleged presence of Rwandan police in Goma, which the authorities strongly denied.

Police remove stones from one of the roads that demonstrators made impassable. By Guerchom NDEBO (AFP)

"Two law enforcement officers were killed and two seriously injured," General Ekenge told reporters. Police accused the protesters of stealing at least three weapons from them.

"These acts will not go unpunished," Ekenge said.

A local community leader and a police source who requested anonymity said that one protester had been shot dead while riding a motorbike.

Serge Kilumbiro, manager of a hospital in Ndosho, one of Goma's poorer districts, said the facility had received "12 injured and one dead, a child less than a year old who was shot while on the back of his mother, who was injured".

The main market in the city centre was closed, as well as banks and schools, following the call for a general shutdown to denounce rising crime in the city of some 600,000 people.

President Felix Tshisekedi placed North Kivu and Ituri provinces under a "state of siege" in May to intensify a battle against rebels, with soldiers replacing civil servants in key positions.

The move was initially welcomed by many locals in a region that has suffered from militia-linked violence for more than two decades.

But continuing deadly violence has raised questions as to whether the strategy is working and protesters called for the state of siege to be re-evaluated.

The protesters also said they "categorically oppose the entry of Rwandan policemen in Goma" after the two countries signed a deal to combat cross-border trafficking.

"We are not going to support the arrival of the Rwandan police in Goma. What are they hiding from us?" said Paluku Issa, one of the demonstrators.

But DRC police chief General Dieudonne Amuli Bahigwa on Saturday said any suggestion that Rwandan soldiers would be charged with maintaining law and order in Goma was "a complete lie".
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21.12.2021 LISTEN

Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia Monday welcomed the 15 gold medalists of the 2021 National Skills Competition to the Jubilee House and challenged them to prepare adequately to win the African edition and global editions.

"The world is a world of skills, not a world of certificate per say...show me what you can do, that is the future of work," Dr Bawumia emphasised.

The Vice President congratulated the award winners for emerging victorious among 73 competitors and encouraged them to utilise their skills for their wellbeing and the public good.

The Akufo-Addo administration, he said, was focused on prioritising TVET and thus had invested huge sums of money towards infrastructure development and training of human resource towards achieving the set objectives.

Skills acquisition would enable the youth to create their own businesses or secure jobs quicker after school in order to contribute their quota towards national development, he said.

Madam Gifty Twum-Ampofo, a Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), led the award winners to the seat of government.

The delegation also included Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah, the Director-General of Commission for TVET and Mr Antwi-Boasiako, a Deputy Director-General, Commission for TVET and some lecturers who groomed the award winners.

The national competition, held in October this year, was in 14 categories including Graphic Design, Hairdressing, Beauty Therapy, Auto-mobile Technology, Electrical Installation, Information Technology and Business Solution and Cooking.

The African edition of the competition would be held in Namibia, March next year.

Vice President Mahamudu also congratulated the lecturers and management of the various education institutions whose students excelled.

The Skills Competition create a platform for competitors to showcase their skills in TVET sector and to unearth talents.

GNA
21.12.2021 LISTEN

The Special Anti-Robbery Unit of the Bono East Regional Police Command has shot and killed two robbery and kidnapping suspects in the region.

The suspects identified as; Ali Ruga alias Ali Muguyaro and Issaka Abubakar alias Kuriidor were shot dead when the Police embarked on an intelligence-led operation on a criminal syndicate at Yeji on Monday.

According to the Police in a report said Intelligence gathered indicates that the two suspects were members of a robbery and kidnapping syndicate operating in and around the Yeji enclave who were involved in the kidnapping of one Boma on Saturday, December 11, 2021, and released him later on after a ransom of GHC25,000 was paid.

The Police said further intelligence established that the same syndicate kidnapped one Alhaji Juuli about two months ago and released him after a ransom of GH 60,000 was also paid.

The statement added that Also, the syndicate was involved in the robbery and murder on the Atebubu highway on December 17, 2021.

The Police said the investigation established that the syndicate operates in and around the Bono East Region notably Yeji, Atebubu, Prang, Kintampo, Kwame Danso, and at times in the Savannah Region.

The Police also managed to retrieve a single barrel shotgun with two live BB cartridges, three mobile phones, and a talisman after a search was conducted at their hideout at Konkoba, a suburb of Yeji.

The Police Administration in its statement lauds the efforts of the Bono East Regional Police Command and the Anti-Robbery Squad for their bravery and speedy investigation.

We are assuring the public that the Police are committed to combating criminal syndicates for the peace and security of the country the statement underscored.

---DGN online
The majority group in parliament is anticipating that the debate on the controversial e-levy bill currently before parliament will end up in votes and is therefore demanding the return of Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin to chair the proceedings.

According to the caucus, the absence of Bagbin has forced the second deputy speaker, Andrews Amoako Asiamah to preside over the sitting and that means a possible loss of one vote for them.

Alexander Afenyo Markin, the Deputy Majority Leader while addressing the press said the absence of Alban Bagbin throughout the first part of the sitting appears to be part of a grand plan by the minority to frustrate the approval of the bill.

He insisted that the majority caucus will not proceed to take decisions without Speaker Bagbin.

We will not proceed to take decisions without Mr. Speaker. We need him in the House because by the technicalities of our own procedures, one of our people would have to sit in and therefore he will not have the opportunity to have his right of voting as a member. Mr. Speaker must show leadership in parliament, he said.

Mr. Markin said the majority side was not given any information about the whereabouts of Alban Bagbin and so they want him to immediately return to the House.

We have no information as to the whereabouts of Mr. Speaker. We see this as a grand political partisan design by the minority group to frustrate us, and we dont want to suggest that Mr. Speaker is unavoidably absent to frustrate government business. We expect Mr. Speaker to be present. We have our numbers, and we are ready to do government business. We cant be cajoled into pettiness because we see this as a strategy by the minority to create a standoff, he added.

With Andrews Amoako Asiamah currently presiding, voting on the E-levy bill may see a tie of 137 votes for it by the majority side, and 137 votes against it by the minority side.

---citinewsroom
Kumasi Asafo Hene, Nana Akyemfo Asafo Boakye Agyeman Bonus who doubles as the Akwamuhene of His Royal Majesty Otumfuo Osei Tutu II has marked the first year of his reign as Chief of Asafo, a popular suburb of Kumasi in the Ashanti region.

The anniversary was marked in collaboration with the Church of Pentecost in the Bompata Area on the19th of December 2021.

"I will thank the Most High God for making it possible for me to ascend the throne of our forefathers as the chief of Kumasa Asafo," Nana said in his opening remarks.

Asafo Hene expressed his joy and deepest gratitude when he addressed the congregation for their support and prayers during his one year rule.

"We are pleased to welcome all of you who traveled from far and near to join us commemorate the first year of my reign."

He also stressed that they (the institution of chieftaincy) would love to have the honour and privilege of working with the church since the two institutions work towards the same goal.

Asafo Hene also used the medium to advise the youth to abstain from things that do not glorify God as they approach the Christmas season.

Addressing the media and people gathered, the Area Head Apostle Yaw Agyei Kwarteng revealed that over the years traditional leaders, who are the custodians of an undying heritage have had the support from the church as a body on matters concerning the well being of the people and the country in general.

Apostle Yaw Agyei Kwarteng had assured the public that, the church will collaborate with the traditional leaders on how to review some costumes for the general good of the people.
At the just ended Annual General Meeting of the leadership of the Chamber, Mr Richard E. Addison was appointed Acting President of the Chamber.

Mr Addison, until his appointment, has been an ardent member of the Chamber since 2018 and have contributed immensely to the development and growth of the Chamber extolled as Ghanas premium network on young entrepreneurs.

For the next year, Richard Addison will work closely with both the Executive arm and Secretariat of the Chamber to achieve the set goals and objectives. He will be supported by the current CEO of the Chamber, Mr Sherif Ghali, in delivering his mandate.

It will be recalled that Mr Sherif Ghali, for the past years, has played both the role of CEO and President of the Chamber. He will now focus on the administration and operationalization of the Chamber, whiles Mr Richard Addison focuses on the functionality and provides leadership to the Chamber for the following year.

Profile of Richard Addison

Mr Richard Addison is a farmer who cares a lot about youth and community development.

His 50-acre rice farm, which started as a 30 acre in the Sharma District in 2014, employs over 100 locals from land preparation, planting, harvesting, and milling to transporting produce to the market.

Farming and agricultural ventures are not just business for Richard Addison; they are ways to impact peoples livelihood positively.

When not on the farm, Mr Addison and his team at Kent Systems specialize in revenue mobilization for district assemblies, finding solutions to increasing revenues through internally generated funds (IGF).

Richard has been managing The Richard Addison Foundation (TRAF) for the past decade. This non-profit organization focuses on projects ranging from farming, provision of water to the renovation of schools in deprived communities.

Mr Addisons goal as a farmer is to produce Ghanaian staples in large quantities to reduce the importation of food crops into the country.

Apart from pushing the youth into venturing into the agricultural, his focus is finishing his rice mill in the Shama District to help localize the processing and branding of rice harvested from Kent Farms as Koaba Rice; for everyday life use.
The Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ghana, Angela Lusigi, has called on journalists to use their platforms to advocate for data-driven policies to position Ghana on the path to sustainable development.

She made this call in her remarks at the graduation ceremony of the first cohort of the maiden data storytelling certification course for journalists at the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ).

Dr. Angela Lusigi underscored the critical role of the media in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and urged the media to advocate and cause more social and developmental changes with evidence-based reportages.

As we race towards the 2030 deadline for the attainment of the SDGs, you must play your part in helping us to transform complex data into actionable outcomes through evidence-based storytelling, for the good of our people, Dr. Lusigi added.

The course, which is an initiative of UNDP in partnership with the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) seeks to equip journalists with the needed skills to interpret and report statistical data accurately for more impact on policy actions. This is to increase media advocacy to ensure that public policies and interventions are data-driven and implemented towards development.

The Rector of GIJ, Prof. Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo urged the graduands to use the knowledge acquired to transform and make journalism even more impactful.

The medias role in promoting development cannot be over-emphasized and now this training has positioned you to have a greater influence on development efforts with stories informed by data, noted Prof Kwansah-Aidoo.

In her remarks, the Deputy Government Statistician, Dr. Faustina Frempong-Ainguah highlighted the importance of data in development planning and called on journalists to become active partners in disseminating data in a more impactful way.

Data will not benefit our people if it is not accurately interpreted and leveraged by policymakers and the public to cause a change. This training has now equipped you with the needed skills to drive the change we all desire through your stories, she stated.

The journalists commended UNDP, GSS and GIJ for initiating the course and described the knowledge acquired as one that will help them highlight SDGs issues with evidence.

The training has been very insightful and has made data interpretation much easier. I have already shared the knowledge with my colleagues in the newsroom and we have now set up a data story desk, which is helping us shape the development discourse in our area using data as evidence, said Stephen Ernest Buah, Programme Manager at Radio Max in Takoradi.

The course is a three-month programme, structured in three levels: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced levels. The graduation ceremony for the first cohort saw 40 journalists drawn from different media houses from across Ghana awarded the joint certificate in the Basic Level by UNDP, GSS and GIJ.
How can Akufo Addo admit that Ghanaians are going through difficult times, yet claims it's not his fault. If its not his fault then who is responsible?

How does the president expect Ghana to be a better country after appointing two of his family members at the offices of the main pillars holding a country when both are not experienced or even qualified to hold that post?

The judicial system is part of the system of state at a higher level, so let us consider its significance and role in the concept of powers.

Without an effective judiciary system, the country collapses. This is exactly what happened when Gloria Akuffo was the Chief Justice because she ran the court like a family business amid corruption.

Gloria Akuffo failed to recognize and observe the rights, freedoms, and legitimate interests of individuals and citizens. She abused her power in office, just as Akufo Addo continues to as a president.

How many times did Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Member of Parliament for North Tongu District Of Volta Region, criticize his reckless spending when he travels out of the country on a luxurious jet which cost is affecting Ghana?

Akufo Addo refused to listen to anyone, however, today, he is telling Ghanaians that he admits things are tough in the country but its not his fault.

Sometimes, I wonder if, in his power intoxicated brain, he thinks Ghanaians are stupid. Akufo Addo said, "Yeti Sika Su Na Ekom Di Yen."

It is very likely those years when struggling to be president, he was facing acute financial problems. Now that he becomes president, he has abused his power to steal all the money from the coffers of Ghana.

Everyone country depends on its Finance Ministry for appropriate dispensation of funds and the presentation of the budget.

In such a high office that needs an expert in dealing with financial matters, Nana Akufo Addo placed another incompetent relative, Ken Ofori-Atta to manage the financial affairs of the state.

Ken Ofori-Atta leads Ghana through corruption, excessive expenditure, and over-borrowing, causing the collapse of banking institutions in the country.

The Finance Minister couldnt even account for the money used in the country and his only excuse like the president, Nana Akufo Addo, is to blame the coronavirus for Ghanas political and economic disasters.

On April 2, 2020, the World Bank decides to provide $100 million to Ghana to assist the country in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. This money was made available to the government and the people of Ghana as short, medium, and long-term support.

In November 2020, the same year, the European Union mobilized 86.5 million in emergency budget support to help Ghana in tackling the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

So why should the Ghanaian government blame the COVID-19 for their incompetence and corruption which have led to the suffering of the common people?

I have said many times that nepotism is never good for any government because it is very hard for the president to take away a family from his or her post if they are not performing very well, which are the cases of Ken Ofori-Atta and the former Chief Justice, Gloria Akuffo.

Unfortunately, after her departure, another corrupt and incompetent new Chief Justice, Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, has been appointed.

Nana Akufo Addo must, therefore, accept the blame for todays economic and political crisis in Ghana because of his incompetence, corruption, and greed.
Five civilians and a soldier were killed in the latest attack by armed groups in the Central African Republic, a local official said Monday.

Rebel fighters attacked positions of Central African forces on Sunday in the town of Mann, some 600 kilometres northwest of the capital, Bangui, local sub-prefect Jean-Ulrich Sembetanga told AFP.

"The toll is five civilians killed, one Central African soldier and one rebel," Sembetanga said, blaming the powerful 3R (Return, Reclamation, Rehabilitation) group, which is active in the northwest of the country and mainly made up of the Fulani ethnic group.

The news came hours after a report that 15 civilians had been killed in the central east of the former French colony on 6 and 7 December.

Cases of amputation

The United Nation's MINUSCA mission in CAR said Monday that others had been mutilated in that attack some 400 kilometres east of Bangui, and that some 1,500 people had been forced from their homes.

The organisation added it had evidence of "cases of amputation, extortion and destruction of homes and the displacement of upwards of 1,500 people", pointing the finger of blame at a mainly Christian and animist militia known as the anti-Balaka.

MINUSCA added it "strongly condemns the recent violence deliberately targeting civilian populations".

One of the poorest countries in the world, CAR descended into conflict in 2013 when then 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.

In December last year, rebels launched a new offensive against current President Faustin-Archange Touadera's government on the eve of presidential elections.

Touadera won re-election, and his army has now reconquered the lost territory -- the UN and France say with key support from Russia's Wagner private security group -- as well as crack Rwandan troops.

Moscow denies the allegations.

Touadera on 15 October decreed a unilateral ceasefire with a view to opening a dialogue with armed groups. The main groups responded by announcing they would abide by the truce.

But on 28 November, some 30 civilians and two soldiers were killed in an attack in the northwest which authorities blamed on the 3R group.

(With AFP)
Ghanas Parliament will today, December 21, 2021, vote on the controversial Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy).

The levy was first announced by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta during his presentation of the 2022 budget statement and economic policy proposal of the ruling government on November 17.

Since then, the levy that seeks to charge a 1.75% tax on financial transactions that exceed GH100 has created a lot of controversies.

Although the Majority in Parliament are all for it amid agitations from Ghanaians, the Minority in the house have time and again stressed that they will fight to ensure it is rejected.

On Monday night in Parliament, the debate on the levy turned chaotic when the Minority clashed with the Majority in a free for all fight prior to the voting on whether the E-levy bill should be taken under a certificate of urgency

Subsequently, after calm was restored, sitting was adjourned to today, December 21, 2021.

Speaker Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin is expected to mount his seat today in what many anticipate will be another showdown between the two groups in the hung parliament.

Sitting starts today at 09:00am.
21.12.2021 LISTEN

Member of Parliament for Akim Swedru constituency, Kennedy Nyarko Osei has suggested that Minister for the Interior Ambrose Dery, as a matter of urgency, take all the necessary steps to provide substantial and tough security arrangements in parliament going forward to deal ruthlessly with any unruly MPs within the chamber.

The former deputy minister of agriculture wrote on Facebook: We must protect the sanctity of our parliament and democracy and not allow some rascals to create confusion in the chamber.

In his view, we must not sit down for either the Speaker or a member to be maimed before we take any decisive actions.

His suggestion follows Monday nights fisticuffs in parliament over the controversial 1.75 per cent e-levy.

The rumpus started when First Deputy Speaker Joe Osei-Owusu, who was presiding over the business of the house in the absence of Speaker Alban Bagbin, attempted to also cast his ballot on whether or not the bill should be considered under a certificate of urgency.

MPs from either side of the house were seen exchanging blows over the matter, which threw the whole house into chaos.

Earlier in the day, the Finance Committee of Parliament approved the controversial e-levy bill.

The Minority side, made up of 12 members, voted against it while the 12 members on the Majority side voted for it.

The Chairman of the Committee voted in favour of the bill to break the tie.

This meant it had to be put before the plenary for a certificate of urgency vote as the house has been scheduled to rise soon for the Christmas break.

The NDC and its Minority are against the 1.75 per cent levy which will affect electronic transactions.

Several calls on the government to drop the proposed tax has fallen on deaf ears.

The government has explained that the upsurge in the use of e-payment platforms, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been an impetus for the introduction of the levy.

As a result, Ghana recorded a total of GHS500 billion from e-transactions in 2020 compared with GHS78 billion in 2016.

The government says the e-Levy proceeds will be used to support entrepreneurship, youth employment, cyber security, and digital and road infrastructure, among others.

---classfmonline.com
21.12.2021 LISTEN

1. Father of Abraham and Nahor served other gods .

Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem, summoning the elders, leaders, judges, and officers of Israel. When they stood in ranks before God, Joshua addressed all the people: Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: In times past your ancestors, down to Terah, father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River * and served other gods. (Joshua 24:1-2)

2. God calls Abram !

The LORD said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your fathers house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the LORD had told him and Lot went with him. Abraham was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abraham took his wife Sarah and his brothers son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land-of-Canaan. (Genesis 12: 1-5)

3. Arabic Nation !

Arabic Nation came into existence through Egyptian slave girl whose name was Hagar by Abram and their son Ishmael:

Abrams wife Sarai had borne him no children. Now she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. Thus, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, his wife Sarai took her maid, Hagar the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. He had intercourse with her, and she became pregnant. As soon as Hagar knew she was pregnant, her mistress lost stature in her eyes. Abram told Sarai: Your maid is in your power. Do to her what you regard as right. Sarai then mistreated her so much that Hagar ran away from her.

But the LORDs angel told her: Go back to your mistress and submit to her authority. I will make your descendants so numerous, added the LORDs angel, That they will be too many to count.  Then the LORDs angel said to her: You are now pregnant and shall bear a son; you shall name him Ishmael, For the LORD has heeded your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone and everyones hand against him; alongside all his kindred shall he encamp. Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named the son whom Hagar bore him Ishmael . Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. (Genesis 16: 1-16)

4. God Promise to Abraham !

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, I am God Almighty walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous. Then Abram fell on his face and God said to him As for me, this is my covenant with you: you shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant. (Genesis 17: 1-7)

5. God said also to Abraham: I will establish my covenant with Isaac, bu not Ismael :

God said also to Abraham: Sarai thy wife thou shalt not call Sarai, but Sara. And I will bless her, and of her I will give thee a son, whom I will bless, and he shell become nations, and kings of people shall spring from him. And God said to Abraham: Sara thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for a perpetual covenant and with his seed after him. And as for Ismael I have also heard thee. Behold, I will bless him, and increase, and multiply him exceedingly: he shall beget twelve chiefs, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sara shall bring forth to thee at this time in the next year. (Genesis 17: 15-16, 19-21)

6. Hebrew Nation !

Jewish nation came into existence through Abrahams wife Sarah and through their son Issac.

The LORD took note of Sarah as he had said he would; the LORD did for her as he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time that God had stated. Abraham gave the name Isaac to this son of his whom Sarah bore him . When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. (Genesis 21: 1-5)

7. Hagar & Ishmael Sent Away:

Sarah noticed the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing with her son Isaac; so she demanded of Abraham: Drive out that slave and her son! No son of that slave is going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac! Abraham was greatly distressed because it concerned a son of his. But God said to Abraham: Do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman. Obey Sarah, no matter what she asks of you; for it is through Isaac that descendants will bear your name . As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, since he too is your offspring.

Early the next morning Abraham got some bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. Then, placing the child on her back, * he sent her away. As she roamed aimlessly in the wilderness of Beer-sheba, the water in the skin was used up. So she put the child down under one of the bushes and then went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away; for she said to herself, I cannot watch the child die. As she sat opposite him, she wept aloud. God heard the boys voice, and Gods angel called to Hagar from heaven: What is the matter, Hagar? Do not fear; God has heard the boys voice in this plight of his. Get up, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand; for I will make of him a great nation. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water, and then let the boy drink. God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and became an expert bowman. He lived in the wilderness of Paran. His mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. (Genesis 21: 9-21)

8. Gods Command to Sacrifice of Isaac !

Some time afterward, God put Abraham to the test and said to him: Abraham! Here I am! he replied. Then God said: Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you. Abraham said to his servants: Stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go on over there. We will worship and then come back to you. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he bound * his son Isaac, and put him on top of the wood on the altar . Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham! Here I am, he answered. Do not lay your hand on the boy, said the angel. Do not do the least thing to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you did not withhold from me your son, your only one. Abraham looked up and saw a single ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son. Abraham named that place Yahweh-yireh; * hence people today say, On the mountain the LORD will provide. (Genesis 22: 1-2, 5, 9-14)

9. The death of Sarah !

The span of Sarahs life was one hundred and twenty-seven years. She died in Kiriath-arba now Hebron in the land of Canaan and Abraham proceeded to mourn and weep for her. After this, Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave of the field of Machpelah, facing Mamre now Hebron in the land of Canaan. (Genesis 23: 1-2, 19)

10. Aryan Nation (Hinduism )!

Arya Nation came into existence through Abrahams wife Keturah and through their sons.

Arya (Hindu) nation came into existence through another wife whose name was Keturah whom Abraham married after Sarahs death and their sons were Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah. Jokshan was the father of Sheba and Dedan. The son of Dedan was Asshurim, Letushim and Leummim. The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah. Abraham gave all he had to Isaac. But to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, while he was still living, and he sent them away from his son Issac, eastward to the east country. (Genesis 25: 1-6)

11. The death of Abraham !

The whole span of Abrahams life was one hundred and seventy-five years. Then he breathed his last, dying at a ripe old age, grown old after a full life; and he was gathered to his people. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron, son of Zohar the Hittite, which faces Mamre, the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites; there he was buried next to his wife Sarah. After the death of Abraham, God blessed his son Isaac, who lived near Beer-lahai-roi. (Genesis 25: 7-10)

12. The Tribes Renew the Covenant :

Joshua addressed all the people: Thus says the LORD, But I brought your father Abraham from the region beyond the River and led him through the entire land of Canaan. I made his descendants numerous, and gave him Isaac. To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I assigned the mountain region of Seir to possess, while Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and struck Egypt with the plagues and wonders that I wrought in her midst. Afterward I led you out.

I gave you a land you did not till and cities you did not build, to dwell in; you ate of vineyards and olive groves you did not plant. If you forsake the LORD and serve strange gods, he will then do evil to you and destroy you, after having done you good. But the people answered Joshua, No! We will serve the LORD. Joshua therefore said to the people, You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the LORD. They replied, We are witnesses! Now, therefore, put away the foreign gods that are among you and turn your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel. Then the people promised Joshua, We will serve the LORD, our God, and will listen to his voice. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made statutes and ordinances for them at Shechem. (Joshua 24: 3-5, 13, 20-25)

13. The Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David :

In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel, but Samuel said to Jesse, The LORD has not chosen any one of these. Then Samuel asked Jesse, Are these all the sons you have? Jesse replied, There is still the youngest, but he is tending the sheep. Samuel said to Jesse, Send for him; we will not sit down to eat until he arrives here. Jesse had the young man brought to them. He was ruddy, a youth with beautiful eyes, and good looking. The LORD said: There anoint him, for this is the one! Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand, anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and from that day on, the spirit of the LORD rushed upon David. Then Samuel set out for Ramah. (1 Samuel 16: 10-13)

14. Thus says the LORD: David throne shall be firmly established forever :

But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: Go and tell David my servant, Thus says the LORD: Your house and your kingdom are firm forever before me; your throne shall be firmly established forever. In accordance with all these words and this whole vision Nathan spoke to David. (2 Samuel 7:4-5, 16)

15. King David: Jesus is the Son of the Most High :

Then the angel Gabriel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. (Luke 1:30-33)

16. Jesus say to Simon Peter: you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church :

Jesus said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter said in reply, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus said to him in reply, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood * has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:15-19)

17. Apostle Peter the First Pope:

John 21:15 : Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? * He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, Feed my lambs. The Present Pope successor the chair of First Pope Simon Peter!

18.  Jesus Christ is Purusha Prajapathy 

Arabic people did not have any vision or oracle from God. But Jewish Prophets and Arya Munis received visions and oracle from God. Visions and oracle received from God by Jewish Prophets are mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible. Vedas are the visions of Arya Munis from God. Bible as well as Vedas declares that a Saviour would come to redeem the people from their sins. This Saviour is called Jesus Christ in the Bible; in Vedas this Saviour is called Purusha Prajapathy.

A Truth Seeker :

S/d

Francis Xavier India.
The Minority in Parliament has accused the First Deputy Speaker Joseph Osei Owusu of constantly manipulating a lacuna in the Constitution in relation to the proceedings on the floor of Parliament.

A member of the Minority and the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Odododiodio Constituency in the Greater Accra Region, Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuije made these accusations against the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament after a free-for-all fight broke on the floor of Parliament on Monday, December 20, 2021, over the proceedings to vote for the approval of the controversial Electronic Levy (E-Levey).

The Odododiodio MP was speaking in an interview on Accra-based Neat FM.

He accused the First Deputy Speaker of manipulating the rules on the floor of Parliament to favour the Majority group.

According to him, the Deputy Speakers decision to preside and still cast a vote on the proceedings on the floor is a lacuna that is being manipulated by the First Deputy Speaker.

He said the First Deputy Speaker over time has chosen to consistently manipulate the lacuna in the Constitution.

Nii Lante was of the view that anytime the First Deputy Speaker presides in the absence of the Speaker, he has no casting vote per the Standing Order 1093. But anytime the First Deputy Speaker presides and there is a vote, he wants to manipulate the situation to favour the Majority group.

He attributed the stalemate on the floor to the lack of leadership on the part of the Majority group.

The Majority group must be told that this eighth Parliament is not the usual Parliament known to the Majority, he said.

He added that this is the time for consensus building and not a show of state power and manipulations.

He served notice that as members of the Minority, they will not allow the First Deputy Speaker to preside and still have a vote.

--- Classfmonline.com
The Western Regional Commander of the Motor Traffic and Transport Division (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service, Chief Superintendent Isaac K. Sorkpa has reiterated the commitment of the Command in keeping the Region safe before, during and after the Christmas festivities.

He announced that the Command had launched an operation to provide optimum security for all residents in the Region, as personnel, who are resolute in clamping down the activities of miscreants, have been dispatched to all the"'nooks and crannies'" of the Region.

Chief Supt Sorkpa, who was speaking on Security and Personal Safety at the Pentecost International Worship Centre (PIWC) at Effia in the Effia-Kwesimintsim Municipality (EKMA) said God has made available everything needed for security, and that the security personnel only followed the foundation laid by God.

He defined security as a state of being free from danger or something and said security was a shared responsibility, which must be followed through by all for results.

He therefore underscored the need to develop a new orientation towards security and safety with all consciousness, saying that, being hospitable should not prevent us from giving recourse to security.

Touching on ways to prevent kidnapping, he urged the public to pick the registration number and any necessary identification of the vehicle they board as well as the place and time they joined the vehicle.

"You should send information to relatives to be aware of your whereabouts".

He cautioned against asking for free rides (locally known as lift) from strangers during this Christmas season.

He read from Jeremiah 17:5 which reads, cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

Chief Supt Sorkpa further cautioned the public not to send vulnerable people like children to secluded places and at late hours, and should replace all faulty locks or broken doors in order not to compromise on their security to prevent criminals from having access,.

He said the Police Administration was charting a new path to make the Service and its personnel approachable and called on the public to develop good relationships with the Service and volunteer information that could lead to the arrest of miscreants.

GNA
US President Joe Biden is set to deliver an address on Covid-19 Tuesday after urging Americans to get vaccinated with the fast-spreading Omicron variant confirmed as the dominant strain in the hard-hit country.

His address comes as the World Health Organization called for vigilance over the holiday period with fresh virus surges reported globally.

The highly-mutated Omicron variant, now present in dozens of countries, appears to be more infectious and possibly have higher resistance to vaccines, despite early indications that it is not more severe than the Delta strain.

Its lightning fast dash around the globe has forced governments to reimpose restrictions ahead of the holidays, dampening hopes the worst of the pandemic is over.

Omicron now accounts for 73.2 percent of new US cases over the past week ending Saturday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

A White House official said the US will distribute 500 million free Covid tests as Omicron cases rise. By Joseph Prezioso (AFP)

Biden took to Twitter late Monday to encourage people to get vaccinated and adopt safety measures like mask-wearing, warning that Omicron cases are on the rise.

"If you're an adult choosing to be unvaccinated, you will face an extremely difficult winter for your family and community," he said.

The government will distribute 500 million free Covid tests and mobilize military medical personnel if needed, a senior White House official said Tuesday.

"We have the tools to get through this wave," the official said, noting there are no plans to impose new restrictions.

One week of new Covid-19 cases. By Laurence CHU (AFP)

With Biden set to deliver an address on the pandemic later Tuesday, the White House reported that a mid-level, fully-vaccinated and boosted staff member had tested positive for Covid-19 after spending 30 minutes in proximity to the president three days prior.

Biden has so far tested negative.

'Celebrate later'

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for nations to redouble efforts to help end the pandemic, calling for new year events to be canceled because it was better to "celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later."

"We have to focus now on ending this pandemic," he said Monday.

People queue at a street-side Covid-19 testing booth in New York's Times Square on December 20, 2021 as omicron was announced to be the dominant strain in the United States. By Ed JONES (AFP)

The warning came as the European Union approved its fifth Covid-19 jab Monday -- from US firm Novavax -- with Europe already far ahead of other parts of the world with its rollout of vaccines and booster shots.

Authorization of the jab, which uses a more conventional technology than other Covid vaccines, has raised hopes that people worried about getting vaccinated might now come forward.

The other vaccines approved in the bloc are from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, and the EU has already signed a deal to buy up to 200 million doses of the two-shot Novavax vaccine.

"At a time where the Omicron variant is rapidly spreading... I am particularly pleased with today's authorization of the Novavax vaccine," EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.

Paris has already cancelled its new year celebrations, and Germany is expected to roll out tight restrictions on private parties and close nightclubs.

Spain's Catalonia region is considering a clampdown as well, while Morocco has announced a blanket ban on New Year's Eve celebrations.

London on Monday said it had canceled a New Year's Eve event in the central Trafalgar Square for 6,500 people.

But British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ruled out any further tightening of England's coronavirus rules over Christmas, while pledging to keep the situation "under constant review."

Queen Elizabeth II is nonetheless understood to have canceled plans to spend Christmas at her Sandringham estate and will instead take "sensible precautions" and stay at Windsor Castle, according to British media.

The Netherlands has already imposed a Christmas lockdown, and von der Leyen has warned that the Omicron variant could be dominant in Europe by mid-January.

burs-jv/ach
The former Mayor of Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Nat Nunoo-Amarteifio has died.

Close family sources have confirmed.

The cause of death was, however, not immediately disclosed by the family sources.

Nunoo-Amarteifio was Mayor of Accra between 1994 and 1998 in the JJ Rawlings administration.

Nunoo-Amarteifio went into lecturing on urban management and contemporary Ghanaian art and culture when he left office.

He was an architectural historian and a writer.

He used to work in the US, Canada before returning to Ghana as an architect and consultant.

He was an occasional guest critic for the Ghanaian Times and Sunday Mirror in Accra.

He has written a book on the history of architecture in Accra.

In June 2009, the former mayor undertook a photographic exhibition with Kofi Setordji, a Ghanaian sculptor and painter, under the title Architectural history of Accra showcasing in black and white photographs some buildings that were put up between 1920 and 1930

---Classfmonline.com
21.12.2021 LISTEN

Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has reiterated governments determination to provide enhanced opportunities for the acquisition of technical and vocational Education Training (TVET) and skills acquisition in order to provide decent jobs and opportunities for all, especially the youth.

The governments focus on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is unwavering and, with the establishment of the Ghana TVET Service, which brings together all the various technical and vocational training programmes previously run by the 19 separate Ministries, and the enactment of appropriate laws, the focus is set to grow even stronger as we work to position Ghanas youth to meet the changing dynamics of the labour market.

Dr Bawumia emphasised the governments commitment to greater skills training and acquisition when he welcomed, on Monday, 20 December 2021, the 15 Gold medal winners of the 2021 WorldSkills Ghana National Skills Competition, which he launched on October 27, 2021.

The start of the Free TVET programme next academic year, to provide opportunities for our brothers and sisters who wish to pursue a TVET path, is further evidence of our resolve. I am happy to see that more young people are taking up skills training and acquisition, and I can assure you that the Government of President Akufo-Addo will continue to invest heavily in TVET, he told the winners, who won from categories as varied as Autobody Repairs, Graphic Design Technology, Carpentry, Automobile technology, Electrical Installation, Welding, fashion Technology, IT Software Solutions, Bricklaying, Mechanical Engineering CAD, Mechatronics, Cooking, Hairdressing and Beauty Therapy.

Government, he assured, would continue to invest huge financial resources in skills training, construction of ultra-modern workshops, training infrastructure and equipment for Ghanaian youth to receive training to become competitive on the global job market.

"The job market, in this fourth industrial revolution, is one of skills. It is not a world of degrees. With a skill, you can create your own job, employ others, or find it easier getting a job. That is why we have taken a comprehensive approach in revamping and revitalising TVET education in Ghana. TVET is the way to go, and we are determined to do right by Ghanaians.

Dr Bawumia pointed out that, as part of implementing the TVET agenda, the government is establishing the first-ever second cycle Applied Technical High School across the country.

The programmes to be offered at the Applied Technical High School would be designed as a career-based technical education that integrates career and technical education with a rigorous academic core and industry participation. The programmes would be benchmarked against international best practices and standards.

The schools, he said, will build strategic alliances with community, industry, development partners and Government, to ensure that it is responsive to the national needs and expectations for socio-economic transformation.

Dr Bawumia assured the winners of the WorldSkills Ghana National Skills Competition of continued support as they head into the Africa leg of the global WorldSkills competition next year.

Go out there and conquer the world. There is no reason why all of you brilliant young men and women cannot be world champions, and as the Ghanaian has shown on countless occasions, our innate ingenuity, coupled with the required skills, will make you world-beaters. I know you will make us proud.

WorldSkills International, a group of people and organisations that together advance the shared social objective of increasing the provision of skills, provides a platform for young people to showcase their professional skills through community projects, skills competitions, and knowledge exchange.

Its 85 member organisations reach two-thirds of the worlds population and have helped to build the confidence of millions of young people, empowering communities and fueling economies.

Ghana is the 81st member and the first West African country to join World Skills International.
21.12.2021 LISTEN

A female soldier has been picked up in Nigeria for accepting a marriage proposal while on duty, an army spokesman has said.

She had breached the military's code of conduct by indulging in romance while in uniform, he added.

A video emerged last week of the soldier accepting a ring from a man kneeling in front of her, while onlookers shared in their joy.

A woman's rights group has accused the military of discriminating against her.

Similar action had not been taken against male soldiers involved in a public display of amorous relationships in full military uniform, the Women Empowerment and Legal Aid group said.

Human rights activist and former Nigerian presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore condemned the army's decision as misogynistic.

The soldier had accepted the marriage proposal from a trainee in the government's youth training scheme, known as the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

As part of the year-long mandatory scheme graduates from universities and other higher-learning institutions get instruction from the army.

The marriage proposal was made during a training programme in western Kwara state.

It is unclear when it happened, but a video of it emerged last week.

Many social media users congratulated the couple, and praised the man for proposing. Others teased the soldier.

Army spokesman Gen Clement Nwachukwu told the BBC the soldier had flouted the military's code of conduct, as well as its social media policy.

Her conduct was prejudicial to good order and military discipline

[The trainers'] task was to train the youth corps members and not to indulge in amorous relationship with any of them, Gen Nwachukwu added.

The NYSC has not yet commented.

Source: BBC
Minister of National Security, Albert Kan-Dapaah, has met leaders of the factions that are engaged in protracted chieftaincy conflict in the Bawku Traditional Area of the Upper East Region.

The minister held the meeting with representatives of Mamprusis and Kusasis in the Bawku Traditional Area, at the office of the Northern Regional Coordinating Council in Tamale.

After the meeting, the leaders of the two factions issued a joint communique pledging to commit to peace in the area.

The communique said recent developments emanating from an ongoing chieftaincy dispute between Mamprusis and Kusasis, continue to threaten the peace and security of the entire Bawku Traditional Area. In a bid to avert an escalation of the dispute and safeguard the peace of the area, the Hon. Albert Kan-Dapaah, Minister for National Security, on December 20, 2021, met with representatives of Mamprusis and Kusasis in the Bawku Traditional Area, at the office of the Northern Regional Coordinating Council in Tamale.

It said, Consequently, we, the representatives of Mamprusis and Kusasis, present at the meeting, in committing to the protection of the peace and stability of Bawku, agreed that, the youth and people of the two factions would desist from acts, including the passing of incendiary comments via traditional and social media and the release of press statements, aimed at inflaming passions.

They also resolved that we shall fully support actions of State Security Agencies aimed at restoring peace, law, and order in the event of an escalation arising from a failure of the youth to abide by the aforesaid resolution.

They said by this communique, we entreat our people to remain calm while we explore non-violent means, per the laws of Ghana, to amicably resolve the impasse.
The United States said Tuesday it will distribute hundreds of millions of free Covid tests in the face of surging Omicron cases, which have forced governments worldwide to reimpose restrictions ahead of the holidays.

Washington also said Tuesday it will donate more than $500 million in international Covid aid to help countries battle the pandemic, while Israel announced tough new restriction on US travel.

The highly-mutated Omicron variant, now present in dozens of countries, appears to be more infectious and possibly have higher resistance to vaccines, despite early indications that it is not more severe than the Delta strain.

Its lightning dash around the globe has forced governments to reimpose restrictions ahead of the holidays, dampening hopes the worst of the pandemic is over.

A White House official said the US will distribute 500 million free Covid tests as Omicron cases rise. By Joseph Prezioso (AFP)

US President Joe Biden was due to address the nation later Tuesday after a White House official said the government will distribute 500 million free Covid tests and mobilize military medical personnel if needed.

"We have the tools to get through this wave," the official said, noting there are no plans to impose new restrictions.

The United States will also give $580 million (654 million euros) in additional aid to international organizations to fight Covid in the face of surging Omicron cases, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

One week of new Covid-19 cases. By Laurence CHU (AFP)

The announcements come after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Omicron now accounts for 73.2 percent of new US cases over the past week ending Saturday.

Biden took to Twitter late Monday to encourage people to get vaccinated and adopt safety measures like mask-wearing, warning that Omicron cases are on the rise.

"If you're an adult choosing to be unvaccinated, you will face an extremely difficult winter for your family and community," he said.

'Celebrate later'

As Omicron fears loomed large over the end of year holidays, Israel become the latest nation to reimpose tough restrictions in an effort to contain Omicron.

Lawmakers Tuesday banned citizens and residents from US travel, adding it to a list of more than 50 countries declared off-limits, including Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Morocco, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey.

People queue at a street-side Covid-19 testing booth in New York's Times Square on December 20, 2021 as omicron was announced to be the dominant strain in the United States. By Ed JONES (AFP)

The news comes after WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for nations to redouble efforts to help end the pandemic, calling for new year events to be cancelled because it was better to "celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later."

"We have to focus now on ending this pandemic," he said Monday.

Paris has already cancelled its new year celebrations, and Germany is expected to roll out tight restrictions on private parties and to close nightclubs.

Spain's Catalonia region is considering a clampdown as well, while Morocco has announced a blanket ban on New Year's Eve celebrations.

London on Monday said it had cancelled a New Year's Eve event in central Trafalgar Square for 6,500 people.

But British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ruled out any further tightening of England's coronavirus rules over Christmas, while pledging to keep the situation "under constant review."

Queen Elizabeth II is nonetheless understood to have cancelled plans to spend Christmas at her Sandringham estate and will instead take "sensible precautions" and stay at Windsor Castle, according to British media.

The Netherlands has already imposed a Christmas lockdown, with EU officials warning that the Omicron variant could be dominant in Europe by mid-January.

burs-jv/yad
A Political Science Lecturer at the University of Ghana, Dr. Ansah Asare, has disclosed that the ongoing disturbance in Parliament means the government does not want to listen to the cries of Ghanaians.

Speaking to Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Tuesday, Dr. Ansah said economists have alluded to the fact that the nation is in difficult times so the E-levy should be reduced drastically, yet the government is adamant.

The bottom line or what has brought us to this end is the issue of E-levy and the fact that the government is not ready to listen to the ordinary man. What the NDC is saying is nothing but the true voice of the public. They are telling the government that look times are hard. The government itself has admitted that times are hard.

For me that is where the difficulty is, if you want to rule me Ive given you my mandate, at a point in time whenever there are issues and I talk to you. You should be humble enough to listen to me and then bring my concerns to bear on your decisions. You cant pretend to be taking a decision in my interest where I will not have a say in that decision. That becomes tyranny, he added.

Meanwhile, Parliament has adjourned sine die failing to pass the controversial E-levy.

The application for adjournment was moved by Majority leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu who argued the move is to ensure a serene environment for consideration of the controversial tax. It was supported by the Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu.

On Monday night, disagreements that heralded voting over the bill caused chaos in the House with some MPs punching their colleagues.

The Minority side were livid after the First Deputy Speaker of the House Joe Osei-Wusu who was presiding over affairs declared he was going to take part in voting which was being done by separation.

The Minority has insisted they are against the levy in all of its form and shape describing as killer levy.

The Majority insists the levy is needed to stop the country from its habitual borrowing.

The proposed levy, which was expected to come into effect on 1 February 2022, is a charge of 1.75% of the value of electronic transactions. It covers mobile money payments, bank transfers, merchant payments, and inward remittances. The originator of the transactions will bear the charge except for inward remittances, which will be borne by the recipient. There is an exemption for transactions up to GH100 ($16) per day.

---starrfmonline
Ghanas Parliament has been adjourned to January 18, 2022, after the chaos surrounding the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) in the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy Proposal of the ruling government.

First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei Owusu announced the adjournment of the house today, Tuesday, December 21, 2021.

It comes barely a day after a brawl broke out in Parliament over the debate on the controversial E-Levy.

Although the controversies around the levy have not been resolved in Parliament, Parliament has gone on recess for Members of Parliament to spend time with their families during the yuletide.

Speaking to the media after the announcement, Majority Leader Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu assured Ghanaians that there is no need to worry.

According to him, there is an approved budget and government will not be found wanting in the new year.

I think that this will also allow us some time to have further consultations among ourselves, it is the reason why the First Deputy Speaker had to adjourn the House sine die.

As you know, the budget has been passed, there was an attempt to portray that that there is no budget, there is a budget, the appropriations bill passed, Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu told the Press.
Associate Professor with the University of Ghana, Professor Ransford Gyampo has said anyone who will blame the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin for the brouhaha in the house on Monday night is a hypocrite.

Ghanas Parliament last night was turned upside down when the Minority and Majority clashed in a free for all fight.

In the discussion about the chaos in parliament, there are some that have blamed Speaker Alban Bagbin with the argument that his absence from the chamber did not help matters.

Reacting to those claims, Political Science lecturer Professor Gyampo says it is not accurate.

According to him, those blaming the Speaker are either ignorant or hypocrites.

So they must show leadership and they must be magnanimous in being sincerely conciliatory in reaching out to the other side. Ive heard the argument of putting the blame on the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin and I am saying those who canvass these arguments are either ignorant or they are hypocrites, Prof. Ransford Gyampo told Starr FM in an interview.

Meanwhile, hours after the controversy in Parliament, First Deputy Speaker Joseph Osei-Owusu has today, Tuesday, December 21, 2021, adjourned sitting to January 18, 2022.
Tigrayan forces fighting the central government have withdrawn from neighbouring regions in Ethiopia's north a step towards a possible ceasefire after major territorial gains by the Ethiopian military.

The 13-month-old war in Ethiopia has destabilised an already fragile region, sent 60,000 refugees into Sudan, pulled Ethiopian soldiers away from war-ravaged Somalia and drawn in armed forces from neighbouring Eritrea.

On Monday, Getachew Reda, a spokesman for the Tigray People's Liberation Front - the political party controlling most of the northerly region of Tigray - said on Twitter: "We have just completed the withdrawal of our forces from both Amhara and Afar regions."

Getachew added that the TPLF hoped the retreat would motivate the international community to put pressure on the governments of Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea - both allies in the conflict - to cease military operations in Tigray.

TPLF outlines its demands

TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael called for a no-fly zone for hostile aircraft over Tigray, arms embargoes on Ethiopia and Eritrea, and a U.N. mechanism to verify that external armed forces have left Tigray - all requests that the Ethiopian government is likely to oppose.

"We trust that our bold act of withdrawal will be a decisive opening for peace," Debretsion wrote in a letter to the United Nations outlining the TPLF's demands.

Ethiopian government spokesperson Legesse Tulu and the prime minister's spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A U.N. spokesman said Debretsion's letter was being studied and he had no immediate comment beyond that.

Rare opportunity for peace

Thousands of civilians have been killed as a result of the conflict, around 400,000 are facing famine in Tigray and 9.4 million people need food aid across northern Ethiopia.

Debretsion said he hoped the Tigrayan withdrawal would force the international community to ensure that food aid could enter Tigray.

The United Nations previously accused the government of operating a de facto blockade - a charge Addis Ababa has denied.

The TPLF accuses Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of wanting to centralise power at the expense of Ethiopia's regions. Abiy denies the accusation.

Abiy, whose appointment in 2018 brought nearly three decades of TPLF dominance over Ethiopia to an end, says the TPLF wanted to hang onto central power - something the Tigrayan leadership denies.

Trust building measures required

International mediators including the African Union and United States have repeatedly tried to negotiate a ceasefire to allow aid to enter Tigray, but both sides have refused until certain conditions were met.

In June, the Ethiopian and Eritrean militaries withdrew from Tigray after reports of mass killings of civilians, gang rapes and blocking of aid supplies.

The government has said it has prosecuted individual soldiers, although it has provided no details, and denied blocking aid.

In July, Tigrayan forces invaded Afar and Amhara. The Ethiopian military launched an offensive at the end of November that pushed the Tigrayan forces back hundreds of kilometres.

Local residents in Amhara have reported abuses such as killings and rapes by Tigrayan fighters.

The TPLF has said any soldiers found guilty would be punished.
21.12.2021 LISTEN

Political party is an entity which thrives on grassroots participation of every single person that believes in ideals it stands for. Sometimes, there are others who might not, necessarily, be attracted by ideological considerations but rather attraction the organization portrays through policies, programmes and conduct of decision-makers.

I have come into contact with ordinary people who tell me they are attracted to the NPP because they find the partys colour appealing. Others are attracted by just the demeanor of the man Nana Addo; and this was on display during the 2016 electioneering campaign where I had the rare privilege to be a member of Nana Addos campaign team as an Aide.

Tarkwa experience

I remember an incident with then-flagbearer Nana Addo on the 2016 campaign trail where upon arrival at Tarkwa at 2am in a heaving downpour, a young girl approached us, burst into uncontrollable crying and said I have completed JSS for two years now but I am still at home because my parents do not have money to pay for my SHS education so I am praying for Nana Addo to win so he will actualize FREE SHS for some of us to continue our education.

For such a person, how internal structures of NPP are managed, definitely, does not mean anything to her. Her motivation for being attached to the party is a policy alternative propounded by then-flagbearer; and like I have stated already, there are other millions of ordinary Ghanaians who might not be officially associated with the party but are attracted by policies and image it projects.

4-term agenda

I have always reminded appointees of the Nana Addo administration and officials of the NPP about what he told us, (the national communication team) at the party national headquarters when the verdict of 2008 did not go in our favor, thus FOR THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GHANA TO REAP THE BENEFITS OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE, THE NPP, WITH ITS ROOTS IN THE DANQUAH-BUSIA-DOMBO TRADITION MUST GOVERN FOR A PERIOD OF NOT LESS THAN 20YEARS, CONSECUTIVELY.

That opportunity, once again, eluded us in 2012 but with determination and resilience, the good people of Ghana bought into our message, spearheaded by amazing display of energy in campaigning by then flagbearer Nana Addo, and gave us the privilege to serve them.

And I deliberately chose the word PRIVILEDGE to stress home the fact that political power belongs to the governed and therefore can be taken away at any point in time.

The sure-bet to maintain power is doing what is in the best interests of the people, but not what those in authority think they can force down the throats of the governed.

It therefore stands to reason that, to ensure NPP stayed in power beyond the 8-year cyclical one-step-forward two-steps-backwards between NPP and ndc under the 4th Republican dispensation in order to actualize the dream Nana Addo told us about in 2008, we must do things in ways that will engender trust, build hope, consolidate credibility and enhance image of the NPP.

Past experience

Now, in 2008, the NPP was in power and processes leading to selection of parliamentary candidates for the 2012 elections were characterized by misunderstandings with resultant effect of others going independent.

Indeed, we had instances where some individuals the party wanted to protect out of good intentions, rather resulted in others being dissatisfied, going independent and actually winning.

In the end, it had a rippling effect on our ultimate electoral fortunes as a result of voter-apathy. The ndc suffered a similar fate during processes towards 2016, and they were trounced.

Primaries

On many occasions, I ran a lot of commentary on processes leading to our 2020 parliamentary primaries when issues of alleged denial of nomination form to some prospective aspirants in some constituencies were the order of the day.

We heard reports of constituency executives responsible for issuing nomination forms, either going into hiding, or, the forms running out.

Indeed, one can be spared for going into hiding at any point in time, since we enjoy freedom of movements as guaranteed under the 1992 constitution.

However, nominations forms cannot be said to have ran out, when the quantity supplied to a given constituency actually outstrips the number of those that have picked them. And this is where I had serious issue with managers of the process, the national executives .

For example; if 10 nomination forms have been sent to a constituency and 7 aspirants have gone to pick, what was the point coming out with a directive to others who have been told the forms had ran out at the constituency, to go to regional and ultimately national to secure a form, instead of calling the constituency executives to order?

Is it not when the numbers of prospective aspirants at a given constituency actually outstrip the quantity of forms supplied, that, others can be asked to go to regional or national?

And even if there is more demand at a given constituency, couldnt official request be made to national or regional for extra in order to spare prospective aspirants the hustle? The submission was characterized by its own peculiar shenanigan encumbrances.

Requirements

The vetting also did not go without uproar: Dr. Lawyer Addison, for example, was in the spotlight, generating a lot of contesting intra-party inferno.

From what I heard, he was disqualified on the grounds of not knowing every single polling station in the constituency he intended to represent in the August House. He was also said not to have nurtured the constituency and not known by the constituents.

Now, my problem with those reasons for which Lawyer Addison was disqualified is simple: for an individual to qualify to contest primaries of NPP, he/she must be;

Paid-up registered member Registered in the said constituency for not less than 2years A citizen of Ghana Of no criminal record Of sound mind

Absolutely nowhere in rules/regulations governing the process, is it stated that one must know, off-the-cuff, every single location of polling station in a given constituency, as a pre-requisite for contesting the primaries.

But if we are to insist on this requirement, then, it stands to reason that a regional officer is to have at his/her finger-tips, the number and location of every single polling station within the region; and this can be stretched to national officers.

The kingmakers

Theoretically, an individual perceived to be completely alien to a constituency will not be voted for by the constituents and therefore the decision must always be left to the local people in order to avoid all the uproar. But practically, someone perceived to be alien in a constituency can still be voted for by the constituents for varied reasons.

Akwatia experienced acrimony of apocalyptic proportions because the grassroots, possibly, wanted a candidate other than the one we presented. And in the end, we lost the seat.

Today, the MP for Fomina has become the messiah of NPP, following a knife-edge parliamentary results. But he, and those that supported his decision to go independent, would have become politically ostracized and thrown out of the party, as stipulated by it's constitution, if he had not won.

So I have always asked: what kind of intelligence work went into the decision to insist that the man was not the right candidate to win the seat on the ticket of NPP?

I am therefore of the belief that when an individual is not known in a constituency but qualifies to contest, per the party's laid-down requirements, he/she must be allowed to contest and the decision regarding his/her fate left in the bosom of the constituents.

Upcoming contests

Now, as current national party executives, you are going to superintend the coming intra-party elections from polling stations to national, of which some of you are also contestants. It is therefore incumbent on you to ensure the process is fair, credible and transparent.

You must always be guided by the saying that OPPOSITION PARTIES DO NOT WIN POWER BY UNITY AND STRENGTH BUT IT IS RATHER RULING PARTIES THAT LOSE POWER BY PROTRACTED INTERNAL CONTESTATIONS.

Inaccessibility

There is also the deluge of complaints about all the party's national executives being almost inaccessible, but one. Indeed, some of you national executives are much difficult to reach than even the sitting-President.

I have always suggested that the party's national secretariat be furnished with effective lines of communication to enable the grassroots stay in constant touch.

As National Executives, you are not supposed to be available to only inner circle of friends and aquitances. That is abominably inimical to the concept of grassroots mobilisiation, and deblitatingly deadly to the party's electoral fortunes.

Even in advanced democracies where their welfare system is impeccable and citizens do not need anything from their party officials, there are still effective lines of communication for ordinary party people to stay in touch.

So in our case where people have needs, it is important to always be accessible, not necessarily to dish out cash, but show empathy and concern.

Where there are opportunities, it must be spread beyond the boundaries of your favourites.

Our agenda

OUR AGENDA OF MAKING GHANA A BETTER PLACE GOES BEYOND 7TH DECEMBER, 2024; and that is why our time and energies must be expended on acts that generate PEACE, UNITY, EMPATHY, CARE, LOVE AND TRANQUILITY, rather than selfishness, cronyism and arrogance.

INDEED, THE ALTERNATIVE IS AN EYE-SORE BUT LET US NOT MAKE WHAT WE HAVE UNATTACTIVE.

God bless our homeland Ghana.

Newton-Offei Justice Abeeku

Email: [email protected]
21.12.2021 LISTEN

Kindly permit me a small space to bring to the attention of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) directorate a concern and some observation I have made at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in Accra, Ghana.

Firstly, let me say a big THANK YOU to the President of the Republic, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo and the officers of the Ghana Health Service and Ministry of Health for instituting stringent measures aimed at curbing the spread of the ongoing Corona Virus (COVID-19) pandemic and more recently the Omicron variant.

I have travelled to other countries in recent times and it is always refreshing to hear the good stories being told about Ghana`s determination and commitment to fighting the virus. This is an enviable and great achievement.

The recent announcement by President Akuffo Addo that all passengers travelling to Ghana must ensure they are vaccinated before arrival in Ghana received mixed reactions from citizens. That notwithstanding that approach has been hailed by some members of the international community.

Because of this requirement however among other things, traveling into the jurisdiction has become a bit painful, stressful, and sometimes more chaotic. In fact, those days when traveling was fun are gone for good as a result of these tight regulations.

Today, I share my personal experience on the COVID-19 measures at the Kotoka International Airport. On 17th December 2021, I joined about 150 passengers in a Kenya Airways flight from Sierra Leone to Ghana. We arrived at Kotoka International Airport around 9:00pm.

As fate would have it, much bigger flights like British Airways, KLM and Brussels Airlines landed within a space of 30-40minutes interval. I may not have the exact number of persons who were on board these flights, but your guess is as good as mine. The Airport was packed and filled with an estimated number of 600-700 passengers that evening due to the bigger flights.

There came the horrific exit protocols staring at me. Let me admit that, since I had completed and paid the USD50 (USD150 for non-Ghanaians) COVID-19 test fee, completed the Ghana Health Service requirements online (using the HDF Reference/Unique ID on the payslip) and followed the laid down process to undertake the COVID-19 test, it was relatively smoother and faster  in spite of the long queue. After this exercise, I went through the internal arrival rudiments to pick my luggage.

The process requires that, before a passenger moves out of the airport the passenger must obtain a manually printed COVID 19 laboratory results before the immigration officers will allow the passenger to exit. This is where I found an unbelievable and hectic process that passengers had to go through to obtain a printed COVID-19 laboratory report and show to custom officials before exit. There may be reasons best known to GHS for doing this but with all humility, this is not an efficient approach.

What amazes me is that, as soon as the COVID-19 test is taken, travellers are advised to be intermittently checking for the status at ghs-hdf.org using the passengers passport number to confirm if the laboratory report is ready. The question I and other passengers asked was that, why was the COVID-19 laboratory report itself not automated for those who may need it.

Meanwhile, this same report I queued to obtain is electronically signed by MLS Lawrence Annison. In my case, I didnt cut corners, I followed the laid down process and eventually left the airport at 11:45pm (thus spending 2hours 45minutes) - all due to the cumbersome protocols. It wasnt fun! And only God knows what was going through my head. In any case, it wasnt also the first time using the airport.

Every process implemented requires a review at some point in time. The essence is to ease traffic flow and reduce the stress passengers, who have travelled an average 4-6hours to be in Ghana, go through. In view of the above, I recommend the following for your kind consideration with the technical team:

Automate the entire process of obtaining the COVID-19 laboratory report after the test is taking at the arrival hall so that, passengers can show the results to Custom/Immigration officers and exit quickly. There should be the option for a passenger who prefers the manual print out of the COVID-19 Laboratory Report to access same through the current procedure. Due to the Christmas festivities, there will be a lot of travellers to KIA, it may be good to increase the personnel printing the laboratory results.

I am sure I may possibly not be using the right words to describe the disturbing situation at the Airport but it is worth noting that other travellers (both first time and regular) also expressed dissatisfaction and the painful experience they go through at the Airport. I believe that, to be the gateway and hub for the aviation industry in the sub-region, we will have to pay close attention to the teething challenges which frustrate passengers and threaten the drive to achieve this goal.

Maybe I am exaggerating but I think it will be important for our media personnel to take key interest in this and evaluate this claim. As the president of the republic encourages us to be citizens and not spectators, it`s in the same spirit that this problem is highlighted.

I therefore do not have interest in degrading the good work done by the health ministry but exploring alternatives to improve life, wellbeing and precious time spent at the arrival hall. I will check again on 29th January 2022 and reassess the situation.

God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong

Thank you for reading.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are personal views and doesnt represent that of the media house or institution the writer works.

Credit Mrs Miriam Amoako,

About the writer

Carl Odame-Gyenti, PhD is a Finance and Investment professional, Director and Country Head, Client Coverage of an International Bank in Sierra Leone. Contact: [email protected] , Cell: +233 200301110
21.12.2021 LISTEN

The struggles of the NPP in parliament and the blows some of our NPPs suffered, is a reflection of a failed strategy by the party in the 2020 elections.

The lack of democratic process and subtle imposition of certain individuals who were not the choice of the electorate but preferred by the party executives at the national and constituency levels was the NPPs biggest mistake.

This is what caused the skirt and blouse voting and has resulted in a hung parliament that trades blows to vote.

Politics is a game of strategy and maximizing your numbers.

Any party that will get this right will win the 2024 elections in a one-touch victory.

The blows that occurred in parliament show that NPPs strategy of maximizing our numbers in parliament was a total disaster.

Our own internal political pettiness, to borrow this phrase from my good brother Ebo Buckman has led to the partys cataclysmic state in parliament.

We didnt get our strategy right and the drop in our numbers in parliament from 169 to 137 is evidence of the partys failed strategy.

WHY A FLAGBEARER WHO IS A UNIFIER?

The next Flagbearer of the NPP must be someone with a track record of ensuring unity.

Remember, we have more than thirty-two (32) seats to win back.

The question is, which candidate can rally the rank and file of the Party and bring back our lost seats.

Winning back our lost seat will take a candidate who has been tried, tested, and proven.

One who understands the need to bring everybody on board and not be vindictive.

ALAN KYEREMATEN THE UNIFIER:

A great reason why NPP should elect Alan for 2024, is that Alan is a Unifier.

In 2007, after a hard-fought battle of 17 aspirants, it became clear that President Nana Addo and Alan Kyerematen will battle it out for the second round.

Wait - Something special happened that took everyone by surprise. Alan Kyerematen requested the microphone.

Note, that the Electoral Commission (EC), had requested both candidates' pictures.

This was so that a new ballot will be printed for the second round of voting, which will need more hours of voting in the early morning of the next day.

When Alan Kyerematen spoke after he received the microphone, he declared that he will not contest President Nana Addo for the second round.

He conceded the victory to the current President and stated that he did that to preserve the unity of the NPP.

This was a magnanimous act that saved the party from breaking up.

Alan Kyerematen sacrificed his ambition to ensure that the unity of the party was preserved.

If this selfless act isnt a true embodiment of unity, then I cant think far.

A FRESH FACE TO WIN BACK OUR SEATS:

Alan Kyerematen will be a fresh face for the Partys presidential bid after 16 years of the NPP/Akufo-Addo/Bawumia face.

It will be disastrous considering what has happened in parliament to put on someone who was part of the ticket that has caused a CALAMITOUS FALL in parliament.

A fresh face - Alan - most definitely will attract more votes for the party and help lead the party to win back our seats in parliament.

He can maximize our votes from our Stronghold (Ashanti Region), whilst attracting floating voters from other parts of our political market. (Women, youth, religion markets).

The man Alan has paid his dues and stands ready to embrace both friend and opponent to lead a United charge to win back our seats and ensure victory 2024.

Lets win back our seats and break the 8, with Alan Kyerematen the party stalwart who is credible, honest and has served loyally since 1992.

I Remain Terry Afram-Kumi,

Product of Adabraka R/C JHS,

Adabraka - Accra.
The United States said Tuesday it will distribute hundreds of millions of free Covid tests in the face of surging Omicron cases, which have forced governments worldwide to reimpose restrictions ahead of the holidays.

Washington also said Tuesday it will donate more than $500 million in international Covid aid to help countries battle the pandemic, while Israel announced tough new restriction on US travel.

Amid fears that the highly-mutated variant might not be as effective against vaccines, the EU medicines watchdog said it was too soon to say if drug companies needed to develop an Omicron-specific jab.

Omicron, now present in dozens of countries, appears to be more infectious, despite early indications that it does not cause a more severe form of Covid-19 than the Delta strain.

Its lightning dash around the globe has forced governments to reimpose restrictions ahead of the holidays, dampening hopes the worst of the pandemic is over.

A White House official said the US will distribute 500 million free Covid tests as Omicron cases rise. By Joseph Prezioso (AFP)

US President Joe Biden was due to address the nation later Tuesday after a White House official said the government will distribute 500 million free Covid tests and mobilize military medical personnel if needed.

"We have the tools to get through this wave," the official said, noting there are no plans to impose new restrictions.

The United States will also give $580 million (654 million euros) in additional aid to international organizations to fight Covid in the face of surging Omicron cases, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

One week of new Covid-19 cases. By Laurence CHU (AFP)

The announcements come after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Omicron now accounts for 73.2 percent of new US cases over the past week ending Saturday.

Denmark said Tuesday it had also become the dominant strain there.

Biden took to Twitter late Monday to encourage people to get vaccinated and adopt safety measures like mask-wearing, warning that Omicron cases are on the rise.

"If you're an adult choosing to be unvaccinated, you will face an extremely difficult winter for your family and community," he said.

'Celebrate later'

As Omicron fears loomed large over the end-of-year holidays, Israel become the latest nation to reimpose tough restrictions in an effort to contain Omicron.

Lawmakers Tuesday banned citizens and residents from US travel, adding it to a list of more than 50 countries declared off-limits, including Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Morocco, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey.

People queue at a street-side Covid-19 testing booth in New York's Times Square on December 20, 2021 as omicron was announced to be the dominant strain in the United States. By Ed JONES (AFP)

The news comes after WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for nations to redouble efforts to help end the pandemic, urging new year events to be cancelled because it was better to "celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later."

"We have to focus now on ending this pandemic," he said Monday.

Paris has already cancelled its new year celebrations, and Germany is expected to roll out tight restrictions on private parties and to close nightclubs.

Spain's Catalonia region is considering a clampdown as well, while Morocco has announced a blanket ban on New Year's Eve celebrations.

The Netherlands has already imposed a Christmas lockdown, with EU officials warning that the Omicron variant could be dominant in Europe by mid-January.

Scientists are racing to know more about Omicron, first detected last month in South Africa, with infections reported among double vaccinated people around the world.

The head of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it was too soon to say whether an Omicron-specific vaccine was necessary, adding that more data was needed.

"There's no answer yet on whether we will need an adaptive vaccine with a different composition to tackle this (Omicron) or any other variants," Emer Cooke said.

Her comments came as the WHO approved another vaccine on Tuesday, from US firm Novavax.

The jab was authorised by the EU on Monday, the fifth in the bloc after vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

Officials hope Novavax's vaccine, made from a more conventional technology than the others, will help persuade those hesitant about vaccination to get inoculated.

burs-jv/yad
Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin's absence in the House on Monday night was not a deliberate attempt to frustrate government business, Deputy Minority Leader, James Klutse Avedzi has said.

Addressing journalists on Tuesday, December 21, 2021, after parliament adjourned sitting to January 18, 2022, Mr. Avedzi said Alban Bagbin's absence was purely based on health grounds.

He was responding to the Deputy Majority Leader, Afenyo Markin's claim that Bagbin 's absence throughout the first part of last night's sitting to debate on the e-levy appeared to be part of a grand plan by the minority to frustrate the approval of the e-levy bill.

He [Afenyo Markin] said Bagbin's absence was a deliberate act to frustrate government business. That is a complete lie. It is not true. We all know Bagbin just returned from Dubai where he went for medical treatment, and he must obey the instructions of his doctors, Mr. Avedzi said.

He also dismissed Afenyo-Markins claim suggesting that Alban Bagbin had failed to show leadership amid the controversy surrounding the passage of the 2022 budget.

If Bagbin was not showing leadership, he would have reversed the wrongs by the first Deputy Speaker, but for the fact that he wanted the country to move on, he said he will not do anything to overturn the decisions, so for Afenyo-Markin to say that Bagbin is not showing leadership is very surprising.

He is the only person who has served Parliament for 28 good years. Everybody should disregard the comments from Afenyo-Markin in relation to the leadership style of Bagbin.

The debate on the controversial e-levy bill in Parliament was expected to bring finality to an arguably long-standing disagreement over the 2022 Budget, but it ended up in a brawl as some MPs exchanged blows.

While taking votes on whether the E-levy bill should be taken under a certificate of urgency, the minority got infuriated over an attempt by the presiding Speaker, Joe Osei-Owusu to leave the chair to cast his vote.

The Minority had earlier argued that per parliament's standing orders, the Speaker of Parliament does not have a casting vote, however, Joe Osei Owusu indicated that he would still vote.

The brawl saw dozens of the opposition parliamentarians exchange fisticuffs with their colleagues on the majority side while some officials of parliament tried to protect the Speaker's seat and the mace of parliament from being attacked.

However, calm returned moments after, before the Second Deputy Speaker, Andrew Asiamah, adjourned the sitting.

citinewsroom
21.12.2021 LISTEN

Deputy Minority Leader James Klutse Avedzi has said the absence of the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Alban Bagbin, from the house on Monday night during a sitting on the controversial e-levy bill was not deliberate.

He told journalists on Tuesday, 21 December 2021, that Deputy Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markins claim that Mr Bagbins absence was part of a grand scheme by the Minority Caucus to frustrate the e-levy, was baseless.

He [Afenyo Markin] said Bagbins absence was a deliberate act to frustrate government business. That is a complete lie. It is not true. We all know Bagbin just returned from Dubai where he went for medical treatment, and he must obey the instructions of his doctors, Mr Avedzi said.

If Bagbin was not showing leadership, he would have reversed the wrongs by the first Deputy Speaker, but for the fact that he wanted the country to move on, he said he will not do anything to overturn the decisions, so, for Afenyo-Markin to say that Bagbin is not showing leadership. is very surprising.

He is the only person who has served Parliament for 28 good years. Everybody should disregard the comments from Afenyo-Markin in relation to the leadership style of Bagbin.

Meanwhile, Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has said First Deputy Speaker Joe Osei-Owusu was excusing himself during Monday nights sitting to take his medication and go to the washroom but not necessarily to take part in the voting process.

The house was thrown into chaos amidst fisticuffs during a vote on the e-levy bill.

The free-for-all brawl started after the Minority tried stopping Mr Osei-Owusu, who was presiding over the business of the house, from going onto the floor to take part in the vote.

According to Mr Kyei-Menash-Bonsu, however, the Bekwai MP was not well and, so, needed a respite during the balloting on the floor about whether or not the controversial 1.75 per cent e-levy should be considered under a certificate of urgency.

Is it the case that a speaker cant even excuse himself to visit the loo? Is it the case? Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu asked in an interview with the parliamentary press.

The man was indisposed, he noted, adding: He was shivering.

And he went to the clinic; the record is there. So, we had to persuade him to come and sit. He was in the chamber and he was shaking like a leaf.

We had to go and prevail on him to come and preside, the Suame MP stressed.

Of course, he pointed out, if hes presiding, given his own long tenure in Parliament, his own understanding of the rules and procedures in Parliament, we thought that hed be able to navigate crises periods, with respect, much more than the second deputy speaker but it was getting too much for him.

So, he said he wanted to excuse himself to take his medication and then, perhaps, to come back if he felt okay, or, perhaps, maybe to sit somewhere, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said.

Asked if Mr Osei-Owusu was not excusing himself so he could take part in the voting on the floor, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu retorted: What if he did? What if he did to take his medication and he came, voting was not over and he thought that because somebody else what presiding he could participate in that? What of that? Is there any illegality in that? Theres no illegality.

---classfmonline.com
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Banda Constituency, Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim has accused Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu of being a threat to Ghanas democracy.

Speaking in an interview on Asempa FM's Eko sii sen programme on Tuesday, the NDC MP said the Majority Leader is the cause of the brawl in Parliament on Monday night.

According to him, the Suame MP used delay tactics to drag sitting late into the night, forcing Speaker Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin to miss proceedings.

Defending the Speaker who has been blamed for the chaos in Parliament by some people, Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim insists that fingers should be pointed at the Majority Leader who to him, is a danger to democracy in the country.

He is a dangerous creature for Ghana's democracy. He does not want to cooperate with the Speaker to conduct Parliament business. It is very unfair.

Alban Bagbin never abandoned Parliament business, Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim who doubles as the Deputy Minority Chief Whip in Parliament shared.

Today, First Deputy Speaker of Parliament Joseph Osei-Owusu has adjourned sitting to January 18, 2022, as MPs break for the yuletide season.
21.12.2021 LISTEN

Energy sector consulting firm, Arthur Energy Advisors (AEA), has been adjudged Consultancy Service Organization of the Year at the 2021 Ghana Energy Awards (GEA).

The 2021 Awards ceremony was under the theme; Digitalised Energy Sector: The Key For A Resilient Economic Future. Organised by the Energy Media Group in Partnership the GP Business Consulting, the Ghana Energy Awards aims to recognize the efforts, innovations, and excellence of stalwarts in the energy sector.

The Minister of Energy, Hon. Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh was the Special Guest of Honour. Also present among other dignitaries was Former President John Agyekum Kufuor at the event held at the Labadi Beach Hotel in Accra.

Arthur Energy Advisors was awarded for its cutting-edge Consultancy Services to companies operating in the country to help Ghana meet its energy needs.

Managing Partner of the firm Ing. Jabesh Amissah-Arthur dedicated the award to its dedicated Staff, Clients and Partners.

Our work being recognized in this way encourages the Partners to double their efforts because we seem to be on the right track. And it makes the whole AEA team feel proud of its efforts over the past year, he said.

Ing. Amissah-Arthur added that the award will inspire the firm to do more going into the future. You can expect to hear more about the impact of our work in the West African energy sector, he said.

AEA delivers technical energy sector advisory and consultancy services in the areas of project definition and development, project management and execution, energy strategy and resource planning, energy regulation and policy development in Ghana and West Africa.

We have focused our efforts on large scale projects with wider technical, commercial and economic impact. We have been involved in aiding distribution utilities to improve their grid and operational efficiency using advanced technological tools for grid verification, loss reduction, planning and revenue recovery improvements. We hope to progressively deploy similar solutions to support other utilities across the sub-region, the Managing Partner added.
An Adentan Circuit Court has sentenced a 23-year-old mason to three years imprisonment for breaking into a Supermarket and stealing the safe containing GHS4,791 and provisions at Oyarifa, Accra.

Michael Kofi aka Mystical, charged with unlawful entry, causing unlawful damage and stealing, pleaded guilty.

The Court presided over by Mrs Sedinam Awo Balokah convicted Kofi on his own plea.

According to the Trial Judge, she took into consideration accused quick admission of guilt and the fact that the items had been retrieved.

It ordered that the items retrieved should be given to the owner and complainant, Francis Okoh Okai.

Police Chief Inspector Jacob Nyarko narrated that the complainant is an accountant and owner of Ghana Flag Supermarket at Oyarifa. Accused also resided at Oyarifa, K. Ofori area.

Prosecution said in recent times, there had been series of reported cases of break-in in Oyarifa and surrounding communities and efforts to get the culprits had proved futile.

The Prosecutor said on December 10, this year at about 3:00am, Kofi broke into the complainant's supermarket at Oyarifa and caused damage to the main door leading to the Supermarket by using a crowbar, hacksaw, a pair of pliers and cement block.

Chief Inspector Nyarko said accused ransacked the place and stole assorted provisions.

According to the Prosecutor, accused also broke into the Manager's office and made away with a Dell Laptop with its charger valued at GHS3,600 and cash of GHS4,791.

While exiting with the booty, prosecution said luck eluded accused.

Accused was nabbed by witnesses when took to his heels.

Prosecution said accused was escorted to the Ayi Mensah Police Station together with the exhibits.

Accused in his caution statement admitted the offence and mentioned one Moses, now at large, as his accomplice.

GNA
Weija Business Centre, a branch of the Asa Savings and Loans Limited has donated to Lepers Aid Committee Ghana at Weija in the Greater Accra Region 13th December, 2021.

The items include food items and drugs such as methylated spirit, bandages, plaster, cotton, drez solution, guaze, nose masks, gloves, liquid soaps, tissue papers, paracetamol, bags of rice, bags of sugar, bottles of oil, packs of tin tomatoes, packs of milk, troll, packs of sardine, milo and spaghetti.

Regina G. Amu, the Branch Manager of the Weija Business Centre said the donation forms part of their Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSRs) to give back to the community.

She noted that her outfit saw it necessary to support the wellbeing of the lepers who are adults and aged.

According to her, the donation which includes drugs will go a long way to support Lepers Aid Committee Ghana to improve the health condition of the lepers.
Remember the Right to Information (RTI) activist Bipin Agarwal, a resident of Motihari town of the East Champaran district of Bihar, who was shot dead on 24th September in broad daylight on a busy road, by two assailants astride a motorcycle? He was allegedly killed because of his incessant exposure of illegal encroachment by influential people on government land and other corruption issues!

In a note recently written in his own handwriting to the superintendent of police, Motihari, the slain activists eight-year-old son says: Since, till date there has not been a single arrest, there seems no hope of justice for my father who was brutally murdered. And due to the alleged nexus between the police and the criminals, we are running from pillar to post for the last three months and havent obtained even his death certificate. This is frustrating us. It looks like senior police officers are not on the side of the affected family of the victim. Since no one is lending us an ear, I am compelled to go on fast in front of my house from 21st December.

And, indeed, Rohit has begun his fast since morning in front of his house, gathering sympathy and support of many citizens. When Moneylife contacted him, he stated, My father was brutally killed and no one is arresting the culprits. Im going to sit on fast till the chief minister comes to meet me and give me an assurance.

Rohits visibly disturbed 70-year-old grandfather Vijay Agarwal, says, The kid is so angry and frustrated over the killers still being at large. The murder of my son is clearly an administrative and political murder, which is why not a single arrest has been made so far. They are yet to make an arrest. Even in 2020 some goons had attacked our house. Clearly, the goons, with the active protection of the powers-that-be, are going scot free while we are suffering immensely, emotionally and financially.

When asked whether he is even hopeful if the chief minister (CM) will visit his house, which is the desire of his grandson Rohit, the grandfather, Vijay Agrawal says, After all, he is a child. For him the most important thing is to arrest his fathers killers, hence he has made that statement.

Moneylife Impact: Main Accused Arrested Citizen and media pressure works!



Eight-year-old Rohit Agrawal who is on a dharna had written a letter on 12th December to various police officers to protest against no arrests in the case of his father's murder and harassment faced for procuring his father's death certificate. On 19th December, the family finally received the death certificate after nearly three months of Bipin Agarwal's murder.



Similarly, post the story in Moneylife on 21st December, Abhinav Dhiman, the sub-divisional police officer (SDPO), who is investigating the case confirmed that, "the main accused Ajay Singh was arrested last night in a raid conducted by me with one weapon and fully loaded magazine. Altogether, five arrests have been made so far."



He further added, qualifying delay in taking action, that, "though in events like these its natural to pit the police in the forefront for inaction or maybe collusion; as law enforcers we also have to make sure that the innocent are not falsely implicated."



Young Rohit is finding means to meet the CM of Bihar. Meanwhile Aam Admi Party (AAP) while re-tweeting our story has asked its party workers in Bihar to help the boy.

Abhinav Dhiman, the sub-divisional police officer (SDPO), who is investigating the case contests the claims of the Agrawal family. When contacted, he stated, I think the family is not happy with the three arrests  the main three who were the shooters - which have been made. They want more people to be arrested which will happen soon. We are conducting further raids and necessary action is being taken.

Has he approached the family now that the eight-year child is sitting on fast? Yes, we have informed the family about the progress of the case, he says.

Read: Slain RTI Activists Anguished Father More Interested in Securing the Future of His Sons Children Than Nailing His Murderer ) Narrating the reason why his son was killed, Vijay Agarwal, had earlier stated, My son was a small-time businessman and would spend most of his money in his RTI activism. For the last 10-15 years, he had been doggedly pursuing RTI for bank scams, corruption in local bodies and mainly illegal encroachments by private individuals on large tracts of government land. He had also filed a petition in the High Court for which many encroachers had been served notices to vacate the lands. The hearing of the case is still going on. But now that he is gone and we will never get him back, I am worried about the future of his three sons, aged eight, 10 and 13 years old. I would appeal to the administration and the society to secure a good future by supporting their education. That is more important for me now than nabbing the criminals. (
Investors of Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL) have been paid back Rs138.07 crore, including Rs70.09 crore as principal and Rs67.98 crore as an interest, the Lok Sabha was informed on Monday.

In a written reply, the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman says, In response to the various press releases and advertisements, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) received 19,644 applications in total, involving 53,642 original bond certificates or passbooks for an aggregate principal amount of Rs81.70 crore. On the basis of verifiable documents, SEBI made refunds with respect to 17,526 eligible bondholders involving 48,326 original bond certificates and passbooks for an aggregate amount of Rs138.07 crore (i.e., Rs70.09 crore as principal and Rs67.98 crore as an interest) by way of transfer through national electronic funds transfer (NEFT) and real-time gross settlement (RTGS).

On 31 August 2012, the Supreme Court of India (SC) handed down a historic verdict asking SIRECL and SHICL to refund Rs19,400.87 crore and Rs6,380.50 crore, respectively, to investors as the funds were illegally raised through quasi-debentures without regulatory clearance.

These two Sahara group companies collected Rs25,781.37 crore from around 3.07 crore investors through red herring prospectuses (RHP) on optionally fully convertible debentures dated 13 March 2008 and 16 October 2009 of SIRECL and SHICL, respectively.

As of 30 November 2021, the Sahara companies have deposited an aggregate amount of Rs15,485.80 crore against the principal amount Rs25,781.37 crore into the designated SEBI-Sahara Refund account, the minister says.

Gajanan Chandrakant Kirtikar, a member of Parliament (MP) from Mumbai, had asked about the status of repayment to investors of Sahara. He had asked whether the Union government is aware that the Sahara India group could not pay back the investors of other schemes due to the embargo placed on them and about measures being taken to ensure lifting of the embargo.

However, Ms Sitharaman only shared information on money deposited by Sahara group and efforts taken by SEBI to refund the money to investors. She says, As regards Sahara India group not being able to pay back the investors of other schemes, it informed that the principal amount raised under RHP of optionally fully convertible debentures of SIRCEL and SHICL is Rs25,781.37 crore against which only Rs15,485.80 crore has been deposited in the SEBI-Sahara refund account and SEBI has been facilitating the repayment of principal and interest to the investors who invested in optionally fully convertible debentures of SIRCEL and SHICL.

As reported by Moneylife, while SEBI cannot find investors of the realty companies, lakhs of genuine investors are coming forward from all over the country demanding payment. They were lured into investing in the controversial group through four giant cooperative societies spread across India. Many have a genuine claim to the money collected by SEBI. Still, the regulator is sticking to a narrow definition of what the Supreme Court has ordered and is making no effort to help investors who were duped.

It was never the Supreme Courts intention that SEBI sit on the money. Moreover, the regulator is clearly out of ideas and it may be time for the SC to set up a committee to collect all valid claims and distribute the money. The big difference today is that there are lakhs of genuine investors who have been dupedunlike in the past when it was impossible to find a Sahara investor. ( Read: Sahara Refunds: Did the SC Want SEBI To Sit on Rs15,448.67 Crore for a Decade?
This story was originally published by ProPublica.

The worlds largest chemical maker, BASF, produces ingredients for Americas most popular products, from soaps to surface cleaners to dishwasher detergent. Emissions from their U.S. plants elevate cancer risks for an estimated 1.5 million people.

Hollie Walker cherished the simplicity of her life in White Stone, South Carolina, a tiny community on the outskirts of Spartanburg. In the quiet of the country, she and her husband raised their two sons in a yellow house on 37 acres of secluded land, where they hiked in the woods and swam in their lake. Today, the area is home to a one-room post office, two churches, and a shooting range open three days a week. For years in the 1990s, Walker worked behind the counter at the post office.

There used to be a bar called the White Stone Mall on the same stretch of highway, where Walker would sip beers, shoot pool and chat with workers getting off their shifts from a chemical plant across the street. She didnt know much about the German-owned company, BASF, that operated the plant. After BASF expanded its site in the 2000s, demolishing the bar in the process, she had little reason to stop along that highway, except when the railroad gates halted traffic.

The passing trains carried tank cars of chemicals bound for White Stones BASF plant, a fleeting moment in an epic multi-state journey during which BASF transforms natural gas into specialized, secretive compounds that are the building blocks of ubiquitous cleaning products. BASF isnt a household name like Procter & Gamble, but the ingredients it creates are essential to the success of that companys products, allowing dirt stains to be lifted from clothes and egg yolk to be washed off plates.

The long, winding path from shale rock to the kitchen cabinet contributes to massive sales for BASF, the worlds largest chemical maker. But for the companys neighbors, the journey leaves behind a trail of toxic pollution that has placed hundreds of thousands of people  including Walker  in harms way.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency aspires to minimize the number of people exposed to emissions that increase excess cancer risk above 1 in 1 million. That risk level means that if 1 million people in an area were exposed to toxic air pollutants over a presumed lifetime of 70 years, there would likely be at least one case of cancer on top of those from risks people already face. But a ProPublica analysis found that the EPA effectively allows two dozen BASF plants nationwide to expose an estimated 1.5 million Americans to elevated cancer risks greater than 1 in 1 million. EPA rules also say that plants should never expose people to an additional lifetime cancer risk that exceeds 1 in 10,000. Yet an estimated 2,800 people who live near BASF plants around the country face risks at least that high because of the companys emissions, according to our analysis. Our analysis is based on an EPA screening tool that uses data reported by companies such as BASF. It cannot be used to assess the cause of individual cancer cases, but can identify geographic areas of potential concern.

BASFs footprint of cancer-causing air pollution is larger than that of any other foreign-owned company in the U.S. and is the fourth-largest toxic footprint among all companies operating in this country, according to our analysis.
December 21, 2021 Iran And The Houthi Split? No, A Reporter Fell For 'Exclusive' Spin. Last Friday, December 17, the Wall Street Journal published an 'Exclusive' that claimed a breach of relations between the Houthis in Yemen and their Iranian benefactors. It is an example for how official spin and the hunt for 'exclusives' outweigh a reporters knowledge of local circumstance.

bigger The piece, reproduced here in full by Yemen Online, asserted that the Houthi wanted to get rid of the Iranian ambassador to the parts of Yemen they hold: A member of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was smuggled into Yemen last year and named the ambassador to the countrys Houthi-rebel-controlled areas. Now, the Houthis want to send him back to Tehran, Middle Eastern and Western officials said. The Houthi forces have asked Saudi Arabia, which maintains a sweeping air blockade of Yemens capital, to let the top Iranian diplomat in the country immediately fly back to Iran, a request seen by Saudi officials as a sign of strains between Tehran and the militant group.

...

Irloo has become a burden for them, said one regional official. Hes a political problem. To me that immediately sounded like bullshit. I follow the war on Yemen and there are no signs that Iranian support for the Houthi is waning and there was no news of any trouble between both parties: The Saudis told Houthi leaders that they wouldnt let Iran fly a plane to Yemen to get Mr. Irloo, according to regional officials. Instead, the officials said, Mr. Irloo could only fly out on a plane from Oman or Iraq and would only be allowed to leave if the Houthis freed some high-profile Saudi hostages.

...

In recent days, Houthi leaders asked Saudi officials for permission to put Mr. Irloo on a flight back to Tehran, the regional and Western officials said. Houthi officials assured Riyadh that they wouldnt replace Mr. Irloo with a new Iranian diplomat. Riyadh took this as a sign that the Houthis were trying to distance themselves from Tehrans influence, according to regional officials. Houthi leaders told Riyadh that Mr. Irloo needed to leave to get better medical treatment after contracting Covid-19, the officials said. But regional officials said Mr. Irloo was still holding meetings in Yemen and said there were no signs he had Covid-19. Today we learn that Ambassador Irloo has died of Covid-19: Iran's ambassador to Yemen, Hassan Irloo, has passed away of COVID-19 complications after certain countries delayed his return home for medical treatment. Irloo had earlier this week been repatriated from Yemen amid Saudi aerial blockade on the war-torn Arab country to receive treatment at a hospital in Tehran. Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for Irans Foreign Ministry, said the envoy passed away from complications related to the coronavirus in the early hours of Tuesday. He said Irloo was transferred to the country in a bad state and due to late cooperation of some countries, a reference to Saudi Arabia. Irloo had, like many Iranians of his age, a bad precondition that made a survival of Covid-19 very difficult: A war veteran, Irloo had sustained injuries from chemical warfare attacks on Iran during Iraqs 1980-88 imposed war, backed by the West. He contracted the coronavirus at the place of his mission, and passed away early on Tuesday despite undergoing all stages of treatment to improve his condition, Khatibzadeh said. The WSJ 'exclusive' was obviously planted by Saudi sources who tried to justify the delayed transfer of Ambassador Irloo and were spreading disinformation about a Iran Houthi split. Dion Nissenbaum, the reporter who wrote the WSJ story, is based in Beirut and has lots of experience in the Middle East. He did some good work for McClatchy during the war on Iraq. It is sad to see him falling for the spin 'Middle Eastern and Western officials' were selling him. To his excuse he had added this: Iranian officials didnt respond Friday to requests for comment. Houthi leaders didnt respond to questions seeking comment. However, Friday is the equivalent of Sunday in Muslim societies and nearly all officials will not have been in their office. But the 'exclusive' spin could not wait for Iran to debunk it: The Wall Street Journal claimed on Friday that the envoy showed no signs of COVID-19, and quoted anonymous officials from the Mideast and Western officials as saying that the ambassador was recalled to Tehran over "strains with the Ansarullah movement." Tehran rejected the claims, stressing that Tehran-Sanaa relations are stronger than before. Ibrahim al-Dailami, Yemens ambassador to Tehran, also dismissed the report in an interview with IRNA published on Sunday. We should not respond to such nonsense, which the American media publish from time to time in order to take advantage of the [dire situation] and poison the atmosphere, Dailami said, adding that relations between Tehran and Sanaa were developing rapidly. Ambassador Irloo was evacuated from Sanaa on an Iraqi plane on Saturday, December 18. He died last night. The Saudis will see that as a 'win'. Also last night they (again) bombed the airport of Sanaa and made any further evacuation and aid flights impossible: UN aid flights into Yemen's rebel-held capital Sanaa have been halted by air strikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition which supports the government, an airport official said Tuesday. Because of coalition air strikes targeting the Huthi rebels, "the airport is no longer able to receive aircraft operated by the United Nations or international humanitarian organisations", the official told AFP. Flights into Sanaa airport have been largely halted by a Saudi-led blockade since August 2016, but there have been exemptions for aid flights that are a key lifeline for the population. The airport official, who asked not to be identified, called on the United Nations to secure a halt to the raids so that the airport could resume operations. Those fireworks were probably the Saudi's way to celebrate the death of the Iranian envoy. Posted by b on December 21, 2021 at 17:25 UTC | Permalink Comments
OECUSSE, East Timor (AP)  A defrocked American priest accused of sexually abusing orphaned and disadvantaged young girls under his care in East Timor was found guilty Tuesday and sentenced to 12 years in prison, in the first case of its kind in the staunchly Catholic nation.

Richard Daschbach, 84, who spent decades as a missionary in the countrys remote enclave of Oecusse, faced charges of child sexual abuse as well as child pornography and domestic violence.

The trial began in February but was postponed several times before concluding last month. During the proceedings, victims complained about threats and online attacks. Daschbach maintains strong backing from some, including former President Xanana Gusmao, who went to the court on Tuesday. East Timor is the most Catholic place outside the Vatican and Daschbach is revered for his role during the tiny Southeast Asian nations fight for independence.

The church and foreign donors who once supported Daschbach's shelter said he confessed to the abuse, but the former priest and his lawyers have at various times refused to comment. They did not make their legal strategy public and court proceedings were closed.

Daschbach, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, was ordained in 1964 by the Society of the Divine Word at its headquarters outside of Chicago. He arrived in the country now known as East Timor several years later, setting up a shelter in the 1990s named Topu Honis, which means Guide to Life.

Hundreds of children passed through the shelter under Daschbachs care. More than a dozen females came forward with abuse claims, but only nine were registered in the case due to legal technicalities. The Associated Press spoke with five of the accusers.

They recalled their experiences in vivid detail, saying Daschbach kept a list of young girls on his bedroom door and that every night one of those girls would sit on his lap, surrounded by a ring of children and staff members praying and singing hymns before bed.

They said the girl on his lap would then sleep with him that night and that various types of abuse - from oral sex to rape - would occur, sometimes involving other children too. The accusers have not been identified because of fears of retribution.

Daschbachs lawyer, Miguel Faria, said they are disappointed with the courts verdict and plan to appeal the decision issued by the three judges.

Evidence provided by the shelter matron and former students who lived in the orphanage were ignored by the court, Faria told reporters, alleging that some accusers changed their statements made earlier to authorities in Oecusse after being taken to the capital, Dili, and the new statements became the sole basis for the judges decision.

We cannot accept this and will appeal, Faria said.

Dozens of Daschbachs supporters, including several children brought by Gusmao from Dili, wept and some were screaming as it became clear the court would sentence the former priest to jail. Some in the impoverished enclave revere Daschbach so highly, they believe he possesses special powers and is the victim of a conspiracy.

In a statement Tuesday, JU,S Juridico Social, a group of human rights lawyers representing the accusers, applauded the verdict but said it would appeal, arguing that the sentence should be harsher. Under the law, Daschbach faced more than twice the prison time he received.

The history written today is a bitter history for the entire nation, the group said. Our children were subjected to horrendous crimes for such a long time because we, as a society, were blinded by the belief that a figure as the defendant in this case would not commit such crimes against children.

Separately, a U.S. federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Daschbach in August. He faces seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct at the shelter. If convicted in the U.S., Daschbach could receive up to 30 years in prison for each count, but the Department of Justice has not said whether it plans to try to extradite the ex-priest.

Daschbach also is wanted in the U.S. on three counts of wire fraud linked to one of his California-based donors, which accused him in a court case of violating an agreement to protect those under his care. An Interpol Red Notice has been issued internationally for Daschbach's arrest.
MONTGENEVRE, France (AP)  From the inky night, two women loomed. Police? The wary migrants, crossing the high-altitude Alpine border clandestinely from Italy to France, couldn't be sure. They scattered and ran.

In fact, the women wanted to help the Moroccans evade border patrols, not detain them. They distributed hand-warmers to the shivering migrants, helped them hide in snowy woods until the coast was clear, and then steered them to waiting cars that whisked them from the frozen peaks to a warm shelter.

They treated us like humans," said Hamid Saous, among the rescued. "Not everyone does that.

As Europe erects ever more fearsome barriers against migration, volunteers working along the Italy-France border to keep migrants from being killed or maimed by cold and mountain mishaps are driven by a simple creed: The exiles from conflict zones and oppression of all kinds who trek through the Alps and onward to European cities in search of brighter futures are people, first and foremost.

Armed with thermoses of hot tea and the belief that their own humanity would be diminished if they left pregnant women, children and men young and old to fend for themselves, the Alpine helpers are a counter-argument to populist politicians with large followings in Europe who say migrants, particularly Muslims and Africans, are threatening European livelihoods and liberal traditions.

In the Alps, on both sides of the border, the approach is essentially humanist and humanitarian, grounded in local traditions of not leaving people alone against the elements. Starting around 2016, when they first began encountering sneakered and thinly clothed migrants in trouble on Alpine passes, mountain workers refused to look the other way.

That assistance grew into networks of hundreds of volunteers who run migrant shelters, clothe those in need for the hazardous crossing and trek into the cold. They clear paths in the snow by day for migrants to follow and wait for them at night, to guide them past border police to safety and, if necessary, treatment for frostbite and other medical needs.

Often, we say, Welcome! How are you? We speak a bit of English because most people speak at least a bit, said volunteer helper Paquerette Forest, a retired teacher.

Some refuse assistance, generally men who are quite robust, she said. Exhausted people say, 'Yes.'

"We walk with them, discreetly. We try to avoid being spotted. We wait in the forest if needed. And we sort out vehicles to come and pick them up, she said.

Migrants credit the volunteers for saving lives and limbs. The Alps aren't as deadly for migrants as the Mediterranean Sea, where many hundreds have died or gone missing this year alone. And the mountains have so far been spared a tragedy on the scale of the boat sinking that killed 27 men, women and children, the majority Iraqi Kurds, in the English Channel in November.

If not for them, we would have died of cold, said Aymen Jarnane, 23, another Moroccan led to safety on a night when the thermometer dropped to minus-15 degrees Celsius (5 Fahrenheit).

But there have been deaths. Aid groups pleaded for French authorities to provide Alpine shelter to exiles and stop pushing them back into Italy after a Togolese man found hypothermic in freezing temperatures died during a night trek across the border in February 2019.

Iranian exile Bizhan Bamedi had a companion film him on the crossing, to show how punishing it is.

Hi guys. Im recording this for those who say, Good for you, you went to Europe! he said, ankle-deep in snow in a clearing amid frosted pines. Someone like me who has crossed through jungles and mountains from Turkey is now here. I have no place to lie, no place to sit. ... Its a really difficult path."

The temperature is minus-10 degrees, he continued. "Im hungry and thirsty but cant eat snow. Good luck!

On top of the physical difficulty, a cruelty of the crossing is that Europeans pass through the border without even knowing it's there. Crisscrossed by ski runs, the frontier is a playground for vacationers who don't get stopped by police. But it is so inhospitable for migrants that some quickly give up, even equipped with donated cold-weather gear.

"When you are African or Arab with black hair youre not getting through even if you dress up like that, said Jarnane. If you put on a hat or something, people can still see your brown or black eyes and that youre not from around here.

Health workers in a volunteer-run shelter for migrants on the French side, in the fortified town of Briancon, patch up those who get through.

People arrive cold, dehydrated, thirsty, hungry," said Isabelle Lorre of Doctors of the World, after taking care of an Iranian with an infected toe who trekked for 15 hours through snow he said was thigh-deep at times.

European opponents of migration argue that aiding exiles encourages others to follow. The view of those assisting them in the Alps is that not helping simply isn't an option.

"Some of them have traveled 7,000 or 8,000 kilometers before getting here, so its not a mountainous barrier that will stop them, said Jean Gaboriau, a mountain guide who helps run the Briancon shelter.

Regardless of skin color, political or religious beliefs, everyone has the right to be saved or simply to be welcomed.

___

Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
AleksandarNakic/Getty Images

As we approach a number of seasonal holiday celebrations, LawnStarter, a lawn care company, released its roundup of the most festive cities in the U.S. Based on the findings, the Lone Star State isn't exactly the most festive of places in the country.

To determine the list, the company said it took into account areas "packed" with holiday happenings, "Euro-style" holiday markets, "delicious goodies" and also looked at snowfall averages to "find the most Instagram-worthy backdrops" around the country.
Courtesy photo

In October, Matt Galindo met with Barbara Yarbrough and Principal Camarillo to discuss the needs at South.

He said they took him on a tour of the school, and one of their needs was getting the library help with book in English and Spanish.
SAPD

The San Antonio Police Department is still searching for missing 3-year-old girl Lina Sadar Khil who was last seen in the 9400 block of Fredericksburg Road around 5 p.m. on Monday, December 20. Authorities sent out an Amber Alert shortly after she was reported missing.

Officials tweeted the next morning (Tuesday, December 21) they are continuing their efforts to find Khil. She has brown eyes and brown hair and a light complexion. She was last seen wearing a red dress, black jacket, and black shoes.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The aggressive cellphone break-ins of a high-profile lawyer representing top Polish opposition figures came in the final weeks of pivotal 2019 parliamentary elections. Two years later, a prosecutor challenging attempts by the populist right-wing government to purge the judiciary had her smartphone hacked.

In both instances, the invader was military-grade spyware from NSO Group, the Israeli hack-for-hire outfit that the U.S. government recently blacklisted, say digital sleuths of the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab internet watchdog.

Citizen Lab could not say who ordered the hacks and NSO does not identify its clients, beyond saying it works only with legitimate government agencies vetted by Israel's Defense Ministry. But both victims believe Polands increasingly illiberal government is responsible.

A Polish state security spokesman, Stanislaw Zaryn, would neither confirm nor deny whether the government ordered the hacks or is an NSO customer.

Lawyer Roman Giertych and prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek join a list of government critics worldwide whose phones have been hacked using the companys Pegasus product. The spyware turns a phone into an eavesdropping device and lets its operators remotely siphon off everything from messages to contacts. Confirmed victims have included Mexican and Saudi journalists, British attorneys, Palestinian human rights activists, heads of state and Uganda-based U.S. diplomats.

But word of the Poland hacking is especially notable, coming as rights groups are demanding an EU-wide ban on the spyware. The 27-nation European Union has tightened export restrictions on spyware, but critics complain that abuse of it by EU member states urgently needs to be addressed.

Citizen Lab previously detected multiple infections in Poland dating from November 2017, though it didn't identify individual victims then. The Pegasus spyware has also been linked to Hungary, which like Poland has been denounced for anti-democratic abuses. Germany and Spain are reportedly among NSO's customers, with Catalan separatists accusing Madrid of targeting them with Pegasus.

Once you start aggressively targeting with Pegasus, youll join a fraternity of dictators and autocrats who use it against their enemies and that certainly has no place in the EU, said senior researcher John-Scott Railton of Citizen Lab.

Former EU parliament member Marietje Schaake of the Netherlands, now international cyber policy director at Stanford University, said: The EU cannot credibly condemn human rights violations in the rest of the world while turning a blind eye to problems at home.

The Polish targets see the hack as evidence of a perilous erosion of democracy in the very nation where Soviet hegemony began unraveling four decades ago.

Just hours before Zaryn answered emailed questions about the hack from The Associated Press, a provincial prosecutor filed a motion seeking the arrest of Giertych, the lawyer, in a financial crimes investigation.

Zaryn did not comment on whether the two matters might be related. He said Poland conducts surveillance only after obtaining court orders.

Suggestions that Polish services use operational methods for political struggle are unjustified, Zaryn said.

An NSO spokesperson said Monday that the company is a software provider, the company does not operate the technology nor is the company privy to who the targets are and to the data collected by the customers. Citizen Lab and Amnesty International researchers say, however, that NSO appears to maintain the infection infrastructure.

The company spokesperson also called the allegations of Polish misuse of Pegasus unclear: Once a democratic country lawfully, following due process, uses tools to investigate a person suspected in committing a crime, this would not be considered a misuse of such tools by any means.

In July an investigation by a global media consortium found Pegasus was used in Hungary to hack at least 10 lawyers, an opposition politician and several journalists. Last month, a Hungarian governing party official acknowledged that the government had purchased Pegasus licenses.

In 2019, independent Polish broadcaster TVN found evidence the government anti-corruption agency spent more than $8 million on phone spyware. The agency denied the report but Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was more ambiguous, saying all would be clarified in due time.

In the last four months of 2019, Giertych was hacked at least 18 times, Citizen Lab found. At the time, he was representing former Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Civic Platform, now head of the largest opposition party, and former Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, now a European Parliament member.

The jaw-droppingly aggressive tempo and intensity of the targeting  day-by-day, even hour-by-hour  suggested a desperate desire to monitor his communications, Scott-Railton said. It was so unrelenting that the iPhone became useless and Giertych abandoned it.

This phone was with me in my bedroom and it was with me when I went to confession. They scanned my life totally, he said.

Most of the hacks occurred just ahead of an Oct. 13, 2019, parliamentary election that the Law and Justice party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski won by a slim margin, leading to a further erosion of judicial independence and press freedom.

Giertych was also involved representing an Austrian developer at the time who claimed that Kaczynski, Polands most powerful politician, stiffed him as a deal to build twin business towers in Warsaw fell apart. Revelations of that deal-gone-sour triggered a scandal because Polish law bans political parties from profit  and the towers were to be built on land owned by Kaczynski's party.

Giertych also represented Sikorski in an illegal w iretapping case in which the former foreign minister's conversations were recorded and published; Sikorski alleges the government failed to investigate the possible involvement of Kaczynski allies. Last year, anti-corruption officials searched Giertych's home and office in a manner a Polish court deemed illegal and the EU called emblematic of how Poland's government treats hostile lawyers in politically sensitive cases.

When the Lublin regional prosecutor applied for a court order Monday seeking Giertych's arrest, it said the lawyer had refused to appear for questioning, and seemed to be deliberately hiding from justice.

Giertych called this absurd and said the financial wrongdoing investigation was trumped-up, that a Poznan court had already dismissed it for lack of evidence. Prosecutors say he is suspected of money laundering for legal fees he received in a Warsaw property dispute case a decade ago.

Citizen Lab was still investigating how Giertychs phone was infected but said it expects a zero-click vulnerability, which wouldn't involve user interaction. They believe Wrzosek was similarly hacked. Citizen Lab found six intrusions on her phone from June 24-Aug. 19.

Last year, Wrzosek ordered an investigation into whether presidential elections should be postponed over concerns they could threaten the health of voters and election workers. Almost immediately, she was stripped of the case and transferred to the distant provincial city of Srem with two days notice.

"I didnt even know where the city was and I had nowhere to live there, said Wrzosek, who was hacked shortly after returning to Warsaw and resuming media appearances critical of the government.

A vocal member of an independent prosecutors' association, Wrzosek learned shed been hacked  and tweeted about it -- when Apple sent out alerts last month to scores of iPhone users across the globe targeted by NSOs Pegasus, including 11 U.S. State Department employees in Uganda. In a lawsuit it filed the same day, Apple called NSO amoral 21-century mercenaries. In 2019, Facebook sued the Israeli firm for allegedly hacking its globally popular WhatsApp messenger app.

Wrzosek has filed an official complaint but doesnt expect prompt accountability, believing the same services that tried to break into my phone will now be conducting the proceedings, looking for perpetrators.

___

Bajak reported from Boston. Associated Press reporter Josef Federman contributed from Jerusalem.
Andrew Merry/Getty Images

Monday's regularly scheduled Jacksonville City Council workshop and meeting have been canceled.

The council next will meet at 6 p.m. Jan. 10 in the Municipal Building, 200 W. Douglas Ave.
Pramote Polyamate/Getty Images

COLLINSVILLE  Jersey County's Delhi Bypass is set to open Wednesday  months ahead of schedule  with all four lanes complete, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

The official opening for the project, which is part of Gov. J. B. Pritzker's Rebuild Illinois initiative, will be between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Wednesday, weather permitting.
Stocktrek Images/Getty Images

A loud boom heard across west-central Illinois around 11:20 a.m. Tuesday stemmed from an F-15 fighter jet flying overhead, according to Illinois officials.

The jet was traveling at high enough speeds to break the sound barrier, generating a sonic boom  a wave of pressure that created both the sound and minor shaking.
BOULDER, Colo. (AP)  Twenty-five years after JonBenet Ramsey was killed, police say DNA hasnt been ruled out to help solve the case.

The 6-year-old was found dead in the basement of her familys Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996, bludgeoned and strangled, several hours after her mother called 911 to say her daughter was missing and a ransom note had been left behind. Her death was ruled a homicide, but nobody was ever charged in the case.

Boulder police have been working closely with state investigators on future DNA advancements," the department said in a statement Monday addressing the anniversary of JonBenets death.

As the Department continues to use new technology to enhance the investigation, it is actively reviewing genetic DNA testing processes to see if those can be applied to this case moving forward, it said.

In recent years, investigators have identified suspects in unsolved cases by comparing DNA profiles from crime scenes and to DNA testing results shared online by people researching their family trees, i ncluding the Golden State Killer in California.

In Oregon earlier this year, a man was accused of killing two people who disappeared 20 years apart after forensic genealogy linked him to the 1999 disappearance and presumed death of one of them. Christopher Lovrien has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

It's unclear if this is the method investigators plan to apply to the JonBenet case.

A police spokesperson, Dionne Waugh, said she could not comment further because the investigation is still active and ongoing.

Investigators have analyzed nearly 1,000 DNA samples during the course of the Ramsey investigation, police said in the statement, along with receiving, reviewing or investigating more than 21,016 tips, letters and emails. Detectives have traveled to 19 states to interview or speak with more than 1,000 people in connection with the case, the department said.

Tests in 2008 on newly discovered DNA on JonBenets clothing pointed to the involvement of an unexplained third party in her slaying, and not her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, or their son, Burke. That led former district attorney Mary Lacy to clear the Ramseys of any involvement, two years after Patsy Ramsey died of cancer, calling the couple victims of this crime.

The police department was criticized for its initial handling of the investigation into the death of JonBenet, who had competed in beauty pageants.

The details of the crime and video footage of JonBenet from the pageants propelled the case into one of the highest-profile mysteries in the United States, unleashing a series of true-crime books and TV specials.
Ronda Morrison, a full-time homemaker and married mother of three children and two grandchildren, believes in science.

The 55-year-old Springfield resident also believes the COVID-19 pandemic is real.

But even though scientists say vaccines are the best way to reduce virus transmission, sickness and death in the pandemic, she decided not to get vaccinated.

"I believed that my body was strong enough to fight off anything, and boy, was I wrong," Morrison said Friday from her hospital bed at HSHS St. John's Hospital. "I'm not ashamed to admit that my pride cometh before my fall."

After first experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 a few days before Thanksgiving, Morrison was admitted to HSHS St. John's Hospital on Dec. 6 and discharged Saturday after an almost two-week stay.

She said her COVID-19-related lung damage may take years to heal. But her experience with the novel coronavirus left her thankful to St. John's nurses, doctors and other caregivers, and grateful to once again hug her children, who were too young to visit.

Her experience also made her regret that she didn't take advantage of vaccines proven to prevent serious illness and death in the vast majority of COVID-19 cases.

"I wanted to do things my own way," she said, adding that she plans to get vaccinated soon and make sure her unvaccinated husband and two unvaccinated children, ages 12 and 16, all get the COVID-19 shots.

She hopes others learn from her example so other families aren't put through the trauma of worrying about a loved one sick with COVID-19.

"Don't be so bull-headed," she said. "Do your research. Think of your family. Think of your children. Your life is worth so much more than being stubborn. Your life is beautiful."

Morrison was discharged as hospitals in Springfield and statewide continue to fill up with COVID-19 patients. Illinois is experiencing a spike in new COVID-19 cases that experts fear could rival the all-time highs seen a year ago, before vaccines were widely available.

At St. John's, there were 55 COVID-19 inpatients on Friday, an increase of seven from a week earlier.

The total 246 COVID-19 patients in Hospital Sisters Health System's nine Illinois hospitals (including St. John's) and six Wisconsin hospitals was lower than the all-time high of 293 on Nov. 17, 2020.

But the latest HSHS inpatient total was a 15.5% increase over the previous seven days. The increase in COVID-19 patients at the health system's Illinois hospitals was up almost 24% during that period.

Almost 80% of COVID-19 patients in HSHS hospitals are unvaccinated, officials said. Almost 90% in HSHS ICUs and all of those on ventilators are unvaccinated. Those trends are being seen across the state and nation.

Morrison's change of heart on vaccines came during her hospital stay, one that began almost two weeks after she began to experience a low-grade fever and cold symptoms.

She learned she had COVID-19 the weekend after Thanksgiving through a test required before scheduled surgery on one of her hands.

The surgery was canceled, and the symptoms remained mild, with a fever of 100.4 Fahrenheit, until about a week later. Morrison became so short of breath that she couldn't walk 20 feet in her house.

"It got worse really quick, and it was very scary," she said.

Morrison said she regrets disregarding her 75-year-old mother's urging to seek care from a doctor for her symptoms. Then, at 1 a.m. Dec. 6, she woke up her 16-year-old son and said, "'You've got to take me to the hospital. I'm dying.'"

The teen drove Morrison to the St. John's emergency department, where her blood-oxygen level was recorded at 69%. Normal levels are 95% or more.

"A doctor there told me that I would have died in my sleep if I hadn't come," said Morrison, who has asthma, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes and both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.

Her time in the hospital included seven days in the intensive-care unit with bilevel positive airway pressure, or BiPAP, to provide supplemental oxygen.

She also received antiviral medicine and "proning," a COVID-19 treatment in which staff members position the body on its side and face-down to promote lung expansion.

Morrison, who is covered by Medicaid, said she feared for her life only once, in the middle of the night in the ICU. But the staff, especially the nurses, helped ease her emotional turmoil with skill and compassion.

"I cannot say enough about the wonderful staff there, the dedication to my life and preserving my life and making sure that I was taken care of," she said. "They would say, 'We will get through this together.'

"I could see the tiredness in their faces, and they still pressed on and they still did their job, and they still cared for me, and they still did everything in their power to help me breathe.

"I am 100% positive that because of their love and their care and their dedication to my life that I'm here today."

St. John's registered nurse Sally Tamizuddin, who cared for Morrison and has cared for many other COVID-19 patients throughout the pandemic, said she was pleased to hear Morrison compliment nurses for their compassion more than 1 years into the pandemic.

"There is the concern of burnout with the nurses, but I have seen the nurses at St. John's full of compassion for their patients," said Tamizuddin, 58, who has worked at the 422-bed hospital for 10 years.

"Compassion is the No. 1 most important ingredient for being a nurse," she said.

Like Morrison, most unvaccinated COVID-19 patients regret not getting a shot once they get so sick they need to be hospitalized, Tamizuddin said.

Some patients still deny the pandemic, but Tamizuddin, a Leland Grove alderwoman said, "There are more people who are shocked and disappointed it was as serious as it is."

Vaccination "can make a huge difference in someone's life," she said, noting that research and real-world experience with the vaccine have demonstrated that the vaccinated are less likely to become infected, get sick or die from COVID-19.

An increase in vaccinations also can lead to fewer COVID-19 infections in vaccinated patients whose immune systems or chronic illnesses and conditions make them more likely to become seriously ill or die from "breakthrough" infections, she said.

"It would be great if so many more people would get vaccinated," she said.

Though unvaccinated, Morrison's husband, Joseph Morrison, a self-employed kitchen and bathroom remodeler, and their two children never came down with COVID-19, but Morrison's mother and 79-year-old father tested positive a few days after she did.

Morrison's mother and father also were unvaccinated. Her mother had mild symptoms and recovered, but her father now is in intensive care at Springfield Memorial Hospital because of COVID-19, Morrison said.

She said she is uncertain how her parents were infected or whether she might have passed on the virus at a Thanksgiving get-together at her parents' Springfield home. She said she remained apart from her parents and ate in another room because she feared she was COVID-positive.

Her husband wasn't at the get-together and was spending time with his own mother at the time.

Morrison's 34-year-old daughter, Jessica Bakunas, came down with COVID-19 about the same time Morrison did but had mild symptoms and recovered.

Morrison thinks the two might have been infected while eating at a bowling alley where Morrison takes part in a bowling league. Bakunas, a remote employee of a software company, got fully vaccinated six months earlier and had encouraged Morrison to get vaccinated.

The sales pitch didn't work the first time. But then Bakunas, the mother of Morrison's 2- and 4-year-old grandchildren and half-sister of Morrison's two younger children, visited St. John's, and the two talked about how Morrison was fortunate this time.

Morrison said Bakunas, a Springfield resident, told her: "'We can't go through this again. I cannot raise my children and your two children, too."

That comment, and the research the two did on the Internet in Morrison's hospital room, finally convinced Morrison to get vaccinated when she is cleared by her doctor to do so.

"The benefits outweigh the risks," she said.
GOMA, Congo (AP)  Residents of eastern Congos largest city launched violent protests Monday amid fears that police from neighboring Rwanda had entered the country, leaving at least four people dead, authorities said.

Gunfire rang out across Goma, a city of 2 million near the Rwandan border, and demonstrators later put up barricades in several areas.

Three police officers and one protester died amid the unrest, according to Gen. Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the military governor of North Kivu province. Seventeen other people were seriously injured, he said.

Congos relations with Rwanda have been fraught over the past 30 years, with Rwanda accusing Congo of giving shelter to ethnic Hutus responsible for carrying out the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Rwanda was later among the neighboring countries that invaded Congo during its back-to-back civil wars, and in the years since the two countries have accused each other of supporting opposing armed militias.

The latest anti-Rwandan sentiment in eastern Congo was sparked by a memorandum of bilateral cooperation signed a week ago, which authorities say is aimed at combating cross-border crime.

Many Goma residents view the agreement with suspicion, fearing it could lead to Rwanda annexing portions of eastern Congo.

We do not want Rwandans in our country, protester Tommy Mashauri said.

The commissioner general of the Congolese national police told reporters over the weekend there are no Rwandan police officers inside Congo, and authorities maintained Monday there were no such plans in motion.

This Rwandan police presence in Goma exists only in the imagination of the salesmen of illusions and the manipulators, as well as people of bad faith, who are ready to jump on any rumor to cause disorder, said Ekenge, the spokesperson for the military governor.

___

Associated Press writer Jean Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo contributed.

By JUSTIN KATUMWA

Associated Press
AP Exclusive: Polish opposition duo hacked with NSO spyware View Photo

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The aggressive cellphone break-ins of a high-profile lawyer representing top Polish opposition figures came in the final weeks of pivotal 2019 parliamentary elections. Two years later, a prosecutor challenging attempts by the populist right-wing government to purge the judiciary had her smartphone hacked.

In both instances, the invader was military-grade spyware from NSO Group, the Israeli hack-for-hire outfit that the U.S. government recently blacklisted, say digital sleuths of the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab internet watchdog.

Citizen Lab could not say who ordered the hacks and NSO does not identify its clients, beyond saying it works only with legitimate government agencies vetted by Israels Defense Ministry. But both victims believe Polands increasingly illiberal government is responsible.

A Polish state security spokesman, Stanislaw Zaryn, would neither confirm nor deny whether the government ordered the hacks or is an NSO customer.

Lawyer Roman Giertych and prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek join a list of government critics worldwide whose phones have been hacked using the companys Pegasus product. The spyware turns a phone into an eavesdropping device and lets its operators remotely siphon off everything from messages to contacts. Confirmed victims have included Mexican and Saudi journalists, British attorneys, Palestinian human rights activists, heads of state and Uganda-based U.S. diplomats.

But word of the Poland hacking is especially notable, coming as rights groups are demanding an EU-wide ban on the spyware. The 27-nation European Union has tightened export restrictions on spyware, but critics complain that abuse of it by EU member states urgently needs to be addressed.

Citizen Lab previously detected multiple infections in Poland dating from November 2017, though it didnt identify individual victims then. The Pegasus spyware has also been linked to Hungary, which like Poland has been denounced for anti-democratic abuses. Germany and Spain are reportedly among NSOs customers, with Catalan separatists accusing Madrid of targeting them with Pegasus.

Once you start aggressively targeting with Pegasus, youll join a fraternity of dictators and autocrats who use it against their enemies and that certainly has no place in the EU, said senior researcher John-Scott Railton of Citizen Lab.

Former EU parliament member Marietje Schaake of the Netherlands, now international cyber policy director at Stanford University, said: The EU cannot credibly condemn human rights violations in the rest of the world while turning a blind eye to problems at home.

The Polish targets see the hack as evidence of a perilous erosion of democracy in the very nation where Soviet hegemony began unraveling four decades ago.

Just hours before Zaryn answered emailed questions about the hack from The Associated Press, a provincial prosecutor filed a motion seeking the arrest of Giertych, the lawyer, in a financial crimes investigation.

Zaryn did not comment on whether the two matters might be related. He said Poland conducts surveillance only after obtaining court orders.

Suggestions that Polish services use operational methods for political struggle are unjustified, Zaryn said.

An NSO spokesperson said Monday that the company is a software provider, the company does not operate the technology nor is the company privy to who the targets are and to the data collected by the customers. Citizen Lab and Amnesty International researchers say, however, that NSO appears to maintain the infection infrastructure.

The company spokesperson also called the allegations of Polish misuse of Pegasus unclear: Once a democratic country lawfully, following due process, uses tools to investigate a person suspected in committing a crime, this would not be considered a misuse of such tools by any means.

In July an investigation by a global media consortium found Pegasus was used in Hungary to hack at least 10 lawyers, an opposition politician and several journalists. Last month, a Hungarian governing party official acknowledged that the government had purchased Pegasus licenses.

In 2019, independent Polish broadcaster TVN found evidence the government anti-corruption agency spent more than $8 million on phone spyware. The agency denied the report but Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was more ambiguous, saying all would be clarified in due time.

In the last four months of 2019, Giertych was hacked at least 18 times, Citizen Lab found. At the time, he was representing former Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Civic Platform, now head of the largest opposition party, and former Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, now a European Parliament member.

The jaw-droppingly aggressive tempo and intensity of the targeting  day-by-day, even hour-by-hour  suggested a desperate desire to monitor his communications, Scott-Railton said. It was so unrelenting that the iPhone became useless and Giertych abandoned it.

This phone was with me in my bedroom and it was with me when I went to confession. They scanned my life totally, he said.

Most of the hacks occurred just ahead of an Oct. 13, 2019, parliamentary election that the Law and Justice party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski won by a slim margin, leading to a further erosion of judicial independence and press freedom.

Giertych was also involved representing an Austrian developer at the time who claimed that Kaczynski, Polands most powerful politician, stiffed him as a deal to build twin business towers in Warsaw fell apart. Revelations of that deal-gone-sour triggered a scandal because Polish law bans political parties from profit  and the towers were to be built on land owned by Kaczynskis party.

Giertych also represented Sikorski in an illegal w iretapping case in which the former foreign ministers conversations were recorded and published; Sikorski alleges the government failed to investigate the possible involvement of Kaczynski allies. Last year, anti-corruption officials searched Giertychs home and office in a manner a Polish court deemed illegal and the EU called emblematic of how Polands government treats hostile lawyers in politically sensitive cases.

When the Lublin regional prosecutor applied for a court order Monday seeking Giertychs arrest, it said the lawyer had refused to appear for questioning, and seemed to be deliberately hiding from justice.

Giertych called this absurd and said the financial wrongdoing investigation was trumped-up, that a Poznan court had already dismissed it for lack of evidence. Prosecutors say he is suspected of money laundering for legal fees he received in a Warsaw property dispute case a decade ago.

Citizen Lab was still investigating how Giertychs phone was infected but said it expects a zero-click vulnerability, which wouldnt involve user interaction. They believe Wrzosek was similarly hacked. Citizen Lab found six intrusions on her phone from June 24-Aug. 19.

Last year, Wrzosek ordered an investigation into whether presidential elections should be postponed over concerns they could threaten the health of voters and election workers. Almost immediately, she was stripped of the case and transferred to the distant provincial city of Srem with two days notice.

I didnt even know where the city was and I had nowhere to live there, said Wrzosek, who was hacked shortly after returning to Warsaw and resuming media appearances critical of the government.

A vocal member of an independent prosecutors association, Wrzosek learned shed been hacked  and tweeted about it  when Apple sent out alerts last month to scores of iPhone users across the globe targeted by NSOs Pegasus, including 11 U.S. State Department employees in Uganda. In a lawsuit it filed the same day, Apple called NSO amoral 21-century mercenaries. In 2019, Facebook sued the Israeli firm for allegedly hacking its globally popular WhatsApp messenger app.

Wrzosek has filed an official complaint but doesnt expect prompt accountability, believing the same services that tried to break into my phone will now be conducting the proceedings, looking for perpetrators.

___

Bajak reported from Boston. Associated Press reporter Josef Federman contributed from Jerusalem.

By FRANK BAJAK and VANESSA GERA

Associated Press
Live updates: British Columbia orders closures due to COVID View Photo

VICTORIA, British Columbia  The Canadian Pacific Coast province of British Columbia is closing bars, nightclubs and gyms because of the omicron coronavirus variant.

Starting at 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, bars, nightclubs, gyms, fitness centers and dance studios will have to close, and all seated events will be reduced to 50% capacity. Indoor gatherings, including weddings, are being cancelled.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said Tuesday the risk posed by omicron is fundamentally different than other variants and it more easily infects those who are vaccinated or have had COVID-19.

She said the province is seeing explosive outbreaks, with a large number of people being exposed at the same time. Theres also been a spike in cases among those aged 18 to 35.

The French-speaking province of Quebec announced Monday that it is closing bars, cinemas, gyms and spas because of a record number of coronavirus cases.

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HERES WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC:

 Biden pivots to home tests to fight omicron surge as Christmas nears

 Omicron casts a new shadow over economys pandemic recovery

 Parents, schools face another reckoning over pandemic

 Explainer: Boosters key to fight omicron, lot still to learn

 Feeling powerless, families bring elderly home in pandemic

 Britain to give financial support to businesses hurt by the omicron surge

Go to https://APNews.com/coronavirus-pandemic for updates throughout the day.

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING TODAY:

NEW YORK  The NHL will withdraw from the Winter Olympics after the regular-season schedule was disrupted by coronavirus outbreaks, a person with direct knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

As a result, mens hockey tournament at the Olympics will go on without NHL players for the second consecutive time.

The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because an announcement had yet to be made on the NHL pulling out of Beijing.

The league informed the players association on Tuesday that it was retaining its right to withdraw from Olympic participation because there was a material disruption to the season, and the union was not going to dispute the decision, the person said.

 By John Wawrow and Stephen Whyno

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ANNAPOLIS, Md.  Amid a surge in coronavirus hospitalizations in Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan announced $100 million in emergency funding Tuesday to ramp up hospital and nursing home staffing and make more testing, treatments and vaccines available.

As I have been warning for the past few weeks, we are entering another pivotal moment in the fight against COVID-19, Hogan said.

Hogan said hes also mobilizing the Maryland National Guard to provide support personnel to expand testing sites and hours.

The emergency funding includes $50 million to stabilize hospital staffing and another $50 million to expand the availability of COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccines at hospitals and nursing homes, Hogan said. The state also will provide $30 million for schools to purchase testing resources, he said.

Hogan, who is working from home after testing positive for the coronavirus himself on Monday, made the announcement via video. He said he was only experiencing cold-like symptoms, something he attributes to getting vaccinated. He urged others to do the same.

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NEW ORLEANS  New Orleans is shortening parade routes for the upcoming Mardi Gras season because there are fewer police officers, medics and other first responders to handle the crowds, officials said Tuesday.

The city canceled Mardi Gras parades this past February because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2020 parade crowds are considered a big reason that New Orleans was an early pandemic hot spot.

The big news and the best news is that Mardi Gras is returning to the city of New Orleans and to the world in 2022, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.

Weeks of Carnival season parades lead up to Fat Tuesday, which will be on March 1.

Cantrell also noted that if things go wrong in our city, she might have to change its plans for Carnival and Mardi Gras. But she said she is confident the city can make it through the omicron variant, flu season and the holiday season.

With 80% of its residents fully vaccinated, New Orleans is a national leader, she said.

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LINCOLN, Neb.  The last Nebraska community still requiring masks is dropping its mandate.

Lincoln Lancaster County Health Director Pat Lopez said in a news conference Tuesday that a health order requiring indoor masking will expire at the end of the day Thursday.

The county reinstated the mask requirement in August amid the delta surge. No other city or county in the state has required masks in indoor settings over the past four months, the Lincoln Journal-Star reports.

Lopez said the county has made critical progress over the past year in battling the virus, helped largely by the vaccine. Even without the requirement, she said masks are strongly recommended in schools and at indoor sporting events, theaters, gatherings of groups indoors, including church and faith-based services.

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LIMA, Peru  Some Latin American countries are beginning to reimpose coronavirus restrictions to avoid the spread of the omicron variant over the holiday season despite seeing few reported cases so far.

Ecuador and Peru on Tuesday announced some capacity limits at public places, like restaurants and movie theaters. Both countries have more than 60% of their population fully vaccinated.

Peruvian authorities closed land borders to visitors and imposed a curfew from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. Anybody over 18 years old will have to show proof of being fully vaccinated to fly or take an intercity bus within the country.

Peru has officially reported 12 cases of the omicron variant.

In neighboring Ecuador, authorities suspended mass events and said anybody over 12 will have to present a vaccination card to enter to enter public offices. Restaurants and movie theaters will limited to 50%. capacity.

Ecuador has reported 22 cases of the omicron variant.

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OKLAHOMA CITY  Oklahoma health officials announced Tuesday they have detected the states first confirmed case of the omicron COVID-19 variant.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health didnt release any information about where the case originated or whether the person had been vaccinated.

Oklahoma was among the last states to confirm the presence of omicron. Federal health officials said Monday that omicron is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of infections last week.

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SEATTLE  University of Washington officials said Tuesday they will use remote learning during the first week of the winter quarter in January because of growing concerns about the rapidly spreading omicron variant.

The university told students, staff and faculty that most classes will be held online Jan. 3 through Jan. 9 as they track infections.

Several other schools across the country are taking similar measures in the face of the variant, including DePaul, Harvard and Stanford universities.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va.  Citing a nursing shortage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, West Virginia will use $48 million in federal stimulus funding to aggressively recruit and train nurses over the next four years, Gov. Jim Justice said Tuesday.

Justice said about 1,700 nurses declined to renew their state licenses last year. He said 68% of those who left the field cited being just plain tired and pushed to the very limit from the strains of the pandemic.

The Republican governor said nursing programs will be expanded next fall at three colleges. The funding comes from $126 million remaining to be spent by the state from the federal CARES Act.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska  The Anchorage School Board has reversed the superintendents decision to make masking optional when students return from winter break and will instead keep the current mask requirement in place until at least Jan. 15.

Board members cited the rapid rise of the omicron variant of COVID-19 for the move.

Superintendent Deena Bishop announced last week that masks would be optional in the school district starting Jan. 3. In a letter to parents, she cited low transmission rates in the school district and the municipality.

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LAS VEGAS  Health officials in Nevada are charting jumps in key coronavirus measurements, including more than 3,800 new cases of COVID-19 in Clark County during the last week.

The Las Vegas area surpassed 6,400 deaths attributed to the coronavirus since the pandemic began, or 77% of the more than 8,300 people who have died statewide.

The Southern Nevada Health District on Tuesday reported 974 new cases and 15 deaths in Clark County since Monday. State health officials on Monday also confirmed three new cases of the fast-spreading omicron variant  including two in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County. Thats five omicron cases in Nevada since the first one was detected last week.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I.  Rhode Islands pandemic death toll has surpassed 3,000, prompting Democratic Gov. Daniel McKee to order state flags at all state facilities and buildings to be flown at half-staff as a solemn sign of respect.

McKee said in a statement Tuesday: Weve lost 3,000 mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, grandparents, friends, and neighbors who will be missed  especially during this holiday season.

He urged the unvaccinated to get a shot, and the vaccinated to get their boosters and for people to wear a mask in public places.

Flags will remain at half-staff until sunset on Wednesday.

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BARCELONA, Spain  Despite vaccination rates that make other governments envious, Spain and Portugal are facing the hard truth that with the new omicron variant running rampant, these winter holidays wont be a time of unrestrained joy.

Portugal on Tuesday announced a slew of new restrictions over Christmas and the New Year, making working from home mandatory and shutting discotheques and bars beginning Saturday night. A negative test result must be shown to enter cinemas, theaters, sports events, weddings and baptisms until at least Jan. 9.

Portugal will impose exceptional measures for Christmas and New Year, including having a negative test result to enter restaurants and public celebrations.

That is happening despite almost 87% of Portugals population being fully vaccinated, due to the omicron variant, which is racing across Europe.

Meanwhile, Catalonia, home to the northeastern city of Barcelona, is prepared to become the first Spanish region to reinstate serious limitations. One in four of everyone hospitalized in Spain with COVID-19 is in Catalonia.

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JERUSALEM  A government advisory panel of health experts has recommended that Israel begin administering a fourth shot of the coronavirus vaccine to protect against the fast-spreading omicron variant.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday he had already instructed health officials to begin preparations.

The campaign is to begin with people over 60 and health care workers. But based on past vaccination efforts, it could quickly include other segments of the population.

Bennetts office said the campaign, which still requires bureaucratic approvals, is expected to begin in the coming days.

Israel was one of the first countries to vaccinate its population early this year and then carried out the worlds first booster campaign over the summer.

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CHICAGO  Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday the nations third-largest city will require proof of coronavirus vaccination at restaurants, bars, gyms and other indoor venues, as the rapidly spreading omicron variant drives a spike in COVID-19 infections.

Lightfoot said the requirement will take effect Jan. 3, and will apply to places where food and beverages are served  including sport and entertainment venues  and to fitness centers. It doesnt apply to people getting take-out, who stay in a businesses for 10 minutes or less.

Lightfoot said the measure is necessary because of a surge in cases and hospitalizations, with Chicago seeing numbers at levels similar to those before vaccines were available. Chicago is reporting an average of about 1,700 cases per day, up from about 300 per day just weeks ago, she said.

On Monday, Illinois reported about 12,330 new COVID-19 cases  the highest daily total in more than a year. Much of that increase has been driven by the omicron variant, prompting fears of a winter surge.

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ATLANTA  Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Tuesday reinstated a mask requirement inside stores and other businesses in the city due to rising COVID-19 infections and the emergence of the extraordinarily contagious omicron variant, which has quickly become the dominant version of the virus in the U.S.

People who fail to wear a mask indoors could face a fine of $50 for a second offense. Bottoms had lifted the previous mask mandate last month.

By The Associated Press
Calaveras County Public Health reports 26 new Covid cases since Friday, active cases decreased six to 18 with one hospitalized. The total number of confirmed cases is 4,560. Five of the new cases are age 17 or younger and three are age 65 and older, in total 838 under age 17 and 764 over 65 have been identified with Covid. There are 32 more recovered cases for a total of 4,450 cases recovered and 55.24% of the eligible population is fully vaccinated in the county. There have been 92 Covid deaths in Calaveras since the pandemic began. There were 8 Covid deaths in October, 6 in November, and 3 this month for a total of 18 Covid deaths since October in Calaveras.

Tuolumne County Public Health reports 31 new Covid cases since Friday, 25 are unvaccinated. Tuolumne Countys active cases increased by 14 to 90 including five people who are hospitalized, one is vaccinated. The number of active cases has been up from under 20 since the end of July with the lowest active cases being 62 on November 29.

The newly reported cases include six cases age 17 or younger and five cases age 60 or older. New Covid cases by gender and age: two girls and one boy age 11 or younger, three girls age 12 to 17, two women and three men age 18 to 29, four women and four men in their 30s, five women and one man in his 40s, one man in his 50s, one woman and two men in their 60s, one man in his 70s, and one man in his 80s.

The total current case rate, a 14-day average for Tuolumne County increased to 16 from 15.1 per 100,000 population. Seventeen individuals were released from isolation, in all 6,231 have been released from isolation. There have been 6,469 community cases and 148 deaths. There were 18 Covid deaths in October, 20 in November, and seven this month for a total of 45 Covid deaths since October in Tuolumne.

A total of 59% 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 one active Covid case at the Sierra Conservation Center. The SCC manages 3,245 inmates including all the southern fire conservation camps.

California Public Health is requiring universal masking for all public indoor settings to slow the spread of both Delta, the highly transmissible Omicron variant, and to increase protection for individuals, families, and communities during the holidays. More details are here. Additionally, CDPH updated requirements for attending mega-events, and issued a new travel advisory. Mariposa Public Health shares the CDC added multiple studies to their Science Brief on Community Use of Masks to Control the Spread of SARS-CoV-2 as detailed here.

COVID-19 Testing Public health recommends scheduling an appointment to get tested 5 days after possible exposure and if you are having any symptoms, to get tested right away. The LHI testing site at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds will be open next Friday, Dec. 24th from 7 AM to 1 PM and will be closed Saturday, Dec. 25th for the Christmas holiday. Friday, Dec. 31 it will be open from 7 AM to 1 PM and closed Jan. 1st for New Years Day.

Excluding the holidays, 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. Testing is also at pharmacies, at Rapid Care and the hospital emergency department if you are experiencing any symptoms, or contact your healthcare provider. The Mariposa LHI/OptumServe testing site is at the YARTS Park and Ride beside Rite Aid and is open Tuesdays to Saturdays, 7:00 am to 12:00 pm, 1:00 to 4:00 pm, and 5:00 to 7:00 pm.

COVID-19 Vaccine appointments and booster vaccine shots are recommended for anyone age 16 and older (Pfizer only for age 16-17) Vaccine appointments 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 local pharmacies more details are here. For ways to manage this fear of needles or a phobia and help others with it, view the CDCs information guide here. Learn more about self-care strategies by visiting namica.org

County/Date

New

Active (Hospital)

Total 2021 (2020) All Cases (All Deaths) Amador 12/20 4 40 (7) 2,667

(1,233) 3,900

(61) Calaveras 12/20 18 26 (1) 3,707

(853) 4,560

(92) Mariposa 12/20 7 22 (14) 1,426

(252) 1,678

(18) Mono 12/20 16 41 1,137

(637) 1,774

(5) Stanislaus 12/20 252 1,243 (91) 48,812

(34,465) 83,277

(1,459) Tuolumne 12/20 31 90 (5) 5,128

(2,962) 8,090

(148)
Sonora Area Foundation Office View Photo

The Tuolumne County Supervisors last month voted to spend $500,000 in federal American Rescue Act dollars on a community grants program for non-profits.

The one-time federal funding pot is designed to help local governments offset some of the impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. Tuolumne County received over $10-million to spend on efforts of their choosing over the next few years.

The county is doing the grants program in partnership with the Sonora Area Foundation, which is tasked with reviewing the various applications.

At todays supervisors meeting, County Administrative Analyst Jason Terry stated, Grant applications closed yesterday and we ended with 68 total applications. We would need $2.1 million to fund them all, so the review team has their work cut out for them.

Grants will range in size from $20,000 to $50,000.

The supervisors earlier decided to allow the foundation to select the recipients, as opposed to the board, to prevent the final selections from being politicized. The groups who are selected for grants will be announced at a later meeting.

The $500,000 community grants program was in addition to the $500,000 Rad Card program which was also funded by federal rescue dollars.
American ex-priest in East Timor found guilty of sex abuse View Photo

OECUSSE, East Timor (AP)  A defrocked American priest accused of sexually abusing orphaned and disadvantaged young girls under his care in East Timor was found guilty Tuesday and sentenced to 12 years in prison, in the first case of its kind in the staunchly Catholic nation.

Richard Daschbach, 84, who spent decades as a missionary in the countrys remote enclave of Oecusse, faced charges of child sexual abuse as well as child pornography and domestic violence.

The trial began in February but was postponed several times before concluding last month. During the proceedings, victims complained about threats and online attacks. Daschbach maintains strong backing from some, including former President Xanana Gusmao, who went to the court on Tuesday. East Timor is the most Catholic place outside the Vatican and Daschbach is revered for his role during the tiny Southeast Asian nations fight for independence.

The church and foreign donors who once supported Daschbachs shelter said he confessed to the abuse, but the former priest and his lawyers have at various times refused to comment. They did not make their legal strategy public and court proceedings were closed.

Daschbach, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, was ordained in 1964 by the Society of the Divine Word at its headquarters outside of Chicago. He arrived in the country now known as East Timor several years later, setting up a shelter in the 1990s named Topu Honis, which means Guide to Life.

Hundreds of children passed through the shelter under Daschbachs care. More than a dozen females came forward with abuse claims, but only nine were registered in the case due to legal technicalities. The Associated Press spoke with five of the accusers.

They recalled their experiences in vivid detail, saying Daschbach kept a list of young girls on his bedroom door and that every night one of those girls would sit on his lap, surrounded by a ring of children and staff members praying and singing hymns before bed.

They said the girl on his lap would then sleep with him that night and that various types of abuse - from oral sex to rape - would occur, sometimes involving other children too. The accusers have not been identified because of fears of retribution.

Daschbachs lawyer, Miguel Faria, said they are disappointed with the courts verdict and plan to appeal the decision issued by the three judges.

Evidence provided by the shelter matron and former students who lived in the orphanage were ignored by the court, Faria told reporters, alleging that some accusers changed their statements made earlier to authorities in Oecusse after being taken to the capital, Dili, and the new statements became the sole basis for the judges decision.

We cannot accept this and will appeal, Faria said.

Dozens of Daschbachs supporters, including several children brought by Gusmao from Dili, wept and some were screaming as it became clear the court would sentence the former priest to jail. Some in the impoverished enclave revere Daschbach so highly, they believe he possesses special powers and is the victim of a conspiracy.

In a statement Tuesday, JU,S Juridico Social, a group of human rights lawyers representing the accusers, applauded the verdict but said it would appeal, arguing that the sentence should be harsher. Under the law, Daschbach faced more than twice the prison time he received.

The history written today is a bitter history for the entire nation, the group said. Our children were subjected to horrendous crimes for such a long time because we, as a society, were blinded by the belief that a figure as the defendant in this case would not commit such crimes against children.

Separately, a U.S. federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Daschbach in August. He faces seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct at the shelter. If convicted in the U.S., Daschbach could receive up to 30 years in prison for each count, but the Department of Justice has not said whether it plans to try to extradite the ex-priest.

Daschbach also is wanted in the U.S. on three counts of wire fraud linked to one of his California-based donors, which accused him in a court case of violating an agreement to protect those under his care. An Interpol Red Notice has been issued internationally for Daschbachs arrest.

By DAVID dos SANTOS GUSMAO

Associated Press
Rep. Scott Perry denies Jan. 6 panels request for interview View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania on Tuesday rebuffed a request for him to sit down for an interview and turn over documents to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, joining other allies of former President Donald Trump in trying to stonewall the committee.

In a statement, Perry called the committee illegitimate.

In a letter to Perry on Monday night, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel, said the panel had received evidence from multiple witnesses, including then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, that Perry had an important role in efforts to install Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general.

The lawmakers refusal will test how far the committee is willing to go in its quest for information as members have so far resisted subpoenaing one of their own as they investigate the insurrection by Trumps supporters and his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The letter is the first time the panel has publicly released a request to a fellow member of Congress as the members inquire about the details of Perry and other congressional Republicans who met with Trump ahead of the Capitol attack and strategized about how they could block the results at the Jan. 6 electoral count.

Also in the letter, Thompson added that while the panel has tremendous respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its Members, it also has a solemn responsibility to investigate fully all of these facts and circumstances.

The committee has also asked for any documents and correspondence between Perry and Trump, his legal team or anyone involved in the planning of Jan. 6 events.

The lawmaker, representing Pennsylvanias 10th District, was cited more than 50 times in a Senate Judiciary report released in October outlining how Trumps effort to overturn his election defeat to Joe Biden brought the Justice Department to the brink of chaos and prompted top officials there and at the White House to threaten to resign.

Perry, who has continuously disputed the validity of Bidens victory in Pennsylvania, has said he obliged Trumps request for an introduction to Clark, then an assistant attorney general whom Perry knew from unrelated legislative matters. The three men went on to discuss their shared concerns about the election, Perry has said.

The Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud in Pennsylvania or any other state, and senior Justice officials dismissed Perrys claims.

The recent Senate report outlined a call Perry made to Donoghue last December to say the department wasnt doing its job with respect to the elections. Perry encouraged Donoghue to elicit Clarks help because hes the kind of guy who could really get in there and do something about this, the report said.

Perry has said his official communications with Justice Department officials were consistent with the law.

The panel voted in November to hold Clark in contempt after he showed up for a deposition yet declined to answer questions. But Thompson has said he will hold off pursuing the charges and allow Clark to attend another deposition and try again. Clarks lawyer has said Clark intends to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, but the deposition has been repeatedly postponed as Clark has dealt with an unidentified medical condition.

The panel has already interviewed around 300 people as it seeks to create a comprehensive record of the Jan. 6 attack and the events leading up to it.

Trump at the time was pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud and lobbying Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of Congress to try to overturn the count at the Jan. 6 congressional certification. Election officials across the country, along with the courts, had repeatedly dismissed Trumps claims.

An angry mob of Trump supporters was echoing his false claims as it brutally beat Capitol police and broke into the building that day, interrupting the certification of Bidens victory.

Thompson, in his request for a meeting with Perry, wrote: We would like to meet with you soon to discuss these topics, but we also want to accommodate your schedule.

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Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

By FARNOUSH AMIRI and MARY CLARE JALONICK

Associated Press
TURLOCK, Calif. (AP)  Stanislaus County prosecutors on Monday charged a man with shooting and wounding a California Highway Patrol investigator last week .

Henry Moreno Arroyo was charged with two counts of attempted murder in the events that spanned Wednesday and Thursday and at one point led to 10 city blocks being cordoned off in the Central Valley city of Turlock.

On Monday, Arroyos arraignment was postponed until Dec. 27 so that he could make financial arrangements to hire a private attorney. He was ordered held on nearly $1.5 million bail.

Arroyo, 40, of Turlock, opened fire Thursday on CHP investigators who were investigating a Wednesday evening freeway shooting and found what they believed to be the suspects car in Turlock, prosecutors said.

Officers fired back before Arroyo ran off and was later arrested, prosecutors said.

Arroyo and one CHP officer were treated for non-life threatening wounds.

Arroyo is charged with trying to kill the wounded investigator and a second officer.

At the time, Arroyo was on probation and awaiting final judgment on an earlier accusation of child endangerment, authorities said.

They havent released any more details about the freeway shooting and Arroyo isnt charged with that crime.
NEW YORK (AP)  Kathryn Malara, a Brooklyn teacher, lingered on a street Tuesday, filled with dread about going to her job.

I'm sitting in my car terrified to walk into school, she wrote on Twitter just before taking a deep breath and heading to her classroom. Cases exploding. People I really care about are sick & frightened.

The quick spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus has stirred another angst-ridden reckoning about whether in-person schooling is worth the risk. Malara and other teachers worry about endangering their health by entering crowded schools. Frustrated parents wonder how to keep their children safe and whether campuses could become superspreader sites.

Its creeping back up again, and I dont like this. Im worried. Lives are at stake here  not just my sons life, said Starita Ansari, a public school parent in Manhattan who is keeping her 10th grader home after being rattled by the latest COVID-19 infections at his school.

Scientists say omicron spreads more easily than other coronavirus strains, including delta, though many details about it remain unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness. But even if it is milder, the new variant could still upend schooling and overwhelm health systems because of the sheer number of infections.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said schools can remain safe when proper protocols are followed, including observing safe distancing, wearing masks and getting vaccinated.

Detection of cases in schools does not necessarily mean that transmission occurred in schools, the CDC said.

On Monday, a fifth of New York Citys public school students skipped in-person classes, an indication of the anxiety spawned by the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in New York state, which in recent days has broken infection records.

Parents are voting with their feet, and many of them dont feel that the current protocols are actually keeping their families safe. And a lot them don't think they're being given enough information about whats happening to allow them to make choices for their families, said Jennifer Jennings, a Princeton University researcher focused partly focused on the intersection of education and health care policy.

Most schools across the country are keeping classrooms open, despite the new threat from omicron, but some school districts have moved to limit in-person instruction as a precaution.

On Friday, one of the largest school districts on the East Coast, the Prince Georges County district in Maryland, just outside Washington, said it would cancel in-person instruction in favor of virtual classes because of rising COVID-19 cases at its campuses.

Schools in Mount Vernon, New York, and elsewhere also reverted back to virtual instruction.

There is great concern because we had been doing so well, said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.

Just about a month ago, we had about 98 percent of the students in this country attending school in person, and omicron has brought about just a huge reversal in that process. And all of a sudden were seeing infection rates skyrocket, he said, Its affecting children much more than previous variants, so children are getting sick. Staff is getting sick, and its just a spread thats alarming.

Boston school officials have not announced whether children will have to return to virtual classes  an unwelcome prospect for Alejandra Hung and his Boston family.

Were going through this feeling of deja vu, but in reality things are better this time out, said Hung, who has two children in elementary school. Remote learning took such a toll.

The availability of vaccines for children raised hopes that disruptions at school would be minimized. Public health officials now hope that concern about omicron will convince more parents to vaccinate their children.

That's been the case for Yahaira Lopez, who lives in a Boston suburb. She resisted vaccinating her twin 12-year-old sons, both of whom suffer from severe asthma. Even if she herself has been fully vaccinated and received a booster shot, she had doubts about the vaccines' safety for her children.

But the numbers are increasing, and this virus is impacting a lot of students now, so I just want to be preventative and make sure nothing happens to them, Lopez said.

Her sons have appointments to get their first shots this week.

As of Thursday, nearly 7.4 million children in the United States have been infected since the start of the pandemic, representing 17.3% of all cases, according to data gathered by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Childrens Hospital Association.

Of those cases, almost 170,000 cases were reported over the last seven days of the tally.

The CDC has said that the extent to which children suffer long-term consequences of COVID-19 is still unknown. But it noted in a report last week that a disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic children suffer much more severe symptoms, including hospitalization that leads to admission to intensive care.

Back in New York, Liz Rosenberg decided to keep her two children, 17 and 11, home from the final days of school before the holidays. It was still unclear if they would return to the classroom when in-person instruction reconvenes in the new year.

The messaging that were basically getting from lots of places right now is that getting COVID is inevitable," Rosenberg said. "And I just cant participate in that. Why would I send my kids to school knowing that that in their own buildings, cases have risen quite a bit?

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has vowed to keep schools open. She said the state would provide 2 million test kits to schools, which would then distribute the tests to children to take home.

We believe that its critically important that our children not end up in that same situation they were for so many months, when they were so displaced from their normal environment, Hochul said Monday.

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Associated Press Writer Philip Marcelo in Boston contributed to this report.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  Congregations affiliated with the United Methodist Church have agreed to contribute $30 million to a fund for victims who say they were molested as youngsters in the Boy Scouts of America, an attorney said Tuesday.

A committee representing United Methodist churches that sponsored Scouting activities also agreed to help raise an additional $100 million for the fund.

Jessica Lauria, an attorney for the BSA, told Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein about the planned agreement during an online hearing Tuesday in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. Lauria said the United Methodist-affiliated churches would receive protected party status, which means they would be released from further liability for abuse claims.

The proposed trust is expected to grow to more than $2.6 billion and would be the largest sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history.

More than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case. Victims who say they were abused must vote by Dec. 28 on a Boy Scouts reorganization plan.

Judge Silverstein had originally scheduled a hearing starting Jan. 24 to consider the voting results and to decide whether the plan meets the requirements of the bankruptcy code and should be approved. But on Tuesday, the judge pushed the hearing start date to Feb. 22 to give attorneys more time to prepare.

Tuesdays announcement involving United Methodist churches comes a week after attorneys said a tentative settlement was reached with one of BSA's largest insurers, Century Indemnity Co. and affiliated companies had agreed to contribute $800 million into the fund in return for being released from further liability for abuse claims.

Other agreements involve another major Boy Scouts insurer, The Hartford, and the BSAs former largest troop sponsor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church. The Hartford has agreed to pay $787 million into the victims fund, and the Mormons have agreed to contribute $250 million. In exchange, both entities would be released from any further liability involving child sex abuse claims.

The BSA is continuing to negotiate with Roman Catholic-affiliated churches that sponsored Scouting units.

The Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, sought bankruptcy protection in February 2020, seeking to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a fund for victims who say they were sexually abused as children.
Teachers that return to the Plainview Independent School District next year will be getting a bump in their salaries.

During Thursdays regularly scheduled meeting, the Plainview ISD school board approved a general pay increase proposal for all returning teachers and the district librarian of $4,000 to their salaries.

Brady Merrick, Associate Superintendent, said this reflects an 8% increase in salary the current average teacher salary of $50,000.

Superintendent H.T. Sanchez urged the board to pass the measure as a means to continue retaining teachers as well as help the district recruit new teachers.

The increase in pay also reflects the districts step-pay schedule for all in-coming teachers to the district. The draft of the new step schedule presented on Thursday shows that new hires coming into the district with no teaching experience  i.e. someone fresh out of school  will have a starting salary of $43,750. The salaries increase with each year of experience the teacher brings with them to the school.

A teacher with 30 or more years of experience coming into the district would have a starting salary of $69,288.

The board unanimously approved the measure  Adam Sotto was absent  and was greeted by a round of applause by the teachers in attendance.

This is the latest in a string of recent pay incentives the school board has approved in recent weeks. Last month, the board approved a one-time loyalty and retention incentive payment to almost every employee across the district. Full-time employees who signed a letter of intent to return to the district for the 2022-23 school year would receive a $500 in their December paychecks.

The district also agreed to pay $1,000 to all permanent employees who have been in the district for a full two years or more.

Payments such as the ones approved last month was also given by the district last December. The $4,000 salary bump is new, and only applies to teachers and the district librarian.
Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images

One of the largest names in Spanish jamon is coming to San Antonio. Enrique Tomas, a legendary purveyor of jamon with more than 100 locations in Spain, Mexico, the U.K., Peru, France, and Argentina will soon have a second U.S. outpost in the Alamo City.

Signage at what was formerly Maria Mia Mexican Bistro at 849 E Commerce Street, on the river level of the San Antonio River Walk, advertises the Enrique Tomas Experience as "coming soon." Neither the company nor the mall were immediately available to comment on an opening date. It's unclear when the Mexican bistro shut its doors.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  Gov. Pete Ricketts on Monday urged Nebraska residents to get vaccinated and tested for the coronavirus and seek early treatment for severe symptoms amid concerns about the omicron variant and the prospect of a jump in new cases over the holidays.

Ricketts issued the holiday warning as leading Nebraska virus experts warned that the new variant appears to be more transmissible, making it a threat even if it isn't as lethal as other variants.

Ricketts said he was concerned because roughly 90% of the people hospitalized with the virus in Nebraska are unvaccinated, and the upcoming holidays will mean more large family gatherings. Ricketts said he has been vaccinated and received a booster shot, but like many Republicans, he opposes vaccine and mask mandates.

Everybody who has not been vaccinated yet can help out by getting vaccinated, Ricketts said at a news conference. The best defense we have against the virus is making sure we get the vaccine.

Dr. Gary Anthone, the states chief medical officer, said its too early to know whether the variant will lead to a surge in cases in Nebraska.

The state's hospitals were treating 523 coronavirus patients as of Monday, well short of this year's peak of 637, but health officials have expressed worries about the omicron variant. The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked at 987 in 2020.

At a separate news briefing in Omaha, Nebraska public health experts warned that the omicron variant could overwhelm hospitals even if it isn't as deadly as other variants because it spreads much more easily.

This is the most dangerous scenario we have faced, really, since spring of 2020, said Dr. James Lawler, co-director of the Global Center for Health Security at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Even if the virus is only half as severe in most people, we'll produce so many cases that it will overrun our health system, said Lawler, an associate professor of medicine.

Lawler said the greatest risk over the holidays is not traveling but gathering in large groups in close spaces. He said people can mitigate the risk with masks, social-distancing and by getting vaccinated.

Ricketts also announced that he will extend several current public health orders through March 31, 2022. The orders, in place since October, relaxed licensing requirements for health care officials to try to address chronic worker shortages that worsened during the pandemic. They were initially set to expire at the year's end.

Ricketts said the state will also request additional funding from the federal government to boost reimbursement rates for long-term care facilities, allowing nursing homes to collect more money so they can offer better pay to try to attract more workers.

___

Follow Grant Schulte on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrantSchulte
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP)  Police in West Texas on Monday arrested a 15-year-old boy after shots were fired a day earlier at a mall.

Lubbock police said two people suffered minor injuries when shots were fired Sunday at 5:35 p.m. in a common area of South Plains Mall. One person was grazed with a bullet and another was injured while leaving the scene, police said.

Police said Monday that the teen who was arrested has been charged with aggravated assault. The teen has been booked into the Lubbock County Juvenile Justice Center.

Police said it appears that the shooting stemmed from a dispute between two juveniles who knew each other.
Steve Prezant/Getty Images

A Texas woman who was arrested in late November for allegedly brandishing a firearm in the parking lot of an H-E-B has just been met with a lawsuit delivered by witness Diane Reyes, according to KRIS TV in Corpus Christi.

Reyes' report states that on Wednesday, November 24, she drove to the Annaville Corpus Christi grocery store to buy food for Thanksgiving dinner with two friends and her 6-month old daughter in tow. Upon arrival, Rossie Dennis, 60, allegedly pointed a gun at the car and threatened to shoot Reyes over a parking space.
Incidents of Covid-19 are spiking again this holiday, fueled by the new and more transmissible Omicron variant, first identified by scientists in South Africa on Nov 24, 2021.

While experts do not recommend that vaccinated Americans cancel their plans, they have stressed the importance of at-home test kits, available online and at certain pharmacies, as an important part of celebrating safely.

iHealth COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test, 2 Tests per Pack, iHealth amazon.com $17.98 Shop Now

We are doing better if you look now compared to where we were a year ago, says Dr. Anthony Fauci, Americas top infectious disease expert, told CNN on Sunday. We now have multiple at-home tests available, and we virtually had none a year ago.

The danger is especially high in areas where the vaccination rate is low, because vaccinated individuals are significantly less likely to contract the virus and, in cases of breakthrough infection, are less likely to suffer from severe symptoms.

The chances are, youre going to have a pretty mild case [if youre vaccinated], Fauci told Fox News. Youll have the sniffles, maybe are sick for a day or two with a fever, but you wont be in the I.C.U.

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told NPR something similar.

I think we should all be clear, we are going to see a very large wave of infections that will really get going, probably by the end of this month, Dr. Jha said. And January will be a month where we will see maybe more infections than weve seen in any month throughout the whole pandemic.

More infections will not necessarily lead to more deaths, however. He cites getting your booster shot and taking advantage of rapid tests as a key part of staying safe.

Weve got to get boosters into everybody. That will make an enormous difference and we have tools like rapid tests, which we can use to get together safely.

Last week the United States passed 50 million cases and 800,000 deaths due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
JJ Jelincic has scored an important initial win in his Public Records Act suit against CalPERS. Weve embedded the order from Judge Michael Markman below.1

Jelincic prevailed on the issue that had the potential to be most embarrassing to CalPERS, as well as the one that might pressure the giant fund to be a bit less flagrant about violating its confidentiality requirements.

As youll see on page 2, under Orders and Writ, Markman found that the CalPERS board had held an improper closed session on August 17, 2020, which was a special board meeting held in the wake of Ben Mengs sudden exodus after we exposed that he had violated California conflict of interest laws by holding shares in Blackstone, and found that the only portions of the discussion that were bona fide closed session matters were two sections where California Government Code 11126 (g), which allow performance reviews, hiring and firing of CEOs and CIOs to be held in private. One has to presume these parts of the meeting related to hiring Mengs replacement; Markman more or less says so in his analysis.

We are not going to analyze this ruling as closely as we normally might because as well explain, some matters are still in play and CalPERS is just about guaranteed to appeal. Mind you, most observers expected CalPERS to appeal it if lost. Here, CalPERS lost on the most embarrassing issue, the abuse of closed session privilege, as in improperly relegating matters that are required by law to be deliberated in public to secret board discussions. Among other things, this finding is tantamount to ruling that Board President Henry Jones committed a crime, albeit one subject only to misdemeanor penalties. Since Jones no doubt relied on the guidance of supposedly trusted staff, this ruling should put Jones and the other members of the board on notice not to be so trusting.

Keep in mind that the incentive for CalPERS to appeal has almost nothing to do with its odds of prevailing. If it appeals, CalPERS can attempt to maintain that the matter is still not resolved and any nay-saying about their conduct is premature. CalPERS can also presumably stay the release of any additional portions of the closed session transcript that arent already public by virtue of CalPERS mistakenly posting the redacted transcript on a public section of the courts site (see our copy of it here).

Now back to the order. It is clear that Markman still has not seen the entire closed session transcript. CalPERS has withheld some portions claiming they are attorney-client privileged. Apparently under California law, bona fide and sufficiently high stakes attorney-client privileged matters may be shielded even from in camera review.

Mind you, if there were any actual attorney-client privileged matter at issue, general counsel Matt Jacobs was required to submit a memorandum to the board as part of substantiating the basis for holding the discussion in secret. I am told that in the hearings, CalPERS has tried to maintain that such a document was created but now it cant find it.

Markman looks like he is being awfully deferential in asking CalPERS one more time to cough up its supposedly wayward record:

Markman basically says CalPERS needs to cough up the document that has allegedly gone missing so he can assess its bona fides, or publish the entire transcript, or face sanctions. So this wrangling will continue into the new year.

Those of you who follow CalPERS might justifiably worry that this is an invitation for CalPERS to fabricate the missing memorandum. That would be risky since the document was never provided to the board and does not exist in the boards records system, Diligent.

You will also see that Markman ruled that CalPERS did not have to disclose its writedowns of nearly $600 million in real estate assets because they fell under disclosure carveouts provided for the legislature for alternative investments (which are listed and do not include real estate) and alternative investment vehicles. Markman also accepts CalPERS keeping some supporting memoranda hidden by asserting trade secret status.

Unfortunately, this comes off as Markman falling, as judges sadly do, for assertions that saying too much about investment strategies or documents could expose the investor to harm, like an attack of evil shorts.

Its also disconcerting to see Markman depict this ruling as the first time any court has considered the question of whether California public pension funds that invested in real estate via limited partnerships fell under the alternative investments confidentiality shield. A California court ruled against CalPERS on precisely this issue, in 2010, over CalPERS efforts to hide documents regarding a lossmaking real estate investment, Page Mill Properties. The judge ruled that real estate was a traditional investment and subject to disclosure.

The problem is that when these laws shielding private equity and closely related investments were put in place around the US in the early 2000s (ironically in response to a settlement of a CalPERS Public Records Act suit that required CalPERS to publish limited performance data about all of its private equity funds on a quarterly basis), the argument ran that companies were fragile things and too much harsh light of transparency could lead to adverse outcomes to both poor performers (they could collapse as customers and prospective employees shunned them) and high fliers (key staffers could be poached).

These concerns simply does not apply in commercial real estate. A buildings valuation is not going to suffer if its super or managing agent quits. And events that do impact value, like lease termination or tenants being evicted, become public pronto because the space is put back on the market. Similarly, sales prices are public so theres no ability to make the private equity claim that they (somehow) need to hide their transaction prices. Buyers know, leasing agents know, lenders know, competitors know, all sorts of information: typical lease terms, who the tenants are (meaning also a good idea of how creditworthy they are), building construction type and condition. Its a small world.

Put it another way: CalPERS and other investors were using limited partnerships and buying shares of REITs way back in the stone ages of the early 2000s. If the legislature had wanted investment in real estate to be included under alternative investments, one would have expected it to have been specifically stated, as the legislature did for private equity, venture, hedge funds, and absolute return funds. The other category is alternative investment vehicles.through which the public investment fund invests in portfolio companies. In the early 2000s and even now, industry professional would take portfolio companies to mean operating businesses. The only way a real-estate-related business might qualify is if it were a management company/service provider, say a major broker like Cushman Wakefield. But that does not appear to be the argument Markman relied upon. He bizarrely invokes the notion that the real estate fund manager CalPERS is deeply involved with, CIM, has set up and/or bought SPACS and then used them to acquire real estate. How does that make the real estate a portfolio company? And thats before getting to the fact that it does not appear that CalPERS even claims that any of the written-down investments actually were or had been in a SPAC.

Let me briefly remind readers why the trade secret claim should have been a non-starter, and one is left wondering if Jelincics very competent lawyer Michael Risher spent so much time fighting the transcript/closed session issues that he didnt brief the real estate matters as thoroughly. Markman does not seem to appreciate that nothing in private equity or real estate land could rise to the level of trade secret, which is a very high legal bar, on the level of the design of a proprietary Intel chip. The only possible type of investment in that arena that might warrant that treatment would be an exotic hedging or derivatives trading strategy that competitors had not yet emulated. Those sorts of strategies, even when successful, tend to have a very short shelf life. As we explained in 2014:

For decades, private equity (PE) firms have asserted that limited partnership agreements (LPAs), the contracts between themselves and investors, should be treated in their entirety as trade secrets, and therefore not subject to disclosure under Freedom of Information Act laws in any jurisdiction. These private equity general partners argued that the information in their contracts was so sensitive that it needed to be shielded from competitors eyes, otherwise their unique, critically important know-how would be appropriated and used against them. In particular, PE firms have made frequent, forceful claims that their limited partnership agreements provide valuable insight into their investment strategies. The industry took the position that these documents were as valuable to them as the formula for Coca-Cola or the schematics for Intels next microprocessor chip. Now that we can look at the actual language in limited partnership agreements, we can see what any sophisticated user of legal instruments would guess: the PE firm lawyers describe the strategy in the broadest, most general terms to give the private equity fund as much latitude as possible When KKR claims the limited partnership agreement is a trade secret, its not hard to surmise that these tax games are a big part of what they are really trying to hide. But now that we can look across a series of limited partnership agreements, its clear that the tax strategies are highly parallel across funds. To the extent that there is anything distinctive, its in minor details relating to the implementation of the tax scheme, and not its objective or design We see more of the same, the absence of any specific or sensitive detail regarding investment strategies in this new round of limited partnership agreements. In fact, youd expect, just like the Use of Proceeds section in a public securities offering, for the investment strategies to be described in the most vague and general terms possible so as to give the general partner maximum flexibility in executing his mandate.

Why dont we toss this back to our sophisticated readers. How can anyone possibly have a real estate strategy that rose to the level of trade secret, save maybe the returns depending on unique illegal activity? There are no super duper confidential technical tricks for getting an information advantage.

The reason for belaboring this issue is that given the near-certainty that CalPERS will appeal, Jelincic and his attorney will have to respond. If they are put on the defense with respect to the finding of a closed session violation, they might as well go on the offense with respect to the real estate valuation, since the legal interpretation seems questionable. So if we are really lucky, CalPERS will wind up hoist on its appeals petard.

_____

1 The court posted 12 documents. This is the main ruling. We have not reviewed the other materials yet, another reason to stick to the big issues.
My position with Nashville Post has evolved since 2000 when I began work with the now-defunct The City Paper. TCP became a Post sister pub in 2008 (when I began some Post work) and folded in 2013. I have worked mainly with the Post since late 2011.

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(Natural News) Dr. Alan Keyes branded the Democratic Party as an anti-American party during the December 15 episode of his program Lets Talk America on Brighteon.TV.

They are committed now to a way of thinking that destroys the very foundations, principles and premises of our government as free people. They have abandoned it, said Keyes, who had fellow Brighteon.TV hosts Leah and Michelle Svenssen as guests.

Keyes encouraged the people to wake up now if they dont want to wake up dead.

We will be gone So America, for all the success weve had [and] for all the influence weve achieved, we are on the verge of disappearing, said Keyes. We always use that word freedom with great ease. Freedom simply means you have the opportunity and capacity to choose.

But Keyes said America isnt lacking in good-hearted people, faithful people, people who understand that theres a fundamental difference between right and freedom.

The Resistance Chicks agreed, saying that awakening is happening all around the United States. Theres an awakening happening. Theres a rumbling and theres a hunger because people have been starved, and that our relationship with the Almighty feeds our soul.

The Resistance Chicks said people hunger for something. The culture that is, you know, the sex, drugs, rock and roll, it actually starves the soul. And what happened was when they shut everything down, and they didnt feed the soul with sports, and you couldnt go to rock concerts, and you couldnt watch movies, they werent making movies, people began to hunger for something.

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One proof that is the declining popularity of President Joe Biden. In a New York Post poll, approval of Bidens handling of the pandemic has already fallen from 69 percent on Inauguration Day to 53 percent.

America still believes in God

Keyes also cited a recent survey, this time showing that 73 percent of the respondents answered that our rights come from God.

This is proof that America still believes in God, Keyes said. I think that the assumption that this is not so should just be tossed out the window. We should become people who are willing, no matter what the cost, to test the assumption that America still believes in God.

Keyes said there should be a study between people who read the Bible and those who watch porn. Im willing to bet that when they finished it up and they did tests, youd get the benchmark to start with. And then you do test of thinking and reasoning abilities and so forth. And then you take the end, the people who read the Bible will be smarter. And the people who are watching porn will be dumber. Yes, right. Theyll be less capable of thought, Keyes said.

According to Keyes, the Resistance Chicks embody both the spirit and the action that as citizens we must now be committed to representing if were to save the United States. He added that the most serious example of lies is the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines that are now turning into something that people have to take.

The regime of terror is using the health area to establish permanent control over every single American, and if possible, every single human being on the planet. I think with that specter in our minds, we Americans have better wake up, Keyes said.

We have saved the world several times in the course of our existence. But if we are to continue to work with others, for the salvation of humanity that God promises, then I think wed better work hard to return to his wisdom, so that we can save ourselves right now.

Watch the full Dec. 15 episode of Lets Talk America with Dr. Alan Keyes and the Resistance Chicks below. Tune in to Lets Talk America with Dr. Alan Keyes from Monday to Friday at 1-3 p.m. on Brighteon.TV



Follow JoeBiden.news for more news related to Joe Biden and his Democrat cohorts.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

Townhall.com
(Natural News) Two major environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop the use of deadly pesticides that are harming bees and other pollinators. Last week, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) of North America filed a suit demanding that the EPA close a loophole that has been allowing seeds that are coated with dangerous neonicotinoids to avoid being labeled and registered in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which means they are subject to fewer regulations than other types of pesticides.

The move came after the EPA failed to act on a legal rulemaking petition filed by the group in 2017 informing them of the loophole. They were required by law to answer the petition but never did.

Neonicotinoids are a type of pesticide that is known to be highly toxic to insects such as bees. They are the most widely used class of pesticides in the United States right now despite being so dangerous that the European Union banned three of the most common chemicals in this family for outdoor use in 2018.

Neonicotinoids are widely used to treat seeds, with crops grown from these seeds estimated to cover more than 150 million acres of American farmland each year. In 2011, more than 79 percent of the nations corn and 30 percent of its soybeans came from seeds that had been treated with neonicotinoids.

According to the National Resources Defense Councils Daniel Raichel, just one corn seed that has been treated with neonicotinoids contains enough of the active ingredient to kill a quarter of a million bees. Moreover, a recent study revealed that one common neonicotinoid is capable of reducing bee populations for several generations.

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Unfortunately, the dangers of these chemicals are not just confined to the seeds that are treated with them. In fact, more than 80 percent of the pesticides are able to leave the seed and pollute the air, water and soil surrounding them. Those that remain in the seed end up being taken into the plant itself, making their way into the leaves and nectar. When the plants are consumed by bees, birds and other pollinators, the chemicals attack their central nervous system, harming their ability to navigate and learn and leading to paralysis and even death.

Pesticides impact several generations of bees

A study from the University of California, Davis, found that repeated exposure to certain pesticides like neonicotinoids can have an additive effect that gets worse after multiple exposures and could require several generations to recover. The study looked at the North American blue orchard bee, an important pollinator of agricultural products such as fruit trees, to study how it was affected by the popular neonicotinoid imidacloprid.

They found that female bees who were exposed to the chemical as larvae experienced a 20 percent drop in the number of offspring they produced. However, when they were exposed later as adults, the same bees that had previously been exposed to it had a total drop of 44 percent fewer offspring. This indicates the effects of the chemical are additive, and it is particularly concerning when you consider that many bees who are exposed to harmful pesticides are exposed repeatedly rather than just once. In addition, neonicotinoids like imidacloprid have a very long persistence in soil. Its a dangerous situation for bee species that are already suffering from a lack of food resources, and it could put our food supply at risk.

Neonicotinoids have been under scrutiny for a long time for their scientifically documented role in causing the decline of honeybee populations, and newer evidence shows they also harm a wide range of wildlife, including birds and deer, in addition to having adverse effects on human health.

Sources for this article include:

EcoWatch.com

ModernFarmer.com
(Natural News) Facebook allegedly censored a video from a Chinese whistleblower detailing the origins of COVID.

(Article by Autumn Johnson republished from NewsBusters.org)

Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist, fled to America after exposing the origins of COVID-19. She spoke with The Daily Signal about what she said are the true origins of the virus, orchestrated in China with the approval of the Chinese Communist Party.

When The Signal published an exclusive interview with Yan about her research, Facebook flagged the video with a partly false information warning.

On some posts sharing the video, a warning from Facebook noting Independent fact-checkers reviewed the information and said it was partly false. The post is no longer available appeared.

Science Feedbacks FactCheck stated, The virus causing COVID-19 most likely evolved in natural wildlife populations before spreading to humans.

Yan said her research says the opposite.

The virus actually does not come from nature. It came from the lab, the lab controlled by the Chinese Communist Party government and its military.  The Chinese government has developed a novel bioweapon, she said. Yan also stated that she was warned not to go public with her research.

Be silent, dont cross a red line. If not, you will be disappeared, Yan said her supervisor told her in early 2020.

When The Signal asked Facebook about the flag, the platform allegedly blamed the fact-checker.

Just as all fact-checks, if you wish to issue a correction or dispute a rating, we ask that you please contact the fact-checking organization directly, Facebook said. Third-party fact-checkers apply their ratings independently from Facebook and are responsible for responding to appeals. More information about the process can be found in our Help Center.

The Daily Signal is in the process of appealing Facebooks decision.

Read more at: NewsBusters.org
(Natural News) A federal judge in Manhattan cast doubt on the future of the OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and its owners after overturning a roughly $4.5 billion settlement between the company and members of the Sackler family.

Members of the Sackler family, who own the company, have been accused of fueling the nations opioid crisis.

Judge Collen McMahon of the Southern District of New York ruled Thursday, Dec. 16, that legal releases cannot shield the owners from civil lawsuits because it is not permitted under the bankruptcy code.

The Sacklers, Purdue and groups representing opioid victims and other company creditors who supported the settlement and reorganization plan are likely to appeal the decision. (Related: Sickening: Billionaire Sackler opioid dynasty granted immunity from lawsuits.)

State attorneys general and the Department of Justices bankruptcy watchdog have earlier challenged the releases, which would prevent the potential legal claims of the state against the Sacklers. The Sacklers, in fact, didnt support the deal, which is being used in other corporate bankruptcies.

Congressional Democrats introduced a bill earlier this year in response to the Purdue settlement that would ban these types of releases.

According to McMahon, her ruling wont be the last word on the issue, stressing that prior legal rulings from the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Purdue and other bankrupt companies have relied on in advancing the types of legal releases the Sacklers would receive havent properly analyzed the issue.

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It must be put to rest sometime. At least in this Circuit, it should be put to rest now, McMahon said.

State attorneys general from Washington, Connecticut, Maryland and other states were against the settlement because the Sacklers contribution was insufficient to prevent other corporate wrongdoings. The settlement will be used by Purdue to fund programs to fight the opioid crisis and compensate people affected by OxyContin.

This is a seismic victory for justice and accountability that will re-open the deeply flawed Purdue bankruptcy and force the Sackler family to confront the pain and devastation they have caused, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said. (Related: Ex-opioid addict starts online campaign against billionaire family behind OxyContin; their company, Purdue Pharma, has made billions off opioids)

Before McMahons decision, the Sacklers have denied wrongdoing and said the deal will pave the way to provide assistance to people and communities in need.

The deal extracted as much as possible from the Sacklers, whose wealth is housed in hard-to-reach offshore trusts. The deal was approved in September and Judge McMahon was the second federal judge to review the Sacklers settlement.

Purdue, Sackler family deny fueling opioid crisis

Purdue and the Sacklers denied fueling the opioid crisis, and the bankruptcy filing was meant to resolve an onslaught of lawsuits. Purdue and major creditor groups have defended the family settlement, claiming it received broad support because it will provide assistance to people in need.

The deal, according to the Sacklers, mirrored similar deals that resolved lawsuits arising from dangerous or defective products.

If its restructuring plans collapse, McMahon said it would result in an outcome in which billions of dollars for abatement and victim compensation will be irretrievably lost.

Last year, Purdue pleaded guilty to three federal felonies related to the marketing and sale of OxyContin. The company admitted that it pushed the opioid painkiller on dozens of doctors it knew were diverting the drug for improper uses, and then failed to report those healthcare providers to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Sacklers, who testified in the bankruptcy court, denied that they were responsible for driving opioid addiction.

Our family has a moral responsibility, said David Sackler. Dr. Richard Sackler also denied that he, his family or the company are responsible for the opioid crisis.

A forced apology is not really an apology, so we will have to live without one, Judge Robert Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., said in his ruling approving the chapter 11 plan.

Because of what happened, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and descendants of company co-founders Mortimer and Raymond Sackler removed the familys name from seven museum exhibition spaces. The Sacklers are known for their philanthropic, academic and financial contributions.

The Sacklers wont have any involvement in Purdue under the bankruptcy plan when it emerges from chapter 11 under the new name Knoa Pharma. Purdue stressed its decision to file bankruptcy and settle with its owners came from a special committee of directors, free from family influence. The committee, according to a court-appointed examiner, acted independently from the family after Purdues bankruptcy filing.

The Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic worsened opioid addiction as U.S. drug overdose deaths surged nearly 30 percent in 2020  driven by the proliferation of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.

Watch the full video below to learn more about the opioid crisis and the effects of addiction.

Visit Opioids.news for more news and information related to illegal drugs.

Sources include:

Archive.fo

NewYorker.com

WSJ.com
(Natural News) Google has announced new notifications in Google Drive that show that the platform has restricted the sharing and access of files that violate its policies. In a blog post, the tech giant said that it will restrict the sharing of files that violate its Terms of Service and abuse program policies.

(Article by Christina Maas republished from ReclaimTheNet.org)

If a file is flagged for violating policies, the owner will still have full access but sharing will not be possible and those who already had a link will no longer have access.

The owner of the file will receive an email informing them their files have been restricted. They will be able to appeal the decision by requesting a review of their own document.

When a Google Drive file is identified as violating Googles Terms of Service or program policies, it may be restricted. When its restricted, you may see a flag next to the filename, you wont be able to share it, and your file will no longer be publicly accessible, even to people who have the link, the post states.

Google said it could review the content that violated its policies and take further action, such as restricting access to the content, removing the content, and limiting or terminating a users access to Google products.

The abuse policy program policies list several topics not allowed by Google, such as, hate speech, sexually explicit material, dangerous and illegal activities, malware, and misleading content.

Google justified the move as a measure to prevent the abuse of Google Drive services. It added that exceptions based on artistic, educational, documentary or scientific considerations.

Read more at: ReclaimTheNet.org
(Natural News) I just got off the phone with a woman who works at a large IVF clinic. She has to remain nameless to avoid being fired for speaking out. Nobody is supposed to know about the serious problems happening in the IVF clinics.

(Article by Steve Kirsch republished from SteveKirsch.Substack.com)

Let me tell you what is really going on and the scientific study that explains it.

Rest assured that the so-called fact checkers will call the IVF clinics who will deny there are any problems at all. Nothing to see here folks, move along!

So youll have to decide who you want to believe here.

No clue why miscarriage rates doubled from March through May

It seems that theyve been having a series of problems starting in March, 2021 that they just cannot figure out and have never seen before. Although my informant believes it is the vaccine (which of course is why I got the call), she says that the PhD they employ there to investigate the problem is looking at every possible variable to figure out why there was suddenly a doubling of the miscarriage rate (in March through May). Nothing was common to all these women. Nothing. She couldnt figure out the cause.

The PhD never even considered the shots as a possible variable  she refused to look at it when it was mentioned as really the only environmental change for all their patients. And because none of the other variables panned out as being a cause, she called the miscarriage increase a fluke.

The IVF clinics start having problems starting in March. And theyve talked to other IVF clinics who are having similar problems.

The problems in Utah are documented in this 42-page report produced by HEALTH INDEPENDENCE ALLIANCE.

Here are a few highlights from the report:

Due to the vaccine, the miscarriage rate jumped from 28% to 40% (which is a 43% increase) The report details stories of miscarriages, death, disability, and a wide range of other adverse events. Conclusion: the vaccines should be immediately stopped.

Here is a sample of some of the problems theyve had. Ill add to this list over time as I get more data, but I wanted to share this with you now.

Note: they do NOT track the vaccination status of any of the women or men involved in the IVF process since they believe that the vaccines are safe and effective. I just wanted to point that out in case you were curious.

In March thru May, there was a huge spike in miscarriage rates. It is normally 25% to 30%. In these months it shot up over 50%. Theyve never seen anything like that before. One woman had very reliably donated 30 or more eggs each time she came in which yielded 5 to 8 embryos. In May, she got her second shot of the vaccine and then came in to donate a couple of weeks later. The clinic was shocked: all of the embryos had all arrested when they checked them on day 5. None of them reached the stage where the trophectoderm forms. Im told this sort of thing is exactly what youd expect from the vaccine (see What happened in Singapore below). They are seeing an unknown contaminant in the wells with the embryos. They started noticing this in August, but it could have started sooner than that. They only notice it under high power magnification and it is only the wells with the embryos. They still dont know what it is or how it got there. Multiple clinics report the exact same thing. This means it is either coming from the sperm or the egg. This month, 2 of 10 women in their clinic are having serious problems. They both had 38 eggs but produced only 1 or 2 embryos, way below normal.

The clinics are not bringing any of these problems to the publics attention

They dont want to alarm anyone or discourage anyone from getting these safe and effective vaccines. Its all being discussed in private chat rooms between the IVF clinics. My informant would be fired if they found out who she was.

Some people who work at these clinics really dont like the unvaccinated

Finally, the embryologist at one clinic was heard saying All the unvaxed deserve to die. Wow. You really cant make this stuff up.

What happened in Singapore?

Ive written in the past about the famous Singapore study that was deliberately gamed so that the conclusion (which determined the vaccines were dangerous to women) would not panic anyone.

Essentially, the vaccine creates antibodies that attack a protein (syncytin-1) which is essential for placenta formation.

In plain English, what they found is that the vaccine should be avoided if you are trying to have a baby.

Heres what I originally wrote in July, 2021:

There is a substack article What happened in Singapore showing the antibody response to syncytin-1 is real and harmful. Mike Yeadon and Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg raised an alarm in Item XI of their petition to halt the Covid vaccine in December that it may induce an antibody response to syncytin-1, which is essential for placenta formation. The Singapore study authors set up their study to dispel this insinuation. Brian Mowrey wrote the article to explain the testing system and why the result the authors study found is a giant warning that the fears they were trying to dispel are valid. In short there is a lot we do not know about the effects of the vaccines on reproductive health and what we know is troubling enough that they should not be recommended for anyone looking to have a baby.

Brian Mowreys substack article was written on Jun 23, 2021, about a month after the Singapore study was published.

Its now December 15, 2021. There was only one person who commented on the article and 5 likes. Thats why nobody knows about this. Its been suppressed.

So nobody is going to connect the dots here unless they read my substack of course.

Expect real scientists to ignore your data if it doesnt comport with the mainstream narrative

Just an addendum that it will be hard to get anyone mainstream to even read this article.

In my case, Id estimate that close to 90% of the people doing medical research that I know now refuse to talk to me because I dont think the vaccines are safe (so I must be an evil person). Around 5% agree with me. And there are 5% are in the middle who will talk to me about anything except the vaccines and masking. They do not want to even hear that they might be wrong. I suggested that they might want to check out my substack articles just so they can see what they have been missing, but I get a polite no thank you to my offer.

This is why the scientific community is so stuck on their beliefs. They basically are very proficient at filtering out any information that doesnt align with their beliefs.

Read more at: SteveKirsch.Substack.com
(Natural News) Joe Flynn, younger brother of former national security adviser General Michael Flynn, told Ann Vandersteel that the medical community needs to do a deep soul-searching.

Its unbelievable to me that the medical community is something you used to trust explicitly. Like without even questioning, you go to your doctor and get a diagnosis, then he tells you to take this drug, Flynn said during the Dec. 13 episode of Vandersteels program Steel Truth on Brighteon.TV.

It is completely flipped on its head with this COVID thing. Now, I dont trust anything coming out of any of these health systems. The way that theyve handled this pandemic, by not allowing people to have proven remedies to these types of airborne viruses is, its a crime. I cant even describe it. (Related: Americas public health system is utterly corrupt.)

Vandersteel said the situation got worse when federal agencies started to overstep their authority. Weve got the FDA [Food and Drug Administration], the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], the NIH [National Institutes of Health], which are not constitutionally charted organizations, making rules, making laws, Vandersteel said.

Flynn, who is with the America Project, stressed that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) was manufactured in a Chinese lab and let loose to control the global population.

The America Project is a network of likeminded individuals, businesses and organizations. Its mission is to harness and activate the power of the American spirit by building a support network of and for pro-freedom organizations, businesses and individuals to empower and embolden them to stand up for America.

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Perfect storm brewing for patriots

Vandersteel delivered some good news on other fronts, saying that theres a perfect storm brewing for the patriots.

The U.S. havent had a free fair election in probably 20 years from all the data that were getting out there. Clearly, the media is complicit in covering this up. They dont want it out there. Theres a perfect storm thats brewing for the patriots. Thats going to finally put the nail in the coffin in this theft, Vandersteel said. (Related: Election interference: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent $500 million to influence Democrat election officials and unlawfully change the election system.)

Flynn said a lot of people want to see somebody getting indicted.

I think a lot of people are anxious for an investigation in Arizona. Im disappointed that the attorney general hasnt moved as quickly there. I think that situation is going to take on a life of its own, Flynn said. You got the situation in Wisconsin, where a public hearing has now shown 119,1000 voters that were over the age of 100, which is impossible.

Vandersteel showed Flynn and her viewers a video of Trump speaking with Bill OReilly in Orlando, Florida. Trump predicted that the Republicans are going to take the House and said that he will appoint a special prosecutor to look into election fraud if reelected.

We cant have fraudulent elections in our country. That whole thing was about a fraudulent election. And its a committee made up of all horrible Democrats that truly hate up, theyre all haters at the highest level, Trump said.

Flynn agreed that the elections have massive problems in terms of fraud, but stressed that people must go out and vote.

No matter what we still have to show up and vote, we have to show up in huge numbers, we have to show up at the precincts, we have to do what Leon Benjamin did in the state of Virginia and rally the people to force scrutiny on the voting system in Virginia, Flynn said.

Obviously, we know part of the problem is the Republican Party. Were not going to get perfect candidates. But theres a lot of really good candidates running in this 2022 election in the primaries. People got to pay attention to those primaries and get the right people in the right jobs. So we can make the changes we need to make.

Republican bet on the rise in Colorado

Vandersteel also hit Democratic Governor Jared Polis, who is now relaxing COVID restrictions in Colorado because he is petrified that he might lose to Republican bet Danielle Neuschwanger.

Is it potentially that you no longer want to claim this to be a pandemic because a woman who is nipping at your heels is actually overtaking you in the polls? asked Vandersteel.

Neuschwanger criticized the 25-year high crime rate in Colorado and Polis being soft on sex offenders.

If you dont like this, or youre tired of this type of stuff happening in Colorado, I would encourage you to go over to danielleforco.com and check me out to be the next Governor of Colorado where I promised to clean up crime in our state, said the Republican candidate.

Watch the full Dec. 13 episode of Ann Vandersteels Steel Truth on Brighteon.TV below. Drs. Richard Bartlett and Patrick Byrne also appeared on the show.



Catch new episodes of Steel Truth on Brighteon.TV from Monday to Friday at 8 to 10 p.m.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

AmericaProject.com
(Natural News) Mike Adams talked about the Christian-based fundraising platform GiveSendGo.com with its co-founder Heather Wilson during the Dec.16 edition of Health Ranger Report on Brighteon.TV.

In 2016, Wilson and her brother launched the fundraising platform to help people raise money for worthy causes without the insane censorship of some of the other platforms.

Social media, according to Wilson, is becoming bigger and one of the fundraising platforms available was GoFundMe. But she felt the need for a platform in the market for conservatives, or people who have a different view compared to the mainstream media.

Looking back, we know that God planted the idea back then, so that today there would be a vehicle that would not be censoring people, said Wilson.

Adams said more and more people are hearing about GiveSendGo.com, which is hosting the fundraiser for Greg Catan, who is on life support in Ecuador. Adams described Catan as somebody who exercises free speech.

GoFundMe hosts fundraisers for murderers, violent criminals and terrorists

Saying that GoFundMe is happy hosting fundraisers for murderers, violent criminals and terrorists, as long as theyre on the political side of the of the left, Adams noted that GiveSendGo.com hosts a big diversity of different things.

Adams and Wilson talked about Kyle Rittenhouse, who was found not guilty of shooting two men in Kenosha, Wisconsin by the jury. The teenager said he shot the two in self-defense during the height of protests and riots that followed after the shooting of a black man. (Related: Alan Dershowitz: Kyle Rittenhouse should be acquitted, sue media outlets.)

Those platforms, they dont mind hosting terrorists, but then Kyle Rittenhouse, who has been found innocent, they banned him from their network when all he was doing was defending himself. And the courts have now affirmed that. The jury has affirmed that, said Adams.

Wilson said GiveSendGo.com is growing year after year and becoming the Christian alternative.

Then all of a sudden, one day we wake up to a lot of hate mail and death threats. And we see this campaign, this young man named Kyle. Were reading things on him and someone had come to our platform and started a campaign for Kyle, because he had been taken off every other platform, recalled Wilson, who said it is incredible that other platforms werent allowing the young man to raise money for legal defense.

Wilson said all citizens can hire an attorney they can afford in the United States. It shouldnt just be for the wealthy people. And so people living with no means should be able to raise money. They should be able to raise money for a lawyer and get the best lawyer they can so that when they go to court, if they are found guilty, its not because they didnt have a good lawyer, explained Wilson.

Wilson said they allowed the fundraising campaign for Rittenhouse because everybody is presumed innocent until youre found guilty in a court of law.

We allowed the campaign in the presumption of innocence. And even if he did it, even if he went out and he shot those people on purpose, he deserves to be able to defend himself on why he did it. And so we allowed him to campaign, Wilson said.

Left attacks GiveSendGo.com for helping Rittenhouse

By helping Rittenhouse, Wilson said people attacked GiveSendGo.com and tried to take it down. People want to say, Oh, are you a right-leaning website? And we say no, we dont lean either way. We just stand for freedom, because our goal is to share the hope we found in Jesus to anybody who comes on our platform.

But Wilson made it clear that GiveSendGo.com will never raise money to do something criminal like killing a child even in ones womb or bombing the White House. Were not going to just allow you to go and harm somebody else on purpose, said Wilson.

Wilson also assured that their platform makes sure the name that is listed on a fundraising campaign is the actual recipient of the fund. We 100 percent guarantee that if it says John Smith is getting the fund, then John Smiths bank account is attached to that, said Wilson.

She added that when a campaign gets bigger and goes viral, they always tell people to make sure they do due diligence.

Its like a Hunter Bidens campaign. So Im raising money for painting canvases, then it ends up on crack and hookers. So you know, if you donate to Hunter Biden, thats your fault, commented Adams.

Watch the full De. 16 episode of the Health Ranger Report with Mike Adams below. Tune in to the Health Ranger Report from Monday to Friday at 3-3:30 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.



Follow Patriot.news for more articles about Christian patriots in the United States.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

NPR.org
(Natural News) Because of some covid law, California paramedics say they refused to attend to a dying man during a recent emergency call, which led to the man dying without the care he needed.

The incident took place on November 11 in Rialto. The man, 56-year-old Joseph Angulo, was in a care facility when he suddenly stopped breathing. A 911 call from the Rialto Post Acute Care Center sent first responders to the facility around 7:50 p.m.

When police officer Ralph Ballew arrived, two Rialto Fire responders were waiting at the door of the facility. This was confirmed through footage obtained from Ballews bodycam.

In the video, Ballew speaks to the care home personnel who explain that the man is in cardiac arrest. Ballew tells them that the paramedics are refusing to enter the building because theyre saying that its a state law that they cant come in.

Personnel at the facility were also seen in the footage trying to work on Angulo and appearing to administer CPR while telling Ballew that the bed he was in has no wheels.

Ballew was then seen pushing Angulos bed to the doorway and down the hallway, despite the lack of wheels. The bed eventually made it past the front door which is when the paramedics took over, but it was already too late.

It is difficult to watch the tape, said Rialto Mayor Pro Tem Ed Scott about what became of Angulo, who was transported to a nearby hospital where he later died.

Are first responders just letting people die now while using covid rules as an excuse?

After being told about the incident, Scott reportedly contacted the city attorney. Sergy El More-Shedy from the states Emergency Medical Services Authority confirmed that there is no law in place barring paramedics from entering care facilities to assist dying patients.

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Upon acceptance of a call assignment, California paramedics cannot refuse service (i.e., assessment, treatment, transport) unless directed by law enforcement or if the scene is unsafe, More-Shedy said in a statement.

Local protocols may change instructions for the conditions to assess, treat, and / or transport.

Rialto Acting Fire Chief Brian Park followed up as well to indicate that the two paramedics who essentially let Angulo die by refusing him care are now on leave pending an investigation.

Rialto Mayor Deborah Robertson also promised a full investigation into the matter.

In a report, Ballew confirmed that paramedics insisted the patient had to be brought outside the facility before they could provide any sort of treatment.

I was informed due to an unspecified COVID-19 law, fire personnel was [sic] prohibited from entering the facility and the patient needed to be brought outside, Ballew further explained.

Despite being in their line of sight, fire personnel still insisted on (the patient) being brought to them outside before they began life saving efforts and made no effort to assist me in getting (the patient) outside.

Ballew says he was also told by the two paramedics that ever since the implementation of some covid law that they could not specify but that they were sure prohibited them from entering the building, Rialto Fire Personnel had not received any direction on how to proceed from their command.

I hope they (paramedics) are charged with negligent homicide and convicted, and do time right alongside Newsom for this law,' wrote one commenter at The Western Journal.

Im a retired paramedic and I think these actions were unacceptable, wrote another. We are taught how to protect ourselves (or were supposed to be). I am floored by the actions of the EMS providers in this incident. My sincere condolences to the family of the patient and the staff of the care facility.

More related news about covid can be found at Genocide.news.

Sources for this article include:

WesternJournal.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Investigative reporter Leo Hohmann warned that the push to vaccinate young children is not meant to protect them from the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). It is designed to include children into the blossoming global digital identity system.

Digital record isnt about health. It is one powerful tool for data collection.

Thats why there has been a constant push to implement COVID-19 vaccine passports, most of which rely on digital technologies like mobile applications, to document a persons COVID-19 vaccination records.

While these tools allegedly exist for documentation purposes, theres a worrying proof that they will also be used for data collection on adults and children alike.

Different organizations support the melding of Big Tech and Big Health

In January 2010, Bill Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced that people must work to make the next 10 years the decade of vaccines. He also advised that technology is key to saving more children.

After launching the so-called Decade of Vaccines, the Gates Foundation pledged $10 billion in funding. The billionaire was working with others to launch this initiative.

The Decade of Vaccines program used a model from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to calculate the potential impact of vaccines on childhood deaths in the coming decades. The announcement for the decade of vaccines initiative was made at the 2010 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Interestingly, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the WEF organized the Event 201 pandemic simulation exercise in October 2019  a few months before the coronavirus spread around the world.

In 2010, the Global Vaccine Action Plan was also announced as part of this initiative. It was a collaboration by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Anthony Fauci also served on the leadership council.

At the time, the Gates Foundation said that the Global Vaccine Action Plan will allow greater coordination across all stakeholder groups, such as national governments, the private sector and philanthropic organizations.

The steering committee for the Global Vaccine Action Plan included a member from the GAVI Alliance and the initial announcement for the Decade of Vaccines was made in the presence of Julian Lob-Levyt, who was the CEO of the GAVI Alliance at the time.

The GAVI Alliance, formerly known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, is a global health partnership of public and private sector organizations with one seemingly innocent goal: immunization for all.

Also called the Vaccine Alliance, GAVI claims that its mission is to save lives and protect peoples health. The organization has allegedly helped vaccinate more than 50 percent of the worlds children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases. (Related: Over 15,000 doctors and scientists sign declaration opposing COVID-19 vaccinations for children.)

GAVI also works with several international organizations, such as the WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank.

Through its innovation for update, scale and equity in immunization (INFUSE) initiative, GAVI suggested in 2018 that a future where children have access to vaccines wherever they are in the world is also a future where children have digital health records that are permanent.

The records can be used by children and their parents to have access to a bank account, go to school and access services. GAVI explained that the records would be possible through innovations that leverage new technologies to modernize the process of identifying and registering the children who are most in need of life-saving vaccines.

But Hohmann saw through the smoke and mirrors.

If COVID-19 passports are enforced across the globe, unvaccinated individuals would have limited access to services such as businesses, banks and other private spaces.

The GAVI Alliance also worked closely with the ID2020 Alliance. Founded in 2016, the NGO is allegedly working towards ethical, privacy-protecting approaches to digital ID.

ID2020 also claims that, when done right, digital IDs will help protect civil liberties.

From COVID-19 vaccine passports to digital wallet regimes

On Nov. 30, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 550, the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021.

The law would provide $400 million in funding to further develop vaccine-tracking systems at the state and local level. Once upgraded, the systems can be used by state health officials to monitor the vaccination status of Americans and to provide this information to the federal government.

Fauci himself supported no-fly lists for the unvaccinated, which could be created under the law along with vaccine passports.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Annie Kuster and it passed the House of Representatives with 294 votes  from all Democrats and 80 Republicans. As of writing, the bill is being reviewed by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Digital platforms are making data collection easier for government and other interested parties

The continued use of these invasive digital platforms has triggered questions about the safety of peoples data on these digital platforms even though the government insists that there is nothing to worry about.

It also remains to be seen how long COVID-19 passports, whether in digital or paper form, will be enforced  or if governments are working behind the scenes to make them permanent.

Watch the video below to know more about GAVI and its dubious goals.



Visit Vaccines.news to read more articles about how the government and Big Pharma are trying to use vaccines to control the public.

Sources include:

GlobalResearch.ca

GatesFoundation.org

WHO.int

ID2020.org

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas is launching an investigation into two pharmaceutical companies that are accused of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by promoting puberty blockers for children on the pathway to becoming transgender.

Paxton is focusing on Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and AbbVie Inc., both of which allegedly advertised and promoted hormone (puberty) blockers for unapproved uses while failing to disclose the potential risks involved with taking them.

Currently, medications like Supprelin LA and Lupron Depot are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat children with Central Precocious Puberty, or CPP, a condition in which the puberty process begins prematurely.

Vantas, along with other forms of Lupron, can also be prescribed for the palliative treatment of prostate cancer, another hormone-driven disease.

Ever since the LGBTQ mafia started aggressively pushing children to become trans, however, drug giants have allegedly been promoting the aforementioned drugs to treat gender dysphoria, even though the FDA has never approved them for this purpose.

Gender dysphoria is a diagnosed mental disorder, just to be clear. It requires a different kind of treatment in order to get rid of it, not the prescription of gender-bender drugs that affirm it as normal and recreate a persons body in the image of the opposite sex.

The manufacture, sale, prescription, and use of puberty blockers on young teens and minors is dangerous and reckless, Paxton said.

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These drugs were approved for very different purposes and can have detrimental and even irreversible side effects. I will not allow pharmaceutical companies to take advantage of Texas children.

Parents: Protect your children from life-destroying gender-bender drugs

In a statement to Fox News, Endo Pharmaceuticals denied ever promoting its gender-bender drugs for gender dysphoria.

The company has not promoted either of these medications outside of their indications and does not promote medications for off-label uses, said Heather Zoumas Lubeski, a company spokesperson. That being said, we intend to fully cooperate with this inquiry / investigation.

We do not have any approved medications indicated for gender dysphoria and we do not promote medications for off-label uses, she further added.

AbbVie reportedly did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Dr. Michael Laidlaw, an independent private practice endocrinologist in Rocklin, Calif., told Fox that he fully agrees with AG Paxtons investigation.

I agree with AG Paxton that these drugs are only FDA approved as puberty blockers in children for the purpose of treating central precocious puberty and not for gender dysphoria, he said.

Central precocious puberty is a medical condition in which a child starts puberty at an abnormally young age, say age four. Medications like Supprelin LA are used to stop this abnormal puberty. Then once the child reaches a typical age for puberty (say age 11 or 12), the medication is stopped, and then normal puberty will resume.

Using such drugs for off-label purposes, including to treat gender dysphoria, is a completely different thing, he added, that is not appropriate for older children who are now taking them to try to become the opposite sex.

Blocking normal puberty has numerous unhealthy side effects including loss of normal bone development, interference with normal brain and social development, and importantly causes infertility and sexual dysfunction, Laidlaw warns. Many of these effects will be irreversible.

Not only that, but this class of drugs is very expensive, he says. One 50mg subcutaneous implant of Supprellin LA, for example, costs $44,973. One parent who spoke to Laidlaw said a bill received from the hospital for the procedure and the medication device totaled around $210,000.

More related news about Big Pharma, gender dysphoria and puberty blocker drugs can be found at Gender.news.

Sources for this article include:

TexasAttorneyGeneral.org

FoxNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) A judge in Minnesota just sentenced a woman to 90 days in jail for violating the governors COVID-19 indoor service ban during the scamdemic. Thou shall not make money during the China Flu crisis unless you are a high-ranking member of a huge corporation (at the top of the food chain). Though quarantines, lockdowns and small-to-medium-sized businesses (non-essential according to the government) forced closures have exacerbated the pandemic, the Biden Covid regime and their sellout/buy in judges must burn some scarecrows to intimidate the populace and claim otherwise.

Owner of Interchange Wine & Coffee Bistro, Melissa Hanson, now imprisoned for serving alcohol indoors

Google says her business is permanently closed, but how would they know? Who says she cant run her business after being tied to the scamdemic whipping post? Google business pages reveal that Melissa Hansons Bistro is permanently closed, per the screenshot below.

You see, anyone who opposes the Resident Biden/CCP administration Covid guidelines is put in a Gulag and their life is ruined forever. This is the Democrat way to protect the greater good, as Hitler once proclaimed. Guilty on all counts, the jurors found. The courts called it breaking the law, but what law is that? All the FAST FOOD restaurants remained open during the pandemic, if even just as a drive through or takeout or delivery, because they are corporations, and there is no science behind going into a restaurant versus getting take out food and spreading Covid. Get it?

Quarantines for bad head colds and the flu are not laws, theyre mandates and conjured rules based on ZERO science, even though they are all about stopping the so-called spread of false-PCR-positive coronavirus, a strain of a lab-made something thats never been isolated or identified.

Bistro owner labeled ongoing public safety risk and unwilling to participate in the legal process

Hanson, a first time offender, should not have been sent to jail at all. Is there any proof she got anyone infected with Covid at her Bistro? Were there ever any claims made by anyone about this? Is this just fake news (plandemic) with real-life consequences? She was arrested for being passionate about her country and expressing the God-given and constitutional right to function.

Why should most large corporations continue to function at not just 100 percent capacity throughout the pandemic, but grossly funded by the desperation of every American who could not go to family restaurants, or grocers, or health shops, or anything that wasnt Amazon or Walmart run?

The judge berated her anyway, You were a public risk because you kept your business open. That must be as dangerous as not wearing a mask, like nearly every politician whos been caught partying without one, over and over. Hanson is no criminal, so why is she being treated like one? Its all part of the smoke and mirrors of the big Covid Circus. Step right up folks and see the sheeple ride the Ferris wheel of death (Covid vaccine regimen including all upcoming boosters).

It gets better. The judge also accused Melissa Hanson of being greedy and taking advantage of the pandemic by staying open while others were closed. But wait, the vaccine manufacturers made billions off jabs that dont work, and maim and kill thousands of people, but theyre not greedy and guilty of spreading THE Covid? The judge went on to belittle the restaurant owner, You sure played them for the fool, didnt you? he jabbed at her, You just wanted to make money during a global pandemic.

Isnt Fauci writing a book? The woman was trying to pay her bills, put food on her familys table and keep her business functioning during a big fake crisis where nobody needed to shut down or limit capacity at all, ever. The whole theory of lockdowns and quarantines was horribly applied and failed miserably at flattening the curve that never existed.

For reliable health news on the internet, tune to Vaccines.news for updates on experimental vaccines (all of the Covid shots) that cause blood clots and other horrific side effects.

Sources for this article include:

Pandemic.news

TruthWiki.org

NaturalNews.com

TheMinnesotaSun.com
(Natural News) Popular truth-teller Dr. David Martin called the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) an intentional weaponization of the spike protein during his speech on Clay Clarks ReAwaken America Tour last Dec. 10. Clark shared the video of Martins speech during the Dec. 13 episode of Thrive Time Show on Brighteon.TV.

This was not a public health problem. This was a biowarfare act of domestic terrorism meted out on the citizens of the United States and the people of the world, said Martin.

And it was not a lab leak from China. It was not a lab leak from anywhere. It was an intentional weaponization of the spike protein, and it is murder. And we will call it what it is. It was murder then and its premeditated murder.

Martin added that COVID is a direct result of HIV Inc., which was founded in 1984 with Anthony Fauci being the chief architect of the organization. He added that Faucis goal was to use sexuality, specifically homosexuality, as a way to indoctrinate humanity into the acceptance of a universal vaccine mandate.

According to Martin, Fauci and his team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), along with his minions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), had convinced the American people to accept a universal vaccine  leading to the first ever product immunity in the United States, which allowed manufacturers to kill people with intent.

Martin, a developer of innovation-based quantitative indices of public equities and founder of the Purple Bridge Funds and M-CAM International, noted that the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill began the weaponization of the coronavirus in 1986.

Coronavirus, as a model, has a very interesting set of attractive attributes, which include this very interesting thing called the spike protein, and a couple other binding sites where the virus allegedly binds to the outside of the cell. And it turns out that Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill was the very first person to figure out how to take a pathogen which used to be an infection of the gut, Martin said.

For over 30 years, coronavirus was gastroenteritis. But Ralph Baric figured out how to weaponize it, and not weaponize the virus [but] weaponize the spike protein. And he was the one that figured out how to make a thing that used to hit your gut, hit your heart.

Martin said that in 1996 Baric received a grant followed by a series of more grants in 1999 from Fauci to actually weaponize the coronavirus spike protein so it could be used as a vaccine vector with the idea that it would be the next HIV vaccine. (Related: Fauci KNEW COVID-19 is a biological weapon created in Wuhan lab but chose not to tell Trump  Brighteon.TV.)

SARS-CoV altered in laboratories

Martin, who had earlier this year exposed COVID-19 as a man-made biological weapon, has been actively tracking patent applications and approvals since 1999 to identify suspicious activity.

He added that since 1999, humans have been manipulating properties of the beta coronavirus model so that it can become more pathogenic to humans and we saw its emergence in the 2002-2003 outbreak.

It would resurface in 2012 with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak, which would go on until 2013 before reemerging anew in 2019.

Martin said the beta coronavirus model called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-coronavirus (SARS-CoV) has been altered in laboratories, including the amplification of the spike protein and the ACE-2 receptor.

He also took note of a publication released on March 15, 2016 that said there was a Wuhan Institute of Virology pathogen that was assured for human emergence.

Watch the full Dec. 13 episode of Thrive Time Show with Clay Clark on Brighteon.TV.

You can catch Thrive Time Show with Clay Clark from Monday to Friday at 3;30-4 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Follow Pandemic.news for more news related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

Z3 News.com
(Natural News) If you are among those who have not succumbed to the psychological warfare that has been inflicted upon the world through the war against the COVID-19 virus and remain unvaccinated with a healthy heart and sound mind, get ready for the next phase of this war against the virus, as Operation Omicron is about to be unleashed, and there are going to be massive casualties, all blamed on you and me; the unvaccinated.

(Article by Brian Shilhavy republished from HealthImpactNews.com)

The script has been written, and the message has been delivered this week by the usual puppet spokespeople to the public.

U.S. President Joe Biden:

Omicron is here. Its gonna start to spread much more rapidly at the beginning of the year, and the only real protection is to get your shot. We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death, if youre unvaccinated. For themselves, their family, and the hospitals theyll soon overwhelm. (Source)

From The Hill:

Anthony Fauci said Thursday that the omicron variant will likely be dominant in the U.S. in a few weeks and warned of the possibility of hospitals being overwhelmed this winter. He added, though, that people who are vaccinated, and especially those who have their booster shots, will be relatively well protected, at least against severe disease, saying he is most worried about the unvaccinated. The omicron variant will assume a dominant role very soon, I would imagine within a period of a few weeks to as we go into January, Fauci, the governments top infectious disease expert, said during an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

The masses in the public currently supporting Pfizer and Moderna by being obedient slaves and doing exactly what they are told to do, have apparently now conferred prophet status on people like Joe Biden and Tony Fauci, since they just announced that they know exactly how this virus is going to behave within the next few weeks into the future.

Those of us unvaccinated who still have our hearts and minds intact, can easily see that this is just the next phase of the Great Reset and the declared war on the virus started by Donald Trump in 2020 with Operation Warp Speed.

They have almost completed their take over of the U.S. hospital system by firing all the sane and ethical staff that refused the bioweapon shots, and implemented COVID protocols that are actually designed to bring in great profits while reducing the population of those sick with weakened immune systems.

Get more news like this without being censored: Get the Natural News app for your mobile devices. Enjoy uncensored news, lab test results, videos, podcasts and more. Bypass all the unfair censorship by Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Get your daily news and videos directly from the source! Download here.

As has been true in the initial campaigns of this war against the virus, the elderly will probably be targeted first, since they are deemed worthless members of society by the Satanic Globalists, and they can increase their profits by reducing the number of people on Medicare and social security.

Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet exposed this agenda in October with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuels 2009-2010 Complete Lives System for rationing medical care for people older than 50.

Dr. Zeke Emanuel, who was the Senior White House Health Policy Advisor to President Obama and has been advising President Joe Biden about COVID-19, stated in his classic 2009 Lancet paper:

When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated. Attenuatedmeans rationed, restricted, or denied medical care that commonly leads to premature death. (Full article.)

This is happening in the UK as well. The Expose in the UK published this article today:

Deja vu  The UK is about to experience a huge wave of deaths among the Elderly and Vulnerable comparable to April 2020

Excerpts:

The UK is about to experience a huge wave of deaths among the elderly and most vulnerable population in scenes that will resemble those of April 2020. The public will be told that Covid-19 is to blame, but the truth is that the recipe for disaster that has been cooked up by the UK Government and its circle of scientific advisors will be solely responsible. A recipe that has included mandating vaccines for carers, dedicating the energy of the entire NHS to administering booster jabs to the nation, and the mass purchase of a drug known as midazolam yet again. In March 2020 the British people were ordered to stay at home, to protect the NHS, and save lives. But in reality the evidence suggests that the British people were ordered to stay at home, so the NHS could give midazolam to the elderly and vulnerable and pretend that they were Covid-19 deaths. Heres a quick run-down of some of the evidence  Midazolam is a commonly used drug in palliative care, think of it as diazepam on steroids.

Midazolam is also a drug that has been used in executions by lethal injection in the USA.

UK regulators state that you should only receive midazolam in a hospital or doctors office that has the equipment that is needed to monitor your heart and lungs and to provide life-saving medical treatment quickly if your breathing slows or stops.

This is because Midazolam can cause serious or life-threatening breathing problems such as shallow, slowed, or temporarily stopped breathing that may lead to permanent brain injury or death.

At the start of the alleged Covid-19 pandemic Matt Hancock ordered a two-year supply of Midazolam and then went back to France for more.

This was confirmed in a parliamentary committee meeting which included Hancock, Professor Van Tam, and Tory MP; Dr Luke Evans, who said a good death needs three things, one of those things being Midazolam.

At the same time Hancock and the Government changed the law on the certification of deaths under the guise of the coronavirus act.

And the law on cremations; removing the need for a confirmatory medical certificate.

And the law on indemnity for health service activity.

And the law on visiting loved ones in care homes; which was banned.

April and May 2020 saw a huge spike in deaths occurring in care homes, many were falsely attributed to Covid-19.

In late 2020 the Care Quality Commission found 34 percent of Health and Social Care workers said they had felt pressured to place Do Not Resuscitate orders on care home residents without informing the resident or their loved ones.

An Amnesty report also found the blanket use of DNR orders in Care homes.

The two-year supply of Midazolam purchased at the beginning of the alleged pandemic was gone by October.

What happened to all of the Midazolam? Now the authorities are about to play this whole game again, this time under the guise of the alleged Omicron Covid-19 variant. (Full article.)

The Expose has also published some very interesting reports based on the U.S VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) showing that the vast majority of deaths being reported following COVID-19 shots are from a very small percentage of the lots issued by the drug companies. See:

EXCLUSIVE  100% of Covid-19 Vaccine Deaths were caused by just 5% of the batches produced according to official Government data

EXCLUSIVE  100% of Covid-19 Vaccine Permanent Disabilities and Deaths among Children were caused by just 6% of the batches produced according to official Government data

Investigation finds Medicine Regulators are knowingly continuing to administer the most dangerous batches of Covid-19 Vaccine to Children causing countless Disabilities and Deaths

Since the Globalist puppets here in the U.S. are already telling us ahead of time that we are going to see severe illness and deaths with the hospitals being overrun beyond capacity within the next few weeks, there is good reason to believe that the lots of pediatric Pfizer shots given to children, and the booster shots given to seniors, are about to become much more deadly.

So if you want to protect yourself from this Omicron variant, do the exact opposite of what the Globalists tell you, because those who will die and suffer crippling injuries, will be the ones who rush out and get their shots, and NOT the unvaccinated.

Whatever this Omicron is, the main way you will get it is through a needle injecting it into you.

Read more at: HealthImpactNews.com
(Natural News) German bureaucrats have declared the Telegram messaging app to be a threat to democracy and a hotbed of radicalization because some people use it to organize protests against Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) fascism.

Fake news stories from German media outlets such as Tagesschau and Deutsche Welle have been consistently framing Telegram as a gathering place for dangerous conspiracies, vaccine misinformation, and the driving force behind the violent protests against the countrys lockdowns, mask mandates, and compulsory vaccination edicts.

Since the beginning of December, in fact, the fake news media machine in Germany has been going nuts in opposition to Telegram  almost like they are all controlled by the same hidden hand of propaganda.

Thuringen interior minister George Mair, a member of the Social Democrats party in Germany, actually proposed trying to penalize Telegram if the platform refuses to remove harmful content that goes against the governments Fauci Virus tyranny.

Mair says that bureaucrats like himself could set up geoblocking protocols to disallow Germans from using the platform. The service could also be disabled from certain regions of the country using IP protocol blocking.

Roland Woller of the Christian Democrat party echoed Mairs sentiments, suggesting that more radicalization on Telegram will occur if politicians like himself impose mandatory jab policies across Germany.

Woller has suggested punishing the company behind the Telegram app if any criminal acts that occur in Germany can somehow be traced back to the platforms use.

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Officials are also calling for the deanonymization of users on the platform, reported The National Pulse.

Woller further suggested opening criminal investigations into Telegram users after their anonymity is scrapped.

Germanys tyrant political class says opposing covid fascism is hate

At no point have any of these corrupt bureaucrats even considered the fact that they are the ones who have been radicalized. Their total lack of self-awareness has led them to the conclusion that their imposition of mass medical fascism is completely normal, and that anyone who opposes it is a terrorist.

The truth, of course, is that Mair and Woller and their kind are the true radicalized terrorists in this whole equation. They are the ones who deserve prosecution and punishment for committing crimes against humanity.

They do not see things this way, though. Nancy Faeser, the new German governments interior minister, recently announced that her number-one priority is to fight right-wing extremism on Telegram.

Faeser believes that all opposition to Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) fascism represents hate speech and aggression, and that it must be punished with strict measures to stamp it out from all of Germany.

What is happening on Telegram is not only disgusting and inappropriate, but also, in most cases, criminal, further decreed Marco Buschmann, a member of the German Bundestag and yet another medical fascist leading Germany off a cliff.

The law is clear on this, Buschmann further declared. We have to think about all the possibilities  my wish is not to have a German way  but a European framework, which will allow us to fight against this hate.

It is important to point out that ever since these Fauci Flu fascists have started aggressively abusing Germans with all of their new safety restrictions, disease and death have skyrocketed.

Germany is now sicker and more blanketed with death thanks to covid jab passports, lockdown measures, mask mandates and other forms of tyranny that the ruling class is desperately trying to establish as the new normal for society.

Mass formation psychosis or demonic delusion? Take your pick, wrote one Natural News commenter about all this evil.

More news about Fauci Flu fascism can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

TheNationalPulse.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) World Alternative Media host Josh Sigurdson slammed Hong Kong for forcing people into camps based on things that literally dont exist.

Sigurdson mentioned an article from Zero Hedge that says Hong Kong is forcing arrivals from the United Kingdom and United States into quarantine camps after a single asymptomatic omicron case.

They are trying to push the levels of tyranny up as high as they can possibly [can] without actually revolting against it. Theyll do whatever they can to get away with it, as this Zero Hedge article says Hong Kong, forcing arrivals into quarantine camps after a single asymptomatic omicron case,' said Sigurdson.

While stressing that omicron doesnt exist because theres no test that says it exists and theres no way to isolate it, Sigurdson recalled an interview with an Australian and a Norwegian-Australian who were forced into one of the camps.

Hong Kong residents returning from the United States are being forced to spend one week in Spartan quarantine camp after which they must serve out two weeks in a hotel room that they pay for themselves, said Sigurdson, who noted the South China Morning Post has already compared Hong Kong to China.

Health authorities recently announced the new measures after elevating China to the highest Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) risk level, which was prompted by one confirmed case of the omicron variant in a traveler from the U.S.  an asymptomatic 37-year-old man who had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine and traveled from Los Angeles on Dec. 7.

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Its insane. In a press release, the city said that those arriving from the U.S. would be subject to the most stringent quarantine and testing requirements, said Sigurdson, who accused Hong Kong of going against the worlds trend of reopening.

Who is testing for omicron? Absolutely no one. They arent searching for that. They are literally just saying that this ones COVID or this ones omicron. Thats how they do it. Theyre just faking it. Its fake. Ask any testing center how they do it. And they will tell you they cant. Theres literally no way for them to do this. Its fake, Sigurdson said.

Policy causing long-term damage on HKs status as financial center

Hong Kongs policy is sparking chaos during the busiest travel season as families try to reunite for the holidays.

The strategy, which has choked off travels to a city once known for its connectedness, is causing long-term damage on Hong Kongs status as a financial center, Sigurdson said.

He noted that even Elon Musk, the wealthiest individual on the planet, is against vaccine mandates. But I dont understand why hes still saying that vaccines are good, Sigurdson pointed out.

Musk is part of the global establishment, according to Sigurdson.

I do think that he said COVID doesnt really even exist back last year. And now hes like, Oh, but I might as well take the vaccine to get us closer to normal. Thats basically like saying, In order to get closer to normal, we need to get further away from it. In order to get freedom back, we need to give it away. Its absurd, said Sigurdson.

The World Alternative Media commentator lauded the people who are standing up for their rights.

Protesters recently took to the streets in France and Italy in opposition of COVID rules that infringe on their civil liberties. The protests came after European countries double down on efforts to get wide portions of their populations vaccinated in a bid to avoid further lockdowns.

I think disobedience and rejection and rejecting the narrative is the best way. But also, if you cant scare politicians, the politicians will be scaring you and pushing you into a state of fear, Sigurdson said.

And so while I dont support any violence or destruction, especially of private businesses, I do think that there should be some level of fear that politicians should be feeling in the face of this so that they just stop enforcing things and they stop writing these this ink on paper and the police stop enforcing.

Watch the full World Alternative Media video below.

Follow Infections.news for more stories about the omicron variant.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

BusinessInsider.com

DW.com
(Natural News) New research out of the University of Florida (UF) has found that two simple over-the-counter (OTC) compounds are highly effective at inhibiting replication of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).

Diphenhydramine, an antihistamine drug used for allergy symptoms, and lactoferrin, a protein found in cow and human milk, both hinder SARS-CoV-2 from replicating by up to 99 percent, the research team found.

Tests using both monkey and human cells revealed all this. The findings were published in the journal Pathogens.

We found out why certain drugs are active against the virus that causes Covid-19, said David A. Ostrov, Ph.D., an immunologist and associate professor in the UF College of Medicines department of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicines.

Then, we found an antiviral combination that can be effective, economical, and has a long history of safety.

Earlier research he conducted led Ostrov to conclude that diphenhydramine was potentially effective against the Fauci Flu all on its own. Now, thanks to recent meeting of scientists at the Global Virus Networks COVID-19 Task Force, lactoferrin has been added to the repertoire.

According to reports, a researcher at the meeting presented unpublished data on various federally approved compounds that possess anti-covid properties. Lactoferrin was one such compound.

Like diphenhydramine, lactoferrin is available without a prescription, reported SciTechDaily. Ostrov thought about pairing it with diphenhydramine and ran with the idea.

In lab tests on human and monkey cells, the combination was particularly potent: Individually, the two compounds each inhibited SARS-CoV-2 virus replication by about 30%. Together, they reduced virus replication by 99%.

Sounds like covid can be cured without vaccines and masks

This discovery, Ostrov says, represents a first step in developing a formulation that could be used to accelerate recovery from Chinese Germs. It could eventually lead to an academic-corporate partnership for human clinical trials centered around Covid-19 prevention.

Additional research involving mice is also already underway for these two particular compounds.

For this latest research, scientists focused on a specific type of protein expressed in human cells known as sigma receptors. The Fauci Flu is said to hijack the bodys stress-response machinery, including sigma receptors, in order to replicate inside the body.

Interfering with that signaling could be the key to stopping the Chines Flu from staying potent enough to cause infection, Ostrov says.

We now know the detailed mechanism of how certain drugs inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection, he added in a statement.

Data from Ostrovs experiments show that a highly specific sigma receptor-binding drug candidate with pain relieving properties combined with OTC products such as diphenhydramine and lactoferrin could inhibit viral infection and decrease recovery time in those already infected.

As encouraging as this all sounds, Ostrov recommends against self-medicating with these two compounds in an attempt to heal a Fauci Infection without professional medical guidance and oversight.

Ostrov also pointed out that the type of lactoferrin used in his experiments differs slightly from the kind commonly available to consumers in supplement form. The widely available type is commonly used to treat stomach and intestinal ulcers, among other health conditions.

Lactoferrin is such a powerful immune-boosting nutrient that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a pharmaceutical-pushing fake science entity, has advised mothers not to breastfeed their babies because breast milk contains high amounts of lactoferrin. The CDC would instead prefer that mothers feed their babies industrial baby formula, leaving their tiny immune systems damaged and diseased.

Ostrovs study is entitled: Highly Specific Sigma Receptor Ligands Exhibit Anti-Viral Properties in SARS-CoV-2 Infected Cells. It is available for further review in the Pathogens journal.

The latest news about scientific discoveries pertaining to the Fauci Flu can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

SciTechDaily.com

Doi.org

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Jeffrey InTheMatrixxx Pedersen and Shannon ShadyGrooove Townsend discussed the pushback against medical tyranny on their Brighteon.TV program The Matrixxx Groove Show. The shows Dec. 15 episode also featured Dr. Simone Gold, the founder of Americas Frontline Doctors (AFLDS).

Over the last 20 to 22 months, it has been a very obvious war of the collective versus the individual. Under public health, the collective should matter more than the individual person. And what do we call that? We call it communism, said Gold.

I think I recognized it earlier than most doctors. I was looking at medical powers, [and I found them] unconstitutional from that perspective. I [also] got very disgusted with the lies that our public health officials are telling the average American. So we decided to get together and just bring [the] truth to the American people. We did that last time, [and] weve been off to the races.

The AFLDS founder also branded the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns  most especially the closure of churches  a communist plan. The biggest threat [are] the churches, which is why they [were ordered] closed.

Gold added that it was easier for medical tyranny to flourish when you lose hope, you lose faith and you lose camaraderie with other like-minded souls. (Related: Expert raises concerns about coronavirus restrictions following arrest of Canadian pastor.)

Its really a lot easier to inject fear whenever youre alone and isolated, and not really understanding whats going on. Then all of a sudden, you dont want to speak up or even talk about something [because you think] maybe theres a problem with yourself, Townsend said in agreement.

What has happened is we became complacent and the system decided to police the system. Now youre seeing where that gets us. She was talking about a collective mindset. Theyre trying to put America in a collective mindset to make you think that youre somehow harming people by being free. Freedom doesnt harm people. As a matter of fact, freedom does the exact opposite.

Many nations around the world are now standing up against tyranny. People in Australia took to the streets earlier this month to stand up for health freedom and protest against the draconian vaccine mandates. According to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, protesters in three states  Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland  gathered to express disagreement over their respective leaders measures that infringe upon peoples freedoms in the name of public health.

Collins sings a song about the pandemic

Earlier in the show, Pedersen played a video of outgoing National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins singing a modified version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.

Collins changed the lyrics to reflect the COVID-19 pandemic. He sang the song during a Dec. 14 town hall meeting by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

This is really a song for you, for all of us who have been going through this pandemic and trying to imagine hows it going to feel when were finally past that. Were going to get there and youre going to help us get there, Collins said.

Somewhere past the pandemic, masks will come off; no more need for a nose swab every time we cough. Somewhere past the pandemic, well hug our friends and thank the people in science that brought the pandemics end, he sang.

As we are gathered here today, COVIDs toll has hit and sent us reeling. But partners like the ones right here will help to make the pathway clear to find the true healing.

Pedersen turned to Townsend when the video finished, saying: When is [the pandemic] going to end, Shady? I mean, I think its ended already. [But] people dont understand that science.

He also brought up the possibility of the outgoing NIH directors involvement in much more nefarious things, given that he shares the surname of a family known for witchcraft. The reason why we brought [up] the Collins family [is because] thats the bloodline that teaches witchcraft. Look up the Collins bloodline [and] youll be fascinated. (Related: NIH director Francis Collins lied and committed treason, but the media refuses to report it.)

Watch the full Dec. 15 episode of The Matrixxx Grooove Show at the video below. Tune in to The Matrixxx Grooove Show from Monday to Friday at 12-1 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Resist.news has more articles about Americans standing up to medical tyranny.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

ABC.net.au

TheFederalist.com
(Natural News) Australian Medical Association President Danielle McMullen expressed concerns after the state government lifted Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions on Wednesday, Dec. 15, just a day after the state recorded 804 cases. McMullen stressed that New South Wales residents must continue wearing mask indoors.

The state government gave the unvaccinated the same freedoms as the double jabbed and announced that masks will only be mandatory on public transport and at airports while QR check-in codes will only be required at some venues. Without providing scientific reasons, McMullen told The Today Show on Wednesday morning, Dec. 15, that she was asking the government to reconsider the mask mandate.

Weve been worried in the weeks leading up to this and encouraging the government to reconsider the mask mandate in particular, said McMullen, who believes masks are a really simple, cheap way of reducing the spread of COVID-19.

McMullen also said it was unfortunate that the government lifted the mask mandate and encouraged Australians to keep wearing masks indoors despite multiple studies showing they do nothing to prevent COVID transmission and even cause several health issues when worn for long periods.

Meanwhile, passengers from two Virgin Australia flights will have to spend Christmas in isolation after two planes  flight VA1105 from Newcastle to Brisbane and flight VA375 from Brisbane to Townsville  were declared high risk COVID exposure sites.

Passengers on both flights have been deemed close contacts and have already started their mandatory 14-day isolation period in Queensland. They will spend their Christmas holidays locked away far from their families.

Christmas party revelers infected with omicron

Some 84 new cases were detected among Christmas party revelers in The Argyle House nightclub in Newcastle, New South Wales. All the 680 attendees were identified as close contact after the virus was transmitted on December 8.

The latest cluster is linked to a boat party five nights earlier on Sydney Harbor, where at least five people caught the virus. NSW Health said the infections are likely caused by the omicron variant.

Due to the high transmission at the venue, the government ordered the household contacts of each individual present at the nightclub that day to immediately get tested and to isolate until the close contact tests negative.

NSW Health is concerned about increased transmission taking place in larger social venues such as these, and we urge people not to attend social functions if they have any symptoms, even if mild. the agency stated.

Presently, there are 171 people in hospitals due to the virus, 24 of them in intensive care. Two deaths were reported, a man in his 70s and a man in his 80s.

A female traveler, who came from Britain, became the first case of Omicron at Newcastle. The alert was issued hours after NSW recorded Australias first hospital admission of omicron. The tally of omicron infections rose to 55 out of the states 485 new cases of COVID-19 on Dec. 12.

Meanwhile, dozens of demonstrators recently took to Sydneys Hyde Park to protest the introduction of a vaccine mandate across several industries.

Protests erupted in Melbourne, Victoria, Hobart, Tasmania, Sydney, New South Wales, Perth, Western Australia, and Gold Coast, Queensland as citizens showed their opposition to the mandate that makes it compulsory for employees to get vaccinated.

Last August, Australian truck drivers blocked a major highway in Queensland to show their opposition against the vaccine mandate and tough border restrictions.

The action marked a series of ongoing protests from Australians who are vehemently against the state governments COVID-19 lockdowns and mandated restrictions based on emergency public health orders.

Watch the video below to learn more about the omicron variant.



Follow Pandemic.news for more news and information related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk 1

DailyMail.co.uk 2

TheEpochTimes.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) South African Health Minister Joe Phaahla told the public that hospitalizations associated with the omicron variant of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) are relatively low and nothing to worry about.

In a press release, Phaahla noted that while scientific studies have found that the omicron variant is spreading faster than previous waves, the rates of hospitalizations and deaths are relatively low in South Africa.

Omicron may be mild, but citizens must remain vigilant

Phaahla advised that even though the omicron variant isnt something to worry about, South Africans should still practice reasonable safety measures and avoid superspreader events.

According to infectious disease expert Dr. Donald Dumford, superspreader events dont have an exact criteria. You can have a large gathering of people where very few people (or even none) contract the virus and a family gathering of 12 people or so that could spread the virus to everyone.

Generally, a large event where theres a greater amount of transmission than would be expected qualifies as a superspreader, explained Dumford.

To date, the standard experts are following advises that an infected person at a gathering may infect two to three people, with an infection rate of about 20 percent among family members from an infectious person.

Weddings, funerals and even large family parties such as holiday gatherings or birthday parties are some common examples of regular events that could turn into superspreaders. Whatever the situation, Dumford warned that the more people there are at an event, the higher the risk of infection becomes.

Phaahla said the omicron variant shouldnt stop people from having a joyous Christmas, and prosperous New Year celebrations as long as citizens follow safety precautions to curb the spread of the virus. He also asked citizens to help South Africas hardworking healthcare professionals, who keep the public safe amid the pandemic.

He added that South Africas Department of Health will continue to closely monitor the situation and record the number of daily infection cases, hospitalizations, mortality and recovery rates. The department will also make necessary recommendations to the National Coronavirus Command Councils in the best interest of peoples lives and livelihoods.

Phaahla also encouraged public transport operators to enforce compliance with mask-wearing at all times, handwashing or hand sanitizing and opening of windows to maintain proper ventilation.

Britain and France overreact to omicron variant

Meanwhile, authorities in the U.K. went on alert after the first omicron case was detected on Nov. 27 in Britain.

Early in December, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson enforced stricter restrictions. He also warned that the variant could overcome the immune defenses of vaccinated individuals.

To date, there has been one omicron-related death confirmed worldwide. Johnson announced the death from the variant earlier in December, adding that the fatality occurred in the United Kingdom. However, scant details have been released to the public.

On Dec. 16, the French government announced that it would enforce more rigid restrictions on travel from the U.K., essentially banning all non-essential trips. In a statement, the government announced that individuals cant travel for tourism or professional reasons.

U.K. government officials also warned that the country should prepare for a tidal wave of new infections linked to the omicron variant.

All arrivals from the U.K. are required to provide negative PCR or antigen tests taken within the previous 24 hours. Travelers also need to quarantine in France for seven days or 48 hours if they have a recent negative COVID-19 test.

The statement also said that all travelers from the U.K. have to use a digital platform to register before their departure. The platform requires travelers to give the address where they will be staying in France. Additionally, the quarantine requirements will be policed.

On Dec. 12, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that omicron variant could be less severe than the delta strain based on preliminary findings from South Africa.

The WHO also reported that all cases reported in Europe have been mild or asymptomatic. (Related: Top South African doctor says COVID-19 omicron variant symptoms are mild.)

Watch the video below to learn more about the omicron variant in South Africa.



Check out Outbreak.news for more updates about the omicron variant.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

Health.ClevelandClinic.org

SACoronavirus.co.za

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Former top Trump political adviser Steve Bannon said on his Thursday War Room podcast that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is to blame for the Democrats shifting away from Joe Bidens massively expensive and misnamed Build Back Better legislation so they can focus instead on rendering moot all state voter integrity laws so they can cheat their way into a permanent decades-long majority.

News that Democratic leaders in the Senate, where the BBB legislation is stalled, were planning a shift to voting rights was first reported by Jesse Rodriguez, the vice president of editorial and booking at MSNBC, in a tweet:

NBC News: Senate expected to shelve Build Back Better bill, moving forward aggressively now on voting rights, he wrote.

NBC News: Senate expected to shelve Build Back Better bill, moving forward aggressively now on voting rights  Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) December 15, 2021

Rodriguez then followed that tweet up with another containing a link to an NBC News report that provided more details:

Democrats in the Senate are preparing to miss their self-imposed deadline to pass President Joe Bidens $1.7 trillion social safety net bill before the end of the year, according to four sources familiar with planning by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumers office.

The decision to try again next year is based on simple math  Schumer doesnt have the 50 votes needed to pass the legislation thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who remains a hold out.

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The decision is also in part because Senate Democrats havent finished negotiating the bill. Provisions on state and local taxes and the methane rule remain undecided. Senate Democrats also havent finished clearing all the procedural hurdles necessary to hold a vote.

The network then quoted a pair of congressional sources, both of whom said that the vote on BBB could be delayed until March.

That said, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) remained confident that the legislation isnt dead.

The president and Sen. Manchin are having many discussions, and were waiting to see the outcome of those, he said.

NBC then noted that Schumer is set to pivot to the voting rights legislation, which Republicans have blasted as a naked attempt to skew voting around the country and override legitimate voter integrity measures that have passed in several red states since the chaotic 2020 election.

Wednesday morning on his American First network podcast, Bannon blamed McConnell (R-Ky.) for the current situation in the Senate.

We told you that this is what Mitch McConnell has brought upon us. I told you this was going to happen. He gave them $3 trillion and now hes given them a pathway to federalize all of these elections which is the only way they can win and they understand that, Bannon said.

They understand. Theyve seen the polls. These are not dumb people. These are cunning and crafty people. You could see this a mile away. Rick Scott and the people of the Senate ought to have a conference meeting today and they ought to take the leadership away from Mitch McConnell! he added.

And if they dont do it, the War Room posse is gonna force them to do it. Mark my words, his day is over, and the big donors in the Republican Party have had is back and better step up and get rid of this guy. Today, he added.

Fortunately for the country  at least, for the time being  there isnt any likelihood of this very unconstitutional measure passing, thanks to (again) the Democratic Partys moderates, Sens, Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (W. Va.), neither of whom supports blowing up the filibuster rule to pass the bill with a simple Democratic majority.

Kyrsten Sinema supports the elections reform bill that Democrats are considering a year-end push to pass. She doesnt support a shortcut around the filibuster to get it done, Politico reported last week.

In a statement to the outlet, a spokesperson said that Sinema continues to support the Senates 60-vote threshold, to protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions, and further erode Americans confidence in our government.

Our republic is literally teetering on the edge of destruction with Democrats in charge.

Read more stories like this at Tyranny.news.

Sources include:

Politico.com

NBCNews.com
(Natural News) An emergency room doctor in Australia revealed that those who are fully vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) are dying in droves.

The Australian doctors face and voice had to be obscured to protect his identity for fear of possible retaliation by Australian public health authorities and other government entities. But I am blowing the whistle, he proclaimed.

The doctor-turned-whistleblower first directed his concerns at the Australian governments mass vaccination program including children.

I am increasingly perplexed at the continued government backing of a medical intervention marred by serious complications in the young when there are zero benefits this treatment offers them.

The whistleblower pointed out that the phase three drug trials for the COVID-19 vaccines for children between the ages of five and 11 were rushed and not extensive enough. It only featured around 600 subjects who were put through a six-month preliminary study wherein no adverse effects were reported.

According to the whistleblower, the trial claimed that there may always be serious complications with any medication but these are unpredictable.

But since the vaccine was approved for administration among those under 18-years-old, the number of cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in the young has surged. According to the whistleblowers experience as an emergency room doctor, a vast majority of these cases were caused by either Pfizer or Modernas COVID-19 vaccine.

The whistleblower pointed out that myocarditis is virtually unheard of for people under the age of 40. Many of the myocarditis cases involving the vaccines that he saw led to other heart complications including shortness of breath, chest pains, heart attack and even acute heart failure.

One can logically put two and two together and surmise that the vaccine had something to do with these serious complications, he said.

As much as Pfizer, Moderna and the media will have you believe this is rare, I have diagnosed these conditions in young men and women after getting the Pfizer and Moderna jabs, especially after the second dose, said the whistleblower.

Australian government moving forward with plans to vaccinate younger children

Starting Jan. 10, 2022, the Australian government will allow all children aged five to 11 to receive Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine. (Related: Whistleblower: Pfizer vaccine trial data was falsified, participants who experienced adverse effects were ignored.)

The Therapeutic Goods Administration, Australias main drug regulatory body, supposedly made a careful, thorough assessment and determined that Pfizers vaccine is safe and effective and that it is in the interests of children and Australians for children five to11 to be vaccinated, said Minister of Health Greg Hunt.

There are about 2.3 million children between the ages of five and 11 in Australia. Come Jan. 10, most of them will be subjected to these experimental and deadly vaccines.

If we are risking this in our children, and I can tell you the risk, however small, is very significant with these vaccines that dont prevent infection or transmission of COVID, they carry an inherent risk of permanent heart damage, while providing absolutely no benefit to the child nor anyone else, said the whistleblower. Why should we subject our children to these shots?

The whistleblower appealed to Australian parents to think about their children before getting them vaccinated against COVID-19.

Parents, you might think that the vaccine offers your child freedoms, even if you know it provides no health benefit to your son or daughter, he said. But what good would that school excursion be, if they suffer from a reduction in their heart function for the rest of their lives and will almost certainly shorten their lives if they do get vaccine complication?

The whistleblower also sent a message to Australian doctors, saying that they should not be afraid to speak out.

Being complicit with the unnecessary harm we are unintentionally causing when we knew better or were convinced of the hierarchical narrative does not absolve us of the ethical duty to protect our patients, he said.

Finally, the whistleblower called out Australias politicians to think of the people who are being affected by these dangerous vaccines.

These are real people they are permanently affecting, not just statistics, he said. Stop the mandates and discrimination based on medical status. It is unnecessarily harming people in more ways than one.

Watch the Australian whistleblowers full statement regarding the COVID-19 vaccines here:

Learn more about the dangers of getting COVID-19 vaccines at VaccineInjuryNews.com.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

Reuters.com
By: Stuart Strickland, Fellow, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

With a new year upon us, we no longer anticipate a return to normal and must prepare ourselves to respond to constantly changing requirements. For the Aruba 2022 Wireless Predictions, weve highlighted trends that may help IT leaders looking for new ways to support accelerated digital transformation and achieve greater flexibility:

10 million enterprise Wi-Fi 6E APs will be installed in 2022 Wi-Fi infrastructure becomes location aware The rise of the contextually-wireless network Built-in AI doubles efficiency, while lowering costs Enterprises get their first taste of Private 5G

Top Five 2022 Wireless Predictions

Prediction 1: 10 million enterprise Wi-Fi 6E APs will be installed in 2022

2021 was a year of regulatory approvals, paving the way for 2022 to become the year of large-scale enterprise adoption. Wi-Fi 6E represents the single largest allocation of unlicensed spectrum in history. Enterprises can look forward to a massive increase in capacity and wider channel bandwidths in dense deployments. We expect to see accelerated rollouts take advantage of this new, clean spectrum by segregating traffic according to quality-of-service requirements  allocating 2.4 GHz for IoT, 5 GHz for legacy devices and guest traffic, and reserving 6 GHz for new, bandwidth-intensive, and latency-sensitive applications like high-definition video or healthcare imaging. Expect to see 10 million or more Wi-Fi 6E APs in the field worldwide by year end to meet these needs.

Aruba

Forty-seven countries across the globe representing more than 1.4 billion people have opened 6 Ghz spectrum for Wi-Fi, with more on the way.

Prediction 2: Wi-Fi infrastructure becomes location aware

Indoor location accuracy has been a persistent challenge. Advances in Wi-Fi Fine Time Measurement (FTM) and scalable approaches to determining access point reference locations promise to enable new client services, enrich network analytics tools, and enhance quality of service.

As helpful as Bluetooth beacons have been as an effective (if costly and labor-intensive) stopgap method to enable indoor location applications, FTM, built into the Wi-Fi infrastructure, will emerge in 2022 as a highly scalable alternative, quickly becoming the dominant basis for accurate and ubiquitous indoor location. Overlay deployments of arduously surveyed beacons, whether physical or virtual, will die out, saving network administrators time, money, and headaches, and every Wi-Fi network will deliver accurate location information as easily as it has delivered access to data.

Prediction 3: The rise of the contextually-wireless network

Solving strategic business problems  whether through enhancing productivity, improving efficiency, ensuring safety, promoting loyalty, or providing comfort  requires more than connecting network traffic.

These solutions require contextual knowledge, environmental awareness, and the ability to make projections of future scenarios. The network infrastructure will become a sponge for contextually significant data, including location, identity, applications in use, and security posture.

As networks connect, protect, and analyze the interactions among devices, people, and their environments, the results of their analysis will be shared across business applications, enabling use cases far removed from wireless connectivity, but again based entirely on familiar and widely deployed wireless networks.

We predict that 2022 will see the ascendance of hyper-aware Wi-Fi access points as hubs for an array of sensors and radios supporting the Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT), accessing powerful analytics engines, both locally and in the cloud, that fuse device data and context to create value and solve real problems for businesses and their customers.

Prediction 4: Built-in AI doubles efficiency, while lowering costs

As cloud-managed networking adoption grows, the ease with which infrastructure and client telemetry can be collected and used to gain insights will fundamentally change how organizations view their data and their network architecture. Aruba predicts that with more built-in AI across entire organizations, businesses will increase the efficiency with which they move from insights to actions and results by 50 percent or more.

A new wave of AIOps capabilities will extend AIs value from purely network troubleshooting to providing visibility into client behavior on a global scale, optimizing networks, (wireless, wired or SD-WAN) and enhancing user experience.

Prediction 5: Enterprises get their first taste of Private 5G

2022 will be the year when 5G slips out of the hands of mobile network operators and becomes a viable technology for private enterprise networks. In the US, the CBRS spectrum available for private use will see its first 5G radios, offered in form factors that allow them to be deployed as easily as a Wi-Fi access point and with core networks scaled to the needs of the enterprise. Similarly, in countries throughout the world, spectrum is being allocated specifically for private enterprise use. Private 5G will be deployed in conjunction with Wi-Fi to support use cases that require dedicated, clean spectrum or continuous, wide-area outdoor coverage. No longer will enterprises have to wait for mobile network operators to deliver long-promised private 5G services.

Keys to Success in 2022

Over the past year or two, networking professionals and business leaders have learned to navigate extreme unpredictability. In 2022, they will be able to shift their attention from keeping the lights on to building new opportunities-based compelling technologies such as Wi-Fi 6E and private 5G. They will extract more value from their wireless investments by taking advantage of the new location and contextual awareness of their respective networks. All of this will allow them to envision a future in which they can develop entirely new services and insights in support of emerging business objectives.

Learn more about Wi-Fi 6E in the Technical Guide to Wi-Fi 6E and the 6GHz Band and the emergence of the Multi-RAN enterprise.
Amid rising COVID case rates and a sharp increase in hospitalizations, Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday he will not institute any new mandates.

But some public health experts believe that requiring booster shots or masks might help stem the rising tide of cases as the omicron variant gains traction in the state.

I still believe in mandates. I still believe they can work as long as education accompanies that mandate, said Ridgefield resident Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at New York University Langone Medical Center. With omicron running amok and boosters being the key to the response, it would make a lot of sense to mandate so we dont overwhelm our health care system.

Connecticut hopsitals saw an increase of 101 admitted patients with over the weekend, pushing the statewide total to 837  the most since Feb. 3. Since Friday, 6,209 new COVID infections were discovered among 90,689 tests for a 6.85 percent positivity rate.

The latest rise in COVID-19 metrics comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the omicron variant, first discovered last month in South Africa, has become the dominant strain in the United States. Researchers believe it will overtake the delta variant in Connecticut by the end of the month.

We have gone from the least infected state in the country to maybe the 13th, Lamont said. I think you should realize unlike a year ago or two years ago, we are in a much better position because we know how to defend ourselves, we know that masking works, we know that vaccines work, we know that boosters work."

Lamont stressed that the patients who are filling up hospital beds are not vaccinated, saying there was a disconnect between infections and hospitalizations.

The governor on Monday reiterated his stance to avoid reinstating a statewide mask mandate. He said the requirement would be an added layer of protection only if people complied and it could be enforced.

I'm sort of a UConn fan these days I was looking at the basketball game at the XL [Center in Hartford] the other day and you know, you're supposed to wear a mask there, Lamont said. Not everyone was wearing a mask, to put it mildly. So I can pass a lot of laws and mandates and restrictions, but they're only effective when people follow it. So thats why I like to give that local discretion. They know their populations the best, and theyre the ones responsible for enforcing it.

Neighboring states have recently reinstated mandates and restrictions in response to omicrons spread. In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu announced Monday that restaurant patrons would be required to show proof of vaccination before dining indoors.

Boston will require adults to show proof of at least one vaccine dose as of Jan. 15, and a second dose a month later. Children ages 5 to 11 will be subject to the same mandate beginning March 1.

Other Massachusetts communities are expected to follow suit.

New York City has had a similar policy for months, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this month announced that all offices, restaurants, shops and other businesses in the state must require staff and customers to either show proof of vaccination or wear masks.

New York, New Jersey are ground zero for omicron right now, Lamont said. I like to do things that work.

Some individual communities in Connecticut have instituted mask mandates  Trumbull, for example  and many companies have required employees to be vaccinated.

We know that mandates work. I am certain our current hospital employees have higher vaccination rates because of our mandate, said Scott Roberts, associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health. It's another layer and tool added to our public health defense against this current rising wave of omicron.

I'm definitely in support of a mask mandate in the state of Connecticut, he said. We're approaching the highest levels we've ever recorded in the state with a variant that we don't know much about, but we do know is two to three times as contagious as the delta variant.

Hartford HealthCare infectious disease specialist Ulysses Wu said Lamont also has to recognize the autonomy of each of the towns.

Im sure there are town mayors saying, I hope the governor does this. They want to pass the buck up the food chain, he said. The mandate has become such a political hot-button topic, there are some people who dont want to touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Caplan said politics has gotten in the way of restrictions and mandates, both within the state and at a federal level.

The politics on masks is asking restaurants, bars, gyms to enforce them and they hate that, he said. They don't want to be seen as the mask police.

Lamont on Monday announced a digital vaccination ID system, offering proof of vaccination on a smartphone, similar to New Yorks Excelsior Pass. But Lamont spokesperson Max Reiss said Connecticuts program would not come with additional mandates.

Restrictions only work with rules you can enforce. We are at a point in the pandemic when we know best defense is to vaccinate and booster, and the Moderna and Pfizer boosters are proven to have a positive effect against the omicron variant, he said. We know what is effective against severe illness and death and the governor continues to push vaccines and therapies as hard as we can.

Andy Slavitt, the former White House senior advisor for COVID response, said on Twitter that electoral politics is playing a role: In an election year, too many governors are too slow to take tough policy responses. December and January are a time for proactive and unpopular actions.

Caplan said he believes mask requirements and vaccine mandates might be possible, but enforced lockdowns were no longer a feasible option.

Were not going to lock down and were not going to quarantine. Its clear that thats politically untenable at this point, he said. I cant see the governor announcing were back to quarantine. I cant imagine it. I think we take the deaths.

Wu does not believe statewide mandates would make a significant difference, pointing out how people have decided what rules they are comfortable following.

Ideologically, people have kind of decided what theyre going to do, he said. The majority of the people who are already masking would of course want a mask mandate. Its really fallen along ideological lines at this point.

Omicron doesnt change that assessment for Wu.

Omicron is no different from delta in terms of what we should be doing, Wu said. We should have been washing our hands the whole entire time.

There may come a time, Wu said, when the governor has no choice, when public health concerns outweigh political concerns. But the state has not yet reached that point, he said.

Once he pulls that, theres not much more that hes going to be able to do beyond that, Wu said. COVID doesn't care about the politics, but I understand the position that hes in.

In the absence of mandates, taking measures to protect oneself and the community from COVID is a matter of personal responsibility, Wu said.

People have just stopped worrying about COVID, he said. For me, its a way of life at this point. I will continue to trudge on and continue to fight it. I dont necessarily worry about it any more because its here to stay.

Hearst Connecticut Media Group reporter Ken Dixon contributed to this story.
NEW CANAAN  Connecticut State Police investigators spent hours Monday searching an area of town property near where Jennifer Dulos SUV was found the night she vanished.

The search, which was mostly focused in the area of the New Canaan mulch dump, came two days before one of the defendants who has been cooperating with the investigation is scheduled to appear in a judges chambers for an unrelated case.

Brian Foley, aide to Department of Emergency Management and Public Protection Commissioner James Rovella, described the search as a standard investigative effort out of an abundance of caution.

State police did not say what they were looking for or if they were there in response to a tip.

Nearby Waveny Park was one of many key locations investigators first searched after Jennifer Dulos vanished on May 24, 2019. The 50-year-olds body has never been found, but police said she is presumed dead based on the evidence found in the garage of her New Canaan home.

Her estranged husband, Fotis Dulos, died by suicide in January 2020 while facing murder, kidnapping and other charges in the case.

Fotis Dulos ex-girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, and his former attorney, Kent Mawhinney, have each pleaded not guilty to charges in the case.

Mawhinney is scheduled to appear in a Hartford judges chambers on Wednesday to discuss the status of his domestic violence cases involving his estranged wife. Referring to Mawhinney as a jailhouse informant in court filings, an attorney for Troconis has requested a court order to review documents in the domestic cases to see if a deal is being worked out in exchange for cooperation in the Dulos case.

The prosecution has previously said they plan to call Mawhinney as a witness if Troconis goes to trial.

Mawhinney is facing charges of sexual assault and violating a protective order for incidents police said occurred in 2019 involving his estranged wife. He is free on bond after pleading not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in the Dulos case.

Chief States Attorney Richard Colangelo did not respond to questions Monday about the search.

Mawhinney has been accused of trying to create an alibi for his longtime friend, Fotis Dulos, the morning of the disappearance.

Authorities believe Fotis Dulos drove a pickup truck belonging to one of his employees from his home in Farmington to New Canaan the morning of the disappearance, according to arrest warrants. Fotis Dulos parked the pickup on Lapham Road, near where police later found his wifes SUV, the warrants indicate.

Police said they believe Fotis Dulos rode a bicycle from Lapham Road to his estranged wifes home on Welles Lane where he attacked her in the garage when she returned from dropping off their five children at school, according to arrest warrants.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High 14F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. Low around 0F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
In a recent study published on the bioRxiv* preprint server, a team of researchers describes the genomic region encompassing the furin cleavage site (FCS) in the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Study: Genomic determinants of Furin cleavage in diverse European SARS-related bat coronaviruses. Image Credit: Rudmer Zwerver / Shutterstock.com

Background

SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the species of severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronaviruses (SrCs) of the subgenus Sarbecovirus. As compared to other sarbecoviruses and mammalian coronaviruses (CoVs), SARS-CoV-2 is highly transmissible due to a functional polybasic FCS between the S1 and S2 subunits of its spike (S) glycoprotein. FCS makes SARS-CoV-2 unique among other SrCs, as even the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2, including the bat coronavirus RaTG13 and the pangolin COVs, do not have an FCS.

FCS is also considered essential in establishing SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans, as it determines the efficiency of infection of the upper respiratory tract and consequent transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2. More importantly, the existence of FCS has led to various hypotheses regarding the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, including speculations about the possibility of an unnatural origin from laboratory experiments.

About the study

The researchers of the present study amplified an 816-nucleotide fragment of the viral ribonucleic acid (RNA)-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of ten European bat-associated CoVs belonging to the species SrC. They investigated the genomic regions encompassing FCS in these CoVs to determine the similarities/differences in this region as compared to other sarbecoviruses and mammalian coronaviruses.

The researchers accessed and used stored fecal samples from four horseshoe bat species including Rhinolophus hipposideros, R. euryale, R. ferrumequinum, and R. blasii, all of which are natural hosts of SrC,. These samples were collected from Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, and Slovenia between 2008 and 2009.

There are two distinct types of avian influenza A viruses (IAVs), namely the low-pathogenic avian influenza viruses (LPAIs) and high pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIs). In HPAIs, a polybasic FCS at the hemagglutinin (HA) cleavage site already exists.

However, LPAI evolves into HPAI by acquiring an FCS via different molecular mechanisms. These include recombination with cellular or other RNA molecules and multiple nucleotide insertions/substitutions, which are facilitated by a stem-loop secondary RNA structure enclosing the FCS and a high adenine/guanine content in the external loop structure.

Study findings

One of the notable observations about the European bat-associated CoVs was that only 10% and 11% of these viruses showed an FCS in either the S2 or the S1/S2 genomic region, respectively, thereby suggesting a broad genetic diversity in their genomic region encoding FCS. These CoVs, except for a few Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-related CoVs, did not have an FCS at the S1/S2 boundary, thus suggesting that an FCS may not provide a fitness advantage in most bat hosts.

Furthermore, upon comparing sequences of the S1/S2 genomic region, remains of a polybasic FCS motif at the S1/S2 boundary in 12 of the 17 CoVs from Europe, Asia, and Africa were seen. This observation indicates a higher genetic diversity in European bat-associated SrC as compared to Asian bat-associated SrC.

Studying RNA secondary structures among some European bat-associated SrC and HPAI sequences revealed similarities in the genomic determinants of FCS acquisition between avian HPAI and bat SrC. Additionally, an adenine (A) to guanine (G) transversion in the external loop of the RNA secondary structure allowed furin cleavage in two European bat-associated SrC.

The genome sequencing results showed A to G transversion in 0.004% and 0.006% of the total genomic sequences in both these viruses. Furthermore, the researchers observed that single nucleotide substitutions in LPAI occurred at a low frequency of 0.0028%, thus indicating how FCS emerged in European bat SrC strains. Taken together, careful examination is needed to determine whether bat SrC quasispecies harbor a functional FCS exist within European bat.

In another European SrC, a stem-loop structure with more than 60% adenine/guanine content was observed, which facilitated the acquisition of an FCS comparable to the insertion leading to HPAI outbreaks in the United States in 2016-2017. The existence of the palindromic sequence CAGAC in some other European SrC, as compared to SARS-CoV-2, suggests that this genomic region might be serving as an RNA signal for recombination. More importantly, the recombination of European SrC was observed with another bat CoV HKU9, which would have resulted in the origin of S1/S2 FCS of SARS-CoV-2.

Conclusions

To conclude, the study results support the notion that FCS was acquired in European bat-associated SrC through mechanisms that are similar to the origin of HPAI in their avian reservoir. This observation further validates a natural evolutionary origin of SARS-CoV-2 in bats, with or without the involvement of intermediary hosts.

In the future, ecological studies on bats may identify other sarbecoviruses harboring functional FCS in bat hosts. Therefore, further investigation of the potential of these sarbecoviruses posing threats to human health is crucial.

*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.
The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 may be significantly better than previous variants at evading vaccine-induced antibodies, according to new research from Cambridge - but preliminary evidence suggests it is less likely to cause severe COVID-19 illness in the lungs.

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus replicates and spreads, errors in its genetic code can lead to changes in the virus. On 26 November 2021, the World Health Organization designated the variant B.1.1.529, first identified in South Africa, a variant of concern, named Omicron. The variant carries a large number of mutations, leading to concern that it will leave vaccines less effective at protecting against infection and illness.

Working in secure conditions, a team led by Professor Ravi Gupta at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, University of Cambridge, created synthetic viruses - known as 'pseudoviruses' - that carried key mutations found in the Delta and Omicron strains. They used these to study the virus's behavior.

The team, which included collaborators from Japan, including Dr Kei Sato of Tokyo University, has released its data ahead of peer review because of the urgent need to share information relating to the pandemic, and particularly the new Omicron variant.

Professor Gupta and colleagues tested the pseudoviruses against blood samples donated to the NIHR COVID-19 BioResource. The blood samples were from vaccinated individuals who had received two doses of either the AstraZeneca (ChAdOx-1) or Pfizer (BNT162b2) vaccines.

On average, Omicron required around a ten-fold increase in the concentration of serum antibody in order to neutralize the virus, compared to Delta. Of particular concern, antibodies from the majority of individuals who had received two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were unable to neutralize the virus. The data were confirmed in live virus experiments.

Reassuringly, however, following a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine, both groups saw a significant increase in neutralization.

The Omicron variant appears to be much better than Delta at evading neutralizing antibodies in individuals who have received just two doses of the vaccine. A third dose 'booster' with the Pfizer vaccine was able to overturn this in the short term, though we'd still expect a waning in immunity to occur over time." Professor Ravi Gupta, Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, University of Cambridge

Spike proteins on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 bind to ACE2, a protein receptor found on the surface of cells in the lung. Both the spike protein and ACE2 are then cleaved, allowing genetic material from the virus to enter the host cell. The virus manipulates the host cell's machinery to allow the virus to replicate and spread.

To see how effective Omicron is at entering our cells, the team used their pseudoviruses to infect cells in lung organoids - 'mini-lungs' that model parts of the lung. Despite having three mutations that were predicted to favor the spike cleavage, the researchers found the Omicron spike protein to be less efficient than the Delta spike at cleaving the ACE2 receptor and entering the lung cells.

In addition, once Omicron had entered the cells, it was also less able than Delta to cause fusion between cells, a phenomenon associated with impaired cell-to-cell spread. Fused cells are often seen in respiratory tissues taken following severe disease. Indeed, when the team used a live Omicron virus and compared it to Delta in a spreading infection experiment using lung cells, Omicron was significantly poorer in replication, confirming the findings regarding impaired entry.

Professor Gupta added: "We speculate that the more efficient the virus is at infecting our cells, the more severe the disease might be. The fact that Omicron is not so good at entering lung cells and that it causes fewer fused cells with lower infection levels in the lab suggests this new variant may cause less severe lung-associated disease.

"While further work is needed to corroborate these findings, overall, it suggests that Omicron's mutations present the virus with a double-edged sword: it's got better at evading the immune system, but it might have lost some of its ability to cause severe disease."

However, Professor Gupta urged caution.

"Omicron still represents a major public health challenge. Individuals who have only received two doses of the vaccine - or worse, none at all - are still at significant risk of COVID-19, and some will develop severe disease. The sheer number of new cases we are seeing every day reinforces the need for everyone to get their boosters as quickly as possible."

The research was supported by Wellcome and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.
The arrival of the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant has brought into question the effectiveness of current COVID-19 treatments in preventing infection and death. New research published in the preprint bioRxiv* server suggests the efficacy of most monoclonal antibody treatments are ineffective against Omicron.

Since December 2019, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected over 275 million people and caused over 5.3 million deaths worldwide. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has evolved on several occasions, leading to several variants of concerns with spike protein mutations that give it a better chance at evading the hosts immune system.

The latest variant of concern, Omicron, has more than double the mutations than Delta and has been the cause behind a surge of infections in both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals. Since its discovery in late November, Omicron has been reported in many countries worldwide, including the United Kingdom and the United States.

Monoclonal antibody treatments from Regeneron, Lilly, and Celltrion completely lost neutralizing activity when faced with Omicron. However, monoclonal antibody treatments offered by AstraZeneca and Vir Biotechnology retained partial activity.

The study authors suggest more research identifying monoclonal antibodies that target the most highly conserved residues on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is necessary for adequate protection against Omicron and other future variants with mutated spike proteins.

Study: An infectious SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.529 Omicron virus escapes neutralization by several therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. Image Credit: Andrii Vodolazhskyi / Shutterstock

How they did it

The research team collected a sample of Omicron from an infected individual living in the United States. Then, they replicated the virus in cells expressing transmembrane protease serine 2 to prevent any additional mutations near the furin cleavage site in the spike protein.

The Omicron model resembled the strain first identified in South Africa, incorporating most of Omicrons spike protein mutations. The only exception was the R346K mutation as it has been reported in approximately 8% of strains.

Omicron causes a loss of inhibitory activity in monoclonal antibodies

Because there are numerous mutations on Omicrons spike protein, the researchers first investigated how mutations on the receptor-binding motif affected the binding of monoclonal antibodies.

The monoclonal antibodies tested in the study were those that had emergency use authorization or were in advanced clinical trials.

Every monoclonal antibody had structurally defined recognition sites changed in the Omicron spiked protein. However, the level of recognition differed between antibodies.

Monoclonal antibody treatments REGN10933, REGN10987, LY-CoV555, LV-CoV016, CT-P59 and SARS2-38 had no effect against Omicron. There continued to be an absence of neutralizing activity when researchers tested antibodies at the highest concentration.

Other monoclonal antibodies showed a partial reduction in inhibitory activity. COV2-2130 and COV2-2196 had an approximate 12- to 150-fold decrease in neutralizing power against Omicron. In contrast, S309 showed a 2-fold reduction in neutralization.

Monoclonal antibody cocktails in current medical use  REGN10933/REGN10987 and LY112 CoV555/LV-CoV016  had no effect against Omicron. Another cocktail, COV2-

2130/COV2-2196, had about a 12-fold decrease in inhibitory activity.

Human ACE2 expression alters neutralization from monoclonal antibodies

Prior research suggests human ACE2 expression may influence the neutralizing activity of monoclonal antibodies. Additionally, Omicron spike protein mutations may increase binding interactions with human ACE2.

With this in mind, the researchers repeated the cellular study, but this time studied the potential role human ACE2 may play in decreasing neutralization from monoclonal antibodies.

Individual or monoclonal antibody cocktails successfully neutralized an earlier version of SARS-CoV-2. However, the REGN10933, REGN10987, LY-CoV555, LV-CoV016, SARS2-38, and CT-P59 monoclonal antibodies were completely ineffective against Omicron. Antibody cocktails in clinical use also lost their inhibitory activity.

COV2-2196 showed a 16-fold reduction and the COV2-2130/COV2-2196 combination treatment had an 11-fold reduction in neutralization.

In cells expressing human ACE2, the researchers encountered unexpected differences in inhibitory activity from COV2-2130 and S309 monoclonal antibodies. COV2-2130 showed no change in neutralizing activity from cells expressing or not expressing human ACE2. The S309 monoclonal antibody treatment showed only a 6-fold decrease in neutralizing activity against Omicron compared to an earlier SARS-CoV-2 strain.

The above results suggest monoclonal antibodies belonging to the AstraZeneca combination treatment or Vir Biotechnology still exert some inhibitory activity towards Omicron. However, the researchers note that more experiments looking into these treatments are needed to validate its clinical use against Omicron.

*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.
A team of researchers from the United States and China recently discuss the effects of the new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron variant, its likely impact on current convalescent therapies, and the immunity of vaccinated individuals against this variant in a new study published on the bioRxiv* preprint server.



Study: Striking Antibody Evasion Manifested by the Omicron Variant of SARS-CoV-2. Image Credit: Dkoi / Shutterstock.com

Background

The emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) was originally identified in November 2021 and has since been detected in more than 60 countries. The Omicron variant could become dominant in the next few weeks across the globe due to its increased transmissibility, similar to what was observed during the Delta variant outbreak.

About 37 mutations of the spike protein have been reported in the Omicron variant, which raises concerns about the efficacy of the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines and the use of therapeutic antibodies for convalescent therapy.

About the study

In the present study, the team collected sera from individuals who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the spring of 2020, as well as from vaccinated individuals who received any of the BNT162b2, mRNA-1273, Ad26.COV2.S, or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccines to test the neutralization activity of these samples against both wild-type and the B.1.1.529 pseudoviruses. The researchers analyzed the activity of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against all known epitopes of the spike protein.

Besides the 37 reported mutations in the spike protein of the B.1.1.529 variant, about 10% of Omicron sequences in the GISAID database contain an additional R346K mutation, which was also found in the Mu variant (B.1.621). This finding prompted the researchers to work on an additional pseudovirus with this mutation.

About 19 mAbs approved for COVID-19 treatment were tested for their neutralization activity, either individually or in combination, 17 of which target the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and two of which are directed at the N-terminal domain (NTD) of the spike protein. They further investigated the amino acid substitutions that confer antibody resistance to the Omicron variant.

Study findings

The study found that the neutralization activity of sera from infected and vaccinated individuals was significantly lower against the B.1.1.529 variant. A 32-fold reduction in infectious dose of 50% (ID 50 ) titers was observed in samples of infected individuals against the Omicron variant. Individuals vaccinated with mRNA vaccines showed a 21-fold (BNT162b2) and 8.6-fold (mRNA-1273) reduction in ID 50 titers. The sera of individuals who received Ad26.COV2.S and ChAdOx1 nCOV-19 vaccines elicited lower titer values below the limit of detection (LOD) against the Omicron variant.

The team reported that 18 mAbs lost neutralization activity completely or partially against the B.1.1.529 variant. More than a 100-fold reduction was observed for mAbs of RBD classes 1, 2, and 3. A modest 10-fold decrease was reported for class 4 mAbs. The pseudoviral Omicron constructs with R346K substitution rendered all the mAbs inactive.

Resistance of B.1.1.529 to neutralization by sera. a, Unrooted phylogenetic tree of B.1.1.529 with other major SARS-CoV-2 variants. b, Key spike mutations found in the viruses isolated in the major lineage of B.1.1.529 are denoted. c, Neutralization of D614G and B.1.1.529 pseudoviruses by convalescent patient sera. d, Neutralization of D614G and B.1.1.529 pseudoviruses by vaccinee sera. Within the four standard vaccination groups, individuals that were vaccinated without documented infection are denoted as circles and individuals that were both vaccinated and infected are denoted as triangles. Within the boosted group, Moderna vaccinees are denoted as squares and Pfizer vaccinees are denoted as diamonds. e, Neutralization of authentic D614G and B.1.1.529 viruses by vaccinee sera. Moderna vaccinees are denoted as squares and Pfizer vaccinees are denoted as diamonds.

Further, the researchers discovered four new mutations of S371L, N440K, G446S, and Q493R in the Omicron spike protein, which confer enhanced antibody resistance to the variant. The Q493R substitution was shown to provide resistance to mAbs of RBD classes 1 and 2, whereas N440K and G446S mutations showed resistance to class 3 mAbs.

Remarkably, the S371L substitution conferred resistance to mAbs of all four classes. Steric hindrance was reported as the most likely reason for antibody resistance in the Omicron variant. Detailed analysis revealed that the B.1.1.529 variant evades all available mAbs that target either RBD or NTD.

Resistance of B.1.1.529 to neutralization by monoclonal antibodies. a, Footprints of RBD-directed antibodies, with mutations within B.1.1.529 highlighted in cyan. Approved or authorized antibodies are bolded. The receptor-binding motif (RBM) residues are highlighted in yellow. b, Footprints of NTD-directed antibodies, with mutations within B.1.1.529 highlighted in cyan. The NTD supersite residues are highlighted in light pink. c, Neutralization of D614G and B.1.1.529 pseudoviruses by RBD-directed and NTD-directed mAbs. d, Neutralization D614G and B.1.1.529+R346K pseudoviruses by RBD-directed and NTD-directed mAbs.

Conclusions

The findings of the current study demonstrate the diminished efficacy of the most widely used vaccines against the Omicron variant. Sera from convalescent patients presented similar results adding to the growing concerns of vaccine breakthroughs and the high rate of reinfections by the Omicron variant.

The current study also investigated serum samples from individuals who received mRNA vaccine boosters and found that even a third dose could not elicit adequate neutralization activity confirming the suspicions of their low efficacy against the Omicron variant. The B.1.1.529 variant, with the additional R346K substitution, decreases the scope of convalescent therapy, thus highlighting the pressing need to rethink existing therapies. At this rate, any newer mutations could render the virus pan-resistant to all current therapies.

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant presents new threats to global healthcare systems, thus compelling them to intervene with advanced strategies to tackle the ongoing crisis. The emergence of potentially dangerous new variants calls for more extensive research that could help detect new variants and also predict their evolution.

*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
Being the parent or sibling of a child with a life-threatening condition can take a mental and physical toll on other members of the family. A new study from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is one of the first to empirically measure the extent of this burden on families, with parents and siblings 50% to 70% more likely than their peers to receive health care for mental and physical health issues, accompanied by medication for these issues, than families of children without a life-threatening condition. The findings were published online in JAMA Network Open.

Prior qualitative studies have shown adverse collateral impacts on mental and physical well-being for parents and siblings of infants, children, and adolescents diagnosed with a life-threatening condition (LTC). These studies have shown lower resilience, greater post-traumatic distress, higher emotional distress, and lower overall quality of life, with damaging effects on family life, marriages, social life, finances, and education, among other aspects of their lives that can be impacted by these disorders.

Most studies have not, however, been able to measure the exact impact LTCs have on parents and siblings. Prior studies have been limited by small sample sizes, self-reported outcomes, and being limited to one condition, usually cancer. To address these limitations, CHOP researchers focused on four different types of LTCs that are each stressful for patient families: very premature birth, critical congenital heart disease, cancer, and severe neurological impairment.

As clinicians caring for children with a variety of life-threatening conditions, members of our research group have long known, by bearing witness, that many of the parents and siblings of our patients are adversely affected by the stress imposed due to presence of a life-threatening condition in the family. We hope that this study brings enhanced awareness of this largely unaddressed problem and starts moving us towards effective responses." Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH, Senior Study Author, Director of Research for the Justin Michael Ingerman Center for Palliative Care and a core faculty member at the Center of Pediatric Clinical Effectiveness (CPCE) at CHOP

This retrospective study used commercial health insurance data from a single carrier to match families whose child has a LTC with families whose child did not have a LTC based on the age of the children in the study. The study examined the rates of healthcare encounters (that is, inpatient stay, outpatient visit, telephone consultation), physical and mental health diagnoses, and subsequent medication prescriptions. In total, the study looked at 6,909 case and 18,619 control children and their families between August 2020 and March 2021.

The study found that mothers of a child with a LTC were, on average, 61% more likely to have a healthcare encounter, diagnosis, and/or prescription. For fathers, the rate was about 51%. Sisters and brothers had similar rates at 68% and 70%, respectively.

"Though limited to four specific life-threatening conditions, our study provides critical empirical data specifically measuring the negative impact felt by family members," Feudtner said. "We hope that this study provides the foundation for more work that offers critical interventions and support for families to help stabilize their mental and physical wellbeing during an incredibly trying time in their lives."
After the 2019 outbreak, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged as the largest pandemic since the 1918 influenza outbreak. One of the unique aspects of this virus is that its spike proteins contain a furin cleavage site.

After receptor binding, the CoV spike protein is proteolytically cleaved at the S1 and S2 sites to activate the fusion machinery. For SARS-CoV-2, the novel cleavage motif of the spike protein is recognized by the host cell furin protease (PRRAR)directly upstream of the S1 cleavage sitethat facilitates cleavage prior to virion release. This furin cleavage site (FCS), which is not found in other group 2B CoVs, plays a key role in spike processing, infectivity, and pathogenesis.

Another novel amino acid motif  QTQTN, is found directly upstream of the FCS, which is also absent in other group 2B CoVs. This motif is often deleted and has been rampant in cultured virus stocks of the alpha, beta and delta variants. Also, the QTQTN deletion was found in a small subset of patient samples.

A new study posted to the bioRxiv* preprint server aimed to demonstrate whether the loss of the QTQTN motif attenuates SARS-CoV-2 replication in respiratory cells in vitro and pathogenesis in hamsters.

Study: QTQTN motif upstream of the furin-cleavage site plays key role in SARS-CoV-2 infection and pathogenesis. Image Credit: ktsdesign / Shutterstock

Findings

The present experiment entailed a comparison of group 2B coronavirus sequences. It was found that in addition to the furin cleavage site (FCS), a QTQTN motif was present directly upstream in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. This motif is absent in other CoVs, except for the closely related RaTG13 69 bat coronavirus. Importantly, this QTQTN motif is often deleted in SARS-CoV-2 strains propagated in Vero E6 cells.

The QTQTN deletion on the SARS-CoV-2 spike structure was examined. The results showed that the QTQTN mutant forms a stable -helix in the loop containing the S1' cleavage site. This -helix is speculated to make the loop less flexible and reduce access to the proteolytic cleavage site.

It was also noted that the deletion of the QTQTN motif did not affect virus replication in Vero E6 (African green monkey kidney cells) cells  with the rescue stock titer comparable to wild-type WA-1 (WT) in yield. However, the QTQTN mutant produced a large plaque morphology, as seen with FCS knockout mutant.

In vitro characterization of SARS-CoV-2 QTQTN. a, Comparison of S1/S2 cleavage site across SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 and 5 related bat CoVs. b, Schematic of SARS-CoV-2 genome with deletion of QTQTN codons. c, SARS-CoV-2 spike trimer (grey) with WT (upper) and model-predicted QTQTN (lower) overlaid. PRRA (blue) is exposed with QTQTN (cyan) present in WT and extends the loop (upper). An -helix is formed with the deletion of QTQTN (red) and PRRA (green) is exposed (lower). d, Viral titer from Vero E6 cells infected with WT (black) or QTQTN (red) SARS-CoV-2 at an MOI of 0.01 (n=3). e, Competition assay between WT and QTQTN SARS-CoV-2 at a ratio of 1:1, showing RNA percentage from next-generation sequencing. f, Viral titer from Calu-3 2B4 infected with WT or QTQTN SARS-CoV-2 at an MOI of 0.01 (n=3). Data are mean  s.d. The statistical analysis was measured by a two-tailed Students t-test. *, p0.05; **, p0.01; ***, p0.001; ****, p0.0001.

On the other hand, the QTQTN mutant had a significant advantage over WT SARS-CoV-2 in Vero E6 cells. This probably caused the accumulation of this mutation in Vero E6-amplified virus stocks.

Notably, Calu-3 2B4 cells  a human respiratory cell line - exhibited a ~2.5 log reduction in QTQTN replication at both 24- and 48-hours post-infection (hpi). Hence, the QTQTN mutant is attenuated in respiratory cells and has a fitness advantage in Vero E6 cells.

Here, hamsters infected with QTQTN developed less extensive pulmonary lesions than those in hamsters infected with WT SARS CoV-2. All lesions depicted  interstitial pneumonia, peribronchitis, peribronchiolitis, and vasculitis with predominantly subendothelial and perivascular infiltration by lymphocytes and perivascular edema. Meanwhile, cytopathologic effects were observed in alveolar pneumocytes and bronchiolar epithelium. Thus, the deletion of QTQTN motif attenuated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), in vivo.

QTQTN SARS-CoV-2 replication. a, Virus stock titer of WT and QTQTN SARS-CoV-2 from Vero E6. b, Plaque morphology of WT and QTQTN in Vero E6. c-d, Competition assay between WT and QTQTN SARS-CoV-2 at a ratio of 100:0 (c) and 0:100 (d) WT:QTQTN, showing RNA percentage from next generation sequencing.

However, QTQTN viral replication in vivo was not compromised compared to WT SARS-CoV-2. In fact, the viral titers were more significant  with a 10-fold increase in nasal wash titers at 1, 2, and 4 dpi. Similar titer elevations were identified in the trachea of infected hamsters. Notably, viral titers were equivalent in the lungs for 2 and 4 dpi.

On examining the viral ribonucleic acid (RNA), the QTQTN had comparable levels of viral replication relative to control SARS-CoV-2 in the lung. While hamster lung samples elicited clustering of WT and QTQTN at 2 dpi and 4 dpi. In addition, upregulated genes were similar between WT and QTQTN compared to mock at both time points. Therefore, the attenuation of QTQTN in vivo is not due to a change in replication capacity  these data are consistent with in vivo results with the FCS knockout virus.

Furthermore, loss of the QTQTN motif resulted in minimal S1/S2 cleavage product and greater full-length spike compared to WT control. Similar suppression of spike processing was seen in Calu3-2B4 cells, which was still higher than in Vero E6. The deletion of the QTQTN motif appeared to impair spike cleavage at the S1/S2 site.

In vivo characterization of SARS-CoV-2 QTQTN in golden Syrian hamsters. a, Schematic of golden Syrian hamster infection with WT (black) or QTQTN (red) SARS-CoV-2. b-c, Three- to four-week-old male hamsters were infected with 105 plaque-forming units (pfu) of WT or QTQTN SARS-CoV-2 and monitored for weight loss (b) and disease score (c) for seven days (n=10). d, Histopathology of hamster lungs manifested more extensive lesions in animals infected with WT SARS-CoV-2 on day 2 (i) (4X magnification) than in animals infected with QTQTN (ii) (4X). Lesions increased in volume on day 4 with greater proportions of the lungs affected in hamsters infected with WT (iii) (4X) than QTQTN (iv) (4X) on day 4. e-g, Viral titers were measured for nasal washes (e), tracheae (f), and lungs (g). Data are mean  s.e.m. Statistical analysis measured by two-tailed Students t-test. *, p0.05; **, p0.01; ***, p0.001; ****, p0.0001. Figures were created with BioRender.com

Additionally, the loss of the QTQTN motif reduced the virus's capacity to use TMPRSS2 (present at the cell surface) for entry. Besides, the loss of glycosylation sites in the QTQTN motif attenuates replication in Calu-3 2B4 cells. While the loss of glycosylated residues did not impact the spike processing of SARS-CoV-2.

Whereas, disruption of both glycosylation residues with the QVQVN mutant titer resulted in attenuationequivalent to that of QTQTNsuggesting that abolishing both O-linked glycosylation sites disrupted TMPRSS2 utilization. Glycosylation of the QTQTN motif appeared essential for protease interactions with spike and SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In conclusion, the FCS, the length/composition of the exterior loop, as well as glycosylation of the QTQTN motif are necessary for the infection and pathogenesis. Disruption of any of these three elements attenuates SARS-CoV-2.

Moreover, the QTQTN deletion results in reduced spike cleavage and diminished capacity for cell surface entry. Mutations of glycosylation-enabling residues in the QTQTN motif also render replication attenuation despite intact spike processing.

The results isolated elements in the SARS-CoV-2 spike and the furin cleavage site that contribute to increased replication and pathogenesis of the virus.

*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 recent study published on the bioRxiv* preprint server, researchers discuss the sensitivity of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus disease 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron variant towards monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), which are antibodies that have been isolated from the sera of convalescent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) individuals or recipients of COVID-19 vaccines.

Study: Considerable escape of SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron to antibody neutralization. Image Credit: CROCOTHERY / Shutterstock.com

Potent SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant

After its initial identification in November 2021 in South Africa and Botswana, the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 had rapidly spread across the world. The virulent nature of Omicron and its antibody neutralization capacity may be due to the presence of 32 mutations in the spike protein (S) receptor-binding domain (RBD), N-terminal domain (NTD), and around the furin cleavage site. There remains a lack of information available on the sensitivity of this variant of concern (VOC) towards humoral immunity.

About the study

The present study tested the sensitivity of the Omicron variant against antibodies present in 90 serum samples from convalescent COVID-19 patients or vaccine recipients, as well as nine mAbs that are currently in development or clinically approved for the treatment of COVID-19.

The sera antibodies from convalescent COVID-19 patients were sampled at six or 12 months after the patient had recovered from COVID-19, whereas sera antibodies from vaccine recipients were collected five months after their two-dose regimen with either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccine.

The sensitivity of the Omicron variant against a panel of human mAbs was determined using the S-Fuse assay. Subsequently, the efficacy of vaccine-elicited antibodies and convalescent sera antibodies against both the Omicron and Delta strains were measured by calculating the effective dose for each serum and virus combination.

The antibody neutralizing capacity against Omicron was also analyzed in vaccinated convalescent COVID-19 patients and those who received a third Pfizer vaccine booster dose. Serum antibodies were sampled one month after the vaccination of previously infected individuals and booster dose recipients.

The Omicron lineage was analyzed phylogenetically using the data obtained from the global initiative on sharing all influenza data (GISAID) EpiCoV database. A three-dimensional (3D) protein model was used to compare the mutations in both this VOC and the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. The current study was not double-blinded or randomized in design and did not use any statistical methods to predetermine the sample size.

Study findings

The current study reports that six therapeutic mAbs of Casirivimab, Bamlanivimab, Etesevimab, Regdanvima, Tixagevimab, and Imdevimab, out of the nine tested mAbs, were inactive when their cross-reactivity was tested against the Omicron variant. The inhibitory concentration of 50% (IC50%) increased around 20-fold following treatment with Andintrevimab and Cilgavimab, whereas Sotrovimab had only a three-fold increase in the IC50%, thereby indicating it was less effective against the Omicron variant.

Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 variants Delta and Omicron by clinical and pre-clinical mAbs. a. Mutational landscape of the Omicron Spike. The amino acid modifications are indicated in comparison to the ancestral Wuhan-Hu-1 sequence (NC_045512). Consensus sequences of the Spike protein were built with the Sierra tool 33. The Omicron sequence corresponds to the viral strain isolated in Belgium and used in the study (GISAID accession ID: (EPI_ISL_6794907). Mutations are compared to some preexisting variants of concern and variants of interest. Filled circles: change identical to Omicron. Open circles: different substitution at the same position.

b. Neutralization curves of mAbs. Dose response analysis of the neutralization by clinical or pre-clinical mAbs (Bamlanivimab, Etesivimab, Casirivimab, Imdevimab, Adintrevimab, Cligavimab, Tixagevimab, Regdanvimab, Sotrovimab) and the indicated combinations (Bamlanivimab/Etesivimab, Casirivimab/Imdevimab [Ronapreve], Cligavimab/Tixagevimab [Evusheld]) on Delta (turquoise) and Omicron (red) variants. Data are meanSD of 2 to 3 independent experiments.

Among the 36 vaccinated participants who were not previously infected, 18 individuals received the two-dose AstraZeneca vaccine regimen, 16 participants received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and 11 individuals who had completed two-dose Pfizer regimen received a Pfizer vaccine booster dose. The sera antibodies obtained five months after the two-dose Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccination barely neutralized the Omicron virus. Similarly, sera antibodies obtained at six- or 12-months after recovery from convalescent COVID-19 individuals showed limited or no neutralizing capacity against the Omicron variant.

The antibody neutralization against Omicron increased after vaccination in convalescent COVID-19 patients or booster dose recipients. However, the neutralization against Omicron was five- to 30-fold reduced as compared to the Delta variant in flow cytometry analysis.

Sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 variants D614G, Delta and Omicron to sera from vaccinated, convalescent or infected then vaccinated individuals.

Conclusions

The findings of the study show that the Omicron variant was partially or totally resistant towards antibody neutralization by therapeutic mAbs, as well as sera antibodies from those who have completed the two-dose vaccine regimen of Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines. Furthermore, convalescent COVID-19 patients had no or low antibody neutralization activity against the Omicron variant.

This proves that the Omicron variant escapes the antibody neutralizing capacity of vaccine-elicited antibodies and therapeutic mAbs. However, an anti-Omicron neutralizing response was observed in participants who received a Pfizer booster vaccine after the Pfizer two-dose regimen and vaccinated convalescent COVID patients. Thus, acceleration of global vaccination and booster doses is necessary to counteract the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 VOCs.

The results of this study can help public health decision-making and influence policies on the use of vaccines and therapeutic mAbs indicated in the prevention of COVID-19 in infected individuals who are at a high risk of severe disease, as well as pre-exposed individuals with low immunity. The current study also highlights the importance of an antibody-based treatment strategy for the management of Omicron-infected individuals and updating the current pharmacopeia with mAbs and vaccine information.

*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.
A clinical trial in which two test drugs failed to help patients with mild COVID-19 nevertheless had a silver lining: It proved the viability of a study model in which a medication's potential arrhythmic side effects are safely, effectively monitored without the participants ever setting foot in a hospital or clinic.

The findings are reported Dec. 20, 2021, in the journal Communications Medicine. They also suggest that remote studies can expand clinical research to broader populations and greatly reduce participants' burdens of time, travel and cost, said Dr. Arun Sridhar, a senior author.

This indicates we can reach people who are typically unable to participate in research, including those who live far from academic health centers and those with limited mobility. The digital age may help democratize clinical trials." Dr. Arun Sridhar, assistant professor of cardiology, University of Washington School of Medicine

The fully remote study was designed in the early spring of 2020 during COVID-19's first wave. Researchers wanted to learn whether the inexpensive drugs hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin might speed the recoveries of patients who had tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and were self-treating at home. The investigators, however, were wary of the drugs' potential to cause a type of heart rhythm disorder called a prolonged QT interval. If allowed to persist, long QT can cause cardiac arrest.

Daily electrocardiograms (ECG) would be needed from participants, but COVID-19 concerns precluded the people from coming to clinic for those tests.

Starting April 15, 2020, COVID-19 patients in five U.S. healthcare systems began trial enrollment by phone or email, with consent confirmed by secure video teleconference. Enrollees were sent a kit with 16 days' worth of supplies with which to perform nasal swab tests and to obtain vital signs such as temperature and blood oxygen levels.

Also in the supplies: a handheld rhythm-monitoring device to transmit digital ECGs to the research team in real time.

"At the outset, all participants were taught how to use the device and how to download the corresponding smartphone app. They could transmit an ECG to the study site during each day of the study to ensure the QT interval was not increasing," explained Dr. Christine Johnston, the trial's principal investigator and a UW associate professor of medicine.

Some 218 patients were enrolled, initiated study medication, and transmitted ECG data into three randomized arms before the trial was terminated for lack of drug benefit. Collaborators at the Mayo Clinic processed the daily digital ECG readouts. All readings were forwarded to the trial coordinators and clinicians for review, typically within an hour. Participants whose QT interval was high above baseline were promptly asked for another ECG, and if that test confirmed the finding, the medication was discontinued.Twenty-eight participants experienced prolonged QT, two of whom needed to have the drugs discontinued for that reason. No fatal events were reported.

More importantly, though, 85% of enrollees followed the trial's protocol to submit one ECG per day for the first 14 days, suggesting that remote self-monitoring for arrhythmia is feasible, Johnston said.

"Before COVID, there was no precedent for monitoring patients' ECGs remotely," she said. "These participants were highly motivated and did well in terms of adherence to the daily survey of symptoms, swab and ECG requests."

Dozens of medications, including some for arrhythmias and cancer, require patients to have their heart rhythms monitored closely. In some cases, patients are admitted to the hospital for the first three days to undergo two ECGs per day before the medication is deemed safe enough to take at home.

"Remote monitoring could create a huge cost savings for healthcare systems and huge time savings for patients, who would not have to stay in the hospital for three days and miss work just to get six ECGs," Sridhar said. "Another upside of remote trials is that it doesn't require us to have a dedicated clinical space that serves only trial subjects."

The researchers noted two main limitations seen with the trial: a lack of digital literacy among older trial participants and the potential for poor communication with non-English-speaking participants.

"Some older patients were not tech-savvy with smartphones and apps. It also was slightly more difficult to communicate with non-English speaking patients in the trial centers that did not have Spanish interpreters available. Sometimes younger family members were asked to help bridge the communication gap," Sridhar said.

"I think these barriers are relatively easy to overcome with more rigorous education for the participants, which we simply did not have time for with the pandemic."

The study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Despite the belief of many parents and teachers, school uniforms don't seem to have any effect on young students' behavior or attendance overall, a new national study found.

But students who attended schools requiring school uniforms did report lower levels of "school belonging" in fifth grade than did students in schools without uniforms.

The findings came from data on more than 6,000 school-age children.

A lot of the core arguments about why school uniforms are good for student behavior don't hold up in our sample. We didn't see much difference in our behavior measures, regardless of whether the schools had a uniform policy or not." Arya Ansari, lead author of the study and assistant professor of human sciences, The Ohio State University

Ansari conducted the study with Michael Shepard, a graduate student in human sciences at Ohio State, and Michael Gottfried, associate professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Their results were published online recently in the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

The issue is important because school uniforms are becoming more popular, Ansari said, and not just in private schools.

About 20% of public schools required uniforms in 2011-12, up from just 3% in 1995-96. About 6 out of every 10 private schools required uniforms in 2011-2012.

"There hasn't been much research done on the value of school uniforms in the past 20 years or so, especially given how much their use has increased," said Ansari, who is also a faculty associate at Ohio State's Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy.

Proponents of school uniforms have argued that, among other things, they promote better attendance and a stronger sense of community, which results in less bullying and fighting.

To test that, the researchers used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which followed a nationally representative sample of 6,320 students from kindergarten through the end of fifth grade.

Every academic year, teachers rated each student on three dimensions: internalizing behavior problems (such as anxiety and social withdrawal), externalizing behavior problems (such as aggression or destruction of property) and social skills.

Teachers also reported how often each student was absent.

Overall, school uniforms had no effect on any of the three dimensions of behavior in any grade, even after taking into account a wide range of other factors that could potentially affect students' behavior.

The study did find that low-income students in schools that required uniforms did have slightly better attendance, but that difference amounted to less than one day per year, Ansari said.

The researchers also evaluated self-report measures from the same students when they were in fifth grade. Students reported on their sense of school belonging, such as how close they felt to teachers and classmates. They also reported their experiences of bullying and social anxiety.

School uniforms were not linked to any differences in bullying or social anxiety in the children. But those who had to wear uniforms reported lower levels of school belonging than did those who attended schools with no uniform requirements.

The data in this study can't explain this finding, Ansari said, but there are some plausible reasons why this might be so.

"While uniforms are supposed to build a sense of community, they may have the opposite effect," he said.

"Fashion is one way that students express themselves, and that may be an important part of the school experience. When students can't show their individuality, they may not feel like they belong as much."

The results of this study should caution parents, teachers and administrators from assuming that school uniforms have positive effects that they may not have, Ansari said.

"School uniforms may not be the most effective way to improve student behavior and engagement."

The study was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Early results from an Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology randomized clinical trial of adults with multiple myeloma relapsing on frontline lenalidomide therapy showed that adding ixazomib (Ninlaro) to pomalidomide and dexamethasone as part of second line therapy extended the length of time patients lived before their disease worsened (progression-free survival) compared with patients who received pomalidomide and dexamethasone.

The Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) overseeing the trial recommended to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that the results be released because a recent interim analysis showed a significant improvement in progression-free survival for those patients who received ixazomib in addition to pomalidomide and dexamethasome.

According to the DSMB's recommendation, patients currently receiving pomalidomide, dexamethasone, and ixazomib should continue therapy as planned. Any patient who is currently receiving pomalidomide and dexamethasone may elect to receive ixazomib after discussion with their physician or continue with their current regimen and add ixazomib at the time of disease progression. Full details from this study will be presented at an upcoming scientific meeting and in a peer-reviewed publication.

In a phase I/II trial known as Alliance A061202, patients in phase I received increasing doses of pomalidomide, dexamethasone, and ixazomib over a 28-day cycle to establish a maximally tolerated dose for each as part of the combination, and were treated until their disease progressed or the patients experience unacceptable toxicities. Patients enrolled in the phase II study were required to have proteasome inhibitor naive or sensitive disease that had progressed on lenalidomide as part of frontline treatment for multiple myeloma (e.g., progression of disease on frontline lenalidomide maintenance therapy). Patients were randomized to one of the two treatment arms.

We found that pomalidomide, ixazomib, and dexamethasone can be combined safely. The preliminary efficacy of this combination is promising and warrants additional investigation in phase III trials. Our results provide support for the use of this all-oral regimen for patients with lenalidomide-refractory multiple myeloma in need of second line therapy, a growing patient population that has not been evaluated well in randomized studies to date." Peter Voorhees, MD, Study Lead Investigator and Chair, Multiple Myeloma Specialist and Chief of the Plasma Cell Disorders Division, Levine Cancer Institute

Alliance A061202 was designed and sponsored by Alliance, and conducted by the NCI National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) of researchers led by the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology. Celgene Corporation (now part of Bristol-Myers Squibb) provided the pomalidomide. Millennium Pharmaceuticals: A Takeda Oncology Company provided the ixazomib. Ixazomib, an oral proteasome inhibitor, may stop the growth of tumor cells by blocking some of the enzymes needed for cell growth. It is currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in combination with lenalidomide and dexamethasone for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior therapy.

"We found this all oral combination approach generally well tolerated and clearly active in lenalidomide-refractory patients, with the benefit of a convenient out-patient regimen, which proved especially practical and popular amongst our patients during the pandemic," commented senior investigator and Committee Chair Paul Richardson, MD, Clinical Program Leader and Directory of Clinical Research, the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center, Dana- Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, whose site was the lead enroller to the study.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells that develops in the bone marrow and can spread throughout the body. It is a rare cancer. In the United States, the lifetime risk of getting multiple myeloma is 1 in 132, according to the American Cancer Society, which estimated that this year, more than 34,900 new cases will be diagnosed and about 12,410 deaths expected to occur.

Survival of patients with multiple myeloma has significantly improved with the advent of the immunomodulatory drugs, thalidomide and lenalidomide, pomalidomide, and the proteasome inhibitors bortezomib, carfilzomib and Ixazomib, as well as the introduction of monoclonal antibody therapy, including daratumumab. However, most patients will experience repeated relapses and eventually succumb to refractory disease.
The protection offered by the Oxford-Astra Zeneca Covid-19 vaccine declines after three months of receiving two doses, a study says.

The findings  drawn from datasets in two countries  suggest that booster programs are needed to help maintain protection from severe disease in those vaccinated with Oxford-Astra Zeneca, experts say.

Researchers from Scotland and Brazil analysed data for two million people in Scotland and 42 million people in Brazil who had been vaccinated with the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine.

In Scotland, when compared with two weeks after receiving a second dose, there was approximately a fivefold increase in the chance of being hospitalised or dying from Covid-19 nearly five months after being double vaccinated.

The decline in effectiveness begins to first appear at around three months, when the risk of hospitalisation and death is double that of two weeks after the second dose, experts say.

The risk increases threefold just short of four months after the second vaccine dose. Similar numbers were seen for Brazil.

Researchers were able to compare data between Scotland and Brazil as they had a similar interval between doses  12 weeks  and initial prioritisation of who was vaccinated  people at highest risk of severe disease and healthcare workers.

The dominant variant was different in each country during the study period  Delta in Scotland and Gamma in Brazil  meaning the decline in effectiveness is likely because of vaccine waning and the impact of variants.

The study also estimated vaccine effectiveness at similar fortnightly intervals by comparing outcomes of people who have been jabbed with those who are unvaccinated.

But experts warned these figures should be treated with caution because it is becoming harder to compare unvaccinated people to vaccinated people with similar characteristics, particularly among older age groups where so many people are now vaccinated..

The study is part of the EAVE II project, which uses anonymised linked patient data in Scotland to track the pandemic and the vaccine roll out in real time.

The research team included scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Strathclyde, and St Andrew's; Public Health Scotland; Victoria University of Wellington; Fiocruz; Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and Universidade Federal de Bahia.

Vaccines have been a key tool in fighting the pandemic, but waning in their effectiveness has been a concern for a while. By identifying when waning first starts to occur in the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine, it should be possible for governments to design booster programs that can ensure maximum protection is maintained." Aziz Sheikh, Study Lead, Professor and Director, Usher Institute and EAVE II, University of Edinburgh

"If eligible for a booster and you have not had yet had one, I would highly recommend that you book one soon."

Professor Vittal Katikireddi at the University of Glasgow said: "Our analyses of national datasets from both Scotland and Brazil suggest that there is considerable waning of effectiveness for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, with protection against severe Covid-19 falling over time.

"We studied two million people in Scotland and over 42 million people in Brazil who had received two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. More than four months after receiving a second dose, the risk of experiencing either a Covid-19 hospitalisation or death was approximately five times greater than the period of maximum vaccine protection after accounting for changes in infection rates and a range of other factors.

"Our work highlights the importance of getting boosters, even if you've had two doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, as soon as you are able to."

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council, UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, the National Institute for Health Research and Health Data Research UK (HDR UK), and was supported by the Scottish Government.

Additional support was provided through the Scottish Government Director-General Health and Social Care, and the UKRI COVID-19 National Core Studies Data and Connectivity program led by HDR UK.

Professor Andrew Morris, Director of Health Data Research UK said, "This research is a great example of what can be achieved through global collaboration when it comes to the use of data for health research. By drawing on findings from data sets in two countries with differing dominant COVID-19 variants, the researchers have been able to disentangle vaccine waning from the effects of changes in variants  strengthening the evidence for the ongoing booster program.

"Health Data Research UK is pleased to have been able to support both the development of these data sets, and their harmonised analysis, as part of our mission to enable global and trustworthy sharing of data to allow major COVID-19 research questions to be addressed at pace."
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread to nearly every country in the world and is responsible for over 5 million deaths. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the organism that causes the disease, infects epithelial tissue in the lungs, later destroying endothelial cells. This can cause massive inflammatory and immune reactions, and infected individuals can suffer from very varied symptoms, from a mild cough to multiple organ failure.

The extensive inflammatory response that is characteristic of more severe disease is thought to increase the production of reactive oxidative species that can cause even more harm to the body. Serum-free thiols are known to reflect the activity of reactive oxygen species in the body, and a group of researchers from the University of Groningen have been examining the difference in these thiols in COVID-19 patients.

Study: Mild Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Is Marked by Systemic Oxidative Stress: A Pilot Study. Image Credit: SWKStock/Shutterstock.com

The study

The scientists examined data from patients in the Netherlands who had a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 using a positive PCR test. No patients were vaccinated. Serum samples were gathered from these, and a roughly equal population of healthy controls. Demographic and clinical characteristics were gathered, including age, BMI, medical history, smoking status, gender, and comorbidities.

The serum was tested for serum-free thiol as well as hemoglobin, C-reactive protein (CRP), white blood cell counts, albumin, and creatine. Hemoglobin, white blood cells, and platelets were measured using an automated hematology analyzer, albumin and CRP were measured with turbidimetry, and estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was calculated using the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) formula. The basic characteristics were presented as means +/- standard deviation, and medians in case of non-normal distributions.

Shapiro-Wilk normality tests, histograms, and Q-Q plots were used to assess normality. Mann-Whitney U-tests and independent sample t-tests were used to assess differences between groups of continuous samples, and nominal variables were compared using chi-square tests or Fishers exact tests. Paired t-tests were used for within-group comparisons. Univariable and multivariable linear regression analyses were used to identify parameters associated with serum-free thiol concentrations.

The researchers examined 29 mild, non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients and 30 healthy controls. There were no significant differences in age, gender, or body mass index between the groups. Comorbidities such as smoking history, hypertension, diabetes, and pulmonary disease were also equal between groups. Differences were observed in concentrations of CRP (increased in COVID-19 patients) and concentrations of WBC (decreased), but this is expected. COVID-19 subjects showed a wide range of symptoms, including asymptomatic patients and several who suffered from long COVID. Seven hospitalized patients were also examined.

The researchers found that serum-free thiol concentrations were significantly reduced in patients with mild COVID-19, and albumin-adjusted serum concentrations of free thiols showed a similar trend with lower concentrations in COVID-19 subjects  although the albumin data was not statistically significant.

The scientists then performed univariable and multivariable linear regression analyses to identify parameters associated with serum-free thiol concentrations. Univariable regression showed that both CRP and albumin concentration were associated with serum-free thiols in COVID-19 patients, while the multivariable regression analysis showed that albumin concentrations were independently associated with serum-free thiol concentrations.

CRP was not associated with albumin. In controls, age and albumin concentrations showed associations with serum-free thiol concentrations. Age and albumin were also associated with each other.

Following this, analyses were performed on the serum-free thiol concentrations at different time points in hospitalized and non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients, to examine any correlation between free thiols and COVID-19 disease severity. While there was no difference between the two groups at baseline, non-hospitalized patients showed significantly lower concentrations of serum-free thiols by day 7, as well as decreased concentrations of hemoglobin and creatinine.

Serum-free thiol concentrations were also evaluated for the ability to differentiate between non-hospitalized patients and controls. The free thiol concentrations differed significantly between these two groups, showing a slightly better discriminative capacity than CRP concentrations. Albumin-adjusted free thiol concentration was also evaluated and found to be effective if less so than free thiols alone. Unfortunately, free thiols were not useful for discriminating between hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients at their baseline.

(A) Serum concentrations of free thiols (M) significantly discriminated between patients with COVID-19 and healthy controls and (B) showing a slightly higher discriminative capacity as compared to CRP concentrations (mg/L).

The conclusion

The authors highlight that their study effectively demonstrates that serum-free thiols are significantly lower in patients with COVID-19 compared to the control group. This is significant evidence for the presence of a redox imbalance in even mild COVID-19 patients. This information could be very valuable for healthcare workers and drug developers.

While unfortunately the presence of serum-free thiols cannot be used as a biomarker for future disease severity at baseline, it could still be used to measure the advancement of the disease.
In a recent study published on the bioRxiv* preprint server, researchers demonstrate that the exposure of platelets to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein promotes their activation and adhesion, thus enhancing calcium release and phosphatidylserine (PS) exposure to drive increased thrombin generation. The researchers also showed that the TMEM16F activity inhibitors of niclosamide and clofazimine almost completely eliminated this spike-induced pro-coagulant response.

The lung pathology of severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients revealed thrombosis as a defining characteristic. Previous studies have shown that clinical indicators of thrombosis, including elevated D-dimer, fibrinogen, and thrombosis-associated inflammatory biomarkers, are present in most COVID-19 patients requiring intensive care.

Study: SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein activates TMEM16F-mediated platelet pro-coagulant activity. Image Credit: Kateryna Kon / Shutterstock.com

About the study

The present study was based on a few observations which suggested that thrombosis in COVID-19 is triggered by local events occurring in the infected lungs. The first observation is regarding the asynchronous deposition of thrombi and fibrin in the lungs. The deposition of these substances appears to be due to relatively recent thrombi infiltrated by inflammatory cells that are close to older thrombi in an advanced stage of fibrotic organization.

The second observation suggests that viral infection triggers local thrombotic events in the lungs due to the sporadic presence of macro- or microvascular thrombosis in other organs. The third observation opposes thrombosis as a result of a systemic consumptive coagulopathy since high D-dimer and fibrinogen levels have been identified in severe COVID-19 patients and no increase in prothrombin time or a decrease in antithrombin levels are observed. Various other observations emphasize the specific involvement of platelets in the pathogenesis of thrombosis in COVID-19 patients.

In the current study, the researchers produced SARS-CoV-2 spike or vascular stomatitis virus (VSV)-G protein-pseudotyped virions, or generated cells expressing the spike protein on their plasma membrane. Subsequently, the researchers examined their effects on platelet adhesion (fluorescence), aggregation (absorbance), exposure of phosphatidylserine (flow cytometry for annexin V binding), calcium flux (flow cytometry for fluo-4AM), and clot formation and retraction.

The researchers discovered a novel mechanism that regulates cell-cell fusion induced by the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. They began with the observation that the lungs of almost 90% of COVID-19 patients contain several syncytia including two to more than 20 nuclei.

Screening two large libraries of European Medicines Agency (EMA)/ the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved small molecules to search for drugs that inhibit spike-induced syncytia formation led to the identification of TMEM16F activity inhibitors niclosamide and clofazimine. Subsequent experiments on the aforementioned cell lines included an evaluation of how niclosamide and clofazimine treatment affects these cells.

SARS-CoV-2 spike stimulated platelets both when present on the virion envelopes or upon expression onto the plasma membrane of cells.

Study findings

The study data showed that the exposure of platelets to the SARS-CoV-2 spoke protein increases their activation and adhesion, as well as promotes the release of calcium from these cells. This increase in adhesion and aggregation occurred as a result of the spike proteins effects on pro-coagulant platelet activation markers, including PS exposure on the platelet outer membrane and generation of thrombin.

Spike enhances platelet activation. A. Histopathological evidence of platelet aggregates in the thrombotic microvasculature of SARS-COV-2-infected lungs from 4 COVID-19 patients. Numeric codes identify patients. Platelets were stained by using an anti p62 glycoprotein antibody. Magnification: x40 B. Experimental scheme to study platelet activation and aggregate formation. Vero cells transfected to express either Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) or SARS-CoV-2 Spike were incubated with pre-labeled washed platelets and shaken at 200 rpm for 10 min at 37C. The plate was centrifuged, fixed, and stained with Cell Mask and antibodies recognizing either GFP or Spike. C. Representative images showing platelet aggregates. Cells stained with Cell Mask are in blue; labeled platelets are in red; GFP or Spike are in green. Scale bar, 20 m. D. Number of aggregates larger than 40,000 px2. Results are from n=3 independent experiments. Data are mean  SEM, statistical significance is indicated (paired Students t-test). E. Violin plot showing the size of the aggregates found in all the experiments performed. Statistical significance is indicated (unpaired Students t-test). F. Experimental scheme for platelet activation in suspension. G-I. Percentage of platelet aggregation when incubated with vehicle (G), stimulated with collagen (H) or CRP (I). Results are from N=6 independent experiments. Data are meanSEM Statistical significance is indicated (paired Students t-test). J. Number of adherent platelets per field. Results are from n=3 independent experiments each performed in duplicate. Each dot represents the mean of 6 images quantified. Data are meanSEM. Statistical significance is indicated (paired Students t-test). K. Percentage of the area covered by adherent platelets. Results are from n=3 independent experiments performed in duplicate; each dot represents the mean of 6 images quantified. L. Representative images of platelets adhering on collagen. Images were acquired using a high content fluorescent microscope followed by analysis using the ImageJ software (Fiji). Platelets were stained with F-actin (in red). Scale bar, 5 m.

In severely infected SARS-CoV-2 patients, viral replication is robust in the lung and lower tract respiratory epithelium, which leads to the continuous production of infectious particles. Cells that were engineered to express the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on their surface were found to fuse with neighboring cells expressing the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor, which is an essential component of the SARS-CoV-2 entry into host cells. This phenomenon subsequently leads to the formation of large syncytia, which have been observed in over 90% of patients with severe COVID-19.

Taken together, these findings suggest that cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, as well as those that contribute to the formation of large syncytia, contribute to platelet activation and the subsequent induction of thrombosis. Two possible mechanisms that could be responsible for this spike-mediated platelet activation were proposed.

The first potential mechanism suggests that platelet activation could occur directly upon binding of the spike protein to the ACE2 receptor that is expressed in platelets, thereby leading to direct activation of TMEM16F on the platelet plasma membrane. Comparatively, the activation of TMEM16F could be triggered by the increase in calcium that occurs following stimulation with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

In agreement with the first proposed mechanism, the researchers found that the platelets were not activated when the medium was depleted of extracellular calcium, thus indicating that intracellular calcium stores are not required for activation. Platelet activation was also observed occurred upon treatment with isolated spike receptor-binding domain (RBD), which suggests that TMEM16F directly acts on the platelets following the binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to the ACE2 receptor.

Niclosamide and Clofazimine reduce annexin V and intracellular calcium A. Experimental scheme to assess annexin V reactivity upon Spike stimulation and drug treatment. Platelets were pre-incubated with Niclosamide (NIC, 1 M) or Clofazamine (CLO, 5 M) for 10 min, followed by incubation with collagen (30 g/ml) and thrombin (0.5 units) for 15 min. Platelets were then stained with Annexin V-Pacific Blue and CD61-APC and analyzed by flow cytometry. B. Representative flow cytometry plots. The boxed areas show the percentage of washed platelets positive for annexin V upon pre-treatment with Niclosamide (NIC), Clofazimine (CLO) or vehicle and incubation with VSV-G or Spike pseudo particles, followed by stimulation with collagen and thrombin. C. Mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of annexin V positive platelets (AU, arbitrary units). Results are from n=4 independent experiments. Data are meanSEM. Statistical significance is indicated (paired Students t-test). D. Experimental scheme to assess calcium influx upon Spike stimulation and drug treatment. Platelets were stained with Fluo-4 for 30 min and then pre-incubated with Niclosamide (NIC, 1 M) or Clofazimine (CLO, 5 M) for 10 min, followed by incubation with collagen (30 g/ml) and thrombin (0.5 units) for 15 min. Platelets were then assessed for fluorescence by flow cytometry. E. Flow cytometry plots. The boxed areas show the percentage of washed platelets positive for Fluo-4 upon pre-treatment with Niclosamide (NIC), Clofazimine (CLO), or vehicle (DMSO) and incubation with VSV-G or Spike pseudo particles, followed by stimulation with collagen and thrombin. F. Mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of Fluo-4 (AU, arbitrary units). Results are from n=4 independent experiments. Data are meanSEM. Statistical significance is indicated (paired Students t-test).

Both niclosamide and clofazimine act by blocking spike-induced syncytia formation in a variety of epithelial and non-epithelial cells expressing the ACE2 receptor. The experiments conducted in the current study using these agents found that both niclosamide and clofazimine effectively inhibited spike-induced platelet activation; however, niclosamide was particularly effective at inhibiting platelet activation at low concentrations.

The results of the current study provide evidence for a pathogenic mechanism that might be responsible for COVID-19-induced thrombosis. These findings also support the repurposing of niclosamide, which targets TMEM16F, for the treatment of COVID-19.

*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.
The pandemic has created a hostile environment for pregnant people and their babies.

Stress levels among expectant mothers have soared. Pregnant women with covid are five times as likely as uninfected pregnant people to require intensive care and 22 times as likely to die. Infected moms are four times as likely to have a stillborn child.

Yet some of the pandemic's greatest threats to infants' health may not be apparent for years or even decades.

That's because babies of covid-infected moms are 60% more likely to be born very prematurely, which increases the danger of infant mortality and long-term disabilities such as cerebral palsy, asthma and hearing loss, as well as a child's risk of adult disease, including depression, anxiety, heart disease and kidney disease.

Studies have linked fever and infection during pregnancy to developmental and psychiatric conditions such as autism, depression and schizophrenia.

"Some of these conditions do not show up until middle childhood or early adult life, but they have their origins in fetal life," said Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou, a child neurologist at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and a pediatrics professor at the University of Toronto.

For fetuses exposed to covid, the greatest danger is usually not the coronavirus itself, but the mother's immune system.

Both severe covid infections and the strain of the pandemic can expose fetuses to harmful inflammation, which can occur when a mother's immune system is fighting a virus or when stress hormones send nonstop alarm signals.

Prenatal inflammation "changes the way the brain develops and, depending on the timing of the infection, it can change the way the heart or kidneys develop," Anagnostou said.

Although health officials have strongly recommended covid vaccines for pregnant people, only 35% are fully vaccinated.

At least 150,000 pregnant people have been diagnosed with covid; more than 25,000 of them have been hospitalized, and 249 have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although most babies will be fine, even a small increase in the percentage of children with special medical or educational needs could have a large effect on the population, given the huge number of covid infections, Anagnostou said.

"If someone has a baby who is doing well, that is what they should focus on," Anagnostou said. "But from a public health point of view, we need to follow women who experienced severe covid and their babies to understand the impact."

Learning from history

Researchers in the United States and other countries are already studying "the covid generation" to see whether these children have more health issues than those conceived or born before 2020.

Previous crises have shown that the challenges fetuses face in the womb  such as maternal infections, hunger, stress and hormone-disrupting chemicals  can leave a lasting imprint on their health, as well as that of their children and grandchildren, said Dr. Frederick Kaskel, director of pediatric nephrology at the Childrens Hospital at Montefiore.

People whose mothers were pregnant during surges in the 1918 influenza pandemic, for example, had poorer health throughout their lives, compared with Americans born at other times, said John McCarthy, who is a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and co-wrote a recent review in JAMA Pediatrics with Kaskel.

Researchers don't know exactly which moms were infected with pandemic flu, McCarthy said. But women who were pregnant during major surges  when infection was widespread  had children with higher rates of heart disease or diabetes. These children were also less successful in school, less economically productive and more likely to live with a disability.

Because organ systems develop during different periods of pregnancy, fetuses exposed during the first trimester may face different risks than those exposed toward the end of pregnancy, McCarthy said. For example, people born in the fall of 1918 were 50% more likely than others to develop kidney disease; that may reflect an exposure to the pandemic in the third trimester, while the kidneys were still developing.

Nearly two years into the covid pandemic, researchers have begun to publish preliminary observations of infants exposed to covid infections and stress before birth.

Although Anagnostou noted that it's too early to reach definitive conclusions, "there is evidence that babies born to moms with severe covid infections have changes to their immune system," she said. "It's enough to make us worry a little bit."

Damaging a fetal security system

The good news about the coronavirus is that it seldom crosses the placenta, the organ tasked with protecting a developing fetus from infections and providing it with oxygen. So moms with covid rarely give the virus to their children before birth.

That's important, because some viruses that directly infect the fetus  such as Zika  can cause devastating birth defects, said Dr. Karin Nielsen-Saines, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.

But studies also suggest that inflammation from a mother's covid infection can injure the placenta, said Dr. Jeffery Goldstein, an assistant professor of pathology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. In a study published last year, Goldstein and his co-authors found that placentas from covid-infected moms had more abnormal blood vessels than placentas from patients without covid, making it harder for them to deliver sufficient oxygen to the fetus.

Placental damage can also lead to preeclampsia, a serious complication of pregnancy that can cause a mother's blood pressure to spike.

Preeclampsia occurs when blood vessels in the placenta don't develop or function properly, forcing the mother's heart to work harder to get blood to the fetus, which may not receive enough oxygen and nutrients. Preeclampsia also predisposes women to heart attacks and strokes later in life.

Rewiring the immune system

In some cases, covid also appears to rewire a baby's immune response, Nielsen-Saines said.

In an October study in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, Nielsen-Saines and her co-authors found that infants born to people with severe covid infections had a different mix of immune cells and proteins than other babies. None of the newborns tested positive for the coronavirus.

The immune changes are concerning, Nielsen-Saines said, because this pattern of immune cells and proteins has previously been found in infants with respiratory problems and in some cases poor neurodevelopment.

Notably, all the babies in her study appear healthy, said Nielsen-Saines, who plans to follow them for three years to see whether these early signals translate into developmental delays, such as problems talking, walking or interacting with others.

"How big of a difference does any of this make in the baby?" asked Anagnostou. "We won't know for a few years. All we can do is try to be as prepared as possible."

Increasing the risk for boys

Boys could face higher risks from covid, even before birth.

Males are generally more vulnerable than females as fetuses and newborns; they're more likely to be born prematurely and to die as infants. Preterm boys also have a higher risk of disability and death.

But coronavirus infection poses special dangers, said Sabra Klein, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

That's because boys are disproportionately affected by conditions linked to maternal infections. Boys are four times as likely as girls to be diagnosed with autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for example, while men are 75% more likely than women to develop schizophrenia.

Scientists don't fully understand why boys appear more fragile in the womb, although testosterone  which can dampen immune response  may play a role, said Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington.

Men generally mount weaker immune responses than women and more often develop severe covid infections. Recent research suggests boys with covid are more likely than girls to become seriously ill or develop a rare inflammatory condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome.

New research on covid could help illuminate this vulnerability.

In a study published in October, researchers found that the sex of a fetus influences the way its placenta responds to covid, as well as how its mother's immune system responds.

Pregnant people infected with covid made fewer antibodies against the coronavirus if they were carrying male fetuses than if they were carrying females. Mothers also transferred fewer antibodies to boys than to girls, said Dr. Andrea Edlow, senior author of the study and a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

When examining the placentas of male fetuses after delivery, researchers found changes that could leave boys less protected against damaging inflammation.

The sex of a fetus can influence its mother's response to other illnesses, as well.

For example, research shows that pregnant women with asthma have worse symptoms if they're carrying a female. Women carrying males are slightly more likely to develop gestational diabetes.

Edlow said her findings raise questions about the "cross talk" between mother and baby. "The mom's immune system is sensing there is a male fetus," Edlow said. "And the fetus is actively communicating with the mom's immune system."

Boosting toxic stress

Rates of depression and stress among pregnant women have increased dramatically during the pandemic.

That's concerning because chronic stress can lead to inflammation, affecting the babies of both infected and uninfected women, Anagnostou said.

Studies consistently show that infants born to mothers who experience significant stress during pregnancy have higher rates of short- and long-term health damage  including heart defects and obesity  than babies born to women with less stress.

"We know that inflammation directly influences the way a baby's brain develops," said Elinor Sullivan, an associate professor in psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University.

Lockdowns, travel restrictions and physical distancing left many pregnant women without the support of family and friends. The stress of losing a loved one, a job or a home further heightens the risks to moms and babies, said Sullivan, who is following children born during the pandemic for five years.

In research that has not yet been published, Sullivan found that babies of women who were pregnant during the pandemic showed more sadness and negative emotions in the first year of life compared with infants of women who were pregnant before the pandemic.

The findings show the importance of helping and protecting pregnant people before and after delivery, said Sullivan, who conducted a separate study that found women who received more social support were less depressed.

Italian researchers are also studying the effect of maternal stress on infants' behavior, as well as the way their genes are regulated.

Although stress-related inflammation doesn't alter the structure of a baby's genes, it can influence whether they're turned on and off, said Livio Provenzi, a psychologist at the C. Mondino National Institute of Neurology Foundation in Pavia, Italy.

In Provenzi's study of 163 mother-baby pairs, he found differences in how genes that regulate the stress response were activated. Genes that help people respond to stress were more likely to be turned off in babies whose moms reported the most stress during pregnancy. The same moms also reported that their babies cried more and were fussier when they were 3 months old.

Researchers usually prefer to make in-person observations of babies as they interact with their mothers, Provenzi said. But because of the pandemic, Provenzi asked mothers to fill out questionnaires about infant behavior. He plans to observe mothers and babies in person when the children are 12 months old.

While vaccinating pregnant people is the best way to protect them and their fetuses from the virus, Anagnostou said, society needs to do more to preserve expectant mothers' mental health.

"We can't escape the fact that we've lived through two years of a pandemic," Anagnostou said. "But we can think about opportunities for reducing the risk."
Heme is an essential part of the protein hemoglobin, which colors human blood red. Heme also is crucial for cytochrome proteins, which power the cell. Humans, animals, plants and bacteria all use heme.

Hemoglobin shuttles oxygen to tissues where it is needed, while cytochromes carry electrons for energy conversion in the cell. But understanding how heme moves across membranes -; like it needs to, in order to insert into hemoglobin and cytochromes -; has been challenging. Heme transport is transient, which means heme moves through membranes quickly and leaves behind no traces. And heme-binding membrane proteins are difficult to purify in large quantities.

In research published Dec. 20 in Nature Chemical Biology, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis described for the first time the structure of a bifunctional protein, called CcsBA, that transports heme and attaches it to cytochromes. The study led by Robert Kranz, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, captured two conformational states of CcsBA, a bacterial and chloroplast protein, allowing scientists to characterize the enzyme mechanism.

"This new paper addresses the structural basis for how the CcsBA machine functions, revealing major dynamic switches that occur during the cycle of heme transport," Kranz said.

The study was made possible by a collaboration with James Fitzpatrick, director of the Washington University Center for Cellular Imaging (WUCCI) at the School of Medicine and a professor of neuroscience, of cell biology and physiology, and of biomedical engineering, and Michael Rau, a staff scientist and structural biologist on his team.

They leveraged a cutting-edge structural biology technique called single particle averaging, which utilized a state-of-the-art cryo-Electron Microscope (cryo-EM) to image different views of the protein in its natively vitrified (frozen) state. After sorting all of the different views, they were able to construct cryo-EM density maps -; which are three-dimensional representations of the protein built from a series of two-dimensional projections of various views -; from which Kranz's team could build an atomic model of the structure of CcsBA.

"Cryo-EM is a transformative technology that allows us to visualize at the near-atomic level the structural arrangement of a given protein, including the ability to tease out different conformations from an ensemble of states," Fitzpatrick said. "It was this latter ability that was key in enabling us to capture the mechanism of heme transport."

The cyro-EM data identified two states in which either one or two heme molecules were bound.

The structural models we were able to construct illustrate that CcsBA is trapped with heme in two different conformations, which we term the closed and open states. This new body of work addresses the structural basis by which the CcsBA machine functions, revealing a major dynamic switch that occurs during the transport cycle." Robert Kranz, Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis

"One of the coolest findings is that a large chamber opens upon heme transport," he said. The chamber is for cytochrome c synthesis.

Co-first author Deanna L. Mendez, a postdoctoral staff scientist in biology, previously co-authored a study with Kranz in eLIFE about the reconstitution of the purified bacterial and human synthases of heme. CcsBA is different from the human form of heme-transporter/cytochrome c synthase. The insights gained through identifying its structures give researchers a leg up on developing antimicrobial agents that will selectively target bacteria.

"In CcsBA, we observe a clear path between transmembrane alpha helices that could allow heme to travel from the transmembrane-heme site to the external heme site," Mendez said. "Since heme goes down its concentration gradient during export, we do not envision an energy source requirement for this process."

Co-first author Ethan Lowder is a senior at Washington University and worked on this project for two years.

"Solving a novel structure of a protein is very difficult," Lowder said. "In this case, there were no similar structures that we could rely on as a template or starting point. It was definitely a challenge, but we worked all the way through it to get to the final structures."

The second author, Dustin Tillman, who was an undergraduate at Washington University when he completed this work, was instrumental in purifying CcsBA. He partnered with the WUCCI team to optimize the sample preparation for the single particle cryo-EM studies. "Dustin also performed reconstitution assays on his purified preps to show they were active synthases," Kranz said.

"I am grateful for the contributions and involvement of our talented undergraduate researchers in this NIH-supported research," Kranz said. "This study is a culmination of over three decades that our lab has studied heme transport and cytochrome assembly, so it is satisfying to know the structural basis for both. It will lead to more experiments on mechanisms of chamber opening, transport and the synthase reaction in the chamber."
Children are a low-risk group for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) following infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), with less than 2% of European hospitalizations with the disease being in children below the age of 19 years, and less than 5% in the USA, Spain, and China in 2020.

A current medRxiv* preprint discusses the current epidemiologic profile of this age group, following the massive rollout of vaccines and the emergence of different variants of the virus.

Study: Risk of SARS-CoV-2 testing, PCR-confirmed infections and COVID-19--related hospital admissions in children and young people: birth cohort study. Image Credit: Dragana Gordic/Shutterstock.com

Background

Children with severe COVID-19 often present with fever, nausea or vomiting, and respiratory symptoms. Some weeks after the infection, a few children develop an acute inflammatory syndrome, pediatric inflammatory syndrome temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2 (PIMS-TS), or multisystem inflammatory syndrome related to COVID - MIS-C.

While those below 2 years have the highest risk of acute symptoms, children above 10 account for most PIMS-TS.

Earlier studies show that children with certain symptoms relating to the lungs, throat, brain, or heart, and especially if they have underlying illnesses, are at greater risk for severe COVID-19 and admission to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) admission or death. The highest risk is among infants and older children, the least being in children aged 0-4 years.

This data is important in determining the risk-benefit ratio of vaccinations in children. The current study, on the medRxiv preprint server, aims at helping make this decision clearer, by providing data on population-level risks of COVID-19 testing, confirmation of infection by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, and admissions in children and young people (CYP) for this condition. The scientists attempted to compensate for age, other illnesses, and socioeconomic factors to derive a generalizable conclusion.

What Did the Study Show?

The study used data from a national Scotland birth cohort covering the years from 1997 onward, including only those who remained in Scotland throughout. Public health surveillance data was used to provide SARS-CoV-2 test results.

Covering over 1.2 million CYP, of which about 5% had one or more chronic conditions, the study results showed that COVID-19 testing had been carried out in over a fifth of the cohort. Most had been tested once, but one in seven had been tested twice, and 6% more than twice. This comes to a testing rate of >770/1,000 CYP-years.

The testing rates were highest for children aged 1-4 years, and those aged 18-22 years, as well as those with more than one illness. Children born preterm were more likely to receive a test below the age of 5 years than those born at term. For infants with chronic conditions, testing was more common.

PCR tests were positive in 5% of cases, and excluding multiple positive tests in the same children, this comes to PCR-confirmed infections in 7% of CYP, with an overall rate of ~180/1,000 CYP-years. Again, the highest rates were in those aged 18-22 years and the lowest among those aged 1-4 years.

Except for infants, who tested positive more frequently than other children below 5, age-linked infection rates were observed. Among children above 12 years, PCR-confirmed infections were more likely in higher socioeconomic strata but were less common if previous health conditions were present. For younger children, the opposite was observed.

Having one older child in the family reduced the risk of PCR-confirmed infection in children 1-4 years old by 36%, while for infants the decrease was by 14%. At the age of 12-17 years, a high body mass index increased the risk of being PCR-positive very slightly.

Less than 1% of all admissions were related to COVID-19, with only 25 re-admissions, and a two-day median stay, for an overall rate of admission due to COVID-19 of 29/1,000 CYP-years. Again, infants were admitted at 120/1,000, much higher than any other age group, but the proportion of admissions was highest among CYP with other health conditions. Nonetheless, almost 90% of admissions were in CYP without prior health conditions.

There were <350 admissions related to COVID-19 altogether, and only 13 (intensive care unit) ICU admissions. Half the ICU admissions were in children with one or more chronic illnesses, with a median age of 14 years, and a median ICU stay of 6 days. Half were boys. Less than five were admitted for PIMS-TS, all being boys, with a median 10-day ICU stay.

What Are the Implications?

Relatively high testing rates were seen among the CYP in this study, increasing with age. Less than 2% had a PCR-confirmed infection, with the highest rates in those aged 18-22 years. Testing was more common in those with chronic infections.

PCR-confirmed infection was more common in under-fives and older children >12 years, from lower and higher socioeconomic groups, respectively. Lower socioeconomic status was linked to a higher risk of admission.

This could indicate that parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to be occupationally exposed to infection and to pass it on to preschool children at home. Conversely, older children from such backgrounds may be less likely to attend colleges or other educational centers and are thus shielded from the infection. Further studies are required to explore this risk.

Admissions related to COVID-19 were very uncommon, with the highest rates being in infants and those with more than one chronic condition. This is the case for other injuries and illnesses, thus does not reflect a unique risk for COVID-19 in CYP.

The population-based nature of the study enabled variations with age, socioeconomic status and chronic conditions to be examined for their relationship with testing, confirmed infections, and admissions for COVID-19. However, during the study period, only the wildtype and Alpha variants of the virus were circulating.

Vaccination recommendations for high-risk children aged 12 years or more with two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were first introduced, in July 2021, but changed to one dose for those aged 16-7 years for fear of myocarditis, and eventually to one dose for all children above 12 years. In the US, however, the vaccine is approved for use in children above 5 years.

Admission risks even in infants are low, despite their having the highest admission rate among all CYP. It is only half that of admission for influenza or respiratory syncytial virus infection (at 1/1,000, 2/1,000, and 22/1,000 CYP-years, respectively).

Further studies are urgently needed to examine whether maternal vaccine during pregnancy prevents COVID-19 admissions in infants. These data also provide baseline risks of infection and hospital admission for risk-benefit assessments of childhood vaccination, particularly for preschool children.

Given the small admission risks reported here, it is to be seen whether the vaccination program will help to significantly improve these risks, though it may reduce school absences  itself a controversial assertion with the emergence of new immune-escape variants of the virus. More such studies must inform the recommendations for universal pediatric vaccination against this overwhelmingly minor infection where children are concerned.

*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.
As Montana's tally of new covid cases neared 1,000 each day in September, Shelly Stanley-Lehman worried about when the virus would reach her day care in Billings.

She wanted to have covid tests on hand to help prevent an outbreak from sweeping through her business, but stores were sold out. She spent days making calls and searching online. When Stanley-Lehman finally got her hands on a box of tests later that month, it was too late  a child's family member, unknowingly infected, had exposed the day care to covid. The virus quickly spread to four others, including kids and staffers.

"We got the tests just in time to close down," Stanley-Lehman said.

Rapid antigen tests for covid have emerged as a public health tool that can help keep schools and businesses open. They are less accurate than polymerase chain reaction tests, known as PCR tests, which must be sent to a laboratory for results. However, the rapid tests' turnaround time of as little as 15 minutes can spot cases early and, through quarantines and isolation, prevent infected people from spreading the virus at schools, businesses and other workplaces. But a box containing two at-home BinaxNow tests, made by Abbott Laboratories, costs $24 at a retail pharmacy  and they are often in short supply.

The tests are much more accessible for those who are part of Montana's state-run, free rapid test distribution program, which gives away at least two types of BinaxNow rapid antigen tests and a third non-antigen test called Abbott ID Now from the same manufacturer, Abbott. This fall, the state delivered as many as 113,000 antigen tests to hospitals, health clinics, government offices, local health departments and others.

But communication on how to access tests has been inconsistent, such as with certain detention centers and child care providers. While some jails are screening symptomatic inmates with tests from their local public health department, other law enforcement officials hadn't heard of the availability of the state's rapid tests at all.

Tina Bets His Medicine, assistant to the sheriff in Roosevelt County, said jail staffers there had not received rapid tests from the state or been trained on how to use them. "We're definitely interested," she said. "That would eliminate some problems for us. Because we certainly don't want people sick in our jail."

The state has communicated with schools and local health officials about the program, but it hasn't been more broadly publicized in the past two years. Of the state's covid-19 public service announcements, none advertise a supply of rapid BinaxNow tests or explain how to apply for shipments.

Eligibility requirements for the free tests can be complex. Some school districts are ordering recurring shipments of tests for students and staff members. But private child care centers and private employers have to obtain a federal waiver to administer certain kinds of tests. And others who are eligible either don't know about the tests, don't want them or are stretched too thin to add another burdensome covid task.

The result is an uneven distribution of the state's free tests. State officials cited several reasons for that, including the federal waiver restrictions. A limited national supply chain also means officials must prioritize recipients.

But some public health officials see the gaps in test distribution as another indicator of an overwhelmed and under-resourced public health system.

Drenda Niemann, Lewis and Clark County's public health officer, said many children and families in her county can get tested through school districts while other residents have few options when pharmacies sell out.

"It's really hit-or-miss and we're just doing the best with the resources that we have," Niemann said. "There's no consistency."

Montana's Department of Public Health and Human Services said it distributed nearly 550,000 BinaxNow rapid tests from October 2020 through this October. DPHHS sent 45% of those to hospitals and health clinics, according to a Montana Free Press and KHN analysis of the state's data. An additional 13%, or about 73,000 tests, went to assisted living and long-term care facilities.

But only 5%, or 26,500 tests, went to a category titled "Other," which includes group homes, services for people with disabilities and child care centers. That comes to slightly more than 70 tests a day for that entire category, statewide. During the same period, fewer than 2% of all tests distributed, approximately 11,000, went to dozens of state corrections facilities and jails.

Other states, comparatively, have swung open the gates to testing. Tennessee created a program for interested businesses to obtain covid test kits, free of charge, with guidelines on how to qualify. Colorado is shipping BinaxNow rapid tests directly to homes free of charge. Around the Washington, D.C., region, libraries offer them at no cost.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations have encouraged widespread distribution of rapid tests. The Biden administration aims to boost testing by increasing supplies to 200 million rapid tests a month.

"In an ideal world, you would have readily available testing much like we see in countries in Europe, where families can get 10 tests a day for their home," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

In ordering Abbott BinaxNow tests, Montana is careful not to stockpile more than it can deliver before the tests expire after 12 months. It sent 51,200 tests to Colorado in May that were close to their expiration date. The state doesn't track how many tests go unused after they've been distributed.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte spokesperson Brooke Stroyke said that testing is an important component of the state's pandemic response and that the state distributes tests to eligible vulnerable and underserved populations based on local health officials' input.

"After all, local leaders know the needs of their communities best," Stroyke said.

Missoula County is using rapid Abbott ID Now tests, the third kind of rapid covid test the state is distributing. The Abbott ID Now is not an antigen test but a molecular test similar to PCR tests. The state has distributed an average of 3,120 of those tests a month.

Those tests can be more reliable, county officials said. Brian Chaszar, its covid-19 operations section chief, said his county has access to plenty of tests and is able to get the word out about what's available.

He said some businesses and groups are bound to get missed in a large county and not every place will opt to receive tests, whether it's because of the workload or potential backlash against covid precautions, particularly in some school districts.

"I have no envy for principals of those schools," Chaszar said. "Some parents really want masking and testing, other parents want to have nothing to do with it and refuse to participate in it."

With the rise of the contagious delta variant this fall, the state increased distribution of tests to public and private K-12 schools that asked for them.

"We would like as many K-12 schools to tap into these resources to help schools to stay open and be safe," Todd Harwell, the state health department's public health and safety administrator, wrote in a September email to local and tribal health officials.

But DPHHS spokesperson Jon Ebelt said supplying rapid tests directly to private businesses is complicated by federal regulations that require each business to receive a waiver to administer them.

Ebelt said most of the state-distributed tests are tethered by those federal rules, which he said offer "better reporting and quality control" and are less expensive.

One of the two types of antigen tests the state receives from Abbott doesn't need a federal waiver, but it has a far more limited supply of them. Since June, the state has doled out about 18,000 of those at-home tests. Ebelt said the state's limited stock of the less-regulated, at-home tests has been prioritized for other entities, such as local health departments.

"We were very concerned that we would not be able to secure enough tests from our supplier to expand distribution," Ebelt said. Although some businesses such as child care providers could apply for federal waivers to access more tests, Ebelt said DPHHS did not think that was the best route because of the additional work for those "already understaffed" groups.

One former DPHHS official disagreed with the department's interpretation of federal rules. Jim Murphy, formerly the state's lead epidemiologist, said the state could find a way to distribute tests to day cares and other businesses if it provided proper training and oversight.

Ideally, Murphy said, the public health philosophy for navigating the pandemic should be focused on solutions rather than hurdles.

"We shouldn't find obstacles here," he said. "We should find ways to get these tests in the right hands."

One workaround offered by health officials in Montana has been to connect child care centers with a federal PCR testing initiative operated through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the same program Stanley-Lehman of Billings used to order tests for her child care facility. Ebelt said the department knew of nine Montana child care providers that had signed up to work with that program by early November. As of this year, Montana had nearly 1,200 licensed child care facilities.

Montanans' access to tests varies by county, partly because of how many tests local officials request and how they are used. Joe Russell, health officer for the Flathead City-County Health Department, said that he knows people are struggling to find tests but that it's not all on the state to advertise that tests are available.

"Sometimes it will fall to us, the county, and sometimes it's the responsibility of the business, you know, to push forward and ask," Russell said.
In a recent study published on the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers performed two parallel population-based studies using the National Immunization Management System (NIMS) data in England to investigate the possible relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and the incidences of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS).

Study: COVID-19 vaccination and Guillain-Barre syndrome: analyses using the National Immunoglobulin Database. Image Credit: Verin / Shutterstock.com

While assessing the neurological impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection, brachial neuritis, facial palsy, and Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) have been the subjects of particular interest. However, an association of GBS with COVID-19 vaccination remains unknown.

During the swine flu vaccination campaign in the United States, GBS became an adverse event of special interest (AESI) related to vaccination. From January 2020 onwards, the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in the United Kingdom triggered extensive monitoring with GBS as an AESI.

About the study

In the current study, the researchers retrospectively interrogated the database of patients hospitalized with GBS in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, along with the NIMS COVID-19 vaccinations data. They also characterized a large surveillance dataset of the incident U.K. GBS cases after COVID-19 vaccination and before vaccination during the same period, wherein they recorded the timing of onset after COVID-19 vaccination.

Study findings

A total of 996 GBS cases were reported to the National Immunoglobulin Database (NID) from January to October 2021. The number of GBS cases in January 2021 was significantly lower, continuing the trend of lower GBS rates of the years 2016-2020.

NHSE Immunoglobulin Database GBS cases 2016-2021. NHSE Immunoglobulin Database-derived numbers of GBS cases reported per month between 2016 and 2021 (year to date). The table below summarises GBS case numbers in 2021 to date as well as 95% confidence intervals (CI) for case numbers between 2016-2020. *2021 GBS monthly number lower than 95% confidence interval of 2016  2020 monthly numbers; 2021 GBS monthly number higher than 95% confidence interval of 2016  2020 monthly numbers.

However, in March and April 2021, England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland experienced a notable monthly increase in GBS cases. Importantly, GBS rates fell again in the normal range of the 2016-2020 average from July to October 2021.

The U.K. COVID-19 vaccination program began on December 8, 2020, with the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 vaccine, followed by the AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 in January 2021, and subsequently by the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine. By February 2021, 50% of adults over the age of 50 had taken their first vaccination.

While.8 cases of GBS were reported per million first doses of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine, GBS cases associated with the first dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine were insignificant. This data suggests that more GBS cases were associated with the first dose of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 COVID-19 vaccination and occurred within the first 42 days following immunization.

Excess risk in first 42 days following vaccination in England. Estimated incidence of GBS cases within 6 weeks (per 100,000 vaccine doses), comparing reports of GBS cases 0-42 days (red) and 43-84 (blue) for first-dose vaccines (all vaccines, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, tozinameran) and second-dose vaccines. Diamonds represent upper and lower limits of 95% confidence intervals. An excess of GBS cases is noted in the first 42 days following first-dose vaccination, accounted for by the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine.

All GBS cases reported to the NID did not have a vaccination record. The first GBS case within six weeks after a COVID-19 vaccination was reported in January 2021.

A total of 198 GBS cases occurred within six weeks at the rate of 0.618 cases per 100,000 vaccinations. Of these 198 cases, 176 cases occurred after the first dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine at a rate of 0.868 per 100,000, whereas 21 cases were reported after patients had received the first dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine at a rate of 0.183 per 100,000.

A total of 32.1 million first dose vaccinations were recorded during the study period, of which included 20.3 million ChAdOx1nCoV-19, 11.5 million BNT162b2, and 0.3 million mRNA1273 doses. Only one GBS case occurred within six weeks of mRNA-1273 vaccination.

Within six weeks of any second dose, 23 GBS cases occurred. The GBS incidence after the first vaccination was highest in males receiving the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine at a rate of 1.069 per 100,000 doses. It remains unclear why more males were affected than females.

Of the total 121 GBS cases that were reported by the British Peripheral Nerve Society (BPNS) and the Association of British Neurologists (ABN) network between January and November 2021, 90% occurred between January and April 2021 within six weeks of vaccination and only 35% of cases occurred from May 2021 onwards. The median age of these GBS patients was 59 years, of which 59% were male. Moreover, 42 patients reported facial weakness associated with other GBS findings and only one patient had a recurrent GBS-like illness following second-dose vaccination.

Of the 121 GBS cases, 106 or 87.3% of patients had GBS before receiving COVID-19 vaccination, with 66.1% having taken the first dose of the vaccine within 42 days of GBS onset. In comparison with the linked NID/NIMS dataset, 198 of the 659 GBS cases in England were reported within 42 days of vaccination, thereby indicating the reporting bias of the dataset towards vaccine-associated GBS.

Conclusions

The current study demonstrates an association between the first dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine and GBS, which accounts for an estimated incidence of 5.8 GBS cases per million doses. While the reason for this association remains unclear, the risk remains almost similar to prior vaccine-associated GBS and the benefits of vaccination outshine the risk. Further research is required to confirm the study's observations, determine GBS-related causalities, and investigate the effects of other COVID-19 vaccines used globally.

*Important notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
The Centre for Health Protection today said it is investigating eight additional imported COVID-19 cases involving seven men and a woman.

The patients all arrived from high-risk regions, one from a Group A specified place with enhanced surveillance, and seven from Group A specified places.

Seven cases involve the N501Y mutant strain while one has the L452R strain, the centre added.

Among the cases is a 54-year-old woman who left Hong Kong for the US on December 16 after testing negative for COVID-19 the day before. She arrived back in Hong Kong on December 19 on Cathay Pacific flight CX881 and her specimen collected upon arrival tested positive for the virus.

The patient was asymptomatic with a cycle threshold (Ct) value below 30, carrying the N501Y mutant strain.

She lives at Block 18A, Serenity Villa in Tai Po. As a prudent measure, the places where she had stayed and visited in Hong Kong during the incubation period have already been included in the compulsory testing notice on December 19 which requires specified people to get tested no later than today.

Meanwhile, as Qatar Airways flight QR818 arriving from Doha, Qatar within a seven-day period had five passengers on board confirmed to have COVID-19 by arrival testing, the Department of Health has invoked a law to prohibit the landing of the airline's passenger flights from Doha in Hong Kong from tomorrow to January 4, 2022.

Additionally, due to an outbreak of upper respiratory tract infection and/or influenza-like illness, three schools are covered in todays compulsory testing notice. Those who have completed a COVID-19 vaccination course can be exempted.

The latest opening dates and operating hours of mobile specimen collection stations in various districts are also announced.

A total of 67 cases have been reported in the past 14 days, all of which were imported.

For information and health advice on COVID-19, visit the Governments dedicated webpage.
(Newser)  Less than a month after it was first detected in southern Africaand less than three weeks after the first US case was confirmedthe omicron variant is now the dominant COVID strain in the US, authorities say. Federal officials said Monday that according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, the variant accounted for an estimated 73% of COVID infections in the US last week, and around 90% in areas including the Pacific Northwest, the Southeast, and the New York City area, the AP reports. Two weeks ago, the CDC said omicron made up around 1% of US cases, which rose to 13% the following week, reports the New York Times.

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The formerly dominant delta variant now accounts for only around 26% of new infections in the US, according to the CDC's estimates. Authorities believe omicron is two to three times more transmissible than delta. Experts say it is also more likely to overcome vaccines, though vaccination should still prevent serious illness and death. "All of us have a date with omicron, warned Dr. Amesh Adalja at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "If youre going to interact with society, if youre going to have any type of life, omicron will be something you encounter, and the best way you can encounter this is to be fully vaccinated," Adalja said.

COVID surges have led to the reintroduction of mask mandates and other restrictions in numerous states, especially in the Northeast. North of the border, Quebec shifted to a semi-lockdown Monday amid what authorities called "astounding" community spread, the CBC reports. Bars, gyms, and cinemas will be closed, and for students in the province, the return from the Christmas break will be delayed for at least a week. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that when President Biden addresses the nation Tuesday, it will be a "stark warning" about the dangers of being unvaccinated, not a "speech about locking the country down," the Washington Post reports. (Hospitals in Ohio have one word for the public: "Help.")
(Newser)  President Biden has welcomed a new addition to the family, a puppy named Commander. Biden shared a photo Monday on his official Twitter account with a caption that said, Welcome to the White House, Commander" as well as a brief video of him tossing a ball to Commander and walking the leashed dog into the White House, the AP reports. No other details about the dog were provided. The puppy appears to be a German shepherd, the breed of Biden's other two dogs, and was a gift to him from his family, according to CNN, which first reported on the puppy's arrival after it was seen scampering around the White House South Lawn on Monday.

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Biden brought his other dogs to the White House shortly after he took office in January. Champ died in June at age 13. Major, who was much younger than Champ, was involved in several biting incidents during his relatively short tenure at the executive mansion and was returned to Biden's home in Delaware. Biden's wife, Jill, had said in April that a cat would soon be joining the family at the White House, but a feline has not yet shown up or been announced.

(Read more President Biden stories.)
(Newser)  It was a normal day at work for Sydney Raley, 15, at a McDonald's near Minneapolis, Minnesotauntil it wasn't. After the teen handed a female drive-thru customer part of her order Saturday, she turned back to the car to tell her the rest of her order was coming up and saw the woman in distress. "She was coughing like crazy, and I noticed she was gagging," the teen tells CNN. Realizing the woman had choked on a chicken McNugget, Raley quickly told both her manager and the customer's daughter, who was in the passenger seat, to call 911. Then she leaped through the drive-thru window and got the woman out of the car, KARE 11 reports.

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Raley, who learned the Heimlich maneuver as part of a Red Cross class when she was a babysitter at age 11, started doing it on the woman and eventually managed to dislodge the nugget with the help of a bystander she called over when she realized she needed assistance. When police arrived, they gave Raley a $100 reward from a community fund for good Samaritans. "I always tell her she has a gift, because she's autistic," says her dad. "She can remember anythingdo anything." Adds the owner-operator of the Eden Prairie McDonald's, "We ... will continue to celebrate her courageous efforts of literally jumping out of the drive-thru window to provide aid to a customer in need." (Read more uplifting news stories.)
(Newser)  President Biden will reportedly announce the purchase of half a billion at-home rapid COVID-19 tests, which are to be delivered for free to Americans who request them, in a nationwide speech Tuesday amid soaring cases of the omicron variant. An administration official said Americans will be able to request tests, to be delivered by mail, through a newly created website, per USA Today. The administration is still deciding what the household limit on tests will be, per CNN. The CDC has recommended the use of rapid at-home COVID-19 tests ahead of holiday gatherings, but such tests have been in short supply in some parts of the country, with Dr. Anthony Fauci saying Monday that even he had difficulty locating any, per ABC News.

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On Dec. 2, Biden announced that health insurance companies would be required to cover the costs of at-home COVID-19 tests after mid-January. But "we always feel we need to be doing more and that's what the president will talk about tomorrow," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, per USA Today. "Our objective is to make tests accessible and free for Americans." Bidenwho last addressed the nation on the highly transmissible variant on Dec. 2, just a day after it was confirmed in the USwill also announce plans to send 1,000 military medical personnel to assist overwhelmed hospitals. Six emergency response teams will be directed to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Vermont, the administration official said.

Finally, Biden is expected to warn the tens of millions of Americans who are still unvaccinated that they are at high risk of getting sick and may end up in a hospital. On the other hand, he will assure vaccinated Americans, especially those who've received a booster shot, that they have a high degree of protection against severe illness, per CNN. "The President will tell the American people if they're vaccinated and follow the precautions we all know well, especially masking while traveling, they should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays as they planned," a senior administration official told the outlet. (Omicron, detected in 39 states, accounted for 73% of new cases across the country last week, up 13% over the previous week.)
(Newser)  For two years, Japan hasn't carried out any executions. That changed Tuesday with the hanging of three death-row inmates, reviving outcry from human rights activists on the controversial way in which the country carries out capital punishment. At a presser, Justice Minister Yoshihisa Furukawa cited the "extremely brutal" cases that prompted Tuesday's executions, per CNN, including that of 65-year-old Yasutaka Fujishiro, who murdered seven relatives and neighbors in Hyogo prefecture in 2004.

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The other two men executed, 54-year-old Tomoaki Takanezawa and 44-year-old Mitsunori Onogawa, slaughtered two workers at pachinko parlors in Gunma prefecture in 2003. They're the first executions under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who took office in October. The last time Japan saw an inmate put to death was Dec. 26, 2019; in 2018, more than a dozen members of a doomsday cult that set up a deadly sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway were executed, per the Guardian. Japan's capital punishment consists of hangings only, and prisoners typically learn of their final long walk just hours before it happens.

The Japan Times notes that more notice did appear to be given decades ago, but that courtesy apparently stopped around 1975. Amnesty International, meanwhile, says inmates' families aren't even given word until after the deed is done. It's a process that causes psychological distress, say two current inmates who are now suing the government, asking for nearly $200,000 for the stress they're enduring by not knowing when their execution is scheduled for.

Only two industrialized nationsJapan and the United Statesstill have the death penalty. An Amnesty International rep calls the resumption of Japan's executions "abhorrent" and "a damning indictment of this government's lack of respect for the right to life," per CNN. But Japanese government officials say the public largely supports the death penalty, and that it's a necessity as long as violent crimes continue. "Considering that these crimes are still going on, I don't believe it is appropriate to abolish" capital punishment, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara said at a news conference. (Read more Japan stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Carbon monoxide poisoning, apparently accidental, killed seven family members whose bodies were found in their home, Minnesota officials said Wednesday.

Ramsey County officials said blood tests showed a lethal level of carbon monoxide, the AP reports. Technicians couldn't find a problem with the furnace that would have caused a leak, the sheriff said. Hydrogen cyanide tests will be conducted on the blood samples to see if the carbon monoxide came from a van parked in the garage; those tests could take eight weeks. "We have not found anything indicating any kind of criminal activity," the sheriff said. Our original story from Tuesday follows:

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Relatives of seven family members found dead in a Minnesota home a week before Christmas say they're still waiting to hear how their loved ones died. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office is analyzing blood samples taken from the victims: Belin Hernandez, 37, and Marleny Pinto, 34; their children Breylin Hernandez, 16, Mike Hernandez, 7, and Marbely Hernandez, 5; Belin's brother Eldor Hernandez Castillo, 32; and the couple's niece Mariela Guzman Pinto, 19, per the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "We are shocked. We feel like it's a nightmare," Guzman Pinto's fiance, Alfredo Hutar, told the outlet on Monday, which would've marked Belin Hernandez and Marleny Pinto's 17th wedding anniversary.

"We have more questions than answers," added Hutar. He said the family relocated from Honduras seven years ago and had lived in the newly built duplex in Moorhead, a city of 40,000 on the border with North Dakota, for two years. He added relatives hadn't been allowed inside the home since the bodies were discovered on Saturday. Eric Bravo Mejia, a pastor at Moorhead's Mount Carmel Church, told Valley News Live that he went to the home after receiving a phone call around 7pm local time on Saturday. He said he found Hernandez, Pinto, and their children dead in a single room. "And I went to another room and there was the niece dead. And the uncle. Also dead. All dead," he added. "It's so painful for me."

Police said they were looking at all possible causes of death after a preliminary autopsy "ruled out any obvious trauma." There's been speculation about carbon monoxide poisoning, per KVRR. But "right now it's not about speculationit's about support for the family and friends," Mayor Shelly Carlson told the Star Tribune. "We're just going to wrap this family in love and prayer and make sure they're cared for." "It's a big hit because I don't have an explanation. I feel that I don't know how I'm going to get over it," Wilfredo Pinto, Marleny's brother, told Valley News Live. "On Wednesday, I was wrapping all of the gifts for all of the kids," his wife, Nolvia, added through tears. More than $13,600 has been raised for the family as of this writing. (Read more Minnesota stories.)
(Newser)  A defrocked American priest accused of sexually abusing orphaned and disadvantaged young girls under his care in East Timor was found guilty Tuesday and sentenced to 12 years in prison, in the first case of its kind in the staunchly Catholic nation. Richard Daschbach, 84, who spent decades as a missionary in the country's remote enclave of Oecusse, faced charges of child sexual abuse, as well as child pornography and domestic violence, per the AP. The trial began in February but was postponed several times before concluding last month. During the proceedings, victims complained about threats and online attacks.

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Daschbach maintains strong backing from some, including former President Xanana Gusmao. East Timor is the most Catholic place outside of the Vatican, and Daschbach is revered for his role during the tiny Southeast Asian nation's fight for independence. Dozens of Daschbach's supporters, including several children brought by Gusmao, wept and some were screaming as it became clear the court would sentence the former priest to jail. Some in the impoverished enclave revere Daschbach so highly that they believe he possesses special powers and is the victim of a conspiracy.

Daschbach, the son of a Pittsburgh steelworker, was ordained in 1964 by the Society of the Divine Word. He arrived in the country now known as East Timor several years later, setting up a shelter in the 1990s named Topu Honis, which means "Guide to Life." Hundreds of children passed through the shelter under Daschbach's care. More than a dozen females came forward with abuse claims, but only nine were registered in the case due to legal technicalities. The AP spoke with five of the accusers, and they recalled their experiences in vivid detail, saying Daschbach kept a list of young girls on his bedroom door and that every night one of those girls would sit on his lap, surrounded by a ring of children and staff members praying and singing hymns before bed.

They said the girl on his lap would then sleep with him that night and that various types of abusefrom oral sex to rapewould occur, sometimes involving other children. The accusers haven't been identified because of fears of retribution. Separately, a US federal grand jury in Washington, DC, indicted Daschbach in August. He faces seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct at the shelter. If convicted in the US, Daschbach could receive up to 30 years in prison for each count, but the DOJ hasn't said whether it plans to try to extradite the ex-priest. Daschbach also is wanted in the US on three counts of wire fraud linked to one of his California-based donors. Daschbach's legal team says they plan to appeal the verdict in East Timor.

(Read more East Timor stories.)
(Newser)  A California man is headed to prison for three years after threatening 50 people who stated that President Biden won the 2020 presidential election, including CNN anchors and members of Congress. "We have armed members near your home," 36-year-old Robert Lemke, who claimed to be part of a crew of active and former military and law enforcement members, told the brother of New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on Jan. 6 as supporters of then-President Trump attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to intervene in the certification of Biden's election win, reports Law & Crime. "Your brother is putting your entire family at risk with his lies," Lemke added, sharing a photo of a home in the brother's neighborhood. He also claimed to know the location of Jeffries' sons.

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That same day, Lemke warned a relative of a journalist that he and others were "nearby, armed and ready." Prosecutors didn't name any of the victims Lemke contacted from November 2020 to January 2021, though CNN anchors Don Lemon and Brian Stelter both spoke at Lemke's sentencing hearing Monday, per the New York Daily News. Lemon said he and his fiance had been targeted. "I am tired of being suspicious of even friendly faces in public," he said. "I am tired of being called names like 'f----t and 'n----r' in public by people like Robert Lemke." Stelter said Lemke threatened his family "because I was telling the truth on TV." He said Lemke had sent photos of his fathers grave and described the "nice dense trees" behind his mother's house.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who received threatening messages while at the Capitol on Jan. 6, described being "terrified for my family for weeks thereafter," Stelter writes at CNN. Lemke "acquired and used at least three different phone numbers and various electronic accounts to mask his identity" as he "sought to quell freedom of expression, to intimidate and instill fear in others by threats of violence, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Lemke told the court that he was "sincerely defending" the election against fraud but should have done so while being "compassionate and respectful" rather than "reckless and hateful." The Bay Area resident had faced up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to making threatening interstate communications. (Read more threats stories.)
(Newser)  Anthony Fauci says Fox News host Jesse Watters should be fired immediately for violent rhetoric, though he doesn't have much hope that he will be. Fauci made the comment to CNN on Tuesday, a day after Watters appeared at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest conference, where he pushed the theory that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He encouraged attendees to "ambush" Fauci with questions about the National Institutes of Health's alleged funding of "gain-of-function" research at the lab, per Politico. "Now you go in for the kill shot," added Watters, who once praised the QAnon movement. "The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn't see it coming."

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"This is when you say, 'Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab, the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people don't trust you, don't you?' Boom, he is dead! He is dead! He's done!" Watters went on, per the Daily Beast. He urged attendees to film such interactions and suggested Fox and its hosts would air the clips. "Get us that! That's what we want. That changes the whole conversation of the country," he said. "Just make sure it's legal." Fauci told CNN that he'd spent the past two years encouraging people "to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask ... and for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot to ambush me?"

"That's awful that he said that. And he's gonna go, very likely, unaccountable," Fauci continued. "I mean, whatever network he's on is not going to do anything for him. I mean, that's crazy. The guy should be fired on the spot." President Biden's chief medical adviser also rebuked Fox News for not taking action against contributor Lara Logan when she compared Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele late last month. Fauci told MSNBC he was "astounded" that the network "can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action." Outlets report that Fox, which has yet to publicly comment on Logan, didn't return requests to comment on whether it would discipline Watters. (Read more Anthony Fauci stories.)
(Newser)  Walmart illegally dumps more than 1 million batteries, aerosol cans of insect killer, toxic cleaning supplies, electronic waste, latex paints, and other hazardous waste into California landfills each year, state prosecutors charged Monday in a lawsuit that the company labeled unjustified. "As we shop the brightly packed aisles there are products that will never make it into the cartreturned, damaged or pulled from the shelves for a variety of reasons," said California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the AP reports. When stores dispose of those products, he said, they should do it properly, as everyone else has to do. But Walmart, Bonta said, "has failed to do that on a grand scale here."

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The attorney general's office settled a similar lawsuit in 2010 in which Walmart, which operates more than 300 stores in California, paid $25 million and agreed to stop dumping into local landfills that are not equipped to contain the hazardous products. It paid $1.25 million to Missouri in 2012 to settle a similar lawsuit. And in 2013, the company pleaded guilty to six federal misdemeanors of negligently discharging a pollutant into drains in 16 California counties, part of an $81 million deal that included charges in Missouri. Spokesman Randy Hargrove said Walmart will fight the "unjustified lawsuit" filed Monday.

"The state is demanding a level of compliance regarding waste disposal from our stores of common household products and other items that goes beyond what is required by law," Hargrove said. He said a judge was ready to sign off in 2018 on Walmart's compliance under the 2010 deal until the attorney general's office started a new investigation with "new rules" in a bid to force a new settlement. More than 3,800 audits overseen by the attorney generals office since 2010 found that Walmart's trash compactors "contain at most 0.4% of items of potential concern," compared to a statewide average of 3%, Hargrove said. Bonta said Walmart's own inspections show it illegally disposes of nearly 80 tons of such waste each year.

(Read more hazardous waste stories.)
(Newser)  US population growth dipped to its lowest rate since the nations founding during the first year of the pandemic as the coronavirus curtailed immigration, delayed pregnancies, and killed hundreds of thousands of US residents, according to figures released Tuesday. The United States grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to the population from July 2020 to July 2021, according to population estimates released by the Census Bureau, per the AP. The overall total inched up to 331.9 million, notes the Wall Street Journal. The US has been experiencing slow population growth for years, but this was the first time since 1937 that the nations population grew by less than 1 million people.

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"I was expecting low growth but nothing this low," said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro. "It tells us that this pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all kinds of ways, and now demography." Between 2020 and 2021, 33 states saw population increases, primarily through domestic migration, while 17 states and the District of Columbia lost population. States in the Mountain West saw the biggest year-over-year growth, with Idaho growing by almost 3%, and Utah and Montana each seeing population increases of 1.7%. The District of Columbia lost 2.9% of its population, while New York and Illinois lost 1.6% and 0.9% of their populations, respectively.

University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson described the decline in natural population increase as stunning," saying it was the smallest spread of births over deaths in more than 80 years. "Of course most of this is COVID, but not all of it," Johnson said. "US natural increase was already at a low ebb prior to COVID with the fertility rate hitting a new record low each year and deaths steadily rising due to the population aging." (Read more population growth stories.)
(Newser)  Should Derek Chauvin serve his sentence for the murder of George Floyd in state prison, he might make parole in 15 years. If Chauvin goes to federal prison, the guidelines mean he'll have to serve at least 20 years. Nevertheless, federal prison is his choice, ABC News reports. Floyd's family supports the agreement, which Chauvin signed Wednesday in a St. Paul, Minnesota, court. The former police officer was sentenced to 22 years in state prison in June for the May 2020 killing. "It is important to the family that he serves as much of his sentence as possible," the Floyd family's lawyers said in a statement.

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There are reasons anyone would prefer a federal lockup. "Federal prison just tends to be safer and nicer than state prison and local jails," said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who added that federal prisons are managed better. Another analyst cited crowding problems "in state prisons and local jails that you just don't have in federal prison." A former federal inmate said Chauvin can request a specific prison, but he might not get his choice. Any federal prison probably will isolate him, Rahmani said, though he could be put with white-collar criminals unlikely to pose a threat.

"Anytime you have a police officer in prison that's going to be a very risky situation for that individual," Rahmani said. "They've got to basically put him somewhere safe." Chauvin has another sentencing ahead, after pleading guilty to federal charges of violating George Floyd's civil rights. Under the plea agreement, that conviction could lengthen Chauvin's sentence by 2 years, per the New York Times. In federal prison, the former inmate said, Chauvin can expect better food, better housing, and better bunks. (Read more Derek Chauvin stories.)
(Newser)  Months before the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a United Arab Emirates government agency installed spyware on the cellphone of his fiancee. It happened in April 2018 while Hanan Elatr was being detained, in handcuffs and a blindfold, in Dubai, the Washington Post reports, and was uncovered in a recent analysis of the phones by a cybersecurity expert. "We found the smoking gun on her phone," said Bill Marczak of Citizen Lab. The Post and Elatr had agreed to have the phones examined. Khashoggi, who wrote for the Post, disappeared after going to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul later that year.

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The analysis pieced together the process. Someone typed a website into the Chrome browser, inserting two typos, and tapped "Go." The site sent Pegasus, a military-grade spyware, to the phone, then received 27 status reports on the installation over the next 40 seconds. Marczak said he can't be certain the spyware loaded successfully, though he could tell there was no second attempt. Pegasus would have allow the theft of a phone's contents and even turned on the microphone. Elatr's interrogators took her two phones but returned them days later. The US has found that Saudi Arabia's crown prince approved killing Khashoggi; Saudi Arabia and the UAE are close allies.

Israeli's NSO Group, which developed Pegasus, said its records show none of its clients used the spyware to attack the phones of Khashoggi or Elatr; NSO is prohibited from selling the software to other countries without Israel's approval. But once it licenses the software to someone, per the Post, NSO doesn't know how it's deployed. The software is designed to use against terrorists and criminals, NSO said. An attorney argued the Post's analysis, saying Pegasus is installed remotely, so there would be no need to type an address into the phone. NSO's marketing materials, however, say, "When physical access to the device is an option, the Pegasus agent can be manually injected and installed in less than five minutes." (Read more Jamal Khashoggi stories.)
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A winter storm knocked out the heat and power at University of Alaska Fairbanks overnight Sunday, Dec. 19, 2021. The National Weather Service, located at UAF, was impacted. The NWS tweeted this photo after power was restored Monday, Dec. 20, 2021.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Cabinet has thanked His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for issuing the Royal Decree to grant The Prince Salman bin Hamad Medal for Medical Merit to 15,811 of the Kingdoms frontline medical professionals and support staff.

The medal is awarded in appreciation of frontline staffs relentless coronavirus (COVID-19) mitigation efforts. Chaired by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, the Cabinet reiterated their pivotal role in protecting public health, adding that their efforts are appreciated by all and are a source of pride for the Kingdom.

During the meeting, the Cabinet commended HM King Hamads National Day speech, in commemoration of the establishment of the modern Bahraini State (founded by Ahmed Al Fateh in 1783), the anniversary of the Kingdom becoming a full member of the United Nations and the anniversary of His Majestys accession to the throne.

In the speech, HM the King thanked all those who passed on messages of congratulations to mark this occasion. The Cabinet lauded the speech delivered by His Majesty the King at the opening session of the 42nd GCC Summit.

It underscored the importance of the Al Ula Declaration, the purpose of which is to deepen GCC bilateral cooperation and settle unresolved issues. The Cabinet noted the outcomes of the summit which aims to strengthen GCC solidarity and unity to achieve the aspirations of the peoples of the region.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Information Affairs Minister Ali bin Mohammed Al Romaihi expressed thanks and gratitude to His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, for honouring him, along with other ministrys officials, with The Prince Salman bin Hamad Medal for Medical Merit.

This came during the ceremony which was held yesterday at Gudaibiya Palace, under the patronage of HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, to honour medical frontliners and officials from the Bahrain Defence Force (BDF), the Ministry of Interior and supporting entities.

Al Romaihi paid tribute to His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister for their keenness on promoting the national media and their appreciation of the efforts exerted by the ministrys cadres in support of the National Medical Taskforce for Combating COVID-19.

He highlighted Bahrains strides and successes which earned the Kingdom international praise, paying tribute to HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister for his leadership of Team Bahrain.

Bahrain has set a model in the world for managing challenges competently, he said, adding the media would continue playing its national role in highlighting the development march, under the wise leadership of HM the King.

Undersecretary Dr Abdulrahman Mohammed Baher said the medal represents an honour for all the ministrys affiliates for their efforts during the pandemic.

Assistant Undersecretary for Radio and Television Affairs Abdulla Khalid Al Dosary praised HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Ministers keenness on honouring the media cadres.

Assistant Undersecretary for Technical Affairs Abdulla Ahmed Al Balooshi expressed thanks and gratitude to HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister for this honour.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani has affirmed the Kingdom of Bahrains keenness to further strengthen cooperation with the UK in various political, security and economic fields.

This came as Dr Al Zayani held an official session of talks with the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development of the UK, Elizabeth Truss, in London yesterday.

The session of talks was attended by the Ambassador of Bahrain to the UK, Shaikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, and the delegation accompanying Dr Al Zayani.

Secretary Truss praised strong relations between the two friendly countries, hailing the development of bilateral cooperation in various fields.

Dr Al Zayani congratulated Secretary Truss on her appointment, wishing her success in carrying out her duties.

He highlighted the British efforts to promote peace and peaceful coexistence in the Middle East, noting the UKs support of the Abraham Accords.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The first training programme for trainers who deal with victims of trafficking in persons has concluded.

The event was organised by the Regional Centre of Excellence for Capacity Building in the Field of Combatting Trafficking in Persons, in collaboration with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the GCC.

Labour Market Regulatory Authority Chief Executive Officer Jamal Abdulaziz Al Alawi expressed LMRAs pride in the role played by the centre to develop and build the capacities of the first responders to the victims of trafficking in persons or potential victims, as well as provide them with the necessary expertise on ways to deal with victims and help them.

He affirmed that LMRAs strategy is to promote anti-trafficking in-person culture as to be a well-established social behaviour.

Al Alawi praised the great number of participants in the training programme, including representatives from eight governmental and non-governmental agencies, namely the Ministry of Information Affairs, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Primary Health Care Centres, the National Communication Centre, LMRA, the Bahrain Airport Company, the Bahrain Airport Services Company (BAS), and the Bahrain Corporate Social Responsibility Society.

He thanked all the participating parties that work in partnership with LMRA in the system of combating the crime of trafficking in persons, which, he said, is a well-established national approach in the Kingdom.

He pointed out that the centre is planning intensive training courses to rehabilitate those dealing with victims of trafficking in persons, not only at the local level but also at the level of countries in the Middle East.

It represents Bahrains contribution to supporting international efforts to combat the crime of trafficking in persons, given the fact that the centre is the first of its kind in the region.

Acting United Nations Resident Coordinator and Chief of Mission of IOM in Bahrain, Mohamed El Zarkani, expressed appreciation for the efforts being exerted by Bahrain to raise the level of public awareness in the field of combating trafficking in persons.

El Zarkani underlined the unwavering interest of the UN and its specialised agencies in strengthening cooperation and coordination with the Kingdom, represented by the LMRA to provide all its expertise in developing and training Bahraini competencies.

He highlighted the ongoing strong partnership between the Bahrain government and the UN over the past years, yielding many achievements in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice in general, and addressing trafficking in persons, in particular.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Tala Bashmi often referred to as the spirit of modern Bahraini cuisine, has been named the winner of the first Middle East & North Africas Best Female Chef Award 2022.

Chef patron of Fusions by Tala in Manama, Chef Tala will be presented with the inaugural award at the debut edition of MENAs 50 Best Restaurants, in Abu Dhabi in February.

The much-coveted award forms part of the 50 Best organisations mission to honour female role models within the culinary industry and represents the first pre-announced award of the Middle East & North Africas 50 Best Restaurants 2022 programme.

Over 200 independent restaurant industry experts and well-travelled gourmets from across the region have voted for the award. None of the sponsors has any influence over the voting process, organisers said.

MENAs Best Female Chef Award aims to support and promote inclusivity in the culinary sphere and provide the opportunity for female role models to inspire future generations of young women to reach for the heights of their chosen profession.

A passion for creating nostalgic culinary experiences for her guests drives Bahraini-born, Swiss-trained Tala.

She learned about Middle Eastern cuisine and her cultural identity from her father Ibrahim Bashmi through his in-depth knowledge of the ingredients used.

"I first realised I wanted to become a chef when I fed someone a single bite, and I saw the pure joy on their face. Nothing can replace that," she said.

"My family always inspired me with ingredients, with dishes. So I thought I had to legitimize myself and study and work towards becoming the best chef I can be.".

This education soon turned into a calling as Tala witnessed first-hand the joy that a well-prepared dish could bring. Beginning her career through a home venture called Baked by T, the chefs desserts became especially famous in Bahrain, garnering her numerous fans.

Following this initial success, Tala joined the Culinary Arts Academy in Lucerne, Switzerland, where she gained a Masters in International Business in Culinary Management.

During her time in Europe, she held roles at the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois and Michelin-starred restaurant Prisma, learning how to run restaurant operations as well as working in fast-paced kitchen environments.

Upon her return to the Middle East, Chef Tala competed in the acclaimed MBC show Top Chef (the Middle East & North Africa) show, finishing in the finals and showcasing the modernised Bahraini cuisine that she would become famous for.

She took over Fusions by Tala, at the Gulf Hotel, Bahrain, in September 2017 priding herself on the concepts willingness to experiment with ingredients and techniques used around the world and incorporating these into native Bahraini dishes.

The restaurant was renovated and relaunched as Fusions by Tala in February 2020.

"The whole experience starts as soon as you get out of the elevator. We have an amazing terrace where we invite our guests to enjoy a drink before dinner," Tala said.

"We then walk our guests in, to start their dining experience; and the first thing that will catch their eye is the open kitchen. Ive designed the restaurant for this to be the focal point, for people to watch us perform, to watch our plate in a symphony."

Signature creations include Bamia, traditional okra and meat stew developed using offcuts and modernised using wagyu beef cheek, crispy okra glass and tomato broth rice, to capture the essence of the original dish. Tala feels she should use her skills to make sure there are no confines to her passion, no limits to her creativity.

"Being a chef means I can do what I love every single day. My philosophy is to kind of reshape how people see food, by creating a focus and setting the stage. I see what we do as performance and what we are doing is giving you a show, an experience that hopefully, you won't forget," she said.

"So my goal when opening the restaurant was to kind of re-educate my local audience and show them my food and our food in a new light. And for foreigners who have never experienced our food or tasted it, to learn about our memories and our history."

Tala has been going to the traditional souk since a young age, fascinated by the aromas, captivated by the sounds, mesmerized by the colours. To her, they are always an endless source of inspiration.

"Bahrain is an island, were surrounded by the sea, and we love seafood. Its also a culture where we make the most of what we have. We try to make it enough and abundant for everyone. What I am trying to do is create this culinary renaissance for Middle Eastern food and Bahrain especially."

Her devotion to Bahrain's culinary heritage was eventually recognized internationally.

It is an absolute honour to be awarded the first-ever Best Female Chef award as part of the inaugural MENAs 50 Best Restaurants 2022, said Tala.

It has always been a dream to put my culinary heritage on the global map, highlighting it not only within the MENA region but around the world. One of my main goals as a chef is to bridge the gap between high-end gastronomy and simple food, making each meal a journey.

William Drew, Director of Content for 50 Best said the Best Female Chef award series "celebrates chefs whose skills, creativity and dedication within the industry reach new bounds."

"Chef Tala epitomizes the spirit of this award with her ardent commitment to highlighting Bahraini cuisine around the world whilst simultaneously modernising many of its traditional dishes. She is a hugely worthy winner of the inaugural MENAs Best Female Chef title and we are very excited to celebrate her, along with leading chefs and restaurateurs from across the region, at the awards event in Abu Dhabi in February.

The inaugural Middle East & North Africas 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony, sponsored by S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna, will be hosted in the UAE Capital on February 7, supported by Abu Dhabis Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT).

The first edition of the Middle East & North Africas 50 Best Restaurants event programme, including the awards ceremony and unveiling of the list, provides a unique opportunity for chefs, gourmets, and food and travel media from all over the region to gather and celebrate cuisine and hospitality, whilst also promoting the culinary strength and diversity of the region to a global audience.

Other pre-announced awards in the lead up to the inaugural event and reveal of MENAs 50 Best Restaurants 2022 will include the Foodics Icon Award on January 11 and the One To Watch Award on January 25.

The Department of Culture and Tourism  Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) drives the sustainable growth of Abu Dhabis culture and tourism sectors, fuels economic progress and helps achieve Abu Dhabis wider global ambitions.

By working in partnership with the organisations that define the Emirates position as a leading international destination, DCT Abu Dhabi strives to unite the ecosystem around a shared vision of the Emirates potential, coordinate effort and investment, deliver innovative solutions, and use the best tools, policies and systems to support the culture and tourism industries. DCT Abu Dhabis vision is defined by the Emirates people, heritage and landscape. It works to enhance Abu Dhabis status as a place of authenticity, innovation, and unparalleled experiences, represented by its living traditions of hospitality, pioneering initiatives and creative thought.
Bahrain court to hear closing argument of three accused of disclosing state secrets

Bahrain court to hear closing argument of three accused of disclosing state secrets

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Closing arguments will be heard on Thursday in the trial of three individuals accused of disclosing state secrets.

The defendants include a senior manager serving at a national petroleum company and another man who is working at a company that provides services to the petroleum firm.

The third accused, an Asian man, was serving as an adviser at the company.

In an unprecedented event at the courts in Bahrain, witnesses, in this case, were examined for seven hours in one of the hearings by the defence and public attorney.

The witnesses took the stand in three hearings before judges at the High Criminal Court decided to adjourn the case until next Thursday to hear the closing arguments.

The trio forged documents issued by a foreign bank to prove financial capacity worth $20 billion to enter tenders in Bahrain.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Al Salam Bank recently hosted its annual town hall for its employees at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

The event aimed to highlight key milestones and successes of 2021, as well as usher in a new phase of the Banks growth strategy launched earlier this year, coinciding with the reveal of its refreshed Brand DNA guided by a renewed set of principles, and the reveal of its new logo to reflect this new chapter.

Commenting, Rafik Nayed, Al Salam Bank Group Chief Executive Officer, said The past two years have posed a significant challenge to industries and communities around the world.

Yet, by the same token, these circumstances have built a drive within us to be better, and stronger.

Through perseverance and the unwavering commitment of every Bank employee, we have made impressive progress in our growth strategy to expand core banking activities and consistently increase our market share.

The Group Chief Executive Officer, added, Our strategy for the coming year will be to continue to push forward on our ability to deliver state of the art financial solutions driven by the latest financial technology, whilst nurturing our customer relationships, for a truly hospitable banking experience unlike any other in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

It is with the forward-thinking mindset that we have achieved these milestones, and it is with our continued commitment that we will continue to deliver on our promise, becoming the bank of choice in Bahrain.

The annual event was attended by over 300 of Al Salam Banks employees, where 60 employees were recognized for exceptional performance across various departments.
WATERBURY  The Mattatuck Museum, 144 West Main St., has scheduled programs for children and adults in late December and January. To register for any event or for more information, visit www.mattmuseum.org, which also outlines updated COVID-19 guidelines for visitors, including what to expect on your visit, cleaning and safety protocols, and frequently asked questions. Follow The MATT on Facebook and Instagram for more updates and content.

Classes:

Tai Chi, 10-11 a.m., Wednesdays, $8 members, $12 guests. Improve your energy and stamina as you move to the music at the Mattatuck Museum with certified Tai Chi instructor Joe Atkins. Joe will teach gentle movements that improves balance, flexibility, and mobility, and reduce stiffness and soreness. Wear comfortable clothes. All levels welcome.

Yoga, 5:30-6:30 p.m., Thursdays, $8 members, $12 guests. Taught by new instructor Michele Carella. This style of yoga will focus most on alignment of basic yoga poses, as well as breathing techniques which will link movement with breath. There will be an emphasis on slow movements to strengthen muscles and increase flexibility with guided meditation during savasana, or resting pose. Pose modifications will always be shared so that everyone, regardless of fitness level, will feel safe and comfortable participating in the class.

Midday Mindfulness, noon, Monday-Friday, $5 members, $8 guests. On Mondays, during Foundations of Mindfulness class, Ranji will offer guidance to participants on cultivating different mindful practices using clear, precise, and accurate language. Mindfulness practices explored and embodied will include Focused Attention, Open Awareness, Loving Kindness practice and Mindful Yoga. On Fridays, Ranji will lead Appreciating Art Using a Mindfulness Practice, and offer guidance to participants on developing a focused attention mindfulness practice. During each session Ranji will lead participants in an experiential focused attention guided meditation.

Saturday Docent Guided Tours, Saturdays in January, 1 p.m., no tour Jan. 1, included with admission. Staff will guide patrons through a highlights tour or the museums current special exhibition.

Seniors Only Special Exhibition Tour, Jan. 19, 10 a.m., Tour of Focus on the Makers: Samplers, Needlework, and Quilts, $5 members, $12 BRASS members, $17 senior guests, $20 adults. Pre-registration for this tour is recommended. Register at mattmuseum.com/calendar. To book a private senior group tour, contact Angel Bleggi at angel@mattmuseum.org or 203-753-0381 x118.

For children

Story Time @ The MATT, Jan. 8, 11-11:15 a.m., Included with Museum admission. Join a Mattatuck Museum Educator for a reading of Willie Was Different, Norman Rockwells only storybook for children. The story follows a young bird who discovers that he has a special talent, but the consequences of it arent quite what he expects. Children and parents alike will enjoy his beautiful illustrations and meaningful story. After the story, explore the Museum on your own including the special exhibition Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, on view through Jan. 16.

Museum Minis (ages 0-3), Mondays starting Jan. 31, 10-11 a.m., no class on Presidents Day. $8 members, $12 guests.

Learn about some art and history fun while practicing developmental, social, and mobility skills. A Museum Educator will facilitate 30-minutes of playtime in the galleries with an opportunity to mingle with other parents and caregivers, followed by a 15-minute themed story, and a small art activity in the classroom that can be taken home.

Storybook Making Kids Art Workshop, Jan. 8, 11:15 a.m.-1:15 a.m., for ages 5 and up. $10 members, $15 guests. A Storybook Making Workshop has pre-made booklets waiting to be transformed into your childs own story book filled with their wildest and most fantastical tales. Draw, decorate, and illustrate these story pages using the variety of art materials provided.

Janet Maya Kids Art Workshop, Jan. 15, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., for ages 5 and up, $10 members, $15 guests. Led by artist Janet Maya, whose paintings are currently on view in Janet Maya: Women/Strength/Beauty. She will discuss her artistic process with the children and teach them how to paint in her style.

Share Your Story: LGBTQIA+ Storytelling Workshop, Part 1, Jan. 15, 3 p.m.; Part 2, Jan. 29, 3 p.m.; Part 3, Feb. 17, 6-8 p.m. Free, space limited. The events are opportunity for members of the LGBTQIA+ community to get together with likeminded individuals to create, workshop, and share stories relating to their experiences, from light-hearted anecdotes to heart-rending accounts. Workshop participants will spend two 1.5-hour sessions in a safe and inclusive environment learning about the elements of a good story, writing their piece, and engaging in creative dialogue with others, and ultimately creating a story that they will share with an audience at the My LGBTQIA+ Story event Feb. 17.

Schools Out: Celebrate MLK, Jan. 17, 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. $35 members, $40 guests. Drop off your child for these fun-filled single-day experiences. Children will be immersed in the Museums galleries and special exhibitions while learning about history and developing their art skills with unique materials and techniques. Children will celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with different activities that explore ideas around peace, empathy, and community. They will also look at work by African American artists in the gallery, highlighting the various messages that can be told through art. All supplies provided. Bring a bagged lunch. Space is limited and pre-registration is required. Full and partial scholarships are available. For more information contact Jason Foberg at x114 or jason@mattmuseum.org

Other events:

Cocktails and Curators with Assistant Curator Natalie DeQuarto, 5:30-7 p.m., Jan. 20, $30 members, $35 guests. Sample cocktails created by the Cocktail Chemist, Dimitrios Zahariadias as Assistant Curator Natalie DeQuarto delves into the fascinating history of needlework and quilts of the nineteenth century. Explore beautiful examples of local samplers, needlework, quilts, and hand-sewn ephemera from the nineteenth century on view in the Museums exhibit, Focus on the Makers. Natalie DeQuarto will further discuss the exhibition, responding to any questions or comments along the way. Drink samples will be provided along with a take-home cocktail recipe sheet.

In-Gallery Weaving Experience, Jan. 23, 1-4 p.m., included with Museum admission. Watch weaving artist Krista Clark as she works on a current fiber project in the gallery at the Mattatuck Museum. Surrounded by examples of samplers, needlework, quilts, and hand-sewn ephemera created locally in the nineteenth century, she will answer questions about her work and visitors will even have the opportunity to try weaving themselves. Museum Educators will be in the gallery offering half-hour drop-in tours of the Focus on the Makers exhibition, which is on view through Feb. 28.

Hidden Within: X-Ray Technology as a Tool to Examine Antique Quilts and Textiles, Jan. 27, 5:30-6:30 p.m. $5 members, $10 guests. Join radiographer Nicholas Jannetty and explore how x-rays (like those performed in a hospital or imaging center) are used to uncover hidden details in the construction of antique quilts and textiles. Selected items from the Museums textile collection will be displayed and discussed, with a question-and-answer period to follow.
NEW FAIRFIELD  Acts of misconduct and social media threats since the start of the school year have created a looming sense of unease and vulnerability over students at the high school.

Thats what New Fairfield High School senior and student representative Cayden Walker shared with the Board of Education last week at the request of his peers, who he said asked him to let the board know they feel unsafe in school.

Walker said seemingly unchecked misconduct at the high school, coupled with rumored threats of violence, have been negatively impacting students social-emotional well being and learning.

Myself and many of my peers feel like the majority of us are being affected because of the unchecked actions of a select few that are reportedly just getting away with it, Walker said.

For example, he said, the bathrooms  particularly the boys bathrooms  have been repeatedly trashed/destroyed, and theres reportedly been nobody punished for this.

Superintendent Pat Cosentino told Hearst Connecticut Media those incidents were connected to a TikTok challenge to vandalize bathrooms.

Social media has just invaded our kids lives and these challenges are very difficult because theyre not thinking and theyre doing stupid things, she said.

Cosentino did not say whether anyone was held responsible for the bathroom vandalism, but said school officials took care of that as best we could.

After that happened, she said, somebody anonymously went in and put flowers in the bathroom and a little welcome mat to remind students that this is our school and we need to keep it in good shape and take care of it.

Walker said concerns he and his peers already have about in-school safety and well being were recently worsened by last weeks social media threats of school violence.

The TikTok threat of violence at schools on Dec. 17  which prompted an increased police presence at schools not only in New Fairfield, but other area towns as well  was not the school districts only social media concern last week.

Cosentino said there was also a disturbing Instagram message brought to school officials attention Wednesday night, which implied there was a hit list with 100 to 150 New Fairfield High School students names on it.

Like the middle school TikTok threat, authorities deemed the Instagram message not credible.

here is no hit list. There was never a hit list, Cosentino said Thursday, promising that the person responsible for the post would face severe consequences.

By Friday, a student had confessed to posting the message. Cosentino said Tuesday that the student has been disciplined appropriately. Still, the district reported 1,013 students were absent Friday, Dec. 17 including 440 at the high school and 280 at the middle school.

Walker said feeling left in the dark about what was going on last week only compounded students worries and concerns.

Of all the threats, we really only had one announcement in school, which didnt necessarily do a whole lot to soothe the anxieties, he said Thursday. A lot of people just feel like theyre being left out, theyre unsafe and theres just not enough measures being taken  proactively or even reactively  (regarding) these sorts of threats, he said.

While she understands students desire to know whats going on, Cosentino said there are reasons why not everything is shared.

I think one of the things students are unaware of is that its best practice not to announce things over the loud speaker because that can trigger other students, she said. If somethings brought to our attention, we always follow up and deal with it  but unfortunately, due to privacy issues, students and staff dont always know how its dealt with.

In addition to last weeks TikTok and Instagram posts, Cosentino said she thinks the anniversary of the 2012 Sandy Hook tragedy, as well as the recent school shooting in Oxford, Mich., has everyone on edge.

To improve safety and hopefully alleviate some student concerns, Cosentino said she and her administrative team are working to tighten up some of the districts security protocols.

Cosentino said one thing she plans to propose is a new policy that would require middle and high school students to wear student IDs in school and when they board school buses.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Chris Noth will no longer be part of the CBS series The Equalizer in the wake of sexual assault allegations against the actor.

Universal Television and CBS made a joint announcement Monday that Noth would no longer be part of filming effective immediately.

Noth has played a former CIA director on The Equalizer, which stars Queen Latifah. Noth will appear in at least one upcoming episode.

Noth's representatives had no immediate comment on The Equalizer decision.

Two women accused Noth of sexual assault in a story reported last week by The Hollywood Reporter. Noth vehemently denied the allegations, which date back to 2004 and 2015.

The accusations against me made by individuals I met years, even decades, ago are categorically false. These stories couldve been from 30 years ago or 30 days ago  no always means no  that is a line I did not cross, Noth said in a statement to the Reporter.

One of the women who accused Noth of assaulting her said his reprisal of his Mr. Big character on the Sex and the City sequel And Just Like That prompted her to speak out about the actor.

Noths demise in the first episode of the show led to widespread attention.

Series stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis issued a joint statement Monday on social media saying they were saddened by the allegations against Noth but supported his accusers.

We support the women who have come forward and shared their painful experiences, a statement signed by the three read. We know that it must be a very difficult thing to do and we commend them for it.
ROTTERDAM JUNCTION, N.Y. (AP)  Pushed up to the breakfast table, Betty Bednarowski folds and refolds her napkin with studied intensity, softly singing Winter Wonderland without the words, the same as she did in March and July and September.

Dessert today is a tiny cup of pudding, like yesterdays, with seven pills Bednarowski cant swallow, crushed into the butterscotch. Between mouthfuls, Bednarowski, who has advanced Alzheimers disease, glances at her daughter, Susan Ryder, and flashes a blissful grin.

Its probably just as well that, a year after Ryder took her mother out of a nursing home locked down against COVID-19 to rescue her from isolation and neglect, the retired sandwich shop worker never remembers what comes next.

OK Mom, Im going to put your stockings on, Ryder says.

I dont want to help! the 79-year-old growls. The pudding smile is gone. I cant do this!

By the time Bednarowskis family brought her home they, and thousands more with loved ones in nursing facilities slammed by the pandemic, were desperate. After months of separation, Bednarowski had dropped 20 pounds. Her delight in others company had given way to a hollow stare. Her hair was filled with lice.

Thats in the past now. But only because Ryder is her mothers keeper.

Oh God! Oh God! Betty wails. Im too... Before she can finish the sentence, the thought slips away.

Crouched on the floor, Ryder struggles alongside a nursing assistant to pull the compression hose over her mothers scarred calves. Today is easier. On mornings without help, she presses her face against Bettys knee to hold it down.

I know Mom, she says. Im sorry. Youre doing great Betty.

Mothers and children have battled over getting dressed forever, only here the roles are reversed. If anyone can relate its the many families who made the same decision: to bring home the people they love and find peace in comforts and consequences that could outlast the pandemic itself.

We mostly hear two things. One, theyre really happy they did it. Theyre genuinely happy to have their loved ones at home, says John Schall of the Caregiver Action Network, which has fielded calls from thousands of distressed families. The other thing we hear is, Oh My God, how difficult this has turned out to be. ...It really is fairly unrelenting.

To families like Bednarowskis, the longer the lockdowns stretched on the less that leaving loved ones in a nursing home felt like a choice.

Patients, many frail and unable to communicate their needs, were walled off from the family members who could advocate for them, even as staffing shortages and pandemic restrictions sharply reduced care. COVID has killed more than 140,000 residents of U.S. nursing homes, with deaths from other causes also far surpassing previous years.

And Ryder and others like her -- standing at nursing home windows watching the condition of their loved ones deteriorate -- felt powerless to do anything about it.

It was fear for her safety, for her wellbeing -- this is your mother! says Ryder, herself the parent of two 20-somethings.

I mean, I dont know if you have kids. But can you imagine being at work and the school calls and says Were going to lock the school and were going to keep your kids for their own safety?

What would you do?

___

The search for an answer to that question began on a March afternoon in 2020. Alarm over COVID was rising quickly, but in New York state it was still focused mostly on the area around the nations biggest city, about three hours south.

Ryder, then an office manager at a package delivery contractor, was planning a stop to see her mom at the Schenectady Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing. An hour before her workday ended, an email arrived from a social worker at the home. The facility was barring visitors, effective immediately.

He was just very matter of fact: were doing this for the safety of the residents, says Ryder, whose family had joined others to raise concerns about care at the facility well before the pandemic. He promised me that he would check on my mother every day which, in hindsight, was lip service.

The decision to lock down, while sudden, followed state and federal guidelines and visits were allowed to resume as soon as officials eased restrictions and virus cases were in check, said Jeff Jacomowitz, a spokesman for the nursing home.

But families who were willing to take their loved ones out of the facility permanently to take care of them were opened to do so, he said in a written statement.

Driving home, Ryder cried at the wheel. Anyone who knew her mother could see she thrived on human interaction. She loved fussing over customers at Subway, where managers made her the hostess after dementia began limiting her abilities behind the counter. At the nursing facility, she scooted her wheelchair up and down the halls to visit residents and staff.

That need for social connection was one of the reasons the family had resisted placing her in a nursing home. One of Ryders sisters spent five years as a live-in caregiver. But after their mother was hospitalized again in 2017 the siblings decided to move her to a care facility, with a pact that family members would visit Bednarowski every day.

In three years before the pandemic hit, they missed just one. Family members brought Bednarowski homemade macaroni and cheese and picked up her dirty laundry. They danced with her, took her out for burgers, held her hand and tucked her in at night.

Then the lockdown forced them to break their promise. They were far from the only ones.

Its hard to know just how many families have taken loved ones out of nursing homes during the pandemic. But this year has seen a 14 percent increase in patients discharged to go home, according to CarePort, a software provider that connects hospitals with nursing facilities.

In a June survey by the American Health Care Association, an industry group, operators of nearly four in ten nursing homes said they were losing money because patients were moving out.

And with 1.3 million Americans in nursing homes before the outbreaks, advocates say it has forced a painful reckoning in many more households.

Weve heard from a lot of families who are just crushed by guilt, in these really tough positions, who want to take their loved ones home but they know they cant live independently, says Sam Brooks of the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, which advocates for nursing home residents.

As lockdowns stretched on, taking action began to feel like a necessity to some families.

I was like an archaeologist looking for clues, says Beth Heard Frith of Lafayette, La., who was barred for months from spending time with her 92-year-old mother, but continued stopping by the nursing home to pick up her laundry. Why is there a hospital gown in there when I know shes supposed to have eight nightgowns? Why did everything reek of urine?

Last fall, Frith moved her mother out of the facility and into her home after a doctor determined that Elizabeth Heards declining health qualified her for hospice care. When Heard died in February, her family was there to pray at her bedside.

Of course, when the lockdowns started, no one knew how long they would last.

During window visits, when Bednarowski motioned to her daughter to come inside, Ryder promised shed be right there -- knowing that within a few seconds the moment would slip from her mothers mind.

Once a week, nursing home staffers put a tablet computer in front of Bednarowski and connected her with her children by video. But she just stared into the air before shuffling away, leaving family members with a view of the nursing home ceiling.

Ryder says she tried hard not to let her mothers condition bother her. Late on many nights, though, husband Jimmy heard her sobbing in the bathroom.

It killed her, he says.

Bednarowskis family and the relatives of other nursing home residents pressed for entry, arguing that the care they provided was essential, but got no traction. By early September, after six months of separation, the frustration was boiling over.

Ryder joined about 40 others on the sidewalk outside the nursing home demanding entry. A few weeks later, state officials began allowing brief visits, but with sharp restrictions.

At their first meeting, in late September of 2020, mother and daughter were required to stay at opposite ends of an eight-foot table. Bednarowskis hair, wet and unbrushed, was filled with lice. Instead of clothes, she was wrapped in a towel, eyes cast down in a vacant stare, a photo taken during the visit shows.

I couldnt touch her. I couldnt hug her, Ryder says. She looked right through me.

Back in her garage, Ryder spent hours mounting protest signs on lengths of wood moulding. Essential Caregivers Work for LOVE, read one. SAVE Betty, demanded another.

In mid-October she joined dozens of other New Yorkers with relatives in nursing homes in front of the state Capitol, calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to give family caregivers immediate access. Their request was denied.

About 10 days later, Ryders brother, Bill Bednarowski, the oldest of the four siblings, had his own distanced visit with their mother and left shaken.

Actual photo of how well Im keeping it all together right now, brother texted sister afterward. He attached a picture of an electrical pole snapped apart like a toothpick and held up, just barely, with bands of duct tape. There was only one thing the siblings could do.

Lets bring her home, Ryder answered.

___

Early last October, a woman named Jill Wisler, who lives about 200 miles from Ryder on New Yorks Long Island, took her own mother out of a nursing facility.

Months of separation had been hard on both women, the only two living members of their family. When staffers wheeled Arlene Wisler, 88, to the nursing home window with a black eye and no adequate explanation, her daughter knew she couldnt leave her there.

Jill Wisler, an insurance fraud investigator working from home during the pandemic, learned New York state would allow her mothers Medicaid assistance to pay for home care. Wisler spent months cycling through nursing aides, who are in short supply. Because her mother has advanced Alzheimers, she does not know who Wisler is and she must be lifted in and out of bed.

With care, Arlene has regained lost weight and stabilized. And Jill, who stays home each night to be with her mother, has found some peace.

Even if the pandemic ended tomorrow, I still have my mom, says Wisler, of Plainview, N.Y. Some days are good and some days are bad. But every day is a victory.

After bringing her mother home, Wisler mentioned her decision on a Facebook group for families battling the lockdowns, Caregivers for Compromise. Another New York woman looking to remove her mother from a nursing home asked Wisler for guidance. Then another. And another.

Susan Ryder was one. Last November 4, days after collecting advice and encouragement from Wisler, Ryder pulled up in front of the nursing home. Employees had piled all of Betty Bednarowksis clothes and other possessions into clear plastic bags, waiting at the curb.

In addition to the lost weight, Bednarowski was no longer continent. She spent hours whistling Winter Wonderland, something she hadnt done before the lockdown. Her children believe she seized on the song as a source of comfort from the isolation.

Ryder settled her mom into a bedroom one of her sons left behind, hanging a sign on the door salvaged from Bednarowskis quarters at the nursing home: Bettys Place. On shelves above the bed, she lined up plush figurines her mother had won at nursing home games of Bingo.

She wakes up every single day to a familiar face. She tells me she loves me...and I know shes safe, Ryder says. I dont have to wonder where bruises came from on her body. I dont have to wonder if shes sitting in a wet undergarment.

With those worries put aside, the days have settled into a routine that seesaws between a new set of stresses and moments of affirmation.

Sweet Caroline! Good times never seemed so good! Ryder sings on a recent afternoon spent, like so many others, with Bednarowski swaying to her lead from a recliner in the living room.

So good! So good! So good! Bednarowski sings back, gleefully. She cant play the piano or dance the jitterbug the way she used to, but music is still her go-to place.

Other times mother and daughter bat a balloon back and forth or sit together to watch episodes of Friends. On Tuesdays, Ryders brother takes a seat alongside Betty at dinner and on Friday mornings, its his sister Cheryls turn.

Bednarowski struggles to remember who they are. But from the moment she wakes to Ryders touch, she is reminded that this is home.

The good times, though, are often just moments removed from the hard ones. Bednarowski, fierce in protecting her modesty, curses at her daughter when she tries to change soiled clothes. She strains to get away when Ryder takes a blood sample, required to monitor one of her medications.

Its like being the parent of a small child again, Ryder says, except a toddler learns to do things. Betty never does so Susan has to.

I used to be like: You have to do this. Put your foot in this pants legs!... And she would fight me, Ryder says. Now I take five seconds and just wait and do nothing and try again. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt.

One night this fall, locked together in the bathroom, the battle of wills over changing soiled undergarments exploded just as Ryder broke into the sweat of a hot flash. The feelings that welled up inside her were so intense, she kicked a hole in a wall.

When Ryder was laid off about a month after taking her mother out of the home, she embraced it as a chance to fully devote herself to caregiving. Medicaid pays for a nursing assistant to visit for eight hours, four days a week, giving Ryder a chance to leave care to someone else, shop for groceries and get to the chiropractor.

But getting by on the paycheck of her husband, a flooring installer, has created a squeeze. Not long before Bednarowski came to live with them, the Ryders finally retired thousands in credit card debt they took on to rebuild their home after a 2011 flood. Now, Ryder is back to agonizing over which bills she can delay paying.

The couple agree she should look for a new job. But she worries about finding one with hours and flexibility that will allow her to care for her mother. The reasons for going back to work, though, extend beyond finances.

Do I wish I had my life back? Some days, especially when theres so much craziness going on, Ryder says. But I know shes safe. I know shes happy and thats what matters most. Right?

Right Mama?

Bednarowski, sitting across the breakfast table, looks up but doesnt answer.

___

The Ryders joke that the past year, with all its joys and exasperations, could be a reality television show. Theyd call it Bringing up Betty.

Todays episode ends where it began.

In the bathroom, Betty curses at her daughter for trying to change her clothes, but Susan laughs off the threat. Waiting in the hallway, Jimmy Ryder takes his mother-in-laws hand and guides her to her bedroom. Susan turns the radio on low so her mother can drift off to music.

I love you, she tells Bednarowski, tucking her in. Who do you love? How about Susan and Cheryl and Karen? Its a gentle reminder to her mother that she raised three daughters.

Youre right! Betty says, beaming.

I had a good Mom. She taught me lots of stuff, Susan tells her. She leans down to kiss her mother, then turns off the light as a 1980s anthem floats from the radio.

We are strong. No one can tell us were wrong, it goes. Both of us knowing, Love is a battlefield.
A Bethel man has been sentenced to 18 months in jail after pleading guilty for his role in a fatal two-car crash last year.

Court records show Bradley Stock was sentenced last week to five years in jail, suspended after 18 months. His sentence includes five years of probation when hes released from jail.

Stock, 66, previously pleaded guilty to a single charge of misconduct with a motor vehicle in connection with the crash on May 10, 2020. The driver of the other car died three days after the collision, according to police. She was later identified by her daughter, Patricia Moriarty, as 78-year-old Barbara Camlek.

The family is at peace with this sentence and we were happy to get justice for our mothers death, Moriarty said. She was the heart of our family and we still have a huge hole where she was.

Stocks lawyer, Joseph Romanello, said he believes the sentence was fair considering his client did not have a criminal history.

Hes just extremely remorseful. Hes been in therapy since its happened, Romanello said. Its a very unfortunate tragic incident. I just hope that the victims family has some closure now. He really feels for the victim and the victims family.

Moriarty said her family is disappointed it took so long for Stock to be convicted and sentenced, but she appreciated the work of Bethel Police Sgt. James Christos, who she said investigated the case.

Bethel police said the crash occurred on Route 53 near Mansfield Street.

An investigation by Bethel Police determined that the crash occurred when a northbound vehicle, operated by Bradley Stock, crossed over the center line while passing another northbound vehicle, Bethel police said in a statement at the time.

Police said Stocks vehicle was traveling  at a high rate of speed when it struck the other car head-on in the southbound lane.

Moriarty said her mother grew up in Queens and moved to the area in 1981 for a job at Union Carbide.

To me, she was the best mother in the world and to have her die on Mothers Day was something that was really hard to wrap my head around, Moriarty said.
DANBURY  Holiday travel, rising COVID-19 cases and concerns about the omicron variant have made it harder to get a COVID test.

Community providers in Danbury say demand has increased for COVID tests. Unlike in previous surges, there are fewer drive-thru testing sites available, and the provider that has offered COVID testing in Danbury in recent months plans to pull out in the state in January. That provider, SEMA4, is expected to be replaced, officials said.

They (the state) have assured us that they wont be any break in services once SEMA4 is done with their contract, that they have another vendor who will step in and there wont be any break in continuity in testing services, said Kara Prunty, the citys health director.

The health department is working with the state to expand hours at the testing sites that SEMA4 runs in Danbury, she said. Those new hours could start next week. The city has asked the state to open another testing site in Danbury, too.

Demand has been very high this week for testing, especially with the Christmas holidays coming up, which is very encouraging that people are doing the responsible thing before they have their family gathering and their traveling, Prunty said.

Rising COVID cases and the highly contagious omicron variant are other factors, she said.

The state is trying very, very hard in Connecticut, and its equally true in New York, to make testing available, but the demand has really soared beyond our present capacity, said Dr. John Murphy, president and CEO of Nuvance Health.

Ideally, families should use testing, in addition to vaccinations and boosters, to gather safely for the holidays, but its going to be tough to get tested this week, he said.

The higher need are the people who are symptomatic, Murphy said. There the ones who, if they have COVID, they should be given priority to the testing because those are the people you really do want to have isolated, particularly if there's an underlying health condition.

AFC Urgent Care has seen demand rise for COVID tests in recent weeks.

As soon as the news started breaking as far as omicron, I think many folks started panicking, said Kaushik Makati, spokesman with AFC Urgent Care, which has three locations in Danbury.

He added the increase in COVID exposures has also caused testing demand to be quite strong. For about 1 1/2 months, AFC has started handing out tickets to patients lined up at the center for a COVID test.

Those tickets are pretty much exhausted within the first hour, he said.

In fact, demand is about the same as it was this time last year, when the state and country faced a surge, Makati said.

We may even have seen a slight increase from last year, he said.

Thanks to the vaccine, however, the situation isnt as dire, he said. Vaccinated individuals generally experience less serious symptoms than those without the vaccine, helping people to feel more confident, he said.

Were in a little better place than we were last year as more folks are getting vaccinated, Makati said.

Where can you get tested?

Drive-thru COVID-19 testing is available from SEMA4 at the Pat Waldron Building on Memorial Drive and the Police Activities League Building at Hayestown Road. The company announced last week that it plans to end its contract with the state in January.

For now, free testing is available from 3 to 7 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays, as well as 10 a.m. to 2 pm Saturdays, as the Pat Waldon Building. The PAL Building offers testing from 3 to 7 p.m. Thursdays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Fridays.

Nuvance Health, the Community Health Center and the Connecticut Institute for Communities offer COVID testing for their patients.

Demand for testing at Nuvance Health Medical Practices has increased substantively, Dr. Cornelius Ferreira, Nuvance Health medical practices primary care, said in a statement. We are reserving testing supplies for sick care and referring those looking for travel-related testing to community resources.

The Connecticut Institute for Communities in Danbury and the Community Health Center, which has locations across the state, including on Delay Street in Danbury, offered drive-thru testing for the community until June 30, when their contracts with the state expired.

Both federally-qualified health centers said theyd restart community testing if needed.

CHC is willing to stand up community based testing if the state requests it of us, said Amy Taylor, vice president of the western region.

Demand for tests among patients has been significant, she said.

State officials told the Connecticut Institute for Communities that theyve already contracted with a different provider to fill the hole that Sema4 will leave, said Katie Curran, president and CEO of CIFC.

Were going to keep watching the need here and just see how it increases, she said. We always want to be able to step in to help where needed, assuming we have the workforce to be able to support that.

Staff are needed for primary care health services, as well as COVID vaccines. On some days, more than 200 people have walked into the 132 Main St. clinic for boosters or pediatric vaccines, Curran said.

Through a new federal initiative, CIFC on Tuesday planned to order at-home COVID testing kits that can be distributed to its patients and the community for free.

Curran said she plans to order as many as we can.

Obviously increased access to at home testing is really important to stop the spread of COVID-19 and keep people home who are sick, she said.

The nonprofit is developing a plan for how to distribute the kits, but plans to prioritize its patients first. CIFC serves more than 15,000 low- and- moderate-income patients.

At AFC, the number of tickets available for COVID testing varies, but could range from 75 to more than 100, Makati said.

It depends on each center and the staffing that we have within that center on that particular day, he said. The more staffed we are, the more we can accommodate.

AFC offers its urgent care services, on top of COVID testing, he said. Existing staff are working to meet the demand for both, while the company is recruiting additional employees.

Its stressing (for) our staff, as well, Makati said. Anyone in health care can tell you that theyre tired.
Hearst Connecticut Media file photo

SOUTHBURY  State police are seeking information about a single-vehicle rollover crash that occurred over the weekend on Interstate 84.

A 2005 Honda Civic was found on its roof with no occupants inside in the area of westbound Exit 13 around 3:23 a.m. Saturday, according to authorities.
PHOENIX (AP)  A month after his acquittal on murder charges, Kyle Rittenhouse was given a standing ovation at a conservative groups conference in Phoenix where panelists discussed the 2020 deadly shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Most of the comments during Mondays discussion were made by other panelists, but the 18-year-old Rittenhouse reflected on how the trial had matured him and about his decision to take the stand to provide his account of the shootings.
Bradley Buchbinder/Getty Images/iStockphoto

EUGENE, Ore. (AP)  As the highly transmissible omicron variant spreads across the country, University of Oregon students, faculty and staff will be required to get a COVID-19 booster shot as soon as they are eligible, school officials announced Monday.

Currently the university and the states six other public universities require COVID-19 vaccinations for those on campus. As of Monday afternoon, the University of Oregon is the only public university in the state to publicly announce a booster requirement.
OTTAWA, ON, Dec. 21, 2021 /CNW/ -- As we step into a new year, the International Fund for Animal for Animal Welfare (IFAW) looks back on some key 'animal wins' in Canada in 2021 that have helped build momentum towards improved conservation and a world where both animals and people thrive together.

Some of the 'animal wins' in Canada include:

Zero reported deaths of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales in Canadian waters. With only an estimated 336 whales currently remaining in this struggling population, the reduction in reported deaths is a hopeful and encouraging sign, and is thought to be driven in part by the implementation of reduced shipping speeds and fisheries closures in Canadian waters frequented by right whales;

Canada launched a public consultation on the future of the elephant ivory trade in Canada on the heels of efforts by the United States , United Kingdom , and European Union, taking stricter measures to restrict domestic ivory trade and protect elephants from poaching;

launched a public consultation on the future of the elephant ivory trade in on the heels of efforts by , , and European Union, taking stricter measures to restrict domestic ivory trade and protect elephants from poaching; For the second year in a row, the reported number of seals killed during Canada's commercial East coast seal hunt remained at its lowest point in 35 years and continuing a steep, long-term decline;

commercial East coast seal hunt remained at its lowest point in 35 years and continuing a steep, long-term decline; The Minister of Environment and Climate Change was specifically instructed by the Prime Minister of Canada to introduce legislation to protect animals in captivity and to work with partners to curb illegal wildlife trade and end elephant and rhinoceros tusk trade;

to introduce legislation to protect animals in captivity and to work with partners to curb illegal wildlife trade and end elephant and rhinoceros tusk trade; For only the second winter since 2005, the strychnine bait program used to kill wolves in Alberta was not implemented. Both inhumane and indiscriminate, strychnine poison permeates down the food chain, killing and harming numerous non-target species including both endangered species and pets; and

was implemented. Both inhumane and indiscriminate, strychnine poison permeates down the food chain, killing and harming numerous non-target species including both endangered species and pets; and Over 150 dogs and puppies were rehomed as part of IFAW's Northern Dogs Project, a comprehensive dog management program implemented with First Nations people in both rural and remote communities across Canada

"Despite the ongoing challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, we welcome the successes that 2021 has brought for animals in Canada," said Patricia Zaat, IFAW's Country Director for Canada. "Continuing to drive meaningful change, both legislatively and in our personal lives, will continue to create the momentum necessary to ensure the critical long-term conservation of Canada's magnificent wildlife. We are grateful that IFAW has played a role in promoting such critical stewardship."

To learn more about IFAW and its ongoing efforts in Canada, please visit https://www.ifaw.org/ca-en.

About IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare)

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is a global non-profit helping animals and people thrive together. We are experts and everyday people, working across seas, oceans, and in more than 40 countries around the world. We rescue, rehabilitate, and release animals, and we restore and protect their natural habitats. The problems we're up against are urgent and complicated. To solve them, we match fresh thinking with bold action. We partner with local communities, governments, non-governmental organizations, and businesses. Together, we pioneer new and innovative ways to help all species flourish. See how at ifaw.org.

Contact: Rodger Correa

+1.202.834-6637, [email protected]

SOURCE International Fund for Animal Welfare
GATINEAU, QC, Dec. 21, 2021 /CNW/ - Significantly reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector is a critical part of Canada's climate plan to reduce greenhouse gas pollution in the oil and gas sector. These reductions will improve air quality, drive innovation in the industry, and help to transition the sector to net-zero emissions by 2050.

The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, released a report confirming that Canada is on track to meet the goal of reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 4045 percent by 2025. The review, ordered as part of Canada's strengthened climate plan, provides a current snapshot of the quickly evolving federal methane regime. The current federal methane regulations and equivalency agreements with the provinces are expected to generate approximately 10 million tonnes (Mt) of emission reductions in carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025, representing a 39 percent reduction in methane emissions from 2012 levels. Complementary initiatives such as funding programs at the federal, provincial and private sector level will achieve additional reductions, bringing the total expected reductions by 2025 into the 4045 percent target range.

The work to date sets a strong foundation for continued progress on reducing methane emissions. It provides a solid basis for launching consultations in early 2022 on new federal regulations that will be developed to reduce oil and gas methane emissions by at least 75 percent by 2030 compared with 2012 levels.

Building on actions taken to achieve its 2025 oil and gas methane target, the Government is implementing a suite of measures that include:

Strengthening the Emissions Reduction Fund to achieve further emissions reductions before 2025 and beyond to 2030;

Improving quantification of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector in the 2022 edition of the National Inventory Report;

Working with international partners, including the United States , to identify best practices, improve measuring and reporting, and drive low-cost reductions in the sector; and

, to identify best practices, improve measuring and reporting, and drive low-cost reductions in the sector; and Developing a plan to reduce methane emissions across the broader Canadian economy in support of the Global Methane Pledge and the goals in Canada's climate plan.

The Government of Canada is also developing an approach to cap and cut oil and gas sector emissions, implementing the Clean Fuel Standard to accelerate the adoption of cleaner fuels, and putting a price on carbon pollution through to 2030.

Together, these measures support Minister Guilbeault's mandate letter from the Prime Minister, which included instructions to "further reduce methane emissions across the economy."

The Government remains committed to achieving its 2025 target for oil and gas methane emissions and will continue to monitor and report on progress in this regard. Achieving this goal is an essential part of the Government's efforts to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 percent by 2030. That is why Canada was one of the first countries in the world to regulate methane emissions from the oil and gas sector at the national leveland more recently became the first to commit to at least a 75 percent reduction by 2030.

The Government will consult the provinces and territories, Indigenous peoples, industry, and civil society in the design of regulations to achieve at least a 75 percent reduction in methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 2030. In early 2022, Environment and Climate Change Canada will publish a discussion paper and hold targeted consultations on this new measure.

Quotes

"Tackling methane emissions from the oil and gas sector is one of the lowest-cost emissions reduction opportunities in Canada, and one of the most important things we can do to limit climate warming over the next decade. New methodologies and data will inform our continued progress towards our 2025 target. It is a vital time for international and global action on methane emissions, and I look forward to building on our progress and to working with the provinces, industry, environmental organizations, and others to develop regulations to further reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector that achieve at least a 75 percent reduction by 2030 from 2012 levels."

 The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change

"The changes we're making to the third intake of the Emissions Reduction Fund Onshore Program will ensure our government is investing in high-impact projects aimed at delivering additional emissions reductions sooner than through regulation, while investing in infrastructure that supports Canada's climate targets. This will help us reduce methane emissions from Canada's oil and gas sector."

 The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resources

Quick facts

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) and short-lived climate pollutant that has 86 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a 20 year period after being released into the atmosphere.

Methane accounts for 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, principally from the energy, agriculture, and waste sectors.

The benefits of current Canadian oil and gas methane policies are substantial, with about 17 million tonnes of GHG emissions reductions (in CO 2 eq) expected per year by 2025, relative to 2012 levels.

eq) expected per year by 2025, relative to 2012 levels. In 2016, Canada set a target of reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 4045 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 and has put in place regulations to help achieve that target, making it one of the first countries in the world to regulate methane emissions from the oil and gas sector at the national level.

set a target of reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 4045 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 and has put in place regulations to help achieve that target, making it one of the first countries in the world to regulate methane emissions from the oil and gas sector at the national level. The report fulfills a commitment from the Government of Canada to review the effectiveness of the existing federal oil and gas methane regulations, and to report on the efficacy of the suite of federal actions to achieve a 4045 percent reduction in oil and gas methane emissions by 2025.

to review the effectiveness of the existing federal oil and gas methane regulations, and to report on the efficacy of the suite of federal actions to achieve a 4045 percent reduction in oil and gas methane emissions by 2025. This review reflects input from the provinces and Indigenous groups, as well as environmental groups and industry. Environment and Climate Change Canada also completed emissions analysis and modelling based on projected oil and gas production.

In October 2021 , the Government of Canada confirmed its support for the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to reduce methane emissions around the world by 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030 and committed to reducing methane emissions across the broader Canadian economy for 2030, and to developing regulations to reduce oil and gas methane emissions by at least 75 percent below 2012 levels by 2030.

Associated links

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Twitter page

Environment and Climate Change Canada's Facebook page

SOURCE Environment and Climate Change Canada

For further information: Gabriel Brunet, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-665-6527, [email protected]; Media Relations, Environment and Climate Change Canada, 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll-free), [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.ec.gc.ca


TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2021 /CNW/ - The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) and Restaurants Canada issued a joint open letter to all Premiers urging them to provide financial support to small businesses facing renewed lockdowns, restrictions and loss of business in the face of the Omicron variant. The full statement is copied below.

Dear Premiers:

We are writing to ask for your immediate help. With many public health officials ringing Omicron alarm bells across Canada, many small businesses are, once again, deeply affected. Most provinces have now announced a fresh round of restrictions, on top of the ongoing restrictions like vaccine passport requirements that exist across the country. In addition, the panic that has set in among the public has meant that, even in areas that have not added fresh restrictions, many more consumers are staying home, cancelling reservations and events and doing their shopping online.

Even before Omicron fears, nearly two-thirds of small firms across Canada have not seen sales return to normal levels. And of this group, nearly a quarter report their business may fail within the next six months.

The need for significant and immediate financial help is critical. You may have been led to believe that with the passage of Bill C-2, the federal government has renewed the wage and rent subsidy system that has helped tens of thousands of businesses survive the pandemic so far. This is incorrect. The new federal support programs are incredibly limited in scope. CFIB's pre-Omicron data showed that 80 per cent of small businesses in need of help will no longer qualify. The more generous Tourism and Hospitality Program requires a 40 per cent loss both in the current month and over the past 12 months. And the Hardest Hit Recovery Program for other businesses requires a 50 per cent current and 12 month loss to qualify. Consider the following:

A restaurant that has a 35 per cent revenue decline will now receive zero support from Ottawa .

. A retailer with a 45 per cent revenue decline will now receive zero support from Ottawa .

. The federal "lockdown" support, which increases the amount of subsidy, is only available to businesses that have much of their operations fully locked down. Those facing a 50 per cent capacity restriction, are ineligible.

Put frankly, tens of thousands of small firms across Canada will receive no support from governments while government restrictions dramatically reduce their ability to serve customers and public health warnings frighten many consumers into staying home.

We urge you to ensure public health officials do not heighten the panic and fear among the public. We urge you to reconsider new or existing restrictions. We urge you to lift restrictions at their earliest opportunity.

But as Omicron panic has now set in and consumers are cancelling travel, events, reservations and shifting purchases once again to large online retailers, more than anything, we urge you to ensure proper support funding is in place to help small businesses survive. We need you to:

Immediately announce a fresh round of provincial small business grants. Urge the federal government to return the wage and rent subsidy to the levels used in the spring of 2021 (available to all firms on a sliding scale as a percentage of their revenue losses to a maximum of 75 per cent). Urge the federal government to revise extra "lockdown" supports to ensure they are available to businesses facing significant capacity restrictions. Urge the federal government to reopen the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loan program with a larger loan, a larger forgivable portion and delayed repayment requirements. Urge the federal government to ensure new firms are able to qualify for all programs.

As rapid action is critical, we urge you to push both privately and publicly for these measures. CFIB and Restaurants Canada stand ready to work with you in the days ahead.

Sincerely,

Dan Kelly

President and CEO

CFIB

Todd Barclay

President and CEO

Restaurants Canada

cc. Finance Ministers, PM Trudeau, DPM Freeland

About CFIB

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) is Canada's largest association of small and medium-sized businesses with 95,000 members across every industry and region. CFIB is dedicated to increasing business owners' chances of success by driving policy change at all levels of government, providing expert advice and tools, and negotiating exclusive savings. Learn more at cfib.ca.

About Restaurants Canada

Restaurants Canada is a national, not-for-profit association advancing the potential of Canada's diverse and dynamic foodservice industry through member programs, research, advocacy, resources and events. Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada's foodservice sector was a $95 billion industry, directly employing 1.2 million people, providing Canada's number one source of first jobs and serving 22 million customers across the country every day. The industry has since lost hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in sales due to the impacts of COVID-19. Learn more at restaurantscanada.org.

SOURCE Canadian Federation of Independent Business

For further information: For media enquiries or interviews, please contact: Milena Stanoeva, CFIB, 647-464-2814, [email protected]; Roberto Sarjoo, Restaurants Canada, 416-649-4213, [email protected]

Related Links

https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/


GUELPH, ON, Dec. 21, 2021 /CNW/ - Today, on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Member of Parliament Lloyd Longfield announced an investment up to $275,000 to Farm & Food Care Ontario, through the AgriCompetitiveness Program, to help Canadian consumers learn more about food production, farming and the people who work in the Canadian agriculture and agri-food sectors.

With Canadians showing an increased interest in where their food comes from, it's important for consumers to hear from farmers about our safe, high-quality food systems. Funds will be administered by Farm & Food Care Ontario and will work with partners in Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan to reach Canadians across the country by supporting the development of website materials including videos, photos and articles, and virtual tours that are accessible for all Canadians.

Helping Canadian consumers understand the process of how food is brought from a farm to their tables opens up more opportunities for Canadians to support farmers in their communities and help the sector thrive. The project also provides resources for food influencers by leading farm tours and by producing a quarterly national newsletter for Canadian food influencers. All of these activities will increase consumer knowledge of how food is produced and processed in Canada.

This project is aligned with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's AgriCommunication Initiative, which supports progress towards achieving the vision established in the Food Policy for Canada, that all people in Canada are able to access a sufficient amount of safe, nutritious, and culturally diverse food. This, in turn, will increase appreciation and pride in Canada's farmers and food businesses.

Quotes

"The Government of Canada is committed to strengthening public trust within the sector, as it helps increase appreciation and pride in our farmers and food businesses. It's important that consumers are aware of Canada's food system, as it's resilient and innovative, sustains our environment and supports our economy. Farm & Food Care Ontario will share positive stories and give a greater understanding to consumers about how their food is produced. The greater confidence and trust Canadians have in the food system, the greater position the sector will be in the future."

- The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food

"Today's investment to Farm & Food Care Ontario aims to build bridges between members of the sector and Canadian consumers through various activities. By strengthening these relationships, Canadians will have a greater interest in the sector and strengthen it due to understanding and confidence in the food system."

- Lloyd Longfield, Member of Parliament for Guelph

"The Farm & Food Care organizations in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island were created with mandates to provide credible information on food and farming across Canada. The three groups are extremely appreciative of the support of Agriculture and Agri Food Canada in supporting valuable public trust initiatives executed both digitally and through events planned across Canada. This funding will enable Farm & Food Care to create new tools and programs, and further expand existing programming designed to directly answer questions about Canadian food and farming."

- Bonnie den Haan, Chair, Farm & Food Care Ontario

Quick Facts

The Canadian Agricultural Partnership is a five-year (2018-2023), $3-billion investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments to strengthen and grow Canada's agriculture and agri-food sector.

investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments to strengthen and grow agriculture and agri-food sector. The AgriCompetitiveness Program is a five-year program, under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, that helps the agricultural sector: leverage, coordinate and build on existing capacity; enhance safety; adapt to changing commercial and regulatory environments; seize new opportunities; share best practices, and provide mentorship opportunities.

The AgriCommunication Program is a 3-year, up to $8 million federal initiative that will focus specifically on supporting activities which increase appreciation and pride in the contributions of farmers and the food industry and enhance public trust. The activities will help strengthen public trust about the origin of the food Canadians eat and how it is produced.

federal initiative that will focus specifically on supporting activities which increase appreciation and pride in the contributions of farmers and the food industry and enhance public trust. The activities will help strengthen public trust about the origin of the food Canadians eat and how it is produced. Farm & Food Care Ontario is a registered Canadian charity and whole-sector coalition made up of representatives from all farming types and associated businesses and positions itself as the helpful expert on Ontario agriculture.

Additional Links

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Web: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

SOURCE Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

For further information: Marianne Dandurand, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, [email protected], 343-541-9229; Media Relations: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 1-866-345-7972, [email protected]

Related Links

www.agr.gc.ca


OTTAWA, ON, Dec. 20, 2021 /CNW/ - Today the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, announced the reappointment of Patricia Farnese and Marthanne Robson to the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal.

Ms. Farnese has been reappointed for a three-year term, effective December 13, 2021. She has been a member of the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal since 2018 and was previously vice-chair of the Practitioner Staff Appeals Tribunal in Saskatchewan. Ms. Farnese is a lawyer and Law Professor at the University of Saskatchewan. In addition to her undergraduate degrees, Ms. Farnese holds a Masters of Laws degree in Agricultural Law from the University of Arkansas. Her published research critiques both the design and implementation of agri-environmental policies, including policies intended to promote the wise-use of wetlands, animal health and infectious diseases.

Ms. Robson has been reappointed for a three-year term, effective December 14, 2021. She has been a member of the Canadian Agricultural Review Tribunal since 2017 and was previously vice-chair of the Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal from 2006 to 2016. Ms. Robson obtained her common law degree (LL.B.) from the University of Ottawa, is currently a member of the Law Society of Ontario, and was a member of the Barreau du Quebec for 20 years. Ms. Robson is very active in her community as a volunteer and is a co-founder and partner of the Ethical Investors Group of Montreal.

In 2016, the Government of Canada implemented an open, transparent and merit-based process for selecting Governor in Council appointees. Appointees play a fundamental role in Canada's democracy by serving on commissions, boards, Crown corporations, agencies and tribunals across the country.

Quote

"The Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal acts to balance our rights while protecting the health and well-being of consumers and enhancing the economic vibrancy of Canadian agriculture. I am pleased to announce the reappointment of Ms. Farnese and Ms. Robson to the Tribunal where their valuable experience and knowledge of food security and agri-food law will continue to be an asset."

- The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Quick facts

The Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal is an independent, quasi-judicial body established by the Government of Canada to provide impartial reviews of notices of violation issued by federal agencies regulating agriculture and food.

to provide impartial reviews of notices of violation issued by federal agencies regulating agriculture and food. Members of the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal are appointed by the Governor in Council upon the recommendation of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

Additional Links

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Web: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

SOURCE Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

For further information: Marianne Dandurand, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, [email protected], 343-541-9229; Media Relations: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 1-866-345-7972, [email protected]

Related Links

www.agr.gc.ca


DAVID SHARPE, File No. 2021-26

and

BRIDGING FINANCE INC., DAVID SHARPE, BRIDGING INCOME FUND LP, BRIDGING MID-MARKET DEBT FUND LP, BRIDGING INCOME RSP FUND, BRIDGING MID-MARKET DEBT RSP FUND, BRIDGING PRIVATE DEBT INSTITUTIONAL LP, BRIDGING REAL ESTATE LENDING FUND LP, BRIDGING SMA 1 LP, BRIDGING INFRASTRUCTURE FUND LP, AND BRIDGING INDIGENOUS IMPACT FUND, File No. 2021-15

TORONTO, Dec. 20, 2021 /CNW/ - The Commission issued an Order in the above named matter.

A copy of the Order dated December 20, 2021 is available at www.osc.ca

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY

GRACE KNAKOWSKI

SECRETARY TO THE COMMISSION

SOURCE Ontario Securities Commission

For further information: For Media Inquiries: [email protected]; For General Inquiries: 1-877-785-1555 (Toll Free), [email protected]

Related Links

https://www.osc.ca/


This award recognizes Operadora's efforts to go beyond the current legal regulations and to implement the highest level of environmental best practices. In addition, the award recognizes the donation of 1,500 native trees as part of a reforestation program in the area.

Javier Cordova, Soma's CEO, states, "It's encouraging and gratifying for us to receive this recognition in the first year of operating Operadora as a 100% subsidiary of Soma. We are committed to our ESG program, which is a top priority in all our operations. This award demonstrates our commitment not only to comply with all environmental and legal regulations but to exceed them. We are devoted to maintaining a sustainable operation by adhering to best practices in environmental, social and governance policies. For example, Operadora generates its own processing power at its hydroelectric power station. We plant trees to offset our carbon footprint and sponsor on-going programs with local communities to strengthen their social and administrative capabilities."



ABOUT SOMA GOLD

Soma Gold Corp. (TSXV: SOMA) (OTCQB: SMAGF) (WKN: A2P4DU) is a mining company focused on gold production and exploration. The Company owns two adjacent mining properties in Antioquia, Colombia with a combined milling capacity of 675 TBD (permitted for 1,400 TBD). The El Bagre Mill is currently operating and producing. Internally generated funds are being used to finance a regional exploration program.

The Company also owns an exploration and development property near Tucuma, Para State, Brazil.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Javier Cordova Unda"

Chief Executive Officer and President

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.

All statements, analysis and other information contained in this press release about anticipated future events or results constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect" and "intend" and statements that an event or result "may", "will", "should", "could" or "might" occur or be achieved and other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are subject to business and economic risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results of operations to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and opinions of management at the date the statements are made. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements even if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable laws. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Soma Gold Corp.

For further information: please contact Andrea Laird, telephone: +1-604-259-0302
The meeting comes after the Foreign Ministers of Central Asian countries took part in the Third meeting of the India-Central Asia Dialogue, which was chaired by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the Foreign Ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on Monday and discussed ways to further strengthen Indias close partnership with Central Asia.

PM Modi exchanged views with Foreign Ministers of Central Asian countries on the developments in the region.

Met the Foreign Ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. We discussed ways to further strengthen Indias close partnership with Central Asia, and also exchanged views on developments in the region, the Prime Minister said in a tweet on Monday.

The Central Asian Foreign Ministers conveyed the greetings of their Presidents to Prime Minister Modi and emphasised the readiness of their leadership to further strengthen relations with India.

The meeting comes after the Foreign Ministers of Central Asian countries took part in the Third meeting of the India-Central Asia Dialogue, which was chaired by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

PM Modi underlined the importance that New Delhi attaches to its long-standing relations with Central Asian countries, which are part of its Extended Neighbourhood. He also underscored the potential of enhanced economic cooperation between India and Central Asia and the role of connectivity in that regard.
The campaign seeks the expulsion of an alleged "Indian military presence" in the Maldives. Male has already denied claims of any such military presence in the archipelago.

Former Maldives President Abdulla Yameen speaking at a demonstration as part of the 'India Out' campaign.

Former Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen is spearheading an anti-India campaign in the island nation. The campaign seeks the expulsion of an alleged Indian military presence in the Maldives. Male has already denied claims of any such military presence in the archipelago. Notably, earlier this month, the Indian Army and the Maldives National Defence Force partook in the joint military exercise, Exercise Ekuverin, in the Maldives.

Yameen, whose five-year prison sentence over money laundering charges was revoked by the Supreme Court of Maldives in November, is well known for his pro-China political stance. In 2018, India condemned the crackdown on political opponents by Yameens China-backed government in Maldives during a state of emergency. Moreover, appeals for an Indian military intervention by Abdulla Yameens rivals sent his regime into a panic mode.

In an apparent reference to the India Out campaign led by Abdulla Yameens Progressive Party of Maldives, the Maldivian government on Saturday expressed its concern over the attempts on spreading false information regarding ties with India. The statement said, The Government of Maldives is profoundly concerned by the attempts to spread misguided and unsubstantiated information to propagate hatred towards India, one of the closest bilateral partners of the Maldives by a small group of individuals and a few political personalities.

President Solih-led Maldivian government also said that false allegations regarding bilateral ties tarnishes the relations with trusted allies who extends consistent support to the Maldivian people.

Earlier this year, a report by the Colombo Information Agency warned about an information war waged against India to generate anti-India sentiments in Maldivians. The information was unearthed following extensive analysis of the #IndiaOut hashtag in the Maldivian social media space since 2019.
A total of 60 Chinese planes have been tracked in Taiwan's ADIZ so far this month, including 36 fighter jets, two bombers, and 22 spotter planes.

A Chinese military plane flew into Taiwans air defence identification zone on Sunday. A single Peoples Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Shaanxi Y-8 electronic warfare plane entered the southwest corner of the ADIZ, according to the Ministry of National Defense (MND). In response, Taiwan sent aircraft, issued radio warnings, and deployed air defense missile systems to track the PLAAF planes, Taiwan News reported.

A total of 60 Chinese planes have been tracked in Taiwans ADIZ so far this month, including 36 fighter jets, two bombers, and 22 spotter planes. Chinese military aircraft have been monitored in the identification zone every day this month except for on Dec. 5, 12, and 17.

China has been regularly sending warplanes into Taiwans air defence zone.

Taiwans defence ministry has been publishing information about such flights since September 17 last year, amid a growing incidence of intrusions into its ADIZ by Chinese military planes.

Air defence identification zones are early warning systems that help countries detect incursions into their airspace.

Any aircraft entering such an area is supposed to report its route and purpose to the host nation, though the zones are classified as international airspace and pilots are not legally bound to make such a notification.

Since mid-September of last year, Beijing has stepped up its grey-zone tactics by regularly sending planes into Taiwans ADIZ, with most instances occurring in the southwest corner of the zone and usually consisting of one to three slow-flying turboprop planes.

Beijing claims full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.

Taipei, on the other hand, has countered the Chinese aggression by increasing strategic ties with democracies including the US, which has been repeatedly opposed by Beijing. China has threatened that Taiwans independence means war.
Heading into the Christmas weekend, the blues schedule is a little light, but some major acts are playing around the region, and others are getting ready for New Years Eve. If you are looking to go out, start making reservations now.

On Tuesday, NRBQ will be at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center. NRBQ is often called one of Americas National Treasures. You might think that after 50 years a band would want to settle down and just relax, but not these guys  Terry Adams, Scott Ligon, Casey McDonough, and John Perrin. NRBQ stands for New Rhythm and Blues Quartet. NRBQ have attracted accolades and respect from talent as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Doc Pomus, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, and Penn & Teller. The bands songs have been performed by a multitude of artists.

Wednesday, The Founders are at the Knickerbocker Music Center. Many people ask how did the Westerly area become the birthplace of East Coast blues? The answer is Copley, James, Lataille, Piccolo and Robillard, aka The Founders. These world-renowned musicians, along with a few others from right in our own backyard, have played alongside Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn and countless others, with performances spanning the globe.

Forming Roomful of Blues as young men, they went on to pack dance floor as well as stadiums throughout their careers. Today, the group continues performing the quality they started  dust off your dance shoes, grab a friend and get ready for a swinging night of music.

A Christmas Party with Johnny Larsen Band featuring Carolyn Rae is Sunday at 3:30 p.m. at the Brass Horse Cafe. Also Sunday, The New Incredible Amplifires are at the Steak Loft, providing great Chicago blues for dancing. The New Amps feature Dave Robbins on harp and vocals, Ryan Newman on guitar, Mark Hennessy on drums and Tim Leffingwell on bass.

Blues On The Rocks has a Thursday date at Scotch Plains Tavern.

Daryls House has other big shows this week. Live At The Fillmore appears Tuesday. The band has become the most popular and best-known tribute to the original Allman Brothers Band. Great attention is paid to recreating the music with an unparalleled degree of authenticity. The band has been chosen as the featured performer for next years Time Life Southern Rock Cruise, and received rave reviews for the Spring 2017 performance on national television, part of Axs TVs Worlds Greatest Tribute Bands.

Then Thursday, Daryls House bring in the larger-than-life blues figure with a unique brand of blues rock n funky soul, Popa Chubby.

Popa Chubby has a lot of reasons to feel lucky this year, which marks his continued presence a powerful force in the New York blues scene with his very own band. Hell celebrate the only way he knows how: hard hitting.

Its been 25 years and Im still standing, declares Popa Chubby, and considering the long and rugged road hes had to travel, that in itself is a miracle. From his beginning in the late 70s as a bad kid with an afro and a brand new Gibson Midnight Special guitar to his stint as a punk rock sideman for Screaming Mad George and Richard Hell, among others, to signing a deal with Sony and releasing one of the top selling blues albums of 1994  the phenomenal Booty And The Beast  Popa Chubby has seen it all and lived to tell about it on more than a dozen studio albums!

On Thursday, the Turning Point Cafe has The Roues Brothers for a blues-rock bash.

Recently, Alligator Records founder and president Bruce Iglauer was honored with the French Charles Cros Academy In Honorem Award. As a live ceremony is not possible this year, the highly coveted award was announced by host Alex Dutilh on his Open Jazz radio show on France Musique.

According to the Academie Charles Cros, Members of the Jazz and Blues and Soul commissions have unanimously agreed to award this distinction to Bruce Iglauer, founder of Alligator Records, the independent label which has carried the colors of the blues high for 50 years, on the occasion of the release of 50 Years of Genuine Houserockin Music (Alligator / Socadisc).

Iglauer is thrilled to received this recognition, saying,I am extremely honored to have Alligator Records receive this award. I accept it in the name of all the Alligator artists, from Hound Dog Taylor in 1971 to Christone Kingfish Ingram today, who have lived the blues and carried the tradition forward. The slogan of Alligator is Genuine Houserockin Music. We hope that the rockin means that our music not only rocks your body, but hopefully rocks your soul. Again, thank you.

Alligator Records was born in 1971,when 23-year-old blues fan Bruce Iglauer spent his savings to record and release a record by his favorite Chicago blues band, Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers. He created Alligator Records to release that one LP. Today, Alligator boasts a catalog of over 350 titles, many of which are renowned, award-winning, time-tested classics of the genre.

See the Connecticut Blues Society for more gig listings: https://www.ctblues.org/weekly-calendar Any questions or comments should be sent to Domenic Forcella at TWBlus@aol.com.
The classic Christmas song "Oh Little town of Bethlehem" may refer to the birthplace of Jesus, but Connecticut has its own Bethlehem that, for obvious reasons, has become known as the state's "Christmas Town."

Bethlehem was incorporated in 1787 and named after the town in Palestine near Jerusalem where Jesus is said to have been born. It hosted the first theological seminary in the United States, according to connecticuthistory.org, and is also home to the Abbey of Regina Laudis, a monastic community of contemplative Benedictine women, which was founded in 1947.

Because of its Christmas-themed name, people began to travel to the small Litchfield County town to get their Christmas cards postmarked in Bethlehem. Every December, the Bethlehem post office handles more than 200,000 pieces of mail  a 1,000 percent higher volume than the rest of the year  according to connecticuthistory.org.

"There's people that come from the surrounding areas just to mail their cards," said George Murdock, chairman of the Bethlehem Christmas Holiday Festival.

Bethlehem also has its own unique stamps (or "cachets") from the post office. According to state historians, this tradition started in 1938 when, a week before Christmas, the city's postmaster Earl Johnson decided to send out a Christmas card with a drawing of a small tree and the words "Merry Christmas from the little Town of Bethlehem."

But during the 1950s, the small town's postal office became too overwhelmed.

"The town stationed police officers at the post office to control traffic," wrote Gregg Mangan for connecticuthistory.org. During the 1950s and 60s, the town also set up an unofficial postal station to handle the volume of customers wanting to stamp their outgoing mail with the festive cachets, according to Mangan.

Today, residents can just visit the post office and stamp their mail at the office's lobby. Residents from both Connecticut and neighboring states travel to Bethlehem to mark their Christmas cards with the more than 80 unique "cachets" from the post office.

RELATED: 5 cute Connecticut towns for holiday charm

Another reason Bethlehem is known as Connecticut's Christmas Town is because of its famous festival.

Since 1981, Bethlehem has hosted the "Christmas Holiday Festival," a free event celebrated in early December. The festival originated after the town's Memorial Hall caught on fire and need to be rebuilt, according to Murdock.

"Residents in town felt because of the name of our town, they should put together a Christmas Festival to help pay for the building," said Murdock. To this day, the festival's profits go towards the maintenance of the Memorial Hall.

Entry to the festival is free and residents can enjoy live events and a wide variety of vendors. An 85 foot tree is lit up during the first day of the festival, and on the second day, visitors can participate in a 5k race. In 1982, a year after the festival started, it began selling Christmas ornaments for residents to collect.

"We only make one production run of the ornaments and each is stamped with a sequential number," said Murdock. This year, there were 1,150 ornaments available. The $10 ornaments can be found in local stores around town.

Last year, the festival was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but this year's festival was celebrated Dec. 3-4.

"What we do is we put smiles on a lot of people's faces going into the holiday season, and hopefully create some lasting memories for these people," said Murdock.
After 300 intimate partner deaths in 20 years, has enough changed?

We reviewed hundreds of pages of police reports, criminal case filings and court data related to intimate partner violence in Connecticut. Here are our key findings.
Bjoern Wylezich / TNS

Connecticut authorities have charged a former Meriden resident in a Medicaid fraud scheme, alleging he submitted hundreds of fake claims for services that were never provided, netting almost $44,000.

Thomas Thurber, of Bayfield, Colo., was arrested Monday by inspectors for the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in the office of Chief States Attorney Richard Colangelo, the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice said in a statement. He was charged with one count first-degree larceny by defrauding a public community, and one count health insurance fraud, the agency said.
Connecticuts bipartisan Reapportionment Commission failed to meet a deadline of noon Tuesday to agree on congressional districts, setting the stage for a court-appointed special master to take over the task.

The deadlock arises less from differences among state legislators on the panel than the reluctance of the all-Democratic congressional delegation to accept even the smallest losses of political advantage ahead of the midterm elections.

The falling approval ratings of President Joe Biden, a narrow House Democratic majority, and the historic trend of the presidents party losing seats in the midterms all contribute to a sense of volatility in 2022.

I think the enormity of whats happening in Washington, the toxicity, the feeling of the tipping balance of Congress, everybody feels that on both sides, said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford.

Were right now at an impasse, so were going back to court, said House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford.

The impasse was unexpected, given that Democrats and Republicans had agreed on attempting to draw a map that would equalize populations of the five districts without significantly shifting the balance of power.

On behalf of the commission, the attorney generals office notified the Supreme Court of the impasse, saying Republicans and Democrats separately would suggest the names of a special master.

The court had asked the commission to agree on three potential names.

Commission members said they would continue working on a map, but final approval has rested with the Supreme Court since the commission missed a Nov. 30 constitutional deadline.

The court, however, had indicated it would defer to the commission if it produced a map by Dec. 21.

While the members of the congressional delegation have no official role in the process, their consent is sought as a matter of tradition.

Democrats on the commission who have taken calls from congressional representatives declined to share details of those talks, but the lack of consent is evident.

Its fair to say that theres no map to date that seems to get unanimous support, Ritter said.

Ritter said no one has a veto.

Republicans were circumspect about any talks with the congressional delegation.

We are not communicating with the congressional delegation or Republican candidates, Candelora said.

Deputy House Minority Leader Jason Perillo, R-Shelton, also a commission member, said the Democrats and Republicans on the commission have worked well, unanimously agreeing on the House and Senate maps for the General Assembly.

But it sounds like there may be some external forces playing a role in finalizing the congressional map, he said.

The current map was negated 20 years ago after Connecticut lost one of its six seats.

With a bipartisan commission, no party can dictate a result. Deadlocks essentially are broken by the Supreme Court, which made only the minimal changes required 10 years ago to equalize the populations of the districts.

Connecticut grew by not quite 32,000 people in the past decade, mostly in Fairfield County. Hartford, as well as rural communities in eastern Connecticut, lost population.

The sprawling 2nd District of eastern Connecticut needs to pick up another 21,288 residents, while the 4th District of lower Fairfield County needs to get more geographically compact and shed 25,627 people.

The population deviations are smaller in the other districts: the 1st and 3rd are under by 3,535 and 5,829, respectively, while the 5th is over by 5,024. Since the overpopulated 4th and underpopulated 2nd share no border, changes will have to ripple across the map.

The Redistricting Commission is composed of four Democrats and four Republicans: the Senate president pro tem and the House speaker, who are Democrats, and the House and Senate majority and minority leaders, plus two deputy minority leaders.

The eight appointed a neutral ninth member, ostensibly a tie-breaker. But following precedent, the neutral member, John McKinney, has agreed not to play that role, meaning that no map will be adopted without either a bipartisan deal or court intervention.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel's former military intelligence chief says the country was involved in the American airstrike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. It was the first public acknowledgement of Israel's role in the operation.

Soleimani headed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force and helped orchestrate Iran's involvement with paramilitary groups abroad. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport in January 2020, an incident that threatened to pull the countries into full-blown conflict.

A week after the airstrike, NBC News reported that Israeli intelligence helped confirm the details of Soleimanis flight from Damascus to Baghdad. Earlier this year, a Yahoo News reported that Israel had access to Soleimanis numbers and gave that intelligence to the United States.

But Maj. Gen. Tamir Heyman, the now-retired general who headed military intelligence until October, appears to be the first official to confirm Israel's involvement.

Heyman's comments were published in the November issue of a Hebrew-language magazine closely affiliated with Israels intelligence services. The interview was held in late September, a couple weeks before his retirement from the military. The authors wrote that Heyman opened the interview by talking about the American airstrike that killed Soleimani, but in which Israeli intelligence played a part.

Assassinating Soleimani was an an achievement, since our main enemy, in my eyes, are the Iranians," Heyman told the magazine. He said there were two significant and important assassinations during my term as head of army intelligence.

The first, as Ive already recalled, is that of Qassem Soleimani -- its rare to locate someone so senior, who is the architect of the fighting force, the strategist and the operator -- its rare, he said. Heyman called Soleimani the engine of the train of Iranian entrenchment" in neighboring Syria.

Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria in the past decade, but rarely publicly comments on them. Israel has said, however, that it has targeted bases of Iranian-backed force and arms shipments bound for Iran's proxy, the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

Heyman said that Israeli strikes had succeeded in preventing the attempt by Iran to put down roots in Syria.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Heyman's remarks.

The interview was published as world powers and Iran were engaged in negotiations to reach a new agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program. The previous deal, struck in 2015, unraveled after the United States unilaterally withdrew in 2018 and re-imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran.

On Wednesday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was scheduled to meet this week in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to discuss a range of issues of strategic importance to the U.S.-Israel bilateral relationship, including the threat posed by Iran," National Security Council Spokesperson Emily Horne said.

Israel considers Iran its regional arch-foe, and says it will take any steps needed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
NEW HAVEN  Rosana Duarte, 20, came to the United States from Bogota, Colombia, at age 17 and in addition to attending college here is helping her family here navigate the process for political asylum.

But Duarte, a junior at Southern Connecticut State University, hopes in the future to go beyond helping family and become a positive force in international relations in a way that affects immigration policy.

Shes off to an impressive start, as Duarte has been awarded a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute internship in Washington, D.C. for the spring semester. Only 23 people are chosen nationwide for the prestigious position.

Im hoping to learn as much as possible about policy and getting to know people who are interested in the same topics, she said. Im really excited and looking forward to the experience. Im nervous because its my first time away from home.

Duarte said shes excited about meeting Latino political leaders so she can learn more about the issues our community faces.

Its part of who I am, she said.

Duarte left Colombia in 2018 and joined her father and younger sister, Gabriela, in New Haven, while her mother stayed behind in Colombia for the time being. Duarte graduated from high school in Colombia, then took a year at Wilbur Cross High School, where her sister attends.

When asked in her application essay for the internship what current Latino leaders are making a difference, Duarte wrote that she admired Secretary of Education Miguel Cardonas awareness of the achievement gap in education.

His impact on the community demonstrates his drive to create a fairer education system, Duarte wrote in her essay. In terms of leadership traits, I value Dr. Cardonas assertiveness in tackling inequality. And as his perseverance to advance the interest of his community.

I agree with his argument that education opens doors and assures a brighter future for America, Duarte wrote. Discrimination of immigration status, race, preferred language shouldnt be a barrier to education.

Cardona was born into poverty to Puerto Rican parents before becoming a public school teacher, principal, administrator and, in 2019, Connecticuts education commissioner.

Duarte wrote that equal access and opportunity of education despite immigration status is an issue that must be addressed on Capitol Hill.

Duarte said in her essay that when she was applying for college she was very self-conscious, because she had been told once by a high school counselor the most she could achieve considering her conditions was a technical degree.

But then she was assigned a different counselor who walked her through college applications considering my asylum status.

I question why that counselor dared to tell me what I could or couldnt achieve in the future. And hope that anyone under similar circumstances as I never allow anyone to limit their aspirations and goals, she wrote in her essay.

Duarte is a political science major with a double minor in journalism and environmental studies. She hopes after graduation to earn a masters degree in international affairs with a specialty in conflict resolution.

Duarte wrote in her essay that she someday wants to become a diplomat and advocate internationally on the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.

But ultimately, my dream is to offer advice and pressure Latin American governments to drive change, development and strong government institutions that provide protection of rights to their citizens that will decrease the number of people who must flee their countries because of the lack of rights, Duarte said.
3 1 of 3 Mara Lavitt / Contributed Photo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Mara Lavitt / Contributed Photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3





NEW HAVEN  A 4-year-old pit bull terrier was stolen from the New Haven Animal Shelter early Tuesday, police said.

An alarm alerted officers to the burglary around 3:50 a.m. Video surveillance shows a person breaking into the shelter and stealing Misty, a pit-bull terrier, police said.
The suburban Minneapolis police officer on trial for fatally shooting Daunte Wright has said she mistakenly used her gun when she was trying to grab a Taser during a chaotic attempt to arrest the Black motorist.

Policing experts say that regardless of Kim Potter's intent, the fatal shooting was preceded by smaller mistakes or questionable decisions that added up to a dangerous situation as she was training a new officer. They also say the tragic outcome shows how important it is for veteran officers like her to have not just the savvy to train rookies, but the willingness to correct them instantly in risky situations  even if it means the trainee might lose face.

The number one priority isnt the long-term outcome of training an officer, its the short term of safety, said Brian Higgins, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the former chief of police and director of public safety for Bergen County, New Jersey.

Knowing when to step in is a difficult decision sometimes, and Im sure many times field training officers look back and go Wow, I should have stepped in sooner.

Potter, who is white, is charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter in the April 11 killing of Wright, who was pulled over in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. The jury began deliberating on Monday.

Potter was training a newer officer, Anthony Luckey, that day, and she testified that if she had been alone, she most likely wouldn't have pulled over Wright, who was 20 years old. She said the air freshener was trivial and that many people were having difficulty renewing their tags at that stage of the pandemic.

But Potter said Luckey wanted to make the stop and she allowed it because its important for trainees to have many encounters with the public.

Policing experts agree that it's good for trainees to interact often with the public so that they learn the intangible skills the job requires. But using traffic violations as a way to check for more serious lawbreaking  criticized by some as pretext stops  has come under scrutiny, especially because some of these stops have led to the deaths of Black people in recent years.

Carl Lafata, a professor of criminal justice at Minnesota State University in Mankato, said such stops can erode community trust if they're used too aggressively. The Wright stop could have been a chance for Potter to teach Luckey the art of the job," he said.

"How do you do it in such a way that is safe, that is professional, that leaves that person with a good taste in their mouth? he asked.

After Potter and Luckey discovered that Wright had an outstanding warrant on a weapons charge, body camera video recorded them making a plan to arrest Wright.

Im just going to get him out and then cuff him up. I mean hes got a warrant, so Im going to get him cuffed up, Luckey said.

That should have been a point at which the officers' level of caution went up, especially in the midst of field-training a new officer, Higgins said. Learning how to correctly handcuff and control someone is a basic but critical process for police officers. If a trainee struggles to the point of risking someone's safety, a field training officer should step in, he said.

When an officer has made a decision to place someone under arrest, that's when you enter in many cases the real dangerous situation, he said. And that's why handcuffing and controlling the subject is critical, regardless of what the charge is.

Ryan Getty, a professor at California State University at Sacramento who has specialized in developing police field training, said field training officers usually don't allow trainees to make arrests on their own until the latter half of their training program. Although Luckey had gone through field training programs at other police departments, he was in the second of four phases with the Brooklyn Center police force.

Usually the (field training officer) takes over if its a violent arrest or warrant, Getty said.

Luckey, Potter and the third officer who responded to the scene, then-Sgt. Mychal Johnson, all approached Wright's car, with Luckey taking the lead as Wright stood outside his car.

As Luckey struggled to handcuff him, Potter tried to assist, placing her hand on Wrights arm.

That move made sense to the police training experts, who said training officers will usually try to nonverbally take charge of an arrest where police lose control.

When its clearly going south, then the (field training officer) needs to step in and take charge, Lafata said.

But then Wright made a break for his car and got behind the wheel.

Potter's former chief, Tim Gannon, testified that he saw no error by Potter in procedure. But he faulted Luckey for not moving Wright away from his open car door.

What training tells us to do is to move him to the rear of the car away from the open door or close the door behind him, testified Gannon, who resigned two days after the shooting  the same day Potter quit.

Lafata and Higgins highlighted the same error. You want to avoid any sort of opportunity for the person to get back into the car and flee, said Lafata, who previously served as a state trooper in Michigan.

When prosecutors questioned Potter about why she didn't step in at that point, she testified that she wouldnt do that to a rookie in front of a suspect.

Gannon agreed in his testimony, calling it an action he would not have addressed until afterward.

Higgins said a general good rule is to let a trainee officer work through his or her actions and afterward try to critique it.

But if there is any concern having to do with safety, you have a responsibility to train them and keep them safe, he said. If her concern was that his actions were unsafe because he did not position the individual correctly during the arrest, she has to interject herself.

Field training officers dont want to be the bad guy or girl, but ensuring someone is trained properly is critical in policing where the health and safety of everyone involved can be at stake, Higgins said.

Once Wright jumped into his car, the situation became chaotic, with Potter pulling her handgun while yelling, Ill tase you! Ill tase you! Taser! Taser! Taser!

Getty questioned whether Potter was even qualified to be a field training officer because she made the fatal error of grabbing her handgun instead of a Taser.

When it comes to panic time, if they dont have that experience, they just go back to how they are trained, he said, adding that field training officers are supposed to be the best of the best officers.

___

Find the APs full coverage of the Daunte Wright case: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-daunte-wright
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  San Francisco's top prosecutor on Monday pushed back on the mayor's call for increased policing to battle rampant drug dealing in one of the city's most vulnerable neighborhoods, urging her instead to put more money into housing and treatment that get at the root causes of crime.

The politically embattled District Attorney Chesa Boudin was joined by public defender Mano Raju and addiction specialists at a news conference announced after Mayor London Breed last week declared a state of emergency in the long-troubled Tenderloin. Open drug dealing and shootings in the neighborhood have made children and seniors afraid to go outside.

The news conference comes as Boudin, whose 2019 election was not supported by Breed, faces a recall election in June put on the ballot by detractors who say he is soft on criminals. Boudin's office has countered the criticism with examples of successful crackdowns on retail theft and other criminal operations. But his remarks Monday made clear his position on going after people who have substance use problems or mental health issues.

If arrests and prosecutions alone could solve the drug crisis in this country or in this city, it would have been solved long ago, he said. We've invested over a trillion dollars in fighting the so-called war on drugs, and where has it gotten us?

Boudin said the raw human suffering he sees in the neighborhood outrages him. But using outdated methods wont make people any safer, and the city has other options, said Boudin, who worked in the public defender's office before becoming DA.

A spokesperson for the mayor said Monday the administration has made historic investments in housing and treatment and is committed to opening a safe drug consumption site as well as a drug sobering center, ideas also supported by Monday's speakers. As part of her emergency response plan, Breed is working to open a temporary site in the Tenderloin to connect people to services, said Jeff Cretan.

The reality is that our outreach teams are out there every day, and while many people accept services to get themselves indoors and to get the help they need, others dont, he said, adding that the mayor will continue to invest in these programs, but people will not be allowed to reject these services and continue to break the law.

Like many other overwhelmingly Democratic cities, San Francisco is struggling to address crime amid police reforms prompted by the 2020 murder of George Floyd. While overall reports of crime are down from San Franciscos pre-pandemic levels, viral video footage of brazen shoplifters and tales of home burglaries have forced an uncomfortable spotlight on a city that takes pride in its vaunted compassion and tolerance.

The Oakland City Council, a longtime leader in the Black Lives Matter movement to cut police funding, backtracked earlier this month and voted to hire 60 new officers and add two new police academies amid a surge in homicides and gun violence.

San Francisco spends millions of dollars to address homelessness and drug addiction, but the efforts have not resulted in visible change. City leaders say the high cost of housing and the abundance of cheap synthetic drugs are also ravaging other major cities.

Some residents say San Francisco has lost its shine as public officials fail to deter repeat offenders, provide housing to the homeless or keep streets clean. They're also dismayed that the school district, which is not controlled by the mayor, stuck to remote learning for most of last year while neighboring districts and even private schools in San Francisco welcomed students back into classrooms. Several school board members also face recall elections.

People living and working in the Tenderloin, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, have pleaded with the mayor's office for increased patrols, although not everyone agrees policing is the solution.

In response, Breed said last week they need to be less tolerant of all the bulls- that has destroyed our city" and announced initiatives to make it harder to sell stolen goods and allow police real-time access to surveillance video.

She said the city would no longer tolerate open drug use or dealing and people will have to accept treatment or go to jail. Critics say there are not enough treatment beds or housing.

Del Seymour, founder of workforce development group Code Tenderloin, said at Monday's news conference that he loves and respects the mayor, but flooding the neighborhood with more police who don't know how to deal with people struggling with addiction and mental health issues and homelessness isn't the answer.

We deserve a whole bunch better than that, he said. The funding that you're going to spend on this can be well spent on drug counseling, treatment on demand.

Other speakers Monday included representatives of HealthRIGHT 360, which provides mental health and substance use treatment; SF AIDS Foundation; and Shamann Walton, who is president and the sole Black member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
WEST HAVEN  In something that seems rather Grinch-y as the holidays approach, some residents are reporting that Amazon orders the company notified them were delivered are instead being left in piles around the city, sometimes blocks away from where they were supposed to go.

Some city residents say packages they were to receive from Amazon, including intended Christmas gifts, have not been delivered properly, or not at all. Some packages, with various names and addresses, have been discovered on street corners.

In some cases, well-meaning residents have taken to voluntarily delivering the packages around the city.

Joe Boughton said he still is waiting for six packages that he ordered. The Atwater Street resident said he ended up finding one of them on Peck Street, two blocks away.

When I looked, they were names of all different people throughout the West Haven area, he said of what he discovered.

Boughton said he knew something was amiss when the company reported that his packages were delivered but he did not receive any photos to confirm their delivery, as Amazon usually provides. He said his girlfriend checked the porch but there was nothing.

Only when driving around looking for the packages did Boughton and his girlfriend discover the alleged pile of undelivered packages.

Jen Burt, a Leete Street resident, said she believes the issue may go back several weeks.

About two weeks ago, a really nice older lady was walking down the street with a bag with a bunch of packages she said that she received in a big pile that she was hand-delivering. She mustve been in her 80s and there were five packages, she said.

Burt said she orders from Amazon multiple times a month, owing in part to the business she operates out of her home: L&J Appliance Repair.

Between me and my husband and my kids, were getting packages multiple times a month and this is the first time weve had this issue, she said. I wasnt that concerned about it until I saw these other people on Facebook having issues.

Burt said there were two other neighbors on her street who were missing packages, but they were able to find packages in a pile on a streetcorner. Burt still is without her package, but said she spoke to Amazon and they indicated they would send the package again.

Despite the setback, Christmas isnt totally ruined, she said.

Its one Christmas present. Our kids are teenagers, so theyre not little. If they dont get it, they dont get it, she said.

Amazon spokeswoman Loni Monroe said the company is investigating.

We work hard to provide customers with a great experience and deeply regret that this situation did not live up to our high standards, she said in a statement. We are working with our local Delivery Service Partners to identify the cause of this issue.

Sgt. Patrick Buturla, a spokesman for the West Haven Police Department, said the department had not received any complaints about such undelivered, or dumped, packages.

Several commenters on a Facebook group popular with city residents posted photos of piles of alleged Amazon deliveries plopped curbside, urged their package-missing neighbors to contact Amazon customer service to register their complaints.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
DANBURY  Michelle Rochniak has been writing poems since she was a freshman in high school, often tying in her love of Greek mythology and identity as a member of the LGBTQ community.

Rochniak, a sophomore at Western Connecticut State University, has been named one of four Connecticut Collegiate Poets by the Connecticut Poetry Circuit for 2021-22. She is the first WSCU student to earn this honor.

A Connecticut Collegiate Poet is someone who writes strong, moving poetry, and I am proud to be recognized for this as it is the highest form of validation, she said in a statement.

Rochniak, of Wallingford, was nominated by her professor and chosen by a panel of poets and educators in a statewide contest based on the strength and creativity of her original works, according to the university. Only four to five student poets are selected each year.

Brian Clements, the chairman of WCSUs department of writing, linguistics and creative process, said he nominated her because her writing and enthusiasm for writing deserve recognition, and because she models the values of the WCSU Writing Department.

Michelle has a passion for writing, an ability to reach and communicate with audiences, and a commitment to compassion and community, he said in a statement.

Rochniak is majors in professional writing with a focus on creative writing. Her minor is womens studies, and she is a member of the WCSU Kathwari Honors Program.

At WCSU, I made many new friends, connected with professors and found my poetic voice, said Rochniak, whose work has been published in Perspective, the WCSU Honors literary and art magazine, and on the Heartland Society of Women Writers website.

Im so grateful that I feel at home in the Writing department, and Im even more grateful that people here appreciate my work and encourage me on a regular basis to continue writing, she added.

She plans to publish a poetry chapbook by graduation and earn her Master of Fine Arts in the creative and professional writing program at WCSU.

WestConn will host the the Connecticut Poetry Circuit poets on campus this spring.

The Connecticut Poetry Circuit was established in 1968 to continue the work of the New England Poetry Circuit, which was founded in 1964 by the Academy of American Poets and Holly Stevens, daughter of the acclaimed poet and Hartford insurance executive Wallace Stevens, according to the program website. The goal of the circuit is to bring established, yet unpublished, poets to colleges and universities, as well as oversee a competition among Connecticut students that allows them to travel the circuit as student poets.

The public events will be the first professional reading engagement for most of the student poets, said James M. Gentile, director of the Connecticut Poetry Circuit.

They will get to collaborate with peers from other colleges for a memorable experience, he said in a statement. Many of the student poets go on to successful careers as writers, editors and in education.
Pastor David Ibiyeomie of the Salvation Ministries, has decried the state of insecurity under the administration of President Muhammadu Buha...





Pastor David Ibiyeomie of the Salvation Ministries, has decried the state of insecurity under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.





Ibiyeomie lamented that the Buhari-led government has allowed cows to have more value than human lives.





He disclosed this while addressing his members in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, on the topic Divine Protection.





The preacher noted that human wickedness was on the increase due to the love for money.





Some people will just sit down and scheme to attack somebody. The love of money has increased, so people want to do anything to have it, so human life is of no value. That is why you need protection, especially this part of the world like Nigeria where people value cows more than humans.





In Nigeria, a cow is more important than a human being, that is how funny the Government of Nigeria is, where cows are of more valuable than human beings.





Ibiyeomie also lamented that no Boko Haram member has ever been convicted.





I have not seen one Boko Haram man convicted, not one. Have you heard anyone convicted? So, who is behind it? You better answer it? That is the level of wickedness everywhere. Are you saying that they dont know them? Why is it that one person has not been caught and convicted?





We are privileged to hear things from the military men which I might not be able to say on the altar, but by the position of my calling, I hear from the military. If you say you want to attack the Boko Haram, you may be the victim they want to attack. You know in the military you dont talk, else they will court martial you. It is a very funny country, he said.
President Muhammadu Buhari has, in a letter to the national assembly, withheld assent to the electoral act amendment bill. The national ...

President Muhammadu Buhari has, in a letter to the national assembly, withheld assent to the electoral act amendment bill.

The national assembly had, on November 19, transmitted the bill to the president for assent.

Among the amendments are recommendations on direct primaries for political parties and electronic transmission of election results.

According to THISDAY , the president, who kicked against the recommendation on adopting direct primaries, cited concerns on rights violation as well as cost as part of reasons for his refusal to assent to the bill.

The amendment as proposed is the violation of the underlying spirit of democracy, which is characterised by freedom of choices of which political party membership is a voluntary exercise of the constitutional right of freedom of association, the president was quoted as saying in the letter.

The president was also said to have cited other concerns such as security and litigation issues that may arise from adopting direct primary.

The president said the prevailing situation in the country will not allow him sign the bill. Among other reasons, the president cited high cost of conducting direct primaries, the security challenge of monitoring the election, violation of citizens rights, marginalisation of small political parties, the report reads.

Buhari also notes that adopting direct primaries has implications on the rights of citizens to participate in the government, as constitutionally insured.

According to the president, the conduct of direct primaries will lead to a significant spike in the cost of conducting primary elections by parties, as well as the increase in the cost of monitoring such elections by INEC.

He explained that the direct consequences of the high cost are monetisation and that it will drive and increase financial crimes and constitute further strain on the economy.

In his view, it will also stifle smaller parties without the enormous resources required to mobilise all party members for the primaries, a situation which he says is not healthy for the sustainance of multi-party democracy in Nigeria.

The president further states that security agencies will also be overstretched, as direct primaries will be open to participation from all and sundry.

Such large turnout without effective security coordination will also engender intimidation and disruptions, thereby raising credibility issues on the outcomes of such election.

President Buhari also says the proposed amendment might give rise to a plethora of litigations based on diverse grounds and issues of law, including but not limited to the fact that the proposed amendment could not work in retrospect, given that the existing constitution of the parties already registered with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) permits direct, indirect and consensus primaries.

Buhari said his decision is based on informed advice by relevant ministries, departments and agencies of the government, and careful review of the bill in light of the current realities prevalent in the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the circumstances.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has reinstated its approval for Emirates Airlines winter flight schedule, consisting of 21 weekly passe...

The Federal Government of Nigeria has reinstated its approval for Emirates Airlines winter flight schedule, consisting of 21 weekly passenger flight frequencies to the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja; and the Murtala Muhammad International Airport, Lagos.

This is as the United Arab Emirates cave in to pressure and granted Nigerias Air Peace Airline daily slots at the Dubai Airport, in the spirit of reciprocity and the Bilateral Air Service Agreement in existence between the UAE and Nigeria.

The Director-General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Capt Musa Nuhu, made the reinstatement known in a letter to the Country Manager of Emirates Airlines in Nigeria on Tuesday.

The NCAA also copied its counterpart in the UAE, the General Authority of Civil Aviation as well as the Nigerian Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika.

The letter marked, NCAA/DG/AIR/11/16/334, was titled, The FG grants Emirates 21 weekly flights as UAE allows Air Peace daily schedule.

It read, Following further consultations with various stakeholders and the letter from Dubai Civil Aviation Authority with reference number DCAA/ASA/N-3/016 dated 17 December, 2021 offering Air Peace airline daily slots at Dubai Airport, I wish to inform you of the reinstatement of the ministerial approval of Emirates Airlines Winter Schedule.

This approval is predicated on the compliance with the Dubai Travel Protocol as released by Dubai Airports on Friday 26 November, 2021 as it affects passengers travelling from Nigeria to UAE. Please be guided accordingly.

Back story

Nigeria had recently lifted the ban on Emirates Airlines flights to Nigeria after suspending the carrier from operating into Nigeria for several months earlier, due to concerns over UAE carriers requirements in the management of COVID-19.

Nuhu had stated that following the lifting of the ban, the UAE-based airline applied to the Federal Ministry of Aviation for approval of its winter flight schedule, consisting of 21 weekly passenger flight frequencies to Nigeria, noting that Nigeria approved the schedule in the spirit and intent of the BASA between both countries.

He had, however, expressed dissatisfaction that Air Peace Airlines, the only Nigerian airline that operates passenger flights to Sharjah International Airport in the UAE, requested three weekly passenger flight frequencies but was granted only one.

Subsequently, Emirates Airline on Friday announced the suspension of its flights to Nigeria, attributing its decision to the NCAA policy limiting its operation in the country to one flight per week.

Nigeria currently has signed BASAs with over 90 countries including the UAE. However, over the years, stakeholders have lamented that most air agreements between Nigeria and other countries have been one-sided as Nigerian airlines have been unable to reciprocate the agreements due to what they termed, aero-politics.
The federal government says it will introduce a slot system in regulating the operation of foreign airlines into Nigeria. Musa Nuhu,...

The federal government says it will introduce a slot system in regulating the operation of foreign airlines into Nigeria.

Musa Nuhu, director-general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), disclosed this while speaking with journalists on Monday in Lagos.

This development comes amid the lingering diplomatic rift between Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

He said the slot system would eliminate unfair commercial advantage in the implementation of the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) with other countries.

Nuhu said the new system, which he described as tit for tat, has become imperative because some countries were deploying the slot allocation systems at their airports as a ploy to undermine Nigerian carriers.

Believe me, we are working on that, and it is going to be tit-for-tat. Let me use an example, and I am not saying that is what we are going to do, but just as an example. If a Nigerian airline is going to the United Kingdom and they insist that the Nigerian airline must buy slots, then any British Airlines that is coming into Nigeria will need to pay for slots too. It is tit-for-tat, Nuhu said.

If you tell me a particular airline from Nigeria cannot go to Heathrow because you cannot get slots, then their airlines too cannot come into Lagos because of slot issues. If you tell me a particular airline from Nigeria must pay, for instance, 100,000 pounds to operate to Heathrow, then, their own airline will have to pay the same amount of money to operate to Lagos. It is going to be reciprocity.

We cannot hide under the issue of slots to give unfair commercial advantages to foreign airlines over Nigerian airlines. We have made mistakes in the past, we have learned from our mistakes, and we are going to correct them.

Lagos Airport was built for less than 300,000 passengers in 1979, and the airport is doing more than 8 million passengers annually now, and you are telling them your airport is doing above capacity, Lagos Airport is doing far above 1,000 percent capacity. It is no longer acceptable. No one should come here and give us stories.

On the resumption of Emirates flights to Nigeria, he said the carrier would not be cleared until civil aviation authorities in the UAE officially communicated the extra airport slots granted to Air Peace.

It is important to have all these officially. So, the Nigerian Government is ready to allow the operations to start through the proper diplomatic channel. The Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs has written to the Foreign Affairs of UAE to confirm officially if the letter was from them. Then, we will see where we go from there. It is important to have fairness, transparency. and equity, the NCAA DG said.

The government needs to protect Nigerian businesses, and Air Peace is one of the designated carriers from Nigeria. If we allow other airlines to come and take all the juicy slots, we are shooting ourselves in the leg.

They have said Air Peace can operate to UAE, but we want it to be made available to us officially. Once this is done, their airline can resume operations as they requested.
Over 1,000 persons have signed a petition asking the Nigerian army to release Sofiyat Akinlabi, the female soldier detained for accepting ...

Over 1,000 persons have signed a petition asking the Nigerian army to release Sofiyat Akinlabi, the female soldier detained for accepting a corps members marriage proposal.

Akinlabi and the corps member went viral for engaging in lovey-dovey moments at the Yikpata orientation camp of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Kwara.

The army had earlier said the soldier was detained for violating the militarys rules of engagement.

But the petition , initiated by Omoyele Sowore, Nigerian activist, condemned the armys handling of the soldiers case.

The petition also questioned why the army would detain Akinlabi for the marriage proposal when male soldiers were not punished for doing same thing  with the scenes also going viral on social media.

According to the petition, the soldier is being detained under unhealthy conditions with no food and access to sanitary and medical facilities.

It also said the soldier knew the corps member before they met in camp, adding that the couple only decided to strengthen their relationship.

It called on Farouk Yahaya, the chief of army staff (COAS), to ensure Akinlabi is not stigmatised or dismissed from the military, and that love should not be punished.

The petition also asked Francisca Olaleye, Kwara NYSC coordinator, to ensure no harm or hurt happens to the couple.

We are asking the Nigeria chief of army staff, major-general Farouk Yahaya to respect her constitutional rights and ensure that shes not stigmatized or dismissed from the military, it read.

We further call on the Nigerian military and security forces to review and remove all discriminatory rules against service women in it books with immediate effect!

The petition, which targets 1,500 signatures, has been signed by 1,200 people as of the time of this report.

Funmi Falana, human rights lawyer, had earlier faulted Akinlabis detention and called on authorities to release her.
The Police in Ogun State have arrested one Kenneth Akpa and his colleague, Adebayo Michael for allegedly snatching a car in Lagos State. The...





The Police in Ogun State have arrested one Kenneth Akpa and his colleague, Adebayo Michael for allegedly snatching a car in Lagos State.





The police had been informed that the stolen Toyota Camry (2008 model) was sighted at a mechanic workshop in Iperu, the hometown of Governor Dapo Abiodun.





While making efforts to fix the car, the DPO of Iperu police division was said to have quickly mobilized his men to the scene where the two suspects were arrested and the vehicle with registration number, MUS 599 GV, was recovered.





The Ogun State police image maker, Abimbola Oyeyemi, said on Tuesday that the owner of the stolen car, one James John Ushahemba of Ahoyaya Lagos was invited to Iperu.





In his statement at the police station, the car owner had explained that he was attacked in his home on Monday, December 20, at about 1:30 am by two armed men.





Oyeyemi quoted him as saying that the robbers stole his Toyota Corolla car, three different phones and a cash sum of N30,000 at gun point. It was the vehicle that was sighted in Iperu through technical investigation.





It was learnt that the State Commissioner of Police, Lanre Bankole, after ordering that preliminary investigation be conducted, said the case would be forwarded to Lagos command for prosecution.
The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Osun State Command has arrested a woman, Elizabeth Aderibigbe for allegedly beating a 14-year-...





The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Osun State Command has arrested a woman, Elizabeth Aderibigbe for allegedly beating a 14-year-old girl, Adesewa mercilessly and inflicting injuries on her.





Elizabeth accused the girl of stealing which necessitated the beating.





The NSCDC media Officer, Atanda Olabisi told newsmen that the woman treated her niece cruelly and that there are marks all over Adesewas body as a result of the beating.





The girl said she stole food because she was hungry and that her aunty was beating her as a result.





Adesewa was reported to have run away from home on Thursday 16th December 2021 after eating left over food she found in the kitchen.





She was later found on a prayer mountain and brought to the office of the NSCDC on Saturday 18th December 2021.





Aderibigbe said Adesewa was fond of stealing and was adamant to corrections, which is why she is beaten anytime she behaves deviantly.





Atanda said While examining Adesewas body, serious troubling view was seen on her body with stick marks and wounds.





Adesewa confessed that she stole food when she was hungry and that her aunty always beat her with wire and cane.





The NSCDC Head of Anti-Human Trafficking Unit, Onifade Clement advised parents against releasing their wards to relatives or strangers who would maltreat such children.





The State Commandant, Ocheja Emmanuel also called on parents to take good care of their wards. He also advised residents to always report any act of abuse
The Senate has confirmed the nomination of Muazu Jaji Sambo from Taraba State as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The ministeri...





The Senate has confirmed the nomination of Muazu Jaji Sambo from Taraba State as Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.





The ministerial nominee was confirmed after a brief screening on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday.





Sambo will replace either the sacked Mamman Sale (Minister of Power) or Sabo Nanono (Minister of Agriculture), who the President Muhammadu Buhari sacked in September.





Buhari had in a letter dated December 8, 2021, requested the Senate to confirm Sambos nomination.





In the letter, the President explained that the request was made in accordance with Section 147(2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).





At the screening, Sambo told the lawmakers that he knew the problem stalling the commencement of the Mambilla power project.





He also assured the Senate that he would make a difference within a year in office if posted to the power ministry.

Sambo said he had worked in the insurance, banking and maritime sectors for 35 years.





He also said he had gathered requisite experience to help the present administration fix the countrys infrastructural deficit.





He said, The experience Ive gathered in the course of my 35 years in service which spanned different fields, will help Mr President in his drive to fix the infrastructural deficit in the country.





Responding to questions on the Mambilla power project, the nominee said it was disappointing that Nigerians, in 2021, were still talking about the project, which has been on the drawing board since the days of the First Republic.





He said the major constraint stalling the take-off of the project has been an arbitration case in Paris.





The minister-designate said, There must be a way we can compensate the company that took us to court. If Im posted to the power ministry upon confirmation by the Senate, I will definitely make a difference in one year. I know where the problem is and I can crack it.
The senate is currently in a closed session deliberating on the rejection of the electoral act amendment bill by President Muhammadu Buhar...

The senate is currently in a closed session deliberating on the rejection of the electoral act amendment bill by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The decision of the upper legislative chamber to deliberate Buharis rejection of the proposed law followed a motion by Thompson Sekibo, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senator from Rivers state.

The presidents rejection was contained in a letter read on the floors of the senate and House of Representatives on Tuesday.

In the letter, Buhari said the amendment may open up the electoral system to a plethora of litigations based on diverse grounds and issues of law, adding that adopting direct primary violates the spirit of democracy.

Compulsory direct primaries for political parties and electronic transmission of election results are among the amendments proposed by the national assembly.

While moving his motion, Sekibo said there is a need for the senate to take a decision on the development before they embark on the Christmas break.

It is my opinion that the senate dissolve into a closed-door session and discuss on it so that can take appropriate decision on it before we go for our Christmas, he said.

So, I submit that the senate  before we take the budget  dissolves into committee of the whole in closed session to discuss it and take a decision.

TheCable reports that the Sekibo is leading a pack of opposition lawmakers who are mulling on overriding the president.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Snow this morning will give way to lingering snow showers this afternoon. High 29F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 100%. 1 to 3 inches of snow expected. Heavier amounts in persistent snowbands..

Tonight

Variable clouds with snow showers. Low 19F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 60%. 1 to 3 inches of snow expected. Heavier amounts in persistent snowbands.
On a busy holiday weekend, staff at restaurants across the city were working the phones, calling people who had reservations to dine. They werent calling to confirm, but rather to deliver the news that their restaurants had temporarily closed.

After learning of COVID exposures among employees, many restaurants have been shutting down to allow others on staff to get tested. One was Rosedale, chef Susan Spicers restaurant in the Navarre neighborhood, which shut down Saturday after some of the kitchen staff reported positive test results.

We just decided to shut down until Thursday, said Spicer, who on Monday said she had tested negative herself. We were having a great week, but its more important to shut down now rather than mess up peoples Christmas plans.

State health officials report that the number of new coronavirus cases have doubled in the past week. Early studies suggest that the omicron variant now on the rise is more easily spread and more likely to result in breakthrough cases, or infections among those who have been vaccinated. Hospitalizations statewide remain relatively low but are also rising.

+4 New COVID cases more than doubled over the past week in Louisiana as holidays near; see new data The number of new coronavirus cases in Louisiana more than doubled over the past week, a potential sign the state is moving toward a fifth wav

As with the previous surges, this one is registering swiftly in hospitality businesses.

Many local restaurants have made similar temporary closing decisions in the past week, from upscale spots like Saba and Patois to more casual places like Steins Deli, Cherry Coffee Roasters and Marjies Grill, all of which have since reopened. The coffee shop Coffee Science closed Monday with plans to return Tuesday, as did High Hat Cafe on Freret Street.

The list of temporary closures seems to grow constantly.

A closure of a day or two is the most common course as staff get tested, though some businesses are taking different steps.

The Maple Leaf Bar, for instance, has shut down through Dec. 30, with a reopening tentatively scheduled for New Years Eve.

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At the Warehouse District steakhouse La Boca, manager Lorenzo Reef was alarmed to see many restaurants shutting down after exposures, so he decided to bring back a protocol from earlier COVID surges. La Boca now requires face mask use for customers when theyre moving around the restaurant, and employees are getting a rapid test once a week.

La Boca has not closed from a COVID exposure through the course of the pandemic, and Reef is hoping these precautions will keep that streak going.

The moves are on top of the citys own proof-of-vaccination mandate for indoor dining, which Reef has been diligent in enforcing. The restaurant was one of several to start its own such vaccination policy prior to the city's mandate.

Weve always taken our role as purveyors of public health seriously, even before the pandemic. Its what you do every day to make sure people dont get sick, he said, referring to sanitation and food safety practices.

This rash of temporary closings comes with Christmas just days away, and restaurant operators and their customers are trying to keep plans intact. Shutting down even for a day or two means losing revenue while staff depending on hourly wages and tips lose shifts.

But even when restaurants are able to reopen quickly, they are sometimes working with a further reduced staff if some employees continue to test positive and have to quarantine.

Patois is back open with some key people still out, and chef/owner Aaron Burgau said the rest of the staff has been stretching to keep the restaurant running.

Were just hoping we dont have to make calls to cancel plans and disappoint people, he said.

Making such calls is woefully familiar to restaurant people, as the sector has weathered changing conditions, policies, and protocols throughout the pandemic. A similar slew of temporary closures rippled through the industry in late summer as the delta variant surged.

At Rosedale, though, Spicer said by this point flexibility and swift change have become the norm, and she tries to take the long view on getting through the latest challenge.

You just have to take care of your people, take care of your guests, and well get through this, she said. At least until the next one.
Alzina Toups, 94, sat at the head of a long lunch table at her great-grandsons restaurant, Kajun Twist & Grill in Lockport. It was filled with family, including those who are now carrying her legacy forward.

While the family passed around Melamine platters of fried trout and duck tenderloin strips, Toups flipped through one of the spiral-bound cookbooks she wrote 40 years ago. She pointed to the names printed below some of the recipes, the names of long-ago neighbors on Bayou Lafourche who contributed to it.

They were the elders back then, she said, and she spent time with them, learning recipes for redfish courtbouillon, shrimp jambalaya or duck soup that they prepared by intuition instead of measurements and shared with her in Cajun French.

I respected them, I admired them and I loved them because they prepared the way for us, Toups said in a soft, sure voice. I feel that's what I did for our family, too  prepared the way.

Toups is best known for Alzinas Kitchen, located another 20 miles down the bayou in Galliano. It is a destination for private meals and group outings that has become a low-key legend for Cajun cooking and lured faithful regulars from far and wide.

It has been out of commission since Hurricane Ida ravaged this part of southeast Louisiana last summer.

Toups days in the kitchen there are done. She has retired, a decision she made even before the disaster.

Now, though, her family is preparing to bring Alzinas Kitchen back to life. Her granddaughters Jenny Toups Stevens and Tish Toups plan to resume dinners by February, pending repairs to its storm-damaged structure.

It's so important to my grandmother that we do this, said Stevens. There's so much love and respect for her, I don't see how we couldn't do it.

That return is unfolding as younger generations of this tight-knit family open new chapters in a long-running Louisiana food story.

Family cooking

The name says it all. Alzinas Kitchen isnt really a restaurant. Since its start in 1977, it has been a place to experience how Alzina Toups cooks, and how a bayou country family eats.

Alzinas Kitchen serves a homestyle Cajun meal for one group each night, with reservations typically booked many months out. Some people visit as an annual pilgrimage. For most guests, a visit entails a road trip; for some, international travel.

It is housed in a metal building with no windows, no sign out front and no separation between the cafeteria-like dinner tables and the kitchen.

A meal could run through shrimp gumbo (made with okra but no roux), smothered pork loin, black eyed pea jambalaya, chicken and shrimp fricassee, sweet potatoes cooked with Amaretto, the deceptively-named brown sugar shrimp (in a garlicky tomato sauce), hot dinner rolls and walnut tart. Its BYOB for anything stronger than home-brewed iced tea.

People serve themselves from the platters and pans. By the end of the meal, guests might help wash the dishes. They are encouraged to bring containers to take home any leftovers.

Part of the experience was always Alzina Toups herself, who shared stories of bayou life and the food traditions that run through it.

I wanted my guests to know how the Cajuns live, she said. The people who came got to learn about a Cajun community, where we come from, who we are, how we eat, what our food means.

Always a cook

The narrow road leading to Alzinas Kitchen looks like one of the many small streets branching off the natural high ground flanking the bayou. But around here its known as the family lane. Its lined by homes occupied by Toups relations, some of whom have simply traded addresses over the years.

Alzina Toups was raised in the clapboard cottage facing the bayou, a small home that was blown down by Ida. Now she lives two doors down.

She has never run a traditional restaurant and eschews the term chef. She is a cook. One of her proudest skills was her ability to debone a chicken in four minutes flat.

Long before Alzinas Kitchen, she and her late husband, David, ran a shrimp trawler together, working the Gulf waters as far out as Texas. She cooked for her extended family, with Sunday meals bringing all the children together. She always cooked breakfasts for clergy at her church. When priests visited from other parishes, she would put on big, homestyle spreads for them.

Alzina's Kitchen developed after her son Anthony Toups decided to convert his former welding shop next to the family home into a kitchen, giving his mother a home base for these community meals. As word of her prowess with bayou flavors spread, it grew into a regular destination for planned private dinners, with groups of a half dozen or more than 20 making the trek for the shared meal.

A food family

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Bayou country towns like Galliano were among the hardest hit when Hurricane Ida struck as a Category 4 storm in August. Four months later, they present a tattered tableau of damage, with blue tarps over steel roofs, building fronts ripped away to reveal doll house-like views and entire structures crumbled.

The Toups family counts themselves relatively lucky. No one in the family was hurt. Alzinas Kitchen, though damaged, is still standing. One great-granddaughter and her family who cant yet move back to their own damaged home are living in a trailer right beside it.

Worse off are other businesses under the extended family umbrella. The family has had many restaurants through the years, including some that predate Alzinas Kitchen.

Anthony Toups started it off back in the early 1970s when he bought a convenience store in the oil town of Port Fourchon, renamed it Kajun Mart and started adding sandwiches and plate lunches. Eventually he opened a dedicated restaurant called Kajun Twist in Galliano, just across the bayou from Alzinas Kitchen.

Later came the restaurants Barataria in Grand Isle and Toupsies Kajun Eatery in Port Fourchon, and he expanded to New Orleans for a time. He had Alzinas on the Lake in the West End in the 1980s and, later, Anatole downtown on St. Charles Avenue.

The original Kajun Twist was wrecked by Hurricane Ida, and the family plans to rebuild.

Its much newer offshoot, though, Kajun Twist & Grill in Lockport, was able to reopen just weeks after the hurricane. It had just debuted earlier in 2021, with Alzinas great-grandson Anthony Goldsmith at the helm. With the other businesses sidelined, this is where multiple members of the family are now working.

It is a diner-style restaurant, with fried seafood platters and burgers, while Goldsmith also makes specials that tap into older family recipes, like the rouxless gumbo and shrimp fricassee.

He's the only person in our family with a college degree, and here he is flipping hamburgers, said Goldsmiths grandmother, Rebecca Toups, with gentle chiding.

But Goldsmith, 31, sees it differently.

Cooking is the only thing I ever wanted to do, he said. I missed the food, and it was dying away. A lot of younger people arent learning the traditional recipes. I want to help keep that alive.

In the coming year, he plans to expand the menu with more family dishes, including an assortment from the old Toupsies, like seafood crepes, stuffed potatoes and crabmeat casserole.

Another world

Stevens, 44, and her sister Tish Toups, 50, had been taking on progressively more of the operation at Alzinas Kitchen before their grandmother fully retired. Like other members of the family, they had worked there in some capacity since they were kids.

Stevens started culinary school when she was younger but left, realizing she was getting a more valuable education at her grandmothers side.

It was about the time we spent together as much as anything I learned  that quality, alone time with her, she said.

It feels like another world when I walk in there. It's so peaceful, nothing else matters. My cellphone doesn't even work in there, so it's just this time to concentrate on what we're doing, what we've learned.

Today, Stevens is excited to bring Alzinas Kitchen back, and she has some new ideas to develop while maintaining its traditional, family-style format.

She wants to add packaged meals for quick daytime service, a way for people to get a taste of the family's cooking without booking the full dinner. Her grandmother has endorsed the idea.

Today, when the family gathers, they talk of gutting houses and timelines for insurance proceeds and which contractors are returning calls. They also talk of food and family and the entwined rhythms that bring the two together.

During that lunch in Lockport, Alzina Toups looked lovingly around the table, where five generations of her family were seated, all the way down to her great-great-grandchildren Jax and Camellia Matherne. Stevens sometimes sprang up to serve another table, and Goldsmith kept ferrying more platters from the kitchen. But then everyone was back again, to talk, and to eat.

My heart is jumping with joy, Alzina Toups said quietly. Because of them, I know people will be enjoying my recipes for a long time.

Alzina's Kitchen anticipates reopening in February 2022. To inquire about bookings, call or text (985) 696-7708.

+5 Closed since Ida, one more traditional Cajun butcher shop returns in LaPlace The old-fashioned wood smokers weathered the storm OK, but the rest of Wayne Jacobs Smokehouse in LaPlace took a beating during Hurricane Ida

+9 Racing to help her bayou home, a New Orleans chef taps a potent grassroots network They are going door to door, though often those doors are off their hinges and the roofs that once covered them are gone.

+9 In this bayou town, Louisiana fishers team up to feed neighbors in need after Ida Milton Naquin would otherwise be running his shrimp boat out of Delcambre with white shrimp season in full swing. But instead, last Thursday h
A state district judge has ordered the city of Kenner to turn pay records of some employees and contractors over to WVUE-TV by Jan. 6, following a lawsuit the TV station filed last week claiming the city had been dragging its feet fulfilling a public records request.

State District Judge Raymond S. Steib ordered the city to turn over the records by 5 p.m. on Jan. 6 at the latest. He issued his ruling after a brief hearing in Gretna Monday morning, during which the city, represented by Matthew Sherman, conceded that the requested records were public and said the city was working to make them available.

WVUE filed suit last week in Jefferson Parish's 24th Judicial District Court asking a judge to order the city to produce the records. The TV station first sought the records in public records requests submitted on Oct. 12 and Oct. 18. In those requests, WVUE producer Cody Lillich requested the pay records of a number of city higher-ups and contractors in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, which laid waste to much of Kenner and forced a massive response effort.

The Times-Picayune made a similar public records request on Oct. 21. That request has also not been fulfilled by the city.

"The city of Kenner was hit very hard by the hurricane," argued Scott Sternberg, the attorney for WVUE in the hearing. "A lot of people were getting paid."

+5 Kenner buys almost $1M worth of trucks in Ida's aftermath; council members question purchase Days after Hurricane Ida tore through Kenner, Mayor Ben Zahn's administration went on a truck shopping spree, dropping nearly $1 million on 20

Sternberg also represents The Times-Picayune in some legal matters.

Sternberg argued that there was no possible exemption within state law for the city not to provide the records.

"We thought these were the two most obvious that should be fulfilled," he said, alluding to the two requests at issue during Monday's hearing. They are among a number of requests the station submitted to the city.

Sherman, the city's attorney, conceded the point.

"I don't disagree" with Sternberg's argument, he said. "We are going to produce the records."

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Efforts have been hampered by the city's preoccupation with hurricane response, he said. The department responsible for compiling the records is also handling insurance claims and other functions related to Ida, he said.

The city had said it would take "at least" 45 days to produce the records, Sherman noted. And though that timeline has passed, city officials are still working on it, he said.

Steib was unmoved.

"It's at least 60 days," since that notice had gone out, he noted, and not one document responsive to the request has been released.

+3 Kenner leaders seeking Fire Marshal approval for Macy's move. Here's why. After Hurricane Ida ripped through Kenner in late August, thousands of city residents were forced to contend with heavily damaged homes and bu

"If you showed me a partial production, I'd feel differently," the judge said.

In addition to imposing the Jan. 6 deadline, Steib ordered the city to produce any documents responsive to the request as they become available.

Sherman assured the judge that the city would comply.

After the hearing, Sternberg said he was satisfied with the ruling.

"This is a pretty textbook case of records that should be produced," he said. "Fortunately, the city has agreed to start producing them."
A Jefferson Parish judge on Monday increased the bond holding former Jesuit priest and non-profit director Stephen Sauer behind bars on allegations that he took hundreds of lewd photographs of unconscious  possibly drugged  men without their knowledge.

Criminal Commissioner Paul Schneider set Sauer's bond at $138,000 during a hearing on the latest charges against the Metairie 59-year-old, including information about the sixth alleged video voyeurism victim who came forward after Sauer's initial arrest on Dec. 13.

Former priest who ran agency for disabled accused of taking explicit pics of unconscious men Stephen Sauer, a former Jesuit priest who served as executive director of the Arc of Greater New Orleans, is accused of taking hundreds of sex

There were images of the sixth victim "naked in Sauer's spare bedroom," Jefferson Parish Assistant District Attorney Kellie Rish told the court. "He indicated that he did not consent to the photographs."

Rish also listed some of the prescription medication seized during a second search of Sauer's home, drugs that were not in Sauer's name. They included medications to treat diabetes, depression, seizures and insomnia.

"In regards to the possible sexual abuse... the victims in this matter may have been distributed and or given narcotic agents as part of the acts that occurred," Rish said.

In July, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives began investigating Sauer, then the executive director the Arc of Greater New Orleans, after he sent an external hard drive to a company in New York for repair, authorities said.

An employee at the company found hundreds of thumbnail images of men being sexually assaulted and contacted law enforcement. Authorities in New York reached out to the Sheriff's Office about the hard drive.

+2 3rd juvenile victim comes forward, accuses Jefferson Parish fire investigator of sexual abuse A Jefferson Parish fire investigator arrested earlier this year on allegations that he inappropriately touched two girls is now facing new cha

The device contained photos of adult men who appeared to be asleep, unconscious or under the influence of an unknown substance while in "various stages of undress," authorities said.

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In some photos, the men's genitals were exposed and being fondled. In others, genitals can be seen on their faces, authorities said. Five victims between the ages of 21 and 48 were identified and interviewed. The men told detectives they did not willingly participate in any of the acts nor did they consent to be photographed.

Sauer was arrested Dec. 13 and accused of five counts of video voyeurism and one count of sexual battery. He was dismissed as head of ArcGNO, a non-profit that offers services to the mentally disabled in the New Orleans area.

Sauer was rearrested Thursday after detectives conducted a second search of his Purdue Drive home in Metairie, according to authorities.

Investigators seized a wooden cigar box that contained different medications, none of which were prescribed to Sauer. Rish rattled off more than a dozen names including gabapentin, an anti-seizure medication, Depakote, the brand name of a drug used to treat bi-polar disorder, and trazodone hydrochloride, a medication that treats depression and sleeping problems.

Detectives also found an eye dropper, a pill-cutter and individual plastic bags. Some of the prescription pills were separated into the bags. Some was still in the bottles, Rish said.

The Sheriff's Office also seized other electronic devices from Sauer's home that have not yet been searched.

Sauer's attorney, Michael Ciaccio, noted that his client has longstanding and family connections to the community. Sauer has served on many local boards, including a two-term stint on Loyola University's Board of Trustees. He also served as the pastor of Immaculate Conception Jesuit Church in New Orleans for a time.

Sauer was remanded to the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna.

Anyone with information about Stephen Sauer is asked to call the Sheriff's Office Personal Violence Unit 504-364-5300.
A small Colorado company looking to build a $400 million grain terminal in St. John the Baptist Parish is growing its network of elevators. Earlier this month, Greenfield Holdings LLC announced its acquisition of four grain elevators already operating in Louisiana and Arkansas.

While just one, located in the northeast Louisiana town of Lake Providence, sits along the Mississippi River, Greenfield Holdings CEO Adam Johnson said each elevator will connect with farmers and source products such as wheat, corn, soybeans and rice.

Our company is committed to maintaining a local-first policy and a close relationship with our neighbors," Johnson said in an announcement last week. "With these acquisitions, we are dedicated to maintaining a strong, local job base and the assets in Louisiana will provide immediate benefits to our export facility and the Louisiana local community.

In addition to the Lake Providence site, Greenfield now holds elevators in Crowville and Delhi, along with one in Parkdale, Arkansas. The company would not disclose what it spent on the acquisition or release details on the elevators' storage and through-put capacity.

All have been in operation for at least 15 years, Johnson said, and the company plans to hold all elevators to "the highest safety standards in the market for (their) farmers and neighbors in the community to visit."

Currently, each elevator is being leased by another company, but Greenfield will assume operations at some point in 2022.

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+2 St. John Parish group sues to overturn 1990 zoning change for Formosa Plastics Parish President Lester Millet went to prison, and now a grain elevator is planned for the site

In St. John, Greenfield wants to construct a major 54-silo grain export terminal that would transport products by barge to ship across the world. The new terminal has faced opposition from residents near the site as it would be built within a few hundred feet of a majority Black neighborhood, where residents are now suing to overturn the property's industrial zoning designation.

The company has said it wants to build a "state-of-the-art" facility that exceeds health and safety requirements and ultimately use its network to ease the market pressure leading to some of the clear-cutting of land for agriculture in countries like Brazil by making it more efficient for U.S. farmers to supply international buyers.

"Current U.S. infrastructure could benefit from an increase in capacity, speed, safety and efficiency to keep the US farmer competitive with farmers around the world," Johnson said. "We believe that the U.S. farmer is already the most efficient in the world and can, and will, produce enough grain to feed the world in the most environmentally-friendly way possible."
Coronavirus cases are once again surging in Louisiana, in what health experts say is likely the beginning of a fifth wave of the disease fueled by the fast-spreading omicron variant.

New cases in the state have more than doubled in the past week and residents, particularly in the New Orleans area, rushed to get tested amid localized outbreaks that have caused some businesses to shut their doors.

The surge comes as federal officials announced that less than three weeks after it was first detected in the United States, the highly infectious omicron strain now accounts for about three quarters of new cases in the country.

Though it is still early, the jump in cases is renewing fears of yet another major outbreak that could lead to serious illnesses and deaths and once again push the states hospital system to the breaking point.

Theres nothing that will overwhelm a hospital more than exponential growth of a viral contagion, said Dr. Catherine ONeal, chief medical officer of Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge. If it puts 1% of people in the hospital, but it has exponential growth to it, than that is like just a wave crashing down on your hospital all at once, and it will overwhelm the system and there will be collateral damage that we cant prevent.

The increase comes just four months after the crest of the last major surge  caused by the delta strain  pushed cases, hospitalizations and deaths to new heights in Louisiana. That outbreak only fully subsided in October, ushering in a few months of historically low rates of infections.

That, it seems, may be coming to an end.

The number of new confirmed cases reported by the Louisiana Department of Health stands at 4,850, more than twice as many as the week before and 1.5 times as many as were reported four weeks ago. That puts the new infections on a sharp upward trajectory.

The community rate of positive cases per day in the last seven days should concern anybody who knows how to read a graph, ONeal said. If you graph out that escalation in cases, culminating in todays positive rate, we should be alarmed.

Omicron was first detected in Louisiana at the start of the month and accounted for about 3% of all cases in the United States as of Dec. 11, according to the most recent data available from the CDC.

If omicron is not already the dominant strain circulating in Louisiana, we feel it will be very soon, state Epidemiologist Theresa Sokol said at a press briefing Monday.

Experts believe the variant is better than prior strains at breaking through prior immunity, whether acquired through a vaccine or through past infections. Health officials have stressed, however, that there is evidence that vaccinations and boosters can lessen symptoms and prevent hospitalizations and deaths.

Ive told all my patients: If youre going to travel or see family this Christmas, you need to get a booster, said Dr. Michael Rolfsen, a physician at the Baton Rouge Clinic.

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While experts initially believed omicron may have had less severe impacts even as it spread more widely, officials say that the jury is still out on whether that is indeed the case.

Rolfsen asked the community to be patient with public health officials.

We dont know everything, Rolfsen said. Its important to acknowledge that the facts may change.

Hospitalizations ticked up over the weekend, from 213 patients with the virus statewide on Friday to 265 on Monday. But, so far, those numbers remain at roughly the level they were before the delta wave struck. That, in part, is likely due to the fact that coronavirus hospitalizations were at their lowest point of the pandemic after the delta wave had finally passed. Hospitalizations in prior waves have also lagged new reports of cases, sometimes by weeks.

Deaths, which come even later, have not yet significantly increased. About 34 confirmed deaths were reported over the past seven days, only 2 more than in the week before.

So far, the current outbreak has been focused in the New Orleans area, which accounted for about half of the states cases in the past week. Those 2,322 confirmed cases are four times the number detected just a week before.

Last week, Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced she was expanding the citys vaccine mandate, which requires proof of vaccine or negative test to enter certain businesses, to children five and up. No other additional restrictions have been announced on the city or state level, though officials continued to urge residents to wear masks when around other people and to get their shots.

The Baton Rouge area accounted for about 385 cases over the last seven days, roughly 50% more than last week, and the Lafayette area reported 311 cases, up from 240.

Dr. Henry Kaufman, chief medical officer at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center, said his facility was at an all-time low for coronavirus patients, so he was cautiously optimistic. But he still urged people to take precautions.

I just want everybody to be smart, be safe. If you are sick  it doesnt matter if you have rhinovirus, cold or flu or COVID  you just need to be smart and not expose those around you. Because there are consequences for people in our community. Its not just COVID.

As with every coronavirus wave, its not clear how much of a given areas case count should be ascribed to the level of testing in that community. The New Orleans region also led the state in testing by a large margin  more than twice as many were performed as in the Baton Rouge area.

That continued Monday, as long lines awaited those seeking testing at the Mahalia Jackson Theater in Armstrong Park. There were also reports on social media of pharmacies that had run out of at-home test kits.

Testing is available at Walgreens and CVS pharmacies, at LCMC Health and Ochsner Health locations and at a variety of other clinics.

In New Orleans and Jefferson Parish, community sites are available at the University of New Orleans Lakefront Arena parking lot, the Mahalia Jackson Theater and at the Alario Center in Westwego.

More information from the state on testing locations is available by dialing 2-1-1.
NCPR staff | Coverage map and fm frequencies | Contact NCPR

About the Station

Based in Canton, NY, in St. Lawrence County, NCPR operates a network of 33 transmitters broadcasting to the entire Adirondack North Country, western Vermont and southeastern Ontario. The commercial-free format includes a wide variety of programs from National Public Radio including All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Fresh Air and more. NCPR's awards-winning news team can be heard weekdays at 8:00 am with regional news broadcasts, features and interviews. The station also airs an eclectic mix of locally-hosted music programs.

Donations from listeners sustain our day-to-day operation. In fact, the single largest segment of our funding comes from household members and regional businesses. Total community giving exceeds $1.5 million annually.

In addition to North Country Public Radio's on-air signal, the station operates a comprehensive website, and is the emergency broadcast service for many communities in the region.

Statement of Purpose

North Country Public Radio informs, enriches and connects the region-on air, online and in our communities.

NCPR Core Values

These values inspire and shape our work:

From the mind a commitment to lifelong learning, fairness, accuracy, honesty, substance, credibility, purpose, and respect for the people who use our services.

From the craft a love of unique human voices, voices that are conversational, authentic, intimate; an attention to the details of music, sound elements, language, pace and writing.

From the heart and spirit idealism, humor; civility and a belief in civil discourse, generosity, inspiration about public life and culture, and the power to seek and find solutions.

License and governance:

NCPR Station Governance

NCPR Online is a project of North Country Public Radio, a licensee of St. Lawrence University in Canton NY. The St. Lawrence University Board of Trustees constitutes the governing board of directors.

Our community advisory board, the Executive Council, makes regular postings in the Executive Council blog. You can also find the names of council members, its bylaws, and more information about NCPR oversight at the blog. The council's chair can be reached via email at ncprec@gmail.com

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Xiaomi has lifted the lid on the Xiaomi 12 series, which will include at least the Xiaomi 12, Xiaomi 12X and the Xiaomi 12 Pro. Not only has Xiaomi confirmed when it will reveal the Xiaomi 12 series, but it has also showcased what two models look like.

Working For Notebookcheck Are you a techie who knows how to write? Then join our Team! English native speakers welcome! News Writer (AUS/NZL based) - Details here

Xiaomi has begun teasing the 12 series on Weibo, following months of leaks. Unusually, Xiaomi has confirmed the designs of two models, but there appears to be a third model in the offing too. Seemingly, Xiaomi is preparing to release the Xiaomi 12, Xiaomi 12 Pro and the Xiaomi 12X.

According to the company, the devices pictured in one teaser are the Xiaomi 12 and the Xiaomi 12 Pro. The smaller of the two is the Xiaomi 12, rumoured to feature a 6.2-inch display. Xiaomi has confirmed that both will rely on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 though, Qualcomm's latest flagship SoC.

By contrast, Xiaomi has not published any teasers for the Xiaomi 12X. However, company executives are posting on Weibo using the device, shown in a screenshot below. For reference, Xiaomi is tipped to launch the Xiaomi 12X with a Snapdragon 870, an SoC based on the Snapdragon 865 series.
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NTV News 24 is a service of Nippon Television, Japan's leading broadcasting network. This page provides a selection of today's stories in English.
Lakeshore PBS has returned to RCN cable network in Chicago after a three-year hiatus.

The Merrillville-based public broadcasting affiliate reaches households across Northwest Indiana and greater Chicagoland. It can be viewed via antenna, through cable providers like Comcast and AT&T and on Dish Network and Direct TV. But it was not viewable on RCN since its transmitter near Lowell was damaged by storms and vandalism in 2018.

Lakeshore PBS can again be viewed on homes with RCN, on channel 44. The cable provider also will add a Lakeshore PBS HD channel sometime at a yet-to-be-determined date.

A lot of hard work went into getting our broadcast signal reestablished with RCN cable network, but were overjoyed to return to the network and all of the viewers who have missed Lakeshore PBS, Lakeshore Public Medias President and CEO James Muhammad said.
A longtime Gary radio host has joined WGVE 88.7 FM as the director of broadcasting.

Jeffrey Smith signed on with the radio station known as "Gary's Voice of Education" that's run by the Gary Community School Corporation. He will manage the radio station housed at the Gary Area Career Center, expand on-air community programming and help develop a radio and television broadcast curriculum.

Jeff is just the shot in the arm we need as we continue to ramp up the course offerings and opportunities at the Career Center, GCSC Manager Dr. Paige McNulty said. Our students are fortunate to glean from his broadcast experience, and the community will still get to enjoy his witty, on-air personality during the morning show.

Smith served for a decade as an on-air personality at the Gary talk radio station WLTH 1370 AM.

This was an opportunity that I had to seize, he said. This role affords me the opportunity to share my craft with aspiring broadcasters while still delivering news and commentary to a community filled with long-time supporters. I am simply overwhelmed by the support I have received as a result of this decision and cant wait to start my new journey.
VALPARAISO  A former Valparaiso University student was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted rape, residential entry and voyeurism after he was arrested for preying on female students at the college in 2018.

Jaylen King, a now-21-year-old of Zion, Illinois, was sentenced to a total of nine years on the charge of attempted rape: five years in prison, followed by four years on probation.

Porter Circuit Court Judge Mary DeBoer approved a proposed plea agreement that was reached between defense attorneys and the prosecutor's office. She sentenced him to the maximum allowed under the parameters of the plea deal.

King was sentenced to 365 days on the residential entry charge and 180 days on voyeurism, but those sentences will be served concurrently with the attempted rape charge that results in five years in prison.

The Porter County prosecutor's office agreed to drop the remaining eight charges King faced in the case as part the terms of the plea deal.
Minority, disadvantaged or low-income college students or college graduates who plan to attend law school in Indiana next year are invited to participate in an intense, residential preparatory experience designed to help underrepresented students succeed.

The Indiana Conference for Legal Education Opportunity (ICLEO) program, sponsored by the Indiana Supreme Court, immerses participants in first-year law school curriculum and skills courses designed to closely simulate the law school experience even before classes begin.

Approximately 30 students annually are chosen for the program. Students selected next year will attend a six-week summer institute beginning June 12 at the University of Notre Dame that's intended to prepare students for the rigors of law school, along with professional development programming, field visits and social events.

Students who successfully complete the summer institute are awarded a scholarship of $4,800 per semester for up to six semesters.
VALPARAISO  Porter County Prosecutor Gary Germann said he has determined that a county police officer was justified Nov. 3 in shooting and injuring a man while serving a warrant.

"Based upon my review of all of the information available to me I will not be pursuing any criminal charges against the officer," Germann said Monday in a prepared statement.

Germann said he came to conclusion after reviewing the investigation carried out by Indiana State Police and body camera footage of the shooting.

Germann further said he will not be pursuing any additional charges against James Filby, 58, of Porter Township, on allegations of resisting law enforcement.

Filby was shot by Porter County Sheriff Patrolman Chris Winterhaler as police were serving a warrant on him based on allegations of molesting a young girl and sexually attacking her sister and mother in separate incidents, records show.
But Figgs' spokesperson did say that only expired documents were destroyed and that action followed the clerk's office being instructed to do so by the mayor's office in order to free up storage space.

"Today's press conference was the latest act in a series of threats and intimidation and bullying of the elected Calumet City Clerk Nyota Figgs by State Representative/Mayor Jones," Figgs said in a statement. "Calumet City needs an intervention. ... I welcome an actual independent investigation into the situation here in Calumet City. I have been in contact with law enforcement about the actions taken by the Mayor and his team."

Figgs' spokesperson declined to identify the law enforcement entity Figgs reached out to, citing an "ongoing investigation."

Benford said she has talked to the FBI about her findings, and Jones said he plans to present the audit findings to the U.S. Attorney, the FBI and the Cook County State's Attorney for possible action.

Jones said he did not seek an investigation of Figgs by Calumet City police so as to avoid any appearance of undue pressure by his office. "We want to make sure that ... there is no issue to say that there's any political vendetta on my part," he said.
Legacy is proud to help students across Lake County achieve their goals; we look forward to seeing the positive impact they will have on Indiana, Kateiva said.

In nominating Lake Countys Lilly Endowment Community Scholars, consideration was given to demonstrated leadership skills, service to others, and character. The volunteer scholarship review committee also selects recipients based on an essay and interview.

After the field of applicants was narrowed down, nominees were submitted to the statewide administrator of the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program, ICI, for the selection of scholarship recipients.

Lilly Endowment created the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program for the 1998-1999 school year and has supported the program every year since with tuition grants totaling in excess of $439 million. More than 5,000 Indiana students have received the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship since the programs inception.

The primary purposes of the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program are to help raise the level of educational attainment in Indiana; to increase awareness of the beneficial roles Indiana community foundations can play in their communities; and to encourage and support the efforts of current and past Lilly Endowment Community Scholars to engage with each other and with Indiana business, governmental, educational, nonprofit and civic leaders to improve the quality of life in Indiana generally and in local communities throughout the state.

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Purdue University Northwest will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy at its 27th annual MLK Day event virtually this year.

The community is invited to take part in the free event that will take place between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 17. The celebration of diversity and inclusion will be broadcast on PNW's YouTube channel, where people also will be able to view it later any time after the fact if they can't catch it live.

The event serves as an opportunity to educate and empower humanity to move forward with Dr. Martin Luther Kings unfinished work, said Laura Odom, associate director of PNWs Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. This annual celebration is an opportunity to remember, experience and honor the life and legacy of Dr. King.

This year's theme is "Social Justice Begins with Me." The hope is to spark inner reflection that will lead people to better humanity.

Its a personal privilege to publicly commit to keeping the dream alive, said Sondra Craig, MLK committee co-chair. I eagerly look forward to a new yearly specific call to action to implement in my daily life an extension of the life and legacy of MLK.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Monday introduced the newest member of his family, a purebred German shepherd puppy named Commander, while the first lady's office said the cat she promised more than a year ago to bring to the White House will finally join them in January.

But the news wasn't as "paws-itive" for another member of the Biden animal family. The family decided it was best for their other German shepherd, Major, to live in a quieter environment with friends after some biting incidents.

Keep scrolling for a look at presidential pets through the years

Biden shared a photo on his official Twitter account of the 3-month-old male puppy with a caption that said, "Welcome to the White House, Commander." He also released a brief video of him tossing a ball to Commander and walking the leashed dog into the White House.

Commander was born Sept. 1 and arrived at the White House on Monday afternoon, a gift from the president's brother, James Biden, and sister-in-law Sara Biden, according to Michael LaRosa, a spokesperson for first lady Jill Biden.

His name appears to be a play on Biden's status as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces.
Webb released a portion of the report including its major conclusions, in 2020. The full report released Monday documents interviews with Foxx, dozens of employees of her office, Chicago police officers and friends and family members of Smollett.

It says Foxx  who recused herself from the Smollett case before it was dropped  told the special prosecutor's office that she was surprised when all 16 counts against Smollett were dropped, and that she believed he should have been required to admit some wrongdoing, which he was not. She also said she believed prosecutors in her office "wanted to get this guy out of town" because of the media attention that accompanied the case.

Foxx later said in a media statement that the case was dropped just like thousands of other similar cases, which Webb concluded was not true.

"The fact that such a significant mischaracterization could be asserted without sufficient vetting, repeated by figureheads of the (Cook County State's Attorney's Office) and then never corrected or clarified  particularly in a case the (office) knows has captured the public attention  is unacceptable for an office that must be transparent and maintain public confidence," Webb's report states.
PHOENIX  A month after his acquittal on murder charges, Kyle Rittenhouse was given a standing ovation at a conservative groups conference in Phoenix where panelists discussed the 2020 deadly shootings in Kenosha.

Most of the comments during Mondays discussion were made by other panelists, but the 18-year-old Rittenhouse reflected on how the trial had matured him and about his decision to take the stand to provide his account of the shootings.

Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz. The shooting occurred during a tumultuous night of protests over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer.
OMAHA, Neb.  In May, a 10-year-old Omaha girl told police that her older brother had sexually assaulted her twice a few months before.

The 15-year-old boy was arrested and placed in state custody. But in October, at the recommendation of a guardian ad litem and Douglas Countys probation office, a judge allowed him to return to live at his parents home.

His mother and stepfather signed a safety plan that said they would not allow the boy, who had turned 16, to be alone and unsupervised with his siblings or other children.

Within two weeks of the boys return to the home, the girl reported that he had raped her. And their 16-year-old half-sister told police that he had also sexually assaulted her.

Now the boy has been charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree sexual assault. If convicted, he faces up to 100 years in prison. His parents face intentional child abuse charges. The teen and his mother are scheduled to appear in court Monday.

Its terrible, Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said. We want to protect children. To me, obviously, the system failed in that regard this time.
Unemployment fell again across Northwest Indiana in November, declining under 3% in Porter and LaPorte counties and hovering just over 3% across the entire Gary metro area, which covers most of the Region.

The Region still had some of the highest jobless rates in the state, as it usually does. Lake County ranked second in joblessness statewide. LaPorte County was fifth, and Porter County 14th.

Cities in north Lake County have been especially hard hit by the continuing economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 7.5% of the workforce remained unemployed in Gary and more than 6% was out of work and looking in East Chicago, according to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.

The jobless rate peaked at nearly 20% in Northwest Indiana in April 2020, but largely has been declining since then. The jobless rate fell 0.7 percentage points to 3.2% in November 2021 across the Gary metropolitan area, which encompasses Lake, Porter, Newton and Jasper counties. The unemployment rate in the Gary metro area was 3.7% the previous month and 6.7% in November 2020.
[This article, which was originally published for 2017s winter solstice, has been updated for 2021. Sign up for The Times Space Calendar here.]

On Dec. 21, or Tuesday this year, the sun will hug the horizon. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it will seem to barely rise  hardly peeking above a citys skyline or a forests snow-covered evergreens  before it swiftly sets.

For months, the orbs arc across the sky has been slumping, shortening each day.

In New York City, for example, the sun will be in the sky for just over nine hours  roughly six hours less than in June at the summer solstice. The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, before the sun reverses course and climbs higher into the sky. (At the same time, places like Australia in the Southern Hemisphere mark the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.)

This is a good opportunity to imagine what such a day might look like if we had evolved on another planet where the sun would take a different dance across the sky. You might want to feel thankful for the solstices and seasons we do have, or we might not be here to witness them at all.
To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

When will the Covid-19 pandemic end? And how?

According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.

When people ask, When will this end?, they are asking about the social ending, said Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease. Allan Brandt, a Harvard historian, said something similar was happening with Covid-19: As we have seen in the debate about opening the economy, many questions about the so-called end are determined not by medical and public health data but by sociopolitical processes.

Endings are very, very messy, said Dora Vargha, a historian at the University of Exeter. Looking back, we have a weak narrative. For whom does the epidemic end, and who gets to say?
KATHMANDU, Nepal  Nepals Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the countrys Parliament, which was dissolved in December by the countrys prime minister, must be reconvened, pushing the Himalayan nation into another round of political instability.

Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli of Nepal dissolved Parliament on Dec. 20 following protracted internal disputes within his ruling Nepal Communist Party, but the court concluded that he had overstepped his powers.

The court has termed the house dissolution as an unconstitutional act, said the courts spokesman, Bhadrakali Pokharel, adding that the legislature needed to be reinstated within two weeks.

The decision means that Mr. Oli will likely face a no-confidence motion when legislators reconvene.

Rajan Bhattarai, a foreign affairs adviser to Mr. Oli said the prime minister would respect the court order. He wont weigh any undemocratic move like imposing an emergency or anything else, he said.
A stone sculpture representing a Hindu deity is making its way back to Nepal nearly 40 years after it disappeared from a temple shrine and ended up in the Dallas Museum of Art.

For more than eight centuries, the sacred stele of Lakshmi-Narayana, a manifestation of the Hindu deities Vishnu and Lakshmi, watched over devotees in the Nepalese city of Patan until it suddenly disappeared, stolen by looters in 1984. Six years later, the eight-armed figure reappeared at auction at Sothebys, selling to a collector, who then lent it to the Dallas museum.

A spokesman for Sothebys said it did not have records from the 1990 sale on hand to clarify what provenance had been presented to it at the time the antiquity was put up for auction, but it said it was researching the matter.

But it wasnt until late 2019, when an expert raised concerns about the Kathmandu Valley icon, that curators re-examined its provenance. Thats when the F.B.I. got involved, collaborating on a transfer of the sacred statue, with permission from its lender, from the museum to Nepals embassy in Washington that is taking place this week.
The biggest villain in Marvel-wood isnt Thanos: Its your friendly, sometimes cranky neighborhood film critic. Shes also the puniest, and thats OK. Her powers are irrelevant.

Marvel, with its armies of true believers and domination of both movie theaters and a click-baiting media, rendered its product line critic proof long ago. Its movies open, they crush and regenerate (repeat). Now, with Spider-Man: No Way Home, it has a movie thats also review proof. Your critic can toss out adjectives  lively! amusing! corny! but cant say all that much about what happens.

The idea is that saying too much would, as the spoiler police insist, ruin the fun here. It wouldnt, of course. The trailer and the advance publicity have already spilled plenty, and Marvels movies cater to their fans so insistently that theres rarely room for any real surprises. So, spoiler alert: Spider-Man wins. And, once again, Tom Holland, the best of the franchises live-action leads, has suited up to play Peter Parker, the eternal teenager who doubles as Spider-Man. With his compact size and bright, easy smile, Holland still looks and sounds more like a kid than an adult, and he radiates the same sweet, earnest decency that has helped make Peter and Spider-Man an enduring twin act.

Peters boyish good nature has always been his most productive weapon, even more so than his super-ability to spin webs and swing by a thread. Hes always been a nice, cute boy with the nicest, loveliest girls, too (Kirsten Dunst, Emma Stone). But Holland is also the most persuasive of the other moist-eyed boy-men (Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield) whove played Spidey. His love interest is now MJ, played by Zendaya, who was paired with another of this years adolescent saviors in Dune. Her casting as MJ and her expanded role in the series continue to pay off, and Zendayas charisma and gift for selling emotions (and silly dialogue) helps give the new movie a soft, steady glow that centers it like a heartbeat as the story takes off in different directions.
Wilson, our intrepid guide, is incredibly smart at playing dumb, alert to moments of minor revelation, disturbing oddness and layered meanings. But unlike most of the great deadpan comics, he stays off camera, telling his stories through narration, interviews with strangers and carefully curated scenes of New York. The show shares elements with critical video essays by the likes of Matt Zoller Seitz and with Thom Andersens fascinating documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, which also invites you to see a city through new eyes. But the new season of How to, written by a staff that includes the author Susan Orlean and the comic Conner OMalley, is much more autobiographical. New York isnt the main character, as the cliche goes, so much as shots of it are the language used to describe Wilson.

Detours take us into his checkered early filmmaking career, including a disastrous early film, Jingle Berry, he has stashed away but cant quite destroy, and brief video of old roommates and a girlfriend. The most surreal (and chilling) personal revelation is a story of organizing a failed rebellion in college when his a cappella group attended a conference hosted by Keith Raniere, the convicted sex trafficker who founded the cult Nxivm.

All great comedy reveals the artist, but these intimate new episodes dig deeper, making Wilson more vulnerable than youd expect. Wilson comes off as an anguished subject, anxious and afraid of confrontation but struggling to connect. This tension is reflected in the form: We only actually see him in quick glances in mirrors or old clips, but the stories are told entirely from the perspective of his camera. Most of his emotional reactions are illuminated by street scenes. When he talks about feeling shock, he shows an image of a Gothic building whose windows resemble a face with a mouth agape.

The roots of this brand of comedy date to the pranks of Candid Camera. Another touchstone is the late-night talk show tradition of turning interactions with strangers into comedy, from Steve Allen in the 1950s to the literate remote segments by Merrill Markoe on Late Night With David Letterman in the 1980s. Its a strain of comedy that inspired artists like Billy Eichner. The recent documentary comedy examples stretch the canvas created by their forerunners, offering a wider emotional landscape and more complicated ideas.
Fox Corporation, the owner of Fox News, told employees on Friday that those working in New York City would have to show proof theyd had at least one dose of the Covid vaccine by Dec. 27, removing the option to get tested weekly instead.

The new policy was in keeping with New York Citys vaccine rule, which Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in early December and which is more stringent than a contested Biden administration rule requiring vaccine mandates or weekly testing at larger employers.

The New York City mandate, which requires on-site workers at all businesses to be vaccinated, is the countrys most sweeping local vaccine mandate and affects some 184,000 businesses.

Our policy reflects the guidelines of the mandate, a spokesman for Fox Corporation said in an email on Monday. More than 90 percent of Foxs employees are vaccinated, the company said.
A federal jury in Manhattan began deliberations late on Monday in the sex-trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, the former socialite charged with conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein over a decade to recruit, groom and sexually abuse teenage girls.

The jury was sent home after deliberating for about an hour without reaching a verdict and will continue deliberations on Tuesday.

The jury received the case after spending most of the day listening to prosecutors and a lawyer for Ms. Maxwell clash sharply in their closing arguments over what the government said was Ms. Maxwells central role in Mr. Epsteins sexual-abuse scheme.

It is crystal clear that Maxwell knew about and was deeply involved in Epsteins sexual abuse of children, Alison Moe, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the jury in a closing argument that sought to tie together the governments evidence, which was presented over 10 days. Maxwell was key to the whole operation, she said.
Markets sank on Monday, extending last weeks losses, as investors took in the latest grim forecasts about the sudden surge in the Omicron variant and after a big setback in President Bidens efforts to pass a comprehensive domestic policy bill.

The S&P 500 fell about 1.1 percent, recovering some of its earlier losses. The index fell nearly 2 percent last week.

For the first time since Omicron appeared we have reason to be nervous about the variant having an impact on the growth trajectory of the economy, said Lindsey Bell, the chief money and markets strategist at Ally Invest, a foreign exchange company. A slowdown could mean inflation sticks around a bit longer given supply chain constraints.

Despite its recent wobbles, the S&P 500 is still up 21 percent this year.

In the White House, the future of Mr. Bidens $2.2 trillion domestic policy bill was put in doubt after Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said he would vote against it because he feared it would inflame inflation.

The impact began to weigh on prospects for the U.S. economy, adding to negative sentiment in markets. Goldman Sachs said in a research note that it would scale back its projected growth for the economy next year and now expected 2 percent growth in the first quarter, down from 3 percent. Researchers at the bank said Congress could pass some version of the bill, with a focus on manufacturing and supply chain issues.

Disagreement over the bill also pushed shares of major engineering and construction materials companies lower. SolarEdge Technologies, which provides solar-powered systems, fell 10.6 percent, while the asphalt maker Vulcan Materials fell 2.9 percent.

Investors are also still reacting to the Federal Reserves decision last week to speed up the tapering of its bond-buying program, a possible prelude to higher interest rates, as the Fed tries to quell inflation, wrote Saira Malik, the chief investment officer for global equities at Nuveen, a unit of TIAA.

The stock market initially rallied after the announcement. But now, investors have fully digested the Feds plans, raising concerns that a rapid increase in rates might cause economic growth to slow, she wrote in a research note.

Shares of technology stocks, which are sensitive to changing views on interest rates, have fallen in recent weeks. Meta, Facebooks parent company, fell 2.5 percent on Monday, while Amazon, Apple and Microsoft were also lower.

Over the weekend, more European countries announced restrictions to control the spread of the coronavirus. And Germanys central bank, the Bundesbank, said it would scale back its predictions of economic growth because of recent pandemic restrictions. Markets in Europe were down, with the Stoxx Europe 600 closing 1.4 percent lower. Asian indexes closed lower.

Airline and travel stocks fell sharply in midday European trading. But the biggest decliner in Britains FTSE 100 was Informa, which organizes large in-person events. It fell 5.3 percent, after shedding as much as 6.9 percent earlier.

The spread of the new variant has also prompted companies to go fully remote, to bar nonessential staff from the office and to cancel mass gatherings. CNN and JPMorgan Chase are among the companies that have set renewed work-from-home models. The World Economic Forum announced Monday that it was postponing its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Economists say the prospect for a year-end rise in the stock market is marred because of news on the Omicron variant. At the same time, trading is generally light during the holidays, making the market more volatile.

Given the amount of downside risks going into the new year, its hardly surprising to see investors adopting a more cautious approach as they log off for the holidays, Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst at Oanda, wrote in a note.

Senator Manchins assertion that he could not support the domestic policy bill  which would provide tax credits of up to $12,500 for consumers buying electric vehicles  appeared to weigh on the stocks of automakers on Monday. Car companies are investing heavily in production of electric vehicles, believing they will make up an increasing share of the auto market in the years ahead.

Shares in the electric carmaker Lucid plunged 5.1 percent and have fallen nearly a third from their high. Rivian, which makes electric trucks and vans, was down 7.9 percent and has lost nearly half of its value since its peak last month. And Tesla shares were down 3.5 percent and have shed more than a quarter of their value since their peak last month.

Investors bid up stock in Ford Motor and General Motors this year as those companies moved to make electric vehicles a big part of their product lines. Ford stock was down 1.8 percent Monday, but was still up about 120 percent for the year. G.M. fell 2 percent Monday but has gained about 30 percent this year.

The bill would have extended and increased existing tax credits; Lucid and Rivian would still benefit from credits available under the current program.

Oil prices also fell on Monday. Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, dropped nearly 4 percent to $68.23 a barrel. Energy stocks were among the worst performers in the S&P 500, with Devon Energy Corporation down 2.4 and Enphase Energy 5.5 percent lower.

Peter Eavis , Kevin Granville and Eshe Nelson contributed reporting.
President Biden was in close contact with a White House official who later tested positive for the coronavirus, the administration said on Monday.

The president came into contact with the official aboard Air Force One on Friday, spending about 30 minutes near that person during a trip from South Carolina to Pennsylvania, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. The official, who was vaccinated and had received a booster shot, began experiencing symptoms two days later and tested positive on Monday morning.

The president is tested on a regular basis. As part of that regular testing, the president received an antigen test Sunday and tested negative, Ms. Psaki said. This morning, after being notified of the staffers positive test, the president received a P.C.R. test and tested negative.

She added that Mr. Biden would be tested again on Wednesday, and that as a fully vaccinated person, he was not required to quarantine after exposure.
The actor Chris Noth, 67, facing allegations that he sexually assaulted two women, has been dropped from The Equalizer and will no longer film any new episodes of the television series, Universal Television and CBS said in a joint statement on Monday.

The move, which is effective immediately, came just days after the womens accusations against the actor appeared in an article in The Hollywood Reporter.

A representative for Mr. Noth had no comment on Monday night about the actors ousting from the show, in which he plays William Bishop, a former C.I.A. director and a friend to Robyn McCall played by Queen Latifah. Mr. Noth will appear in one upcoming new episode, as well as in reruns of the show.

In a previous statement, Mr. Noth said that the allegations against him were categorically false.

In the Hollywood Reporter article, one woman said that Mr. Noth raped her in 2004, when she was 22. Another woman said she was assaulted by Mr. Noth in 2015, when she was 25, following a date in New York City. The women were identified with pseudonyms.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, few people are allowed in the courtroom for the trial of Kimberly Potter, the former police officer charged with manslaughter, except for Ms. Potter, the jury, the judge and other court staff, and lawyers for the prosecution and the defense. Three seats each are reserved for relatives of Mr. Wright and Ms. Potter, and two seats are saved for a rotating pool of journalists.

Here are the key people who are part of the trial.
In March 1978, a 15-year-old girl from Queens traveled to San Francisco for Easter to visit her half sister. Days after her arrival, her body was found near Golden Gate Park. She had been strangled.

The San Francisco Police Department investigated the killing, but eventually the case went cold. On Thursday, 43 years after the shocking crime and a little more than a year since the case was reopened, San Francisco officers traveled to Colorado to arrest Mark Stanley Personette, 76, in the killing of the girl, Marissa Rolf Harvey.

Mr. Personette was charged with one count of homicide on Thursday after a joint operation in the suburbs of Denver conducted by the San Francisco Police Departments homicide detail, the San Francisco District Attorneys Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Jefferson County, Colo., Sheriffs Office, the Police Department announced in a statement on Sunday.

Mr. Personette was booked into the Jefferson County Jail and is scheduled to appear in a Jefferson County court on Jan. 10. It was unclear on Monday if Mr. Personette had a lawyer.
This is not a speech about locking the country down, Ms. Psaki told reporters on Monday. This is a speech outlining and being direct and clear with the American people about the benefits of being vaccinated, the steps were going to take to increase access and to increase testing, and the risks posed to unvaccinated individuals.

In her statement about Mr. Bidens exposure to the virus, Ms. Psaki added that he would be tested again on Wednesday, and that as a fully vaccinated person, he was not required to quarantine after exposure. According to guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fully vaccinated people who have had close contact with someone who has Covid should be tested five to seven days from the date of exposure and wear a mask in public indoor settings for two weeks or until they receive a negative test result.

Researchers still do not know how likely Omicron is to cause severe illness in most people, but its speed has stunned public health experts. With Omicron already the dominant form of the coronavirus in the United States, White House officials have tried to emphasize that breakthrough cases among the fully vaccinated and boosted will most likely be mild compared with infections the unvaccinated may face; but given the variants contagiousness, those cases could become more common.

Officials have also said that there is no reason to treat this wave like the devastating one the United States faced in spring 2020, but the virus is interfering with day-to-day functions in the administration. At least one person  a journalist who traveled with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to Southeast Asia last week  tested positive, causing Mr. Blinken to cut short his trip. Another White House official, who attended a Christmas party with journalists on Tuesday, later tested positive. The administration has not disclosed the scope of infections in the White House and at various agencies.

I would just note that we do expect there to be breakthrough cases, as there are  as there will be  across government, Ms. Psaki said on Monday when asked to describe infections in the administration.
We know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were trying to count electoral votes, Ms. Cheney said, adding: Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congresss official proceeding to count electoral votes?

The question is one of the most significant to emerge in the first six months of the investigation.

The panel has nine House members  including two Republicans  and is modeling itself on the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The committee plans to produce the authoritative report about Jan. 6.

It plans to hold televised hearings early next year to lay out for the public how the pro-Trump Stop the Steal movement helped lead to the Capitol riot. And it ultimately may propose changes to federal laws, toughening statutes to rein in a presidents conduct and overhauling the Electoral Count Act, which Mr. Trump and his allies sought to exploit in his attempt to cling to power.

One of the challenges the committee faces is that so much has been reported about Mr. Trumps efforts to hold onto power and the attacks themselves. So far, the numerous disclosures about the role of Mr. Trump, his aides and others who promoted the baseless idea that the election had been stolen from him have had little impact on his Republican support in Congress.

But a credible criminal referral could provide the committee an opportunity to underscore the gravity of what happened while potentially subjecting Mr. Trump and others to intensified legal scrutiny.

Although congressional investigators have no powers to charge a crime, their ability to subpoena documents and compel witnesses to testify allows them to reveal new details about events. At times, that process leads to witnesses disclosing potential criminality about themselves or others.

When that occurs, Congress can make a criminal referral to the Justice Department  often in the form of a public letter  that can increase pressure on the department to open investigations. Sometimes members of Congress, amid partisan squabbling, overstate the evidence of criminality and make referrals to the Justice Department that are ignored because they appear political.
A spokesman for Mr. Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Perry, a member of Congress since 2013, compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations and coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general, who was resisting Mr. Trumps attempts to overturn the election, with a more compliant official.

A former Army helicopter pilot and a retired brigadier general in the National Guard whose colleagues call him General Perry, Mr. Perry introduced Mr. Trump to Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Justice Departments civil division who became one of the Stop the Steal movements most ardent supporters. Around this time, the committee said, investigators believe Mr. Perry was communicating with Mark Meadows, who was then the White House chief of staff, via an encrypted app, Signal.

Mr. Clark has said he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he next appears before the panel.

We have received evidence from multiple witnesses that you had an important role in the efforts to install Mr. Clark as acting attorney general, Mr. Thompson wrote to Mr. Perry. When Mr. Clark decided to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, he understood that we planned to pose questions addressing his interactions with you, among a host of other topics.

Shortly after Mr. Trump lost the election, Mr. Perry joined Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, as they huddled with senior White House officials at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington County, Va., and came up with a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trumps supporters in Congress: hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign and bolster the case with allegations of fraud.
WASHINGTON  A Senate deal has set the stage for a January vote on whether to sanction the company behind a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, complicating the Biden administrations efforts to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The upcoming vote means the new year in Congress will begin in part with a contentious debate about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which the Biden administration opposes but has not used all its powers to stop, for fear of damaging vital relations with Germany.

The $11 billion pipeline was completed in September but is awaiting certification to become operational. Germanys new foreign minister said last week that the country could stop gas from flowing if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia invades Ukraine, along whose border he has massed up to 100,000 troops, though other German leaders have been noncommittal.

The Senate deal, which was reached late Friday night, was a grudging concession by Democrats to Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who has delayed the confirmation of dozens of President Bidens nominees to protest what he called Mr. Bidens weak opposition to the pipeline. Mr. Cruz and others insist that Nord Stream 2 will provide Russia with a cash infusion and dangerous control over Europes energy supplies, while potentially costing Ukraines government around $3 billion in annual transit fees from a similar pipeline through its territory that Russia could circumvent.
PARIS  The Dutch can now invite only two guests to their homes as part of a new lockdown. In Denmark, where masks and other social restrictions had all but disappeared thanks to a successful vaccination campaign, cinemas, amusement parks, zoos and other establishments are closed once again.

By contrast, France has ruled out lockdowns, curfews or closures on a continent where new Covid-19 rules are being announced every day in the face of the Omicron variants rapid spread. The French exception, the front page of one newspaper, Le Parisien, said on Monday.

For now, France  as well as Spain and, to a lesser extent, Italy  is betting that high vaccine and booster coverage, along with earlier restrictions it put in place, will be enough to keep the coronavirus variant manageable, adopting a wait-and-see attitude as a sense of urgency grips the Netherlands, Denmark and Britain.
In the final weeks of 2021, there are a lot of reasons to feel overwhelmed. Though the world has reopened to a large extent, life has become a series of risk assessments as we try to navigate which events to attend, which travel plans to cancel and what level of normalcy is worth the potential price of a Covid-19 exposure. And though the holidays should be a time to relax and regroup, the emergence of the Omicron variant has thrown many plans into yet more chaos. Its a lot.

In their own ways, these six podcasts can help you to take a breath, refill your emotional cup and get some rest ahead of the New Year.

Holiday gift-giving can be one of the most draining aspects of the festive season, even if youre the kind of person who gets real joy out of the process. Bridger Winegar, a writer and actor whose credits include Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, knows that pain so deeply that he dedicated an entire (tongue-in-cheek) podcast to it. As the title suggests, Winegars one rule for his guests (mostly fellow comedians and performers) is that no gifts are allowed. But they all disobey him, which means every conversation builds toward unveiling and discussing a gift of the week. Winegars dry but sweet-natured sense of humor, and an array of guests including Kimmel, Emma Thompson and Ziwe Fumudoh, make this a consistently delightful comfort show.

Starter episode: Emma Thompson Disobeys Bridger

When the world feels stressful, meditation suggests that we focus on our immediate surroundings: that building, those trees, the ground beneath our feet. Though the long-running podcast 99% Invisible is not designed to be meditative, its sound-rich explorations of the physical world make it perfect listening material for fraught times. For more than a decade, ever since its origins on public radio, the show has delved into the unseen designs, patterns and decisions that shape our lives. Though its primarily about design and architecture, many episodes go beyond that remit  one memorable installment last year delved into the bizarre origin story of the Baha Men song Who Let The Dogs Out. Theres a back catalog of more than 400 episodes to choose from, and no matter which one you start with, youll come away with your view of the world slightly changed.
Asias Omicron playbook

As the Omicron coronavirus wave crashes through Europe and the United States, countries in Asia are all over the map with their containment approaches.

Heightening the urgency, data shows that Asias most widely used vaccines  including those made by AstraZeneca, Sinovac and Sinopharm  show no ability to stop Omicron infections six months after vaccination. (Most vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from Omicron.)

New Zealand said on Tuesday that it was pushing back a phased opening of its borders to the end of February. It has detected 22 cases of Omicron in international arrivals but no community spread. In the event of an outbreak, the government intends to replace the lockdowns of the past with more targeted measures, the Covid minister said. It is also speeding up booster shots and bringing back quarantine for Kiwis returning home.

Other countries in the Asia-Pacific region are taking their own approaches.

India has not announced new rules but told governors to be on alert, as Omicron cases have multiplied quickly. Ninety percent of vaccinated people in India received the AstraZeneca vaccine, under the brand name Covishield.
Another Covid Christmas for Europe and the U.S.

New coronavirus cases are surging in the U.S., prompting governors and mayors to once again reintroduce restrictions. Federal officials say that the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus now accounts for three-quarters of new cases in the country.

In Europe, countries are split between imposing new measures to curb the spread, as the Netherlands and Denmark have done, or adopting a wait-and-see approach. France has ruled out lockdowns, curfews or closures, betting on its high vaccine and booster coverage. Britain has yet to announce whether it will impose a lockdown before Christmas.

In all of these countries, economic and political concerns  just days before the holidays  are also guiding governments, amid uncertainty about just how big a risk the variant poses. Epidemiologists have warned that even if Omicron is eventually shown to cause less severe illness, its rapid spread could still send huge numbers of people to hospitals.

Quotable: Its annoying, but this year theres at least more of a Christmas spirit than last year, when we had a curfew, said one Parisian. We couldnt go out and enjoy Christmas decorations.
Omicron already accounts for about 75 percent of new cases in the U.S., the C.D.C. said yesterday, and experts expect cases to soar over the next month. The vast majority will be mild because the vast majority of Americans have some degree of immune protection (and because childhood Covid is almost always mild). But Omicron may cause such a large increase in cases that it will nonetheless overwhelm hospitals, many of which are already near capacity.

One potential problem is hospital staffing. One-third of all health care workers may contract Covid and need to miss work, Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota said on the podcast In the Bubble.

The good news is it could be over quickly, Andy Slavitt, a former White House adviser and the host of In the Bubble, told me, referring to the Omicron surge. The bad news is that almost everything could face some kind of shortage.

Here are the three major areas in which the U.S. has fallen behind:

1. Boosters

For months, Americans heard a message  from experts, politicians and journalists  that anybody who had received two Covid shots was fully vaccinated. That message is no longer fully accurate. If you received your second shot more than six months ago (or a Johnson & Johnson more than two months ago), your immunity has begun to wane. You are more likely to contract Omicron than somebody who has received a booster shot.

People who closely follow Covid news are aware of the power of boosters. But millions of other Americans are not. About 73 percent of Americans have received at least one vaccine shot, and less than 20 percent have received a full initial dose plus a booster, according to the C.D.C.
The organizers at SHoP, which has about 135 employees and is known for its work on the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and a luxury building south of Central Park previously called the Steinway tower, among other projects, said well over half their eligible colleagues had signed cards pledging support for the union.

They plan to affiliate with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and are asking for voluntary recognition of what would appear to be the only union at a prominent private-sector architecture firm in the country.

Many of us feel pushed to the limits of our productivity and mental health, the firms union backers, who call themselves Architectural Workers United, wrote in a letter to the firms leadership Monday. SHoP is the firm that can begin to enact changes that will eventually ensure a more healthy and equitable future.

Half a dozen SHoP employees said they worked about 50 hours a week on average, and often 60 to 70 hours when a key deadline loomed, usually every month or two. They said this was common even among more junior architects and designers who make $50,000 to $80,000 a year  above what many in other fields make, but a strain for workers who typically accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in student debt.

SHoP was founded to practice architecture differently and has always been interested in empowering and supporting our staff, the firm said in a statement. The firm did not say whether it would recognize the union.
The fledgling electric truck manufacturer Nikola agreed to pay $125 million to settle an investigation into allegations that the company and its founder defrauded investors by making misleading claims about its products and technology, securities regulators said on Tuesday.

Nikola is settling the case, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, nearly five months after federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Trevor Milton, the companys founder and former chief executive, who has pleaded not guilty. The S.E.C. also filed civil fraud charges against Mr. Milton.

Nikola Corporation is responsible both for Miltons allegedly misleading statements and for other alleged deceptions, all of which falsely portrayed the true state of the companys business and technology, Gurbir Grewal, director of the S.E.C.s enforcement division, said in a statement.

The S.E.C., in a civil order resolving the investigation, found that Mr. Milton had embarked on a campaign on Twitter and in news releases to pump up the price of Nikolas shares with a series of misleading statements. The regulator said Nikola had compounded that by making its own misleading statements about the refueling times for its planned products.
WASHINGTON  The Biden administration said Tuesday that it had given the go-ahead to two major solar projects on federal land in the California desert, pushing forward with clean energy plans by using federal authority after Joe Manchin III, the West Virginia senator and coal industry supporter, this week said he would not back broader climate legislation, stalling it in Congress.

The two approved solar projects, and a third for which approval is nearing completion, would generate about 1,000 megawatts, enough electricity to power about 132,000 homes, the Interior Department said. All three projects are in Riverside County, Calif.

The project approvals are significant because they represent one of a limited number of policy tools available to the Biden administration as it works to wean the United States from fossil fuels and achieve a goal of slashing the countrys greenhouse gas emissions roughly in half by 2030.

Democrats have vowed to move forward with a vote on President Bidens signature policy agenda, the Build Back Better Act, which includes $555 billion in clean energy tax credits. But the measure is not expected to pass given the statement this week from Mr. Manchin announcing his opposition.
Headliner

Commerce Inn

In their latest venture, Jody Williams and Rita Sodi, who own four highly regarded restaurants in the West Village, have been seduced by history. And its not just the history of this location, which was built in 1911, and formerly housed Fifty, Commerce, Grange Hall, Blue Mill Tavern and a speakeasy before that. Were taking it back to a colonial tavern, Ms. Williams said, even including a Tavern Room, fitted with a dark wood back bar, a zinc counter, custom stools and compact booths. They also did their homework, looking to an old store in Virginia that was once a train station for floor and ceiling boards, a Vermont maker of Shaker-style furniture for the chairs and benches in the large dining room and even the fonts Ms. Sodi used for the menu. Its all about simplicity and craftsmanship, Ms. Williams said. Food in the tavern, open now with the dining room coming soon, starts with oysters served raw, pickled or fried. Then the choices are smoked cod cakes, country ham, marrow with mushrooms, greens with buttermilk dressing, spoon bread and baked apple. Wines are domestic, mostly East Coast. The dinner menu, in the sparsely decorated white-tablecloth dining room, will feature roasts like duck and pork. For breakfast, also on the horizon, there will be scrapple, porridge, eggs and smoked fish. In keeping with the historic approach, bartenders haul ice for drinks like milk punches and switchels in 25-pound blocks with vintage tongs, and electronics are hidden in drawers. There is no espresso machine. But at the same time, Ms. Williams and Ms. Sodi insist its not a theme park frozen in the past: They use olive oil, not typical of the era being evoked. It fits with some of our dishes, but were also thrilled to be using ingredients that arent French or Italian, to be exploring a new genre, Ms. Williams said. Were having a lot of fun.

50 Commerce Street (Barrow Street), no phone, thecommerceinn.com.

Opening

Noz 17

The very traditional Sushi Noz on the Upper East Side, with two intimate rooms for high-priced tasting menus, has opened this similarly upscale offshoot in Chelsea. Here, the $400 omakase, served at a counter seating just seven and relying on imported and domestic seasonal ingredients, can run to 30 courses. The price includes gratuity but not beverages or tax. The chef, Junichi Matsuzaki, was at Sushi Noz. The companys uptown fish market, next to the Upper East Side location, is closed for renovations. (Opens Wednesday)

458 West 17th Street, no phone, noz17.com.

Loi Specialty Shop

Maria Loi, the Greek chef, restaurateur and television personality now based in New York, has opened a pop-up boutique selling products she imports from Greece, like olive oils, honeys and pasta, along with items that she likes from some Greek companies, like sauces and tahini. This shop, in the Plaza, about a block east of her restaurant, Loi Estiatorio, also carries prepared food, including baklava, and will be open until through Feb. 14.

The Plaza, 1 West 58th Street, loiestiatorio.com.

MAD Bar & Lounge

The name of this bar, in the first NH Collection hotel in North America from this hotel group located in Madrid, is a pun, nodding to its Madison Avenue address, as well as the era of Mad Men, the business of advertising and the three-martini lunch. Martinis and an updated manhattan made with tequila are some of the drinks. Food is provided by the Serafina chain, which will be opening a location in the hotel.

NH Collection New York Madison Avenue Hotel, 212-802-0600, nh-hotels.com.
Hospitals, drug companies and Biden administration officials are racing to address one of the Omicron variants biggest threats: Two of the three monoclonal antibody treatments that doctors have depended on to keep Covid-19 patients from becoming seriously ill do not appear to thwart the latest version of the coronavirus.

The one such treatment that is still likely to work against Omicron is now so scarce that many doctors and hospitals have already run through their supplies.

Monoclonal antibodies have become a mainstay of Covid treatment, shown to be highly effective in keeping high-risk patients from being hospitalized. But even as infections surge and Omicron becomes the dominant form of new cases in the United States, some hospitals have begun scaling back the treatments, fearing they have become suddenly useless.

In New York, hospital administrators at NewYork-Presbyterian, N.Y.U. Langone and Mount Sinai all said in recent days that they would stop giving patients the two most commonly used antibody treatments, made by Eli Lilly and Regeneron, according to memos obtained by The Times and officials at the health systems.
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

The first time I saw Abubakar Nasir he had a wide grin on his face.

It was 2019. He was about 4 years old and had a bald head, curious eyes and a magnetic personality. He was being treated by a doctor at Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital in Kano, Nigeria, the global epicenter of sickle cell disease, a painful blood disorder. I was there to report on the challenges of caring for children with sickle cell in a developing nation. While people with the disease in wealthy countries like the United States can live into their 50s, one study found that nearly half of newborns with sickle cell in Nigeria dont make it to their fifth birthdays.

Although Abubakar, who goes by Sadiq, was among the hundreds of thousands of Nigerian children with the illness, he seemed perfectly fine that day. But a visiting pediatrician from Vanderbilt University, Dr. Michael R. DeBaun, did see some worrying signs. He noticed that one of Sadiqs hands was smaller than the other and that the same side of his body seemed weak. To Dr. DeBaun, it was a sign that Sadiq had experienced a stroke in the past.

He sent the boy to have lab tests done. A short time later, Sadiqs mother, Aisha Nasir, came racing back into the clinic, tears streaming down her face. Sadiq was in her arms, his eyes closed and body limp. He was having a stroke in that moment. He was rushed to receive an emergency blood transfusion.

Two years ago, when I was the national race correspondent for The Times, I started reporting on sickle cell and its impact on people in the United States. About 100,000 people live with the disease in the United States, most of them Black. The treatment for American patients with sickle cell is often affected by the racial disparities and injustices pervasive in the medical system.
A man with a thick Puerto Rican accent at the other end of the table said something loudly but unintelligibly, and Lucille leaned over to me and quietly asked, What is Ricky Ricardo down there saying?

That seemed like an icebreaker, so I boldly asked if she ever visited her hometown, Jamestown, N.Y., just to let her know I was one of the cognoscenti. She said she hadnt been there in years. I then went even further and asked if she ever spoke to Marion Strong, her childhood pal whose name was borrowed for a character on the original series. She said she had recently spoken to Marion on the phone.

Lucie Arnaz suddenly interjected: Mom, he knows everything about you.

Lucille replied, Yes, I know. He just asked me about Marion Strong. And added, as if I wasnt sitting right there, What does he care?

I was flattened, certain I had overstepped and afraid that she thought I was some psychotic fan. To save face, I turned my attention toward the guests at the other end of the table. Shortly, a beautifully manicured hand holding a crystal water goblet came into my range of view, with Lucille saying, Take your glass. Befuddled, I thought my glass was in her way and she wanted me to place it elsewhere, so I reached out to take the glass from her. She withdrew it then pushed it toward me again and commanded, Take your glass. Once again I tried to take the glass from her, and she withdrew it.

It felt like I was part of a Lucy sketch  or the butt of a joke.

Finally, she offered the glass again, motioning toward the goblet directly in front of me, and ordered, Take your glass. Ah! She was trying to propose an interlocking toast!
I was already thinking about leaving the collision repair industry, Mr. Johnson said. Then, when we were furloughed during Covid, we started going to food drives from the San Antonio Food Bank.

It was while searching for food distribution dates on the food banks website that fall that Mr. Johnson came upon its Culinary Training Program.

Part of the network of Feeding America, a beneficiary of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, the San Antonio Food Bank runs a state-accredited 10-week culinary program to address hunger by training the unemployed and underemployed to feed others.

Our food bank is committed to culinary training because we see that our kitchen can produce nourishing meals that impact peoples lives, said Eric Cooper, president and chief executive of the food bank. Ultimately, food is medicine. Its what our bodies need.

The goal of the program is to get someone into the middle of the kitchen, Mr. Cooper said, meaning preparing trainees for higher-paying jobs in the industry, so they can continue to learn and advance.
Maxwell herself did not testify. Her British-accented voice was heard only on Friday when the judge asked if she wanted to take the stand. Your honor, she said, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and so there is no reason for me to testify. The judge, Alison Nathan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, asked if that meant she would, in fact, not take the stand. Maxwell answered that the judge was correct.

On Monday, the governments closing argument methodically pieced together the case against Ms. Maxwell, while Menninger said the government had constructed the case from erroneous memories that prosecutors took at face value.

You need to keep your eye on the thing that the government hasnt  how these stories have changed dramatically over time, Menninger told the jury. She said that the victims interviews with federal investigators were about Epstein at first but that the focus eventually shifted to Maxwell.

With that, she said, suddenly the women recovered memories, years later  they recovered memories that Ghislaine was there. But the governments meetings with the women were not recorded, she said. That was by design, so that none of us had a transcript of what took place in these interviews with the F.B.I., Menninger said.

Moe, the prosecutor, recalled the defenses opening statement, which she said had suggested that Maxwell was being blamed for something she didnt do. Moe said the evidence at trial showed that Ms. Maxwell made her own choices.

It was an argument that prosecutors had touched on briefly at the beginning of the trial last month, but never so directly as during Moes two-hour summation. Citing bank records that Epstein had given Maxwell $30.7 million between 1999 and 2007, Moe offered the jury a rationale for why Maxwell did what the government said she did: money.

Your common sense tells you, you dont give someone $30 million unless they are giving you exactly what you want, Moe told jurors, and what Epstein wanted was to touch underage girls.
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Is America no longer governable? Can psychedelics cure us? Whats in a Subway tuna fish sandwich? This December, Times Opinion is looking back at the year through the lens we know best: debates.

For the past several weeks, weve been combing through media coverage and Google trends data to compile a list of the arguments that defined 2021, from the most important conversations we had as a nation to the absurd controversies that fascinated us. The result is a package of 41 short essays covering topics as diverse as American violence, the future of work, Britney Spears, Philip Roth, saving the planet, hermits, Big Bird, cryptocurrency, Critical Race Theory and much more.

Earlier this month, when I met with a group of my colleagues to select the final list, we noticed that one theme kept coming up again and again: connection. After all, 2021 was supposed to be the year that American society knit itself back together. News of the vaccines last November, on the heels of the presidential election, led many of us to believe that the country would soon emerge from the dispiriting isolation of the pandemic with a newfound appreciation for community  for the privilege of being with others.
To the Editor:

I applaud the incisive investigative journalism that produced Hidden Files Bare Military Failures in Deadly Strikes (front page, Dec. 19), about the militarys own confidential assessments of more than 1,300 reports of civilian casualties since 2014 in the American air war in the Mideast.

Across 45 years as a psychotherapist, I have counseled three generations of U.S. veterans from the Vietnam War to the present. By listening to them, I have learned about the deep, lasting suffering that comes from moral injury  the emotional burden of carrying the guilt for killing innocent civilians in our various wars.

Over the years, the guilt and shame these combatants feel becomes intolerable when the fact of war crimes is never acknowledged at the highest levels of authority  military, congressional or presidential. The guilt and shame of soldiers who participated in these killings is intolerably increased when they alone bear the responsibility. For years after, they suffer and pass their dark legacy onto their children. We the people of the United States must bear this burden as well.

Bill Roller

Berkeley, Calif.

The writer is the director of the Berkeley Group and Family Therapy Institute.
BOSTON  Charles Lieber, one of the countrys top research chemists, sat miserably in a chair at the Harvard Police Department, trying to explain to two F.B.I. agents why he had agreed to partner with a lesser-known Chinese university in a relationship that had soured and landed him in trouble with the U.S. government.

The university had money to spend  thats one of the things China uses to try to seduce people, Dr. Lieber said in the interrogation, clips of which were shown in court.

But money wasnt the reason, he said. By training young scientists in the use of technology he had pioneered, he hoped to burnish his credentials with the committee that decides the ultimate scientific honor.

This is embarrassing, he said. Every scientist wants to win a Nobel Prize.

On Tuesday, after deliberating for two hours and 45 minutes, a federal jury found Dr. Lieber guilty of two counts of making false statements to the U.S. government about whether he participated in Thousand Talents Plan, a program designed by the Chinese government to attract foreign-educated scientists to China. They also found him guilty of failing to declare income earned in China and failing to report a Chinese bank account.
Even as some women embrace their naturally silvering tresses  consider Miranda, in the Sex and the City reboot, who abandons her trademark red in favor of a sleek gray bob  laissez-faire attitude isnt likely to extend to other changes women see in their hair as they get older.

Most people expect their hair to turn gray, but hair actually goes through myriad changes as we age, becoming less dense and more unruly, brittle and harder to grow long.

Thick, shiny hair is a hallmark of youth, said Dr. Erika Schwartz, an integrative medicine doctor who founded Evolved Science, a functional longevity practice in Manhattan that provides a variety of treatments to deal with thinning and lackluster locks. Like everything else in aging, your hair suffers the consequences.

While many doctors are reporting a spike in thinning hair among patients who have had Covid-19 or are dealing with the stress of pandemic life (who isnt?), hair loss and textural shifts related to getting older require a different approach to treat effectively.
Families of those who spent time on the website and learned ways to die have long sought accountability from tech companies that lead people to the site, including search engines. The site draws six million page views a month, and nearly half of all traffic is driven by online searches, according to data from Similarweb, a web analytics company.

A representative for Microsoft said that in response to The Timess investigation, the company had taken action in line with our policies and addressed the ranking associated with this website in our results, making the site rank lower for most related searches.

Citing The Timess reporting, Mr. Blumenthal wrote in his letter, addressed to Googles chief executive, Sundar Pichai, that the content on the suicide site makes the world a dark place for too many, and that Google had the ability and legal authority to steer people who are struggling away from this dangerous website.

Googles hands are not tied, and it has a responsibility to act, he wrote.

In an email to The Times, Lara Levin, a spokeswoman for Google, declined to comment on the investigation or the senators letter.

Mr. Blumenthal made the same case in his letter to Microsoft, writing to the companys chief executive, Satya Nadella, and its president, Brad Smith. The Microsoft representative declined to make any additional comment.

The operators of the suicide site have long used Cloudflare, an American firm that provides cyberprotections, to obscure the names of its web host, making it difficult or impossible to know what company is providing those services.

In 2019, Cloudflare was notified of the dangers of the suicide website by Australian government officials. The next year, parents whose children had died while participating in the site asked Matthew Prince, Cloudflares chief executive, to stop providing its services to the site, but he did not respond. Cloudflare declined to respond to a request for comment for this article.
President Biden will announce new steps on Tuesday to confront a staggering surge in coronavirus cases, including readying 1,000 military medical professionals to help at overburdened hospitals, setting up new federal testing sites, deploying hundreds of federal vaccinators and buying 500 million rapid tests to distribute free to the public.

The measures, outlined to reporters on Monday night by two senior administration officials, come as coronavirus caseloads are rapidly rising around the country, particularly in the Northeast, fueled by the highly infectious new Omicron variant.

The 500 million tests that the administration intends to buy will not be available until January, the officials said, adding that the government intends to create a website where people can request that tests be sent to their homes.

The plan for new federal testing sites will debut in New York City, where several new sites will be running before Christmas. And Mr. Biden intends to invoke the Defense Production Act, officials said, to accelerate production of tests.
The dread was familiar.

As news spread of the latest coronavirus surge, fueled by the Omicron variant, parents faced a return to the drudgery of school through a screen, child care crises and restless young bodies, penned inside for the winter.

In Manhattan, Olivia Strong received an email from her sons public middle school on Monday, informing her that his cohort of eighth graders would transition to remote learning because of multiple positive virus cases.

I was not even slightly surprised; I fully expected it, she said, sighing deeply. Her hope, she added, was that a short break to reset would allow schools to reopen more safely in the new year.

Districts have mostly reassured families that despite targeted classroom closures to contain spread of the virus, they plan to continue in-person learning until the Christmas break and reopen as planned in January. New York City, Boston and Montgomery County, Md., in suburban Washington, were among the large school systems that said they would not shift districtwide to remote learning, or would do so only if forced to by public health officials.
The much-anticipated moment has arrived.

After nearly four months in court, the jury in the trial of the former Silicon Valley superstar Elizabeth Holmes began deliberations on Monday. The group of eight men and four women will decide whether Holmes  whose blood-testing company, Theranos, collapsed in scandal  should be convicted of 11 counts of fraud-related charges.

We dont know how long the jurors will take to arrive at their conclusion. The soonest the verdict could come is today: They are scheduled to reconvene in a federal courthouse in San Jose at 8:30 a.m. There are no court proceedings on Wednesday, but the jury would resume on Thursday if needed.

The jurors must reach a unanimous decision, and failing to do so could result in a mistrial. Some legal experts have said that longer deliberations suggest things may go Holmess way.

If convicted, Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison. The sentencing would come at a later date.

Since beginning in late summer, Holmess trial has dragged on for weeks longer than originally expected. (You can catch up with my colleagues stories on opening statements, James Mattiss testimony, the prosecutions arguments, the defenses case and closing arguments.)
A billionaire from Utah, Jeff T. Green, said he was resigning this week from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in an unusually high-profile rebuke of the churchs wealth and position on social issues.

Mr. Green, who runs an advertising technology firm and is believed to be one of the wealthiest people from Utah, did not say what caused him to make such a public exit this week. But he said in a letter to Russell M. Nelson, the churchs president, that he was concerned about the churchs history, finances and advocacy.

While most members are good people trying to do right, I believe the church is actively and currently doing harm in the world, he wrote in the letter, which was reported Monday by The Salt Lake Tribune.

In the letter, a copy of which was dated Dec. 23, he said he had stopped believing in the churchs teachings more than a decade ago and had spent several years reflecting on his issues with it. I believe the Mormon Church has hindered global progress in womens rights, civil rights and racial equality, and L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, he wrote.
Mr. Biden acknowledged the political division in the country and the fierce opposition to vaccine requirements among some people, saying his administration has put some mandates in place not to control your life, but to save your life and the lives of others. And he pleaded with Americans who remained unvaccinated to get shots to protect themselves and the people around them from infection.

I honest to God believe its your patriotic duty, Mr. Biden said.

Some of Mr. Bidens announcements  including the distribution of new at-home tests  are not intended to be implemented for weeks, if not longer, raising doubts about how much they will help in the short term. And most are incremental steps that many public health experts say fall far short of the kind of aggressive actions required.

The president is not moving to mandate testing or vaccination for travelers on domestic flights, and he flatly ruled out on Tuesday returning to the kinds of restrictions that some European nations have once again imposed in an effort to slow the spread of the new variant, which doctors say is even more highly contagious than previous iterations of the virus.

Thats what I keep getting asked, Mr. Biden said. The answer is absolutely no. No.

Keeping the economy and schools open has been a high priority of the presidents; experts say last years school closures were traumatic for many students. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a new test to stay program, in which students exposed to the virus could take coronavirus tests to remain in the classroom, rather than quarantining at home.

We know how to keep our kids safe, Mr. Biden said on Tuesday. K-12 schools should be open.

Mr. Bidens remarks came as officials across the nation, and the world, rushed to confront Omicron in different ways. In New York, Eric Adams, the incoming mayor, postponed his inauguration ceremony. The National Hockey League paused its season ahead of a holiday break, and on Tuesday said its players would not participate in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. In Massachusetts, state officials called out the National Guard to help staff hospitals with crushing caseloads.
WASHINGTON  A commission created by Congress to develop a more strategic approach to defending against cyberattacks turned out the lights on Tuesday, ending two and a half years of work on policy recommendations, legislative pushes and warnings about malware, ransomware and other threats.

When the Cyberspace Solarium Commission released its first recommendations in March 2020, after a year of research and writing, its members vowed that the panel would work differently from other blue ribbon Washington exercises. Senator Angus King, independent of Maine and a co-chairman of the commission, said the recommendations would not end up dusty on a shelf, like those drawn up by many other well-meaning panels.

The commissions name was based on the Eisenhower administrations Project Solarium, which developed new policies for the Cold War. Influential members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees led the commission, allowing its cybersecurity recommendations to be packaged as legislation included in one of the few policy bills that pass each year: the annual National Defense Authorization Act.

This is an example of what I think was genius  and I can say that because it wasnt my idea  instead of just issuing a report with recommendations we handed the congressional committees fully drafted, finished legislation, Mr. King said.
Mr. Graham, who along with Mr. Thune and Ms. Collins is part of a small group of senators who often dine together in Washington, said that before they left for the holidays, he had reassured Mr. Thune about any Trumpian intervention.

I told John thatll be fine, Mr. Graham recalled. John will be fine.

Asked if he thought the threat of a Trump-inspired primary bothered Mr. Thune, Mr. McConnell said, No. No, I dont.

But if Mr. Thune ascended to Republican Senate leadership, Mr. Trump could still prove a headache.

The former president does not have the influence in the Senate, where 19 Republicans defied him to support the infrastructure bill, that he does in the House. Yet Mr. Trumps regular attacks on Mr. McConnell and on anything that has the air of cooperation with President Biden are not lost on Senate Republicans.

A handful of them whose seats are up in 2022, including Mr. Thune, opposed the infrastructure bill after the former presidents relentless criticism of the bipartisan measure made it difficult for Senate leaders to back the legislation.

Perhaps more significant regarding Mr. Trumps future influence is the turnover in the Senate and the question of whether retiring mainstream Republicans, like Senators Richard Shelby of Alabama, Rob Portman of Ohio and Roy Blunt of Missouri, will be replaced by Trump acolytes.

Weve just got to plow through this to the post-Donald Trump era, which I believe is coming, Ms. Collins said, lamenting that the former presidents haranguing the leader, Mitch, has gotten worse lately.

If Mr. Thune left, she said, she would truly be beside myself.

Echoing Ms. Collins, if not as unequivocally, about why Mr. Thune should stay, Mr. Graham and Mr. Cramer both said he could eventually succeed Mr. McConnell, who will be 80 in February. Mr. Cramer said that Mr. Thunes ascension would not happen by default but that it would be really good for the farm belt.
Mr. Waldron opened his story by saying that his research into the 2020 election began that summer, when he started to examine what he described as a network of nonprofit groups connected to Mr. Soros, an outspoken supporter of liberal causes who has long been at the center of right-wing, often antisemitic conspiracies.

Around that time, Mr. Waldron said, he and his associates  whom he has never named  developed a relationship with a Texas cybersecurity company, Allied Security Operations Group, which was co-founded by a man named Russell J. Ramsland Jr.

According to Mr. Waldron, Mr. Ramsland and his team had made a startling discovery: that the Chinese Communist Party, through software companies it controlled, had developed a way to flip votes on American tabulation machines, particularly those built by Dominion Voting Systems. (Dominion has adamantly denied its machines have security flaws and has filed defamation suits against some of those who have repeated the claims, including Fox News, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell.)

Beginning in August last year, months before Election Day, Mr. Waldron started to raise an alarm, as he put it, and tried to get anyone he could interested in his claim that the countrys voting machines were susceptible to hacking.

He told the podcast hosts that he and his partners had reached out to officials in the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, all of which were run by Trump appointees at the time. Mr. Waldron said he also sent an email to Mr. Trumps director of strategic communications, but all of it fell on deaf ears.

But there was one person who listened, Mr. Waldron said: Mr. Gohmert, the Texas Republican and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group that was traditionally loyal to Mr. Trump and ultimately played an outsize role in his efforts to overturn the election. By Mr. Waldrons account, Mr. Gohmert promised to pass along his concerns about voting machines to the president, but apparently failed to do so until after the election. (Mr. Gohmert did not respond to questions seeking comment.)
Congress gave the Bureau of Prisons the authority to release federal inmates to home confinement as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, passed in March 2020 to address threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic, including risks to people in overcrowded prisons.

But five days before Mr. Biden took office in January, the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel determined that nearly all those people would need to return to prison once the government said the pandemic no longer constituted an emergency.

Criminal justice advocates and some lawmakers  including Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois Democrat and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee  pressed the new administration to reverse course. But in July, The New York Times reported that Biden administration lawyers had decided that the Trump-era memo had correctly interpreted the law.

During a trip to Chicago days later, Mr. Durbin lobbied Mr. Garland to become personally involved, according to a person familiar with the matter. The next month, administration officials characterized the previous assessment as a preliminary review and said that a more formal one was underway.

As an alternative to keep some inmates on home confinement from returning to prison, the White House worked on a clemency program for some nonviolent drug offenders and considered using compassionate release for others.
A California man who pleaded guilty to threatening dozens of people, including members of Congress and journalists, for saying that former President Donald J. Trump had lost the 2020 election was sentenced on Monday to three years in prison.

The man, Robert Lemke, 36, sent texts and voice messages to about 50 people between November 2020 and early January. Several of the messages warned elected officials and reporters to stop telling the public that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the election, and said that Mr. Lemke and others were armed, federal prosecutors said.

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Monday that Mr. Lemke had targeted his victims for the perceived offense of stating the facts.

Rather than attempting to effect change through the lawful forms of expression that all of us Americans still enjoy, Lemke sought to quell freedom of expression, to intimidate and instill fear in others by threats of violence, Mr. Williams said in a statement.
Well before a global pandemic tore us away from our loved ones, and the Omicron variant threatened to upend holiday plans, experts were warning of an epidemic of loneliness in the United States.

Three in five Americans surveyed in 2019 reported feeling lonely, which the researchers attributed to a variety of factors, including a lack of social support, infrequent meaningful social interactions, poor physical and mental health and an imbalance in daily activities. In addition, nearly one quarter of those 65 and older are considered socially isolated, according to the National Health and Aging Trends Study.

Loneliness often stems from unwanted solitude. But it is also driven by a discrepancy between how you perceive your relationships versus what you want (or expect) from them. That disconnect is why you can be surrounded by family at Christmas and still feel like an outsider.

A potential cure? Kindness toward others. Something as simple as volunteering can improve our health, ease feelings of loneliness and broaden our social networks, studies suggest. Opportunities to give back  both in person and virtually  are more commonplace than they were last year, and the need for volunteers hasnt let up, especially at food pantries.
NAIROBI, Kenya  The captain and first officer of a ship that hit a coral reef and spilled toxic fuel off the coast of Mauritius last year in the worst environmental disaster in the island nations recent history have pleaded guilty to endangering safe navigation.

The spill was an environmental calamity for Mauritius, an Indian Ocean nation off the coast of East Africa that is famous for its stunning beaches and lagoons. It destroyed the livelihoods of fishermen and tourism workers and threatened biodiversity hot spots, including prominent snorkeling and diving areas.

The captain, Sunil Kumar Nandeshwar, and the first officer, Subodha Tilakaratna, entered their pleas Monday in a hearing at the Intermediate Court in the capital, Port Louis, according to Mr. Tilakaratnas lawyer. Mr. Nandeshwar had admitted to drinking during a party on the ship, which was carrying 200 tons of diesel and 3,800 tons of fuel oil, when it ran aground in July 2020.

But the charges  for conduct likely to endanger the safe navigation of the ship or to cause interference or annoyance to the other persons on board  are among the lightest criminal ones under Mauritian law, and the two are likely to be freed soon, the lawyer, Amira Peeroo, said.
Gabriel Boric rose to prominence in Chile ten years ago as a shaggy-haired student leading massive demonstrations for free quality public education. He ran for president this year, calling for a square deal for more Chileans, with more social protections for the poor and higher taxes on the rich.

Now, having won the presidency on Sunday  with more votes than any other candidate in history  Mr. Boric is poised to oversee what could be the most profound transformation of Chilean society in decades.

Its not just that he wants to bury the legacy of Gen. Augusto Pinochets dictatorship by overhauling the conservative economic model the country inherited at the end of his tenure in 1990. Mr. Borics government will also oversee the final stages of the writing of a new Constitution to replace the dictatorship-era document that continues to define the nation.

And then theres who he is: Elected at 35, Mr. Boric will be the youngest president in the countrys history when he takes office in March. He never completed his law degree  the protests got in the way. He speaks openly about his obsessive-compulsive disorder. And he scandalized the Chilean establishment by showing up for his first day as a congressman in 2014 in a beige trench coat  and no tie.
On July 1, with little warning and no public ceremony, U.S. forces abandoned the sprawling Bagram Air Base, the hub of the 20-year American war effort in Afghanistan. Six weeks later, on Aug. 15, Taliban fighters swept into the base and freed thousands of prisoners  including senior Taliban and Al Qaeda figures  from a prison complex at Bagram.

A base that was once a bustling city housing tens of thousands of troops is now a desolate ruin. Within Bagrams concrete blast walls, a bedraggled unit of Taliban fighters guards the emptied prison, once the site where the U.S. military detained thousands of people suspected of being insurgents, often for long periods without charge or trial. The guards camp amid mountains of debris and personal belongings abandoned by fleeing prisoners, and damaged equipment left by U.S. and Afghan government forces.
IMLIDOL, India  The pipes are laid, the taps installed and the village tank is under construction  all promising signs that, come spring, Girja Ahriwar will get water at her doorstep and finally shed a lifelong burden.

I go out and put the jerrycans in the queue at around 5 a.m. and wait there with the children, Ms. Ahriwar, a mother of three who lives in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, said about her routine of fetching from the village hand pump. Sometimes it could take five or six hours. I have to stay there because if I leave, someone else moves ahead.

India, one of the worlds most water-stressed countries, is halfway through an ambitious drive to provide clean tap water by 2024 to all the roughly 192 million households across its 600,000 villages. About 18,000 government engineers are overseeing the $50 billion undertaking, which includes hundreds of thousands of contractors and laborers who are laying more than 2.5 million miles of pipe.

The project has a powerful champion in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has slashed through Indias notorious red tape and pushed aside thorny political divisions to see it through. His success thus far helps explain his dominance over the countrys political landscape.
How will people get their free rapid tests? The administration says it will buy 500 million rapid tests to deliver free, beginning in January, via a website where people can request tests and have them sent to their homes. (Britain, where tests are cheaper and more plentiful, already has such a site.) But White House officials concede the particulars of their plan arent fully developed. They have not said whether there would be a limit on the number of tests, or exactly how  via the Postal Service? FedEx? United Parcel Service?  they will be shipped.

Will 500 million tests be enough? Experts have projected there would be roughly 250 million at-home tests available in January. It is unclear whether the new supply of 500 million additional tests will be available right away, or if the administration expects to supply 500 million tests per month. Assuming that supply in January doubles, it would still mean there are fewer than two tests for every American for the entire month.

How will the White House scale up supply? Administration officials say Mr. Biden will continue to invoke the Defense Production Act, the Korean War-era law that gives the president broad powers, largely through executive order, to direct private companies to prioritize orders from the federal government. The administration has already been using the law to scale up test production, officials say, and did so again as recently as last week to ensure that two test manufacturers have the raw materials they needed.

How and where will the military be deployed? Mr. Biden will instruct his defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, to ready 1,000 military doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health professionals to help overburdened hospitals. There are no plans yet to send those troops to specific locations; they will be at the ready in case they are needed, officials say.

Where will the new testing sites be, how many will there be, and when will they open? The exact number of new testing sites is unknown. The administration plans to start with several new sites in New York City that officials say will be open by Christmas.
Several countries in Europe are reporting growing instances of fake Covid passes and vaccination certificates  an indication that the vaccine resistance that threatened earlier this year to upend governments anti-Covid strategies is far from over.

In France, the authorities said on Monday that they had detected over 180,000 fake Covid passes since the measure was introduced this summer. And in Italy on Tuesday, the police in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, arrested a leader of an anti-vaccine movement and a nurse who is accused of accepting payments for pretend vaccinations.

Officials in France said on Friday that soon only vaccinated people would be eligible for Covid passes, which are required for entry into restaurants, cafes and other public places. The news of the forgeries highlighted how vaccine resistance remains strong in parts of the countrys population.
Sheikh Mohammeds representatives have denied that the women are being held against their will.

In October, court documents revealed that Sheikh Mohammed had used high-tech software purchased from an Israeli company to hack the cellphones of his ex-wife, two of her lawyers and three other associates.

In the court documents made public this week, Judge Philip Moor cited the hacking and his kidnapping of Sheikha Shamsa and Sheikha Latifa, among other factors, in saying that Sheikh Mohammed constitutes a grave risk to the princess and their children.

Judge Moor said that Princess Haya and the children, given their status, would have required security in any event, but he emphasized that they are particularly vulnerable and need watertight security to ensure their continued safety and security in this country.

The judge added that Princess Haya was not asking for an award for herself other than for security and compensation for items she had lost as a result of the end of her marriage.

The court ordered Sheikh Mohammed to make a lump-sum payment of 251.5 million, about $330 million, to Princess Haya, who was the most visible of the sheikhs reported six wives. Documents said the money was to go toward the upkeep of her British homes, future security and what she was owed for jewelry and racehorses.
MOSCOW  Stepping onto a podium in heavy boots and military fatigues at a ceremony outside Moscow, six teenagers accepted awards for an increasingly important discipline in Russia: patriotism.

For days, students from around the country had competed in activities like map-reading, shooting and history quizzes. The contest was funded in part by the Kremlin, which has been making military patriotic education a priority.

Parents and children understand that this aggressive shell around us, it is tightening, it is hardening, said Svyatoslav Omelchenko, a special forces veteran of the K.G.B. who founded Vympel, the group running the event. We are doing all we can to make sure that children are aware of that and to get them ready to go and serve.

Over the past eight years, the Russian government has promoted the idea that the motherland is surrounded by enemies, filtering the concept through national institutions like schools, the military, the news media and the Orthodox Church. It has even raised the possibility that the country might again have to defend itself as it did against the Nazis in World War II.
TUNIS  Nearly 100 candidates declared they were running for president, a few of them among the most prominent in Libyan politics. More than a third of Libyans registered to vote, and most signaled their intention to cast ballots.

Western leaders and United Nations officials had thrown their support behind the election, one they said represented the best hope of reunifying and pacifying a country still largely divided in two and dazed from nearly a decade of internecine fighting.

For more than a year now, Libya has been hurtling toward a long-awaited presidential election scheduled for Friday, the 70th anniversary of the countrys independence. But with just a few days to go, the vote looks virtually sure to be postponed as questions swirl about the legitimacy of major candidates and the elections legal basis.

Amid the uncertainty, the national election commission dissolved the committees that had been preparing for the vote, essentially conceding that it would not occur on schedule. For now, it was the closest thing Libyans were likely to get to a formal announcement, given all parties reluctance to make such a declaration and take the blame.
Johannes Wessmark is a self-taught Swedish artist who specializes in hyperrealistic acrylic painting that rivals high-resolution photography.

Johannes Wessmark was born in Karlstad, Sweden in 1962. He had a happy childhood, but he wasnt the most popular of his peers, preferring instead to observe without interacting. Looking back, the Swedish painter remembers some quirks that hint at the attention to detail his art is now world-famous for. When he was 10, he decided to start cleaning his own room, just to make sure it was done exactly the way he wanted. He sorted all of his toys in straight lines and in color order, which was a bit odd for a kid his age. He also drew and painted a lot, and his mother encouraged him to develop his artistic side, which turned out to be a great idea, as Johannes is one of the worlds most respected hyperrealistic artists.

In my paintings, I want to convey a feeling of calm and relaxation. Water and landscapes a subject matters that have followed me for many years, Wessmark wrote on his website. I grew up in the country and have spent much time in the wilderness and forests around me. We also had a summer-house by the Swedish west coast where we spent many holidays. Positive experiences that came to influence me as an artist many years later. Hyperrealistic figurative and portrait painting together with landscapes have become my favorite motives over the many years as an artist.

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Although he has tackled many varied subjects in his ultra-realistic acrylic paintings over the years, Johannes Wessmark has become particularly famous for his ability to depict the female body in water. Moving water is one of the most challenging things to pull off as a hyperrealistic painter, because the distortion of the objects or people submerged in it, and the reflection of light are incredibly tricky. And yet, Johannes has this uncanny ability to make it look as real as a photograph.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by J Wessmark  artist (@johannes_wessmark)

It has been one of my favorite subject matters for many years, the Swedish artist told My Modern Met. When I started painting women it came quite naturally to put them in water. I love both the beauty of the female form and the challenge of painting moving and reflecting water. This has become more or less my signum even if I have painted many other subject matters through my 30 years as a professional artist.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by J Wessmark  artist (@johannes_wessmark)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by J Wessmark  artist (@johannes_wessmark)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by J Wessmark  artist (@johannes_wessmark)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by J Wessmark  artist (@johannes_wessmark)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by J Wessmark  artist (@johannes_wessmark)
Jon Selib

Clayton, Dubilier & Rice has named Jon Selib, who was senior VP of global policy & public affairs at Pfizer, managing director & global external affairs leader.

He will join the private investment firm in March and take responsibility for its outreach to media, trade groups and governmental units.

Selib also will work with CD&Rs portfolio companies, which includes Huntsworth, to bolster their communications efforts.

At Pfizer, Selib handled reputation, PA and policy matters and counseled CEO Albert Bourla and other top executives during the companys rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Previously, he was partner at Londons Hakluyt & Co. commercial strategy firm, in charge of its US business.

Selib has Capitol Hill experience gained while serving as chief of staff to Sen Max Baucus, who chaired the Senate Finance Committee during the legislative battle over the Affordable Care Act.

Nate Sleeper, CD&R CEO, said his firm and portfolio companies will benefit from Selibs deep experience and strategic counsel as they confront an ever more competitive and sophisticated landscape.
Trade impacts of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom

This paper assesses the medium term impact of the United Kingdom leaving the EU Single Market under the terms of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) reached at the end of 2020 using the OECD METRO CGE model. The analysis does not include any transitional costs to fully implementing the new trade agreement, nor does it take into account stress on the economy as a result of COVID-19. Lastly, only the implications on services trade from regulatory restrictions on the free movement of people have been incorporated in the analysis while the wider labour market impacts of cross-border movement of people are left aside. Results from the simulation show that real GDP losses in the European Union, in the worst case scenario are expected to be around 0.6% in the medium term, but would vary markedly across countries. Ireland would experience the largest losses, while countries with loose trade links with the United Kingdom would barely be affected. The decline in trade is not uniform among sectors. European Union member states are expected to import less professional services such as financial services and insurance, communication, and other business services. UK exports are estimated to fall by about 6.3% and imports by 8.1% in the medium term. The overall medium-term loss in real GDP could amount to 4.4%.

In series:OECD Economics Department Working Papersview more titles
Public views are being sought in Offaly and other counties on a long promised plan that could deliver nearly 85 million in development funding to the midlands that have been hit by the ending of peat production.

The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communication, Eamon Ryan, has launched a public consultation on a draft of Irelands Territorial Just Transition Plan, in partnership with the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly.



A statement says the plan will set out how Ireland proposes to invest funding from the EU Just Transition Fund  to support a just transition in the wider Midlands region.

Just days after Laois Offaly TD Carol Nolan said the plan's publication was like Waiting for Godot, Minister Ryan's Department has published the draft plan which has seen 84.5 million allocated to Ireland under the EU Just Transition Fund over the period to 2027.

The Fund must be complemented with national resources and in Ireland the national co-funding rate will be between 30% to 50%. There are also specific rules in relation to the timing of expenditure and on eligible costs that may be supported by the Fund.



This public consultation is asking for stakeholders views on the transition process and the draft plan which, when finalised, will be submitted to the European Commission for approval. The consultation invites stakeholders to complete an online survey and to attend online workshops.



There will be two online workshops on January 18 and 25 for in-depth discussions on priorities for the EU Just Transition Fund. A third online workshop, for young people in the region, is being organised with national youth representative organisations to ensure that people impacted have the opportunity to shape the plan. There will also be specific information sessions for Oireachtas members, as well as relevant local authorities and their members.

The Department says views are views of individuals, communities, businesses, and representative bodies are particularly sought in the wider Midlands region of east Galway, north Tipperary, Longford, Laois, Offaly, Westmeath, west Kildare and Roscommon.



A statement announcing the consultation says the EU Just Transition Fund will support the goals of Irelands Climate Action Plan and its objectives, in relation to providing a just transition in the wider Midlands region. This is in response to the ending of peat extraction for electricity generation.

Minister Ryan's Department says analysis for the draft Territorial Just Transition Plan builds on extensive analysis and public engagement already undertaken. This considered the development needs of the region, including for the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy for the Eastern and Midland Region.

It identified the following proposed key development needs for the wider Midlands region, based on the scope of support from the EU Just Transition Fund:

Modernising the business environment and creating employment opportunities;

Enhancing the skills profile;

Promoting environmental sustainability and industrial heritage;

Enhancing the potential of region as a place to live and work.

Commenting on publication, Minister Ryan, said:



This Government is committed to a just transition for the Midlands region and has dedicated significant funding to support workers, companies and communities following the early closure, in 2020, of the peat-fired power stations and the ending of peat extraction to supply these power stations.



I am pleased to launch this public consultation on our draft Territorial Just Transition Plan, which is a significant step in helping to deliver further significant funding to the region, with support from the EU Just Transition Fund. I look forward to hearing peoples views on the draft plan. This will inform the final plan, which we will submit to the European Commission.



I am also pleased to announce that I have decided to appoint the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly (EMRA) as the Managing Authority to deliver this funding. The EMRA is the key statutory body representing the development needs of the region. It is extremely well placed, through its statutory functions and working in close cooperation with my Department and the other bodies administering EU funds in Ireland, to deliver EU just transition funding into the region, he said.

Laois Offaly Minister of State Pippa Hackett encouraged people to engage.

The Midlands deserves to be front and centre for EU Just Transition funding and this move by my colleague Minister Eamon Ryan is a step in that direction. Up to 84m is coming to Ireland and the Midlands is being prioritised for investment. It will create jobs, modernise business, and attract people into our towns.

"I would urge people with ideas for spending to join the online workshops on January 18 and 25. We will be having special session for young people at a later date. This is really positive announcement for the region, she said.

The consultation is open until the 14th February 2022.

The draft Territorial Just Transition Plan and consultation survey are available HERE.

A report summarising the responses received will be made available online after the consultation period.

The Department says the EU Just Transition Fund (EU JTF) is a newly established fund under the framework of EU cohesion policy and is being rolled out in all EU Member States. The Fund is governed by the EU Just Transition Fund Regulation (Regulation 2021/1056) and the EU Common Provisions Regulation (Regulation 2021/1060), which set out common rules for all EU cohesion policy funds. These regulations were adopted in June 2021.



The Just Transition Fund is designed to assist communities across Europe to meet the challenges of the green transition, in line with the objective of achieving EU climate neutrality by 2050 in an effective and fair manner  ensuring that nobody is left behind.



Member States must therefore concentrate the proposed investments in their territorial just transition plans on specific regions or parts of regions and justify the selection of those regions based on the economic and social impacts resulting from the transition, in particular with regard to job losses.



The wider Midlands region has been proposed as the territory for investment under the draft Territorial Just Transition Plan. This region comprises East Galway, North Tipperary, Longford, Laois, Offaly, Westmeath, West Kildare and Roscommon.



Territorial Just Transition Plans must address a number of areas, including:

outlining the national climate transition process;

identifying the most negatively affected territory and the economic, social and territorial impact of the transition;

identifying the development needs and objectives of that territory by 2030 consistent with other national, regional or

territorial strategies and plans;

setting out the types of investments envisaged; and

outlining the proposed governance mechanisms for the implementation of the EU JTF.

The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications has overall policy responsibility for the EU Just Transition Fund in Ireland. The Department will be supported by the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly (EMRA), which will be the Managing Authority  a requirement of the EU funds management system.



The Managing Authority is a key function within the overall architecture for the delivery of the funds and the EMRA will play a critical role in the development and ongoing management of Irelands JTF Programme for the forthcoming programme period, as prescribed by the EU Common Provisions Regulation. Other bodies may be selected by the Government to deliver specific elements of the territorial plan and programme.
OFFALY County Council has been fined 90,000 in relation to breaches of health and safety regulations, which left a council employee paralysed after a cast iron light column fell on him.

The incident dates back to January 25, 2019, when council workers were removing a light column in the Kilbride Plaza car park in Tullamore. Micahel Hogan was standing nearby and was hit by the pole as it fell.

The local authority was charged with five counts of breaches under the 2005 health and safety act. They pleaded guilty to two counts which were accepted by the prosecution and a nolle prosequi was entered on the remaining three.

In passing sentence on Tuesday December 21, Judge Francis Comerford said the case differed from other criminal cases in that the council did not set out to deliberately harm anyone. Neither did they cut corners for financial gain.

However, he said the council hadn't taken any consideration of how people could be harmed when the pole was being removed and it was an ''institutional failure.'' He said they had failed in their duty of care to Michael Hogan who had suffered terrible life altering and life reducing injuries as a consequence.

He said the accident has been catastrophic for Mr Hogan and his family and he must mark the seriousness of the offences. He said the penalty will not improve things for anyone but it will mark the significance and the failure of Offaly county Council to meet its responsibilities. The judge said the council had failed to conduct an inquiry to identify the hazards involved in the removal of the pole. He said it was not the fault of any of the workers involved in the removal but it was because no safety plan had been put in place.

He noted that Mr Hogan didn't have to be at the location, but there was nothing wrong with him being there as he may have been called on in the future to undertake a similar job.

At a hearing last Friday's December 17 the court heard the offence carries a sentence of two years in prison or a 3m fine.

However Judge Comerford said he had to take into account the ability of the offenders to meet a large fine. He said it would not do any good for the family and it would leave other county council areas short and the public would suffer.

He said the mitigating factors was the early guilty plea and the steps the council had taken to mitigate some of the harm to Mr Hogan by providing a house and adapting it to meet his needs. He noted that Offaly County Council had no previous convictions. They had also fully cooperated with the Health and Safety Authority. But Judge Comerford said it was ''not at all impressed'' that they were not accepting full liability in a related civil case.

In breaking down the 90,000 fine Judge Comerford said 50,000 is for failing to carry out a risk assessment before undertaking the work and 40,000 was for the overall negligence by the council. He also awarded costs of 4,000 to the office of Director of Prosecutions and 1,379 to the Health and Safety Authority. All fines must be paid within three months.

Background to the case

On Friday, December 17 last, Tullamore Circuit Court heard that on January 23, 2019, a Council worker discovered a loose light post in Kilbride Plaza. When he put his hand to the pole it moved. He rang his supervisor expressing concern. He was told to put cones around the pole along with a barrier. An electrician was contacted. The electrician was not available until Friday January 25, however, on his way home from work that Thursday evening he went to inspect the pole and he saw that it was unsteady. He removed the fuse and made the cable safe. He formed the opinion that the pole would have to be removed. He disconnected the power source.

On Friday, January 25, 2019, a JCB operator from a local company who regularly carried out work for the council, was hired to pull the pole from the ground. There were other council employees present on the day.

Michael Hogan was not part of the team involved in the removal of the light column. He and another man had gone to inspect a parking metre in the Texas Car park which was out of order. They then asked the electrician to take a look at it. Afterwards they came back to Kilbride Plaza.

The JCB operator attached a chain to a D-shackle on the digger and the chain was then attached to the pole. He shouted at everyone to move back. Michael Hogan was described as standing two car parking spaces away from the pole which was 4 metres high. However, the digger operator had difficulties pulling the pole out of the ground and so the chain was moved lower down on the pole by some of the other workers as they felt there would be less risk of it slipping.

The digger operator once again attempted to pull the pole, however, this time it sprang out of the ground and hit Mr Hogan on the neck and he fell to the ground. An ambulance was called and while they were waiting the other workers placed bandages around Mr Hogans head under instructions from a paramedic. Mr Hogan was removed to hospital and the court heard that 4 weeks later he recalled waking up in the Mater Hospital.

In her evidence to the court Lillian ONeill, Inspector for the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) said when she inspected the site she saw the JCB with 5 chains attached to the bucket and one on the pole. She noted that the base of the pole appeared to be sheared and there were 4 bolts at the base with one looking as if it had previously been sheared. She took a number of pictures at the site. In addition, she commissioned structural engineer Michael Slevin.

In his report, Mr Slevin described the pole as having a base plate which was bolted to cement. The bolts were not removed before work began. Ms ONeill said if the pole was inspected it would have been evident. She said that typically poles would have a root mounted column which could be pulled up from the ground. However, she said this particular pole should have been supported while the bolts were removed and choke slings placed high up on the light column would typically be used in this instance. She said the methodology was fundamentally flawed and there was no safety system, work plan, or risk assessment in place.

Judge Francis Comerford commented that someone must have known what would happen. However, Ms ONeill said it wasnt thought through and there was no plan. She said no exclusion zone had been set up in the car park which would have ensured no one could enter the area.

She recommended to the council that a safety plan specifically for the removal of poles be adopted. The council accepted the recommendations and all staff have since been informed.

A medical report from Orthopaedic consultant Dorothy Neil read by Mr White stated that Mr Hogan, a 57 year old man, had significant head and neck injuries. He is now paralysed from the chest down. He has very limited ability to move his hands and has a high level of dependency. He had surgery in the spinal unit of the Mater Hospital, he was then transferred back to Tullamore hospital where he remained for two months before being transferred to the National Rehabilitation Hospital. Any further recovery in years to come will be slow and protracted and it is difficult to predict what recovery will be like. He is wheelchair bound but because of weakness in his hands it makes it difficult. He will never return to manual work and while he may be able to do sedentary work, it is unlikely.

An updated medical report from Dr Kearney of Church Avenue, Tullamore, confirmed that Mr Hogan had reduced use of his hands and needs two people to move him in the bed, he also needs two people during the day. He can feed himself and can use the remote control for the television. He also suffers severe spasms in both legs which keep him awake at night. His cognitive functions are normal. But he has bladder and bowel problems.

He has no issues breathing and he remains calm and accepting. Mr Hogan had previous medical problems including a liver transplant and hypertension. He was not in court for the hearing and is currently in Tullamore hospital as he experiences ongoing issues.

His children wrote that they had moved into a new house provided by Offaly County Council which had to be adapted to meet Mr Hogans needs. They said his care is complex and he is at a much higher risk of being hospitalised if he gets an infection. His diagnosis is severe but he has adjusted. He suffers from depression but tries to be positive. When he left work that morning little did we know that life would change forever, Kevin White BL prosecuting, read on behalf of the family.

Daily living for the family is quite difficult. Mr Hogan needs two people to get him out of bed, and he needs an electric wheelchair.

The birth of his granddaughter Sofia has brought a lot of joy to his life but he will never be able to hug her. He has also suffered the loss of his hobby, pitch and putt which he had been involved in for 30 year. He travelled all over the country with the club.

He was a very hard working man and he misses the social aspect of his job. He cannot sit for longer than three hours in his wheelchair without experiencing pain.

The family said their new house doesnt feel like a home as they have three visits from carers every day. Mr Hogan is also unable to visit his siblings in Clonaslee. Michael Hogan said he wished people could experience what one day in his life was like so they could see what he goes through. His family said he has a great sense of humour and is very kind. He is known as a gentle giant and is the strongest person they know.

David Staunton BL for Offaly County Council said everyone in the council was shocked and had cooperated fully with the investigation. They had also instigated all of the HSA recommendations.

They had made the incorrect assumption that the pole was a rooted column and believed that it would easily be removed.

Mr Staunton said Offaly County Council had an impeccable record regarding health and safety standards. He described it as a small council where everyone knew one another. He said everyone felt remorse from the lowest to the highest. He said a mark of how serious they take the matter was evident in that the Chief Executive Anna Maria Delaney was present in court as was the Director of Services Tom Shanahan and Senior Executive Engineer John Connelly along with the head of finance. He said they wanted to extend their deepest sympathy to the family. He said they were in a position to secure a home for Mr Hogan but knew that his life had been turned upside down and he needed constant care. They have also provided 200,000 to the family.

Mr White said the offence carries a jail sentence of two years or a fine of 3m.

Responding, Mr Staunton said Offaly County Council has a 1.6m deficit. He said they were at a loss of rates from the closure of Bord na Mona. He said it is not a significant or well funded council. He said there had been a sense of genuine shock and heartfelt concern from Chief Executive Anna Marie Delaney to Mr Hogan and all they can do is make him as comfortable as possible.

Judge Comerford said there had been a terrible breach of health and safety standards and there should have been a prepared plan. He said there appeared to be no thought given to how the pole would come out of the ground.
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Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo, is a partially recognised state in Southeast Europe. It lies at the centre of the Balkans, occupying an area of 10,887 km2 (4,203 sq mi), with a population of a. 1.8 million; and is bordered by the uncontested part of the territory of Serbia to the north and east, North Macedonia to the southeast, Albania to the southwest, and Montenegro to the west. Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, and has since gained diplomatic recognition as a sovereign state by 97 member states of the United Nations. Most of central Kosovo is dominated by the vast plains and fields of Metohija and Kosovo. The Accursed Mountains and Sar Mountains rise in the southwest and southeast, respectively. Its capital and largest city is Pristina.
Business Insider 05 Jan 2022

"90% of people will not play a game unless they are being properly valued for that time," Alexis Ohanian said in a recent podcast.
But Health Minister Greg Hunt says there is still an important role for masks in indoor settings, as the countrys leaders prepare to meet on Wednesday.
The settlement is the latest development in a legal saga that began when the princess fled to Britain in April 2019, fearing for her safety.
Two local police officers described 15-year-old Sydney Raley as a hero and rewarded her with $100 for the deed.
Newsy 08 Dec 2021

Watch VideoPresident Biden and his Russian counterpart Russian President Vladimir Putin have now had their second meeting since..
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened a "military-technical" reaction to NATO. The US expects talks with Moscow to resume in bilateral and multilateral formats in the new year.
UN representatives traveling to the region described the situation as "appalling," calling on both countries to live up to their human rights obligations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said if the West continued its "obviously aggressive stance" Russia would take "appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures".
A single U.S. senator detonated a political bombshell by refusing to back the U.S. president's Build Back Better bill. The wide-ranging blast radius has touched his political party, his country, and his planet. Let's sift through the wreckage and look at the effects of Sen. Joe Manchin's decision.
Newsy 01 Dec 2021

Watch VideoA person in California who had been vaccinated against COVID-19 became the first in the U.S. to have an identified case..
Vodafone is auctioning the first text message in history  which reads, "Merry Christmas." The telecom company says the proceeds will go to the UN's refugee agency.
Romania has the EU's second-lowest vaccination rate with just 39.6% of its population fully vaccinated, compared to more than 67% for the rest of the bloc.
Wibbitz Top Stories 15 Dec 2021

Omicron Is Spreading Faster

Than Any Other Variant, , WHO Director Warns.

The Director-General of the World Health..
Dr. Kluge stressed warned last week that as Europe goes into the holiday season, it will be dealing "with two highly transmissible variants."
Germany's vaccine body has shortened the recommended period before receiving a coronavirus booster shot. Elsewhere, New Zealand has postponed the reopening of its borders. DW has the latest.
The first text message in history  which reads, "Merry Christmas"  was sold by Vodafone at an auction in Paris. The telecom company said the proceeds will go to the UN's refugee agency.
New Zealand Herald 21 Dec 2021

A British court has ordered the ruler of Dubai to pay his ex-wife and their children close to 550 million ($1 billion), in one of..
NEW YORK (AP)  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he's committed to keeping the city open as it grapples with yet another spike in coronavirus cases.



The Democratic mayor said Tuesday that New York can't see schools and businesses closed again like the city did in 2020 when COVID-19 first spread widely.



De Blasio has faced questions over the past week about whether he would call for closures as a wave of new cases fueled by the omicron variant has broken over the city.



Adamantly I feel this: No more shutdowns. Weve been through them," de Blasio said at a virtual news conference Tuesday. "They were devastating. We cant go through it again.



De Blasio, in the waning days of his term as mayor, will decide by Christmas whether the annual New Years Eve celebration in Times Square will continue as planned. The event was small and socially distanced last year but de Blasio had hoped to hold it this year at full strength. That was before reports of COVID-19 cases ramped up again.



While the fate of the outdoor New Year's Eve event remained up in the air, De Blasio's successor Eric Adams postponed his inauguration ceremony, scheduled for Jan. 1 indoors at Brooklyns Kings Theatre.



The mayor-elect issued a statement Tuesday saying that the ceremony would be rescheduled for a later date to prioritize the health of attendees, staff and reporters.



It is clear that our city is facing a formidable opponent in the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and that the spike in cases presents a serious risk to public health, Adams said.



Two other Democratic officials, the citys Comptroller-elect Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, were also to participate in the ceremony and co-signed Adams statement announcing its postponement. Williams has been quarantining at...
The boss of the UK's largest trade union has ordered a QC-led inquiry into the spending of almost 100m of members' money on a controversial hotel and conference centre.
Members of the Ethiopian community marched on Parliament this afternoon.Ethiopia has been embroiled in the Tigray War for more than one year and the demonstrators said Western powers gave a free pass to the Tigray People's Liberation...
Former United States President Donald Trump clashes with Attorney General Letitia James as the Republican businessman files a lawsuit against the latter. The former president argues that there is political bias in James' continued investigation of his company, the Trump Organization.
Yangon (AFP) Dec 20, 2021



A Myanmar junta court on Monday postponed giving its verdict in Aung San Suu Kyi's trial for illegally importing and possessing walkie talkies, a source with knowledge of the case said. The Nobel laureate has been detained since the generals staged a coup against her government on February 1, ending the Southeast Asian country's brief period of democracy. Nationwide protests against the
Bangkok (AFP) Dec 20, 2021



Myanmar junta troops launched a helicopter raid on anti-coup fighters in a restive region, locals and a spokesman said Monday, as the military struggles to break resistance to its rule. Anti-junta militias have sprung up across Myanmar to fight back after the February coup and a crackdown on dissent that a local monitoring group says has killed more than 1,300 people. These "people's def
Federal prosecutors argued Monday that Jeffrey Epstein could not have preyed on teenage girls without the help of the British socialite. Defense attorneys, meanwhile, said she was wrongfully accused.
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KwaZulu-Natal officials are concerned about the rise in Covid-19 cases after the province recorded more than 4 000 new cases on..

News24 20 Dec 2021
Oneindia 03 Jan 2022

The security forces had great success in the Kashmir valley on Monday as they gunned down one of the dreaded terrorists, who was on..
Institution of Valuers (IOV) organises Indian Valuers Congress (IVC), annually which is a bench marking platform in the careers of Valuers from all over India and overseas. This year, 52nd Indian Valuers Congress (IVC 2021) was celebrated on 3rd & 4th December, 2021 at Bengaluru in hybrid mode focussing on Transforming the Valuation Eco System in association with Insolvency & Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) and IOV Registered Valuers Foundation 
Midland County is now eligible to receive a direct payment as a result of the Janssen Settlement, and local nonprofits who support those impacted by opioids are grateful for this participation.

The Janssen Settlement is a class action lawsuit brought by local government units against the manufacturers of opioids and the negative effects of the opioid crisis on local government.

This item, among all of the other board meeting agenda items, was approved at the Tuesday county meeting. Three members of the community were in attendance to provide support for the decision to participate in the settlement. One of the speakers was Terry Hanley with For A Brighter Tomorrow.

He provided public comment before the commissioners, in support of the potential money that would benefit survivors and those seeking treatment in Midland County.

"This money is needed," he said. "There are plenty of groups involved in Midland County that can use this money. We all are nonprofits that are struggling right now through COVID, and not being able to do fundraisers or anything to get money that we need... I just ask that you approve this so we can get the money needed. For our groups that are battling this, it was a huge win for us as parents that had children that passed because of an overdose, and to get any kind of money coming into our community, it would be great."

Prior to Hanley's emotional tribute, Midland County Commissioners had a small and furry member of the public in attendance to advocate for another agenda item. The speaker was the Juvenile Care Center's newest pup, a young golden retriever named Monarch Marley, and her handler Ryan Griffus.

The butterfly-inspired nickname of monarch before Marley's name comes from the recent effort to rename the center, Monarch Academy.

Both Griffus and Midland County's Judge Dorene Allen shared comments in support of the agenda item which approved a "hold harmless" agreement between Midland County and employees of the Juvenile Care Center regarding potential incidents with the canine.

As for now, the pup is working on being a good citizen and earning her certification as a therapy dog.

"The kids are enthusiastic, we've introduced the notion of the kids assisting in training and socializing Marley," Griffus said. "They talked about different ways that she can be involved in our therapeutic groups, and even just spending time with kids who are going through potentially traumatic and/or emotionally difficult periods."

Chair Mark Bone's comments pointed out a room of smiling faces and the goodwill that was brought to the board room by Marley.

"Everybody is smiling," Bone said. "I can only imagine what (this effort) does for the children. It's just a fantastic thing."

In other business, an amended Secondary Road Patrol & Traffic Accident grant award from the Michigan State Police Office of Highway Safety Planning was approved Tuesday.

The amended amount of the grant award is $55,253, an increase of $15,269 over the original grant award. The term of this agreement is through the end of next September.

Midland County also extended an existing grant agreement that supports the prosecutor's office efforts to catch up on a backlog in cases by retaining a law school graduate for assistance. The county approved a $70,082 Coronavirus Emergency Supplemental Fund Extension to the existing agreement with the Michigan State Police.

The term of the extension is for one year, beginning Dec. 31.

A Midland County couple requested to purchase a county-owned parcel. After Tuesday's meeting, a parcel near South Thayer Road in District 4 could be sold. The district's commissioner, Gaye Terwillegar, said she encouraged the two residents to attend a township meeting to become acquainted with some farmers in the area. Terwillegar and the other six commissioners approved sale negotiations for this parcel.

And the Midland Area Community Foundation (MACF) is investing a $100,000 grant agreement into a refurbishment project for the Pere Marquette Rail Trail. In addition to this approved agreement, MACF is granting $10,000 to the Midland Area Honor Guard Uniform Project.

In addition to the federal recognition, Midland County now designates Juneteenth as an observed holiday.

Regarding the approval to participate in the Janssen settlement, Hanley spoke about the loss of a child from a heroin overdose in 2013. He explained his son received detox services in Mount Pleasant prior to a time when Midland County had grown in services and treatment.

"He would be in a detox area for three days, and then he'd come home and that battle kept going," he said. "Nowadays, (Midland County) has so many support groups, so many volunteers that are working their tails off in our community to make sure to provide as much help as we can, for people that are struggling with opiates."

Hanley also offered paperwork services and additional volunteers to support Midland County's participation in the settlement. For A Brighter Tomorrow is a non-profit organization that was created around 2015 by its members' own life experiences with the disease of addiction.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Andrew Mullin.

Friday, Dec. 17

11:03 p.m.  Officers responded to a driver operating with a suspended license in the area of East Patrick and East Carpenter roads.

10:25 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a personal injury crash on a Lee Township roadway. The driver, a 42-year-old female, was treated for injuries at the Mid-Michigan medical center. A report was completed and forwarded to the Midland County Prosecutors Office.

7:33 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Mount Haley Township location to assist with traffic control for a house fire.

5:50 p.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of West Wackerly Street and Sturgeon Avenue.

5:30 p.m.  A 52-year-old Jerome Township female was stopped for a traffic violation. The driver was issued citations and a report was sent to the prosecutors office for review.

5:00 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Lee Township residence to speak with an 82-year-old Lee Township male about a fraud complaint. The deputies investigated this incident.

3:45 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to the area of East Saginaw Road near West Stark Road for the report of a two-vehicle crash.

3:16 p.m.  Deputies responded to Warren Township reference an intoxicated male walking in the roadway. The deputies located the individual, a 51-year-old Harrison male, who subsequently was arrested for an outstanding warrant. The male was transported to the Midland County Jail without incident.

3:00 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to the Law Enforcement Center to speak with a 42-year-old Lee Township male regarding a fraud investigation. An unknown individual had applied for a $10,000 online loan in his name, but the bank denied the loan. The 42-year-old male wanted to file a police report.

1:53 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to a Lee Township gas station about a fail-to-pay of $14.

1:10 p.m.  Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash in the area of Jerome and West Buttles streets.

12:37 p.m.  A deputy cited a 38-year-old Edenville Township male after a traffic stop in Edenville Township. A report will be forwarded to the prosecutors office.

11:33 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Porter Township business for a report of a suspicious package. The deputies investigated the package.

9:56 a.m.  Officers made a warrant arrest in the area of Bay City Road and Willow Street.

6:30 a.m.  Officers responded to a death investigation on Countryside Drive.

2:57 a.m.  An unknown person had failed to pay for $67.02 worth of gas at a Coleman gas station.

2:16 a.m.  Deputies spoke with a 33-year-old Warren Township female who reported unwanted contact from a former boyfriend. The female advised she was in the process of filing a personal protection order on the male and she only wanted the incident documented.

12:23 a.m.  A deputy responded to a Warren Township residence for a report of a trespassing complaint. Two unknown suspects trespassed at a 39-year-old woman's property. The suspects left prior to the deputy's arrival.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

LONDON (AP)  A 25-year-old man pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to murdering a British lawmaker who was stabbed to death while meeting constituents.

Conservative member of Parliament David Amess was attacked Oct. 15 during a routine meeting with voters in a church hall in the town of Leigh-on-Sea in eastern England.
A suspect of possible threats directed at Coleman Community High School has been identified after Midland County 911 responded to a report of potential threats around 3:20 p.m. Monday.

The suspect was identified as a 17-year-old Bay County resident who attends Coleman High School. The preliminary investigation indicates the suspect made a threat to the school over social media.
To the editor:

I work with Midlanders of all ages. I know about outbreaks in nursing homes, outbreaks in schools, and people who arent aware of either. I see how connected we are as a community even when individual households have unique opinions and experiences.

My 80-year-old friends are not disposable, and neither are the ones that are 2. Unfortunately, there is no communication in our wider community that shows what is happening across generations. I feel frustrated that reporting from our schools, our health department, and other outlets show only a daily account and not trends.

Looking at a daily posting from Midland Public Schools doesnt give the full scope. 411 daily close contacts is irrelevant as a single data point, yet the line graph of daily cases in our schools since 8/23/2021 closely resembles the line graph of cases per 100,000 in our community since the same date. We are connected.

Northeast recently experienced an increase in COVID cases and is administering hundreds of rapid tests. My child was a close contact so I compared daily numbers with past data, otherwise I would have been unaware that cases more than tripled in one week. No communication was provided to inform Northeast households, let alone our wider community. It is especially frustrating that no additional safety protocols are in place for turning on the heat in the one district building with outdated HVAC not running at CDC standards for COVID safety. When asked what the threshold for adding safety protocols for the building might be, the superintendent said there are no thresholds or models for doing so. Northeast families are connected to our community.

Articles from MDN continue to report 1 death daily, but that doesnt show how our community has had one daily COVID death for almost three weeks. In that same time frame, our local health department dashboard has not been updated. We are connected to families who have lost loved ones.

If nothing else, COVID exposes how connected we are, and how important it is to pay attention to our neighbors of all ages.

JENNIFER RINGGOLD

Midland
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Geneva, Switzerland (PAN) - Reports of serious sexual violence and the use of live ammunition against protesters at the weekend in Sudan must be investigated immediately, the UN rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday
Geneva, Switzerland (PANA) - Nearly 5,000 refugees who fled violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) four years ago are opting to head home voluntarily from Zambia in coming months, with the first 100 people setting out on Tuesday
Photo: (Photo : JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)

Another child has died following the bouncy castle tragedy that unexpectedly tossed the kids 32 feet up the air. The death toll for this accident has climbed to six while some of the children are still receiving treatments at the hospital.

Police confirmed that the sixth child, Chace Harrison, died on Sunday due to his injuries. On Thursday, five other kids fell to their deaths after a freak wind tossed their bouncy castle into the air. They were Peter Dodt, 12, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, 12, Zane Mellor, 12, Jye Sheehan, 12, and Addison Stewart, 11.

Per CNN, two other children are still in critical condition while another child is now recovering at home. The kids were celebrating the end of classes at the Hillcrest Primary School in Tasmania, Australia.

Investigations are ongoing with the help of the New South Wales state force. Tasmania Police Commissioner Darren Hine said that they sought assistance from NSW "given the magnitude of this critical incident." The police will be speaking to a number of witnesses, including the traumatized children, to find clarity on what really happened during that fateful day.

Read Also: Waukesha Tragedy: First Child Victim Dies, 13 Other Kids Still Hospitalized Following Christmas Parade Attack

Fun Day Out Quickly Turned Tragic

The bouncy castle was part of the "Big Day In" event organized for the kids at the Hillcrest Primary School, which also had a Water Play Zone and a Zorb area. Parents said that the school sets up these activity play centers every end of the school year for the children's fun day out on the last day of school.

There were about 40 children on the ground when gusty winds triggered the bouncy castle tragedy. Even the zorb balls with the kids inside were flung into the air.

Those at the scene immediately rushed to the children for first aid. The paramedics also arrived to fly the injured children to nearby hospitals. However, four were pronounced dead on the scene while another died while getting emergency treatment.

Distraught Tim Mellor said that he is "completely lost" without his son, Zane, who was a "beautiful, caring, gentle soul." Mom Miranda McLaughlin, was just reunited with her son, Peter, because she lives in Adelaide. McLaughlin traveled to Tasmania five days before he died since the borders had just re-opened for fully vaccinated travelers.

Family and friends set up a GoFundMe page for each of the victims' funeral costs. Tributes to the kids were also shared on social media while the police have offered counseling to all those affected by this incident.

Following the tragedy, Tasmania's Education Department placed a ban on bouncy castles until the investigation's results are out. Initial findings showed, however, that the strong wind likely untethered the castle. Commissioner Hine said that they don't want to pre-empt the investigations and will work with the coroner on the evidence gathered.

Australia in Mourning

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the federal government will be extending $800,000 in support to Tasmania and "the community that will carry this burden." Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein has been coordinating with the prime minister since the day of the accident. Morrison also visited Hillcrest Primary School to pay his respects to the children who died.

Gutwein expressed his gratitude for the outpouring support and sympathy for Tasmania, which is located in the south and separated from the mainland via the Bass Strait. Elsewhere, various fundraisers have also been initiated for the victims and their families.

Related Article: Travis Scott Concert: Rapper 'Absolutely Devastated' Over Death of Teenagers at His Astroworld Event
Photo: (Photo : FRED TANNEAU/AFP via Getty Images)

The Pfizer COVID vaccine given to children between six months to four years old failed to provide a substantial immunity response that should protect them from the virus. The pharmaceutical company said that it will be changing its plans for the ongoing clinical trials if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves.

According to reports, the Pfizer COVID vaccine for this age group has been administered in two shots with three micrograms per shot. The dose is just 10 percent of the vaccine given to adults, which is at 30 micrograms per shot.

Early outcomes of the trial showed that while the shots produced the expected immunity for those under two years old, including the babies, the majority of the children between three to four years old did not produce the expected level of protection from the virus. A spokesperson for Pfizer said they plan to give a third three-microgram shot some two months after the children had their second jab.

Read Also: What Parents Should Know About the COVID-19 Omicron Variant as Schools Remain Open

No Safety Concerns Reported

Pfizer also confirmed that there were no safety concerns reported with the administered dosages for the youngest group. Thus, they believe that a third dose would be the right amount to deliver maximum immunity.

If the FDA will allow Pfizer to administer the third dose, the company said it will likely be able to submit data for their application for emergency use authorization (EUA) for the under five years old within the first half of 2022.

During the summer, the regulator cleared the vaccine for emergency use authorization for 12- to 17-year-old kids at 30 micrograms per shot. By the fall, the FDA also signed the approval for vaccination for kids between 5 to 11 years old at lower doses or 10 micrograms per shot.

However, these two age groups have yet to be granted full authorization because only the vaccines for adults have full approval. These age groups have also not been cleared for booster shots, which are now available for adults.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor for the White House said that while no one likes to delay the vaccines for the under five years old, especially with the Omicron COVID variant doubling cases by the day, it's imperative that the vaccine makers get it right for the safety of the children.

Pfizer's Oral Antiviral Drug

Meanwhile, Pfizer is also planning to acquire approval for its oral antiviral drug for treating COVID-19. The pill, called Paxlovid, has been shown to have an 89 percent rate of cutting the risks of death or hospitalizations among high-risk patients.

President Joe Biden said that his administration will secure 10 million Paxlovid once it has the approval of the FDA. The drug, however, cannot be used in kids but it will greatly accelerate the treatments given to COVID-19 patients. Secretary Xavier Becerra of the Health and Human Services (HHS) said that the pill is going to be a lifesaver.

Related Article: Study Shows New Pfizer COVID-19 Pill Drastically Cuts Risks, Protects Patients by 89%
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An announcement last week proved that Microsoft is jumping on the Right to Repair bandwagon via a new partnership with the popular product teardown and repair website iFixit. Microsoft has begun making its custom tool designs for Surface repairs available for purchase from iFixit, which will sell them to certified repair technicians.

While end users wont be able to buy the tools, repair shops will, allowing you to get your device fixed somewhere other than at an official Microsoft shop. Per the release, "iFixit Pro independent repairers, Microsoft Authorized Service Providers, Microsoft Experience Centers, and Microsoft Commercial customers can now purchase Microsoft service tools for Surface devices directly from iFixit.com."

The initial launch will feature three tools, which are designed by Microsoft and manufactured by iFixit. They will include a tool that lets you "debond" the display from the device, a weight that lets you put the display back on properly, and a battery cover thats used when the devices guts are exposed to prevent accidental contact with sensitive components.

(Click on image to Enlarge)





iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens: "Microsoft has taken a big step toward making repair accessible to their customers, and their timing is perfect as Right to Repair gains momentum across the US. Having OEM tools available will give repair technicians the ability to help their customers keep their devices alive for longer." You could read the iFixit press release here.

Microsoft's move happens to come at just the right time, being that weve seen the push for the right to repair gain some strength over the past year. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission recently opened an investigation into repair restrictions imposed by some device manufacturers.

While Apple announced "Self Service Repair" starting with iPhone 12 and 13 back in November, it's very likely that only hardware geeks will be able to take advantage of this. Your average Apple device owner doesn't want the hassle of diving into manuals and so forth to fix their device(s) and that's just fine with Apple. Apple device owners in general are the losers.

Microsoft's approach working with iFixit to provide repair shops with the needed tools to fix Surface devices is likely to be a welcomed move towards the Right to Repair for Microsoft hardware and it may be the start of an industry trend. Just don't hold your breath waiting for Apple to make a similar announcement any time soon.
Ive been reflecting a lot on the arc of the spiritual path.

It has numerous aspects. There is the principal thread, the cord that pulls us into the depths. But along with it are numerous points about ourselves, strengths, weaknesses. All the things that make us, that stand in the way for us, and that open doors for us.

One of those things turns on the question to what do we give our attention. By one definition these are the gods of our lives. Now, Im not a monotheist, thinking there is one true. But, there are a lot of divinities in our lives, a lot of things that claim our attention, some for the good, some, well, not.

Which has turned my thoughts to the Golden Calf.

In 2001, the Golden Calf from Cecil B DeMilles classic film The Ten Commandments, was sold at a Christies auction for a tad over $15,000. It was, as you might imagine, in fact roughly carved wood with gilt paint. Pretty expensive for what is ultimately little more than a tawdry souvenir. Although I suspect today someone might pay a bit more for it.

I loved the movie. I may have seen it in the theater, but I would have been eight. My memory is fixed by it playing in regular rotation on television starting in the very early 1970s, usually near Easter and Passover. And with that for good and ill my image of Moses as well as the voice of God is Charleston Heston. While Pharoah is and forever will be Yul Brynner.

Also, I have seared into my mind the image of the evil overseer, Dathan, played deliciously by Edgar G. Robinson. What I was unaware of when watching the movie was how DeMille, after considering a host of actors picked Robinson in part because hed been blacklisted during the Red Scare, and felt he deserved a juicy part for his rehabilitation.

Robinsons Dathan stood in for all the vacillation, compromise, and venality of, well, actually, everybody. So, of course, when it came time for the Golden Calf scene, its Dathan who does the deed, even whipping the crowd into a frenzy, and even offering an implied human sacrifice. Rather, it is worth noting, than the biblical Aaron, brother of Moses, who in the scriptures actually authorized the making of the calf.

The Golden Calf has entered our Western psyche. It stands for all the false idols of our lives. And, at least out of the film version, Dathan stands for that part in each of us that, well, theres the list: vacillating, compromising, venal.

The parts that worship the false.

The question here is, among those divinities within your life, what are false gods?

I did a small personal assessment and I have found several that have a place in my life, both useful with a right amount of attention, others, well. I suspect if you look inwards, you probably can see yours as well. Your friends can, especially the not healthy ones. You can bet on it.

So, what are yours? For good and ill?

A big step on the way of wisdom.
It was a Farewell Rob Bell moment for the neo-Reformed harbingers of orthodoxy. I have always like Matt Chandler, but his recent assertion (in a clipped video posted to TikTok) that those who deconstruct their Christian faith just want to be in on the sexy thing, and that one cannot deconstruct an authentic experience of Christ (so your faith must not be authentic), has only amplified the deconstruction phenomenon. For awhile now, the hawkers have been cranking out books on deconstruction like fidget spinners, and Christian celebrities offer my story of deconstruction like spiritual advice columnists. It can be a bit cloying, but theres no putting this toothpaste back in the tube. Deconstruction is the thing now.

Apart from being a dumb thing to say (which I can forgive, because I say dumb things all the time), Chandlers remarks lack self-awareness. Consciously, he clearly believes he is defending the gospel, God, and Christian orthodoxy. But, as Hauerwas often says, Anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol. In this case, the idol is the tight system of modern neo-Reformed Calvinism, and the incredible evangelical/political power its keepers wield. They are Gods theology cops, policing the borders of orthodoxy. Their power is rooted in their authority over theology, and their ability to dictate and even control not only beliefs, but bodiesespecially with regard to women in ministry, and sexuality.

This control over beliefs and bodies is the key to understanding the true (and likely unconscious) reasons Chandler said what he did:

The neo-Reformed camp is uncomfortable with deconstruction not because it is a danger to the gospel or to a persons soul, but because deconstruction represents a threat to their power over peoples beliefs and bodies, exposing their own culpability in the issues that are driving deconstruction in the first place, some of which are embedded in their own theology.

When I sit with people who are deconstructing, nearly all of them are driven by some version of the same concern, and it has nothing to do with whats sexy. They are looking at the fruits of American Christianitywhat Christians are about, what they fight for, who they embrace, who they hate, and how they treat their enemiesand theyre saying: if thats what Christianity is about, I dont know if I can be part of it anymore. They speak these words through heart-wrenching sorrow and tears, because they love Jesus but have real problems with what the church in America has become.

Unsurprisingly, the real issues driving this season of widespread deconstruction have everything to do with the churchs relationship to power over other peoples bodies. The top ten issues I hear are:

Politics: The embrace of Donald Trump by 80% of evangelicals deeply damaged the reputation of Christianity as a whole, exposing evangelicalism as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party. Sexuality: Many Christians think that if the churchs stance on LGBTQ issues is causing students from our youth groups to commit suicide, then we should probably rethink our stance. Patriarchy: The segment of American Christianity that is synonymous with patriarchy is being rejected, even as they continue to cling to power . Racism: The church has been, and still is, complicit in all manner of racism and racial injustice and is not doing nearly enough to change. Climate Change: Christianity has tended toward the exploitation of creation, rather than its stewardship. Culture Wars: American society is riding a rocket of cultural division and conflict headed for the side of a cliff and Christianity wont accept a course correction. Injury & Trauma: The church has abused its power in many waysup to and including the horrific sexual abuse of childrenand it has not adequately confessed or repented. Character: As a group, Christians are seen as morally inferior to the culture at large. The corruption, hypocrisy, immaturity, nationalism, violence, arrogance, and cruelty so often on display leaves many feeling that they no longer want to be linked to this group by a common religion. Relationships: Many who desire relationships that are rooted in hospitality, justice, forgiveness, fidelity, sacrifice, honesty, and virtue no longer see Christianity as a viable pathway to those things. Truth: In the name of dogma (which seems to be a thinly veiled desire for power), Christians would rather embrace magical thinking, deny science, and use coercive tactics to enforce conformity, than to change and adjust to new knowledge of the world, and what humans collectively think of as true.

These are the legitimate concerns which have thrust many sincere believers into the wilderness to deconstruct (atonement theologies, and how to read the bible should probably get an honorable mention).

If you ask me, the defensiveness around deconstruction exposes a deep insecurity. Chandlers video is a signifier, revealing thatat least on some unconscious levelfundamentalist and neo-Reformed leaders know the very source of their strength and power is now undermining the church. My sense is that neo-Reformed leaders are defensive about deconstruction because have too much power riding on the issues of patriarchy and sexuality alone to ever risk entertaining even the most legitimate theological and exegetical challenges to their dogmatic stances. I expect their attacks to intensify as this pressure grows, and it will only grow.

Maybe I am wrong. Either way, I dont think the driving force behind most deconstruction is a desire to be sexy and cool, or to be free from religious constraint. The deconstructors are trying to hold onto faith, not let it go. They are bravely chasing a deep intuition that the church can do better, and they are right. Their persistence is commendable, and we ought to be equipping them for this project instead of dismissing or condemning them.

One last thing. Most of what is called deconstruction isnt really deconstruction at all. True philosophical deconstruction (as pioneered by Derrida) is a very particular thing, and its not what most of these people are doing. Deconstruction, in the popular sense of that word, should be a normal aspect of growth toward maturity. In a less insecure era we would just call it: discipleship. Christian beliefs always change and develop over time. If you dont believe me, ask the critics of deconstruction why they dont require women to cover their heads, or wash each others feet. Everyone picks and chooses. Everyone evaluates and changes their beliefs over time. This is not a problem, that is, unless your power is tied to something which is being called into question.

If you are deconstructing, I want to encourage you to keep going. Ill tell you what I often tell my own congregation: If the you of today doesnt call the you of five years ago a heretic on at least one or two issues, then youre likely doing it wrong. Find a graceful (small) congregation, embrace some basic Christian practices, and keep on faithing-it.
Former President Barack Obama and his family were seen enjoying some fun in the water this weekend after heading back to Hawaii for their annual Christmas trip.



The 60-year-old 44th president was pictured donning black swim trunks on Saturday as he went for a dip in the Pacific Ocean, and was snapped squinting in the sun as he left his sunglasses behind.



The day before, his daughters, Sasha, 20, and Malia, 23, were also caught on camera as they went out on the water on stand-up paddle boards, each wearing a bikini for the beach day.



Obama, who was born in Hawaii, has visited the state with his family during Christmas for decades.



Read Full Story .... dailymail.co.uk >>> :

















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Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye has disclosed that the number of Covid-19 infections in the Greater Accra region is on the ascendency.



In an interview on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', the GHS Boss said about 400 cases are recorded in the city daily.



He has therefore asked Ghanaians to adhere to all the Covid protocols to avoid being infected.



"People should not take things for granted because the numbers have started going up in Accrawere reporting about 400 cases a day now. The threat were facing is far far than last year Decemberwe need to apply all the protocols and get vaccinated" he urged.



Ghana currently has 156 new cases and 1,301 active cases.





Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com









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Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, in the wake of a media report suggesting that he has abruptly offered to resign from a key Vatican department has put out a tweet saying he is waiting for "new action of [the] Pope".



On Saturday [Dec 18, 2021], Reuters reported that Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson, seen by some as a candidate to become the first African Pope in about 1,500 years, has abruptly offered his resignation from a key Vatican department, sources familiar with the matter said.



Turkson, 73, from Ghana, has been a key adviser to Pope Francis on issues such as climate change and social justice, and is the only African to head a Vatican department.



But in a tweet, Cardinal Turkson wrote:



"In Vatican mandates of Office-Heads expire at death/resignation of Pope or expiry of 5yr term of office. One surrenders mandate for Pope/new Pope to renew/extend mandate or reassign. Turkson surrendered in 2013 Francis renewed 5yr mandate in 2016. Now must await new action of Pope!"

Source: graphic.com.gh









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A left-wing legislator who rose to prominence during anti-government protests in Chile has been elected the countrys next president.



With almost 99 percent of polling stations reporting, Gabriel Boric won 56 percent of the votes, compared with 44 percent for his conservative opponent, Jose Antonio Kast.



In a model of civility that broke from the polarizing rhetoric of the campaign, Kast immediately recognised defeat, tweeting a photo of himself on the phone with his opponent congratulating him on his grand triumph.



At 35, Boric is set to become Chiles youngest-ever president.



Outgoing President Sebastian Pinera  a conservative billionaire  held a video conference with Boric to offer his governments full support during the three-month transition.



I am going to be the president of all Chileans, Boric said in the brief televised appearance with Pinera. I am going to do my best to get on top of this tremendous challenge.









Source: Aljazeera









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Four people have been confirmed dead in Saturday's head-on haulage train collision at Wassa Manso in the Western Region.



The incident happened around 2am, Saturday (December 18, 2021).



Six other persons were seriously injured and were in critical condition.



The two trains were moving from opposite directions on the Tarkwa-Kojokrom route.



Graphic Onlines Western Regional correspondent Dotsey Kobla Aklorbortu reports the non-adherence to instruction from the control center by locomotive drivers resulted in the head-on collision at Wassa Manso.



A preliminary investigation indicated that, the locomotive-engine driver from Tarkwa toward Takoradi failed to stop as instructed and attributed it to break-failure while the driver who was in charge of the locomotive from Kojokrom failed to heed to instruction to switch to another lane.



Some passengers who reportedly illegally hopped on board the haulage train without permission were trapped under the metal wagons meant to carry bauxite or manganese.



Some of the eyewitnesses told Graphic Online that they were able to pull one of the passengers out of the wreckage but he was unconscious.



The Western Regional Minister, Mr Kwabena Okyere Darko Mensah described the situation as unfortunate and called for full investigation into the incident saying, it is avoidable and must be investigated.



The Minister of Railways Development, Mr John Peter Amewu described the incident as sheer negligence, saying, because of negligence the unfortunate has happened and we must guard against its recurrence.



Not too long ago we lost one of our managers in a similar incident in Accra  the truth is the industry is not already on the right footing and for this to happen again I must say it is unfortunate.

Source: graphic.com.gh









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Afigya Kwabre North Member of Parliament (MP), Collins Adomako-Mensah, has rendered an apology to Ghanaians over the misconduct of the Members of Parliament while deliberating on the 2022 budget.



Some members of the Minority turned on the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Joseph Osei Owusu, popularly called Joe Wise, who was sitting in for the Speaker, Alban Sumana Bagbin as the Majority and Minority gathered in their chambers to argue out on whether or not the budget had been approved.



This was after the Majority voted for the budget to negate its earlier rejection by the Minority following a walkout by the Majority.



A Minority member pulled the Speaker's seat as a sign of protest against the Deputy Speaker presiding over proceedings in the House.



Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, Hon. Adomako-Mensah bemoaned the attitude of his colleagues MPs who engaged in the commotion in the House.



He described the conduct as unacceptable and pleaded with the citizenry saying, "allow me to apologize on behalf of myself and colleague Members of Parliament that the scene that occurred, the international organizations and everyone was watching, it was quite embarrassing. So, forgive us. We believe, going forward, such things won't happen again''.



He, however, clarified that there is no acrimony between the Majority and Minority in Parliament and that what happened in Parliament was just out of control.



"In fact, when you come to Parliament, that's not how we conduct ourselves. When you come to the Committee, we have very cordial relationship. I mean 90 percent of the things we do at Committee level is consensus," he said.







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Kweku Baako Jnr, has described as unacceptable, delay in inaugurating the board for the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP).



"Im unable to admit that a five-month delay relative to inaugurating a board for that office is acceptable. Im not going to accept it, he said.



Ultimate Responsibility



The renowned Journalist further criticized the ruling government for not resourcing the OSP even after the "Martin Amidu saga".



Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng addressing a gathering at an event to mark the International Anti-Corruption Day in Accra, disclosed that though he has taken steps to operationalize his office, there is a need for the government to provide the needed resources.



According to him, upon my assumption of office on 5 August 2021 as the second Special Prosecutor of the Republic, I noticed that the OSP had not been operationalized and it was without its own staff and necessary resources. The fight against corruption had, in effect, been thrown in reverse for three (3) years...I look forward to the provision of adequate funding and the necessary material resources as stipulated in Articles 6 and 36 of the Convention to carry out this most challenging and solemn mandate. I cannot help but state that without adequate funding and the provision of the necessary material resources, the good intentions of my staff and I would remain just good intentions with nothing concrete to show for it.



Kweku Baako, taken aback by the current development, asked President and his administration to "wake up" and prove their commitment to fight corruption.



" . . the ruling government shouldn't have allowed the current SP to even ask for resources for his office. The president and government must wake up and resource the Special Prosecutor. After the Martin Amidu saga which was an anti-climax, we ought not to repeat the same scenario and Im not here to allocate blame but as for the president, he has the ultimate responsibility to ensure that, that creature of law, the office of the Special Prosecutor works and works effectively. At this stage, only a few of the personnel are being effective. Even salaries structure, there is a challenge there, he bemoaned while speaking on Joy Newsfile programme.







Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called on members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to remain united as the party works to break the eight-year power cycle.



He said internal competition should not divide the party, but rather strengthen and unite them in the lead up to the election of a flagbearer for the 2024 presidential elections.



We cannot avoid competition. Competition there will be but let that competition help the party and not hinder the party so that we can break the eight in 2024, Akufo-Addo said at the annual national delegates conference of the NPP in Kumasi on Sunday (19 December).



He said breaking the eight-year power cycle will inure to the benefit of Ghanaians because it will help to sustain the economic growth seen under his administration.



We want to break the eight not just for ourselves but for Ghana because we know the zigzag, NPP comes to clean for them to be polluted, this is not the way progress will be brought to our country.



We need secure period in office to make that irreversible change in the fortunes of our nation and we are capable of doing it. We will get a candidate that will unify our party and all of us will campaign to make that candidate the next president of the Republic, Akufo-Addo said.



Daring Mahama

He added: We have spent more money in improving the circumstances of our people than any government in the Fourth Republic. So when you leave here be proud that you have produced a government that has been most diligent in improving the lives of the people than any other government in the history of this country.



All the things that we have done in government are things we thought about while in opposition, what is the one policy that the NDC and their leader John Mahama have thought about in five years that they have been in opposition. There is not one policy, the answer is zero.





Source: asaaseradio.com









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Leader of the majority group in Parliament, Mr Kyei Mensah Bonsu has advised the leadership of the New Patriotic Party to learn lessons from the outcome of the 2020 elections which made some incumbent Members of Parliament(MP) lose seats to the National Democratic Congress.



Speaking at the Annual National delegates conference in Kumasi, Mr Kyei Mensah-Bonsu said the party was not built on polarization but on democratic credentials which they hold in high esteem and therefore one direction leadership must not be encouraged.



Making reference to the 2020 elections he admonished the party to be guided by the just-ended elections which saw some of our key MPs losing their seats not only in the Ashanti region but some other regions too.



Sighting polarization as one of the cankers holding down the party he said:



As a party, we should confront the reality and not pretend that everything is right with us. The conduct of elections at all levels of the party is increasingly polarizing the party. It appears those who should lead are looking elsewhere. We should do serious introspection into the things that are holding us down.



If we are able to unleash the full potentials of our party, the other parties will find it extremely difficult to create space for themselves in contemporary Ghanaian politics.



Mr Kyei Mensah-Bonsu called on the party to stick to the democratic principles on which the NPP was birth to make way for others to lead.



As I have been insisting in our previous conferences, further interrogation into article 55 (9) of the 1992 constitution should lead to a conclusion that the selection of party officers doesn't need to be solely by-election.



We must explore other means which the parties in the more established democracies resort to including consensus, acclamation, persuasion and even rotation.



He warned against inducement of delegates and said the partys constitution frowns it.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Former President John Dramani Mahama has lashed out at President Akufo-Addo asking the latter to do away with the "rabble-rousing skits" he is treating Ghanaians to and focus on alleviating the appalling living conditions of the citizenry.



To him, though President Akufo-Addo has carved a niche as a good campaigner, unfortunately he is a poor leader as Ghanaians have found out at a great cost and urged him to attach serious responsibilities to the position he occupies.



Mr Mahama was reacting to remarks made by his successor during the commissioning of the New Patriotic Party (NPP's) constituency office complex at Juaben in the Ashanti Region over the weekend.



President Akufo-Addo, in his address, acknowledged that Ghanaians are going through difficult times, but held that blame cannot be laid at his doorstep.



While absolving himself and his administration of any responsibility in that regard, he pointed out that a revival of Ghanas economy is hinged on Ghanaians decision to support the governments vision.



I admit that Ghanaians are going through difficult times, some people are trying to say that it is my fault but you know that is not the case. I am hopeful that if you all support the vision of this government, we will be able to turn things around, President Akufo-Addo said.



As if that was not enough, the President took his attack an octave higher later on Sunday, when during his address of party faithfuls at the NPP's Delegates Conference, challenged Mr. Mahama to show any of the policies the NDC party has suggested in its five years in opposition.



What is the one policy that the National Democratic Congress and their leader, John Dramani Mahama have brought about in this five years in opposition. Somebody should give me one idea that has emerged from the National Democratic Congress that will bring about progress for Ghana. The answer is zero, not one single idea, he added.



But in a facebook post, Mr Mahama has fired a sharp riposte saying the comments made by the President were because he, Akufo-Addo, had not read the NDCs 2020 Peoples manifesto and was willing to provide him with an autographed copy.



To answer his rhetorical question on policy, if only he took a moment, in the comfort of his chartered jet, to read the People's manifesto, he would have at least learnt about the 'Big Push' (an accelerated infrastructure plan for Ghana), 'Free Primary Health Care Plan', the 1 million jobs plan, 'Ghana FIRST' (Framework for Industrial Revitalisation, Support and Transformation) and several other well-thought-through and costed policies.



Read Statement Below



"I think the President must take his responsibilities seriously and focus on working to change the circumstances of our people, rather than the rabble-rousing skits he serves the nation.



To answer his rhetorical question on policy, if only he took a moment, in the comfort of his chartered jet, to read the People's manifesto, he would have at least learnt about the 'Big Push' (an accelerated infrastructure plan for Ghana), 'Free Primary Health Care Plan', the 1 million jobs plan, 'Ghana FIRST' (Framework for Industrial Revitalisation, Support and Transformation) and several other well-thought-through and costed policies.



I am willing to provide him with an autographed copy of the manifesto.



With his speech of yesterday, he has carved his niche as a good campaigner, but unfortunately a poor leader as Ghanaians have found out at great cost."







Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]









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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Damian Bielecki and Marcin Tomaszewski in their portaledge during the first ascent of Frozen Fight Club on Uli Biaho Gallery, Trango, Karakorum, Pakistan (05- 16/12/2021) Photo by Marcin Tomaszewski, Damian Bielecki

Marcin Tomaszewski and Damian Bielecki battle up Frozen Fight Club on Uli Biaho Gallery, Trango

21.12.2021 by by Planetmountain

Over a period of 11 days at the start of December 2021 Polish mountaineers Marcin Tomaszewski and Damian Bielecki made the first ascent of Frozen Fight Club (A3, M7, 780m)on Uli Biaho Gallery, Trango, Krakorum, Pakistan.

The imposing Trango massif in Pakistans Karakorum is generally visited by mountaineers in the summer months with their eyes set on illustrious prizes such as the striking Trango Tower, Shipton Spire or Uli Biaho, and it is unusual therefore to see these huge granite needles ascended in the colder months.



The recent ascent carried out by Marcin Tomaszewski and Damian Bielecki goes very much against the trend therefore, as from 05 to 16 December the Poles forged a new line up Uli Biaho Gallery. This is a huge buttress that guards the formidable Uli Biaho Great Spire and was probably first climbed in 2012 by Florian Dertnig, Martin Krasnansky and Jakob Schweighofer.



The original plan had been to climb a route on Shipton Spire with Pawe Hadasie, but when he couldnt make it right at the last minute they were forced to quickly reconsider and their choice fell on a line in the center of Uli Biaho Gallery, to the left of FreeTanga Ecuatoriana (Felipe Guarderas, Roberto Morales 2014) with which it shares the penultimate pitch.

The pair spent 11 days climbing capsule style, battling up technical terrain and against what can only be described as extreme conditions. The route faces NE and received practically no sun whatsoever, and as the thermometer dropped down to -32C they breached difficulties up to A3 aid and, towards the end of the route, M7. They placed just 9 bolts for hauling and the rappels.



After the ascent big wall veteran Tomaszewski commented "We were very lucky and we managed not to make any mistake, and that's a lot." The new route has been called, quite aptly, Frozen Fight Club.



Links: www.marcintomaszewski.pl, CAMP - Cassin
Turkmenistan, an authoritarian Central Asian republic, has reported no COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. The World Health Organizations pandemic dashboard indicates that there have been zero COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations or deaths in Turkmenistan.

The WHO database relies on information provided by national health authorities. The WHO expects that information to be accurate, as each country is legally bound to implement the body of International Health Regulations adopted in 1969.

Until recently, WHO officials refrained from publicly questioning Turkmenistans official data. On November 9, however, WHO senior emergencies officer Catherine Smallwood told BBC News that it is doubtful that a country could have remained free of a virus while it has been spreading worldwide as a pandemic for almost two years now.

From the scientific point of view, it's unlikely that the virus is not circulating in Turkmenistan, Smallwood said.

Smallwood is most likely correct. News stories and other secondhand reports suggest that Turkmenistan hasnt escaped the pandemic. They include reports that the country keeps a second set of COVID-19 statistics under wraps.

In July 2020, Kemal Uckun, a 57-year-old Turkish diplomat, died in Turkmenistan after a brief illness. Turkish authorities later confirmed that he died from COVID-19. Authorities in Turkmenistan denied the diagnosis. (Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and his regime are known for making very little information public.)

In December 2020, Uckuns widow, Guzide, sued Turkeys foreign ministry, saying the country failed to evacuate her husband from Turkmenistan for treatment. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) quoted a Turkish embassy official as saying that, Turkmen officials refused to allow a Turkish plane to come to Turkmenistan to transport Uckun home because they did not want the world to know that coronavirus was in their country.

(Editors note: RFE/RL is a sister U.S. government-funded news agency to VOA.)

In September, Turkmen human rights and civilian union groups wrote to the WHO stating that [a]lmost all foreign diplomatic representations in Turkmenistan temporarily suspended work and stopped receiving citizens in person, which is indirect confirmation that coronavirus is widespread in the country.

The letter urged the WHO to call on Turkmenistan to enact public safety protocols and allow independent COVID testing.

According to reports from numerous sources, hospitals are overflown in the capital and the regions, the letter said. We are convinced that the number of deaths from COVID-19 is far higher, but it is not possible to confirm the cause of death as coronavirus, as relatives and health workers are afraid to share information.

Health authorities in Turkmenistan have compiled a secret COVID database indicating some 25,000 deaths in the country from the virus, RFE/RLs Turkmen service reported in October. The real numbers are likely much higher, because regional health workers were downplaying the scale of the pandemic, a source in the Turkmen health ministry told RFE/RL.

The U.S. embassy in Turkmenistan said that it has received reports of local citizens with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 undergoing COVID-19 testing and being placed in quarantine in infectious diseases hospitals.

However, Turkmenistan has not officially acknowledged any cases of COVID-19 within its borders and may be disinclined to do so if cases were confirmed, the embassy said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that Americans avoid travel to Turkmenistan. Because the current situation in Turkmenistan is unknown, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants, the CDC warned.

When the BBC asked Smallwood whether Turkmenistan was providing false data to the WHO, she refrained from a direct answer, saying it is important to build a dialogue with Turkmen authorities rather than make statements that may not in fact lead to the type of actions that we would want to see.

According to the WHO, Turkmenistan had administered some 7.6 million COVID-19 vaccine doses as of last August. The countrys population is about 6.2 million.

In November Turkmenistan extended quarantine-like measures first imposed in August. The authorities provided no explanation for the restrictions, which included closing restaurants and street markets.

The bodies of those who have died of COVID-19-like lung diseases were being delivered to their relatives in special plastic bags, and the number of fresh graves across the country was increasing exponentially, the RFE/RL Turkmen service reported.

The word "coronavirus" has been banned in Turkmenistan, and removed from the public vocabulary, Reporters Without Borders reported in April 2020.

The website of Turkmenistans health ministry does not mention COVID-19 but recommends wearing masks over nose and mouth, keeping a two-meter distance from each other in public places and following personal hygiene  for health improvement.

In July 2020, the health ministry said people needed to wear masks to protect themselves from a high concentration of dust in the air.
King Street may be short of royalty these days, but there is a mother figure holding court at 349 King St.

Kim Onam Brown is known as Mama Kim, both for her Korean restaurant of the same family name (Onam is her first name and Brown is her married name) and for the relationship she has year after year with local customers.

You may know some of my friends, Kim said coyly while leading a visitor down a red hall jammed with more photos than a doting grandmothers apartment. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott. The Zuckers. Bill Murray and his children. Most with arms draped around the diminutive dynamo and wearing big grins.

Everyone, it seems, comes to Mama Kims both for the food and for Kim's stringent brand of mothering.

This isnt her first restaurant in the area. Kim came to the United States from South Korea when she was 18 years old and became a cosmetologist. Her cooking skills were rudimentary, but her sister ran a restaurant in Los Angeles and Kim opened a West Ashley restaurant for her family to work in.

The restaurant, Kims Korean Steakhouse, was run by her brother, who she lovingly refers to as Crazy Kim." After the West Ashley restaurant closed, Kim's sister came to Charleston with her chef to help Kim open a new place, one that she herself would run, Kims Korean Express, on Calhoun Street.

That shuttered when the building by Marion Square was slated for renovation. She opened her current location in 2003 and has won the communitys heart ever since.

Family helps out in the kitchen, including Chung, married to "Crazy Kim," and a granddaughter, Kimberly, who helps get food ready for delivery. It is hard to tell who is family by blood and who is family by food, as the teasing continues from the kitchen to the dining room.

A college-aged girl interrupted the conversation on her way out.

Bye, Mama, love you!

It is the affection as much as the food that brings people in, but make no mistake: Kim is serious about the food.

At first, she said, Charleston assumed Korean food was just Chinese food done by different people.

Its different, she said. Korean food is not Americanized. We have a lot of individual (side) dishes, and we dont use corn starch or butters. People in the military who have been to Korea know about our food. About 60 to 70 percent of our customers come from The Citadel. No one else had heard of Korean food.

But thats changing.

Kim recalled one young woman who ordered from the menu like a pro.

You must be from military, Kim remembers telling her.

The girl replied that she was not, but had instead learned the terms from K-Pop, a phenomenon featuring boy bands like BTS, that has brought South Koreas food and culture to the forefront.

Next, Kim brought a visitor endless bowls of kimchi, radishes, mung beans, spinach, roasted soy beans and other delectable condiments to-go, along with the sizzling spicy meats and rice. She spooned up Kimchi-Jigae, a soup of kimchi vegetables served in a spicy broth. A dish called Dol-Nee-Bim-Bop features a stone bowl filled with rice crispy from the hot bowl and topped with marinated beef, vegetables and a fried egg that Kim breaks open to make the rice creamy as well as crispy.

You try this, she urged, as pushy and loving as any mom.

It is the mothering that brings people back, no matter how good the food is.

These kids come in, they are like my kids, she said, recalling one time she saw a young customer drinking on the street. I say, Hey, your mother send you to school to drink? I love them, I tell them, Study first, when you are a junior, get a boyfriend or girlfriend, but study first.

When students sit with friends and dont order, she asks why. If the reason is that they dont have money, she brings them food.

Her biggest flaw is her big heart, if you could call that a flaw, said her daughter-in-law, Tina, who sometimes helps in the restaurant.

The affection is returned. When her windows were broken during the protests after the killing of George Floyd, one student brought her flowers and told her, Im sorry, Mama Kim, I told them to leave your place alone.

Another Citadel cadet, Jackson Jenkins, started a fundraising page to raise money for the repairs. In just days, the effort brought in more than $17,000, more than enough to fix the windows. Kim shared the excess with small business owners who had also sustained damage.

She said she knows firsthand how hard it is to survive as a small business and that her fortunes rise and sink, but when they rose with the fundraising, she had to share.

The pandemic and supply shortages have brought further challenges. The restaurant had to shut down a month and a half, and now about half of her business comes from delivery orders. The problem, she said, is its hard to find soy sauce, salt, delivery boxes and people willing to work for what she can afford to pay.

Her family sometimes encourages the about-70-year-old (There was a discrepancy with my birth certificate. Its either 1952 or 1953, Im not sure) to retire and leave all the problems behind.

But she said shes not ready for that yet.

It is hard. A restaurant is a 24-hour job, she said. I have to be here to make sure they do the job right. I do close Mondays now and a half-day Wednesday. But if I stay home, what do I do with my life? Ive worked all my life. Working is like push-ups for my mind. It keeps it strong.

Her customers, a steady stream of about 200 a day who greet her like family, arent ready for her to go either. They come for the healthy food and for the love.

As Brown puts it: Love makes food taste good.
Restaurant wine lists can be a bit daunting even for the experienced diner. With so many different types, vintages and varietals, it can be difficult to decide what to order.

The holiday season is a time to catch up with the family members and friends you might not have seen in months or even years, meaning there might not be time to give a lengthy wine list the attention it deserves.

Five local wine shop and bar owners are here to help with their quick tips for ordering wine in Charleston restaurants this holiday season.

Engage your server or sommelier

Wine & Company owner Joshua Walker's No. 1 tip is to engage with your server or sommelier. Whether you're an experienced wine drinker with a cellar or someone who leans toward the same cabernet or pinot noir, most Charleston restaurants employ knowledgeable staff members who are ready to share more about the wine they're pouring.

"Don't be afraid to ask for help," Walker said. "We have a lot of great sommeliers downtown, and they spend their lives thinking about what the absolute best pairings (are) for their menus."

Matthew Conway, owner of The Tippling House, agrees, saying he likes when guests tell him the types of bottles they normally turn to.

"Don't be shy to tell the server or sommelier what you like to drink at home to help them guide you to the right choice," he said. "No matter what they say, it helps guide my path and my next few questions."

Instant expert

Before the server or sommelier arrives, peruse the list to see the options and prices for bottles. You could even take a look at the list before heading to the restaurant.

When looking at the wines specifically, Walker said to "think about the area that the wine comes from."

"Colder growing regions tend to produce wines that retain more acidity," he said. "Higher acidity creates wine that has more complexity and, thus, a wider range of pairing abilities."

Fuller bodied white wines like Chablis or Muscadet tend to be more acidic than reds. Gamay, Malbec and Barolo are examples of red wines with higher acidity.

If all this seems like too much to handle and you're up for a big night out, Conway suggests visiting the Charleston Grill.

"Or you can just cut that all out and go see Andrew Marshall at the Grill and be wowed by his impressive ability as a tableside sommelier."

Some suggestions

Walker, Nathan Wheeler of Vintage Lounge and Sarah O'Kelley of Edmund's Oast Exchange offered a few quick suggestions for what to order.

"When in doubt, go Old World (Europe). Wines that come from the Old World often have more focus on balance and tend to be much safer when pairing wine with food," Walker said.

"I like champagne for the holidays; so many different styles and textures to choose from," Wheeler said. "You can drink it alone, pair it with turkey or pour it on someone. To me, champagne checks all the boxes."

"Look for more off-the-beaten-path regions for super interesting wines at oftentimes better pricing," O'Kelley said.

According to O'Kelley, white wines from Northeastern Italy and reds from Portugal or the Canary Islands are examples of undercover, wallet-friendly options.

Tasting the wine

The bottle arrives, and the server asks who wants to taste the wine. Everyone points to the person who ordered the wine, which in this case is you. Rather than slugging the tiny sample as quickly as possible, listen to Monarch Wine Merchants owner Justin Coleman's quick tip for tasting.

"When they pour you a taste, be sure to give it a good sniff and taste. If it smells or tastes weird or off in some way, don't be afraid to bring it up with the server or sommelier. It could just be how the wine is, but more often, the bottle is flawed and they'll be happy to replace it with a sound one."
A mixed-use development proposed for Mauldin's North Main Street that would include townhomes and restaurants with a focus on walkability is moving forward after a Dec. 20 City Council meeting.

Council voted unanimously to finalize the rezoning of the roughly 6-acre property where lead developer Grey Shell Group plans to build the 36-home project.

Preliminary designs for the commercial portion of the development show a two-story building sitting on North Main where it intersects between Knollwood Drive and Murray Drive, according to materials provided to the city, with one restaurant serving the dinner crowd and another geared toward breakfast and lunch. Parking for the business side, which would also likely include office and co-working space, would be in the rear. The residential portion will sit behind it, with townhomes facing a central green.

Grey Shell Group Principal Sebastian Carter said last month that the intent is to fill the commercial spaces along North Main with local tenants and foster accessibility with pedestrian options. The development firm met with residents and city officials as it formed plans for the site and incorporated their input into the design, working to integrate the project into the existing community with features such as natural barriers between the townhomes and surrounding houses.

The development will likely represent an investment of between $15 and $20 million.

Carter said in November his firm and project engineer Seamon Whiteside are consulting with the state Department of Transportation about the possibility of extending Devon Drive past the intersection with Knollwood to connect it to Murray. Under that plan, through traffic would be cut off on Knollwood, eliminating the staggered intersection that currently exists and creating a new, direct one with a traffic light.

The two companies are also consulting with SCDOT about adding pedestrian and bike options at the intersection. The prospective improvements would bolster connectivity between the new development and the Mauldin's burgeoning city center district, which sits about a mile to the south.

Carter said he sees the coming project as another piece of the redevelopment Mauldin is experiencing with a focus on mixed-use concepts, to include the coming city center and the $150 million first phase of BridgeWay Station, which is currently under construction.
MYRTLE BEACH  Myrtle Beach area tourism numbers rebounded coming out of COVID-19 restrictions in 2021 by allowing people to get outdoors when that became in-demand during the pandemic, Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce leaders said.

A lot of the things that we offer vacationers are outdoors, Chamber President Karen Riordan said of the Grand Strands 60-mile coastline. Those were really popular things in the COVID era.

Myrtle Beach was No. 1 in the United States for hotel revenue recovery last year with a nearly 25 percent jump from 2019, according to analytics firm Washington, D.C.-based CoStar Group. Myrtle Beach and the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area were the only two cities to see increases between 2019 and 2021.

There was visitor growth in all months of 2021 compared to 2019 and 2020, Riordan said. In August, the biggest month of the year for tourism, the Myrtle Beach area saw more than 90 percent occupancy rates, a 30 percentage point increase compared to 2019 and 2020.

Riordan praised business owners and employees, who worked through a workforce shortage coming out of COVID-19 to keep up to the added tourism demand.

The area typically relies on students from the J-1 international summer work-travel program to supplement the labor force. There were 729 students in the program this year, far from the more than 3,200 the same area saw each year from 2017-2019, according to the U.S. State Department.

Despite all of those challenges, we still delivered to millions of people from a visitor standpoint as well as all of us as locals so I would hope we could do better next year, so we dont have quite the roller coaster that we had in 2021, she said of the business labor shortfalls.

Riordan said in other parts of the United States she is seeing retirees reentering the workforce.

Is that an option for us at the Grand Strand?" she asked. We are going to explore that to see if there is a way we can encourage some seniors to take on the jobs that we have available.

The area, though still popular this fall, is not seeing the kind of demand that it sees in the summer, and that has helped business owners to step back and see what they need, Riordan said.

"I think we naturally have been able to take a little bit of a breath, exhale a little bit and get that under control, but I can already tell that our businesses are thinking ahead that January is the time to start training for the spring break workforce and what they will need in April.

The Myrtle Beach International Airport is breaking almost every flight record this year and was one of the tops in the state during the summer months.

We are seeing visitation from the North, which is really no surprise because of our weather, but also from the Midwest and the South, she said. We are seeing Floridians come, we are seeing Georgians come, we are seeing folks from Alabama. We are really just seeing visitation from all corridors.

With many also not taking cruises this year due to the pandemic, Riordan said visitors are looking for new domestic spots with some coming to Myrtle Beach.

The Canadian border reopened in November has also helped tourism. The 61st Annual CAN-AM Days are scheduled for March 12-20 next year.

I was out and about doing errands yesterday and two different cars that I was driving by on (U.S.) 501 both had Ontario plates which made me really happy, she said. What we love about our Canadians is that they usually stay for quite some time, so they have a really big impact on our local economy.

Looking ahead to 2022, Riordan acknowledged that COVID-19 is still around, with Omicron the new variant of concern.

We do worry about it, she said. We continue to urge people to get vaccinated, to follow all of the health guidelines.

Riordan said she does not expect state mandates that could curb tourism.

"We just feel like we would rather use a carrot and really encourage people to protect themselves and that is hopefully what it takes to ride this latest variant wave.
MYRTLE BEACH  One of South Carolinas most popular tourist spots could be home to the states next indoor ax throwing venue, but Myrtle Beach leaders still arent ready to toss in final approval of the idea.

Regulations presented Dec. 14 to the City Council would allow ax throwing within municipal limits for the first time by adding it as an allowed use in highway commercial and light industrial zones, but only if at least half a buildings footprint was designed for the activity.

Kenneth May, the citys zoning administrator, said that was because the Planning Commission didnt want single-lane ax throwing at bars and restaurants.

The City Council, which has final say on zoning matters, said it was open to the single-lane concept and delayed approval of the issue until they could see diagrams of what a single-lane site may look like.

I have no problem bringing the 50 percent to zero because if we're going to allow it, I think we need to allow it, councilman John Krajc said. I think its (a 50 percent footprint) a limit on businesses and gives another revenue stream to attract folks that from time to time struggle and may need to revamp their business.

Myrtle Beach would join several other South Carolina cities in allowing indoor ax throwing. Woodchuckers Axe Throwing opened in Aiken over the summer. Anderson, Beaufort, Charleston, Columbia, Greenville and Lexington all have ax throwing locations as well.

Jack Axe Throwing, located along Kings Highway and with a second site in North Myrtle Beach, is outside the citys boundaries.

May said investors were interested in coming to Myrtle Beach as early as 2018, but planners were reluctant.

Since then, industry safety and operational standards have been written.

At the time it was such a new thing to this area that we werent sure if it was a fad or something that was going to be hanging around for a while, May said Dec. 14.

Krajc also said he was concerned about allowing the use in light industrial zones.

I think it opens the door to amusements, and I don't think it's the direction that council expressed that we wanted to go, he said.
CONWAY  With a reshuffling of Horry County Council districts imminent, members of the school board are talking about adjustments that could impact their own spheres of influence in one of South Carolina's most populous areas.

Its not bothering me, but I think its going to bother the public that everythings changing so drastically, Horry County Schools board member Helen Smith said Dec. 6. There's going to be a lot of changes, and people aren't going to know who to vote for when the time comes, so it's going to be important for people to pay attention to those districts.

County leaders began redistricting talks in October and are expected to finalize their maps by early next year, but there was a key addition to the team putting the documents together.

This is the first time ever that Horry County Schools got a seat at the table, board chairman Ken Richardson said. He said he was chosen because he wont seek reelection when his term expires late next year, and serves in an advisory role for the redistricting committee.

Some of us have got questions about it, so I know the public has some, he said.

Residents have already raised concerns about how redrawn lines could affect minority and rural representation on the council, but Horry County is also South Carolinas third largest public school district, educating more than 45,000 students.

Right now, Horry County Council and Horry County Schools Board of Education each have one Black representative  Orton Bellamy and school board member Janet Graham  and they both represent the same area which consists of Conway and rural areas like Bucksport.

Mickey James, president of the Myrtle Beach branch of the NAACP, said care needs to be taken that districts for both the council and school board end up balanced  especially since theyll be in place for a decade.

We'll certainly take it court down the road if that's problem. The way we see it right now, it doesnt look too good for minorities to be elected, he said at a public hearing earlier this month. "I don't think that's fair and we are going to evaluate this.

Horry County Schools has nine attendance zones but 11 representatives. One of the biggest changes to the revised maps is making sure none of the boundary lines for board members has more than one high school.

The redistricting committee is set to meet again on Jan. 5.
The proposal to lend Charleston's statue of John C. Calhoun to a Los Angeles-based art exhibit hit a snag when a lawsuit was filed challenging the exchange.

Orangeburg-based attorney Bill Connor filed the lawsuit Dec. 20 against the city of Charleston on behalf of three men with ties to the Calhoun family and his supporters. It questions whether the city had the authority to take down the statue in the first place and whether the original owners intended for it to stay in South Carolina.

People are tired of Mayor (John) Tecklenburgs woke crusade," state Rep. Lin Bennett, R-Charleston, said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. "A South Carolina monument does not belong in California.

The press release also stated Bennett plans to introduce a bill in the 2022 legislative session that would potentially "cut millions in state funding to the city of Charleston, if the statue is temporarily moved to California.

Tecklenburg was attending the Dec. 21 City Council meeting, but in a text responded to Bennett's proposed legislation: "You know, I've never had to answer a question about a state representative threatening to cut off her own constituents' funding for things like public safety, flooding, traffic relief and whatever else. I guess I'll just have to think about that one."

The lawsuit, which centers on the statue's trust, was filed in Charleston County's probate court by The Bill Connor Law Firm. A preservation group known as the American Heritage Association is helping fund it. It was filed on behalf of Calhoun's direct descendants, Mark Calhoun and Francis Doty III, as well as F. Preston Wilson, a descendent of a member of the Ladies Calhoun Monument Association.

The monument association helped fund and commission the statue in the late 1800s.

The American Heritage Association is proud to assist the petitioners with payment of legal fees. This is a South Carolina monument, paid for by South Carolinians, and it needs to stay in South Carolina, Brett Barry, president of the American Heritage Association, said in the press release.

Charleston officials declined to comment on the litigation but said they plan to defend the city's position. The association was created a few years ago to defend monuments around the state.

The 125-year-old statue depicts Calhoun, a congressman and vice president, who died years before the formation of the Confederacy. He is also remembered as a strong defender of slavery, at one point delivering a speech calling it a "positive good."

The city took the statue down from its perch in Marion Square in June 2020 after protests against police brutality and racial inequality reached new heights.

A South Carolina law that keeps authority of such monuments in the state's control does not apply to the Calhoun monument, an opinion from S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson said at the time.

The Dec. 20 lawsuit asks a probate judge to weigh in on who has the ultimate authority over the statue. It also requests the court determine whether the original intent of the statue was for it to stay in South Carolina.

"If (the descendants) want to put it on private land, if they want to work out a deal with someone else or keep it for their own personal love. ... I support any measure they want to take," Bennett told The Post and Courier.

The lawsuit states that when the Ladies Calhoun Monument Association planned to disband in 1898 and gave authority over to the city, the members intended for the statue to honor Calhoun and stay in the state.

"The Calhoun Monument was designed for the benefit of reminding 'us all of the great Carolina statesman,'" the lawsuit states, referencing an 1898 letter from the monument association to the city.

The lawsuit also expresses disapproval over a proposed plan to lend the statue to a pair of L.A.-based art exhibitors, stating the exhibit is "seeking to denigrate and demean figures such as John C. Calhoun."

The attorney representing the descendants, Bill Connor, was out of office for the holidays and declined to comment for this article.

Curator Hamza Walker has spent the past three years requesting access to decommissioned antebellum and Civil War monuments from across the U.S. Tentatively called "Monuments," the exhibit is slated to open at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in fall 2023. The monuments will be displayed alongside a mix of existing and newly commissioned works of contemporary art.

Walker told members of the Charleston Commission on History last month the exhibit is not intended to "shame anyone," but rather to serve as a educational tool.

At the history commission's Dec. 15 meeting, members voted 7-4 to recommend City Council approve lending the statue to the art exhibit.

A vote by council has not been scheduled.

Wilson's June 2020 opinion on the statue determined because the Washington Light Infantry Sumter Guards owned the property where the Calhoun statue stood for 124 years, lawyers agreed the statue was not covered by the Heritage Act, which otherwise gives the Legislature control of most military and historic monuments in the state.

Editors note: This story has been edited to correct the entities that filed the lawsuit.
GOOSE CREEK  Mayor Greg Habib has a dream that one day soon a resident who lives along the U.S. Highway 52 corridor between Moncks Corner and Goose Creek can live, work and play without ever having to get into an automobile.

Its a dream that is shared by many who live along the bustling 18-mile stretch between the two Berkeley County cities.

If the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments has any say, Habibs dream will become a reality in the coming decades.

BCD-COG is putting the finishing touches on a study leaders hope will be a blueprint for municipalities and developers to ease traffic congestion and figure out future land use along Highway 52.

The study is expected to be published next spring.

More than 15,000 Goose Creek residents leave the city to go to work, Habib said. Double that number go through the city to get to wherever they need to go on any given day. The Number One way to combat traffic congestion is through economic development. To get people to live, work and play in the same area so they never have to get into their cars.

According to the 2020 census, Berkeley Countys growth rate over the past decade was 29.2 percent, putting it among the top one percent of fastest growing counties in the U.S.

The majority of the growth has occurred in the so-called mega-clusters near Summerville and in unincorporated Berkeley County  Cane Bay, Carnes Crossroads, Nexton and adjacent developments  which together could eventually see 30,000 homes built with as many as 75,000 residents.

The next boom in development is expected to occur along the Highway 52 corridor between Goose Creek and Moncks Corner. The once rural area has become part of the suburban sprawl that had begun to creep across the county.

The Highway 52 corridor is home to about 85,000 people already with more than 61,000 vehicles using the road on a daily basis.

Those numbers are expected to swell over the coming decade as more manufacturing plants and businesses move into the county.

Growth is coming to the Highway 52 corridor and what we are trying to do is address that growth as best we can, said Sarah Cox, BCD-COG transportation planner and project manager for the Highway 52 study.

We are not ahead of the ball by any means, but we can definitely have an impact on where infrastructure investments can and should be made for the long term," Cox said. "We cant just build our way out of traffic congestion. We have to find supplemental ways to move people along the corridor without them getting into their vehicles.

Growth scenarios

To help the public and local municipalities visualize future development along the Highway 52 corridor, the BCD-COG has come up with three different growth scenarios:

Base Growth Scenario  this scenario assumes the corridor continues to grow following current development patterns, which will see lower density growth along the corridor with limited travel options.

Managed Growth Scenario  This scenario assumes the corridors future growth is more concentrated within 11 development nodes along the corridor with higher density growth, a more diverse mix of land uses, and introduction of more travel options and active transportation facilities.

TOD (Transit Oriented Development) Scenario  The TOD scenario builds upon the Growth Management Scenario and introduces increased growth densities within three of the 11 growth nodes. The scenario accommodates mixed-use development at higher densities, more robust transit service, and active transportation connections.

The feedback from the public has been very encouraging, Cox said. The public understands that managing growth and land use is needed now. Theres been support for contextual density, and were sensitive to that. What you see in Moncks Corner will be different from Goose Creek versus unincorporated Berkeley County.

The concept of building around well-planned live-work-play nodes along the corridor as well as offering alternative modes of travel has also been well received.

Devin Levi lived in Goose Creek for more than two decades before moving to just south of Moncks Corner. Levi was trying to escape the suburban sprawl of Goose Creek when he moved out of the county's largest city, but now worries it has followed him north up Highway 52.

Twenty years ago, there wasnt a whole lot between Goose Creek and Moncks Corner, Levi said. That whole area was mostly rural, a few industrial sites, but not a lot of houses. Thats all changed. We need to be a whole lot smarter with the way we develop this area.

Its a sentiment shared by Berkeley County Supervisor Johnny Cribb.

I dont think its a lot for the public to ask our elected officials to plan better for the future, Cribb said. Yes, we need to address our immediate needs, but we also have to plan better. The COG study, along with the countys 10-year comprehensive plan, will be a blueprint that we can use for the future of our county.

As a result, Cribb said the county has had to become more selective with its business partners.

A couple of years ago, a company wanted to build a manufacturing plant along Clements Ferry Road. The plant would have created 500 new jobs.

The council decided to pass on the opportunity.

The folks that would have worked at the facility wouldnt have been able to afford to live in the area with what the company was going to pay them, Cribb said. Weve started to look at things with a lot more scrutiny and forethought. Were looking at traffic counts, how many jobs will be created, what are the wages. All those things matter.

LCRT and rapid transit

One of the solutions that the BCD-COG has come up with to help combat traffic congestion is to use rapid transit along the Highway 52 corridor.

Lowcountry Rapid Transit, which will be the state's first high-capacity mass-transit project when it's completed in 2027, is a modern bus transportation project that will connect communities from downtown Charleston to Dorchester County.

It will run along U.S. 78 and parts of the U.S. 52 corridor and travel parallel to Interstate 26. Individual transit stations are slated to be built between the Ladson fairgrounds and downtown Charleston.

Charleston County approved $180 million for construction costs and $70 million for operating costs. The federal grant will add an additional $180 million to the construction funds.

Under the BCD-COGs study, the rapid-transit line will be expanded to include the Highway 52 corridor between Goose Creek and Moncks Corner.

It just makes sense to connect those two components together, said Daniel Brock, a regional strategist with BCD-COG. Think of the traffic that would be off the road if someone living in Moncks Corner or Goose Creek could catch a LCRT bus and take it all the to downtown Charleston. Thats a win-win.

Levi, who works in North Charleston, said he would be open to the idea of rapid transit.

Depending on how much it costs, I would probably use it, Levi said. I waste so much time just sitting in traffic on I-26.

However, there are several hurdles that will have to be cleared before implementing the LCRT between Moncks Corner and Goose Creek.

Theres right of way and whos going to pay for the property that is affected, Habib said. Is there going to be enough density so people can walk to the stations? If not, where are people going to park that want to ride the bus? Then youve got to build parking lots for those cars. I think LCRT is a great idea, but there is still some work that needs to be done.

Cox said part of the plan would be to use the current median that runs from Goose Creek to Moncks Corner along Highway 52 as a LCRT bus lane.

When the county thinks about the future of Highway 52, the hope is that they will take into consideration whats already there that can be used for the LCRT, Cox said.

The biggest issue will be funding.

You can have the best plan or study in the world, but if you cant get funding for it, then its going to sit on a shelf, Cribb said. The COG does a great job, and they are getting input from all the municipalities on what will work best, not just for Berkeley County, but for the entire region because were all connected.

Cribb said money raised from the county's penny-sales tax could be used to incorporate the recommendations from the BCD-COG study.

There is going to be rapid bus transit at some point in the future, Cribb said. Theres nothing worse then 10 years after you are gone for people to look back at your tenure and think what were they thinking' or worse, what were they not thinking. Weve got an opportunity to plan for the future right now and this study is a part of that future plan.

The general consensus is that this chance to plan for the future of the Highway 52 corridor might not come around again.

We better get it right this time because I dont think we will get a second chance, Moncks Corner Mayor Michael Lockliear said.
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SPARTANBURG  Employees with the City of Spartanburg will receive supplemental pay before Jan. 1.

A second reading to amend the fiscal 2021-2022 budget was approved Dec. 20 by the City Council during a special called meeting to use $450,000 from the operating budget for extra pay. City Manager Chris Story told The Post and Courier full-time employees will receive $1,000 each in extra pay, while part-time employees will receive $500 each in extra pay. The amendment is a one-time adjustment for employees.

During a City Council meeting on Dec. 13, Story recommended City Council provide employees extra pay since the operating budget ending June 2021 was not negatively impacted by COVID-19.

"We saw the uncertainty with the pandemic, budgeting relatively conservatively," Story said on Dec. 20. "Things came in good shape, so this (extra pay) is one of the several benefits of that. The extra pay for employees will come in the next pay cycle between Christmas and New Years."

Story said the city has 420 full-time employees and 45 part-time employees.
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My friend who reads the New York Times called my attention to a story from a few days ago about San Francisco mayor London Breeds reversal on crime policy in that city. Slumbering until recently, Breed now acknowledges the breakdown in law and order and has declared a state of emergency in what the Times calls one of the citys most crime-infested areas. The article about her reversal appeared on the front page of the Times and was republished here by the Chicago Tribune.

My friend says:

The Times seems torn on this one, providing evidence that Breeds turnaround is justified while also implying that conservative media have been unfair in their coverage of SF and crime.

I think that accurately characterizes the Times report. Heres the mayors justification for the turnaround:

At a news conference at City Hall, steps away from where drug dealers openly peddle fentanyl and methamphetamines, [Mayor Breed] said, We are in a crisis, and we need to respond accordingly. She added, Too many people are dying in this city, too many people are sprawled on our streets. The neighborhood, the Tenderloin, has been ground zero for drug dealing, overdose deaths and homelessness for years. But Breed said in an interview that she reached her breaking point in recent weeks after meeting with families with children who live in the Tenderloin and said they felt constantly threatened. . . . Elected as a liberal Democrat, she spoke this week about a reign of criminals, trash strewn across neighborhoods full of feces and urine, and shoplifting at high-end stores that she called mass looting events.

Heres the part where the Times goes after conservative media for, in effect, reporting the conditions the Times describes, only much earlier.

The conditions in San Francisco have been fodder nationally for Fox News and other conservative outlets as signs of disarray supposedly created by liberal governance. In San Francisco, opponents of District Attorney Chesa Boudin have tried to leverage a perception of disorder and high-profile incidents of retail theft to further a recall effort. This week, Breed used more strident language than even her citys harshest critics. Her announcement came as mayors across the country are grappling with a rise in gun violence, homicides and overdose deaths.

Crime, then, isnt fodder for conservatives. Its a national crisis that even liberals tasked with governing, as opposed to bloviating, belatedly acknowledge.

Heres some of what the San Francisco mayor plans to do to grapple with the crisis:

Breed detailed a list of initiatives intended to disrupt street sales of stolen goods, expand police surveillance powers and pressure people who use drugs into treatment. Breed said that declaring a state of emergency cut through red tape and increase funding to the police, who she said had already started arresting people who have been holding this neighborhood hostage during felony warrant sweeps.

Mayor Breeds announcement was, of course, well received by law-abiding residents of the citys crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Some who work in the Tenderloin said they were heartened by Breeds announcement. A block away from a deserted playground, Hanh Huynh, 33, said that the Vietnamese grocery store where she works was frequently robbed, and that she had recently moved because she worried about raising her 2-year-old in the area. Ali Baalouach, 44, said homeless people often stole the food he sold at his fathers halal grocery store. I love the mayor, he said. Listen to her, follow the rules and do what you have to do. Fatou Sadio, 37, who lives two blocks from the Tenderloin and frequently shops in the area, said she was happy about the crackdown on drugs and homelessness. You step out of your door and you have to be careful, she said, because somebodys sleeping there, using needles, pooping there.

Theres not a Karen or a Karens spouse in this trio.

But the Times ambivalence about Breeds decision resurfaces later in the article. It sniffs that public perception of crime is often at odds with reality and it cherry picks a few statistics to suggest this might be the case in San Francisco.

The Times citywide stats dont speak to whats occurring in the area to which Breeds emergency orders apply, though. And in any case, the citywide numbers suggest that the reality shes addressing prevails in much of San Francisco.

According to the Times, homicides in the city have increased to 53 this year from 37 in 2019. Burglaries were up sharply in 2020 and have declined only slightly this year. Motor vehicle thefts also spiked in 2020 and have stayed about the same this year.

Thus, reality matches perception in San Francisco. And it is Mayor Breed, not the New York Times, who presumably would like to hold public office in the future.
Im out of popcorn already, and its only Wednesday. I note that amidst the Democrats Manchinangst, clear signs of Venezuela-envy have emerged. The CNN story about the civil war inside the party includes this tidbit:

There are clear signs that the party is hardly on the same page about how to move ahead. In a phone call Monday, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she conveyed her frustration directly to the senator  and shes now calling on Biden to act administratively instead.

Because, you know, who needs Congress or a statute to spend $3 or $4 trillion and do everything else you want!

Surprise, surprise, AOC also has Venezuela-envy:

Meanwhile, Politico has a curious story out today about what some people think is an organized campaign to undermine Kamala Harris on Spanish language radio:

Florida Democrats are sounding alarms over what they believe is a sustained and coordinated campaign rapidly unfolding across Spanish-language media to tarnish the image of Vice President Kamala Harris. Democratic veterans in the state are unnerved by the ferocity and speed of the attacks, which have come from callers and guests on local radio programs in recent weeks. They suspect the participants are part of a larger, astroturf effort to diminish Harris standing among key Latino constituencies in a region where Republicans have notched sharp gains. Even more worrying for these Democrats has been the lack of pushback from their party.

Maybe the reason there is no pushback from the Democratic Party is that the calls are coming from inside the house the campaignif it is oneis being done by Democrats themselves to take out Harris before 2024. Why would Republicans waste their time and effort attacking Harris when she is the person (after Biden) theyd most like to run against in 2024?

CHASER: Bidens poll numbers have slumped to a new low.

Biden approval rating at historic low in NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll President Bidens approval rating is at a historic low in a new poll, which coincides with a national surge in COVID-19 cases, rising consumer prices and struggles to advance his legislative agenda on Capitol Hill. The new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that Bidens approval rating has sunk to 41 percent, a historic low for the president in polls conducted by the groups. Fifty-five percent of adults in the U.S. disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president.

This poll was actually conducted before Manchins announcement on BBB. Ill bet the next round of polls will be even worse.

CHASER 2: So, his plan appears to be even more of a secret than Nixons alleged secret plan* to end the Vietnam War.

NB: *Nixon actually never claimed to have a secret plan to end Vietnam. This urban legend arose from a misreport in a wire service story, and it stuck, as fake news often does. Biden has no such excuse.
Bret Baier interviewed NIH Director Francis Collins on Collins last day in office this past Sunday. Baier did a poor job, letting Collins disparage the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration as fringe epidemiologists without providing any notion of their professional prominence, the substance of the debate, or their sapience on the issues, for that matter.

The topic sentence of the declaration called on the public health authorities to take into account the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies and recommend[ed] an approach we call Focused Protection. Baier quoted recently disclosed emails between Collins and the fallacious Dr. Fauci in which Collins called for a quick and devastating published take down of the declaration.

New email dump showing Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins coordinating a propaganda campaign to attack the Great Barrington declaration last October. More coming soon so here's a teaser pic.twitter.com/hVrNkjAYaS  Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 17, 2021

Collinss email itself notes that one of the fringe epidemiologists is Nobel Prize-winner Michael Levitt (misspelled Leavitt by Collins). He is Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford. He holds an endowed chair in cancer research at the Stanford School of Medicine. His professional background is posted here (more here: Since 28 January 2020, Levitt, his Stanford group and an international team of volunteers have worked tirelessly on data analysis of COVID-19). His Twitter feed is here.

Another is Martin Kulldorff. Dr. Kulldorff is in fact a distinguished epidemiologist. He is a member of the faculty of both Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Womens Hospital. His professional background is posted here. His Twitter feed is here.

Another is Jay Bhattacharya. Dr. Bhattacharya holds both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. He is Professor of Medicine with a focus on health policy at Stanford. His professional background is posted here and here (Dr. Bhattacharyas research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics). His Twitter feed is here.

Drs. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya are two of the three founding fellows of Hillsdale Colleges new Academy for Science and Freedom in Washington. The third is Dr. Scott Atlas. Hillsdales press release is posted here.

Collins appears to be a happy idiot, and stupidity explains a lot, but at this point it must be worse than that. He really should be called to account. To say the least, the issues remain alive. Baiers interview was a lost opportunity.

Dr. Bhattacharya has posted a long Twitter thread responding to Collins. He takes up the Collins crock in a useful and illuminating fashion. Below is the first tweet of the thread, which is quoted at length in Debra Heines American Greatness column here. You can also pick up the Twitter thread in its entirety here.

UPDATE: I forgot about Sunetra Gupta. She is also one of the original authors or proponents of the Great Barrington Declaration. Dr. Gupta is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University. She is an expert in the field of infectious diseases. Her professional background is posted here. Her Twitter feed is here.
Yoruba movie star, Damola Olatunji, made the news on Monday after he confronted policemen whom he claimed assaulted him and his personal assistant at Abule-Egba, a Lagos suburb.

The outspoken actor captured the incident live on Instagram and showed the faces of the policemen who allegedly assaulted him and his P.A by seizing their phones.

Mr Olatunji claimed that the policemen forcefully took his phone while he was recording them and also slapped his P.A.

He also accused the policemen of extorting people of their hard-earned money, and also assaulted a bikeman in the Abule-Egba axis of the state.

In the now deleted viral video posted by the actor, the police officers were also seen throwing tear gas canisters at the masses who had gathered around the scene.

Following the incident, the actor was arrested for public incitement and assaulting a police officer. He was charged to court just hours after he was arrested by police officers attached to Area P, Agbesan in Lagos.

Bolaji Amusan, popularly known as Mr Latin, the president of the Theater Arts and Motion Picture Producers Association of Nigeria (TAMPAN), confirmed the development when PREMIUM TIMES contacted him on Wednesday.

He said: Mr Olatunji was arrested and has been charged to court on six count charges, and he has been granted bail by the magistrate court in Ogba, I am just coming from the court.

Mr Latin declined to speak further when this newspaper probed further.

The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Adekunle Ajisebutu, had yet to issue an official statement nor respond to enquiries as of press time.

History

This is not the first time the actor would have a run-in with the police in Lagos. In February 2020, his movie set was disrupted by some police officers in Lagos.

In the video which trended on social media, the officers demanded their work permits. This was met with stiff resistance from the actor and his crew. The armed police officers argued with the film crew by the roadside and stalled their filming for hours. The matter was later resolved amicably.

The actor became famous after he starred in Yomi Fash-Lansos movie Ojo (Rain). He has since featured in a number of movies including: Mans Best Friend, Status, Ona MiIyawo, Koro, Toromade, Arewa Ojo and many others.

The actor, who emerged as TAMPAMs Chairman in June 2020, has starred alongside various actors and actresses like Femi Adebayo, Bolaji Amusan, Peju Ogunmola, Damola Olatunji, Yinka Quadri and many others.
President Muhammadu Buhari has officially written the National Assembly, rejecting the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.

The rejection was conveyed in letters read in the two chambers of the National Assembly on Tuesday by the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila.

The bill was transmitted to the president on November 19.

In a lengthy letter read by Mr Gbajabiamila, Mr Buhari explained his reasons for the declining assent to the bill.

He said he got relevant advice from all concerned ministries, departments and agencies.

Mr Buhari cited financial, security and legal consequences for rejecting the bill.

He added that it would infringe on the rights of Nigerians to participate in governance and democracy.

The amendment as proposed is a violation of the underlying spirit of democracy, which is characterised by freedom of choices of which political party membership is a voluntary exercise of the constitutional right of freedom of association, the statement reads in part.

He added that the existing constitution of the parties already registered with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) permits direct, indirect and consensus primaries.

Mr Buhari said his decision is based on informed advice by relevant ministries, departments and agencies of the government, and careful review of the bill in light of the current realities prevalent in the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the circumstances.

Parliament will decide the way forward  Gbajabiamila

In his end of the year speech, Mr Gbajabiamila said the parliament will decide the way forward on the bill next year.

He noted that there would be no need to throw away the baby with the bathwater.

As it is, it falls on the parliament to decide the way forward. When we resume next year, we will decide it together. We must not throw a baby away with the bathwater, Mr Gbajabiamila said.

Details later
The Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, has declared his support for the presidents rejection of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.

Mr Fayemi spoke Tuesday while addressing journalists after meeting with the president at the State House, Abuja.

Mr President has not objected to direct primaries, neither has he endorsed indirect primaries, he has only said, be fair to all, let all options apply and what you decide should be determined by your own local and peculiar circumstances; being mindful of questions of security, finances, and internal democracy.

So I think we all should commend the courage of Mr president to stand with the people, the governor said.

PREMIUM TIMES Tuesday reported how Mr Buhari wrote the lawmakers, telling them he would not be signing the bill into law.

The amendment as proposed is a violation of the underlying spirit of democracy, which is characterised by freedom of choices of which political party membership is a voluntary exercise of the constitutional right of freedom of association, Mr Buhari wrote.

Many Nigerians believe the bill would bring more transparency to Nigerias elections as it contains clauses such as that which legalises the electronic transmission of election results. The electoral commission, INEC, had also written in support of the bill.

Some Nigerians including human rights lawyer, Jiti Ogunye, have called on the National Assembly to override the presidents veto of the bill.

On Tuesday, Mr Fayemi also spoke on next years governorship election in Ekiti and other matters.

Read the excerpts of Mr Fayemis interview with journalists below.

Q: Whats the purpose of the visit?

Fayemi: Well, its customary, I mean, as chairman of the Nigerian governors to always exchange notes with Mr President from time to time, especially in the yuletide season like this, I always find time to come and say hello to Mr President. But yes, there will always be issues to discuss between binary, sorry, between the sub nationals, and the president of the Federal Republic, to commend him for his efforts in trying to stem the tide of insecurity in our country, and to also deal with the economic challenges that we are confronted with. On our part as governors, we have had cause during the year to raise issues, about insecurity in various domain, we have our cause to raise issues about economic challenges that the country is experiencing, we have had cause to raise other governance-related issues.

And Mr President has responded to many of those issues, he has stepped in the bridge, he has assisted us as states, even most recently a had supported as with bridge finance, to address some of the economic difficulties that states are experiencing. And its always appropriate to express our gratitude, even if we, as we continue to raise concerns about aspects of our governance that we still want him to do more on.

Q: About the kind of support states are receiving from the federal government in the past year, many criticisms on how governments utilise such funds, what assurance are you giving Nigerians, this last one, will be properly utilised by your colleagues. And then secondly, your level of preparations for elections in your state February next.

Fayemi: Well, governors are elected to tend to the affairs of their states and protect their citizens in the best manner possible. You would recall that the bridge finance that we negotiated with the federal government was precisely that to bridge the gap that was created by the repayment of the previous facilities, around bailouts, around budget support, and on excess crude support, which Mr President approved in 2017. The repayment of those loans had commenced because CBN wanted the money back. And because that would have left us with a very deep hole in virtually all the states. We then negotiated for these to address specific things in relation to workers welfare, in relation to infrastructure development, in relation to improving the enabling environment for investments in our states, and these are the things that states are spending it on. They are very specific, measurable and each state had outlined what this support would cover.

On preparation for election in Ekiti state. I didnt come to discuss that with Mr President, by the way, but yes, Ekiti is already on the match the aspirants are already expressing their intentions in both the major and the minor parties. I gathered yesterday 17 aspirants from the leading opposition party PDP, were here in Abuja meeting with their own party chieftains. And I know that the last time I checked, at least five aspirants have obtained the gubernatorial form from the All Progressives Congress. So the marches on, well see how it all pans out at the various primaries, you know, as an exiting governor, Im the father of all i am only basically just watching and ensuring that the party regulations are adhered to in a manner that is inclusive and gives everyone the opportunity and the level playing field to express their intention. So thats essentially all Im doing in my own case. But its good to look forward to a free, inclusive and fair process that will then culminate in the elections in June 2022.

Q: What is your takeaway from meeting with Mr President and secondly, whats your reaction to the President withholding his assent from the electoral act? Im sure the governors are happy.

Fayemi: Okay, well I dont I dont know what you mean by governors being happy. At least as the governor who has gone through a series of elections. My election to office during my first term was via a direct primary that took place in all the 177 wards in my state. And my election to my second term in office was via an indirect primary. So Ive tested both. And I can tell you that it really doesnt matter to any governor whether you have primaries via direct mode or an indirect mode. What is the governors interest and concern is that opportunities are given for an inclusive process. And I think that is what Mr Presidents letter has brought out. Mr President has not objected to direct primaries, neither has he endorsed indirect primaries, he has only said, be fair to all, let all options apply and what you decide should be determined by your own local and peculiar circumstances. Being mindful of questions of security, finances, and internal democracy. So I think we all should commend the courage of Mr president to stand with the people. And the President, you know, just like me, is not afraid of whatever mode you decide to use. When I chaired the primaries, the historic primaries that brought him in as a presidential candidate, I was the chair of that primaries in 2014. It was an indirect primary. But in 2019, when he was coming back, he came back via a direct primary. So Mr President has also tasted both. And I dont think its somebody to be lectured about the pros and cons of either process. What is important is to ensure that whatever process you choose in your particular circumstance, still provides a process that is as free a manner as possible. Its not completely free process, but at least there is something that is called substantial compliance in electoral law. And if it meets substantial compliance, I think all of us should be happy with that we shouldnt really dwell too much on theres been this exaggerated expectation that direct primaries is going to provide all answers to whatever electoral challenges that we have faced. And we all know that that is false direct primaries has its own challenges indirect primaries has its own challenges. A consensus approach is also not without challenges, but options should be provided. Thats all I think, Mr President has said and whether governors are happy or not, its really material to government, whether its direct or indirect.

Oh, its always enlightening to meet with the President, as you know. I came to see the President in my capacity as the chairman of the Nigerian governors and to express, as I said, gratitude for his approval of the bridge finance and is also to let him know, some of the steps we are taking in our various states to also fundamentally address this lack of revenue, because we have a challenge in this country, and tokenistic support will not do what the federal government does not have the resources. Neither do we have the resources in our various states. So we need to look for creative measures that would allow us to be able to raise funds that we can use to tackle the challenges of the moment, the challenge of infrastructure gap, the challenge of educational inequalities of our children that are out of school in parts of the country, the challenge of security. If we dont have the resources, we would continue to have difficulties in managing peoples expectations. And the truth of the matter is, the country is not as buoyant as most people think it is. And one of our suggestions, Mr President, is clearly that we need to create the enabling environment that will give those who can provide such support for the country the confidence to want to invest in the future of Nigeria. Those are the things that I discussed with Mr President.

Q: Teachers, members of the NUT in your state are right now contributing N500 each to pay for ransom for Mrs Awoniyi, a teacher of St. Pauls primary school Ikole Ekiti. What do you think?

Fayemi: I saw that funny clip that youre just reading on my way here. Dont always believe what you read in the social media. Its not true.
The Jigawa State House of Assembly, North-west Nigeria, on Tuesday passed a bill to protect children from abuse, but says the legislation will not regulate the age of marriage because its controversial and alien to predominant religion and culture of the residents.

This is coming a few weeks after stakeholders across Africa gathered in Niamey, Republic of Niger, to adopt measures aimed at reinforcing the already adopted protocols to protect African girls from abuse such as female genital mutilation and early child marriage.

The bill was unanimously passed according to the lawmakers after deliberations on the report of the House Committee on Justice and Judiciary.

They said it now awaits the governors assent to become a law.

About the bill

The bill, which is titled; Child Right Protection Bill, is an executive bill forwarded to the lawamakers by Governor Muhammad Badaru of the state.

It defines a child as a person below the age of 18 and seeks to enhance the welfare of children in the state and maximise requisite care and protection for children.

The bills sponsors said it also seeks to offer higher protection to the vulnerable in the society and raise the status bar of cherished societal norms and values.

The chairperson, House Committee on Justice and Judiciary, Abubakar Muhammad, while presenting the recommendations of the committee before his colleagues on Tuesday, urged the immediate passage of the bill to end the decade long controversy surrounding it.

Jigawa State had in the past domesticated Nigerias child right act 2003 but following controversies over issues of marriage age, among other contentious issues, it was repealed in 2021.



The lawmakers in Jigawa State said the law was repealed due to inadequate input from citizens and ambiguous sections that needed explanations.

Therefore, since 2012, there has been no law protecting children in the state with the provisions of Nigeria 1999 Constitution (as amended) concerning child rights being subjected to varying interpretations.

The new bill, therefore, covers key aspects of the lives of children and adolescents, and divided into survival rights, development rights, participation rights, and protection rights.

Why we expunged marriage age  Lawmaker

Speaking with journalists after the plenary, Mr Muhammad told reporters that the technical committee on the bill expunged the matter of marriageable age from the bill because its very difficult to determine the age of a girl that is ripe for marriage.

The lawmaker said it is a controversial matter and that to avoid further controversies on the matter, we expunged it totally from the bill.

He said the bill that was presented to the house is one that complies with Islamic jurisprudence especially in connection with the rights of a child.

He said the passage of the bill brought an end to years of misrepresentation, misinformation about it.

ALSO READ: Masari signs Katsina child protection bill allowing underage marriage

Any provision that was in contrast to Islamic principles and law, the culture of the Hausa, Fulani people was erased, Mr Muhammad said.

Setback for child rights advocates

Rising from the Niamey summit in November, the participants were hopeful of a change for the better in terms of child rights protection on the continent, urging African leaders to adopt existing protocols and conventions that protect children.

The decisions were based on the grim statistics about child rights on the continent, especially the estimated 10 million girl-children expected to be married off on the continent by 2030 before they are 18 years of age.

In Nigeria specifically, a United Nations survey says 43 per cent of Nigerian girls are married before they are 18.

The problem of early marriage is particularly endemic in the North-west and North-east regions of the country.

With more than 80 per cent of its girls married off before their 18th birthday, Jigawa State has one of the highest prevalence of child marriage and street children (Almajiri) in the country.

But with the passage of the bill, Jigawa has joined other states in the North-west region that had, at least, taken similar steps which are Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, and Sokoto.

However, Kano and Zamfara States are yet to do so.

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Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno has approved one month salary bonus for thousands of volunteers fighting Boko Haram including the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) and hunters as end of the year gifts.

MrZulum disclosed this on Monday when he hosted leaders of the different sectors of the volunteers and sanitation workers operating in Maiduguri Metropolis and Jere local government of the state.

The governor included sanitation staff who are involved in cleaning up communities destroyed by insurgents before reconstruction as well as cleaners working in government establishments and agencies.

He said that the gesture was to show gratitude to the volunteers for their gallantry and sacrifices in complementing the efforts of the military and other armed forces in the fight against insurgents.

You all, our gallant volunteers, have been working assiduously to secure Borno State. Even though you are in thousands, there is no amount of support that is too much considering the sacrifices you make.

On behalf of the entire people of Borno, I convey our deepest appreciation. We are eternally grateful for all the sacrifices you have been making. Thank you so much.

As early as 6a.m., many of you are on our streets sweeping.

Many of you are involved with the cleaning of our communities before reconstructions. We recognise that your contributions are very essential and we thank you so much, he said.

The Governor also announced the release of one bag of rice to each of the volunteers and sanitation workers in addition to the support.

Responding, the Chairman of the Civilian JTF, Baba Lawan, and the Chairman of hunters, Mai Durma, expressed gratitude to Governor Zulum, noting that he has regularly supported those at the front line, those injured and families of those killed in battles.(NAN)
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says it has arrested another suspect at the Malam Aminu Kano International Airport, with 576 Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards.

The commission, in a statement by its spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, on Tuesday, said the fresh arrest came barely two hours after securing the conviction of three suspects arrested with 1,144 ATM cards at the same airport.

Mr Uwujaren said the suspect, Khalil Bashir Lawal, was intercepted on Monday, December 20, 2021, by operatives of the commission in collaboration with Nigeria Aviation Security and the Nigeria Customs Service under the aegis of Special Task Force on Money Laundering.

Upon his arrest, it was discovered that Mr Lawal, who was travelling to Uganda with Ethiopian Airline, had concealed 576 ATM cards bearing different names and banks in his luggage.

The suspect will be charged to court as soon as the investigation is concluded, the EFCC statement said.

Previous arrest, conviction

Mr Uwujaren had earlier this month disclosed in a statement that the suspects were caught trying to smuggle a total of 1,144 ATM cards out of the country.

He had said the three suspects  Abdullahi Usman, Musa Abubakar and Abdulwahid Auwalu  were apprehended by EFCC operatives during separate arrests carried out between November 24 and December 1, 2021.

It was discovered that Musa Abubakar, who was on his way to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), had concealed 714 ATM cards, while Abdullahi Usman who was Saudi Arabia-bound had 298 ATM cards in his possession.

Mr Abdulwahid, on the other hand, was said to have been arrested with 132 ATM cards while trying to board an Ethiopian Airlines plane to Istanbul Turkey.

The suspects were subsequently charged with three counts each. They pleaded guilty to the charges.

The judge, Tanimu Shehu, of the Kano State High Court, on Monday, convicted and sentenced them to six months imprisonment with an option N50,000 each.
Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has approved the payment of end of year bonuses to civil servants in the state.

In a statement signed by the Media Adviser to Mr El-Rufai, Muyiwa Adekeye, on Tuesday, civil servants in the state will this month receive bonuses ranging from 100% of monthly pay for junior civil servants to 30% for senior civil servants.

The statement also said the end of year bonus is part of the state governments efforts to boost morale and enhance the welfare of civil servants.

 Under the scheme, workers from Grade Levels 1-7 will be paid 100% of their monthly salary as a bonus. Middle-level civil servants from Grade Level 8-13 will get 40%, while senior officers on Grade Level 14 and above will receive 30% of their monthly earnings.

 The 2021 end of year bonus will cost the state N1.382bn.

In September 2019, the Kaduna State Government became the first government, national or subnational, to pay the new national minimum wage. The state also increased the minimum pension to N30,000 monthly for retirees on defined benefits.

Some civil servants who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES in Kaduna applauded the governor for the gesture.

Hadiza Nasiru, a primary school teacher, said it is indeed a good thing from the state government this year. The cost of foodstuff is unbearable and our salaries will surely not be enough. This addition will surely go a long way in making it easier.

Steven Galadima was full of excitement when speaking to our reporter.

 As they always say for El-Rufai, the more you see the less you understand. that is exactly what he did to us this year. Nobody sees this coming. I am so happy.

Binta Shamaki also expressed her gratitude to the governor, saying she hoped the gesture will continue and come every year.
The fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has continued its rage in Nigeria as the country, on Monday, recorded 1,368 new infections.

The latest statistics released by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) early Tuesday morning shows that the new confirmed cases were reported across 19 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The centre noted that Mondays new cases raised Nigerias total infections to 225,255 while the fatality toll still stands at 2,985.

It added that the number of active cases has increased to 10,610 while the discharged cases now stand at 211,660, as the FCT and Anambra State reported a backlog of 13 and 11 discharges for December 20 and 19 respectively.

Breakdown

The breakdown of the NCDC data revealed that Lagos State, the epicentre of the disease, continues to contribute more to the surge in COVID-19 cases, as the commercial city records 844 new cases on Monday.

The FCT came second on the log with 209 cases, followed by Oyo State with 58 cases, Abia, 51; Ondo, 39; while Ogun State reported 30 cases.

Kaduna State followed on the log with a backlog of 26 cases; Delta and Akwa Ibom states in the South-south followed with 20 and 17 cases respectively, while Osun and Ekiti State reported 15 and 12 cases respectively.

While Anambra and Zamfara states reported seven cases each, four states: Cross River, Kano, Kwara and Rivers recorded six cases each.

Also, Bauchi State reported five cases; Gombe State, three; while Plateau State came last on the log with a single case.
Muazu Sambo, the newly appointed minister, has vowed to tackle the challenges surrounding the take-off of the Mambilla Power Project.

He made the vow when he appeared before the Senate in plenary on Tuesday.

Mr Sambo, who hails from Taraba State, was appointed minister by President Muhammadu Buhari last Tuesday.

His appointment came weeks after ministers of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono, and Power, Saleh Mamman, were sacked by the president.

Although no reason was given for the termination of their appointments, their tenure, especially Mr Mammans, marked little or no improvement in the power sector as the power situation in the country remained without any significant improvement

While it is not clear whether Mr Sambo will be asked to head the power ministry, he has however, assured the Senate that he knows the issues frustrating the take-off of the power project and and will solve them  in a year.

Take-off of the the Mabilla Power Project has been stalled for years.

Before he was sacked, Mr Mamman had said that the project would be completed by 2030 to add 1,525 megawatts of power to the installed generating capacity.

Mr Sambo was responding to questions from lawmakers during the screening exercise when he said the delay in the commencement of the project is sad for the country.

I share sentiment with the lack of progress we have witnessed over the Mambila project. It has been on from the first republic. If in 2021, we are still talking about the project not taking off, it is sad for Nigeria  he said.

Major constraints on the project has been the arbitration case in Paris. There must be a way we can compensate the company that took us to court.

If confirmed by this Senate, I will definitely make a difference on the Mambila project within one year. I know what the problem is and I can crack it.

The problem is human. I have delivered successful multi-billion dollar projects in the last 35 years. It is not new.

Mr Sambo also addressed the increase in collapse of buildings across the country

He identified some major causes as use of substandard or defective materials, use of quacks instead of professionals and poor sub-soil investigation.

To this regard, he stressed the need for legal, regulatory and institutional reforms as well as synergy with mortgage banks.

Earlier, he said he had rendered over 35 years of service across maritime, banking, insurance and has been generally involved in infrastructure design and delivery.

Because of the focus of the president on infrastructure, I believe I will assist in adding value to his government. If I get found worthy by the parliament, he said.

Some senators like Shuaibu Lau (APC, Taraba), Orji Kalu (APC, Abia) and Yusuf Yusuf asked that Mr Muazu be let to take a bow and go.

After responding to some questions, the nominee was asked to bow and go.

The Senate thereafter confirmed his nomination.
The Senate is currently in a closed-door session to discuss the Electoral Amendment bill rejected by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The closed-door session was a sequel to a point of order by Rivers senator, Thompson Sekibo, during plenary on Tuesday.

The president, in a letter to the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, cited insecurity and the cost of conducting direct primaries in political parties, as his reasons for rejecting the bill.

The letter was read out by Mr Lawan at the start of plenary on Tuesday.

In the bill, passed by the National Assembly in October, the lawmakers passed that political parties should adopt direct mode of primaries in choosing candidates for elective offices.

This provision had stirred rift between the lawmakers and governors  who disagreed with the idea of direct primaries.

The lawmakers were about to consider and pass the 2022 budget when Mr Sekibo asked that the Senate goes into an executive session to discuss the presidents veto.

I want to call this Senate to go into a closed-door session to discuss the presidents letter today, he said.

The lawmaker said it is important that they discuss the issue and decide the next line of action before embarking on Christmas break.

The Senate President, Mr Lawan, obliged and thereafter called for an executive session.

The lawmakers have come under criticism for their silence over the presidents veto. They had carried on with legislative activities as usual after the letter was read.

PREMIUM TIMES reported what the National Assembly can do if Mr Buhari rejects the bill.
The Senate has approved a request by President Muhammadu Buhari to extend the 2021 budget implementation year from December 2021 to March 2022.

The presidents request was contained in a letter to the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, who read it out at the start of plenary on Tuesday.

Mr Buhari asked the National Assembly for virement of the 2021 budget.

In his letter, the Mr Buhari said he sought an extension of the 2021 budget till March 2022 because the federal government is looking to fund critical and urgent needs provided for in the Appropriation bill.

Mr Buhari said his request for virement would enhance the federal governments efforts to improve the wellbeing of Nigerians.

The 2021 budget presentation implementation has areas that will need additional funding for some critical and urgent line items in the budget.

In the light of the above, I implore the Senate to consider the virement proposals to support our efforts to improve the wellbeing of our citizens.

Shortly after the presidents letter was read, the lawmakers speedily amended the 2021 Appropriation bill to accommodate his request.

The bill was speedily read for the second and third time before approving the presidents request.

Plenary is still underway.

The lawmakers have planned to pass both the Finance bill and the 2022 budget today, before embarking on the Christmas holidays.
A Nigerian lawyer, Jiti Ogunye, has advised the National Assembly to override President Muhammadu Buharis veto of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, and pass same into law.

PREMIUM TIMES Tuesday reported how Mr Buhari wrote the lawmakers, telling them he would not be signing the bill into law.

The amendment as proposed is a violation of the underlying spirit of democracy, which is characterised by freedom of choices of which political party membership is a voluntary exercise of the constitutional right of freedom of association, Mr Buhari wrote.

Many Nigerians believe the bill would bring more transparency to Nigerias elections as it contains clauses such as that which legalises the electronic transmission of election results. The electoral commission, INEC, had also written in support of the bill.

The bill also contains a controversial clause that mandates all political parties to adopt direct primaries to select their candidates. The clause, opposed by many state governors, is what President Buhari latched on to reject the bill.

Mr Ogunye in his reaction said the presidents reasons are not genuine.

It is our view that the alleged impracticability of using only direct primaries as the nomination vehicle of candidates, the high cost of adoption of that mode, security challenges of monitoring elections, violations of citizens rights, marginalization of small parties, likely litigations and possible manipulations are lame excuses and sophistries woven to justify the rejection of the direct primaries formula. These  reasons, nay excuses, are not genuine, the human rights activist said while calling on the lawmakers to override the presidents veto.

Read Mr Ogunyes full reaction below.

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY SHOULD OVERRIDE THE VETO OF THE PRESIDENT ON THE ELECTORAL AMENDMENT BILL

The National Assembly should, as a matter of patriotic duty, override the veto of the President on the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, and pass same into law. A president who came into office, tearfully complaining about how the brokenness of the electoral system serially had been used against his candidacy, yet demonstrate this lackadaisical attitude towards electoral reforms, is not a trustworthy agent for democratic consolidation.

By this veto, the President, sadly, is demonstrating to all that whereas he cared so much about political power and office ascendancy, he cared little about the growth of democracy anchored on a free and fair electoral system. We wished the President came across, in the exercise of his discretionary veto power, as a democracy-enthusiast, and not an underminer of democratic values.

The question is, what legacy of electoral reforms will the President bequeath to the Country at the end of his painful two terms in office?

The Electoral Act in use is that enacted in 2010, as amended by the Electoral (Amendment ) Act, 2015. There is obvious necessity for amendment. Before now, on three occasions: March, September and December 2018, the President had refused to sign into law a duly passed Electoral Act Amendment Bill, giving one excuse or another. Now, the President is using, amongst other excuses, the pretext of alleged inappropriateness of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria foisting on political parties and their respective constitutions ( providing for direct and indirect primaries ) the direct primaries candidates nomination mode, to decline assent.

The President has just rebuffed a fourth presented opportunity to give an assent to the electoral act amendment bill. If the political destiny of the president is not to assent to so important a bill in the life of his eight-year tenure, the National Assembly should grant the wish of the President by overriding his veto; and not present to the President, for the fifth time, a further amended electoral act bill that he will be willing to assent to.

It does not need any explanation that the political parties the President is implying by his unfortunate veto should be granted sovereignty of existence and operation, regarding mode of nominations of candidates, are established by, and under the Constitution. They are operationally governed by the provisions of the Constitution, the Electoral Act and their respective constitutions.

The Constitution and the Electoral Act, for example, do not allow regional or local political parties to be established or vie for power. The President has never been heard to complain that the prohibition is against the right of Nigerians to freedom of association and political participation.

On candidates nominations, the Constitution and the Electoral Act provide for the qualifications of candidates for nomination, elections and contested offices. The Constitution and the Electoral Act provide also for the establishment, organization, management and reporting obligations of political parties; the time to hold primaries and conduct of primaries; the time to hold elections, and holding of elections; election petitions and the election petitions determination periods. It is, therefore, very dubious for anyone, let alone the President who is charged with the constitutional duty to execute our federal laws, to claim that the Constitution and the Electoral Act that have these far-reaching provisions on the establishment, existence, governance and operations of the political parties, will be violating the untrammelled right of the parties to make rules that they wish for themselves, regarding the mode of primaries in the nomination of their candidates.

Havent Nigeria gone too far in prescribing what our political parties should do, for the President to now suddenly realize (mischievously, in our view) that the freedom and democratic rights of the political parties will be imperilled, if one additional step is taken to legislatively prescribe the candidates nomination mode of direct primaries? If the President is sincerely concerned about enjoyment of internal liberty in the parties, shouldnt he sponsor an executive bill for the repeal of many provisions in the Electoral Act and in the Constitution on the establishment, existence, operation and conduct of the affairs of the political parties?

It is our view that the alleged impracticability of using only direct primaries as the nomination vehicle of candidates, the high cost of adoption of that mode, security challenges of monitoring elections, violations of citizens rights, marginalization of small parties, likely litigations and possible manipulations are lame excuses and sophistries woven to justify the rejection of the direct primaries formula. These  reasons, nay excuses, are not genuine.

The Yoruba characterize a never do nothing person as alaininkannse.  The National Assembly, hopefully, has something to do now. Only recently, the Senate President reportedly said the National Assembly is not a  rubber stamp  assembly. Here comes another true test for the National Assembly to assert its legislative independence.

The veto of the president should be overridden and the Electoral Amendment Bill passed into law.

Jiti Ogunye.

LAGOS

21st of December, 2021
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has berated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over comments to downplay its governments efforts in tackling the countrys security challenges.

The ruling party said the PDPs suggestion that the Buhari administration was insensitive to the heinous activities of bandits in parts of the country was politically-motivated, callous and insensitive to victims of the attacks and the security agencies fighting to end the security challenges.

The APC stated this in a statement on Tuesday by its interim National Secretary, John Akpanudoedehe, in Abuja.

The PDP, on Sunday, accused leaders of the ruling party of indifference to recent attacks by bandits in Sokoto, Plateau, Katsina, Kaduna, Plateau, and other parts of the country.

In what appears to be a recurring manner, top government officials were seen on Saturday in Daura, Katsina State, celebrating President Muhammadu Buharis sons chieftaincy title after the attacks recorded in the Northern region in the last two weeks.

Some of the key officials at the event include Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Senate President Ahmad Lawan, and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, none of whom has visited any of the scenes of the attacks.

The main opposition party condemned the APC leaders, pinpointing their numbness.

Is it not unforgivable that while the APC failed to show empathy for the heinous murder of scores of travellers who were burned alive in Sokoto state, the massacre of over 15 worshippers in Niger state, and other compatriots killed in Kaduna, Katsina, and other parts of the country in recent days, its leaders and officials in government found time to attend President Muhammadu Buharis sons turbaning ceremony in the same troubled Katsina state? the PDP spokesperson, Debo Ologunagba, had said.

In their defence, the APC on Tuesday said it was unfair to condemn its government over the countrys state of insecurity despite its efforts to combat the spread.

The party accused the PDP of downgrading its role with the intent to score cheap political points, calling the latter unpatriotic and banal.

Suggestions by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that the President Muhammadu Buhari government is insensitive to the heinous activities of bandits in parts of the country should be seen for what it is  politically motivated, callous and insensitive to victims and our gallant troops battling to end their criminal activities.

The regrettable attempt to turn a tragic situation into an object of politicking crosses the line of political decorum. True to form, the PDP continues to expose its desperate politics in which all is fair, including unguarded statements mocking the travails of citizens and efforts of security services to score political points.

The PDP playing politics with the evil activities of bandits, insurgents and other criminal rings which had their roots in PDPs shabby handling of their criminal activities during their formative stages, has exposed PDP as unpatriotic, banal and a wobbling opposition, Mr Akpanudoedehe said.
A Yaba Chief Magistrates court in Lagos on Tuesday admitted five Dowen College students, charged with the alleged murder of their 12-year-old schoolmate, Sylvester Oromoni, to bail in the sum of N1 million each.

The police charged the boys who are minors with conspiracy and homicide.

Chief Magistrate Olatunbosun Adeola, after hearing the bail application from the defendants counsel, ordered the defendants to produce two sureties each in like sum.

Mr Adeola said that one of each of the defendants sureties must be their parent, and must swear an affidavit of compliance.

She further held that the international passports of all the defendants must be submitted to the court, their residence must be verified by the prosecutor and they must stay within two kilometres of their residence at all times.

The defendants were on December 9 remanded in a juvenile home over the death of their schoolmate who was allegedly attacked in a case of bullying while in school.

Two days earlier, the police said they had arrested three of the students in connection with the incident. The arrest came days after the Lagos State government ordered the indefinite closure of the school after a meeting with the school management and staff.
Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to reopen the murder case of the late former Minister of Justice, Bola Ige.

Mr Ige was shot dead in his home in Ibadan on December 23, 2001.

He was 71.

In a message to Mr Iges daughter, Funso Adegbola, Mr Soyinka described the late politician as a remarkable individual.

The message was to be delivered by Mr Soyinka at the 20th Year of Bola Ige Memorial Symposium, Two Decades of Injustice: What are the implications on Nigerian Democracy, organised by the Bola Ige for Justice Centre in Lagos on Tuesday. The professor, however, was unable to attend but sent his regrets, attributing his absence to an 11th-hour, sadly insurmountable impediment.

In his message, Mr Soyinka asked what had become of the presidents robust pledge to open an enquiry into the spate of political murders across Nigeria.

Does it all amount to yet another instance of political bravado? Mr Soyinka asked.

While we all accept that all lives should be valued equally, some impose a special responsibility on those in governance. Bola Ige, as the nations minister of justice and United Nations civil servant designate, was unarguably one such.

A nations honour is in question and remains so until the hour of closure. Thus, she must never relent in demanding an explanation for his brutal murder, expose the perpetrators, identify the conspirators and reinstate the broken lines of justice.

There were several calls to the Buhari-led administration, in the past, to reopen investigations into the killing of Mr Ige and other unsolved political murders. 20 years after Mr Iges death, theres been no conviction.

Mr Soyinka said unsolved murders breed a culture of impunity and put the country at risk.

At the very least, we need a formal declaration regarding those who displayed an abnormal interest in the fates of those accused, to a level of proven, documented interference both in the investigative process and within the judiciary.

I am not alone in having written and lectured on these sordid aspects that fuelled the subversion of justice. There are surviving witnesses.
The Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered relevant officials and agency of the federal government to stop the plan to award a sensitive international cargo tracking system contract to two firms  Medtech Scientific Limited and Rozi International Nigeria Limited.

The court order restrained all five defendants sued in the suit  the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, and the two firms  from taking any further steps concerning the appointment of an operator for the International Cargo Tracking Note (ICTN)

D.U. Okorowo, the judge, issued the order on December 17, 2021 following an ex parte application by a civil society organisation, Citizens Advocacy for Social & Economic Rights (CASER), which alleged irregularities in the process of awarding the contract.

Mr Okorowo, after hearing the plaintiffs lawyer, Abdulhakeem Mustapha, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, issued, among others, an order of interim injunction restraining the 2nd defendant (BPP) from appointing the 4th and 5th defendants (Medtech Scientific Limited and Rozi International Nigeria Limited) as the operators of the ICTN in Nigeria pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice.

The judge similarly issued another order of interim injunction restraining BPP from giving further approvals and waivers to the 1st defendant (Minister of Transport) in the planned appointment of the 4th and 5th defendants (the two firms) as the operators of the ITCN.

He also issued a simar order restraining Medtech Scientific Limited and Rozi International Nigeria Limited or their agents from parading themselves or functioning as the operators of the ICTN.

Lastly, the judge ordered all the five defendants to suspend taking any ffurther steps towards nominating any company or entity to be operators of the International Cargo Tracking Note (ICTN) in Nigeria pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice.

The judge then adjourned till January 12 for the hearing of the plaintiffs motion on notice.

Why we filed suit-CASER

In a statement announcing the court order, on Monday, the Executive Director of CASER, Frank Tietie, a lawyer,

said the group filed the suit to challenge the ongoing process of appointing an implementing agent for the International Cargo Tracking Note (ICTN) in Nigeria due to the manner the process is being carried out by the Honourable Minister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Amaechi.

CASER instituted the case out of serious concern for Nigerias internal security following the massive inflow of small arms and light weapons (SALW) through Nigerian sea ports, the statement added.

It said the organisation was concerned that Nigeria loses huge billions of dollars following the improper tracking of cargo exports and imports.

The overall goal of the case, according to Mr Tietie, is to simply ensure compliance with the provisions of the Public Procurement Act (PPA) with international best practices and standards in procurement of such security-sensitive services.

Background

PREMIUM TIMES had exclusively reported how President Muhammadu Buhari and Mr Amaechi approved the national security-sensitive maritime contract to a medical company in a process the BPP said was embarrassing and illegal.

The International Cargo Tracking Note is an electronic cargo verification system that monitors the shipments of seaborne cargoes and enables a real-time generation of vital data on ships and cargo traffic in and out of Nigeria.

To get the contract going, Mr Amaechi obtained an anticipatory approval for the work from President Buhari. Although the president lacks the fiat to sideline procurement laws, the BPP claimed the presidential endorsement forced its hand on the deal.

Before approaching the president, Mr Amaechi had brushed aside the BPPs order that companies given the contracts be selected through an international competitive bidding. Mr Buhari approved his request to have the contract to Medtech Scientific Limited and Rozi International Nigeria Limited.
The federal government has reinstated the air services arrangements it had with Emirates airline.

Nigerias aviation ministry had earlier limited the carriers daily flights to Abuja to a single run a week and denied approval for the airlines winter schedule.

The decision was prompted after authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) denied Nigerias only carrier to Dubai, Airpeace, the three frequencies it requested at UAEs Sharjah Airport.

After much back and forth on the matter, the UAE on December 14 made a U-turn on its initial decision, and granted Air Peace seven slots at Dubai.

The reinstatement was contained in a letter signed by director-general, Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Musa Nuhu, and addressed to the country manager, Emirates Airlines.

ALSO READ: Emirates suspends flights to Nigeria indefinitely

Following further consultations with various stakeholders and the letter from Dubai CAA with reference number DCAA/ASA/N-3/016 dated December 17, 2021 offering Air Peace Airlines daily slots to Dubai airports; I wish to inform you of the reinstatement of the ministerial approval of Emirates Airlines Winter Schedule, the letter said.

According to him, the approval comes as a result of compliance with the Dubai Travel Protocol as released by Dubai airports on Friday November 26, 2021 as it affects travellers from Nigeria to UAE.
A Benin national, Robert Kpanou, arrested in October 2020 during the aftermath of the #EndSARS protest regained freedom on Tuesday after spending 14 months in jail, his lawyer, Festus Ogun told PREMIUM TIMES.

His release comes days after Seyi Awobola regained freedom after spending 14 months at Kirikiri prison.

Mr Kpanou, who worked as a tile layer, was arrested on October 22, 2020, in Lagos, his brother, Alex told this newspaper.

According to FIJ, he was arrested while returning to his residence when he was stopped by officers attached to Maroko police station for a search during the 2020 nationwide #EndSARS protest.

Mr Kpanou was arrested that evening after the police found in his possession a roll of sachet milk and four canned sardines they claimed he stole from a looted supermarket nearby.

After telling the police officers I bought the sachet milk and sardines, they asked me to bring out the receipts but I told them I didnt have any, Mr Kpanou said.

Lagos was stormed 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 protests, which were peaceful in the beginning, were hijacked by hoodlums who hid under the cover of the protest to unleash mayhem across the state.

By the way, they (police) never mentioned anything about any crime of burgling a supermarket in court. They said we were the ones that burnt Ajah Police Station, whereas I never joined the protest, he said.

Speaking with this newspaper after his release via his lawyers phone, Mr Kpanou said although he felt happy to have been freed, he suffered while in jail.

No food, any small thing, na punishment, he said.

Administrative hurdle

His lawyer told this newspaper that the matter was withdrawn on Friday by the state government and the case struck out by the magistrate, L.A Owolabi, who immediately issued a release warrant.

Mr Ogun said he took the warrant to the prison where his client was detained but he met an administrative hurdle.

The prison officers required a certified copy of the judgment with the magistrates signature stating his release, he said.

He said he went back to Yaba to get it but he was told that the magistrate sits at the court in Ogba.

He said he went to Ogba on Monday and got the court ruling and proceeded to the Kirikiri prison on Tuesday to release Mr Kpanou.
The purpose of the Presidents trip to Turkey, December 16th to 19th was to participate in the 3rd Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit, with an appealing theme: Enhanced Partnership for Common Development and Prosperity.

Our national strategy was laid out before departure, based on a strong optimism that the summit will work well for all the leaders. Turkey is serious about working with Africa in a win-win relationship. Though not yet accepted as a member of the EU, it is a major player in the continent in many ways and is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Turkey also has strong links in the Middle-East. In Asia, the competition is stiff, with China, Japan, South Korea and the rest. But see what discipline, national mobilization and determination have brought Turkey to where it is today. So, Africa may seem for them, a good bet for solidarity and market.

For us on the continent, it is not in doubt that the big countries are not outrightly helpful at all times. In some instances, as with the COVID-19 vaccine, we have seen how might becomes right.

So, really, the embrace of Turkey by Africa is a logical path to follow, given that the country had gone through the big economies in search of economic and national development, abandoned that process and became, on their own, the fastest growing economy in Europe. Annual trade between Turkey and Africa was USD 5.5 billion in 2003. Today, it has risen to USD 26 billion. Under the Erdogan leadership, the country has grown its presence in Africa from 12 embassies to 42. Turkish Airlines flies to 50 destinations in 30 African countries.

President Erdogan has himself described his country as being an Afro- Euro-Asian state, and was on record as being the first non-African Head of State to visit Somalia. Turkey has arrived as a world power. They have advanced in so many areas.

In going to Turkey, the position of the Presidents team was: If the partnership through the multilateral process works for us, it will help. All six ministers on the delegation held meetings with their respective counterparts to deepen the good bilateral relations between us. We went there in search of partnerships, partnerships that Nigeria stands to gain from.

When he came here in October, President Erdogan and President Buhari had the two countries sign three Memoranda of Understanding, MoUs, and four agreements on a variety of subjects that included political consultation, energy, hydrocarbons, mining, youth, double taxation and the reform and development of the Defence Industries Corporation, DIC in Kaduna.

The starting point of this engagement was the meeting between the two leaders-President Muhammadu Buhari and the Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The tone of this meeting was itself set by the officials who accompanied the President: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Defence, National Security Adviser and the Director-General, National Intelligence Agency. And from all accounts, the meeting met all expectations: Turkish leader Erdogan agreed to work with President Buhari in tackling insurgents and other security challenges facing this country.

This is significant in many ways. Turkey today not only has a modern defence industry but one that is technologically advanced. Their intervention against ISIL in Syria and Iraq and even Libya has brought them a lot of respect. When they intervened on the side of Azerbaijan in that countrys war against Armenia, that participation using especially that impressive drone technology was the single most important game-changer. Turkish technology, be they drones or even through the supply or manufacture of military ordinance in Nigeria will surely quicken the process and efforts to rid the country of pockets of terrorists and the menace of kidnappers and bandits. From their wide experience and advances in technology in fighting terrorism and banditry, they have a lot to give and they have assured us that they will give that support.

Flowing from the meeting of leaders, the heads of our defence and security establishments were afforded long engagements with their Turkish counterparts. The meetings took time to reflect on what Nigeria needs to overcome the problem of insecurity. These issues revolved around the use of technology to fight crime, something that everyone is doing, and so why not Nigeria.

As we go into January next year, a team from the Turkish defence establishment is expected to be in Nigeria in the effort to advance the discussions on the issue of military procurement.

The national security component equally has a Turkish angle to it and one that turned to be one of the gains, in the sense that both countries have a common view of what Turkey perceives as a security threat to their nation and its leaders present in Nigeria. This is about some Turkish investments, schools and hospitals associated with an opposition figure linked to the abortive coup and attempted assassination of President Erdogan. This had existed as a critical but unspoken issue, with the potential to undermine the relationship in spite of the strong bond of friendship based on trust between the leaders of the two nations. It appears however that a strong common ground and understanding is reached.

The government of Nigeria will not allow any part of our territory to be used to undermine a friendly state such as Turkey. Under our strict Central Bank and Financial Intelligence Units governance structure and management, money from the investments in issue cannot be moved anywhere to finance subversive activities. While protection of foreign investment is sacrosanct, government clearly will not allow interest, individual or group, to undermine the very warm and cordial relationship between the two nations.

Turkey has achieved so much in infrastructure, which is something very close to the heart of the President. Turkey has shown real capacity in heavy capital projects in many countries and this has another advantage to us.

As it is now, we are reliant on just one country for infrastructure and Turkey should help us to diversify.

From these bilateral meetings, the ground has been laid for the setting up of education, health and leisure projects including the proposal for a big hotel and conference center project in Abuja.

In the not-too-distant future, the administration of the Federal Capital Territory will be receiving the team of investors including the world- famous Maarif Foundation to be shown exact locations for the setting up of a five-star hotel and conference center, schools and a world-class hospital.

Three other companies have a strong interest in other areas, with the first, in oil and gas, and from which a good outcome is expected by the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, NNPC Mele Kyari and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Niyi Adebayo. One of the other investors is coming with interest in the Abuja property market, real estate and the creative industry especially film making and another, with interest in the construction sector. This is the company that built Turkeys famous undersea tunnel.

Finally, it is important to say that President Buhari was in Turkey on a special request by the Turkish President.

By an earlier agreement, the number of African leaders at the four-yearly summit was rationalized to just 15, and leaders were chosen to attend as representatives of either the African Union or the elected leaders of sub-regional groups such as ECOWAS, the South African Development Community, SADC and the rest. Each sub-regional leader presented a representative statement, and in the case of ECOWAS, it was President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, its Chairman. No national statements were planned for, except for Nigeria where our President was given a special speaking opportunity.

As to be expected, President Buhari used it to good effect, calling for increased support for Africa in fighting terrorism, vaccine equity and manufacture on the continent and for combined efforts to address the effects of climate change.

The Nigerian delegation returned to Nigeria on a high note of expectation that this was indeed, a visit worth undertaking.

Garba Shehu is the Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media & Publicity).

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Apart from using my plight to serve as a lesson to others, my final reason for making this public is to help a few misguided persons who still prefer to stigmatise COVID-19. There is nothing to be ashamed about if you are the latest person to be caught by a pandemic.

There was an outbreak of COVID in my house as last weekend approached and so I told myself that I must do the correct thing. I immediately went into self-isolation (because I had been exposed) and started cancelling all the physical engagements that I had committed to attend over the course of the next few days.

One of the first casualties was a Future Leaders Network event billed for Saturday morning in Ikoyi, where I was supposed to be the keynote speaker. I contacted them and offered to deliver my address virtually instead. Dr Tony Rapu (medical doctor and pastor) was the intermediary for this engagement. He was the one who pressured me to commit to being the keynote speaker at this event that was organised by a bunch of highly responsible young men. Tony even held an emergency conference call between the young leaders, himself and myself to help pacify them after I cancelled my physical participation. They decided to postpone their event on account of my physical absence; they felt it was too late in the day to hurriedly arrange for my virtual participation instead.

I maintained my ground with all and sundry that it would be irresponsible for me to start going around Lagos, attending physical functions at a time when there had been an outbreak of COVID-19 in my house. I know a little bit about the Omicron variant and how highly transmissible it is. That I had no symptoms whatsoever was not the issue. The chances were that I could be at the incubation stage.

I still do not have any COVID-19 symptoms, but in a sense my positive test result was both a relief and a lesson. To all those who felt I was being too strict to the point of being ridiculous, I stand vindicated. I am relieved because some people argued with my stance and felt I was simply overzealous.

It would suffice to say that I cancelled all physical engagements in Lagos, including weddings, business meetings, etc. Then I got a phone call inviting me to Aso Rock on Wednesday to attend the launching of the new National Development Plan 2021-25 by Mr President, in my capacity as Co-Chairman (private sector) of the National Steering Committee that was set up to produce the Plan. Indeed, my Co-Chairman (public sector) called me also i.e. the Finance minister. I told her that I felt fine and had no symptoms, but that the correct thing to do (as per Nigeria Centre for Disease Control [NCDC] protocols) was that I must continue to self-isolate. In any case, my latest COVID-19 test had been taken on Monday morning by 54-Gene and the result was not yet out. The Finance minister accepted my logic and said she would explain my absence for health reasons and based on a strict adherence to the NCDC safety protocols. We even discussed how long the incubation period could stretch.

This morning (Tuesday) I woke up and saw an email that came in overnight containing my COVID-19 test result from Monday (yesterday) morning and it was POSITIVE.

I still do not have any COVID-19 symptoms, but in a sense my positive test result was both a relief and a lesson. To all those who felt I was being too strict to the point of being ridiculous, I stand vindicated. I am relieved because some people argued with my stance and felt I was simply overzealous. Now they know different.

I was well prepared in the sense of taking all the preventive measures, which the Nigerian government placed at my disposal. Perhaps the vaccines have helped to make me asymptomatic (so far) ? Are you as well prepared as I was? If you are not, what do you intend to do about it?

Apart from using my plight to serve as a lesson to others, my final reason for making this public is to help a few misguided persons who still prefer to stigmatise COVID-19. There is nothing to be ashamed about if you are the latest person to be caught by a pandemic.

Finally, please get your head around this: I had taken two doses of the Astra Zeneca vaccine in early March and late May and I also took the Pfizer booster shot last week in Victoria Island and yet COVID-19 still knocked on my door. I was well prepared in the sense of taking all the preventive measures, which the Nigerian government placed at my disposal. Perhaps the vaccines have helped to make me asymptomatic (so far) ? Are you as well prepared as I was? If you are not, what do you intend to do about it?

Atedo N. A. Peterside (CON) is the President & Founder of Anap Foundation and the Founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank PLC. Twitter: @AtedoPeterside
The Jigawa State House of Assembly has passed a bill to protect children from abuse, but says the legislation will not regulate the age of marriage because it is controversial to predominant religion and culture of the residents.

The decision means that though the Child Rights Protection Bill defines a child as a person below the age of 18, people who should by that definition be considered underage, can still marry.

The Child Rights Protection Bill is an executive bill forwarded to the lawamakers by the governor, Muhammad Badaru.

Sponsors of the bill say it is meant to enhance the welfare of children in the state and seek to maximize requisite care and protection for children.

Also, the bill seeks to offer higher protection to the vulnerable in the society and raise the status bar of cherished societal norms and values.

The chairperson, House Committee on Justice and Judiciary, Abubakar Muhammad, while presenting the recommendations of the committee before his colleagues on Tuesday, urged the immediate passage of the bill to end the decade long controversy on it.

After the plenary, Mr Muhammad told journalists that the technical committee on the bill had expunged child marriage.

The issue of underage marriage is totally expunged in the bill is no longer part of the law  he said.

The lawmaker added: It is very difficult to determine the age of a girl that is ripe for marriage, thus, because of the controversial nature of it we expunged it totally from the bill.

Mr Muhammad said the bill presented to the house is the Islamic compliance version of child protection bill.

He said the passage of the bill brought an end to years of misrepresentation, misinformation about it which formed part and parcel of the Islamic religion.

Any provision that was in contrast to Islamic principles and law, the culture of the Hausa and Fulani people was erased, Mr Muhammad said.

After deliberations on the committees report, the lawmakers unanimously passed the bill which now awaits the governors assent to become law.

According to a United Nations survey, 43 per cent of Nigerian girls married before they were 18.

The problem of early marriage is particularly endemic in the North-west and North-east regions.

With more than 80 per cent of its girls married off before their 18th birthday, Jigawa State has one of the highest rates of child marriage and street children (Almajiri) in the country.

The Act covers key aspects of the lives of children and adolescents. It is divided into survival rights, development rights, participation rights, and protection rights.

Long in coming

Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act in 2003 to domesticate the International Convention on the Rights of a Child.

Jigawa passed the Child Rights Act, but later repealed it in 2012.

The lawmakers said the law was repealed due to inadequate input from citizens and ambiguous sections that needed explanations.

With the passage of the bill, Jigawa becomes one of the states in the North-west region to have done so.

Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, and Sokoto States had earlier passed the bill.

Kano and Zamfara States are yet to do so.

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The popular Ikoyi Club in Lagos has announced the suspension of Modupe Alakija, the husband of billionaire businesswoman, Folorunsho Alakija.

The club said Mr Alakija, 72, will remain suspended till November 30, 2022.

According to a circular signed by Bamidele Ibironke, the Honorary Secretary of Ikoyi Club, Mr Alakija, a lawyer, was suspended over physical assault and abuse.

The above-named member of the Club is hereby placed on a one year suspension from the Club for physically assaulting and abusing a fellow member, conduct injurious to the interest of the Club, thereby violating Rule 9(C) of the Clubs Rule Book.

This suspension takes effect from Decemebr 1, 2021 to November 30 2022, the circular, which contained Mr Alakijas picture read.

An official at Ikoyi Club, who confirmed the development to PREMIUM TIMES, said a letter has been forward to Mr Alakija, containing the details of the offence and sanction. The official preferred not to be identified because he was not authorised to comment on the incident.

Mr Alakija reportedly slapped a member of the club whom he accused of disrespecting him. This led to a scuffle between the duo and disruption of peace within the club.

Mr Alakijas wife is Nigerias first female billionaire, and the founder of Famfa Oil. An oil mogul, Mrs Alakija made the Forbes Black Billionaires List in 2019, with a net worth of $1.1 billion.

Mr Alakija is the chairman of FAMFA Oil, a company founded by his wife.

PREMIUM TIMES was unable to reach him for comments on his suspension and allegations of assault levelled against him.
NEW DELHI, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As Christmas & New Year is around the corner, Gifting giant, Ferns N Petals introduces an exquisite range of holiday gifting collection. Celebrating the true intent of 'giving' this festive season, convey the messages in an extraordinary way by choosing from personalized gifting range of Christmas & New Year gifts from Ferns N Petals.

Ferns N Petals is a pioneer in providing gifts for every kind of occasion and celebration. Exquisite Christmas and New Year, holiday gifting collection is available in 120+ countries and can opt for same day express deliveries to send sweet surprises to loved ones within the comfort of their homes. Explore from designer to personalized well lit cushions, mugs with those Christmassy prints enlightening those festive feels, to dry cakes and merry Christmas hampers for loved ones.

On this Festive occasion, Mr. Paritosh Bindra, AVP- Category at Ferns N Petals, said, "At Ferns N Petals, it has been our constant endeavor to come up with exclusive Christmas gifts & Hampers for our patrons. We are growing at an exponential rate of 73% in comparison to last year with an average of 500+ orders per day in the Christmas-holiday gifting category. Our popular categories are dry cakes followed by chocolates and Christmas products like Wish tree, Christmas tree etc. We have expanded in existing categories via increasing the depth and serviceability of top selling products and have introduced new range in Balloon Decorations. We are experiencing an aggressive growth in Dry cakes, Gift Hampers, Exotic Sweets and Dry Fruits for Christmas & New Year's."

The exchange of gifts and thoughtful greeting cards with loved ones is perhaps one of the most important customs of all. In addition to exchanging gifts, at Ferns N Petals, choose to shop for home decor items which can give an absolute face lift to this Christmas celebration. Browse from several Christmas gift ideas online to the X-mas tree, Santa caps, lights, candles, bells and other decoration items to beautifully accessorize your home and make the auspicious occasion memorable.

Christmas Gift Hampers | Choose from gorgeous gift hampers that consist of various edible and non-edible things. Among edible things, one will find chocolates, dry fruits, roasted nuts, fresh fruits, cookies, biscuits, etc. Among non-edible things, one will find spa materials, makeup items, and cosmetics. So, get gift hampers for loved ones can be chosen depending on their choices.

Personalised Gifts | To convey heartfelt love for someone, nothing can come closer to the appeal of personalized gifts. These gifts range from mugs, cushions, LED cushions, lamps, key chains, pen stand, etc. All one needs to do is share some high-resolution images of friends or relatives with the team to get these amazing products as Christmas gifts.

Cakes for Christmas | Cakes would be the best gifts for Christmas festival because of the ancient tradition of eating cakes on this day. One can find the Christmas special fruit cake, plum cake, Dundee cake, rum n raisin cake, along with fondant cake, cheesecake, cream cake, etc. in flavors like chocolate, vanilla, pineapple, red velvet, truffle, etc.

Flowers |This Christmas day, present flowers as gifts for friends and relatives. Find roses, chrysanthemums, carnations, lilies, orchids, or daisies in various colors and arrangements to surprise loved ones on this holy occasion of Christmas.

Christmas Plants | Spread positivity in the air by gifting plants to loved ones. There will be more oxygen in the air, less toxin in the atmosphere, and the space where the plants are kept would also be beautified. Check out the stunning varieties of plants on the website to order.

Photo Frame | A photo frame is always a nice gift because that always reminds one of the past happy times of life. At Ferns N Petals, find metal and wooden photo frames that one will simply love.

Home Decor Items | One can find gorgeous home decor items like photo frames, mugs, plants, side table accessories, small drawers, etc. There are also lamps and candles that can be ordered as gifts for Christmas.

Chocolates | Express love and respect towards people. One can get a box of chocolates, bouquet of chocolates, or combo of chocolates with other products like mug, plant, flowers, or cakes.

Personalize boxes with Christmas theme based baskets, add personal notes/cards to convey messages meaningfully. Personalize favorite handbags, to card holders to wallets and more and make it 'yours forever'.

About the Company:

Ferns N Petals came into existence in 1994 that has grown to be the Largest Gifting Portal in India in the last 27 years. The journey started with a single store under the entrepreneurship of Mr.Vikaas Gutgutia, which has now emerged as a reputed brand with 11 verticals under the FNP World. These verticals are FNP Retail & Franchising, FNP E-commerce  India| UAE| Singapore, FNP Cakes 'N' More, FNP Venues, FNP Weddings & Events, FNP Floral Touch - UAE, WDH (Wedding Design Hub), Flowers 'N' More, FNP Flagship, Sipping Thoughts | Last Journey and FNP Media.

Today, the brand leads the floral, gifting and cakes industry with 386 outlets in more than 120 cities pan India. The company also has ten luxury venues in Delhi NCR to offer vast spaces to host social and corporate gatherings. FNP is consciously foraying into various fields to make your special moments even more memorable, be it your birthday or even your wedding.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1714239/Customised_Bottle.jpg

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1714238/delicious_christmas_chocolate_cake.jpg

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1714237/Christmas_Chocolate_Box.jpg

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/534936/Ferns_N_Petals_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Ferns N Petals
For more insights on the beer market in US - Download a free sample now!

Market Dynamics

The market is driven by factors such as the increasing demand for premium beers, increasing health consciousness among consumers, and the increased consumption of alcoholic beverages among women. The increasing growth of legal recreational cannabis is hindering market growth. The holistic analysis of the drivers & challenges will help in deducing end goals and refining marketing strategies to gain a competitive edge.

Company Profiles

The beer market in US is fragmented and the vendors are deploying various organic and inorganic growth strategies to compete in the market. The beer market in us report includes information on the product launches, sustainability, and prospects of leading vendors including Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC, Constellation Brands Inc., D.G. Yuengling and Son Inc., Diageo Plc, Duvel Moortgat NV, HEINEKEN International B.V., Molson Coors Beverage Co., Pabst Brewing, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., and The Boston Beer Co. Inc.

Few companies with key offerings

Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC - The company offers brewed beers under various brands like Budweiser, Bud Light, Presidente, and others.

The company offers brewed beers under various brands like Budweiser, Bud Light, Presidente, and others. Constellation Brands Inc., - The company offers different types of beer under Carona, Modela and Victoria , and others.

The company offers different types of beer under Carona, Modela and , and others. D.G. Yuengling and Son Inc. - The company offers brewed beer under Yuengling which offers a wide range of beers like Black & Tan, Raging Eagle, Chesterfield Ale, and others.

The company offers brewed beer under Yuengling which offers a wide range of beers like Black & Tan, Raging Eagle, Chesterfield Ale, and others. Diageo Plc - The company offers brewed and drought beer under the brand of Guinness.

The company offers brewed and drought beer under the brand of Guinness. Duvel Moortgat NV - The company offers brewed beer like Duvel 6,66 and Duvel and drafted beer which is soft in taste, slightly aromatic, and has fruit essence.

To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments. The beer market forecast report of US by Technavio offers in-depth insights into key vendor profiles. The profiles include information on the production, sustainability, and prospects of the leading companies.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive scenario provided in the beer market in us 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 Product, the market is classified into non-craft beer and craft beer

By Distribution channel, the market is classified into the on-trade channel and off-trade channel

Related Reports -

Dark Beer Market -The dark beer market has the potential to grow by USD 23.47 billion during 2021-2025, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 11.15%. Download a free sample now!

Craft Beer Market -The craft beer market has the potential to grow by USD 65.09 billion during 2021-2025, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 11.24%. Download a free sample now!

Beer Market In US Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2020 Forecast period 2021-2025 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 4.17% Market growth 2021-2025 USD 21.34 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 4.13 Regional analysis US Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC, Constellation Brands Inc., D.G. Yuengling and Son Inc., Diageo Plc, Duvel Moortgat NV, HEINEKEN International B.V. , Molson Coors Beverage Co., Pabst Brewing, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., and The Boston Beer Co. Inc. 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
NEW YORK, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackstone Liquid Credit Strategies LLC, an affiliate of Blackstone Alternative Credit Advisors LP (collectively, and together with their affiliates in the credit-focused business of Blackstone Inc., "Blackstone Credit"), announced today a special distribution for each of the three listed closed-end funds it advises, Blackstone Senior Floating Rate Term Fund (NYSE: BSL), Blackstone Long-Short Credit Income Fund (NYSE: BGX), and Blackstone Strategic Credit Fund (NYSE: BGB) (each a "Fund" and together the "Funds"). These special distributions are in addition to each Fund's regular monthly distributions. The special distribution for each Fund is set forth below, and the following dates apply to the special distributions declared today:

Ticker Fund Special Distribution Per Share BSL Senior Floating Rate Term Fund $0.086 BGX Long-Short Credit Income Fund $0.058 BGB Strategic Credit Fund $0.044

Ex-Date: December 30, 2021 Record Date: December 31, 2021 Payable Date: January 31, 2022

These special distributions are payable in 2022 but will be treated as having been paid by the Funds and received by shareholders as of December 31, 2021.

A portion of each distribution may be treated as paid from sources other than net investment income, including but not limited to short-term capital gain, long-term capital gain, or return of capital. The final determination of the source and tax characteristics of these distributions will depend upon each Fund's investment experience during its fiscal year and will be made after the Fund's year end. Each Fund will send to investors a Form 1099-DIV for the calendar year that will define how to report these distributions for federal income tax purposes. The Funds anticipate these special distributions will not result in a return of capital.

About Blackstone and Blackstone Credit

Blackstone is the world's largest alternative asset manager. We seek to create positive economic impact and long-term value for our investors, the companies we invest in, and the communities in which we work. We do this by using extraordinary people and flexible capital to help companies solve problems. Our $731 billion in assets under management include investment vehicles focused on private equity, real estate, public debt and equity, life sciences, growth equity, opportunistic, non-investment grade credit, real assets and secondary funds, all on a global basis.

Blackstone Credit is one of the largest credit-focused asset managers, with $178 billion in AUM. We seek to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for our clients by investing across the entire corporate credit market, from public debt to private loans. Our capital supports a wide range of companies across sectors and geographies, enabling businesses to expand, invest, and navigate changing market environments

Investors wishing to buy or sell shares need to place orders through an intermediary or broker.

SOURCE Blackstone Liquid Credit Strategies LLC

Related Links

http://www.blackstone-credit.com


BLACKWELL, Okla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bluepeak, an innovative internet provider, announced today that it has received franchise approval from the City of Blackwell, Oklahoma, and will break ground next year on a high-speed fiber network to meet the growing needs of the community, today and in the future. The approximate $3 million expansion effort will bring Bluepeak service to nearly 3,000 residences and businesses in Blackwell.

"We're thrilled to be partnering with the City of Blackwell to build a next-generation, fiber-to-the-home network," said Rich Fish, CEO of Bluepeak. "Bluepeak is a different kind of provider with faster, more reliable speeds that will better connect homes, businesses and organizations across Blackwell."

With Bluepeak's advanced fiber connection, residential customers can get up to 5 gigabits of symmetrical bandwidth and businesses can get up to 10 gigabits of symmetrical bandwidth. Bluepeak's fiber network will provide faster speeds, better connectivity, and the bandwidth to connect more devices for internet, streaming, gaming and more.

"Providing city residents, businesses and industry with additional telecommunication options is paramount in this age of information. The City looks forward to working with Clarity Telecom, LLC/Bluepeak in the coordination of the installation of fiber on the City's poles and underground fiber in its rights-of-way where no poles are present," said Blackwell City Manager Jerry Wieland.

For more information and to receive the latest updates, visit www.mybluepeak.com .

About Bluepeak

Bluepeak is building a faster, more reliable internet without the things that get in the way of great servicelike red tape, hidden fees, and slow response times. Offering up to 5 gigabits of speed for residential customers and 10 gigabits for businesses, Bluepeak is a whole new ballgame  from internet to TV, to connecting every device in a home, to powering a business, Bluepeak not only provides the best fiber connections in the communities it serves, but also meets the growing needs for how its customers live.

Bluepeak (Clarity Telecom LLC) is known as Vast Broadband today in South Dakota and portions of western Minnesota until those markets rebrand as Bluepeak in the summer of 2022. Visit www.meetbluepeak.com to learn more.

Media Contact:

Brad Krebs

314-973-8090

[email protected]

SOURCE Bluepeak
Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic, is the site of the first Princess Medallion  device manufacturing facility outside of Asia, as Carnival Corporation adds production capacity support for its Caribbean cruises while also boosting economic development by supporting the more than 600 jobs at Jabil's Dominican Republic facility.

"The proximity of Jabil's state-of-the-art facilities and factory automation along with its exceptional track record across consumer, medical and military device manufacturing gives us a tremendous opportunity to support the increased demand for our experiential IoT wearables and also support good-paying jobs in the Dominican Republic in the highly desirable sector of travel and tourism," said John Padgett, chief experience and innovation officer for Carnival Corporation. "This development also reflects the continuation of Carnival Corporation's impressive investments throughout the Caribbean to stimulate economic growth and prosperity across the region."

Launched in 2017, the revolutionary Medallion wearable contains a proprietary blend of communication technologies and enables the world's first interactive guest experience platform transforming vacation travel on a large scale into a highly personalized level of customized service.

Currently available on ships from Princess Cruises, MedallionClass vacations leverage the innovation within the Medallion to enable touchless embarkation and disembarkation, frictionless commerce and keyless stateroom entry, as well as dynamic way-finding on board, family and friends locator, first-run movies on the go, an interactive events and activities planner, and interactive gaming.

The quarter-sized, 1.8-ounce wearable disc has no discernible technology  no on-off switch, no recharge needed, no menu to navigate, and is waterproof, heat- and cold-resistant and sand- and salt-proof. The Medallions are emblazoned with the cruise line's logo and each disc is laser-etched with the guest's name, name of their ship and sail date.

Inside the Medallion are two microscopic antennas  one utilizing Near Field Communication (NFC) and one utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The device seamlessly syncs with an invisible Experiential Internet of ThingsTM (xIoTTM) network of readers, sensors and edge computing devices that recognize individual guests in locations throughout the ships and facilitate experiences for them based on location, personal information they provide and onboard interactions.

The Medallion wearables are being produced in Jabil's 60,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Bajos de Haina's PIISA Industrial Park, part of the area's fast-growing free trade zone. Medallions produced and fulfilled at the Dominican Republic location will ship to Miami for distribution to guests sailing Princess MedallionClass vacations in the Caribbean.

"Jabil is excited about this new partnership with Carnival Corporation and confident that our manufacturing solutions in one of our newest sites will meet the needs of this world-class wearable that elevates the Princess Cruises guest experience," said Mike Mahaz, vice president of global business units at Jabil. "Our facility in Santo Domingo is the ideal location to support this exciting new product, given its proximity and high-caliber talent pool."

In addition to the new manufacturing initiative, Princess Cruises is also growing the number of ship visits to the Dominican Republic during the 2021-22 season by 250%, compared to 2019.

About Carnival Corporation & plc

Carnival Corporation & plc is one of the world's largest leisure travel companies with a portfolio of nine of the world's leading cruise lines sailing to all seven continents. With operations in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia, its portfolio features Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, P&O Cruises (Australia), Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and Cunard.

Additional information can be found on www.carnivalcorp.com, www.carnival.com, www.princess.com, www.hollandamerica.com, www.seabourn.com, www.pocruises.com.au, www.costacruise.com, www.aida.de, www.pocruises.com and www.cunard.com.

About Princess Cruises:

One of the best-known names in cruising, Princess Cruises is the world's leading international premium cruise line and tour company operating a fleet of 14 modern cruise ships, carrying two million guests each year to 380 destinations around the globe, including the Caribbean, Alaska, Panama Canal, Mexican Riviera, Europe, South America, Australia/New Zealand, the South Pacific, Hawaii, Asia, Canada/New England, Antarctica, and World Cruises. In 2017 Princess Cruises, with parent company Carnival Corporation, introduced MedallionClass Vacations enabled by the Princess Medallion, the vacation industry's most advanced wearable device, provided free to each guest sailing on a MedallionClass ship. The award-winning innovation offers the fastest way to an effortless personalized vacation giving guests more time to do the things they love most. The company is part of Carnival Corporation & plc. (NYSE/LSE: CCL;NYSE:CUK).

About Jabil:

Jabil (NYSE: JBL) is a manufacturing solutions provider with over 260,000 employees across 100 locations in 30 countries. The world's leading brands rely on Jabil's unmatched breadth and depth of end-market experience, technical and design capabilities, manufacturing know-how, supply chain insights and global product management expertise. Driven by a common purpose, Jabil and its people are committed to making a positive impact on their local community and the environment. Visit www.jabil.com to learn more.

SOURCE Carnival Corporation & plc
IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chaz Guinn, the CEO and Co-Founder of Revolve Capital Group, has been an industry leader in distressed real estate since 2008. He has built and developed multiple real estate firms that specialize in the purchasing, managing and selling of 1st lien non-performing and re-performing mortgage debt backed by single-family homes.

"I went into a market that was unknown in 2008, and here I am a decade later actively doing and scaling this business" Tweet this "Paving Your Path" featuring Chaz Guinn

Chaz Guinn delivered a speech at the 2021 NoteExpo in a NoteTalks seminar titled "Paving Your Path", where he covered the obstacles and challenges faced while developing his career in distressed real estate investing. His speech explores his triumphs and successes, and what it took to carry himself and his business through a global pandemic.

"I definitely felt that I went into a market that was unknown in 2008, and here I am a decade plus later still actively doing and scaling this business."

Guinn adds that his firm is on a mission to educate the new wave of investors who are coming into a market that traditionally invested into fix-and-flips, rentals, the stock market, commercial properties, multi-family, hospitality, and senior housing. He emphasizes that, while many other firms act as brokers, Revolve Capital is one of the only distressed real estate firms that provide bank-direct assets to investors of all sizes.

"We want to step out and align ourselves with all of you folks, to say if you can properly source capital, and we can help you setup the right infrastructure, you'll see we are a direct source to the major sellers in this country," Guinn explains.

Chaz Guinn has structured, negotiated and raised over $200M from high-net-worth Accredited investors, family offices, and financial institutions. Having acquired over $1 billion directly from Tier 1 banks, Investment Banks, Large Real Estate Funds, GSE's, and Servicers, Guinn is a market-maker in bringing institutional and Wall Street investments to main street investors.

Guinn's speech is available for viewing on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okVyrYiKAb4.

For more information about distressed mortgage investment opportunities, visit https://revcapgroup.com/.

About the Company

Revolve Capital Group is a privately held real estate investment firm that specializes in the acquisition, management, and sale of distressed mortgage notes. The primary objective of Revolve Capital is to invest in high-quality, well maintained, higher-valued non-performing loans secured by a 1st lien mortgage or deed of trust on residential real estate property.

SOURCE Revolve Capital Group
WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania have released a new research report that examines differences in how wealth managers and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals evaluate assets and coordinate risk management activities. The study, which included a survey of 100 UHNW investors, family office members, and key financial decision makers, found that these differences are particularly apparent with tangible assets like property, art collections, and other valuables.

"Wharton is known for its groundbreaking research in finance and wealth management, and this particular study shows that ultra-high-net-worth asset owners generally think about risk, risk management and investment undertakings differently from most people," said Chris Geczy, the Wharton finance faculty member overseeing the research. "In our sample, most UHNW respondents view their wealth holistically, meaning that they think of multiple factors, such as tangible non-financial assets, operating businesses assets, human capital and liquid financial assets, as representing a more complete picture of their family's total wealth. Understandably, many wealth managers may focus largely or exclusively on the risks and returns of stocks, bonds, private equity and other financial investments, but the research shows that UHNW asset owners want their wealth managers to consider tangible assets to be a part of their investment plans."

Other key insights that emerged from the Wharton survey include:

Eighty-seven percent of the ultra-wealthy reported seeing tangible assets as part of their wealth, while only 53% of financial advisors consider these assets in the same way;

There's a 37% gap between UHNW investors who believe tangible assets should be included in their balance sheet and wealth advisors who coordinate with an insurance agent or broker to protect those assets;

Ninety-five percent of respondents with $50M+ in wealth, and 80% of individuals with $30M+in wealth would prioritize coverage and service over price; and,

The number one insurance priority for UHNW individuals is knowing that the insurance carrier has a strong balance sheet (and is financially stable), followed by the ability to handle complex situations.

The research also found that, modeled over a 40-year period, adequate liability insurance and property coverage might improve the risk-adjusted return on assets of total balance sheet portfolios that include a family's business, property, and possessions.

"Ultra-high-net-worth people face constantly changing and complex risks and are looking for guidance from those who understand the complexity of their wealth, such as advisors and insurers, to coordinate all assets and risks," said Fran O'Brien, Division President of Chubb North America Personal Risk Services. "Most wealth managers have an extensive network of professionals, such as accountants and attorneys, to supplement the guidance they provide. As part of that network, advisors should also consider working with insurance agents, brokers, and carriers who specialize in ultra-high-net-worth clients to ensure they are covered more holistically."

Download the Does Wealth Change the Way You Think report and the Out of Left Tail report as well as the Improving the Risk-Adjusted Return of Your Ultra-High-Net-Worth Clients' Portfolios case studies.

About Chubb:

Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company, and the largest commercial insurer in the United States. With operations in 54 countries and territories, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London, Paris and other locations, and employs approximately 31,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: chubb.com.

About the Wharton School:

Founded in 1881 as the world's first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is shaping the future of business by incubating ideas, driving insights, and creating leaders who change the world. With a faculty of more than 235 renowned professors, Wharton has 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA and doctoral students. Each year 13,000 professionals from around the world advance their careers through Wharton Executive Education's individual, company-customized, and online programs. More than 100,000 Wharton alumni form a powerful global network of leaders who transform business every day. For more information, visit www.wharton.upenn.edu.

SOURCE Chubb
VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Deep-South Resources Inc. ("Deep-South" or "the Company") (TSXV: DSM) announces that the Namibian legal counsel of the Company and its subsidiary, Haib Minerals (Pty) Ltd ("Haib"), have amended and supplemented the original application on behalf of Haib with the High Court of Namibia for an order that the Minister of Mines and Energy should grant the renewal of the Haib Copper EPL 3140 licence within 30 days of the issuing of the order.

The Ministry has not filed any documents supporting the process followed by the Minister, the Mining Commissioner and the Ministry's relevant officials assessing and deliberating on the Haib renewal application for the Haib Copper EPL 3140 licence. This lack of internal process documentation regarding the Minister's decision to refuse the renewal of the licence was made evident in the court proceedings, thereby providing no written evidence of a meaningful evaluation of the merits of Haib's licence renewal application.

It is to be assumed that the Minister did not receive any documentation or evaluation by the Mining Commissioner or any of his staff relating to the exploration activities carried out on the Haib Copper licence. Therefore, the decision seemed to have been taken without any paper trail showing a reasonable and fair administrative process thus violating Haib's rights in terms of Article 18 of the Namibian constitution.

The Company will provide regular updates in this regard and any other matter concerning this situation.

Corporate update

While recovering Haib Copper mineral rights remains a top priority for the Company, Management continues to seek another copper project. Some projects have been identified and discussions with their owners are taking place. The Company will provide an update on the matter in due course.

About Deep-South Resources Inc

Deep-South Resources is a mineral exploration and development company Deep-South growth strategy is to focus on the exploration and development of quality assets in significant mineralized trends and in proximity to infrastructure in stable countries. In using and assessing environmentally friendly technologies in the development of its copper project, Deep-South embraces the green revolution.

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.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Information contained in this news release which are not statements of historical facts may be "forward-looking information" for the purposes of Canadian securities laws. Such forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking information. The words "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "contemplate", "plan", "intends", "continue", "budget", "estimate", "may", "will", "schedule", "understand" and similar expressions identify forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things: the Minister's refusal to renew the Company's Licence, the Company's intention to contest the Minister's decision before the Courts of Namibia and the outcome of such proceedings.

Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by Deep-South, are inherently subject to significant technical, political, business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. Factors and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things: political risks associated with the Company's operations in Namibia; the failure of the Namibian Government to comply with its continuing obligations under the Act to allow for the renewal of the Licence; the impact of changes in, or to the more aggressive enforcement of, laws, regulations and government practices; the inability of the Company and its subsidiaries to enforce their legal rights in certain circumstances. For additional risk factors, please see the Company's most recently filed Management Discussions & Analysis for its quarter ended ended February 28, 2021 available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

There can be no assurances that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as many factors and future events, both known and unknown could cause actual results, performance or achievements to vary or differ materially from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements contained herein or incorporated by reference. Accordingly, all such factors should be considered carefully when making decisions with respect to Deep-South, and prospective investors should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release is made as at the date hereof. The Company assumes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect changes in assumptions, changes in circumstances or any other events affecting such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law.

SOURCE Deep-South Resources Inc.
DALLAS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MB2 Dental, the fastest-growing Dental Partnership Organization in the country, has welcomed its first doctor partner in the state of Virginia. The group partnered with Dr. Jared Pell, owner of Shenandoah Family Dentistry in Winchester. The city of Winchester is located in Northern Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley. Virginia is the 12th state MB2 has expanded its territory to in 2021, with more states anticipated by year's end.

Dr. Pell is a general practitioner offering a wide array of comprehensive dental services in his 17 operatory practice. Dr. Pell earned his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the Medical College of Virginia School of Dentistry. He focuses on advanced cosmetics and laser dentistry.

The DFW-based company was founded in 2007 by Dr. Chris Steven Villanueva and his doctor partners with a mission to empower doctors to preserve their profession in a consolidating industry. MB2 Dental is a Dental Partnership Organization or "DPO," a category of dental partner that the company created and began using in 2017. The MB2 Dental DPO allows doctors to practice as if they would in solo ownership with the added benefits of a larger group, yet does not strip the autonomy or decision-making of the practice owner.

Doctor partners of the MB2 Dental DPO experience:

Freedom to make all business and clinical decisions

Centralized administrative support

Practice equity to drive long-term growth

Expanded access to services and tools

Mentorship and a learning community

More time to pursue personal priorities

Shared financial responsibility

MB2 Dental currently partners with general dentists, pediatric dentists, orthodontists, prosthodontists, endodontists, and periodontists with nearly 400 locations across 34 states. The support team is based in the DFW area with more than 150 employees.

In Q1, MB2 completed its second private equity transaction and partnered with Charlesbank Capital Partners.

"We are thrilled to continue our expansion into the Southeast," said founder and CEO Dr. Chris Steven Villanueva," Our strategy has never been a goal revolving around geography. All growth has been organic when the partnership was suitable for both parties. We are excited to meet other potential partners in Virginia and help them learn about MB2 Dental's mission to protect our profession as dentists and specialists. Dr. Pell and his team share our values of integrity and are a most welcome asset to our community."

About MB2 Dental

Dallas, Texas-based MB2 Dental is a first-of-its-kind Dental Partnership Organization (DPO) founded and led by dentist and entrepreneur CEO Dr. Chris Steven Villanueva, with a mission to empower dentists to preserve their profession. Since its founding in 2007, MB2 has partnered with hundreds of dentists to help them stay in the driver's seat as they maximize their talents, connect as part of a community and build exceptional wealth. MB2 currently partners with dentists and specialists in over 30 states and counting. For more information, visit https://mb2dental.com.

PRESS CONTACT:



Lindsey Byrnes

9728693789

https://mb2dental.com/

SOURCE MB2 Dental
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Doug's Balms was founded in 2016 after neurologist and founder, Dr. Doug Strobel, assembled and tested his original "Miracle Balm." Ever since that time, the original formula has remained at the center of the brand's rapidly growing catalog of skincare products.

What makes Dr. Doug's Miracle Balm so special isn't a never-heard-before ingredient or too-clever-by-half delivery system. It revolves around the perfect amalgamation of some of nature's best natural healers.

Dr. Doug's Miracle Balm brings several of Mother Nature's best skincare ingredients together into a simple, effective topical that was dubbed by those who first used it a "miracle balm." The product consists of a short, easy-to-read list of ingredients that includes the following:

Coconut oil : This highly saturated oil offers antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory properties and operates as a moisturizer and healer.

: This highly saturated oil offers antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory properties and operates as a moisturizer and healer. Shea butter : This product of shea tree nuts is known for its anti-inflammatory, healing, and emollient properties.

: This product of shea tree nuts is known for its anti-inflammatory, healing, and emollient properties. Beeswax : This natural wax provides a moisture barrier and reduces friction.

: This natural wax provides a moisture barrier and reduces friction. Lavender essential oil : This great-smelling oil can help manage skincare concerns such as eczema and dry skin.

: This great-smelling oil can help manage skincare concerns such as eczema and dry skin. Peppermint essential oil : This multi-use oil can help relieve itching and muscle pain.

: This multi-use oil can help relieve itching and muscle pain. Olive oil : This offers a high-quality, food-grade carrier to help apply the other ingredients.

: This offers a high-quality, food-grade carrier to help apply the other ingredients. Vitamin E: This skin-nourishing vitamin was eventually added to the original formula to extend shelf life.

All of these are certified organic ingredients that are non-GMO, non-toxic, and paraben- and cruelty-free. They're also so easy to understand, that they immediately put customers' minds at ease.

"We recently got a review saying 'I love using products where you actually recognize the ingredients'" explains Dr. Doug himself, adding humorously, "...it's a readable label. You could eat that in a survival scenario." The neurologist is proud of the fact that his balms are consistently so effective, even while utilizing such simple, natural ingredients.

The Dr. Doug's Balms label is a unique skincare resource that taps into the synergistic power of all of its simple, organic ingredients. Handcrafted and made in the U.S.A., the brand's products are an ideal way to manage anything from minor bouts of dry skin to full-blown eczema. This is great news for Americans across the nation as the winter weather drives millions of itchy individuals to seek effective solutions for their cracked and dehydrated skin.

About Dr. Doug's Balms: "Dr. Doug" Strobel and Natalie Gardner co-founded Dr. Doug's Balms in Carmel, Indiana in 2016 after finding smashing success with their original "Miracle Balm" solution. The brand's growing line of skincare products continues to wow customers as it faithfully delivers on its promise to "protect, heal, and restore." Learn more about the company's growing collection of skincare products at drdougsbalms.com .

Media Contact:

Natalie Gardner

President/Co-Owner

Dr. Doug's Balms

C: 219-613-8674

[email protected]

SOURCE Dr. Doug's Balms
CRANBURY, N.J., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- dvm360, the No. 1 multimedia platform in the veterinary industry, is pleased to announce that they have added 21 new partners to their Strategic Alliance Partnership (SAP) program.

"It is my pleasure to welcome 21 new partners to the dvm360 Strategic Alliance Partnership (SAP) program," said Mike Hennessy Jr., president and CEO of MJH Life Sciences, parent company of dvm360. "Alongside the existing partners, I am confident that the newly established partnerships with each of these program members will result in outstanding initiatives within the veterinary profession."

The new partners are:

The SAP program provides partnering advocacy organizations, medical associations, and veterinary schools with international and national reach and visibility. Through the SAP program, dvm360 fosters collaboration and open exchange of information among trusted veterinary professionals for the benefit of the profession. dvm360 works with affiliated partners to share information and highlight the diverse veterinary communities they support.

For a full list of dvm360 SAP partners, click here.

About dvm360

The leading media-content provider in the veterinary market, dvm360 has been in operation for more than 50 years. It provides readers with top-of-the-line digital and print content that focuses on every aspect of a veterinary professional's life. In addition, dvm360 hosts continuing education (CE) conferences that provide a 360-degree educational engagement experience for veterinary professionals. dvm360 is a brand of MJH Life Sciences, the largest privately held, independent, full-service medical media company in North America. MJH Life Sciences dedicated to delivering trusted health care news across multiple channels.

Media Contact

Alyssa Scarpaci, 609-716-7777

[email protected]

SAP Support Team

Melanie Gutierrez, Sales and Marketing Coordinator

[email protected]

John Hydrusko, VP of MultiMedia Animal Care, LLC

[email protected]

Dr. Adam Christman, DVM, CVO

[email protected]

SOURCE dvm360
ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Emmes (the "Company"), a global, full-service Clinical Research Organization (CRO) dedicated to supporting the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation and a portfolio company of Behrman Capital, today announced that it has acquired Institut Dr. Schauerte (IDS), a CRO headquartered in Munich, Germany. Founded in 1990, IDS is a full-service, technology-oriented CRO that specializes in late-phase, non-interventional, and post-market clinical follow-up studies. It has conducted more than 400 studies across a range of therapeutic areas.

IDS marks the third acquisition for Emmes in the last year and since Behrman's investment in 2019. The Company previously purchased Neox, headquartered in the Czech Republic, in December 2020 and UK-based Orphan Reach in May 2021. The acquisition of IDS augments Emmes' global reach by expanding the Company's presence in Germany and adding new long-term strategic relationships with global biopharma companies. With IDS, Emmes now has more than 1,200 employees.

Grant Behrman, Managing Partner of Behrman Capital, said, "IDS is a highly complementary and additive business that significantly enhances the Emmes platform. Since our initial investment, we are proud to have helped drive the Company's rapid expansion of its global reach and customer base  first with Neox and Orphan Reach, and now with IDS, a market leader in Germany. We look forward to continuing to support the Company's success and growth trajectory."

Emmes Chief Executive Officer Dr. Christine Dingivan said, "This is another positive step in our growth and diversification strategy. Institut Dr. Schauerte has a 30-year history and deep expertise in the growing field of Real World Evidence (RWE) research. Its agile, technology-enabled approach is a perfect fit with Emmes and will enhance our digital capabilities."

She added, "Emmes Europe is growing quickly, and Institut Dr. Schauerte will be joining an integrated team across the UK and EU that is successfully collaborating with colleagues in Canada, India and the U.S. to conduct global clinical trials."

IDS' clinical trial operations have been conducted in more than 20 countries, and the company has seen accelerating revenues from post-approval non-interventional studies. RWE and Real World Data have become increasingly important in improving patient care and influencing product development and lifecycle management decisions for drug, device and diagnostic manufacturers.

Institut Dr. Schauerte CEO and Founder Dr. Wulfram Schauerte said, "Our deep expertise in RWE and a thriving set of offices in Munich and Cottbus, Germany will be strong assets in Emmes' global growth plans. We are excited about joining the company and working with our new colleagues in Emmes Europe. We share much in common; in addition to our dedication to high research standards, we place great value on employee engagement and long-term client relationships."

Dr. Schauerte and IDS' leaders and staff will continue in their current roles.

About Institut Dr. Schauerte

Headquartered in Munich, Germany, and founded in 1990, Institut Dr. Schauerte is a technology-oriented full-service Clinical Research Organization that specializes in late-phase, non-interventional, and post-market clinical follow-up studies. Committed to providing high quality, bespoke RWE services and solutions, Institut Dr. Schauerte serves pharmaceutical and medical device companies across Europe in a broad range of therapeutic areas.

About Emmes

Founded in 1977, Emmes is a global, full-service Clinical Research Organization dedicated to excellence in supporting the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation. The company's clients include numerous agencies and institutes of the U.S. federal government and a wide range of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies throughout the world. To learn more about how our research is making a positive impact on human health, go to the Emmes website at www.emmes.com

About Behrman Capital

Based in New York City, Behrman Capital was founded in 1991 by Grant G. and Darryl G. Behrman. The firm invests in management buyouts, leveraged buildups and recapitalizations of established growth businesses. The company's investments are focused in three industries: defense and aerospace, healthcare services, and specialty manufacturing and distribution. Since its inception, the firm has raised $3.5 billion and is currently investing out of its sixth fund.

Contact

Ross Lovern / Daniel Hoadley

Kekst CNC

[email protected] / [email protected]

SOURCE Behrman Capital
ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Emmes, a global, full-service Clinical Research Organization (CRO) dedicated to supporting the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation, today announced that it has acquired Institut Dr. Schauerte, a CRO headquartered in Munich, Germany. Founded in 1990, Institut Dr. Schauerte is a full-service, technology-oriented CRO that specializes in late-phase, non-interventional, and post-market clinical follow-up studies. It has conducted more than 400 studies across a range of therapeutic areas.

This is the third acquisition for Emmes in the last year, having previously purchased Neox, headquartered in the Czech Republic, in December 2020 and UK-based Orphan Reach in May 2021. The acquisition of Institut Dr. Schauerte augments Emmes' global reach by expanding the company's presence in Germany and adding new long-term strategic relationships with global biopharma companies. With Institut Dr. Schauerte, Emmes now has more than 1,200 employees.

Emmes Chief Executive Officer Dr. Christine Dingivan said, "This is another positive step in our growth and diversification strategy. Institut Dr. Schauerte has a 30-year history and deep expertise in the growing field of Real World Evidence (RWE) research. Its agile, technology-enabled approach is a perfect fit with Emmes and will enhance our digital capabilities."

She added, "Emmes Europe is growing quickly, and Institut Dr. Schauerte will be joining an integrated team across the UK and EU that is successfully collaborating with colleagues in Canada, India and the U.S. to conduct global clinical trials."

Institut Dr. Schauerte's clinical trial operations have been conducted in more than 20 countries, and the company has seen accelerating revenues from post-approval non-interventional studies. RWE and Real World Data have become increasingly important in improving patient care and influencing product development and lifecycle management decisions for drug, device and diagnostic manufacturers.

Institut Dr. Schauerte also expands Emmes' technology product line with its ClinDoc tool, a secure, intuitive CFR21 Part 11 compliant Electronic Data Capture (EDC) solution. It includes multi-language capabilities and interfaces for clinical trial management systems, electronic health records, and mobile health data from apps and wearables. ClinDoc complements Emmes' Advantage e-Clinical EDC system, giving the company even greater flexibility to meet diverse customer needs.

Institut Dr. Schauerte CEO and Founder Dr. Wulfram Schauerte said, "Our deep expertise in RWE and a thriving set of offices in Munich and Cottbus, Germany, will be strong assets in Emmes' global growth plans. We are excited about joining the company and working with our new colleagues in Emmes Europe. We share much in common; in addition to our dedication to high research standards, we place great value on employee engagement and long-term client relationships."

Dr. Schauerte and Institut Dr. Schauerte's leaders and staff will continue in their current roles.

"Emmes and Institut Dr. Schauerte have a combined legacy of over 70 years in business," noted Dr. Dingivan. "Our team is looking forward to collaborating to improve the care and treatment of patients throughout the world, leveraging RWE to enhance studies ranging from Phase I to Phase IV, and using our EDC solutions to achieve greater data quality and efficiency for clients."

About Institut Dr. Schauerte

Headquartered in Munich, Germany, and founded in 1990, Institut Dr. Schauerte is a technology-oriented full-service Clinical Research Organization that specializes in late-phase, non-interventional, and post-market clinical follow-up studies. Committed to providing high quality, bespoke RWE services and solutions, Institut Dr. Schauerte serves pharmaceutical and medical device companies across Europe in a broad range of therapeutic areas.

About Emmes

Founded in 1977, Emmes is a global, full-service Clinical Research Organization dedicated to excellence in supporting the advancement of public health and biopharmaceutical innovation. The company's clients include numerous agencies and institutes of the U.S. federal government and a wide range of biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies throughout the world. To learn more about how our research is making a positive impact on human health, go to the Emmes website at www.emmes.com

SOURCE Emmes
The 181 MW Lily solar + storage project , located east of Dallas, Texas, is the company's first hybrid project in North America that integrates a renewable energy plant with utility-scale battery storage. The project includes 55 MWdc of battery storage, part of Enel's installation of around 600 MW of new storage capacity on the Texas power grid by 2022. Enel also began operations of the 140 MW Rockhaven wind farm in Oklahoma.

"This milestone signals a new era for our company as we start delivering on our major commitment to grid-scale battery storage in the United States. By pairing renewable energy with storage technology, we are supporting a cleaner and more flexible grid," said Paolo Romanacci, Head of Enel Green Power in the US and Canada. "We are ready to answer the call of policymakers and business leaders to accelerate the energy transition in North America. As such, we are committing more investment than ever before to achieve accelerated growth targets."

Enel Green Power is North America's fifth-largest operator of wind and solar plants and is executing on a growth strategy of adding 6.5 GW of new renewables and 1.4 GW of storage capacity by the end of 2024, in an $8 billion growth plan announced in November. Enel has over 2 GW of new wind and solar capacity currently under construction in the US and Canada, along with over 550 MW of battery storage capacity in Texas. The company currently has a mature development pipeline of around 12 GW and is a key part of Enel's global goal to achieve around 155 GW of installed renewable capacity by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, Enel continues to prioritize sustainability throughout the value chain in North America, supporting innovative programs like dual-use solar and investing in the resiliency of local communities through its Creating Shared Value model.

Located southeast of Dallas in Kaufman County, Texas, the Lily solar + storage project comprises a 181 MW1 photovoltaic (PV) facility paired with a 55 MW2 battery. The project's 421,400 PV bifacial panels are expected to generate over 367 GWh each year, which will be delivered to the grid and will charge the co-located battery, equivalent to avoiding the annual emission of over 242,000 tons of CO 2 into the atmosphere. The battery storage system can dispatch electricity when solar power generation is low, while also providing the grid access to a clean supply of electricity during periods of high demand.

The Lily solar project was initiated and developed by Red River Renewable Energy, LLC, a joint venture among affiliates of Sun Chase Power and MAP Energy, LLC.

The Rockhaven wind farm, located in Murray and Carter counties in Oklahoma, includes 49 turbines that are expected to generate 616 GWh of energy each year, enough to avoid over 359,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually. Through a first-of-its-kind virtual PPA, Wellington Management will purchase the electricity delivered to the grid by an 11 MW portion of the project. The clean energy contracted by Wellington Management is expected to equal or exceed the electricity needs for all of their US corporate offices as well as residential electricity usage of more than 2,200 employees in the US.

Enel is currently constructing five other renewables + storage hybrids in Texas: the Azure Sky solar + storage, Azure Sky wind + storage, Roseland solar + storage, Blue Jay solar + storage and Ranchland wind + storage projects. Additionally, the company is adding to its 500 MW High Lonesome wind farm and 497 MW Roadrunner solar farm in West Texas with a 57 MW battery storage system near each plant. Elsewhere in the United States, the company is building the 250 MW 25 Mile Creek wind project in Oklahoma and the 200 MW Alta Farms wind project in Illinois.

Enel Green Power North America is a leading developer, long-term owner and operator of renewable energy plants in North America, with a presence in 14 US states and one Canadian province. The company operates 61 plants with a managed capacity of over 7.3 GW powered by renewable wind, geothermal and solar energy.

https://www.enelgreenpower.com/countries/north-america/united-states

1 MWdc

2 MWdc rated power capacity

Media Relations

[email protected]

enelgreenpower.com

SOURCE Enel Green Power North America
HARRISBURG Pa., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FHLBank Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency announced today the 2021 Home4Good funding awarded to programs across the state working to reduce homelessness. This year, FHLBank Pittsburgh is providing $2.45 million toward the effort, and PHFA is providing $1.5 million, for a total contribution of $3.95 million.

"FHLBank Pittsburgh is proud to partner with PHFA and our members to provide more than $2 million to 49 programs seeking to end homelessness in Pennsylvania," said President and Chief Executive Officer Winthrop Watson.

Home4Good was created by FHLBank Pittsburgh and is administered by PHFA. The funding announced today will be distributed as grants to organizations that help individuals retain or find housing, provide supportive services to those facing homelessness or address other unmet needs within the existing homeless provider network.

Distribution of the funding in most counties will be overseen by local Continuum of Care organizations. The list of funding recipients is available on the PHFA website.

"The importance of this funding to address homelessness has never been greater," said PHFA Executive Director and CEO Robin Wiessmann. "The pandemic has threatened the stability of many people's housing. Home4Good provides funding to organizations that can help."

Information about Home4Good is available at www.fhlb-pgh.com and at www.phfa.org at the bottom of the homepage under "Resources." Organizations interested in future participation in the program can contact Kate Swanson at [email protected] or Bryce Maretzki at [email protected] for details.

About FHLBank Pittsburgh

As an intermediary between global capital markets and local lenders, FHLBank Pittsburgh provides readily available liquidity, as well as affordable housing and community development opportunities, to member financial institutions of all sizes in Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Bank is part of the Federal Home Loan Bank System, which was established by Congress in 1932 and serves as a reliable source of funds for housing, jobs and growth in all economic cycles. To learn more, visit www.fhlb-pgh.com.

About PHFA

The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency works to provide affordable homeownership and rental housing options for older adults, low- and moderate-income families, and people with special housing needs. Through its carefully managed mortgage programs and investments in multifamily housing developments, PHFA also promotes economic development across the state. Since its creation by the legislature in 1972, it has generated more than $15.6 billion of funding for more than 184,870 single-family home mortgage loans, helped fund the construction of 138,000 rental units, distributed approximately $191 million to support local housing initiatives, and saved the homes of nearly 50,400 families from foreclosure. PHFA programs and operations are funded primarily by the sale of securities and from fees paid by program users, not by public tax dollars. The agency is governed by a 14-member board.

Media contact:

Scott Elliott, PHFA

717-649-6522 (cell)

[email protected]

SOURCE Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency
TAMPA, Fla., Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Florida Medical Clinic is proud to announce a new care network for patients in need of extended therapy or rehabilitation after being discharged from the hospital. The post-acute care network consists of 24 hospitalists, seven home health agencies, and ten skilled nursing facilities throughout Tampa Bay.

Doctors have increasingly cited the importance of the continuity of care for patients after discharge from a hospital stay. Florida Medical Clinic CEO Joe Delatorre noticed a lack of adequate post-acute care for patients considered not sick enough to stay at a hospital, but not well enough to return home. In response, Florida Medical Clinic hospitalists are now partnering with local skilled nursing facilities to support patients in their transition from hospital to home.

Patients now have the option to choose a facility or home health care provider that is partnered with Florida Medical Clinic . Through this network, patients may have their recovery overseen by the same doctors who treated them in the hospital.

"As Florida Medical Clinic continues to evaluate how we can best treat our patients, we identified a real need to eliminate the breakdown in coordination in care that happens between a critical hospitalization and the post-acute area," CEO Joe Delatorre said. " FMC restructured our Hospitalist Program to provide the highest quality and best cost-value in the market. The result is one coordinated team taking care of our patients during hospitalization and rehabilitation."

For more details about Florida Medical CLinic's post-acute care network, contact Katie North at (813) 255-3910.

In 1993, Florida Medical Clinic founders set their sights on one ideal: to provide a better way to organize and deliver high-quality and cost-effective health care to the community.

Today, Florida Medical Clinic is proud to include over 380 providers and nearly 2,000 employees in more than 50 locations across Florida's East Pasco and Hillsborough counties. Facilities include two urgent care clinics and three ambulatory surgery centers. Florida Medical Clinic doctors offer care in more than 40 different medical specialties.

Through 28 years of growth, ever-evolving patient needs, and a global pandemic, Florida Medical Clinic remains dedicated to our mission of being the best choice for patients in our community.

SOURCE Florida Medical Clinic
PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Robotics Market by Application (Disinfection, Shelf Scanning, RFID Scanning, Delivery, Security & Inspection, and Advertising) and End User (Automotive, Retail, Healthcare, Electronics, and Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030." According to the report, the global robotics industry was estimated at $12.15 billion in 2020, and is anticipated to hit $149.86 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 27.7% from 2021 to 2030.



Drivers, restraints, and opportunities-

Increase in demand for disinfection equipment, reduction of labor cost, and growing need for continuous surveillance devices drive the growth of the global robotics market. On the other hand, high initial cost of robots and lack of proper operating systems impede the growth to some extent. However, increase in funding for development of innovative robots is projected to create lucrative opportunities in the industry.



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COVID-19 scenario-

The outbreak of the pandemic gave way to distorted manufacturing and transportation activities, which led to a steep decline in manufacturing of robotic systems as well as their demand in the market, especially during the initial phase of the pandemic.

However, the demand for robots such as disinfection robots and delivery robots grew significantly, thereby giving a mixed impact to the market.

The security & inspection segment to dominate by 2030-

Based on application, the security & inspection segment accounted for more than four-fifths of the total robotics market share in 2020, and is anticipated to rule the roost by 2030. This is due to its wide application in all the end user segments. The shelf scanning segment, however, would cite the fastest CAGR of 46.5% throughout the forecast period. Its rapid adoption in retail and warehouses drives the growth of the segment.



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The retail segment to maintain the dominant share-



Based on end user, the retail segment held nearly two-fifths of the global robotics market revenue in 2020, and is expected to lead the trail by 2030. This is attributed to its large scale potential of applications for robotics. The electronic segment, on the other hand, would manifest the fastest CAGR of 28.9% from 2020 to 2030.

Europe, followed by North America, garnered the major share in 2020-

Based on region, Europe, followed by North America, held the major share in 2020, generating more than two-fifths of the global robotics market, due to large scale R&D of robotics and adoption of automation in the province. At the same time, the market across LAMEA would grow at the fastest CAGR of 31.4% by 2030, owing to rapid industrialization and urbanization in the region.

Key players in the industry-

Brain Corporation

Fetch Robotics, Inc.

Honeywell International Inc.

RoboAds

Siemens

Simbe Robotics, Inc.

Xenex Disinfection Services Inc.

Blue Ocean Robotics

Motorola Solutions

SMP Robotics

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Similar Reports We Have:

Packaging Robots Market: The packaging robots market size was valued at $2471 million in 2016 and is projected to reach $4,649 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 9.6% from 2017 to 2023.

Adaptive Robotics Market  The adaptive robotics market is expected to reach $ 55,097.0 million by 2030, registering a CAGR of 26.3% from 2021 to 2030.

Construction Robotics Market  The construction robotics market is expected to reach $7,880.3 million by 2027, registering a CAGR of 23.3% from 2020 to 2027.



Warehouse Robotics Market - The warehouse robotics market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 11.6% and is forecast to reach $5,186 million by 2023.

Service Robotics Market - Global service robotics market size is expected to garner $34.7 billion by 2022, registering a CAGR of 23.9% during the forecast period 2015 - 2022.



Industrial Robotics Market - Global Industrial Robotics Market is projected to reach $70,715 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 9.4% from 2017 to 2023.

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Robotic Flexible Washer Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2020-2027

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The Company was also recognized on Forbes' inaugural list of the World's Top Female-Friendly Companies. The list was based on sentiment compiled from a women-only survey with 85,000 participants, focusing on several aspects of the female employees' experience.

"Being recognized for a second year by Newsweek for corporate responsibility as well as being included on Forbes' inaugural list of Top Female-Friendly Companies is a true honor," said Michael Doss, President and Chief Executive Officer. "At Graphic Packaging, we are committed to delivering sustainable fiber-based consumer packaging solutions through a high-performance company culture that embraces diversity. We are committed to positive change and advancement of our environmental, social and governance initiatives. The recognitions demonstrate the progress we have made and will continue to drive to benefit all stakeholders."

America's Most Responsible Companies were selected from 2,000 of the largest U.S. companies based on publicly available key performance indicators derived from corporate annual reports, sustainability reports and corporate citizenship reports, in addition to an independent survey of 11,000 U.S. residents to evaluate company reputations. The final list, which spans 14 industries, recognizes the top 500 companies with the highest scores as the most responsible companies in the United States. Newsweek's complete list of America's Most Responsible Companies in 2022 can be found here.

The World's Top Female-Friendly Companies were selected based on survey responses from over 80,000 women in 40 countries around the world. Statista asked respondents to evaluate their companies on sexism, supportive policies for women and balanced recruitment. The final list ranks the 300 companies that received the most recommendations and have the most gender-diverse boards and executive ranks. For the full company rankings, visit the Forbes website here.

To learn more about Graphic Packaging's Environmental, Social and Governance initiatives, access the Company's 2020 ESG Report.

Forward Looking Statements

Any statements of the Company's expectations in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on currently available information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's present expectations. Undue reliance should not be placed on such forward-looking statements, as such statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and the Company undertakes no obligation to update such statements, except as required by law. Additional information regarding these and other risks is contained in the Company's periodic filings with the SEC.

About Graphic Packaging Holding Company

Graphic Packaging Holding Company (NYSE: GPK), headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is committed to providing consumer packaging that makes a world of difference. The Company is a leading provider of sustainable fiber-based packaging solutions for a wide variety of products to food, beverage, foodservice, and other consumer products companies. The Company operates on a global basis, is one of the largest producers of folding cartons and paper-based foodservice products in the United States, and holds leading market positions in coated recycled paperboard, coated unbleached kraft paperboard and solid bleached sulfate paperboard. The Company's customers include many of the world's most widely recognized companies and brands. Additional information about Graphic Packaging, its business and its products is available on the Company's web site at www.graphicpkg.com .

SOURCE Graphic Packaging Holding Company
DALLAS, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Greyhound, the largest provider of intercity bus transportation in North America, is providing vital transportation this holiday season with its long-standing 'Home Free' program, helping runaway, homeless, and exploited youth between the ages of 12 and 21 reunite with their families (or legal guardians) through a free bus ticket home or to a stable and safe place. 2021 marks the 34th consecutive year Greyhound has provided the free program, demonstrating its commitment to serve communities nationwide.

"Every year, through our Home Free program, we help young people in need receive a free ride home," said Dave Leach, President and Chief Executive Officer, Greyhound Lines, Inc. "I am both humbled and thrilled to be a part of the Greyhound team committed to providing young people the chance to reconnect with their families and return to a safe environment. It is our hope that the resources we provide runaway youth will bring comfort to those looking to safely reunite with their families."

To extend the program and provide this service on a greater scale, Greyhound has partnered with the National Runaway Safeline (NRS) since 1995. NRS, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is an organization that helps keep runaway and homeless youth safe.

According to the Voices of Youth Count from researchers at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, nearly 4.2 million youth experience some form of homelessness each year in America, leaving them at risk for exploitation, assault, illness and suicide. Home Free is designed to help make sure runaway young people between the ages of 12 and 21 have a ticket to get back home to their families or safe legal guardians.

In 2020, nearly 325 free bus tickets were provided to young people looking to be reconnected with their families. So far in 2021, Greyhound and the NRS have provided more than 230 free bus tickets, valued at nearly $42,000.

"The Home Free partnership between Greyhound and NRS continues to have a positive impact in providing a vital resource in helping address and resolve the growing number of homeless and exploited young people," said Susan Frankel, Chief Executive Officer, National Runaway Safeline. "We are honored to be able to continue our partnership with Greyhound Lines and look forward to serving as their charitable partner for the Home Free program for many more years."

If you or someone you know has run away or is experiencing homelessness and wants to return home or needs help, call toll-free 1-800-RUNAWAY (1-800-786-2929) or visit www.1800RUNAWAY.org. Click here to learn more about the program.

About Greyhound

Greyhound is the largest North American provider of intercity bus transportation, serving more than 1,700 destinations across the continent. The company also provides Greyhound Package Express and charter services. For fare and schedule information and to buy tickets call 1-800-231-2222 or visit the website at Greyhound.com . For the latest news and travel deals, follow us on Twitter , like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram .

About The National Runaway Safeline (NRS)

The National Runaway Safeline (NRS) is a national non-profit organization committed to ensuring that runaway, homeless and at-risk youth are safe and off the streets. Founded in 1971, NRS operates a national crisis services and support system for youth and families throughout the U.S., providing critical crisis intervention 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Each year, NRS makes hundreds of thousands of connections to help and hope through hotline (1-800-RUNAWAY), and online (1800RUNAWAY.org) and prevention services.

For additional information, visit www.1800RUNAWAY.org or follow us @1800RUNAWAY on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

SOURCE Greyhound Lines, Inc.
As an imaging solution development veteran, Leopard Imaging will exhibit customized cameras for autonomous driving, drones, IoT, robotics, and AI edge computing devices at CES 2022. The company will exchange ideas with its partners, industry experts, and customers to develop more advanced imaging solutions.

In November, Leopard Imaging collaborated with NVIDIA launching Hawk 3D Depth stereo camera LI-AR0234CS-STEREO-GMSL2 , supporting NVIDIA Isaac Robotics platform and NVIDIA Jetson platform, and taking camera solutions to the next level. Leopard Imaging empowers the imaging quality with Active Alignment (AA) technology through its powerful manufacturing capabilities. Its full integration services will help customers incorporate this camera with different robotic projects.

"By leveraging our full stack of GPU-accelerated computing technologies and enabling ease of deployment of cost-effective 3D camera solutions, Leopard Imaging is accelerating time-to-market of vision-based edge AI and robotics applications," said Murali Gopalakrishna, Head of Product Management, Autonomous Machines and General Manager for Robotics at NVIDIA.

"We are very excited to showcase our depth cameras with the support from NVIDIA Jetson Edge AI and Isaac Robotics platforms," said Bill Pu, president and co-founder of Leopard Imaging. " We are looking forward to meeting our partners and more high technology companies who are seeking advanced image solutions at CES 2022."

Leopard Imaging will be showcasing their imaging solutions at CES 2022 Booth 9521, Las Vegas Convention Center North Hall, January 5th - 8th. To set up a meeting with Leopard Imaging at CES, email [email protected].

About Leopard Imaging Inc.

Leopard Imaging is a global leader that provides high definition (HD) embedded cameras and AI-based camera solutionsfocusing on core technologies that improve image processing in autonomous vehicles, drones, IoT, robotics, and healthcare devices. As a Preferred NVIDIA Partner and a member of the AWS Partner Network, Leopard Imaging also works closely with Sony, ON Semiconductor OmniVision, and established sensor companies in producing advanced camera solutions for global customers. With Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) services, Leopard Imaging provides camera solutions for Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Zoox, Cruise, Boston Dynamics, and many other established organizations. More information at https://www.leopardimaging.com .

Press Contact

Cathy Zhao

[email protected]

+1 408-263-0988

SOURCE Leopard Imaging Inc.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Little Spurs Autism Centers will be providing care for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) both in-home and at their brand-new center in Leon Springs, TX. Home-based initial assessments and therapy are now available by calling (210) 263-9443 to schedule an appointment or go to their website at www.littlespursautism.com. In-center services in Leon Springs will be available in early 2022. Costs for assessments and treatment are covered by most major health insurance plans. The Autism Center staff will help determine insurance eligibility and coverage.

The center will be under the leadership of Sarah Powell, M.Ed., BCBA, LBA. Powell is a longtime San Antonio resident and University of Texas graduate and will serve as the clinical director for the center.

"I am so excited to get to work in our center and work with the families of San Antonio," Powell said, "My focus will be on ensuring positive interactions for our clients and our employees by building a strong supportive company culture! I look forward to creating a place where people enjoy being and where ongoing training is a norm. I hope to not only see our clients grow and progress, but our employees as well!"

"We are so proud to bring the specialized services of our Autism Center to families and children in need in San Antonio," said Alicia Tezel, MD, FAAP, Chief Medical Officer for Little Spurs Pediatric Urgent Care, the sponsoring organization for Little Spurs Autism Center. "According to the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in every 44 children born in this country. We feel very fortunate to have the leadership and clinical expertise of Sarah Powell, BCBA to lead this effort and welcome her to the Little Spurs family."

The mission at LSAC is to positively impact the lives of individuals with ASD and their caregivers through compassionate, collaborative, and person-centered ABA Therapy. Given the major emphasis on staff training, LSAC will also provide parent education sessions, ARD/IEP Assistance, and comprehensive assessments for their clients. LSAC will be located at 24200 IH-10 Frontage Road in Leon Springs, TX.

________________________________________________________________________________

Little Spurs Autism Center is accepting appointments for assessment and home-based therapy now and will open its first clinic in early 2022 in Leon Springs, TX. LSAC will offer collaborative and compassionate ABA Therapy to children 0-21 years old. LSAC is excited to empower families by providing them with the support they need. The purpose of Little Spurs Autism Centers is to serve the needs of individuals with autism spectrum disorder and their caregivers by using high quality, evidence-based, ABA (Applied Behavioral Analaysis) therapy. What sets LSAC apart from other ABA service providers is their focus on collaborating with caregivers to ensure that they feel supported in supporting their child.

SOURCE Little Spurs Autism Center
DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Lung Cancer Drugs Global Market Report 2021: COVID-19 Impact and Recovery to 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report provides strategists, marketers and senior management with the critical information they need to assess the global lung cancer drugs market as it emerges from the COVID-19 shut down.

Reasons to Purchase

Gain a truly global perspective with the most comprehensive report available on this market covering 12+ geographies.

Understand how the market is being affected by the coronavirus and how it is likely to emerge and grow as the impact of the virus abates.

Create regional and country strategies on the basis of local data and analysis.

Identify growth segments for investment.

Outperform competitors using forecast data and the drivers and trends shaping the market.

Understand customers based on the latest market research findings.

Benchmark performance against key competitors.

Utilize the relationships between key data sets for superior strategizing.

Suitable for supporting your internal and external presentations with reliable high quality data and analysis

Report will be updated with the latest data and delivered to you within 3-5 working days of order.

Description:



Where is the largest and fastest growing market for the lung cancer drugs? How does the market relate to the overall economy, demography and other similar markets? What forces will shape the market going forward? The Lung Cancer Drugs Market Global Report answers all these questions and many more.



The report covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional and country breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. It traces the market's historic and forecast market growth by geography.

The Market Characteristics section of the report defines and explains the market.

The market size section gives the market size ($b) covering both the historic growth of the market, the impact of the COVID-19 virus and forecasting its recovery.

Market segmentations break down market into sub markets.

The regional and country breakdowns section gives an analysis of the market in each geography and the size of the market by geography and compares their historic and forecast growth. It covers the impact and recovery trajectory of COVID-19 for all regions, key developed countries and major emerging markets.

Competitive landscape gives a description of the competitive nature of the market, market shares, and a description of the leading companies. Key financial deals which have shaped the market in recent years are identified.

The trends and strategies section analyses the shape of the market as it emerges from the crisis and suggests how companies can grow as the market recovers.

Major players in the lung cancer drugs market are Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Merck & Co., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Novartis AG, and Pfizer Inc.



The global lung cancer drugs market is expected to grow from $8.06 billion in 2020 to $8.67 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.6%. The growth is mainly due to the companies rearranging their operations and recovering from the COVID-19 impact, which had earlier led to restrictive containment measures involving social distancing, remote working, and the closure of commercial activities that resulted in operational challenges. The market is expected to reach $12.84 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 10.3%.



The lung cancer drugs market consists of sales of lung cancer drugs. Lung cancer is a type of cancer that decreases the ability of lungs to supply oxygen to the bloodstream beacausebecause of uncontrolled growth of tissues in the lung. Some of the possible treatments for lung cancer include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and targeted therapy. On the basis of the size of the tumor cells, lung cancer is broadly divided into small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).



The FDA's guidelines for lung cancer drugs are mentioned within the Code for Federal Regulations (CFR) title number 21 under part 312, which contains sub-parts from 'A' to 'I'. The sub-part 'E' deals with the procedures designed to push the development, evaluation and marketing of drugs related to therapies aimed to treat persons with life-threatening illnesses such as lung cancer. The sub part 'E' also includes guidelines for monitoring and evaluation of clinical trials of lung cancer drugs and other cancer drugs by agency officials to determine whether new treatments are safe and effective, or better than existing treatments. All drug manufacturers are required to abide to these regulations by the FDA. Hence, regulations such as these would also keep a check on manufacturers of lung cancer drugs.



Targeted drug therapy in combination with other therapies is an emerging trend in the lung cancer market. It involves the use of immunotherapy drugs combined with other therapies such as chemotherapy that help in early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of the disease. In this regard, drug manufacturers are developing targeted drug therapies for better diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer. For example, in 2018, Merck and Co. developed pembrolizumab, which is a drug that helps the immune system to detect and fight cancer cells when used in addition to chemotherapy. This combination therapy showed an improvement in lung cancer status in patients. The drug is a major product of Merck and Co., and is sold under the brand name Keytruda.



The rising prevalence rate of lung cancer is a major driver for the lung cancer market. This is mainly because an increase in prevalence and incidence rate of lung cancer cases propels the need for drugs that enable efficient and fast treatment of the disease. It also drives the industry to maintain a strong pipeline of drugs. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), cancer led to around 9.6 million deaths in 2018, out of which, lung cancer was responsible for the largest number of deaths (1.8 million deaths, 18.4% of the total).



Increasing use of biologics and targeted therapies is a major restraint for the lung cancer market. This is because chemical lung cancer drugs come with myriads of side effects and have a toxic effect on the body. Chemical drugs lack cell specificity, i.e., they destroy even the normal body cells along with cancer infected cells. While biologic drugs are highly targeted and work on cancer infected cells only. Biologic drugs are also very efficient with no side-effects. Clinical studies have also found that the probability of success of biologic drugs is much higher than the conventional chemical drugs. For example, Cetuximab, Gefitinib and Afatinib are lung cancer biologic drugs which specifically target only the muted form of tumours and do not destroy the normal body cells.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Executive Summary



2. Lung Cancer Drugs Market Characteristics



3. Lung Cancer Drugs Market Trends And Strategies



4. Impact Of COVID-19 on Lung Cancer Drugs



5. Lung Cancer Drugs Market Size And Growth

5.1. Global Lung Cancer Drugs Historic Market, 2015-2020, $ Billion

5.1.1. Drivers of the Market

5.1.2. Restraints on The Market

5.2. Global Lung Cancer Drugs Forecast Market, 2020-2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

5.2.1. Drivers of the Market

5.2.2. Restraints on the Market



6. Lung Cancer Drugs Market Segmentation

6.1. Global Lung Cancer Drugs Market, Segmentation By Disease Type, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC)

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)

6.2. Global Lung Cancer Drugs Market, Segmentation By End User, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

Hospitals

Clinics

Others

6.3. Global Lung Cancer Drugs Market, Segmentation By Drugs, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

Gemzar

Paraplatin

Taxotere

Navelbine

Avastin

Tarceva

Iressa

Others

7. Lung Cancer Drugs Market Regional And Country Analysis

7.1. Global Lung Cancer Drugs Market, Split By Region, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

7.2. Global Lung Cancer Drugs Market, Split By Country, Historic and Forecast, 2015-2020, 2020-2025F, 2030F, $ Billion

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ihahfn

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

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MelllingMedical and OCuSoft deal is a fit between two companies known for distributing ophthalmic products and supplies. Tweet this

The agreement is a natural fit between two companies known for distributing ophthalmic products and supplies. MellingMedical serves federal health facilities through its Medical Equipment and Surgical Federal Supply Schedule while OCuSOFT offers top-of-the-line supplies for eye care offices and medical facilities through a nationwide network of sales professionals.

"We are delighted to join forces with a company whose values and priorities are in such close alignment with ours," said Cynthia Barratt, President/CEO at OCuSOFT, Inc. "This partnership with MellingMedical will open doors across the federal health system to deliver the care and comfort veterans deserve."

About MellingMedical

MellingMedical, a CVE-Verified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), holds a Medical Equipment and Surgical Federal Supply Schedule (Med/Surg), as well as a Pharmaceutical Schedule, and currently serves more than 165 VA Medical Centers and 300 VA Outpatient clinics, all seven (7) VA CMOPs, 95 DoD Medical Facilities and Health and Human Services (HHS), including Indian Health Services (IHS) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC). MellingMedical provides access to innovative and cost-effective healthcare solutions in ophthalmology, optometry. To learn more, visit MellingMedical.com.

About OCuSOFT

OCuSOFT Inc. is a privately-held Richmond, TX USA-based eye and skincare company with an established reputation for innovation, particularly in Ocular Surface Disease (OSD). Since 1986, OCuSOFT has served the ophthalmic industry with a unique selection of proprietary brands and has recently been rapidly expanding its presence in the skincare market. OCuSOFT, most recognized for its #1 Doctor Recommended Brand of Eyelid Cleansers, OCuSOFT Lid Scrub, is dedicated to improving each patient's health by providing the highest quality products. For more information, please call 800-233-5469 or visit www.ocusoft.com.

SOURCE MellingMedical
"Augmented reality is the future of how we interact with content, & our mission is to make it as accessible as possible" Tweet this

In addition to no-code AR development, the BUNDLAR platform is unlike any AR solution in the market because augmented reality experiences are bundled together. Instead of a single experience, one QR code or Bundle code can launch multiple experiences that are bundled together, reducing the need for the audience to start over with every new trigger. This allows users to seamlessly jump from experience to experience, regardless of the trigger type. BUNDLAR also allows users to analyze interactions and publish updates to their experiences to improve results, achieve desired outcomes, and optimize content. BUNDLAR technology also ensures all AR experiences are strong, stable, and reliable by 'bundling' many AR experiences in the cloud. Then, once they are downloaded on a device, users can engage with many related AR experiences without constantly needing to connect to the cloud or relying on a strong internet connection.

Learn more about BUNDLAR's innovative no-code AR platform HERE.

About Small Business Awards

Since 2016 the Small Business Awards have looked to celebrate small enterprises and their dedicated owners. Small businesses have given the global economy a solid foundation and help to shape the corporate landscape. Each year, Corporate Vision Magazine proudly seeks out the very best that the small business community has to offer on a global basis. Like all awards hosted by Corporate Vision, The Small Business Awards 2021 are judged purely on merit.

About BUNDLAR

Headquartered in Chicago, BUNDLAR is an accessible web-based platform that provides a no-code, drag-and-drop interface for authoring, editing, and publishing augmented reality experience bundles to any supported mobile device. The platform reduces the time, cost, and complexity of implementing AR into existing communication channels. In addition to marketing and general applications, BUNDLAR can be utilized to augment existing training programs to increase efficacy, track completion/status, and provide faster problem resolution than traditional training methodologies.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bundlar

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BUNDLAR

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheBUNDLAR

SOURCE BUNDLAR
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The holidays may be known as the most wonderful time of the year, but the team behind Naikela Botanicals knows that they're also loaded with busyness and stress. One in three Americans experiences "festive burnout" before December 25th, while a staggering 88% of individuals label the holiday season as the most stressful time of the year.

This action-packed, mentally-draining period can lead to restless nights, anxious thoughts, and an overall rundown state by the time the first week of January rolls around.

That's where Naikela Botanical's elite tea powders can make all the difference.

Naikela's teas offer adaptogenic support to stressed-out minds and bodies. They aren't designed to pump individuals full of caffeine and sugar for short bursts of energy (which are always followed by a nasty crash.)

Instead, they focus on addressing adrenal fatigue by providing potent blends of botanical superfoods. These help to manage existing stress, offering gentle, natural stimulation and mental clarity. Each tea is packaged in a delectable, easy-access tea powder form, making delivery quick, easy, and effective, as well.

All of Naikela's ingredients are grown right on the North Shore of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. There, the company's blend master, Aaron Moeller, cultivates his crops at Makanalani, a gorgeous 131-acre estate that doubles as an agricultural property and nonprofit kids camp and youth center.

Once grown, the tea leaves and other herbal ingredients are hand-picked. They're then dried using the company's artisanal, proprietary dehydration method, which the company describes as a "sun-powered, solar dehydration system." This allows the leaves to be naturally dried by the sun without being burned in the process.

From there, the ingredients are blended by Moeller himself. This means every batch is ever-so-slightly different, making it a unique experience every time. Even so, Moeller brings decades of experience to the table, and he has used his agricultural prowess to develop the five unique tea powder blends that have put Naikela Botanicals on the map.

Naikela Botanical's tea powders are a welcome relief in a season marked by excessive energy, emotional highs and lows, and an endless stream of exhausting interactions. Whether they're being used as a quality gift or for personal rejuvenation, each tea powder offers a welcome reprieve and a chance to truly sit back and relax during one of the busiest times of the year.

About Naikela Botanicals: Naikela Botanicals is operated by Aaron Moeller. The herbal mixologist sustainably farms at Makanalani, a 131-acre agricultural property and nonprofit youth center on Kauai's North Shore. Learn more about both Naikela and Makanalani at naikela.com .

Please direct inquiries to:

Sherry Romoli

(954) 723-8534

[email protected]

SOURCE Naikela Botanicals
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA has awarded a contract to Mitchell Vantage Systems LLC of Oklahoma City for software products, services, and engineering support.

The Software Engineering Support III (SES III) contract is an 8(a) small business set-aside, cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract. The total contract value is $359 million, and the total period of performance is five years, beginning April 1, 2022. Individual task orders may extend for up to one year past the expiration of the ordering period.

Mitchell Vantage Systems LLC will provide products and service expertise to support flight software, ground software, and science data systems, as well as software technology infusion, mission environments, software engineering, software systems engineering, secure coding, software/data systems project management, mission operations and mission validation capabilities.

This contract supports work in NASA's Engineering and Technology Directorate that focuses on the development of reusable, secure flight and ground architectures and frameworks to reduce mission cost, maximize development schedules, minimize customer programmatic/technical risks, and increase the scientific value of information products.

The work will be performed primarily at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. However, work may also be required at the contractor's facility and other NASA centers and locations specified in task orders.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

SOURCE NASA
The survey also finds more than half (52%) of respondents still do not have the ideal workspace setup at home. And while more than half of people (58%) prefer hybrid or remote working environments, only 36% of workers in North America describe themselves as hybrid or remote workers.

When asked about their biggest workplace priorities, sustainability, embracing new ways of working, and physical and mental wellbeing were at the top of the list. For instance, more than 76% of respondents state that sustainability should be a top priority for businesses, and 74% of respondents value sustainability as a key consideration for choosing their new employer. Also, interestingly, US decision makers are more likely to believe better tech and accessories increase employee satisfaction (79%) and productivity (79%), compared to other countries.

"In our entire company's history, we can't remember a time more turbulent, nor seen a more rapid adoption of different technologies, and how we have come to rely on them," says Andrew Corkill, Vice President, Global Marketing & eCommerce, Targus. "Our research underscores the importance for today's businesses to equip their employees with the right technology tools to improve productivity and wellbeing, whether they are working at home, in the office, or both."

Additional key takeaways include:

While people are starting to return to the office, many are still working from home, with more than 41% of US employees back in the office and nearly 32% who are hybrid workers.



In the future, 58% of people in the US would like to work hybrid or remote, while 37% prefer to work only at the office.



Most organizations recognize that better technologies and their accessories increase employee productivity and satisfaction; however, almost 40% of employers globally do not supply their employees with any tech accessories.

As companies everywhere face unprecedented labor challenges, security concerns, and more, it's critical to face these issues with all the knowledge and expertise possible. Find out what you can expect in the workplace in 2022, and beyond. Download the full report and watch our recent "Annual State of the Workplace 2022" webinar on-demand for the insights you need to prepare for the future of work.

*Global research of 1,215 decision-makers and 7,114 employees throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, in September-October 2021

About Targus



For more than 35 years, Targus has been revolutionizing mobile computing accessories for large enterprises and consumers, alike  connecting people and technology in meaningful ways. From laptop bags to tablet cases, to peripherals and universal docking stations, we persistently conceive, design, and produce innovative, productivity-boosting solutions that make the complex, simple; and seamlessly integrate into the lifestyles of mobile professionals wherever they work  at home, in the office, or wherever they go. We cross categories, regions, industries, and lifestyles with a breadth and depth of products that provide you with the solutions you need to live, dream, and do.



Headquartered in Anaheim, California, Targus has global operations in more than 24 offices and distribution in more than 100 countries. Learn more about us at targus.com, like or follow us on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Targus

Related Links

http://www.targus.com


DALLAS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new whitepaper from Parks Associates, produced in partnership with Xfinity Home, reveals 27% of US broadband households report far more concern now about the physical security of home than five years ago. That number rises to 43% among households with children. The whitepaper Home Security: Choice is the Ultimate Value Proposition explores the market trends specific to the role of the broadband service provider in providing consumers the ultimate value through choice of installation and services for home automation and residential security.

Parks Associates: Interest in Add-On Network Services

"The uncertainty caused by the pandemic has heightened consumer anxiety about the safety and security of their families and homes and expanded the volume and type of consumers searching for safety-related home solutions," said Elizabeth Parks, President, Parks Associates. "Smart home and security device adoption is also rising in broadband households, and consumers are embracing standalone devices and DIY home security solutions. Smart home security devices like networked cameras and smart doorbells have grown to over 10% adoption across all broadband households as of 2021."

DIY-installed security systems, like Ring Alarm, SimpliSafe and Abode, and DIY offerings from national brands such as Comcast and ADT, have expanded consumer familiarity with the category. Comcast recently announced the Xfinity Video Doorbell, to integrate with its Xfinity Home systems and enable anytime, anywhere monitoring of the home's front door. Lower prices, no contract offerings, and these new installation and services options provide consumers with the ultimate choice in home security, automation and monitoring services. However, there are signs that, as the US comes out of the pandemic, adoption of smart home devices will ramp up, with more than 40% of US broadband households planning to buy at least one device in the next six months.

"A growing number of consumers are seeking affordable, easy-to-install solutions to protect their homes," said Raman Sidhu, VP Product, Xfinity Home and Connectivity, Comcast. "It is critical for the home automation and security industry to simplify the process, delivering customers flexible DIY offerings, while also providing the requisite support for those customers that want a professional install experience. The research and insights from Parks Associates further highlight the potential value the broadband industry can deliver in helping customers protect the people and places they care about the most."

New installation and monitoring offerings have expanded options for consumers. Smart home devices and DIY security systems have disrupted the notion that professional monitoring is "needed" to provide adequate safety and security. While home security systems make consumers feel most secure, almost half of all broadband households surveyed find smart home security devices make them feel "safe enough."

"Security providers across the spectrum have an opportunity to attract customers and drive revenues by offering the consumer choice in installation, monitoring, support, system configuration, smart device attachment, contract length, and the ability to append additional network-related services to meet their personalized household needs," Parks said.

To request data or an interview, contact Rosey Ulpino, [email protected], 972.996.0233.

About Parks Associates

Parks Associates, a woman-founded and certified business, is an internationally recognized market research and consulting company specializing in emerging consumer technology products and services. Founded in 1986, Parks Associates creates research capital through market reports, primary studies, consumer research, custom research, workshops, executive conferences, and annual service subscriptions. http://www.parksassociates.com

Contact

Rosimely Ulpino

Parks Associates

972.996.0233

[email protected]

SOURCE Parks Associates
BOSTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PEAK Event Services, the Northeast's leading tent and event rental provider, announced today that its Board of Directors has named Jennifer Gullins as President and Chief Executive Officer. Gullins will succeed Co-CEO's Bob Traina and Larry Green. Gullins brings more than 20 years of industry experience to the role with a passion for customer centricity and keen focus on people and culture. Joining PEAK Event Services in 2013, Gullins has held various leadership positions, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing where she oversaw the company's commercial strategy. Throughout her tenure, Gullins has demonstrated her ability to manage multi-unit businesses and driving value to customers and shareholders. Her oversight was instrumental in navigating the company throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jennifer Gullins will become PEAK's new President and CEO beginning January 1, 2022.

"I'm thrilled to be able to work alongside this dedicated team of professionals while we continue to stabilize the business during this post pandemic phase, and strategically position the company for continued growth and innovation," said Gullins.

Co-CEO's Bob Traina and Larry Green will step down from their positions but will remain active in day-to-day operations and continue to serve on PEAK's Board of Directors. Traina will shift into the role of Senior Director of Inventory and Logistics - Tent Division, and Green will now serve as Senior Director of Inventory and Logistics - Core Division. "It has been my pleasure working along-side Jennifer these past several years and I couldn't be happier to have a successor with tenured experience in this industry," said Bob Traina. "Knowing Jennifer for nearly 20 years, I have seen her path progress to where she now is the ideal candidate to lead PEAK into its next chapter of success. Bob and I are thrilled to see her in this role," said Larry Green.

Both Traina and Green's experience and stewardship have been integral in managing PEAK through the unprecedented downturn and their commitment to the business, staff and customers remains unmatched.

About PEAK: With over 70 years of experience in the event industry, Peterson Party Center combined with Rentals Unlimited in 2016 to form PEAK Event ServicesNew England's leading tent and event rental resource. PEAK's goal of offering customers a full portfolio of unmatched products has been enhanced in recent years with the additional acquisitions of Table Toppers of Newton, Reserve Modern Event Rental, JG Willis, Be Our Guest and Newport Tent Company.

PEAK makes it easy for clients to plan, design and execute events. With five showrooms across New England, and more combined experience and expertise than any other event rental company in the region, PEAK's people have established relationships with the area's most respected event planners, caterers, corporations, and venues. PEAK's unmatched selection of itemsfrom tents and furniture to glassware and linenscreate behind-the-scenes magic. PEAK is more than a rental companythey're a collaborative team with round-the-clock dedication to their customers.

SOURCE PEAK Event Services
LAKELAND, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Chapters Health Foundation, in support of Good Shepherd Hospice, announced it accepted an award of $250,000 from the Polk County Board of County Commissioners as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law by President Biden in March. The funding, intended to offset financial setbacks brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, will be directed to program support and expansion of community services provided by the Bethany Center for Grieving Children.

The American Rescue Plan funding supplements an ongoing campaign by the Chapters Health Foundation in support of Good Shepherd Hospice, which to date has raised over $274,000 for the expansion, with a goal of reaching $550,000. The American Rescue Plan funding will support professional bereavement programs through June 2023.

The Bethany Center for Grieving Children, with additional locations in Auburndale and Sebring, provides counseling, hope and healing free of charge for all children and families who grieve the loss of a loved one. Experienced grief counselors and trained volunteers guide children and families through the grief process.

The new Bethany Center in Lakeland, located at 3470 Lakeland Hills Boulevard, will feature a range of interactive resources for children including but not limited to:

An expressive art studio filled with an array of art materials for children to use for free expression.

A play therapy room, complete with a state-of-the-art interactive sandbox, play kitchen and other amenities that enable children to play and engage with one another in a safe environment.

An interactive gaming floor that encourages sports, games, and physical activity to reduce stress, tension, anxiety, and depression.

"Since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Florida, Good Shepherd Hospice has been steadfast in its commitment to meet the ever-increasing needs of the communities it serves through continuous adaptation," said Adam Stanfield, vice president of development and executive director of the Chapters Health Foundation. "With American Rescue Plan funding awarded by the Polk County Board of County Commissioners, Good Shepherd Hospice is better able to produce and deliver free, vital bereavement therapy and support to anyone in need."

About Good Shepherd Hospice

Good Shepherd Hospice, an affiliate of Chapters Health System, is a community-based, not-for-profit organization that supports more than 4,200 patients each year in Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties as they face the challenges of advancing age and illness. Since 2008, the organization has been accredited by The Joint Commission, the nation's premier healthcare accrediting body.

About Chapters Health Foundation

Chapters Health Foundation is a 501(c)(3), not-for-profit organization committed to supporting Chapters Health System, a progressive leader in home health, palliative care, hospice, and grief support. Chapters Health Foundation provides more than $7.4 million annually to help offset the accumulated costs of unfunded and underfunded programming including but not limited to charity care, helping to meet the needs of patients and families who cannot afford hospice services. Chapters Health Foundation also provides $1.3 million in funding for the provision of grief support across Chapters Health and in 2020, provided more than $1 million to assist with underfunded pediatric and adult palliative care services.

SOURCE Chapters Health Foundation
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ready Capital Corporation (NYSE: RC) ("Ready Capital" or the "Company") today announced that it closed an underwritten public offering of $110.00 million aggregate principal amount of 5.50% senior unsecured notes due 2028 (the "Notes"). The Company intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to originate or acquire additional mortgage loans and mortgage-related assets consistent with its investment strategy and for general business purposes. Piper Sandler & Co. served as book-running manager for the offering. The issue price to investors was $1,000.00 per Note. The Notes were issued in minimum denominations of $2,000.00 and integral multiples of $1,000.00.

A registration statement relating to these Notes was declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). The offering was made only by means of a preliminary prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus, which have been filed with the SEC. A copy of the prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus may be obtained free of charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov or from the underwriters by contacting: Piper Sandler & Co. at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10020, or by calling toll-free 866-805-4128, or by email at [email protected].

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of the Company's securities, nor shall there be any sale of the Company's securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state.

About Ready Capital Corporation

Ready Capital Corporation (NYSE: RC) is a multi-strategy real estate finance company that originates, acquires, finances and services small- to medium-sized balance commercial loans. Ready Capital specializes in loans backed by commercial real estate, including agency multifamily, investor and bridge as well as U.S. Small Business Administration loans under its Section 7(a) program. Headquartered in New York, New York, Ready Capital employs over 400 lending professionals nationwide. The Company is externally managed and advised by Waterfall Asset Management, LLC.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "plan," "continue," "intend," "should," "could," "would," "may," "potential" or the negative of those terms or other comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to the inherent uncertainties in predicting future results and conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including, without limitation, the risk factors and other matters set forth in the prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus and the Company's Annual Report on Form 10K for the year ended December 31, 2020 filed with the SEC and in its other filings with the SEC. 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, except as may be required by law.

Contacts:

Investor Relations

Ready Capital Corporation

212-257-4666

[email protected]

SOURCE Ready Capital Corporation
Not for distribution to U.S. news wire services or dissemination in the United States.

VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Rhyolite Resources Ltd. (TSXV: RYE) ("Rhyolite" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its news release dated December 7, 2021, the Company has completed a "bought deal" brokered private placement of 16,000,000 common shares (the "Common Shares") of the Company at a price of C$0.88 per Common Share (the "Offering Price") for gross proceeds of approximately C$14 million (the "Bought Deal Private Placement"). BMO Capital Markets ("BMO") acted as the sole underwriter in respect of the Bought Deal Private Placement and received a cash commission equal to 6.0% of the gross proceeds thereon.

Rhyolite also closed its previously announced non-brokered private placement of approximately C$4 million at a price per Common Share equal to the Offering Price (the "Non-Brokered Private Placement", and together with the Bought Deal Private Placement, the "Offering"). No finders fees or commissions were paid in connection with the Non-Brokered Private Placement.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering for furthering engineering work on Muckahi equipment, procurement of Muckahi equipment, exploration in Suriname, and corporate purposes.

Fred Stanford, CEO of Rhyolite, commented: "Regarding both financial and ESG outcomes, the Muckahi Mining System has the potential to be a positive disruptor of the underground hard rock mining industry. In an industry that is slow to change, at Rhyolite, with Muckahi, we are intent on picking up the pace. We appreciate the time and energy of investors and the BMO team to investigate and understand the opportunities that Muckahi provides. With this capital injection we intend to bring the Muckahi Mining System to commercial readiness. From that platform, we look forward to rapidly changing the industry to achieve superior financial and ESG outcomes."

All Common Shares issued under the Offering are subject to a hold period expiring on April 22, 2022 in accordance with applicable securities laws.

MI 61-101 Disclosure

The Non-Brokered Private Placement constitutes a "related party transaction" within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101  Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101") as certain directors and officers of the Company purchased an aggregate of 3,479,637 Common Shares. The Company has relied on exemptions from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101 in respect of related party participation in the Non-Brokered Private Placement as neither the fair market value (as determined under MI 61-101) of the subject matter of, nor the fair market value of the consideration for, the transaction, insofar as it involved the related parties, exceeded 25% of the Company's market capitalization (as determined under MI 61-101). Further details will be included in a material change report to be filed by the Company. A material change report will be filed in connection with the related party participation in the Non-Brokered Private Placement less than 21 days in advance of closing of the Non-Brokered Private Placement as approval of the Non-Brokered Private Placement occurred less than 21 days prior to closing. The Non-Brokered Private Placement was approved by the board of directors of the Company, with directors participating in the Non-Brokered Private Placement abstaining from the vote in respect thereof.

The securities offered have not been registered under the U.S. 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. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any State in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Early Warning Disclosure

Tyrus Capital Event Master Fund Limited ("Tyrus"), an investment fund managed by Tony Chedraoui, a director of the Company, subscribed for 3,098,864 Common Shares under the Non-Brokered Private Placement for aggregate consideration of approximately $2,727,000. Immediately prior to the completion of the Offering, Tyrus held 8,000,000 Common Shares and Mr. Chedraoui held 3,830,000 Common Shares, representing collectively approximately 12.3% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares on a non-diluted basis. Mr. Chedraoui has control and direction over the Common Shares held by Tyrus.

Following completion of the Offering, Mr. Chedraoui, together with Tyrus, hold and control 14,928,864 Common Shares, representing approximately 12.3% of the issued an outstanding Common Shares on a non-diluted basis. Tyrus has acquired the Common Shares for investment purposes.

A copy of the early warning report to be filed by Mr. Chedraoui in connection with the acquisition of the Common Shares by Tyrus will be available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com under the Company's profile. A copy of such report will also be available upon written request to the Company at [email protected].

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the use of proceeds of the Offering. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; delay or failure to receive regulatory approvals; the ability to attract financing on these terms or at all; the price of commodities; and the results of current exploration. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

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 press release.

SOURCE Rhyolite Resources Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.rhyoliteresources.com/


The ranking highlights the strength of a university-wide ecosystem enriched by interdisciplinary collaboration and Rutgers Business School faculty members who bring their own entrepreneurial experience into the classroom.

Poets & Quants considered programs at 38 schools and used 16 different data points to measure various parts of the entrepreneurial experience, including the average percentage of students launching businesses during their MBA program as well as the amount of accelerator space and startup award money available to MBAs.

The ranking puts Rutgers Business School in the company of such schools as Olin Business School, Harvard Business School, Ross School of Business and Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

"We are extremely proud to be ranked by Poets & Quants as one of the top 10 MBA programs in the world for entrepreneurship," said Lei Lei, the dean of Rutgers Business School. "Our faculty collaborate across Rutgers to create an eco-system that fosters entrepreneurial thought and allows the ambitions of our student entrepreneurs to flourish."

Mukesh Patel, who teaches entrepreneurship to graduate students, is one of the faculty members who provide Rutgers with a unique strength in developing entrepreneurs and graduates with entrepreneurial mindsets.

Patel brings 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur, small business owner and venture capitalist. He also brings the insights of someone who sits on boards helping to fund and grow startups. "It's a 360-degree perspective," Patel said. Other faculty members who add to the entrepreneurial ecosystem include professors, Jeffrey Robinson and Ted Baker, who are known for their research in the field of entrepreneurship.

Thinking about enhancing your career in 2022. Learn about the advantages of earning an MBA from Rutgers. Register to attend an online MBA Info Session. Out-of-state U.S. residents can learn more about the Full-Time MBA Program during a webinar on Feb. 5.

Rutgers MBA students who pursue studies in entrepreneurship benefit from an expansive, interdisciplinary ecosystem that includes graduate-level courses that allow teams of students to identify opportunities to launch tech-related start-ups, to develop business plans and gain experience pitching to investors.

Patel is director of the graduate-level Collaborative for Tech Entrepreneurship and Commercialization. C-TEC reflects the popularity of entrepreneurship across Rutgers, attracting graduate students who come from engineering as well as business. In two years, the program has expanded from one semester to two and the cohort of students has quadrupled, forcing Patel to create a waiting list.

During the past year, Patel and Doug Miller, associate professor and associate dean of MBA programs, have worked together to create a new student organization called CeO Forum as a way of strengthening the networks of entrepreneurial students. (CeO is short for Chief Entrepreneurial Officer.) The forum offers a unique platform for connecting current students and Rutgers alumni through speaking and networking events, and case competitions.

"We're so grateful to the many alumni and other entrepreneurs that mentor our MBA students. They're the people that create the ecosystem of opportunities," Miller said. "With many virtual meetings over the last 18 months, we've seen an expansion of the number of RBS alumni connecting with current students. Building a new business is all about networking."

Students also benefit from competitions outside clubs and classrooms. Rutgers Business School's annual business plan competition has helped to grow a number of companies started by MBA students and Rutgers alumni, including P-nuff Crunch (Juan Salinas); Emma's Premium Services (Anton Kogan); Playa Bowls (Rob Giuliani) Surf, Turf, and Earth (Paul Auriemma); Bibi Beverages (Jen Du); Zwiren Title Agency (Paula Zwiren).

Miller said the ranking also recognizes the value of having excellent facilities, including business incubator space. Rutgers MBA students have access to Newark Venture Partners, which is housed within Rutgers Business School-Newark.

The ecosystem across Rutgers University fuels the MBA program's strength in entrepreneurship, according to Professor Patel. "The fact that Rutgers is a large institution with different schools and disciplines creates a compelling incubator for ideas," he said.

SOURCE Rutgers Business School
OTCQX: SHWZ

Acquisition Adds to Schwazze's Retail Footprint in Colorado

DENVER, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Schwazze, (OTCQX: SHWZ) ("Schwazze" or the "Company"), announced that it has closed the acquisition of the assets of Smoking Gun, LLC and Smoking Gun Land Company, LLC ("Smoking Gun"). Total consideration for the acquisition was $4 million in cash and 100,000 shares of Schwazze common stock upon closing.

The Smoking Gun dispensary and assets are located on a prime retail corner on Colorado Blvd. in Glendale, Colorado in the center of the greater Denver metro area. This acquisition is part of the Company's continuing retail expansion plan in Colorado, and including the recently announced planned acquisitions in New Mexico (December 3, 2021), brings the total number of dispensaries to 32.

Since April 2020, Schwazze acquired or announced the planned acquisition of 32 cannabis dispensaries, including the ten R. Greenleaf New Mexico dispensaries. In 2021, the Company also acquired or announced the planned acquisition of seven cultivation facilities, three in Colorado - SCG Holding LLC, Brow 2 LLC and Star Buds - and four licensed in New Mexico. The New Mexico acquisition will also add a manufacturing asset, Elemental Kitchen & Laboratories, LLC, to the Company's manufacturing plant, Purplebee's in Colorado. In May 2021, Schwazze announced its BioSciences division and in August 2021 it commenced home delivery services in Colorado.

About Schwazze

Schwazze (OTCQX: SHWZ) is building a premier vertically integrated regional cannabis company with assets in Colorado and New Mexico and will continue to take its operating system to other states where it can develop a differentiated regional leadership position. Schwazze is the parent company of a portfolio of leading cannabis businesses and brands spanning seed to sale. The Company is committed to unlocking the full potential of the cannabis plant to improve the human condition. Schwazze is anchored by a high- performance culture that combines customer-centric thinking and data science to test, measure, and drive decisions and outcomes. The Company's leadership team has deep expertise in retailing, wholesaling, and building consumer brands at Fortune 500 companies as well as in the cannabis sector. Schwazze is passionate about making a difference in our communities, promoting diversity and inclusion, and doing our part to incorporate climate-conscious best practices. Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. was Schwazze's former operating trade name. The corporate entity continues to be named Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. Schwazze derives its name from the pruning technique of a cannabis plant to enhance plant structure and promote healthy growth.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "plan," "will," "may," "continue," "predicts," or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future events or performance, are based on certain assumptions, and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control and cannot be predicted or quantified. Consequently, actual events and results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with (i) our inability to manufacture our products and product candidates on a commercial scale on our own or in collaboration with third parties; (ii) difficulties in obtaining financing on commercially reasonable terms; (iii) changes in the size and nature of our competition; (iv) loss of one or more key executives or scientists; (v) difficulties in securing regulatory approval to market our products and product candidates; (vi) our ability to successfully execute our growth strategy in Colorado and outside the state, (vii) our ability to consummate the acquisition described in this press release or to identify and consummate future acquisitions that meet our criteria, (viii) our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses, including the acquisition described in this press release, and realize synergies therefrom, (ix) the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, * the timing and extent of governmental stimulus programs, and (xi) the uncertainty in the application of federal, state and local laws to our business, and any changes in such laws. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by law.

SOURCE Schwazze
ANNAPOLIS, Md., Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Significance, Inc., an Women- Owned Small Business (WOSB) , announced a partnership today with Koniag Government Services (KGS), an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC). Significance has been providing Defense Agencies Initiative (DAI) support to the Marine Corps as they transition from their legacy accounting system (SABRS) to DAI and Koniag has been providing DAI support to multiple federal agencies since 2018. Members of both companies have provided strategic direction and thought leadership to the program since its inception.

"This partnership between Significance and KGS is a key enhancement for the Marine Corps, who needs to rapidly complete the implementation of DAI and then sustain this new accounting system for years to come. We have built tremendous capabilities in this area, and we now will be able to help move the Marine Corps and other clients into post-deployment sustainment of the system far more quickly and with less time and paperwork" said Mary Ahern-Snyder, President and Founder of Significance, Inc.

Tom Ulsas, Senior Vice President with KGS, added, "Significance is a perfect partner for us as we work to make DAI post-deployment sustainment as cost-effective and time-efficient as possible. Not only do we complement each other with our incredible amount of DAI expertise, but our two companies have similar values and cultures. Our combined strength will be instrumental in making this partnership a success for us and valuable to our customers."

About Significance Inc.

Significance, Inc. is designated an Economically Disadvantaged Woman-Owned Small Business (EDWOSB) with offices in Alexandria, VA and Annapolis, MD. Founded in 2014 by Mary Ahern-Snyder, the company provides government consulting services in the areas of Financial Management & Audit Support; SAP; Business Systems; Program & Project Management; Advanced Analytics & Decision Support; Transformation & Strategy; and Systems Support Training. To learn more, visit www.significanceinc.com

About Koniag Government Services

Koniag Government Services (KGS) is an Alaska Native Owned Corporation supporting the values and traditions of its native communities through an agile employee and corporate culture that delivers Enterprise Solutions, Professional Services, and Operational Management to Federal Government Agencies. KGS applies its proven commercial solutions to a deep knowledge of Defense and Civilian missions to provide forward leaning technical, professional, and operational solutions. KGS enables successful mission outcomes for its customers through solution-oriented business partnerships and a commitment to exceptional service delivery. For more information, visit www.koniag-gs.com.

SOURCE Significance, Inc.
ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SolaREIT , a leading solar real estate investment fund, has executed a $2 million solar land deal with developer partners PTR Holdco and Prospect 14 . The deal involves a parcel of land on which a 20 megawatt (MW) solar project in Pennsylvania will be constructed. SolaREIT, which launched in late 2020, represents an innovative model in financing solar land and provides more options to compensate landowners for utilizing their land to host solar farms while incenting developers through savings in lease rates.

SolaREIT is a leading solar real estate investment fund

The project, located in Franklin County, will likely begin construction in the second quarter of 2022. SolaREIT structured the deal to purchase the land pre-construction, allowing the solar project to move forward.

"We're excited to work with PTR Holdco and Prospect 14 to bring more solar energy to Pennsylvania. Small, utility scale projects require large expanses of land and land purchases that tie-up capital can oftentimes deteriorate project economics. SolaREIT provides financial flexibility to both landowners and solar developers to ensure projects get built," said Laura Pagliarulo, President of SolaREIT.

"Prospect14 is in active development of 5 GW of solar assets. This is representative of over 100 landowners with very different economic profiles. Not every landowner fits into the traditional solar lease, some require bespoke structures that can be customized. SolaREIT armed us with optionality to approach landowners which increased transaction certainty," said Carl Jackson, Partner of Propect 14.

"We're thrilled to partner with SolaREIT on this project," said Guy Winters of PTR Holdco. SolarREIT's innovative approach allowed us to maintain site control and satisfy our landowner as we pursue the necessary authorizations to build the project," said Guy Winters of PTR Holdco.

While most solar projects are on leased property, SolaREIT offers alternative options to developers and asset owners that reduce their lease costs. Earlier this year, SolaREIT announced their "Pre-Paid Solar Land Lease" allowing solar developers to provide landowners with up-front payment for up to 40-years of lease payments while reducing developers' lease costs and therefore ongoing operating expenses.

About SolaREIT: SolaREIT, based in Rockville, Maryland, focuses on making investments in acquiring, developing, and managing climate-friendly solar assets that support the transformation to a low-carbon economy. We aim to provide unique products to clients while generating attractive returns for our investors. For more information, please visit www.solareit.com .

Contact:

Sam Boykin

9174472657

[email protected]

SOURCE SolaREIT
And not in any way, because Marco Antonio wants to stand out at the most luxurious level of the electric motorcycle sector. A goal of the most ambitious with which it began its journey in 2020. "I was in Miami at a conference presenting a topic about family legacy and business, the light bulb went on and I asked myself, 'Why not?' Now that everyone is talking about TESLA and electric brands that do not have that family tradition like ours, I decided to do it," he explains.

"I started making the initial designs and took out some lines that people gave me valuable feedback," he says. From there came the Giaguaro, a model of sporty and elegant design that has a particularity that makes it special: a double engine with gearbox and clutch. "One of the problems that electric motors have is that there is no change, there is no torque and there are no emotions, it does not have the traditional feeling of a motorcycle. That is what makes our bikes special," he explains.

Melandri, your ambassador

To embrace Soriano Motori, both in its development and in its promotion, the brand has a champion former MotoGP rider, Marco Melandri, as an ambassador. "The future is electric; I like the technology and the project. Marco Antonio has a very advanced look and I like that a lot," says the Italian about his inclusion in the project and, of course, he likes his bikes: "The torque and having an engine with a gearbox is something amazing, I have never seen anything like it. They are heavier, because of the batteries, but extremely easy and natural."

Taking advantage of the fact that he has Melandri by his side, will Marco Antonio be encouraged to get involved in the sport with his company? "We have a circuit that we have bought, I would like to sponsor racing teams and bet on the right driver to bear the name of the brand. And I also want to support women, because there are some who are competing and we must try to help them as an international brand," she responds. But first he must consolidate a project of which his grandfather surely already feels proud.

SOURCE Soriano Motori
TAMPA, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hive Learning and their client Sun Life were awarded the gold award for 'Best Advance in Diversity and Inclusion Innovation' at the 2021 Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology Awards.

This award reflects their shared success in creating meaningful impact for Sun Life employees as part of their commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I). With the help of Hive Learning's peer learning program, Inclusion Works (branded Kaleidoscope for Sun Life employees), learners were taken on a journey from unconscious bias to conscious action by embedding tiny, but powerful, acts of inclusion into their daily behaviors and routines.

"We are proud of the progress we're making on our commitment to creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace. As the first insurer to launch a digital learning platform to advance DE&I, we are committed to embracing diverse perspectives and creating an environment where everyone can be their most authentic selves," said Emily Schur, Senior Vice-President, Global Talent at Sun Life. "Working with Hive Learning is helping us achieve our goal and I'm excited about the work we'll continue to do."

Since launching the program, Sun Life employees have overwhelmingly said they are committed to taking action on what they've learned, feel confident demonstrating inclusive behaviors at work, and believe the program will drive positive change at Sun Life.

Hive Learning CEO Julia Tierney commented on the partnership:

"We absolutely love working with the team at Sun Life who have one of the most innovative DE&I teams we've had the pleasure of meeting. We love their data-driven approach and how quickly they respond to the changing needs of their learners  we all know that being inclusive is ever-evolving and I really believe that Sun Life's responsiveness is the reason why they've seen such impactful results. They are proof that even in traditional industries like finance, culture change is possible and that you can see results in months, not years. We are so excited for what the future of our partnership will bring."

Learn more about how Hive Learning helps organizations create a culture of peer learning and inclusion here and Sun Life's DEI strategy here .

About Hive Learning

Hive Learning is the world's #1 peer learning platform. Their award-winning approach uses nudge theory and network science to help enterprise companies create and sustain culture change at scale by changing one behavior at a time.

Hive Learning combines a consumer grade platform with peer learning programs that accelerate skill adoption, specializing in areas like inclusion, mental health, and leadership; expert services offer customers deep insights into their culture and deliver an engagement playbook designed over 20,000 deployments.

In the past three years, Hive Learning has generated over 22 million peer learning interactions in 196 countries and helped +80% of learners take action on what they learned. Visit www.hivelearning.com to learn more.

About Sun Life Financial

Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization providing insurance, wealth and asset management solutions to individual and corporate Clients. Sun Life has operations in a number of markets worldwide, including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, India, China, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of September 30, 2021, Sun Life had total assets under management of $1.39 trillion. For more information, please visitwww.sunlife.com. Sun Life Financial Inc. trades on the Toronto (TSX), New York (NYSE) and Philippine (PSE) stock exchanges under the tickersymbol SLF.

About the Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology Awards

Brandon Hall Group operates the largest and longest-running awards program in Human Capital Management. As an independent HCM research and analyst firm, they conduct studies in Learning and Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Talent Acquisition and HR/Workforce Management. These benchmark studies help organizations by providing strategic insights for executives and practitioners responsible for growth and business results.

SOURCE Hive Learning
NEW YORK, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Summus Global, the leading virtual specialist platform, announces Mary Mulcare, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Weill Cornell, and Chief Medical Officer, Summus Global, is leading a new pathway in teaching pre-clinical medical students about telemedicine through virtual platforms. To overcome pandemic-based in-person learning, medical students successfully shadowed Dr. Mulcare and leading emergency medicine (EM) physicians at Weill Cornell Medicine's Healthcare Leadership and Management (HLM) Scholars Program. Students gained enhanced experience through a virtual shadowing model of emergency department (ED) patient care and telemedicine patient visits.

Dr. Mulcare is a leader in developing new platforms for delivering virtual care, including Summus Global's virtual specialist platform.

Who: Mary Mulcare, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Weill Cornell; Chief Medical Officer, Summus Global



When: Available for Media Interviews



Where: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publication, Telemedicine Reports:

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/tmr.2021.0019



Details: Media interviews will discuss:

New virtual clinical shadowing model benefits for medical students

Leadership lessons learned in forging telemedicine solutions from emergency medicine (EM) physician

Best practices for telemedicine patient visits and care

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
TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - The Green Organic Dutchman Holdings Ltd. (the "Company" or "TGOD") (CSE: TGOD) (US-OTC: TGODF), a trusted and sustainable global cannabis company is pleased to announce the appointment (the "Appointment") of Louis Sterling to the Board of Directors ("Board") effective today, subject to the receipt of any necessary regulatory approvals.

Since 2017, Mr. Sterling has been a private investor targeting small-cap public equities and select fast-growth private companies, particularly in the health, wellness, and cannabis industries. Prior to this, he was a managing director of BondFactor, a firm specializing in insuring municipal bonds. A graduate from Harvard Law School, Mr. Sterling also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an undergraduate degree from Howard University, and has extensive experience in investment banking and private equity, having worked at Lincolnshire Management and Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Mr. Sterling will be replacing Mr. Jeffrey Scott who is resigning from his position as Board Member effective immediately to focus on other business interests.

"On behalf of the entire TGOD organization, I'd like to welcome Louis to TGOD's Board. He joins us at an exciting time as we continue to grow revenues and execute our plan to profitability. We are confident that Louis will provide valuable perspectives as we explore opportunities in the U.S. and increase our market share domestically," said Angus Footman, Chair of the Board. "I would also like to thank Jeff for his contribution to the Board since 2018 and wish him well in his future endeavours," added Mr. Footman.

In connection with the Appointment, the Company has granted Mr. Sterling options (each, an "Option") to purchase an aggregate of up to 300,000 common shares of the Company. Each Option is exercisable into one common share at an exercise price of $0.11 per common share. The Options are granted in accordance with the Company's share option plan adopted by the board of directors of the Company on May 12, 2021 (the "Option Plan"). The Option Plan is available under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

About The Green Organic Dutchman Holdings Ltd.

The Green Organic Dutchman Holdings Ltd. (CSE: TGOD) (USOTC: TGODF) is a sustainable cannabis company with a focus on innovation, quality, consistency, integrity and transparency. The Company is committed to cultivating a better tomorrow by producing its products responsibly, with less waste and impact on the environment. In Canada, the Company serves the recreational market with a brand portfolio including The Green Organic Dutchman, Highly Dutch Organics, Ripple by TGOD and Cruuzy, and the medical markets in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and Germany. All cannabis utilized in products for The Green Organic Dutchman and Highly Dutch Organics brands is grown through a certified organic process, which includes living soil, filtered rainwater, sunlight, and natural inputs.

The Company's Common Shares and certain warrants issued under the indentures dated December 19, 2019, June 12, 2020, October 23, 2020, and December 10, 2020, trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") under the symbol "TGOD", "TGOD.WS", "TGOD.WR", "TGOD.WA", and "TGOD.WB" respectively. The Company's Common Shares trade in the U.S. on the OTCQX under the symbol "TGODF". For more information on The Green Organic Dutchman Holdings Ltd., please visit www.tgod.ca.

Cautionary Statements

This news release includes statements containing certain "forwardlooking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law ("forwardlooking statements"). Forward looking statements in this release include, but are not limited to, statements about future revenue, statements about potential sales and market share, statements about the future profitability of the Company and statements regarding the future performance of the Company in any jurisdiction. Forwardlooking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "continue", "expect", "project", "intend", "should", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. Various assumptions were used in drawing the conclusions or making the projections contained in the forwardlooking statements throughout this news release. Forwardlooking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties (including market conditions) and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forwardlooking statements, including those risk factors described in the Company's most recent Annual Information Form filed with Canadian securities regulators and available on the Company's issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information or forward-looking statements in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date of this news release. The Company is under no obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forwardlooking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law.

Neither the CSE nor the CSE's Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of CSE) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE The Green Organic Dutchman Holdings Ltd.
TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cybersixgill , the premier vendor of real-time and actionable threat intelligence, today announced findings from a newly commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting quantifying the Total Economic Impact and business benefits enabled by Cybersixgill's threat intelligence solutions. The study revealed that organizations employing Cybersixgill solutions experienced benefits of almost $1.57 million and a return on investment (ROI) of 311% over three years. Benefits considered included ability to address growing threat intelligence business demand without the need to expand staff while growing several facets of their service offering.

According to the study "While underground criminal forums and the dark web are well-known threats to organizations, cybersecurity teams lack the access and resources to collect the data needed to proactively address them. Cybersixgill provides cybersecurity teams with dark web data to enable them to perform threat intelligence analysis utilizing their existing skillsets. The portal provides capabilities such as search, machine learning (ML) alerts and vulnerability ranking to support analysts."

For the analysis portion of the TEI study, Forrester gathered data and experiences from customer interviews to show the total economic impact of organizations that invest in the Cybersixgill solution. The study showed that participants in the study experienced a dramatic uptick in the speed of dark web analysis with both greater depth of sources and more data from those sources in near real-time as well as the ability to shift processes from reactive to a proactive approach. "I don't think that it would be economically or technically possible to provide the access and value that Cybersixgill brings. It would take many more people and years to cultivate. It's tool and capabilities provide great value" noted one customer.

Key findings identified in the study included:

Avoided staff expansion to meet growing threat intelligence business demand, saving over $820,000 over three years

to meet growing threat intelligence business demand, saving over over three years Dark web offering a positive differentiator and led to an increased close rate according to enterprise sales teams

and led to an increased close rate according to enterprise sales teams Breadth of data expanded significantly - Cybersixgill provides more data sources - including social media - more detailed data, and support of longitudinal analysis. Translations have enabled expanded global coverage

- Cybersixgill provides more data sources - including social media - more detailed data, and support of longitudinal analysis. Translations have enabled expanded global coverage Contribution from new offerings as a differentiator earning over $534,000 over three years

"Organizations today are up against threats that are quickly increasing in numbers, velocity, and sophistication. In order to protect themselves as well as their customers' assets, it is critical they ingest dynamic fresh intel that comes with context, available only with the breadth and depth of our extensive data collection," said Sharon Wagner, CEO of Cybersixgill. "Our main focus is to deliver the best intel faster so security teams can stop attacks and fortify their overall cybersecurity posture."

Download Cybersixgill's Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study.

About Cybersixgill

Cybersixgill's AI-driven, fully autonomous threat intelligence solutions help organizations fight cybercrime, detect phishing, data leaks, fraud and vulnerabilities as well as amplify incident response  in real-time. The Cybersixgill Investigative Portal empowers security teams with context and actionable insights as well as the ability to conduct real-time investigations. Rich data feeds such as Darkfeed and CVE insights from DVE Score harness Cybersixgill's unmatched intelligence to deliver prioritized, critical intel and customized alerts into organizations' existing security systems. Cybersixgill brings agility to threat intel with their CI/CP methodology (Continuous Investigation/Continuous Protection). Current customers include global enterprises, financial services, MSSPs, government and law enforcement entities.

Media contact

Laurie Ben-Haim

Cybersixgill

+972-52-7831911

+1646-300-9549

[email protected]

SOURCE Cybersixgill
BOCA RATON, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TransMedia Group to promote new true-crime book titled "Ghislaine, Sensational and Impure" by William Steel, the acclaimed author of "Sex and the Serial Killer, My Bizarre Times with Robert Durst."

Just as the jury has begun deliberating whether Jeffrey Epstein's longtime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, recruited and groomed teens for his pleasure, TransMedia Group will have the pleasure of introducing this new book by William Steel who knew her personally and others allegedly involved," said TransMedia Group CEO Tom Madden.

Madden said the new book will cast light on the many dark corners passed over in the trial as the 59-year-old British socialite faces a lengthy prison term if convicted of multiple charges in connection with a sex trafficking scheme.

"Our publicity will highlight how the book details what and who is on the blackmail videos allegedly made by Maxwell and Epstein as well as the last known location of the missing Palm Beach videos. Also in the book is Ghislaine telling Steel she would like Epstein dead because 'he's going to be the death of me.'"

This eye-opening book comes after a judicial ruling that none of the evidence against Epstein for whom Maxwell is charged with procuring underage girls for sex can be made public or used against him since he is dead.

The 66-year-old financier, who counted former President Bill Clinton and Britain's Prince Andrew as friends, hung himself in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on dozens of sex trafficking charges in New York in which Maxwell was also allegedly involved.

"Steel combines the personal and the literary," says Dr. Mary Bass, Metaphysical scholar. "In the intensity and intimacy of his writing, William Steel reminds us that true crime narratives are not just stories, but tragedies," she added.

Madden said both Steel and Dr. Bass are zealous advocates for both victims of crime and wrongful incarceration, and are advocates for a movement to free Dave Reinhrdt (FreeDaveReinhrdt.com).

Madden said William Steel's website is at www.williamsteelauthor.com. Instagram @dursturbed Twitter @dursturbed SexAndTheSerialKiller.com.

Media contact: Karla Hernandez 561-750-9800; [email protected].

SOURCE TransMedia Group
Numerous grand opening specials available at new Tampa-Hillsborough location

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Trulieve Cannabis Corp. (CSE: TRUL) (OTCQX: TCNNF) ("Trulieve" or "the Company"), a leading and top-performing cannabis company in the United States, today opens its eighth medical cannabis dispensary in the Tampa area. The Tampa-Fairgrounds Trulieve, located at 7702 E. Hillsborough Avenue near the intersection of I-4 and I-75, begins serving patients at 9am on Tuesday, December 21.

There will be deals and specials throughout opening day, including a 25% discount for all registered patients at the Tampa-Fairgrounds location. Grand opening festivities will include St. Petersburg-based Craft Tee custom t-shirt printing, music, and numerous partner giveaways. As always, all first-time guests are eligible for a 50% new customer discount at any Florida-based location. Trulieve also offers statewide home delivery, convenient online ordering, and in-store pickup.

Statewide on Tuesday, December 21, Trulieve will continue its 12 Days of Cannabis promotion with the launch of the TruChocolate Dark Chocolate Cranberry and special one-day deals on brand partner, Bhang's dark and milk chocolate edibles.

As the state's leading medical cannabis provider, Trulieve's retail employees are trained to provide personalized patient care and support individuals at every stage of their cannabis journey. Trulieve dispensaries throughout Florida offer on-site consultations to help patients obtain appropriate medical products and dosages to ensure optimal cannabis experiences.

"Trulieve is excited to expand access to medical cannabis in Tampa and to continue building strong relationships in the community," said Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve. "Our company is driven by our commitment to providing tailored, high-quality patient care to as many patients as possible."

Trulieve patients across Florida can choose from the largest selection of THC and CBD products available in a variety of consumption methods, including smokable flower, concentrates, edibles, capsules, syringes, tinctures, topical creams, vaporizers, and more. Patients have access to nationally-beloved brands such as Bellamy Brothers, Bhang, Binske, Blue River, Black Tuna, Love's Oven, O.pen, and Sunshine Cannabis, all available exclusively at Trulieve in Florida.

For more information, or to learn how to become a registered patient, please visit Trulieve.com and connect on Instagram or Facebook.

About Trulieve

Trulieve is an industry leading, vertically integrated cannabis company and multi-state operator in the U.S. operating in 11 states, with leading market positions in Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Trulieve is poised for accelerated growth and expansion, building scale in retail and distribution in new and existing markets through its hub strategy. By providing innovative, high-quality products across its brand portfolio, Trulieve delivers optimal customer experiences and increases access to cannabis, helping patients and customers to live without limits. Trulieve is listed on the CSE under the symbol TRUL and trades on the OTCQX market under the symbol TCNNF. To learn more about Trulieve, visit Trulieve.com.

SOURCE Trulieve Cannabis Corp.

Related Links

https://www.trulieve.com/


HOUSTON, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Voss Capital, LLC ("Voss"), a significant shareholder of Griffon Corp. (NYSE: GFF) ("Griffon" or the "Company"), issued the following public statement in opposition to Griffon's planned acquisition of Hunter Fan Company for $845 million in a transaction announced earlier today. Voss has nominated several highly-qualified candidates for election as directors at the Company's upcoming Annual Meeting in mid-February.

"In our opinion, Griffon's ill-advised decision to buy Hunter Fan Company from MidOcean Partners demonstrates the Board's continued disregard for shareholders and causes us to further question whether Griffon's directors are protecting Griffon's shareholders' best interests. The sheer size of this acquisition places tremendous risk squarely on the Company's shareholders for management's ability to integrate and execute. Adding insult to injury, the Griffon Board is not putting this significant Hunter transaction up for a vote of shareholders. Quite frankly, management and the Board have not earned the right, nor have the credibility or track record, to engage in such a high-stakes deal.

We believe this acquisition is wrong for shareholders for many reasons, a few of which are detailed below.

Unattractive Valuation

Griffon says their $845 million purchase price1 is attractive. We disagree. Griffon is paying 9.4x their estimate of fiscal 2023 EBITDA2 for Hunter Fan Company. Griffon currently trades at under 8x EV/FY 2023 EBITDA and is paying a far higher multiple to acquire Hunter Fan Company than Griffon's current or recent valuation. Given Griffon is trading near a 5-year low valuation and building products transaction valuations are hitting record highs, we believe the Company should be selling not buying.

Also, why is the company citing a multiple of their projected FY 2023 EBITDA? What is Hunter Fan's EBITDA for the last twelve months and what assumptions is Griffon management making to reach their FY 2023 figure?

Griffon claims that the deal will add $0.50 to EPS. This is irrelevant. This metric ignores return on invested capital and is purely the result of the company using debt to finance the acquisition.

Execution Risk

All the facts and figures show that Griffon's current management team has operated its existing businesses poorly. If they can't effectively manage the Company's existing businesses, why add complexity? This ineptitude is shown by Griffon's Total Shareholder Return (TSR) consistently lagging that of its own self-selected peer group. For example, over the five years ending on Dec. 20, 2021, Griffon generated a TSR of 8%, 53% below the median TSR of 61% for the 21 peers Griffon disclosed in its most recent proxy statement.

The Hunter Fan Company acquisition will be the largest in Griffon's history and is immense relative to the company's current size. The $845 million purchase price is more than 55% of Griffon's market cap and more than 35% of its enterprise value.3 Griffon's weak TSR and low ROIC clearly demonstrates that its management has not earned the right to invest more capital, especially in a new, unrelated business.

The Board expects to close this huge acquisition by the end of January 2022, an ambitious target to complete a deal of this magnitude. Our view is that this deal was structured, and the company's balance sheet leveraged, specifically to prevent shareholders from voting on the acquisition. Therefore, it seems the Board may have been concerned that shareholders would reject this deal. The Board likely understood how poorly this deal would be received, especially given underlying shareholder discontent, as shown by low shareholder support for Say on Pay and individual directors, as well as our ongoing proxy contest.

Conflict of Interest

Finally, we have serious questions about the deal process. Griffon's lead "independent" director Kevin Sullivan is a Managing Director at MidOcean Partners, the private equity firm who has owned Hunter Fan for 14 years and is rumored to have struggled to sell the company. Mr. Sullivan's connection strikes us as an inherent conflict of interest, irrespective of what safeguards Griffon might claim were put in place. This deal has all the hallmarks of another instance of incestuous insider dealing.

We will be delivering to Griffon a books and records demand under Delaware law, requesting that they provide us with information that will allow us to further investigate the relevant facts and circumstances leading up to, and including, the process and diligence that led to the acquisition of Hunter Fan.

For the aforementioned reasons, this deal is wrong for Griffon shareholders. It exemplifies the long-standing issues with the current Board and provides yet another reason why shareholders should elect Voss Capital's qualified nominees at Griffon's upcoming annual meeting in February.

This year's vote represents an opportunity to finally add truly independent directors to the Griffon Board who will work to dissolve Griffon's outdated conglomerate structure and realize value for all shareholders  a process we estimate will yield over $45/share in net cash proceeds for Griffon shareholders.

This compares to the current status quo of allowing the management team to empire build, receive outlandish compensation and destroy shareholder value. It remains our steadfast view that poor corporate governance has been a key contributor to the flat Griffon stock price since 2005 and a -10% return for shareholders since January 2017. We hope our fellow shareholders will embrace a step in the right direction by electing our proposed slate in order to break away from the archaic boardroom culture at Griffon.

Stockholders can call Saratoga Proxy Consulting LLC at (212) 257-1311 or (888) 368-0379 if they have any questions with the voting process. The last day to buy stock and vote at the 2022 Annual Meeting would be Thursday, December 23rd.

We look forward to continuing our constructive dialogue with shareholders. If you wish to discuss this matter further, we can be reached at (832) 519-9427."

Media Contact:

Serena Koontz

Head of Investor Relations

Voss Capital, LLC

[email protected]

Investor Contact:

John Ferguson

Saratoga Proxy Consulting LLC

[email protected]

CERTAIN INFORMATION CONCERNING THE PARTICIPANTS

Voss Value Master Fund, LP, a Cayman Islands limited partnership ("Voss Value Master Fund"), together with the other participants named herein (collectively, "Voss"), intends to file a preliminary proxy statement and accompanying proxy card with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") to be used to solicit votes for the election of its slate of highly-qualified director nominees at the 2022 annual meeting of stockholders of Griffon Corporation, a Delaware corporation (the "Company").

VOSS STRONGLY ADVISES ALL STOCKHOLDERS OF THE COMPANY TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT AND OTHER PROXY MATERIALS AS THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. SUCH PROXY MATERIALS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT NO CHARGE ON THE SEC'S WEB SITE AT HTTP://WWW.SEC.GOV . IN ADDITION, THE PARTICIPANTS IN THIS PROXY SOLICITATION WILL PROVIDE COPIES OF THE PROXY STATEMENT WITHOUT CHARGE, WHEN AVAILABLE, UPON REQUEST.

The participants in the proxy solicitation are anticipated to be Voss Value Master Fund, Voss Value-Oriented Special Situation Fund, LP, a Delaware limited partnership ("Voss Value Special Situations Fund"), Voss Advisors GP, LLC, a Texas limited liability company ("Voss GP"), Voss Capital, LLC, a Texas limited liability company ("Voss Capital"), Travis W. Cocke, Gerry Bollman, H. C. Charles Diao and Leviathan Winn.

As of the date hereof, Voss Value Master Fund directly beneficially owns 750,000 shares of Common Stock, par value $0.25 per share, of the Company (the "Common Stock"), including 1,000 shares of Common Stock held in record name. As of the date hereof, Voss Value Special Situations Fund directly beneficially owns 129,122 shares of Common Stock. As the general partner of Voss Value Master Fund and Voss Value Special Situations Fund, Voss GP may be deemed to beneficially own the 879,122 shares of Common Stock beneficially owned in the aggregate by Voss Value Master Fund and Voss Value Special Situations Fund. As the investment manager of Voss Value Master Fund, Voss Value Special Situations Fund and a certain separately managed account (the "Voss Managed Account"), Voss Capital may be deemed to beneficially own the 1,279,122 shares of Common Stock beneficially owned in the aggregate by Voss Value Master Fund and Voss Value Special Situations and held in the Voss Managed Account. As the managing member of Voss Capital and Voss GP, Mr. Cocke may be deemed to beneficially own the 1,279,122 shares of Common Stock beneficially owned in the aggregate by Voss Value Master Fund and Voss Value Special Situations and held in the Voss Managed Account. As of the date hereof, none of Messrs. Bollman, Diao or Winn own beneficially or of record any securities of the Company.

1 http://ir.griffon.com/static-files/f7e354e2-a7ce-46de-b6e0-1a75f3e798ce

2 Griffon estimated it was paying "an approximate 9.4 times multiple of EBITDA from the first full fiscal year of operation," which would be Griffon's FY 2023

3 Both as of closing prices on Friday, Dec. 17, 2021

SOURCE Voss Capital
WILMINGTON, Del., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wilmington Trust, a leader in wealth management and corporate and institutional services, announced today that Dolly Donnelly has been hired as a wealth strategist for its Emerald Family Office and Advisory Services division.

Donnelly provides strategic and holistic wealth planning advice to high-net-worth individuals, entrepreneurs, executives, and their families by reviewing and illustrating any current plans, highlighting potential deficiencies, and modeling effective tax and estate planning strategies.

Donnelly's hire is one of many that Wilmington Trust recently announced across its business units. The firm has committed to adding a significant number of new professionals, thus expanding its expertise, and will be doubling the number of its client-facing colleagues over the next two years.

"Welcoming Dolly to our growing Emerald team brings a wealth of experiences she has in the estate, gift, and tax planning spheres to the work we do for our clients," said Alvina Lo, chief wealth strategist for Wilmington Trust. "Dolly's deep technical expertise and her ability to build connections, will help our clients prepare for the best, and in tandem prepare them for any obstacles that come their way and help them move forward on their financial and wealth journeys with confidence."

Prior to joining Wilmington Trust, Donnelly practiced law with Boylan Code LLP in Rochester, NY. In that role, she specialized in trusts and estates and counseled clients on estate planning and administration, as well as income, estate, and gift tax matters. Donnelly also provided guidance on long-term health care, Medicaid, and special needs. Earlier in her career, Donnelly worked in the public sector and with law firms in Washington, DC.

"What drew me to Wilmington Trust was the growing opportunities that the Emerald team is developing to help introduce clients to wealth planning strategies through a holistic perspective," said Donnelly. "Helping clients chart their courses toward greater financial security is a particularly satisfying endeavor for me."

Donnelly holds a JD from the University of Miami School of Law, where she was a member of the Law Review and the International Moot Court team, and a bachelor's degree in international affairs from George Washington University. She is admitted to the bar in New York and Florida, and is a member of the New York State, Monroe County, and Florida Bar Associations. Donnelly was named to the 2021 and 2022 editions of "Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch" for her work in trusts and estates.

ABOUT WILMINGTON TRUST

Wilmington Trust's Wealth Management offers a wide array of personal trust, planning, fiduciary, asset management, private banking, and family office services designed to help high-net-worth individuals and families grow, preserve, and transfer wealth. Wilmington Trust focuses on serving families with whom it can build long-term relationships, many of which span multiple generations.

Wilmington Trust also provides Corporate and Institutional Services for clients around the world.

Wilmington Trust has clients in all 50 states and numerous countries, with offices throughout the United States and internationally in London, Dublin, Paris, and Frankfurt. For more information, visit www.wilmingtontrust.com.

MEDIA CONTACT: Pat Fitzgibbons, Senior Public Relations Manager, Wilmington Trust

[email protected]

Wilmington Trust is a registered service mark used in connection with various fiduciary and non-fiduciary services offered by certain subsidiaries of M&T Bank Corporation including, but not limited to, Manufacturers & Traders Trust Company (M&T Bank), Wilmington Trust Company (WTC) operating in Delaware only, Wilmington Trust, N.A. (WTNA), Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors, Inc. (WTIA), Wilmington Funds Management Corporation (WFMC), and Wilmington Trust Investment Management, LLC (WTIM). Such services include trustee, custodial, agency, investment management, and other services. International corporate and institutional services are offered through M&T Bank Corporation's international subsidiaries. Loans, credit cards, retail and business deposits, and other business and personal banking services and products are offered by M&T Bank, member FDIC.

Wilmington Trust Emerald Family Office & Advisory is a service mark and refers to wealth planning, family office, specialized transaction, and other services provided by Wilmington Trust, N.A., a member of the M&T family.

This publication is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the sale of any financial product. Investors should seek financial advice regarding the suitability of investment strategies based on their objectives, financial situations, and particular needs.

Investments:  Are NOT FDIC Insured  Have NO Bank Guarantee  May Lose Value

2021 M&T Bank Corporation and its subsidiaries. All rights reserved.

SOURCE Wilmington Trust
MARSHALL, Texas, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Texas Public Utility Commission has cleared the way for litigation to proceed against Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy Services with a series of orders affirming that the agency does not have jurisdiction to make common law determinations about the meaning of customer contracts or determine attorney's fees, interests, and penalties.

The orders were issued in response to multiple customer complaints filed against MidAmerican with the PUC that allege the electricity supplier passed through unauthorized "Supplemental Ancillary Charges" during the February 2021 winter storm to commercial customers that held fixed-rate contracts.

The rulings signal that current class action litigation filed against MidAmerican in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas should move forward. In response, in a December 21, 2021 court filing, MidAmerican withdrew the company's request to dismiss the class action litigation.



That class currently includes thousands of Texas businesses with overcharge claims estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The PUC's orders state:

"As a creature of statute, the Commission's powers and duties are limited to those that the Legislature expressly conferred on it through statute and the implied powers that are reasonably necessary to accomplish the Commission's express responsibilities. The Commission does not have the authority to make common-law determinations regarding contracts."

"Although the Commission has been expressly delegated authority to grant some remedies (such as ordering charges or refunds to resolve billing disputes), the Commission does not have authority to order some forms of relief available in courts of law, such as awarding attorney's fees, court costs, or damages under contract law. Those types of relief must be sought before a court of competent jurisdiction."

"The PUC's orders are very significant in that they dismiss the key portion of MidAmerican's legal argument against the validity of our class action case," says Derek Potts of the Potts Law Firm in Houston. "The company has tried to bypass state regulations that protect residential and small business customers by taking advantage of and price-gouging thousands of Texas commercial customers. The PUC rightfully has found that the consequences of those unlawful actions should be heard in a court of law, and we look forward to that opportunity in the coming months."

The litigation alleges violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, among other claims for breach of contract, negligence and misrepresentation.

Media Contact:

Barry Pound

800-559-4534

[email protected]

SOURCE Potts Law Firm
GUANGZHOU, China, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The World Intelligent Vehicle Conference 2021 was held in Nansha, Guangzhou on December 16-17. Organized by the International Cooperation Center of the National Development and Reform Commission, The People's Government of Guangzhou Municipality, and Asia Digital Group, and undertaken by Guangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission, Nansha District People's Government of Guangzhou Municipality, and ADG Expo Co., Ltd., the two-day World Intelligent Vehicle Conference 2021 drew over 100 domestic and foreign government representatives, experts and scholars, business leaders, investment representatives, etc. Centering on the theme of "A New Chapter of ICV", participants delivered speeches at the opening ceremony and main conference, 10 parallel forums, and a range of outfield activities. Participants discussed the latest trends in the global intelligent vehicle field, and the future of the intelligent vehicle industry.

Join hands to create a blueprint for the future

We observe an irresistible trend in the evolution of the automotive sector when intelligent vehicles become the highlight, a hot topic and the focus. When resources are pooled together, accelerated exploration and development become a foregone conclusion. It becomes all the more important to pool wisdom and pick the best course of action.

At the opening ceremony and main conference of the World Intelligent Vehicle Conference 2021, the leaders of the National Development and Reform Commission and The People's Government of Guangzhou Municipality delivered speeches. Liu Jianxing, deputy director of the International Cooperation Center of the National Development and Reform Commission; Dong Ke, director of Nansha District, Guangzhou; Hugo Shong, Founding Chairman of IDG Capital; Zhu Dongfang, president of Asia Digital Group; Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an expert in new energy power system; Shi Dinghuan, a former counselor of the State Council, former Secretary-General of the Ministry of Science and Technology, chairman of The Investment Association of ChinaIAC, chairman of the World Green Design Organization; Liu Yan, deputy Secretary-General of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM); Gu Yu, a professor of the Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RANS); Dong Yang, China EV100 Vice Chairman; Wu Song, executive vice president of GAC Group Co., Ltd.; Wang Xiaogang, president of Mobile Intelligence Group, Co-founder, SenseTime; Han Xu, founder & CEO of WeRide; Huang Hongsheng, founder of Skyworth Group and Chairman of Skywell New Energy Automobile Group; Liu Junfeng, vice president of iFLYTEK Co.Ltd.general manager of Automotive BU, iFLYTEKand general manager of Galaxy Autotech. Co.,Ltd; He Kaixin, vice-president & CTO of HYCAN Automotive Technology Co.,Ltd; Li Hengyu, vice president of Pony.ai and Head of Pony.ai's Robotruck Business Unit; Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council; Karl Fuchs, vice president, Innovation & Technology China, Continental, and other important guests shared their opinions and suggestions for development.

Hugo Shong gave a keynote address via video link, stating that the intelligent vehicle industry has the characteristics of high capital and technology added value, strong influence on other areas, etc., and occupies an important strategic position in the global market. As an investor, IDG Capital aspires to foster more innovative unicorn companies. It is hoped that representatives would brainstorm and build consensus, as well as cooperate and work hard in areas such as building an internationally influential auto brand, enhancing chip supply, and application in certain scenarios.

Ouyang Minggao stated his hope in the speech that the concept of intelligent vehicles be extended to intelligent automobiles in a broad sense, promoting the intelligent revolution in an all-round way. Becoming intelligent is the most important means for all-round automotive innovation. The World Intelligent Vehicle Conference is held in Guangzhou, a city in the Greater Bay Area. It is a suitable location. The Greater Bay Area is the most dynamic place for technological innovation, as well as a prominent area for economic development, reform and opening up. It has benefits in terms of competent personnel and industries, especially in sectors related to intelligent vehicles. I believe that the World Intelligent Vehicle Conference held here will help the Greater Bay Area play a major role in promoting the development of intelligent vehicles and the application of artificial intelligence to vehicles.

Gu Yu delivered a speech entitled "The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence Technology: from 'Perceptual Intelligence' to 'Cognitive Intelligence'". Because smart devices are driven by the human mind, the vehicles are now called man-machine interaction, rather than man-machine fusion. The goal of man-machine fusion is to fully integrate the human and the machine. Perception is a type of perception that people obtain by gathering these things and processing with their brains. The process by which people use, comprehend, and develop knowledge is known as cognition. The two are not the same. The vehicle will be truly intelligent if we get from perceptual intelligence to cognitive intelligence one day.

In the speech entitled "The Selection of "Decarbonization" Track for Auto Enterprises to Achieve Dual Carbon Goals", Wu Song remarked that the "dual-carbon" goals are promoting the automotive vehicles to become intelligent, connected and electrically powered. As vehicles become electrically powered, the industrial chain is decarbonized, necessitating a greater emphasis on a well-coordinated low-carbon supply chain. New energy vehicles are increasingly being integrated into the green energy ecosystem. GAC Group is forging ahead with the Green Low-carbon for Achieving Sustainable Success (GLASS) plan. The investment focus will shift from transforming traditional vehicles into hybrid vehicles to new energy intelligent connected vehicles.

The intelligent vehicle development and cooperation are discussed from a global perspective. Jim Wunderman gave a speech via video link. He pointed out that the Bay Area is not only one of the fastest-growing regions for new energy vehicle market, but also a region for the robust development of the new energy vehicle industry. The Bay Area is where the future of the intelligent vehicle industry lies.

Cornerstone of the industry

At the opening ceremony and the main conference, heavy-hitter attendees addressed the top-level plans for intelligent vehicles. Guests shared insights and views on different areas from different perspectives at the parallel forums.

At the ten parallel forums, that is, " R&D and Application of Global Key Technologies of ICV", "Chinese Vehicles Stand Out the World by Auto Vision China", "Softwares Boost International Competitiveness", "Improve IOV with Data Security and Regulations", "Explore the Development of Independent Brand Vehicles", "Exploration of Business Application for Autonomous Driving", "A New Journey of Dual Carbon Goals for Vehicles", "Cooperative Vehicle Infrastructure Leads the Development of Autonomous Driving", "Development Opportunity of ICV and Supply Chain in Greater Bay Area", and "Evolution and Future Trend Market of New Energy Vehicles", participates shared insightful thoughts about the intelligent vehicle industry, brainstormed solutions, and analyzed critical issues and important trend.

At the conference, we can sense the pulse of global development, and see Guangzhou's development speed. Guangzhou is working to promote the large-scale development of intelligent vehicles and new energy vehicles. In 2020, Guangzhou ranked first in China in the automotive industry, with a total output value of 586.026 billion yuan. From January to November 2021, its total output value increased by 3.3 percent, to 538.303 billion yuan. Over 120,000 new energy vehicles were registered, an increase of 81.9 percent. Guangzhou boasts 13 national and provincial technology and manufacturing innovation centers in the automotive industry. It ranks top in China in terms of test open section mileage, road test licenses for autonomous driving, 5G base stations, among other things. It is the first Chinese city to recognize intelligent vehicle road test licenses from other regions. Nansha District in Guangzhou is in a league of its own in the automobile sector, with Huangge International Auto Town in the north, the Pearl Bay Intelligent Connected Vehicle Innovation Zone in the central region, and the Wanqingsha Intelligent Connected Vehicle Industrial Park in the south. It has formed a development pattern in which GAC Toyota is the leader, new energy vehicles are the extension, and intelligent networked vehicles are the expanded area. The car production capacity has topped 800,000 units, and the output value has surpassed 100 billion yuan for four straight years. It is stepping up a gear to establish a new 100 billion yuan-level new energy vehicle industrial cluster.

Furthermore, the Industrial Development Closed-door Meeting of the World Intelligent Vehicle Conference 2021 was also held. Experts, scholars, investors, entrepreneurs and others discussed the planning of the intelligent vehicle industry in Guangzhou in the areas such as intelligent vehicle ecosystem industry chain, and intelligent manufacturing, and made suggestions for the future development of Nansha automobile cluster.

A new chapter of ICV

World Intelligent Vehicle Conference is a multi-faceted platform, presenting ideas and wisdom, as well as opportunities.

At the conference site, the exhibits include the latest models, technologies, and products, presenting a wealth of innovative intelligent vehicle products with breakthroughs and high application value, such as electric vehicles, sensors, chips, computing platforms, autonomous driving solutions, V2X communications, and artificial intelligence. The " Research Report of Intelligent Vehicle Industry 2021" examines the current state and future trends of the intelligent vehicle industry in five sections: plan for the intelligent vehicle industry, intelligent vehicles application scenarios and business models, global development status of intelligent vehicles, industrial cooperation and investment, and outlook and practice towards 2030. Moreover, the Intelligent Vehicle Industry Awards 2021 was presented in five categories: WIV Intelligent Vehicle Technology Innovation Award, WIV Intelligent Networking Innovation Award, WIV Intelligent Transport Innovation Award, WIV Intelligent Vehicle Brand Innovation Award, and WIV Superior Service of Intelligent Vehicle Industry Award.

As an important outfield activity of the World Intelligent Vehicle Conference for attracting investment to Guangzhou, the Project Matchmaking Business Meeting aims to integrate and utilize project information, build a cooperation platform, increase services, facilitate the communications between governments, enterprises, and investment institutions, promote project cooperation, and attract more high-quality projects to Guangzhou. At the same time, this conference also demonstrates the introduction of competent personnel in the field of intelligent vehicles. Leading brands of intelligent vehicles expressed demand for high-end professional talents in the course of beneficial development.

The World Intelligent Vehicle Conference 2021 has concluded successfully, but it has provided ideas, clarified the development direction of the industry, promoted diverse exchanges, and fostered extensive cooperation, all of which give an impetus to the development of the intelligent vehicle industry.

SOURCE Asia Digital Group

Related Links

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"We are proud of the philanthropic spirit fostered by Zoot employees" Tweet this

As part of its corporate giving initiatives, Zoot matches employee donations to the non-profits of their choice each year. In 2021, the company match included charitable contributions to over 40 employee-supported organizations.

"We are proud of the philanthropic spirit fostered by Zoot employees," said Travis Tuss, Zoot Enterprises EVP of Sales and Marketing and Grant Committee Member. "They are making a difference in their communities, and we are honored to support their efforts."

In addition to its employee-match program, Zoot's Community Grant Program helps fund local organizations and causes. The program emphasizes support for organizations focused on sustaining the arts, encouraging entrepreneurship and STEM education, advancing community character initiatives, offering vibrant youth programs or providing direct assistance.

In 2021, the employee-led Zoot Community Grant Committee awarded funding to 14 organizations and anticipates providing grants to 15-20 non-profit causes in 2022.

Overall, Zoot's charitable efforts support a diverse range of programs. Over the past 30 years, the company has provided financial support to more than 350 non-profit organizations.

"Zoot promotes individual and company-wide community-building efforts to help enhance the quality of life across Montana," continued Tuss. "Our roots are here and making a difference in the place we call home is at the core of our mission."

Non-profit organizations are encouraged to apply for grants. Applications are reviewed quarterly, and approved funding is distributed soon after. Visit the Zoot philanthropy page for more information.

About Zoot

Zoot Enterprises, Inc. is a global provider of advanced origination, acquisition and decision management solutions for financial institutions. We offer comprehensive and flexible platforms for specific business needs that include loan origination, fraud detection and prevention, data acquisition and more. https://zootsolutions.com/

MEDIA CONTACT

Amy Gitchell

Zoot Enterprises, Inc.

[email protected]

SOURCE Zoot Enterprises

Related Links

https://zootsolutions.com/

www.zootweb.com


LAS VEGAS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AAA20Group, LLC, a subscription-based robotic solutions leader, predicts that their automation solution could play a key role in attracting young innovators. In addition to attracting top talent, specialized palletizing robotics leased from AAA20Group can reduce capital requirements and lower fixed costs. A significant cost-saving potential can be realized in nearly any packaging line that requires end-of-line palletizing. As a leader in the nascent Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model, AAA20Group provides a method for lowering the barrier to entry for customers seeking robotic automation.

Robotics can change the perception of manufacturing.

Many young, well-educated job seekers wish to begin their careers in the latest digital-based industries. For the lucky few, a position at Google or Facebook is a great place to launch a career. But not every young person will enjoy such an opportunity. Manufacturing, which was once the darling of the U.S. economy, is perceived by many as dirty, outdated, and environmentally damaging. For manufacturers, the integration of robotics and advanced automation can add an attractive spin on new jobs. AAA20Group offers an economical way for businesses to benefit from robotics, which can help attract and retain top, young talent.

According to Karen Mallouk, Co-Founder of Las Vegas, NV-based AAA20 Group, LLC, "many millennials see manufacturing and packaging as a staid and uninteresting career path. But the addition of robotics and automation to the manufacturing process can expose young professionals to new and interesting technologies". In addition to attracting top talent, robotics can reduce labor costs and eliminate the prohibitive cost of equipment ownership.

Mallouk adds, "growing companies can attract better help by offering higher-level, automation-focused challenges." AAA20 offers a unique, risk-free opportunity for operations to benefit from world-class collaborative robotics for their palletizing process.

About AAA20 Group, LLC

AAA20 Group, LLC is a privately held company headquartered in Las Vegas, NV. The company provides collaborative robotic equipment solutions used in the flexible packaging industry. Proven automation industry leaders manufacture the robots offered by AAA20 for lease. More about AAA20 Group collaborative palletizers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8GvxE4c4Po

Corporate contact:

Karen Mallouk, Co-Founder

10241 Kirkwood Gaps Ave.

Las Vegas, NV 89135 USA

(847) 220-6733

https://collaborativepalletizer.com

[email protected]

Media contact:

Robert Goldberg

StartupFactory, LLC

[email protected]

SOURCE AAA20Group, LLC
BOSTON and SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Encora, a global digital engineering services company specializing in software product development services for fast-growing enterprises and digitally-native companies and Advent International ("Advent"), a leading global private equity firm, today announced that Advent has acquired a majority stake in Encora's business. As part of the agreement, Warburg Pincus, the existing majority shareholder of Encora, retains a minority stake.

"We are thrilled to enter into this partnership with Advent as we continue to scale our differentiated software engineering service offerings," said Venu Raghavan, chief executive officer, Encora. "Advent's deep business and technology services sector expertise, along with its global footprint, complements Encora's strengths and creates opportunities to grow our business in key markets around the world. Warburg Pincus has been a great partner to us over the last two and a half years, accelerating our rapid growth to a valuation of approximately $1.5B. We look forward to continuing to work alongside them in this next phase of growth."

Encora is an established leader in outsourced software product development services, using deep technical expertise in machine learning, AI, data science, cloud services and other next-generation digital engineering disciplines to accelerate strategic innovation for tech-enabled companies whose market position and growth are driven by proprietary software products. Since rebranding as Encora in 2020, the Company has expanded its focus within the Consumer Tech and Enterprise Tech sectors, and grown its global talent pool to over 6,300 associates across 40 global offices across LatAm, India, APAC and the U.S.

"We have seen tremendous growth in the digital technology services sector over the past few years, as the need for strong technology products has escalated across industries," said Shweta Jalan, managing director at Advent. Jan Janshen, managing partner at Advent, also said, "we believe Encora is well positioned to capitalize on the growing digital services market, and we are excited to partner with Venu, Encora's talented management team, and Warburg Pincus to support the company's growth in key markets across North America, Europe, India, Asia Pacific and Latin America, where Advent has a strong presence and domain expertise."

This new partnership enables Encora to accelerate its global growth, both organically and through targeted M&A opportunities, expand its differentiated delivery model and advance its customer-facing digital services. Encora continues to focus on serving the software and digital engineering needs of enterprise SaaS companies, midmarket technology companies, and large enterprises.

"Encora has built an industry leading position, driven by its sharp customer focus and ability to attract high quality technology talent across the globe," said Steven Glenn, managing director, chief financial officer and chief operating officer, Warburg Pincus. "Advent is a great addition to the team and we look forward to continuing to support Encora's bright future."

Advent, with $81 billion in assets as of June 30, 2021, has invested in over 380 companies across 42 countries, throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. It has significant investment experience in both the business and technology services sectors and in the key markets where Encora operates.

J.P. Morgan acted as exclusive financial advisor to Encora in connection with the transaction and Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati LLP served as legal advisor. Credit Suisse acted as financial advisor and Weil, Gotshtal & Manges LLP served as legal advisor to Advent.

About Encora

Headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ, Encora is an established leader in software and digital engineering services, specializing in innovation acceleration for leading edge technology companies. Encora has over 6,300 associates in 40+ offices and innovation labs across U.S., Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, India, and Asia Pacific. Encora's global talent pool, micro-industry vertical expertise and proprietary agile engineering capabilities enable clients to improve their speed to impact.

For more information, please visit

Website: www.encora.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/encorainc

About Advent International

Founded in 1984, Advent International is one of the largest and most experienced global private equity investors. The firm has invested in over 380 companies across 42 countries, and as of June 30, 2021, had $81 billion in assets under management. With 15 offices in 12 countries, Advent has established a globally integrated team of over 245 investment professionals across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on investments in five core sectors, including business and financial services; health care; industrial; retail, consumer and leisure; and technology. After more than 35 years dedicated to international investing, Advent remains committed to partnering with management teams to deliver sustained revenue and earnings growth for its portfolio companies.

For more information, please visit

Website: www.adventinternational.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/advent-international

About Warburg Pincus

Warburg Pincus LLC is a leading global growth investor. The firm has more than $67 billion in private equity assets under management. The firm's active portfolio of more than 215 companies is highly diversified by stage, sector, and geography. Warburg Pincus is an experienced partner to management teams seeking to build durable companies with sustainable value. Founded in 1966, Warburg Pincus has raised 20 private equity funds, which have invested more than $97 billion in over 960 companies in more than 40 countries. The firm is headquartered in New York with offices in Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Mauritius, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Singapore.

For more information please visit

Website: www.warburgpincus.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/warburg-pincus/

SOURCE Encora
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Several of the country's leading agricultural cooperatives are mobilizing to provide support to customers, families, team members and communities impacted by the devastating tornadoes and severe weather that swept the South and Midwest on December 11.

AgFirst, CoBank, Farm Credit East, Farm Credit Illinois, Farm Credit Mid-America, Farm Credit Services of America, Farm Credit of Western Arkansas, Land O'Lakes, Inc. and Rural 1st have committed nearly $700,000 to national, state and local charities to assist families and communities impacted by these catastrophic events.

"The impact of this disaster is severe and is being felt at national, state and local levels," said Derrick Waggoner, regional president, CoBank. "CoBank and our partners have responded with a package of contributions benefitting a wide array of relief efforts. We hope that our donations will help to alleviate some of the most immediate suffering and provide support for long-term recovery efforts."

Among the beneficiaries are the American Red Cross, Feeding America, the Kentucky Agriculture Relief Fund, the Kentucky Rural Electric Disaster Fund, the Tennessee Farm Disaster Response Fund, the Mayfield Tornado Relief Fund and Rotary International in Dresden, Tennessee.

"As a federated cooperative system, our ownership network touches communities all across the country including those devastated by the December storms. While natural disasters like this leave behind indescribable pain and challenges, the recovery efforts underscore what we as cooperatives do best: come together," said Brett Bruggeman, Land O'Lakes, Inc. Executive Vice President & President, WinField United. "With cooperative partners, we're working to support our owners and their communities as they start to rebuild what was lost."

The devastation of these storms spread across six Midwest states, leaving unprecedented damage. Residents in Kentucky and Tennessee were among those most severely impacted by the severe weather. Cooperatives continue to identify impacted customers and are working to understand how best to meet their immediate and long-term needs.

"We are grieving with our customers and communities who lost so much and working diligently to find solutions for the obstacles ahead," said Mark Barker, senior vice president of agricultural lending for Farm Credit Mid-America in Kentucky. "Alongside their communities, we have customers who have experienced significant loss of personal property and businesses. While we are still learning about the full extent of the damage and loss, Farm Credit Mid-America and our fellow cooperatives are committed to being long-term partners to help our customers get back on their feet."

As part of their contributions, several of these cooperatives are also matching individual contributions made by their employees to organizations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army. In addition, CoBank will offer a $100,000 matching fund for its customers who donate to tornado relief efforts. Information on the matching fund will be provided directly to CoBank customers in the next few days.

About CoBank

CoBank is a $155 billion cooperative bank serving vital industries across rural America. The bank provides commercial loans, leases, export financing and other financial services to agribusinesses and rural power, water and communications providers in all 50 states. The bank also provides wholesale loans and other financial services to affiliated Farm Credit associations serving more than 75,000 farmers, ranchers and other rural borrowers in 23 states around the country. CoBank is a member of the Farm Credit System, a nationwide network of banks and retail lending associations chartered to support the borrowing needs of U.S. agriculture, rural infrastructure and rural communities.

About Land O'Lakes

Land O'Lakes, Inc., one of America's premier agribusiness and food companies, is a member-owned cooperative with industry-leading operations that span the spectrum from agricultural production to consumer foods. With 2020 annual sales of $14 billion, Land O'Lakes is one of the nation's largest cooperatives, ranking 219 on the Fortune 500. Building on a legacy of more than 100 years of operation, Land O'Lakes today operates some of the most respected brands in agribusiness and food production including Land O'Lakes Dairy Foods, Purina Animal Nutrition, WinField United and Truterra. The company does business in all 50 states and more than 60 countries. Land O'Lakes, Inc. corporate headquarters are located in Arden Hills, Minnesota.

About Farm Credit Mid-America

Farm Credit Mid-America is a financial services cooperative that has served the credit needs of farmers and rural residents across Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee for more than a century. Backed by the strength of more than $28.8 billion in assets, Farm Credit Mid-America provides loans for real estate, operating, equipment, housing and related services such as crop insurance and vehicle, equipment and building leases. For more information, call 1-800-444-FARM or visit www.e-farmcredit.com.

SOURCE Farm Credit Mid-America
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The following statement is attributable to:

American Hospital Association

American Medical Association

American Nurses Association

"For nearly two years, our nation's physicians, nurses and other health care professionals have seen firsthand the tragic impact of COVID-19 on the patients and colleagues they have lost as well as those suffering from the virus' long-term effects and the families and loved ones left behind.

"For people trained to save lives, this moment is frustrating, exhausting and heartbreaking.

"As the Delta variant and new Omicron variant contribute to a rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations across the county, we double-down on our call for all eligible Americans to get vaccinated and to get their booster shots. Science has shown that receiving a booster shot decreases your chance of contracting COVID-19, getting severely sick, ending up in the hospital or dying. As families get together for the holidays, now is the time to do your part to protect yourself, your loved ones, and your community.

"Protecting yourself against COVID-19, through vaccination and public health measures such as wearing face masks and physical distancing, will also help ensure that our health care system is able to provide care to all who need it. Our member physicians, nurses and other health care professionals thank you and wish you a healthy and happy holiday season."

About the American Hospital Association

The American Hospital Association (AHA) is a not-for-profit association of health care provider organizations and individuals that are committed to the health improvement of their communities. The AHA advocates on behalf of our nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations, our clinician partners  including more than 270,000 affiliated physicians, 2 million nurses and other caregivers  and the 43,000 health care leaders who belong to our professional membership groups. Founded in 1898, the AHA provides insight and education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends. For more information, visit the AHA website at www.aha.org.

About the American Medical AssociationThe American Medical Association is the physicians' powerful ally in patient care. As the only medical association that convenes 190+ state and specialty medical societies and other critical stakeholders, the AMA represents physicians with a unified voice to all key players in health care. The AMA leverages its strength by removing the obstacles that interfere with patient care, leading the charge to prevent chronic disease and confront public health crises and, driving the future of medicine to tackle the biggest challenges in health care.

About the American Nurses Association

The American Nurses Association (ANA) is the premier organization representing the interests of the nation's 4.3 million registered nurses. ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting a safe and ethical work environment, bolstering the health and wellness of nurses, and advocating on health care issues that affect nurses and the public. ANA is at the forefront of improving the quality of health care for all. For high-resolution images of the ANA logo or photos of ANA leadership, please click here.

SOURCE American Hospital Association
OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Catchword is thrilled to announce that Allergan VUITY, the first and only eye drop to treat presbyopia (age-related blurry near vision), has been approved by the FDA and is now available by prescription. Catchword created the name for the medication and for pHast, the technology used to deliver it.

VUITY (pilocarpine HCL ophthalmic solution 1.25%) is a once-daily prescription eye drop that works in as soon as 15 minutes and lasts up to 6 hours to improve near and intermediate vision in adults with presbyopia without impacting distance vision.

Image courtesy of Allergan

"VUITY represents an eyesight revolution for millions of people around the world," said Catchword principal Mark Skoultchi. "We couldn't be more proud to have named it."

Presbyopia untreated in 128 million Americans until now

Presybopia, the age-related inability to focus on near objects, is a progressive condition that affects nearly half the US adult population. Presbyopia can be diagnosed by an eye doctor, but is usually left untreated as an inevitable part of getting older. Until now.

Allergan VUITY is an optimized formulation of pilocarpine, an established eye care therapeutic, and is delivered with proprietary technology that allows the eye drop to rapidly equilibrate to the pH of the tear film. It uses the eye's own ability to reduce pupil size, improving near vision without affecting distance vision. This new method eliminates the discomfort and blurry vision associated with existing means of delivering pilocarpine.

The story behind the names

Allergan turned to frequent naming partner Catchword to develop a name for this first-of-its-kind product as well as the pH-sensitive ingredient technology.

The name VUITY was created to easily and instantly express the solution's ability to improve viewing acuity while recalling the phrase "view it," explained Catchword co-founder and creative director Maria Cypher. "It's a short, user-friendly name, easy to spell and saythat's no small feat in pharmaceutical namingand works equally well for English-speaking and international audiences."

The ingredient technology name pHast, a slightly altered spelling of "fast," communicates the method's fast pH equilibration. Short and easy to remember, the name balances scientific and common vocabulary, appealing to both doctors and consumers.

Catchword, a trusted leader in branding with deep expertise in naming was founded in 1998. From its offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, and Denver, Catchword helps companiesfrom startups to Fortune 50sdefine, refine, and express who they are and what they offer. Catchword has created brands such as Asana, Upwork, Hitachi Vantara, Intel Arc, Corning Fibrance, and Starbucks Refreshers.

Catchword

409 13th Street, 12th Floor

Tribune Tower

Oakland, CA 94612

Twitter: @Catchword

LinkedIn

More Vuity & Allergan media available at https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8969851-allergan-abbvie-vuity-now-available/

Media Contact:

Erin Milnes

415.559.1157

[email protected]

SOURCE Catchword Branding
DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Europe Coin-operated Laundries Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Application (Residential, Commercial), By Country (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Russia), And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Europe's coin-operated laundries market size is anticipated to reach USD 7.5 billion by 2028. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.1% from 2021 to 2028. The industry has undergone a revolution. Laundromats are no longer dingy, unsafe, and tedious places that customers must endure on a weekly basis, and have instead become fun and attractive multiservice centers that customers may even enjoy visiting. Modern-day businesses have snack bars, a place to leave off and pick up dry cleaning, and video games. Some of them even use additional methods of payments instead of exclusively being dependent on coins. Many laundry owners also employ attendants to keep an eye on the store and help customers use the equipment.



In addition, owners have realized that they can maximize their profits by providing customers with access to multiple services. Since they pay a set amount of rent on their commercial space, they have started to use that space to its fullest potential. Coin-operated laundry firms are located in apartment housing and are referred to as multi-housing laundry businesses or route laundry businesses. These businesses thrive in periods of both growth and recession. During periods of recession, when homeownership decreases, the self-service laundry market expands as more people are unable to afford to repair, replace, or purchase new washers and dryers, or as they move to apartment housing with inadequate or nonexistent laundry facilities. The market size grows proportionately to the increase in population.



Moreover, most hotels, hostels, and temporary lodging establishments offer coin-operated laundry services for their guests. Hotels often have an agreement that lets guests use laundromat services. In January 2021, Springboard Hospitality expanded its roster of Hawaii properties with the addition of Ohia Waikiki Studio Suites. The studio suit, along with offering 251 apartment-style accommodations, full kitchens, pool, bar, and restaurant, also offers coin-operated laundry facilities. Similarly, in November 2020, 304-room Marriott Tacoma Downtown was inaugurated, which, along with various facilities, also offers coin-operated laundry services.



Furthermore, Hybrid card-op laundry payment allows one to audit the amount of both coin and card sales in each of the machines. As money boxes near capacity, the one gets alerted by email and schedule the right time to have them emptied. Along with this, with an accurate system of accounting for machines, the collections get correctly deposited. Hybrid coin-and-card systems allow one to take the complexity out of dealing entirely with coins alone and save time. As a result, the acceptance of payment through various different channels can increase the traction and contribute to the growth of the industry.



Also, even though the COVID-19 pandemic is on the decline in terms of its impact, its economic impact continues to spread. From laundry businesses having to close down temporarily to closing up shop completely, the ripple effects that the outbreak has had and will continue to have on the national and global economies are unprecedented. For many Europeans, it was routine to run a quick wash at the local laundromat after coming home from work. However, with many Europeans still working from home, the need to go out and use these services has declined.



Europe Coin-operated Laundries Market Report Highlights

The market is expected to witness a CAGR of 9.1% from 2021 to 2028

The residential application segment accounted for the largest revenue share of 80.5% in 2020

Germany held the largest revenue share of 17.1% in 2020

Companies Mentioned

Elis SA

COLAN Cordoba

Quesada Laundry Service

WASH' N DRY ( LAVERIE LIBRE SERVICE )

) TECNITRAMO

REMBLI

LAVANDERIA LAVISA

Broomfield Launderette

Girbau

Johnson Service Group PLC

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1. Methodology and Scope

1.1. Market Segmentation & Scope

1.2. Market Definition

1.3. Information Procurement

1.4. Information Analysis

1.5. Market Formulation & Data Visualization

1.6. Data Validation & Publishing



Chapter 2. Executive Summary

2.1. Market Outlook

2.2. Application Outlook

2.3. Country Insights



Chapter 3. Europe Coin-operated Laundries Market Variables, Trends & Scope

3.1. Market Introduction

3.2. Penetration & Growth Prospect Mapping

3.3. Industry Value Chain Analysis

3.3.1. Retail Chain Analysis

3.3.2. Profit Margin Analysis

3.4. Market Dynamics

3.5. Business Environment Analysis

3.5.1. Industry Analysis - Porter's

3.6. Roadmap of Europe Coin-Operated Laundry Market

3.7. Market Entry Strategies

3.8. Impact of COVID-19 on the Europe Coin-Operated Laundry Market



Chapter 4. Consumer Behavior Analysis

4.1. Consumer Trends and Preferences

4.2. Factors Affecting Buying Decision

4.3. Consumer Product Adoption

4.4. Observations & Recommendations



Chapter 5. Europe Coin-Operated Laundry Market: Application Estimates & Trend Analysis

5.1. Application Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2018 & 2025

5.2. Residential

5.3. Commercial



Chapter 6. Europe Coin-Operated Laundry Market: Regional Estimates & Trend Analysis

6.1. Regional Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2018 & 2025

6.2. Europe

6.2.3. Germany

6.2.4. UK

6.2.5. France

6.2.6. Spain

6.2.7. Italy

6.2.8. Russia



Chapter 7. Competitive Analysis

7.1. Key global players, recent developments & their impact on the industry

7.2. Key Company/Competition Categorization (Key innovators, Market leaders, Emerging players)

7.3. Vendor Landscape

7.3.1. Key company market share analysis, 2020



Chapter 8. Company Profiles



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/g45lfs

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


While lines for testing and lack of supply have made the headlines, GENETWORx, a national laboratory and healthcare services company, announced today that it currently has testing capacity from previous investment in infrastructure to help meet the demand for testing and assist both corporations and individuals.

"We started out as a national laboratory and, early in the pandemic, we invested in developing significant capacity for COVID-19 testing to build on what we already had," said Steven Crossley, Head of Strategy for GENETWORx. "Since 2020, we have been adding tests, services, infrastructure, and technology which has led to expertise and innovation in all areas of the COVID-19 testing space, with particular emphasis in corporate testing."

GENETWORx' specialization in corporate testing includes successful ongoing testing programs at Fortune 500 employers, universities, assisted living facilities, state and government organizations, small businesses and K-12 schools. The company also developed, in partnership with Nucleus Healthcare, an app that ties together all aspects of the testing program in a comprehensive digital management system. The app was built on a software platform called Aura which provides results record keeping and reporting that can be used for managing state and federal compliance requirements as well as allowing patients or providers to easily access test results from an online portal. For more information on GENETWORx corporate testing programs, call (844)277-3284.

Individuals who need COVID-19 testing immediately, with or without symptoms, can order rapid antigen tests delivered to homes or businesses for $49. The DIY COVID-19 test kits are available to both adults and minors with results available while in the comfort of your home within fifteen minutes. The kits contain two pre-filled test collection tubes and two nasal swabs which are sent via complimentary Fed Ex delivery within two business days of order. To learn more or order a test kit, visit our website here.

Additionally, individuals and organizations in New York City (345 Park Avenue South, New York, NY) or in suburban Philadelphia (650 Carnegie Blvd, Malvern, PA 19355) can get tested for COVID-19 at Test Now and Go collection sites open to the public. Each test is administered by a collection specialist and processed by GENETWORx. Businesses can also arrange a block of scheduled tests for their workers at Test Now and Go. Additionally, individuals can book their own Test Now and Go appointments here. These locations offer rapid antigen and rapid PCR tests in under 30 minutes and traditional PCR tests with results in 12-24 hours. Insurance reimbursement for COVID-19 tests is subject to specific health plan terms. GENETWORx can provide an itemized receipt for services if you wish to submit a claim for reimbursement. For more information or to schedule an appointment, visit testnowandgo.com .

GENETWORx has performed over 8.5 million COVID-19 tests since the pandemic first began.

GENETWORx is a fully integrated CAP accredited laboratory which is certified according to the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA) for high complexity molecular testing. In addition to COVID-19 testing, the company also provides pharmacogenomic DNA genotyping and infectious disease testing. The laboratory offers an all-in-one combination influenza/COVID-19/RSV test , a PCR saliva test, and antibody testing for the COVID-19 virus. Please visit Genetworx.com for further information and follow us on Linked In . For media interviews contact: Terri C. Malenfant at [email protected].

SOURCE GENETWORx
FORT WORTH, Texas, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SwiftCheck, a leading provider of background screening services, today announced the opening of a new office in 4500 Mercantile Plaza, Suite 300, Fort Worth Texas, to better meet the needs of clients in both the Central and Pacific time zones.

SwiftCheck Fort Worth Location

Plans to develop operations in Fort Worth, Texas, were initiated by a client-growth in the states of Texas, Arizona and California. Post-pandemic hiring and background screening volume demand have spurred the need for additional resources industry-wide. The additional location will further support both client growth and customer service to clients beyond Eastern time zones.

"The opening of SwiftCheck's new Fort Worth, Texas office is an important step towards providing our clients nationwide with a premier customer service experience that they have come to expect," said Aaron Cotter, Director of Sales. "The new location will be the first of many important changes in 2022 due to an influx of background screening demand and our high standards for customer service."

The new office is expected to support customer service and generate new sales of employment background screening services.

About SwiftCheck

Headquartered in Cranberry Township, PA, SwiftCheck saw major issues with background check companies and set to change it for employers. We have worked to circumvent issues such as slow turnaround-times, HR technology needs, compliance issues and more. We set to change the industry and give employers what they really want: a swift, technology driven, accurate background check report. For more information about SwiftCheck, please visit our website at: www.swiftcheckscreening.com

Media Contact

Aaron Cotter

Director of Sales

(800) 505-8003 Ext. 200

SOURCE SwiftCheck
NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Taylor Devices, Inc. today announced it received a BAE Systems Partner2Win Supplier of the Year Award for the Vertical Launch System Program based on exceptional performance and contributions to supply chain success in 2021 for BAE Systems' Combat Mission Systems business.



BAE Systems' Partner2Win is a global program designed to achieve operational excellence and eliminate defects in its supply chain by raising the bar of performance expectations to meet the demand of current and future customers. As part of the program, BAE Systems meets regularly with its suppliers at their locations to transfer best practices to ensure that the components and materials that compose BAE Systems products meet the highest quality standards.

"Our suppliers have overcome many challenges posed by the COVID pandemic to sustain deliveries of our products to Army, Marines, and Navy customers," said Andy Corea, vice president and general manager of BAE Systems' Combat Mission Systems business. "By partnering with the highest performing suppliers  including Taylor Devices, Inc. in the industry, we have and will continue to exceed our customers' expectations."

Learn more about BAE Systems Partner2Win Supplier Symposium here.

About BAE Systems

BAE Systems provides some of the world's most advanced, technology-led defense, aerospace, and security solutions. The company employs a skilled workforce of more than 83,000 employees worldwide and operations in 30 states across the U.S. Working with customers and local partners, BAE Systems develops, engineers, manufactures, and supports products and systems to deliver military capability, protect national security and people, and keep critical information and infrastructure secure.

About Taylor Devices, Inc.

Taylor Devices is the world leader in innovative shock and vibration solutions since 1955. Now in its 7th decade as a supplier of critical damping and shock isolation components, Taylor Devices is a trusted supplier for major space and defense programs including space vehicles, aircraft and landing gear, launch pads, satellites, weapon systems, navigation systems, and various modern structures throughout the world. Products include precise positioning shock isolators, elastomer and hydropneumatic spring-dampers, high-capacity fluid dampers, and modular machined springs. Headquartered in N Tonawanda, NY, Taylor Devices is an AS9100 certified company with its products made 100% in the USA.

Contact:

Artie Regan

Regan & Associates, Inc.

212-587-3005

SOURCE Taylor Devices, Inc.
"We are pleased to welcome Nina to our Board of Directors," said Chairperson David M. Brunelle. "Nina brings tremendous experience with her background in digital transformation, customer experience, financial and risk management which will provide valuable perspectives to our Compensation, Compliance & Regulatory and Corporate Responsibility & Culture Committees."

"Nina's three decades of work for Fortune 100 financial services companies will further advance the Board's governance and oversight of our BEST plan to enhance financial performance and customer experience. I look forward to working with Nina to support our vision of being the leading socially responsible community bank in New England and beyond," added Berkshire Bank CEO Nitin Mhatre.

Ms. Charnley, age 66 was Senior Managing Director, Enterprise Customer Experience Executive at TIAA, a Fortune 100 financial services company with over $1 trillion in assets under management and five million customers. In that role, she was a member of the Executive Leadership Group, the Digital Transformation Team and Chaired the Customer Experience Board. During her time at TIAA, Ms. Charnley led the strategy, development and execution of a significant portfolio of technology projects launching the company's mobile app and a digital bank, building digital capabilities enabling employees and customers. Prior to joining TIAA, Ms. Charnley spent the majority of her career as an executive at Bank of America and its predecessor companies where she managed a diverse portfolio of both national and regional businesses including a de novo sustainable energy lending program and created the strategy, infrastructure, template and accountabilities matrix for Bank of America's Diversity and Inclusion program.

In addition to her current advisory board roles with the Women's Business League and Budget Buddies, Ms. Charnley has decades of board service including committee chairs for Strong Women Strong Girls, The RI Children's Museum, and Rhode Island Hospital/Lifespan. Charnley holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California and currently resides in Boston Massachusetts. Ms. Charnley will serve as an independent director.

ABOUT BERKSHIRE HILLS BANCORP

Berkshire Hills Bancorp is the parent of Berkshire Bank, which is transforming what it means to bank its neighbors socially, humanly, and digitally to empower the financial potential of people, families, and businesses in its communities as it pursues its vision of being the leading socially responsible omni-channel community bank in the markets it serves. Berkshire Bank provides business and consumer banking, mortgage, wealth management, and investment services.

Headquartered in Boston, Berkshire has approximately $11.8 billion in assets and operates 106 branch offices in New England and New York, and is a member of the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. To learn more, call 800-773-5601 or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

MEDIA CONTACT

Alison Skratt, Head of Communications

Email: [email protected]

INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACTS

Kevin Conn, SVP, Investor Relations & Corporate Development

Email: [email protected]

Tel: (617) 641-9206

David Gonci, Capital Markets Director

Email: [email protected]

Tel: (413) 281-1973

SOURCE Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.berkshirebank.com


CHICAGO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Berlin Packaging, the world's largest Hybrid Packaging Supplier, collected nine medals and two honorable mentions at the 2021 Craft Spirits Packaging Awards presented by the American Craft Spirits Association and CRAFT SPIRITS magazine and sponsored by the Glass Packaging Institute. Now in its second year, the annual competition celebrates excellence and creativity in the design of craft spirits labels and packaging. This year's winners were drawn from 150 entries from more than 70 companies.

Michigan-based Iron Fish Distillery  a valued customer of Berlin Packaging  was a stand-out across numerous categories, most notably winning a Gold medal in the Portfolio category. Iron Fish also won a Silver for their Mad Angler Whiskey, a Bronze for their Two Peninsula Whiskey, a Silver for their Michigan Navy-Strength Rum, and an Honorable Mention for their gin, Slightly Lost. Iron Fish is Michigan's first distillery operating on a fully functional farm since prohibition. Taking inspiration from these roots, Studio One Eleven, the design and innovation division of Berlin Packaging, was influenced by the land, water, and natural bounty that play an integral role in the distillery's story.

"We were completely impressed throughout the design to mold to manufacturing process, expertly guided by the designers, who diligently iterated concepts leading to a work of art - holding our spirit!" said Richard Anderson, Co-Owner and Founder of Iron Fish.

Berlin Packaging works with distillers of all sizes, offering complete spirits packaging solutions, including a variety of ready-to-ship premium stock bottles and closures and an extensive collection of innovative bottle shapes. For those seeking custom packaging, Berlin Packaging has design and innovation centers on two continents, including Chicago-based Studio One Eleven, a world-class custom design and innovation studio that provides structural design, branding, and graphics.

A complete list of Berlin Packaging's wins at the 2021 American Craft Spirits Packaging Awards is below:

Brandy

SILVER: Brandy No. 83, Charbay Distillery ( Ukiah, California )

Bottle Provider: Berlin Packaging/ Bruni Glass

Gin

SILVER: Fid St Gin , Haliimaile Distilling Co. ( Makawao, Hawaii )

Designer: Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging; Bottle Provider: Berlin Packaging

, ( ) Designer: Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging; Bottle Provider: Berlin Packaging SILVER: H.O.B.S. Gin , Young & Yonder Spirits ( Healdsburg, California )

Bottle Provider: Berlin Packaging

, ( ) Bottle Provider: Berlin Packaging HONORABLE MENTION: Slightly Lost, Iron Fish Distillery ( Thompsonville, Michigan )

Portfolio

GOLD: Iron Fish Distillery ( Thompsonville, Michigan )

Label Design: Iron Fish Distillery; Packaging Supplier: Berlin Packaging; Bottle Design: Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging

( ) Label Design: Iron Fish Distillery; Packaging Supplier: Berlin Packaging; Bottle Design: Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging SILVER: Hinterhaus Distilling ( Arnold, California )

Bottle Supplier: Berlin Packaging

Rum

SILVER: Michigan Navy Strength Rum, Iron Fish Distillery ( Thompsonville, Michigan )

Label Design: Iron Fish Distillery; Packaging Supplier: Berlin Packaging; Bottle Design: Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging

Ready-To-Drink

BRONZE: Basil Crush , Hudson Valley Distillers ( Germantown, New York )

Packaging Supplier: Berlin Packaging

, ( ) Packaging Supplier: Berlin Packaging HONORABLE MENTION: Fabrizia Vodka Soda, Fabrizia Spirits ( Salem, New Hampshire )

Whiskey

SILVER: Mad Angler Whiskey , Iron Fish Distillery ( Thompsonville, Michigan )

Label Design: Iron Fish Distillery; Packaging Supplier: Berlin Packaging; Bottle Design: Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging

, ( ) Label Design: Iron Fish Distillery; Packaging Supplier: Berlin Packaging; Bottle Design: Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging BRONZE: Two Peninsula Whiskey, Iron Fish Distillery ( Thompsonville, Michigan )

Label Design: Iron Fish Distillery; Packaging Supplier: Berlin Packaging; Bottle Design: Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging

About Berlin Packaging

Berlin Packaging is the world's largest Hybrid Packaging Supplier of glass, plastic, and metal containers and closures. The company supplies billions of items annually along with package design, financing, consulting, warehousing, and logistics services for customers across all industries. Berlin Packaging brings together the best of manufacturing, distribution, and income-adding service providers. Its mission is to increase the net income of its customers through packaging products and services. See BerlinPackaging.com for more information.

Media Contact

Celeste Osborne, [email protected], (708) 272-7046

SOURCE Berlin Packaging
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Binance, the world's leading blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider, and the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority (DWTCA) have signed a cooperation agreement to help advance Dubai's commitment to establishing a new international Virtual Asset ecosystem that will generate long-term economic growth through digital innovation.

Building off Dubai's reputation as a global technology leader, the recent announcement establishing DWTCA as the comprehensive zone and regulator for virtual assets comes as a much-awaited signal for the global industry. This first-of-its-kind hub for crypto assets and blockchain services, will fuel entrepreneurship, boost market confidence and accelerate investment.

Dubai's Virtual Asset ecosystem aims to create a robust regulatory and legislative framework that will support innovation, ensure safe market adoption, and facilitate global acceptance.

As the leading blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem, Binance's commitment to the landmark agreement demonstrates its confidence in Dubai's future-shaping agenda to tap into a new wave of multi-sectoral growth across the global economy.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Founder and CEO of Binance, said: "I am grateful for the confidence the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority has placed in Binance. Together, we share a vision for helping Dubai embrace the new future economy that includes crypto and blockchain. Today, the adoption of crypto and blockchain technology remains in its infancy, but through our leadership position and expertise, combined with the long-term vision of Dubai, we plan to develop a regulatory framework appropriate to fit the fast-moving and progressive nature of virtual assets."

Binance will also participate in this knowledge-sharing ecosystem with its experience in collaborating with global regulators to aid the development of progressive Virtual Asset regulations. The goal is to help crypto exchanges, or businesses that offer blockchain and DLT services, or a wide range of digital currencies and assets to become licensed in Dubai.

Dubai World Trade Centre Authority remarked: "The new Virtual Assets Hub in Dubai will connect service providers, technology enablers, and governments to co-create the next generation future economy ecosystem for the Virtual Assets industry. Our pioneering 'test-adapt-scale' model is designed to accelerate secure, equitable and sustainable access to new growth opportunities, aiding Dubai's vision for a fully digital and inclusive global society."

SOURCE Binance
The BitCard innovative platform resolves a key challenge impacting the cryptocurrency industryproviding customers with a secure, easy-to-use, custodial gateway for purchasing and redeeming Bitcoin. This newly inked partnership with Epipoli will enable customers in dozens of European countries to purchase a BitCard at their local grocery stores, tobacconists, and newsstands using cash, debit cards, or other payment methods. The digital BitCard will also be available via Epipoli's website, www.mygiftcard.it

Once purchased, the BitCard can be redeemed for Bitcoin via the www.mybitcards.com website. The BitCard is also available for distribution in the USA.

"Epipoli is passionate about embracing technologies that provide our customers and partners with the flexibility they need to thrive," said Gaetano Giannetto, CEO of Epipoli. "Our partnership with BitCard enables us to provide a uniquely valuable product that meets the evolving needs of our diverse customer base."

The BitCard is available in increments of 100 and 250 and provide customers with an integrated, friendly, and secure solution for purchasing Bitcoin.

About Bitcoin Solutions, Inc.

Bitcoin Solutions, Inc. (www.mybitcards.com and www.BitCards.com) is a technology company focused on making Bitcoin as easy to purchase as any gift card. We believe cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will become integrated with our daily lives and will fundamentally impact the financial services market. Our goal is to become the most accessible access point for the average consumer to purchase Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through gift cards, loyalty, rewards, points and incentives. For all media inquiries, please contact: [email protected].

About Epipoli

Epipoli is a FinTech company, market leader in Prepaid services and Engagement solutions in retailing industry. In 2006, Epipoli introduced the Gift Cards in Italy, and, as of today, the prepaid payment network - which includes 400 Partners in over 50,000 points of sale in Europe and more than 4 million consumers - represents the most advanced link between the digital world and the physical points of sale.

To learn more, visit www.epipoli.com or www.mygiftcard.it.

SOURCE Bitcoin Solutions, Inc.
CINCINNATI, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brixey & Meyer Capital ("BMC") announce today that Safe-Way Garage Doors, a portfolio company in its second fund, has been acquired by CapitalWorks, a private equity firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1950, Safe-Way is a leading manufacturer and distributor of residential, commercial, and industrial overhead garage doors. Safe-Way serves customers across the country from its manufacturing facility in Warsaw, Indiana and its distribution centers in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and Nixa, Missouri.

"Safe-Way has built a solid foundation to continue its exponential growth and we are confident that CapitalWorks is the right partner for Safe-Way to continue its tremendous journey," said David Brixey, CEO of Brixey & Meyer Capital.

BMC acquired Safe-Way in January 2021 and during BMC's ownership, BMC partnered with the management team to streamline its manufacturing processes and invest in its employee base to meet the significant demand for its product over the last two years.

The exit of Safe-Way is the first exit from its second fund, the BMC Growth Fund II. The sale of Safe-Way marks BMC's second exit in 2021. BMC announced its exit of 3 Sigma in November 2021.

About Brixey & Meyer Capital:

Brixey & Meyer Capital is a lower-middle-market private investment firm with offices in Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information, visit Brixey & Meyer Capital's website at www.brixeyandmeyercapital.com . To date, BMC has raised over $120 million in committed capital and invests in lower middle-market companies generating $1.0 to $5.0 million of cash flow. For information about all of BMC's investments, click here .

Media Contact:

Patrick Odell

[email protected]

SOURCE Brixey & Meyer Capital

Related Links

http://www.brixeyandmeyercapital.com


Addition of preeminent independent M&A advisory firm builds on momentum in investment banking and advisory segments

TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (TSX: CF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sawaya Partners ("Sawaya"), a leading independent M&A advisory firm to the consumer sector based in New York. This acquisition underscores the Company's commitment to expanding its advisory capability and builds upon its existing consumer practice, while providing a strong intersection with core CG focus sectors of technology, media, healthcare, and sustainability.

Since expanding its advisory business in 2019, Canaccord Genuity's U.S. capital markets business has been a growing contributor of revenue and net income. At the end of fiscal 2021, revenue from advisory activities in this business increased by 200% when compared to the end of fiscal 2018. Increased contributions from advisory activities have contributed to substantial earnings and margin growth in this business since 2019.

Founded in 2001, Sawaya Partners has established itself as a globally recognized, premium independent M&A advisory business with deep domain expertise in the consumer sector. Since its inception, the Sawaya Partners principals have established broad-based and lasting relationships with corporations and sponsors, which has allowed them to generate meaningful repeat engagements and revenue growth.

"We are excited to be building upon the success of our advisory practice with the high-quality team of professionals from Sawaya Partners and adding deep domain expertise and relationships in the consumer sector," said Jeff Barlow, President of Canaccord Genuity Capital Markets (U.S.). "This transaction creates an opportunity to meaningfully enhance our service offering to our combined clients, and advantageously positions us to capitalize on attractive industry trends."

To ensure a seamless transition for Sawaya' s clients and employees, Founder and Managing Partner Fuad Sawaya will join CG's U.S. operating committee and become Vice Chairman  Consumer and Global Head of CG's Consumer Investment Banking practice. Partners Jeff Kuhr and Slava Leykind will become Co-Heads of the U.S. Consumer Investment Banking group. All existing employees of Sawaya Partners will continue with the Company's U.S. capital markets business.

Sawaya Partners Founder and Managing Partner Fuad Sawaya adds: "Having just celebrated Sawaya Partners' 20th anniversary, we are delighted to begin the next stage in our journey as part of the Canaccord Genuity team. Both businesses share a similar entrepreneurial and collegial culture and a rigorously client-centric approach. This transaction presents a tremendous opportunity to expand our reach, while leveraging CG's extensive global footprint and capital markets capabilities to provide enhanced opportunities for our corporate and sponsor clients."

Keefe Bruyette & Woods, A Stifel Company is acting as financial advisor and Mayer Brown LLP is acting as legal advisors to Sawaya Partners. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP is providing legal advice to Canaccord Genuity.

The acquisition is expected to close at the end of calendar 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.

ABOUT CANACCORD GENUITY GROUP INC.

Through its principal subsidiaries, Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (the "Company") is a leading independent, full-service financial services firm, with operations in two principal segments of the securities industry: wealth management and capital markets. Since its establishment in 1950, the Company has been driven by an unwavering commitment to building lasting client relationships. We achieve this by generating value for our individual, institutional and corporate clients through comprehensive investment solutions, brokerage services and investment banking services. The Company has wealth management offices located in Canada, the UK, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Australia. The Company's international capital markets division operates in North America, UK & Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East.

Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. is publicly traded under the symbol CF on the TSX.

ABOUT CANACCORD GENUITY GLOBAL CAPITAL MARKETS

Canaccord Genuity's global capital markets division offers institutional and corporate clients idea-driven investment banking, merger and acquisition, research, sales and trading services from offices in North America, UK & Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. Our diverse team of capital markets and advisory professionals has deep industry and transactional expertise in key growth sectors of the global economy. We are committed to providing valued services to our clients throughout the entire lifecycle of their business and operating as a gold standard independent investment bank  expansive in resources and reach, but targeted in industry expertise, market focus and individual client attention. We are driven by your success. For more information, visit www.cgf.com.

ABOUT SAWAYA PARTNERS

Founded in 2001, Sawaya Partners is has established itself as a globally recognized, premium independent M&A advisory businesses with deep domain expertise in the consumer industry. Since inception, the Sawaya Partners principals have established broad-based and lasting relationships with corporations and sponsors in the consumer sector, which has generated meaningful repeat engagements. With differentiated execution capability and skill sets, Sawaya Partners are consistently sought after as trusted advisors by global corporations, private equity firms and privately held businesses.

CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release may contain "forward-looking information" as defined under applicable securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). These statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's expectations, beliefs, plans, estimates, intentions and similar statements concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances, performance or expectations that are not historical facts, including business and economic conditions and Canaccord Genuity Group's growth, results of operations, performance and business prospects and opportunities. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may", "will", "should", "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict", "potential", "continue", "target", "intend", "could" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and a number of factors could cause actual events or results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. In evaluating these statements, readers should specifically consider various factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement. These factors include, but are not limited `to, market and general economic conditions, the nature of the financial services industry and the risks and uncertainties discussed from time to time in the Company's interim condensed and annual consolidated financial statements, its annual report and its annual information form ("AIF") filed on www.sedar.com as well as the factors discussed in the sections entitled "Risk Management" and "Risk Factors" in the AIF, which include market, liquidity, credit, operational, legal and regulatory risks. Material factors or assumptions that were used by the Company to develop the forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to, those set out in the Fiscal 2021 Outlook section in the annual MD&A and those discussed from time to time in the Company's interim condensed and annual consolidated financial statements, its annual report and the AIF filed on www.sedar.com. The preceding list is not exhaustive of all possible risk factors that may influence actual results. Readers are cautioned that the preceding list of material factors or assumptions is not exhaustive.

Although the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon what management believes are reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Except as may be required by applicable law, the Company does not undertake, and specifically disclaims, any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, further developments or otherwise.

SOURCE Canaccord Genuity Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cgf.com


SHANGHAI, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cango Inc. (NYSE: CANG) ("Cango" or the "Company"), a leading automotive transaction service platform in China, received a "Best Investment Value for Listed Companies" award at the 11th China Securities Golden Bauhinia Awards. This prestigious award recognizes Cango's outstanding accomplishments, diverse business services and solid, comprehensive strength.

The China Securities Golden Bauhinia Awards, organized by Hong Kong Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group, are a trusted, large-scale, premiere selection event honoring top-performing listed companies in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The Golden Bauhinia Awards are widely recognized as the "Oscars" for listed companies and have become an important benchmark for investors at home and abroad when following the developments of China's capital markets and listed companies. The judging panel evaluates listed companies according to principles of fairness, openness and justice and formulates a comprehensive score for each candidate based on various metrics and expert opinions. This year, over 70 winners were chosen, boasting a combined market value of RMB100 trillion.

Cango management commented that it is a great honor to receive this distinguished award. It is a powerful testament to our dedication to excellence and our business model's flexibility and resilience as we grow from an automotive financing facilitator into a comprehensive car transaction services platform. Cango remains committed to its goal of becoming an auto service platform of choice by facilitating easy and enjoyable car purchase experiences. Furthermore, Cango will continuously strive to reward all its investors with better performance and more generous dividends.

Since its inception more than 10 years ago, Cango's business has evolved from its original automotive financing facilitation services model (Model 1.0) into a supply chain model, covering car trading transactions, automotive financing facilitation and after-market services facilitation (Model 2.0). Cango is now working towards Model 3.0  building a platform to reshape the relationship between people, goods and the market through technology-empowered automotive trading and financing services and its unique closed service loop, creating value for each participant along the car trading transaction chain.

Cango has established cooperation with dozens of medium-sized and large commercial banks, such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, WeBank, Shanghai Bank, MYBank, as well as a dozen insurance agencies including Pacific Insurance and Zhong'an Insurance, among others. In addition, it has collaborated with major OEMs of both traditional automobile and new energy vehicle manufacturers and connected around 50,000 registered dealers across the country, providing services to more than 1.9 million car buyers.

Endorsed by multiple Internet giants and financial capital providers, Cango has completed three rounds of financing totaling USD650 million. Tencent, Didi Chuxing, Taikang Insurance, Warburg Pincus and other heavyweight institutions are among Cango's strategic shareholders.

About Cango Inc.

Cango Inc. (NYSE: CANG) is a leading automotive transaction service platform in China connecting dealers, financial institutions, car buyers, and other industry participants. Founded in 2010 by a group of pioneers in China's automotive finance industry, the Company is headquartered in Shanghai and engages car buyers through a nationwide dealer network. The Company's services primarily consist of automotive financing facilitation, car trading transactions, and after-market services facilitation. By utilizing its competitive advantages in technology, data insights, and cloud-based infrastructure, Cango is able to connect its platform participants while bringing them a premium user experience. Cango's platform model puts it in a unique position to add value for its platform participants and business partners as the automotive and mobility markets in China continue to grow and evolve. For more information, please visit: www.cangoonline.com.

Investor Relations Contact

Yihe Liu

Cango Inc.

Tel: +86 21 3183 5088 ext.5581

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cango_Group

Emilie Wu

The Piacente Group, Inc.

Tel: +86 21 6039 8363

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Cango Inc.

Related Links

www.cangoonline.com


NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation (Cat Financial) is announcing a $1 million donation to the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) to support and promote the museum's focus on education and youth outreach in the Nashville area. The newly built museum is a state-of-the-art gallery designed to engage audiences in hands-on experiences that inform and inspire fans and students. NMAAM's mission is to educate the world, preserve the legacy, and celebrate the central role African Americans play in creating the American soundtrack.

"This contribution will expose thousands of Nashville youth to the museum," said Cat Financial President Dave Walton. "Our partnership will foster a greater understanding and appreciation for the influence and impact of African Americans on music and enrich the dialogue between students and the community through unique, culture-driven experiences."

As part of the contribution, Cat Financial will be a "Soundtrack for All" title sponsor, providing free access to thousands of Metro Nashville school students for field trips to the museum for guided tours and hands-on activities. Through "Soundtrack for All," NMAAM will target schools where music education and museum access are limited.

"We are excited to partner with Cat Financial to grow and build on the museum's mission and educational programs," said President and CEO of NMAAM H. Beecher Hicks, III. "Cat Financial's contribution allows us to ensure the museum's resources and influence continues to have a broader reach in the community and beyond."

The contribution also promotes the museum's "From Nothing to Something" (FN2S) online digital platform and "Rivers of Rhythm Institute for Social Education" (RRISE). NMAAM's FN2S digital content engages students in examining, researching, and analyzing the history of African American musical innovation and its role in shaping American history. The donation also supports the further buildout of the Quaver Music adaption, a web-based animated platform that will help ensure students have access to and are aware of the rich education and cultural content preserved by NMAAM and will help to engage students on multiple levels. RRISE is an annual teacher training workshop that provides educators across the nation with access to curriculum development training and techniques/tactics for teaching African American history through music. Through Cat Financial's support, the workshop will provide complimentary access to Metro Nashville educators.

Cat Financial's contribution will be distributed over the course of 10 years and will include ongoing employee engagement.

About Cat Financial

Celebrating 40 years in 2021, Cat Financial is a subsidiary of Caterpillar, the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives. Cat Financial provides a wide range of financing solutions to customers and Cat dealers for machines, engines, Solar turbines, genuine Cat parts and services. Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, Cat Financial serves customers globally with offices and subsidiaries located throughout North and South America, Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Visit cat.com to learn more about Cat Financial.

About NMAAM

The National Museum of African American Music is the only museum dedicated solely to educating, preserving, and celebrating the influence African Americans have had on music. Based in Nashville, Tenn., as a part of the Fifth + Broadway development, the Museum shares the story of the American soundtrack by integrating history and interactive technology to bring musical heroes of the past into the present.

SOURCE Cat Financial
WHITEHALL, Pa., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ChainBytes, LLC, a Bitcoin ATM manufacturer based in Whitehall, PA, announced a joint initiative with BTM Compliance, LLC to help improve Anti-Money Laundering/Know-Your-Customer (AML/KYC) compliance processes for Bitcoin ATM kiosks.

The collaborative effort seeks to study and recommend enrichments to Bitcoin ATM operating systems to help improve data management, transaction monitoring, and operator compliance with federal AML/KYC regulations.

ChainBytes Bitcoin ATMs

Federal AML/KYC regulations help law enforcement officials tamp down on money laundering, fraud, and other unlawful financial activity.

Eric Grill, CEO of ChainBytes said, "Bitcoin ATMs are an important onramp for millions of retail customers wanting to get involved in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space. Improving fraud protection and AML/KYC best-practices are key to keeping Bitcoin ATMs safe, secure, and accessible to legitimate consumers."

Statistics show the adoption of Bitcoin ATMs to be growing at a rapid pace. Recent estimates indicate there are now over 29,000 Bitcoin ATMs in the United States. (Source: cointatmradar.com)

Jeremy Snyder, CEO of BTM Compliance said, "Working to identify improvements that would make Bitcoin ATM transactions safer, more compliant, and more secure are a win-win for operators, regulators, and retail customers alike."

ChainBytes, LLC is a veteran-owned, U.S.-based Bitcoin ATM company based in Whitehall, PA that serves customers in the central Pennsylvania and Lehigh Valley areas.

BTM Compliance, LLC is a veteran-owned and operated, U.S.-based company that offers custom-built compliance solutions including AML/KYC controls for Bitcoin ATM kiosk operators.

For more information contact:

Media Contact:

Ted Stevenot

ChainBytes, LLC

3722 Lehigh Street

Whitehall, PA 18052

(415) 529-5777

[email protected]

SOURCE ChainBytes, LLC
-Completion of Renewable Energy Investment in PHI

VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Chemistree Technology Inc. (CSE: CHM) (CSE: CHM.WT) (USOTCQB: CHMJF) (the "Company" or "Chemistree"), is pleased to announce that the adjourned extraordinary meeting of the holders of Chemistree's 10% senior unsecured convertible debentures (the "Debentures") was reconvened and completed on December 20, 2021, in connection with the proposed amendments to the trust indenture between the Company and Odyssey Trust Company dated as of March 29, 2019 (the "Indenture"). The Company's debenture holders approved all proposed amendments.

By way of an Extraordinary Resolution, Chemistree's debenture holders approved amendments to the Indenture which may amend the Debentures in the following two key areas:

Subsequent to payment of the December 31, 2021 interest amount - which is intended to be paid in cash; authorize the Company, in its sole discretion, to pay the interest due on the Debentures in cash or through the issuance of its common shares at the market price of the common shares in effect on the date of the common share interest payment election notice, and Extend the term of the convertible debentures by twenty-four (24) months to March 29, 2024 .

All other terms of the Debentures under the Indenture will remain unchanged. The convertible debentures accrue interest daily, with such accrued interest paid immediately upon conversion of the debentures. The principal amount of the debentures is currently $7,814,000 and is convertible into common shares of the Company at a price of $0.50 per share.

PHI Investment

Further to the Company's press release of December 2, 2021, Chemistree has now completed its Subscription Agreement with Philippine Metals Inc. ("PHI"), a TSX Venture Exchange listed issuer. The Company invested $174,000 in the recently completed first tranche of PHI's private placement of Subscription Receipts at $0.50 per Subscription Receipt. PHI's private Placement is being conducted pursuant to the PHI's previously announced reverse takeover transaction with ReVolve Renewable Power Ltd ("ReVolve"). Each Subscription Receipt, provided the escrow release conditions in the subscription receipt agreement are satisfied, will automatically convert into one unit, with each unit comprising one postconsolidation common share of PHI and one common share purchase warrant of PHI. Each warrant shall entitle the holder thereof to purchase one additional postconsolidation common share of PHI at a price of $0.75 per warrant share for a period of 18 months following the automatic conversion of the Subscription Receipts.

ReVolve was established in 2012 and currently has a portfolio of 2.78 gigawatts ("GW") of projects under active development and a further 1.30GW of greenfield opportunities identified and in the process of being converted to ReVolve's development pipeline. ReVolve is proceeding with a public listing via reverse takeover of PHI, concurrently with a two-phase capital raise to accelerate its expansion plans in the US.

ReVolve's business model is based on identifying greenfield project development opportunities focusing on strong renewable resource areas, proximity / availability of capacity on the local transmission network as well as environmental considerations. These projects are then brought through the development cycle with the company obtaining the necessary federal, state and other permits and authorisations required for the project as well as securing the necessary interconnection capacity in order for the project to commence construction.

ReVolve then adopts an asset monetisation strategy, whereby it looks to sell development rights to its projects to other Utilities, Independent Power Producers (IPP's) or Institutional Investors active in the renewable energy sector. ReVolve intends on continuing to implement this strategy for its active development pipeline, while retaining the flexibility to change this strategy if the opportunity arises to a construct, finance and operate model focused on generating longer term revenue and cashflow.

The public listing via reverse takeover of PHI will enable ReVolve to capitalize on the significant growth opportunities in the North American renewable energy market as the major global economies and companies move to net zero carbon emissions. ReVolve is targeting a development pipeline of at least 5GW in the region within the next three years.

About Chemistree Technology Inc.

Chemistree Technology Inc. is an investment company with holdings in the U.S. cannabis sector and a consumer-targeted biotechnology venture. The Company's corporate strategy is to focus on opportunistic investments across a broad range of industries, and is seeking to invest in early stage, promising companies where it may be the lead investor and can additionally provide investees with advisory services, mentoring and access to the Company's management expertise. For more information, visit www.Chemistree.ca.

Advisory

The Company wishes to inform shareholders that there are significant legal restrictions and regulations that govern the cannabis industry in both Canada and the United States.

Cannabis-related Practices or Activities are Illegal Under U.S. Federal Laws

The concepts of "medical cannabis" and "recreational cannabis" do not exist under U.S. federal law. The Federal Controlled Substances Act classifies "marihuana" as a Schedule I drug. Under U.S. federal law, a Schedule I drug or substance has a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use in the United States, and a lack of safety for the use of the drug under medical supervision. As such, cannabis related practices or activities, including without limitation, the manufacture, importation, possession, use or distribution of cannabis are illegal under U.S. federal law. Strict compliance with state laws with respect to cannabis will neither absolve the Company of liability under U.S. federal law, nor will it provide a defence to any federal proceeding which may be brought against the Company. Enforcement of U.S. federal laws will be a significant risk to the business of the Company and any such proceedings brought against the Company may adversely affect the Company's operations and financial performance.

Further information regarding the legal status of cannabis related activities and associated risk factors, including, but not limited to, risk of enforcement actions, risks that third-party service providers, such as banking or financial institutions cease providing services to the Company, and the risk that Company may not be able to distribute profits, if any, from U.S. operations up to the Company, are included in the Prospectus, the Company's annual information form and other documents incorporated by reference therein and in the Company's Form 2A annual listing statement filed with the CSE and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

"Karl Kottmeier"

President

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Information set forth in this news release includes forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are statements that relate to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "budget", "scheduled" and "intend", statements that an action or event "may", "might", "could", "should", or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions. In particular, but without limiting the foregoing, this news release contains forward-looking statements pertaining to: the PHI investment, the automatic conversion of the subscription receipts, the closing of the reverse takeover transaction, the Debenture Amendments; the ability for the Company to pay future interest payments on the Debentures as such payments become due; the Company approval to implementing the Debenture Amendments; and the anticipated results of the Debenture Amendments on the debt burden and future operations of the Company.

By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others, the risks identified in the Company's reports and filings with the applicable Canadian securities regulators. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date that statements are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as required by applicable securities laws. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. The Company assumes no responsibility to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances unless required by applicable law.

SOURCE Chemistree Technology Inc.

Related Links

http://chemistree.ca/


DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "China Ferro-Alloys Directory 2022" directory has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The comprehensive annual directory to China's Ferro-Alloy companies, including contact details, senior management, products, and plants.

Access a wealth of information on Manufacturers & Traders instantly with the China Ferro-Alloy Directory!

Wherever you sit in the Ferro-Alloy supply chain, this directory is an essential business tool

This new directory reflects the influx of new players into the industry - on both the producing and trading side. If you need to find a supplier of, or trader, in Ferro-alloys, it can be a time-consuming task. In recent times new company start ups, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, technological advances, have changed the shape of the industry considerably.

Why waste valuable time searching the internet for these new contacts when we've done the hard work for you? Simply order this directory today and save yourself time and money.

The China Ferro-Alloy Directory contains details of Chinese producers and traders of all Ferro-alloys and ores and concentrates.

Wherever you sit in the Ferro-alloys supply chain, this directory is an essential business tool. If you're a producer, trader, or consumer; or if you're involved in plant equipment, shipping or warehousing; this new directory includes details on all the key contacts in the China Ferro-Alloys marketplace.

Producers - find out where you fit within the industry and discover new opportunities to expand your business;

Traders - source new suppliers instantly, by product;

If you are in the service sector supplying the metals industry - in shipping, warehousing, assaying or plant manufacturing, this is the definitive source of potential new clients for your goods and services;

If you're a steel mill or other end-user - discover who the best Ferro-alloy suppliers are and make sound purchasing decisions.

This essential guide to the Chinese Ferro-Alloys industry contains full contact details for companies and personnel in the industry, including:

Full company contact details including telephone, fax, email and website

Key management personnel

Ownership, subsidiaries and associates

Year established and number of employees

Products & Services

Here are five great reasons to order your copy of the China Ferro-Alloy Directory today:

Save time, no more searching the Internet, with the entire Chinese Ferro-alloys producers and traders in one handy source; The user-friendly A-Z Buyers Guide means you can source the right supplier by product instantly; Update your contact list from the most reliable source in the industry; Quickly find management, sales and production contacts within companies; Keep up-to-date in an ever-changing industry.

If you do business within any part of the Ferro-Alloy trade, then this directory is a must-have for you. Where else will you find such a broad depth of both key contact and production information for the China Ferro-alloy industry in one handy reference source?

For more information about this directory visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/txay1t

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
PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Springbrook Software, a leading cloud-based ERP platform provider for local government agencies today announces that the City of Peekskill, New York has selected Springbrook's Cirrus Cloud platform to run its agency's entire financial and administrative operations. The City selected Springbrook over another regional software provider as part of a modernization initiative.

Peekskill acquired Springbrook's Finance, Property Tax, Payroll, Fixed Assets, Purchase Orders and Accounts Receivable modules. All modules are delivered on a single, integrated platform which enables data to flow accurately and in real-time across all departmental units within the City, thereby ensuring accuracy, efficiency and transparency of information.

"We started down the path of selecting an ERP system that enabled us to run our municipality from a single platform and found, through trial and error with another vendor, that Springbrook was the best alternative in the marketplace. We needed to get all our data into one single platform, and Springbrook's modern, cloud based Cirrus solution was the right answer for us," said Matt Alexander, Finance Director for the City of Peekskill.

"The efficiency, data security and scalability of Springbrook's software means our entire back-office process is in sync," he added. "This accuracy and speed will help us respond to our commissioner requests and citizen needs with confidence."

"The City of Peekskill's modernization vision is something that many local governments across the country are going through right now. A vital part of becoming a 21st century-ready city includes modernizing the technology backbone from which the city runs its core functions. Springbrook is proud to help the City of Peekskill make that transformation a success" said Robert Bonavito, CEO of Springbrook.

About The City of Peekskill, NY:

The City of Peekskill is a thriving, historic community located on the banks of the Hudson River. Just under one hour north of New York City, Peekskill is culturally and economically vibrant, and it is blessed with abundant natural resources due to its location on the river and at the gateway to the Hudson Highlands. https://www.cityofpeekskill.com/discover-peekskill

About Springbrook Software:

Springbrook Software is the country's leading cloud-based finance and administration software provider designing solutions specifically for small to medium sized local government agencies. More than 1700 cities, towns and districts from coast to coast use our suite of modern, high-performance solutions to manage their finances, payroll, utility billing and collect citizen payments. Springbrook is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with regional presence in Washington, New York and Massachusetts. https://springbrooksoftware.com

MEDIA CONTACT: Steve Lundin [email protected]

SOURCE Springbrook Software
REX makes a big step toward putting consumers in control of how they buy and sell homes by winning key motion in court. Tweet this

The NAR segregation rule cordons off low-commission homes to a "hidden" tab, where these homes cannot freely compete with the homes sold by the big brokers who banded together to create the segregation rule and other restrictions that prevent competition and keep home prices artificially high. The ruling marks the third time that REX has won on its antitrust claims against the NAR segregation rule.



Reactions from REX CEO Jack Ryan and General Counsel Michael Toth:

"REX is the only real estate industry player willing to fight for consumers in the court of law and public opinion. Legacy real estate brokers do not want consumers to choose for themselves. REX does. The ruling is another important step towards reining in the anti-competitive policies that have come to define big real estate. It points to the long overdue changes that REX already delivers to home shoppers nationwide," said REX CEO Jack Ryan.

"Today's ruling is a win for consumer choice. The opinionthe third time REX has won on its antitrust claims in this casemakes it clear that Zillow changed its website because of NAR's rules. REX has said all along that these rules are being used to prevent consumers from having the choices that have become common in every other industry. The ruling brings REX one big step closer to putting consumers in control of their own real estate transactions. As our case continues to progress, REX looks forward to getting to the bottom of how real estate insiders, led by NAR, have stood in the way of basic consumer rights for decades," said REX General Counsel Michael Toth.

Yesterday's decision once again connected Zillow's display change with the NAR segregation rule. Among other things, the court's order points to a statement from a Zillow representative, who told REX that "these changes are for us to comply with MLS rules." The segregation rule is an example of an anti-competitive NAR rule that brokers across the country impose through local multiple listing services (MLSs), which Zillow recently joined.

Other key quotes from the ruling include:

"NAR takes a second bite at the apple, and argues that Plaintiff's amended complaint confirms that NAR's actions did not cause Plaintiff's alleged injuries . . . . As before, NAR ignores Plaintiff's allegations that NAR is a direct participant in the challenged conduct."

"The Court concludes that Plaintiff's alleged injuries are fairly traceable to NAR's conduct."

"The amended complaint plausibly alleges that Zillow changed its websites because of NAR's rules."

REX's critical legal fight will continue to play out as NAR and Zillow must now defend their anticompetitive tactics on multiple fronts. The Justice Department has demanded that NAR share information about the segregation rule in a civil subpoena that NAR has not complied with, opting instead to challenge the investigation in federal court. As NAR's challenge to the Justice Department remains pending, REX's case against the segregation rule will continue into fact discovery.

For media inquiries: contact Colin Maynard at [email protected].

ABOUT REX

REX, headquartered in Austin, Texas, is a real estate tech company resetting the traditional real estate market nationwide. When buying a REX home - or any home on the market in the U.S. purchased through REX - consumers have the peace of mind knowing they are finding residential real estate for less and saving time thanks to our groundbreaking technology. REX has emerged as the national leader in real estate reform since founding the company in 2016 with the goal of eliminating fees, growing the U.S. real estate market, and saving Americans billions of dollars each year. REX also works as a partner in the global fight against housing insecurity. Learn more about REX's online platform, integrated services, and business model at rexhomes.com. Also visit newsroom.rexhomes.com for the latest press releases, podcasts, market analysis, digital real estate data, and information about the company and leadership team.

SOURCE REX
BRESCIA, Italy, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- COPAN announces the resolution of its United States International Trade Commission complaint with respondents Cardinal Health, Inc., Innovative Product Brands, Inc., Innovative Product Brands, Inc., KSL Biomedical, Inc., KSL Diagnostics, Inc., Thomas Scientific, LLC, Vectornate Korea Ltd., Vectornate USA, Inc., and VWR International, LLC. COPAN has filed a joint request with each settling respondent seeking termination from the on-going investigation as a result of the settlements.

COPAN had previously announced that the U.S.I.T.C. instituted an unfair importation investigation, conducted pursuant to 19 U.S.C.  1337, against several manufacturers and distributors of imported flocked swabs and products containing the flocked swabs. In the complaint, COPAN Italia S.p.A. and its Puerto Rico based manufacturing subsidiary alleged that the accused devices and products infringe several of its U.S.-issued patents, and requested an exclusion order against the named respondents, as well as a general exclusion seeking an order directing U.S. Customs to stop the infringing imports from entering the United States. The investigation is entitled In the Matter of Certain Flocked Swabs, Products Containing Flocked Swabs, and Methods of Using Same, No. 337-TA-1279.
SUZHOU, China, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CStone Pharmaceuticals (the "Company" or "CStone") is pleased to announce that the National Medical Products Administration ("NMPA") of China has approved the new drug application ("NDA") of anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody Cejemly (sugemalimab) in combination with chemotherapy for treatment-naive metastatic (stage IV) non-small cell lung cancer ("non-small cell lung caner" or "NSCLC") patients.

Key Highlights

Anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody Cejemly  approved in combination with pemetrexed and carboplatin as first-line treatment of patients with metastatic nonsquamous NSCLC, with no EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations; and in combination with paclitaxel and carboplatin as first-line treatment of patients with metastatic squamous NSCLC.

approved in combination with pemetrexed and carboplatin as first-line treatment of patients with metastatic nonsquamous NSCLC, with no EGFR or ALK genomic tumor aberrations; and in combination with paclitaxel and carboplatin as first-line treatment of patients with metastatic squamous NSCLC. It is the first anti-PD-L1 plus chemotherapy approved for the first-line treatment of metastatic non-squamous and squamous NSCLC patients worldwide.

The NDA of Cejemly  in stage III NSCLC is under regulatory review, and the product has the potential to provide an anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody option for both stage III and stage IV non-small cell lung cancer patents in the future.

in stage III NSCLC is under regulatory review, and the product has the potential to provide an anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody option for both stage III and stage IV non-small cell lung cancer patents in the future. Cejemly is CStone's third new drug approval in China in 2021, following two first-in-class precision medicines GAVRETO and AYVAKIT.

Globally, the incidence of lung cancer continues to rise, and it is still the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, with huge unmet medical needs. According to statistics, there were 2.21 million new lung cancer cases worldwide in 2020. NSCLC accounts for about 85% of all lung cancer cases, and about 66% of patients are diagnosed with stage III/IV NSCLC. According to IQVIA's Global Oncology Trends, the size of global oncology drug market is estimated to reach US$269 billion by 2025, of which immuno-oncology drugs will contribute about 20%.

Dr. Frank Jiang, Chairman and CEO of CStone, said: "Cejemly is our third approved new drug in China this year. This further demonstrates CStone's ability and track record in developing and commercializing high-quality new drugs. As a drug supported by China's national science innovation program, Cejemly is a globally leading anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody. We will work closely with Pfizer to leverage resources and advantages of both sides to accelerate commercialization so that more Chinese patients can benefit from this innovative therapy soon."

Professor Caicun Zhou, Principal Investigator of the GEMSTONE-302 registrational phase III clinical study of Cejemly and Director of the Department of Oncology, Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, said, "The latest data show that Cejemly plus chemotherapy further prolonged progression-free survival ("PFS") of treatment-naive patients with stage IV NSCLC. Compared with chemotherapy alone, Cejemly plus chemotherapy demonstrated durable survival benefits with lower toxicity and immunogenicity risks. With a unique dual mechanism of action, Cejemly mobilizes both T cells and macrophages to destroy tumor cells. Therefore, Cejemly is expected to reshape the landscape of lung cancer treatment."

Dr. Jason Yang, Chief Medical Officer of CStone, said, "We are thrilled that Cejemly has been approved in Mainland China. It took only four years for Cejemly to obtain the first NDA approval in lung cancer from the initiation of the phase I clinical trial in humans. It comprehensively showcased CStone's robust clinical strategy, innovative trial design and rapid execution, while once again demonstrating the 'CStone Speed'. We will continue to work with our partner to pursue regulatory discussions for Cejemly on the NDAs of stage III and stage IV NSCLC with regulators in multiple countries and regions, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and bring this innovative immunotherapy to more lung cancer patients soon. We will also continue to advance the registrational studies of Cejemly in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, gastric cancer, relapsed/refractory extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma, to benefit more cancer patients."

The NMPA approval is based on the positive data of GEMSTONE-302 study, a multi-center, randomized, double-blind, phase III study that evaluated the efficacy and safety of Cejemly or placebo in combination with chemotherapy in first-line stage IV NSCLC patients. Compared with placebo plus chemotherapy, Cejemly plus chemotherapy lowered the risk of disease progression or death by 52%, significantly prolonged the patients' PFS and an encouraging trend in overall survival ("OS") was observed. The clinical benefit was irrespective of NSCLC pathologies and PD-L1 expression levels. Cejemly has a well-tolerated safety profile, and no new safety signals were found.

Apart from the approved indication, the NMPA accepted the NDA of Cejemly as consolidation therapy in patients with unresectable stage III NSCLC without disease progression after concurrent or sequential chemoradiotherapy in September 2021. The product has the potential to become an anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody approved to cover stage III and stage IV NSCLC in all-comer settings.

About Cejemly (sugemalimab)

The potential best-in-class anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody Cejemly (sugemalimab) is an investigational anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody discovered by CStone. Authorized by the U.S.-based Ligand Corporation, Cejemly is developed by the OmniRat transgenic animal platform, which can generate fully human antibodies in one stop. As a fully human, full-length anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody, Cejemly mirrors the natural G-type immunoglobulin 4 (IgG4) human antibody, which reduces the risk of immunogenicity and potential toxicities in patients, a unique advantage over similar drugs.

Currently, the China NMPA has approved the potential best-in-class anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody Cejemly in combination with chemotherapy for the treatment of treatment-naive patients with stage IV NSCLC. In addition, Cejemly is being investigated in a number of ongoing clinical trials, including one Phase II registrational study for lymphoma and four Phase III registrational studies in stage III NSCLC, stage IV NSCLC, gastric cancer, and esophageal cancer, respectively.

CStone formed a strategic collaboration agreement with Pfizer that includes the development and commercialization of Cejemly in mainland China, and a framework to bring additional oncology assets to the Greater China market.

About the GEMSTONE-302 Study

The GEMSTONE-302 study (ClinicalTrials.gov registration number: NCT03789604; drug clinical trial registration number: CTR20181452) is a randomized, double-blind Phase III study, designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody Cejemly combined with chemotherapy as the first-line treatment in treatment-naive patients with stage IV NSCLC vs. placebo combined with chemotherapy. The primary endpoint of the study was investigator-assessed PFS. Secondary endpoints included OS, BICR-assessed PFS and safety, etc.

In August 2020, the GEMSTONE-302 study met its primary endpoint of significantly prolonged PFS, with the risk of disease progression or death reduced by 50% with Cejemly combined with chemotherapy compared to placebo combined with chemotherapy, as assessed by iDMC at the planned interim analysis. Specific study data were presented in a Proffered Paper Oral Presentation (Late-Breaking Abstract) at the ESMO Asia 2020.

In July 2021, the final analysis of PFS from the GEMSTONE-302 study showed that Cejemly in combination with chemotherapy demonstrated further improvement in PFS and the risk of disease progression or death was reduced by 52%, together with a trend of OS benefits. Data were presented in a Mini Oral Presentation (Late-Breaking Abstract) at the IASLC 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer.

About CStone

CStone is a biopharmaceutical company focused on researching, developing, and commercializing innovative immuno-oncology and precision medicines to address the unmet medical needs of cancer patients in China and worldwide. Established in 2015, CStone has assembled a world-class management team with extensive experience in innovative drug development, clinical research, and commercialization. The Company has built an oncology-focused pipeline of 15 drug candidates with a strategic emphasis on immuno-oncology combination therapies. Currently, CStone has received four drug approvals in Greater China, including three in Mainland China and one in Taiwan. CStone's vision is to become globally recognized as a world-renowned biopharmaceutical company by bringing innovative oncology therapies to cancer patients worldwide.

For more information about CStone, please visit: www.cstonepharma.com.

About Pfizer: Breakthroughs That Change Patients' Lives

At Pfizer, Pfizer applies science and our global resources to bring therapies to people that extend and significantly improve their lives. Pfizer strives to set the standard for quality, safety and value in the discovery, development and manufacture of health care products, including innovative medicines and vaccines. Every day, Pfizer colleagues work across developed and emerging markets to advance wellness, prevention, treatments and cures that challenge the most feared diseases of our time. Consistent with our responsibility as one of the world's premier innovative biopharmaceutical companies, Pfizer collaborates with health care providers, governments and local communities to support and expand access to reliable, affordable health care around the world. For more than 170 years, Pfizer has worked to make a difference for all who rely on Pfizer.

For more information about Pifzer, please visit www.pfizer.com.cn.

Cautionary Statement required by Rule 18A.05 of the Listing Rules: THE COMPANY CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT WE MAY BE ABLE TO ULTIMATELY DEVELOP AND MARKET CEJEMLY (SUGEMALIMAB) SUCCESSFULLY. Shareholders of the Company and potential investors are advised to exercise due care when dealing in the shares of the Company

SOURCE CStone Pharmaceuticals

Related Links

www.cstonepharma.com


BURLINGTON, Vt., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DealerPolicy, the leading insurance marketplace for automotive retail, has appointed Tom Super as the company's Head of Agency Solutions. In this role, Tom will report directly to DealerPolicy Co-Founder and CEO Travis Fitzgerald and oversee the company's insurance sales and service business, which includes DealerPolicy's growing network of local agencies.

Super's appointment to expand insurance operations comes as DealerPolicy enters its next phase of accelerated growth. In 2021, DealerPolicy announced a $110 million Series C funding round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Fitzgerald was recognized as one of Travelers' 2021 Agents of the Year. The company has grown in headcount by 50% over the past year and now supports over 1,200 dealerships nationwide, with more joining each month.

A recognized insurance industry veteran, Super brings 15 years of experience in strategy, general management and leadership to DealerPolicy, having previously held positions at Farmers Insurance Group, Booz & Company, AT&T and The White House. Most recently, Super served as Head of P&C Insurance for J.D. Power and Associates, where he led the expansion of the company's insurance practice and oversaw its vast data-driven research and analysis on insurance consumers. While at Farmers, he helped to establish the company as a national brand while serving in strategy and consumer research areas during his tenure. He holds a master's degree in public administration from the American University School of Public Affairs and received his bachelor's degree in business from Robert Morris University.

"We're thrilled to have Tom join us. In addition to being an established expert who people turn to for all matters related to property and casualty insurance, Tom is a passionate and dedicated leader," said Travis Fitzgerald, Co-Founder and CEO of DealerPolicy. "His track record in establishing J.D. Power and Associates and Farmers as authorities in the industry makes for a tremendous addition to our team. Very few have more insight on insurance customers than Tom, and his expertise on the needs of modern insurance consumers is invaluable to DealerPolicy's mission of delivering a better, more seamless car buying experience for dealers and consumers alike."

"I'm excited to join DealerPolicy because the team is transforming the car-buying experience with a holistic, end-to-end solution as well as changing the way in which insurance is purchased," said Super. "We're at an important inflection point as the insurance industry continues to navigate shifting purchasing behaviors and an ever-evolving technological landscape, and I'm thrilled to be working with DealerPolicy to meet the moment with these consumers."

About DealerPolicy

DealerPolicy is the most trusted and complete digital insurance marketplace for automotive retailers and their valued customers. The company's innovative mobile technology enables car-buyers to view multiple insurance quotes and immediately purchase online and/or connect with licensed insurance agents to complete the process. With an exclusive combination of partnerships among premier automotive retailers and data providers, an industry-best insurance carrier network, and access to DealerPolicy Insurance licensed agents, DealerPolicy is recognized for its place at the forefront of Insurtech. DealerPolicy Insurance is a licensed insurance agency, with licenses to operate in the lower 48 states. For more information, visit www.dealerpolicy.com .

SOURCE DealerPolicy

Related Links

https://www.dealerpolicy.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft carrying more than 6,500 pounds of science experiments, crew supplies, and other cargo is on its way to the International Space Station after launching at 5:07 a.m. EST Tuesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy for the company's 24th commercial resupply services mission for NASA. It is scheduled to autonomously dock at the space station around 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 22, and remain there for about a month. Coverage of arrival will begin at 3 a.m. on NASA Television, the agency's website, and the NASA app.

Among the science experiments Dragon is delivering to the space station are:

Bioprinting bandages

Bioprinting uses viable cells and biological molecules to print tissue structures. The German Aerospace Center study Bioprint FirstAid demonstrates a portable, handheld bioprinter that uses a patient's own skin cells to create a tissue-forming patch to cover a wound and accelerate the healing process. On future missions to the Moon and Mars, bioprinting such customized patches could help address changes in wound healing that can occur in space and complicate treatment. Personalized healing patches also have potential benefits on Earth, providing safer and more flexible treatment anywhere needed.

Improving delivery of cancer drugs

Monoclonal antibodies, used to treat a wide range of human diseases, do not dissolve easily in liquid and so typically must be given intravenously in a clinical setting. The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space Protein Crystal Growth 20 (CASIS PCG 20) experiment continues work on crystallizing a monoclonal antibody, pembrolizumab, that Merck Research Labs developed. It is the active ingredient in Keytruda, a drug that targets multiple cancers. Scientists analyze these crystals to learn more about the structure and behavior of the component to create drug formulations that can be administered at a doctor's office or even at home.

Assessing infection risk

Scientists have observed that spaceflight sometimes increases the virulence of potentially harmful microbes and reduces human immune function, increasing the risk for infectious disease. Host-Pathogen assesses space-induced changes in immune status by culturing cells collected from crew members before, during, and after spaceflight with both "normal" bacteria and bacteria grown under simulated spaceflight conditions. Results could help assess the potential risk infectious microbes may pose and may support development of countermeasures. This could improve care for those with compromised immune systems on Earth.

Roots, shoots, and leaves

Multi Variable Platform (MVP) Plant-01 profiles and monitors the development of the shoots and roots of plants in microgravity. Plants could serve as a vital part of human life support systems for long-duration spaceflight and habitation of the Moon and Mars. However, space-grown plants experience stress from various factors and recent studies indicate changes in plant gene expression in response to those stressors. Improved understanding of these changes could enable the design of plants that are better suited for growth in spaceflight environments.

Toward lunar laundromats

Astronauts on the space station wear items of clothing several times, then replace them with new clothes delivered on resupply missions. Limited cargo capacity makes this a challenge, and resupply is not an option for longer missions, such as those to the Moon and Mars. In a collaboration with NASA, and sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory, Proctor & Gamble has developed Tide Infinity, a fully degradable detergent specifically designed for use in space, and the P&G Telescience Investigation of Detergent Experiments (PGTIDE) study the performance of its stain removal ingredients and the formulation's stability in microgravity. Once proven in space, Tide plans to use the new cleaning methods and detergent to advance sustainable, low-resource-use laundry solutions on Earth.

Parts made in space

Turbine Superalloy Casting Module (SCM) tests a commercial manufacturing device that processes heat-resistant alloy parts in microgravity. Alloys are materials made up of at least two different chemical elements, one of which is a metal. Researchers expect more uniform microstructures and improved mechanical properties in superalloy parts processed in microgravity compared to those processed on Earth. These superior materials could improve the performance of turbine engines in industries such as aerospace and power generation on Earth.

Students and citizens as space scientists

Students enrolled in institutions of higher learning can design and build microgravity experiments as part of NASA's Student Payload Opportunity with Citizen Science (SPOCS). As part of their experiments, selected teams include students in kindergarten through 12 grade as citizen scientists. Citizen science allows individuals who are not professional scientists to contribute to real-world research. The NASA STEM on Station project is funding experiments flying on this SpaceX resupply mission, including a study on antibiotic resistance in microgravity from Columbia University in New York and one on how microgravity affects bacteria-resistant polymers from the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho.

These are just a few of the hundreds of investigations currently being conducted aboard the orbiting laboratory in the areas of biology and biotechnology, physical sciences, and Earth and space science. Advances in these areas will help keep astronauts healthy during long-duration space travel and demonstrate technologies for future human and robotic exploration beyond low-Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars through NASA's Artemis program.

Learn more about SpaceX's mission for NASA at:

https://www.nasa.gov/spacex

Get breaking news, images and features about research on station and space station activities on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


For more insights on the digital diabetes management market - Download a free sample report now!

Market Dynamics

Factors such as the rising global burden of diabetes and favorable government initiatives will be crucial in driving the growth of the market. But the stringent regulatory framework will restrict 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.

Company Profiles

The digital diabetes management market is fragmented and the vendors are deploying various organic and inorganic growth strategies to compete in the market. The digital diabetes management market report provides complete insights on key vendors including Abbott Laboratories, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Intel Corp. Becton Dickinson and Co., DarioHealth Corp., Dassault Systemes SE, decide Clinical Software GmbH, Dexcom Inc., PHC Holdings Corp., and WaveForm Technologies Inc.

Few Companies with Key Offerings

Abbott Laboratories - The company offers Freestyle Libre which is a sensor-based glucose monitoring system that comes with a reader and a sensor. The sensor is applied to the back of the patient upper arm and can be worn for up to 14 days. Simply swipe the reader over the sensor to get a complete picture of patient glucose levels.

The company offers Freestyle Libre which is a sensor-based glucose monitoring system that comes with a reader and a sensor. The sensor is applied to the back of the patient upper arm and can be worn for up to 14 days. Simply swipe the reader over the sensor to get a complete picture of patient glucose levels. B. Braun Melsungen AG - The company offers an Omnitest app that can be used as a digital diabetes diary with any glucose meter, Patients can view diabetes data anywhere, anytime and it is easy to understand and analyze information.

The company offers an Omnitest app that can be used as a digital diabetes diary with any glucose meter, Patients can view diabetes data anywhere, anytime and it is easy to understand and analyze information. Intel Corp. - The company offers a digital diabetes management solution that helps diabetic patients to drive greater adherence and navigate towards improved outcomes.

The company offers a digital diabetes management solution that helps diabetic patients to drive greater adherence and navigate towards improved outcomes. Becton Dickinson and Co. - The company offers a BD diabetes care app that offers the patient to understand the signs of progress in their disease journey.

The company offers a BD diabetes care app that offers the patient to understand the signs of progress in their disease journey. DarioHealth Corp. - The company offers a Smart Diabetes management app where the app was designed to monitor diabetic patients blood sugar, making it easier to see blood sugar trends, count carbs, and build healthy new habits according to results

Competitive Analysis

The competitive scenario provided in the digital diabetes management market 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 Type, the market is classified into wearable devices and hand-held devices.

the market is classified into wearable devices and hand-held devices. By Geography, the market is classified as North America , Europe , APAC, South America , and MEA.

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Digital Blood Pressure Monitors Market -The digital blood pressure monitors market value is projected to grow by USD 244.53 mn at a CAGR of 4.05% during 2021-2025. Download a free sample now!





Biomaterials Market -The biomaterials market share is expected to increase by USD 12.82 billion from 2021 to 2026, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 6.04%. Download a free sample now!

Digital Diabetes Management Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 21.15% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 12.45 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 20.33 Regional analysis North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA Performing market contribution North America at 48% Key consumer countries US, Germany, France, China, and UK Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Abbott Laboratories, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Becton Dickinson and Co., DarioHealth Corp., Dassault Systemes SE, decide Clinical Software GmbH, Dexcom Inc., Intel Corp., PHC Holdings Corp., and WaveForm Technologies Inc 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 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.

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
HOUSTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DonateStock, a fintech startup transforming charitable giving has partnered with GVNG, empowering users to contribute stock to their personal GVNG Wallets. By donating appreciated stock to their GVNG Wallet via Donatestock, GVNG customers can now immediately realize the tax benefits of donating stock while reserving the option to choose which charity they would like to support until a later date.

DonateStock has revolutionized the online stock gifting process by making stock gifting accessible and easy for all donors and nonprofits. Previously, less than one percent of investors donate stock and few nonprofits solicit stock donations. DonateStock closes that gap by enabling 60 million American investors to donate stock to any accredited US nonprofit in 10 minutes or less.

GVNG is a simple and safe way to manage all charitable giving in one place while maximizing impact and tax benefits. Within the app and at their own pace, GVNG users can donate the funds to any U.S. charity. They allow users to contribute money, assets, crypto, and now stock to their accounts.

With this collaboration, GVNG customers contributing through DonateStock can avoid capital gains tax on the increased value of the stock and deduct the full market value of the stock immediately. The tax-deductible stock gift is processed by DonateStock and the proceeds are deposited into the holder's GVNG Wallet. Customers will receive the tax receipt from DonateStock Charitable, Inc. a registered 501c3. This innovative approach allows GVNG Wallet holders several years to distribute the proceeds from the donated stock, making it ideal for year-end tax-advantaged giving.

"We are excited to offer GVNG customers the ability to contribute appreciated stock to their GVNG Wallets in a way that is fast, safe, and easy. Appreciated stock represents billions in untapped funding for nonprofits. Through this partnership we're enabling millions of donors and causes to access it," Steve Latham, DonateStock's Founder and Chairman.

"Empowering donors to make the biggest impact is core to our mission and the partnership with DonateStock will enable charitably minded people to seamlessly and easily do more good with appreciated equity-based assets," said Kyle C. Murphy, CEO of GVNG Technology, the technology arm of GVNG.

Donors can contribute their charitable stock donation to their GVNG Wallet at https://donatestock.com/gvng

For media inquiries regarding DonateStock, please contact Jacquelyn Grant at 202-813-5360 or [email protected].

About DonateStock

DonateStock is a disruptive startup transforming charitable giving by making stock gifting easy and accessible to all nonprofits and donors. DonateStock streamlines the stock gifting process to help donors save on taxes while having greater impact. Nonprofits benefit from larger pre-tax donations and the tools and support needed to diversify and grow individual giving via stock donations. DonateStock is passionate about impacting communities by helping donors and nonprofits make the most out of charitable giving.

About GVNG

GVNG is as much a philosophy as a financial product and appit is designed to increase giving by empowering the citizen philanthropist with the tools, inspiration, and support to become a better donor. The GVNG Wallet is like a 401k for giving, enabling individuals, companies, and other organizations to contribute funds, crypto, stocks, and bonds and get a tax benefit immediately, while providing a seamless path to donate to more than 1.6 million charities over time. Unique to GVNG, users can amplify their impact by running their own tax-deductible crowdfunding campaigns to support their favorite charitable causes. GVNG is integrated with payroll and banks to ensure giving is always part of the overall financial wellness picture and provides a unified picture of impact over time with a single tax receipt at the end of the year. The GVNG Wallet is administered by GVNGorg, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization (a California nonprofit public benefit corporation) and powered by GVNG Technology, Inc.

Learn more at www.gvng.org.

Contact: Jacquelyn Grant

The TASC Group

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE DonateStock
EMBRAER S.A.

Publicly Held Company

CNPJ/ME No. 07.689.002/0001-89

NIRE: 353.003.257-67

SAO JOSE DOS CAMPOS, Brazil, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Embraer S.A. (the "Company") (B3: EMBR3,NYSE: ERJ), pursuant to CVM's Resolution No. 44, dated August 23rd, 2021, and in connection with the material fact disclosed on June 10th, 2021, hereby informs its shareholders and the market in general that the Company, along with two of its subsidiaries (EVE UAM, LLC ("Eve") and Embraer Aircraft Holding Inc. ("EAH")), and Zanite Acquisition Corp. ("Zanite"), a publicly held special purpose acquisition company incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware in the United States, entered into, on this date, a Business Combination Agreement (the "Business Combination Agreement"). Under the Business Combination Agreement, the Company's urban air mobility business, which includes the development and certification of electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles ("eVTOLs"), the creation of a maintenance and services network for eVTOLs and the creation of an air traffic management system for eVTOLs (the "UAM Business"), will be combined with Zanite and the resulting entity will be publicly traded in the United States (the "Combination").

In connection with the Combination, the Company, Eve and EAH also entered into a Contribution Agreement, which governs the transfer of certain assets and liabilities related to the UAM Business to Eve and the transfer of Eve's units to EAH in preparation for the Combination.

The Combination will be implemented through an exchange of Eve's units, which are owned by EAH, for shares of Zanite common stock. After the exchange is effected, Eve will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Zanite and Zanite will change its corporate name to EVE Holding, Inc. ("New Eve"). In connection with the Combination, the Company also entered into new agreements to provide products, inputs, and services to Eve which will continue to be effective after the Combination is completed.

Upon closing of the Combination, EAH will own 237.5 million shares of New Eve's common stock, representing approximately 82% of the outstanding shares of New Eve as of the closing. EAH will receive 220 million shares in exchange for Eve's units, and 17.5 million shares against a cash contribution of US$175 million. The remaining shares of common stock will be owned by the Zanite's public shareholders, Zanite's sponsor and certain third-party investors who enter into subscription agreements to purchase shares of Zanite common stock at the closing of the Combination. In connection with such commitments, Embraer has entered into arrangements with certain of such strategic investors to provide them with price protections in the amount of up to their $30 million aggregate commitments in the form of credits for parts and services or cash in exchange for the transfer of shares to Embraer.

New Eve will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and will be required to disclose reports and financial information relating to its activities pursuant to the regulations of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC").

The Combination, which has been unanimously approved by Zanite's board of directors and the Company's board of directors, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022, subject to approval by regulators, approval of the transaction by Zanite's shareholders and other customary conditions.

Pursuant to SEC regulations, Zanite will disclose additional information relating to the Combination, which will be available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov and on Zanite's website at (https://zaniteacquisition.com/znte-i/). Free translations of the main agreements relating to the Combination will be available at the following website: https://ri.embraer.com.br/. The Company does not assume any liability for the information disclosed by Zanite.

In keeping with its strategy of innovation and growth, the Company will keep its shareholders and the market in general duly informed about new material information relating to the transaction.

Sao Jose dos Campos, December 21, 2021

Antonio Carlos Garcia

Finance and Investor Relations Executive Vice-President

SOURCE Embraer S.A.
MELBOURNE, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Eve Air Mobility, an Embraer company, and Republic Airways Holdings Inc, announced today a Memorandum of Understanding and Letter of Intent to purchase up to 200 of Eve's electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) to explore additional opportunities within its subsidiaries, such as LIFT Academy, that are focused on workforce development initiatives and the future of air travel. The strategic relationship will focus on developing a deployment network throughout the Central and East Coast markets of the United States, with an initial focus on the Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. markets.

In preparation for the first Urban Air Mobility (UAM) flights with Eve's aircraft, the companies have agreed to establish a working group that will study the requirements of future AOCs (Airline Operating Certificates) where Eve's aircraft can be deployed in specific markets and missions. This same working group will also examine the feasibility of additional services from other types of urban air vehicles, which could further expand access into new markets

"Republic's commitment to provide sustainable aviation solutions to our codeshare partners, American, Delta and United, relies on continued investments in both workforce development and emerging clean technologies. The strategic relationship with Eve builds upon decades of a successful relationship with Embraer that has expanded access to regional airports across the country, and we believe Eve's UAM platform could play a critical role in our future workforce development initiatives," said Bryan Bedford, President and CEO of Republic Airways.

"This partnership is a new chapter of a longstanding alliance and a shared tradition of excellence between Republic and Embraer, and now Eve. Republic has the expertise of flying extensive route networks in the United States that are similar to what we expect to see with UAM on a different geographical scale. Beyond that, the deployment of our eVTOL will provide millions of passengers in the country with a faster and better solution as their last-mile option," said Andre Stein, co-CEO of Eve.

Follow Eve, Embraer and Republic Airways on Twitter: @Eveairmobility @Embraer and @RepublicAirways

Forward Looking Statements Disclosure

This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements represent Republic's (the "Company") current expectations or forecasts of future events. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "project," or "continue," or other similar words. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, reflect management's current views with respect to future events and therefore are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, such forward-looking statements include statements regarding the capabilities, development, certification, marketing, and future operations of Eve Urban Air Mobility, LLC ("Eve") eVTOL, the Company's purchase of aircraft from Eve, and the anticipated benefits of the collaboration between the Company and Eve. The Company's actual results may vary materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements.

The Company disclaims any obligation or undertaking to provide any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement to reflect any change in the Company's expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which the forward-looking statement is based that occur after the date hereof. You should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements because the matters they describe are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other unpredictable factors, many of which are beyond our control. Our forward-looking statements are based on the information currently available to us and speak only as of the date hereof. New risks and uncertainties arise from time to time, and it is impossible for us to predict these matters or how they may affect us. We have included important factors in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021 (the "Annual Report") which we believe over time, could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ from the anticipated results, performance or achievements that are expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. You should consider all risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Annual Report and in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), all of which are accessible on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

About Republic Airways Inc.

Founded in 1974, Republic Airways is one of the largest regional airlines in the U.S. Republic operates a fleet of more than 220 Embraer 170/175 aircraft and offers scheduled passenger service with daily flights to 100 cities in the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean and Central America. The airline provides fixed-fee flights operated under its codeshare partners' brands: American Eagle, Delta Connection and United Express. The airline employs about 6,000 aviation professionals. Learn more at www.rjet.com.

In May 2018, Republic opened the Leadership In Flight Training (LIFT) Academy, a commercial aviation pilot and maintenance technician training school in Indianapolis. LIFT uses state-of-the-art training technologies that combine flight, flight simulator, online and in-classroom training. Graduates have a defined pathway to a job as a pilot or aircraft technician at Republic. Learn more at www.flywithlift.com.

About Eve Air Mobility

Eve is a new, independent company dedicated to accelerating the global Urban Air Mobility (UAM) ecosystem. Benefitting from a startup mindset, backed by Embraer's more than 50-year history of aerospace expertise, its singular focus takes a comprehensive approach to the UAM industry by providing a holistic ecosystem. Its advanced electric vertical aircraft (EVA) coupled with its comprehensive global services and support network, and a unique air traffic management solution make it a serious contender in this space. Eve is the first company to graduate from EmbraerX. For more information, visit www.eveairmobility.com.

About Embraer

A global aerospace company headquartered in Brazil, Embraer has businesses in Commercial and Executive aviation, Defense & Security and Agricultural Aviation. The company designs, develops, manufactures and markets aircraft and systems, providing Services & Support to customers after-sales.

Since it was founded in 1969, Embraer has delivered more than 8,000 aircraft. On average, about every 10 seconds an aircraft manufactured by Embraer takes off somewhere in the world, transporting over 145 million passengers a year.

Embraer is the leading manufacturer of commercial jets up to 150 seats and the main exporter of high value-added goods in Brazil. The company maintains industrial units, offices, service and parts distribution centers, among other activities, across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe.

Important Information and Where to Find it

In connection with the proposed business combination among Zanite Acquisition Corp. ("Zanite"), Embraer, Eve and Embraer Aircraft Holding, Inc. ("EAH"), Zanite intends to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") a preliminary proxy statement relating to the proposed business combination. Zanite will mail a definitive proxy statement and other relevant documents to its stockholders. This press release 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 proposed business combination. Zanite's stockholders and other interested persons are advised to read, when available, the preliminary proxy statement and the amendments thereto and the definitive proxy statement and documents incorporated by reference therein filed in connection with Zanite's solicitation of proxies for its special meeting of stockholders to be held to approve the proposed business combination and other matters, as these materials will contain important information about Zanite, Eve and the proposed business combination. When available, the definitive proxy statement and other relevant materials for the proposed business combination will be mailed to stockholders of Zanite as of a record date to be established for voting on the proposed business combination. Stockholders of Zanite will also be able to obtain copies of the preliminary proxy statement, the definitive proxy statement and other documents filed with the SEC that will be incorporated by reference therein, without charge, once available, at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov, or by directing a request to Zanite Acquisition Corp. at 25101 Chagrin Boulevard Suite 350, Cleveland, Ohio 44122, Attention: Steven H. Rosen, or by calling (216) 292-0200.

No Offer or Solicitation

This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, or a solicitation of any vote or approval, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act, or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements thereof.

Participants in the Solicitation

Zanite and its directors and executive officers may be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies from Zanite's stockholders 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 Zanite is contained in Zanite's Registration Statement on Form S-1/A and by Zanite's Current Report on Form 8-K filed on September 15, 2021, each of which was filed with the SEC and is available free of charge at the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov, or by directing a request to Zanite Acquisition Corp. at 25101 Chagrin Boulevard Suite 350, Cleveland, Ohio 44122, Attention: Steven H. Rosen, or by calling (216) 292-0200.

Eve, Embraer, EAH and their respective directors and executive officers may also be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the stockholders of Zanite 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 for the proposed business combination when available.

Additional information regarding the persons who may, under SEC rules, be deemed participants in the solicitation of Zanite's stockholders in connection with the proposed business combination, including a description of their direct and indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be set forth in Zanite's proxy statement for the proposed business combination when it is filed with the SEC. Stockholders, potential investors and other interested persons should read the proxy statement carefully when it becomes available before making any voting or investment decisions. When available, these documents can be obtained free of charge from the sources indicated above.

SOURCE Eve; Republic Airways
DENVER, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Farmland Partners Inc. (NYSE: FPI) (the "Company" or "FPI") and Ducks Unlimited ("DU") last week completed the second stage of a three-part conservation transaction for an approximate total of 1,268 acres adjacent to the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia.

The land resides in the Atlantic Flyway, one of four ancient pathways migratory birds use to travel from breeding grounds to wintering areas.

FPI, which purchased the land in 2015, announced earlier this year that it would sell the property in a staged deal to DU for habitat restoration and protection. The unique transaction structure offered by FPI provides DU time and flexibility to secure capital for the project.

"Thanks to conservation partners like Farmland Partners, important land will be restored to the iconic wetland it once was," DU CEO Adam Putnam said. "By protecting this landscape, we are helping to ensure the wildlife corridor between the Great Dismal Swamp and Caviler Wildlife Management Area is available for generations to come."

The sale of the first tract, consisting of approximately 231 acres, closed January 30, 2021. The second tract was sold on December 17 and includes approximately 625 acres. The final 412-acre tract is expected to close no later than November 30, 2023.

"This transaction is a source of pride for our company because it's good for the environment and it's good for our shareholders," explained Paul Pittman, FPI's Chairman and CEO. "We've enjoyed working with the Ducks Unlimited team to get the second phase of this deal across the finish line, and we look forward to continue working closely with them to preserve precious wildlife habitat."

If the third closing occurs as expected, gross proceeds on all three tracts will total $8 million and should generate approximately $800,000 in gains relative to book value for the company. FPI will continue to receive rent for the final tract until it is sold. That sale is subject to customary due diligence and DU's ability to raise the necessary funds.

About Farmland Partners Inc.

Farmland Partners Inc. is an internally managed real estate company that owns and seeks to acquire high-quality North American farmland and makes loans to farmers secured by farm real estate. As of the date of this release, the Company owns and/or manages approximately 186,000 acres in 18 states, including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota and Virginia. We have approximately 26 crop types and more than 100 tenants. The Company elected to be taxed as a real estate investment trust, or REIT, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, commencing with the taxable year ended December 31, 2014. Additional information: www.farmlandpartners.com or (720) 452-3100.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including, without limitation, statements concerning the transaction, the anticipated timeline for closing and the anticipated gross proceeds. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "should," "could," "would," "predicts," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" or similar expressions or their negatives, as well as statements in future tense. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, beliefs and expectations, such forward-looking statements are not predictions of future events or guarantees of future performance and our actual results could differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Some factors that might cause such a difference include DU's ability to raise the necessary capital to acquire the farms described in this press release on the anticipated timeline or at all, the ability to consummate the transaction described above and general economic conditions. Any forward-looking information presented herein is made only as of the date of this press release, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information to reflect changes in assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events, or otherwise.

SOURCE Farmland Partners Inc.
SILVER SPRING, Md., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration conditionally approved Canalevia-CA1 (crofelemer delayed-release tablets) for the treatment of chemotherapy-induced diarrhea in dogs. This is the first treatment to be approved for this condition.

"Diarrhea is a common side effect of chemotherapy in dogs, which can be so severe that cancer treatment must be halted. Chemotherapy drugs often have potential side effects, but, unlike in human medicine where patients may be willing to tolerate some discomfort in exchange for a potential cure, the primary purpose of cancer treatment in dogs and other pets is to extend survival without sacrificing quality of life and comfort," said Steven M. Solomon, D.V.M., M.P.H., director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine. "This new medication provides veterinarians and dog owners with another tool to help control the side effects of chemotherapy for dogs undergoing such treatment."

Canalevia-CA1 is available only by prescription due to the professional veterinary expertise required to properly diagnosis the cause of diarrhea and monitor dogs receiving chemotherapy. Canalevia-CA1 is a tablet that is given by mouth and can be prescribed for home treatment.

The active ingredient in Canalevia-CA1 is crofelemer, which is approved for use in humans to treat non-infectious diarrhea in adults with HIV/AIDS who take anti-retroviral therapy. In humans, crofelemer functions by inhibiting the secretion of chloride ions and water by intestinal epithelial cells, thereby normalizing the gastrointestinal tract. It is thought that the drug functions similarly in dogs.

Canalevia-CA1 received conditional approval through the Minor Use/Minor Species pathway, which is an option for drugs intended for minor uses in major species (dogs, cats, horses, cattle, pigs, turkeys and chickens) or for minor species. Canalevia-CA1 qualified for conditional approval because the FDA estimates that only about 1% of dogs in the U.S. receive a diagnosis of malignant neoplasia (cancer) per year, and not all dogs that receive treatment suffer from chemotherapy-induced diarrhea. Therefore, the agency estimates the rate of occurrence of chemotherapy-induced diarrhea in dogs in the U.S. to be fewer than 70,000 dogs, which qualifies it as a minor use in a major species.

Conditional approval allows an animal drug sponsor to legally market its product after demonstrating that the drug is safe and manufactured in accordance with full approval standards, and that there is a reasonable expectation of the drug's effectiveness. The initial conditional approval is valid for one year with the potential for four annual renewals. During this time, the animal drug sponsor must demonstrate active progress toward proving substantial evidence of effectiveness for full approval. The animal drug sponsor has five years to obtain full approval after receiving conditional approval, or it will no longer be allowed to be marketed.

The reasonable expectation of effectiveness of Canalevia-CA1 was established in a study with 24 dogs (12 treated and 12 control). A dog was considered a treatment success if its diarrhea resolved and didn't recur during the three-day study. Resolution of diarrhea was defined as a fecal score of one (well-formed stool) or two (soft or very soft, moist stool that doesn't have a clear shape). On the third day, 9 out of 12 dogs (75%) in the treated group were treatment successes compared to 3 out of 12 dogs (25%) in the control group. Additionally, diarrhea had resolved by 48 hours in 4 of the 12 dogs (33%) in the treated group compared to none of the dogs in the control group.

The most common side effects across the laboratory studies and field studies were abnormal feces (soft, watery, mucoid, discolored feces), decreased appetite and activity and vomiting.

Veterinarians should advise owners about the possible side effects before using the drug. The FDA encourages dog owners to work with their veterinary team to report any adverse events or side effects potentially related to the use of any drug, including Canalevia-CA1.

The FDA granted conditional approval of Canalevia-CA1 to Jaguar Animal Health.

Additional Information:

Media Contact: Veronika Pfaeffle, 310-301-2576 or Kim DiFonzo, 240-651-4191

Veterinary and Consumer Inquiries: [email protected], 800-835-4709

The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.

SOURCE U.S. Food and Drug Administration
MAJURO, Marshall Islands, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading cryptocurrency exchange, Gate.io, has launched their second API Trading Competition to reward institutional traders using the platform to execute their trades. Besides a prize pool of up to $300,000 in USDT, participants also stand a chance to win exclusive NFTs.

"After the success of our first API trading competition in July 2021, we have decided to launch another to reward the various institutional investors that make use of Gate.io's platform to perform their trades. Gate.io has seen great interest from high frequency traders, hedge funds, market makers and we'd like to give back to them through this contest," said Marie Tatibouet, Chief Marketing Officer at Gate.io

The trading contest will reward institutional traders based on the trading volume seen during the duration of the competition. Up to $300,000 in USDT and up to 20 exclusive NFTs will be given away to the top traders, with the NFTs giving traders an upgrade on their VIP tier for 60 days as well as access to Gate.io's AMA community and priority as a market maker.

The competition will take place from January 3rd, 2022, until January 17th, 2022, with registration opening on December 20th, 2021.

Benefits of Gate.io for Institutional Investors

Gate.io has over 1,200 coins and tokens available to trade on its spot exchange, making it one of the widest varieties of assets from any top tier exchange. Its tiered VIP structure allow traders discount on trading based off their monthly trading volume, with higher levels giving traders rewards on each trade.

Besides spot trading, Gate.io also offers futures and perpetual contract trading as well as margin and leveraged trading. A single institutional account allows organizations to add up to 300 trading accounts under a single master account with various security features to protect their assets.

About Gate.io

Gate.io is a leading digital currency exchange with over 9 million users in 190 countries across the globe. The exchange offers over 1,200 coins and tokens to trade using spot, margin, futures and contract trading in addition to decentralized finance products through HipoDeFi, services through Wallet.io, investments through Gate Labs and GateChain platform. The company also offers an integrated list of products, such as its Startup IEO platform, NFT, crypto loans and more.

SOURCE Gate.io
DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Automatic Identification and Data Capture Market by Offering, Product, Technology, and Industry Vertical: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Automatic identification and data capture are a process used to identify and collect data related to objects. The automatic identification and data capture system is a relatively broad process of specific technologies such as bar codes, RFID, optical character recognition, smart cards, and voice recognition system.



Surge in the growth of the e-commerce industry paired with the rise in utilization of smartphones based QR codes and image recognition technology is driving the market growth. However, the high cost associated with the automatic identification and data capture coupled with the high risk of concerns of malware attacks and security breaches is anticipated to restrain the automatic identification and data capture market share. Further, the surge in the adoption of AIDC solutions to address human error coupled with government regulations for the adoption of AIDC solutions is expected to drive the need for automatic identification and data capture during the forecast period.



Emergence of COVID-19 has significantly impacted the global automatic identification and data capture industry. Delay caused for deployment and installation of automatic identification and data capture due to partial or complete lockdown in various regions of the world has significantly reduced the growth of automatic identification and data capture during the pandemic. However, the rise in demand for e-commerce platform solutions and smartphones propel the need for enhancing automatic identification and data capture. Further, the government sector has seen growth potential in the deployment of automatic identification and data capture for biometric solutions is forecast to drive the automatic identification and data capture market analysis post-pandemic.



The automatic identification and data capture market is segmented into offering, product, technology, industry vertical, and region. By offering, the market is segregated into hardware, solutions, and services. Based on product, it is segmented into scanner & reader, biometric scanners, printer & recorder, and others. The scanner & reader segment is further segmented into barcode scanners, RFID scanner, smart card reader, magnetic stripe reader, and optical character recognition (OCR). Depending on technology, it is segmented into biometrics, radio frequency identification (RFID), smart cards, optical character recognition (OCR), and others. Based on industry vertical, the market is segmented into BFSI, manufacturing, retail, transportation & logistics, hospitality, healthcare, government, and others. Region wise, the market is analysed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.



The report analyses top automatic identification and data capture companies operating in the market such as Cognex Corporation, Datalogic S.p.A., Honeywell, NXP Semiconductors N.V., Panasonic Corporation, SICK AG, Synaptics Incorporated, Thales, Toshiba, and Zebra Technologies. These players have adopted various strategies to increase their market penetration and strengthen their position in the automatic identification and data capture industry.

Key Topics Covered:



CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION



CHAPTER 2: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



CHAPTER 3: MARKET LANDSCAPE

3.1. MARKET DEFINITION AND SCOPE

3.2. KEY FINDINGS

3.2.1. Top investment pockets

3.2.2. Top winning strategies

3.3. PORTER'S FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS

3.3.1. Bargaining power of suppliers

3.3.2. Threat of new entrants

3.3.3. Threat of substitutes

3.3.4. Competitive rivalry

3.3.5. Bargaining power among buyers

3.4. MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS/TOP PLAYER POSITIONING 2020

3.5. MARKET DYNAMICS

3.5.1. Drivers

3.5.2. Restraints

3.5.3. Opportunities

3.6. COVID-19 impact analysis on automatic identification and data capture market

3.6.1. Impact on automatic identification and data capture market size

3.6.2. Change in consumer trends, preferences, and budget impact, owing to COVID-19

3.6.3. Framework for market challenges faced by automatic identification and data capture providers

3.6.4. Economic impact on automatic identification and data capture providers

3.6.5. Key player strategies to tackle negative impact on the industry

3.6.6. Opportunity analysis for automatic identification and data capture providers



CHAPTER 4: AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION AND DATA CAPTURE MARKET BY OFFERING

4.1. OVERVIEW

4.2. HARDWARE

4.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

4.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region

4.2.3. Market share analysis, by country

4.3. SOLUTION

4.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

4.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region

4.3.3. Market share analysis, by country

4.4. SERVICES

4.4.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

4.4.2. Market size and forecast, by region

4.4.3. Market share analysis, by country



CHAPTER 5: AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION AND DATA CAPTURE MARKET BY PRODUCT

5.1. OVERVIEW

5.2. SCANNER & READER

5.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

5.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region

5.2.3. Market share analysis, by country

5.2.4. Barcode Scanners

5.2.4.1. Market size and forecast

5.2.5. RFID Scanner

5.2.5.1. Market size and forecast

5.2.6. Smart Card Reader

5.2.6.1. Market size and forecast

5.2.7. Magnetic Stripe Reader

5.2.7.1. Market size and forecast

5.2.8. Optical Character Recogni

5.2.8.1. Market size and forecast

5.3. BIOMETRIC SCANNERS

5.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

5.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region

5.3.3. Market share analysis, by country

5.4. PRINTER & RECORDER

5.4.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

5.4.2. Market size and forecast, by region

5.4.3. Market share analysis, by country

5.5. OTHERS

5.5.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

5.5.2. Market size and forecast, by region

5.5.3. Market share analysis, by country



CHAPTER 6: AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION AND DATA CAPTURE MARKET BY TECHNOLOGY

6.1. OVERVIEW

6.2. BIOMETRICS

6.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

6.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region

6.2.3. Market share analysis, by country

6.3. RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION (RFID)

6.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

6.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region

6.3.3. Market share analysis, by country

6.4. SMART CARDS

6.4.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

6.4.2. Market size and forecast, by region

6.4.3. Market share analysis, by country

6.5. OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION (OCR)

6.5.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

6.5.2. Market size and forecast, by region

6.5.3. Market share analysis, by country

6.6. OTHERS

6.6.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

6.6.2. Market size and forecast, by region

6.6.3. Market share analysis, by country



CHAPTER 7: AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION AND DATA CAPTURE MARKET BY INDUSTRY VERTICAL

7.1. OVERVIEW

7.2. BFSI

7.2.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

7.2.2. Market size and forecast, by region

7.2.3. Market share analysis, by country

7.3. MANUFACTURING

7.3.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

7.3.2. Market size and forecast, by region

7.3.3. Market share analysis, by country

7.4. RETAIL

7.4.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

7.4.2. Market size and forecast, by region

7.4.3. Market share analysis, by country

7.5. TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

7.5.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

7.5.2. Market size and forecast, by region

7.5.3. Market share analysis, by country

7.6. HOSPITALITY

7.6.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

7.6.2. Market size and forecast, by region

7.6.3. Market share analysis, by country

7.7. HEALTHCARE

7.7.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

7.7.2. Market size and forecast, by region

7.7.3. Market share analysis, by country

7.8. GOVERNMENT

7.8.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

7.8.2. Market size and forecast, by region

7.8.3. Market share analysis, by country

7.9. OTHERS

7.9.1. Key market trends, growth factors and opportunities

7.9.2. Market size and forecast, by region

7.9.3. Market share analysis, by country



CHAPTER 8: AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION AND DATA CAPTURE MARKET BY REGION

CHAPTER 9: COMPANY PROFILES

9.1. COGNEX CORPORATION

9.1.1. Company overview

9.1.2. Key Executives

9.1.3. Company snapshot

9.1.4. Operating business segments

9.1.5. Product portfolio

9.1.6. Business performance

9.1.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.2. DATALOGIC S. P. A.

9.2.1. Company overview

9.2.2. Key Executives

9.2.3. Company snapshot

9.2.4. Operating business segments

9.2.5. Product portfolio

9.2.6. Business performance

9.2.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.3. HONEYWELL

9.3.1. Company overview

9.3.2. Key Executives

9.3.3. Company snapshot

9.3.4. Operating business segments

9.3.5. Product portfolio

9.3.6. Business performance

9.3.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.4. NXP SEMICONDUCTORS N. V.

9.4.1. Company overview

9.4.2. Key Executives

9.4.3. Company snapshot

9.4.4. Operating business segments

9.4.5. Product portfolio

9.4.6. Business performance

9.4.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.5. PANASONIC CORPORATION

9.5.1. Company overview

9.5.2. Key Executives

9.5.3. Company snapshot

9.5.4. Operating business segments

9.5.5. Product portfolio

9.5.6. Business performance

9.5.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.6. SICK AG

9.6.1. Company overview

9.6.2. Key Executives

9.6.3. Company snapshot

9.6.4. Operating business segments

9.6.5. Product portfolio

9.6.6. Business performance

9.6.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.7. SYNAPTICS INCORPORATED

9.7.1. Company overview

9.7.2. Key Executives

9.7.3. Company snapshot

9.7.4. Operating business segments

9.7.5. Product portfolio

9.7.6. Business performance

9.7.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.8. THALES

9.8.1. Company overview

9.8.2. Key Executives

9.8.3. Company snapshot

9.8.4. Operating business segments

9.8.5. Product portfolio

9.8.6. Business performance

9.8.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.9. TOSHIBA

9.9.1. Company overview

9.9.2. Key Executives

9.9.3. Company snapshot

9.9.4. Operating business segments

9.9.5. Product portfolio

9.9.6. Business performance

9.9.7. Key strategic moves and developments

9.10. ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES

9.10.1. Company overview

9.10.2. Key Executives

9.10.3. Company snapshot

9.10.4. Operating business segments

9.10.5. Product portfolio

9.10.6. Business performance

9.10.7. Key strategic moves and developments

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/anx8hz

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
DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Cyber Security Market (By Segment, End-Users & Region): Insights & Forecast with Potential Impact of COVID-19 (2021-2025)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global cyber security market is forecasted to reach US$276.1 billion in 2025, experiencing growth at a CAGR of 7.64% during the period spanning from 2021 to 2025.

Growth in the global cyber security market was supported by factors such as surge in cyber crime rate, increasing digitalization, rise in cyber security regulations, evolution of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, upsurge in web traffic, surge in tech startups, and rising e-commerce sales.

However, the market growth is expected to be restrained by complexity of network infrastructure and higher reliance on traditional authentication methods.

The global cyber security market by type can be segmented as follows: security services, infrastructure protection, network security, identity access management, consumer security services, integrated risk management, data security, application security, cloud security and other information security software. In 2020, the dominant share of global cyber security market was held by security services, followed by infrastructure protection.

The global cyber security market by end user can be segmented as follows: government, IT & telecom, banking, manufacturing, insurance, transportation, securities and others. The largest share of the market was being held by government, followed by IT & telecom and banking.

In 2020, the dominant share of market was being held by North America, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Factors such as surge in tech startups and rising e-commerce sales helped in boosting market growth.

Scope of the report

The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the global cyber security market with potential impact of COVID-19.

The major regional markets ( North America , Europe , Asia Pacific , Latin America and Middle East & Africa ) have been analyzed.

, , , and & ) have been analyzed. The market dynamics such as growth drivers, market trends and challenges are analyzed in-depth.

The competitive landscape of the market, along with the company profiles of leading players (International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Cisco Systems, Inc., Broadcom Inc., Palo Alto Networks, Inc., McAfee Corp., Check Point Software Technologies Limited) are also presented in detail.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Market Overview

1.1.1 Cyber Security - Introduction

1.1.2 Need for Cyber Security

1.1.3 Importance of Cyber Security

1.2 Common Cyber Attacks

1.3 Types of Cyber Security

1.4 Implications of Cyber Security

1.4.1 Financial, Stock Market and Insurance Implications

1.4.2 Environmental Implications

1.4.3 Social Implications

1.4.4 Governance Implications

1.5 Advantages of Cyber Security

1.6 Disadvantages of Cyber Security



2. Impact of COVID-19

2.1 Impact of COVID-19 on Cyber Security Market

2.2 Increased Use of Video Communication Platforms

2.3 Shift to Remote Working

2.4 Rise in adoption of BYOD trend

2.5 Post-COVID Scenario



3. Market Analysis

3.1 Global Cyber Security Market by Value

3.2 Global Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

3.3 Global Cyber Security Market by Segment

3.4 Global Cyber Security Market by Type

3.5 Global Cyber Security Market by End User

3.6 Global Cyber Security Market by Device

3.7 Global Cyber Security Market by Region



4. Regional Market

4.1 North America

4.1.1 North America Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.1.2 North America Cyber Security Market by Geography

4.1.3 The US Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.1.4 Canada Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.2 Europe

4.2.1 Europe Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.3 Asia Pacific

4.3.1 Asia Pacific Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.3.2 Asia Pacific Cyber Security Market by Geography

4.3.3 China Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.3.4 India Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.3.5 Japan Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.3.6 ASEAN Countries Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.3.7 Australia & New Zealand Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.3.8 South Korea Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.3.9 Rest of Asia Pacific Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.4 Latin America

4.4.1 Latin America Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value

4.5 Middle East & Africa

4.5.1 Middle East & Africa Cyber Security Market Forecast by Value



5. Market Dynamics

5.1 Growth Drivers

5.1.1 Increasing Digitalization

5.1.2 Rise in Cyber Security Regulations

5.1.3 Upsurge in Web Traffic

5.1.4 Surge in Cyber Crime Rate

5.1.5 Surge in Tech Startups

5.1.6 Rising E-commerce Sales

5.2 Key Trends & Developments

5.2.1 Evolution of Internet of Things (IoT) Devices

5.2.2 Integration of Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security

5.2.3 Rise in Smart City Projects

5.2.4 Growth in 5G Network Connections

5.2.5 Cyber Security Mesh

5.3 Challenges

5.3.1 Complexity of Network Infrastructure

5.3.2 Higher Reliance on Traditional Authentication Methods

5.3.3 Shortage of Skilled Cyber Security Professionals



6. Competitive Landscape

6.1 Global Market

6.1.1 Revenue Comparison- Key Players

6.1.2 Market Capitalization Comparison- Key Players

6.1.3 Research & Development Expenses Comparison- Key Players

6.1.4 Market Share- Key Players



7. Company Profiles

7.1 Business Overview

7.2 Financial Overview

7.3 Business Strategies

Broadcom Inc.

Check Point Software Technologies Limited

Cisco Systems Inc.

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)

McAfee Corp.

Palo Alto Networks Inc.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2n1igx

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
Tennessee is tied with five other states for the third-highest prevalence of parental incarceration, with one in 10 children in the state with a parent or guardian who served time in jail or prison after the child was born. There are currently 2.7 million children in the U.S. whose parents are incarcerated, and a total of 10 million children have experienced parental incarceration at some point.

Research shows the trauma of being separated from a parent can increase children's mental health issues and hamper educational achievement, and kids of incarcerated parents are at a greater risk of dropping out of school.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's report, "A Shared Sentence: The Devastating Toll of Parental Incarceration on Kids, Families and Communities" recommends ways communities can better support children who have a parent in prison or jail, including providing mentoring programs and other support in early education. Studies show that participation in storybook programs helps keep families together and increases the chances of a parent staying at home once he or she is released from prison.

"The gift of reading not only gives children an opportunity for a brighter future, but it can bring comfort and safety during a difficult time," said James Pond, GELF President. "When my dad was in prison, we didn't have anything to bridge the gap behind bars. One teacher instilled in me a strong sense of the power of books and how they can change you and transform your life. Through this initiative, I hope we give the gift of reading to children and keep families reading together. Books bond. Books build. Books bridge."

Women Ablaze is a non-profit interdenominational ministry in West Tennessee that ministers to women experiencing incarceration in two Memphis prisons. Through this special holiday initiative, GELF donated books to Women Ablaze's Storybook Program and provided incarcerated mothers and fathers the opportunity to apply to gift their children a home library.

"We always hear from the mothers how their children love listening to them read a story repeatedly," said Linda Lee White, Founder and Executive Director of Women Ablaze Ministries. "The home library will help deepen the connection and make it much stronger and what an impact it will make with the children to see that their moms or dads sent them something! I am so thankful to Governor's Early Literacy Foundation for making this possible. It's going to make a special Christmas for the parents and 158 children!"

Quotes collected from participating parents reveal the personal impact of this holiday gift from GELF.

"My daughter is nine and very smart, talented, and creative, and she will just love this," said Loren, a participating mother with one child. "Since I won't be home for Christmas, it's like I'll still be there for her. I am very excited about this!"

"I like that this is being sent to my children from me, and the books will encourage them to read more," said Ashley, a participating mother with two children. "They love to read, and this will help them bond with me and my family. It will let my children know that I am thinking of them."

"This means a lot to me because I do not get to talk with my children much," said Tara, a participating mother with three children. "It is a way that I can be in contact with them, and that will mean a lot to them. I am so happy that something is coming from me to them."

This initiative is a part of GELF's annual year-end "Giving Back, Moving Forward" campaign, made possible with support from Amazon.

"We've been proud to partner with GELF on several of their programs in recent years, and I've personally seen firsthand the difference they make in Tennessee," said Courtney Ross, Amazon's Sr. Manager of External Affairs in Nashville. "There is something magical about the connection parents and children share through reading together and, as a company, we're happy to contribute this season as GELF continues this vital work."

GELF encourages Tennesseans to give the gift of reading this holiday season by donating to their cause. For more information on how to donate, visit GovernorsFoundation.org .

About GELF

Governor's Early Literacy Foundation (GELF) equips Tennessee's children with books and innovative literacy tools that encourage lifelong learning for a brighter future. GELF is a nonpartisan 501c3 driven by a mission to strengthen early literacy in Tennessee by acting as a thought leader, advisor, and catalyst for programs across the state. These programs include Birth-5 Book Delivery through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, K-3 Book Delivery, Caregiver Engagement, Book Buses, and Storybook Trails. For more information, visit www.GovernorsFoundation.org .

About Women Ablaze Ministries, Inc.

Women Ablaze (WAM) is a non-profit interdenominational ministry in West Tennessee that ministers to women experiencing incarceration in two Memphis prisons. The vision and mission of WAM are accomplished through the establishment and ongoing management of group homes, prison ministry, regular worship services, Bible studies, mentoring, and outreach to the lost especially at-risk women. For more information, visit www.womenablazeministries.org .

Contact: Claire Jones

[email protected]

(318) 286-0933

SOURCE Governors Early Literacy Foundation
BEIJING, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hanjiao Group, Inc. ("Hanjiao" or the "Company") (OTC Pink: HJGP), a Nevada holding corporation that, through its variable interest entity, is engaged in providing home care services and related healthcare products to the middle-aged and elderly communities in the PRC through its online e-Commerce platform and offline service centers, today announced the Company was selected by CCTV's Rising China Interview Show ("Rising China") as one of the supported enterprises. Xiangyang Tian, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hanjiao was invited as a guest speaker of Rising China to discuss the business management in enterprise development with the show host on December 16, 2021.

Rising China, a program of CCTV digital channel, is a large-scale studio-based interview show program combined with live-action shooting. Through a multi-faceted media perspective, Rise China interviews Chinese private enterprise groups to discuss the commonalities of enterprise growth and explore the core of brand development. Rising China aims to show the commitment and social responsibility of modern enterprises by focusing on the outstanding performance of national enterprises in establishing national brands and assisting enterprises to improve their brand reputation and influence. In view of Hanjiao's continuous promotion of the smart senior care market and its rapid growth from a small private enterprise to a US-listed senior care company in just a few years, the Rising China program committee decided to include Hanjiao in the list of supported enterprises to assist the Company's development and promote transformation and upgrading of senior care industry.

Xiangyang Tian, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hanjiao, commented, "We are excited that our Company was selected to partner with Rising China to share the story of our brand and development. We will continue to develop in the health and wellness industry, and become an senior care platform supported by an intelligent service system that brings together wellness related talents, education, services, products and technology. We believe we could inspire other entrepreneurs, and better promote our Company through Rising China."

About Hanjiao Group, Inc.

Hanjiao Group, Inc. (OTC: HJGP) ("Hanjiao" or the "Company") is a Nevada holding corporation that, through its subsidiaries and variable interest entity, is engaged in the business of distributing healthcare related products and providing senior care institutions, home care services, housekeeping services, home appliance maintenance, senior socialization, meal services, and consultation services to the middle-aged and elderly market segments in the PRC through its "Internet + Wellness" homecare services cloud platform - Yiyuankangyang, online e-Commerce platform (www.fozgo.com) and offline service centers. Hanjiao's business is conducted through Beijing Yingjun Technology Co., Ltd., a variable interest entity formed in Beijing, China on March 27, 2007.

About CCTV Digital Channel

CCTV Digital Channel, a China TV integrated operation platform invested by China Central Television and China International Television Corporation, is China's first operating organization engaged in digital channel integration technical support and agency marketing business in China. Currently, CCTV Digital Channel integrates a total of 30 TV channels and maintains a leading position in the market with "the number of channels integrated, the number of contracted network companies and the number of subscribers covered", and it is the largest integrated operation platform for TV in China.

Forward-Looking Statement

This release contains certain "forward-looking statements" relating to the business of Hanjiao Group, Inc., which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates" or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including business uncertainties relating to the Chinese government regulation of U.S. publicly listed companies and our industry such as China's M&A rules, Anti-Monopoly Law, and the Data Security Law, or other laws that may target our corporate structure and impact our ability to conduct business in the PRC, accept foreign investments, or list on an U.S. or other foreign exchange, risks of market demand, reliance on key personnel, future capital requirements, competition in general and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Certain of these risks and uncertainties are or will be described in greater detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects on the Company. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting the Company will be those anticipated by the Company. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond the control of the Company) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. 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, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

For more information, please contact:

Honggang Xu

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +86 185-1685-0587

Sherry Zheng

Weitian Group LLC

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +1-718-213-7386

SOURCE Hanjiao Group, Inc.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- It all started with blood-soaked sand in a remote forward operating base in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, but none of the founders of 2B3D Inc. knew it at the time.

Robert Bell was the sales executive and owner of Bell Medical Solutions, generating high volumes of revenue managing multi-million-dollar accounts.

"I got involved with crypto shortly after the market crashed," Bell explained. "As an early investor in NFTs, I realized the potential, but there was also no easy way to show off these digital works of art. I knew there was a better way."

Bell launched his own NFT marketplace in 2021, intending to create virtual spaces where NFTs could be genuinely appreciated. He reached out to a childhood friend, Andrew Bjarnsen, to help develop NFT galleries.

Bjarnsen graduated from Laguna College of Art and Design with a master's in fine arts in Art of Game Design. His University of Southern California team had developed an "electrifying VR rhythm game" called Super Nova, which was selected as a finalist for the 2018 IEEE GameSIG Showcase in 2018, according to LCAD. This game laid the groundwork for Bjarnsen's gaming studio.

"We started talking about his video game projects and my NFT marketplace, and we decided to combine the two," Bell said.

Bell and Bjarnsen founded 2B3D Inc. to develop a VR metaverse filled with NFTs using their combined marketing, cryptocurrency, and game design expertise. But why stop there? They also wanted to make a difference in the real world, and for good reason.

Bjarnsen had recently returned from a U.S. Army deployment in Afghanistan, serving as a combat medic.

"I quickly recognized that something had changed in my friend," Bell said.

Like many veterans returning from Afghanistan at the time, Bjarnsen had difficulty recovering after experiencing a traumatic event. The condition, known as post-traumatic stress disorder, could last months or years, with triggers that bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions. Other symptoms include nightmares, unwanted memories of the trauma, avoidance of situations that bring back memories, heightened reactions, anxiety, or depression.

Veterans who have seen combat or feel isolated are the most vulnerable to thoughts of suicide. Twenty to 30 percent of veterans who commit suicide also screened positive for PTSD. Many more go undiagnosed.

Bell immediately thought of his friend.

"Honestly, my 'aha' moment was when I looked at the 580 veteran suicides last year," Bell said. "When I wrote that number down and really did that math, that's when something changed in me. I no longer wanted to make something that was just fun or cool, but something that could help heal and save lives. I knew it needed to be done as fast as possible."

2B3D's flagship project is a gamified VR mental health solution called VRx, for veterans who have PTSD.

VR therapy, or the use of VR technology for psychological or therapeutic rehabilitation, is backed by more than 25 Years of scientific research. The Office of Naval Research believes VR therapy, with its game-like qualities, could resonate with the current generation of warfighters. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, video games can help veterans recover from post-traumatic stress.

In an open clinical trial of VR therapy by the Office of Naval Research, veterans with PTSD experienced a 56 to 90 percent drop in stress response measurements. Another 46 percent of veterans no longer screened positive for PTSD after receiving treatment in VR.

"I get phone calls from strangers who are desperate for this solution," Bell explained. "Once I realized that every day closer to our goal has the potential to save hundreds of lives, I stopped sleeping as much. I knew we had to get this done."

With VRx preloaded on VR headsets, veterans with PTSD could step into soothing virtual environments integrated with neurocognitive mini-games designed with data points using research-backed by neuroscientists and neuropsychologists.

Additionally, 2B3D has partnered with the veteran-owned and operated nonprofit Forge Forward Project to conduct a peer-reviewed study of VRx using the most advanced imaging and testing protocols in the world. With six different cognitive tests performed inside MRI machines, neuroscientists can measure the effects that their VR games have on neurovascular coupling, which is the connection between neurons and blood flow in the brain. By processing more than 7000 near real-time images of the brain and comparing them to a healthy control database, Forge Forward Project aims to show how, exactly, VRx's neurocognitive mini-games jumpstart the healing process in the brain.

To learn more about 2B3D's nonprofit partners, visit www.ForgeForwardProject.org

Veterans will also be able to use VRx for socialization, community building, and connecting with crisis response managers or mental health therapists in a safe virtual space from anywhere in the world.

2B3D is the first tech company of its kind to use virtual reality technology to provide peace and healing to veterans for free. VRx is currently under development, with alpha tests starting early 2022. They are currently seeking investors and major partners in this effort.

Visit their GoFundMe campaign to learn more or donate:

https://gofund.me/9e0e50d8

"I know we can do more," Bell said. "We now have the research and expertise to make a real difference. It's time to end veteran suicide. Because we should."

WATCH:

VRx Launch Teaser

VRx Full Campaign Video

Contact:

Robert Bell

9499109069

[email protected]

SOURCE 2B3D Inc.
MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hunter Street Partners ("Hunter Street"), a Minneapolis-based alternative investment management firm, is pleased to announce it has partnered with Rice Park Capital Management ("Rice Park") to acquire Asset Based Lending, LLC ("ABL"), building on a residential loan investment platform launched by the two firms last year .

ABL provides real estate investors with access to cash through real estate investor loan programs. Borrowers use the loans to finance business activities, including fix-and-flip projects, new construction, and term-lending products for non-owner-occupied properties. Hunter Street and Rice Park will support the growth of ABL, while integrating ABL's existing loan portfolio and origination capabilities into its broader residential loan investment platform.

"We are seeing positive secular tailwinds for single family housing and look forward to working with Rice Park and ABL's management team to further scale origination efforts," said Neal Johnson, CEO and CIO at Hunter Street.

"The investment from Hunter Street and Rice Park enables us to attract new borrowers by offering lower-cost and more efficient financing. We were looking for long-term partners that could not only provide the capital we need to grow, but ones with significant experience in our market niche so we could benefit from their expertise for additional added value," said Kevin Rodman, CEO at ABL.

"ABL is a perfect extension to our residential loan investment platform, and we see tremendous synergistic opportunities as we develop a leading platform in this sector. We look forward to working with the ABL team alongside Hunter Street as they continue to grow their business," said Nicholas Smith, Rice Park founder, CEO and Co-CIO.

ABL will continue to operate under the same name and its core leadership team will remain in place, with Kevin Rodman serving as CEO and Daniel Leyden as COO.

Piper Sandler & Co. was the exclusive financial advisor to ABL for this transaction.

About Hunter Street Partners

Hunter Street Partners is a Minneapolis-based alternative investment management firm that provides capital solutions to operating partner teams and lower middle market companies across corporate finance, real estate, and specialty finance. The firm is focused on fundamentals-driven, asset-oriented credit and equity opportunities. Learn more about Hunter Street Partners at www.hunterst.com

About Rice Park Capital Management

Rice Park Capital Management LP is a private investment firm managing funds and vehicles on behalf of institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals. Its investment focus is to deliver cycle-resistant returns to its limited partners by unlocking value in complex opportunities in the residential and commercial mortgage and real estate sectors. Learn more about Rice Park at www.riceparkcapital.com.

About Asset Based Lending

Established in 2010, Asset Based Lending, LLC is a lender that provides fast-bridge financing to real estate investors for the purchase, renovation, or new construction of single family, multi-family, and mixed-use properties. The firm lends in 13 states and Washington DC and has closed loans with total transaction amounts in excess of $1 billion. For more information, visit https://www.abl1.net/ .

Contact for Hunter Street Partners

[email protected]

Contact for Rice Park Capital Management

[email protected]

Media Contact for Hunter Street Partners

Zach Kouwe / Shree Dhond

Dukas Linden Public Relations

[email protected]

212.704.7385

SOURCE Hunter Street Partners
ATLANTA, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Impellam, a leading talent acquisition and workforce management company, today announced the appointment of Danny Cohen as Managing Director, STEM, North America and Tracy Monsour as SVP, Marketing, North America. Cohen and Monsour both report into Claire Marsh, CEO, Impellam, North America.

Cohen has direct oversight and is responsible for driving strategy across the Impellam STEM portfolio, including the Lorien, SRG, and Bartech divisions, working closely with the respective brand presidents.

Monsour leads marketing and communication activities across all Impellam brands in the US and Canada, including Bartech, Corestaff, Lorien, and SRG.

"It's a really exciting time for Danny and Tracy to join Impellam, as they'll play integral roles in the ongoing, rapid growth of our business in North America," commented Claire Marsh, CEO, North America, "We're also honored to be one of a very select few companies recognized by Forbes as leaders in executive, professional, and temporary recruitment. Our reputation is set to continue to rise with the appointment of Danny and Tracy. Recruiting two people of their stature demonstrates the magnitude of our ambition and our commitment to delivering excellence across all areas of our business. We have a world-class leadership team in place, and I can't wait to see what we can deliver together for our clients and candidates."

Danny Cohen, Managing Director, STEM North America, "I am thrilled to join Impellam. Community is important to me, and in Impellam I have found a community of like-minded people enthusiasts who embrace originality, agility, and doing the right thing. A great passion of mine is in finding pathways for everyone into the STEM industry and I'm delighted this ethos is shared by Claire and our team."

Tracy Monsour, SVP, Marketing, North America added, "Impellam has some of the most respected staffing brands in the market, and I am proud to work for a company that puts trust and people at the heart of everything they do. The leadership team values creativity and collaboration, so I am looking forward to working together to deliver bold new campaigns for our brands."

The news of Cohen and Monsour's appointments follows the recent announcement that Ann Bookout has joined as Global Head of Culture and Fulfillment for Impellam Group.

NOTES

Danny Cohen

Cohen started his career in recruitment in Europe over 20 years ago, working via many specialist brands within the SThree Group. He moved to Amsterdam in 2005 eventually leading all STEM contract brands across Benelux and France before relocating to the US where he was promoted to Computer Futures' Head of Americas. Away from his day job, Cohen sits on a number of diversity and tech boards; he is the co-founder of Breaking the Glass, a leading professional program for women in the tech community and their allies; and board member at both 50/50 Women Board and the San Diego Tech Hub, a partnership to help under-served and under-represented communities get jobs in technology.

Tracy Monsour

Monsour has significant executive experience in the field of marketing and communications. She has spent most of her career working in and around the human capital industry and has a passion for developing and mentoring young professionals. She started her career working for Bernard Hodes Group and during that 15+ year tenure, rose to SVP and co-head of national sales; and later held roles in TMP Worldwide (now Radancy) and most recently in Randstad. At Randstad she rose to become the Global Head of Content, Thought Leadership and Enterprise Insights where she headed a team that was responsible for driving share of voice for the company across all relevant media platforms, with a focus on engaging enterprise client companies. Monsour was also instrumental in developing the women's mentorship program for Randstad that fosters and develops early-to-mid career women in achieving professional growth and fulfillment.



Impellam is one of the largest global talent acquisition and managed workforce solutions providers in the world. Clients across the world trust us to deliver managed services and specialist staffing in the UK, North America, Australasia, and Europe. Working with them are 2,500 Impellam people, bringing a wealth of expertise through our 14 market-leading brands across 76 locations. Every year, we connect carefully chosen candidates with good work at all levels. Visit www.impellam.com .

For more information, please contact Kirsty Tranter at [email protected], +44(0)1582 692692.

SOURCE Impellam
PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Insurance Third Party Administrator Market By Service Type (Claims Management, Policy Management, Commission Management, and Others), End User (Life & Health Insurance [Diseases Insurance and Medical Insurance] and Property & Casualty (P&C) Insurance), and Enterprise Size (Large Enterprises and Small & Medium-sized Enterprises): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030". According to the report, the global insurance third party administrator industry generated $280.69 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach $514.98 billion by 2030, witnessing a CAGR of 6.3% from 2021 to 2030.

Drivers, Restraints and Opportunities

Increase in adoption of third party administrators in the health insurance industry and need for operational efficiency & transparency in insurance business processes drive the growth of the global insurance third party administrator (TPA) market. However, security issues and privacy concerns hinder the market growth. On the other hand, technological advancements in third party administrator services create new opportunities in the coming years.

Download Sample Report (Get Full Insights in PDF - 321 Pages) @ https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/12907

COVID-19 Scenario:

The Covid-19 pandemic led to surge in trend of digital transformation in the insurance industry and demand for third party administration solutions that are hosted or managed on the cloud.

In addition, the number of claims in health insurance increased during the pandemic. Therefore, the insurance companies invested heavily in third party administrator services to effectively handle sudden rise in number of claims. This showed the increase in third-party administrators for improving cost efficiency and business operations during the pandemic by insurance companies.

The large enterprises segment to maintain its leadership status during the forecast period

Based on enterprise size, the large enterprises segment contributed to the highest share in 2020, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the global insurance third party administrator market, and is expected to maintain its leadership status during the forecast period. This is due to constant risks regarding changing government regulations that impact the business operations and cause financial loss to the company. TPA protects enterprises from uncertainties and ensures smooth business operations.

However, the small & medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) segment is expected to manifest the largest CAGR of 7.4% from 2021 to 2030, owing to SMEs opting for self-insurance of a portion of their liability, commercial property, or workers compensation risks. In addition, TPAs administer claims on behalf of businesses that are self-funded their health, dental, or other benefit plans.

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The claims management segment to continue its lead position throughout the forecast period

Based on service type, the claims management segment accounted for the largest share in 2020, contributing to nearly three-fourths of the global insurance third party administrator market, and is estimated to continue its lead position throughout the forecast period. This is pertaining to their help in making claim processes more efficient by identifying several complications in claims and assisting in taking command of claims & controlling defense and administrative costs. However, the policy management segment is projected to portray the fastest CAGR of 9.3% from 2021 to 2030, owing to management of an entire catalogue of policies that are offered and issued to the policyholders.

North America to maintain its dominant share in terms of revenue by 2030

Based on region, North America accounted for the highest market share in 2020, contributing to nearly three-fifths of the global insurance third party administrator market, and is projected to maintain its dominant share in terms of revenue by 2030. This is attributed to increased adoption of health insurance policies and favorable health insurance landscape in the U.S. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to manifest the highest CAGR of 8.9% during the forecast period, due to continuous increase in healthcare costs and steady income of people.

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Leading Market Players

Charles Taylor

Corvel

Crawford & Company

ESIS

ExlService Holdings Inc.

Gallagher Bassett Services Inc.

Helmsman Management Services LLC

Meritain Health

Sedgwick

United HealthCare Services Inc.

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Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

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SOURCE Allied Market Research
MIAMI, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hunt, the first online consumer marketplace to use a combination of Augmented Reality (AR), Computer Vision (CV), and blockchain technology to allow people to purchase, display, and even symbolically wear their NFTs, is announcing its public launch. The Hunt is kicking off the launch with an LA-based and Malawian-born artist, Rannel Ngumuya, and has curated a limited edition release featuring NFTs and wearable collectibles based on his Bungalo Boy brand.

The Hunt is the first of its kind, creating a unique range of offerings in a single marketplace. While there are platforms that let people import and display their collection of NFTs and other digital assets, The Hunt is innovative in that it has combined digital collectibles with physical, AR-capable products. Additionally, while existing platforms in the space rely on barcodes for physical merchandise, The Hunt's use of CV allows users to scan images with trained data assets that can detect AR experiences in physical and digital products without the use of barcodes or markers. Through this implementation of machine learning technology, The Hunt is able to elevate the experience for the NFT holder, offering an advanced AR experience that can detect unique markers, creating an emotional connection between the consumer and the product.

The Hunt also includes a mobile application--a seamless extension of the web platform--that lets users import, display, and even wear NFTs in AR anytime and anywhere via their mobile device. The mobile application is available on iOS and Android in January 2022.

To purchase NFTs and physical collectibles from the limited edition releases on The Hunt, users visit the web platform via thehunt.com , then browse the marketplace and select a digital asset (NFT). If the user has a Metamask wallet and wants to pay using Ether (ETH), they then connect their wallet through the browser extension. Once connected and confirmed, the NFT will appear in the library of collectibles in their profile section of the website. However if the user does not have a Metamask account, they are prompted to either create one or checkout via credit card.

Once this process has been completed, users can then utilize The Hunt's mobile app to access their NFT library, view and display their purchased digital assets in AR, as well as scan accompanying physical products to experience the AR component.

"Augmented Reality and Blockchain technologies are an unstoppable combination that will create a new paradigm of how we experience a hybrid between physical and digital content for the metaverse," says Natalia Diaz, Co-founder and CEO of The Hunt. "As The Hunt continues to evolve, we imagine a world where you can collect and explore multi-dimensional unique experiences through mobile devices, gaming, and wearables."

"It's an inevitability that fashionable and affordable AR glasses will hit the market in coming years," says Andrew Resnick, a Co-Founder of The Hunt. "Within the fashion and merchandise spaces, The Hunt is positioning itself as the leading destination for all things Augmented Reality."

"We are beyond excited to collaborate with an emerging artist such as Rannel," adds Sagen Albert, Co-Founder and COO of The Hunt. "He is profoundly talented and our intention with The Hunt is to showcase a range of artwork and collectibles that deeply embody creativity and genuine storytelling through our purposeful curation and interactivity. The idea driving our affordable price structure is to make The Hunt accessible to both new and seasoned collectors."

In the coming year, The Hunt will continue creating new augmented experiences and further developing its cutting-edge convergence of physical and digital storytelling through wearables, gaming, mobile, and decentralized apps. The company will also be working to secure partnerships with creative and innovative artists and celebrities, industry-leading brands, and AR display companies. For more information or to purchase one of The Hunt's Bungalo Collection offerings, please visit www.thehunt.com/ .

For more information, please contact:

Priscilla Vento | Angle42

[email protected]

SOURCE The Hunt
LUND, Sweden, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alfa Laval will release fourth-quarter earnings on February 2nd 2022 at 07:30 am CET. The telephone conference will start at 10.00 am CET.

To join the telephone conference - hosted by Alfa Laval's President and CEO Tom Erixon and CFO Jan Allde - sign up in advance via the link below. Once registered, you will receive a phone number, a participant pin, and a conference pin. Please dial in 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start of the event.

http://emea.directeventreg.com/registration/7893734

You can also follow the conference via a live webcast. A webcast link will be available on

Alfa Laval - Investors.

Contacts:

Johan Lundin

Head of Investor Relations

Phone: +46 46 36 65 10

Mobile: +46 730 46 30 90

Beata Ardhe

Phone: +46 46 36 65 26

Mobile: +46 709 36 65 26

www.alfalaval.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/alfa-laval/r/invitation-to-alfa-laval-s-fourth-quarter-conference-call,c3476304

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/905/3476304/1512976.pdf Invitation Q4 2021

SOURCE Alfa Laval
HOUSTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Groundbreaking tech startupsHouston-based iownit and Silicon Valley-based Tanzleare ushering investors into the future of alternative investments. Tanzle, a data-infrastructure platform, has completed its A-round raise of $40M on iownit, a digitized alternative investment platform built on live permissioned blockchain technology.

"Tanzle's raise, one of the first securities issued using live permissioned blockchain, highlights iownit's unique blending of tried-and-true investment fundamentals with innovation," says iownit's CBDO and co-founder, Hamid Gayibov. "The iownit platform's strength begins with a streamlined investment process, matching promising new companies and technologies with the millions of investors who want alternative investments. It also opens the door to transformative new capabilities and features, such as access to a dynamic secondary market."

"iownit streamlined the onerous process of raising funds, and uniquely facilitates investor secondary-market liquidity" Tweet this

iownit is an end-to-end digital infrastructure built for investors to issue, manage, and buy and sell digital asset securities. Trusted investors with deep subject matter expertise anchor alternative investments. These investments are promoted through the platform's wide partnerships within the international broker-dealer community. The platform also provides flexible liquidity options and streamlined access to all investment communications and details. This makes the process streamlined for both investor and issuer and opens the doors for engagement among the nearly 90% of accredited investors who are not currently active participants in the market.

"Because Tanzle is a foundationally breakthrough technology, we naturally partner with equally innovative companies like iownit," says Tanzle founder and CEO Nancy Clemens. "iownit streamlined the traditionally onerous process of raising funds, and uniquely facilitates investor secondary-market liquidity. And iownit has a great team: We found them to be highly skilled, professional and super helpful in positioning and expediting our raise."

Tanzle, a privately held technology company, aims to revolutionize how people comprehend and communicate complex information. Tanzle's data infrastructure platform is architected to enable massive productivity gains. The Tanzle platform unifies data management, augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum-level security, resulting in accelerated situational awareness and better-informed decision-making across commercial, government and consumer use cases.



About iownit

iownit.us provides the pipes for frictionless capital flow from investors into privately held companies. Our sophisticated technology platform streamlines the investment process for investors and issuers by providing end-to-end support for the issuance, management, and trading of private securities.

iownit partners with like-minded organizations that are also looking to transform the alternative markets for a digital future, and we are actively expanding our network of third-party broker/dealers ready to embrace digital transformation for private markets.



Securities are offered through iownit's affiliate, IOI Capital and Markets, LLC ("IOICM"), a FINRA member broker-dealer. IOI Capital and Markets, LLC (iownit.us) is a wholly owned subsidiary of iownit Capital and Markets, Inc. For more information about iownit.us, please visit our website iownit.us or contact us at [email protected]

About Tanzle

Tanzle, Inc. ( www.tanzle.com ) is a privately held technology company, founded in 2012 and headquartered in Scotts Valley, CA.

Tanzle's new data infrastructure platform is designed to deepen human comprehension and communication of complex subjects. Tanzle's platform is being built to fully support today's data-intensive computing and communication needs, and unifying core technologies that include data management, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and quantum-level security.

Tanzle expects that its platform will enable users to increase productivity, insights, and speed to decision across vertical markets spanning business, government, and consumer sectorsincluding smart cities, reinsurance, energy, engineering, construction, medical, space, fintech, cybersecurity, education, national security, and manufacturing. For more information, please email [email protected] .

Disclaimer: Investing involves risk. This is a marketing communication and is for informational purposes only. This document does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security and shall not be deemed an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. The views and opinions expressed herein, which are subject to change without notice, are those of iownit Capital and Markets, Inc., or its affiliated companies at the time of publication. The duplication, publication, extraction, or transmission of the contents, irrespective of the form, is not permitted.

Contact: [email protected], [email protected]

SOURCE iownit
MADRID, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Spanish tech company Lleida.net (OTCQX: LLEIF) (EPA: ALLLN) (BME:LLN) has been included in the OTCQX Composite Index of OTC Markets.

The OTCQX Composite recognizes investor-oriented OTC-listed companies with high levels of transparency. It is the third index in which Lleida.net has been included in America since it began trading there in 2020.

The corporation, whose shares have been traded in New York since November last year, is already listed on the OTCQX Dividend and OTCQX International indexes.

CEO and founder Sisco Sapena, said: "the U.S. market has shown during 2021 that we are an interesting company for American investors. In addition, our inclusion in three indexes on OTCQX prove that we are a liquid, transparent and attractive company internationally."

Jonathan Dickson, Vice President of OTC in Europe, added that: "We're delighted that Lleida.net has experienced such success on our OTCQX market in the US and congratulate them on their accomplishments. We are pleased to recognize Lleida.net and look forward to welcoming more companies from the region to our OTCQX Market."

Throughout 2021, Lleida.net has been one of the Spanish market companies with the highest liquidity levels. Over the year, the company has traded more than 80 million euros in shares.

OTCQX is a U.S. market for companies listed on a qualified international stock exchange. To qualify for the OTCQX market, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance, demonstrate compliance with U.S. securities laws, and have a professional third-party sponsor introduction.

Over 11,000 U.S. and global securities (including financial services, metals & mining, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals & biotechnology, healthcare, telecommunications, technology, retail, media, and utilities) are listed on the market, which has a total annual dollar volume of $605 billion.

In Europe, Lleida.net is part of the IBEX Growth Market 15 index, which brings together the fastest-moving companies in the Spanish alternative market.

It is also part of Euronext Tech Croissance, which includes the leading technology companies in the Pan-European space.

Lleida.net is the European leader in the registered electronic notification, signature, and contracting industry and is listed in Spain, France, and the United States.

Its technology has been granted more than 200 patents from 63 countries on five continents, and its intellectual property portfolio is one of the most important in the industry worldwide.

Among those countries are the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, India, Mexico, Japan, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, South Africa, Nigeria, Australia, and New Zealand.

At present, some 70 countries recognize the legal validity of the Spanish company's electronic methods to certify legal notifications in contracting processes.

Recently, it approved the purchase of the company, Indenova for 7.1 million euros, in one of the most significant operations in the Spanish SaaS market in 2021.

SOURCE Lleida.net
VOORHEES, N.J., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Echelon Health and Fitness is hosting their fourth annual holiday toy drive. Over the last four years, the team at Echelon has collected thousands of new toys for children in need. With so much support from their local community, this year, they have decided to donate the toys they receive to both Toys for Tots and a local church.

Echerlon Health & Fitness Voted Best Gym in South Jersey 5 Years in a Row! Echelon Health & Fitness 5th Annual Toy Drive

The gym brings in so many gifts through both their actively involved members and a promotion they run each year. In 2021, they are giving away a one-year, 3 day per week, bronze membership and eight free Thrive personal training sessions to each non-member who brings in a toy (some restrictions apply*).

Current members who participate can give the free membership they receive to a family member or friend.

Echelon holds this fundraiser each year to help families in need in the surrounding South Jersey towns. Being a local and family-owned business, the ownership team of Jeff Quinn and David and Susie Chung, have been able to connect with countless people in the Voorhees area and are able to see their impact firsthand.

They also have the opportunity to help people kick start their fitness journey as they head into the new year. Starting off with free personal training sessions can help someone stay motivated and learn proper technique when they are first starting out.

About Echelon - Echelon Health and Fitness is a 38,000 sq. ft. local and family owned gym that has been Voted Best Gym in South Jersey 5 years in a row. The fitness center includes 3 studios with 75 classes per week, THRIVE Personal Training, MemberPERX, Indoor Track, Childcare and a pool and sauna area. Since opening in April 2016, Echelon has become a top destination for gym-goers looking for both valuable amenities and affordable pricing. Echelon Health and Fitness is committed to helping the community reach their fitness goals.

*Some restrictions apply. Eligible recipients must be 23 years or older and a local resident. This offer is not valid for past or current members or guests.



Contact:

Echelon Health and Fitness

Jeff Quinn

Managing Partner

610-400-7379

[email protected]

Links:

Echelon Health and Fitness Website

SOURCE Echelon Health and Fitness
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Magnachip Semiconductor Corporation ("Magnachip Corp." or the "Company") (NYSE: MX), announced today that the Board of Directors has authorized the Company to repurchase up to $75 million of the Company's common stock. As an immediate step towards implementing the approved stock repurchase program, the Company has entered into an accelerated stock repurchase agreement (the "ASR Agreement") with JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association ("JPM") to repurchase an aggregate of $37.5 million of Magnachip's common stock.

Pursuant to the terms of the ASR Agreement dated December 21, 2021, the Company will pay JPM $37.5 million in cash and will receive an initial delivery of approximately 1.0 million shares of the Company's common stock. The final number of shares of common stock to ultimately be repurchased by the Company will generally be based on the average of the daily volume-weighted average stock prices of the Company's common stock during the valuation period of the ASR Agreement, less a discount and subject to adjustments. Upon final settlement of the ASR Agreement, the Company may be entitled to receive additional shares of common stock from JPM or, under certain circumstances specified in the ASR Agreement, the Company may be required to deliver shares of common stock or make a cash payment, at its option, to JPM. The ASR Agreement contains provisions customary for agreements of this type, including provisions for adjustments to the transaction terms, the circumstances under which the ASR Agreement may be accelerated, extended or terminated early by JPM and various acknowledgments, representations and warranties made by the parties to one another. Final settlement of the ASR Agreement is expected to occur during the fiscal quarter ending March 31, 2022.

"Today's announcement reflects the confidence of the management team and our Board of Directors in Magnachip's financial strength, long-term growth strategy and ability to generate sustainable cash flow," said YJ Kim, Magnachip's chief executive officer. "It is also consistent with our commitment to enhance and return value to our shareholders. Our business has sound long-term fundamentals and we are poised to accelerate our MX 3.0 strategy, which we look forward to articulating in more detail at our investor call on January 6, 2022."

Investor Conference Call

Magnachip will host an investor conference call at 5:00 pm Eastern time on January 6, 2022. The investor call will be webcast live and also is available by dialing toll-free at 1-844-536-5472 in US/Canada. International call-in participants can dial 1-614-999-9318. The conference ID number is 9163925. Participants are encouraged to initiate their calls at least 10 minutes in advance of the start time to ensure a timely connection. A live and archived webcast of the call will be accessible from the 'Investors' section of the company's website at www.magnachip.com. A replay of the conference call will be available until 8:00 pm ET on January 13, 2022. The replay dial-in numbers are 1-404-537-3406 or toll-free at 1-855-859-2056. The conference ID number is 9163925.

About Magnachip Semiconductor Corporation

Magnachip is a designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor platform solutions for communications, IoT, consumer, industrial and automotive applications. The Company provides a broad range of standard products to customers worldwide. Magnachip, with more than 40 years of operating history, owns a portfolio of approximately 1,200 registered patents and pending applications, and has extensive engineering, design and manufacturing process expertise. For more information, please visit www.magnachip.com. Information on or accessible through Magnachip's website is not a part of, and is not incorporated into, this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are subject to the safe harbor created thereby. Statements that are not historical or current facts, including statements about beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are often, but not always, made through the use of words or phrases such as "may," "will," "will be," "anticipate," "estimate," "plan," "project," "continuing," "ongoing," "expect," "believe(s)," "intend," "predict," "potential," "future," "strategy," "opportunity" and similar words or phrases or the negatives of these words or phrases. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, and important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated, including, but not limited to: the impact of changes in macroeconomic and/or general economic conditions, including those caused by or related to the COVID-19 outbreak, recessions, economic instability and the outbreak of disease; manufacturing capacity constraints or supply chain disruptions that may impact our ability to deliver our products or affect the price of components, which may lead to an increase in our costs, as well as impacting demand for our products from customers who are similarly affected by such capacity constraints or disruptions; the impact of competitive products and pricing; timely design acceptance by our customers; timely introduction of new products and technologies; ability to ramp new products into volume production; industry wide shifts in supply and demand for semiconductor products; industry and/or company overcapacity or supply constraints; effective and cost efficient utilization of manufacturing capacity; financial stability in foreign markets and the impact of foreign exchange rates; unanticipated costs and expenses or the inability to identify expenses which can be eliminated; compliance with U.S. and international trade and export laws and regulations by us and our distributors; change or ratification of local or international laws and regulations, including those related to environment, health and safety; public health issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic; other business interruptions that could disrupt supply or delivery of, or demand for, Magnachip's products, including uncertainties regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic that may result in factory closures, reduced workforces, scarcity of raw materials and goods produced in infected areas, as well as reduced consumer and business spending affecting demand for Magnachip's products due to government and private sector mandatory business closures, travel restrictions or the like to prevent the spread of disease; and other risks and uncertainties and the factors identified under "Risk Factors" in Part I, Item 1A of the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and updated in subsequent reports filed by the Company with the SEC. These reports are available at www.magnachip.com or www.sec.gov . Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update them in light of new information or future events.

CONTACTS:

In the United States:

So-Yeon Jeong

Jeong Consulting

Tel. +1-408-712-6151

[email protected]

SOURCE Magnachip Semiconductor Corporation
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MainStay CBRE Global Infrastructure Megatrends Fund (the "Fund") (NYSE: MEGI) today released the Fund's complete Holdings as of November 30, 2021, which can be retrieved from the Fund's webpage by clicking here. The Fund's portfolio characteristics and top 10 holdings as of December 17, 2021 have also been released and posted to the Fund's webpage to provide shareholders with a more complete view of the Fund's investments since the Fund's IPO proceeds are now fully invested.

About New York Life Investments

With over $650 billion in Assets Under Management* as of September 30, 2021, New York Life Investments is comprised of the affiliated global asset management businesses of its parent company, New York Life Insurance Company (New York Life), and offers clients access to specialized, independent investment teams through its family of affiliated boutiques. New York Life Investments remains committed to clients through a combination of the diverse perspectives of its boutiques and a long-lasting focus on sustainable relationships.

New York Life Insurance Company (www.newyorklife.com), a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845, is the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States** and one of the largest life insurers in the world. Headquartered in New York City, New York Life's family of companies offers life insurance, retirement income, investments and long-term care insurance. New York Life has the highest financial strength ratings currently awarded to any U.S. life insurer from all four of the major credit rating agencies***.

*AUM includes assets of Investment Advisors affiliated with New York Life Insurance Company as of September 30, 2021. AUM for Candriam and Ausbil is reported at the spot rate.

** Based on revenue as reported by "Fortune 500 ranked within Industries, Insurance: Life, Health (Mutual)," Fortune magazine, 6/2/2021. For methodology, please see http://fortune.com/fortune500/.

***Individual independent rating agency commentary as of 10/15/2020: A.M. Best (A++), Fitch (AAA), Moody's Investors Service (Aaa), Standard & Poor's (AA+). The financial strength of New York Life Insurance Company applies only to its insurance products and not to investment products which are subject to market risk and fluctuation in value.

"New York Life Investments" is both a service mark, and the common trade name, of certain investment advisors affiliated with New York Life Insurance Company.

About CBRE Investment Management

CBRE Investment Management is a leading global real assets investment management firm with $133.1 billion in assets under management* as of September 30, 2021, operating in more than 30 offices and 20 countries around the world. Through its investor-operator culture, the firm seeks to deliver sustainable investment solutions across real assets categories, geographies, risk profiles and execution formats so that its clients, people, and communities thrive. CBRE Investment Management Listed Real Assets LLC is a separately registered investment adviser within CBRE Investment Management that specializes in the management of global listed real assets solutions

CBRE Investment Management is an independently operated affiliate of CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE: CBRE), the world's largest commercial real estate services and investment firm (based on 2020 revenue). CBRE has more than 100,000 employees serving clients in more than 100 countries. CBRE Investment Management harnesses CBRE's data and market insights, investment sourcing and other resources for the benefit of its clients. For more information about CBRE Investment Management, please visit www.cbreim.com

*Assets under management (AUM) refers to the fair market value of real assets-related investments with respect to which CBRE Investment Management provides, on a global basis, oversight, investment management services and other advice and which generally consist of investments in real assets; equity in funds and joint ventures; securities portfolios; operating companies and real assets-related loans. This AUM is intended principally to reflect the extent of CBRE Investment Management's presence in the global real assets market, and its calculation of AUM may differ from the calculations of other asset managers and from its calculation of regulatory assets under management for purposes of certain regulatory filings.

Before considering an investment in the Fund, you should understand that you could lose money. There are risks inherent in all investments. The Fund's risks include:

New Fund Risk: The Fund is a new fund which may result in additional risk. There can be no assurance that the Fund will grow to an economically viable size, in which case the Fund may cease operations. In such an event, investors may be required to liquidate or transfer their investments at an inopportune time.

No Operating History Risk: The Fund is a recently organized, non-diversified, closed end management investment company with no operating history. It is designed for long term investing and not as a vehicle for trading. Shares of closed end investment companies frequently trade at a discount from their NAV. This risk may be greater for investors expecting to sell their shares in a relatively short period of time after completion of the public offering.

Limited Term Risk: Unless action is otherwise taken by the Board in accordance with the Declaration of Trust, the Fund will commence the process of liquidation and dissolution at the close of business on the Termination Date. The Fund will not seek to return an initial investment in common shares by an investor on the Termination Date. Instead, the Fund will distribute an amount equal to the Fund's NAV at that time, which may be greater or less than an investor's initial investment.

Infrastructure Industry Risk: The Fund is particularly exposed to adverse economic, regulatory, political, legal, geographical, and other changes affecting the issuers of infrastructure related securities. Infrastructure related companies are subject to a variety of factors that may adversely affect their business or operations, including high interest costs in connect ion with capital construction programs, difficulties in obtaining financing for construction programs, costs associated with environmental and other regulations, the effects of economic slowdown, surplus capacity, increased competition from other providers of services, uncertainties concerning the availability of fuel at reasonable prices, the effects of energy conservation policies, changes in market sentiment and other factors. Additionally, infrastructure related companies may be subject to regulation by various governmental authorities, may also be affected by governmental regulation of rates charged to customers, service interruption, and/or legal challenges due to environmental, operational, the imposition of special tariffs and changes in tax laws, regulatory policies, and accounting standards. There is also the risk that corruption may negatively affect infrastructure projects, resulting in delays and cost overruns.

Leverage Risk: The use of leverage creates an opportunity for increased common share net investment income dividends, but also creates risks for the holders of common shares. Leverage is a speculative technique that exposes the Fund to greater risk, and increased costs. Leverage may cause greater changes in the Fund's NAV. The Fund will also have to pay interest on its borrowings, if any, which may reduce the Fund's return.

Equity Securities Risk: Equity securities prices have historically experienced periods of significant volatility, particularly during recessions or other periods of financial stress. Common stock prices, like other equity securities may be affected by macroeconomics and other factors affecting the stock market in general, including financial or political conditions that m ay affect particular industries, or the economy in general. Preferred stocks are subject to issuer specific risks, in addition to the general equity risks, and unlike common stocks, participation in the growth of an issuer may be limited.

Debt Securities Risk: The risks involved with investing in debt securities include (without limitation) Credit risk the risk that an issuer, guarantor, or liquidity provider of a debt security may be unable or unwilling, or may be perceived (whether by market participants, ratings agencies, pricing services or otherwise) as unable or unwilling, to make timely principal and/or interest payments, or to otherwise honor its obligations.

Foreign Securities Risk: Foreign securities can be subject to greater risks than U.S. investments, including currency fluctuations, less liquid trading markets, greater price volatility, political and economic instability, less publicly available information, and changes in tax or currency laws or monetary policy. These risks are likely to be greater for emerging markets than in developed markets.

Emerging Markets Risk: The risks of foreign investments (or exposure to foreign investments) are usually much greater when they are made in (or result in exposure to) emerging markets. Investments in emerging markets may be considered speculative. Emerging markets are riskier than more developed markets because they tend to develop unevenly and may never fully develop.

Investors should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of the Fund carefully before investing. The Fund's prospectus, which contains this and other information about the Fund, should be read carefully before investing. A copy of the final prospectus relating to this Fund may be obtained by clicking the Fund page noted above, contacting your financial advisor, or by calling 800-624-6782.

New York Life Investment Management LLC engages the services of SEC-registered advisors. CBRE Investment Management Listed Real Assets (CBRE Investment Management) is unaffiliated with New York Life Investments. The MainStay Funds are managed by New York Life Investment Management LLC and distributed by NYLIFE Distributors LLC, 30 Hudson Street, Jersey City, NJ 07302, a wholly owned subsidiary of New York Life Insurance Company. NYLIFE Distributors LLC is a Member FINRA/SIPC.

Media Contacts:

New York Life Investments:

Allison Scott Sara Guenoun [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE MainStay
LAS VEGAS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MAPP Advisors, a leading fintech advisory firm with a core focus on payments and ISVs, is pleased to announce Lance McCord has joined the company as Senior Vice President of M&A. McCord is a veteran in the payments industry and has completed hundreds of transactions during his career. Prior to joining MAPP Advisors, he served as SVP of ISOs for Worldpay, Inc. (formerly Vantiv) and helped grow their ISO portfolio by over 50,000 merchant customers and $15 billion in annual merchant volume. He also served as CFO for their $2B merchant line of business.

MAPP Advisors' Managing Partner, Jim Battista, commented, "I have known Lance for many years and have worked on several M&A deals with him. I am happy to have him join our growing team of fintech experts. His expertise, diligence and extensive industry contacts make him an asset to the MAPP Advisors team. He has joined us at a pivotal time as our deal volume has dramatically increased due to the accelerated adoption of digital transactions, ecommerce, contactless payments and the ISV model."

US fintech funding has grown 121% YoY to hit $14.6B in Q3'21 according to "The State of Fintech Q3'21 Report" by CB Insights. Specific to payments, funding in 2021 YTD is already up 80% compared to 2020 with US-based payments startups leading in global funding. The average deal size reached $62M in 2021 YTD, nearly double 2020. MAPP Advisors predicts record breaking numbers in Q4'21 and strong growth into Q1'22.

"I am excited to work with the MAPP Advisors team and to put my payments experience to use. My 11 years at Vantiv were a time of exciting growth and prepared me well to assist our diverse clients at MAPP," commented McCord. He has over 30 years of financial experience with emphasis on M&A, banking relationships, valuations and revenue growth. McCord has a BS in Accounting from Southern Illinois University, attended graduate school at St. Louis University and is a Certified Public Accountant.

To learn more about MAPP Advisors' services and opportunities, contact [email protected].

About MAPP Advisors

MAPP Advisors is the leading boutique mergers and acquisitions firm serving the payment processing industry. With offices in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Raleigh, MAPP Advisors provides exemplary advisory, portfolio optimization, portfolio management and operational consulting services proven to produce measurable results. The company's extensive transactional expertise and depth of industry knowledge distinguishes MAPP in the fintech industry. To learn more, visit www.mappadvisors.com.

For media inquiries, contact Aimee DuCasse, Marketing Director, MAPP Advisors at 610-662-7926 or [email protected].

SOURCE MAPP Advisors
"Ed Martin is among the media's most respected commentators on television programming," Jack Myers said. Tweet this

Excerpts of Martin's commentary are below:

Ghosts (CBS) -- So why is CBS' scary smart supernatural treat here? Because in addition to ticking all my boxes (clever dialogue, marvelous multi-tiered storytelling, great eccentric characters, a genuinely original concept, top-notch production values, fine acting by a terrific new ensemble) it also assumes a basic level of intelligence on the part of its audience.

Dancing with the Stars (ABC) -- Why is a 16-year-old broadcast competition series sitting in the second spot on my list? Because DWTS roared excitingly back to life this fall even with a cast largely devoid of true "stars." The production values for every single dance were dazzling, and every episode felt like a grand achievement in live television.

Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) -- Even without the many ugly urgencies of 2020 fueling his humor, and his conversations with guests, Bill Maher continued to offer the only televised commentaries and insights worth watching about our increasingly trying times. He can deconstruct conservative crap and liberal lunacy with equal aplomb, a singular and stunning achievement that keeps him above the quagmire of cable "news" and a few hyper-opinionated broadcast personalities, too. And he's not afraid to defy the cancel culture and tell the woke mob to "Shut the fu*k up." My hero!

Reservation Dogs (FX on Hulu) -- Leave it to FX (on Hulu or anywhere else) to deliver the most important new series of 2021: A comedy about indigenous teens striving (like most kids in their age range) to extract themselves from the confines of the lives they were born into and get someplace better (in this case, Los Angeles). There is nothing I can say here about Dogs that my colleague Juan Ayala hasn't expressed in his review of the show or in his Multicultural TV Talk podcasts with series stars D'Pharoah Woon-a-tai and Devery Jacobs. Follow those links and be enlightened.

Succession (HBO) -- The two-year stretch between its powerful pre-pandemic season two cliffhanger and its triumphant return this fall was certainly worth the wait as the power-mad Roys resumed their family fight club without missing a beat. Not since the days of Dallas and Dynasty has it been so much fun to watch members of an obscenely wealthy family suffer their own slings and arrows, eagerly cutting each other down at every turn.

Acapulco (Apple TV+) -- Chances are you haven't watched this show yet, so let me introduce you to another charming and disarming series brought to us by Apple TV+, the home of Ted Lasso and Schmigadoon! By way of flashbacks to the '80s, Acapulco tells the story of a Mexican teenager's slow climb from a working-class background to (in adulthood) a position of tremendous wealth, beginning with an entry-level position at the fabulous ocean-front resort Las Colinas. Come for the natural beauty and the man-made luxuries stay for the sweet humor and heart-tugging romantic drama. Also worth noting: Acapulco is, I believe, the first truly bilingual television series. A genuine gem.

Schmigadoon! (Apple TV +) -- It's hard to select one new show this year that was arguably more original than the rest (WandaVision? Ghosts? Squid Game? Yellowjackets?) but I'll go with Schmigadoon!, a six-part musical on Apple TV+ that came along after more than one year without Broadway musicals  or any musicals, for that matter.

The White Lotus (HBO) -- After more than a year in lockdown we all needed a soothing warm-weather vacation -- or at least a tropical diversion  and HBO more than delivered with Mike White's miniseries (filmed at the Four Seasons Resort Maui) about rich people trying to forget their problems by enjoying some fun in the sun, with tumultuous results.

Hacks (HBO Max) -- Jean Smart gave what I believe to have been the performance of the year as Deborah Vance, a tough, tireless, brittle and ballsy legendary Las Vegas comedienne who worked her way to the top no matter the cost and seeks to remain there with the help of an entitled, self-involved, recently humbled young comedy writer named Ava (nifty newcomer Hannah Einbinder). Filled with support, conflict, suspicion and admiration, their relationship is a fascinating mess that somehow bridges the widest generation gap we've seen in years.

Squid Game (Netflix) -- Just as the South Korean thriller Parasite took the U.S. movie industry by surprise in 2019 (winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, among other accolades), the South Korean television series Squid Game this year came out of nowhere (via Netflix) to become what has arguably been the most talked about TV program of 2021.

The rest are:

Evil (Paramount+) -- This scary, sexy, funny and fascinating drama is a true horror show (in the best sense of the term).

The Good Fight (Paramount+) -- It was hardly the first time that this show reflected what was happening in our country, but its reflection this season of the January 6 madness was priceless.

Mare of Easttown (HBO) -- HBO's unrelentingly grim and relentlessly depressing limited series about a female detective somehow moving forward through one town crisis or personal tragedy after another was a must-see event.

The Underground Railroad (Prime Video) -- Director and executive producer Barry Jenkins' searing ten-part adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2016 novel about a woman's valiant efforts to escape slavery deserved more attention than it got.

Pose (FX) -- The abbreviated final season of this emotionally charged gem about the challenges faced by New York City's LGBTQ+ community in the '80s brought out the best in its cast -- especially Billy Porter, MJ Rodriguez, Angel Bismarck Curiel and Dyllon Burnside.

WandaVision (Disney+) -- Part a continuation of stories from the MCU, part nostalgic love note to timeless TV classics from the distant past, part thrilling action-adventure and at all times an engaging mystery, WandaVision generated huge interest in established and forgotten Marvel characters alike, especially sorceress Agatha Harkness. . . Can't wait for the recently announced WandaVision spin-off, Agatha: House of Harkness.

It's a Sin (HBO) -- Russell T. Davies was already one of the finest writers ever to work in television before he created this amazing drama about vibrant young gay men who are only beginning to explore their sexuality in early-Eighties London when they are struck down by HIV and AIDS -- even before they know or fully understand what they are up against.

This Is Us (NBC) -- Many shows returned from pandemic postponements with a determination to reflect the harsh realities of this nasty new decade, including black-ish, Grey's Anatomy and various medical and procedural dramas. But This Is Us went dangerously deep, as we witnessed the escalating racial tensions of 2020 tear our beloved Pearson family apart with such ferocity that we feared they could never put the pieces back together.

Midnight Mass (Netflix) -- Eerie and unforgettable, this well-produced limited series told the story of a relatively isolated and deeply religious island community imperiled by the arrival of a mysterious priest (Hamish Linklater), a troubled young man (Zach Gilford) and a bloodthirsty angel.

911 and 911: Lone Star (Fox) -- Fox's twin action shows continued to dazzle with episode after episode featuring epic disasters once seen only in big-budget disaster movies. (Seriously, how do they do it so often and do it so well?)

The Dodo and @Cristina Zenato (Instagram) -- I have included the Instagram feed for The Dodo on my Top Programs of the Year list for quite a while now, simply because it continues to give me life on even the worst of days, reminding me (with video evidence) that there are many good, selfless people in the world who will stop whatever they are doing to help a fellow creature in need, be it a dog, a cat, a squirrel, a snake or a bee. This year I'm adding the Insta feeds of @CristinaZenato, who removes hooks from the mouths of sharks.

Invincible (Prime Video) -- It's based on a long-running comic book about a teenager learning to cope with his emerging superpowers while beginning to question what he knows about his dad -- who happens to be the most powerful superhero on Earth.

Days of Our Lives (NBC, Peacock) -- After years of denigration by the broadcast networks, it's amazing that we still have four daily soap operas. So, three cheers for NBCUniversal and its unwavering support of Days of Our Lives -- first with a side story on the DOOL app, then with a limited series and a standalone movie on Peacock.

America's Got Talent (NBC) -- This outsized competition show has always been a favorite of mine, but there was something extraordinary about its 16th season.

The retro commercials spaced throughout "Live in Front of a Studio Audience" (ABC) -- With only a couple weeks left of 2021 ABC did one of those things broadcast networks should do more often, but somehow don't -- it presented a fun special. . .This was 90 minutes of television made with the television audience in mind. That's not as common as you might think.

"Ed Martin is among the media's best-known and most respected commentators on television programming," said leading media ecologist Jack Myers, founder of MediaVillage.com and AdvancingDiversity.org. "His access to industry leaders assures our readers unique insights into the behind-the-scenes influences that impact network programming."

Prior to joining MediaVillage, Martin was a television critic and reporter for USA Today and senior editor and television critic at Inside Media. He has written features for Variety, TV Line, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide. Earlier in his career, Martin was publicity director for Vestron Pictures, where he orchestrated campaigns for dozens of movies, including the Academy Award-winning classic Dirty Dancing. Follow Ed Martin @PlanetEd and read his commentary at Ed Martin Report.

For press inquiries, contact Diane Stefani at [email protected]. Follow @MediaVillageCom, @PlanetEd, @JackMyersBiz.

ABOUT MEDIAVILLAGE + ADVANCINGDIVERSITY.ORG:

At MediaVillage + AdvancingDiversity.org, we've built the most sophisticated platform for B2B marketing, focused on advancing revenue growth through education (stakeholder and team) and diversity. Our proven platform is enabling more than 100 leading companies, organizations, and non-profits to reinvent their B2B investments, generating measurably increased effectiveness and improved cost efficiencies. In a turnkey fully integrated model dedicated to activating results, we optimize our members' investments in earned media, paid media, digital advertising, social media, perceptions research, market intelligence, programming/content promotion and diverse talent advancement. We've identified and removed B2B marketers' pain points, many of which have been exacerbated by Covid-19.

Our membership model empowers activation at levels appropriate to each members' B2B goals. Underpinned by SaaS technology, MediaVillage Knowledge Exchange, AdvancingDiversity.org, Watch Listen & Learn, TV/Video Download, MeetingPrep.com and The Myers Report enable your teams to integrate across responsibilities, break down time-wasting silos, and bring B2B marketing into a modern, multi-modal, cross platform, cost efficient, and future-facing platform. Become a MediaVillage subscriber here and learn more about us at www.AboutMediaVillage.com. Follow @mediavillagecom @advdiversity @jackmyersbiz

SOURCE MediaVillage


















NORTHFIELD, Ill. , Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Medline, a leading manufacturer, distributor, and solutions provider for the healthcare industry, has opened five newly constructed distribution centers in 2021, with two more to be completed in 2022, to support the long-term needs of healthcare providers. The newest LEED-certified distribution center, set to be fully operational in Q1 of 2022, is located in Richmond Hill, Georgia, less than 30 miles from the Port of Savannah, the single largest and fastest growing container terminal in America.

The opening in Richmond Hill is the latest in a larger transship center strategy and part of Medline's Healthcare Resilience Initiative, a national capital expenditure campaign that included $1.5 billion in new distribution centers, manufacturing capabilities and IT upgrades to further their commitment to delivering superior customer service. Since 2018, the Medline Healthcare Resilience Initiative has delivered approximately 8,500 new jobs, eight new distribution centers, nearly 150 manufacturing expansion projects, and a new global digital customer ordering platform.

Richmond Hill location hedges risk

"There has been a lot of talk about how supply chain shortages are impacting the retail industry, but you aren't hearing as much about the risk they place on the healthcare industry," said Bill Abington, president of operations for Medline. "The reality is, hospitals, surgery centers, nursing homes, and providers across the entire continuum of care are feeling these disruptions, and Medline is continuing to invest to mitigate any impacts felt today and ensure product availability for the long-term."

Medline's strategy to build long-term resilience in the supply chain includes hedging future port disruption risks by expanding their distribution options to have transship operations located at all of the largest ports across the U.S. The company already has transship centers close to ports in Northern and Southern California, as well as the Northeast in New York and New Jersey. The expansion of the transship center near the Port of Savannah will provide more options to support customers in key cities throughout the Southeast and Midwest, and the Port's advanced capabilities and automation will allow Medline to triple its import volume into the region.

Enabling strategic stockpiling

Due to industry-wide supply chain disruptions, stockpiling has become essential for healthcare resilience. Richmond Hill's facility will provide an additional 1.2 million square feet of space to stockpile needed supplies for customer distribution centers throughout the region  bringing Medline's total medical-grade U.S. warehousing footprint to more than 27 million square feet. This enables Medline's nationwide disaster preparedness capacity, allowing the company to provide inventory management services, expand customized third-party logistics (3PL) capabilities, and further support Medline's CERT (Customer Emergency Response Tools) program  a subscription-based service to store and manage critical emergency inventory.

Speedy delivery key to success

A portion of the new distribution center will be leased to FedEx Ground, an integral partner in Medline's logistics operations, expanding service to a growing customer base for both companies along the eastern seaboard. With access to I-16 (East/West) and I-95 (North/South), the Richmond Hill location will provide the ability to reach key cities throughout the U.S. Southeast and Midwest within a one- to two-day drive.

"Not only will FedEx Ground's space within the building help enable Medline deliveries to regional customer distribution centers, but the Port of Savannah terminal also provides direct access to two Class I railroads for our intermodal cargo," said Mike Collins, vice president of operations for Medline. "In addition, the Port of Savannah's Mid-American Arc initiative will further expand their intermodal capabilities throughout the Midwest and East Coast, and with access to 63% of the U.S. population in under three days, the Port of Savannah offers us even more choices for reaching inland markets."

Anticipating future state

The company plans to make additional investments in 2022 as part of Medline's Healthcare Resilience Initiative, which includes continued work on distribution center projects underway, supply-and-demand planning technology, and additional manufacturing expansions and upgrades.

Learn more about how Medline helps healthcare run better at https://www.medline.com/pages/about-us/.

About Medline

Medline is a healthcare company; a manufacturer, distributor, and solutions provider focused on improving the overall operating performance of healthcare. Partnering with healthcare systems and facilities across the continuum of care, Medline provides the clinical and supply chain resources required for long-term financial viability in delivering high-quality care. With the scale of one of the country's largest companies and the agility of a family-led business, Medline is able to invest in its customers for the future and rapidly respond to a dynamically changing market with customized solutions. Headquartered in Northfield, Ill., Medline has 27,000+ employees worldwide and does business in more than 125 countries and territories. Learn more about Medline at www.medline.com.

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SOURCE Medline
The video on Facebook alone captured almost 3.8 million views and more than 67,000 interactions. Followers left messages to express their praise, and even shared this video. David Smith wrote: "Sometime soon I will return to see such places." Subramani Chetty said: "You better go to China and stay."

Deqing is famous for its natural and cultural endowments such as mountains, wetlands and ancient towns. Local economy has over these years been developing at an astonishing pace.

In an endeavor to explore new platforms connecting Deqing and the outside world, the county launched its official accounts on Facebook and Twitter on Aug. 19, to show a county full of vitality, charm and great development potential.

After careful planning and design, the accounts set up several themes to categorize Deqing's natural and cultural resources. In addition to posting photos and videos on landscapes, food, festivals and celebrations, and collective prosperity on a daily basis, the two accounts also follow up closely with current events and set up creative activities to attract interaction and sharing.

When the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) was held from Oct. 11 to 15 in China's Yunnan, a video on how Deqing has been protecting crested ibis, a rare and endangered birds and national first-class protected animal, was released on the accounts. These years the county has been focusing on the bird's artificial cultivation and reintroduction to the wild.

Photos of Leonid Meteor Shower on Mogan Mountain in Deqing were posted on the accounts in November, which combined the county's tourist resources and good wishes.

Social media is currently the main source of information for overseas audiences. The two accounts, which boast over 90,000 and 15,000 followers respectively, now serve and will always serve as a bridge of direct dialogues between the county and overseas audience.

SOURCE Publicity Department of the CPC Deqing County Committee
SEOUL, South Korea and BETHESDA, Md., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mezzion Pharma Co., Ltd. (Mezzion Pharma) announces that new data from its Phase 3 efficacy and safety trial (FUEL Trial) and its open label extension trial (FUEL OLE Trial) that concerns the treatment of a very large subgroup of patients with congenital single ventricle heart disease (SVHD) who have Fontan physiology was presented to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a Type C meeting held on Thursday, December 16, 2021.

Mezzion Pharma is pleased to report that this newly presented data from the FUEL Trial is statistically significant and supports efficacy and clinical relevance for udenafil treatment of this very large subgroup, approximately 80% of the treatment population, who will most benefit from udenafil treatment. Mezzion Pharma is also pleased to report that the FUEL OLE Trial data supports and is believed to provide independent confirmatory evidence of reproducibility and durability of this efficacy for this very large subgroup.

The FUEL Trial is a landmark study that evaluated the safety and efficacy of orally administered udenafil in 400 male and female adolescents with a single functional ventricle who had previously undergone Fontan surgical palliation. Study participants were drawn from a total of 30 Pediatric Heart Network http://www.pediatricheartnetwork.org/ (PHN) and auxiliary sites throughout the U.S., Canada, and Korea.

In view of the positive analysis of the subgroup data from the FUEL Trial and FUEL OLE Trial, Mezzion Pharma continues to look forward to the FDA review process and to bringing a novel pharmacotherapeutic option to this unique Fontan patient population.

About the Fontan Procedure and Subsequent Expectations

The Fontan procedure is a surgical intervention that allows for the survival of children born with congenital heart disease characterized by only a single functional pumping chamber. This procedure consists of re-configuring the circulation to allow the single ventricle to pump blood to the body while connecting the great veins directly to the arteries that bring blood to the lungs. In this "Fontan circulation" the blood returning from the body bypasses the heart and travels to the lungs without the assistance of a dedicated right ventricle pumping chamber. The goal of the Fontan procedure is to separate the systemic and pulmonary circulations and to improve oxygen levels by redirecting venous blood directly to the lungs.

While the Fontan procedure creates a stable circulation, the risk of hospitalization and cardiac death rises significantly in the second and third decades after Fontan completion, a risk that is associated with a decline in exercise capacity. The Fontan circulation is also associated with non-cardiac complications such as protein-losing enteropathy, plastic bronchitis, and liver failure, all of which can be attributed to a chronic elevation in central venous pressure and a chronically reduced cardiac output. For all of these reasons, a 35 year-old patient who has gone through Fontan palliation has the approximate life expectancy of a 75 year old with normal cardiac physiology.

Mezzion Pharma Co., Ltd.

Mezzion Pharma Co., Ltd. is headquartered in Korea. Mezzion and its wholly owned subsidiary, Mezzion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., have administrative offices in Deerfield, Illinois and Boca Raton, Florida. Mezzion Pharma is an innovation-driven pharmaceutical company that is focused on discovering, developing, and commercializing novel therapeutics in the field of rare pediatric diseases. Mezzion Pharma is a publicly-listed pharmaceutical company in Korea on the Korean stock exchange under (140410:KOSDAQ).

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding: Mezzion Pharma's expectations regarding the potential benefits of udenafil; Mezzion Pharma's expectations regarding the anticipated timing of any future clinical trials; Mezzion Pharma's expectations on regulatory submissions for marketing approval of udenafil for the treatment of patients that have undergone the Fontan operation, to improve exercise capacity in the United States, including the timing of these submissions; and Mezzion Pharma's expectations regarding the potential commercial launch of udenafil, including the timing of a potential approval of udenafil. Risks and uncertainties that contribute to the uncertain nature of the forward-looking statements include: the expectation that Mezzion Pharma will need additional funds to finance its operations; Mezzion Pharma's or any of its collaborative partners' ability to initiate and/or complete clinical trials; the unpredictability of the regulatory process; the possibility that Mezzion Pharma's or any of its clinical trials will not be successful; Mezzion Pharma's dependence on the success of udenafil; Mezzion Pharma's reliance on third parties for the manufacture of Mezzion Pharma's udenafil and udenafil tablets; possible regulatory developments in the United States and foreign countries; and Mezzion Pharma's ability to attract and retain senior management personnel.

These and other risks and uncertainties are described more fully in Mezzion Pharma's most recent filings with the Statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act: with the exception of the historical information contained in this release, the matters described herein contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties that may individually or mutually impact the matters herein described, including but not limited to FDA review and approval, product development and acceptance, manufacturing, competition, and/or other factors, which are outside the control of Mezzion Pharma. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they were made. Mezzion undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

Contact:

Dr. James Yeager, Deerfield, Illinois, USA, Tel: +1-847-2122679

Email: [email protected]

Mr. S.I. Noh, Seoul, Korea, Tel: +82 2 560 8000

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Mezzion Pharma Co. Ltd.
We've seen that savings from a competitive bid process contributed to increased appetite in the group annuity market Tweet this

"Throughout 2021 we've seen that savings from a competitive bid process have contributed to increased appetite in the group annuity market," says Mary Leong, a consulting actuary with Milliman and co-author of the study. "Looking ahead to 2022, we expect competitive buyout pricing to continue to be front and center for plan sponsors deciding on de-risking strategies or plan termination."

The MPBI uses the FTSE Above Median AA Curve, along with annuity purchase composite interest rates from eight insurers, to estimate the competitive and average costs of a PRT annuity de-risking strategy. Individual plan annuity buyouts can vary based on plan size, complexity, and competitive landscape.

To view the complete Milliman Pension Buyout Index, go to https://www.milliman.com/mpbi.

About Milliman

Milliman is among the world's largest providers of actuarial and related products and services. The firm has consulting practices in healthcare, property & casualty insurance, life insurance and financial services, and employee benefits. Founded in 1947, Milliman is an independent firm with offices in major cities around the globe. For further information, visit milliman.com.

SOURCE Milliman, Inc.
GUANGZHOU, China, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MINISO Group Holding Limited (NYSE: MNSO) ("MINISO Group", "MINISO" or the "Company"), a fast-growing global value retailer offering a variety of design-led lifestyle products, today announced that its board of directors has authorized a share repurchase program under which the Company may repurchase up to US$200 million of its outstanding Class A ordinary shares and/or American depositary shares representing its Class A ordinary shares, effective until September 21, 2022. The Company expects to fund repurchases under this program from surplus cash on its balance sheet.

The Company's proposed repurchases may be made from time to time on the open market at prevailing market prices, in privately negotiated transactions, in block trades, and/or through other legally permissible means, depending on market conditions and in accordance with applicable rules and regulations and its insider trading policy. The Company's board of directors will review the share repurchase program periodically, and may authorize adjustment of its terms and size.

About MINISO Group Holding Limited

MINISO is a fast-growing global value retailer offering a variety of design-led lifestyle products. The Company serves consumers primarily through its large network of MINISO stores, and promotes a relaxing, treasure-hunting and engaging shopping experience full of delightful surprises that appeals to all demographics. Aesthetically pleasing design, quality and affordability are at the core of every product in MINISO's wide product portfolio, and the Company continually and frequently rolls out products with these qualities. Since the opening of its first store in China in 2013, the Company has built its flagship brand "MINISO" as a globally recognized retail brand and established a massive store network worldwide. For more information, please visit http://ir.miniso.com/.

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by words or phrases such as "may," "will," "expect," "anticipate," "aim," "estimate," "intend," "plan," "believe," "is/are likely to," "potential," "continue," or other similar expressions. MINISO may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about MINISO's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in the Company's reports filed with, or furnished to the SEC. All information provided in this press release and in the attachments is as of the date of this press release, and MINISO undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

Investor Relations Contact

Raine Hu, Mengru Wang

MINISO Group Holding Limited

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +86 (20) 36228788 Ext.8039

SOURCE MINISO Group Holding Limited

Related Links

https://ir.miniso.com/


SOUTH BEND, Ind., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NAS Investment Solutions (NASIS), a national sponsor of high-quality real estate investment properties with a nationwide reputation for acquiring elite commercial real estate with investment grade tenants, has acquired a prime Class-A, office property in South Bend, IN.

NAS Investment Solutions (NASIS), a national sponsor of high-quality real estate investment properties with a nationwide reputation for acquiring elite commercial real estate with investment grade tenants, has acquired a prime Class-A, office property in South Bend, IN.

Newly constructed in 2021, the 82,064 square-foot office building serves as the national headquarters for Press Ganey, the area's fifth largest employer and a leading provider of performance measurement and improvement services to U.S. healthcare providers. The company currently has 1600+ employees in 23 locations across the U.S. and over 41,000 customers, including over 80% of the largest U.S. hospitals and medical service providers. Press Ganey has a 98% customer-retention rating.

Assuming responsibilities for asset management and property management for the newly acquired investment is National Asset Services (NAS), one of the Nation's leading commercial real estate companies.

Since 2008, NAS has served over 2,500 investment clients and has established an impressive track record for investment property management. The track record includes generating over $585 million in cash distributions to property investors and managing a commercial real estate portfolio of 169 diverse commercial properties, comprised of 24.422 million square-feet, in 30 states. The overall value of NAS' managed portfolio in the company's 12-year history, totals over $3.325 billion.

"We are extremely proud to have delivered an elite, trophy-class property to our investment clients while expeditiously closing the transaction for our 1031 Exchange investors," commented Karen E. Kennedy, President and Founder of NAS Investment Solutions and National Asset Services. "This property acquisition is the direct result of our tenacious acquisitions team, our exhaustive underwriting process and our transactions management expertise."

NASIS was represented by Paul D. Rubenstein, Attorney in Los Angeles, CA for the acquisition of the property.

Located less than two miles southwest of downtown South Bend, the Press Ganey property's structure and design were recognized by the Indiana Kentucky Associated Builders and Contractors with the 2021 Award of Excellence in Construction. The 6.8-acre site consists of approximately 408 surface parking spaces and features a unique 4,800 square-foot rooftop employee patio lounge.

About NAS Investment Solutions (NASIS)

NAS Investment Solutions was established to leverage National Asset Services' vast experience in investment property management by identifying, acquiring, and enhancing commercial real estate investments across all sectors of the real estate industry. The company is differentiated from other property investment sponsors by:

Investing in the property alongside investor clients

Managing the sponsored investment through National Asset Services, making the company accountable throughout the entire hold period

Maintaining high acquisition standards and executing an exhaustive, transparent due diligence process

Thoroughly vetting potential property investments, utilizing professionals that have extensive experience in acquiring and managing real estate

A proven track record of closing properties on time

Ensuring investment properties are 1031 exchange eligible and qualify for self-directed IRAs

For more information about National Asset Services and NAS Investment Solutions, visit nasassets.com or nasinvestmentsolutions.com.

About National Asset Services (NAS)

Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, NAS manages a wide range of diverse commercial real estate: Office, medical office, multifamily, retail, student housing, assisted living and industrial flex properties. The company manages sole-owned and multi-owner properties. NAS offers a wide range of asset management capabilities. They include property management; project management; lease administration; acquisition and disposition services; real estate strategy analysis; long-range business objectives; monitoring changing market conditions; investor relations; real estate and investor accounting; loan modification and workout solutions; exit and hold strategies; leasing & marketing; tenant retention plans; research studies; site selections; feasibility studies; insurance risk management; capital improvement planning and tracking; property tax appeal services and cost segregation services.

Contact:

JW Robison

310-795-8985

[email protected]

SOURCE National Asset Services
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In 2021, NASA completed its busiest year of development yet in low-Earth orbit, made history on Mars, continued to make progress on its Artemis plans for the Moon, tested new technologies for a supersonic aircraft, finalized launch preparations for the next-generation space telescope, and much more  all while safely operating during a pandemic and welcoming new leadership under the Biden-Harris Administration.

"At NASA, we turn science fiction into science fact, and we do it daily. From continuing to launch astronauts to the International Space Station from American soil to landing the Perseverance rover on Mars and logging the first flight on another planet, 2021 was a banner year for the world's premier space agency and all of humanity," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who was sworn into office May 3 by Vice President Kamala Harris. "Next year, NASA will accomplish more daring feats with new discoveries and technological advancements, especially as our Artemis I mission paves the way for future crewed missions to the Moon  and beyond."

Among the many science accomplishments for the year, NASA continued preparations to launch the James Webb Space Telescope on Dec. 24 from French Guiana, successfully landed the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars, and piloted the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter  the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.

NASA welcomed back to Earth the first two sets of commercial crew astronauts to complete expedition missions aboard the International Space Station and launched Crew-3 to the orbiting laboratory. During the Crew-2 mission, astronauts spent a U.S. record-setting 199 days in orbit, surpassing the 168 days set by Crew-1 mission earlier this year.

The agency advanced plans to explore more of the Moon through Artemis, pledging to send the first woman and first person of color to the lunar surface. To pave the way for future lunar missions with crew, NASA completed stacking of its Space Launch System rocket, with its Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission launching in spring 2022. In addition to other highlights, NASA also picked SpaceX to continue the development and demonstration of the first commercial human lunar lander .

This year, the Biden-Harris Administration tapped NASA to join the White House Climate Task Force. The agency also established a new position of senior climate advisor and released a climate action plan aimed at averting mission impacts due to climate change.

NASA also took action to roll out aviation technology to more airports to help save time for passengers, pushing the boundaries of making aeronautics more green and more efficient.

Solar System and Beyond

Prior to the targeted Dec. 24 launch of the Webb Telescope, NASA this year completed testing and sent the telescope on a 5,800 mile journey by sea to its launch site in French Guiana.

Webb is the agency's final launch this year, and was preceded by several other scientific missions launches, including the cosmic X-ray studying Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), the asteroid-studying Lucy spacecraft, the world's first planetary defense test mission  the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)  and two CubeSat missions.

NASA selected multiple new missions for development, including two to Venus, Earth's nearest planetary neighbor: DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) and VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy). The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) mission will study gamma rays to chart the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy.

Spacecraft and rovers already in space continued to help advance our understanding of the universe, providing a variety of new findings.

NASA researchers, facilities, instruments, and spacecraft were involved in many more scientific activities in 2021. Highlights this year included:

NASA Climate, Earth Science

In 2021, NASA's climate research continued to show how the planet is changing as the agency maintained its role as a leader in understanding climate change. Among the accomplishments in this area, the agency:

Humans in Space

This was the 21st continuous year of human presence aboard the International Space Station, and the busiest yet. NASA continues to send astronauts to the orbiting laboratory using commercial spacecraft launched from the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as well as Russian Soyuz capsules launched from Kazakhstan. Among the accomplishments this year, the agency:

Moon to Mars

The agency is targeting launch of Artemis I, an uncrewed flight test of NASA's powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft that will travel around the Moon in March or April 2022. NASA took critical steps in 2021 to prepare for this historic milestone:

Other activities supporting NASA's Moon to Mars exploration approach included preparations toward future Artemis missions at the Moon with crew. The agency's Artemis II mission is targeted to launch in 2024, and the Artemis III mission is aimed to launch no earlier than 2025. Among the accomplishments in this area in 2021, the agency:

Flight

NASA launched the Sustainable Flight National Partnership, teaming up with industry, academia, and other government agencies to achieve net-zero carbon emissions from aviation by 2050. NASA also continues to validate unique airframe design technologies that will one day allow future supersonic planes to fly quietly. Among the accomplishments this year in this area, the agency:

Space Technology

This year, NASA advanced technology for exploration, with new concepts that can drive exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond  and benefit people here on Earth. Highlights included:

Diversity, Equality, Inclusion, and Accessibility

As part of its response to an executive order aimed at advancing racial equity and support for historically underserved and underrepresented communities in federal government, NASA launched its Mission Equity initiative. The agency is reviewing nearly 200 public comments about how the agency can better engage untapped communities. NASA also:

Appointed its first diversity and inclusion advisor to advance the administration's commitment to advance racial equity.

Named the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters Building in Washington . Jackson was the first African American female engineer at NASA, whose work was critical to sending the first Americans to space. She went on to lead programs influencing the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

. Jackson was the first African American female engineer at NASA, whose work was critical to sending the first Americans to space. She went on to lead programs influencing the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Developed a standard internal community of practice for agencywide observances of heritage month events planning, integration, and communications to advance White House Administration Observance objectives.

Continued to expand its Spanish-language communication activities:

Conducted NASA's first live Spanish-language broadcast of a planetary landing, Juntos Perseveramos. That show has surpassed 2.6 million views and is the top video on the agency's Spanish channel.



NASA also launched "Los Martes de Marte" (Mars' Tuesdays), a web series for the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission from landing to Ingenuity's first flight on Mars and completed the second season of [email protected] de la NASA.

de la NASA.

The NASA en espanol social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram grew their total followers by over 30% in 2021 to more than 1.7 million. They shared over 50% more content, and saw engagements grow by nearly 160%.



Translated NASA's first graphic novel translated into Spanish: "La primera mujer", aired the first NASA podcast episode in Spanish, focused on the Webb telescope, and hosted a Spanish-language broadcast of the Webb launch.

Named a Diversity Champion winner as part of the LinkedIn Talent Awards for recruitment efforts. NASA was the only federal agency nominated in any category.

In May, students who are deaf, blind, or hearing or visually impaired, and their mentors had an opportunity to connect with astronauts serving aboard space station to promote inclusion in space and help pave the way for space explorers with disabilities.

STEM Engagement

NASA's STEM engagement accomplishments this year included:

Public Engagement

Inspiration is the foundation of NASA's public engagement program. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to limit in-person events around the world, NASA's virtual events and digital communications provided new opportunities to connect people around the world with agency content. Highlights in 2021 included:

Grew the agency's social media following to 277 million so far in 2021  up 14% from 240 million in 2020.

Shares on social media posts across the agency reached 8.3 million in 2021, matching the pace of 2019 (8.5 million shares) and lower than 2020's record of 12.7 million shares.

Three flagship NASA accounts reached follower milestones this year, passing 50 million (Twitter) and 70 million (Instagram), while our Tumblr blog reached one million followers.

On Feb. 18 , 4.2 million peak viewers watched live as our Perseverance rover landed on Mars, and nearly 370K live viewers tuned in Feb. 22 to view images and video of the landing. Our top three most-viewed videos of 2021 all featured Perseverance, with the live landing broadcast now the most-watched video of all time on NASA's flagship YouTube channel (23 million views).

, 4.2 million peak viewers watched live as our Perseverance rover landed on Mars, and nearly live viewers tuned in to view images and video of the landing. Our top three most-viewed videos of 2021 all featured Perseverance, with the live landing broadcast now the most-watched video of all time on NASA's flagship YouTube channel (23 million views). On Nasa.gov, the "Send Your Name to Mars" feature was the fourth most-visited page due to interest in the Perseverance landing, with 16.9 million members of the public signing up for a boarding pass on future Mars missions, and millions also opting to receive our weekly NASA Explore newsletter, which more than doubled its signups and is near seven million total subscribers.

NASA hosted our first-ever Twitter Spaces Sept. 29 , focusing on the James Webb Space Telescope, with 68,000 unique listeners joining to learn about the mission.

, focusing on the James Webb Space Telescope, with 68,000 unique listeners joining to learn about the mission. To date in 2021, NASA livestreamed 148 events to agency flagship channels. The 13 Virtual NASA Socials on Facebook have a total of 363,000 respondents.

NASA won three Webby Awards and two People's Voice Webbys in 2021 and was nominated for six (plus one honoree).

On nasa.gov, nine out of 10 most-viewed agency news releases in 2021 were about Perseverance or the Ingenuity helicopter, with the release announcing the first audio from the rover taking the top spot. Nineteen new special features were launched on nasa.gov, including the Value of NASA, the "First Woman" graphic novel, and the "You Are Going" storybook.

NASA collaborates with a variety of partners, organizations, and stakeholders to highlight milestones and inspire the public about the agency's missions:

NASA partnered with LEGO Education for a 10-week STEM engagement series. The Artemis Build to Launch STEM series primarily highlights the NASA Artemis I mission and NASA careers, but also includes features about the ISS, James Webb and other NASA missions. More than 4,000 educators across 90 countries signed up to participate. NASA also announced four minifigures will fly on the Artemis I mission in the Official Flight Kit as part of this collaboration.

and other NASA missions. More than 4,000 educators across 90 countries signed up to participate. NASA also announced four minifigures will fly on the Artemis I mission in the Official Flight Kit as part of this collaboration. NASA announced Snoopy will serve as the zero-gravity indicator on the Artemis I mission around the Moon. Snoopy will be outfitted in a custom orange flight suit, and Peanuts released a new suite of curriculum and short videos with its partners, GoNoodle and Young Minds Inspired, to encourage kids to learn about gravity, teamwork, and space exploration while they follow Snoopy along on his Artemis I journey.

In addition to the doll and Sliver Snoopy pins, a pen nib from Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts studio will make the trek on Artemis I wrapped in a space themed comic strip as part of a collection of mementos selected by NASA to fly aboard the Orion spacecraft.

Peanuts studio will make the trek on Artemis I wrapped in a space themed comic strip as part of a collection of mementos selected by NASA to fly aboard the Orion spacecraft. NASA collaborated with several commercial entities to support NASA themed merchandise, including: a LEGO Space Shuttle Discovery and Hubble model; a Hot Wheels Mars Perseverance Rover with link to more NASA information; Lucky Charms Galaxy Edition that included Artemis box content; Frito-Lay Artemis snack packs with related educational content and scholarships for underserved children; and a Krispy Kreme Mars doughnut marking landing day for the Perseverance Mars rover.

NASA also collaborated with screens in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus, as well as other locations across the globe, to feature the Mars Perseverance landing and Webb Space Telescope. In addition to Mars and Webb Space Telescope content on Google's Arts & Culture page, Google created special search features to include Mars Perseverance fireworks and a simulated Ingenuity helicopter flight against a Mars background during the first test flight.

At the request of the administration, NASA loaned a Moon rock from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission  the last crewed mission to the lunar surface  to be displayed in the White House Oval Office.

Collaborations to spotlight agency events included sending congrats to Scripps National Spelling Bee winner and aspiring NASA team member Zaila Avant -garde, and a message from astronauts on the space station appearing at the MTV Video Music Awards.

-garde, and a message from astronauts on the space station appearing at the MTV Video Music Awards. Among the many other talent engagements with the agency this year, NASA worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger , Sia, William Shatner , Yo-Yo Ma , Jo-Jo Siwa , Kehinde Wiley , Shawn Mendez , and others.

, Sia, , , , , , and others. A few highlights of the agency's collaborations with the film and television industry included Moonfall, War of the Worlds, Don't Look Up, and Million Miles Away.

The agency's merchandise team worked with a variety of brands including Balenciaga, Target, Omega, H&M, Proctor & Gamble/Tide, and more.

The agency is streamlining its guest operations processes and continued to provide a hybrid model of both in-person and virtual guest opportunities for launches:

NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 completed the agency's first post-flight visit to Washington in nearly two years. The astronauts met with members of Congress, presented a flag to U.S. Space Force Gen. John Raymond , participated in local STEM activities, and more.

in nearly two years. The astronauts met with members of Congress, presented a flag to U.S. Space Force Gen. , participated in local STEM activities, and more. More than 458,000 people around the world registered to take part in NASA's virtual launch experiences, up 11% from 2020. This initiative has continued as an alternative launch-viewing opportunity in response to COVID-19.

Returned to in-person events with exhibits at both Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado , and the International Astronautical Congress in Dubai .

, and the International Astronautical Congress in . NASA Glenn held a dedication ceremony for its Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio , and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston renamed its Rocket Park to honor former Director George Abbey .

For more about NASA's missions, research, and discoveries, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

SOURCE NASA
Treadway, currently Vice President of Small Business at Unum, will transition into his new role in January. He has expertise managing small business distribution, operations and key external partnerships. Shea was instrumental in driving growth through numerous sales and client management leadership positions at Unum.

"Shea and Michael have proven track records of driving results and developing talent," said Tim Arnold, president of Colonial Life and executive vice president for Voluntary Benefits. "I'm confident their leadership will position us for strong future growth."

Stachowiak has a degree in business administration and human resource management from the School of Business at Portland State University. He and his family will relocate to Columbia, S.C.

Treadway earned his bachelor's degree in political science from Yale University and his MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He and his family live in Denver.

About Colonial Life

Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Unum Group, provides financial protection benefits to America's workers and their families when the unexpected happens. The company offers workplace benefits, including disability, life, accident, dental, cancer, critical illness and hospital confinement indemnity insurance. Colonial Life's benefit services, education and innovative enrollment technology supports over 87,000 businesses and 4 million workers. In 2020, Colonial Life paid more than $700 million in benefits to policyholders.

Connect with Colonial Life on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

SOURCE Colonial Life
PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research recently published a report, titled, "Next Generation Sequencing Informatics Market by Product (Data Analysis & Management Tools, NGS Informatics Services, and Primary and Secondary Data Analysis Tools), Application (Drug Discovery, Diagnostics, Biomarker Discovery, Precision Medicine, and Agriculture & Animal Research) and End User (Hospitals and Clinics, Academic and Research Centers, Pharmaceutical Companies, and Other End Users): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030". As per the report, the global next-generation sequencing informatics industry generated $933.18 million in 2020, and is estimated to reach $3.18 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 13.3% from 2021 to 2030.

For Right Perspective and Competitive Insights, Get Sample Report at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/2824

Major determinants of the market growth

Rise in investments, technological advancements in NGS informatics tools, and preference toward personalized medicines drive the growth of the global next-generation sequencing information market. However, lack of skilled technicians for NGS informatics services and ethical & legal limitation hinder the market growth. On the contrary, rise in prevalence of cancer diseases is expected to open new opportunities for the market players in the future.

Covid-19 scenario:

The NGS informatics helped in understanding the evolving process of the Covid-19 virus and keeping track of the transmission of the virus across the globe. Thus, the pandemic fueled the investments in the market.

However, lockdown and restrictions on social gathering hampered the market and created shortage of workforce.

The data analysis and management tools segment dominated the market

By product, the data analysis and management tools segment held the largest share in 2020, accounting for more than half of the global next-generation sequencing information market, due to rise in demand and technological advancements in the NGS informatic tools. However, the NGS informatics services segment is projected to manifest the highest CAGR of 14.7% during the forecast period, owing to use of cloud computing and ability of services of managing enormous genomic data.

Do You Have Any Query Or Specific Requirement? Ask to Our Industry Expert: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/2824

The precision medicine segment to portray the highest CAGR through 2030

By incontinence type, the precision medicine segment is expected to portray the highest CAGR of 15.5% during the forecast period, due to rise in investment in R&D and rise in awareness around NGS application in precision medicine. However, the biomarker discovery segment held the largest share in 2020, contributing to more than one-third of the global next-generation sequencing information market, owing to rise in prevalence of cancer as biomarkers to improve quality of cancer treatment and developments in NGS informatics technology.

North America held the lion's share

By region, the market across North America dominated the market in 2020, accounting for around two-fifths of the market, due to presence of high per capita healthcare expenditure, high patient awareness levels, and high prevalence of target diseases. However, the global next-generation sequencing information market across Asia-Pacific is anticipated to register the highest CAGR of 15.1% during the forecast period, owing to rise in demand for NGS informatics and strong presence of key players.

Major market players

Illumina, Inc.

Agilent Technologies Inc.

Thermo Fischer Scientific, Inc.

Qiagen N.V.

F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG

Intrexon Bioinformatics Germany GmbH

DNANexus Inc.

Fabric Genomics Inc.

Partek Incorporated

Sapio Sciences

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About Us

Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

Pawan Kumar, the CEO of Allied Market Research, is leading the organization toward providing high-quality data and insights. We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

Contact:

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#205, Portland, OR 97220

United States

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UK: +44-845-528-1300

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Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/reports-store/life-sciences

Follow Us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/life-sciences-industry-research/

SOURCE Allied Market Research
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of non-profit organizations and private individuals led by the national coalition Americans for Responsible Technology (ART) today petitioned the Health and Human Services Department and its constituent agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to publicly issue a declaration of Imminent Hazard and clarify its position on the safety of human exposure to radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted from cell phones, cell towers, smart meters, small cell antennas, wireless kiosks, tablets, computers and other wireless devices. The groups contend that the FDA is allowing and encouraging the misleading and false impression that it has engaged in a careful examination of the evidence, reached a science-based conclusion and developed standards for human exposure following government procedures. It has not.

"We're asking a simple and basic question that Americans have a right to know the answer to: where are the FDA's science-based standards for exposure to RF radiation?" says ART founder and National Director Doug Wood, whose organization represents more than 130 grassroots organizations across the country. "The FDA is our nation's primary agency to protect and promote public health and it has a statutory responsibility to evaluate the safety of wireless devices. This is an imminent hazard to human health. The FDA must act."

The rapid deployment of 5G antennas in neighborhoods across the country, along with the national effort to make every school classroom wireless has raised questions among parents and others as to the safety of near-constant exposure. The concurrent publication of more studies linking RF radiation to cancer, DNA damage and reproductive and neurological problems, has ignited a fierce debate over the wisdom of increasing involuntary exposure to RF radiation. Petitioners argue that the current FCC thermal guidelines, developed more than a quarter century ago, do not address proven biological impacts occurring at levels below the thermal threshold.

"The public is completely uninformed and unprotected," says Cindy Franklin, founder of Consumers for Safe Cell Phones, a co-petitioner in the action. "Most people think the FDA is carefully evaluating the science, and that FCC regulations are based on properly developed scientific input from the FDA. None of that is true."

A recent lawsuit seeking a judicial review of the FCC's decision to keep its outdated safety guidelines in place resulted in the Court ordering the FCC to look again at emerging science linking exposure to RF radiation with biological harm, especially to children and the environment. The court called the FCC's decision to keep its thermal-only guidelines "arbitrary and capricious."

"People all over the country are suffering from exposure, but may not realize it's the RF radiation from a nearby antenna, smart meter or router," says Ellen Marks, founder of the California Brain Tumor Association whose husband developed a brain tumor after years of holding his cell phone against his head. "RF radiation can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, insomnia, inability to concentrate  and those are just the acute symptoms. Cancer takes longer to develop. We can't wait. This is a public health crisis that needs to be addressed immediately!"

About Americans for Responsible Technology: ART is a national coalition of grassroots organizations supporting the deployment of safe, economical and future-proof wired technology.

Read the entire petition here.

Press Contact:

Doug Wood, Founder and National Director

Americans for Responsible Technology

(516) 423-6021

SOURCE Americans for Responsible Technology
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GoodPetsPlan, a revolutionary international provider of televet care and pet health coverage is pledging 100% of all net profits from today, December 21st 2021, through the end of 2022, to provide life-saving, emergency and other veterinary care in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

With the continued Covid concerns around the globe, virtual healthcare has become commonplace for people needing around the clock online doctors' visits and prescription medications delivered for themselves. Your pets get sick too and not always at a convenient place or time! GoodPetsPlan is the solution for when your pet partner needs some doctor time and maybe some Rx as well.

Giving our beloved pets the best healthcare is a main goal for most of us. Providing quality veterinary care is at the top of the list and GoodPetsPlan has created a place where all pet parents can rely on 24/7 online virtual vet care from over 3,000 licensed vets in the Us, UK and Canada, and also can plan for their pet's future healthcare coverage needs. GoodPetsPlan applies a modern and practical twist on traditional pet insurance and veterinary medicine by offering community funded, health coverage with an extremely low monthly maximum payment.

"The total wellbeing of your and our pet partners was a goal when envisioning GoodPetsPlan" says founder AJ Rey. "This business was not only created to modernize how we use telehealth for our pets, but for us to utilize this opportunity to provide urgent, critical emergency and other much needed vet care to the pets of low-income families."

As a response to the overwhelming need for urgent and immediate vet care for so many animals - domestic and wild - GoodPetsPlan has pledged 100% of all net profits from their operations in the US, UK and Canada to charities that include the ASPCA, VCA Charities and GoodPetsPlan's personal favorite in the US, For the Love Of Alex, Inc. The RSPCA, PDSA and Blue Cross (British emergency vet clinics) and other UK charities will be benefiting from all UK sales.

"These have been trying times. I am hoping 2022 will be a healthy, safe year for all of us - pet buddies included. If we can help pet families this coming year and improve the quality of the lives of hopefully millions of animals, then this would be my wish answered for Christmas and New Year." said Rey.

GoodPetsPlan

Website: www.goodpetsplan.com

General Contact: [email protected]

Media Contact:

AJ Rey

805-319-8876

[email protected]

SOURCE GoodPetsPlan
The Pleasant T. Rowland Leadership Campus will serve as the home of One City's elementary and secondary schools. One City Elementary currently enrolls 198 children in grades 4K to 4 and will add 5th grade next school year. One City has also been approved by its charter school authorizer, the University of Wisconsin System's Office of Educational Opportunity, to open its new 6th to 12th grade One City Preparatory Academy in September 2022.

One City Prep will offer a unique Early College and Career Preparatory Program that will enable students to complete credits towards earning associates and bachelor's degrees, and industry certifications, beginning in ninth grade, at no expense to its students. Beginning in 6th grade, building on its current project-based learning model, students will begin exploring careers, addressing community and social issues, and considering new ideas and solutions to problems confronting education, business, industry and society.

One City Founder and CEO, Kaleem Caire, said "The Frautschi family has a long history of investing in initiatives to make Madison a great city for everyone, dating back to their contributions to downtown and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the early 1900s. We are truly grateful to be a part of Mr. Jerome Frautschi's extraordinary personal legacy of giving to projects that inspire the heart and art of human kindness, community and innovation in our capital city."

Mr. Frautschi's tremendous contribution will enable One City to continue pursuing its mission of seeding a new model of public education that ensures young children are on track to succeed in a college and career preparatory program from birth through high school graduation.

Commenting on the Foundation's recent gift to One City, Mr. Frautschi said, "I am proud to be among the many supporters of One City Schools. Their program is on the leading edge of innovation in public education, and I look forward to seeing One City execute their impressive vision."

Renovation of the facility located at 1707 W. Broadway in Monona, Wisconsin is scheduled to be completed by August 2022. By the fall of 2024, One City will enroll 970 children, from age 2 through 12th grade: 82 children at its preschool facility in South Madison and 888 students at the Rowland Leadership Campus.

To date, more than 2,500 financial donors and more than 300 volunteers have contributed to One City Schools growth and success.

About One City Schools

One City Schools, Incorporated is a nonprofit organization that currently operates two schools: a tuition-based independent preschool that serves 2 and 3-year-olds and a tuition-free public charter school, authorized by the University of Wisconsin System, that will eventually enroll children from 4-year-old kindergarten through 12th grade.

SOURCE One City Schools

Related Links

https://www.onecityschools.org


BEIJING, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ambow Education Holding Ltd. ("Ambow" or the "Company") (NYSE American: AMBO), a leading cross-border career educational and technology service provider, today announced the Company's open teaching system platform, OOOK ("O Course," https://oook.com) won the "Technology Innovation Brand" Award at the China National Radio (CNR) 2021 Annual Education Summit for its ground-breaking technology and applications. At the same event, Ambow was awarded the "2021 Leading Vocational Education Brand."

China National Radio, an arm of China Central Television, is one of most influential online media portals in China. The CNR 2021 Annual Education Summit was held on December 15, 2021, in Beijing. With the theme "New Challenges, New Opportunities, and New Models," the event gathered together officials from the government including the Ministry of Education, educational experts from home and abroad, principals of well-known education brands, and representatives from the media, to witness the recognition of outstanding projects for creating value and sustainable development as well as remarkable contributors to the education industry. As one of the winners, OOOK is supported by over 70 patented technologies, operating on a cloud service model, it provides high-quality, cross-terminal live and recording services, immersive and interactive live broadcast experiences that combine images and shared files, and one-stop operation management functions.

Dr. Jin Huang, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ambow, commented, "Technology is the key force driving educational reforms, and technological innovation is in Ambow's genes. We will adhere to our original aspirations by continuing to strengthen our efforts to develop an educational ecosystem to promote smart education, by creating products that address users' needs and utilizing a high-quality approach and service commitment that promotes the industry's sustainable development."

About Ambow Education Holding Ltd.

Ambow Education Holding Ltd. is a leading cross-border career educational and technology service provider, offering high-quality, individualized services and products. With its extensive network of regional service hubs complemented by a dynamic proprietary learning platform and distributors, Ambow provides its services and products to students in China and United States of America.

Follow us on Twitter: @Ambow_Education

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the outlook and quotations from management in this announcement, as well as Ambow's strategic and operational plans, contain forward-looking statements. Ambow may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its reports filed or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in its annual reports to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the following: the Company's goals and strategies, expansion plans, the expected growth of the content and application delivery services market, the Company's expectations regarding keeping and strengthening its relationships with its customers, and the general economic and business conditions in the regions where the Company provides its solutions and services. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and Ambow undertakes no duty to update such information, except as required under applicable law.

For investor and media inquiries please contact:

Ambow Education Holding Ltd.

Tel: +86 10-6206-8000

The Piacente Group | Investor Relations

Tel: +1 212-481-2050 or +86 10-6508-0677

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Ambow Education Holding Ltd.

Related Links

www.ambow.com


STOCKHOLM, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ortoma signs agreement with Johnson & Johnson K.K. for exclusive distribution rights in Japan of the Ortoma Treatment Solution for hip surgery. It is the first agreement that the company executes with a global strategic partner. The agreement allows for the possibility to expand the partnership to other global markets.

Ortoma is the provider of the Ortoma Treatment Solution (OTS), which includes OTS Hip Plan and OTS Hip Guide for pre-operative planning, intra-operative navigation, and post-operative follow-up of hip implant surgical procedures. The OTS platform is a surgical system that is assisted by Artificial Intelligence for improved accuracy, efficiency and surgical outcome.

Johnson & Johnson K.K. is a supplier of medical devices. Johnson & Johnson K.K. offers Depuy Synthes products, including hip implants, on the Japanese market. OTS Hip Plan can be used with Depuy Synthes hip implants available on the Japanese market.

"I am very happy about the opportunity to take OTS for hip replacement surgery to the Japanese market with a major industry leading partner. We are looking forward to supporting Johnson & Johnson K.K.'s launch of the OTS platform. Ortoma believes that our offerings will provide differentiated medical solutions to patients in the Japanese market," says Linus Bystrom, CEO of Ortoma AB.

The agreement includes the commercial terms for the exclusive distribution rights in Japan of OTS for hip replacement surgery including the products OTS Hip Plan and OTS Hip Guide. The agreement is valid for an initial term of seven years. Johnson & Johnson K.K.with affiliated companies has the right to negotiate an extension of the strategic partnership to other surgical areas in Japan as well as to other global markets.

Johnson & Johnson K.K. will evaluate the products clinically during an initial pilot period in 2022 agreed upon by the parties. If satisfactory, Johnson & Johnson K.K.will proceed with the launch of the products on the Japanese market. The evaluation will be conducted following the registration of appropriate regulatory approval of the relevant OTS product in Japan. OTS Hip Plan already has regulatory approval in Japan. The Johnson & Johnson K.K. has the right to terminate the agreement two years after regulatory approval.

Following the pilot period, the income from the strategic partnership will be a combination of fixed fees, software annual license fees and fees for consumables and services. Ortoma will be responsible for the service of OTS for hip surgery in Japan via a local third party organization.

"Although we cannot quantify the future income from this strategic partnership, we are encouraged by the early indications of interest by key clinicians in the Japanese market," says Linus Bystrom.

"The OTS Hip Plan and OTS Hip Guide will allow surgeons to improve precision in hip implant surgery. Patients, clinicians and the Japan Health system will all benefit," says Gunnar Nemeth, Chairman of the Board of Ortoma.

The agreement was facilitated by MedWorld Advisors, an International Strategic M&A Advisory firm. MedWorld supported Ortoma with its strategic objectives and the execution of the contract between the parties.

Ortoma  Improved Performance

This disclosure contains information that Ortoma is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation (EU nr 596/2014). The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person, on 21-12-2021 20:05 CET.

CONTACT:

For more information, please contact:

CEO Linus Bystrom, e-mail: [email protected]

Chairman of the Board, Gunnar Nemeth, e-mail: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/ortoma/r/ortoma-signs-agreement-for-exclusive-distribution-rights-in-japan,c3476932

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/11612/3476932/1513460.pdf Ortoma_PM_211221_Ortoma Signs Agreement for Exclusive Distribution Rights in Japan

SOURCE Ortoma
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for over 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Cypress Development Corp. (TSX-V: CYP; OTCQX: CYDVF), a lithium exploration and development company, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Cypress Development Corp. upgraded to OTCQX from the OTCQB Venture Market.

Cypress Development Corp. begins trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "CYDVF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com.

The OTCQX Market is designed for established, investor-focused U.S. and international companies. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance, and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws. Graduating to the OTCQX Market marks an important milestone for companies, enabling them to demonstrate their qualifications and build visibility among U.S. investors.

"We are pleased to better serve our growing investor base and supporters of Cypress as we advance our Clayton Valley Lithium Project in Nevada" said Bill Willoughby, President and CEO of Cypress Development. "Upgrading to the OTCQX is an important step for the Company in building market awareness and improving access for our U.S. investors."

About Cypress Development Corp.

Cypress Development Corp. is an advanced stage lithium company, focused on developing its 100%-owned Clayton Valley Lithium Project in Nevada. Work completed by Cypress led to the discovery of a world-class resource of lithium-bearing claystone adjacent to the Albemarle Silver Peak mine, North America's only lithium brine operation. Cypress is advancing its Clayton Valley Lithium Project in Nevada towards the production of high-purity lithium hydroxide suitable for tier one battery usage.

About OTC Markets Group Inc.

OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market and the Pink Open Market for over 11,000 U.S. and global securities. Through our regulated OTC Link Alternative Trading Systems, the Company connects a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for their investors.

OTC Link ATS, OTC Link ECN and OTC Link NQB are each an SEC regulated ATS, operated by OTC Link LLC, a FINRA and SEC registered broker-dealer, member SIPC.

To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com.

Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed

Media Contact:

OTC Markets Group Inc., +1 (212) 896-4428, [email protected]

SOURCE OTC Markets Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.otcmarkets.com


NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for over 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Starr Peak Mining Ltd. (TSX-V: STE; OTCQX: STRPF), a Canadian based exploration company focused on the acquisition and exploration of high value Gold projects in Canada, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Starr Peak Mining Ltd. upgraded to OTCQX from the Pink market.

Starr Peak Mining Ltd. begins trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "STRPF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com.

Upgrading to the OTCQX Market is an important step for companies seeking to provide transparent trading for their U.S. investors. For companies listed on a qualified international exchange, streamlined market standards enable them to utilize their home market reporting to make their information available in the U.S. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws.

Johnathan More, Chairman & CEO of Starr Peak commented, "We are excited to be a part of the OTCQX market. This will be a huge benefit to presenting our exciting story to a wide range of U.S. based investors."

Securities Law USA, PLLC acted as the company's OTCQX sponsor.

About Starr Peak Mining Ltd.

Starr Peak Exploration Ltd. is a Canadian based exploration company focused on the acquisition and exploration of high value Gold projects in Canada. The company is committed to creating long term shareholder value through the exploration and development of our recently acquired NewMetal property located in the mining friendly province of Quebec, contiguous to Amex Exploration's significant gold discovery at their Perron property.

About OTC Markets Group Inc.

OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market and the Pink Open Market for over 11,000 U.S. and global securities. Through our regulated OTC Link Alternative Trading Systems, the Company connects a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for their investors.

OTC Link ATS, OTC Link ECN and OTC Link NQB are each an SEC regulated ATS, operated by OTC Link LLC, a FINRA and SEC registered broker-dealer, member SIPC.

To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com.

Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed

Media Contact:

OTC Markets Group Inc., +1 (212) 896-4428, [email protected]

SOURCE OTC Markets Group Inc.
CORAL GABLES, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Paul A. Garcia, P.A. (PAG), a leading CPA firm and provider of tax, accounting, and litigation support services in Coral Gables, Florida, announces a merger with Eric E. Santa Maria, CPA. in Coral Gables. Santa Maria was previously the lead tax and litigation support partner with Verdeja De Armas Trujillo LLP. By joining forces, Garcia and Santa Maria will better position their clients to achieve long term growth and success, while strengthening their position as a trusted advisor.

"We are excited to have Eric join our team. His extensive professional experience and credentials will add to our expertise and reputation for providing high-quality tax and consulting services in the South Florida community and internationally," said Paul A. Garcia, CPA, of Paul A. Garcia, P.A.

Paul A. Garcia, P.A. is a certified public accounting firm that has been serving the Coral Gables community for over 35 years. Specializing in tax, accounting, and forensic litigation support, the firm is well known for their personalized and pro-active approach to serving their clients.

Eric Santa Maria CPA has more than 20 years of experience working with individuals and businesses in South Florida providing tax, accounting, and consulting services. Santa Maria worked with Paul Garcia previously after leaving PwC in 2009. "I am excited to re-join Paul's team," said Eric Santa Maria CPA. "I've known Paul as a good friend and colleague for more than 30 years and I'm very excited to partner with him to start our new firm. The added resources and expertise by joining forces with Paul will allow me to continue to service existing clients and allow me the opportunity to provide additional tax and consulting services during these uncertain times." Santa Maria serves clients in various specialty industry groups including Manufacturing and Distribution, Medical, Real Estate, and Aviation.

The new firm will operate under the name of Garcia Santa Maria PLLC, with their main office at 135 San Lorenzo Avenue in Coral Gables, Florida effective January 1, 2022. The firm has plans to expand and hire professionals at various levels in the coming year with opportunities both in the office and remotely.

For more information, please email [email protected] or call Garcia Santa Maria at (305)448-0404.

SOURCE Garcia Santa Maria PLLC
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Piedmont Natural Gas late last week filed requests with the utilities commissions in North Carolina and South Carolina to reduce customer billing rates due to a decrease in the market cost of natural gas.

If these decreases are approved as requested, bills for the average residential customer in North Carolina and South Carolina will decrease by about $5 per month, or about $15 total, for the first quarter of 2022. Pending approval from both commissions, the rate decreases will each take effect on Jan. 1, 2022.

"With so many factors impacting the global market price of natural gas, it's difficult to predict what rates will be in the coming months," said Sasha Weintraub, Piedmont Natural Gas senior vice president. "We are glad to see a downward trend in the cost of natural gas to lessen the impact on customers this winter."

Piedmont requests occasional rate adjustments, called benchmark rate changes, to reflect fluctuations in the market price of the natural gas it purchases for its customers. Earlier this year Piedmont increased rates, citing dramatic surges in the global market cost of natural gas. By law, Piedmont does not mark up the cost of natural gas and must pass through the actual cost on a dollar-for-dollar basis to customers.

"We do all we can to ease price impacts on customers," added Weintraub. "We are continuing to proactively notify customers about available assistance and sharing ways customers can help manage their bills throughout the winter."

Equal Payment Program (EPP)

This free service helps customers manage their budgets by eliminating high winter bills. The EPP program levels out a customer's natural gas bills, allowing them to pay a predictable, equal monthly amount to help avoid billing surprises. Piedmont determines this payment by adding up a customer's annual natural gas usage and then dividing it into the same payment amount each month. Learn more here.

Assistance for Customers in Need

Piedmont is reaching out to customers whose bills are past due through email and/or text with information about utility assistance administered by agencies in their state and local communities. Customers who may not have qualified for assistance in the past may now qualify due to expanded eligibility criteria during the pandemic. Increased levels of assistance also may be available for those who qualified and have already received assistance.

Share the Warmth provides funds to local agencies to assist families with their utility bills, no matter the source of energy they use.

The Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP) provides winter heating assistance to pay for gas, electric and other methods customers use to heat their homes. There are many customers who are eligible but do not apply for this annual federal benefit that can reduce winter heating costs for low-income families. The links below can provide information on how to apply locally:



Piedmont says anyone in need should apply for this and other newly available programs to see if they qualify. For detailed federal and state-specific information, go to www.piedmontng.com/winterbills and click on your state.

Low- to no-cost energy-saving tips and projects

Natural gas use typically spikes in the winter as customers combat low temperatures to stay warm. Below are tips to help prepare for cold weather and manage your energy use. B-roll of energy-efficiency measures available here.

Learn how to reduce energy use. The first step to reduce energy use in your home is to identify and prioritize energy-saving improvements. This can be accomplished through a certified auditor or by performing your own energy audit.



Seal air ducts. Make sure the air ducts from your home's furnace and central air conditioner are properly sealed. Ducts that leak into the attic or crawl space can substantially increase your heating and cooling bills.



Seal your home. One of the quickest energy-saving tasks you can do is caulk, seal and weatherstrip all seams, cracks and openings to the outside. This can save 10% to 20% on your heating and cooling bills.



Install smart thermostats. Installing a "smart" or programmable thermostat will reduce your energy use while you are asleep or away.



Manage water heating. Set your water heater temperature to 120 degrees Fahrenheit or consider installing an on-demand or tankless water heater that only heats water when you need it.



Consider insulation. Consider whether you need to add insulation to your ceilings, floors and walls. Insulation between the indoors and outdoors reduces energy demand, saving you money while improving the comfort of your home.

Energy-Saving Tools

Piedmont Natural Gas also offers a variety of energy-saving tools to help customers and our communities identify ways to save money and energy all year long. These programs and tools help customers understand what factors are impacting their natural gas bills and emphasize specific actions they can take to reduce the impacts of high winter usage.

Piedmont Natural Gas

Piedmont Natural Gas, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, is an energy services company whose principal business is the distribution of natural gas to more than 1 million residential, commercial and industrial customers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The company also supplies natural gas to power plants. Piedmont is routinely recognized by J.D. Power for excellent customer satisfaction, and has been named by Cogent Reports as one of the most trusted utility brands in the U.S.

Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), a Fortune 150 company headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is one of America's largest energy holding companies. Its electric utilities serve 7.9 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and collectively own 51,000 megawatts of energy capacity. Its natural gas unit serves 1.6 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The company employs 27,500 people.

Duke Energy is executing an aggressive clean energy strategy to create a smarter energy future for its customers and communities  with goals of at least a 50% carbon reduction by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The company is a top U.S. renewable energy provider, on track to own or purchase 16,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2025. The company also is investing in major electric grid upgrades and expanded battery storage, and exploring zero-emitting power generation technologies such as hydrogen and advanced nuclear.

Duke Energy was named to Fortune's 2021 "World's Most Admired Companies" list and Forbes' "America's Best Employers" list. More information is available at duke-energy.com. The Duke Energy News Center contains news releases, fact sheets, photos and videos. Duke Energy's illumination features stories about people, innovations, community topics and environmental issues. Follow Duke Energy on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Media contact: Jennifer Sharpe

Media Line: 877.348.3612

[email protected]

SOURCE Piedmont Natural Gas
- Piramal Pharma Solutions adds new technologies and capabilities in large molecules, including vaccines and gene therapy, to its global offering

- Investment of INR101.77cr in biologics reflects the company's global commitment to this fast-growing segment of the pharma industry

MUMBAI, India, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Piramal Pharma Limited (PPL) today announced an investment of INR101.77cr in Yapan Bio Pvt Ltd ("Yapan") of Hyderabad, India, augmenting the capabilities of its Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) business, Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS). PPL holds 27.78% equity stake in the company as a result of this investment. As PPS continues to strengthen its capabilities and position itself as a leading CDMO, this acquisition marks a significant addition to PPS' global capabilities in the development and manufacturing of large molecules for human clinical trials.

Yapan Bio provides process development, scale-up, and cGMP compliant manufacturing of vaccines and biologics/bio-therapeutics, including high containment product classes (up to BSL-2+), recombinant vaccines, RNA/DNA vaccines, gene therapies, monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic proteins, and other complex biologics. Yapan's FY21 turnover was INR 12.4cr. The company has already earned revenues of INR 11.8cr for H1FY22 and is poised for fast growth in response to strong market demand.

The investment in Yapan Bio allows PPS to broaden its service offerings in the fast-growing biologics CDMO space. Biologics capabilities can be synergistic with the company's anti-body drug conjugation capabilities; specifically, for customers who prefer the speed and simplicity benefits of an integrated program that involves development, manufacturing, conjugation, and fill finish. PPS currently offers integrated payload, conjugation, fill finish services, and the addition of anti-body capabilities enhances that offering.

Nandini Piramal, Chairperson, Piramal Pharma Limited, said, "The expertise found at Yapan will help Piramal provide existing customers with wider capabilities for developing and manufacturing large molecules. This investment further supports our growth strategy for Piramal Pharma."

Peter DeYoung, CEO, Pharma Solutions, Piramal Pharma Limited, said, "During the past decade, biologics and their accompanying development services are the fastest growing segments of the CDMO market. This investment, coupled with the market-leading capabilities of our Grangemouth, UK site in antibody drug conjugations and our sterile fill/finish capabilities in Lexington, USA, demonstrates our commitment to growing our service offerings in the large molecule CDMO space."

Atin Tomar and Nirav Desai, CEO and COO of Yapan, said, "We are very excited about this transaction and are confident that PPS is the ideal partner to take the business through its next phase of growth. Yapan's employees and customers, who are the core stakeholders of our business, will most assuredly benefit from PPS' expertise in providing integrated services on a global scale."

In today's market, many pharma innovator companies are looking for CDMOs to support their biologics development and manufacturing requirements. PPS expects that adding these capabilities and expertise will enable the company to further enhance its offerings in this attractive, fast-track growth sector.

Trilegal served as legal advisors to PPL on this transaction. Torreya Partners India LLP served as financial advisor and Samisti Legal LLP served as legal advisors to Yapan on this transaction.

About Piramal Pharma Solutions:

Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS) is a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) offering end-to-end development and manufacturing solutions across the drug life cycle. We serve our customers through a globally integrated network of facilities in North America, Europe, and Asia. This enables us to offer a comprehensive range of services including drug discovery solutions, process & pharmaceutical development services, clinical trial supplies, commercial supply of APIs, and finished dosage forms. We also offer specialized services such as the development and manufacture of highly potent APIs, antibody-drug conjugations, sterile fill/finish, peptide products & services, and potent solid oral drug product. Our track record as a trusted service provider with experience across varied technologies makes us a partner of choice for innovator and generic companies worldwide.

For more information please visit: www.piramalpharmasolutions.com | Twitter | LinkedIn

About Piramal Pharma Ltd.

Piramal Pharma Limited (PPL) offers a portfolio of differentiated products and services through end-to-end manufacturing capabilities across 15 global facilities and a global distribution network over 100 countries. PPL includes: Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS), an integrated Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization; Piramal Critical Care (PCC), a Complex Hospital Generics business, and the India Consumer Healthcare business, selling over-the counter products. PPS offers end-to-end development and manufacturing solutions through a globally integrated network of facilities across the drug life cycle to innovator and generic companies. PCC's complex hospital product portfolio includes inhalation anaesthetics, intrathecal therapies for spasticity and pain management, injectable pain and anaesthetics, injectable anti-infectives, and other therapies. The Indian Consumer Healthcare business is among the leading players in India in the self-care space, with established brands in the Indian consumer healthcare market. In addition, PPL has a joint venture with Allergan, a leader in ophthalmology in the Indian formulations market. In October 2020, the company received growth equity investment from the Carlyle Group.

For more information visit: www.piramal.com | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

About Yapan Bio Pvt Ltd

Yapan Bio Pvt Ltd, located in Genome Valley in Hyderabad, has been founded by Atin Tomar and Nirav Desai, both having ~40 years of combined experience in the biotechnology industry, globally, specializing in the fields of development, manufacturing and commercialization of Vaccines and Biologics/Bio-therapeutics. Yapan Bio is a Contract Process Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) providing process development, scale-up and complaint GMP manufacturing of Vaccines and Biologics/Bio-therapeutics for human clinical trials across the world. Capabilities at Yapan includes development and GMP facilities for high containment product classes (up to BSL-2+).

For more information visit https://www.yapanbio.com

SOURCE Piramal Pharma Solutions
LAS VEGAS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GNCC Capital, Inc. ("GNCP.PK", "GNCC" or "the Company" refers our shareholders to our Press Release dated December 13, 2021, a link for ease of reference: https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GNCP/news/PREMIER-DEVELOPMENT--INVESTMENT-INC-SUBSTANTIALLY-INCREASES-ITS-HOLDING-IN-GNCC-CAPITAL-INC?id=335484 whereby we confirmed that Premier Development & Investment, Inc. (OTC: PDIV) ("PDIV.PK" or "Premier") has now very substantially increased its holdings of restricted Voting Common Stock in GNCP.

We can now confirm that Premier's holdings in GNCC exceed 55% of GNCC's shares of outstanding Voting Common Stock.

We can confirm that Premier has no desire to hold more than up to more than some 45% of GNCC Voting Common Stock; from time to time.

As Premier is a GNCC Insider, it is prohibited nor is it willing to dispose of any of its shareholdings in GNCC in the market. It would not be possible for Premier to obtain consent to remove the "restrictive legend" from its GNCP Common Stock.

We reiterate that that Premier views its holdings in GNCC as a long term, passive and now; an extremely attractive investment. The current GNCC stock price was considered as an irresistible and highly attractive further entry point for Premier (in the opinion of the Directors of Premier and of the controlling shareholders of Premier).

This is not considered to be a material transaction by Premier given its cash, fixed and short term liquid assets; coupled with its very short term investment holdings.

GNCC has now managed to obtain the necessary Conversion Notices from additional Preferred Stockholders in order to convert into additional shares of GNCC restricted Voting Common Stock.

This ensures that Premier will not hold in excess of 45% of GNCC Voting Common Stock by no later than December 31, 2021; that being Premier's Financial Year End.

GNCC's last Financial Report being the Q3 Report to June 30, 2021 disclosed additional shareholders holding restricted shares of GNCC Voting Common Stock and under "lock up" agreements. This will be increased in due course as mentioned above.

Stockholders are reminded that that Preferred Stockholders of GNCC enjoy the same rights as Common Stockholders in respect of any Dividend Payouts. The Preferred Stockholders long standing publicly filed Certificates of Designation clearly set this out. The increase in the number of GNCC Voting Common Stock is irrelevant in terms of any unfounded "fears of dilution"; given that long standing and disclosed point of fact. Preferred Stockholders conversions into shares of restricted Voting Common Stock is viewed as positive by your Directors.

Both Premier and GNCC are now finally in a position to be filing on OTC Markets, certain Regulatory and obligatory filings in order to ensure that our shareholders are in possession of all the facts and in a timely fashion and in line with the OTC Markets Rules and Regulations pertaining to Insider Dealings.

ABOUT PREMIER:-

Premier holds claims to Rare Earth Mining Exploration Properties in New Mexico, has options over Oil & Gas Wells in Oklahoma and holds the largest amount of the outstanding Common Stock of GNCC Capital, Inc. (OTC: GNCP) which gives Premier an indirect exposure to their claims to Gold and Silver Mining Exploration Properties. Premier's Futures Trading Company is extremely active and continues to trade some 16 hours a day; solely in Index linked Futures Contracts. Premier also holds material cash and short term loan/investment deposits.

Forward-Looking Statements:-

This press release may contain forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "should," "intend," "estimate," "projects," variations of such words and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not a forward-looking statement. These forward-looking statements are based upon the Company's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements are risks that are detailed in the Company's filings, which are on file with the OTC Markets Group.

Contact Information:

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Contact Information:

GNCC CAPITAL, INC.

Telephone: (702) 990-0156

E Mail: [email protected]

Investor Relations Contact:

E Mail: [email protected]

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gncccapital

SOURCE GNCC Capital, Inc.
DALLAS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Puration, Inc. (USOTC: PURA) today announced signing its first Farmersville Hemp clients that will in turn contribute to the company's 2022 revenue objectives.

The company has forecasted $1 million in revenue for 2022 with the potential for revenue to reach $10 million.

PURA has established a new business model to build an industrial hemp business with 3 sources of revenue  education, branding and partnerships.

The initial $1 million in revenue forecasted for next year conservatively only encompasses revenue coming from its education line of business which is designed to ignite the revenue potential of the branding and partnership business lines.

Management indicates the branding and particularly the partnership lines of business also have a high potential of contributing revenue next year. Accordingly, management has indicated the possibility that the initial revenue forecast maybe revised upward more than once in the course of 2022.

PURA has engaged its first three Farmersville Hemp Brand customers. The customers announced today have signed up for PURA's education services. The education services consist of a consultative curriculum customized for each client to design specific strategies for hemp to be incorporated into the client's products and services to enhance their offering with more sustainable, durable and efficient products and services.

For more information on Puration, visit http://www.purationinc.com

Disclaimer:

This News Release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or industry results, to differ materially from any these statements. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any those forward-looking statements. Except as otherwise required by the federal securities laws, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements after the date of this news release. None of such forward-looking statements should be regarded as a representation by us or any other person that the objectives and plans set forth in this News Release will be achieved or be executed.

For More Information Contact:

Puration, Inc.

Brian Shibley

[email protected]

(800) 861-1350

SOURCE Puration, Inc.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rapid-Ease is a tool designed for weekend warriors, CrossFitters, gym rats, and any other fitness fanatics who are seriously committed to their exercise regimen. The botanical topical delivers safe, fast-acting pain relief and is ideal for both warming up and cooling down. The winter is one of the most essential times of the year when Rapid-Ease can make a serious difference in keeping individuals healthy and fit in spite of the cold-weather risk of injury.

Colder temperatures present a variety of challenges to anyone who's trying to stay fit. On the one hand, if people continue to go outside to jog or ride a bike, the chilly weather can wreak havoc on their limbs. Muscle fibers constrict, joint movement is restricted, and the added strain makes it easier for injuries to pop up.

Even if one heads indoors to the warmer environment of a gym, it's important that they take steps to avoid hurting themselves. A trip to the gym often involves driving in an ice-cold car both before and after exercise. This creates scenarios where muscles can constrict and cramp.

Rapid-Ease founder, Kim Davies-Haycock, is proud of her company's solution to both of these pre- and post-workout cold-weather concerns. The New Zealand brand's revolutionary topical, Rapid-Ease, utilizes potent, proven therapeutic quantities of botanical ingredients, like Arnica flower and Comfrey leaf, to deliver fast-acting aid to strained or fatigued muscles.

"Warming rubs that increase blood flow, massage, and dynamic movement that mimic your exercise all work together to warm the muscles and joints up before movement," Davies-Haycock explains, adding that this trio of tools reduces the chance of injury much more than old-fashioned static stretching before a workout. She goes on to explain that "using Rapid-Ease as part of warm-up and post-workout routines really minimizes injury risk and decreases recovery time."

The principle holds true whether one is going for a run in the snow or heading to a warmer gym environment. In either case, navigating the transition from warm to cold and vice versa can lead to pulled muscles and cramps. Rapid-Ease offers a quick, safe, and effective way to both prep muscles for and guard them against the dangers presented by a cold-weather workout.

About Rapid-Ease: Rapid-Ease is the American offshoot of the New Zealand-based enterprise Nature's Nurse. The company was founded by Kim Davies-Haycock over 15 years ago and specializes in using 100% natural ingredients at highly therapeutic levels to create topical pain relief remedies that are effective, fast-working, safe, and natural. Learn more about Rapid-Ease at rapid-ease.com .

Please direct inquiries to:

Alison Dresser

(954) 673-7734

[email protected]

SOURCE Rapid-Ease
NEW YORK, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, continues its investigation of potential securities claims on behalf of shareholders of Redwire Corp. (NYSE: RDW) resulting from allegations that Redwire may have issued materially misleading business information to the investing public.

SO WHAT: If you purchased Redwire securities you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement. The Rosen Law firm is preparing a class action seeking recovery of investor losses.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the prospective class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2214.html or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action.

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT: On September 2, 2021, Genesis Park Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, combined with certain entities and was renamed Redwire. During market trading hours on November 10, 2021, Redwire Corporation announced it would not be releasing Q3 2021 earnings that day as previously scheduled, and did not provide any explanation for the delay. After the market closed, Redwire announced that the delay was due to claims by an employee of accounting issue and that its Audit Committee would commence an investigation into those claims. On this news, Redwire's stock price fell $1.92 per share, or 16%, to close at $9.99 per share on November 10, 2021.

Then, on November 15, 2021, Redwire announced that it could not timely file its quarterly report for the period ended September 30, 2021. The Company advised that due to the pending investigation into the accounting issues at a business subunit, "the Company has not been able to finalize its financial statements or its assessment of the effectiveness of its disclosure controls and procedures and any impact" on the report.

On this news, Redwire's stock price fell $0.93 per share, or 8%, over the following two trading sessions to close at $10.32 per share on November 16, 2021.

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 firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

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

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

www.rosenlegal.com

SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A.

Related Links

www.rosenlegal.com


CHICAGO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- One of Everspring's educational partners, Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business, has achieved a No. 9 ranking for its online MBA program in The Princeton Review's 2022 Top Online MBA Programs list, up from No. 14 in 2021.

Santa Clara partnered with Everspring, a leading provider of higher education technology and services solutions, to build and launch its online MBA program in 2018. Since then, the program has consistently earned top national rankings for its outstanding academic quality, student experience and career outcomes. In addition to a No. 9 spot on The Princeton Review list, the online MBA recently ranked No. 3 in the Poets&Quants Best Online MBA Programs of 2022, with a No. 1 ranking in academic experience and career outcomes.

Everspring supports the online MBA with a full suite of services, including instructional design, faculty support, marketing and enrollment and student services. The program offers students a unique experience by leveraging the university's proximity to Silicon Valley and access to tech industry leaders and experts, while focusing on the university's long-standing tradition of ethics and social responsibility.

The Princeton Review's 2022 online MBA rankings are an endorsement of quality based on institutional and student survey data from 241 business schools. Metrics considered include academic rigor, technology infrastructure, student persistence, on-time graduation rate, quality of teaching and career outcomes. Santa Clara's online MBA excels in each of these areas, with exceptional student satisfaction ratings of 97% and faculty satisfaction ratings of 96%.

"It is amazing, but not surprising, that Santa Clara's online MBA has again risen in The Princeton Review annual rankings," said Beth Hollenberg, president and co-founder of Everspring. "When we engaged with Santa Clara, we set out to build a high-caliber, widely recognized online MBA that would bring great value to its students. This impressive ranking is continuing proof that the partnership has accomplished that goal and that the program continues to thrive and advance, year after year."

In addition to the online MBA, Everspring supports an online portfolio at Santa Clara's Leavey School of Business which includes a Master of Science in Business Analytics, Master of Science in Marketing and Master of Science in Financial Analytics.

About Santa Clara University and the Leavey School of Business

Founded in 1851, Santa Clara University sits in the heart of Silicon Valleythe world's most innovative and entrepreneurial region. With undergraduate programs in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, and graduate programs in six disciplines, the curriculum blends high-tech innovation with social consciousness grounded in the 450-year tradition of Jesuit, Catholic education. For more information, visit www.scu.edu/business.

About Everspring

Everspring is a leading provider of education technology and services solutions for higher education. Our advanced technology, proven marketing approach, and robust faculty support and instructional design services deliver outstanding outcomes for our university partners, powering their success online. Everspring offers a range of full-service turnkey solutions, as well as standalone fee-for-service offerings, and innovative self-service products that enable universities to establish themselves as leaders in the digital delivery of higher education. Based in Chicago, Everspring serves a growing number of colleges and universities nationwide.

Visit www.everspringpartners.com for more information. Don't just go digital. BE DIGITAL.

SOURCE Everspring
SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Santa Cruz County Bank www.sccountybank.com (OTCQX:SCZC), with assets over $1.7 billion, is a top-rated community bank headquartered in Santa Cruz County. Today the bank announced that its Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.125 per share. The dividend is payable on January 10, 2022 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on January 4, 2022.

Chairman William J. Hansen stated, "The Board of Directors of Santa Cruz County Bank are pleased to continue payment of a quarterly cash dividend at $0.125 per share, following the recent 10% stock dividend paid to shareholders in November 2021."

For the quarter ended September 30, 2021, Santa Cruz County Bank reported a $5.5 million in net income, a 3% increase over the same period in 2020.

Return on average equity was 11.95% for the quarter ended September 30, 2021. The book value per share of Santa Cruz County Bank's common stock at September 30, 2021 was $47.21, an increase of $4.38 from the same period in 2020. Shareholders' equity grew to $183.0 million, an $18.1 million increase compared to the same period in 2020.

ABOUT SANTA CRUZ COUNTY BANK

Santa Cruz County Bank was founded in 2004. It is a top-rated, locally-owned and operated, full-service community bank headquartered in Santa Cruz, California. The bank has branches located in Aptos, Capitola, Cupertino, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Watsonville. Santa Cruz County Bank is distinguished from "big banks" by its relationship-based service, problem-solving focus and direct access to decision makers. The bank is a leading SBA lender in Santa Cruz County and Silicon Valley and a top USDA lender in the state of California. As a full-service bank, Santa Cruz County Bank offers competitive deposit and lending solutions for businesses and individuals; including business loans, lines of credit, commercial real estate financing, construction lending, agricultural loans, SBA and USDA government guaranteed loans, credit cards, merchant services, remote deposit capture, mobile and online banking, bill payment and treasury management. True to its community roots, Santa Cruz County Bank has supported regional well-being by actively participating in and donating to local not-for-profit organizations. Santa Cruz County Bank stock is publicly traded on the OTCQX marketplace under the symbol SCZC. For more information about Santa Cruz County Bank, visit www.sccountybank.com.

This release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Such risks and uncertainties may include but are not necessarily limited to fluctuations in interest rates, inflation, government regulations and general economic conditions, and competition within the business areas in which the Bank is conducting its operations, including the real estate market in California and other factors beyond the Bank's control. Such risks and uncertainties could cause results for subsequent interim periods or for the entire year to differ materially from those indicated. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which reflect management's view only as of the date hereof. The Bank undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

SOURCE Santa Cruz County Bank
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtual assistant pioneer Sensely announced a strategic partnership with Krungthai-AXA Life Insurance, a Thailand-based carrier providing health insurance to approximately 500,000 members. Under the partnership, Krungthai-AXA Life has integrated Sensely's technology and health solutions into its recently launched Emma by AXA application, a powerful all-in-one digital solution which offers policyholders instant access to a range of convenient healthcare services and policy information in one application.

Emma by AXA includes the evidence-based Sensely Symptom Checker, which highlights Sensely's groundbreaking conversational AI interface, which utilizes a combination of voice, chat, and avatar-based interaction. To start with, users enter their symptoms by conversing with the Sensely avatar. In just a few minutes, users receive a recommendation for the appropriate level of care and information on where to go next. Fast, reliable, and available in both the English and Thai languages, the Sensely Symptom Checker provides Krungthai-AXA Life members with quality information and valuable peace of mind.

In addition to the Symptom Checker, Emma by AXA also includes a wide range of other service options: including telehealth, network directory location information, health content, and policy information services, such as electronic insurance cards.

"Providing enhanced access to world-class health services creates immediate value for our members," said Pakawipa Charoentra, Chief Customer Officer of Krungthai-AXA Life. "The Emma platform offers a full spectrum of tools and services to enhance health and wellness, helping members to live their best lives, while being delivered with a modern customer experience that leads the industry. Partnering with Sensely helps accelerate our efforts, and we look forward to broadening and deepening the relationship."

"We've been impressed by the AXA team's commitment to being their policyholders' go-to resource for accessing and navigating healthcare services in a friendly and helpful manner, with digital services playing a leading role," said Adam Odessky, CEO and Co-founder of Sensely. "Enabling easy, user-friendly access to trusted health information has never been more important, and we're looking forward to continuing to work with Krungthai-AXA Life to drive increasing member value over time."

About Sensely

Sensely's avatar and chatbot-based platforms assist insurance plan members and patients with the insurance services and healthcare resources they need, when they need it. With offices in San Francisco, London, Kiev, Manila, and Tokyo, Sensely's global teams provide virtual assistant solutions to insurance companies, hospital systems, and pharmaceutical clients worldwide. For more information, please visit www.sensely.com .

About Krungthai-AXA Life Insurance

Established in 2007, Krungthai-AXA Life Insurance Public Company Limited (KTAXA) is a partnership between Krungthai Bank PCL., and the AXA Group. Today, Krungthai-AXA Life Insurance Public Company Limited is a fast-growing Life Insurance Company with a new brand promise "Know You Can" which encourages our customers to have self-belief and positions the company as a life partner that aims "to empower people to live a better life."

Krungthai-AXA Life Insurance PCL. has been trusted to take care of more than 2 million customers, with 16,000 representatives and more than 130 representative offices near your home and all branches of Krung Thai Bank nationwide.

The AXA Group is a worldwide leader in insurance and asset management, with 160,000 employees serving 105 million clients in 57 countries.

Media Contact:

Dov Tamler

818-481-8371

[email protected]

SOURCE Sensely Corporation
In December 2021, Sentient Brands launched its Oeuvre social media marketing and influencer campaign. Sentient Brands believes that Oeuvre's product design, formulations, and disruptive "Luxury Clean Beauty" branding strategy, make Oeuvre a standout in a marketplace crowded with undifferentiated CBD skincare products. The initial phase of the Company's Oeuvre social media marketing campaign is heavily focused on the utilization of influencers and paid advertising on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. In January 2022, the Company plans to introduce videos demonstrating Oeuvre product and survey results through the Company's website and in paid ads. Sentient Brands has also developed customer-focused and data-driven digital architecture which will allow the Company to closely monitor its Oeuvre product launch strategies, and continually refine the most successful influencer campaigns and channels. Sentient Brands believes it possesses the in-depth experience and in-house expertise, as well as a broad array of powerful digital tools, which will enable the Company to connect with Oeuvre's target customers in meaningful ways.

Sentient Brands tracks Oeuvre's social media marketing click-throughs, impressions, engagements, and sales, on those platforms that the Company believes Oeuvre's target customers will engage with most: www.oeuvreskincare.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.

George Furlan, CEO & COO of Sentient Brands, stated, "The comprehensive and carefully curated influencer strategy that our team has developed will help expand brand awareness, reach key audiences, grow DTC traffic, and ultimately drive sales conversion. Our philosophy is to develop authentic partnerships with creators who have powerful, important, and influential voices, on both a macro and micro scale."

James Mansour, CMO of Sentient Brands, stated, "We are consumer-obsessed brand differentiators who know how to convert compelling stories into digital sales. We look for tangible and measurable results from our influencer marketing - and these expectations drive our Oeuvre Skincare social media strategy. We believe that in order to have a meaningful impact, Oeuvre's social branding, products, and experiences must contribute to cultural conversations that our target customers actually care about. We do not believe that celebrity size or follow-count necessarily equates to influence on social media or product sales. We know that a brand is not something you buy - it is something you buy into."

About Oeuvre Skincare

Oeuvre - "Elevating Clean Beauty to an Artform" - is a next-generation luxury skincare product line and lifestyle brand derived from the Company's proprietary OE Complex: CBD + Gemstones + Bioactives. Oeuvre Skincare products contain proprietary formulations of synergistically balanced luxury ingredients, combined with the Company's rigorous commitment to formulating 'Clean Beauty' products without toxins, irritants, and unnecessary additives. Oeuvre Skincare products are non-toxic, ungendered, and contain zero GMO, retinyl palmitate, petroleum, mineral oil, parabens, sulfates, or synthetic colors. Product offerings under the Oeuvre Skincare product line include:

Purifying Exfoliator

Replenishing Oil

Ultra-Nourishing Face Cream

Revitalizing Eye Cream

Oeuvre Skincare products are sold through the Company's direct-to-consumer oeuvreskincare.com platform, as well as on Instagram (instagram.com/Oeuvre-Skincare) and Facebook (facebook.com/Oeuvre-Skincare).

About Sentient Brands Holdings Inc.

Sentient Brands Holdings Inc. ("Sentient Brands" and the "Company") ( www.sentientbrands.com ) is a next-level product development and brand management company with a focus on building innovative brands in the luxury and prestige beauty market space. Sentient Brands has a direct-to-consumer business model focusing on wellness and beauty for conscious consumers. Sentient Brands incorporates an omnichannel approach in its marketing strategies to ensure that its products are accessible across both digital and retail channels. Sentient Brands develops and nurtures lifestyle brands with carefully thought-out ingredients, packaging, fragrance and design. The Company's management team has extensive experience in building world-class brands such as Hugo Boss, Victoria's Secret, Versace, and Bath & Body Works. Sentient Brands is focused on two key market segments, targeting: wellness and responsible luxury lifestyle, which the Company believes represent unique opportunities for its Oeuvre Skincare product line, and subsequent planned products and brands. Sentient Brands intends to leverage its in-house innovation capabilities to launch new products that "disrupt" adjacent product categories, and plans to grow by leveraging its deep connections within its existing network and attract consumers through increased brand awareness and investing in unique social media marketing. The Company's goal is to create customer experiences that have sustainable resonance with consumers and consistently implement strategies that result in long-term profit growth for its investors.

The Company's business model is focused on creating brand experiences and launching breakthrough products in the high-end Cannabis/CBD space that have sustainable resonance with consumers, and to consistently implement strategies that result in long-term profit growth for its investors. The Company's value creation strategy, supported by its highly experienced management team, is focused on creating and operating best-in-class brands that yield high margins and profitability at scale.

The Company's executive leadership team has a proven history of developing and scaling world-class consumer lifestyle brands. The Company's Interim CEO and Chief Operating Officer, George Furlan, was previously instrumental in the launch of the Hugo Boss luxury division, where Mr. Furlan directed Hugo Boss sales for the Americas. In addition, as a prior Director of Sales and merchandising for Versace, Mr. Furlan led sales, merchandising, and marketing efforts for the Versace US and Canadian markets. The Company's Chief Marketing Officer & Chief Brand and Innovation Officer, James Mansour, was previously instrumental in the development of numerous brands that have become icons in the consumer marketplace, including Mr. Mansour's development of successful brands for both Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works.

Sentient Brands is a collaborative effort rooted in fashion, marketing, product development and the highest echelons of branding, all culminating to create niche products that are relevant in the marketplace and socially conscious at the same time. Sentient Brands believes that its goal of launching and operating best-in-class brands is key to the Company's long-term value creation strategy.

For more information about Sentient Brands, please visit: www.sentientbrands.com

Safe Harbor Provision

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, that are intended to be covered by the safe harbor created thereby. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "expects," "intends," "plans," "projects," "estimates," "anticipates," or "believes" or the negative thereof or any variation thereon or similar terminology or expressions. These forward-looking statements are based upon current estimates and assumptions and include statements regarding the intended use of proceeds and the pending acquisition of Flagship. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from results proposed in such statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can provide no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include, but are not limited to, those factors set forth in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 and its other filings and submissions with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

Contact:

Sentient Brands Holdings Inc.

646-202-2897

[email protected]

SOURCE Sentient Brands Holdings Inc.
PARIS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sequans Communications S.A. (NYSE: SQNS), a leading provider of cellular IoT chips and modules for massive and broadband IoT, announced that LTE band 65 support is now available on its Cassiopeia LTE-Advanced platform. In collaboration with EchoStar Mobile, a mobile satellite services provider offering connectivity across Europe through a converged satellite and terrestrial network, Sequans has extended the capabilities of its Cassiopeia LTE platform to include B65, 90 MHz of spectrum that is primarily used for satellite or combined terrestrial/satellite services. The new Sequans/EchoStar Mobile solution comprises the entire modem function, including baseband, RFIC and front-end, enabling EchoStar Mobile to realize its plans to deploy a converged S-band satellite and terrestrial end-to-end network.

"Our collaboration with EchoStar Mobile on Band 65 support is the latest development we've undertaken to enable LTE to satellite communications, and we are excited about the new broadband IoT applications that are now possible using this new technology," said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO. "EchoStar Mobile is working on some of the world's most exciting communications projects, and we are pleased to contribute our technology in support of their long-term spectrum utilization strategy."

The new Cassiopeia LTE-A prototype with B65 support has passed all 3GPP required conformance tests for the FDD 1920  2010 MHz UL / 2110  2200 MHz DL frequency range and can be used as an initial design guideline for a wide variety of broadband LTE IoT devices.

This project with EchoStar Mobile was undertaken as part of Sequans "Custom Technology Solutions" initiative where Sequans experts address some of the world's most difficult and exciting communications challenges. In addition to satellite, Sequans has adapted its technology for projects in other markets, including aviation, transportation, public safety, and government. For more information, see CustomTech.

Sequans' Cassiopeia LTE-Advanced platform is compliant with 3GPP Release 10 specifications. Cassiopeia supports highly flexible dual-carrier aggregation that allows the combination of any two carriers of any size up to 20 MHz each, contiguous or non-contiguous, inter-band or intra-band. Cassiopeia also supports other Release 10 enhancements such as new MIMO schemes, enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) schemes for heterogeneous networks (HetNets), and improvements to LTE broadcast. Cassiopeia features Sequans' advanced receiver technology for improved performance and can support additional optional features, including envelope tracking and secure boot.

About Sequans

Sequans Communications S.A. (NYSE: SQNS) is a leading developer and supplier of cellular IoT connectivity solutions, providing chips and modules for 5G/4G massive and broadband IoT. For 5G/4G massive IoT applications, Sequans provides a comprehensive product portfolio based on its flagship Monarch LTE-M/NB-IoT and Calliope Cat 1 chip platforms, featuring industry-leading low power consumption, a large set of integrated functionalities, and global deployment capability. For 5G/4G broadband IoT applications, Sequans offers a product portfolio based on its Cassiopeia Cat 4/Cat 6 4G and high-end Taurus 5G chip platforms, optimized for low-cost residential, enterprise, and industrial applications. Founded in 2003, Sequans is based in Paris, France with additional offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, Taiwan, South Korea, and China. Visit Sequans online at www.sequans.com, and follow us on Twitter and Linked-In

Forward Looking Statements

Sequans media relations: Kimberly Tassin (USA), +1.425.736.0569, [email protected]

Sequans investor relations: Kim Rogers (USA), +1 385.831.7337, [email protected]

About EchoStar Mobile

EchoStar Mobile, an Irish company with commercial operations headquartered in the United Kingdom and a data center based in Griesheim, Germany, is a mobile satellite services provider offering connectivity across Europe through a converged satellite and terrestrial network. EchoStar Mobile is a subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation. For more information, visit www.echostarmobile.com.

About EchoStar Corporation

EchoStar Corporation (Nasdaq: SATS) is a premier global provider of satellite communication solutions. Headquartered in Englewood, Colo., and conducting business around the globe, EchoStar is a pioneer in secure communications technologies through its Hughes Network Systems and EchoStar Satellite Services business segments. For more information, visit www.EchoStar.com. Follow @EchoStar on Twitter.

SOURCE Sequans Communications
CHICAGO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The latest data from ShowingTime, the residential real estate industry's leading showing management and market stats technology provider, shows that home buyers continued aggressively shopping for homes throughout most of the U.S. in November, driving year-over-year gains in home showings in all regions according to the latest data from the ShowingTime Showing Index.

Seattle once again led all markets, averaging nearly 15 showings per listing, and was closely followed by Denver, which averaged 13 showings per listing. Orlando, Fla. was next with 12 showings per listing, and four more Florida cities  Miami, Port St. Lucie, Tampa and Sarasota  all averaged double-digit showings per listing. Burlington, Vt., Salt Lake City, Dallas, Manchester, N.H., Boulder, Colo. and Bridgeport, Conn. rounded out the list of top markets.

"Showings traditionally lag during the holiday season, but the data we're seeing tells us that buyer demand remains strong," said ShowingTime Vice President & General Manager Michael Lane. "The fact that every region showed a year-over-year increase indicates that buyers are undeterred by the approaching holidays. It speaks to their desire to keep searching for their next home."

Both the Midwest and Northeast regions saw 14 percent increases in year-over-year showing activity, with the South's 13.6 percent growth close behind. The West saw a more modest 3 percent boost in activity, with the U.S. overall seeing an increase of 12.5 percent in November. Of the cities on the list with double-digit showings, only Manchester, N.H. recorded a year-over-year decline in buyer activity.

The ShowingTime Showing Index is compiled using data from more than six million property showings scheduled across the country each month on listings using ShowingTime products and services. It tracks the average number of appointments received on active listings during the month.

Metropolitan Area November 2021 Ratio of Showings to Listings Year Over Year Change Month Over Month Change U.S. 6.15 12.5% -5.2% Seattle, WA 14.94 18% 0% Denver, CO 13.44 9% -2% Orlando, FL 11.86 55% 0% Burlington, VT 11.85 78% -2% Salt Lake City, UT 11.48 2% 8% Dallas, TX 11.09 24% -7% Miami, FL 10.80 66% -6% Manchester, NH 10.62 -4% -4% Port St. Lucie, FL 10.41 58% -8% Tampa, FL 10.38 32% -5% Sarasota, FL 10.26 54% 0% Boulder, CO 10.13 45% -5% Bridgeport, CT 10.01 23% -3%

About ShowingTime

ShowingTime is the industry leader in home touring technology and a proud affiliate of Zillow Group, Inc. ShowingTime's technology and services simplify the tour scheduling process for buyers, sellers and agents across the industry. ShowingTime products are used in hundreds of MLSs representing more than one million real estate professionals across the U.S. and Canada.

CONTACT: Barbara Wagner Elana Bodow

Barbara Wagner Communications Barbara Wagner Communications

646.609.2288 (315) 440-7554

[email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE ShowingTime
PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sila Services, LLC has acquired Adam Mechanical Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing, increasing its reach of home comfort services and strengthening its presence in the Greater Philadelphia market. Based in Haverford, PA and established in 2002, Adam Mechanical specializes in the installation and service of HVAC and plumbing systems for residential customers.

"Adam Mechanical is a remarkable fit for us in the Philadelphia region. For nearly twenty years they've established a first class reputation amongst their customers and built a business that will contribute strongly to our growth strategy," said Jason Rabbino, CEO of Sila Services, LLC. "Adam Mechanical's award-winning service and robust presence in the Main Line will effectively complement the existing Sila family of companies in the Greater Philadelphia region and we are proud to have these great colleagues on the Sila team."

About Adam Mechanical Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing

Adam Mechanical was founded in 2002 by brothers Zack and Seth Samuel to build on their 20+ years of experience in the HVAC industry. Since its establishment, Adam Mechanical has delivered on its commitment to providing award-winning HVAC and plumbing service with a complete customer satisfaction guarantee. For more information or to schedule an appointment, visit adammechanical.com.

About Sila Services

Sila Services is a leading home services platform, operating 10 brands across 13 company locations throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. The companies of Sila Services offer a wide range of residential and commercial services in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, water treatment, and indoor air quality  delivering distinctive repair, replacement, and maintenance services to customers for more than 30 years. For more information, visit www.sila.com.

Contact:

Andrew Moffatt

610.491.9409

[email protected]

SOURCE Sila Services, LLC
ROTTERDAM, Netherlands and SAN DIEGO, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, SkylineDx announced it received a capital investment from USA based investment and advisory firm Novalis LifeSciences, and one of Benelux' largest biotech investors Van Herk Investments, to further solidify its position in the USA dermatology diagnostics market. SkylineDx is at a critical growth stage in their development now that the first products are introduced to the USA market, and Novalis LifeSciences has demonstrated impressive successes with their strategic and operational advice to their portfolio companies. Marijn E. Dekkers, founder and chairman of Novalis LifeSciences, will be named board member of SkylineDx' Board of Directors. He brings a long track record of industry-related strategic leadership experience as the former CEO of Bayer AG (Leverkussen, Germany), CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltman, MA, USA) and his role in the recent 600M USD acquisition of Decipher Biosciences by Veracyte.

SkylineDx' dermatology program, often referred to as the Falcon R&D Program, currently overarches four dedicated dermatology initiatives, focused on prognostic and predictive biomarker development covering two skin cancers: melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma. These indications affect approximately 1.9 million patients annually in the United States only. One of these initiatives generated its first commercially available product, branded as Merlin Test, for which SkylineDx aims to accelerate the clinical adoption with this joint investment.

"It is a great honor to have Marijn and Novalis LifeSciences as our first specialized USA investor on board, with all their incredible experience and know-how," comments Dharminder Chahal, CEO SkylineDx. "Together we aim to further extend SkylineDx' USA investor base and continue expanding our strong footprint there. Our mission is to improve a patient's quality of life by enabling them to benefit from personal insights at the genomic level of their disease. We are excited to be working with Marijn and his team to continue fulfilling this mission."

Marijn Dekkers comments: "I have monitored the progress of SkylineDx for several years now, and I am excited about the leading edge position the company has built in predictive biomarkers for melanoma and various other cancers. I very much look forward to working with the SkylineDx team to bring these sophisticated diagnostic tests to patients around the globe."

About SkylineDx

SkylineDx is a biotechnology company, focused on research & development of molecular diagnostics in oncology and inflammatory diseases. The company is headquartered in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and complemented with a field medical and scientific affairs team in the USA and a CAP/CLIA certified laboratory in San Diego (California). SkylineDx uses its expertise to bridge the gap between academically discovered gene expression signatures and commercially available diagnostic products with high clinical utility, assisting healthcare professionals in accurately determining the type or status of disease or predict a patient's response to treatment. Based on test results, healthcare professionals can tailor the treatment approach to the individual patient. To learn more about SkylineDx, please visit www.skylinedx.com. For more information on Falcon R&D Program or Merlin Test, please visit www.falconprogram.com.

About Novalis LifeSciences

Novalis LifeSciences LLC is a boutique investment and advisory firm that was founded in 2017 by Marijn E. Dekkers, and is based in Hampton, NH, USA. With a team of experienced operating executives from the Life Science industry, Novalis funds and advises visionary Life Science entrepreneurs. The firm has approximately USD 500M under management in two investment funds. To learn more about Novalis LifeScienes, please visit www.novalislifesciences.com.

Footnotes

1. Link to this press release on website SkylineDx (click here)

SOURCE SkylineDx
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sycamore Partners, a private equity firm specializing in consumer, distribution, and retail-related investments, today announced that it has acquired Digital Room from an affiliate of H.I.G. Capital.

Headquartered in Sherman Oaks, CA, Digital Room is a leading e-commerce provider of customized marketing products to small and medium sized businesses. The Company reaches its diversified customer base through a suite of branded websites, and services customers with its vertically-integrated national production network capable of reaching 90% of the U.S. population with 2-day ground delivery.

"Digital Room has an impressive track record serving the marketing needs of small and medium sized businesses," said Stefan Kaluzny, Managing Director of Sycamore Partners. "We believe the company is well positioned for its next phase of growth, and we look forward to partnering with the Digital Room team as they continue executing on their existing strategy."

"We are excited to partner with Sycamore as we take the next step in our growth," said Michael Turner, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Room. "With Sycamore's support and expertise, we can expand our market leadership and continue to deliver exceptional products and services for our customers."

Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal advisor to Sycamore Partners.

About Digital Room

Digital Room offers a broad array of marketing products for small and medium sized businesses through a portfolio of uniquely branded eCommerce websites, including Uprinting.com, Signs.com logosportswear.com, packola.com, eSigns.com, PrintPlace.com, NextDayFlyers.com, PrintRunner.com, and 48HourPrint.com. Digital Room's focus on providing an outstanding user experience and excellent products has built loyal repeat customers from its base of small business owners, design professionals and marketers.

About Sycamore Partners

Sycamore Partners is a private equity firm based in New York. The firm specializes in consumer, distribution and retail-related investments and partners with management teams to improve the operating profitability and strategic value of their business. With approximately $10 billion in aggregate committed capital raised since its inception in 2011, Sycamore Partners' investors include leading endowments, financial institutions, family offices, pension plans and sovereign wealth funds. For more information on Sycamore Partners, visit www.sycamorepartners.com.

Contact for Sycamore Partners

Michael Freitag or Arielle Rothstein

Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher

(212) 355-4449

[email protected]

SOURCE Sycamore Partners
Williams has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. She joins T. Rowe Price from Arbi Solutions, a consulting business she established in 2018. Previously, Williams spent more than 20 years at Invesco, where she served as Head of Digital and led teams responsible for digital and marketing technology solutions, content strategy, mobile apps, web-UX design and more. She also led the creation of a Global Center of Excellence governance program.

"Our clients are savvy and we want our technology to meet them where they are," said McLaughlin. "Chrystal's extensive experience and eye to digital strategy will ensure we continue to enhance and deliver meaningful client experiences across our businesses and foster even greater internal synergy in our digital approach."

ABOUT T. ROWE PRICE

Founded in 1937, T. Rowe Price (NASDAQ-GS: TROW) is an independent global asset management company with $1.63 trillion in assets under management as of November 30, 2021. The firm is focused on delivering investment excellence and retirement services for institutional, intermediary, and individual investors. Our strategic investing approach, driven by independent thinking and guided by rigorous research, helps clients feel confident in pursuing financial goals. For more information, visit troweprice.com , Twitter , YouTube , LinkedIn , Instagram , or Facebook .

SOURCE T. Rowe Price Group, Inc.
BOISE, Idaho, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tackle.io , a software company dedicated to helping software providers generate revenue through the clouds, today announced a $100 million Series C funding round. The round brings the company's valuation to $1.25 billion and was co-led by Coatue and existing investor Andreessen Horowitz , and included participation from Bessemer Venture Partners .

The funding, which comes 9 months after a $35M Series B, brings Tackle's total funding to $148M. The round will help Tackle fast-track the execution of its product roadmap and expand its global reach while furthering its mission to help software companies sell through the Cloud Marketplaces offered by AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM / Red Hat.

"This has been a tremendous year for Tackle, as we've tripled the size of our team and more than doubled our customer count," said John Jahnke, CEO of Tackle. "Our customers today are primarily hypergrowth startups and we are excited to leverage this investment to broaden our platform in support of startups looking to build a Marketplace-native go-to-market as well as enterprises that are retrofitting their product portfolios to align to the cloud buyer. Tackle's mission is to provide a global enterprise grade platform focused on bringing a Marketplace Cloud GTM to the masses."

In its annual State of the Cloud Marketplaces Report , Tackle found that 83% of B2B buyers said they were likely or extremely likely to purchase through Marketplaces and 67% of sellers said they were investing more into building their cloud go-to-market (Cloud GTM). The report also predicts Marketplace growth will happen even faster than previously reported, expecting $50B in throughput by the end of 2025.

The era of digital selling of software is here and Tackle has emerged as the only platform solution purpose-built for software companieslike CrowdStrike, Lacework, and VMwareto launch, scale, and operationalize their businesses through the Cloud Marketplaces.

"We innovate on behalf of the ISV community," said Dillon Woods, founder and CTO of Tackle. "Our customers love how we build seller and buyer experiences on top of the Marketplaces that eliminate friction and ultimately deliver on every buyer's desired outcome: access to the software they need to innovate."

With this funding, Tackle will continue to invest deeply into bringing Marketplaces closer to the point where buyers discover as well as more deeply integrating Marketplaces into core software company systems like Salesforce. Tackle will also streamline the workflow between co-sell systems and the Marketplaces to provide a single end to end integrated experience.

As part of the funding round, David Schneider, General Partner at Coatue, will join Tackle's board as an observer. "We have followed Tackle for some time because many of our portfolio companies leverage the platform to accelerate their revenue through the clouds," said Schneider. "I have seen a lot of go-to-market systems in my career and it is rare, and exciting, to see a SaaS company like this that enables direct access to budget and buyers. We believe Tackle is well positioned to help all sellers accelerate their shift toward Cloud Marketplaces and digital selling."

Tackle's customers have similar sentiments. "We have seen a significant increase in demand for OutSystems' low code platform, and the Cloud Marketplaces are key to our growth strategy," said Robson Grieve, CMO at OutSystems. "The Tackle Platform makes leveraging Marketplaces a business decision versus a distraction to product and engineering teams, and Tackle's focused experts have helped guide us along our journey from first transaction to at scale revenue across the clouds."

For more information about Tackle, visit tackle.io .

About Tackle

Tackle is a software company dedicated to helping software providers accelerate revenue through Cloud Marketplaces. Tackle's Cloud Marketplace Platform drastically reduces time to list and sell products on the Marketplaces while providing granular transaction reporting, all with zero engineering resources required. Tackle works with 350+ cloud leaders today, including A Cloud Guru, AppDynamics, Auth0, Fivetran, HashiCorp, Looker, McAfee, NewRelic, PagerDuty, and Talend. Tackle is available for purchase on the AWS Marketplace , Azure Marketplace , Google Cloud Platform Marketplace , and Red Hat Marketplace .

About Coatue

Coatue is one of the largest technology investment platforms in the world with more than $45 billion in assets under management. Our dedicated team of engineers and data scientists work closely with investment professionals to add value to founders and executive teams in our portfolio. With venture, growth and public funds, we back entrepreneurs from around the globe and at every stage of growth. Some of our private investments have included Airtable, Ant Financial, Anaplan, ByteDance, Chime, Databricks, DoorDash, Instacart, Meituan, Snap, Snowflake and Spotify.

About Andreessen Horowitz

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. The firm is stage agnostic, investing in seed to late-stage technology companies, across the consumer, enterprise, bio/healthcare, crypto, and fintech spaces. a16z has over $19 billion in assets under management across multiple funds. See portfolio companies here: https://a16z.com/portfolio/ .

Media Contact

Raven Carpenter

BLASTmedia for Tackle

[email protected]

317.806.1900

SOURCE Tackle.io
Taylor County and the City of Abilene have approved a project with Lancium, a Houston-based energy technology company. Tweet this

Lancium and its customers plan to invest $2.4 billion over 20 years, create 57 full-time jobs, and build their Clean Compute Campus on approximately 800 acres in Taylor County and Abilene, pending annexation into the city limits. This new development is expected to solidify the region as a major provider of renewable energy, while simultaneously hosting Bitcoin mining and other energy-intensive applications. Breaking ground in the first quarter of 2022, the Clean Compute Campus will initially contain approximately 100,000 square feet of industrial electric services equipment and data servers.

"We are proud to be at the forefront of this movement that will utilize and revitalize 800 acres of land," said Taylor County Judge Downing Bolls. "This partnership is historic with Lancium's projected investment of approximately $2.4 billion in improvements to real property in the County."

Lancium is a leader in green, low-cost infrastructure whose solutions help ensure that renewable energy can power our future. The company uses its proprietary Smart Response software to enable the campus to act as a "Controllable Load Resource," which allows the grid to absorb more renewable energy.

"Abilene is recognized for its skilled workforce. This opportunity to bring well-paying quality technology jobs to our community is one of the many ways we are continuing to build a better future for the families of Abilene," said Abilene Mayor Anthony Williams.

"This project will bring new private capital investment into our community and grow important technology opportunities," said Abilene City Manager Robert Hanna.

"This project brings immense value to our community as it is truly shaping our future," said Jack Rich, DCOA Board Chair. "We are fortunate to have community resources that support the needs of companies like Lancium."

"Lancium's development is a tremendous opportunity to ensure the viability of the community for years to come through the diversification of our economy," said Misty Mayo, President and Chief Executive Officer of the DCOA. "Over the next 20-years, this project is estimated to bring $993.4 million in total projected economic impact to Taylor County and the City of Abilene. This is the exact kind of opportunity the DCOA is tasked to find and win for our community."

The campus will enhance the community's workforce, tapping into a skilled labor force in the technical services industry. With four higher education institutions, a technical college, and a community college, the community boasts the necessary education to support future needs. In addition to powerful professionals, the community has robust infrastructure and a strategic location in the south-central United States that secures Abilene and Taylor County as the premier location for data centers and emerging technology.

About Lancium

Lancium is a technology company creating software, technical solutions and energy infrastructure that together are decarbonizing the grid. Lancium strives to be the leader in green, low-cost infrastructure that will power the next generation of cryptocurrency mining and other distributed energy-intensive applications. Its solutions help ensure that renewable energy can power our future. Lancium has numerous issued and pending patents. For more information, visit www.lancium.com, and follow Lancium on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Taylor County

Taylor County, Texas is centrally located in Texas with access to major highways. The county has a population of 139,064 people.

About Abilene

Abilene, Texas is located in Taylor County, Texas. Directly on I-20 just a two and half hours from the Dallas/Fort Worth metro, Abilene is strategically located in the south-central United States. The city has a population of 121,512 people, and has a labor shed of over 140,000.

About the Development Corporation of Abilene

The DCOA is the economic development driver of the Abilene region with the goal to increase job opportunities and capital investments, as well as recruit and retain companies for Abilene. The DCOA is focused on the future success of the community and leverages a partnership called DevelopAbilene to market Abilene as the premier location for business. Learn more about the DCOA and DevelopAbilene at: www.developabilene.com.

SOURCE Development Corporation of Abilene
Under the theme of "Impact and Enlightenment: New Leaps in Digital Cultural Services," the forum aimed to promote the digitization of museums and the application and innovation of the latest technologies and discuss the development direction of culture and technology. More than 50 specialists and scholars from a variety of renowned museums, cultural and academic institutions, and tech companies at home and abroad gathered to discuss the future of museums in the digital era.

Director Wang Xudong of the Palace Museum, Deputy Mayor of Shenzhen Zhang Hua, Director-general Liu Shuguang of the Chinese Museums Association, Director Shahbaz Khan of the UNESCO Beijing Office, and Ren Yuxin, Chief Operating Officer of Tencent attended the meeting in person or via video link.

At the opening ceremony, Wang Xudong, Director of the Palace Museum, noted that, "The Forum aims to consolidate the advantageous resources of culture and technology, and build an international platform for cutting-edge academic exchange. In the digital era and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we should take a long-term view, re-examine the positioning and mission of museums, dig deeper into and reveal the multifaceted value of cultural heritage, breathe new life into it, and make feasible proposals for its creative transformation and innovative development."

Cheng Wu, Vice President of Tencent, CEO of China Literature Limited, said: "We joined hands with the Palace Museum in 2016 to apply digital technologies to museums for cultural heritage conservation. We have created such internet hits as A Singing Masterpiece, helping to bring traditional culture closer to the people, especially the younger generation. At the same time, we use the latest technologies to empower digital infrastructure for the digital collection of cultural relics, and have developed and launched the WeChat-based mini-program the "Digital Palace Museum" to make the cultural relics just one click away for visitors. Hence by means of content creation and the application of advanced technologies, we help Chinese museums cut out a path of innovation with Chinese characteristics, and contribute to global cultural heritage conservation and development of museums. This is also an important practice of 'Tech for Good,' one of the missions of Tencent."

Vice President of the International Council of Museums and heads of several famous museums at home and abroad delivered a series of keynote speeches.

The forum consists of three sessions which spanned two days: Panel 1  Reverberation: Global Perspective on New Developments in Digital Culturetracked the development of digital cultural services amid the COVID-19pandemic; Panel 2  Invigoration: Digital Transformation of Traditional Culturefocused on the in-depth integration of traditional culture and digital technology; and the Panel 3  Eruption: Integration and Elevation of Digital Cultural Servicespresented real-life cases, explored the practical methods for marrying culture and technology, and discussed the overall development, efficiency improvement and ecosystem building of digital cultural services from multiple perspectives.

At the Greater Bay Area Salon, five guests from the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR Government, the Palace Museum, the Guangdong Museum, the Hong Kong History Museum and Tencent were invited to exchange ideas about the region's cultural policy and development, cultural resources, and the talent exchange and cultivation in Hong Kong, Macao and the mainland (including the traditional cultural exchange events for youth in the region, and cultural talent training in Hong Kong, Macao and the mainland).

Meanwhile, the pattern-themed immersive digital experience exhibition, co-hosted by the Palace Museum and Tencent T-Museum was unveiled. This was the debut of the Palace Museum's ultra-high-definition "digital cultural relics" in Shenzhen, and some scenes of the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service will be restored with the help of VR and AR technologies. In 2020, the Palace Museum worked with Tencent to show the beauty of the patterns of its collection by jointly launching the mini-program "Tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities." With the help of Tencent's immersive rendering, image search and surround sound technologies, the visitors can immerse themselves in the world of patterns displayed on heritage buildings and collections, and appreciate the beauty and wisdom behind them.

There are seven exhibition areas, where visitors can enjoy a 5.3-meter high naked-eye 3D display of "digital cultural relics" and high-definition images of artefacts that are magnified 22 times, and experience more than they could get from a physical cultural heritage exhibition. "Surprises" are also awaiting in the three-dimensional space. At the 10 specially designed photogenic locations, visitors are invited to a stroll in the Palace Museum through the four seasons and take photos to record the beauty.

The exhibition, held at the Shekou Sea World Culture and Art Center, is open to the public free of charge from December 18, 2021 to February 12, 2022. Reservation can be made via the Digital Palace Museum mini-program.

SOURCE Tencent
AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Clinician , a global digital health leader, announced today that it has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate program.

The AWS ISV Accelerate Program is a co-sell program for AWS Partners who provide software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS. The AWS ISV Accelerate Program will provide The Clinician with co-sell support and benefits to connect with AWS field sellers globally, who service millions of active AWS customers. Co-selling provides better customer outcomes and assures mutual commitment from AWS and AWS Partners.

"Having established a close relationship with AWS from the start of The Clinician's journey, we are thrilled to have been accepted into the AWS ISV Accelerate Program. For us, the program will help accelerate our global business development efforts and will enable us to reach more organisations interested in digitally transforming their healthcare delivery."

Ron Tenenbaum, CEO of The Clinician

Headquartered in New Zealand with teams in Australia, Singapore, Israel and partners in MENA and the USA, The Clinician works with healthcare organisations across the globe to improve patient health outcomes and enhance care delivery by enabling the timely exchange of health data and information between patients and providers outside traditional care settings. The company's artificial intelligence (AI)-driven ZEDOC platform offers healthcare providers real-time health monitoring, analysis, and risk prediction by collecting health data directly from patients in the comfort of their own homes.

While developing ZEDOC, The Clinician joined the AWS Partner Network on the AWS Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Partner Path. By doing so, The Clinician leveraged AWS resources and programs specifically designed to meet its business goals faster, to develop its products while adhering to strict patient-data protocols.

The Princess Alexandra Hospital (PAH) in Brisbane uses the ZEDOC platform to monitor and act on post-chemotherapy side effects for lung cancer patients. ZEDOC sends a weekly questionnaire via an embedded link in a short messaging service (SMS), asking patients to report on 12 key chemotherapy-related symptoms following treatment. These responses help the hospital tailor patients' post-therapy medications or modify their next chemotherapy session accordingly.

By using ZEDOC to capture patient responses, PAH's oncology team can analyse real-time patient outcomes and actionable information, which is presented in a single, interactive dashboard. The oncology team also receives automated, real-time alerts when any oncological emergencies are reported.

Because of the improved efficiency from ZEDOC, the oncology team is able to handle increasing workloads while delivering individualised care. Furthermore, with accurate, real-time data on patient conditions, the oncology team can determine which patients can skip hospital consultations and go straight to treatment on their next visit, and who needs a doctor's review.

About The Clinician

The Clinician is a digital health leader, redefining how healthcare is measured and delivered. Their cloud-based platform, ZEDOC, enables healthcare providers to manage patient-generated health data outside traditional clinical settings and transform slow, inefficient care processes through digitisation. Tightly integrated with health information systems, ZEDOC supports timely exchange of health data and information between providers and patients, including subjective patient-reported measures (PROMs and PREMs), objective wearable / device data, and important communication or educational materials. By streamlining the digital collection of critical health data and delivery of rich educational content, ZEDOC gives healthcare providers and patients real-time, actionable information to improve health outcomes and experiences while reducing waste and inefficiencies.

For more information, visit www.theclinician.com .

SOURCE The Clinician
GCC has also announced that they have contracted to purchase 2,340 additional acres of coffee land adjacent to their existing farms, which nearly doubles their existing landholdings. This acquisition positions them to become the #2 largest coffee producer in all of Colombia as they finish planting additional coffee trees at their farms, which process is already substantially underway.

The Company has decided to upsize the Series B funding round by an additional $3.5 million to accelerate its growth plans to become the #1 producer of coffee in the country as a result of this incredible momentum and to complete the acquisition.

With this acquisition and the development of the acquired land, the Green Coffee Company can become the #1 largest coffee producer in Colombia with their 4,700 acres of available farmland prior to the projected 2025 sale or IPO without the need for any further acquisitions.

GCC has decided to extend the Series B funding round due to incredible investor demand and to complete the acquisition described above. They are giving all investors a chance to invest at the $700 per share price that was just offered in the Series B funding round.

The company's innovative business model allows complete control of the supply chain: from cultivation, through processing, to direct trade with end clients. The GCC's holistic approach to the coffee sector and commitment to best environmental practices not only establishes the long-term profitability and sustainability of the business, but also improves the quality of the coffee produced on the farms.

A projected 7x return for investors in this funding round through a potential 2025 IPO exit gives investors an unprecedented opportunity to generate significant returns from one of the world's most timeless and in-demand commodities.

For more information contact Legacy Group at [email protected] or visit their website at https://legacy-group.co/ . Details regarding this announcement and the available investment can be found at https://legacy-group.co/current-offerings/ .

SOURCE Legacy Group
The new 3,821 square-foot salon is designed to capture the elegance and intimacy of a private estate. The House's signature soft taupe and grey color palette is used throughout and complements classic Winston elements such as custom designed lacquer, bronze accents, and antique bronze furniture with pristine marble floors and bespoke crystal chandeliers. The interior layout features dedicated galleries for bridal and collections, designed to highlight the breadth of Harry Winston's exceptional offering, while ensuring clients the highly personalized shopping experience that the House is known for. Private selling rooms provide the ideal environment for a discreet and truly luxurious shopping experience.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. and WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ThycoticCentrify , a leading provider of cloud identity security solutions formed by the merger of privileged access management (PAM) leaders Thycotic and Centrify, today announced enhancements to its industry-leading solution for service account governance, Account Lifecycle Manager (ALM). This release allows organizations to gain control over their growing number of privileged service accounts, offering full lifecycle management in multi-cloud environments.

As companies accelerate digital transformation efforts and accommodate the increase in remote workers, multi-cloud environments have become the norm, with most companies using a combination of platforms to manage a variety of applications and processes. With many cloud platforms in the mix, account management and governance are extremely challenging, complex, and time-consuming. Access controls that organizations rely on for on-premises service accounts aren't nearly as granular in the cloud if they exist at all. Each cloud platform has its own interface and security controls, so IT teams must learn their unique differences and remember to manage each one.

As a result, cloud-based service accounts can easily become a security risk if not managed correctly and with the right tools. Account Lifecycle Manager now makes it possible to discover, provision, and manage service accounts for all major cloud providers  Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform  from a central, policy-based solution.

"Increasingly, automation and rapid development have given rise to a wide variety of service accounts used by cloud and hybrid applications and we're going to see their use expand in numbers and complexity," said Jon Kuhn, Senior Vice President of Product Management at ThycoticCentrify. "Account Lifecycle Manager gives teams the ability to ensure consistent security policies, account governance, and multi-platform reporting."

With ALM, organizations can now:

Discover unmanaged accounts and bring them into central management

Stay on top of account changes through alerts and audit reports

Provision new accounts according to standardized access control and governance policies

Define account approval workflows, and set timing requirements for when accounts are reviewed, expired, disabled, or deleted

Update policy and workflow templates and easily associate accounts to new versions, while maintaining an audit history of changes

Integrate with ThycoticCentrify Secret Server and third-party ticketing systems like Service Now out of box

More information about Account Lifecycle Manager, including a free 30-day trial, is available at https://thycotic.com/products/account-lifecycle-manager/

About ThycoticCentrify

ThycoticCentrify is a leading cloud identity security vendor, enabling digital transformation at scale. ThycoticCentrify's industry-leading privileged access management (PAM) solutions reduce risk, complexity, and cost while securing organizations' data, devices, and code across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. ThycoticCentrify is trusted by over 14,000 leading organizations around the globe including over half of the Fortune 100, and customers include the world's largest financial institutions, intelligence agencies, and critical infrastructure companies.

 Thycotic Software, LLC and Centrify Corporation 2021. Centrify and Thycotic are registered trademarks of Centrify Corporation and Thycotic Software, LLC respectively. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Contacts

Brad Shewmake

ThycoticCentrify

[email protected]

+1-408-625-4191



John Kreuzer

Lumina Communications

[email protected]

+1-408-963-6418

SOURCE ThycoticCentrify
DETROIT, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- "One Person Can Make a Difference and Everyone Should Try!" (President John Fitzgerald Kennedy) US Behind the Walls invites everyone to make a difference by attending the official US Behind the Walls State of Michigan Second Chance Initiatives on January 22nd, 2022, at the Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center.

These reform initiatives would cover several aspects of the Michigan Criminal Justice System. Throughout the years, major and effective criminal justice reform changes have only come about through the advocacy and efforts of concerned voters. Today the State of Michigan has one of the nations highest rates and costs of incarceration. The time for change is now, and we need help to bring about these reforms. The history of the adversary we face is quite clear.

On January 22, 2009, the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, ordered that the Guantanamo prison camp be closed within 12 months. Today, nearly 13 years later that prison remains open! Nothing better exemplifies a snapshot of the hold the Prison Industrial Complex has on America than that fact. Even a directive from the nation's Commander and Chief could not close a prison.

The prison industrial complex/criminal justice system has become a goliath unto itself. Unduly influencing Legislative bodies and Executive branches to their economic benefit. It has ingrained itself into the daily lives of tens of millions of Americans, unjustly over-punishing many and destroying lives in the process.

In Michigan, since the year 2000, over 200 schools have been closed. In that same time, the State of Michigan, like many other States, has spent more on incarceration, than education. Repeated studies have shown the link between inadequately funded and failing schools and the criminal justice system. According to a study by the ACLU,

 the "school-to-prison pipeline," is a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systemsFor most students, the pipeline begins with inadequate resources in public schools. Overcrowded classrooms, a lack of qualified teachers, and insufficient funding for "extras" such as counselors, special education services, and even textbooks, lock students into second-rate educational environments.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2016/07/07/michigan-spending-schools-corrections/86795772/

https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline

This year on January 22, 2022, US Behind the Walls again cordially invites all those invested in changing this broken system to join us at our inaugural Reform the System Ball. This event will be the start of abolishing mass incarceration, ending extensive sentences for people of color, and balancing the scales of justice for all Americans. It will be held at the Detroit Renaissance Center Ballroom.

Press please RSVP at [email protected] by January 10th, 2022.

Please rsvp at [email protected] and visit our website for more information.

https://www.usbehindthewalls.org/

US Behind the Walls Lobbying and Prison Reform Organization

Press contact

[email protected]

usbehindthewalls.org

Tel: 213-589-3330

SOURCE US Behind The Walls
The veterinary software market covers the following areas:

Veterinary Software Market - Driver

The global pet population is on the rise as more and more households are adopting pets. For instance, roughly two-thirds of American households have at least one pet, most of which are dogs. The need to own a pet in the US stems from the belief that pets positively contribute to human lives. Other nations, such as China, have come a long way in having pets, which was once considered illegal. Brazil and India are also witnessing a significant increase in their pet populations. A study on the psychology of pet owners shows that the majority of pet owners believe that their pets positively impact their physical and mental health, which has resulted in a growing market for pets. The rising adoption of pets has increased the demand for pet care, veterinary services, and veterinary visits.

Veterinary Software Market - Challenges

Countries, especially in APAC, such as India, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, do not have such strict regulations guiding the safety of pets. These countries lack proper vet clinics and pet care services which will hinder the growth of the market during the forecast period. This is due to the lack of organizations and authorities to regulate these issues. The governments in these countries majorly focus on the safety of endangered species. Thus, the lack of properly established animal services in developing countries will hinder the market's growth during the forecast period.

Veterinary Software Market - Segmentation

The veterinary software market analysis includes deployment (on-premises and cloud-based) and geography (North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA).

The veterinary software market share growth by the on-premises segment will be significant for revenue generation. On-premises deployment veterinary software is considered highly secure as it is managed and maintained by end-users such as hospitals and other related clinics. The end-users have complete control over on-premises solutions because of monitored and restricted access, and it also allows them to customize veterinary software solutions as per requirement. This market segment is dominated by large organizations that are concerned more about functionality than cost. These organizations mainly deal with highly critical data, so they increasingly rely on the on-premises model, as it is more secure due to end-to-end quality control and no third-party interference.

Companies Mentioned

Animal Intelligence Software Inc.

Brittons Wise Computer Inc.

Covetrus Inc.

ezyVet Software and Applications

FirmCloud Corp.

IDEXX Laboratories Inc.

Oehm und Rehbein GmbH

Timeless Veterinary Systems Inc.

Vetter Software Inc.

VIA Information Systems

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Veterinary Software Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 5.81% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 161.37 million Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 5.13 Regional analysis North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA Performing market contribution North America at 41% Key consumer countries US, Germany, UK, France, and China Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Animal Intelligence Software Inc., Brittons Wise Computer Inc., Covetrus Inc., ezyVet Software and Applications, FirmCloud Corp., IDEXX Laboratories Inc., Oehm und Rehbein GmbH, Timeless Veterinary Systems Inc., Vetter Software Inc., and VIA Information Systems 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 focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio
Veho is providing e-commerce brands a fast, tech-forward delivery option that puts the customer experience at the center Tweet this

The company has been rapidly growing its client base by providing clear tangible value in key strategic business metrics. Existing Veho brand partners, ranging from leading apparel and accessories companies to food and packaged goods brands, have seen a 20% increase in customer repurchase, 40% increase in customer lifetime value, and an 8-point increase in net promoter score (NPS) compared with customers who received their box from a traditional shipping company.

Giving package recipients greater insight and control, Veho lets them know the time in the day when they will receive their package, when the driver is en route, and enables real-time rescheduling, address changes, and personal delivery instructions. More than 7 in 10 recipients are choosing to interact with Veho about their package delivery, showing the company is meeting a need.

Powered by a sophisticated and dynamic crowdsourced driver marketplace, Veho's technology seamlessly matches demand for package delivery with qualified driver partners, ensuring every package is delivered on time and correctly.

"We're providing e-commerce brands a fast, tech-forward and customer-centric delivery option that ensures brand perception makes it past the purchase, all the way through to the customer door," said Veho CEO and co-founder Itamar Zur. "We avoid many of the traditional pitfalls of logistics and shipping through advanced proprietary technology, a culture that places the customer experience at the center of everything we do and our partnership with professional and qualified crowdsourced drivers. We're in 14 US cities today and expect to be serving brand partners and consumers in every major market by the end of 2022, including introducing and scaling our doorstep returns program."

"The role of last-mile logistics in e-commerce is more important than ever and Veho is bringing much-needed innovation to a space that has for years struggled to keep up with the dramatic increase in demand while focusing on a superior consumer experience," said Kyle Doherty, Managing Director at General Catalyst. "Ita, Fred and the Veho team are re-imagining how delivery logistics can be architected to bring a competitive advantage to e-commerce brands while creating more opportunities for delivery professionals that choose to join the Veho platform."

About General Catalyst

General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures  for our entrepreneurs, our investors, our people, and society. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. With offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, London, and Boston, the firm has helped support the growth of businesses such as: Airbnb, Deliveroo, Guild, Gusto, Hubspot, Illumio, Lemonade, Livongo, Oscar, Samsara, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. For more: www.generalcatalyst.com.

About Veho

Veho is revolutionizing ecommerce logistics with the use of technology that allows for fast, transparent, and personalized deliveries that increase customer satisfaction and drive customer lifetime value. For ecommerce brands, Veho provides a tech-forward and customer-centric delivery option to ensure that the purchase experience extends all the way through product arrival into their customers' hands. By leveraging live customer communication, in-market warehouse locations and a dynamic marketplace to seamlessly match demand for deliveries with last-mile driver-partners, Veho provides ecommerce brands with a complete solution to make delivery their competitive edge. For more information, please visit https://shipveho.com/ .

CONTACT: [email protected]

SOURCE Veho
VERO Biotech Receives Funding from MVM Partners to Accelerate Growth Tweet this

"As MVM is committed to supporting the growth of companies with innovative technologies to treat unmet medical needs, it was clear MVM is the right fit for our next stage of growth," said Brent V. Furse, CEO and President, VERO Biotech. "MVM has a deep understanding of our business, and we will be able to leverage MVM's experience in bringing innovative products to market, driving growth, making strategic acquisitions, and establishing new standards of care in medicine. VERO's partnership with MVM will ensure greater access to our proprietary tankless, cassette-based GENOSYL Delivery System."

Eric Bednarski, Partner of MVM commented: "VERO Biotech has a best-in-class technology that improves the clinical care of patients requiring inhaled nitric oxide therapy. GENOSYL has gained significant market traction with adoption by some of the top hospitals in the US. We are extremely impressed by the management team and excited to partner with VERO Biotech to help the company achieve its near- and long-term goals."

About GENOSYL

Indication

GENOSYL (nitric oxide) gas, for inhalation, is indicated to improve oxygenation and reduce the need for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in term and near-term (>34 weeks gestation) neonates with hypoxic respiratory failure associated with clinical or echocardiographic evidence of pulmonary hypertension in conjunction with ventilatory support and other appropriate agents.

Important Safety Information

GENOSYL is contraindicated in the treatment of neonates dependent on right-to-left shunting of blood.

in the treatment of neonates dependent on right-to-left shunting of blood. Abrupt discontinuation of GENOSYL (nitric oxide) gas, for inhalation may lead to worsening oxygenation and increasing pulmonary artery pressure.

Methemoglobin levels in the blood increase with the dose of nitric oxide; following discontinuation or reduction of nitric oxide, methemoglobin levels return to baseline over a period of hours.

Methemoglobin, NO2, and PaO2 should be monitored during nitric oxide administration.

In patients with pre-existing left ventricular dysfunction, GENOSYL may increase pulmonary capillary wedge pressure leading to pulmonary edema.

The most common adverse reaction is hypotension.

Nitric oxide donor compounds may have an additive effect with GENOSYL on the risk of developing methemoglobinemia.

GENOSYL must be administered using a calibrated GENOSYL Delivery System. Only validated ventilator systems or nasal cannulas should be used in conjunction with GENOSYL.

Please visit www.vero-biotech.com for the full Prescribing Information for GENOSYL.

About GENOSYL DS

GENOSYL DS is VERO Biotech's lead product. This proprietary delivery system eliminates the need for large nitric oxide tanks and the associated logistical burden. GENOSYL DS is a tankless and portable system engineered with redundant backup features, which delivers a constant concentration of inhaled nitric oxide gas to patients with an easy-to-use interface and portability features.

About VERO Biotech

VERO Biotech Inc. (formerly known as GeNO LLC) is focused on the design, development, and commercialization of next-generation products to address the unmet medical needs of patients with a variety of pulmonary and cardiac diseases.

VERO Biotech is dedicated to improving the lives of patients by leading the development of innovative technologies for inhaled nitric oxide delivery in the acute care hospital setting and beyond, wherever inhaled nitric oxide treatment is needed.

About MVM Partners

MVM has invested in innovative, high growth healthcare businesses since 1997. With teams in Boston and London, MVM has a successful track record of investing across most healthcare sub-sectors, including medical technology, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, contract research and manufacturing, and digital health. In aggregate, MVM has raised investment vehicles totaling over $1 billion.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release and any statements of representatives of VERO Biotech Inc. related thereto that are not historical in nature contain, or may contain, among other things, certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements with respect to VERO Biotech's plans, objectives, projections, expectations and intentions and other statements identified by words such as "projects," "may," "will," "could," "would," "should," "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates," "seeks," "intends," "plans," "potential" or similar expressions, including statements with respect to the potential effects of its products and plans to assess and undertake next steps for VERO Biotech Inc. These statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of VERO Biotech's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ significantly from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that are subject to change based on various risk factors (many of which are beyond VERO Biotech's control).

For information, please visit www.vero-biotech.com or contact Ray Russo at [email protected] or (908) 313-7172.

SOURCE VERO Biotech LLC
DALLAS, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vesper Energy ("Vesper"), a leading developer, owner and operator of utility-scale renewable energy assets, today announced it entered into a 15-year virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with Zoetis, the world's leading animal health company. Vesper will deliver more than 40 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy to the grid to power approximately 33 percent of Zoetis' North American operations' projected energy needs.

"At Zoetis, we are committed to protecting our planet while we fulfill our purpose to nurture the world and humankind by advancing care for animals," said Jeannette Ferran Astorga, Chief Sustainability Officer at Zoetis. "Partnering with Vesper Energy to make our North American operations cleaner and more sustainably powered is another step in our sustainability journey as we achieve our renewable energy goals."

The solar energy will be generated from Vesper's 500MW Hornet Solar project in west Texas, which is targeted to be fully operational by the end of 2023.

"We're proud to work with Zoetis to power a significant portion of their North American operations via solar energy and congratulate the entire Zoetis team for continuing to play their part in materially contributing to a sustainable, decarbonized future," said Vesper Energy CEO Craig Carson.

Vesper Energy is majority-owned by funds and accounts managed by Magnetar Capital through its Energy & Infrastructure business.

About Vesper Energy

Vesper Energy is a North American developer, owner and operator of utility-scale renewable energy and energy storage assets. It has commercialized over 680 MW of solar projects in the U.S. and has an existing 3 GW solar and 2.5 GWh energy storage development pipeline. Vesper Energy started as Lendlease Energy Development in 2015 and rebranded as Vesper Energy in 2020, after Magnetar Capital, on behalf of certain of its funds and accounts, partnered with management to acquire the business.

About Zoetis

As the world's leading animal health company, Zoetis is driven by a singular purpose: to nurture our world and humankind by advancing care for animals. After nearly 70 years innovating ways to predict, prevent, detect, and treat animal illness, Zoetis continues to stand by those raising and caring for animals worldwide -- from livestock farmers to veterinarians and pet owners. The company's leading portfolio and pipeline of medicines, vaccines, diagnostics and technologies make a difference in over 100 countries. A Fortune 500 company, Zoetis generated revenue of $6.7 billion in 2020 with approximately 11,300 employees. For more information, visit www.zoetis.com

SOURCE Vesper Energy
PITTSBURGH, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VISIMO, with Research Institute partner Colorado State University, has won an Air Force Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) award to develop a generator capable of creating synthetic, annotated image datasets in minutes, improving on the months  and even years  of hours required to manually annotate datasets using current methods.



Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) is collaborating as the end-user of VISIMO's technology. AFRL/RI works to prototype game-changing technologies, transitioning them to interested users across the Air Force and Department of Defense. VISIMO's technology will aid the Lab in the development of a broad range of technologies.

"Specialized, large-scale datasets are required to train machine learning models. The advancement of ML and what these models can accomplish are often slowed due to a lack of appropriate training data," said VISIMO's Chief Data Scientist, Dino Mintas.

Researchers are often forced to manually create training datasets, which is especially cumbersome when specialized or rare image data are needed. Models that train on overhead imagery include tracking and detection algorithms  the types of models used for autonomous vehicle navigation, humanitarian aid drops, wildfire management, search and rescue, and more.

VISIMO is building a conditional generative adversarial network (CGAN) that learns to generate unlimited original backgrounds from a limited amount of landscape images. It then inserts annotated objects into the generated backgrounds, automating a typically manual process. In Phase I , the CGAN proof-of-concept focused on overhead satellite imagery and in Phase II it will be expanded to other types of image data, like SAR or radar/lidar.



Phase II will focus on expanding the number of specialized output parameters the CGAN can create, including various security features, biome changes like snow or desert, and visibility changes like shadow, sunlight, fog, or smoke. Phase II builds from successful Phase I work, in which the proof-of-concept generated full, customized datasets in just 15 minutes.

The Air Force granted the 15-month, $750,000 award based on the potential impact of VISIMO's proposed R&D. Dr. Steven Simske, former Director of Security at HP Labs, and current Professor at Colorado State University, sees the work as an opportunity to develop novel security features in synthetic data.

"The work has potential security, privacy, access control, and authentication applications in areas like tracing, object recognition, biometrics, and scene analysis," he said. "Taking the concepts of red team/blue team in cybersecurity and cyber-physical security to GAN networks is a natural progression in the field of machine intelligence and will help the blue teams be able to stay ahead in the arms race of data manipulation."

VISIMO is actively seeking additional government and private-sector end-users for the developing technology.

This material is based upon work supported by the United States Air Force under Contract No. FA864921P1505. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Air Force.



Media Contact: Alexander Heit, (412) 615-4372, [email protected]

SOURCE VISIMO

Related Links

https://visimo.ai/


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Who are the Top Suppliers in the Waste Management Equipment Market?

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Babcock & Wilcox Enterprise, Inc.

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Wastequip LLC

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The research includes a complete analysis of the most commonly used procurement strategies by buyers across sectors, as well as an insight into these strategies' innovation, regulatory compliance, quality, supply, and cost. Adopting these procurement tactics would enable buyers to minimize category TCO and achieve cost savings while sourcing Waste Management Equipment.

What Are the Most Effective Price Strategy That a Vendor Can Adopt and What is The Forecasted Incremental Spend?

It is critical to monitor current and future pricing changes in order to maximize the value of the purchase. Price forecasts can assist in purchase planning, especially when combined with constant monitoring of price-influencing factors. The market expects an incremental spend of USD 4.47 billion over the forecast period as a result of several market drivers prevalent across multiple geographies. In addition, the sourcing and procurement report discusses different cost-cutting factors by analyzing the following criteria:

Identify favorable opportunities in Waste Management Equipment TCO (total cost of ownership)

Expected changes in price forecast and factors driving the current and future price changes

Identify pricing models that offer the most rewarding opportunities

Download the free sample report to get detailed insights into few more pricing strategies.

Which are the Key Regions for Waste Management Equipment Market?

The Waste Management Equipment market will register an incremental spend of about USD 4.47 billion during the forecast period. However, only a few regions will drive the majority of this growth. Moreover, on the supply side, North America, Europe, and APAC will have the maximum influence owing to the supplier base. The growth is expected to be primarily driven by increasing demand and adoption of the category across those few regions.

To get more information on the volume drivers that are driving the adoption of the category across regions, download our free sample report.

Smart Procurement Starts Here:

SpendEdge's procurement intelligence platform is the go-to tool for companies looking to access latest procurement research insights and supplier data on an easy to use platform:

Subscribe now for free, to get instant access to over 1000 market-ready procurement intelligence reports without any additional costs or commitment.

Table of Content

Executive Summary

Market Insights

Category Pricing Insights

Cost-saving Opportunities

Best Practices

Category Ecosystem

Category Management Strategy

Category Management Enablers

Suppliers Selection

Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

Appendix

About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Contacts

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

SOURCE SpendEdge
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Waystar , a leading provider of healthcare payments software, was named the top revenue cycle management (RCM) software and technology vendor in two categories in a recent survey conducted by Black Book Research :

End-to-End RCM Software & Technology, Hospital Chains, Systems, Corporations, Integrated Delivery Networks & Corporations

End-to-End RCM Software & Technology, Community Hospitals & Medical Centers

In a survey of 1,302 hospital executives, financial system users and business office leaders, Waystar was ranked the top RCM technology vendor in user satisfaction and client experience in both of the categories listed above. Waystar was evaluated alongside more than 200 vendors and was one of only two companies to earn top honors in multiple categories. As part of these rankings, survey executives deemed the following user satisfaction factors as having the highest importance: analytics and financial decision support, improved charge/reimbursement execution & coding, seamless EHR integration, demonstrated cost savings & ROI and value-based care readiness.

Waystar provides top-rated client support and end-to-end revenue cycle technology to more than 500,000 providers, including more than 1,000 hospitals and health systems. It offers enterprise, cloud-based software-as-a service that simplifies and unifies healthcare payments, processing nearly a trillion dollars in healthcare claims annually. Its technology helps support financial clearance and revenue capture, including patient estimation, eligibility verification, charge integrity and DRG anomaly detection. Additionally, Waystar recently acquired Patientco, a leading provider of omnichannel patient payment and engagement software. Patientco is recognized by Black Book as the #1 vendor for patient payments and also has earned Best in KLAS for Patient Payments and Patient Financial Engagement Platforms.

"Our mission is to simplify the healthcare payment process for providers and patients. It's an honor to be recognized as a top client-rated revenue cycle management platform by Black Book Research," said Matt Hawkins, CEO of Waystar. "This award demonstrates how our technology is successfully helping healthcare providers solve the unique operational and financial payment challenges they're facing."

"This survey provides intel into the current RCM software marketplace, which has several hundred core vendors. These results show that Waystar is leading the way in the market by providing an exceptional client experience," said Douglas Brown, President of Black Book Research.

Black Book is a full-service healthcare-centric market research company, conducting qualitative and quantitative surveys of client-user healthcare and technology services. The Black Book survey polls customer satisfaction based on 18 client experience-based key performance indicators. The data is then reviewed by an internal and external audit process to ensure the authenticity of the study.

For more information, please visit Waystar or read about the results of Black Book's research here .

About Waystar

Waystar provides next-generation, cloud-based technology that simplifies and unifies healthcare payments. The Waystar platform removes friction in payment processes, streamlines workflows and improves financials for providers in every care setting. The platform automates more than 300 million processes annually. Waystar products have been named Best in KLAS or Category Leader by KLAS Research twelve times and earned multiple #1 rankings from Black Book. Waystar supports more than 500,000 providers, 1,000 health systems and hospitals, 5,000 payers and health plans, and processes claims for approximately 40 percent of the U.S. population annually. Waystar is backed by EQT, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Bain Capital. For more information, visit waystar.com or follow @Waystar on Twitter.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Waystar
Wellness Pet Company renaming harmonizes pet nutrition pioneer's mission of bringing nature, innovation, and science to premium pet nutrition with the Company's flagship Wellness brand

TEWKSBURY, Mass., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WellPet, LLC, the largest North America based independent branded premium natural pet food company, backed by Clearlake Capital Group L.P. (together with its affiliates, "Clearlake"), today announced it is changing its name to the Wellness Pet Company ("Wellness Pet," or the "Company"). With 100 years of premium pet food and treats heritage, Wellness Pet will build on its mission of fulfilling a shared life of wellbeing between pets and a new generation of pet parents. This expanded vision for Wellness Pet Company comes at a pivotal time as consumer interest in the premium natural pet food category has been fueled by step-change increase in U.S. pet adoption and pet parents seeking the benefits of premium natural nutrition first-hand.

"We felt this was the ideal time to re-introduce Wellness Pet, a company focused squarely on serving the next generation of pet parents at the beginning of their life-long pet parenting journey. Our relationships with pets are about more than just companionship. Pets provide a mutually beneficial emotional connection that makes each of our lives better every day, and proper, science-driven natural nutrition is one of the foundational elements needed to keep them healthy, happy, and well," said Reed Howlett, CEO of Wellness Pet Company. "Pet parents and their pets are at the center of all that we do, and we believe that natural, premium nutrition focused on proven health outcomes is the foundation of creating this mutual wellbeing. We're here to make a difference for even more pets and their families."

The premium natural category is the largest and fastest growing segment in the pet food industry, and Wellness Pet Company believes this is driven primarily by the desires of Millennial and Gen-Z pet parents, who are expected to make up 58% of American pet parents by 20251. This next generation of pet parents looks for credible brands they can trust and has a greater interest in feeding premium treats, toppers, and supplements that make them confident their pets' needs are being met. Wellness Pet will actively pursue its mission to create natural nutrition that provides physical, mental, and emotional benefits that pets can feel, and pet parents can see, like a healthy skin and coat, optimal energy, digestive health, healthy eyes, teeth and gums, and immunity.

"We see so much potential for Wellness Pet Company as a purpose-driven organization that continues to provide pet parents around the world with the quality products they deserve," said Jose E. Feliciano, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, and Arta Tabaee, Managing Director, of Clearlake. "We look forward to supporting the Company's strategic growth with the help of our Operations, People and Strategy playbook, O.P.S., while supporting initiatives important to pet parents, such as a continued commitment to natural nutrition, a science-driven approach, and sustainability."

Wellness Pet Company carries on the legacy of best-in-class product innovation and outcomes-based nutrition led by its flagship Wellness brand and includes well-known dental treat brand WHIMZEES by Wellness and all-natural dog treat brand Old Mother Hubbard by Wellness, in addition to premium food brands Holistic Select, Sojos, and Eagle Pack, all backed by its world-class operational and manufacturing capabilities rooted in quality and safety.

Wellbeing amongst pets and parents also means wellbeing for their communities and the environment they enjoy together. That's why Wellness Pet Company will remain committed to the global fight against climate change with more recyclable packaging, low-waste eCommerce shipping, and greater attention to manufacturing emissions while continuing to operate with the highest food safety and compliance standards. Equally important will be creating and cultivating diversity, inclusivity, and belonging in the workplace.

The new company name will be effective in early 2022. Wellness Pet Company will continue to be headquartered in Tewksbury, MA. The Company also recently opened a new Boston, MA office, the Consumer Connect Center (C3), a center of excellence that will focus on developing best-in-class nutrition solutions for the next generation of pet parents.

About Wellness Pet Company:

Wellness Pet Company, the largest North America based independent branded premium natural pet food company, is home to pet food and treats brands Wellness, WHIMZEES by Wellness, Old Mother Hubbard by Wellness, Holistic Select, Sojos, and Eagle Pack. Building on a 100-year legacy, Wellness Pet Company has a singular mission of fulfilling a shared life of wellbeing between pets and pet parents with premium natural nutrition that provides proven health benefits that pets feel, and pet parents can see, because when pets are well, pet parents are, too. Wellness Pet produces proprietary and exclusive formulations at its three state-of-the-art facilities in Indiana, Minnesota, and the Netherlands, supported by a supply chain spanning over 1.2 million distribution points across the globe. More information is available at the Company's website.

About Clearlake:

Founded in 2006, Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. is a leading investment firm operating integrated businesses across private equity, credit, and other related strategies. With a sector-focused approach, the firm seeks to partner with experienced management teams by providing patient, long-term capital to dynamic businesses that can benefit from Clearlake's operational improvement approach, O.P.S. The firm's core target sectors are technology, industrials, and consumer. Clearlake currently has over $55 billion assets under management, and its senior investment principals have led or co-led over 300 investments. The firm has offices in Santa Monica and Dallas. More information is available at www.clearlake.com and on Twitter @ClearlakeCap.

1 2019, Packaged Facts Pet Owner Survey

SOURCE Wellness Pet Company
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WIRES, the international trade association that promotes investment in all aspects of the high voltage grid, announced today its 2022 leadership team, with Will Sauer, Managing Director, Federal Regulatory Affairs at Duke Energy, elected as the new WIRES President.

The 2022 slate of WIRES officers includes:

President: Will Sauer , Managing Director, Federal Regulatory Affairs, Duke Energy

, Managing Director, Federal Regulatory Affairs, Duke Energy Vice President: Amanda Conner , Vice President, FERC and RTO Strategy and Policy, American Electric Power

, Vice President, FERC and RTO Strategy and Policy, American Electric Power Secretary: Jodi Moskowitz , Deputy General Counsel & RTO Strategy Officer, PSEG

Deputy General Counsel & RTO Strategy Officer, PSEG Treasurer: Amanda Rumsey , Manager, PJM and Federal Regulatory Policy, PPL Electric Utilities

"This past year was marked by a whirlwind of activity as the Biden administration and Congress acted on the pressing need for more transmission infrastructure," said Larry Gasteiger, Executive Director of WIRES. "In parallel, FERC has undertaken the most ambitious transmission policy reform effort in more than a decade. WIRES is fortunate to have a deep bench of industry experts as our officers and board members to continue our mission of advocating for more investment in critical transmission. I look forward to working alongside WIRES' incoming president Will Sauer, the entire leadership team, and the growing WIRES membership on what is likely to be one of the most impactful years for the transmission industry in a generation."

WIRES' current president, Dave Weaver, Vice President, Transmission Strategy at Exelon, will join the WIRES Board of Directors. Brian Gemmell, Chief Clean Energy Development Officer at National Grid, was elected to a second 2-year term on the Board.

WIRES' 2022 Board of Directors will include:

Brian Gemmell , Chief Clean Energy Development Officer, National Grid

, Chief Clean Energy Development Officer, National Grid Tom Hestermann , Manager, Transmission Policy, Sunflower Electric Power Corp

, Manager, Transmission Policy, Sunflower Electric Power Corp Priti Patel , Vice President & Chief Transmission Officer, Great River Energy

, Vice President & Chief Transmission Officer, Great River Energy Nina Plaushin , Vice President, ITC Holdings

, Vice President, ITC Holdings Dave Weaver , Vice President, Transmission Strategy, Exelon

"High-voltage transmission's critical role in grid resilience, the integration of clean energy resources and the coming electrification of transportation has received renewed and well founded attention in 2021," said Will Sauer, Managing Director, Federal Regulatory Affairs, Duke Energy and incoming WIRES 2022 President. "WIRES has been a leading transmission industry voice, educating and advocating for advancements in North America's transmission infrastructure and highlighting transmission's many benefits. There is much work before us as we seek to build out the grid of the future, and I look forward to working closely with Larry, and the WIRES leadership in what has all the hallmarks of a landmark year ahead."

WIRES Reports

WIRES disseminates research and reports that help educate regulators, legislators, and the industry on a variety of transmission issues. In 2021 WIRES shared the following two studies:

A study by Charles River Associates (CRA) published on Dec. 20, 2021 , the Value of Local Transmission Planning , highlights how local transmission planning helps to support a resilient and clean transmission grid. The report finds that local transmission planning is foundational to the success of the regional planning process and to achieving public policy goals, and that local project needs are often unique and distinct from regional system issues and solutions.

, the Value of Local Transmission Planning highlights how local transmission planning helps to support a resilient and clean transmission grid. The report finds that local transmission planning is foundational to the success of the regional planning process and to achieving public policy goals, and that local project needs are often unique and distinct from regional system issues and solutions. In May 2021 , London Economics International (LEI) prepared an analysis of the economic and job benefits that transmission offers. The Repowering America: Transmission investment for economic stimulus and climate change report identified $83 billion in planned transmission projects around the country that had been ISO/RTO Board-approved and/or recommended to regulators. The study found that the construction phase of this infrastructure investment would add $42 billion to GDP, create approximately 442,000 family-supporting jobs, and boost direct local spending by nearly $39 billion cumulatively.

Visit our WIRES Reports page for these and other transmission industry resources.

About WIRES

WIRES is an international non-profit trade association of investor-, publicly-, and cooperatively owned transmission providers, transmission customers, regional grid managers, and equipment and service companies. WIRES promotes investment in electric transmission and progressive state and federal policies that advance energy markets, economic efficiency, and consumer and environmental benefits through development of electric power infrastructure. For more information, visit www.wiresgroup.com.

SOURCE WIRES
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Wolper Law Firm has filed multiple arbitration claims with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ("FINRA") on behalf of victims of the alleged Ponzi scheme perpetrated by John J. Woods, a former Financial Advisor at Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. The claims seek damages for clients who were victimized through the Horizon Private Equity, III Fund.



The Ponzi scheme was estimated to have defrauded 400 investors out of more than $110 million. It was orchestrated by John J. Woods and his investment advisory firm, Livingston Group Asset Management d/b/a Southport Capital, utilizing the fund known as Horizon Private Equity, III, LLC. If you are one of the impacted investors, please contact the Wolper Law Firm at 800.931.8452. This is a public service announcement.



The claims filed by Wolper Law Firm state that John Woods engaged in the unlawful practice of "selling away" for nearly ten years while employed and registered with Oppenheimer, in violation of FINRA Rules 3270 and 3280. "Selling away" means a broker solicits clients to purchase securities not officially offered or held by the executing brokerage firm and for which due diligence has not been completed. This is illegal.



Woods did not initially disclose his involvement in the Horizon Fund to Oppenheimer and, hence, Horizon and other funds were "undisclosed" Outside Business Activities (and Outside Securities Activities) of Woods. However, a reasonable examination or audit by Oppenheimer would have clearly uncovered Woods' affiliation with these funds. Oppenheimer did not disclose these compliance failures to regulators and later allowed Woods to resign rather than be fired for wrongdoing.



On August 20, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a Complaint against John J. Woods, Livingston Group Asset Management Company d/b/a Southport Capital, and Horizon Private Equity, III, LLC. The Complaint was filed in the United States District Court, Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. A copy of the Complaint can be accessed by clicking here.



According to the SEC Complaint:

"John J. Woods has been running a massive Ponzi scheme for over a decade. As of the end of July 2021, investors in the Ponzi scheme were owed over $110,000,000 in principal. There are more than 400 investors, residing in at least 20 different states, who currently hold investments in the Ponzi scheme, which goes by the name Horizon Private Equity, III, LLC ("Horizon"). Many of the victims are elderly retirees who were preyed upon by investment advisers at Livingston Group Asset Management Company d/b/a Southport Capital ("Southport"), a registered investment adviser firm owned and controlled by Woods. The Defendants' Ponzi scheme is ongoing and continues to raise money from new investors each month."



What makes this Ponzi scheme unique is that John J. Woods and his cohorts, Michael Mooney, James Woods, and Arthur Brown, were former Financial Advisors of Oppenheimer & Co., in its Atlanta branch office.



During the time period that they were employed and registered with Oppenheimer, John J. Woods began soliciting clients to invest in the Horizon Private Equity, III, LLC under the guise that the investment was being offered by Oppenheimer.



Investors were lulled into a false sense of security that Oppenheimer conducted due diligence regarding the investment and ensured the protection of principal. Of course, Horizon Private Equity, III, LLC was not offered and sold by Oppenheimer. This unlawful practice is known as "selling away," and is prohibited.



There are legal remedies for investors harmed by this Ponzi scheme. Attorney Matt Wolper suggests they consult with lawyers who have experience helping investors recoup losses in similar schemes.



The Wolper Law Firm represents investors nationwide in securities litigation and arbitration on a contingency fee basis. Matt Wolper, the Managing Principal of the Wolper Law Firm, is a trial lawyer who has handled hundreds of securities cases during his career involving a wide range of products, strategies, and securities. Prior to representing investors, he was a partner with a national law firm, where he represented some of the largest banks and brokerage firms in the world in securities matters. He can be reached at 800.931.8452 or by email at [email protected].

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com

SOURCE Wolper Law Firm
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Worksite Labs, known for bringing mobile labs to COVID-19 testing sites, now accepts most major insurance providers, Medicare and Medicaid for its 12- and 24-hour PCR tests. Safe holiday travel and gathering just got easier with no cost for testing for those with insurance nationwide and for all individuals in New York.

"Cost should never be a barrier to fast, accurate and convenient testing. With the Omicron-fueled spike in demand for tests, we are pleased to work with insurance companies and handle the backend of billing to increase access to COVID-19 testing," states Gary Frazier, CEO of Worksite Labs.

Worksite Labs Community sites, established in partnership with trusted faith-based leaders, continue to provide free COVID-19 services to meet the needs of underserved residents in South Los Angeles and Brooklyn. These sites provide medical staff and bilingual nurses to conduct COVID-19 testing and offer health education. In addition, vaccinations are available to residents in South Los Angeles.

Appointments are available at https://worksitelabs.com/scheduling/.

Prepared for the Surge in Testing

Media outlets report significant increases in people testing for COVID-19, raising concerns about whether long delays in test results will follow.

"A COVID-19 test result that arrives in days is not very useful, which is why Worksite Labs guarantees accurate PCR test results within 24 hours," Frazier states. "By processing tests in mobile labs, we provide top-notch accuracy in as little as 90 minutes."

PCR tests remain abundant, providing 98-99% accurate results without active symptomsbefore an individual is infectious.

New policies will further increase demand for COVID-19 testing. In the past week:

A court upheld President Biden's employer vaccination or testing mandate

CDC issued "test to stay" guidelines for schools

Additional countries required PCR testing for international travel

State and private businesses announced testing mandates

"Worksite Labs partners with multiple vendors to secure US-produced supplies. As a result, we remain confident in our ability to meet increased COVID-19 testing demand," Frazier reassures. "Further, we verified that all our tests detect the Omicron variant."

About Worksite Labs

Worksite Labs is based in California with labs located across the US, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco and Seattle, and at many U.S. airports with international service.

Twitter

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LinkedIn

SOURCE Worksite Labs
DUBLIN, Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Biochips Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global biochips market exhibited strong growth during 2015-2020. Looking forward, the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 15% during 2021-2026. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, the analyst is continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different end use industries. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



Biochips refer to a miniaturized medical device that includes a wide collection of microarrays for performing multiple biochemical reactions simultaneously. They contain numerous biosensors that enable the screening of several biological analytes such as enzymes, proteins, DNA, biological molecules, antibodies, etc. Biochips are primarily used in drug discovery, in-vitro diagnostics, gene expression profiling, single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping, agricultural biotechnology, etc. As a result, they are widely adopted across various pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, research and academic laboratories, and healthcare facilities.



The increasing prevalence of chronic disorders along with the rising geriatric population is currently driving the demand for biochips in the medical sector. In recent times, the growing incidences of cancer have also augmented the use of biochips for the early detection of cancerous cells in the body. In line with this, biochips are increasingly being adopted for developing targeted and personalized medicines for cancer treatment.

Additionally, the growing consumer health concerns towards several viral infections and immunological disorders are also propelling the demand for biochips in new drug discovery and development activities. For instance, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, several biotechnology and pharma companies are focusing on developing novel biochips for detecting the infection in the body. Moreover, rising advancements in microfluid technology have led to the introduction of specifically engineered biochips for various laboratory procedures.

Furthermore, numerous R&D activities in the biotechnology sector have also led to the emergence of digital microfluidic biochips. The changing consumer inclination towards minimally invasive surgeries coupled with rising upgradations in nanotechnology are further driving the demand for biochips. Apart from this, the growing investments in the healthcare sector pertaining to cancer genomics, human proteome, and DNA-analysis are further anticipated to catalyze the global biochips market.

Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined with some of the key players being Agilent Technologies, Inc., bioMerieux SA, Bio-RAD Laboratories, Inc., CapitalBio Corporation, Dynamic Biosensors GmbH, EMD Millipore Corporation, Fluidigm Corporation, Illumina, Inc., Perkinelmer, Inc., and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.



Key Questions Answered in This Report

How has the global biochips market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global biochips 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 fabrication technique?

What is the breakup of the market based on the analysis method?

What is the breakup of the market based on the application?

What is the breakup of the market based on the end user?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the market?

What is the structure of the global biochips market and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the market?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Biochips Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Product Type

6.1 DNA Chip

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Protein Chip

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast

6.3 Lab-On-a-Chip

6.3.1 Market Trends

6.3.2 Market Forecast

6.4 Enzyme Chip

6.4.1 Market Trends

6.4.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by Fabrication Technique

7.1 Microarray

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Microfluidic

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Analysis Method

8.1 Electrophoresis

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Luminescence

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Mass Spectrometry

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Electrical Signals

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast

8.5 Magnetism

8.5.1 Market Trends

8.5.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Application

9.1 Molecular Analysis

9.1.1 Hybridization

9.1.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.1.2 Market Forecast

9.1.2 Protein

9.1.2.1 Market Trends

9.1.2.2 Market Forecast

9.1.3 Immunological

9.1.3.1 Market Trends

9.1.3.2 Market Forecast

9.1.4 Biomolecules

9.1.4.1 Market Trends

9.1.4.2 Market Forecast

9.1.5 Biomarker

9.1.5.1 Market Trends

9.1.5.2 Market Forecast

9.1.6 Others

9.1.6.1 Market Trends

9.1.6.2 Market Forecast

9.2 Diagnosis

9.2.1 Gene Diagnosis

9.2.1.1 Market Trends

9.2.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2.2 Oncology

9.2.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2.2 Market Forecast

9.2.3 Inflammatory

9.2.3.1 Market Trends

9.2.3.2 Market Forecast

9.2.4 Others

9.2.4.1 Market Trends

9.2.4.2 Market Forecast

9.3 Non-Biological Usage

9.3.1 Market Trends

9.3.2 Market Forecast



10 Market Breakup by End-user

10.1 Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies

10.1.1 Market Trends

10.1.2 Market Forecast

10.2 Hospitals and Diagnostics Centers

10.2.1 Market Trends

10.2.2 Market Forecast

10.3 Academic & Research Institutes

10.3.1 Market Trends

10.3.2 Market Forecast

10.4 Others

10.4.1 Market Trends

10.4.2 Market Forecast



11 Market Breakup by Region



12 SWOT Analysis



13 Value Chain Analysis



14 Porters Five Forces Analysis



15 Competitive Landscape

15.1 Market Structure

15.2 Key Players

15.3 Profiles of Key Players

15.3.1 Agilent Technologies, Inc.

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 bioMerieux SA

15.3.2.1 Company Overview

15.3.2.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.2.3 Financials

15.3.2.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.3 Bio-RAD Laboratories, Inc.

15.3.3.1 Company Overview

15.3.3.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.3.3 Financials

15.3.3.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.4 CapitalBio Corporation

15.3.4.1 Company Overview

15.3.4.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.5 Dynamic Biosensors GmbH

15.3.5.1 Company Overview

15.3.5.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.6 EMD Millipore Corporation

15.3.6.1 Company Overview

15.3.6.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.6.3 Financials

15.3.6.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.7 Fluidigm Corporation

15.3.7.1 Company Overview

15.3.7.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.7.3 Financials

15.3.8 Illumina, Inc.

15.3.8.1 Company Overview

15.3.8.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.8.3 Financials

15.3.8.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.9 Perkinelmer, Inc.

15.3.9.1 Company Overview

15.3.9.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.9.3 Financials

15.3.9.4 SWOT Analysis

15.3.10 Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.

15.3.10.1 Company Overview

15.3.10.2 Product Portfolio

15.3.10.3 Financials

15.3.10.4 SWOT Analysis

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/6oigwl

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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SOURCE Research and Markets

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To facilitate the e-commerce live streaming sales of local agricultural products, Xiangzhou has managed to hold a live streaming sales campaign for online influencers at the orange festival and selected the most influential local live-streaming celebrity, to promote the local signature agricultural products and increase earnings for local villagers.

Local agricultural authorities of Xiangzhou hold that this year, while promoting sugar orange sales through onsite and live streaming platform, the county has also cooperated with merchants from different provinces and regions across China to extend the influence of local sugar orange products.

The local government of Xiangzhou has also taken various measures, such as cooperating with China's leading e-commerce platform Pinduoduo to promote fruit sales in Xiangzhou County by establishing a long-term and stable cooperation mechanism to inject impetus into the local economy.

In recent years, Xiangzhou County has made great efforts to develop an urban characteristic agricultural industry based on sugar orange as the core. As one of the three main producing areas of sugar orange in Guangxi, Xiangzhou has a total orange cultivation area of 320,000 mu, yielding 600,000 tonnes of orange output.

Weitao, County Chief of Xiangzhou revealed that Xiangzhou would promote the transformation and upgrading of the sugar orange industry and drive local agriculture to a new era of diversified development of production, supply, and sales.

See the original link: https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/325462.html

SOURCE Xinhua Silk Road
Co-Founder and former Head of Strategy of the UK's Aerospace Technology Institute James McMicking joins as new VP Strategy

Shell's Former Global Hydrogen Technology Director Arnab Chatterjee named VP Infrastructure

named VP Infrastructure 35-year Boeing veteran and former Chief Engineer of Propulsion Jim Petersen joins advisory board

Hires follow the announcement of 460 order options from partners such as Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, and many others; funding reaches $115m

OEM partnerships represent a total 7,000 engine opportunity for ZeroAvia

KEMBLE, UK and HOLLISTER, Calif., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ZeroAvia , the leader in hydrogen-electric, zero-emission aviation, has added two new senior hires, and a new member to its advisory board, as it prepares to ramp up growth over the next 12 months.

James McMicking joins as ZeroAvia's first Vice President of Strategy from the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) - the body in charge of developing the technology strategy for the UK aerospace sector. As one of the original executives to set up the ATI, McMicking held several positions throughout the business over seven years, including its Head of Strategy and Operations.

"Through my work, in recent years I have seen first hand the rapid progression of zero-emission technologies for flight, so it is exhilarating to be joining a company that I believe is taking the right approach and is on the path to certification and market adoption in the very near future," said James McMicking. "True zero-emission technology will reduce aviation's climate impact, improve air quality around airports and enable better regional connectivity in the future."

A mechanical engineer by training, McMicking brings experience covering advanced R&D, business and innovation strategy, and transformation. At the ATI, McMicking worked extensively with organisations throughout the aerospace tech sector and UK Government to support world-class research and development, navigate complex strategic challenges and catalyse innovation.

At ZeroAvia, McMicking is now responsible for building a strategic roadmap for the business, both from a commercial and technical point of view to reach its 2024 target, working in collaboration with CEO Val Miftakhov and the rest of the executive team.

Meanwhile, Arnab Chatterjee also joins the business as Vice President of Infrastructure. Prior to ZeroAvia, Chatterjee spent almost a decade at Shell working on low carbon fuel, digital, e-mobility, and renewable energy solutions in a range of technical, commercial and strategy roles. Most recently, he has been driving Shell's efforts in hydrogen at a global scale. Chatterjee has a background in chemical product development, venture investments and corporate development. He has a PhD in electrochemistry from the University of Oxford.

At ZeroAvia, Chatterjee will be responsible for working with aviation and energy industry partners to deliver the hydrogen production and refuelling infrastructure required to support the adoption of hydrogen-electric propulsion.

Commenting on his new role, Arnab Chatterjee said: "Seeing ZeroAvia's aircraft in the sky for the first time last year was a real lightning bolt moment, and I have followed the R&D progress closely. With a 19-seat aircraft close to flight testing and commercialisation a little over two years away, ground infrastructure requires equal focus to ensure our success in transforming the future of flight. It is an exciting challenge ahead."

In addition, joining ZeroAvia's advisory board is Jim Peterson. An expert in propulsion integration, Peterson brings over 35 years of experience from his time at Boeing where he was Chief Engineer of Propulsion, responsible for integrating engines into various Boeing airframes.

"We're delighted to have these three remarkable leaders on our team," commented Val Miftakhov, CEO, ZeroAvia. "Adding strong strategic firepower to the business, as well as industry-leading expertise to continue our rapid R&D advancement, will help us to take things to a new level in 2022."

The executive and advisory board additions bookend an enormously successful year for ZeroAvia. Beyond being named one of the world's most innovative companies by Fast Company and a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, the company made significant strides on its R&D. It completed 35 test flights of its six-seat prototype, part of the UK Government-backed HyFlyer I project.

The company also ramped up work on the HyFlyer II project, focused on delivering its commercial entry product, a 600 kW hydrogen-electric powertrain for 10-20 seat aircraft. In September, ZeroAvia welcomed its Dornier 228 testbed aircraft to its new base at Cotswold Airport, immediately beginning work to install its powertrain technology, and the team is already well advanced in preparation for flight testing early next year.

ZeroAvia raised over $70 million in 2021, taking the total to $115 million, with the most recent round of $35 million announced in December. The company also increased its headcount to nearly 100 employees globally.

ZeroAvia also announced several highly significant commercial deals throughout the year's final quarter, amounting to more than 460 commitments for hydrogen-electric engines and several important joint development programmes. In the second half of the year, ZeroAvia also cemented a number of deals, including an intention to develop one of the world's first commercial zero-emission routes from London to Rotterdam the Hague Airport , investment and purchase options from airlines such as Alaska Airlines and United Airlines , and partnerships with a variety of aviation players such as De Havilland of Canada , Rose Cay , Hindustan Aeronautics Limited , ASL Aviation Holdings , and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Regional Jet division. The total number of engines (excluding spares) for in service or stored aircraft produced by the OEMs that ZeroAvia has signed deals with stands at over 7,000, showing the scale of the opportunity.

"This commercial traction alongside the technical progress has been a massive boost for the company," Miftakhov continued. "It demonstrates how receptive the market is for both our ZA600 and ZA2000 powertrains, as well as illustrates that hydrogen-electric is the only meaningful solution for zero-emission aviation."

About ZeroAvia

ZeroAvia is a leader in zero-emission aviation, focused on hydrogen-electric aviation solutions to address a variety of markets, initially targeting 500-mile range in 10-20 and 40-90 seat aircraft used for commercial passenger transport, cargo, agriculture, and more. Based in the UK and USA, ZeroAvia has already secured experimental certificates for two prototype aircraft from the CAA and FAA, passed significant flight test milestones, and is on track for initial commercial operations of its technology in 2024. The company's expanding UK operations are supported by grants from UK's Aerospace Technology Institute and Innovate UK, and ZeroAvia is part of the UK Prime Minister's Jet Zero Council. For more, please visit ZeroAvia.com, follow @ZeroAvia on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

SOURCE ZeroAvia
Seoul, Dec 21 : South Korea's Defence Minister Suh Wook met with his Thai counterpart in Bangkok to discuss defence cooperation between the two countries and the security situations on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, his ministry has said.

Suh held talks with Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Monday, who doubles as defence minister, on the second day of his three-day visit to Thailand, Yonhap news agency reported.

During the meeting, Prayut said Bangkok wishes to expand arms industry cooperation with South Korea.

The Southeast Asian country is reviewing a new frigate project and intends to start talks on defence industry cooperation with South Korea as soon as the pandemic situation improves, he added.

Thailand secured a 3,750-ton frigate from South Korea in 2018, currently deployed for field operations.

Suh also expressed gratitude to Bangkok for purchasing additional T-50TH advanced trainer jets developed by Korea Aerospace Industries Co. in July, and said South Korea wishes to continue participating in Thailand's military procurement projects down the road.

The two ministers also agreed to join forces in coping with the Covid-19 pandemic within their militaries.

Prayut especially asked South Korea to share its knowledge with the ASEAN Center for Military Medicine (ACMM), an organization based in Bangkok that promotes health cooperation among militaries in the region.

Suh also called for Bangkok's support on the ASEAN-ROK Informal Defence Ministers Meeting, held in November for the first time, as Seoul pushes to cement ties with the regional bloc under its signature New Southern Policy. ROK stands for South Korea's formal name, the Republic of Korea.

The previous day, Suh met Korean War veterans of Thailand, one of 16 UN member countries that sent troops to South Korea to help defend it in the 1950-53 war.

After completing his schedule in Thailand, Suh will fly to Singapore for talks with his counterpart, Ng Eng Hen, on defence cooperation and exchanges.
Tehran, Dec 21 : The Iranian foreign ministry denied has a claim by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that there were direct talks between the two countries over the past few months, official news agency IRNA reported.

"Since the beginning of the negotiations on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna, Iran has held no direct talks with the US," Saeed Khatibzadeh, the ministry spokesman, was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying.

On Friday, Sullivan had told reporters in Washington that the US has "communicated both through the Europeans and directly to Iran".

"Iran has received some messages on the issues of negotiations in written and unwritten forms through EU mediators since the start of the talks in Vienna, to which answers were given on the spot," Khatibzadeh noted.

In May 2018, former US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the Iranian nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and reimposed unilateral sanctions against Tehran in a bid to hammer out a new deal.

Since early April this year, representatives from China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran have held seven rounds of negotiations in the Austrian capital, with the United States involved indirectly, aiming to bring the United States back to the JCPOA and prepare the ground for its full implementation.

The seventh and latest round of the talks started on November 29 and concluded on Friday.

"Today, We have two new agreed-upon texts, which are the results of the intense negotiations over the past few days in the Austrian capital," Khatibzadeh said.

"The new texts have incorporated Iran's views compared to the previous ones. We now have texts according to which we can continue the future talks," he added.

On the US approach to the talks and its intention, the Iranian spokesman said Washington has offered "no tangible proposal or text" to other parties, placing "a big question mark on America's intention."
Lucknow, Dec 21 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Prayagraj on Tuesday to attend programmes related to women.

The Prime Minister will transfer Rs 1,000 crore into the accounts of 1.60 lakh self-help groups (SHGs) and Rs 20.20 crore to 1.01 lakh beneficiaries of the Mukhya Mantri Kanya Sumangala Yojana on Tuesday.

He will also lay the foundation stone of 202 supplementary nutrition manufacturing units when he visits Prayagraj on Tuesday.

According to the government spokesman, about 80,000 SHGs will receive Community Investment Fund at Rs 1.10 lakh each and 60,000 SHGs will get Rs 15,000 each as revolving fund.

The Prime Minister will then transfer Rs 20.20 crore to 1.01 lakh beneficiaries of Mukhya Mantri Kanya Sumangala Scheme under which conditional cash transfer is made to a girl's account at various stages, with each being entitled to Rs 15,000 in total.

"So far, 9.92 lakh girls have benefitted and after fund transfer on Tuesday, 1.01 lakh more beneficiaries will be added. The Prime Minister will also transfer monthly stipend of Rs 4,000 to 20,000 banking correspondent sakhis," the spokesman said.

The state government aims to employ a banking correspondent sakhi in all 58,189-gram panchayats.

So far, 56,875 women have been selected, out of which 38,341 have been trained and certified.

In another programme, the Prime Minister will lay the foundation stone of 202 supplementary nutrition manufacturing units.

The cost of each unit is approximately Rs 1 crore. The units are being funded by SHGs and will employ 4,000 members and benefit 60,600 SHGs by paying against their equity.

The spokesman said that the programme in Prayagraj is being held as per Modi's "vision to empower women, especially at the grassroots level, by providing them with the necessary skills, incentives, and resources." The Prime Minister has already visited poll-bound Uttar Pradesh six times in the past month. He has been to Gorakhpur, Sultanpur, Varanasi, Jhansi, Greater Noida and Balrampur to unveil various projects. He was also in Lucknow for the directors general of police (DGPs) conference.
Prayagraj, Dec 21 : Foolproof security arrangements have been made in Prayagraj for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit on Tuesday.

The Prime Minister will stay in Prayagraj for two hours as per the programme, during which the traffic movement will be diverted.

The entire route has been sanitized and special vigil is being maintained at the venue.

Prime Minister Modi will arrive in the holy city at around 1 p.m. at Bamrauli airport and the proceed to the parade ground by helicopter.

The Prime Minister will inspect an exhibition and then participate in the programme - where he will transfer Rs 1,000 crore into the accounts of over one lakh self-help groups (SHGs).

After the function, the Prime Minister will return to Delhi.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who inspected the arrangements at the venue on Monday, has asked officials not to allow unidentified persons at the venue.

Officials said that 67 schools have been selected for lodging the women members of SHGs and beneficiaries of other schemes while 32 schools have been earmarked for the stay of police and security personnel.

"Special attention has been paid to security and stricter arrangements are in place this time. There is also a large presence of women security personnel because women are the main participants at the function," said a senior police official.
London, Dec 21 : UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the government reserves the "possibility of taking further action" to protect public health because of the raging spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.

In his remarks on Monday, the Prime Minister said he is following the data "hour by hour" and warned the rules could still be tightened in the days to come, reports Xinhua news agency.

Britain reported 91,743 coronavirus cases in the last 24-hour period, the second highest recorded daily number ever, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 11,518,116, according to official figures.

Another 8,044 Omicron cases have been detected in the UK, taking the total tally to 45,145, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) confirmed.

The country also reported a further 44 fatalities, raising the national death toll to 147,722.

Meanwhile, Ministers have reportedly pushed back against calls from scientific advisers for new measures to tackle the Omicron variant before Christmas.

Around one third of the cabinet are said to be reluctant to support new restrictions in the coming days, with Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak among them, according to The Times newspaper.

The government's advisory scientists have warned extra restrictions are needed "within days" to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by Omicron.

More than 89 per cent of people aged 12 and over in Britain have had their first vaccine dose and over 81 per cent are fully inoculated, according to the latest figures.

Some 50.4 per cent have received the booster shot.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Shahjahanpur : , Dec 21 (IANS) Two farmers were killed and one seriously injured after coming into contact with a high-voltage electric fence erected around a farm land in Uttar Pradesh's Shahjahanpur district.

The two farmers Ankit Kumar, 25, and Arvind Kumar, 23, died on the spot, while the third, Shobhit Kumar, 26, is battling for his life in hospital.

Carcasses of two bulls were also found near the fence located in Powayan area.

Police have registered an FIR under IPC section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against the farm owner, Bhola Ram.

Bhola Ram had electrified the fence to protect his crop from stray cattle, but apparently, did not have the permission to do so.

BS Vir Kumar, circle officer, Powayan, said that Ankit along with his neighbours, Arvind and Shobhit, had gone out on Monday.

Arvind accidentally touched the fence and suffered an electric shock. He screamed for help. Ankit and Shobhit rushed to his aid and they, too, received electric shocks.

By the time locals reached the spot, Arvind and Ankit were dead while Shobhit was found unconscious.

The carcasses of the two bulls were also found lying near the fence.

The police official said that as per law, electrification of fences by individuals or organisations without permission is not allowed.

"Even in cases of permission, there is a limit to the level of current that can be passed through the wires. We have booked the farm owner under the relevant sections of the IPC and for cruelty against animals. The bodies of the two men were handed to their families after autopsy," he said.
Chennai, Dec 21 : Did the Indian insurance regulator consider share premium as part of paid-up capital and issued the licence to operate to a private reinsurer? It seems so, as per the recent answers given by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) to a series of questions raised under the Right to Information (RTI) Act about ITI Reinsurance Limited (ITI RE) and also as per its Annual Reports.

For starters, the minimum capital required for a private reinsurance company is Rs 200 crore.

However, IRDAI had asked ITI RE to bring in an additional capital of Rs 300 crore - Rs 100 crore before granting of licence to operate and another Rs 200 crore within three months of granting of the licence or March 31, 2017 whichever is earlier.

The ITI Re was given licence to transact reinsurance business -- general, life and health -- on December 30, 2016.

As per the IRDAI's annual reports for FY17, FY18 and FY19 the equity share capital of ITI Re was only Rs 268.94 crore.

However, to a question raised under the RTI Act, the IRDAI had sent a certificate given by an accounting firm whereby ITI RE had brought in equity share capital of Rs 205 crore and Rs 102.50 crore towards securities premium account.

"By no stretch of imagination that the share premium amount be taken into account as part of the minimum paid up capital requirement of an insurance or reinsurance company either under the Insurance Act or the Companies Act," D. Varadarajan, a Supreme Court lawyer specialising in Insurance and Corporate Laws and a Member on KPN Committee on Insurance Laws Reforms told IANS.

The term paid up capital cannot be allowed to subsume the amount standing in the share premium account, he said.

"Hence, both are distinct and separate and not be construed as mutually inclusive. Both under the IRDAI Regulations on preparation of financial statements and Companies Act, paid-up share capital falls under the head share capital, whereas share premium would fall under the head reserves and surplus. Further, the statute also makes provisions in regard to utilisation of share premium amounts for specific purposes only," Varadarajan explained.

According to him, rudimentary knowledge of law, regulations and settled accounting principles cannot fathom treatment of share premium amount as paid up capital for determining the threshold limit of capital requirement of an insurance or reinsurance company.

"It is Utopian or self-serving interpretation to accord 'pari materia' treatment in the teeth of extant statutory and regulatory dispensation," he remarked.

Be that as it may, the IRDAI for another RTI query had annexed a letter written by ITI RE, wherein the reinsurer on March 31, 2017 had said it had infused an additional capital of Rs 200.05 crore thereby taking the total equity capital to Rs 407.65 crore and a subordinated debt of Rs 100 crore and the total capital to Rs 507.65 crore.

Curiously, the IRDAI's annual reports for FY17 -FY19 clearly states the equity share capital of ITI RE was only Rs 268.94 crore.

The IRDAI declined to answer the RTI query on the compelling reasons for considering ITI RE's licence application with the company bringing in about Rs 300 crore as capital than the requested Rs 500 crore.

The Insurance Regulator said it has no information on allowing any insurer to bring initial equity shares at a premium, thereby circumventing the provisions of Section 6A(1) of the Insurance Act.

The IRDAI also said it does not have any information whether any committee of its officers was formed to process the R2 application of ITI RE.

To the RTI query on the statutory returns for reinsurers for the years 2017, 2018 and till April 2019, the IRDAI sought an exemption from providing the same.

The Insurance Regulator also said it does not have information about the CEO and key managerial persons of ITI RE for the years 2017 and 2018.

The ITI RE did not transact any business since it was given the licence in 2016. The company's board decided to surrender the licence to IRDAI in 2019 and the latter cancelled the same.

Incidentally the first Chairman of IRDAI N.Rangachary had recently said it is time to do a review of IRDAI.

"It is time to do a review of IRDAI. It is more than two decades since IRDAI came into existence. As a matter of fact, every regulatory organisation should be reviewed at regular intervals," Rangachary told IANS.

It was Rangachary who had paved the regulatory path for the sector as the first head of IRDAI.

"There should be a review committee to go into all regulatory aspects. It is time to see whether the original goal of forming the regulatory body has been fulfilled and if not, the action to be taken," Rangachary suggested.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)
Kuwait City, Dec 21 : Kuwait imposed new travel restrictions to contain the spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant, the country's Centre for Government Communication said.

According to a decision made by the Kuwaiti government on Monday, incoming passengers will be required to conduct a PCR test within 48 hours before arrival and take home quarantine for 10 days, while the decision is effective as of December 26, reports Xinhua news agency.

In order to end the quarantine, they must conduct a PCR test after 72 hours of quarantine, the centre said on Twitter.

Starting from January 2, 2022, if nine months have passed since the second dose of vaccination, the person is considered not fully immunised and cannot travel unless he or she takes a booster dose of approved vaccines, it said.

On November 27, Kuwait decided to suspend direct flights with nine African countries over the new Omicron variant.
Seoul, Dec 21 : North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ranked the third most searched politician by internet users worldwide this year, data showed on Tuesday.

Online searches for Kim totaled a monthly average of 1.9 million, behind US President Joe Biden, who topped the list with 7 million searches, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson with 2 million, according to German data analytics firm Statista.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel ranked fourth with 1.4 million searches, reports Yonhap News Agency.

The most searched keyword related to the North Korean leader this year was "weight loss", separate analysis by Google Trends found.

In June, the 37-year-old Kim appeared at a politburo session appearing to have lost a significant amount of weight, raising speculation about his health and sparking keen public interest.

South Korea's state intelligence agency told lawmakers in October that Kim has lost around 20 kg from a weight of about 140 kg but appears to have no major health problem.
Seoul, Dec 21 : North Korea's military is conducting a wintertime exercise, as South Korea and the US are closely monitoring related moves, Seoul's defence authorities said on Tuesday.

"We believe that wintertime drills by North Korea's military are under way," Yonhap News Agency quoted Col. Kim Jun-rak, the spokesperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), as saying to the media.

"(We) are keeping a close watch on related activities while maintaining close cooperation between the intelligence authorities of South Korea and the US," he added.

The North usually kicks off a regular military training in December, which continues through early spring often involving artillery firing drills.
Srinagar, Dec 21 : The proposed increase in the Assembly seats by six in the Jammu division and one in Kashmir division by the delimitation commission has evoked sharp criticism from Valley centric political parties.

In the erstwhile Assembly, Jammu division had 37 and Kashmir division 46 seats while the Ladakh region had 4.

As proposed by the delimitation commission headed by Justice (Retired) Ranjana Prakash Desai, the new J&K Assembly would have 90 seats, 47 for Kashmir division and 43 for Jammu division.

The commission has proposed to keep 24 Assembly seats reserved for Pakistan occupied parts of J&K.

It is also proposed to have seven seats reserved for Schedule Castes and nine for the Scheduled Tribes.

While the Jammu centric BJP has said the delimitation commission has undone the long standing injustice with the Jammu division, the Valley centric political parties like the National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peoples Conference (PC), Apni Party and even the CPI-M have called the delimitation commission recommendations 'unacceptable'.

NC Vice President and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has said that the delimitation commission has tailor made its recommendations to suit the political interests of the BJP.

Interestingly, the PC headed by Sajad Gani Lone and the Apni Party headed by Syed Altaf Bukhari have also criticised the delimitation commission recommendations.

Rivals of the PC and the Apni Party have been calling these two parties as the proxies of the BJP to make the right wing party acceptable to the voters in the Muslim dominated Valley.

With nine seats getting reserved for Scheduled Tribes in addition to seven for the Scheduled Castes, the dice would definitely be loaded against Kashmir centric parties.

As is visible on the ground, so far, no political party, including the BJP is likely to achieve the magic number of 46 in a house of 90 so that it can lodge a claim to form the next government in J&K on its own.

The fortunes of the NC and the PDP are heavily loaded against each other, the gain of one of them means the direct loss of the other.

Given the Muslim majority pockets of the Jammu division, the NC and the PDP will have to wait for the next political move of the senior Congress leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad.

If Azad breaks loose from the Congress, as is widely believed in circles close to him, then he would become a 'king maker' of sorts in the days to come in J&K.

Azad has general public support and goodwill among the people of the Jammu division, but among the voters in Kishtwar, Doda, Ramban and also Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu division, he has significant political support.

If he decides to float a separate political party and throw his hat in the arena, then the chances of the NC and the PDP getting seats in the Jammu division become bleaker.

Voters in Kashmir are expected to vote for local candidates who generate goodwill among the people and not because of the legacy of old political parties like the NC.

The BJP has been pushing for its agenda to have a chief minister from the Jammu region to break the longstanding practice of having one from the Valley.

If the new Assembly throws up a fractured mandate with none of the major political parties getting enough seats to stake claim to power on its own, dark horses like Azad, Sajad, Bukhari, etc., could call the shots by pledging support to the front runners.

In a nutshell, the proposed increase of six seats in Jammu division and one in Kashmir has once again driven a wedge between the Valley centric and the Jammu centric parties.

This time it appears that sauce for the gander might not be sauce for the goose in J&K.
Kochi, Dec 21 : The Kerala High Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea challenging the picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Covid vaccine certificates and imposed a fine of Rs one lakh on the petitioner.

Justice P.V. Kunhikrishnan said: "This is a frivolous petition filed with ulterior motives and I have a strong doubt that there is political agenda also to petitioner. According to me, this is a publicity oriented litigation. Therefore, this is a fit case that is to be dismissed with a heavy cost," said the judge.

The petitioner argued that a vaccination certificate was his private space and he has certain rights over it.

He argued that since he had paid for his vaccination, the state has no right to claim the credit by inserting a photograph of the Prime Minister in the certificate issued to him.

Incidentally, when this petition came up early this month, the judge asked the petitioner why he was ashamed of having Modi's photo on the vaccination certificates and had pointed out that he was wasting judicial time.
Mumbai, Dec 21 : Actor Rohit Purohit, who plays the role of Dr Vikrant Saxena in the show 'Dhadkan Zindaggi Kii', shares the difficulties he faced in understanding the medical terminologies that are needed for portraying a professional doctor.

The show is based on doctors and it's quite thrilling for an actor to play someone from the medical profession on screen, shares Rohit. "It's intriguing and thrilling. When I started working on 'Dhadkan Zindaggi Kii', it was not easy, unlike some of my earlier shows here things have to be kept quite natural and subtle. It had to look like we're doctors and not actors who are playing the role of doctors. So, basically it was challenging, medical terms were difficult, also how dealing with a patient needs to look authentic was tough." He further says that he finds the title of the show appropriate. "The title, much like the show, is relatable. Since this is a medical drama based on the life of doctors and their struggles, sacrifices and contribution to society, the title goes with the theme." Rohit briefs about his character in the show, saying: "Vikrant, my character in the show, is that of a very egoistic man. He is in love with doctor Deepika (Additi Gupta) but again he has different demands from life, as his upbringing has taught him that men are superior than women and that men are always a step ahead of women." "Vikrant also goes with the flow of society. He is very ambitious and is one of the top surgeons of the country. His transformation is very interesting," adds the actor.

Rohit adds that he does not relate much to Vikrant. "I have never had this thought that men are superior to women as I've seen many strong women in my life, be it my mom, my wife and many others and I know what they can do. But yes, I'm ambitious like Vikrant is," he concludes.
Beirut, Dec 21 : Visiting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that Lebanon is at the centre of all strategies and efforts of the world amid the multiple crises in the country.

"Lebanon is today at the centre of all our strategies and efforts, both at the level of the Secretariat and at the level of the different agencies that are cooperating with the Lebanese authorities," Guterres said during a meeting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the Lebanese cabinet at the Grand Serail on Monday.

The Secretary-General emphasized the importance of adopting unified strategies among the UN and Lebanese leaders that are aligned in pursuit of a stable peaceful Lebanon to offer hope and opportunity to all its people.

Guterres noted that the UN stands ready to support Lebanon in its negotiations with international financial institutions to encourage them to provide the maximum possible support for the country.

For his part, Mikati said that Lebanon urgently needs more aid, especially for a cash assistance program for hundreds of thousands of families.

He asked for the help of the international community to facilitate the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland.

Earlier on Monday, Guterres met House Speaker Nabih Berri, vowing to facilitate negotiations for maritime border demarcation allowing Lebanon to take full profit of the natural resources.

The UN Secretary-General laid a wreath earlier in the day at a memorial for the August 2020 Beirut port blast.

Guterres arrived on Sunday in Lebanon to express solidarity with the people of Lebanon amid the country's multiple crises.
Seoul, Dec 21 : The labour union of South Korea's flag carrier Korean Air Lines Co. on Tuesday lodged a complaint against a female YouTuber who appears in an underwear in a lookbook video before putting on flight attendant uniforms, alleging that she defamed the reputation of flight attendants.

The complaint was filed with Seoul's Gangnam Police Station against the YouTuber who recently triggered a sexual commodification controversy by uploading an eight-minute video in which she appears only in underwear and changes into two uniforms similar to ones used by Korean Air flight attendants, Yonhap News Agency quoted the union as saying.

The union asked police to punish her for violating the special act on punishment of sexual crimes and on charges of defamation, saying Korean Air flight attendants have been frustrated for being subjected to sexual commodification by the YouTuber accused of engaging in obscene acts with flight attendant uniforms on.

The YouTuber posted the lookbook video in her channel on November 2.

She contends in the post: "The clothes worn by me are not the official uniforms of a specific airline, though they look similar. They differ in designs and fabrics." But a Korean Air union official countered her claim, saying: "The colour is the same and her clothes can be easily recognised as Korean Air flight attendant uniforms." The official said Korean Air is also conducting a separate legal review on the case and the labour union will also take legal actions against other similar cases on behalf of its members.
December 21 : Kareena Kapoor Khan, who is currently recovering from Covid-19 and is quarantined at home, is heartbroken as she reacts to sister-in-law, Soha Ali Khans birthday post for Taimur Ali Khan.

On Taimurs fifth birthday, Soha took to her Instagram handle and shared two most adorable pictures of Taimur. In the first picture, Soha can be seen holding little Taimur in her arms, while the second photo featured Taimur playing with his cousin, and Sohas daughter, Inaaya Naumi Kemmu. Sharing the pictures, Soha wrote. "I remember the first time I held you in my arms - the tiniest little bundle of love and joy! And now you are five already - Happy birthday Tim Tim. We are missing you immensely but will see you and celebrate together soon!"

Reacting to the post, Kareena commented, "We are missing all of you (broken heart emojis) very soon (fingers crossed emojis)." Kareena is away from Taimur and Jeh as she is in isolation after she tested positive for Covid-19.

Soha also shared a super cute birthday card made by Inaaya for her Tim Bhai.

Earlier, Kareena shared a birthday post for her son. She had shared a video of her tiger Taimur taking his first steps. Along with the post, the actress wrote, "Your first steps your first fall... I recorded it with so much pride. This isnt your first or last fall, my son, but I do know one thing for sure you will always pick yourself up, take bigger strides, and march along head held high... 'cause you are my tiger...Happy Birthday my heartbeat... My Tim Tim no one like you mera beta (my son). #HappyBirthdayTimTim #MeraBeta #MyTiger."

Meanwhile, on the work front, Kareena Kapoor will be seen next in Laal Singh Chaddha opposite Aamir Khan. Helmed by Advait Chandan, the film will hit the theatres on April 14, 2022. The film is an official remake of the 1994 Hollywood blockbuster Forrest Gump. Kareena had shot a portion of the film while she was pregnant with Jeh. Kareena has turned a producer and has signed a new film with Hansal Mehta. She will co-produce the venture with Ekta Kapoor.
London, Dec 21 : The protection offered by the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, named Covishield in India, declines after three months of receiving two doses, according to a study published in the journal The Lancet.

The findings suggest that booster programmes are needed to help maintain protection from severe disease, said a team of researchers led by University of Edinburgh.

The researchers from Scotland and Brazil analysed data for two million people in Scotland and 42 million people in Brazil who had been vaccinated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine which uses an adenovirus, specifically a common cold virus from chimpanzees, to train the immune system to fight the virus.

In Scotland, when compared with two weeks after receiving a second dose, there was approximately a five-fold increase in the chance of being hospitalised or dying from Covid-19 nearly five months after being double vaccinated.

The decline in effectiveness begins to first appear at around three months, when the risk of hospitalisation and death is double that of two weeks after the second dose, the experts said, while the risk increases three-fold just short of four months after the second vaccine dose. Similar numbers were seen for Brazil.

"Vaccines have been a key tool in fighting the pandemic, but waning in their effectiveness has been a concern for a while. By identifying when waning first starts to occur in the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, it should be possible for governments to design booster programmes that can ensure maximum protection is maintained, said Professor Aziz Sheikh, Director of the University of Edinburgh.

"If eligible for a booster and you have not yet had one, I would highly recommend that you book one soon," he added.

The study also estimated vaccine effectiveness at similar fortnightly intervals by comparing outcomes of people who have been jabbed with those who are unvaccinated.

However, the experts warned that the figures should be treated with caution because it is becoming harder to compare unvaccinated people to vaccinated people with similar characteristics, particularly among older age groups where so many people are now vaccinated.

Meanwhile, a recent study led by Pune-based BJ Government Medical College (BJMC) and Sassoon hospital revealed high levels of protection (seroprevalence) against Covid-19 in over 500 healthcare workers even three to seven months after taking two doses of Covishield.

The study also showed that the antibody prevalence was above 90 per cent and immunity level was also high months after completion of two doses, suggesting no need for booster doses.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Union Minister of State for Law and Justice and Agra MP S.P. Singh Baghel on Tuesday asserted that the Congress is nowhere and cannot reach even double digit in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

In an exclusive interaction with IANS, Baghel put forth his views on the high-decibel campaign in the state.

On Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra trying to strengthen the party base by addressing rallies, the Minister said: "Congress is nowhere in Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. I do not think that the Congress can even go to the double digit." "Congress leader Rahul Gandhi even lost his traditional seat Amethi... Whenever Priyanka Gandhi flew from Delhi, she used to land at Fursatganj. She visited constituencies of her brother and mother several times... Rahul had to go to Kerala's Wayanad as he knew that he will not be able to win in Amethi." In the 2017 Assembly polls, the BJP formed the government in the state winning 312 seats, Samajwadi Party bagged 47, BSP 19 while Congress could get only seven seats.

Taunting at Akhilesh Yadav's rallies drawing massive crowd, Baghel said: "Crowd does not convert into votes." "Akhilesh's supporters from 15-20 districts are reaching along with him at all the rallies. Around 15-20 aspirants for tickets are there in each Assembly seat, so they come for show of strength. In 2019 Lok Sabha polls also, SP's rallies drew huge crowds but they even lost their family seats," he said.

When asked about BJP's position in the state, he said that the party will reach out to people and tell them about state government's welfare schemes, post which "Lotus" (BJP's party symbol) will definitely bloom in Uttar Pradesh.

On the question of large scale disenchantment in rural areas, Baghel said, "In 2014, winning 73 seats was a big achievement. In 2017, we got full majority in state polls, and we got the same support of the people in urban as well as rural areas in 2019 as well." When asked if he is bothered with Akhilesh stitching alliances with smaller parties, the BJP leader said that in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls also, the SP, the BSP and the RLD fought together, but what was the result? Then RLD chief Ajit Singh and his son Jayant Choudhary had to bite the dust on their home turf.

"Besides, Akshay Yadav and Dharmendra Yadav also lost in their family bastion -- Firozabad and Badaun. These were the seats which the SP was winning for a long time. That's why we are not worried about any political party forming alliances in Uttar Pradesh," he said.

Baghel further said: "Akhilesh Yadav is playing psychological game by poll tie-ups. However, if the SP has Om Prakash Rajhbhar, we have Cabinet Minister Anil Rajbhar. If the SP has Anupriya's mother Krishna Patel, we have tall leaders like Anupriya Patel herself and Santosh Gangwar." In 2012 Assembly polls, the SP had bagged 224 seats, the BSP 80, the BJP 47 while the Congress 28.
Wellington, Dec 21 : The New Zealand government on Tuesday urged parents and caregivers to consider protecting their children aged 5 to 11 against Covid-19 with a suitable jab to be unveiled in January next year.

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said that Cabinet has agreed with the advice from the Technical Advisory Group off the back of Medsafe approval to vaccinate children between 5 to 11 years old, reports Xinhua news agency.

"A key focus of the government is to keep everyone in New Zealand safe from the Covid-19 pandemic," Hipkins said.

According to the Ministry of Health, the children vaccination program will begin from January 17, 2022.

There are 476,000 children between the mentioned age group nationwide, who will become eligible to get their first dose from this date, and their second dose at least eight weeks later.

However, the interval can be safely shortened to a minimum of 21 days if needed, the Ministry said.

The New Zealand government strongly recommends parents have their children vaccinated.

"In the most recent outbreak, 24 percent of cases have been aged 11 or under. The government is strongly encouraging parents to have their children vaccinated against Covid-19, but I want to be clear that this is a choice for parents," Hipkins added.
Mumbai, Dec 21 : In a strange development, the government-backed private sector IDBI Bank Ltd. here has revealed three different figures of the alleged loans defaulted by a well-known diamantaire group, surprising banking and diamond industry circles.

Late on Monday, the IDBI Bank Ltd. in a regulatory filing, clarified an article by IANS (December 20) that the diamantaire group had allegedly defaulted on loans worth around Rs 6,710 crore.

The IDBI Bank Ltd. further said that the company, Sanghavi Exports International Pvt. Ltd., an NPA with the bank, plus other group entities and its promoters/directors/guarantors, only has a current principal outstanding of Rs 16.72 crore and the "account is fully provided" with action taken to recover the dues.

On Tuesday (December 21), the IDBI Bank Ltd. issued a fresh public notice stating that the outstanding amount from the same Group is around Rs 67.13 crore.

"The outstanding amount has been wrongly published on 19-12-2021. Notice of default with correct outstanding is published," said the new public notice on Tuesday, confounding the banking fraternity.

The IDBI has revealed three contradictory figures of outstanding amounts in just 72 hours, "raising questions over which is the real figure", said banking expert and All India Bank Officers Association leader Vishwas Utagi.

"This is outrageous... A big bank backed by the Centre and LIC cannot make such blunders, with the upcoming LIC IPO. They must clarify which of the three outstanding amounts' figure is genuine? If indeed any recoveries are made, they must publicly state when, how much, and into which account," Utagi demanded.

Slamming the 'confusion' and differing statements, Shiv Sena's Bhartiya Kamgar Sena GS, Dr. Raghunath Kuchik, accorded the Minister of State (MoS) status, asked how -- under such circumstances -- the government can think of going ahead with the LIC IPO? "For years, the LIC has been taking care of organised-unorganised labour. I urge the Centre not to put the common man's money, savings, and confidence into jeopardy till this issue of the IDBI Bank-diamantaire group is properly probed and resolved," said Dr. Kuchik, who is the crucial Maharashtra Minimum Wages Board Chairman.

Interestingly, the public notices of December 19 and December 21 also clearly mention the outstanding foreign currency component -- US$ 161088 -- which does not appear in the SEBI declaration made by the IDBI Bank Ltd.

The bank's SEBI filing stated that "the account is fully provided", while the two public notices have warned the masses against any kind of dealings with the properties of the Promoters/Directors/Guarantors as huge dues are to be recovered from them.

Interestingly, the IDBI Bank Ltd's spokesperson and its official communication agency did not respond to a questionnaire sent on December 20 by IANS.

One of the Group members, Aagam Sanghavi -- who is named by the IDBI Bank Ltd. in its public notices -- also strongly denied the bank's figures of default (December 19 public notice), and a woman purportedly belonging to the family declined to reveal her fully identity, but contended that the amount in the public notice (December 19) was a "typo" and warned of legal consequences.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in)
Belagavi : , Dec 21 (IANS) The Karnataka Congress has announced that the party will take out a ten-day padayatra demanding implementation of the Mekedatu project in the state. The yatra will begin from January 9 from Mekedatu and end on January 19 in Bengaluru.

Neighbouring Tamil Nadu is opposing the project.

Congress State President D.K. Shivakumar and Opposition leader Siddaramaiah made this announcement in a joint press conference on Tuesday.

"The padayatra is going to be historic. It would begin from January 9 at 9.30 a.m. and reach Bengaluru in five days, a distance of about 80 km. Later, the Padayatra will be varried through various assembly constituencies within Bengaluru. I call upon people from all walks of life to participate in the historic padayatra," he urged.

"The project is being implemented on our land, with our money and utilising our water. But, two states will be benefited. There should not be any objection. The cost of the project could be recovered from the generation of 440 mega watt electricity," he stated.

Siddaramaiah explained that the Mekedatu project was started in 1968 when Congress was in power in the state. Since the matter was in the court, the project could not take off. "When I became Chief Minister in 2013, a Detailed Project Report (DPR) was prepared. The proposed expenditure of the project is Rs 5,912 crore. When Shivakumar was the Irrigation minister, the blueprint for the project was also prepared in 2018, the proposed expenditure for the project became Rs 9,500 crore," he said.

This is a project to provide drinking water to Bengaluru and surrounding villages. As many 66 TMC water which is going waste would be stored in the balancing reservoir and would be utilized for drinking water purposes and electricity generation. As much as 30 per cent people of Bengaluru are not having proper drinking water supply. To cater to their needs, it is inevitable to implement this project. Along with Bengaluru, Chikkaballapur, Kolar, Bengaluru Rural regions will also benefit from the project, he explained.

The neighbouring Tamil Nadu will also benefit from the project. The water dispute between Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu has ended after the Supreme Court verdict in 2018. The decision has been given that Karnataka should release 177.25 TMC of water to Tamil Nadu.

"Apart from this, Tamil Nadu has no scope for objections on the project as per law," Siddaramaiah stated.

The Green Tribunal has also not objected to the project. The project is not being implemented even as there is no objection; a detailed project report is ready and even as Tamil Nadu does not have any legal right. The respective BJP governments at the Centre and the state should have commenced the work of the project, he questioned.

"If we were to be in power, the project would have been taken up by this time. This BJP government does not have the will to implement the Mekedatu project. The padayatra is being taken up as this project would help 2.5 crore people. The BJP, even after two-and-half-years into power, has taken up no irrigation project. This government is busy in gobbling up 40 per cent commission in all schemes and projects," he charged.

When asked whether the padayatra is a political show off, Siddaramaiah stated that if the ruling BJP starts the work, the padayatra will not be held.
Mumbai, Dec 21 : As 'Ek Mahanayak Dr B.R. Ambedkar' completed two years recently, the lead actors talk about their journey on the show so far. It is based on the life of the architect of the Indian Constitution - Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.

Atharva Karve, essaying young Bhimrao's character, said: "Although the show completed its two years, for me, it seems like the journey has just started. Since the beginning, I have admired this show, and it has been one of my favourite shows. I had never imagined that one day, I would be a part of it and essay the lead character of the young Bhimrao. Essaying a personality of this stature is not easy and a big responsibility." On the other hand, Jagannath Nivangune, who is seen as Ramji Sakpal, Bhimrao's father, shared: "It is undoubtedly a very proud moment for all of us. I am thankful to my director Imtiaz Punjabi who has taken my acting craft a notch higher with his direction. His father imbibed Bhimrao's eagerness to learn and his values. Although Ramji was a strict disciplinarian, he always worked towards the welfare of his children and wife. The show has given all of us immense love and recognition." Narayani Mahesh Varne, who plays the role of Bhimrao's wife, Ramabai, expressed her excitement at being part of the show. "I am on cloud nine today as our show completes two years. It has been a great journey for me, professionally and personally. Portraying Ramabai's character has been an enriching experience, and I had never imagined that I would be playing a significant role in the show one day." 'Ek Mahanayak Dr B.R. Ambedkar' airs on &TV.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Islamabad, Dec 21 : Pakistans successful hosting of the 17th extraordinary session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers in Islamabad in an effort to find ways to save the neighbouring Afghanistan from the ongoing humanitarian crisis, is certainly paving way towards generating a much needed momentum and restructuring of its foreign policy on Kabul, which could impel Islamabad out of the current difficult position it finds itself in.

The OIC Council for foreign ministers has predominantly helped Pakistan showcase itself as one of the driving force behind logical and workable headways for a stable and peaceful Afghanistan under the Taliban rule. The participation of not just the OIC member states, but also from P5 countries in the extraordinary session in Islamabad are being seen as a major achievement of the Imran Khan led-governmenty.

The forum provided Pakistan an opportunity to put forward its foreign policy and priorities for Afghanistan. During the session, Pakistan highlighted the economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and the outflow of migrants, calling on the west and the European countries to not be under any illusion of the impact of migrants, being only on Pakistan.

The forum was also used efficiently to have the Taliban leadership sit patiently and listen to what the rest of the world thinks about them and vice versa. Important concerns and demands of the west which include, rights to jobs, employment and education for females, basic representation for minorities ethnic groups and an inclusive government, have also been expressed in the forum, which again would be beneficial in helping Pakistan be seen more as a progressive facilitator to Afghanistan's stability rather then being an ally in war only.

The Taliban regime on the other hand, has not shown much flexibility in their stance of meeting the demands of the rest of the world. However, they do claim that all demands are being met, adding that it would implement decision as per the interpretations under the Islamic law.

Many Afghans, including some ministers sitting in the current ruling Taliban government, have seen Pakistan's historical standing as per its policy on Afghanistan, seriously negatively.

Former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, in a recent interview, called on Pakistan to stop what he called, propaganda on Afghanistan.

Another minister called Pakistan's intelligence agencies as the enemy of Afghanistan.

It should be noted that anti-Pakistan sentiments prevail among many locals in Afghanistan, who accuse the country for not only supporting the Taliban, but also playing a double game by being an ally to Washington, and allowing them to carry out air strikes in the country, which has claimed thousands of innocent lives in the past two decades of the US-led war on terror in the country.

The Taliban regime is also well aware of the support Pakistan extended to the US to carry out strikes against them in the past.

Taliban, like previous the governments in the country, have a strong opposition to the Durand line, which demarks the long rugged, untapped border between the two countries.

But today, Pakistan looks towards the new Afghanistan as an opportunity to change the narrative and keep its relevance in and for Afghanistan with a renewed focus on becoming the gateway to handling of humanitarian aid, economic crisis and further development in the war-torn country.
Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 21 : The famed Guruvayoor Sree Krishna temple on Tuesday decided to hand over the Mahindra Group gifted brand new SUV limited edition of its latest variant of Thar - a 4 wheel drive, which was received as a gift, to the lone bidder who won the auction last week.

Incidentally, the auction was announced on last Saturday and the base price was also fixed as Rs 15 lakh and when the auction commenced, there was only one bidder Amal Mohammed Ali whose agent Subhash Panicker had come for the auction.

Panicker put his bid at Rs 15,10,000 and with none else registered for the auction, it was won by Ali.

Then arose a confusion as to what if the price was less and the president of the Temple board K.V. Mohandas said the final decision will be made by the director of the board and on Tuesday it was decided to hand over the vehicle to Ali.

Incidentally when Mohandas said the board has to decide, Panicker threatened legal action, if his principal failed to get the vehicle.

The brand new red colour Thar was handed over to the management of the temple last month. Even as initially, Mohandas, said they might use the vehicle for their needs, but it was later decided to put it up for auction.

Amal, a businessman in Bahrain, wanted to gift this 'God's vehicle' to his son who turned 21 and the agent had come willing to bid a maximum of Rs 21 lakh.

Incidentally after the auction was done and it became big news, the temple board received numerous enquiries if the auction could be held online but by then it was too late as it was already done with Panicker threatening legal action.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Less senior IT professionals are losing their jobs after their organisations were hit by hackers in 2021 as compared to previous years, as the demand for cybersecurity specialists remains high and more firms now believe in nurturing and retaining talent rather than handing over pink slips, a new report showed on Tuesday.

There is a positive trend in how organisations respond to cybersecurity breaches globally, according to a Kaspersky study.

In 2021, almost half as many organisations laid off senior IT staff (7 per cent in 2021 compared to 16 per cent in 2018) and senior IT security roles (13 per cent compared to 18 per cent in 2018) if a data breach occurs.

The split of employees that could lose their job as a result of a cybersecurity breach has also changed.

In addition to senior IT and IT security roles, C-level executives are now half as likely to be exposed to dismissals - 10 per cent in 2021 compared to 11 per cent in 2018.

The decreasing trend is also relevant for non-IT senior staff. As a result, the overall split across IT and non-IT, senior and non-senior roles, became flatter than a few years ago, the findings showed.

"The transfer to remote work and processes has put increased pressure on the information security sector. With cybersecurity jobs in such high demand and skilled professionals in low supply, companies are realising the value of senior security executives and the need to plug the talent gap," said Evgeniya Naumova, Executive VP, Corporate Business at Kaspersky.

According to Gartner, 40 per cent of boards will have a dedicated cybersecurity committee overseen by a qualified director by 2025.

With a continuing skills gap in the market, it should be important for organisations to save experts in their positions.

The demand for retaining and nurturing expertise is seen, for example, in budget planning.

Nearly 45 per cent of enterprises report the need to improve the level of specialist security expertise as the top reason to increase their IT security budget.

In fact, this is the second most common reason, followed only by increased complexity of IT infrastructure (49 per cent).

Furthermore, by investing in internal specialists, employers are interested in retaining their knowledge within the company so that employees could leverage their skills in future, the report noted.

"The highest possible level of cybersecurity depends on an adequate strategy, represented by IT security experts," said Sebastian Artz, Head of Cyber and Information Security at Bitkom e.V., Germany's digital association.
Lucknow, Dec 21 : Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary Rajendra Kumar Tiwari has directed commissioners and district magistrates across the state to conduct mock drills at health facilities.

This is designed to assess Covid preparedness in view of an increasing number of Omicron cases in the country and will include availability of beds, equipment, oxygen, ventilators in the state.

"All district magistrates must personally inspect hospitals and take measures accordingly," the chief secretary said.

He said the public address systems and integrated control rooms should also be activated without any delay.

The chief secretary also asked the officials to enforce the fixed protocol for international flights and ensure compliance of masking and social distancing norms. He told them to see to it that people who had not taken any vaccine shots, got one at the earliest.

The chief secretary also reviewed arrangements in the cow protection centres and night shelters. Tiwari asked district magistrates to ensure weekly physical inspection of these places. No human beings and cattle should die due to the cold wave, he warned.

Meanwhile, the chief secretary said that the government had decided to observe 'good governance week' from December 20 to 25 with a view to improving public service delivery.

Commissioners and district magistrates have been asked to ensure that public complaints were disposed of quickly and to the satisfaction of the complainants. He asked the officials to send a report on works that would be done during the good governance week to the department of general administration.
Hyderabad, Dec 21 : ) President Ram Nath Kovind will have southern sojourn here from December 29 to January 3.

The President will stay at Rashtrapati Nilayam at Bolarum in Secunderabad Cantonment.

Telangana Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar on Tuesday reviewed the arrangements for the President's visit and stay. He held a coordination meeting with the officials of various heads of the departments.

The chief secretary directed the officials of concerned departments to work in coordination to make the arrangements in the most perfect way. He directed Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) Commissioner and Secunderabad Cantonment Board CEO to take up road repair works and barricading so that traffic to the Rastrapathi Nilayam flows smoothly.

Somesh Kumar asked the electricity department to ensure 24 hours power supply, the medical department to deploy medical teams and other departments to make arrangements as per the protocol at Rastrapahti Nilayam.

The chief secretary said that the President's visit to Hyderabad should be seen as an opportunity to further enhance the prestige of the Telangana government and the recognition of Hyderabad worldwide. Accordingly, the officials have been directed to coordinate with all the departments to avoid any shortcomings in arrangements and make the President's visit comfortable.

M. Mahender Reddy, Director General of Police, Sunil Sharma, Special Chief Secretary, Energy, Vikas Raj, Principal Secretary, Political, Ravi Gupta, Principal Secretary, Home, Sanjay Kumar Jain, DG, Fire Services, Jitender, Additional DG,A SAM Rizvi, Secretary, Health, Medical & Family Welfare, Anitha Rajendra, MD, TS Dairy Development Corporation and other officials attended the meeting.

Rashtrapati Nilayam is the President of India's official residence in south India. Every year the President spends a few days at the Rasthrapati Nilayam during the winter and conducts official business from the Nilayam.

Constructed during 1860, this building has a total land area of 90 acres. A single-storeyed building, it contains on its premises 11 rooms. It has a dining hall, cinema hall, darbar hall, morning room, dining room, among others.

After Hyderabad acceded to India on September 17, 1949, Rashtrapati Nilayam building was taken over from the Nizam and handed over to the President's Secretariat.

Last year, the President's southern sojourn was cancelled due to Covid-19 pandemic.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Police in Karachi have arrested a man for allegedly damaging statues at a Hindu temple in the old city area of Narainpura, The Express Tribune reported.

The FIR said the man identified as Waleed Muhammad Shabeer attacked the statues.

The complainant, Mukesh Kumar, a resident of the area, said that his wife saw the suspect attacking the idols with a hammer. The area residents present around the temple caught the miscreant and handed him over to the police, the report said.

The Hindu residents staged a protest in the area and outside the police station, demanding the government to provide security.

They also chanted slogans against the attackers, saying they were not feeling secure in the area after the incident, the report said.

"Everyone is under trauma after the incident," said a resident. "We are labourers and very poor people. We do not harm anyone and always pray people will respect our worship places too," he added.

Police and Rangers reached the spot immediately and cordoned off the area.

Instructing the South district's police, Sindh Minister for Minority Affairs Gyanchand Israni said that FIR should be registered and the culprits should be arrested. He said that such incidents create unrest in the society. "We condemn such attacks," he said.

Narainpur is one of the localities of the old town which is known for teeming Hindu population. "Some of our Muslim friends living in the area have also condemned this attack," another resident told The Express Tribune. He also informed that he has not seen such kind of attack before.

It was not clear the motive behind the attack. Police have started probing the incident and assured the Hindu residents of the area that complete security will be provided to them, the report said.

Videos of the broken statues were being circulating on the social media.

Several activists and the politicians also condemned the attack and demanded the government to arrest all the persons involved in the temple attack.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's MNA Kheeal Das Kohistani csaid that one out of two attackers were held by the police.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Trends in India's domestic automobile market are expected to remain 'fluidic' in 2022 due to unpredictable factors, said automaker MG Motor India.

Accordingly, the carmaker cited unpredictable factors such as Covid-19 pandemic, global semiconductor shortage, freight cost amongst others for its 'cautious optimism' for 2022.

In a conversation with IANS, MG Motor India President and Managing Director Rajeev Chaba said: "Currently, the domestic market is witnessing increased demand, but is also impacted by the global semiconductor shortage." "The situation will remain fluidic in 2022 due to unpredictable factors... We are constantly monitoring these factors and aligning our operations to capitalise the best output." According to Chaba, the new normal has set unique challenges for the industry.

"The biggest challenge is to sustain business operations and ensure the financial health of the organisation and its stakeholders." "With the industry having exhibited resilience over the last two years, we are looking towards 2022 with 'Cautious Optimism'." Besides, Chaba cited that the company has witnessed positive consumer sentiment due to pent-up demand.

On a year-to-date basis, the company reported a growth of 56 per cent with retail of 37,723 units (Jan-November, 2021) over 24,152 sold in the same period last year.

"However, the production levels are currently impacted and will remain so in the next quarter due to the global shortage of semiconductor chips." Nevertheless, he exuded confidence that supplies will "optimise" in the coming year.

At present, semiconductors play a critical part in the production of internal combustion engines. They are an integral part of all kinds of sensors and controls in any vehicle.

Lately, the shortage has extended the waiting period along with escalated prices.

"With the usage of technology going up and the advent of 'IoT' and '5G' in India, the demand for semiconductor chips is increasing." "However, we are working towards fulfilling our delivery commitments to customers and expect supplies to optimise by the first quarter in the coming year." Besides, the company will focus on meeting the Centre's guidelines for the production linked (PLI) scheme for the auto sector by localising parts for its next EV.

The plan is to assemble batteries as well as other parts in India to drive down the cost.

"The car will be customised to meet the Indian regulations. Further, to meet the Government's guidelines for the production linked (PLI) scheme, we will undertake maximum possible localisation, which would include battery assembly and other parts." "With all these initiatives in place, we expect EVs to contribute over 20 per cent to our overall sales in the next two years." Currently, 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).

ZS EV continues to attract customers in India as we average 700 bookings per month.

"The new EV, which will be a futuristic car, will be brought to the Indian market in the next financial year." "Based on the global platform, the new EV will be developed and expected to be priced between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 15 lakh addressing the mass segment." Currently, the company offers Hector, ZS EV, and Gloster in India.

(Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in)
Chennai, Dec 21 : The Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) party floated by actor-turned-politician Kamal Hassan on Tuesday said the linking of Aadhaar card with the voter identity card should be the first step towards removing bogus voter cards.

In a statement issued here, the party said it had suggested several measures to the Election Commission earlier on the removal of bogus voter identity cards like verifying Aadhaar card or mobile number of the voters.

The MNM said it had found during the Tamil Nadu Assembly polls that a person was having several voter identity cards and had voted in various polling booths.

The party said though it also shares the doubts raised by opposition parties on linking Aadhaar card with the voter identity cards, it is the first step towards removing the bogus voter identity cards.

The party also urged that those who are interested in democracy should strive to remove the bogus votes from the voters list.
Kannada actress Parul Yadav kick starts conversation to pave way for more Indian films to be shot in Greece. Image Source: IANS News

Kannada actress Parul Yadav kick starts conversation to pave way for more Indian films to be shot in Greece. Image Source: IANS News

Kannada actress Parul Yadav kick starts conversation to pave way for more Indian films to be shot in Greece. Image Source: IANS News

Kannada actress Parul Yadav kick starts conversation to pave way for more Indian films to be shot in Greece. Image Source: IANS News

Bengaluru, Dec 21 : Kannada actress Parul Yadav is currently on a trip to Greece where she met with Greek Minister for Development and Investment Adonis Georgiadis to explore ways to enhance the number of south Indian films shot in the European country.

Parul, who actively works in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films, hit the spotlight with her movie 'Butterfly' - an adaptation of Kangana Ranaut's 'Queen'.

The actress was in discussion with the minister about tapping into Greece as a possible location to shoot her upcoming movies. She also discussed with local authorities on potentially opening a new market for south Indian films. Yadav and Georgiadis discussed a host of matters on film production and shoots.

The Ministry of Development and Investment tweeted, "The Minister of Development and Investment Adonis Georgiadi met with Parul Yadav and Manu Kumaran. The focus of the discussion is investments in Greece and the possibility of creating a film production studio." The actress explained, "It's too early to say anything specific but yes Greece is a place that south Indian movies haven't explored much and any collaboration would be good for both parties. The minister Adonis Georgiadis is really impressive and forward-thinking in his approach. His command over the details of the various possibilities for collaboration is truly amazing."
Mumbai, Dec 21 : 'Uncharted' starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg will be arriving in theatres on February 18 in India.

The film, directed by Ruben Fleischer with screenplay by Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, with a story by Judkins, will be released in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu across India.

Sony Pictures India recently made an announcement with regards to the film's release on their social media as they shared the film's poster and wrote, "The race for the greatest treasure never found begins in #UnchartedMovie, starring @TomHolland2013 and @MarkWahlberg, exclusively in movie theaters February 18. Releasing in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu." The film serves as an origin story and prequel to the video games of the same name and follows the journey of Nathan Drake played by Tom Holland on his first treasure hunting adventure with his partner Victor Sullivan played by Mark Wahlberg as they set out on the hot pursuit of "the greatest treasure never found." The film that went into development as early as 2008, has faced numerous roadblocks to its release. Finally, it will see the light of day first with UK release on February 11 followed by its worldwide release on February 18.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Apple has started assembling its new flagship iPhone 13 in India, as the tech giant prepares to manufacture/assemble its top-of-the-line smartphones in the country.

Industry sources told IANS on Tuesday that iPhone 13 is being assembled on trial basis at the Foxconn plant in Chennai, in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of 'Make in India'.

Foxconn is the company's largest manufacturing partner globally.

The 'make in India' iPhone 13 will be available in the domestic market, as well as for exports from the country by early next year, the sources said.

Apple generally begins assembling new and environment-friendly iPhones in India after three-four month of their global and domestic launch.

Apple is reportedly ramping up production of iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other devices in India and Vietnam to end its dependence on China.

The tech giant is already assembling its highest-selling models iPhone 12, iPhone 11 and XR in India, along with iPhone SE, 7 and 6S.

Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017 with iPhone SE.

The Apple iPhone 13 series for which pre-orders were thrown open in India on September 17, received a record response.

iPhone 13 had grabbed 3 per cent market share in Q3, and the newly-launched series was set to break all records in the festive quarter (Q4) in the country.

Apple registered a whopping 150 per cent growth (on-quarter) for iPhones in the July-September period (Q3) in India, shipping over 1.53 million units in the country, as per insights from market research firm CyberMedia Research (CMR).

On the year-on-year (YoY) front, iPhones registered a 28 per cent growth.

For the entire year, iPhones are estimated to have 3.5 per cent market share in India.

The iPhone 13 starts at Rs 79,900 for 128GB storage, Rs 89,900 for 256GB and Rs 1,09,900 for the 512GB option.
Seoul, Dec 21 : Hyundai Motor Group raised its global electric vehicle (EV) sales target for 2026 to 1.7 million units from 1 million units, its chief executive has said, underscoring the automaker's push to meet the growing EV demand.

Hyundai Motor CEO Chang Jae-hoon made the remark in an interview with the US-based Automotive News published on Tuesday, saying that the company will double the EV lineup to at least 13 models by 2026.

"That's very ambitious. Next year, we expect to sell about 220,000 EVs around the world for Hyundai and Genesis, which is about a 56 percent increase over what we expect this year," Chang said.

The updated sales target combines the sales from Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Corp, and Hyundai Motor's independent premium brand Genesis, according to Chang.

Prior to the revision, Hyundai had set the global EV targets at 5,60,000 units by 2025 and Kia at 5,00,000 units by 2026, reports Yonhap news agency.

Chang said that the automaker has been aggressive in its electrification plan toward carbon neutrality, and how to bring the transition faster is one of its goals.

"In 2035, there will be 100 per cent carbon neutrality in Europe. That will be followed by major markets like the US. We are going to keep this pace around the world," he said.

Regarding the US market, Chang said that Hyundai is shortening the production development schedule to have more EVs by 2025-2026, adding that it needs to procure 50 per cent of the total sales from EVs by 2030.

"We see a clear signal from the market that demand will be increasing ... there is a big momentum in how customers feel about EVs ... and the Biden administration is also driving more eco-friendly EV policies," he said, according to Automotive News.
Puducherry, Dec 21 : Senior leader of the Congress party and former Chief Minister of Puducherry, V. Narayanasamy called for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention on the issue of arrest of Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu by Sri Lanka.

Narayanasamy said that the Prime Minister must intervene in the issue and settle this once and for all.

In a statement on Tuesday, the former Puducherry Chief Minister said that the arrest of fishermen from Rameswaram region of Tamil Nadu and impounding their vessels was the latest of such incidents that had happened last week.

The former Chief Minister said that Indian fishermen mostly from Tamil Nadu and Karaikkal regions were being repeatedly apprehended and their vessels seized on false charges of transgressing international waters. He said that the Indian fishermen were very much within the Indian waters.

Narayanasamy alleged that the Modi government is not intervening in the issue of Tamil fishermen being regularly harassed by the Sri Lankan Naval and marine authorities.

He also alleged that the Puducherry government was not performing for the past seven months and added that Chief Minister N. Rangaswamy was a major failure and added that the BJP failed the people of the Union Territory who had elected it and the AINRC combine replacing the Congress.
December 21 : Interior designer Gauri Khan, wife of Shah Rukh Khan, on Tuesday received a Christmas gift from their friend, filmmaker Farah Khan. Taking to her Instagram stories, Gauri shared a picture of the note that came from Farahs gift and reacted to it.

Farah's handwritten note read as, "Merry Christmas! We are sending you our favourite snack, these yummy cherries from Chile that we received from our secret Santa. Let's celebrate the joy of Christmas together and we hope that you love these Chilean cherries as much as we do. Love, Farah, Czar, Anya, Diva." Czar, Anya, and Diva are Farah and her husband Shirish Kunder's triplets. Gauri shared the note and tagged Farah Khan. She also added the hashtag, cherries from Chile.

Image Source: Instagram/gaurikhan Gauri Khan gets Christmas gift from Farah Khan

Last week, a day after Aryan Khan got relief from the Bombay High Court in his bail condition, mom Gauri Khan shared a post where she was seen back at work.

Gauri shared the work-related post on her Instagram handle, and netizens as well as her Bollywood friends overwhelmingly welcomed her back on social media. Both Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri Khan were away from the social media ever since Aryan was arrested in the drug case in October.

In her first social media post after her son's bail, the celebrity interior designer expressed her excitement about a new project in Hyderabad. Within a few hours, Gauris Instagram post was flooded with welcome back comments. Reacting to the post, Farah Khan had commented, "So good to see you back at work, Gauri."

Aryan Khan, who was released on bail last month after 26 days in the jail, has been granted relief from appearing for weekly attendance before the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).

Latest updates on Christmas 2021
Belagavi, : Dec 21 (IANS) Karnataka government on Tuesday announced restrictions on new year celebrations in the wake of prevailing Covid situation in the state.

At Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that the decision has been taken at a high-level meeting with authorities and Covid expert committee members who attended the meeting through video conferencing.

"The usual large gatherings at M.G.Road, Brigade Road and surrounding areas in Bengaluru has been banned this time. Large gatherings are also banned at any place across the state for new year celebrations," he stated.

As for as clubs, pubs are concerned, DJ music, special events are not allowed. The entry has been restricted to 50 per cent capacity. Large scale parties are also not allowed anywhere in the state, he maintained.

Bommai further said that this applies to the apartment premises also. The resident welfare association's must see to it that there are no large gatherings and parties on their premises. The entry is allowed only for those who have been administered with two doses of Covid vaccination.

The rules will be applied from December 30 to January 2. During the Christmas celebrations, mass gatherings are not allowed outside the premises and the prayers inside the church are allowed and church authorities should ensure social distancing, Bommai explained.

The state health department is worried over detection of 19 cases of Omicron variant in the state. The cases are reported in districts other than Bengaluru and health machinery is on firefighting mode. Fortunately, all Omicron patients are asymptomatic and recovering well.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has informed the Delhi High Court that it has total funds worth Rs 5,800.93 crore available with them, as on December 17, 2021.

The DMRC has stated its fund position in an affidavit filed with the Delhi HC.

The fund position of DMRC, as per its own affidavit, clearly exhibits its ability to pay the arbitral award to Reliance Infrastructure.

The DMRC has already deposited Rs 1,000 crore in an escrow account with the Delhi HC, as per the directions of the court in its last hearing on December 6, 2021.

The DMRC has to pay an arbitral award of around Rs 7,200 crore to Reliance Infrastructure subsidiary Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd (DAMEPL).

The Supreme Court had upheld the arbitral award of Rs 7,200 crore in favour of DAMEPL, on September 7, 2021.

The next hearing on the execution petition filed by DAMEPL is scheduled for Wednesday i.e. December 22, 2021.

In the last hearing on December 6, the Delhi HC had directed the DMRC to file an affidavit with regard to the total amount payable along with interest, as per the award.

Over 6 hearings have taken place so far on the Execution Petition of DAMEPL, to enforce the Supreme Court's Rs 7,200 crore money-decree against DMRC, and yet DMRC has not come up with any clear commitment/plan to make the payment.

In the meantime, the delay in the payment of award by DRMRC, a govt of India undertaking, is putting an additional interest burden of Rs 2.0 crore per day on the taxpayers' money.

The delay by DMRC, since the pronouncement of the award by the SC on September 9, has already cost the government exchequer an additional interest of over Rs 200 crore, as of date.

According to legal sources, the whole conduct of DMRC is also in gross violation of the Rule 227A of the General Finance Rules (GFR), issued by the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, on October 29, 2021, which clearly states that in cases where Ministry/Department has challenged the arbitral award and the award money has not been paid, 75 per cent of the arbitral award (which may include interest up to date of the award) shall be paid by the concerned Ministry/Department to the contractor/concessionaire.

In addition to that, "General Instructions on Procurement and Project Management" issued by the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, on October 29, 2021 emphasize that appeals are sometimes resorted to by the government officials to postpone the problem and defer personal accountability and such casual appealing in cases has resulted in the payment of heavy damages/ compensation/ additional interest cost, thereby causing more harm to the exchequer.

The instructions clearly state that officials responsible for not adhering to the Rule 227A of the GFRs would be held personally accountable for the additional interest arising, in the event of the final court order going against the entity.

Based on the Instructions, personal accountability would have to be fixed on the concerned DMRC officials.

It is learned that, out of the money-decree of over Rs 7,250 crore against DMRC, Rs 2,945 crore is the principal amount and the remaining Rs 4,305 crore are the pre-award and post-award interest.

The DMRC has been utilizing the Project Assets constructed/installed by DAMEPL and the Project revenues ever since July 2013.

DAMEPL had succeeded in the Supreme Court against DMRC, on the issue of termination of the Concession Agreement for the Airport Metro Express Line. The Termination Payment and other compensation, under the arbitral award dated 11.05.2017, were confirmed by the Supreme Court on 09.09.2021. DMRC's Review Petition against this judgement was also summarily dismissed by SC on 23 November 2021.
Bhopal, Dec 21 : Panchayat elections in Madhya Pradesh will have mandatory reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC), said Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday.

Chouhan's statement came while replying to an adjournment notice by Leader of the Opposition in Madhya Pradesh Assembly Kamal Nath on the second day of the winter session on Tuesday.

"Panchayat elections will be held following the reservation policy for OBC community in Madhya Pradesh. The state government will go to the court to oppose the Supreme Court's judgement to stay OBC quota for Panchayat polls in Madhya Pradesh," Chouhan said, adding that he has spoken to the Centre to seek its support on the issue.

On Tuesday, soon after the second day of the winter session began, Kamal Nath moved an adjournment notice to Speaker Girish Gautam for seeking discussion on OBC reservation issue in the state.

During the discussion, both BJP and the opposition Congress accused each other of being anti-OBC. The BJP held the Congress responsible for cancellation of OBC qota in Panchayat elections. "The Supreme Court's judgment on this matter came on your (Congress) petition and hence you should be held responsible for it," said Medical Education Minister Viswash Sarang.

The BJP alleged that senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP for Congress, Vivek Tankha had opposed OBC reservation in the court.

In reply to that, Kamal Nath said that the Congress had approached the Supreme Court only for two reasons -- rotation and reservation in Panchayat elections. Nath alleged that the ruling BJP issued an ordinance to conduct three-tire panchayat elections on the basis of rotation policy of 2014, which was totally against the Constitutional rules.

"Congress never opposed reservation for OBCs. We went to the court only because what you were doing was wrong. Did you speak to leader of opposition before issuing ordinance? Now, the Court gave its judgement clubbing it with the issue of OBC reservation in Maharashtra, why didn't you oppose it?" Nath added.

Nath further said, "It would be better if both- ruling and the opposition unanimously decide to challenge SC's decision. The Congress is ready to extend its support to the government. But, will the state government do it?" Nath asked.

Replying to that, the chief minister said, "MP Government will challenge SC's decision on OBC reservation issue and assured that panchayat elections will be held with OBC reservation."
Russian President Vladimir Putins visit to India on December 6 was important for a variety of reasons. Bilaterally, it helped to address some misgivings that the two countries were drifting apart. Geopolitics and defence had bound the two countries together for decades but the perception had developed that on both counts the relationship was not as strong as before.

Geopolitics was seen as compelling both sides to strengthen partnerships with countries viewed respectively as antagonistic towards them. Russia's ties with the US, always fraught, have worsened to the point of virtual hostility at present. At the same time, India's ties with the US have vastly improved. Russia sees India as drifting steadily into the US orbit at the cost of the traditional independence of its foreign policy. India rightly believes that its increasingly close ties with the US are independent of its ties with Russia and serve the new political, economic and military requirements as we rise as a country and have the ambition to play a larger role in international governance.

Russia is being subjected to multiple pressures by the US and Europe towards its west. India is not seen by Russia as being in the same power league as China as a partner to resist these pressures and maintain its space to act in defence of its interests, both in the UN and outside. India cannot cover Russia's flanks as China can do. India is also not in phase with the development of close China-Russia ties within the Russia-India-China dialogue forum, BRICS and the SCO, as India's own relations with China have deteriorated very sharply. The deepening of Russia-China ties, especially its military dimension in the context of close China-Pakistan ties, is a matter of some concern to India, but we have possibly a better appreciation of Russia's compulsions than Russia has of the dynamics of our improved ties with the US.

Russia's opposition to the concept of the Indo-Pacific and the Quad is the case in point. India has been slow in embracing both, with our relations with China in mind principally, but also Russia to some extent. India cannot objectively count on Russia to counter the Chinese in its expansionist policies in the maritime domain, in our neighbourhood in general and its unilateralism on our territorial disputes. With the US now treating China as an adversary and seeking to counter its maritime expansionism, not to mention reducing dependence on the critical supply chains it controls, India has objective reasons to cooperate with the US to protect shared interests. The US has the capacity to strengthen our maritime surveillance capabilities in the Indian Ocean in ways Russia cannot. With Japan facing Chinese expansionism in the western Pacific and Australia subject to its bullying tactics, the case for Quad has got progressively strengthened in India's calculus. More so, as India's concept of the Quad goes beyond maritime security and covers the domain of new technologies, diversification of critical supply chains, climate change, disaster relief, education and anti-Covid vaccines.

Russia's positions on the Taliban and Pakistan's role in Afghanistan have not been in alignment with ours. This is a sensitive area for us given the ideology of the Taliban, Pakistan's ambitions to oust us from Afghanistan and terrorism related security issues emanating from the Af-Pak region that we face. Russia has not always involved us in discussions it has initiated on Afghanistan, believing that our presence will prevent constructive cooperation by Pakistan. India has also had concerns that the expanding Russia-China strategic ties may lead to Russia accommodating China's strategic interests in Pakistan as part of a give and take involving each other's interests and concerns.

It is in this broad context that Putin's visit was timely. It had become necessary to change the developing narrative of gaps developing in India-Russia ties. This risked narrowing our foreign policy space, including in dealing with the US that remains uncomfortable with our close ties with Russia, especially in the defence sector where its lobbies want it to replace Russia as our principal defence partner.

Putin's gesture in travelling to India, albeit for a few hours, despite pandemic concerns and the immediacy of the Ukrainian crisis has helped to counter the narrative of the two countries inexorably drifting apart. With the first supplies of the S-400 air defence system reaching India in December, India has asserted its fundamental position that it will maintain defence ties with Russia independent of any US concerns, as they serve our vital national interest. During the visit another "significant" new contract for the manufacture of AK 203 assault rifles in India was signed, despite the overhang of CAATSA. Apparently, two further contracts will need to be signed before production can begin. Significantly, this is the first major contract in defence manufacturing in the "Atmanirbhar" framework. The AK 203 will equip our entire armed forces, including the para-military forces eventually. A complete transfer of technology is envisaged. The RELOS agreement on logistics could not be signed as expected, and this is because the Russian side apparently added a para to the already approved text at the last minute. It should be signed at the earliest appropriate occasion. The Kamov-226 contract, already delayed, still awaits finalisation. India is now much more demanding on technology transfer issues.

Apart from the extension of the Defence Cooperation Agreement for another 10 years-from 2021 to 2031, the Defence and Foreign Ministers of both countries held their inaugural 2+2 dialogue just before the Modi-Putin meeting. Notwithstanding CAATSA, Raksha Mantri mentioned India's requirement of closer military cooperation with Russia, expressed concerns about militarisation and expansion of armament in our neighbourhood and the completely unprovoked aggression on our northern border (words intentionally made public to send a message to China that India was raising these concerns with Russia knowing its increasingly close ties with China and the shared membership of the three countries in RIC, BRICS, SCO etc.), adding cryptically that India "seeks partners who are sensitive and responsive to India's expectations and requirements". India has such 2+2 dialogues with the US, Japan and Australia but not with Russia despite our Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership with it. This anomalous situation has now been corrected. That this dialogue to better coordinate our defence and foreign policies has taken place when our relations with China have slumped and its troops are massed on our border has political significance.

Raksha Mantri proposed greater engagements in the Indian Ocean region where Russia's thinking is not in alignment with ours. It remains somewhat inexplicable why despite several discussions between India and Russia at Foreign Ministers level, the reality of Chinese expansionism in Asia where China has encroached into the Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia where Chinese investments are more than four times of that of Russia and China's access to oil and gas of the region reduces the degree of its dependence on Moscow, as well as China's territorial claims on India and resort to aggression of which it has had a bitter past experience, Russia continues to believe that the Indo-Pacific and Quad are America's ploys to create exclusive blocs and draw India into a military alliance against China. Russia still employs the term Asia-Pacific instead of the Indo-Pacific, a term earlier invented by the Americans and which did not include India as part of "Asia".

It has been noticed that Putin himself has been more prudent in his comments on the Indo-Pacific than Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He appears to have been satisfied with Modi's enunciation of the Indo-Pacific concept at the Shangri La dialogue at Singapore in 2018 as an inclusive one and has recognised that India is free to make its choices. Any military alliance between India and the US would no doubt certainly rock bilateral ties seriously. (Interestingly, Russia has not reacted adversely to the western "Quad" of India, UAE, Israel and the US). That, according to Kremlin aide Ushakov, during the Putin-Xi call on December 15 both leaders expressed negative sentiments about the Quad (and AUKUS) is surprising coming from the Russian side.

That Putin briefed Xi on his talk with Modi and evoked the possibility of an RIC summit suggests his concern at the state of India-China ties, the need for Russia to take some initiative to prevent a further deterioration and some signal from Modi that India would not be averse to some form of a Russian effort to sensitise China against its aggressive moves on the Indian border. One cannot envisage a RIC summit unless the status quo ante in Ladakh is restored, and if China were ready to do that, it would much rather take credit directly with India rather than build Russia's diplomatic stature.

On Afghanistan, Russia's own calculations in reaching out to the Taliban and Pakistan have gone awry with the sudden collapse of the Ghani government and the take-over of Afghanistan by the Taliban without resistance. This has derailed the project of an inclusive government in Kabul and raised concerns about the fall out of terrorism and radicalism in Central Asia. This has drawn India and Russian positions closer, as reflected in Putin's public remarks in New Delhi and in the joint statement which also includes a reference to the LeT as a threat. A Permanent Consultative Mechanism on Afghanistan between the National Security Councils of both countries has been established.

Energy cooperation with Russia is set to expand, with more Indian investments in Russian Arctic gas and oil fields. A 2019-2024 Road Map for Cooperation in Hydrocarbons has been agreed. With the Arctic route potentially opening up, the Vladivostok-Chennai maritime corridor, whose feasibility study is being conducted, could well become a major economic Indo-Pacific link between India and Russia. With India ready to make investments in developing Russia's Far East, to facilitate which India has offered a $1 billion credit line, the prospect of boosting the present low level of bilateral trade has improved. Russia cannot but be concerned about next-door China increasing its presence in the region. Consequently, it would objectively favour more Indian presence and involvement. At the coming Vibrant Gujarat event several governors from this region have been invited to participate.

To boost economic cooperation, Russian companies have been invited to participate in 13 key sectors in India, taking advantage of the Production Linked Incentive Scheme, especially in the steel sector. Accepting RuPay and Russia's MIR cards within the national payments structures is being explored, including UPI and the FPS of the Bank of Russia.

Many positives have emerged from Putin's visit, with a sense of assurance that despite being pulled geopolitically in different directions and Cold War-like tensions that have erupted, that both countries have to manage together, some basic understandings between the two countries on the fundamentals of long standing mutually beneficial ties have endurance.

(Kanwal Sibal is India's former foreign secretary and ambassador to Russia. Views expressed are personal and exclusive to India Narrative) (The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Dec 21 : PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz has said that her father and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will soon return to Pakistan.

"Pakistan is his country," she said, Samaa TV reported.

On Tuesday, the Islamabad High Court resumed hearing the Avenfield case. In a media interaction outside the court, she said that her father is desperate to return to the country and will do so soon.

"Imran Khan's time has come to an end. He is stuck under the burden of his own performance and can't stay in power for long," she remarked. She was referring to PTI's recent defeat in the 2021 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Elections, the report said.

Maryam congratulated Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his party for their performance. "JUI-F's win is PML-N's win," she said, promising development for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the upcoming years.

"This is the first time I have seen a government lose one local body election after the other," the politician pointed out. "Khan still has time. He should just leave himself now." Maryam claimed that the National Accountability Bureau is just delaying the case as it has nothing to prove against her. "All the cases against me are fake and based on lies." In July 2018, an accountability court in Islamabad sentenced Nawaz Sharif to 10 years in prison and a fine of eight million pounds was imposed on him in a case linked to the Sharif family's purchase of upscale London flats, the report added.

It said the Sharifs could not legitimately show the money trail for the purchase of the luxury properties in London, mostly in the mid-1990s. A copy of the verdict said the Sharif family had failed to prove a legal source of income for the purchase of the Avenfield apartments.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Ajay Chandra and Sanjay Chandra, the promoters of Unitech realty group, who were arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), in a money laundering case, were on Tuesday remanded to ED custody till December 29 by a special court in Delhi.

Atul Tripathi and Arun Khatri, both Special Public Prosecutors who appeared for the ED, contended that their custodial interrogation is necessary to unearth the conspiracy which was opposed by the defence. After hearing the arguments of both the sides, the court allowed the plea of the ED and remanded Chandra brothers to their custody till December 29.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested promoters of Unitech Ajay Chandra and Sanjay Chandra in a PMLA case on Tuesday. Their arrest was made after permission was granted by the apex court.

The ED had earlier told the apex court that they wanted custodial interrogation of both the brothers.

Sanjay Chandra and Ajay Chandra who were lodged in Mumbai's jail, were brought to Delhi On Monday. Later, both were placed under arrest by the ED.

According to information, Chandra brothers were shifted to Mumbai jail on the allegations that they were allegedly running office from Tihar Jail in Delhi. It was also alleged that Tihar Jail officials were helping Chandra brothers in running office from inside the jail.

The matter reached the Supreme Court and after a long hearing, the court directed the Delhi Police Commissioner to look into the matter. The apex court had also asked to take action if they were found guilty.

Following the top court order, Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana formed a committee to look into the matter. The Delhi Police Commissioner prepared a report which said that around 36 jail officials were allegedly helping Chandra brothers.
London, Dec 21 : The hypothesis that the emergence of new Covid-19 variants could be linked, in some cases, to untreated HIV is "highly plausible", according to South African scientists.

To explore the link, a team of scientists have launched a probe into mutations taking place inside infected people whose immune systems have already been weakened by other factors, including, though not limited to, untreated HIV, BBC reported.

It has already been observed that Covid-19 can linger for many months in patients who are HIV-positive but who have, for varying reasons, not been taking the medicines that would enable them to lead healthy lives.

"Normally your immune system would kick a virus out fairly quickly, if fully functional," Professor Linda-Gayle Bekker, Chief of Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town, was quoted as saying.

"In someone where immunity is suppressed, then we see viruses persisting. And it doesn't just sit around, it replicates. And as it replicates it undergoes potential mutations. And in somebody where immunity is suppressed that virus may be able to continue for many months -- mutating as it goes," she added.

In line with this, the researchers found a South African woman who continued to test positive for Covid-19 for almost eight months, earlier this year, while the virus underwent more than 30 genetic shifts, the report said.

About "10 to 15" similar cases had been found in other parts of the world, including the UK, Professor Tulio de Oliveira, who leads the team that confirmed the discovery of Omicron, was quoted as saying.

"It's a very rare event. But it is a plausible explanation that individuals that are immuno-suppressed can basically be a source of virus evolution," he said.

The link between immuno-suppressed patients and new Covid variants is "a highly plausible hypothesis", said Professor Salim Karim, a leading HIV specialist and former chair of the South African government's Covid-19 advisory committee.

"But it's not proven. We've seen five variants come from four different continents," Karim added.

At the same time, the scientists noted that they are anxious to avoid further stigmatising people living with HIV, both in South Africa -- home to the world's largest HIV epidemic - and globally.

"It's important to stress that people who are on anti-retroviral medication - that does restore their immunity," Bekker said.

But scientists tracking the virus say they hope that concern about a potential link with HIV will spur greater global action at a time when the fight against HIV has been neglected, in some areas, because of the pandemic.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Delhi Police's Special Cell has busted an inter-state firearms syndicate that was spread across four states and arrested two key members of the gang, an official said here on Tuesday.

The arrested persons, identified as Chhote Kumar and Dinesh, both residents of Aligarh, were booked under the stringent provisions of Arms (Amendment) Act 2019.

In this newly incorporated section of the amended Arms Act of 2019, there is a provision of minimum sentence of 10 years of punishment, which is extendable up to life imprisonment and also punishable with fine. The intent of the legislation is to curb the increasing menace of arms trafficking in the country.

Furnishing the details about the operation, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell), Jasmeet Singh, said that in recent past, several illegal firearms syndicates were identified for indulging in supply of arms and ammunition to gangsters, hardened criminals and small firearm traffickers in Delhi-NCR and adjoining states after procuring them from manufacturer-cum-suppliers in Madhya Pradesh.

A team of Special Cell was working on one of these syndicates and on Monday, an information was received that two members of this gang had collected a consignment of arms and ammunition from a supplier in Madhya Pradesh and that both would arrive at a specific spot in Delhi to hand over the firearms to one of their contacts.

Acting on the tip-off, the police team laid a trap and apprehended both the accused -- Chhote Kumar and Dinesh -- and recovered 15 illegal pistols and 30 live cartridges from the duo.

"Eight .32 semi-automatic pistols, 10 live cartridges of the same calibre, seven .315 single shot pistols, and 20 live cartridges were recovered from their possession," the official said.

The DCP informed that both the arrested persons have disclosed to have procured firearms and ammunition from a notorious arms manufacturer-cum-supplier in Khargone, Madhya Pradesh.

"They regularly procured firearms from arms manufacturers in MP and further supplied them to gangsters, hardened criminals and small arms peddlers in Delhi-NCR and adjoining states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan etc. for the last 10 years," the official said.

"During interrogation, the duo further disclosed to have already supplied more than 400 firearms in Delhi-NCR and adjoining states in the last two years. They used to purchase a semi-automatic pistol for Rs 7,000 and a single shot pistol for Rs 1,000, and sold them for Rs 25,000 and Rs 4,000, respectively, to criminals in Delhi-NCR," the official added.
San Francisco, Dec 21 : Elon Musk-owned electric vehicle company Tesla has started to release its 'holiday' software update with TikTok integration in Tesla Theater, several UI changes and more.

According to the auto-tech website Electrek, while Tesla generally pushes new features through software updates whenever it is ready, it is also known for bundling some of those more fun features for a bigger 'holiday update' toward the end of the year.

Tesla Theater, the platform where Tesla integrates streaming apps, is getting a new addition, TikTok, which allows them to watch the short video platform from their touchscreen. To launch, users can tap the Theater icon from the bottom bar and select TikTok while the car is in park.

Along with the Tesla Theater, Tesla also has an 'Arcade' where it ports video games.

In this year's holiday update, the automaker is also adding Sonic the Hedgehog.

With the customisable app launcher, users can drag and drop their favourite apps to any position along the bottom menu bar for easy access. To customise the menu bar, users will have to hold any icon and then drag to reorder.

To adjust climate controls such as heated seats and defrost, tap on the temperature or swipe up from the bottom of the screen, the report said.

The report mentioned that Dark Mode can now be activated manually. And, Tesla has also added a way to automate blind spot camera view, which users can now automatically see a live camera view of your blind spot whenever they activate the turn signal.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Lahore Gymkhana has told its members to ensure that their 'private servants and maids' do not enter the premises, Friday Times reported.

In a notification issued on December 9, the Gymkhana administration said that it was observed that the clause of the Gymkhana rules that bans entry of 'private servants and maids' was being violated.

"Members are therefore requested to please note and ensure that Maids and Servants are not allowed beyond car parking area," the letter said.

It also warned the members that their membership would be suspended in case of violations.

A photo of the said letter went viral on social media, with people terming the ban on helpers a form of 'colonial hangover'.

"Lahore Gymkhana takes elitism to another level. Maids and Servants not allowed. One may be accompanied by a criminal but not maids & servants. Mind you after the promulgation of PUNJAB DOMESTIC WORKERS ACT, 2019, no one can be termed as a servant. Colonial hangover", said a Twitter user.
Hyderabad, Dec 21 : The makers of Pawan Kalyan and Rana Daggubati-starrer 'Bheemla Nayak' have apologised to the fans after they announced the postponement of the movie's release to avert a clash with other big-budget films.

The makers, who were requested to postpone 'Bheemla Nayak' and back off from the Sankranthi race, announced a new release date of February 25 for the movie on Tuesday.

'Bheemla Nayak' producer Suryadevara Naga Vamsi, who took to his social media, wrote, "Apologies to all the fans. Sorry, it was out of my hands. I had to go by our hero @PawanKalyan gari words." "As you'll know he's always inclined to the welfare of this industry," Vamsi wrote.

"I promise you all, this Shivarathri, a storming force will hit the screens! #BheemlaNayakon25thFeb"," he added.

The producer's guild of Telugu movies had a meeting where they discussed the upcoming movie releases.

In order to avert a clash at the box-office, the bigwigs of the Telugu film industry decided to request the makers of 'Bheemla Nayak' and 'F3' to postpone their respective movies.

The reasons quoted for the postponement include the distribution of theatres for the big-ticket movies during Sankranthi, along with other problems related to movie collections.

As 'Bheemla Nayak' is out of the race now, S.S. Rajamouli's 'RRR' and Radha Krishna Kumar's 'Radhe Shyam' will be the two big movies that would compete at the box-office during Sankranthi.
Srinagar, Dec 21 : A joint party of the J&K Police and CRPF came under fire from terrorists at Soura in Srinagar district on Tuesday evening, officials said.

Police sources said the Superintendent of Police, Hazratbal, along with a CRPF team, were conducting checks at a 'naka' point in Soura when a terrorist fired upon them. Nobody was hurt but the team of police and security forces promptly retaliated.

Sources say probably the terrorist got injured during the retaliation but managed to escape.

Police sources said they are following on the vehicle-borne terrorist. Additional forces have reached the spot and an operation has been started to nab the attacker.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Intensifying their ongoing protest over the delay in NEET-PG 2021 counselling, the resident doctors of Delhi's hospitals on Tuesday held a 'Tali, Thali and Phool Wapsi' protest outside the Health Ministry in Nirman Bhawan.

In a symbolic representation, the agitating doctors returned the flowers showered on them for being at the forefront in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic during its peak to the ministry.

Resident doctors' associations (RDAs) across the nation are protesting since November 27 against the multiple postponement of NEET-PG counselling for 2021 and the subsequent admission of the fresh batch of resident doctors in the medical colleges.

The RDAs withdrew all services, including routine and emergency services, from December 17 over their demand of urgent hearing of NEET-PG counselling, which is pending before the apex court.

Earlier, the Federation of Resident Doctors' Association (FORDA) had requested the presidents of all the political parties via a letter to highlight their issues in the Parliament, including the necessity of expediting NEET-PG counselling.

"Around 45,000 qualified doctors who have cleared NEET-PG 2021 are eagerly waiting to join the workforce. The current batch of resident doctors are already overworked and exhausted after dealing with the previous waves of the pandemic. With the threat of a possible third wave looming large, the situation will be distarous for the healthcare sector with bearing on the nation's population," FORDA had said in its letter to the political parties.

Patient care has largely been affected in the city's hospitals, as the doctors' protest entered the fifth day on Tuesday. Earlier, the RDAs had boycotted emergency and routine services in hospitals from December 6.

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Postgraduate) for 2021 was delayed twice, first from January to April, and then to September.

Now the admission process has been delayed due to a dispute over the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) quota.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice on a plea filed by a man who lost his parents in 1984 anti-Sikh riots in the national capital, seeking directions from the city government to provide him a job as per the 2006 circular of the Centre which states the children or other family members of those killed in the 84 riots be provided jobs on compassionate grounds.

Stating the petitioner did not get any reply despite seeking employment from the city government, he also sought compensation for the loss of his income from the date of his eligibility.

Asking the Delhi government to follow the Ministry of Home Affairs order dated January 16, 2006, Justice Rekha Palli issued notice on the petition and allowed four weeks period for filing a counter-affidavit. The court also granted two weeks more time to file a rejoinder.

The court was hearing the plea filed by the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) through Advocates Gagan Gandhi and Mohit Kaushik.

After proper verification of the applicants and on the basis of the evidence on record, employment will be given in such cases, the court asserted. The court will take up the matter again in March next year.
Patna, Dec 21 : Four persons were killed and four others critically injured after a three-wheeler in which they were travelling was hit by a dumper in Bihar's Nalanda district on Tuesday.

The accident took place at Hargawa village around 3 p.m. after the dumper collided with the three-wheeler coming from the opposite direction.

All victims were on board the three-wheeler.

Shibli Nomani, the SDPO of Nalanda (Sadar) said four persons died on the spot. Local residents and police rescued four others trapped inside. They were taken to Sadar hospital in Nalanda where the condition of the injured people are critical.

Following the accident, the driver of the dumper fled the spot. The agitated villagers set the vehicle on fire and blocked the state highway.

In another accident, a youth was killed after he was hit by a speeding bus on NH-139 at Naubatpur on Tuesday noon.

The victim has been identified as Manish Kumar who got married a week ago. He died on the spot.
Hyderabad, Dec 21 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday asked Telangana's BJP leaders to be ready for the state Assembly elections whenever they are held, and work hard to bring the party to power.

The state BJP leaders led by Union Minister for Tourism and Culture G. Kishan Reddy called on Amit Shah in Delhi.

Shah has directed the BJP leadership to educate people about the corruption indulged in the by Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government.

The senior BJP leader reviewed the political situation in the state and gave directions to the state leadership to achieve the goal of bringing the BJP to power.

State BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, BJP national vice president D.K. Aruna, former minister Eatala Rajender, MP D. Aravind, former MPs Vijay Shanti, G. Mohan Rao, Jitender Reddy and others attended the meeting with Shah.

The meeting is likely to give a boost to BJP's efforts to focus on Telangana ahead of Assembly elections in 2023. Shah, however, asked the BJP leaders to be prepared even if the TRS goes for early polls.

The Union Minister asked the state BJP leadership to expose the rice scam and other corruption by the TRS government and suggested that they demand a probe into the same.

Shah also wanted the BJP leaders to effectively counter the allegations being made by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao against the BJP. The Central minister wanted the BJP leaders to prepare an action plan to expose the TRS over the issue of paddy procurement.

The meeting was held a day after the TRS organised state-wide protests against the Centre over 'anti-farmer' policies. The protesters set afire the effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Union ministers.

The meeting also discussed the strategy to counter the allegations by TRS against the Central government over the procurement of paddy.

Stating that the government and party are different, Shah said the party should carry on its activities irrespective of the relations between the state and the Central governments.

The Union Minister also suggested to the party leaders to chalk out programmes to remain in the midst of the people. Referring to the first phase of Bandi Sanjay's 'praja sangrama yatra', he advised him to work out plans to launch the second phase.

After the meeting, Sanjay said they briefed Shah on bad governance, family rule and the attempts by the TRS government to crush dissent by foisting cases against BJP leaders.

Amit Shah also congratulated Eatala Rajender over his victory in the recent by-election to Huzurabad Assembly seat. Rajender had quit TRS and joined BJP after KCR dropped him from the state Cabinet following the allegations of land encroachment.

Shah told BJP leaders that he will visit Telangana for two days after the current Parliament session and will address a few public meetings.

State BJP leaders claim that following its victories in the by-election to Dubbak Assembly seat last year and the recent win in Huzurabad, BJP has emerged as the only viable alternative to TRS.
London, Dec 21 : Matt Smith, who plays the young Prince Philip in the Netflix series "The Crown", and will be seen in the "Game of Thrones" prequel "House of the Dragon", will voice "Superworm", the lead character of the children's book by the same name now being made into an animated film. It will be aired as a Christmas Day special in Britain.

The 30-minute animated film will be narrated by Olivia Colman, who played Queen Elizabeth II in 'The Crown' in 2019-20, but is in the news now for her potentially Oscar-winning lead role in Maggie Gylenhaal's "The Lost Daughter".

Colman, like many parents around the UK, is a superfan, according to 'Variety'. "I love all these books, Julia Donaldson books," Colman said about her "Superworm" assignment. "I have read (them) to my children over the years. And I love watching them when they are on the telly. So I was thrilled that they asked me." A children's book written in 2016 by Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, "Superworm" is about a wriggly caped crusader who finds himself abducted and bewitched by a bling-loving lizard. Donaldson and Scheffler, according to 'Variety', are Britain's answer to Dr Seuss.

Ever since publishing "The Gruffalo" in 1999, the writer-illustrator duo have delighted millions of children with their stories of robber rats, wandering whales and fantastical fish.

In 2009, the UK production company, Magic Light Pictures, turned "The Gruffalo", which is about a little mouse who ventures into a deep, dark wood, into a 30-minute animated special voiced by James Corden, the British host of "The Late Late Show with James Corden" on the American TV network, CBS, and Helena Bonham Carter. It turned out to be the first of nine animated adaptations of Donaldson and Scheffler's works.
Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 21 : President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday said the task of the government while promoting education is to help create the right environment in which the "young minds will be fired with creativity".

"The National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 is a well-planned roadmap to develop an eco-system that will nurture the talent of our young generation. The NEP aims to prepare them for the world of tomorrow, while also equipping them with the best of our own traditions," said Kovind.

The President said this while speaking at the 5th convocation of the Central University of Kerala at Kasargode, located about 500 km from the state capital.

He went on to add that he has had the occasion to discuss the implementation of the NEP with vice-chancellors of central universities and directors of other educational institutions.

"The consensus is that this reorientation of our educational policy was long needed, and that it has the potential to turn India into a hub of knowledge. I believe that the most outstanding feature of the NEP is that it aims to promote both inclusion and excellence. Through its varied curricula, NEP promotes liberal as well as professional education, because each stream of knowledge has a role to play in society and in nation-building," said the President.

He further added the NEP can become instrumental for India to harness and reap the demographic dividend.

"When the younger generation is provided with skills and knowledge required for success in the world of the 21st century, they can do miracles. The 21st century is described as knowledge century. Knowledge power will determine the place of a nation in the global community," added Kovind.

Shifting to Kerala, he said the state being a leading one in the area of learning and education, the Central government has recommended names of three cities from the entire country for being listed in Unesco's Global Network of Learning.

"Out of them two cities are from Kerala. These two cities are Thrissur and Nilambur. Being part of this Global Network supports the achievement of the sustainable development goals, especially the goal of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting life-long learning opportunities for all," said Kovind.

Earlier on Tuesday, the President arrived at the Kannur airport for a three-day trip to Kerala. He was received by Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan among others.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was absent as he is presently undergoing his routine medical check up at a leading hospital at Chennai.

Kovind is expected to attend a function at the Kochi Naval base on Wednesday, and after that he will reach the state capital.

On Thursday, he is scheduled to take part at a programme in the state capital and will return to Delhi on Thursday.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Ahead of the crucial Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday accused the government of hacking the Instagram accounts of her children.

Now, Priyanka's husband Robert Vadra has threatened legal action in the matter.

In an exclusive chat with IANS over phone, Robert Vadra said, "We have the proof of what we are saying. We will definitely take recourse to the law. We believe in the justice system. The way this government is behaving, only legal remedy can stop it. Also, this should not happen to children." "They had created hurdles before as well, which I tolerated for seven years. They made baseless allegations against me, but children should be spared from all this," Robert Vadra said.

Earlier in the day, when asked about phone tapping of opposition leaders, Priyanka Gandhi told the media in Lucknow, "Leave alone phone tapping, the government is targeting my children on social media. My children's Instagram accounts have been hacked. Don't they have any other work?" "Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi go out to campaign and when the government feels that we are reaching out to the people, they adopt one way or the other to harass us. Now they have stooped to such an extent that they are harassing the children... pressure is being created in one way or the other through social media," Robert Vadra said.

Asked when did he realise that the accounts were hacked, Vadra said, "For the last 10 or 15 days, I think, ever since Priyanka started campaigning and people began joining in large numbers." "We took so much time because we first confirmed the matter and then brought it before the media. This is not democracy, this is dictatorship," Vadra added.

When asked if the Congress would be able improve its performance in UP this time, Vadra said, "If EVMs are not tampered with in the elections, then yes, I think Congress will perform better and those who want to see a change will definitely see it. People will come out of their homes and vote for the Congress, but the elections should be free and fair." Does he think the government adopts such tactics during elections? To this, he said, "It's not just me, but people all over the country have doubts. The BJP is winning with very little margin. I think this is everyone's thinking... now I will raise people's voice." On Priyanka Gandhi contesting the elections, Vadra said, "It depends on her, I cannot comment on that. When the time comes, Priyanka and the party will decide." (Mohammad Suaib Khan can be contacted at mohammad.k@ians.in)
Mumbai, Dec 21 : Actor Govinda, who celebrates his birthday on Tuesday, recently did an Instagram Live with RJ Adaa where Ranveer Singh turned up in the audience and took Govinda by surprise.

The '83' actor wrote comments such as "There is no one like chi chi", "Love you chi chi" and "Chi Chi se humara wajood hai (we exist because of Chi Chi)". Taking notice of his comments, Govinda said, "I love Ranveer like no one else, he is the next superstar of the industry. May God bless him. His energy is unparalleled. Words fall short when I see his expression of love for me." Govinda thanked his fans, as he said, "I am blessed, fans have showered their love on the work that I have done through the year - be it my appearances on television or the songs that I have released on my own YouTube channel - I have not only sung but also performed on these - Govinda Style." The actor also made a revelation during the Instagram Live when he said that he penned the lyrics for a lot of his films but shied away from taking credit, "Not a lot of people would know this, but I have written lyrics for a lot of songs of my films but have never taken credit for the same." "During the pandemic time, my fans reached out to me and said that they would want to see more of me - this idea got converted into the YouTube channel and I finally decided to take the digital leap. I am happy with the response and have a bank of songs ready for release in the coming months," the 'Coolie No. 1' actor concluded.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Reliance Brands Limited's investment into Anamika Khanna's AK-OK, says corporate India is finally ready to say it's A-OK to look beyond bridal fashion.

It has been quite a year for Indian fashion with Sabyasachi, Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Malhotra and Ritu Kumar all receiving corporate investments. Most of these labels are known primarily for their bridalwear, a market we all know flourishes in India. Now Anamika Khanna can add her name to this list.

However, her buyout speaks about a shift with the industry. It points to changing consumption styles and a niche sophisticated fashion audience that corporate India sees the need to cater to.

If there is one designer who has defined Indian contemporary fashion, it has to be Anamika Khanna. Her label is over two decades old, and the Kolkata-based designer prefers to stay under the radar, always letting her work do the talking. You can credit Khanna for making the cape a de rigueur part of an Indian women's wardrobe, she gave the dhoti a modern twist and there is still no one who can rival her label's zardozi.

Anamika made clothes that were Indian and yet had a global feel. Sonam Kapoor has worn her label at Cannes several times, and many Indian fashion editors wear her designs while attending fashion weeks in Paris and Milan. Within the industry she is loved; designers ranging from Gaurav Gupta to Masaba Gupta have spoken about her talent, and how she has been an inspiration.

So, a few weeks ago, when Reliance Brands Limited (RBL) announced that they were buying stakes in two homegrown brands Manish Malhotra and Ritu Kumar, rumours were rife that Anamika Khanna was next on their list. What no-one expected was that RBL had its eyes on her three-year-old ready to wear brand, AK-OK.

The timing of this announcement is interesting as it comes hot on the heels of the Tasva launch, the menswear pret label by Aditya Birla Fashion Retail Limited (ABFRL) and Tarun Tahiliani. ABFRL bought a stake in the Tarun Tahiliani label earlier this year. With men's kurtas starting at Rs 1,599, Tasva plans to open 70 stores, taking Tahiliani, a label primarily known for woman's bridal couture into a new market. As the designer himself put it, "it is about complete accessibility of pricing". And the only way fashion can become inclusive is by being more democratic, especially in a country as large as India.

Anamika Khanna though, is clearly still trying to be a little exclusive, as her message is a different one to that of Tasva. AK-OK prices are much easier on the wallet than her main brand -- you can expect to spend Rs 30,000 on an ensemble from this label. So, for many this is still not accessible. The pieces are very much still investment buys made of silks and include embroidery details, with a complete feel of luxury. A better term to describe them would perhaps be diffusion wear.

RBL now owns a 60 per cent of AK-OK, and Khanna will remain at the creative helm. AK-OK was a label, the designer started with her twin boys Viraj and Vishesh, while she was going through some health issues. Unlike her earlier attempts at more accessible fashion, this one seemed to hit all the right style notes. The label is currently available in her own stores, on her own e-commerce website, as well as leading multi brand boutiques.

Says Khanna, "AK-OK is not just another fashion brand, it has the potential to stand for a life-style -- a capsule of beautiful objects that bring joy to the modern, conscious consumer." They are investment buys for the discerning client. The silhouettes are experimental while having more of a lounge feel to them, than her couture label, while staying true to Anamika Khanna's design aesthetic.

Even after this partnership with RBL, the Khannas' are not talking about either the number of stores they will open, nor about pricing, but only about making beautiful clothes, for women of all shapes, sizes and ages. Clothes with an Indian soul one want's to keep forever.

RBL's president-chief executive officer Darshan Mehta has not really spoken about strategy or statics but instead says, "For me what sets this unique brand apart is that it is an outcome of a strong insight from Anamika, bordering on spirituality, of an increasing mindset amongst a tribe of global fashion consumers, 'to do their own thing'. And the brand, through its merchandise, salutes this free spiritedness. The common goal for both partners is to build a brand that evokes strong desire; and the resultant power that AK-OK will have over its followers." While AK-OK may not have the Bollywood glamour of Manish Malhotra, nor the doors and reach of Ritu Kumar, it does have a unique beautiful creative message. The fact that a corporate like Reliance has invested into the brand, speaks of a coming of age of Indian fashion--- that we are looking beyond brand, beyond glamour, beyond weddings. And there is no better note for the industry to end 2021 with.

(The writer Sujata Assomull is an IANSlife columnist. Assomull is the author "100 Iconic Bollywood Costumes" and was the Founding Editor In Chief of Harper's Bazaar, India)
Kolkata, Dec 21 : With the non-existence of the Opposition, it was obvious that the Trinamool Congress will win the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) election but the party made a stunning record of mobilising more than 72 per cent of the vote share in this election.

The data available with the West Bengal election commission shows that the ruling Trinamool Congress has a vote share of 72.1 per cent while the opposition but the Left Front could not reach the double figures even.

While BJP struggled with 9.2 per cent, Congress was reduced to politically insignificant managing only 4.1 per cent of the vote share. Interestingly enough, the Left Front came up to the second spot with 11.9 per cent of the vote share.

However, considering the sharing of seats BJP still managed to retain the second spot with 3 seats while both Congress and CPI-M got 2 seats each.

The Independent candidates who mainly broke away from Trinamool Congress got three seats. Indications are strong that all these three independent candidates might walk back to their old party again. Trinamool Congress alone bagged 133 seats of the 144 Kolkata Municipal Corporation.

In 2015 the ruling Trinamool Congress had won 113 seats -- the highest margin then while BJP had 7 seats and Congress and Left Front had 5 and 15 seats, respectively.

Three seats were won by the independent candidates. Interestingly enough, the BJP went back to its performance of 2010 when it had bagged three seats each. BJP had the best performance in 2019 Lok Sabha when considering the ward wise results, they had led in 22 wards.

Even in the 2021 assembly polls, the saffron brigade had a lead in 10 wards of KMC. It is perhaps the worst performance of the party in recent times.

On the other hand, the Left Front has been witnessing a gradual surge in their vote share since the Assembly by-polls. The Left has been traditionally strong in the rural areas of the state and the hinterland of Kolkata.

But its vote shares did not slip to single digit in the March-April Assembly elections. From Jadavpur (27.57 per cent), Kasba (17.56 per cent), Tollygunge (20.57 per cent), Behala Paschim (20.49 per cent), Behala Purba (13.60 per cent), Shyampukur (10.52 per cent), Maniktala (10.16 per cent) to Kashipur-Belgachia (10.94 per cent), the Left had maintained its double-digit vote share in KMC areas.

Interestingly enough, the Left Front had contested from 128 wards and had won two seats but they are in second place in 65 wards. On the other hand, the BJP had contested in all 144 wards (two candidates later withdrew), Though they have won in three seats - one more than the Left Front but they are in second position in 54 wards, much less than the Left.
Chennai, Dec 21 : Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Tuesday urged External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to intervene for the immediate release of Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu in Sri Lankan captivity.

With the arrest of another 13 fishermen from Tamil Nadu on Tuesday, the total number of Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan custody has risen to 68.

Stalin had already written a letter to the External Affairs minister to take up with the Sri Lankan government, through diplomatic channels, the arrest and judicial remand of 55 Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy for purportedly transgressing into the island nation's territorial waters.

In his latest letter to the Minister, a copy of which was handed personally to the minister by the DMK's parliamentary party leader, T.R. Baalu, Stalin said: "The alarming frequency at which these incidents of detention and attacks are happening needs urgent attention. The lives and livelihoods of our fishermen must be protected while they are fishing in the traditional waters of Palk Bay." As many as 19 incidents of Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu being arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy and Coast Gguard have taken place in a year's time. Two incidents of attack on Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu by the Sri Lankan Navy has taken place in 2021 and five fishermen had lost their lives.

A total of 43 fishermen from Rameswaram were arrested on Saturday while 12 fishermen from Mandapam were arrested on Sunday.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The term "anti-national' was not defined in the statutes or the Constitution but it was inserted in the latter during the Emergency by the then Congress regime in 1976 through a Constitutional amendment, but was omitted next year, the Parliament was told on Tuesday.

The word "anti-national" was not mentioned in statutes, however, there are criminal legislations and various judicial pronouncements to sternly deal with unlawful and subversive activities which are detrimental to the unity and integrity of the country," Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai told the Lok Sabha in a written reply to the question by AIMIM member Asaduddin Owaisi.

The word "anti-national was inserted in the Constitution through the Forty-Second Amendment, 1976 as Article 31D to define "anti-national activity".

Owaisi had asked whether the government has defined the meaning of "anti-national" under any legislation or rules or any other legal enactment that is enforced in the country and whether the Supreme Court has prescribed any guidelines to deal with crimes relating to "anti-national" activity.

Rai also said that Article 31D was removed from the Constitution by the Forty-Third Amendment in 1977.
Chennai, Dec 21 : The Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on Tuesday suspended a lawyer from practice, following his "improper behaviour" with a woman during a virtual hearing of a case in the Madras High Court.

A statement from the Bar Council said that lawyer, R.D. Santhana Krishnan was suspended from practice as an advocate in all courts, tribunals, and other authorities in India either in his name or in any assumed name till the disposal of the disciplinary proceedings pending against him for his alleged indecent behaviour.

A clip of the lawyer in "a compromising position with a woman during the virtual hearing of the case went viral on social media on Tuesday.

A bench of Justices P.N. Prakash and R. Hemalatha directed Tamil Nadu CB-CID to register a case against the lawyer and to submit a report before December 23.

The court had also directed the Bar Council to initiate proceedings against the lawyer.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : Inspite of proactive engagement with the Nepali political establishment and healthy relations with the Nepali Communist Parties, China has not made much headway on the political front in Nepal and has realised that the landscape of Nepali politics is indeed a complex one, which yet remains challenging for the Chinese to understand.

The very fact that within two years of formation of the Nepali Communist Party with the backing and blessings of the Chinese, the party split, giving away political space to the Nepali Congress, made the Chinese realise the gaps in their understanding of Nepali politics and the underlying dynamics.

China has, thus, been trying to engage various political constituencies and representative bodies/organisations representing the non-Hill population, especially the Madhesis living in the Terai region adjacent to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

In this connection, the representative of the Xinhua news agency in Nepal, Zhou Shengping, organised two separate interaction programmes with the youth from the Madhesi community on November 26 and 29 with the aim of leveraging the political potential of this community.

The Madhesis have traditionally been identified with India, which is their place of origin. However, the Chinese, having suffered in their political calibrations in Nepal, have come to realise that synergy with the Madhesis is necessary to sustain their political momentum.

Representing 30 per cent of the Nepali population and with a faster growing population than the Hill people, the Madhesis form an important constituency in Nepal.

In the past, attempts by the Chinese to target Madhesi political parties did not produce as much dividends and such engagements have mostly been on a selective basis. Attempts have been made by the Chinese to invite Madhesi leaders to China on visits, but not much could be derived from these visits. China has thus decided to target the Madhesi youth in the madhes for ensuring long term advantages.

At a meeting on November 29 in Nepalganj, Zhou Shengping met with 15 persons from the Madhesi community, representing various political parties such as CPN(MC), JSPN and UML. Discussions were held on the apparently unhealthy competition among political parties in Nepal and the aspirations/demands of Madhesi people being ignored.

The struggle of Madhesi people to establish their identity and India's interference in Madhesi affairs was also discussed with Zhou Shengping expressing concern over a range of issues associated with the Madhesis, such as air pollution, deforestation, poverty, income disparity, etc. Issues such as border management, human trafficking and smuggling across the Indo-Nepal border also formed part of the discussions.

The Xinhua representative encouraged participants to speak out their mind on the traditional problems faced by Madhes and Madhesi people and sought to know from them how China could contribute in dealing with some of these problems and develop strategy for the Madhesi people.

He reiterated that since China wanted to play a positive role in the overall development of Madhes, "no other country" should have any reservation and interference on these issues.

Zhou Shengping also suggested that China considered the whole of Nepal as one nation without discrimination between the people of Madhes and the Hill region. Besides, China is prepared to provide sustainable development projects for the Madhes region and revive industries in some of the prominent cities such as Hetauda, Birgunj, Biratnagar, etc.

Zhou suggested that he would recommend increase in scholarships for Madhesi youth to study in China and expressed eagerness to establish small-scale industries in Madhes region for generating employment for Madhesi youth.

Significantly, Zhou mentioned that China considers Madhes as the land of gods like Buddha in Lumbini and Sita in Janakpur. He also mentioned that China is confident that Madhes could be developed as an attractive place for Chinese tourists.

Earlier, at a meeting on November 26 in Kathmandu, Zhou met with another group of Madhesi youth representing various political parties.

During the discussions, Zhou suggested that a committee be formed of intellectuals from the eight districts of Madhes, who will coordinate with Nepali institutions to assess the socio-political problems associated with the Terai region.

He said that a report prepared by the Nepali side will enable China to increase investment in cultural and language institutions in Terai and undertake special promotional campaign for large number of Chinese companies to invest in the small-scale sector to generate employment opportunities. During one-to-one interaction, Zhou mentioned that the objective of his meeting Madhesi youth was to enable greater interaction between the Madhesis and China.

After dabbling in politics in Nepal, the Chinese have been keen on building healthy relations with the people in the Terai region and are prepared to invest significantly in this regard. With education opportunities being limited in the Madhes, there is possibility of the Chinese offering soft scholarships to students in the Madhes who would only be keen to undertake professional courses in China.

As part of such projects, the Chinese side usually trains and prepares work force in a manner that they can be employed in Chinese companies operating in Nepal. Moreover, setting up of industries and business establishments close to the border with India in the Terai region has also been a major problem for the Chinese. However, this problem can be overcome with the local Madhesi population playing a proactive and participatory role in such ventures.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : A Ugandan national woman was on Tuesday caught by customs officials at the Indira Gandhi International Airport with heroin, allegedly meant to be supplied in the national capital, officials said.

A senior Customs officer said that the woman, who arrived at Terminal-3 by flight No FZ 541 from Dubai, was stopped for checking as her luggage was found to be suspicious.

"On thorough checking of her baggage, some material was found secreted in the sides of her bag. Detailed examination yielded a total of 2,020 grams of off-white powdery substance which was confirmed as heroin on testing," said the official.

The recovered heroin was seized under the relevant provisions of the NDPS Act, an FIR lodged, and the woman passenger placed under arrest.

She was handed over to the Delhi Police which will now undertake further investigations.
Hyderabad, Dec 21 : A delegation of Telangana ministers and MPs on Tuesday insisted on written assurance from the Centre that it will lift entire paddy stocks procured from the farmers during current Kharif season.

The delegation, which was camping in Delhi for the last three days, met Union Food and Civil Supplies Minister Piyush Goyal and demanded that the Centre procure the entire paddy cultivated in the state.

State Agriculture Minister S. Niranjan Reddy told reporters after the meeting that they sought a written assurance over paddy procurement. He said Goyal wanted one or two days to give clarity over the issue, and the delegation will return from Delhi only after receiving a clear assurance.

He said they brought to the Central minister's notice that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) was not lifting the procured paddy and Goyal directed the officials to speed up transportation by arranging the rakes.

The delegation informed Goyal that during the current season the target of 60 lakh tonnes of paddy will be reached in 2-3 days. Another 10-12 lakh tonnes of paddy is lying at procurement centres while 5 lakh tonnes is ready for harvest. "In this situation, we wanted him to clarify if the state should procure the remaining paddy or not. We demanded a written assurance in this regard," he said.

Reddy said the Central minister reiterated that the Centre will not procure paddy during the coming Rabi season.

Earlier, state BJP leaders led by Union Tourism and Culture Minister G. Kishan Reddy called on Goyal and briefed him how the TRS government in the state is targeting BJP and the Centre over paddy procurement issue.

After the meeting, Goyal told reporters that the state government has failed in paddy procurement from farmers. He alleged that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao was spreading falsehood over the issue.

He claimed that the Centre agreed to procure 20 lakh tonnes of parboiled rice in addition to the quantum agreed as per the agreement between the state and the FCI. He said there was no requirement of parboiled rice in the country but the Centre agreed for additional procurement as a special case in the interest of farmers. He alleged that the state government failed to make use of the opportunity.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : A 20-year-old youth preparing for UPSC examination was stabbed to death by two persons in the Mangolpuri area of the city, while another was injured during the scuffle, an official said on Tuesday.

The police said that they have arrested three persons for the murder of the IAS aspirant, who has been identified as Amardeep (20).

Furnishing details about the incident, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer District), Parvinder Singh, said on Tuesday that on December 14, a PCR call was received at about 8.19 p.m. regarding a stabbing incident in Mangolpuri.

The local police rushed to the spot and found that two injured persons had already been taken to the Sanjay Gandhi Hospital.

On reaching the hospital, it was found that Amardeep was declared brought dead with stab injuries whereas Sagar, 20, was being treated for similar injuries.

A case was registered at the Mangolpuri police station and investigation was taken up.

Preliminary enquiry revealed that the two youth were going to meet their friend when they had a scuffle with three unknown persons over a petty issue, which resulted in the violent outburst.

A police team was constituted which checked all the CCTV footages of the area. The scanning of the footages showed that the assailants were three boys.

"Initial success was achieved when one of the accused, namely Rohit, was arrested. But his co-accused continued to evade arrest and no weapon of offence could be recovered from him. He was taken on police remand to nab the remaining culprits," the official said.

During questioning, he disclosed that on the fateful day, he had come back from his work when one of his friends, Mukesh, called him on his mobile and asked him to come to the market. He joined two of his friends (Mukesh and Ronak) at the market and had some small chat.

While they were going to the house of Mukesh for some work, two youth who were coming from the opposite side collided with them and a minor scuffle ensued.

Later, the two victims brought two more of their friends and another scuffle broke out in which Ronak and Mukesh stabbed the victims.

Based on technical and human resources, the police team arrested the remaining accused from the railway underpass in Mangolpuri.

As per the police, the accused trio went into hiding after they came to know about Amardeep's death through newspaper reports.

The police said that they have recovered the weapon of offence, the clothes worn by the accused at the time of incident, among other things.
Patna, Dec 21 : After the death of a member of their community, a large number of eunuchs went on rampage in Patna and pelted stones on the police in the Kankarbagh locality on Tuesday.

The eunuchs assembled at Kankarbagh after one of their community members, Usha, died during treatment at a hospital in the same locality.

"Usha was shot at a few days ago by some unidentified persons in Machuatoli locality. She was admitted to a hospital where she died on Tuesday. Usha was recovering well from the gunshot injuries, but died due to the callous and negligent attitude of the doctors," said one of the agitators named Rani.

Another agitator, Khushboo, claimed that Patna police have not been able to nab the miscreants who had opened fire on Usha, and even their identities are yet to be ascertained.

Following the death of Usha, the members of the community damaged hospital property. When the police came to remove them, a quarrel broke out between the two sides which soon turned ugly, forcing the police to resort to lathi charge.

The angry eunuchs then pelted stones on the police personnel and even set some vehicles on fire, besides damaging private and government properties. They also blocked the road with Usha's body for over three hours.

When Patna SSP Upendra Sharma went to the spot to bring the situation under control, the community members manhandled him and his bodyguard.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : He was pained by his mother's drudgery when she would be at the 'Asu' machine for hours together, ending with pain but less money. Desire to bring her relief led to an innovation that not just helped his mother but the entire weaving community in the region of Telangana.

The 'Laxmi Asu Making Machine', developed by innovator Mallesham Laxminarayana Chinthakindi, has revolutionised the weaving of the Pochampally silk and not just reduced his mother's the drudgery but also that of thousands of weavers involved in the occupation, it said.

Chinthakindi, from Telangana's Nalgonda, has reduced the tedious and cumbersome hand-winding process of yarn for weaving of the famous Pochampally silk, thus reviving the traditional art as well as the silk saree industry that provides livelihood for many families in the areas.

With the support of the National Innovation Foundation, an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology, the 'Laxmi Asu Making Machine' has been incubated, and now used by thousands of weavers to come up with a Pochampalli silk sarees, the Science and Technology Ministry release said.

Making this special silk of Telangana involves an exquisite tradition comprising a special technique called double ikat style of weaving consisting of dyeing prior to weaving. It produces fabrics of a variety of colours and intricate designs. The traditional process involves drudgery, requiring to-and-fro moving of the hand thousands of times in a span of four-five hours.

However, in what can be described as a classic example of difference that a well thought of mechanisation can bring for common people, the 'Laxmi Asu Making Machine' has resolved this challenge that weavers had faced for centuries.

The efforts of Chinthakindi have helped prevent the slow decay of the tie and dye tradition, and triggered the revival of Pochampally saree industry.

The conventional process involved moving hands over a space of one metre up and down around semi-circularly arranged pegs, 9,000 times for one saree, demanding high concentration and accuracy. Automation with this machine has now done away with this process.

Several women have set up 'Asu machine centres' generating immense livelihood opportunities and several thousand were directly relieved of a conventional and a non-productive approach.

Chinthakindi was inspired to develop the machine by the challenges his mother faced while weaving a saree. In a day, she could only do the Asu for a maximum of two sarees, and it led to tremendous pain in her shoulders and elbow joints. The pain his mother suffered bothered him a lot. He wondered if there could be an alternative method for Asu that would relieve the physical drudgery for his mother. This led to the birth of the idea of a mechanical device to make the silk-making process easy, just like a power loom replaces a manual loom.

As a result of the innovation, employment opportunities and productivity in the village witnessed an all-time high. Not just this, by virtue of improved designs, there is a clear renewed interest by connoisseurs of silk sarees.

Besides, the large number of women involved in the industry could save time by virtue of automation and hence could focus on studies and could spend quality time with their families.

The Asu machine developed by Chithakindi brought the entire village to the limelight, and now it has been recognised as the world's best tourism village by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.
Bengaluru, Dec 21 : After a 20-month break forced by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) season 8 is set to begin in a secure bio-bubble at the Sheraton Grand in Bengaluru from Wednesday (Dec 22).

As a special format for PKL 8 season, organisers have scheduled 'Triple Headers' on the first four days of the competition to ensure that Kabaddi fans across the country get to watch each of their favourite teams play in the very initial days of the League.

Former champions U Mumba and Bengaluru Bulls face off in the opener, which will be followed by Telugu Titans' southern derby against Tamil Thalaivas. The third match of the opening day will see defending champions Bengal Warriors take on UP Yoddha.

The 12 captains representing each team included Maninder Singh from Bengal Warriors, Joginder Narwal from Dabang Delhi, K. C. Sunil Kumar from Gujarat Giants, Pawan Sehrawat from Bengaluru Bulls, Vikash Kandola from Haryana Steelers, Deepak Hooda from Jaipur Pink Panthers, Prashant Kumar Rai for Patna Pirates, Nitin Tomar from Puneri Paltan, Surjeet Singh from Tamil Thalaivas, Rohit Kumar from Telugu Titans, Nitesh Kumar from UP Yoddha and Fazel Atrachali from U Mumba on Tuesday spoke to the media in virtual interaction.

The team captains spoke about the opening day, strategies, preparations, and the young players who will shine this season.

Patna Pirates captain, Prashant Kumar Rai reveale' the team's plan for this season.

"Our approach this season is different -- we are going with a young squad and a refreshed outlook in terms of strategy and planning. Each match will have a surprise element keeping our opponent team on their toes. There is a Plan B for every situation, and we will step on the mat with full preparation. Our fans across the country will not be disappointed, and we request them to continue supporting us from the comfort of their homes," he said.

UP Yoddha captain, Nitesh Kumar said that the team is feeling elated to be back on the mat.

"First of all we are excited to be finally back on the mat after a gap of two years, second, we are confident and well prepared, thanks to a long time we spent as a team during our long training session at our UP Yoddha BK Kabaddi Academy. This is going to be a challenging season, both on the mat and off it too given the new dynamics of the bubble life, but as a team, we are geared to take on the challenges and give it our all for each other, fans, and our home state Uttar Pradesh," Nitesh Kumar said.
Belagavi : , Dec 21 (IANS) The Karnataka government has initiated measures to provide compensation for the houses damaged during the 2019 floods whose details were not uploaded in the compensation software app, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Tuesday.

"Compensation would be paid to the owners of 7,600 such houses too," the Chief Minister said in the Assembly in his reply during the debate on flood havoc.

Belagavi had suffered heavily during the 2019 floods. Deadline was extended thrice to upload the details on houses destroyed or damaged.

Details of damage to over 7,700 houses were not uploaded on the app. However, after studying the ground reality, compensation has been released for 7,600 eligible families, Bommai said.

No such hitch, however, was reported in 2020-21. For the year 2021-22, Deputy Commissioners have been vested with powers to grant compensation based on reports of Tehsildars, Bommai said.

Of the 36,698 houses completely destroyed, construction of 18,589 houses have been completed, while 7,000 houses almost completed.

Construction of 3,130 houses is yet to be taken up due to legal and administrative hurdles, the Chief Minister said.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : There is no evidence to suggest that existing Covid vaccines do not work on the Omicron variant, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Tuesday.

"While there is no evidence to suggest that existing vaccines do not work on Omicron, some of the mutations reported on spike gene may decrease the efficacy of existing vaccines," he told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

Responding to a question on whether the vaccines being administered in the country are effective to develop immunity against the Omicron variant, he informed the house that there is limited available data, and no peer-reviewed evidence, on vaccine efficacy or effectiveness to date for Omicron. However, vaccine protection is also by antibodies as well as by cellular immunity, which is expected to be relatively better preserved.

"Hence, vaccines are expected to still offer protection against severe disease and, vaccination with the available vaccines remains crucial," he emphasised.

The Union Health Ministry, in a statement on Tuesday morning, said that the number of cases of new Covid strain Omicron has crossed the 200 -mark in India. However, out of them them, 77 patients have recovered or migrated.

Meanwhile, it has asked all states and UTs to gear up against the Omicron variant as it is three times more transmissible than the Delta variant, and formulate a strategy that can ensure infection is contained at the local level itself before it spreads to other parts of the state.
New Delhi, Dec 21 : The Reliance General Insurance Company said on Tuesday that it will soon come out with nine sandbox products to meet evolving consumer needs.

The company has already received approval for the same from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI).

This announcement is in line with the company's long-term goal of re-innovating and redefining the insurance sector to cater to the fast-transforming customer expectations in the digital age.

"Three out of the nine products are from the telematics segment, while the rest of the offerings are from the company's innovative product line designed to address customers' current and future policy requirements. Being one of the most tech-driven insurance companies, RGICL aims to introduce these pioneering product offerings to provide holistic insurance cover from a futuristic perspective," the company said in a statement.

According to Rakesh Jain, CEO, Reliance General Insurance Company: "The pandemic has transformed the insurance landscape and elevated customer expectations. The approved nine sandbox products are designed to meet customer expectations through personalised offerings." "They are also modelled to address customers' current and futuristic requirements. We intend to take the customer experiences to the next level with these new-age offerings," Jain said.

Reliance General Insurance, a part of Reliance Capital, is one of the leading general insurance companies in India. It offers motor insurance, health insurance, travel insurance, and home insurance, among other customised solutions.
Bengaluru, Dec 21 : A policeman in Bengaluru has been suspended for behaving with a woman in an obscene manner, and flashing his private parts at her, a police officer said on Tuesday.

Bengaluru North East Division DCP, C.K. Baba has issued suspension orders of Chandrashekar, a head constable, attached to Amrutahalli police station.

According to the police, on Sunday night, Chandrashekar was urinating after stopping his bike, near Yelahanka New Town Housing Board, while he was on the way to home.

He had flashed his private parts to a woman who had come out to feed the street dogs, and also misbehaved with her.

When the woman objected to his behaviour, a heated exchange of words and argument took place between them. The local residents had filmed it, and posted the video on the Bengaluru Police Commissioner's social media account.

A case has been lodged against the policeman in Yelahanka New Town police station under IPC Sections 354 (A) and 509. Further investigation is underway.
Belagavi : , Dec 22 (IANS) Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday lashed out at the Congress over its conduct in the ongoing Assembly session, calling it an "irresponsible opposition party".

"The Congress is not bothered about the development of northern Karnataka. It has come to the Belagavi session to deliver speeches and hold dharna in the house. It has failed to take up pro-people issues and seek reply," he said.

Speaking to the media persons at Suvarna Soudha, he said: "The opposition leaders don't want farmers to get compensation for their crop losses. We have raised the compensation, the state cabinet has taken a slew of decisions for development of northern Karnataka. We are ready for discussion on any development projects." Referring to the anti-conversion bill, he said: "It is the right of an elected government, as the voice of the people, to decide as to what laws need to be brought. The opposition Congress members were not present when the bill was introduced in the House. It is the duty of the Opposition to be present. They have shown their irresponsibility by staying away. The state has the most irresponsible opposition party." Reacting to the Congress' charge that the bill was included in the supplementary agenda of the proceedings of the house, the Chief Minister said: "The Speaker is vested with the power to prepare supplementary agenda. It is an irresponsible party." Saying adverse impact of religious conversions on innumerable families is a known fact for all, the Chief Minister said "it should be prevented".

"We are working under legal and constitutional provisions in this regard. The Congress has the opportunity to discuss it. We are ready to make amends if there are any mistakes in the bill," Bommai said.

"The Congress has boycotted the proceedings as part of its vote bank politics. The state has an irresponsible opposition party," he said.
New Delhi, Dec 22 : The government informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday that it has received complaints against 18 NGOs for their alleged involvement in conversion into Christianity by inducements, allurement and misrepresentation since 2018.

In a written reply to a query, Minister of State for Home Affairs, Nityanand Rai, said that the ministry has received complaints against 18 associations of Andhra Pradesh regarding their alleged indulgence in conversion into Christianity.

He said in his reply that appropriate action has been initiated with respect to the complaints, based on the facts and circumstances of each case under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010.

The said associations are Metropolitan Mission; Swaantana Seva Samiti; Oikonomas Ministries; Bikkavolu Charitable; Herald of Good News Society; India Rural Evangrlical Fellowship; Living Sacrifice Ministries; Life Givers; Salesian Andhra Society; Diocese of Nellore Society; Love-n-Care Ministries; Indian Christian Ministries; AMG India International; Shalom Trust for Relief, Education and Mission; Good She-herd Convent; Samantha Community Development and Welfare Society; Harvest India; and Sylom Blind Centre.

Stating that the FCRA, 2010 provides a legal mechanism to deal with violation of its provisions, Rai further said that such mechanism includes audit of accounts of such NGOs, inspection of their accounts and records, and verification of their onfield activities and so on.

The FCRA certificate of such NGOs may be suspended depending upon the facts and circumstances of the case, Rai informed.

YSR Congress Party MP K. Raghu Rama Krishna Raju had asked the question as to whether the government has received any complaint against violation of FCRA by some NGOs in Andhra Pradesh.
Belagavi, Dec 22 : About 1,44,000 houses have been provided electricity connection under the 'Belaku' programme, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said here on Tuesday after launching the 'State Level Belaku Programme' in the Dastikoppa vilage in Belagavi district.

"State government is providing power connection to houses of the poor and farmers' pump sets. It is providing 24X7 single phase power and 7 hours of three phase power in the state. The government has decided to convert the Rs 1900 crore debt burden of Hubballi Electric Supply Company into government' share capital and would utilise Rs 1500 crore central grant for rejuvenation of the company," he said.

The Chief Minister reiterated his government's commitment for comprehensive development of northern Karnataka.

State cabinet has decided to install statues of Kitturu Rani Chennamma and Sangolli Rayanna in Suvarna Soudha premises, Bommai said.

The cabinet has also approved Dharawad-Belagavi via Kitturu railway line project at a cost of Rs 898 crore. It would give a big boost for infrastructure development in the region, he said.
Kaedi Airport, Kaedi, Mauritania [ KED / GQNK ]

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Kaedi Airport IATA Code: KED Kaedi Airport ICAO Code: GQNK Latitude : 16.1594 Longitude : -13.5075 City : Kaedi Country : Mauritania World Area Code : 545 Airport Type : Small Kaedi Airport Address / Contact Details :

Kaedi Airport (KED), Kaedi, Mauritania Timezone : Africa/Nouakchott Kaedi Airport Timezone : GMT +00:00 hours Current time and date at Kaedi Airport is 15:22:53 PM (GMT) on Thursday, Jan 6, 2022

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Kaedi Airport Map - Location of Kaedi Airport Load Map Mauritania - General Information Country Formal Name Islamic Republic of Mauritania Country Code MR Capital Nouakchott Tel Code +222 Top Level Domain .mr

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Hydrozid cryosurgery device Since 2015, weve experienced tremendous growth, as providers have experienced how easy and convenient Hydrozid is to use, and most importantly, how effective it is in treating warts and other skin conditions, said Christian Kjerulf-Jensen, CEO of Medilink, BIBAWO Medicals parent company.

Hydrozid, a leading cryosurgery device in Europe, is now FDA cleared and available to qualified providers in the U.S. Designed for primary care physicians, pediatricians, dermatologists, podiatrists, and other medical specialties, Hydrozid is a portable and convenient alternative to liquid nitrogen, with proven effectiveness in treating warts, seborrheic keratosis, actinic keratosis, and other pre-malignant skin conditions.

The device was developed in Denmark by BIBAWO Medical, a specialty pharma company. Originally sold to Danish dermatologists, the device is now sold to dermatologists, pediatricians, primary care physicians, gynecologists, urologists, and podiatrists, in 10 European countries. Since 2015, weve experienced tremendous growth, as providers have experienced how easy and convenient Hydrozid is to use, and most importantly, how effective it is in treating warts and other skin conditions, said Christian Kjerulf-Jensen, CEO of Medilink, BIBAWO Medicals parent company. Were thrilled to have FDA clearance and be coming to the U.S., to avail providers of this unique device.

The Hydrozid system includes a 200mL light weight cannister, which keeps the pressure (and thus the temperature) consistent from the first use to the last. The Scandinavian design of the product, emphasizing functionality and ergonomics, makes it easy and comfortable to use. Hydrozids unique spray head is patented in Denmark with a patent pending in the U.S. Templates provided with the system enable providers to select a hole matching the size of an individual lesion, thus protecting surrounding skin.

Hydrozid utilizes norflurane, a medically approved gas that has no odor and is nonflammable. This propellant has been used for decades in asthma inhalers and has proven to be safe for patients. Used Hydrozid cans do not require special disposal.

In order to secure the best possible partners for its products in the U.S., BIBAWO Medical engaged Scan MedPartners, LLC a U.S. market-entry consulting firm that specializes in clinically proven, disruptive healthcare technologies. In the U.S., Hydrozid will be distributed by Edge Pharmaceuticals LLC, in Coral Springs, Florida.

BIBAWO Medical

BIBAWO Medical is a Danish specialty pharmaceutical company which produces, markets, and distributes medical devices and equipment. Headquartered in Bikerd, Denmark, the company also has offices in Portugal and India.

Edge Pharmaceuticals, LLC

Edge Pharmaceuticals, LLC, a distributor of medical products, is based in Coral Springs, Florida. Primarily, Edge Pharmaceuticals distributes products to providers offering allergenic immunotherapy. Products include testing supplies, compounding supplies, and allergenic extracts.
Prague Castle View, Prague, Czech Republic. A country thats poised right in the sweet spot before it hits mainstream popularity"

Places evolve, and we keep a careful eye on trends, changes, and events that bring new destinations to our attention, notes Sean Keenan, International Living magazine editor. Each month, readers gain the most up-to-date information on the best places to retire outside the U.S. borders, including spots just coming into their own as places worth paying attention to.

In summary, were feeling excited about El Salvadorless than three hours from the U.S., with unspoiled landscapes, tropical weather, and low, low costs. And it has recently adopted bitcoin as legal tender.

Greece offers some of the worlds best long-term visa options, and with thousands of sun-soaked Mediterranean islands to choose from, is very tempting.

And the Czech Republic blends Old World style with low costs and modern infrastructure.

The new report delves into the joys the three countries offer and why its important to take note for the coming year.

El Salvador

A country thats poised right in the sweet spot before it hits mainstream popularity, El Salvador has thrown off the struggles of its past and emerged, confident and energetic, into a bright future, Keenan notes.

Hitting the headlines recently due to its adoption of bitcoin as legal tender, the digital nomads came first for the novelty, but then stayed when they fell in love with what they found there.

The smallest country in Central America geographically, El Salvador offers 190 miles of coastreplete with warm, sandy beaches that surfers consider among the best in the world. But theres more than just its stunning coastline. With the cosmopolitan capital San Salvador, and an interior that includes volcanoes, hot springs, lakes and waterfallsthis little country has plenty to offer those in search of unspoiled natural beauty.

This is a tropical, coastal, affordable paradise of swaying palms, pretty colonial villages, epic waves, and exuberant localsthats less than three hours flying time from the U.S. A civil war kept it off the expat radar for a long time, but that civil war ended in 1992, Keenan says. Thirty years later, adventurous expats are discovering that El Salvador is exactly what they want from a relocation destination. It wont be long until the merely curious follow them, and then the rest of the world. Get in now before its too late!

Greece

Large, diverse and visually stunning, Greece offers an enthralling mixture of sun-drenched islands, towering mountains, buzzing cities, and timeless traditions. The worlds first democracy, dating back to the 5th century B.C., Greece is wrapped in the warm embrace of the Aegean Sea vibrant, welcoming, and full of surprises.

With some of the worlds best long-term visa options, and one of the lowest costs of living scores in Europe, Greece is gathering momentum as a premier expat destination with every passing year, says Keenan.

When your minds eye pictures Mediterranean island living, its probably Greece that fills the screen. Crete and Corfu are two of the larger islands, and either one makes an excellent starting point for expats, given that the amenities and infrastructure of a thriving tourism industry are well established there.

Others choose the city pace of Athens, a capital overlooked by the imposing remains of Ancient Greece itself. History, and prehistory rub shoulders with all the amenities of a world-class city thats proving popular with the connected digital nomad set.

Whichever option you want to consider, close your eyes and picture the wine-dark Mediterranean and the warm Greek sun on your face. Bet youve already decided!

The Czech Republic

Located at the at the heart of Central Europe, the Czech Republic provides arguably one of the best expat opportunities in all of Europe.

Its capital, Prague, is easily one of the most beautiful, ancient, Old World cities on the European continent. Then-Czechoslovakia, and especially Prague, never experienced the devastating bombing raids that destroyed so many European cities during World War II. As such, the country and its cities still reflect much of their 1,000+ years of history.

Because of that, and because of a low cost of living relative to Western Europe and the U.S., the Czech Republicand Prague, in particularare increasingly becoming an expat haven for those who want an affordable, big-city lifestyle with all the amenities of modern living.

Obtaining a residency visa for the Czech Republic (good for one year and renewable) is relatively easy. With it, folks can travel freely and easily around the European Union. Given the Czech Republics central location in the dead center of the Continent, you can be in Dublin, Ireland, or Oslo, Norway, as quickly as Moscow or Athens, Greece. A direct flight to the U.S. means getting back and forth across the Atlantic is as convenient as from London, Paris, or Frankfurt.

Truly, a European hot spot for in-the-know expats, the Czech Republic is the low-cost, eye-wateringly beautiful option for those who want something different than the cocktails-on-the-beach life, remarks Keenan.

Fact is, its landlocked, but dont let that put you off. Think instead of vast forests, exquisitely preserved medieval walled towns, and hands-down the best beer in Europe.

Most visitors start with the splendid Baroque surrounds of the capital, Prague, but theres far more to see in the countrys rural heart. And every year, more potential expats get to hear about it, explore, and fall in love with this Old-World beauty.

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About International Living

Since 1979, InternationalLiving.com has been the leading authority for anyone looking for global retirement or relocation opportunities. Through its monthly magazine and related e-letters, extensive website, podcasts, online bookstore, and events held around the world, InternationalLiving.com provides information and services to help its readers live better, travel farther, have more fun, save more money, and find better business opportunities when they expand their world beyond their own shores. InternationalLiving.com has more than 200 contributors traveling the globe, investigating the best opportunities for travel, retirement, real estate, and investment.
This is an incredibly exciting milestone in our clinical trial. We believe it is possible for a one-and-done therapy to make a person living with HIV permanently immune to HIV, and this recent data increases our optimism that we are on track. -AGT CEO Jeff Galvin

American Gene Technologies (AGT), a clinical-stage biotechnology company working to cure HIV, announced that it has reached two important milestones for its HIV cure program.

All three patients achieved engraftment of the genetically modified cell product, AGT103-T, and avoided rejection of the infused cells. In addition, patient samples were challenged to determine if their HIV-specific response remained active. All three products demonstrated an active response. These two studies confirm that the patients retained an appropriate concentration of the product and indicate AGT103-T should be able to create an effective immune response against HIV in the absence of antiretroviral treatment (ART).

This is an incredibly exciting milestone in our clinical trial, said AGT CEO Jeff Galvin. We demonstrated our theory in pre-clinical tests in cell models, and published encouraging data in Molecular Therapy Magazine. Now were seeing blood markers in trial participants that indicate parallel data in vivo.

This augments the safety data already established in the human trial with initial objective markers of efficacy in the participants blood tests. The probative data is still to come in treatment withdrawal studies, which are planned to begin in the first half of 2022. AGT continues to hope to see a functionally cured patient by next summer that durably suppresses their HIV without the use of antiretroviral therapy (ART). The company remains optimistic that its work may allow people living with HIV to go off ART without fear of developing AIDS or infecting others, and without the risk of reinfection.

Our goal is to return people living with HIV to a normal life without the side effects of ART, and having no further consequences of their HIV infection, added Galvin. We believe it is possible for a one-and-done therapy to make a person living with HIV permanently immune to HIV, and this recent data increases our optimism that we are on track.

Phase 1 Trial Background



Overview: Designated the RePAIR trial (Restore Potent Antiviral Immune Responses, NCT04561258), AGTs first-in-human study for AGT103-T is currently underway at trial sites in the Maryland / Washington, D.C. area. Participants in the Phase 1 trial receive a single infusion of their own HIV-specific CD4 T cells after those cells are enriched and genetically modified to resist infection. Without any observed negative or adverse events, the DSMB has allowed the trial to continue without adjustments or delays.

Focus: The primary endpoints of RePAIR are safety and efficacy. Testing related to secondary endpoints evaluates responses to treatment, including changes in the immune response to HIV.

Participant Criteria: Participants range in age from 18 to 60 and include males and females. Participants have been diagnosed with HIV for at least three years and must have taken HIV antiretroviral medication for more than two years prior to enrollment. Participants cannot be pregnant and must be available to attend 17 study visits over a 10-month period. Anticipated completion of treatments in the Phase 1 study is Q2 2022, although final data and long-term monitoring will continue. The Phase 1 study will include 18 participants. (The recruitment status of the Phase 1 RePAIR clinical trial, along with information on the trial sites, can be found on the official ClinicalTrials.gov website.)

Timeframe: Participants treated with AGT103-T are followed for 6 months in this safety study before enrolling in an FDA-mandated, 15-year, long-term follow up (required for all gene therapy trials). The first infusion occurred in May 2021, the second in August 2021, the third in September 2021, and the fourth and fifth in November 2021. Two more are scheduled for January 2022. AGT is also submitting a modification to the protocol with the intention of starting a treatment withdrawal study in March 2022.

About HIV

According to UNAIDS, approximately 37.7 million people worldwide live with HIV/AIDS. In the United States, government statistics show 1.2 million people have HIV and estimate that 34,800 Americans were newly infected with HIV in 2019. Across the globe, UNAIDS estimates that approximately 1.5 million individuals were newly infected with HIV in 2020. The Washington D.C./Baltimore area is often cited as a hot spot for HIV, with Washington, D.C., having the highest rate of infection at nearly 46 cases per 100,000 population and Baltimore City having rates of 17 cases per 100,000. Maryland also ranks sixth among U.S. states and territories in HIV diagnosis rates, with more than 900 new cases in 2019 alone, according to the Maryland Department of Health.

Since the late 1980s, antiretroviral drugs have restored quality of life to persons living with HIV and, in some cases, have even been used to prevent new infections. However, no approved treatment has demonstrated the ability to cure HIV. AGT is committed to addressing this unmet medical need.

About AGT103-T

AGT103-T is a genetically modified cell product made from a person's own cells. AGT's unique approach focuses on permanently repairing the key immune system damage caused by HIV. AGTs goal is to develop a cell and gene therapy capable of repairing the immune system so it will provide natural control over HIV replication.

About American Gene Technologies

AGT is a gene and cell therapy company with a proprietary gene-delivery platform for rapid development of cell and gene therapies to cure infectious diseases, cancers, and inherited disorders. AGT's mission is to transform people's lives through genetic medicines that rid the body of disease. AGT has been granted four patents for the technology used to make AGT103-T and 11 patents for its unique immuno-oncology approach to stimulate gamma-delta () T cells to destroy a variety of solid tumors. The company has developed a synthetic gene for treating Phenylketonuria (PKU), a debilitating inherited disease. AGT's treatment for PKU has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and it is expected to reach the clinic in 2022.

Video: https://youtu.be/fiA2s7JCkJ8
Leonard Perlmutter Educator, Philosopher and Yoga Scientist AMIs Foundation Course offers easy-to-use instruction on how Your Conscience can transform the debilitating and poisonous energy of worry and anger into powerful reserves of beneficial healing energy, will power and creativity. Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev)

The American Meditation Institute (AMI) begins 2022 with new classes to relieve stress and burnout, enhance creativity, and strengthen the bodys immune system. Available to the general public, the six-session Foundation Course will be taught by AMI founder Leonard Perlmutter from January 11 through February 15, 2022 from 6:30-8:30pm ET on Tuesday evenings, and will provide attending physicians 18 continuing medical education (CME) credits.

For six thousand years, countless women and men have experimented with practical methods to optimize their minds and bodieswith the goal of achieving happiness, health and fulfillment. AMIs Foundation Course curriculum, developed for the 21st century by Leonard Perlmutter, is the only such program of its kindincorporating Holistic Mind/Body Medicine, AMI Meditation, meditation-in-action, easy-gentle physical exercises and breath work, Yoga Science, Philosophy, and Psychology. Each weekly session combines the best of ancient Eastern wisdom with the practicality of modern Western medical science.

The Foundation Course begins with an understanding of the Four Functions of the Mind, as described in Perlmutters new book YOUR CONSCIENCE. Students will learn how to optimize the capacities of the mind, and how to easily experiment with lifestyle choices that will bring about better health, self-confidence and increasing fulfillment. According to Leonard Perlmutter, Every human being already has unlimited wisdom and creativity at the core of their beingthey just need to learn a few tools to coordinate the voices of the Ego, the Senses, and the Unconscious Mind in order to access the unerring wisdom of the Conscience.

For the past eleven years, the Foundation Course has been accredited by the American Medical Association for continuing medical education credits, a status awarded only to those educational programs that meet the highest standards of professional review.

In 2008, AMI conducted a retrospective case study of participants who had previously completed and practiced the material taught in Leonard Perlmutters Foundation Course. The study found that students experienced the following positive, reproducible, long-term health-promoting changes: lowered blood pressure, lowered heart rate, reduced cholesterol levels, decreased chest pain, diminished or extinguished acute and chronic pain, weight loss, increased breathing capacity, increased exercise capacity, improved quality and quantity of sleep, improved energy levels, increased creative capacity, diminishment of migraine headaches, significant reductions in stress and fear, elimination of irritable bowel syndrome, and a general sense of happiness and optimism in all facets of life for every participant.

According to recent course graduate, Donald Starzinski MD, who is Board Certified in Neurology in Saint Paul, Minnesota, As a Neurologist with a keen interest in Integrative Health and Wellness, I would strongly recommend AMIs Foundation Course. It was life-changing for me, both in my personal and professional life.

About the American Meditation Institute

The American Meditation Institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization devoted to the teaching and practice of Yoga Science, meditation and its allied disciplines as mind-body medicine. In its holistic approach to wellness, the AMI combines the healing arts of the East with the practicality of modern Western science. The American Meditation Institute offers a wide variety of classes, retreats, and teacher training programs. AMI also publishes Transformation a bi-monthly journal of Yoga Science as Mind-Body Medicine. Call 518.674.8714 for a mail or email subscription.
The Sustainable Valley will be the first showcase of a clean energy supply chain hub.

Arizona Land Consulting, the Valleys leading, female-owned land consulting firm, announced today the closing of a 67-acre property near the Buckeye KOREPlex facility. The $8.3 million deal was the next step in creating what is known as the Sustainable Valley, an area to be used to attract KORE Power suppliers and other green energy companies.

Arizona Land Consulting CEO and founder, Anita Verma-Lallian, consulted a 1031 exchange investor on a 22-acre, $2.5 million purchase in July 2021. In October, she assisted two separate investor groups in additional land purchases: 67-acres for $6 million and 45 acres for $4 million. Arizona Land Consulting closed on the fourth property just last week, bought with another group of investors, culminating in a $20 million dollar deal and 200 acres now known as the Sustainable Valley.

It has been incredible to see this area grow and unveil the potential it has for green energy, said Verma-Lallian. We are also proud to be able to give more employment opportunities to the Buckeye community while supporting sustainable living.

The property is located in one of the Valleys most important employment corridors in one of the fastest growing cities in Arizona. Bringing a sustainable company to Buckeye will create multiple job opportunities for the boom of residents. Having a large employer move into the city means less of a commute, creating a more sustainable, affordable and convenient lifestyle.

This incredible announcement is not only a win for Buckeye and our residents, but a win for the region and the entire state of Arizona, said Buckeye Mayor Eric Orsborn. The Sustainable Valley is the future of industrial development with cutting edge technology that will secure Buckeyes future as a leader in green energy.

The Sustainable Valley, combined with KOREPlex, will encompass more than 400 acres, with 214 acres utilized for KOREplex, the first lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility owned by a U.S. company. KORE Power is planning to break ground early in 2022.

KORE Power is eager to help establish the U.S. supply chain for lithium-ion batteries through the Sustainable Valley, said Lindsay Gorrill, Co-founder and CEO of KORE Power. The Sustainable Valley will be the first showcase of a clean energy supply chain hub. We will continue to promote education and industrial training with the local universities and colleges to further our success, and we urge others to take the same path when building up their facilities.

For more information about Arizona Land Consulting, please visit https://arizonalandconsulting.com/.

ABOUT ARIZONA LAND CONSULTING

Arizona Land Consulting is a Phoenix-based land investment and consulting company that specializes in commercial real estate, founded by Anita Verma-Lallian. You can view more information at https://arizonalandconsulting.com/.


There is nothing redeeming or educational about instructing third graders to reenact scenes from the Holocaust.

A recent story involving a third-grade teacher who made their students simulate episodes of the Holocaust has rightfully sparked comment from around the nation.

The incident, which involved a staff member having their students mimic digging mass graves and shooting their peers, highlights the need for proper educational materials surrounding the Holocaust. Students, especially those at a young age, need to understand the atrocities of the Holocaust in a responsible way that teaches them how to recognize and understand that hate is never the answer. Simulations are both traumatic for the students and can minimize or belittle a survivors experience.

Michael Igel, Board Chair of The Florida Holocaust Museum and Chair of the Florida Commissioners Task Force on Holocaust Education, released a statement following the event.

Teachers have a critical role in shaping the world by educating and inspiring the next generation of world-changers, and with that responsibility comes an obligation. There is nothing redeeming or educational about instructing third graders to reenact scenes from the Holocaust. When educators need resources to teach their students about antisemitism and genocide, they should not take matters into their hands. If they do, this is what results. Instead, they should seek information and curriculum from accredited institutions. Those materials include artifacts, ground-breaking technology and testimony from people who survived, as well as their children and grandchildren. That is how we teach.

Since his appointment as Chair of the Commissioners Task Force on Holocaust Education, Igel has helped advise the Commissioner on issues relating to Holocaust education. Both the Commissioners Task Force and The Florida Holocaust Museum are dedicated to providing education and materials for students and teachers to fight denial and distortion of the Holocaust.

About The Florida Holocaust Museum

One of the largest Holocaust museums in the country, and one of three nationally accredited Holocaust museums, The Florida Holocaust Museum honors the memory of millions of men, women and children who suffered or died in the Holocaust. The FHM is dedicated to teaching members of all races and cultures the inherent worth and dignity of human life in order to prevent future genocides. For additional information, please visit http://www.thefhm.org.


Chef Brad Miller and THOR Kitchen are partnering up to bring fans custom recipes and step-by-step cooking videos from his THOR Kitchen. I am very excited to begin working with THOR Kitchen and show everyone how strong, powerful and versatile their products are.

THOR Kitchen and celebrity chef Brad Miller are teaming up with a new partnership. Miller will serve as brand ambassador for THOR Kitchen, using his own suite of professional appliances to create THOR exclusive recipes and offer giveaways to fans and foodies alike.

I am very excited to begin working with THOR Kitchen and show everyone how strong, powerful and versatile their products are, said Miller. For me, cooking is much more than just a jobits my lifestyle. THORs appliances allow me to continue to cook the latest and most popular recipes for everyone to enjoy.

TWEET THIS: Celebrity @chefbradmiller joins @THORKitchen as brand ambassador, teaming up with a partnership that will bring delicious recipes and exclusive giveaways to followers and foodies alikeall while he cooks in his own THOR Kitchen. #cooklikeagod https://thorkitchen.com/recipes/

We are excited to welcome Chef Miller into the THOR family, said Kyle You, THOR Kitchen Managing Director. From his experience in kitchens around the world, his trend setting recipes and his infectious personality, Chef Miller has already been an advocate for THOR Kitchen, and we are excited to expand our collaboration to bring his passions and ambassadorship to the next level.

A graduate of the Scottsdale Culinary Institutes Cordon Bleu program, Chef Miller began his career at Arizonas 5-Star Latilla at the Boulders and 4-star Wrights at the Arizona Biltmore, before heading to the prestigious and Michelin-starred restaurant Patina in Los Angeles.

Currently Chef Miller is the Chef and Co-Owner at Inn of the Seventh Ray restaurant and corporate chef and tastemaker for Five Star Senior Livingone of the countrys most prestigious retirement communities. He is also the owner of Brown Butter Productions, a catering and content production company.

Chef Miller is a much sought-after media personality, appearing on television networks such as Food Network, NBC, FOX, Tasted Channel and the Cooking Channel. Thats where you can find him on his very own show Food Truck Nation, which is currently in its second season.

Miller will be using his own, hand-picked suite of THOR Kitchen products, including: 30-inch Professional Gas Range, 24-inch Dual Zone Indoor/Outdoor Wine Cooler, Outdoor Kitchen Pizza Oven and Cabinet, 36-inch Professional French Door Refrigerator. To view custom recipes by Miller, visit https://thorkitchen.com/recipes/.

About THOR Kitchen

THOR Kitchens professional appliances are full-featured, stainless steel machines designed to take meals to the next level. With features like high BTU burners and cast-iron cooking grates, THOR appliances offer premium power and performanceyet at a practical price. Sleek. Handsome. Versatile. These are some of the hardest working kitchen mates around, designed to please both the eyes and the appetite. For more information about THOR Kitchen and its full suite of kitchen appliances, visit thorkitchen.com.
Britten Periodontics & Implant Dentistry is located in Clearwater, Florida It is important for people to know their risk factors for gum disease, which can help their dental professional (Periodontist or dentist) classify their periodontal disease and establish the right treatment plan.

Dr. Todd Britten, a periodontist in Clearwater, Florida, explains that people should understand their potential risk factors for gum disease.

Dr. Britten explains, There are a number of risk factors that contribute to the development and/or progression of periodontal disease. He says studies have shown age, genetics, stress, clenching & grinding, as well as poor nutrition or obesity are all risk factors, but smoking and tobacco use is the most significant risk factor for gum disease. The likelihood of developing advanced periodontal disease or gum disease can be up to six times higher in smokers, Dr. Brirtten said.

Although age or genetics are not a cause for periodontal disease, both are other risk factors. 70% of Americans 65 and older have some form of gum disease and research has also indicated that some are more genetically predisposed to gum disease than others.

Stress as well as medical conditions that interfere with the bodys inflammatory response cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis are shown to be connected to initiating or exacerbating periodontal disease. Certain medications such as oral contraceptives, antidepressants, and certain heart medicines, can also affect oral health.

Lifestyles and behaviors such as clenching or grinding of teeth and poor nutrition can also contribute to the onset and aggravation of periodontal disease. Parafunctional habits like clenching or grinding cause excessive forces on the supporting tissues of the teeth (the gums and bone) and speed up the rate at which these periodontal tissues are destroyed.

Dr. Britten states it is important for people to know their risk factors for gum disease, which can help the doctors classify their periodontal disease and establish the right treatment plan.

Britten Periodontics is a periodontal practice offering patients personalized dental care in periodontics, implants, laser therapy, cosmetic periodontics and regenerative therapy in Clearwater, Florida. Dr. Todd Britten received his Bachelor of Science and Doctorate of Dental Medicine and Masters Degree and Certificate in Periodontology and Implant Dentistry at the University of Florida. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology. He has completed extensive continuing education coursework, including training at the Pankey Institute, Pikos Institute for Advanced Bone Grafting, Misch International Implant Institute and LANAP Institute for advanced Laser Dentistry. His Professional Associations and Memberships include American Board of Periodontology, American Academy of Periodontology, American Dental Association, Florida Association of Periodontists, Academy of Osseointegration, Upper Pinellas County Dental Association, Pinellas County Dental Association, Top Dentist 2015, Florida West Coast Dental Association and he completed extensive training at the Institute of Advanced Laser Dentistry. Dr. Britten is part of the one percent of dental professionals offering the FDA cleared laser procedure for gum disease treatment.
We are extremely excited and honored to have Jordan, Pat, and Steve joining us for the opening conversation at this years Summit. Their discussion will set the tone for a progressive event that will inspire and invoke action as we all work together to transform the media landscape.

Matrix Solutions announces the Executive Keynote Conversation that will open the upcoming Media Ad Sales Summit, happening in-person at the Nobu Hotel in Miami Beach, FL from January 19-21, 2022. This anticipated conversation will feature Hearst Televisions President, Jordan Wertlieb, Gray Televisions Co-CEO and President, Pat LaPlatney, and CMGs Executive Chairman, Steven J. Pruett. This esteemed panel will share their perceptions of the media marketplace transformation and what they believe lies ahead for the broadcast industry.

The annual Media Ad Sales Summit, now in its fifth year, brings together executives from across the media advertising ecosystem to discuss and advance the development of a prosperous marketplace that promotes industry-wide automation, data consistency, and transparency. Additionally, the sessions will delve into reducing the friction between the buy and sell sides when delivering advertising inventory across multiple delivery paths.

We are extremely excited and honored to have Jordan, Pat, and Steve joining us for the opening conversation at this years Summit. Their discussion will set the tone for a progressive event that will inspire and invoke action as we all work together to transform the media landscape, said Mark Gorman, CEO, Matrix. Our Summit has proven to be a significantly impactful event and is known for its candid and collaborative conversations. We are eager to be back-in-person with an incredible line-up of speakers and sessions that I know will provide valuable content in advancing our industry.

In addition to the Opening Keynote, the Summit will also host a Media Ad Sales Council (MASC) Roundtable session featuring members of the Matrix-founded council as they discuss their efforts to-date and vision for 2022. The council focuses on identifying solutions that will advance the media marketplace; including the adoption of a standard unit of measurement for all advertising, pinpointing manual buy-sell transactions that can be automated, and unifying the business rules in the monetization of advertising inventory. The MASC members who will be joining founders Mark Gorman, CEO, Matrix, and Brenda Hetrick, CRO, Matrix, for the roundtable include Peter Jones, Premion, Melanie Webb, TEGNA, Joe Lampert, CNOmniMedia, Becky Meyer, Gray Television, Jen Scilabro, Nexstar, Missy Evenson, E.W. Scripps, and Al Lustgarten, Hearst Television.

Additional key topics include:

Ad Sales Automation & AI

Programmatic Ad Sales

Data-enabled Linear & Cross-Platform Sales

Addressable Advertising

Fast, OTT, CTV & AVOD

Local TV Advertising in a Digital World

Local Media Outlook 2022 with dentsu and Magna/IPG

To register, view the agenda, or get more information on the 2022 Media Ad Sales Summit, visit https://www.matrixformedia.com/summit2022.

About Matrix Solutions

Matrix Solutions is a forward-thinking technology company that empowers the media ad sales world with intelligence, technology, and expertise. It provides the technology back bone for the end-to-end workflow for sales organizations, transacting in the media marketplace. Its flagship solution, Monarch, is the only global ad sales platform built specifically for media, delivering the CRM and business intelligence necessary to optimize inventory, while the Matrix Sales Gateway, serving as a sell-side dedicated platform allows for the ingestion and dissemination of data from all providers in the ecosystem that participate in the negotiation and execution process. Matrix manages more than $13 billion annually in media ad revenue, has over 10K users, maintains over 95% renewal rate, and has founded the annual Media Ad Sales Summit and Media Ad Sales Council (MASC)  both of which bring together industry leaders to advance the future of media ad sales. For more information, please visit matrixformedia.com.
This is a Notice to potential witnesses and whistleblowers who may have information regarding the allegations in Insurance Office of America, Incs, John Ritenour and Heath Ritenours filed More Definite Statement against Defendants.

These depositions have yet to be formally scheduled, pursuant to a footnote in the Notices of Taking Depositions, the dates set forth in the Notices are subject to change based upon all parties and non-parties availability. The Non-Party Witnesses named in the Notices include Wesley Scovanner, Clark Witten and Abigail Ritenour, none of whom are accused of any wrongdoing and are potential non-party fact witnesses to the allegations of the Plaintiffs in their More Definite Statement against the remaining Defendants and their lawyers. This defamation case has been pending since March, 2020.

According to the filed Notices of Taking Deposition Duces Tecum (filed in the 18th Judicial Circuit Court in Seminole County, Florida, Case Number: 2020 CA 000725 11B), non-parties have been requested to produce documents, to the extent they have them, relative to their relationships with Plaintiffs as well as appear for oral deposition. Although documents and testimony have been requested, the same may be objected to and the Court may limit or even deny any or all of the requests in the Notice of Taking Depositions. At this time, Plaintiffs counsel has requested a meet and confer about the filings to attempt resolve discovery disputes before bringing the same to the Court and the same should occur after coordinating a date with Defendants counsel.

If you have any information as to the allegations in the Insurance Office of America, John Ritenour or Heath Ritenours More Definite Statement filed in our about March 2021 which can be found at the 18th Circuit Judicial Website Case Number: 2020 CA 000725 11B against former business associates and their lawyers, or if you are a witness as to the reputation of Insurance Office of America, Inc., John Ritenour or Heath Ritenour, or have any information regarding the Notices Case Number:2020 CA 000725 11B., please contact us. All communications will remain confidential unless otherwise permitted by the witness/whistleblower or Court order.

This is a Notice to potential witnesses and whistleblowers who may have information regarding the allegations in Insurance Office of America, Incs, John Ritenour and Heath Ritenours filed More Definite Statement against Defendants. At this time, the Court has issued a preliminary injunction against Defendants which is now on appeal before the 5th District Court of Appeal and Defendants have filed their initial brief. Plaintiff has yet to file its Answer Brief. This notice to witnesses has no opinion as to the issues of the case, or those issues on appeal or as to Plaintiffs allegations in their More Definite Statement or as to whether the non-parties forthcoming testimony will occur or be permitted by the Court. The Non-Party Witnesses referenced herein, are not accused of any wrongdoing, are not parties to Plaintiffs case and are potential non-party fact witnesses to the allegations of the Plaintiffs. This Notice is not a solicitation for any individual having any alleged claims against the Plaintiffs Insurance Office of American, Inc, John Ritenour or Heath Ritenour and is being published such that Defendants may obtain information from witnesses or whistleblowers. This case has not gone to trial. The Non-Parties and the Plaintiffs have rights to object to the Notice of Taking Deposition referenced herein. As such, the production of the requested material may be subject to Court review upon objections or motions to quash and the non-party witnesses may be excused altogether after court rulings from testifying or producing documents.
This series is the vehicle to share these stories of accomplished people from all walks of life who have been touched by a single word that has added to their definition of who they are and what they do."

The Naperville, Illinois-based Fig Factor Media Publishing is proud to present a new and inspiring book series that captures the positive and emotional power of 12 significant words. The new series called WordPOWER brings together 12 authors and 12 powerful words that affect their lives.

Fig Factor Media CEO Jacqueline Ruiz explained that each of the series' books compiles short anecdotes, personal messages, quotes and unique thoughts that represent each word.

I know that every one of us has a story that is waiting to be shared and embraced by others, Ruiz said. This series is the vehicle to share these stories of accomplished people from all walks of life who have been touched by a single word that has added to their definition of who they are and what they do. Our goal at Fig Factor Media is to elevate people through their stories and WordPOWER does just that. I know that it will resonate with readers.

The 12 participating authors are:

 Carolina M. Veira, author of Shining

 Erin Minckley, author of Creativity

 Gabriela Hernandez Franch, author of Smile

 Kylie Knur, author of Resilience

 Lisa Yunker Welz, author of Family

 Maria Castro, author of Kindness

 Marie Lazzara, author of Perseverance

 Perla Tamez, author of Fearless

 Ricardo Trinidad, author of Healing

 Ron and Sue Rescigno, authors of Change

 Tamika Lechee Morales, author of Inclusion

 Yaneth Medina, author of Authenticity

Several writers such as Knur, a JJR Marketing mission manager, are excited to be first-time authors.

Im so excited to share how I see the word resilience in my life through my very first book, she said. I have always thought about writing a book but never thought it would be something that I accomplish so quickly. I thank Jackie Ruiz for inviting these 12 authors, which include some of our team members, to be part of this inspirational series. I cant wait to see where this will take us.

The Rescignos, owners of Rescignos Fundraising Professionals in Bridgeview, Illinois, share their personal thoughts about their word: change.

We chose the word change because we believe everyone experiences change in their lives and how we deal with this affects our future, Sue Rescigno explained. We wanted to open peoples hearts to change. For us, this special word has guided our lives, both personally and professionally, for many years. Because we were able to adapt to change, we have become more successful than we ever imagined!

Castro, regional external affairs manager at Comcast in Chicago and an author with Fig Factor Medias Todays Inspired Latina book series chose the word  kindness because of its special meaning.

I love the word and all it represents, she said. Kindness is free and if we all shared it daily the world would be a better place. The word resonates with me because I truly believe that acts of kindness can cure anything and everything that ails usa broken heart, loneliness, illness, hatred, biases, and so much more. A dose of kindness a day costs us nothing but a few minutes of our time. And the return on that investment, priceless.

Each book is priced at $16.97. Additionally, there is a limited edition collectors box10 available which contains all 12 books for $150. All can be purchased on the WordPOWER website.

About Fig Factor Media:

Fig Factor Media will ignite your career as an author and offer proven methods to transform your mission into a movement. We help you define your passion to serve others and elevate the community, as well as impact the next generation with your story. We believe writing is an extension of your soul. Contact Fig Factor Media today and start making your dream of authorship come true! Visit our website at http://figfactormedia.com/. ###
FirstService Residential represents the best of professional property management with their deep knowledge base and extensive support infrastructure, said Paul Chan, vice president at Oceanview Village Owners Association. They bring the A-game to the management of our association.

FirstService Residential, North Americas leading association management company, was awarded the management contract for Oceanview Village Owners Association in San Francisco, California. FirstService Residential began managing the 370-unit mid-rise condominium in November 2021.

FirstService Residential represents the best of professional property management with their deep knowledge base and extensive support infrastructure, said Paul Chan, vice president at Oceanview Village Owners Association. They bring the A-game to the management of our association.

Oceanview Village Owners Association was built in 2002 and consisted of five mid-rise buildings that feature one-, two- and three-bedroom layouts with home sizes ranging from 500 to 1,200 square feet. The Oceanview Village gated community offers residents underground parking and a retail center with mixed businesses such as 24 Hour Fitness, banking and grocery stores. Residents can walk to the Daly City BART station to commute into the heart of San Francisco.

We are thrilled to be chosen by Oceanview Village, and we look forward to bringing our resources to serve the community, said Natalie Valdez-Smith, vice president of community management in San Francisco. The Board of Directors is fully engaged in all details that benefit the health of the community, and this makes them a great partner for our management team.

About FirstService Residential

FirstService Residential is North Americas property management leader, partnering with 8,500 communities across the U.S. and Canada, including low-, mid- and high-rise condominiums and cooperatives; single-family communities; master-planned, lifestyle and active adult communities; and mixed-use and rental properties. HOAs, community associations, condos and strata corporations rely on their extensive experience, resources and local expertise to maximize property values and enhance their residents lifestyles. Dedicated to making a difference, every day, FirstService Residential goes above and beyond to deliver exceptional service. FirstService Residential is a subsidiary of FirstService Corporation (FSV), a North American leader in the property services sector.

For more information, visit http://www.fsresidential.com/california.
Civil War Trails team installs new Civil War Trail sign on Chambersburg Square as Pennsylvania becomes the sixth state to join the program. Civil War Trails continues to grow into new areas with partners seeing an increasing return on investment, said Chris Brown, Assistant Director of Civil War Trails, Inc.

Earlier in December, a new Civil War Trails sign was installed in the Chambersburg Square. The sign, located in front of the Franklin County 11/30 Visitors Center, is one of many planned in Franklin County as the multi-state program expands into Pennsylvania--the sixth state to join the program.

The first Civil War Trails site will be a gateway for visitors to explore Chambersburg on foot and to encourage exploration of Franklin County. The opportunity to network Franklin Countys stories into a nation-wide program opens the county to new visitors. Civil War Trails is marketed nationally and internationally to tell Americas stories, and Franklin County certainly has many to tell, said Janet Pollard, executive director of Franklin County Visitors Bureau.

Chambersburgs new site is among the first half dozen being installed in Pennsylvania since the Commonwealth joined the program earlier in 2021.

Civil War Trails continues to grow into new areas with partners seeing an increasing return on investment, said Chris Brown, Assistant Director of Civil War Trails, Inc. The program is recognized among travelers, particularly younger visitors, who are looking for authentic experiences and local history.

The Foundation for Enhancing Communities (TFEC) funded the cost of the new Civil War Trail sign in Chambersburg as part of its 100-year celebration. TFEC works to strengthen and support community. It is funding a second sign in Chambersburg to be installed later in 2022. Other sites in Franklin County under consideration include Monterey Pass Battlefield, near Blue Ridge Summit, and the Allison-Antrim Museum in Greencastle.

The Civil War Trails team also installed two new signs in Wrightsville along the Susquehanna River in York County. In total, the team installed, updated, or repaired 27 Civil War Trails sites across Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia during the week. Once installed, each Civil War Trails site is constantly updated with new content and refreshed to ensure a well-maintained product, which is always worth revisiting.

To learn more about the Civil War Trails program, visit http://www.civilwartrails.org and @civilwartrails on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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 regularly or contact the Franklin County Visitors Bureau at 866.646.8060 for information on 11/30 Visitors Center activities.
The FTX.US platform is sophisticated yet simple for clients to use, and it integrates seamlessly with our air charter marketplace.

FTX US ("the Company"), a leading US-regulated cryptocurrency exchange, today announced that it has entered into a partnership agreement with Stratos Jets Charters Inc (Stratos), a private jet charter broker based in Orlando, Florida. Through this partnership, Stratos will be accepting payments in both crypto and fiat through the FTX Pay platform. FTX Pay through Stratos will only be available to FTX US customers.

FTX Pay is a service that allows companies to accept payments in both crypto and traditional currencies in a fast and efficient process when compared to traditional credit card payments. As a result of the partnership, Stratos will choose which coins/crypto they will accept for payments for its services. With the integration of FTX Pay, customers for Stratos will be charged a 1.5% fee as opposed to the 4% fee associated with standard credit card payments.

Brett Harrison, President of FTX US, commented on todays news, We built FTX Pay in order to provide businesses with a quick, secure and inexpensive way to accept payment in any type of currency, with the end goal of revising the global payments landscape. As an organization, Stratos prioritizes the customer experience and were happy to assist them in this process through our payment platform. Its exciting to work with an industry leader and assist in bettering their customer experience while also elevating the presence of digital assets outside of the traditional financial landscape.

Joel Thomas, CEO of Stratos Jet Charters Inc., says that in searching for a crypto partner to integrate with its online booking platform Stratos Marketplace, FTX.US was an ideal fit: FTX offers more features than any other major US platform and it sets the industry standard for security. The FTX.US platform is sophisticated yet simple for clients to use, and it integrates seamlessly with our air charter marketplace.

The Stratos marketplace can be used on desktop or mobile devices, giving those making travel plans the ability to search for and book flights instantly. Travelers can also check itineraries and passenger information, as well as confirm catering and ground services for upcoming flights. Now with the new FTX integration, in just a few extra clicks, clients can also easily book and pay for their charter flights.

With the current unprecedented level of demand for private aviation, Stratos was looking for a more secure and efficient way of securing client payments for charter flights, adds Thomas. We felt that accepting crypto as a form of payment would dramatically reduce our risk vs credit cards and we selected FTX Pay due to the sophisticated simplicity of their platform and its ability to seamlessly integrate it within our air charter marketplace. Within the first week of integrating the FTX payment platform into Stratos Air Charter Marketplace, weve transacted roughly a half a million dollars in revenue.

About FTX US

FTX US is a US-regulated cryptocurrency exchange, built from the ground up. Our mission is for FTX US to grow the digital currency ecosystem, offer US traders a platform that inspires their loyalty, and become the market leading US cryptocurrency exchange.

To learn more about FTX US, please visit: https://ftx.us/

About Stratos Jet Charters Inc.

Based in Orlando, FL, Stratos Jet Charters Inc. has been providing private jet broker services across the United States and around the world for nearly two decades. In that time, Stratos has developed a reputation for outstanding service and safety. With strong industry relationships, a trip support department and a unique additional $50 million liability policy above operators insurance, Stratos strives to provide private jet travel that offers value and convenience as well as the height of service and safety. To learn more, please visit: http://www.StratosJets.com
The Findora community will be able to vote on which projects get funded through a governance process administered by a DAO.

Six weeks after the release of Findora EVM on Forge Testnet, winners of the inaugural Falling for DeFi on Findora Hackathon raced to deploy their projects on Findora as the EVM went live on Mainnet Beta last week.

The hackathon, which hosted over 300 developers and received over 50 project submissions, showcased demos on Thursday, December 9th, and produced winners across three tracks:

Liquidity

1st Place $15K - TropIC - a Norse mythology game on Findora

2nd Place $7.5K - Findswap - an AMM Deployment on Findora

3rd Place $2.5K - Atherton - an OlympusDAO fork on Findora

Tools

1st Place $7.5K - Findexer - an indexer for Findora

2nd Place $5K - Pyndora - a Python SDK for Findora

3rd Place $2.5K - Findora Explorer - an Etherscan alternative on Findora

Cryptography

Winner $15K - Poseidon - an integration of Poseidon, a hash function for ZKP systems

The Findora EVM release on Mainnet Beta means that developers can use Findora to:



Deploy Ethereum smart contracts using Solidity

Issue and transact with ERC-20 compatible tokens

Build trustless bridges with Ethereum and ERC-20 compatible networks

Create Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) using the ERC-721 standard

Build and deploy DApps using Ethereum developer tools, including:



MetaMask - a crypto wallet browser extension for EVM blockchains

Remix - an Ethereum development environment

Truffle - an Ethereum development environment, testing framework and asset pipeline

Hardhat - an Ethereum development environment

Waffle - a library for compiling and testing smart contracts

Mars - a deployment manager

Developers can apply for grants via the Findora Foundation website to help seed their ideas and accelerate their growth. The Findora community will be able to vote on which projects get funded through a governance process administered by a DAO. Projects should meet the following criteria in order to qualify for grant funding:



1. Projects must build a protocol or DApp directly on the Findora blockchain

2. Projects must impact the Findora ecosystem in a meaningful way

3. Projects should utilize Findoras privacy technology such as zero-knowledge proofs

Get Involved

If you are a developer interested in building on Findora, then you can start by reading the documentation, joining the Discord channel and applying for a grant through the Findora Foundation website.

About Findora

Findora is a public blockchain with programmable privacy. Originally conceptualized as a university cryptography research project in 2017, and finally launched to the public in 2021, Findora utilizes the latest breakthroughs in zero-knowledge proofs and multi-party computation, to allow users transactional privacy with selective auditability.

Findora is backed by Polychain, Powerscale Capital, Allchaineed, Cabin VC, Krypital Group, Axia8 Ventures and is partnered with dozens of companies and organizations including Tencent, BSN, MetisDAO, Taxa, Bank of Asia, Travel USA Express, MoneyMoov, IOTPay, YouWorld, Citcon, and Bayes. For more information, please visit findora.org.
It should broaden readers' perspectives on life, death, society, culture, art, history, philosophy, and religion, as well as serving to remind readers of the true nature of the world in which we live.

Author Adam Kristos Radley shares a compelling, realistic story of an American collapse with readers in IN THE SHADOWS OF GODS ($28.99, paperback, 9781662836596; $9.99, e-book, 9781662836602).

Radleys story follows fictional character, Keith Rawlings, as he faces a sudden and unexpected power outage in his southern Indiana college town. All electronics including cars and cellphones are dead, panic overtakes society, and chaos ensues. Keith must get home, reunite the family, and create a plan to survive in a world without modern technology. Simultaneously, the residents of two country roads must band together to build a community and rebuild what they can of their lives, but they have more than nature to battle; they must contend with human nature as well. In a world with scarce resources and no rule of law, the clash of opposing worldviews is inevitable. What will happen with these two very different worldviews?

I hope for readers to find this book both entertaining and edifying, said Radley. It should broaden readers' perspectives on life, death, society, culture, art, history, philosophy, and religion, as well as serving to remind readers of the true nature of the world in which we live.

Adam Kristos Radley holds bachelor's degrees in English and History from Indiana University as well as a certificate in gunsmithing. He is a Marine Corps Infantry veteran in addition to have worked as a landscaper, roofer, mover, factory worker, truck driver, security guard, and entrepreneur. Radley is an avid outdoorsman, hunter, trapper, fisherman, shooter, and homesteader. He enjoys growing and preserving fruits and vegetables, foraging for wild mushrooms and edible plants, raising animals, and cooking, as well as reading, writing, and painting. Radley is currently working to build a brand for literature lovers who are tired of reading propaganda and uninspired drivel devoid of all creativity and truth. He is committed to writing the literature that readers have been deprived of for decades.

Liberty Hill Publishing, a division of Salem Media Group, is a leader in the print-on-demand, self-publishing industry. IN THE SHADOWS OF GODS is available online through amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
This social media contest will be such a fun way to find the biggest fan leading up to the exciting launch of season four of the series. -Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4

KnowBe4, the provider of the worlds largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, today announced a new social media contest in search of the biggest fan of KnowBe4s popular security awareness training series The Inside Man.

KnowBe4s The Biggest Fan of The Inside Man contest has kicked off and is in search of original and creative social media posts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Spiceworks about The Inside Man that must use the hash tag #KnowBe4IMBiggestFan. The winner must reside in the United States or Canada and will receive one airline ticket and hotel accommodations for the world premiere of The Inside Man Season 4 on February 2, 2022 in Clearwater, Florida, USA. The contest will close on January 13, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Specific terms and conditions for the contest are available at https://www.knowbe4.com/inside-man-contest-terms-conditions?hs_preview=KTAyqOVK-62168844351.

The Inside Man is one of the most popular security awareness training series that KnowBe4 offers its customers, said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4. This social media contest will be such a fun way to find the biggest fan leading up to the exciting launch of season four of the series. The winner will receive the opportunity to come to Florida for the premiere, walk the red carpet and get a sneak peek at the new season of the series.

The Inside Man is a custom, network-quality video series, with three seasons (soon to be four), created by Twist & Shout Communications, a KnowBe4 company. The series is about an IT security analyst starting a new job where no one suspects he is already inside their most secure systems or that sinister forces are pulling his strings. The KnowBe4 series delivers an entertaining, movie-like experience with a compelling story that will engage users and create fans. From social engineering to passwords, to social media and travel, The Inside Man reveals how easy it can be for an outsider to penetrate an organizations security controls and network. And, more importantly, it wrestles with the human cost of cybercrime.

For more information on The Inside Man series, visit https://www.knowbe4.com/inside-man.

About KnowBe4

KnowBe4, the provider of the worlds largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 44,000 organizations around the globe. Founded by IT and data security specialist, Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness about ransomware, CEO fraud, and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to awareness training on security. Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist and KnowBe4's Chief Hacking Officer, helped design the KnowBe4 training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Tens of thousands of organizations rely on KnowBe4 to mobilize their end users as their last line of defense.
What is needed by providers of metaverse spaces, and the brands they hope to acquire, is messaging that will attract the users and the buyers they seek. The growth curve that entrepreneurs and investors hope will occur is like that of e-commerce. Twenty years ago, eCommerce was an insignificant portion of overall retail. In 2021, they will reach nearly $5 trillion. The same path could happen with the metaverse.

The metaverse, broadly defined as the immersive digital platform in which people will work, play, and socialize, is likely to become the next major technological step for the internet.(1) Facebook recently changed its company name to Meta to reflect its focus on building the metaverse(2), and other companies, such as Epic Games, have recently raised significant capital in pursuit of similar ambitions.(3)

The growth curve that entrepreneurs and investors hope will occur, notes Maury Rogow, CEO of Hollywoods Rip Media Group, is like that of e-commerce. Twenty years ago, says Rogow, eCommerce was an insignificant portion of overall retail. In 2021, they will reach nearly $5 trillion.(4) The same path could happen with the metaverse.

There are, Rogow notes, some obstacles to metaverse growth on this scale. One is the need for connectivity, a virtual reality (VR) headset can run from $300 to $1,500, depending on needed features and responsiveness.(5) Although, according to Rogow, one can access the metaverse without a headset, the experience would not be as immersive. Another issue is that the various metaverses at the moment need continuity.

What is needed by providers of metaverse spaces, and the brands they hope to attract, says Rogow, is messaging that will overcome these difficulties and attract the users and the buyers they seek.

To be effective, this sort of messaging, says Rogow, which is at present mostly aimed at business leaders in a very high-tech environment, should be based on traditional and longstanding principles of marketing. As an example, he cites the experience of RedFOX Labs, a Southeast Asia-based venture builder that recently sought market support in the sale of 20 retail spaces (SHOPs) in its RFOX VALT metaverse.(6)

Im not a fortune teller regarding the metaverse, says Rogow, but I know how to market a brand. We follow the creative steps of what worked for thousands of campaigns, which led to all shops being sold in weeks. The question is, how would you market the metaverse?

The approach, says Rogow, is inside what he regards as a fundamental credo of marketing: a brand will live or die based on the story it tells. His companys guidelines for telling an effective story have been collected as a set of general principles, which are known as the 10 Commandments of Brand Story. One of Rogows favorites for novel or complex products is to make certain that the story focuses on the benefits provided to customers and not just on the product. Following commandment Number Three (sell the hole, not the drill) and its fellows, RedFoX Labs vision became successful through videos, landing pages, and podcasts. RedFoX sold each space for $100,000 using the RedFOX bitcoin, raising $2 million in capital.

The metaverse, Rogow acknowledges, is difficult to talk and write clearly about, largely because so much of it is unknown. Exactly the same was true 25 years ago, he notes, about the World Wide Web. Even so, companies with an easily communicable ideaovernight delivery of best-selling books, for example, or easily searchingwere able to thrive and become the billion-dollar companies of this decade.

In one form or another, the metaverse is coming, says Rogow. To thrive, brands will need a clear and compelling story to tell. Finding that story, refining it, and selling is what professional marketers do.

About Rip Media Group

Rip Media Group, founded in 2007, is a trailblazing video marketing company based in Los Angeles, California. Founded by digital pioneer Maury Rogow, Rip Media Group brings a unique combination of storytelling, art and ROI strategy to the field of marketing. Maury is a member of the Producers Guild of America, with several feature films to his credit. His unique background in film production led to an epiphany in the intrinsic value of storytelling in marketing, no matter how technical the subject. This led to his work in a high-tech firm and its purchase by Cisco for more than $1 billion. He went on to form Rip Media Group, a collection of award-winning storytellers, technicians, and artists, selected from the Producers Guild, Writers Guild, and Screen Actors Guild. Their Green Light Production Process and other proprietary systems are used to create world-class voiceover, animation, and live action video to grow businesses of any size. For more, visit https://ripmediagroup.com/

1. Hackl, Cathy. The Metaverse Is Coming and Its a Very Big Deal; 5 July 2020; Forbes; forbes.com/sites/cathyhackl/2020/07/05/the-metaverse-is-coming--its-a-very-big-deal/?sh=2aceea87440f

2. Molina, Brett and Guynn, Jessica; Facebook changes name to Meta: Mark Zuckerberg announces company rebrand as it moves to the metaverse; 28 Oct. 2021; USA Today; usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/10/28/facebook-meta-name-change-metaverse-instagram-whatsapp-zuckerberg/6180303001/

3. Newsroom; Announcing a New Funding Round of $1 Billion to Support Epics Long-Term Vision for the Metaverse; 13 April 2021; Epic Games; epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/announcing-a-1-billion-funding-round-to-support-epics-long-term-vision-for-the-metaverse

4. Chevalier, Stephanie; Global Retail E-Commerce Market Size 2014-2023; 7 July 2021; Statista;statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/

5. Greenwald, Will; The Best VR Headsets for 2021; 18 Nov. 2021; PCMAG; pcmag.com/picks/the-best-vr-headsets

6. Newsroom; Southeast Asian Venture Builder Redfox Labs Launches First Shop Auction for RFOX Valt Metaverse; 15 Sept. 2021; GlobeNewswire; globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/09/15/2297173/0/en/Southeast-Asian-Venture-Builder-RedFOX-Labs-Launches-First-SHOP-Auction-for-RFOX-VALT-Metaverse.html
There is nothing like the excited feeling a person gets from finding an excellent deal online. It feels even better knowing that a person has spent their money wisely, particularly on essential purchases such as a car. My Car Auction is pleased to announce its newest referral program. The company is offering $100 to those referring their family and friends who will sell a car online with them.

There are so many ways to sell a car that it can seem overwhelming. At My Car Auction the company makes the process of registering, listing and selling a car online quick and efficient. The used car selling platform takes pride in its no hidden fees and no hassle car selling process.

My Car Auction offers customers a more straightforward and convenient way to sell a car, so the customer doesnt need to deal with the inconvenience of listing it privately. Customers also receive a maximum value quote for a car. Currently, MyCarAuction.com uses one of the largest car selling platforms in the county, with more than $50 billion in used cars sold annually.

As their way of thanking their loyal customers, the company has prepared special offers for customers and friends. According to a spokesperson from My Car Auction, If you know someone in need of selling their car, now is the best time to tell them about My Car Auction. We will help them get the money they need with our instant online car valuation process. As our gift, we are also offering $100 for each qualified sale made through the referral link. The more friends you get to sell their car through the referral link, the more rewards you earn.

The referral program works by encouraging current customers to refer someone they think would benefit from selling a used car. Customers will receive a custom website link they can text, email, or share with their family and friends who are considering selling their used car. Once the customer sells a car, My Car Auction will process the $100 payment through Paypal.

About My Car Auction

My Car Auction is an online car selling platform located in Irvine, California. The company is composed of car enthusiasts who have been in the car business for a combined experience of more than four decades. The owners saw an opportunity in the market to make a platform that would become an advocate for the customer. Throughout the years, MyCarAuction.com put a lot of thought into offering customers the most convenient way to sell a car and get the most of their money.

To learn more about My Car Auctions referral program or to receive a quote to sell your car online, call Nicholas Sperr at (949) 533-2308 or email info@mycarauction.com. To send a referral link, sign in or create an account using just a phone number, click Referral Program in the top right, enter the user's PayPal information, and then the user will receive a custom, sharable link to send to family and friends. Visit the companys official website at https://mycarauction.com to view some of their recently sold vehicles.
Rare Cannabinoid Company's eGift Cards can be used for any of their products. Some of the most popular items are THCV, CBN, CBG, and CBD gummies. We hope our eGift Cards will take the stress out of choosing a specific item for a friend or loved one and help people give a healthy, wellness gift that arrives on time.

Need a last-minute present? Rare Cannabinoid Company has just launched electronic Gift Cards that can be delivered instantly or on a chosen date -- perfect for Christmas deliveries. Recipients can use the cannabinoid eGift Cards for any of the brand's products. Rare Cannabinoid Company sells the strongest THCV gummies for energy and appetite suppression, CBN gummies for sleep, CBG gummies for discomfort, and CBD gummies for calm and balance. Pioneers in the minor cannabinoid industry, their full apothecary includes tinctures of CBDA, CBDV, CBC, full spectrum Hawaiian CBD, terpene-only blends and more hemp-derived products.

"We hope our eGift Cards will take the stress out of choosing a specific item for a friend or loved one and help people give a healthy, wellness gift that arrives on time," said Jennifer Carlile, Rare Cannabinoid Company Co-Founder.

"Our products are also great for helping people with their New Year's Resolutions," she said.

How do the new gift cards work?

Customers simply fill out the recipient's email address, how much they'd like to give them (between $10 and $500), write a gift message, and specify if they'd like the eGift Card delivered immediately or on a specific day, such as Christmas.

Their friend, colleague, or relative will receive an email with their message and a unique code to use at checkout. They can choose any Rare Cannabinoid Company products they like with it. For added security, they can also lock the gift card balance against their user account.

Best of all? There are no physical cards to lose or restrictions. This means they can use it on discounted items or for special deals just like cash or a credit card. The money from partially used eGift Cards can also be saved for later.

What can eGift Card recipients purchase?

They can choose any products they want with the eGift Card money. Rare Cannabinoid Company sells pure rare cannabinoid tinctures, one-to-one blends of rare cannabinoids and full spectrum Hawaiian CBD, and high potency, naturally flavored, vegan gummies of THCV, CBN, CBG, and CBD.

Below is a very brief description of what each cannabinoid may be good for. Click on the cannabinoid name for more information and links to scientific studies:

THCV: Increases energy and reduces hunger, which may aid weight loss. THCV is being studied for nicotine and other addictions, panic attacks, and type 2 diabetes. Products for sale: Pure THCV tinctures, THCV CBD blends, strong THCV gummies.

CBN: Promotes rest, relaxation, and sleep. Products for sale: Pure CBN tinctures, CBN CBD blends, strong CBN gummies.

CBG: May reduce discomfort, soreness and is being studied for potential use against many diseases. Products for sale: Pure CBG tinctures, CBD CBD blends, strong CBG gummies.

CBC: May improve and enhance mood. Products for sale: Pure CBC tinctures and CBC CBD blends.

CBDA: Reduces nausea and discomfort. Products for sale: Pure CBDA tincture.

CBDV: May reduce discomfort and nausea and is being studied for potential benefits for seizures, autism spectrum disorder and other uses. Products for sale: Pure CBDV tincture.

CBD: Promotes stress resilience, a sense of calm, and may reduce inflammation from daily activities. Products for sale: 1000mg full spectrum Rare Hawaiian CBD, extra strength 3000mg CBD booster, and strong CBD gummies.

Relax Terpenes: Promotes rest, relaxation, and sleep.

Relief Terpenes: May reduce discomfort and stress.

Rare Cannabinoid Company is an American company based in Hawaii. It was established in the first quarter of 2020 as one of the first brands to offer "rare" or "minor" cannabinoids.

It is the sister brand of Hawaiian Choice, which was established in 2017. Hawaiian Choice is a luxury, lifestyle brand that combines premium broad spectrum Hawaiian CBD with organic and wild crafted Hawaiian fruits, essential oils and honey in an assortment of tinctures, gummies, salves and pet products.

Stores interested in stocking Rare Cannabinoid Company and/or Hawaiian Choice products can request a wholesale account at Wellness Orders.
The engineering team saw that PENETRON ADMIX SB could withstand the corrosive nature of the effluent and permanently seal the new concrete structures from any liquid penetration. In turn, this would significantly reduce long-term repair and maintenance costs for the village.

Completed in September 2021, the expansion of the municipal stormwater control system and upgrade of the wastewater treatment plant will help East Palestine, Ohio better meet EPA regulations. PENETRON ADMIX SB was specified to ensure durable and waterproof concrete for the villages new stormwater infrastructure.

East Palestine, Ohio is located on the eastern border to Pennsylvania, about 20 miles (32 km) south of Youngstown. The municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in this village of approximately 5,000 inhabitants needed to be expanded and upgraded to better meet current EPA standards to control the flow of storm water.

The water treatment system in East Palestine treats an average of 1.4 million gallons of effluent every day, explains Christopher Chen, Director of The Penetron Group. However, in storm situations, the villages water control system was quickly overwhelmed, which led to untreated effluent being discharged into the nearby Leslie Run Creek. This resulted in unacceptable levels of water pollution.

Expanding to Prevent Overflows

The construction project added an equalization basin, a large (1.2 million gallon) holding tank to help prevent flooding or overflow of the wastewater treatment plant. Further work included replacement of the wastewater siphon under Leslie Run Creek, a new 24" main sewer line running to the WWTP, replacement of the blower building and the grit removal equipment, and construction of new administration and maintenance/garage buildings.

MS Consultants, the projects structural engineers, needed a solution to protect the new concrete structures exposed to the corrosive environment of the untreated effluent from above, and the hydrostatic pressure of the sites groundwater from below. Originally, a competitive crystalline product was specified in the construction plans. After MS Consultants checked with the local Penetron specialist and City Concrete, the projects ready-mix concrete supplier, PENETRON ADMIX SB, a permeability-reducing concrete admixture in soluble bags, was specified.

Stopping Water and Harmful Chemicals

PENETRON ADMIX SB  in the soluble bag format to simplify the concrete batching process  contains active proprietary chemicals that form a non-soluble, lattice-like crystalline formation throughout the pores, micro-cracks and capillary tracts typically found in concrete. This formation essentially makes the concrete impermeable, stopping water and harmful chemicals from penetrating the concrete, even when facing high hydrostatic pressure.

City Concrete treated over 4,300 yds3 (3,900 m3) of concrete with PENETRON ADMIX SB, which was used for the new equalization basin, the wastewater siphon, the main sewer line, the below-grade concrete structures of the grit removal system, the new blower building, and the administration and maintenance/garage buildings.

The engineering team saw that PENETRON ADMIX SB could withstand the corrosive nature of the effluent and permanently seal the new concrete structures from any liquid penetration, said Christopher Chen. In turn, this would significantly reduce long-term repair and maintenance costs for the village.

The Penetron Group is a leading manufacturer of specialty construction products for concrete waterproofing, concrete repairs and floor preparation systems. The Group operates through a global network, offering support to the design and construction community through its regional offices, representatives, and distribution channels.

For more information on Penetron waterproofing solutions, please visit penetron(dot)com or Facebook(dot)com/ThePenetronGroup, email CRDept(at)penetron(dot)com, or contact the Corporate Relations Department at 631-941-9700.
We are thrilled for our Central Valley locations for earning this recognition once again, and we look forward to supporting their continued success in 2022 and beyond.

PrideStaff, a nationally franchised staffing organization, is pleased to announce that their Fresno, Modesto, and Visalia offices were named to the 2021 Best of Central Valley Business List by The Business Journal. This is the seventh consecutive win for PrideStaff Fresno and the fourth consecutive win for PrideStaff Visalia in the Best Employment Service category.

The Best of Central Valley program has evolved tremendously since its inception eight years ago. The program has grown from 22,000 votes cast in 2014, to more than 150,000 in 2021. This year, website visitors chose their favorite local businesses in 35 categories. An invite-only crowd of around 100 gathered at Fresno's Elbow Room earlier this month to celebrate the accomplishments of those crowned the "cream of the crop" by The Business Journal's readers.

"It's incredibly meaningful to be voted a leading staffing agency in our market, especially since those votes come directly from members of the community we serve," stated Sean Akin, Strategic-Partner of PrideStaff Fresno and PrideStaff Modesto. "I'd like to thank everyone on our team for helping us be the Central Valley's favorite for seven straight years. By truly listening to employers and job seekers, adapting our solutions to their needs, and living our mission to 'Consistently provide client experiences focused on what they value most,' we've been able to deliver great results and unmatched service to our customers."

Blanca Covarrubias, Owner/Strategic-Partner of PrideStaff Visalia, spoke to her office's recruiting and service advantages as key factors in their success. "Today's recruiting market is incredibly challenging, and my team has gone above and beyond to help employers find the talented people they need for temporary and direct roles," stated Covarrubias. "Its an honor to work with such great candidates and clients in the Central Valley. Thank you to all of the readers who voted for us."

"Despite a multitude of pandemic-related restrictions and critical candidate shortages in their markets, Sean, Blanca and their teams have done a tremendous job acting as true partners to both clients and candidates  creating exceptional customer experiences and connecting great people with meaningful employment opportunities," said PrideStaff Co-CEO, Tammi Heaton. "We are thrilled for our Central Valley locations for earning this recognition once again, and we look forward to supporting their continued success in 2022 and beyond."

About PrideStaff

PrideStaff was founded in the 1970s as 100% company-owned units and began staffing franchising in 1995. They operate over 85 offices in North America to serve over 5,000 clients and are headquartered in Fresno, CA. With over 40 years in the staffing business, PrideStaff offers the resources and expertise of a national firm with the spirit, dedication and personal service of smaller, entrepreneurial firms. PrideStaff is the only nationwide, commercial staffing firm in the U.S. and Canada with over $100 million in annual revenue to earn ClearlyRateds prestigious Best of Staffing Diamond Award eight years in a row highlighting exceptional client and talent service quality.

For more information on our services or for staffing franchise information, visit our website.
The Central Valley Project in California will receive $61.8 million to address ongoing drought needs throughout the region. Shown: The Sacramento River below Shasta Dam in Northern California. By funding efforts to address intensifying drought and wildfires, this Administration is making among the largest investments in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history."

Today, the Bureau of Reclamation released the spending plan for the $210 million provided in the Extending Government Funding and Delivery Emergency Assistance Act (P.L. 117-43). The legislation provides Reclamation with $200 million to address drought conditions throughout the West, as well as $10 million for fire remediation and suppression emergency assistance related to wildfires.

By funding efforts to address intensifying drought and wildfires, this Administration is making among the largest investments in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history, said Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Tanya Trujillo. This legislation helps protect communities and ecosystems against the threat of wildland fire by making historic investments in drought relief, hazardous fuels management, and post-wildfire restoration activities.

"Most of the West, and specifically Californias Central Valley, the Klamath Basin in Oregon/California, and the Colorado River Basin, were impacted by this past dry hydrologic year. Recent forecasts show minimal relief for water year 2022," said Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton. "This funding will help protect those communities and ecosystems in the short term, as we leverage our resources in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build long-term water resilience in the backdrop of climate change across the entire West."

Funding allocations include:



$40 million for the implementation of conserving 500,000+ acre-feet of water over the next two years to stabilize the decline of Lake Mead. This includes $26 million to the Lower Colorado River Operations Program to continue the implementation of Drought Contingency Plan activities, and $14 million to shore up water firming rights for Tribal communities during times of shortage in the Central Arizona water supply.

- This brings the total to $50 million available for the first year of implementation when adding in $10 million in FY 2021 funds reprogrammed for this purpose.

$1.2 million for the Lower Colorado River Operations Program to initiate coordination of post 2026 operational guidelines and studies related to drought resiliency.

$61.8 million to Californias Central Valley Project to address ongoing drought needs throughout the region.

$20 million to the WaterSMART Drought Response Program to address drought planning and implementation actions through a competitive selection process that emphasizes mitigation of drought impacts, involvement from multiple stakeholders, and cost-sharing from non-federal sponsors.

$10 million for the Klamath Project to support drought response and resiliency activities.

$10 million for drought mitigation activities for Native Americans.

$22 million for drought-specific projects and activities, such as additional storage facilities for the Mni Wiconi Project (SD) and water conservation improvements for the Yakima River Basin Water Enhancement Project (WA).

$35 million for contingency funding to address the most pressing and emerging drought- related needs as the FY 2022 water year hydrology unfolds.

In addition to drought funding, P.L. 117-43 provided Reclamation with $10 million for fire remediation and suppression emergency assistance activities related to wildfires. Climate change and dry hydrologic patterns have made wildfires more frequent and extreme in recent years, where the devasting impacts have dire effects in Reclamation areas. Reclamations fire remediation and suppression activities include infrastructure repairs, debris removal, fire suppression, and water quality efforts, as well as risk prevention and future fire mitigation efforts such as fuels reduction and cleanup activities.

For more information, please visit https://www.usbr.gov/budget/.


Our unparalleled experience in creating engaging consumer gifting experiences combined with our technical know-how and stack puts us in a prime position to compete successfully in this market.

SmartGift, Inc., the leaders in easy and thoughtful gifting and recognition experiences, today released an update on its 2021 progress, which is underpinned by a year of continued growth for its consumer business, as well as a strong start for its corporate gifting and employee recognition platform, Hero.

The societal and market drivers for SmartGifts accelerated growth exist on multiple fronts. Brands continue to focus on seamless consumer experiences as part of their online strategy. Sustainability is moving to the forefront in boardrooms and businesses are seeking tech solutions that help eliminate waste. Work from anywhere creates new opportunities for platforms that empower employers, employees and clients to forge deeper relationships and make work rewarding and fun.

Through its patented Send with SmartGift platform, SmartGift, Inc. powers consumer gifting experiences for top brands in North America, Europe, and APAC. Shoppers can instantly send gifts via email, text, or social media without the need to guess the recipients shipping address or preferences such as size, color, shade, pattern, and fragrance.

During 2021, SmartGift added new clients to its consumer gifting platform, including additional top brands like bareMinerals in the US and UK. The company also expanded its existing partnerships with brands such as VF Corporation with the addition of Altra Running, and Pandora Jewelry, which added its online store in Spain to the US, Canadian, UK, German and French stores. Additionally, SmartGift, Inc. launched its corporate gifting platform Hero with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC. in October.

Our Send with SmartGift consumer gifting platform continues to resonate with consumers and brands alike. Its thoughtful, engaging, convenient and has a tangible impact on sustainability by significantly reducing returns and the associated waste and carbon footprint, said Bernd Strenitz, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at SmartGift.

Work from anywhere created an urgent need for address-less gifting, which we see on the consumer and corporate side. Our expansion into corporate gifting with Hero is driven by strong interest from businesses in our consumer solution and is off to a great start. Our unparalleled experience in creating engaging consumer gifting experiences combined with our technical know-how and stack puts us in a prime position to compete successfully in this market. We are tremendously excited about 2022 as we are focusing on further accelerating our year over year growth in both business segments, added Strenitz.

Brand Partner Quotes

"After viewing the results of the partnership between VF Corporation and SmartGift, Altra Running decided to join the network of outstanding brands utilizing virtual gifting during the holiday season and beyond. The "Send as a Gift" technology has allowed us to see the deeper gifting opportunities with our customers and develop a stronger approach to marketing for our peak occasions." - Wade Litsey, Senior Manager- E-Commerce, Altra Running

"We expect the December holidays to be our biggest shopping occasion of the year because of the increased demand for statement-making and breathtaking accessories for upcoming in-person events. We are delighted to be partnering with SmartGift to facilitate a stress-free and intuitive gifting experience that allows the recipient to be wowed by their perfect gift, while also being seamlessly introduced to our brand and story." - Martha Hernandez, Senior Digital Design/UX Manager, Brighton Collectibles

"SmartGift helps both new and existing bareMinerals customers send the perfect gift every time. We have seen our users in the US and UK sending, customizing, and paying for gifts within 20 to 30 minutes. These insights highlight how engaged recipients are with the experience, and we're looking forward to the positive impact this will have on post-holiday returns and exchanges. - Whitney Goldman, Vice President, Global Digital, Ecommerce & CRM, bareMinerals

For more information and to schedule a demo reach out at: https://www.smartgiftit.com/product/send-with-smartgift#request-demo

About SmartGift, Inc.

SmartGift, Inc. is a recognized leader in providing innovative, thoughtful and convenient gift sending and receiving experiences to major retail brands and businesses in the US, Europe and Asia through its Send with SmartGift consumer gifting platform and its Hero employee and client engagement and recognition platform. The companys solutions enable consumers and businesses to connect and deepen relationships with friends, family, employees and clients. For more information visit http://www.smartgift.com.
Softtek has been a key advocate for innovation at H-E-B in the most efficient, swift and effective way, maximizing our investment in technology with advancements for its automation and innovation management platform, using AI for proof of concept and other diverse digital solutions

Softtek, a global company dedicated to helping organizations evolve through digital technology, announced today it won the Strategic Partner H-E-B 2021 in the IT division from H-E-B Mexico, a privately held supermarket chain, with more than 340 stores across Texas and northern Mexico. The award recognizes superb performance and outstanding partner relationship throughout the challenges brought on by 2021.

Softtek has been a key advocate for innovation at H-E-B in the most efficient, swift and effective way, maximizing our investment in technology with advancements for its automation and innovation management platform, using AI for proof of concept and other diverse digital solutions, said Hilda Ruiz, head of centers of excellence at HEB.

Softtek began working with H-E-B in 2012, providing a variety of IT support services. The relationship has evolved in the past few years to address strategic innovation projects, which has included an evaluation of the companys various departments to identify areas of opportunity for which robotic process automation (RPA) could provide added value while reducing costs. In 2018, Softtek implemented FRIDA, its proprietary cognitive automation platform, leveraging state-of-the art machine learning and AI tools. In 2019, H-E-B reported that the ROI for FRIDA allowed the company to cover 100% the cost of the project with just one bot, representing significantly reduced process times  from several minutes to a few seconds.

Over the past year, despite obstacles provoked by the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Softtek was able to maintain impeccable service.

We feel very honored and motivated to have received this recognition from a company like H-E-B who focuses on maintaining relationships with their consumers and employees based on superior quality and care, said Miguel Saldivar, managing director for retail at Softtek. We look forward to continue supporting the progressive digital transformation of H-E-B, improving consumer and employee experience.

For more detailed information about Softteks intelligent automation solutions, visit https://www2.softtek.com/intelligent-automation.

About H-E-B:

H-E-B, with sales of $28 billion, operates more than 400 stores in Texas and Mexico. Known for its innovation and community service, H-E-B celebrates its 115th anniversary this year. Recognized for its fresh food, quality products, convenient services, and a commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainability, H-E-B strives to provide the best customer experience and lowest prices. Based in San Antonio, H-E-B employs over 120,000 Partners in Texas and Mexico and serves millions of customers in more than 300 communities. For more information, visit HEB.com and HEB.com/Newsroom.

About Softtek:

Founded in 1982, Softtek is a global company and the largest provider of IT services from Latin America. With a broad portfolio of business-transforming products and solutions, Softtek helps Global 2000 organizations evolve their digital capabilities constantly and seamlessly, from ideation and development to execution. Learn how Softtek creates value through technology at http://www.softtek.com and connect with @Softtek in social media.
Together these programs and projects address key priorities within our city -- including property revitalization, the promotion & accessibility of the arts, and increased affordable housing opportunities-- and will lead to an improved quality of life for our residents. - Mayor Michael OConnor

On Friday, December 10, 2021, Governor Larry Hogan announced new awardees for the State Revitalization Programs administered by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). Among those projects funded were three within The City of Frederick.



Fredericks Building Reuse Programs: $100,000 has been awarded for the continuation of existing grant programs facilitating commercial building upgrades across The City of Frederick. These grant opportunities include the Facade Improvement Programs administered by the Downtown Frederick Partnership, Golden Mile Alliance, and East Frederick Rising; as well as the downtown-specific Mission: Interior and Fire Suppression Programs. Under the Facade Improvement Programs, eligible commercial and mixed-use buildings owners/tenants may apply for matching grants to support exterior building improvements. The Mission: Interior program assists downtown businesses in making critical interior capital repairs to retail spaces, and the Fire Suppression Program helps offset the high costs of sprinkler installations in historic buildings. Visit The City of Fredericks Department of Economic Development for more information and application materials for each program.

SkyStage Upgrades: $200,000 has been awarded to future improvements at the Frederick Arts Councils award-winning outdoor amphitheater and public arts installation located at 59 S Carroll. The project plans include the installation of permanent restroom facilities and the addition of a retractable roof to allow year-round performances onsite, regardless of weather conditions.

West All Saints Street Project: $250,000 was awarded to the renovation and construction by Habitat for Humanity of Frederick County of 12 affordable, for-sale homes in historic downtown Frederick. When completed, the new living spaces will be sold to Habitat-qualified home buyers.

I am thrilled to see the States support of these critical community initiatives, said Mayor Michael OConnor. Together these programs and projects address key priorities within our city -- including property revitalization, the promotion & accessibility of the arts, and increased affordable housing opportunities -- and will lead to an improved quality of life for our residents.

The City of Fredericks Department of Economic Development supports application of DHCD grant funds and oversees disbursement and quarterly reporting. Richard Griffin, Director of Economic Development, explained The States revitalization awards are key to spurring strategic economic growth across the city. By leveraging public, private, and nonprofit investments, local projects can be more significant in both size and impact. We look forward to seeing new business activity and increased community vibrancy because of these projects.

For more information about DHCD and its revitalization programs, visit their website.
Thompson Coe is committed to giving back to those in need and partnering with these wonderful organizations that help so many.

Thompson, Coe, Cousins & Irons, LLP, a premier civil litigation firm, has donated to a local food bank in every city where the firm has an office, which amounts to 63,300 meals for those in need. The donation to each food bank was made in lieu of annual holiday gifts to clients. The Firm has offices in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; and St. Paul, Minnesota.

We are proud to support our local communities, said Shawn Phelan, chair of the management committee. Thompson Coe is committed to giving back to those in need and partnering with these wonderful organizations that help so many.

Donations of $1,500 each were made to the North Texas Food Bank, Central Texas Food Bank, San Antonio Food Bank, Houston Food Bank, Second Harvest Food Bank Greater New Orleans, and Second Harvest Heartland. Additionally, the Austin office staff and attorneys held a Holiday Drive to raise an additional $300 for the Central Texas Food Bank.

The persisting pandemic, record-high food prices, spiking heating costs, and an economic recovery thats coming slowly for many means todays hunger is tougher to deal with and tougher to fight. The COVID-19 pandemic has both caused and exposed an unprecedented level of food insecurity in our communities.

North Texas is the 6th most food insecure region in the nation, with 1 in 6 people in North Texas food insecure. For every $1 donated, North Texas Food Bank provides access to three nutritious meals for children, seniors, and families in our community. Texas is ranked 2nd in the nation for food insecurity with 1 in 6 living in food insecure homes.

At the Central Texas Food Bank, every dollar is doubled thanks to friends and community partners at the Beaumont Foundation. For every $1 donated, they provide 8 meals. A leader in the fight against hunger for nearly 40 years, their mission is to nourish hungry people and lead the community in the fight against hunger.

At the San Antonio Food Bank, 98% of donated resources go to help set the table for 120,000 individuals a week. For every $1 donated, they provide 7 meals.

Houston Food Bank is Americas largest food bank in distribution leading hunger relief in 18 southeast Texas counties. More than one million people within the Houston Food Banks service area are food insecure. Every $1 provides a full day of meals to our neighbors in need in Southeast Texas.

One in five households in Louisiana is at risk of hunger. For every $1 donated, Second Harvest Food Bank Greater New Orleans provide 4 meals for a family in need. They distribute the equivalent of more than 32 million meals to 210,000+ people a year.

One in 10 local people do not know where their next meal will come from. In 2020, Second Harvest Heartland helped provide 105 million meals to more than 1,000 food shelves and meal programs serving 59 counties in Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Over half a million Minnesotans are now facing hunger, including 200,000 kids. For every $1 donated, they provide three meals to those in the community.

For 70 years, Thompson Coe has been recognized as a top tier litigation firm and a national authority on insurance defense and sophisticated coverage issues. The Firm opened the Austin office in 1999, the Houston office in 2001, the St. Paul office in 2002, the New Orleans office in 2016, and the San Antonio office in 2021.

Thompson Coe is recognized as a Band 1 law firm for Insurance in Texas by Chambers & Partners USA 2004-2021.

About Thompson Coe

Founded in 1951, Thompson Coe has been providing legal services to clients both regionally and nationally for 70 years. Thompson Coe is 200+ attorney firm with offices in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; and St. Paul, Minnesota. The firm is highly recognized for its civil litigation capabilities and our diverse group of attorneys has the experience, resources, and capacity to respond to the multi-service demands of our clients across multiple states and industries. Thompson Coe offers comprehensive legal services in areas of Insurance Litigation and Coverage, Products Liability, Mass Torts, Property and Casualty Litigation, Labor and Employment, Business & Commercial Litigation, Professional Liability, Appellate Law, Insurance Regulation, State Legislation, and Business Transactions, among others.


Jay Loeffler, MD, FACR, FASTRO Dr. Loeffler's distinguished experience and commitment to the care and wellbeing of his patients will be a significant asset to all Floridians.

Dr. Loeffler is the Herman and Joan Suit Professor Emeritus Harvard Medical School and former Professor of Neurosurgery Harvard Medical School. He is the past Chairperson of Radiation Oncology at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School (2000-2020), and the former Director of the Francis H. Burr Proton Therapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, the 2nd hospital-based proton therapy center in the nation.

After receiving his undergraduate degree at Williams College and his medical degree at Brown University Medical School, Dr. Loeffler traveled to Boston where he received his residency training at the Harvard Joint Center for Radiation Therapy. Dr. Loeffler developed an interest in and passion for treating one of the most challenging of all cancer diagnoses: central nervous system tumors. Following residency, he became an attending physician specializing in neuro-oncology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School and DanaFarber Cancer Institute. While there, he founded the Brain Tumor Center at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Dr. Loeffler has been featured 14 years consecutively among America's Top Doctors, 13 years in Boston Magazine as a Top Doc, in Castle Connolly America's Top Doctors every year since 2016, and Castle Connolly America's Top Doctors for Cancer every year since 2016.

He has authored over 400 publications, co-edited nine cancer textbooks and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Loeffler has spent his career investigating specialized radiation delivery technologies such as stereotactic radiation and proton therapy. His work helped develop the use of stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), now the mainstay treatment for benign and malignant intracranial tumors. This research paved the way for developing stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), also known as stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), now widely used for malignancies throughout the body. As a result of this work, he received the Jacob Fabrikant Award for Lifetime Achievement in the field of stereotactic radiosurgery.

"Dr. Loeffler's distinguished experience and commitment to the care and wellbeing of his patients will be a significant asset to all Floridians," said Inspire Oncology founder Dr. Bruce Nakfoor.

The Inspire Oncology team of veteran board-certified radiation oncologists Bruce Nakfoor, MD, Michael Hanus, MD, and Timothy Kerwin, MD, are looking forward to adding Dr. Loeffler's extensive knowledge, obtained from decades of clinical investigation and practice.

***Dropbox Image of Dr. Loeffler***

For more information about Inspire Oncology or to make an appointment, please visit them online at inspireoncology.com, call Inspire Oncology at 239-429-0100, or email info@inspireoncology.com.
Today is the official launch day of Two Hats Travel Consultants, a uniquely customized travel oriented service that specializes in outfitting Americans for unforgettable European adventures. THTC is headed by two lifelong friends, Carl Arriaga and Ian Murphy, who between them have made many memorable trips to Europe.

In addition to handling the time-consuming research and legwork, THTC provides insider recommendations that can only come from personal experience. Two Hats Travel can research most European destinations but they specialize in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany, and Italy.

Ian Murphy spent his honeymoon in both Germany and Ireland for good reason and on one trip, Carl Arriaga dedicated upwards to a month experiencing the many wonders of the Italian peninsula and Spain.

Bearing this in mind, when it comes to picking a specific European destination, there really is no wrong answer as all locations have their value and allure. Its up to THTC to help their client either make a great choice on where to go based on their interests or help them maximize their experiences in a pre-determined location.

Where many people tend to make mistakes is in the planning and logistics. Its easy to comb through a guidebook and get a general idea about what a particular locale offers, but its entirely another to know how to maximize your time, money, and to have a good working knowledge of your host countrys culture. The last thing any traveler would want is to be confused, frustrated and in a bad mood because they wasted too much time in transit and not enough in the place they were so excited to visit.

This is where THTC comes in. Weve been there and weve made the mistakes for you so you don't have to! states Ian Murphy. Two Hats Travel Consultants mission is to offer headache-free, superior customized travel planning that saves precious time and resources.

Visit us at https://2hatstravel.com or contact us at 2hatstravel@gmail.com

Contact us at 845-905-6481 | 2hatstravel@gmail.com
Mike Bracchi stands beneath the Wilton Manors Christmas tree in Celebration of the South Florida holiday season It is important to provide residents with outdoor festivities, in a socially distant and safe manner."  Mike Bracchi, Attorney at Florida Probate Law Firm and Wilton Manors City Commissioner

Wilton Manors City Commissioner Mike Bracchi recently attended the city Holiday Lighting Ceremony at Justin Flippen Park in Wilton Manors. The ceremony featured music by local performers and the local chorus, a number of festivities, and the lighting of the Menorah, Kinara, and Christmas Tree.

Commissioner Bracchi stated, This all-embracing ceremony is indicative of the inclusiveness of our beautiful Island City. The ceremony took place at the park named after the late mayor. Justin loved our city and he would dress up as Santa every year. This park is the perfect place to continue the annual lighting ceremonies, Bracchi said.

This years event was attended by hundreds of local residents. Because the event was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic, residents and friends were excited to be back outside celebrating holiday cheer. It is important to provide residents with outdoor festivities, in a socially distant and safe manner. People are eager to get out and enjoy the holidays this year Bracchi stated.

About Michael Mike Bracchi

Bracchi was elected to the Wilton Manors City Commissioner in November, 2020. He practices full-time as an attorney and is a Shareholder in the Florida Probate Law Firm, PLLC. Bracchi has earned a number of degrees including a Juris Doctor (J.D.), a Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.), and an M.S. in Business Management and Leadership. Bracchi is licensed to practice law in Florida and New York. He also serves as an Arbitrator with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and previously was an Arbitrator with the New York City Court  Small Claims Division.

Contact Info:

Name: Mike Bracchi

Phone: (954) 281-2212

Email: mbracchi@wiltonmanors.com
XRC 180-180DV 200kV

The United States Transportation Security Administration has granted X-Ray Centers XRC 180-180DV 200kV cargo system acceptance onto the Qualified section of the Air Cargo Security Technology List (ACSTL). XRCs 180-180DV 200kV cargo system joins XRCs 60-40DV, 75-55DV, 100-100DV, and 180-180DV 320 kV systems on TSAs ACSTL, making XRC one of only a handful of companies in the world with such a wide range of tunnel sizes having been approved by TSA. XRC is one of only a few companies in the world that makes large 180-180 tunnel sized dual view x-ray scanning systems that are TSA approved, now with 200kV and 320kV generator strengths that are both TSA approved.

We want to thank the United States Transportation and Security Administration for all of their hard work, professionalism and dedication in evaluating security systems like ours for the purpose of securing the freedom of movement of people and commerce throughout the world, stated Kami Havluciyan, CEO of XRC. As threats to the worlds transportation systems continue to evolve, so must we, and the TSA helps us in every turn to outmatch these threats, stated Mr. Havluciyan.

ABOUT X-RAY CENTER:

XRC was established in 1998 with the goal of protecting the world from hidden threats. In 2010, XRC began developing and manufacturing its own innovative brand of x-ray security screening systems. Today, XRC is the only x-ray security screening system manufacturer in Turkey, and one of only a handful of manufacturers in the entire world who produces x-ray security screening systems that have been tested and approved by the United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC). TSA and ECAC employ the highest testing standards in the industry to ensure the protection of the worlds transportation systems. In 2021, XRC was an exclusive provider of X-ray security screening systems for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In just one decade, XRC has grown from a small national manufacturer to one that has over thirty different products deployed in every continent in the world except Antarctica.

Media Contact:

Mikael Havluciyan

mike@x-raycenter.com

+1 619-990-5248
Xtalks Food Industry Podcast explored some of the latest innovations in food tech, plant-based foods, food safety, sustainability initiatives and grocery and foodservice news.

The Xtalks editorial team is celebrating nearly one year of the Xtalks Food Industry Podcast. Hosted by Sydney Perelmutter and joined by editorial team members, Mira Nabulsi, Ayesha Rashid, Sarah Hand and Vera Kovacevic, the team comes together once a week to discuss trending food industry topics and share insights from industry experts.

This year, the Xtalks Food Industry Podcast explored some of the latest innovations in food tech, plant-based foods, food safety, sustainability initiatives and grocery and foodservice news. Also in 2021, the team said goodbye to Sarah and Mira and welcomed Vera to the editorial team.

Next year, as Xtalks lead food industry writer, Sydney will present stories on a wide variety of topics and trends, with Vera and Ayesha weighing in on their point of view. The Xtalks Food Industry Podcast will also feature guests and interview clips from discussions with food industry insiders to get their perspective on current events.

The podcast will continue to allow team members to explore, and give their opinions on, the latest food stories like no other piece of editorial content. Most importantly, it will give food industry professionals a way to stay up to date on the latest in their field, and hear diverse perspectives on controversial topics.

Dont miss out on the Xtalks Food Industry Podcast in the New Year starting Thursday, January 6, 2022!

The weekly podcast is available for streaming every Thursday on Spotify, Apple, Google and wherever you stream podcasts. Subscribe to the Xtalks Food Industry Podcast to never miss a new episode.

ABOUT XTALKS

Xtalks, powered by Honeycomb Worldwide Inc., is a leading provider of educational webinars to the global life science, food and medical device community. Every year, thousands of industry practitioners (from life science, food and medical device companies, private & academic research institutions, healthcare centers, etc.) turn to Xtalks for access to quality content. Xtalks helps Life Science professionals stay current with industry developments, trends and regulations. Xtalks webinars also provide perspectives on key issues from top industry thought leaders and service providers.

To learn more about Xtalks visit http://xtalks.com

For information about hosting a webinar visit http://xtalks.com/why-host-a-webinar/


An interview with author Rick Riordan about his latest fantasy novel, a farewell to four fan-favorite YA trilogies, and more q&as with authors on saying goodbye to their popular teen series were among PWs most-clicked stories about kids and YA books in 2021. Here is our list of the top 10 articles, in ascending order of popularity. Catch up on some of the big stories you may have missed!

10. Rick Riordan Imprint Moves into YA Fiction with Daniel Jose Older

Daniel Jose Older, author of Shadowshaper and many more books for middle grade, YA, and adult readers, signed a two-book deal to launch a series with Rick Riordan Presents, is about a teen who discovers that he has the capability to save New York City from being destroyed by an ancient evil force.

9. The Most Anticipated Childrens and YA Books of Spring 2021

Our editors shared their picks for the best childrens and YA titles the released during the first half of the year, including anthologies foregrounding diverse voices, picture books from the pandemics frontlines, and more.

8. Rowling Returns with Holiday Tale

The Harry Potter author topped our childrens headlines again this year, less so for her controversial statements on gender than for her standalone middle grade holiday novel, The Christmas Pig, which released in October.

7. Alex Gino Debuts New Title and Cover for Groundbreaking Trans Novel

It is an extremely trans thing to be told youre too beautiful to change, middle grade author Alex Gino mused when they announced that their groundbreaking and award-winning middle grade novel would be repackaged and retitled Melissa to honor the trans heroines chosen name.

6. Obituary: Kathleen Krull

Beloved book editor and nonfiction author Kathleen Krull, who died in January, was remembered by colleagues, friends, and readers in our obituary. Her love of fun echoed in so much of what she did, whether in work or friendship, said her editor Jeannette Larson.

5. Fall 2021 Childrens Sneak Previews

At the top of the year, alongside our Spring Announcements issue, we shared an exclusive first look at publishers most anticipated fall releases for children and teens.

4. Spring 2022 Children's Sneak Previews

And with this falls Announcements issue, we offered a glimpse at publishers eagerly awaited offerings for the spring.

3. Noteworthy YA Series Come to an End This Season

Either readers were eager to catch up or not quite ready to say goodbye when our roundup of q&as with the authors of popular concluding YA series broke the top three most-viewed articles on our site.

2. Four Fan-Favorite YA Trilogies Come to an End This Fall

And continuing the long goodbye was our fall installment of interviews with the authors behind genre-spanning YA series reaching their conclusions this season.

1. Four Questions for Rick Riordan

And finally, as he did last year, Percy Jackson creator Rick Riordan tops our most-viewed articles! The author and acquiring editor of Disneys Rick Riordan Presents imprint sat down for a rapid-fire interview ahead of the release of his latest book, Daughter of the Deep.
Mark Daniel Ward, director of the Purdue University Data Mine, works with two students involved in the popular data science program. Ward, in collaboration with the American Statistical Association, is establishing The National Data Mine Network. (Purdue University photo/Rebecca McElhoe)

Purdue program looks to expand, support underrepresented students in data fields

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  Thanks to personal devices and digital platforms, data is everywhere, and that is why a Purdue University management student is investing her time to learn more about the field of data science so she has an edge in the business world.

Sabrina Dopp is even accumulating real-world data science experience working with corporations involved in Purdue Universitys The Data Mine program.

Most people have to go find internships to get these experiences said Dopp, a junior studying general management. What I like about the Data Mine is it provides internship-level experience with an educational level of support.

Mark Daniel Ward, director of The Data Mine and a professor of statistics, is enthusiastic about experiences like Dopps and is taking the benefits of the program to a larger level to reach more college students with The National Data Mine Network  a collaborative project between Purdue and the American Statistical Association.

Ward said the national network, like the initial program, will promote learning from data, using it as a tool to help solve problems in a data-driven society.

We are excited that many students from different institutions will collaborate on cutting-edge research and industry experiences, Ward said of the project.

The National Data Mine Network will enable undergraduate students at minority-serving institutions to learn data science with hands-on work in research or data science projects informed by industry partners.

The National Data Mine Network will directly fund 300 undergraduate students at a cross-section of minority-serving institutions with 100 research stipends per year.

The students will use high-performance computing to solve data-driven challenges that arise in every sector of industry, including biomedical engineering, health care engineering, image processing, manufacturing, supply chain management and transportation.

Co-principal investigators on the project are Kathy Ensor (Rice University), Monica Jackson (American University), Donna LaLonde (American Statistical Association) and Talitha Washington (Atlanta University Center Data Science Initiative). The project received three-year grant funding earlier this year from the National Science Foundation.

Ward said he expects the benefits to stretch beyond simply the students. Faculty at the participating institutions will gain insight into building their own data science courses and programs as well as expertise about how to carry out hands-on, data-intensive research projects.

Purdue answered the call for data science expertise in 2018-19 with The Data Mine  a fully immersive living and learning community for students, faculty, researchers and corporate partners alike. The learning community originated as a project in the Department of Statistics in the College of Science through a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation in 2014.

More than 800 students now collaborate and learn from each other in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap in data-infused innovation, including 300 undergraduate and graduate students in The Data Mines Corporate Partners program.

The National Data Mine Network isnt the first expansion of The Data Mine. In April, a statewide expansion called the Indiana Data Mine was announced. Students involved with the Indiana Data Mine will learn data science skills through immersive engagement with Indiana-based companies, which will potentially lead to careers in the state and enhance Indianas surging tech sector.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a top public research institution developing practical solutions to todays toughest challenges. Ranked in each of the last four years as one of the 10 Most Innovative universities in the United States by U.S. News & World Report, Purdue delivers world-changing research and out-of-this-world discovery. Committed to hands-on and online, real-world learning, Purdue offers a transformative education to all. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue has frozen tuition and most fees at 2012-13 levels, enabling more students than ever to graduate debt-free. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap at https://purdue.edu/.

Writer, Media contact: Brian Huchel, bhuchel@purdue.edu

Source: Mark Daniel Ward, mdw@purdue.edu
UK production house World Media Rights (WMR) has announced that its box set series World War Two in Color: The Road to Victory, a co-production between WMR and ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE), will appear as a Netflix series globally on 22 December 2021.

The Road to Victory is a 10-part sequel to WMRs Greatest Events of World War Two in Colour.

The series uses WMRs special colourisation techniques to take World War Two black and white archive and colourise it. It meant researching the real colours which led to the shades of black and white depicted in the archive and also matching the correct sounds against all the different weapons involved in the fierce fighting portrayed in the series.

The Road to Victory follows the progress of the allies from early comebacks and victories in World War Two to the surrender of Germany and Japan. It uses previously unseen footage of Dunkirk, The Liberation of Paris, Iwo Jima and the Battle for Berlin and the US invasion of Okinawa to show how the allies, after early mistakes, refined their combat methods and their technology to finally deliver victory in the Second World War.

The series features an interview with 102-year-old Jeannette Vanderschooten, one of the few surviving members of the French Resistance. She talks about what it was like to operate in the resistance during the German occupation of Paris.

WMR is known for its innovative software techniques. Its previous Netflix release in March 2021, The Lost Pirate Kingdom, used a new piece of visual effects software which allowed WMR to recreate the pirate republic of Nassau in 1715. That series won the Best Visual Effects Award in the Broadcast awards on 30th November 2021.

Alan Griffiths, CEO of WMR, said: Were thrilled that Netflix is taking The Road to Victory to its 214 million subscribers as a Netflix series. WMRs colourisation and sound techniques bring the Second World War to life as if it was shot for news cameras yesterday.

Founded in 2007, World Media Rights produces factual TV programming and drama reconstruction for a wide range of global media companies including Discovery, ZDF and Netflix.
Global producer and distributor Fremantle has secured the exclusive option rights from the official right owners to create an in-depth documentary looking at the life and cultural impact of Italian actress, recording artist, presenter, model, and cultural icon Raffaella Carra.





The new Fremantle documentary will chart the incredible life story of one of Italys most inspirational women. Born in Bologna in 1943, she was to rise from very humble beginnings to become the lady of Italian television and died earlier this year aged 78. Carras career as the superstar of Italian TV spanned an incredible seven decades, as she became a symbol of liberation and womens rights. She continually pushed the boundaries, challenging conservative morality, and presenting herself as a free, self-aware, and independent woman. In 1965, she signed a deal with 20th Century Fox, following in the footsteps of artists such as Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren and Virna Lisi, and appeared in the film Von Ryan's Express alongside Frank Sinatra, Edward Mulhar, and Trevor Howard.Her popularity grew in Spain and across Europe and Latin America as her reputation as a leading music artist continued to grow, with albums such as Forte Forte Forte, released in 36 countries around the world. Carra also challenged the status quo in her heyday. Through her work, she helped women be more confident about their bodies and their sexuality, encouraging everyone to feel free to express themselves. She was to become a strong supporter and icon of the LGBTQ+ community and was recognised at the 2017 World Pride Madrid.The Fremantle project has been spearheaded by Andrea Scrosati, (Group COO, CEO Continental Europe), Gabriele Immirzi (CEO, Italy), Nathalie Garcia (CEO, Spain) alongside Mandy Chang (global head of documentaries) and Alessandro De Rita (Italian head of documentaries). The project will also be supported in Spain by Fernando Jerez (MD, EN Cero Coma Producciones).
Extreme weather events resulting from the changing climate are threatening some 40 percent of the worlds recoverable oil and gas reserves, risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft has said in a new report.

The portion is equal to some 600 billion barrels of oil equivalent, the reports authors also said. Some 10.5 percent of the global recoverable oil and gas reserves are located in places that were rated as extremely risky under the consultancys Climate Change Exposure Indices, while the other 29.5 percent were rated as highly risky.

Among the events listed in the report are storms and floods, rising sea levels, and extreme temperatures.

According to Verisk Maplecroft, OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Iraq are among the most vulnerable to these events. The Kingdom is under increased threat from droughts, sand storms, and extremely high temperatures, the authors noted. Together, these three countries account for almost a fifth of the worlds recoverable oil and gas reserves.
BBC Three will relaunch in February with new series RuPaul's Drag Race: UK Versus the World.

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The next installment in the RuPaul 's Drag Race franchise will be the opening night centerpiece of BBC Three.

The show will feature nine international RuPaul's Drag Race queens from different shows and cultures as they compete to become the first global drag race superstar. The U.K. is serving as the host nation.

RuPaul will be joined by Michelle Visage, Graham Norton and Alan Carr. More information regarding the contestants and special guest judges will be announced at a later date.

RuPaul's Drag Race: UK Versus the World will also be available through the BBC iPlayer after it premieres on BBC Three.

BBC Three has also commissioned six-part documentary series titled Santa Claus the Serial Killer, which follows journalist Mobeen Azhar as he travels to Toronto to investigate the case of serial killer Bruce McArthur.

The network additionally ordered Flight Club, a 10-part seres following the staff and crew of airline Loganair.
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The former general manager of a Papa John's franchise location in Colorado was fired this week after scheduling conflicts led him to close the restaurant three hours early on Tuesday evening.

Chris Jackson told Insider he has been with Papa John's for more than 13 years and had been working long stretches of back-to-back open-to-close shifts for the pizza chain due to difficulty with hiring and retaining staff during the pandemic.

In a Reddit post to the fast-growing r/antiwork community, Jackson explained that on Monday, the Tuesday evening shift leader told him they had a medical appointment and couldn't cover the shift. Jackson said he too had a family medical obligation at that time and asked his area manager for coverage.

On Tuesday afternoon, Jackson was told that no one was coming to cover the shift, so he closed the restaurant at 5pm. The next morning he was fired.

"I hadn't had any issues at all, that's why I was confused," he told Insider. "This is the only incident that ever happened."

Jackson's Reddit post racked up over 6,600 upvotes and 650 comments on Friday, but was removed by moderators for violating the platform's ban on sharing confidential or personal information.

Insider spoke with Jackson, who provided screenshots of text messages and emails that were consistent with his story, including a company form that said he was fired.

"Chris closed the restaurant without approval," the form reads. "Closing a restaurant without approval is cause for immediate termination of employment."

Colorado is an at-will state, where employees may be fired at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all.

A spokesperson for Papa John's told Insider that franchisees typically handle their own hiring and firing procedures without corporate involvement, and that he did not want to speculate without a more detailed knowledge of the situation.

The franchise owner did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

As a salaried manager, Jackson says he was responsible for covering far more than full-time hours for no additional pay.

"If I worked 50 hours or 60 hours, it didn't matter in the pay at all." he said.

Jackson said he was able to agree to a weekly cap of 55 hours on his own schedule, but he was not authorized to offer a wage or salary high enough to attract and retain workers and managers for his restaurant.

"They'll just be like, "This is the top line where we can pay,'" he said. "And you know, it's expensive. It's like, it's really expensive here."

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SCOTT, Ind. (AP)  Two people were found dead Monday at a house in northern Indiana, police said.

Although this investigation is in the very early stages, at this time the facts and circumstances do not suggest that any other persons were involved, Indiana State Police said.

The bodies of Ashley Hargrove, 36, and Adam Leslie, 38, were discovered at a house in a rural area of LaGrange County, northeast of Shipshewana, police said.

Autopsies were planned. Sheriff's deputies found the bodies while checking the home and asked for assistance from state police detectives.
A California man has been sentenced to three years in prison for threatening harm in text messages sent during the attack on the U.S. Capitol to a New York-based family member of a journalist, prosecutors said.

Robert Lemke, 36, was sentenced Monday in Manhattan federal court, according to Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
NEW HAVEN  The store wont turn 100 until next year, but Libbys Italian Pastry Shop already is spiffed up for the celebration.

When Liberato and Giuseppina DellAmura started baking cookies, pastries and pies in their shop on the other side of Wooster Street in 1922, they were among the many Italian immigrants to bring their treats to New Haven.

Four generations and a century later, Marc, Sal and Paul DAngelo formally will take ownership of the popular shop after renovating the bakery at 139 Wooster St. to give it a more modern, open feel. Family photos of Libby DellAmura and others on the walls pay homage to the generations of owners.

Nicole Funaro / Hearst Connecticut Media Group

DAngelo and his brothers are more involved in the business now and will become the fourth-generation owners in January, DAngelo said, taking over from their aunts Jo-Ann and Dolores DellAmura and Leona Delcore. Their mother, Marie DAngelo, died in 2008.

Ive been here in this store for about eight years but I was at the North Haven location we had for a while since 2009, Marc DAngelo said. But he, like his other family members, has been a part of the family business since boyhood.

We basically started the renovation in January, and we opened on the side in March, offering takeout service, DAngelo said. The glass alone delayed us for about three months, so that kind of pushed everything back.

Jo-Ann DellAmura said shes been working in the store since she was 13, more than a few decades ago. When its a family business, thats what happens, she said. You have more feeling for whats going on.

DellAmura said shes looking forward to the 100th anniversary. We want to have a celebration next year. Were hoping the pandemic and all that stuff is out of the way so we can have fun.

Contributed photo

Marc D'Angelo / Contributed Photo

Marc D'Angelo / Contributed Photo

Right now, the bakers are busy with the 25 to 30 kinds of cookies that fill the glass cabinets. Christmas is always a cookie holiday, DellAmura said. Easter is pies.

She said she likes the new look of the shop.

I think its going to work out better for the people, she said. Now its easier to keep clean, to keep everything in order.

Dan Hemperly comes from Bethany for Libbys cookies. I come here usually to get a pound of pignoli cookies, but today its a quarter-pound, he said. The cookies are $25 a pound and worth every dime, Hemperly said.

He said the renovation is wonderful, a lot more elbow room.  Ive been coming to Wooster Street since 1980.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382
The #MeToo movement has been one of the famous movements in recent times that triggered the testimonies of many against the top names of Hollywood. While that movement was sparked by the allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein, more famous names have been accused since then and also over the years. The latest on the list was Chris Noth.

The veteran actor being accused by multiple women over alleged instances in the past has led to numerous setbacks, like being fired from the show The Equaliser. However, many famous names of Hollywood have also faced the heat over sexual assault allegations. Here's looking at some of the big celebrities of the industry who faced sexual assault allegations:

Harvey Weinstein

Image: AP

In October 2017, the Hollywood producer was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, with incidents dating back to three and four decades ago. As per reports, more than 80 women made allegations against him and among those to share their unpleasant experiences including Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow.

He was arrested on charges of rape in May 2018 but was later released on bail. He is currently serving his sentence after being sentenced to 23 years imprisonment in February 2020.

Dustin Hoffman

Veteran actor Dustin Hoffman was accused of sexual misconduct by seven women in 2017, with incidents dating back to the '70s. Even former co-star Meryl Streep shared an experience, but later clarified that he had apologised and she had accepted it.

Armie Hammer

Allegations against Armie Hammer emerged earlier this year when multiple women shared on social media alleged instances of sexual assault by the actor, and alleged screenshots of his messages were expressed a tendency towards cannibalism and more.

Roman Polanski

Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski had fled the United States of America to Paris after being accused by a teenage girl of sexual assault in 1978. He was arrested in 2009 in Switzerland and released in 2010, while the spotlight continued over the case continued, with him being removed from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2018. Another actor then alleged that he had sexually assaulted her in the '70s, an allegation he denied.

Kevin Spacey

Kevin Spacey was dropped from numerous projects in 2017 after allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against him by almost 15 people, with the accusations going back three to four decades. The veteran actor was accused by Anthony Rapp of making a sexual advance towards him when he was 14. Civil lawsuits were filed by Rapp and some anonymous persons, a masseur, a journalist's son and more.

Casey Affleck

Oscar-winning actor-director Casey Affleck was accused of sexual misconduct by two female crew members of the documentary he directed, I'm Still Here in 2010. The women also filed lawsuits against him alleging that he made sexual advances towards them. He denied the allegations and the lawsuits were eventually settled out of court in the same year.

Woody Allen

Oscar-winning filmmaker Woody Allen's adopted daughter Dylan Farrow alleged that he had sexually assaulted her when she was seven years old in 1992. He has denied the allegation. Though the allegations were investigated by agencies, no charges were pressed against the director.

Bill Cosby

Actor-comedian Bill Cosby was accused of sexual misconduct by over 60 women, with claims dating back to the '60s. After the allegations surfacing from 2014 and getting more popular during the #MeToo movement, he was convicted for the offences in 2018 and imprisoned. The charge was overturned earlier this year.

Michael Douglas

A former employee of Michael Douglas, a journalist, had alleged that the veteran actor sexually harassed her when they were working together in 2018. The Hollywood star denied the allegations.

Morgan Freeman

Eight women came forward at the time of the #MeToo movement in 2018 and alleged that Morgan Freeman had sexually harassed them. The veteran Hollywood star had issued an apology following the controversy.

James Franco

James Franco was accused by a former girlfriend, actress Ally Sheedy, of sexual misconduct following the #MeToo movement in 2018. Five women had accused him of sexual harassment in 2018 when he was their acting teacher. He agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle the case earlier this year.

Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone was, in 2017, accused of sexually assaulting in incidents from 1987 and 1990. However, in 2018, he got relief due to lack of evidence, while the Rocky star denied the allegations. Another woman had filed a lawsuit against him in 2000 for sexual assaults.

Image: AP
Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt, while replying to a question in Rajya Sabha said more than 5,600 ceasefire violations were reported along the Line of Control (LoC) in the last two years. The minister categorically accused Pakistan of a record number of ceasefire violations. However, Bhatt said that the Indian soldiers replied befittingly to the Pakistani soldiers and confirmed, "substantial damage" to the Pakistani posts and personnel. While reiterating the exact numbers of ceasefire violations, the Minister confirmed the number as 5,601 from November 30, 2019, to November 29, 2021. Further, the Minister of State for Defence, replying to another question in the lower house on Monday said that the Indian troops are given "free hands" to counter the aggressions of Pakistani soldiers.

"A total of 5,601 instances of ceasefire violations were reported along the LoC under the operational control of Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir from November 30, 2019, to November 29, 2021," Bhatt said in Rajya Sabha.

Indian soldiers enjoy complete freedom of action: Bhatt

According to him, the Indian soldiers made "substantial damage" to Pakistani posts and personnel during retaliation.

"Troops deployed on forward posts enjoy complete freedom of action in responding to Pakistan ceasefire violations. Substantial damage was inflicted on Pakistan posts and personnel during retaliation by the Indian Army," the minister added. It is worth mentioning that ceasefire violations from the Pakistani soldiers are quite regular in the border areas of Jammu and Kashmir despite both India and Islamabad having signed a ceasefire agreement in all sectors on 25 February 2021, this year. Notably, the two countries had earlier signed a ceasefire agreement in 2003 but it was repeatedly violated.

"194 industrial licenses issued to private firms for arms and ammunition"

Meanwhile, while replying to another question, Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt informed the lower house that a total of 194 industrial licenses have been issued to private firms for manufacturing items like air defence guns, night-vision devices, ammunition, howitzers, destroyers, frigates, artillery guns, ballistic protection items and radars since 2016. "License to manufacture defence equipment is granted by the licensing authorities namely, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and Ministry of Home Affairs under Industries (Development and Regulation) Act and Arms Act respectively, in consultation with Ministry of Defence," Bhatt informed the Rajya Sabha.

With inputs from PTI

Image: PTI/ANI
Valmikinagar (Bihar), Dec 21 (PTI) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday chaired the Cabinet meeting at Valmikinagar, a small town located within a forested region of West Champaran district, and approved a total of 13 projects and schemes worth several crores of rupees, official sources said.

Located near the Indo-Nepal border, Valmikinagar is known for its tiger reserve that is spread over 880 square kilometres. Maharshi Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana, is said to have passed some years at Bhainsalotan which is now known as Valmikinagar.

There is also a dam built on the river Gandak here and Kumar enjoyed a boat safari ride along with his cabinet collegues before the meeting.

According to sources, a forest department hall was converted to an auditorium for the meeting in which the cabinet decided to approve 13 projects of the departments such as industry, building construction, panchayati raj, fisheries and education.

Kumar held cabinet meetings outside the state capital Patna several times after coming to power in 2005.

Arrangements have been made for his overnight stay at the state governments guest house in Valmikinagar.

The CM will leave for Motihari on Wednesday to launch his statewide social reform campaign to create awareness against alcoholism, dowry and child marriage. PTI CORR PKD NN NN

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Alert forces of the Border Security Force (BSF), shot dead a Pakistani intruder at the international border in Punjab's Gurdaspur sector. According to sources, he had crossed the border and the BSF personnel intercepted his movement and a search operation is currently underway along the international border. In addition, the sources also informed that the operation was carried out in the wee hours of Tuesday during the patrol.

One Pakistani intruder shot dead by the Border Security Force along the Indo-Pak border in Gurdaspur sector when he crossed over to the Indian territory at 6.45 am this morning: BSF  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2021

Earlier on Monday, the BSF had apprehended a Pakistani national. He was captured in Punjabs Dera Baba Nanak area. The forces also recovered Pakistan currency, mobile phone and earphones along with a phone charger. The incident took place near Kartarpur Corridor in Pakistan. Recently, the Punjab police had recovered a tiffin bomb and four hand grenades from the international borders of Gurdaspur district.

Pakistani intruder shot dead along IB in Jammu

Similarly, the BSF has also shot down a Pakistani woman intruder along the international border here, an official said on Monday. Deputy Inspector General of Border Security Force (BSF) S P S Sandhu said alert troops neutralized the intruder in the RS Pura sector on Sunday night.

"The BSF troops noticed suspicious movement and warned the intruder many times not to cross the IB but the intruder kept running towards border fencing aggressively," Sandhu, who is the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of BSF, Jammu, said.

He said alert BSF troops fired and neutralized the intruder near BSF fencing inside the IB and thwarted the infiltration attempt.

With PTI inputs

Image: PTI/Representative image
In response to an increase in COVID-19 variant Omicron cases in Gujarat, the state government has extended night curfews in eight major cities till December 31. According to the official decree, the curfew will be in effect from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat, Rajkot, Vadodara, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, and Junagarh are the eight cities still under night curfew.

In the meanwhile, businesses can continue to operate until 12 a.m. Restaurants are only allowed to occupy 75% of their seating capacity in order to maintain social distance, according to the decree. The order has not changed the limit of allowing maximum of 400 people for weddings.

COVID-19: Gujarat extends night curfew in eight districts till December 31

The first case of the Omicron strain of COVID-19 was recorded in Gujarat's Rajkot district on Sunday, according to district collector Arun Mahesh Babu. Other districts in the state, on the other hand, have reported incidences of Omicron. On Sunday, four additional cases of the Omicron variation of coronavirus were recorded in Gujarat, bringing the total number of people infected with this strain in the state to eleven, according to officials.

Omicron cases in Gujarat

New patients with the Omicron variety found in the state include a 45-year-old NRI and a teenage boy from the United Kingdom, a Surat-based woman who had recently visited Dubai, and a Tanzanian citizen. According to a health department official, the NRI (non-resident Indian) tested positive for coronavirus infection in an RT-PCR test conducted at the Ahmedabad international airport shortly after his arrival from the United Kingdom on December 15.

According to the authority, his other passengers and other contacts have tested negative for the virus. According to Gandhinagar Municipal Commissioner Dhaval Patel, a 15-year-old kid from Gandhinagar was also diagnosed with the Omicron variant after returning from the United Kingdom on Saturday. Officials said that a 23-year-old Tanzanian national who tested positive for COVID-19 on December 15 in Rajkot and a 39-year-old businesswoman in Surat who recently returned from Dubai have also been found infected with the new variant of the virus, bringing the total number of Omicron cases in the state to eleven.

The Tanzanian national, who arrived in Ahmedabad through Zanzibar and Dar-es-Salaam, tested negative for the virus after an RT-PCR test at the airport. On December 15, he was tested again after arriving in Rajkot and was declared positive, according to Rajkot collector Arun Mahesh Babu.

Omicron cases in India

Meanwhile, India has reported 161 cases of the novel coronavirus strain Omicron, according to Mansukh Mandaviya, the Union Health Minister.

"As of now, India has 161 Omicron cases...We are monitoring the situation daily with experts," the minister told Rajya Sabha while replying to a debate on the COVID-19 situation.

(Inputs: ANI and PTI)

(IMAGE: ANI / PIXABAY)
In the latest development, terrorists opened fire at a joint party of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and CRPF in Srinagar's Soura area on Tuesday. The security forces were checking vehicles when they came under fire from terrorists. In response, forces retaliated. In the incident, no CRPF and Police personnel was injured.

According to sources, a terrorist got injured in retaliation but managed to flee. Meanwhile, a search operation has been launched to nab the terrorists. Reportedly, additional troops have also been brought in

This development comes weeks after terrorists fired upon a traffic police personnel in the Rajouri Kandal area of Srinagar.

LeT terrorist associate arrested in Baramulla, ammunition recovered

Baramulla Police along with units of the Army on Tuesday arrested a terrorist associate of Lashkar e Toiba (LeT) upon the receipt of a specific input during a special Naka laid at Kralhar railway crossing in Baramulla.

The terrorist associate has been identified as Faisal Ahmed Dar, a resident of Maldera, Shopian. 10 rounds of the pistol were recovered from his possession and FIR No. 271/2021 of PS Baramulla under relevant sections of law has been registered into the matter and investigation has been taken up.

Srinagar terrorist attack: Three police officers martyred, 14 injured

On December 13, three Jammu and Kashmir police personnel were martyred and 14 were injured after two terrorists attacked a police bus near a police camp. The terrorists belonging to Kashmir Tigers (an offshoot of Jaish-e-Mohammed) resorted to heavy shelling on the police bus in the Zewan area. Kashmir Inspector General of Police (IGP) Vijay Kumar had told the Republic that the terrorist involved in the arrested was trained in Pakistan. Meanwhile, on the same day, forced gunned down two LeT terrorists including a foreign terrorist at the Rangreth area of Srinagar.
The wife of the RSS worker who was brutally murdered in Kerala's Palakkad district in November moved Kerala High Court on Tuesday seeking a CBI investigation into her husband's death. On Wednesday, the case will be heard before the High Court.

On November 15, Sanjith (27) was hacked to death while driving his wife to work. Several people were later detained in the matter, including a Popular Front of India (PFI) officer bearer. According to the report, the accused PFI office-bearer was actively engaged in Sanjith's murder.

BJP claims SDPI responsible for murder of RSS worker

The BJP and the RSS have claimed that workers from the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), a political branch of the Islamist group PFI, were responsible for the murder in broad daylight. A month after the murder, BJP leaders had alleged that the police had failed to nab the culprits and that there was an attempt to sabotage the case, delay the probe and help the accused destroy evidence. Sanjiths family had protested alleging delay on the part of Kerala Police. The BJP in Palakkad has also planned to hold a massive stir against the police.

Meanwhile, Police sources told Republic that they have received information about those who assisted the absconding accused in the case. The probe team, it is learnt, has filed a report in court against some of them. Proceedings were initiated to include in the list of defendants all those who assisted the defendants. The raid, as per police sources is after the information they collected after tracking the movement of some of these suspects.

RSS Worker who was stabbed 50 times

The RSS worker who was hacked to death was identified as S Sanjith. He was killed in an ambush attack while he was riding his motorcycle with his wife, according to the police. The attack, according to the BJP, was carried out by the Social Democratic Party of India, a political wing of the Popular Front of India (PFI).

Police said that Sanjith, who is from the Elappully region of the state of Kerala, was stabbed more than 50 times. Following the murder, the region was tense, and police had been keeping a close eye on things. According to them, an investigation has been initiated to track down the accused, who fled the site following the incident.
Union Cabinet Minister for Women & Child Development, Smriti Irani on Tuesday tabled The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in the Lok Sabha, calling it a 'historic step'. The bill aims to introduce parity in the legal marriage age of men and women.

While proposing the bill, Irani asserted that the act should be applicable across all religions, castes, and creeds. "We're, in a democracy, 75 years late in providing equal rights to men and women to enter into matrimony. Through this amendment, for the first time, men and women will be able to make a decision on marriage at the age of 21, keeping in mind the right to equality," said Union Minister Smriti Irani.

"This act should be applicable across all religions, all caste, all creed. I request that it should be sent to the standing committee. While introducing this act, this is a historic step," she added.

Union Cabinet Minister for Women & Child Development, Smriti Irani introduces The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in Lok Sabha.



The Bill is to increase the age of marriage of women from 18 years to 21 years. pic.twitter.com/lHSOzBSswC  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2021

Opposition raises objection

Meanwhile, Opposition leaders, including Congress Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi, Trinamool Congress Saugata Roy, NCP's Supriya Sule raised objections to the bill.

"It's against the right to freedom under Art 19. An 18-yr-old can choose a PM, can have a live-in relationship but you are denying the right to marriage. What have you done for an 18-yr-old? Women labor force participation in India lower than Somalia," Owaisi said.

"Except for Women's Reservation Bill, Govt doesn't believe in consulting anybody. It's very important that such an imp Bill has to be sent to Standing Committee or Select Committee & they've to review it & ask for opinions in civil society & then bring the Bill," said DMK MP Kanimozhi.

It's the 2nd or 3rd time consecutively, they're aggressively bringing Bills & nobody from Oppn is consulted. Whatever is discussed in Business Advisory Committee is never implemented on floor of House. I want to condemn this new practice which this govt is doing: Supriya Sule,NCP pic.twitter.com/T0wXEgPelx  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2021

Centre clears proposal for raising marriage age for women

The Union Cabinet on December 15 cleared a proposal that would increase the minimum marriage age for women from 18 to 21 years, the same as that of men. The proposal was framed on basis of recommendations made by a task force set up by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. Headed by Jaya Jaitley, the task force made extensive recommendations based on consultations from experts, young adults, young women, and others whom the decision affects directly. The development comes over a year after the plan was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day address in 2020.
MicroAge, a research project, can now help people live longer and healthier lives. Human muscle cells are set to be launched into orbit as part of this project which will aid in comprehending what happens to human muscle cells and why they weaken with age. On Tuesday, the study, undertaken by UK researchers from the University of Liverpool, will be launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

According to a report by Sky News, human muscle cells the size of a grain of rice were produced in labs and placed in small 3D-printed holders. They will be electrically stimulated in space to cause tissue contraction. Spending time in space without the effects of gravity can make astronauts' muscles weaker, similar to how they do as they become older before they recover when they return to Earth.

Team @MicroAgeUoL have completed handover of our muscle constructs to NASA after a gruelling and eventful 12 hour integration day. Excited for the launch on Tuesday . Sam, Kay and Shah were awesome. Watch this space! @LivuniILCaMS @LivUni @spacegovuk @livunieng @livuniHLS pic.twitter.com/sNvo1NNIK8  MicroAge UoL (@MicroAgeUoL) December 20, 2021

Once the samples return to Earth in January 2022, researchers from the University of Liverpool will examine and compare them with results from experiments on Earth. They believe that by doing so, they will be able to figure out why muscles weaken with age and how to prevent it. "For a long time, we have known that astronauts in space lose muscle quickly. People have pondered whether this is a case of accelerated ageing. We recently discovered that astronauts on Space Station face a similar difficulty," Professor Malcolm Jackson, from the University of Liverpool, was quoted as saying by Sky News.

UK Space Agency provided 1.2m in funding for the project

Despite exercising for at least 2.5 hours every day, astronauts lose a substantial amount of muscle and find it difficult to walk for a while once they return to earth, Jackson added. The 24 muscle cell containers will also accompany mission patches designed by children as part of a competition organised by the University of Liverpool. The University of Liverpool has received 1.2 million in funding from the UK Space Agency for the project, the news outlet reported.

Image: Twitter/@MicroAgeUoL
Scores of people marched to the presidential palace in Sudan's capital Khartoum on Sunday in protest against the October 25 military coup. The protesters chanted slogans against the military General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, triggering a crackdown from the military junta. In the aftermath, local media citing medics present on scene reported that dozens of people were left wounded after the military fired live rounds and tear gas to deter them.

The people want the downfall of Burhan, the protesters shouted as additional security forces were deployed to tackle the increasing number of demonstrators. Several shared videos and photos from the rally on social media. "People's will cannot be defeated! Bravo Sudan! #SudanUprising," wrote a user sharing footage from the mass rally. On October 25, the coup head, General al-Burhan, issued an order for detaining ministers from Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's government. Later, al-Burhan then declared a state of emergency across the country and dismissed the national assembly and government.

Sexual assault is a vile desperate weapon. It won't stop the women of Sudan from fighting for freedom, peace, and justice. They are fearless!#SudanUprising#SudaneseWomen pic.twitter.com/kdib81Nov9  eimanzein (@eimanzein) December 21, 2021

The million march have arrived to the presidential Palace in Sudan. They said NO to the military coup. #SudanCoup#SudanUprising pic.twitter.com/SEvODUdimJ  Sudanese Revolution Support Committee Ireland (@SudanRevIreland) December 19, 2021

UN calls for a political solution

Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres had urged the Sudanese General Commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan via a telephonic conversation to establish a political solution for the growing conflict in the nation, Xinhua reported. As per a transcript of Guterres's phone call with al-Burhan, the UN chief "encouraged the developments of all efforts toward resolving the political crisis in Sudan and urgently restoring the constitutional order and Sudan's transitional process."

Antonio Guterres went on to say that he has repeatedly requested the release of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and other citizens who were unlawfully held in Sudan. The transcript further reveals that the UN chief has emphasised the fact that the United Nations would continue to support the citizens of Sudan who aspire for a peaceful, affluent, and democratic future.

In addendum, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United States, and the United Kingdom also urged for the reinstatement of a citizen-dependant administration in Sudan after the military coup. The countries produced a joint statement, as per the Associated Press, asking that the army free everyone detained in connection with the takeover and withdraw the state of emergency which was imposed throughout the nation since October 25. According to the joint statement, the four nations have restated their commitment to the Sudanese people.

(Image: SudanzUprising/twitter)
The leader of Tigray forces in Ethiopia says its fighters outside of the region have been ordered to withdraw and return to the embattled federal state.

Debretsion Gebremichael, in a letter to the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, proposed an immediate cease-fire to be followed by negotiations.

I have ordered those units of the Tigray Army that are outside the borders of Tigray to withdraw to the borders of Tigray within immediate effect, Debretsion said in the letter.

Other proposals in the letter include the establishment of a no-fly zone for over Tigray to prevent hostile flights and the imposition of an international arms embargo on Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The order for the forces to return to Tigray came as the Ethiopian federal army and its allies have made strong advances in recent weeks. Major towns and cities in the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions have been recaptured by the Ethiopian forces, forcing the Tigray fighters to retreat further into their region.

Getachew Reda, spokesman for the Tigray region, confirmed on Monday the withdrawal was complete. By doing so, we believe we have taken away whatever excuse the international community (may have used) to explain its feet-dragging when it comes to putting pressure on Aiby Ahmed, he wrote on Twitter, referring to the Ethiopian prime minister.

The Ethiopian government has not yet commented on the latest move by Tigrayan forces.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in a war that erupted in November 2020 between Ethiopian forces and fighters from the countrys Tigray region, who dominated the national government before Abiy became prime minister in 2018.

Some of Tigrays 6 million people have begun starving to death under a months-long government blockade. Thousands of ethnic Tigrayans have been detained or forcibly expelled in an atmosphere stoked by virulent speeches against Tigrayans by some senior Ethiopian officials. Alarmed human rights groups have warned some of the anti-Tigrayan rhetoric is hate speech.

Last month, the Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency as Tigray fighters moved closer to the capital, Addis Ababa, and carried out a number of abuses against ethnic Amhara , according to accounts by local residents. The Tigray forces say they are fighting to lift the blockade on their people.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
In yet another proof of China's illegal encroachment policy, a new report revealed China has set up villages inside Bhutanese territory, ANI reported on Monday. According to a report by Policy Research Group, Beijing desires to do something similar in other bordering nations in the future. Notably, Bhutan and China share more than 400km long border and the two nations had signed an MoU concerning expediting border negotiations. The three-step roadmap was finalised in April this year in Kunming. According to some government insiders, the roadmap was mainly prepared by the Communist government and had more recommendations from the Beijing side.

According to the Policy Research Group, the roadmap is China's pattern of obtaining Bhutan to assume the changed ground position by the building of its settlements within Bhutanese territory. The areas were mostly from the border regions of Doklam. It is worth mentioning Doklam is an area with a plateau and a valley, lying between China's Chumbi Valley to the north, Bhutan's Ha Valley to the east and India's Sikkim state's Nathang Valley to the west. Since 1961, Bhutan depicted the region as part of their territory, however, China never accepted Bhutanese claim and marked the region as theirs. In 2017, a military standoff happened between Beijing and India as China attempted to extend a road on the Doklam plateau.

China builds a village near Doklam

"A satellite image was recently in the news which many experts claimed has shown China's establishment of at least four villages nearly three to four kilometres deep inside the disputed territory along the border with Bhutan," said POREG. "Villages that are occupied by China are located at a short distance from Doklam and are in an area of about 100 sq km. Several rows of houses and new roads are visible in the satellite picture in all four villages, which all are located in mountainous terrain. Two of these villages are fairly large," added the POREG report.

The media report also emphasised the recent construction by the Chinese near Doklam in Pangda, which is located on the West Bank of the Torsa River. According to the report, the Chinese government was developing a village in Pangda-- almost 2.5 km inside the Bhutanese border. The POREG report said that the President Xi Jinping-led government makes claims that Pangda is located in its Tibet Autonomous Region's Yadong county. "Pangda as seen in recent satellite pictures and from China's own official statements is one of the 628 moderately well-off villages, or what the Chinese term as Xiaokang. China is in plans to do the same with other neighbours in the region as it is doing with Bhutan," according to POREG.

With inputs from ANI

Image: AP/DETRESFA/ Twitter
The elections for the seventh Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region were conducted on December 19. In a new development, China has criticised the remarks made by the United Kingdom and all of its allies regarding the electoral system in Hong Kong.

The Chinese Embassy spokesperson in the United Kingdom issued a statement on 20th December, "strongly" urged the handful of countries including the UK to recognise the results trend and respect China's sovereignty and unity.

Furthermore, the Chinese Embassy spokesperson in the UK called on the countries to not interfere in the matters related to Hong Kong and China.

The Chinese Embassy spokesperson in the United Kingdom made the statement after the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs of the UK issued a joint statement with the Secretary of State of the United States and the Foreign Ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand expressing "grave concern" over the election results of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.

"China strongly urges the handful of countries, including the UK, to take off their mask of hypocrisy, recognize the reality and major trend, respect Chinas sovereignty and unity, and stop any form of interference in Hong Kong affairs, which are Chinas internal affairs," Chinese Embassy spokesperson in the UK said in the statement.

The Chinese Embassy spokesperson in the UK has expressed "firm opposition" and "strong condemnation" over the comment made by the foreign ministers of the other four countries. The embassy spokesperson further mentioned that the "election was smooth, fair" and this election showed a "rational and constructive culture". The elections will be the first since the passage of the National Security Law in June 2020 and as per the ANI report, all of Hong Kongs major opposition leaders have been in prison or exile.

US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand issue statement

Earlier on December 20, the Foreign Ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, and the United States Secretary of State issued a statement expressing "grave concern" over the erosion of democratic elements of Hong Kong's Special Administrative Region.

The foreign ministers pointed out that since the handover, candidates with different political views contested elections, however, the elections that were held on December 19 reversed the trend.

They noted that as Hong Kong's electoral system was introduced earlier this year, there is a decrease in the number of directly elected seats. Furthermore, they pointed out that a new vetting process has been implemented to "severely restrict" the choice of candidates on the ballot paper.

They raised concern over the effect of the National Security Law and the growing restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of Assembly. They urged the Chinese authorities to act according to international obligations to respect protected rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong.

Inputs from ANI

Image: AP/Unsplash
Amid soaring tensions between Beijing and Washington, Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday accused the United States of breaching commitments on adherence to the One-China principle. In recent years, the US has boosted cooperation with Taiwan, while China has strengthened its fighter jets deployment in the island nation's air defence identification zone. Now, Beijing has accused Washington of using Taipei for its own interest in order to contain China, which recognises the democratically-governed island as part of its own territory.

According to Sputnik while speaking to reporters, Lijian reiterated Beijings stance that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, which is not only a historical and legal fact that cannot be changed but also a status quo that cannot be challenged.

The Chinese ministry spokesperson also referred to some American forces stubbornly manipulating the Taiwan issue in a bid to control China, which Lijian says has now further aggravated tensions in the Taiwan Strait. He urged the United States to adhere to the One-China principle and three Sino-US Communiques on Taiwan. He also asked Washington to be cautious in its words and deeds on Taiwan-related issues.

Washington should stop developing military ties with Taipei [] so as not to seriously damage Sino-US relations and in order to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, Zhao Lijian told reporters.

China-US ties continue to deteriorate over Taiwan

Meanwhile, it is to mention that Lijian remarks come a month after US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan promised that Washington would take every action to prevent China from forcibly invading Taiwan. Previously, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin had stressed that the White House remains committed to the One-China policy, but he also added that it is ready to resist any attempts by Beijing to use force against the island nation. Lloyd underscored that Washington is willing to face Chinas military rise with confidence and resolve and is working to support Taiwans ability to defend itself.

It is pertinent to mention here that China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, but the people of the island claim autonomy. However, in recent months, the movement of Chinese military aircraft and flight emissions has also increased. And in retaliation, Taiwan has been responding to Chinese aggression by increasing strategic ties with democracies including the United States.

(Image: AP)




The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) has claimed in its annual risk assessment that Russia is "intentionally" spying on Denmark, including phone tapping, hacking, and more traditional espionage tools like recruiting sources to divulge secrets. The report also underscored Moscow's military dominance. Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, a DDIS official, stated that there is a serious threat to Danish organisations, authorities, and a number of Danish businesses.

"Russia has a strong capacity to carry out classic agency operations as well as cyber espionage," she told Danish Radio as reported by Sputnik.

In comparison to previous releases, this year's report lays a larger emphasis on Russia, which is perceived as posing a threat to Denmark in other areas as well, such as the Arctic, where both countries have territorial claims. According to the report, the Russian military is of a very high standard and in some areas, they are even better than modern, high-tech opponents.

"We are employing more force to depict Russia's tools, rearmament, and modernisation of the armed forces that have been noticed in various fields. This is a concerning pattern," Dalgaard-Nielsen remarked.

'Russia has a deep mistrust of West and its motives': Danish defence official

According to the Danish intelligence community, Russia has now gained parity with NATO in several sectors following five years of military rearmament and modernisation. Russia has a great distrust of the West, according to the Danish Defence Intelligence Service, which raises the possibility of an unintentional escalation. "We are concerned because the Russian leadership has a deep mistrust of the West and its motives, which could lead to misunderstandings and inadvertent escalation," Dalgaard-Nielsen stated. She further stated that Russia is presently the strongest country in the Baltic Sea and would have an advantage in the case of a confrontation since it could block NATO countries from sending reinforcements to the region.

Sweden, Finland often expressed concerns about Russia's military modernisation

It is significant to mention here that this isn't the first time Russia has been viewed as a potential threat. Sweden and Finland have often expressed concerns about Russia's military modernisation and made similar espionage charges. Sweden's Navy Chief, Ewa Skoog Haslum, described Russia and China as the two biggest threats to the Scandinavian country. Notably, Russian-Danish relations have deteriorated as a result of mutual accusations and criticism. In the month of November, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova alleged that the Danish justice system follows the country's general Russophobic trajectory.

(Image: AP)
Citing concerns over the post-Brexit trade deal and the Northern Ireland protocol, European commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johannson has remarked uncertainty over the migration deal with the United Kingdom over a dispute concerning the Brexit agreement. Adding to it, she said that the EU member states have a "limited appetite" for the agreement which seeks to manage the asylum seekers and migrants.

European commissioner stresses on 'practical cooperation' for curbing migration

Furthermore, the European commissioner emphasized a "practical cooperation" for restricting the attempts made by people to cross the channel from France. She said that it is important to focus on heightening police cooperation and intelligence sharing in this regard. As reported by The Guardian, Johannson was speaking prior to the clash between EU and UK negotiators over the future of the Irish protocol which keeps Northern Ireland in the European Union's single market and thus, the UK Government wants to rewrite it.

However, Johannson's comments underscore how the dispute over the protocol has been damaging the relationship between the EU and the UK following the shocking resignation of David Frost. Also, raising concerns over the implementation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) and the protocol on Northern Ireland, she said the chance of the member states to go into negotiations for a new agreement regarding migration is very less. Ylva Johannson also stressed the need to tackle migrant smuggling networks between Germany, Belgium, and France on the grounds of a practical corporation before discussing any new agreement.

French government on contrary with European Union's stance on migration deal

French government which is seeking to establish a broader agreement between the EU and UK for dealing with the people heading to northern France is on the contrary with Johannson's statement. According to France Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, France will be pushing for a migration treaty between EU-UK while taking over the rotating presidency on January 1, 2022, reported The Guardian.

Notably, around 27 people drowned in the Channel in November while trying to reach the UK from Calais adding to the record numbers trying to carry out the perilous journey. This tragedy further prompted an agreement between the north-Western European countries to study and tighten up the action against such people smugglers.

(Image: AP)


Frances health authority has approved COVID-19 vaccinations for children five to 11 years old and the government says injections could begin Wednesday.

France began vaccinations for children with health risks last week, and the High Authority for Health on Monday expanded its recommendation to include all 5 to 11-year-olds, using Pfizers pediatric dose.

It cited the fifth wave due to the delta variant and the appearance of the omicron variant, and said the decision came after lengthy discussions with ethical committees, medical professionals, parents and teachers. Health Minister Olivier Veran said the injections could begin Wednesday.

France is seeing more weekly confirmed virus cases than at any time in the pandemic, and a rise in hospitalizations linked to the virus. The government canceled New Years Eve events and is accelerating efforts to administer booster shots, but has not closed restaurants and stores or set curfews like some other European countries have done to limit the spread of omicron.

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HERES WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC:

 British nurses warn the health care system at a breaking poin t as omicron cases soar

 German military gives hospital an edge in treating COVID-19 patients

 Omicron prompts World Economic Forum to delay Davos meeting until summer 2022

 Austria ends 20-day lockdown , considers move a success as virus cases plummet

HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING TODAY:

THE HAGUE, Netherlands  The European Unions drugs regulator gave the green light to a fifth COVID-19 vaccine for use in the 27-nation bloc, granting conditional marketing authorization to the two-dose vaccine made by U.S. biotech company Novavax.

The European Medicines Agency decision to recommend granting conditional marketing authorization for the vaccine for people aged 18 and over, which must be confirmed by the EUs executive commission, comes as many European nations are battling surges in infections and amid concerns about the spread of the new omicron variant.

Novavax says it currently is testing how its shots will hold up against the omicron variant, and like other manufacturers has begun formulating an updated version to better match that variant in case in case its eventually needed.

The Novavax shot joins those from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca in the EUs vaccine armory. The EU has ordered up to 100 million doses of the Novavax vaccine with an option for 100 million more.

VIENNA  As the last few regions in Austria reopened restaurants and hotels on Monday, the country reported fewer than 2,000 new coronavirus cases, the lowest number since October.

Austria saw 1,792 new infections in 24 hours, down from daily highs of around 13,000 daily cases in late November  a trend that stands in contrast to rising cases across much of Europe.

In response to a massive fourth wave of infections, the small Alpine nation went into a 20-day lockdown on Nov. 22. National lockdown restrictions were lifted for vaccinated people on Dec. 12, but remain in place for unvaccinated people.

Since Dec. 12, each of Austrias nine states has set its own policy regarding reopening: In some states, restaurants and hotels reopened immediately, while in others they remained closed a few days longer. The capital, Vienna, opted to open shops and Christmas markets last week, but kept restaurants and hotels closed until Monday.

The latest case numbers show the benefit of the lockdown, especially as the omicron variant has led to rising cases elsewhere across Europe. Austrias seven-day rate of new infections now stands at 215 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared with a high of 1,100 per 100,000 late last month.

LONDON  Britains main nurses union warned Monday that exhaustion and surging coronavirus cases among medical staff are pushing them to the breaking point, adding to pressure on the government for new restrictions to curb record numbers of infections driven by the omicron variant.

The warning throws into stark relief the unpalatable choice Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces: wreck holiday plans for millions for a second year running, or face a potential tidal wave of cases and disruption.

Many governments in Europe and the U.S. are confronting similar dilemmas over how hard to come down in the face of omicron, which appears more transmissible than the previous delta variant. Even if it is milder, the new variant could still overwhelm health systems because of the sheer number of infections.

Confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.K. have surged by 50% in a week as omicron overtook delta as the dominant variant.

The British Medical Association has warned that almost 50,000 doctors, nurses and other National Health Service staff in England could be off sick with COVID-19 by Christmas Day unless additional restrictions are introduced.

WESTERSTEDE, Germany  As hospitals across Europe brace themselves for a surge in coronavirus cases over the holiday season because of the new omicron variant, Westerstede Clinical Center is cautiously hopeful it can weather the storm.

The region of northwestern Germany it mainly serves has among the lowest case numbers nationally, and an above-average vaccination rate.

I think were on a stable level here, said the head of the hospitals intensive care unit, Rene Lehr, when The Associated Press was recently granted rare access inside the facility.

The 43-year-old predicted his ICU might need to treat up to five COVID-19 patients during the period from Christmas to New Year  a number that staff can confidently handle.

In part thats because it enjoys benefits many other hospitals dont have. It is operated in cooperation between regional authorities and the German military, helping ensure it has state-of-the art equipment, spare beds and additional staff who work there while they are on standby for possible troop deployments.

The militarys vast resources  and its desire to keep medics at the cutting edge of their profession  mean this little-known facility was among the first in Germany to treat people with COVID-19.

GENEVA  The World Economic Forum is again delaying its much-ballyhooed annual meeting of world leaders, business executives and other elites in Davos, Switzerland, amid new uncertainties about the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The forum, which repeatedly delayed, moved and finally canceled last years event, says the previously planned Jan. 17-21 gathering in the alpine town will now take place in early summer  without giving specifics.

Current pandemic conditions make it extremely difficult to deliver a global in-person meeting, the forum said in a statement. Preparations have been guided by expert advice and have benefited from the close collaboration of the Swiss government at all levels.

The decision comes as some countries in Europe impose new restrictions or face tough choices about what to do about rising numbers of COVID-19 infections tied to omicron. Switzerland on Friday announced requirements to show proof of vaccination or COVID-19 recovery to go to restaurants and indoor events amid a spike in infections in recent weeks, largely of the delta variant.

BRUSSELS  Belgiums health ministers agreed Monday to start vaccinating children aged between 5 and 11 against the coronavirus.

Ministers from the country of 11.5 million said the vaccination is highly recommended to children with conditions that put them at high risk for complications from COVID-19.

Those children will be invited to receive their jabs as a priority before the end of the month.

EU regulators last month approved a reduced-dose vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech for use in the 5-11 age group.

To counter a new spike in case of the virus which has already claimed 27,900 lives in Belgium, the government has tightened rules for schools and nurseries, bringing school holidays forward and asking children aged 6 and over to wear masks. In addition, classes must close when two children from the same class test positive.

BARCELONA, Spain  Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has convoked a meeting with the heads of Spains regions to face a rise in coronavirus infections.

Sanchez said that Wednesdays meeting via video will be to analyze the situation of the pandemic and evaluate new measures that we can put into place over the coming weeks.

Spain is one of the world leaders in vaccination with over 90% of its population having received at least two doses. But with the emergence of the omicron strain cases have been rapidly on the rise and are above 500 per 100,000 inhabitants over 14 days.

Sanchez said hospitalization rates for COVID-19 are still lower than a year ago thanks to the protection offered by the vaccines.

Authorities are now worried about a big spread of infections during the Christmas holidays when families traditionally gather in large numbers.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Russia's recent security requirements to the United States (US) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been described as "unacceptable" by Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist. He claimed that Russia's demands would prevent Sweden from implementing the current security policy. "The goal is to establish a Russian sphere of interest where Moscow can exert influence over countries in our immediate vicinity. We would also be impacted by this, so it is simply unacceptable to us," Hultqvist told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter as reported by Sputnik.

Earlier on Friday, December 17, Russia's Foreign Ministry presented a draft proposal on security assurances between Russia and the United States, as well as to NATO countries in Europe. The proposals seek to restrict NATO from expanding in eastern Europe. Among several other terms, it also calls to prohibit the United States and Russia from placing intermediate and shorter-range missiles within striking distance of each other's territory. One of the most important conditions is for NATO to halt its expansion. This would potentially rule out Sweden and Finland from joining the alliance, which is supported by several of their political parties, including the Swedish Moderates and the Finnish National Coalition Party.

"We have no intention to join NATO, whether now or later, and this is entirely a Swedish viewpoint on which no one else should have an opinion. We must be able to make judgments based on what we believe is in the best interests of the Swedish people. It's about our fundamental sovereignty and ability to make our own choices," Hultqvist remarked according to the Swedish daily. He also went on to claim that Russia's requirements are contrary to International law. Small countries must be able to make their own judgments regarding their future and any attempt to create areas of interest in which certain countries are regarded superior to others is not at all acceptable, he added.

Russia may try to keep EU out of talks on security policy: Josep Borrell

Meanwhile, On Monday, December 20, Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief, warned that Moscow may try to keep the European Union out of talks on security guarantees. He stated that Russia's ultimate goals are unclear, except that it is trying to threaten and weaken Ukraine. "Various scenarios are possible. We can't rule out Russia's desire to use the crisis as leverage for its declared goal of reshaping Europe's security framework while simultaneously excluding Europeans from the discussion," Borrell stated on his blog as reported by Sputnik. The EU's foreign policy chief also stressed that any Russian move against Ukraine's sovereignty would have severe consequences, and expressed optimism that the United States will not allow Brussels to be excluded from security negotiations.

Image: AP
An 11-day war between Israel and Gaza's ruling Hamas militant group in May left over 260 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

It was the fourth war between the bitter enemies since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, with fighting erupting after weeks of tensions and clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police in contested east Jerusalem.

Israeli aircraft struck hundreds of targets in Gaza, while Hamas launched over 4,000 rockets at Israel. In a first, the violence also spilled over into clashes between Jews and Arabs inside Israel as well.

In Gaza, tens of thousands of homes were damaged and more than 2,000 others were destroyed. Israel has eased its blockade of Gaza as part of Egyptian-led efforts to broker a longer-term cease-fire, but reconstruction efforts have yet to get off the ground. In rocket-scarred southern Israel, residents remain jittery.

On the sixth day of the war, the Israeli air force bombed the 12-story al-Jalaa tower, roughly an hour after ordering all occupants to evacuate. No one was injured, but the building was destroyed. The building was home to offices belonging to The Associated Press, the Al-Jazeera satellite channel as well as dozens of families. Israel has said it had evidence Hamas was using the building for military purposes, though it has not released any evidence publicly to back the claim.

Here, some AP journalists involved in the coverage reflect on the story and their own experiences.

Josef Federman, AP's News Director for Israel the Palestinian Territories and Jordan reflects on the coverage and his own experiences:

The airstrike happened on the sixth day of the war. During those first few days, we had worked out a nice little routine. Karin Laub, the Mideast news director, would keep an eye on the story in the mornings while I would rest and do TV interviews. Then I would come in and handle the story and write the night's big roundup at the end of the day.

The airstrike happened on a Saturday, and it was actually kind of quiet. I went out and did a TV interview for Chinese television. Whenever I did TV, I would turn my phone off and put it down so I could focus on the interview. So, I turned my phone off for about 10 minutes.

When I turned it back on, there were eight missed calls from the office. I thought, "What the heck is going on?" And then as I was staring at my phone, it rang again and it was Karin and she was frantic. We had just received a warning from the Israeli army that the building with our Gaza office was going to be blown up. "We've been given an hour to clear out," she said, before asking me to call my contacts to see if we could stop it.

A couple of days earlier, I had given the Israeli military the GPS coordinates of our office to make sure it wasn't accidentally bombed. So I called them to see if they could stop this. The spokesman was very nice, asked for more details about the building and said he would make some phone calls to see if anything could be done.

I then called the Foreign Ministry, telling the spokesman that this would be a public relations disaster if Israel destroyed the AP office. He also promised to make some calls and see if he could help.

Then, I called the prime minister's office and got a very different reply. There were no offers of help. The spokesman merely said: "Make sure you get your people out of there and they are safe."

That's when I knew the office was going to get blown up.

I rushed home, flipped on the TV and watched our office get blown up in real time on live TV.

This wasn't the worst thing we've dealt with. In 2014, two people were killed in an accident, an explosion in Gaza, and another staffer was badly wounded. So, all things considered, this wasn't the worst outcome. At least everybody was safe.

They had an hour to get out of there. They grabbed what they could. And the amazing thing is, they went to work. They ran down the stairs, they got out of the building and they took incredible footage: They interviewed people, they spoke to the owner of the building who was also pleading with the army not to do this, they got incredible photos. We wrote some great stories and a first-person account. The resilience is amazing.

It's not easy, but everybody kind of knows what to do. They spring to life, everybody knows their job, and they just go to work and take care of business.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
The Chairman of the Iranian armed forces' central command headquarters, Gholam Ali Rashid on Tuesday stated that Israel would be unable to carry out a strike against Iran's nuclear or military bases sans prior approval from the US. He also announced that Tehran's armed forces conducted an air defence exercise in the skies above the Bushehr nuclear power station on Monday morning indicating that if Israel tried to bombard Iran, they would meet with crushing retaliation with Tehran's Revolutionary Guard Corps performing large manoeuvres across the country's south that is planned to last five days, reported Sputnik.

He further said that any threat to Iran's nuclear and military bases by the Zionist regime is not conceivable without the United States' green light, according to Sputnik, and that in the event of Israeli aggression, the response would be a crushing attack on all bases, centres and pathways.

Iran's nuclear programme is continuing in Vienna

Talks over Iran's nuclear programme is ongoing in Vienna, with the seventh round commencing on November 29. After this, another round of talks will be forming after the Christmas holidays. According to Sputnik, the talks have already hit many obstacles, and the US has stated that if diplomacy fails to address the matter, it will consider other options.

The negotiations have been begun to discuss the prospect of renewing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which is a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries, that includes the United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom along with Germany and the European Union. The agreement, inked in 2015, called for the lifting of economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for Tehran curtailing its nuclear programme. However, ex-POTUS Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, causing the Islamic Republic to back out of its nuclear commitments.

Israel has expressed its concerns

However, since the proposal to resurrect the deal was announced, Israel has voiced its concerns about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Israel has approved a budget of about NIS 5 billion to be used to prepare the military for a possible strike against Iran's nuclear programme, according to the Times of Israel. It includes financing for various types of aircraft, intelligence-gathering drones, and specific munitions to target heavily guarded underground facilities.

Image: Twitter/@NCRIUS
Yossi Levy has repeatedly booked and canceled his COVID vaccine appointment.

The 45-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew recovered from the virus earlier this year, as have his eight children and wife, but a combination of lethargy and procrastination has prevented him from following through and getting inoculated.

"It isn't something pressing. I'm not opposed to it. It's simply laziness," he said.

Levy is among the hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who have yet to receive their COVID-19 shots. The group has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country despite being hit hard by the pandemic.

Facing the new omicron coronavirus variant, officials are scrambling to ramp up vaccination rates in a population that has so far been slow to roll up their sleeves.

"We are going on the offensive with the issue of vaccinations," said Avraham Rubinstein, Mayor of Bnei Brak, the country's largest ultra-Orthodox city.

Israeli officials have appealed to the community's prominent rabbis, who serve as arbiters on all matters, to promote vaccination. They are deploying mobile clinics. And they are beating back a wave of lies about the vaccine that has washed over parts of the community.

The vaccination rate is low in part because half of the ultra-Orthodox population is under 16 and was only recently made eligible for vaccination.

In addition, many ultra-Orthodox were already infected or believe they don't think they need the vaccine.

The outreach effort has had mixed success. Officials hope to raise the vaccination rate with a new mobile-clinic campaign at religious schools and media blitz stepping up pressure on parents to vaccinate children.

While vaccination rates for the second dose among the general population hover around 62% and the booster at 44%, in the ultra-Orthodox community the number is around half of that.

The community's immunity shoots up somewhat when the 300,000 or so of those who are known to have recovered are included, but Israel's Health Ministry recommends those who were infected to get at least one shot if six months have elapsed since the infection.

The low vaccination rate stands in stark contrast to the heavy price the community paid during the pandemic. The ultra-Orthodox were hit hard from the start, with the community's 1.2 million people often leading the country's morbidity rates and losing hundreds to the disease. The ultra-Orthodox make up 13% of Israel's 9.3 million population.

There are societal reasons for the quick community spread. The ultra-Orthodox tend to live in poor, crowded neighborhoods, with large families in small apartments, where sickness can quickly spread. Synagogues, the centerpiece of social life, bring men together to pray and socialize in small spaces.

The particular way of life of the ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredim, has also made driving up vaccination rates a unique challenge for health officials.

The cloistered community has long been separate from mainstream Israeli life, with children studying scripture but very little math and English. The community typically shuns the internet, doesn't watch secular TV and tends to live separately from non-religious Israelis. It is suspicious of secular state authorities and many of the trappings of modernity.

The ultra-Orthodox follow a strict interpretation of Judaism and rely on rabbis to guide them in many life decisions. While some rabbis have actively encouraged vaccination, others have taken a less aggressive approach and their followers have been less enthusiastic about getting inoculated.

For Rubinstein, getting rabbis involved is crucial in the fight to get people vaccinated.

"We are enlisting the greatest rabbis for this. The greatest rabbis are enlisting us. They are the leaders," he said.

But with the Haredi community not subscribing to traditional methods of mass communication, he insists that "we need ways to talk to our residents. Give us means to talk to our residents", adding "It needs to be talked to the way it talks. If there is something on TV or the internet or some way, it doesn't resonate with most residents of the city."

Israel was one of the first countries to vaccinate its population early this year and the first to give booster shots. But the campaign has lagged in recent weeks and hundreds of thousands of people remain unvaccinated or without a booster as the specter of an omicron surge looms.

And there is also the issue of those who are extremely vocal against vaccination affecting those on the fence.

On Saturday night, Israeli police used water cannons to disperse hundreds of protesters gathered in the central city of Raanana, where Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett lives, to voice their opposition to the country's COVID-19 vaccination drive.

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Syria continues to witness economic difficulties due to the economic blockade and sanctions that are imposed on the country by the United States, said Syrian Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Susan told the journalists. As per Sputnik report, Susan said, Syria experiences economic difficulties and this is the result of the [US-led] economic war against the Syrian Arab Republic and unilateral sanctions against it.

On Tuesday, the Kazakh capital of Nur-Sultan is organising Astana format talks and the negotiations are to be joined by delegations from Russia, the Syrian government and its opposition, Turkey, Iran among other nations. Susans remarks came in line with the 2019 US law signed by former US President Donald Trump which was the so-called Ceaser Act. The same law since sanctioned several domestic and foreign companies and individuals who do business with the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The US move pushed Syria into its worst socioeconomic crisis since the war broke out. Meanwhile, the Middle Eastern nation has repeatedly asked the international community, as per Sputnik, to denounce the unilateral sanctions by Washington and take steps to lift them. Damascus also pointed out that the sanctions have led to an increase in the number of Syrians who are in crucial need. It reportedly also said that the US move violates basic human rights.

US Dispatches Two Military Convoy To Syria

Susans remarks came just weeks after the US in November dispatched a massive convoy of trucks consisting of forces, arms and logistics supplies to Surias northeastern province of Al-Hasakh from Iraqi territory. Sana news agency reported that the convoy had around 100 trucks that moved in two columns. While the first convoy had roughly 60 trucks, the second had around 40. The US convoy entered Syria through the al-Waleed crossing in Iraq. The United States has deployed troops in Syria to combat Daesh, a terrorist entity.

Press Tv reported that former US President Donald Trump, in several instances, acknowledged that the American forces in Syria were for the oil in the Middle Eastern nation. The report added that the US administration escalated its economic war on Syria after failing to depose the Syrian government through proxies and direct involvement in the conflict.
In a massive crackdown on Pakistan-sponsored fake news, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Tuesday blocked 20 YouTube Channels and two websites for spreading anti-India propaganda. According to the Ministry, the Pakistan-coordinated disinformation operation was actively spreading fake news about various sensitive subjects such as Kashmir, Indian Army, minority communities in India, Ram Mandir, General Bipin Rawat, etc.

These channels were identified in a closely-coordinated effort between intelligence agencies and the Ministry. In two separate orders  one for 20 YouTube channels directing YouTube, and the other for two news websites, the Government has now requested the Department of Telecom to direct internet service providers for blocking the news channels/portals.

"The modus operandi of the anti-India disinformation campaign involved The Naya Pakistan Group (NPG), operating from Pakistan, having a network of YouTube channels, and some other standalone YouTube channels not related to NPG. The channels had a combined subscriber base of over 35 lakh, and their videos had over 55 crore views. Some of the YouTube channels of the Naya Pakistan Group (NPG) were being operated by anchors of Pakistani news channels," said the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in a press release.

Disruption of Elections also on agenda: Centre

The Centre further stated that over the last year, the Pak-sponsored YouTube channels were posting contentious content on issues such as the farmers protest, protests related to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, in a bid to 'incite the minorities' against the Government of India. It was also feared that these YouTube channels would be used to post content to undermine the democratic process of the upcoming elections in five states.

It also observed that most of the content pertains to subjects sensitive from the perspective of national security and are factually incorrect, and are being mainly posted from Pakistan as a coordinated disinformation network (as in the case of Naya Pakistan Group) against India.

"The Ministry has acted to secure the information space in India, and utilised emergency powers under Rule 16 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021,'' as per a statement, adding that the action had been taken under the provisions to block content in case of emergency.

Image: PTI, PIB, AP
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan again sparked controversy after his comment against Afghanistan went viral on social media sites, ANI reported citing Khaama Press. According to local media reports, Khan was speaking about Afghanistan's culture and women education during the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) summit in Pakistan's national capital, Islamabad. During his speech, Khan reportedly said women education has never been a part of the culture of the Afghan people and, the "world should respect" that. However, this created a storm of adverse comments on social media platforms. While countering the claims of Khan, thousand of people throng to the comment section and argued Pakistan was formed in 1945 and the girls of Afghans were studying even before Islamabad's formation.

Afghans said that women were teaching and studying at universities before the establishment of Pakistan, reported Khaama Press. While some argued that Kabul University has been founded in 1932 while Pakistan emerged in 1947.

Apart from people showing their anger against the Pakistan Prime Minister on social media platforms, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai took a dig at the comments of Imran Khan. He said, "The statements of Imran Khan are inflammatory and disrespectful." Further, Karzai suggested Khan stop interfering in Afghanistan's internal affairs, reported Khaama Press.

"The comments show his lack of knowledge of Afghanistan's history, "Afghanistan's former ambassadress to Norway Shukria Barakzai said.

Khan blames Ghani and Karzai for poverty

Furthermore, Afghans and several top teachers and professors termed his comment as a humiliation to the Afghan people and the Islamic system. Apart from comment on education and culture, Khan had said that Pakistan multiple faced attacks from Afghanistan's border in which the IS was said to be involved. "These remarks are not true and are obvious propaganda against Afghanistan. In fact, from the beginning, Afghanistan has been facing Daesh's threat from Pakistan," TOLOnews quoted Karzai as saying in a statement. The incumbent Pakistan Prime Minister also said that people in the war-ravaged country has been facing an acute shortage of basic requirements. He added that the previous government including former President Hamid Karzai and his successor Ashraf Ghani had not worked sufficiently to end the corruption in the government. "Such remarks insult the people of Afghanistan, said, Karzai.

With inputs from ANI

Image: Twitter/@PakPMO
A verdict in the trial of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been postponed by Myanmar Court till December 27, the latest in a series of cases that have been filed against her. The development has been confirmed by a legal official familiar with the case, according to AP. The verdict that has been postponed in the court in Naypyitaw is the second among multiple cases that have been filed against the Myanmar leader since the army took control of the country on February 1.

Court postpones verdict of Aung San Suu Kyi case

The legal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity revealed that there was no reason given for the postponement of the verdict. According to AP, Aung San Suu Kyi has been accused of importing and possessing walkie-talkies without any official procedure. Reportedly, the radios were found on the entrance gate of her residence and the barracks of her bodyguards during the search which was carried out on the day of her arrest. The charge has been filed against Aung San Suu Kyi under the Export-Import Law. She has been accused of not following proper procedure regarding the import of the walkies-talkies and illegally possessing the walkies-talkies.

As per the AP report, the lawyers of Aung San Suu Kyi have stated that the radios which were seized from her residence were not in her possession. The lawyers further told the Court that the radios were used in her security, however, the court declined to dismiss the charges against her. On December 6, Aung San Suu Kyi was convicted on two other charges, incitement and violating COVID-19 restrictions. She was sentenced to four years imprisonment, however, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, reduced the sentence by half.

Myanmar Coup

Earlier on February 1, the Myanmar military overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. After the February 1 coup, people of the country have been protesting against the Myanmar military. The international community and human rights groups across the world have expressed concern over the situation in Myanmar. According to the Assistance Association For Political Prisoners (BURMA), 1,348 have died, 11,079 people have been arrested and 1,964 people are evading warrants in Myanmar.

Inputs from AP

Image: AP/Shutterstock/RepresentativeImage
Amid escalating border tensions with Ukraine, a Russian diplomat stated that Western partners will not be able to isolate Russia. Speaking at YouTube's SolovyovLive show, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, stated that it's the West who is planning to isolate Russia, not the vice-versa. However, they would not succeed in their intention, he added as reported by ANI. Gavrilov further stated that the support of China for Russia's security guarantees is absolutely genuine. "I believe China's viewpoint is critical. It is being heard by the US as well as in NATO countries. China is our ally, and its support in this area is undeniable," the diplomat added.

Earlier on Friday, December 17, Russia's Foreign Ministry presented a draft proposal on security assurances between Russia and the United States, as well as to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries in Europe. The proposals seek to restrict NATO from expanding in eastern Europe. Among several other terms, it also calls to prohibit the United States and Russia from placing intermediate and shorter-range missiles within striking distance of each other's territory. According to China's foreign ministry, Russia's proposals to NATO and the US on security guarantees will help to strengthen mutual trust and lessen the chance of confrontations.

Russia responds to West with constructive advice on restoring stability: Foreign Ministry

Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that Moscow responds to the West with constructive recommendations on restoring stability and security despite efforts by the US and NATO to escalate tensions. Despite the West's efforts to isolate Russia, the country has demonstrated its ability to engage in talks with its allies based on mutual respect in a variety of domains, Zakharova remarked. "We often emphasise the fact that our foreign policy is actually multifaceted. Taking the current scenario into account, we portray ourselves as a nation capable of establishing an equal conversation based on mutual respect," she told Channel One as reported by Tass news agency.

Russia deployed around 70,000 troops towards Ukraine's border: US

It is pertinent to mention here that the security concerns have become a vital issue in the context of escalating tensions around Ukraine, with reports claiming that Russia has placed troops near the Ukrainian border in preparation for an invasion. According to US intelligence officials, Russia has pushed around 70,000 troops towards Ukraine's border and is preparing for an attack early next year. However, Moscow denies any intention of attacking Ukraine and dismisses Western concerns as a "propaganda campaign."

(With inputs from ANI)

Image: Twitter/@@armscontrol_rus
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Monday, Dec. 20 appointed the Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian, Cultural and Social Affairs Tariq Ali Bakheet as special representative to Afghanistan, the OIC said in a press release. The latter will ensure the implementation of the resolution of the Council of Foreign Ministers, and will be responsible to lead the coordination efforts for the supply of humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, the council said. Bakheets appointment came as the OIC concluded its 17th extraordinary session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers held in Islamabad, Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The Special Envoy will coordinate delivery of humanitarian assistance and support, and is mandated to pursue economic and political engagement with Afghanistan, the OIC said in its statement.

In his remarks, Tariq Ali Bakheet said the forum is very serious and committed to supporting the Afghan people in this critical time. Speaking about Pakistans role toward peace and stability in Afghanistan, the OIC Assistant Secretary-General said Pakistan is the founding member of the OIC. Furthermore, he stated that the OIC has a leading role in helping Afghan citizens in order to alleviate their suffering and ensure that humanitarian medical supplies and assistance reach them across all domains. Bakheet said that Pakistans offer to host this meeting is a clear testimony to its commitment to Islamic solidarity.

Pakistan calls Afghanistan a tribal culture

Defending the Talibans oppressive rules against Afghan women, the Pakistani leader Imran Khan said at the 17th session of the OIC held in Islamabad that the countries worldwide must be sensitive to tribal customs. Khan further justified the Talibans positioning on banning young girls at education institutions saying that the international community to understand that the idea of human rights and womens rights is different in every society. Embattled leader of Pakistan, who has been a staunch supporter of the hardline Islamist Taliban regime that enacted the stringent Sharia law as a basis of governance, told the forum that the Talibans culture is similar to the culture in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa of Peshawar where parents were paid stipends to send girls to school, but they were not given education. He then reiterated that Islamabad is fighting for the world powers to recognise the Taliban government.
Chilean President-elect Gabriel Boric met with outgoing leader Sebastian Pinera on Monday following his historic victory in the country's presidential runoff.

Pinera briefed his successor on topics including the coronavirus pandemic as the pair met at the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago.

Speaking to the media after the talks, Boric stressed the need for international collaboration in efforts to control the virus.

He also promised to support workers and the elderly through the economic impact of the pandemic.

With 56% of the votes, Boric on Sunday handily defeated his opponent, far right lawmaker Jose Antonio Kast, and at age 35 was elected Chile's youngest modern president.

IMAGE: AP

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Members of unions and social movements marched in downtown Buenos Aires on Monday to mark the 20th anniversary of Argentina's 2001 protests and riots.

Demonstrators paid tribute to the dozens who died in the unrest as people took to the streets over the country's economic crisis.

Protests spread across Argentina over December 19-20, 2001, after a series of central government policies sparked the rage of citizens who suddenly saw their savings partly confiscated from their bank accounts.

A violent assault by mounted police against the emblematic Argentine human rights group The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo only inflamed sentiment among protesters.

Then-President Fernando de la Rua was forced to step down from office, starting a political crisis which included the swearing-in of four further presidents in the space of 11 days.

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The United Kingdom has demanded a "thorough revision" of the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP), amid rising speculation that it could invoke Article 16 of the document, which would allow London to suspend its NIP-related commitments temporarily. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has expressed her desire to meet with European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic to discuss serious concerns surrounding the Northern Ireland Protocol. (NIP). "I want a comprehensive solution that delivers for the people of Northern Ireland and everyone across our great country," She wrote on Twitter on Monday, December 20.

The statement comes after Lord David Frost, the UK government's former senior negotiator on post-Brexit relations with the European Union, resigned on Saturday, December 18, citing his "disaffection" with the direction of London's domestic and foreign policy. Last week, Frost voiced displeasure with the lack of progress in UK's negotiations with the EU, repeating London's willingness to invoke the provision permitting one of the parties to temporarily forsake its commitments. He stated that it's sad that there hasn't been any progress toward a thorough or worthwhile interim agreement this year and a solution must be found as soon as possible next year.

Look forward to speaking to @MarosSefcovic tomorrow about the Northern Ireland Protocol.



I want a comprehensive solution that delivers for the people of Northern Ireland and everyone across our great country.  Liz Truss (@trussliz) December 20, 2021

"We will continue to use the Article 16 safeguard mechanism if it is the only way to defend the prosperity and stability of Northern Ireland and its people, as long as there is no negotiated solution," the former Brexit minister remarked as reported by news agency Sputnik. The remarks come after Ireland's Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheal Martin warned last month that invoking Article 16 by London might have catastrophic consequences. He had also emphasised that the United Kingdom's government must respond in good faith. "In my opinion, invoking Article 16 as a response to the European Commission's recommendations would be irresponsible, imprudent, and reckless," he told in a message to Irish lawmakers.

No hard border between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland as part of Brexit agreement

It should be mentioned here that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as part of the Brexit agreement that came into effect in January. However, under NIP, all commodities and animal-based products entering the UK must be inspected upon arrival to ensure that they comply with EU sanitary requirements. According to the UK government, the protocol is ineffective since it causes delays and disruptions in products being transited between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country. Meanwhile, the EU pledged in October to reduce food, plant, and animal product inspections by 80% and paperwork of transport companies by half, but London is seeking a total overhaul of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Image: AP
US is ready to engage in diplomacy with Russia and will hold a dialogue through multiple channels, including bilateral engagement, the NATO-Russia Council, and the OSCE, the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Sunday after holding a telephonic conversation with his Russian counterpart Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of Russia, Yuriy Ushakov.

Sullivan told a press briefing that any dialogue between the US and Moscow must be based on reciprocity, and must address the United States concerns about Russias actions. The dialogue must be conducted in full coordination with our European Allies and partners, US national security advisor Sullivan further insisted. He also noted that substantive progress can only occur in an environment of de-escalation rather than escalation.

'We're prepared for dialogue with Russia': US

The talks between US and Russia come in the backdrop of a heavy troop build-up near Ukraine and soaring tensions between NATO, the US, and its allies, and the Kremlin. US intelligence reports revealed that Moscow is planning a military invasion involving an estimated 175,000 troops as early as next year. Declassified US intelligence paper also outlined that Russia mobilized 100 battalion tactical units, as well as heavy armour, artillery, and other equipment to launch an offensive on Kyiv, which the NATO and US warned against.

The United States, however, stressed that it still believes there is an opportunity for progress in normalizing the tense situation if talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin would be held "in the appropriate format, adding we're prepared for dialogue with Russia.

Last week, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said at the event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington that Russia has now put on the table its concerns with American and NATO activities, referring to Moscows recent document laying down conditions such as limiting activities of the US-led Nato military alliance in the region.

We're going to put on the table our concern with Russian activities that we believe harm our interest and values. That's the basis of reciprocity upon which you would pursue any kind of dialogue, Sullivan stressed. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also asserted to the reporters that the US will not hold dialogue with Russia alone, there will be no talks on European security without our European allies and partners.

Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov had earlier told the countrys state-affiliated press that Russia has given the US and NATO two draft treaties that lay down a set of radical demands for the countries that join the transatlantic alliance NATO. The demands mention the red lines as spoken previously by the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the security guarantees from both United States and NATO to curb NATOs eastward military expansion and remove weaponry installed after 1997.

Russia seeks to prohibit the US from providing military assistance to the former Soviet states and stop all military exercises in the Eastern European region, Central Asia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan
In a letter to US Labor Secretary Martin Walsh, Senators Sherrod Brown and Marco Rubio urged that E-commerce giant Amazon should be probed for harsh labour practices, such as unjust dismissals and a lack of sensitivity to catastrophes like the one that killed six workers in a tornado. Recent reports have revealed disturbing working conditions at Amazon, implying improper treatment of its employees, to the harm of workers and families across the country, the senators wrote in the letter. "Amazon employs almost one out of every 170 people in the United States, highlighting our specific interest in ensuring that the company's hiring procedures are fair and legal. We advise you to probe Amazon's labour and employment practises as soon as possible using all available tools," they wrote in the letter as reported by Sputnik.

Brown and Rubio's appeal is part of a bipartisan campaign to rein in Amazon's business practices, which have been criticised by US lawmakers and authorities over the last year. Earlier this year, Letitia James, New York's Attorney General, stated that Amazon might have violated the law when it fired an employee for attending a protest about working conditions at a warehouse operated by the company. The senators referenced media reports of allegations by Amazon employees stating how the company mismanaged their perks and wages. The employees also accused the corporation of establishing demanding work hours and a general lack of reaction to their complaints owing to its highly automated management procedures.

Six workers died after Amazon's warehouse collapsed during tornado

Senators also cited reports of workers being unable to use the restroom on the job and being compelled to take drastic steps such as urinating in bottles in order to meet work targets. Brown and Rubio also asked Secretary Walsh to look into the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's inquiry into Amazon's conduct following the collapse of its warehouse in Edwardsville earlier this month, which killed six workers. According to the senators, one of the workers killed in the incident texted his girlfriend, alleging that his employer would not let him go home during the storm. Workers also expressed worries about Amazon's apparent lack of disaster response training and the company's expectation that employees work through tornado warnings, Sputnik reported.

Image: Twitter/@SecMartyWalsh/AP
The move follows recent U.S. sanctions against officials deemed responsible for abuses of Uyghurs and others.

Uyghur Freedom protesters calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to "combat the Uyghur genocide through diplomacy and economic pressure".hold signs during a rally in New York . March 22, 2021..

UPDATED at 1:50 P.M. EST on 2021-12-21

China on Tuesday slapped an entry ban on four members of a U.S. federal commission on religious freedom, in retaliation for U.S. sanctions on its officials over rights abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian named U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) chairwoman Nadine Maenza, vice chairman Nury Turkel and commissioners Anurima Bhargava and James W. Carr, saying they would be barred from entering China, and any assets held in China would be frozen.

"The US imposed illegal sanctions on Chinese officials under the pretext of so-called human rights issue in Xinjiang in accordance with its domestic law. Such action seriously interferes in Chinas internal affairs, seriously violates basic norms governing international relations and seriously undermines China-U.S. relations. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this," Zhao said.

"In response to the above-mentioned erroneous practice of the U.S. side, China has decided to take reciprocal countermeasures in accordance with the Anti-foreign Sanctions Law of the Peoples Republic of China," he said.

The U.S. imposed sanctions on Dec. 10 on Chinese officials linked to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, where Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are subjected to mass incarceration, invasive surveillance and forced labor.

The sanctions unveiled on World human Rights Day include a U.S. visa ban on the current and previous chairmen of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), Erken Tuniyaz and Shohrat Zakir, and the blacklisting of a Chinese artificial intelligence company accused of supporting mass surveillance of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.

During their tenures, more than one million Uyghurs and members of other predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups have been detained in Xinjiang, Treasury said in a statement.

The USCIRF, a federal government body, condemned the sanctions.

We are not surprised to see the Chinese government impose additional baseless sanctions in response to growing concern over its egregious human rights and religious freedom violations, especially its genocidal policies against Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. As we have said beforeUSCIRF will not be silenced, Maenza said in a statement.

The Chinese government needs to end its state-led oppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and others, rather than implementing misguided sanctions," she said, referring to groups facing repression at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.

International rebukes over Xinjiang

China's tit-for-tat sanctions over Xinjiang come amid a string of international rebukes of Beijing over its policies toward the 12 million Uyghurs and small numbers of ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Turkic speakers.

On Dec. 9, an independent Uyghur Tribunal in London ruled that China has committed genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. Its ruling was based on evidence from survivors, witnesses and experts on the network of detention camps in which China has held as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. Beijing claims the camps are vocational training centers.

Although the tribunal is non-binding and has no state backing, Uyghur groups responded to the findings of genocide and crimes against humanity by preparing or proceeding with lawsuits in Argentina and the U.K.

The Uyghur Human Rights Project, based in Washington, and the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), headquartered in Germany, are preparing to submit a criminal complaint in Argentina. The countrys universal jurisdiction provisions enable courts to investigate and prosecute crimes against humanity or genocide under international law, regardless of where they have taken place.

On Dec. 16, The High Court of England and Wales gave the WUC approval to proceed with a case against U.K. authorities for permitting the importation of cotton goods produced with Uyghur forced labor in China.

Last week, both chambers of the U.S. Congress unanimously passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Once signed into la by President Joe Biden, the measure will block the import of goods into the U.S. from Xinjiang without "clear and convincing evidence" that they were not made with forced labor, and authorize sanctions on foreign individuals and entities found responsible for rights abuses.

The Biden administration and its predecessor have ramped up U.S. policies in response to Xinjiang rights abuses, including visa restrictions, sanctions, export controls and import restrictions, and the release of a business advisory on forced labor.

Earlier Thursday the Commerce Department added to its export blacklist 34 research institutes and tech companies in China that have been identified as developing technologies that can be used to surveil and repress minorities.

Citing abuses in Xinjiang and elsewhere, the U.S. and five other countries announced early this month that they will send athletes but not government officials to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which open in February.

Hong Kong election draws sanctions

On Monday, the State Department also sanctioned five officials in China's Hong Kong liaison office, in connection with recent changes to election rules in the city that mean only candidates pre-approved by Beijing may stand.

Central Liaison Office deputy directors Chen Dong, He Jing, Lu Xinning, Tan Tienui and Yin Zonghua were named in its report to Congress, bringing the total number of officials sanctioned over rights abuses and loss of promised freedoms in Hong Kong to 39, including Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam.

"Foreign financial institutions that knowingly conduct significant transactions with the individuals listed in todays report are subject to sanctions," the State Department said in its statement.

It said there were "deep concerns about Beijings clear efforts to deprive Hongkongers of a meaningful voice" in elections to the Legislative Council (LegCo) on Dec. 19.

China's National People's Congress (NPC) approved new rules in March preventing anyone from standing for election in Hong Kong without the approval of a newly-expanded committee of Beijing loyalists.

The Election Committee that previously voted for the city's chief executive was expanded, and now also directly appoints some members of the Legislative Council (LegCo).

China on Tuesday issued a white paper defending the electoral rule changes in Hong Kong, saying that there was scant democracy in Hong Kong under British colonial rule, during which the city went from an appointed body prior to the signing of the Joint Declaration to fully elected status in 1995, against strong opposition from Beijing.

"Anti-China agitators in Hong Kong and the external groups behind them must be held to account for impeding Hong Kong's progress towards democracy," the white paper said, adding that the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has indeed taken steps to strengthen its control of the city, giving it a "form of democracy suited to its realities."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified U.S. policies on Hong Kong as the trigger for sanctions announced by China Tuesday. This story has been corrected to show that Beijing was responding to recent sanctions on Xinjiang officials.

Reported by Alim Seytoff for RFA's Uyghur Service and by Gao Feng for the Mandarin Service, and Cheng Yut Yiu and Shum Yin Hang for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Police are putting pressure on Tang's friends and family not to speak out about his treatment.

Chinese rights lawyer Tang Jitian is shown at the Fuzhou Changle International Airport, where he was prevented from boarding a flight to Japan, June 2, 2021.

A prominent Chinese rights attorney believed detained after he planned to attend an event on Human Rights Day is once more being subjected to torture and mistreatment in detention, according to one of his friends.

Tang Jitian has been incommunicado since texting friends a couple of hours before the Dec. 10 event was due to start that it was "not safe" to attend, with friends and fellow attorneys saying he has been subjected to a forced disappearance.

Tang's friend Zhao Zhongyuan, a U.S.-based traditional Chinese medicine doctor, said he is being forcibly deprived of sleep, as well as beatings.

"They won't let him sleep at all, and they are hanging him up and beating him, very similar to [the way he was treated] 10 years ago," Zhao told RFA on Tuesday. "Judging from the photo, it looks similar to the torture he suffered [in 2014]."

"And his state of health is a whole lot worse than it was 10 years ago," he said.

RFA was unable to verify Zhao's report independently.

Zhao has previously said Tang was already at the point of physical and mental collapse when he disappeared, which came after he was prevented from traveling to Japan to visit his 24-year-old daughter Qiqi, who is in a coma due to complications from tuberculosis.

"[The authorities] have said that if there is ongoing attention on his case, they will send him back to his birth city [of Jilin]," Zhao said. "A source told me that I should stop speaking out for him."

"They said his family have put their faith in the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government," he said. "But the less I speak out, and the more I cover this up, the less likely Tang Jitian is to get out eventually."

Tang was stopped by border guards at Fuzhou Airport in May 2021 as he tried to board a flight to Japan, on the grounds that his leaving would "endanger national security and interests."

Tang's travel ban began after he lost his lawyer's license in 2010 for defending practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

He was among a group four Chinese rights lawyers tortured by police after being detained in March 2014 during a protest outside a detention center in Jiansanjiang in northeast China demanding information about Falun Gong members believed to be incarcerated there.

In 2017, he was turned back by border guards at the Lo Wu border crossing after he tried to travel to Hong Kong to seek medical treatment for leukemia diagnosed after his release from detention. He was told at the time that his leaving the country could pose a "threat to national security."

U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao hit out at the use of travel bans to silence prominent dissidents and activists.

"If you don't do as you're told, or you do some kind of human rights or political work, they will confiscate your passport and prevent you from leaving the country," Teng told RFA.

"Tang's daughter is critically ill in Japan, and he should be allowed to visit her, purely on humanitarian grounds," he said. "But the Chinese government has no concept of humanitarian considerations."

"They are doing this as a form of punishment; a way to get back at human rights lawyers," Teng said.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Korean People's Army (KPA) soldiers pay their respects to the statues of late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il ahead of the 27th anniversary of the death of Kim Il Sung, at Mansu Hill in Pyongyang, North Korea on July 7, 2021.

Newly retired military officers in North Korea are complaining to authorities about a serious lack of housing, with many of them forced to stay with relatives in utility rooms and basements after decades of service to the country, sources told RFA.

The military officers, who joined up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were promised that the hardships they would experience in the line of duty would be worth it, because they would be well taken care of after completing their service.

But many have been waiting around for years for the government to provide them with homes. Some are beginning to think that it wont happen at all.

As winter begins, dissatisfaction with the authorities is rising among the retired officers. Their housing problems have not been resolved even after theyve waited several years, a local government employee from the port city of Hamhung on the east coast told RFA Dec. 15.

At the end of last month, several recently discharged military officers visited the Hamhung Municipal Peoples Committee and protested the lack of housing support, said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Most of the retired officers are living wherever they can, with friends, acquaintances or even in factory dormitories, according to the source.

Home construction has been put on hold due to a suspension of trade with China to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Chinese construction materials have not been available for almost two years in North Korea.

The central government has been funneling resources and electricity to the capital Pyongyang so that it can complete an ambitious national plan to construct 50,000 homes by 2025, including 10,000 by the end of this year.

But this has taken even more attention away from the provinces, the source said.

Housing construction has been so sluggish here that receiving a state provided house is akin to picking the stars out of the sky, the source said. Still, the discharged officers visit the Urban Management Department of the Peoples Committee every day to complain.

Ex-soldiers, especially officers, are supposed to receive benefits like new homes in return for their 30 years of service, but Hamhung officials have been unable to comply, the source said.

The housing problem for veterans is likely to be similar in other regions of the country, beyond just Hamhung, the source said.

Its a difficult time for everyone to live these days, but the transition from military life is even more difficult. Veterans are accustomed to receiving monthly food rations while in the military.  They have to live their lives to the best of their ability where there are no rations at all, said the source.

For many, the hard military life was better than their retirement, according to the source.

They are tired of waiting for their house to be assigned. They are suffering from hardships they never experienced while in uniform, the source said. They are not hiding their dissatisfaction, saying, Is this our reward for more than 30 years of hard work in service of the party and the country?

A resident of the city of Hyesan, on the border with China in Ryanggang province, told RFA that an uncle has been living with the family for three years while waiting for his own house from the government.

My uncle visits the Peoples Committee every week to find out when he will get his house, but he comes back discouraged because there is no prospect that the problem will be resolved, said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

At least the veterans with parents and relatives can live with them, but most veterans have been assigned to places where there was nobody to support them, so now they live in basements of apartments or in storage rooms, the second source said.

The economy has transformed radically since the time that the retired officers joined the military. Back then, the Soviet Union was still in existence, providing aid to Pyongyang that kept the economy stable. People could live off their government salaries.

Now government salaries are nowhere near enough to live on, and a nascent market economy has emerged. Most people earn their living doing secondary jobs, usually by running a family business.

Veterans have no experience doing business in the market, so it is more difficult for them to live, the second source said. This is emerging as a real social problem, so urban youth who see these veterans suffering from housing shortages and hardships do not hope to become military officers, and women do not want to marry soldiers.

Translated by Claire Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
The location of the Sanakham dam on the Mekong River is shown in a photo taken in 2020.

A hydropower project set to be built in Laos is raising concerns in next-door Thailand, with government officials and environmental experts voicing alarm over forced relocations, impacts on fish stocks and security along the two countries shared border.

Speaking on Dec. 17 at a seminar in Chiang Khan in northeastern Thailand, participants said the China-backed Sanakham Dam  now moving ahead after a two-year delay amid COVID-19 concerns  will force many Lao villagers from their homes.

This will put their health and livelihoods at risk, said Piraton Bunyaratpan, a social economic expert from Thailands Naresuan University who said he had examined information about the dam forwarded by the projects developer.

Of course, the severe impacts will occur in Laos. The impacts may be less serious in nearby countries, he said. The project developer has said nothing so far about compensation paid to villagers forced to relocate, he added.

Developers have also not shared data on the projects impact on fish stocks along the affected stretch of the Mekong River, said Thuanthong Jutaket, a fishery expert from Thailands Ubon Rachatany University.

Most fish live around rocks and rapids and in the deep waters of the Mekong River, so if this dam is built and the EIA [environmental impact assessment] is not properly done, there will be a big loss of the fishes habitat, he said.

According to an initial impact assessment, the Sanakham Dama $2 billion project with capacity to produce 684 megawatts of electricitywill be built on the Mekong River between the Kentao district of Xayaburi province and the Sanakham district of Vientiane province, and will uproot three villages, displacing 1,127 residents in 267 families.

Developers of the project, which will sell power mainly to Thailand when operation begins, are the Datang Lao Sanakham Hydropower Company, an affiliate of Datang International Power Generation of China.

Border security concerns

Participants in the Thai conference also raised concerns that smuggling and other cross-border movements will be made easier by the dams operation, affecting Thailands national security.

After the dam is built, the water levels will be low, and our patrol boats might get stuck, said Captain Nirud Matong, an officer of the Thai Mekong River Patrol Forces in Nonkhai province. And the locals who live near the river will be able to just walk across to the other side.

Therefore, the dam will impact not only peoples livelihoods but also the border and other islands in the river too, he said.

Tarit Thanaphatnophon, head of the security department of Chiang Kan district in Loei province, worried that the dams operations will affect the bilateral relationship between Laos and Thailand, noting that Loei province lies adjacent to Xayaburi and Vientiane in Laos.

So, if the dam is built, this will affect all three provinces, he said. As the head of security for my district, I feel its very necessary for us to have a good relationship with the authorities of Sanakham district in Vientiane and Kentan district in Xayaburi.

Calls for work to stop

Also attending the conference, members of Thai NGOs called on developers and the Lao government to stop work on the dam pending assurances the project will not have negative impacts on Thailands side of the river.

The information we have received is not sufficient, a member of the Thai Peoples Network of the Lower Mekong River said, asking for anonymity in order to speak freely.

The dam will create severe impacts reducing fisheries. The big fish will disappear, and the livelihoods of our fishermen and farmers will be wiped out, he said. How will the dams developers create jobs for the fishermen and farmers?

Lao villagers and others living along the Mekong should also be included in discussions, a representative of the Mekong River Network of Loei Province said. Were talking only among ourselves here, and thats not right.

We should invite people from our neighboring countries to join us so that together we can exchange information and act to protect our interests and create sustainable development, he said.

Surasi Kittimonton, secretary of the Office of Thai National Water Resources, told the conference that the information now available about the Sanakham dam was forwarded to Thailand in 2019 and is now out of date.

Weve checked the information  especially the information about the environmental impact assessment  and I can attest that the information weve received is incomplete and is unclear in many areas.

Weve asked that more information be sent to us, he said.

Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams on the Mekong and its tributaries and is building about 50 more under a plan to become the Battery of Southeast Asia and export the electricity they generate to other countries in the region, mainly Thailand.

The Lao government sees power generation as a way to boost the countrys economy, but the dam projects are controversial because of their displacement of villagers without adequate compensation, environmental impact, and questionable financial and power demand arrangements.

Reported and translated by Max Avary for RFAs Lao Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Some 5,000 have sought shelter along the border as clashes are expected to continue.

Residents of Myanmar's Lay Kay Kaw township wait to cross the Moei River on the border with Thailand, Dec. 19, 2021.

Some 10,000 civilians from Myanmar have been forced to seek refuge along the countrys shared border with Thailand amid fighting between junta troops and joint forces consisting of ethnic Karen groups and prodemocracy militias in Kayin states Lay Kay Kaw township, according to sources.

Residents told RFAs Myanmar Service that on Dec. 15 the military first engaged with a combined group of pro-democracy Peoples Defense Force (PDF) militiamen and fighters with the Karen National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU) political group, firing artillery at locations in Lay Kay Kaws No. 6 Ward, Rathe Gu village and Lay Kay Kaw Waterfall.

The fighting began after government troops entered the area at least six times on Dec. 14, capturing more than 20 political activists, including a member of Parliament for the deposed National League for Democracy Party. The clashes have continued through the week, forcing nearly all Lay Kay Kaws residents to leave the area, KNU town officials said.

The latest clashes began at around 5 p.m. on Sunday in Phlu Gyi village, forcing refugees who were taking shelter there to flee again.

Lay Kay Kaw Mayor Htee Hpatayar told RFA on Monday that efforts to reunite displaced refugees had been hampered by junta forces shelling the area.

[The military] opened fire on the mountain range southwest of Lay Kay Kaw and on [Phlu Gyi] village. They seemed to know that the [refugees] are sheltering in the village, he said.

They are firing heavy weapons around the area to prevent them from staying here. As usual, people run the moment they hear the sound of artillery.

Htee Hpatayar said a list of about 6,000 refugees has been compiled so far and that KNU officials are still looking for those who remain missing.

A temporary camp was initially set up in Htee Mae War Khee village, about four miles from Lay Kay Kaw, on Dec. 15, but fighting broke out near the camp two days later, forcing refugees to relocate to Phlu Gyi, about three miles away.

Now, the mayor said, refugees are fleeing to Thailand daily. Around 1,000 were waiting to cross the Moei River on the border on Monday afternoon.

Five days of clashes

After fleeing the Phlu Gyi camp on Sunday night, a refugee waiting to cross the river to Thailand told RFA it was no longer possible to stay in Myanmar because all the villages in this area are under attack.

No one can live here anymore. Those who do not want to cross to the other side are now staying near the river in tents, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity. We heard this morning that there would be new attacks in the coming days.

The number of refugees who have fled to Thailand to escape the fighting in Lay Kay Kaw number around 5,000, and about 5,000 remain on the Myanmar side of the border, she said.

Ko Sai, a PDF member in Lay Kay Kaw, said that fighting is likely to continue as the military is sending reinforcements to Myawaddy township, slightly more than nine miles to the north.

If the junta forces come into KNU territory, the KNU will not be sitting idly by. They will respond, he said.

Ko Sai said there had been 13 clashes between the two sides in the five days of fighting, resulting in around 60 deaths of government troops.

Karen National Liberation Army and PDF coalition forces said they suffered six dead and 12 wounded in the clashes.

Junta spokesman and Deputy Minister for Information Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun told RFA that some soldiers were wounded in Sundays clashes.

There was fighting in Mae Htaw Thale, north of Lay Kaw Kaw, at about 10 or 11 a.m. yesterday. It erupted once again at about 5 p.m. Some of our soldiers were wounded, he said.

Refugees on the border

Meanwhile, Thai authorities said at least 600 of the refugees who fled Myanmar to Thailand on Sunday have since returned voluntarily. However, Benar News  an RFA-affiliated online news service  reported that more than 1,500 refugees from Kayin state crossed into Thailand in the previous 24 hours alone, citing a statement issued by Thailands Tak Province Border Center on Monday.

Phil Robertson, deputy director for New York-based Human Rights Watchs Asia division, said Sunday that his organization had urged Thai authorities not to forcibly deport the refugees.

Refugees on the banks of Moei River told RFA on Monday that Thai authorities refused to allow them to cross the border on Monday.

Karen National Union spokesman Pado Saw Tawney told RFA that the KNU has appealed to the Thai government to accept the refugees and called on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for assistance.

The UNHCR plays a major role in protecting displaced people, and so it would be more appropriate if they could take responsibility, he said.

Secondly, we want to request [that the Thai government] let our people  who are fleeing to the Thai side of the border have temporary asylum on humanitarian grounds. It is not safe for them to be forced back. Itd be better to send them back when the situation cools down.

Responding via email to an inquiry from RFA on Monday, the UNHCRs Myanmar office said it was concerned that thousands of people have been displaced following armed clashes in Myawaddy township, Kayin state, but has been unable to reach affected areas due to insecurity, access limitations and road blockages.

We are making all efforts to respond to calls for humanitarian aid and stand ready to support those who need it most, an office spokesperson said. UNHCR continues to urge that unimpeded humanitarian access be facilitated so humanitarian assistance could be provided to those in need.

Residents told RFA that the number of refugees is likely to increase as fighting continued Monday with more artillery fire from the military in and around Lay Kay Kaw.

Lay Kay Kaw was built in February 2015 with the help of the Japan Nippon Foundation as a symbol of peace between the KNU and Myanmars nominally civilian government under then-President Thein Sein.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Four young men sentenced to death by a military court in Yangon are shown in photos released Dec. 16 by a Myanmar military-controlled news website.

More than 90 people have been sentenced to death by military courts in Myanmars Yangon region since the countrys army overthrew civilian rule in a Feb. 1 coup, according to reports in Myanmars junta-controlled media.

Five youths were sentenced on Dec. 16 in Yangons South Dagon township for allegedly shooting and killing a local administrator, and another two  identified as Hein Htet Aung and Aukkar Thein were sentenced in North Dagon township on Dec. 3.

Six others, including Htet Paing Soe, also called Pho Htet, from South Dagon Myothit, and 15 others from Dagon Seikkan township, including Khin Wint Kyaw Maung and Zin Min Kyaw, were also handed death sentences, bringing the total to 28 between November and mid-December.

The number of people on death row in the six Yangon townships under martial law has now risen to 92, of whom 42 were sentenced in absentia, according to official figures.

Speaking to RFA, San San Aye  the mother of four of the youths sentenced in South Dagon  said she feels great sympathy for the parents of other young men condemned to die.

I have suffered emotionally, and Im sure they are no different from me, she said. No matter who you are, you will feel the same if your children meet this fate. My two sons and two adopted sons are now on death row. I dont want these people to suffer like me.

One of her two sons, Thaw Zin Naing, also called Khaing Myair, is now being held in Taungoo prison, while her second son San Naing, also called Shwe Ngar, was sent to prison in central Myanmars Mandalay, she said. Her two adopted sons  Soe Phyae Aung, also called Aung Aung, and Aung Myo Lin, also called Kyethpha  are in custody in prisons in Myingyan and in Kyaikmaraw.

Persons tried by military tribunals in the six Yangon townships under martial law have lost the right to legal representation normally provided under Myanmar law and have almost always received sentences of life in prison or death, sources said.

Veteran Myanmar lawyer Pho Phyu said that junta security forces routinely torture detainees to force confessions that can be used against them in court.

Handing out sentences based on these statements is not in accordance with the law, he said.

'Rule of law has disappeared'

The verdicts handed down by Myanmars military courts testify to the loss of human rights and collapse of an independent judiciary in the country, said Aung Myo Min, human rights minister for Myanmars shadow National Unity Government.

These cases just show the world how much the rule of law has disappeared and how much people have lost their rights, and they show how much democracy is being threatened in Myanmar, he said.

A former political prisoner who was sentenced to death during an earlier period of military rule said that the people now condemned by military courts should not lose hope.

Its terrifying when they give you this orange prison uniform after handing down the death penalty, and even if youve been in prison before, you can feel your legs trembling as you walk down to the death cell, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Those now in prison, along with their family members, must not lose hope that they might go free one day. Our lives can always take a new turn when the political situation changes in the country, he said.

Myanmars junta has killed 1,348 civilians and arrested 8,131 since February, mostly during non-violent protests against the coup, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Tom Andrews, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar (left), walks with officials towards a learning center at a Rohingya refugee camp in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, Dec. 17, 2021.

A United Nations envoy says he has credible information about Rohingya militants being involved in kidnapping, abusing and even killing fellow Rohingya at refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh.

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) militants gunned down Md. Muhib Ullah, a prominent Rohingya activist, at a refugee camp in Coxs Bazar district in late September, Tom Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told reporters at the end of a six-day visit to Bangladesh.

I visited his [Muhibs] office and stood in the very spot where he was murdered. His murder was believed to be at the hands of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, Andrews told reporters on Sunday.

I have received credible reports that members of ARSA have killed, tortured, abducted, and threatened Rohingya refugees.

Members of ARSA, an insurgent group active in Myanmars Rakhine state, say they want to defend the Rohingya Muslims from the Burmese government, which for decades has violated the stateless minority groups human rights.

In 2016, a rag-tag bunch of ARSA members attacked police posts in Rakhine, an act that ignited a brutal military offensive, which led to nearly three-quarters of a million Rohingya fleeing across the border into Coxs Bazar.

In the past two years, reports have persisted that ARSA operates in the sprawling refugee camps, but Bangladesh always has  and continues to  deny this.

He [Tom Andrews] talked about ARSA, but we did not see any presence of ARSA here, Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen told reporters on Sunday.

If he identified any ARSA member and shared the information with us, we will send them to their country. We want to see the ARSA people.

Khin Maung, founder of the Rohingya Youth Association, believes Andrews claim.

The U.N. representatives statement about ARSAs presence in Rohingya camps is true. We have been talking about the presence of ARSA in Rohingya camps for a long time, he told BenarNews.

The government should continue drives against ARSA activities. ARSA was involved in the killing of Muhib Ullah.

A retired Bangladeshi air commodore and security expert, meanwhile, said he believed that ARSA members were active in Coxs Bazar, but added the onus is on the U.N. to solve the Rohingya crisis.

If the U.N. expresses concern over the presence of ARSA in Rohingya camps, they should take necessary steps to solve the Rohingya issue immediately, Ishfaq Ilahi Choudhury told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Rohingya have rights as refugees

Andrews also urged Bangladesh to grant freedom of movement to the refugees, but the foreign minister said that wouldnt happen.

The U.N. rapporteur said that a barbed-wire fence around the Rohingya camps was not keeping their residents safe.

I was informed by officials that the fence was constructed to protect Rohingya from criminal activities from outside. But I also heard concerns that that the fence was not only ineffective in achieving its purpose, it also makes residents more vulnerable to dangers such as fires, he said.

Many Rohingya spoke to me about the substantial insecurity nighttime brings to the camps. Women in particular are at risk of sexual and gender based violence.

On Monday, a human rights organization said Bangladesh must end restrictions on Rohingya refugees.

The Rohingya have rights as refugees, and its in the interest of Bangladesh to better protect those rights, including the right to freedom of movement, Ismail Wolff, regional director at Fortify Rights, said in a statement.

Rohingya give thanks to Bangladesh but continue to face restrictions and violations of their basic rights and struggle to live with dignity.

Foreign Minister Momen said the government would not allow such freedoms.

We wont agree to allow free mobility of the Rohingya people as they took shelter here [only] for the short term, Momen said.

Another human rights watchdog as well as U.N. rapporteur Andrews said they worried about education for the 400,000 Rohingya children who live in the camps.

Human Rights Watch said Bangladeshs government had decided to close thousands of home-based and community-led schools for Rohingya refugee students, while Andrews said the plan was to shut down only private schools in the camps.

Mohammad Shamsud Douza, an additional commissioner for refugee relief and repatriation, confirmed to BenarNews that only private schools were being shut down.

All educational institutions except for private learning centers in Rohingya camps are open. We shut the private learning centers because they were operating illegally, Douza said.

According to Momen, the foreign minister, these private centers were promoting radicalism in the camps and following the Myanmar curriculum that the legal centers follow.

Therefore, the government has asked to stop those unauthorized activities, he said in a statement on Sunday.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
Direct talks between the 86-year-old Dalai Lamas representatives and Chinese officials were last held in 2009.

Uzra Zeya, named U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, speaks to the media at the U.S. embassy in Paris, France, in an April 6, 2017 file photo.

UPDATED AT 12:30 p.m. EST on 2021/12/21

The U.S. on Monday appointed Uzra Zeya, a high-ranking diplomat, to serve as Washingtons Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, charged with trying to open long-stalled dialogue between Tibets exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and China.

Zeya, will hold the Tibet coordinator post concurrently with her present role as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Specifically, she will promote substantive dialogue, without preconditions, between the Government of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the Dalai Lama, his representatives, or democratically elected Tibetan leaders in support of a negotiated agreement on Tibet, he said in a statement.

She will promote respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Tibetans, including their freedom of religion or belief, and will support efforts to preserve their distinct historical, linguistic, cultural, and religious heritage, added Blinken.

I look forward to helping preserve the rich culture and traditions of Tibetans worldwide, Zeya tweeted Monday.

Informal direct talks between the 86-year-old Dalai Lamas representatives and Chinese government officials were last held in 2009.

Zeya, born in North Carolina to parents who emigrated from India, is a 27-year Foreign Service veteran who has served in India, France, Syria, Egypt, Oman, and Jamaica.

This is very good news and we hope that Biden administration will engage with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and encourage strategies that will push Sino-Tibetan dialogue forward, said Namgyal Choedup, the Tibetan exile governments representative in North America.

The United States has played a significant role politically to resolve the Sino-Tibet conflict based on the Middle Way approach," he added.

In the debate over how best to advance the rights of the 6.3 million Tibetans living in China, some Tibetans call for a restoration of the independence lost when Chinese troops marched into Tibet in 1950.

The CTA and the Dalai Lama, however, have adopted a policy approach called the Middle Way, which accepts Tibets status as a part of China but urges greater cultural and religious freedom, including strengthened language rights, for Tibetans living under Beijings rule.

The International Campaign for Tibet advocacy group expects that Zeya will work proactively at promoting dialogue between the Dalai Lamas envoys and the Chinese leadership, as well as at advocating for U.S. interests in Tibet, and advancing the cause of Tibetan Americans and Tibetans around the globe, said interim president Buchung Tsering.

We urge Special Coordinator Zeya to proactively take the lead in gathering support from like-minded countries to formulate a common approach on the Tibetan issue, he added.

The Tibet position, which was established by U.S.s Tibetan Policy Act in 2002, had been vacant for much of the Trump administration, until State Department official Robert Destro served several months.

Zeya takes the post as the Biden administration has been called on to step up implementation of the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2018, which aims to press China to allow more outside access to the region, and the Tibetan Policy Support Act of 2020, which affirms the absolute right of Tibetans to choose their next Dalai Lama in the face of Chinas insistence on choosing a successor.

Authorities in Tibetan areas of China continue to severely restrict religious freedom, speech, movement, and assembly, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its annual report for 2021.

Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have been uprooted from their traditional farming and grazing land, suffering forced land grabs at the hands of local officials, and under pressure from economic migration into Tibet from other parts of China, HRW said.

Intensified surveillance and intimidation in neighborhoods, workplaces, and homes has prevented public protest, the rights group said.

A formerly independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force more than 70 years ago, and the Dalai Lama and thousands of his followers fled into exile in India and other countries around the world following a failed 1959 national uprising against Chinese rule.

Reported by RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Paul Eckert.
Anti-vaccination protesters affiliated with a far-right Romanian parliamentary party have tried to force their way into the legislature building in Bucharest, blocking traffic and vandalizing vehicles, including a car belonging to the U.S. Embassy.

An estimated 2,500 people gathered outside parliament on December 21 waving Romanian flags and chanting "Freedom," in a protest organized by the opposition Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR) party.

The protesters, whose march had been announced days in advance, were attempting to prevent lawmakers from making a COVID-19 health pass mandatory for workers.

Police guarding the sprawling Parliament Palace -- one of the largest buildings in the world -- appeared to be caught off-guard when hundreds of protesters poured in through a gate while others climbed over the fence, spray-painting parked vehicles.

The U.S. Embassy confirmed that one of its vehicles was damaged in the mayhem.

Police blocked the building's entryways, preventing protesters, who came from across the country, from entering the building, but they did not use force. The protesters later left, with some 700 marching toward government headquarters.

Amid a lackluster vaccination campaign, EU member Romania faced a deadliest surge of coronavirus infections and deaths through October and November, with tens of thousands of daily infections and hundreds of deaths.

Romania's coalition government is discussing legislation that would require employees to have a green certificate -- proof of full vaccination, having recovered from COVID-19, or a negative test.

Only 40 percent of Romania's 19 million people, or 7.7 million people, have received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine, and 2 million of those also received the booster dose that is considered necessary to combat the Omicron variant.

In a live online video from the protest, AUR co-Chairman George Simion urged people to "stand with us today to block the green certificate" and called the bill "unconstitutional."

"Side with AUR, side with the people who are right-headed -- who want justice," Simion said.

The commander of the Bucharest riot police told the media many protesters entered the premises in vehicles belonging to AUR lawmakers, who have a free pass.

AUR is a newly formed far-right party that acceded to parliament in December 2020 and currently has 43 lawmakers.

Hundreds of thousands of Romanians have been pouring into the country for the winter vacation, many of them unvaccinated, causing huge bottlenecks at western border crossings and prompting the authorities on December 20 to implement passenger location forms to improve the traceability of infections.

With reporting by G4media.ro, Digi24.ro, Reuters, and AP
China has imposed sanctions on four members of the U.S. government's Commission on International Religious Freedom in the latest tit-for-tat measure after Washington's penalties last week against Chinese officials and companies over alleged abuses in the countrys northwestern Xinjiang region.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on December 21 that commission Chairwoman Nadine Maenza, Vice Chairman Nury Turkel, and members Anurima Bhargava and James W. Carr are barred from visiting mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. In addition, any assets they have in the country will be frozen.

Locked Up In China: The Plight Of Xinjiang's Muslims Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is partnering with its sister organization, Radio Free Asia, to highlight the plight of Muslims living in China's western province of Xinjiang.

Zhao gave no indication as to whether those barred have assets in China.

Beijing's move came as Washington appointed a new special coordinator for Tibet on December 20.

China has been under growing international criticism and hit with sanctions for detaining more than 1 million Uyghurs and representatives of Xinjiang's other indigenous, mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in camps for "political reeducation" in Xinjiang.

China insists such camps are "vocational education centers" aimed at helping people steer clear of terrorism.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on December 10 on two officials accused of involvement in the repression of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

The U.S. sanctions also included a ban on virtually all imports from the region -- a major global cotton producer -- over forced labor allegations and the blacklisting of Chinese companies such as drone maker DJI over their alleged work with authorities in Xinjiang.

The U.S. State Department on December 20 named Undersecretary of State Uzra Zeya as the special coordinator for Tibet.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Zeya, who is responsible for democracy and human rights, would lead U.S. efforts to ensure that China respects Tibet's religious, cultural, and linguistic heritage.

Washington has also announced a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics in China. Several other countries have joined in the boycott, which does not affect them from sending athletes.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
Opposition protesters in the Abkhaz capital, Sukhumi, have attempted to force their way through a security perimeter of buses and other obstacles surrounding the de facto parliament of the breakaway Georgian region.

Protesters threw fireworks at police, who responded with smoke grenades, local media reported on December 21.

There were no immediate reports of arrests or injuries, although reports on social media showed protesters attempting to overturn some of the buses.

Earlier, protesters outside the city's main drama theater met with Abkhaz leader Aslan Bzhania.

But the opposition protesters were not satisfied with the discussions, and they marched to the parliament building.

"We told him about the views of the protesters and asked to hear the president's views on the matters raised," said Aslan Bartsits, head of the opposition Forum of Popular Unity of Abkhazia.

"He answered that he heard us and that he'd expressed his views in his speech on [December 20] and that there was no need for protests."

In his speech, Bzhania condemned "all those trying to carry out illegal and unconstitutional acts."

The same day, de facto Interior Minister Valter Butba called on citizens not to participate in illegal protests or hamper the functioning of the government.

The opposition accuses the de facto authorities of failing to cope effectively with the coronavirus pandemic, failing to manage the energy network properly, and expanding the bureaucracy.

Abkhazia and another Georgian breakaway region, South Ossetia, declared independence following a brief war between Georgia and Russia in 2008. Only Russia and a handful of other countries have recognized the two regions.
In December 1991, the central streets of Tbilisi boomed with artillery and gunfire in one of the most destructive chapters of the Georgian Civil War. Thirty years later, dog walkers and delivery drivers pass the same places where tanks once rumbled.

The Tbilisi war was a short, fiery conflict that began in the center of the Georgian capital on December 22, 1991. Fighting erupted when a collection of rebel groups banded together to overthrow Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia just months after he was voted into power.

Most of the conflict took place around Georgias historic parliament building on Shota Rustaveli Avenue, where Gamsakhurdia spent much of the conflict holed up in a bunker with his supporters.

Click or tap on the following historical images to reveal how the exact locations look in 2021.
TBILISI -- Several thousand supporters of jailed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili took to the streets in protest in the wake of a report by an independent medical commission finding that he had been "tortured" while in custody.

The protesters on December 21 waved flags and held banners demanding Saakashvili's immediate release as they marched through the capital, Tbilisi, and gathered in front of the parliament building.

Addressing the crowd, Nika Melia, chairman of Saakashvili's United National Movement (ENM), announced a "mass hunger strike that will not end until Mikheil Saakashvili is released from captivity."

It was not immediately clear how many people would participate in the hunger strike, which is to be held outside ENM's Tbilisi headquarters.

The protest was timed to coincide with Saakashvili's 54th birthday.

There were no reports of arrests or violence.

Shortly before the protest, Saakashvili -- who has been in custody since early October -- posted a message on Facebook calling for national unity and peaceful demonstrations.

"For me personally, the choice is clear -- either death or freedom, because Georgia will die without freedom and then my life will lose its meaning," he wrote. "In our diversity and our love of freedom is our strength and the secret of survival."

The ex-president said someday Georgia will "elect a government that will serve all Georgians, rather than one man," referring to the billionaire founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Ivanishvili is believed to be the top decision-maker in the South Caucasus country even though he does not hold any office.

Saakashvili served as Georgia's president from 2004 to 2013. He was arrested October 1 shortly after returning from self-imposed exile in Ukraine.

He conducted a 50-day hunger strike while in jail to protest his convictions on charges of abuse of office, which he says were politically motivated.

On December 18, an independent group of seven doctors examined him in the Gori Military Hospital and issued a statement saying that Saakashvili's health had been seriously compromised as a result of "torture" and mistreatment while in custody.

The commission, organized by the NGO Empathy Center, said the former president had developed several neurological conditions "as a result of torture, ill-treatment, inadequate medical care, and a prolonged hunger strike."

One member of the team alleged Saakashvili had been wrongly given "antipsychotic drugs" and accused the authorities of "pharmacological torture."

Earlier this month, the Georgian State Inspectorate announced it had opened an investigation into Saakashvili's allegations of mistreatment.
A majority stake in the Euronews media network is being sold to a company run by the son of a key adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been widely criticized as an enemy of press freedom.

Euronews announced on December 17 that Portuguese investment firm Alpac Capital, whose chief executive officer, Pedro Vargas David, is well connected in Hungary and is the son of Orban adviser Mario David, will buy an 88 percent share from Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris.

In recent years, Euronews has seen falling revenues and has been subsidized by the European Commission.

The purchase price has not been disclosed, but the planned capital increase could further increase the share of Portuguese ownership in the troubled channel, which provides content in 15 languages and reaches an estimated 145 million people.

RFE/RL contacted Pedro Vargas David with questions about the Euronews acquisition but has not yet received a reply.

Under Orban, Hungary has been chided by rights groups for having a poor record on media freedom, while being accused of influencing media regulators, targeting media and journalists who have reported critically on his government, and providing state funds for pro-government media.

In 2010, when Orban returned to the post of prime minister for the second time, Hungary was ranked 23rd on Reporters Without Borders' press-freedom list. By 2021 it had slipped to 92nd place.

Mario David, the father of the Alpac Capital CEO, is a right-wing Portuguese politician, former member of the European Parliament, and current adviser to Orban on issues related to the European Union. He also served as the vice president of the center-right European People's Party, the largest party in the European Parliament.

According to a list on the website of the Hungarian prime minister's office, Mario David has a contract until the end of 2021 and is advising Orban for free.

RFE/RL contacted the prime minister's office about Mario David's relationship with Orban but has not yet received a reply.

Orban and Mario David have reportedly known each other since the fall of the Berlin Wall and, in April 2016, Orban called Mario David a "true friend" when he awarded him the Middle Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit in Lisbon. The Portuguese politician received the award for "supporting Hungarian interests."

When Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa visited Budapest in summer 2020, Mario David attended the meeting as part of the Hungarian delegation, Portugal's online publication Observador reported.

Pedro Vargas David, who was educated at Harvard and has worked for the McKinsey & Company management consulting firm, has many ties to Hungary, and according to a profile in the Hungarian-based Index magazine lived in Budapest in 2019.

Pedro Vargas David founded a joint investment fund in 2017 with EXIM, Hungary's official export-credit agency. He also has a 5.25 percent stake and seat on the board of directors in 4iG, a Hungarian communications giant that has won numerous state contracts in the IT sector and whose owner, Gellert Jaszai, is considered well connected to Orban.

'Europe's CNN'

Euronews was founded in 1990 with the aim of becoming the "European CNN" and was initially in the hands of a consortium of European public broadcasters.

In 2015, the Egyptian tycoon Sawiris became the main owner through the Luxembourg-based Media Globe Networks. NBC News, which is owned by U.S.-based telecommunications conglomerate Comcast, sold its 25 percent stake in Euronews to Sawiris in 2020.

After the sale to Alpac Capital, the remaining 12 percent of Euronews will remain in the hands of a consortium of public television companies and local authorities.

For years, the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, has subsidized Euronews with significant sums of money.

Politico reported that in 2019, the European Court of Auditors expressed concerns that between 2014 and 2018, Euronews relied on 122 million euros ($138 million) in funding from the European Commission, around one-third of the company's annual turnover.

A spokesman from the European Commission, who wished to remain anonymous, told RFE/RL that a decision had been made in March to renew the partnership agreement with Euronews.

The contract, signed in July, runs until 2023 and "does not contain direct funding obligations, but allows the commission to sign specific contracts on funding," the spokesman said.

According to the auditors in 2019, the European Commission, which has been criticized in the past for taking little action to curb attacks on press freedom, should have a mechanism in place to check that Euronews "complies with its commitments to maintain editorial impartiality."

Speaking to RFE/RL, the commission spokesman did not comment on the change in ownership, saying Euronews is a private company and that the European Commission has no stake in the channel, nor does it have any role in making financial, managerial, or personnel decisions.

"That said, we are following developments closely to make sure that any changes in the company's management or editorial workflows do not impact our contractual arrangements," the commission spokesperson said.
U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan will visit Israel this week for discussions likely to be dominated by a perceived threat from Iran amid U.S. concerns that the time Tehran would need to develop a nuclear weapon has become unacceptably short.



Sullivan will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to "reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israels security and consult on a range of issues of strategic importance to the U.S.-Israel bilateral relationship, including the threat posed by Iran," National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said in a statement on December 20.



He and other officials will also meet with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas to discuss strengthening U.S. relations with the Palestinians, Horne said. Her statement did not provide the dates of Sullivan's meetings.



The trip comes as negotiators report that talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are moving at a slow pace.



A Biden administration official, who spoke earlier to reporters on condition of anonymity, said U.S. and Israeli officials will talk about the status of negotiations and the future of Iran's nuclear program.



"It will be a good opportunity to sit down face-to-face and talk about the state of the talks, the time frame in which we are working, and to reemphasize that we don't have much time," the official said.



The United States believes the amount of time required for Iran to develop nuclear weapons has become unacceptably short," an unidentified Biden administration source said last week.

The official did not offer an estimate of Iran's so-called "breakout time" -- the time it would take Iran to develop a nuclear weapon if it renounced all international agreements restricting its nuclear program -- but it has previously been estimated at several months.



Iran has denied that its nuclear program is for developing weapons.



The latest round of talks aimed at salvaging the nuclear deal adjourned on December 17. They are to resume next week.



Sullivan said last week that the talks were "not going well, adding that the United States had conveyed to Iran its "alarm" over the purported progress of its nuclear program.



White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on December 20 that because of the way the Iranians approached and participated in the last round of talks, Biden had asked the national-security team to be prepared in the event that diplomacy fails and to look at other options.



That has been ongoing, including in consultation with a range of partners around the world, she said, declining to elaborate on what the other options might be.

With reporting by Reuters and dpa
ALMATY -- A 24-year-old inmate at the Zhaugashty women's prison in southeastern Kazakhstan has accused a male guard of raping her.

But instead of taking action against the guard, prison officials and a local court have declared the alleged victim "insane," her lawyers say.

Now the woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy, faces imminent transfer to a psychiatric hospital for "treatment," her lawyers add. The woman's defense team says officials do not want to acknowledge that rape exits in Kazakh prisons and are trying to silence those who speak out about the taboo issue.

"I have been threatened and warned that -- given my status here as a convict -- I can't prove anything, and that the complaint letters I write don't even leave this facility," the woman said in a letter to her lawyers, who provided a copy to RFE/RL.

The lawyers say they have appealed the December 7 ruling by the Ile district court ordering the woman to be placed "under intense supervision" in the National Psychiatric Hospital in Almaty Province. The court also acquitted the guard accused of raping her.

Officials at the Zhaugashty prison, located in a town of the same name, told RFE/RL that "four officers have been temporarily suspended" in connection with the case. They refused to provide any further details.

'Unbearable Torture And Threats'

The woman was sent to Zhaugashty in February 2020, shortly after she was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison. She had pleaded guilty to an unspecified crime.

The married mother of three from Jambyl Province was pregnant at the time of her arrest. She gave birth in prison, but the infant died just days after he was born.

The woman admitted to having a "verbal conflict" with prison staff, blaming it on her postnatal depression and grief. As punishment for her outbursts, the woman was placed in the prison's isolation ward, where she alleges the rape occurred.

In the letter to her lawyers, the woman alleged that a guard had been harassing her for months prior to the alleged rape. "When I was locked in the isolation ward -- there are no cameras there -- he raped me," the woman wrote.

Following the alleged rape, the guard forced her to take a shower to get rid of evidence, according to her lawyers. But they say she wiped the semen with her T-shirt before washing herself. Her lawyers used it as evidence in court.

Since the alleged rape, the woman's husband has stopped visiting her. Many rape victims in the predominately Muslim country are shunned by their families, who view them as a stain on the family's honor.

Inside the prison, her allegations provoked "threats" and "pressure," the woman said in the letter to her lawyers. The woman also alleges that she was denied access to her lawyers. "They have threatened to put me in solitary confinement, and they pitted other prisoners against me," the woman said in her letter. "I'm enduring unbearable torture and threats."

Desperate Measures

Desperate for help from the outside world, the woman ingested a spoon so she would be taken to the hospital. But during her brief stay, she was closely monitored by a guard and unable to speak to anyone.

She tried again several months later. In June 2021, she swallowed a nail, prompting prison authorities to send her to the hospital again. This time, she managed to speak to a woman, a visitor at the hospital, about her plight and asked for her help.

"That woman called me anonymously on the evening of June 26," Viktor Ten, one of the alleged victim's defense lawyers, told RFE/RL. Ten is a member of the National Preventive Mechanism, an independent watchdog that monitors prisons in Kazakhstan.

Two days later, Ten and fellow lawyer Aleksandr Kim met the alleged victim in Zhaugashty prison. After speaking with her, the two lawyers agreed to represent her in court. But they lost the case, and the court cleared the guard of rape and mistreatment charges on December 7.

Since promptly lodging an appeal, her lawyers say they have been denied access to their client. The only exception was a brief phone call from the woman, who said prison staff had told her that she will soon be sent for "psychiatric treatment."

According to Ten, his client's decision to ingest a spoon and a nail was used by prosecutors as evidence of insanity. But Ten insists it was a desperate measure by his client seeking help. He insists that his client does not suffer from any psychiatric condition.

"This woman was found 100 percent healthy and mentally stable when she was examined as a suspect in a crime two years ago," Ten told RFE/RL. "After spending time in prison, she was found insane. If that is the case, authorities should question how inmates are being treated in prison."

Written by Farangis Najibullah based on reporting by Manshuk Aautai of RFE/RL's Kazakh Service
The governing board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a $558 million loan program to help Moldova recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly $80 million would be released immediately under a program that will last 40 months, the IMF said in a statement on December 21.

"The Moldovan authorities have made commendable progress in rehabilitating the bank sector and bolstering macro-financial stability," IMF Deputy Managing Director Kenji Okamura was quoted as saying.

"However, the COVID-19 pandemic, drought in 2020, and the ongoing surge in global energy prices have slowed economic activity, intensified downside risks, and complicated policy making."

Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe.

Last month, the country struggled to meet a deadline to pay $79 million to Russia's Gazprom, which had threatened to cut off natural-gas supplies to the country.

In November 2020, Moldovans elected pro-European former World Bank economist Maia Sandu as president on a platform of economic reform and fighting corruption.
A Russian submarine has successfully launched a Kalibr cruise missile from the Sea of Japan at a land target more than 1,000 kilometers away, Russian news agencies reported on December 21.

The diesel-electric submarine Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky hit a target located at a Russian training ground onshore, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Russia's Pacific Fleet said the exercise also included covert movement and support from navy vessels, aircraft, and drones.

Japan continues to assert territorial rights to the Kurile Islands in the nearby Sea of Okhotsk. Japan calls the islands the Northern Territories. Soviet troops seized them from Japan at the end of World War II.

The dispute has kept Russia and Japan from signing a peace treaty formally ending the war.

Based on reporting by Reuters and TASS
The United States and Russia will likely hold bilateral talks to discuss Moscow's security proposals next month as the Kremlin ramped up is rhetoric by again warning it was prepared to take military measures if the West launched "unfriendly" actions with regard to Ukraine.

"We will decide on a date together with Russia, and we believe that that will take place in January," Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried said in a call with media on December 21.

Donfried said that NATO will be holding a meeting on December 21 to discuss inviting Russia for talks on its proposals. Meanwhile, she said the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was working out how it wants to engage Russia.

"My sense is that we will be seeing movement in these channels in the month of January," she said.

Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he hoped for constructive talks with Washington and Brussels on Moscow's security concerns, which include opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine.

"Armed conflicts and bloodshed are absolutely not something we would choose. We do not want such a scenario," the Russian leader said.

He said Russia's proposals were no ultimatum, but added it had nowhere to retreat over Ukraine, which Moscow considers part of its sphere of influence.

In a meeting with Defense Ministry officials, Putin took a much sharper tone, warning the West against supplying weapons to Ukraine, including missiles that could reach Moscow in minutes.

He said if the West continued its "obviously aggressive stance," Russia would take "appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures."

Russia "will react toughly to unfriendly steps," Putin said, adding that he wanted to underscore that "we have every right to do so."

His tough comments follow on Russia's publication last week of the sweeping new security demands it is seeking from the West that would essentially give Moscow a sphere of influence in neighboring countries while rolling back many of the advances NATO has made in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union since the 1990s.

The demands were laid out in the form of two draft agreements with the United States and NATO.

Donfried said that some of the demands were unacceptable and that Russia knows this, but added, "there's merit in having a discussion" and that the West was "ready to engage."

Addressing concerns among the military alliance's eastern contingent, the U.S. official said that NATO will consult with all 30 members as it engages in talks with Russia.

The Russian security demands come as the Kremlin amasses about 100,000 combat-ready troops near the border with Ukraine in what the United States has said could be a prelude to an invasion as early as next month.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said earlier in the day that Russia had continued the "groundless and unexplained" buildup of troops.

Donfried called on Russia to pull back its troops, saying talks can only succeed in an atmosphere of de-escalation.

Analysts have said the military buildup could be aimed at strengthening Russia's position at the bargaining table with the United States and NATO.

Russia is seeking a commitment from the West that Ukraine will not join NATO, calling its membership in the alliance a "red line." NATO has said that Ukraine would someday become a member, a move fiercely opposed by Moscow.

Most analysts say that Ukraine is at least a decade away from joining the security alliance.

Ukrainian President Voldomyr Zelenskiy remained defiant in the face of Russia's hostile posture, saying in an address on December 21 to his ambassadors that he hopes next year to attain "a very clear timeline" for NATO membership.

Earlier in the day, Stoltenberg reiterated the alliance's support for Ukraine, saying it backed Kyiv's "right to choose" its own geopolitical orientation.

Flurry Of Diplomacy

Russia's buildup and security demands have sparked a flurry of diplomacy to avoid hostilities.

Putin spoke separately with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on December 21 about Moscow's security proposals and the nearly eight-year war in eastern Ukraine.

German and France, two of the largest members of NATO, are participants in the so-called Normandy Format peace talks to end the fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk, where Kremlin-backed rebels are battling government forces.

The United States this year has allocated more than $450 million in military aid to Ukraine to defend itself against possible Russian aggression, including lethal anti-tank missiles. It is also helping refit Ukraine's ports to host NATO ships.

Donfried told media during the call that the United States would increase defense aid to Ukraine if Russia launches hostilities against the country.

She said that any Russian aggression against Ukraine would be met with powerful sanctions by the West.

"We have been clear that we would respond with strong economic measures that we have not considered in the past, and that would inflict significant costs on the Russian economy and financial system," she said.

Donfried also said that the United States would increase defense aid to Ukraine in the event of Russian aggression.

With reporting by Reuters, TASS, and dpa
U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan has told his Russian counterpart that Washington is ready to engage in diplomacy over Russia's buildup of troops near Ukraine, but that any dialogue must take place in coordination with its allies and partners in Europe.



Sullivan told Yury Ushakov, foreign policy adviser to President Vladimir Putin, that the United Stats is ready to hold talks through multiple channels, including bilateral engagement, the NATO-Russia Council, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the White House said on December 20.



The statement is consistent with ongoing outreach and engagement with the Russians, as well as the Ukrainians and European partners, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Sullivan spoke by phone with Ushakov amid ongoing tensions in Europe over the buildup of as many as 100,000 Russian troops near the border with Ukraine.



Russia denies that it is a prelude to an invasion of Ukraine and says it is Ukraine's growing relationship with NATO that has caused the tensions.

Sullivan "made clear that any dialogue must be based on reciprocity and address our concerns about Russias actions, and take place in full coordination with our European allies and partners, Psaki said.



Moscow, whose troop buildup has alarmed NATO and Ukraine, last week unveiled a wish list of security proposals it wants to negotiate, including a promise to end NATOs eastward expansion and limitations on the alliances military activity in Eastern Europe, including cooperation with Ukraine and Georgia.

Psaki reiterated the U.S. position that sovereign nations have the right to choose their alliances and NATO's relationship with Ukraine is a matter only for Ukraine and 30 NATO allies to determine.



According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Ushakov told Sullivan that Moscow was ready to begin talks on draft documents on security guarantees and that Russia would be represented at these talks by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.



Ryabkov said that Moscow had so far received no response from the United States.



"I think they'll try to turn this into a slow-moving process, but we need it to be urgent, because the situation is very difficult, it is acute, it tends to become more complicated," he was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

With reporting by Reuters, RIA Novosti, and TASS
KYIV -- Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has denounced a decision by the authorities to investigate him for high treason over his alleged financing of Kremlin-backed separatist forces in the country's east, as Kyiv's Western backers called for a fair and transparent probe.

"Accusing the head of state of state treason, financing terrorists, and facilitating terrorist organizations is a crossing of red lines," Poroshenko said in a video from the Polish capital, Warsaw.

The 56-year-old ex-president vowed to return from his trip abroad in January.

The U.S. and U.K. embassies in Kyiv said they were following proceedings "closely" and urged an independent trial.

On December 21, the State Investigation Bureau said Poroshenko had been placed under formal investigation for high treason, accusing him of "facilitating the activities" of separatists fighting government forces in a conflict that has claimed more than 13,200 lives since April 2014.

Ukraine faced an acute shortage of resources after the separatists seized territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where the country's main coal mines are located.

During his presidency, Poroshenko is suspected of helping the separatists to sell some 1.5 billion hryvnyas ($54 million) worth of coal to Kyiv in 2014-15, it said in a statement.

The politician, who is now a lawmaker and the leader of the opposition European Solidarity party, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

"The United States is closely following the case against former President Poroshenko," the U.S. Embassy wrote on Twitter. "Crucial that process and outcome be based on the rule of law, not politics."

British Ambassador to Ukraine Melinda Simmons tweeted it was "vital" that the case be tackled "independently, impartially, and professionally, ensuring fairness and respect for due process."

Officials have said the accusations against Poroshenko were related to similar charges against pro-Russian lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk, who has been under house arrest since May.

In October, Prosecutor-General Iryna Venediktova accused Medvedchuk of colluding with officials during Poroshenko's administration to buy coal from mines located in separatist-held areas as a way to finance the separatists. His political party is the second largest in parliament.

Poroshenko's and Medvedchuk's political parties dismissed the accusations, calling them an effort to divert attention from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's government's own wrongdoing and failures.

Zelenskiy succeeded Poroshenko as president after defeating him in a 2019 election.
(diamonds.net) - Angolas diamond industry has come a long way in a relatively short time. The countrys mineral reforms under President Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco have sought to rid the sector of the cronyism and opacity that characterized operations under his predecessor. The new policy, published by presidential decree in July 2018, marked the beginning of change in every aspect of the African nations diamond pipeline  from how licenses are issued, through its exploration and mining operations, to how it approaches diamond sales. Now, Angola is ready to sell itself to the world.


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Good morning, Bay Area. Its Tuesday, Dec. 21, and a San Francisco floral society says grand theft nearly brought the nonprofit to its knees. Heres what you need to know to start your day.

Of all the risk assessments weve faced again and again throughout the pandemic, the question of whether to dine indoors or not tends to come into focus as soon as cases start to rise.

As omicron spreads rapidly through the nation and the Bay Area warily eyes whats happening in New York City, some public health experts are saying nows the time to opt for that outdoor table... or just get takeout.

In some cases, you might not have the choice, anyway. More and more Bay Area restaurants are shutting down or moving to takeout only to protect workers and diners alike from catching COVID, or because their staff are coming down with the virus. As one restaurant owner put it, It feels totally irresponsible to be open as a restaurant inside.

While San Francisco has a low case rate and high vaccination rate compared to other places, that isnt enough for some virologists to feel safe.

Read more from Janelle Bitker.

 Omicron is now the dominant variant of coronavirus in the U.S. Is the new variant more contagious than measles?

 Oakland City Council is considering whether to require proof of COVID vaccination at restaurants, bars and city buildings.

 Get live updates from The Chronicles coronavirus blog.

Seeking asylum

Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

For two East Bay teens, migrating to the U.S. represented freedom from the gangs that threatened them in their native countries.

Kevin, who fled from Honduras to the Texas border after street gangs tried to recruit him, and Axel, who left Guatemala after his older brother was killed by a local gang, face unimaginable risks if deported back to their home countries.

Their fates lie in the hands of the federal judges who determine whether their asylum claims will be accepted. And the teens need to find attorneys who can help them navigate a complex, backlogged system that could take years to tell them whether they can stay here for good.

Read more from Deepa Fernandes.

Around the Bay

BrontA Wittpenn/The Chronicle

 Homelessness, visualized: A San Francisco doctor photographed people living on the streets on his way home from work. Now, the faces of his daily commute are plastered on the windows of a vacant building.

 Weather forecast: Expect rain every day through Christmas, and if youre headed to Lake Tahoe, get those snow chains ready.

 Law in effect: Nearly a year ago, California passed a law to move transgender women out of men's prisons. Few have actually left.

 State of Emergency : San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is among those protesting Mayor London Breeds crackdown on crime and drugs in the Tenderloin.

 Shaker: A 6.2 earthquake jolted the area near Eureka on Monday, sending tremors as far south as San Francisco.

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.

 Terrifying scene for shoppers: A person reportedly was shot at the Westfield Oakridge mall in San Jose.

 Rebuilding a hospital: See UCSFs latest design for a new 15-story hospital at the historic Parnassus campus.

 In photos: What has San Franciscos downtown retail district looked like during the holidays?

Grand theft orchid

Photos by Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

For the past five years, the San Francisco Orchid Society has been grappling with the financial fallout of a former society official who pilfered $100,000 from its coffers.

The cash is small potatoes compared to the sums of other white-collar crimes, but society members say its devastating for nonprofits like theirs. That money could have gone toward bigger event venues for international floral society gatherings, more climate change awareness or reviving dying breeds of the delicate flower.

Now, as it tries to come back to prominence, the club wonders what its future looks like.

Read more from Annie Vainshtein.

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.
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Oakland police have recovered a car that matches the description of the vehicle used last month in the fatal shooting of security guard Kevin Nishita, officials said.

In the days following the shooting, the Oakland Police Department posted surveillance photos on social media of a white, four-door Acura TL from between 2004 and 2008 with no front license plate. In a news conference Monday, Chief LeRonne Armstrong said police had recovered a car that matched that description and that investigators were working to find out whether it was the one used during the crime. He did not say when, where or how the car was located.
Go here for the latest updates on omicron in California.

The contagiousness of the omicron variant spreading rapidly through Europe and New York is likely between chickenpox and measles, experts say. A wave of Bay Area restaurants are shutting down temporarily due to confirmed and suspected cases among employees, and indoor dining may once again be too risky, health experts warn.

Resources on COVID-19 in California: For detailed maps and city-by-city Bay Area data, check out The Chronicles Coronavirus Tracker.

Latest updates:

Difficult for us humans to keep up: Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County health officer said that with the rapid spread of the omicron variant, now responsible for three quarters of the nations COVID infections, Its so difficult to wrap our collective heads around this, because omicron is moving at breathtaking speed. She added, Its difficult for us humans to keep up with this virus.

COVID cases, fueled by omicron, double in S.F. over 5 days: Coronavirus case rates have doubled in San Francisco over just the past five days, almost certainly due to omicron spreading in the community, said Dr. Grant Colfax, head of the Department of Public Health. He said the city has now identified 32 omicron cases, but he expects there are many more. The highly infectious variant appears to be well established in the Bay Area and likely is fueling outbreaks and early surges in COVID cases across the region, health officials said Tuesday. Read the full story here.

Pre-Christmas travel climbs: Air travel over the days leading to Christmas has escalated dramatically over last years pre-vaccine slump at airports, despite the rapidly spreading omicron coronavirus variant. The Transportation Security Administration reports that over the weekend and including Monday, the 6.25 million people passing through the nations airport security checkpoints was slightly more than double last years comparable figure. It did not reach the 7.5 million recorded during the comparable days in the pre-pandemic year 2019, however.

East Bay Rep. Lee is COVID-19 positive: Rep. Barbara Lee said Tuesday she had tested positive with a breakthrough infection of COVID-19. Fortunately, I have only mild cold-like symptoms, but I know it could have been much worse had I not been vaccinated and boosted, the Democrat wrote in a news release. I am isolating and will follow all of the required health protocols to keep my loved ones, my staff, and my community safe. Im grateful for the miraculous work of vaccines, and encourage everyone to get vaccinated and boosted. Please stay masked and follow all of the CDCs health guidelines as you gather with loved ones this holiday.

California health workers now will have to be boosted: Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday afternoon that California now will require health care workers to get booster shots. Already they are required to be fully vaccinated with two doses of Moderna or Pfizer shots or a dose of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. With Omicron on the rise, were taking immediate actions to protect Californians and ensure our hospitals are prepared, Newsom tweeted. He said the official announcement will be Wednesday.

Oakland passes ordinance to require proof of vaccines at restaurants, bars and most indoor businesses: The Oakland City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to require proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, clubs, theaters and other indoor businesses. The ordinance requires adults to show their photo identification cards and a proof of vaccination to enter most businesses. However, to enter City Hall, visitors can show a negative test taken within three days in place of proof of vaccination. Across the bay, San Francisco for some months has required proof of vaccination to enter many indoor places, including large indoor events, and was the first city in the nation to have such a mandate.

Israel rolls out 4th vaccine dose: Israel announced on Tuesday that it will offer a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to those 60 and older as the fast- spreading omicron variant sets off alarms worldwide, media accounts report. A Health Ministry expert panel recommended the fourth shot, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett swiftly embraced the "great news that will help us overcome the Omicron wave that is spreading around the world." The decision is pending formal approval by senior health officials, but Bennett urged Israelis to get the dose as soon as possible, saying: "My message is - dont waste time, go get vaccinated." The decision follows the first known death in Israel of an omicron patient.

New York mayor inauguration put off: Mayor-elect Eric Adams announced Tuesday that he is postponing his Jan. 1 inauguration in Brooklyn because of a sharp rise in coronavirus infections. New York faces a formidable opponent in the Omicron variant of COVID-19, said his joint statement with Comptroller-elect Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and the spike in cases presents a serious risk to public health. After consulting with public health experts, we have decided that our joint inauguration ceremony will be postponed to a later date in order to prioritize the health of all who were planning to attend, cover, and work on this major event, the statement read.

San Jose mayor proposes requiring boosters for city employees, venue attendees: Mayor Sam Liccardo on Tuesday proposed that COVID booster shots be mandatory for city employees and for people entering the SAP Center and city-owned venues such as the convention center and theaters. He cited the increased transmissability of the omicron variant, saying, Omicron is certainly coming. Its marching its way into California. More than 95% of city employees are fully vaccinated, with the two-dose regimen or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Santa Cruz County identifies two omicron cases: Public health officals in Santa Cruz County announced Tuesday that two omicron coronavirus cases have been identified there. The omicron variant was detected in samples collected on Dec.16 and 17. The individuals are North County residents in their mid-20s. A case investigation is underway, a county statement said. While we must remain vigilant against COVID-19 and Omicron, this new variant is not a cause for panic. It is important that we collectively focus on the things we know prevent the spread of COVID-19 and its variants, said Dr. Cal Gordon, the county health officer, and that includes vaccination and booster shots and wearing masks indoors and in crowded settings, as well holding gatherings outside if possible.

Biden urges schools to stay open: President Biden Tuesday said K-12 schools should stay open amid a rise in coronavirus infection around the nation, with a surge of federal funding already sent to districts for steps aimed keeping kids in classrooms.Last year, we thought the only way to keep your children safe was the closure of our schools. We know more and we have more resources to keep those schools open, Biden said. Evidence shows its fine for uninfected children who have been exposed to remain in school while testing confirms they are negative. We dont have to shut down schools because of a case of COVID-19, Biden said. The key to protecting kids is to ensure all adults and eligible children in their lives are vaccinated, he said.

UC Berkeley not going remote - yet: UC Berkeley officials on Tuesday said the campus still plans on holding in-person classes in January. University of California campuses have the option of going to online instruction when classes resume amid concerns about potential burgeoning omicron variant infections as students return from holiday gatherings and travel. A spokesman for UC Berkeley said there were active discussions on whether to change course in light of developments regarding the omicron variant, and we will adjust as necessary and appropriate.

Marin County party outbreak confirmed: The health officer of Marin County confirmed Tuesday that at least 28 people who attended a holiday gathering last week have tested positive for the coronavirus, in a likely outbreak of the highly infectious omicron variant. Face coverings were not required at the indoor party, which was held before the state re-instituted a universal mask mandate, said Dr. Matt Willis. The event hosts insisted that all attendees be fully vaccinated, and asked that they take a rapid COVID test at home to confirm they were not infected on the day of the party, Willis said. Many of the people in attendance also had gotten booster shots. But more than half of the 50 to 60 attendees have now tested positive, Willis said. All reported mild illness or no symptoms, and none have been hospitalized. Read the story here.

About 71% of covid samples at one Bay Area lab are now omicron: At Stanfords Virology lab, around 71% of COVID samples are those with the omicron variant, the labs director Dr. Ben Pinsky said Tuesday. That figure is from over the weekend, and marks a rapid rise from the 56% it was the prior week. Those percentages are based on initial PCR screening of the samples, not full genome sequencing. It really picked up over the course of the last week, Pinsky said. We went from very few to basically the majority being omicron. He predicted that nearly all of the cases will be omicron soon. The 71% tracks with the CDCs estimate that 73% of U.S. cases are now omicron.

UC schools may go remote in January: University of California President Michael Drake on Tuesday said campuses may choose to begin the January school term with remote classes in the face of rising coronavirus infections. In a letter to chancellors, Drake did not specifically advise going to all-online classes. But he said campuses should make plans to lessen COVID infections in light of the highly contagious omicron variant that coupled with student travel to and from campus and the prevalence of gatherings over the holidays, will present our campuses with a unique set of public health challenges as we begin the New Year. He advised campuses to test, sequester and retest returning students. This may require campuses to begin the term using remote instruction in order to allow students to complete an appropriate testing protocol as they return to campus, he said, noting conditions vary around the state. The University of California San Diego will revert to online classes for the first two weeks of January, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Biden says this is not March 2020: President Biden on Tuesday sought to reassure Americans who are both fed up and worried about the resurgent coronavirus, saying the country is far better off than it was more than a year ago. Thanks to vaccinations, he said, there is no need for lockdowns. He underscored that schools should remain open, with staff vaccinated, and students who are not infected are not at high risk. This is not March of 2020, Biden declared. Two hundred million people are vaccinated. Were prepared; we know more. He made the comments in his televised address to the nation as coronavirus deaths nationwide have climbed above 1,000 a day again. He again laid into the purveyors of virus misinformation. He cited dangerous misinformation on cable TV and social media, including by people making money by peddling lies and allowing misinformation that can kill their own customers and their own supporters.

Biden says dont panic: I know some Americans are wondering whether you can celebrate the holdays with family and friends, President Biden said Tuesday in an address to the nation. The answer is yes  if you are fully vaccinated. Biden underscored his call for everyone to get COVID vaccination and boosters saying Americans should all be concerned about omicron, but not panicked. Amid rising concern about the runaway omicron variant, he said, almost everyone who has died from COVID has been unvaccinated. Especially for those people who have received a booster shot, he added, you have much much less reason to worry. ... If youre fully vaccinated and especially if you have a booster shot, you are highly protected. Even President Trump said recently that hes received a booster shot, Biden noted, adding it was one of the few things he and his predecessor agreed on.

First reported death from omicron is Texas man: The death of an unvaccinated Texas man may be the first in the United States tied to the omicron variant of the coronavirus. The Harris County Public Health Department said Monday the man was between 50 and 60 years old and had already contracted COVID-19 before getting infected again with a virus confirmed to be omicron. The man was at higher risk of severe complications from COVID-19 due to his unvaccinated status and had underlying health conditions, Harris County officials said.

Pharmacies strain under test demand: Americans are floodingWalgreens and CVS stores this week for at-home tests, the new must-have item for millions ahead of the Christmas holiday. The demand has surged with the dramatic rise of the omicron variant: Long lines have formed around the nation at test centers and pharmacies in response to news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that omicron accounted for nearly three-quarters of covid-19 cases in the past week, making it the dominant variant nationwide. Walgreens and CVS have struggled to keep at-home test kits, such as Abbott BinaxNOW, Acon FlowFlex and Quidel Quickvue, in stock. The Bay Area also has seen an uptick in demand.

CVS closing 6 stores in San Francisco: CVS Pharmacy will close six of its 21 San Francisco stores in January, a company spokesperson told The Chronicle. The closures, part of a wave of anticipated closures the company first announced mid-November, come as demand for COVID-19 tests, often procured at local pharmacies, is climbing. Bay Area residents have reported long searches to find at-home, self-administered tests, as well as waits for appointments to get PCR tests administered in person. Read where the CVS stores in the city are closing here.

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.

Massachusetts calls up National Guard: Gov. Charlie Baker on Tuesday ordered that up to 500 National Guard troops be sent to help hospitals straining with coronavirus patients with nonmedical tasks like food service and transportation, news accounts report. Starting on Monday, hospitals must postpone nonessential procedures, he said. Theres no question the next few weeks will be difficult for our healthcare community, Baker told reporters at a Tuesday briefing. There are staff shortages, sicker patients and fewer beds available, the governor said. The steps we are taking today are designed to support them so they can continue taking care of patients.

Biden plan includes help from military at hospitals: President Bidens plan to counter the surge in fast-moving coronavirus infections includes readying 1,000 military medical professionals to help at overburdened hospitals in January and February, the White House said in a fact sheet Tuesday. The plan also includes activating FEMA response teams to help add hospital capacity where needed, and federally-funded expansion of hospital beds.The government also will set up new federal testing sites, starting this week in New York City, to help meet the mounting demand for tests that has seen people waiting in long lines to get tests. Biden intends to deploy 100 additional federal vaccinators to help meet demand in six hard-hit states. Previously Biden had announced in the face of the burgeoning omicron variant that Americans with private health insurance could get reimbursed for at-home COVID-19 tests starting in January.

Omicron cases pick up in L.A.: L.A. County confirmed 60 new cases of the coronavirus variant omicron on Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported. The number exceeds the 49 total confirmed omicron cases that had been reported statewide to the California Department of Public Health as of Wednesday. Given the rising case numbers, the high rate of community transmission, and all the evidence that, over time, our immune systems need a boost to be able to attack the COVID virus, no one eligible should delay getting their booster dose, county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement.

FDA set to OK treatment pills for COVID, report says: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is poised to authorize pills from both Pfizer and Merck to treat COVID-19, with the action expected as soon as Wednesday, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The step would be a milestone in the fight against COVID, expanding the available therapies for those infected. Vaccination to prevent the disease has been the focus of most public health efforts to date. Pfizers pill, Paxlovid, and Mercks molnupiravir, taken in a series over several days, are intended for higher-risk people who test positive for COVID.

Former CDC director says omicron as infectious as measles: Ive worked on infectious disease outbreaks for 30 years, Dr. Tom Frieden, a CDC director under President Barack Obama, tweeted Monday night. Ive NEVER seen anything like the speed of Omicron. Its as infectious as measles spreading in a non-immune population, with a much shorter incubation time therefore much faster doubling time. Hope its a lot less severe. Read more here on the comparison between omicron and measles.

Omicron suspected in outbreak from Marin holiday party: At least 28 people have tested positive for the coronavirus after a holiday party at a Larkspur restaurant, and Marin health officials suspect that the omicron variant might be the cause of the outbreak. Some attendees, all in their 40s and 50s, reported flu-like symptoms after the Dec. 11 event at Farm House Local, the Marin Independent Journal reported. I think this is a glimpse into the next chapter of the pandemic for us, county public health officer Dr. Matt Willis said Monday. I would not be surprised if this particular outbreak was fueled by omicron. Vaccinations were required for guests, and many had received boosters. Guests were also asked to self-administer a COVID- 19 home test the day of the party. Guests did not wear masks, which was allowed for vaccinated people at that time under Marin County rules since the new state mandate was not yet in effect. So far, no attendees have become seriously ill, Willis said.

Biden plan includes 500 million free home tests, hospital support, more vaccination sites: In his speech to the nation Tuesday about plans to combat the omicron variant, President Biden will announce free rapid coronavirus tests for Americans, more support for hospitals and a redoubling of vaccination and boosting efforts. The plan for the government to purchase 500 million home tests and ship them free to Americans starting in January marks a major shift for the Biden administration, the Associated Press reported. People will use a new website to order their tests, which will be sent by U.S. mail at no charge, the White House said. The government will also establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. Additionally, Biden is prepared to deploy an additional 1,000 troops with medical skills to assist hospitals, and stand up multiple vaccination sites and provide hundreds of personnel to administer shots.

Child dies of COVID in Solano County: Solano Countys public health department on Monday announced that COVID has taken the life of a baby less than 1 year old in the county. County Health Officer Dr. Bela Matyas called the loss an urgent reminder that children can get seriously ill and die from COVID-19. While pediatric deaths are incredibly rare, they are also very tragic.As of Monday morning, the county reported it had 369 active COVID-19 cases, and 342 cumulative deaths since the start of the pandemic. Matyas urged all eligible county residents to get vaccinated to protect the youngest children who are not yet eligible..

Biden to address nation about virus on Tuesday: President Biden will deliver an address to the nation Tuesday about the omicron variants rapid spread, which is sending case numbers soaring in many parts of the country. Biden will announce new steps the Administration is taking to help communities in need of assistance, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tweeted, while also issuing a stark warning of what the winter will look like for Americans that choose to remain unvaccinated. She said the president will enourage vaccination and booster shots. We are prepared for the rising case levels, she wrote. Biden will detail how we will respond to this challenge.

Omicron now dominant variant in U.S., report says: The immensely contagious omicron variant accounted for 73% of new infections in the United States last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show  a sharp rise from just 13% the prior week. In some places, such as New York, the prevalence of omicron is at over 90%. In much of the country, omicrons prevalence is even higher. Its responsible for an estimated 90% of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest. California, however, has not seen similar dramatic surges in omicron cases.

L.A. New Years event canceled: Rising U.S. coronavirus case numbers have forced cancellation for the second year in a row of the New Years Eve countdown celebration in downtown L.A.s Grand Park. The event will be streamed online instead, officials said Monday. The event, which is operated by the Music Center, had been set to include an invite-only audience of frontline workers and first responders, the Los Angeles Times reports. Given the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases in the county, the Music Center/Grand Park team determined the safest route to continue with this popular annual tradition would be to eliminate a live audience, event officials said.

Dining risk deterring restaurant enjoyment again: Bay Area restaurants have started temporarily closing their dining rooms because of positive coronavirus cases among staff or simply out of an abundance of caution, and Dr. Bob Wachter, a leading Bay Area health expert on COVID-19, says he is no longer dining indoors because of the highly infectious omicron variant. In a Twitter thread that went viral, the UCSF Department of Medicine chair explained that indoor dining isnt worth the risk for him even as San Francisco maintains a low case rate and high vaccination rate. Indoor dining has been found to be among the riskiest activities because people take their masks off to eat and drink. Read the latest on pandemic dining out here.

Rita Beamish and Anna Buchmann are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: rbeamish@sfchronicle.com, anna.buchmann@sfchronicle.com
Six months ago, a North Bay man who was pursued into his garage by police scored a rare defense victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, which limited officers authority to enter a suspects home without a warrant.

That meant the entry into Arthur Langes garage was illegal  but because the officer couldnt have known that in advance, Langes drunken-driving conviction was valid, a state appeals court ruled Monday.

The decision by the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco was the latest in a long line of state and federal rulings to find exceptions to the exclusionary rule, which prohibits prosecutors from using evidence obtained in illegal searches. The U.S. Supreme Court established that rule in a 1961 case but the court, and lower courts, have substantially limited its impact since then, allowing evidence when police acted illegally but in good faith based on their reasonable understanding of the law.

Lange, a retired real estate agent, was driving home on Highway 12 in an unincorporated area of eastern Sonoma County one evening in October 2016 when a California Highway Patrol officer heard him honking his horn and decided to follow him. The officer did not turn on his light or siren, however, until Lange drove into a residential area, stopped in front of his home and pushed a button to open his garage door.

After Lange drove into his garage, the officer got out, put his foot under the door to keep it from closing and entered the garage, where he questioned Lange and smelled alcohol on his breath. Lange later pleaded no contest to misdemeanor drunken driving and was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

State courts upheld his conviction, but the Supreme Court took up Langes case and set new standards for the authority of officers to chase fleeing suspects into their homes. While police in hot pursuit of a felony suspect can enter a home without a judicial warrant, the court ruled 7-2 that when the suspected crime is only a misdemeanor, a relatively minor offense punishable by a county jail term, the pursuit must stop at the suspects door unless there is a true emergency.

When the case returned to the California courts, Attorney General Rob Bontas office did not claim that there had been an emergency justifying the entry, but argued that the conviction should stand because the CHP officer had reasonably believed he was acting legally, based on past cases allowing the pursuit of misdemeanor suspects into their homes. The appeals court agreed.

The goal of the exclusionary rule  to discourage illegal searches  is not served by prohibiting evidence obtained by an officer who acted in objective good faith, Justice Teri Jackson wrote in the 3-0 ruling. Until the Supreme Courts recent ruling in Langes case, she wrote, police could reasonably rely on decisions like one in 1989 from another California appeals court that said a suspect who is being sought for misconduct in public cannot avoid arrest or search by fleeing to a private place.

Quoting the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2011 case, Jackson said, A police officer who acts in compliance with binding judicial precedent is not culpable in any way.

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Langes lawyer, Peter Goodman, said he would appeal.

For the last five plus years, Mr. Lange has fought to protect his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures of his home, Goodman said. The attorney generals attempt to deny him the fruits of his victory in the United States Supreme Court will be fought with the same sense of purpose.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

A man who barricaded himself in an RV after brandishing what is believed to be a rifle at people in San Jose on Tuesday morning was taken into custody and was expected to be booked into jail on suspicion of brandishing a weapon, police said.

Police on Twitter said they were at the scene at about 9:23 a.m. near a UPS customer center on the 2000 block of South Seventh Street, negotiating with the suspect after hearing reports that people had seen the man with a rifle. South Seventh Street was closed in both directions, police said.
The Oakland City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to require patrons to show proof of COVID vaccination in indoor restaurants, clubs, theaters and other businesses amid increasing concerns about the highly transmissible omicron variant.

The emergency ordinance, introduced by Council Member Dan Kalb, also applies to City Hall, senior centers, gyms, museums and other entertainment venues. The ordinance requires adults to show their photo identification card and a proof of vaccination to enter most businesses. However, to enter City Hall, visitors can show a negative test taken within three days in place of proof of vaccination.

A library card counts as identification. People under 17 dont have to show identification, but do have to show proof of vaccination. People who have medical exemptions would not have to show proof of vaccination. People who attend public meetings at City Hall would not be required to show vaccine proof. Council meetings are currently remote.

Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas introduced an amendment to exempt public libraries and dental offices after hearing opposition from the public and other members of the council. Only Kalb voted against the amendment.

The ordinance will go into effect Feb. 1.

Kalb told The Chronicle Monday that the ordinance is meant to encourage more vaccinations and to reduce the spread of the virus as concerns heighten over omicron.

More than 75% of Oaklands population has been fully vaccinated and 82.4% has received at least one dose, according to the countys public health department.

The emergency ordinance comes about four months after the city mandated vaccines for all municipal employees by the end of November. As of December, 94% of the citys 3,560 permanent and full-time staff have been fully vaccinated, according to the city. Five percent have requested a medical or religious exemption and 1% of permanent employees have not complied with the mandatory vaccination policy.

San Francisco and Berkeley have similar measures in place, requiring proof of vaccines in restaurants and other indoor establishments but not at public facilities.

In Oakland, the city administration expressed concern that people would no longer be able to access city services at City Hall and said requiring an ID might be a barrier for some people.

Restricting access to public services and facilities for that large a proportion of Oaklanders should be weighed against public health benefits, Ed Reiskin, the city administrator, wrote in a memo.

Kalb said Tuesday that a city vaccine and testing clinic is available outside City Hall.

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.

Reiskin also expressed concerns the city doesnt have enough staff to enforce the ordinance, if passed.

Other council members said they were worried that passing the ordinance could create equity issues  about 62% of Black and Latinx residents in Alameda County have been vaccinated  but ultimately agreed that requiring vaccines at certain businesses is necessary.

The council discussed increasing COVID testing. Reiskin noted that President Biden announced Tuesday that the government will purchase 500 million home tests in January, though immediate details on those plans were not available.

He also said free vaccinations and free testing sites are available throughout the city. Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan said she would work with city administration to bring a report to council on Jan. 18 on whether the city can open additional free vaccination sites.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
There are seven stages of Christmas.

The first is wonder. In South Ozone Park where I grew up, the neighbors came by to help us screw in branches to our tree, and we in turn screwed in the branches of theirs. Ornaments migrated from one home to another and toasts were made. All us children went to bed, and the next morning, under the tinsel and next to the papier-mache villages were Flintstones play sets, GI Joes (even Santa refused me a Barbie) and View-Masters.

The second stage is doubt. Sixth grade. Brother X had gone off to Marist College; XX had joined the Navy. I wondered whether our family Christmas would ever be like the Waltons, or even the Bradys. Turned out it was like the Bunkers.

This led to the third stage: cynicism. This is the point when you rewrite the lyrics to carols. Walking in a Winter Wonderland becomes Walking Round in Womens Underwear. And Its the Most Wonderful Time to Drink Beer.

My stage three coincided with the first Christmas I didnt spend at home, in graduate school at the University of Michigan. I worked as a security guard in downtown Ann Arbor. Around midnight on Christmas Eve, I checked the roof and saw that the Chemistry and Economics Building was on fire (never mix ethyl alcohol and monetary theory). But it matched my mood. Three days later, I did, however, drive to Chicago to celebrate the last night of Hanukkah with Danny, the guy I was semi-dating at the time.

The light of those eight candles showed this Catholic boy that cynicism doesnt really work when all these holidays are about hope. For 12,000 years, weve celebrated the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, not because the darkness is so long, but because the light is returning.

The fourth stage is Flaming Rum Punch. Brian and I proposed to each other the first Christmas after we met, logs burning in the fireplace, antique saucer Champagne glasses in hand, gifts within gifts. It must have taken, because its lasted for at least 36 years, and in those first Noels without children, we had the time to concoct clever cocktails and needlepoint ornaments and serve the fatted goose.

This led to the fifth stage: Zuzus Petals. Christmas is not about adults but children. On Christmas Eves, we read The Grinch to our adopted sons Zane and Aidan, tucked them in, then wrapped gifts until 3 a.m. to help out the jolly old elf, who apparently made his last stop the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior.

The sixth stage: Bah, humbug! Our family has had its fair share of disasters, but the zenith of our nadir was the year I asked my husband Brian to take the boys out on Christmas Eve so that I could help Santa wrap the gifts. Zane had a meltdown in Target, which led to Aidan having a meltdown, which led to Brian having a meltdown. He came home and said, Why bother? Take the tree down.

We were supposed to be the family that carried the Christ Child to the creche at Most Holy Redeemer that year. That didnt happen. Neither did dinner at the Sausage Factory in the Castro. Around 9 oclock, I walked the boys down to Cordova Market and let them pick out Flamin Hot Doritos for their holiday dinner. During this, our Hard Cheetoh Christmas, I discovered that my sons cannot discern the difference between cinnamon rolls where I let the yeast rise twice and the ones popped out of the Pillsbury canister.

The seventh stage is wisdom. If youre not as old as me, let me give you this truth for free: the holiday is not about what you get, but what you do.

This year it would be easy to go back to the cynical stage. as A good friend of mine has cancer, Buddyboys on his last legs and Brian has one less reason to wear toe shoes. Omicron looms and Zane almost missed the Christmas picture.

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.

But now the daylight begins lasting longer.

And in that spirit, Brian and I, instead of getting yet another building for our Christmas village, donated to a friend of mine whose wife needs both a lung and heart transplant. Were taking it easy. Weve even bought Pillsbury rolls. Poppin Fresh saves Christmas!

Weve put up a tree, and our neighbors come by. Not to screw in branches, but just as they did in stage one, ornaments migrate from our tree to theirs, from theirs to ours. In this way, our home becomes part of theirs. And vice versa.

The meaning of Christmas is not the belief that miracles happen. The meaning of Christmas is that we each need to do our part to make those miracles happen.

May your days be merry and  light.

Kevin Fisher-Paulsons column appears Wednesdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com
PHOENIX (AP)  Arizona health officials are reporting 2,176 new confirmed COVID-19 cases but no additional deaths.

The latest numbers released Monday push the state's pandemic totals to 1,338,982 cases and 23,519 known deaths.

Hospitalizations due to the virus numbered at 2,496 as of Sunday.

Arizona's largest hospital systems warn that a surge in hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients and patients seeking treatment for other issues could lead soon to a rationing of care.

Hospitals in more rural parts of the state have put in requests to the federal government for more medical staff.

All have said the majority of their COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated.

Data from the state Department of Health Services dashboard showed that 68.5% of Arizonans old enough to get vaccinated have received at least one shot

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.

That trails the national rates of 76.9% of age-eligible individuals with at least one dose.

Meanwhile, the Health System Alliance of Arizona and member hospitals issued a statewide message urging Arizonans to do everything they can to slow down the spread of COVID-19.

The letter was running as a full page ad in Sunday editions of the states largest newspaper  The Arizona Republic  and newspapers that publish in Tucson, Flagstaff and Prescott.
MOSCOW (AP)  Russian military transport planes on Saturday delivered a shipment of humanitarian supplies to Afghanistan and flew back 200 Russians, Afghan students and others, the defense ministry said.

The ministry said that three Il-76 cargo planes will make stopovers in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan before flying to Moscow. It said the planes were carrying citizens of Russia and Kyrgyzstan who wanted to leave Afghanistan, and Afghan students enlisted in Russian universities.
Regarding Oakland releases As ballpark study (Bay Area, Dec. 18): I have two concerns I have not seen addressed. One is the impending sea level rise that is predicted around the world; it seems irresponsible and reckless to disregard this looming danger that could impact the whole development. A more immediate concern is the danger of the As abusing their power in the same way as the 49ers have done in Santa Clara, as reported by The Chronicle.

I watched in dismay as the San Francisco 49ers literally took over the Santa Clara City Council by spending $2.9 million to elect candidates who are doing their bidding, e.g., firing the city attorney who tried to hold them accountable to their contracts.

I urge the Oakland City Council to seriously reconsider the proposed waterfront park for these and other reasons being raised by the community.

Margit Birge, Oakland

Police deserve respect

Regarding No holiday cheer at Union Square (Open Forum, Dec. 17): I would like to express my opposition, disgust and displeasure at writer Charles Lewis III and to The Chronicle Open Forum editor after reading the angry, juvenile rant against our San Francisco Police officers.

Readers deserve a higher level of discourse and thoughtful opinions from our local paper. Once more The Chronicle has chosen to push a narrative from a San Francisco journalist who demonstrated little journalistic integrity in his opinion piece.

San Francisco police officers take enormous risks every day to protect the public. Under Chief Bill Scott, the department has implemented a multitude of policing reforms ahead of many urban cities throughout the U.S. To denigrate our officers and residents  citizens who are greatly concerned with feeling the city has become less safe  distorts a complex problem to a sophomoric, sarcastic diatribe. Mr. Lewis use of right-wingers wet dream, cry babies and officers sat on their lazy butts demonstrates his journalistic limitations.

To the hardworking police officers of San Francisco, please know that you are appreciated, respected and valued by most residents and businesses in San Francisco.

Kelly Powers, Oakland

No Christianity in tree

Regarding Christmas is religious (Letters, Dec. 17): A recent letter from a non-Christian stated that she has always believed that the Christmas tree was a symbol that represents the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although I was raised in an ultra-Christian household, I have never believed nor have I ever known anyone who believed that a decorated evergreen tree symbolized anything to do with Jesus. Indeed, in the Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 10, verses 1 through 5, the Lord instructs the Israelites to learn not the way of the heathen by cutting a tree out of the forest and decking it with silver and gold.

The Roman winter solstice celebration of Saturnalia included the ritual of bringing greenery indoors. When Roman Christians were unsuccessful in preventing the Saturnalian festivities, they substituted a Christian celebration for the pagan festival. Many biblical scholars have surmised that Jesus was actually born in midsummer, not in winter.

I currently subscribe to no particular theology, and I am not arguing for or against the presence of a menorah in a public school. However, the annual tradition of decorating what has come to be known as a Christmas tree has no roots (as it were) in Christianity.

Kathryn Ayres, San Francisco

Praise for photo staff

Regarding 2021 photos of the year (Front Page, Dec. 19): Kudos to The Chronicle and staff of the paper. Out of an outstanding group of photos, the one I loved the most was The Chronicle staff photo. It looked like a group of committed and joyful people, dedicated to working together as a team to deliver high quality pictures of the human condition and emotions, both of victory and of tragedy. Thanks for a great photo and a great group.
WASHINGTON  The process wasnt always pretty, but Californias redistricting commission has finalized its new map of the states congressional districts, largely sparing the Bay Area of major changes and overall favoring Democrats in the state.

The political boundaries that will dictate representation for the next 10 years will be officially transmitted to the secretary of state by the Dec. 27 deadline, paving the way for candidates to make final decisions about their futures by the March 11 filing deadline. The commission voted unanimously to approve its maps late Monday night.

The vote came after months of intense activity by the 14-member Citizens Redistricting Commission, which is made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four independents. The group decided to set out to draw the map from scratch rather than base its drafts on existing boundaries, causing a lengthy process that required many different proposals and changes based on public input that continued up to the last hours before maps were approved.

The decennial process is dictated by the results of the U.S. census, which were delayed by the pandemic and litigation, shortening the window in which the commission could draw maps. Ultimately, Californias population grew at a slower rate than the nation, costing the state one of its 53 seats in Congress and forcing changes to the map.

The lost seat will essentially come from the Los Angeles area, where population growth in the state was slowest, specifically near Long Beach. The impact of losing the seat, however, will be mitigated by the retirement of the lawmakers who represent the area, Democratic Reps. Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach and Lucille Roybal-Allard of Los Angeles.

In the Bay Area, there will be some changes, though none that fundamentally jeopardize incumbents. Most of the changes reflect population shifts, including increasing diversity. The commission found it had legal obligations to draw districts with strong Latino populations in the Central Valley and South Bay, as well as Asian American communities in Silicon Valley. Ultimately 12 lawmakers will represent significant portions of the Bay Area, up from 10 in the current map.

The area of Richmond and Vallejo will be a new seat in the region, the likely landing place for Democratic Rep. John Garamendi, whose current Walnut Grove north state district has been largely broken up among neighboring districts. Garamendi announced his candidacy in the district shortly after the commission approved the maps.

In the South Bay, Fremont Rep. Ro Khannas district with a high population of Asian American voters remains largely intact, but neighboring Silicon Valley districts will see some changes. Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgrens San Jose district expanded significantly south to include agricultural and Latino communities south of Gilroy in San Benito and parts of Salinas. Central Coast Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, will also join the Bay Area delegation, as his district anchored by Monterey will expand to include some of South San Jose.

That area provided some last-minute fireworks for the commission. The map splits San Jose across four congressional districts, up from its current three, with the inclusion of Panetta. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo waged a significant campaign to get the commission to reconsider, calling into public comment daily urging it to slice his city into fewer pieces. He almost succeeded  over the weekend, the commission redrew the area to have a district running from Stanford in the north down the Central Coast to San Luis Obispo in order to create a San Jose-specific district.

As Liccardo lauded the changes, redistricting and elections expert Dave Wasserman dubbed the proposed district the ribbon of shame. Concern poured in that Silicon Valley would dominate the district, effectively depriving the Central Coast of adequate representation, and increasing the affluent areas already considerable influence in national politics.

Just before midnight on Sunday night, the commission reversed course, and went back to the map it had been using last week that split up San Jose. Liccardo called in once more.

You do not have to sacrifice the interests of 1 million San Joseans to have a representative speak for them in Congress in order for smaller communities in Monterey County or on the Peninsula to have districts appropriate for their communities of interest, Liccardo said. He warned commissioners theyd be making San Jose the only city among Americas 25 largest without a single representative for a majority of its population, though many of the nations largest cities have multiple members of Congress.

Liccardos heavy participation drew some scrutiny, as he is widely expected to mount a run for Congress when one of the longtime incumbents who represents the city retires as anticipated in coming years. He defended his motivations as pure on Twitter.

But the commission settled on its decision to split the city four ways over the alternative that would have created the long coastal district.

Overall, outside experts analyze the map as favorable to Democrats. Several swing Democratic seats now lean more left, based on voting data, including the one represented by Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock (Stanislaus County), whose district shifted several times over the weeks of drawing as the commission grappled with how to draw San Joaquin County. Many close Republican-held seats also will swing left, including those of Reps. David Valadao of Hanford (Kings County) and Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County). Redistricting expert Paul Mitchell predicts the map favors 43 Democrats and nine Republicans. The current split is 42-11.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan
NEW YORK (AP)  A strike at Kellogg that has gone on since early October has ended after workers voted to ratify a new labor contract at the company's four U.S. cereal plants.

The contract covers approximately 1,400 workers represented by the union at plants in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Kellogg said Tuesday that the new contract provides immediate, across the board wage increases and enhanced benefits for all. It also provides an accelerated, defined path to top-tier wages, a major sticking point for workers, and benefits for transitional employees.

We are pleased that we have reached an agreement that brings our cereal employees back to work, CEO Steve Cahillane said in a prepared statement.

Workers that have been on strike since Oct. 5 will return to work on Monday, Kellogg said, after the holiday.

The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union said the contract is a win for workers.

This agreement makes gains and does not include any concessions, union President Anthony Shelton said in a prepared statement.

Members of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union voted on the new offer over the weekend. The offer includes cost-of-living adjustments and a $1.10 per hour raise for all employees.

Earlier this month, an overwhelming majority of workers voted down a five-year offer that would have provided 3% raises and cost of living adjustments in coming years to most, but not all of the workers.

Workers have been on strike at plants in Battle Creek, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Memphis, Tennessee. They make all of the companys well-known brands of cereal, including Apple Jacks and Frosted Flakes.

Kelloggs said most workers at its cereal plants earned an average of $120,000 last year, though union members have said they work more than 80 hours a week to earn that, and those wages are only available to longtime workers. Under the two-tiered pay system the company uses, newer workers are paid less and receive fewer benefits.

That pay system has been a sticking point during the negotiations, and Kelloggs offer didnt change on that part of the contract. The company has said it will allow all workers with at least four years of experience move up to the higher legacy pay level as part of this contract. Union officials previously said that plan wouldnt let other workers move up quickly enough. The company has also proposed eliminating the current 30% cap on the number of workers at each plant who receive the lower wages.

The workers remained unified during the strike amid worker shortages across the country, which may have given them more leverage in negotiations. And the said raises were overdue after workers kept the plants running throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

Throughout the strike Kellogg has been trying to keep its plants operating with salaried employees and outside workers, and the company said late last month that it planned to start hiring permanent replacements for the striking workers.

President Joe Biden sharply criticized Kelloggs for threatening to permanently replace workers, saying that doing that would undermine the collective bargaining process.

Shares of Kellogg Co., based in Battle Creek, Michigan, fell more than 2% Tuesday.
A suspected serial killer may be responsible for the disappearance of a Northern California woman who went missing on a sightseeing trip to Washington, D.C., police say.

Police in Virginia say 35-year-old Anthony Robinson of Washington is the lead suspect in the deaths of four individuals found in two different locations. Dubbed the "shopping cart killer" by Fairfax County police Chief Kevin Davis, police believe Robinson met women on dating apps, murdered them at hotel meet-ups and then used shopping carts to dump their bodies in vacant lots.

Police say Robinson is responsible for the deaths of Tonita Lorice Smith, 39, of Charlottesville, and Allene Elizabeth Beth Redmon, 54, of Harrisonburg, Virginia. Robinson was arrested last month in connection with those slayings, and evidence uncovered after the arrest led police to search an area near the Moon Inn south of Alexandria. During the search, detectives noticed a shopping cart and recalled that a cart had been used to transport the bodies in the Harrisonburg cases.

Near the shopping cart was a large plastic container that held the remains of two women. One has been tentatively identified as Cheyenne Brown, 29, whose disappearance had been under investigation by Washington, D.C., police. The second body found in Fairfax County has not yet been identified, although police think it may possibly be Stephanie Harrison of Redding, California.

Aware Foundation/Handout

Harrison last had contact with her loved ones on Aug. 19, 2021, when she was on a sightseeing trip to the nation's capital. According to a missing person flyer, Harrison's last bank transaction was a check-in at the Moon Inn.

We did reach out to the Redding, California, police department after seeing this, and they do, in fact, have a report, Fairfax County Police Department spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi told WTOP. We believe based on the flyer and check-in records that she stayed at the same hotel as our killer.

Guglielmi said investigators are flying out to Redding to obtain a DNA sample from Harrison's family, which will be compared to the unidentified body.

Police are also probing the possibility there are even more victims.

"He didn't suddenly turn into who he is three months ago," Davis said. "That's why we are painstakingly going through his whereabouts, his relationships [and] employment history to figure out if in fact there are other victims."

Robinson's lawyer, Louis Nagy, declined to comment on the substance of the two murder charges against his client in Harrisonburg. Robinson has not yet been formally charged in Fairfax County, but police said charges are forthcoming.

The good thing is hes in custody. The challenge that remains is identifying other victims, Davis said.

A scheduling hearing in Harrisonburg is set for Dec. 27.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Cases of COVID-19 are surging in Hawaii, with 707 new cases reported on Saturday and 972 new cases on Sunday.



Its a mix of the delta and omicron variants being transmitted at large gatherings, said State Health Director Dr. Libby Char in a press release. Of the 972, 877 were on Oahu, 38 were on Maui, 29 were on Hawaii Island, and 14 were on Kauai. Future updates to Hawaiis COVID-19 counts may be found on the Department of Healths website.



We are definitely concerned, Gov. Ige told Hawaii News Now. The increasing number of cases, we did anticipate, but certainly we want to remind everyone that the best way out of this pandemic is to get vaccinated.



No plans have been announced by state or county leaders to add any restrictions.



Currently, all travelers entering Hawaii must follow the State of Hawaii Safe Travels program. It includes a required online health form, temperature screening and a 10-day quarantine unless you receive a vaccination exception by uploading your card digitally for validation or you receive a negative pre-travel COVID-19 test within 72 hours of your departure time. For multi-city flight itineraries, youll have to ensure the 72 hours prior to departure time is from the last leg of your itinerary to Hawaii.



If you choose not to participate in the Safe Travels program, you will be required to quarantine for 10 days.

Info: Find the latest information on travel to the islands from Hawaii's COVID-19 travel site.

Testing: Get details on Hawaiis pre-travel testing program.

Form: Fill out the health form needed to visit Hawaii.
One of the Bay Areas favorite vacation destinations was just named Zillows most popular place of 2021.

Not only was South Lake Tahoe the most popular place overall, but it also earned the No. 1 spot in the real estate marketplaces lists of most popular small town and most popular vacation town.

This is the first year Zillow shared the list, which analyzed page views per listing, home values and affordability with growth potential, using data from October 2020 to November 2021. The real estate marketplace also cited South Lake Tahoes small-town vibe and short driving distance to the Bay Area, Sacramento and Reno, Nev. as reasons for its high desirability.

The Lake Tahoe town had 5,469 page views per listing according to Zillow, though rising home values in the region may be the biggest indicator of popularity. South Lake Tahoe hit a median of $692,792 this year, up 34.9% in the past year. Values are up from $515,000 in November 2020, and $447,000 in November 2019.

South Lake Tahoe shot to the top of our list because it has everything you would dream about in a place to live. Its a beautiful area, with a small-town vibe and big-city amenities, and of course some of the best year-round outdoor recreation in the country, said Zillow spokesperson Matt Kreamer. It certainly doesnt hurt that its fairly close to some of the largest population centers in the country, so its a natural place for millions to think of first when theyre dreaming about a vacation home or new place to work remotely.

After South Lake Tahoe, Calabasas, Calif. was dubbed the most popular small town and Big Bear Lake, Calif. topped the list of most popular vacation towns. Newport, Ore. was named the most popular beach town.
WINTER HARBOUR, Maine (AP)  A swath of land totaling 1,700 acres near Maine's Acadia National Park has been donated to a land trust that plans to conserve and protect it.

The owners, Schoodic Woods LLC, who bought the property 10 years ago, transferred ownership of the north side of Route 186 to Maine Coast Heritage Trust last week. That part of the property was once proposed to be developed into a resort, The Bangor Daily News reported on Tuesday.
MIAMI  Two men were arrested after authorities said they clashed with police officers Monday at Miami International Airport, which is expecting a record number of passengers for the holiday season.

The men  Mayfrer Gregorio Serranopaca, 30, of Kissimmee, Florida, and Alberto YanezSuarez, 32, of Odessa, Texas  were each charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department, which is investigating the episode. Serranopaca also faces additional charges, including resisting an officer with violence and inciting a riot.

Serranopaca and YanezSuarez could not be reached Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if the men had attorneys.

The skirmish, which was captured on a cellphone video that circulated widely on social media, took place at about 6:30 p.m. Monday, when officers responded to a call from an airport employee about a disturbance at Gate H8.

The employee told police officers that he was driving a transport cart when an unruly passenger refused to let him through, according to an arrest report. The man, later identified as Serranopaca, entered the cart, broke the key and refused to exit the cart, the report said. The airport worker told police that the passenger was complaining in Spanish about a delayed flight.

As the officers tried to calm Serranopaca, a physical confrontation ensued, attracting a large crowd.

The video showed a chaotic crowd of travelers surrounding an officer who appeared to restrain Serranopaca with his arms. When the officer released him from a hold, the two scuffled.

At one point, the officer and Serranopaca separated, and Serranopaca charged at the officer, his arms flailing.

The video shows the officer breaking away, stepping back and drawing a firearm. As officers tried to arrest Serranopaca, police said YanezSuarez was grabbing and pulling officers off him.

Firefighters also responded to the scene after Serranopaca bit one officer on the head, police said. Serranopaca and YanezSuarez were both arrested.

The altercation took place as airports across the country are experiencing heavy holiday traffic. COVID-19 cases have surged, driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant, leading some people to rethink their holiday plans, but millions of travelers are forging ahead.

More than 109 million Americans are expected to travel between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2, a 34% increase from last year, according to AAA. The number of airline passengers alone is projected to rise 184% from last year.

Like airports across the country, MIA is seeing record-high passenger numbers this winter travel season, Ralph Cutie, director and CEO of Miami International Airport, said in a statement.

The Miami airport said it expected about 2.6 million travelers  an average of about 156,000 per day  to pass through its gates from Tuesday through Jan. 6, an increase of 6% over the same period in 2019.

Unfortunately, that passenger growth has come with a record-high increase nationwide in bad behavior as well, Cutie said, noting the altercation at the airport Monday.

Disruptive passengers could face arrest, civil penalties up to $37,000, being barred from flying and possible federal prosecution, Cutie said.

He urged people to travel responsibly by getting to the airport extra early, being patient, complying with the federal mask law and airport staff, limiting your alcohol consumption and notifying police at the first sign of bad behavior by calling 911.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  A 20-member team from the U.S. Navy is headed to Green Bay's Bellin Hospital to help the overwhelmed facility treat patients with COVID-19.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatched the team to assist, Gov. Tony Evers announced Tuesday.

Wisconsin hospitals are struggling to keep up with a surge in COVID-19 patients while also dealing with staffing shortages. On Monday, there were 1,660 people hospitalized statewide due to the virus, with 424 of them in intensive care, according to the Wisconsin Hospital Association.

Nearly every intensive care bed  96%  is in use in addition to 98% of intermediate care beds.

The FEMA team will be essential to supporting our health care system in northeastern Wisconsin," Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary Karen Timberlake said.

Chris Woleske, president and CEO of Bellin Health, expressed thanks for the assistance, while also calling on the community to work on stopping the spread of COVID-19 by wearing masks and getting vaccinated.

FEMA has been dispatching similar teams of nurses, doctors and other health care professionals to overwhelmed hospitals in other states across the country.

The seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin is 3,294, up from 1,891 two months ago. As of Monday, nearly 58% of all Wisconsin residents was fully vaccinated, according to the state health department.
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Alert: Jury concludes first day of deliberations without reaching verdict in trial of Minnesota cop who killed Daunte Wright
BALTIMORE (AP)  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a California-based contractor have started removing mud, sand and other materials from the Cape Henry Channel as part of a larger project supporting the Ports of Baltimore and Virginia.

About 2.4 million cubic yards (1.8 million cubic meters) of material is being dredged from the federal navigation channel at the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay, the Army Corps Baltimore District said in a news release Monday. The $14.8 million contract was awarded at the end of September, and the work is expected to be done by late spring.
SYDNEY (AP)  New COVID-19 cases in Australia's most populous state surged past 3,000 on Tuesday for the first time, adding pressure on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to speed the rollout of booster shots.

New South Wales state reported a record 3,057 new coronavirus cases and two deaths over the past 24 hours. There were 284 people in hospitals, up from 261 a day earlier, and 39 in intensive care units, up from 33.

Morrison has called an "informal meeting on Wednesday of the national cabinet, a forum of state premiers and territory chief ministers, as new infections rise in New South Wales and Victoria states.

The premiers of those states are likely to press Morrison to cut the interval between a second vaccine dose and a booster shot from six months to four months.

Victoria reported 1,245 new COVID-19 cases and six deaths on Tuesday.

Health ministers in New South Wales and Victoria have called on the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation to make specific determinations for accelerated booster programs in both states in part to stay ahead of the new omicron strain of the virus.

The advisory group is also reportedly considering changing the definition of fully vaccinated to mean those who have had a booster shot in addition to two vaccine doses.

While some states in Australia require masks in bars, restaurants and other indoor public settings, New South Wales has resisted a return to mask mandates.

Morrison has also said he does not favor mandates, even in the face of the omicron variant. He said Australia would have to continue to calibrate how it lives with the virus.

The time for that heavy hand is behind us," Morrison said. It is the time for knowing and trusting Australians who have proven themselves with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

"We have to move from a culture of mandates to a culture of responsibility. Thats how we live with this virus into the future, he said.
BONAIRE, Ga. (AP)  Law officers are trying to identify a body found along a highway in Middle Georgia.

The body was discovered Sunday night just east of Bonaire, near the border of Twiggs and Houston counties, The Telegraph reported.
MIAMI (AP)  Two travelers are facing charges following a brawl with police at Miami International Airport, authorities said.

Mayfrer Serranopaca, 30, of Kissimmee, Florida, and Alberto Yanez Suarez, 32, of Odessa, Texas, were arrested in Concourse H following Monday evening's fight, according to Miami-Dade police reports. They were each charged with battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest, while Serranopaca also faces six additional counts that include burglary and inciting a riot.

MIA Director and CEO Ralph Cutie said in a statement that the airport is experiencing record-high passenger numbers this winter travel season.

Unfortunately, that passenger growth has come with a record-high increase nationwide in bad behavior as well, such as the incident this evening at MIA, Cutie said Monday. Disruptive passengers face police arrest, civil penalties up to $37,000, being banned from flying, and potential federal prosecution.

Monday's confrontation, which was captured on video by another traveler, began when Serranopaca hopped onto a cart driven by an airport employee and refused to move until the worker gave him information about his delayed flight, according to the arrest report. The employee said he didn't work for the airline and didn't have any information about the flight. The worker eventually called for airport police.

Two officers responded and tried to calm Serranopaca, police said. Serranopaca attempted to incite the nearby crowd and began to fight with the officers, biting one of them on the head, authorities said. At one point, an officer broke free of the struggle and drew his firearm, though no shots were fired, police said.

As additional officers arrived and attempted to take Serranopaca into custody, officials said Yanez Suarez intervened and attempted to pull the police off of Serranopaca, prompting officers to arrest him, as well.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue treated Serranopaca and the bitten officer at the scene, officials said.

Serranopaca was being held on $29,500 bond, and Yanez Suarez was later freed on $15,000 bond. A defense attorney for Serranopaca didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment from The Associated Press. Court and jail records didn't list an attorney for Yanez Suarez.
SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP)  Bulgaria considers a deployment of NATO troops on its territory as unjustifiable, the Black Sea countrys defense minister said Tuesday.

Defense Minister Stefan Yanev commented in a Facebook post about a possible response of the military alliance to Russias military build-up near the border with Ukraine.

Such a decision would not match the allies interests or the national interests of Bulgaria, he wrote.

Yanev confirmed reports that various scenarios responding to Russias actions are being considered by NATO, including the deployment of additional troops in Bulgaria and Romania under NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence mission, but added that these are technical discussions and no decisions have been made.

He said that such a debate has the potential of causing unnecessary tensions in the region and that at this stage there was no reason to consider Russias activities as a direct threat to the alliance and its security.

In this sense, I see nothing that justifies a decision for deployment of additional troops on our territory, Yanev wrote.

He added that Bulgaria, a member of NATO since 2004, was ready if needed to increase the capacity of its own troops on its territory in the context of the allied capabilities for deterrence and defense.
CHICAGO (AP)  Chicago will require proof of coronavirus vaccination at restaurants, bars, gyms and other indoor venues, as the rapidly spreading omicron variant drives a spike in COVID-19 infections, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday.

Lightfoot said the requirement will take effect Jan. 3, and will apply to places in the nation's third-largest city where food and beverages are served  including sport and entertainment venues  and fitness centers. It doesn't apply to people getting takeout, who stay in a businesses for less than 10 minutes.

Lightfoot said the measure is necessary because of a surge in cases and hospitalizations, with Chicago seeing numbers at levels similar to before vaccines were available. Chicago is reporting an average of more than 1,700 new COVID cases per day, up from about 300 per day just weeks ago, she said.

To be clear, I have not been this concerned about COVID-19 since the early days of the pandemic in 2020, Lightfoot said. She also urged people to get vaccinated, saying it's the only way for life to return to some kind of normalcy and the best way to save lives.

The mayors office said more than 60 Chicago residents are being hospitalized with COVID each day and an average of 10 are dying from COVID daily. Most of Chicagos COVID hospitalizations and deaths are people who are not vaccinated, the mayors office said.

The solution is vaccine, Lightfoot said.

On Monday, Illinois reported about 12,330 new COVID-19 cases  the highest daily total in more than a year. Much of that increase has been driven by the omicron variant, prompting fears of a winter surge.

Federal health officials announced Monday that omicron accounted for 73% of new infections last week, a nearly sixfold increase in only seven days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported omicron's prevalence is even higher in some parts of the U.S., with the variant responsible for an estimated 90% of new infections in the industrial Midwest, the New York area, the Southeast and the Pacific Northwest.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced Monday that the city will require proof of vaccination for workers and customers at many indoor businesses beginning in mid-January. New York and San Francisco already require it.

Rob Karr, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, called the Chicago requirement a reasonably measured approach."

It certainly is better than shutting businesses down, he said.

Lightfoot said there would be a weekly testing option for employees who are unvaccinated, but no testing option for customers. Proof of vaccination may be with a physical card, or a photo of the card. The requirement doesn't apply to houses of worship, elementary and secondary schools, grocery stores and office or residential buildings.

Allison Arwady, Chicago's public health commissioner, said the requirement will apply to everyone age 5 and older, and that they must be fully vaccinated," which the CDC currently defines as two weeks after the second dose of the vaccine. For people age 16 and older, a valid photo ID must be presented along with a vaccination card.

Lightfoot said city inspectors will monitor business compliance with the requirement. Warnings will be issued to businesses not complying, but if a business repeatedly violates the rules, were going to bring the hammer down, Lightfoot said.

Much about the omicron variant remains unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness. Early studies suggest the vaccinated will need a booster shot for the best chance at preventing omicron infection but even without the extra dose, vaccination still should offer strong protection against severe illness and death.

Arwady said 32.5% of Chicago residents age 18 and older have received booster shots.
As Donald Trump began contesting the presidential election results in November 2020, CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter received a text from a man describing Stelter's mother's home, "implying he was there."

It wasn't the only threatening message Stelter said he received from the man. The "Reliable Sources" host also got a voice mail telling him to "stop digging" and a text with a photo of his father's grave. Stelter detailed the threats Monday night after testifying at the sentencing hearing for Robert Lemke, a California man federal investigators say threatened about 50 people over their truthful "statements expressing that then-President Trump had lost the 2020 presidential election."

On Monday, Lemke, 36, from Bay Point, Calif., was sentenced to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty in October to threatening an unspecified journalist's New York-based family. His attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the sentence.

In a Dec. 7 letter to the judge, Lemke repeated false claims of "a large amount of fraud" in the 2020 election. (No widespread fraud has been uncovered.) In another letter on Dec. 16, Lemke wrote that he was "wholeheartedly regretful and remorseful for my actions."

"After the election, I was caught in a firestorm of rhetoric and emotions," he added. "I chose words that placed people in fear. If I could go back, I would change those words, and take more time to properly present my thoughts and intentions."

Stelter wrote on CNN.com after the hearing that it was "clear from the evidence that Lemke was triggered over and over again by accurate news reports about Trump losing."

"As he admitted in court on Monday, he thought he was a part of something bigger, a crusade to keep Trump in power," Stelter said. "The Big Lie led him to threaten brothers, and mothers, and fathers, and even kids."

Lemke is one of several people charged with threatening public figures in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. A Proud Boys supporter pleaded guilty in August to threatening Democratic Sen. Raphael G. Warnock of Georgia on social media in January. And a California man was arrested in January after federal investigators say he made pipe bombs in a plot to attack Democrats to keep Trump in power.

Lemke, according to the Justice Department, sent threatening messages to journalists, politicians and other victims between November 2020 and January 2021. As Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, investigators say Lemke sent texts to a journalist's family member claiming the reporter's words were "putting you and your family at risk."

"We are nearby, armed and ready," the text message said, according to court documents. "Thousands of us are active/retired law enforcement, military, etc. That's how we do it."

That same day, the brother of an unnamed congressman representing New York received a similar message from Lemke.

"Stop telling lies; Biden did not win, he will not be president," the text said, according to court records. " . . . We have armed members near your home."

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement Monday that Lemke had refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election.

"Rather than attempting to effect change through the lawful forms of expression that all of us Americans still enjoy, Lemke sought to quell freedom of expression, to intimidate and instill fear in others by threats of violence," he added. "Today, Robert Lemke was rightly sentenced to prison for his conduct."

Lemke used at least three phone numbers and different electronic accounts to mask his identity when threatening victims, federal investigators wrote. The day Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, Lemke wrote on his Facebook page that people should "Be ready for war," according to court documents.

He told followers to spread the message, records show, and to "keep an eye out for a variety of protests, and Stop The Steal Facebook groups for updates."

He was arrested in Bay Point, about 35 miles from San Francisco, on Jan. 26.

CNN anchor Don Lemon also spoke at Lemke's sentencing hearing as one of the dozens of people who'd received threatening messages. Lemon told the judge the messages he'd received targeted him and his fiancee.

"I am tired of looking over my shoulder. I am tired of being suspicious of even friendly faces in public," Lemon said, according to the New York Daily News. "I am tired of being called fake news."

Democratic Rep. John Garamendi of California also detailed the threatening messages he received. In court documents, Garamendi said the lives of his wife and children were threatened in a text message "listing them by name and home address."

"My phone number and the addresses of my family are not widely known, and the sender purported to be a part of a larger network of law enforcement officials who would carry out future attacks to overthrow the government," Garamendi said. " . . . Given the ability of the sender to gather sensitive security information about my family, we perceived this to be a credible threat to my children, grandchildren, wife, and myself."

The threats forced him and his family to "keep low profiles," he added, which affected his work as a lawmaker.

Another victim, whose name was redacted from court documents, wrote about the fear his family faced over the threatening messages.

"I could see it in my . . . daughter's eyes when she wondered whether the odd creak in the house was actually someone trying to get into our house to harm us," the victim wrote. "And she could see my fear, a fear that I couldn't protect them, that I couldn't keep them safe, in a world gone mad."

In addition to his time behind bars, Lemke was sentenced to three years of supervised release following prison.
The number of COVID-19 testing locations and hours of available testing will expand over the next week or more as Connecticut continues to see more positive cases, driven in part by the fast-spreading omicron variant and an increased demand for testing.

While there are currently about 400 state and private testing locations across the state, Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday that seven more state sites will be added to the mix, including a new saliva testing site on the New Haven Green that's scheduled to open this week.

Were expanding the hours of many of our sites to make it easier for you, before work and after work. Were adding on additional sites. Ive had good conversations with the pharmacies. They are going to be expanding testing as well," said Lamont, adding how the hospitals are also expanding their public testing capacity.

Since Friday, there have been more than 6,200 additional positive cases, according to figures released Monday. The number of hospitalizations grew by 101, to 837, the highest level since early February.

Dr. Manisha Juthani, the state's public health commissioner, said the health care company Sema4 has agreed to continue providing testing services at sites across Connecticut through the end of January, giving the state some more time to find replacement vendors after Sema4 announced it was ending its COVID-19 testing program.

We had competitively bid for vendors who are ready and willing to pick up those sites," said Juthani. With the seven new locations coming online, new vendors will be needed for 30 state-run testing sites across Connecticut.

Stamford-based Sema4, whose investors include a venture capital firm run by Lamont's wife, Annie, recently told its investors and state officials that it planned to drop its COVID-19 testing in mid-January and return to its core business, genomic testing.

Meanwhile, to help ease the demand for testing services, Lamont announced Monday there will be a temporary two-week pause on the enforcement of vaccination mandates for certain unvaccinated workers who undergo testing in order to comply. The short enforcement hiatus does not affect hospital workers or employees in congregate settings such prisons, where testing will still be made available.

For all the others, office workers, educators, many of whom are going to be on vacation for some of the next two weeks anyway, were going to pause enforcement," said Josh Geballe, Lamont's chief operating officer. What we expect that will do is free up a little bit of additional capacity for other residents of the state who are actually symptomatic or who are exposed so they can have a little bit quicker access to testing.

Also Monday, the state announced residents can now store their personal COVID-19 vaccination records on their smartphones by using the voluntary SMART Health Cards program. It enables a vaccinated resident to display a QR code that confirms their vaccination status, a standard that is already being used in New York, California and Canada. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and other states are also expected to launch programs using the same standard.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  A state appeals court wants the Wisconsin Supreme Court to decide whether a constitutional amendment expanding crime victims rights was enacted properly.

Voters approved the so-called Marsy's Law amendment in a statewide referendum in April 2020. Late last year Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington ruled the ballot question was improperly phrased and didn't adequately warn voters that the amendment would diminish defendant's rights.

Remington let the amendment stand, however, while the Wisconsin Elections Commission and others pursued an appeal.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported Tuesday that judges on the 3rd District Court of Appeals have asked the state Supreme Court to take the case from them and decide if the amendment is valid. They said the case involves significant questions of constitutional law and could have a far-ranging effect on Wisconsin's criminal justice system.

Myranda Tanck, a spokeswoman for Marsy's Law for Wisconsin, said she was confident the amendment is valid.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  Court documents show that a Nebraska man was shot after social media posts resulted in a case of mistaken identity.

The Omaha World-Herald obtained court documents in the Aug. 22 shooting in a suburban Omaha park. Court records show that 25-year-old Manuel L. Mata was arrested on suspicion of assault and weapons charges and is out on bail.

Shevaun Nelson told authorities that she and her boyfriend, Keelin Johnson, were test-driving a gold Honda Accord when they stopped at the park. Minutes later, a Dodge Challenger pulled behind them and a man fired into the car. Johnson was struck but managed to drive away.

Before the shooting, Mata had been following social media posts about thefts from cars, authorities said. Court records say the woman he lived with was among the theft victims. The posts included video of a car that bore some resemblance to the one Johnson and Nelson were in, but was not the car involved in the thefts.
WASHINGTON - A Washington elementary school staff member told third-graders in library class to reenact scenes from the Holocaust, directing them to dig their classmates' mass graves and simulate shooting the victims, according to an email from the school's principal. The instructor was placed on leave Friday.

The Watkins Elementary School staff member allegedly assigned specific roles to students. She cast one student as Adolf Hitler, according to an email from Principal MScott Berkowitz to the third-graders' parents. He did not name the staff member. That student is Jewish, according to the parent of a student who was asked to participate. At the end of the exercise, the child was told to pretend to commit suicide, as Hitler did.

Originally, the students were in library class on Friday for a self-directed project they would present to their classmates before winter break. But the instructor had students participate in the reenactment during their allotted research time, Berkowitz wrote to parents.

"I want to acknowledge the gravity of this poor instructional decision, as students should never be asked to act out or portray any atrocity, especially genocide, war, or murder," Berkowitz said in the email.

A different parent of a student who was a part of the reenactment said her son had to pretend to be on a train to a concentration camp, then act as if he were dying in a gas chamber. He also had to act as if he were shooting his peers, the parent said. The parent spoke on the condition of anonymity and declined to name the child.

The instructor allegedly made antisemitic comments during the reenactment. The parent said that when the children asked why the Germans did this, the staff member said it was "because the Jews ruined Christmas."

The instructor asked students after the reenactment not to tell anyone about it, but they told their homeroom teacher, the parent said.

The incident was reported to D.C. Public Schools' Comprehensive Alternative Resolution and Equity Team. The staff member is now on leave, pending a school investigation.

"This was not an approved lesson plan, and we sincerely apologize to our students and families who were subjected to this incident," a spokesperson for DCPS said.

The entire class met with the school's mental health response team after the Friday incident, according to Berkowitz's email.

Other Washington schools have reported incidents of bigotry in recent months. At Woodrow Wilson High School, several swastikas, the n-word and the phrase "white power" were scrawled on the wall of a men's bathroom early this month, according to reporting by student journalists at the Beacon, the school's independent newspaper.
BELVIDERE, Ill. (AP)  Police in northern Illinois are investigating the apparent shooting deaths of a man and his two young sons as a triple homicide and are searching for the man's missing vehicle.

Officers found the bodies of Andrew Hintt, 31, and his two sons, 5 and 7, at their home in Belvidere on Sunday night, police said Monday. Autopsies are pending.

Four shell casings were found at the scene, but no weapons have been recovered, police said.

The bodies were found after the boys' mother contacted the landlord to say she had not heard from anyone in the family. The landlord called 911 and officers responded, police said.

Belvidere Police Chief Shane Woody said the deaths are being investigated as a triple homicide.

Whoever did this horrific act is truly evil, he said Monday during a news conference. Belvidere is about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of Chicago.

Officers are searching for Hintts vehicle, a silver or gray 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk with Illinois registration: CT92923.

An online effort to pay for memorial services had raised more than $24,000 by Tuesday night.

These boys were energetic, loving, and they brought a smile to those around them," the GoFundMe page says. Their passing has left their friends and families with a void that will never heal.

Police asked anyone who knows anything about the vehicle's whereabouts or anything else regarding the case to contact the Belvidere Police Department at 815-544-2135 or Boone County Crime Stoppers at 815-547-7867.
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP)  A lead investigator in the alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pleaded no contest Monday to assaulting his wife, though he said he has no memory of it.

Kalamazoo County prosecutors struck a deal with former FBI agent Richard Trask after his wife declined to cooperate further.
HART, Mich. (AP)  The father of four Christian missionaries from Michigan who were among 12 who escaped from kidnappers in Haiti expressed gratitude Tuesday and said they're in good shape.

Two more family members were also kidnapped but were released a few weeks ago. They're associated with Hart Dunkard Brethren Church in Hart, about 190 miles (306 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.

A church elder, Ron Marks, read a statement from Ray Noecker, whose wife, Cheryl, and five of their children were kidnapped in October.

My family is all together and in good health. We are rejoicing together over the many ways that God answered the prayers of his people from all around the world, said Ray, who added that the family plans to return to Michigan soon.

Church member Carleton Horst identified the six hostages from Michigan as Cheryl Noecker, 48, Brandyn Noecker, 15, Kasondra Noecker, 14, Courtney Noecker, 18, Shelden Noecker, 6, and Cherilyn Noecker, 27.

Cheryl and Shelden were released a few weeks ago, Horst said.

They were in Haiti on behalf of Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries and were among 17 people abducted on Oct. 16, shortly after visiting an orphanage in Ganthier, in the Croix-des-Bouquets area.

Twelve made a risky overnight escape last week, walking for miles over difficult terrain with an infant and other children in tow, according to the organization known as CAM. Five were released earlier.

Ray Noecker, 49, was in Haiti with his family but was not at the orphanage when the abduction took place.

Horst and Marks offered no details about the escape in a Zoom conference call with reporters.

The story is for them to tell, Horst said.

Captors from the 400 Mawozo gang initially demanded millions of dollars in ransom. It is unclear if a ransom was paid.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  Oklahoma health officials announced Tuesday that theyve detected the states first confirmed case of the omicron COVID-19 variant.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health didnt release any information about where the case originated or whether the person was vaccinated.

The variants appearance in the state had been expected as it has been spreading throughout the United States.

Early research is indicating that the mitigation methods weve been using to combat COVID-19 are still the best way to detect and prevent severe illness from the omicron variant," interim Commissioner of Health Keith Reed said in a statement. Getting your COVID-19 shot is the best way to protect yourself and others, even from new variants like this one."

Oklahoma was one of the last states to confirm the presence of omicron. Federal health officials said Monday that omicron is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of infections last week.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Oklahoma declined over the past two weeks, going from 1,245.43 new cases per day on Dec. 5 to 788.14 new cases per day on Dec. 19, but the number of daily deaths increased during the same time period, from 17.71 deaths per day to 28.33 per day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

About 53% of Oklahomans are fully vaccinated, well below the national average of 61.6%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
BERLIN (AP)  Franziska Giffey, a former federal minister who quit Germany's national government earlier this year, became Berlin's new mayor on Tuesday as the leader of a three-party left-wing governing coalition.

Giffey was elected by the state legislature nearly three months after a regional election in which she led her center-left Social Democrats, the party of new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to a narrow victory over the environmentalist Greens.

Giffey, 43, served as minister for women and families in ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel's last government until she resigned in May amid allegations of plagiarism in her doctoral thesis. She was later stripped of her doctorate, but stuck to her longstanding plan to run for mayor.

She said at the time that she wrote the thesis to the best of my ability and mistakes she made werent intentional or planned.

Giffey was already well known to Berliners before she joined the national government in 2018 as the popular mayor of the German capital's Neukoelln district, which has a high poverty rate and many families with an immigrant background.

As Berlin mayor, she has identified housing as a top priority. Rising rents have long been a top issue in Berlin. Giffey's new government will have to decide what to do with the result of a nonbinding September referendum in which voters backed a call for the local administration to expropriate about 240,000 apartments from corporate owners.

Giffey's coalition with the Greens and the Left Party isn't united on that issue. It has tasked an expert commission to make a recommendation.

It's the same combination of parties that formed the capital's sometimes fractious government for the past five years, but with mostly different faces after Giffey's predecessor, fellow Social Democrat Michael Mueller, won a seat in the national parliament. He didn't seek another term after governing the city for seven years.

Giffey is the first woman to be elected as mayor though not the first to lead the city. Louise Schroeder, then the deputy mayor, stepped up to the top job in 1947-48 after the first post-World War II mayor resigned.
BOSTON (AP)  A former administrator at a Boston middle school charged with sexually abusing a child was released without bail at his arraignment, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Michael McDonald, 40, pleaded not guilty on Monday to aggravated child rape, posing a child in a state of nudity, possession of child sexual abuse materials, and dissemination of materials harmful to a minor, according to a statement from the office of Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins.
PARIS (AP)  The French army says it has neutralized a regional Islamic State group leader wanted in connection with the killing of seven aid workers, mostly French citizens, and a leading guide in a Niger giraffe park in August 2020.

Frances Defense Ministry said Tuesday that, in cooperation with Nigerien authorities, operatives from Frances anti-insurgent force Operation Barkhane struck Soumana Boura, an Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) leader, in a fatal airstrike.
ATLANTA (AP)  GE Appliances, a unit of Chinese appliance maker Haier, announced Tuesday that it will invest more than $118 million to expand its factory in northwest Georgia, hiring 600 additional workers by the end of 2024.

Spokesperson Julie Wood said the company needs to expand because of increased demand for the electric ranges, wall ovens and gas and electric cooktops it makes at the Walker County facility.

Consumers continue to be at home cooking and using their appliances more, and we dont see that trend changing  especially as more people are deciding to work from home permanently, she wrote in an email.

The growth will boost GE Appliances employment to more than 2,600 workers at its LaFayette factory, which uses the Roper Corp. name. The company also has another 400 workers combined at a distribution center in Commerce, a logistics facility in Crandall and a factory service dispatch center in Marietta.

The company makes products under the GE, GE Profile, Monogram, and Cafe brands in LaFayette.

Investing in U.S. manufacturing allows us to be closer to our consumers and serve them better and faster, which is critical to GE Appliances business strategy, Bill Good, vice president of manufacturing for GE Appliances, said in a statement.

GE Appliances announced a $130 million expansion in Georgia in 2019, including $43 million at the LaFayette plant, the $55 million Commerce distribution center, and a $32 million logistics hub in Crandall near the Georgia Ports Authoritys inland rail port in Murray County.

The two rounds of investment are expected to increase the capacity of the LaFayette plant by 50%. Wood said the company will spend to install more robots to automate processes or aid workers, as well as autonomous vehicles to carry materials around the plant.

The company says it's already hiring for the 600 new jobs, and that new workers will be paid as much as $17.50 an hour when they start.

GE Appliances could claim various tax breaks, including an income tax credit allowing it to annually deduct $2,500 per job from state income taxes, up to $7.5 million over five years. The company could also get local property tax breaks.

General Electric Co. sold the unit to Haier and an investment firm for $5.6 billion in 2016. The 12,000-employee unit remains based in Louisville, Kentucky, where the company announced a $450 million expansion in October. It also has assembly plants in Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee. Haier, based in Qingdao, China, has the rights to use the GE brand name through 2056.

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Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.
BERLIN (AP)  Germany announced new restrictions Tuesday that will begin after Christmas to slow the spread of the new omicron variant, rules that will fall short of a full lockdown but will include contact restrictions even for vaccinated people.

I can understand anyone who doesnt want to hear about the coronavirus, mutations and new virus variants, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a press conference Tuesday evening. But we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to this next wave.

Among the new rules are limiting private gatherings to 10 people, closing nightclubs nationwide and having large events like soccer matches held without an in-person audience. The restrictions will go into effect nationwide on Dec. 28, although states can implement the measures sooner.

Scholz said the government decided to wait until after Christmas to implement new national restrictions because family-focused holidays such as Christmas and Easter have not proven to be major drivers of the pandemic." But he said restrictions on New Year's celebrations are necessary to keep Germany's health system from being overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases.

This is no longer the time for parties and social evenings in big groups, Scholz said.

Scholz and Germany's 16 state governors agreed on the new restrictions at a meeting Tuesday, after the government's new panel of experts called for action to be taken within days nationwide because the omicron variant is racing across Europe.

Scholz and the state governors will meet again on Jan. 7 to discuss whether the measures should be continued or even tightened.

Hours before the meeting, the national disease control center called on Twitter for maximum contact restrictions starting immediately and lasting until mid-January, and for Germans to reduce their holiday travel to the absolutely necessary.

One state, Hamburg, already moved Tuesday to impose restrictions starting on Christmas Eve. There will be a 10-person limit on private meetings and dance events will be banned, effectively closing nightclubs. Restaurants and bars in the state will have to close at 11 p.m.  except on New Year's Eve, when they can stay open until 1 a.m.

Restrictions already in place in Germany target mainly the unvaccinated, with proof of vaccination or recovery required to enter nonessential stores. Also, the sale of New Year fireworks has been banned nationwide.

Scholz said the German government is also trying to speed up its booster vaccine campaign, aiming to give out an additional 30 million shots by the end of January by keeping some vaccination centers open over the holidays.

Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate remains our goal, Scholz said. The coronavirus doesnt take a Christmas break.

But authorities remain dissatisfied that only 70.4% of Germany's population has been fully vaccinated and 32.6% have received boosters.

Germany's infection rate is, for now, drifting downward slowly. On Tuesday, the disease control center recorded 306.4 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days, down from 375 a week earlier, with 23,428 new daily cases.

However, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has warned that Germany faces a massive fifth wave of infections because of omicron, which he says can't realistically be prevented.

The disease control center said Monday that people who have recovered or have been fully vaccinated now face a high risk of infection, while it is moderate for those who have received a booster. It said the risk of getting COVID-19 is very high for the unvaccinated.

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MILWAUKEE (AP)  Wisconsin's governor received a complaint Monday seeking the removal of Milwaukee County's district attorney because one his prosecutors recommended $1,000 bail for a man who authorities say later drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in a nearby county, killing six people.

Darrell Brooks is being held on a $5 million bail for the six homicide charges he faces in the Nov. 21 parade deaths in Waukesha, a Milkwauee suburb that is in Waukesha County. He was released on bail just days earlier after allegedly running over the mother of his child with his SUV.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has been under intense criticism for the bail recommendation. Chisholm has called it inappropriately low given the circumstances of the crimes Brooks was facing and his prior history.

A group of people who say they are Milwaukee County taxpayers filed the complaint Friday asking Evers to remove Chisholm to prevent similarly low bail recommendations in future cases involving violent offenders. The governor's office confirmed it received the complaint Monday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

"The devastation resulting from Chisholms dereliction of duty to protect the public has reached outside the borders of Milwaukee County, the complaint says.

It was signed by Orville Seymer and six people who did not list their addresses or return phone calls from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Seymer has long been affiliated with a local group called Citizens for Responsible Government that formed in the wake of a 2002 Milwaukee County public pension scandal.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has not yet had a chance to review the complaint, a spokeswoman said.

A spokesman for Chisholm, who is also a Democrat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under state law, a governor may remove an elected district attorney for inefficiency, neglect of duty, official misconduct, or malfeasance in office.

Earlier this year, Evers launched an investigation into Eau Claire County District Attorney Gary King, also a Democrat, over alleged sexual harassment in the workplace after receiving a complaint from Kings former colleagues. King resigned before the investigation concluded.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Hennepin County Sheriff David Hutchinson has been sentenced to two years' probation in connection with a misdemeanor drunken driving charge.

Hutchinson crashed his county-owned SUV near Alexandria during the early morning hours of Dec. 8 after attending a state sheriff's conference. His blood alcohol content was 0.13%. The legal limit to drive in Minnesota is 0.08%
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP)  Amid a surge in coronavirus hospitalizations in Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan announced $100 million in emergency funding Tuesday to ramp up hospital and nursing home staffing and make more testing, treatments and vaccines available.

As I have been warning for the past few weeks, we are entering another pivotal moment in the fight against COVID-19, Hogan said. We will continue to constantly monitor this surge and take additional actions as needed.

Hogan said he's also mobilizing the Maryland National Guard to provide support personnel to expand testing sites and hours.

The emergency funding includes $50 million to stabilize hospital staffing and another $50 million to expand the availability of COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccines at hospitals and nursing homes, Hogan said. The state also will provide $30 million for schools to purchase testing resources, he said.

Hogan, who is working from home after testing positive for the coronavirus himself on Monday, made the announcement via video. He said he was only experiencing cold-like symptoms, something he attributes to getting vaccinated. He urged others to do the same.

While 91% of adults in the state are vaccinated, staff will continue to work to reach those who still aren't, he said.

Right now that remaining 9% is responsible for more than 75% of our COVID-19 hospitalizations, pushing our hospital systems and our health care heroes to the brink," he said. Were pleading with those people. Please do not wait until its too late or until you get too sick. Go out now and get vaccinated.

Maryland reported 6,218 new cases on Tuesday, the highest number of cases reported on one day during the pandemic. The seven-day average testing positivity rate grew to 11.6%, a 1.4% change from a day earlier.

The National Guard will provide support personnel to expand testing sites and hours. Annapolis and Prince Georges County testing sites will expand operations sites to six days a week, officials said. Testing at the State Center site in Baltimore will also expand, with at-home rapid test kits available on site.

Meanwhile, hospitalizations grew to 1,392, an increase of more than 180% in the last month. Hogan said projections show that the hospitalizations could surpass 2,000 with a peak in mid-to-late January, which is typically the peak of flu season.

The number of coronavirus deaths has not been updated since Maryland officials took state health department servers offline amid an apparent cyberattack earlier this month. The state reported 11,022 deaths on Dec. 4. Health officials began reporting case numbers and positivity rate data again Monday after a more than two week interruption.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  Intel has told workers that unvaccinated people who don't get an exemption for religious or medical reasons will be on unpaid leave beginning in April.

The California-based semiconductor company told employees last month they had a Jan. 4 deadline to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or seek an exemption, citing a government mandate for federal contractors.

The constitutionality of broad government mandates is up in the air. A federal court in Georgia blocked the contractor mandate earlier this month, but the government is appealing.

Intel is for now leaving its policies in place, the Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

We are closely monitoring the legal environment and expect it will take time for the case in Georgia, as well as other similar cases, to be fully resolved, Intel said in a statement.

In a Dec. 7 memo to employees, Chief People Officer Christy Pambianchi told employees the Jan. 4 vaccine deadline remains in place.

She wrote that employees who arent vaccinated must seek a medical or religious accommodation and submit to weekly testing, regardless of whether they are still working remotely.

Intel will review employees exemption requests until March 15. Pambianchi said employees who dont receive an exemption will begin unpaid leave on April 4 for at least three months but will not be terminated.

She said Intel will continue providing health care benefits to unvaccinated employees on leave.
D'IBERVILLE, Miss. (AP)  Authorities in south Mississippi are offering a $2,500 reward for information in hopes of identifying a gunshot victim.

The man was found dead with an apparent gunshot wound Friday along Mississippi 15, Harrison County law officers said.

Hes a Black man between the ages of 19-25 with a money sign tattoo on this left ring finger, WLOX-TV reported.

He was wearing a red and black jacket, a black Nike shirt with a Just do it emblem, authorities said. He was also wearing gray jogging pants, white Nike slides and marijuana print boxer shorts.

The reward is being offered by Crime Stoppers.
TOKYO (AP)  Japan hanged three death-row inmates on Tuesday, its first executions in two years, amid growing criticism by human rights groups of the country's use of the death penalty.

One of the three, Yasutaka Fujishiro, was convicted of killing seven people and setting fire to their house in 2004, while the other two, Tomoaki Takanezawa and Mitsunori Onogawa, were convicted in the 2003 killings of two pinball parlor employees.

Executions are carried out in high secrecy in Japan, where prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. Since 2007, Japan has begun disclosing the names of those executed and some details of their crimes, but information is still limited.

Justice Minister Yoshihisa Furukawa said at a news conference that the three had committed extremely ghastly crimes and the punishment was appropriate.

Furukawa declined to comment on the timing of the executions, often carried out during the year-end holiday season when parliament is in recess, which opponents say is an attempt by the government to reduce criticism. Japan's parliament had its final session of the year on Tuesday.

As justice minister, I authorized their executions after giving extremely careful considerations again and again, Furukawa said.

Japan now has 107 people on death row at detention centers, instead of regular prisons.

It has maintained the death penalty despite growing international criticism, saying the punishment is needed to take into consideration the victims feelings and as a deterrence for heinous crime.

Japan and the U.S. are the only two countries in the Group of Seven industrialized nations that use capital punishment. A survey by the Japanese government showed an overwhelming majority of the public supports executions, Furukawa said.

He defended the short notice given to inmates about to be executed, citing a serious mental impact on them if they learn their fate way in advance.

Two death-row inmates recently filed a lawsuit against the government saying the system causes psychological distress and seeking compensation over mental suffering from living in uncertainty until the last day of their lives.

Most executions are also carried out long after sentencing.

The executions were the first since Dec. 26, 2019, when a Chinese citizen convicted in the 2003 killing of a family of four in Fukuoka was put to death. He was one of three hanged that year. In 2018, Japan executed 15, including 13 Aum Shinrikyo cult members convicted in a deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subways.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  A North Carolina law cannot temporarily lift the statute of limitations to allow people who were sexually abused as children decades ago to be able to sue in civil court, a three-judge panel ruled on Monday.

The measure, which had passed the state legislature unanimously in 2019, was designed to help child sex abuse victims sue the people who abused them and the groups who let it happen, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported.

Among other aspects, the law allowed any sex abuse victim to file a lawsuit in 2020 or 2021, even if they would normally have been barred because the statute of limitations already expired.

But the judges ruled 2-1 that that change was unconstitutional.

The two judges in the majority, Gregory Horne and Imelda Pate, wrote that previous case law says the state constitution bars the legislature from reopening the statute of limitations, even for meritorious causes of action.

The judges stressed that they felt bound by precedent and suggested that the issue may be better suited for the North Carolina Supreme Court to consider instead of the panel.

Judge Martin McGee dissented. He said the legislature can make such a change  as long as it passes the legal test of whether the change had a rational basis.

Other parts of the law, such as a section requiring training for teachers to spot signs of potential abuse victims, or a section making it a crime for people to fail to report child abuse to the authorities, were not challenged, the newspaper reported.

The bill had sailed through the Republican-controlled General Assembly with support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle as well as Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein. Lawmakers worked to rewrite several laws surrounding sex crimes in North Carolina following a series of nationwide abuse scandals involving the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America.

Stein had publicly pushed for victims to use the new law to go to court. It was not immediately clear whether the ruling would be appealed.

I am disappointed with this decision, Stein told the newspaper in a written statement. I continue to believe it is constitutional and will continue to defend the law if the decision is appealed.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP)  A Kansas woman has been sentenced to more than 31 years in prison for killing a 3-year-old girl in a case that drew attention to the agency responsible for overseeing young children in the state.

Jacqulyn Kirkpatrick was sentenced Monday, a little more than a month after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and interfering with a law enforcement investigation, the Kansas City Star reported.

Olivia Ann Jansen of Kansas City, Kansas, died in July 2020. Her body was found in a shallow grave, hours after her father reported her missing. A medical examiner's report later showed that she had signs of physical abuse and died of a brain bleed. Kirkpatrick and the child's father, Howard Jansen III, were arrested.

Jansen is scheduled to go to trial May 2 on a charge of first-degree murder.

Olivias death led to calls for changes at the Kansas Department of Children and Families. Information previously released by the agency shows it received two reports of alleged physical abuse involving Olivia in February 2020. One report alleged Olivias father hit her on the leg, leaving a bruise and possibly breaking the limb. The other report alleged Kilpatrick hit the girl. Both were ruled unsubstantiated after a person who alleged the abuse recanted.

The girl also was visited by a caseworker over a video call 11 days before she was found dead. That investigation stemmed from a hotline report from someone worried that her caregiver was unavailable or unable to care for her and may have been using drugs.

Child welfare officials also have acknowledged that they received repeated reports about a 2-year-old Wichita boy before he was found dead in a motel of a methadone overdose in May 2019. A 3-year-old Wichita boys body was found encased in concrete in 2017 after relatives repeatedly reported abuse. In the Kansas City area, a 7-year-old boy was tortured, starved, killed and fed to pigs in 2015 despite extensive involvement with welfare officials.

The state has taken several steps to address the issues, including creating an independent office to review complaints against the Kansas foster care system and recommend changes in child welfare policies, a longtime goal of advocates for abused and neglected children.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  New California congressional maps finalized Monday leave the Los Angeles area with one fewer U.S. House seat and set up a handful of highly competitive races for next year's midterm elections.

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission was tasked with drawing new state political maps based on census data, a process that happens once every 10 years. California lost a U.S. House seat for the first time, going from 53 to 52, because the state grew more slowly than others. But the state of nearly 40 million people still has by far the largest House delegation.

The borders of each California seat shifted slightly to fit the requirement that they represent 760,000 people. But it was the LA-area seat held by Democratic Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard that was effectively eliminated, with a huge portion of her district folding into another in Long Beach. Roybal-Allard, the first Mexican American woman elected to Congress, announced Monday she won't seek re-election.

Nor will Democratic Rep. Alan Lowenthal, who currently represents Long Beach. The city's mayor, Democrat Robert Garcia, has already announced plans to run for Congress. Garcia is a close ally of Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Though California is a heavily Democrat state, it also has Republican strongholds in the northern region and parts of the agricultural Central Valley, home to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The GOP currently holds 11 of California's 53 seats.

Democrats have more registered voters in 43 of the newly drawn districts, according to California Target Book, an organization that analyzes redistricting data. But a registration edge doesnt always translate to electorate wins.

The Central Valley and suburban Orange County have seen some of the country's most competitive U.S. House races in recent midterm elections, and that's poised to continue with the new maps. Democrats knocked off seven Republicans in 2018, only for the GOP to take four of those seats back in 2020.

The borders of Fresno area districts represented by Democratic Rep. Jim Costa and Republican Reps. David Valadao and Devin Nunes shifted significantly. Nunes has already announced he won't run for re-election and plans to lead a media organization launched by former President Donald Trump. Like Valadao, Democratic Rep. Josh Harder saw his Modesto-area district sliced almost in half, perhaps creating a more complicated path to re-election.

In Orange County, a major piece of Democratic Rep. Katie Porters district, including Irvine, has been combined with beach communities along the coast that make up the bulk of Republican Michelle Steels district, potentially creating a race between the two incumbents. The new district has a miniscule registration edge for Republicans. Porter is a fundraising powerhouse with more than $14 million in her campaign account. Steel, meanwhile, has $1.3 million.

Elsewhere, the suburban Los Angeles County district held by Republican Rep. Mike Garcia grew slightly more Democratic, while the coastal district represented by Democratic Rep. Mike Levin that includes Carlsbad and Oceanside turned slightly less Democratic.

California is one of 10 states that relies on an independent commission to draw lines, rather than judges or partisan lawmakers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Commissioners arent allowed to consider a districts partisan makeup when drawing lines. Alongside creating districts with even population, the state constitution requires the commission to consider geographic continuity and compliance with the Voting Rights Act, which sets rules for racial representation.

Latinos, who account for 40% of Californias population, will make up a majority of the voting-age population in 16 of the 52 new districts, said Evan McLaughlin, a redistricting expert who works with Democrats.

The 14-member commission included five registered Republicans, five registered Democrats and four people registered without a political party. They were selected through a lengthy process run by the state auditors office. Voters created the commission in 2008 in an effort to remove partisanship from the process of drawing new political lines.

Im so proud of the work that together we have completed to serve all Californians," Commissioner Pedro Toledo, who has no party affiliation, said as the commission finished reviewing the proposed lines. Despite a difference of opinion at times, there was always commitment to our common goal: The goal of creating representative and fair maps for all Californians."

The commission faced some criticism for a lack of transparency. Commissioners regularly made map changes in live meetings and sometimes did not upload the new maps for days, making it difficult for the public to understand the changes. Delayed Census data due to the pandemic shortened how much time the commission had to complete its work.

Other California lawmakers who don't plan to seek reelection are Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier, who represents the San Francisco Bay Area, and Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, who plans to run for mayor of Los Angeles.
A bipartisan commission tasked with redrawing the boundaries for Connecticut's congressional districts failed to meet its deadline on Tuesday, sending the challenging job of crafting a new map to the Connecticut Supreme Court once again.

In 2011, the last time boundaries were redrawn, lawmakers couldnt reach agreement on the congressional districts and the state's highest court named a special master to redraw the lines.

We'll continue to have conversations with our counterparts, but I just don't think we'll be able to get there. It's not adversarial. No one is angry at anybody. This is high-stakes stuff, said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford. He noted how both Democrats and Republicans face external pressures to redraw the congressional lines in a certain way. In contrast, the group was able to reach bipartisan agreements on how to redraw the state Senate and House of Representatives to accommodate population shifts, lauding the process as a template for the rest of the rest of the country.

This is bigger than Connecticut. It has national implications, potentially. And so, I think for a lot of us, we're hearing from people down in Washington about what they think and I think there's a lot less appetite for agreement, given the level of stress and toxicity in that environment, he said. I think both sides feel it.

Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, however, blamed the state's all-Democratic congressional delegation for the process falling apart. He accused the U.S. House members of thinking they're an entitled class that's scared of competition" from Republicans and only want to to have safe districts.

Congressional Democrats only care about keeping their power. Their failure to reasonably negotiate led to an impasse. Its why nothing gets done in Washington and it is unfortunate that this dysfunction is being brought to our state, he said in a written statement.

The Connecticut Supreme Court agreed earlier this month to give the Reapportionment Commission until Dec. 21 at noon to finish its work redrawing the congressional district lines.

The justices also ordered the commission to file an interim status report on Dec. 15 to update the court on the panels efforts. That report was to include names, addresses and telephone numbers of three people the commission would recommend to serve as a special master, in case the panel couldn't adopt a plan by Dec. 21. But as of Tuesday, the group still could not agree on three names, Ritter said.

In a notice released Tuesday afternoon, the court said it will appoint its own special master unless the commission complies with its earlier order and produces three names by 5 p.m. The Republicans have submitted their own list of three names to the court, according to documents provided by the Judicial Branch.

Ritter said he thought it was absolutely terrible the state Supreme Court is being put in the awkward position, for the second time in a decade, of having to finish the legislative task of redrawing district lines. Ritter said he was extremely disappointed in both himself and the process.

I think it is a very risky strategy for both sides to go to court because were asking the court to achieve a very difficult situation. And I just hope that the court will agree that minimal changes is what should be required. I think that is where I am," he said. But I readily admit this is not what they do and the expectation should always be that the legislators will do this job in the future.
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP)  A longtime Iowa business owner convicted of using his diner in sex trafficking and drug crimes has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.

Hershal James Ratliff, 71, of Council Bluffs, was sentenced Thursday after being found guilty in July of six counts of human trafficking and one count of distribution of a controlled substance to a minor.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  People who haven't been vaccinated for COVID-19 are taking up too many beds at Michigan's strained hospitals, as the state prepares for the rapid spread of omicron variant, the governor said Tuesday.

The omicron variant is already the dominant strain in the U.S. and is expected to spread rapidly through Michigan in the near future, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said at a news conference in Grand Rapids where health officials also spoke.

I have come to appreciate the fact that because this virus is mutating and its spreading so quickly, every one of us is likely going to have some exposure at some point, Whitmer said. What is our goal? To stay out of the hospital and to stay alive. And the best way to do that is through vaccination and through being boosted.

Much remains unknown about the omicron variant, including whether it causes more or less severe illness than previous strains. Early studies suggest that the vaccinated will need a booster shot for the best chance at preventing omicron infection, but that even without the extra dose, vaccination still should offer strong protection against severe illness and death, health officials said.

Elizabeth Hertel, director of the state health agency, said that although the state's positivity rate has decreased to 16.2%, that is still too high. During the seven-day period that ended Dec. 9, Michigan recorded 756 COVID-19 deaths.

Thats over 100 people every day, in one week, who wont be here to celebrate the holidays or ring in the new year, Hertel said. And there could be hundreds or thousands more who wont be at our tables next year.

Hertel said that from Jan. 15 through Dec. 3, people who were unvaccinated or weren't fully vaccinated made up 85.1% of the state's recorded COVID-19 cases, 88.1% of its coronavirus-related hospitalizations and 85.5% of its deaths from the disease.

Health officials on Tuesday asked anyone who is eligible to get vaccinated to do so, if not to save their own lives but to save those of people who are the most in danger if they catch COVID-19 or who can't get vaccinated.

Dr. Shelley Schmidt, a pulmonary and critical care doctor at Spectrum Health, talked about the daily experience of watching children crying over a dead parent and severely sick or dying parents asking doctors what more they they could have done for their children and spouses?

Since the beginning of this pandemic, I have never taken care of a patient dying from the vaccine," Schmidt said. "I have taken care of dozens and dozens who are dead from this virus.

Whitmer didn't say whether the state could expect a return of mask mandates like those seen earlier in the pandemic, but she encouraged people to wear them and Hertel suggested people should upgrade the quality of the ones they wear.

Our focus has to be on making sure that people get boosted and the unvaccinated get vaccinated, and that our kids get vaccinated," Whitmer said. "Sweeping mandates are less likely to influence and encourage that population to get vaccinated.

___

Anna Liz Nichols 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.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has tested positive for COVID-19, along with his wife and teenage son, the governor's office announced Tuesday.

Walz said in a statement that the three of them tested positive on Monday after his son began experiencing mild symptoms over the weekend. The governor and first lady Gwen Walz remain asymptomatic.

All three have been vaccinated, including Walz who received the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine in March and the Moderna booster in October. They will quarantine for 10 days, Walz said

My family and I are isolating, and I will continue to work from home until I feel better and test negative for the virus, Walz said in a statement. In the meantime, I encourage every Minnesotan to get tested before the holidays, and to roll up their sleeves and get their vaccine and their booster to ensure they, too, have strong protection against COVID-19.

As a dad, I'm super concerned for my family," Walz said in a video posted on Twitter, while expressing faith in the effectiveness of vaccines and booster shots, citing his own lack of symptoms. The governor urged Minnesotans to get the booster shot and get tested if they experience any symptoms during the holiday season.

The biggest gift we can give is staying safe and seeing our relatives into the new year, he said.

The omicron variant has quickly become the dominant version of the coronavirus, making up 73% of new infections across the country this week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Minnesota hospital capacity remains strained amid fears of an omicron-fueled spike in cases, with nearly 1,500 people hospitalized with complications due to COVID-19 as of Monday, including 355 in intensive care.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  An advertising-technology billionaire has formally resigned his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and rebuked the faith over social issues and LGBTQ rights in an unusual public move.

Jeff T. Green has pledged to donate 90% of his estimated $5 billion fortune, starting with a $600,000 donation to the LGBTQ-rights group Equality Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Green said in a Monday resignation letter to church President Russell M. Nelson that he hasnt been active in the faith widely known as Mormon for more than a decade but wanted to make his departure official and remove his name from membership records.

I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in womens rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights, he wrote. Eleven family members and a friend formally resigned along with him.

The church didn't immediately return a message from The Associated Press seeking comment Tuesday, but in recent years has shown a willingness to engage on LGBTQ rights that is unusual for a conservative faith. It maintains its doctrinal opposition to same-sex marriage and intimacy, but the faith didn't block a 2019 ban on so-called conversion therapy in Utah and in November high-ranking leader Dallin Oaks called for a recognition of both religious rights and LGBTQ rights.

Still, the church has taken positions over the years that have been deeply painful for many in the LGBTQ community. Green, for his part, said most church members are good people trying to do right, but he also worries about the faiths transparency around its history and finances.

Green, 44, now lives in Southern California. He is the CEO and chairman of The Trade Desk, an advertising-technology firm he founded in 2009.

He also mentioned concerns about a $100 billion investment portfolio held by the faith. It was the subject of an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower complaint in 2019, from a former employee who charged the church had improperly built it up using member donations that are supposed to go to charitable causes.

Leaders have defended how the church uses and invests member donations, saying most is used for operational and humanitarian needs, but a portion is safeguarded to build a reserve for the future. The faith annually spends about $1 billion on humanitarian and welfare aid, leaders have said.

The church has also come under criticism for conservative social positions. Women do not hold the priesthood in the faith, and Black men could not until the 1970s.

In recent years, though, the faith has worked with the NAACP and donated nearly $10 million for initiatives to help Black Americans. It has also worked with Equality Utah to pass a state LGBTQ nondiscrimination law, with religious exemptions.

Another prominent onetime Latter-day Saint sued the faith this year, accusing it of fraud and seeking to recover millions of dollars in contributions. James Huntsman is a member of one of Utahs most well-known families and brother of a former governor. The suit was later tossed out.
GROVETOWN, Ga. (AP)  A Georgia man walked out of prison a free man after more than two decades behind bars after his murder case was dismissed.

Devonia Inman, 43, was freed Monday, and immediately embraced his mother and stepfather as he emerged from the Augusta State Medical Prison, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP)  Some Native American students at the University of Kansas want a say in criminal cases involving vandalism and thefts at the Native Hosts art exhibit.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that members of the First Nations Student Association have asked the Douglas County District Attorney's Office to include them in processing of the criminal cases. Doctoral student D'Arlyn Bell said the crimes made Native American students feel targeted.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  New Mexico's governor signed a nearly $500 milling spending bill Tuesday that draws on federal pandemic relief funds to expand high-speed internet access, bolster roads, upgrade state parks, expand nurse training programs and help teachers pay off their student debts amid a shortage of educators.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, approved all proposed spending in the bill and vetoed a requirement that local governments contribute to related affordable housing projects. The governor said that requirement was unreasonable given economic distress.

A bill-signing ceremony in Belen marked a truce in a monthslong standoff between the governor and a handful of state senators over which branches of government can allocate $1.7 billion in federal pandemic aid.

Lujan Grisham initially asserted sole authority over the aid approved in March by President Joe Biden and Congress. Legislators including Republican Sen. Greg Baca of Belen and unaffiliated Sen. Jacob Candelaria of Albuquerque challenged the governor at the Supreme Court and successfully defended the Legislature's oversight of the federal relief funds.

Baca highlighted a provision of the bill that sets aside $50 million for the possible construction of an acute care hospital in Valencia County, which encompasses rapidly growing communities on the southern outskirts of Albuquerque.

The bill signed on Tuesday provides $133 million for high-speed internet infrastructure. Spending can go towards alternatives to underground fiber-optic cable such as satellite networks.

It assigned $142 million to road and highway infrastructure projects, $25 million to housing assistance, $20 million for upgrades to the state's network of state parks, $15 million to nurse training programs and $15 million toward advertising aimed at attracting tourists to the state.

The state will spend another $10 million to pick up litter, $7 million on outdoor recreation programs and $5 million on food banks.

The state already used $600 million in federal pandemic relief to replenish the states unemployment insurance trust fund, avoiding payroll tax increases on local businesses.

Lujan Grisham previously authorized spending on sweepstakes prizes for people who got vaccinated and supplementary wages to agricultural workers that harvest and process the states renowned chile crop.

Of the state's original $1.7 billion allocation in federal aid, legislators have wrapped more than a half-billion dollars into the state general fund to allow more time for spending decisions in the coming years.

Leading legislators are highlighting the need for workforce training and education programs to expand and diversify a state economy that is closely tethered to oil production, tourism and federal military and research facilities.
GIESSEN, Germany (AP)  She had already walked for 60 hours through the wet, dark forests of Poland, trying to make her way to Germany, when the 29-year-old Syrian Kurd twisted her knee.

It wasnt the first setback in Bushras journey.

Earlier, her road companion and best friend had fainted in a panic attack as Polish border guards chased them. They hid in ditches and behind trees as her friend tried to regain her breath, but it was no good. They turned themselves in and the guards dumped them back across the border into Belarus.

They quickly returned, bedraggled and wet, on the same trail. After twisting her knee, Bushra persevered. For two more days, she dragged her right foot behind her through the rain and freezing temperatures of the forests. Finally, they reached a Polish village where a car took them across the border into Germany  for a life she hopes will be free.

I put up with the unbearable pain. Running away from something is sometimes the easiest thing, Bushra said in the central German town of Giessen, where she applied for asylum as a refugee. There is no future for us in Syria.

Bushra, who asked that her last name be withheld for her own safety, is the face of the new Syrian migrant. More Syrians are leaving home, even though the 10-year-old civil war has wound down and conflict lines have been frozen for years.

They are fleeing not from the wars horrors, which drove hundreds of thousands to Europe in the massive wave of 2015, but from the misery of the wars aftermath. They have lost hope in a future at home amid abject poverty, rampant corruption and wrecked infrastructure, as well as continued hostilities, government repression and revenge attacks by multiple armed groups.

More than 78,000 Syrians have applied for asylum in the European Union so far this year, a 70% increase from last year, according to EU records. After Afghans, Syrians are the largest single nationality among this years nearly 500,000 asylum applicants so far.

Nine out of 10 people live in poverty in Syria. Around 13 million need humanitarian assistance, a 20% increase from the year before. The government is unable to secure basic needs, and nearly 7 million are internally displaced.

Roads, telecommunications, hospitals and schools have been devastated by the war and widening economic sanctions are making reconstruction impossible.

The coronavirus pandemic compounded the worst economic crisis since the war began in 2011. Syrias currency is collapsing, and minimum wage is barely enough to buy five pounds of meat a month, if meat is even available. Crime and drug production are on the rise while militias, backed by foreign powers, operate smuggling rackets and control entire villages and towns.

The numbers are far below the levels of 2015, but desperate Syrians are racing to get out. Social media groups are dedicated to helping them find a way. Users ask where they can apply for work or scholarship visas. Others seek advice on the latest migration routes, cost of smugglers, and how risky it would be to use assumed identities to get out of Syria or enter other countries.

At the same time, Syrias neighbors, grappling with their own economic crises, are calling for the refugees on their soil to be sent home. Among the new migrants to the EU are Syrians leaving Turkey or Lebanon, where they had been refugees for years.

Belarus briefly opened its border with Poland to migrants this summer. That created a standoff with the EU, which accuses Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating illegal migration in retaliation for European sanctions against him.

Bushra was one of only several thousand who managed to get through from Belarus, where 15 died trying to make the trek.

She left for Minsk from Irbil, Iraq, in late September.

It was the start of a harrowing journey. Bushra recounted how they survived on biscuits and water for days and how six of them slept sitting up on a single dry mat. Her friend broke a tooth shivering from the cold.

After the forest ordeal, they had to hide in a ditch at one point when a police patrol with sniffer dogs came to check their car. Riding along the highway, Bushra removed her head scarf to avoid suspicion at checkpoints. She reached Giessen on Oct. 12.

I surprised myself by how I put up with all this, Bushra said.

It was all worth it, she said. When you lose hope, you follow a path more dangerous than where you started.

Bushras life in Syria had been in upheaval for years. She was at university in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour when the war broke out in 2011 and anti-government protests spread in the city. She quickly moved to another university farther north. Soon Deir el-Zour and the rest of the east were taken over by the Islamic State group.

Bushra and her parents were outside IS rule in the Kurdish-held northeast but still lived in fear of violence. She hardly left the house for two years.

Eventually, she found a job with an international aid group. Ever since, she saved up to leave, checking into routes out of Syria.

Syrias oil-rich northeast, which already suffered from years of neglect, was devastated by the war. Drought wrecked farmers livelihoods. The currency collapse gutted incomes. The salary of Bushras father, a government employee, is now worth $15 a month, down from $100 at the start of the war.

Moreover, the region was not secure. IS militants were defeated in 2019, but sleeper cells continue to target Kurdish-led security and civil administration.

Eight kidnappings were reported this summer in a town near her.

Threats were made against Bushra after she exposed a corruption case involving powerful local officials, causing her to fear for her life. She declined to give details because her family remains in Syria.

The harassment expedited her plans to leave and convinced her parents, who had been worried about a single woman going on such a journey alone.

The U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan this summer raised Bushras worries that the U.S. would also pull out its 900 troops in Syrias Kurdish-administered northeast. The troops carry out anti-terrorism operations with local forces, and their presence also keeps rival forces at bay.

If they withdraw, she feared that Turkey, which considers the Kurdish-led forces in Syria as terrorists, could launch a military campaign against the Kurds. Syrian government forces would also move in, endangering Bushra because they consider those who work with international aid groups unregistered in Damascus as traitors.

If I stay in Syria, I will be pursued by security all my life, she said.

Gaining asylum and residency in Germany is her gateway to freedom.

She hopes to study political science to understand the news, which she boycotted since the war started to avoid scenes of the atrocities she was already living. She wants to have freedom to travel. I am done with restrictions, she said.

Going back to Syria is impossible, she said. If she doesnt get her papers in Germany, Bushra says she will keep trying.

If I cant get to where I want to go, I will go to where I can live.

___

El Deeb reported from Beirut.
TOKYO (AP)  The suspect in a deadly fire at a mental health clinic in Osaka last week might have studied the fatal 2019 Kyoto Animation studio arson while preparing his own attack that killed 25 people, police said Tuesday.

Osaka police have identified 61-year-old Morio Tanimoto as the prime suspect in Friday's fire at the clinic on the fourth floor of an eight-story building in Osakas main business district of Kitashinchi. The blaze also left two people severely injured, including Tanimoto.

The incident sent shockwaves across the country and recalled the deadly arson in Kyoto two years ago.

While searching the suspect's house, police found a months-old newspaper containing an article on the 2019 attack on the Kyoto Animation studio, indicating Tanimoto might have been inspired by it, an Osaka police investigator told The Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity because of department rules.

In the Kyoto Animation case, an attacker stormed into the building, spread gasoline near the entrance and set the building on fire, causing an explosion and killing 36 people and injuring more than 30 others. The incident shocked Japan and drew an outpouring of grief from anime fans worldwide.

Tanimoto purchased 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of gasoline in November in apparent preparation, police said.

Tanimoto, who is severely injured and unconscious, is being treated in a hospital and has not been arrested or charged. One of the severely injured victims from the attack died in a hospital, bringing the fire's death toll to 25, police said Tuesday.

Officials believe the death toll at the downtown Osaka building was high because the fire was started near the floor's only stairway, leaving many people trapped inside while smoke and heat quickly filled the space, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.

A security camera at the clinic showed a man walking into the reception area with a paper bag, which he put on the floor and kicked. As liquid poured out of the bag, he ducked down and moved his hand, and then a blaze shot up to the ceiling, with flames and smoke erupting.

In the footage, the man believed to be Tanimoto is seen moving farther into the clinic, where there was no emergency exit, the police official said, adding that it was not known whether he had a suicidal intent.

The skilled metal worker has had troubled relationships with his family and served a prison term for stabbing his own son in 2011 with a knife in a forced suicide attempt, Japanese media reported. His brother told the media that Tanimoto had distanced himself from the family and they haven't been in touch for about 30 years.

Autopsy results showed most victims died from inhaling carbon monoxide and had few burns or other external injuries, police said Tuesday. The clinics psychiatrist, Kotaro Nishizawa, was among the victims.

Witnesses and investigators have suggested that the victims struggled to find their way out of the clinic as they gasped for air. Most were found to have collapsed while headed to the other end of the clinic, only to find there was no alternative exit.

The government has launched a nationwide inspection of buildings with three or more stories and only one stairway as part of an effort to step up safety measures.
ISLAMABAD (AP)  Pakistans military test-fired a home-grown Babur cruise missile on Tuesday that has a range of more than 900 kilometers (560 miles), twice the distance of an earlier missile of the same model, a statement said.

The missile's extended range further enhances nuclear-armed Pakistans military capability.

Pakistan and neighbor India, which also has a nuclear arsenal, have a volatile relationship, having fought three wars against each other. The military buildup of both countries is closely watched by a nervous international community as India and Pakistan have come dangerously close to a fourth war at least twice over the last two decades.

The missile, dubbed the Babur Cruise Missile 1B, is domestically developed, said the military statement. An earlier version had the limited capacity to travel just 450 kilometers (280 miles).
WESTPORT, Conn. (AP)  Four workers at a Connecticut day care center have been arrested after a teacher was accused of kicking a ball at babies, moving children around in an aggressive manner and leaving them crying for extended periods of time, police said Monday.

The teacher, identified by police as Suzette Virgo, turned herself in on Friday and is charged with risk of injury to a child. Three other staff members at the Westport day care center turned themselves in to face charges alleging they failed in their duty as mandated reporters to report abuse or neglect.
BANGOR, Maine (AP)  Police in a Maine city said they are investigating a vehicle crash that killed a pedestrian in Bangor.

Police said the crash killed city resident Gary Rich, 74, on Dec. 17. They said the crash happened in the late afternoon near the city's downtown.
FOLSOM, Pa. (AP) 

A suspect has been arrested in the shooting death of a smoke shop employee gunned down last week in the Philadelphia-area business, police said.

Shawn Williams, 39, of Chester is charged in Delaware County in the death Friday afternoon of 45-year-old Sameer Abdullah, the Ridley Township police department said Tuesday.

Police earlier posted a photo of a man they alleged entered the Empire Smoke Shop and Phones store in Crum Lynne and shot and killed an employee. Police said Abdullah, who was found behind the counter, was shot multiple times with a revolver.

Police said the motive for the slaying hasn't been determined, but it wasn't a robbery. They said that by all accounts, the victim was hard-working and well-respected." They credited tips from the public that led to what they called the quick arrest of this dangerous individual."

Court documents don't list an attorney for Williams, who faces murder and weapons charges.
DALLAS (AP)  Retired Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater, who covered the rise of Texas governors Ann Richards and George W. Bush, has died in a car crash. He was 74.

Slater died Monday after his vehicle collided with a pickup, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Deon Cockrell said Tuesday. It happened near Florence, the city north of Austin where Slater lived.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP)  Hundreds of far-right protesters gathered in Romanias capital, Bucharest, on Tuesday to oppose a bill that would introduce green certificates in workplaces, which authorities hope will limit the spread of coronavirus infections and prevent another collapse of the country's health care system.

Romania, a European Union nation of about 19 million, faced its deadliest surge of coronavirus infections and deaths through October and November when intensive care units across the country were overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, and hospital morgues ran out of space.

In response to the unfolding disaster, authorities tightened restrictions in late October, and daily coronavirus cases have since dropped to their lowest since August. Authorities are now looking at ways to try to avert another grim virus surge  now a real concern after Romania confirmed more than a dozen cases of the omicron coronavirus variant.

Romanias new coalition government is discussing a bill that would require people going into their workplaces to present green certificates  obtained with proof of full vaccination, having recovered from COVID-19, or a negative test. They would be introduced after three consecutive weeks of an increasing COVID-19 infection rate, and once a certain incident rate is exceeded.

Only 40% of Romania's population, or 7.7 million people, have received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine. Some 2 million of those have also received the booster dose that is considered necessary to combat the omicron variant.

The mostly maskless demonstrators, who converged outside the parliament building, waved national tricolor flags in red, yellow, and blue, blocked traffic and chanted Freedom! Chaos briefly ensued as dozens forced their way into the parliament building's courtyard and some tried to access the building but were stopped by riot police.

The protest was attended by various right-wing groups including supporters of Romania's nationalist AUR party, which holds seats in parliament. In a video broadcast online from the protest, AUR co-chair George Simion urged people to "stand with us today to block the green certificate and called the bill unconstitutional.

Side with AUR, side with the people who are right-headed  who want justice, he said.

Romania's health ministry said in a press release Monday that the adoption of the law on the digital COVID-19 certificate must take into account the interest of public health but also cater to the proper functioning of the economy.

Over the winter holidays, hundreds of thousands of Romanians living abroad are expected to return home, which prompted authorities to implement on Monday passenger location forms to improve the traceability of infections. In 24 hours, more than 100,000 forms have been filled out.

Beatrice Mahler, hospital manager of Bucharests Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumology, which has been on the front line of the pandemic, told The Associated Press Tuesday that her hospital has been busy disinfecting wards, repairing medical equipment, and revising medical oxygen supplies.

This moment is sensitive and critical, Mahler said. I hope that the experience of the past waves will be the one that will make us responsible ... and understand that testing is mandatory if we want to protect our loved ones.

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Follow all AP stories on the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
BILOXI, Miss. (AP)  Employees of a Mississippi shipyard donated gifts for immigrant children who got to visit with Spanish-speaking Santa Claus.

WLOX-TV reports the jolly old elf recently appeared at the Biloxi office of El Pueblo, a nonprofit organization that provides low-cost legal services for immigrants. Children lined up for photos with Santa, and many were surprised he speaks the same language they speak at home.

I love them seeing Santa speaking Spanish. That is absolutely great. We want our kids to (not) lose their native language, said Allison Hanson, access language programs director for El Pueblo.

The idea of the celebration was to make sure Spanish-speaking families could enjoy holiday traditions without language barriers.

You know, youre growing up, you never see a Santa Claus that speaks Spanish or different languages. So the more comfortable you can make the kid and the family, the better it is, Anderson Esquilin said.

Esquilin is a part of an Ingalls Shipbuilding group called HOLA, Hispanic Outreach and Leadership Alliance. The organization partnered with El Pueblo for the Santa meet-and-greet by holding a toy drive at the shipyard in Pascagoula. Organizers say about 60 shipbuilders donated more than 200 presents for the children.

A little bit goes a long way. So if everyone does a little, nobody has to do a lot," HOLA Communications Chair Robert Santos said. "It just represents how good the type of people are at Ingalls."

Hanson said immigrant families need to know they are not alone.

We are here for affection, love, support with all of the programs El Pueblo holds throughout the year," she said.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP)  Supporters of juvenile justice reform in Maryland are hopeful the time has come to end the policy of automatically charging children as adults for certain crimes  a practice that many other states have changed in recent years.

Supporters of reform say juveniles who are charged as adults are more likely to receive longer sentences than youth who are charged with similar crimes in juvenile court. They also say the practice disproportionately affects minorities and undermines the goal of rehabilitating young offenders.

Opponents of ending the policy entirely, however, say theyre concerned about putting dangerous juveniles in facilities that are not secure enough to confine them safely.

In the past 15 years, 26 states have made changes to their laws regarding the automatic transfers of juveniles to adult court. Marcy Mistrett, director of youth justice at The Sentencing Project, told a Maryland panel supporting reforms earlier this year that the changes have been happening in a broad range of states, based on science and research.

It is based on what we have learned about adolescent development, neuroscience, and what jurisprudence has told us, and it is also based on really good data in terms of effective interventions with young people who engage in delinquent and or serious criminal behavior, Mistrett told the state's Juvenile Justice Reform Council.

The council voted this summer to recommend ending the automatic charging of youth as adults.

In Maryland, there are more than 30 charges that make juveniles automatically eligible for transfer to adult court. They include crimes that range from murder to handgun possession. From 2013 to 2020, about 7,800 juveniles were automatically charged as adults in Maryland, and about 80% of them were Black, according to state data. Only about 10% of the juveniles charged as adults were convicted.

It doesnt result in convictions in adult court, but what it does is deprive those children of the programs and opportunities that they need to become better people," said state Sen. Jill Carter, a Baltimore Democrat who has sponsored reform legislation over the last decade and is sponsoring legislation in the upcoming Maryland session.

Maryland is one of nine states that send more than 200 children to the adult system every year. Policies of automatic transfers of juveniles were driven by crime spikes in the 1990s, but since then a growing number of states have at least narrowed the charges that trigger the transfers.

In an interview, Carter said the push to change the policies is not new and has been embraced in some conservative states, too.

Judges would still be able to decide after a hearing that juveniles could be charged in adult court.

But opponents of ending all automatic juvenile transfers under the current law cite the seriousness of some of the crimes committed by juveniles and the dangers they could present in less secure juvenile facilities.

Critics point to a 2018 uprising at the Victor Cullen Center juvenile-detention center in Sabillasville, Maryland, where eight staff members were injured. And in 2020, youth committed to a treatment center on the grounds of the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County took over the facility in what authorities described as a riot. Police requested additional units in order to retake the facility, and 19 detainees were involved.

Scott Shellenberger, Baltimore County's state's attorney, said he's concerned about holding youths charged with murders in such facilities, citing multiple cases of juveniles who have committed extreme acts of violence in the state.

One of the most notable ones he pointed to is the case of Lee Boyd Malvo, the younger of the two snipers who killed 10 people and left three others wounded in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. in a 2002 spree that terrorized the region.

Shellenberger served on the Juvenile Justice Reform Council and voted against entirely ending the state's policy on automatically charging in adult court for certain crimes. He also said he was concerned about ending the policy when some counties are experiencing a rise in violent crime.

I think theres some people who feel very strongly that now is the time to get this done, and I dont understand where that push and desire is coming from in light of the fact that were still seeing a tremendous amount of violence in a lot of counties, Shellenberger said.

Several other juvenile justice reforms also are expected to be taken up this session.

Carter plans to sponsor a measure to prohibit a law enforcement officer from conducting a custodial interrogation of a child until the child has consulted with an attorney.

Other proposals include putting limits on the length of probation a child can have in the juvenile system, creating opportunities for administrative diversion at the front end of the process before a child is charged as well as ensuring there is no incarceration for misdemeanors or technical violations of probation, Carter said.
TURLOCK, Calif. (AP)  Stanislaus County prosecutors on Monday charged a man with shooting and wounding a California Highway Patrol investigator last week .

Henry Moreno Arroyo was charged with two counts of attempted murder in the events that spanned Wednesday and Thursday and at one point led to 10 city blocks being cordoned off in the Central Valley city of Turlock.

On Monday, Arroyos arraignment was postponed until Dec. 27 so that he could make financial arrangements to hire a private attorney. He was ordered held on nearly $1.5 million bail.

Arroyo, 40, of Turlock, opened fire Thursday on CHP investigators who were investigating a Wednesday evening freeway shooting and found what they believed to be the suspect's car in Turlock, prosecutors said.

Officers fired back before Arroyo ran off and was later arrested, prosecutors said.

Arroyo and one CHP officer were treated for non-life threatening wounds.

Arroyo is charged with trying to kill the wounded investigator and a second officer.

At the time, Arroyo was on probation and awaiting final judgment on an earlier accusation of child endangerment, authorities said.

They haven't released any more details about the freeway shooting and Arroyo isn't charged with that crime.
BURTON, Mich. (AP)  Two police officers were shot Tuesday in Genesee County during a violent confrontation with a gunman who was killed after a chase on foot, authorities said.

One of the injured officers, a sheriff's deputy, was in critical condition while a Burton officer was in fair condition, Sheriff Chris Swanson said.
NEW YORK (AP)  A man claiming to be a UPS delivery man pushed his way inside a New York City apartment on Monday and demanded residents bind themselves with zip ties before he and an accomplice broke into a safe and a childrens piggy bank and made off with a pair of iPhones, an iPad and more than $7,500 in cash, police said.

The man showed up to the Bronx apartment around 5 p.m. holding a box and wearing a brown winter hat with stickers pasted on the front spelling out UPS, police said. The man claimed to have a gun in the box and pushed past the 60-year-old woman who answered the door, police said.
LONDON (AP)  Britain announced 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in grants and other aid to help the hospitality industry survive the onslaught of the omicron variant of COVID-19, bowing to days of pressure from pubs, restaurants and other businesses that complain public health warnings have torpedoed the vital Christmas season.

Businesses in the hospitality and leisure sectors in England will be eligible for one-time grants of up to 6,000 pounds ($7,954) each. An additional 100 million pounds ($133 million) will be given to local governments to support businesses in their areas hit by the sudden spike in COVID-19 infections driven by the highly transmissible new variant.

While industry groups welcomed the funding, many said it was too narrowly focused and more assistance would be needed if the surge in infections continues or the government imposes more restrictions.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Tuesday that he wouldn't impose any new coronavirus restrictions before Christmas  but new measures could be coming after the holiday if omicron continues to surge.

We continue to monitor omicron very closely and if the situation deteriorates we will be ready to take action if needed, he said in a video statement.

Pubs and restaurants have reported a wave of cancellations during the crucial Christmas season as people shun public events and workers are forced to self-isolate, leaving venues short of staff. Many theaters and museums also have closed their doors.

With the surge in omicron cases, people are rightly exercising more caution as they go about their lives, which is impacting our hospitality, leisure and cultural sectors at what is typically the busiest time of the year, Johnson said in a statement. Thats why were taking immediate action.

The plunge in business came after Englands chief medical officer told the public to limit their social contacts and prioritize the events they most want to attend this holiday season. The message came as COVID-19 infections surged to the highest levels ever, raising concerns that hospitals and other emergency services may be overwhelmed.

Business groups including the British Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Small Business and UKHospitality have demanded government help.

The decline in trade at this critical period for the hospitality sector has been catastrophic, so we are extremely grateful that the chancellor has recognized this and come forward with a generous package of support," said Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality. This will help businesses to stay afloat and preserve jobs.

While several organizations welcomed the government aid, some big interest groups said so much damage had already been done that the support offered Tuesday was inadequate.

The open/close strategy is crucifying businesses," Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association. Every pound of help is much needed. But this package is far too little and borders on the insulting.

Others pointed to major gaps in the package. The aviation industry and companies in the food and drink supply chain, for example, won't be eligible for help, said Stephen Phipson, chief executive of Make UK, an industry group for manufacturers.

Hospitality is not the only sector being severely impacted,'' he said. Government must now consider targeted support for the aerospace sector in particular, which has taken one step forward and now two steps back as travel has once again subsided.

The governments scientific advisers have recommended further restrictions to slow the spread of omicron, but Johnson has been reluctant to order a lockdown in part because of the cost to the public purse. The U.K. has already spent more than 350 billion pounds ($464 billion) fighting the pandemic, pushing public debt to 96% of gross domestic product, the highest since 1963.

Instead, Johnson is betting vaccines will be his savior, urging everyone to get booster shots.

Many governments in Europe and the U.S. are confronting similar dilemmas over how hard to come down in the face of omicron, which scientists say spreads more easily than other coronavirus strains, including delta, which itself led to surges in many parts of the world. Early evidence suggests omicron may also produce less serious illness  though experts caution it is too soon to say  and that it could better evade vaccine protection.

Even if it is milder, the new variant could still overwhelm health systems because of the sheer number of infections. Confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.K. have surged by 60% in a week as omicron overtook delta as the dominant variant.

Businesses argue that the uncertainty alone is wreaking havoc. Nathan Godley of restaurant supplier Premier Seafoods told the BBC that he needed to be able to plan for the future.

Fish doesnt just go from the boat to the restaurant,'' he said. Theres quite a few of us in this supply chain in between, and we all need to know what is happening.

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Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
CAIRO (AP)  The U.N. human rights office on Tuesday called for an independent investigation into allegations of sexual violence including rape and gang rape during mass anti-coup protests in Sudan earlier this week, a spokeswoman said.

Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman for the U.N. human rights office in Geneva, said they received disturbing reports alleging that 13 women and girls were raped or gang raped in the demonstrations on Sunday in the capital, Khartoum.

There was no immediate comment from Sudans government.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese took to the streets in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan on Sunday, marking the third anniversary of the uprising that forced the removal of autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

The rallies turned violent in many places as security forces moved against the protesters. At least two people were killed and over 300 others were wounded, according the Sudan Doctors Committee, a professional medical union.

Women were reportedly sexually harassed while fleeing the area around the presidential palace in Khartoum when Sudanese forces fired tear gas and live ammunition there to disperse the protests, Throssell.

We urge a prompt, independent and thorough investigation into the allegations of rape and sexual harassment, as well as the allegations of death and injury of protesters as a result of the unnecessary or disproportionate use of force, in particular use of live ammunition, she said.

It was not the first time Sudanese security forces face accusations of sexual violence against female protesters.

On June 3, 2019, dozens of women were raped when forces tore apart a sit-in camp outside the military's headquarters in Khartoum, according to the doctors committee and the testimonies of several of the women.

Sundays protests were one of the largest since the military took over on Oct. 25, removing Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdoks transitional government in a coup that rattled the country's fragile transition to democracy and led to relentless street demonstrations.

At least 46 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in protests triggered by the coup, according to a tally by the Sudanese medical group. Hamdok was reinstated last month amid international pressure in a deal that calls for an independent technocratic Cabinet under military oversight led by him.

However, Sudan's pro-democracy movement rejects the deal and has vowed to continue street protests to pressure coup leaders to hand over power to a fully civilian government to lead the transition.

Later Tuesday, two government officials said Hamdok would step down soon due to the political deadlock hampering his efforts to form a Cabinet. They said political and military leaders were trying to persuade Hamdok not to resign, but he appeared determined "because all the parties can not find a common ground to move forward.

There was no official announcement and the officials asked for anonymity to discuss the matter.
With coronavirus cases spiking because of the fast-spreading omicron variant, many Americans have flooded their Walgreens and CVS stores this week for at-home tests, which have become the must-have item for millions ahead of the Christmas holiday.

The long lines forming at test centers and pharmacies nationwide are in response to news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that omicron accounted for nearly three-quarters of covid-19 cases in the past week, making it the nation's new dominant variant.

Walgreens and CVS are struggling to keep at-home test kits on the shelves days before millions hold indoor family gatherings for Christmas. The high demand for at-home coronavirus tests such as Abbott BinaxNOW, Acon FlowFlex and Quidel Quickvue has also affected online orders, with many stores listing the over-the-counter kits as "out of stock" or only available for in-store purchase.

"As the nation experiences a surge in COVID-19 cases coinciding with the holidays, we are seeing unprecedented demand for testing services," Alexandra Brown, a Walgreens spokeswoman, said in a statement to The Washington Post. "Due to the incredible demand for at-home rapid testing, we put in effect a four item purchase limit on at-home COVID-19 testing products in our stores and digital properties in an effort to help improve inventory while we continue to work diligently with our supplier partners to best meet customer demands."

Matthew Blanchette, a CVS spokesperson, said in a statement emailed to The Post that the company is working "around the clock to provide our stores with inventory" of the five at-home kits it offers, days before Christmas.

"In the event a store experiences a temporary shortage, our teams have a process in place to rapidly replenish supply," he said. "Due to a recent surge in demand, and to retain community-based access to tests in our stores, there may be temporary out-of-stocks for these products on CVS.com."

The shortage of rapid tests to help identify and contain potential outbreaks comes as President Joe Biden on Tuesday is expected to outline plans to expand testing sites across the country, distribute a half-billion free at-home tests and deploy more federal health resources to aid strained hospitals.

The Biden administration will start delivering a half-billion free rapid tests to homes next month, according to a White House statement previewing the president's Tuesday speech, and health officials are launching a website where Americans can order them. New federal testing sites will also be established across the country, starting with one in New York City this week.

"I will be deploying hundreds more vaccinators and more sites to help get more booster shots in arms," Biden tweeted. "I've ordered FEMA to stand up new pop-up vaccination clinics across the country where you can get a booster shot."

The United States is averaging nearly 147,000 new confirmed infections a day, an increase of 22% from the previous seven-day period, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. The omicron variant accounted for 73% of new coronavirus cases between Dec. 12 and Saturday, according to modeled projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New York has seen the most significant spike in recent cases, averaging more than 18,300 new infections a day.

More than 68,000 Americans are currently hospitalized for covid. The death rate has also slightly increased over the past seven days, as the United States is averaging more than 1,300 covid deaths a day.

Finding at-home coronavirus tests, particularly the rapid antigen tests found online and at most drugstores, has been increasingly difficult in recent months. In response to the demand, some retailers have limited the number of at-home tests people can buy, while others were warned that delivery times may be delayed.

Though the Biden administration has emphasized increased testing as one of the pillars of its pandemic response, the White House has been criticized for failing to provide at-home tests at low cost. Americans are paying $25 for a pack of two tests - that is, if they can find any at a pharmacy.

The administration has also struggled to explain testing shortages to Americans. Earlier this month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was criticized for her response as to why the administration has not made at-home tests free and more widely available: "Should we just send one to every American?"

With the surge in the omicron variant, people have posted photos of waiting in long lines for both in-person testing and at-home test kits, as well as empty shelves at Walgreens and CVS stores. Some have posted screenshots of the number of stores that can't keep up with the demand.

That's been especially evident in New York City, where people criticized the "shameful" response to the surge after not finding home tests at Walgreens or CVS. CNN's Brian Stelter posted a photo of a CVS store in New York emphasizing that they had no home tests available.

"The website is not accurate," the sign reads. "All covid test out of stock."

In Chicago, many Walgreens and CVS stores had barren shelves after the run on rapid home tests, according to the Chicago Tribune. Dana Vais, system medical director for infectious-disease services at Amita Health in Illinois, told the outlet that people planning indoor family gatherings need to take a rapid, at-home test rather than a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test - molecular tests that are much more sensitive and can take longer to return results.

"I would not recommend any holiday gathering without the people there having at least an antigen test," Vais said. "If we want to get through this, we really have to make testing as easy as possible, widely available."

Some on social media posted about how their orders for home kits had been unexpectedly canceled. Others offered tips for which stores still had them available. One California woman told KGO that she and her son had been looking for at-home tests for close to 24 hours before finding some at a Walgreens in San Jose.

"One place said online that they had it so I drove there . . . and they didn't have it so then [my son] kept looking online and found this store," she told the station.

Blanchette reiterated to The Post in the statement that the company was "committed to providing families with protection and peace of mind during the holiday season.

"We continue to offer access to lab-based testing with results available in 1-2 days or rapid COVID-19 testing at more than 4,800 CVS Pharmacy locations nationwide," the company said.

- - -

The Washington Post's Andrew Jeong, Lindsey Bever and Lateshia Beachum contributed to this report.
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP)  Washington lawmakers are suing Gov. Jay Inslee for the second time over allegedly exceeding his veto power.

The Northwest News Network reported Monday the lawsuit is in response to the governor line-item vetoing parts of the state transportation budget and eliminating a subsection of a low carbon fuels bill earlier this year.

Generally, the governor is limited to vetoing entire bills, entire sections of bills or whole appropriation items in a budget bill.

Last month, in a separate lawsuit, the Washington Supreme Court sided with state lawmakers over Inslees previous use of the veto pen, calling cases like this a test of two of the courts most fundamental duties: to delineate and maintain the proper constitutional balance between the coordinate branches of our State government with respect to the veto and, more broadly, to interpret the constitution faithfully.

The new lawsuit revolves around Inslees May veto of a subsection in the low carbon fuel bill that would have delayed portions of the law until passage of a new statewide transportation funding package.

Inslee has justified his veto, saying the Legislature cant design a bill section with the intent of circumventing the governors veto authority.

Inslee also excised several lines referencing fuel type from the states 233-page transportation funding bill. Specifically, the lines he vetoed prohibited consideration of fuel type when issuing transportation-related grants.

The governor said those references amounted to a substantive policy change. In their lawsuit, the legislators note the language Inslee vetoed from the 2021-23 transportation budget is the exact same sentence he vetoed in the 2019-21 transportation budget, which resulted in the previous lawsuit.

In a statement Monday, Inslees office said it was disappointed by the Legislatures decision to sue again and that we remain confident that the governor acted within his legal authority with these vetoes.

Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, a Spokane Democrat, said the lawsuit was "about protecting the authority of the legislative branch and maintaining the balance of power as prescribed by our state Constitution.

In a separate statement, Senate Minority Leader John Braun, a Republican from Centralia, noted that all four legislative caucuses were united in the lawsuit, and that it was not a partisan effort to undermine the governors authority.

This is a bicameral, bipartisan effort to preserve the Legislatures lawmaking power, he said.

The lawsuit seeks to have Inslees vetoes invalidated and the language he struck resurrected.
Over the past month, following several high-profile retail thefts of luxury stores around the Bay Area and across the country  including in San Franciscos Union Square  our city has been caught in the crossfire of attacks on criminal justice reform. The all-too-common response to these crimes has been calls for more policing and attacks on progressive reforms, but these knee-jerk reactions are short-sighted. Achieving long-lasting public safety means we must think about these crimes differently. If we truly care about preventing these crimes  as well as others  we must implement the systemic changes needed to make a real difference.

Although these crimes have understandably frightened store employees and have shocked those who watched the viral videos capturing the events, these types of thefts with multiple people running into a store and grabbing items are not new  reports of similar crimes go back years. They happened during the Trump administration, and they happened in cities like Los Angeles under the previous reign of an anti-reform prosecutor. Nor are they isolated to the Bay Area or even to progressive cities  retailers in Texas, Minnesota, Florida and beyond have all been targets.

Despite this, some are falsely blaming criminal justice reforms  and reformers  for these offenses. Some have wrongly accused progressive prosecutors like me of not pursuing accountability despite my offices high prosecution rates on these kinds of crimes and our transparency on filing rates. And some have pointed to laws like Proposition 47  which reduced some felony theft and drug possession charges to misdemeanors  as somehow responsible for these crimes. These are red herrings.

Though Fox News might have you think otherwise, the truth is that as District Attorney of San Francisco, I am holding those who have been arrested in connection with the crimes in Union Square accountable. My office filed felony charges against every person San Francisco police have arrested for these crimes. We presented evidence at a preliminary hearing, where a judge agreed there was probable cause to proceed on all felony charges aside from looting  a reminder that aggressive charges do not necessarily translate to convictions. Accountability is important, and my office is vigorously pursuing it, just as we have in 86% of the commercial burglary cases police presented to us this year. For context, police have made arrests in just 8.8% of commercial burglary cases this year.

Organized retail theft is not a problem that can be addressed solely by law enforcement solutions  which come after a crime has been committed. Public safety is a shared responsibility between police, city officials, prosecutors and the courts  and also requires the help of retailers, community groups, public health providers and community members. State and city officials make laws; police investigate and arrest; district attorneys file charges and prosecute; and the courts release or detain and sentence. Prosecutors dont receive cases until after a crime has occurred and police have made an arrest. Combating crime can only come through a sense of shared responsibility.

Blaming legal reforms is equally misguided. Rolling back Proposition 47 would not solve the problems we are facing now. Californias felony theft threshold of $950 is still among the lowest in the country  38 states have felony thresholds at or above $1,000  and Texas has a threshold of $2,500. Proposition 47 also passed seven years ago and was followed by a decline in property crimes. Its passage did not prevent prosecutors from being able to hold those who commit organized retail thefts accountable; for example, all the charges in Union Square were still felonies.

Preventing these crimes before they happen and ensuring long-term public safety requires that, instead of unilateral focus on law enforcement responses or rolling back reforms, we must shift our focus to supporting victims and addressing root causes of crime.

Charles Russo/SFGATE

Supporting victims means meeting the needs of all victims, not just the powerful or wealthy. The focus on providing increased policing to support high-end retailers has meant that victims of thefts targeting smaller businesses  including numerous stores in Chinatown  have been largely overlooked. Those incidents have not received attention in the mainstream media and the city has not invested the same resources devoted to protecting those businesses as the larger businesses in Union Square.

I have often noted that we talk about punishing perpetrators, but not on repairing the harm to victims. Last year, my office spearheaded a victim services pilot in District 5 that compensated small businesses that experienced vandalism. That pilot has now been expanded across the city. Ive dramatically expanded our offices Victim Services Division including, for the first time, having advocates dedicated to working for victims of property crimes.

Long-term safety for all people requires more of us than simply reacting to crime. We must work to reduce crime. Investments in the social safety net  providing safety for all  goes far. Affordable housing, quality education, access to health care and addiction services can provide the stability that empirical evidence has shown actually deters criminal activity.

Of course, not all crimes are crimes of desperation. We should be focusing resources on opportunists who intentionally seek out to commit these crimes  like the prosecution my office announced Monday following an extensive organized retail theft operation.

We are at a tipping point in San Francisco; we are in danger of making decisions driven by fear. We should not return to the days of locking up every person who commits any offense, no matter how small  a practice which not only failed to stop crime but also disproportionately impacted over-policed communities of color. Returning to those criminal justice policies offers no solution. We can have both safety and justice.

I am committed to a comprehensive response that investigates identifies and holds accountable those responsible, supports victims and prevents future crime. It is only through this multi-faceted approach that we will be able to build better, safer and just communities.

Chesa Boudin is the district attorney of San Francisco.
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As many people work from home to avoid the risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ontario government has passed legislation to help workers disconnect from their employment responsibilities after work hours. The right-to-disconnect provision takes effect June 2, 2022.

Ontario is now the first jurisdiction in Canada to establish policies that prioritize workers' mental health, along with a healthier work/life balance. "This is a symbolic shift toward employee well-being  especially to prevent employees from being reachable 24/7," said Flora Vineberg, a lawyer at SpringLaw in Toronto.

The pandemic has been a challenging time for both employers and employees, said Lisa Goodfellow, an attorney with Miller Thomson LLP in Toronto. "For some who are working remotely, the lack of physical separation between work and home has made it harder to disconnect."

The employee-friendly amendment will require employers in Ontario with 25 or more employees to have a written policy giving workers the right to disconnect from their job at the end of their workday. Bill 27, the Working for Workers Act 2021, defines disconnecting from work as not engaging in work-related communicationsincluding e-mails, telephone calls, video calls, and sending and reviewing messagesto be free from the performance of work. Remote workers "feel like they can't get away from the office with modern technology serving as an electronic leash," said Neena Gupta, an attorney with Gowling WLG in Waterloo, Ontario. "I've heard from a worker: 'I don't work from home; I simply sleep in the office.' "

The Ontario government is following in the footsteps of France, Spain and Portugal, which give employees the legal right not to engage in work-related activities and communication after work. The Canadian government is also exploring the option to prohibit federal employees from responding to phone calls, e-mails and texts from their supervisor or colleagues off-hours.

"Ontario has been a leader in employment and labor law legislation," Gupta said. "This is an opportune time for this bill to come up. [The province] could pave the way for the right to disconnect across Canada."

Downsides of Disconnecting

Opponents say the legislation might reduce productivity, as managers will have less oversight of when employees are actually working, Vineberg noted. In addition, workers who truly disconnect might be passed over for promotions or viewed as lower-performing employees. This may disproportionately affect the careers of women who opt to disconnect to tend to household chores and caregiving, while their male counterparts choose to work additional hours. Women spend 33 percent more time on household chores and caregiving responsibilities compared with men, according to the government of Canada.

Some employees do not have the option to disconnect.

Occupations like agriculture, construction, health care, manufacturing, hospitality, law, law enforcement and transportation could be exempt, Goodfellow said, as they are covered by provisions of Ontario's Employment Standards Act 2000. Currently, it is unclear whether there will be employer and employee exceptions under the right-to-disconnect policy, Goodfellow stated.

Employers, HR Should Drive Culture Shift

Bill 27 does not provide guidance on what a right-to-disconnect policy must include, Goodfellow said. Therefore, employers and HR professionals will be tasked with reviewing a policy between Jan. 1 and March 1 each year that accounts for business needs while complying with legislation.

In addition to giving workers the right to disconnect, senior leadership should also refrain from making demands outside of business hours if they are not time-sensitive, Goodfellow said.

Vineberg recommended employers effectively implement and enforce policies in a decentralized workplace by:



Encouraging employees to turn on out-of-office notifications when they aren't working.

Setting clear expectations about response times for e-mails.

Limiting hours employees spend in virtual meetings or on virtual platforms and chats.

Articulating expectations for hybrid-work models regarding when and why employees must report to work in person.

"Employers need to be conscious about allowing employees to disconnect or else they will pay for it later on with absenteeism," Gupta said.

Some additional ways staff can be encouraged to protect their mental well-being include:



Taking their earned vacation.

Making time in their day for physical and mental self-care.

Tapping into fitness and wellness programs.

HR will have to keep track of employee concerns, ensure alignment with remote and hybrid-work policies, and manage reliance on technology platforms for supervision, Vineberg said.

"HR will end up drafting and implementing disconnect-from-work policies," Gupta concluded. "They will be key in rolling out communications strategies to all workers in Ontario."

Catherine Skrzypinski is a freelance writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia.


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New York City passed a first-of-its-kind law that will prohibit employers from using AI and algorithm-based technologies for recruiting, hiring or promotion without those tools first being audited for bias.

Outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio allowed the legislation to advance into law without a signature on Dec. 10. It takes effect Jan. 2, 2023, and applies only to decisions to screen candidates for employment or employees for promotion who are residents of New York City, but it is a harbinger of things to come for employers across the country.

If New York City employers are "using an AI-informed selection tool, whether it's a pre-employment assessment or video interviews scored by AI or some other selection tool using AI, it is likely subject to this new ordinance," said Mark Girouard, an attorney in the Minneapolis office of Nilan Johnson Lewis who, as part of his practice, advises employers on pre-employment assessments.

He added that "they will need to start engaging a third party to conduct bias audits of those tools to test the tool's disparate impacta neutral policy that could lead to discriminationon the basis of race, ethnicity or sex."

The law defines automated employment decision tools as "any computational process, derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence," that scores, classifies or otherwise makes a recommendation regarding candidates and is used to assist or replace an employer's decision-making process.

"The definition is very broad," Girouard said. "It's not clear if the statute captures only the pure AI tools or sweeps in a broader set of selection tools. If an employer uses a traditional pre-employment personality test, for example, which is scored by an algorithm based on weighting and a combination of components, it could be includedwe're not certain," he said.

Matthew Jedreski, an attorney in the Seattle office of Davis Wright Tremaine and a member of the firm's artificial intelligence group, added that the law could "capture innumerable technologies used by many employers, including software that sources candidates, performs initial resume reviews, helps rank applicants or tracks employee performance."



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Provisions of the Law

Under the law, employers will be prohibited from using an AI-type tool to screen job candidates or evaluate employees unless the technology has been audited for bias no more than one year before its use and a summary of the audit's results has been made publicly available on the employer's website.

Girouard said that it's unclear when and how often the bias audit would need to be updated and whether the audit is meant to cover the employer's hiring process in conjunction with the tool, or the tool itself more generally.

Employers that fail to comply may be subject to a fine of up to $500 for a first violation and then penalized by fines between $500 and $1,500 daily for each subsequent violation.

Frida Polli, co-founder and CEO of Pymetrics, a talent matching platform that uses behavioral science and AI, is one of the most vocal supporters of reducing bias in technology.

To that end, her company works to make sure her tool's algorithms do not have any disparate impact.

"We have a process that the algorithms go through before they are built that ensures that they are above the threshold that constitutes disparate impact," she said. "We test for that and continue to monitor it once it is deployed."

Girouard said that the law also requires employers to provide notice to candidates before using the technology and disclose the qualifications or characteristics that the tool is evaluating.

"The requirement to explain how the tool analyzes different characteristics is likely to raise particular challenges for employers that use vendor-made software, as these vendors often protect how their tools work as trade secrets or under confidentiality agreements," Jedreski said.

Candidates and employees may also request an "alternative process or accommodation" instead of being assessed by the technology.

Girouard said that the New York City law illustrates certain prevalent trends employers must be aware of, including a focus on transparency, the importance of explainability (you must have some job-related characteristic or qualification that is being scored) and, increasingly, the concept of informed consenteither an ability to opt out or at least a requirement to notify candidates that AI is being used, he said.

The New York City law is the tip of the iceberg of what's coming, Girouard said. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently signaled it would step up its examination of AI-type tools. But until the agency publishes formal guidelines, states and municipalities will continue to fill in the gap, he said.

'A Good Step'

The approved final version of the New York City law drew a variety of responses, even among proponents of greater scrutiny of AI technology who had advocated for it from the beginning.

Polli is supportive of the law, calling it "a good step in the right direction."

Several important elements are included, she said, including provisions on candidate notification, transparency regarding what data is being evaluated, and testing for disparate impact.

"Right now, there is no place to go to see the disparate impact thresholds of different platforms and how they compare," she said. "There is no public scoring of these products in any way. Public reporting will be helpful for employers making better decisions and in informing the public in general about where a lot of these technologies fall."

Julia Stoyanovich, a professor of computer and data science at New York University and the founding director of the school's Center for Responsible AI, also sees the law as a "substantial positive development," especially the disclosure components informing candidates about what is being done.

"The law supports informed consent, which is crucial, and it's been utterly lacking to date," she said. "And it also supports at least a limited form of recourse, allowing candidates to seek accommodations or to challenge the process."

'Deeply Flawed'

But some digital rights activists expressed disappointment with the final legislative product.

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) in Washington, D.C., called it a "deeply flawed" and "weakened" standard that doesn't go far enough to curb AI technology bias in employment.

"The New York City bill could have been a model for jurisdictions around the country to follow, but instead, it is a missed opportunity that fails to hold companies accountable, and leaves important forms of discrimination unaddressed," said Matthew Scherer, senior policy counsel for worker privacy at CDT.

Scherer said that the worst thing about the revised legislationcompared with its original draftis that it only requires companies to audit for discrimination on the basis of race or gender, ignoring other forms of discrimination. Instead of assessing a tool's compliance with all anti-discrimination laws covering the gamut of protected traits, the law doesn't require employers to do anything they aren't already required to do, he said.

"The main effect of the revisions is, therefore, to relieve employers of any incentive to check for other forms of discrimination, such as discrimination against disabled, older or LGBTQ+ workers," he said.

Polli countered that the challenge with including age and disability for disparate impact testing is "that we don't get that information from candidatesit is illegal to ask a candidate about a disability," she said. "I agree that there should be better safeguards in place, and we have created a workaround at Pymetrics, using past rates of people selecting accommodations versus those who have not, but these are real challenges we need to figure out how to overcome."

The final version of the law also has a narrower scope for who and what it covers, said Ridhi Shetty, a policy counsel at the CDT. "It applies only to hiring and promotion," she said. "This leaves many substantial employment decisions that dramatically impact workers' lives, including those relating to compensation, scheduling, and working conditions, outside the law's scope. It also applies only to workers who are residents of New York City, rather than to all employees of New York City-based employers. Given the sheer volume of non-New York City residents employed by New York City employers, this represents a significant narrowing of the law's applicability."

The CDT also believes that the notice and disclosure requirements are vague. "There's no mechanism to ensure alternative tests or requests for accommodation are seriously considered, much less fairly offered," Scherer said.

Stoyanovich said she understands the arguments critical of the law but sees its passage "as an opportunity for all of us, collectively, to figure out how to operationalize the very necessary requirements of bias auditing, and of public disclosure in the algorithmic hiring domain. We can only figure this out by acting, not by sitting back and allowing algorithmic hiring tools to continue to be used, without any oversight and any accountability."


Page Content

After the passage of Florida Statute 381.00317 on Nov. 17, employers with employees in Florida were left with new rules relating to COVID-19 vaccination policies, in many instances contrary to the signaled direction of federal government rules and guidance. Moreover, this new Florida law includes vague language, few definitions and a promise of future clarification despite immediate applicability.

As previously discussed, the new Florida law prohibits private employers from imposing a "COVID-19 vaccination mandate" without providing individual exemptions allowing an employee to "opt out" of such mandate based on one of five reasons. While several questions still remain about implementation of this new law, the Florida Department of Legal Affairs, a department in the attorney general's office, issued a clarification that provides employers with some guidance. Notably, the following terms have been defined in Rule 2ER21-1: "department," "Employee," "independent contractor," "private employer," and "functional equivalent of termination." Additionally, the Department of Legal Affairs issued FAQs that drill down on some of the questions that private employers have had in navigating the vaccine mandate landscape.



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New Definitions

As noted above, the emergency rule provides some definitions to be used in interpreting the Florida law.

Department. First, the term department, which is charged with enforcing the law, is defined as the Department of Legal Affairs.

Employee. Next, employee is defined as "any person who receives remuneration from a private employer for the performance of any work or service occurring within this state while engaged in any employment  whether lawfully or unlawfully employed." It further specifically states that "employee" does not include an independent contractor, a volunteer or someone who serves in a private nonprofit agency without compensation other than expenses.

In further describing this "exemption" for "independent contractors," the emergency rule sets out a high bar for what an independent contractor is and one that is different from the definition that has been developed in case law over the years. Specifically, the rule requires that to be an independent contractor under the Florida law, the individual must either:

(1) Meet four or more of the following criteria:

Maintains a separate business with their own work facility, truck, equipment, materials, or similar accommodations apart from the private employer.

Holds or has applied for a federal employer identification number.

Receives compensation for services rendered or work performed and such compensation is paid to a business, other than the private employer, rather than to an individual.

Holds one or more bank accounts in the name of a business entity, other than the private employer, for purposes of paying business expenses or other expenses related to services rendered or work performed for compensation.

Performs work or is able to perform work for any entity in addition to or besides the private employer at their own election without the necessity of completing an employment application or process.

Receives compensation for work or services rendered on a competitive-bid basis or completion of a task or a set of tasks as defined by a contractual agreement, unless such contractual agreement expressly states that an employment relationship exists.

(2) Alternatively, the individual can show any of the following:

The person performs or agrees to perform specific services or work for a specific amount of money and controls the means of performing the services or work.

The person incurs the principal expenses related to the service or work that they perform or agree to perform.

The person is responsible for the satisfactory completion of the work or services that they perform or agree to perform.

The person receives compensation for work or services performed for a commission or on a per-job basis and not on any other basis.

The person may realize a profit or suffer a loss in connection with performing work or services.

The person has continuing or recurring business liabilities or obligations.

The success or failure of the person's business depends on the relationship of business receipts to expenditures.

It appears these requirements are intended to prevent employers from trying to misclassify an individual employee as a "1099 employee" to avoid the statute's requirements.

Private employer. The emergency rule next defines private employer to include anyone or any legal entity who employs employees within the state regardless of the form of legal entity. Of import is the emphasis that the employer itself need not be in the state if there is an employee present in the state while doing work for the employer. There is no minimum number of employees required for this statute to apply.

Functional equivalent of termination. Last, the phrase functional equivalent of termination is also defined. This definition is relatively restrictive, noting such act is met if an employee 1) resigns under duress or 2) the employer made working conditions so difficult or intolerable that a reasonable person in the employee's position would feel compelled to resign. Notably, the second option tracks the concept of "constructive discharge" in other employment law settings and requires a high standard and burden of proof on the employee to be established.

Other Questions Answered



FAQs issued by the Department of Legal Affairs describes in more detail the process available should an employee complain that an employer has violated the new Florida law, including an investigation allowing both parties to provide evidence and potentially an evidentiary hearing before the Division Of Administrative Hearings (DOAH) and potential resolution throughout the process. Notably, the FAQs mention the Department does not have the authority to order reinstatement although an employer may be subject to a fine if the employee is found to have improperly terminated any employee.

Lingering Questions

What is a vaccine mandate? The Florida law facially allows private employers to maintain vaccination mandates but states a "private employer may not impose a COVID-19 vaccination mandate  without providing individual exemptions" describing five potential exemptions (medical, religious, prior COVID infection, agreement to testing, and agreement to using PPE). As explained in more detail in our prior ASAP, if an employee submits an "exemption statement" properly identifying the necessary information to select one of the five options, "the employer must allow the employee to "opt out" of the mandate. Employers are then prohibited from terminating an employee based on a vaccine mandate (including the functional equivalent of termination).

One major question mark has been what a "vaccine mandate" is under the Florida law. As we previously opined, the words used by the legislature and rules of statutory construction suggest opt-outs must only be provided if there is a pure mandate. Thus, if an employer has a hybrid policy allowing for vaccination or testing, such policy may not need to allow employees to opt out of the hybrid program for the reasons set forth in the Florida law.

This important question is not answered nor even addressed in either the emergency rules issued or the FAQs. Thus, while it is unclear how Florida may ultimately resolve this issue, the rules of statutory construction remain the same and employers may need to decide of whether the Florida statute applies to their particular vaccine program. Employers should consult with legal counsel to determine how to proceed with vaccination mandates in Florida.

Nancy Johnson and Kimberly Doud are attorneys with Littler Mendelson in Orlando, Fla.  2021 Littler Mendelson. All rights reserved. Reposted with permission.
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US financial regulators are so concerned about the perceived threat to financial stability and investors of stablecoins that they are warning they will act unilaterally if Congress doesnt legislate.

Last week the US Treasurys key body for monitoring the financial system, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, issued its annual report. Digital assets, and stablecoins in particular, were one of the key concerns it identified.

It said the rapid growth of digital assets, including stablecoins and lending and borrowing on digital assets trading platforms, was an important potential emerging vulnerability for the system.

The overall crypto market is valued at about $US2.3 trillion, while stablecoins are valued at only about $US130 billion. Credit:iStock

In relation to stablecoins  crypto assets backed by traditional financial assets, most commonly the US dollar -- the council said that while they might be marketed with the claim that they will maintain a stable value they might be subject to widespread redemption and asset liquidations if investors doubted the credibility of the claim.
Looking forward to some time off over the summer holidays? I am. Long time since Ive been in more need of a decent break. Few more columns to go, and Im off for four weeks.

This will surprise and shock you, but regular polling by the Roy Morgan outfit has found that, by September, the total annual leave owing to Australian employees had reached a record 185 million days, up almost a quarter on a year earlier.

Do yourself a favour. Take your annual leave if you can.

No need to tell you it was all the lockdowns and lockouts  not just from other countries and other states, but even 100 kms down the coast. Weve had little ability to take leave. Nor much desire to either, if it meant holidaying at home.

The proportion of workers owed less than two weeks is down and the proportion owed more than seven weeks (including me) is up past 10 per cent. Of course, the almost 40 per cent people working as casuals dont get annual leave.
A controversial $600 million gas power plant proposed for Kurri Kurri in the Hunter Valley has won NSW government planning approval despite its critics saying it is unneeded and will increase the states emissions.

The Liddell and Bayswater coal power stations near Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley are among those expected to close in coming years. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

The development is being funded by the federal government and comes after Energy and Emission Reductions Minister Angus Taylor called on the private sector to provide an extra 1000 MWh of power capacity to protect against price rises when the Liddell power plant closes in 2023.

On Monday evening the state government confirmed it had secured approval, after the planning department earlier issued and then withdrew statements saying it had been approved.

A spokesperson for the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment said the application was approved following rigorous assessment and consideration of community feedback.
Loading Its trying to decide between a public health measure, versus other necessities like food and medicine and bills. The Pharmacy Guild of Australia is calling for free access to rapid antigen tests, in line with Britain. Anthony Tassone, a pharmacist in Clyde in Melbournes south-east and president of the guilds Victorian branch, said there had been occasions where customers had come in planning to buy a multiple pack for their family, and baulked at the price. Where someone has seen the price of four or five tests, that can be from $50 and up, theyve looked at it and said well, perhaps I can only get the single one for now.

But his pharmacy has now sold out of single tests. It could take another week for a delivery to arrive, putting them at risk of running out entirely. Melbourne pharmacist Stephen Speirs, who runs a pharmacy in the CBD, said some corporate customers had been buying 50 or 60 tests at a time. They are just flying off the shelf, Mr Speirs said. Umber Rind, a GP who works at Campbellfield in Melbournes north, where Delta spread rapidly, believes making rapid tests free could have prevented countless infections among families during the Christmas period, and it was a missed opportunity in the fight against Omicron.

In the UK, theyre free so why cant they be free here? she said. University of New South Wales epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws said many people in disadvantaged areas, who had been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 outbreaks, would not be able to afford the kits. Rapid antigen tests can now be bought at supermarkets and pharmacies. Credit:Kate Geraghty The federal government needs to fully fund this for the sake of all Australians, she said. They have certainly given enormous reimbursements to private pathology for their PCR testing. But it seems like they dont want to invest in the public doing something that could really change their behaviour for the good. While rapid antigen tests are not as accurate as PCR tests, they can deliver results much faster with most returning results between 15 and 30 minutes.

They are only free in limited circumstances in Australia, including for some contacts of COVID-19 cases in schools in Victoria and NSW, where the kits are funded by state governments. The federal government has also made the kits available to some aged care services where there are outbreaks. However, Melbourne infectious diseases physician Kudzai Kanhutu, who has spent years working with migrant communities, said careful consideration should be given to ensure the tests were freely available to those most at risk. We dont just want to flood the market with more plastic junk and rubble and get lots of people who are getting false positives, and it generates more chaos than good, she said. Loading

Dr Kanhutu said free tests could be provided at places like Centrelink where people who were experiencing unemployment could pick them up and be tested for the virus while they received welfare support. She also stressed that polymerase chain reaction tests remained the gold standard and anyone with symptoms should be getting a PCR test. On Tuesday, Victorias acting Premier James Merlino indicated the government may be willing to expand the free rapid testing program beyond those already eligible in workplaces, schools and early childhood centres. A federal Health Department spokesman said the government was consulting stakeholders to identify where support for [rapid antigen testing] is of most benefit.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the Omicron coronavirus variant presents another new challenge and is expected to lead to a much greater volume of cases, as he urged Australians to wear masks in indoor settings.

He said the countrys hospital systems had been able to cope with demand so far but of course theyll be tested.

The highly transmissible strain of the virus had been in Australia for less than four weeks, he said, and we are well prepared for Omicron but we are not taking it anything other than seriously in our responses.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison arriving at todays press conference. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

NSW does not require masks to be worn in most indoor settings, including shops, but masks are required in shops and a range of other indoor settings in Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania.

Mr Morrison said each state and territory leader would detail how their state will act on recommendations from medical experts on how to slow the spread of the Omicron variant that were discussed by national cabinet today.

But speaking after the meeting, Mr Morrison urged everyone to wear masks in indoor public spaces: Whether its mandated or not, thats what you should be doing.

Mr Morrison has likened mask-wearing to wearing sunscreen, in comments that have attracted criticism from the federal Opposition. He said mandates are enforcement mechanisms, which require resources to be applied to enforcement.

Mr Morrison said some premiers would make decisions to mandate masks while others would encourage residents to take that step.

Wear a mask in an indoor setting. You dont need to be forced to do it, Mr Morrison said. Think of Christmas Day when youre going to see elderly relatives. Wear a mask.

Australias Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly, said masks should be worn indoors.

Mr Morrison said leaders were taking Omicron very seriously and that it presented a new challenge, particularly because the speed at which it spreads means a much greater volume of cases.

Although we have seen an increase in the number of cases we have not yet seen any significant impact on our hospital system, he said.

Mr Morrison also announced the payment to GPs and pharmacists for delivering booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines would be increased by $10 a dose.
Last-minute Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve, Pitt Street, Sydney, December 1935. Credit:Fairfax

No wonder they look somewhat dour. Theyve left their Christmas shopping until the very last minute. This picture was taken in Pitt Street on Christmas Eve 1935. At least they didnt have to wear a mask.

It appears, albeit from this image alone, that much of the shopping was undertaken by women and for such a task, a three-quarters length skirt and a hat were de rigueur.

Pedestrians view the holiday windows at the Macys Inc. flagship department store in the Herald Square area of New York. Credit:Bloomberg

The image has been chosen by the Heralds photographic editor Mags King for inclusion in a 160-page book, Sydney Lives, celebrating the extraordinary people, cultures and places that have shaped Australias oldest city.
With a new baby in the family, Rowena Murray has no time for sugar-coating discussions with distant relatives about vaccination and Christmas.

I think Ive snapped; Im sick of talking to people about [why vaccination is sensible] ... to me its such a minor thing to do to protect the rest of the family, says Ms Murray.

Rowena Murray is one of many Australians whose wider families do not all agree on vaccination, and it has affected Christmas decision-making. Credit:Simon Schluter

She has family members who claim they felt bullied into having their first COVID-19 vaccination and chose not to get a second - and others who are strong believers in full-tilt QAnon.

I got fully shirty with them ... what frustrated me was they have medical power of attorney over parents in their 80s, she said.
The NSW government is urging other states to reconsider travel testing rules as COVID-19 swab turnaround times blow out, clinics are stretched and infections hit record highs.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said tourism testing was straining lab capacity with tens of thousands of people trying to obtain a prerequisite negative result to travel to states including Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania.

Long lines at St Vincents drive-through COVID testing clinic at Bondi Beach. Credit:Anna Kucera

Tourism tests are getting in the way of actually looking after patients and clinical outcomes, he said on Tuesday.

NSW recorded 3057 cases on Tuesday, a daily record, as pressure mounts on Premier Dominic Perrottet to reintroduce restrictions such as masks and density limits.
Almost 2 per cent of Queensland Healths workforce and about 1 per cent of Queensland Police Service staff have defied their employers vaccine mandate, new data reveals.

The mandate deadlines for health workers and QPS staff expired last week  December 17 for police and December 15 for health workers.

A Queensland Health nurse receives a COVID-19 vaccine. (File image) Credit:Ian Hitchcock - Queensland Health

QPS employs about 17,200 people. As of December 19, 100 police officers and 71 support staff had been suspended on vaccine-related matters.

Another 11 police officers and seven staff had been suspended over their vaccination status, but the suspensions were revoked when they later complied.
Crippled Queensland businesses are calling for government payments to offset financial losses caused by isolation requirements in the lead-up to Christmas.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles announced on Tuesday that quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated close contacts of a positive COVID case would drop from 14 to seven days isolation.

Restaurant and Catering CEO Wes Lambert said governments should consider helping businesses and workers financially if they must quarantine, which can force closures. Credit:Attila Csaszar

The announcement came as the state recorded 86 new cases, with many of them identified as the Omicron variant.

Mr Miles said the quarantine requirement change would greatly reduce the impact on individuals and businesses when they have a COVID-positive case attend their venue, as the state moves to live more freely with the virus.
WA authorities are highly likely to be reviewing the states reopening date as concerns around the Omicron variant grow, according to Australias leading doctors lobby.

Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said he believed the state government would be closely watching rapidly rising COVID cases in Sydney to determine if WA could safely reopen with minimal restrictions as planned on February 5.

Australian Medical Association president Dr Omar Khorshid. Credit:Peter de Kruijff

I think it is highly likely the West Australians government will be looking very, very carefully at what is happening in New South Wales with the hospitalisation rates, and yet again WA will be able to learn from that experience, he said.

If we get to late January and were seeing large numbers of cases but really not a lot of severe illness, then really WAs border may open the way its been set.
So, who was the recipient of this boisterous adulation? It was Don Harwin, the NSW Arts Minister.

On each occasion the audience had been alerted to the fact that a certain individual was present in their midst. Both times, the entire audience, together with the performers, broke into spontaneous and enduring applause.

Don Harwin has been a popular and effective arts minister in NSW. But now hes been replaced. Credit:Steven Saphore

The first time, three weeks ago, was at a performance by Bach Akademie at Christ Church St Lawrence. The second, last Saturday, happened at a performance by the Haydn Ensemble at the City Recital Hall.

Why? Simply because, for these audiences and their performers, Harwin  largely unknown outside the sphere of government  was rightly seen as the saviour of the arts in NSW.

What was even more startling was this: by last Saturday, it was clear that Harwin was no longer to be a minister in the NSW government. Of course, the new Premier has every right to pick and choose his ministry. That is not in doubt. However, we have to ask this question: what political or other imperative led to the departure of a man, widely regarded as the most successful arts minister in Australia? It is unlikely that we shall ever know or understand the answer to this question.

But we must reflect on the achievements and qualities of Harwin as arts minister.

First, he generally admired and respected all manifestations of the arts.

He was not one of those politicians who belittle the so-called elitism of classical music, theatre and dance. He did not, like some, regard the arts as the fodder of the privileged middle class. He rightly saw the sector as a civilising aspect of our community life.
London: Dubais ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, has been ordered by the High Court in London to provide a British record of more than 554 million ($1.029 billion) to settle a custody battle with his ex-wife over their two children.

The bulk of the massive award to Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, half-sister of Jordans King Abdullah II, and the couples two children, is to ensure their lifetime security, not least to address the grave risk posed to them by the sheikh himself, the judge, Philip Moor, said.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum has been ordered to provide more than $1 billion in a custody battle with his former wife. Credit:Getty Images

The judge said Haya is not asking for an award for herself other than for security and to compensate her for the possessions she lost as a result of the marital breakdown.

He directed Mohammed to make a one-off payment of 251.5 million within three months to Haya for the upkeep of her British mansions, to cover the money she said she was owed for jewellery and racehorses, and for her future security costs.
PHILIPSBURG:--- BirdsCaribbean is extremely concerned at the drastic increase in the capture and trafficking of wild birds in Cuba over the past two years and is urging the Cuban Government to enforce laws put in place to curb the practice.

The economic strain brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a return to the centuries-old tradition of trapping and selling birds as a

way to make a living  and it has reached unprecedented levels,

putting already declining populations of birds at risk. These birds are sold on social media platforms, in particular Facebook and WhatsApp.

The numbers are frightening. The November issue of the Cuban Birder includes a list of 36 Facebook groups that are openly selling wild birds. BirdsCaribbean recorded daily catches from images shared by trappers in just one of these groups (with 46,000 members). Our data showed that 3,270 birds from 28 different species were captured during the month of October 2021 alone [1]. The highest number of captures were of Indigo Buntings (2,041), Painted Buntings (785), and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks (235).

BirdsCaribbean Executive Director, Dr. Lisa Sorenson, commented on the shocking numbers, noting that social media posts reviewed only reflect a fraction of the actual numbers trapped and sold.

It is sobering and worrying that so many birds were removed from the wild in the space of one month. When you consider all the Facebook groups dedicated to the trafficking of birds, paired with sales made via alternative social networks, such as Whatsapp, the dire extent of the situation becomes clear  that bird captures likely to add up to tens of thousands of birds each season, Dr. Sorenson lamented.

The ease of selling wild birds online provides an opportunity for residents to substantially boost their income. Many sales of captured birds are local, but international demand has also increased. Trappers obtain high prices for a Cuban Bullfinch (Negrito) or a Tomeguin del Pinar (Cuban Grassquit) among the Cuban-American community in Florida.

The capture and sale of these birds have become a part of the international wildlife trade, which often has links to organized crime.

The impacts of large-scale trapping on bird populations

The Cuban archipelago is a critical area for migratory species, many of which are already in decline in their breeding territories in North America. Some use Cuba as a stopover to rest and refuel during their long migrations to countries in Central and South America; others spend many months wintering in Cuba. The tired, hungry birds arrive in large flocks on the coast, giving trappers the opportunity to catch thousands.

They use abrasive, often cruel methods, including the use of lyre traps spread with glue. Many birds suffer and die in the process.

Migratory birds account for approximately 70 percent of the bird population on Cuba, with some species spending at least half of each year on the island. The brightly-colored Painted Bunting, Indigo Bunting and Rose-breasted Grosbeak are among the most targeted birds for capture. Many of these species are on the US Fish and Wildlife Service Birds of Conservation Concern 2020 List [2]. This list identifies species that may warrant Endangered species status in the near future if immediate conservation actions are not taken.

Some iconic endemic bird species are also targeted by trappers, including the Cuban Bullfinch, a popular bird for Singing Competitions, the Cuban Grassquit, Cuban Parrot and Cuban Parakeet. Some of these birds are categorized as Threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) [3].

The increase in trapping comes at a time when the very survival of Caribbean birds is in jeopardy. Wild bird populations have been severely impacted by climate change and resulting extreme weather events, as well as habitat loss due to development. A recent study found that nearly 3 billion birds have been lost since 1970 [4].

BirdsCaribbean would like to express its deep appreciation to the dedicated Cuban ornithologists and conservationists who continue to work diligently on this issue through education and outreach initiatives. It is vital to build on their valuable work through an expanded national environmental education campaign in schools, communities, and national media. This sensitization should target children and young people, who are increasingly involved in the illegal trade. It is essential to also inspire changes in behavior and attitudes of older Cubans and families who traditionally keep birds as pets.

It is also vital to invest in alternative and sustainable ways to make a living, providing incentives for Cuban citizens to protect wildlife instead of destroying it. Community-based tourism, including bird and nature guides and engaging citizens in birding as a hobby, as well as citizen science monitoring programs such as eBird, could be expanded.

Cuba reopened to tourism on November 15 and its population is now approximately 87 percent vaccinated. As tourists return, community tourism including eco-tourism and nature guiding could be expanded as alternative livelihoods, catering for an increasingly environmentally conscious tourism market - benefiting all involved.

At BirdsCaribbean, we believe in long-term, sustainable solutions that benefit both nature and the local community. In collaboration with our partners in Cuba, whom we have long supported, we have been working to educate communities on the beauty and value of wild birds. Birds provide essential ecosystem services that are critical for the health of communities and quality of life.

Cuba is a signatory to international treaties aimed at the conservation of species and the islands biodiversity in general, such as the Bonn Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. It is also a contracting party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 1990, and has an excellent record of protecting its natural resources through establishing many Parks and Protected Areas throughout the country.

We are urgently appealing to the Cuban Government to take stronger action to protect its migratory and endemic birds, a vital piece of their natural heritage and national pride. We ask the international conservation community to help Cuba in its efforts to put a stop to bird trapping and trafficking. Efforts to raise the level of awareness of Cubas unique avifauna  many of which are significantly declining in numbers  must also continue.

To learn more about this issue and view many photos and videos, please visit our website:

https://www.birdscaribbean.org/2021/12/birdscaribbean-expresses-alarm-at-the-escalating-illegal-bird-trafficking-problem-in-cuba/

Youtube page: https://bit.ly/BirdTrappingYoutube
PHILIPSBURG:--- On Monday, December 20th, His Excellency Governor Eugene Holiday and the Honorable Minister of Justice Anna E. Richardson have approved and signed the National Decree containing the general measures, thereby establishing the completed Function Book.

The legal position Rechtspositie Regeling KPSM, amendments to the Police Ordinance (Politie Landsverordening), the Organization decree for the Justice Ministry (Organisatie besluit Justitie), and several decrees relating to the Immigration & Border Protection Services have all been completed and is on the legislative route. As such, the focus will now be geared towards the completion of the Rechtspositie regelingen, and the new salary tables (Bezoldigsbesluit).

The newly approved and established Function Book will be seeing some updates in the foreseeable future as departments such as the Court of Guardianship, Judicial Institutes of Sint Maarten (SJIB), Miss Lalie Center (MLC), and the Law Enforcement Institute of Sint Maarten formerly known as the Justice Academy, requires an update to the LIOL incorporating them and thereby must first be approved by the Parliament of Sint Maarten. The steps are underway for this process to be completed.

Minister Richardson stated, "The date 12-20-21, marks a monumental day for the Ministry of Justice, the personnel of this ministry and by extension, the people of Sint Maarten. Technical staff and monitoring bodies engaged in a very meticulous process to ensure that the proper legislative process was carried out for the long-overdue function book of the Ministry of Justice. From the onset, I had taken a firm position that this process would be done the correct way to ensure the function book for the Ministry of Justice would be legally established eliminating any further inconsistencies, stagnation, and instability for the personnel of this ministry. With the teamwork and input of many, this goal has been achieved."

Upon taking office in March 2020, Minister Richardson made the function book her number one priority. The function book has been an unresolved matter since 10-10-10 and has contributed to various challenges (also legally) within the Ministry of Justice. It regulates an important part of the legal status of each civil servant which ultimately defines their task, responsibilities, and their salary scales.

On December 22, 2020, just three months after the installation of the workgroup, the Ministry of Justices Function Book was handed over to the Committee of Civil Servants Unions (CCSU) for their review and advice as required by law. After having received feedback from the Progress Committee, the Committee of Civil Servants Union (CCSU), and the unions representing the civil servants within the Ministry of Justice, the function book was submitted to the Council of Advice for a legal review before it was approved by the Council of Ministers on May 11th, 2021.

Based on the advice of the Council of Advice, the Ministers retained attorney together with the unions sat and made the necessary adjustments to which all parties agreed and signed a statement of assent on July 28, 2021, confirming their agreement with the updated draft.

With the approval and signatures of His Excellency Governor Holiday and Minister Richardson, the function book will now be heading to the office of the Ombudsman for a period of six weeks, whereby a constitutional review will be done to review the laws that were ratified. Additionally, Minister Richardson will be presenting a detailed description of the next step by step process to be followed during the upcoming budget debate in Parliament in January 2022.

"Id like to give a heartfelt thank you to the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of General Affairs, the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, the Unions, His Excellency Governor Eugene B. Holiday, and his Cabinet, my legal team, the Progress Committee and Council of Advice and all stakeholders who played a role in making this day a reality. I take this moment to bid each and every person who makes up the staff in service to this Ministry and to the country as a whole, a heartfelt CONGRATULATIONS. There is still more work ahead to be done, however, rest assured, I am committed to seeing it through," concluded Minister Richardson.
PHILIPSBURG:--- It is an annual custom of Motorworld for all Management & Staff to come together to give back to the community during the holiday season. This year, the Miss Lalie Youth Care and Rehabilitation Center were selected to receive the Annual Christmas Donation.

The Miss Lalie Youth Care and Rehabilitation Center was opened in 2011 and currently is the home of 11 young boys. Supported by their 12 staff, the goal of the center is to correct, educate, guide, and offer perspective to the young men. It serves as a safe space where they can work positively towards self-improvement.

I would like to applaud the entire company for always going out of their way and contributing towards this very special event. We strongly believe that sharing is caring, says Annesa Dwarka, Motorworld Representative.

Thanks to the donations from Motorworld Management & Staff, Christmas baskets containing items such as hygiene products, snacks, cookies, and cider were distributed to the residents. Furthermore, a mix of perishable and non-perishable goods was also donated to the Miss Lalie Youth Care and Rehabilitation Center so that they can prepare Christmas dinner. Each member of staff also received a ham and chicken as a show of appreciation for their hard work with the residents. Representatives of Motorworld visited the center to surprise the residents and staff and present them with their Christmas baskets and goods.

The boys had a great time when you all arrived, and the staff was very grateful to the donation because they had no idea that this was possible in these hard times. We would like to wish a sincere thank you to Motorworld and all of your colleagues, shares Rikson Martina, Manager at Miss Lalie Center.
A security manufacturer has helped Made Smarters trailblazing technology adoption programme mark its third anniversary by reaching a major milestone.

Three years from its launch, the government-funded and industry-led initiative helping SMEs drive growth and decarbonise through digitalisation, has supported its 200th business.

Perimeter security

Among the latest wave of manufacturers starting their journey to use technology to benefit their business, their bottom line, and the environment are GJD Manufacturing, based in Heywood.

The firm makes perimeter security and surveillance devices and has invested in data and systems integration technology.

With the support of Made Smarter, we have been able to source and seamlessly roll out a new ERP and MRP system"

Improving manufacturing efficiency

Mark Tibbenham, Managing Director, said, Over the next three years we aim to double our turnover and profit by developing new products, becoming digitally smart, and growing our export markets.

"With the support of Made Smarter, we have been able to source and seamlessly roll out a new ERP and MRP system which has resulted in significant improvements to our manufacturing efficiency as well as stock control. This, in turn, has freed up cash for new R&D investments.

Impact of private sector investment

SME manufacturers across sectors have secured 4.6M matched funding for 241 projects, worth 16M after private sector investment. Technologies that integrate systems, capture and analyse data, and even create simulations of their plants and processes, are being used to drive efficiencies and reduce waste.

Meanwhile, 3D printing, automation, and robotics are being used to solve business challenges and meet increased demand. These investments are forecasting the creation of 1,177 new jobs and 2,205 upskilled roles, and are forecast to deliver an additional 192.9M in gross value added (GVA) for the North West economy over the next three years.

Digital technologies for SMEs

We launched Made Smarter in the North West to kick start an adoption programme for digital technologies"

Juergen Maier CBE, Co-Chair of Made Smarter, said, "We launched Made Smarter in the North West three years ago with the ambitious aim to kick start an adoption programme for digital technologies among small and medium-sized enterprises, strengthened by leadership training and harnessing talent within universities.

It is fantastic to see the tremendous impact that the programme continues to have on individuals, businesses, the UK economy, and the environment.

Opportunities and offerings

It is clear from the unequivocal success we are seeing in the North West, and the positive effect adoption programmes in the West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humber, and the North East, are having that we are starting to grasp the multitude of opportunities that innovation and digital technologies offer.

It is clear that for the UK manufacturing sector to thrive and become a world leader, we now need to roll out Made Smarter nationwide and with a stronger ambition.

Boosting productivity

Made Smarter has engaged with 1,381 businesses to help them introduce digital tools and technologies

Since launching in 2018, Made Smarter has engaged with 1,381 businesses from every corner of the region to help them introduce digital tools and technologies to help boost productivity and growth, navigate COVID-19, and tackle climate change.

670 have reaped the rewards of intensive support including expert, impartial technology advice, 248 have used digital transformation workshops to help take their first steps to transform their business, and 56 business leaders have developed the vision and the skills to pursue smarter manufacturing through the Made Smarter Leadership programme, developed in partnership with Lancaster University. Meanwhile, manufacturers have benefited from funded digital technology internships which offer students and graduates paid placements to work on live technology projects.

Becoming sustainable

Over 80% of SMEs working with Made Smarter to adopt cutting-edge technologies have seen a boost in productivity, while others have benefited from an increase in revenue and exports, job creation, and providing new skills to workforces, as well as improved visibility and enhanced integration with supply chains.

More than 25% reduced their carbon emissions, while others cut energy bills, reduced waste, and became more environmentally sustainable.

Digital journey

We have engaged with 1,381 SMEs to help them start their digital journey by providing the right approach"

Donna Edwards, Director of the Made Smarter Adoption Programme in the North West, said, Over the last three years we have worked extremely hard to drive digital technology usage among makers across the North West.

We have engaged with 1,381 SMEs in the region to help them start their digital journey by providing them with specialist advice to help them select the right approach, level of investment, and tools for their business.

The balance between social and environmental goals

We have seen huge success with Made Smarter-supported businesses reporting growth, productivity, and efficiency gains, as well as upskilling their workforce and creating new high-value jobs. Were also playing a crucial role in helping the UK grow sustainably and reach its ambitious aim of net-zero greenhouse gases by 2050.

Digitalisation enables businesses to find the sustainability sweet spot between these economic, social, and environmental goals. We look forward to continuing our drive to enable hundreds more manufacturers in Cheshire and Warrington, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and Liverpool City Region to learn how digital transformation can help them recover, grow, and create resilience.
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Two months ago, Dan Bongino sounded ready to give up one of the best slots in conservative talk radio over his objection to his employer's coronavirus vaccine mandate.

"You can have me, or you can have the mandate, but you can't have both," he said on Oct. 18, threatening to stop hosting his three-hour program on Cumulus Media - which launched in March - if the radio giant did not back down from health requirements imposed on employees this fall.

A lot has happened since then, but not much has changed for Bongino and his bosses. He is still hosting the same show, even though Cumulus Media does not appear to have changed it mandate. That's led some radio hosts and industry observers to question Bongino's commitment to his ultimatum. Talk radio historian Brian Rosenwald said "there was a stunt element to it."

Bongino - who has taken the coronavirus vaccine himself - told his listeners in October that he was taking a stand on behalf of Cumulus Media employees who didn't want the shot, as well as other on-air personalities who had been terminated for failing to get one. "I'm not going to let this go," he said at the time. "Cumulus is going to have to make a decision with me if they want to continue this partnership, or they don't. I want something to change, and I'm giving them an opportunity to do it. But if they don't, this is going to be an entirely untenable situation going forward."

But after taking a week and a half off the air, Bongino returned to his radio show in early November. He told listeners that Cumulus Media had made "some concessions" but did not go into details. "We're at a stalemate here," he said. "We basically got guns to each other's heads." Since then, he has posted regularly updates on his Parler social media account telling his followers that he's in an "ongoing battle over these immoral, unscientific vaccine mandates" and doesn't "know what's coming next."

A different metaphor occurred to longtime talk radio chronicler Michael Harrison, the publisher of industry publication Talkers magazine. Bongino "painted himself into a corner and threatened to leave and then didn't make good on that threat," he said.

"With all due respect to Dan Bongino, who is extremely talented and appears to have a potentially bright future in talk radio ahead of him, I think he miscalculated the level of his clout as a talk-show host and employee of Cumulus Media," Harrison added. "Platform usually wins in these spaces, and Cumulus Media is a very large and powerful platform."

Bongino offered no further specifics about his situation in an email interview with The Washington Post. When asked why he hasn't severed ties with Cumulus, he said he is still negotiating against the mandate and suggested he wants to protect the job security of his workers. "I have numerous employees who work on my show too. I have to protect them," he said.

He said he was in "an ongoing fight" with Cumulus. "There are conversations happening but I'm not optimistic." Asked how long this these conversations could take, and how long he would wait before parting ways with Cumlus he said, "I can't speak to their timeline."

Bongino, who has battled Hodgkin's lymphoma, has been vaccinated "on the advice from his doctor while he was battling cancer," his team said in October. He told his listeners on Monday that he was infected with the coronavirus a month and a half ago and was initially "afraid" but ended up recovering fairly quickly.

He told The Post he will not get a booster shot, even if Cumulus Media requires employees to do so.

Representatives for Cumulus Media have been publicly silent on the issue since Bongino called out the company in October. Cumulus representatives did not respond to multiple inquiries about the vaccine mandate, but an on-air employee told The Post that it remains in place. Many media companies have recently been tightening health-and-safety measures in response to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. On Monday, Fox News parent Fox Corp. - which Bongino also hosts a show for - announced it would impose a vaccine mandate for employees in New York City on Dec. 27.

Cumulus Media came close to acknowledging Bongino's protest during a question-and-answer session on an earnings call last month, when an analyst asked about issues with unnamed "higher-profile personalities."

Cumulus's chief financial officer Frank Lopez-Balboa essentially dismissed the concern. "The business and the particular talent you're talking about is a nice business and additive business for us and very successful," he replied. "But having said that, when you look at the overall scheme of the size of the company, the implications are really not material."

If Bongino did walk away from Cumulus, he would be giving up the prized noon-to-3 p.m. slot, which many radio stations devoted to the ultra-popular host Rush Limbaugh before his death in February. Cumulus Media, which owns 415 stations across 86 markets, has touted the reach of Bongino's show as it competes with rivals in the same time slot, including conservative media personalities Dana Loesch, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.

On his show last week, Bongino called his radio time slot "the honor of [his] life." And he has accused other conservative radio hosts of trying to exploit his dispute with Cumulus Media to swipe the time slot for themselves. "They want my job," he said in a video he posted to Facebook in November.

Rosenwald, who published a 2019 book about the history of political talk radio, suspects Bongino's October ultimatum was never much of an ultimatum at all. He saw little reason for either the host or Cumulus to break up with each other.

"I think it was a cynical ploy, to some extent," Rosenwald said. "There was an incentive for him to stay with them because of that platform, and they've invested a lot of money in launching this show and building it up."
STAMFORD  A criminal defense attorney claims a client accused of slaying a Norwalk man in 2010 couldnt have committed the crime because he was visiting the hospital at the time of the homicide.

Ibo Boone, a 35-year-old Waterbury man, was arrested in September 2017 and charged with murder in connection to the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Michael Mizzy Robinson in the area of South Main and Grove streets on Oct. 29, 2010.

Police claimed at the time of the arrest that Boone allegedly killed Robinson in connection to a back-and-forth wave of violence among rival street gangs in South Norwalk.

But Boones attorney, Phillip Russell, claims police nabbed the wrong guy.

Russell said during a remote disposition hearing Monday out of Stamford Superior Court that Boone couldnt have been the gunman because he was visiting a woman who was giving birth at Norwalk Hospital at the same time Robinson was killed miles away.

Russell said his client, who cooperated with the Norwalk police investigation, and two other witnesses present at Norwalk Hospital that day told police as far back as 2010 that Boone was with them at the time of the homicide. He said those two witnesses are prepared to testify if the case goes to trial.

Russell also claims that he has video evidence from Norwalk Hospital on the day in question which places Boone there at the time of the homicide across town.

Assistant States Attorney Daniel Cummings disagreed with Russells claims, however, saying that the defense team has yet to produce any sworn written statements from witnesses attesting to Boones supposed alibi.

The state does not agree that his alibi has any merit to it, Cummings said during Mondays hearing.

Cummings also took aim at the video evidence that Russell says shows Boone at the hospital that evening in 2010, saying that the footage is so poor that you cant identify anyone in the video.

The discussion over Boones whereabouts on the day of the 2010 homicide was prompted by a motion from Russell to reduce Boones $1 million bond.

It was Russells third such motion asking for a bond reduction over the past four years of Boones incarceration. Last March, Judge Gary White denied a similar motion asking for Boones bond to be reduced to $250,000. That denial was made without prejudice, which allowed Russell to keep trying.

Russell said Boones family is prepared to post up to a $500,000 bond, if the court sees fit to lower the bond.

We believe that the states entitled to some security on this, but its unfair to leave the man languishing for four years when he, first of all, could be working; second of all, be assisting in his own defense; and third of all, not be subject to pretrial detention, Russell said.

Russell claimed the state has cut off all off-the-record pretrial discussions with his team since April 2020.

On Monday, Russell asked White to either order the state to engage in a supervised pretrial hearing to discuss the bond reduction argument in light of new information, or schedule a proper hearing where he could call witnesses, police officers and review other evidence related to the case  a suggestion with which Cummings took issue.

We dont do mini trials on bond motions to try and take a swipe at the states case, Cummings said.

Cummings said the state is reluctant to continue participating in off-the-record pretrial hearings with the defense because previous efforts have not been fruitful.

Its been pretty much a waste of time. Counsel is sending the state on one wild goose chase after another, trying to track down witnesses and video that he claims establishes an alibi, Cummings said.

White is scheduled to decide on the motion for bond reduction on Jan. 18.

Once the decision is made, White suggested the case should be placed on the trial list.
VICTORIA, British Columbia  The Canadian Pacific Coast province of British Columbia is closing bars, nightclubs and gyms because of the omicron coronavirus variant.

Starting at 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, bars, nightclubs, gyms, fitness centers and dance studios will have to close, and all seated events will be reduced to 50% capacity. Indoor gatherings, including weddings, are being cancelled.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said Tuesday the risk posed by omicron is fundamentally different than other variants and it more easily infects those who are vaccinated or have had COVID-19.

She said the province is seeing explosive outbreaks, with a large number of people being exposed at the same time. Theres also been a spike in cases among those aged 18 to 35.

The French-speaking province of Quebec announced Monday that it is closing bars, cinemas, gyms and spas because of a record number of coronavirus cases.

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HERES WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC:

 Biden pivots to home tests to fight omicron surge as Christmas nears

 Omicron casts a new shadow over economy's pandemic recovery

 Parents, schools face another reckoning over pandemic

 Explainer: Boosters key to fight omicron, lot still to learn

 Feeling powerless, families bring elderly home in pandemic

 Britain to give financial support to businesses hurt by the omicron surge

Go to https://APNews.com/coronavirus-pandemic for updates throughout the day.

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING TODAY:

NEW YORK  The NHL will withdraw from the Winter Olympics after the regular-season schedule was disrupted by coronavirus outbreaks, a person with direct knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

As a result, mens hockey tournament at the Olympics will go on without NHL players for the second consecutive time.

The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because an announcement had yet to be made on the NHL pulling out of Beijing.

The league informed the players association on Tuesday that it was retaining its right to withdraw from Olympic participation because there was a material disruption to the season, and the union was not going to dispute the decision, the person said.

 By John Wawrow and Stephen Whyno

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ANNAPOLIS, Md.  Amid a surge in coronavirus hospitalizations in Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan announced $100 million in emergency funding Tuesday to ramp up hospital and nursing home staffing and make more testing, treatments and vaccines available.

As I have been warning for the past few weeks, we are entering another pivotal moment in the fight against COVID-19, Hogan said.

Hogan said hes also mobilizing the Maryland National Guard to provide support personnel to expand testing sites and hours.

The emergency funding includes $50 million to stabilize hospital staffing and another $50 million to expand the availability of COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccines at hospitals and nursing homes, Hogan said. The state also will provide $30 million for schools to purchase testing resources, he said.

Hogan, who is working from home after testing positive for the coronavirus himself on Monday, made the announcement via video. He said he was only experiencing cold-like symptoms, something he attributes to getting vaccinated. He urged others to do the same.

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NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans is shortening parade routes for the upcoming Mardi Gras season because there are fewer police officers, medics and other first responders to handle the crowds, officials said Tuesday.

The city canceled Mardi Gras parades this past February because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2020 parade crowds are considered a big reason that New Orleans was an early pandemic hot spot.

The big news and the best news is that Mardi Gras is returning to the city of New Orleans and to the world in 2022, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.

Weeks of Carnival season parades lead up to Fat Tuesday, which will be on March 1.

Cantrell also noted that if things go wrong in our city, she might have to change its plans for Carnival and Mardi Gras. But she said she is confident the city can make it through the omicron variant, flu season and the holiday season.

With 80% of its residents fully vaccinated, New Orleans is a national leader, she said.

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LINCOLN, Neb.  The last Nebraska community still requiring masks is dropping its mandate.

Lincoln Lancaster County Health Director Pat Lopez said in a news conference Tuesday that a health order requiring indoor masking will expire at the end of the day Thursday.

The county reinstated the mask requirement in August amid the delta surge. No other city or county in the state has required masks in indoor settings over the past four months, the Lincoln Journal-Star reports.

Lopez said the county has made critical progress over the past year in battling the virus, helped largely by the vaccine. Even without the requirement, she said masks are strongly recommended in schools and at indoor sporting events, theaters, gatherings of groups indoors, including church and faith-based services.

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LIMA, Peru  Some Latin American countries are beginning to reimpose coronavirus restrictions to avoid the spread of the omicron variant over the holiday season despite seeing few reported cases so far.

Ecuador and Peru on Tuesday announced some capacity limits at public places, like restaurants and movie theaters. Both countries have more than 60% of their population fully vaccinated.

Peruvian authorities closed land borders to visitors and imposed a curfew from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. Anybody over 18 years old will have to show proof of being fully vaccinated to fly or take an intercity bus within the country.

Peru has officially reported 12 cases of the omicron variant.

In neighboring Ecuador, authorities suspended mass events and said anybody over 12 will have to present a vaccination card to enter to enter public offices. Restaurants and movie theaters will limited to 50%. capacity.

Ecuador has reported 22 cases of the omicron variant.

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OKLAHOMA CITY  Oklahoma health officials announced Tuesday they have detected the states first confirmed case of the omicron COVID-19 variant.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health didnt release any information about where the case originated or whether the person had been vaccinated.

Oklahoma was among the last states to confirm the presence of omicron. Federal health officials said Monday that omicron is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of infections last week.

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SEATTLE - University of Washington officials said Tuesday they will use remote learning during the first week of the winter quarter in January because of growing concerns about the rapidly spreading omicron variant.

The university told students, staff and faculty that most classes will be held online Jan. 3 through Jan. 9 as they track infections.

Several other schools across the country are taking similar measures in the face of the variant, including DePaul, Harvard and Stanford universities.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va.  Citing a nursing shortage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, West Virginia will use $48 million in federal stimulus funding to aggressively recruit and train nurses over the next four years, Gov. Jim Justice said Tuesday.

Justice said about 1,700 nurses declined to renew their state licenses last year. He said 68% of those who left the field cited being just plain tired and pushed to the very limit from the strains of the pandemic.

The Republican governor said nursing programs will be expanded next fall at three colleges. The funding comes from $126 million remaining to be spent by the state from the federal CARES Act.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The Anchorage School Board has reversed the superintendents decision to make masking optional when students return from winter break and will instead keep the current mask requirement in place until at least Jan. 15.

Board members cited the rapid rise of the omicron variant of COVID-19 for the move.

Superintendent Deena Bishop announced last week that masks would be optional in the school district starting Jan. 3. In a letter to parents, she cited low transmission rates in the school district and the municipality.

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LAS VEGAS  Health officials in Nevada are charting jumps in key coronavirus measurements, including more than 3,800 new cases of COVID-19 in Clark County during the last week.

The Las Vegas area surpassed 6,400 deaths attributed to the coronavirus since the pandemic began, or 77% of the more than 8,300 people who have died statewide.

The Southern Nevada Health District on Tuesday reported 974 new cases and 15 deaths in Clark County since Monday. State health officials on Monday also confirmed three new cases of the fast-spreading omicron variant  including two in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County. Thats five omicron cases in Nevada since the first one was detected last week.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Rhode Islands pandemic death toll has surpassed 3,000, prompting Democratic Gov. Daniel McKee to order state flags at all state facilities and buildings to be flown at half-staff as a solemn sign of respect.

McKee said in a statement Tuesday: Weve lost 3,000 mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, grandparents, friends, and neighbors who will be missed  especially during this holiday season.

He urged the unvaccinated to get a shot, and the vaccinated to get their boosters and for people to wear a mask in public places.

Flags will remain at half-staff until sunset on Wednesday.

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BARCELONA, Spain  Despite vaccination rates that make other governments envious, Spain and Portugal are facing the hard truth that with the new omicron variant running rampant, these winter holidays wont be a time of unrestrained joy.

Portugal on Tuesday announced a slew of new restrictions over Christmas and the New Year, making working from home mandatory and shutting discotheques and bars beginning Saturday night. A negative test result must be shown to enter cinemas, theaters, sports events, weddings and baptisms until at least Jan. 9.

Portugal will impose exceptional measures for Christmas and New Year, including having a negative test result to enter restaurants and public celebrations.

That is happening despite almost 87% of Portugals population being fully vaccinated, due to the omicron variant, which is racing across Europe.

Meanwhile, Catalonia, home to the northeastern city of Barcelona, is prepared to become the first Spanish region to reinstate serious limitations. One in four of everyone hospitalized in Spain with COVID-19 is in Catalonia.

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JERUSALEM  A government advisory panel of health experts has recommended that Israel begin administering a fourth shot of the coronavirus vaccine to protect against the fast-spreading omicron variant.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday he had already instructed health officials to begin preparations.

The campaign is to begin with people over 60 and health care workers. But based on past vaccination efforts, it could quickly include other segments of the population.

Bennetts office said the campaign, which still requires bureaucratic approvals, is expected to begin in the coming days.

Israel was one of the first countries to vaccinate its population early this year and then carried out the worlds first booster campaign over the summer.

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CHICAGO  Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday the nations third-largest city will require proof of coronavirus vaccination at restaurants, bars, gyms and other indoor venues, as the rapidly spreading omicron variant drives a spike in COVID-19 infections.

Lightfoot said the requirement will take effect Jan. 3, and will apply to places where food and beverages are served  including sport and entertainment venues  and to fitness centers. It doesnt apply to people getting take-out, who stay in a businesses for 10 minutes or less.

Lightfoot said the measure is necessary because of a surge in cases and hospitalizations, with Chicago seeing numbers at levels similar to those before vaccines were available. Chicago is reporting an average of about 1,700 cases per day, up from about 300 per day just weeks ago, she said.

On Monday, Illinois reported about 12,330 new COVID-19 cases  the highest daily total in more than a year. Much of that increase has been driven by the omicron variant, prompting fears of a winter surge.

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ATLANTA -- Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Tuesday reinstated a mask requirement inside stores and other businesses in the city due to rising COVID-19 infections and the emergence of the extraordinarily contagious omicron variant, which has quickly become the dominant version of the virus in the U.S.

People who fail to wear a mask indoors could face a fine of $50 for a second offense. Bottoms had lifted the previous mask mandate last month.
NEW CANAAN  Lines are getting longer in front of a privately-owned pharmacy in town where people have been receiving free vaccines since April, and now, boosters.

The line, which bent around the corner of Cherry Street and East Avenue Tuesday morning, started forming regularly in front of the towns oldest drug store, New Canaan Pharmacy, around Thanksgiving, according to the stores owner Premal Patel. The pharmacy, which was previously located on Main Street, has been administering vaccine doses and booster shots to nearly 120 people Monday to Saturday on a walk-in basis. Before Thanksgiving, Patel said he did not see regular lines outside of his store.

There has been an uptick in cases, said Henry Howe, 18, who was standing in line Tuesday morning.

Not long ago, he wasnt sure he needed a booster. But recently, people he knew contracted COVID-19 despite having boosters, and he said he thought it was time.

His mother, Juliet Howe, said she expected to be in and out in a few minutes, but arrived to a long line.

It starts getting crowded by 9:45 in the morning, Patel said, adding he recommends residents arrive before 1 p.m.

The most challenging thing, he said, is when he has to turn people away. When the supply runs low, Patel said he may stop accepting walk-ins at around 1 p.m.

Even so, the owner said Monday he feels great that he can do this for the community, with the ability to offer Moderna, Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer vaccines and boosters. Patel said he often has more vaccines than he can administer and is getting shipments on a regular basis.

While New Canaan offers its own clinics through the Health Department and is offering boosters and vaccine doses at Vine Cottage and Irwin House, the towns cases have been steadily rising since November.

The town reported 71 positive COVID-19 cases last week, up from 51, according the town dashboard, and the totals do not always include residents who took home tests.

First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said in weekly COVID update that its expected this upward trend in positive cases will continue in the coming weeks in New Canaan and all of Connecticut.
NEW CANAAN  The schools quarantined population more than tripled week-over-week, with 90 students and one staff member isolating after being deemed in close contact with someone who had COVID-19.

The districts quarantining total is up from the 29 individuals reported on the school dashboard on Dec. 13.

At the same time, the town saw its highest one-week positive COVID total in months, with 71 cases last week reported as of Monday, a 20-case jump from the week prior.

With the upcoming holidays, it is expected that this upward trend in positive cases will continue in the coming weeks in New Canaan and all of Connecticut, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said in his weekly coronavirus update to the town. We strongly encourage everyone to get their booster vaccinations if you are 16 and over and it has been at least six months since your second dose.

New Canaan schools also reported 36 cases among students Monday. Out of that total, 13 students are from New Canaan High School, eight are from South Elementary School, Saxe Middle School and East Elementary School both have seven and West Elementary School has one.

The high school also has four staff members that are reported positive, with one additional staff member at both Saxe Middle School and East Elementary School, and another at the districts administrative level.

Moynihan reported that the town has a 0.58% breakthrough case rate among their total fully vaccinated resident population of 15,765. Per the first selectmans report, all eligible residents ages 12 to 17, 18 to 24, 25 to 44 and over 65 have been fully vaccinated. Just over 93% of eligible residents ages 45 to 64 have been fully vaccinated, as well as 53.41% of eligible residents between the ages of 5 and 11.

The town is continuing to host COVID booster vaccination clinics in town for residents seeking a third Pfizer or Moderna dose. On Dec. 23 and Dec. 27 the town will be hosting large booster vaccination clinics at Irwin House in Irwin Park.

Free rapid testing is also available through the towns Health Department at Vine Cottage for symptomatic residents.

Additional booster clinics will continue to be added in the upcoming weeks. Area pharmacies and Stamford Hospital are also providing booster vaccinations.
MOORHEAD, Minn. (AP)  Wreaths for each of the seven people whose bodies were discovered inside a Minnesota home over the weekend were left outside the residence Monday, where friends and relatives wept in below-freezing weather and wondered what happened to their loved ones.

Preliminary autopsy results showed the victims who lived together in Moorhead did not die from any obvious trauma, but a cause of death has not been determined, police said. Relatives said they have more questions than answers.

Moorhead police identified the victims as 37-year-old Belin Hernandez, 34-year-old Marleny Pinto, 32-year-old Eldor Hernandez Castillo, 19-year-old Mariela Guzman Pinto, 16-year-old Breylin Hernandez, 7-year-old Mike Hernandez and 5-year-old Marbely Hernandez.

Alan Pinto, 14, a cousin who on Monday served as translator for his Spanish-speaking relatives, most of whom immigrated from Honduras, said the family was happy to be in America and to escape the turmoil of their home country. But they said their lives will never be the same after such a tragic loss.

I'm trying, Pinto said, when asked how he was holding up. It's hard.

Autopsies were conducted over the weekend by the Ramsey County Medical Examiners Office in St. Paul. Police said blood samples from the victims have been sent to a lab for further examination.

I know there is a lot of speculation in the community but our job is to look at all the facts, Moorhead Capt. Deric Swenson told The Associated Press. We have ideas about what happened but we don't have that specific answer.

The victims were found just before 8 p.m. Saturday by family members conducting a welfare check at the home in south Moorhead. Neighbors said the children were last seen Friday.

There were no signs of violence or forced entry, police said. Authorities were not seeking suspects.

Moorhead is on the Minnesota border next to Fargo, North Dakota, in a metropolitan area of about 230,000 people.
SHELTON  The school districts building substitutes will soon be getting a bump in pay.

The Board of Education, at its meeting last week, approved increasing the current salary from $110 to $150 per day beginning Jan. 3.

School District Chief of Staff Carole Pannozzo said the building substitute program was introduced during the 2015-16 school year, and there has been no increase in the per-diem rate since that time.

Currently, with the fierce competition for employees in all employment areas, the rate increase is one tool to aid Shelton public schools with recruitment and retention of these employees, Pannozzo said.

She said, for the 2021-22 school year, the district budgeted for 26 building subs, with 14 positions filled and two more subs starting on Jan. 3. She said the daily rate increase will not impact the present years school budget.

These positions are important to the successful functioning of schools, Pannozzo said, They of course cover teacher absences, but since the subs are assigned to one particular school, they become familiar with that schools staff, students, routines, and building layout, as opposed to a sub who is assigned on a daily basis and requires training each day.

Also, Pannozzo said the building substitutes have been a recruitment pool for filling teacher positions, since some of the building subs are studying to become certified teachers.

The program has been successful, and principals applaud and support the program, Pannozzo said. We just need to hire more staff.

brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com
STAMFORD  Two major school construction projects in Stamford recently received partial funding from the state, but officials are hoping to receive even more money.

Of the two projects, the biggest is reconstruction of Westhill High School, a project estimated to cost $258 million, according to the states Department of Administrative Services. The current 50-year-old structure has had a variety of problems, including major water intrusion items related to leaky roofs, windows, doorways and exterior facade, according to schools Superintendent Tamu Lucero.

Plans are to build a brand new school on the same site, and then demolishing the existing building once the new one is complete. Lucero said the new school would be designed to be more student oriented, promoting student autonomy and independence.

The state has agreed to finance 20 percent of the work, or $52 million, according to a letter released late last week by the department.

The other project would be a new pre-school Early Childhood Center slated for 83 Lockwood Ave. That project, which is estimated to cost $52 million, would receive roughly $10 million in state funding.

The Early Childhood Center would expand pre-school services by hosting about 600 students, from birth to the age of 5.

Research demonstrates the most important time in a childs development is birth to age 5, Lucero said. It is imperative that we offer the most developmentally appropriate support to our children during these years of growth.

Despite the news that the state has agreed to fund 20 percent of each project, officials said its not enough.

While this is a critical first step towards the realization of these two projects, we will need to work with our local and state representatives to pursue additional state funding, said Lucero in an emailed press release.

In the same release, Lucero said projects such as the Westhill reconstruction represent significant expenditures.

We cannot cover the costs of these projects without significant help from the state, she said. We are cautiously optimistic that the legislature will understand both the importance of these projects in our community and the impact the projects will have on the lives and careers of our students.

Beside Westhill, the district also had identified four other schools  Cloonan Middle School, Hart Elementary School, Roxbury Elementary School and Toquam Magnet Elementary School  as buildings that need to be torn down and replaced.

State funding for construction projects is based on a formula which is tied to a municipalitys wealth. In essence, the poorest municipalities in Connecticut get the highest reimbursement rates while wealthier communities receive a smaller reimbursement percentage.

For next year, Stamfords percentage of reimbursement is slated to be 30 percent for general construction and 20 percent for new construction. Both the Westhill and Lockwood projects, each deemed new construction, secured 20 percent funding.

While the state has agreed to place both the Westhill and Lockwood projects on its priority list, the funding will ultimately need to be approved by the General Assembly during the upcoming legislative session.

Stamford officials have repeatedly said they hope Westhill gets the same type of funding recently secured by Norwalk Public Schools for a new high school. That district was able to secure 80 percent funding, well above Norwalks normal rate of 23 percent for new construction.

Norwalk got that amount after filing for special legislation emphasizing its regional program, said Konstantinos Kosta Diamantis, the former director of the Office of School Construction Grants and Review, in a previous article.

At the time, Diamantis said the state encourages regional programming, which explains why such projects  like the one in Norwalk  get more money.

Stamford school officials have discussed using special legislation to acquire more state funding for Westhill, but it is unclear if that will happen. Last month, Lucero said school representatives met with state officials to discuss creating a regional program within Westhill in the hopes that going that route could mean considerably more state dollars.

Lucero pointed out to members of the districts Long Term Facilities Committee how Westhill could offer a regional program. The tentative plan would be to allow students in surrounding communities to enroll in the schools recently created Pathway to Career program, designed to help students entering the workforce.

ignacio.laguarda@stamfordadvocate.com
Published: 21 December 2021

General government debt grew by EUR 1.4 billion in the third quarter of 2021

General government EDP debt, or consolidated gross debt at nominal prices, amounted to EUR 168.5 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2021 and grew by EUR 1.4 billion during the quarter. Relative to GDP, general government debt stood at 68.7 per cent. Correspondingly, general government debt has grown by EUR 9.3 billion compared with the respective period of the year before. These data derive from Statistics Finland's statistics on general government debt by quarter.

General government debt by quarter

During the third quarter, central government debt grew by EUR 0.9 billion and was EUR 141.0 billion at the end of the quarter. The stock of long-term bonds grew by EUR 4.1 billion and the amount of short-term debt instruments with a maturity of under one year decreased by EUR 3.3 billion. The stocks of long-term and short-term loans remained nearly on level with the previous quarter.

The local government sector's debt increased by EUR 0.5 billion and stood at EUR 26.5 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2021. The loan stock grew by EUR 0.2 billion and the amount of debt instruments grew by EUR 0.3 billion from the previous quarter. Social security funds' debt grew by EUR 0.1 billion and totalled EUR 2.6 billion at the end of the quarter. Of these, the debt of employment pension schemes grew by EUR 0.1 billion as loan stocks increased. The debt of other social security funds remained on level with the previous quarter.

General government EDP debt describes general governments debt to other sectors of the national economy and to the rest of the world, and its development is influenced by changes in unconsolidated debt and internal general government debts. Consolidated general government gross debt is derived by deducting debts between units recorded under general government from unconsolidated gross debt. For this reason, general government debt is smaller than the combined debts of its sub-sectors. The debt-to-GDP ratio has been calculated using a seasonally and working day adjusted GDP series at market prices.

The EDP debt of general government differs conceptionally to some extent in the case of central government from the central government debt published by the State Treasury. Central government's EDP debt also includes loans granted to beneficiary counties by the European Financial Stability Facility EFSF, received cash collaterals related to derivative contracts, the capital of the Nuclear Waste Management Fund, debts generated from investments in central government's PPP (public-private partnership) projects, coins that are in circulation, and the deposits of the European Commission. In National Accounts, central government is also a broader concept than the budget and financial economy ( http://www.stat.fi/meta/luokitukset/_linkki/julkisyhteisot.html ). However, the State Pension Fund is included in social security funds. The valuation principle for both debt concepts is the nominal value, where the effect of currency swaps is taken into account.

Source: General government debt by quarter, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Johannes Nykanen 029 551 3641, Jose Lahtinen 029 551 3776, financial.accounts@stat.fi

Head of Department in charge: Katri Kaaja

Publication in pdf-format (218.1 kB)

Updated 21.12.2021

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): General government debt by quarter [e-publication].

ISSN=1799-8034. 3rd quarter 2021. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 6.1.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/jyev/2021/03/jyev_2021_03_2021-12-21_tie_001_en.html
The Ministry of Health informs that the 16th case of COVID with the Omicron variant has been confirmed on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Health, it is about a 39 year old woman, in the county of Bihor, with a travel history in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The person is fully vaccinated, is isolating at home, and her health status is good, the Ministry of Health specifies, Agerpres informs.
As many as 28,084 vaccine doses from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson&Johnson were administered in the last 24 hours, including 6,883, which represent the first dose, 6,630 - the second dose and 14,571 - the third dose, Romania's National COVID-19 Vaccination Coordination Committee (CNCAV) informs on Tuesday.

According to CNCAV, since the start of the anti-COVID vaccination campaign, on December 27, 2020, there have been 15,685,669 vaccine doses administered for 7,903,461 people, 7,753,973 receiving the full scheme and 1,929,754 were immunized with the third dose.In the last 24 hours there have been 9 adverse reactions recorded, 2 local types and 7 general types.In total, since the start of the vaccination campaign, there have been 19,651 adverse reactions recorded in the anti-COVID vaccines, 2,139 local types and 17,512 general types.AGERPRES
Approximately 100 persons among those who are protesting in the Izvor Park area have managed to enter Parliament's courtyard, according to some judiciary sources.

Approximately 1,500 people are protesting on Tuesday close to the Palace of Parliament, against the introduction of the green certificate.

Traffic was blocked in the protest area with the Traffic Police deciding to restrict the traffic on the Natiunile Unite avenue, the segment between the B.P. Hasdeu Street and the Libertatii Avenue, as well as on the first lane of the segment of the Calea 13 Septembrie Avenue, from the Libertatii Avenue towards the Marriot Hotel.

Numerous AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romania) supporters and MPs have been protesting on Tuesday in front of the Palace of Parliament against the COVID green certificate and restrictions imposed in the pandemic context, Agerpres informs.
Specialist teams of the Gendarmerie are discussing with the protesters who managed to enter the courtyard of the Parliament Palace, with the law enforcement now trying to convince them to leave the area.

"At this point, through our dialogue teams, we are urging the persons to leave the outside area belonging to the institutions. So far, the Gendarmerie has not used force or other equipment," said the Directorate General of the Bucharest Municipality Gendarmerie.

The Capital City Gendarmerie calls on the participants in the protest to cooperate, to follow the indications and head towards the exit from the Parliament Palace courtyard and go to the area indicated by the law enforcement.

Approximately 1,500 people are protesting on Tuesday close to the Palace of Parliament, against the introduction of the green certificate.

Traffic was blocked in the protest area with the Traffic Police deciding to restrict the traffic on the Natiunile Unite avenue, the segment between the B.P. Hasdeu Street and the Libertatii Avenue, as well as on the first lane of the segment of the Calea 13 Septembrie Avenue, from the Libertatii Avenue towards the Marriot Hotel, Agerpres informs.
AGERPRES special correspondent, Florin Stefan, reports: Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca announced in Brussels on Tuesday that the government is very close to making a decision on setting up a structure to manage everything that the monitoring, coordination and verification of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) mean and specified that he has received guarantees from the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, that Romania will receive technical assistance from the EU for the absorption of these funds.

"We have received assurances [from the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen - ed.n.] that we will receive technical assistance from the EU where we need it to be able to operationalize everything that the mechanisms and managing authorities entail in order to absorb European funds. We also discussed that NRRP is a component, but there are also the other funds from the multi-annual funding at EU level that are available, which must also be a priority for the Romanian government," premier Ciuca told a press conference at the headquarters of the Romanian Permanent Representation to the European Union.

According to the Prime Minister, "we are very close to making a decision so that we can identify at the governmental level the structure that can manage everything that the monitoring, coordination and verification of the way these mechanisms become operational mean." "We cannot afford to miss this chance," said Ciuca, in reference to NRRP, but also to other EU funds.

"We already have 12 billion euros in cohesion funds to be spent in a very short period of time. These are the funds that come on this NRRP axis, plus the European funds from the multiannual financial framework. It is a set of offers that involves an even greater set of measures of involvement and responsibility of each of us to be able to achieve this goal," the Romanian prime minister underlined.
President Klaus Iohannis has signed a decree for decorating several personalities in Germany.

According to a press release from the Presidential Administration, the president offered the Order of "Merit for Promoting Human Rights and Social Commitment", in the rank of Grand Officer to the chairman of the "German-Romanian Forum" (1999-2018), Susanne Kastner, and the president of the Bavarian Parliament (2008-2018), Barbara Stamm, the Order of "Merit for Promoting Human Rights and Social Commitment", in the rank of Commander to Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schramm, member in the Board of Directors of the "Bavarian Children's Aid Romania" Association and the Order of "Merit for Promoting Human Rights and Social Commitment" in the rank of Officer to Fabritius Uwe-Volker, responsible for Romania of the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Affairs of the land of Bavaria.

The decorations were offered as a sign of "appreciation for the important contribution to consolidating Romanian-German bilateral relations, for the active involvement in numerous social and humanitarian projects that were carried out in Romania".AGERPRES
Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca presented, during his meeting in Brussels on Monday, with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, the main priorities of the Government and offered assurances regarding Romania's commitment to continue to support, as a state deeply attached to the European project and its core values, efforts to strengthen cohesion and convergence at EU level.

According to a Government's release sent to AGERPRES on Tuesday, Ciuca and Michel exchanged views on the priorities of the European agenda, including in the context of recent discussions by EU leaders on a number of current issues such as the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, the evolution of energy prices and their impact on the objectives of the green transition, the perspectives of the European security and defence policy, respectively the evolutions in the Eastern Neighborhood."The Prime Minister of Romania presented the main priorities of the Government and offered assurances regarding Romania's commitment to continue to support, as a state deeply attached to the European project and its core values, efforts to strengthen cohesion and convergence at Union level. In the context, Minister Nicolae Ciuca expressed the full readiness of the Romanian Government to cooperate openly with the European institutions to promote these objectives and to advance solutions and tools designed to contribute to strengthening the resilience of the Union in the post-crisis period. Prime Minister Ciuca reiterated the determination of the Romanian authorities to continue the fight against corruption, mentioning the relevance in this respect of the recently adopted National Strategy in the field," the release reads.The Prime Minister and the President of the European Council emphasized the importance of continuing joint efforts to manage the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a view to strengthening health resilience and the full implementation of European instruments to enable economic recovery, in parallel with the process of green and digital transition.The head of the Executive reiterated the importance given by the Government of Bucharest to the objective of finalizing the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, as well as to Romania's accession to the Schengen area.He emphasized the importance of the economic recovery process as a basis for advancing European policies and objectives, appreciating the role of the European Recovery and Resilience Plan.The Prime Minister presented the major priorities of Romania for the next period, which aim at both the achievement of the basic infrastructure in multiple fields, as well as the adaptation to the processes of transformation at European level in the digital field and of the climate changes.According to the Government's release, Ciuca referred to the opportunities for development and future orientation that the ecological transition process offers to the member states, emphasizing, at the same time, the need to manage the inherent challenges in a balanced and equitable way, so that they are not differences in development within the EU, and that the different realities in the member states should be taken into account."In this context, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca underlined the importance of natural gas resources and nuclear energy in supporting national economic activity, and it is essential for Romania to maintain their role in the transition process. He mentioned the importance of adopting as soon as possible a complementary delegated act on taxonomy, including natural gas and nuclear power," the Government informed.The two officials also welcomed the results of the recent Eastern Partnership Summit, emphasizing the need to implement the objectives agreed on this occasion. The Prime Minister reaffirmed his support for the European course of the Republic of Moldova and for the process of democratic reform, as well as for ensuring energy security, requiring coordinated action by the European institutions and member states, including Romania."Regarding the security situation regarding Ukraine and the Black Sea, Prime Minister Ciuca stressed the need for a uniform EU approach, by sending a strong message to Russia's aggressive and destabilizing actions, in line with the conclusions of the European Council meting last week," also shows the quoted release.He stressed the strategic importance of the transatlantic relationship in promoting shared goals and managing common challenges, adding that close EU-US cooperation and coordination is designed to help strengthen the European Union's global role.On Tuesday, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca is scheduled to meet in Brussels with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen, EC Executive Vice Presidents: Frans Timmermans (European Vice President for the European Green Deal), Margrethe Vestager (European Vice President for a Europe fit for the digital age) and Valdis Dombrovskis (Executive Vice President for an Economy that works for people), as well as Adina Valean, the European Commissioner for Transport.
Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca presented the Romanian Government's priorities for the next period during the meeting he had, on Tuesday, with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in the context of his visit to Brussels.

According to a Government press release, the Prime Minister referred to the efforts to manage the pandemic, both in terms of health and in view of the economic and social implications, and thanked the President of the Commission for the involvement of the European institution in supporting these efforts, including the vaccination campaign in Romania.

and Resilience Plan, and underlined the concern for ensuring fiscal-budgetary stability, an objective reflected in next year's budget projection. In this regard, he gave assurances as to the Government's determination for the adoption of the necessary measures for accessing the funds available through NRRP," the release shows.

In the talks with the President of the EC, Prime Minister Ciuca assured of the full availability of the Romanian Government for open and constructive cooperation with the European Commission in order to fulfill the common European commitments and objectives.

With regard to the priorities of the European agenda, the cited source stated, the head of the Executive said that Romania supports the efforts to advance European policies in order to strengthen the resilience of the Union, following the lessons learned from the pandemic, so that the Union and the Member States have effective tools and solutions to enable them to be better prepared for any challenges or crises in the future.

He also emphasized the special contribution of an "integrated, unbroken" Schengen area to the objective of consolidating the internal market, and in context, he reiterated the call for "a decision to be made as soon as possible on Romania's accession to the Schengen area", while thanking European Commission for its constant support in this endeavor, reconfirmed at the meeting with the President of the Commission.

At the same time, Prime Minister Ciuca recalled Romania's objective of finalizing the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, underlining the Government's commitment to promote the necessary reforms in this regard.

He also referred to the Union's major objective of a dual green and digital transition, giving assurances regarding Romania's support for its advancement, as a prerequisite for the future development of the Union and its Member States, for adapting to the demands of a future economy.

"At the same time, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca maintained that the solutions to be be formulated at EU level to achieve these objectives must be balanced, adapted to the economic and social realities of the Member States, including Romania, so as not to present the risk of accentuating the development differences within the Union and affect the economic stability of the Member States. Prime Minister Ciuca reiterated the importance of adopting as soon as possible a complementary delegated Act on EU taxonomy, including natural gas and nuclear energy," the release further mentions.

The cited source states that the discussions with the President of the European Commission also addressed aspects of the Union's external agenda, especially in the context of the worrying developments in Ukraine and those on the EU's border with Belarus.

In this context, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca expressed concern over Russia's military actions in Ukraine and the Black Sea area, calling for a united and strong message from the EU aimed at discouraging an escalation of the security situation.

According to the release, the President of the European Commission gave assurances as to the seriousness with which the European institutions are considering this file and also with regard to the close coordination of the action with the United States and the other partners, reiterating the common message that if the situation continues to escalate, there will be major costs for the Russian side.

"The Prime Minister of the Romanian Government also referred to the importance of supporting the efforts of European integration of the Republic of Moldova, respectively of deep democratic reform, initiated by the Chisinau Executive, including in terms of ensuring energy security. In this regard, he agreed with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who thanked Romania for its support to the Republic of Moldova during the recent energy crisis, to continue the joint action in support of Chisinau's efforts," according to the same source, Agerpres informs.
Agerpres special correspondent Florin Stefan reports: Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca said on Tuesday in Brussels that he had received the guarantees, during the discussions he had with senior officials of the Community Executive, that, given that during this period the delegated act for taxonomy is finalized, Romania will benefit from a transition period in which it can use gas and nuclear energy in parallel.

"In the context of the discussion on the green transition, we reiterated that for Romania, natural gas and nuclear energy continue to represent two basic components of the national energy mix, being imperative to maintain their role during the transition to a climate-neutral economy," Nicolae Ciuca said during a press conference held at the Romanian Representation to the EU.He stressed that he explained, during meetings with senior Community officials, including the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the EC Vice-President responsible for the Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, that the measures to be taken in Brussels should not impact European citizens and that not all countries start at the same level when it comes to implementing measures."In terms of taxonomy and ensuring this transitional period in which we still need the use of gas resources and the provision of electricity through the nuclear component, we have received guarantees that - not having been taken a decision so far, but being very close to making a decision in this regard - we will benefit from this transitional period in which we can use gas and nuclear energy in parallel", the PM said.Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca paid a visit to Brussels on Monday and Tuesday, where he met with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and with other representatives of the European institutions, as well as with the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.
On Tuesday, the second day of his visit to Brussels, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca will have meetings with several European officials, as well as with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

In the first part of the day, the Prime Minister will meet the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, with whom he will hold a joint press conference.Late on the same day, Nicolae Ciuca will talk to the three executive vice presidents of the European Commission: Frans Timmermans (European Vice President for the European Green Deal), Margrethe Vestager (European Vice President for a Europe fit for the digital age) and Valdis Dombrovskis (Executive Vice President for an Economy that works for people).The Romanian Prime Minister will also hold a press conference at 4.00 pm local time at the end of his visit to Brussels.On Monday, in Bucharest, in the beginning of the government meeting, Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca stated that during these meetings he will send a message regarding the need to look for solutions in the case of energy prices, as well as maintaining the role of gas and nuclear energy during the transition period, as an essential element for Romania's energy security and economic stability."It is a priority for the Government to fully comply with Romania's obligations within the European Union. The Government's objectives are to manage the pandemic, implement the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan), and accelerate preparations for green and digital transitions. Our country is fully committed to promoting the European values, democracy, rule of law, the fundamental rights and strengthening democratic instruments. In the spirit of European solidarity, I believe that together, at the EU level, we must seek solutions to energy prices and the maintenance of the role of gas and nuclear energy during the transition period, which is essential for Romania's energy security and economic stability," said Ciuca.Another of his messages will be that Romania is waiting for the completion of the process of accession to the Schengen Area."This issue is a priority on our Government's agenda. Romania committed to conclude the CVM (Cooperation and Verification Mechanism), insisting on the transition to exclusive monitoring through the general European mechanism regarding the rule of law, which is valid for all member states," Ciuca added.The Prime Minister will also present to the European officials the fact that "ensuring the fiscal-budgetary stability" represents "a priority for Romania."Regarding his meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, he said that current issues on the security agenda will be addressed, with a focus on developments in the Eastern Neighbourhood and the Black Sea region."We will also discuss the future strategic concept of NATO, which will be adopted next year at the Alliance Summit in Madrid, especially since Romania was among the first allies to support the need to update it. We reiterate the determination of the Romanian Government to actively contribute to the missions and operations of the North Atlantic Alliance and commitments on allied defence spending," Ciuca said.On Monday evening, the Prime Minister started his working visit to Brussels with a working dinner hosted by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca declared on Tuesday, during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, that he did not understand how NATO and Ukraine's measures and actions could be viewed as provocations, specifying that the implications of this situation are currently being assessed within the Alliance.

"I would like to mention that today I discussed with the Secretary General many issues of major importance, including the preparations for the Madrid summit in which the future strategic concept of the Alliance will be adopted. I also assured the Secretary General that Romania will continue to honor its commitment of providing 2 percent of GDP for defense and also that Romania intends to continue to participate actively and significantly in the debates on NATO's strategic concept and of course the future missions in which the Alliance will be engaged," premier Ciuca told a joint press conference alongside Secretary General Stoltenberg.The head of the Romanian Executive specified the talks focused on "the security situation around Ukraine and the Black Sea.""The current concentration of Russian troops is significant, unprovoked and unjustified. We cannot understand how NATO and Ukraine's measures and actions could be seen as provocations. We are currently assessing the implications of this situation within the Alliance. It goes without saying that NATO will defend all its members because our commitment to collective defense remains the cornerstone of the Alliance," Ciuca said.He affirmed that in light of all this, he discussed with Secretary General Stoltenberg how security could be strengthened more effectively."The current evolution of security confirms once again the need to strengthen threat-deterrence and defense actions on the eastern flank and the Black Sea in a coherent and balanced manner. At the same time, beyond focusing on more prevention and defense, I believe a de-escalation of the situation should take place. As mentioned last week by NATO and its allies, any new aggression against Ukraine will have serious consequences," the Romanian prime minister said.He reaffirmed Romania's support for Ukraine in terms of sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders. "The right of any state to freely link its foreign policy is a fundamental principle of sovereignty, and NATO strongly supports this principle," he said."I agreed with the Secretary General today that NATO's current policy of prevention and defense, while remaining open to dialogue, is still valid. The Alliance has established channels of dialogue with the Russian Federation and has launched numerous calls for dialogue. In order for this dialogue to be effective, we need a de-escalation of the situation," Nicolae Ciuca further argued.AGERPRES
About 1,500 people protested in the early hours of the morning near the Parliament Palace, mainly supporters of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), against the COVID green certificate and the restrictions imposed in the pandemic context.

According to AUR Chairman George Simion, the COVID green certificate is inefficient and unconstitutional, and the protest has been organised to say a firm no to those aberrant measures that don't solve the problem.

Approximately 100 persons among those who were protesting in the Izvor Park area have managed to enter Parliament's courtyard, according to some judiciary sources.

Bucharest Prefect Alexandra Vacaru called for the due observance of the directions of the Gendarmerie representatives, and the protesters to leave the outer area of the Palace of Parliament.

The head of the Bucharest Gendarmerie, Catalin Stegaroiu, said that "the gathering was peaceful and the situation was under control", after the protesters who entered the Senate courtyard were permanently under the surveillance of the gendarmes and no other incidents were recorded.

"(...) we had a group of 200-300 people who went into the Senate court, they were permanently under our surveillance. Subsequently, they left the Senate court at the guidance of the law enforcement forces," Catalin Stegaroiu said.

"Now, at this time, identifications are being made, evidence is being gathered about their action and I guarantee you that they will be sanctioned, as we have always done," the head of the Bucharest Gendarmerie said. Catalin Stegaroiu explained that the use of tear gas was due to a mistake and said that he had no information about people who were affected by the use of tear sprays.

According to him, there were "hundreds of gendarmes" on the spot and the situation "was permanently under control".

Regarding the people who protested in the courtyard of the Chamber of Deputies, the head of the Bucharest Gendarmerie said that they were introduced to that area with the cars of some parliamentarians.

* * *

The U.S. Embassy in Romania confirmed Tuesday that a vehicle belonging to it was damaged during a protest at the Palace of Parliament.

"At this time, no further information is available," the diplomatic mission said.

* * *

Interior Minister Lucian Bode said that the protests that took place at the Palace of Parliament against the green certificate at work are not related to free speech and the democratic game.

He claimed that no cars belonging to the diplomatic corps were vandalized.

Of the following protests, he said: "We are ready!"

* * *

The president of Save Romania Union (USR), Dacian Ciolos, claimed that the state should, through its institutions, have ensured that a protest rally can be held in civilized conditions, adding that AUR leader George Simion is "a danger" for Romania. The USR leader criticized the way in which the Gendarmerie and the Ministry of Interior managed the situation generated by the protest at the Palace of Parliament.

Therefore, USR demands the resignation of Interior Minister Lucian Bode for the way in which the police acted at the protest organized by AUR in front of the Parliament Palace, a protest that had been announced. USR added that there is a problem related to the ability of the Government and the Interior Ministry to cope with "a predictable and announced situation".

* * *

The president of the Senate, Florin Citu, says that he defends the right to protest, but stresses that it must be exercised peacefully and only within the limits of the Constitution.

"Attack on the health of Romanians! The violence and vandalism of the people who are in Parliament are putting at risk the Romanians who cannot protect themselves from COVID-19! That denotes pure selfishness. Vaccination and green certificate are the most effective weapons against the virus. Only in this way can we protect those who cannot defend themselves, those who are in serious condition due to COVID-19. As president of the Senate and as a staunch liberal, I defend the right to protest. But it must be exercised peacefully and only within the limits of the Constitution. The right to have a different opinion is a right that all Romanian citizens have, but the right to life prevails!" Citu wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

* * *

Unaffiliated Deputy George Ionescu said that, on Tuesday, his car was vandalized in the courtyard of the Parliament Palace, although he never supported the green certificate.

"I have never supported the green certificate as a limitation of the right to work, even more so now, when more and more studies show that even those vaccinated with the full scheme can be carriers of the virus and can still spread it. As a matter of principle, I believe that a document like the green certificate is an anomaly in a democracy, even in this atypical context of a large-scale health crisis, but I do not want to go into such details now," the unaffiliated MP wrote on his Facebook page.AGERPRES
Shirley Washington has heard the word legend applied to her more than once. Still, its something the St. Louis broadcaster struggles to wrap her head around.

This is from the woman who early in her career made the legendary move to send out an audition tape gift-wrapped (and she got the gig).

Its meaningful when someone says legend. I dont consider myself that, but that means a lot. When someone says that to me, it touches my heart, says the Emmy-winning St. Louis native. Shes recently moved into the anchor spot on the 6 and 10 p.m. news broadcasts on KTVI (Channel 2).

On air at KTVI since 2007 after a lengthy television career in several other cities, Washington is a quiet, graceful, yet forceful presence with a literal finger on the pulse of St. Louis (and a show she co-founded to prove it).

Her contributions have not gone unnoticed.

Community

Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis President and CEO Michael McMillan calls Washington an iconic figure who has paved the way for women and African-Americans to be in such high-profile positions. She has really lived up to that.

Her commitment to the St. Louis community runs deep, McMillian says, from participating in the Urban Leagues humanitarian response to the pandemic to emceeing the organizations awards gala, where Washington herself was honored in 2018.

Audrey Prywitch, news director for KTVI and sister station KPLR, credits Washington with helping lead the stations through Ferguson unrest including guiding coverage and tone, along with being a presence on issues of diversity and inclusion.

Shes thoughtful and has opinions about coverage. She has made me better, challenged me, inspired me. Anyone who goes into her universe comes out better.

She says Washington cares about the viewer, the community and her colleagues in the newsroom, and is full of random acts of kindness no one knows about. She once noticed a full box of thank you notes from the community at Washingtons desk.

Self-reflecting, Washington says: I look at myself as a journalist doing the best I can as a journalist. We have a sense of power, and I take ownership in that. Theres a responsibility in how we handle that. Were intentional in how we tell stories about people in our community.

As journalists, she says, we give voice to the voiceless. We are the storytellers. The great thing about stories is they connect us to ideas, connect us to issues, connect us to each other. Thats the beautiful thing about that. And when you make that connection, it encourages us to move, to do something, make change, and thats significant.

Sometimes, especially in the Black community, the stories told can be unflattering. For Washington, as a Black journalist, part of the responsibility she takes on is limiting that under her watch.

During the many times coverage has taken her into the Black community, the reception she receives has been noteworthy.

People are so excited to see you and to tell you their stories. Its like as soon as you walk in the room theres an immediate trust factor, and its important for me not to break it, she says. People trust you with their stories, to tell their stories the way they tell it to you.

Its not your story. Its their story.

Tellingly, its Washingtons need to tell stories fairly and correctly that makes up her own story.

When I look at my body of work at Fox 2, Im most proud of the Pulse of St. Louis, she says of the weekly community talk show on KPLR Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m. (Beginning Jan. 16 it will be rebroadcast on KTVI at 10 a.m. Sundays.)

Washington co-founded and began hosting The Pulse of St. Louis in 2011. The show gives a platform to St. Louisans to voice their issues. In September, Washington walked away from the show for better work flow management after she accepted her new role of anchoring the 6 p.m. newscast. Her co-anchor, Jasmine Huda, now hosts The Pulse of St. Louis.

Huda praises Washington for her commitment, focus and no-nonsense demeanor.

Youre lucky if you get one of those things, and shes all of the above. Those are great things you want in a broadcaster. A lot of people do it for fame or celebrity. You dont see that with her, and I appreciate that. Shes committed to the job, committed to the story and getting it right rather than making it about herself, says Huda.

The Pulse of St. Louis came about after station brass came to Washington with the idea of a community-based show. She was tasked with figuring out what that would look like.

They wanted it to be a big platform in the community. We bounced around ideas. I came up with the title. It was a collaborative effort. Great minds came together, Washington says. Its hard to believe people are at home Saturday night watching The Pulse, but they are.

It was a sad day for her when she hosted for the last time.

It just hit me it was my last show, while I was driving in as well. I just tried to hold it together and be professional and do what I do.

She sees her new 6 p.m. nightly anchor role as a beautiful thing taking on new responsibilities.

The new slot came with multiple pluses. Early evening news broadcasts are high-profile slots. But closer to Washington, Its important for little girls to see someone on TV who looks like themselves. If they see me doing something significant on TV Monday to Friday, it lets them know they can do it, too. Its a big responsibility helping children realize their dreams, let them know they can be anything they want to be, says Washington.

Growing up

This strong sense of community Washington wears proudly goes back to her childhood growing up in south St. Louis.

Washington, who graduated from Roosevelt High School, says her parents, H.D. and Pearline Washington, kept her and her six siblings (shes the middle child) engaged in the community, whether it was through the church, the library or volunteering.

My mom was on the missionary board at church and instilled in us the value of service and giving back to the community, says Washington. When I look at what I do as a journalist, I align that with what I did growing up.

Her mother made sure the family watched TV news and read the newspaper regularly, especially on Sunday. The family would be quizzed about what was in the news.

When Washington enrolled in Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, she thought shed pursue medical school and take a page from her mother, a surgical attendant (her dad was a maintenance engineer). But she also had an affinity for writing. She worked for the campus radio station and then auditioned for the campus TV station.

Her first television audition was terrible, she says. Her confidence hadnt kicked in by that point, but producers told her she had something special. They saw something in me before I saw something in myself. She was hired.

During college, Washington reached out to Kim Hindrew of KTVI, to get career advice. The fact Hindrew responded blew my mind. ... She was so kind to me. One of the things she told me to be mindful of was to always check and recheck your facts no matter what you do, and shes right.

Eventually, she graduated from SIUC with a broadcast journalism degree. But she found herself without a job, and worked the department store job she worked in high school. But with her employee discount, she was able to amass an appropriate TV wardrobe. So when the time came, shed look the part.

Shed land her first TV gig at WAND in Decatur, Illinois, but the reporter slot she thought she was being offered was actually a photographer position. She said no, but her father persuaded her to take the job, just to get her foot in the door.

I was the absolute worst photographer, she says. She mostly trained herself, studying photography books and driving around the city before her shifts to practice shooting.

When it was time for me to move into a reporting position, it was a great experience. I wouldnt change it for the world.

From Decatur she moved on to other jobs in Moline, Illinois; Des Moines, Iowa; Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta; and Dallas.

Atlanta, where she worked for most of the 90s, was one of her favorites. She says the city left a strong impression on her, and she basked in being in the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement and meeting some of the leaders of the movement, names such as John Lewis, Hosea Williams, Julian Bond and Andrew Young.

It was amazing what it did for me. It reinforced what my parents told me growing up about standing up for whats right.

Washington was anchoring in Dallas in 2007 when she decided to return to St. Louis, though it wasnt to come to KTVI. Both of her parents had taken ill, and rather than continually fly back and forth, she accepted a job in the communications department at St. Louis Lambert International Airport so she could be home.

She wasnt at the airport long before being offered a position at KTVI. She wasnt looking for a new job at the time, but the opportunity presented itself.

I do believe things happen as they are supposed to happen, and God has a hand in that, says Washington, who is married with a son. (She leads a private life with her family.)

She calls her coming home, even without a job in TV, a no-brainer.

I did what I needed to do for family, and Im so glad I did. Look at all your parents do for you, the morals and values they instill in you.

(Washingtons mother died in 2017, and her father died earlier this year.)

Mothers loveOne of the things her mother taught her was how to make food fun. Washington enjoys cooking, as her mother did, and turning the food into works of art.

Id make breakfast like art sculptures for my mom. Shed say Oh my god, thats so beautiful. I still do that.

Washington pulled off a major surprise for her mother when she was close to death  a call from gospel music icon Shirley Caesar.

Washingtons mother was a huge fan. Washington called Caesars church in Raleigh, North Carolina, to try to set it up.

Caesar called. She was on the phone with my mother for 45 minutes. They were talking like they were old friends.

The following year at the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis Salute to Women in Leadership Awards Gala in 2018, both Caesar and Washington were coincidentally honored, and Washington approached Caesar.

I shared the story about my mother. She was so blown away.

Shirley Washington

Occupation  Broadcaster/anchor, KTVI (Fox 2)

Family  She is married and has a son.

Education: Graduated from Roosevelt High School and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Causes  Volunteering, emceeing and promoting events with the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, Beyond Housing, St. Louis Crisis Nursery, Womens Voices Raised for Social Justice, Mathews-Dickey Boys and Girls Club, and ABC Brigade

Favorite music  I have so many. I love Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire, Shirley Caesar, Aretha Franklin. I cried during the Amazing Grace documentary. She was so talented and gifted and made it look so easy.

Favorite book  If I had to choose, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (by St. Louisan Maya Angelou). Her story is so impactful and amazing. She herself has written three books: The Motherhood Club: Help, Hope and Inspiration for New Mothers From New Mothers with Ann L. Dunnewold (2002), A Gift for Girls: Words of Wisdom From Successful Women (2005), and the novel The Diary (2013).

Favorite cuisine  I enjoy soul food. Ive learned how to make it more healthy. You know how our grandparents throw fatback hamhocks into it.

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Four separate D.C. public schools have decided to shift back to virtual learning for the near future. DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee announced that the resumption of the school year in January after winter break would be delayed by two days to allow for distribution of thousands of testing kits.

All public schools in neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland, have already announced plans to switch to virtual learning through at least mid-January. But Ferebee said he preferred to handle the issue on a school-by-school basis and that his administration strongly favored maintaining in-person learning, backed by extensive testing.

We will continue to be guided by ... the belief that our schools are the safest place, the most appropriate place for students to learn, Ferebee said.

This will be the third time that D.C. has imposed a mask mandate; the original 2020 mandate was lifted for fully vaccinated individuals in May, then reinstated in late July as cases began to rise again.

City officials said local hospital systems have witnessed an increase in COVID-19 patients, but weren't near critical capacity yet.

Hospitalization rates are five times more likely for the unvaccinated than the vaccinated, so vaccines are still the tool, said Dr. Anjali Talwalkar of the D.C. Health Department. It's time to get boosted. It's not too late. Now is the time and there's vaccine available.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
And it isnt just rural hospitals looking for beds. Overwhelmed hospitals as far away as Minnesota and Michigan have been calling looking for beds in larger Kansas hospitals. Often there simply isnt room.

Dr. Richard Watson, founder of Motient, said Friday that the long-distance transfers and long waits for beds are sadly becoming commonplace as the pandemic ends its second year.

CONCORD, New Hampshire  Health officials say a child who was too young to have been vaccinated against COVID-19 is the first person under 18 from New Hampshire to have died from complications related to the virus.

The Department of Health and Human Services said in a news release that the death happened in September in another state and was identified after COVID-19 was listed as a cause of death on the death certificate, which was recently finalized.

We are all saddened by this loss and give our condolences to the family, said Dr. Benjamin Chan, state epidemiologist. It continues to be important for us all to take steps to protect those who are not yet able to be vaccinated, and those who are vulnerable and at risk for severe COVID-19.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP)  A bill that would give tax relief to Atlantic City's casinos  and possibly prevent the closure of as many as four of them  was being considered Monday in the New Jersey Legislature.

The full state Senate passed a bill making changes to an existing law enabling the nine casinos to make payments in lieu of property taxes to Atlantic City, Atlantic County and the school system.

The Assembly had not yet acted on the bill Monday night, and it remained unclear when a vote might occur.

Known as the PILOT bill, it is intended to help the casinos recover from the coronavirus pandemic by reducing large increases in such payments that would take effect if the bill is not passed.

Failure to pass the PILOT legislation will have a further detrimental impact on the land-based casinos, which are still recovering from this unprecedented pandemic, the Casino Association of New Jersey, the casinos' trade group, said in a statement Friday. The group said the bill would bring stability and help protect 20,000 jobs, among other benefits.

The casinos would still pay more to the city, county and schools next year even if the bill passes; it just reduces the amount of the increase.
BOSTON (AP)  One of five Russian nationals who authorities allege made tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits by trading shares of companies using information stolen during hacks of U.S. computer networks has been extradited to the U.S. to answer to the charges, federal prosecutors in Boston announced Monday.

Vladislav Klyushin, 41, whose last name is sometimes spelled Kliushin, was arrested in Sion, Switzerland, on March 21 and was extradited to the U.S. on Dec. 18, acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Nathaniel Mendell said.

In simple terms, they hacked into U.S. networks, stole inside information, and cheated honest investors out of millions of dollars, Mendell said at a news conference.

No defense attorney was listed for Klyushin in online court records.

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed parallel fraud charges against the defendants Monday, they made a total of $82 million through the scheme from 2018 through 2020.

The other four suspects remain at large, U.S. authorities said.
In his filing Tuesday, Schmitt said the state constitution allows only his office to request an appeal of the case.

The motions to intervene serve no purpose other than to circumvent Missouri law and usurp the Attorney Generals exclusive authority to direct litigation and appeals on behalf of the State. They should be denied, he said.

The pandemic, which has been ongoing for nearly two years, has killed more than 15,000 Missourians.

On Friday, after DHSS announced testing had found the omicron variant in wastewater in the state, agency director Donald Kauerauf urged vigilance in taking measures to protect people from the virus.

Those who havent been vaccinated are highly encouraged to do so. If it is time for your booster, it is critically important to get your booster today to maximize your protection. Getting the booster greatly improves your protection from omicron, Kauerauf said.
You cant tell us how many candidates you have and how many youve looked at? said Barney.

Donaldson said the mayors office, city counselors office and others have been involved in crafting the chief search.

It really should not be shared openly, Donaldson said. But there definitely is a process.

The process is nonspecific  it doesnt mention people and their personnel records, Barney said. The process would be able to be discussed openly I would think.

I would not necessarily in this new role be the person to do that, Donaldson said.

All three commission members appeared dismayed by the inability of the personnel department to test candidates virtually during a pandemic when applicants from out of town may not be able to travel.

Our state and federal courts have been operating virtually for almost two years at this point. I think we can figure it out, Kpere-Daibo said.

Barney agreed: When we are dealing with something as sensitive as a key job in our city government, we know there are ways to do it.
JEFFERSON CITY  A member of the Normandy City Council has been fined $3,100 by state ethics regulators for violations of Missouri campaign finance laws.

Maurice Hunt, who made an unsuccessful bid for mayor of the north St. Louis County community in 2021, failed to file accurate reports with the Missouri Ethics Commission about how much money he was raising and spending during the spring campaign, according to an order filed Monday by the MEC.

Among the violations alleged by the MEC was a failure by Hunt to report four expenditures totaling more than $1,400 related to door hangers, magnetic car signs, buttons, T-shirts and yard signs.

Hunt had been appointed mayor in January 2020 by the city council following the departure of the previous mayor when he launched his bid for a full term in the position.

Mark Beckmann defeated Hunt in the mayoral election with 242 votes, five more than Hunt.
BEIJING (AP)  China announced sanctions on Tuesday on four members of the U.S. government's Commission on International Religious Freedom in retaliation for penalties imposed on Chinese officials over complaints of abuses in the countrys northwestern Xinjiang region.

The tit-for-tat sanctions add to spiraling tension over Xinjiang. Washington has banned imports from the region that might be made with forced labor, while activists are calling for a boycott of Februarys Winter Olympics in Beijing. China has denied accusations of abuses and earlier retaliated by publicizing calls for boycotts of foreign shoe and clothing brands.

The chairwoman and three members of the U.S. panel are barred from visiting mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, and any assets they have in the country will be frozen, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.

Zhao identified those targeted as chairwoman Nadine Maenza, deputy chairman Nury Turkel and members Anurima Bhargava and James Carr. Zhao gave no indication whether they have assets in China.
Its a big step in what will still be a multi-year process to turn the old rail line into a trail for walkers, runners and cyclists.

The states existing rails-to-trails project has already proved its worth. The Katy Trail is the longest-developed rail trail in the United States. Its been a boon for tourism, the economy and for recreation. More than 500,000 people visited it last year.

The Katy Trail runs east-west across the state and is close to twice as long as the Rock Island Trail, which is also an east-west trail thats south of Jefferson City. Rock Island stretches from Windsor to Beaufort.

In making the announcement, Gov. Mike Parson said the state is prepared to commit millions of dollars in state resources to help develop the trail. He said its an investment for the future, and we agree.

This is why the Rock Island Trail is going to be so important, Parson said. Because there is going to be kids going down there, theres going to be families going down that trail that none of us will ever know. But well be part of making Missouri a better place for a lot of people.

One of the projects primary opponents has been the Missouri Farm Bureau.
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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.
In northeast China, where there is a large Chinese population of ethnic Koreans, many North Korean women who have made it out of North Korea illegally find shelter with families of Chinese who speak Korean. The Chinese police leave these North Korean women alone if they report their presence and where they are living. Its no secret that the local police or Chinese military intelligence often use these women as informants on illegal activities among other North Koreans in the area or criminal activity in general, no matter where the perpetrators come from. This snitch to survive system has been used for a long time, with periodic adjustments. Most of the illegal migrants from North Korea are women, in part because women dominate the legal marketplaces and have become wealthier than their husbands, who usually keep their government job. Getting families out of North Korea is easier if the women go first, make money in China or South Korea, and then pay the people smugglers to get other family members out.

Another one of those adjustments appeared in late 2021 when Chinese police in Liaoning and Jilin provinces, which shares borders with North Korea, visited all these North Korean women to check their cell phones and record the phone numbers they called or were called by. The police were looking for excessive calls to and from North and South Korea.

Too many calls to the wrong numbers indicated possible criminal activity, including involvement with people smugglers or smuggling in general. Other possible offenses are prostitution or cooperating with people smugglers who assist in getting North Korean women into China and then force them to become prostitutes or marry Chinese men who cannot find a Chinese wife. This is a growing problem in China where nearly four decades of the one child policy meant that many mothers would abort females and try again to produce a son.

The Chinese families the North Korean women are living with were also threatened if they were involved in any illegal activities. North Koreas who did not cooperate were threatened with forcible return to North Korea, where they faced prosecution for getting out without permission.

Such a widespread operation indicates the order came from the central government which is worried about something but wont reveal exactly what it is. That will emerge eventually, and sooner if the police visits continue into 2022.
The current OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) meeting in Pakistan is one the best attended ever, with government officials from all 57 member nations attending as well as the UN and United States, Britain, France Russia and China. These five are only UN members with a permanent veto power in the UN. There were also representatives from the Taliban IEA (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) government, who wanted to challenge membership by the IRA (Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) government the Taliban deposed in August. So far, no foreign country, including Pakistan, has officially recognized the IEA as the new government of Afghanistan. Many countries are quietly discussing the matter with IEA officials but this has not led to any changes in recognition.

This OIC meeting is all about Pakistani efforts to get the IEA recognized as the government of Afghanistan. If that happens, Pakistan is prepared to make a lot of promises they cant keep in order to get foreign aid for the IEA. Getting the IEA recognized as a legitimate government is subordinate to getting foreign aid. Saudi Arabia is the current head of the OIC and does not agree with how Pakistan has used the Taliban to gain control of Afghanistan. The IEA is controlled by officials who take orders from Pakistan. After decades of lies, Pakistan has lost the support of most Islamic nations, especially when it comes to Afghanistan. Pakistan created the Taliban from young Afghan teenagers and men attending Saudi-supported religious schools to go fight in the Afghan civil war that followed the departure of Russian forces by 1989. This was a disaster because their Taliban gained control of most of the country and supported Islamic terrorists that attacked Iran as well as the West and triggered a response that has been a disaster for the Islamic world, especially in the Middle East. Pakistan is bankrupt because of its decades of support for Islamic terrorists. The Pakistani military, which now controls the Pakistani government, is behind this self-destructive behavior that is opposed by most elected Pakistani officials.

To make matters worse the situation inside Afghanistan is worse now than it was during the 1990s. The Pakistani military now has nuclear weapons, something they achieved by 1998 and believed it would make Pakistan immune from foreign threats about their Afghan policy. After September 11, 2001 the Pakistani generals realized their puny nuclear arsenal had become a liability when the Americans told Pakistan they could either help suppress the Taliban and Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan or go to war with the United States. Pakistan agreed to cooperate but lied to and deceived a growing list of foreign allies, including major Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran while continuing to support useful Islamic terrorist and criminal groups.

After 2001 Pakistan discovered that they could not control the entire Taliban organization. Back then the Taliban leadership was enjoying sanctuary in Pakistan and the Taliban gunmen inside Afghanistan supported themselves by serving as hired guns of the heroin cartels. Pakistan became known as the Moslem country most responsible for Afghanistan becoming the source of most (over 90 percent) of the worlds heroin supply. For neighboring nations this was a disaster because the cheap Afghan opium and heroin turned over ten million Moslems in nations bordering Afghanistan into addicts.

Carrying all this deadweight into the OIC meeting, Pakistan is asking for Islamic nations to provide food and other aid for the IEA. Twenty years of relative peace and very real prosperity followed the 2001 Taliban defeat. The Pakistani-backed effort to get the Taliban, as the IEA, back in power turned out to be an economic disaster for Afghanistan because 80 percent of its governments budget and all emergency supplies came from foreign aid, most of it American, and that stopped when the IEA took over. Pakistan was unable to help, nor was anyone else. Worse, the IEA does not have much control over the many Taliban factions that dominate various parts of Afghanistan. Many of those factions support Taliban control but oppose Pakistani interference. Most factions recognize that the drug cartels are not popular inside Afghanistan or among any of the neighboring countries. The drug cartels depend on Pakistan to provide vital supplies of industrial chemicals needed to turn opium into heroin. Pakistan also provides heroin smugglers access to Pakistani ports and other transportation facilities to distribute the heroin worldwide. For this the Pakistani military received large fees, something most Pakistanis do not support.

Replacing the missing foreign aid in Afghanistan is not a popular project for Islamic countries, who have become dependent on Western countries to carry most of that load worldwide. Now Pakistan brings all of this out into the open in order to save Afghan people, or maintain Pakistani control of Afghanistan, or to maintain the control the Pakistani military exercises over Pakistan, or all three. Pakistan has a weak hand but without foreign support for the IEA government Afghanistan will become an economic and human disaster as well as a sanctuary for even more Islamic terrorist groups.

Pakistan came out of the OIC meeting with a compromise that enabled Pakistan to declare victory while leaving the IEA without diplomatic recognition or instant relief. This came in the form of having the IDB (Islamic Development Bank) manage a trust fund for nations to use to send relief money to individuals or organizations in Afghanistan. This is not a win for Pakistan or the IEA because of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), an anti-money-laundering organization established in 1989 by the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. In 2001 FATF added financial support for terrorism to their continued efforts against money laundering. The FATF itself does not impose any punishments and is more like a credit rating agency. There are only three ratings; no evidence of supporting money-laundering, the gray list (some evidence of money laundering or financial support for terrorist activity) and the black list (much evidence and no efforts to deal with it). Currently only two nations are on the black list North Korea and Iran and both considered outlaw states and no place to send financial aid. Currently 23 nations are on the gray list, including Pakistan and Turkey. The next step is the black list and most nations spend a short time on the gray list, just long enough to clear up the criminal activity that got them gray listed. Pakistan has long been a few steps away from the black list. Pakistan has been on the gray list since 2012, except for three years off the list that ended in 2018 when they were put back on. The IDB has had problems with the FATF because nations getting financing or aid via IDB were found to be diverting some of that aid money to Islamic terrorists. This has been a favorite financing method for Islamic terror groups but now that the FATF is monitoring financial institutions for this sort of thing legitimate lenders or aid providers stay away from any charity associated with gray list level behavior.

Therefore, the Pakistans success at the OIC conference is a sham. With FATF scrutiny on the IEA donation portal, any donors using it must be very certain that whoever is getting the aid in Afghanistan will not misuse it.

The Chinese Method

China has a very different relationship with Pakistan and Afghanistan. China sees major economic opportunities in Afghanistan but questions the degree to which its Pakistan client controls things there. China has warned Chinese companies sending teams or individuals to Afghanistan to check out potential opportunities, that they must obtain permits from the IEA, and expect to pay large fees to IEA for this and even larger bribes to local tribes and Taliban factions who occupy areas containing some of the trillions of dollars worth of mineral resources. China has been trying to get at these mineral riches for decades but has been put off by the heroin cartels, Taliban factions and tribal militias all demanding payment for access and violence if they are not paid. Unlike elsewhere, especially central Africa, Chinese bribes and ruthless business practices will not succeed in Afghanistan. Not until the IEA truly controls the country, or at least those portions containing the natural resources and the exit (to China) routes from landlocked Afghanistan. That sort of national control has never existed in Afghanistan.

Pakistani generals told China that the new IEA government was controlled by Afghans who were veteran Pakistani agents. This included a senior member of the Haqqani Group who has been running the Taliban for several years and is now a senior member of the IEA government. Despite all that Afghanistan is still a violent, unpredictable place. The IEA and Pakistan were dismayed to find the government Afghan treasury empty (or nearly so) when they took over. The corruption Pakistan, the Taliban and heroin cartels encouraged to weaken the former IRA government had done its job too well and the corrupted officials either moved their illicit fortunes to foreign banks or invested in property and other assets in Afghanistan, where there were few buyers able or willing to purchase them from the IEA. This was discovered when the IEA sought to auction off some of these assets to pay overdue bills for electricity imported from northern neighbors.

There is no money to pay skilled government personnel that the IEA wants (and often needs) to keep their new government going. Over $10 billion in foreign aid was kept in foreign banks by the donor nations and disbursed as needed but often delayed because of the continued corruption in the IRA government. The heroin cartels never represented more than ten percent of the GDP and were already taxed via the bribes paid to IRA officials to leave alone heroin production and smuggling to foreign markets via Pakistan. The leaders of the 1990s Taliban understood how this worked and some Taliban leaders of the current generation do as well, and that is one reason why the IEA leadership has so many factions that disagree with Pakistani control and how that is keeping foreign donors away.

Since 2011 Pakistan has become dependent on China for weapons, economic investment, and protection from foreign (including UN) economic sanctions. This support disappears, or greatly diminishes, if Pakistan cannot deliver an Afghanistan stable enough for Chinese firms to operate in. China always demanded a similar performance from Pakistan when it came to terrorist violence against Chinese in Pakistan. That violence still occurs and appears to be increasing because there are more attacks in Pakistan by Islamic terrorists or Afghan resistance groups based in Afghanistan. China sees the IEA situation more clearly than the Pakistani generals do and agrees with potential foreign donor nations that the IEA is a bad place to send aid or investment money.

Several recent conferences by neighboring nations to discuss the IEA situation seem to agree that the IEA will be less successful than the 1990s version, which was expelled from Afghanistan shortly after September 11, 2001, when the Americans backed the opposition in northern Afghanistan and got Pakistan to back off, for a while. The Pakistani military saw the recent takeover of Afghanistan by the IEA and heroin cartels as a great victory. Everyone else, including the political opposition in Pakistan and all potential donor nations are less optimistic.

China is seeking to dominate the region by using Pakistan, a Pakistan controlled Afghanistan and an isolated Iran as violent but obedient partners in Chinese efforts to dominate South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. While China is now a military and economic superpower, something that China was not back in the 1980s. China is now powerful enough to exercise the kind of control it needs to get what it needs out of all three regions. China does not seek allies, but dependent client states. The Pawn Patrol of Pakistan, Iran and the Taliban are the best China could get. China will cut its losses if it must but would rather not and is willing to take chances to keep those three pawns in play.

December 19, 2021: As the end of the year approaches India finds that despite all the renewed Pakistani efforts to generate more Islamic terrorism in Kashmir, 2020 and 2021 were the least violent ever. Fewer than 300 deaths from Islamic terrorist and rebel activity throughout India. Most of the deaths have nothing to do with Islamic terrorism and occur in eastern India where communist and tribal rebels are fading but still fighting. Most of the deaths from Islamic terrorist and rebel violence occur among the terrorists and rebels, the rest of the deaths shared by the security forces and the least number of deaths are civilians. Pakistan, or at least the Pakistan military, seeks to get the most out of each violent incident in Kashmir to vilify India for defending itself from Pakistanis sponsored violence.

December 18, 2021: In northwest India (Punjab and Kashmir) border forces detected and shot down a 23 kg (51 pound) Chinese quad-copter entering Indian Punjab from Pakistani Punjab. This one was a hexa-copter, a quad-copter design with six propellers and a 10 kg (22 pound Since 2019 Indian troops in Kashmir have been detecting Pakistan using UAVs to deliver small quantities of weapons and other supplies to Islamic terrorists operating on the Indian side of the border. There were 167 sightings in 2019 and nearly as many this year. The failed use of tunnels under the border apparently led to trying UAVs to carry smaller quantities of supplies to Pakistani terrorist operatives in Kashmir. This urgent supply effort is a response to the heavy casualties the infiltrators suffer because of the improved border security. In July of this year later India announced a major program to issue UAV (mainly quad-copter) jammers to troops in border areas where unidentified UAVs were observed crossing the border. The order was caused by a June 27 incident where an air force base suffered two explosions which turned out to be from explosives carrying UAVs (drones). The base is only 14 kilometers from the Pakistan border.

In northwest Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) soldiers raided a suspected TTP safe house and found a mid0level TTP leader called Ghafoor, who refused to surrender. During a brief gun battle Ghafoor was killed and a soldier wounded.

December 16, 2021: In northwest Pakistan, across the border in Afghanistan (Kunar province), a senior leader of the TTP (Pakistani Taliban) was the target of a laser guided rocket fired from a UAV above the village he was staying in. The missile failed to detonate. Two TTP gunmen were wounded. No pictures of the missile wreckage were made available so it is difficult to determine where it came from. Pakistan has been using Chinese UAVs since 2009 and by 2015 had armed them and used them against Islamic terrorists, including TTP, in 2015. In September 12015 a Pakistani Burraq UAV, armed with Pakistani Barq laser guided missiles, to kill three Islamic terrorists in North Waziristan. This was a first for Pakistan. While Pakistan has, for nearly a decade, officially condemned and opposed similar strikes by American UAVs in North Waziristan, it never outright banned the American use of armed UAVs in certain parts of Pakistan. The U.S. refused to sell Pakistan UAVs that could carry laser guided missiles, mainly because the Americans didnt, and still dont, trust Pakistan. There were other suppliers and eventually Pakistan bought a similar (to the U.S. Predator) UAV from China in 2009 and began building their own. and calling the larger one Burraq.

December 15, 2021: The United States released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism, covering nations the U.S. considers as bases for international terrorists. Pakistan is still on the list, mainly for the Islamic terror groups the Pakistani military has been supporting for decades as long as they carry out attacks the Pakistani generals designate and cause no problems inside Pakistan. Official documents like this, which many countries compile and often publish, tend to result in nations being sanctioned, or worse, for not halting this form of deadly aggression against foreign enemies, real or perceived. Pakistan does receive credit for its counterterrorism efforts, but this is largely for suppressing Islamic terror groups that consider the current Pakistani government an enemy of Islam and in needs of extermination. These groups would attack Western targets if they could but they cant because they are stuck inside Pakistan and attack what is available.

December 14, 2021: In southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) a group of gunmen, apparently Baluchi separatists, attacked an army checkpoint and killed a soldier and escaped with no losses of their own. The other source of such attacks are Iranian Sunni Islamic terrorists, who often establish camps in Baluchistan and will attack Pakistani security forces in some circumstances.

December 12, 2021: In northwest Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) there were two attacks on polio vaccination teams, one today and one yesterday. Each attack, by two gunmen on a motorcycle, left a policeman dead while the attackers sped away quickly. The TTP (Pakistani Taliban) said they were responsible for one of the attacks. This the third such attack this year. Officially, the major Islamic terror groups oppose such attacks but there are plenty of fringe members of Islamic terror groups who will disregard their leadership and attack anyway. These three attacks come two years after Pakistan launched a media campaign against those who oppose polio vaccination and vaccinations in general. Despite strenuous efforts, Pakistan has been unable to eliminate polio via vaccinations. For a long time, the main opposition were Islamic conservative clerics who called the vaccinations an attempt by Western nations to poison Moslem children. While few of those clerics remain, there are now more Pakistanis agreeing with Western anti-vaccination groups and insisting there are harmful side effects. Numerous controlled studies have not demonstrated any evidence of this but it has become a popular cause. There are other problems unique to Pakistan. For example, polio is making a comeback among refugees on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. This came after another major effort in 2017 to vaccinate vulnerable Afghan and Pakistani children against polio. In 2016 there were 20 cases of polio in Pakistan and 13 in Afghanistan. There were four in Nigeria, a country declared free of polio in 2020. In Pakistan and Afghanistan there are still religious problems with vaccination. The Afghan Taliban have openly supported the vaccination program but there are still some rural areas where local Moslem clerics or teachers still denounce the vaccinations. There is a similar situation in Pakistan, where some fringe Islamic groups will still try and kill members of the vaccination teams. Since 2008 over a hundred vaccinators and police escorts have been killed. This year there are a quarter million vaccinators and nearly as many security personnel seeking to vaccinate 40 million young (under five) children.

December 11, 2021: In a major embarrassment to Pakistan and the Pakistan backed IEA government in Afghanistan, several hundred TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) members openly traveled in a convoy through northwest Pakistan. TTP is a Pakistani Taliban group that is much smaller than the IEA, in part because it opposes the drug cartels that finance the Afghan Taliban. TTP is perpetually poor and gets by anyway it can. The TTP wants to establish an Islamic government in Pakistan and eliminate the current corrupt Pakistani military leadership, something most Pakistanis can agree with, The TTP later distributed an hour-long video of this road trip and showed TTP leaders giving speeches in mosques, where the TTP leaders claimed that they have many members who also work, or worked, for the IEA but left because of the dependence on drug money and control the Pakistani military exercises over the IEA leaders. Since November 9 the TTP has had a ceasefire with the Pakistani military to facilitate negotiations. Yesterday the TTP withdrew from the ceasefire, accusing the Pakistan military of being uncooperative and not willing to negotiate.

December 8, 2021: In southern India, (Tamil Nadu) an Mi-17 military helicopter carrying General Bipin Rawat was killed. He was the Indian military senior general who was the first CDS (Chief of Defense Staff) of the Indian Armed Forces. He died in a helicopter crash and was accompanied by his wife and eight other passengers and four crew. The helicopter crashed in foggy weather, killing all but one of the passengers on board. Rawat held the CDS job for 23 months and had made a lot of progress implementing long-overdue reforms. Recent reforms created this new command structure.

The sole survivor of the crash, an air force Group Captain (colonel) who commanded jet fighter units, died after a few days of intensive care.

December 3, 2021: In Pakistan a local reformer (Idris Khattak) was charged with espionage and sedition, convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Three retired army officers faced similar charges, but not in connection with Khattak, who was kidnapped by the military in 2019 and was expected to just disappear, or show up dead. The military is trying to improve its image, Khattak was held and questioned about his sources. Some of them are in the government and military. Retired officers often go public with illegal acts they witnessed and are usually arrested and prosecuted, rather being disappeared.

November 29, 2021: Pakistan is making an extraordinary effort to rehabilitate the reputation of Islamic terrorists that have thrived because of sanctuary in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is some popular support for this in Pakistan and even pro-democracy politicians will appeal to voters who generally oppose Islamic terrorism, especially if it endangers them, but still appreciate politicians who will praise well-known leaders of Islamic terror groups. Pakistani prime minister Imran

Two months before the Afghan Taliban took control in Afghanistan Khan declared that Osama bin Laden was a martyr for Islam. This is seen as another example of Kahn doing the bidding of the military, but portraying bin Laden as a hero while condemning his followers who killed Moslems, especially Pakistani Moslem civilians is acceptable in many Moslem countries. For Kahn, it was military support and media intimidation that got him elected and now Kahn is joining the military in defending bin Laden as well as the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. This very public move by Kahn cost him a lot of support inside and outside Pakistan. Kahn was always seen as beholden to the Pakistani military for helping his election campaign via military supplied vote rigging, and further support via growing military control of Pakistani media via intimidation and when that does not work, murder. Kahn did not seem comfortable explaining to Westerners or even some Arab leaders, why he called bin Laden a martyr and excused it as a slip of the tongue, or, more privately, seeking to avoid becoming a martyr.

Since 2011 the Pakistani military has had less popular support because of the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout and left with the bin Laden corpse and massive amounts of documents, many of them detailing how the Pakistani military had lied to the world about secret support for al Qaeda and many other Islamic terror groups. After 2011 the military made a few changes like going to war with Islamic terror groups that carried out unauthorized (by the military) attacks inside Pakistan. There is still Islamic terrorist violence inside Pakistan but most of it is done without permission from the military. What Islamic terrorism the military still used inside Pakistan had a specific purpose. Case in point is the growing use of blasphemy charges by Islamic religious parties against those who threaten military power. Most of these parties are either allies of the military or literally on the army payroll. This program includes the new Islamic political parties formed by Islamic terror groups that have long worked for the military to carry out attacks inside India. The Pakistani military wants to protect these Islamic terror groups and turning them into political parties is the latest ploy. The covert violence against foreign (Afghan and Indian targets) is against Pakistani and international law and the Pakistani military continues to claim that it is not involved.

Meanwhile Kahn presides over a bankrupt economy, which is largely the fault of military corruption. Misbehavior by the military has played a major role in fewer countries willing to lend Pakistan money, or even do business with them.

September 28, 2021: In southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) someone firing across the border with Iran killed a Pakistani soldier patrolling the border. The usual suspects are Iranian Sunni Islamic terrorists, firing across the border from Iran at border guards.

November 27, 2021: In northwest Pakistan (North Waziristan) gunmen from Afghanistan attacked an army outpost and killed two soldiers. It is unknown if the attackers went back to Afghanistan or continued into Pakistan.
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Industry Ventures, a leading investment firm focused on venture capital and private technology, announced key additions to its investment and operations team to further strengthen and grow the firm. Additionally, the firm recognized the ongoing contributions of team members with the announcement of internal promotions.

Pat Hanson joined the firm in July 2021 as Chief Administrative Officer and took over the Chief Compliance Officer role in November 2021. Prior to joining Industry Ventures, Pat was the Vice President of Finance and Chief Compliance Officer for Dyson Capital Advisors. Earlier, Pat served as Chief Financial Officer for Little Hawk Capital Management LLC (the firm Industry Ventures acquired in 2009 which formed the Partnership Holdings fund strategy) and was a Controller for a Mid-Atlantic real estate developer. Pat began his career at Price Waterhouse LLP, where he worked in the Audit and Business Advisory Services Group. Pat received a B.S. in Accounting from the College of the Holy Cross.

Jon Wong joined the firm in October 2021 as a Vice President on the Tech Buyout team. Prior to joining Industry Ventures, Jon served as a Vice President in BlackRocks Private Equity Partners group, where he completed primary fund commitments in venture capital and private equity funds as well as direct investments. Prior to that, Jon developed private equity and investment banking industry expertise while working at Fulcrum Capital Partners, Rabo Securities, and EY. Jon earned his MBA from the Yale School of Management and a B.S. in Finance from NYU.

Valerie Lau joined the firm in September 2021 as Vice President of Legal where she will support all legal functions for the firm. Prior to joining Industry Ventures, Valerie was an attorney at Latham & Watkins where she worked in the emerging companies and venture capital group (ECVC). In addition to representing companies throughout their corporate life cycle, she counseled venture capital funds in their primary and secondary investments and other related legal matters. Valerie earned her J.D. at Georgetown University and a B.A. in Biochemistry from Harvard University.

Additional team hires during the year include Stephen Casillas, Associate on the Direct and Partnership Holdings team; Theresa Starnes, Associate on the Secondary team; Jady Wei, Associate on the Direct and Partnership Holdings team; Wade Cobb, Business Development Analyst; and Lynn Appelbaum, Accounting Manager.

We are excited about the continued growth of our firm and are honored to welcome this group of high-caliber team members, said Hans Swildens, CEO of Industry Ventures. Its terrific to be working with Pat again, who has a long history of working with our team and has hit the ground running. Jons experience executing on both direct and fund investments with BlackRock makes him well-suited to join our Tech Buyout team. Valerie brings valuable experience to our firm as an in-house attorney which will enable us to institutionalize our legal processes.

In addition, the firm recognized the ongoing contributions of team members with internal promotions throughout the year, including Brian Langner to Principal; Nick Laszlo to Senior Associate; Hannibal George to Business Development Associate; Alex Adam to Principal, Head of Investor Relations; Jay Foster to Senior Fund Accounting Manager; Alyssa Walker to Senior Associate, Investor Relations; and Chris Hipple to Controller.

About Industry Ventures LLC

Founded in 2000, Industry Ventures is a leading venture capital platform with over $5 billion of committed capital under management. Industry Ventures invests across all stages of the venture capital lifecycle through complementary fund strategies. The firm is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Washington, DC, and London. For more information, please visit www.industryventures.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211221005179/en/

Alex Adam

Industry Ventures

415-273-7229

IR@industryventures.com

Source: Industry Ventures
Co-Founder and former Head of Strategy of the UK's Aerospace Technology Institute James McMicking joins as new VP Strategy

Shell's Former Global Hydrogen Technology Director Arnab Chatterjee named VP Infrastructure

35-year Boeing veteran and former Chief Engineer of Propulsion Jim Petersen joins advisory board

Hires follow the announcement of 460 order options from partners such as Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, and many others; funding reaches $115m

OEM partnerships represent a total 7,000 engine opportunity for ZeroAvia

KEMBLE, UK and HOLLISTER, Calif., Dec. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ZeroAvia, the leader in hydrogen-electric, zero-emission aviation, has added two new senior hires, and a new member to its advisory board, as it prepares to ramp up growth over the next 12 months.

James McMicking joins as ZeroAvia's first Vice President of Strategy from the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) - the body in charge of developing the technology strategy for the UK aerospace sector. As one of the original executives to set up the ATI, McMicking held several positions throughout the business over seven years, including its Head of Strategy and Operations.

"Through my work, in recent years I have seen first hand the rapid progression of zero-emission technologies for flight, so it is exhilarating to be joining a company that I believe is taking the right approach and is on the path to certification and market adoption in the very near future," said James McMicking. "True zero-emission technology will reduce aviation's climate impact, improve air quality around airports and enable better regional connectivity in the future."

A mechanical engineer by training, McMicking brings experience covering advanced R&D, business and innovation strategy, and transformation. At the ATI, McMicking worked extensively with organisations throughout the aerospace tech sector and UK Government to support world-class research and development, navigate complex strategic challenges and catalyse innovation.

At ZeroAvia, McMicking is now responsible for building a strategic roadmap for the business, both from a commercial and technical point of view to reach its 2024 target, working in collaboration with CEO Val Miftakhov and the rest of the executive team.

Meanwhile, Arnab Chatterjee also joins the business as Vice President of Infrastructure. Prior to ZeroAvia, Chatterjee spent almost a decade at Shell working on low carbon fuel, digital, e-mobility, and renewable energy solutions in a range of technical, commercial and strategy roles. Most recently, he has been driving Shell's efforts in hydrogen at a global scale. Chatterjee has a background in chemical product development, venture investments and corporate development. He has a PhD in electrochemistry from the University of Oxford.

At ZeroAvia, Chatterjee will be responsible for working with aviation and energy industry partners to deliver the hydrogen production and refuelling infrastructure required to support the adoption of hydrogen-electric propulsion.

Commenting on his new role, Arnab Chatterjee said: "Seeing ZeroAvia's aircraft in the sky for the first time last year was a real lightning bolt moment, and I have followed the R&D progress closely. With a 19-seat aircraft close to flight testing and commercialisation a little over two years away, ground infrastructure requires equal focus to ensure our success in transforming the future of flight. It is an exciting challenge ahead."

In addition, joining ZeroAvia's advisory board is Jim Peterson. An expert in propulsion integration, Peterson brings over 35 years of experience from his time at Boeing where he was Chief Engineer of Propulsion, responsible for integrating engines into various Boeing airframes.

"We're delighted to have these three remarkable leaders on our team," commented Val Miftakhov, CEO, ZeroAvia. "Adding strong strategic firepower to the business, as well as industry-leading expertise to continue our rapid R&D advancement, will help us to take things to a new level in 2022."

The executive and advisory board additions bookend an enormously successful year for ZeroAvia. Beyond being named one of the world's most innovative companies by Fast Company and a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, the company made significant strides on its R&D. It completed 35 test flights of its six-seat prototype, part of the UK Government-backed HyFlyer I project.

The company also ramped up work on the HyFlyer II project, focused on delivering its commercial entry product, a 600 kW hydrogen-electric powertrain for 10-20 seat aircraft. In September, ZeroAvia welcomed its Dornier 228 testbed aircraft to its new base at Cotswold Airport, immediately beginning work to install its powertrain technology, and the team is already well advanced in preparation for flight testing early next year.

ZeroAvia raised over $70 million in 2021, taking the total to $115 million, with the most recent round of $35 million announced in December. The company also increased its headcount to nearly 100 employees globally.

ZeroAvia also announced several highly significant commercial deals throughout the year's final quarter, amounting to more than 460 commitments for hydrogen-electric engines and several important joint development programmes. In the second half of the year, ZeroAvia also cemented a number of deals, including an intention to develop one of the world's first commercial zero-emission routes from London to Rotterdam the Hague Airport, investment and purchase options from airlines such as Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, and partnerships with a variety of aviation players such as De Havilland of Canada, Rose Cay, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, ASL Aviation Holdings, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Regional Jet division. The total number of engines (excluding spares) for in service or stored aircraft produced by the OEMs that ZeroAvia has signed deals with stands at over 7,000, showing the scale of the opportunity.

"This commercial traction alongside the technical progress has been a massive boost for the company," Miftakhov continued. "It demonstrates how receptive the market is for both our ZA600 and ZA2000 powertrains, as well as illustrates that hydrogen-electric is the only meaningful solution for zero-emission aviation."

About ZeroAvia

ZeroAvia is a leader in zero-emission aviation, focused on hydrogen-electric aviation solutions to address a variety of markets, initially targeting 500-mile range in 10-20 and 40-90 seat aircraft used for commercial passenger transport, cargo, agriculture, and more. Based in the UK and USA, ZeroAvia has already secured experimental certificates for two prototype aircraft from the CAA and FAA, passed significant flight test milestones, and is on track for initial commercial operations of its technology in 2024. The company's expanding UK operations are supported by grants from UK's Aerospace Technology Institute and Innovate UK, and ZeroAvia is part of the UK Prime Minister's Jet Zero Council. For more, please visit ZeroAvia.com, follow @ZeroAvia on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

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SOURCE ZeroAvia
TICKERS: UGE; UGEIF

(12/21/21)

In a December 15 research note, H.C. Wainwright & Co. Equity Research

Analysts Sameer Joshi and Amit Dayal commented that community and

commercial solar power company UGE International Ltd. (UGE:TSX.V; UGEIF:OTCQB) is "positioned to capture value across the project lifecycle."

The analysts indicated that their positive outlook on UGE International is based upon several key factors including the firm's fast-growing sales backlog which as of November 2021, totaled 145MW and has exceeded management's previous goal of 120MW.

The company has repositioned itself away from its traditional business model that was built around project engineering, procurement and construction and has gravitated toward a higher-margin business model whereby the firm designs, constructs, owns and operates facilities throughout the entire project lifecycle.

UGE is now on a path to expand its installed capacity in the community solar segment from 3.4GW at the end of Q2/21 to 30.0GW by 2025.

The report from H.C. Wainwright & Co. noted that UGE is well-positioned to continue the increase in its backlog as the company will benefit from strong tailwinds from a highly conducive solar energy regulatory environment and declining solar installation costs.

The company's projects earn upfront fees and offer cash flows from future recurring revenues which serve to benefit all stakeholders. The firm's community solar projects typically utilize a property owner's unused areas such as rooftops, parking lots and empty lots. UGE's strategy is to earn fees during the project development and construction periods and then earn recurring revenues from energy sales over the course of a 15 to 25 year project contract.

As an example, the H.C. Wainwright report listed that "a typical 1MW rooftop project in NYC yields the company a $0.46/W in upfront development, construction and EPC fees, as well as $0.35/W in present value of future cash flows from electricity sales."

Adoption in the U.S. is accelerating as both federal and state agencies are pushing for and incentivizing community solar project in several U.S. states. These projects provide federal Investment Tax Credits (ITCs) and additional state specific incentives such as tax credits, grants and rebates.

The analysts mentioned that notably, "the infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden in November 2021, includes provisions for investment of over $65 billion toward the enhancement of the country's electricity grid for better integration of renewable energy." If passed in its present form, the bill would include a 10-year extension of the ITC from 26% to 30% and provide for direct cash payments to taxpayers bypassing the use of tax credits.

The analysts pointed out that UGE stated in its Q3/21 earnings release that it expects to realize increases in operating capacity of 1.6MW in the rest of 2021, 35.7MW in 2022 and 102.5MW in 2023.

The research firm commented that taking the increases into consideration, it projects UGE's topline revenues will be $2.0M, $7.1M, and $19.7M, during 2021, 2022, and 2023, respectively, and that blended gross margins will improve from 29.5% in 2021, to 45.9% in 2022 and 65.0% in 2023. The research firm commented that taking the increases into consideration, "we are projecting revenues to exceed $100M in 2026, generating over 80% in blended gross margins."

UGE International is a turn-key solar energy solutions provider headquartered in New York. The renewable energy company develops, builds, owns, and operates end-to-end mid-scale solar projects in the U.S. and the Philippines and to date has successfully deployed sustainable projects totaling 500MW. The firm endeavors to deliver cleaner and more affordable solar energy solutions to consumers and businesses and has refocused its business strategy from project engineering and construction to development and longer-term management of solar projects that generate higher margin, recurring revenue streams.

H.C. Wainwright & Co. stated that it is initiating coverage on UGE International Ltd. with a price target of CA$3.50/share. UGE International shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "UGE" and last closed for trading at CA$1.63 on Friday, December 17, 2021. The company's shares also trade under the ticker symbol "UGEIF" on the OTCQB market.

[NLINSERT]

Disclosures

1) Steve Hytha compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an independent contractor. He or members of his household own securities of the following companies mentioned in the article: None. He and members of his household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. His company has a financial relationship with the following companies referred to in this article: None.

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Disclosures for HCW, UGE Intl Ltd., Dec. 15, 2021

Investment Banking Services include, but are not limited to, acting as a manager/co-manager in the underwriting or placement

of securities, acting as financial advisor, and/or providing corporate finance or capital markets-related services to a company

or one of its affiliates or subsidiaries within the past 12 months.

H.C. Wainwright & Co, LLC (the Firm) is a member of FINRA and SIPC and a registered U.S. Broker-Dealer.

I, Sameer Joshi and Amit Dayal , certify that 1) all of the views expressed in this report accurately reflect my personal views

about any and all subject securities or issuers discussed; and 2) no part of my compensation was, is, or will be directly or

indirectly related to the specific recommendation or views expressed in this research report; and 3) neither myself nor any

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None of the research analysts or the research analysts household has a financial interest in the securities of UGE International

Ltd. (including, without limitation, any option, right, warrant, future, long or short position).

As of November 30, 2021 neither the Firm nor its affiliates beneficially own 1% or more of any class of common equity securities

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Neither the research analyst nor the Firm knows or has reason to know of any other material conflict of interest at the time

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The research analyst principally responsible for preparation of the report does not receive compensation that is based upon any

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The Firm or its affiliates did not receive compensation from UGE International Ltd. for investment banking services within twelve

months before, but will seek compensation from the companies mentioned in this report for investment banking services within

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The Firm does not make a market in UGE International Ltd. as of the date of this research report.

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Marine Cpl. Giovanni Brunacini is credited with saving the life of a man who was badly wounded in a shooting in suburban San Diego on Nov. 17, 2021. Brunacini said his military medical training allowed him to administer the necessary first aid. (Alison Dostie/U.S. Marine Corps)

A Marine corporals visit to a San Diego-area coffee shop turned out to be a godsend for a wounded man, who is still alive thanks to first aid given by the Marine, authorities say.

Cpl. Giovanni Brunacini and a friend were leaving the Starbucks in the Lemon Grove Plaza shopping center on Nov. 17 when gunfire was unleashed some 200 yards away, leaving a homeless man badly injured.

The Camp Pendleton-based infantryman hurriedly administered medical care, which authorities say kept the man from dying in the apparent drive-by shooting.

The victim is stable and is expected to survive his injuries, thanks to the help of the Marine, Sgt. Pat Fox of the San Diego County Sheriffs Department said in an email Monday.

A marksmanship instructor, Brunacini was visiting a friend working at the coffee shop. Their goodbye was interrupted by the shots.

It was relaxed; it was very chill. We were laughing, and all the sudden, boom, it just, combat mindset happened, Brunacini said in a Marine Corps video released Friday.

He grabbed his medical bag and ran through the parking lot toward the gunfire, ducking behind cars along the way, he said. When the shooting was over, he saw a man on the ground and no one was helping him.

After sprinting over, Brunacini found him lying in a pool of blood with two shots to his lower abdomen, an exit wound in his belly button and a shattered forearm, he said in the video.

What was going through my head was what my corpsman had taught me, he said, crediting combat-lifesaver training with giving him the skills to treat the man until police and paramedics arrived.

A rifleman with 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine regiment whod deployed to Iraq, Brunacini now believes every Marine should get the medical training that prepared him for the violence back home.

The wounded man was taken to a local hospital and was out of surgery a few hours after the shooting, Fox said that night. Detectives are still investigating leads.

Brunacini had deployed to protect the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, he told local news. Marines reinforced the embassy for much of 2020 after a riot there and the U.S. airstrike that killed an Iranian general at an airport in the Iraqi capital that January.

I was the designated lifesaver for our squad, Brunacini told San Diegos NBC 7 News on Nov. 18. I knew what I had to do there, and I knew what I had to do  last night.

Days after the shooting, the family of 37-year-old victim Robert Mansi thanked Brunacini in-person, San Diegos ABC 10 News reported.

Hes a hero, definitely a hero in my life, always, said Alicia Mansi, the mans mother.
Cmdr. Jennifer Reid, the officer in charge of the Navy Reserve Center in Toledo, Ohio, was relieved of command on Monday, Dec. 21, 2021, due to a loss of confidence in her ability to perform her duties, according to statement from Navy Reserve Forces. (LinkedIn)

The officer in charge of the Navy Reserve Center in Toledo, Ohio, was relieved of command Monday due to a loss of confidence in her ability to perform her duties, according to statement from Navy Reserve Forces.

Cmdr. Jennifer Reid was relieved by Capt. Billy Franklin, the commander of the Navy Region Mid-Atlantic Reserve Component Command Great Lakes. Reid failed to abide by a lawful order, a spokeswoman for the Navy Reserve Forces, Lt. Cmdr. Amber Lewis, told Stars and Stripes in an email Thursday.

Cmdr. Lee Ann Singleton was assigned to replace Reid until a permanent replacement is identified, according to the statement. Reid will be reassigned within the Great Lakes command.

Navy Reserve Centers, formerly known as Navy Operational Support Centers, ensure Reserve sailors are ready to deploy at a moments notice. The centers provide training, equipment and other resources to help Reserve sailors and their families meet the challenges and obligations of military service, according to the statement.
Members of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit sail near Mount Fuji aboard the dock landing ship USS Germantown, Feb. 21, 2021. (Brandon Salas/U.S. Marine Corps)

TOKYO  Japan has agreed to increase its share of funding for U.S. troops stationed in Japan to 1.06 trillion yen, or $9.3 billion, over the next five years, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tuesday.

The increase comes to approximately 211 billion yen, or $1.8 billion, per fiscal year, Hayashi said during a news conference. Japan allocated about 201.7 billion yen for fiscal year 2021 under the current agreement, according to the defense ministry.

The new agreement will take effect in April, when the Japanese fiscal year starts.

We have been holding discussions based on the recognition of need to strengthen deterrence and readiness of Japan-U.S. alliance, Hayashi said.

He said that it is also necessary to support the stable presence of U.S. forces in Japan while the security environment surrounding Japan is becoming more severe in light of the difficult financial situation in Japan.

Bilateral defense cooperation under this cost-sharing agreement will contribute to the enhancement of readiness and resilience of the Alliance, including by improving the interoperability of U.S. Forces and the Self-Defense Forces of Japan, the ministrys news release said Tuesday.

Interoperability describes the ability of a countrys armed forces to use another countrys training methods and military equipment.

News of the increase comes after President Joe Bidens administration called for Japan to bear more of the cost to deal with China, which is building up its military strength in the region.

The new agreement significantly cut utility contributions for U.S. military bases and added a new category to cover the procurement of materials and equipment for joint training, Hayashi said.

We significantly reduced utility costs, where it is difficult to directly see the contribution to strengthening the deterrence and readiness of the Japan-U.S. alliance, he said.

The Japanese share of utility costs will be reduced from about 61% to about 35% in five years, he said.

Instead, 20 billion yen will be allocated for joint training, Hayashi said.

Such equipment and materials will not only ensure the readiness of the U.S. Forces but also can contribute to enhanced capabilities of the Self-Defense Forces of Japan for greater Alliance deterrence and readiness, the news release said.

The new agreement covers labor costs for 23,178 local employees and training relocation costs, approximately 11.4 billion yen, which is about the same as the current amount, the release said.

The cost-sharing agreement for U.S. forces stationed in Japan is usually renewed every five years. However, the two countries agreed to extend it for fiscal 2021 as the U.S. was transitioning from the Trump administration to the Biden administration.
Buy Photo An entrance to Camp Hansen, a Marine Corps base on Okinawa, as seen on Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. (Frank Andrews/Stars and Stripes)

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa  A third employee at Camp Hansen, a Marine Corps base on Okinawa, has tested positive for the omicron variant of the coronavirus as new cases on the installation approached 200 since Friday.

The worker, a resident of Uruma city in her 40s, was a close contact of the first positive case, though the genetic code of the virus infecting her differed from the first patient, Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki said at a press conference in Naha on Monday night.

The number of new COVID-19 cases at Camp Hansen has risen to about 200, up 20 from the previous day, Japans Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara told reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday morning. Kihara said the Japanese government understands the concerns of Okinawans.

U.S. Forces Japan is taking stricter measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, he said. Considering the possibility of omicron variant cases, they are testing actively, tracing the close contacts, and isolating those who might be infected.

A cluster of new cases emerged among newly arrived Marines in a rotational unit, according to Marine Corps Installations Pacific on Friday. Neither the Marines nor the Japanese government has commented publicly on whether the cluster included omicron cases. The installations command on Friday said the infected Marines had no contact with the population outside the base.

If the omicron variant in the base spreads to employees and nearby residents, it will threaten the well-being of Okinawan people, Tamaki said. This matter should not be overlooked.

New COVID-19 cases on Okinawa are still a relative handful but are on the rise, according to the prefectural Department of Public Health and Medical Care. New cases between Dec. 14 and Monday ranged from one to six but shot up to 11 on Tuesday. The department has identified four, so far, as the omicron variant.

The Marine Corps did not reply to an email seeking comment on Tuesday. It has released no new information about the cluster of new cases since Friday.

The omicron variant will likely spread more easily but more information is needed to determine if it causes more severe illness or death than other variants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday the best protection against the virus is a vaccine booster shot.

The Marines do not have the proper equipment to identify the variant by genome analysis, a spokesman for the prefectural Public Health Department told Stars and Stripes by phone Monday.

Tamaki spoke about the Hansen cluster with the commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, Lt. Gen. James Bierman Jr., and Japanese deputy minister of foreign affairs Kiyoshi Odawara on Tuesday, a spokesman for Okinawa prefectures military base affairs division told Stars and Stripes by phone on Tuesday.

Tamaki demanded that the U.S. military stop flying in personnel until the situation calms down, all military and civilian employees at Hansen get tested, arrangements are made to perform genome analysis to see if the Marines are infected with omicron and that personnel are barred from exiting the base unless they test negative for COVID-19.

USFJ on Monday extended the coronavirus quarantine period, also called restriction of movement, for all incoming personnel affiliated with the U.S. military from 10 days to 14 days, according to a public health order by USFJ commander Lt. Gen. Ricky Rupp. The longer quarantine period applies to everyone, regardless of vaccination status.

USFJ did not respond to an email from Stars and Stripes on Tuesday asking if further changes to travel or liberty policy are planned.

On Friday, Hansen raised its COVID-19 risk level to Health Protection Condition-Bravo, which represents a moderate risk of coronavirus infection and gives commanders leeway to impose further restrictions. The base commander reimposed a mask mandate and canceled indoor dining.

That night, Tamaki announced that a base employee, a man in his 50s from Uruma city, had tested positive for omicron. Two more omicron cases surfaced Saturday in the local population, an American civilian in her 50s who works at Hansen and her Japanese husband, a man in his 60s.

Japans Chief Cabinet Secretary Matsuno Hirokazu announced Monday that 180 personnel at Hansen had tested positive for coronavirus.

Mari Higa Matthew M. Burke Matthew M. Burke has been reporting from Okinawa for Stars and Stripes since 2014. The Massachusetts native and UMass Amherst alumnus previously covered Sasebo Naval Base and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, for the newspaper. His work has also appeared in the Boston Globe, Cape Cod Times and other publications.
Navy personnel prepare massive carbon filter systems on Dec. 18, 2021, that will be used to flush contaminated water from military communities near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. (Luke McCall/U.S. Navy)

Nearly 4,000 residents of military housing for Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam are facing the holidays in hotels or in homes without potable water as the Navy flushes contaminated water lines, a job that may stretch into late January.

The Navy planned to start flushing water lines at the Pearl City Peninsula military housing neighborhood on Monday, the first of 17 system purges in military communities, according to a news release Sunday from the joint base. The Pearl City flush was expected to take one day.

Individual homes at Pearl City will also be flushed between Monday and Jan. 4, according to a plan to purge the contaminated water system announced Friday. Pearl City is first to be flushed due to its proximity to the Waiawa well, the Navys source of drinking water after two other wells were shut down Nov. 28 and Dec. 3.

The last communities, McGrew Point and Halawa, may be completed Jan. 20, according to a Sunday update of the bases plan to flush the water system.

Residents of military housing complained in late November of an odor and oily sheen in their tap water. Tests confirmed the presence of petroleum products in the base water supply, and the Navy tracked the contamination to a Nov. 20 jet fuel spill at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

By Friday, more than 1,600 individuals had moved temporarily to hotels, while nearly 2,200 people are staying home without clean water, according to a factsheet on the water emergency compiled by the base.

The plan to flush the system was developed by a team of doctors, engineers and scientists, with input from state and federal regulatory agencies, Rear Adm. Blake Converse, deputy commander of Pacific Fleet, told reporters Friday.

We're going to flush the system, Converse said. We're going to flush each of the individual lines going to the homes, and we're going to flush each of the homes to restore clean water. And we're going to test the system at several steps along the way to the appropriate standards.

Tens of millions of gallons of tainted water in the distribution system will be processed through massive carbon filtering systems the Navy flew in over the past week and that are now being assembled, according to the base.

Tainted water in individual households  typically 80 to 120 gallons in pipes and water heaters  will be flushed into the regular sewage system, Converse said.

As the Navy scrambles to tackle the issue, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General announced Monday its intent to evaluate the operation, maintenance, safety, and oversight of the Navys Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

The investigation follows a request from the Hawaiian congressional delegation of Reps. Ed Case and Kaialii Kahele and Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz. The delegation applauded the decision and said the results would determine the future of Red Hill.

Recent events have called into question the Navys operations of the Red Hill facility and their ability to ensure the safety of water provided to Hawaiis military families and Oahu residents, the delegation said in a news release Monday. It is critical that the military restore safe drinking water immediately. We also need answers.
Vladimir Putin, Russias president, center, during the Russian Navy day in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 28, 2019. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

(Tribune News Service)  President Vladimir Putin threatened a military response to counter NATO expansion toward Russias borders but said he hoped for a diplomatic solution to rising tensions as the U.S. said it was ready to discuss his security demands.

The U.S. and its allies must understand that we have nowhere to retreat further and Russia cant allow them to deploy missiles in Ukraine that would be a few minutes strike distance from Moscow, Putin told senior officers Tuesday at the Russian Defense Ministry. Russia will take adequate military-technical response measures and react harshly to unfriendly steps, he said.

Putin hit out after Russia demanded last week that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization withdraw forces to the positions they held in 1997, before the alliance expanded to include former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe, as part of proposed new security treaties.

The U.S. is ready to start talks on those proposals next month, though some parts of them are unacceptable, Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried told reporters Tuesday. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance wants meaningful dialogue with Moscow and he plans to call a NATO-Russia Council meeting as soon as possible in the New Year.

The U.S. and Europe accuse Russia of a massive buildup of troops near Ukraine in preparation for a possible invasion as early as next month, something Russia denies. The U.S. and its allies are working on plans to impose painful new sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine. The West has also promised to increase arms supplies to Kyiv in the event of a Russian incursion, though NATO hasnt announced plans for any missile deployments in Ukraine, which isnt a member of the alliance.

A dialogue with Russia needs to be based on the core principles of European security and to address NATOs concerns about Russias actions, Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels. And it needs to take place in consultation with NATOs European partners, including with Ukraine.

NATO says its a defensive body and its deployments in member states have come in response to threats from Russia. While the alliance has said the door is open to Ukraine for eventual membership, theres little prospect of that happening any time soon.

Despite the threat of a military response, Putin said Russias proposed security treaties arent an ultimatum. Armed conflict and bloodshed are absolutely not our choice, he said. We want to resolve the question by political and diplomatic means.

But if U.S. and NATO missiles appear in Ukraine the flight time to Moscow will be reduced to 7-10 minutes, and if hypersonic weapons are deployed  to within 5 minutes, Putin said. This is a serious challenge for us, a challenge for our security.

Russia sees potential risks to its territory and Crimea if the U.S. put hypersonic missiles in Ukraine then allowed extremists there to carry out attacks, Putin said. Do they think we dont see these threats? he said.

Russia is hoping for constructive and substantive with visible results over a certain time period to its security proposals, Putin said, warning that theres also a risk that Washington will try to bog down negotiations.

Moscow cant trust security guarantees offered by the U.S. because Washington easily walks away from its commitments, the president said. Still, clearly stated written guarantees are better than oral ones, he said.

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Hanan Elatr, the widow of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the apartment of a friend in the Washington area this year. (Allison Shelley/Washington Post)

Emirates flight attendant Hanan Elatr surrendered her two Android cellphones, laptop and passwords when security agents surrounded her at the Dubai airport. They drove her, blindfolded and in handcuffs, to an interrogation cell on the edge of the city, she said. There, she was questioned all night and into the morning about her fiance, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The next day, at 10:14 a.m. on April 22, 2018, while her devices were still in official custody, someone opened the Chrome browser on one of the Androids.

They tapped in the address of a website https://myfiles[.]photos/1gGrRcCMO, on the phones keyboard, fumbling over the tiny keys, making two typos, and then pressed go, according to a new forensic analysis by cybersecurity expert Bill Marczak of Citizen Lab. The process took 72 seconds.

The website sent the phone a powerful spyware package, known as Pegasus, according to the new analysis.

Over the next 40 seconds, the phone sent 27 status reports from its web browser to the websites server, updating the progress it was making installing the spyware.

The spyware had been developed by an Israeli firm, NSO Group, for what it says is use against terrorists and criminals. The website was configured by NSO for a United Arab Emirates customer, said Marczak, whose research group is based at the University of Toronto and devoted to uncovering cyberespionage.

The new analysis provides the first indication that a UAE government agency placed the military-grade spyware on a phone used by someone in Khashoggis inner circle in the months before his murder.

We found the smoking gun on her phone, said Marczak, who examined Elatrs two Androids at The Washington Posts and her request. Emirati authorities returned them to her several days after her release.

Marczak said he could see the Android trying to install Pegasus, but he could not determine whether the spyware had successfully infected the phone, which would enable Pegasus to steal its contents and turn on its microphone. But he said the UAE operator did not type the website address in a second time, which would ordinarily be expected in the event of a failed first attempt.

Elatrs phone was confiscated just after she and Khashoggi had gotten engaged and were in a long-distance relationship. Because both traveled frequently, with Elatr based in Dubai and Khashoggi in Washington, they often discussed travel and meeting plans in the United States and abroad using apps on their phones, according to Elatr and her phone records.

Marczak discovered the https://myfiles[.]photos address in 2017 while researching the presence of Pegasus spyware on global networks. By scanning the internet, Citizen Lab was able to identify a network of computers and more than a thousand web addresses used to deliver Pegasus spyware to the phones of targets in 45 countries, according to groups landmark Hide and Seek report. The methodology has been used by other cyber-researchers to identify Pegasus hacks worldwide.

The researchers found a particular set of web addresses, including https://myfiles[.]photos, associated with Pegasus targets primarily in the UAE.

Working with an international journalism consortium led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories, The Washington Post reported in July that an unknown operator employing Pegasus sent five SMS text messages over an 18-day period in November 2017 and a sixth one on April 15, 2018, according to an analysis by Amnesty Internationals Security Lab of Elatrs Androids. The research could not determine if the texts resulted in Pegasus being installed inside the phone.

Marczaks research advances the understanding of what happened to Elatrs phone by identifying a UAE agency operator in the process of trying to install Pegasus on the device while she was in UAE custody. He also found forensic data indicating her Android was also trying to install Pegasus.

Following The Posts report in July, NSO Group chief executive Shalev Hulio said a thorough check of the firms client records showed none had used Pegasus to attack the phones of Khashoggi or Elatr before a Saudi hit team murdered him in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018.

Regarding the wife of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi . . . We checked and she was not a target, Hulio told an Israeli technology publication in July. There are no traces of Pegasus on her phone because she was not a target.

After The Posts most recent reporting, NSOs attorney, Thomas Clare, said, NSO Group conducted a review which determined that Pegasus was not used to listen to, monitor, track, or collect information about Ms. Elatr. The Posts continued efforts to falsely connect NSO Group to the heinous murder of Mr. Khashoggi are baffling.

Clare said the premise was deeply flawed and the details make no sense from a technical standpoint. He said Pegasus is installed remotely and that it would therefore be completely unnecessary and make no sense that a human would type the address of a Pegasus-linked website into a targets phone.

That capability is described in NSOs own marketing materials, first published in an unauthorized leak in 2014. The documents were filed as an exhibit in an ongoing lawsuit WhatsApp brought against NSO in 2019, alleging that Pegasus used the WhatsApp messaging service to infect phones. The materials state, When physical access to the device is an option, the Pegasus agent can be manually injected and installed in less than five minutes.

Clare acknowledged that the spyware uses SMS texts to send website links that deliver Pegasus attacks. But he said that technological safeguards prevent this method from being used six times in an 18-day period. The NSO marketing materials say that the system operator can choose to send a regular text message (SMS) or an email, luring the target to open it . . . although the target clicked the link they will not be aware that software is being installed on their device.

Clare said the marketing materials are outdated and do not necessarily provide accurate descriptions of the softwares capabilities and limitations as of 2018.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense requires NSO to get its approval before selling Pegasus to a foreign country to ensure the sale is in Israels national interest. NSO says it has sold Pegasus to 60 government agencies in 40 countries.

NSO said it has no visibility into the real-time targeting of individuals by its clients after it licenses its software to them. But the firm can demand access to customer records to investigate allegations of abuse. The company has said it has shut down five clients in the past several years and foregone millions of dollars in revenue because of its concern for human rights. It also said its technology has saved many lives by enabling law enforcement agencies to catch terrorists and criminals.

There is one thing I want to say: We built this company to save life. Period, Hulio told The Post in July.

He said of the reports of the attacks on journalists and other abuse: Its horrible. I am not minimizing it. But this is the price of doing business. . . . This technology was used to handle literally the worst this planet has to offer. Somebody has to do the dirty work.

The international investigation found that authoritarian governments have used Pegasus against journalists, human rights defenders, diplomats, lawyers and pro-democracy opposition leaders. New revelations continue to roll out. France found traces of the spyware on the phones of five ministers. The U.S. State Department announced that indications of Pegasus were found on the phones of 11 employees in Uganda. After initial denials, Hungary admitted it used the spyware.

Countries have responded forcefully. The United States, Britain and France each spoke with high-level Israel officials to express their consternation. The Biden administration blacklisted NSO Group from receiving access to certain U.S. technologies last month, adding it to an entities list reserved for companies whose activities are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States. NSO said it was dismayed by the move and is seeking its reversal. Apple is suing NSO to prevent it from targeting iPhones with Pegasus in the future.

Im glad governments are beginning to understand that the lack of regulation can lead to deadly consequences, said Randa Fahmy, Elatrs Washington-based pro bono attorney.

The UAE, a federation of monarchies in the Persian Gulf, has been one of NSOs most notorious clients. It has used Pegasus against anti-regime activists, journalists and even a royal princess attempting to escape her father, the international media investigation and others have found. In October, a British court revealed that NSO Group ended its contract with the UAE because Dubais ruler had used it to hack the phones of his ex-wife and her lawyer, a member of Britains House of Lords.

The UAE continues to deny all allegations against it. The UAE Embassy in Washington did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In the past, the UAE has denied allegations that it used Pegasus against human rights activists and other civil society figures.

The UAE is a longtime ally of Saudi Arabia. In 2013, the two countries signed a mutual security agreement promising cooperation on intelligence and law enforcement matters. The UAE has spied on Saudi dissidents abroad and sent them to Riyadh, according to human rights groups and a recent lawsuit filed in federal court in Portland, Ore., on behalf of an imprisoned Saudi human rights activist.

- - -

Three years ago, Hanan Elatr was a globe-trotting supervisor for the Emirates airlines. She was married to a pro-democracy icon and earning a salary that allowed her to support her mother and siblings. Today, she said, she fears for her life.

Every day when I see the daylight, I dont know why Im still alive, because Im the second victim after Jamal in this tragedy, she said in a recent interview, tearing up. I lost my life . . . I used to provide for my family and now I cant even find my own food.

She has spent most of her savings and for a time was sleeping on an air mattress in an empty apartment. At age 53, she recently moved into a basement bedroom of a stranger while waiting for her political asylum case to work its way through the system.

With the help of Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., she recently received a temporary work visa. In addition to organizing her new life, she dresses in her finest clothes and high heels, does her makeup and hair and then takes the Metro or buses to job interviews at local hotels and restaurants. Last week she landed a job as a waitress for $2.70 an hour plus tips.

Elatr said she feels forgotten in the wake of Khashoggis murder. She found out he had disappeared via Twitter after waking up from a long flight, alone in her apartment in Dubai. While she was dealing with the likelihood he had been murdered, she was also learning that he was planning to marry another woman, an accepted practice among Muslims in some countries.

His new fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, was waiting for him outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He had gone there to obtain a document necessary to marry her. Instead, he was murdered with the approval of Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman, U.S. intelligence agencies later concluded. Mohammed has denied any involvement, and some of his underlings have been convicted and sentenced for the crime.

Cengiz, whom Le Monde later dubbed the unofficial heiress of Jamal Khashoggi, became an effective spokeswoman in front of the crowd of television cameras that gathered outside the consulate.

Elatr, meanwhile, has struggled for attention. She was Khashoggis fourth wife, after his three divorces. Many of Khashoggis friends in Washington did not know about his marriage to her in Virginia in June 2018.

Nobody knew her. Jamal had kept it a secret, said Sarah Leah Whitson, a longtime human rights advocate and the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a Mideast-focused organization founded by Khashoggi. I dont know what was going on in his head.

Amnesty Internationals initial steps to help Elatr as far back as May are still tangled in bureaucracy and miscommunication seven months later, according to correspondence between the organization and Elatrs attorney. The organization said it has been overwhelmed by surges in refugees and said that unfortunately there were unexpected delays in handling Elatrs case, but it intends to reconnect with her to complete a review of the matter.

In Turkey, Cengizs life has been demolished, too, she told The Post in an interview in Istanbul this summer. Turkey has assigned her constant bodyguards, and safety considerations prevent her from traveling in the region and remaining in her academic position.

In the case of both Hanan and Hatice, their lives have been completely upended. Both have paid a tremendous price, said Whitson. Hanan has been interrogated and harassed by the UAE and is in dire financial straits and Hatice, too, is suffering.

- - -

On the evening of April 21, 2018, Elatr had finished a 15-hour flight from Toronto to the UAE, weary and ready for bed, when she entered immigration as usual at Dubai International Airport. She immediately noticed a cluster of official-looking men staring at her. She knew that Khashoggi was a target because of his human rights advocacy. She rushed to the bathroom to call her sister.

Something is not right, she remembers telling her in the toilet stall. She quickly deleted WhatsApp, which she and Khashoggi used to communicate. When she came out of the restroom, a large man trapped her on one side and the sole woman in the group on the other. Walk with us quietly and behave, the man whispered.

She felt sick and began shaking uncontrollably, she said. The agents drove her to her home, blindfolded and in handcuffs, to search for documents and computers, according to her sworn affidavit in her asylum case. Three friends of Elatrs have given her lawyers affidavits attesting that Elatr recounted the same facts to them soon after she was released.

Then they drove her to the Al Awir Central Jail, a large high-security complex, on the edge of the city. She was fingerprinted. Agents took a DNA swab from her mouth. They photographed her face from various angles. And then more intense questions about Khashoggi began late at night and into the morning.

She recalled them asking: What are Jamals activities? Who is Jamals network? What is Jamals income? How is Jamals health? She answered every question, she said. She said she told them there was no network preparing to topple the Gulf monarchies. Yes, Khashoggi wanted political activists freed from Saudi prisons. Yes, he favored democracy and respect for human rights in the Arab world. But the royal families should have roles, too, like those in Britain and Sweden. When the agents left her alone, she slid onto the floor to sleep.

The agents brought her back to her house after 17 hours, but she was put under house arrest for 10 days. The interrogations and months-long stints of house arrests continued over the next year, as did phone harassment by her intelligence agency handler, who called himself Mohammed Abdu, she said. Elatrs siblings in Dubai and Egypt also were interrogated and had their passports confiscated when they tried to travel to see their ailing mother or visit Elatr.

Unbeknown to Elatr, the Emiratis had been using Pegasus to try to spy on her as far back as November 2017, according to Amnestys Security Lab. It was a period of telephonic courtship between two people always on the go, as she traveled for the airlines and he gave speeches and met associates in Europe and Turkey.

The profilers designed fake SMS messages to get her to click on a link and infect her phones: They tempted her with a flower bouquet she would receive at home with one click, photos from her sister Mona if she would click on another link, a package waiting at the office of a common Emirati carrier, if she would click on yet another.

The beginning of April was a big week for Elatr and Khashoggi. He had proposed to her on April 3, she said, and gave her an engagement ring. Pegasus was used in an attack on one of her phones again on April 15, 2018, with an SMS message using the myfiles[.]photos website address, the same one the agent would type into one of the Androids a week later.

The couple continued to meet and communicate by phone, using multiple new apps that Khashoggi told Elatr he hoped would make it harder for him to be surveilled. Just past midnight on Sept. 7, their last in-person meeting, she texted him after she had landed in New York City. They planned to stay together at the Sheraton Hotel.

Three weeks later she sent him her flight schedule, which had her arriving at Dulles International Airport on an Oct. 20 flight to Washington, where they planned to meet again.

On Sept. 30, Khashoggi was in Turkey arranging to marry Cengiz but sent Elatr birthday greetings from two phones. One message read: Bless you, happy birthday, may you be well and happy this year.

On Oct 1, at 2:12 a.m., she replied: I appreciate it a lot and hope you are well and happy . . . from the plane back to Dubai.

The next day he was murdered.

Elatr intends to ask Turkish authorities for his phones. The authorities have refused to release them or to publicly share what they have learned. As relations warm between Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Elatr doubts she will ever get answers.

I feel very devastated that I might be the tool to watching Jamal, Elatr recently told The Post. I want to know how many countries were watching my husband move and what were the tools used against my husband.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby participates in a news briefing at the Pentagon Aug. 13, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia. (Alex Wong/TNS)

WASHINGTON  A Defense Department review has found that about 100 service members participated in activities the department prohibits as extremist in 2021, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a briefing Monday.

Kirby stressed that the department had arrived at the figure not with a concerted search of its more than 2 million active duty and reserve forces, but rather in the process of updating instructions to commanders on how to handle extremism in the ranks.

That process  which split congressional Republicans and Democrats took place over the course of 2021 as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III responded to the participation of about 80 veterans in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Only one active duty service member reportedly has been charged.

Kirby said that as part of the review the department has updated its instructions to commanders, defining extremist activity and guiding them on how to handle it. In April, Austin tasked a new Countering Extremist Activity Working Group with reviewing those instructions.

The definition of extremism now includes advocating violence to deprive citizens of their rights, or to pursue political, religious, discriminatory, or ideological goals; supporting terrorism, law-breaking or the overthrow of the United States government; and encouraging unlawful discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

Service members face potential separation from the armed forces for advocating violence in support of extremist activities, but also for attending meetings of groups deemed extremist, displaying extremist materials, distributing literature and liking content on social media, among other things.

Republicans in Congress said they were concerned the new rules will violate service members freedom of speech rights. The policies may be unconstitutional & impact Americans beyond DOD, tweeted House Armed Services ranking Republican Mike D. Rogers of Alabama. DOD must halt any policy roll-out that harms First Amendment rights.

The chairman of the House panel, Democrat Adam Smith of Washington, backed the changes, saying they would strengthen national security and protect service members from radicalization in the ranks.

But Maryland Democrat Anthony G. Brown, an Army veteran and member of the same House committee, said in a statement that the changes do not go far enough. He argued Congress needs to pass a law codifying the departments institutional capacity, training requirements, robust and expanded transparency through reporting, and affirming commanders inherent authority to remove extremists from the ranks.

The House Armed Services Committee included Browns provision to do that in its version of the fiscal 2022 defense authorization bill, despite GOP opposition. But the amendment was dropped in final negotiations before both the House and Senate passed the bill earlier this month. Republicans argued Browns provision would be used to target conservatives.

At the briefing, Kirby said that was not the Pentagons intent: The department is focused on prohibited activity, not on a particular ideology, thought or political orientation.

Pentagon officials dont plan to monitor service members social media activity, but will take action if extremist activity is spotted, Kirby told reporters.

The department has always maintained a distinction between thoughts and actions, he said, adding the new rules were designed to preserve a service members right of expression to the extent possible, while also balancing the need for good order and discipline.

Kirby said the department would launch a training program for service members on the rules and had begun a study on extremist activity in the armed forces.

___

2021 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
This graphic shows three locations in Washington, D.C., where organizers of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation prefer for a new memorial honoring post-9/11 veterans. (Contributed by the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation)

WASHINGTON  A new Global War on Terrorism Memorial would get a sought-after location on the National Mall under a measure included in the annual defense bill that President Joe Biden is expected to sign.

Organizers behind the effort have been working for about seven years to establish a national memorial that would honor service members who fought in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as their families. Theyre adamant about giving the memorial a place of prominence on the National Mall, but roadblocks in Congress the last two years almost jeopardized those plans.

Now, a measure included in the National Defense Authorization Act would clear the way.

Were going to build a memorial on the National Mall so we have a place for our veterans, their families, and our Gold Star families, said Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., one of the sponsors of the measure. People will be able to come reflect, mourn and understand the sacrifice of our men and women over the last 20 years.

In addition to Crow, the measure was led by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. It would exempt the Global War on Terrorism Memorial from a 2003 law that prohibits any more development in a section of the National Mall described as the reserve.

The reserve encompasses the central area of the National Mall, from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and from the White House to the Jefferson Memorial, as well as from the Tidal Basin to the Potomac River. Congress acted in 2003 to prevent any more development in the area out of concerns over a loss of open space on the mall. Between 1980 and 2000, seven new memorials were established there.

Hopefully within the next couple of years the foundation will be able to start on a memorial on our nations mall, said Ernst, after successfully adding the measure to the NDAA. This memorial will be a place of healing for the Gold Star families that lost a loved one, and it will be a place of remembrance for all who served in the Global War on Terror.

Congress approved the NDAA last week, and Biden is expected to sign the bill. The NDAA sets the Defense Departments annual budget and includes a slew of policies for the Pentagon. Its one of the only major bills that passes reliably through Congress each year, making it a desirable target for lawmakers to attach other measures.

The Global War on Terrorism Memorial Location Act was introduced last year as a standalone bill, but it failed to get traction in Congress. Lawmakers reintroduced the measure this year, and it again hit roadblocks.

Following the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August, there was a renewed push to get the bill through Congress. Ernst went to the Senate floor in September and asked the chamber to approve the bill by unanimous consent, but Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., blocked the vote.

Manchin voiced concerns that its passage would be unfair and create a bad precedent for any future memorials.

This precedent would reopen fights to locate other memorials on the National Mall, create conflict and ultimately delay the construction of this memorial, Manchin argued.

Even with the exemption approved, the process to establish the memorial will likely take another four to five years, said Marina Jackman, the president of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation.

During the congressional battle, the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation put the rest of the process on hold. The federal process is 24 steps, and site selection involves steps nine through 12. Later steps include fundraising and deciding the memorials design.
A 26-year-old who wanted to join the Army didnt pass his entrance exam and wasnt allowed to retake it until he studied, according to federal prosecutors.

He spent the next two years harassing the recruiter instead, they said.

Braxton Louis Danley of Luray, Va., pleaded guilty to cyberstalking charges in federal court on Monday, Dec. 20. Danley faces up to five years in prison when hes sentenced in the Western District of Virginia on Feb. 1, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.

Danley is in federal custody and could not be reached for comment. Public defenders representing him did not immediately respond to McClatchy News request for comment.

Prosecutors said Danley first contacted the victim  who is not identified in court filings  in February 2018 when he emailed her to ask about joining the U.S. Army. He then went to her recruiting station in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the following month to take the required entrance exam.

Danley didnt pass, the government said, and was told by the victim and other Army recruiters to keep studying and try again later.

Shortly thereafter, Danley began repeatedly calling the victim on her Army-issued cellphone and at the recruiting station to ask about retaking the exam, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.

Each time, Danley was asked if he had studied for the test  which he admitted that he had not  and was advised that he would only be permitted to retake the test after he had studied, prosecutors said.

By May 2018, Danley became irate at her refusal, the government said.

I remember every thing you [expletive] done to me so time to settle the score, he reportedly wrote in an email to her.

Prosecutors said Danley also called the recruiting station and expressed his anger. The threats were enough to compel the victim to put up a no trespassing notice at the recruiting station, and a few months later she took out a restraining order against him.

Danley reportedly continued to send her harassing text messages during that time.

Two days before Christmas, the government said, Danley took his threats to social media. Directing his post to the victim and two other Army recruiters, he wrote, your lieing(sic) f---ed up my life.

Lock and load f---ers, Danley said in the post. ima at your doorstep now.

Police arrested him a week later for violating the victims restraining order, and he was sentenced to one year in prison, prosecutors said.

Danley was released in June 2019. He began threatening the victim on Facebook again within a few months, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

24 im getin locked remember j rj this is to. you im coming to get you, he reportedly said in a January 2020 Facebook message.

The message was accompanied by a YouTube video that prosecutors said showed a violent home invasion and murder of the family residing in the home.

A grand jury indicted Danley on one count of cyberstalking and three counts of interstate threats in August 2020.

On April 27, a magistrate judge determined Danley was suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent to the extent that he is unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense.

Danley was then committed to the custody of the attorney general for hospitalization.

The judge ordered Danley to receive treatment for a reasonable period of time to determine whether in the foreseeable future he will attain the capacity to permit the proceedings to go forward. The hospitalization was not to exceed four months, he said.

Danley was sent to the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts, on July 20, court filings show. On Dec. 14, the warden sent a certificate of competency to the court.

I certify my staff determined he is able understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him and to assist properly in the defense of the claims brought against him, the warden said.

Danley entered his guilty plea a week later.

2021 The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.

Visit charlotteobserver.com .

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC .
Supporters of President Donald Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (Yuri Gripas, Abaca Press/TNS)

(Tribune News Service)  Some of the people confined to their homes while awaiting trial on charges tied to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump have been freed to travel for the holidays.

While its been almost a year since a mob tried to forcibly prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Bidens election victory, criminal cases against hundreds of defendants still havent been resolved, and judges have been temporarily loosening some restrictions on their movement so they can meet with family members.

Federico Klein, a former Trump appointee with the State Department, on Tuesday won permission from U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden to travel to visit his brother on Christmas Eve. The request by Klein, accused of attacking police with a riot shield, wasnt challenged by prosecutors.

Thomas Caldwell, a Virginia man who is charged in one of the biggest conspiracy cases stemming from the riot and who bought a gun that looked like a cell phone weeks before the attack, asked to attend a party with his neighbors on Christmas. U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta in Washington on Monday granted the request, which prosecutors didnt challenge.

Donovan Crowl, a Marine veteran who stormed the Capitol with the right-wing Oath Keepers militia group while wearing a combat helmet and ballistic goggles, asked to spend Christmas and New Years with his sister. Christopher Grider, a Texas wine-maker who allegedly helped shatter a window leading to the House chamber, asked to leave his multi-acre property in central Texas to visit family in Houston and Dallas this week. Both requests were granted.

In Griders case, prosecutors had tried in January to keep him locked up by arguing that the father of three was at the front line, breaching a secure location with violence after disrupting Congress. Even so, the U.S. didnt object to his recent holiday plans.

The treatment of many of the 700 people charged so far with crimes stemming from the Capitol siege has been criticized by some as too lenient for people who allegedly attempted to forcibly overthrow an election. Prosecutors had a hard time keeping many of them behind bars pending trial, with judges instead granting home confinement with GPS monitoring.

Kimberly Wehle, a former federal prosecutor in Washington who has been closely watching the Jan. 6 cases, said the treatment of many of the defendants sends the message that these are ho-hum crimes.

How many people in U.S. jails and prisons  disproportionately men of color, and some for low-level non-violent offenses  enjoy Christmas at home? said Wehle, now a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. To state the question is to answer it: It doesnt happen.

Many defendants who are confined to their homes are already allowed to leave their property for work, church services or medical appointments. Others dont need to request to leave for the holidays because theyre already locked up with their families. But not all of them.

Adam Johnson, who was photographed smiling in the Capitol while walking away with the Speaker of the Houses lectern, wants to visit his father on Christmas Eve in Miami. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton granted that request on Dec. 13.

George Pierre Tanios, charged in March with assaulting a U.S. Capitol Police officer, filed an unopposed motion to modify his home confinement to travel from West Virginia to New Jersey to visit family for Christmas.

His sister is about to have a baby any day now, and he would like to be able to meet his new niece/nephew during the holiday get together for his family, his lawyer said in the filing.

The request was granted by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan at a hearing on Dec. 10.

Some accused rioters are seeking to loosen their home confinement permanently. On Tuesday, 22-year-old Matthew Ryan Miller, accused of using a ladder to scale a terrace wall at the Capitol and spraying police officers with a fire extinguisher, asked a judge to release him under general supervision. Prosecutors havent yet weighed in.

2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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There are only 28 community cases of Covid-19 being reported around New Zealand today.

Of these cases, 21 are in Auckland, five in the Bay of Plenty, and two are in Taranaki. Five new cases have been identified at the border and the number of cases with the Omicron variant today remains at 22.

A Ministry of Health spokesperson says of the total Omicron cases to date, all remain in managed isolation with the exception of one case who has now recovered and been released as they are no longer infectious.

Health and MIQ teams have been carefully planning for Omicron cases at the border and will continue to manage all arrivals cautiously.

This includes isolation and testing requirements for all new arrivals, robust infection and prevention control and PPE measures at airports and MIQ facilities, and frequent surveillance testing of staff who have any contact with recent international returnees.

There are 57 cases of Covid-19 in hospital throughout the country today and seven cases in either ICU or high dependency units.

Of the five cases reported in the Bay of Plenty today  four are in the Tauranga area and one in Murapara.

The Murupara case is a household contact of a previously reported case.

Local iwi health provider Te Ika Whenua Hauora is managing testing and vaccination with support from the DHB. A testing centre was opened yesterday and details are available on the Healthpoint website.

The Ministry of Health are continuing to ask anyone in New Zealand with symptoms  no matter how mild  to get tested, even if youre vaccinated.

Please stay at home until you return a negative test result.

Testing and vaccination centre locations nationwide can be found on the Healthpoint website.

The recent returnee who was transferred from managed isolation to Middlemore Hospital and left without being discharged, was accompanied by their child.

The child was transferred in the ambulance with the parent as the age of the child meant they could not be left unattended in managed isolation.

Police are currently investigating the early Monday morning incident.

The parent tested negative twice; first on Day 0 in managed isolation. A further Rapid Antigen Test, upon arrival at the hospital on Sunday night, returned a negative result.

We want to reiterate the importance of the pair returning to managed isolation to complete their isolation period and to have further testing on Day 3 and Day 6.

Information regarding the pair is being released in this update to aid the investigation.

COVID-19 vaccine update Vaccines administered to date (percentage of eligible people): 3,966,212 first doses (94%); 3,808,013 second doses (90%); 25,313 third primary doses; 227,559 booster doses Vaccines administered yesterday: 1,860 first doses; 6,273 second doses; 637 third primary doses and 11,558 booster doses. Maori (percentage of eligible people): 496,932 first doses (87%); 445,578 second doses (78%) Pacific Peoples (percentage of eligible people): 268,629 first doses (94%); 253,432 second doses (88%) Vaccination rates by DHB with active cases (percentage of eligible people) Northland DHB: First doses (88%); second doses (83%) Auckland Metro DHBs: First doses (96%); second doses (93%) Waikato DHB: First doses (93%); second doses (89%) Bay of Plenty DHB: First doses (93%); second doses (88%) Lakes DHB: First doses (91%); second doses (86%) Taranaki DHB: First doses (93%); second doses (88%) Nelson-Marlborough DHB: First doses (95%); second doses (90%) Canterbury DHB: First doses (98%); second doses (94%) Hospitalisations Cases in hospital: 57; North Shore: 10; Auckland: 25; Middlemore: 19; Northland 1; Waikato: 2 Vaccination status of current hospitalisations (Northern Region wards only, excluding those in ED): Unvaccinated or not eligible (28 cases / 55%); partially immunised <7 days from second dose or have only received one dose (6 cases / 12%); fully vaccinated at least 7 days before being reported as a case (11 cases / 21%); unknown (6 cases / 12%) Average age of current hospitalisations: 49 Cases in ICU or HDU: 7 (1 in North Shore; 2 in Auckland; 3 in Middlemore, 1 in Northland) Cases Seven day rolling average of community cases: 67 Number of new community cases: 28 Number of new cases identified at the border: 5 Location of new community cases: Auckland (21), Bay of Plenty (5), Taranaki (2). Number of community cases (total): 10,320 (in current community outbreak) Cases epidemiologically linked (total): 7,647 Number of active cases (total): 1,675 (cases identified in the past 21 days and not yet classed as recovered) Confirmed cases (total): 13,161 Contacts Number of active contacts being managed (total): 6,664 Percentage who have received an outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements): 85% Percentage who have returned at least one result: 77% Tests Number of tests total (last 24 hours): 14,745 Tests rolling average (last 7 days): 21,019 Auckland tests total (last 24 hours): 9,160 Wastewater No unexpected detections NZ COVID Tracer Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday: 3,019,693 Manual diary entries in 24 hours to midday: 43,117 My Vaccine Pass My vaccine pass downloads total: 4,407,281 My vaccine pass downloads (last 24 hours): 15,254

New cases identified at the border Arrival date From Via Positive test day/reason Managed isolation/quarantine location 17 December Tanzania United Arab Emirates Day 3 / routine Auckland 16 December United Kingdom Singapore Day 3 / routine Auckland 19 December Full travel history to be confirmed Singapore Day 0 / routine Auckland 18 December United Kingdom Qatar Day 1 / routine Auckland 15 December Full travel history to be determined Singapore Day 5 / routine Christchurch

Nelson-Marlborough DHB is expected to become the tenth DHB to hit the 90% fully vaccinated milestone later today based on uptake among its eligible population, with just 246 doses to go as of 11.59pm yesterday.

Next in line based on uptake by their eligible populations are South Canterbury DHB (195 doses to go); Hawkes Bay DHB (1,714 doses); and Waikato (3,557 doses), which are expected to reach this soon.

For Maori vaccinations, Wairarapa DHB has just 4 doses remaining to reach 90% partially vaccinated for its population; while Southern DHB has 42 doses to go, and Waitemata has 225 doses to go to reach this milestone. They will soon join the five other DHBs to have reached this mark, while Auckland DHB and Capital and Coast DHB are neck and neck to become the first DHBs to reach 90% fully vaccinated for Maori, with 1,118 doses and 1,154 does to go respectively.

For our Pacific communities, MidCentral DHB has just 6 doses to go to reach 90% of its Pacific population being fully vaccinated, with Canterbury only 10 doses away, and Waikato with just 108 doses to go. Nine other DHBs have already hit this milestone.

Auckland

Today, there are 21 new cases being reported in Auckland.

Health and welfare providers are now supporting 2,015 people to isolate at home, including 569 cases.

Bay of Plenty

There are five cases to report in Bay of Plenty today  four are in the Tauranga area and one in Murapara.

The Murupara case is a household contact of a previously reported case.

Local iwi health provider Te Ika Whenua Hauora is managing testing and vaccination with support from the DHB. A testing centre was opened yesterday and details are available on the Healthpoint website.

Taranaki

Today, two new cases are being reported in Taranaki.

One is linked to the Eltham cluster, and the other islinked to a case in New Plymouth.

This takes the total active cases in the region to 32.

Local testing sites can be found on the Taranaki DHB website.
The Government has announced that the gap between doses of the second Pfizer vaccine and the booster jab has now been shortened from six months to four months in order to battle the new Omicron Covid-19 variant.

Hipkins has also confirmed the date for the rollout of the vaccine to 5-11 year-olds will be January 17 as well as changes to border controls.

The advice from the Covid-19 Technical Advisory Group is that shortening the period between the second and booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine is an appropriate and pragmatic step and is in line with what other countries are doing, says Hipkins on the reduced timeframe between boosters.

Data is emerging that a booster dose with Pfizer provides better protection than two-dose course against the Omicron variant.

While two doses is likely to hold a good degree of protection against severe disease from Omicron, a third dose is likely to offer great protection against transmission of COVID-19 and reducing the chance of more serious infections.

The shorter timeframe will start in January and well continue to follow health advice if it recommends the gap in doses can and should reduce further.

Over 82 per cent of vaccinated New Zealanders will be eligible for a booster by the end of February 2022.

The rollout for children, following Medsafes approval of the Pfizer vaccine for the age group, will begin on January 17 next year.

Hipkins was keen to stress that the Government has no intention of making the Covid-19 vaccine mandatory for the 5-11 age group and that the decision to vaccinate your child is ultimately with the parent.

However, he strongly advises getting kids vaccinated.

I encourage parents to make an informed choice and have their children vaccinated to protect them and those they love, he says.

Hipkins also confirms the date for self-isolation to start for travellers from Australia, in place of MIQ stays, has moved from January 17 to the end of February.

Travellers will also be required to conduct their pre-departure testing 48 hours before travel, reduced from 72 hours.

MIQ stays will now stretch from seven to 10 whilst those workers currently mandated to be vaccinated will now also be required to receive the booster shot.

Whilst acknowledging the change to travel restrictions will be frustrating for those who have already made plans, Hipkins says it is necessary to ensure a healthy booster roll-out before travel gets closer to normal.

We are fortunate we still have MIQ in place, says Hipkins.

Without it, Omicron would already be in the community and Christmas plans would be under threat.

Covid-19 keeps throwing new curve balls and we have to respond in a way that continues to protect lives and livelihoods without putting in place restrictions and lockdowns unless absolutely necessary, says Hipkins.

Waiting till the end of February will increase New Zealands overall protection and slow Omicrons eventual spread.

Hipkins also stresses that large outbreaks of Omicron in the community are likely to be combated by the new traffic light system, rather than a return to the Alert Level system and subsequent lockdowns.
Up to $75.7 million from budget allocations will be invested over 3 years to increase the resilience of data and digital systems in the face of increasing cybersecurity risks within the health and disability system.

The number and sophistication of cyber-attacks is increasing around the world, and healthcare is traditionally one of the most targeted sectors, says Data and Digital deputy director general Shayne Hunter.

Weve seen with the recent incident at Waikato District Health Board that New Zealand is not exempt from this global trend.

Our health and disability system is critical national infrastructure that will only become more dependent over time on digital technology and information sharing across health networks. This contributes to better patient care and health outcomes but increases the risk presented by cyber threats.

While its not possible to fully eliminate cyber risks altogether, its essential we improve the resilience of our health and disability system so we can minimise the risk of disruptions to healthcare services in the event of a cyber-attack and better protect sensitive health information.

While all 20 DHBs are continuing to make progress with increasing the resilience of their systems to reduce the risk and impact of events like the Waikato cyber-attack, we know that more needs to be done.

Thats why the Ministry of Health has worked with DHBs to assess the current cybersecurity risks across the sector and prioritise areas for improvement through a cybersecurity roadmap.

The first step in the roadmap is to build a set of core cybersecurity capabilities for our hospitals, primary care and community services.

This will reduce the likelihood of another successful cyber-attack while laying solid foundations for further cybersecurity improvements and the secure implementation of new digital health technologies.

Work will include increasing security leadership and capability both regionally and nationally, upgrading existing software and systems, establishing national security standards and guidelines, strengthening assurance and testing capability, and increasing the use of cloud security services as well as improving identity and access management systems.

A focus of our strategy is on sharing resources and capability. A key responsibility of the regional cybersecurity teams will be to help primary care and community providers develop incident response plans so they can continue to provide essential services in the event of a cyber-attack.

Delivery of the roadmap will be governed by a Cybersecurity National Steering Committee, which will include national and regional Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) along with representatives from the Ministry, the heath sector, the National Cybersecurity Centre and the Government Chief Digital Officer.
Two women are due to appear in Tauranga District Court later today in relation to the homicide of five-year-old Malachi Subecz.

Michaela Barriball, 27, has been charged with murder, disfiguring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and injuring with intent to injure.

She has previously been charged with ill-treating Malachi prior to his death, says Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Rawlinson.

"Her sister, Sharron Barriball, 37, is also due to appear on a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice relating to the investigation of Malachis death.

"Malachi was found with injuries at a Te Puna property on November 1 and treated in Tauranga Hospital.

"He was subsequently airlifted to Starship Hospital in Auckland, where he died on November 12." Read more here.
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re: Photoblog- BMW Roadtrip from Detroit to Great Smoky Mountains National Park + Nashville July 4th, 2021



The day before we waited till almost midnight to check out the Fourth of July Fireworks but, we could not see it up close due to lot of traffic and holiday crowd everywhere. We had to be content from watching the fireworks in sky from a distance.



Sorry for repeating myself but, the holiday crowd was so much that it felt as if half of US population descended to the smokies, this is during/post pandemic so can't imagine how this place would be prior to this epidemic. It was swarming with people and traffic was backed up like crazy. As an example, it took us about an hour for a U-turn covering 500-800 meters to get into our hotel premises post midnight on July 3rd. Anyways, after reaching our hotel we just crashed and went out like the lights till 8:00am.



Next day, we freshened up and got ready to hit the road around 10:00am and we decided to have a quick breakfast from Americas cornerstone of nutrition (McDonalds). and then drive up into the mountains going past Gatlinburg and much higher into mountains to the popular scenic places like :



Cades Cove Loop



This is a 15-Mile loop inside deep forests in the mountains and a very popular loop. We joined multiple other cars and drove around bumper to bumper (you can see in some pictures) at an average speed of 5-10mph generally enjoying the beautiful mountain scenes and stopping at some scenic passes for pictures etc.



Smoky Mountain National Park is extremely popular for Bears as its generally knowns as Bear Country and we were lucky to spot them twice in our short visit. One of them at Cove Loop. As we drove around the loop, some cars stopped on side and people getting out. I knew something was spotted. So, I whipped out my powerful binoculars and there it was- A small baby cub of Bear far in the distance in the woods. I felt bad for folks who were around me as they could not spot it with naked eye so I passed on my Binoculars to them and they all enjoyed the cub as if it was right in front of their eyes. Bino passing on went on for quite a few people and we all had great fun watching the bear cub playing in the woods.



The other spotting was when a huge bear just passed our car, it happened so alarmingly quick that there was absolutely no way to take a picture. But, it was a memorable event and our intent of coming to Smokies was ticked off (so as to speak).



We finished the loop around 1:00pm and then headed even higher where the state of Tennessee ends and we enter into state of North Carolina. Its quite unique that a state park spans across two different states and we actually crossed the border line where we stopped for a picture.



Another interesting trivia about Smoky National Park- It is the most visited national park in USA (One of the picture in this photoblog shows that as well) which was a huge surprise for me personally as I thought it might be Yellowstone or Yosemite. But, nope its the Smokies apparently.



We stopped at state border as it had some stunning views and we spent a long time sinking in those beautiful sights. We also spotted some bikers parked their enjoying the beautiful scenery. I went over and had a quick word with them and passed my compliments on their beautiful motorcycles and told them I'm an ex-Motorcyclist.



It felt great to live my motorcycling memories with them. They were riding different places and met in Smokies and riding through the entire ranges together. I envied them. Sigh !!



Clingman's Dome



We drove further upwards where the elevation gets higher and weather becomes colder (This is Tennessee/North Carolina where its not so cold in summers) and we can practically feel the chill in air even though it was sunny outside. We finally reached our destination- Clingmans Dome.



Clingmans Dome is a mandatory visit for anyone visiting the Smokies. The base area where we parked the car, it felt like we are on Top of the World- One of the pictures on rock depicts just that feeling of being on the cloudsLOL!. It was just breathtakingly awesome and we spent an hour just sinking in the sights and as it was getting late in evening, we then decided to hike up to the actual Clingmans dome. From the base its a 30-minutes walk higher up on a steep elevation.



Believe you me, I walked for 10 minutes and gave up and wanted to come back as the path is ridiculously steep and it was knocking the wind out of me. Then my wife pointed out some old folks walking upLOL. Well, suddenly a zing came into my step and I breezed through to the top. OMG, what an amazing view from there, I would have kicked myself if I had returned back to base area without making an attempt to walk up there. Thank god, small inspirations makes you trudge along and rewards you with fruits for all your hard work. This moment was exactly like one of those moments. It was quite cold up there and we regretted not getting a jacket and we decided to hike back just after 15 minutes as it was getting unbearably cold. But, sights from top were surreal and totally worth the hike to the top.



It was around 8:00pm and was getting dark so decided to drive to Gatlinburg and had a nice meal in the city before driving further down the mountains to Pigeon Forge to our hotel to call it a night. It was a memorable 2-days spent in Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge and totally enjoyed being in the Smoky Mountains. I just cant wait to go back to the Smokies. It did leave a beautiful impression on us.



Next day, we checked out of the hotel started driving towards Nashville. I was driving fast as now my focus shifted towards the HOT Fried Chicken that was waiting for me in Nashville. Haha!







































































































The day before we waited till almost midnight to check out thebut, we could not see it up close due to lot of traffic and holiday crowd everywhere. We had to be content from watching the fireworks in sky from a distance.Sorry for repeating myself but, the holiday crowd was so much that it felt as if half of US population descended to the smokies, this is during/post pandemic so can't imagine how this place would be prior to this epidemic. It was swarming with people and traffic was backed up like crazy. As an example, it took us about an hour for a U-turn covering 500-800 meters to get into our hotel premises post midnight on July 3rd. Anyways, after reaching our hotel we just crashed and went out like the lights till 8:00am.Next day, we freshened up and got ready to hit the road around 10:00am and we decided to have a quick breakfast from Americas cornerstone of nutrition (McDonalds).and then drive up into the mountains going past Gatlinburg and much higher into mountains to the popular scenic places like :This is a 15-Mile loop inside deep forests in the mountains and a very popular loop. We joined multiple other cars and drove around bumper to bumper (you can see in some pictures) at an average speed of 5-10mph generally enjoying the beautiful mountain scenes and stopping at some scenic passes for pictures etc.Smoky Mountain National Park is extremely popular for Bears as its generally knowns as Bear Country and we were lucky to spot them twice in our short visit. One of them at Cove Loop. As we drove around the loop, some cars stopped on side and people getting out. I knew something was spotted. So, I whipped out my powerful binoculars and there it was- A small baby cub of Bear far in the distance in the woods. I felt bad for folks who were around me as they could not spot it with naked eye so I passed on my Binoculars to them and they all enjoyed the cub as if it was right in front of their eyes. Bino passing on went on for quite a few people and we all had great fun watching the bear cub playing in the woods.The other spotting was when a huge bear just passed our car, it happened so alarmingly quick that there was absolutely no way to take a picture. But, it was a memorable event and our intent of coming to Smokies was ticked off (so as to speak).We finished the loop around 1:00pm and then headed even higher where the state of Tennessee ends and we enter into state of North Carolina. Its quite unique that a state park spans across two different states and we actually crossed the border line where we stopped for a picture.It is the most visited national park in USA (One of the picture in this photoblog shows that as well) which was a huge surprise for me personally as I thought it might be Yellowstone or Yosemite. But, nope its the Smokies apparently.We stopped at state border as it had some stunning views and we spent a long time sinking in those beautiful sights. We also spotted some bikers parked their enjoying the beautiful scenery. I went over and had a quick word with them and passed my compliments on their beautiful motorcycles and told them I'm an ex-Motorcyclist.It felt great to live my motorcycling memories with them. They were riding different places and met in Smokies and riding through the entire ranges together. I envied them. Sigh !!We drove further upwards where the elevation gets higher and weather becomes colder (This is Tennessee/North Carolina where its not so cold in summers) and we can practically feel the chill in air even though it was sunny outside. We finally reached our destination- Clingmans Dome.Clingmans Dome is a mandatory visit for anyone visiting the Smokies. The base area where we parked the car, it felt like we are on Top of the World- One of the pictures on rock depicts just that feeling of being on the cloudsLOL!. It was just breathtakingly awesome and we spent an hour just sinking in the sights and as it was getting late in evening, we then decided to hike up to the actual Clingmans dome. From the base its a 30-minutes walk higher up on a steep elevation.Believe you me, I walked for 10 minutes and gave up and wanted to come back as the path is ridiculously steep and it was knocking the wind out of me. Then my wife pointed out some old folks walking upLOL. Well, suddenly a zing came into my step and I breezed through to the top. OMG, what an amazing view from there, I would have kicked myself if I had returned back to base area without making an attempt to walk up there. Thank god, small inspirations makes you trudge along and rewards you with fruits for all your hard work. This moment was exactly like one of those moments. It was quite cold up there and we regretted not getting a jacket and we decided to hike back just after 15 minutes as it was getting unbearably cold. But, sights from top were surreal and totally worth the hike to the top.It was around 8:00pm and was getting dark so decided to drive to Gatlinburg and had a nice meal in the city before driving further down the mountains to Pigeon Forge to our hotel to call it a night. It was a memorable 2-days spent in Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge and totally enjoyed being in the Smoky Mountains. I just cant wait to go back to the Smokies. It did leave a beautiful impression on us.Next day, we checked out of the hotel started driving towards Nashville. I was driving fast as now my focus shifted towards the HOT Fried Chicken that was waiting for me in Nashville. Haha! Last edited by mobike008 : 20th December 2021 at 06:49 .
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In brief: Ubisoft has long had a reputation for being one of the worlds most disliked gaming companies, and its starting to look like some employees feel the same way. The Assassins Creed Valhalla developer is reportedly hemorrhaging staff in what some are calling a great exodus and the cut artery.

A report by Axios claims that Ubisoft has seen massive departures over the past 18 months. At least five of the top 25-credited people from Far Cry 6, which only launched in October, have gone, while twelve people out of the top 50-credited developers from Assassins Creed Valhalla also waved goodbye to the company.

According to two current developers, these departures are impacting current projects, causing delays and postponements.

Both mid-level and lower-level workers are also leaving, with Ubisofts Canadian studios being particularly affected. According to LinkedIn, the Montreal and Toronto studios are down at least 60 workers in the last six months. The business-focused platform also shows that Ubisofts attrition rate is 12%, higher than EA (9%), Take-Two (8%), and Epic Games (7%), though it's still lower than Activision Blizzard, which has a 16% ratefor obvious reasons.

"Our attrition today is a few percentage points above where it typically is," Ubisoft's head of people ops, Anika Grant, told Axios in an interview. "But it's still within industry norms."

Employees say there are several factors behind the departures, including low pay, opportunities at other studios, frustration at the company's creative direction, and the #MeToo and toxicity allegations that have surrounded Ubisoft in recent times.

"I think abuse and toxicity are contributing factors but not deciding ones for most," a current Ubisoft developer said of why colleagues were leaving, adding that "Women and people of color experience them as deciding factors."

Ubisoft has faced criticism lately over its plan to implement non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in Ghost Recon Breakpoint; the YouTube announcement video attracted over 30,000 dislikes.

In its defense, Ubisoft pointed out that it has hired 2,600 workers since April and that a recent company-wide satisfaction survey returned a score of 74, in line with the industry average. The departures are also likely linked to the Great Resignation, a movement in which employees are fighting back against low pay, poor conditions, and companies that force them to place work above everything else in their lives.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launch is now free from any additional delays, making it ready for its scheduled lift-off during Christmas Eve or on Dec. 24.

NASA James Webb Space Telescope is Ready to Launch

As per the report by CNET, the successor to the Hubble telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, is still to launch soon after numerous hiccups, which further delayed its lift-off to the end of 2021.

The observatory integration and test manager of the Webb telescope, Mark Voyton, said that the launch of the observatory "will be a significant life event."

He added that he will "be elated, of course, when this is successful." However, he noted that "it will also be a time of deep personal introspection."

The Webb Telescope is now scheduled to launch on the Europe Spaceport in French Guiana on Dec. 24 after NASA has already fixed its latest hiccup.

NASA James Webb Space Telescope Latest Delay

Last Dec. 15, according to the report by CNN, the launch of the Hubble telescope successor has been delayed yet again. Thus, Its Dec. 22 launch has been moved to Christmas eve.

It is to note that before the Dec. 22 schedule, it was slated to lift off on Dec. 18, but was pushed to a later date due to an accident, which occurred as technicians were trying to attach it to the Ariane 5 rocket.

NASA disclosed in a press release that there was a "sudden, unplanned release of a clamp band" during the installation process. As a result, the whole Webb telescope, which cost a hefty $10 billion to develop, vibrated throughout its body.

The clamp band issue was eventually fixed last Dec. 11.

But another problem arises on Dec. 15, which concerns the communication system of the launch vehicle system and the James Webb Telescope itself.

Thus, further delaying the launch to Dec. 24 as NASA still worked on the communication issues.

However, this time around, NASA announced that the James Webb Space Telescope is now ready for its launch on Christmas Eve.

Read Also: Terraforming Mars With Artificial Magnetic Field? Experts Say it's Possible Through Martian Moon Phobos, But How?

NASA James Webb Space Telescope Launch: How to Watch

If you want to spend your Christmas eve lurking at the marvelous and long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope. Here's how to watch its NASA launch.

First off, its lift-off is scheduled for Dec. 24 at 4:20 am. NASA TV is streaming the long-awaited long of the telescope online.

Related Article: James Webb Space Telescope Referred to as 'Most Complicated' | NASA Says There are Over 300 Ways It Could Fail

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(Photo : Photo by NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP via Getty Images) In this picture taken on April 29, 2020, an engineer works at the Quality Control Laboratory on an experimental vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus at the Sinovac Biotech facilities in Beijing. - Sinovac Biotech, which is conducting one of the four clinical trials that have been authorised in China, has claimed great progress in its research and promising results among monkeys. (Photo : Jeff J Mitchell - Pool /Getty Images)

COVID-19 has a phenomenon known as "Super Immunity," and it focuses on the study that discovered a surge in antibodies in a person for as much as 2,000 percent. Getting super immunity is possible through getting infected after being fully vaccinated against the virus, more like a "practical approach" or real-world situation.

COVID-19 'Super Immunity: Study Reveals How It's Achieved

A report by USA Today focused on the latest findings in COVID-19, as conducted by Oregon-based researchers that looked into COVID-19's "Super Immunity." The study focuses on the antibody production of a person fully vaccinated against the virus, meaning that they have already received two vaccine shots.

The study stated that a 2,000 percent surge in antibodies appears whenever a fully-vaccinated person gets infected by the virus. This means that the vaccines are effective and can protect against COVID-19.

It also answers the question that people can still get infected by COVID even after getting the vaccine. However, the public would not receive its worse fallout but naturally, expel it from their system.

Read Also: CDC's First Batch of COVID-19 Tests are Flawed? Internal Investigation Reveals Possible Contamination

COVID-19 and its Infection Rate in the Country

The reports focused on the massive infection rate of Omicron in the country, and with New York being the epicenter in the country, states have been asking for more testing and priority in their healthcare. The massive infection rate also looks into the mandate of masks in public places again, especially now that the holidays are near.

COVID-19 Omicron Variant: Can Super Immunity Protect Against It?

From October to early November, the Omicron variant of the virus first showed its fangs to the public, and its horror of infection spread throughout different regions of the world. It reached the country towards the middle to end of November, and it has become a problem ever since as it is unexpected despite the many precautions against it.

The new variant is the topmost infectious strain of the virus, bringing a massive problem for the world, which initially thought it was healing from the pandemic. The Omicron brought a lot of issues to the world, including doubts on the current health solutions to the virus, including the vaccine and health organizations that focus on it.

The question now is, will the Super Immunity discovered by researchers be that effective or protective from the Omicron variant? The answer lies in the studies, which would happen soon, as it opened up different opportunities that await a look into the new antibody production, which would help in understanding protecting more against the virus.

Related Article: How Distance Learning Has Affected Students' Mental Health During The Pandemic

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The International Space Station will host a government-backed experiment set to launch on Tuesday, Dec. 21, to help people live longer and healthier lives.

Scientists, supported by the U.K. government, will launch human muscle cells into space on Tuesday for an experiment aimed at understanding how aging affects our bodies, courtesy of SpaceX's Falcon 9

According to the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, the experiment called MicroAge study, to be led by researchers from the University of Liverpool in the U.K., will be sent by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida to the International Space Station (ISS).

At 10:00 a.m. (GMT) this Tuesday, MicroAge will launch from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The experiment is set to Earth in January 2022 to undergo further analysis.

The MicroAge Study

Space makes astronauts' muscles weaker because there is no gravity, so they do not need extra tissue.

To understand the causes of human muscle weakness as we age and help combat the effects of aging, researchers want to examine what happens to muscle tissue during space flight versus on Earth.

"Ageing is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century and we will learn a great deal about how muscle responds to microgravity and ageing from the data we obtain from this study," said Professor Malcolm Jackson from the University of Liverpool.

A research team from the university said they would conduct a number of experiments in microgravity on the ISS. The cells, which are smaller than a grain of rice, will be placed in 3D-printed holders, according to a U.K. government report.

Now, when the cells reach the International Space Station, cells will be electrically stimulated to produce muscle tissue contractions.

Scientists from the University of Florida have traveled to the Kennedy Space Center to keep muscle cells growing before SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch, according to a University report. The cell samples will return to Earth in January for further analysis.

Also Read: SpaceX's Falcon 9 Selected to Launch Varda Space's First Manufacturing Satellite in 2023-What to Expect | Tech Times

Sharing the Secrets of Ageing

Through the 'Micro Age Mission' App, people can stay updated on the progress of the study and access timely updates, podcasts, activity packs, and other information related to healthy aging, exercise, and other aspects of the study.

As a member of the European Space Agency's exploration program, the U.K. can make use of the International Space Station (ISS) for research. The European Space Agency also provides launch and operations of the ISS.

For the second time, the U.K. Space Agency directly funds an experiment to be flown to the ISS.

In the first experiment, which launched in June 2021, scientists from Nottingham University and Exeter University brought thousands of tiny worms back from space to study the effects of space travel on muscles.

A 1.2 million ($1.35 million) grant has been awarded to the University of Liverpool by the U.K. Space Agency for the MicroAge experiment.

Related Article: Two SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Successfully Send 52 Starlink Sats! Booster Recoveries Done on the Same Day | Tech Times

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(Photo : by MARK FELIX/AFP via Getty Images) NASA and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronauts acknowledge the audience after their graduation ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas, on January 10, 2020. - The 13 astronauts, 11 from NASA and 2 from CSA, are the first candidates to graduate under the Artemis program and will become eligible for spaceflight, including assignments to the International Space Station, Artemis missions to the Moon, and ultimately, missions to Mars, according to NASA.

(Photo : Getty Images )

The NASA Artemis moon mission is scheduled to have its first launch (an unmanned one) in February 2022. But that launch has now been pushed back due to a major glitch.

According to CNET, the glitch is affecting the flight controller of one of the engines driving the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Its main purpose is to serve as the "brain" for the RS-25 engine; helping it communicate with the SLS rocket for precision controls.

This engine controller, as per an official NASA statement, is found on each RS-25 engine (there are four of these controllers in total). Every controller has two channels, A and B, for backup purposes.

Recent testing found that channel B on engine four's flight controller failed to consistently power up, despite working perfectly fine during earlier testing rounds.

For now, NASA engineers are suggesting that the engine controller be replaced. As a result, the initial February 2022 launch date for part 1 of the Artemis mission is being reconsidered for a March or April launch.

Aside from that, the agency also plans to continue their tests as well as prepare the rocket and Orion capsule for an upcoming "wet dress rehearsal." This rehearsal, as per the original CNET report, will involve loading the rockets up with actual fuel they'll use during the real launch.

Once the dress rehearsal is complete, then the agency will set a much firmer, slightly delayed launch date.

The NASA Artemis moon mission is one of the most anticipated expeditions to date, as it will finally bring humans back to the moon-almost 50 years since we were last there.

That was the time when the Apollo 17 mission set many records, according to Space.com. This included the longest time spent on the moon by any astronaut-almost 75 hours, set by Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan.

Read Also: NASA Artemis Moon Mission: 3 Reasons Why We Should Go Back To The Moon

What's The Purpose Of The NASA Artemis Moon Mission?

The Artemis mission, which will cost NASA a whopping $93 billion until 2025, aims to accomplish a single main goal: to establish a permanent human base there.

This permanent human settlement, as per NASA themselves, will serve as a staging ground for more missions into the further reaches of space. The mission will also serve a technological and scientific purpose; one that will help scientists understand the universe in a better, more hands-on way.

As the agency says, "we are going to the moon to stay."

No Stranger To Delays

The Artemis mission is still in its preparatory stages, but it has already suffered major delays. As per a report by The Verge, the actual human landing has been pushed back from 2024 to at least several years later.

This recommendation was made after the agency's Office of the Inspector General completed their latest periodic audit of the mission itself. Among the many reasons for the delay is due to the technological complexity of the equipment-especially that of SpaceX's Starship, which is still in the very early development stage.

Related Article: NASA Will Be Bringing National Geographic's Cameras To Artemis Moon Mission

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The SpaceX COVID-19 outbreak has yielded a total of 132 positive cases from the employees of the space exploration firm of Elon Musk in its corporate headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

SpaceX COVID-19 Outbreak

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed that out of the approximately 6,000 employees from the SpaceX Headquarters, 132 of them tested positive for the novel coronavirus, as per the news story by Fox News LA.

A court document back in May estimated that about 5,972 staffers are working in the corporate site of SpaceX at 1 Rocket Road in Hawthorne, Los Angeles.

It is worth noting that the corporate headquarters of the space firm is home to both the engineering and manufacturing of the Falcon 9 rockets, as well as the Dragon capsules. Not to mention that the main designs for its spacecraft are also being done in the same facility.

The LA health authorities released the latest number of COVID cases inside the corporate headquarters of billionaire Musk along with the other positive cases in the county.

Los Angeles County reported nearly 3,000 new COVID-19 cases as part of the raging winter surge, which continues to see an uptick in the number of new positive cases.

As such, the health authorities of LA Country further noted that the cumulative number of cases in the said location has already reached a total of 1,563,894 cases. Meanwhile, the fatalities from COVID-19 in the county have already tallied up to 27,441.

Read Also: SpaceX Bankruptcy Could Happen, Says Elon Musk in a Leaked Email! Raptor Production Crisis Getting Serious?

SpaceX and COVID-19

According to the report by Los Angeles Times, it is not the first time that the headquarters of SpaceX figured in a COVID-19 outbreak.

During the early days of the pandemic, back in March 2020, a total of 12 employees from the said rocket facility were also quarantined after two cases broke out.

On top of that, over 400 employees from the SpaceX plant ended up being positive from COVID-19 from May until December 2020.

It is to note that the CEO and founder of the space firm, Musk, have been consistently blurting out that the whole pandemic is overblown and even "dumb."

In fact, LA Times further mentioned in the report that the other tech firm of Musk, Tesla, went on to open its plant in the Bay Area even if there were statewide lockdowns that were in place during that time.

Related Article: SpaceX Starship is 'Next-Level,' But Has a 'Long Way to Go; Says Elon Musk for Interstellar Explorations

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(Photo : by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images) The Tesla logo is seen outside of their showroom in Washington, DC, on August 8, 2018. - Tesla's board of directors said Wednesday it will evaluate chief executive Elon Musk's proposal to take the electric car maker private. After Musk last week raised the idea as a better solution for Tesla's long-term growth, directors met "several times" and are "taking the appropriate next steps to evaluate this," the board said in a brief statement issued before the stock market opened.

Tesla has warned that its new 2021 electric vehicles or EVs still include old 2017 battery packs. As such, the tech giant admitted that its capacity has been slightly reduced already.

Tesla: 2021 EVs Include 2017 Battery Packs

As per the report by Electrek, the EV tech giant, Tesla, has added a disclaimer in its online listing of the new 2021 Model 3 sedan.

The strange thing about it is that it disclosed that these supposedly new vehicles from the auto firm of Elon Musk carry a battery pack from 2017.

The news outlet further noted that the EV maker has been scrambling to reduce its inventory of vehicles in hopes to improve its earnings before 2021 comes to an end, its CEO and founder Elon Musk previously said.

As such, Tesla ended up selling even its demo and test drive units as a brand new vehicle.

Some customers of Tesla have been reporting that they have seen a new listing on the website of the EV maker, which turns out to be the model vehicle of the tech giant.

Read Also: Tesla California Corporate HQ to New Texas Factory Under Construction! Will ALL Employees be Relocated?

Tesla Model 3 2021 with Battery Range Disclaimer

According to the news story by Jalopnik, a Twitter user that goes by the name Seth Horowitz revealed the new listing of Tesla in his series of tweets.

The Twitter user further noted that there is a new listing of the 2021 Tesla Model 3 that carries a disclaimer that the range of the vehicle might have been reduced due to its old battery pack.

Horowitz added that the brand new listing of the 2021 Model 3 was seen in various locations, such as Portland, Miami, Denver, Honolulu, and Los Angeles.

The disclaimer specifically warned its buyers that the "range figures may be up to 12% lower due to battery age."

1/2 New thread. TSLA is selling Demo 21 Long Range Model 3s with low miles, and a disclaimer that the battery was built in 17 and may be degraded by 12%. I put a ton of links in a thread that broke. Heres the search criteria for the Bay Area: https://t.co/6Hh5wYkUEP pic.twitter.com/iY8beAlgxx  Seth Horwitz (@Seth_Horwitz) December 20, 2021

On top of that, the warning from Tesla also noted that "this vehicle was built with a battery pack manufactured as early as 2017."

That said, the EV maker further disclosed that even if the said vehicle is still brand new, its battery range capacity has been reduced over time.

Electrek also confirmed in the same report that the demo vehicles with old battery packs were listed under the "new inventory" section of the website of Tesla.

The listing admitted that the odometer of the 2021 Model 3 vehicles already had 1,000 miles on it, which the news outlet assumed to be from test drives.

Related Article: Tesla Releases the Findings of its Test Program for Model 3 Made as Police Patrol Car in the UK

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Tesla rolled out its software update for the upcoming holiday as users could now test the new UI changes, blindspot camera, TikTok-Tesla Theater changes, and more.

The electric vehicle maker is now releasing a lot of improvements before 2021 ends. Take a look inside the 2021 holiday update (v.2021.44.25) through the following release notes.

Tesla 'Holiday' Software Update Release Notes

According to a report by Electrek on Monday, Dec. 20, a screenshot of the software's news features was uploaded by u/Emulsifide on the r/teslamotors Reddit channel. The release notes indicated that the following updates will be soon accessible to all Tesla users.

Simplified Controls on the UI

This update focuses on the primary controls and navigation of the Tesla software. To access the status bar information and windshield wipers, go to the Controls. For those who will activate the latter, the wiper card will be continuously displayed if you enable the wipers via the stalk.

If you want to take a look at the charging controls, tap Controls then Charging.

For odometer information and trip, access Trips. Lastly, go to Service to explore more about tire pressure information.

Related Article: Starlink Flights? Elon Musk Teases Video Streaming, Online Video Games In-Flights With Satellite Internet

Light Show

Back in 2015, Tesla brought this feature as an Easter Egg for the Model X. The good news is that all EVs can now use the Light Show. To start, open the Toy Box and click Light Show for more details.

Dark Mode

Tesla car owners can now manually activate Dark Mode for a dark-themed display. To change that, you need to go to the Controls, Display, and tap Appearance. Click and select Dark.

Edit Waypoints

Back in November, Tech Times reported that Tesla has finally added Waypoint, a long-time requested feature by the fans. Now, users could add many destinations paired with desired arrival times.

To begin, select a navigation route and access the options button on the turn list to edit or halt a trip.

Customizable Menu Bar

To organize your favorite apps in the menu, you can simply customize them by holding the icon and dragging them to arrange their positions. You can also tweak changes for the climate controls and click the temperature on the screen.

Blind Spot Camera

Peaking at the blindspot when you enable the turn signal is now possible. To do this, you need to go to Controls, Autopilot, and tap Automatic Bling Spot Camera.

TikTok and Tesla Theater

From the touchscreen, you can now watch TikTok videos by launching the Tesla Theater. To take advantage of this integration, search the Theater icon on the bottom bar and click it.

After that, tap TikTok while your EV is in the park. You can also port games through "Arcade" so you could play "Sonic the Hedgehog," "Sudoku," and "The Battle of Polytopia."

In April, Tech Times reported a prank about Tesla TikTok update 2021.4.12.6. People knew that in-car streaming was coming along with the recording, but it turns out that this was only a part of the April Fool's joke.

Hide Map Details

On the map, click the pin button to roll out this feature.

Cold Weather Improvements

Make sure to activate the climate on your Tesla and save the current setting. To do so, click "Yes" to confirm the changes. For the protection of your car's battery, the climate will be unavailable at a lower charging state. This is accessible for Tesla mobile app v.4.4.0 or newer version.

Automatic Seat Heaters

To regulate the temperature of the seat, click the Temperature Settings to activate the HVAC panel.

Dashcam Clips

If you want to delete the latest clips of the day through your Tesla car, go to Controls, Safety, Dash Cam, and click Delete Dashcam Clips from the touchscreen.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg wrote in a story that Tesla's stock with Hertz crashed down on Monday, Dec. 20 at $899.94. The 35% rally disappeared in the latest trend.

Read Also: Tesla Launches Software Update for Powerwall, Virtual Power Plant and Energy Plan--Here's the Complete Release Notes



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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Google OnHub router support would soon end, as confirmed by the giant search engine company. Right now, many consumers are still relying on this old-school internet gadget since it still allows them to have access to the online world.

However, they would soon need to replace their OnHub routers once Google completely halts updates. First launched back in August 2015, this modem allowed many consumers to access the internet.

After that, a new OnHub router, developed by ASUS, replaced the very first version. For the past few years, it continuously received advanced features and updates, such as IFTTT support and Chrome OS availability.

Google OnHub Router Support's EOL Details

OnHub router received the "Guest Wi-Fi with Device Sharing" function and other advanced enhancements after it hit the one-year mark of its launch.

Also Read: Google Breaks its Promise to Stop Running Ads Promoting Climate Change Denial

But, the essential enhancements for this internet model would soon be over as Google plans to end its support for the wifi gadget, as reported by Android Community.

"Since OnHub routers were introduced 6 years ago, a lot has changed. In 2022, support for these older devices will end," said Google via its official Google Nest Help blog post.

The exact EOL (End-of-Life) schedule for OnHub is December 19, 2022. Before this date arrived, Google said that it would still release the needed enhancements, such as fixes and software updates.

But, the search engine giant still suggested that consumers need to get a new wifi setup as soon as possible. Meanwhile, here are the specific things that would happen after December 19, 2022:

You won't be able to update things like wifi network settings, add additional wifi devices, or run speed tests.

OnHub performance can't be guaranteed.

Google Assistant features like "Hey Google, pause my wifi" will stop working.

What Users Need to Do

Google explained that the best thing that users can do is to upgrade their OnHub to Google Nest wifi. Doing this would provide the following benefits:

Check your peak internet usage on a graph to help you understand if your current internet plan is the best fit for your home.

Get notifications when new or inactive devices join the network.

Run speed tests and receive insights to help you understand how you can improve your internet connection speed on a specific device.

Get real-time connection speed information to help identify the issues and receive troubleshooting tips to improve your device's performance.

In other news, a new Google AR OS is expected to arrive. Meanwhile, Google Workspace received a new update for Drive files.

For more news updates about Google and its upcoming innovations, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Google Collaborates With US National Cancer Institute to Work on Breast Cancer Research

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About 225 million stolen passwords and emails appeared to have been involved in a massive data breach in the United Kingdom.

The country's cybercrime watchdogs, National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU), and National Crime Agency (NCA) now gave them to credential tracking service HaveIBeenPwned (HIBP) to see if there are more compromised credentials in this case.

Stolen Passwords Leaked in Previous Hacks

According to a report from ZDNET, over 200 million new credentials, including passwords and emails, have been handed to HIPB to see the previously leaked details in the past data breaches.

If you are doubtful that your password has been leaked before, you can check HIPB's Pwned Password to verify its authenticity and anonymity.

The report suggested that the recommendation from NIST will help the users be wary of their passwords. As such, they would now stop using the old credentials that were exposed in a breach.

Moreover, it aims to address the escalating usage of "credential stuffing," wherein hackers try a list of frequently-used passwords and usernames from online accounts.

Related Article: How to Check if My Facebook Data Have Been Hacked [2021]: 533 Million Accounts Compromised

Beware of These New Passwords

Since people are sometimes lazy in changing their passwords, cyber attackers took the opportunity to test them out. As a result, many users are vulnerable to piling credentials because they only stick to the common passwords.

Last year, the FBI said that credential stuffing has also affected 50,000 online bank accounts since 2017. The agency urged the public to regularly change their passwords to stay away from this trap.

Back in May, the US law enforcement agency teamed up with Have I Been Pwned to overlook the potential logins that have been exposed.

With that, NCA and NCCU found cloud storage of stolen passwords and email addresses. The former recently told HIPB that they were able to identify compromised credentials from multiple users.

"Through analysis, it became clear that these credentials were an accumulation of breached datasets known and unknown. The fact that they had been placed on a UK business's cloud storage facility by unknown criminal actors meant the credentials now existed in the public domain and could be accessed by other 3rd parties to commit further fraud or cyber offenses," NCA said.

The updated list for the compromised passwords includes the new ones including the following in the Pwned Passwords data set. Here are they:

aganesq

Alexei2005

flamingo228

123Tests

91177700

For organizations who want to scan all the data on the website, you can compress them into a 17.2GB file in SHA-1 format. This would include the first list of the passwords that the FBI and other agencies discovered previously.

According to Troy Hunt, an HIBP's operator, the compromised credentials handed to HIPB would be for community use and not for him.

Hunt highlighted that the total number of Pwned Passwords in the latest release now hit 847,223,402. In short, the team has spotted a 38% increase of the leaked credentials, and this was significantly bigger than the previous version.

How to Check if Your Password is Stolen

A report from PC World said that there are three password monitors that you can use to tell if your password has been compromised.

You can use Google Password Checkup, Firefox Lockwise, and Microsoft Edge Password Monitor for password monitoring apps. Note that these tools can be found as an extension of your browser.

If you want a more secure password manager, you can opt for LastPass,1Password, and Dashlane. If you want a quick scan of your credential to see if it is pawned, check the HIBP site for more details.

On Facebook, you can do the same thing by checking your FB email address at HaveIBeenPawned, Tech Times reported in April.

Read Also: Hotel Wi-Fi Networks Found to Have 'Serious Security Flaws'

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The founder and CEO of OnlyFans, Tim Stokely, will officially be stepping down from his position. With that, Ami Gan, the company's former head of communications and marketing, will be named his successor.

CEO of OnlyFans Steps Down with Spokesperson Expected to Replace Him

According to the article by Bloomberg, the founder, and CEO of OnlyFans, Tim Stokely, is going to be replaced by the company's former head of communications, the company's spokesperson, Ami Gan.

This move comes after quite a tenuous year for the platform, according to the story by TechCrunch. To add, this is when the company announced that it would ban a lot of users from the platform. The decision was then suspended just a week later.

Tim Stokely Himself Decided Gan Should Replace Him

As per the publication, for those that think it's odd that a spokesperson would take the position of CEO of the company, this is "not off-base." As per the reports, however, this was the decision of Stokely himself.

As per Gan, the new CEO, she and Stokely have been working side-by-side and sharing their passion when it comes to the creator company. She said that their priority is for the platform to continue being committed to being the "safest" social media platform in the whole wide world.

Gan's Investment in OFTV

Gan also noted that she would be investing in OFTV, which is the company's very own safe-for-work streaming app. Aside from this, Gan stated that they would be building new tools that creators could use.

While Stokely has been mainly focused on OnlyFans, Gan, on the other hand, has been able to work for different brands like Red Bull and Quest Nutrition. To add, TechCrunch noted that they asked the platform if the new leadership will make an impact on those already using the platform and is reportedly still waiting for a comment.

OnlyFans on Track to Make $2.5 Billion

As of the moment, OnlyFans' business thrives thanks mostly to its NSFW creators. With that, in August, the company was already on track to make $2.5 billion in sales this year, which was up from its previous $1.2 billion made last year.

In a nutshell, OnlyFans make a profit by taking 20% of creator earnings. To add, the company, however, announced a bombshell that could potentially ban the livelihoods of those on the platform who were responsible for making OnlyFans a billion-dollar enterprise.

Read Also: Streaming Pirates Could Get Up to 20 Years Jail Time After Malaysia Updated Copyright Laws

OnlyFans on Banning NSFW Content

In that announcement, OnlyFans said that they would be banning NSFW content. To expand, after quite an amount of backlash, the platform decided to suspend this particular decision and assured users that it has been able to resolve issues when it comes to banking problems.

As for the new CEO, there is still a lot of room for the platform to grow, and having a spokesperson turned CEO leading the platform could also turn out to be an interesting leadership choice.

Related Article: Amazon Delays Warehouse Phone Ban 'Until Further Notice' Amidst Tornado Safety Concerns

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A coalition of Louisiana immigrants rights organizations on Thursday sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas beseeching him to address torturous and racially discriminatory abuses, unlawful conduct and lack of oversight within immigrant detention centers under the jurisdiction of the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office.

The 17-page letter detailed an alleged pattern of systemic abuse in ICE facilities across the state, including episodes of use of torture and verbal threats by officers and guards and instances of discrimination and harassment toward Black asylum seekers.

The facilities under NOLA ICE and their contractors have shown an ongoing history of abusive conditions and are unfit to house human beings, the organizations said in the letter. This pattern is so egregious that of the facilities that ACLU has called on you to shut down nationwide, nearly one-third (11 of the 39) fall within the NOLA ICE AOR.

The letter was sent the day after BuzzFeed reported the Department of Homeland Securitys Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) delivered a warning to ICE on Nov. 17. In the warning, the CRCL recommended stopping placing immigrants at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield until the facility's conditions were improved.

In a Nov. 13 story on The Advocate, dozens of asylum seekers and their family members shared their experience decrying isolation, filth, and lack of medical care at Winn Correctional Center, which is run by LaSalle Corrections, a Louisiana-based private prison operator.

The letter, which is signed by 10 nonprofit organizations including Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU of Louisiana Foundation, and Freedom for Immigrants, underlined that in the year 2020 alone, we and other concerned parties lodged at least four multi-individual civil rights complaints calling for the investigation of excessive of force, naming ICE officers and private prison guards illegal use of torture, threats, coercion, and direct physical force.

ICE officials in New Orleans would not comment on the letter because the correspondence was sent to DHSs Secretary Mayorkas. DHS also has not responded to a request for comment.

The letter recalled a particularly violent episode of retaliation against hunger strikers in August 2020, when a group of 45 Black asylum seekers participated in a peaceful protest. In response, Pine Prairie officers told the protestors that if they continued to hunger strike, they would be placed in solitary confinement, advocates wrote. The protestors sat on the floor and raised their arms to show that they were unarmed. Fifteen guards retaliated by mobilizing tear gas canisters, a tear gas gun, pepper spray, and handcuffs.

As Louisiana prison population drops, private firms turn to immigration contracts for revenue Detention facilities in Louisiana that lost population and funding under Gov. John Bel Edwards' criminal justice reform measures have benefite

One immigrant reportedly described how he watched as an ICE officer broke a protestors arm as he wrestled him to the ground, sharing a vivid memory of hearing the "snap" of the bone.

Pine Prairie is a processing center operated by the GEO Group, a nationwide private prison provider. Responding to a previous, similar letter last June by the same group of nonprofit organizations, GEO denied the allegations to The Advocate | New Orleans Times-Picayune, saying they were being advanced by radical special interest groups with a politically motivated agenda.

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The Dec. 16 letter underlined the increasing use by ICE officers of solitary confinement to punish alleged misbehavior by the asylum seekers. Immigrants at Jackson Parish and Winn Correctional Centers described prison officers placing people in solitary for as long as 60 days, the organizations stated. We have received reports that facility officials at the Winn Correctional Center have punished immigrants with solitary confinement for attempting to speak to reporters during facility tours.

Judge Michelle Odinet disqualified by Louisiana Supreme Court while under investigation The Louisiana Supreme Court released an order Friday that temporarily disqualified Lafayette City Court Judge Michelle Odinet from the bench a

In November, Kokou Lare, an asylum-seeker from Togo who spent several months at Winn Correctional Center told The Advocate that immigrants are sent to a room called Cyper Room. If you dont follow every order, they throw you in solitary," he said.

Winn Correctional Center does not have a room called the Cyper Room, an ICE spokesperson responded at that time. Allegations of lengthy forced isolation for special categories of detainees without communication access are unfounded and do not accurately reflect ICE detention operations, the spokesperson added.

On page 9, the letter reported an episode in May 2021 when an attorney visited Winn Correctional Center. (The lawyer) reported that as detained men were cutting down trees, ICE personnel made a joking comment to the effect to now we cant lynch them.

The letter continued: That attorney reported another incident in May 2021 that occurred when two Cameroonian men asked guards at Winn if they would wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. One of the guards responded, f--- Black people and pushed one of the detained men onto the floor.

The New Orleans Field Office granted fewer parole requests nationwide than most other ICE offices, according to the federal data. ICE records collected by Human Rights First through FOIA showed that the office in New Orleans granted parole to only 1.6% of eligible asylum-seekers in 2018.

+3 Old Facebook posts show Michelle Odinet setting up traps for burglars: Shes been playing cowboy Screenshots of Facebook posts from 2019 and 2020 suggest Lafayette City Court Judge Michelle Odinet was trying to capture a person suspected o

Fewer granted parole means that the average detention time inside of the ICE facilities is likely to be longer, Sofia Casini, Director of Visitation Advocacy Strategies at Freedom for Immigrants, told The Advocate. And if the detention time is longer, the number of abuses is likely to grow, advocates and asylum seekers explained.

ICE data showed that the New Orleans Field Offices parole denial rate is 99%. And even when the parole's request is approved by an ICE officer, Louisiana courts are more likely to deny asylum than anywhere else in the country. TRAC and EOIR immigration data from 2016 to 2021 showed that LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena denied 91.9% of the cases. In New Orleans Immigration Court, the denial rate is 87.6%. In both cases, the percentage is higher than the immigration courts nationwide (73.7% of all cases).

Our organizations have also documented significant racial disparities in bond amounts, parole grants, and release rates among Black and African immigrants detained in NOLA ICE facilities, the letter stated. A Southern Poverty Law Centers analysis of government data on parole found that Cameroonian asylum seekers are 2.5 times more likely to be denied discretionary release in the NOLA ICE Field Office region.
A dispute over when to fill a seat on the East Baton Rouge Metro Council has spurred accusations of racism and partisan power plays.

Councilwoman Erika Green will leave her seat on Jan. 1 to become a judge, and her fellow Democrats have called for a special meeting Wednesday to call for a March 26 election to fill her seat.

I think the residents and constituents of District 5 deserve to know sooner rather than later who their councilperson is going to be, said Councilman Cleve Dunn Jr., a Democrat that represents District 6.

But some Republican council members want to hold off on scheduling a vote, which would mean the seat wouldn't be filled until November. They argue turnout will be higher with other, with bigger elections on the ballot, and they say a later election would give candidates more time to campaign.

Its an important seat, said Dwight Hudson, a Republican from District 9. Its worthy of an election that will have a large turnout.

But Chauna Banks, a Democrat who represents District 2, said the conservative members are just trying to make a power play. She says the Republicans want to take advantage of the 7-4 majority they will have on council once Green leaves, allowing them to appoint someone who will hold the seat for most of next year.

Green's district is 90% Black.

It makes sense that Republicans who are from affluent areas representing affluent people, where less than 20% of their people are African American and hardly any of their constituents are disenfranchised, would be more concerned about the politics than the people, Banks said.

A Metro Council member won an election for judge. Here's who might run to replace her A seat on the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council will soon become vacant, setting up a springtime election to fill the position and a debat

Banks directed a majority of her ire at Hudson. She accused him of trying to disrupt the more harmonious atmosphere the council has enjoyed in 2021 compared to previous years that were defined by partisan fights.

Its just unfair, its selfish, its self-centered, and its racist, based on what were looking at and who is deciding to leave these people without permanent representation for such a length of time, Banks said.

Hudson pushed back against the comments and declined to participate in any squabbling back-and-forth with Councilwoman Banks.

Theres always an opportunity for us to look at a racial or political component to almost any decision we make, Hudson said. I'm going to do my best to move away from that. For me, I think were serving the district well if we make sure and have the election when a lot of people are going to go out there and have their say in it.

The Wednesday meeting was called Monday. At least seven members will need to attend to achieve a quorum, and at least seven members will need to vote in favor of the March election for the item to pass, Council Administrator Ashley Beck said.

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Green will be able to attend and vote at the meeting because her resignation does not take effect until the new year. She said she plans to attend and supports a March election.

Democrats LaMont Cole, Carolyn Coleman, Banks and Dunn all committed to attending the meeting and said that they support a March election.

Republicans Denise Amoroso and Rowdy Gaudet also said they would be in attendance. Amoroso said she supports the election being held in November. Gaudet said he wants to hear the councils discussion before making a decision, although he said he has concerns that an election held in March would be more expensive.

Republican Jennifer Racca said she would likely attend the meeting and is yet to make a decision on when the election will be held.

Either way, were going to have a person thats elected and take this seat regardless of whether its March or November, Racca said.

Republicans Dwight Hudson and Aaron Moak said they likely would not be in attendance due to scheduling conflicts, although neither member supports the election being held in March.

By me not being there, it achieves the same result, Hudson said.

Republicans Laurie Adams and Brandon Noel did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, although both said last week that they support the election being held in November rather than March.

With each side retreating to their corners ahead of the meeting, Gaudet and Racca could be the swing votes.

Wednesdays meeting is just the first step of the dispute over the District 5 seat. If seven members do not vote on Wednesday for the election to be held in March, a second meeting will need to be held to call for the election in November. Or the Democrats can try to hold another meeting before the end of the year to call for the election in March.

Once Green officially vacates her seat on Jan. 1, another special meeting will be held to name an interim council member to the seat.

The back-and-forth over the election date has Banks concerned that the Councils seven Republicans will try to appoint a conservative to represent the heavily Democratic district in the meantime.

Anything is possible because they have the majority and because their interests do not appear to be in the interest of the people, Banks said.
Not long after 1 a.m. Sunday, a host of relatives received panicked phone calls and rushed to the crime scene, each holding onto a sliver of hope that Tony Smith was not the victim.

They formed a large group outside the police tape, praying their suspicions were wrong, his aunt said: Maybe Smith ran into some neighbors while walking to the store, or maybe his phone was broken. But their calls kept going unanswered, and finally Baton Rouge police confirmed their fears.

"It was like all hell broke loose then. Everybody just broke down," said his aunt, Debra Jones.

Now, instead of looking forward to their annual Christmas gathering, the family is planning a funeral.

Smith, 32, was killed around the corner from the apartment he shared with his wife and kids. He became another victim of Baton Rouge gun violence amid a soaring homicide rate that shows no signs of slowing during the final weeks of 2021.

At least 145 lives have been lost to violence this year across East Baton Rouge Parish, including four within the past week alone and two on Sunday. The unprecedented number of annual killings eclipses even the record-breaking 2020 total, according to data tracked by The Advocate.

Police responded to reports of a shooting around 1 a.m. Sunday at the Greenview East apartment complex on North Ardenwood Drive, officials said. Smith was pronounced dead on the scene.

The case remains unsolved. Detectives have not identified suspects or potential motives, but the investigation is ongoing, officials said Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, dozens of grieving family members are trying their best to piece together what happened to Smith, a man who stayed out of trouble but still got caught in the senseless and sometimes indiscriminate gun violence plaguing many Baton Rouge neighborhoods.

"We have so many questions," Jones said. "What could cause someone to do this?"

+2 Baton Rouge mechanic killed at home in daylight as homicide rate soars: 'It's just a mess' A longtime Baton Rouge car mechanic  a fixture in the Brookstown area often spotted peering beneath the hoods of various vehicles parked outs

Smith had left his apartment just minutes before the shooting, and nothing seemed unusual: He was headed to a nearby corner store for cigarettes, his wife later told other relatives. After noticing the errand was taking longer than normal, she stepped outside to find her husband  and discovered a crime scene several yards from her doorstep.

She panicked and started alerting other relatives.

By late Sunday afternoon, about 12 hours after receiving the news of his death, dozens of family members gathered at the small clapboard house off North Foster Drive where Smith grew up alongside his two older siblings. Relatives packed into the living room, offering condolences and support, sharing food and trying to process their new reality.

Smith worked in landscaping, family said. He was a devoted husband and loving father to a son and three daughters. He had no criminal history in East Baton Rouge, not even traffic violations, court records show.

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Smith and his wife had recently been approved for a mortgage and started looking at houses, excited to move their family out of the North Ardenwood apartment, relatives said.

The Greenview East complex includes about two dozen separate buildings, each containing several apartments. Many of the units appeared vacant, and trash littered the common areas. On a chain link fence bordering the complex, strips of police tape flapped in the wind Sunday afternoon, presumably leftover from the overnight crime scene. Christmas lights hung above the front door of the apartment where Smith lived.

"He had so much going for him," his aunt said. "I pray that God was with him through his last breaths, and that he did not suffer. I pray there is some justice."

Jones spoke quietly during an interview late Sunday afternoon, searching for words to describe this unthinkable tragedy and hoping to honor her nephew by sharing the story of his death.

"This is the worst thing that could happen to a family  because he was taken from us, and at such a young age," she said, her eyes wide and glistening. "What is this world coming to?"

Just hours after she made those comments, another man was shot to death on Convention Street around 10 p.m. Sunday.

Latest Baton Rouge homicide victim dies in hospital after Convention St. shooting, police say A man died from gunshot wounds after a Sunday night shooting on Convention Street, the second homicide recorded within city limits that day, a

Baton Rouge is not alone in recording an unprecedented number of murders this year, a prolonged spike in violence that experts attribute to the hardships of the pandemic, delays in the courts and less proactive policing.

With over a week left in 2021, homicides in East Baton Rouge Parish have well surpassed the 2020 total of 114, Advocate records show.

The newspaper tracks intentional and unjustified killings per FBI crime reporting rules, incidents that fit the legal definitions of murder and manslaughter. The data is preliminary and could change if some cases are later ruled accidental or justified and vice versa.

City officials called a press conference last week in response to the recent shooting death of a toddler, who died alongside his uncle after someone shot up their car on Brightside Drive. Chief Murphy Paul sought to reassure the public that detectives are following solid leads in many recent shootings. He said several of them appear retaliatory, but gaps in the criminal justice system are making it harder for police to get bad actors off the streets for significant periods of time. Too often, alleged shooters are posting bond and going right back to their old haunts, Paul said.

Since the local court system was closed for months last year because of COVID, Paul said, the swift administration of justice has become harder to achieve. He said the data suggests some perpetrators are emboldened by the lack of quick accountability.

Before the shock of losing her nephew six days before Christmas, Jones said their large extended family was planning to celebrate together as usual, with plenty of laughter and good food.

"Now there's no Christmas. We're just trying to make it through," she said. "The holidays will never be the same."
The Louisiana Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request by the state Attorney General that a former sheriff's deputy and his ex-wife be tried together for dozens of alleged sex-crimes.

The decision likely ensures that the two former Livingston Parish employees will have separate trials in the new year.

Former Livingston Parish deputy Dennis Perkins, 45, and ex-school teacher Cynthia Perkins, 36, together face 150 felony charges alleging rape, child pornography, sexual battery of a child, video voyeurism and tainting pastries that children later ate at school. Their alleged victims include two children, two adults and a dog.

The couple was indicted jointly and poised to be tried together after a sweeping child pornography investigation led to their 2019 arrests. But defense attorneys argued to a Livingston Parish judge in June that the two should be tried individually, saying Cynthia Perkins planned to pin blame on her ex-husband if they appeared before one jury.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General's office, which is prosecuting the case, did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.

Jarrett Ambeau, Dennis Perkins' defense lawyer, called the state Supreme Court's affirmation of the ruling the "just and right decision."

"Those two cannot be tried together, as their defenses are antagonistic," he said. "The allegations are heinous, but we can't disregard the law and justice to bring the matter to trial."

Ambeau asked in June that Dennis Perkins' trial be delayed so the attorney could represent another client set to stand trial at the same time, and the former cop's trial was pushed to May of 2022.

Cynthia Perkins is scheduled to stand trial in February.

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New details emerged about the case prosecutors are building against the ex-couple during the trial of one of Dennis Perkins' alleged accomplices. Melanie Curtin was found guilty earlier this month of aggravated rape. Prosecutors say Curtin and Dennis Perkins raped a woman in 2014 and took turns filming the assault. Curtin, 42, faces life in prison without possibility of parole.

Melanie Curtin, 42, faces life in prison without possibility of parole for the aggravated rape conviction. Her charges did not involve children.

A trove of digital mementos Perkins guarded for years as a catalog of sexual conquests, as described by Curtins defense lawyers, formed the bulk of the Louisiana Attorney Generals evidence against the Denham Springs woman.

A sting on Perkins home yielded a tremendous number of photos and videos of alleged sex crimes, a state bureau of investigations detective testified during Curtins trial.

During accused accomplices trial, investigator says ex-deputy drugged, raped women An investigator in a major Livingston Parish sex crimes case testified Wednesday that a former sheriff's deputy drugged multiple women before 

Key among those files was a 17-minute video described in the courtroom as showing Curtin and Perkins repeatedly violating an adult woman both of them knew at the time. Testimony didnt make clear how many images Perkins kept showed consensual sex acts and how many showed alleged assaults.

Ambeau said after Curtins trial that glimpses of his client that appeared through evidence are unlikely to influence how he defends Dennis Perkins.

While Perkins sought a deal with the Attorney Generals office in pre-trial motions over the summer, a plea now seems dead in the water, Ambeau said after Curtin's trial.

Perkins defense has gone down that road, Ambeau said at the time, and I dont think theyre going to come back with anything.
Baton Rouge police on Tuesday identified the victim in a Sunday night shooting on Convention Street: Rodney London, 24, was killed about a mile from his Old South Baton Rouge home.

London was transported to the hospital, where he later died, police said.

The shooting was reported around 10 p.m. at 1330 Convention Street, close to the Greyhound bus station on Florida Street, an area where several organizations provide services for the homeless.

London lived on Louise Street, about a mile south of where he was killed, according to police.

His death came less than 24 hours after another fatal shooting at a North Ardenwood Boulevard apartment complex as the Baton Rouge homicide rate continues to soar.
In 1979, I set off for New York where I had the privilege of working in Marcel Breuers office but by the time I returned to Sydney in 1980, post-modernism was at its height. Its not surprising that the subject for my graduate thesis was: High-Tech Architecture in Britain 1960-1980, the vehicle that enabled me to explore the continuation of modernism, as opposed to the seduction of Post-Modernism which had become, for a short time, the fashion of the day. The thesis examined Norman Fosters Sainsbury Centre, Willis Faber and Dumas Building, Renzo Pianos beautiful lightweight structures and, of course, the Pompidou Centre which was the apotheosis of High-Tech Architecture in the 1970s.

I first set eyes on the Centre George Pompidou in 1978 when I was a third-year architecture student at the University of New South Wales. An aerial photo from Architecture Review revealed a new futuristic architecture in front of a flat public plaza contrasting with the surrounding historic fabric of Paris Marais quarter. It was an exhilarating sight for a 21-year-old student.

My thesis put this new architecture into context and described the historic influences which gave rise to it - the Industrial Revolution, Corbusiers Vers une Architecture, Gropius Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohes functionalism, Archigram and Buckminster Fuller. Charles Eames and the Californian case study houses also found an important place in this lineage.

Richard Rogers seemed to me to be the high priest of high-tech architecture. The work he produced had a vibrancy and exhilaration rarely seen since the pioneering days of modernism. He went on to produce many other great projects and master plans around the world and throughout his life.

Richard George Rogers was born in Florence in 1933. His father was a doctor and his mother an art connoisseur. The Rogers family fled to England just before the outbreak of World War II, with Mussolinis rise to power, but the British education system wasnt kind to the young Richard. He suffered from dyslexia which, in those days was not understood and went undiagnosed. Instead, his teachers considered him stupid and unsuited to a career requiring intellectual or creative ability. He described his depression as being so bad that by the time he left school without a single A level grade, he had no idea what his future might be.

Richards parents, Nino and Dada, sent him to Italy, where he worked briefly in his cousin Ernesto Rogers architecture practice in Milan. With Ernestos help, the Architectural Association in London were convinced to admit Rogers into the diploma course and, despite a relatively undistinguished career there, he received the final year prize for the design of a facility for children with special needs.
Surging Omicron infections will overwhelm the health system unless some restrictions return, according to modelling prepared for national cabinet that also recommends bringing coronavirus vaccine boosters forward.

The Doherty Institute modelling predicts that without low-to-medium restrictions such as density and visitor limits, waning vaccine protection against the Omicron variant puts Australia on track to hit about 200,000 cases a day by late January or early February.

The Doherty Institute modelling predicts that without low-to-medium restrictions, cases would reach about 200,000 a day by late January or early February. Credit:Anna Kucera

Boosters alone will not be fast enough to halt the spread of Omicron, the modelling, seen by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, says.

The modelling by a team of researchers including professors Jodie McVernon and James McCaw says rapidly growing case numbers would lift hospitalisation rates to 4000 a day. This would push emergency departments to capacity and fill the nations intensive care units, with between 8000 and 10,000 patients admitted to ICUs.
Following NSW Premier Dominic Perrottets announcement of his reshuffle, much public attention has been (rightly) focused on the women in his new cabinet. While one more woman has joined his ranks, questions are being raised about why were not making faster progress on gender equality in NSW politics.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. Credit:AAP

Frankly, its surprising the Premier was able to lift the number of women in the ministry by one, considering the universe he could choose from has so few women to promote. We already knew two women (Shelley Hancock from the Liberal Party and Melinda Pavey from the Nationals) were coming out of cabinet, decreasing his options further.

It echoes the public concern over who would replace former Premier Gladys Berejiklian after her departure from office; while her decision to step down was not a gendered issue, the lack of highly qualified women available to replace her certainly was.

We are facing a sorry state of affairs for women in our two houses of NSW Parliament. Of the Legislative Assemblys 93 members, 33 are women. Twelve of the Legislative Councils 42 members are women. These numbers fall woefully short of the critical mass needed to attract more women into the political arena.
The independent candidate attempting to oust Treasurer Josh Frydenberg from his federal seat of Kooyong is insisting she remains a political cleanskin, despite conceding she was once a Labor Party member.

In an interview with The Age this month, Professor Monique Ryan suggested she had no involvement with any political party.

Kooyong candidate Monique Ryan says she briefly thought former prime minister Kevin Rudd showed great promise on climate change. Turns out he did not. Credit:Eddie Ryan

No, nothing, she said. Im a complete cleanskin.

Since that interview, Professor Ryan has confirmed she joined Labor before the 2007 federal election but quit because she was disappointed at a lack of action on climate change. She was a member until 2010, but said she did not attend meetings.
Response to THE CASE FOR CLIMATE ACTION







A Plan from a "select committee of Senate Democrats" - Isn't that an oxymoron?

By Marc J. Rauch

Author of THE ETHANOL PAPERS

Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher

THE AUTO CHANNEL

On August 25, 2020, a group calling itself Senate Democrats' Special Committee on Climate Crisis issued a report titled "THE CASE FOR CLIMATE ACTION - Building A Way To A Clean Economy For The American People."







The plan is a subterfuge to keep the status quo while attempting to make it look as if the Democrats (or any single political party) has a legitimate understanding of the issues as well as a solution to real and imagined problems. This fantasy proposal relies on assumptions that are either untrue, will never become true, or that don't take into account the detrimental impact that such a plan will have on the economy.

Firstly, the plan supposes that catastrophic man-made climate change is real. In actuality, there is no proof that the climate is changing in any un-natural existential manner. There is no proof that any daily, weekly, monthly, or annual shifts are catastrophic beyond the level of catastrophe caused by any extreme commonplace storm or condition that Earth hasn't already experienced countless times over millions of years. The information that is touted by climate alarmists today is no different than the baseless predictions made by alarmists numerous times over the past century, and indeed over all recorded history. There is merely conjecture based upon the presumption (or misguided hope by nihilist misanthropes) that human development must result in deadly consequences.

Moreover, there is no proof (regardless of if and why the climate is changing) that humans can stop the change and mitigate any effects caused by such change. Again, there is merely conjecture (and maybe some misguided hope) that increased use of solar cells, wind turbines and electric vehicles can bring about desired mitigation. While I like and believe that solar power and wind turbines can play a part in providing energy, they can only do so as supplemental energy sources and not primary ones. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a natural, life giving gas. Making CO2 into a villain is an absurdity. Without it life on Earth would not be possible, just as life without oxygen (O) would be impossible. One of the largest contributors to the production of CO2 is from the normal breathing process of all living creatures. Humans will never be able to eliminate breathing, nor will we be able to eliminate wild fires, volcanic activity, and animal flatulence - creating 'natural' pollutants that will always present challenges.

The production of electric vehicles and the production of the electricity needed to operate them brings about an entire set of conditions that exacerbate, not alleviate, the problems caused by abiotic fuels (petroleum oil and coal fuels).

On top of this, the actual state of technology is such that reliance upon electric vehicles is much too premature. It is likely that total conversion to electric vehicles will take the better part of a century, if not more, to complete. Until that time the poisoning caused by petroleum oil fuels will continue. When the time finally comes that it can be claimed that 50% or more of all new vehicles sold are electric, it will still not be a time to celebrate because it means that a significant portions of new vehicles sold globally (tens of millions) will still be powered by internal combustion engines. And during this time, much of the existing vehicles in operation will still be powered by internal combustion engines using deadly gasoline and diesel fuel.

The realities of pollution from the use of petroleum oil fuels are horrendous, without the fictional specter of Anthropogenic (human-originating) Global Warming. And the horrendous realities of this pollution should have already been enough to bring about the total elimination of these fuels. If, on the other hand, catastrophic man-made climate change is real, then immediate all-encompassing action must be taken to stop the continuation of abiotic fuel poisoning. Waiting 25 years or 50 years or 100 years is not an option. If the authors and supporters of the plan offered by "Senate Democrats' Special Committee on Climate Crisis" are serious (or seriously believe their own BS) then they must opt for an immediate solution to mitigate the affects.

The only solution is to mandate world wide use of safe alcohol-based fuels. All internal combustion engines can and should be powered by such fuels, and the fuel shouldn't be a blend of gasoline and alcohol, it should be nearly-pure alcohol with a small amount of a cold-start additive. This can be accomplished virtually overnight with little or no cost. All new internal combustion engines should be built to optimize the use of alcohol fuels. This can be done with little or no increase to the cost to build engines. But the plan that's proposed by the "Select Committee" doesn't do this. Their plan relies on daydreams. Their plan doesn't even sincerely acknowledge the potential of ethanol/alcohol fuels, which is how I know that the authors and sponsors aren't serious and they don't know what they're talking about.

Their plan ignorantly incorporates the current circumstances brought about by the Covid-19 virus and they've co-opted some of the terminology to make the plan seem oh-so-cool and timely. The Covid-19 virus is an irrelevant consideration: Respiratory illnesses and other health risks related to petroleum oil fuels, tetraethyl lead, and coal didn't suddenly appear with the invention of this virus; and the risks won't be removed when and if Covid-19 is eradicated. People living in crowded urban environments didn't suddenly become susceptible to dirty air, water, and ubiquitous germ-infested decomposing matter - it's a millennia old problem. Therefore, it's a waste of time and money to incorporate Covid-19 into this discussion, except if the "Select Committee" wants to obfuscate contemporary life in Democrat controlled large cities.

Likewise, the plan's heightened concern for native and tribal communities is just a grandstanding pretentious extraneous consideration. It shows the short-sightedness of the plan's authors and sponsors, and it reveals the ridiculous lengths they will go to sell it. Either ALL PEOPLES' LIVES MATTER, or no lives matter. It's as if this plan originated with a strange pre-teen little girl from Scandinavia...and in many respects it probably did

The Democrats and the Republicans, and any members of other political parties, should have stopped gasoline and petroleum diesel more than 100 years ago. The poison unleashed by the use of tetraethyl lead starting in the 1920's did not end with the banning of much of its use. The lead remains on the ground, in the air, and it gets into the bodies of every new person from the moment they are conceived. The specific effects of lead poisoning are damage to the respiratory system and to brain functions. What's more, leaded gasoline is still in use around the world. Even if the "Select Committee's" plan for "A Clean Economy For The American People" had some bite and beneficial effects, the U.S. is just one of almost 200 countries in the world.

Some ethanol spokespeople have cheered the publication of this report as if it hails some breakthrough in the acceptance of ethanol fuel. It doesn't; it's a giant step backwards, subordinating ethanol to energy concepts that are (as I've stated above) third or fourth rate solutions. The entire narrative text of the "Select Committee" plan runs about 200 pages. By my count, the word "ethanol" is used only 6 times (if I missed one or two or five occasions I apologize on behalf of the word-find feature in my MS Word program). If the average page in this report contained only 300 words, that means there are 60,000 words in the report. So the word "ethanol" occupies only one hundredth of one percent (.001%) of the words in the report. By comparison, the word "electric" ("electricity") is used dozens and dozens of times (I stopped counting after 100). To paraphrase and update an old adage, this plan is thousands of days late and billions of dollars short in supporting the one viable solution (ethanol) to lowering pollution, health risks, energy dependency, and AGW climate change - if it truly exists.

The only thing this plan will do to ethanol fuel is to keep putting it on the back burner. In the relative blink of an eye, we will be decades down the road from where we are now, still talking about the promise of electric cars and the elimination of petroleum oil fuels (and all their poison) while still allowing ignorant politicians and media talking heads to misrepresent the qualities and benefits of ethanol.

The first step is to educate the public while banning the use of all petroleum oil fuels. All engine fuels should be produced from true non-crude oil/coal renewable sources. Solar and wind power will be part of the overall energy equation, as supplemental sources of energy. If future technology turns solar cells and wind turbines into super energy producers, great, we'll put them to greater use when that day comes.

The following editorials and essays elaborate on the information and points I've presented in the above paragraphs:

 Debunking the Myth of Man-Made Global Warming

 What Coronavirus Teaches Us About Climate Change

 Climate Change Alarmism is No Friend to Ethanol

 Tough Times Require Tough Resolute Action

 PLANET OF THE HUMANS - A Film Review

 Ethanol is the SAVIOR of the Oil Industry, Convenience Store Industry, Automotive Supply Chain Industry and Much More!

 Electric Vehicles Solution or Diversion?
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vroom, Inc. , a leading ecommerce platform for buying and selling used vehicles (the Company), today announced an amendment to its inventory financing agreement with Ally Financial Inc. , a leading digital financial services company, to increase the line of credit to $700 million, up from $450 million previously.

Allys extension of additional financing supports Vrooms continued national growth, which is bringing about enduring change in the used vehicle industry. Ally has provided floor plan financing to Vroom since 2016.

Were thrilled to be broadening our financing relationship with Ally, so we can expand our offering of thousands of high quality, affordable vehicles with delivery straight to customers, said Paul Hennessy, Chief Executive Officer at Vroom. Car buyers and sellers are turning to ecommerce solutions more than ever, and Vroom is well positioned as we deliver a seamless online experience.

Since 2012, Vroom has been offering thousands of low-mileage, reconditioned vehicles with delivery directly to consumers through its ecommerce platform. It also arranges financing through leading lenders and offers warranty, insurance and other value-added products that provide convenience for its customers.

About Vroom Inc.:

Vroom is an innovative, end-to-end ecommerce platform designed to offer a better way to buy and a better way to sell used cars. The Company's scalable, data-driven technology brings all phases of the car buying and selling process to consumers wherever they are and offers an extensive selection of used cars, transparent pricing, competitive financing, and at-home pick-up and delivery. Vroom is based in New York and Houston and also operates the Texas Direct Auto and CarStory brands.
Cheyenne, WY (82001)

Today

Cloudy with snow showers mainly during the morning. High 32F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 50%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Low 32F. Winds W at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Batavia, NY (14020)

Today

Periods of snow. High 27F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 100%. 3 to 5 inches of snow expected..

Tonight

Variably cloudy with snow showers. Low near 20F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 50%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.
In short, as long as you choose the right policy, then yes, you will get cover for COVID-19. This is probably the number one thing travellers want from their travel insurance right now, wherever they are travelling.COVID cover can be broken down into two broad categories. One is for if you fall ill with the virus and need medical attention, up to and including hospital admission. This is now included on the medical schedule of most European travel insurance policies, but be sure to check the wording.The second type of COVID cover is for situations where your trip has to be cancelled, for example, because someone in your party tests positive for the virus. With most countries in Europe reintroducing compulsory PCR tests for all new arrivals, regardless of vaccination status, because of the Omicron variant, the risk of having your plans ruined by a positive test just before you travel remains significant.A positive test before travelling is likely to come after the cancellation window offered by most airlines and travel firms close, meaning youd have no recourse to a refund. Travel insurance with COVID cancellation cover is therefore the only way to get your money back.
Detectives release image of silver bullion allegedly stolen while in transit in Australia, obtained Dec. 21, 2021. (State of NSW Police Force)

$1 Million Silver Bullion Allegedly Stolen in Australian Truck Heist

Police in Australia have asked the public for help after $1 million (US$711,000) worth of silver bullion was allegedly stolen from a truck travelling between Sydney and Melbourne.

Between 4.30 p.m. on Friday, 26 November 2021, and 8 a.m. on Monday, 29 November 2021, a consignment of silver was allegedly stolen from a truck while in transit from Maldon, near Picton, to Melbourne in Victoria, New South Wales (NSW) Police said in a statement.

The alleged theft was discovered once the truck arrived in Melbourne, in the neighbouring state of Victoria, where it was then reported to Camden Police Area Command.

Detectives release image of silver bullion in packaging allegedly stolen while in transit in Australia, obtained Dec. 21, 2021. (State of NSW Police Force)

The consignment192 individual 5 kilogram barswas being transported by a Kenworth truck and silver Krueger trailer.

The silver bullion is estimated to be worth $1,015,000, the statement read.

Detectives from the State Crime Commands Robbery and Serious Crime Squad took over the investigation from local police under Strike Force Caimon.

As part of ongoing inquiries, detectives have released an image of one of the missing silver bullion bars and the packaging in which they were stored, the statement read.

Police have asked anyone in Australia who may have seen the Kenworth truck and Krueger trailer to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or via their website at https://nsw.crimestoppers.com.au; but not to report information via NSW Police social media pages.
1st US Death With Omicron Variant of CCP Virus Reported in Texas

Texas on Dec. 21 reported what is widely believed to be the first death in the United States related to the new Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

An unvaccinated Houston man in his 50s with underlying health conditions is believed to be the victim of the Omicron-related death, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo confirmed on Monday.

Sad to report the first local fatality from the Omicron variant of COVID-19. A man in his 50s from the eastern portion of Harris County who was not vaccinated, Hidalgo wrote on Twitter, before urging people to Please  get vaccinated and boosted.

Harris Country Public Health (HCPH) also confirmed the death in a release and said the man was between the ages of 5060 years old, was unvaccinated, and had been infected with COVID-19 previously.

The individual was at higher risk of severe complications from COVID-19 due to his unvaccinated status and had underlying health conditions, health officials said.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the patients family, and we extend our deepest sympathies, said Barbie Robinson, HCPH executive director. This is a reminder of the severity of COVID-19 and its variants. We urge all residents who qualify to get vaccinated and get their booster shot if they have not already.

So far, there have been 2,797 COVID-19 related deaths in Harris County, according to the countys COVID-19 dashboard.

The death comes as Omicron, a highly mutated and more transmissible variant of the CCP virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, is spreading quickly across the globe after it was first detected in South Africa last month.

During a briefing in Geneva on Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned against holiday gatherings over Christmas because there could be a surge in virus cases, despite preliminary data suggesting that Omicron may present milder symptoms than other strains.

Ghebreyesus said that there was now consistent evidence that the newest variant is spreading faster than the Delta variant, and urged people to cancel or delay festive gatherings.

There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant, and its more likely that people who have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or reinfected, Ghebreyesus told reporters during a televised meeting.

All of us are sick of this pandemic. All of us want to spend time with friends and family. All of us want to get back to normal, he said, adding that the fastest way to do this is for all of us, leaders and individuals, to make the difficult decisions that must be made to protect ourselves and others.

The WHO chief said that, in some cases, this could mean canceling or delaying events, adding that an event canceled is better than a life canceled.

Its better to cancel now and celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later. None of us want to be here again in 12 months time, he said.

The WHO designated Omicron a variant of concern on Nov. 26.

As of Dec. 20, Omicron has been detected in nearly every U.S. state and territory. The variant accounted for 73.2 percent of new cases in the week that ended Dec. 18, up from 12 percent the week before, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday.

Earlier in December, the United Kingdom reported the first publicly confirmed death globally involving Omicron. As of Dec. 21, a total of 14 people in Britain have died with the newest variant, and 129 are hospitalized with it.
5 Favorite Christmas Movies and the Hope of Renewal and Redemption

Commentary

As we approach the end of another jarring year, we come to two traditional holidays spaced just one week apartChristmas and New Years. One is sacred and one is secular, but they have in common one very important theme: renewal, a fresh start, the hope that life will look brighter going forward.

One staple of the Christmas season is the wide range of movies about Christmas that are televised every year. There are movies for every taste, ranging from cartoons about Rudolph, Frosty, the Grinch, the Peanuts gang, etc. for kids (including grown-up kids) to feel-good sentimental Christmas season movies churned out by the Hallmark Channel. My personal preference is for heart-warming stories that dramatize the phenomena of renewal and redemption. The possibility of renewal can appeal to people of all faiths and no faith; the gift of redemption is explicitly part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but it has universal potential.

Let me share with you my five favorite Christmas movies. If you havent seen them before, I encourage you to retreat from the hustle and bustle of your life to refresh yourself with some of these messages of hope and grace.

1. The Bishops Wife (1947)

In this enchanting fantasy, Cary Grant plays a charming and very human angel who visits Earth to help a bishop (played by the superb David Niven) and his wife (played by the beautiful Loretta Young). The bishop has allowed the responsibilities of church office to overwhelm him, and this distressed his devoted wife. The supporting charactersan old professor, a friendly taxi driver, a prickly millionairess, and the bishops little girl, cook, and secretaryare delightful. The movie is a reminder to keep material concerns from eclipsing our spiritual priorities. This story is engaging, sweet, and profoundly wise. The scene in which the debonair Grant recites part of the 23rd Psalm is beautifully unselfconscious. Its hard to imagine such a scene in a contemporary movie.

2. Its a Wonderful Life (1946)

I have to confess that I didnt particularly enjoy this movie the first time I saw it, but after viewing it a second time years later, I plead temporary insanity. This Frank Capra classic, starring Hollywood icon Jimmy Stewart, invokes the spirit of Christmas to defeat two of the greatest enemies facing humanitydiscouragement and the awful belief that an individuals life is insignificant. As in The Bishops Wife, an angel plays a key role in the redemption of a human in need, but Clarence the klutzy angel in Its a Wonderful Life is the antithesis of the suave angel played by Cary Grant. (Interesting trivia: the child actress who played the bishops daughter plays one of Jimmy Stewarts daughters in this movie.)

3. Home Alone (1990)

This movie is primarily known as a comedy, and for good reason. Certainly, the slapstick battle between young Macaulay Culkin and the bumbling bad guys, hilariously played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, is the heart of this movie, but it also portrays poignantly the unwelcome frictions that sometimes disrupt the harmony of family life. The theme of renewal comes through loud and clear in the touching subplot in which young Kevin teaches his formerly mysterious elderly neighbor to press the reset button and reconnect with his estranged son and his family.

4. A Christmas Carol

There are multiple renditions of Charles Dickenss classic story of the spiritual awakening of one of the most memorable characters in fictionthe grouchy old miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. In my humble opinion, the older the version, the better the movie (at least, in the era of talkies). The best, then, is the 1938 version, starring Reginald Owen. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future in this rendition are the definitive portrayals. Second place goes to the 1951 film, starring Alastair Sim, which is somewhat longer and goes into greater but nonessential detail about Scrooges youth. What makes A Christmas Carol a timeless classic is Scrooges glorious rebirth. After decades living a desiccated life of self-absorption, a magical Christmas Eve night liberates Scrooges heart from its stony prison. Transformed, he begins to pour out love for others, and as he does, he finds joy and fulfillment in his life. He learned the vital lesson that one of the most effective ways for a person to find happiness is to focus on how to bring happiness to others.

5. Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)

There have been multiple cinematic adaptations of this old Frances Hodgson Burnett novel, but the one that really captures the spirit of the story is the 1980 version, starring Ricky Schroder and the incomparable Alec Guinness, known to my generation for his Oscar-winning role in The Bridge on the River Kwai, and to younger movie-goers for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi. The willingness of the title characteran American boy of about 9 or 10to always see the good in others has a transformative, healing effect. Somewhat like Scrooge, the spirit of the boys English grandfather, a wealthy earl, had withered. The pure, innocent love of the boy touches grandpas heart and redeems his life, with the climax coming most fittingly on Christmas Day. This movie evokes the Biblical prophecy and a little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11:6). I bet Ive seen this movie close to 20 times, and I never tire of it.

Any of these five movies can help to kindle the Christmas spirit within you, whether youre Christian or not. Birth, rebirth, and renewal are what Christmas is all about; more generally, they are what life is all about.

Merry Christmas, everyone. May you feel as a palpable presence the holy benediction on earth peace, good will toward men (Luke 2:14). I hope you will have time to warm your heart with some of these classic Christmas movies.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A letter campaign has been launched this Christmas to help the teen's parents.

A 16-year-old Chinese girl, who is studying music in New York, hopes her one simple Christmas wish could be granted: the unconditional release of her parents who are detained in China for practicing Falun Gong.

It has been more than a year since Grace Chen Fayuan, a talented erhu player, heard any news of what happened to her parents after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) arrested them on Oct. 27, 2020. She herself has faced brief detention at the tender age of 5.

I havent had any contact with them. And I dont know where they go. I miss them, said Chen in a 1-minute video posted on social media by the Falun Dafa Information Center, a press office for Falun Gong.

Chen Fayuan, a 16-year-old Falun Gong practitioner whose parents were arrested by the CCP. She is currently studying in the United States. (Li Guixiu/The Epoch Times)

Chens parents, Chen Yang and Cao Zhimin, from Changsha City, Hunan province, were arrested multiple times for practicing Falun Gong.

A letter campaign has been launched this Christmas to help Chens parents. People are urged to write letters to the detention center that last held her parents after their arrest.

Chens high school classmates have recently written over a dozen letters addressed to her parents to encourage them to stay strong, wishing for the familys earliest reunion in New York.

Grace Chen Fayuans classmates wrote over a dozen letters to her parents, who are detained in China. (Courtesy of Falun Dafa Information Center)

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a mind-body practice that was introduced to the public in China in 1992. According to official estimates at the time, within the next five years, 70100 million Chinese people had taken up the spiritual practice, which is based on the core values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

However, the CCP perceived the peaceful meditation practices growing popularity and moral teachings as a threat to its atheistic Marxist ideologies and launched a violent nationwide campaign in July 1999 to persecute Falun Gong, resulting in tens of thousands of adherents being arrested and tortured, with many being killed for their organs.

Chens parents were one of the countless others who were sentenced in 1999 shortly after the persecution started, when they went to Beijing to petition, according to several reports by Minghui.orga website dedicated to reporting on the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

Her father, a computer engineer, was sentenced to four years in prison and tortured, including being shocked with electric batons and beaten until one of his teeth was knocked out. Her mother, a human resources employee for a state-owned company, was given a three-year term and forced to do slave labor for more than 10 hours a day. Chen was also arrested once.

In 2010, then-5-year-old Chen was on her way to kindergarten with her mother when at least five unidentified men dragged them both into a car and took them to a brainwashing center. Her mother was released after 17 days. The men were later identified as officials of the 610 Officean extrajudicial body responsible for carrying out the persecution of Falun Gong.

Grace Chen Fayuan with her mother. (Courtesy of Minghui.org)

In April 2021, The Epoch Times reported that a GoFundMe was set up for Chen to cover her tuition and living expenses in the United States after her parents were detained and she was left without a source of income. The latest arrest had Chen worrying if her parents would be tortured again.

Now I am worried because there is no news about my parents, Chen told The Epoch Times in a previous interview. I am most worried that they will be beaten and tortured again  forcing them to transform and give up practicing.

Transforming prisoners of conscience is the communist regimes routine psychological abuse that consists of brainwashing and torture to coerce spiritual believers into renouncing their faith.

Chen Fayuan (C), a 16-year-old Erhu player, at a rally in Flushing, New York, on April 18, 2021, to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the April 25th peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Chens guardian in New York, Julia, said then that the teen cried often after her parents were arrested.

Now and then she would cry her heart out, said Julia. She said she didnt know what will happen to her parents or where her future will be. She said she is afraid of seeing police cars or hearing police sirens.

Chen is seeking the support of kindhearted people to realize her Christmas wish. Those who wish to send Chens parents a letter can send it here: No. 1736, Yuanda 2nd Road, Quantang Town, Changsha County, 410131, China.

Watch Chens Christmas wish here:

(Courtesy of Falun Dafa Information Center)
Addictive Brain Hijacking Methods of Social Media Platforms Harmful to Users, Especially Children: Insider

Addictive brain hijacking methods used by social media giants to keep users on their platforms have harmful effects, particularly on children, according to industry insider Rex Lee, who says the companies may be violating child protection laws and consumer protection laws by employing such techniques.

Lee, who has over 35 years of experience in the tech and telecom industry, recently testified before Congress, speaking to members about some of the deceptive practices used by social media networksin particular, brain hijacking.

The first time Id ever heard of brain hijacking, I thought it was something from a science fiction movie, he recently told EpochTVs Crossroads program.

He said that social media apps, including those developed by Google, Meta, and Bytedance, are intentionally developed to be addictive.

Part of what makes these platforms addictive is associated with brain hijacking technologies, which involve suggestive and manipulative advertising, he explained.

Lee, who works in the tech industry for an enterprise app and platform developer, said that he was shocked after coming across an admission in a 2017 Axios interview by Sean Parker, who served as the first president of Facebook.

In the interview, Parker said that Facebook was intentionally developed using addictive technologies associated with something he described as a social validation feedback loop.

That in itself is what is at the heart of brain hijacking, Lee said. And what that does is that reassures the end user that what theyre posting on the platform is being accepted by a lot of people. In other words, a social validation feedback loop would be associated with a thumbs up, or confetti or emojis, and that sort of thing after they do a post.

Lee said these are addictive qualities that developers put into their app and platform designs, which ultimately end up harming the user.

Sean Parker actually admitted this during the Axios interview when he said, God only knows what its doing to our childrens brains, Lee said. But its not only the brains of children, its the brains of the end user, whether its an adult, teen, child, or business and user.

This is why people are checking their smartphones up to 150 times a day.

Lee added that Parker expressly told Axios that the feedback loop was exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because youre exploiting vulnerability in human psychology.

Lee has been providing to congressional committees, as well as senators and House members, insider information on how these platforms are developed.

The cybersecurity and privacy adviser also highlighted the harmful effects these social media platforms have on young teenagers, describing the platforms as no different than tobacco companies making bubblegum-flavored cigarettes to sell to children.

These social validation feedback loops are whats at heart, and why young teen girls as well as boys who utilize this technology can be harmed by itthey get addicted to it, they never can find fulfillment in it, Lee said.

And then, they end up depressed and they end up always constantly having to look for that validation, not only from the technology, but from the other end users on the platform.

This also is dangerous because it contributes to cyber bullying, said Lee, explaining that cyberbullies themselves may become addicted to bullying others online.

They [cyberbullies] get a few thumbs up from that post where theyre bullying somebody and then more thumbs up comes. And then that person, the bully, becomes addicted to actually harming people, as well as the recipient starts getting harmed, he explained. And we all know what that leads to anxiety, self harm, as well as suicides. And all of those are up among teen and young adult adult users, especially young girls who utilize the platform.

Kids are being exploited, he alleged, noting that social media giants may be violating a child online protection lawthe Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) enacted in 1998.

Its actually illegal for a child under 13 to use any type of technology thats supported by predatory apps that are developed to exploit the user for financial gain through methods such as data mining and surveillance, Lee said of the law.

Lee said he analyzed the legal language on a Samsung Galaxy Note smartphone that was pre-installed with over 175 apps created or developed by 18 companies, including Chinese tech company Baidu.

He explained that whats often hidden from the user within the devices themselves is the most important part of your terms of use.

This includes the application permission statements and application product warnings which describe in great detail how much surveillance and data mining that the tech companies can conduct on you.

But they dont want that online. They hide that within the devices, and some of those application permission statements actually contain product warnings, Lee said.

So again, another cigarette analogy would be, it would be like the warning for cigarettes being printed on the inside of the package, he explained. So that after you consume the product, you understand then that it commit that it can cause cancer, its the same thing.

He added, Theyre hiding the product warnings within the application permission statements, which can only be accessed from within the device and not online.

Lee said the FTC should be taking action to investigate these companies for related harm reported by their consumers, and enforce existing customer laws, particularly since former senior executives, such as Parker, have admitted that they developed these technologies to be addictive, even at the expense of the end user safety.

We not only had these platforms weaponized against the end user to exploit them for financial gain through harmful technology, such as addictive apps, but now theyre using them to oppress people and spread misinformation, censorship, crush freedom of the press, and in other things, Lee added. Its unbelievable.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Meta, ByteDance, and Google for comment.

Isabel van Brugen Reporter Follow Isabel van Brugen is an award-winning journalist and currently a news reporter at The Epoch Times. She holds a master's in newspaper journalism from City, University of London.
The Amazon logo is seen outside its JFK8 distribution center in Staten Island, N.Y., on Nov. 25, 2020. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

Amazon Holding Off on Plans to Ban Cell Phones From Warehouses

Amazon.com Inc. is holding off on plans to ban cell phones from the companys warehouses after six workers died when a facility in Edwardsville, Illinois collapsed after being struck by a tornado on Dec. 10.

What Happened

The e-commerce giant had previously planned to prohibit employees from bringing mobile phones into Amazon warehouses, then on Friday workers received a message that cell phones would be allowed until further notice, which the company confirmed Saturday.

Prior to the pandemic, Amazon employees were not allowed to have their phones on warehouse floors. Rules required phones to be left in employees vehicles or in lockers near break rooms.

Amazon relaxed the policy during the pandemic, but announced earlier this year that the ban would resume in January 2022.

The restrictions were originally instituted over concerns that smartphones were a safety risk, especially in industrial operations, due to the potential of workers becoming distracted. Some businesses also believe phones with cameras can be used to compromise sensitive technology and information.

Why It Matters

Following the deadly collapse of the Illinois warehouse, workers were questioning Amazons commitment to their safety.

Text messages between a driver and supervisor at the warehouse showed that as the tornado was approaching the area, the employee was told to keep delivering, according to a Bloomberg report.

Amazon workers say their phones provide them with updated information, including severe weather events, while they are working. They argue that smartphones can also help them contact emergency responders or loved ones if they are trapped.

By Michael Cohen

 2021 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Archdiocese Sues LAUSD, Claims Federal Funds Withheld From Catholic Schools

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is suing the citys school district, saying it prevented Catholic schools in low-income areas from receiving federal funds for years by frequently changing the qualifications and paperwork process for applying schools.

The disagreement between the archdiocese and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) began in 2018, when the archdiocese claimed the LAUSD kept abruptly changing the process for applying for what is known as Title I federal funds, which provide financial assistance to schools with high numbers of low-income students.

Title I requires that local school districtssuch as the LAUSDprovide private schools with Title I funds that are equitable to those provided to eligible public school children, according to the states education department.

In court documents, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Dec. 16, attorneys for the archdiocese allege that LAUSD violated several codes from 2017 through 2020 by continually [changing] the rules, parameters, procedures, and guidelines for reviewing the eligibility of [archdiocesan] students without notice to or consultation with [the archdiocese] and failing to consult with the archdiocese before changing forms necessary for students to participate in Title I.

As a result, the petition claims, a number of eligible low-income students in archdiocese schools were suppressed and denied their right to participate in Title I.

A man walks outside of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles on March 22, 2020. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

The archdiocese is seeking a court order directing LAUSD to engage in timely and meaningful consultations with [the archdiocese] regarding the process by which the [archdiocese] schools Title I allocation was calculated.

Filing is not the first action the archdiocese has taken in an attempt to rectify the situation.

According to the petition, it submitted multiple public records requests with the state to understand LAUSDs purported reasons for its actionswhich the district simply ignored.

In September 2019, the archdiocese filed a complaint with the California Department of Education regarding LAUSDs alleged conduct after the district reduced the number of Catholic schools receiving Title I funds from 102 to 17.

Last summer, the state department of education released a 58-page investigative report in favor of the archdioceses claims.

The report criticized LAUSDs behavior, saying its action was egregious, totally unreasonable, and the antithesis of good faith, and directed the LAUSD to establish timely and meaningful consultation with the archdiocese to rectify any errors within 60 days.

Its unclear at this time whether the LAUSD has complied with the order and consulted with the archdiocese.

The states report also found that the LAUSD receives an average of around $300 million annually in Title I funds and distributes less than 3 percent to private schools.

Students return to in-person learning at St. Anthony Catholic High School in Long Beach, Calif., on March 24, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

In 2019, that percentage was even less0.5 percenteven though the district received about $350 million that year.

In that instance, the total amount the LAUSD allotted to private schools dropped from roughly $7.5 million to $1.7 million.

Superintendent of Schools of the Archdiocese, Paul Escala, was reported last summer as saying the states report affirmed and validated what we have known for a very long timethat the most poor and vulnerable students we serve within the area of the Los Angeles Unified School District have been disenfranchised.

Escala said the LAUSDs actions were not accidental.

There has been a very clear andone can only deduce by the findingsmethodical approach to find ways and means of reducing legally entitled resources to our children, he said.

The archdioceses attorney, as well as a spokesperson for the LAUSD, didnt respond to requests for comment by press time.
Ghislaine Maxwell listens as witness "Kate" is questioned by prosecutor Lara Pomerantz during the trial of Maxwell, the Jeffrey Epstein associate accused of sex trafficking, in a courtroom sketch in New York City on Dec. 6, 2021. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)

Attorneys Deliver Closing Arguments in Ghislaine Maxwell Trial

Both the prosecution and the defense gave their closing arguments to the jury in Ghislaine Maxwells sex-trafficking trial in federal court on Dec. 20.

Speaking for the prosecution, attorney Alison Moe addressed the jury for more than two hours.

Moe described Maxwell as dangerous and a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing.

Its time to hold her accountable, she said.

The courtroom podium was turned 90 degrees so Moe faced the jury.

Seated a few feet behind her, at the defense table and in view of the jury, Maxwell spent the first half hour of Moes monologue looking through a stack of photographs, affixing Post-It notes on some and writing notes on them. Sometimes she removed a Post-It from one photo and attached it to another.

Moe spelled out her eight reasons why Maxwell is guilty.

The first was Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were partners in crime, and the pair worked in tandem the entire time.

The second was, She ran the same playbook over, and over, and over again, as she exploited young girls.

Moe was referring to expert witness Dr. Lisa Rocchios five stages of grooming.

The third, fourth and fifth were the testimonies of three of the alleged victims.

Moe detailed which testimonies corresponded with which of the six charges against Maxwell.

The sixth was the directories Maxwell and Epstein kept with names and numbers of young girls. One such book was admitted into evidence.

The seventh was how Maxwells opulent lifestyle was dependent on Epsteins money.

Maxwell got millions of dollars from Epstein, she said, specifying the number at $30 million.

You know exactly what that money is for, she said. It was payment for committing terrible crimes with Jeffrey Epstein.

And lastly was the timeline.

Its obvious Maxwell spent a lifetime aiding and abetting Epsteins crimes, said Moe.

She went over each count, and how witness testimony connects to each.

Near the end, defense attorney Jeffrey Pagliuca, who was seated next to Maxwell, shuffled through the photographs.

Moe poked holes in the entire defense, often calling testimony and evidence disastrous.

She ended with asking the jury to us its common sense.

Maxwell is guilty, she said.

Then it was Laura Menningers turn for the defense.

Menninger began with, Ghislaine Maxwell is an innocent woman, wrongfully accused of crimes she did not commit.

She went on to blame Epstein for the crimes. Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jeffrey Epstein.

Menninger accused the alleged victims of being gold diggers who lawyered up before talking to the FBI.

Her biggest argument was the inconsistencies of the alleged victims stories and how the truth was manipulated and changed over time.

She also questioned the memories of other witnesses.

In a moment of colorful prose, she claimed the prosecution is making Maxwell out to be Cruella de Vil and The Devil Wears Prada wrapped up into one.

For about 45 minutes of Menningers two-hour summation, she spoke of Jane and her poor memory. She got her dates wrong by three years, she said.

Menninger also reminded the jury that in many instances, witnesses could not place Maxwell at the scene of the alleged abuse and could not confirm she actually trafficked anyone.

She also reminded the jury that each of the six counts has multiple elements (up to four) and if her client is not guilty of one element, then shes not guilty of the entire charge.

Menninger ended with, I demand that you acquit Ms. Maxwell of every, single count of which shes charged.

Prosecuting attorney Maurene Comey had a 37-minute rebuttal, calling the defenses argument a sideshow and using the word distraction several times as well as desperate.

Her biggest assertion was that the memories of the alleged victims are accurate because one remembers core events (being molested) and not peripheral ones (exact dates).

Comey ended with, The defendant is guilty.

Judge Alison Nathan charged the jury, giving detailed instructions on each indictment and how theyre to go about deliberation.

The prosecution called several witnesses over 10 days while the defense called far fewer over two days.

Just prior to the defenses announcement to rest on Dec. 17, Nathan instructed Maxwell regarding her right to testify in her own defenseor not testifyand how the jury cannot use that against her.

Maxwell spoke in court for the first time during the trial that day, saying, The government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and so theres no need for me to testify.

The jury will have its first, full day of deliberations on Dec. 21.
Syringes with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines lie on a tray during a program without an appointment, in Sant Vicenc de Castellet, north of Barcelona, Spain, on July 6, 2021. (Albert Gea/Reuters)

Australia Considers Changing Definition of Fully Vaccinated to Three Doses

Australians might need to get three COVID-19 jabs to be considered fully vaccinated under a proposed new public health order.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will on Wednesday meet with premiers and chief ministers for what he has described as an informal meeting of the national cabinet to discuss rising COVID-19 Omicron cases.

The announcement came following the easing of restrictions and opening of borders as Australians travel in preparation for their Christmas break.

Up for discussion is the speeding up of booster shots and mask mandates in indoor areas, with the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) considering whether to change the definition of fully vaccinated into three vaccine doses.

In a press conference on Monday, Morrison said that Australia needed to keep moving forward with the easing of pandemic restrictions while also stating that vaccination and booster shots remained the best defence against Omicron.

We have to keep moving forward with this, he said. This is why Australians rolled up their sleeves; this is why Australians have worked so hard.

The cases will, of course, rise with the Omicron variant, what we will continue to work through with states and territories is making sure we manage the impact on the hospital system and the primary health network, the prime minister said.

The Prime Minister urged people eligible for boosters to get them, noting that there were 13 million doses available in the country.

Anyone who is concerned and who is ready to have their booster shot, I would urge them to go and get it because that is the best defence against Omicron, particularly for insuring against serious illness, or what might require hospitalisation, he said.

Asked about whether he supported a mask mandate, Morrison said it should be a choice, saying Australians are responsible for and our own health.

Governments have been telling Australians what to do now for the last couple of years, and Australians have grown tired of that, he said.

The way we are able to live with that is Australians making their own positive decisions about their own health.

Meanwhile, some state premiers and health experts are pushing to reduce the interval to at least four months, saying it would mean improved protection against the latest variant of concern as researchers warned vaccine efficacy wanes after six months.

More people getting it (the virus) means more people are going to transmit it and more people going to have that risk of developing serious illness even if theyve been vaccinated, said University of Melbourne epidemiologist Nancy Baxter on ABC radio on Tuesday.

We know that boosters help get around that.

Calls to bring back restrictions or mask mandates have also been met with resistance from NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, who said on Monday that his government wanted to treat residents like adults, and it was time where personal responsibility needed to come to the fore.

We need to also move away from fear and move to hope and confidence, he said. The main thing here is that Christmas isnt ruined, and we dont go back into lockdown, he told Sydney radio 2GB.

NSW recorded 2501 new cases on Monday and Victoria 1302 infections.

South Australia reported 105 new infections, while there were 59 in Queensland. The ACT recorded 13 cases and Tasmania three.
Australian Airlines Campaign Against Abusive Carry-On Behaviour

Australias major airlines have voluntarily signed up to a new Code of Practice on Passenger Behaviour after reporting increased disruptive and abusive behaviour towards airport and flight crew in the wake of ever changing vaccine and protective mask mandates.

Airlines Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin Australia, and Rex have jointly announced the new code of practice along with an awareness campaign backed by Australian Federal Police and the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority (CASA).

Titled No More Carry-On, the awareness campaign plays on the concept that while carry on bags are allowed on aircraft, disruptive or abusive carry-on behaviour is not.

Airports around the country will carry the messaging on digital billboards along with a message from flight crew.

Australian airlines launch No More Carry-On campaign, obtained on Dec. 21, 2021. (JetStar)

This comes as the aviation industry has reported a spike in aggression directed at airport and flight crew amid government and corporate mask and mandates linking freedom to fly to vaccination status.

Whilst the vast majority of travellers do the right thing, we appreciate that navigating the ever-changing rules of travel can at times be challenging and stressful, Neville Howell, Rex chief operating officer, said in the release.

This initiative, in both the code of conduct and the no more carry on campaign, is a timely reminder that whether at the supermarket, a restaurant, the airport, or on an aircraftwe can all do our bit by simply showing patience and having respect for both the teams looking after us and for each other.

The updated code of practice means that airlines can now refuse to allow passengers to board if they are being offensive or disruptive.

Passengers can also be made to repay the costs for any diversions or damage to the aircraft as a result of their behaviour and be banned from future travel.

The code will also allow for airlines and airports to engage with law enforcement and CASA to support any administrative or criminal sanctions against a passenger found to have engaged in offensive or disruptive conduct.

Offences include unruly behaviour, smoking on board, consuming alcohol not supplied onboard, failing to comply with safety directions from flight crew, and interfering with a crew member or threatening the safety of other people onboard.

Passengers need to understand that bad behaviour on an aircraft can put safety at risk, said Pip Spence, CASA CEO and director of safety.

It can disrupt the important safety duties of aircraft crew members, cause distractions during critical phases of flight, and jeopardise the safety of other passengers.

Substantial penalties can be imposed on passengers who dont comply with any safety-related instructions given by crew, Spence said.

Australian domestic travel has resumed to mostly normal levels in time for families to reunite at Christmas after Queensland and other states reopened their borders to vaccinated travellers.

The border reopening was tied to states and territories reaching a rate of 80 percent vaccination against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

While the vast majority of passengers do the right thing, unfortunately as with the hospitality and retail industries, we have seen an increase in the number of people behaving badly, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said.

At airports and on aircraft, critical safety procedures must be followed. There is no room for disruptive behaviour and we will act quickly to stop unruliness to ensure everyone remains safe.

Virgin Australias Chief Operations Officer Stuart Aggs said the campaign was to remind people that flight crew were doing everything they could to safely welcome passengers back to the skies.

Overwhelmingly, we see people doing the right thing, and thats fantastic and very appreciated, he said.
Starry Lee (bottom-C), chairwoman for the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), speaks at a press conference with party members in Hong Kong on Dec. 20, 2021 as Pro-Beijing candidates swept to victory in a "patriots only legislature vote that saw record low turnout from voters and government loyalists sweep every seat. (Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)

Australian Foreign Minister Joins Five Eyes Condemning Erosion of Democratic Elements in Hong Kong

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne has joined Five Eyes partners in expressing grave concern over the erosion of democratic elements in recent elections in Hong Kong that delivered a major victory to pro-Beijing candidates.

Since handover, candidates with diverse political views have contested elections in Hong Kong. Yesterdays election has reversed this trend, according to a joint statement from the five foreign ministers and leaders.

The overhaul of Hong Kongs electoral system introduced earlier this year reduced the number of directly elected seats and established a new vetting process to severely restrict the choice of candidates on the ballot paper, he added.

These changes eliminated any meaningful political opposition. Meanwhile, many of the citys opposition politiciansmost notably the majority of the NSL 47remain in prison pending trial, with others in exile overseas.

(L-R) Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton, Foreign Minister Marise Payne, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pose for a group photograph at the State Department in Washington, DC, on September 16, 2021 (Andrew Harnik/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The statement was authorised by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, and New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta.

The Hong Kong poll was run after a major overhaul of the electoral system, which meant only candidates recognised as patriots by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were allowed to runeffectively ruling out pro-democracy candidates.

The number of candidates that the public could elect was also reduced from 35 to 20, despite the Legislative Council being expanded from 70 to 90 seats.

In response, voter turnout was the lowest historically, with turnout being only 30.2 percent, or around 1,350,680 people, compared to the 50 percent turnout in 2012.

Actions that undermine Hong Kongs rights, freedoms and a high degree of autonomy are threatening our shared wish to see Hong Kong succeed, the leaders said.

They warned of a wider chilling effect of the National Security Law, a contentious law passed last year that punishes any act defined as secession or subversion of the statea broad interpretation of the law would catch dissidents and democracy activists.

NGOs, trade unions and human rights organisations not supportive of the governments agenda have been forced to disband or leave, while media freedoms are being curtailed at pace, the Five Eyes said.

In response, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote on Twitter, With only 30.2 percent of registered voters casting ballots in Sundays elections, its obvious #HongKongers refuse to participate in sham elections orchestrated by the #CCP. Elections, where the candidates are pre-chosen by #Beijing, do not equal #democracy.

While Australian Shadow Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Penny Wong said the opposition was deeply disappointed and concerned by the election result.

Unfortunately, the Legislative Council elections overnight are yet another illustration of the continuing erosion of Hong Kongs autonomy and democratic freedoms, as guaranteed in the Basic Law and the Sino-British Joint Declaration, to which China had committed, she said in a statement.

This further undermining of Hong Kongs democracy and the One Country, Two Systems arrangement is not the behaviour of a responsible global power.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet speaks to the media during a press conference outside the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, Australia, on Dec. 19, 2021. (AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi)

Australian State Leader Resists Growing Calls for Mask Mandates Against Omicron

The state of New South Wales (NSW) has broken the national record again for the most COVID-19 cases recorded in one day, at 3,057 in the 24 hours to 8 p.m. on Dec. 20.

Despite the record high numbers, ICU numbers remain low compared to Delta outbreak, at 39 in total, of which six were newly admitted. The peak number of patients admitted to ICU during the Delta lockdowns was 242.

Two elderly people died, including one vaccinated man in his 80s and one unvaccinated woman in her 70s. Both had underlying health conditions.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has refused to reintroduce mask mandates and other rules, after nearly all restrictions were removed on Dec. 15.

He said the government was taking a balanced and proportionate response, and using ICU numbers as the main metric.

There will always be new variants of this virus. The pandemic is not going away. We need to learn to live alongside it, he told the press on Dec. 20, adding that the government would tailor its response to the circumstances.

While the government has stopped short of bringing back mask mandates, it recommended masks in areas where socially distancing was not feasible.

It is a time of personal responsibility for our state, Perrottet said. We are treating the people of our state like adults.

Shoppers move through the QVB shopping area in Sydney, Australia, on Nov. 8, 2021. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

On Dec. 19, the premier said the government couldnt do everything, and the responsibility was passed over to the people of the state.

There will always be different opinions from time to time, I accept that, he said. We (the NSW government) have regular discussions, we are always assessing the situation.

The comments from Perrotett come after health experts appeared on Australian media channels calling on the NSW government to re-introduce mask mandates for indoor in the face of Omicron.

We only abandoned them relatively recently. We know the vaccine is less effective against Omicron but we know things like mask wearing are effective against any variant, epidemiologist Nancy Baxtertold, a professor from the University of Melbourne, told Nine News. It doesnt matter what they are, they protect both the wearer and they protect others from COVID.

The Australian Medical Association has also been pushing for mask mandates and density limits, with its president, Dr. Omar Khorshid, describing Perrottets approach as reckless.

DIY contact tracing, watered-down check in requirements, the abandonment of mask wearing mandates, and the removal of density limits are together a recipe for disaster and by the time hospital admissions and ICU cases grow beyond whatever benchmark he is working toit will be too late, Khorshid said.

Khorshid said until more was known about Omicron and its severity, a more cautious approach was required.

This is despite data from South Africa, where the variant was first detected, which found no conclusive evidence yet that Omicron causes more severe illness compared to other strains.
Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute, at its inaugural conference in Hartford, Conn., on Nov. 14. (Jack Wang/The Epoch Times)

Battling for Truth in a World of Lies

This is a wild new experiment in social management, says Jeffrey Tucker

The things that work, says Jeffrey Tucker, the things that are right, the things that are true, we have to rediscover them.

On a recent episode of EpochTVs American Thought Leaders, host Jan Jekielek discussed the failed and sinister policies of the pandemic with Tucker, an author and founder of the Brownstone Institute, an organization founded to resist lockdowns and vaccine mandates while providing a vision for a different way to think about freedom, security, and public life.

Jan Jekielek: Well, Jeffrey, weve just taken in a day of the Brownstone Institute, the inaugural conference. Its an important day.

Jeffrey Tucker: Were coming out of a crisis unprecedented in our lifetime, yet here we are, 21 months into this and its still going on.

Were asking all these big questions. What is our relationship to each other? Are we just pathogenic disease vectors? Are we going to give up the idea of human dignity entirely? Are we going to surrender to the idea that some people are destined to rule the world with the hand of science while the rest of us are going to be subjugated and obey?

I hope Brownstone can provide a forum for discussing these things truthfully and honestly.

Mr. Jekielek: Some imagine the crisis to be COVID. Isnt that the crisis, thats why we have to lock down?

Mr. Tucker: We had disease outbreaks in the United States in 68 and 69, and 57 and 58. We had a polio problem in the early 40s, a parrot flu in 1929, and so on. But gradually over the 20th century, we learned more about infectious diseases.

We discovered the idea of herd immunity, and we learned that the way to deal with disease was not dividing society according to the exposed and the unexposed, the clean and the unclean.

Something went wrong in 2020, where we took a completely different path. It was a very strange scientific experiment thats been conducted on almost the whole of humanity. They treated us like lab rats.

This is a wild new experiment in social management, under the guise of virus control. And it didnt work. Theres no evidence that it has achieved anything in terms of mitigating the bad outcomes from the disease.

So the experiment failed, and theres been little public recognition of this.

The demoralization comes from the realization that your rights and freedom can be taken away in an instant, and theres nothing you can do about it.

This is why theres so much depression, drug overdoses, and alcohol abuse, and the rise of obesity and ill-health everywhere. Just the sudden realization that your rights are not guaranteed, that all the things you used to believe may not be true anymore.

Thats a shock, this masking and distancing, or how many people you can have in your home, or whether you can even go to church.

This is a new world for us, and we have to ask ourselves whether were willing to put up with this.

We have to rethink what kind of people we want to be, what kind of society we want to live in.

This is our moment. We have to act on our beliefs, which means we have to decide what we believe.

Mr. Jekielek: But I think a significant portion of society might not even understand what youre saying here.

Mr. Tucker: It reminds me of a statement by Ludwig von Mises. He says, When civilization is sweeping towards destruction, there is no safe space for everyone. Therefore, it is the obligation of everyone to throw himself into the intellectual struggle for freedom.

This was 1923. When I read that, I thought, thats a little bit over the top. Civilization sweeping to destruction? Come on, thats not going to happen. Well, he was right. His world, Vienna, fell apart, and he had to leave in 1934.

Of course, we read about these things, and we always think theyre in the past. Its not going to happen to us. The terrible thing weve discovered in the last 20 months is that we are capable of that and worsedifferent, but potentially worse.

We believed we had a Constitution that protected us. We can read the Bill of Rights and see that we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Then, we woke up practically overnight to a different world in which were managed from the top by a tiny elite thats determining whether I can go to church, how many people I can have in my home, whether I can grab a beer, whether I can open my business, whether I can get my teeth cleaned.

You say that some people might not understand what Im saying, and yes, I get that. Partially, I think people have been so traumatized that theyre in denial. This struggle has been psychological for a lot of people. I mean, certainly, it was for me.

Mr. Jekielek: I cant help but think about the idea of a Platonic noble lie, or the idea that the people setting policy will use noble lies to shape behavior.

Mr. Tucker: They did a terrible thingthe shutting of the schools, the closing of the churches, sending in SWAT teams into rural Texas bars to arrest people for drinking beers. But once theyd invested so heavily in this population-wide experiment, they had a problem. Because youve got a ruling class thats not going to admit error, the lies began, and the lies have not stopped.

We live in a world of lies. Our mainstream newspapers have become cartoon-like. You have headlines that say the pandemic has caused a rash of suicides. But the pandemic didnt cause suicides. The lockdowns caused suicide.

Youre going to find more truth in Substack accounts than youre going to find in The Washington Post.

And we have ruling class elites in this country that are not thinking about the general welfare of the whole populationthe working classes, minorities, the poor.

Mr. Jekielek: It doesnt include the people who have to get their hands dirty through it all, like the people doing the deliveries, the police, fire department, the working class.

Mr. Tucker: Look what were doing to them now. We put them on the front lines to face the pathogen. Most everybody in those class structures whove been out and about for 20 months while the rest of us have been sitting around in pajamas and house shoes and Zooming. Then, at the end of the day, its like, weve got a vaccine. Were telling them to take it, even though they have natural immunities.

Were punishing them, and if they dont want to take the jab, were firing them from their jobs. Its an outrage. The nurses who treated coronavirus patients for months know how natural immunity works. They got exposure, they faced it out of a sense of professional obligation, because they thought they were doing the right thing.

Twenty months later, youre fired. Get the jab, or youre going to lose your job.

Everyone has a theory as to why this is happening. Big pharma is involved, governments always looking for more power, all this is true. But theres something else going on, and I think it comes down to a lack of appreciation for human liberty and the rights of individuals.

Mr. Jekielek: Well, this is the task of the people youre assembling around Brownstone, isnt it?

Mr. Tucker: Yes. But I know whats going to happen at Brownstone. Theyre going to come after us. Brownstone will be characterized as a right-wing libertarian organization. Well, Im going to say in this interview that this is not true.

Right now we just need to remember what built modernity, what made us great, what made us prosperous. What made us feel like dignified individuals, what brought us peace. What are the conditions under which I find value in you and you find value in me, and we have an incentive to protect each others rights?

The things that work, the things that are right, the things that are true, we have to rediscover them. And we need to remember and reunderstand the last 20 months as a catastrophe.

We need to admit it didnt work. It was immoral, and it spread tremendous carnage all over the worldpoverty, suffering everywhere.

Those things are human rights, an aspiration of equality, and a social system in which we find dignity in each other, not just disease, but dignity. I think thats where we need to go, and its going to be a long struggle, but we have to get there.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Beijing Manipulates Narrative of Tragic US Drone Strike to Cover Up Chinas Abuses

Commentary

Beijing has called a U.S. drone strike that killed civilians in Afghanistan an atrocity, but this is a manipulative and hypocritical tactic that ignores far worse atrocities like the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Chinese communists are expert manipulators with their words and the way they interact on the international stage. The most recent example concerns American military action in Afghanistan that killed nearly a dozen civilians. During a press briefing on Dec. 14, Beijing called the incident an atrocity, where American officials exonerate[d] the perpetrators and attacked in the name of human rights and democracy. But this, as usual, is a manipulation of facts and Western guilt to promote the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) agenda.

The action to which they are referring was a drone strike on Aug. 29, during the chaotic final days of the U.S. troops pullout from Afghanistan. American forces were struck by a suicide bomber outside of the Kabul airport and President Joe Biden, eager to promote the over the horizon counter-terrorist capability, launched a drone strike on a suspected terrorist. Upon investigation, it turned out that the attack didnt hit terrorists, but instead killed 10 civilians, including seven children. It is in the news again because after a careful review, U.S. officials announced no punishment for those involved in the strike. This is a tragic situation, but not necessarily criminal.

The tragedy makes a good bumper sticker for the CCP to condemn American behavior, but it doesnt reflect the rules of warfare, American conduct in the War on Terror, and the rules of just warfare. And the event still pales in comparison to far more egregious actions committed by the CCP. Beijings statement reflects the CCPs attempt to turn tragedy into its advantage by stoking American guilt and providing cover for the regimes abuses.

The U.S. military fights with stringent conditions on which targets to strike, and with the utmost care to prevent civilian deaths. This matters during wartime. Deliberately targeting civilians, instead of a military target, would be a crime. Accidently killing them during the chaos of war with limited information, while pursuing a military target using approved military means, makes those civilian deaths tragic but not a crime.

The deaths are blamed on the United States and used by the CCP to attack America and shield the regimes misbehavior (and may score points with the Non-Aligned Movement). But ISIS terrorists put those people in harm by deliberately hiding among civilians and trying to shield bases by using human shields. And it is the terrorists that blur the line between civilian and military targets, and they are the ones who should be blamed for the loss of civilian life.

Even if they didnt blur those lines, there are well-established principles of double effect (collateral damage). According to famed just war theorist Michael Walzer, these principles include the following: if the action is a legitimate act of war; the direct effect (the target) is morally acceptable; the intention was good; and the effect is efficacious enough to offset the negative consequences. Even though the result of the Aug. 29 strike turned out to be civilians killed based upon faulty intelligence, that was only known after the fact, which still makes the strike just (from a military standpoint) while still horribly tragic.

Yet, ISIS terrorists and the Chinese regime take advantage of our natural humanitarian impulses to avoid civilian loss, and takes that loss to condemn the United States. It is much easier to call it an atrocity, which is an emotionally charged word, than to explain the rules of war that sometimes result in tragic life. Beijing does this knowing it will provoke international outrage and makes it tougher to use force when needed.

For perspective and contrast, the Chinese regime has made far worse decisions. One of the most egregious was the decision of the CCP to order the military to break up pro-democracy rallies in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4, 1989. The military opened fire on protesters, killing thousands. The actual death count during the brutal suppression, though kept as a top secret by the CCP, was at least 10,000, according to a secret UK diplomatic report.

A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijings Avenue of Eternal Peace during the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 5, 1989. (Jeff Widener/AP Photo)

Moreover, the United States publicly shares information about its strikes and has a robust reporting and investigation mechanism to determine war crimes. There are multiple people viewing live feeds from helicopters and drones in the area, including JAG (Judge Advocate General) lawyers. Any of these individuals can initiate a review to determine if war crimes were committed, which goes up multiple chain of commands.

While potential massacres receive attention in mainstream media, in contrast, the Tiananmen Square massacre is shrouded in mystery, and pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong have to play a cat and mouse game with officials to publicly remember the event without being arrested.

And dont forget the genocide against the Uyghur minorities in Chinas Xinjiang region, where around one million are detained. The Uyghurs are used as forced labor, subjected to torture, and their women are raped and sterilized. Yet, Beijing wants to score points against the United States over a drone strike in the war against terrorists.

In short, the CCP hypocritically attacks the United States for a tragicbut not criminalaction. U.S. officials and the American public cant let the abhorrent Chinese regime play this game, and must have the understanding to recognize the difference between a tragedy and an actual atrocity.

Clearly, the deaths of innocent lives are tragicbut so is war and terrorism that requires the use of force in the first place. Beijing has used this tragedy to condemn the United States and put it on the defensive, while ignoring much more serious CCP misbehavior like the human rights abuses.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Biden Delivers Speech on Omicron, Says Americans Shouldnt Panic

President Joe Biden in a Tuesday afternoon speech insisted that Americans should not panic over the spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant.

This is not March 2020  were prepared. We know more, Biden said. I know youre tired  I know youre frustrated, he said, adding that this is a critical moment.

The federal government, he said, will set up additional COVID-19 free testing sites, starting in New York City. Biden also said his administration will purchase 500 million at-home rapid tests and deliver them by mail starting in January for free.

I know some Americans are wondering if you can safely celebrate the holidays with your family and friends. The answer is yes, you can, if you and those who celebrate are vaccinated, Biden added, although a federal health official said Omicron can break through antibodies from initial COVID-19 vaccines. Particularly if youve gotten your booster shot.

So far, the Omicron variant has been blamed for the death of at least one person in the United States. Earlier this week, officials in Houston, Texas, said that a man died with the variant, while officials in the United Kingdom said that about a half-dozen people may have died from Omicron.

South Africas Ministry of Health said last week that Omicron hospitalizations are one-tenth that of hospitalizations experienced during previous COVID-19 waves in the country. And New York Citys chief medical officer confirmed that Omicron hospitalizations are a fraction of that seen in prior surges.

On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that Omicron made up 73 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the United States last week, overtaking the Delta variant. The new strain has been detected in most states and territories, the agency confirmed on Tuesday.

The CDCs estimates are based on tens of thousands of coronavirus specimens that are collected each week through university laboratories, commercial laboratories, and state and local health agencies. Scientists then analyze the gene sequences to determine which of the COVID-19 variants are most common.

A national surge in omicron COVID-19 cases will likely occur in the coming weekspossibly starting in January, the CDC also predicted. The agency used synthesis of various scenario models that were conducted by the U.S. government as well as academic partners, although previous COVID-19 scenario models have been criticized as inaccurate.

Earlier on Tuesday, the White House confirmed it would send 1,000 members of the military such as military doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other medical personnel to hospitals starting in January and in February.

Six emergency response teams, meanwhile, with more than 100 staff members are also being sent to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Vermont, according to the White House.

This is on top of the 300 federal medical personnel that we have deployed since we learned about Omicron, said the news release.
President Joe Biden speaks in the Oval Office at the White House on Dec. 13, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Biden Has Close Contact With COVID-19 Positive Staffer

President will not be required to quarantine after testing negative, says White House

President Joe Biden on Monday morning tested negative after coming into close contact with a staff member who has COVID-19, the White House said.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on Monday evening that, earlier in the day, a staff member who does not regularly have contact with Biden tested positive for COVID-19.

Three days earlier, on Friday, that staff member had spent approximately 30 minutes in proximity to the President on Air Force One, on the way from Orangeburg, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she said.

Psaki said the staff member, who is fully vaccinated and boosted, tested negative prior to boarding the aircraft, as is required for everyone traveling with the president, and did not begin to experience symptoms until Dec. 19. They tested positive on Dec. 20.

She added that Biden, who turned 79 in November, is tested on a regular basis. He tested negative in an antigen test on Dec. 19, Psaki said.

This morning, after being notified of the staffers positive test, the President received a PCR test and tested negative. He will be tested again on Wednesday, she said.

The president will not need to quarantine as per current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says that fully vaccinated people are not required to quarantine after exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, Psaki noted.

The president has a full schedule today and is not in need of quarantine, she said.

Psaki added that others on Air Force One who were in close contact with the infected staff member are being contacted and will be advised to get tested per the CDCs guidance.

The announcement came shortly after the president issued a stark warning about the coming winter, amid concerns over the newly detected Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

Biden during a Dec. 16 press conference said that the variant was quickly surging in the country, warning that the White House believes those who are unvaccinated would experience a winter of severe illness and death.

If youre vaccinated, and you have your booster shot, youre protected from severe illness and death, the president added.

The following day, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients pushed similar rhetoric that the unvaccinated are largely to blame for the ongoing pandemic.

We are intent on not letting omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated. Youve done the right thing, and we will get through this, Zients said. For the unvaccinated, youre looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.

Few Omicron-related deaths have been officially confirmed so far worldwide, and its not clear if any have been reported in the United States. Meanwhile, New York Citys health director said that while omicron cases are rising quickly, hospitalizations are not at this time.

South African ministry of health officials last week said that their rates of hospitalization due to Omicron are about one-tenth of the hospitalization rate for the Delta wave earlier this year.
Biden Plans to Deploy Military, Distribute 500 Million Tests Amid COVID-19 Omicron Wave

President Joe Bidens administration is planning to mail out some 500 million COVID-19 tests, starting in January, according to the White House.

The White House on Tuesday said it will send the test kits to homes as part of an effort to deal with the Omicron COVID-19 variant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday said accounts for about 73 percent of cases in the United States. Its not clear yet whether the variant causes more severe disease than previous variants, although fewer than a dozen deaths have been reported worldwide.

Today, the President is announcing his Administration will purchase a half-billion at-home, rapid tests this winter to be distributed for free to Americans who want them, with the initial delivery starting in January 2022, the White House said in a press statement.

Additional federal test sites will also be set up across the United States in the coming days, starting in New York City, according to the White House, in a bid to help states that need additional testing capacity.

Tuesdays announcement appears to reverse a previous White House position on COVID-19 testing. White House press secretary Jen Psaki earlier this month told reporters that the administration wont be mailing test kits to every home.

In the press release, the White House confirmed it will send 1,000 members of the military such as military doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other medical personnel to hospitals in January and February.

Six emergency response teams with more than 100 staff members are also being sent to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Vermont, said the White House. Meanwhile, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) response teams will be sent to add capacity to hospitals in some states, and the federal government is paying for all of it, the statement added.

This is on top of the 300 federal medical personnel that we have deployed since we learned about Omicron, the news release said.

The CDC Monday reported that Omicron is rapidly spreading and may be the dominant variant in the country, representing some 73 percent of sequenced U.S. cases. The Delta strain, which emerged earlier this year, makes up about 26.6 percent of infections, while just a week before that, Delta represented 87 percent of cases.

Authorities in South Africa, where Omicron is first believed to have emerged, reported late last week that the hospitalization rate for Omicron patients is about one-tenth of the hospitalization rate that was seen during the early phase of the Delta wave. New York Citys chief medical official, Dr. Dave Chokshi, made a similar statement.

Right now, there are about a thousand people hospitalized with COVID-19 across New York City. Thats about a quarter of where we were at the peak of last winters wave and less than a tenth of where we were in the spring of 2020, Chokshi said on Monday, blaming the rise in infections on the Omicron wave.

On Tuesday evening, Biden is slated to make a televised announcement about the initiative. During a news conference Monday, Psaki said the president will not call for additional lockdowns or stay-at-home orders.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump waves prior to Game Four of the World Series between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves Truist Park in Atlanta, Ga., on Oct. 30, 2021. (Michael Zarrilli/Getty Images)

Bill OReilly Says Trump Will Run Again in 2024

Former President Donald Trump intends to enter the presidential race again in 2024, former Fox News host Bill OReilly said on Monday.

OReilly said during an appearance on Dan Abramss NewsNation prime-time show that the former president called him to say that he plans to run again for office.

The former Fox News host said he told Trump that the move is good for you.

This is good that people see another side of you, not a political side. You told the truth. You believe in the vax. Your administration did it, and you should take credit for it, OReilly said he told Trump when he rang him shortly after a speaking tour in Dallas.

Im trying to tell President Trump, run on your record. Hes going to run again, all right, OReilly said. I said, Run on your record because your record is pretty darn good.

It comes after Trump on Sunday again hinted at a 2024 presidential run during his History Tour with OReilly in Orlando on Sunday.

We won the first time, and the second time we won by even more. And it looks like we might have to think about very strongly a third time, Trump told OReilly before a crowd in the Amway Center.

The pairs tour began on Dec. 11 in Sunrise, Florida, and ran through Dec. 19.

Trump didnt comment when asked by OReilly if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would be a possible No. 2, in 2024.

First of all, I think that people are going to be very happy with what I do, Trump said, before adding shortly after: Hes [DeSantis] certainly somebody that I like a lot. I can tell you that.

DeSantis has become popular among GOP voters because of his firm stances against the Biden administrations lockdowns, COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and immigration policy.

Trump, meanwhile, has been alluding to a possible run in 2024 for months. Previously, Trump said he would announce if he ran again after the 2022 midterm elections. He also said the reason he could not announce his run was because of the very complicated campaign finance rules and regulations.

A recent poll showed that 67 percent of GOP voters would choose Trump in a possible 2024 presidential race, RSBN reported.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Nov. 22 said President Joe Biden intends to run for a second term in 2024.

He is. Thats his intention, she told reporters on Air Force One.

Biden, Americas oldest president, turned 79 last month.

Harry Lee contributed to this report.
California a Year Late in Releasing Annual Financial Report

Commentary

Most states have a June 30 fiscal year end. After the books are closed, the independent outside Certified Public Accountants come in and audit the books. This task is usually completed no later than the month of December and is released to the public.

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021, the state of South Carolina already has its audited financial statements up on their website for residents to read and review. Its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report was issued on Nov. 12, 2021.

South Carolinas June 30, 2020 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (pdf) was released on Nov. 13, 2020. There was big news in this report as well, dropping them down to 25th placethe middle of the packwith an unrestricted net deficit per capita of $786. It dropped from 13th place in the prior year at a negative per capita of $386. But, youll have to wait for the details for one awkward reason.

The annual audit for the state of California for the year ended June 30, 2020, has not been released yet by the State Controller. Its one year late! Its the only state in the Union that has not issued its audited financial statements! And the stakeholders, who had an unrestricted net deficit per capita of $5,274 for the year ended June 30, 2019, should know how their investment in the Golden State is doing. Especially when our state is nearly seven to fourteen times in worse shape than South Carolina!

When a publicly traded corporation is late in issuing its audited financial statements, its usually a red flag that something is amiss. If the excuse doesnt hold water, investors may need to unload their shares before even worse news is released.

For Californias State Controllers Office, no explanation is given on her website for this delay. At least I couldnt find it where is should have been provided.

Organizations that read these state documents and issue annual reports based on their contents have had to do so without Californias actual information. These analyses are usually issued in September of the following year. One very reputable organization, Truth in Accounting, released their report (pdf) three months ago with this stern admonition:

Twenty-nine states took more than 180 days to make their annual financial reports public, while 21 states produced the reports prior to the deadline. No state issued its annual report within 130 days. The least timely states were California (which has not released its FY 2020 report), Iowa (which has only released a preliminary FY 2020 report), Illinois (408 days), Arizona (400 days), and Nevada (325 days).

California is a national embarrassment. The current State Controller, Betty Yee, will be finishing her second term next year. Its unfortunate that one very clear indicator of the job she is doing is very disappointing. Truth in Accounting goes on:

It is crucial for citizens to have their governments financial information in a timely manner. As of August 31, 2020, California and Iowa have yet to release their FY 2020 annual financial report. Due to Californias tardiness, we were unable to include the newest data in this report and were forced to rely on FY 2019 information. We were able to use Iowas preliminary, unaudited report with FY 2020 information. Most corporate financial reports are issued within 45 days of their respective fiscal year ends.

This month, an article appeared in Forbes Magazine, titled California Is The Only State To Hide Its SpendingNearly $300 Billion A Year, adding to the unique dismal state of affairs of Californias elected Controller.

The tragedy is that this is not the first year California has been tardy. The excuse for being delinquent with the June 2019 was reported (pdf) to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB). It was rather lame, blaming a delay by a significant number of state departments in providing financial information to the State Controller for its tardiness.

But where is this years excuse?

California was also criticized last year by The Bond Buyer, a trade publication that monitors municipal bond issuers around the country. It looks like the distinction of being last has become old news and was not covered by this publication this year. At least not yet.

California is the home of Silicon Valley, the high-tech capital of the nation. And Sacramento, just a few miles away, cant get its general ledger software act together.

Not having the financial statements issued before the Legislature signs off on the annual state budget by June 15 is unconscionable. Now it looks like the balance sheet for California may not be issued before the Jan. 10 deadline for Governor Newsom to release his proposed budget. This accounting negligence should a big digital disaster and a disappointment for the Governor.

What is the State Controller hiding? Were the CARES Act funds mismanaged or misapplied? Did the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown increase the unrestricted net deficit by such a severe amount that California is once again in last place with the largest deficit in the United States?

Or has the Golden State become captive to a software acquisition, known as Fi$Cal, that cant seem to handle double-entry accounting? This vendor has already been paid more than $1 billion, and we cant see what Californias balance sheet looks like?

Weve got to be done with just shaking our heads in disbelief. Someone needs to take charge of this situation in Sacramento. And it doesnt look like its our elected Controller. If the state of California had a Chief Operating Officer, perhaps this nonsense would not be occurring.

How can we hold elected leaders accountable if they dont provide residents with basic financial information? Lets hope the State Controller can release the June 30, 2021 audit well before most of the other states and finish better in her final year of office.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
California Experts Share Strategies to Discourage Burglaries

With home and retail burglaries on the rise, security has become a priority for many Californians, and experts say even simple defense strategies are sometimes all it takes to thwart criminals and protect yourself, your loved ones, and your property.

Security consultants first recommend taking measures to prevent even becoming a target in the first place. Criminals usually search for the path of least resistance, homes and businesses that are easy targets, and many gather both online and onsite intelligence before they strike.

I always recommend locking windows and doors and arming security systems when leaving the home, even if its for just a few minutes, said Chris McGoey, a Los Angeles-area security consultant and licensed private investigator.

Locking up and setting an alarm every time you leave the house may sound paranoid, but many burglaries happen in mere minutes, and it can make all the difference if a burglar tries a door handle to see if you locked it after leaving to walk the dog around the block. Often, victims have no idea they are being watched as they go about their routine business, and it only takes seconds to get inside an unlocked door or window.

Most people think theres little danger when they go out to run a short errand or to walk the dog, said McGoey. And surprisingly, most people who have alarm systems dont use them.

Its often assumed that most burglaries take place at night, but the reality is most occur in the daytime when people are at work or running errands. Embracing the habit of locking doors and windows and engaging security systems is one of the easiest ways to avoid being burglarized but often the very rule of security most people break.

If youve ever locked yourself out of your home, your racing mind likely began to think about which loose screen or unlocked window there might be, or which one would be the easiest to tamper with and pop open, or perhaps a bathroom window left ajar to let the moisture out. If youve ever found yourself considering all the possible options of getting in to your home, then criminals will too.

Loose window coverings and door jams can easily be opened with a screwdriver. Make sure that screens and fittings are secure, and replace all doorjamb hinges with longer screws to help prevent doors from easily being kicked in.

A home with porch lights on in Culver City, Calif. on Aug. 5, 2015. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Fortify Glass for Extra Protection

An increasingly popular security strategy for both homes and businesses is to fortify glass with window film that makes penetration more difficult, if not impossible.

According to Brad Campbell of Campbell Window Film in Huntington Beach, installing window film throughout a home or business can be an excellent deterrent, and it gives occupants critical time to flee, take cover, or defend themselves.

Your time delay with window film is anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute and a half, depending on how determined the guy is, how heavy the tools are, and how aggressive hes being in trying to break in, Campbell said.

Campbell says that window film efficacy depends on the thickness of the film, and if the windows are tempered, making sure that the glass and film are attached properly to the frame of the doors or windows. The goal is to dissuade criminals, so the thicker the film, the more likely they will move on when unable to break the glass right away.

Window film is also helpful in limiting damage due to explosions or earthquakes.

Window film can serve several purposes. It can be very effective in mitigating explosion or earthquake damage, Campbell said, noting that statistically, the number one cause of death and serious injury in those situations is flying glassmore so than the blast itself or a collapsing building.

A mannequin is seen on the street after a store was broken into in Hollywood, Calif., on June 1, 2020. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

After Christmas, Dont Advertise

Its a familiar sight each December 26thgarbage cans next to garages, in alleys and side yards filled to the brim with holiday wrapping paper and gift boxes after a Christmas Day full of toys and treasures of all shapes and sizes.

For would-be burglars however, your trash may be just like a brightly lit store window filled with goodies for them to peruse. Unwittingly, people may give criminals the clues they are looking for when deciding on which houses to burglarize, simply by observing their trash.

We always say, dont advertise, dont show everybody who passes by that you got the latest 100-inch TV or the hottest new PlayStation, Heather Rangel, Public Information Officer with the Newport Beach Police Department told The Epoch Times.

Break down all your boxes so that they fit in trash receptacles and are not in plain sight. The few minutes it takes could make all the difference when it comes to not giving thieves the clues they want.

Even if someone is driving through your community on their way somewhere else, what they see may entice them, said Rangel. Criminals will take advantage of that information, so use care when disposing of boxes and other items that may advertise whats inside your home.

Other Useful Tips

Closing blinds at dusk is often overlooked in Southern California, especially when the weather is nice, and the days are long. But once the sun goes down and indoor lights go on, a thief can easily observe who and what is inside from the cover of darkness. A purse or wallet on the kitchen counter, a big dog, or whether anyone else is home can easily be seen, helping burglars pick their targets.

Cluttered yards with overgrown shrubbery are often a sign to burglars that a resident is unlikely to have a security system. Trimming back trees and bushes that block clear view paths to doors and windows from the street can go a long way in not providing the cover thieves seek. Keeping trees maintained also lessens the opportunity for them to be used to scale a fence or access other parts of a home.

Never leave stacks of bricks, lumber, or heavy tools around that can be used to break a window or door. Ladders should be secured out of site as thieves can easily use one stored on a side yard to access higher windows and doors often left open by residents with a false sense of security.

A house for sale in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 21, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

It goes without saying that putting a door key under a mat or above a doorjamb is asking for trouble. Hide keys in unlikely locations or well-camouflaged areas using hide-a-key units, or give an extra key to a trusted neighbor.

Motion-detector and security lighting should be located both at the front as well as the back of a home. Although it can be pretty, avoid vanity home lighting as it does nothing to deter criminals. In fact, it may illuminate more than people realize by casting light towards people and valuables inside.

Getting creative with hiding valuables, and planting decoys, is a way to mitigate losses should a burglar manage to get inside. For example, take an old unused purse, or worthless laptop and leave it near the front door where a thief will easily spot it, grab it and take off.

Master bedrooms are usually the first area of a home that burglars seek out to find cash and jewelry, so putting items like these in baggies and hiding them in a spare bag of dog food or flour in the kitchen is a creative way to keep valuables from being discovered.

Security system signage and visible cameras are an obvious choice when it comes to home security, but porch pirates stealing packages often ignore them. Also, posting a Beware of Dog sign, even if you dont have one, can be an effective deterrent since thieves usually avoid homes with dogs. The idea is to create an aura around your home of being proactive and prepared when it comes to safety and security, so thieves will seek easier targets.

Some criminals take to social media to gather information about a home or other location, so be sure to have a family agreement about what content is appropriate to post when it comes to photos inside and outside your home, or when away from home altogether. Posting a seemingly harmless group photo in front of the Christmas tree or out for holiday cheer with friends can give criminals information you may not even realize is included in the photo.

For example, in 2016, a Fullerton college maintenance worker was able to target women by browsing through their open public posts on social media sites like Instagram and tracking the GPS coordinates of the photos. He then drove to their locations and managed to sneak into the rooms of 33 female college students, stealing laptops, jewelry, and even underwear.
A view down Anzac Parade towards Parliament House in Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia. (Patty Jansen/pixabay)

Canberra Re-Introduces Mask Wearing Over Omicron Surge

Masks will again be mandatory indoors in Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), as it tightens COVID-19 restrictions due to an increase in Omicron infections.

From Wednesday, masks will be required across indoor retail and hospitality venues as well as aged care, workplaces and on public transport.

Aged care restrictions will also be reintroduced, with a new limit of five visitors each day.

The mask mandate will continue over Christmas and the new year period before it is reviewed in January.

Wearing a mask indoors is a small price to pay to keep your family and friends safe, Acting Chief Minister Yvette Berry told reporters on Tuesday.

It came as the national capital recorded 16 new infections and residents faced lengthy queues for testing.

Some testing clinics were forced to close early after reaching capacity.

Nearly 6000 results were processed on Monday as demand for tests reached levels not seen since August.

An essential worker wearing a face mask walks past a Heroes Wear Masks sign in Melbourne July 23, 2020. (Sandra Sanders/Reuters)

Half of the ACTs 124 active COVID-19 cases have been identified as the Omicron strain.

Three virus patients are in hospital, but none have that variant.

Chief Health Officer Kerryn Coleman expected Omicron to become the dominant strain in the ACT.

We anticipate we will see an escalation in cases similar to that in New South Wales, she said.

The unexpected emergency at this time of Omicron is posing an increasing risk to our community, and its why we have made the decision to reintroduce mask-wearing.

The number of active cases in the national capital has nearly doubled in the past week.

Vaccination rates remain largely unchanged, with 98.4 percent of residents aged 12 and older double-dosed.

Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith reassured people Christmas celebrations could still go ahead.

But people should not attend if theyre unwell or are required to isolate.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies during a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing to examine the COVID-19 response, focusing on an update from federal officials, on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 18, 2021. (Susan Walsh/Pool via Reuters)

CDC Director: Initial COVID-19 Vaccines May Not Be Enough for Omicron

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that initial COVID-19 vaccines may not prevent infection from the Omicron COVID-19 variant.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told CNBC that so far, preliminary data suggest the variantnamed last monthcan breach current vaccine antibodies.

That means, she argued, that people need to continue to wear their masks to prevent the infections overall because the vaccines may not prevent infection.

Walensky conceded that the overall number of Omicron-related deaths appears to be fewer than previous COVID-19 waves. In the United States, officials believe the lone death occurred this week in Houston, Texas.

She said that there have been a minority of deaths, and fewer than weve seen for other variants so far. Still, Walensky said that more people need to receive vaccines and booster shots.

The South African Health Ministry recently said that hospitalizations from Omicron are one-tenth that of the initial Delta wave hospitalization rate. On Monday, New York City health commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi noted in an interview that with Omicron, the hospitalizations are about a quarter of where we were at the peak of last winters wave and less than a tenth of where we were in the spring of 2020.

Walenksys comments come after her agency on Monday reported that Omicron appears to be spreading quickly and has overtaken the Delta variant. Omicron accounted for 73 percent of new infections last week, officials said.

In much of the country, its even higher. Omicron is responsible for an estimated 90 percent or more of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest. The national rate suggests that more than 650,000 Omicron infections occurred in the United States last week.

As of Dec. 21, meanwhile, the new strain has been detected in most U.S. states and territories, the agency confirmed on Tuesday.

Since the end of June, the Delta variant had been the main version causing U.S. infections. As recently as the end of November, more than 99.5 percent of coronaviruses were Delta, according to CDC data.

CDCs estimates are based on thousands of coronavirus specimens collected each week through university and commercial laboratories and state and local health departments. Scientists analyze their genetic sequences to determine which versions of the COVID-19 viruses are most abundant.

CDC officials said they do not yet have estimates of how many hospitalizations or deaths are due to Omicron.

In the United Kingdom, about a half-dozen deaths have been reported to be associated with the new variant in the past week, although few details have been provided.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Chile's president-elect Gabriel Boric celebrates with supporters after winning the presidential election in Santiago, Chile, on Dec. 19, 2021. (Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters)

Chile Chooses Young Socialist as President in Historic Election

SANTA CRUZ, BoliviaOn Dec. 19, 35-year-old socialist Gabriel Boric became the youngest president in Chiles history after defeating right-wing candidate Jose Antonio Kast.

Boric won with 55.87 percent of the votes in a run-off election after the Nov. 21 general poll.

The Santiago stock exchange plummeted more than six points after Boric was announced the winner, while the US dollar hit a historic maximum in exchange at 872.61 pesos.

It was a tight election race between Kast and Boric and was also the nations most polarized since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship back in 1990.

Boric, a former student union leader who got his start in politics during the 2011 civil protests, studied law at the University of Chile but never finished, which has been heavily criticized by his contenders.

The millennial president is one of only seven to enter the presidential palace of La Moneda without completing a university education.

Kast conceded defeat on Dec. 19 and congratulated Boric in a public statement.

I have congratulated him [Boric] on his great triumph. From today he is the elected president of Chile and deserves all our respect and constructive collaboration. Chile is always first.

After his victory in the July primaries, Boric quoted famous socialist president Salvador Allende, who killed himself on Sept. 11, 1973, during a military coup detat.

The great avenues through which free men and women pass will be opened to build a better society.

In the July primaries, Boric became the presidential candidate for the Broad Front and Chile Digno Pact parties, which is part of the Chilean Communist Party collective, which led to accusations that he was controlled by communists from his opponents.

However, Boric has also criticized the center-left governments of Chile and was quick to denounce the regimes of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, gaining him critical middle ground support leading up to the election.

Among his campaign promises are considerable reforms to taxes, healthcare, the national pension, and education.

Though despite Borics ambitions, some Chileans arent convinced hes qualified to lead.

Aside from his lack of completed university education, Boric has never held a job outside of politics.

Others have questioned his recreational choices, including potential substance abuse after Boric refused to take a drug test back in November, claiming the cost of the hair-follicle test was too expensive.

Political opponent Kast offered to pay for the test, but Boric still refused and became flustered during an interview when questioned by journalists.

In his victory speech delivered from Santiago, Boric said, I will be the president of all Chileans. Of those who today voted for this project, of whom today fill the squares of all Chile, and of those who did not turn out to vote. We will be there for all of you. 

He also assured people that he intended to uphold Chiles democratic values every day of this government.

Correction: Allendes death was determined to be a suicide, not a murder. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian speaks during a daily briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs office in Beijing on Feb. 24, 2020. (Andy Wong/AP Photo)

China Sanctions 4 US Officials in Retaliation Against Washingtons Pressure Over Xinjiang

The communist regime in China is imposing sanctions on four U.S. religious freedom officials, in response to Washingtons efforts to pressure Beijing over its human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The sanctions target Chair Nadine Maenza, Vice Chair Nury Turkel, and two commissioners of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Dec. 21.

The measures block their travel to mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau and freeze any assets within China owned by those individuals, according to Zhao. He also noted that the sanctions were countermeasures against recent U.S. sanctions, imposed under Chinas anti-foreign sanctions law.

The United States leveled sanctions on Dec. 10 against a Chinese company and four current and former officials that are involved in the regimes oppression of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in the far-western Xinjiang region. Last week, it also blacklisted dozens of Chinese entities for aiding Beijings abuses in the region or for advancing the regimes military.

More than 1 million Uyghur and other Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in internment camps in Xinjiang, where theyve been subjected to forced sterilization, torture, political indoctrination, and forced labor. The United States and other Western democracies have labeled Beijings actions in the region as a genocide.

A perimeter fence is constructed around what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng in Xinjiang, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Zhao denied the accusations of abuses and expressed strong opposition and condemnation of the U.S. sanctions at the Dec. 21 briefing in Beijing. He accused Washington of interfering in Xinjiangs affairs and Chinas internal affairs and threatened to retaliate.

China will make further responses in accordance with the development of the situation, Zhao said.

USCIRF, in a Dec. 21 statement, strongly condemned the sanctions.

Maenza said the organization is not surprised to be included in the baseless sanctions imposed by the Chinese regime.

As we have said beforeUSCIRF will not be silenced, she said. The Chinese government needs to end its state-led oppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and others, rather than implementing misguided sanctions.

Three current or former commissioners of the USCIRF had already been targeted by the regime under tit-for-tat sanctions. The most recent target was the bodys former commissioner Johnnie Moore, who was blacklisted on May 26, days after the U.S. State Department announced sanctions against a Chinese official for his role in suppressing adherents of the spiritual practice Falun Gong.

The Dec. 21 sanction from Beijing comes amid escalated pressure from Washington and its allies over the regimes repression in Xinjiang. The United States, UK, Canada, and Australia have declared a diplomatic boycott of Beijings 2022 Winter Olympics.

The U.S. Senate approved legislation on Dec. 16 to ban all imports from Xinjiang over forced labor concerns, which was also approved by the House a few days earlier. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act now heads to the White House; President Joe Biden has said hell sign it into law.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (right) speaks with Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the State Department ahead of a meeting in Washington, on Sept. 15, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinas Economic Attack on Lithuania Requires a Joint US-EU Defense

Beijing is also targeting Germany, France, and Sweden

News Analysis

Beijing has reacted against Lithuanias upgrade to its Taiwan relations with extended trade and diplomatic sanctions against the Baltic country. The move is so severe and unprecedented that it provoked reactions from not only the United States, Britain, and European Union, but a German business group that has deep financial ties to China.

Behind the uproar was Lithuanias courageous decision in November to allow Taiwan to open a de facto consulate in Lithuanias capital city of Vilnius. The office uses the name Taiwan rather than Taiwans capital city of Taipei. The former more accurately reflects the island democracys sovereignty than the Taipei used in the United States and elsewhere in Europe.

Last year, Lithuania withdrew from Chinas 17+1 diplomatic forum of Central and East European countries, and Lithuanias ruling coalition agreed to support those fighting for freedom in Taiwan.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said he will not attend the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Lithuania, a country of nearly 3 million, regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, which in part explains the countrys fierce defense of democracy relative to most of the rest of the world.

Beijings Backlash Against Lithuania

In response to Lithuanias growing resistance, Beijing effectively banned imports from the Baltic country on Dec. 1, and demanded that international corporations sever ties with Lithuania or be denied access to the Chinese market.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) expelled Lithuanias ambassador to China in November, withdrew its own from Vilnius, and recently attempted to illegally downgrade the Lithuanian Embassy in Beijing.

According to Bloomberg, China had pressured the Baltic nation to change its embassys name to the Office of the Charge dAffaires, according to Lithuanias Foreign Ministry, a label that doesnt exist in international law and one that would effectively downgrade its diplomatic status.

Landsbergis said: This is still our embassy, which has never changed its name. Any change of name must be done on [a] bilateral basis. Unilateral changes are not recognized by international law.

Beijing most recently demanded that Lithuanian diplomats return their identification cards.

Alarmed at their possible loss of diplomatic immunity and concerned for their safety, Lithuania recalled its diplomats from China on Dec. 15 for consultations. Nineteen of them and their dependents consequently departed. The embassy now works virtually.

The Lithuanian Embassy in Beijing, China, on Aug. 10, 2021. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

According to Arnoldas Pranckevicius, Lithuanias vice minister of Foreign Affairs, China is trying to make an example out of usa negative exampleso that other countries do not follow our path. Therefore, it is a matter of principle how the Western community, the United States, and European Union react.

Support for Lithuania Is Growing Too Slowly

The United States, Britain, Estonia, and of course Taiwan have all supported Lithuania in its dispute with China. But, so far, the EU has reacted only weakly, in large part due to Germany and Frances economic ties with China, and apparent reluctance to use the bloc in defense of Europes smaller countries.

In response to Beijings economic sanctions against Lithuania, the EU began gathering evidence to bring China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for violation of international trade rules, but that could take months.

And the WTO effort could eventually be scuttled, as some companies will not want Brussels to take strong action against Beijing. According to the Financial Times, many companies fear that if they complain they will be shut out of China completely.

Beijing Doubles Down Against Lithuania

Chinas nationalist media has weighed in on the dispute. According to the state-controlled Global Times tabloid, we have no intention to deny that economic and trade cooperation between Lithuania and China will be affected after China downgraded its diplomatic relations with Lithuania to the level of charge daffaires, the lowest rank of diplomatic representative, over the latters breach of the One-China principle. Make no mistake that any country that provokes Chinas core interests is bound to find itself on the receiving end of countermeasures.

Beijings reaction could have been worse. In 2018, Beijing effectively kidnapped two prominent Canadians to pressure the North American country over the detention of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei. The two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were kept in harsh conditions for over 1,000 days, until Meng was returned to China.

(L-R) Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, two Canadians who were detained in China following the arrest of Meng Wanzhou in Canada on a U.S. extradition request. (AP Photo)

Over this time, Beijing lied about there being no relationship between the detention of the two Michaels and the Meng arrest. Yet Spavor and Kovrig were arrested, and released, within days of the same happening to Meng.

The Chinese regime has likewise denied pressuring international corporations to sever ties with Lithuania, but has indicated as much by saying that Chinese companies no longer trust Lithuania.

I heard that many Chinese companies no longer regard Lithuania as a trustworthy partner, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said. Lithuania has to look at itself for the reason why Lithuanian companies are facing difficulties in trade and economic cooperation in China.

Beijing Extends Sanctions to Germany, France, and Sweden

The CCPs trade sanctions have quietly extended to pressure German, French, and Swedish companies with supply chains that reach Lithuania.

According to Politico sources, two German companies in the auto industry had parts stopped at Chinese ports in recent days because they were manufactured in Lithuania. Some of these components could take years to be replaced with trusted alternative suppliers.  French and Swedish firms are also reportedly facing similar problems because Lithuanian products form part of their supply chain.

Consequently, some international companies have canceled contracts with Lithuanian suppliers.

Over the longer term, others will increasingly reevaluate the wisdom of relying on Chinese markets and manufacturing.

Lithuanias direct trade with China is relatively small, according to the Gatestone Institute. The country exported 300 million worth of goods to China in 2020, less than 1% of its total exports. It is, however, home to hundreds of companies that make products for multinationals that sell to China.

This includes Lithuanian components in German cars, for example. The German industry is pushing its business lobby, BDI, into the desperate position of publicly criticizing both Lithuania and Beijing for the dispute.

German companies, which depend on the relatively low-wage industry of Lithuania, will also consider transshipment of Lithuanian components through other countries. Continental and Hella are two major German corporations that rely on Lithuanian labor and are getting pressured by Beijing through denial of imports or exports. Similar denials are also affecting smaller German companies.

Continental, which has operations in 58 countries, is considering shipping products from Lithuania via other countries  in order to avoid further the Chinese blockade, according to a Financial Times source.

BDI criticized Beijing for its own goal, revealing even in its public criticism that the group is advising the CCP on how best to achieve what the business group should realize are Beijings illiberal ends.

BDI went further to tangentially criticize the victim, Lithuania, for being out of step with EU policy.

The German industrys awkward attempt to find a middle path between dictatorship and democracy is explained by Germanys 2020 trade with China. This amounted to 213 billion (about $247 billion) in goods alone, Germanys largest with any country.

Beijings Threat to International Law and the Equal Sovereignty of States

By criticizing Lithuania, the German industry is weighing in on the side of autocracy and the status quo of massive China trade at the expense of democracy in Taiwan and the freedom of countries, like Lithuania, to support democracy globally. This will push the EU into pressuring not only Beijing, but Lithuania, thus furthering the occlusion of small democracies by big power politics.

Chinas state media reflects this unequal approach to international politics, describing Lithuania as a mouse or even just a flea under the feet of fighting elephants.

Even large democratic blocs like the EU, of which Lithuania is a member, are in a weak position relative to Beijing.

According to Politico, for the worlds biggest trade bloc, its usual trade defense instruments such as safeguards or anti-dumping measures do not cover the gray economic zone in which China is targeting Lithuania. The EU also doesnt have a bilateral trade agreement with China through which it could remedy the tensions.

The EUs coordination failures and lack of defensive instruments will necessitate either caving to Beijing, or a strengthening of the EU, both of which result in a concentration of power in what are becoming superpower capitals.

EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis has proposed as much in his anti-coercion instrument designed to tackle exactly this [China-Lithuania] type of geopolitically motivated trade tensions, according to Politico, and which would allow the EU to strike back against trade challengers via goods, services and intellectual property rights.

EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis speaks during a press conference at the Europa building in Brussels, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Olivier Matthys/AP Photo)

But Brussels, Paris, and Berlin are all more cautious about opposing Beijing publicly, than are smaller states in the EUincluding Czechia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Slovakiathat want EU protection against Beijings pressure. Thus the EU is stymied by the vetoes of its biggest economies.

The WTO is likewise paralyzed and illiberal due to the accession of China in 2001.

Beijing Forces Global Political Polarization and a Concentration of Power

The China-Lithuania dispute and its necessary remedies are tragic examples of the concentration of power at the international level, as Lithuania retreats from its independent representation in Beijing to rely on the EU, whose remedies are contrary to the political independence of its component parts. The EU has a relatively illiberal position, compared to Lithuania, on the issue of Taiwans sovereignty and democracy.

Trade sanctions meted out by Beijing have similarities to what it might have done years ago to foreign corporations that refer to Taiwan as a country rather than a city or province of China. This indicates how Beijing views the status of not only Taiwan, but other small countries globally. They are either with Beijing, or against it, due to their recognition of Taiwan. Those in the latter category must necessarily be subordinated to Beijings goals of hegemony.

The best defense of Lithuania, Taiwan, and democracy generally is for the EU to overcome its paralysis and work together with the United States to impose counter-sanctions on China directly, completely bypassing the slow-moving WTO. International organizations that include China have proven to be failures for democracies given Beijings growing influence, veto, and breaking of international norms.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Chinas Growth Picks Up Marginally in November

A slight improvement in November does not change Chinas fundamentally slowed growth picture

News Analysis

After a disappointing couple of months, Chinas economy improved modestly in November. It seems that the worst of the energy shortfall had lifted, allowing some catch-up last month.

Beneath these kinds of month-to-month variation, however, Chinas economic and financial fundamentals suggest a slower growth profile for some time to come. Chinese leader Xi Jinping seems to recognize this reality. Perhaps in an effort to put a good face on a painful reality, he has begun to talk less about growth than quality of life and environmental concerns. However, Beijing chooses to color economic realityslower growth is in Chinas future.

According to preliminary figures, Chinese manufacturing showed a slight upward movement in November after two months of modest declines. The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) came in at a level of 50.1, just a hair above the 50-point mark that distinguishes growth from decline. The non-manufacturing index showed growth even during the drop in manufacturing. In November, it dipped slightly to 52.3, still expansion, from 52.4 in October.

Exports edged down in November, less because of problems, the statistics ministry explained, than because China had already fulfilled most of the holiday orders from the West. Imports accelerated, largely because China has had to bring in a lot of overseas coal and oil to supplement domestic energy supplies and its regular energy imports. Consumer spending seems to have held up. October, the most recent month for which data are available, came in about 5 percent over year-ago levels. Capital spending by business has also held up, with October showing about 6.1 percent growth over year-ago levels. Even the best of this is well short of historic growth rates and certainly the way things looked last spring when statistics recorded double-digit percent growth comparisons to year-ago levels.

Aside from the immediate effects of energy shortages, part of the growth slowdown stems from the legacy of past planning mistakes. These problems came into dramatic light with the default of the property developer, Evergrande, but the matter is much larger than this one, albeit huge company. Chinas rapid growth for years encouraged all sorts of businesses to go into debt to take advantage of the opportunities implicit in that rapid development. Any change was bound to create financial problems, which has become evident with Evergrande. The aggressiveness of Evergrande and others, though unsurprising, has left a legacy of unsupportable debt that complicates growth prospects.

But there is more to this story. In Chinas still very centralized and planned economy, business has frequently followed government guidance. And that guidance has often prompted development in ways not entirely consistent with the preferences of consumers and other buyers. Recent reports that Chinas housing stock is 20 percent unoccupied sets this problem in sharp relief. Such misallocations of resources have added to Chinas overhang of unsupportable debt. Now Beijing is trying to work out these mistakes, but even under the best of circumstances the legacy of these errors will remain for some time and hold back growth prospects accordingly.

A man walks in front of a housing complex by Chinese property developer Evergrande in Beijing on Oct. 21, 2021. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

Even if China had managed to avoid such problems, its relatively advanced stage of development would slow the pace of growth, certainly compared to the past. When an underdeveloped economy, such as Chinas was for a long time, begins to emerge, targets for investment and development are obvious. Roadsrail or pavedeffectively connect villages, towns, and cities for the first time and, in so doing, tremendously enlarge commercial opportunities and make production more efficient. The construction of portsair and seafosters commerce, creates jobs, and accordingly enhances the pace of growth. Outside investors take advantage of low wages, as Chinas were, and create still more jobs as they build factories and warehouses. The economys metabolism picks up as do growth prospects.

But after development has taken advantage of these obvious opportunities, as has been done in China, what to do next becomes harder to discern. Meanwhile, further improvements, though helpful, have less effect. A first road between the two towns does wonders for growth. Widening it improves matters but not nearly so much as the original road did. These differences explain why developed economies grow at slower paces on average than emerging economies. China has moved from the first, fast-growth stage to the slower developed stage.

Chinese demographics also seem poised to slow the pace of economic expansion. When Chinese development took off in the late 1970s, China had a youthful, eager, and well-disciplined workforce with which to get the most out of the kind of investment just described. But from the start, Beijing promulgated a one-child policy for families. Initially, the paucity of babies enhanced growth prospects by freeing young adults for work. But after all this time, low birth rates have created a paucity of young workers to take the place of the original eager young workers who are now retiring.

Though arcane demographic statistics have no place in an article of this sort, its suffice to say that China now faces an outright decline in the size of its workforce just when an outsized retired population will strain the economy. Together these realities will also detract from the economys ability to expand rapidly, though as with all things demographic, the effect will come on only gradually.

It is not altogether clear whether Xi or his colleagues in Beijing are aware of all these considerations. On at least one point, the betting is that they are. China has liberalized the one-child policy. Of course, even if birth rates were to pick up suddenly, which they seem not to be doing, it will take 18 to 20 years for any additional births to affect the nations labor supply. For these other growth considerations, it is not apparent what China can do much to mitigate the growth impediments they impose.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping talks to Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow and his wife Adele Fleet Bacow at The Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on March 20, 2019. (Andrea Verdelli/Pool/Getty Images)

Chinas Influence Over US Universities Poses Existential Risks

Commentary

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is busy developing high-tech weaponry. By the end of the decade, China will have disruptive military technologies capable of wreaking widespread chaos.

In other words, China is developing weapons that will change the character of warfare. Which begs the question: Why are U.S. universities helping China advance its military might?

According to a new report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, a number of U.S. universities are closely aligned with various Chinese universitiesall of whom are closely aligned with the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The report warns that these Chinese universities are heavily involved in the PLAs military buildupincluding its nuclear weapons programwhich continues to expand at a rapid pace.

Who benefits when U.S. universities partner with CCP-backed enterprises? In one word: China.

As the report noted, the partnerships strengthen Chinas broader military-industrial complex, including its nuclear program, cyberespionage platforms, and other sensitive weapons research.

This is deeply concerning. The United States, until very recently, was the dominant player in tech and weapons research. However, things have changed, with China now the ascendant force.

Although Chinese universities have improved significantly over the years, China still relies on acquiring technology by any means available, according to an unclassified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

By any means possible, as you can guess, involves acts of espionage and intellectual property (IP) theft. The unclassified report was released in 2019; since then, little has changed. Its common knowledge that the Chinese have been stealing ideas and technologies from the United States for years.

In 2015, the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) published an article discussing Chinas rapidly expanding military, and the fact that it had been (and continues to be) bolstered by weapons cloned from the arsenals of other countries, including the United States.

China has copied a number of U.S. aircraft, including the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Northrop Grumman X-47B, according to the USNI piece. These designs were acquired through highly concentrated cyberespionage campaigns.

Since the turn of the century, U.S. defense officials have raised the alarm about Chinas technical reconnaissance and concerted efforts to steal valuable data. Alas, their warnings have largely been ignored.

The aforementioned Foundation for Defense of Democracies report discusses the dangers of Confucius Institutes (CI), and the ways in which they serve as platforms that advance facets of Chinas military-civil fusion (MCF).

For the uninitiated, the MCF has one aim and one aim only: to make the PLA a world-class military by 2049. The MCF is overseen by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who also happens to chair the CCPs Central Military Commission and the Central Commission for Military-Civil Fusion Development.

A human rights group urges Tufts University to close its Confucius Institute in Somerville, Mass., on March 13, 2021. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)

Chinas CI-enabled alliances, according to the report, include the establishment of academic and research partnerships between top-tier American institutions and Chinese universities supporting Beijings military-industrial complex.

Under the MCF, China is actively targeting key technologies, including the likes of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors, and aerospace technology.

The author C. JoyBell C. once wrote: Dont let a thief into your house three times. The first time was enough. The second time was a chance. The third time means youre stupid.

By allowing China to establish CIs on American soil, the U.S. government allowed the CCP into 120 different houses around the country. Although many are now closed, there are 30 of these institutes still operating in the United States. That is 30 too many. In this age of cyberespionage, IP theft, cyberhacking, and intelligent warfare, the United States continues to let China eat its lunch.

Imagine for a second if the shoe was on the other foot. Imagine if a U.S. equivalent of CIs existed, and imagine if 30 of these institutes were operating in China, conducting espionage, and spreading propaganda. How would the CCP respond? Not favorably, one imagines. Remember, the first CI came to the United States in 2004. Thats almost 20 years of thievery and lies.

According to Alex Joske, a researcher working with the Cyber Policy Center, universities must develop a mature understanding of the Chinese state. By working with CCP-backed researchers and scientists, they are enabling the CCP to enhance its capacity to stay in power indefinitely.

U.S. universities, either wittingly or otherwise, are helping a rival military become even more powerful. Of course, those of a more delicate disposition will read this and shout words such as racist and xenophobe. But, I contend, its neither racist nor xenophobic to highlight obvious truths.

The CCP is using U.S. universities to further its rather ominous agenda. Sadly, dozens of U.S. universities are only too eager to assist.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A worker in a protective suit checks the temperature of a passenger arriving at the Xianning North Station on the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations, in Xianning city, Hubei Province, China, on Jan. 24, 2020. (Martin Pollard/Reuters)

Chinas Zero COVID-19 Policy Impacts Another Chinese New Year, No Family Reunions

Since the outbreak of the CCP virus, which caused the COVID-19 pandemic, China will ring in its third Chinese New Year on Feb. 1, 2022. However, at least 31 epidemic prevention centers in Chinas provinces and municipalities have issued their policy: People should stay where they are for the Chinese New Year.

The Chinese New Year is the most celebrated holiday of family gatherings, but Chinas strict zero COVID-19 policy is challenging the tolerance level of the population.

In addition, this policy will affect 370 million Chinese migrant workers, the largest contributors to the once-in-a-year holiday travel.

Stay Where You Are

According to a Chinese local government media report, Pingxiang city, Guangxi Province, was the first to issue the notice. On Dec. 5, the local CDC requested that shop and store employees stay where they are, send New Years greetings via the internet, and reduce mobility.

Liu Jun (pseudonym) from Shaanxi, a landlocked province in northwest China, has worked in a chemical plant in the coastal city, Guangzhou, for the past eight months.

He said the companys regulation was relatively relaxed because of the cultural mixits run by both a Korean investor and a state-owned enterprise.

However, the company did require that employees from medium- and high-risk areas get their managers approvals to travel home.

He said that one of his coworkers from northwest China has not been allowed to go home for the past couple of years due to the surge of local cases.

The 26-year-old Liu talked about his previous employer, which blocked any possibility for the workers to go home so that the company could reduce the risk of shutting down the entire production.

Last year, Liu was able to spend the new year at home because he left the job, but the family reunion still didnt happen.

Both his sister and father were restrained at their workplaces in Guangzhou, southern China.

He believed the regime was demonizing the pandemic. Restricting people from going places is convenient and easy for the administration. A little more humanity would have cost them resources, Liu said, explaining why the regime would not take the time to make the prevention measures more people-friendly.

Wang Yi (pseudonym), a native of Hebei, northern coastal China, is a designer in Beijing. He told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that he spent his new year by himself in Beijing last year, but he called home on Chinese New Years Eve.

But, he really wanted to go home to visit his 94-year-old grandmother this year. He mentioned the feeling of spending the New Years eve alone, Its quite sad, not to the point of crying  but people were having the reunion dinner, and I was having instant noodles by myself.

A baby sits in a basket on his way home after shopping for spring festival couplets at the Qingbaijiang District in Chengdu of Sichuan Province, China, on Jan. 16, 2009. (China Photos/Getty Images)

Not Staying Put for Another Year

In Zhejiang, eastern coastal China, at least 500,000 people were recently quarantined at home and another 100,000 in isolation facilities due to local outbreaks, according to Chinese state news media reports on Dec. 15.

A local resident Miao Hua (pseudonym) told The Epoch Times on Dec. 13, that since the city was locked down, for six days, theres been no food supplies or door-to-door visits for a nucleic acid test.

According to the customary practice of the regime, local residents often encounter lockdowns on short notice; typically within a few minutes of announcement the lockdowns begin.

He said, we wanted to go back to our hometown, but the highway was closed, so we couldnt drive back. Now the food has become a problem, its scary.

Miao explained that the elderly are in need of medicines for high blood pressure, hyperlipidemia, and diabetesthere are also childrenbut the lockdown forbids them from going out shopping. Basic food supplies are gone, and the officials dont care about peoples problems, even after addressing their issues.

Zhang Xin (pseudonym) was another local resident in Zhejiang. He had to celebrate the Chinese New Year by himself in a rental apartment last year.

He told The Epoch Times, This year I will definitely not stay here for another new year. Its been two years since I went home. I will scramble back home if I have to.

Longing for Home

The travel ban also affected many college students who study in foreign provinces.

On Dec. 16, Xian city in Shaanxi Province suddenly announced the closure of a number of scenic spots, museums, shopping malls, and schools. Many college students are forced to stay for the new year on short notice.

Take a local university, Changan University, as an example.

Immediately following the city announcement, the university began to closely manage the dormitories on Dec. 17, and the meals are now collectively distributed.

Student Zhang Zhihui wrote on her Weibo (Chinese social media) page: On the evening of the 14th, the campus was closed in five minutes, a shed was built in five minutes, a nucleic acid test in three hours. On the 15th, the residential area on campus was classified as medium risk.

She further stated: The future is hopeless. It seems that what we planned will not come true. Its the second Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Years Eve that will be gone because of the epidemic. Now even going home for the Chinese New Year is a luxury.

Many Chinese web bloggers expressed their true feelings online via their Weibo accounts.

Works at the Front Desk wrote: If the epidemic does not disappear for several years, will Chinese New Year be celebrated on the spot every year?  How long can we tolerate a life filled with isolation, nucleic acid testing, and not seeing families or spouses.

Moon Li said: Its too early to say  stay where you are for the new year.  Epidemic prevention is of course important, but many people have not been able to go home for the New Year for two or three years!

A blogger also wrote: When you ask us to get a booster, I agreed; Do the nucleic acid test, I obeyed; But, not going home for three years, its too much.
The China Evergrande Centre building sign is seen in Hong Kong on Dec. 7, 2021. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Chinese City Takes Back 2 Plots of Land From Evergrande

HONG KONGThe city of Chengdu has taken back two plots of land from China Evergrande Group the latest move by authorities to seize assets from the cash-strapped property developer.

The land planning authority in the southwestern city said it was taking control of the plots, totaling over 300,000 square meters, as Evergrande had not developed them after holding them for over a decade.

The notices on the two plots, posted by the authority on Dec. 17, followed the same move by the Haikou city authority early last week, taking back a plot without compensation in the countrys island province of Hainan.

The Chinese regime is calling the shots at Evergrande after the real estate giant missed payments on two overseas bonds, triggering a restructuring to deal with its more than $300 billion in liabilities.

Its EV unit China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group also said late last month it had returned undeveloped lands for seven projects worth a total of 1.3 billion yuan ($203.87 million) to the Chinese regime.

Shares of Evergrande fell 9.9 percent on Monday to HK$1.46, a fresh low.

S&P downgraded Evergrande on Friday to selective default after the firm missed a debt payment deadline earlier this month, putting the developer at risk of becoming the countrys biggest defaulter. Fitch has already downgraded the developer to restricted default.

($1 = 6.3765 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Couple Arrested in Huntington Beach Fatal Hit-and-Run

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.A Seal Beach couple was arrested in connection with a fatal hit-and-run collision in Huntington Beach, police said today.

Daniel, 37, and Kimberly Burch, 39, who live in Surfside, were arrested in connection with the Sunday evening collision at Pacific Coast Highway near 24th Street, according to Jennifer Carey of the Huntington Beach Police Department. The couple have since bailed out of the Huntington Beach jail.

Police were called at 6:41 p.m. Sunday, and when officers arrived they found the victim, a 66-year-old man, whose name was not immediately released as police were still notifying all of his family members. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

While police were still on scene, Kimberly Burch told officers that she was the driver who struck the victim in a 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee, Carey said. Later, investigators determined that her husband, Daniel, was the driver, Carey said.

Kimberly Burch was booked on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact and Daniel Burch was booked on suspicion of a fatal hit-and-run, Carey said.

Anyone who saw the collision was asked to call investigators at 714-536-5670 or 714-536-5231.
A nurse is handed a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine before administering it to a college student at a mobile vaccination clinic at the California State University Long Beach campus in Calif., on Aug. 11, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Death of 26-Year-Old Man Linked to Pfizer Vaccine: New Zealand Officials

Authorities in New Zealand this week linked the death of a 26-year-old man to Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine, saying the individual suffered from myocarditis, a type of inflammation of the heart muscle, after taking the first dose.

With the current available information, the board has considered that the myocarditis was probably due to vaccination in this individual, a COVID-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board said in a statement, adding it extends its deepest sympathies to the family, whanau, and friends of the people involved. Whanau is a Maori language word for extended family.

The death is New Zealands second that has been linked to the Pfizer shot. Health officials in August said a woman died after taking two doses of the mRNA vaccine.

The man, who was not identified, died within two weeks of taking his first dose. He had not sought any medical treatment or advice for his symptoms, said officials.

New Zealands vaccine safety board said two other people, including a 13-year-old, died with possible myocarditis after receiving their shots. The authority said more details needed to be obtained first before linking the childs death with the vaccine, while they said the other deatha man in his 60swas unlikely related to the Pfizer shot.

The benefits of vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 continue to greatly outweigh the risk of such rare side effects, the monitoring boards statement said. It added that COVID-19 itself can cause myocarditis and other serious side effects.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in an update on vaccines last month, the agency considers myocarditis cases to be rare and most often occur following the second dose. Chest pain, shortness of breath, and feelings of a fluttering heart are symptoms.

The known risks of COVID-19 illness and its related, possibly severe complications, such as long-term health problems, hospitalization, and even death, far outweigh the potential risks of having a rare adverse reaction to vaccination, including the possible risk of myocarditis, said the CDC.

The Epoch Times has contacted Pfizer for comment.

A Pfizer spokesperson told CNBC that the pharmaceutical giant was aware of the death, saying it is monitoring all possible adverse event reports. The spokesperson said that Pfizer believes the vaccine provides more benefit than risk.

Earlier this month, a federal agency that deals with compensations, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, confirmed it is paying out one of the 4,751 claims that have alleged injuries or death arising from the administration of a COVID-19 countermeasure. That can include vaccines, drugs, or medical devices.

One COVID-19 claim has been determined eligible for compensation and is pending a review of eligible expenses, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program said in a brief statement. No additional details were provided.

Meanwhile, about 10,000 Australians have indicated they will file COVID-19 vaccine claims, alleging injury or loss of income.
A woman offers prayers in front of a building damaged by last Friday's deadly fire in Osaka, western Japan, on Dec. 21, 2021. (Kyodo News via AP)

Death Toll From Suspected Arson at Japanese Clinic Rises to 25: Media

TOKYOThe death toll from a suspected arson attack at a psychiatry clinic in Japan has risen to 25 with the death of a woman believed to be in her 20s, local media reported on Tuesday.

A 61-year-old man suspected of starting the fire on Friday in the western city of Osaka and a woman who appeared to be in her 30s were in critical condition, Kyodo news agency said.

Security camera footage from the clinic showed the fire broke out when the suspect carried two bags of liquid in and set them on fire, an Osaka police official said on Monday.

This photo shows a building where a fire broke out Friday in Osaka, western Japan, on Dec. 18, 2021. (Chisato Tanaka/AP Photo)

Meanwhile, an Osaka police investigator told The Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity because of department rule, that the suspect might have copied the fatal 2019 Kyoto Animation studio arson while preparing his own attack.

Police found in the suspects house a months-old newspaper containing an article on the 2019 attack on the Kyoto Animation studio that could have inspired the suspect to copy the deadly clinic attack.

The suspect was identified as Morio Tanimoto. He was also severely injured and is being treated in a hospital, and has not yet been arrested or charged.

Reuters contributed to this article.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis mingles with audience members after signing into law Senate Bill 7072 at Florida International University in Miami on May 24, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

DeSantis Credits Constitutional Freedom, Spending Policies for Floridas Economic Performance

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave credit for his states jobs and economic performance to respecting constitutional rights, ensuring freedom from vaccine mandates, low taxation, and government spending policies.

DeSantis discussed on Fox News the Sunshine States stance regarding COVID-19 measures and its focus on the constitutional rights of Floridians.

At the end of the day in Florida, Floridians know we will not let anybody lock them down. We will not let anyone take their jobs, DeSantis said. We will not let anyone ruin their businesses, and we will not let anyone close their schools, so people are going to be able to live life. Theyre going to be able to make their own decisions.

As for the Omicron coronavirus variant, a mild but fast-spreading variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, DeSantis said that when compared to the Delta variant, Omicron has not shown to produce the same level of hospitalizations.

The numbers of South Africa were, by and large, very encouraging and didnt justify the hysteria that you saw by lots of folks in corporate media, he said.

DeSantis then talked about the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, which have turned into massive impediments that have affected the daily lives of the majority of Americans.

I cannot believe that something that started with 15 days to slow the spread, now, almost two years later, youre seeing lockdowns and closures, he said, noting that some places have mask and vaccine mandates, but are still locked down because the number of cases keeps rising.

There has been only one death attributed to the Omicron variant in the United States so far.

Florida has largely supported early treatments for COVID-19, including monoclonal antibody treatments. DeSantis said hospitalization rates in the state were relatively low compared to other parts of the country because of these monoclonal clinics.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandate requiring all private businesses with more than 100 employees to get vaccinated is a terrible decision, DeSantis said.

Floridians are able to opt out of these types of mandates. The OSHA mandate must not be allowed to stand, on a legal and constitutional standpoint. They reached back decades and found some statute and are using that to force vaccinationsthats never been done in the history of our country, and so I think its a massive expansion of federal power that goes beyond the Constitution.

When asked whether he had received a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, DeSantis replied that he has just had the normal shot and that it was peoples individual decision whether to get the vaccine booster dose.

Florida added 50,000 new jobs in November, a quarter of the 200,000 total jobs added throughout the country. DeSantis said it was a combination of freedoms, low taxes, and spending policies that made the state perform well compared to a state such as New York.

People know in Florida, their freedoms are going to be respected, he said. People know they can invest here and not have their businesses shut down. People know theyre going to get jobs here and not be forced out because of mandates.
A health worker checks a box of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine donated by the United States, during a booster vaccination drive at the Zainoel Abidin hospital in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, on Aug. 9, 2021. (Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP via Getty Images)

Development of Omicron-Specific Shot Could Begin in Weeks: Moderna CEO

Modernas chief executive officer doesnt expect any problems with the development of a booster shot against the latest strain of the CCP virus and hopes clinical trials can begin early next year.

It only needs minor adjustments for Omicron. I dont expect any problems, Stephane Bancel told Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, likely referring to the companys currently authorized 50 microgram dose booster of its mRNA-1273 vaccine.

Bancel noted that the biotechnology company is currently only awaiting important information on Omicron to begin development.

That will take another week or two, Bancel said, adding that it will take a few months before we can produce 500 million doses after approval.

If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Switzerlands Swissmedic, and other regulatory agencies require further studies, then that would add at least three months, he said.

Some authorities want a study, others are still undecided, Bancel told the paper. In my opinion, it depends very much on how severely the disease progresses.

The CEO of Moderna Stephane Bancel is seen in this video frame grab as he speaks during an interview with AFP on Nov. 17, 2020. (Ivan Couronne/AFP via Getty Images)

Bancels announcement on the development of an Omicron-specific booster shot comes as the company said on Dec. 20 that its existing COVID-19 vaccine booster shot sharply increased Omicron neutralizing antibody levels in laboratory testing.

The company said in a statement that its currently authorized booster shot increased Omicron neutralizing antibody levels 37-fold, while a not-yet-approved 100 microgram dose booster raised them 83-fold.

Bancel called the findings of the lab study a reassuring development, noting that the company will continue to rapidly advance an Omicron-specific booster candidate into clinical testing.

The company produced between 700 million and 800 million COVID-19 vaccine doses this year, and expects to produce a higher number in 2022, boosting production from 100 million doses a month to 150 million.

A study published on Dec. 16 in the British Medical Journal suggests that the Moderna shot is up to four times more likely to cause heart inflammationmyocarditis or myopericarditisthan Pfizer-BioNTechs COVID-19 vaccine.

Vaccination with [Modernas vaccine] was associated with a significantly increased risk of myocarditis or myopericarditis in the Danish population, and the rate was threefold to fourfold higher with the Moderna vaccine compared to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, authors said in the study, which spanned almost 85 percent of Danes, or 4.9 million people aged 12 and older.

Omicron, a highly mutated and less deadly variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, has already spread around the globe after being first detected last month in southern Africa. Health experts in South Africa have said Omicron was not driving up hospitalizations or fatalities in the country to a significant degree.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Dec. 18 that Omicron cases have now been reported in 89 countries, and that the number of infections was doubling every 1.5 to 3 days in areas with community transmission.

Epoch Times reporter Tom Ozimek and Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
A statue of Mickey Mouse at Disneyland California Adventure theme park in Anaheim, Calif., on Feb. 1, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Disneyland Pass Holder Sues Over Misleading Annual Pass

A Disneyland annual pass holder filed a lawsuit against Walt Disney Parks and Resorts for misleading buyers into believing they would receive unlimited dates to access the theme park.

The $5 million lawsuit was filed by Jenale Nielsen, of Santa Clara County, on behalf of herself and 3,600 other Dream Key passholders who are experiencing theme park visitation limits after purchasing the top tier pass.

The $1,399 Dream Key annual pass was advertised to have no blockout dates, according to the lawsuit (pdf).

The lawsuit claims Disneyland misrepresented the annual pass benefits for consumers and seeks to prevent Disney from unlawful business practices.

Ms. Nielsen and the proposed class have lost money as a result of Disneys unlawful behavior, the lawsuit states.

Nielsen purchased the top tier pass in September since it was advertised to have no blockout dates and would grant her more visits to the theme park, according to the lawsuit.

After purchasing the Dream Key, Nielson attempted to make a reservation for November to visit Disneyland but found the theme park to be filled for most days and weekends despite attempting to secure a slot in October.

When checking the Disneyland reservation webpage, she observed that park reservations were open for single-day ticket buyers but not annual passholders.

Nielsen filed the lawsuit on Nov. 9 from the Orange County Superior Court to combat the lack of available dates for Dream Key passholders after paying for the most expensive pass.

Ms. Nielson did not knowand had no way of knowingthat the Dream Key was, essentially, a second class ticket with limited availability because Disney had reserved an unknown majority of the available reservations for single day or other full price ticket purchases, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit has since been transferred to the United States District Court on Dec. 15 since the value is over $5 million and Walt Disney Parks is located in Florida, according to the lawsuit.

Despite the allegations made against Walt Disney Parks, Disneyland informs passholders prior to purchasing their pass that admission is not guaranteed and is subject to capacity limits, according to the theme parks website.

The lawsuit is occurring amid Disney passholders of all tiers complaining about the lack of available slots to visit the theme park. The theme park began requiring reservations to attend once Disneyland reopened in April amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Disneyland welcomed back the new annual pass program in August after the course of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the expiration of the older system in January. The Dream Key is one of four Disneyland annual passes that have been sold out since October following the second-highest tier, the Believe Key.

The Believe Key sold out in November for $949 per pass. The Enchant Key for $649 and the Imagine Key for $399 are still available for purchase.

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts didnt respond to a request for comment by press time.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks to reporters at the Pentagon in Washington, on Aug. 18, 2021. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

DOD Issues New Policy on Extremism That Includes Likes

The Pentagon has updated its policy regarding extremism among military personnel.

The revised policy comes as the result of a Counter Extremist Activity Working Group established in the Spring by Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin.

Officials say the new policy does not seek to focus on any one ideology, thought, or political orientation, but to define more clearly what qualifies as prohibited extremist activity.

A report issued Dec. 20 provides a lengthy definition of extremist activities that range from advocating or engaging in political violence to knowingly displaying paraphernalia, words, or symbols in support of extremist activity.

This can include liking content on the internet, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.

The physical act of liking is, of course, advocating, Kirby told reporters Monday. And advocating for extremist groupscertainly groups that advocate violating the oath of the Constitution, overthrowing the government, terrorist activities. Liking is an advocation.

According to the report, extremist activity can include posting, liking, sharing, re-tweeting, or otherwise distributing contentwhen such action is taken with the intent to promote or otherwise endorse extremist activities,

Kirby adds it will be the responsibility of commanding officers to determine whether specific actions qualify as deliberate acts of extremist activities or not.

The report outlines disciplinary actions for engaging in extremist behavior that range from reassignment to reporting to law enforcement and counterintelligence authorities.

A memorandum issued by Austin says: We believe only a very few violate this oath by participating in extremist activities, but even the actions of a few can have an outsized impact on unit cohesion, morale and readinessand the physical harm some of these activities can engender can undermine the safety of our people.

Kirby says the new policies do not center on extremism in a group dynamic as groups can reform themselves and disband.

If we got into coming up with a list of extremist groups it would probably be only as good as the day we published it, because these groups change, he said.

The report does prohibit service members from actively advocating criminal gang doctrine, ideology, or causes.

Kirby also says the new policies dont have anything to do with an individual service members political views or who they vote for.

We want them to be a part of the democratic process, said Kirby.

The new policy prohibits service men and women from pursuing personally writing for a publication, participating in political demonstrations, and recruiting or training others to engage in extremist activities.
President Donald Trump holds his mask as he speaks while touring Ford's Rawsonville Components Plant, in Ypsilanti, Mich., on May 21, 2020. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

Donald Trump Says He Got a COVID-19 Booster Shot

Donald Trump revealed on Sunday that he has received a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot.

The former U.S. president confirmed the news during a Sunday question-and-answer session in Dallas on Bill OReillys History Tour.

A video of the press event was shared on social media by OReillys new organization, No Spin News, and appears to show a small portion of the audience at the event yell out in response to his admission.

Both the president and I are vaxxed, and, did you get the booster? OReilly asked Trump, to which he replied, Yes. OReilly then said, I got it, too.

Their answers prompted audible exclamation from some audience members, to which the former president began waving his hand dismissively and said, Oh, dont, dont, dont! before attributing the negative response to a very tiny group over there, while pointing them out.

The Epoch Times has contacted a Trump spokesperson for more details on his decision to get the booster shot.

In a longer video later posted by No Spin News, Trump said his administration and the American people did something that was historic and saved tens of millions worldwide by creating the vaccine.

We got a vaccine done in less than nine months, that was supposed to take from five to twelve years. Because of that vaccine, millions and millions of people. I think this would have been the Spanish flu of 1917 where up to 100 million died, this was going to ravage the country far beyond what it is right now, he said.

He then urged the audience to take credit for it, stating that what weve done is historic. Dont let them take it away. Dont take it away from ourselves. Youre playing right into their hands when you sort of like, Oh the vaccine.'

However, Trump said that people who dont want to take the vaccine should not be forced to do so, and said he disagreed with vaccine mandates.

Mandatory vaccine programs, enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, are currently in place in the United States after President Joe Biden in September issued a sweeping set of new rules for employees regarding vaccinations and testing.

However, lawsuits from states across the country have been mounting in response to the mandates, which are scheduled to take effect on Jan. 4 and dictate that employers with 100 or more employees ensure each of their workers is fully vaccinated or that they test for COVID-19 on at least a weekly basis. All unvaccinated workers must also wear a mask in the workplace.

Trump previously said he and former First Lady Melania Trump were vaccinated before leaving the White House in January but did not say if they received the Moderna, Pfizer, or Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Speaking to the New York Post in April, the businessman said that the vaccine is a great thing and people should take advantage of it, but that nobody should be forced as Americans have our freedoms.

But I strongly recommend it because its a real lifesaver, Trump said.

Back in September, he told the Wall Street Journal that he had no plans to get a booster shot, stating, Ill look at stuff later on. Im not against it, but its probably not for me.
Elderly Chinese Falun Gong Practitioner Dies 3 Days After Release From Notorious Prison

A 76-year-old practitioner of Falun Gong died three days after she was released from a notorious Chinese prison, according to Minghui.org, a U.S-based website that documents the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) persecution of the spiritual practice.

Liu Shuhua was found to have lost her memory when guards from northeastern Chinas Liaoning Womens Prison sent her home in mid-October.

Notably, her release was more than one week ahead of the officially scheduled dateNov. 9, by which she would complete her six-year term. Early release is rare for imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners like Liu, who refuse to renounce their beliefs.

Three days after the release, Liu died at her home in Beipiao, a satellite city of Chaoyang in northeastern Liaoning Province.

The Epoch Times cannot verify independently what had happened to the elderly woman during her time in jail or whether she suffered torture in that prison due to the lack of transparency in Chinas prison system.

However, the provincial womens prison has one of the worst records for torture since Minghui began documenting the persecution that begin in 1999. Recorded forms of torture in the prison have included the use of pepper spray, electrocution, forced exhaustive labor, sexual abuse, injection of unknown drugs, and dousing detainees with boiled water.

The prisons authorities have persecuted at least 37 Falun Gong practitioners to death and rendered several others insane or disabled, according to Minghui.

Other women died after leaving the prison, including 50-year-old practitioner Sun Min, a teacher from Anshan City, Liaoning Province. She died during her 7-year-term in the General Hospital of the Liaoning Provincial Prison Administration on March 8, 2018, according to Minghui. She had been detained in the 12th cell area in the prison since Oct. 10, 2017.

One month before her death, on Feb. 7, her father and sister found her unable to walk alone on a prison visit. A cellmate carried Sun on her back to the meeting area. The family also found her extremely thin, weak, and unable to talk as usual, with a pus-like liquid dripping from her right ear.

In the same prison, Falun Gong adherent Lan Lihua died at 49 during her near 4-year-term on April 21, 2020.

Another practitioner named Wu Xiufang from the provinces Fuxin City was found in a persistent vegetative state when the prison released her on Aug. 19, 2018, after her 3-year-term. Within two years, the bedridden patient died at age 64.

Torture, Industrial Labor in Prisons: Survivor

Permanent Canadian resident and Falun Gong practitioner Joy Gao told The Epoch Times on Dec. 4 that she survived Liaoning Womens Prison.

Torture is common to Falun Gong adherents there, Gao recalled.

Joy Gao, Falun Gong practitioner and survivor from northeastern Chinas Liaoning Womens Prison, pictured in Montreal, Canada, on Dec. 5, 2021. (Courtesy of Joy Gao)

During her three years in jail, she was transferred from a brutal labor camp known as Masanjia to that prison. There, she spent the last year of her term until her release on July 4, 2011.

In her first week of imprisonment, she was forcibly deprived of sleep for seven days. Whenever she dozed off, cellmates in charge of monitoring her 24 hours a day would wake her up.

Gao said she witnessed a guard surnamed Liu, who was responsible for production management, slap her fellow practitioner Wei Yuhong hard on the face for failing to keep machine maintenance records.

She also testified that another fellow practitioner Lou Caihua was put into solitary confinement for passing on an article by Mr. Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong.

Gao learned in the prison that Falun Gong adherent Chen Shang was kept in a damp room and couldnt see any sunlight all day long.

Public data shows Chen and her husband Gao Mingxing were respectively sentenced to 10-year- and 11-year-imprisonment for disseminating information about Falun Gong by tapping into a local TV network on Feb. 4 and Aug. 25, 2004.

Gao also said she witnessed a guard hitting a prisoner who failed to meet her production goal with an electric baton. The terrible smell of scorched skin filled the room, Gao told The Epoch Times.

All the prisoners in her cell area were forced to produce garments for domestic clients without any pay, she said.

The CCP has industrialized its prisons in its effort to persecute Falun Gong practitioners, Gao recounted. In China, all prisons are production bases; prisoners are payless labor. Although China is the worlds factory, most of its small commodities come from prisons.

In 2013, Gao alone fled communist China and traveled to Thailand, seeking asylum with the United Nations. In January 2017, she was accepted as a convention refugee and moved to Montreal, Quebec Province, Canada.

The public practice of Falun Gong began in northern China during the early 1990s. Along with meditation and slow-moving exercises, practitioners adhere to the three main principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It quickly spread through China, and somewhere between 70100 million people were believed to have taken up the practice prior to the CCPs persecution.

Lily Chen contributed to this report.
Epoch Watchlist: What to Watch This Week

New Release

West Side Story

Steven Spielbergs modern take on the 1957 original, this film tells a story of forbidden love, racial tension, and violence in New York City. The narrative focuses on the leader (Ansel Elgort) of a street gang, the all-white Jets, as he falls in love with the sister (Rachel Zegler) of the leader of a rival gang, the Puerto Rican Sharks.

It features the usual touchstones of woke political correctness, including divisive racial tension and the shoving of identity politics down everyones throats. It also seems designed purely as an Oscar-winning vehicle.

Crime | Drama | Musical

Release Date: Dec. 10, 2021

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose

Runtime: 2 hours, 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Where to Watch: Theaters

Rated: 1 1/2 out of 5 stars

Feel-Good Comedy

Groundhog Day

Pittsburgh meteorologist Phil Connors (Bill Murray) is sent to Punxsutawney, where he covers Groundhog Day each year. Although the day is special to town locals, Phil cant stand the job or the locale, although he likes Rita (Andie MacDowell), the events producer. Phils disdain for the town reaches critical levels when he wakes up each consecutive morning and finds himself reliving the same day over and over.

This plot device stays fresh because of the films unexpected twists, funny dialogue, and ultimately uplifting message.

Comedy | Fantasy | Romance

Release Date: Feb. 12, 1993

Director: Harold Ramis

Starring: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliot

Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Rated: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Christmas Comedy

Elf

Buddy (Will Ferrell) is a human who was mistakenly raised as an elf by Santa Claus at the North Pole. Restless about who his biological father is, he travels to New York City and discovers that his dad, Walter Hobbs (James Caan), is not only a mean-spirited person, but also on Santas naughty list for Christmas.

A good-natured and modern take on Christmas that should cheer us up in these interesting times, Elf explores the themes of generosity and selfishness, and innocence and cynicism.

Adventure | Comedy | Family

Release Date: Nov. 7, 2003

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Bob Newhart

Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Where to Watch: Redbox, Starz, HBO Max

Rated: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Highly Underrated Christmas Classic

A Holiday Affair

War widow Connie (Janet Leigh) meets salesman Steve (Robert Mitchum) over the Christmas holidays. Although attracted to Steve, she doesnt necessarily want to give up the security that lawyer Carl (Wendell Corey) can provide for her and her son.

Stirring romance and laughs uplift what could have been a rather pedestrian holiday yarn, making this a highly underrated film.

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Release Date: Dec. 24, 1949

Director: Don Hartman

Starring: Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh, Wendell Corey

Runtime: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: Approved

Where to Watch: HBO Max, Vudu, Apple TV

Rated: 4 out of 5 stars
One shift of a large team of volunteers who met on May 3, 2021, in Gainesville, Fla., at one of four multi-day events to assemble Petition Partner Packets for distribution throughout the state. (Mark Minck)

Florida Heartbeat Amendment Campaign Faces Christmas Deadline

A four-year-long grassroots campaign to add a heartbeat amendment to the Florida constitution is sprinting toward a Christmas deadline to collect the 1 million signatures needed to place the initiative on the ballot for the 2022 election.

The effort is still short on signatures, according to Mark Minck, chairman of the committee sponsoring the Human Life Protection Amendment. His four-year effort and sacrifice are lostfor now.

Minck put his corporate career on hold in 2018 to take on the project, which he sees as a mission from God, alongside his wife. Should the years of effort pay off, Floridas voters will decide whether to add this statement to the states constitution: All human beings have a right to life regardless of age, illness, or disability when there is a detectable heartbeat.

This grassroots organization is taking the issue of vulnerable human life straight to the people of Florida and bypassing lawmakers by putting forth a ballot initiative to change the Florida Constitution, Minck told The Epoch Times.

Florida residents last approved ballot initiatives in 2018. That questions dealt with voter control of gambling and the restoration of voting rights to felons. Both measures were approved by the required 60 percent of the vote.

Mark Minck speaking at an event in Tampa, Fla., on Nov. 11, 2021. (Deanna Hurley)

Minck studied the successful efforts from 2018. They had one thing in common. Both were expensive endeavors because firms were hired to collect signatures.

During the petition phase of these other campaigns, they spent almost $5.7 million, he said. Ninety-two percent of that went to pay petition gatherers.

Mincks organization doesnt have that kind of money, so he and his wife gathered a small group of friends and began their quest.

We realized that nobody had a vested financial interest in the passage of it, he said. Nobody was going to get rich off of protecting preborn children or protecting the elderly or protecting the infirmed or the disabled, so we didnt have a case to make or a group of financial investors sitting in the wings ready to finance our effort because of the financial windfall that could potentially be associated with it.

Ken and Lori, parishioners of Holy Family Catholic Church in Orlando, Fla., promote the Human Life Protection Amendment citizen initiative to commuters during morning rush hour on Dec. 8, 2021. (Mark Minck)

After years of watching Florida draft legislation to protect sea turtles and their eggs, as well as other animals, Minck was disturbed by the lack of protection for vulnerable human life, including preborn children, the elderly, and the disabled.

It became clear that we needed to put together an amendment that was not only an abortion ban, but put together an amendment that dealt with vulnerable human life through the spectrum of life, he said.

Since being ratified in 1968, Floridas current constitution has been amended 144 times, according to Minck. He estimated that every two-year election cycle there are about half a dozen amendments on the ballot in Florida voters have to either approve or reject.

If successful, the ballot initiative would add a new section under Article One of the states constitution.

Throughout the years, Minck said he has seen abortion legislation drafted and brought to the table when lawmakers are in session, but the measures seem to die in committee. He said he didnt want to make the same mistakes of legislation past and wants to take the initiative straight to Florida voters.

We jokingly refer to what we are doing as Legislative Bypass Surgery, he said. We drafted this thing with words that even a child could understand.

Incoming mail from volunteer petition gatherers returning signed and completed petitions requesting ballot placement of the Human Life Protection Amendment in Florida. (Mark Minck)

Incoming mail from volunteer petition gatherers returning signed and completed petitions requesting ballot placement of the Human Life Protection Amendment in Florida. (Mark Minck)

Minck was brought into the world by a teenaged mother who gave him up for adoption. He said his parents were honest and open about his adoption, and he never doubted that he was chosen. He was brought home to a big sister, then 3 years old, who was also adopted as an infant.

Minck met his biological mother in February 2018. Twelve days later, he attended a mens prayer breakfast where he listened to the recording The Sound of Abortion. He said the experience forever changed his life, becoming the impetus for the ballot initiative.

After data testing, focus groups, statewide surveys, and robocalls, Minck and his group gauged where Florida voters were on the subject of protecting human life.

Our thought was that if we found out that Florida voters didnt have an appetite for the issue, we might just be spinning our wheels and wasting our time, he said. We believe that what we saw in the data testing convinced us that we should go forwardit did not discourage usit actually greatly encouraged us.

HB 167

In January, Florida lawmakers will return to Tallahassee to discuss new laws and amend old ones. One measure that will be up for consideration is HB 167, a Texas-style abortion law that would allow private citizens to sue people involved in performing an abortion after a heartbeat is detected in a preborn child.

The Texas law has thus far survived scrutiny from higher courts.

A heartbeat is detectable in a preborn child 6 to 8 weeks after conception. However, some doctors disagree with that interpretation.

A little flutter is in the area that will become the future heart of the baby, Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Childrens Hospital in Miami, told livescience.com. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future pacemaker of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals. By no means does it translate to viability of the heart [or of the pregnancy].

The Cleveland Clinic maintains that until the eighth week of pregnancy, the baby is called a fetus and prior to that, its still considered to be an embryo.

After the detection of the flutter at six weeks, the heart muscle continues to develop over the next four to six weeks, undergoing the folding and bending that needs to happen for the heart to take its final shape, Aftab said.

After the legislation was filed, Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls told reporters that hes supportive of stricter abortion rules, but didnt endorse HB 167. He asked House Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Erin Grall and House Health and Human Services Committee Chairwoman Colleen Burton to review abortion law proposals and to take point on the issue.

I have always fought for unborn babies and their right to life, and the Florida House of Representatives has been a national leader in developing pro-life legislation. While other states contend with Federal law only, we must also contend with Article I, Section 23 of the Florida Constitution, as well, Sprowls said in a statement, referring to the states constitutional right to privacy.

Our laws have to be strong enough to jump through multiple levels of judicial scrutiny. We look forward to bringing to the floor a bill that saves every unborn life possible.

Both Democratic candidates who hope to run against Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 provided their thoughts on HB 167.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) wrote on Twitter that the measure is a direct attack on a womans right to choose.

Were going to have to fight tooth and nail to protect reproductive freedom.

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the other candidate vying for a spot on the Democratic ticket for governor, said in a written statement that she would do what she could to prevent the bill from becoming law.

This bill is dangerous, radical, and unconstitutional, Fried said in the statement. Its obvious that this is nothing more than a shameless attempt to try to control women and our bodies.

The Epoch Times reached out to pro-choice groups around the state but most declined to comment, while others didnt return emails or phone calls.

Minck said that unfortunately because abortion is such a hot-button issue, HB 167 will never see the light of day. He said he didnt want to judge what was in the hearts of politicians when they bring forth laws such as HB 167, but they never seem to get out of committee because no one wants to fall down on one side of the issue or the other.

Pallets containing 1.2 million blank petitions of the 2 million total printed for physical distribution to hub sites and volunteers throughout the state of Florida are seen in a photo taken on July 6, 2021. (Mark Minck)

This effort is the most basic expression of grass-roots engagement by everyday citizens who want to make a difference when the legislative process has failed them repeatedly on an issue of great significance, he said.

Minck declined to disclose how many petition signatures his group has collected. He said the clock is ticking to gather the 1 million signatures he needs to send the petition to Tallahassee.

I hope this forces a debate, even if our amendment efforts fail, he said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference at the Shul of Bal Harbour in Surfside, Fla., on June 14, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Florida Moves to Disentangle State Investments in China

'The whole experiment with China has been a big failure for the United States,' governor says

Florida officials on Dec. 20 took action to disentangle state retirement funds from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including revoking authority that let outside managers decide where to invest some of the states pension funds.

The plan from Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, was approved during a meeting of the State Board of Administration of Florida, which invests and manages the states pension plan, one of the largest public retirement plans in the U.S., and smaller funds.

The board also approved starting a review to see how many of the states assets are tied up in Chinese companies and clarifying that all fund managers should act solely in the financial interest of the states funds.

More than 5,000 proxy votes for investments have been cast since 2016, according to state data.

The revocation of proxy voting authority is important because some investment firms have an ideological bent, DeSantis said during the meeting.

The first-term governor noted that a leading view among policymakers had been that boosting China would help soften the countrys hardline government, but he said that hasnt been the case.

The whole experiment with China has been a big failure for the United States, he said. I think the U.S. as a whole should be disentangling from China, but certainly our investments should be disentangling.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who also sits on the board, agreed.

He pointed out that Chinese property developer Evergrande Group recently missed payments and is at risk of defaulting, which would affect businesses across the country.

Patronis listed other reasons to disengage with China, including the CCPs brazen violation of intellectual property rules, its increasing influence over Hollywood and Washington, the possibility that the virus that causes COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory, and the series of moves done at a federal level in recent weeks, including Congress passing a bill that bans sourcing items produced in Chinas Xinjiang region, where many factories use slave labor.

Some in Washington say were entering a Cold War with China. It seems like limiting our exposure to China is not only good for our country but is financially prudent, he said.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican and member of the board, said the financial moves were in the best interests of the retirement funds participants and beneficiaries.

Chinese government control and influence over businesses operating in China should be a source of concern for anyone investing there, Moody said in a statement. As fiduciaries, we should understand these risks and ensure they are being evaluated by the Florida Retirement System.
Floridas Scott Questions US Response to Chinas Failure to Comply With Trump Trade Deal

China has bought just over half the U.S. goods and services it agreed to purchase under phase one of the landmark trade deal negotiated by President Donald Trump, and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wants to know what President Joe Biden is doing about it.

As part of the Phase 1 trade agreement with the U.S., Communist China agreed to a target purchase of $378 billion worth of manufactured, agricultural and energy goods. Since October 2021, it has only purchased $210.4 billionjust 56 percent of its committed purchases, Scott told U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a Dec. 20 letter.

It is abundantly clear that Communist China has not complied with the Phase 1 trade deal, and given their track record of lying and cheating, its doubtful they ever will.

Scott said he worries that as Beijing fails to uphold its end of the bargain and hurts American workers, the Biden administration is taking actions, like ending the Keystone Pipeline XL, which are killing American jobs and thereby doing the bidding of General Secretary Xi and weakening the American economy.

The American people, whove been harmed by the Chinese Communist Partys economic wrongdoing, deserve to know how this administration is holding the Communist Chinese government accountable.

To that end, Scott asked Tai for written responses to the following questions:

How many high-level trade related discussions has the Biden administration had with Communist China? Please specify what plans exist for future trade discussions.

In detail, describe the Biden administrations current and future plans to crack down on Communist Chinas illegal trade practices, including what plans, if any, exist to inform the public about Beijings failure to uphold the Phase 1 trade agreement. Please include information on how Beijings human rights abuses inform the Biden administrations approach to trade.

Assuming that President Biden will quickly sign the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law, how do you plan to immediately implement the provisions of the bill and ensure goods entering the United States from Communist China are free from Uyghur slave labor?

How does the Biden administration plan to address Communist Chinas manufacturing and exportation of fentanyl in our trade strategy?

Does the Biden administration support a free trade agreement between the United States and Taiwan?

Do you believe that the WTO should continue to classify Communist China as a developing nation? If not, what steps are you taking to push the WTO to alter its designation?

A USTR spokesman didnt respond to The Epoch Times request for comment about the Scott letter and questions.

In a fact sheet on its 2021 trade agenda, however, Tai pledged that the Biden Administration recognizes that Chinas coercive and unfair trade practices harm American workers, threaten our technological edge, weaken our supply chain resiliency, and undermine our national interests. The ongoing comprehensive review of U.S. trade policy toward China is integral to the development of the administrations overall China strategy.

The Biden Administration is committed to using all available tools to take on the range of Chinas unfair trade practices that continue to harm U.S. workers and businesses. It will also make it a top priority to address the widespread human rights abuses of the Chinese governments forced labor program that targets the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and elsewhere in the country.

Trump signed the phase one deal with China in January 2020 after imposing tough sanctions in response to multiple violations by Beijing of prior agreements and international trade standards. Trump promised to end the sanctions once a phase two deal was reached between the United States and China. Biden has said he will maintain the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese products imported into the United States.
People affected by the typhoon Rai gather during a distribution of relief goods, in Surigao City, Surigao del Norte, Philippines, on Dec. 20, 2021. (Erwin Mascarinas/Greenpeace/Handout via Reuters)

Philippine Typhoon Survivors Say Food Is Running Out

MANILA, PhilippinesOfficials and residents of areas in the Philippines that bore the brunt of Typhoon Rai pleaded for food, water, and shelter on Dec. 21 as damaged roads, flooding, and severed power and communication lines hampered relief efforts.

Rai, the strongest typhoon to hit the archipelago this year, struck on Dec. 16, killing nearly 400 people and affecting 1.8 million, displacing 630,000 of them, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Our food supply is running low. Maybe, in a few days, we will totally run out, said Fely Pedrablanca, the mayor of Tubajon town on Dinagat Island. The area, which faces the Pacific Ocean, was devastated by the typhoon, with just nine of more than 2,000 homes in her town left standing, she said.

The coast guard has deployed vessels to help in relief work and in trying to reach areas still cut off, while the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) planned to ferry people to safety, including foreign tourists stranded on the vacation island of Siargao.

Philippine Coast Guard personnel unload packs of relief goods for victims of Typhoon Rai, in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, Philippines, on Dec. 21, 2021. (Philippine Coast Guard/Handout via Reuters)

Were fighting a tremendous disaster. Its Haiyan all over again, PRC Chairman Richard Gordon told Reuters, referring to one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded, which killed 6,300 people in the Philippines in 2013.

In the province of Southern Leyte, evacuation centers were also destroyed, said Roger Mercado, acting chief of the public works agency, as he appealed for tents and construction material.

Damage to infrastructure in Southern Leyte, where residents were also in desperate need of food and water, could reach 3 billion pesos ($60.14 million), Mercado told DZMM radio.

At least 375 people were killed and 56 are missing. More than 500 were injured, police said on Dec. 21.

The government prepositioned food and non-food items but they are not enough because many are in need, Danilo Atienza, Southern Leytes disaster chief, told Reuters.

President Rodrigo Duterte on Dec. 20 ordered state agencies to restore power and communications as he promised 10 billion pesos ($200 million) for recovery efforts.

Foreign aid has also started to arrive, while the United Nations said it was working with partners to help in the areas of shelter, health, food, protection, and other life-saving responses.

By Neil Jerome Morales and Karen Lema
Former Chinese Official Pleads Guilty in LA to Money Laundering Conspiracy

LOS ANGELESA former Chinese official who was a fugitive for more than five years pleaded guilty Dec. 20 to a federal conspiracy charge that he laundered millions of dollars and used some of the stolen funds to purchase properties in Monterey Parkand he was immediately sentenced to time already served.

Jianjun Qiaos sentence includes the 24 months he spent in custody in Sweden while awaiting extradition and the 17 months he subsequently spent in the United States, according to documents filed in Los Angeles federal court.

Qiao, 58, was extradited from Sweden to Los Angeles last year to face charges originally filed seven years ago.

A federal grand jury in July 2014 indicted Qiao and his ex-wife, alleging two separate schemes. An expanded indictment against Qiao returned in December 2018 charged him with conspiracy to commit immigration fraud and international transport of stolen money, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and three counts of engaging in financial transactions in criminally derived property.

As the director of a grain storehouse in Zhoukou City, Henan Province, from 1998 to 2011, Qiao laundered millions of dollars in proceeds related to fraudulent transactions through banks in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Qiao then used the stolen funds to, among other things, purchase properties in Monterey Park.

Qiaos ex-wife, Shilan Zhao, 58, of Newcastle, Washington, pleaded guilty in January 2017 to conspiring with her former husband to falsely portray themselves as still married and lying about the source of Zhaos foreign investment, which was required under the EB-5 immigrant investor program to obtain U.S. immigrant visas. She is scheduled to be sentenced in March.
Law enforcement officers walk out of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington on Jan. 28, 2019. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Former FBI Agent Pleads No Contest to Beating Wife, Avoids Jail Time

A former high-level FBI agent pleaded no contest on Monday to a charge of aggravated assault.

Richard Trask worked as a special agent for the FBI for 10 years.

Trask was arrested over the summer for allegedly assaulting his wife at their home in Kalamazoo County.

Body camera footage and police reports showed Trasks wife called the police around 2 a.m. on July 18. She said her husband took her to a swingers party and after returning home, he assaulted her.

Deputies found Trask shirtless driving his wifes vehicle in the parking lot of a shopping center. Deputies saw blood on his face. They arrested him.

Trasks wife, Heather Foulke, spoke during the hearing on Monday, news outlets reported.

Foulke said she thinks her husband may have been drugged at the party.

Trask asked for a lenient sentence, arguing hes suffered a lot and that his wife has forgiven him.

As the result of the situation Ive lost the only career Ive known. My retirement is gone. Ive lost friends. My reputation has been destroyed. My children have had to face questions. My wife has faced harassment. My family has had to further suffer because I can no longer provide for them, he said, WOOD-TV reported. The events in July were a tragedy. I take full responsibility for my actions.

The judge overseeing the case sentenced Trask to time servedhe had spent two days in jailand ordered him to pay fines and fees.

A lawyer representing Trask couldnt be reached.

Jeffrey Getting, the prosecutor who brought the charge, told The Epoch Times in an email that the case was difficult because Trasks wife wouldnt cooperate.

Her refusal to testify against the defendant compromised our ability to take the case to trial. The agreement in the case provided the State with what was most important to us, a conviction on his record for the violent assault perpetrated by Trask on his wife. While I would [have] liked to have seen a greater penalty imposed by the Court, I am satisfied knowing that Trask is no longer employed by the FBI and is no longer eligible to be a police officer in the State of Michigan as a result of his conviction, he said.

The FBI fired Trask several months after he was charged.

Trask was the lead investigator in the case brought against over a dozen men who allegedly conspired to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He testified in the case at least twice.

The case has been beset by allegations of entrapment, though one man, Ty Garbin, was sentenced to over six years in prison after pleading guilty. The rest of the men are slated to go on trial next year.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are forever linked

The United States has been blessed with many distinguished leaders. But the generation that founded our nation has a special place in the hearts of many Americans. Even among that very special generation, two of our Founders stand out not only because of their many accomplishments and their lasting mark on the country, but because their friendship helped shape its early yearsa friendship that both started and stopped on the Fourth of July.

Jefferson was an erudite, tall, slender, and fearfully shy man from the rolling hills of the Virginia countryside. John Adams was a brash, short, stocky, and straight-talking man from the bustling town of Quincy, Massachusetts. Both were well-educated, having pursued arduous courses of self-study that lead to them each becoming members of the bar.

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Mather Brown, 1786. (Public Domain)

Jefferson was known for his intellect and writing ability, and was often called upon by his home state of Virginia to write important legal documents, frequently focused on human rights. Adams, on the other hand, was known for his work in the courtroom, famously taking on the defense of the British soldiers charged with murder after the Boston Massacre. Where Jefferson was likely to engage in thoughtful analysis, Adams charged forward to take whatever course his unbending principles dictated. While Jefferson was a deist who often wrestled with the idea of an all-knowing creator, Adams was a devout Christian with puritanical tendencies. The two were polar opposites in many respects, but shared one trait: their undying patriotism and devotion to the new nation to which they helped give birth.

Their Reputations Preceded Them

Jefferson and Adams knew of one another by reputation long before they met personally.

Adams was a public figure by his 29th year, in which he published the influential A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law in opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765. He went on to become well-known as a patriot. His fame increased when, at the age of 34, he took on the criminal defense of Captain Thomas Preston and eight British soldiers under his command who faced charges of murdering five colonists in Boston on March 6, 1770, a trial history has dubbed The Boston Massacre Murder Trial. Adamss preparation, attention to detail, and dogged advocacy paid off. The case led to a split verdict, with Preston and six of the eight soldiers being acquitted while the two remaining soldiers were convicted of manslaughter. Adams had proven to England that the colonies were capable of administering justice, an argument Adams later advanced in advocating for Americas independence from Britain. By 1776, he had progressed from a well-known regional patriot to a respected national leader.

Portrait of John Adams by Mather Brown, 1785. (Public Domain)

Jefferson, on the other hand, was eight years younger than Adams, and came to national attention when he authored Summary View of the Rights of British America in 1774. He became known as particularly effective in articulating the colonial position for independence from Britain, and his voice became as important as Patrick Henrys in advocating for the colonies to separate from their mother country.

Jefferson and Adams are thought to have first met in the summer of 1776 in Philadelphia, when the Second Continental Congress appointed them to a five-man committee to write the Declaration of Independence. The other members of the committee were Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. It was John Adams who nominated Jefferson to pen the declaration in honor of Jeffersons highly praised writing style. Together, on July 4, 1776, Jefferson and Adams presented to the world one of the most important and enduring statements of human rights and liberty ever written. Both men viewed it as an important foundation for the creation of a truly representative and egalitarian American republic.

By 1784, three of the five men on the committee that wrote the Declaration of IndependenceJefferson, Adams, and Franklinfound themselves together again, this time in Paris. Jefferson had lost his wife, Martha, only two years prior, and Adams and his wife Abigail became close friends with him, consoling him in his loss and treating him as family. Both men returned to the United States where, following the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the subsequent ratification process, John Adams served as George Washingtons vice president, and Thomas Jefferson was appointed as the countrys first secretary of state.

Crossing Political Swords

Despite their close friendship, the two crossed political swords. Adams believed that the United States needed a stronger central government in order to compete with the European powers of the day, while Jefferson feared that such concentrated power would lead to tyranny. Adams became an important leader of the Federalist Party, while Jefferson became a leader of the newly formed Democratic-Republican Party.

The tension between the two reached its breaking point when they competed against one another to succeed George Washington as the second president of the United States. The race pitted the two friends against each other for the future course of the nation: Would it be the mercantile and banking dominated future offered by the Federalists or the laissez-faire agrarian democracy envisioned by Jefferson and the Republicans. The dominant presence of George Washington had been the primary force holding the country together until the end of his second term, and the vacuum left by his absence loomed over the election. The nations future literally hung in the balance. Given the importance of the race, it soon turned personal, with ad hominem attacks abounding. Their relationship reached its nadir.

Adams won the race, and the men barely spoke during Adamss term. Their competition was repeated in the 1800 presidential race, which historians count among the nastiest political battles in our nations history. Jefferson scored a narrow victory. On his way out of office, Adams saddled Jefferson with midnight appointments of key officials, none more important than installing longtime Jefferson political enemy John Marshall on the Supreme Court. Their longstanding friendship came to a bitter end. They didnt exchange a word for twelve years.

Reconciliation and Final Words

Engraving The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, by Waterman Lilly Ormby, 1876, based on John Trumbulls painting. (Public Domain)

Benjamin Rush, their mutual friend and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence, finally brought the men back together. In 1812, at Rushs urging, Adams made a written overture to Jefferson, who responded kindly. Over the next 14 years, the two exchanged 158 letters, and their friendship and respect for one another reignited.

In a strange quirk of fate, both founders passed away on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years from when they presented the world with the Declaration of Independence. And they were still on each others minds. History is murky as to exact dying words of famous individuals. But legend has it that Jeffersons last words were At least the country still has Adams, while Adams last words are reported to be Jefferson survives. Neither man was correct. They died within hours of one another on the 50th anniversary of the day our great nation was born.

George Wentz is a partner with the Davillier Law Group in New Orleans, La. Hes a graduate of Georgetown Law School, where he served as the administrative editor of the International Law Journal. Ronald Reagan appointed him to serve in the Office of Policy Development at the Federal Trade Commission. He has had a 38-year career as an attorney in the insurance, transportation, and energy fields, as well as litigating constitutional issues in federal court. He has a love of history, the philosophy of law, and the United States of America.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
A voter leaves a polling station during the Legislative Council election in Hong Kong's Choi Hung area on Dec. 19, 2021. (Bertha Wang/AFP via Getty Images)

G-7, EU Express Grave Concern Over Dwindling Democracy in Hong Kong Election

The Group of Seven (G-7) and the European Union (EU) have expressed grave concern over the erosion of democracy in Hong Kongs electoral system, following local Legislative Council elections on Dec. 19 that saw pro-Beijing candidates sweep to victory.

We strongly reiterate our call on China to act in accordance with the SinoBritish Joint Declaration and its other legal obligations and respect fundamental rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, as provided for in the Basic Law, the G-7 foreign ministers and the EU high representative said in a joint statement on Dec. 20.

Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States are G-7 members.

We also call on China and the Hong Kong authorities to restore confidence in Hong Kongs political institutions and end the unwarranted oppression of those who promote democratic values and the defense of rights and freedoms, they said.

Hours before the G-7 and EU statement, the Five Eyes allianceAustralia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the United Statesissued a joint statement expressing similar concerns, as well as the wider chilling effect of Hong Kongs national security law.

The legislative elections on Dec. 19 saw a record-low voter turnoutonly 30.2 percent among Hong Kongs 4.4 million eligible voters took part. More than 50 percent participated in the two previous elections in 2012 and 2016.

Candidates from the pro-establishment camp, also known as the pro-Beijing camp, secured 89 of the 90 available seats.

The Dec. 19 elections were the first since Beijing overhauled the citys electoral process, creating a new review mechanism to vet candidates so that only patriots loyal to the Chinese regime could run for office. The change also expanded the 70-seat Legislative Council (LegCo) to 90 seats, even as the number of seats directly elected by Hong Kong citizens was reduced from 35 to 20.

It was also the first LegCo elections since Beijing implemented a national security law last summer, following months of anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP), pro-democracy protests in the former British colony.

The national security law, which punishes vaguely defined crimes such as subversion, has been used by the Hong Kong authorities to stifle dissent. In February, 47 opposition figures were charged under the law for taking part in a primary vote to select pro-democracy candidates for the Dec. 19 election. More than 600,000 Hongkongers participated in the primary.

The elections were originally scheduled for Sept. 6, 2020, but were postponed by Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, who at the time cited the local surge in COVID-19 infections.

In a separate statement, Josep Borrell, vice president of the European Commission and high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, expressed his concern.

The European Union sees this election, in combination with the ongoing pressure on civil society, as yet another step in the dismantling of the One Country, Two Systems principle, Borrell said. The EU will continue to follow developments closely, including the election of the Chief Executive scheduled for March 2022.

In response to international criticism over the Hong Kong elections, Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for Chinas foreign ministry, accused Western countries of gross interference of Chinas internal affairs, during a daily briefing on Dec. 21.

The Hong Kong government accused the Five Eyes nations of attempting to smear the LegCo elections, and defended the national security law as bringing stability to the city, according to a statement.

Meanwhile, Samuel Chu, president and founder of U.S.-based advocacy group Campaign for Hong Kong, applauded Hongkongers for not participating in the sham Dec. 19 LegCo elections.

Hong Kongers clearly did not buy the sham patriots-only election on Sundaywith an overwhelming majority of them sitting out and boycotting the rigged LegCo elections that were nothing more than a performative selection ritual fully controlled by Beijing, Chu said in a statement.

No sensible and true Hong Konger, regardless of their political beliefs, could honestly claim that Hong Kong operates with any autonomy from the CCP.
Children receive a dose of COVID-19 Pfizer-BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine for children at the children's section of the Lanxess Arena vaccination center in Cologne, Germany, on Dec. 18, 2021. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

Gambling With the Health of 5-Year-Old Children

Commentary

As we near the end of 2021, most people would have expected that the spectre of COVID-19 would have receded and that normal life would have reasserted itself.

However, the reality is that the constant mutation of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus and the responses of governments ensure that the pandemic is very much alive, thriving, and threatening our way of life.

For example, the obsession with vaccination and reaching ludicrous levels of vaccination, which must be met to open the borders of Australian states, have kept the disease constantly in the news.

One recent, very concerning development is the decision of the Australian government to make the Pfizer vaccine available to 5-years old children. This is a disturbing development, which reasonable people, especially parents, need to consider carefully for many reasons.

Indeed, following the adoption by the federal government of recommendations from the Australian Technical Advisory Group (ATAGI), the government has announced that the COVID-19 vaccination program will be extended to all children aged 5 to 11 from Jan. 10, 2022.

A woman holds a young child outside the entrance to the newly opened South Western Sydney Vaccination Centre at Macquarie Fields in Sydney, Australia, on July 26, 2021. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

As stated on the website of the Department of Health, all children aged 5 to 11 will receive 2 doses of the vaccine, 8 weeks apart. The childrens dose is one-third of the dose for people aged 12 years and over. The website reassures parents that the TGAs provisional approval was based on a careful evaluation of available data to support its safety and efficacy among this age group and that research reveals that the Pfizer vaccine is up to 91 percent effective in children.

However, the reassurance is quite problematic because a study, conducted by Kings College London scientists, has firmly concluded that the overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying of COVID-19 is extremely low.

As a result, the United Kingdom (UK) governments Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has refused to endorse COVID-19 vaccination for children under the age of 18, stating that the benefit to them of receiving the novel vaccine is virtually zero, whereas the already-known risk of serious harms is not negligible.

On July 19, 2021, JCVI officially announced it was advising the UK government against the mass rollout of these novel vaccines to healthy children under the age of 18. At this time, the statement concludes: JCVI is of the view that the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks.

Just one known serious potential risk, or adverse effect of these novel vaccines, is that of myocarditisinflammation of the heart. Myocarditis has a high rate of progressing to heart failure and is one of the reasons some younger people end up needing heart transplants.

A recently published peer-reviewed paper produced by pharmacology and toxicology professors has examined these issues related to COVID-19 vaccinations for children. It concluded:

A novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation versus those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic. The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially.

So, given the already known potential harms of the novel vaccines, of which myocarditis is just one, and the entirely unknown potential long-term adverse effects which may come to light only after many years, the decision of the Australian government to seek to vaccinate everyone, including small children, regardless of age or health conditions, is plainly wrong and not supported by scientific evidence.

A child is seen with a placard placed on her by her mother at an anti-vaccination rally in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 20, 2021. (Brook Mitchell/Getty Images)

This is a political decision, not a medical one. Nor is it moral or ethical, because there are very serious risks attached to any new drug and COVID-19 vaccines have limited short-term and no long-term safety data.

As an article from the British Medical Journal explains: From a public health standpoint, it makes poor sense to impose vaccine side-effects on people at minimal risk of severe COVID-19. The argument that it protects others is weak or contrary to evidence. This conclusion suggests a policy of targeting vaccination to those at highest risk, allowing broader post-infection immunity to provide community protection.

Australia has ratified the Convention on the Rights of Children, which entered into force on Sept. 2, 1990.

Article 24(1) relevantly stipulates that ratifying countries recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. While this provision is commendable, Article 24(2)(e) requires that all segments of society, in particular parents and children, are informed, have access to education and are supported in the use of basic knowledge of child health .

It is precisely the lack of sufficient and reliable information on the long-term impact of the health of children that results in parents reluctance to vaccinate their children.

Indeed, the conclusions reached by the Kings College scientists encourages society to be cautious when it comes to making health decisionsespecially for vulnerable very young childrenwhich in the long run, may have adverse consequences for their health and future.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Augusto Zimmermann Follow Dr. Augusto Zimmermann is professor and head of law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education in Perth. He is also president of the Western Australian Legal Theory Association, editor-in-chief of the Western Australian Jurist law journal, and a former law reform commissioner in Western Australia.
Germany Cancels Christmas

Commentary

Christmas is apparently canceled in Germany.

The other day, I was shocked to see videos of German police forcibly detaining a man dressed as Santa Claus for the terrible evil of failing to show his papers and participating in an unregistered gathering, which is illegal in Germany. This came a few days after police enforcers marched through a city with six-foot-long rulers to ensure that people were staying far enough apart. Both of these measures came as a result of a new nationwide edict from the outgoing Supreme Chancellor Angela Merkel that effectively condemns any unvaccinated people to second-class status.

In language befitting of the vile Mayor Burgermeister Meisterburger (who also arrested Kris Kringle in the 1970 classic Santa Claus Is Comin to Town), Merkel called the measure a national act of solidarity, despite the fact that nearly 30 percent of the population now wont have access to anything deemed by the all-powerful government to be nonessential.

The then-health minister, Jens Spahn, took a more menacing tone. He declared that by spring, pretty much everyone in Germany  will be vaccinated, cured, or dead. It has yet to be seen whether or not this is a threat or a promise, considering that COVID-19 has a 99 percent survival rate, but it drips with the eerie specter of Nazism. Merkels successor, Olaf Scholz, has also encouraged Germany to pass laws for the forcible vaccination of everyone, following a similar declaration by the neighboring nation of Austria. In that country, unvaccinated people will be fined up to $15,000 for daring to refuse the states demands.

For those who dont remember, the last time Germany followed the political guidance of Austrians was when a young Austrian man named Adolf Hitler took the helm of the state. In fact, Germany today is increasingly looking more and more like Nazi Germany from the 1930s. Back then, Germany passed laws in the name of national health that increasingly pushed Jews out of all aspects of public life and claimed that they were merely following the science. Propaganda announced (pdf) that the healthy parts of the population were endangered and unnecessarily burdened by those defined as inferior.

To assist with the efforts to protect the nation, Nazi Germany set up camps to isolate Jews and other perceived dangerous groups from the pure Germans. Recently, they have returned to such policies and established camps for anyone who might resist their edicts. Furthermore, in Nazi Germany store owners would post signs declaring Juden unerwunschtJews unwelcome. Today, Germans have begun posting signs with the language updated to read ungeimpfte unerwunschtunvaccinated not welcome.

For 12 long yearsfrom 1933 to 1945the Nazi regime persecuted, oppressed, and killed anyone they claimed was a danger to the state. Anyone who questioned the justice or propriety of these acts was silenced through one means or another. After the war, once the Allied powers had defeated their armies and conquered their nation, their wicked deeds were exposed to the world. It was determined that the whole nation has engaged in a lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern civilization, and must be reformed so that both Germany and the world would never forget the atrocities that were committed and never allow them again.

However, not even 100 years later, it seems as though they have forgotten. Observers noted after the war that the Third Reich was perhaps the only nation who carried the prostitution of science to this extremity. Yet again, Germany is walking down a dangerous path and seemingly seeks to establish a Fourth Reich using the same tactics, methods, and ideas of its forefathers.

Let us in America not follow down that same road but continually steel ourselves against any and all forms of tyranny and oppression. Let us also pray that Bonhoeffers and Niemollers will once again stand against this familiar foe, and as totalitarianism grows increasingly popular, this year for Christmas, lets give each other the gift of freedom.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Abby Joseph Cohen, Senior Investment Strategist Goldman Sachs, attends the Economic Club of New York Leadership Excellence Award in New York on April 21, 2015. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Goldman Sachs Strategist Abby Joseph Cohen to Retire, Join Columbia Faculty

Goldman Sachs senior investment strategist Abby Joseph Cohen, whose upbeat stock market forecasts made her the face of the 1990s bull market, will retire at the end of 2021 to join the Columbia University faculty, the company said on Monday.

Cohen, who joined Goldman Sachs in 1990, will become professor of business at Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Business on Jan. 1, the firm said.

In a statement, the company said Cohen played a critical role in expanding its global investment research franchise, with leadership positions including chief U.S. strategist and president of the Global Markets Institute, Goldmans public policy center.

She has been an influential presence at the firm and across the financial industry, said Jan Hatzius, head of the global investment research division and the firms chief economist.

By Karen Pierog
Northern Territory Health Minister Natasha Fyles speaks to the media during a press conference outside Parliament in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia on Apr. 9, 2021. (AAP Image/Aaron Bunch)

Health Staff Shortages Cause Medical Clinic Closures in the Northern Territory, Australia

Just as the Northern Territory borders open and cases of COVID-19 grow to 123, a number of Territory clinics will be closing down for the Christmas holiday period.

In a social media post on Monday evening, Country Liberal Party (CLP) Shadow Health Minister Bill Yan said that ongoing staff shortages and crippling pressure on the Territorys health system is negatively impacting Territorians in remote areas and that some clinics are closing their doors for the Christmas holidays.

He also highlighted that the timing is not good, considering borders have just been opened up to interstate travellers.

As well as heaping additional stress on residents, this also puts additional pressure on healthcare providers in Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, he said, referring to the fact that with multiple clinic closures, people will need to travel to larger towns such as Tenant Creek and Alice Springs to seek health care.

Yan said that just 37 percent of remote communities are fully vaccinated in the Barkly region, which makes up the mid-eastern portion of the Northern Territory. Meanwhile, Canteen Creek in the Southern Barkly has a double vaccinated rate of just 26 percent.

However, this is a region in which several remote clinics will close for Christmas,

So why is the Gunner Government shutting down an essential health service in these communities? he said.

Yan also speculated that the NT Health Minister is overwhelmed with the management of the Howard Springs quarantine facility, along with the day to day needs of the Territory, and that Territorians are suffering as a result.

The Gunner Government needs to hand Howard Springs back to the Federal Government so it can focus on the delivery of critical health services to Territorians, he said.

The CLP supports ongoing permanent healthcare positions, rather than fixed-term contracts so that these critical staff shortages can be filled and certainty provided to interstate health professionals looking to relocate to the Territory.

Yan said that closing health clinics and putting extra pressure on the health system as borders reopen is irresponsible, dangerous and just not good enough.

Meanwhile, at a press conference on Tuesday, Health Minister Natasha Fyles responded to previous comments from the Leader of the Opposition, Lia Finocchiaro, who said the Government has no idea how many staff shortages there are at hospitals, and the CLP is concerned that the 3,500 travellers coming into the Territory each day over the holidays will render the health system unable to cope.

If you want to know who has no idea, its the Leader of the Opposition. She would have opened our borders last year in June, she would have given away our vaccines, so when it comes to credibility, the CLP has absolutely none in the health space, Fyles said.

She added that the Government has continued to listen to health advice and have put a number of public health measures in place to keep the community safe.

As we step forward into the new normal, as we go from a pandemic to an endemic, there will certainly be challenges, but its not that were just throwing open our borders like the CLP would have done, she said.

Weve got vaccination; weve got people coming in and having to follow a testing regime.

She said that the Government had managed the pandemic response well right across the Territory, including in the vulnerable communities, and that the Territory has some of the highest vaccination rates in Australia in some areas.

She acknowledged that some locations had low vaccination rates, but they are working on that and need people to come forward.

Fyles also said the Territory is entering a new phase and cant stay cut off forever, that people need to be able to travel, and that the public health measures in place will keep people safe as they do so.

When asked about staff shortages, Fyles said there are 80 remote health care clinics and six hospitals in the Territory.

Weve always acknowledged that staffing is a challenge, and weve got a number of measures in place to grow our own staff, to support staff, she said.

But I can absolutely assure Territorians that throughout the pandemic, weve kept them safe and will continue to do so over the coming weeks and months.
The Kennedy Expressway is clogged with cars as rush-hour commuters and Thanksgiving holiday travelers try to make their way through the city, in Chicago on Nov. 21, 2017. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Holiday Travelers Undeterred by Omicron, Gas Prices

Millions of year-end holiday travelers are expected to take to the road, the railways, and the skies next week, despite widespread fears over the Omicron coronavirus variant.

AAA has estimated that more than 109 million people will travel during the final days of December and into early Januarynearly 28 million more than in 2020 and just under 10 million fewer than in 2019.

Its not atypical for a big holiday for 90 percent of people to go by car, AAA National Public Relations Manager Andrew Gross told The Epoch Times. At this point, we dont think Omicron is going to have an impact on peoples travel plans domestically.

Certainly, people have shown they are more comfortable traveling in a pandemic. People have begun to adapt, and theyve learned how to cope and work within the system.

Gross said AAA travel volume projections are based on a number of variables, including macroeconomic factors, stock indexes, and broad market forces. The agency uses IHS Market in London to provide estimates, which are pretty accurate, he said.

Travelers go through OHare International Airport before the Thanksgiving Day holiday in Chicago on Nov. 20, 2018. (Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters)

Travelers who had to cancel plans in 2020 because of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus are making up for lost time this holiday season, according to AAA.

The organization said the dramatic turnaround will bring this years travel volume to 92 percent of 2019 levels. Airlines can expect to see a 184 percent increase from 2020.

Americans who canceled their vacations in 2020 want to gather with family and friends for the holidays this year, although they will still be mindful of the pandemic and the new Omicron variant, Paula Twidale, senior vice president for AAA Travel, said in a statement. With vaccines widely available, conditions are much different and many people feel a greater level of comfort with travel.

The Omicron variant accounted for more than 70 percent of new cases logged in the United States the week ending Dec. 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Southwest Airlines said its encouraged by holiday travel volumes, but it didnt provide specific numbers.

Based on current trends, leisure bookings continue to come in above expectations for December travel, the airline told The Epoch Times. The airline has not observed any noticeable impact on travel demand related to the Omicron variant and has not reduced capacity or operations in response to it.

United Airlines estimated that until Jan. 3, there will be a 5 percent increase in daily passenger volumes to roughly 420,000 people per day.

Southwest Airlines planes in a file photograph. (Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo)

At Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) officials said the winter holiday travel season is off to a strong start, with projections of up to 3.5 million travelers expected to use the airport from Dec. 16 through Jan. 3, making this the busiest travel period the airport has seen this year.

The projected travel volume is about 77 percent of the nearly 4.5 million travelers during the same time in 2019. In 2020, nearly 2 million passengers went through LAX during the holiday season.

We are committed to providing clean, safe, and healthy facilities at LAX, and we will be deploying additional help during the holiday season to ensure our guests have a smooth and enjoyable travel experience, said Justin Erbacci, chief executive for Los Angeles World Airports.

Idle Greyhound buses are parked at a depot in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, after the transportation company announced that it had permanently closed its service in Canada on May 13, 2021. (Chris Helgren/Reuters)

Many holiday travelers are also expected to travel by commuter rail this holiday season.

At Amtrak, public relations manager Jason Abrams said the busiest days will be from Dec. 17 through Jan. 2, 2022.

While I dont have numbers specific to highlight for the upcoming travel period, I can tell you that for Thanksgiving weekfrom Nov. 19 to Nov. 29systemwide ridership was 78 percent compared with ridership in a similar period during the 2019 Thanksgiving holiday rush, Abrams told The Epoch Times.

Falling gas prices should also help to spur travel plans. Nationally, it costs an average of $3.31 per gallon for regular gas at the pump.
House Republicans Ask Biden When Legal Immunity for Vaccine Manufacturers Will End

A group of House Republicans has asked President Joe Biden about the legal immunity granted to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, expressing concern about the immunity combined with the administrations vaccine mandates.

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) and 15 colleagues told Biden in a Dec. 20 letter that the mandates raise many concerns as to the ethics of the federal government requiring a vaccine which receives special liability protections normally afforded to developing drugs, financially benefiting the vaccine manufacturers.

During the Trump administration, then-Health Security Alex Azar invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act and declared vaccine makers immune from claims except for those alleging willful misconduct.

The invocation has been extended multiple times and is currently set to stay in place until October 2024.

People who suffer adverse reactions from a COVID-19 vaccine can seek compensation from a program known as CICP, but program administrators have been slow to analyze claims. The first payout was just announced last week.

Cloud and the other congressmembers said they see the combination of mandates and legal protection for Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson unjust.

It is utterly unjust to the American people to not only use the coercive arm of the government to force vaccines upon them, but to then provide little legal recourse for damages should they be adversely affected. It is our belief that in the face of such mandates, the American people should be entitled to greater legal recourse to recoup damages brought on by the federal government, they wrote.

Trying to unconstitutionally mandate an experimental vaccine on Americans without allowing them legal recourse if they are adversely affected is one of the most egregiously tyrannical abuses of power in Americas history, Cloud added in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times. Giving full-blown legal immunity to vaccine manufacturers while mandating the public to use their product is absurd. If the Biden administration continues to pursue forced injections, then vaccine manufacturers must have their legal immunity revoked, allowing Americans to take legal action if they experience harmful side effects.

A nurse fills up syringes for patients as they receive their COVID-19 booster vaccination during a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination clinic in Southfield, Mich., on Sept. 29, 2021. (Emily Elconin/Reuters)

A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that there are no current plans to rescind the PREP Act declaration.

Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Millions of Americans have experienced side effects after getting a COVID-19 vaccine, according to reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

One of the most severe side effects, blood clotting with low blood platelet levels, has been seen more frequently after people get Johnson & Johnsons shot. About 15 percent of cases have led to death. That prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week to recommend people get one of the other vaccines.

The Pfizer and Moderna shots have been linked to post-vaccination heart inflammation, but health officials have said they have not been able to confirm that the condition has resulted in any deaths.

The Food and Drug Administration and the CDC say the benefits of all three vaccines cleared for use in the United States outweigh the risks. The benefits are primarily the reduction of hospitalizations following contraction of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

The Biden administration was asked whether there are plans to rescind the current PREP Act declaration, given regulators approved Pfizers vaccine in August.

It was also asked what criteria must be satisfied to rescind the declaration before its expiration date and how the criteria are decided upon.
School in a church. Children evacuated from West Ham and Birmingham are using All Saints Church, Bishopswood, Ross on Wye, as a schoolroom, because of lack of accommodation in the school. The church is situated in the heart of the woods in Wye Valley, and when the weather is suitable, the children have their lessons outdoors. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

How Horace Mann Worked to Destroy Traditional Educationand America

Commentary

This article is part 2 in a series examining the origins of public education in the United States.

Before government took over education in Massachusetts and eventually the rest of the United States, the state and the nation had a thriving education system that produced the best-educated population on the planet up until that time. But then, Horace Mann came along, and everything changed.

Early American schooling was dominated by homeschooling, along with a vibrant free-market education ecosystem. Outside of education at home, which is where most children learned to read, the landscape featured mostly schools run by churches and entrepreneurs, as well as private tutors.

Many of Americas Founding Fathers, like the broader population, received the bulk of their basic education at home. Even poor children could receive a formal education, though, provided largely by churches and philanthropists. The Quakers, for example, ran schools that welcomed anyone, whether they could pay or not.

Tax-funded K-12 government schoolsespecially as they exist todaywould have been inconceivable to Americans from the 1600s to the mid-1800s. Education without the Bible and God would have been not just inconceivable to those people, but outrageous, if not an oxymoron.

And yet, long before government seized control over education, Americans were incredibly well educated. Literacy data and vast amounts of anecdotal evidence from that era show that literacy levels were significantly higher in the mid-to-late 1700s than they are today. Modern studies on the subject confirm that.

Most children learned to read at home before ever stepping foot in a formal school. And they did it using simple, cheap primers that were vastly superior to almost everything in use today when it comes to reading instruction.

Then, everything changed. An ambitious lawyer-turned-politician-turned-educational-reformer with almost no experience as an educator came on the scene. He had grandiose ideas and messianic delusions that would eventually see the complete restructuring of the entire educational system in the United States. His name: Horace Mann.

Inspiration and Beginnings

In the first article in this education series, The Genesis of Public Schools: Collectivism and Failure, the almost unknown origins of the government-school movement in America were exposed. It all began with with a now-obscure communist named Robert Owen and his failed collectivist colony in Indiana known as New Harmony.

Owens early 19th-century writings on education inspired the king of Prussia to establish a national government education system based on statist idealseducation of the state, by the state, for the state. Prussias totalitarian system included mandatory schooling for all children, powerful police forces to deal with non-compliance, segregation of children by age, instilling of a statist mindset in all children, and more. It was the first system of its kind anywhere on the planet.

But it would not be the last.

The Owen-inspired Prussian system captured the imagination of Mann and his wealthy associates. These mostly Harvard-educated elites were increasingly abandoning the Orthodox Christianity that defined early America in favor of liberal Unitarian and secular ideas about man and nature. They had an obsession with reforming man and society in their own image.

As a politician in the state legislature, Mann worked hard to expand the size and scope of government across all fields. But by the mid-1830s, the educational reformer was ready to advance Big Government in the United States in an unprecedented manner: the total takeover of education by the state.

With a governor friendly to their ideas in place, Mann and his wealthy backers launched their transformative education plan in 1837. This included setting up a state Board of Educationthe first in Americathat would oversee education throughout the commonwealth. Mann was chosen to serve as the boards first secretary.

It was all supposed to be based on the Prussian model launched two decades earlier. According to Mann himself, one of the primary goals of the new education regime he was constructing in Massachusetts would be to equalize the conditions of men and eradicate povertyin essence, the same collectivist ideology espoused by Owen and his disciples decades earlier.

The keystone of the system envisioned by Mann was a network of government-run seminaries, or normal schools, that would train all Massachusetts teachers to teach what the state wanted taught. It didnt take long for the state-sponsored normal schools to begin indoctrinating future teachers with Manns naturalistic views on religion, including the introduction of the quack phrenology book The Constitution of Man.

Utopian Beliefs

Even though Christianity and the Reformation had fueled the spread of education, Mann, like Owen before him, only more quietly, rejected the Bible and Orthodox Christianity, putting him far outside of the mainstream in 1800s America. Under the guise of removing sectarian ideas, he worked hard to destroy the Christian roots of education across Massachusetts and beyond.

Mann shared Owens views on the nature of man, too. The prevailing Calvinist worldview in early America held that man was innately and totally depraved, and so government must be strictly limited in its powers. Men like Owen and Mann, however, believed people were basically good, and that the right set of policies and education would perfect mankind to create Utopia.

Mann and his cohorts believed fervently in the power of big government to wisely guide mankind toward an idyllic future. He regularly used lofty rhetoric about the benevolent, paternalistic role of government that would become the all-too-familiar siren song of the 20th centurys most ruthless totalitarians.

The views of Mann and Owen ultimately prevailed over the traditional understanding of education that had been refined and perfected over the centuries. But while Mann predicted that government schools would ultimately render obsolete nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code, in reality, their proliferation coincided with a downward spiral that would see crime and immorality explode to unprecedented heights.

Manns attitude toward other peoples children was bizarre, too, even by todays standards. In his 1867 Lectures and Annual Reports on Education, Mann claimed that those engaged in the sacred cause of education were entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause. Shortly before his appointment as education secretary, he gushed at the mere thought of having the future minds of such multitudes dependent in some way on him.

Purpose of Education

While Mann is often described correctly as one of the founders of public education in the United States, the full story is slightly more complex. Prior to Mann, Massachusetts did have some government intervention in education, including some common schools with roots in the early 17th century Puritan Bible colony. That history is well documented.

But regardless of what Mann might have told the conservative public at the time, what existed prior was completely different from what Mann introduced.

The commonwealths first education lawsin fact the first education laws in all of North Americaincluded the Old Deluder Satan Act of the 1640s. The text of the legislation reveals a great deal about the mindset of that era.

The premise was this: One chief project of that old deluder, Satan is to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures. With that in mind, lawmakers decided that towns needed to ensure everyone was capable of reading. So towns with more than a certain number of inhabitants were ordered to make sure children could readthe alternative being satanic deception rooted in ignorance of the Bible.

The modern conception of separation of church and state was completely alien to the Puritan founders, who laid the foundations for what would eventually become the United States of America. For them, the state was a divine institution ordained by God charged with carrying out Gods commandsprimarily punishing evil, as defined by God. And that is why they felt it proper to use both church and stateinseparable institutions, in their mindto educate children.

But even in Massachusetts, one of just a handful of jurisdictions that had any government involvement in education at all, the free market and Christianity still dominated the educational scene by the early to mid-1800s. Common schools were in steep decline, as the overwhelming majority of parents chose to educate their children at home and in vastly superior private schools.

At least, that was the case until Mann came along and created Americas first ever state-controlled, bureaucratic, property-tax-funded government school system. At the same time that was occurring, along with a militant secularization of education, Mann and his cohorts waged a campaign to demonize the phenomenal private academies across the state, as well as the parents who sent their children there.

Until Mann, across America and the broader Western world, education was regarded as a process of giving children intellectual tools and moral instruction. The primary end was to know God, with developing the intellectual abilities of children a secondary purpose.

After Mann, though, there was a radical transformation. So-called progressive education, as it came to be known, was the new norm. Under his vision, schools were to serve as tools for re-shaping human nature and society to achieve a heaven-on-earth ideal.

One of the most far-reaching innovations to enter the schools under Mann was the whole word method of teaching reading, as opposed to the phonics that had been used for thousands of years. It ended in total disaster. That story, which is crucial to understanding the modern illiteracy crisis, will be recounted in an upcoming article in this education series.

After unleashing government education on the people of Massachusetts, Mann went to Prussia to gain a deeper understanding of that regimes centralized indoctrination system. Upon his return to the United States, he beat back conservative attackers upset about his schemes. Then he traveled the country like an evangelist shilling for government schools, successfully promoting the Prussian system in state after state.

The Utopians believed government schools would make Prussia and other jurisdictions that implemented them into paradises of enlightenment and progress. The reality, unfortunately, has not been nearly so nice. In Prussia, the statist educational system culminated in the total transformation of Germany into one of the most despotic horror shows in human history.

Its not working out well for Americans today, either. Stay tuned to this space for more.

Alex Newman is an award-winning international journalist, educator, author, and consultant who co-wrote the book Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy Americas Children. He also serves as the CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media and writes for diverse publications in the United States and abroad.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
The logo of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is pictured at its headquarters, in Hsinchu, Taiwan on Jan. 19, 2021. (Ann Wang/Reuters)

If You Invested $1,000 in Taiwan Semiconductor Stock One Year Ago, Heres How Much Youd Have Now

Investors who have owned stocks in the last year have generally experienced some big gains. In fact, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust total return over the last 12 months is 26.2 percent. But there is no question some big-name stocks performed better than others along the way.

Taiwan Semiconductors Bumpy Ride

One company that has been a disappointing investment in the past year has been chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Ltd.

A global semiconductor shortage has created a favorable pricing environment for Taiwan Semiconductor in the past couple of years. However, the company is also facing some potential headwinds that have weighed on the stocks performance.

Taiwan reportedly accounts for about 65 percent of the worlds semiconductor manufacturing. Taiwan Semiconductor is in the process of building a new fab in Arizona, where it will manufacture 20,000 5-nanometer chips per month at full capacity. Unfortunately, that will only account for about 2 percent of the companys full production and some investors are concerned about potential geopolitical issues in Southeast Asia. Tensions between the U.S. and China are high, and China has been exerting pressure on the region. If a full military dispute were to break out in Asia, Taiwan Semiconductor and its U.S. investors could be collateral damage. Meanwhile, U.S. federal subsidies incentivizing U.S. chip production will likely mostly benefit domestic producers, such as Intel Corporation and Texas Instruments Incorporated.

At the same time, as the chip shortage is alleviated in the coming quarters, semiconductor pricing will likely again soften, potentially eating into Taiwan Semiconductors margins, profits, and valuation.

Still, the company remains the worlds most advanced chipmaker heading into 2022, so optimistic investors are hoping the stock regains its momentum after a lackluster 2021.

At the beginning of 2020, Taiwan Semiconductor shares were trading at $59.60. By the beginning of March, the stock was down to $54.37 as news of the coronavirus spreading in China prompted concerns about a U.S. pandemic.

When the market crashed during the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak in March, Taiwan Semiconductor shares dropped as low as $42.70 during the height of the pandemic fears.

When the market bounced off pandemic lows, Taiwan Semiconductor began to rebound as well. By July, the companys shares were above pre-pandemic highs and trading around $80.

Taiwan Semiconductor didnt maintain the momentum of the broader market in the second half of 2020. After roughly two months of consolidation, the stock broke out to new highs in October, reaching $100 in November before finishing the year at around $110.

Taiwan Semiconductor in 2021, Beyond

Taiwan Semiconductor stock hit its 2021 highs of $142.20 in February before settling back into a trading range of between around $108 and $128 for most of the remainder of the year. Today, shares are hovering around $114.

Taiwan Semiconductor investors who bought one year ago and held on hoping for a big 2021 have generated a lackluster return on their investment at this point. In fact, $1,000 in Taiwan Semiconductor stock bought on Dec. 20, 2020, would be worth about $1,133 today, assuming reinvested dividends.

Looking Ahead

Analysts are expecting bullish momentum to return from Taiwan Semiconductor in the next 12 months. The average price target among the eight analysts covering the stock is $142.50, suggesting 24.5 percent upside from current levels.

By Wayne Duggan

 2021 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Im the Big Problem: COVID-19 Whistleblower on Why She Wont Be Silent Despite Threats to Her Life

Her scientific conclusions about the COVID-19 pandemic and the origins of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus are controversial. The jury is still out on her views that the CCP virus is the result of a secret 20-year-old bioweapons research program by the Chinese regime that includes coronaviruses.

But despite pushback from fellow scientists, her former employer, and even her now-estranged husbandwho she said tried to poison herCOVID-19 whistleblower Dr. Yan Li-meng says it was very easy for her to risk her life and career to speak up about her observations of the initial outbreak.

Im the big problem, the virologist told EpochTVs Crossroads program. Yan was a member of the well-connected WHO influenza H5 Reference Lab based at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Healtha key emergency disease lab for the Chinese government. They [the CCP] need to disappear me, she said.

On why shes considered such a threat to a communist regime that governs more than 1.4 billion people, Yan claimed, The reason is very clear, because the things Im telling the world actually reveal the top confidential plans of the Chinese government. Theyve spent over 20 years working on the novel bioweapons, including using coronavirus.

The CCP has already silenced other whistleblowers who might have had valuable knowledge and insight into the coronavirus outbreak.

With the nature of Yans claims being difficult to verify, she knows she is putting her reputation on the line by sharing her views on the record so that the public can judge for themselves regarding what really happened in Wuhan.

Her bioweapon claims have received no support in publications by the international scientific community and have been dismissed by the U.S. intelligence community, which said in its August report, We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.

Chinese officials had no foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged, the report said, which remains inconclusive regarding the origins of the CCP virus, while pointing to either a natural origin or a laboratory accident as the most likely scenarios for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.

However, the rigors of the report met with some challenges, including that a lab leak does not rule out that the CCP was doing bioweapon research that inadvertently led to a leak, as argued by David Asher, former lead COVID-19 investigator at the U.S. State Department.

There is no evidence to date suggesting that the virus was intentionally released, contrary to Yans claims.

There is intelligence supporting the existence of a CCP-led bioweapons program. In May, investigative reporter with The Australian, Sharri Markson, reported that the U.S. State Department had uncoveredduring its investigations into the origins of COVID-19a 263-page paper written by Peoples Liberation Army scientists and senior Chinese public health officials from 2015.

The paper, titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, outlined opportunities with SARS coronaviruses for a new era of genetic weapons in which the viruses can be artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before.

The document, authored by 18 of the Chinese militarys and academias top people, also outlined a claim by Chinese military scientists that the SARS-CoV-1 virus, which caused many deaths in 2003, was developed by terrorists who released the man-made bioweapon on China.

Analysts have pointed to this as a potential motivation for Beijing to have an interest in developing its own bioweapons research.

Crossing The Red Line

Yan said that because shed crossed the red line of the CCP and its political interests, agents and informants of the CCP have been monitoring her movements and communications even on American soil, and spreading rumors to undermine her reputation. Her husband even acted on the regimes behalf in an attempt to take her back to Hong Kong where she can be charged under Beijings new so-called National Security Law after a failed attempt to poison her breakfast before she defected to the United States in April 2020.

My husband always tried to help the Chinese government and Hong Kong government to bring me back, she said, describing his efforts as typical of the CCP, which uses family members to pressure critics of the regime. He told me that if you come back, the government [will say] you are innocent. They will give you a promotion when you go back; they will give you a lab; they will give you a lot of grants, like millions in money.

As the pandemic unfolded in January 2020, Yan said she realized it was urgent at that time to speak up.

She claims to have learned that Wuhan already knew of human-to-human transmission of a SARS-like virus on Dec. 31, 2019. Then, as January rolled in, Yan said she watched the CCP and WHO lie to the world about what they already knew about the transmission of the viruswhich would later be proven a lie as the first cracks began to emergeshowing that the CCP was covering up the extent of the disease outbreak.

Yan added that at this stage, the CCP had already silenced or disappeared the whistleblower doctorslike Dr. Li Wenliangin mainland China who were trying to warn the world about the virus. By Jan. 17, no more updates were coming out of Wuhan.

Yan then thought, If I dont tell the world, they will keep covering [it] up and there will be [a] bigger outbreak and even a pandemic all over the world.

On Jan. 19, 2020, she decided to go public. She told The Epoch Times American Thoughts Leaders that she first spoke to Mr. Lu De, who hosts a Chinese-language anti-CCP YouTube channel based in America. She had told Lu it was in the hopes of giv[ing] pressure to [the] Chinese government to stop this evil plan.

It delayed the outbreak and reduced the damage in some way, Yan told Crossroads of her efforts, as the CCP was forced to admit the outbreak in Wuhan within four hours of her comments.

They were forced to admit for the first time to the world that human-to-human transmission exists within 24 hours of my revelation, she added.

She said that she was inspired to speak up after witnessing the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests.

I was in Hong Kong, and when I saw it happen in Hong Kong  I realized how evil the CCP can be. They want to grab the freedom, democracy, human rightsall these basic thingsfrom poor people. And once people start to fight, they will just disappear them or kill them, she lamented of her country.

She said that one of the protest scenes that really struck her was where many of Hong Kongs seniors, who would have been over 70 or 80, stood on the front line to stop the army from harming the protesters. Most of the protesters were young people.

They told the journalists, when we were young, 50 years ago, we didnt realize the CCP is so evil, so we didnt stop it, Yan said. And now we realize that they are evil and we didnt do it when we were young, so we want to do it at this moment to help our next generations. This is the only thing we can do to stop them.

So this is also what I think, this is the thing I want to do to stop it, she said of her efforts. And Im lucky Im still alive now to share the things with people. So its just very easy.

Meanwhile, Yan has been invited by the debating society of the University of Oxford, the Oxford Union, to speak on the motion: This House Would Do Whatever Necessary. The Oxford Union has previously hosted figures such as Sir Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, and Mother Theresa.
Is Unschooling the Future of Education?

A conversation with unschooling expert Kerry McDonald

The new book, Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom, by Kerry McDonaldan author, senior education fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education, and advocate of the philosophy of education known as unschoolingtakes aim at long-entrenched notions about schooling and looks to the future as to what McDonald believes education should look like.

The Epoch Times: What led you to become interested in alternatives to traditional schooling?

Kerry McDonald. (Courtesy of Kerry McDonald)

Kerry McDonald: I majored in economics in college, but grew increasingly interested in educationparticularly the government monopoly characteristics of mass schooling that limit parental choice.

During my senior year of college, I did a research project that involved shadowing a homeschooling family who lived nearby. This was the late 1990s and homeschooling had just become legally recognized in all 50 states. I went to public schools and never knew anything about homeschooling or alternatives to school.

Walking into that homeschooling familys kitchen for the first time, I was completely enchanted. It was such a warm and welcoming learning environment, and the child, who was about eight years old at the time, was curious and confident, articulate and talented. I learned about her authentic socialization in their larger community, connecting with people of all ages through shared interests and everyday interactions.

This was in stark contrast to a student-teaching practicum I was doing that same semester. There I experienced a local public elementary school with its forced socialization, command-and-control environment, age-segregated classrooms with a static handful of teachers, and disconnection from the larger world. I never realized this contrast, of course, because my childhood had been spent in public schools; but witnessing these two entirely different learning environments for the first time triggered my fascination with alternatives to mass schooling and education choice more broadly, and is what prompted me to attend graduate school in education policy at Harvard University.

The Epoch Times: You share on your website that you and your husband homeschool your four children. What inspired you to take that path and how has it benefited your family?

Ms. McDonald: After shadowing that homeschooling family when I was in college, the idea of homeschooling always stuck with me as a valuable education option. Once we became parents and were looking at education choices for our children, my husband and I felt that homeschooling was the ideal fit for our family. We live in Boston and have access to a wide array of homeschooling resources, universities, museums, libraries, mentors, and tutors, as well as a vibrant and diverse homeschooling community. Our kids also attend a part-time self-directed learning center for unschoolers and take a host of classes throughout the community that are tied to their interests. We really felt that sending our children to school would contract their learning, not expand it.

The Epoch Times: Much of your work focuses on unschooling. How do you define unschooling?

Ms. McDonald: I define unschooling as disentangling education from schooling, including school-at-home versions of homeschooling.

Schooling is one method of education, but it is not the only one and, I argue, not the best one for the realities of the Innovation Era. The term unschooling was coined in 1977 by John Holt, the bestselling author and teacher who helped usher in the modern homeschooling movement by connecting homeschooling families and fighting to legalize the homeschooling option. Holt defined unschooling as taking children out of school. Today, unschooling has come to mean an education approach focused on self-directed education tied to a childs emerging interests and community immersion, rather than coercive schooling practices.

In Unschooled, I spotlight families and organizations that are incorporating unschooling principles, as well as unschooling alumni.

The Epoch Times: What do you feel are the greatest benefits to the approach of unschooling?

Ms. McDonald: Freedom.

Unschooling is all about moving from force to freedom in education by shifting away from coercive schooling practices, retaining childhood curiosity and creativity, and allowing young people to chart their own path in life, supported by adults and the resources of their community. It is about individual agency over institutional force. A key theme in Unschooled is describing how various individuals, families, and organizations balance freedom and responsibility through unschooling, an important and essential challenge for living in a free society. If we want young people to grow up to value freedom, we cannot expect that respect to emerge when they spend their childhood learning by force.

The Epoch Times: Youve said that the conventional schooling model is inadequate to meet the needs of todays students. Do you believe that schools can be reformed to meet those needs?

Ms. McDonald: Todays conventional schooling model emerged in the mid-19th century under a centralized, standardized plan to mandate school attendance under a legal threat of force. The bells and buzzers, the age-segregated classrooms and top-down curriculum, the straight lines and hands raised for permission to use the bathroom were all imports from the Prussian model of education that fascinated 19th-century American school reformers.

These practices may have helped to train compliant factory workers for the Industrial Age, but they are completely inadequate for the needs of the Innovation Era. We dont need robotic humans. What we need are original thinkers and entrepreneurial doers. Human ingenuity is what separates us from robots.

The good news is that we dont need to teach children how to be creative and innovative. They already are! We simply need to stop crushing their human creativity through forced schooling.

The Epoch Times: What advice would you give parents who are concerned with the state of public schools? What steps can they take to consider alternatives for their children?

Ms. McDonald: I think parents are increasingly frustrated with one-size-fits-all compulsory mass schooling and they are looking for alternatives. Homeschooling is becoming more accessible to more families, including dual-working parent families and single parents, thanks to expanding resources for homeschoolers, local learning centers, co-ops, classes for homeschoolers, digital learning options, and community college programs.

Education choice mechanisms, like Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and tax-credit scholarship programs, are also beginning to extend to homeschoolers. Homeschooling is really the legal mechanism to put parents back in charge of their childs education and connect their childs needs and interests with available educational resources. Parents may have more schooling alternatives available to them than they may think, and homeschooling can be the gateway to these opportunities.

The Epoch Times: Some parents may feel that public school is the only option for their children. What advice would you give such parents?

Ms. McDonald: For families whose only education option is an assigned district school, I would suggest giving children as much freedom as possible outside of school. Avoid scheduling structured extracurriculars and intensive summer programs and give children more freedom to play and explore and discover outside of school.

Also, reinforce to children that schooling does not define who they are. They are much, much more than a letter grade, or a test score, or a teachers impression. Encourage their emerging talents and gifts, originality and exuberance.

Parents can also support the expansion of education choice mechanisms, like ESAs, tax-credit scholarship programs, vouchers, virtual and charter schools, etc., to give more options to families beyond a mandatory school assignment.

The Epoch Times: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?

Ms. McDonald: I hope readers recognize that we need an educated citizenry, but we dont need a schooled one. Visionary parents and entrepreneurial educators are seeking and building alternatives to school that expand freedom and choice. Disruptive innovation in education is already here.
Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida wearing a face mask delivers his policy speech at the start of an extraordinary session of the lower house of the parliament, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in Tokyo, Japan, on Dec. 6, 2021. (Issei Kato/Reuters)

Japan Accelerates Booster Shots for Senior Citizens and Medical Workers Amid Omicron Fears

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Dec. 17 said the government would accelerate COVID-19 vaccine booster shots for 31 million medical workers and senior citizens amid fears over the spread of the Omicron variant in the country.

Booster shot intervals for elderly people will be reduced to seven months, instead of eight months, from February onwards. As for healthcare workers and high-risk elderly people, Kishida said they would get their booster shots within six months after their second shot of the vaccine.

Fears about the Omicron variant are spreading, so Ive decided to move up the schedule to prioritize senior citizens, since the effectiveness of vaccination diminishes faster for them while they are also at higher risks of developing severe illness, he said, reported Japan Times.

Kishida noted that he has spoken with the U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizers CEO, Albert Bourla, to secure 2 million doses of Pfizers oral treatment for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease.

Japan has contracted to receive 120 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine next year and had about 16 million in stock as of this month. The government has also approved the use of Moderna Incs vaccine for its booster program, which has so far covered about 0.1 percent of the population.

Although CCP virus cases have fallen dramatically since a deadly wave in August, there is growing concern about the Omicron variant, which has been found more than 30 times in Japan, mostly during airport screening and quarantine.

On Dec. 16, Japan confirmed its first domestically-acquired infection when a female staff member at a quarantine facility tested positive for Omicron. The Health Ministry noted that the patient in her 30s has no recent history of traveling overseas.

It is strongly suspected that the infection took place within the facility. The woman is now in hospital, and her condition is stable, an official from the health ministry told reporters.

The total number of Omicron cases in Japan stood at 82 as of Monday, with 14 new cases detected at the airport quarantines, according to state media NHK-World Japan.

A cluster of CCP virus cases linked to a U.S. military base in the southern island prefecture of Okinawa has reportedly grown to 180 cases on Monday, with one Japanese worker at Camp Hansen in Okinawa testing positive for the Omicron variant on Dec. 17.

Last month, Kishida announced that he was extending travel bans to all foreign tourists until early next year to curb the spread of the Omicron variant. The rules also required citizens returning from countries where the Omicron variant has been detected to quarantine in designated facilities.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Japan's Prime Minister and ruling Liberal Democratic Party leader Fumio Kishida puts rosettes by successful general election candidates' names on a board at the party headquarters in Tokyo on Oct. 31, 2021. (Behrouz Mehri, Pool via AP)

Japan Hangs 3 Men in First Execution Under PM Fumio Kishida

Japan executed three men on Dec. 21, including a 65-year-old convict, in whats believed to be the first executions carried out under the rule of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who took office in October.

The executions were also deemed to be the first to take place in Japan since 2019.

The first convict, Yasutaka Fujishiro, 65, was hanged for killing his 80-year-old aunt, two cousins, and four other relatives in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, in 2004. Fujishiro was sentenced to death in May 2009 by the Kobe District Court and made an appeal to the Supreme Court in 2015, which was rejected.

The two other convicts, Tomoaki Takanezawa, 54, and Mitsunori Onogawa, 44, were executed for killing two employees at two separate pachinko parlors in Gunma Prefecture in 2003. The Supreme Court finalized the death penalty for Takanezawa in July 2005 and for Onogawa in June 2009.

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara defended the countrys policy regarding capital punishment, citing the occurrences of heinous crimes in current times.

Many Japanese think the death penalty is unavoidable in the case of extremely malicious crime, Kihara told reporters after the executions, Kyodo News reported.

Capital punishment in Japan is conducted by hanging. The practice of not informing inmates of the timing of their executions until shortly before the sentence is carried out has long been decried by international human rights organizations for the stress it places on prisoners, for whom any day could be their last.

In early November, two unnamed death row inmates filed a lawsuit against Japan over how prisoners are notified only hours before the death penalty is carried out.

The lawsuit was filed in a district court in the western city of Osaka, Japan. The filing states that such practice was illegal, as prisoners wouldnt be able to file an objection. They also demanded that the practice be amended and asked for 22 million yen ($193,594) in compensation, attorney Yutaka Ueda said.

Ueda contended that theres no law mandating that prisoners be informed of their execution only hours before it occurs, noting that the practice violates Japans criminal code.

The central government has said this is meant to keep prisoners from suffering before their execution, but thats no explanation and a big problem, and we really need to see how they respond to the suit, Ueda said. Overseas, prisoners are given time to contemplate the end of their lives and mentally prepare. Its as if Japan is trying as hard as possible not to let anybody know.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Judge Blocks Bidens COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Federal Contractors in 10 States

A federal judge in Missouri has issued a temporary hold on the Biden administrations COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in 10 U.S. states while litigation plays out.

We just beat the Biden Administration in court again, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on Twitter late Monday. This afternoon, we obtained a preliminary injunction against the vaccine mandate on federal contractors, halting enforcement of that mandate in Missouri and the other states in our coalition.

The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce, applies to Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Schmitt and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, both Republicans, on Oct. 29 co-led the 10 states in suing the Biden administration over the mandate, calling it unconstitutional, unlawful, and unwise.

It will not harm the federal government to maintain the status quo while the courts decide the issues of the Presidents authority and the implications for federalism. The Court concludes that, on balance, consideration of the harms and the public interest weigh in favor of a preliminary injunction, reads the Monday preliminary injunction order from U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mandate Currently Blocked Nationwide

A nationwide preliminary injunction is already in place blocking the Biden administrations vaccine mandate for federal contractors, after a federal court in Georgia on Dec. 7 granted the injunction in a separate seven-state lawsuit led by Georgia.

The court had decided to block the mandate for the whole of the United States because a national trade organizationAssociated Builders and Contractors (ABC)was granted permission by the court to intervene in the case as a plaintiff. The states of Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia were the other plaintiffs.

[G]iven the breadth of ABCs [nationwide] membership  limiting the relief to only those before the Court would prove unwieldy and would only cause more confusion. Thus, on the unique facts before it, the Court finds it necessary, in order to truly afford injunctive relief to the parties before it, to issue an injunction with nationwide applicability, U.S. District Judge Stan Baker wrote in the order (pdf).

The COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees and contractors was otherwise going to take effect on Jan. 4, 2022. The deadline was initially set for Dec. 8.

Under the vaccine mandate, issued via executive order by President Joe Biden on Sept. 9, regular COVID-19 testing wouldnt be an option, but religious or medical exemptions from vaccination may be granted.

Federal contractors that dont comply may lose out on government contracts.

Another separate ruling on Nov. 30 blocked Bidens COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in three statesKentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Kyle Rittenhouse looks on after a break during his trial in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 9, 2021. (Mark Hertzberg/Pool/Getty Images)

Kyle Rittenhouse Issues Warning: Media Accountability Coming Soon

After he was recently acquitted on murder charges, Kyle Rittenhouse suggested certain media outlets may face legal consequences in the near future.

Theres going to be some media accountability coming soon, Rittenhouse told Fox News during an interview on Tuesday, without elaborating. There has been speculation that Rittenhouse may file defamation lawsuits against certain media outlets and high-profile individuals for how they portrayed him and the accusations they made against him.

Rittenhouse, 18, then appeared to support lawsuits by Nick Sandmann, who settled with several media outlets over their coverage of a viral incident at Washingtons Lincoln Memorial in 2019.

Good for him, Rittenhouse told Fox News.

Earlier this week, the teen was given a standing ovation at a Turning Point USA conference in Phoenix where panelists talked about the 2020 shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges stemming from the incident after arguing he acted in self-defense.

During the event, Rittenhouse suggested that people should be on the lookout for a possible lawsuit against certain media outlets that he believes misconstrued the events in Kenosha, the NY Post reported.

Last month, a jury found Rittenhouse not guilty in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz. The shooting occurred during nights of violence, protests, and riots following the officer-involved shooting of Jacob Blake, who had a warrant out for his arrest.

On that night last year, businesses in Kenosha were ransacked and burned after Blakes shooting, which came several months after an officer was seen kneeling on George Floyd, a convicted felon whose death sparked nationwide unrest, protests, and riots.

The two-week trial captivated the nations attention as his defense attorneys said he acted in self-defense, an argument that was corroborated by video evidence. Prosecutors claimed he was the instigator of the violence because he brought a rifle to Kenosha on that night.

If he had been convicted on the most serious charges in the case, he could have faced life in prison.

At one point during the trial, Rittenhouse decided to waive his Fifth Amendment right and testified in his own defense.

Its helped me grow a lot, its helped me mature, Rittenhouse said of the trial. My mentors who have been in my life  theyve helped make me the person I am today, so thank you for them.

When asked by Fox News on Tuesday about whether he would do things differently, Rittenhouse said he would.

[With] what I was dragged through and what I had to go throughto facing life in prisonI wouldnt say it was worth it, he said, adding that hindsight being 20/20.
When members of Dr. Anthony Faucis group wanted to push the natural origin narrative early in the pandemic, they chose the renowned Lancet journal as their outlet.

EcoHealths Peter Daszak penned the groups Lancet letter, which strongly condemned anyone promoting the Wuhan lab leak theory.

The Lancet letter immediately became the medias main reference point for pushing the natural origin narrative.

What the Lancet failed to disclose was Daszaks many conflicts of interest, including the fact that Ecohealth was the conduit used by Fauci to provide funding for gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

During testimony in the British parliament last week, Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet, tried to explain his dealings with Daszak and the reasoning behind the publication of the Lancet letter. It did not go well for him.

Welcome to Truth over News with Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke.



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The Aboriginal flag is seen projected on the sails of the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, on Jan. 26, 2020. (Don Arnold/Getty Images)

Lift Age of Criminal Responsibly to 14 for Aboriginal Kids: Assembly

The democratically-elected Aboriginal body responsible for negotiating a treaty with the Victorian state government has called for the age of criminal responsibility to rise from 10 to 14 years of age in the Australian state.

First Peoples Assembly of Victoria co-chairs Marcus Stewart, and Geraldine Atkinson wrote an open letter to the Victorian attorney-general calling for the change in legislation to come before a treaty.

This does not need to, nor should it, wait for Treaty. It is a much needed, sensible, compassionate, evidence-based and simple reform that community overwhelmingly supports, the letter stated (pdf).

Stewart and Atkinson said children younger than 14 years old could not fully understand the risks and consequences of their actions and called for the justice system to acknowledge that.

[Ten] year old kids should be able to share Christmas with their families at home. Were sick of seeing our kids ripped away from their communities, only to be thrown into the quicksand of the criminal justice system, Stewart, a Nira illim bulluk man, said in a release on Tuesday.

He called on the state government to stop targeting and locking up Indigenous kids.

Raising the age of legal responsibility from 10 to at least 14 is something that can happen right now, the Government mustnt hide behind its commitment to the Treaty process and use it as an excuse to stall reform, which would have a real impact on Aboriginal kids and their families and communities, Stewart said.

Atkinson, a Bangerang and Wiradjuri elder, said that raising the age of criminal responsibility was strongly supported by First Peoples communities.

The Victorian government is leading the nation in listening to the voices of First Peoples. They need to continue to listen to us; were the experts on our own lives and communities, Geraldine said.

Locking up our kids helps nobody, it just piles on further harm and trauma. Incarcerating primary school-aged kids is just wrong.

The assembly recently marked its second anniversary, after being established in 2019 with elected representatives from Aboriginal communities and traditional owner groups in Victoria.
Lockdowns Never Prevent Infection, Only Prolong Pandemic: UK Professor

Lockdowns never ultimately prevent infection and only serve to flatten the curve and thereby prolong the epidemic, a British medical professor has warned.

Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said on Dec. 21 that there is no need for a lockdown in the UK as the increase in COVID-19 cases appears to be slowing.

He told the PA news agency that measures such as social distancing and lockdowns never ultimately prevent infection unless eradication is a possibility.

What they do is flatten the curve and delay the inevitable, he said. Sometimes that is sufficient if the epidemic would overwhelm the health service, or if effective new treatments or vaccines are coming.

No new treatments or vaccines are likely to come soon, so the issue is all about flattening the peak. But if you flatten the peak you prolong the epidemic, or as we say, the area under the curve remains the same.

If restrictions are not needed, then they would only delay illness and prolong the impact on health services as well as the other negative impacts that lockdowns have on our well-being.

According to Hunter, the latest data show that total case numbers, including those of the Omicron variant, may already have plateaued or even peaked. Indeed, infection numbers may have fallen slightly in the last few days.

Hunter told Times Radio that the previously rapid increase of Omicron cases may have slowed quite dramatically.

If that is the case, then there probably isnt a need for a lockdown, he said.

The UK government removed most of Englands lockdown measures in July, but it has tightened pandemic-related restrictions again following the detection of the Omicron variant.

Under the governments Plan B measures, people have been asked to work from home if they can, vaccine passports have been introduced for large-scale events and nightclubs, and a mask mandate has been enforced for most indoor settings, including cinemas and theatres.

Over the weekend, members of the governments Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies recommended more restrictions.

Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, warned on Dec. 20 that government ministers have been focusing on worst-case scenarios in COVID-19 modelling and the UK is at serious risk of talking ourselves into annual lockdowns.

On Dec. 20, after a special two-hour meeting of the Cabinet, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government would keep the data under constant review hour by hour, but didnt implement further restrictions beyond Plan B.

He said his government wouldnt impose additional measures before it gets a clearer idea about the rate of hospital admissions associated with Omicron, and the effectiveness of vaccines against it.

PA contributed to this report.
Longtime CNN Producer John Griffin Ashamed After Arrest for Enticing Young Girls: Prosecutor

Longtime CNN producer John Griffin made statements indicative of volatility and dangerousness when taken into custody earlier this month on charges of enticing minor children, according to a new court filing.

Prosecutors also said Griffin is a troubled man who should remain held without detention ahead of his arraignment in federal court in Vermont on Wednesday.

Griffin was arrested on Dec. 10 on three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity. He faces at least 10 years and up to life in prison if convicted of a single count.

Authorities say he successfully convinced a woman last year to fly with her daughter from Nevada to Massachusetts, where picked them up in his Tesla and drove them to a ski house in Ludlow and engaged in sexual activities with the pair.

The girl was just 9 years old at the time.

After being arrested, without prompting, Griffin told authorities, Without incriminating myself, I just want to let you guys know that Im ashamed you even know my name at all, according to a new filing from prosecutors.

In the time Im with you guys, in the event I do anything inappropriate, I just want you to know that Id feel the same way you guys would if I were in your situation. Thank you, Griffin also purportedly said.

Prosecutors outlined the statements as they asked a judge to not let Griffin have bail. Hes been held since being arrested.

Griffins attorney declined to comment on the filing.

Griffins lawyer plans on asking the court for bail for his client, according to the Dec. 21 filing.

Prosecutors say Griffin was diagnosed with deep depression and substance abuse. He received inpatient treatment for his problems.

While Griffin said in August that he had been sober for eight months, during an initial court appearance in Connecticut after his arrest, Griffin admitted to having consumed drugs and/or alcohol in the 24 hours before the hearing.

Considering Griffins history of addiction, his recent relapse strongly suggests he will be unable to abide by conditions if released. Indeed, to the extent Griffin blames his investigation-triggering conduct on his substance abuse, his admission to recent drinking or drug use is a significant indicator of dangerousness, prosecutors said.

The remarks Griffin made to law enforcement are additional indicators of volatility and dangerousness, they added.

The filing also contained new details about the evidence authorities have compiled in their investigation, which has lasted over a year.

The case includes a video captured by a drone operated by Griffin that showed the 9-year-old completely naked, standing next to Griffin, who was wearing underwear, and evidence Griffin paid a relative of the girl $4,000 in an attempt to keep him or her quiet.

The woman who brought the girl to the northeast was charged last year with child abuse and other counts.

Described as the girls adopted mother, the woman allegedly sexually abused the child both at her home and in Vermont with Griffin present, according to court documents filed in Nevada.

While in Vermont, the woman went to the hospital twice, leaving her daughter alone with Griffin, who was fired by CNN after being charged.

The girl told investigators in detail about what happened at Griffins ski home.

According to the new filing, Griffin was actually pulled over for speeding in a Mercedes convertible with the girl in his backseat last year, but a police officer let Griffin go with a ticket.

Prosecutors also said Griffin tried to persuade federal authorities not to charge him, claiming he tried to cancel the mother and daughter trip to Vermont but agreed to follow through when the mother pressed the issue.

Online activity shows Griffin paid the mother $3,350 to fly across the country.

Griffin wrote in a letter to an assistant U.S. attorney that he assumed nothing inappropriate would occur with the child present, a claim undercut by messages to the mother that it was her job, in concert with me, to train the womans other minor daughter to be sexually submissive.

Griffin has told law enforcement that his estate is worth upwards of $40 million. The court should not bend to attempts to wield the wealth to secure a pre-trial release, prosecutors said.

Griffin faces not only a significant loss of liberty, but also extraordinary reputational damage. He has dishonestly tried to talk his way out of being held accountable. He has tried to buy his way out of trouble, they wrote. There is no set of conditions that can assure the Court of his continued appearance or address the danger he presents if released.
Partially submerged cars are seen on a flooded road in Shah Alam, Malaysia, on Dec. 18, 2021, in a still image obtained from social media video. (Courtesy of Ashraf Noor Azam/via Reuters)

Malaysia Expects Surge in COVID-19 Following Floods That Displace Over 66,000 People

Malaysian Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin on Monday warned of a spike in the countrys CCP virus cases following the nations worst flooding in years, with 181 new cases detected at several flood relief facilities.

Flooding struck eight Malaysian states on Dec. 18, displacing over 66,000 people who were relocated to flood relief centers. At least 14 people were found dead, eight of which were from Selangor and six from Pahang, according to state news agency Bernama.

Flood victims who were infected with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus were asymptomatic or with mild symptoms, Khairy said, adding that a total of 206 flood victims had been identified as close contacts of positive cases.

The cases include 117 in Selangor, 52 in Pahang, four in Kelantan, and six in Kuala Lumpur. Negeri Sembilan and Melaka have one case each. Khairy said the government will distribute medical supplies to all relief centers.

During floods, the priority is to save the flood victims, and sometimes it cannot be helped, where some things that should be done, like public health measures, cannot be implemented or complied with, he said.

Floods in Malaysia are common during the annual monsoon season between October and March, particularly on the countrys eastern coast. But the downpour that started on Dec. 17 and continued into Dec. 18 hit hardest in the western state of Selangor, Malaysias wealthiest and most populous region surrounding the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Videos posted on social media showed overflowing rivers, landslides, and cars submerged on abandoned streets.

Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said in a statement on Monday that the government would allocate 100 million ringgit ($23.7 million) in post-flood aid for homes and infrastructure repairs, and will give 1,000 ringgit ($237) to each household affected by floods.

Ismail has also ordered all agencies to aggressively help flood victims and instructed the Environment and Water Ministry to mobilize 20 mobile pumps to the affected areas.

As of this evening, a total of 41 boats, 16 lorries, and other assets, as well as 321 rescue team members have been sent to Taman Seri Muda, Ismail said.

Over on social media, however, Ismail faced criticism over allegations that his government has failed to promptly aid victims, with the hashtag #KerajaanPembunuhwhich translates to killer governmenttrending on Twitter.

Malaysian netizens also accused Ismails son-in-law, Jovian Mandagie, of using a government-owned helicopter to escape the floods, although Mandagie has denied this on Instagram and said that he used a commercial helicopter.

Klang lawmaker Charles Santiago said on Dec. 18. that he had not heard a squeak from Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob or his cabinet when the flood victims were in need of an urgent intervention from the government.

This is the time the federal government, state governments, lawmakers, and other key stakeholders offer help and aid without us asking for it, Santiago said on Facebook.

Opposition politicians also questioned the governments efforts to assist flood victims in Parliament on Monday.

I dont know what the prime minister is doing, even on the second day, there was no help, Mohamad Sabu of the Amanah Party said, reported Free Malaysia Today.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Man Arrested, Suspected of Stealing Fire Truck in Orange County

ANAHEIM, Calif.Police have arrested a person suspected of stealing a fire truck and traveling through several cities before being detained in Anaheim Dec. 21.

Truck 85 was stolen from The University of CaliforniaIrvine Medical Center in Orange at approximately 1:40 a.m. while paramedics were taking a patient to the hospital, said Capt. Greg Barta of the Orange County Fire Authority.

As they were dropping off a patient at the hospital the truck was stolen, Barta told City News Service.

The suspect traveled through many Orange County communities, including Fountain Valley and Irvine, before finally stopping in Anaheim near Ball Road and Brookhurst Street just after 3 a.m. when officers from the Anaheim Police Department took the suspect into custody.
Man Pleads Not Guilty in $1.4 Million Fleecing of Laguna Beach Victim

SANTA ANA, Calif.A 39-year-old man pleaded not guilty Dec. 20 in an alleged investment scheme that defrauded an elderly Laguna Beach man out of $1.4 million.

Investigators alleged in court papers that Antonio Michele Velasco conspired with Thomas Martin Green in an elaborate fraud scheme to entice [the victim] into an illusory investment of purchasing defaulted bail bonds.

The defendants on numerous occasions  intentionally misled [the victim] into believing his consistent investments secured him collateral they obtained from defaulted bail bonds, investigators alleged. The victims frail, elderly and easily misled.

The victim lost about $1.4 million, investigators alleged.

The two defendants were charged Oct. 27, and Velasco was arrested Saturday.

Velasco is charged with 28 counts of grand theft, a count of theft from an elderly adult, 38 counts of money laundering, all felonies, with a sentencing enhancement for aggravated white-collar crime exceeding $500,000.

He pleaded not guilty in his arraignment in the jail courtroom in Santa Ana and was ordered to return to court Jan. 4 for a pretrial hearing in the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach.

Green, 63, has not been taken into custody. He is charged with 28 counts of grand theft, a count of theft from an elder exceeding $950, and conspiracy to defraud another of property with a sentencing enhancement for aggravated white-collar crime exceeding $500,000.
Missing Utah College Student Found Alive, Covered in Coal: Officials

A Utah college student who went missing last week was found alive and covered in coal inside the basement of a 39-year-old suspect, officials said.

The suspect, Brent Brown, was arrested on obstruction of justice, aggravated kidnapping, and sexual assault charges.

The student, 19-year-old Madelyn Allen, was reported missing after she was seen leaving her dorm at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah, at around 9:30 p.m. on Dec. 13, officials said in a news release.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, citing an affidavit, authorities were able to trace Allens phone to a town in Wayne County. They then started searching door-to-door before looking through a homes basement window and saw a person with a small build and light-colored hair, the affidavit read.

The occupant of the home told officers that he was there alone. Authorities later searched the place and found Allen inside a coal storage area, according to court documents.

We are overjoyed and relieved that she is safe, a family spokesperson, Jacob Allen, said during a news conference on Sunday. While she is now safe, the ordeal that she has been through is dangerous and traumatic. The experience and details and effects of which weve only begun to understand. She is a fighter. She is now a survivor. We are grateful that she is with us again so that we can help her heal and recover.

Snow College Police Chief Derek Walk said that little is known about the suspect.

We dont have a lot of information about him, Walk told reporters during a news conference. We dont know how extensive his relationship or her knowledge of him is thus far.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks during an event in New York City on Sept. 9, 2021. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

New York Governors Office Says State Inspectors Wont Perform Mask Mandate Checks

The office of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Dec. 20 that the state wouldnt send inspectors to businesses to see if business owners are complying with the Democrats indoor mask mandate, an apparent reversal of remarks Hochul made earlier in the day.

Enforcement will be done by local health departments, Hochul spokesperson Hazel Crampton-Hays told news outlets. Governor Hochul made $65 million available today for counties enforcement needs, including personnel costs associated with spot checks and other enforcement. We are all in this together as we fight this winter surge.

In two press briefings on the funding, Hochul had indicated that the state would help counties identify businesses out of compliance with the new mandate.

In one, she said the money would help counties, whether its just getting out there and bringing masks to the businesses and putting up signs and having a call center so people can call in complaints, or sending a notice and a phone call, just to have the resources to do the right thing.

But the state will be involved as well, Hochul said. Well be sending around inspectors to do spot checks to see whats going on.

During the other briefing, Hochul said the states assistance would include having some spot checks.

The remarks contrasted with the governors comments delivered last week. She said it would be up to each county to enforce the mandate, which applies to all businesses that dont impose a vaccination requirement.

A number of county officials have said they wont enforce the mandate.

My health department has critical things to do that are more important than enforcing this, and I think small businesses have been through enough already, Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus, a Republican, said recently. God forbid the governor directs the state police to go out and enforce it.

The $65 million from the state will be used for expenses incurred by counties and local health departments from when the mandate was announced on Dec. 10 through its expiration on Jan. 15, 2022.

Eligible expenses include staffing and other costs for any sites offering vaccines, boosters, or tests, and personnel costs associated with enforcing the mask mandate.

Getting vaccinated and wearing a mask are the surest ways to fight COVID and stay safe, and this funding will help counties across the state enforce the reasonable, responsible and effective mask-or-vax mandate in place until mid-January, Hochul said in a statement.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
New York Lawmaker Pulls Public Health Detainment Bill, Blames Conspiracy Theorists

A New York lawmaker has taken down a 6-year-old bill that would authorize the state to detain infected individuals and their contacts deemed a threat to public health during a pandemic, blaming conspiracy theorists of spreading misinformation about his proposal.

The bill in question, known as A416, was first introduced by Assemblyman Nick Perry in 2015, nearly a year after the nationwide panic over a potential outbreak of Ebola in the United States. The Brooklyn Democrat said the measure was prompted by an incident in which a nurse refused to be placed in quarantine after returning from West Africa, where shed helped treat Ebola patients.

Like many other bills, A416 had been reintroduced year after year and died in committee. The latest version of the bill would allow the state governor, by issuing a single order, to order the removal or detention of any person or group of people deemed to be a suspected case, contact, or carrier of a contagious disease and poses an imminent and significant threat to the public health in severe morbidity or high mortality.

Such person or group of persons shall be detained in a medical facility or other appropriate facility or premises designated by the governor or his or her delegate, it reads.

The bill, which received little public attention over the past years, became a center of controversy when Perry once again put it up for the 2021-2022 legislative session amid the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. Opponents of the measure argued that it would allow then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to build internment camps for New Yorkers who refuse to comply with his public health policies.

This is straight up detention camp stuff in NY! A bill giving [Gov. Andrew Cuomo], Health Commissioner or any designated official full power to remove any person/group of people from their home if deemed contagious, Elizabeth Joy, a Republican candidate running against Rep. Paul Tonko, wrote in January. Its horrifying.

Facing mounting opposition, Perry on Monday announced he no longer seeks to advance the bill, which he said was misinterpreted by conspiracy theorists and internet trolls.

Conspiracy theorists, and those who spread misinformation online are once again trolling on social media, posting concocted stories about A416, he wrote in a statement on Dec. 20. To deprive these individuals the ability to use this issue for fuel to spread their fire of lies and mistruths, I will take the appropriate legislative action to strike the bill, remove it from the calendar, thus ending all consideration and actions that could lead to passage into law, he said. Get vaccinated and stay safe.

Republican Assemb. Joe Angelino was among the opposing lawmakers who celebrated the withdrawal. He dismissed Perrys claim, saying that there was no misinformation around the bill since everyone could read online what the bill was actually about.

The sponsor of A416 is saying we were spreading misinformation, calling us conspiracy theorists who were concocting stories causing him to pull his Bill. Im pretty sure we all can read and his intent was to haul people away for the good of all, Angelino wrote on Facebook.

This is reminiscent of what happened in WW2 when someone thought it was a good idea to send Americans of Japanese descent to camps for the duration of the war, he said, referring to President Franklin D. Roosevelts order to relocate Japanese Americans to interment camps following the Pearl Harbor attack.
A police car is parked outside as people visit Mosaic Shopping Center Mall Fairfax, Vir., on October 30, 2021 in . (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

No Evidence of Hate Crime Against Virginia Muslim High School Student: Police

Theres no evidence that an alleged assault on a female Muslim high school student in Fairfax, Virginia was a hate crime, local police said.

The Dec. 14 incident involved a male student at Fairfax High School, who reportedly pushed a female Muslim student to the ground, pulled off her hijab, and beat her up, while calling her racial slurs, according to the advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Sophomore student Ekran Mohamed, the victim of the alleged Islamophobic attack, told WUSA9 News that she hasnt been able to eat because of stress and disgust stemming from the assault. It is for every Hijabi out there, every Muslim girl and every Muslim person out there, she told the CBS affiliate. It is a daily thing that we go through.

The perpetrator of the purported hate crime was not punished and continued threatening other students, the CAIR claimed. The organization called for a police investigation, and that the alleged assailant must be suspended while the investigation takes place.

An investigation conducted by the Fairfax Police Department, however, has found no evidence suggesting it was a hate crime.

The police investigation determined the physical altercation between two Fairfax High School students was not a hate crime. The investigation revealed there were no racial comments made by either student, the police department stated.

The police also noted that Mohamed admitted that social media posts claiming the racial comments that were used during the incident were false.

The female student confirmed her hijab became partially undone during the altercation, exposing her hair. The female student advised that the information posted on several social media sites, stating that racial comments were [sic] used during the altercation were false, the Dec. 18 police statement concluded.

Abed Ayoub, the lawyer representing Mohamed, argued it was too early for the police to rule out hate crime charges.

Theres multiple witnesses who can attest to racist and Islamophobic comments and overtures being made immediately prior to the incident into the assault, Ayoub said, reported radio station WTOP. He didnt say whether the witnesses will testify on behalf of his client.

The incident has also triggered a protest at Fairfax High School, during which hundreds of students skipped classes to join the walkout in support of the alleged victim. Fairfax County Public Schools told WTOP that around 350 students at the school exercised their right to protest following an incident between two students that took place in school.  Fairfax County Public Schools and City of Fairfax Schools support the rights of students to peacefully protest.
Triple Self-Portrait, cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 13, 1960. (Norman Rockwell Museum Collection) I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.

Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwells career spanned six decades, and he is certainly one of Americas best-known 20th century artists. Many of us love him. Many dismiss him as a romanticist and kitschy caricaturist, but a showing of his works gives a much deeper appreciation for Americas Best Loved Artist.

When the show came to the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, we went to see it with anticipation. Will it have any original paintings in it? my wife asked. I certainly hope so, I replied. Yes, I would have enjoyed a selection of Saturday Evening Post covers, but I really wanted to see brushstrokes! I was not to be disappointed!

Rockwell began painting professionally at a young age. At 21, he was painting covers for the Saturday Evening Post. He was a disciplined and masterful painter and achieved solid success very early. While most of us are familiar with the oft-reproduced Saturday Evening Post illustrations, few are aware of other masterful works that appear early in his career. These paintings show a keen sense of observation and composition, and a genuine knowledge of the techniques of the old masters.

She stands erect before an audience, lit from above and behind, in a style reminiscent of the works of Degas or Rembrandt. The light is accentuated by a touch of impasto and skilled brushwork. The subject is a serious one. The Young Valedictorian, painted in 1922, captures a young girl standing before her school in a white dress at graduation. The interior behind her is meticulously detailed. In the shadows, a row of seated faculty members listens. A globe on stage reflects a spot of light in highlight on its varnished surface. A clock on the wall, to the upper right of the speaker, marks time.

All eyes are on the face of the young speaker. Rockwells lighting and masterful composition see to that. Here are the brush strokes of a genius! Amazingly enough, this work was never published. Few people are aware of it, and if it were on a wall by itself, perhaps few would attribute it to Norman Rockwell. There is no irony, no humor, and no caricature. It is a beautiful capture of a poignant moment. It reveals a Norman Rockwell I want to know.

 is another painting by Rockwell from the same year. It was painted as an advertisement for Edison Mazda (later to become General Electric). In a masterful bit of chiaroscuro, Rockwell captures a conversation between a young woman and an elderly lady. A single electric lamp backlights the two figurespresumably talking late in the evening after an important social event. The composition creates the conversation. Again, it shows Rockwells mastery of his art, as well as his observational skills.

In Two Children Praying, painted much later in his careerin 1954Rockwell captures an America still in touch with its core values. This painting was done for a billboard advertisement for Longchamps Restaurant, Union Square, New York. The background is a night sky illuminated by a bright star, and its light falls across the faces of a young boy and girl as they pray. Rockwells detailed pencil study for the work shows the artists commitment to excellence in a work like this. The sketch is reminiscent of those that Leonardo da Vinci did leading up to painting The Last Supper. When one remembers that Leonardo took a commission for a rather common refectory scene and added the drama of the betrayalrendered in the relatively new medium of oil paintone can begin to appreciate that Rockwell stepped up to the easel of an illustrator and brought to it the drama that his artistic skills made possible.

Both da Vinci and Rockwell could capture the fine nuance of personality. Though Rockwell would often push it to the limit in his magazine covers, he could pursue subtlety. In a painting entitled Norman Rockwell Visits a Country School, painted in 1946, Rockwell depicts a loving teacher in a small (perhaps one-room) schoolhouse reading to a rapt group of students hanging on her every wordall but one! There, on the other side of the wood stove that heats the room, sits a girl lost in her own book. The painting tells its own story. Here I must tell you, Rockwells interiors are gorgeous! If I wanted to recreate a country schoolhouse, this painting is the template, rendered down to the minutest detail. Even the childrens art on the walls is amazingly realistic. Norman Rockwell was witness to an America in transition.

The body of his work is no less than a historical record. His work spans the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and the Great War. Read the headlines of the Saturday Evening Post covers, and you discover an America whose journalists were not afraid to call out the evils of Communism. Rockwell may indeed have romanticized some of his work, but he had a sense of the life and struggle of ordinary Americans.

Nowhere is this more evident than in a series of posters he designed for a commission from the government: The Four Freedoms. The paintings are based on Franklin D. Roosevelts 1941 State of the Union Address. The president laid out four fundamental freedoms in that speech: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The first two, taken directly from the First Amendment of our Constitution, reiterate freedoms unique to people living under a system of limited governmentfreedoms that belong to the people. In the painting Freedom of Speech, a man in a worn work jacket stands to address a meeting of local government. The image resonates with all of us who are now standing up at school board meetings to protect the interests of our families.

The second painting, Freedom of Worship, shows a rich composition of diverse facesthe faces of the devout. This resonates with all of us whose ancestors came here for freedom to practice our faiths dictates. But here, the freedoms take a turn from freedom to do something to freedom from something.

Freedom from want and freedom from fear are not in the Constitution. They are rather a statement of some of FDRs New Deal ideals. They would play out in the work of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, near Washington, D.C., where much work was done to create our modern, chemically dependent agriculture. Located next to Beltsville is Greenbelt, Maryland, originally an example of Eleanor Roosevelts idea of a centrally planned city, intended to replace the squalor of depression America. Here, the government proposed that it could eliminate want and fear. That was a new idea. All one had to do was democratically assent to central planning.

In 1963, Rockwell left the Saturday Evening Post, and worked for Look magazine. Here he was given more creative latitude, and he freely pursued his passion for civil rights and space exploration. He painted right up to his death in 1978 at the age of 84, leaving an unfinished work on his easel.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.
North Carolina Asks Supreme Court to Deny Challenge to Race-Based Admissions at UNC

North Carolina is urging the Supreme Court to throw out a watchdog groups challenge to the University of North Carolinas partially race-based admission policies.

The case is Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina, court file 21-707, an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) describes itself as a nonprofit membership group of more than 20,000 students, parents, and others who believe that racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.

In its still-pending petition before the Supreme Court, the Arlington, Virginia-based SFFA argued that the court has wrongly abandoned the principle of racial neutrality and given broad deference to university administrators to pursue a diversity interest that is far from compelling. The precedents the court follows have become a license to engage in outright racial balancing.

In October, a federal district judge ruled in favor of the University of North Carolina (UNC), saying its policies were properly tailored to achieve its interest in supporting student diversity. The judge determined that an applicants race appears to be less than or equally important to several other data points considered within a holistic process.

SFFA sued Harvard in 2014 over its race-conscious admissions policies, claiming it discriminates against Asian Americans in order to favor blacks and Latinos. Harvard won at the lower levels. The Biden administration supports Harvards position, breaking with the Trump administration.

The office of North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Dec. 20 on behalf of UNC.

In the document, the state argues that more than 40 years ago, the Supreme Court adopted a framework for the lawful use of race in university admissions and that an eight-day trial showed that UNC has faithfully adhered to that framework.

The school has embraced diversity, in all its forms, as a core feature of its educational mission. It considers race flexibly as merely one factor among numerous factors in its holistic admissions process. And it has scrupulously studied and adopted workable race-neutral alternatives, the brief states.

But SFFA attacks the high courts settled precedents that the University has meticulously followed, the brief states, adding that theres no split among the various circuits of the U.S. Court of Appeals and that the law in this area has been stable for decades.

This stability has allowed the people themselves to decide the wisdom of race-conscious admissions policies. Any bid to overturn precedents that have engendered such significant reliance interests should proceed according to the ordinary appellate process. Respect for precedent demands nothing less.

UNC said separately that SFFAs lawsuit is part of a national legal strategy to overturn the narrowly tailored approach of using race in admissions that the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly endorsed, most recently in 2016. SFFA has also brought a similar lawsuit against the University of TexasAustin.

When filing SFFAs petition with the high court last month, SFFA President Edward Blum said he hoped the court would agree to hear both the UNC and Harvard admissions cases.

Every year, thousands of college applicants have been subjected to unfair and unconstitutional racial classifications and penalties by our nations most competitive institutions. These polarizing practiceswhich a significant majority of all Americans oppose must end as soon as possible, Blum said in a statement at the time.

The cornerstone of our nations civil rights laws is the principle that an individuals race should not be used to help or harm them in their lifes endeavors.

Conservative-leaning Supreme Court justices have been saying for years that theyre growing tired of race-based policies in the education sector.

Critics of affirmative action in college admissions say its time for the government-enforced racially discriminatory policy to end.

They quote the words of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor, who felt the practice was a necessary evil. In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), she wrote, We expect that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

Making race-conscious admissions decisions is dangerous, OConnor wrote, calling it a deviation from the norm of equal treatment. Such programs must be limited in time, she stated, adding that all governmental use of race must have a logical end point.
A coffee machine featuring Novo Nordisk logo is seen at the company headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Febr. 5, 2020. (Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen/Reuters)

Novo Nordisk Shares Tank After Key Drug Hope Hit by US Supply Issues

COPENHAGENNovo Nordisk shares fell as much as 16 percent on Monday after the Danish drugmaker was hit by U.S. supply issues for its new obesity drug as it seeks to establish a market foothold before the launch of a rival drug by Eli Lilly.

The obesity market has proved difficult for pharmaceuticals companies, but Novo made a breakthrough with its Wegovy drug. The company hopes the drug, which helps to achieve weight loss of 17 percent on average over almost two years, will offset growing pressure on its core insulin business.

In a stock announcement after Fridays market close, Novo said that a contract manufacturer filling syringes for pens to inject the drug had halted deliveries and manufacturing temporarily after issues relating to good manufacturing practice.

The Danish drugmaker was already facing separate supply constraints after being overwhelmed by initial uptake of the drug.

As a consequence, fewer new patients will start treatment with the drug in the first half of next year. Novo now expects to be able to meet U.S. demand in the second half of next year, having previously estimated it would do so at the beginning of the year.

Of course its very painful to not be able to supply to that level of demand, Novo finance chief Karsten Munk Knudsen told investors on Monday.

Novo declined to name the contract manufacturer but said the issues concerned a European site of a large international company. The two parties are in daily dialogue and Novo said it believes the contract manufacturer has a good plan in place.

Analysts at JP Morgan, which cut its Novo Nordisk rating to neutral on Monday, said the supply issues would also give it less time to establish the drug on the market before the 2024 launch of rival Eli Lillys tirzepatide drug for obesity.

There should be sufficient space for both agents in the market, Novos Knudsen said.

The companys shares were down around 10.5 percent at 0949GMT, having closed on Friday with a year-to-date gain of 76 percent.

Novo said the news does not affect its 2021 outlook and that it would provide its outlook for the next year in connection with full-year earnings on Feb. 2.

Last month it forecast sales growth would slow by about 3 percent in 2022 because of lower prices and a drop in insulin sales volumes in China.

By Stine Jacobsen
People in Manhattan on in New York City, on Nov. 29, 2021. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Omicron Becomes Dominant Source of New Infections in US: CDC

The Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus is now the dominant source of new infections in the United States, accounting for roughly 73 percent of new infections nationwide, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Federal officials on Monday cited CDC figures for the week ending Dec. 18 that showed a nearly six-fold increase in Omicrons share of infections in only one week.

The variant was first detected by doctors in Africa first less than a month ago, and on Nov. 26, the World Health Organization designated it as a variant of concern. The variant has since been reported in around 90 countries.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the new numbers reflect the kind of growth seen in other countries.

These numbers are stark, but theyre not surprising, she said.

Much about the Omicron variant remains unknown, including whether it causes more or less severe illness.

Few Omicron-related deaths have been officially confirmed so far worldwide. Officials on Monday said an unvaccinated man in Texas died after contracting the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Its not clear if any other Omicron-related deaths have been reported in the United States.

Meanwhile, New York Citys health director said that while Omicron cases are rising quickly, hospitalizations are not at this time.

South African ministry of health officials last week said that their rates of hospitalization due to Omicron are about one-tenth of the hospitalization rate for the Delta wave earlier this year.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, has shifted its messaging in recent days to warning the unvaccinated that the White House believes they will experience a winter of severe illness and death.

If youre vaccinated, and you have your booster shot, youre protected from severe illness and death, President Joe Biden said during a press briefing on Dec. 16.

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients echoed his remarks the following day.

We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated. Youve done the right thing, and we will get through this, Zients said. For the unvaccinated, youre looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.

CDC officials said they do not yet have estimates of how many hospitalizations or deaths are due to the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

Though there remain a lot of new infections caused by the Delta variant, I anticipate that over time that Delta will be crowded out by Omicron, Walensky said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King speaks with media as bags of potatoes sit on a table, Dec. 8, 2021 in Ottawa. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Ottawa Announces $28 Million to Help PEI Potato Growers Cope With Export Ban

CHARLOTTETOWNThe federal government will spend $28 million to help Prince Edward Island farmers deal with a growing surplus of potatoes as an almost month-long export ban to the United States continues.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau told a news conference on Monday the funding will be used to create more potato processing capacity in Canada and to ship some surplus to food aid organizations.

The money will also go toward helping farmers seek out new markets and allowing them to safely destroy their excess potatoes this winter.

The fact is the U.S. will not accept shipments of fresh potatoes until they have the scientific reassurances they need, Bibeau told reporters. She said that to assuage American concerns, an industry-government potato working group is developing a strengthened plant-health management plan.

Canada suspended all shipments of fresh potatoes from P.E.I. to the United States on Nov. 22 after the fungal potato wart was discovered in two fields in the province.

The United States potato market is worth about $120 million a year to P.E.I. Bibeau said a significant quantity of potatoes will need to be destroyed, but she did not specify how many.

P.E.I. premier Dennis King said the money announced Monday will be crucial in ensuring the potatoes slated for export wont all go to waste. These types of creative solutions are exactly what we need to do in the interim to move our excess potatoes until the U.S. market is reopened, King said in a statement.

He also said the province is turning its attention toward ensuring the Canadian Food Inspection Agency can quickly gather the necessary soil samples to confirm potato wart wont remain an issue for exports.

Bibeau said federal officials will be meeting with the P.E.I. Potato Board and other industry members this week to discuss how best to use the funding.
Former police officer Harry Miller speaks to the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Dec. 20, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Police Hate Incident Guidance Interfered With Freedom of Expression, UK Court Rules

The police body in England and Waless guidance on recording non-crime hate incidents has interfered with the right to freedom of expression, the Court of Appeal ruled on Monday.

The challenge to the guidance was brought to court by former police officer Harry Miller, who was visited by police in 2019 after his Twitter posts were reported as being transphobic by a self-described postoperative transgender woman identified in court documents as Mrs. B.

Humberside Police decided to record Millers Twitter activity as a non-crime hate incident, defined by the College of Policings guidance as any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice.

Miller previously won a challenge to Humberside Polices actions at the High Court, but his challenge to the guidance was dismissed, with the judge finding that it serves legitimate purposes and is not disproportionate.

The Court of Appeal ruled on Monday that the guidance clearly constituted a real and significant interference with the right to freedom of expression, and that the risk of recording such cases had the potential to create a chilling effect in relation to public debate on a controversial issue.

The judge, Dame Victoria Sharp, also said that while the guidance pursued the legitimate aims of the prevention of crime and the protection of the rights of others  the aims could be achieved by less intrusive measures and the overall impact of the measures on the right to freedom of expression was therefore disproportionate.

Sharp said that the lack of any common-sense discretion not to record irrational complaints in the guidance meant there was a risk of police recording essentially non-crime non-hate incidents.

Speaking outside court, Miller said the College of Policing had failed to protect the liberty that used to be taken for granted by the citizens of this great nation by framing reality, inquiry, and dissent as prejudice, bigotry, and hate.

Assistant Chief Constable Iain Raphael from the College of Policing said after the ruling that the police body will listen to, reflect on, and review this judgment carefully and make any changes that are necessary.

In a statement published on its website, the College of Policing cautioned officers to apply their judgement in establishing whether there is hostility towards a protected characteristic group and not record the incident as a hate incident in the absence of such hostility.

Following the judgement, free speech campaigners have called on the police to delete their non-crime hate incidents records.

Former police officer Harry Miller speaks to the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Dec. 20, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Speaking to MailOnline on Tuesday, Toby Young, director-general of the Free Speech Union, said police forces have no choice but to delete all these records immediately.

Political commentator Darren Grimes also told the publication that he agreed the government should look to delete the records for thousands of people up and down the country.

He also said that the recordings have wasted precious police time and resources, and that police should be put back on the street and taken off peoples tweets.

Grimes was also investigated by police earlier this year after he was reported for stirring up racial hatred over a guests race-related comment on his YouTube show Reasoned.

The police later ended the investigation, deeming it no longer proportionate after public figures including Home Secretary Priti Patel voiced their support for Grimes.

PA contributed to this report.
Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx speaks to reporters at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago, Ill., on Feb. 23, 2019. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Prosecutors in Smollett Case Lied to the Public, Special Prosecutor Finds

Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx and prosecutors in her office lied and misled the public about the case against Jussie Smollett, according to a special prosecutors report released Monday.

Foxx, a Democrat whose campaign was backed by billionaire George Soros, initially said there was a strong case against Smollett for faking a hate crime against himself that would have led to a conviction. But Foxx claimed days later that certain aspects of the case would have made securing a conviction against Smollett uncertain.

Dan Webb, a special prosecutor appointed to probe the actions of Foxx and her underlings, said the pivot was false and misleading.

The office also offered a series of other false and misleading statements, Webbs report said.

Foxx recused herself from the case in 2019 because she was rumored to be related to or have a relationship with Smollett or his family. But, according to legal rules, Foxx had to recuse her entire office and ask the court to appoint a special prosecutor. Foxx instead chose to keep in place a prosecutor she appointed from within her office to oversee the case.

The office and Foxx made the decision to ignore this major legal defect seemingly because they did not want to admit they had made such a major mistake of judgment, Webb wrote, adding that they then compounded the problem by making a false statement to the media about the matter.

Foxx and/or prosecutors in her office also falsely said Smollett had no criminal background when they dismissed the initial case against him, falsely represented that $10,000 was the most Smollett could have been ordered to pay in restitution, and were misleading when they claimed the dismissal was not unusual because they could not identify any similar cases, according to the report.

Foxxs office engaged in substantial abuses of discretion and breached obligations of honesty and transparency, Webb concluded.

Foxxs office, CCSAO, told The Epoch Times in an email statement that it disagrees with the findings of abuse of prosecutorial discretion. It did not address the findings that Webb and prosecutors in her office offered false and/or misleading statements.

A prosecutors discretion is as broad as any in the law, and differences of opinion as to how a case was handled do not signify an abuse of discretion. Finally, it is important to emphasize that the OSP did not find any criminal activity or undue influence on the part of the States Attorney or the CCSAO, the office said.

Webb said he uncovered evidence that may meet the level of a violation of legal ethics by Foxx and lawyers working under her. He does not have the power to make ethical findings but will refer the matter to the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission. The investigation did not unearth evidence supporting criminal charges against any of the prosecutors.

The report was released on the orders of Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Toomin.

Toomin had rejected previous attempts to make the full report publica summary was released last yearbut agreed to order its release after Smollett was convicted earlier this month of staging a hate crime against himself and lying to police.
Protesters take part in a rally against the proposed Hong Kong extradition bill, in Vancouver on Aug. 17, 2019. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

Pundits, Diaspora Groups Criticize Tories for Not Reviving CanadaChina Committee

From pundits to groups representing the Chinese and Hong Kong diaspora in Canada, many have expressed disappointment over the Conservative Partys decision not to bring back the committee that probed Canada-China relations in the new Parliament.

The Conservatives say they will not be launching a bid to revive the House of Commons Special Committee on CanadaChina Relations (CACN) formed in the last Parliament, according to The Globe and Mail. The committee examined a range of topics and issues related to China, including the Beijing-linked Huawei, Beijings influence operations in Canada, and Chinas human rights record, among other topics.

Conservative MP and foreign affairs critic Michael Chong told the Globe that the reason is not a change in his partys stance on China, but rather due to a resources issue in the House of Commons.

Conservative MP Michael Chong rises during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa on May 31, 2021. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Former Canadian ambassador David Mulroney says the Tories move plays into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and will handicap the Canadian Parliament from speaking out against the authoritarian regime.

Kneecapping the Committee on China in Canadas Parliament ranks as one of Beijings most successful influence operations anywhere. It guarantees that well see more weaponization of diaspora politics, which effectively mutes, immobilizes MPs, he said in a Dec. 20 tweet.

Mulroney also criticized suggestions that standing up to Beijing is deemed as stoking anti-Asian racism.

This fails Canadians just as we need a high-level rethink. The cynical falsehood that criticizing China is somehow racist is a gift that keeps on giving to the CCP, he said in another tweet.

Alliance Canada Hong Kong, a pro-democracy group, says the CACN is an essential space for Parliament to examine the most challenging foreign policy file and hold the federal government accountable.

CACN has yet to complete its studies on foreign interference, which concerns the safety of our communities, as dissidents and members of diasporic communities are being surveilled, intimidated, and harassed in Canada, the group wrote in a Facebook post on Dec. 20.

With ongoing human rights abuses and humanitarian crisis in China, Canada needs to dedicate time and resources to examine the challenging bilateral relationship with China.

The alliance, which consists of human rights activists, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, urges its members to write to MPs, as well as to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, and Conservative Party Leader Erin OToole, demanding that they reconvene the committee.

Chong said a new science and research committee has been created since the election and the Conservatives also want to examine Canadas withdrawal from Afghanistan through another committee it recently initiated. He also said the China issue would be addressed in the foreign affairs committee.

There are serious resource limitations that prevent us from starting a third new committee in the House of Commons, Chong told the Globe.

The CACN, created in response to a prolonged diplomatic crisis with China, was spearheaded by Conservative Leader Erin OToole in December 2019 when he was the partys foreign affairs critic. MPs from the Bloc Quebecois, NDP, and Greens voted in favour of the motion at the time, despite the objections of the governing Liberals.

The committee went on to study the strained relationship between Canada and China, including demanding the federal government submit unredacted documents concerning the firing of two Chinese scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg and the transfer of deadly viruses to Chinas Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The committee also looked into Beijings interference and intimidation activities against dissents, diaspora communities, and pro-Hong Kong democracy activists in Canada. The practice of Confucius Institutes indoctrinating Canadian students with the CCPs agenda was also examined.

Conservative Leader Erin OToole rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 15, 2021. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press)

Chong later said his partys position on the Chinese regime remains unchanged.

We believe the Beijings communist leadership presents a threat to Canadas national interest & national security, he said in a series of tweets on Dec. 20.

Among the priorities Chong said the Conservatives stay committed to include the cracking down on Chinas foreign intimidation ops on Canadian soil; banning Huawei from Canadas 5G network & investigating Huaweis role in the Uyghur genocide through its 24hr surveillance technology; and remain committed to the people of Hong Kongs fight for democracy, freedom & the rule of law.

Joe Adam George, a human rights advocate and foreign policy research intern with the Washington-based policy think tank Hudson Institute, says the assurance given by Chong just isnt good enough.

Myopic decision-making on the part of the @CPC_HQ which will no doubt hurt them. Instead of holding them accountable, the #Liberals will feel encouraged to continue acting with impunity when it comes to issues and threats concerning #China, he said in a tweet on Dec. 20.

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, senior fellow at the University of Ottawas graduate school of public and international affairs, also said its important to maintain the committee.

Canadaa nation that cannot address its biggest foreign affairs challenge because it does not have chump change to form a committee. $ for Zoom meetings and a staffer cant be found. Priceless, eh? she posted on Twitter on Dec. 20.

Noe Chartier contributed to this article
Refugee Activist Appeals Duttons $35,000 Defamation Case Victory

Refugee activist Shane Bazzi will be appealing a court ruling that found he defamed then-Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton when he wrote the words: Peter Dutton is a rape apologist on Twitter.

The defamation victory for Duttoncurrent defence ministersaw Bazzi ordered to pay AU$35,000 and some legal costs.

The case centred on comments by Dutton featured in a 2019 news article, who said some refugee women at the Nauru Detention Centre complaining of rape allegations were trying it on so they could get to mainland Australia for an abortion.

Bazzis lawyers at the time tried to use the defence of fair comment on a matter of public interest, and opinion saying his Twitter post was based on fact. However, both failed.

The Federal Court Judge Richard White said there was no doubt a serious defamation and that it went beyond the facts of the article.

It is understandable that, despite Mr. Dutton being accustomed to bearing the slings and arrows which are an incident of high political office, he found this statement of Mr. Bazzi offensive and hurtful, he wrote in his judgement.

This is a different subject matter than diminishing the significance of rape, or not treating it seriously when it occurs, or any action which involves excusing rape.

However, White said a sense of perspective was needed regarding the severity of the defamation, saying it was not published in any mainstream media and only published to the Twitter audience. Further, Bazzi did remove the post after receiving a letter from Duttons lawyers.

Just because it involves a national figure doesnt mean its a matter of national importance, he added.

The level of awarded damages, around $35,000, fell short of the maximum of $432,500.

On Dec. 20, Bazzis lawyers, OBrien Criminal and Civil Solicitors announced they would launch an appeal.

Mr. Bazzi will be arguing that the judge erred in finding that Mr. Bazzis tweet carried the meaning found by the judge, namely that Mr. Dutton excuses rape, according to a statement.

The appeal will be held sometime in 2022.

Dutton has vowed to take legal action against individuals using social media accounts to write defamatory comments against him.

Im going to start to pick out some of them to sue because we need to have  a respectful public debate, he told 2GB in March.

A lot of lazy journalists pick up these tweets and believe that theyre representative of the larger community view when theyre not.

He took action against Greens Senator Larissa Waters in March, who also accusing Dutton of being a rape apologist.

Waters later issued a public apology and retracted her comments.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is seen in Milwaukee, Wis., on Aug. 19, 2020. (Melina Mara/Pool/Getty Images)

Residents Petition Wisconsin Governor to Remove Milwaukee DA Over Waukesha Parade Massacre

A group of Milwaukee County residents has petitioned Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers to remove District Attorney John Chisholm from office for alleged dereliction of duty.

The residents blame Chisholm for allowing career criminal Darrell Brooks out of jail on $1,000 bail just two days before Brooks allegedly plowed his SUV into the Waukesha Christmas Parade, killing six people and injuring 61.

During the four weeks since the massacre stunned the nation, the Democratic governor said he could only act on calls for Chisholms removal if there was a sworn complaint from a resident of Milwaukee County.

The Dec. 20 petition for Chisholms removal was first posted on the website of the conservative group Empower Wisconsin.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel identified the petition organizer as Orville Seymer. Several other county residents signed the petition, but they arent identified in online versions of the document.

Neither Evers nor Chisholm has commented on the complaint.

The petition cites the governors authority to remove a district attorney. State law requires written charges in such a case to be tendered by a resident taxpayer, followed by a speedy public hearing at which the officer shall have full opportunity to be heard to present a defense against the charges.

Chisholm earlier told reporters he has no plans to resign.

Police tape cordons off a street in Waukesha, Wis., after an SUV plowed into a Christmas parade hitting multiple people on Nov. 21, 2021. (Jeffrey Phelps/AP Photo)

Brooks, 39, of Milwaukee, is being held at the Waukesha County Jail on $5 million bail on six counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the parade killings.

Police and prosecutors say Brooks drove his vehicle down the parade route, intentionally swerving back and forth to hit as many parade participants as possible.

A police officer fired three shots into the SUV in a failed attempt to stop Brooks, who was arrested a short distance away after abandoning the vehicle.

Police havent suggested a motive for the attack.

The Waukesha massacre happened just two days after Brooks was released from Milwaukee County Jail on $1,000 cash bail from a violent Nov. 2 incident. In that case, hes charged with second-degree reckless endangerment, bail jumping, disorderly conduct, battery, and resisting an officer.

Police allege he punched the mother of his child and ran her over with the same SUV allegedly used in the parade attack.

On Dec. 6, he was charged with three more felonies in the case, including intimidating a victim, threatening force, intimidating a witness by a person charged with a felony, and a second count of bail jumping.

At the time of the Nov. 2 attack, Brooks was out on $500 bail in a 2020 case in which he was charged with firing a pistol into a vehicle where his nephew and one other person were seated. He is charged with two counts of second-degree recklessly endangering safety with a dangerous weapon and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon.

A Feb. 18, 2022, hearing is set in that case.

Brooks has a criminal record dating back two decades, records show.

Darrell Brooks is escorted out of the courtroom after making his initial appearance in Waukesha County Court in Waukesha, Wis., on Nov. 23, 2021. (Mark Hoffman/Pool/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)

Shortly after Brooks was arrested for the parade massacre, Chisholm called the $1,000 bail inappropriately low.

In a subsequent report to the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, Chisholm attributed the bail recommendation to an inexperienced assistant district attorney.

The court commissioner who set Brookss bail has since been reassigned to civil cases from criminal court.

On Dec. 20, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Michelle Havas increased Brookss bail in the case to $200,000 and set a status hearing for Feb. 2, 2022.

The petition to Evers cites several media reports of cases of accused criminals out on bail who allegedly committed other serious crimes.

Despite these tragedies and sobering statistics, John Chisholm has refused repeated requests to resign as Milwaukee County district attorney, but as witnessed in Waukesha last month, the devastation resulting from Chisholms dereliction of duty to protect the public reached outside the borders of Milwaukee County.

The petition comes on the heels of a letter to Evers from 16 lawmakers representing Waukesha County in the Wisconsin Legislature, who demanded the governor remove Chisholm from office.

Days later, former longtime Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. told a rally in Waukesha that Chisholm and Milwaukee court officials have blood on their hands for the parade massacre.

It isnt clear when Evers will act on the petition.
The Rite Aid logo is displayed on the exterior of a Rite Aid pharmacy, in San Rafael, Calif., on Sept. 26, 2019. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Rite Aid Says Its Shutting Down More Than 60 Stores

Drugstore chain Rite Aid said it will shut down more than 60 stores across the United States in the coming months as it reassesses how many locations it needs.

According to an earnings report released by the firm Tuesday, shutting down 63 stores would save the company $25 million per year.

After years of heavy expansion across the United States, Rite Aid, Walgreens, CVS, and other pharmacy chains have struggled, triggering the closure of hundreds of storesdespite the chains having played key roles in distributing and administering COVID-19 vaccines.

Several weeks ago, CVS said it would shut down 900 stores over the next three years as it adjusts to consumers purchasing more products online rather than in brick-and-mortar locations.

We delivered a solid quarter as we grew adjusted [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization] by 12.7 percent versus last year, said Rite Aid CEO Heyward Donigan in the earnings release. Despite challenges in the labor market, our pharmacists and store teams were able to meet the unprecedented volumes for COVID and flu immunizations, COVID testing, and other clinical services, which clearly demonstrates our Lean work to free up capacity is paying off.

The company reported a net loss of around $36 million for continuing operations as well as a 1.8 percent increase in revenue from the previous year during the third quarter of 2021.

Today, we also announced the first phase of a store closure program to reduce costs, drive improved profitability and ensure that we have a healthy foundation to grow from, with the right stores in the right locations, for the communities we serve and for our business, said Donigan, who became the companys CEO months before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In closing the stores, Rite Aid did not say how many jobs might be impacted. The Epoch Times has contacted the company for comment.

The effort to close stores started last month, the company confirmed.

Rite Aid shares surged more than 17 percentage points in early trading. Before the market closed on Monday, the companys shares dropped about 22 percent over the past year.

Several months ago, the company said it would move its headquarters to Philadelphia in what it calls a site designed specifically for in-person collaboration and company gatherings instead of office spaces. Its new enterprise headquarters is located n the former Navy Yard in South Philadelphia, it confirmed.

Rite Aid, which was founded in 1962, says it has more than 2,500 retail pharmacy locations across 17 U.S. states.
The Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Symphony of the Seas, is seen moored in the Port of Miami on Aug. 1, 2021. (Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images)

Royal Caribbean Says 48 Passengers Test Positive for Omicron Variant on Ship

Royal Caribbean Group said on Monday 48 people on its Symphony of the Seas cruise ship tested positive for COVID-19, fueling concerns that the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus could put a damper on a recovery in the cruise industry.

The cruise operator said it had 6,091 guests and crew members on board the ship, which ended a week-long cruise in Miami on Saturday after setting sail on Dec. 11.

The passengers who tested positive were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, Royal Caribbean said in a statement, adding that six guests were disembarked earlier in the cruise and transported home.

Royal Caribbean said 95 percent of the community on board were fully vaccinated, while 98 percent of those who tested positive were also fully vaccinated.

Symphonys future itineraries are not impacted, it added.

By Deborah Sophia
Process participants are pictured at the courtroom, where a trial took place against a Russian defendant, Vadim Krasikov, of gunning down 40-year-old Georgian national Zelimkhan "Tornike" Kavtarashvili, in Berlin, on Dec. 15, 2021. (Christophe Gateau/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Russia Expels 2 German Diplomats in Quid Pro Quo Move

MOSCOWRussia on Monday ordered two German diplomats to leave in response to the expulsion of two Russian envoys after a German courts ruling that blamed Moscow for the killing of a Chechen man in Berlin two years ago.

Moscow has angrily rejected the Berlin courts verdict and the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the German ambassador Monday to inform him about the diplomats expulsion in what it said was a symmetrical response to the unfriendly decision by the German government.

The ministry warned that Russia will continue to respond in kind to any potential confrontational moves by Berlin.

Judges at Berlins regional court on Wednesday convicted 56-year-old Vadim Krasikov of killing Zelimkhan Tornike Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity. They ruled that Krasikov had acted on the orders of Russian federal authorities, who provided him with a false identity, a fake passport, and the resources to carry out the killing.

The brazen daylight hit near Berlins Kleiner Tiergarten park on Aug. 23, 2019 sparked outrage in Berlin and prompted the German government to expel two other Russian diplomats at the timea move Russia swiftly reciprocated.

Following the courts decision, Germany expelled two more Russian diplomats with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock calling the state-ordered killing a grave breach of German law and the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The German Foreign Ministry denounced the Russian move as completely unfounded and noted that the Russian diplomats expulsion last week was an appropriate reaction to the courts verdict.

The German government strives for an exchange with the Russian Federation on the basis of international law and mutual respect, it said, adding that the Russian move puts additional strain on this relationship.
Municipal workers hold placards and shout slogans as they march across Brooklyn bridge during a protest against the covid-19 vaccine mandate, in New York on Oct. 25, 2021. (ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)

SCOTUS Dismissal of NY Vax Mandate Challenge Subordinates Religion to Scientism

Commentary

It was supposed to take two weeks to flatten the curve. Instead, in less than two years, Americas authorities have flattened the republic.

From the arbitrary and capricious suspension of basic life for months on end to pervasive censorship and the undermining of the integrity of our elections, our Ruling Class has piled incalculable costs in life and liberty on top of the casualties of the Chinese coronavirus via its despotic response to the diseasewhile it accrued ever-greater wealth and power.

For the latest evidence of COVID-related rot in our republic, look to the Supreme Courtan institution albeit long on the downslide since well before the onset of the pandemic, under its institutionalist chief justice.

Its unwillingness to halt New York States coronavirus vaccine mandate for health care workers during the pendency of litigation raised by faithful objectors not provided even the option of a religious exemptionwhich follows the courts dismissal of a similar Maine caseis even more disturbing than might appear at first glance.

The immediate takeaways are as follows:

First, nurses and doctorsthose who stood in the trenches during the throes of the pandemicare being rewarded for their efforts by losing their livelihoods because they refuse to jab a needle in their arm as a matter of conscience.

Second, even accepting differences in the merits of the cases, the Supreme Courts ruling ought to give pause to those who assume its strike-down of the Biden administrations vaccine mandate for employers of more than 100 people is a layup.

Third, the courts de facto blessing of COVID-19 vaccine mandates of any kind under any circumstanceseven when it comes to health care workers, who might be held to stricter standards on grounds of health and safetyarguably legitimizes tyranny.

Consider: This isnt a disease indiscriminately rampaging through society and killing everyonefar from it, it targets the elderly, overweight, and those with comorbidities acutely, with fatality rates infinitesimal, and serious illness far less likely for most everyone else. Numerous studies show that natural immunity is substantially more durable than the protection conferred by vaccination, yet its ignored in New Yorks policy, undermining its scientific rationale. The vaccines of course wane, can generate adverse events, neither prevent infection nor transmission, and the medium- and long-term effects of these experimental drugs are unknown.

As authorities acknowledged dating back to July, these weaknesses made vaccination increasingly a question of personal protection. If the vaccines are as effective as authorities suggest, the vaccinated should have nothing to fear of the unvaccinated; it isnt the states responsibility to protect the unvaccinated from themselves.

That thousands of health care workers across the countrywho one would think might have some insights when it comes to vaccineshave refused the jab ought to tell us something. And if we face an impending disaster that will require all able hands, wouldnt that also cut against the mandate?

This is to say nothing of course of the constant goalpost shifting; the censorship of dissenting views, lack of open debate (let alone legal recourse), and transparency in data on which we would have it; that virtually every major public policy around the Chinese coronavirus has lacked anything resembling a cost-benefit analysis; the coercive nature of the vast majority of measures imposed on the public; and the vile, un-American attacks on those who refuse to comply with the regimes favored positions that have marked the entire pandemic.

Setting aside science, which authorities have misused throughout the past 21 months as a stand-in for politics, in a free society, people must be left to make their own decisions regarding their health and well-being. Our natural rights dont disappear because Dr. Anthony Fauci decrees it.

New York is one of all but three states in the country not to understand, or more likely not to care one iota, about all this. The state has done nothing to demonstrate that its acting rationally and in good faith throughout this pandemic. And adding injury to insult, its public health resultswhich its last governor famously tried to cover uphave been disastrous to boot.

While New York can be flippant, the Supreme Court cant be. It is duty-bound to uphold constitutional rights when under assault. Yet even if its refusal to provide injunctive relief in the two New York cases at issue doesnt represent a ruling on the merits, it constitutes a statement from the high court that it wont even temporarily respect those most sacred rights of the faithful while their cases are adjudicated.

Not only will the highest court in the land abide First Amendment abrogationit will privilege the pseudo-religion of Scientism above the Judeo-Christian faith bedrock on which America relies.

The court allows clear discrimination against religious objectors because New York carves out those seeking medical exemptions. Once again, questionable public health that must not be questioned takes priority over religion.

This isnt the first time during the pandemic that we have seen governmental authorities subordinate the fundamental rights of the politically disfavored faithful to the whims of our progressive betters.

During the summer of 2020 in blue cities across the country, such as New York, the Woke were permitted to march, riot, and loot with impunity, while the Chosen could neither gather to pray nor bury the dead.

Wokeism and Scientism, which appear to be jockeying for competition as to which represents the strongest Ruling Class force, increasingly trump Christianity and Judaism.

Why would we expect the Supreme Court to be immunized against these strains of elite thought, and to be immune from the hysteria, the Pandemic of the Indoctrinated, that has poisoned elite discourse for nearly two years?

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his dissent that The test of this Courts substance lies in its willingness to defend more than the shadow of freedom in the trying times, not just the easy ones. The Roberts court has failed this test both in times trying and easy.

Whether at the conservative Supreme Court, in the White House, or your governors officewith rare, blessed exceptionsScientism and the cult of Public Health prevail.

We the people are the only check on the tyranny that has infected our body politic.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) participates in a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on oversight of the airline industry, in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Dec. 15, 2021 in Washington. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Sen. Blackburn Urges Commerce Department to Blacklist More Chinese Firms Over Xinjiang Repression

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has called on the U.S. Commerce Department to blacklist several Chinese firms that allegedly aid Beijing in its surveillance and repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Blackburn, in a Dec. 15 letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, urged for the addition of firms in China connected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Automation to the entity list. The list is made up of firms whose practices are incompatible with a pro-democratic, pro-human rights stance, or with the safeguarding of U.S. national security.

According to Blackburn and her fellow signatories, firms tied to the academy are actively assisting Beijing in the development of surveillance technology and equipment that enhance the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) ability to persecute its ethnic Muslim minorities in the far west Xinjiang region.

Joining Sen. Blackburn in her appeal to the Commerce Department were Sens. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), John Cornyn (R-TX), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), Rick Scott (R-Fl.), Tom Tillis (R-NC), Roger Wicker (R.-Miss.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.).

The Department of Commerce plays a critical role in preserving U.S. values and promoting national security, especially when protecting the United States from malign interference by the CCP, the letter states. The CCP is known to blur the facts of activities within state-controlled research institutions, promote unofficial transfers of intellectual property, and participate in activities that damage the moral framework surrounding human rights and scientific research.

The letter singles out for particular criticism the severe human rights abuses going on in Xinjiang. The U.S. government, several Western parliaments, and a London-based independent have classified Beijings actions as genocide. Blackburns letter cites pre-criminal profiling, coerced culling of genetic data, rape and forced sterilization, and mass internment without due process, among other abuses, and notes that the theater of Beijings human rights violations is scarcely limited to Xinjiang.

Elements of the surveillance and control tactics utilized in Xinjiang are also evident in the regions of Tibet and Inner Mongolia, and even against dissidents in major metropolitan cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the letter states.

Given the realities of surveillance and its growing use as a tool of political oppression, the signatories urged the Commerce Department to restrict trade with firms in China whose technology and work contribute to Beijings surveillance capabilities.

While the U.S. government has made strides toward restricting business with some PRC [Peoples Republic of China] entities, efforts are still inadequate with respect to PRC research institutions and their affiliates in light of their contributions to the mass weaponization of surveillance functions, the letter states. Potential partners must be thoroughly vetted to maintain our own national security and to outwardly emphasize that we do not condone the immoral behavior of the CCP.

Last week, the Biden administration slapped trade and investment restrictions on dozens of Chinese entities over their role in aiding the CCPs military or furthering rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Woman with smartphone is seen in front of displayed Amazon logo in this illustration taken on July 30, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

Sens. Rubio and Brown Issue Bipartisan Call for Probe Into Amazon Labor Practices

Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) have asked the Labor Department for a full federal probe into Amazons labor practices, with the two lawmakers citing recent reports that suggest potential employment law violations, troubling working conditions, and improper treatment of Amazon employees.

Rubio and Brown said in a Dec. 20 letter to U.S. Labor Secretary Martin Walsh (pdf) that a series of cases and worker claims raise serious concerns regarding Amazons employment practices, including questions about possible violations of wage and hour laws and occupational safety rules.

Workers concerns are clear, the pair wrote. Amazons business practices seem to prioritize profit over people.

In support of their request for the probe, the two senators cited a number of cases that they say are illustrative of chronic mismanagement at the e-commerce giant.

They noted, for example, that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that Amazon wrongfully terminated a worker who complained about unsafe working conditions during the pandemic, along with two others who criticized Amazons practices.

The NLRB also ordered a re-run of an election by workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, that voted against unionizing. An NLRB review of the conduct of the election determined that Amazons actions during the election exhibited a flagrant disregard for the agencys rules and made a free and fair election impossible,' Rubio and Brown wrote.

The lawmakers also cited a recent announcement by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that the agency would investigate the deaths of six people when an Amazon warehouse in Illinois collapsed during a tornado. They cited reports indicating one of the employees killed by the collapsed building sent a text message to his girlfriend saying Amazon would not let him go home during the storm.

Other Amazon workers have voiced concerns regarding the companys alleged lack of emergency response training, stringent cellphone policies, and expectations that workers continue to work during tornado warnings, they wrote.

They also cited reports of workers not having time to use the restroom while on the job, in some cases being forced to resort to extraordinary measures such as urinating in bottles to meet work quotas.

The lawmakers said the cases, along with other claims by Amazon employees, raise serious concerns about the companys employment practices.

Given Amazons impact on the economy as one of our nations largest employers, and a federal contractor, it is paramount that we ensure workers are treated fairly, with dignity, and in full compliance with labor and employment laws, the pair wrote.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Amazon and the Labor Department with requests for comment on the contents of the letter but did not receive a response by publication.
Singapore Conditionally Releases Neutralized China Spy After Year-Long Detention

Singapore authorities released 40-year-old Dickson Yeo after detaining him for close to a year for investigations. He was picked up when he arrived back in Singapore after serving a 14-month prison sentence in the United States for covertly collecting intelligence for the Chinese regime.

On Dec. 14, Singapores Internal Security Department (ISD) announced in a press release it had completed its investigations into Singaporean Jun Wei Yeo, also known as Dickson Yeo.

It established that Yeo did not manage [to] obtain and pass on any classified information about Singapore to his foreign handlers.

The threat that Yeo poses as a foreign agent is assessed to be effectively neutralized, the ISD said.

As such, he does not pose a security threat that warrants continued detention.

Yeo was released through a Suspension Direction (SD) given by the Minister of Home Affairs, K. Shanmugam, which suspends the detention order made under Singapores Internal Security Act that is currently enforced on Yeo.

While the detention order is still in force, if Yeo does not comply with any of the conditions of the SD, the minister may revoke it and have Yeo re-detained.

Internal Security Act

The ISD arrested Yeo under the Internal Security Act (ISA) on Dec. 30, 2020, the day he arrived back in Singapore.

In a statement made on the same day, the ISD said it would interview Yeo to establish if he had engaged in activities prejudicial to Singapores security, as Yeo had revealed to U.S. investigators his intelligence gathering included other countries aside from the United States.

Under the ISA (pdf), a person can be detained without appearing in court for a period of up to two years, but it is used only as a last resort and for security threats such as international terrorism, foreign subversion, espionage, and acts of violence or hatred using race.

In its statement announcing Yeos release, the ISD said its investigations had established that Yeo had knowingly and covertly worked for a foreign state to gather intelligence from 2016 to 2019.

Yeo was first approached through an online professional network site. Then he was invited to an overseas academic symposium where he was requested to write reports for his handlers.

He was paid substantial amounts for his reports, which were mainly on global and regional geo-political issues and developments, including issues related to Singapore.

Yeo sought privileged information on those issues and approached people he thought had access to such information. He also set up a company and placed employment advertisements online. When asked, he said the reports were research topics for foreign clients.

Yeos strategy was similar to what he did later in the United States, as previously reported by The Epoch Times.

In addition, the ISD said: On the direction of his handlers, Yeo had also applied for sensitive government positions in order to enrich his reports with privileged policy insights and classified information.

However, his attempts to secure employment in the public sector were unsuccessful.

Recruiting Spies Through Social Media

In its statement, the ISD warned social media has made it easier for foreign intelligence services to talent-spot, groom, and cultivate potential agents, even from abroad.

Likely targets are retired/serving civil servants and individuals in the private sector with access to classified or sensitive information.

Singaporeans must therefore remain vigilant to such dangers posed by foreign agents, the ISD said.

These agents may offer attractive business or career opportunities, or even try to obtain sensitive information.

The foreign state mentioned in the ISDs press release was not named.

Yeo did not respond to The Epoch Timess request for comments.
(L-R) Trade or foreign ministers of Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei, Japan, Mexico, Peru, and Vietnam pose for an official picture after signing the rebranded 11-nation Pacific trade pact Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in Santiago, on March 8, 2018. (Claudio Reyes/AFP via Getty Images)

South Korea Applies To Join Pacific Trade Partnership, Reducing Trade Reliance On China

South Koreas finance minister said the country would begin an application to join a massive Asia-Pacific free trade deal before the end of President Moon Jae-ins term in office. The trade deal could boost South Koreas multilateral trade within the region and reduce its import reliance on China.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (CPTPP) is the renegotiated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after former President Donald Trump withdrew from the TPP in 2017. According to South Koreas Yonhap News Agency, Trumps move was widely seen as a key counterweight to Chinas growing economic influence.

The new multilateral free trade deal was launched in 2018 by 11 member nations in the Asia-Pacific region. All members include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam. Currently, Japan is chairing the pact, with China and Taiwan having applied for membership in September this year.

South Korean Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki, who doubles as deputy prime minister, said on Dec. 13 that its government would begin the application process to join CPTPP, seeking not to be left behind on a critical economic treaty in the region, according to the Japanese-based newspaper Nikkei Aisa.

We cannot keep [CPTPP] talks inside the government anymore, as the economic order is changing quickly in the Asia-Pacific region, Hong said in a meeting with economic ministers. We should consider our status as an open trade country, as well as the economic and strategic value of the expansion of trade and investment. He emphasized the regional and strategic importance of CPTPP to South Korea in the global economy.

According to a Yonhap report citing a South Korean state-run think tank, trade volume by the 11 nations participating in the CPTPP had reached $5.7 trillion as of 2019, accounting for 15.2 percent of total global trade.

The [Moon Jae-in] government has an aim to submit the application to join the CPTPP before its five-year term ends, Hong told foreign correspondents according to a Yonhap report. South Korea will hold its presidential election in March next year.

In November 2020, South Korea entered the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECEP) that goes into effect in February next year. RECEP covers the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), South Korea, China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The trade pact is known as the worlds biggest FTA, as its 15 member countries combine to account for around 30 percent of the global GDP.

South Koreas potential accession to the CPTPP could be a significant boost for its trade expansion in addition to its planned implementation of RECEP.

However, given the additional procedures before joining the pact as well as strong opposition from its farming and fishing professionals concerned about intensified competition with foreign rivals, it could take several years to complete the membership process. A final accession requires a unanimous vote from all member states, including Japan, which has yet to voice support for South Koreas bid, citing the Korea Economic Daily.

South Korea had been hesitant about joining the pact, partly because of concerns about damaging relations with Beijing. However, South Korea renewed its interest after China submitted its application to the CPTPP in September, and Taiwan followed suit a week later.

The CPTPP boasts a high level of market openness, with a maximum 96 percent tariff abolition rate. Analysts say it could be Seouls move to lower its trade dependency on China and diversify export markets by joining the CPTPP, citing the South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo.

According to South Morning China Post, the 11 economies in CPTPP imported a combined $126 billion of South Korean goods, corresponding to 23.2 percent of the countrys total exports in 2019. They also sold $124.9 billion of goods and services to South Korea, accounting for 24.8 percent of its imports that year.

South Korea has been heavily reliant on China for raw material imports. In November, the country experienced a severe shortage in ureaa chemical used to lower emissions in diesel carsafter China restricted exports of the substance in recent months. The sudden drop in urea triggered the South Korean government to assemble a task force aiming to diversify its imports away from China by finding a new set of suppliers, according to a Reuters report.

Amid the rising tension between China and Australia, South Korean President Moon traveled to Australia on Dec. 13 for a four-day state visit. The two countries agreed to secure stable supply chains and enhance defense ties. According to the Yonhap report, Moon is the first South Korean president to pay a state visit to Australia in 12 years and the first foreign leader to visit the country since the COVID-19 pandemic.

South Korea also secured a nearly $700 million defense deal during the visit. Under the agreement, Australia will purchase K-9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer from South Korean arms manufacturer Hanwha Defense, according to Reuters.

According to Korea JoongAng Daily, a joint statement issued by Moon and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison during the summit stated that the two countries recognize that the stability of the Indo-Pacific depends on adherence to international law in the maritime domain, including in the South China Sea, underscoring that disputes must be resolved peacefully, in accordance with international law, and reaffirmed the importance of upholding freedom of navigation and overflight.

The statement did not directly call out China, but the issue of rising U.S.-China tensions was looming throughout the summit as South Korea tried to maintain balanced diplomacy.

In a press conference during the visit, Moon said that South Korea is not considering a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, nor have we have received any request from the United States or any other country to take part.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk checks out the University of California Irvine's HYPERXITE pod during the SpaceX Hyperloop competition in Hawthorne, California on Jan. 29, 2017. (Gene Blevins/AFP/Getty Images)

SpaceX Headquarters Reports Highest Number of Workplace COVID-19 Cases in LA

Elon Musks SpaceX company has reported the highest number of workplace COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles.

At least 132 employees, or around 2.3 percent of its nearly 6,000 workers, at the SpaceX Corporate Headquarters in Hawthorne, California, have tested positive for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Monday.

Those figures account for nearly 30 percent of workplace COVID-19 cases in the county.

The outbreak comes as Omicron, a more transmissible but reportedly milder variant of COVID-19, continues to spread quickly in the United States and around the globe.

As of Dec. 20, the new strain has been detected in nearly every U.S. state and territory. The variant accounted for 73.2 percent of new cases in the week that ended Dec. 18, up from 12 percent the week before, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday.

On Dec. 21, what is widely believed to be the first death in the United States attributed to the new variant was reported in Houston, Texas, health officials announced.

An unvaccinated man in his 50s with unspecified underlying health conditions who had previously been infected with the virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, was named as a victim of the Omicron variant, Harris Country Public Health (HCPH) confirmed.

The individual was at higher risk of severe complications from COVID-19 due to his unvaccinated status and had underlying health conditions, health officials said.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the patients family, and we extend our deepest sympathies, said Barbie Robinson, HCPH executive director. This is a reminder of the severity of COVID-19 and its variants. We urge all residents who qualify to get vaccinated and get their booster shot if they have not already.

Meanwhile, World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned against holiday gatherings over Christmas due to fears over a surge in cases.

Ghebreyesus said in a briefing in Geneva on Monday that there was now consistent evidence that the newest variant is spreading faster than the Delta variant, and urged people to cancel or delay festive gatherings.

Earlier this month, Musk came out against COVID-19 vaccine mandates, telling Time Magazine that he believes such policies should not be put in place in the United States.

Yes, yeah. Im very pro-vaccination. The science is unequivocal, Ive tweeted to that effect, he said. But by the same token I am against forcing people to be vaccinated. You know, I think this is just not something we should do in America. I think we should encourage people to be vaccinated, strongly try to convince them to be vaccinated, but not force them to be vaccinated, or for example, for them to get vaccinated or get fired.
People take part in a protest against the October military takeover and a subsequent deal that reinstated Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok but sidelined the movement in Khartoum, Sudan, on Dec. 19, 2021. (Marwan Ali/AP Photo)

Sudan Group Says 1 Person Killed in Anti-Coup Protests

CAIROA Sudanese protester was shot dead during mass demonstrations against the recent military takeover and a subsequent deal that reinstated Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok but sidelined the movement, a medical group said Monday.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese took to the streets in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country Sunday. The protests marked the third anniversary of the uprising that eventually forced the military removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir and his Islamic extremist movement in April 2019.

Security forces fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators attempting to stage a sit-in near the presidential palace on the bank of the Blue Nile in the heart of Khartoum.

There were also protests elsewhere in the country, such as the coastal city of Port Sudan, the eastern city of Kassala, and the northern city of Atbara, the birthplace of the uprising against al-Bashir.

The Sudan Doctors Committee said a 28-year-old man was killed after he was shot in the chest during Sundays demonstrations in the East Nile area in Khartoum.

More than 120 people were wounded in clashes between protesters and security forces in Khartoum, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Two other protesters were wounded in Kassala, it said.

The protests were one of the largest since the military took over on Oct. 25, removing Hamdoks transitional government. The coup has rattled the transition and led to relentless street demonstrations.

At least 45 people were killed, and hundreds wounded in protests triggered by the coup, according to a tally by the Sudanese medical group.

Hamdok was reinstated last month amid international pressure in a deal that calls for an independent technocratic Cabinet under military oversight led by him.

The prime minister has yet to announce his Cabinet, amid talks to agree on a new political charter focused on establishing a broader consensus among all political forces and movements.

He defended the Nov. 21 deal with the military, saying Saturday that it was meant to preserve achievements his government made in the past two years, and to protect our nation from sliding to a new international isolation.

The Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change has meanwhile rejected the deal between Hamdok and Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the ruling Sovereign Council and coup architect. The pro-democracy alliance vowed to continue street protests to pressure coup leaders to hand over power to a civilian government to lead the transition.

Brig. Gen. Al-Tahir Abu Hagga, a media adviser of Burhan, meanwhile urged political parties and movements to unify their programs and strategies to succeed the transitional democracy.

The flagrant, controversial and hostile tone (of the protesters) could impede the smooth democratic transition, he said. The Nov. 21 dealis the basis on which transitional political visions should be built.

By Samy Magdy
A customer shops for Roundup products at a store in San Rafael, Calif., on July, 9, 2018. (JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Supreme Court Could Decide Fate of Monsanto/Bayer Roundup Cancer Suits

Scientists, Ex-EPA executive, anti-glyphosate activist offer clashing opinions in interviews with The Epoch Times

On Dec. 13, the Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General to offer the United States views on Monsanto v. Hardemanthe latest move in what may be a landmark case for multibillion-dollar litigation linking the herbicide Roundup to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, if the high court agrees to review the case.

After a call for the views of the solicitor general, that Justice Department official will often respond with a brief commenting on whether the Supreme Court should agree to review the case. The solicitor generals office didnt respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment by press time.

Monsanto, which was acquired by the German chemical company Bayer in 2018, filed its petition after a 9th Circuit panel ruled in favor of California resident Edwin Hardeman, who claimed his non-Hodgkin lymphoma resulted from exposure to Roundup.

Ninth Circuit Judge Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee, found that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) didnt preempt Californias law, under which Roundup and other products containing glyphosate must feature warnings about that ingredients reported cancer risk.

While the state of California maintains that glyphosate is carcinogenic, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which enforces FIFRA, maintains that glyphosate isnt likely to cause cancer in humans.

Monsantos petition to the Supreme Court challenges the 9th Circuits ruling on preemption. It also argues that the 9th Circuit admitted low-quality expert opinions on glyphosate and cancer, deviating from the practices of other appellate courts and violating Federal Rule of Evidence 702.

Monsanto specifically disputes Dr. Dennis Weisenburgers testimony that Hardemans non-Hodgkin lymphoma was caused by glyphosate and not linked to his earlier diagnosis of Hepatitis C, known to be associated with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Weisenburger didnt respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment by press time.

An American flag waves outside the U.S. Department of Justice Building in Washington on Dec. 15, 2020. (Al Drago/Reuters)

Bayer responded warmly to the Supreme Courts invitation to the solicitor general.

The company has been very selective in its settlement approach since filing its Petition for a Writ of Certiorari in Hardeman. Now that the Supreme Court has requested input from the Solicitor General in this case, we will not entertain any further settlement discussions with plaintiff lawyers that are representing a substantial number of Roundup claims, a Bayer spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

In a separate interview, the spokesperson told The Epoch Times that it has resolved roughly 98,000 out of more than 125,000 claims linking non-Hodgkin lymphoma to Roundup. While those settled claims wouldnt be affected if the high court ruled in favor of Monsanto, the more than 25,000 outstanding claims could be, according to the spokesperson.

While the spokesperson wouldnt say how much the company had paid to date, they said the company has established a $9.6 billion provision for current litigation and, in July, a $4.5 billion provision for future cases.

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria. (United States District Court for the Northern District of California)

In addition, the company took a $2 billion provision for class action, which still stands, even after the company withdrew its agreement in conjunction with an unfavorable ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria, who said elements of Bayers proposal were clearly unreasonable.

The Bayer spokesperson told The Epoch Times that a substantial chunk of its $16.1 billion reserves for settling claims could be affected by the Supreme Courts decision.

Notably, the Supreme Court case could come soon after multiple California jury verdicts that found Roundup wasnt responsible for a claimants non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to Reuters.

Californias law, as well as Hardemans suit, hinges in part on a major 2015 monograph from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans.

A spokesperson for IARC declined to comment on Monsanto v. Hardeman but stated that its results and evaluation from 2015 are still valid.

Monsantos petition argues that EPA and other regulators around the world have maintained a global consensus that glyphosate doesnt cause cancer.

In 2019, after California classified glyphosate as carcinogenic, EPA issued a letter stating that Californias warning language constituted a false and misleading statement.

When asked about Monsanto v. Hardeman, the EPA told The Epoch Times that as this is pending litigation, we have nothing to add.

Henry Darwin, who served as acting deputy administrator and chief operating officer of the EPA during the Trump administration, told The Epoch Times in an exclusive interview that he hopes the Supreme Court will take the case.

The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington on June 30, 2018. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

When EPA says that theres no cancer risk associated with this consumer product, that shouldnt be up for challenge by an individual state or, worse yet, by an individual scientist, Darwin said.

My fear is that if California is allowed to have its own conflicting opinion about something like glyphosate, its a slippery slope that could lead to an eroding of our confidence in EPA as a country.

While Monsanto v. Hardeman effectively pits Californias law against the federal governments standards, Darwin doesnt believe that a ruling in favor of Monsanto would undermine the proper authority of states.

Im a true believer in states rights if the state has a right thats unique to the state, he said. In this instance, were talking about a commercial product thats being sold throughout the country. Theres nothing unique about its use or application in California, and Congress has made it pretty clear that through FIFRA [the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, Rodenticide Act] it is EPAs responsibility to set the appropriate safety standards and evaluations associated with this type of consumer product.

Monsantos petition to the Supreme Court has garnered supporting briefs from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Washington Legal Foundation, and the pesticide trade organization CropLife America, among other organizations.

The quality of decision-making in federal court hinges on the ability and willingness of trial-court judges to prevent unreliable scientific expert evidence from ever being admitted into evidence. Unless the Supreme Court arrests the Ninth Circuits pattern of excusing judges from this gatekeeping duty under Rule 702, the federal judiciarys ability to produce fair and just results will be eroded, Cory Andrews, general counsel and vice president of litigation for the Washington Legal Foundation, told The Epoch Times in an email.

A view of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on June 12, 2017. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In its petition, Monsanto describes the IARCs classification as a slender reed for claims against Monsanto.

Not all scientists agree.

John Spinelli, professor emeritus of epidemiology, biostatistics, and public health practice at the University of British Columbia, was a co-author of a 2001 study that linked non-Hodgkin lymphoma to the use of herbicides. It was cited in IARCs 2015 monograph on glyphosate.

I am in total support of that conclusion of the IARC review, Spinelli told The Epoch Times.

However, Paolo Boffetta, an epidemiologist and professor across multiple disciplines at the Icahn School of Public Health at Mount Sinai, told The Epoch Times that early studies linking glyphosate to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, such as Eriksson et al.s study of almost 2,000 Swedish adults, have seen less support from more recent research.

His 2021 meta-analysis concluded there was no significant association between exposure to glyphosate and overall non-Hodgkin lymphoma risk.

Yet in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, he stressed that there are many different subtypes of the cancer, making it hard to rule out a potential link at a more granular level.

German pharmaceutical giant Bayer in Berlin on Nov. 24, 2010. (JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/GettyImages)

Whether we can say that for each individual subtype of lymphoma we have strong evidence that there is no association, I dont think we should say that, Boffetta said.

He confirmed to The Epoch Times that he previously acted as a consultant for Monsanto, although not on anything related to glyphosate.

Other scientists who have authored research linking glyphosate with cancer either declined to comment or didnt respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

Jeffrey Smith, an anti-glyphosate activist who leads the Institute for Responsible Technology, told The Epoch Times in an exclusive interview about Monsanto v. Hardeman that Monsanto has a history of undermining scientists who are critical of it.

He cited emails in the Monsanto Papers concerning Gilles-Eric Seralini, a French molecular biologist whose research examined the toxicity of Roundup.

Roundup products for sale at a hardware store in San Rafael, Calif., on July, 9, 2018. (JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)

One 2009 email released in the papers showed that the editor of a journal that had received one of the scientists manuscripts allowed it to be reviewed by a Monsanto executive, William F. Heydens.

With your help the following final decision has been reached: Reject (allow resubmission), the editor, Gio Batta Gori, wrote to Heydens.

A spokesperson for Bayer told The Epoch Times that the Monsanto Papers and similar materials hadnt been enough to convince regulators in the United States and many other countries, including in the European Union, to consider Roundup or glyphosate carcinogenic.

The spokesperson cited the European Food Safety Agencys 2017 statement on the Monsanto Papers.

The nature of the information contained within the Monsanto papers was serious enough for EFSA to investigate their significance in relation to the EU assessment of glyphosate. Following this investigation, EFSA can confirm: that there are no grounds to suggest that industry improperly influenced the EU assessment of glyphosate; and that the role of industry and of other actors in the process was carried out according to standard procedures, EFSA wrote.

The Environmental Protection Agency in Washington on Dec. 12, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Smith said Monsanto has undermined the EPAs approval process.

He cited a letter from the late EPA employee Marion Copley to EPA herbicides administrator Jess Rowland as Copley was dying of breast cancer. In it, she accused Rowland of playing political conniving games with the science to favor the registrants. She also wrote that [it] is essentially certain that glyphosate causes cancer.

Bayers spokesperson defended the EPA, stating that the agency said its analysis of the cancer risks from glyphosate was more robust and more transparent than IARCs review.

Smith said a preemption precedent favoring Monsanto would be a tragedy and a travesty, given what he sees as Monsantos undue influence over the EPA.

Theyre now hiding behind that and hoping that the Supreme Court and that the Department of Justice blindly follow a law and give the EPA determination far more validity than it deserves, he said.
Texas Governor Adds $38.4 Million to Operation Lone Star to Secure the Border

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced an additional $38.4 million funding for Operation Lone Star (OLS), which was launched in March in response to the burgeoning crisis at the southern border.

The extra funding will go toward law enforcement, jail operations, and court administration activities in direct support of OLS, the Republican governors office said in a press release.

In the federal govts absence, Texas has taken unprecedented actions to secure the border through #OperationLoneStar, Abbott said on Twitter in announcing the move. This additional funding will ensure our law enforcement & local partners have the resources they need to keep our communities safe.

OLS, in collaboration with the states Department of Public Safety, deploys air, ground, marine, and tactical border security assets to prevent Mexican criminal organizations from smuggling drugs and people into the state.

From deterring illegal immigration, to preventing the smuggling of drugs and weapons, to curtailing human trafficking, the deployment of resources and personnel needed to arrest and jail criminals along the border is imperative to our comprehensive border security strategy under Operation Lone Star, the governor said in a statement.

This additional funding will strengthen our response to the border crisis and ensure our law enforcement and local partners have the resources they need to keep our communities safe in the federal governments absence, he added.

The release notes that since the program was launched, some $74.8 million has been awarded to cities and counties in proximity to the U.S.Mexico border.

The additional funding includes $19.5 million for specialized law enforcement equipment and supplies, and $16 million for additional overtime and pay, including for contract and salaried peace officers, jailers, prosecutors, indigent defense counsel, and administrative court staff.

It also includes $1.9 million for construction of regional emergency communication and radio towers, as well as additional capacity in county jail facilities, and some $800,000 for travel costs associated with non-border counties providing law enforcement assistance to border disaster-declared counties, as well as specialized training for law enforcement and prosecution personnel, the release states.

It comes just days after the governor confirmed that the state has started building its own state-funded border wall.

Texas has officially started building its own border wall, he wrote on Twitter on Friday, while asserting that President Joe Bidens immigration policies allow for an open border since he took office in January.

Biden, the governor added, also refuses to enforce laws passed by Congress to secure the border and enforce immigration laws. He said Texas is stepping up to do the federal governments job.

Abbott earlier this year, amid near-record numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border, announced that he would try to secure funding for Texas to construct its own border barrier after Biden signed an executive order that scrapped federal construction of the wall.

Texass wall construction, which would not obtain federal funding, has been favored by Abbott as a means of cracking down on illegal immigration and drug trafficking. In June, the governor started a private donation campaign that has raised about $54 million.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
The Negation of the Past

Commentary

I live on Lee Street in Alexandria, Virginia. Yes, that LeeRobert E. grew up a few blocks away. We also have Jefferson and Franklin Streets, and King, Duke, Prince, and Princess, which go back to the 18th century. Alexandria is where it is because further north, the Potomac River gets too shallow for shipping. It was a merchant town from the beginning, including a large slave market, with town leaders generally careful to avoid political tensions when they could.

In the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Alexandria was occupied with little incident, and commerce went on.

When I moved to the city in 2017, at the intersection of South Washington and Prince streets was a statue of a Confederate soldier, a solitary figure in bronze atop a concrete and marble base. It showed a common soldier facing south, with no weapon and his head bowed. The accompanying text listed Alexandria residents who ended up among the Confederate dead.

Its an image of defeat, and it bore the name Appomattox.

I say was because the statue is gone. It was removed in June 2020 by the organization responsible for it, the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Daughters knew it was only a matter of time before the city leadership (Democratic) would order it down. The Daughters also didnt want to see the statue vandalized as so many other statues, Confederate and non-confederate, were in the summer of 2020.

It was no surprise, then, that a story in the local paper a few months back reported on a move to change the name of my street. The initiative was all too predictable. A few years before, the old Episcopal church in Alexandria, on North Washington Street, decided to remove two plaques inside, one memorializing George Washington, the other Robert E. Lee. When I moved to town, Frank Buckley took me on a tour that included entering the church and sitting for five minutes in the Washington family pew.

As was often the case back then, a big donation to the church would reserve for you and your descendants a prime place in the congregation. But these commemorations had to go, because, the church leadership said, they create a distraction in our worship space and may create an obstacle to our identity as a welcoming church. As for all the money the church had received from those families in the past (which would have been tainted by profits from enslavement), I dont recall any commentary about it.

Lee Street is an obvious next target. The leader of the effort is a millennial (of course!), only 25 years old, white with a little turquoise dye in his hair, and he shows in his comments in the news stories little historical understanding of the racial past of the United States. He doesnt live on Lee Street, and it isnt clear that his own family has been victimized in any way by the Lee family and what they represent. But his passion is firm, his conviction solid. He knows whats right, and his moral scruples are a whole lot more precise and virtuous than those of actual residents of Lee Street who have lived there for decades, so he believes.

His goal is to erase every sign of the Old White South from the entire city. The Appomattox statue was no celebration of the Cause. It was a sign of mourningbut that didnt stop the campaign against it. I predict that the City Council will eventually vote on the street name change and give him what he wants.

This is the progressive mentality in action. Its ready to walk into a room for the first time and start telling people whove been there a long time what to say and do. Prudence is for weak wills, not for the young idealist eager to mold the world into the image of his ideals. He doesnt hesitate one bit to tell the natives what he thinks of their heritage. He has a set of universal truths and values in hand, and he applies them to any and all as fervently as the most avid Spanish explorers in 1585.

This dictatorial impulse has never been more open than it is today as the woke wave continues. The old liberal values of pluralism and diversity, which they used to mouth, no longer compel them. In truth, they were a dodge, a way to dislodge European legacies from their high place without sounding destructive.

We arent trying to get rid of Shakespeare, they could say in the past, we just want some representation of other races and genders and cultures. You dont object to that, do you?

What they really wanted, though, was to get rid of the Western tradition, the American Dream, and traditional conceptions of social life altogether. Our anti-Lee Street activist doesnt want to share space. He doesnt aim to put abolitionist monuments around town as a contrast to the remembrances of the slaveholders. He doesnt care about historical memory in any broad way, only in the narrow progressive way, which means certain memories must go. It doesnt matter to him that a lot of people in Alexandria find Robert E. Lee admirable as a soldier and gentleman, even though he took the wrong side in the War.

If an Alexandria grandmother said, My great-grandfather fought in Lees army and died at Antietamdont take down that plaque commemorating him and other locals who were killed, our progressive would offer a curt reply: Nope, sorry. If you asked him historical questions about the Civil War, you wouldnt get much of a response. He doesnt need facts; he has the right values in hand, and they tell him what to do.

This isnt a positive projectits a negative one. It must be fought. We dont need to defend Robert E. Lee. We need to fight arrogance and control. I dont know of any people on the right who would object to a monument in Alexandria to the human cargo sold on the docks of the Potomac. Let the history be told, they would say.

But once the erasures start, once the left starts tearing things down, its a new ballgame. Our woke progressives deserve as much space in the public arena as they believe conservatives and traditionalists deserve. Their moral fervor shouldnt shield them from reprisal.

On the contrary, it should put their adversaries on a wartime footing. The Culture War is on.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A Chinese yuan currency sign with two arrows through it, pictured outside a bank branch in Shanghai on August 13, 2015. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)

The Risks of CCP Chinas Digital Yuan Are Understated: Part I

Commentary

This is the first of a two-part article articulating the risks of CCP Chinas new digital yuan, the e-CNY.

Part I details the risks to people and businesses in CCP China.

Part II addresses the geopolitical and geostrategic risks of the digital yuan to other nations and Western-style democracies.

GCHQ, the UKs intelligence, security, and cyber agency, according to its website, recently warned of the dangers of CCP Chinas new digital currency, the e-CNY.

In an interview with the Financial Times the week of Dec. 5, Sir Jeremy Fleming, the GCHQ chief said e-CNY gives them the ability  to be able to exercise control over what is conducted on those digital currencies and to surveil transactions.

Surveillance and Control

In a July white paper from a Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) working group tasked to evaluate progress on the e-CNY, the authors talk about managed anonymity, an Orwellian phrase that they say follows the principle of anonymity for small value and traceable for high value. Then adds, it is necessary to guard against the misuse of e-CNY in illegal and criminal activities, such as tele-fraud, internet gambling, money laundering, and tax evasion. But PBOC has told the foreign Deutsche Banks that transactions between payers and payees can be anonymous.

The PBOC will treat the e-CNY as what economists call M0 (M-zero), the measure of coin currency, physical paper, and central bank reserves. This is important because, as M0, it will effectively be the equivalent of cash in your pocket or purse. e-CNY will only be able to earn interest if it is deposited in one of CCP Chinas state-owned banks.

Given the costs of printing, distributing, and protecting physical cash, one could safely assume that physical currency will ultimately disappear from CCP China, and PBOC cites those costs as a principal reason for adopting e-CNY.

That all seems relatively benign, but one would be naive to not question e-CNY given the CCPs unrelenting efforts to surveil, control, and limit the freedoms and human rights of the people in China.

The irony of the PBOC advancing a Central Bank Digital Currency (or CBDC) is that CCP China already has a number of private (or as private as one can be under the jackboot of the CCP) fintech payment platforms like Alipay and WeChatPay.

So why is CCP China being a pathfinder on CBDC, fintech that a number of countries are pursuing? While, incidentally, prohibiting private cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Etherium, etc.

In a word, control.

In China, people will undoubtedly have their social credit scores linked to their spending. The CCP will be able to collect fines and penalties without due process; theyll simply debit offenders e-CNY accounts by accessing their wallets. (A wallet is ones private key code to access cryptos, but one can readily surmise that e-CNY wallets, which will be tied to CCP China-owned banks, wont be private, despite PBOC assurances to the contrary.)

The e-CNY will also cow companies into submission. While the PBOC says it will guard against the misuse of e-CNY in illegal and criminal activities, make no mistake: if your business or the leadership of your businessor perhaps, an employee of your businessoffends the CCP, be assured: your business will be denied access to revenues and will be blocked from being able to obtain e-CNY. If e-CNY becomes the predominant currency in CCP China, that means you are out of business unless you can survive in a barter economy.

As with Huawei, e-CNY will give the CCP greater ability to surveil, control, and, when beneficial, silence the Laobaixing or old 100 names; the common people of China who suffer under the Partys obsessive denial of the personal freedoms that people who live in Western-style democracies take for granted.

Our Chinese friends who live under the thumb of the CCP should resist e-CNY by all available means: barter, scrip, or personal credit ledgers at the town or neighborhood level. While doing so will ultimately be hopeless, widespread resistance to e-CNY will help build opposition to the CCP and their fetish to know everything about everyone.

Advocates of freedom and free people around the world would applaud. And it might even make the CCP re-think its obsession.

See Part II.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Time to Fire the Decepticons and Get Over COVID

Commentary

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics, first formulated in 1927, states that the product of the uncertainties in position and velocity is equal to or greater than a tiny physical quantity, or constant (h/(4), where h is Plancks constant, or about 6.6  1034 joule-second.

Or, to put it in more popular terms, the act of observation changes the nature of the thing being observed.

Does it ever. Here we are, coming up on the second anniversary of two weeks to slow the spread of a flu-like virus most likely hatched in a Chinese communist laboratory in Wuhan, with a little help from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the American taxpayer, and the dreaded COVID-19 chest cold has conquered the planet, instilling fear and loathing in weak minds whenever and wherever it appears in any of its Transformers-like, constantly mutating configurations.

In the Transformers film series, ordinary household machines such as cars can suddenly reshape themselves into terrifying robots; the evil ones were known as Decepticons and had scary names like Megatron and Bonecrusher. In the world of socialized medicine, this viral beast has been dubbed by the government the Omicron variant (what a title for a Robert Ludlum thriller), which, of course, has arrived right on schedule to attack the Christmas and New Years celebrations around the world.

The irony is, had the novel coronavirus been treated the same way as its immediate predecessors, including SARS, the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, and the Hong Kong flu of 1968, no one would be talking about it, there would have been no lockdowns, no masks, no ruination of the economy, no destruction of the travel industry, no stealth takeover of private medicine and, most importantly, no unconstitutional loss of personal liberty.

But the very act of neurotically obsessing over it has triggered and weaponized the critter and, a la Heisenberg, transformed it from a bug that preyed on old people into the Thing That Devoured the Planet.

Ever since the politically conveniently timed appearance of the CCP virus early in 2020, Fauci and his coevals at various government health agencies have whipsawed the American public with their erratic, contradictory, and wholly unscientific pronouncements, all in the interest of aggrandizing more power.

These Decepticons managed to take down the gullible Trump administration and institutionalize their priorities for controlling the population by nullifying the Bill of Rights, helping to install Joe Biden, and giving a big fat Christmas present to the pharmaceutical companieswhich have profited handsomely from the pandemic.

Consider the current headlines: Omicron grips nation; confirmed in 44 states, U.S. fears million cases a day, Masks on planes forever. At the same time, ponder this: 40 percent have no symptoms at all. Put the two together and you can see the Decepticons staring you in the faceand laughing.

A disease that is in many cases strikingly asymptomatic, whose lethality (such as it is and depending on whos counting and how) is counted by cases (a meaningless statistic), and whose survival rate has always been near 99 percent for the vast majority of the worlds population, doesnt seem like much of a threat in the cosmic scheme of things.

Nor does a vaccine that not only doesnt prevent you from getting the bug but permits breakthrough infections and also has significant side effects seem like much of a vaccine.

But from the beginning, the Democrat-Media Complex has gone all-in on apocalyptic hysteria as governments around the globe have vowed to defeat the virus, and somelike the newly formed police states of Australia and New Zealandare even articulating an impossible zero COVID policy.

All of which is just fine with Fauci, the nations highest-paid ($434,312 per year) bureaucrat, and one of its longest-serving. Yes, the man who told heterosexuals that they, too, were going to be stricken by AIDS back in the early 80s is still collecting a government check, despite his record of proven scare-mongering, and his troubling fascination with gain of function virology.

As it happens, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has addressed these issues and more in a new book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, a no-holds-barred, full-frontal attack on Fauci & Co. Its a bracing read:

Suddenly, trusted institutions seemed to be acting in concert to generate fear, promote obedience, discourage critical thinking, and herd seven billion people to march to a single tune, culminating in mass public health experiments with a novel, shoddily tested, and improperly licensed technology so risky that manufacturers refused to produce it unless every government on Earth shielded them from liability.

Across Western nations, shell-shocked citizens experienced all the well-worn tactics of rising totalitarianismmass propaganda and censorship, the orchestrated promotion of terror, the manipulation of science, the suppression of debate, the vilification of dissent, and use of force to prevent protest. Conscientious objectors who resisted these unwanted, experimental, zero-liability medical interventions faced orchestrated gaslighting, marginalization, and scapegoating.

As the trusted public face of the United States government response to COVID, Dr. Anthony Fauci set this perilous course and sold the American public on a new destination for our democracy.

Now thats deception, and on an industrial scale. You dont have to sport a tinfoil hat to understand that something is horribly wrong here, that the personal sacrifices weve been called on to make have no bearing on the course of COVID, and, worst of all, the Megatrons and Bonecrushers who are doing this to us are sadistically enjoying it.

Across the nation and around the world, people are fighting backbut is it too late? So far, marches and demonstrations have been met with riot police, roundups, and concentration camps. But as they say about socialism, you can vote your way in, but you have to shoot your way out.

Sensing danger, parts of officialdom are now muttering about learning to live with COVID, which is what they should have been doing all along.

Enough is enough. After two years of poisonous squid ink regarding the origins of the disease and its dangers, its time to put away the electron microscope, back away from the Petri dish, and just ignore Omicronwhich, like a typical virus nearing the end of its life, has increased in transmissibility and decreased in virulence. Heisenberg will do the rest.

Then fire Fauci and his team of Decepticons and go back to first principles: get it, get over it, get on with it. Theyll come up with a new set of Transformers soon enough.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Nov. 22, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Trudeau Calls China a Significant Challenge, but China Policy Unclear

Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus mandate letters to his ministers dont specify much on China, making it unclear whether the Liberal government has a China policy.

In his letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, China is not mentioned by name, but a number of directives could relate to China.

Trudeau asks Joly to develop and launch a comprehensive Indo-Pacific strategy to deepen diplomatic, economic and defence partnerships and international assistance in the region, but the fundamental objective is not stated.

A push to condemn and eradicate arbitrary detentions could apply to any country, but is likely motivated by the case of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig who were detained in China for over 1,000 days in apparent retaliation for Canadas arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou at the request of the United States.

Another section of the letter that could be related to China is a directive to work with partners against economic coercion, cyber threats, foreign interference in democratic processes and egregious violations of human rights.

The letters to the ministers of public safety and defence also do not mention China.

Meanwhile, in a year-end interview with CTVs Evan Solomon on Dec. 19, Trudeau said China is a significant challenge, but evaded answering whether he considers Beijing regime a threat.

Many Challenges Out There

In the interview, Solomon asked Trudeau whether China is the biggest threat to Canada, given recent remarks by the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Cohen that China is the biggest threat for his country.

Trudeau said that although China is considered a significant challenge, there are other challenges that fall into the same category, including the rise of authoritarian states.

So are cyber attacks, so is Russia in the Ukraine. There are many, many international challenges to democracies like Canada, to our open trading system in the world that is affected by the supply chain challenges. There are many, many challenges out there. Chinas certainly one of them, he said.

Trudeau was also asked if he believes the persecution of Uyghurs in Chinas Xinjiang Province constitutes a genocide, as expressed by the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Canadian Parliament. During Parliaments vote on the issue earlier this year, Trudeau and his cabinet abstained from voting, although other Liberal MPs voted to recognize the persecution as a genocide.

Trudeau said he believes there needs to be a full investigation into it and I believe there are human rights violations that need to be exposed and accounted for.

When Solomon remarked China would not allow an investigation, Trudeau said the word genocide is such a significantly loaded word. We know there needs to be a proper investigation into these allegations of genocide. Thats something that China needs to accept and were going to continue to increase pressure on them until they do.

Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, criticized Trudeaus avoidance of acknowledging a genocide, saying his stance does not hold any water.

Tohti says theres already of substantial body of witness accounts, official documents, and expert opinions on the issue.

Not to call the atrocities committed by the Chinese government as a genocide is another way to skip on their responsibilities, and also it can be interpreted as to disrespect the will of the Canadian Parliament, Tohti told The Epoch Times.

He adds that China will not let observers and journalists visit the crime scene.

Trudeau told Solomon that given Chinas growth and impact in the world, Canada will continue to do business with Beijing while at the same time challenging and contesting China on human rights and on its behaviours.

Special China Committee

Another China-related issue that disappointed Tohti is the news that the Conservative Party has decided not to launch a bid to revive the House of Commons Special Committee on Canada-China Relations, which dissolved when the election was called.

The previous committee, formed two years ago after the Bloc and NDP supported a Conservative motion, gave its members the opportunity to tackle in-depth a range of China-related issues.

Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong told the Globe and Mail on Dec. 20 that the reason is not a change in his partys stance on China, but rather due to a resources issue in the House of Commons.

Chong said a new science and research committee was created since the election and the Conservatives also want to examine Canadas withdrawal from Afghanistan through another committee it recently spurred. He also said the China issue would be addressed in the foreign affairs committee.

Kneecapping the Committee on China in Canadas Parliament ranks as one of Beijings most successful influence operations anywhere, tweeted former Canadian ambassador to China David Mulroney in reaction to the news.

It guarantees that well see more weaponization of diaspora politics, which effectively mutes, immobilizes MPs.

There could be another reason behind the Conservatives decision not to pursue recreating the committeeinterference by Beijing during the election campaign, possibly causing losses. The partys foreign policy platform included extensive commitments on addressing a number of China-related issues.

A report by DisinfoWatch released in early December said there was a likely coordinated influence operation targeting Chinese-Canadian voters during the last election.

The objective of this false narrative was to incite fear and anger towards the candidate and the Conservative Party in targeted communities. The ultimate impact of these and other influence operations targeting the Conservatives is difficult to measure, though voter influence and conversion remains the likely goal, the report said.

Tohti says hes disturbed and disappointed by the Conservative move to not pursue a new committee, saying it sends the message to other parties that there are political consequences for taking a strong stance against China.

Basically its saying watch your steps when you criticize China, otherwise theres a cost in the election.

Chong insists his partys stance on China remains unchanged, despite not supporting the revival of the Canada-China special committee.

We believe the Beijings communist leadership presents a threat to Canadas national interest & national security, he said on Twitter, reacting to the Globe article.

Iterating some of his partys previously announced China policy items, Chong said Conservatives are still committed to decoupling critical parts of the supply chain from China, banning products from Xinjiang made with Uyghur forced labour, banning Huawei from the 5G network, combatting Beijings intimidation operations in Canada, among other things.

Conservatives believe that this countrys national security and national interest are too important for us not to stay to the course, he said.

Chong also alluded to the issue of Conservatives losing some votes in Chinese-Canadian communities, saying foreign misinformation is to blame.

We lost several seats with Chinese diaspora last election  BUT not because of our policy on China. We lost because domestic & foreign actors spread disinformation and because we didnt do a good job countering in Chinese-language media, i.e., social media platforms like WeChat.
New York Attorney General Letitia James presents the findings of an independent investigation into accusations by multiple women that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed them in New York City on Aug. 3, 2021. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

Trump Sues New Yorks Attorney General, Accusing Her of Political Animus

Former President Donald Trump on Dec. 20 sued New York Attorney General Letitia James, accusing her of targeting him with politically motivated prosecutions.

The lawsuit (pdf), filed in federal court for the northern district of New York, seeks an order for James to cease or limit her offices investigations into Trump.

For years, she has flagrantly abused her investigatory powers to target her political adversaries and advance her career, the complaint states. Her relentless attacks on Donald J. Trump serve as a prime example. Since taking office, she has tirelessly bombarded him, his family, and his business, Trump Organization LLC, with unwarranted subpoenas in a bitter crusade to take on the President.

The attorney generals office responded to the lawsuit saying that Trump was using it to attack and delay the offices inquiries into the business dealings of the Trump Organization.

To be clear, neither Mr. Trump nor the Trump Organization get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions, James said in a statement. Our investigation will continue undeterred because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump.

In a separate statement issued on Monday, Trump said his lawsuit is not about delay and that James investigation is just a continuation of the political Witch Hunt that has gone on against me by the Radical Left Democrats for years.

Trumps lawsuit details a list of instances in which James expressed bias and animus against Trump, commencing with comments she made not long after his inauguration in 2017. The cited statements include James proclamation that we are all being killed by this (Trump) administration.

Ten months into Trumps term, James said, Ive been leading the resistance against Donald Trump in NYC and will only continue to do so in every way possible, the lawsuit points out.

The New York attorney general is investigating four Trump properties in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Trump has previously filed a similar challenge against New York City District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who is conducting a separate investigation into Trumps business. That challenge percolated all the way to the Supreme Court, which rejected Trumps application in February this year.
A hospitality worker wearing a Santa-themed Christmas jumper works around empty tables outside a restaurant in London on Dec. 21, 2021. (Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)

UK Government Announces 1 Billion New Grant as Hospitality Businesses Suffer From Cancellations

A 1 billion ($1.32 billion) taxpayer-funded package has been announced in England on Tuesday to support businesses affected by the spread of the CCP virus and the government policy to curb the spread of the virus, which causes COVID-19.

With the uncertainty around the Omicron variant looming, hospitality businesses have taken another hit in the most crucial month of the year as people canceled their Christmas plans.

Industry representative UKHospitality reported on Monday that over half of the venues lost more than 40 percent in revenue last weekend, with one in five businesses reporting a sales drop of more than 60 percent.

After days of urgent lobbying from MPs, firms, and industry officials, the Treasury said on Tuesday that hospitality and leisure businesses will be eligible for one-off grants of up to 6,000 ($7,950) per premises, with an additional 100 million ($132 million) discretionary funding through the Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) for local authorities to support other businesses.

The Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme will also be reintroduced from Tuesday, covering the cost of Statutory Sick Pay for CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus-related absences for up to 2 weeks per employee for businesses with less than 250 employees.

Another 30 million (approx. $40 million) will go to the Culture Recovery Fund to support cultural organisations in England during the winter

After the Omicron CCP virus was discovered in the UK, the government has reinstated mask mandates in most indoor settings and introduced the NHS COVID Pass as a condition of entry to nightclubs and large events in England.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed on Tuesday that no more restrictions will be imposed before Christmas due to the continuing uncertainty about the severity of Omicron, the hospitalisation rate, or the impact of the vaccine rollout or the boosters.

We dont think today that there is enough evidence to justify any tougher measures before Christmas, Johnson said. But the prime minister also said he cant rule out any further measures after Christmas.

According to the UK governments CCP virus dashboard, the number of cases surged to a record high a week ago, but appears to have plateaued.

The number of people in hospital with the CCP virus fluctuated slightly upward, while the number of patients in mechanical ventilation beds decreased slightly.

The number of people who died with COVID-19 on their death certificate also remained low compared to the previous waves.

Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia (UEA), also said the previous rapid increase in cases appears to be slowing and, if that is true, there is no need for a lockdown, which would only flatten the peak but will also prolong the epidemic, ultimately making no difference unless there will be effective new treatments or vaccines.

Current figures from South Africa also suggested that the wave of Omicron cases has been high but narrow, and the number of deaths remained a fraction of those seen in the previous waves.
Passengers, some wearing face coverings to combat the spread of the coronavirus, sit on the top deck of a red double-decker London bus travelling beneath the Christmas lights in central London on Dec. 21, 2021. (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

UK Government Officials Face Police Investigation Over COVID Vaccines

Dr. Sam White and members of his legal team visited Charing Cross and Hammersmith Police Stations in London on Monday, December 20, in their latest efforts to expose what they claim are serious safety issues regarding the COVID vaccines. They are also accusing UK government agencies of knowingly withholding information from the British public.

PJH Law presented a criminal complaint containing significant and irrefutable evidence, which was accepted by the Metropolitan Police. As a result, a crime reference number has been issued for Misconduct in Public Office, and a designated officer and police department has been allocated to deal with it.

The lawyers acting on behalf of Dr White stated: Of paramount importance and as a matter of public safety, we as a collective have demanded the vaccine rollout is stopped immediately and we suggested an address to the nation is made by the Metropolitan Police to advise accordingly.

They added: A number of government departments and in particular individuals in public office and government have been named as offenders and we have supporting evidence.

Their interview with the police lasted six hours and was recorded, but this is not being released to avoid prejudicing what is now a live criminal investigation.

White stressed to the police that UK Doctors, nurses, and care workers are also being blackmailed to take the vaccine or lose their jobs.

The deadline the government has set for healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated is April 1, 2022. This date is better known as April Fools Day, when practical jokes are traditionally played, but White and his colleagues say there is nothing funny about forcing people to take a not fully tested vaccine or lose their jobs.
UN Secretary-General Betrays Human Rights by Attending Beijing Olympics

Commentary

China is the worlds most vicious tyranny. But for all its wrongdoing, the country faces virtually no accountability. To the contrary, China is treated as a respected member of the international community, even granted the honor of hosting the Winter Olympics, which start on Feb. 4, 2022.

How can this be? One would think nations that claim the mantle of human rights champions would protest the ongoing atrocities in China by refusing to participate in the Winter Games. Yes, it would thwart the dreams of athletes. But that would be the International Olympic Committees (IOC) fault for selecting China as host, not wrongdoing by a righteously disgusted world community.

And what an excellent example of soft power a boycott would provide. Refusing to attend the Olympics would be a bloodlessbut sharp and salutary messagethat the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) brutal ways are beyond the pale.

But no. The international community cant even manage that symbolic protest. The best the United States could do was declare a diplomatic boycottwhich merely means that we wont be sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Beijing to cheer on our athletes. I am sure the CCPs Politburo is shedding bitter tears.

The United Kingdom and Australia followed Americas limp lead. But even that weak tea is too strong for the EU, whichwhile threatening to punish Poland, Hungary, and Romania for refusing to recognize same-sex marriagebarely wrings its collective hands about the bloody tyrannical policies China inflicts on its religious and ethnic minorities. They wouldnt want to offend their trade overlords, dont you know.

Most infuriatingly, Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nationswho continually lectures the world on the need for following international human rights normshappily accepted the IOCs invitation to attend the Beijing Games.

Make no mistake: The head of the United Nations attending the Olympics validates China. Yet, this is the same man who bitterly criticized temporary travel restrictions from Africa announced by several countries to prevent the spread of the Omicron COVID variant. Good grief, how misplaced can his priorities get?

Such cowardice extracts a terrible toll against human rights and the rule of law. Consider the depth of evil engaged in by China that dont even rate a symbolic stay-at-home from Guterres and the leaders of most of the 90 countries participating in the Winter Games:

The genocide of Uyghur Muslims, which involves the mass imprisonment of innocent people in reeducation camps, forced sterilization of their women, involuntary abortion, removal of children from homes into indoctrination schools, involuntary dispersion of Uyghurs around the country as chattel slaves, and other mass means of forced labor.

The horrific pogrom against Falun Gong and Uyghur political prisoners, who are blood sampled and tissue typed upon imprisonment so they can be exploited like so many organ farms in Chinas thriving market in vital organs.

The suppression and persecution of Christians, whose only crime is to worship the Lord instead of the State. Under the countrys Sinicize religion policy, houses of worship are required to uphold CCP dictates, including keeping children from any exposure to religion. As reported by Nina Shea of the Hudson Institutes Center for Religious Freedom, pastors are required to preach from the values promoted by the CCP instead of the faith, parishioners are scanned with facial recognition programs, churches are being blown up. Leaders who dont comply with government diktats may be imprisoned indefinitely in black jailsisolated, uncharged, and denied due process of law. The Bible is even being rewritten and edited to reflect the values promoted by the State.

The dystopian social credit system, in which facial recognition technologies, artificial intelligence, GPS, and other means of high-tech surveillance track individual behaviors and social associations, and punish those who are deemed at variance with Chinese values with loss of jobs and other means of social ex-communication. A new smartphone app is being introduced to encourage the Chinese people to report on each others mistaken opinions about the countrys socialist system.

The illegal occupation of Tibet for decades and the regimes active cultural genocide against Buddhism thereincluding, it was just reported, forcing Tibetan children out of their own homes into boarding schools where they are indoctrinated in communist ideology.

Acts of aggression including the destruction of democracy in Hong Kong, in violation of treaty commitments; the threats of war with Taiwan; the thievery of intellectual property around the world; the construction of illegal artificial islands in the South China Sea to expand the regimes military reach. It also acts as a thuggish loan shark in destitute countries, allowing Chinese businesses to take over ports and other infrastructure when loans cant be repaid.

The plan, in the face of the U.N.s insistence that the world unite to combat climate change, for China to increase its coal generation of electricity by 9 percent this year. Talk about a poke in the international communitys eye!

And let us not forget the COVID-19 catastrophe that has killed more than 5 million people around the world and cost trillions of dollars. There is no question that the plague began in China, but in violation of every public health ethical standard, the countrys leaders refuse to allow a true investigation into the plagues causes or how it became pandemic.

Considering these sundry injustices and crimes against humanityand more that could be listedat what point does conducting business as usual with the tyranny become complicity in its actions? Granting China the respectability of hosting the Olympicsand most particularly, the attendance by the U.N. secretary-general and diplomats from most countriessurely crosses that line. What a travesty.

Worse, the international communitys moral abdication is dangerous. Our impotence will embolden Chinas leaders into contemplating even greater violations of international norms in the years to come. If we maintain the same feckless approach, China may soon become uncontainable.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
University of California Fires Director of Ethics Program for Defying COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

Professor sued the university in August, arguing natural immunity should be an allowed exception

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, the longtime professor of psychiatry at the University of CaliforniaIrvine (UCI) School of Medicine who sued the university over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate because it made no exceptions for natural immunity, has been fired by the institution for refusing the vaccine.

In a blog post titled Farewell, University of California, Kheriaty said he received notice of what he called his arbitrary and capricious firing on Dec. 16, 2021. It was effective the same day. The termination ends his UCI medical teaching career and his longtime role as director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health.

Kheriaty said he worked unpaid nights helping the UCI presidents office draft triage guidelines for scarce resources and vaccines during the pandemic. When N-95 masks were so scarce that hospitals kept them under lock and key, Kheriaty said he found a supply at a local construction company and provided them to doctors and nurses.

Everyone at the university seemed to be a fan of my work, until suddenly they were not, Kheriaty wrote. Once I challenged one of their policies, I immediately became a threat to the health and safety of the community. No amount of empirical evidence about natural immunity or vaccine safety and efficacy mattered at all.

The Universitys leadership was not interested in scientific debate or ethical deliberation. When I was placed on unpaid suspension, I was not permitted to use my paid time offthat is to say, I was ordered to stay off campus because I was not vaccinated, but I also could not take vacation at home because  I was not vaccinated.

Kheriaty said the university tried to prevent him from doing any professional work while he was on unpaid suspension, in an effort to pressure him to resign from a job hed held for 15 years. He said he wasnt allowed on campus except to move out of his office. Kheriaty was also restricted from making money off-campus. It was dizzying and, at times, surreal, he wrote.

The firing decision, he said, wasnt made by the psychiatry department but by the UCI presidents office. Asked by The Epoch Times for more information about Kheriatys firing, UCI spokesman Tom Vasich wrote, UCI does not comment on personnel issues. Kheriaty was on unpaid suspension after initially being placed on investigatory leave.

Now its officially over, Kheriaty wrote on his blog. I do not regret my time at the university. Indeed, I will miss my colleagues, the residents, and the medical students. I will miss teaching and supervising and doing ethics consults on some of the most challenging cases in the hospital.

Kheriaty sued the University of California Board of Regents in federal court on Aug. 18, 2021, alleging the universitys vaccine mandate violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In July 2020, Kheriaty contracted COVID-19, so he now has natural immunity, which he argues is likely superior to protection from a vaccine. His lawsuit is working its way through U.S. District Court.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty (left) in a family portrait posted on his Human Flourishing blog. (Aaron Kheriaty/Substack)

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California refused Kheriatys motion for a preliminary injunction against the vaccine mandate. In his lawsuit, he highlighted the failure of vaccine mandates to account for the likely superior immunity possessed by COVID-19 survivors. His faculty colleagues at the University of California filed a 187-page declaration supporting the efficacy of natural immunity.

As a COVID-19 survivor, Kheriaty said, his immunity to the disease is between 95 and 99 percent effective. There isnt one case on record of someone who recovered from COVID-19 and then was reinfected and transmitted the virus to someone else, he said in October 2021. This sterilizing immunity is an advantage the human immune system has over any COVID-19 vaccine, he argued, noting the declining efficacy of the mRNA vaccines over time.

Reflecting on the pandemic, Kheriaty recalled how pregnant medical residents were concerned about doing consults on COVID-19 patients. The administration reassured these residents that they had no elevated risks from COVIDa claim without any evidential basis at the time, and which we now know to be false. I saw the COVID consults for these worried residents, even when I was not covering the consult service.

He said he worked every day during the pandemic, seeing regular patients and COVID patients in the emergency room, the clinic, psychiatric wards, and hospital wards.

As our chief ethics consultant, I had countless conversations with families of patients dying of COVID, and tried my best to console and guide them in their grief, he wrote.

Video: PART 1Suspended Medical Ethics Professor Aaron Kheriaty on Vaccine Coercion, Risks, and Natural ImmunityEpochTV

Video: PART 2Dr. Aaron Kheriaty on Biosecurity Surveillance, Perverse Vaccine Incentives, and Testing COVID-19 Vaccines on ChildrenEpochTV
A student wears a face mask on the campus of the UCLA college in Westwood, California on March 6, 2020. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)

University of California Mandates Boosters; May Go Remote in January

LOS ANGELESEligible students and staff at University of California (UC) campuses will be required to obtain COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, the systems president said Dec. 21, while indicating some campuses could temporarily shift to remote courses in January.

UCIrvine will revert to remote classes for the first two weeks of the winter term in January, the school chancellor announced Tuesday, and other University of California campuses such as UCLos Angeles could do the same in response to surging COVID-19 cases.

In a letter sent to chancellors at the 10 UC schools statewide, Dr. Michael Drake called for each campus to develop a plan for a January return to campus that mitigates public health impacts, including remote instruction.

Responding to that call, UCIrvine Chancellor Howard Gillman announced that all classes will be held remotely from Jan. 3 through Jan. 13.

He said that while classes will be held remotely, the campus will remain fully operational, with the same staffing policies we have followed for the past few months.

UCRiverside and UCSan Diego also announced temporary shifts to remote learning for January. There was no immediate word from UCLos Angeles.

UC President Drake also wrote that campuses should not be holding any large gatherings.

Large, congregant events, particularly indoors, should be avoided in the opening weeks of your winter quarter or spring semester.
Shipping containers are stacked after being offloaded from a boat in Miami, Florida on Nov. 4, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

US Current Account Deficit Spikes to Highest Level In 15 Years on Import Surge

The current account deficit, which essentially reflects U.S. expenditure exceeding income, rose sharply in the third quarter to its highest level in 15 years, driven by a reduced surplus in services and a surge in goods imports as businesses rushed to build up inventories in the face of strong demand.

The Commerce Department said in a Dec. 21 release that the U.S. current-account deficit grew by $16.5 billion, or 8.3 percent, in the third quarter to $214.8 billion. Thats the highest level in 15 years, when it hit $218.4 billion in the third quarter of 2006.

The $16.5 billion widening of the current-account deficit in the third quarter reflected a reduced surplus on services and expanded deficits on secondary income and on goods that were partly offset by an expanded surplus on primary income, the Commerce Department said.

The extent of the shortfall was an upside surprise, with consensus forecasts expecting a gap of $205 billion.

Many economists argue that a current account deficit is not inherently good or badfor instance, it could be related to timing, with temporarily higher imports within a given period later offset by higher exports at a later date.

A good deficit supports smooth transitionsfor instance, from building productive capacity while accumulating external debt to subsequently accumulating assets, and then drawing them down as the population ages, the World Bank said in a 2018 policy brief.

But economists also generally agree that a current account deficit is bad and can lead to harmful impacts when it becomes unsustainable.

Although a current account deficit in itself is neither good nor bad, it is likely to be unsustainable and lead to harmful consequences when it is persistently large, fuels consumption rather than investment, occurs alongside excessive domestic credit growth, follows an overvalued exchange rate, or accompanies unrestrained fiscal deficits, according to the World Bank.

While the United States is to some extent insulated to some of the harmful impacts of a current account deficit as the U.S. dollar is the worlds reserve currency and the country is seen as an attractive place to invest, excessive reliance on large inflows of money from abroad can be problematic.

The Q3 U.S. current account deficit unexpectedly surged to $214.8 billion, a 15-year high, economist Peter Schiff said in a tweet. The extremely weak U.S. economy now depends more than ever on stronger economies abroad. The current account deficit will explode to record highs in 2022 as our debt service costs soar, Schiff predicted.

Sebastian Edwards, a research associate at the University of California, wrote in a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) on the U.S. current-account deficit when it surged in 2006, that its sustainability depends on whether foreign investors will continue to add U.S. assets, like government securities, to their investment portfolios.

Even if the United States has special status in the global economy and is a very attractive place to park ones money, foreign investors are unlikely to keep propping up U.S. trade and budget imbalances and spending sprees indefinitely, NBER wrote in a review of Edwards paper.

If investors sour on U.S. Treasurys, for instance, this could drive up yields and cause borrowing costs to balloon. A U.S. current account deficit reckoning would, according to Edwards, lead to a painful adjustment that would sap economic growth.
The logo for Google LLC is seen at their office in Manhattan, New York City, N.Y., on Nov. 17, 2021. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

US Recommends Approving Google, Meta Undersea Data Cable to Asia

WASHINGTONThe Biden administration on Friday recommended Alphabets Google and Facebook parent Meta get permission to use an undersea cable system to handle growing internet traffic with Asia.

The administration urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to grant licenses for the companies to send and receive data on the existing 8,000-mile Pacific Light Cable Network. The undersea fiber-optic cable system connects the United States, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong.

Undersea cables transmit nearly all the worlds internet data traffic. Meta sought permission to use the Phillipines-to-United States portion, while Google has asked for permission to connect to Taiwan.

The companies committed to protecting the privacy and security of Americans data, particularly against Chinas intelligence operations.

The plan by Google and Meta abandoned a previous proposal to use the networks cable to Hong Kong, which is controlled by Beijing. Multiple U.S. government agencies recommended blocking that plan in 2020.

The Justice Department said the national security agreements with Google and Meta were needed given Chinas sustained efforts to acquire the sensitive personal data of millions of U.S. persons.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington and Google did not immediately comment.

Google said in 2020 it needed the data connections to handle growing traffic between its data centers in Taiwan and the United States.

A Meta spokesperson said the cable system increases internet capacity between the United States and Philippines to help people stay connected and share content. The cables are secure and data is protected through advanced encryption, it said.

Under the agreements, Google and Meta must conduct annual assessments of risk to sensitive data, and they have to be able to restrict or stop data traffic on the cables within 24 hours.

Around 300 subsea cables form the backbone of the internet, carrying 99 percent of the worlds data traffic.

By David Shepardson
Attendees from various forces march next to a banner supporting the new national security law at the end of a flag-raising ceremony to mark the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from Britain in Hong Kong on July 1, 2020. (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)

US Warns Banks as It Sanctions More Chinese Officials Stifling Hong Kongs Democracy

Washington named five already-sanctioned Chinese officials for reducing Hong Kongs autonomy in a report and warned that foreign financial institutions doing business with them would be punished too.

The Dec. 20 report identified the five as Chen Dong, He Jing, Lu Xinning, Tan Tienui, and Yin Zonghua, all deputy directors at Chinas Hong Kong liaison office. The mainland agency is set to orchestrate Beijings policies in the former British colony.

The five individuals previously blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury Department are materially contributing to, have materially contributed to, or attempt to materially contribute to the failure of the PRC to meet its obligations under the Joint Declaration or the Basic Law, the report reads.

The naming brought to 39 the number of officials that meet the criteria under the U.S. Hong Kong Autonomy Act (HKAA), which former President Donald Trump signed into law in July last year, two weeks after Beijing imposed a national security law over the city.

Foreign financial institutions that knowingly conduct significant transactions with the individuals listed in todays report are subject to sanctions, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said on Dec. 20.

Financial institutions found in violation of the act could be subject to so-called secondary sanctions, including restrictions on U.S. loans, foreign exchange, property transactions, exports, and transfers, in addition to measures against executives.

Under the terms of the act, the Treasury is required to identify any such institution between 30 and 60 days of the submission of the report to Congress.

The United States has thus far not sanctioned any foreign financial institution for doing business with those on the list.

The latest six-monthly report to Congress, which is required under the HKAA, is an update to the October 2020 and March 2021 reports.

The State Department said on the same day it was deeply concerned about Beijings clear efforts to stifle Hong Kongs democratic voices amid Dec. 19 legislative elections, in which only patriots can run and voters choices are restricted under Beijing-amended election laws, according to a press statement.

The five individuals named this week were among seven Chinese officials sanctioned in July over Chinas crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Apple Pay is demonstrated at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., on Oct. 16, 2014. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo)

USPS Begins Accepting Apple Pay for Online Payments

The U.S. Postal Service has begun to accept Apple Inc. Apple Pay on its website for certain services.

What Happened

The same is not yet possible over-the-counter. In the frequently-asked-questions section of its website, USPS lists Apple Pay as an accepted form of payment for The Postal Store, P.O. Box Online, Every Door Direct Mail, Click-N-Ship, and USPS Tracking Plus, Pickup On Demand among others.

Apple Pay can be used by iPhone, iPad, and Mac users if they are using Safari Desktop (v10 or higher) or iOS Safari, according to the USPS website.

Why It Matters

The acceptance of Apple Pay transactions at post offices would require an infrastructure upgrade at 34,000 U.S. locations, reported Apple Insider.

USPS rival FedEx Corporation supports Apple Pay in stores, according to a report from Appleosophy, but another rival United Parcel Service, Inc. does not accept it online or in stores.

The Tim Cook-led Apple is on the cusp of becoming the first-ever $3 trillion company as shares have soared recently.

By Shivdeep Dhaliwal

 2021 The Epoch Times. The Epoch Times does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Washington Mayor Declares State of Emergency, Reinstates Mask Mandate

Washingtons mayor has declared a state of emergency over COVID-19.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, on Monday also reinstated an indoor mask mandate and announced a stricter COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city workers.

Bowser said she imposed the restrictions because of the emergence of the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

The CCP virus causes COVID-19.

Omicron is now the dominant variant of the virus in the United States. Early data indicates its more transmissible than earlier strains but causes a lower percentage of severe cases.

I think were all tired of it. Im tired of it too. But we have to respond to whats happening in our city and whats happening in our nation, Bowser told reporters during a press conference.

COVID-19 cases have been rising in the district in recent weeks. The 7-day case rate was 300 per 100,000 population, up from 83 the month prior. Cases among vaccinated persons have increased recently, though cases among the unvaccinated have increased much more.

Our case rates for the unvaccinated are about seven times higher than the case rate for fully vaccinated, which the definition of fully vaccinated is two doses. So they are still faring much better in terms of rates of infection, and thats something that we continue to monitor. When we also look at hospitalization data, hospitalization rates are five times more likely in the unvaccinated than the vaccinated, so vaccines are still the tool. It is critical if youre age five and over, get vaccinated now, Dr. Anjali Talwalker, an interim senior deputy director at the department, told reporters.

She also encouraged all those who from gotten a vaccine to get a booster; data on Omicron signals the primary vaccination provides little to no protection against infection against the variant.

The hospitalization percentage in the district, on the other hand, has dropped over the past month. Like most areas around the country, the bulk of hospital beds in the nations capital are taken by patients who dont have COVID-19. As of Dec. 16, the last day data are available for, just 129 of the 2,222 patients had the disease.

Bowser said on MSNBC the rising caseload prompted the fresh restrictions.

In the last week or so in the district we`ve seen our case numbers go up substantially in the hundreds of cases per day and that`s a significant number for us, she said.

The state of emergency enables the city government to take certain actions, Bowser said. The mask mandate started at 6 a.m. on Dec. 21 and will be in place until Jan. 31, 2022. The expanded vaccine mandate removes a testing opt-out and forces workers to get a booster shot in addition to a primary regimen.

Washington is also introducing testing and vaccination centers to make it easier for residents to get tested and vaccinated and is adding to the locations where people can pick up at-home tests.

The District of Columbia Health Department ordered over 1 million rapid antigen tests and will be providing them for free at various places. Residents can get up to two kits per day. Enough tests are being distributed to schools for every student and staff member so they can test before returning to school after winter break.
In this file photo, a homeless family stays in a motel after being evicted from their rented house when the father lost his job, in West Sacramento, Calif., on March 5, 2009. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

What is Causing the Mass Exodus from Public Schools to Charters and Homeschools?

News Analysis

In the state of California, more and more parents are looking into alternative forms of learning outside of traditional public schools.

There are currently 1,313 charter schools in California, with a plurality of them being elementary schools. These schools enroll over 650,000, or roughly 1 in 10 public school students statewide.

These schools are public and funded through taxpayer money, but are not subject to the same rules and regulations and statutes of traditional schools. As a result, they receive less public funding than traditional public schools on average.

While charter school enrollment increased 150 percent in the last decade, according to the California Department of Education, the number of charters from the 2017-2018 school year to the 2018-2019 school year increased by only 0.97 percent, indicating a slowdown in the opening of new charters in the state.

The slowdown, coupled with new legislation that would place further restrictions on the opening of new charters in the state, may not bode well for the growth of charters in the state. However, the number of parents hoping to move their children from standard public schools to charters and other alternative schooling continues to rise.

Rebecca Friedrichs, a former public school teacher known for being the plaintiff in the 2016 Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association Supreme Court Case, argued that there are many reasons why so many parents in California have been transitioning their children to charters.

One of these is lack of discipline, which she attributes to state policy that ties the hands of teachers in disciplining unruly students.

A new law, Senate Bill 419, set to come into effect next July, effectively bans teachers and school administrators in the state from suspending unruly students in public and charter elementary and middle schools.

[Teachers] are never informed when these policy changes happen. We just notice somethings different here, said Friedrichs.

Teachers are in crisis and when I talk to teachers, [many tell me] I dont know how much longer I can last. Im going to have to leave. Anyone knows that to run a classroom that 90 percent of the job is keeping the classroom safe. Teachers are leaving, parents are leaving. Many cant put a finger on what happened, but they all know theres a problem. The willfully defiant kids are now emboldened and in charge, she added.

Friedrichs also pointed out that new sex education policies in public schools have also led parents to move their children out and into private, charter or homeschools.

This includes updates to the implementation of Assembly Bill 329, which occasionally covers controversial topics pertaining to sexual health and gender identity in K-12 public institutions.

Parents are quickly learning about sex ed, she said. We have parent groups fighting, but being ignored or bullied by school boards and especially by the California state legislature doing the bidding of the unions.

While charters have been a huge draw for parents that are moving their children out of public schools, homeschooling has also been another popular option.

One such network, APLUS+, enrolls about 71,600 students, which range from providing mostly home school options to independent study schools that cater to struggling students. Another network known as Inspire, which serves over 35,000 students, is scheduled to be audited by the state for potential fraud. Many critics have accused Inspire of not providing adequate insight of families homeschooling and allowing families to purchase non-school related items with money provided by the network.

This issue has drawn the concern of many regarding homeschooling networks. Freidrichs, however, disagrees with those concerns.

I believe parents are the best educators their children have. The teachers unions put down homeschoolers. They are always trying to convince teachers that only experts know best. I find that highly snobbish. Teachers unions do not know better than parents, said Friedrichs.

The unions are always bringing up the argument that kids never socialize. Thats not true. These homeschoolers have networks. Their kids are not being bullied in school or being victims of a school shooting. You can learn so much more in a homeschool environment. The teacher doesnt have to be spread between 30 kids. You learn a lot faster and can learn a lot more. I think homeschooling is an outstanding option, she added.

Christina Laster, who serves as the education chairwoman for Southwest Riverside branch of the NAACP, has strongly advocated for charter school access for black students in California.

While black students are testing at the level of special needs students in public schools, charter schools are raising the achievement gap, said Laster in an interview with The Epoch Times in July. Every single parent that Ive talked to that supports [school] choice stated that if their charter school closes, that they are not sending their kids to district run schools where there is discrimination, bullying, and a lack of education.

According to Freidrichs, the mass exodus from the public school system stems from the teachers unions and government overreach in education.

We need to remove the one corrupt entity, state and national teachers unions, and bring the stakeholders back together again, teachers, parents administrators, and do whats right for the children. We [also] need the government out of our schools. The government doesnt know how to educate children. Honest, good, hardworking teachers and parents educate children, together.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) speaks alongside other Republican Senators during a press conference on rising gas an energy prices at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 27, 2021 in Washington. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Whats Bidens Plan to Stop CCPs Unfair Trade Practices? Sen. Scott Asks US Trade Chief

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Dec. 21 sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tsai demanding answers about how the Biden administration plans to respond to Beijings chronic violation of the terms of its World Trade Organization (WTO) membership and failure to comply with the phase one U.S.-China trade agreement.

Coming just days after the 20th anniversary of Chinas admission to the WTO, the letter calls attention to a range of abusive and illegal practices on the part of Beijing, from intellectual property theft to causing the loss of millions of U.S. jobs and failing to follow through on a target purchase of $378 billion worth of U.S. goods as agreed under phase one trade deal signed in January 2020.

The letter also references the ongoing use of slave labor and the broader issue of Beijings treatment of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang.

Earlier this year, I was pleased to support your nomination as U.S. Trade Representative, and have been encouraged by your tone on how the United States must address the challenges posed by Communist China, Scott writes in his letter to Rep. Tsai.

Unfortunately, as Communist China celebrates the 20-year anniversary of its admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and President Biden concludes his first year in office, I remain gravely concerned that he, and this administration more broadly, has yet to commit to a strong and consistent strategy to combat Communist Chinas unfair trade practices which harm American families and businesses of all sizes.

In Scotts view, it is clear with 20 years hindsight that the much-touted admission of China to the WTO has ushered in a spate of negative consequences for American companies and workers. The letter cites Economic Policy Institute figures indicating that, as of 2020, the U.S. trade deficit with China translated into the loss of 3.7 million American jobs over the period from 2001 to 2018.

This should come as no surprise given our nations unwillingness to consistently hold Communist China accountable over the past two decades for stealing American technology and refusing to open its markets to foreign goods, as required under the WTO, the letter continues.

Scott goes on to demand answers from Tsai to a number of questions, including how many trade-related discussions at the top diplomatic levels have taken place between the Biden administration and the regime of Xi Jinping; how the Biden administration plans to address the Chinese Communist Partys illegal trade practices and violation of the phase one accord; how the administration will address Uyghur slave labor if, as expected, it signs the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law; how it will address Beijings manufacturing and exportation of fentanyl; and whether the Biden administration favors a free-trade accord between the United States and Taiwan.

The full text of Senator Scotts letter is available here.

Tsais office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Darrell Brooks is escorted out of the courtroom after making his initial appearance in Waukesha County Court in Waukesha, Wis., on Nov. 23, 2021. (Mark Hoffman/Pool/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)

Wisconsin Court Sets $200,000 Bail for Christmas Parade Attack Suspect in Domestic Violence Case

A Wisconsin judge on Monday set a $200,000 bail for Darrell Brooks, the alleged driver of an SUV that ran over dozens of peoplekilling sixduring a Christmas parade in Waukesha on Nov. 21, as part of a separate domestic violence case.

Brooks, 39, was arrested on Nov. 2 after allegedly striking the mother of his child and then running her over. At the time of this arrest, he was already out on $500 bail in Milwaukee for allegedly firing a gun at his nephew in 2020.

Prosecutors recommended $1,000 bail, despite his lengthy criminal history and the seriousness of the charges, which he posted on Nov. 11.

Ten days later on Nov. 21, Brooks was reportedly seen by witnesses using the same red SUV to plow into people at the Christmas parade, killing six people with the youngest being an 8-year-old.

During a hearing conducted via Zoom in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on Monday, Judge Michelle Havas agreed with prosecutors request to raise Brooks bail to $200,000 and ordered Brooks to appear in court in February, Fox reports.

Brooks joined the court hearing by phone from the Waukesha County Jail.

His attorney in the Milwaukee cases, Robert Hampton, had argued that the additional $200,000 bail request was unnecessary because his client is already being held on $5 million cash bail for the devastating events in Waukesha. However, Judge Havas disagreed.

Brooks has allegedly violated his bail conditions, specifically a no-contact order that he was issued on Nov. 11 pertaining to a witness in the case known as EAP and DW, ABC reports. Brooks has allegedly made 49 calls to the victim, of which 25 made it through, and some have been intimidating.

The defendant, while in custody on this [domestic violence] case, made 49 phone calls to the victim that he was ordered to have no contact with. Twenty-five of those calls did get through to the victim, Matthew Torbenson, who appeared on behalf of the state, told the judge.

The defendant has violated his bail in a number of ways in a number of manners both while hes in custody and out of custody.

Judge Havas on Monday reasoned that many things could happen with regards to Brooks Feb. 2, 2022 court appearance, such as someone stepping in to pay off his $5 million bail. The judge defended the move to set an additional $200,000 bail.

Someone could decide to be a benefactor of Mr. Brooks and post that $5 million, the judge said. Someone could win the lottery which could secure his release in another county.

Brooks was initially charged with five counts of intentional homicide by Waukesha Court Commissioner Kevin Costello regarding the Christmas parade attack. He is next to set to appear in court regarding that case on Jan. 14, 2022.
Federal banking regulators have signed off on the merger between one of Connecticuts largest homegrown banks, Webster Financial Corp., and Sterling Bancorp, the two partners in the deal said Monday.

The $10 billion all-stock merger was announced in April. The closing of the deal is scheduled to occur sometime around Feb. 1, 2022, officials with two companies said in a statement Monday.

But when asked for further details about the merger, including whether there would be layoffs as a result or any branch closures, Alice Ferreira, a Webster spokesperson, said, we are focused on the good news of receiving final regulatory approval.

We will have more information as we get closer to operating as a combined company, Ferreira said in an email sent to Hearst Connecticut Media.

When the deal closes, the combined company will have approximately $65.5 billion in assets, $42 billion in loans, and $54 billion in deposit balances, as of Sept. 30, and will operate more than 200 financial centers in the Northeast region.

The soon-to-be combined company will be based in Stamford. Ferreira told Hearst Connecticut Media last month Websters Waterbury offices would retain some headquarters functions, although she declined to provide details.

John Carusone, president of the Bank Analysis Center, a Hartford-based industry consulting firm, said while a merger of equals can create value to shareholders, its also important for the two financial institutions to hit the ground running, lay all of their cards on the table in terms who has what responsibilities and how some of them might be changing.

Theres a plethora of things that can go wrong if they are not careful, Carusone said. There can be an incompatibility of corporate cultures, there can be an incompatibility of computer systems and customers can be unhappy as a result. And competitors are going to be nipping at their heels, trying to take some of their market share.

Carusone estimated headquarters staff of the combined banks will be between 25 and 50 people.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP)  COVID-19 numbers are again headed in the wrong direction in Alabama, with hospitalizations up more than 50% from a month ago and school cases climbing in the state with the nation's second-highest death rate during the pandemic.

Although the state's health system is in far better condition than it was in August and September, when hospitals were all but full and officials feared the network was nearing the breaking point, numbers are slowly creeping upward, said Dr. Scott Harris, the head of the Alabama Department of Public Health.

We are a little concerned about how our numbers are trending, Harris said in a discussion held on Facebook live Monday night by the Medical Association of the State of Alabama.

About 400 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized statewide Monday compared with about 250 a month ago, according to health department statistics. Harris called that number very manageable for a system that was treating about 3,000 pandemic patients daily in the fall.

But still, a 25% increase over the last couple of weeks is a reason for concern, Harris said.

The new, fast-spreading omicron variant has been confirmed in the state, but health officials dont believe it has overtaken the delta strain yet. Omicron cases don't respond to monoclonal antibody treatments that have helped patients in recent months, posing a problem once the variant arrives in force, officials said.

Alabama schools reported 750 cases of COVID-19 this week, up about 25% from the 589 last week. The largest increases were in the large metropolitan areas around Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile and Montgomery plus rural Walker County, northwest of Birmingham.

With only about 47% of the states population fully vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19, more than 16,350 people have died from the illness in Alabama, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins. The death toll is the 16th highest nationally and the second highest per capita at almost 335 deaths per 100,000 people.

Dr. Michael Saag, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said there's still time for additional vaccinations to stem a tide of new infections. People who aren't vaccinated make up the vast majority of the people being treated in hospitals, he said, comparing a coming wave of infections from the new omicron variant of the virus to an approaching tornado.

"Theres a storm coming and we need to get in our safe place, and the safest place we can be is with vaccines, said Saag, who recovered from a bout with COVID-19 early in the pandemic.

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of infectious diseases at UAB, said places with low vaccination rates will be faced with "crushing demand on the health care system as omicron spreads, even if it isnt as deadly as earlier versions of the virus.

Im not sure that people really understand that, she told reporters in a briefing Tuesday.

The rolling average of daily new cases in the state over the past two weeks has increased by 332, a jump of 66.6%, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. While there were about 197 new cases per 100,000 people in the state during the period, that ranks 50th nationwide.

Dr. Aruna Arora, president of the state medical organization, said doctors are nervous about what's going to happen to people who haven't been vaccinated and gotten boosters.
Marcia Billhartz, a Collinsville native and area philanthropist, wanted to find a way to honor her brother, Edward Allan, who served as the leader of the southern Illinois chapter of Shriners International 2018. With a $2 million contribution to Shriners Hospitals for Children  the largest ever for the local hospital that provides highly specialized medical care to children regardless of a familys ability to pay  shes leaving a legacy in his name that will help kids for years to come.

Officials at the hospital, including two national-level board members, including the top-ranking Shriner internationally, offered to name the hospitals lobby in Allans name at his sisters request, so that generations to come may know the impact his passion for helping kids has had.

Marcia was married to the late Warren Billhartz, a prominent banker and lawyer in southern Illinois, who passed away in 2006. He served the state in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1955-1961, as well as an assistant Illinois Attorney General. He later was the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of a large bank located in Southern Illinois. He and Marcia married in 1979.

It humbles us to know that someone of Mrs. Billhartzs generosity would want to honor her brother by giving so generously to Shriners Hospitals for Children, said William S. Bill Bailey, Imperial Potentate of Shriners International. This is the largest single gift any one donor has given specifically to Shriners Hospital in St. Louis, and its perfectly fitting that we name our lobby for Illustrious Sir Edward Allan.

Marcia and her brother Edward, along with his wife, Annette, gathered with members of their family, representatives of Shriners Hospitals for Children, both locally and internationally, and three of the organizations top patient ambassadors in St. Louis for the special ceremony to dedicate the hospitals lobby on Dec. 8.

Edward is very proud to be a Shriner and the accomplishments they make in assisting children requiring world-class specialized medical care, said Marcia. I am so proud of my brother and his dedication to this mission  that he would volunteer nearly a decade of his life serving on the leadership line on Ainad Shriners to make a difference in the life of children. I am so glad to have the ability to give this transformative gift to Shriners Hospitals for Children in his honor. I am very proud to be part of his legacy and the ability to contribute to pediatric care.

Hospital officials say that this is the most significant donation in the hospitals local history and allows them to perpetuate the mission of caring for children regardless of their ability to pay.

We are thrilled Marcia and Ed are here today that we may show our gratitude for their support, said Jerry Gantt, President, and CEO of the international pediatric hospital system. Its people like Ms. Billhartz and Illustrious Sir Ed who continue to inspire us as board members and volunteers, our patient and families and our staff members at the hospital, reminding us of the important mission we have the privilege of carrying out because of their generous support.
Anthony Gray

ST. LOUIS  Dr. Rohit Kesarwani, a neurosurgeon who specializes in degenerative spine and movement disorders as well as brain tumors, is the newest physician to join Neurosurgery of St. Louis growing team of specialized doctors.



Kesarwanis practice focuses on neuromodulation for pain and movement disorders related to neurological conditions such as Parkinsons Disease, Dystonia and Tremor. He also specializes in surgical treatments of trigeminal neuralgia and offers general neurosurgery services and care for brain tumors as well as other neurologic or spinal conditions.



Im proud to join such an esteemed group of doctors at Neurosurgery of St. Louis who all strive to offer the best possible care for their patients, said Kesarwani. Not only did I complete my medical degree at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine, but my wife is from here. We actually first met the night the Cardinals won [a] World Series, so my family has strong ties to St. Louis, and I am excited to be practicing here.



Dr. Kesarwani was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He attended the University of Western Ontario where he completed his Master of Science in Neurophysiology. After completing his masters degree, he attended medical school at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and completed his neurosurgical residency at the University of Alberta in Canada. Then, he took a fellowship in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Kesarwani lives in St. Louis with his wife and their two young daughters.



Neurosurgery of St. Louis is a new independent physicians group serving the St. Louis and Metro East region which opened its first three clinic locations in Illinois and Missouri earlier this year.

The Illinois clinic is located at 3 St. Elizabeth Blvd, Suite 3200 in OFallon.
EDWARDSVILLE  Numerous burglary, auto theft and various theft-related charges were filed last week by the Madison County States Attorneys Office.

Josh D. Brockman, 37, of the 17400 block of Yates Road, Grafton, was charged Dec. 15 with residential burglary a Class 1 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. According to court documents, on Dec. 13 Brockman entered a home in the 400 bloc of E. Haller, East Alton, to commit theft.

Bail was set at $108,000.

In an unrelated case, Keith S. Ward, 37, listed as homeless out of Alton, was charged Dec. 14 with burglary, a Class 3 felony.

The case was presented by the Alton Police Department.

According to court documents, on Dec. 7 Ward entered a 1995 Ford E350 box truck in the 2400 block of E. Broadway, to commit theft.

Bail was set at $23,000.

Other theft-related felonies recently filed include:

 Karen C. Best, 39, of the 9100 block of Slemer Road, Worden, was charged Dec. 13 with offenses relating to motor vehicles, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. According to court documents, on Dec. 11 Best was found to be in possession of a stolen 2008 Chevrolet Traverse. Bail was set at $30,000.

 Gabriel D. Deeringer 20, listed as homeless out of Collinsville, was charged Dec. 13 with offenses relating to motor vehicles, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. According to court documents, on Dec. 12 Deeringer was found to be in possession of a stolen 2015 Chevrolet Malibu. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Toni L. Ross, 30, of East St. Louis, was charged Dec. 13 with use of account number with intent to defraud, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. According to court documents, on Dec. 4 Ross used an account number with the intent to defraud Victoria Secret, Amazon, Roku and Apple Inc. in obtaining goods valued at more than $150 using the internet. Bail was set at $15,000.

 James R. Cupp, 37, of the 400 block of Crestview Drive, Wood River, was charged Dec. 15 with theft over $500, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department. According to court documents, on Dec. 14 Cupp took control of more than $500 in cash and gift cards belonging to another person. Bail was set at $25,000.

 Tairah Y. Richardson, 32, of East St. Louis, was charged Dec. 13 with retail theft over $300, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. According to court documents., on Dec. 11 Richardson took clothing, home goods, grocery and party supply items valued at more than $300 from the Collinsville Walmart, 1040 Collinsville Crossing. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Eugene J. Moore, 40, of St. Louis, was charged Dec. 15 with three counts of retail theft under $300 (second subsequent offense), all Class 4 felonies. The cases were presented by the Wood River Police Department. According to court documents, on April 2, Dec. 5, 2020 and Dec. 1, 2020, Moore took liquor from the Wood River Schnucks, 1900 E. Edwardsville Road. It was noted he has a prior conviction for retail theft out of St. Clair County in 2017. Bail was set at $25,000.

 Rhonda O. Whitfield, 41, of St. Louis was charged Dec. 14 with retail theft under $300 (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. According to court documents, on Dec. 13 Whitfield took bathroom decor and baby items valued at less than $300 from the Godfrey Walmart, 6660 Godfrey Road. It was noted she has a prior conviction for theft out of St. Louis County in 2006. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Marco A. Oseguera, 43, of the 200 block of Merrell, Collinsville, was charged Dec. 13 with retail theft under $300 (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. According to court documents, on Dec. 12 Oseguera took pants, a hat, a lighter, an electric razor and an electric toothbrush, valued at less than $300, from the Collinsville Walmart, 1040 Collinsville Crossing. It was noted he has a prior conviction for theft out of Madison County in August 2021. Bail was set at $20,000.

 Brandon L. Stone, 21, of the 3200 block of Yale Street, Collinsville, was charged Dec. 15 with aggravated fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. According to court documents, on Dec. 8 Stone was driving a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu when he fled from a Granite City police officer, reaching speeds in excess of 21 miles above the posted speed limit. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Robert W. Goodbrake, 44, of the 400 block of Roxana Avenue, South Roxana, was charged Dec. 15 with driving while license revoked, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Glen Carbon Police Department. According to court documents, on Oct. 2 Goodbrake was driving a 1978 gold Pontiac Trans Am on Glen Carbon Road and South Illinois 159 with a revoked license. It was noted the license was revoked in August 2000 for a DUI or similar offense out of Madison County; and he had previous convictions for driving while revoked out of Madison County in 2008. Bail was set at $15,000.
EDWARDSVILLE  For Judy Grantham, helping people deal with homelessness is a year-round issue, but she realizes that the topic gets more attention from the community during the holidays.

Homeless people are always out there, but people open their eyes a little wider and see them a little more because it is the holidays, and they are in a more giving spirit, said Grantham, who is the fund development coordinator for Collinsville Food Pantry.

Its kind of seasonal too, because if you see a homeless person in the summer, you might think theyll be fine. But if you see them sleeping on a park bench during the winter, it changes their outlook.

Collinsville Food Pantry is among the many organizations and agencies in Madison County that work with homeless people on a year-round basis.

As part of the pantrys transient program, clients can come in every two days and get bags filled with food and other essential items.

The bags have non-perishable, easy-to-open foods, including snacks like peanuts as well as dried fruit, in addition to a variety of meal items, Grantham said. We also give them water and other drinks, including Gatorade or Ensure (a nutrition drink).

We give them personal hygiene items as well as sleeping bags, blankets, gloves and hats. Now that our thrift store is back open, if people are wearing summer attire and its 30 degrees outside, we can give them pants and sweatshirts. If their shoes have holes in them, we find them a new pair of shoes.

When the weather gets especially cold, the pantry also provides people with hand warmers.

We also give them referrals and resources, Grantham said. If theyre homeless, we give them the number for the homeless hotline. Of course, if they dont choose to call the number, they dont get those resources.

If they do choose to call, theyll get a caseworker assigned to them. If its determined that they have mental issues or alcohol and drug issues, the caseworkers can put them with the right program. We look for shelters for them and we work with the Salvation Army and the United Way. We try to help them as much as possible.

Last winter, the pantry ran a warming center at the Collinsville Senior Center at 420 E. Main St. It opened for 14 consecutive days during a long cold streak and 93 people used the facility.

The center has had a change of hands since then and Im still waiting to hear back from them, so Im not sure if well have it again this year, Grantham said. Im hoping to find out before long because more cold weather is on the way.

Last year when people would have to leave the center around 8:00 or 8:30 in the morning, we would give them bus tokens so they could at least go on the bus and stay warm during the day.

Collinsville Food Pantry is also a member of several boards in Madison County that work to end homelessness.

The pantry is based out of First United Presbyterian Church at 201 E. Church St. The pantry rents space from the church and is not affiliated with it, but the two work closely together.

We have a common mission, to help people, Grantham said.

Homeless veterans, meanwhile, are a primary concern for Bradley Lavite, superintendent of the Veterans Assistance Commission in Edwardsville.

Like Grantham, Lavite noted that homelessness is a year-round concern, but he agrees that the issue gets more attention during the holidays.

From my perspective, the homeless in this area seem to migrate to downtown St. Louis, so we might not have a standing homeless population like they have, Lavite said. Coordinated Entry Homeless Services is a one-door entry point for all people who are homeless in Madison County.

Everybody who comes through gets a full benefits review to establish a baseline of where they are at. If theyre a veteran, they get sent to our office for review. It comes directly to myself or my office manager and the two of us handle all of the financial assistance screenings.

Lavite added that there is a federal grant program called Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) which is administered by Chestnut Health Services

Were in our sixth or seventh year of that funding, Lavite said. We screen people, and they screen them, and then they come back together on one path.

Whatever areas is SSVF is not able to help with, we fill in the gaps. After their funding runs out and the veterans get settled into housing, they come over to us for longer-term case management.

On the Madison County VAC website (https://www.co.madison.il.us/departments/veterans_assistance_commission/index.php), there is a link for Interim and/or Emergency Veterans Financial, where veterans or their families can go to complete a financial assistance application.

On the same page, information is also available about the coordinated entry process.

If people are homeless or at risk of losing their home, it lets them know what they are required to do, Lavite said.

Chris Otto, who is the Madison County Community Development Chief Deputy Administrator, said that through the holidays, the county would continue to assist those in need through various programs.

The county operates a hotline, which connects those experiencing homelessness to essential services, Otto said. The number for the hotline is (618) 296-5300.

We have somebody manning that number during business hours, which are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. You can also leave a message and youll get a call back the next business day. The goal is to get those people connected with emergency services.

Otto added that the county also has resources available to help those who are homeless, or who are danger of becoming homeless.

These resources include emergency shelters, rapid rehousing, transitional housing, help with utility payments and rental assistance, Otto said. In addition to these resources, the county also collaborates with local charities and organizations in order to provide care for those who are homeless or in danger of becoming homeless.

Madison County also participates in the Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, which is a count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness that HUD requires each Continuum of Care (CoC) nationwide to conduct in the last 10 days of January each year.

HUD requires PIT counts annually, but only requires the unsheltered portion of the count every other year.

The 2022 count in Madison County, which includes Collinsville, Granite City and Alton, is scheduled for Jan. 27, and Grantham noted that the most recent count listed a homeless population of 24 people in Collinsville. The count was not held last year due to COVID.

The Edwardsville area is not currently part of the count.

Ive seen random people around here who are probably in that (homeless) situation, but at this point, I dont believe its at the level where that would be a productive use of our people, Otto said. Collinsville, Granite City and Alton are where we tend to see larger congregations of people looking for assistance, particularly in the warming centers during the winter.

For those communities, Otto said the Point of Time count is a valuable tool in trying to reduce the homeless population.

Its an elusive population, so anything you can do to quantify who is out there is helpful, Otto said. But the programs we have here in Community Development for the county are designed to prevent people from getting in this situation.

The Edwardsville Public Library also does its part to help homeless people in Madison County.

That includes partnering with the social work program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to have a graduate student as a social work intern from January through August.

The intern takes cases of people in need and refers them to services that can help them. FCB Bank sponsors that program and they have been a big help, said Jacob Del Rio, Head Librarian of Adult Services at Edwardsville Public Library.

The library also works in tandem with other local organizations to provide services for homeless people.

First Presbyterian Church gives us bus tokens we can give to people who may be stuck in between places, and the tokens can get them on MCT (Madison County Transit) and take them where they need to go, Del Rio said.

Chestnut Health Systems has given us $10 gift cards to Subway if someone needs a meal when they are here. We also keep warm clothes and hygiene products here and the St. Andrews Scarf Project (from St. Andrews Episcopal Church) gives us scarves, hats and gloves to help people during cold weather.

During the winter, the library also refers people to Alton Overnight Warming Centers (altonwarmingcenters@gmail.com).
That release could not be found.
piece stemmed primarily from a 2023 presidency -focused telephone talk I had with Theresa Ashien, Publishers Assistant, the Ika Weekly Newspaper, a Delta state-based community newspaper. Aside from being apt and accurate in her presentation, she gave an indication that there exists a possibility that Senator (Dr) Ifeanyi Okowa may emerge the President of the nation come 2023. A state of affairs she argued that if achieved is laced with the capacity to stabilize the nations political geography.

Her opinion was hinged on reasons that come in multiple folds.

First and very fundamental, is that the Governor is from the Delta North Senatorial zone. The zone is also known as Anioma. A loose interpretation of Anioma in Igbo language is, good land.They are igbo speaking. By virtue of this fact, Governor Okowa is an Igbo man from Delta state. The Aniomas are ably represented at Ohaneze Ndigbo, a socio-cultural umbrella of all Igbos in Nigeria.

Looking at geopolitical consideration, Okowa, she stated, is from the South-South region/geopolitical zone. And there is this ingrained belief/agitation by the people of the zone that they need to complete the remaining four years (one term) which former President Good luck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) was denied. While pointing out that another factor that may work in Okowas favour is the fact that he is a prominent member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as well as a rallying point when it comes to issues of national importance, she concluded that Okowas Presidency if fate allows, will serve dual purpose-settles Igbo persistence agitation for presidency and calm frail nerves of the people of South-South geopolitical zones.

Indeed, I have given some serious thought to the issues raised by Mrs Ashien, they are objective concerns. It is also obvious in my views, that we cannot push back the hands of time in this direction. The only option left for us if we are not to be caught napping is to harness the factors of change and use them to our advantage.

The truth, the bitter truth in my views, is that it is a barefaced truth that the Nigerian state has not treated the people of South South and the Igbos fairly since Independence. Making the situation worse is that the leadership style of the present government at the centre today leaves much to be desired. Other things that bothers Nigerians in addition to the above is our vision for the nation beyond 2023; the nations rising debt profile, scary unemployment situation in the country, galloping growth in population, high rate of corruption, mindless near-exclusion of some zone in government appointments, economic stagnation/very high degree of insecurity in the country.

In the face of these realities, the question may be asked; is Governor Okowa interested in the 2023 Presidency? If yes, is he laced with the capacity needed to arrest the drifting nation and tackle the catalog of challenges outlined above? Will he speak out for justice and practice justice? Can he efficiently and effectively handle the issue of just wages for Nigerian workers who are currently treated like slaves? Could the above arguments/observation by Ashien be considered as a Vote for Governor Okowas 2023 Presidency?

In providing answers to the above beginning with Okowa having interest in the presidency, this piece may not say categorically, but Sen. (Dr) Ifeanyi Okowa, has at different times and places urged Nigerians to support the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to take over governance in the country in 2023. For instance, during a recent thanksgiving service by Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Delta, Chief Kingsley Esiso, in Sapele, Delta state. He said the PDP would do everything possible with the support of the people of Nigeria to win the 2023 presidential election and restore good governance, including infrastructural development in the country.

Definitely, Governor Okowa may not have completely kept pace with the signs of time but as noted in a similar intervention in the past, evidence abounds that he is equipped with transformation mentality. This spurred him upon assumption of office in May 2015 to declare that he will create an enabling environment for local and foreign investors via appropriate measures to sustain, increase, and even introduce new measures to contain and tackle the sources which breed and encourage insecurity as no society can grow without peace and security.

In keeping with this promise and to effectively secure lives and property, Okowas administration in the year 2020, came up with Operation Delta Hawk, a new security outfit floated by the Delta State Government to enhance security of lives and property and checkmate insecurity in all parts of the state headlong.

Today, the state is peaceful.

At this time, this piece will take a critical look at Governor Okowas nation building footprints/relevance. Beginning with his recent call for complete overhaul of the nations 1999 Constitution, it was widely reported that the Senate Sub-Committee on review of the 1999 Constitution met recently, with Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, in Asaba, the state capital. Surprisingly but to the admiration of all, Governor Okowa was not only decisive but emphatic in his position/demand. While he noted that Nigeria needs a new constitution, he kicked against the amendment of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

Lets listen to him; a new constitution for the country had become necessary in view of inherent flaws in the 1999 Constitution. Its good enough that those sent here are familiar with the zone. So, when the people speak, they would understand But, I also wished that some persons from other zones actually had the opportunity to come here and hear the voices of our people directly, because sometimes we do not understand the extent of the pains that the Niger Delta people truly suffer in the country.

As the debate on who becomes the nations president come 2023 continues, two things stand Okowa out.

First, he is transformation personified; a medical Doctor turned Politician. A politician turned Administrative Secretary of Ika Local Government; Administrative Secretary turned Local Government Chairman (Ika Local Government); Local Government Chairman turned Commissioner where he at different times and places transversed about three different ministries; Commissioner turned Secretary to the State Government (SSG); Secretary to the State Government (SSG turned Senator and of course a Senator turned Executive Governor of the state who is now serving out his second in office as the Executive Governor of the state.

Secondly, Delta state, to use the words of Governor Okowa, is a microcosm of Nigeria because she is populated by different ethnic nationalities and has had inter-ethnic conflicts/ clashes, fatal boundary disputes, especially over oil-bearing land, and political tensions, a case that in my views qualifies a governor of such state to effectively lead the Federation.

Utomi is the Programme Coordinator (Media and Public Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), Lagos. He could be reached via;j [email protected]/08032725374 .
Our dear country is witnessing high level of Insecurity and it keeps worsening everyday. Even, to put it straight forwardly, it seems the whole security architecture of Nigeria has collapsed and the lives of vulnerable Nigerians cannot be secured. Frankly speaking, hardly a day would go by without any case of loss of lives in the country. If it is not Boko Haram insurgents ravaging the northern parts of the country , it will be either herdmen, bandits, gunmen or kidnappers thwarting the peace of the country. With the look of things, it seems, apparently, as if the Nigerian government are helpless and incapacitated to secure the hopeless citizens who are dying everyday in the hands of these criminal elements.

The insecurity menace has not only put our country in danger and perpetual fear, it has also truncated our economic growth. Our Gross Domestic Product has been fluctuating since the inception of the insecurity. Recently, the Central Bank of Nigeria declared that Nigeria has recovered from economic recession. Despite the joyous news, the economy has not fully and really recovered as the cost of living is keeping high while prices of food items are skyrocketing on a daily basis. All these because farmers are unable to safely go to their farms. And the few who are, also find it difficult to transport their products to the cities. All these, inevitably, have gross economic implications on the whole nation. Even, to foreign investors, Nigeria is not again a first choice in African continent. To avert this economic decline, it is high time the government took up necessary action and did the needful to save the territory of our country.

Yes, the incessant killings by the non - state actors should be halted immediately with all forces. The death toll of innocent Nigerians is getting higher almost every hour. The everyday attacks on our fellow countrymen is worrisome. Average Nigerians hardly go to their daily business without the panic of these criminals. The recent tragedy in Sokoto which has thrown up reactions and protests from people from northern parts of country is critical brutal and sad. While the bandits who carried out the unfortunately incident are leisuring in their hideouts plotting another attack, Nigerian state security are after peaceful protesters seeking justice for victims of the brutal killings. An end to these everyday tragedies should be attained by the government. Their usual condemnation and commiseration of various attacks on hapless citizens should now be enough. This is the time they must take radical and decisive actions beyond threatening.

Certainly, their inaction and inproactive at this moment is endangering. Those criminals are confidently maiming, killings the feeble citizens. Even though, some high profile citizens and traditional rulers have been a victim of the constant attacks. Yet, the government should know that this country is not at war, still people die in cool blood everyday. Our sovereign nation is not in a battle field, regardless, many souls are lost in the hands of these unknown terrorists. It is saddening and unfortunate!

Government must critically tackle this tragic phenomenon. They must take action to contain this carnage. Our security agencies should be mobilised for the security of the country. Not for any private or influential individuals, but for the country in general. Instead deploying joint security operations to disrupt peace protest or to harass protesters, our security men should be charged to go after the really enemies and criminals of the country. This is the critical direction the government should take to be taken seriously for truly fighting insecurity. Either Bandits or terrorists, the government should ensure that these blood suckers are eliminated and conquered for the peace of our country.

To round off, security is the hallmark of prosperous nation. Nigerian government, currently led by President Muhammadu Buhari, should remember their responsibility to secure the country and protect the people from external and internal forces. By so, they must take radical measures to nip this insecurity in the bud now!

Damilare Adeleye is an undergraduate student of Lagos State University
The Integrity Youth Alliance has vowed to mobilize over 20 million youths across the country to counter the proposed Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) National Protest slated for February 1, 2022, against the planned removal of fuel subsidy.

Arising from its National Executive Council Meeting on Monday 20th December 2021 in Abuja, the Alliance National Coordinator, Kelvin Adegbenga said that the rally is aimed at sending messages to the grassroots people and sensitize the Nigerians on the need for this action (subsidy removal) by the Federal Government.

We hope to mobilize over 20 million Youths across the country to sensitize Nigerians about the benefits of the removal of fuel subsidy because its benefits outweighed its disadvantages, '' the statement said.

The statement read further, To us, the money removed as subsidy would be used to build schools, create employment opportunities and create infrastructure for Nigerians and we agree with the Federal Government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited on the removal.

The proposed protest is unnecessary and since the Federal Government was making efforts to cushion the effect of the removal of oil subsidy, labour should hold its breadth.

We appeal to members of the public to be patient with the Federal Government and to the Nigeria Labour Congress to suspend the proposed protest.

We have also appealed to Nigerian youths not to join the proposed NLC protest because subsidy removal is now a constitutional matter since President Buhari signed the Petroleum Industry Act into Law in August 2021.

We think Nigeria Labour Congress should just exercise some patience and let see what will happen with the removal of subsidy, after all many past administrations have tried and failed.

We truly commend the President for having the political will to sign the PIA.

We complain of unemployment, decayed infrastructure, poor health system, it is our expectation that the PIA will take us out of this logjam.

"There is no doubt the Federal Government is promoting local capacity in refining petroleum products for domestic use such as Dangote Oil Refinery Company, Waltersmith Refining & Petrochemical Company Limited, OPAC Refineries, Niger Delta Petroleum Resources, BUA Refinery & Petrochemicals and Edo Refinery and Petrochemical Company Limited, the statement concluded.
Southern Pines, NC (28387)

Today

Sunshine and a few afternoon clouds. High 58F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 31F. SSW winds shifting to WNW at 10 to 20 mph.
WELLFORD, S.C. (AP)  Officials say an upstate South Carolina man killed himself Monday after deputies tear-gassed his car while trying to arrest him after an hourslong standoff.

A Spartanburg County deputy tried to pull over Robert Alan Beach II of Boiling Springs late Sunday, said Spartanburg County Sheriffs Lt. Kevin Bobo. Beach had active warrants for domestic violence and pointing a firearm, Bobo said, and had cut a Greenville County monitoring device from his ankle.
EDWARDSVILLE  Trinity Lutheran Church at 600 Water St., Edwardsville, will host a special service at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 21, to offer peace, comfort and the bearing of one another's burdens.

Members of Trinity's congregation will be joined by residents of the community for the special service led by the Rev. Jess Biermann.
EDWARDSVILLE  For Judy Grantham, helping people deal with homelessness is a year-round issue, but she realizes that the topic gets more attention from the community during the holidays.

Homeless people are always out there, but people open their eyes a little wider and see them a little more because it is the holidays, and they are in a more giving spirit, said Grantham, who is the fund development coordinator for Collinsville Food Pantry.

Its kind of seasonal too, because if you see a homeless person in the summer, you might think theyll be fine,'" she said. "But if you see them sleeping on a park bench during the winter, it changes their outlook.

The Collinsville Food Pantry is among the many organizations and agencies in Madison County that work with homeless people on a year-round basis. As part of its transient program, clients can come in every two days and get bags filled with food and other essential items.

The bags have non-perishable, easy-to-open foods, including snacks like peanuts as well as dried fruit, in addition to a variety of meal items, Grantham said. We also give them water and other drinks, including Gatorade or Ensure (a nutrition drink).

We give them personal hygiene items as well as sleeping bags, blankets, gloves and hats," she said. "Now that our thrift store is back open, if people are wearing summer attire and its 30 degrees outside, we can give them pants and sweatshirts. If their shoes have holes in them, we find them a new pair of shoes.

When the weather gets especially cold, the pantry also provides people with hand warmers.

We also give them referrals and resources, Grantham said. If theyre homeless, we give them the number for the homeless hotline. Of course, if they dont choose to call the number, they dont get those resources.

If they do choose to call, theyll get a caseworker assigned to them. If its determined that they have mental issues or alcohol and drug issues, the caseworkers can put them with the right program," she said. "We look for shelters for them and we work with the Salvation Army and the United Way. We try to help them as much as possible.

Last winter, the pantry ran a warming center at the Collinsville Senior Center at 420 E. Main St. It opened for 14 consecutive days during a long cold streak and was used by 93 people.

The center has had a change of hands since then and Im still waiting to hear back from them, so Im not sure if well have it again this year, Grantham said. Im hoping to find out before long because more cold weather is on the way. Last year when people would have to leave the center around 8 or 8:30 in the morning, we would give them bus tokens so they could at least go on the bus and stay warm during the day.

Collinsville Food Pantry is also a member of several boards in Madison County that work to end homelessness.

The pantry is based out of First United Presbyterian Church at 201 E. Church St. It rents space from the church and is not affiliated with it, but the two work closely together.

We have a common mission: to help people, Grantham said.

Homeless veterans are a primary concern for Bradley Lavite, superintendent of the Veterans Assistance Commission in Edwardsville.

Like Grantham, Lavite noted homelessness is a year-round concern. He agrees that the issue gets more attention during the holidays.

From my perspective, the homeless in this area seem to migrate to downtown St. Louis, so we might not have a standing homeless population like they have, Lavite said. Coordinated Entry Homeless Services is a one-door entry point for all people who are homeless in Madison County.

Everybody who comes through gets a full benefits review to establish a baseline of where they are at," he said. "If theyre a veteran, they get sent to our office for review. It comes directly to myself or my office manager and the two of us handle all of the financial assistance screenings.

Lavite added there is a federal grant program called Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) which is administered by Chestnut Health Services

Were in our sixth or seventh year of that funding, Lavite said. We screen people, and they screen them, and then they come back together on one path.

Whatever areas is SSVF is not able to help with, we fill in the gaps. After their funding runs out and the veterans get settled into housing, they come over to us for longer-term case management.

On the Madison County VAC website  https://www.co.madison.il.us/departments/veterans_assistance_commission/index.php  there is a link for Interim and/or Emergency Veterans Financial. Veterans or their families can complete a financial assistance application. The same page has information about the coordinated entry process.

If people are homeless or at risk of losing their home, it lets them know what they are required to do, Lavite said.

Chris Otto, Madison County Community Development Chief Deputy Administrator, said that through the holidays the county will continue to help those in need through various programs.

The county operates a hotline, which connects those experiencing homelessness to essential services, Otto said. The number for the hotline is (618) 296-5300. We have somebody manning that number during business hours, which are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. You can also leave a message and youll get a call back the next business day.

"The goal is to get those people connected with emergency services, he said.

Otto added the county also has resources available to help those who are homeless or are in danger of becoming homeless.

These resources include emergency shelters, rapid rehousing, transitional housing, help with utility payments and rental assistance, Otto said. In addition to these resources, the county also collaborates with local charities and organizations in order to provide care for those who are homeless or in danger of becoming homeless.

Madison County also participates in the Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, a tally of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness that HUD requires each "Continuum of Care" to conduct the last 10 days of January each year. HUD requires PIT counts annually, but only requires the unsheltered portion of the count every other year.

The 2022 count in Madison County  which includes Collinsville, Granite City and Alton  is scheduled for Jan. 27. Edwardsville is not part of the count. Grantham said the most recent count, in 2019, listed a homeless population of 24 people in Collinsville. The count was not held last year due to COVID.

Ive seen random people around here who are probably in that (homeless) situation, but at this point, I dont believe its at the level (in Edwardsville) where that would be a productive use of our people, Otto said. Collinsville, Granite City and Alton are where we tend to see larger congregations of people looking for assistance, particularly in the warming centers during the winter.

For those communities, Otto said the PIT count is a valuable tool.

Its an elusive population, so anything you can do to quantify who is out there is helpful, Otto said. But the programs we have here in Community Development for the county are designed to prevent people from getting in this situation.

The Edwardsville Public Library does its part to help homeless people in Madison County, partnering with the social work program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to have a graduate student as a social work intern January through August.

The intern takes cases of people in need and refers them to services that can help them. FCB Bank sponsors that program and they have been a big help, said Jacob Del Rio, Head Librarian of Adult Services at Edwardsville Public Library.

The library also works in tandem with other local organizations to provide services for homeless people.

First Presbyterian Church gives us bus tokens we can give to people who may be stuck in between places, and the tokens can get them on MCT (Madison County Transit) and take them where they need to go, Del Rio said. Chestnut Health Systems has given us $10 gift cards to Subway if someone needs a meal when they are here. We also keep warm clothes and hygiene products here and the St. Andrews Scarf Project (from St. Andrews Episcopal Church) gives us scarves, hats and gloves to help people during cold weather.

During the winter, the library also refers people to the Overnight Warming Centers Alton at Deliverance Temple Church, 1125 E. 6th St. in Alton. The center is open on nights that are 20 degrees or colder. Doors open at 5 p.m. The group has a Facebook page and can be emailed at altonwarmingcenters@gmail.com.
EDWARDSVILLE  A Madison man has been charged in the Dec. 7 death of a St. Louis man.

William A. Jenkins, 44, of Madison, was charged Dec. 13 with three counts of first-degree murder, all Class M felonies; attempted armed robbery, a Class 1 felony; and unlawful possession of weapons by a felon, a Class 3 felony.

The charges were filed Dec. 13 by the Madison County States Attorneys Office and suppressed until the following day.

According to court documents, at about 11:48 p.m. Dec. 7 Madison Police received a 911 call about a shooting and a male subject down in the 1700 block of Wayne Lanter Avenue. The victim, identified as Andre Hutson, 38, of St. Louis, was pronounced dead at the scene and the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis was activated to investigate the incident.

Each murder charge against Jenkins presents a different theory on the killing.

According to court documents Jenkins was attempting to rob Hutson when Jenkins allegedly shot him. Jenkins has a 2013 Madison County felony conviction for mob action, making him ineligible to possess weapons or ammunition.

Bail was set at $3 million.

Other felony charges filed recently by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:

 Wardell D. Webber, 29, of Collinsville, was charged Dec. 14 with aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On Dec. 12 Webber allegedly strangled a household or family member. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Michael J. LeTempt, 50, of Granite City, was charged Dec. 15 with aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. On Aug. 30 LeTempt allegedly strangled a household or family member. Bail was set at $25,000.

 Luis J. Prado, 27, of Harliingen, Texas, was charged Dec. 15 with aggravated battery, a Class 2 felony, and retail theft over $300, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Troy Police Department. On Dec. 14 Prado allegedly spit in the face of a Troy Police officer and took a number of items from the Troy Pilot store at 820 Edwardsville Road. Bail was set at $45,000.

 Courtney Randle, 50, of Alton, was charged Dec. 15 with aggravated unlawful use of weapons, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. On July 29 Rnadle allegedly was carrying a loaded and accessible .38 caliber handgun in a vehicle. Randle has a 1999 Madison County felony conviction for unlawful possession of a controlled substance, making him ineligible to possess weapons or ammunition. Bail was set at $45,000.

 Jeremy R. Fehr, 40, of Collinsville, was charged Dec. 13 with unlawful possession of weapons by a felon, a Class 3 felony, and reckless discharge of a firearm and domestic battery (second subsequent offense), both Class 4 felonies. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On Dec. 11 Fehr allegedly was found to have a Glock 41 .45 caliber handgun. He allegedly fired the weapon, endangering three people, and allegedly struck one of them, a household or family member, in the mouth with the handgun. Fehr has 2014 St. Clair convictions for felony aggravated fleeing and eluding a police officer, as well as a 2019 conviction for domestic battery. Bail was set at $100,000.

 Terrez T. Whitehead, 20, of East St. Louis, was charged Dec. 13 with aggravated unlawful use of weapons and obstruction of justice, both Class 4 felonies. The case was presented by the Alton Police Department. On Dec. 12 Whitehead allegedly was found to have a Glock 43 9 mm handgun in his vehicle without a concealed carry permit, and he allegedly gave false information to an Alton Police officer. Bail was set at $25,000.

 Levauntez D. Conway, 21, of Collinsville, was charged Dec. 13 with aggravated unlawful use of weapons, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On Dec. 11 Conway allegedly was found to have a loaded and accessible Glock 43 9 mm handgun in a motor vehicle without a Firearm Owners Identification Card or concealed carry license. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Brandon L. Whitehead, 26, of Granite City, was charged Dec. 13 with unlawful possession of weapons by a felon, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. On Dec. 12 Whitehead allegedly was found to be carrying a Ruger LCP .380 caliber handgun. He has a 2019 Madison County conviction for burglary, making him ineligible to possess weapons. Bail was set at $15,000.
John Badman

WEST ALTON  Mild weather has allowed work to continue on the $4.1 million project to raise about one mile of the southbound lanes of U.S. 67 just south of the Clark Bridge in West Alton.

Portions of the flood-prone southbound lanes, up to the east of the higher northbound lanes, are too soft for the weight of concrete trucks. Instead, as winter arrives, workers driving motorized wheelbarrows pitch in when needed and shuttle loads of concrete to help with the placement of box culverts and stormwater infrastructure.
Submitted

MATTOON  First Mid Bancshares, Inc., the holding company of First Mid Bank & Trust, has named Jordan Read as its new chief risk officer, effective Jan. 1, 2022.

Read will be directly responsible for coordinating the companys risk management processes designed to identify, measure, monitor, and manage the critical risks present within the business environment that First Mid operates. He assumes the role previously held by Chris Slabach, who will be retiring from day-to-day duties at the end of the year. Slabach will continue to oversee some special projects on a part-time basis in 2022, which will assist with the transition.
FULSHEAR, Texas (AP)  Two people were killed after a small plane collided with a paraglider Tuesday morning near Houston, officials said.

The single-engine Cessna 208 had taken off from Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston when it collided midair with the paraglider at around 9:40 a.m. about 50 miles (80 km) to the southwest near Fulshear, Texas, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
EDWARDSVILLE  A Wood River man who pleaded guilty to killing his father in 1993 is accused of striking a 6-month-old boy.

Shannon L. Musgraves, 44, of Wood River, was charged Dec. 17 with aggravated battery, a Class 3 felony, and two counts of domestic battery (second subsequent offense), both Class 4 felonies.

The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department.

According to court documents, on Dec. 15 Musgraves allegedly struck a 6-month-old boy described in court documents as a family or household member, causing bruising and abrasions to the infants head and torso. Musgraves allegedly struck the infant in the head with a ball.

His bail was set at $63,000.

In 1993 Musgraves, then 16, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for the fatal shooting of his father, Hollis Musgraves, an Alton city employee. According to court documents, Shannon Musgraves told police he shot his father six times but did not mean to kill him.

Court documents state that Musgraves had become upset with his father because of a remark Hollis Musgraves made about his mother.

Shannon Musgrave was sentenced to 30 years in prison. But at that time, Illinois law allowed a day off the sentence for each good day he served.

In March 2014, Shannon Musgraves was arrested and convicted in federal district court for unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. He received a 46-month sentence.

Musgraves also was convicted of domestic battery in Morgan County in 2013.
Scranton, PA (18503)

Today

Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. Temps nearly steady in the low to mid 30s. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with snow. Low 26F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 80%. Snow accumulating 1 to 3 inches.
ANNE DRAGO, Stonington, Girls Basketball, Senior; Drago was named to the all-tournament team at the WCCU Holiday Basketball Tournament. In two games, she scored 38 points and had eight rebounds.

DANTE WILK, Westerly, Boys Basketball, Senior; Wilk was named MVP of the WCCU Holiday Basketball Tournament after the Bulldogs beat Chariho in the title game. Wilk had a combined 35 points, 10 rebounds, 11 assists and eight steals in two tournament victories.

TYLER LABELLE, Chariho, Boys Basketball, Junior; LaBelle scored 41 points in two games to earn all-tournament honors at the WCCU Holiday Basketball Tournament. LaBelle had 22 in a win against South Kingstown and 19 in a loss to Westerly.

ADDIE HAUPTMANN, Wheeler, Girls Basketball, Senior; Hauptmann scored 32 points in two games in the Montville Christmas Tournament. She also had 20 rebounds, seven assists and eight steals.

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Investment manager Schroders had struck an agreement to purchase a 75 per cent stake in green finance specialist Greencoat Capital.

The 358million deal also includes a potential payout worth up to 120million should Greencoat achieve specific revenue targets and its senior management continues to be employed over the next three years.

Schroders will see 6.7billion of additional assets brought under its management and gain control of five investment funds involved in financing renewable energy projects.

Green move: Schroders will see 6.7billion worth more assets brought under its management and gain control of five funds that are solely involved in financing renewable energy projects

This includes Greencoat's FTSE 250-listed UK wind fund, which has a market capitalisation of more than 2.6billion, as well as other funds focused on solar power, bioenergy, and investments in Europe and the United States.

It said the acquisition would expand its sustainability portfolio, help fund projects that bring the world closer to becoming net zero by 2050, and satisfy high investor demand for assets providing longer-term sources of income.

The company also pointed to Greencoat's strong financial performance, noting that its compound AUM growth had jumped by around half in the last four fiscal years, while revenues had risen by 36 per cent.

It added that the deal will 'significantly enhance' Greencoat's growth and offering to clients, as well as boosting its distribution reach and management experience.

Greencoat will become part of the group's private markets division, Schroders Capital, and will be known as Schroders Greencoat.

Peter Harrison, the chief executive of Schroders, said: 'Greencoat is a market-leading, high growth business, with an outstanding management team, which provides access to a large and fast-growing market in high demand among our clients.

Reasons: Schroders said the acquisition would expand its sustainability portfolio and help fund projects that bring the world closer to becoming net zero by 2050, among others

'Its culture is an excellent fit with ours, and Greencoat's focus aligns very closely to our strategy, continuing our approach of adding capabilities in the most attractive growth segments we can provide to our clients.'

Greencoat forecasts the market for renewable energy assets in the United States and Europe to increase by more than $1trillion up to the end of the decade, a reflection of investors' burgeoning appetite to earn money whilst improving the environment.

Schroders has helped propel this trend, buying a majority stake in impact investment manager BlueOrchard in 2019 and launching the Schroder ISF BlueOrchard Emerging Markets Climate Bond fund not long afterwards.

It followed this up a year later when it collaborated with Big Society Capital to set up the BSC Social Impact Trust, which raised gross proceeds of 75million in its initial public offering, though this was 25million short of its target.

Greencoat founder Richard Nourse said: 'We are extremely proud of what the brilliant team at Greencoat has together achieved, creating a market-leading renewables asset management firm in the UK and Ireland, a strong platform in Europe and an important expansion into the US.

'Combining this team with Schroders' global distribution network and expertise will enable clients to capitalise on the unequalled opportunity that our sector represents - a trillion-dollar investable universe - and the chance to meaningfully support the global transition to net zero.'

Shares in Schroders closed trading 3.1 per cent higher at 34.80 on Tuesday, but their value is barely above where it was at the start of the year.
The UKs highest court has blocked Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from accessing 1.4billion of his countrys gold in the Bank of England vaults.

In a judgement this week, the Supreme Court ruled that only Juan Guaido, who is recognised as Venezuelas legitimate leader by Britain and more than 50 other countries, could access the vital wealth.

Maduro, who was re-elected in 2018 in controversial polls, said he needed the gold to help Venezuela fight Covid-19.

Bullion ban: The Supreme Court this week blocked Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (pictured) from accessing 1.4bn of his country's gold

But the Supreme Court said Maduro should not be recognised as president for any purpose.

Maduro has been trying to pull the bullion, which is about 15 per cent of Venezuelas foreign currency reserves, out of the Bank of England since 2018.

But the Bank refused to release it, as Venezuela has been hit with sanctions by countries over corruption, human rights violations and the suppression of democracy.

The Bank of England is the second-largest keeper of gold in the world, and holds enough to cover the entire country in gold leaf. It only owns two bars itself  the rest of the 400,000-odd bars worth more than 200billion are guarded on behalf of the UK Treasury and the central banks of other countries from India to Australia.

For a time, the vaults below Threadneedle Street briefly contained two bars recovered from Nazi Germany by the Tripartite Gold Commission of Britain, the US and France.

The Bank vaults have never been burgled, but in 1836 a sewer worker accidentally found his way in through a disused drain.

He tipped the Bank off, mysteriously arranging to meet the directors one night in the vaults, and was rewarded with a gift of 800 for his honesty, which would now be worth more than 90,000.
After suffering through two national lockdowns and a pingdemic, the hospitality industry is once again in turmoil.

The spread of Omicron has seen cancellations soar as families frantically try to reduce their risk of catching the virus ahead of Christmas.

After weeks of pleas from business owners for extra financial support, Chancellor Rishi Sunak yesterday announced a 1 billion bailout for the hospitality industry. But is it too little, too late?

In limbo: Michael Raphel, left, and Jay Rahman, right, are co-owners of JM Socials restaurant group

Here Michael Raphel, 40, who co-owns a chain of six restaurants in Cheltenham and Oxford, tells Fiona Parker how Omicron has wreaked havoc on his business...

Saturday, November 27

The first Omicron case has been confirmed in the UK. But my partner Jay and I do not know how worried we should be.

It could be weeks before scientists decide whether or not it is a serious threat.

However, there is already a ten-day isolation rule for anyone who comes into contact with an Omicron case. What if this leads to another pingdemic?

Nearly half of our staff were off work in August and we had to shut our chicken restaurant for a fortnight. In a good week, our business, JM Socials, will turn over around 75,000, but we lost a third of our takings that month.

Sunday, November 28

We had three restaurants open for takeaways during the first lockdown. So I am ordering 2,000 worth of boxes and packaging today to prepare for the worst.

JM Socials has around 90 employees working across our restaurants and many are becoming anxious.

Some are worried about the virus itself, while others are concerned about their jobs and hours.

We furloughed 40 front-of-house staff and waiters earlier this year, but that scheme was closed in September. What happens if we need to send employees home again?

Tuesday, November 30

Our restaurants are closed on Mondays and this morning our managers took cancellations for more than 40 individual diners.

They are all sincere and apologetic. A third say they or a member of their group has tested positive.

After weeks of pleas from business owners for extra financial support, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a 1bn bailout for the hospitality industry

The rest just do not want to risk catching it. I understand why they feel like that and I value the safety of my staff and customers above everything else.

But with each diner spending around 50, it is a big financial hit.

Thursday, December 2

Every morning Jay and I meet with our operations managers. Today it is decided an email will be sent to all staff instructing them to wear face masks once again.

It has to be done, but it is hard not to see this as a step backwards. I also know it isnt easy for the employees.

Wearing a mask in a hot kitchen is far from comfortable and waiters who rely heavily on tips cannot smile at their customers. Fortunately, our wonderful workforce are all happy to comply.

Saturday, December 4

Cancellations are coming thick and fast and it looks like we are now going to have to factor in plenty more for the weeks ahead.

Since yesterday, bookings for 66 diners at Bhoomi, the South Asian restaurant in Cheltenham where I am based, have fallen through.

That is going to amount to more than 3,300 in losses. Things are even worse at Prithvi, where Jay is based.

His team has taken 55 cancellations  and there are only 12 tables in the whole restaurant. We do fine dining at Prithvi and the average customer will spend around 100, so thats another 5,500 gone.

Tuesday, December 7

A waiter at our restaurant Bao + BBQ tested positive today. He came in early before the others had arrived and took a lateral flow test.

Fortunately, he has no symptoms and it doesnt look like he will be too poorly. Like previous staff who had to self-isolate, he will receive 96.35 a week in Statutory Sick Pay.

It has been months since we have had a positive case in our team and I hope it is not the first of many.

Staff who test positive and are forced to self-isolate receive 96.35 a week in Statutory Sick Pay

Thursday, December 9

With so many cancellations, we cannot afford to keep our front-of-house team on 38 hours a week  so they have been cut to 25 hours.

As these employees are paid 12 an hour, they will be going home with 300 before tips, rather than 456  which is a big blow ahead of Christmas. It is not a decision we ever wanted to make, but it is essential to avoid cutting jobs.

Last night the Prime Minister confirmed he was going ahead with Plan B restrictions and I am hoping this will lead to a drop in cases. However, it will almost certainly put more people off eating out in the short term.

Friday, December 17

This is by far the worst day we have had for cancellations so far  131 diners in total. Our managers are usually busy taking calls from customers who want a spontaneous meal on a Friday night.

But we have hardly welcomed any of these last-minute bookings tonight. I suppose it is now two days since Professor Chris Whitty told the nation to prioritise social interactions.

I listened out for any announcement about help for business and there was none. But I was not feeling optimistic about this when the press conference began.

Sunday, December 19

We have received fantastic news about our Bhoomi restaurant in Oxford  it is going to be featured in the Michelin Guide. It has prompted a surge in bookings, which are very much welcomed.

Today the papers are full of speculation about a future lockdown. A part of me hopes this will happen. If we could furlough staff and claim grants, a lockdown would be an improvement and help protect my staffs jobs.

Monday, December 20

The wait is over, for now. The Prime Minister ruled out any immediate restrictions tonight.

But that just means we are stuck in this no-mans land where the Government is not shutting us down but wont help us survive either.

We still have energy and water bills, supplies to buy and of course wages to pay. If this carries on, we will have no choice but to cut even more hours.

Tuesday, December 21

At last, the Chancellor has finally committed to some support. Of course I would welcome a 6,000 grant, but without knowing which restrictions will be brought in, it is difficult to say how much help this will be.

If we go back to takeaway and outside dining only, our restaurants would suffer a considerable drop in income and I just dont know whether the grant will be enough to cover our payroll and overheads for the period.

The No. 1 concern for us is to cover wages. Our staff will always be our priority.
Chinas foreign ministry spokesman said four people from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom would be banned from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, in response to U.S. sanctions against Chinese people and entities on Dec. 10.

The sanctioned individuals assets in China will also be frozen, Zhao Lijian said at a regular briefing on Tuesday in Beijing.

Source: Agencies
Tigrayan forces fighting the central government have withdrawn from neighbouring regions in Ethiopias north, a Tigrayan spokesman said on Monday, a step towards a possible ceasefire after major territorial gains by the Ethiopian military.

The 13-month-old war in Africas second-most-populous nation has destabilised an already fragile region, sent 60,000 refugees into Sudan, pulled Ethiopian soldiers away from war-ravaged Somalia and drawn in armed forces from neighbouring Eritrea.

We have just completed the withdrawal of our forces from both Amhara and Afar regions, said Getachew Reda, a spokesman for the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), the political party controlling most of the northerly region of Tigray.

Writing on Twitter, Getachew added that the TPLF hoped the pullout would induce the international community to put pressure on the governments of Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea, allies in the conflict, to cease military operations in Tigray.

TPLF head Debretsion Gebremichael called for a no-fly zone for hostile aircraft over Tigray, arms embargoes on Ethiopia and Eritrea, and a U.N. mechanism to verify that external armed forces have left Tigray  all requests that the Ethiopian government is likely to oppose.

We trust that our bold act of withdrawal will be a decisive opening for peace, Debretsion wrote in a letter to the United Nations outlining the TPLFs demands.

Ethiopian government spokesperson Legesse Tulu and the prime ministers spokesperson, Billene Seyoum, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said Debretsions letter was being studied and he had no immediate comment beyond that.

We would look positively at any efforts that can bring the fighting downwards and ultimately to bring it to a full halt.  Well study this (letter) and see  what can be done with that, he told reporters at a briefing.

The U.S. State Department is aware of the reports of Tigrayan withdrawal, spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

If we do see a movement of Tigrayan forces back into Tigray, that is something we would welcome. Its something weve called for and we hope it opens the door to broader diplomacy, Price said.

RARE OPPORTUNITY

Thousands of civilians have been killed as a result of the conflict, around 400,000 are facing famine in Tigray and 9.4 million people need food aid across northern Ethiopia.

Debretsion said he hoped the Tigrayan withdrawal would force the international community to ensure that food aid could enter Tigray. The United Nations previously accused the government of operating a de facto blockade  a charge Addis Ababa has denied.

The TPLF accuses Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of wanting to centralise power at the expense of Ethiopias regions. Abiy denies the accusation.

Abiy, whose appointment in 2018 brought nearly three decades of TPLF dominance over Ethiopia to an end, says the TPLF wanted to hang onto central power  something the Tigrayan leadership denies.

Will Davison, senior analyst for Ethiopia at the International Crisis Group think tank, said the TPLF letter represented a significant opportunity for peace talks.

There are reasons to think this rare opportunity might lead to a peace process and cessation of hostilities, he said.

A significant shift in the Tigrayan position, he said, was the abandonment of their demand that hostile forces withdraw from western Tigray, a disputed area, as a precondition for peace talks, as well as a concession that this could come about as part of an internationally backed peace process.

TRUST-BUILDING STEPS

Any Tigrayan demands to keep their forces intact might be hard for the Ethiopian government to swallow, he said, but a gradual process might be possible. He added that other confidence-building measures might be under way, such as the federal government releasing jailed political leaders.

The letter also endorses the use of international investigators to pursue those responsible for war crimes.

The United Nations agreedlast week to set up an independent investigation into rights abuses in Ethiopia  a move strongly opposed by the Ethiopian government, which sees it as an infringement of national sovereignty.

International mediators including the African Union and United States have repeatedly tried to negotiate a ceasefire to allow aid to enter Tigray, but both sides have refused until certain conditions were met.

In June, the Ethiopian and Eritrean militaries withdrew from Tigray after reports of mass killings of civilians, gang rapes and blocking of aid supplies. The government has said it has prosecuted individual soldiers, although it has provided no details, and denied blocking aid.

In July, Tigrayan forces invaded Afar and Amhara. The Ethiopian military launched an offensive at the end of November that pushed the Tigrayan forces back hundreds of kilometres (miles).

Reuters reporters travelling to liberated towns in Amhara saw signs of heavy fighting, and local residents reported abuses such as killings and rapes by Tigrayan fighters. The TPLF has said any soldiers found guilty would be punished.

SOURCE: REUTERS
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  The CEO candidate backed by an investor who is pushing for changes at Canadian National railroad has dropped out of the running, but the company is moving forward with plans to name a new top executive next month.

Canadian National said Monday that Jim Vena told the Montreal-based railroad's board Sunday that he is no longer interested in the CEO job. Vena is a former CN executive who also led operations at Union Pacific railroad for a couple years.

The railroad's current CEO JJ Ruest has announced plans to retire at the end of January after CN failed to acquire Kansas City Southern railroad earlier this year.

Vena was recommended for the job by the London-based investment firm TCI Fund that has nominated four new directors and recommended that CN focus on cutting costs and improving its own operations. Officials from TCI, which owns 5% of CN's stock, didn't immediately respond to questions Monday.

TCI has said it doesnt believe the new strategic plan CN executives outlined in September doesnt do enough even though it calls for cutting $550 million in costs, reinstating stock repurchases and delivering 20% growth in earnings per share next year.

Canadian National has said that TCI's particular focus on cutting costs everywhere possible is an outdated approach that would hurt the railroad in the long run because it would likely degrade its service.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Canadian National lost out in the bidding for Kansas City Southern after regulators rejected part of CNs acquisition plan. Instead, Kansas City Southern went with a rival $31 billion buyout offer from Canadian Pacific even though that offer was lower.

A special shareholder meeting has been scheduled for March 22 to vote on TCIs demands.

Canadian National is one of the largest railroads in North America and it operates nearly 20,000 miles of track crossing Canada and crossing the U.S. Midwest south to the Gulf Coast.
Rapid at-home COVID-19 testing kits are being distributed by local towns and school districts across Ulster County ahead of Christmas. The distribution began on Monday, with large turnouts, especially in the City of Kingston.

Distribution was planned at Kingston City Hall between Dec. 20 to Dec. 22 from 10 a.m. to 12 noon each day. However, after all 850 allotted kits were distributed to large crowds on Monday, the city had to cancel its remaining distribution dates this week. While the city plans to get additional supply from the county, who received 33,000 kits to distribute county-wide, there is currently no timeframe for receiving more.

Free testing kits are still available at the Kingston City School District to families of their students.

The need for additional COVID testing comes at a time when New York is seeing a surge in cases due to the rapidly spreading omicron variant, which now accounts for 73 percent of cases. Though early reports suggest it is milder, most researchers say it is too soon to know how severe cases will be in the U.S.

The seven-day rolling average of positive COVID cases in the mid-Hudson region rose to 6.4 percent on Dec., 19, up from 4.6 percent one week prior. Putnam and Orange counties top the region with a seven-day rolling average of 8.3 percent.

On Dec. 18, 401 patients were hospitalized in the region with COVID-related illness, with 68 in the intensive care unit. This is nearly double the hospitalization rate seen at the end of November.

With planned holiday gatherings ahead, there are longer lines than usual for testing, and many pharmacies have sold out of at-home testing kits.

In Ulster County, other distribution sites for this week include Shandaken Town Hall on Dec. 21 from 12 noon to 2 p.m.; Ellenville Town Hall on Dec. 22 from 4 to 6 p.m.; New Paltz Community Center on Dec. 22 from 5 to 7 p.m.; and Woodstock Community Center on Dec. 23 at 1:30 p.m.

County residents are encouraged to contact their towns offices or school districts for further information on when kits will be distributed this week. A handful of nonprofits are also distributing kits to their clients, including e Peoples Place, the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center, For the Many, YMCA of Kingston and Ulster County, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Kingston and Saugerties, Beyond the 4 Walls Outreach Program, Samadhi, and Family of Woodstock.

"In the last three days, New York has set an all-time record for new positive cases, said Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan in an emailed statement Monday. That is why county government is stepping up to get free rapid at-home kits into the hands of Ulster County residents ahead of the holidays.

While the City of Kingston had to cut its distribution short, other municipalities still have take-home kits available. Town of Plattekill Supervisor Joseph Croce said a line had formed before distribution began, but everyone who wanted one was able to get one of approximately 200 kits distributed on Monday.

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Tuesday the town will distribute the rest of the kits, starting at 10 a.m., as there are a little more than 100 left. Each municipality received a certain allotment based on population size.

Were hearing from a lot of people that with the upcoming Christmas holiday, they are going to be gathering with relatives and friends, and they feel much better about doing that if they use the test kit and hopefully test negative, said Croce.

If a test comes back positive, Ulster County is encouraging residents to report their results through its online portal.

In Orange County, rapid test kits have been distributed to Orange Ulster BOCES for use by all schools. Dutchess County said they received a very limited supply of at-home tests from New York State on Friday but have not announced a distribution plan.
ALBANY  A grocery for the South End moved much closer to opening with the announcement Tuesday that the African American Cultural Center purchased the old McDonald's property at the corner of Madison Avenue and South Pearl Street.

The center purchased the property at 106 S. Pearl St. from the land's owner, the Albany Housing Authority, with the hope of opening the store there early next year.

Those behind the project said the store will bring fresh and healthy food to an area referred to as a "food desert" because of the lack of options to purchase groceries.

The people of the South End, Black and oppressed peoples have reason for joy today. It is my honor to endow assets and control of production in a sovereign means for these people," African American Cultural Center Executive Director & BlueLight Development Group President Travon Jackson said. "I look forward to our formal opening in spring."

The 3,148-square-foot building sits on 1.55 acres of land.

Earlier this year, the cultural center announced it was looking to open a full-service grocery store at the now-closed restaurant.

An early plan intended to redevelop the space for El Pilon Market, a convenience store that has already operated at 179 S. Pearl St. as a limited-service grocery store for the last few years. If BlueLight Development and the African American Cultural Center are unable to secure an appropriate operator, they have letters of interest from the Food Bank of Northeastern New York and Capital Roots to operate satellite locations on the site.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

A number of local organizations were involved in the purchase.

Grants and loans from CAPCOM, Key Bank, the Albany County Capital Resource Corp., BlueLight Development Group and MVP Health Care covered the $850,000 purchase price and closing costs, county officials said. MVP Health Care, CAPCOM, Key Bank and undisclosed philanthropists have already promised a combined $150,000 to support the first year of the grocery stores operation.

Health equity is not a goal that gets accomplished overnight and it does take a village, but this announcement is a great example of how the public and private sectors can come together to overcome big challenges," Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Fighting the omicron variant surging through the country, President Joe Biden announced the government will provide 500 million free rapid home-testing kits, increase support for hospitals under strain and redouble vaccination and boosting efforts.

At the White House on Tuesday, Biden detailed major changes to his COVID-19 winter plan, his hand forced by the fast-spreading variant, whose properties are not yet fully understood by scientists. Yet his message was clear that the winter holidays could be close to normal for the vaccinated while potentially dangerous for the unvaccinated.

His pleas are not political, he emphasized. He noted that former President Donald Trump has gotten his booster shot, and he said it's Americans' patriotic duty to get vaccinated.

Its the only responsible thing to do, the president said. "Omicron is serious and potentially deadly business for unvaccinated people.

Biden chastised social media and people on cable TV who have made misleading statements to discourage people from getting vaccinated.

The outbreak from this latest strain of the coronavirus has required the federal government to get more aggressive in addressing the wave of infections, but Biden promised a weary nation that there would not be a mass lockdown of schools or businesses.

I know youre tired, and I know youre frustrated. We all want this to be over. But were still in it, Biden said. We also have more tools than we had before. Were ready, well get through this.

Scientists dont know everything about omicron yet, but they do know that vaccination should offer strong protection against severe illness and death. The variant has spread at such an alarming rate since it was identified in South Africa about a month ago that the Biden administration snapped into action to offer new tests and additional aid. Still more is needed, some medical experts said.

A cornerstone of the plan is for the government to purchase 500 million coronavirus rapid tests for free shipment to Americans starting in January. People will use a new website to order their tests, which will then be sent by U.S. mail at no charge. The 500 million could be increased, depending on developments.

It marks a major shift for Biden, who earlier had called for many Americans to purchase the hard-to-find tests on their own and then seek reimbursement from health insurance. For the first time, the U.S. government will send free COVID-19 tests directly to Americans, after more than a year of urging by public health experts.

Experts had criticized Biden's initial buy-first, get-paid-later approach as unwieldy and warned that the U.S. would face another round of testing problems at a critical time. Testing advocates point to nations including the U.K. and Germany, which have distributed billions of tests to the public and recommend people test themselves twice a week.

The federal government will also establish new testing sites and use the Defense Production Act to help manufacture more tests. The first new federally supported testing site will open in New York this week. The new sites will add to 20,000 already available. White House officials said they're working with Google so that people will be able to find them by searching free COVID test near me.

Still, Biden's testing surge would need to be supported by a further jump in production for all Americans to test at the recommended rate of twice weekly. The U.S. would need 2.3 billion tests per month for everyone 12 and older to do that, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Thats nearly five times the half-billion tests Biden will deploy.

Currently, the U.S. can conduct about 600 million tests per month, with home tests accounting for about half, according to researchers from Arizona State University.

In another prong to Biden's amped-up plan, he is prepared to deploy an additional 1,000 troops with medical skills to assist hospitals buckling under the virus surge. Also, he is immediately sending federal medical personnel to Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire and Vermont. And there are plans to ready additional ventilators and protective equipment from the national stockpile, expanding hospital resources.

As a backstop, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will deploy hundreds of ambulances and paramedic teams so that if one hospital fills up, it can transport patients to open beds in another. Ambulances are already headed to New York and Maine, and paramedic teams are going to New Hampshire, Vermont and Arizona.

But vaccination remains the main defense, since it can head off disease in the first place. The government will support multiple vaccination sites and provide hundreds of personnel to administer shots. New rules will make it easier for pharmacists to work across state lines to administer a broader range of shots.

Biden said in response to a question that he may lift the Southern Africa travel ban that was imposed to delay omicron from reaching the U.S.

Some prominent experts said that Bidens new actions are a step in the right direction but he hasnt gone far enough, given the risks of infections and hospitals being overwhelmed.

I dont know that the measures being proposed are going to be adequate, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Hotez said the government may need to authorize a second booster shot for health care workers to prevent infections that would sideline clinicians when all hands are needed.

Dr. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, said the administration finally sees the light with Bidens plan to ship 500 million tests, but "we need to pull out all the stops, and were not doing that still.

We dont have control of this pandemic here, said Topol.

He said the government could redefine fully vaccinated as three shots instead of two of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Biden could order a ban on air travel by people who are not fully vaccinated, and the government could use its authority to ramp up production of high quality masks for free distribution.

Theres a lack of boldness, Topol said. I am disappointed.

Scientists say omicron spreads even more easily than other coronavirus strains, including delta. It accounted for nearly three-quarters of new U.S. infections last week.

Underscoring the reach of the virus, the White House said late Monday that Biden had been in close contact with a staff member who later tested positive for COVID-19. The staffer spent about 30 minutes around the president on Air Force One on Friday. The staffer, who was fully vaccinated and boosted, tested positive Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Psaki said Biden has tested negative twice since Sunday and will test again on Wednesday. He cleared his throat several times at Tuesday's event but spoke firmly and appeared fine.

In New York City, nearly 42,600 people citywide tested positive from Wednesday through Saturday  compared with fewer than 35,800 in the entire month of November. The city has never had so many people test positive in such a short period of time since testing became widely available.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Perrone, Darlene Superville and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

___

This story has been corrected to show the trip was from Orangeburg, not Orange.
ALBANY  The line already had about 30 people waiting  and it wasnt even 8 a.m.

Ian Kundel arrived at WellNow Urgent Care on Western Avenue for his COVID-19 test at 7:20 a.m. Tuesday  40 minutes before doors open  and he was 10th in line. The queue only kept growing, and by the time he left an hour and a half later, the lot outside was filled with people waiting in the cold for their tests.

Kundel was one of the lucky ones able to secure a COVID-19 test. With Christmas days away, more people traveling and the omicron variant rapidly spreading, the demand for COVID-19 testing has exploded - making it difficult for health care providers to meet it.

In the beginning, we couldnt get PPE, we couldnt get hand gel, we couldnt get Tylenol. And then it was, we cant get the vaccines, said Assemblymember John McDonald, who owns Marra's Pharmacy in Cohoes. Now were in this next phase The best thing we can do right now is play a very critical role in redistribution of test kits when theyre made available from the federal government to the state.

McDonald said demand for testing has significantly increased over the last few months as more people needed proof of a negative COVID-19 test for travel or school, reaching a peak this week. On June 20, for example, over 58,000 tests were performed across the state. But on Monday, six months later, that number was over 214,000  almost four times as much. In Albany County, the number of tests performed jumped from 492 on June 20 to 1,891 Monday.

There are a few reasons health care providers say the demand has been difficult for them to meet. For example, the inconsistent supply of at-home test kits is a real detriment, as well as the fact that pharmacists have to acquire a special license to be able to provide COVID-19 tests. However, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday that the state would be receiving and distributing 10 million at-home test kits to schools, state vaccination sites and county emergency managers. Albany County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen said in an email that she has not been told how many the county will receive.

Once received we will work with emergency managers, city and municipal governments to ensure that they are rapidly deployed to get these out to locations the public can easily access like libraries, firehouses, community-based organizations, houses of worship etc., Whalen wrote.

Another challenge was former Gov. Andrew Cuomo declaring an end to the state of emergency over the summer, which heralded the shutting down of state-run mass testing sites - including the large site at the University at Albany.

The closure of the mass testing sites have definitely impacted the testing availability, because its left to more private organizations to be able to provide the testing, said Zarina Jalal, supervising pharmacist at Lincoln Pharmacy in Albany. Overall, I think a lot of it  especially this past week  is people planning to see their families, and they want to do so in a safe manner.

A Times Union search of major pharmacy retail stores, such as CVS, found no available COVID-19 testing appointments in the Capital Region through at least the end of the week.

A doctor recently opened a COVID-19 testing site in Delmar's Four Corners, and on Tuesday morning the tiny waiting room was filled with about 15 people - with a couple of others waiting on the sidewalk to get in.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Scenes in New York City have been much worse, as some testing lines have stretched for blocks.

Of all the former mass testing sites that were once open, only two are now reopened  Binghamton and Queensbury. The Queensbury site was reopened after Warren County officials made a plea to Hochul last month, saying the smaller rural county needed more state resources to combat the COVID-19 surge they were seeing. Once just a vaccination site, the Aviation Mall location in Queensbury is also now offering tests.

On Monday, Hochul announced seven new testing sites to be opened starting next week; however none of them will be located in the Capital Region. Hochul tweeted Tuesday afternoon that she had requested more federally run mass testing sites from President Joe Biden.

She also announced an impending launch for a test portal, where state residents will be able to order free at-home PCR tests online.

We're ramping up testing and we want to make sure that New Yorkers have many ways to access testing, said Acting Commissioner Jackie Bray of the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. We know that there are long lines, that's because people are doing the right thing, they're seeking a test when they need it to keep each other safe.

Note: An earlier version of this story misidentified Bray's agency.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Angela Bradbery, University of Florida

(THE CONVERSATION) When U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said that he wouldnt support President Joe Bidens signature Build Back Better Act, he set off a wave of breaking news alerts.

It was fitting. For months, media coverage has breathlessly focused on the behind-the-scenes wrangling and hour-by-hour negotiations around the legislation. How much has been slashed from the bill today? What does it mean for the future of the Democratic and Republican parties?

The roughly US$2 trillion proposal is designed to bolster what is widely seen as a frayed social safety net. But most Americans dont think it will benefit people like them, a recent NPR/Marist poll shows. And a quarter of Americans cant even say whether they like or dislike the legislation.

Its no wonder the nation is so indifferent about the sweeping bill, which would change the countrys tax system, increase social services and ramp up efforts to combat climate change.

Largely omitted from news coverage  and consequently, from the national conversation  are the voices and stories of individuals who would be affected by the legislation.

Focusing outside D.C.

What if daily media coverage instead featured those voices? What if reporters and talk show hosts ditched the pundits and issue experts and instead explored the problems that led to the proposed policies  through the eyes and voices of those living with those problems?

That means we would hear from parents who need help paying for child care and elderly people who cant afford medicines or hearing aids.

We would hear from people who cant afford health care, people living in their cars or on the streets, and yes, those who earn more than $400,000 a year. Multimillionaires, billionaires and corporations would pay more under the new tax plan.

What if news stories shined a spotlight on these voices, rather than just throwing in an occasional anecdote? Would people tune in? Would they engage in conversations or take action around the legislation?

Research shows that they likely would. And that would be good for democracy.

Real stories can spark real engagement

Its well documented that horse-race journalism  which treats politics as a sport, focusing on whos ahead or behind, rather than the substance of issues  is associated with an uninformed electorate and elevates public cynicism about politics. Such coverage doesnt help people understand what proposals could mean to them.

Policy overviews filled with large numbers dont engage people, either. When discussing the Build Back Better Act, proponents understandably focus on the scope of the problem: 2.2 million low-income Americans couldnt get health insurance subsidies in 2019 but also werent eligible for Medicaid.

Just 23% of civilian workers can take paid family leave, and more than 800,000 seniors and disabled people seeking home health care are on state Medicaid waiting lists.

But science tells us that discussing large-scale suffering makes people turn away. The phenomenon is called psychic numbing. It means the problem is so big that people disengage, because they feel powerless to help. And individuals find it hard to understand the scale of large numbers.

The way to combat this? Journalists can tell stories about real people. Personal stories quickly bring big issues into focus and make them relatable. They make people care.

In 2015, for example, the Syrian refugee crisis had been raging for four years. But it took a picture of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose corpse washed up on a Turkish beach after his family fled Syria by boat, to generate international horror.

After the photo of the young Syrian boy went viral, donations to refugee organizations skyrocketed. The story and photo engaged people who had not yet paid attention to the crisis.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Research backs up the notion that including real people in news stories can spark reader engagement.

A 2012 study compared peoples reactions after they read two versions of a news story detailing how the lack of health care affected one of three groups: immigrants, prisoners or the elderly.

[Understand whats going on in Washington. Sign up for The Conversations Politics Weekly.]

One version presented the issue using quotes from experts. The other version included a story about a specific persons experiences dealing with that health care issue.

The news pieces that featured peoples stories elicited emotions in readers that the policy pieces did not. That led the participants to be more willing to help the people they read about.

Including real people in news stories doesnt mean that engaged readers will only feel sympathy for the characters profiled. Engagement could produce support or opposition to proposed policies.

Looking beyond the political play-by-play

The Build Back Better Act  which the U.S. House of Representatives passed in November  comes as civic engagement in the U.S. is low.

Considering the scope and potential impact of this bill, its a disservice to the country for news coverage to focus on the play-by-play in Washington, D.C.

If the press eases up on the machinations occurring in the marble halls of Washington, D.C., and instead focuses on real people, the U.S. could perhaps build back something else: civic engagement, a necessary part of our democratic system.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/dont-care-about-the-build-back-better-act-hearing-peoples-personal-stories-might-change-that-172023.
On Troy's cobblestone streets and inside Albany's halls of power, television executives found perfect stand-ins this summer for key turning points in American history.

For weeks of production, HBO turned to the Capital Region as the backdrop to give a feel of period authenticity for The Gilded Age and The White House Plumbers.

And it deposited a bicycle-riding Woody Harrelson and other movies stars into our midst.

With 2022 approaching, there is little reason to believe that the region will cease to be a mise en scene for future television shows and movies.

Created by Julian Fellowes and set in 1882, HBO's nine-part series The Gilded Age relies on Troys historic 19th-century streetscapes that have remained intact for 140 years as the setting for the story of New York Citys high society and clash between old and new money.

Down the Hudson River, the limited series The White House Plumbers found its 1972 stand-in for Washington, D.C., in the exteriors and interiors of Albany. The Empire States capital citys government buildings, inside and outside, were the substitutes for settings in the nations capital during President Richard M. Nixon's downfall.

The production companies found themselves welcomed by the two cities, settling in for weeks of work. Local residents tuning into either series will recognize streets and interiors from scenes of their daily lives.

HBO coming to Troy was great. It really brought a lot of business because of the footprint of the filming, said Elizabeth Reiss, CEO of the Arts Center of the Capital Region, which is located at River Street and Monument Square and had a ringside seat to the downtown production.

The coronavirus delayed filming on the "Gilded Age" by a year. But once local work started it served as a bit of an emotional antidote.

The amount of energy and animation HBO brought to Troy was really needed, Reiss said.

She said local cities need to find ways to exploit the appeal of area locations for filmmaking.

Schenectady didnt host any HBO productions, but found itself in demand as a filming location for other companies. The Showtime series Three Women was staged in the citys Upper Union Street neighborhood. As a result, Discover Schenectady and the Schenectady Film Commission produced a new promotional video showcasing to movie and television producers whats available if they come to the city.

The Gilded Age debuts on Jan. 24, 2022, on HBO Max. A release date for the The White House Plumbers has not been announced though June 17, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in.

Trailers for The Gilded Age have been posted online at the HBO site and Facebook, while still photos are on the HBO Instagram account. The discerning viewer will recognize Washington Park, an entrance to the Rensselaer County Courthouse at Second and Congress streets, Troy row houses, interiors from The Castle, the fraternity house of Pi Kappa Phi at 49 Second St., which was also used in the movie "The Age of Innocence," the Frear House at Russell Sage College, Monument Square transformed into the New York City streetscape and other backdrops.

Troy provided the upscale office space, homes, tenement housing and concert hall space circa 1882 that is seen throughout the trailers and will be seen in the series, which stars Christine Baranski, Audra McDonald and Cynthia Nixon.

Fellowes created the popular dramatic series "Downton Abbey," set in Great Britain, before turning his attention to the United States. Known for his attention to historic detail, Fellowes didnt visit Troy during filming in May and June, but was in constant contact, according to producers.

"The Gilded Age" is set in late 19th-century New York decades before the action of "Downton Abbey," which opened with news of the Titanic's sinking in 1912. The show portrayed the lives of British aristocrats through the late 1920s. There is expected to be a crossover between the two series.

While HBO has been careful not to indicate if crews will return to Troy to film a second season, property owners have said theyve been told to expect the production to be back in 2022. Some say it could be as early as March.

I would very much like to see them come back and look forward to working with them again. It was a great experience for everyone in Troy, said Kathy Sheehan, historian for the city of Troy and Rensselaer County. She worked closely with The Gilded Age in providing historical information and finding locations.

"The White House Plumbers" takes its story from the actions of Nixon aides E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy in a political scandal that's ingrained in the American psyche. HBO promotes the limited-run series as based in part on public records and the book "Integrity" by Egil 'Bud' Krogh and Matthew Krogh telling the tale of how Hunt and Liddy accidentally toppled the presidency they were trying to protect. The elder Krogh worked in the Nixon White House and served a brief prison stint for his role in the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsbergs psychiatrist. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, an until-then secret history of the Vietnam War.

The series stars Harrelson as Hunt and Justin Theroux as Liddy. Kathleen Turner also appears in the show.

Academy Park across from the state Capitol was used for filming as were buildings on State Street and Broadway. The State Education Building and Legislative Office Building also were used as backdrops. Interior scenes were shot in the State Capitol .
ALBANY - The Central Warehouse's owner lost his attempt to convince a judge to give him one more chance at paying off more than $500,000 in past-due property taxes and retaining ownership of the building.

The move appears to clear the way for Albany County to seize one of the Capital Region's most well-known blighted buildings for back taxes, and then turn it over to real estate companies for redevelopment.

During a telephonic hearing on Monday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Littlefield Jr., told Evan Blum and his attorney that he couldn't sign off on Blum's proposal to pay for more than $300,000 in repairs, as well as nearly $600,000 in back property taxes and city code violations.

Littlefield repeatedly noted Blum never submitted a solid financial picture for him to review.

"I think Mr Blum has a wonderful vision of what the Central Warehouse could be but theres simply no way to get from here to there before me," he said.

It was not immediately clear what options Blum has moving forward. An attorney for Blum did not immediately return a request for comment.

Albany County Executive Dan McCoy praised the decision in a statement.

Todays ruling is an important victory for Albany County and our residents, and its another important step towards the ongoing economic revitalization of the Downtown Albany and Warehouse District neighborhoods," he said. "Now that were moving past the court proceedings, Im looking forward to continuing to examine our options for the future of the Central Warehouse that will benefit our taxpayers.

The Albany Business Review first reported the decision.

Littlefield noted that Blum's proposed plan was a bit of a conundrum. Blum wanted to sign a series of leases with companies seeking to use the warehouse for storage in order to pay for the repairs and make payments on the back taxes. But those leases and other financial arrangements he tried to make were dependent on the building being usable and assurances that he would retain ownership of it.

He had also proposed using money from another company he owned to finance the repairs, but the court never received any disclosure as to how much money that would provide.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Albany County moved to seize the building earlier this year. It received two bids for the building back in May, one from a group of local developers that includes Columbia Development and Redburn Development Partners, and another bidder which has not been identified.

The county is not asking the future company that will ultimately take on the building to pay any of the back property taxes.

Blum tried to stave off the seizure by declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June. But he ran into trouble as he tried to come out of bankruptcy because he failed to present a viable plan to pay for over $300,000 in necessary repairs. Both the county and the U.S. bankruptcy court trustee opposed Blum's reorganization plans, arguing he did not have a clear line of financing to pay for the work.

His company Phoenix Albany, LLC., owes more than $520,000 in back property taxes, as well as $78,000 in city code violations.

Blum had said he intended to use the warehouse as gallery space for "500 to 600 artists," hoping to create an arts-driven transformation of Albany. He bought the 11-story building in 2017 from Sunmark Bank for $1.
NEW YORK (AP)  The jury deliberating at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial finished its first full day of deliberations Tuesday without reaching a verdict, having asked to review the testimony of three of four women who said they were teens when the British socialite aided financier Jeffrey Epstein in sexually abusing them.

The Manhattan federal court jury requested the transcripts less than an hour after resuming deliberations in a large room where they could spread out for coronavirus safety reasons. At day's end, U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan reminded them to keep their masks on, except while eating.

The jury had begun deliberating late Monday, working less than an hour before going home after closing arguments consumed most of the day.

The jury is deciding whether Maxwell, 59, assisted her former financier boyfriend in the sexual abuse of teenage girls from 1994 to 2004. Prosecutors say she recruited and groomed the girls, making them feel that sexualized massages of Epstein were normal behavior.

Maxwells lawyers say the government has used her as a scapegoat after Epstein killed himself in 2019 as he awaited his own sex trafficking trial.

The transcripts requested by the jury pertain to the testimony of two women who testified anonymously as Jane and Carolyn, along with the testimony of Annie Farmer, who has spoken publicly about her experiences with Maxwell and Epstein.

Late in the day, jurors also asked for clarification on whether they could consider Farmer's testimony to support conspiracy charges. The judge gave a simple yes," despite vigorous defense objections arguing Nathan's answer needed more explanation.

Farmer, a 42-year-old psychologist, was the only one of four accusers who used her full, real name on the stand. She testified that Epstein held her hand and touched her inappropriately at movies in New York and New Mexico and that Maxwell touched her breasts during a massage in New Mexico when she was 16.

She also said Epstein climbed into bed with her and pressed himself against her before she fled to a bathroom until he left her room.

Her mother testified that Epstein told her that Farmer's trip to New Mexico would be with a group of up to 25 academically gifted high school students chaperoned by Maxwell, his wife. In reality, though, Farmer was the only student there  and Epstein and Maxwell were never married.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Jane said she was 14 when she met Maxwell and Epstein, and alleged that the pair fondled her together. Carolyn testified about what prosecutors called a pyramid of abuse encouraged by Maxwell, in which girls would recruit underage victims for Epstein to abuse.

Maxwell has been held without bail since her July 2020 arrest.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Maxwell was arrested in 2020, not 2019.
MISSION, Kan. (AP)  Rural Kansas hospitals are struggling to transfer patients as COVID-19 numbers surge, with some patients left stranded in emergency rooms for a week while they wait for a bed.

Space also was in short supply last winter and again over the summer when the delta variant first hit the state. The situation improved slightly this fall, but now is worsening again, according to Motient, a company contracted by Kansas to help manage transfers.

It isn't just rural hospitals looking for beds. Overwhelmed hospitals as far away as Minnesota and Michigan have been looking for beds in larger Kansas hospitals. Often there simply isn't room.

Dr. Richard Watson, founder of Motient, said Friday that the long-distance transfers and long waits for beds are becoming commonplace as the pandemic ends its second year, adding, Its already as crazy as it can be.

"When you are talking about moving people from Minnesota to Kansas City for treatment. Its like Mayo Clinic in reverse," he said.

Kansas averaged 41 new COVID-19 hospitalizations a day for the seven days ending Monday, according to state health department data, as total confirmed and probable cases for the pandemic topped 500,000.

Gov. Laura Kelly said she has no plans to pursue the same aggressive strategy of closing schools and businesses statewide that she did in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature ended a state of emergency in June and curbed the power of the Democratic governor and even local officials to impose restrictions.

We have the tools to stop the spread, Kelly told The Associated Press Monday. People really do need to not only get fully vaccinated, they need to get the booster shot.

Jesse Thomas, also of Motient, said Monday that it takes an average of eight and a half hours from the time a smaller hospital starts looking for a bed in a larger hospital to when an ambulance or air transportation arrives, up from about five hours this summer.

It used to be rare, and now its not rare," he said of the long waits.

Forty patients were on the board waiting to be transferred on Friday. Some have been languishing in emergency departments while they await transfers for days, sometimes more than a week, Watson said.

Watson said larger hospitals don't want COVID-19 patients unless they are really sick, adding that some are only accepting COVID-19 transfers if they need to be on a ventilator.

They know that their beds are at a premium and they have to hold them for the people who need them," Watson said, adding that COVID-19 patients who just need oxygen wind up stuck. He said the shortage of beds and staff to care for patients also has stranded patients with other health issues, such as heart attacks.

He said staffing shortages in nursing homes also contribute to the bed shortage because it means there is nowhere to send patients who are improving but still need extra care.

You cant put somebody in that bed if they cant clean it out," he said.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Dr. Jackie Hyland, the chief medical officer at the University of Kansas Health System's St. Francis campus in Topeka, complained about the problems nursing home shortages were causing on a recent call with Kansas and Missouri hospital officials.

It causes a backup all the way through to our emergency room and holding emergency room patients there, preventing them from getting admitted to a hospital bed," Hyland said.

Watson said he has never seen a problem like this on such a broad scale.

You may have a patient here or there thats having a difficulty and the hospital may be in a tight spot, but to have the whole system with people just locked in place for days at a level of care they really need to move out of, thats a different world for us, he said.

Watson said he anticipated the capacity issues would only grow worse over the holidays.

People expect there to be a different story," Watson said. But you know, here we got it: Its unvaccinated people. Omicron moves through. Nobodys paying attention. They all want it to go away for Christmas. Its not going away."

A handful of omicron cases have been detected in the state in recent days. The latest two were announced Monday in Wyandotte County in the Kansas City area.

___

Associated Press reporter John Hanna in Topeka contributed to this report.
NY Secretary of State

ALBANY  A brand of miniature toy race cars has been found to contain dangerously high levels of lead, and state officials are urging that it be pulled from store shelves.

The Super Car Racing Car set was found to have a lead level in excess of the 100 parts per million standard, the state Division of Consumer Protection said on Tuesday. After getting test results, DCP contacted the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission to further investigate and work to remove the toy from shelves around the country.
The following editorial appeared in the New York Daily News:

Americas wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, but the actions of many of the troops who served can continue to uplift a fractious nation. President Biden last week paid tribute to three such soldiers with the Medal of Honor.

In October 2005 in Samarra, Iraq, Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe was in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that was struck by an improvised explosive device, engulfing it in flames. Despite being burned on more than three-quarters of his body, despite continuing enemy fire, Cashe rescued six soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter. A month later, he would die from those burns.

A fact to take to heart: Despite that 16 percent of the active-duty military is Black, Cashe is the first African-American recipient of the medal since 9/11, a period during which 28 servicemen have been so honored.

The second soldier paid posthumous tribute was Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Celiz.

In Afghanistans Paktia Province in July 2018, the Army Ranger, in his fifth deployment, led a small unit to clear an area of enemy forces; it ended in an onslaught of gunfire. Celiz exposed himself to the fusillade as he secured a heavy weapon system and bought his unit precious time to reach cover, enabling a wounded comrade to get to a medical evacuation helicopter. He died soon thereafter of his wounds. Celiz is the first Jewish Medal of Honor recipient since 9/11.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter.

One soldier was at the White House to have the medal hung around his neck. In the summer of 2013, Master Sgt. Earl Plumlee was a Green Beret serving in Afghanistans Forward Operating Base Ghazni when it came under attack. An explosion ripped open the perimeter wall, and 10 armed insurgents wearing suicide vests rushed in. Plumlee then engaged the enemy fighters, killing multiple insurgents in an elaborate gunfight and saving many American lives.

Three humble soldiers who sacrificed for their brethren in good faith: America owes them not only thanks, but an honest attempt, even in small ways, to emulate their example.
ALBANY  Joseph Percoco, a onetime top aide to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo before he was convicted in an influence-peddling scandal, appears to be out of federal prison.

The 52-year-old is no longer listed on the federal Bureau of Prison's website as a resident of Otisville Correctional Facility in Orange County, where he began serving his six-year sentence in early 2019. The site now lists the Brooklyn field office of the bureau's Residential Reentry Management program. It's unclear when the change occurred; the federal agency does not comment on its release plans for prisoners.

At his September 2018 sentencing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Judge Valerie Caproni called the former executive deputy secretary to Cuomo a corrupt public official with little respect for the law and a bully.

Prosecutors had depicted Percoco as the governor's "enforcer." Cuomo called Percoco "my father's third son and my brother" during his 2015 eulogy for his father, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, whose administration had included Percoco at the outset of his career. The trial also included testimony from a number of state officials and members of Cuomo's inner circle, though the then-governor was never accused of wrongdoing.

Cuomo resigned from office in August, weeks after a report from the state attorney general's office accused him of being a serial sexual harasser.

Federal prosecutors said Percoco accepted $285,000 from a Connecticut-based energy company executive who hired Percoco's wife for a low-show $90,000-a-year teaching job as a backdoor way to bribe the aide in pursuit of official favors related to the company's development of a power plant in the Hudson Valley.

Percoco, who managed Cuomo's 2014 reelection campaign, also accepted $35,000 from top officials at a Syracuse-based development firm. The men sought the aide's influence to help them build a parking lot for a hotel project in the citys Inner Harbor.

He was convicted of honest services fraud, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and solicitation of bribes and gratuities. Percoco lost an appeal of his conviction in September. Attorneys who had worked for him during his trial and appeal did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Percoco's prison sentence had been scheduled to run through April 2024.

The same set of development scandals enveloped Alain Kaloyeros, the physicist and founder of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, who has remained free pending his appeal. Kaloyeros, who faces a 42-month sentence, is slated to report to federal prison early next year; he has requested to serve his sentence at Otisville.

Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was briefly released from Otisville last spring and allowed to return to his family apartment in Lower Manhattan. Amid a chorus of protests that the disgraced former power broker had served only nine months of a six-year corruption sentence, he was returned to custody.

Silver, who is said to be battling health problems, resides in a low-security medical facility, according to the Bureau of Prison's website.
ALBANY  New York lawmakers are considering scheduling a legislative committee hearing to revive a push for more funding for dam safety after a Times Union investigation revealed gaps in oversight of the structures across the state, many of which are in poor condition.

The newspaper's reporting found 147 large and potentially dangerous dams in New York are in "unsound" condition, while thousands of others haven't been inspected in 20 years or more.

In the wake of the story, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are calling for more to be done to ensure the state's dams are safe before a flood occurs.

We have some sort of climate-related disaster every day around the nation, said Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, D-Albany. This needs to be on the list of issues that need to be addressed. Its disturbing.

Assemblyman Steve Englebright, who chairs the Environmental Conservation Committee, said, "it is likely" legislators will push for more state funding to support dam safety in New York. The Democrat from Setauket also said his committee is considering holding a hearing to discuss the safety issues in the coming legislation session.

Gov. Kathy Hochul's office said the administration is looking for ways to bolster dam safety, including through newly-approved federal funds. The recently passed federal infrastructure law included billions for dam projects around the country, but the state Department of Environmental Conservation said it is unclear how much funding New York would get.

"Protecting communities from flooding is an important priority for this administration and we will continue to work with DECs dam safety experts to ensure the most comprehensive dam safety program and make the best possible use of available funds," Hochul spokesman Matthew Janiszewski said in a statement Monday. "We look forward to working with our federal and state partners to deploy additional funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and identify other future opportunities with all partners to increase investment and expand our efforts even further."

The Times Union found only 2 percent of dams in New York have been found to have "no deficiencies" by engineers, while 90 percent have not had their condition formally assessed.

DEC said it focuses its efforts on making sure the most dangerous dams in New York  those likely to cause fatalities if they failed  are in good condition through monitoring and enforcement activities, when necessary. The Times Union found some of those high hazards dams, including those regulated by federal authorities, have not been inspected on time and others do not have required emergency plans on file.

Several lawmakers said more must be done to address the state's aging dam infrastructure in the light of the findings.

Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay called dam safety "a decades-old issue that state regulators have struggled to stay ahead of."

"The recent Times Union report certainly raises questions on whether the proper priority is being placed on the condition and inspection of New Yorks dams," Barclay said in a statement. "Year after year, weve seen state money sent to the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) while upstate infrastructure gets shortchanged. Our roads, bridges and dams have needed upgrades for years. Achieving greater parity in infrastructure funding would go a long way toward alleviating a dam-safety issue that needs to be addressed.

Utica-area Republican state Sen. Joe Griffo represents the area around Hinckley Reservoir, where a violent 2019 cloudburst caused a dam to overflow, with flooding and damage downstream.

It is imperative that the states dams be up to modern standards and that financial resources be made available  through the recent federal infrastructure bill or any other means  to address any deficiencies and shortcomings to ensure safety and functionality, Griffo said.

Fahy questioned if the current dams and impoundments are adequate, given the apparent increase in torrential rainfalls and storm events.

State Sen. Dan Stec, a Republican from Queensbury, said the state could consider using additional funding to produce a comprehensive statewide evaluation of New York's dams.

"Id like to see a risk assessment and a prioritization of which dams need attention, Stec said. Of all the infrastructure that we have in our communities, I would guess that dams are probably thought of least often. But if something goes very wrong, theres little that you can do other than evacuate and wait for the damage to be done."

Englebright said DEC has been understaffed for years and some commissioners at some agencies, including DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos, have not advocated for the staffing and resources needed to fully complete their missions. Englebright recounted asking commissioners each year if they have adequate staffing.

"I dont believe he has been allowed to answer in a truthful manner," Englebright said of Seggos.

Seggos said Monday DEC has consistently provided accurate information about staffing, legislative mandates and regulatory requirements.

"Each year, I note DEC continues to meet the increasing demands of its mission with the staffing levels authorized in the budget. We are constantly evaluating the needs for the agency, including growing needs around climate change and clean water, while communicating them to the Executive and Legislature."

DEC will be announcing new grants for improvements to high hazard dams soon, a spokesperson said.

U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, said the federal infrastructure law includes $585 million for the most hazardous dams in the nation and $148 million to support state dam safety offices.

Tonko, Rep. Grace Meng, D-Queens, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-Cold Spring, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and other federal lawmakers also back proposed legislation to invest an additional $21 billion in modernizing, repairing or removing dams across the country.
Drought-stricken California is facing a week of heavy mountain snowfall and widespread rain from another series of the kind of storms that were not expected to be likely this fall and winter due to La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean
A Connecticut appeals court says a local historical society cannot try to impose its conservation rules on a congregational church that dates back to 1700 and is located on the celebrated Lebanon Town Green
We're finally getting into the holiday season if only because it's fun to watch so many locals beg for money.



Accordingly, here's a glimpse at Historic Kansas City and their mission to stir up social media debate, spark a few news stories and that ALWAYS LOSE COUNCIL VOTING.



Seriously, we can't remember one instance wherein these history lovers came out on top.

Nevertheless . . .

We admire their dedication and share a glimpse of the group asking for support . . .



While HKC trimmed our expenses as much as possible, we still need critical support to remain viable and whole. No in-person events were held during 2020 or 2021 due to COVID resulting in a combined estimated loss in revenue of $179,194. Not having face-to-face events and meetings slowed down our ability to continue to build our membership and solicit financial support. But HKC has not sat still. We actively secured two forgivable loans from the Paycheck Protection Program and increased our corporate sponsor support. Yet, our financial future remains uncertain.



We recognize that you are most likely lending a hand to many critical efforts. If your circumstances allow, we need your help to continue protecting the places and stories that matter to all of us. Your support of HKC will help secure our greatest assets: our dedicated staff.

You decide . . .


For close readers we share really depressing follow-up to a soul-crushing report along with more deets about police action, court cases and news from tonight . . . And, as always, we attempt to finish with a bit of hope.



Jacqulyn Kirkpatrick sentenced to more than 3O years for death of Olivia Jansen KANSAS CITY, KS (KCTV) -- A woman who pleaded guilty for the death of Olivia Jansen learned her fate inside an emotional courtroom Monday afternoon. Jacqulyn Kirkpatrick was sentenced to 376 months, a little more than 31 years, with credit for time served.

Jacqulyn Kirkpatrick sentenced to 31 years for the murder of 3-year-old Olivia Jansen WARNING: Details in this story may be considered graphic to someJacqulyn Kirkpatrick has been sentenced for murder in the 2nd degree, in the death of 3-year-old Olivia Jansen. She was also sentenced for one count of child abuse and two counts of interference with a law enforcement officer.Kirkpatrick pleaded guilty to the crimes back in early November.

Woman sentenced to more than 30 years for death of 3-year-old Olivia Jansen KANSAS CITY, Kan. - A Wyandotte County judge sentenced a woman to more than 31 years in prison for her role in the death of her boyfriend's 3-year-old daughter. Jacqulyn Kirkpatrick was sentenced to 376 months, or 31 years and 3 months, in prison in total on Monday in the death of Olivia Jansen.

Kansas City man convicted of 15 illegal gun sales KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A Kansas City man has been convicted of illegally selling 15 guns, including some that have been linked to shootings. Federal prosecutors said 27-year-old Mickael Oliver will face at least seven years in prison when he is sentenced.

Kansas City man sentenced following gunfight that injured car lot employee KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A Kansas City man was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for a robbery attempt that ended in a gunfight at a Grandview, Missouri, car lot. Lyndale E. Watson, who also goes by "Red, "Blood," and "Stoni Blud," pleaded guilty to attempted robbery and carrying a firearm in July.

Road rage victim's organ donations help save seven lives Organ donation is turning a fatal road rage incident into new life for seven people.HCA Midwest is honoring 19-year-old Christopher Hutson Jr. on Monday night for choosing organ donation."He was a ball of energy. He was a loving kind, funny person. He could get along with anybody, any race, any age," Hutson's brother Desmond Hutson said.

Pregnant Kansas City mom gifted new car after vehicle stolen, stripped for parts KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A stranger's act of kindness is helping a pregnant Kansas City mother-in-need get a new set of wheels for her family. Dalynn Moore's car was stolen after leaving it on I-435 following a flat tire. Police found her car a few days later, but her car was no longer drivable, stripped of all major parts.

Developing . . .


Context for a recent court decision . . .

In 2013, Congress defined mass killing as a single incident that leaves three or more people dead.

A tragic local killing meets that qualification.

Sadly, testimony after the massacre didn't offer much explanation for the bloodbath . . .

Court records say she admitted to shooting all three victims. When asked why, she said, because Im a bad person.

The reality is that it seemed as if the slaughter was a result of a confrontation at a local drug den.



Meanwhile, the presser from the courthouse reports the aftermath . . .



Woman sentenced to three consecutive prison sentences of Life Without Parole for triple murder

Dec. 21, 2021



A Jackson County judge on Tuesday sentenced a Kansas City woman to three consecutive Life Without Parole sentences for a triple murder in October 2019 near 45th and South Benton Avenue in KC, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced today.



In November, a Jackson County jury convicted Lynnsey D. Jones, dob: 9/5/1984, of three counts of Murder 1st Degree and three counts of Armed Criminal Action. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced her to three Life Without Parole sentences, running consecutively, and 30 years on the Armed Criminal Action convictions, set to run concurrently with the other sentences.



According to court records, Kansas City police responded to the area of 45th and South Benton Avenue on the sound of gunshots. A woman, the defendant, was taken into custody at the scene. A firearm was recovered from the vehicle that she was observed entering on the passenger side. Another suspect also was taken into custody. Police located three deceased victims at the scene.



Jones will be sentenced by a Jackson County judge in a future hearing. A second defendant in the murders awaits trial.



Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys Jeremy Baldwin, Dion Sankar and Clayton Whitworth prosecute the case on behalf of the state of Missouri.

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Developing . . .


Per ushe, most of the content from the newspaper is pure promotional garbage.



However, in order to hype one of their favorites, they inadvertently offered a reasonable perspective on the problems which have confronted the district . . .



"Instability in leadership was one of the reasons the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education cited for stripping the district of its accreditation in 2011. KCPS has yet to get it back. The district needed someone to reverse enrollment decline, improve academic performance and graduation rates, hire the best teachers and get them in the right classrooms, raise the course rigor, provide more early childhood opportunities, assure equity in education and in extra curricular offerings and more. In short, change the narrative and reality of KCPS to one of a system that is thriving."

And so we ask . . .

WHAT HAS CHANGED?!?!

Test scores are still mediocre especially when we're talking STEM.

The pandemic sparked a MASSIVE DROPOUT and scores of students just disappeared during the worst parts of COVID.

Unfortunately, an even worse question looms . . .

WOULD YOU SEND YOUR STUDENT TO KCPS IF THERE WAS ANY OTHER OPTION?!?

For most, the answers is a resounding NO.

Proof . . .

More parents prefer charter schools over places where KCPS has direct control.

"Of the more than 26,500 K-12 students who attended either KCPS or a charter school within the districts boundaries near the end of September, a slight majority attends one of 20 charter schools."



Sadly . . .

The newspaper isn't really offering their readers any objective analysis or numbers supporting the KCPS honcho . . . Instead, we're simply enduring another celebratory screed hyping a bourgeois hero with very little achievement but politics appealing to middle-class scribes.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . .
There's a great deal to unpack in this story . . .



At the outset, there's reasonable & fair skepticism about the narrative so far . . .

Translation and a question that has been unanswered . . .

WHY WAS THE KCFD TRUCK ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STREET?!?!



A swerve to avoid a collision would be understandable . . . But so far we've only been given the initial report that a collision drove the truck across the street.

Given the extreme weight differential between the truck and a smallish Honda SUV, that is impossible . . . Unless, maybe, the Honda was traveling at 500 miles an hour.



We can only hope that nobody sends an nearby causal drug user to jail in order to find "closure" for this incident.

And so . . .

Remembering the dead before any character assassination begins is important for the public.

Here's a glimpse at local tribute and the latest info from authorities, local media and mourning friends & families . . .



The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department announced all three victims in the deadly crash Wednesday, but family had previously identified the man and woman in the passenger vehicle who died.

Both the driver, 41-year-old Jennifer San Nicholas, and the passenger, 25-year-old Michael J. Elwood, of the SUV were killed in the crash.



A pedestrian, now identified as 41-year-old Tami N. Knight, was also caught in crash and killed, according to police.



In addition to her focus on photography, Knight was a research analyst for the Kansas City, Missouri, Public School District.



Tami was so good at so many things and photography was definitely something she really excelled at both for work and for herself," friend Courtney Crutcher said. "She was an amazing photographer of abstract art."

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

Loved ones remember woman killed in crash while walking on Westport sidewalk KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Family and friends fondly remembered Tami Knight as a friend who had a passion for photography and helping others. Police identified Knight , 41, as the pedestrian who died Wednesday as she walked on the sidewalk when a Kansas City, Missouri, Fire Department pumper truck struck another vehicle and crashed in a building in Westport.

Three victims identified in Westport crash involving Kansas City firetruck KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Police have identified the three victims killed after a crash last week involving a Kansas City firetruck. The firetruck was responding to a possible weather-related fire when it was pulled off and another firetruck was dispatched instead. With lights and sirens on, the truck continued north on Broadway Boulevard.

Police identify three victims KCFD firetruck crash, Wesport building collapse The Kansas City, Missouri Police Department has released the identities of the three people killed in a crash involving a Kansas City, Missouri Fire Department firetruck last week. The incident happened around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.A KCFD firetruck was heading to a fire call, with lights and sirens on, when it hit an SUV.The firetruck then crashed into a building near Westport Road and Broadway.

Police identify pedestrian killed in crash with KCFD fire truck KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Police on Monday identified the pedestrian that was struck and killed in last week's crash in Westport that also killed two others. Tami Knight, 41, of Kansas City, Missouri, was walking on a sidewalk along Broadway Boulevard shortly after 10 p.m.

Developing . . .
And there is news of another collaboration...this time the Air Guard working with the Prison
What would happen to Russia should it decide to launch a full-scale war with Ukraine?

Putin is told of the many unresolved problems existing in Russia and recalled of train cars filled with unidentified bodies of Russian soldiers. Russia has already suffered trillions in losses due to the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas. Meanwhile, Russians arent too eager to fight for the Kremlin. But will any of this stop Putin?

Dialogue at gunpoint

On December 8, Putin called out as provocative The Kommersants question on whether Russia is going to invade Ukraine. He responded in an evasive wordy manner, starting off with a complex sentence involving a "but": "Russia pursues a peaceful foreign policy but ..." This was followed by the same old song about NATO expansion which allegedly threatens Russias security.

The conjunction seems to hint at such possibility.

On December 14, after phone calls with Finlands President Sauli Niiniste and French President Emmanuel Macron, Putin called for "urgent" international talks to work out "legally formalized guarantees" of Russia's security.

According to the Kremlin's website, the guarantees, as Putin sees them, should exclude any further NATO expansion to the east" and deployment of "weapons that threaten Russia" in neighboring countries, especially in Ukraine.

Putin likes talking to the West holding Ukraine at gunpoint, as journalist Roman Honcharenko put it.

However, according to Bloomberg, the Kremlin understands that there is practically no chance to get such guarantees from the Alliance. White House officials say Putin will not have a right to vote on future NATO enlargement. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also assured that the Alliance's relations with Ukraine remain unchanged. "This is a fundamental principle: every nation has the right to choose its own path," he told reporters in Brussels.

Photo: The Ukrainian President's Office

Answering La Repubblicas question, whether he was ready to abandon Ukraine's NATO membership plans in exchange for a guaranteed withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "It is strange to hear the Russian side asking for any guarantees after Russia itself has violated so many commitments.

Putin has repeatedly made it clear that he considers Ukrainians to be one nation with the Russians, and that Ukrainian lands are historical lands of Russia. This is his phantom pain and obsession. But how what lengths is he willing to go to gain the right to control Ukraine at his own discretion?

Many experts put forward reasonable arguments against the possibility of a Russian large-scale military invasion of Ukraine.

They say that Putin is quite happy with the implementation of the Minsk agreements, to have parts of Donbas that are now occupied return to Ukraine, while de facto remaining under Russian control. This way, he would get several million Ukrainian voters who would be voting in Russia's favor and definitely prevent Ukraine's integration into NATO, while Ukraine would bear all responsibility for any socio-economic problems in these territories. And this seems to be enough for Putin.

Andrey Piontkovsky/RFE/RL

Andrey Piontkovsky also added rational arguments, at the same time urging everyone to keep in mind the apt description that Boris Nemtsov once gave to Putin in an interview with Ukrainian television: Just so you know, he is crazy.

Translating this into diplomatic language, we can say that his actions are not always predictable  they can be irrational. Therefore, it is impossible to rule out a scenario that might seem crazy.

According to Valerii Kravchenko, an expert with the National Institute for Strategic Studies, Moscow sees that the "window of opportunity" is closing  Ukraine may soon break away completely. This forces Russia to act hastily.

Kravchenko suggests that Putin's plan may be to create an "alternative Ukraine"  a proxy that would enter into an alliance with Belarus and Russia.

Valentyn Badrak, chief of the Center for Army Research, Conversion and Disarmament, believes Putin's only chance of not losing Ukraine is to launch a blitzkrieg immediately.

"Putin is well aware that a strong but non-fatal blow would mean death for the one who inflicted it. Therefore, it is either blitzkrieg or total failure. Russia is incapable of a protracted war at the moment, said Badrak.

"Let's allow everyone who doesn't love us to just go"

Thus, the hypothetical price that Russia could pay for launching a war against Ukraine in the event of a blitzkrieg failure is the complete collapse of Russia itself.

But Russia, as it turned out, could face collapse even without this war with Ukraine.

On December 9, during a meeting of the Human Rights Council, Putin unexpectedly acknowledged the fragility of the Russian Federation. He reacted really nervously to the address by film director Alexander Sokurov. The latter said, in particular, that in the national republics people increasingly dislike ethnic Russians and want to say goodbye to them. And how young people in the North Caucasus claim that in the event of a war between Russia and NATO, they will not fight for Russia. He also spoke of the approach of the "Islamic Revolution" in Russia.

"Let's allow everyone who doest want to live in one country with us to just go," said the director.

In response, Putin said that "NATO wants to turn us into Muscovy", asked "not to call trouble," suddenly adding that Russia has "two thousand territorial claims," so it may face a "repeat of Yugoslavia."

By the way, one of such territorial conflicts was resolved in the most awkward way: Moscow simply put the leaders of protests in Ingushetia in jail for 7.5 to 9 years. They had been protesting against the change of border in favor of Chechnya. Among those accused was a chair of a local council. Obviously, such actions do not prevent the "repetition of Yugoslavia" scenario  they actually accelerate it.

Alexander Sokurov/Getty Images

Sokurov didnt mention Ukraine but said that, instead of waging war, Russia should focus on developing its own territories.

I hope that you, like me, have an aversion to war and blood. Russia doesnt need to go to war... I appeal to you once again, as I have already said: it is time for us to work on a new Russia ... Let's build roads, restore Russian villages, support northern business, restore health care in the North, the director begged.

Dmitry Muratov, editor of Russia's Novaya Gazeta, also subtly objected to a war with Ukraine in his speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Condemning the "aggressive war marketing" on state television channels, Muratov mentioned another nation sitting in front of other TV sets."

"During the Chechen war, five white refrigerated cars stood on rails at a station. They were guarded around the clock. It was a morgue on wheels. The bodies of unidentified soldiers and officers were stored in those refrigerators. Many had their faces mutilated from direct hits or torture And in a small house by the tracks stood a TV set. In the chairs, like in a rail station waiting room, sat mothers and fathers of the missing soldiers. And the cameraman carrying a video camera put images of bodies on the screen, one after another. One after another. 458 times. This is how many military servicemen lay on the shelves of these cars in their last train, taking them from war to death. Mothers who had spent months searching for their boys in the mountains and gorges of Chechnya, seeing their sons face on the screen, shouted: It's not him! Its not him! And yet, it was. Today's visionaries promote the idea of dying for the Fatherland, not living for it. Lets not let this TV fool us once again, said Muratov.

A study by the Moscow Carnegie Centre found that Russians perceive the idea of a real major war without enthusiasm:

Photo: EPA

"The military actions in Donbas in 2014 against the background of the triumphant capture of Crimea were perceived very positively. However, as soon as it became clear that Donbas and Luhansk were, to put it mildly, a slightly different format of military operation, much bloodier and more destructive ... the war ceased to please people, it began to frighten them instead. And if there is a war tomorrow, as the song goes, let a professional army go in and fight, not our boy, he still needs to enter a university, then find a job, while we actually have plans to go on a seaside holiday, so what war are you talking about?

"Russia's losses will be significant"

On Russian TV talk shows, where they had been conquering and burying Ukraine year after year, they keep doing just that.

Low-profile military experts call for an urgent solution to the "Ukrainian issue": "If the Ukrainian issue is not resolved immediately, in the most radical way, such a war will happen anyway, but then, human and material losses would be much greater."

Propagandists twist the headlines of foreign media: NYT: The Armed Forces of Ukraine will be destroyed in 30-40 minutes - head of Ukraine's military intelligence assessed the country's chances in the event of war with Russia. Of course, the head of military intelligence never said that. Instead, the statement came from Robert Lee, a professor of Kings College London, who meant that Russia can inflict much damage very quickly. But he never said it would take Russia 30-40 minutes to annihilate the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Nothing new about this, of course. There is another thing that is more notable  cautious voices saying that Russia will also pay a hefty price. For example, Sergei Tsekov, a member of the Federation Council representing the occupied Crimea, said that "no one is interested in an armed conflict," and that "Russia's losses will also be significant.

Sergei Tsekov

The National Interest (TNI) is one of the favorite American media outlets for Russian propagandists and pro-Russian media in Ukraine. It often praises Russia, especially its military power, calls on the U.S. leadership to reckon with it, and most importantly, not to sacrifice relations with Russia for the sake of Ukraine, because it does not seem to be worth a try. It is headed by an American of Soviet descent, who in mid-2018 became a co-host of the Bolshaya Igra panel show on Russias state-run TV Channel First.

This time, TNI also came out with a similar position. If Washington refuses to acknowledge Russias red lines, they say, Putin is ready to fight, and there is little the U.S. can do to stop him.

But there is one caveat. Russia will in fact pay the price: "The good news is that Putin almost certainly understands that an invasion of Ukraine would lead to a complete break in relations with the West, rendering Russia in effect a dependent junior partner of China. Moreover, he probably realizes that Russian forces would very likely have to deal with guerrilla resistance in occupied Ukrainian territory, and that unoccupied portions of western Ukraine could become a host for U.S. and NATO forces over the longer term. It is doubtful that these are outcomes he finds appealing.

Trillions of dollars in losses

According to the estimates of military and political observer Oleksandr Kovalenko, Russia has already paid quite the price for its invasion.

"Since 2014, Russia's GDP has lost more than $5.56 trillion. This is the price of the occupied part of Donbas, this is the price of the occupied Crimean Peninsula, this is the price paid by the Russian economy for seven years in a row. So, I just wonder, was it worth it? asks Kovalenko.

Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security
A Ukrainian serviceman was wounded in hostilities in the Joint Forces Operation zone.

This is stated in the morning update released by the JFO Headquarters, Ukrinform reports.

Since day-start on December 21, as of 7:00, one violation of the ceasefire regime has been recorded on the part of the Russian occupation forces. In the direction of Shyrokyne, the enemy fired small arms.

A soldier with the Joint Forces was wounded in combat. The serviceman was provided medical aid on the ground before being evacuated to a medical facility. His condition remains moderate.

In the past 24 hours, on December 20, the Russian occupation forces committed four ceasefire violations, 1 of which involved weapons proscribed by the Minsk agreements.

In the area of the settlements of Hnutove and Vodiane, the enemy flew unmanned aerial vehicles, which dropped VOG-17 shots.

In the direction of Novoluhanske, the occupiers employed automatic easel-mounted grenade launchers. In the direction of Nevelske, the enemy used 120-mm mortars.

Two soldiers with the Joint Forces sustained injuries in an IED explosion. The servicemen, one of whom is in severe condition, are now undergoing treatment in a medical facility.

Ukrainian defenders returned fire and forced the enemy to cease the attacks.

The Joint Forces are monitoring the situation in the area, continuing to deter and repel Russias armed aggression.

Photo: mil.gov.ua

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In January-November 2021, the foreign trade turnover of agricultural products and foodstuffs increased by 22% compared to the corresponding period of 2020, reaching $31.3 billion.

"According to the official data of the State Customs Service, the foreign trade turnover of agricultural products and foodstuffs over the first 11 months of this year increased by 22% compared to 2020 and reached about $31.3 billion, accounting for 24.7% of Ukraines total foreign trade turnover of goods," the press service of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine informs.

As noted, during this period, agricultural exports increased by 22% compared to January-November 2020, totaling $24.4 billion (accounting for 39.8% of total exports of goods from Ukraine). Ukraines major agricultural and food exports in January-November 2021 remained grains, oils, oilseeds and oilcake, solid residues from the extraction of vegetable fats and oils.

According to the Ministry, the main importers of Ukrainian agri-food products were China (15.4% in the structure of exports of agricultural products and foodstuffs), India (6.5%), the Netherlands (6.4%), Egypt (5.9%), Turkey (4.8%).

In January-November 2021, imports of agricultural products and foodstuffs increased by 20% compared to the corresponding period of 2020 and amounted to $6.9 billion, or 10.5% of total imports of goods to Ukraine. The major agricultural products and food imports were: fruits, nuts and peel; fish, crustaceans and molluscs; tobacco and tobacco products; cocoa beans, cocoa products, chocolate; oils. Ukraine mainly imported agricultural products and foodstuffs from Poland (10.5%), Germany (6.9%), Italy (6.9%), Turkey (6.1%), Indonesia (4.3%).

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The Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine has selected two infrastructure projects in Mykolaiv region that will be funded under a framework agreement with Denmark.

"The Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine has selected two infrastructure projects in Mykolayiv region that will be funded under a framework agreement with the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark within the Danida Business Finance program in Ukraine," the Ministrys press service informs.

These projects are "Modernization of district heating system of Private Joint Stock Company Mykolayiv Combine Heat and Power Plant" and "Provision of quality water supply and sewerage services to residents and businesses of Voznesensk City Territorial Community".

More projects will be selected later. They will be implemented in Mykolayiv, Kharkiv, Kherson regions, as well as in the government-controlled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The projects should be non-profit and concern renewable energy, energy efficiency, district heating, water supply and water treatment.

Danida Business Finance is a program implemented by the Kingdom of Denmark aiming to solve infrastructure problems and providing interest-free loans with a maturity period of up to 10 years. The cost of such projects ranges from EUR 13.5 million to EUR 100 million. The procedure for selecting projects related to the reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and the development of infrastructure of adjacent territories to be financed is approved by Government Regulation No. 705 of July 7, 2021.

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The State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection addressed the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety with a proposal to consider the possibility of launching Ukrainian potato exports to the European Union.

"Ukraine fulfills its commitments under the EUUkraine Association Agreement, in particular, to adapt national legislation to the European potato growing sector legislation. We will continue to make every effort to open the EU market for Ukrainian potato growers," said Vladyslava Mahaletska, Head of the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection, during a meeting with representatives of the Ukrainian Association of Potato Producers.

Ukraine and the European colleagues are currently discussing the need to appoint in 2022 an inspection of European experts to launch the Ukrainian potato exports to the EU.

Ukraine is the fourth-largest potato producer in the world after China, India, and Russia. Ukraine also ranks 2nd worldwide in terms of per capita consumption of this product after Belarus. Ukrainians eat 139 kg of potatoes per person per year, while the world average is 33 kg per person per year.

In 2020, the gross yield of potatoes increased by 2.9% compared to 2019 and reached 20.9 million tonnes. At the same time, the area for potato planting also increased by 1.3% up to 1,325,000 hectares, showing an increase in yield compared to the previous year.

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The prime minister has named the top six tasks toward economic growth

Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic affected global financial markets and that in Ukraine. Authorities were worried about the vaccination campaign to save peoples lives and health and allow businesses to recover from the enforced quarantine restrictions. However, the inoculation campaign has been successfully launched and the latest stats on more than 40% of adult population having been vaccinated are a key factor in ensuring that no new lockdown is in the works. Now we are cautiously optimistic about economic development and changes for the better.

This was emphasized by Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal who spoke at the "Ukraine and the world ahead of 2022 gala event, organized by the Novoe Vremya magazine. The following is a sort of top 6 tasks for the country, taken from the prime ministers speech.

1. Achieving an increase in annual investment to $15 billion and running "rapid" privatization

This year, we expect $6.5 billion in foreign investment, said Denys Shmyhal. Given that weve been living through the second "Covid" year, this is a pretty good figure. Our state's economic development strategy until 2030 lays down $15 billion a year. It is achievable, and were working on it  in particular, the relevant legislation has been adopted and regulations have been amended to stimulate investment.

We expect the law on investment nannies and large investors to work effectively We have signed and submitted to the Ministry of Economy the first two packages of documents worth $96 million in investment. In fact, there are even more applicants  20 projects and applications for more than $1.7 billion. I am convinced that next year the number these applications and the volume of investment will be even higher because the law provides good discounts and preferences for investors. We will work to make these preferences even better because we are competing with our neighbors. That is, we want to win regional competition for the investor. Therefore, this work will be permanent and constant. We understand our weak points - it's connecting to networks and providing long and cheap money for business development. We are working to address these issues.

We made privatization open, and it worked. We will move further along this track Among the highlights of the government's work will be rapid, explosive privatization  large, small, and medium. We are minimizing the role of the state in the economy in order to make everything efficient.

2. Public-private partnership should be developed so that the economy does not rely only on the state budget

It is impossible to place the burden of economic development and infrastructure on the state budget because it is capped, the prime minister stressed. Miracles dont just happen, as every businessman here understands. We need bank syndicates, effective private investment, we need a public-private partnership. We will also focus on this next year. Concessions of ports, roads, production sharing agreements in the field of hydrocarbon production We will develop all possible types of public-private partnerships. We see this as a great prospect for our country. This will result in a multiplier  a five-fold increase in investment.

3. Ukraine must continue to work for the liberation of the occupied territories, as this will help move forward and improve the economic situation.

Today, we need to continue working with the international community to ensure that Ukraine has the temporarily occupied territories liberated. They must be freed and (control of our - ed.) borders must be restored. Of course, this will give us even more confidence, even more progress. While negotiations at the diplomatic level are underway and our Army is protecting us, we are working on the implementation of economic reforms and changing the investment climate. And I really want to believe that every year we will hear that business actually sees the governments work on changing the investment climate and economic conditions. This will be the driver that will allow us to achieve 7-8% GDP growth in the future.

Were seeing armed aggression, and this, among other things, affects our efforts to attract investors to Ukraines financial and industrial markets. Of course, this must be taken into account in the macroeconomic forecast  despite our stability and all the positive factors. Still, this (armed aggression - ed.) affects and slows our development.

4. In 15 years, the funded pension system should generate about $50 billion worth of resources

The funded pension system and the stock market are very interrelated We have signed a memorandum with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, USAID, and the American Chamber of Commerce on the establishment of stock market infrastructure and commodity exchanges in Ukraine. The memorandum stipulates that in three years we will receive the most modern clearing system and the most modern stock exchange. We understand where growth points may be in these areas.

Filling the stock market with financial and economic content is possible when the country has accumulated "long resources." And this should be the funded pension system. According to our estimates, in 15 years the funded pension system will be able to collect and generate about $50 billion in resources, which will be "long" And on the one hand, it will be a pension for you and me, and on the other hand  a huge economic potential.

5. Ukraine needs thermal modernization and transformation of coal regions

Thermal modernization is something that will help us become energy independent. Important to this end are the agreements on the distribution of hydrocarbon products  this is about the production of gas in the first place. Also, energy modernization of households, industry, and businesses will allow us to save from 30 to 40% on consumption. In fact, more than 50% of Ukraine's gas is imported. Therefore, 40% savings in consumption and an increase in gas extraction by 10% will allow us to break even. Moreover, we can become a gas-exporting country. It is also a point for the government to work on, together with national companies.

Transformation of coal regions is more about the environment, about the fact that we want to move along with a global context. The world is abandoning fossil fuels, switching to alternative sources, switching to hydrogen, and there are no other options for development. Therefore, the state must coordinate the work toward transforming these regions. Most European countries have gone through this, today they are advising us. Next year we will start six pilot transformation projects - from a coal monocity to a city that doesnt depend on mine operations. Thats how we will be moving towards 2040. The Transformation of Coal Regions is a major government project, but it is also business-related, as we are considering ways to attract investors to such regions.

6. Digitalization is needed as an important element of anti-corruption reform and business facilitation

- Id like to remind you of the already globally-acclaimed brand Diia and I am also convinced that businesses are seeing some relief (thanks to this application - ed.), starting from registration. We will develop digital tools Digitalization is one of the most important elements and factors of anti-corruption reform because even before being elected, President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that computers dont take bribes. Today we are competing with Estonia, a world leader in digitalization. We want to be a global leader in digitalization, we want to have a "paperless government" in the near future and are actively working to this end.

By Bozhena Ketsmur, Kyiv

Photo: Government Portal
In the Netherlands, during a court hearing in the MH17 downing case, prosecutors said that four defendants, the so-called former DPR defense minister Igor Girkin (Strelkov), head of the DPR GRU general (colonel at the time of the tragedy) of the Russian GRU Sergey Dubinskiy, GRU lieutenant colonel Oleg Pulatov (all Russian citizens), and Leonid Kharchenko, a citizen of Ukraine who fought for the DPR, were responsible for the deaths of 298 people on board the plane.

This was reported by an Ukrinform correspondent.

Girkin, Dubinsky, Pulatov and Kharchenko were directly responsible for Buk. Their actions led to the plane crash and the deaths of 298 people. They themselves did not push the button, but they asked for, received, and applied the Buk for their military purposes, as a result of which MH17 was shot down. The defendants intended to shoot down a Ukrainian military plane, but this does not change the essence of accusations and evidence. Dutch law prohibits the downing of any aircraft. Thus, the four accused are guilty of murder. They used the Buk as a weapon in pursuit of their military goals. They are guilty regardless of whether their target was a military or a civilian plane," he said.

He also stressed that from the very start, the inquiry had been conducted at the highest level, and all witness statements, satellite imagery, photos, and videos were carefully verified.

According to him, it was possible to identify the actors heard in intercepted communications. Some even confirmed their voice on the recording.

We compared data from phone communication with information from other sources, checked the location of communication towers. We also confiscated the equipment used for filming and memory cards to check whether any data was doctored, for example, to verify if a photo is real, "he said.

The Dutch prosecutor also stressed that Russia had provided doctored satellite imagery. The Russian Federation also failed to explain where the Buk missile launcher, Reg. No. 3X2, of the Russian armys Kursk-based 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade, was located on July 17, 2014.

The prosecution also said that Russia had vetoed the UN Security Council's decision to establish an international tribunal into the MH17 crash, so it was decided to hold a trial in the Netherlands as most of the victims in the crash are the countrys nationals. The aim was to identify those involved in the tragedy and prepare evidence to be presented in courts to have the perpetrators prosecuted under Dutch criminal law.

"The Netherlands is not involved in the conflict in Ukraine but it does have jurisdiction because crimes against Dutch citizens committed anywhere in the world remain punishable," said the Dutch prosecutor.

According to him, the Russian special services are trying to prevent the revelation of the truth about the downing of MH17, so measures have been taken to protect each witness in the case.

He also stressed that after the relatives of the victims saw so much fake news on what had caused the plane crash, its very important for them to finally hear the truth.

"The court's judgment should bring them (families of the victims - ed.) peace and tranquility, and also contribute to preventing such tragedies in the future We are ready to hear the accused and ensure a fair trial," said the Dutch prosecutor.

It should be noted that the prosecutions statement consists of four parts. It will cover the evidence in place, data on the involvement of those accused in the plane downing, and claims of the relatives of the victims, set to complete this years hearings with a motion asking the court to hand down a guilty verdict.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the latest hearing in the MH17 trial began in the Netherlands on Monday at 10:00 local time.

The prosecutors began reading out the indictment.

According to the preliminary schedule, the court hearings are to continue through December 22.

Memo. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over the occupied area of Donetsk region on July 17, 2014. There were 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board. All of them died. The international Joint Investigation Team reported that the plane had been shot down from a Buk missile system that belonged to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces stationed in Kursk.

On June 19, 2019, the JIT named four suspects believed to be involved in the transportation and combat use of the Buk missile system, from which MH17 flight had been downed. Three of them are Russians: Igor Girkin (Strelkov), former colonel in Russia's FSB intelligence service and former so-called defense minister of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic"; Sergey Dubinskiy, general (at the time of downing  colonel) of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and head of the so-called "Main Intelligence Directorate of the Donetsk Peoples Republic"; Oleg Pulatov, lieutenant colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. The fourth suspect is Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian civilian, who fought on the side of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic.

In March 2020, the District Court of The Hague began the consideration of the case over the downing of Flight MH17.

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The presidents of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania have expressed their deep concern over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project and expressed their readiness to take joint action to counter Russia's monopolization of the European gas market.

That's according to a joint statement by the leaders of the three countries, published on the website of the Ukrainian president on December 20, Ukrinform reports.

"[The presidents] reiterated their strong commitment to further strengthening the European energy security and in this regard expressed their profound concern over the Nord Stream 2 project that represents a security challenge for the European region," the document said.

The presidents expressed their readiness to work together to oppose the monopolization of the European gas market by Russia, "which is using energy as a geopolitical tool."

A summit of the leaders of the Lublin Triangle - the presidents of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania - took place on Monday, December 20, at the Syniohora residence in the village of Huta, Ivano-Frankivsk region.

The Lublin Triangle was set up in July 2020 by the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, who signed a joint declaration on the establishment of a new regional alliance. Among the priorities of the format are strengthening the region, strengthening security, Ukraine's integration into the EU and NATO, the development of economic cooperation, and joint counteraction to hybrid threats.

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The U.S. Department of State continues to advise U.S. citizens not to visit Ukraine due to the situation with the spread of COVID-19 and a growing military threat from Russia.

That's according to an updated travel advisory issued by the Department of State on Monday, December 20, Ukrinform reports.

"The Department of State continues to advise U.S. citizens not to travel to Ukraine due to COVID-19 and to reconsider travel due to increased threats from Russia," the statement said.

According to the travel advisory, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a Level 4 Travel Health Notice for Ukraine, indicating a very high level of COVID-19 in the country.

In addition, the statement points to increased threats from Russia.

"U.S. citizens should be aware of reports that Russia is planning for significant military action against Ukraine. U.S. citizens are also reminded the security conditions, particularly along Ukraine's borders, in Russia-occupied Crimea, and in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine, are unpredictable and can deteriorate with little notice," the document said.

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European Solidarity party leader, MP Petro Poroshenko has said that he will return to Ukraine from a business trip abroad in the first half of January.

He said this in a video address posted on Facebook, Ukrinform reports.

"I want to emphasize that I receive congratulations from the President's Office that they will take it with understanding if I stay in Europe. I want to emphasize that I will not give them such a gift and will return to Ukraine in the first half of January, according to my own schedule, rather than the schedule of a powerful video screenwriter, Mr. Zelensky," Poroshenko said, adding that he is currently in Warsaw.

The politician stressed that a suspicion notice for him on charges of treason, terrorist financing and aiding terrorist organizations is crossing the red lines. "This is no longer a joke. The jokes are over and they will have to answer for this, but later, because now someone has to be smarter. Now we have to unite, and now we have to save Ukraine and repel Russian aggression. Together we are moving to victory and see you in Ukraine," Poroshenko added.

Ukraine's acting Prosecutor General Oleksiy Symonenko on December 20 signed a suspicion notice for former President Petro Poroshenko in the case of coal supplies from occupied territories.

According to the State Bureau of Investigation, Poroshenko is suspected of "contributing to the activities of the terrorist organizations 'LPR' and 'DPR' by acting in collusion with a group of individuals, including representatives of the top leadership of the Russian Federation." The politician was called in for questioning on Thursday, December 23, at 10:00.

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Turkey is a strategic and effective partner that supports Ukraine, its sovereignty and territorial integrity, while maintaining political, diplomatic and economic relations with Russia, so its role as a mediator is important and promising to defuse tensions and resolve other issues.

Rustem Umerov, a Ukrainian MP and secretary of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Human Rights, said this in an interview with Ukrinform.

"Turkey is on our side. It shares our vision, supports our sovereignty and territorial integrity, does not recognize the temporary occupation of Crimea, but maintains political, diplomatic and economic relations with Russia. Russia has more complicated relations with the United States. Therefore, Turkey can become an effective mediator to defuse existing tensions and resolve other issues. Its role is important and promising," Umerov said.

He stressed that Russia continues to block the work of the Trilateral Contact Group.

"We are trying to maintain contact through the Trilateral Contact Group, but the Russian Federation is blocking its work. We have no platforms for contact. They don't want to see and hear anything because they know they'll lose. No matter what they say in Moscow, they understand the pressure from the international community, and sanctions have their effect. We appreciate this support and welcome any efforts that can help end the war with Russia. We are ready to work with international partners," Umerov said.

Turkey stated earlier that it is ready to act as a mediator in resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine and hopes for a peaceful settlement. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry rejected such a proposal from Ankara.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine plans to change the style and philosophy of the countrys foreign policy, making it fast, creative, ambitious, and fruitful.

The president spoke about this at a conference of heads of Ukraines foreign diplomatic missions, entitled "Diplomacy 30. The Strategy of a Strong State," Ukrinform reports.

"For the first time, we gathered all the ambassadors of Ukraine in a new format for a sincere and frank talk. We need to change the style and philosophy of Ukraines foreign policy. It must be fast, creative, ambitious and fruitful," Zelensky wrote on Twitter.

The president called on Ukrainian ambassadors to get rid of a third-world nation complex and initiate new formats and ideas for interaction with other countries.

Get rid of the negative, constantly depressed, pessimistic thinking, get rid of such words as this is impossible, this wont happen, this isnt for us, and, God forbid, its not our level. Get rid of the third-world nation complex. We have great history, as we have said multiple times, a 1000-year history of our statehood. We have had mechanisms of democracy and peoples will long before many European countries. We have a huge potential, of which Im sure; this is Ukraine, Europe needs our Ukraine, not the other way around, Zelensky stressed.

The president underlined that Ukraine should not wait "until someone solves our problems for us," while exploring and proposing new mechanisms, formats, and ideas.

"Each of you must go beyond the traditional political plane and think about how else we can help our country, how else we can help Ukraine, apart from the usual calls for sanctions or us joining NATO. I am very much looking forward to such formats, I am very much looking forward to your initiative ideas," the head of state said.

He also stressed the need to continue to affirm Ukraine as a regional leader and through smaller alliances and initiatives to build a new reality, where Ukraine is not somewhere "sixth in the left third row", but the driver and leader of processes.

"This is ambition  a change in Ukraine's self-perception in order to change the way its perceived around the world. Not as a problem, but as a strategic partner, not as a source of threats, but as a source of opportunities, not as a poor relative who always asks someone for something, but as a strong and self-sufficient country, Zelensky added.

Read also: Zelensky wants to know in 2022 when Ukraine will join NATO

As reported earlier, on December 21-22, a conference of Ukrainian ambassadors "Diplomacy 30. The Strategy of a Strong State" is taking place in the presidential residence Syniohora in the village of Huta, Ivano-Frankivsk region.

Speaking at the event, the president expressed hope for Ukraine's accession to NATO in the coming years and a specific timeframe for NATO membership to be received in 2022, as well as for the country to become a regional leader and strengthen its diplomatic presence abroad.

Photo: Ukraine President's Office

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President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the opening of new Ukrainian embassies in many countries around the world.

"We are strengthening our diplomatic presence and will soon open new embassies in many countries," Zelensky said at the conference of heads of Ukraines foreign diplomatic missions "Diplomacy 30. Strategy of Strong State", an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

He stressed that Ukrainian diplomats should transform their work there into "concrete economic, social and sometimes political dividends."

The President also said that he was ready to personally visit key capitals, where new embassies will be opened, and hold talks with the leaders of those countries.

As reported, the conference of Ukrainian ambassadors to foreign countries "Diplomacy 30. Strategy of Strong State" is being held at the presidential residence "Syniohora" in the village of Huta, Ivano-Frankivsk region, on December 21-22.

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated that any further aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine would carry a very high price.

NATO Secretary General made a corresponding statement at a press conference with Prime Minister of Romania Nicolae Ciuca.

Despite international calls for transparency and de-escalation, the [Russias] build-up continues. We have made clear that any further aggression against Ukraine would carry a very high price. We will also continue to support our close partner Ukraine, politically and practically. And we stand up for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and we stand also for Ukraines right to choose its own path, Stoltenberg said.

The Secretary General also noted that NATO remains ready for meaningful dialogue with Russia and expressed his intention to call a new meeting of NATO-Russia Council early next year.

He added that any dialogue would need to be based on the core principles of European security and that it would need to take place in consultation with NATO's European partners, including Ukraine.

NATO Secretary General praised Romanias contributions to the Alliance, including for playing an essential role in the Black Sea region, and welcomed Romanias support to NATOs partners, including to Moldova and Ukraine.

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Defense Ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia Arvydas Anusauskas, Artis Pabriks, and Kalle Laanet expressed solidarity with Ukraine and their countries readiness to provide the country with assistance, both non-military and military, also calling for NATO to take additional steps to deter Russia.

Thats according to a statement posted on the website of the Lithuanian Defense Ministry following the meeting of the three countries defense chiefs in Kaunas, Ukrinform reports.

The Baltic States strongly support Ukraines territorial integrity, the inviolability of its borders, as well as ongoing reforms in the country's defense sector. If necessary, the Baltic States are ready to provide Ukraine with very rapid support, both military and non-military. Our unity and support for Ukraine are very important, Anusauskas emphasized.

During the discussions, the ministers paid great attention to the actions of Russia and Belarus, destabilizing the security situation in Europe. They came to the conclusion that the buildup of Russian military capabilities on the border with Ukraine represented a particularly dangerous attempt by Russia to limit Ukraine's sovereignty and its aspirations for NATO membership.

The ministers of defense of the Baltic States also outlined in Kaunas the main directions of further cooperation. In particular, a joint statement was signed, which identified joint action plans in the field of security and defense for 2022. The Baltic States will continue to focus on the development of joint capabilities and coordination of actions in the formats of the European Union and NATO.

In general, the ministers unanimously called the close ties with the Allies and their military presence in the region as the core of the security system of the Baltic states.

The meeting of the defense ministers of the three Baltic States took place on Tuesday at the Kaunas War Museum.

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The Embassy of Ukraine in the United States of America has welcomed the establishment by the Voice of America media network of a Kyiv-based office for Eastern Europe.

Thats according to the embassys Facebook post, Ukrinform reports.

"We welcome the news that Voice of America has set up a separate office for Eastern Europe based in Kyiv, headed by Myroslava Gongadze," the statement said.

The embassy has noted that Ukraine remains at the forefront of struggle for democratic and independent media in the region, in particular, in the current conditions of Russia's hybrid war and disinformation.

"This is a great example of Ukraine and the United States working together in the field of information and media," the statement said.

As reported earlier, journalist Myroslava Gongadze took the helm of the newly created Voice of America (VOA) office for Eastern Europe after leading the broadcasters Ukrainian language service in Washington, D.C.
A convoy of pickup trucks hurtles through a field of tall grass and shrubs, towards a plume of smoke on the horizon. Seated in the backs of the trucks are men of all ages, their eyes fixed on the smoke.

As the vehicles approach the source of the smoke  a huge bushfire  the men jump out of the trucks. Armed with no more than tree branches, they attack the fire, yelling inaudibly and moving in unison. Within minutes, the fire is extinguished, leaving behind a charred area about two kilometres long and three kilometres wide.

At the centre of the action is 52-year-old Ahmedou El-Bokhary, a Malian refugee and the leader of this voluntary fire brigade.

This is the third fire we have put out in 24 hours, he says as he wipes sweat from his eyes.

His comrades gather around as he picks up his phone and speaks rapidly into it. He yells out instructions  there is another fire about five kilometres away. The men jump back into the trucks and speed off in the opposite direction.

This is a typical day for Ahmedou and his fellow firefighters, about 100 Malian refugees and Mauritanians. The brigade puts out fires in the area surrounding Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritanias Hodh Chargui region.

Mauritania is already feeling the impacts of climate change. About 90 per cent of its territory is desert, making it especially vulnerable to the effects of deforestation and drought.

See also: Warming climate threatens livelihoods of Malian refugees and Mauritanians

As the climate here has become hotter, the frequency of wildfires has increased at an alarming rate, posing a serious threat to the dwindling grass and tree cover. This dry season, (from September 2020 to July this year), there were over 35 bushfires, up from 15 in the previous dry season.

We have never seen a year like this. This is the year with the most bushfires, says Ahmedou, who has lived here since 2012.

About 68,000 Malians live in and around Mbera camp, located some 60 kilometres from the border with Mali. Most of the refugees, like their Mauritanian hosts, are pastoralists and keep large herds of livestock. Their heavy reliance on the environment to provide pasture for their animals and their desire to help protect the local communities that are hosting them was the reason why they started the fire brigade.

"If we don't put out the bushfires, we're doomed."

During the dry season, from September to July, the long green grass that grew during the rainy season dries and become straw like, making it easily ignitable.

There is a lot of dry grass now and when one part catches fire, the entire area goes up in flames quickly, explains Ahmedou. We intervene because we have no choice. If we dont put out the bushfires, were doomed.

After three hours of driving through the Mauritanian bush in pick-up trucks, the Refugee Fire Brigade arrives at the site of a fire.  UNHCR/Colin Delfosse

The refugees use branches to beat out the bushfire.  UNHCR/Colin Delfosse

Volunteers take it in turns to take on the exhausting work of extinguishing the fires that occur almost every 48 hours during the dry season.  UNHCR/Colin Delfosse

As president of the Refugee Fire Brigade, Ahmedou Ag El-Bokhary (centre) coordinates the refugee volunteers to battle bushfires in the area surrounding Mbera camp.  UNHCR/Colin Delfosse

UNHCR Associate Field Officer Benjamin Kambale says the Refugee Fire Brigade is spurring other refugees and members of the local community to get involved in protecting their environment.  UNHCR/Colin Delfosse

So dedicated are the firefighters that UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the local authorities support them with transport and airtime for their mobile phones to communicate with the network of people in the area who alert them when there is a fire.

Whenever there is a fire, we call on the Refugee Fire Brigade. We all work together to put it out, says Mohamed Cheikh Macire, the prefect of the department of Bassikounou.

He adds that the fires are a cause of great concern for both refugees and Mauritanians. By working together to put them out, the whole community is battling a common enemy and improving relations in the process.

Benjamin Kambale, UNHCRs Associate Field Officer based in Bassikounou, notes that the fire brigade has become a symbol of environmental activism, spurring the refugees, their host communities and partner agencies to do more.

He explains that one key method that the communities have adopted to prevent bushfires is the creation of firewalls  stretches of land that are cleared of dried plant debris and other vegetation that could fuel bushfires.

Last year, 100 kilometres of firewalls were built, he explains, adding that these efforts are contributing towards the Great Green Wall  a massive reforestation project that aims to grow an 8,000-kilometre-long barrier to combat environmental degradation in the Sahel.

SOS Desert, a local partner organization of UNHCR, has established tree nurseries throughout the camp, where thousands of saplings are tended by refugees and Mauritanians. As of September, this year, over 58,000 trees had been planted as part of reforestation efforts in the region.

In addition, nearly 10 hectares of land has been set aside in and around the camp for refugees and locals to grow vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, hibiscus, beans and onions. Not only are the vegetable gardens helping to preserve the environment by increasing green cover and reducing soil degradation, they are also improving the diets of refugees and Mauritanians.

See also: Refugees and locals in Mauritania exchange strategies for adapting to climate change

Refugee-led organizations such as VRPC (Volontaires Refugies pour la Proprete du Camp) also conduct regular community awareness campaigns to educate camp residents on how to preserve the environment, the benefits of planting trees, reducing firewood usage and using renewable energy sources such as solar energy.

Everyone is doing their bit to address the climate challenge, says UNHCRs Kambale, adding that a vocational training centre has been opened in the camp, where refugees and Mauritanians can take courses in electrical and mechanical engineering and learn how to install and maintain solar panels.

As UNHCR  which plans to donate a fire truck to the district of Bassikounou in 2022  continues to work with other partners and local authorities to expand environmental interventions in the region, Ahmadou and his brave firefighters remain committed to their cause  saving the pasturelands that are a lifeline for their way of life.

Nobody forces us to do this work. We do it of our own free will because for us, someone who protects animals, protects their loved ones, and at the same time creates good relations between refugees and locals, he says. We are proud of that.


A Congolese refugee prepares to return home to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Mantapala settlement, Zambia.  UNHCR/Bruce Mulenga

Nearly 5,000 refugees who fled violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) four years ago are opting to head home voluntarily from Zambia in coming months, with the first 100 people setting out today (21 December).

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and Zambias authorities began the voluntary repatriation of Congolese refugees from Mantapala settlement, in Luapula province, to Pweto in Haut-Katanga province in DRC, as security has improved sufficiently to allow for their return in safety and dignity.

Some 4,774 refugees have expressed their intention to return voluntarily through intention surveys carried out by UNHCR in October. The voluntary repatriation which will continue into 2022 is part of the continuation of the tripartite agreement signed in 2006 by UNHCR and the Governments of Zambia and the DRC.

As security has improved in some areas of Haut-Katanga, an estimated 20,000 refugees have spontaneously left Zambia since 2018 to return to their areas of origin  mainly to Pweto territory. UNHCR is working with authorities in DRC and involving development partners like CARITAS, to advance reintegration projects including education, health and agriculture, and to ensure conditions for safe and dignified returns.

Some 18,000 Congolese refugees live by farming at Mantapala settlement alongside 5,000 Zambians, across 11 integrated villages. The settlement was established in early 2018 to accommodate refugees who were displaced because of inter-ethnic clashes as well as fighting between Congolese security forces and militia groups in parts of the south eastern DRC in 2017.

The governments of Zambia and the DRC, UNHCR and its partners including UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) are working closely to support the returning refugees. That support includes the provision of Voluntary Repatriation documents, expedited immigration clearance, health screening and school certificates to allow children to resume their education in the DRC.

UNHCR and WFP have provided two buses and two trucks to transport refugees and their belongings, as well as food for the journey. In addition, they will receive a cash grant to help them as they pick up their lives again in the DRC.

UNICEF has improved water and sanitation facilities at the reception centre in Chiengi district, where returning refugees will sleep over to process immigration documents before embarking on the final leg of their journey home.

The Government of Zambia has prepared a COVID-19 rapid test for the returning refugees at the Mantapala Rural Health Centre, before they commence the journey. UNHCR will disinfect the buses, provide face masks, hand sanitisers and, together with the authorities, ensure that COVID-19 prevention measures are observed, including loading of buses to half the capacity.

Zambia hosts some 103,028 refugees, asylum seekers, and former refugees. These include 63,681 from the DRC.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi attends a press conference in Tehran, Iran, during a three-day visit to the country.  UNHCR/Hossein Eidizadeh

At the end of a three-day visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi urged the international community to scale up its support to the Government and people of Iran, who are receiving Afghans fleeing a deteriorating situation in their country.

According to preliminary estimates by the Government of Iran, up to 500,000 Afghans have arrived in Iran in 2021.

The High Commissioner met with Irans Foreign Minister, Dr. Abdolahian, the Minister of Interior, Mr. Vahidi, and the Minister of Health, Dr. Einollahi, to discuss ways forward to manage and assist newly arriving Afghans, including through registration and documentation. He also called on the government to recognize the protection needs and risks faced on return to Afghanistan.

Grandi travelled to Zahedan, the capital of Sistan and Baluchistan province, where he met with Afghan families, including infants and elderly people, who fled to Iran from Nimrooz some four months ago.

Afghan refugees spoke of their pain and desperation at having to leave their homes behind, said High Commissioner Grandi. University-aged women conveyed to the High Commissioner their anguish at having had to abandon their studies and not knowing what their future will hold.

The High Commissioner also visited a new construction site in Niatak, 14 kilometres to the east of Zabol, to temporarily host newly arrived Afghans, with the view to meet their immediate needs and facilitate their regularisation. UNHCR is also discussing with the government the extension of assistance to new arrivals in urban areas.

The Government of Iran has been a generous host of refugees for decades, despite their precarious economic situation made worse by the pandemic. But as the situation in Afghanistan remains fragile, we need to ensure those fleeing to Iran can get the protection and assistance they need", Grandi added.

UNHCR has already stepped up its work this year and will continue to work with the Government of Iran to ensure they are not alone in bearing the responsibility of hosting refugees. We appeal for greater financial support for Irans inclusive national services, in particular health and education, as well as increased supplies of COVID-19 vaccines equally distributed amongst host communities and Afghans."

UNHCR will also seek greater opportunities for tertiary education for Afghan students, while also facilitating more resettlement from Iran.

Iran is one of the worlds largest refugee-hosting countries, having hosted Afghans for over four decades. In Iran, refugees have been given access to health, education and livelihoods opportunities, with the majority living in villages, towns and cities side by side with the Iranian host community.

While comprehensive and robust efforts to address the humanitarian, economic, and development challenges must be made to stabilize the population inside Afghanistan, refugee host-country needs must simultaneously be prioritized, enhanced, and made more sustainable.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2021) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a statement that it has extended its debt relief service for 25 low-income countries.

"The Executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved on December 15, 2021 a fifth and final tranche of debt service relief under the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) for 25 member countries with eligible debt service falling due to the IMF from January 11 to April 13, 2022," the statement said on Monday.

The IMF explained in the statement the new approval is in the amount of $115 million, noting that this tranche follows four previous similar measures it undertook in the past two years.

"The tranche completes the two-year COVID-19-related debt service relief first approved on April 13, 2020, totaling a cumulative debt service relief of about SDR 690 million (US$ 964 million)," the statement said.

The IMF said it looks forward to the comprehensive review of the CCRT planned for fiscal year 2023, the statement added.
Madrid, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st Dec, 2021 ) :Spain's Balearic Islands will from 2022 limit the number of cruise ships which can dock in the port of Palma de Mallorca, a first for the popular holiday destination.

A maximum of 518 cruise ships will be allowed to stop in the Mediterranean port next year, compared to the 594 that docked there in 2019 before the pandemic, the archipelago's regional government said late Monday in a statement.

No more than three cruise ships will be allowed to dock on the same day, and only one of them can be a so-called "mega-cruise" ship with a capacity of over 5,000 passengers, it added.

Set to hold for five years, the new rules were agreed over two years of talks with the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), an industry group that represents 95 percent of global ocean-going cruise capacity.

"It is the first time that a real limit is set on the arrival of cruise passengers in Palma," regional tourism minister Iago Negueruela said.

Residents of Palma de Mallorca have long called for curbs on cruise ships, saying the sudden surges in tourist arrivals disrupt their lives and strain services from public transport to water.

Some locals say they avoid the city centre on days when many cruise ships dock, and before the pandemic graffiti flourished on walls of the city urging "Tourists go home".

Their concerns clash with the interests of tourist operators, taxi drivers and restaurants, who argue the Balearics need the business brought by the cruise industry.
President Dr Arif Alvi on Tuesday expressed his grief over the death of renowned hematologist Professor Dr Tahir Shamsi

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st Dec, 2021 ) :President Dr Arif Alvi on Tuesday expressed his grief over the death of renowned hematologist Professor Dr Tahir Shamsi.

The president prayed for the high ranks of the departed soul and expressed sympathy with the bereaved family, said a news release.

The president said Dr Shamsi had rendered valuable services in health and medical research sectors.

His contributions over bone-marrow transplant and blood cancer would always be remembered, he added.

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Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared the country will not return to lockdowns despite record COVID-19 infections

CANBERRA, Dec. 21 (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st Dec, 2021 ) --:Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared the country will not return to lockdowns despite record COVID-19 infections.

The prime minister said on Tuesday the time for "heavy-handed" government intervention to keep case numbers down was over.

"We're not going back to lockdowns," he said.

"We're not going back to shutting down peoples' lives.""There will be other variants beyond Omicron, and we have to ensure, as a country, and as leaders around the country, we have put in place measures that Australians can live with," he said.

His remarks came ahead of an emergency meeting with state and territory leaders on Wednesday to discuss the surge in cases across Australia.
China has imposed sanctions on four members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (UCIRF) in a tit-for-tat response to Washington's sanctions against four Chinese officials accused of allegedly violating human rights in Xinjiang, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Tuesday

BEIJING (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2021) China has imposed sanctions on four members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (UCIRF) in a tit-for-tat response to Washington's sanctions against four Chinese officials accused of allegedly violating human rights in Xinjiang, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Tuesday.

The four UCIRF representatives under sanction are prohibited from entering mainland China, Macau and Hong Kong starting from December 21. Their assets in China would be frozen, and they would not be allowed to conduct any transactions with Chinese citizens and organizations.

Earlier in December, the United States imposed sanctions on dozens of people and entities tied to China, Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh for human rights-related violations.

"The United States, guided by its national legislation, imposed illegal sanctions against Chinese officials under the so-called human rights issue in Xinjiang. The corresponding actions became a gross interference in Chinese internal affairs and a serious violation of the basic norms of international relations, also causing serious damage to Chinese-US relations. China strongly opposes this and expresses strong condemnation," Zhao told a briefing.

The diplomat added that in response to the US sanctions, China decided to take equivalent countermeasures in line with the country's to the country's Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law.
Russia believes that China's support for its proposals on security guarantees is tangible, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, said on Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2021) Russia believes that China's support for its proposals on security guarantees is tangible, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, said on Tuesday.

The Chinese foreign ministry told Sputnik earlier in the day that Russia's proposals to NATO and Washington on security guarantees help to increase mutual trust between countries and reduce the risk of conflicts.

"Of course," Gavrilov told the SolovyovLive show on YouTube when asked whether the fact that China has supported Russia on the issue of security guarantees will change the balance of power.

"I think China's opinion is very important. It is being listened to both in Washington and in the NATO countries. China is our ally, its support in this matter, of course, is tangible," the diplomat added.
(@FahadShabbir)

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2021) Iran will be high on the agenda during US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan's meetings with senior Israeli officials this week set up to discuss concerns over Tehran's rapid advancements with its nuclear program, a senior Biden administration official said.

"Iran will be very high on the agenda for Jake's visit to Israel this week," the official said during a conference call on Monday. "The discussion will be a continuation of our ongoing consultations on the threat posed by Iran, particularly its nuclear program but also its destabilizing activities in the region."
(@FahadShabbir)

Nigeria Tuesday said cases have shot up in Africa's most populous nation, urging people to respect anti-Covid measures as it enters a fourth wave of the coronavirus

Lagos, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st Dec, 2021 ) :Nigeria Tuesday said cases have shot up in Africa's most populous nation, urging people to respect anti-Covid measures as it enters a fourth wave of the coronavirus.

"Nigeria has recorded a 500 percent increase in the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases over the past two weeks across the country caused by the Delta and Omicron variants," the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control said.

"The country is now in a fourth Covid-19 wave," it added in a statement.

The West African country of 220 million has recorded just around 225,000 cases since the start of the pandemic, with fewer than 3,000 related deaths.

But experts attribute the low figures partly to low testing rates.

The health authorities urged caution as so-called "Detty December", a party season of weddings and top-line concerts as well as Christmas and New Year festivities, is in full swing in the capital Lagos of some 20 million.

"Religious leaders and heads of institutions, organisations and businesses are urged to enforce public compliance to Covid-19 preventive measures in their jurisdiction," it added.

"We urge Nigerians to take all precautions necessary to ensure we and our loved ones live to celebrate many more events and festivities."Nigeria has so far vaccinated less than three percent of its population, far below the government's goal of inoculating 112 million people by the end of 2022.
Naval flags were raised on the first serial nuclear submarine Novosibirsk and the first serial nuclear-powered strategic submarine Knyaz Oleg, the ceremony was opened by Russian President Vladimir Putin during the expanded meeting of the Ministry of Defense, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2021) Naval flags were raised on the first serial nuclear submarine Novosibirsk and the first serial nuclear-powered strategic submarine Knyaz Oleg, the ceremony was opened by Russian President Vladimir Putin during the expanded meeting of the Ministry of Defense, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Tuesday.

"Today naval flags are raised on the nuclear submarines Knyaz Oleg and Novosibirsk, the new missile carriers are part of the Navy," Putin said at the ceremony.
President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday that Russia is prepared to take "military-technical measures" to "unfriendly" Western actions over the Ukraine conflict

Moscow, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st Dec, 2021 ) :President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday that Russia is prepared to take "military-technical measures" to "unfriendly" Western actions over the Ukraine conflict.

"In the event of the continuation of the obviously aggressive stance by our Western colleagues, we will take appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures," he told a defence ministry meeting, as fears grow that Moscow could launch an invasion of ex-Soviet Ukraine.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on Tuesday urged Brussels to "pick up the pace" of talks on post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland, following her first call on the issue with the European Commission vice president

London, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st Dec, 2021 ) :British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on Tuesday urged Brussels to "pick up the pace" of talks on post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland, following her first call on the issue with the European Commission vice president.

Truss, appointed at the weekend to lead negotiations with the European Union after the resignation of Brexit minister David Frost, told Maros Sefcovic "the UK position has not changed".

She said Britain remained intent on overhauling the Northern Ireland Protocol -- including the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) -- which the UK government agreed just a year ago.

"We need goods to flow freely between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, end the role of the ECJ as the final arbiter of disputes between us, and resolve other issues," Truss said in a statement after their call.

"We must pick up the pace on talks in the new year," she added, noting that London still preferred reaching "an agreed solution".

But Truss warned that the UK was prepared to trigger the Article 16 suspension measure within the deal if its demands were not met.

- Friction - Britain and the EU have been locked in months of feuding over the post-Brexit situation in the UK territory of Northern Ireland, with a possible trade war looming in the background.

The protocol, signed separately from the 2020 Brexit trade deal, was designed to avoid a "hard" border on the island of Ireland.

Northern Ireland is in effect still in the European single market, but checks are required on goods heading into the province from mainland Great Britain.

The arrangements have proved deeply unpopular with some pro-British unionist factions in the territory and have caused friction on the ground.

Britain wants the protocol completely reworked but Brussels has baulked at the demand to remove the role of the ECJ.

Frost, a trusted ally of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had been leading the talks this year.

But he brought forward his resignation in a letter released late on Saturday, citing concerns about the government's "current direction of travel" regarding Covid regulations and tax rises.

The surprise exit is another blow to Johnson, who is reeling from weeks of scandals and controversies, including growing discontent at his performance within his ruling Conservative Party.
The UN Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that they have received reports about security forces in Sudan having raped 13 women during protests in the capital of Khartoum over the weekend

UNITED NATIONS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2021) The UN Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that they have received reports about security forces in Sudan having raped 13 women during protests in the capital of Khartoum over the weekend.

"We have received deeply disturbing reports of sexual violence and harassment by security forces during demonstrations in Khartoum on Sunday, 19 December 2021," UN Human Rights Office said in a press release. "Our Joint Human Rights Office in Sudan has received allegations that 13 women and girls were victims of rape or gang rape."

There are also allegations of sexual harassment by security forces against women who were trying to flee the area near the presidential palace on Sunday evening in Sudan, the release said.

The demonstration took place to mark the third anniversary of protests that resulted in the overthrow of former Sudanese President Omar Bashir in April of 2019.

Two protesters died after being shot and some 300 others were injured during the demonstration, the release said. Sudanese security forces used live ammunition and tear gas, the release added.

The UN Human Rights Office is calling for an independent and thorough investigation into the allegations of rape and into allegations protesters died due to the use of excessive force by security forces, according to the release.
WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2021) The United States is disappointed by an Egyptian court sentencing journalist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, lawyer Mohamed el-Baqer and blogger Mohamed "Oxygen" Ibrahim to prison terms, Department of State spokesman Ned price said in a press briefing on Monday.

Earlier in the day, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Egyptian authorities sentenced freelance journalist Abdel-Fattah to five years in prison for spreading fake news and undermining state security. Lawyer Mohamed al-Baqer and Mohamed Oxygen were sentenced to four years each on the same charges.

"We're disappointed by the verdicts issued today by Egypt state security court and the trials of Alaa Abdel-Fattah, Mohamed el-Baqer and Mohamed Oxygen Ibrahim," Price said.

"Journalists, human rights defenders and others seeking to peacefully exercise their freedom of expression should be able to do so without facing criminal penalties, intimidation, harassment, or any other form of reprisal."

Price said the United States stressed to the Egyptian government that the bilateral relationship would be improved if Washington saw progress in human rights.

"The Egyptian government is very well aware of the concerns we have both broadly and specifically," Price pointed out.

Washington will continue to engage with Cairo to promote freedom of expression and other universal human rights, he added.
MDE Awards USM Over $2M for Mississippi Teacher Residency

Fri, 01/07/2022 - 17:36pm | By: Karelia Pitts

USM student and undergraduate teacher resident Bayleigh Kennedy at Petal Elementary School. Photo by Kelly Dunn / Southern Miss Image Center

The Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) will provide over $2 million to The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) over a two-year period to support Mississippi Teacher Residency (MTR) in critical shortage areas. USM has been awarded the largest grant in the $9.8 million

program that will cover tuition and expenses at five Mississippi universities for up to 240 individuals seeking a graduate degree in elementary and secondary education.

By extending the success of our existing undergraduate residency program to reach graduate students as well, this substantial funding will supplement our ongoing work to address the national and state teacher shortages, said Dr. Trent Gould, dean of USMs College of Education and Human Sciences. We are excited to use this grant to take a fundamentally different approach to the preparation of high-quality, job-ready teacher residents that will make a difference in Mississippi.

In partnership with the National Center for Teacher Residencies, USM has been engaged in training teacher residents at the undergraduate level in several local school districts, including Petal School District.

The ability for a senior education major to spend 187 teacher days at a school and see every component of a school year is priceless! The combination of pedagogy through college work along with the practitioner component is definitely a win-win for the University, the students and our school district, said Dr. Matt Dillon, superintendent of Petal School District. We are thankful that USM partnered with us for their undergraduate residency program three years ago, and I am happy to report that we have many residency students who are now employed and thriving in our district.

A key component of the teacher residency experience is being fully immersed in the school culture, which includes opportunities like opening and closing the school year, conducting parent-teacher conferences, and getting involved in professional learning communities that are focused on supporting residents as they transition to in-service teachers.

As Mississippis historic teachers college, USM is committed to helping reduce the teacher shortage and increase retention in our state, said Dr. Gould. One of the most successful outcomes of our current program is improved teacher retention, which significantly impacts learning outcomes for students. By designing a new graduate-level component for our program that is grounded in adult learning principles and that recognizes the needs of non-traditional students, we will recruit, prepare and graduate an increasing number of academically talented, diverse residents; they will serve in critical shortage areas assisting low-income children, racial/ethnic minorities, and children with disabilities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The upcoming expansion of USMs residency program will allow 30 new teacher candidates to become educated and trained at no personal expense to them. To ensure their success, residency students will be mentored by professional teachers and receive full-tuition scholarships, stipends, textbooks and testing fees.

These new graduate-level teacher residents will be engaged in comprehensive coursework and clinical classroom experiences. The program will be co-constructed with partner district

personnel to ensure the design and implementation of content-rich, authentic, performance-based activities that address the unique needs presented by students in schools identified as geographical critical shortage areas while also enhancing USMs capacity to meet the educational workforce needs of communities.

With positive experiences partnering with USMs undergraduate teacher residency program, Dr. Robert Williams, superintendent of Hattiesburg Public School District, is looking forward to how the Universitys new offerings may further impact their schools.

The undergraduate teacher residency program at The University of Southern Mississippi has proven to be an invaluable asset to Hattiesburg Public School District's ability to not only aid in the cultivation of future educators but also recruit and retain the best and brightest prospective teachers the University has to offer, said Dr. Williams. Having USMs teacher residency program scale to the graduate level will afford Hattiesburg Public Schools the opportunity to recruit non-traditional educators with expertise in hard-to-fill content areas. The graduate-level program will also provide prospective candidates with practicum experiences and professional development opportunities that they otherwise would not have, thus increasing the likelihood that they will stay in the profession and improve educational outcomes for our students.

For more information about USMs educator preparation program, visit usm.edu/education. To learn more about MDEs Mississippi Teacher Residency program, click here.
Lawmakers in Germany are considering setting up a national vaccine registry that will collect information about whether citizens have been vaccinated or not. The proposal has popped up amidst reports that Berlin is also planning to impose a vaccine mandate on its citizens.

In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, a local newspaper, Barbel Bas, president of the German Bundestag, revealed that she fully supports the idea of a national registry. Bas pointed out that there is very little vaccine data available at present, like the proportion of nurses in the country who have been inoculated against COVID-19. Currently, Berlin uses data from doctors and vaccination centers to determine national and regional vaccination rates.

Other politicians have raised concerns about the registry. Kevin Kuhnert, general secretary for the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), dismisses the idea. Even if the registry is limited to data on COVID-19 vaccination, he fears that such a step will open the door for further access to data. Health agencies are already overburdened dealing with the pandemic. As such, Kuhnert isnt sure how they will be able to tackle the additional task of administering the registry.

Friedrich Merz from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) believes there are many questions about the registry that need to be answered. We dont have a national vaccination register yet, we dont know who is vaccinated and who is not vaccinated.

He also questioned the proposed vaccine mandate. The question of the enforcement of such a law is, in my view, at least as important as the discussion about the obligation itself, he told a local media outlet.

A poll conducted in late November found that almost seven in ten adults agree with forcing all eligible individuals in Germany to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Chancellor Olaf Sholz from the SPD has already announced his support for mandating vaccinations. Sholz has blamed unvaccinated individuals for a surge in COVID-19 infections. He has also refused to rule out imposing punishments for those who refuse to get a shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.

I will vote for it My suggestion is that the time by which everyone has been vaccinated is not too far away, so my suggestion: early February or early March What we need is a legislative procedure in which every member of parliament votes according to his conscience on a general vaccination obligation, he said to local paper Bild.

Wolfgang Kubicki, Vice President of the Bundestag, has strongly opposed mandatory vaccination, likening it to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. In an interview with a local media outlet, Kubicki said that he is appalled by the Jacobin behavior of so many people in the country who seem to be seeking revenge and retribution against unvaccinated individuals.

He insisted that people who have refused vaccinations are being made scapegoats for the increasing infection caseload, something Kubicki says is complete nonsense.

Meanwhile, German health minister Karl Lauterbach warned about a potential massive fifth wave of COVID-19 infections sweeping through the country due to the new Omicron variant. At a press conference in Hanover on Dec. 17, Lauterbach said that even if the new variant is milder, it wont make no difference.

It would perhaps keep the number of deaths low for two or three weeks. But then the growth of cases would eat up this advantage, the minister said. Insisting that the situation is still being underestimated, Lauterbach called for preparing for a challenge that Germany has not yet had in this form.
Tang Jitian, a Chinese human rights attorney, has not been heard from since Dec. 10, according to close friends and family.

The 53-year-olds whereabouts were last known when he texted friends to tell them he was planning to attend an event for Human Rights Day at the European Union office in Beijing. A few hours before the event was scheduled to begin, Tang said he did not feel safe and has not been heard from since. Repeated calls to his cellphone have also gone unanswered.

Tang is a prominent human rights lawyer from Chinas Jilin Province who has taken on a wide range of cases surrounding human rights abuse at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), particularly jailed adherents of the Falun Gong spiritual practice. Tang has also represented cases involving land rights, HIV/AIDS victims, religious freedom, and political dissent.

According to the Chinese constitution, citizens enjoy many of the same basic rights as those guaranteed by the law in democratic countries. But in practice, the CCP overrides Chinese law, and most attorneys, judges, and prosecutors defer to the Party line in sensitive cases.

Front Line Defenders reported that as a result of his persistent activism and exposure of governmental abuse, Tangs license to practice law was revoked in 2010 and a travel ban was placed against him. Some experts believe Tang was specifically targeted by the government for defending Falun Gong practitioners.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a Chinese traditional spiritual discipline practiced by tens of millions of people in China and around the world since its introduction to the public in 1992. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began a massive campaign to eradicate the popular faith in July 1999, incarcerating millions of people over the following decades. Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have since died from torture and abuse, with the number still on the rise.

READ MORE:

Abused by Chinese Police for More Than 20 Years, Woman Dies 2 Days After a Final Harassment

Another Woman Dies in China After Suffering 20 Years of Persecution for Practicing Falun Gong

Tang was among a group of four Chinese rights lawyers tortured by police after being detained for 15 days in March 2014. Tang was arrested during a protest outside a detention center in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang after traveling there to demand information on Falun Gong practitioners believed to be incarcerated in Jiansanjiang.

Since his disbarment, Tang has continued his work in human rights, and as a result, has been subjected to beatings, surveillance, travel restrictions and multiple arrests at the hands of Chinese authorities.

South China Morning Post reported that Tang also campaigned for the governing bodies of national and local lawyers associations to be democratically elected by members, hoping that it would bring change to Chinas judicial process and human rights awareness.

Tang and others appear to be subjects of enforced disappearances

U.S. based scholar Teng Biao and a friend of Tang said: I think its definitely more serious, [Tangs disappearance], we have heard nothing from Tang Jitian since Dec. 10, so it looks like an enforced disappearance.

Teng added that he believed Tangs situation to be similar to that of Chinese dissident and former legal advocate Guo Feixiong, also known as Yang Maodong. Guo also disappeared after writing an open letter to Chinese premier Li Keqiang.

In his letter, Guo addressed Li and asked for the government to lift a travel ban imposed on him so he could visit his terminally ill wife Zhang Qing in the United States, Teng said.

They have both played a prominent role in rights activism in China, and they are almost certainly in the custody of certain departments, he added.

RFA also reported that Zhao Zhongyuan, another friend of Tangs, said the lawyer was at the point of physical and mental collapse when he disappeared. Tang was barred from traveling to Japan to visit his 25-year-old daughter Tang Zhengqi who has been in a coma since April due to complications from tuberculosis.

[Tang] had no medical insurance to seek treatment even if he was sick, Zhao said.

His health had reached the point of collapse, because he had been persecuted for a long time, Zhao added. He couldnt work, couldnt leave the country and was homeless, forced to stay a couple of days with one friend, and a couple of days with another.

Barred from visiting critically ill daughter in Japan

SCMP reported that in June of this year, border control authorities at the Fuzhou airport prevented Tang from boarding a flight to Tokyo to see his daughter. Authorities at the airport told him that the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau had imposed an exit ban on him because his travel abroad may endanger national security.

Im physically and mentally exhausted over my daughters illness for the past month and a half. Now I cant even see her in the hospital  there are no words to describe how I feel other than deep regret, Tang said. If it wasnt for my girl, Id have long given up on the hope of ever leaving China again.

Tangs daughter was declared brain dead after developing a serious bout of meningitis. She remains on life support in a hospital in Japan, Zhao told RFA.

If they switched off the life support, she would be gone, Zhao said. Kiki lived very frugally, and when she got sick with tuberculosis, she self-medicated, so treatment was delayed. By the time she went to the hospital, she was already in a coma.

It was extremely cruel of the CCP to not let him go and visit his daughter during this sensitive time.

Chinese authorities have a long history of imposing arbitrary restrictions on freedom of movement, including both domestic and international travel bans. In 2017, Tang was also denied entry at the Lo Wu border crossing in Hong Kong after border patrol officials identified him. Tang said he had been diagnosed with leukemia after being released from detention and was hoping to seek medical treatment there. Officials there told him he had to turn back as his travel ban remained in effect.
On Dec. 17, Hollywood star Rosanna Arquette lashed out on Twitter, accusing the owner of TikTok of allowing imminent threats of mass potential gun violence in public schools to happen without intervening or alarming authorities.

So a Chinese company Douyin owns TikTok. And they apparently are allowing mass potential Gun violence on their Platform. To shoot kids at school, kids killing kids . The HORROR, the 62-year-old star, known for her roles in Desperately Seeking Susan and Pulp Fiction, wrote. Shut it down until its taken off for good, she added.

So a Chinese company Douyin owns TiKToK. And they apparently are allowing mass potential Gun violence on their Platform. To shoot kids at school, kids killing kids . The HORROR .Shut it down until its taken off for good.  rosanna arquette (@RoArquette) December 17, 2021

White males only

Douyin is the brand name of TikTok in China, while TikToks parent company is ByteDance. Arquette, who is known for venting her liberal political stances, is also a staunch gun reform proponent and an anti-racist champion who once said on Twitter that All of the [mass] shooters in America have been White males. White terrorists.

White males or not, TikTok posted a response to Twitter addressing the rumors of an impending high-school mass shooting anywhere in America that read:

We handle even rumored threats with utmost seriousness, which is why were working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok.

We handle even rumored threats with utmost seriousness, which is why we're working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok.  TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) December 16, 2021

School districts closed over TikTok threat

Several districts around the country including California, Texas, Minnesota, and Missouri decided to preemptively cancel classes on Friday, Dec. 17, the rumored designated day of shooting.

Even though several law-enforcement agencies followed leads indicating that on that day, several shootings were planned, they could not trace them back to any particular individual or group of persons that could cause a real or imminent threat.

READ MORE: A Brave Soul: High School Student Sacrifices Life to Save Boy

One such district that closed its doors on Friday was that of Little Falls in Minnesota after the district was identified as a possible target.

Based on law enforcement interviews, Little Falls Community Schools was specifically identified in a TikTok post related to this threat, superintendent Stephen Jones wrote in an announcement to parents and staff.

In conversations with local law enforcement, the origins of this threat remain unknown. Therefore, school throughout the district is canceled tomorrow, Friday, December 17. All home events and activities are canceled or postponed both tonight and tomorrow. it said.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy also made attempts on Twitter to address concerns over mass shootings.

While there are no known specific threats against New Jersey schools, the safety of our children is our highest priority and we will work closely with law enforcement to monitor the situation and remain prepared.  Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) December 16, 2021

While there are no known specific threats against New Jersey schools, the safety of our children is our highest priority and we will work closely with law enforcement to monitor the situation and remain prepared, the governor said.
The United States and four other Western countries expressed grave concern Monday about the erosion of democratic elements in Hong Kong as pro-Beijing candidates swept to victory in the citys legislative elections after laws were changed to favor Chinas Communist Party loyalists.



Actions that undermine Hong Kong's rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy are threatening our shared wish to see Hong Kong succeed, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain said in a statement.



The diplomats said that since Britain handed over control of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Candidates with diverse political views have contested elections in Hong Kong, but that Sundays elections reversed this trend.

Pro-Beijing candidates won a landslide victory in the elections, defeating moderates and independents in Hong Kongs first polls since Beijing decreed that only "patriots" loyal to Chinas ruling Communist Party could run the city.

These changes eliminated any meaningful political opposition, the Western diplomats said. Meanwhile, many of the city's opposition politicians  most notably the majority of the NSL 47"  remain in prison pending trial, with others in exile overseas.

The NSL 47 are activists accused of subverting Hong Kongs National Security Law that was enacted by China last year.

In addition, they said that nongovernmental organizations, trade unions and human rights organizations not supportive of the government's agenda have been forced to disband or leave, while media freedoms are being curtailed at pace.

The diplomats urged China to act in accordance with its international obligations to respect protected rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said Monday at a news conference she was "satisfied" with the election, despite a 30.2% voter turnout, the lowest since China assumed power over Hong Kong 24 years ago.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said there were "multiple reasons" for the decline in voter turnout.

"It is not only the impact of the pandemic but also the disruption and sabotage of anti-China elements in Hong Kong and external forces," Zhao said at a daily briefing.

Some overseas pro-democracy activists, including London-based Nathan Law, urged a boycott of the vote, saying the elections were undemocratic. Under the new election laws, incitement to boycott the voting or to cast invalid votes could be punished by up to three years in jail and a $26,500 fine.

Lam said she expects that work with the 90 legislators will be "very exciting" because they have different opinions on many social issues.

Lam was expected to travel to Beijing later Monday on a duty-reporting trip, which she said was meant to give a full account to Beijing of the latest political and economic situation in Hong Kong.

"I expect to cover a wide range of issues on this particular duty visit because through two very decisive acts of the central authorities, Hong Kong is now back on the right track of 'one country, two systems,'" she said.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
Scientists and health advocates in Africa say theyre deeply disappointed by a statement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

The CDC last week recommended the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines ahead of the J&J, because of concerns the J&J shot could, in rare cases, cause blood clots, or thrombosis.

The J&J vaccine is one of the most widely used in Africa, because its a single dose shot that doesnt require ultra-cold storage. The South African health department has reassured people that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is safe.

In a statement, the CDC said it was expressing a "clinical preference" for other vaccines over J&J.

"This updated CDC recommendation follows similar recommendations from other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom," the CDC said. Still, the CDC said "receiving any vaccine is better than being unvaccinated."

But health authorities in Africa say the CDC recommendation has done irreparable harm to their vaccination efforts. They say that the CDCs linking of the J&J vaccine with rare, but potentially fatal, side effects will spark widespread rejection of the vaccine on the continent, where other vaccines are mostly unavailable.

Fewer than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated and the World Health Organization describes Africa as "one of the least affected regions in the world."

Ive been inundated with calls from people saying, Youre poisoning us and We dont want to take this and Were getting second-hand vaccines; we shouldnt be getting the J&J, we should only be getting the Pfizer, said Barry Jacobson, president of the Southern African Society of Thrombosis. "The CDC, by putting out this statement, has made people scared about taking the J&J booster, and they shouldnt be."

South Africas top epidemiologist, Salim Abdool Karim, maintains J&Js vaccine is safe.

If you had to just look at, for example, thrombosis from cases of COVID-19, its far higher than from what we see from the vaccine," said Karim, an epidemiologist at South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal, who previously advised the South African government on COVID-19. "So theres no question that this vaccine has a net benefit, even in the face of these side effects.

The CDC recommendation followed the occurrence of a rare and sometimes fatal blood-clotting issue, called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, that specifically affected the brain, in people who got the J&J vaccine.

Weve seen thrombosis occurring with all the vaccines," Jacobson said. "But the fact of the matter is, if one gets COVID, the risk of thrombosis is massive. Its a much greater risk of dying of thrombosis from getting COVID than from being vaccinated and getting a thrombosis, where the risk is miniscule compared to the other group.

Jacobson was on the safety committee that oversaw one of the worlds biggest vaccine trials, when half-a-million health workers in South Africa received the J&J vaccine earlier this year.

That trial, called Sisonke, came to a temporary halt in April when the CDC paused use of the vaccine after six cases of TTS in the U.S. After analyzing more data, the CDC gave the green light to the shot, saying its benefits outweighed its risks.

Why the CDC would now, out of the blue, again link the J&J vaccine with this type of thrombosis, Jacobson said, is beyond him.

The fact that the CDC came out and said that, it shows no insight into what we face in Africa, where theres a problem with cold-chain storage and the fact that patients cant get to more than one vaccine, Jacobson said. If you look at the true incidence, its one in 500,000 to one in a million. You have a higher chance of being struck by lightning."
Last year, tens of millions of Americans were forced to abandon holiday travel plans due to the surging coronavirus pandemic. This year, more than 100 million estimated travelers nationwide nervously watch a persistent delta variant and a recently discovered omicron variant threaten gatherings once again.

I havent seen my mother in a year, and I cant imagine a world in which I cant go home to see her for the holidays, said Autumn Town, a New Orleans resident and co-owner of Petes Out in the Cold, a local bar. Were changing our plans a little  we wont go out to restaurants like we normally might. But I get so few chances to see family already, I refuse to miss this one.

New Orleans is a major tourist destination, and Town said many small businesses thrive on the increased tourism the holiday season brings. Like many locals, she said shes torn over the best way to proceed as COVID-19 numbers rise again.

Nuanced is the best way I can describe my feelings, she explained. On one hand, I know the most important thing is to keep people safe. I certainly agree with that. On the other hand, I know that if we prematurely shut things down again, small businesses like mine will suffer. And the people we employ at small businesses will suffer, too. Those are really people who endure real consequences when were closed.

As the pandemic inches closer to the two-year anniversary of its arrival in the United States, a growing number of Americans are fatigued and frustrated by the strain the coronavirus has put on daily life.

I think a lot of people are just having trouble caring as much as they did a year and a half ago, Town explained, and there are good reasons for that, like vaccines that are helping keep us safer. But, still, when a customer comes into the bar and yells about having to wear a mask, you can tell nerves are running thin.

Omicron on the rise

The United States is averaging more than 130,000 new COVID-19 cases each day, according to Johns Hopkins University. That number is up 10% from a week ago and back to levels reached during last summers surge of infections.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Monday that the omicron variant accounted for 73% of cases reported in the United States last week and is now responsible for the vast number of new infections across broad stretches of the country. Health officials continue to collect data on the virulence of omicron and the extent to which current vaccines provide protection.

Many Americans are eagerly awaiting those findings.

Ive used science as my guide on how to act during the pandemic, and thats what Ill continue to do, said Dan McGrath, a college counselor living in New Orleans. I see the data that is suggesting this variant spreads faster but is less severe, but I also know we tend to learn more about these things as experts have more data.

McGrath said he and his wife had a vacation planned for the holidays but decided to cancel it for fear of bringing the virus back to their 6-month-old son. McGrath said they have had no problem going out in the city, where 80% of the eligible adult population have received at least one dose of the vaccine. They go to restaurants, grab a drink with friends, and work in schools. But their vacation destination in Arkansas felt different.

Theres only a 40% vaccination rate in that particular (Arkansas) county, he said. That gave us pause, but if I was only worried about my wife and I, we probably would have still gone. Were vaccinated. We wear masks. But we have a baby at home, and even a moderate risk doesnt feel worth it.

Balancing the risk

Mariana Martelli, a communications professional in New Orleans, said she has remained vigilant throughout the pandemic.

I got my booster (shot) as soon as it was available, and I still wear my mask as much as I did at the height of the pandemic, she told VOA.

Still, as careful as shes been, Martelli acknowledged some pandemic fatigue has set in.

Ive started to go on work trips more frequently, and Im meeting friends in larger groups again. Im vaccinated, and Im not worried about dying from COVID like I was earlier in the pandemic. Ive kind of accepted that I might get it at some point, but we have good methods of treatment now.

Drug manufacturers Pfizer and Merck have developed pills currently being tested that aim to reduce the severest symptoms of coronavirus for patients. Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers are exploring adjusting vaccines to target new variants.

Despite increased confidence she would not get severely sick, Martelli said she wished she would have been more careful as the holidays approached. It was just announced that on a recent work trip, several fellow employees tested positive for coronavirus. Martelli, herself, is now experiencing symptoms and is awaiting test results that will determine whether she can travel home to Florida to see her family.

There were precautions taken, Martelli said. We each took a rapid test before every meeting. It just shows you that anything can happen. But now, I wish I wouldnt have gone. My parents are older, and my nephew is at-risk and too young for the vaccine. Im just waiting for my test results and hoping (for the best). Id be devastated if I cant see them.

'What are we supposed to do?'

Of course, Im worried, Town said, when asked if she was nervous businesses could be shut down again if coronavirus cases continued to climb. But what are we supposed to do? Stop living our lives indefinitely? I want to keep people safe, but I also think we need to be careful that we dont close down too soon if the virus doesnt appear too dangerous. Its complicated, and I guess Im just happy I dont have to make the decision for everyone.

Town said she has seen shops recently close temporarily due to staff or customers getting sick. It reminds her of the longer-term closures shes endured over the last 21 months, a result of the pandemic and Hurricane Ida.

Not only has it been a difficult stretch for her business, but also for many of her customers who have had to suffer while largely isolated. Small businesses like her bar, she said, are important places for people to be social.

New Orleans is such a communal place, Town explained. We love to gather. Humans, in general, need to gather. The holiday season  and Mardi Gras season right after  are important times to do that. Does that mean I have pandemic fatigue? Probably thats some of it. But theres also some real benefits to getting together with friends and family that we need to consider this time of year.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan will visit Israel this week for detailed discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Iran's nuclear program, a senior Biden administration official said on Monday.

Sullivan, joined by the National Security Council's Middle East director Brett McGurk and other U.S. officials, will also meet with Palestinian President Mohammed Abbas in Ramallah on the West Bank to discuss strengthening U.S. relations with the Palestinians, the official said.

But the trip is likely to be dominated by the perceived threat from Iran as negotiators report slow going in talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The Biden administration official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. and Israeli officials will talk about how they see the coming weeks unfolding with Iran.

"We will talk about where we see the state of Iran's nuclear program and some of the timelines," the official said. "It will be a good opportunity to sit down face-to-face and talk about the state of the talks, the time frame in which we are working and to re-emphasize that we don't have much time."

The United States believes Iran's breakout time to producing enough highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon is now "really short" and alarming, a senior U.S. official said last week. Iran denies trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

The United States and Israel are in total agreement that Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, the Biden administration official said.

Talks between Iran and world powers have been put on pause until next eek.

In his talks with the Israelis, Sullivan will reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israels security.

In Ramallah, Sullivan will discuss with Abbas ongoing efforts to strengthen U.S.-Palestinian ties and advance peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike, the statement said
U.S. President Joe Biden laid out a new concerted effort Tuesday to combat the surging omicron variant of the coronavirus, dispatching federal health care workers to short-handed hospitals, pre-positioning the national stockpile of medical equipment around the country and offering 500 million free COVID-19 test kits to Americans.

Biden detailed his attack plan in a White House address as the number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. is markedly increasing again, with 143,000 recorded on Monday, along with another 1,300 deaths. Nearly three-fourths of the new cases are linked to the highly transmissible omicron variant.

But Biden said that fully vaccinated people, and especially those who have gotten booster shots, can safely celebrate the upcoming Christmas and New Year's holidays with family and friends.

"We should all be concerned about omicron, but not panicked," he said.

He warned, however, "If you're not fully vaccinated, you have reason to be concerned." Biden said the 40 million unvaccinated people in the United States "have an obligation, quite frankly, a patriotic duty, to your country" to get inoculated.



Moreover, he emphasized, "Your choice [whether to get vaccinated] can be a choice between life and death. Please get vaccinated. It's the only responsible thing to do."

But even with the growing omicron threat, he said the United States is not returning to the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, when thousands of businesses and schools were shut down.

"Absolutely no," Biden said.

He told Americans, "I know you're tired. I know you're frustrated. We'll get through this. There's no challenge too big for America."

The government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said about 204 million Americans, or 61%, are fully vaccinated, up from less than 1% at the beginning of 2021. But only 60.8 million people so far have gotten booster shots that health experts say provide the most protection against the omicron variant.

Biden said about 40 million Americans have not gotten any vaccination shots, many of them objecting to the government's effort to get more people inoculated, saying it violates their freedom to make their own medical choices.

The president, however, said vaccine mandates he has imposed on government workers and the military, and is hoping to require at large companies with 100 or more employees that could affect 84 million workers, are "not to control your life, but to save your life."

Among some groups of people, getting vaccinated remains controversial  often, according to surveys, those who voted for former President Donald Trump in his unsuccessful 2020 reelection bid against Biden.

Trump, a coronavirus victim while president, was booed by some supporters at an appearance in the southwestern state of Texas over the weekend when he told them he had gotten a booster shot.

Biden, who also has gotten a booster shot, said it was "one of the few things" he and his predecessor agree on, the need to get a booster shot in the arm.

The White House said the actions Biden announced Tuesday "will mitigate the impact unvaccinated individuals have on our health care system, while increasing access to free testing and getting more shots in arms to keep people safe and our schools and economy open."

Biden said he is mobilizing an additional 1,000 military doctors, nurses and other health care workers to send to hospitals that need them in January and February. The White House said emergency medical response teams have been dispatched to six states with a shortage of health care workers.

The U.S. is also expanding hospital bed capacity on an emergency basis ahead of the expected surge of the omicron variant cases, the White House said, while deploying hundreds of ambulances and emergency medical teams to transport patients to open beds.

A White House fact sheet on Biden's address said the government has hundreds of millions of N-95 face masks, billions of gloves, tens of millions of hospital gowns and more than 100,000 ventilators in its strategic national stockpile, "all ready to ship out, if and when states need them."

It said there are now 20,000 free COVID-19 testing sites across the U.S., and that the government is buying a half-billion at-home, rapid test kits for distribution to Americans who want them, starting next month.

The White House said that in recent months the government had added 10,000 vaccination sites across the country and now has 90,000. It plans to add new pop-up vaccination sites at some scattered spots across the U.S. and said private pharmacies are adding workers to administer more vaccinations.


U.S. President Joe Biden is making a new concerted effort Tuesday to combat the surging omicron variant of the coronavirus, dispatching federal health care workers to short-handed hospitals, pre-positioning the national stockpile of medical equipment around the country and offering 500 million free COVID-19 test kits to Americans.

Biden is laying out his attack plan in a White House address as the number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. is markedly increasing again, with 143,000 recorded on Monday, along with another 1,300 deaths. Nearly three-fourths of the new cases are linked to the highly transmissible omicron variant.

Ahead of Bidens speech, the White House said that new cases among already vaccinated people will likely spread because of the omicron variant, but that the medical effects will most likely be mild.

But, it warned, In contrast, unvaccinated individuals are at high risk of getting COVID-19, getting severely ill, and even dying.

The governments Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 204 million Americans, or 61%, are fully vaccinated, up from less than 1% at the beginning of 2021. But only 60.8 million people so far have gotten booster shots that health experts say provide the most protection against the omicron variant.

About 50 million Americans have not gotten any vaccination shots, many of them objecting to the governments effort to get more people inoculated, saying it violates their freedom to make their own medical choices.

Among some groups of people, getting vaccinated remains controversial  often, according to surveys, those who voted for former President Donald Trump in his unsuccessful 2020 re-election bid. Trump, a coronavirus victim while president, was booed by some supporters at an appearance in the southwestern state of Texas over the weekend when he told them he had gotten a booster shot.

The White House said the actions Biden is announcing Tuesday will mitigate the impact unvaccinated individuals have on our health care system, while increasing access to free testing and getting more shots in arms to keep people safe and our schools and economy open.

It said Biden will mobilize an additional 1,000 military doctors, nurses and other health care workers to send to hospitals that need them in January and February. The White House said emergency medical response teams have been dispatched to six states with a shortage of health care workers.

The U.S. is also expanding hospital bed capacity on an emergency basis ahead of the expected surge of the omicron variant cases, the White House said, while deploying hundreds of ambulances and emergency medical teams to transport patients to open beds.

A White House fact sheet on Bidens address said the government has hundreds of millions of N-95 face masks, billions of gloves, tens of millions of hospital gowns and more than 100,000 ventilators in its strategic national stockpile, all ready to ship out, if and when states need them.

It said there are now 20,000 free COVID-19 testing sites across the U.S., and that the government is buying a half-billion at-home, rapid test kits for distribution to Americans who want them, starting next month.

The White House said that in recent months the government had added 10,000 vaccination sites across the country and now has 90,000. It plans to add new pop-up vaccination sites at some scattered spots across the U.S. and said private pharmacies are adding workers to administer more vaccinations.
President Joe Biden has welcomed a new addition to the family, a puppy named Commander.

Biden shared a photo Monday on his official Twitter account with a caption that said, "Welcome to the White House, Commander" as well as a brief video of him tossing a ball to Commander and walking the leashed dog into the White House.

No other details about the dog were provided.

The puppy appears to be a German shepherd, the breed of Biden's other two dogs, and was a gift to him from his family, according to CNN, which first reported on the puppy's arrival after it was seen scampering around the White House South Lawn on Monday.

His name appears to be a play on Biden's status as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces.

Biden brought his other dogs to the White House shortly after he took office in January.

Champ died in June at age 13.

Major, who was much younger than Champ, was involved in several biting incidents during his relatively short tenure at the executive mansion and was returned to Biden's home in Delaware.

Biden's wife, Jill, had said in April that a cat would soon be joining the family at the White House, but a feline has not yet shown up or been announced.


Cameroonian authorities say troops have arrested hundreds of armed men blamed for communal violence in the northeast this month that displaced more than a hundred thousand people  most to neighboring Chad. Authorities say they also seized hundreds of weapons as well as cattle stolen during the conflict over scarce resources.

Cameroonian authorities say the military is conducting an intensive search to find and arrest additional armed men operating in Logone and Chari, along the northern border with Chad.

The governor of the Far North region, Midjiyawa Bakari, says military raids on hideouts in the area led to the arrests of several hundred men.

Speaking from the regions capital, Maroua, Bakari said the men were believed responsible for much of the violence this month that displaced more than 100,000 people  most of them across the border to Chad.

He says besides the arrests, the military also seized several hundred weapons that the men were using to attack and kill civilians. Bakari says troops also seized 30 motorcycles that armed men from rival communities were using in attacks. He says more than 200 cattle stolen from ranchers have been recovered and will be handed over after investigations to determine their legitimate owners.

Clashes broke out on December 4 between ranchers and fishers over water resources, leaving scores dead and sending tens of thousands fleeing  most of them women and children.



Arab Choua cattle ranchers and ethnic Mousgoum fishers accuse each other of trespassing and occupying each others land.

Bakari says most males who remained in the villages are involved in the fighting.

He would not give details on how many people have been killed in the clashes but said no government troops are among the casualties.

President Paul Biya last week dispatched to the area a delegation of lawmakers, ministers, religious leaders, and traditional rulers to negotiate a peace between the communities.

Retired army colonel Hamad Kalkaba Malboum was part of the delegation.

He says in areas where the clashes have stopped, they are asking villagers to return home.

"The president of the republic of Cameroon sent the mission [delegation] to tell people that they must be calm, the government will give instructions to rebuild what has been destroyed, and we need also to prepare the development of that region, which has also suffered Boko Haram [atrocities]," he said.

Boko Haram, an Islamist militant group from Nigeria, has since 2014 spread to neighboring Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, launching attacks that have killed more than 30,000 people and displaced two million.

Cameroons government is allocating $300 million to rebuild infrastructure the militants destroyed along the border.

The communal violence this month left several villages and markets burned to the ground.

Cameroonian authorities have asked people in the area who own weapons to hand them over.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports at least 85,000 Cameroonians have fled into neighboring Chad and 15,000 are internally displaced. But it says the real number could be much higher.
More than a dozen people severely injured in a gas truck explosion last week have died, raising the total number of deaths to 90, the deputy mayor of Cap-Haitien, the city in Haiti where the tragedy occurred, said Monday.

The count is "still unfortunately incomplete" due to severe injuries suffered by those still hospitalized, said Patrick Almonor.

The previous tally released last Wednesday by Haitian authorities stood at 75 deaths with 47 victims severely burned.

According to Almonor, during the night of December 13, the driver of the gas truck lost control when he swerved to avoid a motor-taxi, and subsequently overturned. Residents tried to collect the spilled fuel, which then exploded.

On Tuesday, national funerals will be observed in the city's main cathedral, but only 25 caskets will be set up. The majority of the victims were buried shortly afterward in a mass grave in Cap-Haitien.

In a country plagued by natural disasters and political instability, more than 60% of Haiti's 11 million inhabitants live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

Fuel shortages have been a frequent occurrence in recent years, with authorities regularly running out of cash to pay gas distributors.

"Fuel is worth its weight in gold these days in the country, and there it was free for the taking," Almonor said, describing the scene of the explosion. "That's what worsened the toll."

The tragedy also underscored the weakness of Haiti's national health care system: the only structure specializing in the care of severe burns in the country is managed by Doctors Without Borders (Medecins sans Frontieres, or MSF) which is located in the capital, 200 kilometers (120 miles) to the south of Cap-Haitien.

The international NGO dispatched an emergency team to the northern city to help local hospital staff.

Jean Gilbert Ndong, MSF's medical coordinator, said the injured still in hospital included two children.

"We are at Justinien University Hospital where we have 15 patients including two children who should be discharged today," he said.

"The care of these patients is long-term, it will be at least three to four months," Ndong said, insisting that MSF professionals stand "ready to support the Haitian government."

Lamenting the deaths of the injured over the weekend, both at the MSF hospital in Port-au-Prince and in Cap-Haitien, he said that the deceased had suffered "significant burns which ranged from 80 to 95% of the body."
Five civilians and a soldier were killed in the latest attack by armed groups in volatile Central African Republic, plagued by fighting between rebels and the army, a local official said Monday.

Rebel fighters attacked army positions of Central African forces on Sunday in the town of Mann, some 600 kilometers (370 miles) northwest of Bangui, local sub-prefect Jean-Ulrich Sembetanga told AFP.

"The toll is five civilians killed, one Central African soldier and one rebel," Sembetanga said, blaming the powerful 3R (Return, Reclamation, Rehabilitation) group, active in the northwest of the country and mainly made up of the Fulani ethnic group.

The news came hours after a report that 15 civilians were killed in the central east of the former French colony December 6 and 7.

The U.N. MINUSCA mission said Monday that others were mutilated in the attack some 400 kilometers east of Bangui, and that some 1,500 people were forced from their homes.

The organization added it had evidence of "cases of amputation, extortion and destruction of homes and the displacement of upwards of 1,500 people," pointing the finger of blame at a mainly Christian and animist militia known as the anti-Balaka.

MINUSCA added it "strongly condemns the recent violence deliberately targeting civilian populations."

Yearslong conflict

One of the poorest countries in the world, the CAR descended into conflict in 2013 when then-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.

In December last year, rebels launched a new offensive against President Faustin-Archange Touadera's regime on the eve of presidential elections.

Touadera won reelection, and his army has now reconquered the lost territory  the United Nations and France say with key support from Russia's Wagner private security group  as well as crack Rwandan troops.

Moscow denies the allegations.

Touadera on October 15 decreed a unilateral cease-fire with a view to opening a dialogue with armed groups. The main groups responded by announcing they would abide by the truce.

But on November 28, some 30 civilians and two soldiers were killed in an attack in the northwest which authorities blamed on the 3R group.


An attack on an Afghan journalist, who was stabbed in Kabul on Sunday, has rattled the country's media.

Jawed Yusufi, a reporter for the independent outlet Ufuq News, was attacked about 6 p.m. local time in the predominantly Hazara section of western Kabul, according to his employer and local media advocates.

Three men armed with knives stabbed Yusufi multiple times, badly wounding him. He remains under special care at a local hospital, his employer reported on its website.

A spokesperson for the Taliban blamed robbers for the attack.

But Ufuq News said that the assailants did not take Yusufi's money or mobile phone, which suggests it was not a robbery.

The media outlet condemned the attack and called on the Taliban, media groups and international organizations "to take serious and practical steps in support of freedom of expression and the safety of journalists."

The attack on Yusufi came the same week that one journalist was beaten and had equipment confiscated and at least three journalists were detained.

A spokesperson for the Taliban interior ministry said in a video message that an investigation has been opened into the attack on Yusufi and other incidents targeting journalists.

Since seizing power, the Taliban have repeatedly pledged to respect Afghanistan's independent media.

But Hujatullah Mujadidi, head of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, says the Taliban have failed to protect journalists.

"In every case, the Taliban promise to carry out an investigation, but so far, no case has been investigated," Mujadidi told VOA.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the attack and called for the Taliban to hold those responsible to account.

"Prosecuting those who attack journalists is an essential measure to assure any semblance of press freedom in Afghanistan," CPJ's Asia coordinator Steven Butler said in a statement.

Media harassed

On December 11, Sayed Rashed Kashefi, a journalist for Kabul Times, a state-run English-language newspaper, was detained and beaten by what he said were Taliban forces.

At the time, he was photographing humanitarian aid distribution in the city.

Kashefi told the local TOLOnews channel that the attackers confiscated his equipment and asked where he worked.

Separately, journalists were detained in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Kunduz in the past week, according to Mujadidi.

Faisal Noori, a journalist in the northern city of Kunduz, was taken by Taliban intelligence officials from his home and interrogated for hours.

In a Facebook post, Noori wrote that the incident had resulted from a "misunderstanding," but he complained about forces entering his house without permission and treating him like a criminal.

"The events of the past week, particularly the illegal detentions of journalists, have demoralized journalists," Mujadidi said. "Attempts to restrict freedom of expression represent a blow to the Afghan media community."

Since the Taliban took power in August, media rights groups have reported dozens of cases of journalists being detained or beaten while covering protests and other events.

The Taliban have circulated media guidelines that reporters say amount to an attempt to control the media, and the International Federation of Journalists estimates that at least 150 media outlets have closed.




A man who joined a mob in one of the most violent attacks on police during the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced Monday to nearly four years in prison.

Devlyn Thompson, 28, wrote an apology letter to the officer whom he assaulted during a melee in a tunnel where police battled with dozens of rioters for more than two hours.

He also expressed remorse for his actions in a letter to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who sentenced him to three years and 10 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

"The attack on the Capitol that day was an attack on the very rule of law in our country," Lamberth said.

Justice Department prosecutors recommended a four-year prison sentence for Thompson, a longtime resident of Washington state who moved to Georgia approximately six months before the riot.

Defense attorney Elizabeth Kelley requested a one-year prison sentence for Thompson. He has autism spectrum disorder and "functions in many ways as a young child," Kelley wrote in a court filing. She said Thompson's condition influenced his behavior on January 6 and distorted his understanding of what happened that day.

"Autism is not and should not be an excuse for bad behavior, but rather, it should be considered when a person's individual culpability and degree of social understanding is called into question," she wrote.

The judge also said autism isn't an excuse for assaulting a police officer. He noted that Thompson had a job that paid him $90,000 a year before the riot.

Thompson has been jailed since he pleaded guilty in August to assaulting a police officer with a dangerous weapon, a metal baton. The charge carries a maximum of 20 years imprisonment, but sentencing guidelines for Thompson's case recommended a prison sentence ranging from 46 to 57 months.

Prosecutors say one of the most violent confrontations on January 6 was in the tunnel, where a mob and police fought for control of a Capitol entrance in an area known as the Lower West Terrace. Surveillance video captured Thompson with more than 190 other rioters in the tunnel. He struck a police officer's hand with a baton that he found in the tunnel. Others assaulted police with poles, sticks and other makeshift weapons.

Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone told a congressional committee in July that the fight in the tunnel was "nothing short of brutal." He was pulled into the mob, beaten and repeatedly shocked with a stun gun.

"I observed approximately 30 police officers standing shoulder to shoulder, maybe four or five abreast, using the weight of their bodies to hold back the onslaught of violent attackers. Many of these officers were injured, bleeding and fatigued, but they continued to hold the line," Fanone testified.

Before he assaulted the officer, Thompson helped the mob take riot shields from officers and brought them forward for other rioters to use against police, according to prosecutors. He also joined the mob in pushing together against the front line of officers and threw a large audio speaker that struck another rioter in the head, drawing blood, prosecutors said.

Thompson's actions on January 6 "show an absolute disregard for the rule of law coupled with a willingness to incite and engage in violence," prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Thompson, who worked for a rental property management company, drove to Washington, D.C., from Atlanta. He didn't enter the Capitol before he left.

In his apology letter to the officer, Thompson said he is still trying to understand his "inexcusable" behavior.

"You deserve to be treated with respect, and I didn't show you any with my actions that day," Thompson wrote.

Thompson is the third rioter to be sentenced for assaulting police at the Capitol. The other two, Robert Palmer and Scott Fairlamb, were sentenced to prison terms of 63 months and 41 months, respectively.

More than 700 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot. Over 150 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanor offenses punishable by a maximum of six months imprisonment. Nearly 70 defendants have been sentenced.
The Malaysian military used boats Tuesday to distribute food to desperate people trapped in their homes after massive floods, as the death toll rose to 14 with over 70,000 displaced.

Days of torrential rain triggered some of the worst flooding in years across the country at the weekend, swamping cities and villages and cutting off major roads.

Selangor -- the country's wealthiest and most densely populated state, encircling the capital Kuala Lumpur -- is one of the worst-hit areas.

Some parts of state capital Shah Alam were still under water Tuesday, and military personnel in boats distributed food to people stuck in their homes and government shelters.

Kartik Subramany fled his house as floodwaters rose, and took refuge in a school for 48 hours before being evacuated with his family to a shelter.

"My house is totally damaged, my two cars are wrecked," the 29-year-old told AFP.

"These are the worst floods of my entire life. The federal government has failed the people miserably -- it has failed in its primary function to protect and safeguard lives."

He is among a growing number attacking what they say is a slow and inadequate official response.

Thousands of emergency service and military personnel have been mobilised, but critics say it is not enough and volunteers have stepped in to provide food and boats for the rescue effort.

An AFP journalist in one hard-hit Shah Alam neighbourhood saw people desperate for food snatching items from a devastated supermarket.

'Hopeless' official response

Opposition MP Fuziah Salleh described the official response as "hopeless" and "incompetent".

"No early warning of the torrential rain was given," she told AFP. "It is so sad lives have been lost."

Opposition politicians have accused the government of ignoring their calls to better prepare for the monsoon season, from November to February, particularly by improving drainage in densely populated urban areas.

On Tuesday, the death toll from the floods rose to 14, including eight in Selangor and six in the eastern state of Pahang, official news agency Bernama reported.

But with reports of people still missing, it is expected to increase.

More than 71,000 people have been forced from their homes due to the floods, including 41,000 in Pahang and 27,000 in Selangor, according to official data.

Evacuees are being housed in government relief centres but officials have warned to expect a rise in coronavirus cases linked to the crowded shelters.

The rain has stopped and in many areas floodwaters have receded, leaving residents to count the cost.

"I've been doing business for more than 24 years... this has never happened before," said Mohammad Awal, whose cosmetic shop outside Kuala Lumpur was flooded.

The Southeast Asian nation is hit by floods annually during the monsoon season, but those at the weekend were the worst since 2014 when over 100,000 people were forced from their homes.

Global warming has been linked to worsening floods. Because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, climate change increases the risk and intensity of flooding from extreme rainfall.
Kenya has reached an all-time high COVID-19 infection rate, with positive results in nearly a third of tests. Scientists believe the surge is fueled by the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus. But Kenya is also seeing a low rate of hospitalizations and deaths.

Kenya is battling a wave of COVID-19 infections greater than any since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020.

The positive test rate has jumped from 6.5 percent to almost 30 percent in the past week.

The World Health Organization labels a country high risk if its positivity rate is more than 5 percent and advises affected countries to consider restrictions to limit the spread of the virus.



However, the head of research group Amref Health Africa International, Githinji Gitahi, says that many people visiting hospitals seeking coronavirus treatment do not need to be admitted.

We have a lot of outpatient visits in the clinics, in the hospitals but largely outpatient, outpatient numbers have almost doubled but not hospitalization," Gitahi said. "We are not seeing many hospitalizations, oxygen requirement, ICU-HDU as should have been expected, which indicates that maybe its earlier immunity in the bodies of those who are getting infected, vaccination plus early infection or just that the particular variant is mild and not causing severe disease.

Some countries have reintroduced lockdowns to fight the spread of the omicron variant. But the East African nation has been reluctant to do so.

Dr. David Sang, an epidemiologist, says people have shown some laxity when following health protocols like wearing masks and frequently washing hands.

I may not attribute it to the new strain. I think it's more likely to be because people became complacent because for a longtime the level of transmission was very low," Sang said. "They perceived that the disease was declining and their guard was not as important as before.

In Kenya, wearing a face mask is mandatory, but these days the mandate is rarely followed or enforced.

Gitahi says the country will continue to have waves of COVID-19 until more of the population gets vaccinated.

As usual, the wave will burn out and we normally see the wave taking about three-four weeks and then they get onto the decline," Gitahi said. "This one is rising very rapidly which could also mean that it could also decline rapidly maybe two-three weeks. So, we expect that to happen but people need to get vaccinated so that we dont end up with a surge in hospitalization in case it spreads out in areas of low vaccination.

Out of the estimated 54 million people in Kenya, about 9 million have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and only 3.6 million are fully vaccinated.
Political repression is prompting thousands of Chinese to seek asylum in countries outside of China, including the United States, each year, claiming persecution or well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or other factors. Mike O'Sullivan spoke with two immigrants from China who reached the United States by very different paths. Camera: Mike O'Sullivan, Roy Kim
A Russian businessman has been extradited from Switzerland to the United States to face charges of insider trading, the Swiss justice ministry said.



Vladislav Klyushin, who reportedly owns a media and cybersecurity business called M13 that is linked to the Kremlin, is accused of involvement in a global scheme to trade on non-public information stolen from U.S. computer networks  between at least in or about January 2018 and September 2020, according to a press release from the U.S. Justice Department.



According to the companys website, its products were used by the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation, federal ministries and departments, regional state executive bodies, commercial companies and public organizations.



One of the stocks Klyushin traded using insider information was Tesla, the Justice Department said.



Russia said the move was another example of Washington going after Russians on the world stage.



"We are forced to state that we are dealing with another episode in Washington's ongoing hunt for Russian citizens in third countries," said Vladimir Khokhlov, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Switzerland, TASS reported.



Four other Russians are charged in the alleged scheme.



The integrity of our nations capital markets and of its computer networks are priorities for my office, acting U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Mendell said. Todays charges show that we, the FBI, and our other law enforcement partners will relentlessly pursue those who hack, steal and attempt to profit from inside information, wherever they may hide.



Some information in this report came from Reuters.
Poland and Lithuania have backed Ukraine in urging Western powers to immediately impose sanctions on Russia over its military buildup along the Ukrainian border.

As fears mount of a Russian invasion, Polands President Andrzej Duda, Lithuanias President Gitanas Nauseda and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday called upon the international community to step up sanctions on the Russian Federation over its ongoing aggression against Ukraine.

In a statement issued after the leaders met in Ukraines Carpathian Mountains, they once again urged the Kremlin to de-escalate the situation by withdrawing its troops from the Ukrainian borders.

Despite U.S. President Joe Biden warning Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month that Russia would pay a terrible price in the event it invades Ukraine, the forward-deployment of hundreds of tanks, howitzers, self-propelled artillery and tens of thousands of troops has not been reversed, say Western security sources.

U.S. and Western officials fear Putin is contemplating a replay of 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and used armed proxies to seize a large part of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. The White House believes it has only a four-week window to stave off a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sergei Ryabkov, Russias deputy foreign minister, dismissed reports Monday of the West having a four-week window to stop an invasion. There was nothing to defend [Ukraine] from, he said.

But Russian officials have said relations with NATO were reaching a moment of truth and have called on the West to respond to their demands that the Western alliance bar former Soviet states such as Ukraine from joining the bloc.

Zelenskiys repeated calls for powerful preventative actions, powerful serious sanctions to exclude any thought about escalation so far have been ignored by the U.S. and NATOs Western European members. But they have continued their drumbeat of warnings of severe economic penalties if Russia invades Ukraine.

Speaking Tuesday to reporters on a conference call, Assistant Secretary of State Karen Donfried, who for the past week has been holding talks in Moscow, Kyiv and Brussels, said: The United States has been working very closely with our European counterparts on specific packages of severe consequences for Russia. Should it move forward with military escalation in Ukraine, together with our allies, we have been clear that we would respond with strong economic measures that we have not considered in the past and that would inflict significant costs on the Russian economy and financial system.

Asked if Western powers are ready to act if there is further Russian aggression against Ukraine today, tomorrow or next week, Donfried said: Theres clarity about what we will do.

But current and former diplomats say while theres broad agreement among Western powers about sanctioning Russia in the event of an incursion, theres as yet no final accord on the details. Some European governments have less appetite than others, they say. There is still discussion, said a British diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. It is not all signed and sealed.

Russia is the European Unions fifth largest trading partner, and European assets in Russia are valued at about $350 billion.

Much speculation on what Western powers might do has focused on whether they would cut Russia off from the SWIFT global money-transfer system, which is used by more than 11,000 banks and financial institutions to make and receive cross-border payments. Some commentators have suggested this would be a nuclear option, but others disagree, saying Russia would adapt and could use email, telex and phone calls to arrange money transfers.

One of the things that I imagine is being considered is more restrictions on the Russian financial infrastructure, which might include SWIFT, said Tom Keatinge, director of the Center for Financial Crime and Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute, Britains leading defense think tank.

I'm not convinced it is necessarily the nuclear option, he told VOA. You can perfectly well do cross-border payments without using the system. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be an impact. There would be, because it would throw a ton of grit into Russia's ability to trade internationally. But I'm not convinced it is the sort of threat that's going to make Vladimir Putin quake in his boots.

When disconnecting Russia from SWIFT was first broached in 2014, the impact would have been greater, Keatinge explained. But since then, Russia has clearly given much thought to what workarounds it would use. And, like China, it has been developing its own financial transfer system, known as SPFS, which 400 institutionsmostly banksare already using.

The Russian Central Bank has for a long time been developing a playbook, Keatinge added. Some other analysts fear unplugging Russia from SWIFT would encourage Russia and China to develop a more ubiquitous global payment system of their own.

Keatinge and others suspect potential sanctions would focus on blacklisting more Russian banks and financial institutions and making it harder for Russia to raise capital overseas. But Western countries have different pain thresholds and the Europeans have significantly more [economically] at stake, says Adam Smith, a former senior sanctions adviser at the U.S. Treasury Department who later served on the National Security Council during the Obama administration.

He cites the risk the Kremlin would retaliate by cutting off natural gas exports to Europe, which sources 35% of its gas supplies from Russia.

Going after Russia, like going after China, is not the same as going after Iran, he told VOA. Collateral consequences would be meaningful. The question is: What degree of self-harm is the West willing to tolerate in order to give Putin a bloody nose?
A new survey finds that at least 40 percent of media outlets in Afghanistan have disappeared and more than 80 percent of women journalists lost their jobs since the Islamist Taliban seized control of the country in mid-August.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) conducted the study with its local partner, the Afghan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA), and released the findings Tuesday about Afghanistans once booming and vibrant national media.

It lamented that the environment for journalists in the capital, Kabul, and the rest of the country has become extremely fraught since the Taliban takeover.

Of the 543 media outlets tallied in Afghanistan at the start of the summer, only 312 were still operating at the end of November, according to the survey.

More than 6,400 journalists and media employees have lost their jobs since August 15 when the Taliban seized control of the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Proportionally, women have been hit much more: more than four out of five (84%) have lost their jobs since the Taliban takeover, as against one out of every two men (52%), the survey noted.

There are no working women journalists in 15 of the Afghanistans 34 provinces. The northern province of Jowzjan used to have 19 media outlets employing 112 women, now none of the 12 media outlets still operating is employing a woman.

The study used the figures for the previous situation from a survey conducted by media outlets and journalists operating in Afghanistan before the Taliban seized control of the country.

The Taliban in many municipalities have allegedly demanded that local media not employ any women journalists.

Most of the Afghan provinces had at least 10 privately owned media outlets just four months ago, but now some regions have almost no local media at all.

The central Kabul region, which had more media that anywhere else, has not been spared the carnage. It has lost more than one of every two media outlets (51%). Of the 148 tallied prior to 15 August, only 72 are still operating, the study found.

Of the 1,100 women journalists and media workers counted in the capital at the start of August, only 320 are now working  a 73% drop.

Hundreds of journalists have also left Afghanistan since August for fear of Taliban reprisals or because of problems associated with practicing their profession under Taliban rule.

Since establishing their acting government in September, the Taliban have issued a set of journalism rules, including media compliance with the Taliban interpretation of Islamic doctrine on enjoying good and forbidding wrong.

The survey described the guidelines as dangerous, saying they open the way to censorship and persecution, and deprive journalists of their independence.

Taliban officials have repeatedly denied allegations they are behind dozens of incidents of violence or stifling media freedom.

Reporters Without Borders quoted Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid as telling the media watchdog his government supports freedom for the media in the defined framework for preserving the countrys higher interests, with respect for the Sharia and Islam.

When asked about some 40 incidents of violence against journalists since August 15, Mujahid said efforts are being made to train and control the behavior of Taliban security forces.

Taliban harassment alone is not blamed for the shrinking Afghan media landscape. Many media outlets were receiving national as well international funding that ended when the Islamist group seized control. Their economic troubles have been exacerbated byf a loss of advertising revenue.

There is an urgent need to rein in the spiral leading inevitably to the disappearance of Afghan media and to ensure that respect for press freedom is a priority, said Reza Moini, the head of RSFs Iran-Afghanistan desk.

Beyond the numbers, the closure of nearly half of the country's media and the loss of more than 6,000 jobs are a disaster for press freedom, IAJA Executive-Director Hojatollah Mujadadi said.

Afghanistan has been regularly listed in recent years as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. It was ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index that RSF published last April.
The U.N. human rights office is calling on Belarus and Poland to end what it calls appalling treatment of refugees and migrants stranded along their common border and to live up to their obligations under international human rights and refugee laws.

A U.N. human rights team visited the region between November 29 and December 3 to get a firsthand view of the situation. While Polish officials met with the team, Belarusian authorities did not.

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell says team members were not granted access to the restricted border area. However, she says they interviewed government officials, civil society representatives and dozens of refugees and migrants who had arrived in Poland through Belarus.

Those interviewed, she says, described the dire conditions on both sides of the border.

The majority said that, while in Belarus, they had been beaten or threatened by security forces and also alleged that the Belarusian security forces forced them to cross the borderSeveral interviewees said Belarusian security forces had demanded extortionate sums for food and waterThey spoke about their fear, their fear about being alone in the forest, even fear of dying because of the difficult conditions there. One of the migrants said it is absolute hell for everyone," Throssell said.



The International Organization for Migration says 21 migrants have died along the Belarus-EU border, many from hypothermia because of freezing temperatures.

The European Commission accuses Belarus of creating a crisis by luring migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other countries to the capital, Minsk, with the false promise of gaining easy entry to the European Union.

Throssell says neither Belarus nor Poland wants the refugees and migrants and push them across borders. She says Poland also systematically detains those whom it has not returned to Belarus.

"Many of those interviewed said they had not been given proper physical and mental health care in detention, and had limited contact with the outside world, including with independent lawyers, human rights monitors and civil society organizations," Throssell said. "We remind Poland that detention should be an exceptional measure of last resort, and only be used for a limited period of time, if at all.

The U.N. human rights office is urging authorities of both countries to give human rights and humanitarian actors, as well as journalists, lawyers, and civil society representatives, access to the border areas. It is calling on them and on the EU to respect and protect the human rights of migrants in line with international law.
U.N. human rights officials are calling on Sudanese authorities to investigate and bring to justice members of the security forces accused of sexually assaulting several women and girls during demonstrations held Sunday in the capital, Khartoum.

What began as a peaceful protest, allegedly quickly turned into a chaotic scene of sexual violence, harassment, and deadly force. U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell says U.N. monitors in Sudan have received reports 13 women and girls were victims of rape or gang rape during a recent demonstration.

We have also received allegations of sexual harassment by security forces against women who were trying to flee the area around the presidential palace on Sunday evening. Two protesters died after being shot, and around 300 others were injured, some due to the use of live ammunition, some hit by tear gas canisters or beaten by security forces, and others who suffered breathing difficulties from tear gas inhalation, Throssell said.

Tens of thousands of people took part in demonstrations marking the third anniversary of protests that led to the overthrow of the government of President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. Demonstrators also gathered to protest the military coup in October and the political agreement that was signed in November.

The U.N. human rights office is calling on Sudanese authorities to investigate the allegations of rape and sexual harassment promptly and thoroughly. Throssell said the alleged deaths and injury of protesters because of the disproportionate use of force and live ammunitions also must be investigated.

The perpetrators must be identified and prosecuted. With further protests planned for this weekend and the weeks ahead, it is crucial that security forces guarantee and protect the right to peaceful assembly and act with full respect for international laws and standards regulating the use of force, she said.

Throssell noted the countrys acting attorney general has set up a committee of senior prosecutors to investigate all human rights violations committed since the military coup on October 25.

The U.N. human rights office is urging national authorities to make the committee findings public and to hold to account those responsible for human rights violations and abuses.
The United States believes bilateral talks with Russia over its massive troop buildup along the Ukrainian border could start in January, said the State Department's top diplomats, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the U.S. and its allies for tensions in the region.

"We're prepared to engage diplomatically through multiple channels," said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a press conference Tuesday.

"I think you'll see relatively early in the new year engagements in all of those areas, to see if we can advance the differences diplomatically," added Blinken, referring to the existing U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue and through the NATO-Russia Council, as well as through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The top diplomat also warned of "massive consequences" if Russia "engages in further acts of aggression against Ukraine."

Meanwhile, Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, told reporters that the U.S. and Russia would agree on a specific date to begin talks on Moscow's demands that NATO give up any military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.

But she warned, "We have made clear that any dialogue must be based on reciprocity, address our concerns about Russia's actions, and take place in full coordination with our European allies and partners."

"Let me be clear, there will be no talks on European security without Europe," Donfried said.

Russia has deployed 100,000 troops along its border with eastern Ukraine, according to Western estimates, after unilaterally annexing Ukraines Crimean Peninsula in 2014. The U.S. has expressed concern that Russia could invade Ukraine early next year but does not believe Putin has decided whether to launch an attack.

U.S. President Joe Biden warned Putin two weeks ago during a virtual summit that the U.S. and its allies would impose devastating economic sanctions against Russia if it invades Ukraine.

Biden has ruled out a ground deployment of U.S. troops in the event of a Russian attack on Ukraine, but Washington has been sending small arms and ammunition to the Kyiv government, along with Javelin missiles the U.S. says Ukraine should use only for defensive purposes.

Putin, speaking to a meeting of Russias top military leaders, blamed the West for "tensions that are building up in Europe."

As part of the upcoming bilateral talks with the U.S., Putin is demanding that NATO, the post-World War II Western military alliance, deny possible membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet satellite countries, while curbing its military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe.

Putin said the Kremlin wants "long-term, legally binding guarantees" from the West, as opposed to "verbal assurances, words and promises" that it says it can't trust.

The Russian leader contended that if the U.S. and NATO place missile systems in Ukraine, it will take only minutes for them to reach Moscow.

"For us, it is the most serious challenge  a challenge to our security," he said,

What is happening now, tensions that are building up in Europe, is [the U.S. and NATO's] fault every step of the way," the Russian leader said, ignoring Moscows takeover of Crimea.

"Russia has been forced to respond at every step, Putin contended. The situation kept worsening and worsening, deteriorating and deteriorating. And here we are today, in a situation when we're forced to resolve it somehow."

Putin said Moscow hopes for "constructive, meaningful talks with a visible end result  and within a certain time frame  that would ensure equal security for all."

"Armed conflicts, bloodshed is not our choice, and we don't want such developments, Putin said. We want to resolve issues by political and diplomatic means."

Tuesday, Blinken said there are "no plans" for now, when asked about another in-person meeting between Biden and Putin after both leaders met in person in Geneva in June, and then followed it with a video conference in December.

"We have to see if in the first instance there's any progress diplomatically. We also want to see Russia de-escalate, to move forces back from the border with Ukraine to take down the tension," Blinken told reporters.

Some material in this report came from Reuters and the Associated Press.
Editor's note: Paragraph 3 of this article has been updated to clarify details of the journalist's reporting on the Pandora Papers.



The release of the Pandora Papers in October garnered worldwide attention, with the leaked documents revealing the hidden wealth of some of the most powerful people in the world.

Reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed how the files exposed the hidden offshore finances of 35 current and former world leaders, including Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev. The Azeri leader has denied any wrongdoing, telling the Italian newspaper la Repubblica that only "five percent of (the reporting) could be true, the rest is a lie."

While not part of the main Pandora Papers reporting project, since the release of the documents, investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova has been reporting on findings related to Azerbaijan.

The award-winning journalist, who worked for the Azeri Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is known for her coverage on corruption. In 2014, Azeri authorities arrested her on charges that rights groups believe were in retaliation for her reporting, and she spent more than 530 days in prison.

Ismayilova believes reporting on the leaked documents is important in the global fight against corruption. In an interview with VOA's Azeri Service, however, she expressed her frustration that Azeri authorities had not yet acted on allegations of corruption uncovered by even earlier reporting.

Gunay Salimzade, press secretary for Azerbaijan's prosecutor general, told VOA that Azerbaijan takes corruption allegations seriously. "The fight against corruption in our country is being conducted in all directions in accordance with a strong political will," Salimzade said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What impact has the Pandora Papers had in exposing global corruption?

Ismayilova: This is the largest leak from offshore jurisdictions. These kinds of leaks allow journalists to gain access to documents from jurisdictions that are otherwise closed for public eyes. Secrecy in business is something that feeds corruption, that feeds crimes.

As we see from these leaks, secrecy in business has been used by corrupt officials on a large scale. (For example), the Azerbaijani ruling regime, like lots of Azerbaijani officials, has been involved in business activities and spent millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars to buy property to start companies abroad. (Editor's note: In October, VOA reported that the leaks show the Aliyevs and their associates traded property in Britain worth $544 million over 15 years.)

(Some of) those companies have been used for corrupt activities in Azerbaijan and other countries.

This (investigative reporting) will not stop corruption immediately, but it will help uncover more corrupt facts.

Constant and continuous work on these leaks, on these databases, helps us connect the dots. There were, for example, companies that have been using money-laundering schemes, and we didn't know anything about those companies.

It basically gives us a lot of work, but it also makes it easier to uncover corruption. So this helps journalists, and this helps societies to get informed.

What steps can be taken to ensure transparency, accountability, and tighter control over financial transactions and money laundering?

Ismayilova: We have uncovered many facts about corruption at the highest level in Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, we haven't seen law enforcement act on any of those facts.

The problem is that the government is not able to act against corruption.

There is a myth in Azerbaijan that the president doesn't know anything about what is going on, so it's not him; it's the other people in the elite that are corrupt.

The president makes speeches saying that he will fight corruption, and then people start saying, "Oh, the president is good. His surrounding is bad."

But that myth is broken by this journalist investigation because (it) shows that the president's family is the ultimate beneficiary  they gain much more than any other official from this corruption.

The government declares that it fights corruption, but no practical, effective step has been taken.

From 2006, we have had a law that all government officials should declare their wealth. And 15 years have passed ... nobody has ever declared their wealth under that law because there is no form. Fifteen years, they could not prepare the template.

In 2012, Azerbaijan stepped back from transparency, hiding the ownership of the companies, making it more difficult for investigators to find out who owns companies, including those benefiting from public procurement contracts. They are benefiting from the budget, but we don't know who owns them.

It is quite a frustrating process when you uncover the corruption facts and then nothing happens.

But the global process is going on, and it's very important. It makes it more difficult for the countries, for the corrupt officials from countries like Azerbaijan, to transfer their funds, to invest.

Some countries decide that they have to be more transparent. The United Kingdom, (has taken) some steps on sanctioning, or even taking over property bought with corrupt or criminal money. Some Azerbaijani oligarchs have lost properties (there) because of that process.

We have heard about the initiative by Tom Malinowski (a U.S. Representative for New Jersey) and other representatives that suggests sanctioning people worldwide.

How does Azerbaijani society feel about the fight against corruption and the responsibility of officials?

Ismayilova: Society in Azerbaijan is full of fear. There is a lot of fear in society because of political oppression. And they do not believe in the justice system. There were a couple of initiatives where citizens or political groups applied to a court, demanding an investigation into corruption revealed by international journalist organizations.

Well, no steps have been taken. And, unfortunately, there is very little room for international litigation of domestic corruption.

People are not allowed to speak their minds openly in the street. People do speak their mind (on Facebook), but then they get arrested.

So there is a lot of fear in society, and people are not feeling free to protest, to organize, to demand.

Someday maybe there will be more freedom and more opening to that. This society is a little bit not active, but they are aware. And that's very important because some 10 years ago, even awareness was a luxury.

Tapdig Farhadoglu contributed to this report. This story originated in VOA's Azeri Service.






Military flyovers from China and tough talk in Washington have made a possible conflict over Taiwan feel more real over the past month. That is true for Chen Yi-guang, a retired finance professional.

The Taipei dweller and his family have casually deliberated overstocking on food and water. They could flee if attacked, he said, but flights might all be cancelled. Theres always the possibility of invasion, said Chen, 52.

Escape, survival and rebellion with aid from Western allies are among the scenarios typically imagined if a sudden Chinese occupation that costs Taiwan its autonomy occurs. The former British colony Hong Kong experienced a sea change with the implementation of the National Security Law in 2020 that many Taiwanese say is too close to home.

Taiwanese have seen what happened to Hong Kong and theyre very scared of that, said Shane Lee, a retired political science professor from Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan.

More than half of Taiwans residents combined want to keep the status quo indefinitely or decide later on the question of unification with China or independence according to a survey by the Election Study Center, National Chengchi University. Only 1.5% of the people surveyed wanted reunification as soon as possible.

Old embers, new sparks

China claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island 160 kilometers away and has not dropped the threat of force, if needed, to capture it. The two sides have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalist Party retreated to the island after losing the mainland to Mao Zedongs Communists.

Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed earlier in the month to pursue peaceful unification with Taiwan.

But the specter of a war has captured attention since mid-2020 when the Peoples Liberation Army began almost daily military aircraft flyovers over a sea west of the island, which experts said is Chinas attempt to normalize its military operations near Taiwan.

U.S. President Joe Biden's October comment that Washington has a commitment to defend Taiwan pushed the idea of conflict further into the forefront.

The Chinese governments Taiwan Affairs Office said in October the flyovers are aimed partly at repelling external forces from the China-Taiwan dispute. The same office said in November pressure would ease if Taiwan leaned less on those forces.

Life changer for Taiwan, China

Occupation by China, if its Communist system of government came with it, would jolt a Taiwanese society that has spent nearly the past four decades making democratic decisions and electing its own presidents and parliaments.

Xi says China would run Taiwan in a one country, two systems style as pledged in 1997 for Hong Kong. Beijing gave the world financial center a degree of autonomy that let people carry on almost like pre-1997. That began eroding after the anti-China protests two years ago.

Taiwanese would fight back to the limits of their strength, said Ken Wu, Los Angeles chapter vice president for the advocacy group Formosan Association for Public Affairs. It would be hard to leave the island, if surrounded by Chinese ships. Rebels might flee to the mountain ranges to survive, he said.

I would imagine Taiwan would definitely try to fight back, Wu said. Its not going to be what China through its propaganda is saying, that Taiwanese people would not fight back, they would just succumb to Chinese invasion and surrender.

Taiwans Ministry of National Defense said in September 2020 that it expected to reach 90% of the years staffing goal. More money and arms could be on the way, parliamentary defense committee member Freddy Lim told VOA.

Ive seen international reports estimating conflict will come very soon and others saying it wont happen, Lim said. I think personally we should make the most cautious preparations possible, so Im supporting as a committee member that we raise our defense capabilities.

The Peoples Liberation Army would post troops at all Taiwan ports and the outlying Pratas islands of the disputed South China Sea to break a chain of U.S. allies, said Alexander Huang, chairman of a military strategy research foundation in Taipei.

U.S. allies periodically link up today to check Chinese maritime expansion. Washington sees Taiwan as part of that group along with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

Militarily, (China) will be getting more powerful, because it has very good access to the Pacific Ocean, and it can threaten the United States directly, Lee said.

Other benefits from Taiwan for Beijing including the worlds 21st biggest economy and a powerful high-tech sector, he said.

Overseas reactions

Imperial Japan defeated the Taiwanese resistance within about six months of landing on the island in May 1895. Most of the guerrilla resistance had surrendered or were defeated by 1902. In contrast, Taiwan would get more international aid if China took it today, Wu said.

Although the Biden Administration says it would live by a 1979 act that obligates the United States only to consider defending Taiwan, in recent years Washington has been fortifying its defense links with Taiwan, with billions of dollars in arms sales and increased visits by U.S. warships starting in 2019.

In October, Taiwans president confirmed news reports about U.S. troops being sent to Taiwan to train Taiwanese forces.

I dont think for a minute the U.S. would let Taiwan go, Lee said. Its too important economically, militarily, politically, so I think no matter what the (U.S.) political leader says about the United States position, it would defend Taiwan.

Huang questions how many countries would try to uproot China if it fully occupied Taiwan. I think there will be a lot of diplomatic statements, useless statements, said the military strategist.

Peace for now

Lynn Liang, a Taipei restaurant cashier, dismisses the idea of war because the flyovers have all missed Taiwans territorial airspace and land. Liang is so confident about zero conflict that she recently enrolled her son in military school to study discipline.

We wont have a war, because people in Taiwan dont want to fight and mainland China doesnt really want to fight either, she said. They just want to scare Taiwan and show theyre not afraid of going to war if Taiwans government pushes for independence.

Chen too believes China is laying low. We are not going as far as preparing for digging a bunker in our basement for nuclear fallout or stocking up food rations for three months or clean water for a month, he said. Were not doing anything quite like that yet.
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The campaign for the election of the next president of the French Republic on April 24, 2022 is unleashing passions in a very confused atmosphere. Social tensions can no longer be expressed, except through violence, because the political vocabulary has lost its meaning. The same words are used by everyone with different, even diametrically opposed meanings. Behind this hubbub, no one seems to notice that the country is no longer a democracy, nor even a republic.

France wounded

Like all other Western countries, France is seeing its middle class shrink visibly, while its jobs continue to relocate to Asia [1]. A new social class has formed of workers on the edge of the poverty line, expelled from the big cities and taking refuge in the nearby countryside. It is this class that revolted in 2018, wearing yellow vests, to demand more social justice. Simultaneously a few very rich people benefited from the investment of their capital and became extremely rich. This phenomenon is not new, but the scale of the enrichment of a very small number of them is. In fact, the unprecedented increase in wealth differentials prevents the functioning of a democratic system, which assumes a relatively homogeneous population. Voters, aware that their vote no longer matters, are rapidly turning away from the ballot box. The majority of them abstained from the 2017 legislative elections and two thirds from the 2021 regional and departmental elections. If France still has democratic institutions, its practice is no longer democratic.

The transformation of social classes is accompanied by a change in the population. Millions of people are coming from Africa and Asia to benefit from the European standard of living. They gather in certain suburbs of big cities. They do not seek to integrate as they could only become yellow vests, and be despised by the Franco-Americanised elites. They therefore impose their habits and customs in their neighbourhoods.

Society is split into three: on the one hand, the majority who remain attached to French culture, then a few million uprooted immigrants, and finally an elite fascinated by the United States, whose decline it does not perceive. For the first time, this division is observed geographically: the countryside to the impoverished middle classes, the suburbs of the big cities to the immigrants and the centres of the big cities to the elites.

Furthermore, the Covid-19 epidemic was managed by debt: the fear of large numbers of deaths in the short term led to the confinement of the entire population and thus to depriving them of their means of subsistence. The state then went into considerable debt to distribute allowances and maintain the populations standard of living. The debt now reaches 115% of the annual GNP, depriving the country of its choices.

Lack of debate

Since President Chiracs stroke in 2005, the French Republic is no longer presided over. This was followed by the confrontation between ministers Dominique Gallouzeau de Villepin and Nicolas Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa; the election of the same Sarkozy to wake up a sleeping country, but who turned out to be the grandson by marriage of the US founder of the NATO secret services [2] ; then the election of Francois Hollande, the man who did not represent any current in the Socialist Party and did not manage to represent his People either; and again the election of Emmanuel Macron who promised to unite the right and the left and could only leave the country divided. Three times in a row, the voters were wrong, each time worse and worse.

The presidential election of 2022 looked like a game of massacre: voters who did not recognize themselves in any political leader would have to choose the one they would dislike the least. Then came the candidacy of an outsider, the columnist Eric Zemmour. In a few weeks, he managed to impose his issue of French identity at the centre of the debate, and then to set up a vast political party, Reconquete, bringing together those disappointed by the institutional parties. Those who know him assure us that he is open and tolerant, but there are many among the others who think he is anti-Arab and want to beware of this.

The public debate is no longer rational since doctors have been forbidden to treat Covid-19 and have been forced to eradicate it with so-called messenger RNA "vaccines". So it doesnt matter which side of the argument you are on. All that matters is faith in so-called "vaccines" or the heresy of care. In this context, President Macron has just given a two-hour television interview. He made very little mention of the results of his action and hardly criticised his opponents. He did not set himself up as a professor, but sympathised with everyones pain. He concentrated on describing his feelings. Each of his viewers understood something different from this exercise of a new style. In fact, each one retained only the anguish that obsesses him. Emmanuel Macron has reassured pensioners whose life expectancy seems threatened by Covid and the upper classes whose benefits seem threatened by the rise of the Yellow Vests. He can thus rely on a third of the electorate, without arguments or solutions.

The confusion of values

The French can no longer prioritise tradition and the distribution of wealth, or distinguish between the right and the left. This is because they have lived through a very particular history that they have not analysed.

President Francois Mitterrand came from the Socialist Party. In reality, this man, of exceptional intelligence, had started out as a collaborator of the Nazis. He was decorated for this by Marshal Philippe Petain, but managed to forget it. He did not change his opinions, but developed them in parallel with his news. He never broke with his far-right friends. One of them was his campaign manager during his election to the presidency of the Republic and discreetly followed him to the Elysee [3]. He even hesitated to make the former director of PropagandaStaffel, who had become the richest man in the country, Prime Minister of a Socialist government [4]. Mitterrand led a life comparable to that of a schizophrenic: he even had two families, a socialist wife and an extreme right-wing wife. He was an extreme right-wing personality at the head of the united left.

When he came to power, he took over a federation of neo-fascist chapels, the National Front (FN). This tiny party had been created on the instructions of General De Gaulle. It was a question of bringing together what was left of the Nazi collaborators and the terrorists of the Algerian war under the watchful eyes of his secret services. After the assassination of FN leader Francois Duprat, a veteran secret service agent in Africa, he was replaced by Jean-Marie Le Pen, a member of parliament who had actively participated in De Gaulles seizure of power in 1958 [5]. Mitterrand began to finance him with secret funds from the Elysee Palace, via a Swiss bank account [6]. Le Pen was thus a Gaullist figure who led the anti-Gaullists.

Jean-Marie Le Pens daughter, Marine, inherited the patrimonial party which she normalised. The Nazi collaborators and OAS terrorists are dead. Her party, renamed Rassemblement National (RN), holds the same discourse as its predecessor, yet after being reviled as anti-Gaullist, it now rightly appears as Gaullist. This is normal given its real history, but incomprehensible to people who ignore it. For years, everyone has been accusing the RN of being far-right, even though it is clearly not at all.

The litany of old political parties

If the RN is a legitimate heir of Gaullism, the Republicans are the only legal heirs. But under the leadership of Nicolas Sarkozy, they abandoned the principles of Gaullism and rallied to the global overlord, the United States. They supported the creation of a supra-national European Union, the reintegration of the army into the integrated Nato command under US control, and the end of immigrant integration. They will be represented in the election by Valerie Pecresse, a very bright leader who speaks Russian and Japanese. In reality, she comes from this Americanised elite of which her husband is the incarnation: he was vice-president of Alstom and was the only executive to remain in his post when this industrial flagship was sold to the American General Electric. She herself was a Young Leader of the French-American Foundation and invited by NATO to the Bilderberg Club.

Emmanuel Macrons Republique en marche only transcended the right/left divide for a few months. Then it wandered, satisfying in turn those who listened to it before disappointing them. The Elysee talked a lot and did little, except what its long-time friends, the management funds BlackRock and KKR [7], told it to do. Emmanuel Macron has no programme, just a formidable skill at cajoling the electorate, promising everyone what they expect but will never see. Having no majority in the country, he can no longer undertake anything and has become useless to his sponsors. But he is hanging on.

The left has cowered, abandoning the working classes. It is nothing more than a collection of small groups of elected representatives and their children. After the manipulations of Francois Mitterrand, the Socialist Party has become a bunch of dreamers who propose to change the world, but above all do not want to know it. The Communist Party has only kept its name and no longer knows how to help the proletarians of today. Jean-Luc Melenchons Insoumis are trapped in the contradictions between the Marxist culture of their leader and the Trotskyite leftism of his militants.

As for Yannick Jadots Pole ecologiste, he tries to persuade himself that abandoning fossil fuels and nuclear power will create jobs. Despite appearances, its electorate continues a long tradition which, from King Louis XVI at Varennes to Marshal Philippe Petain at Montoire, via Adolphe Thiers at Versailles, believes that copying the German model will save its social status.

Who will re-establish citizenship?

This tiresome litany of political parties shows their inadequacy for the times. They were a model of the industrial age and have become ineffective in the age of the Internet. Today, vertical structures have been replaced by networks, but parties have not yet undergone a transformation.

Contrary to the dominant discourse, it is not the populists but the elites who are destroying democracy (in the Greek sense of the word). The Conseil superieur de laudiovisuel has already instituted a rule with no legal basis: from now on, the work of an audiovisual journalist is deducted from his speaking time when he announces his intention to become a presidential candidate [8]. Then a court condemned a former president of the Republic for a case on which the National Commission on Campaign Accounts had already ruled [9]. Finally, a political party called on judges to ban the candidacy of one of its competitors on the basis of its interpretation of his statements [10].

Political parties are quite comfortable with the disaffection of the ballot box. They can more easily convince half of the population than the entire electorate. It is better this way, they think, because why should people get involved in complex issues that are so difficult for experts to address? They are wrong. Whoever should win will win a stay in the Elysee Palace, but he or she will not hold power.

Although the French are legitimists and passionate about politics, they vote and obey less and less. The crisis that began 17 years ago is dragging on. It will only find a solution around a way to restore national and popular sovereignty. Now, if under the impetus of Zemmour, some people evoke the reconquest of national sovereignty, none of them dares to speak of popular sovereignty. No one knows anymore what the word "citizenship" means.

Time has not only destroyed democratic practices, but also reached the foundation of France: the Republic (in the Latin sense of the term). Contrary to what is taught in schools, the Republic has nothing to do with the method of appointing a leader. It is not the antithesis of monarchy or empire: King Henry IV (1589-1610), who put an end to the civil wars of religion, declared himself a republican, and Napoleon I (1804-1815), who completed the Revolution, crowned himself "Emperor of the French Republic".

The Republic is the withdrawal of particularisms in the private sphere and the service of the general interest in the public sphere. It is a way of living happily together. However, our current political failure is pushing us to withdraw into communities around this or that minority.

Two hundred years ago, France shook up the world when its People seized political power. It is not a question of pretending that every citizen has an opinion on everything, but that he is capable of controlling his destiny on all the subjects he knows in his daily life. We have gone backwards. Our elites have become parasites. They no longer bow down to their king, but to their American overlord. Two hundred years ago, France reorganised itself in a centralised way to put an end to regional imbalances. Today, centralisation means the loss of responsibility of citizens to Parisian bureaucrats. Two hundred years ago, libertine France bowed to hypocritical clerics in the name of their interpretation of religion. Today, the media, these new clerics, are imposing new dogmas and a new morality.

Our People grumble, but are keeping quiet. Until when?
At the beginning of October, Italy hosted the preparatory meeting for the ongoing UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, COP26. Two weeks later, Italy hosted another international event which, unlike the first widely publicised one, was kept quiet by the government: the Nato nuclear warfare manoeuvre Steadfast Noon in the skies over northern and central Italy. Under US command, the air forces of 14 Atlantic Alliance countries, with dual nuclear and conventional fighter-bombers deployed at the bases of Aviano (Friuli) and Ghedi (Brescia), took part for seven days. At Aviano, the 31st US Wing is permanently based with F-16C/D fighter bombers and B61 nuclear bombs. In Ghedi, the 6th Stormo of the Italian Air Force with Tornado PA-200 fighter bombers and B61 nuclear bombs. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) confirms in 2021 that "the Italian Air Force is assigned nuclear attack missions with US bombs, kept in Italy under the control of the US Air Force, whose use in war must be authorised by the President of the United States". The Aviano and Ghedi bases have been restructured to receive F-35 fighters armed with the new B61-12 nuclear bombs. Last October, in Nevada, the final test with the dropping of inert B61-12s by two F-35A fighters was carried out. Soon the new nuclear bombs will arrive in Italy: 30 Italian F-35A fighters, ready to attack under US command with 60 B61-12 nuclear bombs, can be accommodated in the Ghedi base alone.

A week after participating in this nuclear warfare manoeuvre, Italy participated in the UN Climate Change Conference, chaired by the UK in partnership with Italy. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned: "We are one minute to midnight and we need to act now" against global warming that is destroying the planet. He is using the symbolic Doomsday Clock, which actually marks how many minutes away we are from nuclear midnight. The same Boris Johnson, only a few months ago, in March, announced the ramp-up of British nuclear attack submarines: the Astute (costing $2.2 billion each), armed with US Tomahawk IV nuclear cruise missiles with a range of 1,500 km, and the Vanguard, armed with 16 US Trident D5 ballistic missiles with a range of 12,000 km, equipped with more than 120 nuclear warheads. These were soon replaced by the even more powerful Dreadnough class submarines. British nuclear attack submarines, cruising deep off the Russian coast, are now also cruising along the Chinese coast, starting in Australia, to which the US and UK will supply nuclear submarines. Britain, which is hosting the Conference to Save the Planet from Global Warming, is in this way contributing to the arms race that is leading the world towards nuclear catastrophe.

Against such a background the promotional video for the Conference is wrong: a dinosaur, symbol of an extinct species, from the podium of the United Nations warning humans to save their species from global warming. In reality, scientific studies confirm, the dinosaurs became extinct not because of global warming, but because the Earth cooled after the impact of a huge meteorite that raised clouds of dust and eclipsed the Sun. This is exactly what would happen in the aftermath of a nuclear war: in addition to catastrophic destruction and radioactive fallout all over the planet, it would cause huge fires in urban and forest areas that would produce a layer of thick smoke in the atmosphere, obscuring the Sun. This would cause a climatic cooling for several years: the nuclear winter. The consequence would be the extinction of most plant and animal species, with devastating effects also on agriculture. The cold and hunger would reduce the survival capacity of the few survivors, leading to the extinction of the human species.
The Heads of State or Government of the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, the representatives of the European Union and the Heads of State or Government of its Member States met in Brussels on 15 December 2021. The President of the European Parliament and representatives of the Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Conference of Regional and Local Authorities of the Eastern Partnership and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly also contributed to the Summit.

1. We have come together to reaffirm our strong commitment to our strategic, ambitious and forward-looking Eastern Partnership, which remains firmly based on common fundamental values, mutual interests and shared ownership, responsibility, inclusivity, differentiation and mutual accountability. As a specific dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy, our partnership allows to bring the European Union and its Eastern European partners closer together. It seeks to foster stability, prosperity and mutual cooperation, and to advance our commitment to the necessary reforms and to address the global and regional challenges that we face for the benefit of all our citizens.

VALUES

2. We are bound by our joint determination to further strengthen democracy and the rule of law in our societies. The protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities, fostering inclusive societies, promoting gender equality as well as full respect for the principles and norms of international law remain the cornerstones of our partnership and underpin our joint work in all priority areas. The European Union remains committed in its support to the territorial integrity within their internationally recognised borders, independence, and sovereignty of all Eastern partners, with respect for and adherence to the purposes and principles enshrined in the UN Charter, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and the 1990 Charter of Paris, which are fundamental to our shared vision for a peaceful and undivided Europe.

3. We reconfirm our commitments taken at previous Summits and in bilateral agreements as well as our determination to carry them forward. On this path, our ambitious reform agenda and enhanced cooperation remains the necessary condition for progress and support: increasing prosperity and fostering peace, stability, sustainability and resilience in the region, notably in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our cooperation and support will particularly aim at the delivery of key global policy objectives, including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the UN 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals.

4. We remain deeply concerned about the continuous destabilisation and violations of the principles of international law in many parts of the Eastern Partnership region that pose a threat to peace, security and stability. We call for renewed efforts to promote the peaceful settlement of unresolved conflicts in the Eastern Partnership region based on the principles and norms of international law. The peaceful resolution of conflicts, building trust and good neighbourly relations are essential to economic and social development and cooperation. We welcome EUs efforts, enhanced engagement and strengthened role in conflict prevention, conflict resolution, confidence building, in the framework or in support of existing agreed negotiating formats and processes, including through field presence, when appropriate.

5. The scope and depth of our cooperation are determined by our respective agreements and will continue to be shaped by the ambitions and needs of both the EU and the partners as well as by the pace and quality of reforms. We recognise that the EUs conditionality and incentive-based approach (more-for-more and less-for-less) will continue to benefit those partners most engaged in implementing reforms.

6. We reaffirm the sovereign right of each partner to choose the level of ambition and the goals to which it aspires in its relations with the European Union. We stress that this is a constructive partnership, which is not directed against anyone, but is designed to contribute to peace and prosperity for all countries in the neighbourhood. The Eastern Partnership will remain inclusive and flexible, allowing common regional and global challenges to be tackled jointly in a wide range of areas, including through deeper sectoral cooperation and exchanges. We emphasise in this regard our particular objective to enhance and support regional cooperation in the Eastern Partnership region, including strengthening links and transport connectivity.

PARTNERSHIP

7. We commend the full entry into force of the Association Agreements (AAs) and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs) with Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, the latter following the December 2016 decision by the EU Heads of State or Government.

8. In this context, we acknowledge the European aspirations and the European choice of the partners concerned, as stated in the Association Agreements. The agreements provide for accelerating political association and economic integration with the European Union. We welcome progress so far and encourage the full implementation of these Association Agreements and their Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas. We recall that the effective implementation of the Association Agreements and their DCFTAs, linked to the broader process of regulatory approximation and related necessary reforms, contributes to establishing the conditions for enhanced economic and trade relations with the EU leading towards further gradual economic integration in the European Union Internal Market, as envisaged in the Association Agreements. The EU remains committed to supporting the efforts of the associated partners in this regard.

9. The EU and interested partners commend the entry into force of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement between the EU and Armenia in March 2021, welcome the progress so far and encourage its full implementation leading to a new level of partnership.

10. The EU and interested partners welcome progress in the ongoing negotiations between the EU and Azerbaijan on a new comprehensive Agreement.

11. The EU regrets the decision of the Belarusian authorities to suspend their participation in the Eastern Partnership and look forward to resuming cooperation with the Belarusian authorities as soon as necessary conditions for peaceful democratic transition are in place to build on a joint agenda based on common values and shared interests. In the meantime, the EU continues engagement with and support for the Belarus citizens, civil society and independent media. The comprehensive plan of economic support for a democratic Belarus, of up to EUR 3 billion, reflects the EUs commitment to support the democratic choice of the Belarusian people. Reiterating previous statements, the EU condemns the instrumentalisation of migrants and refugees by the Belarusian authorities and indeed all incidents of instrumentalisation of migrants for political purposes.

12. In line with the principles of differentiation and inclusivity, the EU acknowledges the initiative of the trio of associated partners

Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, to enhance the cooperation with the EU, and takes good note of the increased coordination amongst them on matters of common interest related to the implementation of the Association Agreements and DCFTAs, and on cooperation within the Eastern Partnership. In this context, building on the progress achieved so far, within joint discussions on association-related reforms in order to facilitate full implementation of the AAs/DCFTA, the EU and all interested partners will explore options for enhanced sectoral cooperation, including, but not limited to, the areas of the twin green and digital transitions, connectivity, energy security, justice and home affairs, strategic communication and healthcare. At the same time, the EU continues to stress the importance of the principle of inclusivity, providing equal access to opportunities and resources to all interested partners.

13. We remain open to examining the possibility of cooperation with third countries on a case-by-case basis on the basis of shared values, including in complementarity with other regional formats such as the Black Sea Synergy, where such participation would contribute and bring added value to the objectives of the Eastern Partnership.

RESILIENCE AND PROSPERITY

14. We will seek to enhance our cooperation including on the basis of the Joint Communication Eastern Partnership policy beyond 2020: Reinforcing resilience  an Eastern partnership that delivers for all1, and as a result of the comprehensive consultation with and contributions from Member States, Eastern partner countries and other Eastern Partnership stakeholders. Strengthening resilience remains our overriding policy objective under our agenda of Recovery, Resilience and Reform, structured around the two pillars of governance and investment. We welcome the set of concrete post-2020 priorities summarised in the Annex and highlight in particular the emphasis on generating concrete benefits for the people. The new agenda will be underpinned by the EUR 2.3 billion regional economic and investment plan with a potential to mobilise up to EUR 17 billion in public and private investments for the region, which underpins the future agenda. This multi-country and multi-sector investment plan is for the benefit of the Eastern Partnership region as a whole. Acknowledging the outstanding challenges, we underscore that sustained reform progress in partner countries, and its monitoring, in close coordination with EU Member States, in particular in the areas of common fundamental values and governance, rule of law, justice sector reform, fight against corruption remain key to reach the objectives of the Eastern Partnership and a successful implementation of its agenda, including the Economic and Investment Plan. The EUs support will reflect its conditionality and incentive-based approach and will be conditional upon the implementation of agreed reforms. This will influence structural reforms, particularly in the rule of law and justice reform and anti-corruption.

15. In order to enhance resilience, we will focus on strengthening rule of law, establishing efficient, transparent and accountable public administration at all levels of government, tackling fraud, corruption and economic crime, combatting organised crime and strengthening security, as well as cyber resilience, including cyber and hybrid threats. We highlight the importance of enhancing, where appropriate, security dialogue and cooperation in the areas of CSDP, and welcome in this regard the partners valuable contribution to EU missions and operations and the EUs support under the European Peace Facility (EPF). Gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy will be promoted, in line with partners commitments with the EU. We also reconfirm the importance of strengthening strategic communication for building resilience, including the fight against disinformation and information manipulation, and we call for stronger and more strategic approaches as well as enhanced cooperation between the EU and the Eastern partners. We underline the importance of a well-functioning media environment and freedom of speech, recognising the need for enhanced support to independent media. The partnership will work to strengthen the civil society enabling environment and youth participation, as stressed by the 5th Eastern Partnership Youth Forum in Slovenia in November 2021, education reform, strengthen independent media, enhance democracy, avoid inflammatory rhetoric and provocative actions, promote and mainstream gender equality, protect human rights, strengthen health resilience, and work to improve legal and labour mobility in line with national competences while jointly tackling irregular migration.

16. We will equally focus on strengthening economic resilience through fostering trade and economic integration, investment and access to finance, enhanced transport connectivity, and investing in people and knowledge societies. In this regard, the EU and interested partners welcome the recent signature of the common aviation area agreements with Armenia and Ukraine. The EU and interested partners also welcome the agreements with Armenia, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine for their association to Horizon Europe. The EU and interested partners welcome the completion of the Southern Gas Corridor project, which has contributed to the diversification of gas sources and routes of supply to the EU. As confirmed in the 3rd ministerial meeting on environment and climate change in Portugal in June 2021, we will work to enhance environmental and climate resilience by advancing green transition through investments and cooperation on circular economy, green growth and climate adaptation, and strengthening biodiversity.

The EU supports an intensification of the efforts by partner countries towards climate neutrality in 2050, by phasing out coal and making more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions and we will jointly work towards accelerating their implementation in line with the commitments of COP26. We will also join forces in accelerating the process of energy transition to reduce the carbon footprint and further strengthen inclusive sustainable development in the energy sector in line with the European Energy Union strategy, as appropriate. We will step up our work to strengthen energy security under changing circumstances and prevent the use of gas as weapon or geopolitical lever. Nuclear safety will also be strengthened. We will accelerate the shift to sustainable and smart mobility. Furthermore, we will aim at accelerating the digital transformation including investments in digital infrastructure and e-governance. Building on the regional roaming agreement, we will explore further the possibility of a common international roaming space including the economically sustainable reduction of roaming tariffs between the EU and the Eastern partners.

SOLIDARITY

17. The climate crisis as well as environmental and energy challenges require urgent action from all sides. We recall that post COVID-19 socio-economic recovery and longer-term development provide an opportunity to strengthen resilience by investing in sustainable connectivity and accelerating green and digital transitions within a whole of economy approach, leaving no one behind. We commit to do so with a view to enhancing employability and creating decent job opportunities while pursuing a transition to climate neutral, circular and resource-efficient economies by 2050.

18. We stand together in solidarity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which represents an unprecedented challenge for our healthcare systems, economies and societies. Following the rapid Team Europe support package of over EUR 2.5 billion mobilised since 2020, we acknowledge continued commitment of the EUs and its Member States to support partner countries in addressing the pandemic, the vaccination process, to fight against anti-vaccine disinformation and to foster longer term health resilience. We welcome that more than 13 million vaccine doses were donated to partner countries via the COVAX Facility and through the EU Vaccine Sharing mechanism, and we appreciate the additional EU support under the Team Europe initiative on COVID-19 vaccine sharing for the Eastern Partnership, which is expected to boost further deliveries in the coming months. We welcome mutual recognition of the COVID-19 digital certificates in place for Armenia, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, and soon for Azerbaijan, allowing for safer and easier travel to and from the EU. We call for global solidarity, intensified international cooperation and effective multilateralism to contain, mitigate and overcome the pandemic and its consequences, which combined with the continuation of vaccination efforts, also through contributing to global vaccine equity and effective vaccine campaigns, are essential to defeat the virus.

JOINT OWNERSHIP

19. We call for strengthened joint ownership and reaffirm the importance of inclusive engagement of all parts of the society, highlighting the necessity of further engaging with civil society, in particular with the young people, and by promoting gender equality, tolerance and intercultural dialogue. Engagement with civil society, including through the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, and broadened outreach and targeted support to grassroots civil society organisations and social partners, remains an integral part of this partnership. We confirm the importance of the multilateral dimension of the Eastern Partnership cooperation and call for further work to improve the current architecture in order to adjust to the new priorities and to make it more flexible and efficient. We welcome and wish to further encourage the role of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, the Conference of Regional and Local Authorities for the Eastern Partnership (CORLEAP) as well as of other key stakeholders including the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum and welcome a more systematic engagement with think tanks and European and International Financial Institutions.

20. We look forward to the next Eastern Partnership Summit in 2023, which will be the first milestone for the evaluation and review of the implementation of the new generation of priorities and targets.
Despite what the trailer for Kenneth Branaghs Death on the Nile wants you to think, Armie Hammer is in Kenneth Branaghs Death on the Nile. Back in November 2020, Disney indefinitely pulled the 20th Century Studios film from its release calendar due to the pandemic. Two months later, allegations surfaced surrounding one of the films stars, Armie Hammer, accusing him of non-consensually subjecting multiple women to violent sexual fantasies. One former partner told the Daily Mail that he was emotionally and physically violent. An alleged victim claimed in March 2021 that Hammer raped her in 2017, prompting an LAPD investigation. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney considered reshooting Hammers scenes with a new actor or digitally replacing him, following the allegations. Instead, his role remains intact, but his presence in the trailer is dwindled down to a flash of a silhouette and one blink-and-youll-miss-it line.

Hammer plays a newlywed opposite Gal Gadot, who has brought famed detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) onboard a postnuptial river cruise. Gadots Linnet is fearful that something foul is going to happen, and her premonitions prove true when someone winds up dead. The suspect list is cloudy and full of uncertainty, much like the status of the films upcoming press tour.

Death on the Nile will be in theaters February 11.
Gala Porras-Kim, 228 Offerings for the Rain at the Peabody Museum, 2021. Photo:  Gala Porras-Kim

Gala Porras-Kim watched as a ceiling vent leaked rainwater onto her sculpture, a honey-colored slab laid across a platform the length of a guitar. She was standing in the largest gallery at Amant, a new arts center in industrial East Williamsburg, where her first New York solo show was set to open on November 20. I heard it! she exclaimed as a drop pattered on the artwork; she bent down to examine a shallow puddle pooling on its surface. One of the shows curators, Ruth Estevez, shuffled over from the other end of the gallery to gaze at the ceiling. Thats fantastic, Estevez said.

It was not raining that day, but the gallerys staff had been collecting rainwater for the last week, which they then poured into a basin above the ceiling vent; a valve was calibrated to drip every 20 seconds. Porras-Kims sculpture was molded from a substance called copal, a tree resin used as incense in Mexico and Central America. Mayans on the Yucatan Peninsula once offered copal to the rain god Chaac, throwing pieces of it into flooded caves called cenotes; today, in the U.S., this copal can be found amongst pre-Columbian antiquities at museums like the Smithsonian or the Metropolitan, spoils of an era when American archeologists could more or less loot what they wanted. To Porras-Kim, the rainwater drip was a ritual for reuniting the copal with the elements  and, maybe, a higher power.

Born in Bogota, Colombia, and based in Los Angeles, Porras-Kim makes work about objects, the institutions that house them, and, increasingly, the spiritual lives those objects may lead. There are artifacts in museum collections that may still be performing their original function, the 37-year-old explained. Like, the pillow you go to your afterlife with was technically forever. What happens when an institution takes it and moves it? Can it still function within the museum? In these scenarios, the artist, who also dabbles in academia, sees herself as mediator between the objects original owners (like the rain god Chaac) and the establishments that house them.

Gala Porras-Kim. Photo: Audrey Min

Museum collections are invariably built from the spoils of colonization and conquest. Anyone following news about the museum world knows theres concerted pressure on them to restitute these looted objects  and more museums in the U.S. and Europe are starting to heed the call. Porras-Kim said her work aligns with this increasingly vocal push for restitution, but she doesnt take an explicitly activist stance. Anyone working in the Americas and thinking about history has to think about indigeneity, she said. Im dealing with how the ancient past is represented, which of course is all about colonialism, and much of those efforts are about people now.

She proposes a different kind of return: one that honors an objects sacred function rather than a nationalistic sense of ownership. She knows this premise could come off as woo-woo, the product of magical thinking that strict rationalists write off. I think that is part of why Im not a whole academic and Im in the arts, she said, because I do know how to do research and all of that, but its also very dry. If were trying to understand a broad range of human experience, the woo part is important. But too woo is not rigorous enough.

And Porras-Kim wants to be rigorous, often consulting former grad-school colleagues from UCLA to ensure that her historical ideas are sound. In person, shes excitable and even silly, elaborating her many-layered concepts in breathless run-on sentences, then cracking jokes about how complicated they are. Her show at Amant, on view until March 17, includes a vast selection of drawings, installations, sculptures, and videos produced between 2019 and now. The scope of the show is at first overwhelming, but the pieces are unified in the way they pose questions about the troubled field of archeology.

Porras-Kims show at Amant, with the slab of copal in the foreground. Photo: Iwan Baan

It helps that shes good at convincing museums to let her rummage around in their collections. For the Hammer Museums Made in L.A. biennial in 2016, she borrowed artifacts from the UCLA collection that lacked identifying data, then remixed them into replicas that guessed at their original function. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) also gave her keys to its collection, allowing her to reveal its protocol for naming and organizing objects. For her installation at the 2019 Whitney biennial, she produced drawings and sculptures based on an untranslated Mesoamerican tablet held by a Mexican anthropology museum. The most striking of these was a rotating glass disc filled with multicolor characters from the tablet, floating in translucent fluid like a toy from the dentists office.

Ive always tried to make work that isnt limited to the field of art, Porras-Kim said. Like, I have a masters in Latin American studies and I show at historical conferences. My parents both came from that world, so in a sense, I know how to talk to those people.

Her father was a literature professor who would bring her on research trips to archives around Colombia; he met Porras-Kims mother, who is South Korean, when she was studying Spanish-language literature at a grad program in Bogota. During her childhood, she remembers, many archives in Colombia were housed in the back rooms of colonial churches, and Porras-Kims father used to make up scavenger hunts to keep her busy while he was doing his own digging.

At one such church, he sent Porras-Kim to find the reliquary and retrieve what he said was a saints pinkie toe. Years later, he admitted that the relic was a chicken toe, planted for her to find. She was shocked. I really believed it, and then found out it was all a construction, she said, sitting across from me at a fold-up table in the midst of her half-installed show. That was the moment where I was like, is anything real? Then I began thinking about what validates an object. Like, just because its old, is it important? Or just because its made out of this and not that?

If were trying to understand a broad range of human experience, the woo part is important.

Porras-Kim says her family fled Colombia for Spain in the mid-90s, for reasons she didnt want to make public. After a year in Madrid, they were granted political asylum in the U.S., at the same time as Porras-Kims mother got into a Ph.D. program at UCLA. The family settled permanently in Los Angeles, where Porras-Kim was immersed in the Mexican culture that would later inspire much of her art. She always loved drawing, and her technical skills were sharp by the time she got into the California Institute of the Arts. But at CalArts, her professors seemed more interested in ideas than in pictures, so she learned to balance her formal inclinations with pedagogy, making work inspired by Indigenous languages like Zapotec.

In 2016, Porras-Kim saw a Mexican TV documentary from the 60s about the excavation of a cenote at the Mayan temple Chichen Itza, now one of Mexicos busiest tourist destinations. The program focused on the turn-of-the-20th-century American diplomat Edward H. Thompson. After dredging the sacred pool for artifacts, between 1904 and 1911 Thompson took home a breathtaking haul of objects that the Mayans had submerged there: ceramics, gold, jade, obsidian, wood, clothing, and, of course, copal. Sidestepping laws prohibiting the removal of antiquities, he spirited them out of the country and into the vaults of Harvard Universitys Peabody Museum.

When Harvard opened applications for a 2019 fellowship at Radcliffe, Porras-Kim sent a proposal asking for access to the collection and got in. The result is seven monumental drawings she made there called Offerings for the Rain at the Peabody Museum, now displayed at Amant in the same gallery as her water-soaked copal. In these photorealistic drawings, each six feet square, an array of objects like gold discs, jade necklaces, and ceramic vessels are shown lined up on shelves.

That same year, she also wrote to Mexicos National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) with an offer to create official replicas of a pair of stone monoliths shed seen at a show at LACMA in 2017. The originals had been extracted from Teotihuacan, Mexicos most-visited pyramids, detected thanks to advancements in lidar scanning, and Porras-Kim wanted to make new monoliths that could be left deep underground in their place. After all, the pyramids at Teotihuacan arent originals, either: Almost everything but the bases had already been rebuilt as a visual aid for tourists. If archeologists were willing to reconstruct the pyramids to accommodate human visitors, Porras-Kim explained, why wouldnt they consider its nonhuman visitors too? What if COVID happened because we took the frickin battery out of that thing? she asked, laughing. The INAH never wrote back; you can now see Porras-Kims replica monoliths  an eight-foot-long tall cigar of painted polyurethane and a five-foot-tall brown one  at Amant, where they seem to float, 2001-style, on their rounded tips.

Proposal for the Reconstituting of Ritual Elements for the Sun Pyramid at Teotihuacan, 2019, at Amant. Photo: Courtesy Amant

Despite her heady metacommentaries on the fields of art and archeology, Porras-Kims work is almost always beautiful to look at. My work is mainly the research part, she explained, but I also have to think about the audience. I know that if I make some super-research-y, PDF-style piece that doesnt look like anything, then my mom is never going to bring her friends over to see it. Her works on paper have the kind of exactitude youd expect from a scientific textbook. Her carpal-tunnel-inducing artifact drawings can take three months each to complete, even with a team of four assistants to help with drawing and research. The objects sensuous detail  the delicate translucence of the jade objects, humming with an electric current of green and yellow  clashes with the sterility of the white shelves on which theyre arranged.

People often ask if her work is a form of protest against the hoarding of ethnographic objects, or a way of advocating for change. Porras-Kim insists shes not proposing solutions. This nonpartisan approach keeps her message from being oversimplified for the sake of an agenda, said curator Ruth Estevez: Its more sincere, more real than just a black-and-white statement, like, this is what should be done. Instead, Porras-Kim wants us to think harder about what meaningful change might look like. The Peabody Museum could return its ill-gotten gains, to, say, Mexicos INAH. But Mexico as a country didnt exist when the Mayans launched these artifacts into the Chichen Itza cenote. And even if they were to end up in a vitrine at the Mexico City Museum of Anthropology, they still wouldnt be submerged in rainwater, as their creators intended. Projects like her dripped-on copal are meant to open inquiries into other ways that these artifacts should be treated. She says that, for future showings of the sculpture, shell require venues to find their own way to reunite it with the rain.

Such gestures might appease the spirits, I added, but what about the humans who want what they think is rightly theirs? She responded by bringing up the Benin Bronzes, a set of thousands of sculptures, reliefs, and other items that were made in the West African city-state known as the Kingdom of Benin, located in what is now Nigeria. They were looted by British soldiers in the late 19th century  but recently, museums around the world have begun restoring these objects to the Nigerian government. She seemed to find the way museums were doing this a little too self-promotional, even a little distasteful. She compared the deaccessions to a pancarta, or banner.

The fact that theyre repatriating big things is really great, but in a way it feels like a Band-Aid solution, like, There you go. We did one. The end, she said. And Im like, What about the little wood thing in the corner that nobodys ever gonna pay attention to?
No Vax leader and nurse detained in Palermo.

Police in the Sicilian city of Palermo have arrested three people as part of an investigation into an alleged scam that involved a nurse pretending to administer covid vaccines to anti-vaxxers in exchange for cash.

The three people detained include a prominent No Vax leader, Filippo Accetta, and an associate of his, along with a nurse working at a vaccination hub in Palermo, reports newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

The scheme allegedly involved the nurse emptying the vaccine into a cotton gauze before inserting an empty syringe into the arms of anti-vaxxers who paid 400 to dodge the vaccine but obtain Italy's covid Green Pass certificate.

Hidden cameras caught the nurse carrying out the fake inoculation 11 times, allegedly earning herself 100 each time, leading police to seize 11 Green Passes obtained illegally from the national health system.

However it is suspected that the scam could be far wider, according to newspaper La Repubblica which reports that the 11 people alleged to have availed of the fradulent scheme include another nurse and a policeman.

The investigation excluded the involvement of the doctors and health officials working at the vaccination centre, reports Il Sole 24 Ore.

Palermo's coronavirus commissioner Renato Costa said the "sad and disconcerting" case had left all the workers at the vaccination hub feeling "betrayed", La Repubblica reports.

The probe follows the recent case of the Italian anti-vaxxer dentist who made news headlines around the world after he attempted to get vaccinated into a fake silicone arm.
Rome mask-wearing rules in force over Christmas and into the new year.

The governor of the central Lazio region around Rome, Nicola Zingaretti, has ordered the mandatory wearing of masks outdoors from 23 December until 23 January 2022.

The move comes amid a surge of new covid infections in Italy, with the government meeting on Thursday to discuss fresh measures in light of concerns over the highly contagious Omicron virus variant.

Masks were already compulsory outdoors in crowded central areas of Rome, following an order by the city's mayor Roberto Gualtieri earlier this month.

However as of today this obligation applies throughout the city and across the Lazio region.

The new measures do not apply to children under six, to those with disabilities or to people engaged in physical exercise such as jogging.

Zingaretti described the move as "a precautionary but essential measure for safeguarding our health and that of our loved ones at a time like this."

The order also includes a requirement for healthcare workers, in both the public and private sector, to undergo covid testing every 10 days.

Wearing masks outdoors is compulsory in low-moderate risk 'yellow' zones, under Italy's system of coronavirus restrictions, with seven regions now in this category: Alto Adige, Calabria, Fruili-Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Marche, Trentino and Veneto.

The rest of Italy is, for now, in the lowest-risk 'white' zone, although the threat of possible yellow zone restrictions hangs over Lazio (Rome) and Lombardia (Milan) for the new year.

Italy's health minister Roberto Speranza said on Sunday that there is "an element of concern" within the government over the evolving covid situation, and urged people to "avoid gatherings as much as possible during the Christmas holidays."

Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has reported that among the possible new restrictions being discussed is extending compulsory vaccination to additional sectors of workers and requiring covid tests for crowded venues such as night clubs, including for people who have been vaccinated.

Italy's premier Mario Draghi has confirmed that the government is considering new restrictions but said that no decisions have been made ahead of today's meeting.

Da oggi nel Lazio mascherine allaperto e continua la campagna per i #vaccini. Fermiamo insieme la variante #Omicron  Nicola Zingaretti (@nzingaretti) December 23, 2021

For official information in English on the covid-19 situation in Italy see the health ministry website.

Cover image: Piazza di Spagna, Rome, November 2021. Photo credit: Gennaro Leonardi Photos / Shutterstock.com.
Rome's Vitala Festival - philanthropic events in support of Music and Art  celebrates the holiday season with a festive concert on Tuesday 21 December at 19.30.

Described as an "unconventional arrangements of traditional carols in a warm blend of voice, clarinet and piano", the event takes place at Teatro Le Salette on Vicolo del Campanile 14.

The musical evening will comprise a medley of traditional and popular festive songs, from Ill be Home for Christmas and Silver Bells, to Sleigh Ride and O Come All Ye Faithful, performed by Maria Infante, vocals, Yvonne Fisher, clarinet, and Paige Short, piano.

Doors open 19.00 and the new Super Green Pass certification (issued following vaccination or recovery from covid-19) is required. Tickets 15, reduced for students 12. and the newcertification (issued following vaccination or recovery from covid-19) is required. Tickets 15, reduced for students 12.

Booking required, for information contact: wonderwallenter@gmail.com or tel. 3478248661.
Internet companies have for years been a source of embarrassment for regulators. Government-appointed agencies tasked with keeping digital markets equitable have, mostly, let tech giants acquire whatever they want  data, rivals, promising startups  to grow into digital monoliths. That laissez faire approach is starting to change. In 2022 the British government will be one of the first in the world to force companies to cut back on the spread of harmful content or face big fines. The Federal Trade Commission, newly led by Lina Khan, has warned it could unwind mergers. The U.K. did just that in November with the purchase of Giphy by Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly known as Facebook), a first for Big Tech.
This may not seem like progress, but it is. And its a good thing that banks are becoming more hospitable places to work because Wall Street has been pretty uncivilized at times. There are a lot of tough Generation Xers who like to tell stories about how tough it was in the old days on Wall Street and how easy the kids have it now. True, the risk of being hit by a flying phone is approaching zero and there may be more creature comforts, but the job has gotten a lot more tedious. When I think about Wall Street today, I dont lament the loss of the macho trader culture. But I do lament the loss of risk-taking. That was the thrilling aspect that made working in a pressure cooker fun, not the creature comforts.More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
Either the U.K. or the EU can invoke it if they believe the protocol has caused serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties or a diversion of trade. In short, either side can take unilateral action if they believe the arrangements are not working. But the measures are supposed to be limited and it doesnt allow one side to scrap the protocol entirely. Britain has said the threshold for triggering Article 16 has been met due to disruption of trade, but its held off from taking that final step and insisted it wants a negotiated solution. More recently it indicated a willingness to soften its stance and accept an interim deal to amend the protocol. U.K. Brexit minister David Frost quit his job on Dec. 18, and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss took over the negotiations.
Jordan is terrific as a quiet and dependable  almost saintly  figure, who instills a sense of duty and respect in his men (and in his son). This sense is echoed in his performance under the direction of Washington, a veteran actor who seems to be symbolically handing down his thespian wisdom to a younger generation. But Charles is a little too saintly. More often than not, its Adams who draws our attention; playing Dana as a professional whos nevertheless prone to lose control of her emotions, shes a strong foil for Jordans more stolid presence. (Stolid, but not lifeless: At a recent press screening, during a bedroom scene in which Jordan appears bare-bottomed, an audience member shouted, Turn around!)
And yes, the movie plays, at times, like a comedy, despite some dark turns. Mikeys friendship with a young neighbor named Lonnie (Ethan Darbone), whom Lexi used to babysit, takes a nasty turn. After Mikey causes a horrific traffic accident, he lets Lonnie take the blame for it. Theres not just a sour aftertaste to this story, but a sour before-taste. And in this movie, Baker cant seem to decide whether he wants us to laugh at, to pity or to understand his subjects. Set in summer 2016, with the Republican National Convention taking place on TV in the background, the movie seems to be making some kind of Hillbilly Elegy-style point about Trumpism, but its unclear what that point is.
The question is an unlikely twist on an issue that has occasionally ensnared other journalists. News organizations typically prohibit reporters and columnists from taking anything of value from those they write about, lest it corrupt or compromise what they write and report. The rules usually make no distinction between news reporters and opinion columnists, such as Friedman, the latter of whom are allowed to advocate for a cause or a point of view.
The Labor Department rules say employers with more than 100 workers must require them to be vaccinated or face weekly testing and mandatory masking. There are exceptions for employees who do not work on-site or with others, and also for religious and medical reasons. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) relaxed the deadline for compliance to Feb. 9.
Sires, 70, told the publication that he is retiring because of his age and his view that things are not going to get any better in Washington. He said he plans to retire fully rather than embark on another career, such as lobbying.
Troops at the main square in Almaty amid protests over the government's decision to lift price caps on liquefied petroleum gas. (Reuters)

Troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization will enter Kazakhstan after President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev appealed for help controlling the anti-government protests.
In fact, Trump was one of WikiLeaks most vocal supporters on the campaign trail, once confessing to supporters at a rally in Ohio that he almost didnt get off his plane because they were just announcing new WikiLeaks, and I wanted to stay there, but I didnt want to keep you waiting.
A man who stabbed to death his partner and one-time childhood sweetheart after she told him she wanted out of their relationship has been jailed for 23 years for her murder.

Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry said Trefor Kingdon employed a look at what you made me do defence after he murdered Mandy Melzer-Head last year, and it was time for men to stop killing women because of relationship breakdowns.

Trefor Kingdon was jailed for 23 years for the murder of his former partner Mandy Melzer-Head in 2020. Credit:Facebook

People are entitled to leave relationships, the judge told Kingdon.

Men in particular who are told their relationships are finished do not have any licence, rationale or excuse to inflict fatal violence as a reaction ... to their feelings of rejection.
Looking Back on 2021 at Weber State

December 22, 2021

OGDEN, Utah  Weber State Universitys emergence from the pandemic allowed for a return to more traditional campus life in fall 2021. Here is a look at WSUs many highlights for the year, including a return to in-person events and performances, graduation ceremonies under the stadium lights and celebrating 50 years of the iconic Stewart Bell Tower.

January:

Thanks to the efforts of a volunteer army, Weber State provided vaccinations and testing for thousands of members of the campus community, administering approximately 100,000 vaccine doses in the Dee Events Center from January to April. In addition, WSU volunteers helped keep the campus safe with testing centers at the WSU Ogden and Davis campuses for symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, while also conducting robust contact tracing.

Named as Time Magazines 100 Most Influential People of 2020 for his work as a historian and leading antiracist scholar, Ibram Xolani Kendi, participated in a live-streamed interview for the campus community with WSU President Brad Mortensen. The conversation explored ideas for eliminating racial inequality. The event was hosted in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

February:

WSUs new Outdoor Adventure & Welcome Center held its grand opening ceremony with President Mortensen rappelling down the new 55-foot climbing wall to officially cut the ribbon. The center houses the Campus Recreation Outdoor Program and provides a venue to welcome prospective WSU students and their families to campus.

In February, WSU also welcomed civil rights activist Ruby Bridges to speak virtually to campus about her experiences with segregation. Bridges was the first African-American child to attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in 1960.

March:

More than 60 locally and nationally renowned speakers came together virtually for the 12th annual Intermountain Sustainability Summit. The summit covered a variety of topics including renewable energy and net-zero buildings. Participants also took part in hands-on workshops discussing climate change at a personal and community level.

April:

To honor graduates of fall 2020 and spring and summer 2021, Weber State hosted in-person and virtual graduation ceremonies in Stewart Stadium. Each college held individual events to award degrees for more than 6,497 students  the largest class on record at WSU.

May:

On the second of the two-day graduation events, the Dumke College of Health Professions and the Annie Taylor Dee School of Nursing celebrated the graduation of its first class of the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP). DNP is Weber States first doctoral program.

June:

Major renovation began on the Wildcat Trail System, which also includes the popular Discovery Loop. The trail has been a staple of the Ogden community since 1977. University volunteers removed old exercise equipment along the trail, and Ogden City provided tools for heavy debris removal. The clean-up is part of a multi-year renovation effort.

July:

The Lindquist Pops Concert, which attracts thousands of people each year, was welcomed back to campus after the 2020 hiatus. Attendees enjoyed a free symphonic concert and one of the largest fireworks displays in Utah. This tradition is proudly supported by John E. Lindquist, President of Lindquist Mortuaries and Cemeteries in Ogden.

August:

Weber State University held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Haven J. Barlow Parkway at WSU Davis in Layton. The new entrance gives visitors a second way to access the campus. As part of the ceremony, Barlow, a primary driver in transitioning Weber State from a two-year college to a four-year institution and then a university, drove Weber States purple Tesla along the parkway.

The campus community enjoyed a return to in-person campus activities, which kicked off with the annual Block Party celebration. As Weber State returned to a more traditional fall schedule, students could choose from a variety of face-to-face, online and hybrid classes.

The Val A. Browning Center for the Performing Arts received major upgrades to make performances even more enjoyable for both patrons and performers. The Austad and Allred theaters received improvements, including the sound systems, stage, orchestra pit and floor.

September:

The Chronicle of Higher Education, named Weber State on its 2021 Great Colleges to Work For Honor Roll. Weber joined a list of just 42 institutions around the country for the recognition.

Harry Gottlieb, CEO of Jackbox Games and founder of Unify America, visited Weber State to talk about his initiatives bridging political divides in the U.S. Attendees were invited to take part in the Unify Challenge, where participants across college campuses were paired with others holding a differing viewpoint and asked to engage in productive discussions.

October:

Weber States Outdoor Program hosted the Ogden Climbing Festival for the first time at the new Outdoor Adventure & Welcome Center. Climbers of all skill levels participated in educational climbing clinics and competitions. Kyra Condie, a world-renown Olympian and Salt Lake resident was the festival's keynote speaker.

November:

Weber State Universitys Office of the Provost presented two major awards: the 2020 John S. Hinckley Fellow was awarded to Matt Ondrus, professor of mathematics, for excellent teaching and service to students; the Exemplary Collaboration Award went to the Annie Taylor Dee School of Nursing COVID Task Force, which helped lead Weber States pandemic response.

December:

Weber State celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Stewart Bell Tower, which was dedicated Dec. 14, 1971. It has been the backdrop for holiday concerts, dances, firework displays, midnight Homecoming traditions, purple-pancake breakfasts, fashion shows and Webers Juneteenth celebration.

Over 3,573 WSU graduates were honored during the 157th commencement ceremonies, recognizing students from summer and fall semesters. The most popular majors were nursing, professional sales, computer science, criminal justice and medical laboratory sciences.

Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University.
As a household of one (plus a dog), Ive never had much use for big-box grocery stores like Costco and Sams Club. In fact, Ive always gravitated toward the little-box stores like Trader Joes or completely out-of-the-box farmer's markets for my grocery hauls.

But over the past year or so, my interest in members-only grocery store warehouses started to pique. To be completely honest, its largely because Im a sucker for brand-exclusive snacks, many of which had started to fill my TikTok feed.

For instance, you can get mini creme brulee pots at Costco that can be popped into the oven and broiled if you dont have a torch! And, did you know that you can ask the Costco bakery for a ginormous box of cookie dough that equals out to 19 cents a cookie? Then theres Sams Clubs, whose signature brand, Members Mark, sells chicken sandwiches and nuggets that are rumored to taste just like Chick-fil-A, as well as "everything seasoned" cashews, and pickle and ranch potato chips.

Member's Mark Southern Style Chicken Bites, Frozen (3 lbs.) Member's Mark samsclub.com Shop Now

Still, I couldnt justify a full-on membership to a warehouse store just to satiate the snack attack fueled by my social media feed. But after the grocery store that was within walking distance of my house shut down and was converted to whats now my gym (I shoot hoops where the deli counter used to be), the idea of big-box shopping became more appealing. Plus, with no nearby grocery store, I had developed an expensive habit of buying four-packs of overpriced, too-thin toilet paper and individual granola bars with high mark-ups at the 7-Eleven by my house.

With the holiday season approaching, I convinced myself that it was time to make a commitment to a members-only grocery store. But which one? In the name of excess (and, um, investigative journalism  which store has the best hot dog?), I signed up for memberships at both Costco and Sams Club  unfortunately, it seems, too late to catch the era of grazing on samples while I shop (fingers crossed this returns post-pandemic).

Gold Star Membership - New Member Costco costco.com $60.00 Shop Now

Join Sam's Club Sam's Club $45.00 Shop Now

Now seemed like a good time because, while Ill never need 128 ounces of mayonnaise or a 72-pound wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano, I do have family coming into town for the holidays. And, as the self-appointed snack captain of my friend group, I need to stock a cabin full of goodies for a mountain getaway with girlfriends.

Brittany Anas for Hearst Newspapers

The closest Costco and Sams Club stores to me happen to be across a major intersection from one another. Over the past few weeks, Ive wandered around these vast food wonderlands on a mission to discover which one offers the best shopping experience. Heres how the two stacked up, according to a first-time warehouse club shopper.

How much is a Costco membership vs. Sams Club?

Both Costco and Sams Club have membership tiers, with Costcos being slightly more expensive and both stores offering a refund on your membership if youre not satisfied with it. You can also get extra benefits t with each membership, like discounts on gas.

Know this: The sign-up process can take a solid 20 minutes  and you should be prepared for some high-pressure pitches to sign up for a store credit card. I recommend doing some research before going into the store so you know which membership level is the best fit for you. But the main perk of both warehouses higher-tier membership is cash-back incentives that payout annually. You can crunch your own numbers on how much you expect to spend on groceries each year to determine whether the upgrade will make sense. The stores should also be able to tell you the average cashback that members in your area receive.

Costcos membership tiers:

Costco Gold Star: The $60 annual plan comes with two memberships and access to Costco warehouses, gas stations, and online shopping at Costco.com with no added fees.

Costco Executive: The $120 annual plan comes with two memberships and a 2% cash-back reward (up to $1,000) on Costco and Costco Travel purchases. It also comes with discounts and perks on a slew of services, like travel packages and insurance plans, plus home delivery of the Costco Connection magazine. (If youre not an Executive-tier member, you can still find the mag, which has food and travel stories, available free in stores).

Pro tip: Youd have to spend at least $3,000 a year (or $250 a month) to make up the $60 difference between the two memberships in cash-back incentives. To get the maximum $1,000 rebate, youd need to spend $50,000 a year. However, you can downgrade your membership and Costco will refund you the difference in your cashback.

Costco also has business memberships for people with a business license or resale certificate.

Sams Club membership tiers:

Club membership: The $45-per-year basic membership comes with access to stores, gas stations, and two household membership cards. You will have access to the stores automotive center but not the pharmacy or optical center at this tier.

Plus membership: The $100 membership comes with access to stores and gas stations, and two household membership cards, plus 2% cash-back rewards (up to $500 per year). It also comes with other perks, like early access so you can shop before the crowds hit on weekends. Some other perks include free repair of flat tires and free prescriptions for some generic drugs and steep discounts on others, as well as discounts on eyeglasses.

Right now, you can get a Sam's Club membership through Groupon for between $15 and $20 (with some added gift card freebies).

Pro tip: Youd have to spend at least $2,750 a year (or about $230 a month) to make up the $55 difference between these two memberships. To get the maximum $500 rebate, youd need to spend about $25,000 a year. Also, Sams Club often runs promotions, like a $45 store gift card for joining, which basically cancels out the membership fee at the Club tier.

While you need a membership card to get in the warehouse doors to do your in-person shopping, non-members can shop online at both Costco and Sams Club. However, this comes with an upcharge (and sometimes a steep one).

At Costco, non-members shopping online pay a 5% surcharge. Those markups can be even higher if they use Instacart because the prices you see on the app are higher than in-store prices.

Sams Club says this: You can also shop online without a membership card, but you may miss out on members-only pricing and pay a 10% service fee on some items. Also worth noting, Sams Club has a free 90-day membership trial.

Does Costco or Sams Club save you more money?

It can be a little tricky to make apples-to-apples price comparisons at wholesale club stores, as I quickly discovered.

When I did price-by-price comparisons of things that I was most interested in buying in bulk (pantry staples, fruits and veggies, paper towels, for example), I found Costco and Sams Club prices to be mostly comparable, if not within a difference of a few pennies. The biggest difference I spotted during my shopping excursions was in 24-packs of LaCroix, which were $8.49 at Costco and $8.98 at Sams Club. However, Im looking to replace the tires on my Jeep and, by my early price comparisons, it looks like Ill be able to save a little bit more at Sams Club.

Brittany Anas for Hearst Newspapers

To me, theres no clear winner on who has the best overall prices. However, its worth noting that upfront membership costs are more expensive at Costco but not much ($15 to $20, depending on the tier).

Both warehouses have their own private labels, like Kirkland Signature at Costco and Members Mark at Sams Club. Those private labels are cheaper than name brands, and Ive found Costco to have a much greater selection of those more affordable private label items. When you factor that in, I think its safe to say that while Costco membership fees are higher, theres a greater selection of low-cost food items in the store.

Costco vs. Sams Club: Which in-store experience is better?

Costco has 828 total stores, with 572 of those being in the United States. Sams Club, a division of Walmart, has 600 clubs in the United States. In general, expect a slightly larger warehouse when youre shopping at Costco. The average square footage of its stores is 146,000, compared to 134,000 square feet at the average Sams Club.

Both stores offer a similar, no-frills shopping experience in brightly lit warehouses, with electronics, appliances, clothes (I was surprised by the number of name brands at each, like Adidas sweatshirts and Puma sports bras), sporting goods, and more.

However, I think they both have some unique perks that set them apart from one another. To me, Sams Club felt like a really big Walmart. One major advantage I found at Sams Club was the option to skip the checkout line by downloading the store app and scanning your items as you shop. You pay in the app and show your digital receipt as you exit the store. This is a major timesaver on those busy Saturday mornings during the shopping rush. I also found a lot of known brands with creative offerings at Sams Club (like Nilla banana pudding with Nutter Butter pieces, Southern Comfort eggnog, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch popcorn).

Brittany Anas for Hearst Newspapers

Overall, though, I liked the selection much better at Costco and have become a fast fan of the Kirkland private label, stocking up on things like the movie theater-style buttered popcorn, big bags of frozen fruit for smoothies, and smoked salmon to add to bagels and salads. I also appreciated the easy-to-prep meals, like 12 street tacos with salsa and cilantro lime cream for $13.50. While Sams Club has a lot of popular brands, Costco seems to have more organic selections.

As a seafood lover (but landlocked in Colorado), I had heard that Costco had darn good crab. So, on my first foray into the store, I darted straight to the seafood aisle and scooped some Dungeness crab. My boyfriend steamed it with Old Bay and we dunked it in butter, and we now have a Sunday night seafood tradition forming.

Brittany Anas for Hearst Newspapers

Costco food court vs. Sams Club food court

Something I learned during my warehouse excursions is that you need a membership to get into Costcos food court. (However, Ive read on the web that some warehouses in warmer-weather destinations have outdoor food courts, which are easier for non-members to access.) By comparison, the food court at Sams Club is open to all.

Both warehouses have the famed $1.50 hot dog meal deal that comes with a free soda. Ive tried both and like Costcos slightly more thanks to a bigger frank and fluffier bun. But, overall, the food court at Sams Club, in my opinion, is better because they have more creative dishes. Were talking about a pizza pretzel that you can dunk in marinara and a brownie sundae with caramel sauce.

Sams Club and Costco shopping tips

Saving money is the name of the game at members-only stores. Here are a few tips Ive picked up during my shopping expeditions.

Shop the gift cards. One of the biggest surprises to me was that both Costco and Sams Club offer discounts on gift cards. Sure, this is great for gifting, but if theres a place that you love to eat at or you expect to be planning a vacation, you could get 25% off on gift cards for select restaurants and airlines.

Buy the famous chicken. Both stores have rotisserie chickens for just under $5. In the industry, these are known as loss leaders because customers are paying less for the chicken than the store is, but it makes sense because they get you into the door. (And once youre in the door, youll probably buy more than a single chicken). I tried both Sams Club and Costco rotisserie chickens, and while they were both great, I found Costcos to be a little juicier and less salty. Ive been using the chicken on salads, in wraps, and in burrito bowls and love having one on hand to curb those Ill-just-Doordash nights when Im working late.

Sign up for the emails. Admittedly, warehouse shopping can be intimidating. Theres a lot of square footage to cover in those buildings. When you sign up for a membership at either store, youll give your email address and start getting deal emails. I like that this helps you zero in on the best deals. For instance, Costco is doing special sales leading up to the holidays and Ive been able to easily suss out if theres anything on my shopping list thats also on the deals list.

The verdict: Is Costco or Sams Club Better?

Both Costco and Sams Club offer very similar experiences. In my case, the stores were within equal proximity to my house. But if one were a mile or two closer, that would likely be the deciding factor for me. Thats how close the race is in my book.

However, after shopping at both stores for the past month, Costco has a slight advantage in my book. I found the food selection to be better and more exclusive. Many of the big brands that are at Sams are ones I could find at a normal grocery store.
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Finance Officer, Geneva, Switzerland

Organization: World Health Organization (WHO)

Country: Switzerland

City: Geneva

Office: WHO Geneva, Switzerland

Grade: P-4

Closing date: Thursday, 30 December 2021

Finance Officer

( 2106033 )

Grade : P4

Contractual Arrangement : Fixed-term appointment

Contract Duration (Years, Months, Days) : 2 years

Job Posting: Dec 10, 2021, 4:49:20 PM

The Department of Finances objectives are to support Country Offices, Regional Offices and Headquarters in all financial matters to ensure precise and timely services to colleagues throughout the Organization, including hosted entities.Financial services include Treasury, investments, Staff Health Insurance, pension and other insurances. To set financial policy, issue annual financial statements and manage WHO external audit; to maintain transparency, accountability and trust in WHO by all stakeholders. To provide the best customer service possible, facilitating access to benefit entitlements for the WHO family worldwide and efficient processing of all related benefits using innovative technology.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES

A. Duties of Secretary, CRC: (1) Record, analyze, summarize and assess incoming requests for CRC clearance and make recommendations for CRC decision.

(2) Alert CRC members to problems identified with proposed new contractual arrangements and make policy recommendations with regard to best practices regarding the maintenance and improvement of WHOs procurement practices, based on competitive selection and best value for money principles.

(3) Prepare special analyses and correspondence for Chair CRC with regard to pending submissions.

(4) Respond to queries/requests for advice from CRC members and staff in submitting programmes.

(5) Follow-up of pending cases; correspondence with programmes on CRC requests for clarifications.

(6) Maintain and administer the CRC electronic database and the physical CRC Master File. Prepare regular reports and statistics regarding the CRC caseload, value, trends and other analytical issues related to CRC performance. Prepare reports and analysis on CRC observations, and incorrect submissions, and recommend policy or other solutions to address recurring issues.

(7) Liaise with the regional CRCs; the GSC; CPS; LEG and other services involved in WHO procurement and contractual services and act as catalyst for change in adopting and harmonizing best practices across the Organization; draft CRC-related procedural documentation for the e-Manual, SOPs etc.

(8) Assume the focal point role for CRC matters vis-a-vis internal and external auditor and the IEOAC.

(9) Provide reports for CRC on the observed compliance with procurement procedure, based on submissions to CRC(10) In conjunction with the WHO Procurement unit, provide guidance on CRC procedures.

B.

(1). Back-up the Senior Finance Officer, and the Head of ECA as necessary.

(2) Other tasks as assigned by supervisor.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Education

Essential: Advanced level University degree in a discipline relevant to the position. Professional accounting qualification such as CA, CPA, ACCA,CIPFA or other equivalent formal qualification.

Desirable: MBA or equivalent.

Experience

Essential: A minimum of seven years of progressive financial managerial responsibility in a large, complex, international organization, preferably with decentralized operations. Proven written and communication skills. Integrity, tact and discretion in dealing with internal and external stakeholders. Supervisory, leadership ability, negotiation skills and a Team player. An understanding of procurement procedures.

Desirable: Experience working with International Public Sector Accounting Standards, International Financial Reporting Standards or other international accounting standards. Experience using both finance and procurement modules of ERP systems (Workday or Oracle preferred).

Skills

Integrity, tact, discretion and ability to recommend and interpret administrative and financial policies and systems and establish and maintain effective working relationships within a team with multi-cultural backgrounds in a multi-disciplinary management service environment. Promoting excellent interpersonal skills. Ability to effectively maintain a global network of finance professionals. Proven writing and oral communications skills. Comprehensive knowledge of principles and practices of international accounting and financial management.

WHO Competencies

Teamwork

Respecting and promoting individual and cultural differences

Communication

Producing results

Setting an example

Use of Language Skills

Essential: Expert knowledge of English.

Desirable: Intermediate knowledge of French

REMUNERATION

WHO salaries for staff in the Professional category are calculated in US dollars. The remuneration for the above position comprises an annual base salary starting at USD 74,913 (subject to mandatory deductions for pension contributions and health insurance, as applicable), a variable post adjustment, which reflects the cost of living in a particular duty station, and currently amounts to USD 5181 per month for the duty station indicated above. Other benefits include 30 days of annual leave, allowances for dependent family members, home leave, and an education grant for dependent children.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

This vacancy notice may be used to fill other similar positions at the same grade level

Only candidates under serious consideration will be contacted.

A written test may be used as a form of screening.

In the event that your candidature is retained for an interview, you will be required to provide, in advance, a scanned copy of the degree(s)/diploma(s)/certificate(s) required for this position. WHO 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 through the link: http://www.whed.net/. Some professional certificates may not appear in the WHED and will require individual review.

Any appointment/extension of appointment is subject to WHO Staff Regulations, Staff Rules and Manual. c1TKBwN Dh7qKS

Staff members in other duty stations are encouraged to apply.

For information on WHOs operations please visit: http://www.who.int.

WHO is committed to workforce diversity.

WHO prides itself on a workforce that adheres to the highest ethical and professional standards and that is committed to put the WHO Values Charter into practice.

WHO has zero tolerance towards sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), sexual harassment and other types of abusive conduct (i.e., discrimination, abuse of authority and harassment). All members of the WHO workforce have a role to play in promoting a safe and respectful workplace and should report to WHO any actual or suspected cases of SEA, sexual harassment and other types of abusive conduct. To ensure that individuals with a substantiated history of SEA, sexual harassment or other types of abusive conduct are not hired by the Organization, WHO will conduct a background verification of final candidates.

WHO has a smoke-free environment and does not recruit smokers or users of any form of tobacco.

WHO has a mobility policy which can be found at the following link: http://www.who.int/employment/en/. Candidates appointed to an international post with WHO are subject to mobility and may be assigned to any activity or duty station of the Organization throughout the world.

Applications from women and from nationals of non and underrepresented Member States are particularly encouraged.

Link to the organizations job offer: https://unjobs.org/vacancies/1639244776945
Public Relations and Outreach Associate, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Organization: UNDP - United Nations Development Programme

Country: Uzbekistan

City: Tashkent

Office: UNDP Tashkent

Closing date: Saturday, 25 December 2021

Job Identification : 1646

Locations : Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Posting Date : 11/30/2021, 01:18 PM

Apply Before : 12/25/2021, 04:59 AM

Degree Level : Secondary School Leaving Certificate

Job Schedule : Full time

Agency : UNDP

Grade : NB3

Vacancy Type : National Personnel Service Agreement

Practice Area : Nature, Climate and Energy

Bureau : Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS

Contract Duration : 6 Months

Education & Work Experience : High School certificate

Other Criteria : 6 years of relevant experience in communications for a project or programme implementation, ideally involving international donors.

Required Languages : Fluency in English, Russian and Uzbek

Job Description

Background

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

In March 2021, the GCF Board secretariat approved a 6-year (2021 - 2026) project for the Republic of Uzbekistan entitled "Enhancing Multi-Hazard Early Warning System to increase the resilience of Uzbekistan communities to climate change-induced hazards" (hereafter GCF project). The project will be implemented under the National Implementation Modality (NIM) with the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Republic of Uzbekistan (MES) playing an executing entitys/implementing partners role for it. This project will respond to a critical need of Uzbekistan to modernize its early warning system into an impact-based MHEWS (initially focused on floods, mudflows, landslides, avalanches and hydrological drought in the more populous and economically important eastern mountainous regions), an essential element of the countrys climate risk management framework. In the face of increasing climate risks, this MHEWS will serve to enhance the climate resilience of 32 million people of Uzbekistan (indirect beneficiaries), including the most vulnerable and poor rural communities living in mountainous areas currently at risk from climate-induced hazards.

Specifically, the project will improve methods and capacities for monitoring, modelling and forecasting climate hazards and risks supported with satellite-based remote sensing, create a central repository and analysis system for hydrometeorological hazard and risk information, improve regulations, coordination and institutional mechanisms for an effective impact-based MHEWS, including the development of forecast-based actions. The project will explore and facilitate the concept of forecast-based financing with the national institutional stakeholders responsible for disaster risk management and financing by developing Standard Operating Procedures and prototype decision-making systems/protocols based on the enhanced impact-based forecasting and warning. As a result, the project will significantly enhance the quality and timeliness of climate and disaster-related information available to decision-makers and the dissemination of such information to the population, as well as develop information and procedures for ex-ante actions. Together these activities will demonstrate the potential benefits of the upgraded system and contribute to the transformation of climate and disaster risk management in the country.

The PR and Outreach Associate will be contributing to enhancing the multi-hazard early warning system and increasing the resilience of Uzbekistan communities to climate change-induced hazards through leading the knowledge management outputs and disseminating information on the project activities and results. S/he will be in charge of the provision of thematic and operational services for coordination and implementation of the public relations, knowledge management and outreach activities

Duties and Responsibilities

Develop a project communications strategy/plan, incorporate it with the annual work plans and update it annually in consultation with project stakeholders and coordinate its implementation;

Coordinate the implementation of knowledge management outputs of the project

Facilitate the design and maintenance of the project website/webpages and ensure it is up-to-date and dynamic;

Be responsible for overall coordination of projects background materials, information packages, press releases, press-kits, media advisories, newsletters, public information and bulletins;

Support the project manager and task managers in incorporating all newly developed project materials for publication, coordinate the work of layout-designers, and maintain digest of news and events about the project;

Ensure translation of press releases, news, bulletins, web-page follow-up stories in three languages (English, Russian, Uzbek) and provide interpretation services when required;

Photograph and take a video of each project-related event for press releases and web-page follow-up stories;

In cooperation with the Project Manager and relevant task managers develop articles for national and local media and success stories on the best practices and achievements of the project for UNDP/GCF-supported global web-portals and other international media;

Be responsible for common style and coordination of design and usage of information and logo in all printing materials and publications;

Be responsible for the preparation and distribution of promotional materials to ensure project visibility with the main government counterparts, civil society, donors and media;

Facilitate organization and planning of media coverage, preparation of media kits for project-facilitated round tables, workshops, briefings or any other information events;

Assist Project Manager in conducting conferences, meetings, presentations, workshops and other project activities related to raising awareness at the local, regional and national levels;

Assist in identifying and establishing partnerships with potential stakeholders, donors, etc;

Contribute to resource mobilization of project activities;

Facilitate learning and sharing of knowledge and experiences relevant to the project;

Maintain relations with the UNDP Communication and Learning Staff and other national and international organizations, including the national and local media; c2Ehn03 Dh7qKS

Submit both monthly and quarterly reports to Project Manager on PR and Outreach activities;

Ensures that project contributes to the promotion of gender equality by reaching, involving and benefiting both women and men in its activities (gender mainstreaming);

Conveying the monitoring and evaluation outputs; contribute to project monitoring and evaluation activities and reports;

Presenting the learning outputs and best practices;

Perform other duties related to the scope of work of the Public Relations and Outreach Associate, as required.

Institutional Arrangement

Under the direct supervision of the Project Manager, Public Relations and Outreach Associate will be responsible for the satisfactory achievement of the entrusted functions and tasks, having the responsibility to leading knowledge management outputs and developing the project communications strategy at the project outset and coordinating its implementation across all project components. S/he will work closely with the M&E Officer on knowledge management aspects of the project

Competencies

Strong professional working capacity to use the information and communications technology, specifically including website design and desktop publishing software.

Previous experience in developing and implementing communications strategies for organizations or projects.

Desired additional skills and competencies

Previous experience with UN projects will be a definite asset

Understanding climate resilience and disaster risk reduction issues.

Strong analytical and organizational skills, ability to work in a team.

The initiative, analytical skills, good ability in partnering and networking.

Excellent interpersonal and cross-cultural communication skills.

Ability to use information technologies.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Secondary Education.

Bachelors degree in journalism, communications, public administration and public policy, economics and finance, or development studies would be desired.

Experience:

6 years of relevant experience in communications for a project or programme implementation, ideally involving international donors.

Alternatively, if in a possession of Bachelors degree, the 3 years of relevant experience in communications activities would require.

Required languages: Fluency in English, Russian and Uzbek.

Travel: Official travel is expected to the project target regions of Uzbekistan.

The following documents shall be required from the applicants:

P11, indicating all past positions held and their main underlying functions, their durations (month/year), the qualifications, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate, and at least three (3) the most recent professional references of previous supervisors. References may also include peers.

A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page) indicating why the candidate considers him-/herself to be suitable for the position.

Disclaimer

Important information for US Permanent Residents (Green Card holders)

Under US immigration law, acceptance of a staff position with UNDP, an international organization, may have significant implications for US Permanent Residents. UNDP advises applicants for all professional level posts that they must relinquish their US Permanent Resident status and accept a G-4 visa, or have submitted a valid application for US citizenship prior to commencement of employment.

UNDP is not in a position to provide advice or assistance on applying for US citizenship and therefore applicants are advised to seek the advice of competent immigration lawyers regarding any applications.

Applicant information about UNDP rosters

Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

Scam warning

The United Nations does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee, please disregard it. Furthermore, please note that emblems, logos, names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore, you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.

Link to the organizations job offer: https://unjobs.org/vacancies/1639944892643
Just a few years ago, Janine Myska was scrolling through crocheting videos online during university lectures. Now, shes counting the days until her book, filled with crochet patterns, hits major retailers shelves across the continent.

Just a few years ago, Janine Myska was scrolling through crocheting videos online during university lectures. Now, shes counting the days until her book, filled with crochet patterns, hits major retailers shelves across the continent.

Myska, 27, unwrapped a copy of Modern Crochet Sweaters in November. Her face, handmade sweater and name stared up at her.

"I might have shed a tear," she said.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES The Winnipeg-based knitting influencer and designer compiled 20 of her top and dress patterns for the book.

The Winnipeg-based knitting influencer and designer compiled 20 of her top and dress patterns for the book. Shes been selling designs online to crafters around the globe, but these are new.

Like much of her career, Modern Crochet Sweaters was an unexpected twist for Myska (though her younger self dreamed of authorship).

On Jan. 25, the book will launch in big chains like Indigo and Walmart; in small craft shops; and online, including on Amazon and Google Play, for overseas fans.

"I honestly thought (Id write) a horror novel or something like that," she said.

But, she was already known as a knit and crochet expert  she has over 50,000 followers on Instagram and is the owner of Knits N Knots  when Page Street Publishing contacted her.

Canadas ride with the COVID-19 pandemic had just begun. Myska and her partner, Matt, moved back to Winnipeg from Red Deer, Alta. after he was laid off. The couple was living in Matts parents basement, trying to find an apartment thatd accommodate their large dogs.

"I was disorganized (and) wasnt checking my emails very much," Myska said.

Finally, she came across an email labelled "Third Follow Up". It was the publisher asking, again, if shed collaborate.

"I thought it was a scam," Myska said.

Stephanie Lauren photo The Infinite Prairies poncho from Modern Crochet Sweaters.

Research and a conference call proved otherwise. She signed a contract promising to write the book in half a year  by January 2021  and got to work.

Local photographer Stephanie Penner, who goes by Stephanie Lauren, trekked through the Exchange District, St. Adolphe and The Forks, taking pictures of Myska in her knitware for Modern Crochet Sweaters.

On Jan. 25, the book will launch in big chains like Indigo and Walmart; in small craft shops; and online, including on Amazon and Google Play, for overseas fans.

"I have so many different kinds of crafting books in my closet still from when I was younger, and now those photos (in one book) will be mine," Penner said. "Thats really crazy to me."

Stephanie Lauren photo Mountain Peaks

Penner has watched Myskas business grow over the years. It began as an Instagram account, where the knitter sold hats to friends and family while in school for food sciences.

That ballooned to an online shop and blog with traffic from Germany, Australia and Qatar. Myska attended markets and sold products in the Manitoba Museum and Coal and Canary. Shed watch Game of Thrones and knit until 5 a.m. to fill orders.

"(They) just look like something youd spend a lot of money for at the store," Penner said, adding the products dont seem handmade.

In 2018, Myska transitioned to selling knit and crochet patterns.

"(Selling goods) was fun while it lasted," Myska said. "After a while, I was like, OK, this is too much. Its wearing off now."

Stephanie Lauren photo Champagne Glow

Although she offers many of her designs for free online, people still purchase PDFs, she said. Shes sponsored by craft brands and has projects set for 2022, including releasing her own yarn collection.

"I always thought that was so cool, when people made stuff and then they could just turn it into a business," Myska said. "I never actually thought that would happen to me."

Each pattern in Modern Crochet Sweaters is wearable for sizes XS through 5XL and is beginner friendly, Myska said.

The book is available for pre-order at knitsnknots.ca.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com
KENAI, Alaska (AP)  Ocean farming and aquaculture in Alaskas coastal regions could get a boost from a federal grant program.

KENAI, Alaska (AP)  Ocean farming and aquaculture in Alaskas coastal regions could get a boost from a federal grant program.

The U.S. Economic Development Administration is taking grant applications as part of the American Rescue Plan that provides pandemic relief funding.

A proposal from Alaska envisions the creation of a shellfish and aquatic plants industry, the Peninsula Clarion reported.

The application is among 60 finalists from a nationwide pool of more than 500. Up to 30 proposals will get funding of between $25 and $100 million.

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Tim Dillon, executive director of the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District, said the proposal has regional support and could increase jobs.

The proposal aims to turn Alaska's marine farming and aquaculture into a $100 million per year industry.

I honestly believe that is possible, especially if were able to land this other $50 million to be able to do the different things that we need to do to help and support the industry, Dillon said.

Interest in mariculture, the cultivation of marine organisms in their natural environments, in Alaska has historically been contingent on funding.

For years, people have talked about mariculture and theres been different kinds of task forces and things, and everything has come back to Well, we need money to do things, Dillon said.

He added: No matter what, were going to wind up with information thats going to help us."
VICTORIA - The British Columbia government says it's extending the cap on fees charged by food delivery companies to help the restaurant industry through the COVID-19 pandemic.

A food delivery person wears a protective face mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as they do a pick up in Yaletown in Vancouver on December 3, 2020. The B.C. government says it's extending the cap on fees charged by food delivery companies to help the restaurant industry through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Jobs Minister Ravi Kahlon says the fee cap was set to expire on Dec. 31, but it's now been extended to the end of 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

VICTORIA - The British Columbia government says it's extending the cap on fees charged by food delivery companies to help the restaurant industry through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ravi Kahlon, the minister of jobs, economic recovery and innovation, says the fee cap was to expire on Dec. 31, but it's now been extended to the end of 2022.

The fee charged to restaurants by food delivery companies will remain at 15 per cent, while the additional cap of five per cent has been extended for other services, such as online ordering and processing fees.

The original order was put in place on Dec. 22 last year under the Emergency Program Act and was extended for the first time in September.

Kahlon says the cap has been widely viewed as a success by business owners and industry professionals.

He says it's a "key measure" in allowing restaurants to continue to operate and make money during the pandemic.

"If the caps are not in place, businesses actually lose money on every order. This way, we ensure that the service delivery companies can continue to make a profit, but our restaurants can also navigate this challenging time," Kahlon told a news conference on Monday.

Mark von Schellwitz, Western Canada vice-president for Restaurants Canada, says in-person dining has declined by half during the pandemic, while delivery sales increased three-fold.

"As it becomes a more important component of every restaurant sales mix, it was really important to have these fee caps," he said. "This provides that cost stability that restaurants really need in the takeout delivery business."

Jen Zoratti | Next A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Delivery service provider DoorDash said in a statement that it supports the government's goal of helping local businesses, but pricing regulations may force the company to increase costs for customers, which could result in reduced restaurant sales.

The company, which announced $1.1 million in COVID-19 relief grants for restaurants in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver in January, said it believes the best way to support restaurants is through direct funding, not by capping delivery fees.

Earlier this year, the province also announced that businesses with liquor licences would be able to purchase beer, wine and spirits at wholesale prices permanently.

Kahlon says the ministry will continue to monitor the impact of the pandemic on the sector to determine whether more supports need to be put in place.

He says he is encouraging residents to support local restaurants over the holidays, either by dining in or ordering delivery.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 20, 2021.
Biogen is slashing the price of its Alzheimers treatment in half months after it debuted to widespread criticism for an initial cost that could reach $56,000 annually.

FILE - The Biogen Inc., headquarters is shown March 11, 2020, in Cambridge, Mass. Biogen is slashing the price of its Alzheimers treatment months after the drug debuted to widespread criticism for an initial cost that can reach $56,000 annually. The drugmaker said Monday, Dec. 20, 2021 that starting in January it will cut the wholesale acquisition cost of the drug by about 50%. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

Biogen is slashing the price of its Alzheimers treatment in half months after it debuted to widespread criticism for an initial cost that could reach $56,000 annually.

The drugmaker said Monday that it will cut the wholesale acquisition cost of the drug by about 50% next month. That means the annual cost for a person of average weight will amount to $28,200.

The actual amount that person would pay will depend on factors like insurance coverage.

Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos said in a prepared statement that too many patients were not being offered the drug due to financial considerations, and their disease had progressed beyond the point where Aduhelm could help.

Aduhelm is the first in a line of new drugs that promise to do what no other Alzheimers treatment has managed: slow the progress of the fatal brain-destroying disease, rather than just managing its symptoms.

The drug received FDA approval in June, and the agency later said it was appropriate for patients with mild symptoms or early-stage Alzheimers.

But Aduhelm's debut has been slowed by concerns over the price and research behind the drug. Some insurers have balked at paying for the drug, while medical centers across the country have been either slow to decide on using the drug or said they weren't planning to prescribe it for now.

Doctors have said concerns over the price were compounded by costs patients also would face for regular testing and scans needed to monitor their progress on Aduhelm.

Biogen said in June that it would not raise its price on the drug for four years, and the company often touted its financial assistance programs for patients.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Abrahams said he was not surprised by Biogens price cut. He said in a research note that the move was probably necessary and should give Aduhelm its best opportunity for success.

The initial price was a key factor behind planned premium hikes for Medicare, the federal governments coverage program for people ages 65 and older and for the disabled.

Last month, Medicare announced one of the largest increases ever in its Part B monthly premium for outpatient care. It said it would raise the premium nearly $22, from $148.50 currently to $170.10 starting in January.

The agency said about half of that hike was due to the need for a contingency fund to cover Aduhelm. Medicare is expected to be one main payers for the drug.

Aduhelm clears brain plaque thought to play a role in Alzheimers disease, and U.S. regulators gave their approval based on study results showing the drug seemed likely to benefit patients. But theyve asked for more research.

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Biogen, which developed Aduhelm with Japans Eisai Co., said last week the company expects to screen the first patients for their next study in May. Researchers will aim to enroll about 1,300 people with early-stage Alzheimers and expects to complete the research about four years after the study begins.

Concerns about the research behind the drug were a main reason the European Medicines Agency cited in refusing Aduhelm's marketing authorization last week.

Biogen said in October that Aduhelm had brought in only $300,000 in sales during its first full quarter on the market. The company attributed that figure partly to drug wholesalers drawing down inventory they had purchased the previous quarter.

Biogen also said Monday that it will start some cost-cutting measures that are expected to yield about $500 million in annual savings, most of which will be realized next year. The company said it was cutting costs in part because the slow debut of Aduhem was affecting its revenue.

Shares of Biogen Inc., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, slipped $1.07 to $236.36 Monday morning while broader indexes fell.

The stock price had soared past $425 in June after the FDA approval, but shares have since shed nearly half their value.
SUPERIOR, Wis. (AP)  An intertribal agency says Wisconsin's draft environmental review for a planned reroute of an oil and gas pipeline across northern Wisconsin is incomplete and flawed.

SUPERIOR, Wis. (AP)  An intertribal agency says Wisconsin's draft environmental review for a planned reroute of an oil and gas pipeline across northern Wisconsin is incomplete and flawed.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources released its draft environmental impact statement on Thursday for a roughly 40-mile (64-kilometer) reroute of Enbridge's Line 5 in Ashland and Iron counties. The pipeline carries up to 23 million gallons (87 million liters) of oil and natural gas liquids per day from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario.

Enbridge, a Canadian company, is seeking to move the pipeline after the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa sued the company in 2019 to shut it down and remove it from their reservation.

The proposed reroute is expected to cross nearly 200 bodies of water and temporarily affect 135 acres (55 hectares) of wetlands. Enbridge says the nearly 70-year-old pipeline is a vital link to fuel across the region.

Wisconsin Public Radio reports that the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, which represents 11 Ojibwe tribes, told the DNR in a Dec. 10 letter that the states review has significant gaps in information.

The commission says it doesn't have enough data on the effects an oil spill would have on downstream waters, including Lake Superior. They also say it doesn't assess compliance with the Bad River tribes water quality standards or combined impacts of other projects.

There really needs to be a thorough description of the risks being posed by putting this pipeline around the reservation ... and Enbridge does not have a great history with spills, said John Coleman, the commission's environmental section leader.

Enbridge was responsible for one of the nations largest inland oil spills in July 2010 that contaminated nearly 40 miles (64 kilometers) of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan and cost more than $1.2 billion to clean up. More recently, Minnesota regulators fined the company $3 million for failing to follow the states environmental laws after Enbridge pierced a groundwater aquifer during construction of Line 3, releasing at least 24 million gallons of water.

Line 5 has had around 30 spills that have released more than 1 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids on land since 1968, according to federal pipeline safety data obtained by the National Wildlife Federation.

The draft review says an oil spill to nearby surface waters like the Bad River would temporarily impair water quality for weeks to months. The analysis said its unlikely a large oil spill would reach the lake since much would become trapped in sediments and vegetation at the river bottom, along stream and riverbanks and in wetlands before reaching this far downstream.

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The commission added the agencys review appears to exclude alternatives based on Enbridges analysis, includes problems with reference to treaty rights along the route, lacks sections on water quality, and details incorrect route location and mapping.

Ben Callan, the DNRs integration services section chief, declined to comment on the commissions remarks. He noted the agency intends to review all comments to update, clarify or correct any information.

The company said in a statement Friday that its pleased the reroute is moving forward.

Agreement has been reached with all private landowners along the 40-mile (reroute), chosen because it minimizes environmental impacts and protects critical resources, wrote Michael Barnes, an Enbridge spokesperson. We will move forward with construction once all necessary permits are received.

Labor unions and the states largest business lobby have backed the project and argued the lines shutdown would negatively impact businesses and residents in Wisconsin. Theyve highlighted the 700 jobs it would bring.

Enbridge is currently fighting efforts by the state of Michigan to shut down Line 5 in the Great Lakes. The pipeline provides around 65% of the propane supplied to residents in Michigans Upper Peninsula and around 55% of the states propane fuel.
NEW YORK (AP)  The fate of Ghislaine Maxwell is now squarely in the hands of a jury.

In this courtroom sketch, Ghislaine Maxwell, left, sits at the defense table with defense attorney Jeffrey Pagliuca while listening to testimony in her sex abuse trial, Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

NEW YORK (AP)  The fate of Ghislaine Maxwell is now squarely in the hands of a jury.

The jury received the case in Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial just before 5 p.m. Monday, after prosecutors and Maxwell's defense attorneys delivered closing arguments.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. APs earlier story follows below.

NEW YORK (AP)  The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell speeded to a finish Monday with a prosecutor labeling her a dangerous and sophisticated predator who recruited and groomed teenage girls to be sexually abused by financier Jeffrey Epstein while a defense attorney told jurors during closing arguments that Maxwell is an innocent woman.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe said Epstein could not have preyed on teenage girls for more than a decade without the help of the British socialite, who she described as the lady of the house as Epstein abused girls at a New York mansion, a Florida estate and a New Mexico ranch.

Ghislaine Maxwell was dangerous, Moe told jurors, saying Maxwell accepted over $30 million from Epstein over the years. Maxwell and Epstein committed horrifying crimes.

Defense lawyer Laura Menninger said prosecutors had failed to prove any charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ghislaine Maxwell is an innocent woman, wrongfully accused of crimes she did not commit, Menninger said.

That portrayal conflicted with Moe's depiction of Maxwell as a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing. She ran the same playbook again and again and again.

She manipulated her victims and groomed them. She caused deep and lasting harm to young girls. It is time to hold her accountable, Moe said.

The summations came at the start of the fourth week of a trial that was originally projected to last six weeks. With a coronavirus outbreak in New York worsening by the day and a holiday weekend ahead, Judge Alison J. Nathan urged lawyers to keep their closings tight so the jury could begin deliberating as early as Monday.

Menninger's closing revisited a theme defense attorneys pressed at the trial's start: that Maxwell was made a scapegoat after Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan federal jail cell in August 2019 as he awaited a sex trafficking trial.

Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jeffrey Epstein, Menninger said.

Maxwell, 59, was supported in court by four siblings who sat next to one another in the first row of spectators.

Maxwell has been jailed without bail since her arrest in July 2020. The judge has denied her bail repeatedly, despite her lawyer's arguments that the pledge of her $22.5 million estate and a willingness to be watched 24 hours a day by armed guards would guarantee her appearance in court.

The closings came after two dozen prosecution witnesses testified, including four women who say they were abused by Epstein with the help of Maxwell when they were teenagers.

Moe faced the jury as Maxwell, in a white sweater, sat behind her at the defense table and wrote notes, occasionally turning the pages of a notebook. Later, Maxwell turned in her chair toward the jury, sometimes pulling down her black mask to sip from a water bottle.

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The prosecutor told jurors that Maxwell was a posh, smiling age-appropriate woman who provided cover for Epsteins creepy behavior.

She asked them to ignore the testimony of a psychology professor who testified for the defense, saying the testimony that memories can fade over time and be influenced by what people hear, see or read was a total distraction.

These women know what happened to their own bodies, she said. Your common sense tells you that being molested is something you never forget, ever.

But Menninger defended the testimony of the memory expert, citing instances in which Maxwells accusers never mentioned the defendants name when they first spoke of the abuse they endured from Epstein.

She said the testimony from accusers was manipulated by civil lawyers representing them as they pursued millions of dollars in payouts from a special fund set up after Epsteins suicide to compensate his victims.

Menninger said the women suddenly recovered memories that Ghislaine was there.
SALEM, Ore. (AP)  Oregon, one of the last holdout states in joining a $26 billion settlement with the three largest distributors of opioids and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, is on the verge of signing on, the state's attorney general said Monday.

SALEM, Ore. (AP)  Oregon, one of the last holdout states in joining a $26 billion settlement with the three largest distributors of opioids and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, is on the verge of signing on, the state's attorney general said Monday.

The state had argued with cities and counties over disbursement of Oregons expected $329 million share and how much should go to attorneys fees. But agreement is now imminent, said Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum.

The settlement, which would be the second-biggest in U.S. history, would address damage wrought by opioids.

As of just over one week ago, at least 45 states had signed onto the settlement or signaled their intent to, and at least 4,012 counties and cities had confirmed participation, according to plaintiffs attorneys.

The three drug distributors  AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson  and Johnson & Johnson agreed in July to pay the combined $26 billion to resolve thousands of state and local government lawsuits. But if the defendants feel theres a lack of participation by states and local jurisdictions, it could cause them to back away from the landmark agreement, or eventually reduce the settlement amount.

Plaintiffs' lawyers, who have been working the settlement on the national level and urging cities, counties and states to sign on, applauded the breakthrough in Oregon.

As more communities join in from each state, the greater the funds these communities will receive," lawyer Joe Rice said Monday. "This national settlement is the most efficient way to bring urgently needed resources into communities, with funds being delivered as early as April 2022.

In exchange for the payout, participating states, counties and cities would have to drop any lawsuits against the defendants and agree not to sue them in the future for the opioid epidemic.

But some feel the settlement isn't enough and doesn't cover the damage caused by opioids, which were overprescribed in massive numbers. In the U.S., more than 500,000 deaths over the last two decades have been linked to opioids, both prescription drugs and illegal ones.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson has called the settlement woefully insufficient. Instead of joining, he sued AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson for $38 billion.

In Oregon, the agreement still needs to be formally approved by city councils and county commissions to become final, Rosenblum noted.

Some have already taken steps. The Yamhill County Board of Commissioners unanimously authorized the county counsel to approve the settlement last week, said Commissioner Casey Kulla. In the county southwest of Portland, as in many others, the opioid epidemic has caused overdoses, addiction and homelessness.

According to Rosenblum's office, the agreement between the state and local governments says:

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 Almost half of Oregons share would go into a fund that would be used to study the availability and efficacy of substance use prevention, treatment and recovery services across the state. The funds would also be used to address treatment and prevention of substance use disorder, focused on statewide and regional programs and services.

 The remaining 55% of Oregons share would go directly to cities and counties to pay for prevention, treatment and recovery services at the local level.

Every dollar we receive must be used judiciously and wisely, Rosenblum said. For starters, it will provide us with the ability to increase access to lifesaving treatment and recovery services and will support individuals and families who continue to suffer from substance use disorder.

The settlement is second only to the $200 billion-plus tobacco settlement, in 1998, with the nations four largest tobacco companies.

___

Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky
As the December holidays neared, the Old Triangle alehouses across the Maritimes were bustling with Christmas parties and diners revelling in the festive season.

Brendan Doherty, co-owner of the Old Triangle Irish alehouse, stands in the newly arranged pub in Halifax on June 4, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

As the December holidays neared, the Old Triangle alehouses across the Maritimes were bustling with Christmas parties and diners revelling in the festive season.

But that energy vanished in recent days as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 raged across Canada and governments brought in new restrictions limiting the capacity at restaurants and enforcing physical distance between patrons.

"It was really, really, really depressing," said Brendan Doherty, one of the Old Triangle's owners, of the moment he heard his business would be subject to new rules.

"There's been a few dark moments through the pandemic, and that one really felt like one of the darker, even though we've been dealing with this for two years."

Doherty, like most other small business owners, is lamenting how the "most wonderful time of the year" has become a nightmare of mounting case counts, capacity restrictions or closures and worries many thought were long gone when COVID-19 cases receded over the summer and fall.

They now fear they'll have to shut down once more, lay off staff and perhaps even say goodbye to their businesses for good.

While the Old Triangle is doing its best to stay open through the latest wave of COVID-19, Doherty said even that is a difficult feat and he's already had to reduce operating hours.

"With the current guidelines around testing and isolation in our province, I've got half of my kitchen staff in isolation, and it doesn't look like they're going to get ... test results before Christmas at this point," he said.

"As far as Christmas around here, it's pretty dark and it's a pretty sad time."

The outlook is just as gloomy at Louis Cifer Brew Works and Stout Irish Pub in Toronto.

Before restrictions even came into effect, owner and president Erin Gamelin says between 30 and 40 per cent business dried up as Canadians backed away from dining out amid the threat of Omicron.

"It's almost like we don't have to manage only having 50 per cent capacity, because customers are taking it upon themselves to cancel," she said.

On Saturday, her establishments were booked full with reservations. All but one cancelled.

"This is something that will destroy our industry," said Gamelin. "Restaurants are barely hanging on month by month."

Dan Kelly has been inundated with stories like Gamelin and Doherty's since the Omicron variant arrived in Canada and public health officials started moving to quell the virus.

The president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said in one example he heard from the owner of a gaming centre that was set to host a 60-person corporate party until the party was cancelled.

"He was going to make $2,000 profit and that $2,000 profit may not seem like much, but that would be the first profitable event he's had in two years," said Kelly.

The latest round of restrictions and cases has been particularly tough because small businesses have yet to recover from the previous waves, he added.

The CFIB surveyed 4,514 small business owners in November, before Omicron reached its peak, and found only 36 per cent were back to normal sales.

Of those not making normal sales, 22 per cent said they can survive for fewer than six months at their current level of revenue loss.

"Any little glimmer of hope that many businesses saw at the at the end of this two-year tunnel are quickly being extinguished," Kelly said.

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"Any kind of reserves or fat that the businesses might have had has long since been eliminated."

To make matters worse,this time around there is also little government support. Most of the sweeping relief programs for small business owners and laid off workers ended recently and few have been replaced.

Kelly, Doherty and Gamelin are all calling on the government to bring back support.

"The government is very quick to put restrictions on us and very slow to provide us any relief to continue to support all the people we employ," said Doherty.

"We're not trying to get rich here. All we want to do is just keep our business, keep our staff employed, so people have a roof over their heads."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 20, 2021.
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP)  Thailand on Tuesday decided to immediately reimpose a mandatory quarantine for visitors and suspend a test-and-go scheme for fully vaccinated arrivals as concerns grow over the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, the government said.

FILE- A tourist arrives at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 1, 2021. Thailand on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021, decided to immediately restore a mandatory quarantine for visitors and suspend a test-and-go scheme for fully vaccinated arrivals as concerns grew over the spread of the COVID-19's omicron variant, the government said.(AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP)  Thailand on Tuesday decided to immediately reimpose a mandatory quarantine for visitors and suspend a test-and-go scheme for fully vaccinated arrivals as concerns grow over the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, the government said.

The decision is a blow to efforts to revive Thailands battered tourism sector ahead of the peak holiday season.

Government spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana also announced the suspension of sandbox programs that allow visitors to remain and move around specific locations, except for the resort island of Phuket, where he said it will stay in effect.

This is not to shut off tourists but to temporarily suspend arrivals, he said. He added that the decision would be reviewed on Jan. 4.

He said about 200,000 people who have registered for the test-and-go scheme, known as Thailand Pass, but have not yet entered Thailand will be allowed to come. They will be subject to a coronavirus test on arrival and a second test seven days later at the expense of the government. He did not provide further details.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said Thailand will not accept any new applications for the test-and-go program.

Today we no longer accept more applications for travelers. No new applications," he told reporters. We have about 200,000 travelers who already registered. No other restrictions apply for these people, but we will have to track them.

He added that "from now, we are back to the old system of quarantine when entering.

The decision came after Thailand recorded its first case of domestic transmission of the omicron variant last week, when a returning resident tested negative on arrival but later tested positive and infected members of his family. The few other positive cases were all caught after testing on arrival and quarantined.

Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia eased entry restrictions for fully vaccinated travelers in November in an effort to kickstart tourism, a major revenue earner that collapsed with the start of the pandemic. But with the exception of Thailand, few have attracted the return of many foreign visitors due to complex entry requirements.

Bali, a prime tourism destination, has had only a few dozen foreign tourists since it reopened, and Cambodia and Vietnam have also struggled.

Starting in November, Thailand began reopening to fully vaccinated visitors without quarantine, easing a lockdown that caused massive job losses and hardship. Tourism accounted for some 20% of the economy before the pandemic.

With the onset of omicron, Thailand and other countries in Asia moved swiftly to block entry from an initial group of African nations. But Thailand kept its test-and-go program active for fully vaccinated travelers from more than 60 countries.

Under the scheme, fully vaccinated visitors had to show negative results from RT-PCR tests before flying and upon their arrival had a second PCR test. They had to spend their first night in a government-approved hotel awaiting their test results. If the results were negative, they could travel anywhere in Thailand.

Thailand had by far the most ambitious program in the region to allow travelers to enter and move around the country. It eased restrictions after a successful vaccination program that has seen 100 million doses administered to its population of about 60 million people. Booster programs are already underway around the country.

COVID-19 cases have steadily been dropping, with 2,476 new cases and 32 deaths reported Tuesday. Thailand has recorded 2,196,529 cases and 21,346 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Thailand tested the waters with a sandbox program under which it reopened Phuket in July to fully vaccinated visitors without quarantine, allowing them free movement on the island for 14 days and then onward travel throughout the country. It then cut the requirement to seven days, but actively tracked visitors and required them to undergo RT-PCR tests on day one and seven.

Since Thailand reopened to tourists on Nov. 1 with test-and-go, it has received 290,000 visitors, 130,000 of them in November. Last week, Phuket even had fully booked resorts.

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Thailand shut its borders to most foreign visitors in April last year after local transmission of the coronavirus started to climb. Foreign tourist arrivals in 2019 were almost 40 million but plunged to 6.7 million in 2020, with most of those visitors coming in the first quarter.

The government had targeted 1.5 trillion baht ($44.6 billion) in revenue from tourism in 2021. Thailand recorded 3.4 trillion baht ($101 billion) in income from the tourism sector in 2019.

Most countries in Asia have reported only a handful of omicron cases so far, or in the case of India, about 200.

India, which also opened to vaccinated tourists in November, has since suspended commercial international flights until Jan. 31 as global alarm over the variant grows. Still, international travel has continued via a number of flights from countries that India had agreements with.

Japan, where the vast majority of the population is vaccinated, now bans entry to most foreign nationals.

Mainland China and Hong Kong have continued to ban tourists from entry. Visitors face tight entry restrictions and mandatory 14- to 21-day quarantines depending on which part of the country they arrive in.
The City of Winnipegs vaccine mandate will soon apply to all municipal employees.

The City of Winnipegs vaccine mandate will soon apply to all municipal employees.

No staff member who refused both vaccinations against COVID-19 or frequent testing for the virus has lost their job  but that might be a consequence in future.

As the highly infectious Omicron variant spreads, the change will help protect services and residents, said Michael Jack, the citys chief administrative officer.

This was not a decision we took lightly. By requiring all of our employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, were doing everything we can to keep our employees safe and to protect the critical services they deliver to our residents, said Jack.

About 4,900 additional city staff must now be fully vaccinated (with at least two weeks passed after the second dose) by Feb. 22, 2022. That adds to 5,500 front-line municipal employees, such as police, firefighters and front-counter customer service workers, who were required to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 15.

Workers can apply for medical or religious exemptions and may stay on the job with frequent COVID-19 testing. Those who fail to comply with either option could be placed on unpaid leave.

Employee termination could be considered as a last resort but has not yet occurred, said Jack.

We may very well find ourselves at the point where we believe termination is the appropriate reaction We just simply arent there yet but it always remains a possibility, he said.

Mayor Brian Bowman suggested job loss may be a fitting consequence down the line.

At some point, Id like to see terminations, if and when thats appropriate I think, if you call yourself a public servant, you should serve the public and go get your vaccine, he said, urging both staff and politicians to get immunized.

Among the 5,500 front-line city workers who were required to be vaccinated, the city says 97 per cent are now fully immunized, 175 employees submit to regular testing and 12 staff are on unpaid leave for failing to comply.

Jack said the first round of the mandate has not negatively affected city services or programs. No vaccine exemptions have been granted for religious reasons, he noted.

Municipal staff who work remotely will not be exempt from the mandate.

(There are) any number of reasons we might need that person back in their office at a moments notice. So, for that reason, all of our employees need to be part of this program, said Jack.

The CAO said unions that represent municipal workers have largely supported the call to get workers vaccinated, with some concern over potential job losses.

However, the leader of the citys largest union accused officials of failing to properly consult his organization prior to the change.

Gord Delbridge, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 500, said CUPE learned about the vaccine mandate on Monday, not long before details were released to the media.

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Delbridge said the union is reviewing the plan and seeking a legal opinion to ensure it respects workers contracts.

If theres a violation to our collective agreement, based on the legal opinion, then we have a duty to fight it, he said.

Its too soon to say what concerns might be raised, said Delbridge.

He stressed potential union opposition will not be aimed at vaccination itself, urging all Winnipeggers who can get their shots to do so.

Joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
Winnipeg operating rooms are being prioritized for only the most urgent cases as the health care system braces for another surge of COVID-19 patients, driven in part by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

Winnipeg operating rooms are being prioritized for only the most urgent cases as the health care system braces for another surge of COVID-19 patients, driven in part by the highly contagious Omicron variant.

On Monday, elective surgeries at Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface Hospital and Grace Hospital were postponed to allow surgeons to carry out as many cancer, urgent and emergent procedures as possible before Christmas.

We do understand that these changes may be disappointing for people who are postponed, but it is an attempt to optimize our resources so that we can plan in the future for any increase in our COVID population, said Dr. Ed Buchel, surgery lead with the provinces health authority, Shared Health.

Buchel said about 1,200 surgeries will be carried out this week in Winnipeg and priority is being given to patients who are in hospital or cancer patients who require surgery urgently.

We do not want to go into our holiday slowdown with a large number of people in the hospital waiting for surgery, Buchel said, adding between 40 and 60 people are waiting for emergency surgery at any given time.

We feel it is a dangerous risk to go in as we normally would because we may not have the capacity to deal with them in a week or two from now during the holiday slowdown.

Shared Health said an estimated 10 to 15 patients would have their scheduled procedures postponed each day. Surgeries and procedures at Victoria Hospital, Concordia Hospital and Pan Am Clinic are under review.

The surgical shuffle was done ahead of the holiday slowdown and concern the highly contagious Omicron variant could lead to a surge in hospital admissions or cause essential staff to fall ill, Buchel said.

Buchel said changes to surgical slates are imminent in the Southern Health and Prairie Mountain Health regions to create capacity for COVID-19 patients.

At Carman Memorial Hospital, outpatient surgeries and endoscopies scheduled this month and next will be postponed so staff can be deployed to keep 10 beds open at Boundary Trails Health Centre in Winkler.

At Brandon Regional Health Centre, elective endoscopy will be postponed and staff redeployed to the intensive care unit to maintain the current bed base there and to add two beds as needed.

As of Monday, 89 patients were receiving intensive care in the province, including 27 COVID-19 patients, five of whom were admitted over the weekend.

Shared Health officials have said at a rate of two COVID-19 ICU admissions a day, other health services, including surgeries would be reduced to meet demand from COVID-19 patients. At a rate of three or more admissions a day, out-of-province transfers could be necessary.

We have maximized our resources now as far as we possibly can, Buchel said. It is absolutely vital that everybody in the public does whatever they can to limit the spread of the new variant because we will run out of resources if this is allowed to spread rapidly throughout our province.

The province reported 809 new COVID-19 infections over a three day period ending Monday. Provincial data showed there were 2,183 people with active infections in Manitoba as of Monday and 46 per cent of them had not been fully vaccinated.

The province said 57 per cent of active COVID-19 hospital admissions and 81 per cent of patients in intensive care had not been vaccinated.

A spokesman for Shared Health said the health authority was able to add two staffed ICU beds over the weekend, bringing the total critical care capacity in Manitoba to 112 beds.

Eight critical care nurses with the Canadian Red Cross arrived in Manitoba on Monday and were deployed to the Health Sciences Centre, the spokesman said.

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Health Minister Audrey Gordon and Ron Schuler, minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Organization, had asked the federal government to send more than twice that number of nurses  between 15 and 30  for a six-week period.

In a statement Saturday, a spokesperson for federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair confirmed up to eight nurses would be deployed to Manitoba until Jan. 17, with the possibility of an extension. The number of nurses available to Manitoba reflected Ottawas supply and the needs both governments outlined during negotiations.

Buchel said the lower than requested number of nurses did not influence the decision to postpone or re-prioritize surgical slates this weekend.

Procedures and surgeries that were postponed may be rescheduled for the end of January or early February, Buchel said.

If we do not see significant hospitalizations and ICU admissions from the Omicron variant over the next two, three, four weeks, then we will go back to our current slating throughout the province, Buchel said. We all have to do our part to make that a reality.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
Lujan and Madge Burakowski will fly to New York on Tuesday to spend the holidays with family members they havent seen in three years.

Lujan and Madge Burakowski will fly to New York on Tuesday to spend the holidays with family members they havent seen in three years.

They have decided not to follow the federal governments advice against non-essential travel outside Canada due to COVID-19s Omicron variant. But the Dec. 15 announcement was delivered too late for the Winnipeg couple.

"I agree with the governments plans to limit transportation, but the announcement came too late for us," Lujan said. "We have been missing our family for years now."

The couple booked flights to visit Lujans sister and her kids, whom they last saw in 2019, three months ago.

The Burakowskis said they visited New York during the holidays every year before the pandemic and had to cancel their trip in 2020.

They are vaccinated and have taken precautions in advance of travelling.

"We have been planning for months to ensure we are as safe and prepared as we can be," Madge said. "We upgraded our masks to N-95, we bought face shields and got our third COVID-19 booster vaccine as soon as we could."

The couple said cancelling their trip isnt an option because they have done  and will continue to do  everything they can to protect themselves.

"Even when we get to New York, we wont be leaving my sisters house," Lujan said. "We arent going out to restaurants or in public."

Madge said there is always a risk when travelling during the pandemic, but she trusts the safety measures she has taken to protect herself.

Monday morning, Greg Opyc of Beausejour was gathering his luggage in the arrivals area of Winnipegs Richardson International Airport after his vacation in the Dominican Republic. He said he felt completely safe from COVID-19 during his travels.

"For the most part, people used common sense and followed the restrictions put in place by the resort," he said. "There were few touch points, people wore masks and stayed socially distanced."

Opyc had to present a negative PCR test to a WestJet employee before boarding his flight in the Caribbean nation.

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When asked about an increase in cancellations due to the governments recommendation, WestJet public relations manager Morgan Bell said the airline hasnt experienced a significant change in operations.

"Our schedule remains unchanged at this time for our operations in Manitoba throughout the busy holiday season," she said. "Many of our guests have chosen to purchase a travel protection plan at the time of booking their trip."

Bell said the airline recently extended its "book with confidence" policy until Jan. 31, under which travellers pay a one-time charge and are protected from cancellation fees.

There is no indication the federal government will upgrade its non-essential travel advisory into a ban.

Opyc, who hadnt left the country in two years, said he never feared being let back into the country due to increased travel restrictions.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca
Former Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra executive director Trudy Schroeder is expected to take up the NDP baton at a Fort Whyte riding byelection nomination meeting Wednesday night.

Former Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra executive director Trudy Schroeder is expected to take up the NDP baton at a Fort Whyte riding byelection nomination meeting Wednesday night.

"This is a good time for me to run," said the 62-year-old recently. "Ive always been totally fascinated by public policy and government.

"In a byelection, people can send a message to the legislature. I think even people who have voted Conservative for many years can send a message and say: we can do better."

NDP Leader Wab Kinew sang the praises for Schroeder, who was with the WSO for 13 years before parting ways this year. Prior to that, she was executive director of the Winnipeg Folk Festival from 1999 to 2008.

"Trudy is an excellent candidate for Fort Whyte," said Kinew.

"Not only has she lived in the community for decades, shes deeply in touch with the needs of families who live there  be that seniors in need of better health care, families looking for good opportunities for their kids, or hard-working professionals who want respect from their government."

In a byelection, people can send a message to the legislature. I think even people who have voted Conservative for many years can send a message and say: we can do better," says Trudy Schroeder. (Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press)

The Fort Whyte seat is currently vacant, following the retirement of former Tory premier Brian Pallister, who held the riding from 2012 to 2021.

The date of the byelection has yet to be declared. Former Winnipeg Blue Bombers player Willard Reaves will carry the Liberal banner; the PCs have yet to name a candidate.

The Fort Whyte riding was created in 1999 and has voted Tory ever since.

Since its creation in a boundary redrawing in 1999, the Tories have won all general elections (six) and byelections (two) in its history.

During her career, Schroeder has embraced New Democratic values of equal opportunity and celebrating community while balancing the books, Kinew said.

"To Trudy, access to the arts is an important ingredient for a successful province, alongside a resilient health-care system, supported schools and good jobs for all Manitobans. I know that, if elected, she will fight hard to make life easier and more affordable for Fort Whyte families."

Schroeder, who is married and has two daughters, said her father, a teacher, was a "firm NDP supporter." When she was 18, in 1977, she was asked to give the nomination speech for then-premier Ed Schreyer.

"I let my dad do it because he was Ed Schreyers roommate at university," she said. "Maybe it was inevitable for me to run."

Schroeder was born in Winnipeg and lived in Clover Plains before her family moved into the city.

While in high school, she took music lessons from the WSOs clarinet player and later studied voice at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

She credits her volunteer time with Canada World Youth and its exchange term in Senegal, while still a teen, as being "transformative."

"In a byelection, people can send a message to the legislature. I think even people who have voted Conservative for many years can send a message and say: we can do better." Trudy Schroeder

During her time at the WSO  Schroeder is the longest serving executive director in its seven-decade history  she helped its annual budget double to $11 million (from $5.7 million) and its endowment fund triple to $11.1 million (from $3.3 million).

Schroeder hopes to bring that money sense to government.

"We need a thriving business sector here  they create jobs," she said. "And the voluntary sector is important, too. Thats where we create the community we want to live in."

Schroeder attended the University of Winnipeg and Laval University in Quebec City, where she graduated with a bachelor of music in 1983.

She later received a certificate in arts administration from the University of Ottawa in 1995, a masters of business administration from the University of Manitoba in 2004, and received executive education at Harvard Business School in 2011.

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Schroeder, who is married and has two daughters, said her father, a teacher, was a firm NDP supporter. (Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press)

Schroeder has served as chairwoman of Orchestras Canada and the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, as well as volunteered on numerous boards, including the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Canadian Mennonite University, Concordia Hospital, Concordia Hospital Foundation, and Canadian Conference of the Arts.

Schroeder received the Mayors Award for Volunteerism in 2010, the Queens Diamond Jubilee award in 2013, and was inducted into the Order of Manitoba in 2019.

"Democracy only works if we have different concerns and perspectives," she said. "This could be an opportunity for my neighbours. It is not a traditional NDP riding, but I like to vote for the best candidate.

"And Ive surprised people before."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Canada is advising against non-essential international travel to slow the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant.

Canada is advising against non-essential international travel to slow the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant.

Provincial politicians in Manitoba are being asked by their leaders to follow that advice.

Tory Premier Heather Stefanson is staying in Manitoba and has directed her cabinet and caucus to "refrain from non-essential international travel this holiday season," press secretary Olivia Billson said Monday.

This time last year, when chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin advised against travel outside of the province, at least one MLA and a number of government officials made headlines for violating that directive, including Tory MLA James Teitsma (Radisson) who took a family vacation to the Rockies and former clerk of the executive council David McLaughlin, who travelled to his family home in Ontario.

Don Leitch, who replaced McLaughlin in November, did not respond to a request for comment late Monday.

"Hopefully, people will have learned from last year," said University of Manitoba political studies professor Christopher Adams.

"I would think that that every premier in this country has had a stern conversation with his or her caucus about following government guidelines."

When asked to confirm if any Progressive Conservative MLAs have travel plans outside of Canada this holiday season, a party spokesperson reiterated the premiers statement.

"While we continue to stress that vaccination is the way out of this pandemic, we are acting out of an abundance of caution as we continue to learn more about the impacts of the Omicron variant," the PC caucus spokesperson added in an email.

The NDP said no members of the official Opposition are travelling out of the country this holiday season.

"Caucus leadership has given direction to cancel any international trips for MLAs and staff," said NDP Leader Wab Kinews press secretary, Emily Coutts.

None of the three Liberal MLAs are travelling out of the country this holiday season.

"The guidance from leadership is that all of our MLAs are expected to follow public health guidelines, which at this time is advising against all non-essential travel," said spokesman Colin Roy.

Most communications staff who responded to inquiries about avoiding international travel didnt balk when asked to divulge whether or not their elected officials are adhering to public health officials call for eligible Manitobans to get booster shots.

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont and longtime River Heights MLA Jon Gerrard were scheduled to receive their third doses Monday, Roy said, while Tyndall Park MLA Cindy Lamoureux is due to receive hers in January.

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The NDP said all MLAs are being encouraged to get booster shots, "and all plan to," but specific dates were not available.

The premier received her third dose of COVID-19 vaccine in October, said Billson. The PC caucus did not respond when asked if members were directed to get third doses.

Last week, Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler wouldnt comment on getting vaccinated, even though it was mandatory for cabinet minsters.

The minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Organization told reporters Dec. 16 his personal health information is private, and his belief in civil liberties compels him to keep that information private.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Manitobans who come down with COVID-19 will be relied on to share their positive status with personal close contacts, as provincial public health officials cut tracing efforts amid a spike in cases.

Manitobans who come down with COVID-19 will be relied on to share their positive status with personal close contacts, as provincial public health officials cut tracing efforts amid a spike in cases.

Public health officials reported 809 new COVID-19 cases over a three-day period this weekend, including 276 cases reported Saturday, 333 cases Sunday, and 200 on Monday in their first update since Dec. 17.

For the most part, impacted Manitobans will have to reach out directly to people they were around in the 48 hours before symptoms appeared, and in the 10 days after, to tell them theyve been exposed to the novel coronavirus.

As of Monday, public health officials will no longer notify close contacts of cases  with resources being directed to the vaccination effort, the provincial government said.

"Youre not responsible for being the doctor or anything else, but you are responsible for letting people know that you have been diagnosed." Cynthia Carr

"With the introduction of the Omicron variant of concern, Manitoba is anticipating a surge in COVID-19 cases similar to that seen in other countries and provinces," the government said in a release. "This increase in cases and contacts is expected to exceed public health contact notification resources."

However, public health officials said in some settings, such as schools, personal care homes, child care facilities, shelters, and health-care facilities, the government will work with the facility to notify close contacts.

Winnipeg-based epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said at the speed that Omicron can spread, its simply not possible for contact tracing to keep up, even as Manitobans reduce their close contacts as new restrictions come into effect Tuesday.

"This is why you want to make your number of contacts as small as possible, so you can easily identify who youve been around and have a trust-based relationship," Carr said. "Youre not responsible for being the doctor or anything else, but you are responsible for letting people know that you have been diagnosed."

However, without robust case investigations, public health will miss collecting important data that could provide a better picture of how the virus is spreading in the community, she said.

"But the reality is, in terms of protecting, speed is of the essence," Carr said. "So as long as the person is willing to follow up with their potential contacts as quickly as possible, and understand how important that is, that might actually be faster."

Carr added the federal COVID Alert application could also be useful in the current situation, if there is widespread use.

Meanwhile, the province confirmed nine more cases of the Omicron variant of concern, raising the total to 17. Public health does not report the number of presumptive Omicron cases.

The proportion of COVID-19 tests coming back positive also spiked across the province.

The five-day test positivity rate in Winnipeg was 8.1 per cent, and eight per cent across Manitoba, an increase of 1.5 and 2.6 percentage points, respectively, from Dec. 17.

Six recent deaths due to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus were also reported Monday, including: a man in his 60s, a woman in her 60s, and a man in his 70s from Interlake-Eastern (reported Saturday); a man in his 80s from Southern Health (reported Sunday); a man in his 70s from Southern Health, linked to the outbreak at the Manitoba Developmental Centre (reported Sunday); and a man in his 50s from Prairie Mountain (reported Monday).

The provinces COVID-19 death toll stood at 1,366, as of Monday.

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A total of 137 patients were being treated for COVID-19 in Manitoba hospitals, including 27 in intensive care.

Eighty-one per cent of active COVID-19 patients in intensive care were not vaccinated.

On Monday, the Opposition NDP called on the provincial government to resume daily COVID-19 briefings, given the high case counts over the weekend.

"Manitobans have been doing their part and they deserve to have access to the latest public health numbers so that they can make informed decision over the holidays," NDP Leader Wab Kinew said in a news release.

"The PCs should return to daily COVID updates to facilitate this and step up enforcement in parts of the province where we havent seen buy in to public health orders and the vaccination campaign."

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
Abuse toward Manitoba doctors is escalating and threatening future recruitment and retention, physicians warn.

Over the past month alone, 57 per cent of physicians surveyed in the province reported theyve been mistreated, including verbal abuse, bullying, intimidation assault and threats.

Doctors Manitoba, which represents more than 4,000 physicians, released the survey results Monday. It was based on responses from 403 doctors  stating more than half of the reported incidents have been related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Manitobans who disagree with public health restrictions or vaccines, or have been frustrated with health-care visitation policies or long wait lists, have turned their frustrations on doctors and front-line health professionals, mirroring a national increase in the levels of harassment directed at doctors.

Rural physicians and those who are already marginalized, including women and persons of colour, are more likely to be targets, the survey found.

Its now a "critical" issue, said Doctors Manitoba president and ER physician Dr. Kristjan Thompson.

"These are alarming statistics that are contributing to an already concerning level of stress and burnout in the medical profession, and we are worried about what they meant to the recruitment and retention of physicians across this province," he said.

"These are alarming statistics that are contributing to an already concerning level of stress and burnout in the medical profession, and we are worried about what they meant to the recruitment and retention of physicians across this province." Dr. Kristjan Thompson

Rates of abuse, according to the doctors who responded to the survey, were highest in the Northern, Interlake-Eastern and Southern health regions and were more likely to affect younger doctors.

Dr. Don Klassen, a family doctor in the Morden-Winkler area who works out of the Boundary Trails Health Centre, said this is the worst mistreatment hes witnessed toward front-line caregivers in his more than 40 years of practice.

"Until two years ago, I might have said it was impossible that wed be having this press conference and calling for respect and civility," Klassen said.

A letter was delivered to his office "which is the first time Ive had it suggested to me that somebody would put a gun to my head," he said.

Klassen said he is aware of several doctors planning to leave Boundary Trails next spring and summer, due in part to the current environment. Replacing their positions will be difficult, he added.

A small number of Manitoba doctors have been targeted at their homes, according to the survey results.

Federal legislation passed Dec. 17 makes it a criminal offence to intimidate a health-care worker and get in the way of their ability to carry out their duties. The Canadian Medical Association lobbied for the new legislation because it is flagging similar abuse on a national scale, said association president Dr. Katharine Smart.

"This has been an experience across the country. Weve seen protests happening in peoples driveways, in front of their homes," she said. "This particularly happens to family doctors in smaller communities where theyre well-known and patients know where they live and that line between personal and professional is more challenging.

"So I think that is a potential real risk in terms of peoples longevity in some of these communities. They may feel directly targeted and thats very concerning as we already have a huge challenge with primary care in this country."

"I think that is a potential real risk in terms of peoples longevity in some of these communities. They may feel directly targeted and thats very concerning as we already have a huge challenge with primary care in this country." Dr. Katharine Smart

In Manitoba, doctors are calling on provincial officials and health-care leadership to enforce zero-tolerance policies. Solutions could involve more security measures, de-escalation training and other supports for front-line health-care workers, Thompson said.

He shared a personal interaction with an unvaccinated man who was visiting his dying mother during the third wave. The man refused to wear a mask when Thompson asked him politely, and coughed in the doctors face and shoved him. Security had to escort the man out of the ER.

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"A few minutes later, after things settled, I had gone back out to speak with him and we got to talking."

Thompson said the man apologized; hed been feeling guilty for not being able to visit his mother in her personal care home. The doctor shared similar frustrations about not being able to visit an ill family member.

"What started as a really just unpleasant and awful experience, I think, was this beautiful, human moment of understanding and forgiveness," Thompson said.

The man agreed to wear a mask so he could be present for his mothers last moments. However, Thompson said policies that support health-care workers need to come from the top.

"Unfortunately, mistreatment has reached a level that requires continuous focus across health care, and so we need, at a provincial level, our health leaders and government to ensure that safety is enforced and that health-care providers on the front lines are supported."

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
Manitoba added 809 new COVID-19 cases over a three-day period this weekend, as nine more cases of the Omicron variant of concern were confirmed in the province.

Manitoba added 809 new COVID-19 cases over a three-day period this weekend, as nine more cases of the Omicron variant of concern were confirmed in the province.

Public health officials announced 276 cases were detected Saturday, 333 cases Sunday and 200 on Monday in their first update since Dec. 17.

Six recent deaths due to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus were also reported Monday, including: a man in his 60s, a woman in her 60s, and a man in his 70s from Interlake-Eastern (reported Saturday); a man in his 80s from Southern Health (reported Sunday); a man in his 70s from Southern Health, linked to the outbreak at the Manitoba Developmental Centre (reported Sunday); and a man in his 50s from Prairie Mountain (reported Monday).

The provinces COVID-19 death toll stood at 1,366, as of Monday.

The proportion of COVID-19 tests coming back positive also spiked across the province. Public health said the five-day test positivity rate in Winnipeg was 8.1 per cent, and eight per cent across Manitoba. On Dec. 17, those rates stood at 6.5 per cent provincially and 5.5 per cent in Winnipeg.

Public health said nine previously announced cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed as the Omicron variant of concern, raising the total of confirmed cases to 17.

Public health does not report the number of presumptive Omicron cases.

Of Mondays new cases, 129 were in Winnipeg, 23 in Southern Health, 28 in Northern Health, four in Interlake-Eastern, and 16 in Prairie Mountain.

Public health reported 54 of those were in people not vaccinated against COVID-19, 21 were in partially vaccinated people, and 125 were in fully immunized people.

Manitobans to do their own contact tracing

The provincial government has also offloaded most of its contact tracing efforts onto Manitobans as of Monday.

According to the province, public health officials will no longer notify close contacts of cases. Rather, confirmed COVID-19 cases will be asked to notify their contacts directly.

The change was previewed by chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin on Dec. 17, who said contact tracing resources would be redirected to the vaccination effort.

However, public health officials said in some settings, such as schools, personal care homes, child care facilities, shelters, and health-care facilities, the government will work with the facility to notify close contacts.

"With the introduction of the Omicron variant of concern, Manitoba is anticipating a surge in COVID-19 cases similar to that seen in other countries and provinces," the government said in a release. "This increase in cases and contacts is expected to exceed public health contact notification resources."

NDP calls for return of daily briefings

A total of 137 patients were being treated for COVID-19 in Manitoba hospitals, including 27 in intensive care.

Eighty-one per cent of active COVID-19 patients in intensive care were not vaccinated.

The outbreak at the Misericordia Health Centre, transitional care unit C5, was declared over.

To date, 78.2 per cent of eligible Manitobans have been fully vaccinated and 14.5 per cent have taken three doses. Among children ages five to 11, 42.7 per cent have had one dose of the vaccine.

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On Monday, the Opposition NDP called on the provincial government to resume daily COVID-19 briefings, given the high case counts over the weekend.

"Manitobans have been doing their part and they deserve to have access to the latest public health numbers so that they can make informed decision over the holidays," NDP Leader Wab Kinew said in a news release.

"The PCs should return to daily COVID updates to facilitate this and step up enforcement in parts of the province where we havent seen buy in to public health orders and the vaccination campaign."

Also Monday, eight additional critical care nurses from the Red Cross were scheduled to arrive in Manitoba. The nurses will be in Manitoba until Jan. 17, according to the federal government.

The Manitoba government had requested 15 to 30 additional critical care nurses from Ottawa.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca
WINNIPEG - It's 6 p.m. on a Friday night and the call lines at one of Canada's largest Indigenous radio stations are all flashing.

Davey Gott, NCI FM on-air personality of "We Are The Manitoba Wakeup Crew" show, is photographed at the NCI studio in Winnipeg on Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021. NCI is celebrating its 50th anniversary. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

WINNIPEG - It's 6 p.m. on a Friday night and the call lines at one of Canada's largest Indigenous radio stations are all flashing.

That will be the case for the next four hours as hundreds of listeners across Manitoba try to get on to NCI FM's flagship show called "Friends on Fridays."

The live request show started in 2004 and is a staple in many Indigenous households. Some listeners wait upwards of a year just to get through to send a special shout out to their loved ones.

"Basically getting on is like winning the lottery. Cousins brag all the time. It's a level of love for the show that has totally blown away the community," says Davey Gott, one of the show's co-hosts.

On any given Friday night, listeners can hear song requests, shout outs to "cuzzins" in other communities or tales of winning big at bingo. The heart of the show, much like the station it airs on, is about representing day-to-day life in Indigenous communities.

NCI FM is celebrating 50 years of connecting to and advocating for parts of the province not often included in mainstream media.

"You can listen to it and you're hearing some language, but it's also about community. You're hearing people you might know. You're hearing community names and you're hearing stories that you can relate to as well," says David McLeod, the station's chief executive officer.

Native Communications Inc. or NCI was started in the fall of 1971 in northern Manitoba. At the time, there was a burgeoning media scene in the city of Thompson, but McLeod says there was "skewed" representation when it came to Indigenous peoples.

A group from northern Indigenous communities decided to form a committee to create a station that would provide Indigenous language and cultural programming, which later evolved into NCI, says McLeod.

Part of it included relaying messages to those working on the land, says Sydney McKay, an original board member and former broadcaster with NCI.

"People needed to send messages to the trappers, hunters and the fishermen, and be able to actually have a one-way communication system," he recalls.

McKay was living in Thompson when, at 21, he was asked to be on the board for NCI.

"It was an honour. It was right in the middle of something new. It wasn't done in the north at that point, not in the Aboriginal language."

McKay and his co-host, Arnold Dysart, would record broadcasts using a single microphone on a folding table. NCI purchased airtime from local radio stations and would run half-hour programs featuring music and content in Cree. It later expanded to include religious programs and well as interviews with Indigenous politicians and leaders.

The station's primary growth occurred in the 1990s when it began purchasing transmitters to broadcast its own content. NCI officially went on air in Winnipeg in the fall of 1998.

McLeod says it now operate 57 transmitters reaching almost every corner of the province.

"We're venturing into communities that commercial radio does not pay attention to. That's something that's at the heart of what we do."

Originally from Chemawawin Cree Nation, about 440 kilometres north of Winnipeg, Gott has been with the station for about three years. Some of his earliest memories include NCI playing in the background while his grandmother baked bannock in their home community.

"NCI is like the sound of home. It is like the theme of the community," says Gott.

The station's other integral programming includes "Metis Hour x 2," a two-hour show hosted by Metis music legend Ray St. Germain; the "Indigenous Music Countdown," a Cree country show; and weekly bingo games.

Roz McIvor, who is from Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation, is the voice of the "Indigenous Music Countdown" and the afternoon drive program. She says NCI hosts connect with the audience in a way that isn't seen at other stations because they understand the complex challenges many communities face.

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"NCI is a really safe place for everyone to just forget about everything negative and bad in their lives, and just have fun on air with their favourite music."

McLeod says the station's future includes a push to expand its online reach to urban audiences, but he notes the core of what it does will never change.

"Indigenous communities want to hear (themselves) and want to connect, and I think that radio will always be around."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 21, 2021.

___

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
OTTAWA  A Manitoba MP said he missed his chance to halt the fast-tracked ban on anti-gay conversion therapy, arguing his Conservative party blindsided him instead of hearing out concerns about the bill.

OTTAWA  A Manitoba MP said he missed his chance to halt the fast-tracked ban on anti-gay conversion therapy, arguing his Conservative party "blindsided" him instead of hearing out concerns about the bill.

"Before I could process what was happening, the motion had been passed," wrote MP Ted Falk, who represents the Provencher riding of southeastern Manitoba.

"I am deeply disappointed and troubled."

Ottawa enacted a ban on counselling people to change their sexual orientation or gender identity earlier this month, after the Conservative Party of Canada sought unanimous consent Dec. 1 to fast-tracking Bill C-4.

The move avoided a wedge issue that has hurt the Tories in debates on earlier versions of the bill.

A motion for unanimous consent means the House of Commons passes the legislation at all steps, unless a single MP voices their disagreement.

That avoided a repeat of previous debates, in which one socially conservative MP discussed "lesbian activity" and "unclean" people. Other MPs had attempted to amend previous versions of the legislation, to clarify it shouldnt encroach on religious guidance or parental discussions.

The Conservatives said they decided as a caucus fast-tracking the bill was the best way to proceed.

Yet, Falk claims that decision "completely caught me off guard" and "blindsided many Conservative MPs."

Falk said hes fine with banning coercive and abusive practices but had concerns about the legislation going too far.

Hes not alone  federal Justice Minister David Lametti had previously worried clauses in legislation barring consenting adults from the practice might not be constitutional, and would be fought over in court.

But Falk also suggested he had other issues with the legislation.

"My desire has always been to be a voice for the voiceless and vulnerable, to defend the religious freedom of Canadians, and protect the autonomy of the family," Falk wrote.

"I am sorry that I did not act quicker and voice my opposition to stop this from happening without debate or study."

In his Dec. 17 Facebook post, Falk said he had heard about fast-tracking the legislation and "regularly expressed my concerns about doing so" but had never heard about his party making a final decision.

Falk has been outside Ottawa ever since MPs beefed up the House of Commons vaccination policy and medical exemptions Nov. 25  but his office said Monday hes still been able to attend all Conservative caucus meetings virtually.

Aside from Falk, each of the other Manitoba Conservatives chose to keep attending the Commons and its committees in person this month. His office provided a Monday statement but didnt answer why Falk chose to stop showing up in the House.

His party leadership argued this fall MPs must be physically present to do their jobs, and decried others for "phoning it in." The House recessed as the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19 started to take hold.

Falk is the only MP among 338 to not specify whether hes been vaccinated or has a medical exemption, arguing he is standing up for the principle of personal privacy.

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In mid-2019, during a government consultation on how to ban conversion therapy, Winnipegs Rainbow Resource Centre said it wasnt aware of it occurring within Manitoba, but knew of church groups sending a handful of children to a Mennonite colony in Mexico to undergo the practice.

Daphne Penrose, Manitoba advocate for children and youth, said in March 2020 she had investigated at least one case involving travel for conversion therapy.

^

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
The University of Manitoba is postponing the widespread return of students and staff to campus and reverting to remote learning in response to concerns about the Omicron variant.

The University of Manitoba is postponing the widespread return of students and staff to campus and reverting to remote learning in response to concerns about the Omicron variant.

For more than nine months, dating back to an optimistic announcement in March, when the U of M president indicated he was hopeful about a "full return" to face-to-face operations in early 2022, the upcoming winter term has held the promise of normalcy.

"Im absolutely disappointed," said Michael Benarroch, president and vice-chancellor of Manitobas largest post-secondary institute, Monday. "We watched over the fall term, at least until the last 10 days, that there were very few cases around universities in Canada. There was in-person activity. We did a little bit in-person during the fall term and it had been very safe and I think many people were looking forward to coming back."

In a mass email, Benarroch requested non-essential activities go remote and employees immediately revert to working from home where possible.

The end of the current term, which was extended into January because of strike disruptions, and the start of the winter semester will take place primarily online. The situation will be revisited before reading week ends in late February.

Also Monday, Brandon University shared plans to delay the start of the winter term and return to primarily online learning until the end of January. The University of Winnipeg and Red River College Polytechnic made similar announcements last week.

Benarroch said U of M waited to notify the public about its schedule because it needed to gather all the information necessary before making a decision and connect with public health. As recently as Nov. 26, the school had confirmed plans for in-person learning this winter; only 445 or so unique courses were in-person or partially in-person this autumn.

For graduate student Joel Ferguson, who has been calling for continued remote or hybrid courses for weeks because of concerns about the health of his immunocompromised partner and peers, the news brought about "great relief."

"Im happy that the classes are going to be staying online, but we now have to worry about the Omicron variant. Theres always something to worry about (lately)," he said.

Ferguson has been on campus once since he began his PhD in English literature. While hes eager to meet the classmates he has befriended virtually, he said he is realistic that congregating on campus is still "a long way off."

Academics are feeling the same pandemic exhaustion that people across the world are experiencing as cases rise and holiday plans are cancelled, said Orvie Dingwall, president of the University of Manitoba Faculty Association.

While the union is concerned about student well-being and increased workloads to adjust courses over the break, Dingwall said faculty support U of Ms decision.

"Theres still a lot of frustration and concern that despite everyone wanting to be back in-person, the university administration was really pushing for arbitrary goals and targets," added the union president, who represents upwards of 1,200 professors, instructors and librarians.

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Dingwall said academics want their employer to make KN95 masks available and introduce portable air filtration units before in-person operations resume to pre-pandemic levels.

U of M hired consultants to perform virtual inspections and assess the performance of its heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems earlier in the fall. In total, 11 buildings were selected for additional testing and the results confirmed ventilation is within "typical and acceptable ranges," the university said.

Among other measures, beginning on Jan. 24, the first day of the winter term, U of M will require all attendees on campus to be fully immunized against COVID-19.

Approximately 90 per cent of both its student and staff populations have provided their proof of vaccination.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
Winnipeg elementary schools are surveying families to gauge interest in free rapid COVID-19 testing kits, anticipated to arrive just in time for students to return to classes after the winter break.

Winnipeg elementary schools are surveying families to gauge interest in free rapid COVID-19 testing kits, anticipated to arrive just in time for students to return to classes after the winter break.

Late last week, the province announced it was beginning to distribute an initial shipment of 110,000 rapid antigen tests, which are packaged in kits of five, to K-6 schools located in First Nations and northern Manitoba communities.

Officials indicated they are waiting to secure another duplicate order from the federal government, in addition to a separate request for 250,000 tests.

Since then, principals have been emailing parents to request those who are interested in receiving kits when they are made available to sign-up in order to streamline distribution.

Use of such kits is optional, and there will be no reporting requirements attached.

In the Winnipeg School Division, administrators have been informing families the province anticipates rapid tests will be accessible after pupils return from their vacation Jan. 6.

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"We dont have a confirmed date when they will be arriving," Radean Carter, spokeswoman for the division, said via email. "Our K-6 schools are surveying parents/guardians to see who wants a kit for their children (one per child), so that we can distribute as soon as we get them from the province."

The provinces youngest learners are being targeted for potential test use because they currently account for the largest percentage of COVID-19 cases in schools.

A total of 76 per cent of school-related cases involving students are currently among youth under 12, according to the province. Manitoba did not approve COVID-19 vaccine use for children ages five to 11 until November.

During the first two weeks of December, 409 student cases that were affiliated with schools were reported.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
Public-health restrictions aimed at reducing the number of COVID-19 cases in Manitoba couldnt have come at a worse time for businesses that rely on holiday traffic for a significant portion of their revenue.

Public-health restrictions aimed at reducing the number of COVID-19 cases in Manitoba couldnt have come at a worse time for businesses that rely on holiday traffic for a significant portion of their revenue.

This will be the second consecutive festive season in which restaurants, bowling alleys, reception halls and myriad other places will be forced to limit the numbers of people inside to comply with restrictions imposed Tuesday at midnight to head off a feared collapse of the provinces overwhelmed health-care system.

"Were calling people to confirm numbers for parties and so far were just getting cancellations," a glum Nathan Bogg, a manager at Uptown Alley bowling lanes, said Monday.

We had lots of parties booked and now they are cancelled. They arent just postponing, but cancelling. It especially hurts because these two weeks are usually the busiest of the year.  Nathan Bogg, manager at Uptown Alley bowling lanes

"We had lots of parties booked and now they are cancelled. They arent just postponing, but cancelling. It especially hurts because these two weeks are usually the busiest of the year."

Swelling COVID-19 case numbers last week forced provincial health officials to make a hasty announcement late Friday afternoon that imposed private and public gathering-size restrictions four days before Christmas.

Private indoor gatherings are limited to 10 people in addition to the household if everyone is fully vaccinated, and five additional people if anyone in the group isnt fully vaxxed.

Large-group gatherings are being limited to 50 per cent capacity with proof of vaccination, with the same rules for movie theatres, museums and gyms. Libraries are restricted to 50 per cent, but can allow unvaccinated people inside.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Shaun Jeffrey, executive director of the Manitoba Restaurants and Foodservices Association.

Shaun Jeffrey, executive director and CEO of the Manitoba Restaurant and Foodservices Association, said its a tough time for restaurants to once again have to reduce the number of patrons inside to 50 per cent of capacity. As well, the new restrictions allow only a maximum of 10 people per table, require proof of vaccination and restrict patrons to table service only, cancelling buffet and brunch tables.

"We were made aware of the changes five minutes before the public was," said Jeffrey. "Restaurants are trying to get back on their feet again, so this is another blow. The timing couldnt be any worse for us. This is two of our busiest weeks coming up. Last week, this week, and next week make up for the lull of January and February.

"We cant continue to lose these major days."

Jeffrey called on the province to put in place financial help for the restaurant industry as quickly as possible.

"This will be the first time in a year there are restrictions without federal support," he said. "Were really pushing hard for sector-specific support."

"The timing couildnt be any worse for us. This is two of our busiest weeks coming up. Last week, this week, and next week make up for the lull of January and February."  Shaun Jeffrey, executive director and CEO of the Manitoba Restaurant and Foodservices Association

The managers of both the Gates on Roblin and Saddlery on Market agreed restrictions are coming at an especially bad time of the year for restaurants and catering venues.

Gates manager Ray Louie said the restaurant announced on Sunday its all you can eat Sunday brunch has to be put on hold because of the provincial health restrictions limiting restaurant dining to table service only.

"I think there is a lot of fear out there, fear of the unknown and Omicron, plus other fears," said Louie. "One group cancelled because they were concerned about the optics of social media and getting together. Unfortunately, because of the timing, people arent postponing the event, they are cancelling them."

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Ray Louie, manager and owner of The Gates on Roblin.

He said one of the biggest disappointments is the attitude of a small number of patrons.

"On Saturday, our 16-year-old hostess was accosted by a patron not wearing a mask. You would think an adult would know that is wrong; the 16-year-old didnt come up with the rules," he said.

"It is disgusting."

Roula Alevizos, manager of the Saddlery, said the phone is ringing off the hook with cancellations.

"Its happening to all of us," said Alevizos.

"I even had to cancel an event for 300 people myself. I had to cancel it completely because it was for a dance and you are not allowed to dance. And weve had a lot of reservations cancelled. People are afraid again."

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Roula Alevizos, general manager of Saddlery on Market.

Meanwhile, Chuck Davidson, president and CEO of the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, said there are two ways the provincial government can help: financial support should immediately be approved and the province should ramp up enforcement on people and businesses not following public-health orders.

"As quickly as the orders come in, government should provide support to businesses," he said. "A lot of businesses have been hit hard and have had to do it multiple times in 21 months.

"They should dust off the programs theyve had and they can improve some of them too we also have to step up enforcement. It is one thing to go into a restaurant to pick up food unvaccinated, but there are times the same person also doesnt want to wear a mask."

Davidson said there is one silver lining in the latest public-health orders.

"We are not closing businesses  that was my big fear," he said.

"The opportunity to keep businesses open is a positive."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

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The library is looking to renovate bathrooms, add a tech station, revamp its childrens area and possibly add an open staircase to access its lower-level programming area.

Library Board Member Mary Vogl-Rauscher said now that a preliminary floor plan is chosen, the architects can focus on design options with tiered cost levels to choose from.

The renovation funds will come from the librarys endowment fund, which includes gifts and bequests. Vogl-Rauscher said there is a possibility of running a capital campaign, depending on the final library design choice.

Beaver Dam Community Library joined the Monarch Catalog in September. In order to continue to check out items and to use digital library services including OverDrive, Libby and hoopla, patrons need to update their library cards as the older cards will no longer work in the New Year.

This change means that patrons will now have access to more than 2.7 million items shared by the 31 member libraries of the Monarch Library System and available for convenient pick up at the Beaver Dam library, when placing a hold using the new library card.
The car traveled onto Oneida Street and north onto Lake Shore Drive. According to the criminal complaint, the car was seen near Waterworks Park before leaving town on Highway 33.

The car entered Fox Lake going 70 mph at 2:46 p.m. The vehicle went east on State Street from Spring Street, then continued eastbound onto State Highway 68. A Fox Lake officer terminated the pursuit when speeds reached 120 mph.

According to the criminal complaint, the car traveled on Highway 68 into Waupun. Dodge County Sheriff deputies and Waupun Police were waiting for the car near Central Wisconsin Christian School on Highway 68. The car went around the passenger side of a school bus before trying to turn right onto West Jefferson Street. The car hit the curb and entered the front and side yard of a residence before it came to stop in the roadway.

Carter-Smith and his passenger exited the car and they both started to flee. However the passenger stopped after being ordered to the ground and was cooperative. Carter-Smith proceeded to flee through back yards but was caught in the parking lot of Kwik Trip. He apologized to law enforcement and said he had been scared because his friend had stolen something.
These mandates only create division and unnecessarily divert critical resources," Kemp spokesperson Katie Byrd said Tuesday. Gov. Kemp is fully vaccinated and boosted, and he will continue to urge Georgians to talk with their doctor about the benefits of getting the vaccine or receiving their booster shot. Ultimately, he feels that we must trust our citizens to do whats right for themselves and their families.

Kemp stood by his position as his own Department of Public Health renewed recommendations for people to get vaccinated and seek a booster dose, wear masks in public indoor settings, avoid crowded and poorly ventilated spaces and keep 6 feet away from people outside their own households.

Georgia officials also urged people to get tested if they display symptoms, are exposed to someone with COVID-19, or if they are going to gather indoors with others.

Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr also announced Georgia had joined a lawsuit with 23 other states seeking to strike down a federal requirement for Head Start workers to get vaccinated and wear masks. The suit concerning the federally funded preschool program is the fourth such suit Georgia has filed or joined against federal COVID-19 mandates in recent weeks.
Left at 21

Before COVID, she lost two siblings to alcohol and drugs  a younger brother in 2019, and her sister in 2008. She has an older brother left.

Schumacher left the reservation when she was 21 and in 1989 met her husband when the two worked at a lodge in the Grand Canyon. She was a cashier in the cafeteria; he was a front desk clerk who came through her line sometimes. Now hes an accountant at a law firm in Downtown Madison after a 22-year career at Pepsi.

They moved to Sun Prairie, where he grew up, in 1994, when the oldest of their two daughters was 2 months old.

After her younger sister died of a drug overdose, she took in her sisters four children, and they became an eight-member family. It was a big adjustment for them, but we made it work, she said. In the Navajo culture, family is very important and we are very close-knit.

Schumacher said most of her relatives who have died lived in northeastern Arizona, but an aunt, whom she considered a second mother, died in an assisted-living home in Blanding, Utah. An uncle who died lived on the border of Arizona and Utah in Monument Valley.
Ghislaine Maxwell manipulated and enticed vulnerable girls as an accomplice in Jeffrey Epstein's extensive abuse scheme, a prosecutor said during closing arguments of Maxwell's federal trial Monday.

Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to six federal counts, including sex trafficking of minors, enticing a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity and three related counts of conspiracy.

If convicted on all six counts, she faces up to 70 years in prison.

"Maxwell and Epstein were a wealthy couple who used their privilege to prey on kids from struggling families," prosecutor Alison Moe said Monday.

"The way that they selected these girls tells you that they were targeting vulnerable kids. It is not an accident that Jane and Kate and Annie and Carolyn all came from single-mother households."

The prosecutor said Maxwell knew Epstein's preference for underage girls and helped satisfy that need.

"When you're with someone for 11 years, you know what they like. Epstein liked underaged girls. He liked to touch underaged girls. Maxwell knew it. Make no mistake, Maxwell was crucial to the whole scheme. Epstein could not have done this alone," Moe said.

Maxwell normalized physical touch and sexuality to the alleged victims she groomed for Epstein, the prosecution argued.

"A single middle-aged man who invites a teenage girl to visit his ranch, to come to his house, to fly to New York, is creepy," Moe told jurors.

"But when that man is accompanied by a posh, smiling, respectable, age-appropriate woman, that's when everything starts to seem legitimate. And when that woman encourages those girls to massage that man, when she acts like it's totally normal for the man to touch those girls. It lures them into a trap. It allows the man to silence the alarm bells."

Jurors again saw pages from Epstein and Maxwell's "little black book with their victims' names in it" recovered from Jeffrey Epstein's home.

One page titled "Massages Florida" had notes "Mom," "dad," and "parents" next to some females' names.

"When you contact a professional masseuse you don't need to call her mom or dad," Moe said.

Maxwell's defense team is expected to make its closing argument Monday afternoon.

'Pyramid scheme of abuse'

During opening statements last month, prosecutors said Maxwell and Epstein used cash to lure underage girls into their "pyramid scheme of abuse."

Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz told jurors that in the 1990s, Maxwell would procure girls for Epstein for sexual abuse via the "ruse" of a massage.

Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to state prostitution charges, was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019 but died by suicide in prison a month later. Maxwell was arrested in 2020.

Four key witnesses testified for the prosecution against Maxwell -- all women who allege Epstein sexually abused them when they were under 18. Three of the four accusers used pseudonyms or only first names to protect their privacy.

"Jane" testified that Maxwell sometimes joined in on the sexualized massages.

"Kate" testified Maxwell set up those sexual meetings.

Carolyn testified Maxwell once touched her breasts, hips and butt and told her she "had a great body for Epstein and his friends." Carolyn said she was 14 at the time.

The fourth woman, Annie Farmer, testified she was 16 years old when Maxwell massaged her naked chest at Epstein's New Mexico ranch in 1996.

Two dozen witnesses were called across 10 days of testimony before the prosecution rested. In photos shown to jurors, Maxwell and Epstein are seen embracing and smiling for the camera over the years, including several showing her massaging his foot.

"Their relevance is self-apparent, given the contents of the photographs," prosecutor Alison Moe said. "The relationship between Maxwell and Epstein is central to this case."

Defense rested Friday

The defense rested Friday after presenting its case over two days. The defense argued that Maxwell is being scapegoated for Epstein's criminal behavior and tried to dispute the accusers' statements.

Attorneys called to the stand Eva Andersson-Dubin, who testified she dated Epstein on and off from 1983 through about 1991. She confirmed she and her now-husband, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, remained friends with Epstein through the 2000s.

One of the accusers, referred to as "Jane," had earlier testified she recalled a woman named Eva had joined group sexualized massages with Epstein and Maxwell.

In response to questioning by the defense, Andersson-Dubin said she had never participated in group sexualized massages with "Jane."

"Absolutely not," Andersson-Dubin testified Friday.

A prosecutor clarified on cross-examination that Eva Andersson-Dubin is not necessarily the only Eva to have ever interacted with Epstein, suggesting "Jane" could have been referring to someone else.

On Thursday, as part of the defense's effort to undermine the accusers' testimony, a psychologist and professor at the University of California Irvine testified about false memories.

Dr. Elizabeth Loftus said people can be exposed to misinformation about an event after the fact and incorporate it into their memory, making it inaccurate.

"Even traumatic experiences can be subjected to post-event suggestion that can exaggerate, distort or change the memory," Loftus said.

Maxwell declined to testify Friday, telling Judge Alison Nathan when asked if she understood her rights: "Your honor, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. And so there is no need for me to testify." The jury was not present.

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A jury began deliberating Monday afternoon in the manslaughter trial of Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who mistook her firearm for her Taser and fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop in April.

The jury of six men and six women began deliberating at approximately 1:45 p.m. ET on Monday. They will be sequestered until the trial ends. Two alternates who had sat through the course of the trial were excused prior to deliberations.

Kim Potter trial: Live updates

Earlier Monday, the prosecution and defense laid out their closing arguments in the case, in which Potter, who is White, faces charges of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. She has pleaded not guilty to both counts.

Assistant Minnesota Attorney General Erin Eldridge argued that Potter, the 49-year-old former Brooklyn Center police officer, was negligent and acted recklessly, both in the early parts of the traffic stop and in her fatal mix-up.

"This was a colossal screwup," she said. "It was precisely the thing she had been warned about for years and she was trained to prevent it."

Potter's defense has characterized the killing as an unfortunate accident and argued she was within her rights to use deadly force to protect a fellow officer, who was reaching into the vehicle when Wright attempted to drive away.

"Everybody makes mistakes, nobody's perfect," attorney Earl Gray. "This lady made a mistake and a mistake is not a crime."

More than 30 witnesses, including Potter herself, testified over eight days during the trial. Potter fatally shot Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, after police pulled Wright over for an expired tag. During the stop, officers learned he had an outstanding warrant and attempted to arrest him.

Potter can be heard yelling "Taser" repeatedly before she shoots Wright. After firing her handgun, she yells, "Holy sh*t! I just shot him!" She resigned from the police department days later.

In the trial, an emotional Potter spent hours on the stand and broke down into tears several times as she described the "chaotic" moments that led up to the shooting.

"I was very distraught. I just shot somebody. I'm sorry it happened," Potter said, crying, in court. "I'm so sorry."

The fatal shooting in April -- just miles from where former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin stood trial for killing George Floyd -- set off days of unrest in Brooklyn Center after a summer of coast-to-coast protests over how police treat people of color.

Prosecution says Potter 'made a series of bad choices'

In the prosecution's closing arguments, Eldridge said Potter had 26 years of training in use of force with her firearm and 19 years of training on Taser use, including training on "weapon confusion."

"Every year she signed the paperwork acknowledging the risks," Eldridge said. "All that training and all that experience shows she was aware of the risks associated with her weapons."

The shooting came after Potter "made a series of bad choices," she said. Even if Potter had actually used her Taser as intended, that would not have been appropriate, she argued.

"This was no little oopsie. This was not putting the wrong date on a check. This was not entering the wrong password somewhere," Eldridge added.

"Accidents can still be crimes if they occur because of recklessness or culpable negligence," the prosecutor said. "It's not a defense to the crimes charged."

Further, she challenged the defense's argument that Wright was responsible for his own death.

"The defendant will tell you Daunte Wright is somehow to blame for his own death. But make no mistake, we're here because of the defendant's actions, not Daunte Wright's," she said.

Defense says Potter had right to use force

For the defense, most of Gray's closing argument focused on Wright's actions during the traffic stop. Body camera video of the April 11 incident shows Wright got back in his vehicle and attempted to flee while one of Potter's fellow police officers was partially inside the car.

Gray said Wright tried to flee when officers saw that he had outstanding warrants, including for a weapons offense.

"Did they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she caused this death? No. Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately," he said.

When the officers found out Wright had outstanding warrants, they couldn't allow him to drive away, Gray said. "That's not protecting the public. That's not serving the public. They had to stop him," he said.

"The causation was Daunte Wright," he added. "Everything (Potter) did was legal and then he tried to break away." He said that "you can reasonably infer he was guilty of the weapons violation" and tried to run.

Gray also argued that Potter's use of deadly force was legal because another officer was in the car and could have been injured when Wright drove off.

"Even though she didn't know she was using it, she had the right to, and that's what the law is," said Gray.

He said Potter's Taser training doesn't mean she couldn't make a mistake in the stress of the moment.

"In the walk of life, nobody's perfect," he said. "You can be trained forever and under exigent circumstances make a mistake."

He also said that her admitted mistake indicates she's not guilty of the charges.

"She didn't know she had a weapon. She didn't know she had a gun," he said. "How can you consciously recklessly handle a gun if you don't know you have one?"

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The impact of the Omicron coronavirus variant on a largely unboosted US population going into the holiday season will create a "perfect storm" that will challenge health care systems from coast to coast, an expert said Monday.

Omicron is now the country's most dominant strain less than three weeks after the first case was reported in the US. It accounted for more than 73% of new coronavirus cases in the week ending Saturday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Monday.

"Even though more people who get it have milder illness, so many more people, overall, will get it that I think we are going to see a real challenge in our health care systems over the course of the next three to eight weeks," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

"And what really is challenging is, on top of that, we can expect 10% to 30% of health care workers to get infected during that time."

The variant will not discriminate by state lines, Osterholm told CNN on Monday.

"Instead of seeing the regional surges we were seeing with Delta -- much of the West right now is very low level with Delta, parts of the South -- I think Omicron is going to be a national viral blizzard," he said.

The first confirmed Omicron-related death in the US was reported Monday. The Texas man in his 50s was unvaccinated, had underlying health conditions and previously had been infected with Covid-19, officials said.

Globally, Omicron cases are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days, the World Health Organization said.

Omicron's far higher transmission levels compared to Delta would lead to a rise in US hospitalizations, Osterholm said.

Nearly 73% of Americans have received at least one vaccine dose, while 61.5% are fully vaccinated and 29.8% of those fully vaccinated have received a booster, according to CDC figures.

People should focus on getting optimal protection from the virus with a booster, Osterholm said.

"Right now, we have a lot of people in this country who have bought some protection, but will it be enough to actually avoid serious illness with Omicron? We don't know."

It's concerning that just 30% of vaccinated Americans had received a booster, as it takes seven to 14 days for immunity to really pick up following a booster shot, Osterholm said.

"Well, that takes us into the New Year. Takes us right through the holiday season and right into the heart of the Omicron, what I call, 'blizzard.' So, it's not looking good. It's a real perfect storm, unfortunately, of events," he said.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is expected to announce additional steps in the fight against Covid-19, the White House said, but he won't necessarily talk about more restrictions in the face of rising cases.

Biden will announce the purchase of a half-billion at-home rapid Covid-19 tests and a plan to distribute them free to Americans who request them through a website, an administration official said.

The 500 million new tests will be made available next month and will reach Americans through the mail, the official said.

How often and when people need to test for Covid-19 depends on their situation, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday.

"If you are going to be going to a function, a dinner, and you're vaccinated, hopefully, and boosted, but you want to go the extra step ... you should do that," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN's "New Day."

"Also, if you're in a situation where you may have been exposed to someone, you might want to get tested a few days later to make sure that you're in a situation when you have not been infected," Fauci said.

Also among the President's new initiatives is a plan to prepare 1,000 military service members to deploy to overburdened hospitals across the country in January and February, administration officials said. Those service members will include doctors, nurses, medics and other military medical personnel.

Daily Covid-19 case numbers with Omicron could exceed previous peaks, CDC warns

Omicron cases could cause higher case rates than the US has seen with previous peaks, the CDC posted on its website this week.

Previously, cases peaked at their highest level in January 2021, with 7-day averages exceeding 250,000 new cases per day.

The US is currently averaging more than 139,700 new Covid-19 cases each day, according to Johns Hopkins University. This is 16% higher than a week ago, and back to levels last seen in mid-September.

Experts say this doesn't mean hospitalizations and deaths will rise at the same level we've seen with earlier surges, in part because the country has higher levels of immunity to Covid-19 and also because early data suggest Omicron may causes less severe disease.

Still, Omicron cases could lead to "surges of hospital demand even if severity is reduced, because of the large number of anticipated cases occurring in a short period of time," the CDC notes.

States prepare for Omicron

Some states are already overwhelmed, with Army medical personnel deploying to help fight Covid-19 in Indiana and Wisconsin.

Two 20-person teams will be deployed to assist civilian hospitals in the two states, US Army Northern Command announced Monday.

Meantime, northeast Ohio is in crisis, said Dr. Brook Watts, chief medical officer of community and public health at MetroHealth System in Cleveland.

"I think the health systems, together, said it best this weekend. When we took out a joint ad with all the hospitals in our region and it said one word, it said, 'Help.' It said help because our hospitals are filled with patients with Covid and we're struggling," she told CNN on Monday.

Unvaccinated people face a 10 times greater risk of testing positive and 20 times greater risk of dying from Covid-19 than fully vaccinated people who have also received a booster dose, according to data published recently by the CDC.

Compared to fully vaccinated people yet to receive a booster, unvaccinated people face a five times greater risk of testing positive for Covid-19 and a 14 times greater risk of dying, according to the CDC assessment of data through October.

Cases have been surging in New York state, which saw a nearly threefold increase in one week, according to data Monday from Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration. And in New York City, officials are working to reinstate extra testing capacity, they said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday announced a $100 incentive for any New York City resident who gets a Covid-19 booster shot at a city-run vaccination site. The incentive begins Tuesday and will run until December 31, de Blasio said.

In Washington, DC -- which has seen its highest daily coronavirus case count since the start of the pandemic -- the indoor mask mandate was reinstated at 6 a.m. ET Tuesday and will stay in place through January 31, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced.

In Boston, proof of Covid-19 vaccination will be required for indoor dining, fitness venues, theaters and arenas, Mayor Michelle Wu announced. The mandate will apply to patrons and employees and will come online in phases: Single doses of vaccine will be required by January 15, with second doses required by February 15.

Preliminary data suggests Omicron may be less likely to cause severe disease in the lungs

New research adds to growing evidence that the Omicron variant may be less likely to cause severe disease in the lungs and appears to be less sensitive to current vaccines compared with other variants -- but a booster dose can help improve protection against the variant.

Researchers from the United Kingdom, Japan and South Africa analyzed blood serum samples from vaccinated people and found that neutralization of Omicron was not detectable for most people who received two doses of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, but a third dose of vaccine -- or booster shot -- rescued neutralization in the short term.

The early data, posted Tuesday to the preprint server biorxiv.org, suggests that Omicron more dramatically evades vaccine-elicited antibodies among those vaccinated with the AstraZeneca versus Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines. The research has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a journal.

"The Omicron variant appears to be much better than Delta at evading neutralising antibodies in individuals who have received just two doses of the vaccine. A third dose 'booster' with the Pfizer vaccine was able to overturn this in the short term, though we'd still expect a waning in immunity to occur over time," Ravi Gupta, an author of the study and a professor at the University of Cambridge's Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, said in a news release Monday.

To better understand how Omicron may infect people's cells, Gupta and his colleagues also tested how pseudoviruses infected cells within a mini model of parts of the lungs. The researchers found that Omicron has lower infectivity of lung cells compared with the Delta variant.

"We speculate that the more efficient the virus is at infecting our cells, the more severe the disease might be. The fact that Omicron is not so good at entering lung cells and that it causes fewer fused cells with lower infection levels in the lab suggests this new variant may cause less severe lung-associated disease," Gupta said in the news release.

"While further work is needed to corroborate these findings, overall, it suggests that Omicron's mutations present the virus with a double-edged sword: it's got better at evading the immune system, but it might have lost some of its ability to cause severe disease."

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the first name of Dr. Brook Watts, chief medical officer of community and public health at MetroHealth System in Cleveland.

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ROME, N.Y.  GPO Federal Credit Union marked its grand opening in Rome Monday by donating to two community groups.

After cutting the ribbon at the new James Street location, GPO presented $2,500 checks to the Greater Rome-Utica Chapter of the Military Officers Association and the Rome Food Pantry.

GPO President Nick Mayhew says the bank prioritizes giving back to the communities they serve.

"We're always going to be a big player in all of the local charities because that's one of our important missions is to help out in any community that we have a branch or an office, said Mayhew.

Rome Mayor Jacqueline Izzo says the bank started reaching out within the community after construction on their new locations was announced last year.

"And they want to be a partner right off the bat. Even last year when they first announced their project, they started finding partnerships, and so I think they're going to be a real welcome addition to the community, said Izzo.

GPO also has branches in Barneveld, Dolgeville, Ilion, New Hartford, Oneida and Utica.
ROME, N.Y.  Oneida County is opening a free drive-thru COVID-19 testing site at Griffiss International Airport in Rome on Wednesday, Dec. 22.

Unlike the previous nose swab tests offered at Griffiss, the county will now provide self-administered cheek swab tests at the site.

Because of the new testing method, people going to get tested must not eat or drink anything within 30 minutes of their appointment, and should not chew gum, have mints or lozenges, or smoke prior to the test. Those getting tested should also refrain from brushing their teeth or using mouthwash within an hour of the appointment.

The testing samples will be secured by a county technician and submitted to Quadrant Biosciences, the countys testing partner.

People must also fill out an online profile with Quadrant Biosciences before making an appointment to get tested.

Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente says opening the site will address the growing testing needs in the county.

Testing is a crucial part of fighting COVID-19, especially during the surge we are now experiencing, Picente said. While there are testing options available in the community, they are not adequately meeting the needs of the public. Throughout this pandemic, Oneida County government has remained on the forefront of keeping its residents healthy and safe, and this new, free, all-ages drive-thru testing site will present a convenient, reoccurring option that will improve availability and speed of results.

Those getting tested should bring photo ID and a health insurance card if they have one, although people without insurance can still get a test.

The testing site will be open from 2 to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, and more appointments will be added in the coming weeks.
ROME, N.Y.  Just after 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, Rome police were called to the NBT Bank on Black River Boulevard for an attempted robbery.

Police say the unarmed male suspect went into the lobby and showed a note to the bank teller, but left without receiving any money. He then ran from the scene.

Police are still searching for the suspect, who they describe as a white man about 5-feet 5-inches tall with a medium build. He was seen wearing a dark gray or black hooded shirt, gray sweatpants, a black winter hat and a black face mask.

People who live near the Black River Shopping Plaza are asked to review any home security video for suspicious activity or footage of the suspect.

Anyone with information can call Det. Bryan Zoeckler at 315-339-7712 or the RPD tip line at 315-339-7744.
Former President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have sued New York Attorney General Letitia James, asking for a federal court to halt or limit her office's ongoing investigations.

The lawsuit, which comes on the heels of James' office seeking to depose Trump as part of its civil fraud investigation into the Trump Organization, also seeks to enjoin James' involvement in any civil or criminal actions against the former President or his company.

The suit, filed in federal court in Northern New York Monday, accuses James of misconduct, claiming she has abused her investigatory powers to target her political adversaries and advance her career.

"Since taking office, she has tirelessly bombarded him, his family and his business, Trump Organization LLC, with unwarranted subpoenas in a bitter crusade to 'take on' the President," the suit states.

James responded to the suit in a statement Monday, saying the Trump Organization has repeatedly attempted to delay her office's investigation into its business dealings and called the suit an "attempted collateral attack."

"To be clear, neither Mr. Trump nor the Trump Organization get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions," James said in the statement. "Our investigation will continue undeterred because no one is above the law, not even someone with the name Trump."

The suit cites comments James made from her 2018 campaign for New York attorney general through recent comments she made on "The View" last week, accusing her of openly flouting her duty to remain neutral in public.

James' office is investigating whether the Trump Organization manipulated the value of its properties. Her office is also working with Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance's office on a parallel criminal investigation into the Trump Organization. The two investigations are separate, but some attorneys from James' office have been designated to work on the criminal investigation, which is ongoing.

Trump's suit accuses James of "relentlessly pushing" Vance's office into a criminal investigation of the Trump Organization. A spokesman for Vance's office declined to comment.

Attorneys for Trump ask for a declaratory judgment stating that James has violated Trump and the Trump Org's rights, privileges and immunities and that her investigations constitute "impermissible state action" and an "abuse of power."

"Absent judicial relief, James will continue to violate Plaintiffs' rights in an unconstitutional manner and Plaintiffs will suffer imminent and irreparable harms," the suit states.

This story has been updated with comment from James.

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UTICA, N.Y.  Proctor High School students are being commended by law enforcement for reporting a gun on school grounds last week.

On Dec. 17, students who were on a bus in the back of Proctor waiting to head to BOCES told a school resource officer that they witnessed someone in a white sedan with a firearm.

Following an investigation, authorities identified the woman as 35-year-old Kathleen Goering. Police say Goering was at the school to meet her significant other who works for Durham Bus Company. While there, police Goering had an unloaded shotgun in the front of her car, which was later seized by the Utica Police Department.

Police say there was no immediate danger to anyone at the school.

Goering is charged with criminal possession of a weapon on school grounds.
FRANKFORT, Ind. (WLFI)  The toy drive for children who lost their homes in the Kentucky tornadoes ended over the weekend.

The toy drive received over $5000 in gift cards and a full semi-truck load of donated items.

Frankfort resident Tiffany Fuel  who organized the drive  describes the outpouring of support as overwhelming.

The trailer was 53 feet long and completely filled, front to back, with donations.

Donations included 300 Paw Patrol tents, about one hundred hand-made quilts and dozens of other types of toys and gifts.

Fuel was suprised by the community reaction and support.

"I was just so overjoyed to see the amount of donations that came in," she told News 18. "And the amount of people that poured out to volunteer their time."

And even though this was her first time running a drive like this, she says she has discovered a new passion.

"[I have a] warm, you know, a warm feeling inside to see that we can all come together in a time like this," she said.

The donations made it to Owensboro, Kentucky around 12 p.m. on Monday. Fuel says the governor's office in Kentucky has already reached out to her about now collecting winter coats for those in need.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI)  Shawn Greiner, the 2020 Indiana Association of Public-School Superintendents District IV Superintendent of the Year, was introduced as superintendent of schools for the West Lafayette Community School Corporation on Monday.

The West Lafayette Board of School Trustees approved Greiners hiring at a special meeting that culminated a nearly four-month national search to replace Rocky Killion, who retired June 30.

I am both humbled and excited to move into the West Lafayette community and connect with students, teachers, administrators, families and partners, Greiner said. I am eager to serve and collaborate with all stakeholders to continue to build on the outstanding accomplishments and programs our school community offers."



Greiner will begin his time at WLCSC on Feb. 1. He comes to West Lafayette from Southmont Schools in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he has served as superintendent of schools since 2013. Southmont Schools is comprised of three elementary schools, one junior high school and one high school  totaling over 1,600 students. Southmont High School has above a 98% graduation rate.

Under Greiners leadership, Southmont Schools completed a feasibility study that resulted in $34 million worth of districtwide capital improvements focusing on safety, energy efficiency and learning area updates.

Greiner is a member of the Indiana Association of Public-School Superintendents; AASA, The School Superintendents Association; and the Indiana Association of School Business Officials. He is an Indiana school safety advanced specialist. Greiner also has been active in the community, serving as a board member for the Montgomery County Character Counts program and as a volunteer with the Crawfordsville Rotary Club, Montgomery County Workforce Development and Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.

Prior to becoming a superintendent, Greiner was a principal at four Indiana schools: Thorpe Creek Elementary and Harrison Parkway Elementary in Fishers (2005-13), Maplewood Elementary in Connersville (2002-05), and C.R. Richardson Elementary in Richmond (2000-02). He was a teacher for Fayette County Schools in Connersville, Indiana, from 1990-2000.

We were fortunate to have an extremely strong pool of candidates, and over the course of a thorough selection process, which included input from many stakeholders, Shawn clearly rose to the top, said Alan Karpick, president of the West Lafayette Board of School Trustees. His experience as a superintendent after many years as a principal and teacher, bolstered by his contagious energy and passion, stood out. We know Shawn will put his heart and soul into making our wonderful school district even better, and we look forward to welcoming him and his family to our community.

Greiner earned a Bachelor of Science degree in elementary education from Ball State University in 1989. He also has two Master of Arts degrees from Ball State (elementary education in 1993 and education administration and supervision in 2000). He earned an educational specialist degree in 2010 and a Ph.D. in education administration in 2013, both from Indiana State University. Greiner and his wife, Wakako, have four children: Takeshi, Taishi, Tatsuya and Tomoko.
BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua)  Chinese lawmakers on Monday began deliberating a draft law revision to better protect women and eliminate discrimination against them.

The draft revision to the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women was submitted to the ongoing session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for its first reading.

Necessary measures shall be taken to gradually improve the systems for protecting the rights and interests of women, and eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, according to the draft.

The draft also includes stipulations on gender discrimination in education and employment, as well as improving measures to prevent and curb sexual harassment.

The draft is a major revision to the law which was enacted nearly 30 years ago.

(Source: Xinhua)
Chen Haiyan, staff member from Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of Chinese Academy of Science, explains the working principles of isotope function tester to the visiting children during the academy's 15th Public Science Day event in Urumqi, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, May 19, 2019. [Xinhua/Wang Fei]

URUMQI, Dec. 18 (Xinhua)  Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region plans to build 100 science popularization centers in the region's southern areas by 2025 for the popularization of scientific knowledge among the rural youth.

The project was jointly initiated in 2019 by Xinjiang Association for Science and Technology and a Beijing-based intelligent technology firm.

A total of 37 such facilities have been set up in Kashgar, Hotan and Aksu prefectures as well as the Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture of Bayingolin.

Teenagers in these science popularization centers can attend lectures and experience advanced technologies such as 3D printing and artificial intelligence, said Su Hong, head of the association's Youth Science and Technology Center.

"The centers provide rural children and teenagers with opportunities to explore the field of science and strengthen hands-on learning," Su said, adding that the initiative can help create an environment to cultivate the love, understanding and use of scientific knowledge among villagers.

In recent years, the association has encouraged tech enterprises and scientific organizations to pair up with rural schools in the southern part of Xinjiang, helping them promote science education among primary and middle school students.

(Source: Xinhua)
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 &&

...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM THIS MORNING TO 4 PM CST THIS AFTERNOON... * WHAT...Snow expected. Total snow accumulations of 1 to 3 inches. Highest amounts are expected across west Kentucky. * WHERE...Portions of southwest Indiana, southeast Missouri, western Kentucky and southern Illinois. * WHEN...From 6 AM to 4 PM CST Thursday. * IMPACTS...Plan on slippery road conditions. The hazardous conditions could impact the morning commute. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Slow down and use caution while traveling. &&

...VERY HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS ACROSS THE AREA THIS MORNING... New Madrid Emergency Management reports 25 semi tractor trailers are off the road on Interstate 55, mainly due to driving too fast. Also, several accidents have been reported across Graves County Kentucky. We have had a report of an injury accident. Even though the roads may not look that slick with a minor accumulation, they are. Conditions will only deteriorate through the morning, before the snow lets up from midday through the afternoon hours. Please use extreme caution driving and slow down! Most of the area remains in a Winter Weather Advisory, with a Winter Storm Warning for portions of west Kentucky.
Welsh Government criticised over work from home law A worker is not responsible for their place of work, their employer is

The Welsh Government has been criticised after introducing fines of up to 60 for people who break rules requiring them to work from home where possible.

Ministers have been encouraging people to work from home for some time to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

However, from this week the advice has been turned into a formal part of the Covid regulations in Wales.

As Wrexham.com readers saw late on Friday we were digging into the regulation wording as usual:

New tonight as promised from Welsh Gov  from 20th Dec new law in Wales "Offence of failing to work from home where

reasonably practicable to do so with a reasonable excuse needed. https://t.co/WcSx0I5KWz  Wrexham.com (@wrexham) December 17, 2021

This will be interesting for people who live in Wales and work in England, as the law states 'no person may leave the place where they are living' as part of the text, would a commute be illegal, and would employers in England be aware of law? https://t.co/502SJzIHJn  Wrexham.com (@wrexham) December 17, 2021

It means any workers who go to work when they could work from home could face a fine of up to 60.

Employers face heftier penalties of up to 10,000 for repeatedly failing to allow people to work from home.

The move has been condemned by the Wales Trades Union Congress (Wales TUC) which has expressed shock and concern at the decision today  it is unclear why they did not issue a statement over the weekend or Monday.

Wales TUC General Secretary Shavanah Taj said today, A worker is not responsible for their place of work, their employer is.

This sets a really worrying precedent that the responsibility is somehow shared, and is at best naive.

We hope Welsh Government urgently repeals this to remove the fine on workers.

The Wales TUC meets regularly with the Welsh Government through various social partnership arrangements, including the Shadow Social Partnership Council (SSPC). A

Although the last meeting of the SSPC was held on Thursday 16 December, trade unions say they were not consulted on the plans to fine workers or made aware of the changes to the regulations, which were published on Saturday.

In a written statement announcing the tightening up of the regulations at the end of last week, First Minister Mark Drakeford said the decision had been made in response to the emergence of the Omicron variant.

He said: We should be prepared for the number of cases of the omicron variant in Wales to increase sharply.

We need a plan to keep us safe this Christmas while delta is still dominant and we need stronger measures to protect us afterwards, as we prepare for a large wave of omicron infections.

This is a virus which thrives on human contact. Every contact we have is an opportunity for us to spread or catch the virus.

To reduce the number of contacts between people, the coronavirus regulations will be amended to place a legal duty on employers to allow their employees to work from home if possible, and on employees to do so where practicable.

This is particularly important when cases rates in the community are high as contacts in the workplace can be a significant driver of transmission.
Ahnaf Jazeem, a young Sri Lankan poet and teacher, who has been detained for over 18 months, was bailed out on December 15 under harsh conditions imposed by a High Court judge at Puttalam in North Western Province.

Ahnaf Jazeem holding his mother with father and brother after being bailed out (WSWS media)

The 25-year-old poet was arrested on 16 May 2020 by the notorious Counter Terrorism Investigation Department (CTID) on trumped up charges of promoting Islamic extremism and detained under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

Despite the judges order to grant bail, the court registrar flatly refused to give approval for prison officers to release Jazeem, claiming that he faced another case in a Colombo Magistrates Court. The High Court bail order, however, was applicable to both cases.

Jazeem was transported to the Welikada remand prison in Colombo and finally released the following evening after his lawyer, Sanjaya Wilson Jayasekera, filed a motion in the Magistrates Court. None of the bogus charges have been withdrawn.

The young poet was ordered to deposit three 500,000-rupee (about $US2,500) sureties with the court and will be monitored by the polices Terrorism Investigation Division (TID). He has to report to its office at Puttalam police on the first and last Sunday of every month.

Other bail conditions include: no contact or interference with witnesses involved in the case against him and that the court be informed of any change of his permanent address. The court also ordered the Immigration Department not to issue a passport to Jazeem and that he provide an affidavit that he does not already possess a passport.

The persecution of Jazeem is part of the ongoing racist provocations against Muslim and Tamil communities by the Rajapakse government.

As in other countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a deep economic crisis for Sri Lankan capitalism and the Rajapakse regime, which now faces a surge of working-class struggles. Colombo has responded by whipping up racist and communalist tensions in an attempt to divide the working class.

Jazeem is one of many individuals, including artists, journalists, and politicians, who have been falsely accused of promoting Muslim extremism and detained under the PTA. Anti-Muslim communalism was whipped up by all of Sri Lankas capitalist parties following terrorist attacks on several churches and hotels by a Sri Lankan ISIS-linked terrorist group on Easter Sunday 2019.

The PTA, which was widely used during the 30-year anti-Tamil communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), allows security officers to arbitrarily arrest and detain for months without charge anyone on suspicion. Confessions extracted by torture can be used as evidence in court hearings against those charged.

Originally from the war-torn northern district of Mannar, Jazeem moved to Puttalam where he taught at the School of Excellence and boarded at Save the Pearls, a charity home for the education of underprivileged children. The police have attempted to link the charity to extremist propaganda and in April 2020, arrested one of its board members, Hejaaz Hizbullah, a prominent human rights lawyer, on concocted accusations.

The CID arrested Jazeem claiming that Navarasam, a book of his poetry and written under his pen name Manaramudhu Ahnaf, promoted extremism and linked him to the Easter Sunday attack. The book, in fact, condemned the murderous policies of ISIS as well as US-led imperialist wars and promoted peace and ethnic unity.

The poems were wrongly translated and then submitted in a report to the courts which claimed that the book incited violence, aroused sexual feelings, promoted suicide, glorified death, and fuelled hatred against the perpetrators of violence against Muslims.

During his detention the young poet was subjected to mental and physical torture in an attempt to extract statements implicating him in the Easter Sunday attack. He was sleep-deprived, handcuffed, and tied to the leg of a table for several months.

The police officers, who are now witnesses against Jazeem, tried to make him confess that he became a Muslim fundamentalist while studying at the Naleemiah Institute of Islamic Studies. In an attempt to intimidate him, the young poet was shown images of other Muslim detainees being tortured.

Finally, after detaining him without charge for more than 18 months, the attorney general last month filed a PTA indictment in the Puttalam High Court. The indictment declares that while teaching between October 1 and November 2019, Jazeem had, by words, either spoken or intended to be read or by signs or by visible representations, encouraged violence or religious, racial or communal disharmony or feelings of ill will or hostility between different communities or racial or religious groups.

These wide-ranging charges could be used to indict and frame up anyone. According to the filed indictments, the poet could be imprisoned for 15 to 20 years, if found guilty.

Jazeem was bailed out following widespread protests by workers, young people and human rights groups internationally and in Sri Lanka against his arbitrary arrest.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and Action Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE) launched a powerful defence campaign demanding his immediate and unconditional release. Articles and statements were published on the WSWS and the ACDAE also launched an online petition which was signed by more than 1,700 people.

A relative of the poet thanked the SEP and the WSWS for its campaign and said that many people did not loudly condemn the arrest at the beginning because they feared being witch-hunted. The online petition launched by the ACDAE, he said, broke the silence and allowed people to come forward and register their opposition. He called on the WSWS to visit Mannar and Puttalam and write about homelessness and the plight of its poor residents.

Jazeem was given bail amid President Rajapakses attempts to deflect ongoing international criticism of his governments human right violations, and war crimes committed during Colombos war against the LTTE. The US and other major western powers have initiated a resolution on these issues in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). UNHRC High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet has also highlighted the arrest of Jazeem and Muslim leaders.

The Washington-led campaign has nothing to do with defending democratic rights in Sri Lanka or exposing war crimes but is being exploited to pressure the Rajapakse government to break its relations with Beijing and line up with US aggression against China.

Last month, the Sri Lankan court bailed out former government minister Rishad Bathiudeen who had been arrested, following claims that he was linked to the Easter Sunday terror attack. The former Western Province Governor Azath Salley was also acquitted after a court hearing revealed that the police had concocted a story to arrest him for promoting extremism. Several other Tamils and Muslims, including journalists, have also recently been bailed out.

These actions do not constitute any reversal of President Rajapakses anti- democratic moves and drive towards dictatorship. Last month, he appointed extreme-right Bodu Bala Sena leader Galagodaaththe Gnanasara to head a special task force to prepare draft legislation to implement its racialist One County One Law measures.

We urge workers and young people to come forward to defend all democratic rights, including freedom of expression, and demand the unconditional dropping of charges against Ahnaf Jazeem and the release of all other political prisoners.
As COVID-19 infections mount and the Omicron variant spreads across the country, Australian governments continue to insist that the reopening drive must continue. They are also defying growing statements of alarm, and in some cases, outright opposition, by doctors and public health experts, including Sydney immunologist Dr Dan Suan.

An emergency National Cabinet meeting of the federal, state and territory government leaders has been called for tomorrow in response to the rise of Omicron, which now accounts for at least 40 percent of samples tested in Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, however, was quick to stress that this would be an informal meeting and lockdowns were not on the agenda.

Morrison, who heads the Liberal-National Coalition, said this morning, were not going back to lockdowns, were not going back to shutting down peoples liveswere going forward to live with this virus with common sense and responsibility.

New South Wales (NSW), the most populous state, posted a record-high COVID-19 infection number today, with 3,057 new cases, a 22 percent increase over yesterdays total. This is the sixth-straight day on which the state has reported a daily figure higher than any before December. The state has recorded a total of 15,825 cases in the past seven days.

While state Liberal-National Premier Dominic Perrottet maintained that hospitalisation and intensive care unit (ICU) admission are the key metrics to watch, not infections, the inevitable relationship between these figures is beginning to emerge.

According to the official tally, 284 people are hospitalised with COVID, 116 more than a week ago. New ICU admissions in the past two days have been 11, for a total of 39. Two deaths were reported this morning, making a total of five over the past week.

In fact, the hospitalisation numbers hide the reality. According to NSW Healths Critical Intelligence Unit, 3,342 COVID-19 patients were being cared for outside of a hospital setting on December 13, an increase of almost 1,000 over the previous week. More recent figures have not been released. This number has almost certainly skyrocketed over the past week.

As infections, severe illness and deaths mount, Perrottet demands that NSW residents need to learn to live alongside the virus.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph yesterday, the premier claimed: Vaccination offers a level of protection that, previously, we could only get by staying home. The best advice indicates that a booster dose will provide even better protection, so we should all go and get that too, as soon as were eligible.

In view of studies showing that the Astra Zeneca vaccine provides almost no protection against Omicron, now the dominant strain in NSW, and Pfizer is little better, this is a dangerous lie.

State Labor Party opposition leader Chris Minns on Sunday pledged bipartisan support for the Perrottet governments handling of pandemic.

Neighbouring Victoria reported 1,245 new infections today, bringing total active cases in the state to 13,355. Six Victorians died from COVID-19 yesterday, for a total of 36 in the past week.

The ongoing COVID-19 wave in Victoria has already created a crisis for the states ambulance service. Paramedics are reporting periods in which dozens of patients need assistance but no one is available to respond. This resulted last Wednesday night in the death of a patient, who waited more than 40 minutes for an ambulance after suffering a cardiac arrest.

According to the Herald Sun, much of Melbournes inner west was left without Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance coverage on Friday and Saturday night.

This is the responsibility of the states Labor government, which has run down the public hospital system, as has every other government.

South Australia reported 154 new COVID-19 cases today, following 105 yesterday, which was the first time the state had recorded more than 100 infections in one day during the pandemic.

The unprecedented surge is a direct product of a profit-driven decision to open the borders to NSW and Victoria. Although there were more than 12,000 active cases in those neighbouring states at the time, the state Liberal government ditched domestic quarantine requirements on the phony basis that South Australias adult vaccination rate, then 70 percent, would prevent a severe outbreak.

Since border restrictions were dropped on November 23, the state has reported 632 casesmore than a third of the total recorded since the beginning of the pandemic.

State Premier Steven Marshall echoed the deceptive claims of Perrottet and Morrison that infection numbers are irrelevant, stating were most concerned about anybody that needs to go to hospital.

As of yesterday, only six South Australians were hospitalised with COVID-19, but with 380 infections occurring in the past week, this number is set to increase.

In a clear sign that the South Australian population is concerned about the escalating case numbers, the demand for testing has soared. The Advertiser reported that residents had queued for as long as nine hours overnight at one of Adelaides two 24-hour drive-through test sites.

The states Chief Public Health Officer, Nicola Spurrier, claimed the long queues were the result of a lack of migrant workers to staff the sites. She said: Theres a shortage of people across the board because our international borders have been shut.

In other words, years of attacks on public health have produced wages and conditions so poor that the system cannot function without a steady supply of cheap labour from overseas.

Marshall announced this morning that visitors will no longer be required to take a COVID-19 test upon entering the state.

Queensland reported 86 new COVID-19 cases today, the highest-ever daily total in that state. Since the state Labor government eased border restrictions on December 13, the state has recorded 270 new cases, more than ten times the 26 recorded in the previous eight-day period.

At least 15 cases have been linked to an Omicron cluster of concern involving 2,675 people who attended a Griffith University graduation ceremony in Brisbane on December 13.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the uptick in cases was exactly what we expected. Her government Chief Health Officer John Gerrard openly stated a herd immunity policy. He declared: Omicron is clearly becoming dominant in Queensland. This virus ultimately needs to become endemic in the community. Eventually all of us will develop some degree of immunity to this virus.

Today, the Palaszczuk government announced an easing of quarantine and testing requirements for close and casual contacts of people with COVID-19. Vaccinated close contacts will be required to quarantine for just one week, rather than two. Low risk casual contacts will no longer be required to take a COVID-19 test.

These changes are designed to minimise the number of cases identified, in order to boost spending over the Christmas period.

There are currently 87 active COVID-19 cases in the Northern Territory, the highest number since the start of the pandemic, yet the territorys Labor government yesterday removed the requirement for vaccinated travellers to quarantine upon entry.

Among the mounting medical voices of opposition, University of South Australia epidemiologist Professor Adrian Esterman said it was like Alice in Wonderland that governments were scrapping health protections as the pandemic worsened.

Nevertheless, Australias state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike, are in lockstep. Far from protecting human health and lives as infection numbers rise, they are abandoning public health mitigation measures in line with the demands of big business.

This mercenary policy, which echoes that of governments internationally, demonstrates why the World Socialist Web Site has launched the Global Workers Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic. This is part of the fight throughout the working class for a socialist program that places public health, safety and societys interests above the profit dictates of the wealthy elites.
The highest-ranking scientific adviser to the Trump White House warned in August 2020 that prematurely reopening schools and businesses would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, according to emails released Friday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx (Credit: AP)

The emails were part of the subcommittees year-end staff report, which concluded that the Trump administration made deliberate efforts to undermine the nations coronavirus response and purposely sought to reduce the amount of testing being conducted.

Rick Bright, the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, who warned the public in 2020 that Trumps policies would lead to unprecedented illness and fatalities, said the report showed criminal actions.

The smoking gun of the House Committees report was an email from White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx, who warned that embracing proposals to end masking and social distancing would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands more people.

With our current mitigation scenario we end up near 300k by Christmas and 500k by the time we have vaccine, she wrote. Without masks and social distancing in public and homes we end up with twice as many deaths.

Birx warned on August 25 that ending public health measures would lead to "twice as many deaths."

Birxs email was sent in response to plans by Trump aides to meet with proponents of herd immunity, including Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, who would go on to author the Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto by the free-market American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) calling for the reopening of schools and businesses while there was still widespread community transmission of COVID-19.

However, instead of warning the public that the resident of the White House, a known admirer of the mass murderer Adolf Hitler, planned to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, Birx offered to go out of town or whatever gives the WH cover for the White Houses planned meeting with the herd immunity proponents.

The Great Barrington Declaration, published on October 4, called for:

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal... Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume.

On October 13, 2020, the New York Times published an article headlined, White House embraces a declaration from scientists that opposes lockdowns and relies on herd immunity.

In this September 2020 photo, then-President Donald Trump watches as White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas speaks during a news conference on the pandemic (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Times report says that two White House officialslikely Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Trump adviser Scott Atlascited the Great Barrington Declaration, and that it had been embraced by the White House.

In what was presumably the same anonymous media briefing, the Washington Post cited White House officials as saying, The plan is endorsing what the presidents policy has been for months, which includes calls to open schools and businesses.

In fact, the White House officials said, states throughout the country, at the instigation of the Trump administration, rapidly reopened schools and businesses in April, with most restrictions dropped by the end of May.

This quickly produced a massive resurgence of the pandemic, with daily new cases reaching over 300,000 in January 2021, and daily deaths hitting a record of more than 4,000.

The November presidential election took place at the height of this massive surge, with presidential candidate Joe Biden declaring that Trump says that were learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it.

Biden pledged to follow the science and advocate universal masking and widespread investments in contact tracing.

Instead, Biden discouraged mask-wearing, saying, by April 2021, Take your mask off. Youve earned the right. Biden called for the full reopening of schools and businesses and urged vaccinated people not to social distance. At the same time, Biden starved resources for testing and contact tracing in the United States, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped reporting on breakthrough COVID-19 infections.

These policies have produced a massive resurgence of the pandemic with the Delta, and now Omicron, variants of COVID-19.

When asked by this author to comment on the relationship of the Great Barrington Declaration to the Biden Administrations policies, AIER research director Phil Magness replied that many of the GBDs recommendations have become reality in both red & blue states as theyve reopened.

This is a hugely important admission. It serves as a confirmation, directly from the source, that the policy that Deborah Birx, at the time the highest-ranking White House scientist, said would lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, has in fact become the dominant policy in the United States.
In face of the global spread of the Omicron variant, the government of Brazils fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro is fighting any measures that would impinge on corporate profits and openly promoting herd immunity through mass infections.

Health agencies worldwide are warning of the real impact of the new variant, with the head of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declaring that were concerned that people are dismissing Omicron as mild. He explained, Even if Omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems.

Such warnings are already being confirmed by the record number of cases in the UK, where almost 70 percent of the population is vaccinated with two shots.

After the devastating Gamma variant wave in Brazil between April and July, thousands of lives continued to be lost to the pandemic every week, and the number of deaths per week has never fallen below a thousand.

Bolsonaro and his health minister, Marcelo Queiroga, in May 2021 (Wikimedia Commons)

Now, facing the threat of deadly surges with the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, with active cases reported throughout Latin America and community transmission confirmed in Sao Paulo, Bolsonaros Health Ministry has only announced meager travel restrictions for international flights, in which airports would require a vaccine certificate, which are being called vaccine passports, or a five-day quarantine for those unable to present one.

Such measures are incapable of preventing the entrance of infected individuals, as breakthrough infections with the Delta variant are well documented and a recent South African study found that vaccination with two Pfizer doses offered only 33 percent efficacy against symptomatic infections from Omicron and only 70 percent protection against hospitalization. Furthermore, many individuals only test positive after 14 days of infection, making a five-day quarantine useless. Finally, the quarantines wont be regulated by any authority but are to be self-imposed, with no way to account for those entering the country who have no economic conditions or refuse to isolate.

But even such inadequate measures were immediately attacked by Bolsonaro, who has responded to Omicron with a renewed offensive against vaccines and any measures to control the pandemic.

In reaction to demands that the government adopt vaccine certificate requirements, Bolsonaro said, Is there a better vaccine, scientifically proven, than infection? People who were infected are tens of times more immune than those who only took the vaccine. That is a lie in itself, as vaccines have been proven to be many times more effective than natural immunity, if a person survives the disease without sequelae. On Thursday, Bolsonaro posted a video on Twitter in which a man claims that the vaccines gave no protection, resulting in vaccinated people being the ones who are infected and transmitting the disease while unvaccinated people were being falsely diagnosed.

Using the fact that Omicron infects and transmits more easily, including among vaccinated people, Bolsonaro called for only RT-PCR tests be to implemented at airports, arguing that Its more effective than the vaccine, because the vaccine doesnt stop the virus from infecting and transmitting. That is another blatant lie, as the meager testing capacity offered by the government allows the free spread of the disease by individuals who only test once, and before positivity, even if they are already infected.

Last week, during an event in the presidential palace, he also attacked the use of masks, telling the audience that no one is allowed to wear masks here.

The fascistic presidents objective is to disrupt any measures that would restrict the spread of the virus, and redouble the efforts for an infection-driven herd immunity, regardless of the consequences for the millions of victims. His attack on travel restrictions and vaccines are a critical component of his campaign to defend living with the virus in a post-pandemic period, as he described the present to an audience of police officers.

Another aspect of Bolsonaros campaign is to carry out yet another blackout on COVID-19 data, allowing him to fraudulently downplay the severity of the pandemic.

In August, the Health Ministry had started demanding specific production batch identification be sent to the governments database for every COVID-19 antigen test, effectively sabotaging the notification of mild cases for months. The government argues in a fraudulent fashion that positive tests are being falsely reported, and more information would be needed. Actually, it has already been exposed by health experts that pharmacy workers, who carry out most antigen tests, end up overloaded with the new requirements and the result is a gross undercount of positive tests.

Health agency Fiocruz infectious disease specialist Julio Croda had stated that This sudden change from the Health Ministry requiring batch and producer provoked many health services to stop reporting antigen exams with negative results, but especially positive ones. He added that the undercounting will make it impossible to predict future surges. Its probable that the country will be taken by surprise with a sudden surge in hospitalizations, when it can be too late to propose planning measures such as the opening of hospital beds, Croda stated.

More recently, on December 10, a day before the introduction of vaccine passports and quarantines, the governments online COVID-19 platform was hacked, preventing many states from reporting new cases, deaths and vaccinations while also shutting down the vaccine certificate system.

After the attack, several states stopped reporting COVID-19 data, resulting in a drop. The number of cases dropped almost by half, with 24,164 reported throughout last week in comparison to two weeks ago, when 49,932 cases were reported.

According to Metropoles, the 7-day moving average of deaths fell by 34.9 percent in the week since the hacking. Such an artificial decrease, which has continued for eleven days now, would provide a fraudulent basis to claim that the pandemic is under control.

The attack also affected data from other systems, with Fiocruz stating it is unable to access flu cases from previous months and that they are essential to keep the population informed on the current epidemiological situation. The global spread of the Omicron variant is coinciding with a seasonal flu epidemic in the country, threatening to quickly overload the healthcare system.

The hackers were identified as a small non-professional group, who were only capable of hacking the governments website because there were weaknesses in the platforms security. Only two days before the invasion, the federal administration had opened a public bid to reinforce security on its servers, pointing out they were incapable of monitoring threats in real time.

Whatever the real motives for the hacking, which happened at a convenient moment for Bolsonaro, the resulting distortion and undercounting of cases and deaths are welcomed by all sections of the ruling class.

Since the first Omicron case was recognized in South Africa, the idea of a mild Omicron variant has been promoted in the corporate media. As Brazil flies blind during a deadly global surge, this claim is aimed at keeping factories, workplaces and schools open to guarantee profits for big corporations as the virus rips through the population.

Amid the cancellation of New Years events throughout the country, it is also aimed at justifying maintaining preparations for next years Carnaval festivities and the unchecked spread of the disease through an anticipated mass influx of tourists.

The corporate medias complacency towards Bolsonaros criminal actions has been shown by its focus on the decision by Supreme Court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso making vaccine passports mandatory for those entering the country, as if it had defeated Bolsonaros policies. It is not even guaranteed that this grossly insufficient requirement will be enforced. Only five days after Barrosos decision, Justice Nunes Marques, whom Bolsonaro frequently calls my 10 percent on the Supreme Court, was able to stop a final decision on the vaccine passports, postponing it until after the recess in February. This will allow Bolsonaro to continue his campaign against the vaccine passports amid the blackout in COVID-19 data and well into the Omicron phase of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, state governors in Brazil, promoting the insufficient vaccine-only strategy, made in-person learning mandatory throughout the country in November, provoking the infection of thousands of children and risking new COVID-19 surges.

Many scientists have explained throughout the pandemic that vaccines are a powerful component in the fight against COVID-19, but they can only truly protect the population if implemented together with other critical public health measures, including mass testing and contact tracing, temporary lockdowns, travel restrictions and high quality masks.

Now, as the Omicron variant exposes the idea that vaccines alone are able to control the coronavirus spread, the vaccine-only strategy has allowed fascistic figures such as Bolsonaro not only to attack this critical component in the fight against the virus, but all mitigation measures.

Making clear that the governments response to Omicron will be to allow a full-blown catastrophe, Bolsonaro reacted angrily to the announcement last week that Pfizer vaccines were approved for children 5 to 11 years old and threatened to effectively put a target on technicians from Anvisa, the national agency responsible for the approval.

Appealing to fascistic elements in his social base, Bolsonaro stated that We want to publish the names of these people... You have the right to know the names of those who approved vaccines for your children of 5 years old or older. Such declarations occur amid reports of scientists being persecuted for publishing pandemic data and exposing the governments policy.

On Sunday, the president made public his plan to distribute jabs for children only under the authorization of their parents and with a medical prescription.

As the new variant is already showing its aggressiveness towards children, Bolsonaros policy means letting thousands of children get hospitalized, having to deal with the still unknown long term effects of COVID-19, or even die. Currently, only 66 percent of the population is vaccinated with two doses, and children remain unvaccinated.

The demand for specific medical prescriptions for vaccinating children will leave tens of millions vulnerable, as working-class parents barely have access to doctors in the countrys dilapidated healthcare system.

This is exactly what Bolsonaro intends. Throughout the pandemic, Bolsonaro has presented his campaign against measures to rein in the virus as a fight for freedom. Now, his new offensive amid the spread of Omicron promotes the same theme, attacking the vaccine passport as a leash that they want to put on the people, while his health minister echoed his words that Its better to lose your life than your freedom.

As international workers enter an offensive in defense of their living standards and very lives, Bolsonaro represents a section of the ruling class prepared to suppress opposition by means of violence and dictatorship.

Workers must not allow another catastrophic surge in cases and deaths. The mass infection campaign of Bolsonaro can be defeated only by a mass movement of the working class in Brazil and internationally. Workers must organize rank-and-file committees to implement the strategy of zero COVID in coordination with health specialists and scientists, implementing temporary lockdowns with full income for workers sheltering, while providing the best safety equipment and rigorous protocols to protect essential workers.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, nursing and retirement homes have been the terrifying epicenter of mass mortality. Of the more than 106,000 official coronavirus deaths in Germany over the past two years, 88,769 are among those over the age of 70.

In Bavaria, nearly every second a coronavirus death occurred in a nursing home, according to press reports in May. In Hesse and Berlin, this figure was as high as 73 percent at the peak of the second wave. Currently, incidents are highest among children and adolescents, but the virus continues to run rampant among the elderly.

A nursing home resident receives a corona vaccination, Cologne, December 27, 2020 (AP Photo / Martin Meissner)

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI, the German government agency responsible for disease control and prevention) states that just in the past week, coronavirus outbreaks have occurred in nursing homes and homes for the elderly with a total of 1,164 cases. In recent weeks, there have been numerous fatal outbreaks. Just a few days ago, 28 residents of a nursing home in Rudolstadt, Thuringia, died of COVID-19.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with caregivers in nursing and retirement homes as part of the Global Workers  Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic. They recount their dramatic experiences during the pandemic, the decades of austerity measures and the brutal profit maximization borne by caregivers and those needing care.

Christine is a geriatric nurse and nursing instructor in Bavaria. In December 2020, she was assigned to the Naabtalpark Burglengenfeld retirement home, whose operator is a large nationwide nursing service provider.

Ive been working in nursing since 1991. Last year I was working in a retirement home when the pandemic broke out there. Im used to a lot, but this topped everything. The health department sent all the staff home because they were all positive. Because I was negative, I had to take care of 40 patients on my own. No emergency medical service came for days, only after many phone calls did someone finally come.

When I turned to the health department and they refused to take on the responsibility, there was a lot of back and forth and a call on Facebook for caregivers to come and help. Then they sent in the Army (Bundeswehr, German armed forces).

There were masks in the home, but this was not taken very seriously, and hygiene was not very good either. Especially since among those needing care, some have severe disabilitiesit makes it even more difficult. They were only tested in the first week of December. This should have been done much earlier, but it was neglected because the company didnt take it seriously. At that time, the homes management was on sick leave due to burnout.

The head of nursing was also sent home. The district office wanted me to be the only person responsible for 40 people. I said that if no one helped me, I would end up in a mental hospitaland I really almost did. A lot of facilities were like that, and it should be much more publicized.

The operators license was initially revoked as a result of the outbreak, but it was reinstated two months later after supposed close inspections by the authorities.

At some point I was no longer able to work and had to go to psychosomatic rehab. Now I work in a medical supply store and do nursing consultations and individual care for dementia patients on the side.

I would so like to work with people again, but these circumstances wear you down and depress you. I have depression because of it. The good staff is wearing outthose who continue to work diligently are worn down until they cant keep going.

Compared to how it was before, everything has deteriorated 100 percent. Care is supposed to be done on a computerbut by half illiterates. I have written to the home supervisor many times, without success. Then I see that the facility gets a high grade. This just makes me angry and sad.

From my perspective, the medical service of the health insurance companies (MDK), which gives the grades, has made the situation worse. It only checks the documentation; it doesnt care about anything else. So the MDK is satisfied if everything is documented twice and three times. The actual care for the patient suffers for it.

It is a bottomless pit: Mindless laws by desk jockeys who have no idea how it is in practice. Nursing homes, clinics and hospitals should not and must not be privatized. Because then the elderly just become a source of income.

Kazu, who has been working as a geriatric nurse in a neurological rehabilitation clinic for eight years, reported:

Caregiving has been just dragging on, and many are simply out of steam. Many are switching to other professions or finding part-time work. No one is being replaced. And because there are no new recruits, there are fewer and fewer nursing staff in every area. Many of my colleagues have already left or dont want to continue, like myself. It has only gotten worse and is far worse now than before COVID.

Since we are not an emergency care hospital, we only have post-COVID patients. Its really a miserable disease. Youre mostly left with respiratory problems, and patients have to deal with it for months afterwards. Our patients usually have big problems with shortness of breath and usually have a history of illness. One patient even passed away. Another, who had been a doctor professionally, said to me, I wouldnt wish that on anyone!

Training for the job was hard when I did it. Because of understaffing, its hard to attend to trainees. There were only 30 people in my class at the time, and exactly 15 left after the probationary period. There are a lot of demands placed on you.

Were angry because its always just about money. Patients no longer exist, only payers. You can see from the sick leave how exhausted people are. There are statistics that show that most sick leave is in nursing. Because the situation has no end in sight, despair sets in. Thats why so many quit. I myself would describe myself as on the verge of burnout. The job is no longer fun.

Marco is a curative education nurse and works in Bavaria in a home for people with disabilities. He said:

As a caregiver in a residential home, I can say that conditions had been getting bad in the years before COVID. Older colleagues tell me that they were able to spend enough time with each resident almost every day: talking to people, listening to them, radiating calm. Time pressure due to staff shortages, large bureaucracy and ridiculous staffing ratios now make that almost impossible.

The coronavirus crisis has exacerbated all of the problems in nursing in hospitals even more than in residential homes. However, mandatory vaccination would relieve both areas by lowering hospitalization rates and generally reducing the risk of infection, and this is necessary in my view. Adequate remuneration is also necessary, an adequatethat is, dignifiedstaffing ratio and an appropriate appreciation of the profession: not just applause.

But I also think that mandatory vaccination by itself cannot get us out of the pandemic. Im a big advocate of the 1G rule: by that I mean that you can only go to restaurants, work, public transport, etc. if you are tested. And tested with a PCR test at an appropriate interval. The tests must be free of charge, of course. The capacity to do so exists, and the cost is acceptable in relation to the scale of the pandemic. Thats the only way I see to get out of the current situation.

Looking at official policy, nothing seems to improve, Marco concluded. We caregivers must take action ourselves.

The World Socialist Web Site will be publishing more reports and interviews with those affected by the catastrophic effects of the pandemic and the consequences of the official profits before lives policy. Register for the Global Workers  Inquest to tell us your experiences and take up the fight to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 worldwide.
On Sunday, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) announced that 12 people in Britain had died with the Omicron variant and 104 were currently in hospital with it. With 12,133 additional cases confirmed across Britain Sunday and another 8,044 Monday, this brought the total for the new variant to 45,145.

These are only the confirmed cases. Scientific advisers told the government over the weekend that in reality there are already hundreds of thousands of daily Omicron infections. The growing number of deaths due to Omicron puts paid to false statement from governments around the world that the variant is mild.

On Monday, another 91,743 new coronavirus cases and 44 deaths were announced, the third time in a matter of days that the UK has reported more than 90,000 daily cases. Each Monday normally sees a smaller number of cases reported due to reporting delays over the weekend, yet yesterdays figure was the second highest daily total on record.

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson updates the media in the study of No10 Downing Street after a Cabinet meeting on the Omicron variant . 20/12/2021. London, United Kingdom. (Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/FlickR)

The Omicron variant is ripping through the capital London. An Evening Standard investigation published Monday found that cases had exploded by up to 500 per cent among young adults and also increased among pensioners.

Citing front of house staff shortages which have been impacted by Covid-19 infections and isolation requirements, Londons Natural History Museum announced Monday it will temporarily close. A number of other major tourist attractions, including Edinburgh Castle and leading cultural venues have also shut their doors.

Despite warnings from its own advisers that the ineffectual Plan B measures currently in place will allow the population to be overwhelmed by an avalanche of COVID cases and deaths, Johnson announced no new measures yesterday after meeting with his Cabinet.

The UK prime minister has been one of the worlds foremost advocates of a herd immunity agenda, declaring last year, no more f**cking lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands. The Times reports that a sizable proportion of his Cabinet is determined to hold him to that statement and opposes any measures that would hinder the spread of the deadly virus. A third of the cabinet have made clear that they will not support them and have questioned official modelling, it explained. The newspaper added that [Chancellor] Rishi Sunak was one of at least ten cabinet ministers who were resisting calls by scientific advisers for tougher curbs to be introduced before Christmas.

The money-mad representatives of the financial elite will not allow any anything to impede the profit-making concerns of big business in the pre-Christmas period. The Mail cited one of the Cabinet figures opposed to any anti-COVID measures who made clear they will quit if there is a return to lockdown, and said, hospitals are not being overwhelmed and were in a battle to save Christmas.

Serving these interests, Johnson claimed absurdly on Monday that arguments for and against further restrictions are finely balanced and that there are some things that we need to be clearer about before we decide to go further. The government, he said, will have to reserve the possibility of taking further action.

The governments own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) have advised that between 3,000 and 10,000 people could be hospitalised with COVID each day from January if Plan B is continued.

With the refusal of the social murderers in Downing Street to take any action, large sections of the population have gone into an effective self-imposed lockdown, with millions also queuing up to receive a vaccination. On Saturday 904,598 people received a third dose, 44,599 a second and 37,492 a first.

The numbers of people in city centres and retail outlets that are normally heaving at this time of year are significantly down. Due to a lack of customers, many pubs, restaurants and cafes are closing their doors or moving to reduced hours.

The Daily Mail complained yesterday, Offices and city centres have been abandoned as Omicron cases continue to soar across Britainwith many businesses now working from home in the run-up to Christmas after the government latest work from home if you can advice, leaving roads empty and public transport barely used.

Transport for London said there were 660,000 entries or exits on the Tube up to 10am this morningdown 35% week-on-week, and down 46% over a fortnight. There were 720,000 boarding taps on buses for the same period this morningdown 38% week-on-week.

Trafalgar Square, one of Londons main attractions, was deserted Monday.

In the absence of a coordinated policy to bring down infections, however, huge numbers of people, especially frontline workers, continue to contract the disease. The continued staggering increase in COVID cases has brought the National Health Service (NHS) to its knees, with the British Medical Association warning that almost 50,000 health care workers could be sick with the virus by Christmas.

How dire the situation is was summed by Professor John Edmunds, who advises the government as a member of SAGE. He told the Times, Were close to the point where there already may be enough cases in the system to overwhelm the NHS. The newspaper reported yesterday, Edmunds said it was possible that the UK had as many as 400,000 Omicron infections yesterday and that the doubling time is believed to be roughly two days.

The latest warnings came amid revelations by the Independent over the weekend that Londons ambulance service is in the midst of a severe crisis, with 100 emergency service vehicles taken off the road for two days in a row due to hundreds of staff being unable to work because of Covid. The newspaper reported that at a London Ambulance Service Trust briefing last Friday, attendees were informed that Omicron meant that were going to be engulfed.

The crisis-ridden Johnson government has been reliant on the backing of the opposition Labour Party to remain in office since the outset of the pandemic. In alliance with the trade unions, they function as a de facto coalition with Johnson. A critical role has been played by both in keeping open schools so that parents are able to be in work churning out profits for big business. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer infamously insisted that schools remain open no ifs, no buts, while National Education Union leader Kevin Courtney regularly issues tirades against any measure that could cause education disruption.

They are now doubling down to ensure that schools open up again in two weeks time after the Christmas holidays, no matter whatdespite them being the main vector for the transmission of COVID. The TES reports that Labours shadow schools minister Stephen Morgan has written to the Department for Education calling for a proper workforce plan for schools in the new year in order to prevent defacto school closures.

Under conditions in which 120 children of all ages are already dead from COVID and one in 20 primary children are infected with the disease, Morgan called for a few useless mitigations as a pretext, declaring, I urge you to ramp up basic Covid protections in schools to minimise ongoing disruption to children's education and keep kids learning together next term. We both agree schools must be open, with real and effective steps to drive down transmission in every community.

Summing up Labours alliance with the Johnson government, Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, despite having to declare a major incident due to COVID cases in the capital on Saturday, told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show Sunday, I think we should be able to celebrate Christmas safely, relegating social distancing, household mixing to something sooner rather than later... were going to have to look at.
In an op-ed commentary posted Friday on the website of the Washington Post, three retired US generals warn that the 2024 presidential election could lead to a political crisis dwarfing that of 2020, and a split by the military into rival camps.

The three retired generalsSteven Anderson, Paul D. Eaton and Antonio M. Tagubaall veterans of the Iraq war and other US military conflicts around the world, declare that the approaching first anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol should be the occasion for considering what could happen if the outcome of the 2024 presidential election is disputed.

Retired US Generals Paul D. Eaton, Antonio M. Taguba, Steven Anderson

They urge the Pentagon to begin preparing now to counteract the potential for lethal chaos inside our military  we are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time. The measures would include stepped-up surveillance of military units to identify potential mutineers.

The three generals, long retired after many decades in the Army, publicly opposed the Trump administration and aligned with the pro-Democratic Party wing of the military-intelligence apparatus.

Eaton, a retired Army major general who had been in charge of training the Iraqi army in the early years of the US occupation, publicly denounced then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2007 and called for his resignation.

Taguba, also a retired Army major general, was forced out of the military after leading the internal investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities in 2004, and issuing a harshly critical report. Anderson is a retired brigadier general who was deputy commander for logistics in Iraq, under General David Petraeus.

The op-ed outlines [t]he potential for a total breakdown of the chain of command along partisan linesfrom the top of the chain to squad level  The idea of rogue units organizing among themselves to support the rightful commander in chief cannot be dismissed.

Imagine competing commanders in chiefa newly reelected Biden giving orders, versus Trump (or another Trumpian figure) issuing orders as the head of a shadow government. Worse, imagine politicians at the state and federal levels illegally installing a losing candidate as president.

The three generals go on to elaborate a worst-case scenario of the internal and global consequences of such a conflict erupting in a divided military.

 with loyalties split, some might follow orders from the rightful commander in chief, while others might follow the Trumpian loser. Arms might not be secured depending on who was overseeing them. Under such a scenario, it is not outlandish to say a military breakdown could lead to civil war.

In this context, with our military hobbled and divided, U.S. security would be crippled. Any one of our enemies could take advantage by launching an all-out assault on our assets or our allies.

Citing the failure to seriously investigate the January 6 insurrection or punish any of its leaders, they call on Congress and the Biden administration to take steps to prepare for the worst.

They conclude, the Defense Department should war-game the next potential post-election insurrection or coup attempt to identify weak spots. It must then conduct a top-down debrief of its findings and begin putting in place safeguards to prevent breakdowns not just in the military, but also in any agency that works hand in hand with the military.

Only two days before the generals commentary, Reuters published a lengthy profile of the group of military officers, retired and in the reserves, who worked with retired general Michael Flynn to devise plans for Trump to overturn the outcome of the 2020 elections.

These included Colonel Phil Waldron, who worked for Flynn in the Defense Intelligence Agency, specializing in psychological warfare; Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Raiklin, a former Special Forces officer in Afghanistan; and Captain Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence officer.

Waldron developed the conception that the 2020 election was rigged using methods he was familiar with from his work in the DIA, a psychological warfare operation by foreign adversaries. This contention became the basis of various outlandish claims about election results being routed through servers in Germany, or altered by Italian satellites, and changed by software built in Venezuela or otherwise manipulated by China.

Raiklin, according to Reuters, was a leading promoter of the Pence card theoryin which Vice President Mike Pence purportedly could have blocked the January 6 certification by Congress of Bidens victory.

Captain Keshel claimed to have developed statistical models that prove the 2020 election results were fraudulent  Keshel in August released an analysis which he claimed showed Trump won seven states that went to Biden. Trump embraced the claim 

According to Reuters, the efforts of the former officers not only triggered renewed calls for audits in all the battleground states, they also provoked threats of violence against election officials, both Republican and Democrat, who defended the election as fairly conducted and the results as accurate.

It has already been widely reported that Waldron helped draft the PowerPoint presentation, titled, Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN, which was delivered to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and briefed to selected Republican congressmen on January 5. Among the slides were recommendations that included, Declare National Security Emergency and Declare electronic voting in all states invalid.

But the Reuters report provides further confirmation of the active role played by former military officerswho clearly had continuing contacts within the Pentagonin the organization and political incitement of the January 6 coup.

The Washington Post published a further column on the likelihood of the outbreak of civil war in the United States, by one of its regular op-ed writers, Dana Millbank, who usually adopts a posture of mocking humor and unseriousness.

In Sundays column, however, Millbank interviewed a political science professor at UC San Diego, and adviser to the CIA on political instability, Barbara F. Walter, who employs the CIAs own methodology for assessing civil conflict and applies it to the United States. Her conclusion, We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.

Millbank gives an excerpt from Walters forthcoming book, to be published in January, titled, How Civil Wars Start .

No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war, she writes. But, if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in Americathe same way youd look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuelayou would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.

The United States is on the verge of open insurgency which would lead to sustained violence as increasingly active extremists launch attacks that involve terrorism and guerrilla warfare, including assassinations and ambushes, the CIA adviser writes, according to Millbank.

Such scenarios are not just the nightmare of one trio of retired generals, or one CIA adviser. Rather, these commentaries are given space in the leading newspaper in the US capital to articulate what is being widely discussed within leading circles in the US ruling elite: that January 6, 2021, far from being a one-off event, is a warning of an impending eruption of violent conflict, in 2024 if not sooner.
Multiple European scientific authorities are warning that official refusal to employ scientific policies to halt the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is leading to disaster. As state authorities across Europe refusing to implement mass stay-at-home orders, the virus is surging, threatening unprecedented levels of infection and death, the total swamping of health systems, and the collapse of critical food and energy infrastructure.

These warnings make clear the necessity of the working class taking decisive action to impose a policy to eliminate the virus and avert a catastrophe. Before the Omicron variant emerged, European Union (EU) officials shrugged off official warnings that 400,000 to 700,000 people could die of COVID-19 this winter in Europethis in addition to the nearly 1.5 million who have already died. Now, scientists are warning that the highly-transmissible, more vaccine-resistant Omicron variant threatens far greater levels of death and social dislocation.

A coronavirus patient breathes with an oxygen mask at a tent hospital for COVID-19 patients in Kakhovka, Ukraine, Sunday, Oct. 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Professor Mahmoud Zureik of the University of Versailles warned that the French governments proposal to possibly make vaccination mandatory, announced Friday by Health Minister Olivier Veran, is insufficient. The measures announced on Friday are very timid, they are not the kind that will make the curve of infections go down, he told the Journal du Dimanche (JDD).

Asked whether the current policy would lead to a paralyzed society where a large part of the population, either infected or suspected of being so, stays home, Zureik replied: That is the main concern currently. In Great Britain, the number of cases due to Omicron is currently doubling in less than two days. The health system risks being under extreme stress, and, beyond hospitals, the demand for tests and for medical visits will be very high.

Zureik warned that such mass infection would lead not only to high levels of death, but the collapse of critical infrastructure. He said, The impact will first be felt on health professionals, with a dilemma: if they are infected and isolate themselves, we will not have enough health staff, but if they stay, they can infect their coworkers and non-Covid patients. Then, the country may be paralyzed if front-line jobs, like supermarket cashiers, cannot be filled.

Zureik added, Currently schools are the main motor of viral transmission in the Western European countries. He cited unprecedented numbers of child hospitalizations in France, 210 just over the last week for children under 9. He called for France to adopt a clear, proactive operational strategy based on working from home, ventilation, control of air quality and mass communication with the public about these challenges.

A similar warning came from the German governments Coronavirus Expert Council yesterday. If the spread of the Omicron variant in Germany continues as it has, a significant part of the population will fall sick and/or will go into quarantine. This would mean that the health system and all the critical infrastructure would be extremely hard hit, its report stated, referring to potential disruptions to health care and energy infrastructure.

The report called for urgent measures to limit social contact, stating: Effective nationwide measures to control infections must be prepared, especially well-planned and clearly-explained measures to limit social contact.

It called for complete and immediate preparation to protect critical infrastructure, as control mechanisms need to be available in the short term to ensure the continuity of key supply chains.

In fact, bitter experience has shown that European governments will continue with murderous policies of mass infection, no matter what the impact on hospitals and on loss of life.

Even before the Omicron wave fully hits continental Europe, health systems are on the verge of collapse after two years of overwork. Dr. Arnaud Chiche told France Televisions: The situation is so dramatic that we do not have enough beds in cardiology or neurology. We are having a hard time getting treatment for people who are suffering from strokes and heart attacks.

Already now, he added, 80 percent of hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients, many emergency services and mobile emergency teams are closed due to a lack of personnel, we are missing beds everywhere, and doctors have a hard time getting patients into hospitals.  There is a feeling in the air like it is February 2020, we are all worried. We have the impression that something very serious is about to happen.

We are all sort of afraid of being overtaken by something very large in terms of the influx of patients. Health care staff will do our best as always, it is our job, and the French people should be reassured about that. But the government is in the wrong, Chiche continued, calling for a great Marshall Plan to help hospitals.

The only way to avert a horrific catastrophe is to allow youth and nonessential workers to shelter at home for a number of weeks to slash infection levels. Once viral transmission is driven far lower, as it was by initial lockdowns in China and Europe in the spring of 2020, contact tracing and the isolation of infected individuals can, together with mass vaccination and other scientific techniques, eliminate transmission of the virus. However, such a policy can be imposed only through a conscious, international mass mobilization of the working class.

It requires massive financial support to workers, the self-employed and small businesses, so they can pass through a lockdown financially unscathed. Moreover, it requires a political struggle to remove from power a ruling aristocracy that has repeatedly shown its contempt for human life, and its determination to keep factories and schools open, no matter the consequences, in order to keep reaping massive profits on the financial markets.

The financial aristocracys arguments, which underlie the policy pursued in London, Berlin, Paris and beyond, were laid out in a fascistic article last week in the Daily Telegraph titled, They may not realise it, but the lockdown skeptics have won the Omicron war.

As daily infections top 90,000 in Britain, the newspaper wrote: If the Government had really been determined to flatten the curve, it would have had to lock us down a week ago. Instead, it opted for a series of pointless half-measures aimed at preparing us psychologically to be locked down, as and when ministers thought it absolutely necessary. This approach has, however, been overtaken by events. The speed of the omicron epidemic is such that we are almost certainly going to get locked down by the virus itself before the Government implements its own version.

The paper called to drive up infection levels until hospitals collapse, so workers are terrorized into staying at home by fear of death. It wrote, Once a certain proportion of the country has the virusa third, saywe will be in effective lockdown even if were not in a legal one, adding: If hospitals start turning away the sick, a spontaneous lockdown will take hold, as people worry the health system is no longer available.

The paper made clear it did not know and did not care how many lives would be lost in such a genocidal experiment. We are about to witness how a Covid wave passes through the population interrupted by our own immunity and personal decisions. The result may not be pretty, the Telegraph admitted. However, it nonetheless endorsed this policy as an opportunity to learn the right lessons about how to manage a wave without resorting to house arrest.

The financial aristocracys misanthropic opposition to any collective effort to save lives and end the pandemic can only be broken by an international working class movement for a scientific policy and for socialism.
On Saturday, French Health Minister Olivier Veran rejected appeals from his own scientific advisers for emergency social restrictions to stop the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. France is posting record infection figures with 1 million active cases of COVID-19 and 50,000 to 65,000 daily infections, and more than 3,000 school classes were closed at the end of last week because of infections of teachers and children.

Shoppers wearing face masks to protect against COVID-19 walk along the Grand Bouvard in Paris, Monday, Dec. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

Nonetheless, Veran opposed any lockdown or shelter-at-home orders limiting social interactions to stop viral transmission, claiming the effectiveness of such measures is too weak. He added, I think that given the speed at which the Omicron variant circulates, limitations on seating arrangements or closings of buildings would not have as significant an impact as what they could have with less contagious variants.

In fact, this contradicted the advice of Frances Scientific Council on COVID-19, which declared that strict social restrictions are the only way to prevent mass infection. Shortly before Veran spoke, it had published an article that effectively admitted the failure of the governments policy of relying only on vaccines to limit deaths from the virus, since the Omicron variant is highly resistant to existing vaccines. It called on the French people to spend Christmas 2021 in small groups, testing yourself beforehand, and make sure the elderly have had their booster [vaccine] doses.

Above all, it stressed the need for public health measures like stay-at-home orders to eliminate transmission of the virus and prevent an uncontrolled spread of Omicron: Given the acceleration of the epidemic, and the risks arising from end-of-year parties, significant social restrictions must be authorized by state authorities during the holiday season (including if necessary in the form of collective limitations on social activity or curfews), potentially with the response adapted to conditions in each region.

The Council stressed its fear that there could emerge a series of Omicron mini-clusters, which could spread very rapidly in the coming days throughout the entire country, given population movements during the holidays.

Against the Scientific Council, Veran advanced the absurd argument that the transmission of the Omicron variant would be extremely fast but would have at most a limited impact. Omicron, if it begins to circulate, will most likely circulate very fast, very strongly, with an extremely violent wave, but it will be very fleeting, he claimed.

As this prediction is already being refuted by the facts, Veran tried to cover himself, arguing: We are always anticipating things and at the same time adapting our response according to the level of the threat. The truth today may not be the truth of tomorrow.

In fact, what Veran claims to be the truth is not the truth, either today or yesterday, much less tomorrow. His claim that the current wave of infections will only have a fleeting impact is directly contradicted by the massive influx of seriously ill patients that is swamping hospitals, as well as by the statements of other government officials.

In a TV interview last Wednesday, aiming to reassure the financial aristocracy that he would pursue social austerity measures in the presidential elections, President Emmanuel Macron admitted: We must always be prudent. We have seen this from the beginning, what sets the rules is the virus. Very probably, between Christmas and New Year, our hospitals will be under enormous pressure.

That same morning, government spokesman Gabriel Attal had made similar points. He indicated that more than 1,700 people were admitted to hospital, including 400 in emergency wards, pressure will continue to mount in the coming weeks. The number of people positive for the virus and hospitalized in emergency rooms, he added, could reach the level of 4,000 people during the holidays.

Against the virus, Attal said the government would bet everything on furnishing a third booster dose: 820,000 booster shots took place yesterday, and the objective of 20 million Frenchmen with a booster dose by Christmas will be met. Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer also said he would favor vaccinating children aged 5 to 11 by the end of the year. Children considered medically vulnerable are already eligible for vaccines starting last week.

This strategy will do nothing to halt the Omicron variant, however, which is vaccine-resistant and responsible for hundreds of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in France. The rising number of infections despite the substantial number of vaccinated people in the country exposes the bankruptcy of Macrons strategy of betting everything on vaccinations. With the Omicron variant more resistant to vaccines and a third vaccine dose not furnishing more than 70 percent effective immunity from the new variant, the health crisis is set to deepen rapidly.

Britain is seeing an explosion of cases driven by the Omicron variant, with 93,045 cases in one day last week, a record since the pandemic began. The propagation of the Omicron variant, according to different models, could lead to 8 million cases in a few weeks. The French government has responded by announcing stepped-up border controls, demanding a PCR test less than 24 hours old from all travelers from the United Kingdom and a mandatory seven-day isolation period, cut to 48 hours if a negative test is done.

Macrons reaction to the pandemic is politically criminal. For almost the entire year, it called for relying only on vaccines, hoping to avoid a broader mobilization of the public to halt the pandemic, and aiming to force youth and nonessential workers to keep going to school and work, pumping out a regular flow of profits to the banks. The virus could circulate, government officials insinuated, but vaccines would keep the danger to the public within acceptable limits.

Now the Macron government is terrified, as Europe faces a fifth surge of cases in the pandemic and the Omicron variant prepares a sixth. More than anything else, the government fears working-class anger against its policy of allowing mass infection.

In an article titled COVID-19: why the government fears the arrival of the Omicron variant, Europe1 reported that inside the government, its panic on every floor or almost. It added, Off the record, one minister did not hide his concerns from Europe1. We are really frightened that this variant will be resistant to vaccines. If that is the case, it can get really terrible with public opinion, declares an influential minister in the government.  Five months from the presidential election, the prospect of seeing this strategy fall apart has Macrons supporters in a cold sweat.

Before the pandemic, Macron faced mass yellow vest protests and strikes against austerity amid an international upsurge of the class struggle against social inequality. European governments decisions to carry out strict lockdowns in March 2020 in France and other European countries was forced on capitalist governments. It was for them the only way to deal with a wave of wildcat strikes that erupted as workers in auto, steel and logistics demanded the right to shelter at home to avoid infection across Europe and also in the United States.

It is now critical to struggle for a European and international mobilization of the working class to impose a scientific policy to eliminate the transmission of COVID-19.
Voting ended Monday night among 1,400 striking Kelloggs workers on a concessions tentative agreement which would end a nearly three-month strike at four cereal plants. The results of the vote are expected to be announced Tuesday.

Kellogg workers in Battle Creek, Michigan (Source: BCTGM)

While the main demand of workers is an end to the hated two-tier wage structure, under which transitional employees make substantially less than legacy workers, the new deal brokered by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International (BCTGM) not only continues but expands it, eliminating caps on the number of transitionals the company can hire at each plant. The deal also contains paltry three percent wage increases.

In fact, the deal is virtually identical to a tentative agreement (TA) which workers voted down by an overwhelming margin three weeks ago. In response, Kelloggs threatened to retaliate by firing workers en masse and replacing them, triggering outrage from workers and supporters of the strike across the world, and prompting a nervous intervention by the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, clearly eager to avoid provoking a too direct and open confrontation with the working class.

A leaked internal Kelloggs management email lays out the companys reliance on the union to push through the deal. We are confident this will pass, the email states, because most of the unions negotiating committee is for this and plans to recommend it. It concluded by urging managers to maintain a careful silence about the deal in public, in order to allow the union space to pass the deal.

The endorsement from the bargaining committee is a shift from the previous TA, where, in an attempt to save face, the committee remained officially neutral despite bringing the deal to a vote. Workers tell the World Socialist Web Site that several bargaining committee members have flipped and are now pushing for the deals approval.

The union is attempting to ram the deal through with a campaign of internet censorship, archiving several Facebook groups used by over a thousand workers in order to prevent them from making critical posts or freely discuss the contract with their coworkers.

Yep, we need to get that (email) everywhere, especially the other 3 plants, one legacy worker said. It wasnt seen because the other private union sites pretty much blocked us all. So [the] only message they saw was what the company said and the bullsh*t sellout leadership showed them.

In a statement last week, the World Socialist Web Site described the methods used by the BCTGM to break the strike as the John Deere Maneuver after the almost identical methods used by the United Auto Workers union to end a month-long strike at the agricultural equipment manufacturer with a rotten deal which workers had already voted to reject.

This three-part maneuver involves: 1) the isolation of workers on the picket line and starving them out on $105 in strike pay (supplemented with an insulting $200 gift announced last week by the union); 2) rushing through the vote while seeking to block all channels of communication for workers to discuss the contract; and 3) wearing workers down by making them vote on virtually the same deal again and again, under opaque voting procedures leaving the bureaucracy ample room to stuff the ballot box if needed.

Another critical element of the UAWs strategy that the BCTGM is also copying is dividing workers up by plant, seeking to isolate the more militant plants from the less militant. The Kelloggs plant in Battle Creek, which is under threat of further job cuts, is the main center of opposition to the deal, and even now the sentiment among workers there is such that the local union officials have felt unable to openly campaign in favor.

Instead, they are attempting to convince Battle Creek workers that other plants are likely to cave, rendering their opposition moot. Workers at Battle Creek have reported to the WSWS that they have been told as much repeatedly by local officials. Whether or not it is true that opposition is significantly less entrenched at the Memphis, Omaha and Lancaster plants, and this is difficult to confirm given that their respective Facebook pages have been shut down, the purpose of claiming this is to discourage opposition and attempt to erode the no margin at Battle Creek to the point where a narrow vote in favor at the other plants would be sufficient to pass the contract. This is how the deal at John Deere was ultimately rammed through.

Similar methods were also used by the UAW and the United Steelworkers union during a contract vote at auto parts maker Dana Inc. this August. Workers were told repeatedly by union officials that their no votes would be canceled out by yes votes at other plants. But instead, these other plants themselves turned out to be massive centers of opposition, and one plant in Toledo, Ohio even voted down the contract unanimously.

Regardless of whether or not the contract is declared ratified or not on Tuesday, the entire process itself is a sham from start to finish. The leaked management email itself should be enough to prove that any contract negotiated under such conditions should be considered null and void.

In the event that the contract passes, management and the BCTGM have set a return-to-work date for next Monday, December 27. Given the extremely rapid rise in COVID cases throughout the Northeast and Midwest, driven by the spread of the hyper-infectious Omicron variant, this would mean that they would be sending workers into virtual death traps, where hundreds could potentially become infected.

In Calhoun County, where Battle Creek is located, cases have been steadily rising since the summer, and the seven-day moving average reached 162 earlier this month. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the seven-day average has risen to 338; in Douglas County, Nebraska, 258 and in Shelby County, Tennessee, where the Memphis plant is located, cases are beginning to rise again.

Throughout the pandemic, at least 13,776 food processing workers in the United States have been infected and 61 have died, according to the Food and Environment Reporting Network.

Regardless of the end result of the contract vote, a yes vote would only mean the struggle continues in a new form. The entire experience shows that workers need new organizations. Workers must take the struggle out of the hands of the BCTGM by forming rank-and-file strike committees and connect not only on a plant-by-plant basis but with their coworkers internationally.
On December 15, 2021, William Domitrovitsch Jr., a worker at Mack Trucks in Macungie, Pennsylvania for over five years, passed away. According to unofficial sources inside of Mack Trucks, Domitrovitschs cause of death was COVID-19.

Mack Truck Macungie Plant

The info was spread around pretty far that he was out with COVID, said a worker inside the plant. He was forced to work Buck Week [a traditional off-week for hunting enthusiasts] and went out with an ear ache, then it was posted on our local page that he had passed.

Born October 1961, Domitrovitsch was known to family, friends, and coworkers as Willie Dee. He leaves behind an elderly mother, sister, son and several nieces and nephews, according to an obituary.

The Macungie Mack plant has seen a staggering rise in cases over the past couple months, predominantly from the Delta variant. According to the latest memo issued by Mack Trucks and the UAW, 27 workers tested positive at the facility from December 13 to December 17. The week prior saw 24 positive tests. In total, 562 workers had or have had COVID-19 out of a workforce of just over 2,000. Given the low level of testing across the country, this is likely an undercount.

Domitrovitschs death was wholly preventable, and the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of Mack Trucks and the United Auto Workers union. Both the union and the company have regularly worked to conceal the impact of the pandemic and its victims, rejecting any serious efforts to keep workers safe.

I just feel bad that he wont be able to retire, and he wont be able to enjoy his family anymore, said a Mack Trucks worker to the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter. The worker denounced the UAW, which hadnt put one word or one memo out about Domitrovitsch of the dangers of COVID-19 and the new Omicron variant.

Mack Trucks has reported stellar results in its sales this year, according to an October report in the Pennsylvania-based WFMZ. The article noted, Macks order intake increased 181% to 13,583 from 4,840 in the third quarter of 2020. Order intake for the first nine months was 30,801, an increase of 167% from 11,557 orders in 2020.

In a statement reinforcing the profit-over-lives policy of the ruling class, Gunnar Brunius, vice president and general manager of Mack Trucks Lehigh Valley Operations, hypocritically claimed the companys commitment to providing you [Mack workers] with a safe work environment. In the same breath, Brunius declared Macks plans to increase production in 2022.  [w]e all need to work together to make sure delivering trucks to our customers is our top priority. In other words, the priority is to save corporate profits, not the lives of Mack workers.

This has all come at a cost. Mack workers have told the WSWS that the UAW and management are tight-lipped when workers ask who has been infected or why their coworkers have disappeared for weeks. UAW Local 677s secretary expressed surprise and admitted not even knowing about Domitrovitschs death when contacted by the WSWS. No statement has been forthcoming from the local.

Theres no way anyone can make the argument that he could not have been infected at Mack, said a worker. When were running, were in there for 40 hours a week with no protections in place.  How many more of us have to get sick or die? This is just totally unacceptable, he said.

With the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, cases will continue to explode at workplaces around the state, country and globe. In Pennsylvania, one of the hardest hit states in the Northeast with confirmed Omicron community spread, cases have surged. In the past two weeks cases have increased by 52 percent and hospitalizations by 21 percent.

In Lehigh County, the location of Mack Trucks, the 7-day case average is about equal to last year, before Omicron established its grip in the county. Last year on December 18, the 7-day average was 297, and new cases stood at 233. On December 18 of this year, the 7-day average is 293, and new cases reached 344.

The UAW has done little to combat the spread of COVID-19 at Mack Trucks or in the auto industry. Cases have surged in Michigan, the center of the auto industry, after the UAW co-stamped a return to work last year. The auto industry and K-12 public schools have been at the center of the recent COVID-19 surge which has made Michigan the COVID-19 epicenter of the US.

The endless coverups and collusion between the union and management came to a head at Macungie last summer during the months-long Volvo Trucks strike in Virginias New River Valley. The UAW forced Mack Truck workers to stay put while it tried to isolate the 3,000 Volvo workers. The strike was so powerful however that it halted production at Mack, which handles products often from the NRV plant.

Shortly afterward, workers at Macungie formed the Mack Workers Rank -and-File Committee to break the UAWs isolation tactics. Since its founding, the MWRFC has been the only voice of workers at the Macungie facility speaking on behalf of worker safety in the pandemic.

In August, the MWRFC published a statement calling for COVID-19 protections as Delta variant cases climbed. To keep us safe, further measures need to be instituted immediately, and we need to be the ones to bring them about, the statement noted. The MWRFC called for conditions to allow for safe working distance between each worker and have a line run at the speed needed to achieve that. If we cannot do our jobs safely, then workers must stop the line.

Domitrovitschs death underscores the necessity for workers to demand safety measures such masking, COVID-19 testing and, if necessary, the complete shutdown of the facility with full pay for workers allocated from the billions in profits made by Mack-Volvo off the labor of the entire workforce.

The most dangerous thought in there is that it has to be the way it is, said a Mack Truck worker. If the blame of Willies death can be pinned on Willie by the company or union, then what is to prevent them from doing the same if it happens to one of us?

The Mack Workers Rank-and-File Committee encourages all fellow Mack Trucks workers to write in to join the committee or text 717-739-9517.
A bill has passed the Michigan state legislature which would allow any school district employee with a high school diploma or equivalent to act as a substitute teacher through June 30, 2022. It now requires the signature of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, to become law.

Detroit school buses ((Image Credit Flickr/ohnPickenPhoto)

If Whitmer signs it, substitute teachers across the state will no longer be required to have a teaching certificate, nor a 2-year, 60-credit Associates Degree from a college or university, nor any personal knowledge or experience whatsoever in the subjects they are teaching.

The State Senate passed the bill by a margin of 2313, with the yes votes of 19 Republican senators and 4 Democrats.

While clearly representing an attack on the right to high-quality public education, the legislation is most of all a blatant attempt to undermine teachers recent successful efforts to force the closure of schools to stop the spread of COVID-19, a situation which superintendents and state officials now refer to dishonestly as a teacher shortage.

Notwithstanding official efforts to downplay the danger of the virus and pretend the pandemic is nearly over, Michigan is in the midst of its second Winter of Death. For the past two weeks, Michiganders have been dying from COVID-19 at a rate of more than 100 per day, in a state with a population of just under 10 million.

On December 3, Michigan hit an all-time high of 11,186 daily new COVID-19 cases, exceeding the peaks reached either last winter, before vaccines had been developed, or in the spring when the more-contagious B.1.1.7 variant exploded in the state. Now, the even more contagious Omicron variant is spreading in Michigan and surging around the world. This variant has developed new properties in its spike protein which lets it infect people who have had two or even three vaccine shots.

Last the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) recorded 11 new deaths from COVID-19 among those age 19 and under. In Michigan, 29 children have now died from the disease since it first emerged.

Under these conditions growing numbers of teachers in Michigan and across the US have refused to go in. Several districts were forced to extend the Thanksgiving break, which predictably resulted in an immediate reduction in the daily new case rate in Michigan. Other districts have reverted at least partially to virtual learning.

The bill on Whitmers desk would empower districts to keep schools open in the face of such teacher opposition by essentially transforming other school staff into strike-breakers.

According to the legislation, any school district employee with a high school diploma will be allowed to serve as a substitute teacher. Whitehall District Schools Superintendent Jerry McDowell told the Detroit Free Press that bus drivers could teach in between their morning and afternoon routes!

This would represent the complete transformation of schools from institutions of learning into nothing more or less than holding pens for working class youth and cesspits of infection and community spread of SARS-CoV-2.

While introduced by Republicans, the bill is entirely in line with the policy of the Biden administration, wholike Trump before him, and like governments around the worldplaces the capitalist right to profit above not just public education and mental health, but above workers very lives, by intentionally allowing the virus to spread, kill, mutate and reinfect the population indefinitely. During the pandemic millions have died, but billionaire wealth has skyrocketed.

The bill shows decisively that the policy of keeping schools open amid a raging pandemic is motivated not by a desire to prevent learning loss, let alone to protect the mental health of children, as is cynically claimed by school boards and the pro-corporate unions like the American Federation of Teachers. How could children possibly learn with no teachers, and their spirits thrive amid mass infection and death?

In Michigan in particular, schools have frequently been the source of the absolute majority of recorded COVID-19 outbreaks in the state. It is a fact that the daily new case rate in Michigan has never decreased except when schools have been closed.

As scientists have explained, schools are perfect environments for community spread of an aerosolized virus like SARS-CoV-2, which is transmitted not just through moisture droplets that fall to the ground, but which also hangs in the air for hours like cigarette smoke. In-person learning requires that teachers and students from different households across the community gather in small, badly-ventilated classrooms all day and exchange contaminated air with one another, before returning home to exchange air with their families, who in turn go to different workplaces or schools and repeat the cycle. This process circulates COVID-19 throughout the community.

Along with workplaces, schools are central battlegrounds in the fight to eliminate COVID-19 and end the pandemic. This is because, on the one hand, capitalists must keep schools open in order to keep working-class parents at work; and on the other, schools are a key source of community spread, and therefore must be closed as a part of any scientific plan to end the pandemic.
Recently released documents, including minutes of Israels provisional government meetings in 1948, throw fresh light on the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948-49, when around two-thirds of Palestinians living in what is now Israel were driven from their homes.

An investigation by Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, published in Haaretz, produces incontrovertible evidence that the conquest of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants during the Arab-Israeli war were achieved by criminal actions amounting to ethnic cleansing. Israels leaders knew this, with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion opposing demands for a full investigation with the power to subpoena witnesses and the crimes swept under the carpet.

Israeli Prime Minister (right) David Ben-Gurion and US President Harry S. Truman (left) in 1951 (Credit: Public Domain)

The Akevot report reveals that testimonies about several massacres of Palestinians and war crimes committed by Israeli military forces during the 1948-49 war were presented to the cabinet in 1948.

The report refutes the governments lying claims that the Palestinians fled of their own accord, or due to the incitement of their leaders. Its public relations machine worked long and hard to portray Israel as a country built on empty, neglected or uninhabited land. Censorship was used to ensure that any evidence challenging such a view was suppressed and any criticism denounced as anti-Semitism. That censorship continues more than seven decades later.

This was bound up with suppressing the fact that the establishment of the state of Israel as a Jewish State, in a country where Jews constituted just one-third of the population, necessitated the forcible dispossession of the Palestinian inhabitants and can only be maintained through constant repression.

According to a 1947 British census, the population of Palestine was 1,157,000 Palestinian Muslims, 146,000 Christians, and 580,000 Jews. Two years later, only about 200,000 Palestinians remained in the parts of Palestine that became Israel. Those that left were to become permanent refugees, scattered in neighbouring countries.

In 2019, the United Nations estimated there were some 5.6 million Palestinian refugees, including those expelled following the 1948-49 Arab Israeli war and the June 1967 war or their descendants, as well as others who have since been expelled from the Occupied Territories or Israel. Denied the right of return to their homes, most have been forced to eke out a wretched existence in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Many now live elsewhere in the Middle East, while others have moved to the West.

Palestine refugees "Making their way from Galilee in October-November 1948" (Creative Commons public domain)

The takeover of Palestinian-owned land was even more dramatic: in 1946, Jews had owned less than 12 percent of the land in what became Israel; this rose to 77 percent after the 1948-49 war.

As Professor Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, explained in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, this process began, not as Israel likes to maintain and is generally believed, after the Arab armies attacked Israel in May 1948, but almost immediately after the UN vote for partition. A UN resolution that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbour should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date passed in December 1948, and annually re-affirmed, confirms this.

In the months up to the end of the British Mandate in May 1948, more than 375,000 Palestinian became refugees, driven out by a combination of force, atrocities and a campaign of terror. Several thousand were killed and many more injured.

One of the most notorious incidents was the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when between 117 and 250 men, women and children were murdered by the terrorist Irgun Group led Menachem Begin, who would become prime minister in 1977. The Irgun went from house to house to drive out Palestinians.

Menahem Begin during one of his public speeches in Tel Aviv, August 14, 1948 (Credit: Public Domain)

As Israeli historian Benny Morris, who used archival material to document some 24 massacres in his ground-breaking 1988 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem:1947-1949, makes clear, this was far from being a random act of terrorism by an out of control group. The Hagana, forerunner of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), aided and participated in the massacre that was part of a broader Zionist plan to systematically empty Palestine of its Arab population. The sheer brutality of Deir Yassin was, Morris explains, one of the most important factors in precipitating the flight of Arab villagers from Palestine.

The latest revelations of ethnic cleansing

The Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Researchs investigation adds further evidence of Israels ethnic cleansing and subsequent cover up. In the last weeks of October 1948, the Hagana launched two large-scale operations. The first was Operation Yoav, designed to open the road to and take control of the whole of the Negev in the south. On October 29, soldiers from the 8th Brigade massacred between 100 and 120 Palestinians in the village of al-Dawayima.

A soldier who witnessed the events explained, There was no battle and no resistance. The first conquerors killed 80 to 100 Arab men, women and children. The children were killed by smashing their skulls with sticks. There wasnt a house without people killed in it.

According to the United Nations Refugee Relief Project, the Gaza Strips refugee population rose from 100,000 to 230,000, as a result of the operation.

The second, Operation Hiram, was designed to conquer Galilee in the north, where 120,000 Palestinians were still living, half the number in November 1947, as well as 14 villages in southern Lebanon. Within a couple of days, Israeli forces defeated the Arab Salvation Army made up of volunteers from Arab countries, overran dozens of Arab villages and took control of Galilee and part of southern Lebanon. They carried out ten massacres of civilians and captured Arab soldiers, causing the flight of all but 30,000 villagers by the end of the operation.

One of the most egregious incidents was the massacre on two successive days of 18 and 15 of the 60 residents of Hula that had remained and surrendered without resistance at the end of October. In Saliha, soldiers executed between 60 and 80 inhabitants by driving them into a building and then blowing it up. In Safsaf, where dozens of residents were butchered, one testimony stated, Fifty-two men were caught, tied them to one another, dug a pit and shot them. Ten were still twitching. Women came, begged for mercy. Found bodies of 6 elderly men. There were 61 bodies. 3 cases of rape.

The governments systematic cover-up of ethnic cleansing

Days after these events, the cabinet decided to appoint a committee of three ministers to investigate the massacres, but without the power to subpoena witnesses. With soldiers maintaining a code of silence and refusing to give evidence, it was almost impossible to get testimonials. One week later, Ben-Gurion called it off, saying, Since the committee did not fulfill the role it was tasked with, it is hereby abolished.

Ben-Gurion then called on the attorney general to investigate, and while he brought the main points of the report to the cabinet, as the newly released minutes of the meeting show, the report itself remains classified to this day.

David Ben Gurion (right) visits 101 First Fighter Squadron. August 17, 1948 (Credit: Public Domain)

The only person to be charged with murder in Operation Hiram was Shmuel Lahis, the company commander, who shot 15 Arabs. Sentenced to seven years imprisonment, later reduced on appeal to one year, he was pardoned on his release by Israels president and 30 years later became the director general of the Jewish Agency whose mission is to promote the immigration of Jews to Israel. No one was charged with the massacre at al-Dawayima.

This was not unique. A parliamentary report some six months later referred to an officer who during the fighting had ordered the murder of four wounded individuals, a crime for which he served a six-month prison sentence, while someone who had sold stolen army equipment was sentenced to three years in prison. One month after the war ended, the government issued a retroactive general pardon for any crimes committed during the war.

As part of the governments cover-up of its crimes against the Palestinians, it has systematically hidden evidence of its expulsion of villagers. As Israeli journalist Hagar Shezaf explained in Haaretz, teams from the Defense Ministrys Malmab, its secretive security department, whose activities and budget are classified, have scoured Israels archives and removed historic documents relating not only to Israels nuclear project and relations with foreign governments but also evidence of the Nakba.

Malmab removed documentation from archives illegally and without authority, in some cases even sealing documents that the military censor had previously cleared for publication, or which had already been published, as in the case of Benny Morris. In some instances, Malmab even threatened the archives directors. In one case, when Akhivot found a crucial document in the United Kibbutz Archive, the military censor refused permission to publish it.

A former head of Malmab, Yehiel Horev, admitted he had launched the project to conceal the 1948 atrocities to prevent unrest among the countrys Arab population. Asked why documents that had already been published about the origin of the refugee problem were being removed or were in open and accessible archives but could not be published, he explained that this was to undermine the credibility of studies about the history of the refugee problem since any allegations could not be substantiated by referring to the source document.

A few years ago, Akhivot found a copy of an Israeli report with the fraudulent title The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine, which Morris had earlier cited and Malmab had censored, but the military censors had authorised for publication. Despite its anodyne title, its contents contradicted the official narrative that Arab politicians had encouraged people to leave their homes and ranked the reasons for their departure in order of importance as:

Direct Jewish acts of hostility against Arab places of settlement.

Their impact on neighbouring villages.

Operations by the breakaways, meaning the Irgun and Lehi groups, whose political wing, the Herut Party, was the forerunner of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahus Likud Party. The report noted that many in the villages of central Galilee started to flee following the abduction of the notables of Sheikh Muwannis [a village north of Tel Aviv]. The Ashinrab learned that it is not enough to forge an agreement with the Haganah and that there are other Jews [i.e., the breakaway militias] to beware of.

Orders issued by Arab institutions and gangs, the term used to denote all the Arab fighting groups.

Jewish whispering operations to induce the Arab inhabitants to flee and;

Evacuation ultimatums including loudspeakers using the Arabic language, particularly in central Galilee.

The reports author insisted that without a doubt, the hostile operations were the main cause of the movement of the population and listed the specific causes of the exodus from each of scores of Arab villages.

Under Netanyahu, the Defence Ministry repeatedly extended the confidentiality period for the oldest documents in the Shin Bet and Mossad archives, Israels domestic and external spying agencies respectively. In February 2019, it was extended again to 90 years. The IDFs archive, which is according to Akhivot the largest in Israel, is sealed almost hermetically. About 1 percent of the material is open.

Benjamin Netanyahu [Photo: Office of the Israeli Prime Minister]

That these crimes and their cover-up by successive generations of Israeli politicians are being exposed points to the opposition developing against Israels growing embrace of apartheid and support for some of worlds most authoritarian and fascistic regimes. This comes amid a resurgence of the international class struggle and mounting revulsion towards the political disaster created by capitalism, endless wars to assert US hegemony in the resource-rich Middle East, insecurity, poverty, climate change, and now the pandemic, driving the desire for historical truth.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday that the Omicron variant now accounts for 73 percent of all new coronavirus cases in the US, establishing it as the dominant strain in the country.

States and cities are being overwhelmed by new cases, with the largest number reported in New York state, over 23,000 new infections, a single-day pandemic high. The number of cases is higher than even during the deadly days of spring 2020, when New York City was the epicenter of the world pandemic and bodies were stacked up in freezer trailers for lack of time and space to bury them.

Puseletso Lesofi prepares to sequence COVID-19 omicron samples at the Ndlovu Research Center in Elandsdoorn, South Africa Wednesday Dec. 8, 2021. The centre ls part of the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa, which discovered the omicron variant. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

It has been 42 days since the first detected case of Omicron was sequenced in Botswana and 26 days since the World Health Organization alerted the world to the dangers posed by the new highly transmissible variant B.1.1529, which it named Omicron. Early estimates placed the doubling time at around two days.

On December 1, 2021, the University of California, San Francisco, reported that a man returning from South Africa on November 22 tested positive for infection with Omicron on November 29. By the week ending December 11, health officials estimated that circulating Omicron across the country had risen to 12.6 percent. This number has jumped six-fold in only a week.

With the holiday season upon the country, the number of people flying has doubled from a year ago and there is no indication that things will slow down as the restrictions being implemented are rhetorical in nature and will do little to halt the rapid trajectory of the new variant. More than two million people are transiting through airports each day according to the Transportation Security Administration.

Outgoing NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, speaking with CNN host Anderson Cooper on Friday, explained that he expects daily infections to reach a million new cases. The big question is, he posited, are those million cases going to be sick enough to need health care and especially hospitalizations?

In recent studies by the Imperial College, London, titled reports 48 and 49, the authors found that vaccine effectiveness for Omicron dropped by 4.5-fold compared to Delta. They also confirmed the new variants explosive exponential growth and wrote, we find no evidence (for both risks of hospitalization attendance and symptom status) of Omicron having different severity from Delta, though data on hospitalization are still very limited.

Lead author Neil Ferguson warned, This study provides further evidence of the very substantial extent to which Omicron can evade prior immunity given by both infections or vaccination. This level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health.

Indeed, if upwards of one million cases of Omicron infections are expected each day, is the health care system prepared for such an onslaught?

The answer is was provided in a recent letter dated December 14, 2021, to Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee and the director of the states Department of Health, Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott. Dr. Nadine T. Himelfarb, an emergency medicine physician in Providence, Rhode Island, and president of the Rhode Island Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, began with the following words: I write to you on behalf of a community in distress.

She explained, We are, one could say, the canary in the coalmine of healthcare, and our state healthcare system is currently collapsing.

Dr. Himmelfarb added, Right now, in Rhode Island, citizens cannot consistently receive the standard of care of emergency medicine. In fact, in every hospital in the state, they are often receiving care that previously we would equate to what one would receive in an underdeveloped country: rationing resources, unable to provide privacy, and certainly unable to provide any COVID19 isolation precautions. This is the care lucky patients receive [emphasis added] .

The scenes Dr. Himmelfarb describes are reminiscent of the frontline wartime scenario where medics have to decide who they will save and who will have to die: These nightmare scenarios have come true, in multiple departments across the state, in the past few weeks. Imagine patients dying while waiting to be seen by a doctor who is 50 feet away and, because of lack of staff and thus capacity, simply unable to treat them.

Statewide, she notes, 25 to 50 percent of nursing positions are vacant. These sobering statistics even predate the pandemic. Additional missing roles include secretaries, radiologists and laboratory technicians. A nurse or doctor is only as good as the ability for the entire health system to function cohesively. Deficiencies at every level of this throughput chain have resulted in a complete gridlock of our state healthcare system  Although COVID-19 may not be the immediate cause of the current capacity crisis, any surges from COVID-19 are unmanageable under current conditions.

COVID-19 infections across Rhode Island have risen exponentially and are the highest across the country on a per capita basis. These seven-day averages now exceed more than 1,000 infections per 100,000 in a state which boasts one of the most fully vaccinated populations, with 75.5 percent having received two doses and 86.6 percent at least one dose. This raises the fundamental question of the effectiveness of a vaccine-only strategy out of this pandemic.

Emergency departments are at the forefront of any mass casualties or outbreaks of infectious diseases. Strains and deficits in any health care systems ability to respond to these casualties are funneled into emergency departments, where they are amplified.

Two years of the pandemic have only accelerated the collapse of the health care systems in the United States. Delta has taken a massive toll recently across the upper Midwest and Northeast.

In Pennsylvania, where cases have continued their surge since the beginning of autumn, hospitals are at capacity, and the staff is stretched thin and exhausted by the deluge of patients.

As the state now faces the spread of the Omicron variant, a quarter of the state has few or no ICU capacity left, and two-thirds of hospitals lack any more bed capacity. More than 4,600 COVID hospitalizations were reported to the health department by Friday. The daily death rate is now above 100.

On Sunday in Ohio, where the Delta surge is pushing infections to 10,000 a day, soon to outpace last winters deadly wave, 4,675 Ohioans were hospitalized and 1,176 were in ICUs, according to the states hospital association. The daily death toll is approaching 100, the highest during the pandemic.

Along with these ongoing developments in the pandemic in the US, the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium out of the University of Texas at Austin, on December 16, 2021, projected that if measures are not taken to slow the spread of Omicron, the country would see the most significant health care surge to date by the beginning of February 2022.

In this extreme scenario, we project a wave that peaks on February 2, 2022, with cases, hospital admissions, and deaths reaching levels that are 2.2, 1.8, and 1.2 times higher than the January 2021 peak. Cases are expected to reach one-half million per day and over 30,000 daily hospitalizations.

The Biden administration is responding to this catastrophe with complete callousness. White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients, at the December 17, 2021, press briefing, declared, We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated. Youve done the right thing, and we will get through this. For the unvaccinated, youre looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm .

Such a characterization is patently false as the blame for the skyrocketing toll of the pandemic is not on the unvaccinated but on the policies set in place early in the pandemic by the Republicans and observed by the Democrats. The Biden administration, as much as Trumps, are culpable for the mass death that has befallen the population that has seen one in every 100 elderly persons (one in 400 in the general population) die from the virus.

And rather than employing efforts to end the pandemic through bolstering public health capacities, the Biden administration has insisted on a vaccine-only strategy which keeps schools and businesses open to ensure the flow of profits to the capitalist class. This is the policy of nearly all capitalist governments around the world: normalization of death and putting profits over human lives.

A Zero COVID strategy, shown to viable and effective in China, would have saved millions of lives already. It still is required to shut down the pandemic and eliminate COVID-19, before SARS-CoV-2 evolves into even more terrible forms that Delta and Omicron.
The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is now the dominant strain in the US, according to a statement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday. Omicron accounts for 73 percent of new infections, a staggering six-fold increase in only one week. In some parts of the country, including New York City, the variant already accounts for more than 90 percent of new cases.

President Joe Biden speaks as he meets with members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Amidst this massive surge in cases, US President Joe Biden is going on national television today to outline the administrations response. His message will be clear: There will be no measures, outside of vaccination, to stop the spread of the virus.

The principal preoccupation in the White House right now is the potential impact of the Omicron surge on Wall Street share values. On Monday, the major indices fell by about 1.2 percent, on concerns that the spread of infections throughout Europe and the United States will compel lockdowns, hamper travel and put a dent in Christmas shopping. Two weeks after insisting that there will be no lockdowns in response to Omicron, Bidens task is to reassure the corporate and financial oligarchy that there will be no shift in policy.

We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated, stated White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients last Friday, in a preview of Bidens remarks. For the unvaccinated, youre looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.

A report in CNN on Saturday recounted discussions among administration officials on the necessity to begin discussing publicly how to live alongside a virus that shows no signs of disappearing, a potentially stark shift in messaging for a White House that once touted freedom from the virus.

Were getting to the point now where  its about severity, said Xavier Becerra, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, in a meeting with reporters last week. Its not about cases. Its about severity.

Becerras statement is a declaration that there will no longer be any pretense of ending the pandemic. What has been the de facto policy of the ruling classthat COVID-19 must be allowed to become endemicis now being openly proclaimed. The aim of official policy is not to prevent infection but to promote vaccination on the grounds that it will make infections less severe.

There are a series of blatant lies and misinformation in this messaging.

First, there is no basis to the claim that the infection of individuals who are vaccinated will be mild. Initial data indicates, at best, that existing vaccines will help in reducing the percentage of those infected who are hospitalized and die. However, the sheer scale of infections from Omicron will mean a massive surge in severe illness, including among the vaccinated.

Every infection carries the risk of disastrous consequences. A study published last week in the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA) found that 15 percent of hospital admissions are breakthrough cases (of those who have been vaccinated), and this is before the emergence of the Omicron variant, which is more resistant to vaccines. A separate study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, also published last week, reported that 69 percent of breakthrough cases are among people aged 65 and older, again before the emergence of the Omicron variant.

A staggering 1 out of every 100 Americans over the age of 65, or approximately 600,000 people, have died of COVID-19 over the past two years in what amounts to a war against the elderly. The uncontrolled spread of the Omicron variant means that countless thousands more will suffer debilitating illness and death. The data that does exist, moreover, indicates that cases of Long COVIDwith prolonged symptoms and cognitive impactsare just as common in those with less severe cases, including in breakthrough cases among vaccinated people.

Second, among the most alarming aspects of the Omicron variant is the surge in hospitalizations in both South Africa and the UK of infants, for whom there is no available vaccine. Infant hospitalizations in the UK, where the new variant has been spreading for weeks, increased by 39 percent last week, to 196, the highest level since the pandemic began.

As of December 5, only 16.7 percent of children in the United States between the ages of 5 and 11 had received at least one dose of the vaccine, and no infants under the age of 5 are vaccinated.

The CDC reported last week that at least 1,000 children under 18 have died from COVID-19, including 319 infants under the age of 5. Half of these deaths have occurred within the last four monthsthe product of the criminally reckless reopening of schools to in-person learning. And this is prior to the impact of the Omicron variant.

Zients declaration that the unvaccinated face a winter of severe illness and death is a statement that unvaccinated young children and infants will be hospitalized and killed in record numbers. Children, moreover, are not only potential victims of the virus but also vectors of transmission to their parents, teachers and the community as a whole.

Third, the ability of the Omicron variant to evade vaccines means that to be fully vaccinated requires that one have a third shot, or a booster. Vaccine effectiveness with just two shots is insufficient to protect against infection from Omicron, particularly if the second dose was administered more than six months ago.

However, only 18 percent of the US population have been boosted. Even if the number of people who are boosted rises in the coming days, it takes several weeks for the booster to increase immunity, and millions of people will be infected with the Omicron variant before this happens.

Fourth, the callous indifference to the lives of millions of people in the United States who are not fully vaccinated (about 27 percent of the population over the age of 18) is aimed at blaming individual negligence for the spread of COVID-19 and deflecting responsibility from the ruling class and its political institutions.

Why is it that a substantial portion of the population in the US is unvaccinated, or not fully vaccinated? One cannot believe that millions of adults want to die or want their children to die because they have not received a vaccine.

The fact is that for two years, the population has been subject to an unrelenting campaign of misinformation and propaganda. The severity of the pandemic has been continuously misrepresented in the media, replaced with happy talk about light at the end of the tunnel. Only five months ago, Biden proclaimed that the US was declaring its independence from the virus, and that the population could go back to life as normal.

Moreover, a significant faction of the ruling classled the Trump and the fascistic righthas promoted from the beginning a policy of mass infection or herd immunity, opposing even the most inadequate mitigation measures, such as mask mandates. Vaccine skepticism and hostility to the wearing of masks have been deliberately promoted, feeding on the consequences of the prolonged campaign of the ruling elites to promote backwardness, anti-scientific conceptions and noxious individualism.

Finally, the emergence of the Omicron variant itself is a devastating exposure of the vaccine-only strategy. The evolution of a more transmissible and vaccine-resistant variant is the outcome of the decision not to stop the spread of the virus through aggressive public health measures, coordinated on a global scale.

Scientists, as well as the World Socialist Web Site, have warned for months that exclusive reliance on the vaccine alone would inevitably produce precisely such a catastrophe. And Omicron will not be the last variant of COVID-19. So long as the virus is allowed to spread, there will be the constant danger of the evolution of new, more dangerous strains.

The ruling class is well aware that the statements they are making and the activities they are encouraging will lead to mass infection and death. The fact that officials in the city of New York, currently an epicenter for the spread of Omicron in the US, are even talking about whether to hold a massive New Years celebration in Times Square this year exemplifies the criminal level of irresponsibility and recklessness that pervades the entire political establishment.

The policies necessary to stop the pandemic and eliminate the virus are also understood. It requires the shutdown of nonessential production and in-person learning, mass testing and contact tracing, in addition to universal vaccination and other mitigation measures. This policy has been implemented successfully in China, where the number of deaths from the beginning of the pandemic has been limited to less than 5,000, and the population has, for most of the past two years, been able to live normal lives.

An elimination strategy has been rejected in all the major capitalist countries, however, for one reason: The necessary measures would undermine the interests of the ruling class and threaten to implode the massive speculative bubble on Wall Street and other financial markets, fueled by unlimited sums of money from the Federal Reserve and central banks.

As the United States and the world enter the third year of the pandemic, facing a massive surge in cases produced by the Omicron variant, it is clearer than ever that the fight against the pandemic is not simply a medical issue. It requires the development of a mass social and political movement, rooted in the working class, to demand and enforce the emergency measures to stop the pandemic once and for all.

The fight for a policy of global elimination and eradication, necessary to save countless thousands of lives, is of necessity at the same time a fight against the ruling class and the entire capitalist system.
As the more contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads rapidly across Europe, cases are rising exponentially in Spain. Average daily infections have more than quintupled in a month.

On Friday, Spain reported 33,359 new COVID-19 cases, the highest single-day total since the height of the fourth wave in mid-July (excluding Mondays, when cases from the weekend are also announced). On Thursday, Madrid alone saw infection numbers increase by around 6,000. Over 300,000 infections have been recorded across the country since the start of December.

People walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Even these already catastrophic figures are likely a significant underestimate, as testing remains woefully inadequate in Spain. Only 3,121 tests are being conducted for every 100,000 members of the population, leading to a test positivity rate of 13.9 percent across the country as a wholewell above the 5 percent threshold that the World Health Organization (WHO) considers to be an indicator that the pandemic is under control.

In much of the country, this situation is even worse. Eight of Spains 17 regions have more than 15 percent of their tests coming back positive: Aragon (19.5 percent), the Valencia region (19.1 percent), Castilla y Leon (18.9 percent), Navarra (18 percent), Murcia (16.2 percent), the Basque Country (15.8 percent), La Rioja (15.5 percent) and Andalusia (15.2 percent). Only two regions have test positivity rates below 10 percent, and none are within the WHOs 5 percent recommendation.

The rapid rise in infections in Spain is a sharp warning about the very real dangers posed by the virus, which the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has allowed to spread unchecked. The PSOE-Podemos coalition has engaged in a criminal and concerted campaign to downplay the risks of COVID-19 in recent months, justifying its refusal to take any measures to contain infections with the claim that vaccination had rendered the disease relatively benign.

This vaccine-only strategy, pursued by governments across the world, has facilitated mass circulation of the virus, encouraging the emergence of more contagious and vaccine-resistant variants and leading to the current unfolding catastrophe of the Omicron strain.

Deaths have continued to rise in Spain, with the average daily number of fatalities more than doubling in a monthup from around 20 a day in mid-November to about 50 people now. In the last week alone, 327 people have died from the virus, including 103 last Monday. Daily fatality figures usually lag behind rising infections by around two weeks, meaning this latest increase in cases will not be reflected in the death statistics until around the end of December.

As of Monday, 7,501 people were in hospital with COVID-19, with 1,442 in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). This has nearly tripled in a month. Although a smaller proportion of all cases end up in hospital, due to widespread vaccination, those hospitalized appear to be getting more seriously ill. Around 20 percent of all hospitalizations currently end up in ICUs, according to Alvaro Castellanos, president of the Spanish Society of Intensive Medicine, up from approximately 10 percent during the rest of the pandemic.

Even though the Omicron variant has only recently begun to spread in Spain, incidence rates are already exploding. The 14-day incidence rate reached 609 per 100,000 people on Monday, having skyrocketed up from the low of 40.52 per 100,000 recorded only two months ago in mid-October. It has taken only eleven days for the incidence to roughly double, up from 305 per 100,000 on 9 December.

According to the governments own framework, any rate above 500 puts the country in a situation of high risk, the maximum risk level. This in itself is a significant downplaying of the dangers posed by the virus: in mid-November, the PSOE-Podemos coalition doubled this threshold from 250 to 500 per 100,000, supposedly in response to the decreased risks posed by COVID-19 now that a large proportion of the Spanish population is vaccinated.

The nationwide figures obscure the real impact that the pandemic is having in some areas of Spain, with more than half the countrys regions recording incidence rates above or significantly above 609. The northern region of Navarra has so far been worst affected, recording a staggeringly high incidence rate of 1,394 per 100,000. It is followed by the Basque Country (1,124), La Rioja (960), Aragon (938), Castilla y Leon (842), the Valencia region (668), Asturias (658), Murcia (651), the Madrid region (651) and the Balearic Islands (613).

Yet despite the explosion in cases, the PSOE-Podemos government is refusing to take any action to combat the deadly disease and has continued to insist that vaccination alone will be enough to combat the current tsunami of infections. It is true that this new wave of expansion of the virus has very different characteristics and affects us in very different circumstances, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a conference of the partys Catalan branch in Barcelona on Sunday.

With notably higher contagion figures, he continued, we have lower hospitalization and intensive care occupation than a year ago. The first conclusion is that vaccination works, and that this health crisis can only be stopped with science.

Sanchezs response to the pandemic has nothing in common with a scientific strategy to combat the virus, which would involve social distancing measures, the shutdown of non-essential business, isolation of all infected cases and the putting in place of a mass testing and tracing infrastructure, in addition to vaccination.

While making impotent warnings about the real and certain health risk posed by the Omicron variant, Sanchez proposed no measures to protect Spains population from this danger, other than a vague statement that the government would evaluate new measures that could be introduced in the coming weeks. The prime minister has convened a meeting of regional presidents this Wednesday to discuss the pandemic.

The vaccine-only strategy of the ruling elite is fully supported by the pseudo-left. In its online publication Izquierda Diario, the Morenoite Workers Revolutionary Current (CRT) has agitated against necessary public health measures throughout the pandemic, denouncing social-distancing restrictions as authoritarian and palliative.

In one of their rare pieces on the pandemic, the CRT denounces the decision of the Catalan government to reimpose a mandatory 10-day self-isolation period for those who have been in close contact with a confirmed coronavirus case, a basic public health measure.

Once again, the prevention of the risk of infection is proceeding through restrictive measures, the article states. In this case, too, [it is] during the most significant days of the year [as we approach Christmas], instead of encouraging vaccination as the most effective prevention measure within communities which have not yet been vaccinated.

The concern of the PSOE, Podemos and their pseudo-left satellites like the CRT is to ensure that profits keep flowing into the coffers of the financial elite, whatever the cost in health and lives. This is incompatible with a scientifically guided program to end the pandemic worldwide and to prevent millions more deaths. Workers must take matters into their own hands, building independent safety committees in workplaces and schools to fight the spread of the disease, and developing sections of the ICFI in Spain, across Europe and internationally.
Assassin's Creed is Hosting an Immersive Concert to Celebrate The Series' 15th Anniversary
TheWrap takes a look at superhero movie actors who denied being in talks to star in either Marvel or DC Movies (although they really are).

Non-disclosure agreements contractually prohibits actors from discussing their casting in Marvel or DC Movies, let alone confirming it with news outlets. Here are the 8 actors who we assume lied for contractual reasons about their roles in superhero movies.

Paul Rudd

When Paul Rudd was asked in 2013 if he was playing Ant-Man for Marvel Studios, Rudd very coyly said that it was Its all rumor, man. He followed up by saying that he knew nothing about the role.

Tatiana Maslany

Tatiana Maslany recently denied being in talks to star in Marvel Studios upcoming Disney+ series She-Hulk to the Sudbury Star saying, That actually isnt a real thing and its like a press release thats gotten out of hand. Its totally not  Ive been connected to these things in the past and press has gotten onto it, but its not actually a thing, unfortunately.

Benedict Cumberbatch

In 2014 at the Penguins of Madagascar Comic Con panel, Benedict Cumberbatch said, Thats a joke, Im not Doctor Strange. During that same con he responded he was too busy playing Hamlet. Cumberbatch would be announced as the Sorcerer Supreme months later.

Joaquin Phoenix

When Joaquin Phoenix was asked by a reporter if he was going to star in the movie that would lead to his first Best Actor Oscar for playing the Joker, Phoenix said, What movie about the Joker? I have no idea what youre talking about.

Brie Larson

In 2016, a month before officially being announced as Captain Marvel at Comic Con, Brie Larson told a reporter when asked about the role, Who is Captain Marvel?

Marion Cotillard

In 2011, when asked by MTV at the premiere of Contagion if she was playing Talia Al Ghul, a character from the Batman comics in The Dark Knight Rises,, Cotillard answered, Well, actually, it was not based off of a character in the comic.

Jason Momoa

Jason Momoa actually admitted to Jimmy Kimmel he had to lie about playing Aquaman for four to five years because they wanted it to be a secret.

Andrew Garfield

Spider-Man: No Way Home may technically be a Sony project, but thanks to their agreement with Marvel, it places the story in the MCU. And, when it was revealed that the movie would crack open the multiverse, fans immediately started speculating that Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire would return for No Way Home. Since Garfield had multiple other projects coming out around the same time, he had to do a lot of press, and he lied, repeatedly, insisting he wasnt in the movie.
The new COVID-19 variant omicron accounted for a majority of reported cases in the United States last week.

According to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 73.2 percent of coronavirus cases reported between Dec. 12 to Dec. 18 were omicron. Another 26.6 percent of cases were the delta variant.

This represents a significant increase in the spread of omicron across the country. The week prior, omicron accounted for just 12 percent of cases in the U.S., the CDC reported.

Omicron makes up an even larger portion of COVID-19 cases in parts of the country including the New York region and the Pacific Northwest, where omicron accounted for more than 90 percent of cases last week.

Health officials have been scrambling to learn more about the new variant since it was first spotted in South Africa. The strain is the most contagious yet, has more mutations than any before it and seems to evade the previously-effective two-dose vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

However, new studies suggest that receiving a booster shot can have an increased effectiveness in fighting off the rapidly spreading variant.

A healthcare Worker hands in surgical gloves pulling COVID-19 vaccine liquid from vial to vaccinate a patient

Getty Vaccine

RELATED: Omicron Is Moving Fast  but a Booster Shot Offers Significant Protection from Infection

Researchers tested the variant against the antibodies of people who received the various COVID-19 vaccines and found that they all are less effective with omicron than earlier variants like delta. Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, in particular, made no difference against omicron. But in people who had received a booster shot, they had enough antibodies to fight off omicron from creating an infection.

One study from the U.K. found that while omicron reduces the two-dose vaccine series from Pfizer to just 34 percent effectiveness in preventing infection, getting a booster dose brings that protection back up to 75 percent.

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And though the vaccines are less effective in preventing infection with omicron, they are still extremely protective against severe illness that could lead to hospitalization or death. Cases of omicron in vaccinated people have been mild or asymptomatic, with patients recovering within three days, according to a large study from South Africa. After an incubation period of three to four days, patients first reported experiencing a scratchy throat, which then transitioned into nasal congestion, a dry cough and muscle aches and pains.

Last month, the CDC expanded its vaccine booster recommendations for Americans following the arrival of the Omicron variant in North America.

The spread of the variant "further emphasizes the importance of vaccination, boosters, and prevention efforts needed to protect against COVID-19," the CDC said. "Early data from South Africa suggest increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant, and scientists in the United States and around the world are urgently examining vaccine effectiveness related to this variant."

As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from the CDC, WHO and local public health departments. PEOPLE has partnered with GoFundMe to raise money for the COVID-19 Relief Fund, a GoFundMe.org fundraiser to support everything from frontline responders to families in need, as well as organizations helping communities. For more information or to donate, click here.
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard

Dax Shepard/Instagram

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell dressed for their weekend escape to Pioneertown, California.

The couple and their friends had a glamours getaway to the historical town near Joshua Tree national park over the weekend, Shepard sharing photos of their trip to his Instagram page on Sunday.

In the pics, Shepard, 46, Bell, 41, and their friends all wore Western gear, including wide-brimmed hats, bolo ties, and cowboy boots.

One photo saw the married pair and parents of two posing lovingly with their arms around one another. Shepard casually sported a red plaid shirt matched with grey pants and a pair of stylish Nike LDWaffle x sacai x CLOT sneakers, while Bell opted for fancier look  a sheer, black lace dress paired with a set of matching boots and a chocolate-colored fedora hat.

Other shots showed the two posing with their pals in a variety of group poses.

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Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard

Dax Shepard/Instagram

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In the post's caption, Shepard shared what he called a "recipe for humility," which the Armchair Expert podcast host and Parenthood alum called "have only younger, nicer, more attractive friends."

He then wished friend and celebrity hairstylist Matthew Collins a happy birthday, noting that the trip was to celebrate Collins' 40th.

"THIS IS 40 ," Collins wrote on his own Instagram post. "Feels weird to say it, but feels great to be it. It's been a wild ride and I can't wait for the road ahead."

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He explained, in another post, that he and his friends were staying at the Know Where Ranch, a one of a kind property situated on 3 acres in the heart of the high desert.

The 5 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom residential home sleeps 11 guests, offers breathtaking views of the acclaimed Pioneertown "Sawtooth" mountains, and features first class accommodations including a newly renovated open chef's kitchen, hammocks throughout the property, its own its own on site Saloon, and an infinity pool.

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It rents out on Airbnb for $1,921 a night.

"Celebrating my last weekend in my 30's by frolicking in the desert, dressing up like cowboys/cowgirls and surrounded by SOOO much LOVE ," Collins said in another post. "I couldn't be luckier. Thank you @knowwhereranch for the absolute stunning space."

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Shepard and Bell have been married since 2013, and share daughters, Lincoln, 7, and Delta, 6.

Speaking to PEOPLE in 2019, the pair took stock on the incredible life and family they've built together.

"All these movies from the '80s taught us that it's love at first sight, and it is supposed to be easy and [that] all you have to do is find that person," Bell said. "It took me a while to realize, 'Oh, that was such a lie,' because things that you work really, really, really hard for always yield the best results."
120221_RS_FB_II_MMz2 - Credit: Illustration by Mike McQuade for Rolling Stone

For Erin Scanlon, a junior Army officer in the artillery branch, Fort Bragg was a prime posting. The blond 25-year-old from suburban Phoenix had secured a lieutenants slot in the storied 82nd Airborne Division thanks to the good offices of one of her ROTC instructors at the University of Arizona. He was a really good mentor that I looked up to, she tells me recently. He had been in Delta Force. Scanlon lived off-post in an apartment in Fayetteville, a moody military town in the North Carolina pines just outside of Fort Bragg, the biggest Army base in the U.S. On the evening of Sept. 9, 2016, a friend of hers from the gym, a military wife whom Ill call Tina to protect her privacy, invited her to a charitable event at a barbecue restaurant and bar called Macs Speed Shop. It was a fundraiser to honor five slain Green Berets, hosted by some SF guys, Tina texted.

The Special Forces of the U.S. Army are based out of Fort Bragg, as is the powerful and secretive Joint Special Operations Command, making this spot, inland of the Eastern Seaboard, the central node in the United States global special-operations complex. But Scanlons unit, despite its distinguished pedigree going back to World War I, is a division of the conventional Army, which is kept separate from top-secret JSOC by high walls, both literal and figurative.

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Scanlon and Tina arrived at Macs shortly before 10 p.m. A number of motorcycles were parked out front. They belonged to members of the Coast x Coast motorcycle club, made up of active-duty soldiers on Delta Force, a classified manhunting unit that is the Army component of JSOC. A nonprofit associated with the club, the Coast x Coast Foundation, raises money through annual cross-country motorcycle rides to honor fallen special operators. The founder and CEO of the nonprofit is a 39-year-old man, Cristobal Lopez Vallejo, who goes by the alias Cris Valley. He was host of the event at Macs that night. Right as Scanlon and Tina walked into the crowded barbecue joint and beer hall, Vallejo stopped them, tried to flex, laughed, and walked away, Tina would later recall to a Fayetteville detective.

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Vallejo, dressed in camouflage cargo shorts and a T-shirt, was tall, lean, strong, and fiercely handsome, with a black beard and shaggy brown hair much longer than most soldiers get to wear. Throughout the whole night he kind of acted like a celebrity, Scanlon says. Going around chatting with people like a politician.

At the time he met Scanlon, who was nearly 10 years his junior, Vallejo was a sergeant first class. He had done three combat rotations with Delta Force  two in Afghanistan and one in Iraq  but she never guessed that he was a trained killer, in her words. She took him for a run-of-the-mill special-forces veteran, retired from the Army or otherwise discharged, because shed been taught that its against regulations for active-duty personnel to solicit donations for a military cause, and that was the whole point of the Coast x Coast Foundation. A guy whos in Delta Force would not be flashing his name around and having a nonprofit and partying at a bar. He was not a quiet professional,  she says, using a term that special-operations generals came up with in the 1980s to describe themselves, and since repeated endlessly in the news media.

Shortly after she and Tina arrived at Macs the night of the fundraiser, Scanlon recognized the Coast x Coast clubs logo from a Facebook photo of her old ROTC mentor, the ex-Delta soldier, which made her implicitly trust Vallejo and his crew, she recalls. I asked him if I could take a picture in front of their logo to send to my instructor, she says. He gave me his card and invited us to go to the next bar with everyone.

They exchanged phone numbers, and a group of about nine, led by Vallejo, relocated from Macs to a bar called Paddys, an over-the-top Irish pub out on Raeford Road that has a metal detector at the front entrance, bartenders in Scottish kilts, brass bathroom door handles cast with anatomical exactitude in the form of male genitalia, and urinals shaped like a womans mouth. At one point, while posing for a group photo, Vallejo grabbed my ass, Scanlon claims. I didnt say anything when he did that. Sad as it is, that happens a lot. Thats being a girl at a bar.

According to text messages she sent a girlfriend the next day, Scanlon was drunk and flirted with him. But she didnt consent to what later ensued, she immediately added. I said no over and over.

Former Army Capt. Erin Scanlon wants to go on the record again so that her alleged attacker is identified as Delta Force. And that was the reason why my case was handled the way it was. (Phyllis B. Dooney for Rolling Stone) - Credit:  Phyllis B. Dooney for Rolling Stone

 Phyllis B. Dooney for Rolling Stone

Scanlon claims that Vallejo raped her that night, and says that the trauma still haunts her to this day. Reached through his lawyer, Vallejo declined to comment for this story. Vallejo says the sex was consensual and was acquitted of all charges arising from the incident in a June 2018 court-martial on Fort Bragg. He was originally set to be tried in civilian court, but Army prosecutors assigned to Special Forces swooped in at the last minute and caused the Cumberland County district attorney to drop the charges so that Vallejo could be tried by the military. No reporters attended the subsequent court-martial, and no transcript was made of the proceedings. As soon as it concluded with an acquittal, the Army deleted the audio recordings.

Scanlon maintains that her case was mishandled. She says that she was excluded from hearing the testimony of the other witnesses, that her military-appointed attorney was swapped out five separate times, and that one of them was called to provide testimony against her. Her experience with the military-justice system illustrates the myriad difficulties faced by women in the overwhelmingly male armed forces who report being raped, and raises questions about the adequacy of the uniformed chain of command to protect the interests of victims of sex crimes allegedly committed by service members.

Scanlon previously told her story to Ella Torres of ABC News, who published a thorough report on her case in 2020, and The Fayetteville Observer covered aspects of it in 2019. But neither ABC News nor the Observer named Vallejo, and ABC only mentioned in passing that the alleged rapist was a member of Delta Force. Thats a significant omission, because Scanlons case is also a signal example of another systemic issue in the military: the entitled attitudes and hard-partying lifestyles of some elite soldiers more than two decades into the war on terrorism; the apparent breakdown in good order and discipline in the Special Forces in recent years, with rising instances of alleged criminality among Green Berets and Navy SEALs; and the special treatment often accorded to special operators by civilian and military law enforcement in and around Fort Bragg. Scanlon agreed to go on the record again, in greater detail, if you would be willing to reiterate that my perpetrator was Delta Force. And that was the reason why my case was handled the way it was.

Well after midnight, with Paddys about to close down, Vallejo invited Scanlon and Tina to the after-afterparty at a place he called Warehouse 13. Thinking it was some kind of lounge or club, they took a cab to the location on Worth Street in downtown Fayetteville, only to find that it was literally a warehouse. Sketchy-looking, Scanlon describes it, comparing it to a rundown CrossFit gym, with a roll-up garage door, by a railroad track and a junkyard.

This industrially zoned property, which Vallejo rented from a chemical company, is cut off from any obvious street access, being surrounded on all three sides by train tracks, storage buildings, and scrap yards. The only entrance is hard to find and closed off by a chain-link gate.

Fayatteville, NC - Sept 24, 2021: Fort Bragg soldiers unofficial hangout. (Phyllis B. Dooney for Rolling Stone) - Credit:  Phyllis B. Dooney for Rolling Stone

 Phyllis B. Dooney for Rolling Stone

Arriving at the site in the early morning hours of Sept. 10, 2016, Scanlon and Tina were immediately creeped out by the griminess of the location. Were not staying more than 20 minutes, they agreed. They only stayed that long because Tina was famished and there was a Crock-Pot of food on a folding table.

There were three Delta Force soldiers, plus a retired bomb technician, in addition to Vallejo who went back to the warehouse that night, all of whom were Coast x Coast members. Women made up the rest of the party: two young Army officers, the widow of a slain Green Beret, and a Las Vegas woman who belonged to a traveling company of women bartenders that dance and sing, according to her blog posts.

Scanlon derisively refers to the latter four as groupies. A Fayetteville police detective used the same language in his report on her case. Mr. Vallejo is considered a ladies man and groupies hang out at the ware house [sic] looking for an opportunity to sleep with Mr. Vallejo. This, the detective noted, was according to an employee of the Fayetteville Police Department who had to recuse herself from the case because she herself had once spent the night at Vallejos apartment.

No more than 10 minutes after arriving, Scanlon sent a text message to a 25-year-old staff sergeant, another soldier at Fort Bragg, whom she occasionally hooked up with. This was in violation of regulations that forbid fraternization, or close personal relationships between officers and enlisted soldiers, but as the staff sergeant wasnt in her unit or her chain of command, she thought of it as little more than a peccadillo. The staff sergeant had invited her over to his house earlier in the evening, but she and Tina hadnt wanted to leave the party. Now, she told him that she would be over shortly, and used her phone to order an Uber to take her there. An Uber driver started toward the warehouse at 2:50 a.m., according to screen shots of the app that Scanlon gave police.

On the point of leaving, Scanlon says she asked Vallejo where she could find the restroom. But the warehouse had no plumbing; there was only a portable toilet out back. Youre lucky Im the Army, she told him jokingly, setting her phone and purse on the folding table. Because otherwise I would not be using a port-a-potty.

Scanlon says reporting the alleged attack, and the subsequent ordeal, hurt her military career. - Credit: Courtesy of Erin Scanlon

Courtesy of Erin Scanlon

She went outside and crossed the blacktop to where the toilet was set up against the exterior wall of a metal building. It was a warm night in the Carolinas, with a quarter-moon in the sky. She passed a covered motorcycle trailer with a looming portrait of a slain Delta Force soldier printed on the side. The adjacent alley was full of junked cars. The jury should have been brought to the location at night, she says. I dont see how anyone could have believed that consensual sex occurred there.

When she finished using the toilet and opened the door, she was startled to find Vallejo standing right there. He just ambushed me, she says, repeating what she told Fayetteville police, according to the written report of the detective assigned to the case, Paul Matrafailo. Thats what it felt like. He didnt let me get past him. He started kissing me, and I was pushing him away. I said, No, find someone else. Im not doing this. 

She remembers being pinned against the grille of a vehicle, Vallejo putting his hands up her dress, into her underwear, and penetrating her with his fingers. He was seven inches taller than her and 70 pounds heavier. He literally picked me up off the ground, and my shoes fell off.

He set her on the flaking hood of a defunct Saab convertible that was sunk in tall weeds. He then allegedly forcibly penetrated her vagina with his penis against her will, Detective Matrafailo wrote in his report. After that, she put up no more physical resistance. Ms. Scanlon realized that this was not going to stop, Matrafailo wrote, and gave up fighting back in the hopes that it would end quickly.

At one point the Green Berets widow, a red-haired woman, came around the corner and saw what was going on. She yelled something unintelligible before disappearing. Scanlon says the detail initially slipped her memory. She says she didnt tell her lawyer about it till months later.

Vallejo didnt use any form of contraceptive. As soon as it was over, Scanlon says, I jumped up and grabbed my shoes and ran inside to get my stuff. It was right around 3 a.m. My phone was being blown up by my friend [the staff sergeant] and the Uber driver, who was there trying to find me.

Tina had gone out front to smoke a cigarette. She looked up and saw Scanlon emerge from the warehouse and start toward the only outlet to the street, a narrow strip of dirt parallel to the train tracks. Tina watched Vallejo walk up behind Scanlon, causing Scanlon to dart off, according to the statement Tina gave Matrafailo. I followed her, the detectives notes of the conversation read. She was shaking, acting odd, pacing. She told me, I feel like I just got raped. 

Scanlon had to order another Uber, as the first one had given up and driven off. On the way to the staff sergeants house, where shed spend the night, she looked at her phone and saw that Vallejo had sent her a text: How are you? Let me know when your [sic] home safe. To this he appended a heart emoji and a kissy-face.

Do you realize what you did? she replied at 4:25 a.m.

He didnt respond.

The next morning, Scanlon went directly to the Womack Army Medical Center and underwent a sexual-assault forensic examination. The nurse who did the rape kit noted in her report that Scanlons eyes were red and her makeup was smeared. She described Scanlons general demeanor as tearful.

The examination revealed multiple small lacerations on her vulva, as well as a contusion and four scratch marks on her left flank and lower back, from the hood of the car. The nurse took swabs from Scanlons vagina and cervix, and collected as evidence her soiled underwear. The samples proved a match to Vallejos DNA.

Scanlon agonized over what to do next. Maybe I wasnt clear enough, she texted a girlfriend at 8:59 a.m. on Sept. 12. I was pushing him away saying no stop but I think by the time he got me back to the cars in the dark and he wouldnt stop so I just let him do it.

Anything other than you saying yes or asking for it is not consent, her friend replied.

I feel guilty, Scanlon texted. Like maybe Im making a bigger deal out of it than it was.

It is not your fault, her friend responded, and it is a big deal.

Monday morning I went into work, Scanlon says. After speaking with a chaplain, she met with her units SARC, or sexual-assault response coordinator, who took her to meet with agents from the bases Criminal Investigation Division. She still didnt know that Vallejo was an active-duty soldier, much less that he was on Delta Force. There are recordings somewhere, Scanlon says. After I gave my statement, the CID agents left the room. The main one came back and said, Because it occurred in Fayetteville, we cant help you. 

That is not accurate, a spokesman for Army CID, Jeffrey Castro, writes in a statement. According to him, agents initiated a collateral investigation with Fayetteville police. But Castro cant say when that investigation began, why Scanlon felt that her initial complaint had been dismissed, or whether the recordings she mentioned still exist.

Scanlon went to the Fayetteville police the next day. After taking her statement and reviewing her text messages, Detective Matrafailo drove her the three blocks to the warehouse in an effort to identify the precise location. Ms. Scanlon began to cry, he wrote in his report, as she pointed out the building.

Vallejos mug shot - Credit: Fayetteville Police Department

Fayetteville Police Department

Matrafailo obtained a warrant, took DNA samples from the hood of the Saab, reviewed security footage, visited Macs, and interviewed Tina, among other witnesses. On Sept. 30, he arrested Vallejo on a felony warrant for second-degree rape, second-degree sex offense, and sexual battery. In his mug shot, Vallejo appeared freshly shaved, his beard gone. Only then did Scanlon learn the real identity of the man she knew as Cris Valley. The detective told me, This guys active-duty,  she recalls.  Hes in JSOC. 

According to Vallejos enlistment-record brief, obtained by Rolling Stone, he was born in California and joined the Army shortly before 9/11, when he was 19. He transferred to Fort Bragg three years later to attend the JFK Special Warfare School, the completion of which entitles a soldier to wear a coveted green beret. He proceeded to rack up practically every qualification an infantryman can attain, undergoing advanced training in land navigation, reconnaissance, surveillance, sniping, and high-altitude parachuting. He was taught how to survive behind enemy lines, resist interrogation, and escape from POW camps. He learned to read and understand Arabic, but could not speak it.

His first deployment was to Mali, in 2007. Next came back-to-back tours in Iraq. As of 2010, the document shows, he was a TEAM MEMBER/OPERATOR in the organization demarcated 1ST SFOD-D (DELTA FORCE).

Like SEAL Team 6, its sister unit and only military peer, Delta Force is whats known as a Special Mission Unit. There are at least two other SMUs, one dedicated to surveillance and the other to aviation, reportedly. Together they make up the core of JSOC, the black ops component of the military. Unlike Tier 2, or white, special-operations forces, made up of ordinary Green Berets, Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs, JSOC units operate under Title 50 of the U.S. Code, which was controversially reinterpreted after 9/11 to permit the military to carry out covert actions, defined by the statute as foreign operations where it is intended that the role of the United States will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.

One of the four Delta Force soldiers present that night was a 33-year-old from Michigan, Master Sgt. William Billy Lavigne II, whose violent life and cryptic death in the woods outside of Fort Bragg I wrote about for Rolling Stone last year. Lavigne was a member of the Coast x Coast club and a good friend of Vallejos. At the time Lavignes path crossed Scanlons, his cocaine habit was firmly established, but he remained a team member in good standing on Delta Force, and still had a clean arrest record in Cumberland County.

Scanlon never knew Lavigne, not by name. She only met him and Vallejo that one night in her life. One woman who was much better acquainted with both men, and the whole Coast x Coast crew, is an ex-soldier whom Ill call Jane for the sake of anonymity. During a stretch of Janes military career, her social and professional circle overlapped with the five men, who made up the core of the motorcycle club, all active-duty soldiers on Delta Force. She has photos to prove that she knew them. I was with them for years, constantly, she says.

Jane is out of the military now. She lives a very different life and has no contact with the elite soldiers who had been her colleagues, friends, and lovers for the better part of a decade. It had been, in retrospect, a dark period in her life, she says, a damaging, booze-soaked run of years in her twenties.

Jane was once deployed to a country in Southwest Asia and was stationed on the same base as a contingent from Delta Force. At times, she observed their operations on a video feed. On deployment, they literally go around blasting peoples brains out, she says. They have zero remorse. She doesnt mean that any of the killings she witnessed were illegal or outside the rules of engagement. Its very controlled, she says. I dont think they go around on shooting sprees. But I know they dont feel how I would feel if I shot somebody.

She vividly recalls the day that one Delta soldier, a Coast x Coast guy (neither Vallejo nor Lavigne), came in from an operation outside the wire. He had a dudes brains on his boot, she says, and he just flicked it off, as if completely unfazed.

Stateside they lived intense lives, too. We drank so much, she says. Everything revolved around drinking booze and hooking up. I dont know how we survived.

Jane was well-acquainted with the site known as Warehouse 13. Cris came up with the idea for getting this warehouse, she says. They would have these epic parties, tailgate pool parties, where they would put a liner in the back of a truck and fill it up with water. On one occasion, they hired midget wrestlers to come out, she says. They outfitted the warehouse with couches, a full bar, foosball and ping-pong tables, a stripper pole, and something called a Sybian. Its like a saddle vibrator, she explains. Once people started getting drunk, they would bust it out, and drunk girls would try it and get all hornied up. That was how they operated.

This little black site of a party spot is situated directly across Worth Street from the Cumberland County jail, a no-drone zone that is the biggest law-enforcement facility in the county. The warehouse is three blocks from police headquarters, but a spokesman for the Fayetteville PD denies knowing anything about the place, and had no relevant incident reports pertaining to the address. The location was well-known, though, to other municipal authorities, who suspected it of being an illegal bar and a fire hazard, according to internal emails between city and county officials that I obtained.

Four months before the night in question, Cumberland Countys Alcoholic Beverage Control received a tip from a police officer in Hope Mills, another satellite town of Fort Bragg, about a party occurring in downtown [Fayetteville] in which donations would be accepted, an ABC agent wrote in an affidavit attached to a warrant to search the warehouse and seize alcohol. The tipster also indicated that drugs would be present, the affidavit attested.

Two ABC officers went to the location to check it out. What we noted was a warehouse that appeared to pull double duty as a gym and party location, the ABC officer wrote in an email to a colleague. There were several people present, and the ABC officers learned that the men were military with security clearances. Out of deference to their service of our nation, the ABC officers let them off with a verbal warning.

Later that day, a city fire inspector went to the property and found multiple storage buildings in disrepair, surrounded by junked vehicles, barbecue grills, piles of wooden pallets, tiki torches, and other combustible materials. This is a very secluded parcel, the fire marshal wrote in an email to the zoning department. It appears that a lot goes on here.

Years of proximity to military violence, as well as a culture of functional alcoholism and casual sex, left Jane feeling unworthy, damaged, and lost. Jane has dated multiple men on Delta Force at various times in her life. Shes troubled by the memory of a night in 2012, when she woke up after having passed out drunk to find a man she knew having sex with her without her consent, she says. The next morning, she told the guy she was dating at the time that his buddy had raped her, but he didnt believe her, she says. Both men were on active duty in Delta Force at the time. There is zero respect for women in that community, she says. I know this was specifically Delta Force, but its like this across the whole of USASOC, using an acronym for the U.S. Armys Special Operations Command.

Most Delta Force soldiers keep a very low profile. They avoid social media, and their traces on the internet tend to be very few: an old photo with mom, a defunct phone number, a real-estate deed. Vallejo is a notable exception. There are a dozen-plus local-news hits under his Anglicized name, Cris Valley, and a simple Google search turns up numerous photos and videos of him. In September 2015, he went on the Fox affiliate in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with a military dog named Gunner. In August 2016  just two weeks before he met Scanlon  he threw out the first pitch at a Padres game in San Diego.

Jane never saw Vallejo doing drugs, and unlike Lavigne, he didnt run around getting arrested, but she remembers him being at the center of a social scene that she describes as toxic. This was at the tail end of the Obama years, on the cusp of Trumps election. The wars that Delta Force had been on the bleeding edge of since 2001 had deteriorated into lost causes, but the special-operations forces had completed their takeover-from-within of the military, becoming the paramount force in the Pentagon, with the most political clout in Washington. In Fayetteville, the Coast x Coast club was riding high, leading rock star lifestyles, in Janes words. Those guys, they would drink, and they would need to have sex, she says. They didnt care with who. It was drink, sex, drink, sex. They lived like there was no tomorrow.

The relentless physical drive that she describes is part of what made these men the very best at what they did. In the event of a terrorist strike, international hostage situation, or loose nuclear weapon, its Delta or Team 6 that the president will call on to respond. Guys like Vallejo and Lavigne are constantly told that theyre the elite, the best of the best, the ultimate badasses, and when it comes to killing and capturing people overseas, they are. In the military and in popular culture, their kind is revered. Among some operators, the result can be an unhealthy sense of entitlement, in the words of a Special Operations Command internal ethics review made public in 2020. The hard-partying antics of the Coast x Coast club could certainly be seen as a manifestation of that sort of attitude, a sense of exemption from ordinary strictures and petty rules. As Jane puts it, They did what they wanted when they wanted, and wouldnt take no for an answer.

A brief report by CBS 17 in Raleigh-Durham on Sept. 30 named Vallejo as an N.C. soldier who had been accused of rape, and published his photo. Theres no doubt that he was charged in Cumberland County, yet strangely, there is no trace of his arraignment or indictment in a publicly accessible database of North Carolina court records. Its possible that it was expunged, a clerk tells me.

Vallejo was briefly detained in jail on a $100,000 bond. Thereafter, things moved very slowly toward a trial. Scanlon and Vallejo both continued to live in Fayetteville and work on Fort Bragg. It took her months to get a military protective order against him. On one occasion, she says, she had to hide in the bathroom after he walked into a tavern in Southern Pines. The police were called, and Vallejo left without incident.

Finally, the trial was set to begin in late-February 2018. Scanlon was looking forward to getting the ordeal over with. Then, just before the opening arguments were scheduled to take place, military lawyers from Fort Bragg intervened. They were officers in the Judge Advocate Generals Corps, assigned to the Special Forces.

They convened a weird meeting, Scanlon says, with her and the district attorney, Billy West, whose office declined to comment on this case or on Lavignes record of arrests. Mostly doing the talking, that I remember, was Capt. Joseph Morman, Scanlon says. It was him and Maj. Stacey Cohen.

Army investigators with CID had initially washed their hands of the case, but the two JAG prosecutors, Morman and Cohen, claimed to have only belatedly learned that the victim and defendant were both soldiers, which gave the military parallel jurisdiction to try Vallejo. Scanlon recalls Morman urging her to consent to a change in venue, arguing that a court-martial offered a better chance to convict, among other reasons, because a guilty verdict does not have to be unanimous under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In fact, studies show that the conviction rate on penetrative-rape and forcible-sodomy charges is generally lower in military courts than civilian ones. And when it comes to courts-martial  for whatever crime  where the accused is a Navy SEAL or Green Beret, they can be more full of anomalies and surprises than a cheap legal thriller. Consider the bombshell testimony that relieved ex-SEAL Eddie Gallagher of murder charges in 2019 or Trumps intervention in the Fort Bragg court-martial of Mathew Golsteyn, a Special Forces officer who admitted on live TV to killing an unarmed man.

I dont think there was an agenda there, says Col. Adam Kazin, chief of the Army JAG Corps criminal-law division. It was not a decision to try to sneak it out of Cumberland County. The only purpose of convening the meeting with the DA, Col. Kazin says, was to make sure that the JAG prosecutors understood whether Scanlon preferred to have a military or civilian trial. But he couldnt really explain why the Army waited 16 months to intervene on the eve of the trial, rather than let civilian justice take its course.

It was very frustrating, Scanlon says, that all these people had waited till the last minute, then were trying to put the decision on me, when Im not a lawyer. Im not a police officer. I had no idea why they were making me decide this. I defaulted to what the USASOC prosecutor and the DA would decide, and consented to removal of the case to Fort Bragg, which resulted in an unanticipated four-month delay. I was pissed that another obstacle had gone up, she says. I wanted this all behind me.

During this time, and the months to come, Scanlon was represented by an SVC, or special-victims counsel, a military-appointed attorney. Her first SVC was at the meeting with the DA, but did not advise her that she might be better off pressing her case in civilian court. Subsequently, the Army swapped out her SVC four separate times. Some were deployed, others reassigned, or otherwise bureaucratically reshuffled. As a result, she says, she had to retell her ordeal to five different SVCs, some of whom were unprepared or missed meetings.

Finally, on June 25, 2018, the court-martial convened: United States v. Sergeant First Class Cristobal Vallejo. It was held in the main courthouse on Fort Bragg, a red-brick, Greek-revival building typical of the Carolinas. The trial began on a Monday morning. Though open to the public, no reporters were in the courtroom. It was on a public docket, so people can go look it up, says Col. Kazin; however, it was not necessarily on everyones radar.

The Army never made a transcript of the court-martial, and destroyed the audio recordings as soon as it concluded, leaving no record of the testimony the witnesses gave, the arguments the lawyers made, or the judges oral rulings. But Scanlon was in the courtroom on the first day of trial, and Rolling Stone obtained the trial record, which includes a list of witnesses, the lawyers written motions, the judges orders, his instructions to the jury, and other documents that make it possible to reconstruct much  if not nearly enough  of what happened.

Vallejo, wearing his full-dress uniform, was seated at the defense table, next to his defense attorney, Kris Poppe, a former JAG prosecutor who previously served as an infantry officer. The jury panel of nine included two women and was a mix of colonels, majors, and senior sergeants, all of whom served in the Special Forces. They would have been able to see from the many badges, patches, stripes, and braids on Vallejos embroidered blue coat that he was a military superstar, a veteran operator of the sort that all of USASOC exists to support. He had entered a plea of not guilty. He never denied having sex with Scanlon, but maintained that it was consensual.

Even with the rape kit and the testimony of witnesses like Tina, much would have hinged on Scanlons credibility. She was the first witness called to the stand, on day one. The jury would have been able to see from her dress blues that, in stark contrast with Vallejo, she was a rookie officer in a conventional unit. I had no deployment stripes, Scanlon says. No unit patch. No awards. Because I had been in for 18 months. And hes sitting there decked out. You want to think theyre not comparing?

According to Scanlon, Poppes initial line of questioning was not subtle. She says he grilled her on the quantity of alcohol she had consumed, implying that inebriety had inclined her toward promiscuity. To buttress his depiction of her as a woman on the prowl, he put up photos of her taken that night in which she was wearing a sleeveless dress with a short skirt, and texts between her and Tina joking about going out braless or commando.

Isnt it true you were flirting with him? she recalls him asking. Werent there plenty of people you could have called out to? It wasnt really that dark out.

I dont remember the precise questions that I asked her, Poppe says today, or what exhibits were introduced in evidence, but I remember the facts of the case, and the evidence supported that she consented to the sexual acts with Cris Valley.

A major weakness for the defense was Scanlons apparent absence of a motive to fabricate a rape claim, complete with a trip to the hospital and all. In this regard, Poppe says that she was a commissioned officer  a lieutenant  who got caught having sex in a compromising position with an enlisted man, Vallejo, technically her military inferior. Because she was already guilty of one instance of fraternization, with the staff sergeant to whose house she had been headed to that night, she had a motive to lie and pretend that the encounter with Vallejo was nonconsensual, in Poppes theory of the case.

But Scanlon didnt get caught with the staff sergeant, nor with Vallejo. Her superiors didnt know about the former, and she herself had reported the latter. If her aim was to avoid disciplinary action or professional embarrassment, she could have simply said nothing and no one would have been the wiser. But pressing this line of inquiry served a clear ulterior purpose, Scanlon says: Trying to slut-shame me, and say that I did that all the time.

Poppe says he take[s] exception to this absurd characterization. All of his questions were directed at Scanlons honesty and candor, he says. He maintains that Scanlon and Vallejo were witnessed in the act by people at the warehouse that night. That would have been enough, Poppe argues, to spook Scanlon into making a false accusation of rape, lest word get out and she be reprimanded for fraternization.

Because of societal prejudices toward womens sexuality, and the potential for abuse, rape shield laws, including Military Rule of Evidence 412, generally block defense attorneys from bringing up an accusers sexual history at trial. But the instructions to the jury show that the judge, Col. Jeffrey Nance, allowed the panel to consider Scanlons relationship with the staff sergeant insofar as it was probative of her motive, if any, to fabricate her allegations against the accused. The judge cautioned the panel that they were forbidden to conclude that Scanlon, having willingly slept with one enlisted man, was likely to do it again; but to use an old legal cliche, that was a bit like throwing a skunk into the jury box and instructing the jurors not to smell it.

Scanlon was on the stand for eight hours, she says. My testimony was so long and painful. Throughout, she rigidly refused to make eye contact with Vallejo or even look at his side of the courtroom. Twice she broke down in tears and the court had to call a recess, she says. Finally, at the end of the first day of trial, she was allowed to step down.

The rest of the court-martial is a black box to her, because she spent it sequestered in the prosecutions witness room, which she says she was not permitted to leave. This would have been in violation of regulations that prevent the military from excluding crime victims from the trials of their alleged perpetrators, and USASOC says it didnt happen. Scanlon was not excluded from the proceeding, a spokesman wrote in a statement.

Either way, Scanlon was immersed in an unfamiliar process and taking her cues from military lawyers and the judge, all of whom outranked her. Even if she werent actually barred from the trial by order of the court, she believed that she had to stay in the witness room until called, and according to Scanlon, the SVC did nothing to correct the misapprehension.

The trial record shows that the prosecution called only four more witnesses, half as many as the defense. Besides Scanlon, the only people who testified for the government were Tina, the staff sergeant, the nurse who did the rape kit, and the friend who encouraged Scanlon to go to the police. Efforts to reach these people by phone were unsuccessful. The prosecution did not call Matrafailo, the Fayetteville detective who had investigated Scanlons claim, interviewed witnesses while their memories were fresh, collected evidence before it disappeared, and concluded by arresting Vallejo for second-degree rape.

Instead, on June 26, Matrafailo was the first person called to the stand by the defense. Poppe couldnt recall why that was the case, but conceded that it was somewhat unusual for the main police witness in a criminal trial not to align with the prosecution. Poppe was unable to remember the substance of Matrafailos testimony, only that it involved some aspects of the investigation that had not been discussed.

A few months after the trial, Matrafailo would be accused of making inappropriate contact with Scanlon on social media: sending her suggestive emojis, making weird comments about ads for lingerie, and the like. The police department promptly fired Matrafailo, who had allegedly done the same to two other alleged rape victims. It was shocking, Scanlon told The Fayetteville Observer in 2019, and honestly a little bit unbelievable. (Attempts to reach Matrafailo by phone were unsuccessful.)

The trial record shows that Vallejos defense called eight additional witnesses. The three Delta operators who had been at the warehouse that night took the stand, as did the retired bomb technician, the two civil-affairs officers, and the dancing bartender, as well as the red-haired widow. Attempts to reach these people by phone were unsuccessful, but pretrial filings show that at least two of them were summoned to buttress Vallejos defense of consent.

In a motion dated June 12, the defense stated that one of the civil-affairs officers was expected to testify that she had observed close, friendly, and flirtatious interaction between Vallejo and Scanlon all night. In the same filing, the defense notified the court of its intent to call the Green Berets widow, who would testify that she walked past the portable toilet and saw Cris with the blond girl having sex on a car, and that the female was obviously enjoying it.

This was the red-haired woman whom Scanlon had briefly glimpsed during the alleged assault, a detail she had failed to relate to police. The apparent lapse in memory had given Poppe an opening to hammer away at her credibility. Why didnt you tell anyone about the witness that came around the corner? she remembers him asking. She felt the implication was clear: Obviously youre a liar.

Scanlons testimony was that she had told her special-victims counsel about seeing the Green Berets widow, albeit months after the fact, and that she had instructed the SVC to inform the prosecution of her belated recollection. Seeking to impeach Scanlons credibility and establish that she had tried to conceal the existence of an eyewitness, Poppe sought and obtained the SVCs testimony on this point. Though attorney-client privilege normally protects the SVC-client relationship, Judge Nance found that Scanlon had waived the privilege by including the prosecution in the supposed conversation with her SVC. Nances legal reasoning may have been sound, but it still resulted in a rape counselor providing testimony against her own client at trial, a result that another judge might have bent over backward to avoid.

I represented 1LT [First Lieutenant] Erin Scanlon as her special-victim counsel, Capt. Alycia Stokes written testimony read. 1LT Scanlon never told me that she remembered seeing a female  the Green Berets red-haired widow  who may have witnessed a portion of the alleged assault.

It looked like Scanlon was lying, or at a minimum, misremembering what had happened. She wasnt credible, Poppe says. She wasnt being truthful about her encounter with Cris Vallejo.

They should not have allowed my lawyer to testify against me, Scanlon says. That was a crazy ethical mistake.

Master Sgt. William Lavigne was the sixth witness for the defense, the trial rec-ord shows. At the time, he was so depressed, anxious, guilt-stricken, and strung out on drugs that its a wonder he was able to put on his full-dress uniform that morning. As I wrote in The Fort Bragg Murders, Lavignes dozen-plus deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere had left him addled with trauma and addicted to hard drugs and alcohol. He was a broken operator, a worn-out military part, destroyed by PTSD and substance abuse.

In 2018, after a drug- and booze-filled bender, Lavigne (left) shot and killed his best friend, Leshikar (right), in front of their two young daughters. The DA treated the killing as a justifiable homicide and Lavigne was not charged with a crime.

Just three months before he was called to the stand, in March 2018, at Lavignes house in Fayetteville, he had shot and killed his closest friend, a Green Beret named Mark Leshikar, with whom he had been drinking and doing drugs for days on end during a family vacation to Disney World. For reasons that remain a mystery, Lavigne had pulled out the .40-caliber sidearm he carried and double-tapped his best buddy right in front of two horrified little girls, his daughter and Leshikars.

The military had kept it quiet, though. In local news reports, the shooter wasnt named. The sheriffs office and the DA had treated it as a justifiable homicide, and Army investigators would later come to the same conclusion, for reasons that both civilian and military authorities decline to disclose to the Leshikar family or to the public. Even if Lavigne had been charged with or convicted of murder, says Col. Kazin of Army JAG, Vallejo would have had a constitutional right to call him as a witness, if he were in possession of relevant information.

Poppe says he cant recall the substance of Lavignes testimony, but discloses that after the court-martial concluded, he took him on as a client, too. I was Billys attorney, Poppe says. I represented him in Cumberland County.

Poppe does not find it remarkable, he says, that he simultaneously represented two members of the most elite military unit in the United States, one suspected of murder, the other accused of rape. But he was in JAG for 20 years and has represented such high-profile military clients as Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and is unable to recall another time when a JSOC operator was arrested for a violent felony against a fellow soldier on U.S. soil, as was the case for both Lavigne and Vallejo.

Poppe says there was no connection between the two cases. Lavigne retained him while still under Army investigation into the shooting death of Leshikar, he says. Ultimately, both CID and the sheriffs office determined there was no criminal culpability.

Between the summer of 2018 and the fall of 2020, Lavignes behavior became increasingly erratic and dangerous. Cumberland County sheriffs deputies named him as a suspect on incident reports for crimes including possession of cocaine and crack paraphernalia, weapons infractions, hit-and-run, harboring an escapee, maintaining a dwelling place to manufacture a controlled substance, and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The latter was for firing shots at a guy outside a crack house on Enloe Street in Fayetteville, a very serious offense, but Lavigne was not prosecuted for any of these crimes. North Carolina court records show that the sheriff and DAs office dismissed the charges every time.

Then, on Dec. 2, 2020, Lavigne turned up dead, shot multiple times in the chest, his body wrapped up as if for disposal, and placed in the back of his truck, which was left abandoned on a dirt road near Lake MacArthur. An anonymous Army source leaked to CBS News that authorities suspected a double homicide from a drug deal gone wrong, but to date, there is no clear evidence to support that theory.

Dumas, an ex-soldier with a shady past, was found murdered along with Lavigne in the woods outside Fayetteville in December 2020. - Credit: FBI

FBI

The other person killed in the apparently professional hit, a 44-year-old ex-soldier named Timothy Dumas, was an Afghanistan vet who had served in the 7th Special Forces Group before being separated from the Army for unspecified unacceptable conduct. Like Lavigne, Dumas had a long record of being arrested but not prosecuted in Cumberland County, for crimes including assault on a female, impersonating a police officer, making terroristic threats, and shooting into an occupied dwelling place. His truck, a black quad-cab Dodge Ram, was found some 40 miles away, in Scotland County, burned to a fucking crisp, according to his 24-year-old son. They even took his license plates off.

Billy, we love you and will miss you, the Coast x Coast club posted to its Instagram page two days later. RIP, bro.

One year later, the authorities have identified no suspects, arrested no perpetrators, and disclosed nothing about the evidence theyve gathered to date. Its not even clear what agency, military or civilian, is investigating. Ill have to refer you to Army CID, Shelley Lynch of the FBIs Charlotte, North Carolina, office writes in an email. We are only assisting. But Chris Grey, spokesman for CID, tells me, FBI is leading that investigation.

On the third and final day of Vallejos court-martial, June 27, the prosecution and defense delivered their closing arguments. Scanlons SVC  her fifth  discouraged her from attending, she says. What the prosecution has to say, you already know, she remembers the SVC telling her. What the defense has to say, you dont want to hear. Its not going to be good for you.

For the jury, it must have been a somewhat close call, because they submitted at least 18 questions to the witnesses. How did the Uber driver react to the distress shown by 1LT Scanlon? a juror asked Tina. If you felt that 1LT Scanlon was sexually assaulted, why was she not taken to the hospital as soon as possible? another asked the staff sergeant. A third juror asked the nurse who did the rape kit, In your experience, is it abnormal for the victim to smile in an exam photo?

Scanlon was called in for the reading of the verdict. She had brought with her a victims impact statement that she was prepared to read if Vallejo were found guilty. That night he shattered my whole world, the statement read. I had to get shots and blood drawn to get tested for STDs so many horrible times. Constant appointments with lawyers, detectives, investigators, and advocates had disrupted her military career, and caused her to miss out on her units 2017 deployment to Iraq. Which is all I wanted to do: deploy with my soldiers. Out of fear that Vallejo [would try to] come looking for me, she wrote, she moved from Fayetteville to another small town nearby. I was too scared to go to stores, the gym, and other crowded places. Because every man with a dark beard or a hat terrified me.

But, the statement continued, I am strong. I will keep fighting to put my life back together. This is not how I wanted my time . . . in the Army to go. But I have accepted this new path. I firmly believe that I had to be his victim because I was strong enough to report him.

She never got the chance to lay any of this on Vallejo, or the court. As the jury filed in, everyone stood. I held really, really tightly to my [family members] hands and stared straight ahead, she says. I was resolved to be stoic no matter what, because I knew I had stood up for myself as much as possible. As soon as they said not guilty, my people just kind of quickly escorted me out.

From the perspective of the Armys image-conscious leadership, the failure on the part of the press to catch wind of Vallejos court-martial was a lucky break. Someone might easily have connected the rape case to the unexplained shooting of a Green Beret by a fellow Special Forces soldier three months earlier. They might have noticed that the shooter was a witness for the alleged rapist, and that they both belonged to the same motorcycle club, made up of soldiers from the Armys most elite unit. A sort of Delta Force biker gang  that story wouldnt have been good for the Army, not at a time when the Navy was getting hammered by allegations of rampant drug abuse, fratricidal violence, and sexual assault in the ranks of its SEAL teams. The following year, the legal travails of ex-SEAL Eddie Gallagher would make national headlines for months on end. In 2020, The New York Times, Associated Press, and CNN would cover the sexual-assault allegation against a Navy SEAL on a base in Iraq. The alleged perpetrator, Adel Anayat, eventually copped to a misdemeanor. Like Gallagher, Anayat was an ordinary Tier 2 special operator, of whom there are as many as 10,000. Lavigne and Vallejo were on an altogether different level, one rarely touched by scandal. Other than the one local-news blip on Vallejos arrest, the allegations against them remained confined to Fort Bragg.

By the time of Vallejos trial, it was clear that the Army had missed a chance to intervene in the boundary-pushing, motorcycle-borne debauchery of the Coast x Coast club as early as September 2016, when Scanlon went to CID and alleged that Vallejo had raped her behind their un-permitted clubhouse in downtown Fayetteville, which just happens to be adjacent to the county jail, a building full of cops.

The Army missed another chance to rein in rogue elements in Delta Forces enlisted ranks in 2018, after Lavigne killed Leshikar in a drug-fueled altercation that was proof positive of something rotten in the state of Special Forces. Instead, everything was hushed up. Both Vallejo and Lavigne were exonerated. And every time Lavigne reoffended, the charges against him mysteriously vanished. His spiral into drugs and paranoia culminated in him shooting at a man on the streets of Fayetteville in July 2020. He busted a few rounds in the direction of Ian Detar, an inveterate burglar who has no fewer than 29 mug shots on file with the county.

In September 2021, I visit the crack house where the incident occurred, a run-down home on Enloe Street accessible by a dirt road that a spokeswoman for the sheriff describes as a known drug house. Seven or eight people are sitting on the stoop or standing around the driveway. None are able to say why the shooting took place, but they all remember Lavigne. It seems he crashed there from time to time.

We all knew him, says Roy Lynn Parker, 35.

Parker says that Lavigne once gave him money to cover some court costs. He says Lavigne smoked crack, that was his main thing. He denies that Lavigne was ever into dealing any sort of narcotics. Hes vague about the shooting incident. I remember hearing some shots. I think Ian, he said Will shot at him. They picked him up down at the stop sign.

A big, crazy white man is how a 52-year-old woman named Renee Locklear describes Lavigne. He loved weapons. Locklear shows me the spot where she says he once threw a knife into the trunk of a tree in the front yard, which is littered with hundreds if not thousands of cigarette butts. He always had something in his hand, Locklear says. If he didnt have a knife, he would be toting around, like Rambo, some bow-and-arrow-type shit.

I only recently learned about Lavignes July 2020 arrest from a police report that the sheriffs office initially withheld. The offense was aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a class E felony that could have landed Lavigne in prison for years, but as usual, he wasnt charged with a crime.

When Jane read that Lavigne had killed a man with impunity, only to be murdered in turn, I was trembling, she says, sitting out in the cold, chain-smoking. Its like watching a scary movie. Im still spooked. She read USASOCs statement in The Fort Bragg Murders that some unspecified adverse administrative action had been pending against Lavigne at the time of his death. How coincidental is it? she says. Billys about to be questioned, or face some sort of retribution. And then hes taken out. Its like someone didnt want him to talk. She adds, Im scared to say words like this out loud.

For good reason: The person or persons who killed Lavigne and Dumas remain at large. Whoever they are, they were capable of taking out one of the worlds most skilled and experienced gunfighters, without leaving any apparent clue for the FBI or CID to follow. And no one seems to know quite why.

While awaiting trial, Vallejo had stood down as an active-duty operator, attached to USASOC as an ignominious SURPLUS SLDR, according to his enlistment-record brief. Its unclear if he ever returned to Delta Force or what he did for his last three years in the military. In September 2021, almost 20 years to the day that he joined the Army, he held a retirement party in Colorado, where he now lives, not far from where he began his military career, at Fort Carson.

Around the same time, he went on a cross-country ride with the Coast x Coast motorcycle club, starting out of Los Angeles and bound for Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. It was their annual Ride for the Fallen, a coast-to-coast convoy of ex-military bikers to raise money for wounded special operators, and the families of those slain in battle. Each year, they hold a string of events in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia, where they sell merchandise, take donations, and raffle off items such as bottles of wine printed with portraits of fallen Delta Force soldiers, concealed-carry holsters, and pistols painted in the colors of the American flag. The Coast x Coast Foundation raised $450,943 in tax-free contributions from 2016 to 2020, according to IRS records. Over those five years, it paid out grants totaling $187,143.

On Sept. 8, 2021, the Coast x Coast club holds a public event in Fayetteville, at their usual haunt, Macs Speed Shop. On the back patio, they are standing around a red tent with the Coast x Coast logo, drinking beer, chatting at the bar, and smoking cigarettes. According to a 2014 ATF report leaked to The Intercept, outlaw motorcycle gangs are proliferating in the military in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but aside from their vests and patches, the present-day Coast x Coast club looks more like customers in a Bass Pro Shop than Hells Angels.

The person who seems to be in charge is a tall, barrel-chested man of about 40, whose long, scraggly beard is streaked with gray. He is courteous, with an iron handshake, and gives his name as Joe.

I knew him, Joe says of Lavigne. He was a great dude. He came with us, rode the ride. Other than that, he says, I dont think youre going to get any comment from anybody around here.

I ask whether Cris Valley is in attendance. No, Joe says. Hes at home, doing work shit. Thats all hell say about Coast x Coasts founder and CEO.

There might be a good reason for Vallejo to avoid the spot where, almost five years ago to the day, he met Scanlon. Since he was tried by the military, a branch of the federal government, the double-jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution would not bar the state from prosecuting him all over again. And in North Carolina, there is no statute of limitations for rape.

For her part, Scanlon tried hard not to show any emotion in public, and accepted the jurys July 2018 decision with stoicism. But it was a disheartening conclusion, she says, to a difficult and drawn-out ordeal that she insists was not my fault.

She understood that beyond a reasonable doubt was a high burden of proof, and evinced no particular desire to see Vallejo in prison. It is a lot for a jury to make a decision like that, she says. It didnt necessarily mean they didnt believe me. Unfortunately, her experience with the military-justice system greatly set back her career, and would overshadow her whole time in the Army.

She attained the rank of captain, but the missed deployment, the transfers between units, and the stigma that attaches to female soldiers who report being raped  all the gossipy, nontangible ways, she says, that marks you out as a problem child  diminished her prospects of advancement. When her contract was up in 2019, she resigned from the Army.

Once out of uniform, Scanlon began to meet advocates, lawyers, and people knowledgeable about sexual assault in the military. In 2020, she sued the Army in civil court for allegedly mishandling her case, but the lawsuit was blocked by the so-called Feres doctrine, established in 1950 by a Supreme Court decision that a broad range of legal scholars variously describe as archaic, unfair, irrational, unconscionable, and immoral. The doctrine, long a target of legislative reform, bars soldiers and sailors and Marines from recovering damages resulting from wrongful acts by the military.

More than she questions Vallejos acquittal or the jurys decision, Scanlon simply wants to know what happened at the court-martial. She filed a FOIA request for the transcript in 2019, and the Army gave her the trial record instead. Its hundreds of pages long, but does not include the testimony of witnesses or the arguments the lawyers made.

A spokesman for USASOC tells me that no transcript of the audio recordings of the trial proceedings was ever typed up because Vallejo was acquitted, so there was no possibility of an appeal. The Army couldnt give Scanlon a transcript because no transcript ever existed. In addition, according to USASOC, the court reporter deleted the audio.

It was standard practice at the time, Col. Kazin says. It is something that has changed now, for exactly this reason. Starting in 2019, victims who testify get a copy of the court-martial record, including audio, whether it was an acquittal or conviction.

When Scanlon learns that the audio was destroyed, she unexpectedly breaks down in tears. Its the first time during many hours of interviews that she has lost her composure, and I can understand why. The Armys destruction of records means that she will never know what was said in her absence at trial. Those deleted files were the only record of the testimony the jurors chose to believe over hers.

Looking back on the court-martial, it was a solid case and my testimony was powerful, Scanlon says, but I was this lowly lieutenant up against Delta Force and USASOC and JSOC, and all that entails. Only afterwards did I realize I didnt stand a chance.

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As Europe copes with yet another wave of COVID-19 infections and skyrocketing cases of the Omicron variant, prospects for a full-blown comeback for the international film festival circuit are looking less likely every day.

The Netherlands and Denmark have taken the strictest measures so far, while France and Germany have closed their borders to U.K. travellers. Other countries are expected to follow suit. The current scenario puts pressure on the European festivals scheduled in the first few months of the year, including the Rotterdam fest (IFFR) and the Berlinale, which could be the most impacted. Cannes and Venice, meanwhile, might be spared as they were in 2021. Here is what we know so far about what to expect at key international festivals in 2022:

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International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)

Jan. 26-Feb. 6

With the Netherlands enforcing a strict lockdown ahead of Christmas, International Film Festival Rotterdams plans for an on-site 51st edition could be a mission impossible, but they havent yet called it off. Restrictions will remain in place until at least mid-January, while the festival is due to open on Jan 26. Reacting to the lockdown announcement on Friday, organizers told Variety that they were currently evaluating impact and what is realistically feasible and will announce their decision later this week. IFFRs popular industry events, CineMart and Rotterdam Lab, meanwhile, will take place online. Dutch documentary festival IDFA, which wrapped on Nov. 28, narrowly missed the new restrictions.

Berlin Film Festival

Feb. 10-Feb. 20

After going online in 2021, the Berlin Film Festival is committed to returning with an in-person edition as long as cinemas remain open, Berlinale executive director Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian told Variety on Monday. Although very little info about the selection has leaked so far, Chatrian is in the process of assembling his jury (headed by M. Night Shyamalan) and lineup, which he hopes to be broader in scope and more accessible than his first two editions, according to industry sources. A number of French films are expected to world premiere during the 72nd edition of the festival, including Claire Denis Fire with Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon; Francois Ozons Peter von Kant with Isabelle Adjani; Mikhael Hers Les passagers de la nuit with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Emmanuelle Beart; and Alain Guiraudies Nobodys Hero with Doria Tillier and Noemie Lvovsky. The European Film Market is also on track for an in-person edition and about 2,000 have so far registered. Due to the pandemic, the festival  which is the first to take place under Germanys new political leadership  and market wont be hosting cocktails or parties, and screenings will have to be booked online. Considering the travel restrictions, it will be challenging to pull together a truly international festival with Asian, American and British delegates likely sitting this edition out.

Story continues

Cannes Film Festival

May 17-28

After a bullish 2021 edition that saw Julia Ducournaus Titane win the Golden Palm from a jury presided over by Spike Lee, Cannes is gearing up for another big year in 2022 to mark the festivals 75th anniversary. Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux is already pursuing some high profile U.S. titles and talent, and is also still hoping to bring Netflix back to the festival, which could happen if the streamer accepts to world premiere its movies outside of the competition roster. A sign of their friendly relationship, Netflix recently partnered with Fremauxs Lumiere Institute in Lyon to host a week of gala premieres. In 2021, the festivals selection was super-sized with, among other things, a Cannes Premiere section (that might not be back in 2022, according to an insider). What might stick for 2022 are the beach screenings hosted as part of the Cinema de la Plage lineup. Cannes has also changed its main media sponsors for the first time in 28 years and will be working with France Televisions and the platform Brut instead of Canal Plus Group starting in 2022. So far, the festival hasnt set up a contingency plan in the summer or fall and is prepping for a May edition as normal, roughly three weeks after Frances presidential election.

Venice Film Festival

Aug. 31-Sept. 10

Like Cannes, Venice had a glorious 2021 edition packed with stars and anticipated movies, from Dune to Spencer and also Paolo Sorrentinos Netflix original The Hand of God, which is Italys international Oscar contender. Venices artistic director Alberto Barbera, who is closely monitoring the evolution of the pandemic and its potential impact on winter festivals, has already started the selection process for next years edition. Due to its standing as an awards season kingmaker in recent years Netflix has had a large presence on the lido which has become the streamers main awards race launching pad, beginning with Alfonso Cuarons Roma, which scored three Oscars in 2019. Venice in 2022 should continue this trend, making Netflixs upcoming modern-day Jane Austen adaptation Persuasion, starring Dakota Johnson and Henry Golding, a potential Lido title alongside more esoteric fare.

BFI London Film Festival

October 2022 TBC

The 2021 edition of the London Film Film Festival, operated by the British Film Institute, expanded on its 2020 hybrid model and was a massive success. Operating in London and at 10 partner venues across the U.K., the festival boasted mostly sold out screenings, which attracted 139,400 physical attendances and 152,300 virtual attendees. The festival screened 161 features and physically hosted a galaxy of talent, including Jay Z, Beyonce, Idris Elba, Regina King, George Clooney, Todd Haynes, Dakota Johnson, Kenneth Branagh and Bill Murray, among many others. The 2022 edition will hope to expand on this and return to the heady days of 2019, but COVID-19 will remain a factor. After this years closing night film, The Tragedy of Macbeth, it emerged that two guests had tested positive. Next year will benefit immensely from the presence of Jason Wood, who joins the BFI in the newly created role of director of public programs and audiences. In his previous roles, Wood drove HOME, Manchester and Londons Curzon cinemas towards becoming cultural centers of excellence and is expected to bring that nous to his remit, which includes the London festival, enhancing festival director Tricia Tuttles team.

Busan International Film Festival

October 2022 TBC

Busan, Asias biggest and most prestigious film festival, seems to have put most of its political, financial and management issues behind it. But, due to COVID conditions, it has scarcely had a chance to shine under the leadership of new festival director Huh Moonyoung. Both the 2020 and 2021 editions were held as hybrid editions that emphasized public health measures and operated as largely local affairs with just a handful of foreign visitors of any kind (filmmakers, executives or press). The most recent edition expanded the number of in-person screenings and allowed the festival to restart its discovery role, playing 223 films to 76,000 spectators over 10 days. Seating capacity at each of the 29 venues was limited to 50%. The associated film rights market (also under new management) was held entirely online, except for a lonely, in-person IP pitching strand. For next year, organizers hope that the coronavirus has been banished, borders have reopened and travel within Asia can resume.

Nick Vivarelli, Naman Ramachandran and Patrick Frater contributed to this story.

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Martha Stewart releases replica of nativity set she made in prison (Martha Stewart/TikTok)

Martha Stewart is selling replicas of the ceramic nativity set she made while she was in prison.

In a new video posted to her TikTok account, the writer and TV personality said the white figurines, complete with baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, make for a really beautiful and special gift with a little street cred.

Inspired by, guess what, the set that I made when I was confined, she said.

She also showed viewers the original set, in a darker fawn shade, which still has her inmate number on the bottom.

These are the exact replicas of the nativity scene that I made in my pottery class when I was away at camp, she added, comparing both sets.

Stewart, a Catholic, spent five months in a prison in West Virginia between 2004 and 2005 after she was convicted on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements.

Stewarts latest business venture is being hailed as iconic on TikTok, where the video has been watched more than 300,000 times.

Martha Stewart capitalising on her prison work is the energy we all never knew we needed this year, one user wrote.

Another said: Who goes to jail and makes the worlds best nativity set?

Honestly with this backstory, worth every penny, a third person wrote.

Others noted her choice of vocabulary and avoiding the use of the word prison.

At camp. Icon, one person wrote. Another said: Only Martha goes to camp and brings back decorations!

The set, which is being sold here, retails for $149 (112). It is currently on sale ahead of Christmas for $119.20 (89).

Stewart spoke about her experience in prison in an interview with Harpers Bazaar earlier this year.

I knew I was strong going in and I was certainly stronger coming out, Stewart said.

It was a very serious happening in my life. I take it very seriously. Im not bitter about it. My daughter knows all the problems that resulted because of that. Theres a lot.

She said her only big regret that came from her prison sentence is that she couldnt host Saturday Night Live.

My probation officer wouldnt give me the time. That really pissed me off, because I would have loved to have hosted Saturday Night Live. Id like that on my resume.
QVC is continuing to assess the impact of the deadly fire that swept through its North Carolina distribution center early Saturday morning.

David Rawlinson, president and chief executive officer of Qurate Retail Inc., the parent company of QVC, was in Rocky Mount on Sunday to support his team and help evaluate the situation.

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On behalf of QVC and all our team members, we are heartbroken to learn of the passing of one of our contractor colleagues, Kevon Ricks, in the wake of the tragic fire at our QVC Rocky Mount, N.C., distribution facility. Our thoughts and prayers are with Kevons family and friends, QVC said in a statement. Our continued focus is on all our impacted team members and ensuring their well-being and safety in this difficult time. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of them as well.

Its not clear yet how the fire will affect deliveries to consumers.

For our customers, we are still working to understand the impact to their orders and returns, QVC said in its statement. Our customer care representatives are prepared to help as this situation continues to evolve. We appreciate our customers patience and their outpouring of support to our Rocky Mount team.

We thank the first responders, state and local authorities who are still working to put out the fire so that they can investigate its cause, QVC indicated. We are supporting them in their efforts, including working together to coordinate local resources for our team members, and we deeply appreciate their commitment to partnership and to the Rocky Mount community.

QVC said it is providing shutdown pay to all team members unable to work due to the facility shutdown from Dec. 18 through Dec. 31 and is actively assessing next steps for 2022.

QVC has set up an alternate site for Rocky Mount team members to meet in-person with team leaders for one-on-one support and has created a team member information hotline with updates on this tragedy and for questions. In addition, QVC has an employee assistance program, which provides counseling and other health-related referrals.

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Health officials and private corporations first introduced vaccine mandates in the U.S. over the summer, partly as a response to the new and highly transmissible Delta variant. Over the course of the past few months, new requirements have popped up, but a newer and more infectious variant has prompted even more officials to take a look at their policies. The Omicron variantwhich was first detected on Nov. 24has become the dominant variant in the U.S. with alarming speed, accounting for 73 percent of cases in the country as of Dec. 20, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Virus experts have said that this iteration of the virus means that vaccinations are even more necessary, making vaccine mandates potentially more important as well.

RELATED: Unvaccinated People Will Be Barred From Here, Starting Jan. 3.

But vaccine mandates have invited their fair share of backlash. A November injunction had blocked a rule from the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which initially set a Jan. 4 deadline for large companies to mandate COVID vaccinations for workers as part of President Joe Biden's Path Out of the Pandemic plan. However, on Dec. 17, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the block, according to OSHA.

"OSHA can now once again implement this vital workplace health standard, which will protect the health of workers by mitigating the spread of the unprecedented virus in the workplace," the department said in a statement.

In order to allow employers time to meet the requirements after the ruling was blocked for weeks, OSHA said it will be extending the mandate by nearly a week. According to the department's statement, OSHA will not enforce the vaccine mandate or issue citations for noncompliances before Jan. 10.

The vaccine requirement covers companies with 100 or more employees, meaning that about 84 million U.S. workers are required to get vaccinatedmaking it one of the largest overarching vaccine mandates in the country. Some companies, like United Airlines and Google, have already decided to bar unvaccinated workers, but OSHA's official ruling says that employees who are not fully vaccinated must wear masks and be subject to weekly COVID tests.

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Workers who refuse to get vaccinated have to pay for weekly tests and masks, and giving employees the option to test weekly instead of getting vaccinated is at the discretion of each company, according to Forbes. "The new OSHA rule establishes a floor for safetynot a ceiling. Many businesses have already agreed to institute a full vaccination requirement without a testing option," Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients explained in a joint op-ed for USA Today in November.

Companies that do decide to allow a testing option must comply with the testing requirement by Feb. 9, as OSHA will start handing out citations for non-compliance on this date.

RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter.

The court's new ruling has been appealed. At least three petitions were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court within hours of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling, according to Reuters. "While we are disappointed in the Court's decision, we will continue to fight the illegal mandate in the Supreme Court, We are confident the mandate can be stopped," South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson tweeted on Dec. 17.

But the court has stood beside its decision. "It is difficult to imagine what more OSHA could do or rely on to justify its finding that workers face a grave danger in the workplace," the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' opinion said. "It is not appropriate to second-guess that agency determination considering the substantial evidence, including many peer-reviewed scientific studies, on which it relied."

The White House also praised the court's decision, particularly amid the fast-spreading Omicron variant. "The OSHA vaccination or testing rule will ensure businesses enact measures that will protect their employees," Kevin Munoz, a White House spokesman, said in a statement to The New York Times. "Especially as the U.S. faces the highly transmissible Omicron variant, it's critical we move forward with vaccination requirements and protections for workers with the urgency needed in this moment."

RELATED: People Who Haven't Gotten a Booster Will Be Barred From This, as of Jan. 17.
Federal health officials are now advising U.S. travelers to avoid Spain, Finland, Monaco and five other countries due to their "very high" COVID-19 risk levels.

Spain, Finland, Bonaire, Chad, Gibraltar, Lebanon, Monaco and San Marino on Monday climbed to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions "very high COVID risk level, the agency's top pandemic advisory level for foreign destinations. There are 80 other countries in this category, including popular destinations like the United Kingdom, France and Italy.

Avoid travel to these destinations, the CDC warns. If you must travel to these destinations, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel.

Pedestrians wearing face masks in the southern neighborhood of Vallecas in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020. The country is one of eight that was moved to the CDC's level 4 "Very High COVID risk level.

Travel guidance: Another popular European destination added to State Department's 'do not travel' list due to COVID

COVID on a cruise: How a breakthrough case sent one couple from an ocean view balcony to the 'dungeon'

The shift comes as counties across the globe begin to discover the newest coronavirus variant, omicron, which is believed to be more contagious but potentially less virulent than the delta variant.

The CDC moved a number of other countries this week:

Albania and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines moved from level 4 to level 3.

French Guiana and Moldova moved from level 4 to level unknown.

The Bahamas, Honduras and Grenada moved from level 3 to level 2.

Peru moved from level 2 to level 3.

Fiji moved from level 2 to level 1.

Comoros and Saint Pierre and Miquelon moved from level 1 to level 2.

Sudan moved from level 1 to level unknown.

The CDC looks at a number of factors, including case counts and testing data, when determining a countrys risk level.

The State Department also updated its travel guidance this week and moved 10 countries (Bonaire, Chad, Ethiopia, Finland, French Guiana, Lebanon, Moldova, Spain, Sudan and Ukraine) to its own level 4 travel advisory. The department guidance warns Americans against traveling to these destinations.

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The following countries' Travel Advisories have been raised to or reissued at Level 4 - Do Not Travel:

Bonaire

Chad

Ethiopia

Finland

French Guiana

Lebanon

Moldova

Spain

Sudan

Ukraine

See advisories: https://t.co/NjzywmxBiV pic.twitter.com/RG3ofx671U  Travel - State Dept (@TravelGov) December 21, 2021

 Which EU countries are open to tourists?: A breakdown of EU travel restrictions by country

Follow USA TODAY reporter Bailey Schulz on Twitter: @bailey_schulz.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Spain, Monaco, Finland added to CDC's level 4 'avoid travel' list
YORK, Maine  Todd Goodwin, an officer with the Portsmouth Police Department, has pleaded not guilty to assaulting his domestic partner in an alleged incident at their South Berwick residence last month. The woman he is accused of assaulting is now calling for the charge to be dropped, according to court documents.

Goodwin, 44, a nearly 13-year veteran of the New Hampshire Seacoast city's police force, was arraigned on a single domestic violence assault charge Tuesday at York District Court. After entering his not guilty plea, Goodwin and his attorney, Matthew Howell, stated their request to amend Goodwins bail conditions so that he may have contact with the alleged victim.

Todd Goodwin, a Portsmouth police officer, appears Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021 in York District Court, where he pleaded not guilty to a domestic violence charge. Goodwin's attorney, Matthew Howell, is to his right.

Upon his arrest Nov. 12, Goodwin was placed on bail restrictions, which barred him from having any contact with the person alleged to be the victim of the assault, as well as her children. Court documents state the domestic partner is in support of modifying Goodwins bail conditions so he may have direct and indirect contact with her.

Recently: Accidental shooting leads police to Kensington home with over 70 cats

A motion filed Dec. 15 reads: (The victim) attributes the criminal charge to a misunderstanding, and she does not want Mr. Goodwin to be subject to any bail conditions, and she likewise does not want any criminal charges to proceed against Mr. Goodwin.

Goodwin was arrested by South Berwick police the morning of Friday, Nov. 12 after a woman came to the police station and reported an assault to town police around 2 a.m. Court documents say the victim of the alleged incident is Goodwins "significant other' and that the incident took place at their 149 Dow Highway residence in South Berwick.

South Berwick police responded at about 4:40 a.m. to the address where the assault allegedly took place and subsequently arrested Goodwin.

Previous story: Portsmouth police officer arrested on domestic violence assault charge

When the victim reported the incident to town police, the officer on duty determined the incident to be domestic violence, South Berwick police have said. Rescue personnel checked the victim for injuries, and she was not transported to the hospital.

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Goodwins sole count is a Class D misdemeanor, with court documentation saying he did intentionally, knowingly or recklessly cause bodily injury or offensive physical contact to the victim.

Looking back: Seacoast restaurants that closed and opened in 2021

The police officers case is being prosecuted by York County Assistant District Attorney Kristen Dorion, who has been notified of the motion to amend Goodwins bail conditions. The document says it has been indicated that the State objects to the Defendants proposed bail amendment, though it does not state the prosecution's reasons.

Goodwin remains on paid administrative leave from the Portsmouth Police Department, as he has been since his arrest, according to Police Chief Mark Newport.

A dispositional conference for Goodwin's case was scheduled for April 27.

If you need help

As a community service, the following information is published with stories in which domestic and/or sexual violence is alleged, while making no judgment on the guilt or innocence of the accused:

If you need support Haven has trained confidential advocates available. The 24-hour hotline is (603) 994-SAFE (7233). Or to connect to our confidential, online chat service Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., go to havennh.org. In Maine, visit caring-unlimited.org.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth NH police officer Todd Goodwin pleads not guilty to assault
Numerous awards recognize the companys commitment to an inclusive culture and employee well-being

WATERTOWN, Mass., December 21, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--athenahealth, Inc., a leading provider of network-enabled software and services for medical groups and health systems nationwide, today announced that the company was recognized by numerous employer award programs this year, including top workplaces in Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Boston, MA; and Maine. These achievements demonstrate athenahealths commitment to making employees a priority by supporting and celebrating both personal and professional growth and development, as well as its mission-driven culture to transform the delivery of healthcare and create healthier futures for all.

athenahealth ranked on several top places to work lists in 2021, most recently earning the No. 10 spot in the large company category on The Boston Globes Top Places to Work 2021, a nine-spot increase from the previous years ranking. athenahealth also received recognition in other U.S. cities and states where its offices are located, including the Greater Austin Top Workplaces 2021, announced in November, the Best Places to Work in Maine for 2021, announced in October, as well as worldwide recognition in August as a Silver winner in the 2021 Stevie Awards for Great Employers. Earlier in the year The Atlanta Journal-Constitution named athenahealth a Top Workplace 2021, and the international Great Place to Work organization honored the company with U.S. and India certification.

Showcasing its support for working parents and promoting a healthy work-life balance, athenahealth was included in the 2021 Seramounts Best Companies for Dads list, which commemorates an organizations commitment to forward-thinking workplace programs in areas such as childcare assistance and job flexibility, as well as on Rovers Best Dog-Friendly Companies 2021 list for its benefits around pet care and pet health insurance. The company was also named a 2021 WWCMA Workwell Massachusetts award winner, powered by Healthiest Employers, for exemplary worksite health promotion.

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As previously announced, athenahealth earned nine additional employer of choice awards in the first half of 2021, including being named to the Forbes Best Mid-Sized Employers list and Energages U.S. Top Workplaces program.

"We are honored to receive these accolades, which we believe reflect the culture that we strive to encourage and deliver at athenahealth," said Bob Segert, chairman and chief executive officer at athenahealth. "Our people are our most important asset, and we recognize what an especially difficult year it has been for them. We have incredible talent throughout our organization, and I feel extremely lucky to work with colleagues who choose to dedicate their skills every day to help us realize our vision to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all."

For more information on athenahealths diversity and inclusion initiatives, perks, and job opportunities, please visit: https://www.athenahealth.com/careers.

About athenahealth, Inc.

athenahealth creates innovative healthcare technology that connects clinicians, patients, payers, and partners in differentiated ways. Our electronic health records, revenue cycle management, and patient engagement tools allow anytime, anywhere access, driving better financial outcomes for our customers and enabling our provider customers to deliver better quality care. In everything we do, were inspired by our vision to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211217005321/en/

Contacts

Nikki D'Addario

ndaddario@athenahealth.com

(617) 393-6004
Taylor Boydstun owns and operates T. Berkley Wines in Calistoga, California, a small city in California's Wine Country. Boydstun is a 2004 Galesburg High School graduate.

With a degree in international studies fresh in hand from the University of Illinois in 2008, Galesburg native Taylor Boydstun had no idea where life or a career would take him. But it's safe to say owning a winemaking business wasn't on his radar.

Goodbye Champaign-Urbana, hello Napa Valley, California, with plenty of stops in between.

Boydstun owns and operates T. Berkley Wines in Calistoga, California, a small city in California's Wine Country. There, Boydstun produces a range of premium, small-batch wines sourced from grower partners. The son of John and Lisa Boydstun of Galesburg, Taylor lives in Napa with his wife Sarah Bray and dog Willow.

Through a Q&A, the 2004 Galesburg High School graduate tells us how he developed a love for winemaking, what he thinks makes a great wine and how he sees T. Berkley Wines expanding in the coming years.

Galesburg native Taylor Boydstun says T. Berkley Wines is a project he started in 2016 to focus on the two grape varieties that have most intrigued him personally: Chenin blanc and Cabernet franc.

'From my first job in the industry I was hooked'

Q: You say T. Berkley Wines was founded out of a love for winemaking. How did that love begin and evolve?

Boydstun: I was first introduced to wine while studying abroad in Europe during my time at the University of Illinois. I strategically chose International Studies as it required at least a semester studying abroad and was fortunate to spend some time in both Barcelona and Paris  in both places, the wine is practically cheaper than the water!

What started as a part of cultural immersion grew with a chance visit to Napa and Sonoma after graduation, which opened my eyes to wine production, a field I did not have much exposure to in Galesburg. Winemaking seemed to combine all the things I was looking for  time spent outdoors, constant creation and experimentation, a degree of physicality  with something artistic and highly cultural. In winemaking, I found I could use all parts of myself and that the work was equal parts rural and urban, agricultural and industrial, romantic and scientific  and from my first job in the industry I was hooked.

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Q: What was your first experience working in the wine, or winemaking business? Give us a timeline.

Boydstun: After that 2009 visit to northern California mid-harvest, I turned to my recently minted International Studies degree and began looking at positions in the southern hemisphere, since harvest positions below the equator meant I wouldnt have to wait a full year before diving in. The wine industry is very seasonal and wineries need extra hands, even inexperienced ones, during the harvest push, so I blindly applied to 50 or 60 wineries across three different countries and heard back from only three, all in New Zealand. Two said no and one said they would hire me for the three months of harvest to help pick their grapes. That three-month internship turned into a nearly two-year viticultural apprenticeship in Central Otago on the South Island  this proved to be one of the most formative experiences I could have asked for and was one of my most important work experiences. From there, I moved to California to work in wine cellars and have been out here ever since, albeit with some harvest-hopping to other countries thrown in.

A one-man operation with plans to expand

Q: Tell us about T. Berkley Wines. How did it start, what do you do there, how many people are involved and what products do you offer?

Boydstun: T. Berkley Wines is a project that I started in 2016 to focus on the two grape varieties that have most intrigued me personally: Chenin blanc and Cabernet franc. After 10 harvests working for others in wine, combined with a surprise health scare following my 30th birthday, I realized that working solely on other peoples projects was not going to allow me to craft the kinds of wines that excited me the most. So, in 2016 I scrapped together five tons of fruit and while still working full time for another wine producer, crafted my first commercial vintage in my free time.

Five years on, I make a number of different wines: both a dry and sweet Chenin blanc, a number of different Cabernet francs, and a dry rose of Cabernet franc  nearly 1,000 cases in total. I am still a one-man operation but have plans to expand over the next five years.

Q: How did the name T. Berkley Wines come about?

Boydstun: My full name is Taylor Berkley Boydstun and my middle name, Berkley, is my mothers maiden name. I was always very close to my maternal grandfather, John Berkley Jr., and wanted to honor that connection and my family history. The name Berkley, as opposed to the more common and Californian Berkeley, is an American immigration story. My great-grandfather emigrated to New York City from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and John Berkov naturalized to John Berkley.

Q: How would you describe your products?

Boydstun: I produce a range of premium, small-batch wines sourced from outstanding grower-partners and made in a way that highlights the grapes and the places in which they were grown, which in winespeak we call a minimal interventionist style. My goal with the vineyards I work with is to respect the quality of the fruit and allow the character of the vineyard to show through in the finished wine.

Taylor Boydstun owns and operates T. Berkley Wines in Calistoga, California, a small city in California's Wine Country. Boydstun is a 2004 Galesburg High School graduate.

'Great wine is made in the vineyard'

Q: In your opinion, what makes a good wine?

Boydstun: Great wine is made in the vineyard. It takes an outstanding site, farmed with care and attention, to have any hope of making a truly great wine. I personally look to source from older vine vineyards, planted at elevation, that are farmed organically or sustainably.

Q: Do you have a favorite type of wine?

Boydstun: I love natural acidity in my wines, so I tend to prefer clean and crisp wines with lower levels of alcohol, either white or red  which happens to be the style of wines I make!

Q: Who were your influences along the way? Either people in the wine business, and/or people you have looked up to on a personal or business manner?

Boydstun: It was essential to me to work with people I respected and admired in this industry in order to learn from them, and I have been very fortunate in my career to spend time closely working with some outstanding producers:

Gareth King and the entire team at Felton Road in New Zealand taught me the essentials of impeccable, biodynamic farming to produce premium wine. Ted Lemon at Littorai Winery in California was instrumental in changing the way I approached winemaking, looking at things more philosophically. Emmerich Knoll of Weingut Knoll in Austria taught me to make white wines with concentration, texture and depth. Ian Riggs and the team at Brokenwood Winery in Australia renewed my appreciation for wine-as-culture with their outstanding approach to winemaking and wine education. They reminded me that this is also supposed to be fun!

Global recession leads to career in winemaking

Q: Was winemaking your career ambition? Or did you have something else in mind before developing a passion for wine?

Boydstun: I came to winemaking after my university studies, so it was most definitely not a career ambition I had, or even contemplated, until then. I had considered going into law, or business generally, but honestly did not have any idea what I really wanted to do when I graduated. Had it not been for the global recession in 2008, I most likely would have landed a job in some other field and would never have made my way to wine production!

T. Berkley Wines is available through www.tberkleywines.com, where there is a yearly Wine Club sign up and wines also available for purchase.

Q: How do you distribute your products?

Boydstun: My selection of T. Berkley Wines is available through my website, www.tberkleywines.com, where I have a yearly Wine Club sign up and wines also available for purchase. I am currently working with a distributor partner in New York who operates in Illinois and has plans to bring the wine in in 2022, so keep your eyes out for some of my wines back home soon!

Q: What was it like growing up in Galesburg?

Boydstun: Looking back, growing up in Galesburg at the time that I did was pretty idyllic. I was fortunate to have a good portion of my extended family in town  I could walk to my grandparents home  and it seemed as though every street block near mine was full of kids around my age. Town felt small, but not stiflingly so, and what I remember most is spending so much of my time outdoors either riding bikes around town, playing sports, or simply running around the neighborhood. I will always look back on my childhood fondly.

This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Galesburg native operates T. Berkley Wines in Napa Valley
AT&T will sell Xandr, its programmatic advertising marketplace, to Microsoft, the telco announced.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory reviews. Xandr has formally been part of WarnerMedia, and the sale of the ad unit to Microsoft comes as WarnerMedia has set a deal to merge with Discovery.

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Microsofts proposed acquisition of Xandr does not include the advertising sales business supporting DirecTV, which AT&T spun off in a deal with TPG Capital earlier this year. AT&T, which has embarked on a strategy to reduce its massive debt load through asset divestitures, has been looking to offload Xandr for more than a year.

According to Microsoft, Xandrs technology strategically complements Microsofts current advertising offerings and will help accelerate delivery of digital advertising and retail media solutions for the open web by combining Microsofts audience intelligence, technology and global advertising customer base with Xandrs data-driven platform.

Microsofts shared vision of empowering a free and open web and championing an open industry alternative via a global advertising marketplace makes it a great fit for Xandr, Xandr EVP and GM Mike Welch said in a statement. We look forward to using our innovative platform to help accelerate Microsofts digital advertising and retail media capabilities

Mikhail Parakhin, president of web experiences at Microsoft, commented, With Xandrs talent and technology, Microsoft can accelerate the delivery of its digital advertising and retail media solutions, shaping tomorrows digital ad marketplace into one that respects consumer privacy preferences, understands publishers relationships with consumers and helps advertisers meet their goals.

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AT&T formed Xandr in September 2018, combining its TV and digital advertising businesses, including digital ad marketplace AppNexus, which the telco bought for a reported $1.6 billion that year. Xandr was initially led by CEO Brian Lesser, who exited the post in the spring of 2020 after AT&T decided to combine Xandr with WarnerMedia.

Xandr had ambitions of becoming a dominant player in cross-platform advertising. WarnerMedia had been a founding member of Open AP, an initiative to facilitate advanced TV ad buying across multiple media companies, alongside ViacomCBS and Fox Corp. The Open AP consortium later added NBCUniversal and Univision to its ranks. After AT&Ts creation of Xandr, WarnerMedia exited Open AP in 2019  but this June, the two rivals reached a truce and with a new data-collaboration agreement.

Microsoft has worked with Xandr (and its predecessor businesses) for 10 years. In 2020, Xandr joined the Microsoft Audience Network, which serves Microsoft Audience Ads, a native advertising solution built by the Bing search platform.

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The omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is projected to drive a new spike in infections that could peak in February at more than 150,000 a day in Florida, well above any previous peak since the pandemic began, according to modeling from the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida.

Researchers produced four different scenarios that may play out between now and through spring 2022, using different assumptions for how transmissible the omicron variant will prove to be, how severe infections will become, and how well vaccines and naturally acquired immunity will protect people.

While infections could be three times as high as during the delta variant spike in late August and early September, the number of associated deaths may be much smaller if early indications are correct that omicron cases lead to less severe complications.

One reason for that, according to experts, is that while omicron may break through levels of immunity acquired by vaccines or earlier infection, that immunity can protect people from becoming very sick.

Made with Flourish

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Omicron and vaccines: Do COVID-19 boosters protect against omicron? Where and when can I get a booster in Florida?

"We are entering an explosive peak in infections. It's really unfortunate. For this variant, having a prior infection doesn't appear to be very protective and we have a lot of people in Florida who are not vaccinated," said Dr. Ira Longini, professor of biostatistics, who participated in the study.

The most likely projection, according to the researchers, anticipates a peak of 150,000 cases per day in February but that includes both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases. The number of reported cases  those confirmed by testing  are expected to peak at about the same time but just over 30,000 cases per day, as most who don't exhibit symptoms never get tested.

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Ira Longini, professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, helped model projections for the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.

The omicron scenarios

That's the most likely scenario, the researchers say, but it's not the only one. Adjusting the three variables researchers considered  transmissibility, severity, and ability to evade immunity  leads to models that show much better or much worse public health outcomes.

In a second scenario, reported cases match the delta peak although actual infections more than double, while associated deaths don't get above 100 per day  below the level in previous pandemic peaks.

In a third scenario, reported cases are three times the delta peak and daily deaths match it, at about 400 per day.

In the final scenario, reported cases jump above 60,000 per day and the 600 daily deaths are worse than at any previous point since COVID-19 emerged.

The study was done by Thomas J. Hladish, Alexander N. Pillai and Longini.

Dr. Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said the UF modeling study "looks good" but cautioned that the assumptions about the severity of omicron infections might be too optimistic.

"Data from the United Kingdom suggest no significant difference from delta," Ray said, although even the worst-case scenario in the UF study assumes omicron is less deadly.

He said that lack of good data on omicron is a special concern because it is spreading so quickly that people won't be able to change behavior as effectively in response.

Tracking the surge: Yes, omicron has overtaken delta. No, it's not March 2020.

Back to school: Omicron deals one more blow to schools that have weathered COVID-19 and violence

Vaccinated and test positive? What to know about omicron, COVID for this holiday season.

Less hands-on: University of Florida to change its COVID-19 management with the new year

Longini said it is too soon to say with certainty which scenario will play out, but it appears the models may need to be adjusted as new data comes in. The omicron variant was only first detected in Florida two weeks ago.

"We might have underestimated a bit the speed of this wave and even its size," he said.

Even so, the most likely model shows 2.5 million infections in Florida during the first three months of 2022  roughly a third of all infections since the pandemic began two years ago.

Longini said his team did not even model the worst-case scenario  where transmissibility is high, severity of complications is high, and the variant's ability to evade immune response is high  because early data indicates severe disease from omicron is not as common as with the delta variant.

"We don't yet have good, precise data. But we have a lot of people who are susceptible. That why the infection rates are so high," he said.

He said models developed in advance of the delta variant wave proved to be very accurate, but he has somewhat less confidence in the current modeling for omicron because less is known about this variant than was known about delta leading into that surge in August.

Longini recommended people take precautions, especially to become fully vaccinated, and said if he had out-of-town guests visiting this week  particularly from New York, where the omicron variant is surging  he'd like to see people wearing masks.

Dr. Stuart Ray is the brother of the author of this article.

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Omicron: UF researchers predict huge surge in COVID-19 cases from variant
Today

Some clouds this morning will give way to generally sunny skies for the afternoon. High 74F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 47F. Winds light and variable.

Tomorrow

Sunny, along with a few afternoon clouds. High 74F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.
The public medias charity programme dubbed Good to be Good has raised funds totalling 345 million forints (EUR 939,000), the sum to be donated to the Regoczi Fundation, set up by President Janos Ader and First Lady Anita Herczegh to support children who lost parents in the coronavirus pandemic.

Closing the programme late on Sunday, the first lady said that the foundation was assisting some 1,000 children with mostly financial donations.



She said each family had different problems and they could use the money as they deemed necessary.



She added, however, that in some situations money alone does not help and some families may need a therapist or legal counselling.



Ader said that the programme was also instrumental in warning people who are still doubtful about vaccination and who could perhaps avoid such a situation.



The foundation is aimed to provide long-term assistance in cooperation with charity organisations and other groups, Ader said.



We cannot make up for a parents love, he said but added that the donations could help orphans to complete their studies or learn new skills.



In the programme, it was also announced that biologist Katalin Kariko had offered 50,000 euros to the programme, half of her recently received Bolyai Prize.
Hungarys National Public Health Centre (NNK) on Monday said it has so far identified 15 cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus and is testing more samples suspected of containing the variant.

The omicron variant is spreading quickly in several European countries and has been found to be more contagious than previous variants, the NNK said on the government website koronavirus.gov.hu.



It added, however, that there were conflicting reports of the severity of the variant given the lack of clinical data on it.



The NNK urged those who are unvaccinated against Covid to get the jab and those who are vaccinated to also get a booster shot.



Hungary Records 366 Coronavirus Deaths, 10,105 New Infections Over Weekend

Altogether 366 patients died of a Covid-related illness over the weekend, while 10,105 new coronavirus infections were registered, koronavirus.gov.hu said on Monday.



So far 6,226,399 people have received a first jab, while 5,937,305 have been fully vaccinated. Altogether 3,104,194 Hungarians have received a booster jab.



The number of active infections stands at 141,871, while hospitals are treating 5,537 Covid-19 patients, 503 of whom need respiratory assistance.



Since the first outbreak, 1,228,400 infections have been registered, while the number of fatalities has risen to 37,896.



Fully 1,048,633 people have made a recovery.



There are 33,383 people in official quarantine, while the number of tests taken stands at 9,014,430.
Jon was born and brought up in the East Anglia region of England, and originally trained as a merchant navy radio officer, and subsequently spent his working life in various forms of telecommunications.

He has two grown up sons both of whom live and work in the UK, and he now lives in the Budapest suburbs with his Hungarian partner.

As a semi-retiree, he now helps individuals with English language development, and in his spare time, runs the British in Hungary FB group.



1. When did you arrive in Hungary and what brought you here?

I first came to Hungary in 2005 to help implement the first 3G network for Vodafone, leaving two years later. I came back in 2013 on another telecoms project and when that finished, decided to stay.



2. Have you ever been an expatriate elsewhere?

Yes, Ive worked as far North as Norway, as far South as Antarctica, and East to Saudi Arabia.



3. What surprised you most about Hungary?

The wine! On a visit to the castle district wine festival soon after I first arrived, I discovered just how good they were.



4. Friends are in Budapest for a weekend - what must they absolutely see and do?

A weekend is never enough. A whistle stop tour of the city taking in Gellert Hill, the Castle District, Andrassy Ut, Heroes Sq., and City Park. Time permitting, a trip on the Childrens Railway.



5. What is your favourite Hungarian food?

This is not easy to answer, but the hearty soups must rank high on the list.



6. What is never missing from your refrigerator?

Tejfol



7. What is your favourite Hungarian word?

Nyomtatas (Lovely woody sound. Monty Python fans will understand!)



8. What do you miss most from home?

Fish and Chips.



9. What career other than yours would you love to pursue?

Music composition.



10. What's a job you would definitely never want?

Doctor in A&E. The decision to stop treatment would be so difficult.



11. Where did you spend your last vacation?

North Wales



12. Where do you hope to spend your next holiday?

Africa, probably Morocco.



13. Apart of temptation what can't you resist?

Good chocolate



14. What was your favourite band, film, or hobby as a teen?

Band  Blondie, Film  Jesus Christ Superstar, Hobby (sport) - swimming.



15. Red wine or white?

Cool dry white in the summer, full bodied red in the winter.



16. Book or movie?

A good book, be it fiction or non-fiction.



17. Morning person or night person?

Night



18. Which social issue do you feel most strongly about?

Brexit. It has taken away the freedom to travel, work and study across the EU and created a huge divide within the UK, all for the benefit of a small minority of people.



19. Buda or Pest side?

Buda, but specifically Obuda.



20. What would you say is your personal motto?

Life is what happens when youre busy making other plans  John Lennon
After a significant decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the weekend, it seems unlikely Nebraska residents will see any heightened restrictions due to the virus.

The number of people hospitalized for the coronavirus dropped by more than 10%, from 584 on Friday to 523 on Monday morning. That means COVID-19 patients are now occupying a little more than 12% of the state's hospital beds, down from 14.5% a week ago when hospitalizations reached 637, their highest number of the year.

"It's a huge drop," said Dr. Gary Anthone, the state's chief medical officer.

At one point last week, Anthone said officials were discussing requiring hospitals to limit elective surgeries if the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients hit 15% of the state's beds.

Anthone and Gov. Pete Ricketts held a news conference Monday to give an update on the COVID-19 situation and to encourage people to stay safe over the holidays.

Ricketts announced that he is extending some existing directed health measures aimed at helping alleviate staff shortages at hospitals until at least March 31. The extension of the orders also will keep the state's daily coronavirus dashboard live through the end of March.
Hit twice, Miranda survived. So did Sharon Miranda. Juarez  full name Jose Santos Parra Juarez  did not.

The chaos  some on camera, most of it not  was replayed last week as Miranda is tried in Douglas County District Court on a charge of first-degree murder and weapon use.

Authorities have called Stucks actions heroic, saying he stopped Mirandas rampage and most likely saved Sharon Mirandas life. But defense attorney Bill Pfeffer took aim at Stucks actions, questioning why he shot at Miranda and noting repeatedly that he missed seven of his nine shots.

Youre an expert marksman.  You fired nine shots from that close, and you missed seven times, Pfeffer said.

Stuck said he didnt believe that he missed seven, then later relented that he might have. At first, he was point shooting  in which an officer fires without looking through a guide. Two shots hit Miranda  one went through his leg near the knee, the other grazed his ankle.
The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021 has been passed in the Lok Sabha, and is being discussed in the Rajya Sabha. This bill aims at linking a persons Aadhaar credentials with the electoral process.

The bill has a provision whereby the new applicant may voluntarily provide Aadhaar number along with the application for the purpose of identity. No application will be rejected on the grounds that Aadhaar number has not been provided.

The government argued that this will safeguard the electoral process and stop bogus voting. However, the opposition cited the possible misuse of the information and the right to privacy.

Leader of the Congress Party in Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury demanded the Bill be sent to the standing committee. Meanwhile, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said that the Centre is curtailing the independence of the Election Commission by bringing the legislation.

READ | Aadhaar-Voter ID link: Check step by step process

Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 seeks to allow electoral registration officers to seek the Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters.

However, its interesting to note that some of the parties opposing the bill now had a different opinion earlier.

For example, in 2018, as per a Times of India report, a delegation of opposition Congress leaders in Madhya Pradesh met the Chief Election Commissioner demanding a free and fair poll. They were concerned about the sudden rise in the number of voters in certain constituencies. One of the suggestions given during the meeting was to link Aadhaar with the Voter ID.

In another similar instance reported by the Times of India, during the legislative councils monsoon meeting in Maharashtra in 2019, an NCP legislator suggested that the Voter ID should be linked to Aadhaar to avoid the case of missing names. Then state Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had accepted the proposal to avoid bogus voting.

The opposition might be changing tactics now, but they have been on the other side of the table in the past.

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Srinagar: The Indian Army has objected to a construction being started by Pakistan Rangers along the Line of Control in the Teetwal sector of Kupwara district of north Kashmir.

The local police officer of the area confirmed the incident of illegal construction at about 500 meters on the Pakistan side.

He said After noticing the unusual construction at LoC in Teetwal area the locals informed the Indian Army official and police. After that, the Indian Army objected to the unusual activity of construction by Pakistan Rangers close to the border. It showed displeasure and asked the Pakistan Rangers to stop the unwarranted construction using loudspeakers.

A police officer said the construction has stopped in the area. They had started constructing some structure on the other side of the border which fell within 500-metre range from this side, said the officer.

As a general protocol, no side is allowed to do any sort of construction unless either of the sides is intimated in advance, he added.

It was not, however, immediately known whether it was a bunker or any hutment. The Army is yet to release an official statement on the incident.

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New Delhi: Delhi Cheif Minister and AAP Convener Arvind Kejriwal in Goa on Tuesday (December 21) promised unemployment allowance of Rs 3000 per month to the youth of Goa until they get a job. Addressing a public rally in Panaji, Kejriwal said, "People in Delhi get free and 24 hours electricity. You ask your friends, relatives in Delhi and if they deny it then don`t vote for me. We will give jobs to youth and till they get jobs we will give unemployment allowance of Rs 3000 per month."

Taking a dig at the BJP government, Kejriwal said that Goa is a first-class state with absolutely third-class politicians and said that the state deserves much better politicians.

"Goa is a first-class state with absolutely third-class politicians. one minister did sex scandal, one did ventilator scam, one did job scam, one minister accused of raping minor and one minister even did a garbage scam. I think Goa deserves much better politicians. What did these parties give you apart from corruption in the last 60 years? Our party will make the first corruption-free government in Goa," said Kejriwal attacking the BJP government.

Meanwhile, Kejriwal also took a jibe at the Congress party and said, "When I caught my flight, Congress had three MLAs remaining in Goa. When I landed, Congress was left with just two MLAs. Congress in Goa is giving heavy discount on last two Stock, new stock arriving in March 2022."

Goa Assembly has a strength of 40 members out of which BJP currently has 17 legislators and enjoys the support of legislators from Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Vijay Sardesai of the Goa Forward Party (GFP) and three independents. GFP and MGP each have three MLAs. Congress, on the other hand, has 15 MLAs in the house.

The AAP Convener has commenced his two-day visit in Goa from today. Goa assembly polls are scheduled to take place in early 2022.

Earlier, Delhi CM has also promised a support allowance of Rs 1000 per month for females aged above 18 years in the state of Punjab and Uttarakhand.

(With agency inputs)

Live TV
New Delhi: In a bizarre incident, an engineer from Bihar sold off a railway locomotive engine along with fabricated DMI paperwork. The engineer, named Rajiv Ranjan Jha, who is an employee from the Samastipur Loco Diesel Shed managed to sell an old steam engine lying at the Purnea Court Station.

According to media reports, the engineer, aided by security personnel and other station officials, managed to pull off a carefully planned heist, and hence, sold off the railway asset along with fabricated DMI paperwork.

The reports revealed that the illegal sale allegedly took place on December 14 and the scam surfaced two days later, following which an FIR was lodged at the Banmankhi RPF post based on the application of Purnea Court Station Outpost Incharge MM Rehman on Sunday.

The scam was found after the engineer was spotted by the outpost in charge, while he was deconstructing the engine using a gas cutter. At that time, another man being identified as Sushil was also present there to help the engineer with the process.

When the in-charge asked to stop the work, the engineer used a fake letter to persuade the official that the scrap from the engine had to be sent back to the diesel shed.

This prompted the official to check the register and find out if there was any pickup van entry the next day, but she could not find any scrap from the engine in the shed. After this, she informed authorities about it, they found out that there had been no order by the DMI to cut the engine apart.

Authorities are now on the lookout for the accused as well as the pickup van on whose name an entry was made in the register. In the meantime, the DRM has ordered a suspension of the engineer who helped with the scam, the helper and one security personnel posted at the diesel shed.

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New Delhi: A tweet on the word 'lynching' by senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi kicked off a storm today, with the BJP training guns at the grand old party over its leaders' alleged involvement in 1984 Sikh riots.

"Before 2014, the word 'lynching' was practically unheard of. #ThankYouModiJi," Rahul Gandhi tweeted, days after two cases of lynching in the Congress-ruled Punjab. The two men were lynched in separate incidents, and both of them were accused of sacrilege by Sikh religious leaders.

Speaking to reporters, Union minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey noted that hundreds of Sikhs were killed in the 1984 riots, for which some Congress leaders were blamed, and also referred to the 1989 Bhagalpur riots to ask if these were not lynchings.

"Mobs killed Sikhs by burning tyres around their neck. Wasn't it lynching?" he asked.

BJP's IT department head Amit Malviya tweeted, "Meet Rajiv Gandhi, father of mob lynching, justifying blood curdling genocide of Sikhs. Congress took to streets, raised slogans like 'khoon ka badla khoon se lenge', raped women, wrapped burning tyres around necks of Sikh men while dogs gorged on charred bodies dumped in drains." He posted a short clip of the former prime minister's speech.

Rajiv Gandhi had said earth shakes when a big tree falls, remarks that were seen by critics to be justifying the anti-Sikh violence following the assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.

Malviya also posted about various riots that happened under the Congress rule between 1969 and 1993 to take a swipe at Rahul Gandhi.

Live TV
New Delhi: The corruption of BJP leaders who have been in power for the last 17 years has completely hollowed out the MCD. Corruption has become so prevalent in the MCD that, on the one hand, BJP leaders are embezzling thousands of crores while, on the other hand, MCD is unable to pay its employees' salaries.

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Monday (December 20) lashed out at the BJP for its habit of looting the people and said that BJP is failing to pay employees repeatedly after committing scams worth thousands of crores in the MCD.

He informed that the Delhi Government owes no dues to the MCD and so far in fiscal year 2021-22, Rs 2,588 crores have been dispersed in three installments; the next installment will be dispersed in January. He said that the Kejriwal government has given MCD loans of almost Rs 7,000 crores in addition to its annual share, but BJP leaders keep crying for funds in MCD to misguide the public.

He added that the BJP has been in power in Delhi MCD for 17 years in which it has made the MCD a pauper while its leaders have been amassing ill-gotten wealth. He alleged that the BJP has wrecked the MCD and looted public money through 2,500 crore rent scam and 1,800 crore house tax scam. He talked about how the MCD is paying rent of Rs 18.36 lakh per month for a waste management machine that costs 17.5 lakh to buy.

He said that fearing defeat in the upcoming MCD elections, BJP leaders are selling government parkings and MCD land at throwaway prices and school land worth 250 crores was sold for 126 crores. He stated that the BJP leaders have joined forces with the private parking mafia to orchestrate a ten-thousand-crore parking scam.

Sisodia stated, "Delhi Government is supposed to provide Rs 3,488 crore to the MCD in fiscal year 2021-22, according to the budget. So far, the Delhi Government has given MCD 75% of the funds in three installments totaling Rs 2,588 crore. In addition, the remaining 25% will be dispersed in January."

"Despite knowing this very well, BJP leaders ruling the MCD are crying that the Delhi government did not give money to us. The Mayor keeps doing drama all the time and does not pay his employees who are facing the toughest of the times. The question that must be asked is, where did all of this money go under the watch of the BJP?" he added.

He further stated, "since the formation of Arvind Kejriwal's government in Delhi, the Delhi Government has not only given MCD their share of the budget, but also a loan of Rs 6,889 crore. Furthermore, the Delhi government is yet to deduct the loan amount given to MCDs from their dispensations, whereas previous governments did so regularly."

"The BJP-ruled MCD has a loan of Rs.6,889 crore on its head that was embezzled by BJP leaders. The money given by the Delhi government as its share for MCD has also been gulped down it appears. The BJP leaders are claiming that they do not have enough money to pay their employees but on the contrary because of rampant corruption, the MCD is being hollowed out, while BJP leaders are filling their pockets day by day, he added.

List of scams committed by the BJP-ruled MCD, totaling approximately 20,000 crores

Rent Scam Worth Rs 2500 Crores

South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has not paid rent of Rs. 2500 crores to North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), which is pending for a long time. This rent has not been paid by SDMC yet because BJP leaders have robbed off these public funds.

House Tax Scam worth Rs 1800 crores

MCD should end up receiving Rs 3000 crore in house tax revenue, but due to corruption and fraud, MCD only earns Rs 1200 crore in house tax revenue.

Waste management machine scam worth Rs 1000 crores

Sisodia informed, "Instead of purchasing, the BJP-ruled MCD pays a rent of Rs 6 lakh 30 thousand for a waste management machine costing Rs 17.5 lakh. Along with this, the corporation is on the verge of presenting a new proposal in which rent of Rs 306 per metric ton of waste will be paid for the machines. In a month, this machine processes at least 6,000 metric tons of garbage. As a result, MCD is now paying Rs 18.36 lakh per month in rent instead of Rs 17.5 lakh for a machine."

400 crore worth parking scam; government parkings sold at throwaway prices to earn commission

Shri Manish Sisodia said, "the BJP is losing money by selling MCD parkings. The BJP has committed a parking scam worth Rs 300-400 crore. Despite promising to build 100 multilevel parking lots, the BJP has only built 14 so far."

He stated that there are approximately one crore vehicles in Delhi, but theres legal parking for only one lakh vehicles. MCD is losing money due to illegal parking at all other places and this money is not going to MCD, but rather to BJP leaders.

Sisodia stated, "the BJP had sold 13 parking lots in the North MCD to private mafia for pennies and had waived off crores in property taxes for them. All of these parking lots could generate thousands of crores in revenue each year. However, in order to gulp down commission, the BJP first sold all of the parking at rock-bottom prices and then waived their house tax. The BJP-led MCD has taken crores of rupees from markets in the form of conversion fees and parking fees, but is yet to solve the parking problem."

Government Land Scam worth Rs 400 crores

Manish Sisodia further stated that the BJP is selling away MCD properties at ridiculously low prices. "So far, a scam worth Rs 300-400 crore has been perpetrated. The BJP had sold off 2800 square metre school land worth at least Rs 250 crores for just Rs 126 crores."

"The BJP sold 150-crore Novelty Cinema land for only 36 crores and defrauded the public of crores. And the race to sell MCD's assets did not end there. So far, the BJP has sold Azadpur's Naniwala Bagh, Moti Nagar Shopping Complex, 22 shops near Delite Cinema, 132 plots in Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, 34 schools, a vacant health centre, Town Hotel, RBTB Hospital, among other properties and is still working hard to sell properties on a regular basis."

Illegal Parking scam worth 10,000 crores every year

Sisodia further said, "parking at hospitals and shopping malls is supposed to be free. However, due to the collaboration between the parking mafia and the BJP, parking fees are being collected illegally from people here as well."

"MCD, on the other hand, stated that hospitals and shopping malls are given parking space as an additional FAR. So that no one has to pay a parking fee on it. However, the BJP encourages illegal parking and all of this illegal work is being carried out with the knowledge and consent of the BJP leaders at the helm of the MCD and DDA."

Sisodia asserted that on the one hand, the BJP is impoverishing MCD by committing scam after scam, while on the other hand, its leaders weep that MCD does not have enough money to pay its employees' salaries.

He said that the BJP should be ashamed that it is making MCD poorer day by day. However, the people of Delhi will avenge this loot and fittingly respond to the BJP in the upcoming elections.

Live TV
Beginning in the late 1990s, decision-makers from some of the largest Fortune 500 companies in the world began outsourcing their call centre processes overseas. Led primarily by the US, the motivation for this was to reduce operational costs and increase business efficiencies. India immediately became one of the primary destinations for this type of outsourcing, and it has held that position ever since. There are many reasons call centres in India have been such a popular choice for outsourcing. The country boasts an educated and skilled labour pool necessary for complex customer service and support tasks. "Cost benefits are another important factor in India's favour, as labour costs are much lower than in other countries. A vast labour pool has been another major factor in India's favour as a call centre hot-spot," says Ralf Ellspermann, CEO of PITON-Global, an award-winning call centre outsourcing provider.

The largest number of call centres in India are located along the Eastern corridor of the country, near New Delhi and Mumbai. The high population density around these two cities creates a core location for a substantial labour pool. Additionally, major international airports and many call centre-ready office spaces make these cities attractive for call centre companies. Mumbai is also home to the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) and ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) clusters, where most of India's call centre outsourcing takes place. These clusters are primarily responsible for the growth and development of India's call centre industry and are a major factor in its global success.

"India also produces a much higher number of MBAs, PhDs., IT, and engineering graduates than many other popular outsourcing countries. It provides the country with an almost unrivalled, highly educated and skilled workforce. The quality of the Indian workforce, combined with its low cost, has made it an extremely attractive destination for call centre outsourcing," says Ellspermann. As call centres around the globe incorporate more omnichannel functionality, the need for highly skilled labour that can take on more complex tasks becomes more important.

When outsourcing processes to call centres in India, service buyers can feel confident in the talent of Indian labour due to the country's strong educational system. And although the workforce is highly skilled, the cost of call centre outsourcing services in India is often less than many other outsourcing destinations. Of course, this is a highly attractive component of outsourcing call centre processes to India. As a result of these cost-savings and the other benefits, call centre outsourcing in India provides, the industry continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Despite India's long-term outsourcing success, the industry is not without its challenges. The biggest threat by far is competition from other well-positioned outsourcing countries. The Philippines, in particular, has ensconced itself as a viable alternative to India for call centre outsourcing services. "For an increasing number of companies, especially from English-speaking countries such as the US, Australia, and the UK, the Philippines has become another preferred outsourcing destination, especially for voice-related contact centres and back-office services. The Philippines holds a competitive advantage because the country has an extremely high level of (American) English proficiency.

Additionally, as a former colony of the country, the Philippines enjoys a close cultural affinity to the US, making it a popular choice for many US-based SMEs," explains Ellspermann. These are important competitive factors for call centre outsourcing providers in India to consider moving forward. Call centres in India continue to grow and develop, with new services and technologies being introduced all the time. The country has already proven itself as a global leader in quality call centre outsourcing services, and there is no indication that this will change any time soon.

(Brand Desk Content)
Srinagar: People's Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) on Tuesday (December 21) announced that it will stage a protest on January 1 against the Delimitation Commissions proposal expanding assembly segments in Jammu and Kashmir.

The decision was taken at a meeting held in Jammu under the chairmanship of JKNC chief Farooq Abdullah.

CPIM leader and spokesperson of PAGD Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami said, PAGD has decided to hold a peaceful protest on 1st of January 2022 at Srinagar against these divisive and unacceptable recommendations of the commission.

The leaders of PAGD unanimously expressed their deep dissatisfaction and shock with regard to recommendations of the Commission. The constitutionality of the Commission under the J&K Reorganisation Act has been challenged in the Supreme Court of India, he added.

Tarigami further said that the recommendations are bound to widen the gaps between regions and communities and hence unacceptable to the people of the region.

He also said that the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A was unconstitutional and that the step was taken without taking into confidence the stakeholders from Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.

Everyone is aware that many among us have challenged Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act in the Supreme Court. The Government of India should have avoided going forward with this Commission in a rush as it is neither in national interest nor in the interest of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, he said.

Unfortunately, the constitutional frame of delimitation including census have been ignored in proposal of Delimitation Commission. There should be some criteria during delimitation as per population and laws meant for it should be followed in letter and spirit, said Tarigami.

PAGD has also appealed to the people to remain united and not fall prey to the divisive and disruptive designs of BJP.

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New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi doesnt like to be questioned. This was evident from his interaction with the press today in which he slammed a journalist for asking a question. He went as far as calling the journalist an agent working for the government.

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Tuesday (December 21) discussed how Rahul Gandhi insulted journalists when asked tough questions.

The question put before him today was related to one of his tweets in which he claimed that before 2014, the word 'lynching' was not even heard of in Indian media.

He is probably right as before 2014, during the Congress governments, the journalists did not dare to call lynching as lynching. There have been many instances of lynching, from the 1947 Partition to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. But Rahul Gandhi forgets those.

Todays incident showed Gandhis disregard for the journalists. The truth is that the Gandhi family thinks anyone who does not favour them is an agent of the government.

In fact, over the last several decades when the Gandhi family ran the government, several journalists worked in accordance with their wishes. Doing so, they were handsomely rewarded. That's why Rahul Gandhi is not used to being asked difficult questions.

Often when a leader does not have an answer to a question, they question the credentials of the person asking. Rahul Gandhi is doing the same. Todays incident was not an isolated one. On several past occasions, he has misbehaved with journalists who asked him tough questions.

Ironically, Gandhi has time and again said that the media of our country does not ask questions to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But it appears that it is, in fact, he who has a problem in facing tough questions from journalists.

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New Delhi: Google decided to celebrate Winter 2021 with an animated Doodle on Tuesday (December 21, 2021). The Google Doodle features a hedgehog walking on the snow.

December 21 marks the Winter Solstice, which is the time when Earths pole is tilted away from the sun at its maximum distance, causing the day to have the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year. It is also known as December solstice, hiemal solstice, and hibernal solstice.

Winter Solstice happens once yearly when the Sun reaches 90 degrees below the observer's horizon at solar midnight. The opposite event is the summer solstice. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the December solstice (usually December 21 or 22) and in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the June solstice (usually June 20 or 21).

According to drikpanchang, the Winter Solstice sunrise will be at 7:10 am and sunset at 5:29 pm. Additionally, the Winter Solstice is also popularly said to mark the birth of the sun, , the days begin to get longer after today.

Notably, todays Google Doodle is similar to the one which was tweeted by the company on June 21 with the caption: As the Earth tilts on its axis, many across the Southern Hemisphere prepare to chill out for the next few months Happy first day of Winter! #GoogleDoodle.

As the Earth tilts on its axis, many across the Southern Hemisphere prepare to chill out for the next few months  Happy first day of Winter! #GoogleDoodle  https://t.co/jnu70KdmkK pic.twitter.com/FdagBBvQbe  Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) June 21, 2021

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New Delhi: India has taken up the issue of early release of Indian fishermen and boats with the Sri Lankan government, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) informed on Tuesday (December 21). Responding to media queries regarding the detention of Indian fishermen, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Arindam Bagchi said that India is concerned about the detention of Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu by Sri Lankan authorities between December 18-20.

As per the information, 68 fishermen and 10 boats have been taken into custody. "Officials from the Consulate General of India, Jaffna, have met the detained fishermen and are providing all necessary support. This includes clothes, toiletries, snacks, dry essentials and masks, besides facilitating phone calls to relatives. They are also arranging legal representation."

"Our High Commission in Colombo has taken up the issue of early release of the Indian fishermen and boats with the Government of Sri Lanka," he added. Bagchi also informed about one fisherman who was unwell. "The Indian Consular Officer has visited him in hospital to check on his welfare," he said.

External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar has received representations on this issue from various political parties. He was also called on the matter by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin. Stalin on Sunday wrote to Jaishankar requesting his intervention to secure the immediate release of 55 fishermen and 73 fishing boats apprehended by the Sri Lankan navy.

The chief minister detailed "two incidents of apprehension of Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy that took place in the last 24 hours."

The 43 fishermen from Rameswaram, Ramanathapuram District, were fishing in the traditional waters of Palk Bay, in six mechanized fishing boats and were arrested on December 18 and taken to Mylatti, Naval base in Sri Lanka, the Tamil Nadu CM said in his letter.

In another incident on December 19, 12 fishermen in two mechanized fishing boats from Mandapam, Ramanathapuram district were arrested and taken to Kalpatti, Naval base in Sri Lanka, Stalin wrote.

"He has apprised them all of the current situation and underlined Government of India`s efforts to secure early release," said Bagchi.

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Three people have been reported dead and 42 have been injured in an explosion at an Indian Oil refinery in West Bengal's Purba Medinipur district. The blast occurred at the refinery's Naptha-Hydrogen mixing plant at around 3pm today.

Out of 42 injured, 37 people are being shifted to Kolkata's Desun Hospital for better treatment. The condition of seven of them are stated to be critical, a police official told news agency PTI. The fire has been brought under control. The cause of the blast not yet known. The plant, where the blast took place, was shut since December first week for two-month-long maintenance.

"The primary cause seems to be a flash fire leading to burn injuries to 44 persons and 3 persons have unfortunately succumbed to their injuries," a police official was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

West Bengal | 3 people died, over 30 persons were injured in a fire incident at IOCL refinery in Haldia today. The injured have been shifted to Kolkata: SK Ajgar Ali, Chairman-In-Council, Haldia Municipality pic.twitter.com/W9qge0c0Ub  ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2021

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted her condolences to the families of those who died in the incident. "Deeply anguished by the fire in IOC, Haldia. Three precious lives were lost and my thoughts are with the bereaved families in this hour of grief," Mamata Banerjee tweeted.

Deeply anguished by the fire in IOC, Haldia. Three precious lives were lost and my thoughts are with the bereaved families in this hour of grief. Those injured are being brought to Kolkata through a green corridor. GoWB will extend all assistance to ensure their speedy recovery.  Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) December 21, 2021

"Those injured are being brought to Kolkata through a green corridor. GoWB will extend all assistance to ensure their speedy recovery," she added.

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Kolkata: Seven months after its landslide win in the West Bengal assembly polls, the TMC Tuesday scored a hat-trick of retaining power in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation on the back of a thumping victory, with its candidates winning in 101 out of the 144 wards, and leading in 33 others.

The BJP won one seat and was leading in three wards, a senior State Election Commission official said.

The Congress bagged two wards, but the CPI(M)-led Left Front, which is leading in two seats, is yet to open its account.

Counting of votes for 144 wards of KMC began this morning at 8 am.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee thanked the people of the metropolis for the massive victory.

"I want to dedicate this triumph to the people of the state and Maa, Mati, Manush' (mother, land and people - the slogan of TMC). Several national parties like the BJP, Congress, and CPI(M) also fought against us, but they were all defeated. This victory will show the way in national politics in days to come," Banerjee told reporters outside her residence.

As per the trends, the TMC is leading in 33 wards and has won 101 seats. It now has a clear majority in the KMC. The BJP is leading in three wards, while its candidate Mina Devi Purohit won from ward number 22. The CPI(M) and CPI are ahead in one ward each and the Congress has won two seats," the State Election Commission official said.

As per ward-wise trends, although the TMC is way ahead of its rivals and the BJP is in distant second position, in terms of vote share, the Left Front has emerged as the main opposition in most of the wards.

The TMC has been in power in KMC since 2010.

In the last KMC polls in 2015, it had won 124 seats, whereas the Left Front bagged 13. The BJP and the Congress had secured five and two seats, respectively.

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Kolkata: For Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC), it was a landslide victory in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) polls. TMC swept away the elections, winning 134 out of 144 wards on Tuesday (December 21). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was a distant second with three seats, while the Congress and the Left managed to win just two wards each.

An overjoyed Firhad Hakim, Kolkata Mayor, and State Minister, said, "This is a victory for the people of Kolkata because they established their belief in us. With huge victory comes more and, more responsibility. The party has called a meeting on 23rd December where the next Mayor will be decided."

Saying that he himself has been personally targeted for his religion, Hakim said, "People have given a befitting reply to the BJP. They believe in the politics of division. The BJP used to give me names like mini Pakistan. Just because I am a Muslim, they do not have the authority to insult me; thankfully people have replied to the communal party."

Counting of votes for 144 wards of KMC began this morning at 8 am. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee thanked the people of the metropolis for the "massive" victory. "I want to dedicate this triumph to the people of the state and 'Maa, Mati, Manush' (mother, land and people - the slogan of TMC). Several national parties like the BJP, Congress, and CPI(M) also fought against us, but they were all defeated. This victory will show the way in national politics in days to come," Banerjee told reporters outside her residence.

Meanwhile, Mamata offered prayers at the Kamakhya temple in Guwahati on Tuesday during a brief visit to the city. The West Bengal CM arrived in the afternoon in Guwahati, even as her party swept the Kolkata civic polls, and drove straight to the temple atop the Nilachal Hills where she was received by the temple's 'dolois' or priests.

(Pic courtesy: IANS)

TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee also thanked the people of Kolkata for the "huge mandate". "People of Kolkata have once again proven that politics of HATE & VIOLENCE have NO PLACE in BENGAL! I thank everyone for blessing us with such a huge mandate. We are truly humbled and shall always remain committed in our goals towards YOUR BETTERMENT! Thank you Kolkata," he tweeted.

The TMC has been in power in KMC since 2010. In the last KMC polls in 2015, it had won 124 seats, whereas the Left Front bagged 13. The BJP and the Congress had secured five and two seats, respectively.

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New Delhi: With the Omicron variant of Covid-19 spreading its tentacle across the country, the Centre has told the states to take gear up and be prepared. Asserting that the Omicron variant is at least thrice more transmissible than Delta, the Centre on Tuesday (December 21) asked states and union territories to "activate" war rooms, keep analysing even small trends and surges and keep taking strict and prompt containment action at district and local levels.

In a letter to the states and union territories, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan advised implementing strategic interventions for containment. "Based on current scientific evidence, the VOC (variant of concern) Omicron is at least 3 times more transmissible than the Delta VOC. Besides, the Delta VOC is still present in different parts of the country. Hence, even greater foresight, data analysis, dynamic decision making and strict and prompt containment action is required at the local and district level. The decision making at the state and UT and district level must be very prompt and focussed," he said.

Here are some key points that Bhushan highlighted in his letter to the states and UTs:

- Imposition of night curfew, strict regulation of large gatherings, curtailing numbers in marriages and funerals besides increasing testing and surveillance have been advised

- Measures need to be taken right now - from initial signs of surge in cases of COVID-19 as well as increased detection of the variant of concern Omicron in different parts of the country.

- Steps must be taken to contain the virus and the variant at the local level. At the district level, there should be a constant review of emerging data regarding the population affected by COVID-19, geographical spread, hospital infrastructure and its utilization, manpower, notifying containment zones, enforcement of perimeter of containment zones etc.

- States must "activate the war rooms/EOCs (emergency operation centres) and keep analyzing all trends and surges, no matter how small and keep taking proactive action at the district/local level. Regular reviews with field officers and proactive action in this regard will definitely control the spread of infection and flatten the curve."

- In the case of all new clusters of Covid positive cases, prompt notification of "containment zones", "buffer zones" should be done, strict perimeter control of containment zone according to extant guidelines must be ensured. All cluster samples must be sent to INSACOG Labs for Genome Sequencing without delay, Bhushan underlined.

- Test positivity of 10 per cent or more in the last one week or bed occupancy of 40 per cent or more on oxygen supported or ICU beds should be main elements of the framework to be used by states and union territories to facilitate decision making at the district level.

- A focus on containment, test, track, surveillance, clinical management should be there; door-to-door case search, testing of all SARI/ILI and vulnerable/co-morbid people and the right proportion of RT PCR tests should be conducted daily. It's important to contact trace all Covid positive persons and utilise the access to "AIR SUVIDHA" Portal by State Surveillance Officers (SSOS) and District Surveillance Officers (DSOS) to monitor the international passengers who have arrived in their states and districts

- States and union territories have been asked to increase bed capacity, other logistics like ambulances, mechanism for seamless shifting of patients, availability and operational readiness of oxygen equipment, buffer stock of drugs to be ensured by prompt utilization of Emergency Covid Response Package (ECRP-II) funds released by central government and other available resources etc.

- The existing National Clinical Management Protocol remains unchanged for Omicron. Stringent enforcement of home isolation as per extant guidelines must be ensured. This would include among others: Customized kit for persons undergoing home isolation, their regular monitoring through call centres as well as home visits etc. This is a very critical activity to ensure that persons under home isolation do not spread the virus to others in view of its higher transmissibility.

- States and union territories must ensure 100 per cent coverage of left out first and second dose eligible beneficiaries in an accelerated manner. Special focus to be given to those districts where the first second dose coverage is less than the national average, the letter stated, adding the door-to-door vaccination campaign need to be strengthened. States and UTs must also ensure advance engagement and information so that there is no misinformation or panic, transparent communication on hospital and testing infrastructure availability, regular press briefings etc.

(With Agency inputs)

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New Delhi: Omicron cases continue to rapidly rise in India, and the country now has recorded 200 cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant across more than 12 states. Most of the cases have been reported from Maharashtra and capital Delhi, the health ministry said on Tuesday (December 21). India's tally of Omicron cases has nearly doubled within a week, but there have been no deaths reported so far. In less than 40% of cases, patients either fully recovered or were discharged, the data showed, as mentioned by Reuters.

Of the total cases, Maharashtra and Delhi have the highest number of infections from the highly contagious strain at 54 each, followed by Telangana (20), Karnataka (19), Rajasthan (18), Kerala (15) and Gujarat (14). Odisha also reported its first Omicron cases. At least two people in Odisha tested positive for omicron, the first cases of the latest version of coronavirus in the state, officials said on Tuesday.

India has been accelerating its vaccination campaign amid fears of potential surges in infections, with at least one dose given to 87% of the eligible 944 million adults. India recorded 5,326 new COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours, the lowest overnight tally in more than one and a half years. Overall, the country has reported 34.75 million cases, the second-highest behind only the United States.

Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told parliament on Monday that 80% of Omicron cases were asymptomatic. "We are keeping an eye on the variant and in coming days, we will monitor its effects," Mandaviya said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urged citizens to wear masks and appealed to the Centre to allow booster doses. Delhi had fully vaccinated about 70% of its adult population of 15 million, Kejriwal said.

Looking at the rising tally of Omicron cases in the country, the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) in its latest bulletin dated December 13, published on Monday, said that public health measures and investigations are being conducted to look into the new variant.

However, despite the Omicron scare, India reported the lowest number of Covid cases in 581 days - the country reported 5,326 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. As per the ministry, the active caseload in the country now stands at 79,097; the lowest in 574 days.

(With Agency inputs)
New Delhi: In Maharashtra, 11 more patients have been found to be infected by Omicron. Till date, a total of 65 patients infected with the Omicron variant have been reported in the state. "As reported by the National Institute of Virology, 11 more patients have been found to be infected by Omicron," the health department said. Eight of the new cases came to light following a screening at the Mumbai airport while one case each was found in Navi Mumbai, Pimpri-Chinchwad, and Osmanabad, said an official release.

Meanwhile, Omicron has made an entry in Jammu & Kashmir as well. Three Omicron cases were confirmed in the Jammu cluster. Its the first time that three cases of Covid's new variant, Omicron, have been reported in the Jammu division of J&K.



Three Omicron cases confirmed by NCDC, Delhi from a cluster in Jammu. Sample taken on 30th November. RTPCR testing of the entire locality. Please observe Covid-appropriate behaviour," Health and Medical Education Department, J&K, tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Odisha also reported its first Omicron cases. Bhubaneswar-based Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) confirmed the existence of the variant in the two patients after conducting the genome sequencing of 12 samples. Both of them have travel history to foreign nations - Nigeria and Qatar, they said. The returnee from the African country is fully vaccinated, and is stable in hospital, Cuttack District COVID-19 Nodal Officer Umesh Ray said. All his contacts have tested negative, he added. The other patient is also stable in the hospital.

Down south in Telangana, four more Omicron cases have been reported on Tuesday (December 21), taking the total number of cases of the new coronavirus variant in the state to 24. Of the four new Omicron cases, three are passengers who arrived at the international airport here from countries other than those declared at risk by the Centre, while one is a contact of a positive case, a state health department bulletin said. It said the outcome of 13 samples is awaited over their Omicron status.

(With inputs from Syed Khalid Hussain Hussain)

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Uttar Pradesh`s Prayagraj on Tuesday and transfer a number of Rs 1,000 crore in the bank account of Self Help Groups (SHGs), benefitting around 16 lakh women members of the SHGs.

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana

According to the Prime Minister`s Office (PMO), this transfer is being done under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM), with 80,000 SHGs receiving Community Investment Fund (CIF) of Rs 1.10 lakh per SHG and 60,000 SHGs receiving Revolving Fund of Rs 15,000 per SHG.PM Modi will visit Prayagraj on December 21.

The PM will participate in a one of its kind programme that will be attended by over two lakh women, at around 1 PM.

The programme is being held as per the vision of the Prime Minister to empower women, especially at the grassroots level, by providing them with the necessary skills, incentives and resources.

Business Correspondent - Sakhis

The programme will also witness the Prime Minister encouraging Business Correspondent-Sakhis (BC-Sakhis), by transferring Rs 4,000 as the first month`s stipend in the account of 20,000 BC-Sakhis.

When BC-Sakhis commence their work as providers of doorstep financial services at the grassroot level, they are paid a stipend of Rs 4,000 for six months, so that they get stabilized in their work and then start earning through the commission on transactions, the PMO informed.

Mukhya Mantri Kanya Sumangala Scheme

During the programme, PM Modi will also be transferring a total amount of over 20 crores to more than one lakh beneficiaries under the Mukhya Mantri Kanya Sumangala Scheme. The Scheme provides conditional cash transfer to a girl child at different stages of her life.

The total transfer is Rs 15,000 per beneficiary. "The stages are at birth (Rs 2,000), on completing one-year complete vaccination (Rs 1,000), on admission in class-I (Rs 2,000), On admission in class-VI (Rs 2,000), on admission in class-IX (Rs 3,000), on admission in any degree or diploma course after passing class X or XII (Rs 5,000)," it added.

In addition, the Prime Minister will also lay the foundation stone of 202 Supplementary Nutrition Manufacturing Units. These units are being funded by the Self Help Groups and will be constructed at the cost of approximately Rs 1 crore for one unit.

These units will supply Supplementary Nutrition under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in 600 blocks of the state, the PMO said in its release.

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New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind will embark on a three-day visit to Kerala on Tuesday (December 21, 2021). President Kovind is scheduled to will visit Kerala from December 21 to 24 and, during his visit, the president will attend various events in Kasaragod, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.

"On December 21, the President will grace and address the fifth convocation of the Central University of Kerala in Kasargod," reads the release. The event will be held from 3.30 pm at a specially prepared venue.

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan and State Local Self Government and Excise Minister M V Govindan will also attend the event. The Convocation ceremony of the 2018-2020 batch is being conducted this year and 742 students are graduating.

"On December 22, the President will witness the operational demonstration by the Southern Naval Command in Kochi," the release added.

The president will witness Operational Demonstration by the Southern Naval Command and visit Vikrant Cell.

President Kovind, who will arrive in Thiruvananthapuram from Kochi on the morning of December 23, will attend an event organised by the PN Panicker Foundation there, the release said.

(With agency inputs)

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Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur today slammed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for use of objectionable language against media personnel during a press conference earlier today.

"I am answering you, but do you work for the government, stop being an agent of the government," Rahul Gandhi said in response to a query by a reporter. The former Congress chief went ahead with his rant and used an objectionable word against the reporter.

Reacting to Rahul Gandhi's gesture, Anurag Thakur said that statement was a reminder of emergency era when the press was censored and journalists were jailed for asking questions.

On Sunday, Rahul Gandhi had accused the media of suppressing the voice of the Opposition.

"Sad! Many media companions only show the face of one person, suppress the voice of the opposition - do not allow it to reach the public. Did that person ever raise a voice for you?" said the Congress leader in a tweet in Hindi.

"Do whatever you feel is right, but if there will be injustice-violence against you, then I was with you in the past, I will remain with you in the future," he added.

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New Delhi: UK MP Preet Kaur Gill has issued a new tweet on the sacrilege incident at Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) even as the Indian Mission in London has expressed concern over her previous tweet on the incident. In her initial tweet on the incident, she characterized it as "Hindu terrorist prevented from an act of violence at Sikh Holy Shrine of Harmandir Sahib, against Sikh". Her tweets got furious responses and have been deleted now.

The Indian high commission in a statement said, "it is constrained to unequivocally repudiate the public comment by a Member of the British Parliament regarding a crime that occurred in India even before the Indian law enforcement authority could investigate or comment or declare their finding."

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) under Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Law and Order had been constituted to investigate the sacrilege incident.

The Indian mission said it is "concerned at the effect that such commentary by a foreign MP may have on inter-communal harmony and peace in the British Indian community." Remember British Indians constitute the largest ethnic group in the UK and have played a key role in British society.

The MP later deleted the previous tweet and condemned both the sacrilege and lynching of the man who was responsible for it. She said in a tweet, "Beadbi incidents are unacceptable but the lynching of another person is also unacceptable and no one should take matters into their own hands. We need a full enquiry into these matters. @SGPCAmritsar @PMOIndia"

Beadbi incidents are unacceptable but the lynching of another person is also unacceptable and no one should take matters into their own hands. We need a full enquiry into these matters. @SGPCAmritsar @PMOIndia  Preet Kaur Gill MP (@PreetKGillMP) December 20, 2021

Preet Kaur is a Labour MP and also the first female British Sikh MP. She is also labour shadow secretary of state for international development.

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NEW DELHI: The recent lynching of a man after he allegedly attempted to commit "sacrilege" inside the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple in Amritsar has once again triggered the debate over the issue and how to deal with such inappropriate conduct.

The man who hailed from Uttar Pradesh was allegedly beaten to death and was seen in a viral video, jumping inside a fence, to reach the Guru Granth Sahib in the Golden Temple. The incident took place during the evening prayers (Rehraas Sahib). The man jumped from the golden railing inside the sanctum sanctorum, picked a sword and reached near the place where a Sikh priest was reciting the holy Guru Granth Sahib. The man was caught by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) task force members and then allegedly beaten to death.

The lynching of the youth for allegedly trying to desecrate the Guru Granth Sahib has ignited what has been a long-simmering controversy.

What does 'beadbi' or 'sacrilege' of Guru Granth Sahib Ji mean in Sikhism?

Beadbi or 'sacrilege' means being disrespectful towards Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The concept of sacrilege in Sikhism emanates largely from the fact that Sikhs consider the Guru Granth Sahib to be a living Guru. The Sikhs consider the Guru Granth Sahib and everything associated with it as highly sacred. In Sikhism, the Guru is considered to be a living entity, hence any harm or disrespect to the guru is treated as a serious offence.

Apart from the Guru Granth Sahib, the gurdwara, which literally means the abode of the guru, and the articles used in the service of the Guru, are sacred. The dastaar or the pagri, the headgear worn by Sikhs, is also considered sacred, as is the kirpan, the sword that baptised Sikhs carry. The hair and beard maintained by Sikhs are also sacred, and touching or disrespecting these also amounts to sacrilege.

Incidents of sacrilege in India

In India, for some years now, Punjab has topped the country in the number of sacrilege cases. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that from 2018 to 2020, Punjabs rate of crimes (number of cases divided by population in lakhs) registered under Sections 295 to 297 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which deal with sacrilege, was the highest.

Blasphemy

To blaspheme is 'to show contempt or disrespect for (God or sacred things)'. 71 of the world's 195 countries have blasphemy laws. Penalties for violating blasphemy laws in these countries can range from fines to imprisonment and death.

Definition of Blasphemy

Blasphemy is defined as the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God. According to the study, Blasphemy laws are astonishingly widespread. Seventy-one countries spread out across many regions, maintain such statutes. Every one of these blasphemy statutes deviates from at least one internationally recognized human rights principle. Most of these laws fail to respect fully the human right of freedom of expression.

What do international studies into Blasphemy laws suggest?

All five nations with blasphemy laws that deviate the most from international human rights principles maintain an official state religion.

Most blasphemy laws studied were vaguely worded, as many failed to specify intent as part of the violation. The vast majority carried unduly harsh penalties for violators.

Most blasphemy laws were embedded in the criminal codes and 86 percent of states with blasphemy laws prescribed imprisonment for convicted offenders. Some blasphemy statutes even imposed the death penalty.

What is punishment around the world for such crimes?

A 2017 report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF) identified 71 countries that criminalise views deemed to be blasphemous. The punishments for these transgressions vary from fines to the death penalty, but the vast majority of countries (86%) that enforce blasphemy laws prescribe imprisonment for convicted offenders.

Blasphemy is punishable by death in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia and some African nations. Among non-Muslim-majority cases, the harshest blasphemy laws are in Italy, where the maximum penalty is three years in prison.

Half of the worlds 49 Muslim-majority countries have additional laws banning apostasy, meaning people may be punished for leaving Islam. All countries with apostasy laws are Muslim-majority except India. Apostasy is often charged along with blasphemy.

Pakistan

In Pakistan, which also follows the IPC Sections enacted by the colonial government, while Section 295 similarly leads to two years in jail, Section 295A invites 10 years of imprisonment.

In 1982, the Pakistan government added a Section 295B to protect the Quran. The punishment for defiling it is imprisonment for life. In 1986, Pakistan added Section 295C, which carries a mandatory death sentence for the use of derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed or other prophets.

In simple words, Pakistan's blasphemy laws carry a potential death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say they have been used to persecute minority faiths and unfairly target minorities.

The Middle East and North Africa

Blasphemy bans are the norm rather than the exception in the Middle East and North Africa, with 18 of the regions 20 nations treating insults to Islam as a criminal offence, according to the Pew Research Centre. Fourteen countries in the region also criminalise apostasy, the act of formally renouncing a religion.

Americas and Asia-Pacific

According to the most recent Pew Research report, one-third of the Americas still have anti-blasphemy laws, as do almost a quarter of countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Anti-blasphemy laws in Europe

Even in secular Europe, several developed countries still have laws dealing with blasphemy. Blasphemy was abolished as an offence in England and Wales in 2008, but it remains in Scotland and Northern Ireland, according to The Independent.

In countries like Poland, Greece, Italy, Russia and Ireland, the accuse can face criminal charges for blasphemy, although in practice such prosecutions are rare and, in most cases, impossible due to constitutional guarantees on freedom of expression.

(Based on international studies & Pew Research)

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Shiv Sena on Tuesday slammed the BJP over the issue of vandalisation of the statues of Chhatrapati Shivaji and freedom fighter Sangolli Rayanna in Bengaluru. The party said that the BJP resorts to double standards, as it demands vote on the name of Chhatrapati Shivaji in elections, but stays silent on the issue of "insult" to Shivaji Maharaj.

Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut also attacked the BJP, that currently rules the state of Karnataka, to act against the pro-Marathi outfit Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti.

"The Centre is practising double standards on this issue. To lure voters, Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to Varanasi and referred to Chhatrapati Shivaji and how he fought the Mughals. But not a single Union minister has uttered a word on the insult meted out to Chhatrapati Shivaji in a BJP-ruled state?" Raut told reporters.

Raut said that Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti has worked hard for the causes of Marathis in the Belgaum region.

"They have made sacrifices and shed blood for the cause of Marathi-speaking persons in the Maharashtra-Karnataka border region," Raut said.

He claimed that the Karnataka government has illegally arrested more than 200 activists of MES and cane-charged them.

"What are sensitive leaders of the BJP doing?" Raut asked.

"It is one thing to talk of banning MES, but I dare them to ban the MES," the Shiv Sena leader said.

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New Delhi: State governments can allow the teaching of the Bhagwad Gita to school students if they want, the government told Lok Sabha on Monday. Replying to members' questions in the Lower House, Union Minister for Education Annapurna Devi said that state governments can also make provisions for the teaching of the Bhojpuri language in schools if they want.

She added that under the new education policy, the education of children in regional languages has been made compulsory. "Education comes in the concurrent list of (the Constitution). If the states want, they can add Bhagwad Gita to the curriculum.

"Under the CBSE (central board of secondary school education) pattern, Bhagwad Gita is already taught in various classes. If states want they can add Bhagwad Gita," the Minister told the House during the Question Hour.

She was replying to the question from BJP's North Mumbai MP Gopal Shetty. The BJP member wanted to know from the government if it is considering bringing provisions for the teaching of Bhagwad Gita to school students across the country.

While asking his question, Shetty also suggested that the Congress members read Bhagwad Gita "so that they get the wisdom to do good work".

Congress members were at that time protesting in the House over Lakhimpur Kheri violence and demanding the sacking of Union Minister for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra as his son Ashish Mishra is one of the accused arrested in the case.

"Some contents from the Bhagwad Gita are already there for the students of classes Class 6, 7 and 8. Bhagwad Gita is taught," the minister said in her reply.

In response to a written question in Lok Sabha, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed that Bhagwad Gita is also incorporated in the syllabus for the UGC-NET examination for the Yoga subject.

"The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has introduced a course of Indian Traditional Knowledge System in 2018 in the model curriculum of UG Engineering courses, which has taken some aspect of Shrimad Bhagwad Gita," Pradhan said.

In a separate question in Lok Sabha, BJP member Nishikant Dubey sought to know from the government if it was considering giving recognition to Bhojpuri or making the language part of the school curriculum for students of classes 1-12 and the higher education institutions as well.

He said people from Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have been demanding it for a long time.

"Under the new education policy, education of children in Indian language and regional languages has been made compulsory. States can teach (school) children in Bhojpuri. States can implement the new education policy and teach (Bhojpuri) in Class 1 to 12," the minister of state for education replied.

The minister said the Union government issues advisories to the state governments from time to time. "If the state governments want, they can comply with them and make provisions for teaching (Bhojpuri) to students of Classes 1 to 12," she added.

Meanwhile, in a written response, Pradhan said, "As per information received from the State of Bihar, the Bhojpuri language has not been discontinued from the school curriculum.

As per the Bihar State Curriculum 2008, textbooks for classes 1 to 12 in Bhojpuri have been developed and uploaded on the DIKSHA platform. Further, the state government has the policy to promote regional languages for primary education".

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(Brand Desk Content)
Lucknow: Paddy procurement is progressing smoothly in the Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2021-22 from farmers, at MSP like it was done in the previous years. Chairing a high-level meeting on Tuesday, the CM directed the officials to ensure timely payment to the farmers against the purchase.

The UP government has bought around 33.852 lakh metric tonnes of paddy so far benefitting more than 4.78 lakh farmers in the state.

According to Commissioner, Food and Civil Supplies, Sorabh Babu, As on December 21, total paddy worth more than Rs 6077.91 crore has been purchased from the farmers, and the payment is being made within 72 hours of the purchase directly to their bank accounts.

As per the reports given by the departments, state government agencies and the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has procured more than 1.15 LMT of Paddy in the last 24-hours. The process of paddy procurement is being conducted smoothly in the state.

In line with the instructions of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, arrangements have been made to ensure farmers are not harassed by middlemen. Strict monitoring is also being done to make the process smooth.

At the MSP, the government has procured paddy worth Rs 6077.91 crore from 478239 farmers.

The Chief Minister had given instructions to ensure smooth purchase of the crop and directed the key officers including ADMs, SDMs, Tehsildars to monitor the purchase conducting an on-site inspection of the purchase centres.

A total of 4400 procurement centres had been set up across the state to facilitate direct purchase from farmers against last years 4319 centres in 73districts.

MSP

-Rs 1,960 per quintal for Grade A variety

-Rs 1,940 per quintal for common variety

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Belagavi: Karnataka government on Tuesday (December 21) announced restrictions on new year celebrations in the wake of prevailing Covid situation in the state.

At Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that the decision has been taken at a high-level meeting with authorities and Covid expert committee members who attended the meeting through video conferencing.

"The usual large gatherings at M.G.Road, Brigade Road and surrounding areas in Bengaluru has been banned this time. Large gatherings are also banned at any place across the state for new year celebrations," he stated.

As for as clubs, pubs are concerned, DJ music, special events are not allowed. The entry has been restricted to 50 per cent capacity. Large scale parties are also not allowed anywhere in the state, he maintained.

Bommai further said that this applies to the apartment premises also. The resident welfare association`s must see to it that there are no large gatherings and parties on their premises. The entry is allowed only for those who have been administered with two doses of Covid vaccination.

The rules will be applied from December 30 to January 2. During the Christmas celebrations, mass gatherings are not allowed outside the premises and the prayers inside the church are allowed and church authorities should ensure social distancing, Bommai explained.

The state health department is worried over detection of 19 cases of Omicron variant in the state. The cases are reported in districts other than Bengaluru and health machinery is on firefighting mode. Fortunately, all Omicron patients are asymptomatic and recovering well.



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Mumbai: Maharashtra Minister and senior Shiv Sena leader Gulabrao Patil, who had kicked up a controversy by comparing the roads in his constituency in Jalgaon district to actor Hema Malini's cheeks, has now apologized for the same.

If my statement has hurt anyone, I apologise for it, but I didn't intend to hurt anyone, Maharashtra minister Gulabrao Patil said on Tuesday.

Hema Malini, who is the BJP MP from Mathura, and the state women's commission had strongly objected to his remarks. The video of his remarks, which he had made on Saturday while addressing an election meeting for the Bodwad Nagar Panchayat polls in his district in north Maharashtra, had gone viral on social media.

During the speech, Patil asked his opponents to visit his constituency to see how good the quality of roads there is.

"Those who have been MLAs for 30 years should come to my constituency and see the roads. If they are not like Hema Malini's cheeks, then I will resign," the water supply and sanitation minister said, apparently targeting former BJP leader Eknath Khadse, who was an MLA from Jalgaon for several years.

However, Rupali Chakankar, the chairperson of the Maharashtra State Commission for Women, objected to the remarks and warned the minister of legal action if he did not tender a public apology.

"The commission has taken note of the comment. If the minister doesn't tender an apology, he will have to face legal action," Chakankar said in a video statement on Sunday.

Hours after her warning, Patil apologised for his statement. Talking to reporters in Dhule, the Minister said, "I didn't mean to hurt anybody. I apologise for the comments. I belong to the Shiv Sena, which idolises Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Party founder Balasaheb Thackeray has taught us to respect women."

Reacting to Patils remarks, BJP MP Hema Malini said that the comments were not in good taste, particularly coming from an elected representative.

The Mathura BJP MP also said that the trend was first started by Lalu Prasad Yadav a few years ago and many followed suit.

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New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED), probing conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar in the Rs 200 crore money laundering case has mentioned that he has an association with several Bollywood celebrities including actor Shraddha Kapoor and Shilpa Shetty.

According to the disclosure statement of Sukesh Chandrashekhar, he has disclosed that he knows Sharadha Kapoor since 2015 and helped her in Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) case.

Speaking about other Bollywood celebrities, Chandrashekhar told to ED that he knew actor Harman Baweja and was planning to co-produce his next movie "Captain" starring Kartik Aryan.

Chandrashekhar's disclosure statement also mentioned that he also contacted actor Shilpa Shetty for husband Raj Kundra's conditional release.

Earlier, ED had questioned actor Jacqueline Fernandez and Nora Fatehi for their alleged connection with Sukesh Chandrashekhar. The central agency stated that Jacqueline Fernandez and Nora Fatehi received top models of luxury cars and other expensive gifts from the accused.

Patiala House Court recently took cognizance of the ED's chargesheet filed against Sukesh Chandrashekhar, wife Leena Maria Paul and others in the Rs 200 crore money laundering case. All the accused are presently in judicial custody. The ED, a financial probe agency, has recently arrested them under the PMLA in the extortion racket which was being run from a Delhi jail.

According to ED, during the investigation, searches were conducted at various places linked to Chandrashekar and his associates.

During the search, 16 high-end vehicles were seized under section 17 of the PMLA and these cars are either in the name of firms of Leena Maria Paul or in the name of third parties. It is further submitted that it has emerged that Chandrashekar knowingly created the structure for layering and transferring proceeds of crime and thus, actively participated in the process of money laundering.

Chandrashekar and Leena Maria Paul along with several others accused were earlier arrested by Delhi Police. The police have recently also invoked the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in the case.

Delhi Police had alleged that Leena, Chandrashekar with others used hawala routes, created Shell companies to park the money earned from proceeds of crime.

Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) had registered an FIR against Chandrasekhar for allegedly duping the spouses of former promoters of Ranbaxy, Shivinder Singh, and Malvinder Singh, of Rs 200 crore besides ongoing investigations against him in several cases across the country.
New Delhi: Actor R Madhavan has relocated to Dubai with his wife Sarita and son Vedaant. The 3 Idiots actor revealed that he did so to help his 16 years old son Vedaant, who is a swimmer, to better prepare for Olympics 2026, as most large-sized pools are shut down in Mumbai due to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases after the emergence of Omicron variant.

The larger swimming pools in Mumbai are either closed because of Covid or out of bounds. We are here with Vedaant in Dubai where he has access to large pools. Hes working towards the Olympics, and Sarita (his wife) and I are right by his side., the actor told Bollywood Hungama. He further added that his sons aspirations are more important to him than his own career.

R Madhavan often shares posts for Vedaant on Instagram. On his birthday this year, the actor penned a heartfelt note for him. Thank you for beating me at almost everything I am good at and making me jealous yet, my heart swell with pride. I have to learn so much from you my boy. As you step into the threshold of manhood, I want to wish you a very happy 16th birthday and hope and pray that youre able to make this world a better place than we are able to give to you. Im a blessed father, read the note.

He earlier posted a video of Vedaant and his friends enjoying pool time while his sang Saadi Gali plays in the background.

On the work front, Madhavan is grabbing headlines for his performance in the recently released Netflix series Decoupled. His ambitious directorial project Rocketry will also release in cinema halls next year.

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NEW DELHI: Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Naga Chaitanya, one of the most adored couples in south India, called it quits on October 2. Although the duo released an official statement together and shared the update with their fans, asking for their privacy, several speculations have been there on the internet that led to their separation.

On Tuesday, Samantha, who is known to not take distasteful comments against her, recently hit back at a person who passed a nasty comment about her divorce from Naga Chaitanya. The social media user suggested that she 'robbed' crores in alimony. "@Samanthaprabhu2 is a divorced ruined second-hand item who has 50 crores tax-free money robbed from a gentleman!" the user wrote. Reacting to it, Samantha wrote, 'God bless your soul.'

In October, Samantha and Chaitanya announced their separation in a joint statement, in which they said that they decided to part ways as husband and wife to pursue (their) own paths. Days later, she lashed out at troll attacks on her character and dismissed false rumours of her affairs and abortions.

Samantha said she felt like she would 'crumble and die'. But, as she realised that she is going to live her life, with all the issues, she appreciates herself for being such a strong woman. "I never knew I could pass this. I am proud of myself because I never knew I was this strong", the 'Shakunthalam' actress said.

Samantha also mentioned that her divorce from Chaitanya took a toll on her mental health. But she tried her ways to get better. Samantha, on the work front, has been busy signing new ventures, and will soon be working on two multilingual projects, of which one is titled 'Yashodha'. Samantha promises that she will shut up her critics only with her hard work, nothing else.
New Delhi: Actress Samantha Ruth Prabhu praised Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Ananya Pandays upcoming film Gehraiyaan in one word on her Instagram stories. Posting the teaser of the movie on her Instagram stories, The Family Man actress wrote, Beautiful. Deepika thanked Samantha and reposted her story on her Instagram.

Samantha often praises movies and performances that she admires on her Instagram. She earlier praised Allu Arjun for his performance in Pushpa. This is an @alluarjunonline appreciation post !! A performance that just keeps you hooked .. every second was (fire emojis) I am always always inspired when an actor is just so good that it is impossible to look away .. @alluarjunonline was that for me in #Pushpa .. from the accent to the one side drooping shoulder and that god damn SWAG .Phew .. absolutely stunning .. truly truly inspired.

Samantha had a special item number Oo Antava in the film.

Gehraaiyan is directed by Shakun Batra and will be released on Amazon Prime Videos on January 25. Deepika had earlier shared BTS photos on her Instagram and called Gehraaiyan a labour of love.

YesIt has been a bit of a wait. But as the saying goesSometimes, the longer you wait for something, the more you appreciate it when it finally arrives! Hopefully, the same holds true here. I took the opportunity to be a part of something that I believe was truly magical. And with love in my heart and utmost gratitude, I cannot wait to share our labour of love with all of you, read the actress's post.
New Delhi: Popular television actress Shweta Tiwari is back with a sassy photo shoot and that too in a saree. her glamourous avatar has gone viral on the internet and rightly so! The stunner can be seen flaunting her perfectly toned midriff in a yellow designer saree.

Shweta Tiwari's bold photoshoot pictures have garnered a wow from fans. Take a look here:

Shweta Tiwari became a household name after she sizzled on the small screens as Prerna in 'Kasautii Zindagii Kay'.

The Balaji Telefilms production remained the most loved daily soaps back in early 2000 and one of the most successful shows by Ekta Kapoor. The show had its reprised version 'Kasautii Zindagii Kay 2' with a fresh cast and was widely appreciated.

Shweta has a son named Reyansh with estranged husband Abhinav Kohli. Before Abhinav, Shweta was married to actor Raja Chaudhary, however, they got divorced in 2007 after nine years of marriage. The couple has a daughter named Palak Tiwari.

The actress was last seen in the adventure reality show Khatron Ke Khiladi 11, hosted by Rohit Shetty.
New Delhi: The four labour codes on wages, social security, industrial relations and occupation safety, health and working conditions are likely to be implemented by the next fiscal year, a senior official has told news agency PTI. Once implemented, the new wage code will impact working hours, salary restructuring and PF contribution among the prominent ones.

The official added that at least 13 states have pre-published draft rules on these laws, while the Centre has completed the process of finalising the draft rules on these codes in February 2021. The central government has notified four labour codes, namely, the Code on Wages, 2019, on August 8, 2019, and the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the Code on Social Security, 2020, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 on September 29, 2020.

Since labour is a concurrent subject, the Centre wants the states to implement these as well in one go, added the official.

The government's notification on Code on Wages 2019 may reduce the take-home pay of employees next financial year ie, April 2021 while components like PF and Gratuity might rise. This is based on the grounds that the new wage code mentions provision entailing that the employee's basic salary will be at least 50 percent of his/her net monthly CTC. Hence, if this provision comes into effect, it will mean that employees will not be able to get more than 50 percent of his/her net monthly salary in form of allowance.

This also means that there will be a consequent rise in gratuity and PF contribution of the employee. Hence, while the take home pay of the employees may be reduced, the Gratuity and PF component may rise.

Experts also believe that the new draft will impact the working hours of employees with some media reports saying that employees may be allowed a four-day workweek from next year, but they will have to work for 12 hours on those four days. The labour ministry has apparently made it clear that 48-hour weekly work requirement is a must.

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New Delhi: A Bill to link electoral roll data with Aadhaar ecosystem was passed in Lok Sabha on Monday. The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021, piloted by Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, was passed by a voice vote after a brief discussion during which some opposition members demanded that it be referred to a parliamentary panel for scrutiny.

Here is a step by step process on how to link Aadhaar with voter ID online

- Visit the election commission website https://voterportal.eci.gov.in/

- Login to the portal (you will be asked to log in using either your mobile number, email id, voter id number

- You will be required to provide your state, district and other personal details name, date of birth and fathers name

- Click on the search button

- If entered correctly, your details will match government's database and will be displayed on the screen

- Click Feed Aadhaar No option on the left side of the screen

- A pop-up page will appear

- You will be asked to fill in the name that appears on your Aadhaar card, Aadhaar number, voter ID number, registered mobile number and/or registered email address.

- Hit the submit button. Also, dont forget to cross check the details you have provided.

- Now, a message will appear on the screen stating that the application has been registered successfully.

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New Delhi: The central government is expected to release the 10th instalment of the Prime Minister Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM Kisan) Yojana in December. Farmers are eagerly awaiting the credit of the scheme's funds into their accounts before the start of the new year. But did you know that you may monitor the progress of your instalment online by going to PM Kisan's official website or downloading the PM Kisan App on your smartphone? In the year 2019, the central government introduced the PM Kisan Scheme.

PM Kisan provides economic support to all landholding farmer families in the country to help them meet their financial demands for agricultural and allied activities inputs, as well as residential needs. Farmers' accounts have been credited with 9 instalments so far. Eligible recipient farmer families receive a monetary incentive of Rs 6,000 per year under the scheme. Every four months, the money is deposited straight into the famers' bank accounts in three equal amounts of Rs 2,000 each.

Via PM Kisan website

Step 1: Visit the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi website at pmkisan.gov.in to verify the status of your PM Kisan 10th instalment.

Step 2: On the home page, select the 'Beneficiary Status' tab.

Step 3: Choose from the Aadhaar number, Account number, or Mobile number options.

Step 4: After you've made your selection, click 'Get Data.'

Via PM Kisan Mobile App:

Step 1: Install the PM Kisan App on your mobile device. To do so, go to PM Kisan's official website or click on the following link: https://pmkisan.gov.in/.

Step 2: Click on 'Download PMKISAN Mobile App' from the Farmers Corner on the right side of the homepage. However, you can also go to the Google Play store on your Android device and search for PM Kisan App to get it there.

Step 3: Beneficiaries can register themselves, check the status of their registration and payments, confirm their Aadhaar number, learn about the scheme, and phone hotline lines via the PM Kisan Mobile Application, which works similarly to the official website.

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Amritsar: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) will set up an inquiry panel to investigate the alleged sacrilege attempt at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, said Harjinder Singh Dhami, president, SGPC. Dhami demanded that, meanwhile, Punjab Government should set up an inquiry to probe the alleged sacrilege attempt at Kapurthala gurdwara.

"We demand that the Punjab govt set up an inquiry to probe the sacrilege attempt at Kapurthala gurdwara. Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) is setting up an inquiry panel for sacrilege incident (at Golden Temple) probe," said Dhami.

A man was beaten to death in an altercation by angry devotees after he allegedly attempted to commit sacrilege at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, earlier on December 18.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been formed by the state government to probe the Golden Temple incident. The incident took place during evening prayers when the man jumped over the metal railing around the Guru Granth Sahib and allegedly attempted to desecrate the Holy Book of the Sikhs with a sword.

Meanwhile, an unidentified man was allegedly beaten to death by locals at Nizampur in Punjab`s Kapurthala district on Sunday for allegedly disrespecting the `Nishan Sahib` at the village Gurudwara.

A video of people beating up the man who allegedly attempted sacrilege with the Nishan Sahib has gone viral on the Internet.

He was later handed over to the police but some people reportedly insisted that the man be questioned in front of them and the man was allegedly beaten to death in an ensuing scuffle.

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New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested jailed ex-promoter brothers of the Unitech realty group-- Sanjay Chandra and Ajay Chandra-- in a money laundering case being investigated against them, officials said on Tuesday.

They said the brothers were taken into custody on Monday and have been brought to Delhi from Mumbai where they were lodged in separate jails in an alleged cheating case filed by the Delhi Police.

The action came after the Supreme Court earlier this month allowed the anti-money laundering agency's plea for a fresh custodial interrogation of the duo saying it has obtained new evidence against them and it needs to confront them with those documents.

The ED is expected to produce them before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court here seeking their custody for interrogation, they said.

The agency had earlier informed the Supreme Court that the brothers were conducting business from the Tihar Jail premises in connivance with the prison staff when they were lodged there.

It had made a startling revelation that its officials unearthed a "secret underground office" in the jail which was being operated by erstwhile Unitech founder Ramesh Chandra and visited by his sons Sanjay and Ajay when on parole or bail.

The apex court, following this disclosure by the ED, asked authorities to shift the brothers in two separate prisons in Mumbai, Arthur Road Jail and Taloja Jail.

The ED, which has been investigating money laundering charges against the Chandras and their realty firm Unitech Ltd, said in its report that both Sanjay and Ajay have rendered the entire judicial custody meaningless as they have been freely communicating, instructing their officials and disposing of properties from inside the Tihar Jail in connivance with the prison staff.

The brothers are in jail since August, 2017 and are accused of allegedly siphoning home buyers' money.

The ED filed a criminal case under various sections of the PMLA early this year against the Unitech group and its promoters over allegations that the Chandra brothers illegally diverted over Rs 2,000 crore of depositors funds to Cyprus and the Cayman Islands.

In October, the ED had arrested Unitech founder Ramesh Chandra, Sanjay Chandra's wife Preeti Chandra and Rajesh Malik of the Carnoustie group.

It has attached properties worth more than Rs 690 crore in this case till now.

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Hyderabad: In a bizarre incident a man from Nandi Nagar in Banjara Hills made a fake call to police and reported that his brother was murdered by his parents. However, he was sentenced to three days of prison for giving false information

Banoth Lalu, a 36-year-old man on December 17 called up the police control room and informed that his parents had killed his brother, reported The New Indian Express.

After getting the information about the murder, the police control room sent an alert to the Banjara Hills police and the night patrol team rushed to the spot from where the murder was reported.

However, after arriving on the said crime scene, the entire police team including the night duty sub-inspector and the inspector who were in shock as it turned out that it was a hoax call and no incident of murder had happened.

According to The New Indian Express report, Inquiries revealed that Lalu made the call for fun and to check the readiness of the police.

Police lodged a case against Lalu for making a fake call, He was then produced before the court where he was sentenced to three days imprisonment for misleading the police by giving false information and creating panic.

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Paris: The first text message ever sent, reading "Merry Christmas," was sold on Tuesday for 107,000 euros ($121,000) as a `Non-Fungible Token` at a Paris auction house.

The text, which was sent on Dec. 3, 1992, was put up for auction by the British telecoms company Vodafone.

Vodafone engineer Neil Papworth sent the SMS from his computer to a manager in the United Kingdom, who received it on his 2-kg (4 lb) "Orbitel" telephone - similar to a desk phone but cordless and with a handle.

"They were in the middle of end-of-year events so he sent him the message `Merry Christmas`," said Maximilien Aguttes, head of development for the Aguttes Auction House.

Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, are a type of digital asset that has surged in popularity this year, with NFT artworks selling for millions of dollars.

Traded since around 2017, these digital objects, which encompass images, video, music and text, exist on blockchain, a record of transactions kept on networked computers. Each NFT has a unique digital signature.

The selling of intangible goods is not legal in France and so the auction house has packaged the text message in a digital frame, displaying the code and communication protocol, Aguttes said.

The buyer will receive the replica of the original communication protocol that transmitted the SMS and proceeds will go to the United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR.



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Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will soon return to Pakistan, his daughter Maryam Nawaz told local media today.

My father is desperate to return to the country and will do so soon. Pakistan is his country," Samaa TV quoted Maryam as saying during her interaction with the press outside the Islamabad High Court, which resumed the hearing of Avenfield case on Tuesday.

Referring to the recent local body`s election in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Maryam said that Imran Khan is stuck under the burden of his own performance and cant stay in power for long.

Imran Khan`s party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has failed to grab even a single mayor`s seat in Sunday`s local body polls in Khyber Pakhtunwa. Saying that Imran Khans time has come to an end, Maryam congratulated Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his party JUI-F for their victory in the elections.

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GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading faster than the Delta variant and is causing infections even in already vaccinated people or those who have recovered from the COVID-19 disease.

WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that it would be "unwise" to conclude from early evidence that Omicron was a milder variant than previous ones. "... with the numbers going up, all health systems are going to be under strain," Soumya Swaminathan told Geneva-based journalists.

The variant is successfully evading some immune responses, she said, meaning that the booster programmes being rolled out in many countries ought to be targeted towards people with weaker immune systems.

"There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the briefing. "And it is more likely people vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or re-infected," Tedros said.

Their comments echoed the finding of the study by Imperial College London, which said last week the risk of reinfection was more than five times higher and it has shown no sign of being milder than Delta.

WHO officials said however that other forms of immunity vaccinations may prevent infection and disease. While the antibody defences from some actions have been undermined, there has been hope that T-cells, the second pillar of an immune response, can prevent severe disease by attacking infected human cells.

WHO expert Abdi Mahamud added, "Although we are seeing a reduction in the neutralisation antibodies, almost all preliminary analysis shows T-cell mediated immunity remains intact, that is what we really require."

However, highlighting how little is known about how to handle the new variant that was only detected last month, Swaminathan also said: "Of course there is a challenge, many of the monoclonals will not work with Omicron."

She gave no details as she referred to the treatments that mimic natural antibodies in fighting off infections. Some drug makers have suggested the same.

ENDING THE PANDEMIC

In the short term, Tedros said that holiday festivities would in many places lead to "increased cases, overwhelmed health systems and more deaths" and urged people to postpone gatherings.

"An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled," he said. But the WHO team also offered some hope to a weary world facing the new wave that 2022 would be the year that the pandemic, which already killed more than 5.6 million people worldwide, would end.

It pointed towards the development of second and third-generation vaccines and the further development of antimicrobial treatments and other innovations.

"(We) hope to consign this disease to a relatively mild disease that is easily prevented, that is easily treated," Mike Ryan, the WHO`s top emergency expert, told the briefing. "If we can keep virus transmission to a minimum, then we can bring the pandemic to an end."

However, Tedros also said China, where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was first detected at the end of 2019, must be forthcoming with data and information related to its origin to help the response going forward.

"We need to continue until we know the origins, we need to push harder because we should learn from what happened this time in order to (do) better in the future," Tedros said.

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